#some of them put on or lose weight through the seasons and that's like. normal! and fine!

[thebirdandhersong]

rlly appreciate that the casting for OUAT is like. normal people! with wrinkles and freckles and moles and crow's feet

[last-dropsevi]

I read all of your works until now, and I loved them, so I'd like to request something (if I sound too formal, sorry, English is not my first language)

So, my request is a Sevika x reader, where Sevika is hesitant to trader participating in the final fight, against the noxians, cause she's scared that reader might get hurt. Reader ends up getting a bit hurt but nothing serious, and after the whole Arcane thing, Sevika finds reader looking for her on the battlefield.

Aww thank u for the compliment also woohooo ur my first ever request 🥳. I’m sorry if this isn’t exactly what you wanted since I took alil artistic lliberty.sorry

𝕿𝖍𝖗𝖔𝖚𝖌𝖍 𝕭𝖑𝖔𝖔𝖉 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝕭𝖆𝖙𝖙𝖑𝖊

Pairing: Sevika x Reader

Warning: Toward the end of season 2 so blood, fighting, war normal, cursing, possessive behavior, fire arms/weapons, death. (wrd count 1.8k)

Materlist

The streets of Zaun were eerily quiet the night before the battle, the anticipation so thick it suffocated everything else. The dim glow of neon lights reflected off rain-slicked cobblestones as the city braced for the storm to come. Inside the cramped warehouse that served as a makeshift war room, the tension between you and Sevika was palpable, a raw wound left to fester.

The argument had been brewing all day, a slow boil beneath the surface until it finally spilled over.

“You’re not ready for this,” Sevika said, her voice low but unmistakably firm. She stood with her arms crossed, the dim light catching the dull shine of her mechanical arm. Her gaze bore into you, a mixture of frustration and something softer—something harder for her to admit.

“What the hell do you think I’ve been doing all this time?” you snapped, your voice rising to match the intensity of your emotions. “You think I’m still some rookie who doesn’t know how to fight? I’ve been with you through every skirmish, every backroom deal, every damn battlefield! Don’t stand there and tell me I can’t handle this.” “It’s not about whether you can handle it!” Sevika barked back, her tone sharper now. Her jaw clenched, and you could see the muscles in her neck tighten as she tried—and failed—to keep her temper in check. “This isn’t like the jobs we used to run. This is war. And you’re not invincible.” “Neither are you,” you countered, stepping closer. Your fists were clenched at your sides, your nails biting into your palms.

“But you don’t see me telling you to sit this one out. You don’t get to decide what I can or can’t do, Sevika. I’ve earned my place here, just like you.” Her expression darkened, her brows knitting together as she loomed over you. “Do you think I’m doing this to insult you? To put you down? For once in your life, stop being so damn stubborn and listen. I’m worried about you.” You froze, caught off guard by the raw emotion in her voice. She rarely let her guard down like this, even with you. But the anger still simmered beneath your skin, and you weren’t ready to back down.

“Worried about me? Since when do you care? You’ve never had a problem throwing me into the thick of things before.” “That’s not fair, and you know it,” Sevika growled, her mechanical fist clenching at her side. Sparks flickered from the joints, a physical manifestation of her frustration. “I care more than you realize. That’s why I’m telling you to stay the hell out of this. If something happens to you—” Her voice broke off, and she turned away, pacing a few steps before running a hand down her face. She looked like she wanted to punch a hole through the wall—or maybe through herself. “Why can’t you just trust me to make my own decisions?” you demanded, your voice trembling now, not with fear but with the weight of everything left unsaid between you.

“You act like I’m some fragile thing that needs protecting, but I’ve been at your side for years. I’ve bled for Zaun, for you. What else do I need to prove?” “It’s not about proving anything,” she muttered, her back still to you. “It’s about me not wanting to lose you.” The words hung in the air, heavy and unspoken for far too long. For a moment, neither of you said anything. The rain outside had started to fall harder, the sound of it filling the silence like a heartbeat. But the moment of vulnerability passed quickly, buried under layers of pride and pain. You shook your head, biting back the surge of emotion that threatened to choke you.

“If you can’t respect me enough to trust me, then maybe we’ve been fooling ourselves this whole time.” With that, you turned on your heel and stormed out, leaving Sevika standing there, her fists clenched and her heart aching. She wanted to call after you, to say something—anything—but the words refused to come. Instead, she slammed her mechanical fist into the nearest table, sending a shower of splinters into the air.

The dawn brought with it the sounds of preparation: the clinking of metal, the hum of machinery, and the low murmur of voices. Sevika had thrown herself into the work, sharpening her blade and overseeing the distribution of weapons. It kept her mind occupied, kept her from dwelling on the argument that had left a bitter taste in her mouth.

She hadn’t seen you all morning, but part of her assumed—hoped—you were keeping your distance because you had actually listened to her. Maybe you’d decided to stay out of the thick of the fight, working logistics or coordinating from the sidelines. The thought brought her some comfort, though it was fleeting. Sevika didn’t have time to dwell on it.

The battlefield erupted in chaos, the deafening roar of artillery blending with the cries of soldiers. Ambessa moved with commanding precision, her blade a blur as she tore through enemy lines. Blood streaked her armor, and bruises marred her skin, but she didn’t falter, driven by sheer determination and the thrill of combat.

Unbeknownst to her, you had ignored her stern warnings and joined Loris at one of the heavy machines. The two of you worked side by side, firing relentlessly to hold the line against the advancing enemy. Sweat dripped from your brow as the machine roared, each shot sending shockwaves through your arms. Then, in an instant, everything shifted. An arrow, sharp and swift, pierced Loris’s neck, cutting his commands short as blood sprayed across the machine. Your breath hitched, the chaos around you fading into a cold, sharp focus as his lifeless body crumpled beside you.

You froze as Loris crumpled to the ground, his lifeless eyes staring up at nothing, blood pooling beneath him in a stark, vivid red. Panic clawed at your throat, the sounds of battle muffled as the world seemed to spin around you. Your chest tightened, your breaths coming in shallow gasps, but there was no time to grieve—no time to let fear paralyze you. Gritting your teeth, you forced yourself to move, snatching a rifle from a fallen alliy with trembling hands. With a surge of determination, you threw yourself into the fray, firing shot after shot, every muscle in your body trembling but resolute.

You weren’t as strong as Sevika, but you fought with everything you had, striking down enemy soldiers with a ferocity born of desperation. Each blow sent pain through your bruised and battered body, your muscles screaming with every movement. But you didn’t stop. You couldn’t. The weight of exhaustion pressed down on you, but something deeper -maybe loris- kept you going.

Through the chaos, your eyes locked onto Sevika, crouched behind a crumbling wall. Her chest heaved with labored breaths, her shoulders rising and falling as she tried to steady herself amid the storm of battle. Relief flooded through you, and you ran toward her, dodging through the mess of bodies, dead and alive. But just as you reached her, a stray bullet—meant for Ambessa—tore through your thigh. The scream that tore from your throat was involuntary, raw with pain and shock.

You dropped to the ground, clutching at the wound as blood seeped between your fingers. Around you, the battle raged on, your scream lost in the cacophony. No one noticed—no one but Vika.

Her head snapped up at the sound, her heart lurching in her chest. She knew that voice, that scream. It was imprinted in her mind, as familiar as her own. She spun, her eyes scanning the battlefield until they locked onto you. Her stomach dropped at the sight of you crumpled.

The battle raged on, chaos spreading in every direction. Sevika’s focus had been singular—getting you out of harm’s way. But as her eyes locked on yours and she saw the pain etched into your face, her relief was short-lived. From the far end of the battlefield, a surge of Viktor’s forces began to overwhelm Zaun’s defenders. The enemy soldiers moved with mechanical precision, their glowing eyes reflecting the unmistakable influence of Hextech augmentation.

Sevika’s body tensed, her instincts screaming at her to act. She raised her blade, ready to defend you again. But before she could charge, something changed. The first wave of Viktor’s soldiers stopped abruptly, their weapons dropping to their sides as their bodies stiffened unnaturally

. A soft, eerie hum filled the air, growing louder with each passing second. Then, like a ripple through the crowd, others began to freeze in place, their movements arrested as their bodies jerked under the influence of some unseen force. Sevika’s brow furrowed, her gaze darting across the battlefield. “What the hell is this?” she muttered, her voice low and wary. You, still clutching your wounded leg, tried to push yourself up to get a better view.

The hum grew louder, and your heart sank as you realized what was happening. A faint, unnatural light pulsed through the crowd—Hextech. But this wasn’t just augmentation. This was control. “Vika,” you rasped, your voice trembling. “Something’s wrong.” Before she could respond, the glow of the Hexcore reached the soldiers nearest to you.

Their bodies stiffened as their faces went slack. Sevika stepped forward, her blade at the ready. “Stay behind me,” she ordered, her voice sharp. But it wasn’t just the enemy soldiers. The glow was spreading. Zaunites, your own people began to fall victim to the glowing influence. One by one, they froze, their weapons clattering to the ground as their minds were overtaken.

“Shit,” Sevika cursed, her movements growing more frantic. Their bodies moved like machines, unstoppable and unyielding. And then it happened. The glow reached Sevika. Appearing straight from the sky like an angle. Her flesh arm twitched, trying to resist, but it was no use. Her body jerked unnaturally as the Hextech took hold, her blade falling from her grip. “Sevika!” you screamed, your voice breaking with panic.

Her eyes met yours for a fleeting moment, wide with fear and frustration. “Run—” she managed to rasp before her voice cut off. Her body froze completely, her head tilting upward slightly as her gaze became vacant, her expression eerily calm. “Sevika?” you whispered, your voice trembling as the realization set in. She wasn’t moving. She wasn’t fighting.

She was gone, her mind no longer her own. The hum grew louder, and the glow inched closer to you. Your heart pounded as you tried to crawl away, but your wounded leg made it impossible to move fast enough. “Stay with me,” you pleaded softly, looking at Sevika even though you knew she couldn’t hear you. Then, the glow reached you. unexpectedly as everyone else's. Your body jerked as the Hextech seized control, your limbs relaxing against your will. Panic surged through you, but it was quickly smothered by the overwhelming numbness that followed. You tried to fight it, to resist, but it was like screaming into a void.

Masterlist

Are yall tired of me writing angst like be honest with me i can handle it T-T

[mca-attack21]

Love Can Hurt (Jeremiah x Conklin Reader)

A/N: There are season 1/2 spoilers

It was rare that you came to see Susannah on your own, usually you were with your mom. You came to visit more often than Steven or Belly, both because you wanted to see Susannah and because you wanted to check in on Jeremiah. Last summer had put him in a weird spot with Conrad and Belly, so you made a point to be there for him. At least that’s what you told yourself. The truth is you have always gone out of your way for Jeremiah. So of course, you came when he asked if you could stay with his mom during homecoming, even if the phone call broke your heart.

“Hey Y/n/n, how are you doing?”

“I’m alright Jere, is everything okay?”

“Yeah, I just have a question for you.”

“Of course.”

“Homecoming is this Saturday-” you could not believe what you were hearing, Jeremiah Fisher - the boy you’ve dreamed about being with was actually, “I was planning to go with Blake, but I don’t want to leave my mom home alone. We might get a hotel room. I was hoping you could come stay the weekend. She always loves seeing you.”

Your breath caught in your throat. You had to take a second before answering so your voice wouldn’t give you away. “Of course Jere, you deserve a night to be a normal teenager without the weight of the world on your shoulders. I’ll come up Friday after school.”

“Oh my god, you’re the best. I’ll totally owe you one.”

“It’s no problem Jere, I’ll see you Friday.” You hurriedly end the call, pulling your knees to your chest. Losing the fight to keep your tears at bay. Sometimes you wished you could stop loving him. 

You walked in the door with groceries and set them on the counter. Every time you visited, you would restock the cabinets and fridge. It used to be Susannah who would make sure everyone’s favorites were in the house. It was a small thing, but you felt like it was the least you could do. You went to check in on her, but she was sleeping so you decided to let her rest. You peek in Jeremiah’s room, straightening it up a bit and making his bed. He would be home soon, so you started to make him his favorite dinner.

You don’t know exactly when it happened, that you fell for him. Jeremiah always cared so much about the people around him, he was the most charismatic person you had ever met. He had this energy about him that illuminated any room he was in. Since he found out about his mom, that sparkle dimmed ever so slightly. No one seemed to really notice the toll that all of this was taking on him, except you. You could see through the fake smiles, to the sadness, stress, and fear. You tried to be there for him as much as he would let you. You comforted him through the pain Belly caused, took as much off his shoulders as you could, but you wished there was more you could do. 

You were so deep in your thoughts, you hadn’t even heard him come in. “Y/n?” he called out. 

“In the kitchen Jere.” 

“I’m so glad you’re here,” he wrapped his arms around you from behind, resting his head in the crook of your neck. “That smells delicious, I’m gonna head up and take a shower, check on mom, okay?”

“Yeah, sure.” 

The two of you ate together, catching up. He told you about being nominated homecoming king, which didn’t surprise you at all. With some convincing you got Jere to let you take care of the receipts for the insurance companies while you were there. It was one more thing to take off his plate. When you were both done eating, you took care of the leftovers and did the dishes while he went off to play video games. 

The next day you spent most of your time with Susannah, who was having one of her better days. She was so excited to see Jeremiah going to Homecoming. You were doing fine with it all until his date arrived. 

“Y/n, can you do me a favor and go take pictures of Jere and Blake. I don’t want to scare them away,” she smiled. 

“Of course.”

You took her phone downstairs. Seeing him all dressed up, smiling, laughing, and excited brought mixed emotions. Of course you wanted him to be happy, but watching him with Blake reminded you of having to watch him with Belly this summer. There was a part of you that wished it was you. 

You took the photos, wished them both fun, and went back upstairs to watch movies with Susannah. Right away, she could tell something was off. Of course she could, sometimes you wondered if she knew you better than your own mother. 

“What’s on that brilliant mind of yours?” she asked, pausing the movie. 

“It’s nothing important,” you reply. 

“Of course it's important, because you are important.”

You didn’t know what to say, because you didn’t really know how to describe the way you were feeling without sounding pathetic. 

“This wouldn’t have something to do with Jeremiah, would it?” she asked knowingly. At the mention of his name, your strategic walls came crashing down, tears escaped your eyes. “Oh honey come here,” she said, opening her arms for a hug.

“It hurt to watch him fall for Belly and watch her toss him aside for Conrad and then it hurt tonight to see him so happy with someone else. And he’s my best friend so I get a front row ticket to watch all of it, I hear about every hookup, and I see everything that he tries to hide from everyone…”

“Oh sweetie.” She had always believed that you and Jeremiah were destined for each other the same way that Belly was destined for Conrad. It took her by surprise when Jeremiah admitted feelings for Belly, somehow, she’d missed how much it had affected you.

“Love can hurt sometimes, but that’s because it's real.”

[not-goldy]

But why Jimin is feeling some type about turning 30 🤔 He doesn't have a biological clock ticking to get pregnant, he's a man who according according society doesn't reach their 'expiry date any time soon, he got everything settled financially and family wise, he got supportive parents but he lived majority of his life away from them... now even if he wants to have them here he's perfectly capable to do so. He still looks dropdead gorgeous... actually older he becomes prettier and graceful he turns. His body is still young and beautiful, He already got a partner who is so understanding and makes him feel the best no matter how he looks or his age.

I don't see Tae, who's same age as him focusing on turning 30 much.. he's still having fun, dating best girls out there, all set to enjoy after he retun from MS too. Like he should..because 30 is still very young in my book lol

Biological clock to get pregnant....

Ha🤣

A. He's human

B. Different backgrounds Different directions in life

Tae doesn't have chronic backpain does he??

Tae's career is not woven around his ability to dance his ass off and contour his body into impossible shapes does he? He dances sure and he's good sure but he's not Jimin 🥴

Watch BTS Island or whatever that show was I think they talked about these things- vmin I mean.

Remember he said he hated working out but then had to learn to love it because he needed to work on his form. He said he was becoming weak- he is not just a pretty face. He is not the type of idol you'd give a mic and a seat center stage to perform.

He is Beyonce. He is a spectacle

He will always be a spectacle unfortunately

Losing weight, dieting, fixing his teeth tweaking that- can't do that all his life that's just sad if he has to😢

So he is gonna reminisce and wonder if he should keep doing this or choose a different part- as he said he did before in the past when BTS was going through stuff.

He's gonna reinvent himself take stock reevaluate and shit. 30 is a milestone I suppose most idols do that before they decide to go all in for the long ride- you wouldn't want to look back at 40 and regret certain things you know?

This is where I start ranting bout the impossible beauty standards and performance expectations yall have of him- HE IS SOMEONE'S SON NOT AN OBJECT FOR YOUR ADMIRATION

And before you tell me this idol don't do that that person don't do that- THAT PERSON IS NOT JIMIN AND YOU KNOW DEAD WELL YOU HOLD JIMIN TO A MUCH HIGHER STANDARD THAN TEHM DONT LIE

And let's not forget 30 is primarily when an Idols career is assumed to have come to an end in kpop- sure there are new trends of older idols breaking the stereotypes but let's not act like age isn't a huge part of Kpop and that newer younger, much much younger idols are popping up on the scene- they may not be as seasoned or as talented but that will not stop toxic stans perpetuating ageism against BTS.

Its very normal for an idol of JMs caliber to put some thoughts into what he wants to do with his life at this point- if the company isn't going to be any helpful to his career and he doesn't have his age playing in his favor then boy or girl he very much has a right to ponder over his age. He's human.

If he's queer and wants a family then he very much has to worry about that too. And don't be fooled, men do experience low sperm count as they age and other erectile disfunction as they age too it's not just women like they try to portray.

They grow grey hairs and they go bald 🙄

Their bodies change dramatically with age too🥲

I can go on and on but he's just human doing what normal humans do.

[devondespresso]

writing my silly little fic and again im struck with how much opportunities they missed by pretending the s2 stancy breakup wasn't messy, specifically for Nancy's guilt about barb and forcing herself to grow up too fast

like s1 Nancy spends one night being a stupid teenager goofing off at her boyfriend's party and staying over to get spicy while Barb goes home. then she later realizes Barb disappeared and died that one night she was letting go and having fun. this is widely recognized trauma for her and informs a lot if not most of her actions through the rest of the show

in season 2 she's feeling the weight of it more around the first year anniversary. steve trys to help by taking her to a party to forget for a little while and 'be stupid teenagers' for a night. a perfectly set up parallel already

the way the show wants it to go, we get the bullshit argument, they fight, allegedly break up at some point, and nancy sleeps with Jonathan. later steve tells her to go with him and we're supposed to read it as Steve stepping back so jancy can happen. we're supposed to be seeing this as a happy ending.

but with the material we're given this would have been the perfect place for an emotional repeat of season 1 for nancy. she and steve go to the party and pretend to be stupid teenagers for the night. but oh no! nancy lets lose too much, lets herself relax and drink and dance, and the next day her boyfriend's pissed. hes saying she said things she never remembered saying and its hurt him and she doesn't know what to do. and kids around school are talking about them breaking up at the party, and that fits with Steve's anger she saw, so they must've broken up right? it sucks, even if she wasn't in love with him, that'd be the worst way to break up with someone (especially if she's confusing platonic and romantic feelings or convincing herself it has to be romantic when she really just values him as a friend)

and then she doesn't have time to work it out, she needs to go with Jonathan to avenge barbs 'disappearance' to give her family closure. She's got a lot of conspiracy shit to do and its stressful. so when murray starts going off about how she's not really in love with steve, how she actually likes Jonathan and he seems to like her back. they finished a lot of the hard work with the conspiracy stuff, she can let her guard down and have a quick good night.

then the next day is chaos. demodogs and labs and will being possessed. It a rough fucking day. Steve tells her to go with Jonathan while they get the mindflayer out of Will, civil like they're on good terms so she does (and thank god she did because that was rough and they needed all the help they could get)

and then everything's fine again, with the upside down. and it looks like she handled things better this time, was about to relax occasionally and still made it through.

except apparently she and steve didn't break up. he thought it was just a few fights, that they put their shit aside for the apocalypse and now they can work things out.

and it could ruin nancy. a year later and she's still hasn't learned her lesson, that letting her guard down hurts the people she cares about, that relaxing and having fun makes her lose people. its her fault for the messy breakup with Steve and its her fault that barb is gone. she's the reason she's lost friends close to her, 2 for 2, and now she only has Jonathan left (and what do you know, season 3 has her conflict with Jonathan and in season 4 she's not let anyone else get truly close to her and fred still dies)

you see what i mean?? by having conflict magical resolve itself in the background we loose so much powerful, painful character drama for her. our girl who thinks she has to keep the world around her up solely on her shoulders because she can't handle the loss of her best friend in season 1. Nancy who desperately wants to be normal and have people she loves but keeps losing them, through factors both in and out of her control, but feels like everything has to be her fault just because some things were.

and to be fair, that story is still present in the show. its there and definitely compelling, but it could've been even more so. i feel like if maybe there was less 'nancy has to be a strong independent girlboss' in there (abd it's definitely there, they want to make a point of making her a Strong Woman Character so bad) and she was allowed to have mistakes acknowledged by the narrative, this is the direction it would've gone. She could've been an excellent example of well written women who are strong and awesome through their own right instead of the narrative trying to make us like her

[cookinguptales]

some feelings about wwdits under a cut, for negativity

WWDITS... I don't know. I don't think I've found the writing entirely fulfilling for a while now. s4 had its problems, but s5 was... let's just say not nearly as funny or cohesive as I would've liked, and the characterization has been... wandering, to put it kindly. Seeing it end now feels a little less like losing my favorite show and a little more like stopping it before things really start to spiral.

I remember someone asked me once post-s3 what (if anything) would make me stop watching the show, and I said Guillermo leaving for good or the characters becoming less supernatural. (i.e. Nandor becoming human for good or something.) I really hate shows where the characters become "normal" as a happy ending, so that's really my nightmare scenario. I'm not exaggerating when I say I think I'd literally rather the characters die than lose the spark that makes them interesting.

Honestly, I feel like that's probably a lot of what's made it hard for me to move forward with writing fic for wwdits after the s5 finale. It felt not only OOC for Guillermo but just... such a boring direction to take it. I feel like there were so many ways they could have made non-vampire Guillermo interesting and IC and they just. did not do that. Instead they ignored a lot of previous canon in order to cancel out an entire season while also trying to make us believe that Guillermo choosing humanity is a happy and fulfilling ending for anyone.

And when you look at characters like Laszlo... like they keep giving him plot lines that go absolutely nowhere. The poignancy of his adventures in fatherhood and his depression over losing his child were basically nowhere to be seen in s5. (I kept expecting them to tie it back to his loss over Baby Colin, like he was making Guillermo his new project because he wasn't coping well with losing his son, but they never really went there.) And then they have him doing all of these experiments in s5 that don't really amount to anything other than making it canon that he can't even remember what happened in s1.

(Or... the writers can't, at least...)

I don't know. When none of the plot lines they write are given weight, it's hard for me to give them weight. If none of the characters' choices matter because they'll just be reset anyway, why do I care about their choices? If entire plot lines are just going to go absolutely nowhere (when they're given endings at all) why should I get invested in them?

They set up a lot of interesting themes about found family, the supernatural world as a haven for those who are queer or otherwise socially othered, etc. and then had Guillermo outright choose the human world and his human family over the found family they'd been setting up for five seasons. Having Guillermo be okay with killing vampires but not humans (which... again, makes no sense with his behavior towards humans in the past, but I digress) basically explicitly tells us that he sees vampire life as lesser than human life and like ????? then how are we supposed to interpret the relationships and themes you've spent all this time building???

When you have Guillermo coming out as being gay and also wanting to be a vampire in the same breath and then have him reject that world, when you give these interviews talking about how making Guillermo and Nandor have [gay] sex would lessen their relationship... I don't know! It almost feels like they can't even keep track of their own themes and really do not care if they shit on the audience that's loyally followed them even through some really questionable writing decisions!

I guess at this point, I only worry that they really do see becoming human and leaving the supernatural world as being a happy ending for all these characters. Are they going to make the other vampires human, too? Are they going to have Guillermo leave for good and choose the human world?

Like it's literally my nightmare scenario. lmao.

I guess I just feel like I've been cutting wwdits a lot of slack because I assumed that the writers were going somewhere really interesting with these seemingly incomprehensible choices, but now that I've realized that they're really just... not great writing choices...

It'll be easier to let go, I guess. I don't have nearly the same emotional connection to this show that I did even six months ago, much less a year and a half ago. If you told me even a year ago that my reaction to my favorite show's cancellation would be "...oh..." I wouldn't have believed you. But. I guess here we are.

I keep trying to make myself feel the same love for this show that I did during the first three, three and a half seasons, and I'm just not sure I can do it. I've been going around in circles over this for months now, but I just feel kind of hollow when I reach for the joy that this show used to inspire in me. And now that I know it's ending soon, I guess my mind is just kind of going "well, I guess it'll all be over with soon, one way or another, and I'll finally be able to choose a way to feel about it all."

I think... honestly, I think the only way I can be happy writing fic going forward is if I write fic that actively ignores a lot of the canon developments. It's literally too fucking difficult to eke out coherent characterization from what they've been putting out lately, and maybe it would feel more fun and less like homework if I just stopped trying.

I really, really hope that the last season of this show is beautiful and gorgeous and funny and makes me remember exactly what I love about it just in time to mourn it forever. I hope that I will happily be able to write fics incorporating every ounce of canon and feel fulfilled by that. But... honestly speaking, at this point I'm just hoping that the last season doesn't actively piss me off. lmao

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[uswnt5]

Okay, so I have been sitting on this for a while now, thinking on whether or not I should share this. I've been working in woso for a few years now, specifically women's academy football and I want to add something to this horrifying cycle of abuse we keep seeing in sports. I see a lot of people wondering "how the fuck does this keep happening" and "where the fuck do they keep finding such horrid people" and I want to provide an inside perspective.

When I started working in woso, I was given the chance to work for the first team or for their academy team. I was young and thought I could change the world so I chose the academy team. At that point we still only had one academy team, a U18 team that played in the second division of women's football. I was an idealist and wanted to do more than just work in football, I wanted to innovate and improve football, and I thought a young academy team would give me more opportunities to do so.

I worked with young girls from ages 15 to 18. And I thought I was amazing at it. I would have done anything for that first generation of kids that came up through me. One of them made her debut for the national team recently, and I was crying in the stadium the whole 16 minutes of playtime she got. I love those girls with all my heart, I really do.

But, I also learned very quickly how easy it is to lose yourself, and the person you think you are.

We discuss their bodies daily. We monitor their sleep, their mood, their periods, their fatigue, their weight, every little bit of exercise they do… I know their bodies better than I know my own sometimes. And with that familiarity comes a blurring of boundaries that I never expected myself to be capable of.

At the beginning of last season, one of our girls tore her ACL. It sucks, but it happens (her recovery went absolutely perfect and she's going to back in games sooner than anyone could have hoped). This girl is a 'high potential', tall, strong, really good with her left foot, and only 16 years old at that point. When I say tall and strong, her dad is build like freaking Hagrid and she definitely takes after him.

When the results of the scan came back, confirming the ACL tear, we had a meeting with the whole staff on how we were going to support her through this. Everyone signed the 'get well soon' card, and then we started on making the post-surgery plan. And at some point our PT said: we're really going to have to watch her, because she is going to get fat. With that bodytype, she is going to gain weight, she is not going to stay fit at all. She needs to be put on a diet, right now. Everyone around the table agreed. And we started to discuss how we could prevent her from getting fat while still keeping her knee safe. We were talking about a very injured little girl, and we were discussing her weight, using brutal and harmful language, as if we were discussing the weather.

Because that is part of professional sports, but the habit of talking about bodies, normalizes it. It becomes a casual conversation, and even with the best intentions, that casual conversation turns very cold very quickly. As if there was no human attached to that body. And from cold, it's only a short step before you become cruel.

When someone's body becomes a series of statistics, a product almost, you start to forget how to appropriately handle it. You forget that you shouldn't have ownership of what happens to that body, you forget that it is not normal.

I hope I never turn abusive, I hope someone steps in before it can even come close to abuse. And I too despise the people who abuse their athletes. But I know how easily you can lose yourself, even when your heart is in the right place.

And that is even without taking into account the stress that comes with having to perform at the highest level, how exhausted we all become the longer the season goes on, how worried we constantly need to be that one bad game is going to end our career at a club. I see my staff more than I see anyone in my family. We're starting pre-season in a week and yesterday I worked until 2AM. We haven't even started yet.

It's just a very difficult environment to work in and that frustration and stress does get taken out on the athletes too. And the exhaustion makes you say things that you know you can't say. It's so toxic, even good people just get lost in it.

I am not condoning what is happening now, I was capable of taking a step back and realizing that my words were not okay, that my actions were deeply flawed. If I can do that, everyone can. But the institution is broken, and that can only lead to broken people.

Wow, thanks for sharing. I can see how easily to can be to lose the human element of it when discussing a player as a "tool" used to better your "company" (team).

The institution is definiltey broken, you see it across all sports at every level.

[100ducksizedfolignos]

FANTASY HOCKEY FOR TUMBLRINAS: A GUIDE

been curious about fantasy but have no idea how it works? and whatever guides google deigns to give you are not helping? do you live in canada or minnesota and have your coworkers managed to press-gang you into their fantasy hockey league and you don’t want to embarrass yourself? welcome! i have one whole season of fantasy hockey experience and managed to get second place in my league so i’m probably qualified to take you through this. strap in and hopefully this isn’t incoherent because i have extremely limited visual aids available!

PART 1: HOW IT WORKS

first, the two major fantasy sites are going to be yahoo fantasy and espn fantasy. which you use is probably determined by which one your league commissioner (person who made your league) likes better. disclaimer: basically all of my experience is with yahoo fantasy.

so before we get to talking about the draft - the first thing you do in your fantasy sports journey - let’s talk about what you’re drafting your favorite little hockey men for.

the goal of fantasy hockey is to win either head-to-head matchups or your group as a whole (depending on the settings of your league, to my knowledge head-to-head is more common) in individual stat categories that fall into two groups - skater stats and goalie stats. for instance, if all your skaters got more goals over the course of a week than your opponent’s skaters, you would win the point in that category. if your opponent’s goalies had a better average save percentage than your goalies, they would get the point in that category.

all stats are cumulative across your entire roster, for the record. even save percentage and goals allowed average for goalies, which are averaged out, use every goaltender appearance.

if your win-loss record is good enough (for some leagues, each category separately counts towards your record - for example if your league has 11 categories and you win 6, lose 4, and draw 1, your record is 6-4-1, not 1-0 - and for other leagues, each stat adds to a cumulative point total in different weights, i.e. goals worth 1, assists worth .5, etc., and whoever's total is higher wins), towards the end of the season you make your league’s playoffs, where you duke it out for the title.

there are two commonly-used sets of skater stats, which have become the ways people define fantasy hockey leagues as a whole: points leagues and “bangers” leagues.

points leagues use, as you can imagine, different points categories for skaters. the most common set of these is goals, assists, and power play points. potentially plus or minus shorthanded points depending on your league. bangers leagues, on the other hand, usually use those three stats plus shots on goal, hits, and blocked shots. this makes player selection more multifaceted and interesting and shifts the balance of who has more value in a given league. brady tkachuk is maybe the exemplar of a player who gains a ton of value in bangers leagues due to him having good points totals while also putting up a lot of value in those banger stats. i had esa lindell in my team last season, who put up a whole 24 points, none of them on the power play, but was still valuable to me because he had a lot of hits and blocked shots and helped me win those categories on a pretty regular basis.

you may be looking furiously on normal websites to figure out a player’s banger stats. you will not find them. ask me how i know this. your most reliable source of player stats is going to be the fantasy websites themselves, and you can look through player databases without having a team. yahoo, at least, even lets you do mock drafts, if you want to get cozy with the ui and the experience before you do it for realsies.

(a sample of what a fantasy stats page might look like. this particular one is displaying player stats from last season. if unfamiliar with stat abbreviations, in order, they are: games played, goals, assists, power play points, shorthanded points, shots on goal, hits, blocked shots.)

(same as above, but for goalies. stats in order: games started, wins, goals allowed, saves, shutouts, overtime losses.)

goalie stats are usually wins, goals allowed average, saves, and shutouts. plus or minus save percentage or overtime losses, depending on your site and settings. these are all pretty straightforward, with the small wrinkle of “do you take a better goalie on a worse team knowing he’ll win less but have better other stats” vs “do you take a more average goalie on a better team knowing he’ll be better supported by his system which might help his stats and definitely get him more wins”.

PART 2: THE DRAFT

now that you know what you’re looking for, let’s talk about the draft.

most fantasy drafts are “snake drafts”, meaning the pick order flips every round, in interest of fairness. while most pro sports drafts are the same order every round (1→16, 1→16, 1→16, etc.), they have history to fall back on. poor teams need better players to build around, while better teams already have those players. but in the average fantasy league, everyone is starting from zero. so the order goes 1→16, 16→1, 1→16, etc. for as many rounds as your draft goes. the person who picked last in the first round gets to pick first in the second round, and so on.

what you’re looking for here is highly dependent on your team settings. does your league just distinguish forwards from defense from goalies? or does forward position matter? (if it does, know a player is not locked into a spot once you use him there - he can play any of his listed positions at any given time, whether or not he actually plays that spot in the lineup. for instance, joe pavelski is listed as both a center and right wing - despite the fact he rarely plays center, you can deploy him there on any given night. or you could deploy him at right wing, if that’s where your opening is.)

i’m going to take you through this with the settings used by my last league.

in my league, you had 16 guys on your roster. 2C, 2LW, 2RW, 4D, 2G, and 4 guys on the bench (who, if they played that day, their stats would not be added to any of your totals, although this was rarely an issue). so on my team, i usually had 8 forwards, with at least 3 people able to play each position, 5 defensemen, and 3 goalies. your league might have a bigger roster, it might not have a bench, it might not care about where forwards play as long as they’re forwards, and this all influences the spread of who you draft and when. if your league calls for - in the case of espn’s default league settings - 9 forwards, 5 defensemen, 1 utility player (put another way, any skater), 2 goalies, and 5 guys on the bench, well, you probably take 12 or 13 forwards, 7 or 8 defensemen, and 3 goalies, and it’s on you how you prioritize the order of that.

really, the important parts of the draft are the first few rounds, when you pick the really high-end guys. later-round players are easier to swap out for each other - which you can do! any guy not drafted is considered a free agent, and if you draft a guy who’s underperforming, you can swap him out for an undrafted guy who’s doing better. so don’t sweat the later rounds too much beyond what roles you need to fill. you can let your fantasy site’s ranking board help you out there.

lightning round q&a:

when do you pick a goalie? generally people go the same way nhl teams do in the entry draft - probably not in the first round unless he’s a really sure thing to an extent that he’s more valuable than whatever top skaters are still there.

can you run with just 2 goalies? if you are extremely confident that your 2 goalies combined can match the output of other teams going with 3 goalies. if you have a vasilevskiy or a sorokin or the type of goalie who is a clear starter and plays at a high level for those starts and your other goalie is giving good starts, then yeah maybe you can run with 2. i did for a bit. take the third goalie though, it’ll make your life so much less stressful, especially if your league has a minimum amount of goalie appearances requirement (mine did - your goalies had to make 3 appearances a week for their stats to count at all).

when do banger stats become more valuable than points? i wish i had a clear answer for that. you just gotta feel it out, man. broadly, when a player’s point total starts to get into average territory, then probably start really looking for those banger stats to maximize value. but if a guy has notable banger stats then maybe you take him before point totals get average. no good answer to this one, sorry

is there any reason for mcdavid not to be 1oa, even in bangers? no, and anyone who tries otherwise is being contrarian for the sake of it. if you luck out getting 1oa just take mcdavid. come on.

if you pick last in the first round, are you boned? well i picked last and got second place, so no you are not :)

when do you make a “reach” pick? as you’re drafting, you’ll have a list of players ranked by the site in front of you. use that to help but not as a bible. you reach when you think someone will take a player before you get to pick again, and the difference between that player and the next player on your list is worth the risk.

idk if people have more questions i can make another post or something. maybe you don’t have any of these questions. i hope it was useful anyways

PART 3: FANTASYING

here’s the meat-and-potatoes nitty-gritty of it all. here’s a very retro view of what your team hub might look like - note the ui absolutely does not look like this anymore:

you can actually see on here what i was talking about earlier with that “guys who play multiple positions can be used in either/any” thing. malkin is listed as both a center and a right wing, and is deployed as a center here, but if, say, this person wanted to bring in derek roy but still use malkin, he could put roy in malkin’s center spot and move malkin to bump selanne or jagr to the bench.

good news! i did manage to find someone’s screenshot with something similar to current app ui:

player stats for the week would be under where it says no game, but you can actually see the ir+ spot in use and what the general layout looks like. actually, speaking of ir-

let’s talk about ir real quick. and this bit is all based on yahoo fantasy, so if espn does this different, i’m sorry and you’re on your own

so! if your team has a dedicated ir+ spot, you can put any guy who is officially listed as out (O, as keller is above), injured reserve (IR), or long-term injured reserve (LTIR) there, and he will not count against your roster total. you have a limited amount of these spots, so probably don’t get landeskog, confirmed to be missing the whole season, and stick him on there, although you can and it won’t affect your main team at all. it would only be a problem if with him you have more injured guys than there are ir+ spots. with this, you could even draft a guy starting the season injured, like a brandon montour, stick him on an ir+ spot, and get a fill-in guy out of free agency afterwards (since you’ll only be drafting enough players to field a team without any injuries), if you think that when he’s healthy, he’ll boost your team enough to be worth missing out on a player of the caliber of where you drafted him. so if a player on your team gets injured and you have ir+ spots, use them! pull a guy out of free agency to take the injured player’s spot and go about your merry business knowing you can still field a full team.

anyways - as before, only the players off the bench (in the white spaces on this ui) count towards your totals. so, and i cannot stress this enough, MAKE SURE YOUR PLAYING PLAYERS ARE ACTUALLY PLAYING AND ADDING TO YOUR STAT TOTALS. much heartbreak has been had by people who have forgotten to do this. yahoo has a fun little button that will automatically do this for you, but only for the week, so keep up with that, too. (for purposes of fantasy, weeks start on mondays btw.) it might also not always start the people you want starting if there’s more guys playing that night than there are spots on your starting roster, so watch for that, too. like if you have 4 defense spots and you have 5 defensemen playing that night, decide which one’s stats you’re most okay with missing out on. players only lock in once their game time comes around, so you do usually have the entire day to decide. you might be influenced by where your matchups are standing - if you’re definitely losing your assists matchup, but your hits matchup is close, you might sit your points-producing defenseman in favor of your big hitter. stuff like that.

and that’s actually pretty much it! even playoffs work the same way. once you’ve got your team, the day-to-day of fantasy is pretty simple. make sure your players are playing, adjust your team with free agents if necessary, conveniently ignore trade requests if they suck (as far as i can tell trading is more prolific in irl fantasy groups where people know each other better, we had like no trades in my online league of strangers last season), root on some guys you’ve never heard of before because you need them, and have fun!

[kitkatopinions]

Watched the second ep. I don't have pics this time but I'm gonna do my best to make a good post anyway. RWBY volume 9 spoilers and criticism below the keep reading. Also this is a long one!

Praise

The use of 'business person.' About ten years of gender-specific stuff like 'Huntsman Academies' instead of 'Hunter Academies' aside, it's nice to hear some gender neutral terms.

On its own, removed from the comedy and bad tone of the volume and the moment two seconds before it, I really enjoyed Weiss reflecting on the weight of what happened, the loss of her home, the fact that their plan could've been (and kind of was) a disaster that put people at risk, the possibility of losing the Relics, acting like they made mistakes... I also really like Ruby's response to it, her "you did the best you could to save Atlas" was said in this weak kind of stiff way like Ruby knows that's a meaningless comfort that doesn't help. And then when Weiss talks about Penny, Ruby just turns away and keeps walking? That's good. This on its own felt like a really good moment.

Also, I like the choice of framing in the conversation, specifically Weiss gripping her sword. Yesss those trauma responses motherfucker, yeeeeah! That's what we wanna see!

I really love the concept of the weather in wonderland clearly connecting to emotions (and so far, more Ruby's emotions than anything else.) I kind of even like how it changes on a dime.

The soldier waving to the little kid? Kind of cute!

Ruby's "Look, we may not know exactly what's going on. But for whatever reason, this place is putting us on a similar path as a book we all read as kids. I say we follow it... And stop pretending we know what we're doing." First off, this is what I mean when I say the voice acting for Ruby has much improved. The delivery is great, the emotions are great, the twinge of bitterness despite her seeming to be trying at the start to give one of her usual speechesTM leading to her ending with her dark statement of them not knowing what they're doing, it's great. Second off, she's her uncle's niece, that's for sure, I love this new angle for her actually. Third off, please please please don't have this written off by the end of the season with an "actually there's nothing we could've done differently, nothing that needs to change, Ruby is back to normal." I have a lot of complaints about this episode already typed up (because I'm writing both criticism and praise as I watch) but this is a good direction for Ruby and I'm liking this growth for her actually surprisingly a lot. Everything else, I do not like, but Ruby is so far my absolute favorite part of this season, which is as it should be. And I want these changes to mean something in the long run even if she - as she should - regains some confidence and optimism near the end. I want her to come out of this more cautious, more mature, a bit more cynical, a bit open to council and other solutions and working on her own shortcomings and accepting some nuance. This is good groundwork, I'm really hoping the writers can take this thing the whole way through.

Guys, I feel kind of bad, I really expected to have more praise... But by and large... I didn't like this episode. Let's talk about why.

Criticism

First off, gonna say right away. Yang being like "are we just gonna sit here thinking about that in silence, or...?" What a weird way to start an episode. That's a 'back from a commercial break' line you'd find in Phineas and Ferb.

The way that the 'anime-animation' has gone up by a hundred in this volume is bad, the show has been written so that it's mostly normal with maybe two or three anime-animation gags a season for ages, and they always feel out of place because of how little they're used, and now they kicked it up to eleven jam-packing as many into their show as possible, and it's annoying! The "reason" may be because the writers wanted this volume to feel different than RWBY. If that's the case then congrats the show RWBY doesn't feel like RWBY at all even in vibes right now.

Weiss: "And Yang got her arm stolen by a- by a- what was it, that you said?" Boy howdy. Let's just gloss over Yang actually telling them what happened, so we can by pass their reactions and act like it's all just old hat and stupid and tiring. It's not like the audience needs to be engaged. It's not like this is meant to be the first time the audience is hearing about this.

Weiss (paraphrased): "Just because this place is weird doesn't mean we're actually inside a fairy tale." Me: "Good, someone is going to point out that the sentencing is really weird considering that it doesn't make sense for them to think they just blue-skadoo'd into the pages of a fairy tale and they're going to take this moment - the most logical moment - to talk about how it's more likely that this world must've been traversed by someone who returned to Remnant and based a fairy tale they've read off of it (which is VERY Journey to the Center of the Earth starring Josh Hutcherson and Brendan Fraser by the way) and therefore whether this is an after-life or another dimension or something else that they logically ought to consider, they can get back." Yang: "Also this thing that may be reflective of something that might have happened in a fairy tale happened to me." Weiss: "Actually yes we're probably 'in a fairy tale.'"

Ruby, the girl who explicitly loved FAIRY TALES SPECIFICALLY: "Some of this is sort of familiar." Blake, the girl who may like fairy tales alongside the other books she reads (once joked at majority being trashy romance novels in the show, and repeatedly in Chibi): "I recognize this at once!" Weiss, the girl who grew up in a strict home where she's never once mentioned ever liking even any form of entertainment as far as I can remember: "That's just something we all read as kids." Gee whiz, I wish this was actually... Something better. XD

"Alyx" fought a "Jabberwalker" and beat the "Red King" and met the "Curious Cat." Listen, this is all... Very boring. I know I haven't actually encountered some of these things yet, but despite feeling like them doing things like making Pinnochio become a real person was lazy, RWBY has never been this lazy before. At least when they literally uncreatively named a character Sun Wukong, he wasn't just an immortal godlike character you meet in a rushed journey to the west pocket of an adventure where everything is Journey to the West themed and the characters in RWBY were like "this is the world of Travel to the Western Location, it's a book that exists that we're going to have to go through." Not only am I bored, I'm very annoyed.

Little: "I'll lead the way! Right to-" *Cuts to Little sleeping* Immediately, I'm done as hecking heck with the pointlessness of this mouse so far. "They might have a point later" Well until then, they're annoying, and they could have a point right the frick now by acting as a guide, but instead all they're doing and seemingly their only purpose as of yet is as bad comedy in a season so far filled with more than enough bad comedy.

Blake: "Alyx didn't know the customs and ended up starting a war." Yang: "Well, she was kind of a bad person, right? She lied and cheated her way through most of the book." Weiss: "She was trying to survive. The morals of those old stories are so simplistic." Weiss...... Do you remember how you all fucking hated Ozpin for three seasons because he lied and were fine with him getting punched over it? Do you remember how you guys decided that 'saving what we can in a trolley problem' made someone evil? Do you remember when you pointed what was essentially a loaded gun at your underage civilian brother because he was in the way? Do you remember how you acted like Yang had slapped Ruby because she suggested that Ruby might have been wrong about something? Do you remember when Blake accused May of acting like Ironwood when she told you guys that you had to choose to do something to help people instead of sitting around and doing nothing and you were just like "yuh-huh." And that's not even getting into how this show has treated so much as cut-and-dry either you're good or you're evil for the past three seasons in the narrative, leaving no room for nuance in the conversation. Hopefully this season will address some of that, but it still leaves Weiss looking like a massive hypocrite for this line.

When Yang says what happened with the racoon, the animation used to tell that story is not it for me champs. Idk who decided that. Why couldn't they just mimic the art style of Yang's story about looking for Raven when she was a kid and Qrow helping her? What, is the 'tone' of that style of art too serious for their comedic stuff they've got going on?

Yang and Blake: *Almost touch hands.* Weiss: "About time." ABOUT TIME FOR WHAT, WEISS? THEY HAVEN'T DONE ANYTHING! They've literally held hands at least twice now

And that Blake has also done with Ruby and Weiss

Yes, this time Yang and Blake are doing it with Energy that was non-existent for Blake and Ruby and Blake and Weiss, but they've been doing everything with ENERGY since volume six. This is nothing new, this is just another way of the show writers and Rooster Teeth going "see? See? They're actually something (probably) so just wait teehee" but first off, I don't like it and I wish they'd just progress Blake and Yang's relationship because they haven't done anything now that's different from the cake picture or the practicing their dancing. But second off, boy does Weiss look an oblivious chump. "About time." Where have you been???

And also, at the writers, just because you act like it's new and significant doesn't mean it is. What is this hesitation for?

Also! Weiss and Ruby: *Stop walking, start having a serious conversation.* Yang and Blake:

Bro, when I'm walking with my sister and she stops, I??? Stop walking??? So we can walk together??? When my sister stops walking to have a sad serious conversation about being sad and serious, I just??? Stop to talk to her?? It kind of makes Blake and Yang feel like they're so caught up in each other that they're just ignoring not only the dire situation they're in and the dire situation Remnant is in, but also the feelings and suffering of Ruby and Weiss. And it's just... Not what I want to see tbh? Like I want to see them acting like they care enough to at least notice what the other two are going through.

The amount of screentime that's already been spent on Little being just so silly and quirky is really wrecking my enjoyment. I wish they had left Little behind when they left the mice army. Actually, I wish Little (and also the mice army) had never existed at all.

"So which one is Yang's arm?" I feel like this is from a little kids show for five year olds. "Okay kids, the mean racoon has disguised what he stole as something else. Is it the green doll, the pink rabbit, or the yellow-and-black staff that looks kind of like Yang's arm that's made of metal? Do you guys remember what color Yang's arm is?" *Kids voice* "Yellow!" Hand of the Creator making Team RWBY look like idiots here tbh. Cringe. At least Yang went on to assume it's her arm - because that's what her heart told her - but yikes was that dumb.

Also though the racoon is massively bad and bigoted. Everything about this racoon is a negative stereotype associated with the Romani people and it's coming out in 2023, this is a really bad look especially from Bigoted "NO WE SWEAR WE'VE CHANGED" Bad Business Practices Inc.

The sword thing doesn't make sense to me tbh. Other people who say things better than me have talked about the lack of logic regarding the sword being here in the first place, but what I'm gonna talk about is the lack of emotions tied up in this item. By talking about Doctor Who. So, the writers of Doctor Who wanted the Eleventh Doctor to have something to remember his companion Amy Pond by after she left after a whopping two and a half seasons (more than achieved by even Rose Tyler in modern Who) for his remaining half a season left on the show, as an emotional gut-punch for the many fans who loved Amy and the other companion Rory who left at the same time. So they had the Eleventh Doctor wear Amy's glasses.

The problem with this is... Amy only ever wore glasses in her very last episode, so... There was no real emotional significance in them. They weren't iconic to Amy, they weren't something the viewer knew well, they were something transparently invented for an emotional moment that was completely unearned. This is a bit more than what happened with Penny's sword which I think probably were just invented to give Penny something to fight with now that she was no longer a robot. But it's still the case that I feel zero emotional connection to this thing I've seen in the last like two episodes of volume eight that only appeared right before Penny's death. It isn't like this moment

Especially now that Penny's been in five seasons with her regular weapons tied to her robotic body. That's what we're used to. This is one (of many) reasons why they should have left Penny as a robot. This is already a do-over - Penny died in a terrible fall of a kingdom more or less at the hands of Cinder and Ruby is left with her sword. It's almost like they realized that Penny's death mattered to the viewers and yet nothing significant was ever really done with Penny's death, Penny's sword, or Ruby's reactions and so they copy-pasted the events, tweaked 'em for the story they were in the middle of already, and then were like "OKAY TAKE TWO." But because of them changing Penny's robotic body out for a flesh one and therefore tossing aside the iconic design of her weapon we all know and love, I'm sitting here going "Oh look, green glass that the writers want me to associate with Penny."

Although I do think that the voice actress for Ruby has improved this season, someone please tell them that their whimpering doesn't sound good or convincing.

Also that whole 'get our stuff' section lasted about five minutes. "We're gonna have to get our stuff back." "Oh no we don't know what our stuff is?" "Let's use our feelings to figure out what our stuff is." "Omg, we can't pay the cost of that." "The stuff is revealed as our stuff." "We're gonna have to fight for it!" "I'm so sad about Penny!" "Okay we got our stuff, let's get out of here!" I've said before that RWBY struggles to let people sit with the weight of any emotions which makes things seem really shallow, but this is ridiculous. I feel nothing about Yang not being willing to give up what it feels like to be loved as the price of her arm, because... If I had been grabbing my Red Bull for the two seconds that had happened, I would've missed that, nobody reacted to it, and it was just gone. All of that legit could've been a whole upset with emotional beats where the girls grapple with concepts of having to give up things or not having enough hope to fill up a jar, but instead it's five minutes of rushed comedy-centric nothing that started and then just kind of stopped while I'm just like feeling nothing.

Blake's "I've read so many stories, I... Never thought I'd be the moral of one" Is clearly played straight? As in, it's clearly played as serious and not just for laughs, as 'emotional' music starts playing. But what part of the last scene outside of Ruby's whimper and holding the sword was I meant to take seriously? The whole thing was played up for comedy and Blake didn't seem to be taking it that seriously either - and five minutes prior had been joking and teasing and laughing with Yang in the most carefree manner. I'm sorry if I can't take her crisis seriously now, but I really can't. I actually got confused because I was like 'ah somebody messed up and started playing serious music? Oh wait no, it's gonna cut out for a joke. No? They're being serious?" Bleh

Weiss: "We are not IN A BOOK." Me: "Good, someone is going to point out that it doesn't make sense for them to think they just blue-skadoo'd into the pages of a fairy tale and they're going to take this moment - the most logical moment - to talk about how the author or Alyx or whoever probably just wrote about someone having an adventure in this place that could be an afterlife or another dimension or something else that they logically ought to consider, and their own adventure shouldn't be the same as there's because this is a different time and it's not the foregone conclusion to think the exact same things that happened to her would happen to them (some of this is reminiscent of Tim Buton's Alice in Wonderland btw) but that they can try to get out the same way she did." Weiss: "And even if we were, we know how it ends!" I guess at least they're doing the last part??

Weiss: *Hits herself with a rock so hard that she falls to the ground and doesn't get up for at least two seconds.* The other members of Team RWBY:

Can this show try to convince me these characters care about each other outside of Big MomentsTM, at least a little? Nobody tries to help calm Weiss down? Nobody asks her if she's okay? Nobody tries to help her up? Nobody even reacts? Ruby doesn't even look up? "It's a comedic moment!" Well, first off, not three seconds before it happened or two seconds after it happened, it isn't. And second off, so? Even in a comedic moment, it'd make sense to have someone say "are you okay?"

Also the toy looking guards remind me of Orbot and Cubot from Sonic the Hedgehog... That's not a compliment, they're super annoying.

Okay... Ruby's speech about Penny is not nearly as emotional as everyone made it out to be. I've seen so many people be like "This episode had me crying so hard over Ruby's eulogy to Penny" And then I get to the ep, and she says kind of really impersonal stuff? I mean, maybe it would've seemed shallow if after Ruby's lack of happiness at Penny's actual resurrection she acted like she and Penny had been best friends, but still. "The most powerful warrior to ever live." Okay, I'll believe that Ruby believes that. "She was touched by magic." And so are at least five other characters Ruby knows including herself. "She gave her life for thousands." Sure, okay, but that's still not personal. "She took a message of hope to the stars." Well, that message may have caused mass hysteria that could theoretically bring down every civilization in Remnant, but yep, Ruby sure thought that was an important act that should be done. "And she saw the world through better eyes." See, this is the only one that seems kind of emotional or something specifically connected to Penny, but it still sounds like something people would say about a long dead astronaut they never knew at some kind of gala. Look, I'm ribbing on this, but I actually think this makes sense - Ruby is pushing down her emotions, and she didn't have the connection with Penny she used to after her first death based on her reactions to Penny being alive (it's more like she really wanted to have the connection she used to,) and she's suffering with the concept that all she (and tbh Penny) had done in the most recent fall could've meant a lot of bad despite her (and Penny's) best intentions. It makes sense that her speech given while in the middle of squashing down her feelings is stiff and not very personal, but it's just really not what I imagined. And with RWBY's history, I'm not sure this is meant to be played as Ruby being stiff and impersonal, it might very well be meant to be a deeply emotional tribute to a beloved character that's meant to trigger waterworks in fans everywhere. And if so, it's just wildly disappointing tbh.

Also, the tone between comedy and serious was horribly done yet again, and also still not combat.

All in all, this episode...

[mozart-the-meerkitten]

CW/TW- Pet Death

So last night I asked for prayers for me and my parents because we'd had a really rough and emotionally trying day. I will now explain. This is, unfortunately, also a Kitten Update on my Bengal kittens, so if you've become emotionally invested in them and aren't up for reading this right now, look away and come back to it another time. Or just don't come back to it. Alright, disclaimer over, you've been warned.

Alright, I'm going to keep this as succinct as possible to try and limit how much I end up crying.

We took the six girl kittens to get spayed yesterday.

Tulip, the littlest kitten, Leeli's runt, had a heart condition we didn't know about. It's all but invisible, there are barely any signs and there is no way to know it exists without special tests being done which we never even thought to do because we had never had an issue with it before and we have had Bengal cats for a long time.

They put Tulip under anesthesia and during the procedure her heart just... stopped. They did everything they could to revive her, they gave her CPR, they gave her epinephrine, but it didn't work. She died.

The vet said she likely had a heart condition where the heart walls thicken and it takes more and more effort then for the heart to beat. My mom looked it up and usually by the time symptoms are visible the cat only has 3-6 months to live. There is no cure, all they can do is slow it down/improve symptoms.

I realized, and shared with my parents, that Tulip was already showing symptoms. She always tired out before the other kittens, she slept more than them, when she was littler she'd come and fall asleep on me because she knew I'd keep other kittens from pouncing on her. Two days ago I'd left Madia and Tulip in my room for maybe 10-15 minutes and they were waking up from a nap, so I assumed they'd be tearing around when I got back. They were curled up on my bed again and I thought that was odd, but...

But Tulip was little, she was the runt, there was no reason to question these things because they're not uncommon behavior for runts (being smaller they have less energy/stamina). And she was as fiesty as any Bengal kitten we'd ever had. A few days ago I saw her attack Farid, her brother, who is over a FULL POUND heavier than her, and start beating him up. She gained weight, she ate well, she acted like a normal kitten!

She was already showing symptoms at 4-6 weeks old, maybe earlier. 3-6 months to live (usually) after symptoms show up. Her heart stopped when she was 4 months old.

It was basically as if we'd had her put to sleep. She felt no pain, she didn't even know. She just fell asleep.

There was no happier kitten in existence than Tulip. That little baby would purr like a MOTOR if you were in the ROOM with her, not even if you were holding her, petting her or playing with her. She just purred ALL THE TIME. She was such a sweet little bug that you couldn't get mad at her. All she knew was happiness and love, and like my mom said, there aren't many cats or people that's true of. She had the happiest kittenhood, the happiest life that any cat could ever have. Her siblings knew that their baby sister needed extra TLC so they made sure to always snuggle around her, Madia went slower so her baby sister could keep up, they loved her, they loved her, they loved her.

Tulip was going to die soon, we just didn't know it. At least this way, God gave us some answers and reasons as to why. I told my mom yesterday that this was simply her span of days, and it was short but very bright.

I named her after a spring flower. Tulips have a short season and then they fade. Tulip's season was short but vibrant and full of life. And when I thought about it today, about if I would have rather had her just not be born alive so I didn't have to go through the grief of losing her after I'd known her...

I couldn't imagine a world where I hadn't experienced that baby's life. I'd do it all over again. Her span of days was short but bright and I was with her every day of her life. I was her forever. And I loved her and I loved her and I loved her.

This was not my fault, I did everything right, I have no regrets. Sometimes things happen that are out of our control. She would never have lived long, but I gave her the best life any kitten could ever have.

Tulip is buried in my Hideout, in the Gnarled Forest, next to Dora. There is no higher honor I could give her than that.

All the others kittens came thought surgery fine and are recovering.

[thenixkat]

More Early Riser! Tallman au thoughts

I forgot about aestivation. So! Tallmen from really hot climates can also aestivate to avoid super hot months. Tallmen from hot climates that move to cold climates have some issues falling asleep to hibernate in the winter. Tallmen from cold climates that move to hot climates have some issues falling asleep to aestivate in summer/dry season equivalents.

Tallmen from hot climates still have genes for growing a winter coat, tho their undercoats tend to be thinner than those of their cold climate counterparts.

Tallmen from the Northern continent which has the harshest winters have extra thick winter coats. They also tend to put on weight faster and lose it slower than tallmen from other places.

-> Yes. Laios and Falin are extra thick and fluffy from late fall to late spring.

Tallmen that plan to work through the winter instead of hibernate will aestivate in summer to help ward off the negative mental effects. Tallmen who try to stay awake all year round experience many negative mental effects like hallucinations, disordered normal sleeping, and episodes of confusion.

Clothing and armor for tallmen made by tallmen are designed to grow and shrink with the wearer to an extent. With sections in them to specifically add or subtract extra material as needed. Non-tallmen would rather make things for certain sizes and squeeze more money out of a tallmen client.

Buildings and furniture in tallmen settlements are design for them being bigger in mind. If they're gonna get fat/fatter every year it is less of a hassle and less expensive to just make wider doorways and sturdy chairs and beds.

Tallmen have historically been known for cannibalism. Typically during the months when they hibernate/aestivate when other foods are scarce. Tallmen that wake up early during the period where they're supposed to still be hibernating tend to be quite hungry, more than a bit drowzy, and not picky at all about what they eat. Tallmen who stay up during these periods may also run out of supplies and resort to survival cannibalism. This does play into some of half-foot myths about trolls.

The use of certain drugs to reduce dreaming during hibernation/aestivation to reduce the rate of calorie consumption to increase the rate of survival from hibernating can lead to the creation of Nightwalkers. Effectively living zombies trapped in a half-dreaming state while their bodies wander and devour anything edible. With care and proper treatment people can recover from becoming nightwalkers.

Outside of backwater hick villages most tallman-dominated places have dormitorium, communal living spaces that tallmen hibernate in or live full time as an alternative to inns. The design varies across the world. Places dominated by dwarf/gnome cultural influences tend to be built underground. Places dominated by elf cultural influence tend to be built tower-style above ground. Magic is used for temperature control inside the dormitorium to keep them at the right temp for the hibernators to stay asleep comfortably.

---

Due to interbreeding with tallmen, half-foots also grow winter coats. They don't have the metabolism to hibernate or aestivate even if they put on weight. Their fluffy coat traps the heat that their high metabolism produces and keeps them nice and toasty when it's cold.

Their ears do grow fur on the inside/outside to reduce potential damage from freezing temps.

Half-foots lament that people take them even less seriously when they're floofy.

Half-foots are preferred as dormitorum custodians in places where tallmen and half-foots are found together. It's good steady work checking sleepers to make sure that no one's getting eaten by rats or covered in parasites or mold and redirecting early risers back to their rooms and back to sleep. It does incur the risk of being eaten by a hungry and disoriented tallman tho.

---

Due to interbreeding with tallmen, ogres also grow winter coats. Like half-foots, their metabolism doesn't support being able to hibernate/aestivate.

If it can be secured, being winter guardians over communal hibernation spaces is very good work for ogres.

---

Elf/Tallmen hybrids don't tend to hibernate. They also aren't good at growing a full winter coat and may only grow a thin coat of fur on their backs and the outer surfaces of their arms/legs.

They will gain a larger appetite in the late summer and fall similar to their fullblooded tallmen counterparts. However, due to elf beauty standards and a cultural aversion to having excess weight, half-elves will try to avoid getting fat if it can be helped.

---

A proper fur coat is something that comes to be associated with short-lived races and is used by bigots as a reason to say that short-lived people are more similar to demi-humans/not really human.

[takerfoxx]

Okay, okay, trying to catch up on some shit. So, let's put the whole High School DXD thing to bed, because analyzing and critiquing ecchi harem schlock that swings way above its weight class is weirdly fascinating to me!

So. Season 4.

Right, let's just address the elephant in the room. The new studio, and with it, the new art style.

...

Not really a fan.

Like, I know what happened, I know why there was a switch, I know they're trying to emulate the art style of the light novels more closely. I just liked the older style better, especially when it comes to the facial expressions. It used to be so vivid and detailed. Like, one look and you'd be able to tell immediately what a character is about and what they're feeling. Now, everyone just looks kinda stone.

I will say this though. Like the style switch in Pokemon, what we lose in detail we gain in fluidity. Those fight scenes were sick, especially when they dispensed with the artillery and went for hand to hand. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Okay, art style's different, don't really care for it, but I can adjust. How's the season itself?

Again, mostly a mixed bag, which I suppose comes with each season adapting two books each. You just tend to like one kind of story over the other, and here, I definitely preferred one arc over the other.

Like, the whole hunt for Kunou's mom was...fine, I guess. Kunou's cute and I don't object to her, though the cast is getting really crowded. And I did genuinely enjoy just watching the gang get to go on vacation and have fun together.

What I didn't like was who was behind it. I'm sorry, but so far, the Khaos Brigade just isn't working for me, mainly because they keep throwing all these new names at us. Like, okay, I know Cao Cao and the rest of the Hero faction go and become their own thing later, cool, but for now, it's another gaggle of stuff that we've seen before.

And I really didn't like how this was supposedly the challenge that caused Issei to fall into despair and almost give up. Like, really? Issei? After everything else he's vanquished? This is his darkest hour?

I totally buy him needing tits to activate his hidden strength and get back into the game, though. And, okay, I've complained in the past about big, climatic battles being derailed by some cool new character just dropping into the middle of things and solving the problem. But this time I'll let it slide, because we get the OG Monkey King himself, and he's kind of awesome.

The Boob Dragon thing is pretty funny for its ridiculousness, though really? This is considered wholesome children's entertainment in the demon realm? Okay.

Kinda bummed how similar the demon realm and its inhabitants are to normal humans. Like, evil it up! You're demons! Where's your demonic class?

Okay, so the first arc was kind of eh, but the second might very well be one of my favorites so far. For one, the rating games are one of my favorite aspects of the series so far, because I love tournaments and we get to see the other characters shine a little.

Also, Sairaorg, man. What a fucking chad. Dude gets born without powers, is disinherited by his asshole father, almost loses his mom to illness, but reforms himself into a massive physical powerhouse through sheer will and training alone. Plus, he respects the hell out of Issei in a "Game recognize Game" sort of way and wants punch it out with him. Respect.

The rating game was awesome. Yes, there was a bunch of new names again, but it worked better this time and they were able to shine through action. And I laughed my ass off when Issei foiled his opponent's attempt to seduce him because he was so offended at the violation of the proper way to do a strip tease. Man really takes his ecchi seriously.

Issei and Sairaorg just punching the shit out of each other was so goddamned anime. They keep getting more and more power ups, keep giving these heroic speeches, and you kind of want them both to win. In the end, Sairaorg still fighting on despite having passed out long ago through sheer determination alone? Magnificent.

Okay, I'm going to say it. I like Sairaorg as a rival way more than Vali.

Oh, sweet! Ravel's here! I like her. And she and Koneko are immediately petty toward one another, as it should be.

[1aug24]

For a few moments I thought my son had drowned in our pool, and he almost did, or maybe he didn't, but I can't stop thinking about it

I'd been thinking about July for the past few weeks, about how I'd rally on weight loss, how I'd enter August ready to run 100 miles, and how'd the prepare me for fall racing season and the rest of my life, help me on my way toward getting down to my ideal weight in a few years' time, before the age my dad was when he died.

And how I'd make it about more than just running and losing weight and my dad, how it'd be about writing and working, but also taking time to be present with my family.

The list of things was circling around my head toward the end of June, wasn't sure if I'd make it 7 things for July or 8 things to prepare for August. At the end of the work day on Friday the 28th, I started writing some ideas down.

I was upstairs in my home office, it was just after 5p. I had finished up with work for the week, and I had told everyone I'd order takeout at 5, but at around 4:30p my wife had texted a picture of my older son asleep on a chair outside, tired from a week at camp, I didn't hear any sounds of stirring downstairs, so I figured there wasn't a rush to order right at 5, I could spend a few minutes working on my ideas for July.

Mindy had brought the kids home just after 3p. They were at a Monday morning through Friday afternoon service camp at the church, where they do service projects during the day and stay at the church at night. This is a week they look forward to all year. Edwin and Lyla had done it for a few years, this this the first year Louie was old enough.

I went downstair to catch up with them a bit between 3 and 3:30. They had fun, of course. But they were tired, they notoriously stay up too late on the last night of camp, and Friday is more of a fun day than a service day.

After exchanging a few pleasantries and dropping his belongings all over the living room, Edwin put his bathing suit on and cooled off in the pool. Louie was slightly more forthcoming with a few camp stories but he quickly pivoted to the family room to lounge on the sectional and catch up on a 5 days worth of react video on YouTube he'd missed. Lyla hung out in the living room with Mindy and me and actually filled us in on some goings on. She's the only that reliably shares details.

A little before 4p I was ready to head back upstairs and finish up work. Edwin was already out of the pool and sitting in one of the comfy chairs outside. I opened the slider and told him I'd order Tokyo Tapas takeout at 5p and to get everyone's order for me while I finished up work, I'd be down in an hour. He agreed.

Didn't come downstairs until around 5:10 or 5:15p, because like I said, Mindy had sent me that pic of Edwin sleeping, I figured they wouldn't be ready. I entered the living room, Mindy sitting on the sofa, scrolling on her phone. Through the sliders, I see Edwin still asleep in the chair. I look past him to the pool, noticed Lyla floating a raft in the deep end. Looks like she's asleep. "Is Lyla asleep on that raft?", I ask Mindy. "Where's Louie?", I ask next.

Mindy gets off the couch, opens the slider, walks outside, makes a sudden move toward Lyla in the raft, sort of leaning her body forward deliberately. It initially seemed to me she was going to take a picture of Lyla asleep in the raft. I follow her.

But then I hear Mindy say, "oh my God," and run toward the shallow end of the pool. I turn that direction and see Louie floating face down by the steps. I run behind her toward him. I scream, "Louie!" at the top of my lungs. Not to get his attention, but rather more in the manner of a mom screaming a funeral because I think he is dead. In those few seconds, before Mindy gets to Louie, I think to myself, this is my life now, I only have two kids now, Louie is dead.

Mindy jumps into the pool with her clothes on. She pulls Louie above the surface of the water. He opens his eyes, breathing normally--not coughing up water or struggling to breathe--and says something along the lines of, "what?"

Edwin and Lyla wake up. "What's going on?" they both both inquire groggily. I tap Louie on the head, maybe I kiss his head, I don't remember, just that I do something to acknowledge his existence. Then I lie down on the pool deck nearby and focus on my breathing because it feels like I'm about to have a panic attack.

Edwin and Lyla keep asking what's going on. I keep not answering. Mindy keeps embracing Louie in the pool. Louie says he's sorry, so does Lyla. But I don't think either one of them knows what they are sorry for, they are just reacting to the looks on our faces. Mindy may have said a few stern words to the kids about being careful about swimming when tired, I'm don't remember exactly, I just remember focusing on breathing.

Mindy eventually gets out and dries off. Louie and Lyla too. I get up from the patio. Mindy heads inside and to the shower. I follow her and tell her I feel like I'm going to throw up. I sort of wander around the living room and bedroom aimlessly while she showers. Feeling compelled to return to normalcy, I ask the kids what they want from Tokyo Tapas. Mindy finishes the shower, I tell her I'm ordering food but she's not hungry. I order the food, drive myself to Publix for beer and dessert, then to Tokyo Tapas to pick up the takeout order. I'd missed a call from Mindy, she's hungry now, wants Diet Coke and Publix chicken, so I walk back over to Publix and get her food too.

Drive home and we have a normal enough dinner. Louie is normal. Eats some of the cookies I bought after his dinner. I think we talk about what happened, I am not sure. The kids keep acting normal but I don't feel normal.

Later that night we try to sleep but can't. I can't get this stuff out of my mind: the image of Louie face down in the pool, Mindy's "oh my God!", me momentarily thinking Louie was dead. Mindy wonders aloud about secondary drowning. I am happy for an excuse to do anything but lie here in the dark with my thoughts and go up to Louie's room to make sure he's still breathing. I see Edwin in the upstairs hallway when leaving Louie's room, what's going on he asks. Just checking on Louie, I say.

Mindy is still worried, the internet tells her secondary drowning and take 24 hours. I tell her she could do the same and check on him in his room. She's not interested in that. What about if I bring him to sleep in our bed? That sounds good to her. I go back up to his room and carry him downstairs so he can sleep in our bed next to Mindy. I sleep on the couch. Sort of. I fall asleep with YouTube on couch for a bit. Then I move to guest room and fall asleep to YouTube a bit. Maybe slept a couple hours total.

Next day, Mindy's slept horrible too. Louie sleeps great in our bed. He plays great in an indoor soccer tournament the next day. Life seemingly returns to normal, but the thing is, it never was not normal, it's just those few traumatics seconds for Mindy and me that weren't normal, everyone else is fine.

Mindy talks about it to others to make senses of it. I only tell my mom, I not sure what to talk about, nothing happened but except that something did happen. I do talk to Mindy about it, I try to make sense of it, ascribe some sort of meaning to it. And at least we both experienced it because if only one of us did, we'd probably thing the other was being melodramatic.

Every silent moment for me for the next few days is filled with that image and those thoughts. A few nights after it happened, I lay in bed unable to sleep, thinking that he had to have died, that is the only thing that makes sense, and that I'm probably haven't some sort of psychotic break to trick myself to thinking nothing happened, and I rack my brain for signs that I'm in a lucid dream. I gets better sort of over the next few days. I am not sure what to do next. Running helps, reading Dostoevsky helps, listening to 100 gecs helps. I don't think about it much when I do those 3 things. Mindy thinks I should talk to someone and she's probably right. But for now I just wait for the thoughts of the moment it looked like my son died to go away.

[nodunkiing]

ㅤThere was grief to going back home to the house she'd grown up in, the house where the Mind Flayer had used their bodies to take her parents, and while the house had been scrubbed of anything that would suggest anything strange had happened there, the memories remained. That was nothing new or specific to the house, however, and Heather could deal. The important part was that she wasn't alone there, and that the only person in the world who truly understood her was the one living there with her. She'd tried with her grandparents, but they just didn't understand and it was honestly for the best for all of them that she wasn't staying there any longer.

ㅤThat wasn't to say that she and Billy didn't have issues living together - mostly, they both had nightmares, and those nightmares sometimes messed them up badly enough that Billy had to be careful waking her up that first week lest she take a swing at him thinking he was the Mind Flayer attacking her or panic and try to get away for basically the same reason, and they'd both seen each other cry too many times to count already. It was quickly passing the point of being 'too many times for their comfort' and going right into being desensitized, at least for her. Something about all that somehow made the weight feel heavier some days, which she hadn't experienced with her nightmares at her grandparents' house and they both knew Billy wouldn't have had at his dad's house if he'd gone back. She was just glad that his sister would probably be able to sneak some of his things out of his house, and frankly? Heather would gladly team up with Max to raid his room through his window if she had to, because there was no way Billy needed to be climbing around while he just starting to feel better, and he certainly didn't need to be anywhere near his father.

ㅤIf he wasn't worried about fighting with her, that made it mutual, though for different reasons; he figured she'd win and he didn't like losing fights, but she just didn't see either of them caring about the dumb shit so much anymore that they'd fight over it, not after everything. They'd both managed to finish out high school with some serious struggle, the summer was gearing up to be lifeguarding together again, and they had about three months to figure out what to do when the season was over. By then, they'd have figured out something that felt like normal to them, starting with Billy having a space of his own. She wasn't sure what he was up to in his room, but she'd been in his head enough to know that it was probably important that he have space and it not feel like it was invaded, so she was trying not to bother him while he was in there and getting used to the place unless he invited her in or there was a nightmare involved.

ㅤ"Yeah?" she called from her own room, where she was digging through her closet and deciding what she was keeping and what was either getting donated or pushed to the back in case she changed her mind later. She still had the jean jacket in hand when she hit the hallway and caught him peeking out, his hair a wreck and she was struck once again with some stupid fondness for things like that. In the hospital, it had been involuntary, but he was comfortable enough there with her that he didn't put on the styled hair and attitude that seemed necessary anytime he was around other people. It was mutual, considering she had no problem wandering around with her hair a mess and with absolutely zero concern for how she looked if she didn't absolutely have to, but it felt like a bigger deal that he did it. She followed him into the room and tossed the jacket onto his bed so that she could help with the poster, giving a glance around for placement - it was pretty empty, so he had full choice, which was something else they'd have to change. "Yeah, where do you think you want it? I can hold it so you can see what it looks like."

　THINGS ARE PROMISING. For the first time in a long time, Billy has something to look forward to when he is well enough and healed up from his stay in the hospital. Sure, there is a lot of shit he's worried about. He cannot for the life of him fathom how he's ever going to manage to sleep again when he's not under the influence of pain pills and the sleeping aid the hospital prescribes to him. He doesn't know how he is ever going to deal with the cold or the dark without it reminding him of everything they have endured. He doesn't know how he is going to face his step-sister or her weird ass friends knowing what he had done. How does he begin to apologize for what wasn't him? That's a problem for future Billy though.

There are plenty of things he doesn't have answers for. But there are things he knows he is lookin' forward to. Heather. She shouldn't have—given the circumstances of everything that had happened but he wasn't going to constantly try to convince her to give up on him, she was determined, and he was lonely—offered for him to stay with her. Billy hadn't really known what he was going to do after the hospital. Basically, he knew it was not an option to return 'home' or at least, what had cosplayed his home on Cherry Lane. (He was going to sneak a note to Max to grab the few valuables he had and the things that hadn't been destroyed by his dad.) He thought it might require a period of mourning to bury away your childhood home and move to a new chapter but Billy cannot help but feel relieved.

Was he worried about livin' with Heather? Not really. He couldn't really forsee them fighting 'cause if they did, she'd win hands down. Billy wasn't a fan of losing fights no way. They already have a game plan of finishing up their job at the pool and going from there. There wasn't really a rush since they had settlement money to cushion them on figurin' shit out. Billy is grateful he doesn't have to live alone 'cause, despite everything, he doesn't think he would be able to survive that silence.

"Hey, Heather—" He's calling from the comfort of the room she had given him. Scarcely decorated since he cannot be bothered to go out to any stores yet. He doesn't want to run into anyone. Doesn't want to explain or hear their mock sympathy or horrified expressions when they peep at the scar tissue peeking from his shirt. Blonde unstyled hair pokes from the doorway of his bedroom, "Can you help me put up a poster?" It's a simple request. An old Metallica poster that reminded him of his room back when he lived in Cali.

[epigstolary]

Just A Number

“You’re too young to be so fat” is something you’ve heard all your life. From your youth spent snacking in front of the tv, to your high school years indulging at restaurants or the mall, to your college years eating late-night pizza and junk in your dorm room, you’ve always been big enough to get that comment out of people. Parents, friends, boyfriends and girlfriends have all watched your advancing waistline with alarm, worrying about the fact that — no matter how big you had been when they last saw you — you were always bigger the next time.

And so they’d express their worry to you. These are the best years of your life, they’d say — you should be getting out and enjoying them, not sitting on the sidelines stuffing your face. Someone your age shouldn’t have trouble finding clothes that fit, or such a hard time making it up a flight of stairs that you have to stop halfway. You needed to try and watch the weight a little. Sometimes you wonder how things would have turned out if you had followed their advice.

But you didn’t. And so, you waddled across the stage at graduation and into a young adulthood that freed you from even the limited structure of university life. You landed some regular freelance work that paid the bills and let you work entirely from home. And you kept gorging yourself on whatever delicious food you wanted, whenever you wanted it. There was nobody to tell you what time meals were supposed to be, nobody to question your incessant snacking. While other people your age were going out with their friends, traveling to exotic places, partying, and living their lives, you were home by yourself most of the time. Craving. Consuming. Expanding.

With total freedom from a schedule and your last reason for even limited physical activity gone, the creeping tide of weight gain over the past few years turned into a flood. The snacking, meals, grocery deliveries, and takeout orders became constant. You would look like a completely different person to someone who had gone a couple months without seeing you, packing on fifty pounds or more from season to season. Eventually, your friends and family gave up on trying to save you from what was increasingly looking like an unstoppable force, propelling you faster and faster toward destroying yourself.

I suppose for normal people, there’s never an age where it’s expected someone will be too fat to leave the house. But it’s your mid-20s, and here you are. You spend eighteen hours a day on the couch, pinned beneath a flowing belly the size of a bean bag chair and two bulbous titties connecting to the massive rolls of fat under your arms. Laptop perched atop your wobbling stomach, you try to type with sausage fingers you’re even starting to have trouble bending, taking breaks every few minutes to rest your bloated arms.

As they fall to your sides, the fat on your biceps — bigger around than a healthy adult’s waist — puckers, flowing over the layers of rolls bulging from your abdomen. Your forearm fat shifts down toward your hands, making an impressive roll around your pudgy wrist. You try and shift a little to get more comfortable, wiggling your tremendous butt and shapeless legs around to try and resettle yourself. As you take up most of the couch now, there’s not much room to change positions. Instead, you stretch, wiggling the toes peeking out from the distended blobs of fat, now hundreds of pounds in their own right, that pass for your legs.

Shocking as those legs are, they can still support you during your labored, stumbling trips to the front door a couple times a day. Here, you collect the tens of thousands of calories you have to put away to keep you in this lard prison you’ve built for yourself. But you don’t think of it that way. You see it as a treat. After all, you just did a full-body workout lumbering to the door and back; why shouldn’t you reward yourself for keeping up with your fitness?

Except that nobody’s fooled by what’s going on here — not even you, on those rare occasions when the delusion lifts and you get a lucid look at your situation. There’s nothing normal about a twentysomething eating themself to the size of a California king mattress. There’s no excuse for being too heavy to waddle out your front door, ignoring whether you could even still squeeze your outrageous bulk through it. And all those admirers on the internet — talking about how sexy you look, how much they want to feed you, how they’d love to see you even bigger — are all really thinking the same thing.

They would push you to your limit if they had half a chance. Forget being able to waddle to the door; they want you so blown up with lard and full of food that you’re not rolling over without help. They want you a wheezing, blubbery mess with so many rolls, folds, blobs, and bulges covering your body that you’re almost unrecognizable as a person. They want to see you reaching pathetically across your expanse of fat, trying to get the feeding tube that’s slipped away from you, and looking at them pleadingly for help to restore the sickening flow of calories into your ruined body. They want you to end your twenties as a fat cow, insatiably feeding and alarmingly obese, eating yourself to death.

And they’d probably tease you by telling you about their day out of the house, and all the things that they got to do that a half-ton bariatric patient like you can never hope to do again. Fit in a car. Go shopping, mobility scooter or not. Literally just be outside without having countless amazed stares and snarky comments from all the people, shocked at seeing someone in their twenties who already weighs as much as five or six people. Shame those are off the table for you, they’d say; guess you better eat some more to make yourself feel better.

You’re not quite that big — not yet, at least. Your weight may be wildly out of control compared to most people your age, but even so it takes some time for those bad eating habits to reach critical mass. Give it a few years, though. Even if you manage to get a handle on your rapid expansion, there’s no chance you’re losing any weight. You’re too used to living this way to give it up. That number on the scale will keep creeping up, slowly but surely. You’ll be reminded of your inevitable fate by how your clothes feel like they’re slowly constricting, squeezing your belly and rolls tighter and tighter; how it feels like someone’s turning up gravity on you a little every day. But you can’t pin this on your clothes or the laws of physics. You only have yourself, and your gluttony, to blame.

You didn’t get this big, this fast, without wanting to on some level. And as long as that something is there, driving you, you won’t be stopping. So make peace with the fact that you have just a few more years, at most, before you’re too big to be anything but someone’s fantasy feedee. You may as well have another bite, another helping, another meal. Because age — and weight — is just a number, right?

[empressofdiamonds]

Do you have any tips on being consistent with a weight loss journey ? I have to loose weight but whenever I start eating healthy I always go back to my old ways.

Honestly what helped me the most is to accept that new mentality:

I'm a person that leads a healthy lifestyle.

I love doing excercises, esp walking, running, and yoga which are my favourite ever activities.

I enjoy being in line with my body.

The old lifestyle is what led you to the weight gain, so it is irrealistic to think the weight loss lifestyle is gonna be a temporary one. You gotta gain a healthy lifestyle that both enables you to lose weight, AND to keep it off.

If you haven't found a sport or a excercise that makes you happy, continue seeking. Pointless to run if you freaking hate running.

For the food, only keep what enables you into that healthy lifestyle. You know keeping 6 bags of chips at home won't help you much, you know a bit of chips at parties or at movies wont hurt much, but you know eating a whole bag a day ain't gonna help you on the long term.

I never keep candies or less great snacks at home. I just keep what I need for my meal-prepping.

Find some recipes that both align with what you WANT and what you LIKE. Per example I freaking love ice cream, it's like my sin. I wish I could eat the super super rich gelato every day so much I love it. What I do instead is keep the gelato treat for when I am with my friends, or family, enjoying my gelato with them. I'm not holed up in my bedroom eating a whole tub of shitty 2$ ice crap watching the 4th season of whatever show. So if I find myself craving intensely ice cream, I make myself some frozen banana ice cream with my mixer, or I throw some frozen blueberries and a bit of yogurt in the mixer.

If I crave a snack, I get myself some popcorn, there's low salt low fat versions of bagged popcorn that help satisfy that craving. I sometimes even make my very own popcorn, by using about 1/4 to 1/8 cup of corn seeds, in a small pot, a little bit of butter at the bottom, I put a lid on top, while it pops I shake the pot until I don't hear anymore popping.

For my main meals, I bulk up my meals with vegetables and good quality proteins, the carbs are like not the majority of my meal. And if I have carbs, I try to get as much whole grains ans fibers as possible. Think multigrain boosted in fiber versus the shitty wonderbread.

Making your own meals is much more efficient both for nutrition and self-control, meaning, I'll make myself just enough for one portion, or maybe two if I'm prepping for another meal, then if I'm "fake hungry" (what this means: I'm hungry for more but I don't wanna eat an apple or some healthy snack), if I wanna eat more I have to go through the effort of making it again. Generally it just turns me off.

Another solution is to prep a huge meal then immediately freeze the remnants in individual dishes. I have to go through the effort of defreezing then microwaving. Berk. I'd rather just eat an apple. Or nothing, because I'm "fake hungry".

See how I constantly outsmart my lazy self 😂

Also! I drink shittons of water!! It helps me being satisfied with my meals. Like think if you soak cereal in milk, it expands. Think the same in the stomach, the water is helping my meal expand and stretch my stomach. The stomach tells the brain "ok we're done, stop eating!".

I let treats be treats. I have fun while excercising. I drink water. This didn't use to be my normal.