#posting this into the void where nobody will read it because nothing exists outside the video game style cell of my room etc etc

[ehlnofay]

I should try writing something to evoke the very specific atmosphere I experience when I play too much first person 3D video game and then have mental illness symptoms. it's extremely singular. worth attempting to portray

[sublime-beyond-loss]

The weirdly profound lucid TSP dream I had several months ago and the strange coincidence that followed

Originally I only told @give-soup-please​ about this because he enjoys reading about crazy and interesting TSP dreams like this, but several weeks ago I brought this up in the chat of my TSP streams, and since I did, I figured it's about time I put this up somewhere more permanent. I do feel a little awkward putting this out into the world in a slightly more public fashion since it does go pretty deep into my own insecurities by the mere nature of what this dream represents. However, if there is even the slightest chance someone might get something out of this, I figure it's worth it. Plus the odd coincidence that followed makes this whole thing all the more interesting, but I'll get to that at the end of this blog post.

This TSP dream I had was one of the most lucid and weirdly profound dreams I've ever had. When I woke up from it, I immediately sat down and wrote out everything I could. This blog post will be a slight touching up of what I wrote.

I was using the jump glitch to mess around in the apartment ending and at some point I fell through the map, only instead of falling forever until the game resets, I fell into a completely unused map. There were no narrator lines to be found, and no sound effects outside of Stanley's own footfalls. The place looked like an odd mix of a TSP map and the later parts of Portal once you break out of the testing chambers.

While the area was fully enclosed and complete enough that you would never break the illusion and see out into the void beyond the level, the collision data was spotty at best and I'd often fall through the floor in places only to be reset back to the beginning of the level. I was stupidly eager to explore what seemed like a piece of unused content that nobody else had found or documented yet. Once I started to map out where you'd fall through if you weren't careful, I made my way deeper and deeper into this dark, eerie, and incredibly quiet place.

At some point I noticed something though, because it was inevitable that I'd fall through the floor all of the time because there was no way to predict where the collision data would not be present. As I'd fall, before the reset would hit, I could sometimes see something start to render in the void. I soon realized that if I could find the right spot to fall through the map above, I would be able to fall right into whatever this was that the game was trying to render in the distance.

Through much trial and error, I pulled it off and ended up in a completely new map below the existing one. It was generally the same as the first in looks. A mix of TSP and Portal, just with an entirely new layout. I continued with the same task for awhile that involved seeking out a new layer rendering below the current one.

Several layers in, as I'm running around exploring, I come to a sudden dead end. There was nothing there, but I still felt as if there was a presence and I could feel it watching me. A Morrowind style text box opens up, and frustratingly, I was not able to read all of what it said before it would move on to the next layer of text. Still, I end up having a weird sort of voiceless conversation with the text box.

For anyone not in the know, this is what a Morrowind text box looks like:

It said that it was glad that I had been looking for it and that it was glad I had finally found it after so long. It likes that I keep searching for meaning in this game that was deliberately written to offer zero conclusive answers. It enjoys all of my interpretations about the game because it makes it feel more like a real being. My thoughts and theories give it shape.

I, of course, can't help but wonder if it's the narrator I'm speaking to, or hell, even the settings person. It replies to this question by saying that if I have caused The Death Of The Author, then it must be the new author given shape by my own perception of the meaning to be found within this game. It acknowledged that to search for and make my own meaning in this game is exactly what makes it so compelling to me. It then lamented that it does not have a voice of its own, because I don't speak much and it can't have any other voice than my own.

It then said, ‘You fear that you will never create something as meaningful as what other people have already made before you. You want to make something that makes others feel the same way your favorite interests make you feel. But you struggle with the idea of it because you feel like all of the relevant stories that could be told have already been told. You were born at the end of history where all ideas have already been explored and what little creativity remains only exists to be packaged and sold at a premium. What can you bring to the table that hasn't already been said? You feel too stupid, too foolish to have a story worth committing to paper, and if you did, what if you failed? What if the publishers reject it? What if the audience doesn't like it? What if you are the fool you've always feared yourself to be? You can't handle the thought of it. Still, you feel like time is running out. You are getting old. The world is falling apart. You want to do this before the world comes crashing down around you, and even though you don't believe it, I know you will pull it off someday. I would not exist if that were not the case.’

‘Everyone has their own narrator speaking inside of themselves, really. Everyone has that voice trying to make a story out of the meaninglessness of their life, before they return to the dust they came from, as they spin around on this tiny rock in a vast expanse of nothingness. It was from that nothingness we came and will inevitably return. Even if you fail at your life goal, does it matter? You will be forgotten someday, just like every person who came before you. Maybe that sort of autonomy isn't so bad. Maybe it's okay to just exist in meaninglessness and to return to that void having accomplished nothing. The out of bounds void of this game isn't much different, and you will keep exploring this nothingness, trying to make your own meaning out of it until it all fades away. You've always been a person who likes to break games and explore what lies beyond, even though you know there is rarely anything out there for you to discover, other than the meaning you prescribe to it.’

It was then that a fucking Skyrim werewolf of all things manifested out of nowhere, jumpscared the fuck out of me, slashed at me and caused Stanley to fall over in a haze of red like at the end of the zending when he completes his final jump. Everything went black and when the game reloaded, I was back at the very start in Stanley's office. I go back to the apartment ending, jump back into the area below and continue exploring while trying to find that entity again. I get increasingly frustrated as I fail to find it. All I occasionally come across are a few textures that look like scribbled text on the wall. 'Thank you for giving me meaning', 'Thank you for making me feel real', 'Thank you for searching', and going with the weird Elder Scrolls theme that this dream seemed to really like, 'Thank you for persisting in this doomed world'. 

Which probably relates to this: 

I eventually get so frustrated it wakes me up and I'm left with an intense feeling of surrealism.

What happened after just makes me wonder about somethings. That day upon waking up from that dream, feeling inspired, I boot up The Stanley Parable and get the jump glitch to see if there’s anything interesting to find. I, of course, try getting out of bounds in the apartment ending to see if there is anything to find, but I had no luck. But, after messing around awhile, I find this:

I swear my blood ran cold when I ran into this. It was so eerily similar to the dream I literally had just had. That dark, profoundly eerie quietness of my dream with only Stanley’s footfalls making any sort of sound. As I wandered around that place, a thought occurred to me. If there was ever a game where the out of bounds void would reveal itself to be a malevolent entity of its own, it would be The Stanley Parable.

And that lead to me making this:

So, yeah.

[meraki-sunset]

The game begins with reader finishing reading the epilogues, so we know that they read all homestuck (but not homestuck2) and finally understands everything that is happening around them.

When they go to confront doc scratch they find the place full of photos on the floor and that doc is fighting with slick spades.

That means I was right in my previous theory! And Reader escapes in the middle of the altercation.

But unlike what I thought would happen, reader does not just cross the portal and warns his friends about the arrival of the meteorites that lead to the 12 trolls.

In fact at first I did not understand what happened, but giving it a little more time to think, it is kind of obvious to me what happened.

Reader got into the fenestrated window while it was turned off. So they fell into the void that exists between the windows and got themselves inside a dream bubble.

just like Roxi did when her window got disconected, she landed on Meena’s dream bubble

And within this bubble, they find the retcom juju

The dream bubbles if you remember, they generate a mixture of memories of who is inside, and the bubble where the juju was kept was a convination of places from vriska’s and caliborn’s memories (from their lands during the game)

But being alone in the bubble, arriving long before anyone else to the juju, all that reader found were smooth walls and the juju itself, not in the caliborn’s denizen box, but on the floor.

Reader recognizes the juju and puts their hand in it, but not being a character of the web comic, but from a side story the power is too much for them, and they’re sent to the beginning of homestuck, outside of John’s house on the day of apocalypse.

Later Reader says they probably found the juju by accident, making this the point in wich this timeline divides from the canon alpha timeline. We’ll have to wait and see what results from this separated reality in wich nobody ever plays the game.

We realize now by how they describe everything so vaguely and calmly, by how he does not recognize John and that he is looking to make friends again, that reader now has amnesia, and not only do they don’t remember reading homestuck (which I originaly thought would be their motivation to change the history during this game) but also does not remember their experiences in alternia during Friendsim.

So basically we are at Zero again. Reader is delighted and eager to make friends again, with the added advantage that they can travel between time and space.

This gives them the ability to alter the timeline in the process of making friends. So without even trying, they destroy the homestuck’s narrative from it’s very core, which is,  they prevent the children from playing Sburb.

I always assumed that there was no escape from the game and that if the children did not play it, the meteorites would fall anyway annihilating the earth, and that the game was the only way for someone to be saved. It turns out that it’s not the case. The apocalypse can be avoided only if none of the children created in sburb starts the countdown.  (because other people on earth tried to start the game but never worked)

As an extra fact John mentions that the mailmen are unstoppable when delivering mail, which reminds me of mendicant. And in addition to the theory that pawns can not go back and therefore reader can not stop or withdraw from any encounter and if they do it, that timeline is doomed (reinforcing my carapace theory)

But back to reader, they seems to have vague memories of having been elsewhere and having read homestuck, because the encounter with John seems familiar to them although they do not remember his name

they refer to the first pages of homestuck when they try to remember.

And they think they remember making many friends and having died several times, although they have no memories of anyone or anything specific. The oldest memory they can recal is right after they finished reading homestuck before leaving Doc scratch mansion.

In a timeline, reader teaches John their powers and teleports him to a week in the past, where they accidentally intercept Epilog-John doing the same, and stopping in the backyard of his old home a week before the apocalypse to regroup everyone and choose the Plan of action on Lord English.

Maybe reader knew within himself that this would happen due to their incomplete memories in which they read the epilogue, but they guided themselves by following John's suggestions so it might just be a matter of luck for them to have found Epilog-John.

When they return John has a vague existential crisis after seeing himself from the future for a moment, similar to his extensive existential crisis after winning the game and moving to the Earth c.

Maybe John is not made for this heroic future (even tho he was created for it) and will always end up having crisis, no matter to how little of his magical destiny he is exposed to.

 In another timeline reader never shows their powers to John and they both just hang out in his room.

John implies that he does not have a good time with his father's cake madness, which reader worries that could be an abusive situation, but then he clarifies that everything is really fine and that he should not worry. Thing that calms reader down but still they still feel that they would be able to help someone in an abusive situation if the case ever presented to them (wich have actually done multiple times)

(Ironically, of the 4 children, John is the only one who is not in an abusive situation, contrary to the popular trope of stories involving teenagers, where the protagonist is the one in the most compromising situation which drives them to move the story forward, John actually was the only one from the group who had a loving family and stable home and lost it all on the game while the other three kids gained character development, friends, family and partners. Sad.)

Speaking with Dave, John tells him that the reader doesn't even look like a person, just something humanoid.

He mentioned that before even

So it’s finally confirmed by the kids that Reader is in fact not a human, like we all kind of suspected. (reader themselves seems to believe they are tho)

He also mentions that they are not wearing pants :/ (all this time I assumed that they did, and that Mallek had given them a pair as he had promised and that we as players simply did not notice due to the type of art in which reader is represented but, oh well. No pants. In addition, if it is a carapace, then they are a piece of chess created by cloning, no pants are needed, there is nothing to hide)

In addition Dave seems to be much less gullible than John and immediately understands that reader is not a mailman and that it’s probably their fault that John did not receive his game.

During the conversation reader scatters the things in John's treasure chest on the floor, like in homestuck (I still think they unconsciously mimic homestuck when they encounters scenarios they previously saw)

  And in the end they make a tower of cakes on John's bed and it should be noted that reader is wrapped in John's sheet in the same way that the mayor did with the same sheet and in the same way that all renegade carapaces do. (which only throws more fuel on my carapace theory, with y’all probably sick of hearing by now but i stand by it o:< )

That’s all i have for John’s chapter!

(yes i know reader is confirmed not a carapace, this theory it’s old)

i already have 3 word documents with Rose, Dave and Jade’s analysis i just need to organize them. i’m planing to post all the 8 kids first and then explain the trolls for convinience here you have a link to my 3 part theory for the oncoming hiveswap game!

Part 1 of Hiveswap theory

Part 2 of Hiveswap theory

Part 3 of Hiveswap theory

Link to the HomestuckTheory hashtag on my blog where you can find more stuff

[wordsablaze]

farewell wanderlust

jaskier is eighteen and fuelled by wanderlust, but then jaskier is eighteen and wonders if he's lost...

A/N: basically i was feeling angsty and wanted to write one of these lowercase fics so... (title credit to TAD because i can’t stop listening to them)

-

jaskier is born,

and he is small, an infant, a child, nothing more than the potential of new life.

he is and yet he is not, for he is too young to know what it truly is to be and all he really knows are the hands that pass him around and the arms that hold him close.

jaskier is one,

and he is capable of only garbled noises that suffice as weak imitations of words;

he enjoys being lifted up and thrown in the air and he does little but sleep and eat and watch the people around him, his eyes blue and bright and innocent.

jaskier is two,

and everything he knows makes no sense;

he knows that he will be given food if he cries but he is also sometimes left alone in the dark and there is no way to tell which outcome it will ever be and so he cries anyway because he knows nothing.

jaskier is three,

and he is learning how to talk just like the tall people he’s surrounded by

but he doesn’t understand why they don’t want him to talk, they only sharply hush him and place their fingers on his lips and whisk him away and he just doesn’t understand and-

jaskier is four,

and his hands sting from being hit with wood

because he is too much and not enough all at the same time and he can’t fathom why he isn’t allowed to express what he thinks, wishes, wants .

jaskier is five,

and he is told to be quiet and learn as the other children must do,

and he tries but he can’t sit still and he doesn’t want to remember all these numbers and he wants to chase the music outside his window but he’s not allowed to leave his room.

jaskier is six,

and he is not tall enough to reach the shelves,

even though everyone thinks he should be so he falls and hits his head and hurts his ankle but his father shouts at him and he doesn’t get to eat lunch with everyone else for a month and he almost forgets what proper food tastes like by the end of it.

jaskier is seven,

and there are bruises on his wrists from where he’s been pulled away

repeatedly, because he is too loud and too noisy , children are meant to only be seen but he’s not even worthy of that and there’s nothing he can do to impress anyone and it makes him so sad because he’s trying and he can’t-

jaskier is eight,

and he is good at poetry.

or, at least, that’s what the travellers say, but he’ll take their word as law because they smile at him, encourage him, make him feel alive for the first time in so long.

jaskier is nine,

and he has decided that he hates his name;

it’s only ever used to call for him so he can be ordered around and punished or teased and insulted and he doesn’t want to be himself anymore but he doesn’t think there’s anyone else he can be.

jaskier is ten,

and he is meant to feel special but he doesn’t

and his mother hisses at him when he can’t figure out to convince the guests at his party that he’s quiet and happy and everything they want him to be because he’s not, he’ll never be-

jaskier is eleven,

and he decides he wants to run away

but he’s foolish and he writes it down and someone finds his notebook and all he gets for his planning is a month locked away and the lute he’d been gifted from a traveller smashed in front of his eyes and he can’t stop himself from crying and crying -

jaskier is twelve,

and he falls horribly ill

and nobody even cares and he moans himself to sleep every night until a guest accidentally finds his room and takes pity on him and secretly brings him a healer who makes sure he stays alive but can do little else to help.

jaskier is thirteen,

and he knows he’s nothing but a disappointment

because that’s all his parents ever say, that’s all anyone ever says, even the girl who’d promised to love him forever and then left when he couldn’t give her what she wanted, and he can’t give anyone what they want, not even himself -

jaskier is fourteen,

and he knows he is unlike the others

because he likes to write and explore and the others like to fight and leave bruises and he doesn’t fit in at all and it all kind of hurts but there’s nothing he can do.

jaskier is fifteen,

and he knows heartbreak is written into his destiny

and he doesn’t even think to change it because even the kind boy with the winks had given up on him and his siblings pretend he doesn’t exist and he’s so tired of switching between invisible and a nuisance.

jaskier is sixteen,

and he cannot live with the pain anymore

so he runs away, and he runs and runs and doesn’t stop until his lungs ache and his feet throb and there is nothing behind him except the sound of silence and the hushed whispers of the wild wind urging him on and on and on -

jaskier is seventeen,

and he is finally just jaskier;

he is a bard and he is free to do nothing but sing his songs, even if it means he finds his food thrown at him rather than given to him, and it takes time but he grows and he learns and life finally starts to feel like something he likes .

jaskier is eighteen,

and he finds himself a witcher,

and it’s everything he’s ever wanted even if the witcher doesn’t feel the same and that’s okay because his heart, his foolish heart, guides his feet wherever the witcher goes and he loses yet another lute only to have it blessedly replaced and that has to be some sort of sign -

jaskier is eighteen,

and his life changes for the better

because following a witcher is dangerous but it is thrilling and he has never had more inspiration and everyone starts to sing his songs and toss coins instead of stale bread.

jaskier is eighteen,

and he falls head over heels in love

with the famous white wolf, the white wolf who rarely uses his name and sometimes leaves him behind but usually comes back or finds him again and saves him from nobles and accidentally curses him but lets him stick around despite everything.

jaskier is eighteen,

and he has travelled the continent;

he’s seen more monsters and mages than most and he loves it, he lives for it even if it does put his life at risk, because it’s always worth it when geralt, albeit reluctantly, cares for him and makes sure he stays relatively unharmed.

jaskier is eighteen,

and he knows he is a second choice

because, truly, there is nothing he could possibly have to offer that could compete with yennefer and her magic and her beauty and he’s back to being helpless and all he can do is write a ballad in her name and watch from a distance as his heart breaks yet again -

jaskier is eighteen,

and he climbs a mountain to find a dragon,

an actual dragon , and it should be amazing but it’s violent and they almost plummet to their deaths and then he wakes up alone and then- and then he is rejected yet again and this time it hurts so, so much because he’d thought they would always stay together but his witcher doesn’t want him anymore, has perhaps never wanted him, and he truly feels like less than nothing and oh , how it hurts -

jaskier is eighteen,

and he remains eighteen

but he could not care less, for life no longer means anything to him and there is a brutal, gaping void where his dear heart should be and he feels empty, silent, so much like the weed he had named himself after.

jaskier is eighteen-

jaskier is always eighteen-

but jaskier is filled with pain and his pain is timeless and jaskier is lost -

so jaskier is eighteen

but jaskier is not entirely sure if he still is.

-

me? continuing to bring pain to my faves? more likely than you think. (sorry jaskier) i also accidentally saved this to drafts instead of posting oops

-

edit: companion piece: these are the lies

-

thanks for reading !! masterlist | witcher blog: @geraskifer 

[hiddenwashington]

“ a little party never killed nobody “ 

it starts with a cheer throughout all the homes in washington, dc. televisions broadcast the clock counting down and yells follow the countdown. ten, nine, eight - the countdown continues. new years resolutions are filled throughout the city, to find loved one, for friends and family to remember, to have a better year than last year. seven, six, five - the champagne and bubbly are filled in glasses for those who wish to drink, fun accessories worn to welcome the new year. four - the cheers get louder as the final three seconds of 2019 continue the count down. three, two, one. but once ‘one’ is said or heard - the televisions blink. the cellphones, the fancy cars, the debit and credit cards are gone. technology of the 21st century are void from ever existing.

2019 has ended, 2020 is supposed to come, but everything has changed in just a blink of an eye. the year might  be 2020, but all that can be heard is the music blasting over radios and the cops pounding on the doors confiscating liquor. the roaring twenties are here as the clock strikes midnight; it’s as if modern day never existed. the bars are empty, those who once found themselves as bartenders are no longer such - unless they find themselves hidden away in speakeasies. mob mentality runs through the streets because if you’re not in one, you’re against them. it’s a fight between the government and the mob - the mafia is at it’s height.

welcome to washington, dc. buildings are being constructed, bars are hidden in the back of restaurants and basements, and violent crime seems to be higher. but like always - family means blood. and with blood, citizens are finding themselves allied with forces bigger than them. influential mobsters run the streets, but there’s a war among them. diego hargreeves and alecto carrow battle for dominance in the city; and citizens are found to be either with the hargreeves or the death eaters. who they’re affiliated with isn’t something that’s chosen; it’s something the city forces upon them, except for those who manage to separate themselves in unaffiliated parties. family, couples, and friends are separated. it’s like the capulet’s and the montague’s all over again - but this time, the stakes are higher. welcome to the roaring twenties, not everything is what it seems.

TLDR;

the roaring twenties are in full effect in hiddenwashington, though no one is aware that they’ve been thrown into the past. even with leia still being president, there’s not much power there when it seems like two opposing crime families are in full effect.  the hargreeves and the death eaters mobs are at war with one another and blood is shed, families and friendships are being pulled apart, and all that’s on everybody’s minds seems to be a hunger for power. sides aren’t chosen, but the city forces the sides for the citizens in the cities. either you’re with a certain mob or against them.

OOC INFORMATION;

hello guys, gals and nonbinary pals of hiddenwashington !!! we are so excited to bring you hidden’s eighth event and cannot wait to see what you all make of it !! with the roaring twenties being a HUNDRED years ago, we thought we would bring a little piece of it to our city! we will be dividing all of us into three different groups, which you all are encouraged to interact with to your hearts contents! the mob has come to dc, and we cannot wait to see what your characters make of their presence here! feel free to go wild, plot it out with others, enjoy, and let’s see what life we can bring to this city! with that said, enjoy the 1920′s and have your characters bask in being thrown back in time as if nothing has happened! 

DATES;

january 1st - january 7th

the event will last 7 days in and out of character

THE GROUPS;

the residents of washington dc are split into three groups, which could be found here. the hargreeves, the carrows, and the unaffiliated party. if you want any of these to be changed, please message the main and we’ll get this fixed for you all asap! 

THE HARGREEVES

the hargreeves control a majority of the south end of the city, holding a large amount of speakeasy’s that remain out of the police’s sight. smuggling contraband has been considered a larger difficulty, especially in a city that’s so populated. 

THE CARROWS

the carrows control the north end of the city, each with their own philosophy of wrecking havoc. their family, the death eaters, are known to be louder and more ruthless when it comes to dominating the streets and also known for some blood shed. granted, this isn’t for everyone. 

THE UNAFFILIATED

these are the residents that aren’t affiliated with the mafia, don’t wish to be, or haven’t found a place in one yet. of course, this is open to change as the event goes on, as affiliations change over time, but these residents are more than welcome to join in the speakeasies ( if they know where to find them ) - but don’t mind the non-trusting looks. sometimes it’s hard to trust, especially when cops and detectives are under cover. 

THE MAGIC ; 

all characters are divided into three groups, all done by random.

please feel free to make a small intro for your character if you’d like. let us know what group they’re in, what their stance is, maybe a job or some fun facts about them living in this 20s world.

your characters will have no idea that there has been a time switch. this is the world they are used to. once the clock strikes midnight, they will think that for as long as they have lived in dc, it has been the 1920s.

they will keep their memory status, regardless of if they are aware or unaware, but they will think when they arrived in dc, it has always been in this time period. so your characters (if aware) remember their lives prior to the city, but when they arrived here, they think it has always been during the 1910-1920s!

you are able to take these gangs in any way your character wishes, they could be all for being in either gang, could change throughout the event, they could hate their gang, or be forced into it by family or friends. remember to get creative and explore all the sides of this. will they be happy in their situation? or try and be the rat that tells the police where all the speakeasies are?

you may have to modify your characters’ jobs, especially if they have worked as a bartender in the past. please be sure that you are aware that they may have a new job. and have fun with it.

some ideas for jobs, specifically within the mobs, could be : bruiser, hitman, runner, consigliere, janitor, distractions, underboss, soldiers, or spies.

other ideas, which could go for all three groups, are politicians, police, speakeasy workers, anything that you really could think of! and if you are unsure of something please don’t hesitate to shoot the main a message asking!

your characters will keep their powers, this magic does not affect who they are as people, just the time they think they were born in! so, if you’re a wizard, you will still be a wizard. and if your character is a human, they will stay their human selves!

TAGGING AND PLOTTING ;

please feel free to begin plotting with everyone and anyone!! we want this to be all inclusive, as you never know who is going to be out and about during the new year!!!

also, please know you are completely free to begin plotting your groups or outside your groups! friends and family might be separated for all we know!

once the event begins, please hold any and all non event threads. you may pick them up once it’s over, or start fresh with reuniting with people, returning to your character’s normal state of mind, adjusting to the lack of or the influx of memories, etc.

in terms of plotting, keep in mind that your character doesn’t think this is out of the ordinary. they think that this is perfectly normal. but also, this is a pretty big holiday! if you want your character to talk about their new years plans, go for it! just know that they will not know of this magic swell until after the event ends!

as always, if you are planning to have your character killed during the event, please message us admins as we have to keep track for the sake of their memory status! remember that your character dying will alter their memories, so plan accordingly!

be sure to tag all posts as “hwevent08″ and make sure that you tag all thing appropriately with any trigger warnings needed!

and of course, just use good judgement and be sure not to god mod, this is a very exciting event so just be sure to talk with your partners before doing anything too big!

please, as always, give this post a like when you have read it in its entirety, and let’s get ready for the roaring 20′s, fam!! have fun, stay safe, enjoy and let’s mix things up !! ♥

[cherrywoodpecker]

Perennial Heart | Alec Utgoff x Reader | Chapter Two

Link to Chapter One

WC: 2472

Paired Listening: S. O. S. by ABBA

Link to Paired Listening

Author’s Note: Hey! Thanks to everyone who read chapter one! I haven’t written fanfiction in years and writing this has been making me really happy. I don’t expect to get this very popular, but if anyone wants to be tagged when I post a new chapter, I won’t mind. I don’t really care much about the reads because I’m just glad I found something that makes me happy and doesn’t stress me out. Anyways, have a good one! Thanks for reading!

TW: MENTION OF CHEATING

You shivered as you found your seat on the plane. You always found planes to be incredibly cold. You turned your phone back on for the first time since you told Seth you were leaving. He had texted you 57 times and called 30 times. You didn’t bother to read all of his messages, but you read enough to know that he was worried for your safety and was insistent on convincing that you two could work this out. You sent him one last text. 

“i won’t have service where I’m going. I’m safe. What I need is time alone right now. bye”

You turned your phone off and stuffed it into the deepest corner of your backpack. The fact that you wouldn’t be able to use it was comforting to you. While there was a part of you that was proud of yourself, deep down, you were still having trouble registering emotions on a surface level. Your body, your brain, everything was numb. You knew what you would be feeling if you weren’t numb, but you just couldn’t grasp the gratification of cutting Seth off, or the excitement and nervousness of getting on a plane and going to a country where you barely spoke any of the language. Everything was just... happening- and all you could feel was indifferent. 

Your first plane would be taking you to London. The airport in your city didn’t offer nonstop service to Kiev, so this was the best you could do. You didn’t care. At the beginning of the flight, you retrieved your camera from your bag and took your first picture, which was of the city from up in the air. You felt kind of lucky to have the window seat. It meant you had more to look at and mildly entertain you during the flight. As the plane continued to ascend, you realized you were exhausted. You had barely done anything yet that day, and you still felt like your body was shutting itself off. You decided to lay your head back and rest for a little while. 

You woke up by hitting your head against the seat in front of you. You looked out your window and couldn’t see much beyond the runways and plane hangars. It was dark, too, but you knew you were in London. 

As you left the plane, you felt like you were dreaming. That morning, you had felt like you could marry the man you were living with, and now you were wasting every dollar to your name to get away from him. 

No matter where you were, you felt like your soul, the core of where every feeling you had came from, was continuously falling into a void with no bottom. 

You found your next gate. Your flight wasn’t leaving for an hour or so, so you tried to find a place to sit. As you gazed around your gate, you noticed that all of the seats were taken, but not necessarily by people. Seats were taken by people, dogs, suitcases, purses, guitar cases, and pretty much everything that could be brought into an airport. You sighed, and sat against a wall. You donned a hoodie you had stuffed into a duffel bag carry on, and pulled the hood around your head. You leaned your head back and took a deep breath. 

He had said you were perfect. 

Seth had told you that every single person who had treated you inhumanely before was a lunatic because you were the best girl he had ever met. 

He called you the most beautiful girl in the world, and while you never believed it, it felt nice to hear someone call you that. It was nice to indulge in the belief that someone could see you as more beautiful than any other. 

What had you done to make him cheat?

You felt a light tap on your shoulder. 

“Miss? Uhh, miss?” He said. You looked up. Your eyes were cloudy with tears, and nothing looked quite right. You knew there was somebody in front of you, trying to get your attention. He sounded like a guy. 

“Yeah. Hi. ‘sup.” You said, using as short of terms as possible to possibly avoid a conversation with some chatty Kathy type. You realized it was hard to speak.

“Uh,” He hesitated. “I was just wondering if you’d like to take my seat. I saw you sitting on the ground and...” He trailed off, then continued “I thought you might want my seat.”

You didn’t like the idea of taking some asshole’s charity, but the floor was uncomfortable as hell. You took him up on it. You stood up, slinging your carry on behind you. 

“Thanks,” you said. As you walked over to the seat where he removed his luggage, you noticed that something hot was trailing down your cheek. You were crying. 

You realized why the stranger had been so scared while talking to you. You thought you were keeping your cool, meanwhile you were unwillingly submitting to a 2007-Britney-Spears-Level breakdown in front of the entire airport. You took your hoodie sleeve and wiped your face down before hiding it again in your hood and pulling out something to pretend to read until your plane was ready to board. 

A small drop hit the pages of your book.

You were finally feeling something,  but it wasn’t good. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Alec found the morning that he headed to the airport to be quite refreshing, despite the fact that he was running on two hours of sleep. He felt refreshed, excited, and ready to see the beautiful city of Kiev again. Despite the fact that it was one in the morning, despite the fact that he had forgotten to pack the night before, he managed to make the morning a happy one, and left his apartment with time to spare. He ate a bagel slathered in honey and drank a big cup of raspberry tea (with more honey) on his way. 

He always loved airports after midnight. Everything was quiet, unless there was some big storm somewhere or some other type of problem. Sure, most stores were closed, but he never needed to shop there anyway. He actually enjoyed it more, because there was some sort of thrill in walking down a corridor without anybody else in it. 

He wouldn’t admit it to anyone else, but there was also some satisfaction in the fact that there wasn’t anyone around to ask him for a picture or autograph. 

When he got to his gate, he was surprised by the amount of people already there. People were filling up seats incredibly quickly, so Alec made a beeline for an empty spot he found over by the window. It was mostly dark out, but he could see the pretty lights of London twinkling beyond the airport. 

He noticed more people were flooding to the gate. He thought perhaps a connecting flight had just landed. Everyone found their seats and soon the entire area was abuzz with the sounds of impatient flyers. Alec noticed some people staring at him. He averted his eyes downward and began to scroll on his phone. He put on headphones just for good measure, and played some classic rock. He felt like the enthusiasm of the music suited his morning quite nicely. 

Minutes after the terminal had crowded, Alec noticed someone weaving through the rows of seats trying to find an empty one. Her face was blank, thoughtless. Her demeanor more suited that of the average person taking a 2 AM flight. After realizing there were no seats left, she sat against the wall closest to Alec, seemingly unbothered. Alec paid her no mind until several minutes later, when he noticed movement and sound coming from her corner. She was now in a black sweat shirt, her head tilted back. There were tears building up around her eyes and he noticed her body quake in a hiccuped breath as she kept trying to breathe deeply. One or two other people in the vicinity noticed it, too. 

He stood up and set his backpack on his seat so nobody could take it, and he walked over to her. She didn’t notice him, as her eyes were shut and she hadn’t heard him, so he had no choice but to try to tap her on the shoulder. 

“Miss?” He said, suddenly nervous that he’d irritate her by bothering her. “Uhh, miss?” Her eyes fluttered open, glassy with obvious tears.

“Yeah. Hi. ‘sup” she said, clearly uninterested in anything outside of her own mind. 

“Uh,” Alec stuttered again. “I was just wondering if you’d like to take my seat. I saw you sitting on the ground and...” Shit. Alec didn’t know how to handle some stranger blubbering in a public place, but even more than that, he wanted to be kind. “I thought you might want my seat.”

Her facial expression didn’t change much. She blinked at Alec a few times and nodded, getting up and letting him lead her to his seat. Alec brought his carry on to her little corner and sat back, waiting for the plane to board. Before he could put his headphones back on, a young in a flight attendant’s uniform approached him, asking for selfie after selfie. 

‘Kiev,’ he thought, as the satisfied fan walked back to the desk. ‘Here I come.’

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You were hoping that this sudden feeling of dread would go away shortly, so you could continue living a numb existence, but it persisted through boarding.

What made it sting worse is that Seth was your best friend. He had been ever since you guys started hanging out. He just got you in a way you thought was different than the way anyone else understood you. Sure, he could be mean about your flaws. He never understood them. But it was nice to have someone around who had more confidence in you than you did.  

You could hear his voice in your head.

“What is wrong with you? Do you really think you’re such a dumb piece of shit that you won’t pass this class? You have a fucking C in it! You’re fine!” 

He was abrasive. He could be a jackass. He could be mean.

But he was all you wanted to talk to right now. 

Here you were, on what could be the biggest adventure of your life, and you were stranded in a sea of unfamiliar people, bound to loneliness by plane and the betrayal Seth had committed against you. 

He would have thought Kiev was so cool. He would have quelled your fears about not being able to speak the local language as good as you would have to. While you were a beginner, in his eyes, you were fluent. 

The loneliness reached its peak about halfway through the flight, around the hour and a half mark. You missed him so much and all you could feel was a sourness in your stomach at the thought that you weren’t enough for him. The sourness in your stomach turned into real, pulsating discomfort. You stood up and ran to the nearest restroom, which was towards the front of the plane. All of the people in First Class got fancy curtains so people in the aisle ways couldn’t bother them. 

You managed to do just that, however, when you tripped over a rogue shoe poking out from one of these curtains and fell to the floor. You could hear curtains being pushed back so the First Class passengers could see who was making all the racket. You quickly got up, still as nauseous as you’ve ever been, and ran to the restroom. Before you shut the door, you could hear an annoyed flight attendant say:

“Ma’am, those restrooms are for the First Class pas-”

Before he could finish, you had shut the door and started to get sick. 

After that, you felt drained, even more exhausted than you were before, and helpless. Nobody would be there for you after you opened that door to possibly face a flight attendant. Nobody would be there for you in Kiev. When you came back to the states, the only person there for you would be the person who took your utmost trust and threw it out the window. 

Right now, there was only you. 

For the rest of your life, you realized, there would only be you. 

You stood up, fixed your appearance in the mirror as much as you could, and left the restroom. When the flight attendant tried to confront you, you just muttered a “Yeah, sorry,” before walking back to your seat and contemplating yourself for the rest of the flight. 

Learning not to cry over it wasn’t going to be easy. 

You didn’t know how long it would take not to cry. 

But

You were your own person, and you didn’t need Seth for anything. 

And in that moment, you began to appreciate his absence

though you still hadn’t stopped crying. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Once Alec had boarded and settled into his soft, comfortable First Class seat, he almost nearly passed out. He hadn’t felt tired for a second before boarding the plane, but with the lights nearly all out, and the seat so comfortable, he couldn’t resist. He mentioned to the flight attendant before takeoff that he had already eaten and wouldn’t be interested in any sort of refreshment service. 

With that, he closed his curtain (an addition that didn’t bother him in the slightest), sat back, and drifted blissfully to sleep thinking of the flowers in the botanical gardens of Kiev that would be in bloom when he landed. 

He woke up to a twisting pain in his left foot before realizing that it had been in the aisle and someone had tripped on it. He moved his curtain to say sorry. it was the girl from before, and she looked worse. Her entire face was wet, and she looked incredibly pale. She looked sick. He tried to say something, but she quickly gathered herself and rushed to the restrooms at the front of the plane, being followed by a half-interested flight attendant trying to tell her that she couldn’t use those restrooms. 

Alec pulled his curtain closed and rolled his eyes at the flight attendant. She was obviously going through something. He couldn’t get back to sleep after that, but he could watch the landscape pass by the window, letting all of his thoughts escape with the passing clouds. 

In terms of experience, it wasn’t a bad flight, but with every passing second that Alec wasn’t in Kiev, he became more impatient to see it. He had this undying, unquestionable hope that everything would get better once he got to Kiev. 

He thought of the girl obviously having a breakdown. 

He hoped Kiev would help her, too. 

[flyswhumpcenter]

Bad Things Happen Bingo! The event where you send me requests according to this marvelous card! (Red cross is the completed prompt, character headshots are prompts I’ve already filled. Green deltas are for requested prompts.)

I'll fix what's broken. 

I'm not even sorry for writing this much Inazuma. I love Inazuma. I need to catch up all the years I haven't written content for it.

Also, yes, this ship? I ship it. It has a lot of my soft spots combined into one neat little burrito I immediately fell for it. I wish Akane was better written than what the anime gave us, sure, but it won't prevent me from imagining things and rely on a lot of personal interpretations. Thus this fanfic, which was supposed to be much grittier and edgier and stuff, with more focus on Akane being a more cunning spirit than she lets on, with a ton of regret and an insistence on the theme of fixing and patching things out.

You know what my mind told me instead? "ngh... soft..."

So instead, we all get fluff. I'll see if I can't fit the original idea somewhere, I still have 600-ish words written for it. I restarted this fic like 4 times before finally sticking with this version lol

but like see you soon for more angst on the flygon channel

-------

Dawn of a New Day

Summary: Akane watches over a dear friend.

Fandom: Inazuma Eleven (Ares/Orion continuity; post-canon) Ship: Akane/Haizaki (pre-rel, implied, can be read as platonic)

Wordcount: 1.5K words

Event hosted by @badthingshappenbingo

AO3 version available here.

-------

It’s not so bad, it’s going to be fine, Akane repeats in her mind. It’s not so bad, it’s going to be all fine.

Easier thought than applied, sure. The rational part of herself knows it’s not bad: people just happen to need surgeries, sometimes, and this one wasn’t anything bad. The surgeons looked fairly relaxed about it, the nurses told her it’d be fine, that it was nothing to get this worked up about. Yet, even knowing this, she was still worried: it was still a surgery, it wasn’t just like getting a flu shot.

 Still, in her heart, not getting worried is impossible. She cares about her friend too much not to be scared he won’t open his eyes again, stolen away from the world by a malevolent spirit. They’re too young to go to sleep forever, she figures, and she squeezes his fingers inside of her palm with even more strength now.

It’s funny, when she thinks about. Ryouhei has gone through so much, much more than her in fact, having fought against an enemy much bigger than he was, having faced adversaries coming from the entire world and helped save its order with strong teammates; and yet, she’s worried he won’t ever wake up from a surgery a lot of people have gone through just fine. It’s irrational, paradoxical in a way, but the feeling won’t go away, and she still has a vulnerable picture of her best friend right before her eyes.

 A nurse occasionally shows up to tell her she should be moving around and not stay on that chair, that it’ll be all well and good. Akane doesn’t bulge: she’s determined to be there for him as much as possible and, frankly, she doesn’t feel like she needs to go for a walk, she’s over that. Patience is the one thing she’s always had that she can put towards anything she wants and that’s a liberty she won’t give away for anything. She’s determined to stay here, this much is sure.

She appreciates the attention and recognizes some of the nurses passing by. She sometimes chats with them, they reassure her, she observes them do a few things here and there: changing an IV bag, updating vitals on their notepads, taking temperatures and pulses. She doesn’t say anything about that, lets them to their job: she’ll have to pay them back too, someday, but they’re less close to her than Ryouhei is, so she thinks of them as secondary thanks. She’ll give them flowers in the near future, she swears, because they often compliment those she brought to put in the vase of the room.

 His room isn’t unlike the one she had to stay in, except it’s meant for two and the other patient isn’t here anymore. She’s seen him leave when arriving with the bouquet and a rare plushie she’s grinded at the claw machine for, packing his things away and slipping a “have a nice day” at her before disappearing forever from her sight. It leaves her alone with the passing nurses and her friend, whose hand she holds even if she starts having a cramp from having her fingers in the same position for so long, watching the time go buy on a clock, looking at the sky through the window, glancing at him and smiling to herself about how peaceful he looks like this, both eyes visible.

It’s a rare sight of tranquillity, now that the things that caused them turmoil are over. He deserves this rest from the world.

 She has lost track of time passing, more focused on staring at his chest rising and downing softly, slowly under the covers. It’s an innocuous detail nobody pays attention to, usually, yet she can’t help but find it soothing to watch now. It has a different meaning, here, giving this attention more sense. It’s a vision of serenity, of calm after a violent storm. It’s a gentle warmth she welcomes.

To be honest, Akane spent so long merely watching the window with an empty soul and eyes staring into the void that she doesn’t mind finally spending time for something dear to her, hitting home. This is an unconventional way to spend time with a childhood friend, sure, but this she also can’t mind: in a way, it’s like Ryouhei felt, watching over someone and never getting an answer. The main difference is that she was certain he’d wake up sooner or later, even if she nourished all those irrational worries, when he never knew when she’d do so, if she’d even wake up someday. She’s glad and relieved to be able to say she’s won over her previous ailment and is currently making up for all the time and the lies.

 Her eyes flutter, tired. She finally glances at a clock: it’s already fairly late in the evening, nearing the very early morning. Visiting hours are closed, but she’s been allowed to remain: perhaps her already existing links with the nursing staff allowed her to do that. She’s going to fall asleep soon, even if she doesn’t want to, starting to lack in energy. Ah, that’s a shame… She’d have at least liked to be there when he’d wake up. Not that he’d need her to remember why he’s here, simply because she wants to be the first to say him hello in the morning.

She should have drunk coffee before getting here, but she doesn’t feel like getting up and fetching a can downstairs. What if he wakes up while she’s gone? She doesn’t want that, does she? She’ll remain by his side, now, so she can finally be truly forgiven and make up for her mistakes, clutching the plushie close to her chest.

 She still ends up falling asleep, eventually, slowly dragged into Morpheus’s arms. Her dream is nothing out of the ordinary: it’s abstract and colourful, as she walks around a beautiful garden with fountains made out of crystal shimmering under the summer sunlight. She always feels like she’s been here before, but never knows why, the reason remaining in the shadows of the nearby forest she used to be trapped in. It’s peaceful and calm, gentle like the breeze going through her untied hair.

She follows a golden path, the breeze still blowing through the meadow, flowers slowly dancing to it as they perfume the air. The prize waiting for her at the end of the path always changes and, this time, it’s a familiar pair of eyes she carelessly runs towards.

 It’s already shining outside when Akane finally comes to, eyelids fluttering back open, the discomfort of sleeping in a chair making itself known in the background. The first changes she notices are on her: she now has a jacket on her shoulders, whose scent has never been hers, and there’s a cushion in her back. Someone’s undoubtedly been there while she was out. It’s a given, considering this is a hospital.

She hasn’t moved much in her sleep, she realizes, considering her hand is still in the same place as it was before she fell asleep. She doesn’t dare move it as she otherwise stirs to further wake up, immediately greeted by a familiar voice.

 “Tch, don’t tell me you’ve been here all night…”

It’s groggy and obviously tired, most likely still tinted with some anaesthetics. It’s accompanied by a smirk on his face, eyes half-closed.

“Good morning, Ryouhei,” she replies with a smile, noticing her own voice to still sound tired and not entirely awaken yet. Maybe he’s only woken up recently too.

Despite his hostile words, which lack the bite he tried to put into them, he puffs, “good morning, Akane.”

 She takes his hand in hers, trying to shake away the lethargy she feels in one of them.

“Go to bed, you look like crap,” he tells her again, but his fingers trying to hold hers betray him.

“I’m happy to see you’ve not changed while I was asleep.”

“Tch, like I even would… That’s just a tiny operation…”

 To her slight surprise, Ryouhei loses his smirk.

“Wait… You did stay here all night, did you?”

“I did! It was the least I could do after you’ve watched over me for so long!”

He tries to shove his head in his hand, but the way he’s positioned makes it funny to watch.

“I told you that it was fine… You didn’t need to do that, geez… ”

“Maybe I didn’t need to, but I really wanted to…”

The hint of red she sees on his face makes her swoon on the inside, like she’s getting tickled under her skin. A weird, yet not uncomfortable feeling.

 They shortly fall into silence, neither of them speaking, as she watches the sun rise from the window, peeking through the curtains. The dawn is beautiful.

“…thank you, Akane,” she hears getting mumbled by a boy looking the other way.

“It’s nothing,” she replies, hands closing in on his.

 It tastes like childhood again.

[glcsowy-ed-blog]

HI,  THIS  BITCH  IS  GOING  ON  HIATUS  AND  HERE’S  WHY !

( the funny hat is not related to it whatsoever i just didn’t know what icon to post here so )

LET’S  START  WITH  THE  FACT  THAT  I  SEEM  TO  NOT  LEARN  FROM  MY  MISTAKES.  this  isn’t  the  first  time  this  happens  lmao.  see,  the  thing  with  me  is  that  you  can  easily  assume  that  THE  MORE  ACTIVE  I’M  HERE,  THE  MORE  I’M  TRYING  TO  RUN  FROM  SOME  REAL  LIFE  ISSUES.  and,  yeah,  i  guess  -  aren’t  we  all  ??  but  there  is  a  difference  in  treating  the  rpc  like  a  nice  hobby  to  de-stress  and  in  what  i’m  doing.  

IT’S  FUNNY,  BECAUSE  THIS  IS  EXACTLY  WHAT  I  HAD  TO  POST  ON  ONE  OF  MY  OTHER  RP  BLOGS  LIKE,  A  YEAR  AGO.  i  legit  thought  i  have  things  under  control  and  that  i’ll  be  able  to  keep  everything  in  balance  this  time.  when  i  started  this  blog,  i  was  in  a  pretty  good  mental  state,  actually.  WELL,  MAYBE  NOT,  BUT  -  GETTING  THERE,  DEFINITELY.  i  was  SO  SURE  things  are  going  to  be  different  this  time  around.

i  made  a  mistake  of  completely  hiding  from  the  issues  i  was  doing  a  pretty  good  job  of  fixing  up  until  recently.  it  wasn’t  a  step  back,  but  i  definitely  stopped  moving.  THIS  IS  STILL  PROGRESS,  IN  A  WAY  ??  thinking  back  to  what  i  was  doing  a  year  ago,  to  how  i  single  handedly  fucked  up  multiple  online  friendships,  ( not  to  even  mention  rl  ones,  i’m  not  even  gonna  go  there  )  it’s  still  not  so  bad.  and  i  need  to  step  back  for  a  not  specified  amount  of  time  to  prevent  it  from  getting  bad.

this  is  the  part  where  i  explain  it  further  and  if  somebody  is  sensitive  /  triggered  by  mentions  of  alcohol,  drugs  and  depression,  this  is  your  warning  to  proceed  with  caution.

hi  my  name  is  jay  and  i  have  a  drinking  problem  (  hi  jay  )  and  i  also  have  a  diagnosed  bipolar  disorder  (  bye  jay  )  and  i  have  a  history  of  both  of  those  in  my  close  family.  i’m  nearly  5  months  sober  now  and  i’m  not  going  to  therapy  anymore,  neither  am  i  taking  meds,  which  was  a  personal  choice.  (  i  still  have  my  therapist’s  number  in  case  things  get  bad,  though  and  since  i’m  rly  set  on  getting  healthy,  i’m  not  gonna  be  a  dumbass  and  actually  reach  out  to  her  if  that’s  what  it  comes  to.  but  i  kinda  want  to  try  and  get  by  without  medication.  again,  a  personal  choice,  i  don’t  have  anything  against  meds  ;  the  opposite,  actually,  bcs  wasn’t  it  for  the  stabilizers  i  was  taking  last  year,  i  don’t  think  i’d  manage  to  get  myself  to  the  point  where  i  can  actually  start  working  on  this  on  my  own.  )

i  was  still  drinking  through  the  therapy  and  a  couple  of  months  after  it  ended.  i  took  my  meds  with  booze.  i  never  rly  mentioned  it  to  my  therapist,  either,  which  now  i  realize  was  a  big  red  flag,  since  i  opened  up  about  the  worst  shit.  

i  live  in  a  country  that  enables  drinking.  it’s  WEIRD  not  to  drink  here.  it’s  part  of  the  culture.  i  have  friends  younger  than  me  that  already  have  serious  medical  issues  linked  to  drinking.  (  i’m  only  turning  24  this  year  and  i’m  p  sure  my  liver  is  lowkey  rotting.  )  i  attended  a  wedding  recently  and  had  my  ““date””’s  dad  say  that  he  wished  that  i  gave  them  heads-up  about  the  fact  that  i  don’t  drink.  i  had  somebody  else  jokingly  say  that  i  will  have  to  fight  twice  as  hard  for  the  family’s  acceptance.  this  is  a  regular  functional  family.  it’s  just  the  fucking  culture.  

when  you’re  a  daily  drinker,  even  the  people  closest  to  you  don’t  really  notice.  it’s  like  the  boiling  frog  fable.  if  the  frog  is  put  into  boiling  water,  it  will  immediately  jump  out,  but  if  the  water  is  tepid  and  then  brought  to  boil  slowly,  the  frog  stays.  i  was  surrounded  by  frogs.  the  drinking  got  worse  gradually,  not  all  at  once.  i  hid  it  without  even  realizing  i’m  doing  it.  YOU  DON’T  REALIZE  YOU  DO  IT.  it  is  an  instinct.  throwing  the  bottles  out  into  the  bins  outside,  not  the  ones  at  home.  saying  you’ve  had  2,  when  you’ve  had  5.

it’s  not  an  edgy  thing,  even  though  if  you  talked  to  me  a  mere  year  ago,  i'd  meme  the  fuck  out  of  it.  ‘  whiskey  is  cheaper  than  therapy  !!  ’  and  all  that.  it’s  ugly,  it’s  sad,  it’s  toxic,  it’s  nothing  you  want  to  go  through.  you  don’t  want  that  killer  headache,  you  don’t  want  to  look  at  pictures  from  last  night’s  party  and  not  recognize  yourself,  you  don’t  want  to  throw  the  trash  out  and  have  it  make  clinking  glass  noises,  and  look  down  as  you  are  passing  people  with  it.  you  don’t  want  your  first  bf  to  tell  you  he  hates  you  when  you’re  drunk,  you  don’t  want  to  live  with  all  those  times  you  hurt  people  that  care  for  you.  alcohol  is  not  a  truth  serum,  it’s  an  asshole  serum.  it’s  fucking  gross.  you  don’t  want  to  not  be  able  to  talk  with  certain  people  without  having  a  drink  first,  you  don’t  want  to  look  at  them  and  wonder  if  that’s  going  to  be  you  in  +10  years.  (  is  it  a  good  time  to  gently  nudge  anyone  who  might  be  reading  this  and  having  similar  issues  ??  don’t  drink  to  feel  better,  the  older  you’ll  get,  the  less  edgy  and  romanticized,  and  more  pathetic  and  terrible  you’ll  feel.  )

last  december  i  managed  to  binge  drink  a  whole  month  away.  i’d  go  without  food  for  weeks,  drink  at  work,  it  was  the  worst  mania  case  of  my  entire  life.  i  let  my  guards  down  and  had  a  person  i  trusted  the  most  and  loved  with  all  my  heart  take  advantage  of  me.  it  was  new  years  eve.  i  was  in  denial  up  until  half  of  january,  still  keeping  in  touch  with  them  -  and  then  one  day  i  made  a  bet  with  a  friend  to  quit  drinking  for  a  month.  after  the  month  passed,  i  just  kept  on  going  with  it.  it’s  a  wip.  it’s  good, but  it’s  still  a  wip.  i’m  not  planning  to  get  back  to  it,  ever.

literally  nobody: me:  this  fucking  trainwreck  of  a  post

if  i  was  capable  of  talking  about  this  in  a  chill  personal  way,  this  post  wouldn’t  exist,  i’d  just  announce  the  hiatus  due  to  personal  reasons  and  be  done  with  it.  but  i  have  people  reaching  out  to  me,  friends  reaching  out  to  me  and  i’m  in  no  state  to  explain  shit  personally.  i’m  the  worst  at  this,  i  can’t  do  it,  so  i  decided  to  just  scream  into  the  void  and  hope  whoever  needs  to  read  this,  will.  lmao.

last  year  i  just  deleted  tf  out  of  all  my  blogs  and  burned  all  the  bridges  down,  but  since  i’m  doing  way  better  now  and  i’m  a  bit  more  reasonable  about  the  whole  thing,  i’ll  ghost  until  i  feel  ACTUALLY  GOOD  ENOUGH  to  maybe  treat  this  as  a  fucking  hobby  and  keep  things  in  balance.

i  love  you,  guys.  take  care  <3      

[hagaard]

remember when I wrote "My next post will be a writing prompt"? well. lies. it's not done yet 'cuz it's exam period right now, so I essentially have no time for this. instead, I'm going to do something that I have wanted to do for a long time: screaming into the void. I never had a place to scream into the void before, but now I do. I should have started doing this a long time ago... anyways, if you want to read my two cents on the current state of the brony fandom and how I feel about it, then it's under the cut. and if you don't... you're probably right. after all, this is self-indulgent.

So I've been sucked into MLP a few years ago, in the French equivalent of high school. I can't remember when exactly, but I do remember that I was suffering from pretty severe depression. When I discovered the show, which was on a vacation day, I binged the first season in an afternoon, and followed with the second the very next day. It was... different. Refreshing. Bright. Colorful. Happy. I felt like I had found something that I was missing. And I loved it.

I started searching for content online. I found forums, websites, fiction repositories... all in French, since I hadn't learnt English at the time. But the content was... disappointing? Not what I was looking for. The big forum I joined was very toxic. I still have an account there, but I never visit. The fiction repository was better, but still had its fair share of drama. I wasn't satisfied. The bulk of the content was locked behind a language barrier.

I tore it down in a few months. A few months is all it took me to go from "hello-how-are-you-goodbye" to a good enough level that I was able to understand most of what I was reading. Not everything, of course. But enough. And from there, I would only go up. That's so emotionally invested I was; and, despite this, I could never talk about all of this to anyone. I was constantly looking for new content, but I was so anxious about myself and talking about what I liked that I never really got to talking to the content creators I was adoring. I never talked to anyone about the happiness they filled my life with. I was having suicidal thoughts, but here they were, with their beautiful stories about pastel horses doing stuff. It kept me alive, and I never thanked them. I didn't talk to my own therapist about this, and yet I could have trusted this man with my life! That's how anxious I was talking about my hobbies.

During all this time, I was vaguely aware of the controversies about the fandom. To outsiders, we were a joke. A black sheep, to point at and laugh at. And I don't know how to feel about this, because now, I feel... they can be right. I'd like to say we generally have a safe and welcoming community. I'd love to say that everyone in the MLP fandom is nice and kind. But I feel like I can't say this. There is an uncomfortable number of alt-right sympathizers (read: fascists) that proudly wear MLP badges and such. There are an uncomfortable number of misogynistic assholes within the community. The fandom often gets angry over little nothings. I have met a number of homophobic, transphobic people within the community. I feel like Hasbro is uncomfortable of our very existence because of this.

I still remember that one guy in one of the forums I was visiting, that had as a signature (roughly translated): < "Lesbian ponies" is lunacy, and the worst idea the fandom ever came up with. > I didn't understand why this made me so uncomfortable while younger. Now I know why. It's the idea that lesbian cartoon ponies, homosexual fictional characters, should be treated as fucking jokes, that made me uncomfortable. This guy had no issues shipping a mare with a stallion. At the exact moment it was two mares together (and considering the very balanced cast of 90% mares, which I'm not complaining about by the way, the target is supposed to be girls), it was a joke. It wasn't serious. It was lunacy. This guy couldn't understand w/w pairings as anything else than a joke.

Holy shit.

Also. Adult content! I would usually argue against talking about the adult part of any fandom, 'cuz they're generally a more niche thing? I think? But when half of the featured box in your biggest fanfiction repository, fimfiction.net, is smut fiction, I'd also argue it's a part significant enough that you'll want to talk about it, so here we are. MLP adult content is like any content. There is the better part, which is... cute ponies having fun and it's also hot. And that may be just my perception, but I feel like that's not what the bulk of the content is. We get a lot more of... general sexism, rape, gore, exaggeration, "extreme" content. And y'know, if porn is your thing and you're able to dissociate the reality from what you watch, then go nuts or something. But as the audience gets younger (we used to get a lot of 40s in the fandom, now most who join are 15 or whatever), you'll also expose people that don't have the tools to deal with this stuff and will confuse it with reality. And I really think we as a fandom don't generally put up enough content warnings for that. Not nearly enough. (also. foalcon. FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HAIRY. STOP DOING THAT.)

A whole lot of other shit, too! Weird ships that are both popular and potentially abusive! I used to ship Twilestia, aka a student and her mentor/motherly figure, which is NOT FINE! unless you screw with the canon to change a lot of things in their relationships. Don't get me started on Lunestia, they are SISTERS STOP DOING THIS INTERNET! Outside of shipping wars, now, there was that debate on one featured fic about whether making a joke about transgender people being traps and transwomen being disgusting was fun: it was a terrible joke, stop calling out others for being "overly sensitive". Fallout: Equestria, the crossover that literally split the fandom in half! That is not a joke. And what would be a good fandom without its edgy fiction where the entire country gets brainwashed, the women are now all slaves, the men are now all phallocentred assholes that spend their free time thing about sex or raping every woman they see? I'll tell you what it would be: A MUCH BETTER FANDOM. This story is literally "what if I narrated a game of FATAL"? And it's awful, of course, but also, absolutely exhausting.

So I stopped seeking MLP-related content. I was so focused on the negatives, at some point, I couldn't take it anymore. I took a pause. I stopped checking for updates on stories I was following, stopped making searches. Despite this, I was still reading stuff about other things. There sometimes was a joke about how bronies were all ugly fat kissless virgins, and it always hurt me to read it, because I knew it was a lie. But sometimes, I believed it. I never really got a chance to talk to anyone about this.

I'm glad I can now. I should have created my own little corner to scream into the void a long time ago. I should be able to talk about my interests, rather than reading what others think about them. Everybody should relieve themselves of the pressure sometimes. Can you believe I never once did that? I used to had a blog somewhere else, but the platform was and still is absolute garbage.

welp, here ends the rant. better post this on my tumblr too until I chicken out like I did with that infodump about that one game nobody cares about.

[taskforcebug]

*SCREECHES* PLEASE TELL ME MORE ABOUT ROBBIE AND THE CULT. Like oh man why did Robbie start that cult, and personality details, and what the cult is about. Just everything i'm so curious💖💖💖✨✨✨!!! Also if you'd be willing to have other people's ocs be in that cult because I have a kiddo in mind ajxbajbxs

First off, absolutely! Tell me about your kiddo and we’ll see how we can integrate him into the cult! Robbie accepts any and all willing (or unwilling c;) members!

So! As for why Robbie started the cult in the first place, here’s a brief (or not so brief explanation!): (It’s going under a read-more because its SO LONG!)

Robbie grew up over a century before the current status-quo time of my universe. He was raised in a small village hidden by the maybe largest forest any local outsider has ever seen. Nobody dared to enter, and many people even abandoned their unwanted children at the foot of the forest because of the myths surrounding it! It was said the forest ate unwanted children, returning their bodies to the earth and wiping their “sins” from existence, as well as the parents’. So you could assume (rightfully so) that many kinds of people abandoned their children here for whatever reason, whether it be personal or social. On occasion, rumors popped up about “devil-children” being passed over to the forest, the parents fleeing in shame. Whether this was the case or not, Robbie found himself abandoned at the foot of the forest; instead of being eaten by the woodland, he was taken in by a native people and raised in their village of monsters. They’d seen the marks on his skin and recognized them immediately (C;), though as Robbie grew up, nothing was said of his parents. 

As he was growing up, Robbie met two children who were in a similar situation as he. An older girl, Angela, and a boy, slightly younger than Robbie, Oz. Together they were the only children of the group, as the forest dwellers didn’t often take in children like Robbie. It would happen occasionally they’d stumble upon dying or dead human children and offer them a proper burial, but not often was it they found inhuman creatures like the trio. The village had a strict “no-humans” rule. They operated knowing Humans were inherently evil, having been attacked for centuries, but had become pacifists after eons of war. 

It happened that occasionally, the trio would wander past the limits of safety that the elders had set in place. Specifically as they got older and more rebellious. They hid this from the elders many times, so when they were all around the age of 15, they traveled out as usual. 

Now, in the village outside of the forest, rumors of “forest-people” had been going around for years. Unknowing of this, the trio had been in sight many times, and this final time out wasn’t excluded. When they reached the edge of the forest like they often did to wonder about humans, about civilization away from the woodlands, they met a young boy. Younger than them, maybe six or seven. Seeing themselves in this boy who had told them he’d been abandoned, the trio decided to take him back to the heart of the forest where they lived. Unknowingly, they were followed by a group of bounty hunters. Apparently, in the civilization outside of the forest, humans had caught wind of monsters living in the forest, and instantly saw income in the capture and killing of the group. 

The trio led the boy (and hunters) back to their group. The elders of the village were already in a panic. In their native tongue, they were frantically searching for the human that had infiltrated the forest. They could sense him. And others, as well. Before the trio had time to react, the hunters stormed out of the thick woods and into the clearing in the heart of the forest, into their village. It was a slaughter. They killed every one of the elders. Blood was thick in the air. Robbie and the duo panicked as the young boy pulled a knife on them and ordered them back, babbling about the reward for all of this. Angela was the first to go. A large man pulled her back by the neck. Robbie lunged forward but was stabbed in the thigh by the child and fell to his knee. He watched Angela be killed (I wont put details because even though I have them, I’m not sure what everyone’s okay with!). He screamed in pain and reached out for her. He even managed to stand and stumbled forward, but was stabbed in the stomach and fell onto his side in the dirt. He watched Oz be slaughtered next. He was panicking and adrenaline ran through his veins. His heart was pounding in his ears. 

The distinguishing marks on Robbie’s skin began glowing a bright blue as he was approached to be finished off, and for the first time, his alternate form was released. In that monstrous form, he tore each and every murderer apart with his bare hands. Afterward, he laid with Angela in the dirt, slowly transforming back into his usual self. His eyes were void of emotion. He took the necklace Angela always wore and put it around his own neck and took the dice Oz loved as well. He never lets either item go. He promised himself on that day they would serve as a reminder of what happened here, and that he’d get his revenge.

He began travelling from then on, and turned into a nomad of sorts. Along his journey, he discovered his true power: taking the life force of any being he kills, along with their power, if they have such a thing. This way, he concluded, he could prevent aging and, if he found the right person, he could take their power and bring his dead family back. From then on, he began tracking people of interest, keeping a close eye on them, and planning. This all took around ten years — his plans are deeply, deeply rooted. Around the age of 25, Robbie knocked the first domino and set his plans into motion. He gained the first few members of his cult: Mizu, Infinite, Ringmaster, and Xero. There are a LOT of complexities that go into each of their individual stories and how they were integrated into the cult, how Robbie seduced them into it, and the part he played in it all, so I’ll get into that in another post. 

He started the cult on the basis that humanity is evil and that pacifism never worked for anybody (calling out his village); He promises his followers revenge and solace, and essentially caters to their individual wants (Mizu—bring back the dead, get revenge; Xero—power to enable her to prove herself; it’s all circumstantial). 

But his REAL intentions (as there always are some underlying intentions in a cult) are to make these inhumans as powerful as they can be, so that Robbie can take their life and their powers at their full strength in order to become something of a god. He realizes as time goes on that after using he powers he’s gotten along the way, they begin to fade. Quicker and quicker the more he uses them. So there’s often cultists that join and check out early, if you know what I mean. It was a detrimental blow to him, though. At one point, Robbie gained the power to travel back in time, and he tried over and over again to set things right, but no matter what he seemed to do, Angela and Oz, as well as the village, died. Eventually he ran out of power and was stuck back in the present with his cult. 

So currently he’s decided to create an army in search for the most powerful being in existence (which, hint hint, is a character in our universe), in order to surpass whatever boundaries are stopping Angela and Oz from living. 

But BOY, is he tired! 

[theoverworld]

There Is No Such Thing As Area 51

There is no such thing as Area 51. Sorry! And the fact that it’s the golden egg of conspiracy theories worldwide is exactly what the US government wants. I’m writing this in a bit of a rush and I don’t have any of my thoughts organized, so I’m just going to break it down as follows:

Groom Lake / Paradise Ranch / Edwards AF Extension / Restricted Training Facility UX104

These are a few names for the place you know as Area 51. I don’t know much about its history, but essentially it was intended by the US Air Force to be a secret weapons-testing facility during the Cold War. It had a few on-site extensions; one of them was for developing experimental rocket and jet engines, one was for training contingents of troops for nuclear warfare and post-apocalyptic survival, etc. But much like the third Star Wars movie, the site and its purpose got out around the time of the Roswell incident, and a media frenzy popularized the base. The government tried at first to quell speculation about it, but then adopted another strategy: feed into the hype, and simply move the base a few dozen miles away.

Today, Groom Lake (Area 51) is a small but functional military airport and base. It’s got a bunch of bunkers mostly housing low-security servers, and some munitions tests are performed there. Staff are regularly moved in and out, mostly folks who are low on the totem pole and trying to climb up the ladder to the real facility. There are some very outdated nuclear fallout shelters that are still maintained and used for storage. The facility consumes an enormous amount of power, and everything possible is done to make it look like a well-guarded military base that is engaged in some huge, secret operations.

The employees really do fly there every day from Las Vegas on conspicuously inconspicuous jets marked as “JANET,” sometimes referred to as “Just Another Non-Existent Terminal.” And they want you to notice. And wonder. They want you to wonder where those jets are going.

And they never want you to spend one second thinking about where they came from.

The real “Area 51”

This is the most exciting part, because as far as I can tell in my limited and clandestine researching, nobody has ever divulged the real secret before. It’s pretty highly guarded, and they straight up murder people who are stupid enough to share it. Murder isn’t even the right word. They erase people from existence. Sometimes entire families. That’s why the government freaks out when they find that one of their employees is terminal and has nothing left to lose. It’s why if you’re an employee there, you only see their doctors, so that they know about your health before you even know about it. They want you to die real quick of a sudden heart attack, so that you never have a moment to think about how you might do a public service and air their dirty laundry. And sometimes they induce those heart attacks when they determine you to be an HMT, or “health-motivated threat.”

But I didn’t need to see a doctor to know that I am suffering from the same malignant tumor that killed my father: glioblastoma multiforme. Every three months we get a health evaluation, and every six months we get a CAT scan. I simply didn’t report the very damning symptoms this past eval, and I’ll probably be gone before they scan me next. I really wanted to do this instead. Maybe just to be the first, I guess. The only other thing I’ve ever done with my life is fix computers.

The real secret military base is McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas.

The history of the airport was always bound up in military involvement. Before and during WWII, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Air Force were building, storing, training, and doing all sorts of things there. Basically the government (and its corporate benefactors in the military-industrial complex, of course) acquired full ownership of the airport around the time Area 51/Groom Lake exploded in the public eye. It was a rush job, and a simple solution.

For all intents and purposes, McCarran is an airport. It moves civilians in and out and all over the world just like any other airport on earth, but its subterranean operations are really something else entirely.

First of all, you have to understand the structure of this military base.

Because it serves ostensibly as a business of public transportation, every single aspect of the base has dual functions. This is called “masking,” and it is deployed with remarkable effectiveness at McCarran. To name a few examples, the constant take-offs and landings of airplanes provides sound-camouflage for cutting-edge engine tests. The public completely ignores these sounds and dismiss them as the standard cacophony of airports. Some of the jets themselves are even equipped with technology under test, while others are used to transport hundreds of government employees dressed as vacationing civilians. At any given time in McCarran, up to six of the gates* (corrected by a reader; I initially said terminals) are filled with employees of the highest echelons of the US military and government. They sit around on their iPhones, dressed as college kids in their pajamas or weary businessmen. And they’re paid to look the part.

The entire base is heavily guarded by plainclothes soldiers. Military police, tactical specialists, counter-terrorism forces, and all kinds of soldiers scurry about the airport dressed like cops, airport security, and desk attendants. Their weapons are usually concealed sidearms; the real firepower is packed by the boys waiting around underground. Assault rifles and armor-piercing weaponry is stored around the airport’s public spaces in various places. It’s not hard to do, because nobody’s looking for it. And of course they hire a good number of civilians to work the TSA and other positions; this is called “mixing” and it’s necessary. What kind of airport would never post any job listings?

Have you ever watched the mechanics ducking in and out of the planes outside, or seen your luggage loaded onto the plane as you board? Well, all of that cargo transport activity acts as a cover for the mass movement of special forces, lab equipment, military hardware, exotic building materials, etc. It’s not hard to do. They drive one of those rigs by with all the luggage spilling out of it, and then you instinctively don’t question what’s on the other four rigs behind it. We even have mix-ups and spills occasionally, and nobody bats an eye.

You’re always exposed to some level of radiation while flying (and McCarran, by the way, is why the standard of safe exposure is set where it’s at), but excess radiation from weapons-testing is vented into the earth and out of the nearby desert. Having an airport to explain the radiation is an effective means of ridding the base of nosy folks with Geiger counters. But the true genius of this top-secret military installation is at the largest scale: the base was built under an airport because of the enormity of its power consumption. But it consumes a lot more power than a regular airport, so it was built in a city that consumes a tremendous amount of power – Las Vegas. So the base is hidden from view, even on the electric power grid. Area 51? Not so much. And that’s on purpose.

Inside the base

So if Area 51 is the distraction, what do we call the real one? It has many names, but it’s usually referred to as the “NEXUS.” That’s an acronym, but not many people know what it means. Not even me. Everything about the Nexus, from its operations to its structure, is compartmentalized. That means everything is need-to-know, and virtually nobody knows anything more than their own specific task. You could work in an office in the Nexus doing something like accounting, and never have one single clue what the woman next to you does. Or the guy down the hall. They say not even the President knows exactly what’s going on there, just a few generals and some dudes in the CIA.

The business culture here is insane. It’s like North Korea. Everyone is smiling, everyone is fine, and everyone is happy to say just a few phrases about what it is they do (when we’re allowed to socialize, which is not much). Every line is bugged, every room has a camera in it, and nobody knows who’s watching/listening or when. So that makes you think, nobody here is telling me the truth about anything. Not even the guy I share an office with. I wonder if any of us know why we are here. People you’ve worked with for a long time will suddenly get “reassigned” or have a “medical emergency” and you’ll never see them again. And nobody will remember that person, no matter how many people you ask.

I actually got hired to do some programming for the Navy when I was in my early 20’s out of college, and then got sent to Groom Lake to do server tests. They liked my IT/networking skills, so after a series of strange psychological tests and mountains of non-disclosure agreements and background searches, I got offered a job “at a facility near Las Vegas proper.” Here are a few stipulations of that job, by the way: It’s a $1,500,000 after-tax lump sum plus a $220,000/year stipend, housing/car/medical paid for – but psychological breakdowns, anxiety attacks, grave health conditions, and family issues void the contract. I also sign approximately 2 new non-disclosure agreements per week, most of which read “under penalty of death” somewhere. Employees aren’t allowed to leave the grounds for 5 years, and we all live underground. Term of service is 5 years, then 4 in debriefing, wherein we get to live in Vegas but report to another facility four days a week. We are discharged and observed for the rest of their lives. Our passports are permanently void; we cannot ever leave the continental US. I heard a statistic that 20% of former employees commit suicide. I don’t know if it’s true, but if it is, I bet it’s actually “suicide.”

The base is underground. It’s a network of large structures called hives, which form what is called the “Colony” or the “Nexus.” We make lots of Resident Evil jokes, by the way. Except unlike in that movie, the government doesn’t try to make its employees feel comfortable with fake forests and windows overlooking digital cityscapes. It is a dark, dreary, Soviet-style labyrinth of halls and bunkers, replete with all sorts of submarine-like features: water- and air-tight hatches, trap doors, reinforced blast doors, etc. The only exception are the office ‘buildings’ inside where chair-moisteners like me work. They look just like the office you work in. Except the men with guns standing guard 24-7 everywhere, looking over your shoulder. Oh, and the beautiful, almost surreal glow of the cutting-edge laboratories that pock the lower levels of each building. I’ve never been in them, but I’ve passed by a few times.

There are 4 hives to my knowledge (although I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more). I work in Hive 1. I run some of the servers with a few other guys on one particular floor (there are 16 floors in our hive), but we monitor and maintain all of the servers in Hive 1 so we move around a bit. I’ve gotten to skim some of the data that passes through, and from what I can tell, we’re the most boring hive. I’ve compiled the following list based on the things I’ve intercepted on our network and also from hearsay from other coworkers. The Nexus has multiple networks and they’re all decentralized, but there are some ways in which they communicate, and it is via those lines of communication that I am privy to some sensitive information. Here’s what I know:

Hive 1: finance, accounting, operations/organization divisions, troop training/housing, and some small-scale weapons testing.

Hive 2: Chemical engineering, some nano-tech research, and “advanced psychological fitness,” whatever that means, for elite military forces. Probably black-ops stuff and how to survive thirty years in solitary confinement at a Siberian prison. I also have reason to believe this is the hive where the bigwigs meet and live.

Hive 3: Upper levels = bioweapon and disease research/testing. If the government has zombies, they’ve got to be here. I’ve wanted to make so fucking many zombie jokes over the years, but I never know which of my coworkers is a rat. Lower levels = Advanced space-travel and space-warfare technologies. Particle engines and gravitational beams and the like (guessing, no real evidence). Science-fiction stuff. I once saw an email with all sorts of coded language, marked “A-B,” which is widely believed to refer to “astrobiology.” That’s alien life. Maybe it’s just some single-celled organisms or fossilized plants from some meteor, or maybe it’s something much more advanced. Whatever it is, there must be some reason it’s not on the upper levels with all the biologists.

Hive 4: Total informational blackout. There are encryptions and firewalls and network security features protecting this hive that I’ve never seen before, not even on top-secret Navy projects I worked in the past. I’m being very nonspecific in the language I use to describe our server clusters and networks because I don’t want to tell them exactly who I am. They’ll eventually find out anyway. But there’s a widely-whispered rumor about Hive 4: allegedly, the most terrifying thing in the world is in that structure on floor 15.

There are a few unusual things about Hive 4. First of all, none of the top brass has clearance to get in there. They access it remotely via video feed in their conference rooms, and materials are often transported from 4 to 2 for physical review. I don’t know why our bigwigs won’t go into 4, but maybe it’s because it’s too dangerous? There was one guy who worked in 4 a few years ago when I first started, and he caused the first Nexus-wide lockdown I’ve ever seen. He was being escorted through 1 thumpers (what we call the squads of black-booted soldiers that grant access to different hives), and he started shrieking about IDA’s. I didn’t hear his screams, but I heard the gunshot while I was eating lunch. They put a bullet in the back of his head before he could finish his sentence. IDA’s, by the way, are inter-dimensional anomalies. I have no further information on what those are.

Another thing I’ve read minimally about are “the twins.” I don’t know who or what these are, but they’re the “above-top-secret” gem of Hive 4. It is treasonous to even correspond about them on our secure networks unless you are cleared to do so, and only four employees are. I’ve only seen a few things about them. One was a medical record. No vitals, unusual vocalizations that manifest hallucinations and psychosis in nearby employees, and skin that produces violent nausea when touched. The document was basically speculation that the skin functions much like the Australian stinging tree or a jellyfish.

I read documents about people who worked with them as well. In 4, a woman was remanded to the psychological ward after being in the same room with them, and a soldier who stood outside of the laboratory where they are kept basically killed himself. Specifically, he peeked inside during a routine access, then began bashing his own brains out with the butt of a pistol while singing an Irish folksong. The woman who was remanded to psych was even weirder: during breakfast with her colleagues, she grabbed a fork, stood up, walked out of the mess hall, stripped all of her clothes off, blinded herself in both eyes, then somehow managed to make her way all the way up to Floor 1 where the access corridor to Hive 3 is located. How she managed to operate the dozens of keycard readers, passcode boxes, and retinal scanners is still under review. Last email regarding her was sent in 2012, about how she sits in the dark of solitary on Floor 11’s psych ward with a permanent and blissful grin on her face.

One of my colleagues whom I trust told me that he saw the twins once through hacked access to a video feed. He said they are woman-like, about twice as tall as a full-grown man, with unidentifiable black growths dangling from their heads (like hair but thicker), and they basically float a few inches off the ground and drag their toes lightly as they move. They’re utterly pale. He never saw the faces, but he claims that they appear to distort reality (or at least the video feed) in such a way that space looks bent around them. Perhaps these are the IDA’s that earlier dude was screaming about.

This is all I have for now. But hopefully the world knows the truth someday about what goes on down here. We are all basically prisoners. We have very limited and supervised access to the internet, so if you don’t hear from me again, assume they figured me out.

[shadowfae]

**breathes in deeply**

(vent)

So I'm a soulbonder who's looking to make a new bond to a particular person and nothing is working.

I know a lot about this person, I know a good amount about their world, and I know what I need to do, but none of the things I've tried have worked. I've bonded people before in both intentional and unintentional ways. This is unusual for me. I don't quite know how to handle what's going on here.

I know what's probably causing it. My mental health kinda tanked between this and the last time I called a new bond. Like. I've started experiencing psychosis issues intra-headspace. Thankfully I've avoided anything that severe in meatspace, but I have had increased issues with my pre-existing executive function and emotional regulation issues. Every time I think I've gotten somewhere with bonding this character it's only been psychosis issues and discernment issues, and it's really, really disheartening.

But even aside from mental health issues, when I'm relatively lucid I'm not having luck.

I've tried summoning, I've tried inviting, I've tried direct "hey come here", I've tried indirect "hey we'd like to talk", I've tried yanking them, I've tried directly appearing to them in their own world, I've tried just trying to talk to them before. Most of these I've tried more than once. Nothing has worked. There may have been contact in the past (and seemed positive-to-neutral about learning more about this place and visiting), but at this point I really doubt even the more reliable incidents. Something should have worked here, and I can't shake the feeling something is going very wrong.

I know I should probably give up and move on at this point, as it's been literal months. Honestly I've asked a lot of places for help and I've looked into what resources I've been able to find on their source world and bonding in general, and my options are running dry. Nobody would blame me for giving up. But I have my reasons not to. I have a feeling about this, and they're in a situation I don't feel like leaving alone. Like, everyone they thought they could trust screws them over. I also DESPERATELY want to at least talk to this person. This entire situation is so fucking frustrating. I'm at the "try shaking cat treats at them" phase.

Also I can't talk to anyone about this because 1. dude's source is from my own AU, and is technically my oc, 2. the places I can talk about this shit are not open to sensitive parts of this, going assume I'm lying, or uh, were exposed to a few cringey false alarms on related things, 3. it's been long enough and constant enough that it's too much to talk about the full extent of this nonsense. 4. My SO can't tolerate this person's source world, so I won't make them endure my prattling.

Because I needed isolation added to this clusterfuck.

Anyway that was good to get off my chest, feel free to throw this into the tumblr void with the identities of anon asks if you want. Or post it, I have no investment in the fate of this.

Mmmm, it looks like there are several issues here that you're facing.

I want to ask: do you have any other bonds right now? Because maybe getting them to try will help, just because their methods will be different than yours, and sometimes you just need a second set of hands. (Or fins, as Albafica wants me to make sure you know.)

There could be a ton of things blocking it, and I would suggest dealing with your psychosis issues first. Not give up, but put this on hold until you know what's causing the psychosis and have dealt with it. You do not want to forge a bond on such a shaky foundation. I'm not saying 'psychotic people can't soulbond', flames forbid I am, I'm reading that this is a new and difficult thing, and you don't want unknown variables getting in your way, especially when they can induce things that look similar to soulbonding but really really aren't.

I have to account for my Devil powers every time I do a spell, ward, or fuck around with the headspace. Because I'm the host and the god in the room, and things answer to me when they won't to anyone else, and Albafica's commentary on that is "stop locking me in a room with your crazy sentient brambles that only speak static whenever you're majorly upset" and I think that's not fair to me, that only happened once and it was accidental, but you get the point. That's a variable you need to be predictable and accounted for.

Then yeah, past that it looks like they're just not willing, and if you want to bond, you need to see it from their side. Because to some random person in their world, you probably feel / appear like a particularly dangerous spirit that's trying to eat them. Al agrees that's how he'd take it if someone pulled that on him, and he's very untrusting on his best days. So it sounds, so far, like your approach is not the best for this.

If you rule out medical reasons for your psychosis - and that is not an easy thing to do, please check out medical things for that, you don't want to fuck around with it - it could also be them refusing you and using their own wards. (Or at least, I can see the line of thought between them trying to stop you and such backlash; but that's an option to consider after medical issues.)

If you can get in contact with them, you need to ask one question, and one question alone, and do not pass go or collect your 200$ until they've answered clearly: do they want you to stop?

You haven't said why you want to bond with them so badly, and motivation is a key factor here. With Goni, he showed up looking for Luco and serves partially as the adult to go to when shit gets bad and also as the resident prettyboy and slut. Al is logical and blunt and his remarks cut deep, but he gives a damn and functions as lieutenant where Goni's advisor and backup. South is uh, he's the demon commentating about how much we should just kill people and he's right, he is, but that's illegal. He also serves as the youngest and the most prone to extreme emotions, and when someone else is doing the extreme emotions, it makes it that much easier for the rest of us to keep our heads. He says what I'm thinking, and then I can deal with it rationally.

They're all people, and they aid each other as well in headspace, but the bond between host and bond is a bit different than bonds with each other. I pilot the body most of the time, I handle everything in meatspace, they help me do that. It's simple: keep the guy who pilots the body running, get body privileges.

And what you need to consider here is not only what they can do for you, but what you can do for them, and how exactly you're going to coexist. Because while my triad of fishmen help me, I also help them, largely because uh, /gestures at the fact they all died in a war in various gruesome ways and the journey they took to get there was actually worse/. It's all fun and games until they're here, away from the danger, and then there's the exotrauma.

Goni handles it by not handling it until he has to and right now we're working on actually acknowledging that he's got issues. South deals with it by being resentful as all hell and incredibly violent and yandere, but being allowed to not pull his punches is still so new to him that it's actually quite good for him to get to say what he's thinking and be respected for it. Al's grumpy about it but is trying to build something of his life now before he falls apart. He wants something to hold onto first, which is smart. Trust Al to figure out the most logical way with none of the words and then adamantly refuse to let that go wrong. He and I both understand bullying the universe into giving us what we want, and since he has full utter control over his own mental processes thanks to being able to make my Devil powers do what he wants, I don't think anyone's going to be able to interfere with his ability to do that.

So now I have to ask for you: what is this bond going to be doing for you, and just as important, what exactly do you expect to be able to do for them? Because they're also an OC, and they may have some goddamn feelings about that. They may see you as having coincidentally written down their life, they may see you as channeling it, or they may see you as the one who made it happen. All of which you'll also see in fictionkin spaces. If they fall into the last category, they're gonna be pissed you didn't give them a happy ending, and they're justified in that, and so are you for not doing that.

You have to be prepared - especially from reading between the lines of your ask here - that they're not going to be as functional as you want them to be. When we handle our exotrauma, we're a mess. Everything gets put on hold to deal with it, and even then, we rely a lot on our partner system (Faolan and the Nebulaic Collective) to keep the body from crashing so we can hold onto our life instead of falling apart utterly for a week straight. We don't do jack entirely with the four of us, and it's better that way.

The fact that you can't rely on anyone outside of yourself, especially considering 1) they don't seem to want this, 2) your attempts either very coincidentally happened alongside or caused serious mental issues that need urgent attention from you, and 3) you don't sound prepared to handle the severity of what you're implying it to be; all goes to show that this reads to me like a terrible fucking idea. I mean that honestly and gently and bluntly.

I don't mean 'give up and don't do this', I mean 'seriously dude either you're not giving me context or you haven't thought nearly hard enough about the realistic way this is going to go', and if it's the latter, no wonder you're having issues.

I already know who my next bond will be, and I know what needs to happen for him to show up. Right now, the four of us are functional, and we have a good Thing going on, sleeping arrangements and all. If we're getting another, a Space needs to open up for him, job to keep us functional that he can do as well as a part to play in our dynamic that is currently not being met. We got Adult (Goni), we got Logic (Al), we got Emotional Teenager (South), we got Has Context And Admin Access (me).

(Side note, South is vaguely 17-19, but he's been treated like he was five for most of his life and has been forced to rapidly oscillate between genuinely horrifying scenarios and being incredibly sheltered, so trying to put any sort of 'he's an average X year old' is downright impossible. He's on the upper end of teens and we call it a day there, and if he hears a word of "you're not old enough to do X activity" then I have to stop him from sending you graphic descriptions of things he can do to your insides and that's no fun for anyone so don't do that please.)

So when we have a space the new bond can fill both in keeping things functional so he has something to do and a space in our relationship so he's not standing on the sidelines looking in, he'll show. As it stands right now, that hasn't happened, so he's not here yet. That and I think I'm stretched rather thin when it comes to bonds, I need much more time with our fishes before I think I can handle more folks in here. So much on my mind, so little time.

But either way regardless. You have several glaring issues that are fairly obvious that you may not have noticed because you can't be objective in a situation you're involved in (true of everyone), and until you fix those, yeah, this doesn't sound like it'll work all that well.

Although I will note that I typically bond via my writing, simply writing from their perspective until they start commentating. They go from 'maybe MaDD doing shit' to 'oh hey soulbond' when they don't comment only on themselves but also on things I'm doing in meatspace. Albafica's a character when he's narrating his own life, he's a person when he demands More Salmon For Dinner; if that makes sense.

I doubt you'd get that far unless they genuinely did want the connection, because otherwise they wouldn't tell you stuff about themselves. Works for me, might work for you, who knows, please get your psychosis symptoms checked out first before touching this again and make sure they actually want to bond and it's actually viable before continuing and then try again I suppose?

A very long answer for a very long ask, but I like Helping, so. Hope that helped a bit.

[tvwriteups]

I feel like I grew up at the wrong time or maybe in the wrong place or — and I disgust myself by saying this — the wrong race. Being who I am makes it very easy to dismiss me but even without that I probably would’ve been “canceled” long ago anyway for speaking uncomfortable truths.

Back in 2004, I was in college and majoring in a subject with a very fuzzy name because nobody knew what to really call it: New Media. I think it vaguely referred to computers. Because it was loosely defined if even defined at all the course involved the history of media, classroom hours of pre-production, outside hours of production, and more annoying hours of post-production (tech was far more limited then). It also involved a lot of theory and criticism.

Because the field was what it was it made our senior papers very open. We could write about almost anything.

So what did I write about? Mobile technology and how it could affect change in commercial business and politics. In 2004. Smartphones didn’t even exist then.

And the only things I had to run on from the start — the genesis of the idea for me — were Nokia phones being used to purchase products out of vending machines in Finland and Filipinos using texting to organize People Power protests to overthrow Estrada. This led me to Howard Rheingold’s book Smart Mobs where these two things were covered and more. I think anyone who read a chapter of that book could see all of this coming.

Like this shit — this current moment and the threats that are out there — is nothing new. The dimensions are different though. The speed is faster. The tech is far more insidious.

But in 2004 it was a nothing thing. We had Iraq and everyone went crazy flipping houses. I went on having an unfulfilling time in a shitty job market exposed to all sorts of nefarious companies and individuals and screaming into a void.

I’m kind of surprised I got a good grade on a paper that was full of speculation and my own conjecture (because a lot of source material did not exist then). I probably passed because it was an interesting subject and my professors liked me.

The thing about these news cycles is that they rip open past trauma after past trauma and remind me of being dismissed as crazy or alarmist or of people saying that I hated rich people (often levied against me by someone not rich while surrounded by rich people). It makes me hate people in a way I hadn’t before.

I’ve got so many thoughts but I’m limited by injury so taking a break now.

[regrettablewritings]

So . . . I need to say some stuff

As anyone who knows me or has held certain kinds of conversations with me could tell you that I am the absolute worst at confrontation. Even if it’s in regards to something more positive. However, as this post is about something rather negative, it will be harder for me to express exactly what I mean without feeling like I’m coming off as an ungrateful or bitchy. However, as this is an apparent concern for many content creators on this site, I don’t think it’s fair to assume I am.

Please allow me to word-vomit an explanation:

Communication aka I’m a Talking Human Being:

Before I started this blog, I had a tendency to send headcanons and AUs to other blogs through anon. In fact, I still do this quite often, and usually to great effect both on the blog-runner’s part and their followers. One day, I got brave enough to submit a soulmate AU drabble set to a Tumblr user who is no longer on this site and a few people asked for more so, after speaking with said Tumblr user, I was encouraged to start Regrettablewritings. Now in my bio, I refer to this place as a “dumping ground” for my pieces. That isn’t just there out of self-deprecation: This was literally just meant to be a place where I put my stuff. All the ideas I had, the headcanons, the one-shots, etc. I never once indicated that this was a place that took requests.

But I should’ve known it’d happen and for that I will take responsibility for not suggesting otherwise. I was never truly set on the idea of doing requests at all because I’ve seen the stuff that people send in by the droves and there was no way I would be able to keep up or provide what was desired and at top quality. However, I feared that completely avoiding or turning down the ones that inevitably came in would result in issues. Blame my paranoia.

I’m still not entirely sure as to what to do with the requests I get. Some, I will admit, I do fulfill. But for the most part, I don’t always feel up to it. Especially considering that I have, by no exaggeration, nearly 20 ideas already stockpiled. Of these pieces, some have been in the works since I started this blog and I’m always trying to figure out which ones to focus on the most so I go, “Hey, I got this, this, and that. Which ones do you wanna see?” And you know what I always get? Nothing. Nobody says what they want from the list. So I sigh, delete the post after having it up for a week, and do whatever I can when the motivation hits me.

Not long after, however, I start getting entirely different requests. Always. I know it’s not intended, but the idea I can’t help but get is that my original content isn’t exactly what anyone is looking for no matter how much work I’m determined to put into it.

I reblog ask memes because maybe if I prove that I’m human behind the screen or showcase that “witty personality” my real life friends keep talking about, maybe it’ll prove that I’m approachable. If I’m lucky one person will message me and I have to stop myself from begging them to please ask more, lest I look desperate.

So then I figured if I reached out to the nearly 400 followers I currently have and tried to connect with them, then maybe there’d be more luck in the realm of communication. But when I tried Sleepover Saturday, only two people “showed up.” And they weren’t even the people who liked the post where I asked if anyone would do it, or the people who told me to go on ahead and do it. So that was the end of that.

For months, I’ve debating bringing up this issue. I didn’t want to look like a snooty bitch, but I also wanted to express how I felt about the situation. I may write to express myself, but I also write and in the way I do to entertain. In real life, I am very cynical and bitter and a bit of a crybaby with a bottled up temper. But the truth of the matter is, I love making people laugh and feel better. The world is already so full of shit; I just want to put a little goodness into somebody else’s day, even if it’s a weirdass fic about everyone’s favorite Cuban lawyer having a past as an adult dancer or whatever. So when it feels like I’m only needed when you want something, and then shelved until then, it doesn’t make me feel good. It makes me feel like the ideas I want to give you aren’t good enough. I know the notes may suggest otherwise, but we’re gonna put a pin in that for a quick second.

The feeling of discouragement often effects my willingness to write. I’ll still do it because, in truth, writing is one of the only things I can do reasonably well. But what’s the point in doing something well if you feel like you’re being taken for granted for it?

I ask you guys for your opinions and feelings on things because I genuinely need to know. I function by playing around with options. Any friend of mine, in real life or online, will tell you that if I’m working on a project (be it painting, fanfiction, or essay), I will throw my ideas out there or ask you for your thoughts on the matter. For fuck’s sake, I’ve heckled @xemopeachx and @ohbelieveyoume about cologne suggestions for one sentence in a piece I’ve been working on! That is how thorough I tend to be about the weirdest shit. But I also do it because I feel you guys deserve that kind of effort. I need a lot of things explained to me in depth to know how they work, so I make it an effort to use that as a means to help others see exactly what I do. I’m already hard to comprehend in real life. Please don’t let me think this effort is for nothing.

Summary: I work hard to give content but never hear anything back in terms of what you would like to see next. But when this happens, it’s like I’m posting from the void and nobody can see it. However, suddenly people are willing to fall into the void if only to make a request. I try to reach out and be more friendly, but even those are disregarded. I don’t know what to do.

Notes: Regarding Likes, Reblogs, and Messaging:

This is something that a lot of content creators talk about. If you’ve seen a post about always reblogging art, chances are you’ve seen a comment saying something like, “Same goes for fanfic writers.” This isn’t riding on coattails or anything, this is some real mess. And, on top of that, there’s an extended difference between art feedback and writing feedback. Because with artists, exposure for them can lead to commissions. Writers? We do this for free. However, this doesn’t make feedback any less deserving.

I’m not trying to complain here, but nobody writes 7-21 pages worth of content to get 100+ notes where only about 12 of them are reblogs. Now I, as well as many others, will give leeway: There is a definite stigma against people who read fanfiction and they may not want it on their blog. I get that. A lot of writers do. But when the reblog to total note ratio is 12/115, 14/192, and 13/207, things get . . . disheartening.

Because guys? Writing is HARD. I know you may see this statement all the time, but that's only because it's true: You have to remember all these words so you don't sound repetitive, you have to paint a clear enough picture without sound prose-y, you have to somehow translate exactly what the image in your head is and pray you don't lose people along the way, you have to SOMEHOW get from Point A to Point C when Point B is either exceedingly blurry or even nonexistent. And, perhaps the hardest of all, YOU HAVE TO BE MOTIVATED! It takes so much energy and focus just to write one page, especially if you have a hectic life going on beyond the screen. And guess what? A lot of, if not, all writers do!

For example: For the first two and a half months of running this blog, I wrote on my phone for most of the time because I didn't have a laptop and the only times I could use the computer lab in my dorm was when others were done with their work. (To gain a better idea of how vexing this can be, please note that A Practice in Happy Memories was written on my phone and that bitch is 6 pages in Word. Try doing that and see how tired of it you get.) And I’m one of the lucky ones: You’ve got people going through some rough stuff in their lives, people raising families while holding down a job, coming on this hell site to write and share their thoughts and ideas. I’m just some 22 year-old black chick with seasonal depression and increasingly crippling social anxiety and an aggressively negative view of the world!

Forgive me for sounding cocky, but I would like to think I deserve better than, like, 8 reblogs on a 60-noted something I literally tapped to life in-between homework and depression naps. Really, though, every writer who’s had to do this deserves better. The amount of talented writers who bust out quality content in spite of broken technology or, you know, having a life outside of the computer yet don’t get treated with utmost appreciation is unreal.

I’m not trying to shame people here, but if you can’t reblog, then reply. Or send a message. Even if it’s on anonymous. Trust me: You message a writer saying you love their crap, you will make their day and they will treasure that thing and look back on it when they feel like crap. For those of you that do reblog, please tag it. It literally only takes a few seconds. As @locke-writes put it in his own post about similar issues, writers really want/need to know what you thought. A like is equivalent to a quick nod and distant pat on the back. A reblog without a tag is a bit better, but still doesn’t get across exactly how you felt, what we did right, etc. A reblog with comments, even in the tags? Makes our fucking day!

Likes? They’re literally just the person who walks by your free sample booth, takes the sample, and doesn’t even acknowledge your existence.

I know I should feel grateful that I have as many notes as I do at all. However, a ridiculous amount tend to come from people who 1) don’t even follow me, and 2) they’re just likes. I have nearly 400 followers already and the same small handful only ever add into the notes. And even fewer actually comment or anything.

This is a common issue for a lot of writers: We just want to be seen as more than just story-making machines. We desire validation for the time and acknowledgement for the effort we put into something we feel we’re skilled at. But a lot of people may feel uncomfortable talking about it in fear of seeming ungrateful or anything but this feeling just drives them closer to wanting to quit writing altogether.

I’m not quitting Tumblr. At least, not anytime soon. But I still need you guys to know this because it’s been boiling up inside me and it’s driving me nuts. Anyway, I’m sorry if I came off as bitchy here as that wasn’t my intention. My intention was to give you a look into some part of the mind that a lot of writers have. Thanks for letting me get this off my chest.

Summary: Reblogs > Likes. Reblogs with comments and tags ∞ > Likes. And if you can’t reblog, reply or send a message. Your content creator worked to make that piece come to fruition and they deserve to know how they did. They’re not being paid for it despite the amount of time and energy they gave for it, so payment in the form of feedback is the least that they could be given.

In short: Appreciate your fanfic writers. Let them know what you think because every little compliment sticks with them.

[shinigami-pomp]

This Started As A Note

I am a lonely person who has never been cut out for this world. In a past life I must have sucked…or maybe I’ve just been less than honorable in this one. All I know is that my happiness has always been so fleeting and foreign. My happiness is usually tied to- or is a manifestation of- drug induced euphoria. My happiness. It doesn’t exist. It isn’t mine because I so rarely feel in control of It.

Have you ever felt crazy? Reaching for things, anything and nothing, to ground yourself. I anxiously paced, and searched for, and reached for a knife today. It didn’t feel right in my hands. I held a glass bottle. I had the urge to smash it over my own head which I think I (amid racing thoughts) deemed too “slapstick”. I envisioned smashing it on the counter and maybe dragging the glass shards against my skin but… I’m not a cutter to be fair and I feel like the feeling of self-harm, in that moment, was eclipsed by what I felt might be satisfaction in simply smashing the full bottle of room temp cold brew I held and being done with it.

I didn’t do it.

I walked to my room and leaned against the wall and I sobbed briefly. It was genuinely quick. It just escaped my lips but… despite my loneliness, there’s shame in audible tears so with shaking breaths I suppressed and reached for a large safety pin that I keep on the same hook as my appropriative Buddhist prayer beads. I let tears fall as I continue to feel sorry for myself, so pitifully about to mutilate skin because I feel lonely and lost and angry and sad and sad and sad and sad. I’m in my head though and wonder where the appropriate place to scar one’s body is. It’s summer; not my arms. Do I really want scars on my legs or ribs? Like I said… I’m not a cutter so I half-heartedly scratch my… I don’t even remember… it was such a superficial scratch, it was already gone 10 seconds later.

I couldn’t do it.

I did manage to lose the safety pin somewhere in my bedding or on my floor and I fully expect to succeed unintentionally in self harming when I inevitably roll over onto it or get it lodged in my foot as I head to the bathroom in the middle of the night. I wonder if that’s the way I’ll die too. Suicide is always an ideation. This is one reason why I’m not cut out for this world…but I also can’t hack dying by my own hand. I’m a failure all around. Maybe I’ll get on a plane and it will go down. Maybe I’ll head to the grocery store and get plowed over by an SUV running a light. Maybe I’ll win the lottery and die in my sleep that next day. C’est la vie.

I pull up the suicide hotline webpage. Apparently one can chat online now. Technology is great. Technology provides support for the waves of depression and desperation that envelope me when I look at my social network of Snap stories and Instagram photos of acquaintances with friends smiling, acquaintances traveling and smiling, acquaintances getting married and smiling… acquaintances living. Successfully existing. Facebook posts about acquaintances graduating graduate school and acquaintances landing jobs or being promoted. All liked, viewed, and validated by 60, 70, 80, 90, 100+ other acquaintances. Technology is there when I look at my own screams into the void that go so under… validated. It’s good to know that technology is there to provide a nameless faceless support system that is paid to chat with me online. Technology is awesome.

Actually today, I spent 4 straight hours online looking for apartments and jobs whilst simultaneously trying not to think about how my life is spiraling out of control and how uncertainty kills me slowly. I re-confirmed, as I do every time I job search, that I’m not qualified enough to be considered by any place I want to work … mainly because even in minimum wage, shit hour, non-profit sector gigs… you need a BA. But I was unfazed by this (on its own) today. As a student of life, I try to learn something new every day and today’s factoid was: I’m uninteresting. Not only am I unqualified for a career path job, but I’m unqualified to be an interesting human that people want to get to know. Searching for affordable accommodation in gentrified cities is more difficult than applying for college. Listing after listing I read on Facebook asking for community oriented individuals. Artists. Bohemians. Vegans. Scholastics. SJWS. Extroverts. Professionals. 20-year olds. 40-year olds. Positive mentally sound people. “Link your Instagram and Facebook so that we can use those to confirm how interesting you are; how loved you are by those around you”.

I don’t fit the bill. But it would appear that so many other people do. I stand no chance. C'est la guerre.

 When I break it down:

I have nobody to talk to. I have no more strong connections. I feel unsupported (even if it’s there at times). I feel burdensome all the time.

How can a person feel like they have lost everything when, in reality, they never inherited anything to begin with? Or maybe, how can a person who inherited so much more than plenty of people, feel as if they never stood a chance?

As I’ve typed this, therapeutic self-deprecation has dried any tears. I feel the type of calm I would feel during my brief genuinely non-dramatic stint with bulimia. The calm that comes after a purge. It’s not a relaxing calm necessarily. Not a bright warm calm. It’s the calm that comes when you’re just too tired to feel anything. Too tired to do anything. Too tired to think any more. The calm of a dying person in an induced coma. The calm after a tornado that has ripped miles worth of homes from their foundations. C’est la mort.

Tomorrow is another day to wish I was someone else or nobody at all. There will never be a reprieve outside of untimely death and…

I can’t do it.

- 17 July 2017

[allsystemsarenotgo]

My life on Television

-opens Pandora, taps Play-

*Push (acoustic) - Avril

*Life after you - Daughtry

*Better than me - Hinder

Today's Big Bang Theory was about relationships and how to maintain and balance them.

Young Sheldon was about trying to educate others, psychology, and the pursuit of relationships.

*Bad Girlfriend - Theory of a Deadman

If you go back through my Tumblr by more than a couple years, you'll notice that for quite a while, TBBT followed the events of my life, sometimes to a Tee. As the show progressed into more of a relational and sexual drama and less of a nerdy drama, it has diverged from the events of my life. I enjoyed the original 5-8 seasons or so, even though the convergent nature scared me away from seasons 5-8 and I only watched some of the episodes.

*Girlfriend - Avril

Fortunately, or not, Young Sheldon has not been this level of convergent with my life so far in the series. There have been some analogies and a couple relating spots, but generally not so much.

I have been lonely and depressed lately and thus in pursuit of a relationship. Any kind of relationship. Even friendship is better than nothing. I just need to fill this void I have.

I think my posts from the last few weeks get the general message across. I won't rehash what has already been hashed.

*Bad Company - Five Finger Death Punch

On Big Bang, Sheldon was jealous of Amy, Stuart was nervous of progressing with Denise, and Raj was uncomfortable with Anu because of his own doing.

On Young Sheldon, Sheldon was trying to teach Missy about Math, to the extend of holding a doll as prisoner.

*My Immortal - Evanescence

Meanwhile, Georgie was trying to selfishly court a girl by trying to falsely align his interests to hers.

It sure is unfortunate that these two shows together read like the diobolical rediculousness that has been my life in terms of relationships.

I courted two young ladies by trying to pursue the churchy side of things despite my scientifically influenced decision to maintain agnosticism. The first occurrence was a completely selfish dumpster fire that I got completely called out on from the outside but was too (dumb || selfish || ignorant) to acknowledge from my own point if view.

*Gotta Be Somebody - Nickelback

The second occurrence was actually initiated by the other party. I'd never dated prior to college, so having a young lady make first move, I would have been dumb to say no (or would I?). But like Raj, my own fault led me to attaining undesirable information. While the situation on TV will not be known until next week, I can tell you that I terminated the relationship pretty much at that point, then and there.

*Jar of Hearts - Christina Perri

So what am I trying to (say || vent)? That is a great question.

Seeing not one but both series have a unified topic which strikes my situation is....troubling. to the average person that may not seem significant...but to an alternatively-minded person, it is a big deal.

*Complicated - Avril

It is as if Chuck Lorre and Steven Molaro are trying to tell me to be cautious in who I try to talk to and how I go about it. Which would make sense since I am riding some sharp knife edges as I try to find and get what I want...wether others wish to comply or not. That's not my choice, I can't control that aspect.

I don't know what to do. I am lost and confused.

I want friends instead of acquaintances. But everyone in my world is taken, and it gives me great guilt to contact them. That's covered in a previous post.

I need somebody that I can talk to and be open with, but also hang out with in person and have a tangible feeling.

*I knew you were trouble - Taylor Swift

--A conversation:

--Other: "Why can't you or do you feel like you can't be touched the way you want?"

--Me: "Because there's nobody here to cuddle"

--Other: "Why can't you find that someone? Why do you think you have to be alone?"

--Me: "One of my moodal aspie traits, I generally don't like being around or touching people. But I also enjoy hugs, holding hands, cuddling/laying together, or otherwise having a tangible link to a ground person."

--Other: "So as long as it's on your terms to touch and feel"

--Me: "I refuse to pay a computer to give me its artificially intelligent opinion of a person who is best for me. Especially since my persona is deviant from standard. But since I do not go to bars, drink, smoke, or party, my options for interaction to others, specifically other singles, is significantly reduced."

--Other: "Yes, I can completely understand that. I have no interactions outside of racing. I don't share. I get it. I dont even begin to think I understand you. But I want too. Human is human. Desire and desire to be wanted and touched is there."

*Get The Party Started - Pink

Some people say that I make it look easy to write my feelings out. Unfortunately, anything that you are good at will naturally make it look like an easier task to other people.

*Never Say Never - The Fray

I have become so numb to feelings and emotions that writing is my outlet. It's become part of who I am, and so it comes easily.

Except for when writer's block occurs because I can only represent so much of what goes on in my mind using written words.

*Since U Been Gone - Kelly Clarkson

The other day I made a Tumblr post about various resources relating Asperger's and Depression. It is more common than I was led to believe, which concerns me more that 5 different medical people never brought up the two of them, and the autism expert I visited was unsure of handling Asperger's and Depression together. That is really sad, in more than a few ways.

*A Thousand Years (Part 2) - Christina Perri

Listening to Pandora helps me write sometimes. Somehow, Pandora always knows my mood and is able to cobble together a playlist that generally follows my mood, and sometimes my writing follows in terms to the music.

This leaves me in a place where I have to again wonder if I need to set science aside and accept that I am but a puppet to a higher power, or do I keep my science close and stay Agnostic, not deciding wether such a higher power exists or not.

*If I Die Young - The Band Perry

It is tough accepting that my lack of social skills, my lack of socializing forces me to be lonely, and that this loneliness spurs my depression.

I was at a party for New Year's Eve. I played a couple rounds of dice games (Left-Center-Right). I wasn't exactly lonely, but I was. I was around people and thus was able to talk to others and be social, but at the same token I wasn't much interested after awhile in playing games and all that. So I got bored. The kind of bored that leads to being lonely. Thankfully somebody pulled out from pyrotechnics so that shut down those feelings.

*Sk8er Boi - Avril

It's not really a secret that I get jealous easily. I am not really sure why, if it's from being lonely or having to settle just to get a bit of happiness. I see all these happy people in relationships while I sit here sulking in my own feelings. It is rough on the mental state. I want to have somebody that I can take to parties, to flaunt, to hang out with and go places with and cuddle with and all those great things.

But sometimes I feel like I would be in the same situation as Stuart. Courting a girl almost a full decade younger, great looking, with a common interest, but not knowing what to do with the relationship. Being afraid to make any kind of move, to answer simple questions with a yes or no.

*Always - Saliva

I know that you aren't supposed to care about how others see you. You can't do anything about their thoughts, so why spend time and mental power on something you can't control? Yet despite this, one of my biggest fears is my public image. I hate when others cast doubt and shine down on me like a stray animal or discarded refuse.

While I was with my second (and most recent, for those keeping count) girlfriend, I was extremely, vehemently concerned about the perception cast being around her, because of her weight. I didn't want to be seen as a settler because we actually did get along, understood eachother for the most part, and had a couple interests in common (not to mention meeting through the workplace). I slowly started holding hands with her in public and things like that, but it was a slow road.

*Look After You - The Fray

It is hard to explain my mind in written words, but I try to do the best that I can. I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I don't have a very good history and my outlook on the future is sketchy at times. But writing is my outlet, so I do the best that I can to put my mind out there and vent off the psychological pressure.

*Fake It - Seether

If you have any love to give, please send it my direction. Thank you.

*Behind These Hazel Eyes - Kelly Clarkson