#sorry for. how long and nonsensical this is

[danysdaughter]

Drown Me Gently

pairing | new!avenger!bucky x siren!reader

word count | 6.6k words

summary | a half-siren joins the new avengers, hiding centuries of shame beneath skin that was never yours to begin with. but when bucky barnes sees past the danger to the devastating loneliness underneath, the monster you fear you are finally begins to unravel.

tags | THUNDERBOLTS* SPOILERS, (kind of ig) unprotected sex, comfort sex, emotional intimacy, hurt/comfort, emotional angst, identity crisis, soft!bucky, dark past, trust issues, body horror (light), self-hatred, non-accurate siren mythology, mutual pining, reader backstory, deep emotional healing, sensual tension, dark past, post-trauma connection

a/n | chat, I've literally had this fic in my drafts for almost a month. I lowkey don't know if I like this or not, anyway tell me what you think about it, because I'm second guessing. also based on this request

taglist | if you wanna be added to my bucky barnes masterlist just add your username to my taglist

likes comments and reblogs are much appreciated ✨✨

ᴍᴀsᴛᴇʀʟɪsᴛ

divider by @cafekitsune

You barely had a chance to take a seat before the interrogation began.

“Do you have gills?” Yelena asked, leaning forward like she was inspecting a specimen. “Or do they only show up when you're wet?”

You blinked. “Um—”

“Wait, hold on.” Ava cut in, arms crossed. “Do you eat people? Like, in a sexy way? Or like… teeth and blood?”

“Neither?”

Bob’s eyes lit up. “But hypothetically, if you were shipwrecked, would you rather lure sailors to their deaths or just vibe on a rock singing Adele?”

“I don’t—”

“Also,” Alexei boomed, squinting at you. “How do you have babies with tail? Is it like seahorses? Or salmon?”

“Why would it be like salmon?” Ava muttered.

“Maybe she lays eggs,” Bob said thoughtfully. “Do you lay eggs?”

You opened your mouth, then closed it again. This had to be a test. Some kind of extremely unorthodox hazing ritual.

“I’m sorry,” you finally managed. “Are these actual questions or did you all just watch The Little Mermaid before I got here?”

Walker, inexplicably sipping a protein shake at 8am, nodded solemnly. “So... do you explode if you drink salt water?”

You stared. “I'm from the ocean.”

“And what about chlorinated water,” he asked, completely serious.

Yelena snorted.

Before the next round of nonsense could begin, a voice cut through the chaos.

“Alright, that’s enough.”

You turned. Bucky stood in the doorway, arms crossed, expression unreadable. His eyes settled on you for a beat too long.

“Give her a second to breathe before you start asking about mating rituals.”

“Thank you,” you breathed.

He moved past the others, walking toward you with measured steps. You hadn’t realized how tense your shoulders were until he got close enough that the rest of the room seemed to dim around him.

“You okay?” he asked quietly.

You nodded, but couldn’t help the tiny smile tugging at your lips. “Do you ask all the new recruits about their reproductive methods, or just me?”

He huffed a quiet laugh. “Only the ones who are rumored to eat people.”

────────────────────────

A Few Days Later

You sat on the edge of the couch like a guest who wasn’t sure if they were invited or accidentally wandered in. Your posture was perfect, hands folded neatly in your lap, gaze fixed somewhere safe—like the TV that no one had turned on.

Yelena flopped down beside you with the grace of a feral cat. “You don’t talk much,” she observed bluntly. “Which is fine. Some of us overshare to make up for our emotional repression.”

“That’s just you,” Ava said from the kitchen, balancing a tray of chips and something that might’ve been experimental dip.

“Correct.”

Alexei hovered behind you, inexplicably trying to angle a photo of his dog toward your face. “This is Misha. He was trained to kill before he was housebroken. You would get along.”

“I’m… sure he’s lovely,” you replied politely, offering a tight smile.

Bob sat cross-legged on the floor like a camp counselor. “Okay, but seriously. Do you want anything to eat? We’ve got empanadas. And tofu stuff. And I think someone tried to make brownies.”

You shook your head. “Thank you. I’m not hungry.”

“No fish?” Walker smirked. “Or is it just... men on the menu?”

The room went dead quiet for half a second. Ava groaned.

“Really?” Yelena muttered.

“I’m a vegetarian,” you said quietly.

Walker blinked. “Wait, really?”

“Yes.”

“That’s even more terrifying,” Bob said thoughtfully. “You choose not to eat meat. Yet you still eat men. For sport, right?”

“I do not eat men.”

“Sure,” Ava said with a shrug. “But if you did, it’d be poetic justice. Like, ‘Oops, your ship tried to colonize my homeland, now you're lunch.’”

You gave a tight-lipped smile again, but the joke didn’t quite sit right. They didn’t notice the way your gaze dropped or how your fingers fidgeted slightly at the hem of your sleeve.

Except Bucky.

He leaned against the far wall, arms crossed, eyes on you in that quiet, unreadable way of his. Watching. Not judging. Just… observing. Carefully.

“You always like this?” Ava asked, circling to sit nearby. “Polite. Mysterious. Quiet. Like a goth librarian who also knows how to drown people with her mind?”

You hesitated. “I try not to make people uncomfortable.”

“You don’t,” Yelena said, popping a chip into her mouth. “We’re uncomfortable by default. It’s a trauma response.”

“You’re basically the least weird person in this room,” Bob added. “Which is suspicious in itself.”

That earned a small laugh from you—surprising even yourself. Heads turned, and you flushed faintly under the sudden attention.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” you said.

It wasn’t much. But it was something. A sliver of trust cracked open just enough for light to slip through.

And across the room, Bucky eyes softened.

It had started with snacks and sarcasm. Someone had turned on a movie. Bob was quoting every line with annoying precision. Ava kept tossing popcorn into Walker’s protein shake. For a while, you had almost forgotten to be cautious.

Almost.

“Okay but seriously,” Yelena said, elbowing you gently, “you’ve got to let us see it sometime. The thing. With your voice.”

You hesitated. “It’s not something I do for fun.”

“But it’s, like... mind control, right?” Walker asked, overly casual. “Like Jedi mind tricks, but with falsetto?”

You glanced around. Ava watching with narrowed eyes, trying to read you. Bob leaned forward, too curious. Yelena still too close. Even Alexei had stopped mid-story. And Bucky—still across the room, still silent.

“It’s not mind control,” you said slowly. “It’s... influence.”

The air shifted.

“My voice can influence people. Not just emotion. Thought. Action.”

The joking stopped.

“And I can sense... intention. Urgency. Fear. Hunger. The things people hide.”

Then softly you added. “It’s not always... voluntary.”

There was something fragile in your voice then. Not a confession, but a warning.

Your gaze dropped to your hands, fingers curling in your lap. You could already feel it. The subtle recoil in their posture. Not loud, but enough. Enough for your pulse to tick faster, warning you.

“Damn,” John muttered. “So you just walk into a room and feel everyone’s business?”

“I try not to,” you replied, softly.

That landed harder than you meant it to.

The silence that followed was heavier than any you'd felt all day. Thick with the kind of unease you’d learned to recognize long before you joined this team. Not fear. Not rejection. Just... awareness. The realization that your power wasn’t theoretical anymore. It was here. With them. Listening.

You felt the wall go up in them before they even realized they were building it.

So you did what you always did. What you were best at.

You retreated.

Your shoulders folded in. Your body went still. Not dramatically. Not enough to cause a scene. Just... quieter. Smaller. Like someone sinking slowly beneath the surface of the sea.

No one said anything.

But from across the room, Bucky watched you carefully—jaw set, brow furrowed—not at you, but at the room. At the shift. At how fast they’d gone from teasing to tiptoeing.

And you?

You didn’t need to read anyone’s mind to feel how far away you suddenly were.

────────────────────────

Later That Night

The wind was soft out here. Almost warm, brushing past your bare arms with the gentleness of something that wasn’t trying to take anything from you. You sat curled on a narrow bench, knees pulled to your chest, chin resting lightly on them.

You hadn’t meant to be found. That was kind of the point.

So when the door behind you slid open, your heart sank just a little. Until you heard his footsteps. Quiet. Measured. Familiar now.

Bucky didn’t say anything at first. Just moved beside you slowly and sat down, leaving a respectful distance between you.

“I figured you might be out here,” he said, voice low. Like he didn’t want to scare you off.

You didn’t look at him. “Why?”

“You didn’t say anything.”

The corners of your mouth turned up, barely. “Didn’t know I was supposed to.”

“You’re not. Just... noticed.”

For a while, you both sat in silence, the kind that wasn’t awkward. Just... open. A space you didn’t have to fill.

“I didn’t mean to make them uncomfortable,” you said finally. Voice soft. Still watching the stars.

“You didn’t,” he said automatically.

You turned your head, just a little. “You felt it.”

He paused. “I felt them realizing they don’t understand you yet. That’s different.”

You shook your head slowly. “It’s okay. I’m used to it.”

His eyes flicked to you. You didn’t see the way they narrowed.

“I know what I am,” you continued. “People don’t have to say it. I can feel it. The moment it shifts. That little breath of fear when they realize I can reach inside their heads without asking. It’s not wrong. I am what they think I am.”

You looked at him then, just briefly. Enough for him to see the resignation. The calm acceptance that only comes from long practice.

“A monster,” you said quietly.

His jaw clenched, barely. You saw it, even if he tried to hide it.

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s true.”

“It’s not.” He turned toward you fully now. “You think you’re the only person on this team who’s scared of what they’ve done? What they’re capable of?”

You didn’t answer.

“You think any of us have clean hands?” His voice stayed even, but there was a tightness to it now. Not anger. Something closer to frustration. Or pained. “Ava’s killed for hire. Yelena was trained to be a weapon since she could walk. Walker…” He paused. “You saw the headlines.”

He let the silence hang for a beat.

“I spent seventy years hurting people with no choice. With no soul. If anyone here knows what it means to be used, to be feared—it’s me.”

You blinked. “That’s different.”

“Why?”

“Because you're human.”

He stared at you. Then, quietly, “And you're not?”

You didn’t respond.

The wind picked up. You turned your head back toward the night.

For a long moment, neither of you said anything.

Then, softly, “You scare them a little. Yeah. But not because you’re a monster.”

You glanced at him.

“They just don’t know you yet. And people fear what they don’t understand. But that doesn’t mean they won’t try.”

You looked down at your hands, where your fingers were laced tight together. Like you were holding something in.

“I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“I know,” he said.

And you believed him.

Not because his words were kind, but because they were quiet. Steady. Because they didn’t ask anything of you.

Because he didn’t look away.

And for the first time since you joined this mess of a team, you didn’t feel like a weapon waiting to be triggered.

You just felt... seen.

────────────────────────

Abandoned Shipping Yard

It was supposed to be a clean extraction. In and out. Minimal resistance. Ava had scoped the perimeter, Yelena laid out the breach pattern, Walker was already ten paces ahead being Walker, and Bucky had given you a nod just before the comms went live.

You were ready. Or you thought you were.

The cold air clung to your skin as you moved through the corridor of rusted containers. You kept to the shadows, as always, listening more than speaking, watching more than acting. A quiet presence, there when needed—never more.

The first wave of hostiles came fast—mercs, jittery and underpaid. Nothing the team couldn’t handle. You barely had to use your voice.

But something changed.

Second floor. A new group. More organized. You didn’t see them until they’d already flanked Alexei. You reacted before you thought—instinct firing faster than strategy.

They raised weapons.

And you hummed.

Not loud. Not full. Just enough to stop them.

A sound low in your throat, rich with warning and pressure and pull. It rolled over the air like a tide, a siren note pitched directly into their nerves.

They froze.

Then they turned.

Not toward Alexei.

Toward each other.

Guns half-raised. Hands twitching.

Confusion swelled, slow and dangerous. One man dropped his rifle. Another started crying. A third turned to face you like he couldn’t remember why he was holding a weapon at all.

Then Walker’s voice shouted through comms: “What the hell was that?!”

A sharp click—a trigger cocked.

Bucky got there first.

He shoved the last merc down before he could swing his weapon back around, snapping a zip tie around his wrists with clinical precision.

“Clear!” Yelena called from above.

“Room’s secure,” Ava confirmed, quieter, voice tinged with something more cautious.

You stood in the center of the room, throat tight, breath short. The air still trembled faintly with the residue of your voice.

Everyone was looking at you.

No one said anything.

Until Walker.

“Was that you?” he asked, not angry—just stunned. Like he’d seen lightning strike too close. “What even—what was that?”

“I didn’t mean to—” you started, but your voice wavered.

“That wasn’t just noise. That was... influence, right? You turned them on each other?”

“No.” You swallowed. “I didn’t mean to. It just happened. They were going to shoot Alexei, I—”

“But it wasn’t controlled,” Walker said sharply. Not cruel, just assessing. Calculating risk. “What if they’d turned on us?”

That stung. More than it should have.

“I wouldn’t,” you whispered. “I didn’t mean to—”

“She said it was involuntary,” Bucky cut in, stepping forward. His voice didn’t rise, but it carried weight. “She stopped them. That’s what matters.”

“She also almost made a guy kill himself,” Walker muttered.

“She saved Alexei,” Bucky said firmly, turning toward the others. “We’ve all lost control before. Don’t pretend we haven’t.”

You stood silent, heart pounding, the aftermath of your own power still vibrating under your skin. The others started moving again—resetting, clearing the area, checking gear. But they gave you space now.

Too much space.

You barely heard the rest of the debrief. Your voice was gone, locked behind clenched teeth. Guilt wrapped around your chest like a vice.

You walked ahead in silence.

No one stopped you.

────────────────────────

You hadn’t even taken off your boots. You sat on the floor, back against the wall, arms wrapped tightly around your knees like they might keep you from slipping any further into yourself.

The door creaked open softly.

You didn’t look up.

But you knew the sound of his steps.

“Thought I’d find you here,” Bucky said gently.

You didn’t respond.

He came closer but didn’t sit. Just leaned against the opposite wall, arms crossed loosely. Watching. Waiting.

“I lost control,” you said after a long moment. “They’re right to be wary.”

“They’re wrong,” he said simply.

“You didn’t see their faces.”

“I saw yours.”

You glanced up, surprised.

“You looked like you were trying to tear yourself in half,” he said. “Because you cared more about hurting them than saving yourself.”

You looked away again.

“They don’t understand what it feels like,” you said quietly. “To have something inside you that people fear. That you can’t always lock down. That might one day hurt someone—even if you don’t want it to.”

His expression shifted. Pain, recognition, something deeper.

“Yeah,” he said. “I do.”

You looked at him then. Really looked.

The softness in his face, the tension in his shoulders—he knew. He knew.

And still, he was here.

Not afraid. Not flinching. Just... here.

You exhaled shakily.

“I think I made a mistake joining this team.”

“No,” he said. “You didn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’ve been watching you,” he admitted. “And not because I’m waiting for you to snap. I watch because I see you trying. Every damn day. Even when they don’t notice.”

Your throat tightened.

“You don’t scare me,” he added. “None of this does. You do more to hold yourself back than most of us ever have to.”

Silence.

Then, softly: “You belong here. Even if it takes them time to see it.”

────────────────────────

The Next Night

Bucky wasn’t looking for you.

That’s what he told himself.

He told himself he was going for a walk. That his muscles ached. That the silence in his room was too sharp around the edges tonight.

But when he passed the door to the training pool and saw it slightly ajar, lights off, humid air curling into the hallway like a whisper—he knew.

Of course it was you.

He stepped inside quietly, the heavy door hissing shut behind him. The sound echoed across the still water.

“Hey,” he called out softly, scanning the dark. “You left the lights off.”

He moved toward the control panel instinctively, fingers brushing the switch.

“Don’t,” came your voice.

Not a shout. Not even stern. Just quiet. Low.

Carried like a ripple across the water, echoing from somewhere deep in the pool.

He froze.

“…You okay?” he asked, softer now.

A pause.

Then, “Yes.”

But there was something in the way you said it—like you were holding your breath inside the word.

The pool was a long, Olympic cut of black glass. He could barely make out your shape beneath the surface—a flicker of motion in the far end, a slow shift of shadow.

“You’re in the water.”

“Yes.”

The silence stretched again, heavy but not uncomfortable. He stepped forward, letting the heat of the pool air wrap around him.

“I thought maybe you’d gone,” he admitted. “After yesterday.”

There was a sound, something like a soft splash. A flick of fin, maybe. Movement, not retreat.

“No,” you said. “I just needed to be… this. For a while.”

He squinted toward you, his eyes adjusting to the dark. It took a moment, but then he saw it—just barely. The curve of your back breaking the surface. The subtle gleam of something slick and scaled beneath the low ambient light.

He didn’t speak. Didn’t stare. Just stayed still.

You exhaled slowly, the sound barely above the waterline. “I’m not hiding.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“I just don't want to be seen like this. Not… yet.”

He nodded, even though you probably couldn’t see it. “Alright. Then I won’t look.”

And to his credit, he didn’t.

He turned away slightly, gave you space, let you move without watching. But he still stayed. Because you hadn’t told him to go.

Because, maybe, you wanted someone to stay.

“I’m not human the way you are,” you said after a while. “Not just physically. Sometimes I feel like I’m wearing skin that doesn’t belong to me.”

He breathed in slow. “I know that feeling.”

“Do you?” you asked, not unkindly. Just tired.

Bucky shifted his weight. “I’ve worn a lot of masks. But yeah. There are days where I look in the mirror and don’t see someone who belongs anywhere.”

The water rippled quietly.

“Then you understand why I needed to be in the dark tonight.”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

A pause.

“You ever wish you could just… stay like that?” he asked gently. “Who you are in here. Not the version you have to show everyone else?”

You didn’t answer right away.

Then, “Sometimes I think the version they see is the monster. And this—the water, the dark, the scales—that this is the real me.”

“And is she the monster?”

“No.”

Then you added, softer, “She’s worse.“

The words sank like stones.

You waited for him to back away. To excuse himself. To do what most people did when they saw behind the illusion.

But he didn’t.

“You’re not a monster,” he said, steady as stone. “Not in any form.”

You let out a breath—half bitter, half broken. “You should be afraid of me.”

“I’m not.”

“You should be.” A sharp breath. “Especially you. After what you’ve been through. After what it’s like to have your mind twisted, your will taken—I could do that to you. Without even trying.”

Silence.

You expected him to leave. You preferred him to leave.

Then a soft rustle.

You heard it before you saw it—fabric sliding off. The quiet thud of boots meeting concrete. A belt unhooking. Then another sound: the shift of weight, the hiss of disturbed water.

Your head turned sharply in the dark. “What are you doing?”

Bucky’s voice came low and calm. “Showing you I’m not afraid.”

His bare feet met the water first, then his legs. He stepped slowly into the pool, each movement careful, deliberate—like he was approaching a wounded animal. Like he knew you might vanish if he moved too fast.

You froze.

The lights stayed off.

The water rippled gently around him, catching faint echoes of motion from where you were submerged.

“You can’t even see me,” you said.

“I don’t need to.”

Your voice trembled. “You don’t know what I look like like this.”

“I know what I feel,” he said. “I know it’s you.”

He moved further in, the water reaching his ribs, his breath slow, steady.

You stared across the dark, at the shape of him—a silhouette against nothing. Vulnerable. Unarmed. Open.

You whispered, “Why?”

He paused, standing still in the middle of the water.

“Because you’ve spent your whole life trying not to scare people,” he said. “Trying to keep yourself small, quiet, contained. And no one’s ever just... let you be.”

You blinked.

Something deep inside you shifted.

“I’ve been used too,” he said softly. “Controlled. Hurt. Turned into something I didn’t recognize. And I’m still here. Still fighting to believe I’m not what they made me.”

The ripples between you both softened. Fewer waves. Less space.

You whispered, “You’re not.”

“Neither are you.”

For the first time in a long time, you felt like you could breathe.

Not in the way you did above water—but in the way that didn’t hurt.

“You shouldn’t trust me this much,” you said, a final warning. One last barrier.

“Maybe,” he said quietly. “But I do”

The water between you held its breath.

You didn’t move at first—didn’t trust the trembling in your limbs or the sharp edge of your pulse. But Bucky stood still, waist-deep, facing the other side of the pool, like he wasn’t waiting for danger—just for you.

So you moved.

Slowly. Silently. The water embraced your form the way it always had—your real shape, the one you kept hidden beneath flesh and clothes and fear. You glided like breath, like tide, like instinct. Your tail made no sound. Your scales caught no light. You were the shadow beneath the surface, and he didn’t flinch.

Not even when you came close.

Close enough to touch.

You hovered at his back, watching the curve of his spine rise and fall with every breath. Water clung to his skin, catching faint glints of motion—your motion—as you lifted a hand above the surface.

And touched him.

His shoulders tensed at first, just barely, but he didn’t pull away.

Your fingers were cool against his skin—webbed, slick, foreign. The pads of them brushed along the ridge of his shoulder blade, then down the line of his arm.

Still, he didn’t turn.

So you did it again.

This time, both hands—light and deliberate—placed just above his hips, fingertips resting at the base of his spine, gently urging.

He let out a slow breath.

And turned.

The water shifted as he faced you.

He still couldn’t see all of you—darkness and depth obscured your form—but he could feel you there. Close. Solid. Real.

His hands came to your waist, cautious, reverent. His thumbs brushed faint ridges along your sides—faint scales you hadn’t hidden, soft flesh beneath them. He could feel the texture of you, alien and familiar all at once.

You let him look.

Not completely. Not yet.

But enough.

You tilted your head up, and he bent just slightly toward you. His face a breath away, eyes searching yours in the dark.

“I see you,” he whispered.

And he did.

Not a siren. Not a monster. Not an aberration.

Just you.

The water lapped quietly around you, the two of you suspended in the dark.

Bucky was so close now. Close enough for the heat of his body to ghost across your skin despite the coolness of the water. Close enough that the contrast between you—his warmth, your chill—felt like static between touching wires.

He looked at you then, fully. His eyes locked on yours, no hesitation. Just slow awe.

You saw the flicker of realization behind his gaze.

Your eyes—icy and deep, nearly luminescent in the dark—weren’t human anymore. The pupils too sharp, the color too unnatural. You didn’t try to hide it.

And still, he whispered, breath brushing your mouth,

“I’m not afraid of you.”

Your lips parted, not to speak, but just to feel that warmth.

Then he leaned in—deliberate, drawn, inevitable—and kissed you.

The first touch was slow, hesitant only in reverence, like he was afraid of breaking something sacred. His lips were warm—so warm—pressing softly against yours, testing.

You didn’t hesitate.

You kissed him back, and the pull was instant. A current dragging you both under.

His hands rose, one settling against the back of your neck, the other at your waist, anchoring you to him. You opened your mouth against his—slowly—and his tongue slipped inside with a soft groan that vibrated low in his throat. You tasted him: salt, metal, heat, something earthy and real.

He tasted you: cool and mineral, like sea-salt and secrets, ancient and raw.

His tongue tangled with yours in deliberate strokes, slow and deep. It wasn’t frantic. It was exploration, mouth against mouth, breath mingling, like he was learning you piece by piece.

Then he felt them.

The faint edge of your fangs—barely exposed as your body stirred with instinct and desire.

He didn’t pull away.

He kissed you harder.

And you let him.

Your webbed fingers curled into his hair, claws grazing his scalp just enough to make him shiver. His hand slipped lower, across the slick curve of your back, dragging you flush against him in the water. Your tail brushed his legs—he felt the ripple of it, powerful and sinuous—and instead of flinching, he leaned into it.

He deepened the kiss with a quiet groan, tilting your head just enough to taste more of you, to chase the sharp edge of your teeth and the soft gasp you gave him when he sucked on your bottom lip.

He wanted more. You wanted.

But the kiss said it all: this wasn’t hunger.

It was surrender.

And when he pulled back—only slightly, his forehead resting against yours, both of you panting, breath fogging between mouths—his voice dropped again, rough and reverent.

“You’re not a monster.”

You trembled in his arms, not from cold.

And for the first time, you let someone hold you without fear of what they’d find in the dark.

The kisses evolved—mouths moving in rhythm, breathless and hungry, like they’d been holding back for far too long. The water around you rippled with every shift of your bodies, your bare skin slick against his, every nerve alive.

Bucky’s hands slid lower, smoothing over the firm plane of your back where slick, textured scales had shimmered moments ago. But now—he felt it.

They were fading.

His lips broke from yours just enough to murmur, breath hitched, “You’re changing…”

Your forehead pressed to his as your hands threaded through his wet hair. “I can’t stop it,” you whispered. “When I feel—”

He kissed you again, cutting the words off with a gentleness that said you don’t have to explain.

The transformation was slow, intimate.

You felt it first in your hands—your fingers unwebbing, reshaping. Human again. Your claws softened, becoming skin. You ran them down his chest, gasping softly at the warmth, the roughness of him against the new smoothness of you.

Bucky’s hands wrapped around your waist as you shifted again, the powerful muscles of your tail twitching, tensing—then separating.

Legs.

Human.

Bare.

You wrapped them around his hips instinctively, pulling him closer, water lapping between your bodies, heat blooming between where his skin met yours.

His breath caught, hard, sharp.

You were soft and solid and real in his arms, human now but still you—something wild and full of want beneath the surface. He kissed down your jaw, tasting salt and skin and a thrill he hadn’t felt in years.

His voice, low and rough, ghosted along your throat: “You don’t have to be afraid.”

You shivered in his hold, lips brushing his ear as you whispered back, “I’m not.”

And for once, you weren’t.

Not of what he’d think. Not of what you were. Not even of what you wanted.

Just the sound of your shared breath, the gentle churn of the water, the beat of two hearts finally in rhythm.

Your legs wrapped tighter around his waist as he held you against him, his hands roaming—slow, reverent, learning every curve and shape as if memorizing what it meant to have you.

Not to claim.

But to be allowed.

The warmth of him bled into you, his mouth trailing over the column of your throat, lips parting around your skin as he kissed lower—slowly, like he wanted to taste every shiver.

Your fingers dug into his shoulders as his mouth returned to yours—hungrier this time. Tongues sliding together with unspoken urgency. He groaned into you, low and rough, when you rolled your hips into him beneath the water.

The sound you made—half gasp, half moan—hit him like a shot to the spine.

His hands cupped the back of your thighs, holding you up, keeping you close, guiding your body so you fit around him perfectly. The heat between you sharpened, pressed tight through soaked fabric and wet skin, every movement stoking something deeper.

There was nothing frantic.

Only build.

Only the slow, sacred pull of yes.

The kiss deepened until there was no air between you. His chest pressed to yours, heat meeting the coolness of your skin, fingers curling along your ribs, tracing the path where scales had once been.

You tilted your head back as he kissed his way down—jaw, neck, collarbone—tongue flicking against the hollow of your throat. Each touch lit up something low in your belly, and when you whispered his name, he froze just long enough to look at you.

Eyes dark, lips parted, hands still reverent.

“Are you sure?” he asked, voice hoarse, wet strands of hair clinging to his brow.

You nodded, breathless. “Yes.”

Bucky’s mouth returned to yours with hunger barely tempered now, his kiss pulling sounds from your throat you didn’t know you could make—not songs, not power. Just want.

He guided you back through the water, hands steady at your waist, until your spine met the edge of the pool wall. The tile was cool against your back; he was warm and solid against your front.

His fingers brushed along the curve of your ribs, then up—slowly—tracing the faint shimmer where scales had retreated. He explored each new inch of you with careful reverence, like he was learning you with his hands, like every discovery mattered.

Your breath hitched as he slid one palm beneath the water, low across your hip, then between your thighs—fingers ghosting over the softest part of you with a touch so achingly gentle you shivered.

He swallowed the moan that left your mouth as his other hand found your jaw, tilting your face up so he could kiss you again—deeper now, tongue claiming, teeth grazing your lip.

You gasped, fingers curling around the back of his neck as your legs tightened around his hips, urging him closer.

He groaned, low and wrecked, as he pressed his body into yours fully—his arousal hard against you, his mouth dragging kisses down your throat as you arched into him.

“God, you feel like…” he murmured, unfinished, overwhelmed, pressing his forehead against yours.

Your hand found his chest, feeling the steady, pounding rhythm beneath the scars. “I feel like what?”

He looked at you like you were unreal. “Like something I’ve never deserved. But I’m not letting go.”

He reached down again, guiding himself into you with aching care.

When he pressed into you—slow, stretching, deep—your mouth parted in a soundless gasp, nails sinking into his back as your body opened for him.

The sensation was molten. Your body slick and ready, still half-wrapped in water, and every movement felt amplified—rippled and weightless, like being made and unmade in slow motion.

He held still inside you for a beat—his breath stalling, eyes locked on yours.

“You okay?” he whispered, thumb brushing your cheek.

You nodded, voice caught in your throat. “Don’t stop.”

So he moved.

Rhythmic. Deep. Rolling his hips into you with intense precision, like he wanted every thrust to be a memory etched into your bones.

You clung to him as you rocked together, lips never far, gasps exchanged like prayer. The water splashed gently around you with every movement, hiding and revealing, sheltering and exposing.

And when you came apart in his arms—body shaking, breath hitching, fingers tangled in his hair—he followed seconds after, groaning into your skin as he buried himself in you one last time.

Afterward, he didn’t let go.

He just held you, still wrapped in warmth and water, as if grounding himself in the shape of you—your real form, your chosen form.

And you stayed there, arms around him, mind quiet for the first time in days.

────────────────────────

You lay together outside the pool, still dripping, the tiled floor beneath you warmed by residual heat from the water and each other.

Bucky’s body was solid and relaxed beneath yours, your head resting on his chest, your arm draped across his ribs. His breathing was slow now, steady, one hand lazily tracing your back—his fingers brushing the faint outlines of where your scales had shimmered.

He didn’t speak for a while. Just let his fingers explore you softly, as if mapping something sacred.

Then, voice low, “So… the other you. The form in the water. Is that the real you?”

You didn’t answer right away.

Your breath pushed gently against his skin, your eyes half-lidded with calm.

Then softly, “Both are the real me.”

He didn’t move, but you felt the weight of his silence.

You lifted your head slightly, just enough to brush your lips against his—light, unhurried, a kiss not driven by need but by quiet affection.

A moment passed before you added, “I’m half-human. Half-siren.”

His eyes opened, and he tilted his head to meet your gaze, brows furrowed—curious, but not skeptical.

You sighed, a faint smile ghosting your lips. “Tale as old as time. Sailor meets siren. Siren gets curious. Doesn’t immediately murder him.”

That made him huff a quiet breath against your temple.

“Sometimes… they mate. Rarely. Just to understand. Or because something stirs in them they don’t expect. The sailors rarely survive the interaction. Then they return to the sea.”

His fingers paused at your spine.

You shifted your weight slightly, eyes locked on his, and said quieter still:

“This time, the siren left with a baby.”

His breath caught, just barely.

You looked down.

“And that baby got left behind on land. Half-breed. Too human for the ocean, too strange for the shore.”

He said nothing.

But his hand moved again—this time higher, threading through your hair, cupping the back of your head gently as if trying to hold that pain, that truth, without crowding it.

You exhaled slowly, resting your forehead against his collarbone.

“A monster on land. An abomination in the sea.”

The words hung between you like steam, curling and vanishing before they hit the air.

Bucky didn’t try to correct you. Didn’t rush to wrap those words in comfort. He just moved—his hand smoothing up your back, across your hair, anchoring you to his chest. Holding you like it was the only thing he knew how to do.

His hand never left you.

Now, it moved with a new purpose—his touch slower, more intentional, tracing the skin between your shoulder blades.

You stiffened slightly.

He’d found them.

The scars.

Faint, old, but still jagged—slashing diagonally across your back in places that seemed more symbolic than accidental. He ran a thumb along the longest one, slow and careful.

“They match,” he murmured.

Your brow furrowed. “What?”

“Your claws,” he said. “From before. In the pool. The shape of them.” He traced another line. “These look like what they’d leave.”

You were quiet for a long moment.

Then you whispered, “They did.”

“You mean—?”

“The sirens,” you said softly.

He froze. “Jesus.”

You pushed your face gently against his shoulder, hiding from the look you couldn’t bear to see on his face—pity, horror, heartbreak, you didn’t know which would be worse.

“I didn’t belong here,” you murmured. “On land. Never really fit. So I thought—maybe the ocean would feel like home. Maybe they would understand.”

His hand stilled on your back.

You swallowed. “They didn’t.”

You pulled in a shaking breath, voice tight but steady. “They said I was soft. Weak. That I smelled too human. Felt too much. That I’d taint their species if I stayed.”

A beat.

“They tried to tear the human out of me.”

Bucky closed his eyes. His jaw tensed beneath your hand where it rested on his chest.

You whispered, almost bitterly now, “All the myths are true. They are monsters. They don’t love. They don’t feel. They don’t keep anything they can’t control.”

Silence.

Bucky’s fingers paused again, still tracing the old scars like they were something sacred. “You survived them,” he said quietly. “That says more about you than them.”

Your breath hitched, then came slow and shallow.

“I didn’t just survive them,” you murmured. “I tried to be like them.”

He stilled.

“I thought if I let go of everything human in me, they’d let me stay. If I stopped feeling… stopped flinching when they hunted. When they—”

You stopped, your throat tightening.

Bucky’s eyes were open now, watching you with more than concern. With something like dread.

“I tried,” you said, barely above a whisper. “To become what they were. To be unfeeling. A real monster.”

Your fingers curled slightly against his chest. “I even did it. Their way. Took ships off course with my voice. Lured them close. And I fed.”

His hand faltered.

“I ate humans,” you said, the words fractured, sharp. “So they’d accept me.”

Silence.

The worst kind.

Bucky didn’t move. He didn’t breathe, but you felt his body tense underneath you—hurt, not at you, but for you.

You turned your face further into his shoulder, shame crawling up your spine like ice.

“But it never worked,” you whispered. “I was still too soft. I felt everything. Even when I tried to bury it.”

His arms wrapped tighter around you—gently, but with purpose.

“I couldn’t keep it down,” you continued. “The guilt. The screaming. The way they laughed at me for choking on blood.”

Your voice cracked. “Meat makes me sick now. Just the smell of it.”

He breathed then, long and broken.

You could feel his heartbeat under your cheek. Steady. Solid. And somehow still here.

The silence between you became thick. Not with judgment, but with something worse—your own shame.

You whispered, barely audible, “I became something I hate. I wanted so badly to stop being an outcast, I turned myself into a real monster. And they still didn’t want me.”

You closed your eyes. “They didn’t need to kill me. I did that myself.”

Bucky exhaled slowly, his hand sliding up from your back to cup the back of your head again. He didn’t say it’s okay. He didn’t say you’re forgiven. He didn’t try to rewrite your past.

He just held you.

Because there are wounds too deep for words.

Because you had already condemned yourself, and he knew the last thing you needed was someone else trying to absolve what you hadn’t even survived emotionally.

Still, his voice reached you, low and rough and real,

“I hope someday you'll understand that you were never the monster in that story.”

You didn’t respond. You didn’t believe it. But you didn’t pull away, either.

And for now—that meant something.

our girlie:

Bucky Barnes Taglist:

@Ruexj283 @muchwita @fayeatheart @Leathynn @thealloveru2 @person-005 @princeescalus @lilac13 @solana-jpeg @jeongiegram @winchestert101 @s-sh-ne @n3ptoonz @avgdestitute @xamapolax @Finnickodairslut @honeyhera29 @macbaetwo @rafespeach @bythecloset @ashpeace888 @buckmybarnes @c-grace56 @ozwriterchick @slutforsr @novaslov @xamapolax @theoraekenslover @user911224 @Tafuller @luminousvenomvagrant @sgtjbbhasmyheart @yvespecially @snake-in-a-flower-crown @mencantaleer @shellsbae00 @theewiselionessss @Madlyinlovewithmattmurdockk @avivarougestan @xoxoloverb @superlegend216 @lori19 @sired4urmama @writing-for-marvel @thriving-n-jiving @ogoc-19 @fckmebarnes @excusememrbarnes @its-in-the-woods @barnesonly

those who couldn't be tagged are in bold :(

[cakypa120]

May I request more Billy X Jason

Like captain marvel giving all the justice league members a thing that when they’re in danger, it will teleport them to the rock of eternity.

Jason gets injured and Batman use the thing, 

Cue 18 year old Billy freaking out seeing Jason, who looks like a fully grown man, even though he’s only like 19 at best (I think) and

Jason: “ where am I?”

Billy

Jason: “damn, Roy was right demons are hot”

Batman was panicking. Jason was hurt. Seriously. And they wouldn't get help for a long time. Bruce's hands were shaking as he covered the wounds on his side. He couldn't lose Jason, his son, again. In moments like these, he understood why people prayed to something, hoping for something. Bruce was willing to give the Gods or anyone else anything if it would save his son.

A memory suddenly popped into his mind:

All the heroes were holding a strange crystal in their hands. Marvel smiled brightly at them.

Hal: What is this?

Marvel: Emergency help. If you are badly injured or trapped. You just need to break this crystal. It will teleport you to the Rock of Eternity. All your wounds will freeze in time and you will fall into a temporary sleep. I will find you, heal you and send you back to Earth. This is insurance. But if you get there unharmed, then I ask you not to wander too much. And listen to those who live there.

Batman: How reliable is this?

Marvel: One hundred percent! It can teleport you from any point in space or dimension.

Superman: That's interesting.

Diana: Thank you, brother, for such a valuable gift.

Marvel: You are like family to me! Of course I will worry about your safety.

Bruce takes out the small crystal. This was his last chance. He places the crystal in Jason's hand and squeezes until he hears a crunch. Jason's body is covered in golden light and his son crumbles into golden dust. Bruce looks at the place where his son lay and takes a deep breath. Now all that's left is to wait.

Billy jumps in surprise when he feels something teleport onto the Rock. Someone used his crystal? That was bad!! He runs to the teleportation site in a panic and freezes when he sees a bloody figure. Isn't that Red Hood? Shit, he's seriously hurt. Billy rolls up his sleeves. This was going to be a long job.

Jason wakes up with a groan. His whole body ached. The last thing he remembered was being shot and B holding his wound. Was he dead? Was he in hell?

?: You're awake! You better not move yet, your body needs to rest from all the magic I used on you.

Jason looks up and sees a young man with black hair and bright blue eyes. All thoughts disappear from his head when he sees this young man. Why was he wearing something that looked like ancient Greek clothes? (Billy had blood on his clothes. The Rock didn't have any other clothes. So he wore what he had.)

Jason: I died?

?: No, although you tried very hard. So, how did you get the crystal?

Jason: I don't know what crystal you're talking about. Maybe B did it. Damn, you're hot.

?: Sorry what?

Jason: I'm a little hot!! Is that normal?

The boy frowns and approaches him. Jason smells the rain. It calms him down a little. A warm palm touches his forehead and Jason is ready to melt just from that touch.

?: You're a little hotter than usual. But that's okay. A good night's sleep will help you recover faster.

Jason: Why do I feel so sleepy?

?: Your body wants to rest. You have to let it.

Jason: You're probably a demon. A very hot demon. Roy's right... I...don't want...to fall asleep...

Hands gently lay him down on the bed and Jason falls asleep.

He wakes up in Bruce's mansion. He remembers that boy and his face instantly turns red. He told him such nonsense!! Will that beautiful boy want to talk to him again?!?! Jason takes a pillow and screams into it while kicking the blanket.

Dick: Jaybird! You're awake!!

Jason doesn't answer. He wants to die from all the shame that's washed over him in waves.

Dick: Jay?

Jason: Who brought me here?

Dick: Captain Marvel! He said your wounds were healed and all you needed was sleep.

Jason freezes. Captain Marvel. That boy looked so much like Captain Marvel. Could that really be his son. Jason gets out of bed, ignoring Dick's protests. He goes down to the Batcave and finds Bruce talking to Captain Marvel. The hero in red was explaining something to Bruce.

Jason: Captain!!

Marvel: Oh, you're awake! How are you feeling? Your wounds were pretty bad.

Jason: I want to date your son! Give me your blessing!!

Marvel and Bruce freeze. Marvel turns pale and teleports away. Bruce stares at Jason in shock. Dick falls to the floor. Tim, who was sitting off to the side, chokes on his coffee.

[specialgradefckr]

Not In Your Wildest Dreams

concept: satoru and suguru as incubii. and you, the shy, awkward thing at the club? you're the latest item on their menu.

tw: explicit content. dubcon (?), somno/dream stuff. satoru and suguru are literal demons, they kill people, they do bad things.

you see them in the club often enough. they're not always together but they share a strange, magnetic appeal that has your heart skipping a beat at the sight.

satoru is gorgeous. otherworldly, almost, with his snowy hair, eyes so blue they almost glow, a smooth jawline framing his undeniably attractive face.

he weaves in between the crowds without a care in the world, striding towards whatever takes his fancy. there's something graceful in how he moves; utterly confident, unbothered, and yet somehow there's a deeper, erotic appeal.

maybe it's just his outfits - his shirts are often more fashion than fabric, leaving his toned top half on display. it's like he's showing off; baring all his pale and perfect skin as an appetizer.

lurid eyes piercing through you with a glance, with a tiny, secret smile on those lovely pink lips; want a taste? of course you do.

pure arrogance. and it's so, so hot... but he's the type of guy who'd never go for a girl like you.

you're shy. a wallflower, even. he's a star, shining bright, pulling everyone into orbit. you're content to be a lesser moon, feeling the tug on your blood as he nears, looking away when you can no longer stand his light.

and somehow, you keep coming back anyways.

"this seat taken?"

he sounds as lovely as he looks. your heart can't take this. divert, defend!

"by my boyfriend," you mutter out a lie, looking away. face hot.

satoru laughs, and it turns out he doesn't need his beauty to make your heart skip a beat. just the sound of it; high and boyish and unrelenting charm.

maybe you're crazy, but you swear you can feel the body heat of him sliding in next to you.

"i'm right here~" sing-song, so charming, but teasing - god, he's such a tease, "c'mon, gimme a kiss~"

"my boyfriend wouldn't like that." might as well go all the way with your made-up nonsense.

"i'll beat him up. take his girl. just point him out to me, baby," you can definitely feel the heat of him, as he leans in closer, "i'm stronger than i look, you know. don't worry, i won't kill him~"

it's not like satoru looks weak. he's got muscles, lean, but defined, and just thinking of them again unsettles you.

you pull away, heart racing face burning, "i'm more worried you'll fuck him."

he laughs again. but this is loud, hearty; from the chest, you think. it makes your chest hurt.

you think you feel a hand on your shoulder before you slip off your seat, and into the crowd.

probably just your imagination, though.

suguru is more... obtainable, you think? not that you imagine you'd have a chance with either of them.

they're both so pretty they feel like they're from another world - like models off a billboard, so effortlessly airbrushed and flawless from every angle.

but suguru's got less flash about it. he's more subtle, more unassuming. approachable, almost.

not that you approach him. it's more that you run into him - drink in hand, on the way to the bathroom.

it spills all over him, over a clean but stylish top that must be designer something, an assortment of long chains around his neck clinking and wet.

"oh my god, i'm so sorry," the fluster overwhelms you as you meet his eyes. dark, violet. suddenly you feel unfathomably small, like a tiny fish in the face of a massive great white, out in open ocean.

"it's all right." his voice is velvet-smooth, nothing like satoru's. he smiles, and it's an easy, comforting thing -

but there's something about him that just isn't quite right.

it's hard to think about, because suguru's arms reach down, and you watch him pull his shirt right up over his head, chest stretching, muscles flexing broadly as he takes a deep breath, and drapes the half-soaked shirt over a forearm.

god. oh, god. his chest is so broad, so well-muscled, dusky nipples dark and perked up against his plush pecs.

you think you're going to pass out.

"no harm done," honey-sweet, the words drip out, "as long as i can get your number."

his voice is warm, melodic, and he looks at you with a gentle warmth -

but you can't help but feel like the girl who gets asked out as a joke.

with a tight smile, you type your number into his phone, handing it to him very quickly as you dart into the bathroom, throwing the cup away, only to head straight for the exit afterwards.

you don't dare look back.

and maybe it's a good thing you don't. you don't see suguru, number dialed, staring at the phone ringing in his hands.

you don't see his eyes on you as you leave. how you don't react at all, not even the way you would to a vibration.

you don't see his text, either, or voice message - because you hadn't given him your number.

but suguru knows. he always knows.

they're demons, after all. they have their ways of knowing. desire, attention, lust. they're natural whores. sex isn't exactly casual to them - it's a way of life.

satoru feeds off yearning, longing. he relishes breaking sweet, chaste mortal hearts, bewitching them with the most beautiful face they've ever seen, with quick glances and bashful smiles.

part of it is vanity. he is one of hell's prettiest, after all.

he loves making them want him. crave him. break themselves apart, betray their lovers, their values, their better interests just for a taste - a taste he rarely gives them.

only a chosen few get to touch him. and everyone who does get the honor is drained of their life essence and tossed away like the ugly, emptied out vessel they are.

suguru is more selective. he doesn't get anything out of leading people on. and he's not a gentle creature like satoru, who likes to make his prey come to him.

he's a hunter to the core. of course, he finds people who desire him - introverts, soft, shy souls who aren't likely to act on their longing.

delectable. ripe fruit hanging low on the branch. he hunts them down, presses them with soft smiles, gentle touches. cornering them so tenderly they think the nervousness is their own fault.

virgins are the best. he pushes it further and further, takes and takes and takes from soft, sweet things too caught up in the newness of their own desire and situation to hear the alarms blaring in their empty little heads.

and because he eats less often than satoru, he makes sure to savor each and every one, down to the very last drop.

he's a monster. through and through. at least he can admit it; he doesn't know how most of the mortals who serve him sleep at night.

neither of them feel guilt - what a useless emotion that would be for a demon.

but they do both feel desire.

this, though... this is the first time they've ever felt desire for the same person.

you don't sleep well that night.

it's been a bit of a pattern, lately. you're an insomniac in the best of times, but now it's bad, even when you fall asleep.

now, you've been having dreams.

it's not even subtle what it is. how it starts.

you know immediately that you're not alone. there's a warmth beside you, the press of bare skin against your own.

you think it should feel strange - being touched like this, having hands roaming over you. they're bigger, but not rougher. gentle as they cup your curves, slide along the expanse of your torso, your breasts, your shoulders.

it should feel invasive. it should feel like a violation, being touched like this. no one has ever seen you like this before.

instead, between your legs, a slow and steady ache grows.

it's hard to think when it happens. not quite lucid dreaming. like you're an actor in the play, floating through the roles, the lines, just soaking in the sensations.

hands on your hips. soft lips that tickle your neck, trailing up. tracing skin that prickles and shivers at the touch.

and then you see him - satoru.

unmistakable. striking white and blue that sends a bolt through you - throbbing. hot. hungry.

lower down. hardness against you. a grind, delicious, slow, the friction against your panties nearly making you keen and stretch into it.

you're not even looking at his face, but somewhere in this dream image in your mind, you see his smile.

"so cute... why'd you run off on me, huh?" you hear it, like it's whispered in your ear, but you feel him sucking a mark into your neck, "i don't bite... much."

it's both shameful and erotic, how you feel yourself clench at the sound of his voice.

you open your mouth, or you think you do. maybe you were going to say something. maybe you do, and you don't hear it. maybe it's just part of the dream.

either way, his laughter fills your ears. and it makes your chest ache. it's such a pretty sound.

"don't be scared. i like you, you know that?"

bright white hair flits into your vision. it smells sweet, electric; there's a sour taste lingering on your tongue that makes your mouth water.

makes you grind up into him. legs twine with yours, pinning you down, letting you feel him press and press that length of hardness right into your crotch.

it's - it's dirty. messy. embarrassing, to be like this.

and it feels so, so good.

the hair - soft, feathery - slipping through your fingertips but suddenly it's still there, it's silky, and smooth, and dark, and -

"naughty thing. you really hurt my feelings with that fake number, you know?"

the words should terrify you. they should be frightening even in a dream, you know that.

but looking up into those violet eyes and that catlike smile, all you feel is heat.

pure, pounding out of your chest like your galloping heart. you swallow your spit, or you think you do, the drool pooling in your mouth.

this time, when your mouth opens, you see suguru's face. hovering over yours. his own lips parted, wet, dripping saliva.

a strand, syrup-sweet, that lazily pools down from his mouth into yours.

it tastes as honeyed as his words are. makes your head feel dizzy.

not dizzy enough to forget the pulse of arousal that pounds, heavier and heavier.

you don't know if it's fear or desire that makes it surge as suguru smiles down at you. you don't know if it's fingers, or something longer, thicker, hotter, nudging at your folds, burning -

you never know what's happening in those dreams. it all gets hazy from there.

it dissolves in a mess of heat and sensation. a hot mouth, wide hands, pretty eyes and colors - so many that you can't tell them apart.

maybe it's that in your own mind, you can't decide which one you want. maybe it's because both of them feel like a lie you can't bring yourself to believe.

you don't know. you don't even want to, really. you run away, even in your dreams, hiding from the sensation, the obvious conclusion, the budding arousal and eroticism that must be your own subconscious begging you to get laid.

god. you really need to get a grip.

they're the kinds of dreams you remember, when you wake up. the type you try to pretend you haven't had.

someone like that would never be interested in you anyways... but it's nice to have them in your dreams.

you can't even look at yourself in the mirror most mornings. you don't want to see the face your dream men must have been looking at. you're not some beautiful creature like all of them, gorgeous at every angle, with any expression.

maybe it's lucky. or maybe not.

if you did check, you'd have noticed the hickeys on your neck.

[cloverapple]

@stargirlsblogging so sorry to put you on the spot like this, but I need space to reply + you brought up a good point 😮‍💨💚

“If It’s an Illusion, How Do You Break That Illusion to See Your DR?”

First, let’s set the baseline:

Creation is finished. You already did the action that creates—be it intending, scribbling affirmations until your wrist went numb, running methods on loop, thinking about shifting until your skull ached—you did the thing. Creation is finished. That’s it.

So when you ask, “What else do I need to do to break the illusion so I can see my DR?” you’re already in illusion territory, because you’re assuming there’s still something left to do, some next step, some final piece you must prove or unlock before you can “break” it.

That’s the illusion.

Illusions (in this context) = The continuity rules, the “laws” you’ve internalized, the assumption that you must earn your desire, that shifting takes effort, that there’s a “how” or “when.” Illusions are the rules your mind clings to because it’s addicted to linear cause-and-effect—except it doesn’t realize that the real cause-and-effect is instantaneous: “I did the thing, so I have the thing.”

So automatically, you’re contradicting yourself, which makes no sense!

So how do you actually break the illusion? You see it for what it is:

It makes zero sense that you would still see your CR right now if you’ve created your DR.

That’s where it starts to crumble. All the old logic—“obviously I’m still here,” “I must be failing,” “if I’m the creator why the hell am I still in my CR”—gets exposed for the nonsense it is. Because if you did the thing, then it’s done, and the only explanation left if you’re “still” seeing your CR is: “No, the fuck I’m not.”

🍀 You questioning what more needs to be done? Illusion.

🍀 You spiraling over “wtf do I do now, I’m confused”? Illusion.

🍀 You wondering “why hasn’t it happened yet”? Illusion.

Are you wrong for wavering, doubting, or spiraling? NO! Give yourself grace. You’re not broken for “contradicting assumptions.” The point is that even in the middle of your “BUT BUT BUT BUT” meltdown, you already have your desire. Your only job is to acknowledge how ridiculous it is that you would have anything else, and sit with that fact.

You know those stories people tell: “Eh, I just said fuck it, pretended I was already in my DR, and then I woke up there.” That’s literally it. That’s the “how.”

And like I’ve said before: the moment you accept it’s done, the “how” stops mattering. It can come however it comes—waking up in your DR with zero fanfare, slipping through a lucid dream, sliding through a method that finally clicks. Doesn’t matter. The delivery system isn’t your concern.

Your mind will throw “continuity” nonsense at you because your ego clings to the belief that it can’t be that easy, that there’s always something else to do, some test to pass. Cool. Don’t fight your ego! Show it the proof so it can’t argue:

🍀 Did you intend to shift? Yes.

🍀 Did you take any action that implies shifting? Yes.

🍀 Did you spend months/years doing said action? (Shifting attempts) FURTHER PROOF.

🍀 Creation is finished? Yes.

🍀 So it’s done. It’s yours. No takebacks. Done.

So will your questioning, spiraling, or “contradicting assumptions” stop you from shifting? No. No no no no no no, never.

As long as you recognize that it’s already done and and it cannot be taken from you, you will shift.

Let me put this in the language this community likes to use:

You think that if you assume something, and then assume the opposite, you’ve ruined everything. You think that if you assume “I can’t shift,” you’ve now locked yourself into a reality where you can’t shift. You think that any negative assumption about yourself means you’re delaying your desire. That’s not how it works, that’s an illusion.

You Can Still Shift/Manifest If You Waver, Check the 3D, Doubt, and Have Contradicting Assumptions. None of It Matters

Actually, what if I said I want you to waver, to check for proof, to crash out crying that you “haven’t shifted yet” because you “don’t have your desire”? Wild, right?

1) I encourage you to waver, because once you realize it doesn’t matter, you’ll catch yourself mid-waver and go—“wait, this doesn’t even make sense” and it’ll reinforce that you already have your desire, if anything.

Why would wavering delay your desires, if you’re the source? Why would contradicting assumptions matter if, once you do the action, you have the outcome? If intention is cause and you’re the observer that makes it so, then wavering is just background noise, never the thing that decides what’s yours.

2) I encourage you to check for proof—not because you need to, but because if there’s proof to see, why wouldn’t you look? Why wouldn’t you let yourself feel the thrill of confirmation? The proof is that you did the thing. You decided, you intended, you took the action—so the effect must exist, because cause and effect is all your mind has ever known. You cannot do ABC and not have XYZ. It’s impossible.

3) And I encourage you to crash out, to spiral on your bathroom floor at 3 AM about how you “haven’t shifted yet” or “don’t have your desire yet,” because it’s in that crash and burn that you’ll see how ridiculous and impossible it is. That you—who poured decision, action, and weeks/months/ years of intention into this, could somehow not be the master shifter you already are?

Could somehow not have your desire?

Not be in your DR? It’s insane. It’s impossible. It’s weird.

And you need to notice how weird and uncanny it is. Because that’s the crack in the illusion. That’s the moment you blink and realize:

“Oh! It’s an illusion!”

What Are Illusions?

By illusion, I don’t mean the rainbow spiders you see on shrooms, or the whole “put your hand through glass because glass isn’t real” trick (I mean, I do, but that’s a conversation for another time).

What I mean is: it’s all an illusion tied to the laws you think this reality runs on—continuity, time, linear cause-and-effect, “realistic” expectations. These laws are just the house rules of a dream you forgot you’re lucid in. You assume that because yesterday looked a certain way, today will follow, and tomorrow will play the same song. You think your five senses are the final gatekeepers of truth, that the consistency of waking up in the same bed means “this is real,” that seeing the same face in the mirror means “this is me.”

But these are illusions of consistency. Illusions of repetition. Illusions that make you think you haven’t shifted, that you don’t have your desire, that you aren’t the source.

Because when you zoom out—like really zoom out—you realize these “laws” only bind you if you agree to play by them. And when you realize that, the whole “If I waver, I don’t shift” narrative becomes laughable, because it doesn’t even make sense under the truth of what you are.

Put simply:

• Intention (cause) results in the experience (effect) within awareness.

• The appearance of “no change” is just the illusion of continuity tied to how your awareness filters perception, not a true counter-proof that the cause-effect did not occur.

And from that place, it doesn’t matter if you waver, doubt, check, contradict, spiral, or affirm “I can’t shift”. None of it has ever mattered. Because it can’t. And that’s how you wake up.

I don’t know if I’m losing my mind, but the more I sit with this, the more I pick at it, the more it unravels. Circumstances, negative thoughts, wavering, checking your reality, contradicting assumptions—all of it starts to look absurd under the harsh, irrefutable light of what’s actually true.

Because if you are awareness—and you are—then everything flows from that awareness. Strip away awareness, and nothing remains. Take awareness away, and you are no longer aware of reality. Reality cannot exist without awareness.

You live and breathe because you are aware of it. Take that away, and do you exist?

Whether you believe you are THE creator or A creator, it doesn’t matter. You are the source, you are awareness, so you create everything. You are the creator, the source, the god of reality, whatever you want to call it.

And if we look at cause and effect—or call it decision, observation, assumption, whatever label you want—if I decide to do something, and I take the action, even if that action is simply affirming “I am in my DR,” there must be an effect because of that cause. The effect is that I shifted. I intended, I did, so it is. It’s impossible for it to be otherwise.

You can’t intend to do something, do it, and then not have it. Action is intention, and intention is action. And if you are the source, then wherever your observation goes, your awareness follows, and that’s the reality you’re living. It’s all in your awareness.

And that alone is the proof. The proof is that you did it. The proof is in the intention, the action, the decision, the observation, the assumption. So automatically, you MUST be in your DR, you MUST have your desire, because the cause is there, so the effect is there. You did the thing, so you have the thing. Full stop.

And if the question is, “Okay, if I’m in my DR because I decided and took the action, why am I not seeing it?”—the answer is: you are seeing it. You are. It doesn’t matter if your plan was to be in your DR already or have the ability to shift to it on command, YOU HAVE IT ALREADY.

“But my reality is that I’m still in my CR right now,” or “but my reality is that I still can’t shift no matter how hard I try.”

No. It’s an illusion. If you intended to have your desire, you have it because intention is action, and there cannot be action without an outcome.

The outcome cannot be that you failed, because you did not intend to fail

Your CR is an illusion layered on top of whatever your desire is. You’re not seeing it. It can’t be real, not if the cause has already created the effect. If you’re seeing your current reality, it’s illusion, illusion, illusion.

If you “don't have your desire right now” it’s an illusion BECAUSE you already have it. It’s not real.

Of course, you can explain it a million ways—“you’re observing not being there,” “you’re identifying with the one who hasn’t shifted,” “you still need to work for it a little more,” “Your assumptions are that you can’t shift so just change your assumptions”

Those explanations can be comforting, but they all collapse the second you go back to the irrefutable truth:

And the source is this: if you decide to do something and you take action (intention) to do it, you can’t not have the thing.

“But what if I failed—”

YOU CANNOT FAIL. YOU CANNOT CREATE FAILURE IF YOU DID NOT INTEND TO CREATE FAILURE.

Having the thing doesn’t always look like holding the end result in your hand immediately. You have it because you took action. You intended to shift, you did your method, you did your process, you assumed you would shift, you rolled over and went to sleep after saying “I’ll wake up in my DR.”

So you have shifted. It’s impossible not to.

And when you take this in fully, you see it: wavering, negative assumptions, all the noise—they’re illusions. None of it matters. They’re background static, clinging to a dying continuity that has no power over you anymore.

If I’m lying in bed at night, saying, “I’m shifting to my DR, I am in my DR,” I took the action, so I should have the thing. Any wavering, any “but I don’t see it,” is illusion. It can’t be real, because you already created it. Every bit of noise that shows up—“I’m not there yet,” “I can’t shift”—is illusion, illusion, illusion.

Wavering, contradicting yourself, doubting—yeah, all of that props up the illusion, sure. But none of it touches the fact that what’s done is done. If you intend to have your desire—by any action, whether it’s a split-second decision, a method, or months of trying—you already have it.

So even the “contradicting assumptions” like “obviously I don’t have my desire” are flimsy at best. Because under the larger observation—understanding that you did the thing, so now you have the thing—it doesn’t matter. It can’t matter. The noise of contradiction doesn’t override the fact that you claimed it, and so it’s yours.

And once you see it for what it is, you can’t unsee it.

It doesn’t matter if you spiral at 3 AM whispering “I’ll never shift.”

It doesn’t matter if you open your eyes every morning and think “Guess I’m still here.”

It doesn’t matter if you side-eye the 3D and think “Obviously, I don’t have it.”

None of it matters. Not the doubts, not the contradictions, not the bad days you think ruined everything. They’re background noise. They’re illusions. You’re still getting what you decided on.

So yeah, go ahead and waver. Have as many negative thoughts and contradicting assumptions as you want. But know this:

The moment you truly understand that nothing—no dumb rules and restrictions—can stop you from having your desire because they are ILLUSIONS that don’t even make sense.… this will be you, mid-waver:

[scribbyz]

i wonder what kris thinks about the player’s resets or other playthroughs

i mean, obviously we have the whole thing of them being controlled, which is an obviously upsetting matter to them, but i wonder what they think of other routes— if they’re aware of them, that is

i think its also interesting to think about this while taking into consideration deltarune’s release through chapters

lets say kris is aware of multiple routes. that’s basically time loops, if you think about it. the player restarts from the beginning and follows one of a few paths. i mean, sure, theres a lot of options of what the player can do, but in the end its either a mostly normal route or a weird route. a time loop.

now, when deltarune first came out, it was just chapter one. it was an infinite loop of practically the same stuff every day. it’s terrifying for kris, considering theyre being controlled. but its even more terrifying that, in kris’ perspective, its an infinite loop. its just that first chapter, for on and on.

then chapter 2 released.

its a normal loop, at first— the player goes through chapter 1 normally. but how world shattering would it be to kris, to wake up and it be the next day? to have new interactions after who knows how long of not having any?

i think itd fill kris with a sense of hope that perhaps, finally, theyre out of the loop. sure, theyre still being controlled— that’s terrifying in itself. but maybe theyre hopeful that this means the end is newr

then it repeats again.

the constant loop that they had gone through continues to repeat again and again. this time, however, its just extended and somehow worse. i mean, kris has to go through the whole interaction with noelle likely multiple times. thats gotta be absolutely devastating

and i mean, this just continues to repeat, y’know?? kris goes through the cycle of time loops and timelines, then finally, finally, another chapter releases— theyre filled with hope that the end is near— and then ir repeats, just longer than before.

and i mean, eventually no more chapters are gonna release. whatever happens with the player controlling kris in the future will be known of course, but. the time loop cycle doesnt stop. there wont be new content. the cycle wont extend anymore, but it wont stop repeating.

sorry if this is a nonsensical ramble its kinda hard to put what im thinking into words. also i know this isnt canon im just spouting some ideas

[vcluvleyx]

third place (rin itoshi x fem. reader)

angst/drama

summary: you and rin itoshi have been best friends since you were six. but you moved on. after waiting and hoping for rin to notice your feelings, you eventually gave up. you’re now dating someone kind, someone present. rin, focused on soccer and his goals, never realized what he had—until he saw you with someone else.

notes: this is a pretty short story compared to the other fanfics i wrote lol

chapter 1: foreshadowing

you and rin had a complicated friendship. it was quiet and close. he knew that you were someone he could lean on. you were his safe space.

the two of you would often spend time at the park. ever since you were kids. the cold breeze would catch up to the two of you from running for so long, chasing after each other from noon till night. nowadays, you sit on the bench and reminisce. sometimes, you talk and rin listens. other times, it’s the opposite. some days, you both talk nonstop. other days, you both sit in silence.

one day, the two of you were in his room. you were both sitting on the edge of his bed, talking about nonsense. he was blabbing on about soccer and you were listening. how could you not? you loved him, after all. when it was your turn to speak, you started on about school. how stressful things were and how much work piled up. that was, until you started rambling on about how you feel and then…

“…and i mean…to be honest rin, i really like you.”

you gasped, and slapped a hand over your mouth. “i-i’m so sorry. i didn’t mean to say that.”

he looks at you, wide-eyed. “it’s okay. but…i just…i don’t feel the same about you.”

“i…i understand.” you choked back tears. he noticed.

“hey…i think it’s best if you leave now.”

your jaw drops and his face stays cold. you slowly nod your head, and head down the stairs. the tears won’t stop running. you’re about to open the door, but rin stays in his room. he doesn’t care to escort you, like he always did. you wipe the tears off your face with sleeve of the hoodie you’re wearing. the hoodie that used to be his, but one that you borrowed so often that he let you keep it. you pause. you take it off, and leave it on a chair. it’s was never yours, after all.

chapter 2: what belongs to who?

time eventually passed. your heart couldn’t wait forever, after all. you continued to stay friends with rin, though. but you met someone. someone kind, caring, open. he was everything rin couldn’t be with you. and that was okay. isagi was the nicest person you knew, and you often spent time together with him. you started growing distant with rin. he was third place, after all. after you’re heart, and your current lover. he obviously knew of your relationship with isagi, but apart of him hated it. he’s so mentally focused on soccer, he hadn’t taken in his feelings yet. of you.

fast forward to the present, and you’re grabbing books out of your locker. isagi was waiting by your side, and his company kept you content. rin’s walking down the hall. he sees you laugh. he hasn’t seen you laugh in a while. how could isagi make you laugh in ways he couldn’t?

“want me to walk you to class?” isagi asks, leaning against the lockers. he puts a hand in front of you.

“yeah, obviously,” you chuckle, closing your locker and placing your hand in his.

the two of you pass by rin. of course you don’t notice. why would you? you’re finally getting the happiness you deserve. it hits him like a punch in the gut.

the more time passes, the more he begins to miss your presence. he spends more time in soccer. he devotes himself entirely to forgetting about you. he was the one who rejected you, after all. 

during soccer practices, isagi would openly talk about you during stretches and warm-ups. he didn’t know entirely of your relationship with rin, which is something you always used to avoid talking about. although he knows that you and rin were once friends, he thought that was it. no romantic feelings at all. he pities rin. isagi talks about how he would ask you to be your girlfriend. bachira would often throw in words of encouragement. rin always thinks about how it should’ve been him. maybe if he’d been a little nicer. maybe if you stuck around longer.

truth is, you don’t regret it at all. you didn’t want to wait for rin any longer. what’s worse is that he was stringing you along, unable to make a decision for himself. at his next soccer game, it hits him.

he’s missed all the goals that night. isagi noticed. the team noticed. ego noticed. something’s shifted. his concentration is fading away from soccer. your face appears before every goal. his kicks go wonky, and the ball ends up missing the net. at break, isagi walks up to him. 

“it’s not the game bothering you…is it?”

rin’s eyes widen. he’s angry. “no.” is all he manages to say. it’s not isagi’s fault. he knows that. 

“i’m sorry.”

rin looks up at him. “isagi…”

“yes?”

“i…i need to tell you something.”

“what is it?”

“it’s (y/n)…” isagi’s expression turns into a worried one. “i love her.”

isagi’s jaw drops and his eyebrows dip. “no you don’t.”

“yes, i do.”

isagi grabs the collar of his jersey. “you don’t mean that! you’re saying-“

“she used to love me.”

“…huh?”

“it’s true. when we were friends, i rejected her.”

“she moved on.” isagi tugs on his jersey. “you need to let her go.”

“i-i can’t.” a tear rolls down rin’s cheek. isagi’s genuinely surprised, but he’s angry. how could you have kept this a secret? you know that isagi and rin play together. 

“you have to,” isagi says. “she’s found someone.”

“i can’t,” rin cries. “it’s so, so hard.”

isagi backs away from him. he needs to stop himself from doing something he’ll regret. “she’s happy now. if you ruin that, i’ll make sure you never play soccer again.”

rin doesn’t look at him. he’s looking at his feet. he’s never felt so small. isagi makes sure the rest of the game goes well. they end up winning with isagi scoring the winning goal, and his teammates all congratulate him while rin isolates himself. he hasn’t made a single goal the entire game. he knows that your heart belonged to isagi now. it was never his, after all.

chapter 3: goodbye

on sunday morning, you receive a text message. you’re cuddled up on the couch, and all of a sudden your phone screen lights up. it’s a text from rin. his old icon was a picture of the two of you together, back when you were still close. you’d never bothered to change it since. 

r: hey

rin? hi

r: can we meet up?

sure. where?

r: mine?

how about the park?

r: ok. 2 sound good?

yeah

the thoughts in rin’s head screw together. was he really going to do this? he needed to tell you. no matter the consequence. you decide to get to the park ten minutes earlier, just to see that rin had beat you to the chase. he sits on the small wooden bench. one built for two.

“hey. you’re early,” you give him a small smile.

“huh? yeah,” he exhales. despite all that he’s put you through, seeing the way you smile at him makes his heart ache.

“do you remember coming here as kids?” you sigh, looking up into the sky. the memories flood back into your vision, as you see two kids run along the fields of grass.

“yeah. how could i forget?” he says, blinking down and them.

“so, why are we here exactly?” you ask, sitting beside him.

“um…i just needed to tell you something?”

it couldn’t be. no way. “sure. what is it?”

“i…i love you,” he looks straight into your eyes.

“no…rin.” you stand up.

“i’m sorr-“

“don’t.” you cut him off harshly. “don’t say shit that you don’t mean.”

rin stands up and pokes his finger scarily, painfully hard into your chest. “you’re fucked. i do mean it. why can’t you see it? you’ve known me your entire life.”

you shove him away. “bullshit! if you really loved me, then why? i’m happy now. every single fucking time we were together, as friends, you made me feel so alone. now, you tell me you love me?”

he looks at you. he’s hurt. but so are you. it’s not a competition, he reminds himself. 

“i’m…sorry for raising my voice.”

“it’s okay,” he sighs. 

“i…want you to know that i did truly love you,” you admit. “every single moment we spent together. as friends. you were one of the best things that’ve happened to me. i’ll never forget it.”

rin pulls you into a hug. the way he hugs you was a pattern you’ve memorized. the precise placement of his hands on the high and low of your back, and how his head rests on your shoulder. he feels the tears roll down his cheeks, but he can’t stop them. “feels like you’re leaving.”

“maybe it’s best if i do,” you say, closing your eyes.

“what about…still being friends after it’s over?”

“i…don’t think that’s a good idea.” you pull yourself away from him. your favorite teal eyes were shining with a spark of hope and disappointment under the glossy shield.

“yeah. you’re right,” rin says. “it’s for the best.”

you’re about to open your mouth but rin speaks first. “i care about you. so much it hurts.”

“me too, rin. it’s selfish. on you. and me.”

“i can’t…just be friends with you,” he says shakily. “i’ll always want more. it’s not fair.”

you hug him again, but this time he doesn’t hug you back. instead, he talks. 

“i’m sorry.”

you pull away. “in another life, rin.”

chapter 4: second place

you show up to isagi’s dorm. your mascara is running down your face and your eyes are red from rubbing them nonstop. the sleeves of your sweater were a faded black from wiping your face. when he opens the door, bachira and nagi were sitting on his bed, playing a game on their tv. when isagi sees the state you’re in, he quickly escorts them for a moment before letting you in.

“(y/n)? who did this to you?”

“he told me he loved me,” you cried. 

“who…?”

“rin!” you sobbed. it was almost like a scream. isagi tried to comfort you by wrapping his arms around you. “i-i can’t believe it!” you can’t stop crying. isagi’s worried about you. but worse, he’s mad at rin.

the next day at school, you basically show up as a deformed mess. baggy, swollen eyes, mismatched clothing, and a red, puffy face. your hood of your dark green hoodie was pulled over your head while your red sweatpants hung loosely on your waist. your backpack was slung over one shoulder as it was wide open. isagi hated seeing you like this. during lunch, you stayed on the rooftop with him. you refused to eat anything, despite isagi’s disapproval. you napped on his shoulder as he ate his lunch. 

during soccer practice, isagi ran straight to rin and balled up the front of his jersey in his fist. 

“what the hell is wrong with you?!”

rin doesn’t even flinch. “what do you mean?”

“why would you say that to her?! have you seen the state that she’s in?! she hasn’t slept at all!”

he blinks once. “i said it to her because she deserved to know.”

isagi slowly, deliberately, lets go of him. “why…would you let her go? you were one of her best friends!”

“it…” rin maintains harsh the eye contact. “it had to happen. i had to let go of her. it wasn’t for her. it was for me.”

isagi stays quiet. “but…why? why’d you do it?”

“i did it because i love her. you’d do anything for the people you love, right?”

[moodr1ng]

like prev post is one example i happen to be talking about for once but ig what i mean is like. every little small inconsequential thing that my mind could turn into "you look suspicious right now", that i could possibly suspect means someone thinks poorly of me (w no evidence of that whatsoever), that i can possibly twist into somehow being about how Everyone Secretly Hates Me And Thinks Im A Liar And A Fraud, i will. the most minor things. every day of my life. i am plagued by a constant fear that everyone thinks im always lying, that everyone is always suspecting me of Something, all the time.

every time i go to the pharmacy to pick up my completely normal mental health medications i think "the pharmacist thinks im a malingerer whos faking mental illness to try and get drugs". when they ask "thats two boxes right?" im terrified of saying "yes", even though yeah, my prescription is for two boxes of these meds, bc if i say "yes, give me two boxes and not one", its gonna be confirmation that im a liar whos just trying to get more meds. even though thats. literally just what im prescribed.

its like that about everything. i have to overperform truthfulness at all times, because just knowing im telling the truth isnt enough, i also have to convince everyone else that im telling the truth, all the time, because Everyone Always Thinks Im A Liar in my mind. if i, like, tell a friend on discord "going to bed now!" and then while getting ready for bed i make one last post on tumblr like 5 minutes later i think "my friend is gonna see this and think i lied about going to bed and that i was trying to avoid them on purpose because im a bad friend". if i tell someone about a condition i have i assume they doubt i actually have it and think im lying for attention. if i tell people im bigender and they react with total acceptance i think "theyre actually thinking im obviously just a binary man who is lying about being bigender so i can intrude upon women in some way, but they cant say it bc they dont want to look transphobic". if i tell people about abuse i suffered as a child and they react with horror and compassion i think "theyre thinking im making it up or exaggerating so i can get pity, theyre just forced to pretend they believe me to not be rude". if im having a mental health episode and someone is concerned about my well being i think "they think im doing this on purpose and putting on a show to force them to take care of me". and if i try to tell my therapist about symptoms im experiencing i think "he thinks literally everything i say about my mental health is a lie i tell so i can get on disability and get meds, so i have to hide part of my symptoms from him because the less i tell the less suspicious i am". i literally cant discuss this very belief w my therapist because i am convinced that if i told him "im constantly terrified that everyone, including you, thinks im lying about everything so i can get attention or some other benefit" he would think "ah, my liar patient is claiming that hes afraid of being seen as a liar to throw me off his scent. this is actually more proof that hes lying, hes laying down the precedent that hes not a liar in order to cover further lies".

all the time. all the time. and i cant make it stop. and i cant talk about it because i think anyone i tell about this is going to think "ah, yes, The Liar is insisting shes not a liar, which only a liar would do". i literally think anyone reading this very post is going to think "youre talking about this too much, youre trying too hard to come off as truthful, obviously youre trying to cover up your lies, in fact this very post proves you do lie about being mentally ill and abused and you lie to your therapist to get drugs and you probably stole that girls bonnet too, everything you say you didnt do is just a preemptive cover for having done it".

but well. if i keep refusing to talk about it im only feeding it. because the more i avoid talking about it to not trigger it, the more i reinforce the idea that "if i talk about it, everyone will turn against me" as legitimate. so, whatever, i guess. im just very tired, you know. i wish it would stop sometimes. i wish i could trust that anyone regards me in good faith. i think it also sucks of me to assume the worst out of everyone like this - to just think everyone is out to get me or always regarding me in the worst possible light. idk. i just wish i could make it stop. ill make an effort to finally tell my therapist tomorrow. but idk if ill have the guts yet.

[notbecauseofvictories]

it's so interesting talking to and around my father, because personality-wise we are extremely similar (so much so that sometimes I'll say things, then my mother will go quiet and respond...you know, you sounded just like your father) but I grew up as a woman, and he grew up as a man, and that does that make an appreciable difference.

[stebbinsgreyhoundfursuit]

This is geunily the worst thing I've ever made it took days not because it took any effort but because I could not make myself look at it any longer 😟😟😟.....

[clownhonkbonk]

something something... vampires.

zaya uthman, vampire hunter, nim thunderstruck, the polite vampire.

characters belong to @apleye from their awesome sauce comic!! go read. super good.

[spookythesillyfella]

"This crying voice of mine is so annoying // I suppress the emotion // Break the egg, make it a mess // Fry it, roll it // Look, I've stopped crying"

★ alt verzionz under cut :

★ song : "For you An Empty Shell" – Dobu no Awa

[slightlypoisonedtea]

i haven’t touched the avatar fandom in ages (i’m bad at juggling this okay), so i’m not even sure how relevant zukka is anymore, but i’m now in the hugest, most rewatch-the-whole-series-then-binge-read-all-bookmarked-fics-then-cry mood ever and it’s literally just here bc i read a coffeeshop/college tag in a different fandom.

yes, the tag.

as in, scrolling through ao3 in a completely different fandom, a random tag under a random title that proclaimed something like “College AU, Coffeeshop AU”

i didn’t even read the work.

i was just immediately college/coffeeshop (teashop)AUs are basically directly linked to zukka in my messed up little head and now i must return to this fandom i haven’t touched since midterms.

and by all of this i mean to say it’s 3:28 AM EDT and i’m halfway through Book 2: Earth and sleep is for the weak.

[bittersweetresilience]

adrien often being referred to in fanon as “sunshine” and the sun and something about Felix having Moon symbolism. is this anything sunny?

sentitwin sun moon symbolism is absolutely ridiculous. i have thought about it before but never gotten anywhere. this time i consulted @ninadove about it and rotated it in my mind for many hours and i am still not sure about my verdict. therefore i'm just going to ramble a bit and then pass it over to nina. birthday teamwork!

i started out agreeing with the assignment of adrien as the sun and félix as the moon.

their personalities seem to fit the vibes. moreover, it ties into yin and yang.

adrien's miraculous is placed on the yang half of the miracle box, and ladybug's on the yin. his hair is parted to the right, which is the direction of yang, while félix's and ladybug's are parted to the left, yin.

a brief tangent here: even though the placement in the miracle box and adrien and marinette's civilian selves with their white and black outer garments respectively seem to indicate yang and yin, when they become heroes, they swap entirely. ladybug wears red, yang, and chat noir wears black, yin. their powers of creation and destruction are also yang and yin. my theory is that not only are adrien and marinette meant to be halves of a whole as partners, but their hero selves are also meant to halves of a whole with their civilian selves. yin and yang symbolism all around.

back to adrien as sunshine. before félix was introduced, adrien was established as the character in the show with the disney princess golden hair and golden smile, so it's easy to see where this fanon came from.

marinette describes her love for him as three suns in her heart.

then if we want to pair the sentitwins, and we think adrien is the sun, it makes sense for félix to be the moon.

some final evidence in support of this is mirror imagery. the same way the moon reflects the light of the sun, félix reflects adrien. both in his creation as a reflection of adrien's and in his behavior in the show. félix dresses as adrien in over half of his episodes.

but this picture is complicated by several factors. there's a fair amount of evidence that the twins are actually associated the other way around, with adrien as the moon and félix as the sun.

gold and silver color symbolism. one could easily think of gold as the sun and silver as the moon, but in the show, félix and the graham de vanilys are associated with gold and adrien and the agrestes are associated with silver. the wedding rings, the colors of their homes, their camouflaged miraculous, the lighting... anarchist gang talked about this a few months ago and i think nina may want to expand on what we discovered, so i will leave this to her.

another brief tangent here: white and black color symbolism. i have not fleshed out my thoughts on it but i am leaving notes here for future reference. adrien's civilian outfit features white, but this likely reflects gabriel's influence on him. his hero selves wear black. meanwhile, félix is introduced dressed in black and haloed in white as he enters gabriel's sphere. in the play, it's the opposite. at the diamonds' dance, he and marinette wear white and kagami, like lune rouge, wears red. obfuscation? femininity? yin and yang again?

and a third brief tangent here: when chat noir is unhealthy, he becomes chat blanc, who is white, and patte de velours, who is accented with gold. colors of entanglement? of influence? of inauthenticity? are félix's best parts adrien's idea of a perfect self? i am contemplating.

there are more significant reasons for moon adrien and sun félix. in important moments of the show, adrien is frequently associated with the moon. glaciator, chat blanc, kuro neko, new york special... and on the other hand, where does the sun play an important part of the story? in réplique, with félix.

narratively, sentitwins seem to have moon and sun roles. adrien is the one from whom things are hidden, while félix is the one who shines light on the truth. adrien spends most of his time as support, while félix is an active agent. adrien reacts to things, while félix makes them happen, for better or for worse.

nina has an entire essay on félix and the development of his sun associations from lune rouge to the sunrise in représentation, so i'll leave that to her to discuss.

all right. sentitwins are either sun and moon or moon and sun. what does this mean for them?

it intrigues me that adrien is viewed by fanon as the sun when he could be better described as the moon. adrien agreste enjoyers, please get on this.

here is a starting point for your thoughts. if adrien is the moon, it makes sense why he destroyed the moon in chat blanc when he was trying to destroy himself.

and if félix is the sun, it further puts into perspective why he felt guilty about réplique's fate. they were a sacrifice for his goals. he may has well have literally killed them.

role reversal and false impressions are prominent in sentitwins and this complicated picture adds to that.

frequently bought together. do not separate.

in conclusion, yes, autumn, this is most certainly something. fuck if i know what it is, but i love losing my mind about it.

[limonjarritos]

VINCE IS SO DOWN BAD FOR RODY OH MY GOD??? LITERALLY KILLS HIS EX GIRLFRIEND TO MAKE HIM HAPPY???? THEYVE KNOWN EACH OTHER LESS THAN A WEEK??????

LITERALLY LIKE- MY MAN FELL HARD AND INSANELY. LIKE WHO DOES THAT? I wouldn't have it any other way. Just the way that as soon as Rody came into his life he was like 'I need this man to be so whole-y mine.'

When I was playing the game my pet theory was that he fell for Rody's brand of love, for how he loved Manon (he did say that he spoke of Manon when they first met) and Rody's personality.

(read more because I am so annoying about this game vv)

Something something, how Rody loves so intensely to the detriment of himself (Manon told him to stop giving, to for once in his life realise that he needed to take care of him self and be stable. He can't just account for the other person's needs <- barely know her but I get why Rody was head over heels). How Rody's love is similar to his cooking, burning, burning himself, burning and oh so overwhelming. And I do think Vince wanted the feel of that burn for himself, wanted to feel the warmth and devotion of which he had been so devoid of. To understand what it was he was lacking. How love and cooking go hand in hand in the story, how Vince's dishes were devoid of love, how he can't taste. How Rody's love surely would be strong enough, would be the missing ingredient to allow him to finally taste something. (Also lack of taste going hand in hand with what looks like depression of some sort, or perhaps just apathy for life. How bland his own life may be. How such a love, such a person could perhaps bring some taste to his life.) Vince seems to have killed Manon as a form of trying to show Rody a similar type of love. Giving him something, giving him a meal made out of Rody's own love. A gift since he couldn't give his own brand of love in a way that matters, couldn't give it without showing his own brand of devotion. I do think he 100% had an underlying jealousy and hatred of Manon, how Rody was still stuck up on her. How she never once mentioned Rody when her and Vince dated (though outside of Vince's pov I'm pretty sure Manon was just doing the healthy normal thing by not mentioning an ex?? but Vince is soooo gone) which is obviously a sin (he doesn't seem to take kindly to people who are mean to Rody. Such as the article and Rody's old college classmate) and proof she wasn't deserving enough of Rody's love. But alas she was still a gift and show of love to Rody.

On the personality topic (thought I forgot about that did you?), Rody is such a brash and kind person. A perfect foil for Vincent's more stoic nature. Rody willing to try and befriend Vincent, running into the kitchen to talk to him. He showed a bit of said love to Vince by trying to befriend him and how could Vince not want more? (why wouldn't Vince try to reciprocate in his own way. Make him happy) I mean he seems pretty feared by his cooks, and the people at the party have mentioned that Vince is pretty ruthless, not at all a person many wish to get to know. But Rody is willing to, yet Vince wants his undivided attention...

Okay wow this has gone on way too long uhh I'm 100% open to further discussion especially if I forgot something! And I haven't really looked too much into the game past playing it, so any reveals the creator may have given I'm mostly unaware of and would love to be informed of more!

Anyways tiny Vincent attack!

[idiosyncraticrednebula]

The backlash against Frozen, which, from my observation, has cooled down (that isn't a joke, I swear-) quite a bit over the past few years, was less based on the quality of the movie itself and more on the fact that its massive success and reach really overshadowed a lot of other movies that came out prior to it and after it and was getting credited for stuff that had already been done before plenty of times, and in many cases, in those exact movies. This is why, to this day, many fans STILL refuse to give Tangled its props without trying to put Frozen down in some way. In their eyes, Tangled should have gotten the glory and accolades Frozen received, but did not, and that made them quite jealous. Overall, Frozen is far from a bad movie. It's a great movie with a great message, characters, music and does actually deserve the success and recognition it got, and some fans need to stop being so salty about it and uplift their fav movies without putting Frozen down so they get the proper appreciation they deserve as well. Although, yes, the credit this movie got for allegedly introducing themes, archetypes and tropes that had already been seen before in Disney, including movies set in a fairytale world with heroines as the protags, was undoubtedly the most annoying part about its success and is part of the reason why many tried to drag this movie and its main leads.

[karamazovposting]

On Ivan and bipolar disorder (part three)

This is my favorite part of this whole thing. I haven't written it yet, that's literally the opening line, but here I'll be talking about one of the most interesting (to me) aspects of Ivan's character: how the other characters perceive him; I already know I'll be having a blast writing this. Internal vs external perception is probably my favorite topic when it comes to character study, so I was thinking of doing something similar for Dmitri as well in the future because I noticed some things that I want to talk about. I'll think about it.

For once I don't have to make an introduction where I explain what I'll be going over in this because there's none to be made, so let's start from the beginning. The first time we see Ivan is when they're all waiting for Dmitri at the beginning of the book, and what does he do? He takes the piss out of everyone, of course. And I think that in everything that happens there and in the following passages (I was particularly struck by Father Zosima's words about him, which I've already mentioned in here) we pretty much have the key to Ivan's character, and he doesn't even give it to us himself (very fitting indeed). The first thing we find out is that Alyosha is afraid Ivan will be condescending towards the monks and while Ivan technically isn't, he still adopts a subtly mocking tone with them, which checks out considering that Miusov says Ivan feigns arrogance to mask his own insecurity. Also it's very telling that Ivan's demeanor changes when it comes to Zosima, I feel like he actually does respect him and to some extent appreciates his words. Funnily enough I've found myself in a similar situation in the past (atheist surrounded by nuns, my family was there, they told me some things I appreciated; I wasn't making fun of anyone though I swear) so I get it.

Speaking of words, there are many used for him in those chapters, and there are even more as the novel goes on, brushstroke after brushstroke painting a rather confusing and contradictory picture of this young man: he's bright yet insecure and "a tomb", he's weird and a misunderstood outcast in his own family yet he's charming (said by multiple characters in multiple occasions, I think it's the word that's used the most to describe him) and refined, yet again eccentric. He's paradoxical and a riddle (another word used multiple times), and his own father fears him more than he fears the son who almost beat him to death and at first I couldn't understand why, considering everyone else's opinion of Ivan and the fact that Ivan actually helped get Dmitri off of their father when he was beating him, but then I went back to Book Two and stumbled upon a line that managed to completely go over my head in the past (how could that happen? God, the horror!) that does explain a lot and looking back now, to me feels like one of the most important lines (about Ivan) of the whole novel:

What seemed to [Aleksej] strangest of all was that his brother Ivan, [...] who alone had such influence on his father that he could have stopped him [...]

I don't think I need to explain why I think this line (that you can find in The old buffoon for context) is crucial so I won't say much about it, but it also explains why Ivan's presence in the Karamazov household is seen as a guarantee for quiet and order (as stated during Dmitri's trial, and we also see it in the fact that both Dmitri and Pavel had in mind to murder Fyodor only if Ivan had been out of the picture, though for different reasons), and honestly it surprised me: I mean, Ivan's influence over other people plays a very important role in the story, but him having influence over his father? Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov? Wow. Also I have something else to say about the quiet and order thing but it belongs in part four.

The rest of that line is also interesting in my opinion:

[...] [Ivan] sat now quite unmoved, with downcast eyes, apparently waiting with interest to see how it would end, as though he had nothing to do with it.

This, maybe trivial, line never really left my head, which means it must mean something to me. Maybe because that behaviour fits Ivan's character so well and I always like when he gets to act like a normal, unbothered, and even childish at times, twenty-three year old (he's not even angry there, what a rare occurrence) and because according to how the other characters speak of him, it feels unexpected (and turned out to be useful for this post).

Back to how others speak of him, someone (Fyodor I think) goes as far as saying that maybe Ivan deliberately seeks torment, which honestly feels a little too familiar to me and that's why that's another line I can't seem to get out of my head; when people have such a high opinion of you they do tend to blame your own struggle on you, at least in my experience, as it's their only way of rationalizing it. You should be better than that, you should be smarter than that. But you're not, so maybe you actually want it; why would such a brilliant person be like that otherwise? You're not allowed to be "weak" and I think Ivan is a perfect example of this as he has internalized this concept, but I'll go over it in part four.

But what does all this have to do with bipolar disorder? I'm getting there, but you'll have to bear with me because this whole thing gets quite intricated at this point and I have to be as clear as I can (and I can't, ever), so let's take a seemingly nonsensical step back to see the bigger picture.

None of the brothers are stupid: Dmitri is naive, impulsive and uneducated, sure, but the narrator does describe him as a fairly intelligent man in spite of it, Pavel was basically a child prodigy and a very smart young adult (and maybe I should talk about it sometime because everyone in the novel considers him to be capable but stupid and there's only one person who explicitly recognizes his intelligence in a genuine way apart from the narrator, guess who), and Aleksej, while also uneducated, isn't stupid either. But there is a particular emphasis put on Ivan's intelligence and it's hard to find a paragraph where he is present or where someone else is talking about him that doesn't mention it. Ivan is bright, Ivan is educated, Ivan is an academic. It's pretty much the first thing the other characters think of when thinking about him, it's almost some sort of morbid fixation. And it's not a positive thing either as it does nothing but feed into his insecurities and Pavel even uses it against him by telling him how intelligent he is over and over until he officially loses it. Ivan is smart to the point of being charming and admired, but that turns out to be a double-edged sword (of course) because everyone puts him on a pedestral and higher the pedestral, deadlier the fall, as we see in the second half of the novel. In my opinion the only one who seems to view him as a human being and not as some sort of ghost or higher, detached entity (apart from Zosima) is Alyosha; Dmitri considers Ivan to be better than everyone else including himself, Smerdyakov is...well, Smerdyakov, his father's attitude towards him is basically I don't understand what's up with him and I don't really care (in addition to what I said a few paragraphs ago) and even Katya is charmed by him more than she loves him, at least at first. Everyone else doesn't even really know him and that's partially his own fault, but I can't blame him.

Why do I consider this bipolar coding? To make it short, intelligent people are often considered charismatic and many psychiatric studies suggest that there's a link between bipolar disorder and high intelligence (which to me personally kind of feels like a consolation prize, like nature saying hey, you'll hate being alive but at least you're not an idiot!, thanks a lot I guess) and it's also worth mentioning that bipolar disorder is linked to creativity as well since Ivan has come up with multiple poems over the years, which means he must be a creative person to a certain degree. I haven't been citing my sources because this is not an academic paper and I'm just some guy on Tumblr who doesn't even study psychiatry and just happens to be basically cursed, but there's a book about this topic that I want to mention: Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament by American psychiatrist Kay Redfield Jamison; I've also read her (very relatable) autobiography and I'm a big fan of hers since she knows what she's talking about even more than the average psychiatrist because she has bipolar disorder herself. For anecdotal evidence, I keep a mental list of historical figures and artists (including contemporaries/celebrities who are still alive) diagnosed with bipolar disorder (so if you ever want to know if someone has/had it hit me up I guess) that I won't include here for obvious reasons, but let me just say that the doctors who did the aforementioned studies do seem to have a point (and I'm an artist myself). I want to make clear that I'm not trying to play into the overused, boring, inaccurate, and generally uncomfortable (for me at least) mentally ill tormented genius trope/stereotype and that it's obviously not what Dostoevsky was going for either; it's just that I've personally had people fixate on my intellect my whole life (not to mention the general weird fascination the average person has for mental illness and mentally ill people as well) and seeing Ivan go through that same experience combined with the studies I just mentioned made this association inevitable for me. Also people seem to find you more fun and charming when you're manic/hypomanic (only when you're the "right" kind of manic/hypomanic of course, when you're experiencing dysphoric mania/hypomania people just become ableist because that's the "wrong" kind of mania/hypomania, duh) which is...uhm...I don't really know how to feel about it honestly, but it's a fact so I'm mentioning it.

But what came first, Ivan's self-isolation or people's misunderstanding of him as a person? Is it the former that caused the latter or the other way around? To me this feels like having to talk about the good old chicken and egg dilemma and I still haven't figured it out in relation to myself, so I guess this will remain unanswered for now (or forever). But what I do know is that bipolar disorder is a lonely experience, no matter how hard someone tries to not make it lonely; people just don't get it even if you explain yourself a thousand times over and over. It doesn't mean you don't have relationships with others, it just means you know you have to keep some things to yourself sometimes and you get used to it, which seems to be Ivan's case too; to me the best example of it is when he's just about to tell Alyosha about the devil but stops himself from doing so and decides to push him away instead. In my opinion it's also connected to his inability to show "weakness" that I already mentioned and that is often one of the core experiences of living with bipolar disorder, but I won't go over that now. I'll just say the problem when it comes to Ivan is that everyone (the readers, the other characters, even himself) gets tangled in a net of performance; living with bipolar disorder feels like having to constantly keep up a certain kind of act (that I wouldn't even know how to explain) in front of others due to the stigma, and I'm pretty sure that's the case with every neurodivergence and invisible disability (bipolar disorder is in fact a disability and I'm legally disabled, that's why I mentioned ableism earlier). Ivan knows what people think and expect of him (we've seen it in his first real interaction with Alyosha and I've already talked about it in part two) and we see few moments when he goes mask off, and apart from those moments his facial expressions are always described as being forced or "off" in some other way. One thing that struck me is the significant contrast between what Mrs. Khokhlakova in particular says about him and how we actually see him behave when he doesn't bother with his forced coldness and collectedness (usually by himself or around his family): she talks about how refined and chivalrious he is multiple times because that's the side of him she sees (and almost everyone else sees), yet he's the character who swears the most (I don't know if "swearing" is the right term as in the novel there are no actual curse words in the modern sense but he doesn't really speak kindly does he); his language is even worse than Dmitri's. I'm not saying that being polite in public/formal settings and swearing like a sailor in private/informal settings is something unusual because I'm also like that (as I'm afraid you might have noticed, sorry for all the swearing!), I just wanted to point that out because to me it seems important in general and relevant for this post.

This doesn't mean I think of Ivan as a fake person because I would have to have that same opinion of myself and I don't, it's quite hard to explain if you haven't lived the bipolar experience first-hand or don't really know what masking is and I hope you'll understand what I'm trying to say here; it's just that he hides and polishes some parts of himself due to a combination of childhood emotional neglect, mental illness, and a personality that's difficult on its own (but really, when you have a disorder like this one it's quite hard to tell what's personality and what's mental illness, especially because at times they're one and the same; it shapes you and sometimes you can't even do anything about it and to me it's no surprise Ivan's sense of self is as warped as it is), all factors that contribute to his partially self-inflicted isolation. I mean, he does say himself to Alyosha that at first he kept him at a distance on purpose and you can also find a glimpse of that in his own philosophy: he openly says that he loves humanity but dislikes humans. He can only show affection from afar and I think that also reflects in the situation with Pavel and in Ivan's own guilt: I don't think Ivan lacks empathy (quite the opposite), he just doesn't have the tools to do anything with it. Could he really have done something? He says he would have if Pavel had explicitly told him to stay in their father's house (here the conversation shifts on the physical aspect of things as Ivan now feels guilty for also being physically distant from his family and not only emotionally), but Ivan's words are never really reliable. How can we expect someone who's incapable of getting close to people to help them? Even when trying to help Dmitri escape prison he's still rough with him. There's a reason why his thing with Katya is a mess as well and he refuses to admit that he loves her (he even says to Alyosha that he doesn't like her and he's with her only to prevent a catastrophe at Mitya's trial, which are later stated to be lies by the narrator): he always tries to convert his feelings into reason, otherwise his whole façade crumbles.

I also want to mention Ippolit Kirillovič's words about him at the trial because they seem very important to me, but only very briefly because first, many things he says have already been talked about in my other posts and second, it seems a little unfair to leave the other members of the family out because Ippolit Kirillovič says many interesting things about all of them; maybe I'll make a post about that in the future. Basically, Ippolit Kirillovič doesn't particularly like Ivan because he got the better of him in a couple public arguments they had in the past (very funny to me by the way), but he still prefaces his criticism of him by talking about his positive qualities (once again, his vigorous intellect and brilliant education) and saying he was welcome in their community (but not in the same way Dmitri was). This is yet another case of me not knowing where I'm going with this, but this particular instance stood out to me so it was worth mentioning; I think it summarizes the other characters' attitude towards Ivan quite well, but I can't really explain it.

Another thing that I noticed is that no one ever calls him by a nickname, not even Alyosha. I wrote a post about the use of names and nicknames in The Brothers Karamazov months ago but I hated the way it turned out because I felt like I wasn't making any sense so I decided to throw the whole thing away and I don't even know if I should try writing it again. Anyway, it's very interesting to me that pretty much everyone is referred to by a nickname (even Rakitin of all people) except for Ivan; not even Alyosha calls him anything other than his name (and if I remember correctly not even Katya, who talks to Ivan using the informal you, does). Actually, there are a couple instances where this does happen and that drives me even more insane because the first one happens at the beginning of the novel, when his father calls him Vanya a few times only to never do it again (and honestly Ivan didn't seem to like that either), and the second one is Rakitin mockingly referring to him as Vanechka when talking about him to Aleksej (because of course he'd never call Ivan that to his face and I also have a feeling he'd get decked if he tried). I don't really know where I'm going with this (again) but I wanted to throw it in anyway because it always stood out to me considering the only main characters that are never referred to like that are Fyodor, Ivan, and Smerdyakov and well, there seem to be implications here. In the aforementioned deleted post I wrote about this topic I mentioned sense of belonging (Mitya belongs there after all) and affection/connection (everyone loves Alyosha) in opposition to being excluded (Smerdyakov is not a legitimate son) and being unable to connect with others (Ivan is an outcast due to the multiple reasons I went over in the previous paragraphs). Maybe I really should try writing it again.

Well, I think I'm done for now. I found it a little hard to separate the themes of part three from the ones of part four, because the latter will focus on Ivan's self-perception (among what happens from Book Eleven to the epilogue and other, more "medical", things) but we see how he perceives himself through the devil but the devil is not an actual real person in the book so I couldn't really include that here and in my mind the themes of these two parts kind of blended together so I had to to figure out where to break them apart.

This took longer than usual (which bothers me but oh well) because I had to take a break from pretty much everything (which is why lately many posts have been queued) for a while due to the February-March period always being whacky for me bipolar-wise, mostly because of the seasonal change (something that plays a huge role in this shitshow of a disorder and something I'll go over in part four because surprise surprise) that always makes me mentally and physically tired. All of this, which can be summarized with bipolar disorder bipolar disordering, to say that I hope this part isn't as messy as it seems to me and that I hope you can't tell I wrote it during a time I wasn't getting enough sleep (I swear I did my best given the circumstances), and if I "disappear" or interact less from time to time it's usually because of this kind of stuff. I'm still not getting enough sleep by the way so I might take a break from serious posts again, I love that daylight savings time happens during one of the worst seasonal changes of the whole year for me every year and it doesn't mess with my disorder at all.

It sure didn't help that I chose to make part three more complicated than the others thinking it wouldn't go in a completely different direction than I had originally planned and wouldn't therefore have to reorganize my thoughts during a period I simply couldn't do so; I will obviously be punished for my hubris. But until then I'll be working on part four (and some other unfinished stuff I have in my drafts and have no idea when I'll post), which will be the last part of my bipolar Ivan Karamazov essay.