#someone else has probably articulated this way better than me before

[metropoliswhite]

I've been thinking about this scene, and how Felix repeats Oliver's name 3 times, taking a brief pause between, like he's making sure he's memorizing it. (right after letting us know he didn't even noticed they were in the same college before).

Thinking about the way he calls him in the pub by repeating his name again (and a nickname!) and was already talking about him.

Thinking about Oliver lying to keep Felix's attention by making himself available to be saved, when what made Felix notice him, remember him (WANT to remember him, actively making sure he would!), and think about him enough to give him a nickname in his head and talk about him to his friends, is Oliver saving HIM.

[giddlygoat]

i love ur turbo/felix stuff !! what's an underrated part of their dynamic that you're passionate about? any sorts of scenarios youre fond of ?

oml. thank you for such a treat of an ask!!!!!!

aaaa, where do i start? i genuinely don’t know how to articulate most of my thoughts and headcanons so i’m just gonna go for it LAWL

firstly, i love that turbo is an immature bad boy while felix is this heart-of-gold angel. i’m a simple man, i like that juxtaposition and i like to consider how they would inspire each other to veer out of their respective comfort zones and change as people [for better or for worse]. and i especially love all of this because i think it’s pretty safe to assume they are both the other’s first delve into dating. they’re both stupid about relationships going into this, which i believe is a big part of the reason felix fell in love with turbo.

which reminds me: i don’t think turbo realized he was in love with felix. he latched onto the only sprite in the whole arcade who remained consistently tolerant of his ‘charming quirks’ and soaked up that attention like a sponge. while felix would sometimes chastise his rude behaviors, he seldom told turbo anything but what the racer wanted to hear. he was encouraging to turbo like that; thought he could foster good change with positive reinforcement [at the time, felix did not realize on all conscious levels that he was trying to fix turbo].

that reminds me. in the very beginning, turbo thought of felix as a naive innocent whom he could mess with for his own amusement. on a less cruel note, he also found himself enjoying genuine laughter around felix more than anyone else, and turbo’s perception of the handyman changed significantly once he saw the real value in their friendship. he realized that felix actually made for great company and was a lot brighter than he’d originally assumed.

that’s around the time they both started to get close. turbo discovers that being playfully mean is his go-to love language, and felix consequentially discovers that he likes a little bitchiness in a guy. it’s kind of a surprise to them both but it’s a welcome development and they each come to terms with their newfound chemistry pretty quickly. it all goes unsaid. the flirting just kinda happens, and before too long they’re letting the lines of their relationship blur.

felix is absolutely thrilled. he loves the way turbo lights up when he enters the room. he loves feeling useful and wanted to someone other than a nicelander, and he sincerely loves turbo. it’s ridiculously simple to him, and at some point he was probably even convinced that turbo was his future. there is a sliver of bliss between them before the fantasy inevitably ends. sad! oh well, there are other bad boys with intimacy issues and their golden retriever boyfriends 😊 COUGH tamora & felix COUGH

OK BUT FR turbo even. Listen okay actually no. turbo had gotten wrapped up in felix’s fantasy too. he was invested. then he thought more than 2 seconds about the prospect of felix specifically being his life partner and got scared as fuck.

i’m ngl guys, i think turbo may have found felix’s predictability and love of routine and familiarity comforting in the beginning, but he quickly realizes that he can’t hitch himself to that. i think he had considered the anticipatory lifespan of his own game early on and a little seed of doubt burrowed itself down in his chest, telling him that he could not afford to get too comfortable and loose his touch.

OKAY UHM. sorry about the incoherent wall of text before you i just have so many thoughts about them at all times. all subject to change and evolve of course. in the meantime, here are some of my notes on them:

turbo has a strong emotional attachment to his car and felix recognizes that being invited to ride in it is a huge sign of trust and vulnerability. you’d never think he was sending sappy signals by the way he offered felix to ‘take it for a spin’, but it touches felix either way.

as previously mentioned, felix has a thing for being bossed around. he vehemently denies this when turbo teases him about it. no big surprise

turbo feels out of his element in most of the romantic aspects of their relationship, finding it easier to navigate the physical aspects. this isn’t even necessarily because he doesn’t have romantic feelings for felix, he’s just allergic to emotional intimacy.

felix is the perfect opposite of turbo in that respect. no display of affection is flippant or unimportant to him: he is very deliberate in initiating anything physical

on that note, felix is extremely service oriented and prefers to dote on his partner. turbo could not be happier by all the attention, but sometimes he finds felix’s emotion and sincerity to be overwhelming. this applies to basically every aspect of their relationship

i’m trying not to make all of these about turbo but i just have to get this off my chest: yes, turbo gets off on obliterating competition. he’s not normal about winning. winning in front of his boyfriend makes him especially abnormal. being praised for his victories by said boyfriend makes him downright unusual. no further questions at this time

i have more but this is way too long as it is and i’m falling asleep sitting up so CHAPTER ONE OVER!!!!1!1

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s6 episode 10 thoughts

hmm… scully seems to be black and white in the image for this episode. maybe she has had this power to turn greyscale the whole time and she has simply never chosen to wield it until now. how fascinating of her!

ah, i see that the one after this is likely a two-parter, based on titles alone. so i had better focus now before things get crazy.

the description here emphasizes that scully will be the one pursuing this photographer!! i hope that bodes well for our girl!! i need lots of scully time!! or else terrible things happen to me!!

post-episode thoughts: we need to release the cut of this episode where mulder and scully team up to destroy this ritter fellow. i know mulder had to physically restrain himself from choking that dude out. frankly, he usually has FAR less self-control, so this was a big step for him.

but first and foremost, this was a scully episode. and there is so much i want to say. about living!! and dying!! and loving!! and what scully wants for herself!!! and i am sad, but i am pondering!!! and i want her to be happy!!! and in the process of editing my notes, i got myself so worked up over the whole thing that i simply cannot articulate anything!!!! which is such a shame, because if i had words, i would use them!!! at length!!

we open in new york city, where a woman gets help pushing a shopping cart out of an elevator to deliver some mail. mail time!!! wait. who is behind her?

get away from her. she is working. STOP FOLLOWING HER. I’M SERIOUS. now the elevator is taking too long to come get her…. and the creepy guy gets in. GET OUT OF THERE. YOU’RE MAKING ME ANGRY.

why can creepy man see everyone in black and white? until he steps out of the elevator, and all of the color returns.

oh shoot. he gets out and then the elevator starts breaking. so he takes the STAIRS. and it falls!!!! 

he’s taking a picture of the collapsed elevator?? with the bodies in it??? 

now who does that help….?

why is he documenting it… is he working for OSHA or something…..? 

shortened intro, you will not sneak your tricks past me.

someone else is doing a background check here at the FBI!! are scully and mulder free?? well, they’re stuck on the same floor, so probably not. mulder is on the phone and fiddling with his pen.

no; they, too, are sadly stuck performing background checks. this is so sad!!! she can save lives!!!! and they use her for this!!!

she asks if mulder is ready to quit and he says “no. that would make way too many people way too happy” <- LMAO well, that is entirely understandable

ohhh, she gets a strange call and is on the move. she was asked to go to kersh’s office!! this cannot be good!! he hates her!! and she was the only one called!

OOO, WE SEE HER FILE. she’s 5 foot 2!!! i didn’t know that!!! but i figured she was somewhere in that area. and she lives in annapolis, maryland. like learning that mulder lives in alexandria, i do not know enough about geography to know what that means.

seems she was brought on in 1990 as an instructor of forensic pathology, and she was recruited right from the university of maryland. i did know this. but not the years during which it happened. 

ARGH, i wish this screen wasn’t so dark so i could SEE. it says something about physics. BA in physics?? ARGH! this is so frustrating. mulder had described her thesis as her “graduate thesis”, so maybe she did physics undergrad, physics grad school, then med school, then FBI. 

well. it’s not focusing other than that, so i can’t make any conclusions unless kersh announces what he sees inside. because he is the one reading her file.

some agent named ritter is here from new york. who are you, man? he found an old crime scene photo of a woman who passed away from an overdose. but the clock in the photo is 45 minutes earlier than her listed time of death. scully points out that a clock can be wrong. why is this ritter man, like, quizzing her?

hmm!!! from the newspaper, the other photograph of the body shows a totally different time, an hour and a half later!!! that is very weird. from the same photographer, too. i’m guessing he wasn’t just hanging there for 2 hours and spacing out his picture taking.

alfred fellig is the photographer. ritter thinks that maybe he poisoned the woman and photographed her for personal pleasure, then came back later to do his job for the police and photographed her AGAIN. and while scully says that is “quite a theory”, there are 3 other photos of fellig's that show very different times according to different negatives.

she says there’s no consistent MO, and he says there is no consistent anything. and he wants her help. kersh asks him to leave. what is afoot here….

“i would say he has a promising career ahead of him. so did you… at one time” <- OH MY GOD??? 

(furious scully face)

“AGENT MULDER and i will begin immediately” <- OH!!! she stood right up for him!!! what a good friend!!

but kersh says he is a lost cause. and that he hopes she isn't as well.

so now she has to go to new york city with this RANDOM GUY. oh, i’m pissed off FOR HER!! kersh must be trying to separate them….

fellig is getting off a bus and watching some guy have what appears to be a heart attack. heart attack (or coughing fit? chest pain?) guy is in black and white!! 

he goes somewhere and gets some mail, patting his head with a cloth while fellig watches out the window. and he grabs his arm!! and falls!!!! AND FELLIG COMES CLOSER TO WATCH????

he pulls out his camera and takes a bunch of pictures of the dying guy, who he sees in black and white. very weird.

mulder is looking through a bunch of photos on his computer. ohhh, it looks like he found the pictures from fellig. “mulder. what are you doing?” “being nosy. eating my heart out. they’re sending you on an x file” <- OHHH, HE LOOKS SO SAD AND LEFT OUT :(

“it’s not an x file” “that’s not what i’m reading”

“i’m thinking murder by telekinesis. i’m thinking maybe a shamanistic death touch. i’m thinking about the muslim superstition that to photograph someone is to steal their soul” <- OHHH, LET HIM ON THE CASE :( 

fascinating look into how he starts gathering leads based on the little information he knows about the case and his wealth of memorized strange facts....

he thinks they’re splitting them up!!!! and he’s so sad!!! oh!! she tries to tell him it’s a one-time thing, but he isn’t buying it.

she bites her lip, closes his tabs as agent ritter walks in, and introduces them. he very visibly wants to beat the guy with a hammer. and makes a point of calling him by his first name.

jump to new york city. ritter and scully are asking some cops about fellig. he has yearly renewals for his job a very long time, and he’s been doing it since 1964!!! he doesn’t seem to have aged. 

OH! this ritter guy seems fine enough, but he called her "dana", and that made me flinch. he doesn’t seem to think it’s that weird fellig hasn’t aged at all.

meanwhile, some other dude is being chased and calling for help. whoever is chasing him pulls out a knife and kills him!!! and fellig is there to take pictures of the scene!!

but the murderer finds fellig and starts stabbing him…… he steals fellig’s camera as the blood pours everywhere. but fellig gets up!!! and pulls the knife out of his own back!!! ack!!!! 

the blood from his body is red and didn’t cause any gassing, so i don’t think he’s one of the shape-shifting aliens, but maybe he’s some sort of vampire or vampire-like creature?? maybe he sucks energies from the photos of dying people he takes??

ritter and scully find the knife with fellig’s prints on them.

“what’s this?” “a whole lotta blood” “yeah, i got that” <- LMAOOOOO, do not separate her from her bonded pair or she will be mad. scully clearly does not think there is a second victim because there is no second body.

ritter says it is “january 4th”. so does this take place BEFORE rain king, somehow? or did we jump ahead a year? you know what? i’m gonna try not to think about it. 

that seems like a weird detail to include for it to just prove the timeline wrong.

(i'm still annoyed about this 24 hours later btw)

they’re interviewing fellig. scully watches from the corner. he says he saw someone stealing a kid’s shoes and tried to run him off. he claims he touched the knife after the murderer left. 

OHHH, she picks up on the fact that he is in pain and is closing in on him like a shark smelling blood. yeahhhh, noir detective. ritter seems fascinated by this but like, come on, we all are. he’s not special.

fellig confesses to being cut. and she helps take off his shirt to see the gashes. ritter says to get his blood drawn and take pictures.

“hey, i’m confused. i thought we were trying to bust this guy, not look for reasons to let him go” “i thought we were looking for the truth” <-YEAH, YOU TELL HIM 🔥 

he gets pissed and leaves

AWWWWW, MULDER CALLS HER AND SAYS IN A STUPID VOICE THAT THEY USED TO SIT NEXT TO EACH OTHER AT THE FBI :,) AWWWW, LOOK AT HER TIRED SMILE!!!

WAIT, WHY DOES HE KNOW ABOUT THE STABBING, LMAO????? “i told you, i’m nosy” <- WHAT DOES HE KNOW??

they found another murderer’s prints on the knife and fellig’s blood all over the place… yeah. so fellig probably isn’t killing these people outright.

DID HE HACK INTO THE NYPD DATABASE SOMEHOW?? LMAOOOOO???

NO, HE GOT THE FILES FROM KERSH SOMEHOW, AND HE SEES THAT FELLIG HAS A HEALING FACTOR. LMAOOOO, oh he is gonna get in TROUBLE!!

but he says kersh has (mostly) nice things to say about her. which is kind of him to add.

he whines his way into doing a background check on the murderer, saying it’s what he does now. and you can tell she wants to say no, but also knows that saying no to him won’t do a damn thing, lmao.

why does he have access to kersh’s files….?

scully is joining ritter in a car at 1 am. seems he’s doing a stakeout on fellig. ritter tells her to have a LOVELY evening in a way that seems like he really hates her. man. i thought he was kinda chill at the start of this episode. except for the way he was quizzing her. and ignoring fellig not aging. maybe he was a jerk all along and i simply tried to be kind.

time for scully to flip through some more murder photos. OH NO!! she hears the camera clicking in the distance… and ritter just walked away!!! IS HE GONNA BE DEAD???

she knocks on fellig’s door and says “explain this” LMAO, get those answers!! how did he take a photo of a murder an hour before the police arrived?! 

she says he needs to explain himself or he will not know a moment’s peace. and trust that she means it.

fellig says to take a ride with her, which has me scared. and then he drives her around for an hour!!! he says he is looking for the shot. 

he finds a woman on the street corner, saying she’s about to die, could be a minute, could be an hour. scully grabs her gun, thinking he’s going to do something nefarious. he says the way they die is always a surprise- he just always knows when. 

“you want me to believe that?”, she asks

but then a man comes toward the woman on the side of the road, and they start fighting. scully gets out of the car! and she grabs the dude!!! he is under arrest!!! i fear she may only fulfill the prophecy somehow… 

she takes a gun off of him, and when he claims it isn’t his and calls her “red”, she slaps him on the face, omfg…. just a little slap…. but it was enough

BUT NO!!! when scully goes to ask the lady on the side of the road if she’s okay, the mystery woman gets hit by a truck!!!

OMG????? and fellig comes in to get the shot…

ritter is mad as HELL with scully when she rolls up with this random dude under arrest. she is also very mad at him!!! she does not need his permission to do her job!!! but he says he has something to show her. 

the murderer who killed that kid over the shoes claims that fellig did it. and scully accuses RITTER of making the STORY UP, OHHHH!!!

“fellig is a murderer. whether or not he did this specific one, i don‘t care-“ WELL, YOU SHOULD???

omfg… is this some sort of moral test for scully? is kersh torturing her like this is the good place? he says he knows the judge and he’ll get the warrant

OHHHH!!! “you know, kersh warned me about you.” “uh, he did?” “yeah, you and your partner. god knows his reputation precedes him, so i guess i should have seen this coming. you muck up my case, and kersh will hear about it. are we clear, dana?” “scully.”

WHEW!!!! THE WAY SHE SAID HER NAME ALL CLEAR AND QUIET GAVE ME GOOSEBUMPS

you tell that pathetic rat.

“and we’re done with this conversation” YES MA’AM 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

wow. still playing this on loop in my brain, 24 hours later. the implications... the defining of herself... the resistance... yeah.

phone call time!! it’s mulder!!! she admits that it is an x file, which prompts him to sound worried. “what happened?”

mulder says that fellig is 149! under the name henry strand, someone applied for a press license way back in the day, and henry’s prints match fellig’s!! and before henry, there is an L.H. rice who was born in 1849 and has the same fingerprints!!

how did he track the fingerprints down… get mulder out of this office and into a research lab, maybe!

“i’m not good at math, but i figure that’s a whole lot of candles on the cake”

! MULDER LORE REVEAL ! he doesn’t think he’s good at math!!!

man, i haven’t gotten to do a lore reveal text format like that in a while. that felt nice.

scully finds fellig's age hard to believe, but mulder says she should find him before he vanishes again. she turns up at his apartment and looks so scary, LMAO. 

but she warns him that he will be arrested in 2 hours and charged with murder. which makes her seem to be the the good guy here, and not as scary as her angry face would suggest.

fellig says he just takes the pictures, but she hits him with “what you showed me was a contemptible lack of compassion for another human being. you showed me that you profit off of people’s deaths” <- OHHHH, GET HIM!! that strong moral code kicks in again!

“now, why shouldn’t you go to prison?” <- oooo, she’s playing hardball. but he says they’re lucky!!! and he doesn’t take them, “he” does. girl, who the hell is "he"?

fellig must be jealous that these other people can die… 

scully follows him into his darkroom. i feel such fondness for her as she moves the curtain. 

he points to someone in the photograph and says “he’s the one who takes them” BUT WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?! 

it’s a glimpse of death itself. he’s trying to photograph death!!!

“mr. fellig, i know you know more about photography than i do, but this is just a lens flare” “you’re right, i do know more about photography than you” <- LMAO, okay, that did make me laugh.

she asks him why take a picture of death, and he says he wants to look into his face so he can die. nothing will kill him. he's tried it all.

hey man, i’m unfortunately really distracted by the terrible feelings of tenderness that scully has sparked in me right at this very moment. yeah, idk. i don’t really want to focus on this guy right now. it’s very sad, genuinely, but look at her face. 

he says he doesn’t want to be here, and he got left behind. 

“you know, i don’t believe you” “yes you do. that’s why you’re here” <- OHHHH, he called her out…. the cracks in her disbeliever facade keep growing… is it that she doesn’t believe him, or that her greater commitment to needing to know the truth and therefore do the morally correct thing in handling this murder case brought her here?? can they be separated???

she flips through his photos, touching one of a young flapper. she asks how he knows when they’ll die, and he says he knows.

scully has to step outside. and she calls mulder, asking if louis brady (name on the flapper photo) was also one of fellig's names. he says no, but there is a big gap before 1939, so it could be.

but somehow, fellig disappeared!!! just kidding, he’s back. he wanted to get his film. i thought he vanished for a few seconds there.

mulder is in the FBI archives at 9:30 am. ahhh, i wish i could go there. and he finds fellig’s photo!! it shows him wanted under the name louis brady for double murder!!!

mulder calls ritter when he learns of this news, because he cannot get ahold of her. he tells him about how fellig killed two patients and walked away!!! he tells him to find agent scully NOW. and ritter, of course, is shocked that this murder happened like 80 years ago, but whatever. you better go check on her, ritter.

meanwhile, scully is still with fellig. she asks “how can you have too much life? there’s too much to learn, to experience” and this hits hard because she, of course, was very recently dying.

(moaning in pain as i think about scully wanting to experience and learn everything there is this world has to offer.......)

he says you start to wonder what everyone else gets to know

OH, SHE ASKS ABOUT LOVE??? he wanted to look up his wife 40 years ago. and he couldn’t remember her name. 

(scully, you damn romantic...)

“love lasts 75 years, if you’re lucky. and you don’t want to be around when it’s gone” <- oh stop… you’re going to make her cry…

but, is he actually going to try and kill her…..?

WAIT! she turned black and white… and tells her to count her blessings.

IS HE GOING TO KILL HER BECAUSE HE WANTS TO HELP HER???

(author's note: no)

she wants to know how to prove his thing- that he can live forever, and that he can sense when people are going to die before they do. fellig says someone took his place. he had yellow fever. and he’s getting his camera around…

he saw death back when he was sick. and he saw him dancing around the room, taking people. but death didn’t take him. 

a nurse sat with him, and when death came, he looked away. she looked at him instead. and the fever broke, and she was the one that died. 

he tells her she’s very lucky. she gets in his face and insists she is NOT going to die. she tells him to turn it off. he took her phone!!!

he says death is coming and he needs to make her peace…. 

but it’s ritter!!!! he fires his gun at fellig!!!

SHE COLLAPSES???? WHY IS SHE BLEEDING??????? there is blood coming from her throat???? did ritter miss and shoot her instead???

fellig tries to take a photo of her with his other camera, and asks if she sees "him". he says don’t look, close your eyes. and he holds her hand in his. AND HE LOOKS INTO DEATH INSTEAD. and he gasps softly…. oh my god…. he finally dies.

scully is in bed in the hospital a week later. mulder is waiting, telling ritter he’s a lucky man. which is better than i expected.

OH, he grabs her hand. and he sits on her bed. and he smiles, saying her doctor says she is making an amazing recovery. but she seems so sad, and in so much pain

he says “death only looks for you once you seek its opposite” <- OHHHH my god…

and we fade to black.

so i rewatched the scene where scully gets hurt because at first i couldn't tell what was happening, and this DUMBASS ritter shot fellig, and the bullet went STRAIGHT THROUGH HIM and INTO SCULLY???? like. what the HELL WAS HE THINKING????

holy fuck, if i were mulder i would have done a lot more than tell him he was a lucky guy. look at her enduring ritter's presence while she’s in her hospital bed and he was such an awful person the whole time they worked together. i would have told him to fuck off and let me recover from the bullet YOU put in me in peace.

and mulder grabbing her hand. and the flowers in her room. and his smile at her news. but she’s so sad. people don’t live forever. 

she wants to live, and she wants to have a life, and holy HELL need to lay down.

oh my god… this episode was super dark. and usually i don’t really like the dark ones. but it has scully, so i liked it better. because we got to contemplate her worldview. 

and she wants to LIVE. she wants a LIFE. she wants LOVE. the way she got in fellig’s face and REFUSED to let him take her picture… the way she tried to understand how he could be jealous of death, because she always wants to understand and to learn and empathize… the way she helped fellig, and fellig helped her by telling her to look away from death, so he could look instead… oh my god.

we need to do something about this ritter guy. hopefully, he will simply be fired. you can’t go around shooting your own agents. OH! and the way he didn’t care about justice at all- how he got the warrant because he knew the judge, and he told scully that if she got in his way he’d go to kersh… and how she told him her name is SCULLY and this conversation is OVER…

oh!!!

and mulder helping over the phone; mulder using her sleuthing skills to find out that fellig WAS a murderer and she WAS in danger, and he called ritter immediately and said you had BEST find her. and i can only imagine how he went to bed that night thinking of all the ways he wanted to kill ritter. how he sat by his phone for her. bouncing his basketball until the hospital sent him word of her recovery. 

now, i’m still puzzled as to why he has access to kersh’s files. perhaps this is some sort of clue. but to what? i cannot say.

i just love scully SO MUCH. she saw that the woman on the side of the road was going to die, and she stepped right in and did everything she could, even if it was ultimately doomed. she couldn’t sit back. and she wants a life. she’s in love and she wants a life and she wants a house and a dog. and to save people. and to do work that is satisfying. and all of these things she has been denied.

(screams into my hands)

she’s been slowly starting to believe- maybe not in the traditional sense, but in the sense that she recognizes something she cannot understand is afoot, and she finds herself curious about how and why. i found it very interesting that fellig called her out for this and gibson did as well. and we know that gibson can read minds, so we know it to be true. i don’t think “believes” in the same use of the word that mulder does, but she is finding it harder to compartmentalize, maybe. and can you blame her? i mean, she is miss "there HAS to be a scientific explanation for this". belief not in the supernatural sense, but in the sense that there is so much more to learn and understand and experience. be it love and life or the guy who lives forever and can somehow sense death. maybe the spiritual and the scientific aren't that separate.

god. this really was a scully episode, and i am so grateful. i deserved this. even though it wasn’t one where she laughs and enjoys the gift of being alive, we still got to dive into her thoughts and emotional state. AND we got bonus angsty mulder- angst about them being separated, and angst about nearly losing her. is this not the ultimate kind of mulder angst? 

i shall go to bed a bit sad this evening, but content. 

as i edit my notes to make them readable the day after watching this, there is still so much on my mind. in the sense that i want to write a thinkpiece on what this means for scully's character. maybe this will be a turning point, when she once again confronts her own mortality. how easily death can come. maybe she'll tell him how she feels because she realizes that now is all she has. maybe she'll confront kersh and tell him to get them off of their nonsense assignment so she can go back to saving people. maybe she'll think about all of the times she felt so certain that she was going to die in the past and once again try and make a meaning for why she didn't.

i am also thinking about how sad mulder was when kersh separated them and then how horrible he must have felt when he heard that she was SHOT in his absence. and there was nothing that he could do for a week while he could only wait to hear if she was okay. and then he drove up there as soon as he could. and he KNEW that it was ritter's fault she was lying in that bed fighting for her life, but he somehow managed to say only how lucky he was instead of slamming his head through the drywall. and how he held her hand, smiling, so happy to see her, taking his spot on her bed, thinking of how he loves her and how many times her has nearly lost her. and her thinking the same thing. and neither of them saying anything. just touching.

the feelings i am experiencing are large and difficult to put into words, which is frustrating because, like AUGH! (gestures wildly) do you get what i mean?! do you SEE what i am saying?!?! (grabs your shoulders and shakes them vigorously)

please share your thoughts with me, especially if you are a scully girl like myself. to me, this felt sort of like scully's version of paper hearts, in a way. at least, i see some parallels. even if i cannot elaborate at this time because my brain is flopping.

[sereinlikessleep]

Little rant about Grusha because I had time

So uh listen to my ramblings I had nothing better to do and I’m bad at articulating my points and thoughts 😭 ok cool? Cool

Rant about Grusha because I have nothing better to do. So like I’ve been noticing a lot of people are dissatisfied with Grusha’s injury and it’s been bothering me a tad because the main reason is that it isn’t lining up with their head canons or the severity isn’t enough. That’s fine feel that way but people are treating it like Grusha’s being dramatic and while I agree the little shite can be dramatic at times with all of his ice puns he’s not wrong. As someone who has a former athletic background and has dabbled in snowboarding a bit and has multiple people around me who do snowboarding on the regular I feel qualified to give my 2 cents on the topic. So based on the anime Grusha has a leg injury and as someone who has and has a family with a loooooong history of knee injuries it isn’t a small thing. When your sport requires balance the knees are crucial, while I sustained a minor knee injury for pushing myself too hard in running I have family and friends who had to go through literal years of physical therapy and muscle training and they still can’t achieve the same results they had before and after injury. And that’s why this injury is so big for Grusha, it’s been well established that this man is a perfectionist and cares about results more than anything else. (IE why he quit snowboarding and failed Liko) I also don’t think people understand how fast snowboarding is, a turn that Grusha took at the speed he was going (average snow boarders go 30-40 mph since Grusha was at a pro comp we can assume he was going at least 50-65 mph) and the fact that it was his leg got hurt likely meant he fell feet first or landed on his knees which makes the likelihood that he broke his leg even higher. A close friend of mine was snowboarding and tripped while she was doing it and she’s not pro, she was doing it casually but she landed so hard that she cracked her helmet into 2 pieces and would’ve died if she wasn’t wearing it. Lesson take away is that snowboarding is dangerous and Grusha is very lucky he only ended up with the injury he has now. 

Now comes the hard part after a sports injury, physical therapy. A broken leg is going to require months of physical therapy at the least and knowing Grusha and how closely his identity as a snowboarder was this was probably hell for him and when he was finally cleared to go back he can’t get the same results he used to get. I’ve seen this happen, someone can’t get the results they used to and because you’re just trapped in this cycle of going from the best to only mediocre and you can only go as far as mediocre. For someone who was once considered the 2nd best snowboarder in the world this has to hurt. I didn’t mention it but even after physical therapy you still have to be careful because now you’re more at risk of re-injuring that part of your body. My cousin used to be good at basketball but she had a knee injury and had to quit because she couldn’t keep up and she was always close of injuring her knee again. For someone who likely did snowboarding almost 24/7 much of Grusha’s identity was intertwined with the sport not being able to return to his glory days is world shattering. Now he has to find something else to do, and pokemon battling was that next thing, he obviously threw himself into it with the same and possibly more effort than snowboarding because this is the one thing he has left and cannot let it go. So forgive him if he sounds dramatic or his injury wasn’t as sever as you expected it to be just know that Grusha is a perfectionist who values results more than anything else, snowboarding is dangerous, injuries suck and can last long times and be career ending. Thank you for coming to my ted talk :3

[boxheadpaint]

juice induced hill depression. Back on meds again and hopefully going to get in touch with a new psych who can prescribe me something else. Have been very tired and unjoyful the past week but better now and playing modded Skyrim, initially just to make my oc in it but then just kept slamming more thangs in there. Mod that puts bunny rabbits everywhere. Also is there a mod that adds cute animal ears/suits as wearables or one that even makes the girl armor less sucks. Like im either fully leaning into the immersion breaking for self indulgence sake or im getting rid of the annoying shit.

visiting mom in Vegas earlier this month was nice except for the part where I hate Vegas. I know im not great with travel and settling into places can be a tough one for my brain but also my god it’s just evil there. Brilliantly so but still evil. I would have loved to enjoy the scenery surrounding the place more as deserts are just very beautiful and fascinating places but at no point during the day was the temperature less than a full hundred degrees Fahrenheit. It barely dropped during the night either. Between that and varying physical ailments (Oof Ouch My Digestive Sensitivities Lol) (Oof Ouch My Tendons Lol) (Oof Ouch The Agony Caused By Using Stairs Lol) it was the perfect conditions to be a miserable pile when I wanted to be with my family. As sad I was to part ways again I was not sorry to leave that place. Gained a new appreciation for changing up what I eat randomly to keep my body on its toes. At one point mom brought us to a pub and her husband asked for Diet Pepsi while I asked for regular Pepsi. Visually there’s no difference so we got handed the others pepsi and swapped. And then later after he refilled his Diet Pepsi another waiter came up and wordlessly refilled mine as well. With Diet Pepsi. Wasn’t even asked. Fucking stunned. Also went to a near dead mall that was nice anyway

stuck on brain zaps as a symptom of Specifically antidepressants withdrawal. There’s some things describing them as “mini seizures” in function. To me it’s like the body noticing the usual isn’t happening for some reason so it tries to jumpstart the brain into working good like before. universities I can go to with my theories. Back in and at it this week, hopefully to remain consistent for longer than before which will also likely help with the depression and anxiety. More people should just put stuff in their blood if they can

it can be embarrassing to express your misery more clearly to someone, specifying the fact fact thoughts running through your head. But then again it’s only embarrassing because your mind convinced you so, and will convince you that holding it in is also cruel and selfish. Finding it funny that animals probably don’t have as complex spirals and bouts of depression because they dont have a language to articulate to themselves in their own heads that something is awful in a very specific and contradicting way. Or actually no because there is still pattern recognition but that’s more a paranoia learned thing. Is there an animal that can randomly, for seemingly no reason evident to anyone including itself, experience crushing dread and self doubt. Is there an animal that feels shame besides man

had a tilt table test that was embarrassing too but for much more clear concrete reasons. Somehow didn’t know about that second part, and did complain through most of the first part because Oof Ouch Everything Hurts Lol. REALLY did not know the iv thing and had to once again sadly state that no, It has to go in the hand . I will say the experience was funny in the second part from the other ways because my first reaction was literally just “Uh Oh.” The moment I realized it was going to get worse. all I know is my blood pressure stayed consistent throughout, I don’t know what else im gonna hear about it. Hopefully something helpful.

is setting up an ABLE account difficult? Can anybody do it? It’s an issue dealt with by a lot of people but I should at least try to find a way to save money from benefits for the future or in case some stupid medical shit happens that the health won’t cover. I just looked up and saw Vinny sleeping while propping lubics head up with his foot. Hoping I can enjoy things normally again shortly,

8/26/2024, Still better than july

[followerofmercy]

God I have had an entire Arc for Weltstelle in my head and yet I'm probably never gonna write the fic because:

It is a Novel and I have enough of those

The audience consists of like five people, three of which are way more into daddy kink than I am. (More power to you. Live ur bliss. mwah)

It's kinda a bummer for end game shippers

The vision:

I don't actually think it's a bummer, but it is messy and the ultimate result is "They break up with a better understanding of themselves and a much deeper platonic relationship."

more under the cut

I think it's a really fun idea worth exploring but probably better suited to a different setting? Basically, Stelle asks him out and Welt says yes because he's never stopped to think about what he actually wants out of life when it comes to interpersonal relationships. Yeah, he's jumped around careers and such, but he has such a 'try anything once' attitude and a lot of pressure from the whole World Savior shit going on that he hasn't stopped to look at. like. himself. He is very wise and he's constantly trying to improve himself but if you ask him what he wants to be when he grows up he stares into space for a few seconds before replying "...This?" (Or "I've always wanted to be the protagonist of my own adventure" and. Like. Sir you become the main character of anything you step foot in. To me. You can't help yourself asldfj. Himeko has you on a baby leash to keep you from So Wanting To Help!!!)

Anyway, Welt's actually wildly uncomfortable with the age difference but he puts it aside because Stelle is a grown woman goddammit and she can make her own decisions. It's patronizing for him to try to father her if that's not how she sees him (It's not. His feelings are not accurate. His feelings matter in this too that's not making decisions for her asldf). Also, Stelle's a bit of a self-described whore so it's not like he's keeping her from living her life. She's not tied down to an old man. They hardly ever have sex - in part because Welt doesn't realize he's somewhat sex-repulsed ace and never initiates (again. Very self reflective guy, but not in the 'what do I want out of life' way) - in part because Stelle's got plenty of other people to bone that actually seem to enjoy the act alsdjf

Yes, many people think it's weird that she announces to her boyfriend that she's off to fuck someone else. I mean I am that kind of polyamorous but there's a... way of going about it that feels less like "y'all should actually just be friends" asdflk;j

The relationship persists in a strange limbo where they both enjoy the affection and attention but there's a performative element to it. Stelle's cool with it. Everything she does is both a total performance and vital for her journey of self discovery and identity beyond "living Bomb". Welt is getting steadily more and more uncomfortable and can't articulate why, to the point that he starts avoiding physical contact at all.

Eventually, possibly at Himeko's urging, they have a conversation. Maybe things come to a head when they're alone in space for a while and Welt has Stelle's undivided amorous attention and it gets to the point she has to ask if something is wrong. Welt doesn't want to admit it, of course, because oh my God holy shit the Express is her ONLY home. If he rejects her and ruins this for her, she'll have nowhere to go. Cue internal crisis

Eventually they realize that they just should not be fucking, at least not regularly, and break up amicably. Welt stops trying to make decisions For her and start actually thinking about himself and what HE wants out of life. It's also made easier when Stelle suggests he might be ace and he bluescreens for a bit while he comprehends that he's allowed to have identity and sexuality realizations at his age and they're not just for young people.

"...You know, that does explain some things."

And it's good for Stelle because she IS learning how to people, and as a self described hedonistic trash goblin, she learns that she doesn't have to pursue all her wants with everyone. She can show people love and feel fulfillment in other ways. And also people will still love her even if she isn't Providing some kind of service - entertainment, 18+ entertainment, violence, etc

and hell, they might even wrap back around to a non-sexual romantic relationship? But I prefer the idea of "Deep, important and nebulous relationship that would take pages to define in concrete terms so let's just say they love each other."

anyway thank you for reading the rambles alsdf. I will proceed to do nothing else with this besides rotate it in my mind

[seeingteacupsindragons]

Commenting on Meta: Quick-Start Guide

Inspired by a convo with @hergan416, I realized that while meta writers (me, at least) do still like comments/feedback on their writing, a lot of people probably don’t know how to respond to it very well. Responding to fiction can be easier.

But here’s a cheat sheet for, “Things I Like to Hear About” on my meta writing. I can’t guarantee all meta writers will agree, but I think at least a fair amount of it also applies.

This is not meant to be an all-inclusive list, but to give you ideas of where to start if this is a thing you’d like to do more of this, and maybe some general guidance on how to approach it.

This is divided into three categories: General Comments, If You Agree With the Meta, and If You Disagree With the Meta.

General:

Meta writers typically use different writing techniques than fiction writers, but they do still use them. A lot of it will be in the persuasive or rhetorical category which people are less familiar with, but if you notice them: say it!

Any comments about writing style/voice. Personally, I mix a lot of creative techniques in mine, and there are jokes and asides in there. If they made you laugh: tell me, I wanna know! If a turn of phrase haunts you or really hit you well: let us know!

Things like tone: some meta writers are more clickbait-y or aggressive, some are more wishy-washy, some more authoritative, some more authoritarian—and all of that impacts how it’s received. They might be putting a lot of effort into it.

What is the meta writer’s general approach to meta/analysis/fiction—stuff about that!

Anything you notice that seems like it took a lot of time or effort. They will appreciate you noticed!

Agree:

"I never put those together!"

"I've never seen it that way before.”

“I've never been able to put my finger on this and now it makes sense"

“I’ve never been able to articulate it”

“This would be interesting to explore in fic.”

“I wonder if this could tie into XYZ, too…”

“I wonder where the series might go with this.”

"This also has XYZ implications, too!”

“This is a similar concept I saw somewhere else"

“I really like the way this part of the story was written because XYZ”

“This is well put together because…”

Disagree:

Not all meta writers are gonna want these comments, but personally, I’m okay with them…in some circumstances. If it feels like you’re writing your own meta post, then…a little weird. If you’re opposed to my approach in general, okay, that’s frustrating. But you know what I do like?

Questions about how I got there!

“I’ve always seen it as ABC because of XYZ.”

“How do you think XYZ factors into this?”

“Do you think XYZ changes this?”

“XYZ is what I made of that.”

Stuff like that. Usually I can comment back on that and have a discussion. It’s totally possible we both have valid and yet different takes and both readings are valid! There’s a conversation to be had here!

I'm totally happy to discuss other valid readings and talk about what different readings add and why we might prefer one or the other!

The Most Favorite Comments I get on writing meta tend to be:

Anything about how this changed how you read or write, or think about reading or think about writing/writers

Anything about taking the time to sit down with stuff I write—in this world of infinite scrolling and quick bites, knowing I can entice someone into stopping that for a few minutes is better than gold

Anything about how you got more excited about writing/reading

Anything about what it makes you think of me as a fiction author (I mean…hey, I’m a person and a writer, too)

Anything about how this made reading/writing different or more fun for you

Anything about sharing my meta to discuss with other people

Anything about it making you love the media more

In Conclusion:

There’s lots of ways to interact with your meta writers, and they probably want you to.

[polyamorousmood]

How do people handle when a partner says something along the lines of...oh, what, I'm not enough? I don't feel like the notion of polyamory is about anybody not being enough. But not quite sure how to articulate that in a helpful way to reassure another person. Thoughts?

There is no in-the-moment fix to this that I've found.

That is a big concern that requires a lot of work to address. Your partner has to have an open mind, and you have a lot of explaining to do. It's a process, and you'll probably have to explain it several different ways, several different times for it to sink in.

I would caution against directly saying "you are enough" because... your partner alone won't satiate you, in one way or another. If they could, you likely wouldn't be trying/doing/asking for poly stuff (in such a mono-centric world as we live in). But I'd also be likely to bet no ONE person would satisfy you either.

Here's as good a place as any to put the very necessary read-more. There's specifics and stuff below the cut

Okay, I'm having a hard time organizing what I'm trying to get across as flowing prose so we're just doing bullet points of general advice. You know your life better than I do though so these are not hard-and-fast rules so much as consider-this-es.

🔍Find the specific worries your partner has. Without judgement work with your partner to get to the heart(s) of the issue. Are there any precise worries your partner has? When you go out to eat, your partner isn't scared their cooking isn't to your standards. So what ways are they actually worried about being "not enough for you." Sexually inadequate is a common fear, but so is the fear that they're not providing enough for you emotionally or materially, they might worry you're discontent because your hobbies don't overlap enough, or a thousand other things. There's likely general anxiety there as well, but know as much as you can about what worries your partner has.

👇Be specific with your reassurance. As discussed, saying "you are enough" is too easy to ✌️"disprove"✌️ (these are air quotes). But that's in part because its too broad. Any one thing you prefer to do with someone else can serve as "proof" the partner in question "isn't enough." So focus on what you value about your partner, what you get out of that specific relationship, what is special and un-replicatable that you enjoy. "I will always want to do [activity] with you" and "I love your way of seeing the world. When we were talking about [subject] you mentioned [interesting point]. I never would have considered that. I want to keep hearing your insight" and "I NEVER thought I'd like [whatever], but the way you love it makes me love it". You should also (if applicable, do not lie) probably assure your partner you are still committed to a long term relationship with them, including working through problems together.

🤝Help your partner build security in the relationship. Have dedicated time that's just for them Even if you're living together so everything you do is "together", make quality time. Those specific reassurances? Write them down on fancy paper and give them to your partner, so they can refer back to it when they need to. Thank your partner for coming to you with concerns, even when you're not sure what the fix is. In your daily routine you should be telling your partner things you're grateful for about them.

🧍Help your partner feel confident as an individual. The worst way to transition a relationship to polyamory is to go straight from spending every minute together to seeing other people. Perhaps counter-intuitively, you need to have separate lives, preferably before you add other people to the mix. You should spend at least a couple hours a week with friends or on hobbies away from your partner and vice versa. If you're everything to your partner, the fear of not keeping you is the fear of losing EVERYTHING, so your partner needs to see they have value outside of the relationship. And that WILL make a good relationship STRONGER, and less dependent.

⏲️Take time to work through problems.Don't let stuff fester. If you notice your partner is feeling off, say so in as many words. If they aren't ready to talk, its still helpful for them to know you notice and care about their feelings. If they do want to talk, talk. Even if you don't know how to proceed, take real time to sit together and brainstorm. If you don't reach a possible solution, establish a time to revisit it. Don't. let stuff. fester.

💭Know what you mean. "I don't feel like the notion of polyamory is about anybody not being enough" okay, what is it about? What's the draw for you? For me, whose very kitchen table, its about freedom and trust, sure, but its also very much about exploring new things and sharing that experience with my partner. I feel our love is stronger when it is not bogged down by petty mortal notions of exclusivity.

📘📗📙📕Explain your needs multiple different ways. Find several metaphors that describe how you feel. "My favorite meal cannot be my breakfast, lunch, and dinner." "It doesn't feel different to me than friends. You're my best friend but I wouldn't say no to hanging out with a work friend for my best friend's sake." "The sun is beautiful, I cannot live without it, but its also really important I get to see the stars". "I can't do monogamy. I tried really hard in the past, but it felt like cutting off a limb. I wasn't wholly myself, I could still feel phantom sensations of what wasn't. It drove me mad" Whatever you feel suits the situation. Be prepared to go into detail, be prepared to explain the shortcomings of your metaphor, and be aware of what negative associations your metaphors my have (for example, the food metaphor listed here may be misinterpreted as "so you're sick of me"). Make it personal.

🙋Its not you, its me. but like fr. DO NOT use that wording, but emphasize that your wants and feelings and needs are not caused by your partner. They are yours (and you're asking your partner to help you meet those wants/feelings/needs by allowing you some poly freedom).

📑Further reading. I talk about how to communicate effectively here. Here's a little workbook about "jealousy" but I think it also applies to in/security so it may be helpful for your partner to do independently or with you. Some explanations as to how your partner might be hurt by you having other partners. And lastly, I haven't read Polysecure (yet!) but uhhh, gonna go out on a limb here and say might be applicable (my library has a copy! so you might check yours if you don't want to purchase). And last but certainly not least, though again, nominally about jealousy, I think this article really suits your situation and offers some reframings your partner may find helpful.

As a final word of advice: hear your partner out. Your goal, ultimately is not to change your partner's mind, but to reach an understanding. You both will have to work toward understanding each other for there to be any hope of success.

[bellatrixobsessed1]

I Am Blackened Bones (Part 30)

It is strange to see her again. The real Azula. The Azula that he has always known.

It is stranger still to talk to her again. Without the spirit to intervene. 

And strangest yet to see the Azula that he has always known with her rigid, stiff posture and her well-articulated speaking patterns. But at the same time see someone else, with a more welcoming aura and a twinkle of curiosity in her eye—he can see it every time she spots one of the Fire Nation’s newer innovations, a building with a different material make, a new type of machine, newer forms of firebending…

“What do you think?”

Azula gives the street another up and down glance. “It’s different.” She replies. “That building wasn’t there before. And those statutes.” 

He wonders if it stings at all for her to see that there isn’t one of her standing near the other golden likenesses of he and his friends. If it does she makes no mention of it. “I can probably have them make one of you…”

“Huh?” 

“The statues. I could have one made…”

“What for?” 

“What do you mean? To commemorate your memory…”

“I’m still alive.”

“Your legacy.” He corrects. 

“I’m still making that?” She tilts her head. 

He almost laughs. He can’t believe that enough time has passed for him to forget that she has such a blunt manner of speaking. That she thinks so differently than the way he does. He holds that laugh back lest she get the wrong idea. 

“At any rate, statues are creepy. I don’t understand the appeal.”

“How so?”

“Why do people enjoy staring at their own faces so much? It’s uncanny. That barely even looks like you.” She pauses. “Well it does but there is something off about it. Something that isn’t quite right. That doesn’t bother you?”

Zuko shakes his head. “I never really saw it that way. I think that it’s a nice gesture of respect. A way to remember my accomplishments.”

“You can’t just remember them in your own brain?” She pauses. Before he can speak she adds, “I suppose that I am the wrong person to speak about remembering things that are important.” She pauses again. “From a historical standpoint I suppose that means of commemoration are useful.” She nods more to herself than him. “I’d rather just have a my accomplishments inscribed and then that scroll can hang in a pretty little frame on a wall somewhere.”

“What about portraits?” He asks. “You never minded those.”

“As far as you were aware. I don’t like having to sit for them; there are better uses for my time. Especially since I don’t look at them often.” She sighs. “But it would be quite bizarre if there isn’t a face to put to inscribed stories. I should probably go for an updated portrait, lest future historians think that I died as a child.”

“But no statues?”

“If you erect a statue of me I will personally see to it that it is taken down. If I want to look at my face I will do so in a reflection in a pond as nature had intended.” 

“You have a mirror at home… you’re joking right now.” He states. “You made a joke?”

“I am capable of doing that now and again, yes.” She replies. “I was not, however, joking about getting rid of any statute that resembles me.” 

This isn’t the way that he imagined that his first conversation with her since her arrival would go. Frankly he had imagined stress. He had imagined shouting and scowls and maybe tears. He hadn’t imagined jokes and laughing. He hadn’t imagined feeling a flutter of joy upon seeing her curiously observing the town that she had been deprived of for too long.

And he realizes that he doesn't need an apology just yet. Not vocally, anyways. She has her own way about apologizing. A way that makes her feel safe and he supposes that he shouldn’t push her to do it his way.

It is rather nice talking to her now that father isn’t whispering in her ear.

Now that father isn’t whispering in his ear.

Now that she has had at least a little bit of time to become Azula instead of just an extension of their father. He supposes that he should share this with Mai. Ask her to be patient with Azula. She’ll find the words eventually. Right now, her ability to joke with him and speak mundanely is good enough.

“Are you ready for your homecoming ceremony tonight?” He asks. “I figured that while we were here we can find something new for you to wear.” 

Azula shrugs. “It’s just a homecoming ceremony, there isn’t too much to worry about.” 

He knows that she is lying. If only because his homecoming after three years had been one of the most stressful moments of his life. He puts a hand on her shoulder. “I saw this one hair piece that I thought that you’d like.”

“Alright.” 

.oOo.

Azula smooths her hand down the front of her silks. And she is decorated under layers and layers of it. Pretty red and gold fabrics in varying patterns that drape her arms and flow out and voluminously from beneath the golden sash a her hip. A large ruby with a gold filigree frame pins it in place. 

She hadn’t realized just how long her hair had grown until a team of servants, mostly new faces but one or two that she recognizes, begin pilling it up and fixing it in place with ribbons and hair sticks. The style is quite elaborate, more so than she is used to. And they assure her that they will have it styled twice as elegantly—with hair sticks with dangling crystals and dragon accents and golden hair combs—when it comes time to reinstate her title and place a crown back on her head. She can only imagine what the robes will look like then. There will probably be enough layers and components to make walking a challenge. 

They promise the same of her makeup. Of which they currently tint her lips with. The look is quite simple, they wing her eyeliner the way that she likes and add a touch of red to make it pop. The pat color onto her cheeks. They insist that she has grown quite pale since her trip to the Water Tribe and that they need to add some sunlight back to her complexion. 

It is more lavish than she had been dressed in a very long time, she had forgotten that these dresses make her feel uncomfortable. As terribly as she had missed her spa and the pampering that came with it, she very much does not enjoy the heavy robes. 

It shouldn’t be so hard, Lo and Li will do the talking for her. All she has to do is stand and look poised and presentable. Has to make it look as though she had been through nothing extraordinary.

It is a rather dull affair in spite of the pomp. Lo and Li are enthusiastic and speak with life in their voices but tend to draw speeches out just long enough for the excitement to start to wane. Azula looks down upon the crowd. It is more colorful with a dotting of blue and green with a field of red. It isn’t just her own people that welcome her back home. And maybe some people in the crows are also being welcomed home, for some of them this very well could be their first time standing in Royal Plaza. Their first time seeing Fire Nation royalty in person. 

Everything is so different now. She has been gone for so long. 

But she thinks that she is finally ready to be back. 

Yes, looking down upon the crowd, she thinks that she is. 

If an entire nation can change and change so beautifully then so can she. 

Lo and Li fall silent and revel fills the plaza. Cheers. Claps. Lively chatter. 

Her nation welcomes her with more warmth than the Fire Nation had ever had in the past. She finds herself smiling if only slightly. 

“Welcome home, Azula.” Zuko drapes his arm around her neck. 

“Thank you.” 

He holds his arms out and she sighs. “Fine. Once. Just this once.” He gives her a small squeeze. Just a quick little hug. She supposes that she didn’t hate it. The crowd certainly didn’t. Their claps begin a new. And that is how she knows the long time citizens from the newcomers; a good many of them had probably been waiting for a good long while to see the royal family whole and undivided. 

Whole and undivided like herself. 

.oOo.

“How do I look, Katara?”

“I told you that…”

“I look great.” Azula finishes. “But are you just saying that to get me to relax and move on or do you actually mean it. I don’t enjoy it when people say things just to spare my feelings.” Maybe it is comparison that does her in; she had been dressed so lavishly the night before that the outfit that she has picked for herself feels frumpy and dull. Her hair, loose and unstyled save for the brush she had let Katara run through it, falls to her hips. At least it looks nice.

“While I am very much hoping that we can move on with this, I also actually do mean it. You’ve always been really good at dressing yourself and taking care of yourself.”

“But I was in a jungle for years.” Moreover she was crawling around on all fours, covered in fire for a good portion of those years. She imagines that at least one or two crucial details about Caldera city fashion, she certainly isn’t up to date on the latest styles in Caldera City. Frankly she thinks that she has stuck too rigidly to the way that she used to dress. 

Katara pulls her in and kisses her on the cheek. “We’re having a double date with Zuko and Mai, you’re not making a big speech.”

Azula grimaces. “Not yet.” She is almost angry that she is so nervous. She has never had a problem with speeches and public appearances in the past. 

She had always been so deeply integrated in societies norms, had always been prepped and coached on exactly what to say, what people wanted to hear. Her words were seldom her own and now they want her to, in a sense, speak from the heart. 

Katara massages her shoulders. “You’re getting really tense again; don’t think about that right now.”

“But this speech is going to be a very pivotal one. It is going to shape how everyone views me going forward.” And she is going to need one mighty eloquent, competent, and pretty speech if she is going to undo the damage done to her reputation on the day of the comet.

“They seemed perfectly happy with you during your homecoming ceremony. And besides you have two whole weeks to prepare. One thing at a time, okay.” She offers Azula’s shoulders a firm squeeze. “Tonight let’s get through dinner and making up with Mai.”

Azula cringes.

Making up with Mai…

The prospect is thrice as intimidating as the prospect of making a re-coronation speech. At least she has some framework for what a good speech will sound like.

“You’re going to do fine. Tonight and during your coronation speech.” Katara promises. “Now let’s head out. I know that you like to be punctual.” In a grumble she adds. “And by that you usually mean at least an hour early.”

She does indeed. “I would like to leave ample time in case I see something that catches my eye. Caldera has changed so much.” 

“Are you admitting that you might get distracted?”

“I am admitting that it would only be proper to adequate re-familiarize myself with the city that I rule over…but yes perhaps there might be one or two things that I simply find fascinating.”

Katara flashes her a smile. “Alright then. Fair enough.”

They will probably still arrive an hour early. She had accounted for that.

.oOo.

She hasn’t been to this restaurant since she was a child. It had been her favorite at some point or another. It was always a delight when they handed her the ingredients and let her do some of the cooking. Not that she was particularly good at it. Mostly she liked watching the flames dance. Zuzu’s meals alway came out burnt. Hers did too…probably worse. And so it was up to mother and father to make an edible meal. Most of the time father burned his food too and they were one torched chunk of hippo-cow meat away from calling their chef back to do all of the work.

Mother was good at cooking…

Azula wraps her arms around herself. She is starting to wish that she and Katara hadn’t arrived first. Starting to wish that she had let herself get more distracted. Or that the two of them should have joined Mai and Zuko at the botanical garden but she needed the time to get dressed. Needed time to prepare herself to see her former friend. It is admittedly overwhelming to do, having just gone through her homecoming ceremony and the accompanying dinner the night before. Not that she isn’t pleased to be having plenty of fine Fire Nation cuisine again with all of the spices and all of the richer flavors. It tastes like home. It tastes like normalcy. It is nice to have at least a touch of that after so very long.

Just when Azula is getting comfortable, the figures of Mai and Zuko appear in the doorway. Azula finds herself relieved to know that Mai hasn’t changed all that much. Her hair is longer but she hasn’t changed the way that she puts it up and her bangs are cut exactly the same way. She still has the same somewhat downcast gaze. But she is taller now, much taller. Taller than Zuko even. And she wears dark lipstick. She stands with her hands in her pockets and her lips pressed together. 

“So you got yourself turned into some type of spirit.” Mai says in a way of a greeting. Azula swears that there is a hint of humor in her voice. “That must be quite a story.” 

Azula thinks for a moment. “I don’t remember it all too well.” She thinks that she may never recall all of the details. And maybe that is for the best. Maybe she isn’t supposed to know exactly who or what had put the spirit curse on her. She can’t imagine that the memory would be all too friendly. “Just that it had been storming one night and I came by this old, abandoned temple. It had a spirit protecting it…or it could be that the temple was made for that spirit. Either which way it wanted an offering of some sort for intruding in its temple. I didn’t have anything to give…” She trails off. 

“And…?”

Azula shrugs. “And then a blank space where a memory should be. I think that I had argued with the Spirit. Possibly.” 

Zuko pulls out a chair. “How was your walk?”

“I found this shop that sells little handmade dragon egg sculptures…”

“I thought that you said that you didn’t like…”

“Statutes, Zuzu. Those are unsettling. Sculptures are fine. Especially the egg shaped ones that would make for a very lovely homecoming gift.” She reaches for her tongs as their server places raw ingredients on the table. At its center is a somewhat large pit full of coals. “I understand that you enjoy honor…”

“I do not talk about honor that much.”

“...So I invite you to do the honor of lighting our cooking fire.”

“I haven’t seen you firebend in ages, you can light the fire, the blue would create a nice ambiance.”

“Yes. About that…” 

“Your fire is orange now?” Mai frowns slightly. 

Azula ignites the coals in a brillant flare of white.

“When did that happen?” Mai asks. 

“When I merged with the fire spirit.” This, of course requires a lengthy explanation that she gives while the four of them fight to make an at least semi-appetizing looking meal.

“I think that your fire is too hot, Azula.” Katara frowns. 

“That or you aren’t a good chef.”

“I have never burnt a single meal in my life! Not until now!” She insists. 

Azula rolls her eyes. “Alright, fine.” She snuffs her own flames and gestures for Zuko to set the pit ablaze once more. “But don’t blame the spices when you still can’t create a good meal.”

“Some of these Fire Nation dishes are more complicated then what I’m used to cooking.” Katara insists. 

“We’re going to be eating poorly tonight, aren’t we?” Zuko grumbles.  

“So, why Katara?” Mai asks. “I never imagined that the two of you would get on so well.” 

“Katara can tell you that one. My throat is growing sore. Unlike Katara’s brother, sometimes I get tired of talking.” By the end of Katara’s recanting of their adventure, she finds herself picking at her plate with slightly pinkened cheeks. 

Zuko’s mouth hangs agape so it is up to Mai to confirm, “so the two of you are…dating?

Azula nods. 

“Good luck.” Mai mutters. 

“Who are you wishing luck to, Mai? And why would Katara need it?”

“And good luck to you, Mai. That whole family is a handful.”

“Trust me. I know.” 

They are laughing. All four of them are laughing. She had never imagined that she would be laughing with Mai again. With Mai and Zuzu. To be frank, there had been a time when she didn’t think that she would be able to laugh or smile again. Let alone, mostly untroubled. Maybe next time TyLee will be sitting with them too. Katara cups her hand over Azula��s.

They never do make an edible looking meal.

[weirdestcornelius]

A little Sketchbook fluff fic for all the slappers out there. . .it had to be done, I don't make the rules. It's been a hot minute since I've written anything so apologies if this seems rough lmao.

This whole thing is building off what I said about Sly helping Scrap design a fersona for him to express himself. I accidentally projected onto Sly. Btw. I cannot promise that it won't happen again.

Scrap was laying on the floor of the Comet family's house, as he usually did on the weekends. But this time was quite different; it was the floor of Sly's room rather than Eve's. The bright green fox was sitting close to him, her drawing tablet in her gloved hands.

Scrap knew why Sly wore gloves, he had heard of it in fens mind multiple times. She picked at her nails out of nervous habit, and the gloves were something that she wore to "keep everyone from having something else to pick on me for" in fens own words. Well, thoughts was probably a better way to describe it.

The two had just been sitting in silence for a while, the only noise filling the room being the quiet scratching of Sly's stylist against her drawing tablet. But after a while, Scrap spoke.

". . .what are you drawing?"

That was probably a bit of a dumb question. Scrap already knew a rough idea of what the answer would be. He knew it was something about some sort of fersona thing, but he still wanted to know what it actually looked like; the way that Sly's mind buzzed with happiness anytime she was drawing told Scrap everything he needed to know about the contentment that the character brought her.

Sly's fur spiked a bit at the sudden words, though fen hesitantly looked down at Scrap's lying form. Nobody has ever asked to see her art besides her family, and well. . .that hadn't really gotten fen any nice remarks that really felt nice. Every compliment her family gave her felt so hollow, compared to all of the insults that were hurled at her. Those, fen felt whole and completely. Scrap could hear her mind swimming with negative thoughts, and he couldn't hide the frown under his paper mask.

"I'm not gonna- make fun of you or anything. You know I already know what you're drawing, kind of. I just want to see. If you're comfortable."

Sly exhaled slowly through her nose. Right. It was a bit weird, knowing someone who could read your thoughts. . .but it was also nice in a weird way. Sly had a hard time articulating all her negative feelings into words, but fen didn't even have to do that with Scrap. It was a relieving kind of weird. Besides, Scrap had never made fun of her for anything else before.

"uhm- yeah, okay. It's not that good though, so don't expect an actual work of art or anything-"

Sly nervously turned the drawing tablet towards Scrap, letting him see what she had been drawing. It was nothing fancy, just a few messy sketches of Stroke and some of her friends fersonas. They were a bit rushed, but clear for the most part.

Scrap could already hear Sly's mind going off in all sorts of directions. He almost winced at how loud it was in there.

"oh Tears, is he going to make fun of it? It's stupid, yeah- it's stupid. I'm going to be called something like coxgirl for the rest of my life- he's being quiet because he doesn't like it, isn't he? That was so stupid, so stu-"

Scrap abruptly cut off the flood of thoughts, his ears flicking as he sat up.

"Hey, those are pretty cool! What are their names?"

Good, a distraction was just what Sly needed. The ears of the fox flattened as they tilted back purely from surprise. Most of her family just said "cool" or "cute" in response to fens art. Nobody had ever asked her about it. Scrap kept his smile visible despite the sadness that creeped onto him hearing this in Sly's mind. Jeez, he really needed to get her out of this place someday.

"O-oh- well, the blue one is Stroke- she's my fersona. She's a cox and dragon hybrid, but it was honestly just because I wanted her to have wings- it's a pretty stupid reason, but yeah"

"it's not that stupid, I probably couldn't name a single person who doesn't think wings are cool"

Scrap laid his hands in his lap as Sly's eyes brightened. It was a nice change, hearing good things from fens head rather than just self hatred and dysphoria. Sly hesitated to speak, a smile forming on the corners of her mouth.

". . .yeah-! That was my thought process too! I've always wondered what it would be like to fly, or just have them to use as extra hands- imagine how cool that would be!"

Sly's smile became a bit more solemn as she looked down at her drawing tablet, her gloved hands resting on its corners.

"I could just fly away from all my problems. It's- kind of freeing to have Stroke. It's like I can live my life through her."

Scrap felt a bit bad for Sly for that last sentence- but the bad feeling was much, much worse in Sly's own head. It had already started to swarm with thoughts of all the things Eve has done to her, how it was hard to even live fens real life because of how bad she felt.

But Scrap could fix that. Not forever, but just for a moment. Sly needed- no, deserved even just a moment of content happiness.

". . .What do you think my fersona would be?"

Perfect distraction. Sly's ears perked up almost instantly, fens eyes drifting back towards Scrap instead of staring down at her drawing tablet.

". . .well, you seem like a drat to me- but like, maybe a cyclops drat. Since you have one eye and all-"

Scrap smiled under his mask. Maybe he wasn't able of fixing every problem in Sly's life, no matter how much he so desperately wanted to; but he could make life happier for her, if only for a few moments.

"Really? How would that work?"

Two hours later, Scrap is standing in the driveway of the Comet household, holding a piece of notebook paper with a few doodles of a bipedal drat drawn onto it in blue pen; with one eye, just like Scrap.

He stared at the paper for a moment, the same smile on his face that had been on Sly's own just a few minutes prior. He slowly slipped his backpack off his shoulder, unzipping it to grab the red folder he kept in its large pocket. He opened it, shuffling a few half drawn faces to one side to keep the left pocket empty.

Then, he put the paper inside.

[ach-sss-no]

Things I do if i'm stuck on a WIP

I keep seeing memes about people fighting with their WIPs so maybe you could use some handy weapons?

Some of these are passed around pretty often, but they're in here again because I personally found them useful, as opposed to the common advice I see passed around that has never helped me whatsoever, also, you never know when it's someone's first time seeing something or when it might be worded in a way that makes it more understandable.

Some of these are more useful when you have some options for how to proceed with your story but can't decide on one, and won't be as helpful if you can see no way to proceed.

These are intended primarily for writing and many don't really have other applications I can think of, but some of these strategies should also work for any creative thing you're trying to do that is not progressing in the way you want it to.

Disclaimer: Sometimes none of these work. Good luck!

CRIPES, I'm Stuck

Complain

Tell someone (or pretend to tell someone) who does not know the inner workings of your story all about your story problem in as much detail as you can articulate. The more detail the better, including what events led up to this point and what you want to achieve going forward. Go all the way back to what the main premise is, even. When I do this I often end up figuring out the problem while I am describing it and never even send the message, which is why this can be an imaginary conversation if input from another human is not desired and/or available for whatever reason. You can also tell your problems to your cat, dog, tarantula, or Pokémon team! BONUS: Those things are all cheaper than a therapist!

Randomize

If you have multiple ideas for how to go forward and are paralyzed because you can see no greater or lesser value in any of them, great news! The machine can be trusted! (Disclaimer: The machine cannot be trusted) Go to random.org and use the list randomizer to scramble your potential plot options. Pick the one on top. If you realize you're unhappy with it, examine why. Whatever reason why you've decided you don't like that option after all will help guide you towards what you should be doing instead.

Got any kind of two option yes/no, pass/fail, success/disaster question? Flip a coin! This can be done digitally if you don't have coins lying around (I usually don't myself).

There is also the tried and true method of dice-rolling, which can also be done via app if you don't have dice of the desired type or you've lost yours.

Really stuck? Showrunner's challenge.

Iterate

This is both the least efficient one and the thing I do the most often. Writing a scene? Not sure how it should go? Just write different versions of it until something sticks.

Every time you feel unhappy with the scene, back up to the point that led to whatever you're not jiving with, cut it, and start over from there. I recommend saving all of your different versions so you can reconsider or do some horrific Frankenstein cut-and-paste later.

Like I said: horrendously inefficient. it doesn't have to be pretty... it just has to exist.

Play

Go do something else totally unrelated to writing. Just go do something else you enjoy. Just take a break. Your brain may actually fix your story problem when you ignore it and let it run in the background, and if it doesn't, you get a break. No downside! Chances are, you've heard that before. I'm telling you again because I so often fall prey to the 'but my break will be more satisfying if I fix the problem first' well, it's not getting fixed and I am not equipped to fix it right now or it would be fixed already, so it's break time now.

Work on another project that seems more fun to you at the moment. Battering your head against your current WIP because you think you "should" work on it instead of whatever shinier idea is in your head is probably not helping you progress on that project. Working on something else as a treat may jog your brain to unstuck you from your main idea, and if not, it will lead to a new creative product existing, and even if it never gets finished, you've tricked yourself into thinking art is fun again. No downside!

There's nothing wrong with adding [placeholderlmao] and going on to a part of the story you like better. In fact, knowing what happens later may help you fix the problem point (assuming you don't already know because you either don't work from an outline, or your story has diverged so wildly from the outline that it's not helpful anymore)

Edit

Depending on the length of your project and whether you have already declared parts of it off-limits this may not apply; but if you don't want to go forward right now, it may be a good time to go back and edit what you already have written. Sometimes when I do this I will see a stray idea I mentioned earlier that I can follow up on now, and that gives me a new path forward. I'll also sometimes discover that, while my current story problem is manifesting at my sticking point, the cause of it happened much earlier and needs to be addressed farther back in the story (and once that's done I'm not stuck anymore!) Just like pulling crabgrass out by the roots.

Did you have an outline that has stopped tracking with your story? Maybe you should go look at that outline and revise it to the new version, or at least remind yourself of what you thought was important to put in it. If nothing else, doing this should help you think differently about your story.

Steal

That's right! There are millions on billions of stories out there. Just like infinitely variable humans are built upon skeletons that look very similar, your story is uniquely yours, but its underlying structure probably follows a pattern that other stories with similar goals have used since human communication began. So go look up a story you enjoy that includes a similar scene to the one you're struggling with, and look at what it did to fix the problem you're having. Chances are, there's a way to map that onto your story while keeping your version unique, or at least you can get some helpful hints. Do expand beyond the medium you're working in. There's a lot that novels/movies/games/etc do differently, but basic story beats and interactions between characters are pretty consistent things across anything that's telling a story. If I'm looking for a model for a scene, I always look for something with a similar plot, theme or character dynamic that I thought was done well.

Alternately, do you know of a story that tried to do what you're doing and failed spectacularly? Go look closely at that and see why it's not working. Then ask yourself how those problems could have been avoided. The solution you arrive at may apply to your story as well, or at least lead in the right direction. Alternately-alternately: Do it wrong on purpose for the fun of it and fix it later (or don't fix it later)

Just have no ideas? Hang out with stories with the vibes you want until something clicks. When I was doing this fancomic, I watched The Emperor's New Groove a lot.

Well, there you go. If you think I missed something- which I absolutely did, because the creative process is very individual and there are some highly successful things I never, ever do and can't speak on because I am restricting myself to things I have personally done and found helpful-

-please add it on to this post, and make it longer and longer until no one is ever stuck on a WIP ever again (✿◡‿◡) because they are all too busy reading this infinitely long post to start any projects!

[leaderbond]

I got halfway through filling out this character questionnaire from here before I got bored and overwhelmed. I probably won't do the rest, but there's no point in wasting all I wrote.

Preferred name/nickname: Dwight

Full name: Dwight Fairfield

Generally referred to as: Dwight

Appearance.

FACECLAIM: I don't like finding face claims. I tend to imagine characters better by drawing them.

SEX: Cis male. As a trans man, I identify a lot with Dwight, but there's complicated gender and sexuality things at play here for me personally that make me write him as cis.

HEIGHT: 5'5". Very short for an American man.

WEIGHT: Idk. Light. Easy to pick up and put on a meat hook.

BUILD: "Skinny-fat," ie, skinny but with no muscle definition and a little bit of a belly.

HAIR: He has short, messy hair that tends to defy gravity. Sideburns, but he prefers to be clean-shaven. He doesn't always succeed at that because his hair grows dark and fast and shaving takes a lot of energy to do every day.

SKIN: Pale and smooth.

EYES: Big brown doe eyes. Long lashes. He looks like a Disney princess, except for the extremely prominent dark circles.

MOUTH: Small mouth with plump lips. Teeth are pretty average. He had braces, but they're still a little bit crooked because he doesn't wear his retainer.

NOSE: Very average, unremarkable nose.

HANDS: Hands are bigger than his scrawny lanky arms but not huge. Delicate and soft. He's worked very hard in his life but not at much that would build callouses. Quite nail-bitten, though.

FEET: Average.

SCARS: No scars, and it's a bit eerie, considering the amount of time spent on a meat hook.

CLOTHES: A lot of his time is spent in work clothes, which are whatever the job requires. His personal style is very "nerdy millennial man." He tries super hard, but his fashion sense is not always impeccable.

Speech.

VOICECLAIM: None.

ACCENT: American accent. Slightly Midwestern.

VERBAL TICKS: He stutters and stumbles over his words frequently, but it's definitely more nerves than anything else.

LANGUAGE: English. He took Spanish in high school and got a D.

ARTICULATION: He's surprisingly good with words. He doesn't think he is, because he's awkward socially, but he's good at accomplishing his goals with words, which are usually to get people to feel at ease and accomplishing tasks.

LAUGHTER: He has a soft, clear laugh. He smiles and laughs easily when someone is being nice to him.

GRUMP: Sometimes. He mostly keeps it to himself and tries not to be negative, but if he's comfortable with you he might go off about rude people occasionally.

BREATHING: His breathing is quite expressive. It catches and gasps and speeds up according to anxiety and other moods.

Mannerisms.

FACE: Very expressive face. He can't hide his emotions at all. But usually that emotion is anxiety.

HANDS: He gestures when he's feeling confident and in charge, which usually happens by accident. When he's self-conscious, he tries to make himself as small as possible and keeps his hands to himself.

LEGS/FEET: Constantly bouncing his leg from anxiety. He feels like it's annoying. He can't help it.

EMOTIONAL OUTBURSTS: Rarely. He's very cool-headed under pressure and deals with his emotions later when he's alone or with someone he trusts. He does have panic attacks, though.

HABITS: Rocks back and forth very often. He doesn't realize he's doing it.

POSTURE: Bad posture. He slouches hardcore, trying to make himself take up as little space as possible.

WALKING POSTURE: Cautious.

SITTING POSTURE: Crosses his legs protectively and (again) takes up as little space as he can. The opposite of manspreading.

PERSONAL SPACE: Extremely respectful of not getting in others' personal space. Too respectful, even, because he thinks he's getting in the way when other people are attempting to show him physical affection.

SPACIAL AWARENESS: Clumsy.

Health:

DIET: Mostly cheap, easy-to-make food. He doesn't like cooking and doesn't have a lot of energy, so he gets about as fancy as hamburger helper.

SLEEP: Very poor quality. Has a lot of trouble falling asleep.

EXERCISE: Only as much as his current job requires. In DBD verse, he's constantly running, but his body resets from dying too often to build up any muscle.

ACTIVITY: He uses up all his energy on work and spends the rest of the time not being able to do much.

CLEANLINESS: He's clean, but when he knows he's not going to see anyone for a few days he will put off showering until the last minute because he has so little energy.

ODOUR: Not really anything in particular. Just sort of smells like Dwight.

MEDICINAL DRUGS: He takes a lot of pills every night for anxiety and depression. In DBD verse, he's been off them the entire time he's been in the Fog, which is probably not helping.

NARCOTICS: He's done weed, but he hated the smoke and smell. It made him cough like crazy. He was taken by the Fog in 2016, when weed was just starting to become legalized in America, so he was starting to experiment with edibles a little before that. He liked those much better.

ADDICTIONS: He doesn't play gacha games because he knows he's too susceptible to wasting money on them.

ILLNESS: A smorgasbord of mental illnesses, as well as migraines and IBS, aka constant head and tummy aches that are accentuated by stress.

INJURIES: Often.

PARASITES: No.

Personal.

INTROVERT/EXTROVERT?: Introvert.

OPTIMIST/PESSIMIST: Optimist, despite everything.

GENDER: Soft butch male.

SEXUALITY: Bisexual, but also demisexual. He's not attracted to people he's not already close to and he has a low sex drive.

ROMANTIC: Hopeless romantic, but with very little experience.

MEMORY: Pretty good.

PLANNING: He'd much rather have a plan than not.

PENSIVE: Very.

INTUITION: A lot of emotional intuition, not much practical intuition.

PROBLEM SOLVING: Good. He's clever, even if he doesn't think he is.

GOALS: To make life as much better as he can for the people around him.

INSECURITIES: Everything.

ACHIEVEMENTS: He doesn't think so.

ANXIETY: Always.

OVERWHELMED: The majority of the time.

SELF-HELP: He's been in therapy but it didn't help much and he couldn't afford it for long. It taught him enough to try and catch himself when he's starting unhealthy thought patterns. He's not always super good at it.

COMFORTS: He doesn't require much to be comforted. He likes escaping into fantasy with geeky things like movies and video games and not having to go to work or a trial. He's mostly comforted by being around people who care about him.

[tennesseewalkinghorse]

posting about getting hurt by a friend on sideblog because i am like deeply wounded and don't feel like i have a right to be and don't want to hurt her so i can't talk to her lol

i feel really awful because one of my best friends really hurt me without really directly meaning to and i feel like i don't have a right to be upset but i'm like. really wounded and heartbroken. like in a way that makes it worse? short version is friend and i have been planning to watch glee together for like. literal years. like i'm a media sociologist who does a lot of research on that time period of tv and part of that is my attachment to blaine specifically. and for years i've said if you watch season one i will jump in at never been kissed because that's where i start so you should start and stop there. and she's always been like yes i will do this.

so this friend started watching season one with me and i was like you can keep going with your other friend (staying with her rn) until you get to [episodes in late season one]. she watches the first episode and i go ok well she'll probably stop before the second one. i go away on a trip. i come back and say lets pick the show up again. turns out she's gotten halfway into season 2 without me and WITH THE OTHER FRIEND. WHO HASN'T SEEN THE SHOW AND HAS NO ATTACHMENT TO IT.

and so i feel like essentially what's happened is one of my best friends has taken this experience that is not only like, intimately personal to me because of how that season affected me personally, but something we have talked about doing together for ages, and gave it to someone else who it literally doesn't matter to out of ?? convenience?? callousness?

like a friend who i've always trusted to be there for me for the first time actively chose someone else in something that is supposed to be about me sharing a part of myself i can't often articulate without like, blaine anderson doing it for me, with this friend. and that's not something you can really get on a rewatch because by then you've already had your first impressions, and further when you've watched it with someone else you've had THEIR first impressions. and so this friend is like we can rewatch it and you can tell me all the lore but i feel like. physically ill when i think about that and also just very upset at how she's misunderstood why it's so important to me. it's not about the lore it's about me.

i'm never really the kind of person who likes to ruffle feathers, and i'm more often than not the kind of person who will say something isn't a big deal and take it in stride (this is horse training in action lol). but i'm honestly so brokenhearted about this, like i've been crying on and off since this happened yesterday and i can't think about this friend or that show without feeling like crushingly depressed. but i know this friend is having a hard time right now and i don't want to pile on to that, because if someone did that to me i'd never get out of that headspace. there's also the fact that even if i did explain to her why i'm feeling so awful like, it might feel better to be understood, but the damage is done she can't unwatch it with the other friend. so all i'd be doing is making her feel worse. and then there's a part of me that goes well good! she should feel as bad as you do! but like, that's not a part of me i want to drive the bus.

then of course there's the way in which i'm disenfranchising the whole thing because like it SHOULDN'T be a big deal. it's a fucking b rated tv show. but it is. like it feels so so awful. i don't know what to do except give it time, but i don't want to give it so much time my friend thinks i hate her.

[bluefellow]

Yeah I totally know , I think women can love and feel deeper in general just because we are mother's, daughter's, and sisters we bond stronger because of years of evolution we are better care givers & sympathizers. I love to make my life harder than it needs to be, my creativity steams from pain & when I'm hurt is when I feel the most real. But I'm still afraid of it because I used to not take care of my pain properly & didn't know how to cope with it so I'd suffer & not take anything from it - -but now I know what good can come of bad & I know how to protect myself when needed even if I do build a wall more often than I probably ought to I no longer do it to the point where I become completely numb. I am glad to hear you're sweet & rough, my favorite combination. ❤❤❤

Aw good that makes me feel very nice ! I would love to share with you some of my writing, I have books of it but that page was the only one anyone has ever seen of it before. Yeah I can wrap my head around sorrow a lot better than happiness. I feel like I deserve pain more than happiness so when I do feel happy I'm usually trying to find a way to sabotage that & I've done some pretty fucked up shit just to hurt myself. I am different now though I feel , I have had to learn through years of being

Stuck in my own head how to avoid hurting people around me & instead just effect myself. I used to be really good at ruining relationships before I really understood the fact that I have unbalanced chemicals in my brain & now I try really hard to focus on growing relationships with people I love & care about positively because I know what it means to be ugly & hurt & I don't want people I consider family or friends to feel that way. I think the only way to be truly happy is if you've truly been

Unhappy & of course there is no light without the dark & everyone suffers on their own levels & it is all valid but I tend to be more attracted to people who have really been through the ringer just because I can relate to that on such a deeper level since that's been the majority of my young adult life. Most people don't know what to do when you have bad days & I don't really ever expect people to handle me well when I'm bad but that's just because I often don't handle my own self well during

Those times. Yeah I have a pretty cynical outlook on the majority of human beings. There are a handful of accaptions where I meet a phenomenal person & that is what I think makes this wild life worth it

I love having conversations like this with people like you, it's a rare thing to come by for me. I rest my head on the glory of sorrow & more people find that hard to swallow so when someone can relate it makes me feel a little less lonely. That's exactly what I think I need to start doing. I have more words going through my head than I will ever be able to articulate but most of the time people think I just don't have words to say but the case usually is I just don't want to be the one to speak

Them. I'm not one for small talk so I tend to keep it short until someone mentions something that Sparks my interest but I want to try to be the one to open others up instead of waiting for someone else to. I just don't handle misunderstanding well so I can get offended if someone interprests something I say wrong espically when I'm opening up the parts of myself that I actually need to put effort into in order to reveal them. I will try to make them understand where I'm coming from but if in

The end they still can't seem to comprehend that's when I know I can't get along with them in a sense of how I'd want to be able to get along with people I choose to spend my time w. & That's when I can get bitchy also because I have little patience for people who have had it easy & haven't been exposed to real shit. But I just need to remember that it's not usually their fault & I think no matter how well one can word their thoughts people who've never experienced something similar will never

Be able to actually understand & all that I really am looking for in people is the ability to empathize. I totally feel like I can convey my feelings much more effectively through art. People can have more time to see what it means & truly think about it. Often in verbal conversation people are not mentally present & as soon as someone is finished saying something , rather than thinking about what they just said, they are thinking of what they will say next & that's where I think miscommunication

Comes in & where people get hurt when they put emotion into their words & notice the other person has thrown that away.

[jesfern]

Okay but genuinely I actually have problems with reblogging like it is actually somewhat nerve-racking for me to reblog stuff and I really need to get over it, so I'm going to try and explain why because I sort of know but have never really fully articulated it, and where better to deconstruct my problems than a random tumblr post.

So there are a few contributing factors here:

- I was really shy as a child, like I literally could not speak to strangers like physically could not say anything to them. I remember on one occasion when I was probably about 4 or 5 I was in the lunch hall at school, and these boys who were a few years older than me asked me what 1 +1 was. I said nothing, and they laughed at me, but I remember my thoughts in that moment being "I do know, it's 2, I'm just not saying it to you". I couldn't say something to anyone I didn't know well. I have never been able to quite place why, but I did get better at it. If someone asks me a question I will answer it nowadays. But I think part of it is still very much in me. There's no way I could open up to a stranger in the way I see some people doing. I can speak when spoken to. I can't do anything out of turn really, I can say things that are normal, but still seize up when I'm trying to say something else. However I think I'm still definitely making progress on this one especially because I got real life friends who share my interests, and it has helped me so much with confessing things I care about, because suddenly these things aren't weird anymore, everyone else I talk to is like me, and I love it. I actually feel like genuinely all of myself with the people I love which is wonderful. But I am still so guarded with people I don't know. And I think this is definitely part of the problem I have with reblogging, it's the mortifying ordeal of interacting in public. People can see what I like and that is something that for most of my life I would never do. It is easier online though. I can type rather than speak. See the thing is, I always know exactly what I want to say, it's just the actually physically getting it out of my mouth that I struggle with. So I can type it all, and then I just press send and run away. There's no one looking at me waiting for an answer. It's also much less intrusive to other people. They can choose to read it or not. But still I think a little of that reticence to interact with strangers remains.

- Also my relationship with the internet as a child was strange. I am young enough that the internet very much was there when I was a child, however I grew up with a strange aversion to the internet, especially social media of any form. I had lovely, good, wonderful, but old parents, who instilled in me this dislike of social media. And I never had the "rebellious teen" phase and so never threw away the things my parents taught me. And so I kept this feeling. I remember in computing once we had to get a youtube tutorial for something and I remember my physical repulsion at the idea of using such a site. It really was rather silly of me but I'm glad it wasn't the other way. My friends started getting phones, and when I was 11 I got one too. (You see I'd moved to a new school which was a long way away so my parents wanted a form of contact) They trusted me and so I never really had any parental control on my phone. Did I take advantage of this fact? No. I turned my phone on when I was travelling home, just in case, but apart from that I took a handful of photos. My best friend on the other hand? Completely online. Always on her phone doing something. Did this warm me to the online world. Of course not. I loved her but she made me cringe so badly. Literally the complete opposite of me. Found something out? Telling everyone. Even people she has literally never talked to before. (See above point to understand how completely this destroyed me) Then, covid. I was now isolated away from my friends, the only way to contact them being the internet, did I do anything? No. Oh I turned my phone on occasionally, just to see if there was a message, but there never was.

Hold on I need to fit in a brief anecdote here that I promise will become somewhat relevant later. So I play the violin. And so I played in a youth orchestra, (not a good one) but we played an arrangement of Jupiter by Gustav Holst and I was like wow this is amazing I want to listen to it. So what do I do? I turn the radio on to Classic FM, and guess what is playing - Jupiter by Gustav Holst. Insane coincidence, but it got me hooked on classical music, and one day I was like, huh, I could use youtube and listen to this on demand, instead of having to just hope something good plays. And that is what got me over my irrational aversion to youtube. I had dipped my toe into the platform.

And then one day I get a text from my friend (the one I mentioned earlier) inviting me to her discord server. And so I press the link, because she is my friend and this is the first contact I've had with someone apart from my parents and schoolwork for months. And I get launched into this community as someone who has used the internet like twice to listen to CLASSICAL MUSIC and jesus that sure was a thing. I did survive somehow though, mostly because almost all the people there I knew in real life, and gradually I sort of learned about things. This was the point I went from hardly using my phone to using it a lot. My friend then also sent a link to another server, which was a fan server for a classical music youtube channel (twoset violin for those curious) and I joined that and eventually started watching their videos and since then I have been gradually succumbing to the desire to watch other youtubers.

Oh and need I go into how careful I was about the videos I watched, I would not click on a video unless I was actually 100 percent certain that it was something I wanted to watch. I was so embarrassed about my search history FOR NO REASON, I was so careful about what I searched, to an extent I still am. Shout-out to that time I created a whole new account just to look up stuff I didn't want in my search/watch history. Jokes on me that's the account I use more and show more people now because it's the one that I got into musical theatre on. Oh and also this is the second time I'd done this, I lost the password to the first one when I swapped phones.

So, yeah I have a weird thing about the internet and also people in general that I am trying to get over, showing off my likes publicly used to be something I would rather die than do, but here I am and I'm trying. Also I never really quite appreciated how unusual my childhood was until I put all this together.

The one good thing about all this is I didn't go massively far the other way and end up being a 9 year old and already chronically online (I have met the kids these days. They are horrifying). Also I could never cope with tiktok. What do you mean I just swipe and something random is playing that I didn't choose? Literally my worst nightmare.

Some people really have a visceral hatred of reblogging, huh

Tumblr really should've never introduced the like button (or used it as a bookmark instead, which is how these buttons used to work on Twitter and stuff before Instagram rolled around)

This website is tiring and it sucks it's the only half-decent popular place on the internet anymore

[amuseoffyre]

For the past fortnight, work has been getting in the way of me doing fandom related stuff, but it’s also given me a lot more time to turn over “working class northern Izzy Hands” in my brain.

There have been some fab posts going around with the analysis of Izzy in the context of the social history and what it meant for him and the more I thought about them, the more I recognised him in my dad’s side of the family.

I’ll foreword this with a note that this is entirely based on my lived experience around northern blokes of a certain generation. I have no idea what things are like now, but back when I was a wee bit of a thing, this seemed to be the norm.

A big thing about the north of England is that it’s where a lot of industry was based: glassworks, steelworks, collieries, mines of all kinds, shipbuilding. Whole cities sprang up there based around manual labour and manufacture and trade. There was a history of graft and everyone was expected to do their share and pull their weight. (“Your lots days of sitting around doing fuck all are over”)

There was also a certain pride in that work. Yes, it was hard and yes it could probably kill you, but by god you were good at it. And even moreso if you’d managed to make your way up to be in a position that earned you some modicum of respect and authority. Or even just survived that long. (“My name is First Mate Hands or God as far as you’re concerned”)

There was also a very definite pecking order, whether in social circles or work circles. You couldn’t just swan in and expect to be accepted and respected. You had to earn any respect you got and demanding it was a guarantee you wouldn’t get it. (“Pirates my arse”)

I’ve mentioned before on the post I linked further up about literacy and education. For the longest time, literacy in the north was very low because the majority of people left school early because they had to work. It wasn’t an option to stay on and get an education. If you had stayed in school, then you weren’t working and if you weren’t working, your family may not be eating.

There used to be a vibe of Proper Jobs (ie. manual labour of some kind) versus Soft Jobs (clerking, secretary etc). There were careers such as doctor and lawyer that did get considered Proper Jobs, but for the pencil pushers and the paperwork monkeys scurrying around and making notes, they were doing Soft Jobs.

All of these factors are very clearly in play in the scenes between Izzy and Lucius in episode 5. Here’s a lazy and disrespectful younger man whose entire job on the ship is a Soft Job. He gets to fanny about, writing things down, while everyone else has to do manual labour, and then he disrespects someone who is accustomed to a certain level of authority and respect, someone who has clawed his way up through the ranks.

He’s absolutely dead centre in a ven diagram of Things That Will Annoy Izzy Hands. Even more so since Izzy can’t do anything to Stede for fear of crossing Blackbeard, but this guy? Oh, this guy he can take out his frustrations on.

It explains why Izzy’s ire is focused on him, even though Wee John was having a nap and Black Pete was slacking off just as much. Both of those characters are manual workers (to a given degree, “bottom of the barrel”, after all) but the boy writing the journal, who clearly thinks he’s better than Izzy? Well, there’s someone who needs to learn his place.

(I still have Thoughts on the ‘ooooh daddy’ moment, but I have little brain left to articulate them just now)

And while I was going down that road, my brain took a sharp turn into the realisation of why Izzy dresses the way he does as well. Like the rest of Blackbeard’s crew, he’s in the black/leather combination but unlike them, he is covered from collar to cuffs, neck to toe. Some of it’s worn and repaired, but it’s an outfit that would be seen as Respectable even beyond the pirate world: a full shirt with cravat and a waistcoat on top.

Why would he choose to be so formally dressed? Because “I was honoured to work for the legendary Blackbeard”. It comes back to the pride in his work. He’s First Mate. He’s the second-in-command on the Queen Anne’s Revenge. He has worked bloody hard and survived many things to reach this point. He is representing something both to himself and to the world.

It’s about status: he stands out among the crew, so there’s no question that he’s in charge with his formal clothing. But he also stands out when we see him around other pirates. The only other pirates we see who dress to impress to this degree are Stede and Spanish Jackie. “Make people feel underdressed and suddenly you’re the one in charge” can be applied to all three of them. And it cracks me up knowing how much Izzy would hate that.

All of this is also the reason I’m pretty sure there will be an arc in the coming season when Stede does actually earn some little grudging respect from Izzy. Stede earning his place, doing the work and proving himself feels like it will be a vital cog in the story. Izzy will still deplore him, because he’s a creature of habit and routine, but I feel like there will be at least a grudging “...fine. You’re not a totally useless fucker”, which is high praise indeed.

Now, though, it’s midnight and I’m listing sideways. I shall no doubt have more thoughts, but for now, this will do.