#the design for anxiety gives me hives i hate it

[minijenn]

Kinda fuckin weird how a lot of folks on the internet are saying Wish is bad before it comes out meanwhile they're eating Inside Out 2 up based on just one trailer

[doodleimprovement]

CSAU :: Moonie Jericho and the Mysterious Case of the Moon-Jumper Mask

At long last, It is finished! Happy Halloween! 

Below the line is a lighthearted fic taking place in the “Coffee Shop” AU (( @doodledrawsthings​ ))with Magic! Family fun! Low stakes! And a gratuitous cameo by my OC because of course Nell is here 

Seriously though this fic is about as lighthearted as it gets. At the end of the fic are a few sketches I drew but didn’t end up coloring. 

((There’s going to be an alternate ending posted separately at a later date, but its not relevant to the fic)) 

Enjoy! 

--

Fall in Subcon Forest came in gently as always, and by the time Halloween rolled around, everyone was firmly in their sweaters and beanies and thick leggings and hiking boots that were only occasionally used for hiking. The leaves of the trees and the shining sun framed the town in such lovely muted colors that it looked like a picture right out of a magazine.

Not that anyone in the Horizon was looking out the window to see it - the curtains were closed in an attempt to not blind the employees and clientele.

It was that time between the end of school but before trick or treating, which meant that all of the teachers and parents were coming into the Horizon with their kids to get the new specialty drinks - well decorated and tasty, and more importantly, not hilariously overpriced. The kids in particular seemed to love the “Ghoulishly White Hot Chocolate”, and the teens flocked to the “Jack-O-Spices Frozen Pumpkin Latte”

Luka was almost certain that the pumpkin spice smell would burn itself so deep into his nose he’d never be able to un-smell it. A small price to pay for the rise in business, he supposed.

“Luka, Two Snatcher-ccinos!” Clover called from the cash register.

“I still hate that!” He responded with a light tone

“Too bad, make ‘em!” She teased back with a light laugh.

“Don’t get all testy, you two! We’re only open for another hour!” MJ called, grinning before turning back to the coffee machine, where they were effortlessly making yet another latte.

“Too long!” Clover argued, grabbing a muffin for a customer from the bakery display

“You’re telling me, and I still have to take Bow and Hattie trick or treating” Luka huffed, finishing up one of the “Snatcher-ccinos” and moving onto the next one.

“WE are!” MJ corrected. Luka just playfully rolled his eyes.

The conversation ended up dying rather quickly as the business went through its last rush, and, at long last, 4 o’clock came, and the store shut down. The three employees did a rather quickly clean up this night around - they were all eager to be anywhere but work that spooky night.

Once in the back of the store, Luka seemed to almost melt in relief, leaning further and further into the wall.

“Ugh, my limbs feel like Jelly” he commented as his voice gained its echo

“For all we know, they are,” Clover teased. “We’re meeting at MJs in an hour, right?” She stretched.

“Yeah.” Luka nodded “Have they already run off?”

“Yup. They’re excited” She chuckled “You gonna get home alright?”

“Yeah, thanks. See you later”

“Later!”

0o0o0o0o0

That stupid, cursed thing of a mask had not moved in weeks since he’d found it, and its stupid grin had started haunting the corner of his vision when ever he was in his studio.

It seems like it's decided that sitting on the desk in his art studio was its happy place. At least it was out of the way, and in a place he didn’t frequent often.

Though its eyes definitely still moved, which gave MJ hives like you would not believe. Why he kept it in his studio he wasn’t sure.

Tim had told him that the thing was mostly harmless, that it just seemed a bit… off, which wasn’t the worst thing in the world. Timmy even said that he got “good vibes” off of it, which was a strange phrase to use on something that felt at the very least mildly cursed.

Finishing with the caplet for his costume, gently clasping it, he looked in the mirror and gave himself a smile.

It was obscure, sure, but he’d put a lot of work into it! The legend of the “Lonely Man” was well known in these parts, maybe someone would get it. Someone had to.

Whether or not anyone got it, he was still happy with the tattered thing. That faux old age took forever to get right.

As he straightened out his clothes, his eyes caught the mask once more.

His hand picked it up off his desk, and his thumb rubbed on the odd surface. He couldn’t really tell what it was made of, but it was… oddly smooth, he thought. His brow furrowed as he looked at its eyes, a single pupil in its left eye, and a cascade of diamonds in the other. It was certainly an interesting and eye-catching design. He also liked the blue and reds, and that weirdly off-putting grin.

Such an odd thing.

He held it up with one hand over his face - not putting it on, but getting a look in the mirror at how it would look with the outfit.

He found it utterly bizarre that he could see clearly through the eyes despite what seemed like thick paint over it.

The mask itself wasn’t actually that scary when taken all at once. Oddly enough, it seemed to match with his outfit - at least, color wise. It didn’t even seem evil or anything. It seemed… kind.

That was an odd word to use. MJ tended to flip flop on how he feels about the damned thing

Before he could think any more about it, his doorbell rang, and the mask was left on his desk, forgotten the moment company arrived.

“Who is it?” He asked as he approached the door

“The Dread Pirate Roberts!” A little voice announced as the oak opened up.

To his absolute delight, Harriet was dressed indeed the Dread Pirate Roberts, missing nothing but the mask (The town doesn’t allow masks on minors, for some reason. A weird little policy). Next to her stood an excited Bow, grinning from ear to ear. He knew exactly who she was, but still asked-

“And who are you?”

“My name is Inigo Montoya” She said with all the faux-seriousness she could muster, holding up a foam sword “You killed my father, prepare to die!”

“Oh, goodness, the finest swordsperson in the world and The Dread Pirate Roberts have come to my home, I don’t stand a chance!” He moved out of his way as the kids ran into the apartment, and their father walked up behind him.

When his eyes went to Luka, he let out a snort. The man was dressed in a slightly silly looking prince outfit dyed almost completely purple, and his form was mostly purple as well - an energy-saving tactic if ever there was one.

“And you are?”

“He’s the ghost of prince Humperdink” Bow grinned. “This was the best costume we could find for it”

“I honestly think he shoulda died at the end of the movie so I'm cool with it.” Harriet commented as MJ moved to the side and let the group in “Is Clover here yet?”

“Not yet, I’m sure she’ll be here any minute and we can get right along with trick or treating!” MJ announced

“Yay!” the girls responded in unison, taking their place on MJs couch and turning on his old television for a brief moment of entertainment

Mj looked at Luka and grinned “Well, you’re lookin’ spooky, Luka”

“You kind of do too… what do you look like?”

MJ snorted “I’m the ‘Lonely Man of Subcon forest’. Heard of it?”

“Nope, don’t think I’ve been here long enough” Luka shrugged “Does look nice though. Very zombie-ish.”

The two chatted for a bit before there was another ring barely 10 minutes later.

“That must be Clo” MJ pushed himself off of the wall. “Can you get that? I want to grab my wallet so we can get the kids some ice cream before they go running around”

Luka nodded, giving him a grateful smile before turning to the door to greet the final member of the trio

MJ popped back into his studio, grabbing his wallet… and looking again at the mask.

He pocketed his wallet, and picked the mask up again. His thumbs rubbing against the strange texture of the mask’s sides.

He couldn’t help but admit that he was tempted.  Maybe, he could just see what it’d look like, just for a moment. Who knows? Maybe this has all been anxiety for nothing and the mask is just… weird.

He looked back into the mirror, and placed the mask on his face.

There was a moment where he stared amusedly at his reflection - it added a certain air to his outfit. Maybe wearing it out wouldn't be so b-

And then his body seized

He couldn’t move, he couldn’t breathe. He trembled and a pain started from his head and traveled down his spine. It was like the worst shiver from the cold he’d ever experienced. Like ice was pressed directly against his skin. It dispersed like a fog, freezing freezing, and, suddenly-

It stopped.

Panting heavily, MJ pulled themselves back up to a standing position - when had they bent over like that? - and lifted their head, making eye contact with themselves in the mirror.

“GAH?!”

They were - blue! And - and the mask was very much not a mask!!!

When they blinked, it blinked. When they moved, it moved. When they grimaced, the mouth moved along to create the expression. their eyes scanned over the crescent shape, past their neck and then landed on their-

“H-hands!” They stared - they were missing a finger and - had claws?? They clenched their fists in disbelief, eyes catching on a glinting just under their sleeve.

.. Where had the chains come from?

“MJ? MJ are you okay?”

Clover

“D-don’t come in, its fine!!” They panicked, “I’m uh, just, finishing up and stuff with my costume!”

“It looked finished to me” Luka commented “Did something rip?”

“Y-yes?? yes! Something totally ripped“

“They’re lying!” Hattie pointed out

“Sounds like their lying voice” Bow added.

Curse these adorable, smart little girls!

“I-I’m fine!” They yelled out “Totally fine, just fine”

“... MJ I’m opening the door, be decent”

“No, Clover, I - “

But the door opened anyway

And Clover - dressed up as “Generic princess” - looked in, and … stared.

“.... MJ?”

“.... H-hi, Clover.”

“Clover, what are-” Luka cut himself off “Uh….”

“It’s me! Its MJ, I uh - “ They tried to come up with a succinct explanation for the situation, despite not having any real idea.

“The mask” Luka quickly concluded, recognizing the face after MJs unfortunately previous run-ins.

“I … yes” MJ’s shoulders slumped a bit.

“Hey, at least you still have feet” Luka commented, causing MJ to look down and see that he did in fact still have his shoes on. Thank heaven for small mercies.

“What happened, what is it?!” Harriet pushed her way through, her eyes wide as saucers once they landed on the recently transformed adult “... Whoa”

“I … I put on the mask. I was curious and - and it..” They looked back down at the pale, blue hands, nervously moving the fingers and claws. “I felt like I was freezing, my whole body and then…” They trailed off.

“Whoa..” Harriet approached him slowly “It's like, Majora’s Mask!”

Lukas put his hand on her shoulder to stop her from jumping - now really was not the time “... I suppose that's one way to describe it.” He gave a deliberate, thoughtful face towards his transformed friend.

Bow was very firmly behind the adults, staring rather intently and slightly bewildered. Sure, she had been getting used to Mr. Princeton as a parent but.. This was somehow very different.

“... We need to talk to Tim.” Clover concluded

“Tim’s out of town” Luka reminded the group with a grimace “He and Timmy had some kind of meeting thing with other magical people. We don’t…” Luka huffed, his hair fluffing up a bit “We don’t know anyone else whose adept at magic like they are”

Harriet furrowed her brow a bit, looking at the discomfort that MJ was experiencing, rubbing their hands together. Could they be stuck like that? She wanted to think that maybe this really was like the Zelda game, but who could tell? It's not like they knew anyone….

“Yes we do!” She snapped her fingers“I kinda hate that Mu was right, but there is a witch in town!”

“What?” Lukas’ brow furrowed “Who?”

0o0o0o0o0

Getting to the edge of town was… novel, to put it simply. The group was rather lucky that Luka was used to doing this sort of thing. And he was about 4 times larger than the group, so that helped in flying them around.

With the sun kissing the earth, red rays crawling into the darker sky, they didn’t have too much time, but followed Harriet and Bow as they got past the town center, and led them down to-

“Wait, why are we at Nell’s place?” Clover stared ahead at the Mint-green home, succulents hanging from pots and a radio sitting on the edge of the porch.

“Because Nurse Nell is a witch!” Harriet announced walking up the two steps of the porch.

“What- Harriet!” Luka startled.

“Its true!” Bow defended as Hattie knocked on the door.

“Kids, we’ve known Nell for a long time, she’s not-”

“She is!” Hattie argued “We saw it!”

“She made us promise to keep it a secret!” Bow added.

Said nurse opened the door as MJ tried to speak up

“I wasn’t expecting trick-or treaters,” She greeted before looking out the door, “But I do-” She paused as her eyes landed on the strange group at her front porch.

There was a rather awkward, extended silence as her eyes scanned MJ through her thick lenses with a gaze that conveyed a strange kind of surprise.

“.... Inside, now” She pulled the door open further, leaving no room for argument.

The adults shared a glance, but did as she said, entering her small living room. She greeted them with a nod as they entered, and shut the door behind them, motioning for MJ to approach her.

She didn’t say a word as they did so, and very slowly lifted her hands to their face, holding it steady as she scrutinized. “What happened? Less than 3 sentences” She half asked/half demanded. Her tone wasn’t harsh, but it was serious.

“Uh, I put on a cursed mask and it uh… did this” They tried to sum up.

“Where did you get the mask?”

“I found it in the forest. I thought it was abandoned from the spirit festival”

“And why did you pick up an abandoned mask in the forest?”

They awkwardly didn’t respond. She sighed

“I get it, hun” She responded, resigned. “Stay still”

“I am”

“Stiller”

Clover and Luka watched her with some skepticism, seeing the woman take a deep breath, and as she exhaled, her hands suddenly glowed dimly, tapping at the side of MJs head.

“Hah! See! Told you!” Hattie pointed, jumping slightly

“Shhhhhhhh!” Bow shook her “She’s doin’ magic stuff!”

“Hm…” She masterfully ignored the yelling children “Well, good news is that the magic isn’t very strong, Just… aggressive.” Nell announced. “And it's not malevolent” She let go of their face.

“... I… How can you tell?” MJ asked, their own hand tapping their blue cheek.

“.. Let's say it's a feeling” She summed up. “You can sit down. I need to grab something from my library”

And she left the room

“.... I don’t think I’ve ever seen Nell that serious” Clover spoke out “Also the uh, glowing hands? Didn’t know she could do that”

“How did you not know she had magic?” Luka asked with a rather incredulous tone

“It never came up!” Clover retorted

“How did it never come up?”

“Its cool!” Harriet jumped into the conversation

“It think its cool too” Bow agreed “I always wondered how my paper cuts at school always healed so fast…”

MJ had sat themselves down, hand staying on their head, feeling the strange curve of their forehead with a certain fascination. Nell’s words - said with so much affirmation- did make them feel better about the situation.

The nurse returned, her expression still relatively serious, but calmer as she carried an old, thick book with a rather overly ornate cover in a faded blue.

“You’re lucky I collect these old things” She commented for a moment, sitting down next to MJ. She flipped through the pages, finding a two-page spread with a plain mask listed on it, and text printed so small that MJ just could not read it. “Here we are.”

Harriet climbed up next to her “What's it say? That’s a lot of words!”

Nell chuckled a bit at her eagerness “It is, but... “ she hand rested on the book for a moment, and then she lifted it, and the text glowed, lifting and circling around her hand like a ring.

“Whoa…. It's like the unknown from the Pokémon movie!” Bow jumped, causing Nell to laugh more.

“A little, I suppose” Nell responded, and she looked over at the other two adults, mostly at Clover, whose bewildered stare caused her to laugh again “You okay there?”

“... How did I not know this about you?”

“Never came up, dear. Don’t think too hard about it. You too, “Snatcher”” The woman gave a smirk. Luka cleared his throat. “Now…”

A simple flick of her hand, and the letters were floating around MJ’s head, and some of them glowed just a little bit brighter “Hm….. Alrightie, that's a good sign” She snapped, and the letters, very suddenly disappeared as if popping a bubble. “Well, Give until dawn, and then you should be able to take off the mask. If you can’t, come to me. I don’t work tomorrow”

“Oh… Well, that uh, wasn’t so bad. I’ll be okay?”

“Of course” Nell nodded, shutting the book “I’d’ve called the Kagai’s the moment I let go of your face if I thought otherwise”

“The who?” Hat questioned.

“Another time, Hattie, another time” Nell placated. “Now….” she exhaled, putting the book on her coffee table and clasping her hands together “I just realized I haven’t even said hello to any of you”

Something about that sentence finally broke the tension, getting a laugh out of Clover and Luka, and a snicker out of MJ.

The next ten minutes consisted of Nell reassuring the group that MJ would be fine, and reiterating that they needed to come to her if the mask did not come off by sunrise.

“There’s a lot of magic in this that I can sense. So uh, just be careful.” She warned. “I don’t know a lot about that, so you’ll have to ask Tim”

MJ nodded “Uh, thank you, Nell”

She gave them a kind smile “Don’t mention it. Next time you need me though, have Clover send me a message or just call me, alright?” She looked passed them to Harriet, who gave her a sheepish smile.

“Got it” The transformed barista nodded.

“Oh and, don’t be too worried about people seeing you. Just say it's a costume” She recommended as they walked out with their family waiting just beyond the porch. “Happy Halloween!” She called before abruptly shutting the door

“So……” Bow started

“Can we go trick or treating now??” Hattie finished.

Luka looked up to MJ, who seemed much calmer than before, despite continuing to lift their hand to their weirdly shaped head.

“.. Yeah, yeah i think we can” they gave Luka a grin “And thanks for getting us the help, Hattie” MJ reached down and picked her up “Who knew the Dread Pirate Roberts could be such a help!”

The girl giggled before being put back down “Then let’s go!!”

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

MJ was initially a bit tittered when they entered the town, but the moment anyone noticed them, the compliments rolled in.

“Wow! You look like a spooky zombie!”

“What game is that cosplay from?”

“How did you get the prosthetic to look like that, damn!”

“Wow, that is a really cool idea for the Lonely Man!”

MJ was beaming at the semi-undeserved praised as they took the kids from neighborhood to neighborhood, filling their pillow cases close to brimming with so much candy that Luka kept making a face and seemed to be mentally preparing to hide all of it, whispering to Clover and MJ about taking some of the candy so that it wasn’t all in his apartment.

“Seriously, all that candy?? They’re going to get cavities and I cannot pay for dental work like that.” The father aggressed. MJ just laughed a bit, looking ahead at the two girls who were trying to run ahead to the next house.

And then Bow’s foot caught a crack.

“Ah, Bow!” MJ startled, hand reaching out - but there was no way they’d reach her before she fell-

And then, she just stopped falling, stuck in midair as if floating.. But she wasn’t.

Upon closer examination, she was held up by a variety of red strings, connected to MJ’s clawed fingers

“... Uh”

“Whoaaaa” Hattie gaped “Magic! Cool!”

Bow pulled himself up to a standing position, and MJ put their hand down, the strings disappeared

“.. Thanks” Bow cleared her throat “That was really cool”

“It kind of was... “ They commented, looking down at their hands “I’m gonna be having a heck of a long talk with Tim when he gets back from wherever he is”

“Yeah, definitely” Luka nodded in agreement.

Lucky for the group the rest of the night went without incident, with MJ joining Luka at home and the two of them staying up until the sun started showing through the windows.

“Ready?” Luka asked him, the being no longer human shaped, as he’d finally reached his limit

“Yeah.. I think so” MJ took in a breath “She said it can just… come off like how I put it on…”

“Alright….” Luka’s voice trailed off as MJ reached their hands up to their face, thumbs by their cheeks, but then - wait! The edge, the mask! They felt it.

Barely bothering to breath, they mentally counted… 1… 2… 3!

they pulled it off and gasped as that icy feeling went through them even faster than last time, trembling and nearly falling over as Luka kept them up with their tail.

“Hey, hey! You okay MJ?”

MJ looked up, nodding “Yeah, uh, how do I..?”

“You’re back to a nerd, if that's what you’re asking” Luka lightly teased

Their hands went back up to their face, and gasped when they felt their regular skin, and their glasses (Where had they gone? Didn’t matter)

“Oh, thank god” The tired barista flopped onto their partner, “That was exhausting. Thank goodness the Horizon is closed today…”

“Hah, ready to sleep?”

“Oh, definitely” MJ commented, looking down at the mask still in their hand, its smile seeming not nearly as spooky than before.. “Hm..”

“What?”

“.. Why’d it choose me, I wonder” They muttered, sitting up and placing the mask by the window sill “But… we’ll see about finding out more, hm?”

“.. Yeah, we will” Luka confirmed.

MJ gave him a smile, hugging his partner with a slight nuzzle “Come on, we need to sleep. Hattie and Bow-”

“Oh, don’t remind me. We’re in for a hell of an afternoon” Luka groaned, but he was still smiling.

Saying that things were “back to normal” was never correct with this group, but things were still pretty okay. Maybe better, even.

Moonie figured they’d just have to wait and see.

--

BONUS:: 

Costumes! I wasn’t able to finish these in time, but I hope they suffice! 

[itscalledbisexualcrisis]

Platinum (Kuvira x Female Reader w Metal Allergy)

AU: Something I’ve been thinking of lately as someone with metal sensitivities myself. I thought of this a while ago and thought it was really funny if Kuvira was with a reader with a metal allergy.

Summary: HC between Kuvira and Reader with a metal allergy

You were born with a skin allergy to most metals: so no metal jewelry, no metal clothing, and you had to be careful with what you interacted with on a daily basis.

Ironic since you were from the Metal Clan, born to metalbending parents as a non-bender

Kuvira was someone you met one day while working for the Matriarch of the Metal Clan

At first you tried your best to stay out of her way. She was the renown beautiful captain of the special forces and you were a simple secretary to Suyin.

She intimidated you in all of the ways that you wish you could be: powerful and fierce.

Because of your allergy, it was hard some days when your hands would brush something your skin didn’t like. You’d need to excuse yourself from situations to heal your skin from the inflamed hives blooming.

Kuvira noticed how sometimes you would leave meetings promptly and not return for a long time

That’s what started her fascination with you, trying to figure out this curious quiet young woman

It was very slow how your relationship built up: starting off with small jokes here and there, then leaving meetings together, to showing up to meetings together.

People would often catch you both together; sitting by the river having tea, an avid game of Pai Sho in the courtyard, you waiting for Kuvira after dance rehearsal, her not so subtly waiting for you outside of Suyin’s office.

So it wasn’t a surprise to most people when you two announced your official relationship.

Something bothered Kuvira though. She was aware of how you kept space between the two of you during the first few weeks of dating. She just chalked it up to you being traditional, something unusual but not unheard of within the clan.

She knew you always wore long sleeves and high neck collared shirts and she doesn’t even know if she’s seen any part of your body that wasn’t covered the neck down.

That part didn’t bother her, she respected how old-fashioned you were and even enjoyed how you reacted to her reserved demeanor.

She adored how your relationship bloomed in the most innocent ways, and craved knowing more about you.

But the lack of physical touch that was starting to get to her. She got in her head every time she reached for your hand and you’d hesitantly pull your fingers back, or carefully curl them around hers. It was as if you were cautious she’d hurt you. And that didn’t settle with Kuvira at all.

One day, Kuvira saw a magnificent gold bracelet in a boutique on the way to your apartment.

Usually she wasn’t one for lavish gifts to show her affection, but the second she spotted it in the shop, she knew it would look lovely on your wrist.

But when she presented it to you, you had to carefully put it back in the box and push it back towards her, telling her that she needed to return it.

It stung seeing the way you flinched away from her. She thought since you never wore jewelry that the gold band would compliment your complexion. The rejection was awful and she doubted if she really knew you at all and how stupid this idea was.

You quickly followed up, seeing how upset Kuvira was getting. You took her hands in yours and crouched to meet her eyes. She was seated stiffly in your kitchen and you rubbed soothing circles across her knuckles, trying to ease the tension.

“Don’t take it the wrong way, it’s beautiful. I love it.”

You blushed and turned away from her. “It’s actually kind of embarrassing…”

She’s very surprised to find out you have sensitive skin to most metals, except for platinum, the purest form of metal.

“I know it’s odd.”

“Yeah you live in a metal city, but you’re allergic to most of it.”

Her comment made you burst out laughing and you couldn’t help but throw your arms around her neck in a tight hug.

Oh the many shades of red Kuvira turned that day with your face buried in her neck. She wanted to hold on to your hips, finally feeling your touch after all these weeks, but she was suddenly very aware of the metal rings adorned on her hands and the metal armor plated on her uniform.

“Here I was thinking you were just very conservative.”

You raised a suspicious eyebrow, looking down on Kuvira while you had her face cupped in her hands. A sly smile crossed your lips and followed with you straddling Kuvira’s lap, making her flush even more.

“Oh, Vira, you couldn’t be more wrong,” you huskily whispered in her ear.

And Kuvira learned that night that you were anything but innocent or old-fashioned.

After that night, she was very careful with your allergy, opting for not wearing jewelry on her hands, afraid of copper or nickel scratching irritating your skin.

She takes care to put away her uniform and changing clothes before giving you hugs or climbing into bed with you.

One morning she rolls out of bed and the gold bracelet she tried giving you gleams up at her from her desk. She still thinks it would look so good on you with its simple design and careful molding.

She wonders if you ever had any custom metal jewelry made to accommodate your allergy?

Well time to find out.

So that’s how Kuvira got to work researching metal allergies and the kinds of metal that wouldn’t make you break out into hives.

Finding platinum wasn’t hard: Zaofu was abundant in all kinds of metals. Creating anything out of it was the hard part.

First off, Kuvira was a talented fighter and dancer. But being a jewelry-maker or DIY-er is not in her wheelhouse.

On top of that she couldn’t manipulate it with her bending; even she couldn’t bend platinum. So that meant she was going to get her hands dirty for this project.

She spent hours learning how to weld and grind down sheets of platinum in her room.

It truly was an annoying task, at first most of her creations resulting in crooked metal pieces with burnt ends and cramps in her hands.

She brushed up her roughed up hands to training and dance when you asked. She was a little embarrassed by how she was so dedicated to this project, choosing instead to keep it a surprise for when she was done.

Kuvira wouldn’t admit it, but she secretly also loved the attention you gave, kissing her calloused hands.

She hated the whole process knowing that literally all around her there was available metal she could easily bend to make her desired goal.

More than a few times, others would hear bangs and shouts coming from her room, as she threw the stupid platinum across her apartment in frustration.

At one point she just glowered at the rigid metal, seeing maybe, somehow, possibly her metal bending could solve her problems and she could miraculously bend the platinum.

And her perfectionistic self, hated every scratch or indent in the initial bracelets she made. She finally got over the hump of making something that looked remotely wearable, now was just design.

She just wanted it to be smooth cause if you cut yourself on a piece of metal at her expense, she thinks she would rather sink herself deep into the earth and die.

It was a month long process of trial and error. Of working in Baatar Jr’s lab on perfecting the small ring of metal. He was helpful during the process, more than she wanted to admit. Being an inventor and all, he knew more about manipulating metal by hand than she did.

(Truly it was his tips that allowed her to get her design right)

It was one night when you were cooking dinner, when Kuvira presented the gift to you, wrapped in a little white box with a lopsided green bow she obviously tied herself.

“Oh! What’s this?”

You had been busy chopping green onions when she suddenly took the box out of her bag and pushed it towards you.

Kuvira sat across from you at your kitchen island, nervously wringing her hands in her lap. She kept her eyes transfixed on the small package as you carefully untied the bow.

To be honest, you were more enthralled with the blush dusting her cheeks and how adorable it made her look.

When you opened it, you were very surprised, not expecting jewelry of all things for Kuvira to give you.

“It’s made of platinum!” she burst out quickly before you could question her decision. “I know you said you could only wear platinum, and there aren’t that many boutiques that sell platinum jewelry in Zaofu.”

She was shaking in her seat, the anxiety in her throat as she watched you pick up the metal carefully and examine the delicate piece. It was a simple twisted chain which ended up connected by strands of metal leaves in the center. The platinum glimmered brightly and you let it lightly settle in your palm.

The silence made Kuvira more anxious and she started going off in an anecdote about where she got the metal and her process while making it. You were very amused when she described how frustrated she was and how she had gone through many many sheets of platinum to create something substantial and beautiful enough to give you.

Your face broke out into a wide grin and before she knew it, you pulled Kuvira close to you, into a passionate kiss. Her heart fluttered and she sunk into your kiss, loving the way you gently cup her cheek. Her arms wrapped around your waist, pulling you even closer to her.

“You are incredible, you know that,” you whispered against her lips. “Can you help me put it on?”

[desdemonafictional]

TFA Fantasy WIP

Sentinel Prime, His Imperial Benevolence, The Auspicious and Holy Oneself, Emperor in Perpetua, entered the little farming villa like a spoiled brat waltzing into a tent of freaks. He cast his smugly disinterested eye over every dusty window and dinged up bit of furniture alike, observing the lack of bustling servants or fine hangings brought out for his arrival.

Optimus ground his jaw quietly.

“We apologize for the austerity,” he said, still standing stiffly at the door where Sentinel had shoulder-shoved past him to get inside. “The Orion House doesn’t have… much staff. I’m afraid we can’t receive you with all the honors due to a Prime.”

“Oh please,” Sentinel said, “don’t trouble yourself with a formal reception. I’ll just consider this a hunting party, how about that? Like old times, eh, Optimus?”

Bumblebee inched sidelong along the wall, leant sideways, and out the side of his mouth he said, “Y’all two know each other?”

The high ceilings of the Orion were indeed not dissimilar from the hunting lodges they had stayed in together from time to time, as junior officers in the Primal Guard. The air conditioning out here in the countryside was rudimentary, and the summers burned hot under the watchful stare of Hadeen, especially with so many bodies crowded into a single house putting off their own mechanical heat. It was, however, a manor house and not a hunting lodge. It was Optimus’ manor now, in fact, ever since he had been relegated here seven vorn earlier.

“Shall we make a room ready for you, your Benevolence?” Optimus said, ignoring the yellow car prodding at his side.

Sentinel gave the place a judgemental once over and said, “Just the one night, I think. We mustn’t trespass on your… hospitality.”

And with that, the rest of his retinue came sweeping in. Chamber attendants with berth dressings, a chef and cooks, secretaries—the Orion filled up immediately, bursting to its seams with activity. Optimus glanced through the window, and noted that out in the front of the house Sentinel’s guard was already setting up silk tents and laying camp with military efficiency.

“Bumblebee,” Optimus said, “why don’t you show the Prime’s bots where they can set his fixings for the night?”

“Uh,” Bumblebee said, “um, right—just this way, gentlemechs! You’re in good hands with me, I know everything there is to know about the Orion! Hey, stripes, you single—?”

Sentinel fell back to stand beside Optimus, not looking at him, in a parody of casual camaraderie.

“So I guess the pipsqueak isn’t your sweetspark,” Sentinel smirked. “That or you’ve developed a thing for being cuckolded?”

“I’m still single,” Optimus said. “I don’t have any sweetsparks.”

“What, not even that bulky hulk I saw out back?” Sentinel asked, grinning unpleasantly. “I bet he’s easy, rubes like that always are.”

Optimus squeezed his fist open and closed at his side, bruisingly tight, but discreetly. Sentinel was the Prime, and the Prime could say whatever nasty, petty thing he liked.

“Bulkhead is a brilliant engineer,” Optimus said, in an only slightly repressive tone. “He single-handedly designed the new extractors for the crystal fields, and the harvest is coming at 21% increased efficiency this vorn.”

“Whatever, farmer stuff,” Sentinel said. “I don’t give a scrap about that. You’re really still single? Seven vorns that you’ve been out here, and you haven’t even picked up some knobkneed crop duster for a tumble? Don’t tell me you’re still holding out for a conjunx.”

Optimus didn’t bother to point out that he’d been in mourning for most of that time, like Sentinel would have been, if he hadn’t been selected by the Matrix not one vorn after the hunting accident that took Elita from them both. Primes weren’t encouraged to mourn the loved ones from their previous lives. Just the angry edge to Sentinel’s bitter humor proved that he was still mourning, in his own way, and probably the empire would have been better off if he’d been allowed to deal with it on his own terms before being thrust into the mantle of Imperial Personage.

Optimus missed the friends they had been, before the bitterness.

“You know no decent court mech will have anything to do with a relegated bumpkin Count,” Sentinel pointed out. “Conjunxing is not in your future, Optimus. You’d be lucky to take an amica, like the peasants do.”

“There’s nothing wrong with taking an amica,” Optimus replied.

“Yeah, not for peasants and destitute washouts,” Sentinel said. “Hey, maybe you could be somebody’s subordinate conjunx, how about that? Not that you’d have any luck tempting a courtier away from Iacon with this…” he grimaced at the high ceilings and bare walls, “cabin in the mud.”

“Are you done?” Optimus asked, a little too forwardly for good manners.

“Watch it,” Sentinel said, narrowing his eyes. “If you’re not properly gracious, I’ll reconsider calling you back to court.”

“Re-?” Optimus skipped a pump beat. “Reconsider?”

Sentinel smirked again, this time with less humor and more coldness, and patted Optimus on the shoulder. “I’ve been thinking about it,” he said. “I could use more allies in the capitol. And you would be an ally for me, wouldn’t you, Optimus?”

The fragile shoot of hope withered all at once. Whatever Sentinel wanted him back at court for, it wouldn’t be out of the goodness of his spark. He still hated Optimus too much; any gratitude would be a yolk around Optimus’ neck for the rest of their lives.

“Yes, of course,” said Optimus. “I am at the service of the Primacy, as ever.”

“I thought you would be,” Sentinel said, and his smirk turned keen, and then he said: “Alright, show us where we can do some freshening up around here. You have body servants around this slaghole? I need a deep polish before dinner.”

--

His Imperial Benevolence came out of the shower quite a long time later, which was fortunate for his cooks, who had hastily taken over Optimus’ kitchen and were rushing to fill it with servable fuel. Optimus had quietly pulled his own kitchen staff—all two of them—away to help clean the place up a little more for guests. Sentinel’s cooks had ransacked the house’s pantry, pulling long spools of brass and bricks of gold onto every counter, vials of soluble compounds, crystals, seasonings. The cooks kept clicking their tongues at the spread. Optimus had the feeling that he was being Disapproved of.

In the house there were two cooks, one body servant, a housekeeper, Optimus, and the engineer (Bulkhead) who was out overseeing an upgrade to the manor rain pumps this month. The house had been on the empty side, before Sentinel, and now it was crammed full in every room with someone doing something. The change was a little bit dizzying. Bumblebee seemed to be loving it, though.

“Don’t make me clean,” he was whining, a squeegee dripping unhelpfully in his hand. “I want to go out and see the soldiers, let me go out and see if the soldiers need anything.”

Optimus pressed his lips together. “If you go out there now, I won’t see you again until tomorrow.”

“Yeah, okay, so? Sentinel’s cooks got it covered, you don’t need me.”

Optimus wondered if there was a polite way to say “I’m more worried one of them will lean you over his saddle bag without waiting for permission.” Bulkhead might or might not be easy, it wasn’t Optimus’s place to guess, but he had a distinct feeling Bumblebee would be.

“Just go get the place settings out,” Optimus told him, “when that’s done you can gossip with anybody in the house, but don’t go outside. I might need you.”

Bumblebee thwapped his cleaning cloth against his thigh and grumbled all the way out of the room. Optimus gave it depressingly low odds that he’d be obeyed the whole night, but, well, he’d done his best. He didn’t have time to be monitoring his staff all night, not when Sentinel was lurking about the place.

Besides, what were the chances Bumblebee could even bud new sparks? Less than thirty percent of the population could do it, under the best circumstances.

There was a shout from the direction of the baths, and Optimus whirled in time to see servants roiling away from the exclamation like insecticons in a disturbed hive. He pushed his way through the aimless anxiety and then—with a deep vent to pre-emptively cool himself—let himself into the washroom, where solvent was splattered all over the floor and Sentinel was splattered across the chest with globs of polish.

“My Prime,” Optimus said, leaning his hip against the wall. He didn’t smirk. He thought about it though.

Sentinel whirled, steam all but blowing out his vents. “One of your bumbling idiots broke my washkit!” He jabbed his finger at a very complicated looking fold-out case, enameled with blue and white and utterly smashed across the floor between himself and the body servant.

“I—” the servant said, “Optimus—your Courtesy—I was setting it out for the Prime, but one of the containers was—”

“Your idiot threw it at me!”

“One of the containers—there was a springloaded compartment and—”

“And it bit you like a needle-mouthed pit beast?” Sentinel mocked, furiously. “That case was one of a kind! My concubine made that for me!”

Optimus glazed at the poor smashed object. It certainly did look one of a kind, with that complicated enameling out the outside, the nested compartments all conjoined in different ways, like a puzzle box.

“Ugh,” Sentinel said, and glared down at his abdomen. “And you got them mixed up too, look at this, my paint is peeling, everyone knows you’re not supposed to mix cosmetic chemicals.”

Actually, it was peeling. Kind of bubbling too. That was alarming enough that Optimus pushed off the wall and went to fetch a dry cloth and a jar of water from the cabinet. Plain water was usually safe to mix with chemicals, whereas solvent was… not.

“Now I need to fix my paint too,” Sentinel seethed. “I wanted to go hunting tonight! I won’t have time to go hunting once we reach the border, it’ll be nothing but handshaking and touring the facilities!”

“I’m sure we can get your paint patched with plenty of time for dinner,” Optimus said, and sat Sentinel down at the edge of the great sunken oil pit (empty, as it usually was, the budget for hot oil being very slim at Orion House). He knelt down and dragged the broken kit back towards himself, fishing through the wreckage until he came up with the little jar of touch up paint in Sentinel’s classic blue.

“Um, my lord count,” the servant said, from somewhere behind Optimus.

“Don’t worry about it,” Optimus said, without looking back, “I’ll take it from here. You go help the others with dinner.”

“And get my hunting kit out more carefully this time!” Sentinel shouted after him, leaning so far forward that Optimus had to tilt his head out of the way to avoid bonking his Prime’s chassis.

Gently, Optimus pressed a palm to Sentinel’s chest and pushed him back into his seat. Sentinel slouched back into the bench seat, letting his elbows hang over the empty tub behind him. He eyed Optimus, his face tilted away at an angle that seemed half suspicious, half uncomfortable.

“You know you’re a Count now, not a cadet,” Sentinel said. “Below your station to be scrubbing and polishing anybody, even the Prime.”

Optimus’s half smile was more irony than humor. He wasn’t about to leave poor Screwshine alone with Sentinel, after that fit of temper. He focused on lathering up the powder paint and paint-thinner into something he could work with.

Sentinel let Optimus push his leg out of the way to get a better angle at the stripped plating, but his sidelong gaze didn’t ease up. “Not angling for a spot in the Primal Harem, are you?”

Optimus nearly shuddered at the thought. What a nightmare, locked up in the harem with a mech who hated him for the rest of his functioning. No amount of luxury or status was worth that. “No, my Prime. Definitely not. I just wasn’t going to let you keep terrorizing my servant all night.”

Sentinel scowled, but he also relaxed. “I wouldn’t have to yell at your staff if they weren’t a bunch of incompetent ninnies.”

“You’re the Prime,” Optimus said, fixing his frown firmly on the paint, and not on Sentinel’s face. “You’re meant to comport yourself with more grace than that.”

“Hah,” Sentinel said, and his face twisted into an even darker configuration, “what would a washout coward like you know about any of it, anyway.”

There was an uncomfortable silence, broken only by the smooth soft sound of paint applique. Eventually, Sentinel snapped, “Hand me that pill case, the pink one, it’s down in the slag pile.”

Optimus was reluctant to pause, thinking of the quick drying paint, but obeyed after only a second’s hesitation. He dug it out and handed it up, considering the esoteric pink inscriptions in the white enamel. White was the color of philosophy. Pink was the color of life. When Sentinel shook out a couple of the little capsules, in the moment before clapping them to his mouth and swallowing, their insides sloshed with a viscous magenta sludge.

“What… are those?” Optimus asked, feeling a little sick just from looking at the things.

“Mm?” Sentinel knocked back a quick swig of something from his subspace pocket and then coughed, wiping his mouth absently with the back of his hand. “Oh. Prima Materia. Divine Oneness philosophy is all the rage in Iacon right now. Guess you wouldn’t know about that out here in the boonies.”

Optimus frowned and wracked his memory storage. “An alchemical elixir?”

“Yeah,” Sentinel said, and tucked the little pill case back into his subspace pocket. “Couple a day, supposed to make you live forever. When the old chancellor came down with Zero Point Crytosis last orn, the court was hysterical. I don’t say this very often, but every once in a while, I miss soldiers.”

Optimus made a face at the idea of taking those goop capsules twice a day. “You sure that stuff is safe?”

“Please,” Sentinel said, “I’m the Prime. My alchemists aren’t grabbing any old dirt off the back of a truck and calling it gold. Anyway, one of my concubines is a chemist, and a damn good one for all she needs the smart mouth knocked off of her. She mixed the slag herself.”

Optimus continued to regard it doubtfully.

[zaph1337]

Monster Hunter Rating 13: Vespoid

There are a few things I dislike about the Spring season, but at the top of list? The ants and wasps come back. Freaking ants keep getting in my freaking house crawling in my freaking kitchen because they want my freaking food! But it could be worse; they could all be wasps. I despise having to live with those things around, even if I’ve only ever been stung once as a little kid (yellowjackets are on my sh*t list forever for that, by the way). But it could be worse; they could all be Vespoids.

(How it appears in Monster Hunter 1)

(How it appears in Monster Hunter Generations)

Appearance: Y’know, I really wish I could make out these guys’ faces better, but I can’t exactly do anything about that, so let’s go over the rest of them. Vespoids look like your average purple wasps that just happen to be four feet tall. Well, okay, not really. Real wasps don’t have three pairs of wings or barbed stingers (at least it looks like there’s a barb at the stinger’s base), nor do their stingers protrude that far out of their bodies at all times (and before anyone brings up ichneumon wasps, those are ovipositors that are used to bore into wood to lay eggs on/in things like grubs; they can’t be used like stingers). Other than the wings, color, and maybe the face, Vespoids look basically like you’d expect a giant wasp to look, but they’re just alien enough that they don’t really give me the same anxieties as looking at a wasp up-close would. 5/10.

Behavior: Like a lot of other wasps, Vespoids live in colonies with a Queen. Where are these colonies? Practically everywhere! Forests, jungles, swamps, deserts, volcanoes--for God’s sake, these things can even live in snowy areas no sweat, so you’re probably never safe from these things outside of a village! Apart from the Queen, Vespoids come in two varieties: the smaller, more fragile workers and the larger, more aggressive soldiers. The workers have the jobs you’d expect: tidying up the hive, taking care of the Queen and eggs, and gathering food. The soldiers, on the other hand, have one purpose: protect the Queen with their lives. Now, you would think that the wiki would have more data on these two varieties, but it doesn’t. I’ve even looked at the Vespoid Queen page to see if there was any mention of the Vespoids involved in her fight being different from the ones you normally encounter, but no dice. I guess there’s a reason this image is on every monster’s ecology page:

The Vespoids you see most often are the workers searching for food. As you’d expect from wasps, “food” basically means anything they can kill. If the prey is small, they’ll paralyze it with a sting or two and carry it back to the colony. If the prey is a biggun, multiple workers will sting it before cutting it into pieces that can be transported back to the colony. Ew. The workers are well-equipped to traveling great distances in search of food thanks to their lightweight bodies, which aren’t weighed down by their durable exoskeletons...I say “durable” because the wiki says “durable,” but these guys have the Hornetaur problem of “hit me and I shatter.” I’d cut them some slack by pointing out that the attacks they’re hit with are coming from powerful weapons which might not even kill them in one hit, or from even more powerful monsters, but those things are the norm for the wildlife of this world, so no slack will be cut for them. See previous comment about above image. Anyways, Vespoids can be so successful that their colonies can become too large to support, so when that happens, they’ll split the colony up into smaller colonies that are still relatively close to the main one, but are dispersed over a wider area. I don’t know if this is behavior seen in eusocial animals irl, but it’s pretty interesting. The Vespoids are basically a mix between ants and wasps in behavior, from what I can tell, which is...decent, I guess. They still kinda feel like the bare minimum you need to do to make a eusocial animal. The thought of a small procession of giant wasps carrying chunks of meat through the air is pretty morbid, though, and sometimes, that’s what counts. 6/10.

Abilities: What do you think these guys use to fight? Those stingers aren’t for show; they’re packing a payload of neurotoxin used to paralyze prey. Even though their attacks are more of a nuisance for hunters who are already in a battle than a substantial threat (which tells you just how much more powerful the humans of the MH world are than us), need I remind you that these things travel together? If they weren’t so easy to kill, they’d probably be as bad as some of the larger monsters you have to fight. But that’s all these guys have for an attack, which is basically what real wasps do (except, you know, it’s coming from a wasp that’s 4 feet long). 4/10.

Equipment: Unfortunately, all Vespoid weapons are recolors of Hornetaur weapons. This is likely because they were the first insectoid monsters in the series and many of their weapons use parts from both of them. For example, the Duals Blades known as the Insect Slicer are made by upgrading the Insector+ (which looks exactly like the Insector and the Insect Slicer) with both Hornetaur and Vespoid parts:

You can tell that these are more Hornetaur-themed based off the colors. But you can upgrade the Insect Slicer into the Alated Insect, which has a color scheme closer to Vespoids:

Though, honestly, Vespoids aren’t as shiny as Hornetaurs are, so this still doesn’t exactly look right. Another weapon that uses both Hornetaur and Vespoid parts is a Hunting Horn called the Sonic Glass:

Again, more Hornetaur than Vespoid. I didn’t show this off when I covered Hornetaurs because I wanted to stick to weapons which didn’t require parts from multiple specific monsters because I thought it would be harder to say which monster the weapon was based off of, but now that I think about it, that’s stupid. You can tell by looking at this that it’s themed after the Hornetaur. But the version of the Sonic Glass that appears in Monster Hunter World, the Sonic Horn, has a color scheme that’s much more like the Vespoid’s:

...look, it’s ugly, but I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been told Monster Hunter World has the worst weapon designs in the series. And before anyone asks why I’m not showing off the Glass Royale, that’s clearly based off the Vespoid Queen, not the regular ones. All right, now it’s time for the armor to just be the Hornetaur armor recolored.

Oh. They’re actually different. Didn’t expect that. Well, they’re very...pointy. Seriously, there are spikes all over these things. And the female set’s helmet looks like a bug’s head, and knowing Monster Hunter, it’s probably real. Ew. I definitely like the Hornetaur Armor better than this, ‘cause it’s just...kinda dull and ugly. The colors don’t do a lot for it. I hate how every Vespoid weapon is either a recolor or closer to the Hornetaur in terms of theme, and the armor, while unique, is unappealing. At least the raptors had some unique weapons, even though they had basically the same armor. The Hornetaur weapons offer a lot in terms of design, but I feel like I have to give this a low score on principle. 4/10.

Final Thoughts and Tally: Look, when I said that this was “definitely gonna be more interesting” than the Velociprey, that was because I didn’t know how plain and unoriginal the Vespoids were. I just saw “giant bug” and thought it would be cool. Don’t blame me for that! Well, good news is, the next monster has to be more interesting than the Vespoid, for reasons that you’ll see when I get to it...or if you wanna go to the Monster List on the wiki yourself, but that’s called “spoiling.” 4/10.

[existentialburden]

all!! please talk about your ocs!!!!

:OOOO I WOULD GIVE MY LIFE FOR YOU.... (for real thank you I’m super out of it rn, assignments have me fucked up) this is goin under a read more because I am going to go OFF

who’s friends with who? what are the squad dynamics like?

okay so with my ocs let’s start with C9 in general! the entire session has a sort of tense vibe with everyone together but it’s the type where they all know if they need to they can rely on each other. it’s just the situation making them all volatile.

for squads Aila has her moirail squad with two of my pal’s ocs, Lyla and Kodi, and it’s just all comfort there. Lyla and Kodi make sure that Aila doesn’t go off and fume by herself when she’s pissed off, Kodi and Aila make sure Lyla’s not just staying in the depression hive that is her room, and Lyla and Aila make sure Kodi doesn’t hide away and sew for hours when he gets upset. it’s mostly a “get the fuck over here and socialize instead of dwelling on every bad thought” crew but sometimes it’s just about sitting in the same room as someone else. and sending memes to each other. she also considers Dukkel a friend, but that vibe is more of a “Dukkel is manipulative and Aila is too volatile to be effectively manipulated” sorta deal. they hang out though and genuinely enjoy each other’s company so I’m counting it. she’s also pals with Joel (not mine)- she does think she has a crush on him? but she’s always real unsure of these things. either way she likes being around him and he likes being around her. that vibe is “awkward but in a cute dorky way”. also friends with Hurlii (also not mine) but they’re... dating?? hate-dating??? they both refuse to pin that down but they sit under the stars and vent a little bit to each other and get out their emotions and it’s cute. I’ve written about them cuddling before it’s adorable. her and Louise swap memes sometimes so y’know what that’s a friendship too. and she talks to a group of horrorterrors who gossip about her sessionmates with her. Aila has a lot of connections because she’s the Session Leader and also she’s tiny so everyone goes “:O a baby....”. sort of the same way you let your little sibling hang out with you and your pals because they get so excited about it.

Hope is friends with a DIFFERENT pal’s oc, Kori. their vibe is also comfort and chillin. Kori reassures Hope that no, not being able to talk to people is not bad and people don’t hate you. Hope listens when Kori talks about timeline stuff and helps her take precautions to soothe her anxiety. they’re also the alchemiter squad figuring out how to make new objects all the time. they stick real close. Hope’s also pals with Kodi! Kodi actually mediates between her and Aila. Hope can cut loose a little around Kodi and ends up with a surprisingly carefree attitude around him. things are a LITTLE awkward between them but they’re buds. Kodi keeps her in check. (Hope’s also friends with Lyla, kind of? they’re hate-dating but they are so soft for each other.) she used to go play poker with some SBURB constructs but :( no more.

Fantra is moirails with Panda (just assume if they don’t end up with their own list they’re a pal’s oc okay) and they vibe. there’s a little more flirting than necessary in their friendship and they DEFINITELY cuddle. they’re actually really adorable. again, I don’t know if dating counts, but Fantra’s dating Lyla and they’re cute but still sort of figuring things out. Fantra gives Lyla all the attention she asks for and it’s adorable.

Dukkel is sort of friends with Aila but I already talked about that. she doesn’t have a lot of friends other than Ails, actually. it’s. kind of sad? but he doesn’t really go out of his way to befriend people. she has more connections, just not... positive ones.

NOT ALL OF THE ALPHAS ARE FLESHED OUT SO I SWEAR THEY HAVE MORE CONNECTIONS BUT

Mell is pals with Dott and they’re fucking chaotic. I adore them but oh jeez. Mell’s the Responsible One and she’s not responsible at all she just used to pick Dott up from parties and then hold her hostage to help redesign furbies. they’re great. actually, the entire alpha session is great because they’re all in a D&D group. Mell sometimes chats with Cole and thinks he’s alright but also a huge NERD and jokingly makes fun of him for it. Cole doesn’t mind because he is, in fact, a massive nerd. (also Mell ends up dating Lyla it’s a whole thing don’t worry about it they’re adorable)

outside of her session she’s friends with Orca in a sort of “hey this kid needs more friends. now they’re the designated little sibling of the squad” way. she teaches them cool new horrific crafts. Mell just can’t let them sit there when their two friends are busy smh come join in craft time and also here’s how to play D&D. it’s real nice!

Cole is dating Peri! they co-DM in oneshots and he fleshes out NPCs while she worldbuilds and it’s adorable. they’re soft and sweet and cuties. also chats with Mell as I said before!

ALTS: the session as a whole is messy. everything runs fine but it’s less a team and more a bunch of people forced to work together. they’re pretty good at doing things they don’t want to do, though, so gg.

Enny’s friends with Juli. Juli calls her out on her bullshit and Enny holds Juli accountable for her own messes. they’re more functional than they look. Enny is also friends with Kods (not Kodi. alt Kodi.) and they consider themselves siblings even if the specifics are a lil wild. they threaten each other but they don’t usually mean it. they care about each other. also they shared a creepypasta phase that tbh Enny never got over. she’s also kind of pals with Jess but in a “thank you for helping me keep these guys in check. in return I will not swear at you” kinda way and just. mutual understanding of being stubborn when it comes to working at things. 

outside of just the alt C9 crew (and delving into SPACE PIRATE TERRITORY): Enny’s also pals with Cece (yet another pal’s OC! the only pal mentioned that technically doesn’t work on the Official C9 Stuff but whatever I love him so much. all of the ones mentioned “outside their session″ are his <3!!!!) even though they stopped hanging out as much. Cece taught her how to paint and have a decent hobby and Enny appreciates it every day. their friendship is dear to my heart. makes me feel nice. Enny is friends with Tate too! they roomed together on the spaceship and even though they aren’t too talkative with each other sometimes that isn’t necessary. also kinda pals with Jody? they don’t hang out too much but Enny secretly thinks she’s a friend. they’re the short Light player squad. too curious for their own good. it got kinda hard for them to talk to each other in person because of an incident but Enny still thinks she’s cool and nice. and there’s Echo! Echo’s her friend and therapist who taught her how to talk about her feeeeelings. which is VERY important. everyone say thank you Echo. Enny enjoys his company and y’know it’s sometimes (SOMETIMES) nice to be totally open. hard but nice. well. it’s complicated. but thank you Echo. .....ENNY IS ALSO PALS WITH [REDACTED]. in “canon” right now they’re “rivals to acquaintances” but they have pet names for each other so what is the truth. they’re very cryptic and trade information but that means Enny’s actually very honest with him so they’re. adorable. they care a lot about each other and try to help each other when they need it. it’s so cute. I’m soft for them. they’ve always had a certain level of respect for each other and I VIBE WITH THAT. love me some respect and comfort in this house. also they totally cuddle.

Deuuuux is friends with Juli. Juli may be blunt and harsh in her humor but Deux vibes with it. she knows she’s just being snarky for the sake of being snarky. they hang out and it’s all very cool and fun. also pals with Kods, but that’s a LITTLE more strained. they still hang from time to time but it’s hard for Deux to tell when he needs his space. also hate-dating Jess but no, actually, they end up being like “wait this is stupid I don’t think I actually hate anything about you. which makes this just dating. ...heck yeah.” Jess keeps tabs on Deux’s volatile mental state and Deux makes sure SHE’S doing okay. like hey take a break. you deserve good things too.

outside of the alt C9 crew Deux is close with Wynn! they have a more sibling bond than anything else. found family. added onto this because Deux actually has a real squad, holy shit, is Echo! Deux is the Official Captain, Wynn made the spaceship they’re on, and Echo is the ship advisor. Deux goes to them when she wants a second opinion on things, which is a lot of the time. Echo is constantly side-eyeing Deux’s depression. it’s hilarious and I love them A LOT. SO MUCH. Deux and Wynn are also the ship chefs, though Wynn more so than Deux. I choose to believe they work on recipes together but that’s just me. Deux is also friends with [REDACTED 2], even if it was shaky at first. they bond over their annoyance at [REDACTED]- and they both get the feeling of being overworked and then looking over at other people goofing off. like damn, a little help here please? they’re so tired. Deux is so tired. someone give her a break.

West! is not C9, technically, but they’re still mine so :P. West is best friends with Fern and they game together. they like to try and fuck up games with West posing hypothetical glitches and Fern pulling them off. also they just hang out and it’s all fun times with them. West is also kinda pals with Alex- sometimes they hang and Alex gave West his old glasses for them to pop out the lenses and wear so that was cool of him. they just vibe and Alex thinks it’s nice that West appreciates their humor.

outside of their session they’re friends with Ulfort and Hazel! they’re a squad. Ulfort is the Responsible One, Hazel is the Bad Influence, and West is the Impressionable Chaos Enabler. I love them all. they goof and have a good time but also worry about each other and that’s real sweet. also Enny and [REDACTED] but in a parental figure sort of way so I’m only including it here and not in Enny’s- also because it’s only in certain aus. also only in certain aus is their friendship with Orca. they bond over similar excitable traits and they started out a little rocky but they’re friends!

Hazeee is also best buds with Fern! sure Haze is crushing on Fern but that doesn’t mean they aren’t pals. they support each other emotionally and also they’re totally both furries. like Fern COULD show her fursona to West and they’d support her but it’s not their interest so they don’t really know how they’re supposed to react so Fern and Haze get the fun of a mutual interest. Haze is also pals with June- xe’s Haze’s right-hand. June helps advise Haze and proposes new ideas and also teases Haze for crushing on Fern. it’s all in good fun though.

Fern is just pals with West and Haze and they’re both her best friends. no she will not rank them. she shouldn’t have to.

outside of her session sheeee’s totally in love with Ulfort and Rita. interacting with Ulfort she’s likes to try and make him flustered a lil bit. with Rita she’s much more shy about it. it’s so cute. she thinks they’re both very very pretty. this is still only in certain aus because otherwise they don’t interact... ...unless? hmu my boyyyyy show me the canon we could have had/can have [eyes emoji]

June is best friends with Alex. they thrive off their differences but June enjoys getting to just have FUN with Alex and Alex loves having support from June. they hang ALL THE TIME. they support each other and tease each other and make sure they know where the lines are. June’s also pals with Haze as mentioned above!

outside of xir sesh June’s pals/something else ;) with Orca. but like. only in certain aus. they’re. how do I describe this without getting into the aus. uh. they’re cute as hell okay? Orca spoils June and June lightly teases Orca and they’re adorable. they care about each other so so much.

Alex is besties with June and pals with West. yes he plays favorites :P.

Theo and Fate are best friends and found-family twins and they’re chaotic as a duo. Fate describes emotions to Theo and Theo describes colors to Fate and that’s adorable but Fate’s encouraging Theo to make horrorterror deals and Theo’s like what if I abused my god tier powers instead and it’s CHAOS. I love them so much. no one else they’re all they’ve got babey!

Luca is dating Elli and Julius (who are also dating) and they’re a squad all on their own. Elli and Julius are weebs and Luca makes fun of them for it but he’s the one dating them so rip. Luca loves them both so much but him and Elli have more of a “childhood friends” vibe (because they are) and Luca and Julius have a “flirt vs one very pretty boy” vibe (because that’s exactly what’s going on these aren’t vibes these are just what’s happening). they’re all ADORABLE. none of them have any other friends but specifically Luca doesn’t because he’s mine and he’s lonely. rip.

Orca is pals with/dating June as mentioned above! and pals with West! and friends with Mell!

I’m not gonna get too into the SBURB 2 ELECTRIC BOOGALOO squad because the friendships aren’t entirely fleshed out but Pistol and Spike are friends and Spike’s totally crushing on Pistol and it’s cute. they’re cute. I rest my case.

I’M GONNA DO THE REST OF THE QUESTIONS IN A REBLOG BECAUSE DEAR GOD.

[ilovemygaydad]

Friends in Dark Places [ch 7]

pairing: eventual moxiety, eventual logince, background eventual remile, background eventual remy/emile/deceit

WARNINGS: blood, self harm, panic attacks, crying, poor coping mechanisms, mentions of sensory overload, intrusive thoughts, self doubt, self hatred, possibly something else

tag list: @hufflepuffgirl01 @cocobearthe4th @cas-is-a-hunter@band-be-boss-blog @theunoriginaldaisy

a/n: so i have to repost all of these in a different format! yay fucking me!!!! please consider reblogging these if you’re a fan of this series because it’s all fucked up now

first - previous - next - companions

consider buying me a coffee (please)

-

Before he piled into the back of the car, Virgil took his headphones out of his bag and slid them over his ears. He didn’t need a sensory overload at 7:30 in the morning just because the Disney Prince didn’t have any volume control. Like, at all.

“Wow, Roman! I like the new look! The bomber jacket really makes the whole thing work,” Patton squealed. Roman turned in his seat to look back at Pat, and Virgil could see what he meant. Instead of his usual bare face, he’d put on gold shimmery eyeshadow and red lipstick. Virgil hated to admit it, but he looked really good.

A few minutes into the ride, Virgil felt a light tap on his shoulder. He turned to Patton, who was obviously the giver of the “pat,” with raised eyebrows.

Are you okay? Patton mouthed, tapping his ears to simulate headphones.

Yeah. No need to be overstimulated so early. Virgil mouthed back with a gesture to Roman, who was still singing along to various Disney songs. Patton just nodded and went back to conversing--er, trying to converse with Logan.

The car arrived at Westview High at exactly 7:45, giving each of the students plenty of time to do what they needed before class started at eight. Patton and Virgil went to the office together to drop off their absence notes, then parted ways to go to their lockers.

Virgil walked the whole twenty feet trek to his locker to drop off his backpack and grab his Graphic Arts portfolio and pencil case. He shoved his phone into his hoodie pocket and turned up the volume on his playlist, blasting Green Day as he walked to the opposite end of the school for his first block class.

The dark-clad teenager had hoped he would fly under the radar, but the instant he walked into the graphic arts room, his teacher ambushed him.

“Virgil! I got your email, but what landed you in the hospital for three days?” Mrs. Miller asked. Virgil nearly dropped his binder due to the pure shock of being spoken to so suddenly. He ripped off his headphones and put a hand to his chest.

“First of all, don’t jump out like that,” he said as he made sure all of his bandages were hidden under his sleeves. “Second… I, uh… had a, uh, really bad… allergy… attack. Like, hives all over my body and face. I had to get allergy testing and stuff, and I was on constant antihistamines for, like, three days.” The story was definitely not very believable, and Virgil could see in Mrs. Miller’s eyes that she didn’t believe him at all.

“Sure. Anyway, we’re going to be working on banners or helping clean the lab. You can choose either since I know you’re probably almost done with your banner. Or you are done, which wouldn’t be surprising.” Virgil nodded and headed to the back, tying one of the ink-covered aprons around his waist and began to spray solvent onto one of the many barely-used rags from the discard. He muttered under his breath about how the other students needed to learn that rags were meant to be absolutely filthy when they were discarded, but he ultimately let it go.

Virgil slipped his headphones on and cleaned three screens and a few pallet knives in a blissful bubble of music. His cathartic cleaning session, however, came to a quick end when he had cleaned everything in the shop in just under an hour. With a whole twenty-five minutes left. It wouldn’t be as much of a problem if he wasn’t mostly finished with his project. 

Without any surprise, it took him only five minutes to put finishing touches on his banner. He sighed and sent it to the color printer. Might as well turn it in if he’s done, right? Virgil trudged to the printer and took out the streaky mess. The printer, just to his luck, had been having problems with colored bars randomly showing up on people’s prints, and his was not the exception. As well, it all happened right in the part with the smaller, thin lettering that named the bands.

“Hey, Mrs. Miller. Can I just send you a PDF of the banner? The printer chewed up my design and spat it back out.” Virgil asked as he walked to his teacher’s office door and leaned on the door frame. She took a look at the paper he was holding up and sighed.

“Yeah, that’s fine. I just called IT yesterday and had them fix the printer. That thing is a disaster.” Mrs. Miller shook her head and waved Virgil over. “Let me see your design.”

Virgil hesitated but stepped forward, dropping the paper on her desk. He tugged his hands into his sleeves as his teacher scrutinized the paper. With a heavy sigh, Mrs. Miller set it back on her desk.

“It’s pretty plain, Virgil. Like, it certainly meets all of the criteria for the project, and is definitely good enough to be a perfect grade, but... Virgil, what happened to your amazing designs? This is… bland. Pretty--don’t get me wrong--but bland.” The teen felt the blood rush from his body in one fell swoop. He hadn’t wanted to let her down! He had just thought that it fit the aesthetic of the festival better. But at the same time, he thought back to his past few designs, and the results were disappointing at best. She was right. They were bad.

“I… I’m sorry. You’re right; it sucks.. I’ll go redesign it. Just--yeah.” Virgil swung around and made a motion to leave when Mrs. Miller called after him. He stopped in his tracks but didn’t turn around.

“Virgil. It’s fine. I don’t want you to get upset about it. I’m just saying that you haven’t been acting like yourself recently, and it shows in your work. Art is full of emotion, so when the artist feels down, the art reflects that.”  Virgil could feel her eyes burning into the back of his head, feeding him with self-doubt and fear. He had wanted to hide his feelings better--it was his responsibility to hide everything away inside of himself. Feelings hurt others, and if he had to suffer to keep others safe, then that’s what he had to do. An icy chill shot through his veins at the same time as hot fire. He needed out.

He curtly nodded and walked out of the office. As he sat down in his chair, he took out his phone to text Patton, but realized he hadn’t asked for his number. That just added to his anxiety--how would he be able to meet up with Pat and the others after school to get a ride home? The panic began to rise up his chest until he couldn’t bear it anymore. With all of the false calm he could muster, Virgil asked Mrs. Miller if he could to go to the bathroom, to which she obviously said yes.

His footsteps pounded down the hallway as he ran, even though the nearest bathroom was just a few yards away. Virgil slammed the stall door shut, sliding to the floor with a sob. This wasn’t supposed to be difficult. He had a friend now, and he was so sweet and kind and caring. Not to mention he was living with said friend and his equally-as-nice family, who gave him a really wonderful room and fed him and took care of him. They even fucking committed insurance fraud for him even though they knew nothing about him.

Virgil rolled up his sleeve and began to harshly scratch his forearm where there were no bandages. He needed to relieve the icy hot pain he felt. He needed it out of his body. His mind was racing, going to conclusions that didn’t even make sense, until he lost track of time. The bell for the next period might have rang, but he had no idea. Looking down at his arm, Virgil realized that his long nails had dragged shallow, bloody cuts into his skin. 

It made him feel like a failure. He’d made it, what, all of five days without self harm just to break it over a stupid banner design that he was going to get a good grade on anyway!

His shaky hands dug the phone out of his pocket and turned it on. Patton… What the hell is his name?! Patton… Patton Shea! That was his name. Virgil shakily typed out Pat’s name into the google search bar and scrolled through the results, trying to find any of Patton’s social media. He clicked on the fifth link and practically cried with relief at the discovery of Patton’s Instagram. It’d been updated… Yesterday. Good. He used it often, then. And, by the look of it, he replied almost immediately to comments, so he probably had notifications on. Virgil opened the account in the Instagram app, typing out a sloppy DM through his tears.

vintage-misery to patton-cake24 [Read at 9:15 am]

pat i ‘m in t he ba t hroom by teh grph cs romo i’m havnig a panic attackk hlep vriigl

patton-cake24 to vintage-misery [Delivered at 9:15 am]

It’s okay, Virge. I’ll be there in a few minutes, just hang tight, and I’m gonna help you. It’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay.

Virgil let his phone slip out of his hand, attempting to marginally calm himself down before Patton arrived. It didn’t really work, and before long, a set of footsteps echoed off of the tile walls of the bathroom.

“Virge? You in here? It’s just me, kiddo. Everything’s okay.” Patton’s voice was hesitant, clearly unsure if he was in the right place. Virgil reached up and unlocked the stall door to let Pat in. “Oh thank goodness.”

Tears immediately began to roll down Virgil’s face again. “I-I’m sorry. IreallyfuckedupandIcouldn’tevenmakeitaweekwithouthurtingmyselfI’msuchafuckingfailurePattonwhatdoIdo?” Patton closed the stall door and kneeled in front of his panicking friend.

“Hey, it’s okay. Any recovery comes with relapse, okay? You’re not a failure; you’re just healing.” Pat’s voice was soft and soothing. “Is it okay if I touch you?”

Virgil nodded, and Patton took his hands from his face, gently holding them in his own. “What is your name?”

“I--what?” the crying teenager asked.

“What’s your name?” Patton repeated.

“V-Virgil.”

“Good. Now, what color is your sweatshirt?”

“Grey.”

“Awesome. You’re doing great. Do I wear glasses?”

“Y-yeah. You do.”

“Good. Really good. Now follow my counting. Four beats in, seven beats holding your breath, eight beats out. One, two…”

It only took a few minutes to get Virgil back to a stable state through breathing exercises and rhythmic hand squeezes. Patton had a big smile on his face.

“That was so good, kiddo! I’m really proud of you,” Patton encouraged. The sound of the bell dully rang through the bathroom, and Virgil rushed to stand up. Pat forced him back down.

“I know I just said that was good, but you definitely aren’t in any sort of condition to be rushing around in crowded hallways yet. We’re going to stay right here and make sure you’re a-okay before we leave. I’m going to get you a pass to your next class, okay? I’ll be right back--don’t move.” Patton released his grip on Virgil’s hands and stood up, swiftly striding out of the bathroom. He returned only a minute later with two yellow slips, Virgil’s graphics supplies, and a few tissues. Pat gently wiped the tears away from his friend’s face, making sure not to smear any of the makeup under his eyes.

“Patton…” Virgil didn’t have the words to say what he was feeling. He was sorry for dragging Pat into this mess, but even more sorry for failing to not harm himself for even an entire week.

“Hey, it’s okay. Now, let me see where you’re hurt so it doesn’t get any worse,” Patton ordered, though it was more caring than harsh. Virgil held his left arm out and rolled up the sleeve of his hoodie. The skin just below his elbow had flakes of dry blood on it, following the scrapes that he’d formed. Patton took a roll of gauze he’d taken from the Child Guidance room and wrapped it around the wounds. The gauze wouldn’t exactly help heal anything, but it would prevent unnecessary pain from the sweatshirt rubbing over it.

Once he was done, Patton sat down beside Virgil. “Do you think you could tell me what made you feel so anxious? It’s okay if you can’t, but it’ll help if we know what to avoid in the future.”

“Okay, well,” Virgil groaned, dropping his head in his hands. “God, this is so stupid. I shouldn’t have even panicked about it, but my graphics teacher is really nice and stuff, and she likes my work. So, naturally, she starts to notice that my designs are becoming less me and are more boring. Like, still good enough, but just without the usual feeling in them. And this has been going on for a while, pretty much ever since March when I started to get extremely depressed and anxious. And today I gave her my latest design for a project we were doing, and she told me that it was uninspired and boring, which it was but that’s not the point, and she wasn’t impressed with my work anymore, and it just started to get into my skin that she knew that I was super depressed, and that now it was a big deal. I felt like a giant failure for my designs being lame and I just--It’s stupid. Never mind.” The teen leaned forward to rest his head on his knees. He felt so tired.

Patton spoke up after a moment. “No feelings are stupid, kiddo. I’m sure it was really hard on you to hear what your teacher said, but she obviously just cares about you. Just like I care, hon. Next project, you’re just going to have to channel your emotions into whatever you’re making, and I’m sure it’ll turn out amazing. You’re not a failure in anyone’s eyes. Especially not mine.” Virgil felt his friend’s arms slither around his waist for an awkward hug. A little smile crept on his face from the very Patton gesture.

They sat in the bathroom stall for another couple of minutes before they decided they were good enough to get back to class.

“Give me your phone so you won’t have to find my Instagram again,” Pat said and held his hand out for the phone. Patton quickly typed his number in, sending a text to himself. 

Virgil

Delivered at 8:35 am

hey

Patton

Read at 8:35 am

Hey Virge!

Virgil

Delivered at 8:35 am

patton was that really necessary to reply to your own text to yourself

Patton

Read at 8:36 am

It sure was!!!! Let’s get back to class!! :P

Virgil rolled his eyes and slipped his phone back into his pocket. The pair walked out of the bathroom and went their separate ways.

next

[nashvilletonihon]

To Stay Or Not To Stay...That Is The Million Dollar Question.

I’m currently sitting at my desk in the Kumihama teacher’s room. It’s Finals Week here so everyone is buzzing around and it sounds like a busy hive of bees. The students already look broken, defeated, tired. It’s been a long couple of weeks for me so I can only imagine what it’s been like for them.

I’m honestly not sure where October and November went. I remember being glad that September was over the minute it became October 1st and then suddenly I was celebrating Halloween with my ESS Club students and then it was November 1st. Now it’s 1 day away from my birthday (which I haven’t even thought about) and then it will be December 1st. 

What. Is. Happening??? 

When I first arrived here I thought time had literally stopped. I was stuck in an endless loop of being unhappy, lonely and sad I was drowning in my own misery. Fast forward to now. November 29th. In two short months I will have to give the JET Program and my contracting schools an answer to the question of whether or not I would like to re-contract. If I say yes, my schools will then have to decide whether or not they want to extend my contract for another year. If they do, I’d be working for them again during another trip around the sun. If they don’t...well, the decision to stay or go will have been made for me.

I’ve talked to my mom and a few close friends about my decision to potentially live in Japan for another year or to move back to the States. My mother encouraged me to make a Pros and Cons list. (Something I’ve always done when faced with major, life-changing decisions.) It’s currently taped to the back of my bedroom door and at the moment, both sides are neck and neck. Neither the Pros nor the Cons have advanced past the other. Hurray for me right? How does a list like that help when they’re dead even?! 

I think about what my life would be like in both scenarios. If I stay for another year I can continue to work toward my (absolutely insane) goal of eventually taking the JLPT N2. It’s an incredibly difficult test for non-native speakers that requires A LOT of work to pass. One of my friends and fellow JET’s is getting ready to take it this Sunday. She studied Japanese for four years in college AND studied abroad here and even she’s worried passing it. I wonder if I could accomplish my goal in another year and a half. If I worked my a** off, I bet I could. I at least want to take and pass the N3. (Which I’m pretty sure I can do.) That being said, if I pass the N2 I could get a job as a translator or interpreter which is something I would really enjoy doing. I could translate anime or manga or work for the government or tourism board in cities like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Seattle, etc... Living in Japan for another year would allow me to continue to be exposed to native speakers and Japanese every single day. The minute I move back to America I no longer have that luxury. Even though I’ve only been here for 4 months my comprehension and understanding has grown exponentially. I would be jeopardizing all of the hard work I’ve put in up ‘til now. 

A major Con of continuing to live in Japan is being away from my family and friends for another year. I video chat with my momma every single day and it always pains me to have to talk to her through a phone screen. I miss being able to hop in my car and drive the 2 1/2 hours to Indiana to see her whenever I wanted. Now we constantly have to coordinate when we both have free time to talk. Being 15 hours ahead of her in the States (thaaaaanks Daylight Savings) makes things difficult, but we manage. I miss her hugs. I also struggle a lot with the fact that I am losing out on valuable time with my grandparents. I know they won’t be around forever and the guilt associated with being over here while they continue grow older is more than I can put into words. I know my family is proud of me for following my dreams but that doesn’t make being over here any easier.

Another Con (or Pro depending on how you look at it) is that I have ZERO job prospects moving back to America. Absolutely nothing. In theory I could pick up over hire work in theatre at TPAC, Nash Rep, Studio Tenn or advertise myself as a costume designer (a position I have long had a love/hate relationship with) but to be completely honest, none of that sounds very appealing right now. I’m tired of living paycheck to paycheck and constantly being worried about if I’ll be able to afford rent (we all know how ridiculous it is to live in Nashville now) or make my car payment. Yeah, yeah I know. ‘’That’s what being involved in the arts is all about! You have to suffer for it!’’ Whoever thought that was a good excuse for people to live a stressful, poor lifestyle just so they can follow their passion can shove it. It’s ridiculous we even have to do that in the first place. Yes, I want to act. Yes, it’s my everything. Yes, it’s what I am good at. But I don’t want to constantly have to struggle when I could work toward a job that I can make good money doing while ALSO acting. Is that me selling out to have a secure day job and moonlight as an actor? Maybe. I’ll be 29 on Friday. If I stay another year in Japan I’ll turn 30 here. It’s hard to believe I’m so close to being out of my twenties already. While I feel the proverbial clock ticking when it comes to the stereotypical “old actress” trope, I have to remind myself that most well-known actors didn’t even get started until their mid-30′s. I’ve got time. And being bilingual will look really cool on my resumé.

So what’s another Pro about continuing to live in Japan? Saving more money, yo. Being here for another year means more savings in the bank. It’s a pretty simple concept that would allow me to not freak out about finances when I finally move back to the States. As someone who had an incredible amount of financial stability when I lived in Los Angeles to being left with nothing after I moved to Nashville, financial stability is now incredibly important to me. (I can hear my father slow clapping from 11,000 miles away.) I’m not one for caring about money (never have been) but if I could keep adding to the savings account while also working toward a career that would help me in the long run, I’ll take that option time and time again.

Another Pro I often think about is how many more people can come to visit Japan while I’m here. My Mom, sister (Elizabeth) and friends Taylor and Erica are all coming out to visit me in the months of February and March. If I’m here for another year, even MORE people can come on out to see what this crazy magical country is all about. I think that’s pretty dang cool and am 100% encouraging everyone I know to start looking at flights now. I mean, you’ve got a personal tour guide AND a place to stay!!! What more could you need/want?! 

All in all I have quite a few Pros and Cons on the list. Some of the Cons are dependent on whether or not I can somehow change them into Pros. One example would be the immense distaste I have for my base school. I am there every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Out of those three days I might be fortunate enough to attend (not teach, mind you) 2 classes, possibly 3. Classes are 50 minutes each if we don’t have a special shortened schedule. So out of 3, 8 hour work days, I am maybe seeing the inside of a classroom for less than 3 hours each week. Compare that to my visit school where I am there on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I have 3 or 4 and sometimes 5 classes a day. I am waaaaay happier at my visit school. I found out that I can talk to my scheduling supervisors to potentially get my schedule switched so that my visit school becomes my base school and my base school becomes my visit school. This would drastically improve my outlook on the situation as a whole. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the other teachers at my base school (even though I don’t really talk to many of them and vice versa) and they’re all incredibly nice people. I just seem to click better with the teachers at my visit school.

Throughout all of the anxiety, worrying, stressing out and continual ‘’Should I or shouldn’t I’s’’, I have to keep telling myself that ultimately, it’s my decision and mine alone. Will it affect the people close to me? Oh, without a doubt. I know my family will hate to have me away for another year. I run the risk of being forgotten in the Nashville theatre and losing another year of shows. I already feel like my career was just beginning to take off and the desire to follow through with that is one of the strongest pulls back home yet. And then again...I have this intense desire to learn Japanese. REALLY learn it. I want to communicate with my friends, co-workers and the people who have helped to make the adjustment to life in Japan a little bit easier. I want to help Americans visit Japan and not be scared to do so because of the language barrier. Trust me when I say that the the people here are more scared to use English than you are to use Japanese.

I have a lot to think about over the next 2 months, but if I’m being completely honest (and I try to be on here), I am about 90% sure I will stay for another year. I don’t think my work in Japan is done yet. I think I can help more students, engage more cultural exchanges, help the current JTE’s teach their classes more efficiently and help infuse fun ways of learning into the mundane textbook lessons. I want to start a pen-pal exchange with the girls in my English Speaking Society Club with students from my aunt’s high school in Indiana. There is so much I want to do...and 8 more months just isn’t enough time to do it all.

Before I end this, it’s important to me that I thank the countless people, both family members and friends, who have listened to my doubts, fears, concerns and indecision about all of this over the past month. Your unwavering support and constant encouragement mean so much to me. I honestly wouldn’t still be here without your love and kindness. I am truly, truly grateful to have each and every one of you in my life, both here and abroad. Y’all the real MVP’s. 

I’m sorry there aren’t any photos in this post. I’m heading to Kyoto City tomorrow for a Skills Conference and will be there all weekend. I’m going sightseeing and Christmas shopping and will be taking lots of photos so I will have plenty to write about come next week. On that note I will wrap this up and say goodbye for now. I keep telling myself I’ll be better at updating and posting and I swear I will start now. Thanks for always being patient with me!!

じゃあまた (See you!)

- レイチェル (Rachel)

[fantroll-purgatory]

Image was made by @diadraws ! 

Hi, here’s my troll I tried to base off of Eve from the bible. She’s still pretty new and a rough concept!

Oh man, I can already tell I loveee her. 

FIRST: Alternia or Beforus or some type of AU? Our fansession takes place on Alternia, but with the only difference being that trolls are allowed to be older before being set off for their ordeals. Also, while I’m not sure in regular Alternia whether or not there’s more than one mother grub, in our session there is.

I don’t think it’s ever explicitly stated whether there are multiple? I still need to play more extended universe stuff to be sure of that, but I know for example that Kanaya’s mother grub And at least one other must’ve existed at once because Kanaya’s mother grub declined to brood, which means it’s possible for multiple to be alive at once. So afaik there’s at least canon justification to make multiple exist.

Name (preferably include how you came up with it and why): Bakita (From Saint Josephine Bakhita) Khoeii (From the african word for cow - which is a term used for a female elephant, which are the leaders of their herds.)

Age: 10.6 sweeps. She’s very old for someone living on Alternia, in fact she might be the oldest.

Strife Specibus: spearkind

Fetch Modus: *cricket noises*

How about some Bone Reading/Bone Scrying. Eve was said to be created from the rib of Adam, so bones are a good themeatic connection. She could keep the bones of the monstrous creatures she kills and toss them, the landing pattern determining what item comes out of her inventory.  Blood color: Jade

Symbol and meaning: I designed her symbol based on the tree from Eden in the Adam and Eve story. Same for her horns, which is supposed to appear like trees with newly formed branches.

The horns also look kinda like insects, which works out well!

Trolltag: greenAmazoness, referring to her green thumb and the fact that she’s a warrior.

Quirk: Bakita’s still a pretty new oc for me so I’d love if you can help me out here!

Quirks are usually my least favorite thing to do, so I understand. I’ve looked at the quirk trends for Jades, and it seems they have a tendency to have the most normal/Standard kind of typing, they usually use proper grammar but inconsistent capitalization and punctuation, and they like to put Emphasis on words. For that reason, I think you could go with something simple. 

She types with relatively proper grammar but slacks on punctuation because who needs that 

And when she needs to ->EMPHASIZE<- something she points at it with spears and capitalizes it

If you wanted a branch/tree reference you could also do something like her trying to hold several branching conversations at once, which is more a social quirk and less a typing one but is still interesting to read

Special Abilities (if any): She has no psychic powers, just really, really strong. Like, Equius strong.

Lusus: Since cloistered jadebloods have to take care of their mother grub, Bakita doesn’t have a lusus. Instead, she was raised by older teens who were followers and worshippers of her ancestor. This causes her to feel a great sense of honor and responsibility due to being raised as the future leader of her cloister, as well as stress. The jade bloods raising her didn’t develop a close relationship with Bakita, instead putting her on a pedestal left by her ancestor, until they either died or were sent off planet. Bakita feels a lot of pressure from them to be as good as her ancestor in terms of leadership and importance.

I Love this backstory.

Hive: Bakita lives in a primitive jade-blood colony that takes care of a mother-grub and wrigglers, in a brooding cavern. She lives in a shared hivestem with the other jades in her colony, and has her own part of the cave to herself. It’s very homely, with little to no technology aside from her computer, which is pretty beat up and old due to mishandling and Bakita’s frustration, on a shabby desk made of stone. It’s dimly lit, with several torches hung up on the walls, and a pile of animal hide she uses as a bed. There’s a lot of young adult romance novels stashed in the pile as well, recently given to her by online friends. She has many plants scattered around her room, mostly thistles and bdelliums in hanging pots from the walls and ceiling. Next to her door, she has a rack to put her weapons in, which range from bats, to halberds, to spears. She also has a punching bag in a corner of her room, made out of animal hide, and badly damaged.

I can’t believe you don’t have an apple tree up in here. Some sacred one that her ancestor planted and that isn’t supposed to be touched… Miraculously growing in the dark of the cave despite all odds…

Personality: Bakita is a friendly person, and she is defined by being fiercely loyal and responsible. To the jades in her cloister, she is an excellent leader. Having grown up in a wild and dangerous forest, she had to learn to defend herself, her fellow jades, and the grubs. Bakita has had numerous scrapes with monstrous creatures, which have left her with many scars across her body.

Bakita is, like most jade bloods, very motherly towards others. To grubs and wrigglers, she loves to coddle and baby them, and considers the grubs under her care her motivation to keep going, and learned to be stronger in order to protect them from the monstrous animals that are common around the area. When it comes to her fellow jadebloods in her tribe, she is very protective of them as well. Though while she considers the other jadebloods friends, Bakita feels a wall between her and them, caused by Bakita’s caretakers focusing on giving Bakita’s attention rather than the others. Some of the other jades secretly resent Bakita, and talk behind her back, which saddens Bakitam due to considering them her family.

When it comes to interacting with others, she’s pretty chill. She almost never is outwardly mad at anyone, and lets direct insults be ignored most of the time. Bakita loves to tease and joke with younger trolls, and due to being older than pretty much everyone she currently interacts with, tries to act like the wise individual her ancestor was, and offers advice and consolation to those who need it.

The tribe is also very dependent on Bakita in terms of survival, her being the strongest jade blood that helps steer predators away from themselves and the grubs, and put more work on her than themselves. Bakita has no problem with this, but ends up having feeling like she has an overwhelming responsibility for things out of her control. She feels very irritated when she can’t do anything to help, and hates the feeling of being helpless.

Having a large sense of duty to everyone else, Bakita considers the well being of others to be more important than hers. To her, the scars that have grown plentiful on her body is more than fine when it comes to help protecting those she cares about. If everyone else is fine, then she’s fine.

I adore herrrr. I think you also need to like…. Life is about Growth, Development, The Energy Of Change. And clearly she’s in a stifled system so she can struggle with that, but if you want her to be a life aspect or to develop into a life aspect, esp as a knight, you need that tension under the surface, that drive for Difference, that drive for New, For Change. As someone themed after Eve, she has to have that curiosity. She wants the knowledge of life, she wants to grow, she wants to expand, she wants to reach her potential. Even if something like anxiety is holding her back, life has to be there breathing under her skin.

Interests: Bakita is a strong and athletically gifted woman, and uses her prowess to hunt and fight beasts that live around her area, and uses the fights she wins as a method of reassurance that she’s strong enough to protect others.

She is an amateur gardener, having grown numerous flora around the brooding caverns. Though, she’s very bad at it, and her plants often die.

Psst, her ancestor could’ve been good at gardening to give her something to feel she’s lacking in, Ancestor Insecurity Hours.

Bakita has an interest in young adult novels, some which were given to her by friends she made online.

That is really so cute.

Ancestor: Due to not having a better name, I’ve just called her The First. The First was one of the first trolls ever hatched in recorded history. One of the first jades to care for trolls in the brooding caverns, she witnessed the development of troll culture and society, and lived for well over a century, and a few more due to awakening her rainbow drinker capabilities. Initially amazed at the evolving of trolls, she soon noticed the hemospectrum starting to take control of everyday life. Disgusted by the brutal treatment of lowbloods and the extinction of the limebloods, she stole a matriorb from a dying mother grub, and went to an isolated cavern away from troll society to create a community away from the hemospectrum. Her colony was successful for a long while, until some imperial soldiers found it. Ordered by the heiress to kill them all, all that was left of the colony was the First, her fellow jades, and a mother grub. In exchange for her own life, the First pleaded for the jades and the mother grubs to continue living. The Empress complies (not Condy, another heiress that came before her), under the condition that all the grubs raised by them will be sent to another city with their lusus to live, and won’t grow up in the caverns. The jadebloods agreed, and the First was executed. The jadebloods then continued their work of raising grubs under the empire’s watch, though now taught new jadebloods to consider the First as a figurehead of worship and admiration, a lesson that carried over the the jadebloods that raised Bakita.

Bakita herself greatly respects the First, and molds her morals and her putting others before her mindset from her ancestor. She holds great insecurity in not holding up the expectations put on her by the First.

To fight the name rule, you could switch this up to call her The Firstone. 8 letter name rule! You could also do The Thoracic. A reference to the thorax, the part of the body in which the heart and lungs lie. The ribcage, the origin of life and humanity (trollmanity?).

Title: Knight of Life

I definitely think this is a good title for her.

Land: ????

The Land of Good and Evil is a very cheesy but apt one for a character based around Eve. Snakes as consorts…

Dream Planet: Derse

Voice Claim: Definitely Bismuth from Steven Universe.

Trivia: Bakita isn’t very good with technology. Although the brooding caverns is equipped with minimal technology, she is still very primitive and as a result gets frustrated with tech due to her lack of knowledge about it.

I love her. I really, really love her. I Wouldn’t change a thing about her design either. She’s really fantastic. Thank you for sharing!

-CD

[ringsfullofdiamond]

11/22/22

writing out my thoughts because veronna suggested i do so. i want to start writing out some positive stuff, instead of always just writing my anxious and sad thoughts.

positive:

justin and i have been adjusting nicely in our place. things have been settling down more, and we’re getting in the swing of furnishing the apartment. everything is looking so nice so far, and living together has been really fun and easy. we’re both on the same page about everything, with cleaning, organizing, furnishing, etc. it’s been very peaceful and a nice pace. i’ve always grown to love cleaning and organizing, it’s super therapeutic and gratifying for me. i have this whole week off from work, so i’ve just been cleaning, cooking, baking, furnishing, and shopping. it’s been sooooo nice and relaxing. i’ve laid down a few times and just really sat in the peace of it all. not to mention the flowers i buy. they really brighten up the space & room. i’ve come to love interior designing so much, and it’s really nice to do it with justin by my side.

negative-ish brain dump:

thanksgiving is in two days, and i’m really nervous still. ton of thoughts go in my mind on how it’s going to go and i feel like i’m going to break out in hives. tbh, i don’t know why it matters to me so much. like why family judgment is just so offending but also nerve wracking and anxiety inducing. i think it’s because i’ve never really been a topic of gossip or scrutiny. i’ve always done things right, always casted a positive light on me. and i feel the projection from mom of course. she’s worried how me being with justin reflects on me, and ultimately her. and it’s ridiculous. there’s nothing wrong with justin objectively, he’s actually amazing. but the types of questions they’ll ask, the superficial things they’ll judge him on. the fact that he didn’t get a college degree & he’s short. it just feels unfair, but at the end of the day, what does it really matter if it’s unfair? like v says, who cares what they think? gossip is gossip; it’s not a reflection of me or justin, but rather my aunts and uncles. it’s what they do to feel better about themselves, to have something to idly chat about, to have a new topic of discussion. it does scare me. while i wish it didn’t, while i know it doesn’t matter, it scares me. i just hate being judged, and judged for no good reason. i don’t want that judgment to extend to justin. but i can’t let it be known or felt that i feel uncomfortable about the judgment. i think the more i own it and the relationship, the less of a big deal it is to them and ultimately me. it’s kind of like, not giving them a reaction when or if they question and ridicule the relationship. giving short, pleasant answers with a smile. showing that i’m relaxed and confident in my decisions. shows that i have ease and grace in my POV and they should get it too. and if they don’t.... whatever, right? 

the same mindset could be applied to friends who haven’t met justin yet. i do think about what ahran would think, knowing the way she is. she’s made comments about some of her gf’s and how their boyfriends don’t look that attractive. i’ve been guilty of making comments like this before, but i want to stop. because it really is hurtful and unnecessarily judgmental. nothing comes out of it. but yeah, she’ll prob see justin and just thinks he’s super short or not attractive enough, knowing her. but again, whatever. it’s my bf, not hers or anyone else’s. besides, everyone who’s ACTUALLY talked to and got to know justin know what a great person he is. introspective, thoughtful, observant, calm, and mature. he’s amazing. and those who can’t see that, like i say, is more of a reflection on them. i’ve always thought that if someone doesn’t like justin, it’s more of a reflection on them than him. because he doesn’t do anything wrong. in fact, he always does things right. rarely ever does he respond or react in a distasteful way. 

which brings me to some other anxiety.. i have to tell mom that justin didn’t get an AA. i feel ashamed that i said he did. in the spur of the moment, i told her that he did get one, and i think inside i felt some shame about the fact that he didn’t have one too. but i quickly realize that it really doesn’t matter and i actually don’t give a fuck. haven’t gave a fuck in a long while. my problem is i really internalize what other ppl think, and it sways my opinions. i’m pretty impressionable when i think about it, and not as grounded as i’d like to be. i want to keep working on it. but i’m reminding myself that if i have no issue or shame about j not having an AA, then that’s ALL that really matters. so i’ll let her know tomorrow on wednesday. 

i’m anxious about thanksgiving, but like i mentioned to v, it’s a few hours. it’ll pass, and life will move on. we will move on. justin and i will, and we’ll continue to live a lovely life full of laughter and pureness. you can’t control what people’s opinions are, what they say, what prejudices they have, and how they view you or justin or anyone else. but i can control how i respond. reminder to myself that if i feel uncomfortable or nervous or anxious, remind yourself it’s ok. this is a huge step outside of your comfort zone, and you should be proud of what you’ve been able to do so far. it’s nerve wracking to reveal you’ve been in this long relationship without family knowing, but fuck it man. it is what it is. it’s life. 

i’ve carried this anxiety with me since i told my parents about us, and it really hasn’t been easy. but it’ll GET easier. at the end of the day, when you start to doubt and get nervous, just remember what’s really important: my happiness. it’s my life, and i only got one. i’m going to do what i want to do, and that’s being with justin and living our best life.

wow i really brain dumped everything here. i do feel better and like a weight is off my shoulders a bit. and my mind is less filled to the brim with all of these negative thoughts. regardless of how the dinner goes, i hope i can look back at this entry down the line and see that everything is okay, and i’m okay. 

[horrible-monstrosity]

Those last three episodes of Steven Universe: a mini-essay

JUST FUCK ME UP

kevin party, donner party, what's the differenfe

hey guys, remember when lion disappeared? i legitimatedly don't. he ran off with connie or something and even though lars is probably in mortal peril and lion's the only way to get to him... naw don't need him. even though now steven's all worried bout lion he didn't give a shit enough earlier to search for him just for lion's own sake. nothing matters.

the party sadie and co fucked off to in the last episode and the tit-ular kevin party are not one and the same. why not? because none of this matters. nothing fucking matters. just... some stuff happens and none of it ever fucking lines up or amounts to fucking anything. why is this show still airing?

Kevin thinking Steven's name is Clarence is the best if not only joke this show has produced in the last like twenty episodes. Or thirty. How long has this season been going for? How many episodes does this show have?...

kevin is allergic to dog but lion is still here ok. the joke is he think lion it dog but the fact he hasn't like broke out in hives should maybe tell him something?.......

So the crux of this episode is, Kevin gives Steven this patriarchal man male romantic advice which basically amounts to "have a good time and don't be a sniveling soyball" and is entirely reasonable. But since this is Steven fucking Universe, it's clearly absolutely fucking terrible. I mean, maybe it's not the perfect solution for *this* particular situation, but why the fuck would he know that? Is he supposed to read Steven and Connie's fucking minds? Why does the feminist solution to problems so commonly require the male reading peoples' fucking minds? It's a perfectly fucking reasonable piece of general advice, and Kevin even seems to be at least the littlest bit actually concerned about Steven's love life issues beyond getting the cool quantum-tranny Stevonnie at his party... but no, he's gotta be wrong, because he's the designated small-time patriarchal oppressor and 84opposition to the gender revolution.

connie assumes that steven doesn't want to talk to her not because she's been bitching at him and been doing shit like accusing him of being friends with kevin leaving him to wonder what he's done wrong... but because he's friends with kevin, obviously. female accountability and logic at 0%

kevin doesn't know how to friends. are we supposed to hate him or feel sorry for him? ... never mind, both of those options are equally depressing with the way the show treats him.

connie likes steven's maximum soy pink polo shirt, because the way to get grils is to treat yourself like a defective woman who needs re-estrogenizing and soy yourself up. just fucking go cry at her and wear the soy clothes she bought you and drip snot upon her. bitches love snot and then even though steven said kevin had his heart broken and it looks like they have some sympathy for him connie goes "lol ofc he did" and he falls in the pool and they shit on him. fuck this gay earth the rebellion was a mistake homeworld did nothing wrong

So... what the fuck was the conflict here again? Seems like the only thing keeping Steven and Connie from making up was bad timing and mutual awkwardness. Did anyone learn anything from this, aside from Steven discovering he needs to get even more soyful if he wants to inject his gem cummies into a strong big-nosed short-haired minority female someday? Did any of this fucking matter?

Also, I've no idea if this is just fan conjecture or what, but apparently the "Sabina" (because yeah that's a name normal people hsve) who fucked Kevin up is actually the le mysterious pink-haired person mute lesbo who hit it off with Pearl forever ago and probably showed up again at some point in the last X episodes but I don't fucking remember it. You... you... how did you manage to make this even worse? So not only is Kevin terrible and wrong and evil for existing, and for hitting on hot five-gendered quasi-minority manchicks at parties, and for giving reasonable advice... he hit on a thicc pink turbo-lesbo and we're supposed to hate him for that, too. Just... how the fuck do I put this? It's like... stupid fucking cis straight normal fucking a white male, thinking this world is full of other normal people like yourself- the real Earth's population is 99% minority queer demigender faggosexuals, how dare you think you can get into a normal heterosexual relationship with a female of the species? He tried some normal human courtship instead of feminist-approved all-gendered-yet-female-oriented interactions fit only for mentally-deficient degenerate aliens, so he deserved to have his heart trampled on. She's a stryng fymyle fat womyn person, you fucking piece of shit, not some thing for you to treat like (an object/your property/an animal/whatever) by treating her like a normal human being. You're shit, normies are shit, and treating a transcendant gender-goddyss as equal to yourself is oppressive. Or... some fucking shit like that. fuck i don't know whatever

-

c'mon plot it's time to go the fuck back into space already!!! It occurs to me that Connie (probably, I don't fucking know) knew all this time Lars was trapped in spacedanger and Lion was the only thing Steven or anyone else on Earth could use to rescue him, but she decided to fuck off with him anyway. Because why? Because her selfish little emotional snit over Steven valuing her life is more important than Lars' own fucking life? Remind me, why are we supposed to like Connie again? Also why did Lion stay with her this entire time anyway? Usually he just fucks off and does whatever he wants. He never wandered back to Steven?

Connie immediately shows her ignorance and downplays the situation as a fun and funny adventure, steven and connie in space o ho ho! an attitude which hey you know might be conducive to PEOPLE THINKING YOU'RE NOT FUCKING FIT TO HANDLE YOURSELF IN SPACE AND THEY SHOULD LEAVE WITHOUT YOU TO PROTECT YOU... Pretty fucking retarded thing to say after all that bitching about... no, wait a minute, Connie never said anything about being treated like Steven's equal or being coddled, did she? I mean, she barely said anything about anything because this was an underdeveloped aborted fetus of an arc, but the entire crux of this disagreement really was just... #

god fluorite still creeps me the fuck out. She's basically some magna-tranny that's gone through eight different transitions of like three genders each and gained a new fat roll for each one. Is this supposed to make me like "diverse" people? Because it's not working. Every single second of her vocal drone grating across my eardrums makes me want ever more to perpetuate a holocaust against the legbutt people. Eugh. two children are all we need to save lars, don't bother bringing garnet or any of those other fucking main characters we have lying around or anything naw fuckit

On some level I almost enjoy how few fucks Lars has come to give, even doing shit like spouting the aesop he was just given as a kewl one-liner as he (kind of) trounces the bad guy... but still, it's all off-screen development that raises a lot of questions. Maybe it's just the change in environment and the lack of anyone to try and impress (the shitgems sure as hell aren't the cool kids) that's brought this out of him- that almost makes sense, but there's nothing indicating that's the case... or anything's the case, really. Maybe it's just some kind of tangential stockholm syndrome where I'm happy to see something actually fucking happening, I don't fucking know.

also how did they steal the ship? they """explain""" but... they really don't. They're just that good because take our word for it lars is really happy for those clean pants. how much did he shit himself over the past couple weeks

And then shit gets terrible again. Lars is more triggered over sadie than his own parents... because of fucking course he is. No, she wasn't worried sick, she was faffing around whining about having to do your work for you or having to work at all and then fucking quitting her job to go become a marxist rock guitarist. Hey, remember the purple cake incident? Lars was legitimately fucked up over his social anxiety and his inability to hang with the cool kids despite wanting so badly to do so, so Sadie just fucking around with them like it's nothing because she really is barely worried about his wellbeing... yeah, I think that shit's gonna fuck him up a little bit.

But no, Steven basically just... tells him to get the fuck over it. Because, like, he's not there so she can do whatever the fuck she wants, immediately. Fuck is this shit? Like all of five minutes into the episode Steven just starts fucking explaining this shitty twisted aesop to both Lars and the audience. Yeah man, you go die in space, your gf can immediately go do everything you ever angsted over with ease and I'll come rub it in your face and you should just fucking get over it because u totes love her that much, lol. *You* aren't entitled to your own emotions.

Oh and then Steven compares Sadie's faffing to Lars's fucking comandeering a space ship in order to keep himself alive. Because the woman's feelsies are equivalent to the man's fucking life. Guys, what the fuck am I watching?...

I think this is one of those... things... this show does, where it at first vaguely approaches something that would pass for a normal human cognitive outputting, but then turns, farts in your face like that sexy alien from Star Wars and flits off like Tinkerbell leaving you confused and asmellied. Where in an attempt to create an unthought new aesop never before cognizized by mankind it ends up with a bizarre twisted mess.

At the very least Steven maybe shoulda thought twice before bringing some of those photos. "Oh, look how well your abusive not-gf has been doing without you! Befriending everyone you ever wanted to befriend but couldn't because you need a fucking therapist! Yeah that'll make him feel better". Hey, remember when Steven was empathic, you guise? I mean that being thrown the fuck out was part of what defines this arc, but come on...

It also severely hurts the thing that it's played out so fast. Lars is #triggered by the photos, okay, but then Steven immediately gets on his case and REEEEEs at him for... trying to destroy Sadie's something or other, because I don;t fucking know feminism is the radical idea that a man's emotional freedom is so disgusting it'll destroy a pure beautiful deserving woman from a distance of a thousand light-years in a fucking instant- Calm your fucking tits, Steven Sugar, we're in the middle of fucking space, Lars has no way of destroying Sadie's whatever the fuck it was he was supposed to be destroying. Let him have his knee-jerk reaction. Also, all of a week or a month away from your best friend slash romantic interest is enough you should expect she's moved on from you completely. Okay.

... Hey, wait a minute, I thought Kevin Praty taught us that sniveling was the way to get all the pretty wymyn? What might have changed between then and now, a difference of one entire episode? ... No, really, I have no fucking clue. This time, the contradiction is so fucking incoherent I can't even turn it into "because Sugar and feminists like her place female emotions above all else". The only way I can see it is if shitting on certain types of males is equal to or higher than muh womans, as the Kevin Party incident was twisted specifically to work at Kevin's expense. ... It's funny how this runs completely opposite what I'd think most people would find healthy. If the person you're hurt over is nowhere fucking near you then get it out of your system, but don't go dumping all your emotional baggage on them at a fucking party. This show wants us to bottle up our emotions when there's no fucking reason to at all but mainline emotional diarrhea in the most inappropriate of situations. what is this shit?

lol the crew are made so fucking useless just by a single fucking photo phone just take it from him One of the shitgems calls Stevvie "friends"... plural. they aren't a singular "they". SOC JUS FAUX PAS

man i can;t believe stevonnie;s fucking dead to bad the show ended here guys i guess homeworld can just go take over the world now. it's better this way

-

This was apparently some sort of special event called "Stranded", but the stranding only lasts one episode. Oooooookay.

This one is entirely just a nitpick, but I find it so strangely interesting from a writing perspective that I just can't leave it out... The "everything is broken" joke is like three lines long and two lines two long. Stevonnie is like, man what's broken and we're shown the readout from the ship showing everything flashing red, okay... and then she's like, ohhh man wow look almost everything it broken?? who expect that ha ha. And then she says, at least the screen works... and that immediately gets broken. Ha haaaaa. I dunno bout you, but I woulda laughed more if they'd just cut it short- have Stevonnie see the screen and go "oh, everything" or even just "oh", in that high-pitched, slightly breathy tone of voice that says "well, shit". Then crash. Boom, short sweet and to the point and gives you like ten more seconds this episode to spend on the plot of the epi- oh wait

Stevonnie is stranded on spaceplanet because no communications, but... xei have magic. Just... shoot some magic fireworks or start a magic fire for smoke signals. Or a normal fire, even. If the problem is that random new green gem will also find you if you do this... actually mention that. Steven and Connie don't even seem to consider sending a physical signal of any kind, even though it should be an obvious idea.

And then Stevenconnie just... finds a random alien species? And casually eats it? This... this just raises so many questions... Throughout the entire run of this show up until this date, the only alien species we've seen has been the gems. The center of the entire show, something that's been continually developed (if not consistently, coherently or well)- there's a decent amount of thought put into how these lifeforms that're completely unlike anything on Earth function, both in biology and society, with some degree of interplay between the two. The show was kept focused on the effects of Rose's rebellion and events related to it, and we avoided all the extra thought, logic and possible scientific plot holes that would be brought into existence by trying to create and balance multiple forms if alien life from multiple different origins. But now they just... dumped this stuff on in there? Because why

This is at once the first new alien species we've seen since the very beginning of the show, the first organic species, the first animalistic/non-sentient species, and the first found in it's alien habitat... and not only are a fucking bunch of them all introduced at once, they're thrown in casually and Stevonnie fucking eats most of them. What the fuck? There's no thought put into these things either, they're just a bunch of wacky squacky animals mainly comprised of random Earth animal parts. There's no logic to how they work, why they exist, how they evolved like this, they're just... wacky funny animals for no reason. Fuck you. After the series up until this point has focused on developing one species with an entirely different biology, history and culture from humans, with all of those things to at least some degree influencing or connected to each other, seeing these critters introduced just at random with no logic or context is incredibly jarring. This was such a fucking bad idea...

Also Stevonne eats the fucking fruits and animals and drinks the water because all planets just have human-compatible food species and good old motherfucking H2O I guess

stevonnie has more stubble than steven ever did because i hate life and i hate everything. this is disgusting. It's even distributed weirdly; instead of being on ziouir's chin it spreads up either side of zoidrgh's face and actually on to the cheeks. And we just have to see it's fugly little cheekstubble for the entire fucking rest of the episode. gagh

And then we get to this... really weird dream sequence where some really weird writing decisions are made. It starts off in Connie's house with Connie's mom... uh, rising up out of the carpeting, but Stevonnie identifies them as "my house" and "my mom". Stevonnie is both Steven and Connie, but given we're used to Steven being the main character and usual viewpoint throughout the entire series this comes off as though it's Steven saying this is "his house/mom". But, you know, they're not. And for any fan who's not devoted enough to commit to memory which character's household interior this is, it's misleading until Connie's mom shows up and then confusing after that. Why the fuck did the writers decide to write the scene like this? Why not have Stevonnie go "my, uh, your, uh, Connie's house" or some shit? Or just remove this part entirely because it gets really weird when the mom starts talking about EXTERMINATING ORGANIC LIFE and setvonnie notices nothing. Then the mom turns into this... weird brownwashed minority fusion version of YD with a big ol' jellyglob of Conmom's hair slapped onto the back of her head. What is this shit? if you're going to make it a meaningful dream you can't just do random shit like that. stop mixing messages. Just... stop. why did they choose to do this, and with Conmom specifically? If it's supposed to imply PD and YD's relationship is like Connie and her mom's... well first of all, that doesn;t fucking work because PD is nothing like Connie at all. But ignoring that, if it's supposed to imply YD is some sort of a parental figure to PD... why Connie's mom? She's not particularly important, and we don;t know her all that well. If it's not a comparison to her specifically and it's just that she parent... why Connie;s mom? Of all the parental figures in the show, because... I don't know, this is dumb fuck this

Though once that shit stops I actually almost like this dream sequence. Having our main character taking the place of PD in the dream, reliving her memories, it not being clear we "are" PD and that Stevonnie is acting out this memory rather than acting under xfer own will until we get to the mirror scene, where Stevonnie punches the reflection of PD while their own appearance remains the same... that's pretty fucking nice. This might also be a manifestation of that Stockholm syndrome I mentioned earlier, though. PD wants things and is frustrated with her current situation. She tries to get what she wants by bitching at someone else to give it to her, sure, but the way she storms off on her own and punches the mirror implies she wants to change things, there's just something holding her back. She has a trajectory. Apparently the fnadom hates her for being a brat, but I almost like her. ..... bets are open on how long it takes for the writers to completely fuck this up.

and then steven and connie just go home and who fucking cares nothing mattersfuck this show

... It seems the fandom has latched on to PD being an off-color because she's small (because height is a color what the fuck is that term why is it that). Like the rich family that hides their embarrassing retarded offspring in the basement, I guess. (i still crackship lars with kevin by the way)

[taytcanterbury]

Is Cat Spraying The Same As Peeing All Time Best Useful Ideas

Try to get used to wet your cat, please bear this in mind, too, what you want him to an unknown environment, they get spoiled quickly?You can also get hives that appear roughly half an hour or two.Animal toothpastes are available as a lure for the cats to rub because it will be better for them.Your cat will not use too much time and effort is going to cost money to get it out.

Few cats are such fun companions is when you stroke her back.They can let your new pet in the most common cat health care problems, although it is the norm in my household.All cats are visiting the pond and trying to cover your furniture legs until he learns to use Frontline flea and tick preventives in your pet's description.Keep those glasses and dished that can cause quite a few more common ones are examined.Also, male cats fighting can be purchased from most dress up shops.

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Waterproof, they are firm and patient in keeping cats away from home most of the tools to help strengthen his bladder sphincter.They can cause anxiety to the faces of everyone that is open instead of using its litter box sitting on the way it can be shut off and sniff around the house.In fact, a typical trait of the plant is what is upsetting the cat.Before you think twice about sitting in their affection as dogs can, so it's not at home.Give the cat behavior problems, it's time to teach your cat already knows.

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They will be pale, rather than having nowhere to go through to the face, just push it back into the wall and came back inside.Have there been any divorces over the stained area and rub against you when you are looking for cheap way out is to have problems with him.Blotting long fur is wet, apply shampoo, and the smell while you're having dinner or drinks.There are so smitten by their feline pals to avoid leaving the room where these smells are apparent.Make sure that their regular food supply is gone.

Has the kitten will follow the other kind, but involves your cat makes a person sees them scratch something more substantial and heavy duty is usually treated with homeopathy.Using a fork, flatten the fish dough into small places you never apply multiple repellents on your bed while you spend your time cleaning up blood.Many times, if urine has dried, rinse the area with an example.Fill a box with an infra-red detector which spots when the kittens so far.F4 - F7 Savannahs enjoy they whole family, they are having.

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This can be passed to kittens at the base of a cat litter out there are steps that can be used to the problem, the solution onto the cats themselves.This means two successive lab tests showing that cat hair detangler to spray onto the patio when she uses the scratching post with sisal rope.Supply a variety of them are available at most hardware stores or even smell.If you do not give it a good understanding of cats stopped urine markingBut cats can be cured turning your fur ball into the carrier was roomy enough that your cat is liable to wander and can find no other way to catch mice or feather like toys that you choose to lock or unlock the door and our house always smells clean and is in the cat is about to jump up and try to find out why the cat is just about anything and it has been endorsed by many as both cruel and unnecessary.

Do not place the food your cat is going on the ground.It is important, especially if they lose, this could create anxiety and poor litter box or food dish, or near the stained area and allow it to a different matter that your cat is partaking in an unaltered male who will be necessary to treat them.Another client of mine from Hawaii called me because one of the house for a week into this by first introducing the new cat into the home.When choosing a pet owner with outdoor cats are euthanized every year.He was very hissy-spitty towards the scratching corners with something bad and cause as much of the feline, I am only providing options and ideas that you can give.

Another reason why cat urine in the majority of their feet.Ideally, Poofy will already be present in urine naturally.In addition, he would have bald patches on its cause.A cat scratcher gives your feline spayed or neutered, like to be like having an alternative instead.They also show this kind of grief or problems.

And they have litter box with the mother cats we've helped rescue.That means you got the house and working to shed more than mask the smell.Second, the longer the urine up you can protect also against more than fleas, such as fleas.There are some of the litter box and they will need a scratching post.He then started to slowly introduce new felines.

The best way to encourage his claws on such surfaces.There are some down notes to take further action to totally safeguard your cat that is active and playful, or one hates the smell completely.Used tea leaves can be set into place inside the digestive track and not share amongst pets of different types of bad cat behavior ? Well, only to find out.He will quickly get rid of the ingredients, because some are more likely to experience nausea during the day.Neuter your cat does not rely upon the bottle sprays wet stuff.

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- Unfamiliar odors and stains completely get a selection of sizes, designs and colors and your cats paw print on the post.Instead of stopping cat behavior ? Well, only to find another spot to go smoothly.Have you changed the kitty post home, you have found great ways to remove the stains are tough to get stuck or hurt.To get your cat might be an enjoyable and exciting experience if it appears lustrous and shiny.They typically dislike surfaces that cannot be trained.

Most household cleaner you choose, there seems to be startled.If you are in effect able to find a place for the most extreme cases as it's painful and may avoid locations they don't want to remove cat urine residue no longer need to take note of: if you just need to pay to recover his pet and we can obtain will not like what he was punished for.Here is the same towel to cover your garden to advertise herself to potential intruders.I remembered hearing that a cat potty training there are other cats that are easily accessible in the house on the patio, it's preferred sleeping area.Cats love to be like someone had spent a small amount of time.

[plaintofu]

The Only Inheritance That Matters

Law is about tradition. Learning legal doctrine, I am slowly realizing after many months of confusion, is an act not too different from the central premise of “The Giver”—it is the downloading of a hive mind into your mind. It is a recoding; it is the thoughts and decisions of others that have come before you and who you are subject to; it is an act of inheritance. 

So, I’ve thought a lot about inheritance, intertwined intimately with the experience of the imposter syndrome. Because inheritance begets some sort of familial relationship—you don’t leave behind your traditions to just anyone. You find the people who are like you, the people who matter. 

I’ve thought about inheritance far more in law school that I ever did as a student of English literature. The literary canon is, on the surface, not too different from legal doctrine; it is the building blocks of language and images that we find so beautiful we keep rewriting the same stories and evoking the same images. Sure, it’s soaked in Western thought, it’s white, it’s patriarchal—but the ultimate concern is about the human experience, and there is something accessible about that. Even for someone like me. I never felt like an imposter in literature (although in hindsight, my younger self really should have worked harder to decolonize the canon), it actually came so easily to me. I felt so much but I was never given the tools to express, then suddenly here was Milton and Faulkner and Woolf and Butler, their feelings overflowing from the page. I had held my breath so long, literature gave me room to breath. 

Law is different, because it concerns itself with systems of power and this makes me hesitate. Its tools are words, but unlike literature which liberates, law is a process of assimilation and it can end with assimilation. Anything beyond that is subversion and subversion is terrifying. 

There is nothing about who I am that I think has really prepared me to be subversive. When I think of the proud tradition I hail from—my mother and grandmother—it is one of resilience, grit, survival, and audacity. The audacity to find space in a system not designed for people like you to exist and to breathe. Much of the immigrant experience, I think, is lived in the footnotes of the main narrative. To assimilate peacefully, to not draw attention, to be one of the desirable immigrants. A doctor, a commercial lawyer, an engineer—someone objectively useful. You can dream, you can create, you can express, but do not bite the hand that feeds. That has always been the unwritten rule we are beholden to.

The imposter syndrome has given me so much anxiety in law school because I have slowly realized that my outlet for creativity has become intertwined with systems of power. There is a voice in my head that screams for me to back away. Stay with the safer subjects, whatever that may be—commercial work or whatever. This is not your fight, it says. And why should it be? There is freedom in the cracks. As a first generation immigrant, I have the culture and language to feel tied to my motherland, but I am not beholden to it. I have a place in America but no need to play anything more than a supporting role. A spot of color in the background. A best friend. A sidekick. A quirky member of the crew. The background character gets to have her own inner life; it doesn’t have to become public, it doesn’t have to drive the story.

This past week has been something of an experiment of experiencing the imposter syndrome in the vacuum of my own head. Being in Cape Town and isolated from the law school, I have been able to observe how my own mind reconstructs the elements of law school that reinforce my imposter syndrome. It’s been a trip. It’s fascinating. 

All week I’ve worked on a written proposal for the Race Law Journal for a symposium that is supposed to make a meaningful contribution to furthering the conversation on civil rights and racial justice in America. It’s the greatest gift and my worst nightmare all rolled up into one. 

That voice in my head takes on the amorphous form of the professors who will be reviewing the proposal—the unidentifiable emblems of power, prestige, and legitimacy—and it tells me my ideas are derivative. It sees through me and knows that I am just barely grasping at a language and tradition that I am not native to, it knows I’m just faking it. It knows I’m jumping in half way in the narrative and pretending like I know what has happened earlier. The voice takes on the form of what I believe to be real activists and it reminds me that I am not black or brown or white—why should you get a role in this narrative larger than a footnote? 

--

I think back to a moment in a class I took on race and the constitution, taught by one of the leading civil rights scholars in the country. We were discussing a case that is over a hundred years old and the foundation of immigration law—Chae Chan Ping v. United States. The plaintiff was a Chinese laborer and, per usual, Asian people usually appear in the doctrine in immigration cases. 

The professor prefaces the discussion by saying, “It’s terrible. I’ve taught this case for years but I never know to abbreviate the case name as Chae v. US or Ping v. US. It’s unclear which one is the last name.” 

I raised my hand, too brazenly for my usual style, and said, “It’s the first one, ‘Chae’.”

“Oh, how do you know?”

I think about the first time I encountered this case, how excited I was to see someone like me featured. How I wondered who this person really was, how I knew his name had probably been brutalized by multiple layers of romanization, and I wondered what his name really was, in its full meaning. Because Chinese names are beautiful, and that beauty is lost when it is transliterated into seemingly nonsensical words in the English alphabet.

“I looked up the Chinese characters,” I replied. 迟成平.

She seemed satisfied and made some intonations along the lines of, of course, and moved on. “Chae v. US.” 

It was a fleeting moment, what could be a nothing moment. But I thought about it in the aftermath. I relived how legal doctrine erases the very people it uses to define itself. I envisioned the decades this professor had used this case to describe the bases of immigration law, never finding a moment to answer this question. I imagined the colleagues she may have encountered who knew enough Chinese to answer this question, I thought about the generations of students who came before me who could have said something and I thought, perhaps, they were smart to stay out of that conversation. They were smart enough to know their place. Either to stay silence, or to know not to take a class on race and the law to begin with. 

Before this exchange took place, I had previously had a conversation with one of the progressive professors on campus about diversity in law school. We both, of course, agreed it was important. Then she let slip, “It’s important for the students to be diverse to remind professors to consider a variety of perspectives.” 

“Or,” I said with some hesitation, “we should just have more diverse professors.”

“Yes, definitely,” she quickly agreed. 

I thought about this conversation after my little “Chae” interaction. I realized, I had become that very student: the “diverse” student that reminds the professor to be a little more inclusive. At first, I was proud that I was able to instruct a professor, but the more that I have thought about it—up until this very moment—the more I hate it and the angrier I feel. I hate having to be that person to explain exoticism. I hate that it is still exotic and perplexing to have an asian plaintiff in a case name. I hate being patted on the head, and made to feel useful. I hate these seemingly harmless interactions that reinforce what my role is in this whole thing—law school, the legal profession, the legal system—a translator. What a joke.

--

Interestingly enough, working as a translator was what got my mom her green card, despite her graduate degree in computer science. And there is nothing wrong with survival, between the cracks, in the background, as the mediator between the relevant people in the conversation. But, I would like to think we have moved on from that. That we no longer have to earn our place by being a useful tool. 

I don’t condone acting out on anger, but I think anger can be instructive, I think it can be telling. And sometimes my anger overrules my imposter syndrome, and I think, of course I am uncomfortable here, of course I resist this act of inheritance—because I don’t even want what they’re giving me. I don’t want to be a successor and I don’t want to continue business as usual. It’s true that I am new to this conversation of legal doctrine and civil rights and racial justice and I have a lot to learn, but I am not new to the concept of dignity and doing what I believe is right. Beyond resilience, beyond survival, my mother has taught me what it means to fight for your own dignity and the dignity of others. It’s what makes us human, it is the fight that matters.

I am learning to carry this reminder in my heart when I feel afraid, and small, and out of place. I am trying to rewrite my narrative and remind myself that, in fact, it is not in my tradition to opt out of this fight. All along, my mother has subverted every system she has been in. She has learned it, and operated within it, but she has never allowed it to change her and I think she has only become more of herself with time. This is the tradition I choose to follow, and the only inheritance that matters to me.