#they come with some background on where they came from irl! :D

[that-unspeaking-sky-kid]

Jasmine and her friends that you can send asks to, adoptive daughter of Coca-Cola and Rebecca the Dog. Will do more tomorrow, gtg to sleep within twenty minutes

[rosie-kairi]

Questions for 15 Friends Tag Game

Rules: Answer the questions, then tag 15 people. (won't be tagging anyone personally lol)

Thanks for the tag @/corishadowfang!

ARE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE?

IRL No, not that I'm aware of. I'm the only one in my immediate family (sans my father's side) not named after another member of our family. I do get my middle name from my mom's first name, though. (which, funny enough, wasn't her original first name. She went by her middle name much more than her first name, so she just had it legally changed lol) My Dad wanted to name me Gwendolyn and his mom wanted Bronwyn.

Online, I think it's pretty obvious where I get my name(s) from lol. Though, I don't think I've ever told the origins of Rosie. It was actually originally supposed to be like an adjective? Like "rosy cheeks" or whatever, but I spelt it the way one spells the name Rosie and it came first in my url, so I came to be known as Rosie.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED?

Can't remember exactly? But I think I was crying over some video compilation of people reuniting with lost pets and I was thinking about my deceased cat, Jazzy. I have no idea why I was watching that video.

DO YOU HAVE KIDS?

Nah, I'm 17.

WHAT SPORTS DO YOU PLAY/HAVE YOU PLAYED?

In elementary school my mom really wanted me to get into softball since she played it in college, so I was briefly on a tee-ball (kiddie baseball, hit using a tee) team and a softball team. I didn't like it very much, so I only played for a year or so. Then in middle school my mom wanted me to get into Volleyball, same story there. The one sport that stuck was Swimming, which my mom insisted I try because both of my older brothers had been on the team in the past. I ended up being really good at swimming, so I still swim competitively to this day.

DO YOU USE SARCASM?

Mostly only around my family or people I'm close with irl. I really don't want to come off as mean around strangers, either online or face-to-face.

WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE?

Online I usually pay attention to the way they type, I suppose? or the way they talk through text, can't really explain it though. Real life, I suppose it's how they carry themselves, visual stuff like that.

WHAT���S YOUR EYE COLOUR?

I have central heterochromia! Means I have two colors in one eye; blue and brown :) It's not really noticeable unless you look really close.

SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS?

Happy endings :)) Though I do watch scary movies in a roundabout way by putting on youtube videos about horror movies as background noise sometimes.

ANY TALENTS?

I think I'm a decent singer, also I think I'd make a killer voice actor.

WHERE WERE YOU BORN?

Dead middle of a nor'easter (really bad blizzard) in Maine

WHAT ARE YOUR HOBBIES?

Art :) I read sometimes. I like building legos whenever I get the chance too. Also video games lol. Pretty run-of-the-mill hobbies, I think.

DO YOU HAVE ANY PETS?

Two atm! Sulley (white one) and Callie (calico), both cats :)

HOW TALL ARE YOU?

5'11"

FAVOURITE SUBJECT IN SCHOOL?

History 💪💪💪 Family full of History buffs, excluding my mom lol

DREAM JOB?

I would love to one day work on a show as a storyboard artist or animator, and the hopeful goal is to someday be a showrunner myself. It's a big goal for sure but it's something I really want. Art is my passion and I want to pursue it. Remember your darling mutual rosie-kairi when people start having discourse about my ocs.

Feel free to do this yourself if you want to! Open invitation :D

[devils-windchimes]

Pitch Canker Challenge Prompts Part 2: Days 11-21 (Excludes Day 17)

Part 1 here!

Here's Day 11 through 21. So why did I exclude 17, you ask? It contains g/ore, and so does 30. I plan on posting those two by themselves; that way, people who don't want to see g/ore don't have to avoid entire posts. Just a couple images. Anyway, here's some descriptions.

(11) What the- wait a minute. Someone tagged Gary's car! That's not cool, mate. Not pictured: A slew of profanity coming from Gary Clabaugh himself, and quite possibly some scared teens.

(12) Gary found out the culprit: it was one of the school bullies, Sakura! Her father, Mr. Hamasaki, received a phone call from her science teacher Mr. Clabaugh, and now Sakura will have to take the bus for a while. This looks weird out of context.

(13) Gregg had been gone for way too long; like half a year, an entire career for some. Yes, this whole image is a reference to 'Lifetime Achievement Award' by Lemon Demon. Anyway, he learned that his best friend Melonie (right side, they/them), or quite possibly former best friend, was responsible for requesting a mad scientist to bring a dead body back to life...even though she was rather inexperienced with resurrecting corpses, as told by the sloppy stitch work.

(14) Micha (previously known under a different name and gender at the time of posting that on Twitter and Newgrounds) was working on poisonous concoctions, as she normally did. Her parents have high hopes for her, and dammit, she was not gonna let them down.

(15) Playwright and Micha are...somewhere. The kitchen, maybe? Anyway, their mother wanted Wright to do the dishes, and so does Micha. Wright, not knowing better at the time, thought dishwashing was 'a woman's job', which was something that wasn't expressed in the image; in-story due to avoid being chewed out by his mom and sisters, and IRL due to time constraints.

(16) Lee makes himself sick as a result of eating trash burgers. Yes, they're made with literal rubbish. If him eating that stuff didn't kill him, a random car will. 👽

(18) Relating to the unseen Day 17, Corvina helps Quincy nap after being up all night. When Quincy started showing signs of having psychic powers, his first vision was someone's horrific demise. This made him unable to sleep, which almost everyone noticed. Corvina cares a lot about him, and wouldn't want him to go down a dark and disturbing path.

(19) So, uhh...Mix, a 1-year old girl, a literal toddler, suddenly decided to ask one of her fathers where babies came from. That's extremely awkward, as neither her dads nor her uncle were prepared for that conversation. D'oh!

(20) Chloe callously rejects Micha's date proposal, only caring about how dating someone like her 'would've made her look so uncool'. This bothers the background characters in different ways; Sakura is annoyed, Corvina and Matchh are mad, both Playwright and Pattern look in fear as they try to prevent their brother Matchh from flying towards Chloe in a fit of rage. You could say he was...batty. Get it? 🦇

(21) Quincy had a lot of fun in the arcade, having enough tickets to play jump rope with. He noticed that Chloe worked there, so he decided to brag about the amount of tickets he had. Chloe tried to hush him, as she saw some parents reacting negatively to the profanity the nerd used. This place was like CEC, not D&B.

[wei-meddling-wuxian]

I went to respond but turns out I'm blocked but since I already wrote it out, I thought I'd post it anyways.

Before I begin, for some reason ya'll think I can force you to do this? This post was just my pov on the "canon jiang cheng" tag and the change I'd like to see. I can't force you to change how you use the tag but I can express my opinion about it.

Definition of canon: "Canon [is] the events presented in the media source that provide the universe, setting, and characters."

By calling the tag "canon jiang cheng" you're implying that a particular perspective is the "correct one" which is very audacious and completely untrue for everyone (both pro and anti any character). I don't mind that there's a tag to criticize Jiang Cheng and his actions. I honestly believe that having nuanced discussions for any character requires looking both at the good and bad sides. However, my issue comes with calling the tag "canon" in the context of fandom when there are much better tags to better portray what it's used for: jiang cheng critical, dark jiang cheng or even sandu shengshou considering it relates to the three poisons which are some of the flaws hinted at this tag. The quotes and evidence are fine but metas (which are also usually tagged "jiang cheng meta" so there is already a tag for those discussions) are personal interpretations of the text based on how you view the characters.

2. I can't force people to stop using the tag but I can express my opinion as someone within the fandom and request a possible change to make the experience better. For example, the bung0u str@y d0gs fandom has started to reduce how much we use the actual names of characters as they are irl authors names and use "bsd chvuya" or "bsd d@zai" to help people find the content they want. Does everyone do it? no. But there has been changes and it is possible. I don't think asking to change the word canon to something else is so outrageous. And as a side note, this post came because I saw like three posts in a row criticizing how new tumblr users from twitter have taken over the tag and thought maybe we can come up with a solution. clearly I was wrong.

3. The purpose of tags is to help navigate content as fandoms are usually very large. So having fandom specific tags are really helpful in that process and having well-named ones help not to be misleading re: my own experience with "canon jiang cheng" and other experiences in the comments. I'm sure you'll keep posting in the "canon jiang cheng" tag as you like but I don't think I'm wrong for expressing my opinion about it and seeing if people are willing to change.

The small note: where in my initial post did I ever state that jiang cheng is a hero/underdog? also since when is it completely wrong to sympathize with an antagonists experiences? for example I can completely sympathize with jgy and the discrimination he faces as the son of a prostitute but also criticize his consequential actions. one of the best things about mdzs is the lack of clear lines: wwx has very strong principles regarding human lives and doing what's right but he is very willing to override other's right to make their own choices, he overestimated his control and denied it until the last minute and hundreds of lives were lost and he's also capable of extreme levels of torture which I wasn't a fan of regardless of what the victim of it did. The Lans are depicted as paragons of righteousness and live very humble and disciplined lives but the background story with madam lan is very shady and they also didn't do anything about the Wen Remnents. And jc isn't an exception to these nuances. And sure you can shove him into the role of antagonist, but I'd like to believe the story goes beyond the clear cut lines of good and bad.

tl;dr - I don't care that you guys want to have a more critical perspective of jiang cheng, I'd just prefer don't call it "canon jiang cheng" when you're discussing your own interpretations (I can't make you do shit but I can request a change if I want).

See, I would believe that people who were originally on the "canon jiang cheng" tag were using it as a space to discuss his more morally ambiguous decisions except every other post on there was also tagged "anti jiang cheng". Also using canon in the tag is very bold especially when it's all individual interpretations of the character, which means it falls under fanon instead.

I would also have a more positive perspective if the tag was "jiang cheng critical" if the goal was to have engaging discussions but the audacity of tagging it "canon jiang cheng"....

So yea. So going forward, I propose:

Jiang cheng critical - if you wanna engage in discussion and debate

Canon jiang cheng - for gifs, quotes, fanart etc.

Jiang cheng - for people who enjoy the character and/or canon jiang cheng content

Anti-jiang cheng - for those who don't like the character and don't enjoy him (essentially please by sympathetic to people who actually enjoy the character and related content)

[tokyyovie]

hey!! i love ur work and i wanted to know if i could request another irl!dream x reader :0! maybe where he's doing a no mic stream and at some point he like leaves and the reader starts playing without him or stream knowing? and then he comes back n it's all fluffy :D

prince charming

+ (irl!dream x gn!reader) includes swearing, use of dream’s real name :] also nsfw reference at the end but not rlly

+ A/N: ofc! and sorry this took so long😭 i forgot ab this request also not proofread im lazy

“I’m gonna stream,” Dream mumbled into the crook of your neck, his arms loosely draped around your shoulders.

“What? Right now?” You frowned. You were sat in his lap, a movie playing in front of you, more as background noise than anything, because you two were never really watching. This happened quite frequently between the two of you, after you’d fight over which movie to watch, of course.

“Mhmm, I need to practice for manhunts. I haven’t practiced in ages, god.”

“So you’d rather stream and play a video game than watch a movie with me?” You put on a front, you knew he wouldn’t fall for it, but it was worth the try.

“Oh come on now! I’ve been spending time with you since we woke up. Also, we’re not even watching the stupid movie and you know it.” Your boyfriend sputtered.

“Hey! This movie is not stupid.”

“It is when you’ve seen it 3 times within 2 days, you idiot,” He chuckled, a knowing smirk on his lips. You looked at him with puppy eyes, trying a new approach to get him to stay. Honestly, you just wanted to see how much you could push him.

You could see the hesitation in his eyes and you tried not to smile. “Ugh, fine. Come on, you can stay with me while I stream. I guess I’ll just do a no-mic stream for you, you little brat.”

The last phrase came out in mumbles as you got off his lap happily. “What was that?”

“Nothing.”

He set up his stream, the viewers flooding in even if he wasn’t talking at all. You watched from behind him, smiling whenever he put a small ‘<3’ in chat, or when he’d fail a clutch and let out a frustrated sigh that only you could hear.

The chat was going really fast, but you could just barely catch some people bringing up dreamnotfound even if George wasn’t even there, and you held back a giggle.

He would try and explain how to land his clutch in minecraft to you, but you were listening more to his voice than his words. But you nodded anyway.

He finally landed it, and you clapped along with him. You admired how motivated he was and having to listen to his groans of frustration was way worth the smile on his face when he finally got it.

“Oh my gosh, I have to pee so bad, wait,” He got up, leaving his stream on as he quickly patted you on the shoulder, leaving the room to go pee.

You hummed, resting your chin on your palm. Chat was going wild, even if Clay had been afk for only a few seconds so far. An idea struck your mind, and you sat in his chair, controlling his Minecraft character. You knew things about the game, and you’d occasionally play it with him and sometimes his friends. You could never be as good as him, of course.

You made his bright green avatar crouch in third person, punching at the screen. Chat was going at 50 kilometers per hour (even at slow mode) and it was absolutely pointless to try and keep up. You honestly didn’t know how your boyfriend did it. You teleported back up to where he was attempting to do the clutch, and tried it for yourself. It couldn’t possibly be that hard, right?

Wrong.

Your lips went flat as you failed it, though it wasn’t a surprise to you. You were about to go attempt the jump again when-

“You suck at this game.”

Dream’s voice made you jump in your seat, as you went to turn around and face him. Your sudden movement made you fall over backwards, a squeal leaving your lips.

“Cl- wOAHHUA,”

“Oh my G- Woah, okay, I got you, I got you!” The taller boy quickly swooped down, impossibly catching you even if you thought you were about to break your spine from impact.

You felt like you were in some dramatic rom-com because your eyes connected for a few seconds while you were in his arms, really near the floor, not to mention.

Then he burst out in laughter, finally letting you get out of his tight, protective grip.

“You’re so stupid,” He wheezed. You rolled your eyes, though unable to stop the smile quickly creeping onto your features. Soon, the two of you were rolling on the floor laughing. (Yes, Literally.)

“Shut up! You fucking scared me!” You said between the uncontrollable laughter your voice was filling the air with.

You two would pause, finally stopping the hurt in your gut and cheeks from the laughing, and look at each other in the eyes. Just for you to fall back into uncontrollable giggles once again.

“A-are yo-you okay? You okay?” He snickered, finally stopping. (Not without a few chuckles leaving his and your mouths.)

“You ask me after I fall and almost break my back!” You spit, watching his cheeks glow red.

“Don’t worry, you dont have to fall for that to happen. I can totally do it mys-” You smacked him on the arm, your mouth gaping open at his words.

“Shut up, you’re gross!”

“What? You’re the gross one, I meant I could totally just push you off the- the bed!” He stammered, coming up with pathetic excuses as you two were breathlessly laughing once more, your asses hurting from still being on the floor for so long.

“Just kidding, princess. Your prince charming will always catch ya when you fall, hm?”

You grinned, rolling your eyes again at him as he lightly pressed his pinkish lips against yours.

Stream was probably worried, but that didn’t matter to the two of you anyway. You’d much rather spend time with each other.

[yourfavouritetragedy]

I was adding onto the DSMP Actor AU post, but it turned into Wilbur musician AU, haha rip me, and I only know SBI anyways so here’s a separate post. (It goes back to actor AU at the end.) It’s hypothetically still in the same universe though, and obviously inspired by it. If anything’s phrased weirdly, it’s cuz this was originally an addition to that. 

tbh I kinda adhered to their IRL careers too much compared to the OP but whatever it’s fine. 

Also frick the “Dream SMP” for not having a better title lmaooo

Wilbur is an indie artist really on the come up

Your City Gave Me Asthma was pretty good for a first release, popular with both new fans and fans of his acting.

He had starred in a short mystery/thriller-ish series that started off disguised as a normal sitcom: Chilly in Lincolnshire {Editor Wilbur ARG}

It had a prominent release because of Jack Massey’s involvement and previous fame, but production was abruptly scrapped before it tied everything up with a bow on top, so to speak. It’s still unclear if this was actually planned in order to tell the story the way they way wanted. 

Even before that, critics had mixed reviews, either applauding the storytelling and acting or calling it “irrationally confusing, an amateurish attempt to box unconventional storytelling into a conventional medium.”

Also SootHouse was a sitcom that achieved a cult following during the two seasons it ran before cancellation. Either you’re a fan or you’re never heard of it, and people constantly forget Wilbur was in it. 

(He was a few other old shows on his resume too. Wilbur always focuses on the newest project, so everyone always forgets about what he was in before.) 

Maybe I Was Boring EP was initially just bonus tracks on his website, but his fans liked it so much he gave it a wider release

In between, he had a few comedy songs go viral on youtube. Everybody was so confused when they realized it was the same Wilbur as musician/actor Wilbur. He laughed about it in an interview, saying “How many Wilburs do you know?” 

That’s when it came out that “Wilbur Soot” was actually a stage name. (”Ha, fair, only one.” “Make that zero-- my name’s not really Wilbur.”)

He kinda disappeared after that?? Didn’t do anything, really inactive on social media. It was semi-confirmed that he was both working on his mental health and prepping some stuff (music, auditions).

But anyways he just released a series of singles, combined into Digital Love {E-girl trilogy}-- he’s transformed his image yet again, but this time he does take ownership of all his past ventures.

The release of Digital Love bridges the end of SMP Earth and the beginning Dream SMP. 

But before that there was MCC and the other stuff.

They are shows where celebrities team up do stuff-- you know the type 

but Minecraft Monday is still inexplicably Minecraft Monday. Some Youtuber just managed to get all these up and coming celebrities to play a Minecraft tournament. 

And that’s where the Sleepy Bois (minus Tommy) met IRL so that’s where they meet here. 

SMP Earth, like Minecraft Manhunts, is also a former show they were on. I’m going to call it World Domination. Don’t @ me; I know that’s trash lol. 

They and the Dream Team met up because of their shared fanbases and were even talking a crossover, but it didn’t really work that well for the stories so they scrapped it

They make a non-canon cross over episode anyways {no IRL equivalent, I think}

Everybody loves the cons. Everytime there’s a con, five friendships are made and eight ideas are created. 

Techno backstory time

He’s done a lot of long running, though not exactly popular, serials and sitcoms: Blitz, Survival Games, and Sky Wars. 

Winstreak: 1000 {Bed Wars 1000 winstreak} was so popular they made a second season, but it never got as big as the first. He worked nearly exclusively with Hypixel Studios. 

He was doing lots of random content for their new Sky World universe {Skyblock} -- the small studio was big on experimentation -- , when a fictional documentary, The Great Potato War, went proper viral. 

They made two sequels WHILE he was doing those celebrity team challenge shows and then World Domination, and they were actually good sequels.

Got a reputation for being shallow and a sell-out, but he makes a joke of it so much he gets away with it and constantly self-promos.

Also a kinda scary to work with for the first time because of how single-minded he can get, but once you realize how socially awkward he is it’s okay.  

Now that’s he’s in a lot of stuff with worldbuilding, he practically has the wikis memorized. 

Tommy mainly did limited series and movies before World Domination, where he met the SBI.

He’d had been a fan of Wilbur for a while, and was super star-struck at first, but got over it really quickly in his Tommy style

He still is a total fanboy at concerts and whenever a new music video drops. “I’m friends with the guy! I know him, Wilbur Soot!” “Tommy, you’re famous too.” “Yeah, cuz I’m practically in the video!” “No--” 

Wilbur takes Tommy to one of his concerts and he’s so hyped the entire time, especially to go behind the scenes and on the stage. 

Sometimes he gets stressed about the pressure of being a child star, but Techno, Philza, and Wilbur promise to stand by him and they make him feel protected 

One time Wilbur’s drunk and almost hands Tommy a drink before swearing and going, “You’re a bloody child! You can’t have that! God, what would Philza think?” Tommy’s not sure whether to be relieved or disappointed. 

Philza laughs at the story and actually lets Tommy try a little in a more controlled, responsible situation. Tommy texts his mum first, and then hates the drink anyways. (”This is rubbish! I am a man, but I’m not drinking this!” Techno: “Alcohol is disappointing. I drink orphan’s tears instead.” “Techno WHAT--”)

Philza had been the star of a zombie apocalypse show: Golden Core 

He did canonically die to a child zombie in the movie version. Yes, they made a movie version of the TV show, because the Golden Core franchise actually has had many other shows {other hardcore series}. 

Everybody tries to get the child zombie props near him because of that (they’re puppets)

He’s done a lot of other things, like in the original actor AU post, but none of them came close in popularity. 

He gives the rest of the SBI the knowledge he’s gained from being in the biz for so long. 

There’s also a running joke about SBI meaning “Spy Boys Incorporated” and them starring in a comedy spy movie

The fans would very much actually like this to happen. There’s so many fanons for it (maybe I’ll write one....) 

Back to the DSMP. Maybe I’ll call it Dreamland or smth. 

Wilbur constantly asks Tommy if he’s okay after any difficult scenes

Especially when they were hanging out together a lot in the exile arc.

All the brother scenes were cut because Wilbur kept breaking down and crying in them.

Sometimes people actually ask Techno and Tommy if they’re actually brothers. Tommy tries to go along with it half the time on the basis of “it’s be funny,” so there’s a subset of casual fans that genuinely don’t know. 

After Alivebur was killed off, Wilbur was going to leave the show to concentrate on his music

But he missed the SMP and hanging so much that he just showed up on set one day saying “I’m a ghost now,” and everyone just rolled with it

Alivebur was so popular that, seeing that Wilbur was willing, they decided to bring him back for Season 3. He’s been avoiding doing heavy scenes, but he still seems really invested and like he wants to come back to the show.

Wilbur talks with Techno about writing and lore a lot

it’s one the few times Wilbur actually seems like the older one

Wilbur attempted to get a D&D group going in the cast, but the show was already close enough, with the amount of improvisation they can get by with

Tommy’s Pigstep cover happened, but the background was Philza clapping barely in time with just Wilbur on bass instead (and of course Techno’s “BAHP”s)

It was a charity stream. They had put on their costumes (clothes only) for a previous goal. 

This one was simply called “We rap.”

Some people were almost disappointed that Tommy was the only one actually rapping, but he was so funny it made up for it. 

Okay I spent the whole morning on this and it got way too long but I think I’m finally out of ideas. sorry haha hope you enjoyed! ^_^

[wearequeer-andwearehere]

Hi! I’m the anon who is afab and who shaved their head a while back which sent me into dysphoria lmao and I’m now trying to figure it out

Your response was super helpful already and hearing some sort of confirmation put me at ease quite a bit (the post you linked was also very helpful!) I also read up on social dysphoria (didn’t know that was a thing before!), and yes, that sounds very familiar to what I’m experiencing, as well as physical dysphoria.

I am very sure that I’m not transgender as in I identify as male, I know pronouns are not a representation of gender but “he/him” doesn’t resonate with me at all, nor do I see myself as male (if I use any of these terms incorrectly, please point that out, I’m still learning and I don’t know nearly as much as you do as I’m quite new to this and I don’t want to appear disrespectful or anything). I do present myself as female on a lot of days, where I pick feminine clothing and I wear makeup because that’s what resonates with me on those days, but on other days, I want to look non-feminine as much as possible, but I also don’t want to be perceived as male. Does that make sense? For instance the past days I didn’t think about it at all, but today is a day where I wear very tight clothing under my hoodie which I feel more comfortable with but I wouldn’t say I want to appear as male. On a lot of other days, I don’t mind my chest at all and I like the way I look. The problem for me might also be that I come from a very conservative background with a family that isn’t very accepting (they still haven’t come to terms with my sexuality, even though I came out six years ago), so that knowledge might also just prevent me from truly embracing myself, but I don’t know. Trying out some labels could help me figure it out, but I absolutely don’t know where to start. If you have any suggestions, I’d appreciate that a ton!

Your previous reply was so incredibly kind and made me feel acknowledged and way less alone, so thank you for that <3

Hi anon!!

Just one quick correction, it would be was AFAB, not is AFAB! The assigning of a gender at birth happening the past so it would be in past tense.

Ahh I’m glad my response helped you out :DDD

Not all trans people fit within the gender binary (the binary of being male or female.) You don’t have to be a binary trans man to identify as transgender!

You’re being quite respectful, there’s no need to worry my friend!!

Remember, presentation =/= gender!!

You’re showing a lot of distaste towards being perceived as male and that is totally okay, you do not have to be male if you don’t want to! Male and female are not the only options, okay? Ingrain that into your head and repeat it over and over, male and female are not your only options. Nonbinary genders are real and valid, genderqueerness and agenderness are real and valid.

Ohh God I’m so sorry anon, you deserve so much better from your family than that.

Anyways, here’s my advice!

First off, I’d suggest trying to get more into queer stuff online. It seems like you still have somewhat of a cisnormative mindset (at no fault of yours!! we all live in a cisnormative society which can be hard to unlearn) so Id suggest trying to talk to more trans/nb people, read trans/nb stories and watch trans media, learn about trans identities, follow trans blogs, etc!

I’d also suggest trying to interact more with the trans community. If you can’t irl try joining trans discord servers, making an account on tumblr and making trans friends, and learn more about trans identities, it’d really help you out so you wouldn’t be alone during questioning. Send me another ask if you want my main blog, we can talk if you want :D

I’d also say try on some labels, see how they feel, etc! And remember, happiness first, labels second. Don’t ask yourself what gender you are but ask what makes you happy, be happy and be yourself and everything will fall into place!

If you could send in another ask describing what your gender is like I could suggest some labels for you!! And remember whatever your gender is it is valid and real, so you can describe something you’re not sure even exists and I guarantee you there’s a label for it.

Ofc <3 Sending my love!!

[askatriangleandastar]

OOOOO

Oh these sounds really fun!! Just reading what you shared, some of them make me want to bounce the ideas around and find out more about the characters to put the puzzle together. What a nice motivator to get through all 35 episodes ^^)

This might just be rambling but motivated rambling all the same

Sincerely tho that is a GREAT POINT for why Lady Luck is the route Inventor has turned to for knowledge!! And what you suggested of hooking another minion :00

CO-OP DICE!! I'd be so neat if it could happen in game despite how much there'd be to juggle- and the odd functionality of this pair. That the 2 party members who go through the most changes in styles of fighting and gear with backgrounds for being vigilant, would in turn pick up on the sandpit trap of this place and the loss of veneer from their Host as they persist and seek out someone else who gets it.

The contrast between Thief and Inventor but how they might be able to work well together in part from that.... Like gears that move in different directions are what keep the clock ticking in time. They push each other forward and respect the self-oriented goals: selflessness doesn't get money nor information from where either are hidden away.

The sheer absurdity of 5ft cubes in an apartment building is making me laugh and also get excited about accommodation shenanigans. The trust building and silliness on getting around reaching the cabinetry and getting back on the ground: A Jester's Ballad XD

If Jester has feelings for Lady Luck... the want to be free in conflict with the want to see her and be by her. :0 If that came to a boiling point at the offer of freedom at the cost of others- spicy drama in the style of refusal that follows ooooo

It could even be entirely selfish in motivation- the irony of after so long being a part of the act this is the first time she's listening. You said relationship angst wouldn't mesh well with the tone of the game and it being overt during the game? For sure. That's not at all the show Lady Luck is putting on and she'd likely pull the focus away from it.

Yet the potential of the offer being made to Jester from behind the red curtains, in that nebulous part of the stage when the viewers are cut off and backstage meshes with the darkened empty front, spooky like a crossroads of velvet and still-warm-bulbs buzzing as they dim out. . . I might just need to play the game more that 7 hours, but feels like something could be there. Maybe even a layer to it of it being the rare conditions of facades failing or being made to fall while the balance of between them shifts. Even if only temporarily in this moment where the only witnesses are each other. Can you tell I love Yugioh and well-written Seto Kaiba fics ansnks

Idk social media the best but the contrast in styles of presentation and substance and attitudes sounds like a good mix! The contrast of the old ways of magic against the new ways its known up above- world building through speculation between them on the other! And the best part is the unreliability of both parties leaving pocket space for corrections and simply being wrong/lying for the flow of the conversation and knowing the other person might not have the means to challenge it. Misinformation is to social media skillset as misdirection is to a show host's- different feathers, still a bird.

I can very much relate to flavoring with parts of yourself for cooking up story ideas or fuel for the basis of a “what-if”! :D I still do it to today with writing with friends, though overall it's harder for me to write stories with the overall stressor going on irl ^^; Learning when you're putting too much of yourself in the pot and pulling back is a valuable skill, and I'm glad you're doing better! Getting wiser can be rough and tumble but progress comes over time and coping is a complicated process. Hope things keep looking up for ya! 💛🧡

Warrior seeing what's going in and it's a mix of not picking up on the clues and approaching it from the most good-faith possible has been my impression so far. So combining that with the back and forth you mentioned, the check-ins with each person having a different outlook on Warrior's progression and the point where Jester understands where Warrior is coming from being when they're able to be convinced to help. The folly of Warrior not even considering Jester could fail once they agreed to help because he's thinking nothing could stop them working together....

“Look at a situation too brightly and you'll walk right into the potholes” -sort of consequences. It was always going to take more than just their teamwork. It was always going to take more than Warrior's best efforts and spirits. What's the result of the unyielding force meeting the unmoving object and it's consequences? Probably detailed to some degree in those 35 episodes my gosh I wasn't ready but it's also really fun speculation!

The visual of the crew riding the car from the Wheel out of the Dungeon with flair and cheese my friends have relayed to me the Supernatural Impala possesses, only for the epic road trip to nosedive from mechanical failures [Lady Luck: When was it last "Serviced"?? The only service around here is all of you to me- no one was ever supposed to actually WIN THE THING, Ned! Oh but it's of no consequence- the mortal who supplied it guaranteed it was in top shape. Those fools will be back without issue.] <- was ironically scammed and the car is a lemon 🍋

XDDD the mix of reactions at realizing they're in trouble while looking at the car, and more and more unfortunate happenstance piles on along the way back. So much silliness.

⭐⭐⭐

Id love to hear your ideas if you have any you'd like to share! Either from stories you've put down or concepts you have in the spares drawer!

(⭐fanfic writers' commentary)

Hmm… spares you say..?

I wrote a lot of rough drafts for the other stories in my 'Fixing the Dice' collection (uncertain on the name still), but I didn't feel they were up to my standards so I never published them. I think I'd probably change some of their plots if/when I rewrite them, so I feel safe sharing these.

You probably won't see these exact concepts come to light though. sorry.

Thief is planning an escape route with Inventor. The story focuses on showcasing the tensions he has in the main campaign with the other contestants; I picked Inventor as the character for him to bounce off of because she's crafty in a different way, and picks up on the dungeons being rigged the fastest along with him.

I don't think I ever figured out whether Lady Luck was gonna come into it for the main story, but she does show up at the end and point a finger at Inventor to be like 'that's the guy you're trusting. lmao'

From what I remember this was the draft I liked the most. It was pretty tonally solid. I think I ran out of stamina when it came to writing because I was under so much stress at the time. Also I struggled a bit with characterisation between the two, since the dice tend to be a lot shorter on dialogue than Lady Luck and Jester.

I think Witch was supposed to have a live interview with Lady Luck on her own request, which, as you can predict, doesn't go very well against someone much more experienced in entertainment and rooting for your downfall. I think I might've also had another way earlier version of her doing some fighting and magic, but I never wrote that down

I quit that one because I didn't have much to really say in it. Maybe a theme of influencer culture versus the entertainment industry? I suppose, but I don't care about either of those. I had a couple of ideas about a discussion about peoples' beliefs in magic and luck and whatever, but that felt a bit out of hand for a study on Witch's personality, who's like. A instagram user

…maybe I could make that contrast of attitudes work, actually. Try and reproduce the vibe of Eric Andre's 'did Margaret Thatcher effectively use girl power'. It'd probably still be a bastard to work with, tone-wise, but who knows?

I like to write these stories with a pinch of my own insecurities as the driving force, and I didn't really have any regarding fame at that point, so Witch was really hard to brainstorm for.

Warrior… I wanted to have him play off Jester and Lady Luck at the same time. He was kind of hard to think of a 'deal' for since he's the simplest of the four contestants in terms of character, and doesn't really pick up on Lady Luck's subtle-not-subtle evilness. The idea was instead to make this was a hope spot in the series between him and Jester, and have him trust Jester to help them find a way out, which ultimately fails.

I really struggled to find a setting for this. In the draft I wrote, I settled on a game-show-mandated road trip (they get to touch grass for one hour) out of the dungeons in that fancy car on the wheel. But it just didn't really work well tonally at all, and I personally have no experience on awkward car journeying at all, so.

Inventor I'm actually rewriting now. I've been posting snippets of it on my blog, even, since I'm no longer in contact with some of the friends who used to be my beta readers.

I don't want to spoil its new premise, but I will say the tone has changed massively from 'let's watch this nerd run around in a saw trap and solve maths puzzles that imply that the universe and all knowledge in it is fundamentally doomed' to 'Inventor's urge to know about everything in the dungeons and the world' versus 'WHY ARE YOU ASKING HER ABOUT IT'. It's a slight change, but I think it works way better with the ending I'm planning to use.

It's got a bit of commentary about how the general public reacts badly to maths and you only find respite from that with people who have learnt it sorta deal. I think Lady Luck would be the kind of deity who definitely knows the rules of her domain, given she's the one who designs the puzzles in-universe and is otherwise quite crafty, but obviously doesn't want to tell anyone any of that.

Unless. Well, unless she can get a new minion out of it.

…It's a fun time. I promise c: Now I just need to do research to make sure everything STEM-related I put in there is correct…

Jester was going to fail backstage. A fun reminder of how I was one of the few people who failed that level first try because I didn't realise it was a gimmick fight until half-way through >.>

I struggled with writing the action in this, since that's not usually a focal point of my writing. I felt that it would be useful for building up tension to an anti-climax, and we could have he rest of the story be a sense of failure and being stuck in life, but what actually ended up being written down just felt like a really stilted tonal shift from one bit I felt was obligatory to another I actually felt like doing.

also it played a little to one of my personal headcanons of Jester having a one-sided crush on their boss, with the scraps of recognition they have keeping them going despite the fact they can't leave the dungeons. This was definitely the least canon-compliant thing I put in the series, but I think it's still an interesting concept.

I will be honest. I don't think I would've handled it well. relationship angst doesn't work well with Dicey's mostly lighthearted tone I think. Nowadays I'd rather explore it with the jokey Pride Month DLC my brain cooked up because 'toxic yuri' and 'turbo divorce' are among my favourite words in the English langauge.

…not to get too personal but I think I was kind of putting way too many of my fears into that first draft and using writing it as an unhealthy coping mechanism. so. uhh. yeah after I got called out on that I was a bit embarassed and stopped. I think I'm in a better position nowadays, but as a result of that I don't really have a solid idea of where the tone would go on that story if I wrote it now.

I never really figured out what I wanted to happen to Jester in that fic. One potential ending had them being forced to cohost, like they'd always wanted. Another has the confrontation with their boss just kind of end on an impasse as they refuse to break. I think there was a bit where Lady Luck offers them their own escape at the cost of everyone else, which they did definitely refuse.

A bonus: I think I wrote one story about Warrior helping Jester move into an apartment or something after they got released. It was supposed to be a thing about finally getting to live your life the way you wanted and whatnot. I stopped writing that because I couldn't fucking fit the tone with the fact they were 5 foot tall cubes in my head

[i-did]

HELLO 👋 I WAS SENT HERE BY PALMETT-HOES. What are your thoughts on the foxes + tattoos?? Originally it was Neil + tattoos but if you have thoughts of the other foxes too I'd love to hear them if you want to share 🥺

Okay, so I actually might try to become a tattoo artist and love tattoo culture. I also have already about 30 tattoos, some the size of my whole hand and some the size of a quarter, a lot of mixed and matched stuff. I also always try to think of the foxes in their timeline, so 2006-2007 era, and when I think said foxes would get tattoos in their life and why. 

NEIL

First off: I personally HC Neil has keloid scarring and a lot of scarring so tattooing is hard on his skin. I have a friend who has more scars than I've ever seen on anyone else IRL before and we both love tattoos but even with him trying to prep the artist, unless they were a scar micropigmentation expert, they usually underestimated how hard it was going to be to tattoo on his skin. It's uneven and dense and doesn’t hold ink well. His non-scarred skin faired a lot better but his skin was something artists just weren't prepared for. I might get some micropigmentation on some skin grafts I got to even out the coloring and make it look more “natural” but I’m waiting to see if the pigment will settle and heal more first. 

I personally don't see Neil ever getting a tattoo, and this bums a lot of people out lmao. I think his scars are too thick and too raised and it's too cosmetic and aesthetic centric for it to be something on his radar. On his skin that isn't touched by scars I think he would want to leave as be mostly out of neutrality. I don't see Neil as the type of sentimental tattooer, I see him thinking “well if it matters to me I remember it” sort of and him wanting to keep the really deep stuff personal just for himself and even another person putting it on him is someone else there. I think if he were ever to get a tattoo, he would be like… idk it would be the kind that says “yes I got shot, stop asking” over a bullet hole scar or like that one guy whos missing his leg and above it there's a tattoo that says “one foot in the grave” that's the only type of tattoo I can see Neil doing and even still I'm not convinced he would do it. 

ANDREW

I don't ever see Andrew covering up his scars with tattoos either. I think he likes how the armbands can come on and off and be fully covered to not at all. He's not ashamed of them but he's private, and I think the tattoos could seem like he's trying to hide them when he's not-it's just nobody's business. I think if he were to get anything it would be American-traditional, it ages well, its classic, and doesn't really go out of style. Before the…. Let's say 80s, there weren't the different tattoo “styles” like there are today. It was just… tattoos in America. There was Japanese-style tattooing and then American-style tattooing, and since tattooing started curating its underground culture in the ’50s in America… those circles did not blend. They do now, but they sure as hell didn't then. So I could see Andrew with American-traditional because it's classic and I could see it appealing to him, but I could also see Russian prison tattoo style black-work something that appeals to him too. Get him some gulag tats. However if he had those, and since I currently HC him as white and with a buzzed or grown-out messy buzzed head, he would deadass look like a fuckin skinhead so... yeah lmao. Overall I don't see Andrew getting tattoos really, but if he would, American-traditional seems fitting. 

KEVIN

Okay, so Kevin out here looking like a MF SoundCloud rapper with his single face tat and nothing else going on. I know it might be OOC but since his mom is Irish and I HC his dad as Maori (even tho in the canon Wymack likely has 90s new age tribalism, which is a complicated issue but instead I choose culturally significant tattoos over the tattoo trend that was largely popularized by a movie lmao anyways-).

So I think Kevin is the only one who dives into tattoo culture and bonds over it with his dad. If he just has the chess piece, it still feels like a branding, like a mark so distinct against the rest of him, but one full sleeve of Celtic knots and symbols and the other arm full of Maori's distinct tattoos of swirls and symbols could be a cool way for him to reclaim his own skin and have it not be something he did just to cover something up, but make tattooing something connecting him to his cultures and family. 

NICKY

Nicky is the guy who got like, fierce, or pride, or something like that tattooed if he got a tattoo. I see Nicky getting a pride tattoo of some kind maybe and it being calligraphy or like if Nicky/Erik is a bear then he gets a bear paw. I could also see him getting his and Erik’s wedding date tattooed somewhere. I also don't see him as the type who didn't know how much research and shit goes into finding the artist for you, and kinda assumes you can go to just anyone and just walk in and then was like “wait what” when he couldn’t (or couldn't if he wanted to get exactly what he had in mind) so he probably got/gets tattooed by some non-homophobic apprentice, maybe even that apprentices first tattoo, and also since Nicky is Mexican and darker-skinned I doubt he thinks to put on sunscreen and the sun makes his ink lines bleed and so it doesn't age the best (it be like that). 

ALLISON

Got a trendy tramp stamp to like, really stick it to her parents. Right on her lower back I bet it's the classic 2000s swirls and a butterfly and some of those stars, idk what they're called. If she was a young 20-year-old now tho she totally would have gotten a fine line tattoo, like not a tight three, a real 1 needle tattoo. They were seen as really nice back then and “so Cali” and like I could see /maybe/ her getting it done before she's 30 but they were not that common yet and like micro-realism is so new we still kinda don't know how it's going to age at all since tattoos before it have been designed they way they have for aging. Again if she got a micro-realism/single needle tattoo tho it would be something kinda basic like a butterfly or like a lion. I swear I've seen the same google image lion tattooed on a lotta people and like IDC it's your skin. But yeah, she gets the classic 2000s swirl butterfly and stars tattoo above her crack one night, maybe after a really bad phone call with her parents and she got drunk and pissed off. Maybe someone said she couldn't take the pain. (which btw, tattoos don’t hurt as much as they make them out to be in shows and shit, they can hurt tho)

DAN

I HC Dan as very dark-skinned, she's 75% black and 25% Sioux and grew up in a very very white area when outside her home on the res. Tattoo culture is still really sexist and really colorist, and at this point in history I think if she ever did want a tattoo, she maybe asked vaguely about it and they flat out said “I don't know how to tattoo on black skin” or “it doesn't go with my art” which… are shithole excuses and I think she thought, “well fuck u too” and never thought about it much since then. 

RENEE

I HC as Renee as darker-skinned than Dan, and like the only places she could possibly get tattooed are maybe her palms, the bottoms of her feet, or her inner mouth probably. Some people genuinely are so dark that tattooing is hard, because it's based on the concept of black ink on a lighter surface, which is why scarification catches on in cultures where the skin is too dark to pigment with ink effectively. However, the idea of fuckin, 15-year-old Renee who is still Natalie with “PU$$Y” tattooed in her mouth kinda sends me. I think lil kid Renee thought she was gangster, and tbh she was, and I could see her getting some “fuck you/in your face” tattoo, especially if she was a lesbian in such a homophobic world, getting that tattooed is even better. We also know she got her back tatted in the EC with angel wings that look almost closer to dragon wings, so I imagine they show up as almost raised dark lines like scars from the untrained tattoo artist going way too deep, making it a cross between a tattoo and scarification, even if accidental. (also white ink really wasn't a thing yet and even now is still kinda hard to tell how it will heal, so that's why I don't think she gets any white ink tats)

MATT

He's a rich boy from NYC, he could really get like… whatever he wants. Once he's famous he can afford it that's for sure, but even before then he could with his allowance similar to Allison (even if on a completely different level). However, I doubt he gets anything lol. He's not particularly religious in my HC and doesn't have the same sense of being lost like I feel Kevin does with his own parents (I mean Kevin was raised like an orphan, kinda so it makes sense). I need to develop Matt’s background further on what it means to him personally to be a Filipino-American. I have several ideas about how his parents met in the Philippines and then came here but I would need to flesh out locations and then local cultures and then his parents said opinions on tattoos and then how matt would react to said opinions. I could see him possibly getting something for dan or his kids tattooed on. Which really makes me want to have him get his first kid's name tattooed really big or intricate somewhere like on his chest over his heart and then his kid comes out as trans and he's like “...fuck” lmao and gets it removed maybe and then redone or something. I see him viewing tattoos are personal and symbolic, and if he would get something it would probably be family-oriented, possibly Dan's portrait or like his baby's footprint which I've seen before. 

AARON & SETH

Stick and pokes were not nearly as common then as they are now, and I feel like people kinda have to remember how taboo tattooing was then and still is now in a lot of cultures. My family is Not happy lmaoo. But it is what it is. Stick and Pokes were not a thing bored white middle-class teens did like I see them doing now. It was seen as super sketchy and I know someone who was 16 getting tattooed in a garage by someone who was both drunk and just out of prison for the first time, and that was seen as sketchy as stick and pokes at the time. I could imagine either Seth or Aaron having a failed and fucked up stick and poke tattoo, and out of the two of them, Seth seems like the drunk tat guy. Maybe once he got drunk and mad as fuck after Allison and him broke up and she said he didn't seem serious enough so he got her name drunkenly tattooed on his arm or something and then she was even more pissed because it was spelled wrong “YOU FORGOT THE SECOND L OMFG SETH.” (I can also imagine his future girlfriends don't love it lmao). I also love the idea of Seth just having Marvin the Martian or the Tasmanian Devil tattooed on his ass.

Anyways sorry for the lack of pictures but I didn't want to do that... so I didn't. I didn't go into niche tattoo culture and history like I was expecting myself to but this also got fuckin long. Might not be what you were hoping for at all but it is my current opinion on the foxes and tattoos. (This is also surprisingly free of my own personal aesthetic opinions on tattoos and that I'm kinda proud of ngl, since my preference is none of these, but also I grew up in a very different tattoo time than them)

[sunflowerstalks]

Maybe If Remus Had a Plan in the First Place This Fic Would Have Had a Name, Too

Remus is Remus, Roman is tired, and there’s a cat, too. Expected chaos ensues.

This is my gift for Pigeon, @the-pigeon, for @sanderssidesgiftxchange! I hope you enjoy your gift, and i hope your holidays were and continue to go well! Also, happy new year!! :D

word count: 2125

rating: teen and up (for slight language/innuendo)

content warnings: slight innuendo/language typical of remus, hair pulling as a stim, descriptions of bad things happening to animals (as an intrusive thought, it is dealt with accordingly), slight anxiety attack/sensory overload moment

relationships: platonic sides (all of em) with brotherly roman&remus focus, implied/background romantic roman/virgil and romantic patton/remus but it’s pretty subtle

characters: roman, remus, virgil, patton, logan, janus, c!thomas (meaning both character!thomas and cat!thomas asfhjakfh)

additional tags: high school au, punk au, heist fic, like slight conflict and then mostly fluff and comfort. also, side note, cain and abel are the twins’ cats sdhjgdskfh

“Remus.”

“Roman.”

A beat.

“Any chance you could explain… any of this?” Roman gestures wildly to the pile of metal scraps, receipts, the feral cat, and assorted other trinkets strewn across the sidewalk in front of Remus, before crossing his arms and impatiently awaiting an answer without his usual air of, well, put-together-ness.

“Well, I’d actually gotten around to finally cleaning my wallet, when—”

“The cat, Remus! Whose cat is this? Why do you have it? Why is it surrounded by trash?” Roman’s voice increased in both volume and shrillness as he went on, hands reaching unconsciously to tug at his hair.

“Hey, don’t do that shit,” Remus tugged at the cuffed jean at Roman’s ankle for emphasis, “Anyways, like I was saying, I was cleaning my wallet when I remembered that I was like, eighty assignments behind in anatomy, so I figured I could do some cool art or somethin’ with a cat! For… extra credit or something.” Remus faltered for a moment, “In all honesty, I didn’t think I’d get this far.” He had thought getting the cat would be the hard part, so now he was stuck in the swing of success without a direction to turn. Roman, however, was still stuck on the small details (in Remus’ humble opinion).

Roman took a deep breath, muttering something that sounded a lot like a prayer for forgiveness, before looking down at his brother yet again.

“Remus.”

“Yes, brother dearest?”

“Whose cat is this?”

“Do you want the honest answer?”

Roman looked moments away from manslaughter, yet managed to nod anyways. Remus’ face broke into a shit-eating grin;

“I have no fucking clue.”

---

“Let me get this straight—”

A chorus of ‘good luck with that’s and similar sentiments echoed Logan’s statement, much to his chagrin.

“Okay. Redo.”

“You can’t just say ‘redo’ IRL, Lo,” Virgil chuckled, not even bothering to look up from his phone—he had already checked out from the drama, but stayed for the simple pleasure of experiencing the familiar banter—and in fear of being called to the dean’s office for cutting class. Mostly the latter.

“And I would argue that you cannot say ‘IRL’ in a verbal conversation, yet here we are,” Logan paused for emphasis, adjusted his necklaces for the umpteenth time, and smoothed his hands over the table again before continuing, “Regardless. The situation that you—and I mean you two,” he gestured to the twins, “there is hardly a ‘we’ fault-wise here—have gotten into, is one of... feline larceny, without a known victim? Is that correct?” Remus nodded sheepishly—or as sheepish as his wolfish features could get, all teeth and eyes—while Roman just stewed in rage. Remus’ backpack laid halfway zipped on the lab table, and every once in a while a pink nose and whiskers would find its way into the light before being shoved back by a flurry of hands, aware of what yet another detention would mean for the twins. They couldn’t all just skip, though—they learned that the hard way from the last time one of Roman and Remus’ harebrained schemes had made its way from “a slight nuisance” to “an unignorable thorn in everyone’s side that also somehow ends with arson.” So, they had some past experience in handling the, well, experience that the twins brought along with their company—but they normally had at least a lead to work with.

“How,” Janus started, massaging his temples despite only just then contributing to the wreck of a conversation that their art class had devolved into, “do you steal a cat, and not know who from?” Remus just shrugged.

“It wasn’t intentional. I needed a cat, a guy had a cat, I didn’t ask questions. Was I supposed to?” Remus asked, eyebrows drawn together—normally, he’d be a sarcastic shit that would drive the group insane on (some level of) purpose, but now he just seemed genuinely afraid—of the consequences of his own actions, but, still—progress. Logan opened his mouth to offer his advice, but was silenced by the jarring ring of the bell. He sighed. This was going to be a long day of way more stress than he was qualified for—the twins were going to owe him another stick and poke if he had any say in the matter.

---

Remus must have been a wonderful, wonderful man in his past life. He had to have been. Because, somehow, by some good grace, he managed to make it through another two classes on his own, and to lunch in one piece, with a living cat by his side—well, in his backpack, but the merit stands. Logan could honestly say he was impressed—not that he would tell him that, though. Nevertheless, the six friends reconvened at lunch—still without a direction to turn.

“I could just put him back where I found him,” Remus started, attempting to break the icy silence at the table with a jackhammer as always.

“Do you even know where that is?” Roman scoffed, incredulous.

“Well, no, but I could get close.”

“This isn’t helping,” Logan interjected, “How about you bring it to a shelter? One nearby where you found it?” The table nodded in general agreement, but Remus only frowned.

“But that isn’t where I got it from. What if it has an owner? What if the closest shelter isn’t a no-kill shelter, and we go to all the trouble of saving the cat only for the fucks at the shelter to hurt it?” Remus’ pace picked up with his heart rate—despite only having this cat for maybe six hours, if anything happened to it, Remus had a pretty good idea of what he’d end up doing.

“We can check for that, can’t we, Lo?” Patton chimed in, placing a calming, steady hand on Remus’ shoulder, which sunk, relieved, at the touch.

“Possibly. But, regardless, it isn’t Remus’ cat. Our priority is to get it back to its original owner, if it has one,” Logan pointed out, “If that isn’t possible, then we need to reevaluate our plan, come up with another, and settle for a different goal.”

“Have we at any point today even actually had a plan?” Virgil snickered, ever the pessimist—it wasn’t like he was really helping as he was, once again, staring at his phone.

“Well, it’s not like you’ve done much besides stare at your phone today, edgelord,” Remus snarked, though it came out as more of a mumble—his face was pressed into the table, and his eyes were on the cat in the bag.

“You’re gonna have to get better nicknames, Dukey, we’re all edgelords here,” Janus deadpanned, smudging an unhealthy amount of eyeshadow around his eyes while Virgil and Remus argued over their respective contributions.

“Okay, can you, my brother,” Roman pointed to Remus, whose teeth clacked with how fast he shut up, ”and you, my boyfriend,” he pointed to Virgil, who could only look the smallest bit abashed,  “calm all the way down? Stop arguing, holy shit—” Roman took another breath, relishing the silence that had fallen over the table before pushing on, “—how about we all go, together, and fix this shit? I mean, what could go wrong?”

---

The answer was a lot. A fucking lot could go wrong when six seventeen-year-olds tried to coordinate anything, let alone an amateur heist.

Remus managed to get through the rest of the school day without much incident, but the rest of them were not so lucky, managing to receive a grand total of three detentions and six failed tests from lunch to the end of seventh period between the five of them. The teens recounted the horror stories of sixth period; Patton gesturing wildly from the driver's seat, Remus sat quietly (for maybe the second time in his life) in the passenger seat, and the remaining accomplices squished together in the back seat (which would fit three people at most for any group that wasn’t them). Also in the back seat was the cat, who had been dubbed “Thomas” for the time being—he was sat in Janus’ lap, curled up around an abandoned ball of yarn that had been left under one of the seats. The car ride across town would have been incredibly tense and unbearably long without the feline, and for that, Remus was grateful—even if he still had a sinking feeling of guilt swirling in his stomach.

---

           After a surprisingly uneventful car ride (except for the stop at a drive through for a morale boost (Patton’s words) of coffees and drinks which ended, after a rather nasty pothole, with a massive stain on the roof of the car), the party settled into the waiting room at the—no-kill, Remus triple checked—animal shelter. There weren’t enough chairs, so the group made more of a pile around Thomas, some of them standing, and the others sitting both on chairs and the floor. Juxtaposed with the sterile white of the walls, they stood out like the emo cousins that they basically were. Remus bounced his leg, up, down, up, down, over and over. He kept knocking his knee against Janus’, which jostled Thomas every time he did.

“Sorry,” Remus mumbled, trying to focus on holding still.  But it itched in the back of his brain, guilt and stress and fault and all the wonderful, terrible feelings churning, over and over. The clock behind the desk was too loud, and Remus couldn’t do anything about it because they wouldn’t even have to be here if not for him. So he kept his mouth shut and tried not to cry—for all of two minutes, because that was when Janus decided that he had had enough, and shoved a ball of fur into his arms. For a moment, Remus was terrified he was going to fuck it up, hurting Thomas or himself or causing some other inevitable disaster, but Thomas just pushed his warm face into Remus’ palm, and suddenly, somehow the only thing Remus could feel was loved. He choked out a wet laugh, unable to contain the bubbling build-up of emotions that had been brewing since he first saw Thomas that morning. His friends all looked at him, concerned at first, but all they could do was coo at Remus being the softest they had ever seen him. He sniffed, and gave them all a watery smile.

“Thanks, guys.”

“Sincerity? In my brother? It’s more likely than you think!” Roman teased, poking his brother in the arm. Remus stuck his tongue out at him, and the teens devolved into familiarity, playful taunts and sincere joy, waiting to be called back for Thomas’ check up.

---

While the veterinarian had been momentarily taken aback at the request for all six visitors to be in the room during the appointment, she also hadn’t seen a reason to say no at the time. Thus, once again, like the clowns they were, they piled into the room and crowded around the table, Thomas at the heart of it all—confoundingly calm given the situation, at least to the onlookers.

The veterinarian introduced herself to each of them, and began examining the cat for any injuries, microchips, or anything out of place.

“He seems to be healthy, no broken bones or infections…” The doctor said, reaching for a handheld device, “If he’s microchipped, and I’m able to reach the owner, you boys will be off the hook, okay?” Remus cringed, but nodded—he needed to remember that Thomas wasn’t his before he got hurt. She ran the scanner over Thomas’ back, and hummed.

“I’m… actually not finding anything. You said he was lost?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Remus confessed, “I found him on the street, so he could be a stray.”

“It seems he was a very lucky one, for sure. Most cats his age are incredibly susceptible to outside bacteria—finding you guys likely saved his life.” Remus’ eyes widened, and his hand reached for Thomas almost instinctively.

“You said that he doesn’t have an owner?”

“Not that I can determine, no. Did he have a collar, any sort of identification?”

Remus shook his head.

“Well, there are two options in the meantime; we can hold on to him, and put him up for adoption through our services, or you could adopt him. He needs to be immunized and neutered, first, but where he ends up is up to you guys.” Remus thought to himself for a moment.

“Hey, Roman. How mad do you think Mom would be if we brought Cain and Abel home a new friend?”

---

The answer? Not mad enough to outweigh her happiness at Remus’ smile with Thomas in his arms. And even though he didn’t end up getting the extra credit in anatomy, Remus’ circle of best friends grew by one, so he thinks he did alright in the end.

[khorren]

THE ACNH TAG

 ty @morgrenth​ for the ding <3

— Personal

  Is it your first Animal Crossing game? Nope. I played the one on the Gamecube, New Leaf, Pocket Camp, and now New Horizons!

   Do you listen to the game music or put some of your own? Usually have the game music on! Not often very loud, just enough for some ambient background noise.

   What are your 8 reactions?

The ?, the !, clappy hands, glee, doze, and the other 3 i change around a lot. I’m missing so many. Want more!

   Do you use them a lot? For photo ops with villagers and around friends, sure!

   How many rooms do you have in your house? All 6 of them!

   What are they? (Kitchen, bedroom, etc) Main room is just a collection of stuff that I like, some tables and chairs, and then some useful things like mirror, crafting bench, switch, and some trinkets from in-game mom. My top room and right-side room are currently just holding items for a friend. She's planning on restarting her game, but some items she didn't want to lose. So it's just a junk graveyard right now. The right side room was initially a craft room with sewing machines and stuff, and then the bottom bit was the fathers day mug, some tea, and a set of golf clubs. It was going to be a little room dedicated to my irl mum and dad. But yeah. It's holding junk right now. Left side room is a sort of bathroom. Upstairs is a bedroom/study. Also pet cat room. Has cat food, cat tower, cat nip, kitty litter, etc. And a paper tiger acting as the cat.

   What’s the main purpose of your storage? To hold all the crap I might need one day.

   Do you time travel? Why?Nah. I have plenty to do in game each day, I don't need to leap ahead. Even now when I'm making cat-town, it sure would be quicker to skip ahead, but the 3 days gives me time to do other things. I'll get there in the end.

   Do you have a list of dreamies? I hate this phrase. :D

I am currently working on my all cat village (plus the wolf, Skye, cos she's a sweetie and I can't get rid of her), and I'm moving in a lot of my favourite cats / villagers in general. But there are definitely villagers I like more from other species. I've never really sat down and looked at all billion villagers to decide my ultimate favourites. There are lots of cute bunnies out there. Who knows, maybe 3 months down the line I'll make a bunny village. Since it's taking me like 3 weeks to move in all the cats, I want them stuck around for a while.

— Island    What’s the meaning of your island name? Haven! Haven is one of the key locations in a story I've been "writing" for the past 20 years. It tends to be my go-to place of things to name in games where I build a settlement.

   A picture of your island before vs now?

   Do you have all the fruits? I do! Nom nom.

   Do you have all kind of trees? It's mostly fruit trees, and I have about 6 normal trees, and about 3 or 4 cedars. Although I've not had to shake my fruit trees for money for a while now, I like that the option's there. I have just enough non-fruit trees for furniture and wasp needs.

   Do you have bushes? Which is your favorite? A few, but I don't think I have them all. A few of the currently flowering ones, but mostly out of season ones. They make cute borders.

   What flower is the most prominent? Tulips are probably the most prominent in my village.

   Which flower is your favorite? And what color? I love the hyacinths. The orangey ones are my favourite, but I like blue too. I think I only have like 2 blues though.

— NPCs

   Do you commission Flick? Have had one thing made by him in the past. I should do more now that I don't really need the money. But honestly I haven't seen Flick in forever, and the days I do see him, I'm busy doing something else.

   Do you interact a lot with your villagers? Yep! I try to talk to all of them each day, but I'm sure I miss a couple, especially if they're hiding in bum-fuck egypt. I miss the Megaphone from ACNL :(

   What kind of gifts do you give them? If I've got some junk lying around, they'll get that. I totally gift back ugly clothes. Every few days I'll gift some of them a wrapped ironwood clock. They seem to like that.

   Favorite & least favorite personality? Normal and Peppy are my faves. Jock probably my least fave.

   Which visiting NPC is your favorite? Probably Flick. I like catching bugs, it's pretty chill.

   Which is your least favorite? Redd. BECAUSE HE NEVER COMES HERE. I WANT MY ART YOU SHIT.

   Do you always help Wisp? Yes <3 Love that little goober.

— Random

   Do you buy or craft tools? Bit of both? If I'm lazy, I'll just go to the shops. If I'm stocking up on something then I'll craft. I need to make a bunch of nets for the bug-off in a few days! :D

   Do you have any gold tools? Recently got the recipe for the gold watering can. But since it still breaks, eh, I'll just stick to my tier 2 can.

   Do you recover a hole with your feet or the shovel? I try to just use my feet, but if it's in the middle of other flowers I'll use the shovel for precision, so I don't accidentally pluck a flower.

   Do you buy fake paintings/statues? I WOULD IF REDD CAME TO MY ISLAND. I'll generally buy the real ones, but if there's a fake I really like I'll nab it for myself.

   Do you buy a lot of clothes? Yas!

   Do you buy a lot of wallpapers/floors/carpets? I do, but there's so few I end up liking :( I'll buy the fancy stuff from Saharah when I see them, but all I've been getting recently is gross floors and the goddamn lava/volcano wall.

[nataliedanovelist]

(I did not draw this, my friend, @missinspi, drew this for me) (https://www.deviantart.com/missinspi)

Wanna read fics with this OC in it?

For a fic close to canon Gravity Falls (season 3?), read this.

For an AU about Stan and Ford getting a new neighbor at seven-years-old, read this.

Miscellaneous Oc Asks

@cityandking created a (relatively short) list of random, weird, hopefully interesting OC asks. Feel free to specify a character or just send a couple of questions, and then share it around!

What six CD’s would your OC keep in their car? Is it just a taste/preference thing, or do any of them have particular significance? I can’t think of any particular CDs, but as far as artists go... Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Queen (or in the Gravity Falls world, the band called King), ACDC, a disk full of instrumental piano music, and a Dolly Parton CD her friend Madeline Ingrid probably gave her.

What does your OC smell like? What does your OC wish they smelled like? Coconut butter, japanese cherry-blossom perfume, and occasionally disinfectant (she works at a hospital). She tried every hard to smell nice, as most women do, and if she feels like work is ruining that, she might use her favorite “stress relief” lotion to help overpower the smells of rubber gloves and baby spit up.

How aesthetically-oriented is your OC in their clothing? Their living space? Their general presentation? If their look™ is mismatched, is that on purpose? Hephzie has a plain, easy-to-follow fashion sense: blue-jeans with t-shirts for casual events, jeans with blouses for nicer days, and occasionally a sweater for the winter. She also has a small love for boys’ clothes; she won’t shy away from mens’ t-shirts or button-ups if they feel nice and look OK. Her living space is relatively tidy (having grown up with grandparents who needed clean floors to avoid falling) but she’s not a clean freak. Her living space is very artsy and mitch-match, having friends all over the world and she loves learning about different cultures. She might have a rug from India by her bed, but a quilt from Ireland on her bed and a small statue from Hawaii on her dresser. With a bunch of hand-me-downs and mis-match tastes, her overall aesthetic is old and comfort.

What one word would you use to describe your OC’s vibe? Chill.

What’s one mundane thing that would throw them off-kilter? Why? Nuclear families. She grew up with her Grandma and Grandpa on her mother’s side. She never knew her father and her mother abandoned her at a hospital, not even waiting to see what would happen to Hephzie. So Hephzie values family very much, but she sees no reason why blood should be the most important factor in the definition in “family”. The idea of a “normal” family, one with two parents who are married and in love, siblings, and occasionally cousins and aunts and uncles, is like a dream to her. It’s nice, but not for her.

What kind of AU is your OC best suited to? What kind of AU would be the worst? Is there any AU that would be, objectively, just really funny? Hephzie is in 2 AUs: one pretty close to canon Gravity Falls, and one in which she grows up as neighbors to Stan and Ford. Both AUs are very interesting and I love seeing how she responds to each scenario, but I think the more “tragic” of the two is the canon-like one. I’ve toyed with an AU of her becoming a singer and I can see it going either two ways: either she crumbles under the pressure and gets into drugs and overdoses, or she flourishes and uses her money and power for good, like feeding the hungry and helping the homeless find homes.

If your OC could pick a different name, title, or pseudonym for themself, what would they pick? Why? Have they ever been given an alternate name/title, and how do they feel about it? Well, her birth name is Alicia-Sarah Hephzibah Fisher Cece, but she HATES the name Alicia-Sarah and only goes by Hephzibah/Hephzie. In one AU, she legally “fixes” her name.

If your OC were playing D&D, what would their race and class be? What backstory tragedy™ would they give their character? Does that reflect their own life in any way? Be honest. Okay, because a certain extra-special person in her life loves D,D, & More D, she plays, too. She’s an woodland elf, a healer, and has very little interest in her character, but she likes the storytelling and the praise she gets if she manages to heal a wizard with pointy-ears and fluffy brown hair named Rokuro the Righteous.

Star Wars or Star Trek? A certain boyfriend of hers likes Star Trek better, but she likes Star Wars better. It’s been a bitter rival since the beginning of time.

If your OC is from a fantasy world, where in the real world would they come from? If your OC is from our world, which fantasy world would they most want to live in? Bonus: Would you ever write/RP them in that world? Hephzie grew up on Irish folktales (her grandmother’s family is from there), so she would love to meet færies and see magic and meet a selkie. Screw being a mermaid, she wanted to be a selkie! And... no, don’t expect a fic about this.

What plant, animal, and color does your OC feel like today? A Venus Flytrap, a mongoose, and the color dark-green. It’s been a rough day but she’s keeping a level head.

If your OC were a superhero, how flashy would their costume be? Also, what would their superpower be? Does this go with their costume at all, or are they all about fashion? #Can’tFightCrimeIfYouAin’tCute Well... in the canon-like AU, she’s kinda a superhero already, so... think something like a knight’s armor on the arms and legs with a maroon cape. Power would be healing, but she can also fight hella well with a sword and bow-and-arrows. And she’s never cared about looking good, she just wants to survive the war...

Does your OC thrift? Buy designer? Where would they shop irl? GOODWILL FOR THE WIN!!! She and her friends called it “treasure hunting” in high-school and it stuck. She loves it, and when a certain somebody came out with a song about it, she was livid (even if she was fifty-something years old).

Is your OC superstitious? If so, what superstitions do they believe? If not, what do they think of superstitious people? She’s constantly around the supernatural and abnormal... and loves it. She thrives off of what is different. So, superstitious?... Hm, she isn’t paranoid or afraid; she welcomes it with open arms.

Is your OC religious? Do they want to be? Have they ever been at some time in the past? How complicated is their relationships with worship/the gods/the church/etc? Her grandparents took her to church growing up and she loved the music. Her grandmother was the choir director and her grandfather played the piano, and she had “the voice of an angel”, so she happily sang in church, but she kinda stopped going to church when she went to college, but if you ask her she’ll tell you she’s a Christian. She says it just makes sense to believe in a god; there’s too much that science can’t explain. She also likes studying Buddhism, Islam, and Judaism to learn more about other people and cultures.

Hardwood, tile, or carpet? Hardwood. But she will NEVER say no to a fluffy rug.

What’s their go-to parlor trick? Are they actually that good at it, or do they just enjoy it? Do people tell them they’re good, even if they aren’t? How do they handle criticism? I can’t really think of a good parlor trick. She has a lot of talents she keeps on the down, like singing and stand-up comedy (don’t ask). On another note, she takes criticism overall pretty well.

If your OC could request one boon from a god, what would it be? The extermination of a certain three-sided demon.

Favorite comfort food? Do they enjoy junk food or are they more of a foodie? Can they cook? What’s their favorite thing to cook? OREOS are HERS! DON’T TOUCH THEM UNLESS YOU WANNA LOSE A HAND! She also secretly loves watermelon (doesn’t like to tell people this) and her comfort food is either hot tea or hot chocolate. Something to warm her hands. And no, she can’t cook; she burns everything. EXCEPT, she can brew coffee and she’s a pretty good barista (was one during college).

Any major theme(s) or conflict(s) in your OC’s life? How have they dealt with that? Are they aware of it, or do they ignore it? Did you design them with such theme(s)/conflict(s) in mind, or did they evolve naturally? Loyalty is a huge one for her. I think so many people have forgotten what it means to be a true friend and what real loyalty looks like. You’re willing to go far and wide for the people you care about because you want to, because you get fulfillment out of doing the right thing. Hephzie will have your back, no matter what. She doesn’t care what race, background, gender, sexuality, religion, she doesn’t give a shit. If you’ve got her, you’ve got a loyal friend. IOne thing she struggled with - and is only semi-aware of it - is loneliness. She finds it suffocating. It’s slight PTSD from losing so much in her life, and she’s not terribly clingy, but she’ll wallow about it and sink into depression if she feels abandoned or alone. She NEEDS that reassurance that she is not a freak and not alone and that SOMEONE would care if one day she was gone. This evolved naturally when shaping her backstory and realising it needed to have realistic consequences.

If they could steal one major piece of art with no consequences, what would it be and why? Bonus: how would they pull off the heist? Anything Bob Ross. Loves that guy. And she’d probably just recrute Stan to help her with either blackmail or her “Please, for me?” line.

Now it’s YOUR turn!

[captain-aralias]

Get to know you meme

(lots of memes going around at the moment (i wonder why). here is the first of several.... 

i was tagged by @bunn1cula​ and @thisbluespirit​ <3

Rules: tag 9 people you want to know get to know better

Top 3 Ships:

bunn1cula answered it about spaceships, which i like. so you know what, me too. (y’all already know my ship-ships) 

1. the TARDIS

2. the liberator

3. the enterprise D

i put spaceships after remembering that i really really like tallships, but not wanting to leave any of those off. my favourite tallship is HMS Indefatigable, captained by Sir Edward Pellew. IRL, but also in hornblower, which is one of my favourite things that i never talk about. pellew is a fairly minor character in the excellent books (but still a good character), but in the excellent tely show he is a mentor figure to a man who doesn’t understand that people might like him and want to help him, and i am all about that.

Lipstick or Chapstick:

both. although i also don’t like wearing lipstick because then i think people will say ‘you’re wearing lipstick’. like - they’ll notice that it’s not usual. which is totally fine, but for some reason my brain says ‘i’d rather die than have people notice i changed my appearance’. who’d have thought this question would expose one of my weirdest traumas?

Last Song:

i was listening to this ambient noise of a coffeshop - no lie. but (in slightly less sad news) because i was trying to have a virtual pub experience with some people i know in real life, and it sucked. it was nothing like being a pub at all even though two of them changed their background to look like a pub. 

otherwise my head is still full of ‘the guy who didn’t like musicals’ because of the apocalypse and my iphone still being broken. the song i’m thinking of at the moment is ‘let it out’.

Last Movie:

like bunn1cula, i don’t watch movies. but i have just remembered that i saw the my hero academia movie, heroes rising, back when we could go to the cinema. it was great! we’ve hit the first movie in our re-watch, so will probably watch that next.

Reading:

some crossover here with the books in 2020 meme (coming soon...) so i won’t re-use this ones there. but i’m about to finish ‘howl’s moving castle’, which i am re-reading for reasons. 

also because i thought - my brain is tired and sad, i can’t handle... ‘frankisstein’, which i am theoretically still reading. BUT WHERE ARE THE QUOTATION MARKS, OMG.

Three random things that make me happy:

1. coffee

2. slack

3. comments on AO3

Tags:

this meme came to me from outside my (current) fandom, and everyone’s done so much answering of highly probing anon-questions that your dash is all full, and i can’t work out whether you’ve already done it, but here are some tags anyway (NINE tags - this meme is hardcore) 

@sharkmartini @sourcherrymagiks @annabellelux @basic-banshee  @krisrix @giishu (even though one thing i think i know about you is that you never answer these), @parijpg​ @pipsqueakparker​. @shipaholic and @agapi42 (even though we know each other quite well)  

is that nine? i think it’s close enough.

[szopenhauer]

Whens the last time you ate bread? today

Do you attend school, college, or uni? no longer

If you could speak three different languages fluently, what would they be? I already speak two so dunno if I can add three more or just one?

Where,in your current country, would you like to live, other than where you do now? Ełk

Where wouldn’t you want to live? śląsk

Do you like sheer clothing? nah

Llamas or sheep? llamas

Can you iron? yes?

Can you work the washing machine? theoretically

Do you like your photo being taken? I don’t

Do you like taking photos of yourself? funny selfies

How many magazzines do you buy a month? 1 but my mom buys several

How many of them are car-related? none

What about fashion? maybe mom’s but it’s more possible that I’d buy fashion related mag than one about cars

Any celeb gossip ones? mom’s? I hate those

Are you excited to live on your own? I’d be :3

When do you plan on moving out? hopefully soon

What gives you confidence? when I need to protect someone, help someone weaker, want to make fun of myself to make someone smile or when I’m sure of my knowledge/experience/memory but I rarely am confident

Is there a habit you’re currently trying to kick? maybe

Have you ever dated someone with very different sexual tastes than you? not very

Have you ever said anything you regretted while drunk? never been drunk

Has anyone ever been extremely jealous of you? Do you know why? not extremely

What do you wish you’d spent more time doing five years ago? eating?...

What is the most meaningful gift you’ve ever given? it’s not for me to judge

Do you feel as though someone ‘won’ in your last break up? umm...

What is something most people are turned on by but you’re not? penis 

do you daydream?: less than I used to do you dream at night?: not every night but I do  when you’re sick, do you like to be pampered, or left alone?: depends who’s the better actor, jack nicholson or anthony hopkins?: Nicholson  if someone cries while watching a sad movie do you laugh at them?: wtf... I cry myself  how often do you change your sheets?: rarely, I hate fresh laundry, can’t sleep because of allergy even tho I use special detergents :( are you high maintenance?: not when it comes to money but I'm still a burden deliveryman at your door - who’s the package from?: shirt that I ordered :D do you wear socks with sandals?: I don’t wear sandals would you marry for money?: if I had to but don’t wanna would you vote for a woman president?: why not Are looks/appearances really important?: a little if someone lied to you and came clean is that forgivable?: depends Do you like Final Fantasy? Which one do you prefer of all?

Do you like Lady Gaga? I like some of her songs Don’t you hate when your foot falls asleep? with passion >.< Do you bless random people when they sneeze? sometimes I might Dark, milk or white chocolate? white or at least milk

Last thing you ate? sandwich Was today a good day? sigh... What are you listening to? russian musicians like Valery Meladze  What was the last movie you cried at? Five feet apart You’re getting drunk, what do you drink? but I don’t want to drink/get drunk What do you think of Justin Bieber? I hate him Is the closest saturday going to be a good one? today is Saturday and next one is gonna be the last day before hospital so very anxious Where were you when you last cried? home Would you be bothered if your boyfriend/girlfriend did drugs? I think so Last time you threw up from drinking? that never happened Would you rather get your tongue or lip pierced? lip Do you get sea sick? I didn’t but who knows Do you download music illegally? I don’t download music now at all Hugged anyone today? parents Do you drink every weekend? I don’t drink at all Do you have any scars? meh Have you ever cried at a book? few times only, movies make me cry way more often Would you ever get a tattoo on the inside of your lip? what for? Can you sleep in total darkness? I don’t like to FALL asleep in total darkness but sleep is fine Is there someone who you can spend every minute with and not get annoyed? there isn’t Have you ever fallen in the toilet when you were little?: it’s possible, I don’t recall XD but I stepped into the bathtub in tights at least once

Who was your best friend in 5th grade?: P.

What was the first Beanie Baby you ever got?: never had one? Can you keep a spoon on your nose?: doubt it What is your favorite farm animal?: chicken Do you lie to your parents in order to get your way?: I might exaggerate  Do you like to play Monopoly?: yup Have you ever stayed overnight in the hospital?: many times and will soon again What size bra do you wear?: *shrug* not sure, I buy what feels good enough on me but even if I knew that would be personal  Who was your favorite Sesame Street/Muppet character?: Oscar, Bert (I always say Bern or Bernie), Big bird, Elmo was pretty cool too

*I actually adore puppet shows like this

When was the last time you found yourself somewhere you didn’t want to be? May I ask where that place was? now, in my house because of ppl 

Do your eyes ever twitch? very rarely

When did you last offer to do something that you really didn’t want to do? this day

When did you last feel forced into something? I’m forced to live so...

Assuming you have any, is your hair soft today? assuming I have any lmfao

Who did you last worry about and why? besides myself - my father

Are you currently looking for a new place to live? I wish

Can you see any toys from where you’re sat? shitload

Have you ever been embarrased by something you’ve said or a noise you’ve made during sex or kissing? maybe

Who or what was the subject of the last photograph you took? auto-portrait

Do you eat your dinner at a dining table, coffee table or just off your lap? depends

When did you last see the sea? on a pic or irl? because if in real life then almost 20 years ago

Have you ever experienced contagious yawning? ppl yawning doesn’t make me wanna yawn  Can you handle movies involving lots of bugs and insects? not maggots and not dead bugs Were you ever a vampire for Halloween? yeah

Are you borrowing books from anybody at the moment? my sister Do you keep scissors in your kitchen? If so, where? my mom does couple pairs but not always in the same place Is there a book store in walking distance? there isn’t, just library When was the last time you used a pay phone and who were you calling? camp? my parents? What is the funniest movie you’ve seen recently? I didn’t watch any funny movies lately, the last one was The princess bride that I decided to see in the last months

Is there any kind of design on your socks? stripes How long until you kiss someone again? at least 2-3 weeks Do you like being kissed on the neck? yes Do you accessorize your outfit? rarely

Describe your handwriting: ugly

Are you socially awkward? I am Where are both of your parents right at this moment? home like me Do you find yourself on Youtube a lot? yt is my background quite often  What was the last thing you scratched? my nose and neck Are you satisfied with your gender? not really Looks or personality? Which is more important to you? personality unless looks include gender then exclude all men How many times have you dyed your hair? 4 Do you hate when movies are split into two parts? yes and no? What is something that reminds you of your childhood? lots of stuff 

How did you meet your first crush? my first real female crush I met in high school, we had classes together

What is an anecdote that your family frequently tells about you as a child? there are many, personal If you could do anything with your hair what would you do? I don’t know *shrug* Can you remember how many people you’ve kissed? 1 person How open are you with your parents? very, 99% What is your favorite episode of your favorite show? can’t choose only one :o How did you learn about sex? biology classes mostly Describe your favorite outfit? leggings/pajama pants, T-shirt, hoodie or sweater, socks, slip on shoes, hat like a beanie for example and jacket if it’s cold

Do you have a sister that steals your things? she borrows things without asking at times and some she didn’t even give back or she ruined ‘em

Do you have dishes in your room? mug

Is anyone in your family artistic? would say so

When is the last time you watched a hockey game? never

What was your last dream about? yesterday I had a dream about having a group with Harley Quinn and today I forgot

What are you currently listening to? Susanne Sundfor

Who was the last person to smoke a cigarette in your presence? my sister’s bf or a stranger

Where did you last eat? living room

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

Kasumi’s PT Outfit Analysis

Tell me what do these two have in common?

If you said “Cat theme” you are correct! If not, well then buckle up my dudes cause this is gonna be fun~! :D (I also want to take the time to point out, while this isn’t want I’m talking about, I do like this fan artist’s perspective on her gloves :D)

I know what you’re thinking, and no I’m not smoking anything I don’t do that, but Kasumi really does have cat thief themed origins (and no not because of the fan art, didja click on it? it’s cute!). I realized it after realizing she was a gymnast and was like “Why? Why does she get a gymnast theme? How does this fit with the outlaw theme? Has there been a thief who had gymnast outfit?....wait....could it be.....omg it IS!” AND THE ANSWER IS YES! 4 thieves actually, 3 are sisters in one series, and 1 is an expy of those sisters by the same author in his other work. If you know who I’m talking about I’m talking about.....CAT’S EYE! (and Phantom Thief 305 from City Hunter, I dunno the meaning of the name tho)

Let’s start with Cat’s Eye (not a 100% expert in it, but I know more than City Hunter tbh). Cat’s Eye is about a trio of sisters (Hitomi the middle who is the main character, Rui the oldest sister, and Ai the youngest) stealing things using their multiple skill sets (such as gymnastics), partially because they want to contact their missing dad who is also a thief (and their attempts to contact him are through the calling cards and stealing the items in hopes he comes as well). And....that’s basically it I think (been awhile since I read the manga and I’m in the process of re-reading it now). Movie wise, it seems they are in the process of trying to rescue him (hard to find info, no eng subtitles for me to watch so efsljdfl;aj).

Anne and Kasumi are the biggest shout outs to Cat’s Eye than anyone else (tho you could argue Cat’s eye is probs the reason Makoto drives a Motorcycle and Futaba is an semi-orange themed tech genius, and Haru who is “Noir” tho I don’t feel like looking up who came first, her or the Cat’s Eye Pachinko machine cause it’s not important). Anne’s outfit is more a shout-out to the Cat’s Eye Movie version while Kasumi’s is more a shout-out to the original manga/anime. Let’s focus on the Cat’s Eye movie for a second tho.

This isn’t the first time Cat’s Eye movie was used as inspiration for Persona. Back in P2 Tamaki Uchida dressed as Ai (the youngest sister of Cat’s Eye, but is the lead role in the movie), as the actress she is based off of (Yuki Uchida) played Ai in the movie.

Anne, however, seems to be based on Hitomi outfit with some Rui flare to it (they differ slightly)

(btw the movie opens up with an anime sequence before going full live action, Hitomi Left, Rui Right I think for both pics, Ai is in the middle for the bottom pic, and recolored Anne for better comparison and also because I can 8U)

I know what you are thinking, “But what about Catwoman????” I think she’s still related to Cat’s Eye tho. Catwoman came first in creation, and Catwoman was the first to use the leather outfits (tbh, mask wise, Tamaki’s mask/ears seem to draw from the Catwoman 60s tv show outfit), and it seems she/Batman were the inspiration for the movie costumes. Also considering how Persona likes to use Batman, I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the cat theme stuff was also Batman/Catwoman related as well as Cat’s Eye. So there’s still a connection to Catwoman esp with the movie! 

Another possible connection to the movie is Anne’s name, specifically “Anne,” as the person who went by the stage name “Anri/杏里” (I mean Anne is just the  杏 kanji but still) who sings the theme song “Cat’s Eye 2000″ for the movie. Fun fact.

Now let’s look at the manga/anime, where it’s Kasumi’s time to shine (tho Anne will come back up).

As you can see they’ve been redesigned a few times (btw Hitomi’s colors in the first vol of Cat’s eye is actually blue with an orange ribbon, it was changed to yellow later it seems, also the top right is a spinoff manga of Cat’s Eye called Cat’s Eye: Ai where Ai is the MC)

As you can see, the girl who is mostly in the blue is Hitomi, and she has a tendency to wear a chocker with her leotard. Kinda like.......Kasumi! 

Recolored with blue to highlight the comparison (also because I NEED COLOR IN HER DESIGN ATLUS LORD GIVE ME STRENGTH DX) 

Fun fact, Hitomi I believe is a gymnast and she utilizes her skills as a thief (and thus where we get the gymnast as a thief outlaw theme and why it only works for Kasumi/gymnasts and not runners like Ryuji). 

But Kasumi also has similarities between her and Ai, both have red in their theme, both I think are first years. Also, while Ai isn’t as strong or skilled as her older sisters in fighting, she is the most agile (which we don’t know if Kasumi is in the same boat but it’s worth noting just in case). Another thing about Ai, is her connection to Tamaki up above, Tamaki who is based off the actress who played Ai was in the fencing club (which Yuki Uchida was also a fencer), and what weapon does Kasumi wield? A one handed sword similar to other fencers in Persona (like Mitsuru), so woot we’ve come full circle on that! (also if Kasumi is Hamuko reincarnated, or Hamuko’s younger sister, it should be noted that one of Hamuko’s theme colors is orange along with pink and red so fklsdjfsajf; bonus points if that comes true!)

Kasumi’s mask is also probably based on the Cat’s Eye calling card (or at least it follows a similar pattern):

Same point pattern, same eye shape and design (it’d also explain why it’s so thick, cause the emblem is thick looking too 8U)

So I mentioned we’d come back to Anne, and here we are! There is one last thing that is similar to Anne and the Kisugi sisters, and it’s that they are all hafus! The sisters are all half german, and Hitomi looks just like her western grandmother if Hitomi had blonde hair, and later dyes her hair blonde for her thieving:

Also *cough* a pink/red outfit I wonder who that reminds us of? 8U

Now onto City Hunter, which....I think is the biggest evidence that Kasumi was based off these people. And it’s this girl:

The girl with the glasses is the same one as the girl in the same girl in the green leotard (the one in the red isn’t a thief, but was wearing one to match the other girl while they stole a flower). 

This is the first episode this girl shows up (only one I’ve seen too tbh), she’s actually 17/a 2nd year iirc.... And guess what her name is? Kasumi Aso. Kasumi is spelled the same way too (aka only in hirigana)! From my research she only steals what is commissioned of her (I think she steals back what is stolen from other people). She has connection to flowers like Kasumi Yoshizawa (Aso is connected to the [black] tulip, Yoshizawa has flowers on her belt). Both are pretty unassuming in their civilian outfits too tbh. (tho slightly off topic, fun fact, there was a Japanese hafu rhythmic gymnast named Kasumi, I’ve been wanting to post about that for awhile but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s who IRL Yoshizawa was based off of)

Sadly I don’t know much else about Aso, I need to read more of City Hunter to find out (even tho she’s not a super main character), and tbh this is where I kinda end with the Kasumi/Anne and Cat’s Eye/PT 305/Catwoman analysis. But I’ll use this time to talk about a few misc stuff and maybe a few theories related to cat themed thief ladies:

P5 probably got the “Thief who works at a cafe during the day (and the Cafe name also is a reference to their thieving as well as possibly housing a cat)” from Cat’s Eye and City hunter (which take place in Tokyo/Shinjuku, tho in different locations), as the Kisugi Sisters work at their cafe called “Cat’s Eye,” and Aso being their expy, also works at a cafe by the same name (tho it’s run by different people cause it’s in a different/parallel universe). 

I wouldn’t be surprised if Tamaki’s tendency to house a Nekomata in her workplace to be similar to the kitty (Tiger I think it’s name is) that Ai has at the cafe (esp considering, again, Yuki Uchida played Ai). 

According to the Japanese fan wiki of Cat’s Eye, in the sequel “Cat’s Eye: Ai,” the Cafe is moved to a new location, which is Kichijoji, which is the new area that has been unlocked in P5R (maybe a certain cafe will be available for us to wander into? :0 Or maybe Kasumi works at a cafe XP or maybe is connected to the billiards place, tho that DARTSLIVE3 screenshot seems to have a “cafe” poster in the background so maaaaaaaybe that’s a cafe XP)

Part of me wonders if Mitsuru’s Arena outfit is related more to Black Cat, due to the signature “white fur” both characters wear. 

Kasumi Y’s hairstyle (aka if her hair was down, so basically we are going off her bangs) is similar to Hitomi (at least the Pachinko machine ver)

Anne’s circle zipper designs might be more of a shout-out to Marvel’s Black Cat, not that Catwoman hasn’t had that as well, but I don’t feel like figuring out who did the circle zipper first 8U 

Satomi Tadashi dressed up as Zorro and was romantically involved with Takami. Anne who is a Cat’s Eye expy is crushed on by Mona (who wields Zorro). And Kasumi, another Cat’s Eye expy, looks like a Hamuko Expy, while Mona’s human form looks like a Minato Expy. 

Kasumi has a similar black mask with silver line design (not the mask shape itself, the line design) as a woman named “Noir”(?) who appears in the Cat’s Eye Pachinko Machine (yes I did come across interesting things, no I don’t know what her deal is or really who she is tbh cause I think she’s a pachinko original 8U ;w;)

So yeah just gonna kinda end it here awkwardly. FYI this doesn’t mean you HAVE to like her outfit (you have every right to dislike or like it tbh), it’s just a history lesson, and explaining how it fits the outlaw/PT theme, where’s Ryuji’s track or Haru’s ballet doesn’t.

Oh! Edit cause I forgot, if you push her mask up over head, it might look like cat’s ears, just a theory tho (of course it might look like devil horns but so does Anne’s so fklsjdfk;aj;faj;f take this for what you will):

[patchdotexe]

So, I have a character who is a system, and I wanted to know before I develop them further, how does DID work, from a personal account? I really really really don't want to accidentally create yet another TOXIC misinterpretation of a real condition (because I know how horrible that can feel), and I hope I'm not saying anything wrong even now. (P.S. I love your blog, but I'm too shy to come off anon.)

hey anon!! it means a LOT to me that you sent this message :D theres a lot of really messy-bad potrayals of DID in the media so seeing people actually going to the effort of asking systems abt their experiences is really heartwarming for us. (plus the fact that ppl keep asking us in specific abt system stuff omg,,)

im gonna preface this by saying that, in the end, i can only really talk about my own experiences with full confidence. systems can work pretty differently from each other, but this is how we function and also some details ive noticed from system friends + general discussion over the years

so, to start off: Dissociative Identity Disorder is, at its core, your brain trying to respond to trauma in a pretty severe way. that being said there ARE systems that didnt experience severe trauma and still developed, and im not really sure about the mechanics behind that but i find it really cool and it totally exists. im gonna focus on trauma-based systems bc that’s our ~tragic backstory~ and also tends to be what most people opt for when creating system characters anyway, but the only real difference from what i can tell is, uh, a lack of trauma.

I HOPE YOU’RE READY FOR ME TO SAY THE WORD “TRAUMA” A WHOLE LOT JFC

(system friends are welcome to reblog with corrections or added info!!)

anyway. the way your brain responds to things is really weird. if something happens where you’re just, like, completely unable to handle it, like you dissociate yourself so hard because there’s no way you can manage this, your brain has a chance of going “uh… well, fuck, uh” and generating somebody who can manage it. or it might decide to be a dick and take all of the fucky internalized garbage and turn it into a person whose sole existence is to be an asshole. (they have the potential to get better, i think… ours didnt.) honestly theres a bunch of reasons and a bunch of “roles” that could lead to an alter/headmate* forming.

* we use the terms interchangeably depending on mood and whos fronting. i think its supposed to be “alter” is DID, “headmate” is implication that theyre non-traumatic? we like using “headmate” because it brings this fun mental image of us being a bunch of roommates constantly starting shit with each other and goofing off which is pretty accurate about 75% of the time

i keep getting distracted bc my cat is here. this is gonna be fun to go back and edit.

whatever the original situation is, you’re suddenly not alone in your own brain. and it’s REALLY WEIRD. communication was VERY hard. Icarus, our system original, used to do a very “cliche” thing of sharing a journal with their early headmates, where theyd write a sentence and then theyd write a reply (although back then they didnt realize that was a system-related thing and just thought they were having a fun conversation with their ocs. which… they were, just. Actually Talking.) they didnt have any inward perception of themself or their headmates either, so that kinda built up over time (with some help) along with the appearance of our headspace so that there was… actually a location for people to interact in. once they had a better awareness of things, mental communication got a bit easier– its sort of like background chatter really, when everybody’s awake. sometimes i get weird out of context things from Mae yelling at somebody, or sometimes ill be talking to a friend and someone’ll butt in.

when talking out loud, this usually leads to us suddenly stopping and then laughing or going “no!!!”. when on discord and around people who know who we are… well.

speaking of Mae, she’s pretty much my sister. not like… biologically? because i don’t think thats possible for me, but shes kinda literally my “other half” which ill get into later. headmates can have strong attachments to other alters! friends, best friends, family, dating, whatever. they can also do that with people outside the system, and itll be different for each headmate. there’s like 4 people dating Jorb but i just see him as one of my best friends. we’re people and we have complex social interactions that can get to be kind of a nightmare when you’re around a bunch of people who don’t know that you’re Not Leo and that youre suddenly not super up to existing around people in general.

plus even if like… so Jorb’s dating 4 of us like i said, but his relationship w/ each of them is different? Ica is very clingy and likes rambling to him, Summer’s pretty much just always happy to hang out, Mae makes fun of him a lot but in a loving way, and Leo is… kinda “all of the above” because that’s his gimmick. plus even tho a few other alters have a sibling-ish relationship with Mae like i do, usually its just me and Mae that do the “chaos siblings” bit.

the basic system.. thing… is that there’s “front”, which is being in control of the body– so, like, i’m currently fronting/in front, because im the one currently active and using our computer and staring at our cat.– and then theres the headspace, where everybody hangs out when theyre not in front. the headspace itself can differ in style & functionality for each system, and i think theres some systems that dont really have a location at all? but for us its like a full on location where we have individual rooms, places to visit if we get bored while away from front, etc.

theres also like, being at/near/away from front? so currently im in front, but Leo is pretty much always lurking nearby if he’s awake (we have individual sleep schedules that dont always sync up to the “irl” one, Trust is almost always sleeping), Ica’s somewhat in the back talking to Rookie so i cant really make out what theyre saying (its probably about either a youtube thing they both like or about a comic they want to do), and everyone else is either asleep (in which case they could be nearby but i cant currently “ping” them, so id have to actually take a sec to ground myself in headspace more) or in a different room. communication is easier if im in front and somebody is nearby, or it can be like with Ica rn where im like “well, theyre talking, but i have no idea what theyre saying and am making a guess based off their usual interactions”, or i could pass off front to go talk to Ica and come back (in which case my memory would be kind of vague and weird because information doesnt always properly translate), oooor i could actually go bug them while still in front. which.. im not gonna do rn bc then id get super distracted.

switching front differs between systems a lot! and even varies from day to day. like there are days where we wake up and we have absolutely no idea who we are bc we went to bed as one person and woke up as another. or we could be talking to somebody and then realize “wait, i stopped being Leo a bit ago, who am i”. or we could pass off front to somebody, like if Summer really wanted to front sie’d run up to me and let me know and we’d swap. or if something critical happens (usually a breakdown), Leo or one of the other headmates that’re more built to handle stressful situations will literally drag somebody out of front to make sure they dont hurt themself. or sometimes we throw front at people unexpectedly, like either mid-breakdown where we go “okay i dont wanna be here anymore, tag youre it” or sometimes because we think its funny because its the metaphysical equivalent of getting clonked in the head with a dodgeball, except the dodgeball is “being in control of our shared physical form”. usually mae’s the one that does that lmao

there’s a couple major categories of how alters come about. there’s “walk-ins”, where they kinda just… appear externally? like they just show up. sometimes we get a feeling of “huh. i think somebody might be here? or somebody might be showing up soon.” and have to rummage around for a while until they approach us or we find them. our walk-ins aren’t like, inherently aware of system stuff at first, so they usually get a crash course before they first front (if they choose to front at all) and it can be kinda entertaining. Rookie’s a walk-in! also Hiro, from a couple years ago. most of our walk-ins are fictives (fictional characters, usually appearing in response to us getting extremely attached to something or somebody) but a couple of our trauma splits are also fictives so that’s not like, a Rule or anything. i think these are mostly associated with non-traumatic systems but we get em fairly often so man idk

theres also… uh, i dunno what theyre actually called? we used to call them “constructs” but that sounds kind of mean. these alters exist to fill a specific role! and we usually dont talk about them on here with the exception of one major one, they just kinda hang out. Dhe exists to keep the system stable and manages the “backend” so to speak. Imp is kind of a mix of our intrusive & impulsive thoughts that came about from us trying to separate ourself from them so that we had an imaginary entity to go “nope!” at, which… stopped being imaginary, and is now a gremlin that lives in my brain. they can show up in response to trauma but arent split off of somebody, they kinda just pop into existence to help manage things.

the more… well-known, i guess? alter origin is “trauma splits”. rather than “just showing up one day with no real connection to the system origins”, trauma splits are formed when somebody in-system, uh, splits. it could be in response to a single situation or something built up over a long time, but somebody just kinda breaks and somebody new that has a bit of the original alter’s identity (if kinda influenced by the situation) shows up.

this can vary. All is a trauma split off of Leo himself, who got saddled with all of our brain hell about our ex and their insystem appearance is influenced more by eir than by leo which is… something they struggle with. Mae has a trauma split from a similar situation that is “Mae but from 2 years ago”, so basically her old identity before she reworked herself after getting put through total hell. and then uh… then there’s me and Mae! Icarus quite literally exploded into several people, with Pat (me) and Mae being the most distinct ones. we’re STILL finding out alters used to originally be a part of them that later evolved into their own people, like Summer and Toby. my identity is shaped pretty heavily not just by who Ica was at time of splitting, but also what they wanted to be jumbled together with trying to rationalize what was happening to them (they’re a pretty big fan of megaman star force, which has a media-typical system in it, so they leaned into hard “its like pat and rey from mmsf! i like pat, i wouldnt mind being like pat, its scary but im like one of my current favourite characters” and so i ended up being like, half-weird shapeshifter, half-green-haired prettyboy. and yeah thats where my name comes from!)

(Ica got put back together w/o anybody needing to integrate, which we were all very scared about, and it’s still kind of surreal to me because… me and Mae used to be able to stick ourself back together and thats how we found out about what happened to Ica in the first place? and we havent tried that since bc we have no idea what would happen. Ica 2: Ica Harder?)

despite their origins, trauma splits can be way more than… being a split. :V;; Toby’s not just a tiny splinter of Ica, he’s a quiet guy that gets stressed out and isn’t totally sure how to interact with people. i’ve existed for like 7 years at minimum and im a totally different person than i was when i thought i was still Ica, ‘cause ive had time to grow and change (and a problem Ica keeps running into now that theyre back is… they kinda Didn’t change because they were MIA for 6 years.) like everything else though this is variable– there can be “temporary” splits that dont develop properly and might get integrated back in, which has only happened to us when we were at the lowest point in our life where we were stuck constantly splitting to try and cope with whatever the hell was going on.

so Ica was gone for 6 years, which meant our system was without an original or main– there wasn’t anybody to be head of the system, basically. for a while i was operating under the assumption that i was Ica, so i filled in that role for a few years before i made the realization. eventually i kinda… stopped being able to, though, bc of stability issues, and then we were back to not really having a proper main anymore. to make up for it, we started going by Leo collectively and kinda… trying to pretend to be a single person? and so that ended up creating a construct to fill the role of “system main and the person we pretend to be when passing as singlet/not a system”: Leo himself! he’s kinda the most prominent traits we all have in common rolled into a single guy, which means that not only is he a pretty good system representative but we can also pretend to be him pretty easily (unless it’s someone like Toby who acts totally different). i dont know how common this situation is, i think normally it’s just “if system original is gone, another alter steps up” like originally happened to us before i had a severe case of problems disorder.

uhhh this is very rambley bc there’s a Lot to cover and now im trying to figure out how much of it i HAVE covered. systems are complicated and weird! OH WAIT okay i have one last bit.

so like, for us, first realizing we were a system was total hell. we fought a lot. as more alters showed up through various means, there were times where Ica felt like they were completely out of control of their own life bc of having to manage everything. there were a lot of panic attacks of people fronting and not being sure they were even REAL, despite… being in front. but we still felt like we were deluding ourself. this was in, like, late 2011, so systems weren’t a THING. they were a very fringe community that everyone hated. we got constantly harassed, which only fed into Ica’s panic hell and our identity issues. interpersonal relationships became a nightmare, especially because we have BPD as well which varies in severity for each of us but… for me it’s pretty bad! there were times early on where every day was another fun new breakdown from us arguing with each other or our friends or not being understood or… etc.

so… how are we holding up ~7 and a half years later? pretty well, actually! we talk to each other. we do things for each other, like buy food or games we know specific headmates like. Ica is back and way happier than they were in 2011, and is thrilled to get to hang out with everybody that’s showed up since. we help each other through problems, because at the end of the day our system ended up being a support network. Ica couldnt function on their own, so we’re like… 10+ people working together to try and be a single functional person. and we feel pretty okay with that! we still fight, and we still start shit, but we’re not in constant crisis anymore. we’re still working through all of our trauma, especially the more “recent” stuff that kinda broke our system for a while until we were able to start rebuilding, but we’re doing it together. :D

so… yeah, it can start out as a stereotypical “nightmare system”, with constant infighting and toxicity and self-sabotage and etc. but we worked through it! it took a while, but we’re overall more stable than we were before. we got out of the bad environment that was fucking us up, we got mental help for our other brain hell (we havent been able to bring up the system to our therapists bc its literally a non-issue now and we focus more on other things like our depression, anxiety, PTSD, etc), we found people that support us for being us, and we were able to like… figure things out. and it was a mess! i still have issues about my own identity because of literally thinking i was someone else for two years. Ica’s still trying to figure out how to adjust to things, especially bc they missed our entire “cringe culture” phase so they came back to find that i’d dismantled a lot of their middle-school settings. and, uh, some of their friendships as well.

systems are fuckin weird