#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

[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.

[calxia]

Unlike humans, ghouls are covered from head to toe in a layer of fur. Fur texture will vary from ghoul to ghoul depending on genetics and type, but pretty much every ghoul has at least a fine layer of fur.

They also go through shedding seasons just like dogs and cats do, which leads to very grouchy, itchy ghouls during spring and autumn and the abbey being coated in a layer of ghoul fur.

Earth and Quintessence ghouls tend to have the thickest coat and often have a double coat to help provide extra insulation. They normally have the worst time with shedding due to their coats and sometimes can even get matted if they do not pay enough attention to their coat. Some ghouls choose to just get clipped to a shorter length but this can affect coat texture long term.

Air ghouls also have double coats to help them survive in the cold mountaintops they tend to live in. Their coats are short and dense but they still shed ridiculous amounts during the shedding season. Air ghouls can also have feathers instead of fur, in which they don't undergo a shedding season but instead moult all their feathers once a year. Moulting air ghouls are even more miserable than shedding ghouls. They are often very tired and miserable with all the energy being put into regrowing their feathers and will feel colder than usual during this time.

Fire ghouls usually only have a short coat of fine hair that is hardly noticeable unless you're looking directly for it. they have very little issue with shedding due to having such light coats, and sometimes fire ghouls don't even have a generalised period of greater shedding and will instead just gradually shed over the year. They also usually have areas that are more sparsely covered with fur to help them avoid overheating.

Water ghouls often have frizzy coats with densely packed guard hairs that help provide thermal insulation while swimming and provide natural waterproofing. These guard hairs stick together when the ghoul is underwater to wick water away from the ghoul's skin and keep it dry. water ghouls only moult once a year. The moult usually starts around the ghoul's face and will reveal a darker-coloured coat as the old hair sheds out. During this time most water ghouls will remain on land to help conserve the energy they need to moult. They will often become irritable and in the pit, Water ghouls will often lose great amounts of weight due to not hunting during their moult.

Multi ghouls will always have great variability in their coat type and texture due to their mixed heritage so it is hard to predict what coat type a multi ghoul will be. They can often have a harder time moulting due to not having the 'proper' coat type and can be more prone to matting and coat impaction.

[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)_/¯

[notyour-valentine]

The Boy in the Window 21 ~ Tommy Shelby X Reader (Series)

[Masterlist] [Series Masterlist] [Taglists]

Chapter Summary: How does one handle a broken man and his heartbroken child?

Notes:  It's almost over... I do not consent to my work being translated, copied or posted elsewhere on this platform or any other.

Warning: Canon conforming mention of violence. Drug and alcohol abuse. Alcoholism. Trauma. Suggestion of physical violence. (18/21+). Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Expect spoilers for Peaky Blinders Season 1-4.

Wordcount: 4886

Part 21

[Previously]

She wanted him - she needed him to deny it, to call her insane and her suggestion ridiculous. She would even be alright if he mocked her and laughed at her. If he'd waved her off as an emotional and irrational woman, she would have breathed a sigh of relief.

Honestly, she would have.

It would be infinitely better for them all if she was jumping to conclusion, instead of him -

Instead of him what?

Going insane? Losing his mind? Being incapable from differentiating truth from lies, reality from imagination.

Instead of him confusing his baby boy with an apparition of his dead brother.

But once again Tommy disappointed her.

He slumped into his chair and crumbled, his head dropped and his chest lowered as if the weight of keeping himself upright was too much for him to endure. 

She had seen him angry and it had terrified her to her core, making her fear for more than her own life, cowering at his sight alone.

She had seen him desperate and overwhelmed by grief and had done her best to comfort him, holding her in her arms the way she would either one of their children.

She had seen him leave with the iron determination only a warrior could muster and had stood waiting and praying for him like millions of women before her, in years and ages gone by, because there had been nothing more she could have done.

She had seen him loud and quiet, brave and afraid, strong and weak, determined and doubting.

She had seen him face death and return to her, but when she looked at him now, she saw only a shell of a man, one coming apart at the seams.

(Y/N) was afraid to speak, not that she had any words to say to him, and even more terrified to touch him.

If she did, she thought he might crumble to dust.

So she only stood there, frozen to the spot her eyes wide and her heart racing as if it wanted to escape this room, this revelation, as much as she did.

"I always knew it was only a matter of time before he realised I wasn't much good.", He confessed, his voice not strong enough to be more than a whisper and strained with the pain he felt beyond the repercussions of his wound and the abuse he had put his body through in the past week. 

"The best I can do for him now is leave him with you."

He could not look at her when he spoke, could not look at anything, really. Instead he buried his face in his hands. 

His fingers were slimmer now and she could see the bones pushing against the thin barrier of his skin.

She had imagined him to be in poor condition after all she had seen and heard, but this was even beyond her worst fears- worse than her brother looked even including the time she prepared his body for burial.

How he could muster up the strength in his frail body to even talk, let alone storm away from her, was beyond her. 

There was no muscle left to support even the slightest movement, it seemed, and little enough of a clear mind to decide on them.

She hated him for the pain he caused Charlie, for the disregard he had shown her agency and Emma's safety and now she hated him for his recklessness with his own wellbeing - for how bad he had let this get.

But she pitied him too. 

He couldn't tell his son from his brother!

She knew Tommy had his ghosts, more than most, but for him to believe they would be standing in front of him, to talk to them as if it was normal - the thought made her blood run cold.

There were limits, she knew, one could cross between the land of the living and the dead and only some of them could be reversed.

Mrs Shelby had whispered about talking to the dead, hearing their voices, seeing their faces. Once she had even offered her to contact her own departed mother. Her eyes had been soft and her voice warm - but nothing prior or since.

Within a month, Mrs Shelby had been dead.

Claimed by the ghosts she summoned, people had whispered.

A whimper escaped her lips.

Her heart ached for him the same way it ached for that little boy out in the garden, because she could see that his heart was no less broken.

It was Charlie she thought of, Charlie she had to think of. 

(Y/N) did not know what to make of Tommy anymore, not like this, not after everything. 

She did not know what was best for him or if it even was something she should consider after what he put them all through. 

The only certainty she had, the only certainty she had left were her children. Emma and Charlie - that was what she could cling to, what she could focus on. And in this, it was Charlie who mattered above else, his pain and anything that could ease it. 

"Tommy,", she finally said, her voice steadied by determination because for once she was sure, "if you send him away now you will lose him."

Strands of dark hair fell into his face. 

"I've already lost him."

"Not yet,", she said with a heavy sigh. "You've hurt him, more than any child should ever be hurt. But he still loves you."

Because that's what children do.

Tommy had flinched at her words as if she branded him with a burning iron. 

Perhaps that would have been kinder.

"You don't know that.", He insisted, forcing his eyes shut so fiercely it made wrinkles appear all over his face. 

"I see him staring at your pictures when he thinks no one is watching. I see the way he treats the horse you've given him. I know how betrayed he feels."

Tommy dropped his head even further, his fingers burying themselves in his hair as if he wanted to tear it out by the bushes. 

It didn't take long for her to realise he was crying. 

"I'm no good, (Y/N)! Fucking look at me. And I'll only get worse. Just take him away before I hurt him more. Please!"

By the end, desperation made his voice tremble.

She did look and she saw. 

Pursing her lips she watched him weep and tremble. 

So many people, so many thousands of people were terrified of this man, of his face, his presence, of his name alone, and now she could end him with a single word alone.

But she took no pride in it, felt no surge of power, no satisfaction in light of the possible payback she could deal him for the helpness he caused her to feel - the fear.

She could only feel that pounding agony in her chest that only ever grew.

Yes, she thought in bitter agreement, like this he would only hurt Charlie worse.

He would frighten him by his sight alone, the way he frightened her and would haunt her nightmares with his pale grayish skin tightening over his bones, with his reddened, sunken eyes and the madness that they evidently saw.

It made her want to run.

But leaving would be a decision with consequences that could not be undone, not by her or him or anyone. And those consequences would be Charlie's to suffer, more than theirs.

A soft gasp escaped her lips as she felt her own eyes beginning to burn.

"Do you want to get better?", She asked him point black. 

Her bluntness startled him, making his reddened blue eyes peek up to look at her. 

"What?"

"You did this to yourself, so I have to know. Do you want to get better, Tommy?", She repeated.

It was direct, maybe even cruely so, but at the same time she was looking at a man who had drowned himself in liquor, clouded his mind in opium and was only still alive by pure chance alone, it seemed. And the fact that he had done it meant that he could do it again and again until there was nothing left of him that was worth for Charlie to hold onto.

So she thought the question was more than fair. 

When he saw that in her eyes, his greyed and chapped lips quivered. 

"I don't know how..."

(Y/N) took a deep breath and nodded. 

"There'll be ways. There'll be doctors and smart people, who have ideas. I'm sure Mrs. Gray will have a list already, or Ada."

They were always prepared and loved him fiercely and loyally. They wouldn't hesitate to put their time and their energy in to find the best care possible. And the most expensive.

"They'll find them and spend some of that money of yours to make you better. If you want that."

So you look like a human again. 

Tommy swallowed hard, his eyes still glistening with tears that already coated his long black lashes. 

"And Charlie?"

Saying his son's name made his voice crack and his tears spill, as if merely saying it out loud tore what was left of him to shreds.

"Fuck, (Y/N)!"

Tommy buckled over as violent sobs shook his already drained body. 

She watched him cry, unsure of what to do, but in the end her pity won, defeating her pride, her fear, her rage and even her disappointment, and her hand found his shoulder. 

Even if she felt his bones as she touched him, she did not pull away, although if it felt like she was touching the Grim Reaper himself.

Feeling her touch, he looked up at her wide-eyed and shaking, with the desperation of a frightened child in the night, brought to tears by the worst terrors his mind could come up with to haunt him in the darkness.

She had not forgiven him, far from it.

Yet he was in agony, not just from the wound in his side. And it wasn't right to hurt those already hurting. 

"We'll figure that out too.", She forced herself to say. 

Thomas Shelby stared at her with disbelief for half an eternity before his piercing blue eyes fluttered shut and he leaned into her, the same way she had grown to expect from his son. 

To her own surprise, she let him. 

She let him bury his head in her chest, let his arms wrap around her body and let his fingers bury themselves in the fabric of her clothes as his tears soaked through her blouse until she felt them on her skin. 

"We'll figure it out.", She repeated more to herself than to him. 

How, she did not know, but she'd have to find a way, for Charlie's sake above anything else. 

(Y/N) hesitated but then she gave in to her instinct and brought her hand to the back of his head, feeling the long strands between her fingers. 

He tightened his grip with the same determination Charlie had when he feared she could slip away, clinging to her the same way a drowning man at sea latched onto the last thing between him and the horizon. 

Closing her eyes she took a deep, shaking breath. 

God help us.

~

Once more (Y/N) added another to her long list of sleepless nights with Emma curled up at her side and Charlie's head blocking the blood flow in her arm. 

Every time she closed her eyes, she saw his sunken eyes and fallen in cheeks. The wooden carving on the ceiling was a far more preferable sight.

But even if she did not see him, his image still haunted her.

Perhaps she had made a mistake promising his father help so soon. 

She still hadn't forgiven him for what he did to her, but Charlie's wellbeing came first, before her needs, before her pride. 

And she wouldn't not push him, nor would she let Tommy or Mrs Gray or Ada, when she returned from closing up her house in Boston, or Frances or anyone else who might try, push him either. 

Tommy had decided to make her his caretaker in probably his only moment of clarity in the last few weeks, but more importantly, Charlie had chosen her.

He had done so when he asked to stay with her, had doubled down on his decisions when he had tried to run to her arms when everything else - anyone else - had failed him.

He was hers to take her of, hers to protect and she would not betray him, even if it would pit her against the most powerful family she knew.

Tommy might have given her the reins, but it would be Charlie who'd hold them.

She could only hope it wasn't a mistake. 

His son's forgiveness was something he could earn, but children had a tendency to forgive only once. 

If their trust, once regained, was broken a second time, there would be no repairing it, not by her and not by anything else under the sun.

She had seen it in Tommy all those years ago, when they were barefeeted, hungry children in the dirt of Small Heath.

Here they were, all those years later, and she could only hope Tommy would prove to be a better man than his own father had been.

~

She awoke feeling sore and exhausted, but that only seemed like a promise about what was still to come. 

She washed and dressed the children before the three of them made their way to get breakfast. 

"Cyril!", Emma squealed, running towards the dog who was rushing to greet her, his tail wagging excitedly. 

She fell to her knees and wrapped her arms around him, nuzzling her face into his fur. 

"You'll have to wash your hands before breakfast.", She reminded her daughter as soon as they caught up to where she was holding Cyril in a tight embrace who only escaped to greet Charlie and then her with equal excitement. 

"Yes, alright.", She told the giddy animal, trying to ignore the slobber stains in Emma's dress, and the way Charlie smiled when Cyril threw his head around in excitement.

But it was difficult to hate something that made her children happy. 

Once Cyril had received enough good morning cuddles, rubs and even a few kisses she took the children to the small bathroom in the hall to wash their hands before going through for breakfast. 

When they had first arrived the staff had expected she, as a married women, if widowed, would have breakfast in bed, while the children would be served something as a nursery breakfast, but she had that idea shot down immediately. 

Nor would she entertain the notion of taking meals in that ghastly thing called a dining room with a table so large one could have fit an entire village at.

She might as well have tried to have a family meal at a train station with them sitting on opposing platforms. It would have provided the same atmosphere.

Instead they had imported the habit of having all their meals together at the tea table from Warburton House. 

Usually they were provided with more food than they could eat the entire day, eggs in all varieties, toast, different kinds of marmalade and cheese and all sorts of fresh fruit and more, with tea, warm milk and coffee constantly provided to their liking.

While the same offer awaited them, something was very different today.

Mrs Gray was already sitting at the desk when they entered, expecting them.

In the past weeks, she had abided by the privilege of having breakfast in bed but now her silhouette was draped over one of the chairs, her face half hidden behind a newspaper. 

They hadn’t spoken since their fight that night and instinctively her hand tightened around Charlie’s. 

Her hawkish eyes glanced at her over the edge of the Times, mustering her. 

She knows. 

Tommy must’ve told her of their interaction, but she wasn’t sure what to make of it. Did she approve? Did she disapprove? Did her opinion even matter?

Not to her, but to many other people and (Y/N) couldn't pretend that she was on par with Mrs Gray when it came to influence and power.

“Morning.”, she just said before helping Emma and Charlie sit up on the chairs with pillows to add a little height for them.

Mrs Gray didn’t respond and didn’t say anything else as she stayed concealed behind the paper. 

But even if (Y/N) couldn’t see her eyes, she knew she was being watched. 

“Mummy?”, Emma asked after a while. “Are we going riding today?”

“I think so.”, she confirmed, watching Emma’s face light up. 

“Can we bring Cyril?”

“Dogs can’t ride.”, Charlie said, a frown playing on his face. 

“Not on the horse, silly!”, Emma laughed, strawberry marmalade decorating the corners of her mouth. 

“Just to watch. Mummy can look after him while we go riding!”

Mummy can, can she?

To Emma she was still invincible, even if (Y/N) felt less so by the day. 

She wasn't as young as she had once been, and the exhaustion of the past months had seeped into her bones.

But after everything, she should be able to manage a dog.

“We’ll see.”, she told her. “But we will have to ask first, not that Cyril scares the horses.”

The last thing she needed was for one of the children to get hurt too.

“Morning Lisa.”, Charlie chirped as the girl entered with fresh tea. 

“Good morning, Master Charles.”, she said with a smile, before offering the rest of them greetings too. 

They continued talking about the horses, and they meant the children, with Mrs Gray not raising her voice and (Y/N) being content in silence.

She wasn’t hungry, not much, but she took a nibble here and there while cutting up fruit and placing pieces on Emma’s and Charlie’s plates in turn. 

They were just about finished, when Frances entered. 

“The Doctors have arrived for the meeting with Mr Shelby.”, she announced. 

The newspaper whipped through the air as Polly Gray closed it, placing it beside her plate before she got up. 

She was halfway to the door when Frances spoke up again. 

“Mr Shelby has asked for you to be there too, Mrs Hale.”

Mrs Gray’s head snapped around, her eyes burning into her. 

She swallowed hard and took a deep breath, taking a moment to gather her courage. 

Then she offered the children, especially Charlie an encouraging smile before getting up. 

“Be good until I get back.”, she asked, pressing a kiss to the tops of both their heads in turn. Only Charlie's eyes followed her out of the room.

Her heart thundered in her chest all the way to his office and it didn’t help that Mrs Gray was throwing daggers at her. 

There were two doctors, a Doctor Wood, with greying brown hair, who had been the doctor she had seen come and go time and time again. He wore small round glasses and had a bushy moustache. The other doctor, while being of the same age, was taller, with a sharper cut, clean shaven jaw. His hair was completely grey by now, and he had thinking lines gracing his forehead. 

His name was Sangster and he was a specialist, with his own clinic apparently. 

“I am Elizabeth Gray.”, Mrs Gray introduced herself. “I'm Mr. Shelby’s aunt.”

There were pleasantries and then it was her turn.

“I-I am (Y/N) Hale…I…”

What could she say?

She barely knew who she was anymore, let alone who she was to him.

“She’s a family friend.”, Tommy muttered without lifting his head. 

He was sitting in his chair behind his desk, his sunken eyes lowered. 

“I see.”, Dr. Sangster said, mustering her through mouseish eyes. 

Then you see more than I do. 

Mrs Gray took her chair and dragged it to Tommy’s side, while (Y/N) felt content in sitting down at the side of the room. 

“As you know, we have been providing, within limits, Mr Shelby with alcohol so that the effects of withdrawal would not interfere with the primary healing process of the operation.”

She had known that his wound had gotten infected to the point they had to remove some parts of the tainted flesh to prevent it spreading, but she hadn't known that throughout it all he had still been drinking.

But she held her tongue and kept her eyes down. 

“However, it is crucial that we begin the treatment as soon as possible, even parallel to the healing of the wound.”, Dr. Woods continued. 

“Dr. Sangster is an expert when it comes to your condition, Mr. Shelby. He runs a clinic specialised with the treatment of this kind. Since the withdrawal is a long, strenuous and perilous process I’d suggest a stay at his facility, where you will be surrounded by the best of care.”

“What about doing it here?”, Mrs Gray said. 

“There is a high risk of rebound in the first few months, so a change of scenery is generally recommended.”, Dr. Sangster explained calmly. “And the absence of alcohol will be connected with sever consequences for Mr Shelby, as his body has gotten used to it and even developed some form of dependency."

Jesus Christ, (Y/N) thought, inhaling sharply as a wave of nausea hit her.

The man said these things as if explaining the weather, but if she thought they had reached the pinnacle, she was proved wrong swiftly.

"We are talking risks to his physical and mental wellbeing, including temper swings, bouts of fever, illness, general uneasiness and pain, severe nausea, headaches, shakes, night terrors-”

“It sounds like you’re going to make him worse, not better.”

They all turned to look at (Y/N).  

“Mrs Hale,”, Dr Sangster said, in a tone some people would use with children, slow and simple. 

“Mr Shelby has been poisoning his body for a significant amount of time now. It has seeped into his body, into his bones and it will take a lot of time for it to ease up.”

She swallowed hard as her hands clutched carefully. 

“It will be extremely uncomfortable for Mr Shelby, however if we do not do this, he risks a fast decay to his physical and mental health ending in an early death in the next few years.”

A soft gasp escaped her lips as she lowered her head again.

They talked more about the consequences, about time frames and costs, about what every part of his body was going through and would continue to go through - each more grisly than the last.

They made her feel sick, but what was the alternative?

There was hardly any other option if Tommy hoped to see more than the next two years, let alone be able to greet forty. 

“Any further questions for now?”, Dr Sangster asked. 

Tommy shook his head, while Polly had the large binder of information material in her hands. 

“We’ll contact you with our decision.”, Tommy said. “Polly, see them out.”

Her head snapped up and her mouth opened to protest but one look of his shut her up. Taking her binder, she led the way for the two men.

Slowly, (Y/N) stood up, expecting to go as well. 

“Not you.”, Tommy said and so the door fell shut without her having crossed the threshold. 

For a few seconds there was silence, before he spoke up again. 

“What do I do?”, he finally asked, staring into the distance.

“Pardon?”, she asked, coming closer to his desk.

“You heard them. What do I do?”

It took her a moment to realise what he was asking of her. 

“Tommy, I can’t chose for you.”, she said. "I can't and I won't."

“I want you to.”, he said, still staring out into nothingness, his head lowered. 

She scoffed and shook her head, as disbelief made her bolder than she wanted to be.

“You are unbelievably unfair, Thomas.”, she muttered, making him look up in confusion. 

“First you strip me of any and all control in regards to my own life only to drop the entire responsibility for yours into in my hands? Not only your son but your health too?"

He stared at her with parted lips. 

“I…I didn’t mean to.”

“No?”, she snapped. “When you knew that all of Small Heath saw me as nothing but your whore, including Mrs Cook and the people that employ her and thereby my services? When you tricked me into ownership of a house without telling me what I was signing, knowing I was frightened and overwhelmed and only signed because you begged me to?”

She knew this meeting wasn’t about this, but everything came bubbling up. 

Now faced with absolute control, her previous lack of it became ever more apparent.

“When you blackmailed me into accepting a position in your foundation as only source of income, when you started automatically paying bills so I didn’t even have the chance of developing an overview of my financial situation, let alone control, chipping away every single bit of my old life until you held my entire and complete existence in your hand only to not speak to me for weeks?"

Her voice grew higher and more strained, but she kept going.

"To banish me from your home and forbid me to contact you? To leave me in the dark as to your reasons? Not knowing if this was…kindness or some power play or some strung out plan for revenge?”

She turned away from him, one hand braced on her forehead, the other on her hip as she took deep breaths trying to calm herself. 

"You took my life away just like that and just as easily you want to burden me with yours?

“I wanted to help you.”, he finally whispered. “To make sure you and Emma were taken care of.”

She scoffed and took another deep breath. 

“You could have just talked to me. Like an adult, like a normal person would have done.”, she snapped. 

His whisper was so soft it was almost inaudible, and filled with regret. 

“I’m sorry.”

Biting back her unshed tears she nodded and turned, pacing up and down a few times to steady her racing heartbeat, sorting her racing thoughts. Yes, she was angry and she knew she had every right to be angry, but her anger did not trump his health, let alone Charlie's happiness.

One thing after the other.

If she lost track of that, she would drown and drag them all down with her. (Y/N) knew she had to keep her head because if she didn't, it would all crumble like a house of cards.

Nodding, she gave herself the affirmation no one else did.

And taking Polly Gray’s chair, she sat down right in front of him.

“Well, there’ll be time for that.”, she sighed, “now you have to decide what you want to do.”

Tommy swallowed hard, just staring at her for so long she would have thought he had drifted off if she hadn’t seen his shining blue eyes glued to her face with something she could not decipher.

“I don’t want to go to some hospital.”, he finally admitted. 

“So here?”, she asked. 

Tommy nodded. 

Alright then. 

“We’ll have to remove all the alcohol from the house, and the other things too.”, she said, glancing at where the amber liquid glistened in the expensive crystal carafe. "And set up a sick room."

“And how’s that supposed to work in the real world eh?”, he asked. “Have people turn over every pub or restaurant I enter for the rest of my life?”

It was almost as if he was teasing her, but this was far from a laughing matter. 

Bold of you to think of the real world given the current situation, she thought.

But at least he seemed confident, which was more than she could say.

“They said the risk of relapse is highest at first. Won’t it be even more difficult with temptation all around?”

He snorted and leaned back slightly, reaching for a cigarette.

 “It’ll be difficult alright.”, he admitted, lighting it and bringing it to his lips. 

“Difficult and ugly and bad.”

Tommy inhaled deeply, as if she smoke gave him strength. 

“I’ve seen it before. I’ll get ill. I’ll get unpleasant. I know you don’t want to but I think you should take ‘em and go back to Warburton House.”, he suggested. 

“Or another house if you don’t like that one.”

Sighing she shook her head. 

“Nothing wrong with that house. But I’d prefer to stay with the children. Emma doesn't mind being here and she loves your dog and like I said…if we leave, it will be hard to convince Charlie to return.”

It will be hard to convince him even to talk to you, but that was a whole other matter and one she couldn't burden Tommy with at this stage.

“We’ll need to keep them away, though.”, he said. “I don’t want them seeing me like that…'specially when it gets bad.”

(Y/N) nodded in agreement. 

Tommy put the cigarette out with a trembling heart, lifting it up to look at it. 

“Me hands already fucking shaking.”, he said, turning it in the light. 

“I don’t know if it’s me head or it’s already fucking starting.”

“I can't tell,”, (Y/N) admitted. “I’m not a doctor.”

That left another thing. 

“I’ll look into finding a nurse or two to move in to help us take care of you.”

That way someone who knew what they were doing would be around constantly and could assess his state better than she or Polly or anyone else ever could. 

“I’ve met a woman, she’s very nice and she used to be a nurse. I’ll ask her to recommend someone.”

“No one young, eh?”, Tommy asked. “Someone tough, someone who has been in France. Who knows his way around men like me.”

~

When she finally left the office, she wanted nothing more than to lie down and rest, but something made her stop, with her hand still on the handle of the door. 

She knew he was there even before she saw him, her eyes darting around the corridor before she spotted him crouched down on the foot of the large pedestal where a massive painted Chinese vase stood, filled with fresh garden flowers. 

"Charlie, what are you doing down there?", She asked, crouching down in front of him. 

He was as white as a sheet and in his hands he clutched Mrs. Tatters. 

"I thought he might scream at you too.", Charlie whispered, his eyes wide. 

"Oh Sweetheart.", She sighed. 

As soon as she opened her arms he found his way into them. 

Lifting him from the shadows, she carried him all the way down the grand staircase and into the library. He was growing heavier by the day and soon he would weigh too much for her to carry, but she could still just about manage it.

She held him in her arms even when she sat down on the sofa.

It was placed in the middle of the room and thereby an oasis against eavesdroppers of any kind. 

He stayed in her lap, his fingers playing with Mrs Tatters' ears. 

With a sigh, she stroked his cheek. 

"Charlie, did you notice the doctor's cars coming again and again in the last few days?"

He nodded solemnly, his lips forming a little pout. 

"They are coming because your father is ill."

His eyes shot up, and he stared at her. 

"Badly ill?", He wanted to know. 

Yes. Very badly ill. So ill he could no longer tell the dead from the living. So dead that he nearly died himself. So ill that he could still die soon if he doesn't change his ways. 

If he didn't, he wouldn't make it close to forty, and long before that, if he lived that long, he'd be a shell of a man, half mad, with a body that would shut down bit by bit until there was nothing left of the man that he once was, the father he had been.

That would mean he wouldn't get to see Charlie's eighth birthday, let alone participate in it.

"He's not well and he's in a lot of pain.", She told him. "And he was in a lot of pain for a long while."

She swallowed hard.

"You know, Charlie, sometimes when people are hurting a lot they say and do things they don't mean. That doesn't make them right, but that's the way it is sometimes."

Charlie glanced down again. 

"Do you remember your birthday when we walked all the way to the canal? Emma's feet were hurting and she began to scream and even hit me too when I didn't carry her?"

Until Tommy did.

Charlie nodded. 

"That wasn't very nice but I knew she was hurting and once she was feeling better we had all the cuddles and kisses."

He huffed and rested his head against her chest. 

She leaned her chin against his blonde hair and hummed. 

"I talked to your Dad. He loves you very much and he is very sorry for hurting you, but he also understands that you don't want to see him right now."

Her senses were heightened for any sign of reaction from the boy but there was nothing. 

"First he has to get better and then if you are ready and if you want to, he would like to show you how much he cares about you, how much he needs you."

"What if I don't want him to?", Charlie wanted to know, not with malice but uncertainty in his voice

Closing her eyes she stroked the back of his head. 

"Then that's alright too. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do- I promise."

She wouldn't force him to talk to Tommy, or interact with him in any way, she wouldn't push him or try to talk to him about the matter. 

It would be Charlie's choice to seek out or bring up his father, not hers and not Tommy's or anyone else's.

(Y/N) sealed that promise with a lingering kiss to the top of his head.

The door handle clicked before it was pushed open. 

"There you are!", Emma accused, with Cyril close on her trail. 

She ran up to them and scrambled up on the sofa. 

"Can we play hide and seek in the garden?", She asked with a wide smile. 

"In a bit, my darling.", She assured her, offering her a smile and stroking her cheek. 

"Let's just have a little quiet time now. Mummy needs a moment."

Mummy needs more than a moment.

Even though she pouted slightly, she nodded in agreement. 

Charlie climbed off of her lap, allowing her to lie back against the pillows and making room for Emma too. 

"Come here, the both of you.", She said, as they both climbed on top of her, resting their heads on her chest and stomach, their weight creating the sweetest strain. 

"You look sleepy, Mummy.", Emma remarked. 

"That's because I am.", She admitted and not soon after she drifted off into oblivion. 

~

Her idea to consult Barbara had been more fruitful than she could have hoped for.

She had introduced her to two nurses that put the fear of God in (Y/N) on sight - Lord knows where she had dug them out.

Both were older women, one Frances' age, the other almost sixty but still strong and sharp eyed. She even was a nun, which seemed strange for her demeanour but Barbara assured her she knew all about how to handle hard men. 

But she was also fair. 

And sometimes you needed old women, the kind who had seen everything, whose words were harsh but hands were foolproof.

The midwife she had had with Emma looked positively ancient, but nothing had fazed her and somehow that had calmed (Y/N).

Both women demanded to know the full details of Tommy's condition to the point where her face burned with shame, but they took it without batting an eyelash, as if none of them, even the most ghastly and ghoulish details was nothing new to them.

In a way, there accepting silence was more reassuring than anything either doctor had said or promised.

They had made up a room for Tommy on the far side of the house- originally meant as part of the servants quarters but since many servants lived in the village, they were empty. 

They chose it because it was far away from the main part of the house and not where the children would go. It also had its own staircase which led to the garden. 

He was keen on some fresh air. 

But at this time of day she found him sitting on an age-old chair, a blanket over his shoulders and a book lying on the table in front of him. 

He was still pale and looked as awful as she was used to expect him to look by now. It was no longer a shock, but it still frightened her.

And they say it will get worse before it can get better.

"Did you meet the nurses?", She asked as she placed the vase which she had already filled with water down on the table. 

"Yes.", Tommy muttered as he watched her suspiciously. 

"Did you like them?"

"No."

"No?", She asked, looking up from the flowers she was unwrapping from the newspaper she had brought them up in. 

"No, I do not like them.", Tommy said bluntly. "'specially not the nun, but I don't have to like them, do I? I just have to do what they fucking say."

She tilted her head in disgruntled agreement before spreading out the freshly picked wildflowers. 

"Do you want them here or by the bed?"

"They're for me?", He asked, surprise lifting his eyes and his tone alike. 

She nodded.

"Emma picked them for you today, down at the village green. I told the children you were ill and she thought they might help you get better."

He lowered his gaze in shame, his trembling hands closing into a fist. 

"I promised I'd give them to you."

"I don't deserve the flowers.", He muttered under his breath. "Or them. Or you."

"Well,", she sighed, "Lizzie says no one don't gets what they deserve in life."

That made him snort in bitter amusement. 

"I don't deserve her either when it comes to it."

She had to agree with that. 

Lizzie had kept things running in his absence. The whole thing, the whole Shelby Enterprise, wouldn't last a week under Arthur's care without her input, whether it was the company, the businesses or the foundation.

It had made Linda even more frustrated that Tommy had officially delegated his voting power of the foundation board, splitting it equally between (Y/N) and Lizzie. 

That had shifted the balance of power so that no majority decision was possible without at least one of them, even if she controlled Arthur's vote. 

But truth be told, all of (Y/N)'s good will and ambition when it came to the foundation had gone straight out of the window when faced with the current situation.

"What about Charlie?", Tommy wanted to know cautiously, like touching a pot he knew could burn him. 

"He asked if you were going to get better. I told him you were."

Tommy's jaw muscles clenched. 

"Don't make me a liar.", She asked softly as she put down the vase in the centre of the room. 

On her way out, his hand tightened around her wrist, stopping her in her tracks. 

When she looked at him, he was staring up at her with wide, desperate eyes.  

“I’m scared, (Y/N).”, he whispered. “I’m fucking scared I'll mess it up.”

I'm scared to, she thought. 

Scared for you, scared for Charlie, scared of what will happen because I don't understand it. I'm scared for Emma. I'm scared for us all. I'm so scared that I've run out of prayers.

But she couldn't say that, not to him and not to the children. Just like them, he needed someone to be strong, or at least look to be.

Taking a deep breath, she reached out and cupped his cheek. 

“Good.”, she forced herself to say, summoning confusion to his eyes. 

“If you underestimate your enemy, you can’t possibly defeat them.”

Tommy frowned. 

“Where’d you get that from?”

She shrugged and let her thumb trail over his cheekbone, a sigh passing her lips. 

“Sounds like something you would say.”

End of Part 21

~

Part 22

Thank you for reading! I’d be very grateful for feedback of any kind!

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[masonshaws]

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.

[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.

[sereina-archive]

incoming ask from - @profutured​

AIdrés had been watching them. Of course he had, he watched everyone who entered Area Zero. This pair, however, were not normal trespassers but rather bystanders who had seemingly been dragged in, the sudden force of an Iron Jugulis' Tailwind too great to be countered.

It was glad to see they were both still alive, at least. Such a fall could have gone much worse.

Roto-to-to-to! It's an incoming text!

              [ Señora Bellegrade, I do not believe it wise to move too much. Attempting to push yourself will only worsen your condition. ]

              [ If you or your partner can stand, I will direct you to safety.  ]

But with the Zero Lab door locked, asking her to explore for the four stations may be too much to demand...

              [ Do you have any other pokemon on you? They will make this task easier. ]

The fall into the crater was much, much worse than Serena had anticipated. She hadn’t meant to get so close, knowing that the area was strictly off-limits. All she remembered was something that looked like a Hydreigon, and a strong wind that pulled her and her Salamence in. Etamin was a seasoned flyer, but the downdraft in the crater after had been too strong.

She awoke in the grass, a metallic smell pervading all of her senses. Her hair was damp and sticky, and a searing pain exploded from her left arm. She... should not be alive, she realized. By all rights, she should have died in that fall. Her body was banged up, several deep cuts slashed through her uniform, now stained deep red. Blood leaked from the corner of her mouth, likely having bit the inside of her cheek in the plummet.

“Etamin,” she choked out from her spot on the ground, a spluttering cough shaking bruised ribs. The dragon was worse off than even she was, wings a mangled mess. Her hand reached out to touch his scaly skin, palm covered in blood as she pulled it back. Fuck.

Her head pounded as she forced herself to sit up, hissing in pain as she put weight on her bad arm. It definitely was broken, or fractured at the very least. Every movement heralded a cacophony of agony, her nerves screaming in protest. Serena wasn’t sure how they were going to get out of here, but Etamin needed some form of medical attention. He was still breathing, but very shallowly. She had to get up. There was no point in sitting here. She couldn’t let her inaction cause another pointless death of a teammate - a friend.

As she willed herself to stand, the buzz of her phone from her bag grabbed her attention. The screen was totally smashed, but she could still read the incoming barrage of texts... just barely. It was from an unknown number. Anxiety struck her heart for a moment, but it almost seemed as if they knew what had happened to her, and they knew her name...

[✉: ???] i can try

Typing out a response was more taxing than she could have imagined, especially being only able to use one hand to do it.

[✉: ???] i dont know if etamin can. he’s really hurt. i have other partner pokemon on hand

Serena pauses to cough, spitting a mouthful of blood into the grass. If only she had brought Merlin with... she wasn’t sure if he would have been able to teleport them out, though. She pauses a moment to look over at Etamin, feeling her chest constrict. Whoever this mystery person was texting her... she just hoped they could help somehow. If not her, than help Etamin at the very least.

[✉: ???] ill do whatever i need to if it means keeping him alive. i cant lose him

[threadbaresweater]

This is like really weird pls ignore if you don’t feel comfortable

This is in regards to your fat phobia post. So obv all the tw for that stuff

I am going on 20 and am starting to gain more weight than what I was used to growing up. I’m not unhealthy, I’m just at the bigger end of what’s considered normal for my age and height. When I was younger (even just a couple years ago) I was at the lower end of normal.

But I’m starting to realize how much I used to dress just doesn’t fit me anymore. It doesn’t fit my body type or my appearance like it used to and it bothers me. I could also be pregnant and am worried that the weight I would gain then would affect my mental health.

Do you have any advice for dealing with this because I feel silly for even asking and feeling this way

Hi! First of all, thank you for trusting me to open up about your insecurities. I know that topics like this are really sensitive for some people, and I want to try and approach this as gently as I can, as well as relay some of my own experiences.

Tw: body image, weight, diet culture, pregnancy. If you read below the cut, PLEASE heed the warnings.

I've spent most of my life feeling bad about my body. Even when I was younger and just 10-20 pounds overweight, I always felt bigger than my peers, even though the reality was that I was pretty average sized. I grew up with a mother who was always hard on herself about her weight and frequently put me on diets, during which we would take pictures of ourselves at different angles and hang them on the fridge to remind us that we were fat. I've gained weight steadily over the years, with each pregnancy, but I was always able to lose it after the baby came. I have been overweight most of my adult life; most of what has made me feel the most insecure lately was gained during lockdown. I reached my highest weight in September of 2020, and I'm about 15 pounds less than that now, after multiple failed attempts at losing the bulk of it. I am the least comfortable I have ever been with my body, but I cannot seem to heal my relationship with food, no matter how badly I want to.

I've had the same style since 1999. I'm very much a jeans and t-shirt kind of gal- I've just consistently bought bigger sizes to accommodate my weight gain. So while I don't have fashion advice for you, I will say that you should dress in a way that makes you feel comfortable that also flatters the things you feel insecure about. I think it would be fun to change up your wardrobe (if you have the means) and get excited about trying new looks! I have always kind of envied people who can put together cute outfits so effortlessly, but I've also never really put a lot of effort into it myself. I know what I am most comfortable in, and it can be a little scary to try something new.

If you're pregnant, congratulations! (I will assume it's a good and happy thing. If it isn't, I hope you can find a way to make peace with it). I wore a lot of long skirts and forgiving tops (empire waist and lots of cardigan sweaters). The key is dressing for comfort, but also feeling good as your body changes.

As far as your weight affecting your mental health, I think it's always subjective. During pregnancy, I was comfortable gaining weight because I knew that it's normal and natural to do so when you're growing a human (yes, even when you're overweight to begin with). My weight throughout my life has absolutely been a factor in my own feelings of depression and feeling down about myself in general, but not always! I think you have to come to a point where you love yourself enough to make the changes you need to make to get healthier. Self loathing and self-flagellation does nothing to help you meet your goals. You have to love yourself through every season. Give yourself grace and patience. Get enough sleep, drink lots of water, eat food that nourishes your body- but let yourself indulge when the time comes. I don't know what your relationship with food and activity is like, but I think it's so, so important to nurture a healthy outlook. And the younger you are when you can do it, the more successful you will be and the happier you'll be with yourself. I wish I'd had a better role model at your age to help me establish these kind of habits. I'm learning them now for myself and also trying to show my children.

I apologize that this got long winded and possibly off topic. It's something I don't get to talk about much, but I feel would help me and others to talk about more often. I wish you well on your journey.

[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.

[jeanfrancoisgeschwind]

Jean-Francois Geschwind What To Do When Diagnosed With Cancer

Jean-Francois Geschwind Expert tips provider. Most people are able to experience the joy in life as they progress in years and stake their claim. Sometimes, though, something comes along and floors the good times and presents a true challenge. Cancer can change everything in the blink of an eye, so be sure to use these cancer-related tips to rise above and conquer this mountain.

There are many different ways that people cope with cancer. Some of them good and some of them bad. Find a good way to cope with cancer. Some good coping methods include relaxation techniques, such as meditation, doing leisure activities or writing your feelings down in a journal.

Do not isolate yourself from friends and family if you are diagnosed with cancer. Sometimes, people will become depressed and close up if they find out they have cancer. The emotional support from others will give you strength and a renewed energy to fight. You may be able to get useful advice from others who have experienced cancer as well.

The sun can be a major cancer causing factor for many people. The sun releases ultraviolet rays that enter the earth's atmosphere. When we step outside, our skin is exposed to these rays, and too much exposure can cause skin damage that can lead to skin cancer. Be sure to protect yourself with sun screen to prevent this.

Following your cancer diagnosis, try to keep your life as normal as possible. You may need to make some changes, but a consistent routine will help you feel more like yourself. Since your plans may need to be altered at the drop of a hat, take each day as it comes and enjoy it.

Unfortunately, some people will contract cancer due to their genes, even if they lead a healthy, active lifestyle. You may want to consider undergoing some type of counseling if your DNA increases your risks of getting cancer. Being prepared for what's possibly to come will help you deal with it when it arrives.

If someone you know has contracted cancer, the best thing you can do now is listen to this person's wants and needs. Trying to insert yourself into their life by force may backfire and cause this person to reject you, and treating this person differently may have a devastating effect. Listen to their needs.

Doctors and the general public at large have long known that red wine can help fight against heart disease, but more people are now finding out that wine can also help work against contracting cancer. The polyphenols in wine (like those found in grapes) help to neutralize and eliminate dangerous free radicals.

Try to stay at a healthy weight. Being overweight and inactive can increase your chances of getting cancer. Excess weight has far reaching consequences and losing weight will do much more than lower your cancer risk. It will also lower the risk of heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and premature death.

Understand that you may have to put some of your personal feelings and opinions aside. Each of your friends and family members will want to support the person with cancer and there will inevitably be disagreements about the best way to do this. Keep things as stress free as possible and take a step back if you need to.

Jean-Francois Geschwind Skilled tips provider. Know the signs and symptoms of lung cancer, and those that aren't so easy to see. Lung cancer is such a fatal disease, due to the fact that signs and symptoms often mask themselves as other conditions until the disease has spread throughout the lungs and caused greater damage.

Whether you have recently been diagnosed with cancer or you have had it for awhile, you may want to join a cancer support group. Other cancer patients know ways to deal with the disease that you might not be aware of. If you feel comfortable enough to do so, invite your family to the group so that they can understand what you're going through and how to support you.

Many people do not think to protect their lips when they are out in the sun. No matter the season or the length of time you are going to be in the sun, take the time to apply lip balm. Be sure that the balm that you choose has a good SPF level to protect your lips.

It is important that you do not keep your cancer diagnosis from your boss. Especially if you are going to be receiving chemotherapy or radiation treatment. Your boss is going to start to wonder why you are missing so much and telling him the truth will probably make him more understanding.

Find some kind of humor in your days. Laughter is good for the mind, body and spirit. If you can find at least one thing to laugh about each hour of every day, you are going to benefit from the chemicals it will release in your body and the uplifting it will do for your spirit.

Keep your job as long as your body will allow you to. You will find that if you continue to work that you will find more meaning in your life. That will give you a way to spend your days without thinking about your disease the entire time. You will keep your mind sharp and feel good doing it.

Look into complementary therapies that could very well support conventional medical therapies and help you transition into your post cancer lifestyle. Complementary therapies include massages, aromatherapy, acupuncture, and yoga. These are a few of the ways you can relax during this stressful period of your life.

In order to properly deal with a loved one that has been diagnosed with cancer it is very important to deal with your own feelings first. It is hard to think about what may happen to someone close that has been diagnosed with cancer but if you deal with your feelings first it will be easier for you to appropriately deal with them.

Jean-Francois Geschwind Top service provider. If you can follow the tips laid out in this article, you should be able to greatly improve your odds of preventing or beating cancer. If you can conquer this, you will find that there's nothing in life that can hold you back. Do more than merely survive your fight with cancer; learn to thrive.

[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?