#this chart actually is like one number more severe than I'm used to actually?

[lyraeon]

As always, I'm curious...

Poll incoming:

[copperbadge]

Hi Sam, could you please recommend any resources/websites to learn about ADHD medication? Until reading your post about second-line meds I thought Adderal was the only one

I can definitely talk about it a little! Always bearing in mind that I am not a doctor and this is not medical advice, etc. etc.

So, I've had many friends with ADHD in my life before I got my diagnosis and I picked up some stuff from them even before getting diagnosed; I also spoke with my prescribing psychiatrist about options when we met. If you think your psychiatrist might be resistant to discussing options, or you don't have one, doing your own research is good, but it's not really a substitute for a specialist in medication management. So it's also important to know what your needs are -- ie, "I want help with my executive function but I need something that's nonaddictive" or "I want something nonsedative" or "I don't think the treatment I'm on is working, what is available outside of this kind of medication?"

The problems you run into with researching medication for ADHD are threefold:

Most well-informed sources aren't actually geared towards non-doctor adults who just want to know what their options are -- they're usually either doctors who don't know how to talk about medication to non-doctors, or doctors (and parents) talking to parents about pediatric options.

A huge number of sites when you google are either AI-generated, covert ads for stimulant addiction rehab, or both.

Reliable sites with easy-to-understand information are not updated super often.

So you just kind of have to be really alert and read the "page" itself for context clues -- is it a science journal, is it an organization that helps people with ADHD, is it a doctor, is it a rehab clinic, is it a drug advertiser, is it a random site with a weird URL that's probably AI generated, etc.

So for example, ADDitude Magazine, which is kind of the pre-eminent clearinghouse for non-scholarly information on ADHD, is a great place to start, but when the research is clearly outlined it sometimes isn't up-to-date, and when it's up-to-date it's often a little impenetrable. They have an extensive library of podcast/webinars, and I started this particular research with this one, but his slides aren't super well-organized, he flips back and forth between chemical and brand name, and he doesn't always designate which is which. However, he does have a couple of slides that list off a bunch of medications, so I just put those into a spreadsheet, gleaned what I could from him, and then searched each medication. I did find a pretty good chart at WebMD that at least gives you the types and brand names fairly visibly. (Fwiw with the webinar, I definitely spent more time skimming the transcript than listening to him, auto transcription isn't GOOD but it is helpful in speeding through stuff like that.)

I think, functionally, there are four types of meds for ADHD, and the more popular ones often have several variations. Sometimes this is just for dosage purposes -- like, if you have trouble swallowing pills there are some meds that come in liquids or patches, so it's useful to learn the chemical name rather than the brand name, because then you can identify several "brands" that all use the same chemical and start to differentiate between them.

Top of the list you have your methylphenidate and your amphetamine, those are the two types of stimulant medications; the most well known brand names for these are Ritalin (methylphenidate) and Adderall (amphetamine).

Then there's the nonstimulant medications, SNRIs (Strattera, for example) and Alpha-2 Agonists (guanfacine and clonidine, brand names Kapvay and Intuniv; I'm looking at these for a second-line medication). There's some crossover between these and the next category:

Antidepressants are sometimes helpful with ADHD symptoms as well as being helpful for depression; I haven't looked at these much because for me they feel like the nuclear option, but it's Dopamine reuptake inhibitors like Wellbutrin and tricyclics like Tofranil. If you're researching these you don't need to look at like, every antidepressant ever, just look for ones that are specifically mentioned in context with ADHD.

Lastly there are what I call the Offlabels -- medications that we understand to have an impact on ADHD for some people, but which aren't generally prescribed very often, and sometimes aren't approved for use. I don't know much about these, either, because they tend to be for complex cases that don't respond to the usual scrips and are particularly difficult to research. The one I have in my notes is memantine (brand name Namenda) which is primarily a dementia medication that has shown to be particularly helpful for social cognition in people with combined Autism/ADHD.

So yeah -- hopefully that's a start for you, but as with everything online, don't take my word for it -- I'm also a lay person and may get stuff wrong, so this is just what I've found and kept in my notes. Your best bet truly is to find a psychiatrist specializing in ADHD medication management and discuss your options with them. Good luck!

[ms-demeanor]

hello! i vaguely recall you doing a new year's resolution bingo thing - first, was that actually you lol? and if so, how'd it go, any adjustments you'd make from the original idea? (i did a resolution bingo this past year, which mostly ended up being a 24 item quest buffet, which did work for me! but i'm curious for more data). happy new year to you and your various sizes of bastard!

Hello! Yes, that was me. It didn't go great!

I did a resolution bingo in 2022 but it ended up feeling like homework and at a certain point in the year I looked at the spaces that I hadn't filled and it just made me feel bad.

In 2023 I did kind of a chore chart; I used a sheet of college-ruled notebook paper and divided it up into columns with things like "guitar" and "draw" and and "quilt square" and "go for a walk by myself" and numbered out 52 lines and I went through and highlighted each thing as I did it each week. That went very well for some things and not very well for others. I had at least a few columns where I did something every other week, and I totally finished the quilt square column, and I drew something for like 40 weeks, but I also had several categories that I did absolutely nothing for and several categories that had very few highlights.

That chart *also* was kind of a problem and there was a week in, like, august where my brain was being weird and was like "you can't do more of X until you've caught up on Y and Z" because I had to flip the paper over and wanted to finish three columns before I flipped it - that was clearly a very silly hangup but I don't make the rules for what my brain will freak out about and it caused a disproportionate amount of stress.

This year I kind of combined the two and I've made three sheets of paper with different tasks on different lines, and in different amounts. (And none of the papers need to be flipped over so I won't get a weird hangup week)

So instead of having 52 blanks each for "pushups" "squats" and "go for a walk by myself" I've got 156 blanks for "workout: lifting, calisthenics, stretching, walking, cardio." I didn't do a single walk by myself last year, and it turns out I'm pretty unlikely do do random squats or pushups, so rather than try to do one exercise fifty two times I'm just going to try to do *some* kind of exercise three times a week and I'm not going to feel bad about it if that's more bench press instead of more cardio.

I did pretty well with quilt squares so i've set a goal to do twice as many this year. I set a goal for 52 drawings and writing seriously 52 times. My yard is a disaster so my goal is to fill my yardwaste bin 52 times this year.

But what I *haven't* done is divide that up by week. Maybe some weeks I'll get four workouts in and other weeks I'll do two. Maybe I won't draw for a month but I'll get into it a lot over the summer.

One of my two other sheets is things that I'd like to do daily. My four daily tasks that I'm aiming for are: clean something at the house, floss, moisturize, and journal. (Journaling was successful in the bingo year but not at all last year)

The other sheet is the one that's more like the bingo, or what I think the spirit of the bingo is supposed to be. I've got it labeled "Bonus" and each thing on it has about twenty circles that I can check off if I do something but that I don't see as a goal. That includes stuff like "friend hangs" and "go someplace" - stuff that I want to do more of but that I can either plan or do spontaneously and that doesn't have a big project end goal (so it's "do something with music like program a music box or play guitar for a while" rather than "write a song" like it was the bingo year, when no song got written).

I may have also just kneecapped myself by making the bingo squares too hard. Maybe I should do a monthly bingo with smaller goals.

The bingo also got harder when I failed at bullet journaling; turns out that's not a great way for me to manage my time and attention and the bingo was in the bullet journal. Having stuff on a wall next to the light switch in my office helped a lot last year, I think, so that's where my sheets are this year too.

IDK, this is all fun to experiment with and I enjoy it but also I'm never sure if any of it "works" in terms of getting me to do more of the things that I'd like myself to do. It did work for quilt squares last year, though, and that's the best progress I've made on my quilt since I started it in 2021. And the daily chart is helping a lot so far.

But maybe I just like making charts (I do).

[fraeuleintaka]

Investigations 1 Official Anthology Manga - Volume 1

This is the 72nd post in the Ace Attorney Investigations Collection Countdown: 9 days left until release!

Today's topic: the Investigations 1 Official Anthology Manga (Volume 1)!

I've talked about the official Investigations manga in a previous countdown post but that's not the only manga release accompanying the Investigations games. There are also several anthology mangas featuring Miles and Co.! Unlike the manga series these don't tell separate stories with different cases than the games but jump off the games' events and show some shenanigans the characters get up to. Since there are several volumes I'm going to label them by number in my posts even though they're not in any way consecutive but they don't have any special titles to differentiate them by either.

The "first" one (cover shown above) has its short stories in the order of how the cases are played in the game (so starting from I1-1 and going to I1-5). All of its stories take place during the cases (or shortly afterwards) and all use concrete moments in the game, specific interactions or events happening inbetween that we didn't get to see, to build a narrative around. Most of them are simply funny but there are also some rather serious and emotional ones. The stories vary greatly by length, some are only a page long and others much longer. The artists for each story also vary but at least in this case the artstyle differences aren't too extreme. Of course, just like the manga series, the anthology mangas aren't canon to the games. However, apart from some joke stories that are clearly just exaggerations for humour the characters are written pretty faithfully to the games. I can easily see a lot of the shown interactions happen in the games and will definitely take them as canon as far as they don't contradict anything!

Sadly, all of the anthology mangas are only available in Japanese and out of print so extremely hard to get. It took me a lot of effort and luck to be able to acquire them and call all of them my own. And it was so worth it! The stories are so well made, hilarious, adorable, everything! They add even more to the characters' personalities and relationships with each other. So much fun to read and to just look at the panels, too! They also have some gorgeous art!

All these artworks are used as "covers" for the different story sections in the manga and they have these beautiful coloured versions at the beginning! Love them! They also have character relationship charts at the beginning for each section similar to what the Complete Guide had (without colour though).

I plan to talk more in detail about each different comic that's part of these anthologies at a later date as that would be far too much for one single post but I do want to highlight some of my favourite parts and my favourite individual (out of context) panels. So much good stuff!

Gumshoe, the professional stalker OR how the partner mechanic would actually look like

The Prosecutor Championship (with friendly help from the janitor)

When Gumshoe just gives him a prompt and Miles goes into an entire fanboy rant about the Steel Samurai

How Miles and Kay really escaped the hideout

Exchanging cards gone wrong OR Shi-Long just wants to be cool but it isn't always easy

How Manfred thinks he comes across VS how he actually comes across

When Miles gets a little distracted from the "perfect" case

Apparently Shi-Long also wears his sunglasses indoors just to make a cool entrance and then immediately takes them off (Miles did not like his cool entrance)

Shi-Long really wants to give Miles a birthday gift, but sadly it's not his birthday (he still accepts the gift though because it's tea)

Miles & Shi-Long just chilling and drinking tea together (I love the way Shi-Long sits on the couch!)

And finally, probably my absolute favourite one, Miles & Shi-Long arguing way too seriously about tea! Apparently Miles finally found someone who's as passionate about tea as he is.

[thisisnotthenerd]

and we're back with another edition of thisisnotthenerd's d20 stats. this time we're talking character races. mechanically. they are not all italian.

most common character races

a couple of things:

the chart displays the character races as they present within their individual seasons. this is not always reflective of their mechanical races, which is what i'm using to evaluate. if you go into the spreadsheet and look at the notes, you'll see the mechanical race for each character.

some characters are not counted because they do not have an accurate equivalent, e.g. the creepy co-eds and the prefrontal p.i.s. the magical misfits are because i don't know that you can get more variant human than what they have going on.

obviously there are repeats in the chart. those are not counted in the totals.

at the top, as most would expect from d20, is variant human, with 40 characters. this tracks for several reasons; it's a fairly solid race that allows you to start with a feat and tool proficiencies and focuses asis rather than spreading them around. the other reason is that it's used as the base for most characters in most seasons that don't fit the dnd standard races, i.e. tiny heist, a crown of candy, mice & murder, and the ravening war.

next up is actually harengon with 6, though it might not look like it from the chart. that's because all of the stoats from burrow's end are using harengon stats with the addition of at will primal savagery and claw/bite attacks. it's a solid build that fits well for this season, but makes the rabbit comments from the top of the season funnier.

next up is half-elves, with 4 characters: fabian seacaster, danielle barkstock, misty moore, and agnes. mechanically, those marked as faeries are half-elves. they are marked as faerie to distinguish them from fairies, who are also on this list a little later on.

in fourth place is tieflings, with 3 characters: fig faeth, magfelda/maggie, and gertrude. two fo them sit in the same seat in back to back seasons. tied with them are half-orcs: gorgug thistlespring, katja cleaver, and sokhbarr, who is another reskin, much like the faerie characters.

tied for fifth with two each are: bugbear (marcid the typhoon & k.p. hob), drow (lilith (as a reskin) & andhera), changeling (rick diggins & binx choppley), high elf (adaine abernant & efink murderdeath), kalashtar (pete conlan & riva), kenku (chirp & squak), ratfolk [different types] (kugrash & jack brakkow), vampire (squing & may wong), and warforged (car-go jones & pinocchio)

and with one each we have:

aarakocra: sunny biscotto

aasimar: barbarella sarsaparilla gainglynn

android [ryn]: sundry sidney

cerebroslug: skip/valdrinor

clone soldier [shistavanen]: big barry syx

dwarf: ostentatia wallace

fairy: twyla

genasi [water]: sam nightingale

gnome [forest]: cheese

goblin: riz gukgak

halfling [lightfoot]: penny luckstone

hobgoblin [frog-man reskin]: gerard of greenleigh

hollow one: leiland

merfolk: myrtle the bitch

orc: princess foehammer

owlbear: delloso de la rue

satyr: zelda donovan

shifter [beasthide]: ylfa snorgelsson

tabaxi: puss in boots/pib

triton: troyánn

there were a total of 34 pc races used over the course of dimension 20.

now for the fun part, beyond the numbers:

commentary

a lot of this won't make sense without the notes. if you're interested in reading through this, i'd suggest at least a cursory look.

most of the pc races used on dimension 20 do actually have a standardized background (or two or more) in dnd. generally they stick to the same variants most of the time, usually the ones that grant the best versions of racial abilities. even the reskins have a solid background: kashai->half-orc, faerie->half-elf, the usage of kalashtar stats for pete, frogman->hobgoblin, cat->tabaxi, puppet->warforged, rick diggins as a changeling clicko man. they make sense and make sure that characters have a balance of racial traits.

however there are a few that don't have a standard. some of them only show up in the bestiaries. some are straight up homebrewed or borrowed from 'unofficial' sources. i pieced them together based on wiki info and what i could find on each of these.

drider: from what i found, drider isn't currently playable. i suspect they combined drider traits from the bestiaries and drow/dark elf stats to make lilith. it gives her a bunch of really cool abilities.

ratfolk: this one was tough, because murph and matt used different sources to make their rat-men. murph's likely comes from kobold press, wherein ratfolk are small, with 25 ft of movement, rodent empathy, darkvision, and poison resistance. hell, kug might still be a reflavored dwarf. i don't think so, because he doesn't use any of the racial abilities that would make him a dwarf as opposed to ratfolk, but who knows. matt's comes from adamant entertainment's ratkin, whose ratfolk are medium, humanoid rats, with 30 ft of movement, low light vision, immunity to disease, and proficiency with bite attacks. matt specifically references ratkin during pirates of leviathan, so i'm fairly confident that that's what jack is.

cyborg: gunnie is a base human, but has a lot of cybernetic replacements and so has a few extras that come with it. he gets an additional +1 to any skill, at the expense of augmentation side effects i.e. vulnerability to ion damage. this is a combination of sw 5e's cybernetic augmentation rules with the sw 5e human.

cerebroslug: norman is a base human in sw 5e. that part is easy. i'm pretty sure that cerebroslugs were a homebrew creation based on existing starstruck lore and zac's character pitch. i had to go back and watch a few episodes of starstruck to figure out what he's using, because it sure as hell is not on the wiki. body thief is the one named ability that i can recall. if a creature is incapacitated, the cerebroslug can enter its body start running it. if not incapacitated, the cerebroslug cannot attempt to overpower their vessel. other racial traits allow the cerebroslug to a) retain it's own mental statistics while using the vessel's physical statistics, b) run the body by using piloting statistics, e.g. making piloting checks to run the body upon waking. with enough successes, they stop being required. cerebroslugs are sensitive to cold--they are ejected from their vessel if 20 points of cold damage are dealt to them. they must succeed on a dc 15 con saving throw or be paralyzed upon ejection. i really hope this is actually written down somewhere and isn't just me hallucinating after hours of rewatching starstruck.

owlbear: this was simpler: rue is an awakened owlbear as opposed to a standard owlbear. the adaptations: innate savagery. ancestric physiology, natural instincts, and clumsy are the noted racial traits.

stoat: they're actually harengons as noted previously. they also have the cantrip primal savagery that they can cast at will in order to up the damage of their claw/bite attacks. these stoats are literally built different.

and that's all! let me know if there's something i missed; i'd love to hear it. the spreadsheet is open to perusal.

[sizzlingpatrolfox]

I’ve been thinking a lot about how sensitive tae / jk / tkkrs are. Like the thing you said about JK solos thinking the company and army are against him. Like if jimin had the fan base numbers and company support they had I would be thrilled and simply keep my mouth shut.

It’s especially interesting that they drag jimin so much when he poses no real threat (numbers wise) to them. Tae literally has 10 MILLION more followers than jimin on IG. And JK probably would too if he was still on IG.

What i keep coming back to is that can’t fathom jimin having the large amount of success than he has (even if it’s less than tae/jk) when he doesn’t have the traditional qualities that tae and jk have that make them the most biased. Like tae’s perfect face or JK’s boyish charm / masculinity / both of them being conventionally attractive overall, along with JK’s natural talent and Tae’s “confidence”. Jimin has all this success without those things. And I feel like that’s what bugs them and threatens them. Idk just thinking/rambling!

Here's the thing about Instagram followers... I've written about this before but I can't seem to find that post, so I guess I'll have to do another post (this one) about it.

Instagram followers are not a measure of talent or success. They never were, and never will be. I can only think of like Messi and Ronaldo who have 600 million followers as people who their instagram followers are *sort of* a reflection of how well known they are.

Armys live in a bubble; taekookers, Taehyung and JK stans live in an even smaller bubble, tho this could be true for every solo out there. They think BTS (or their particular bias) is the center of the universe, and they forget that there actually are other celebrities and musicians in the planet. They forget too that not everything that looks like success, is actually success.

Harry Styles doesn't get half the likes any BTS member gets. Harry has had several billboard 100 singles, many of them were #1 and As It Was is still charting. Yet he has even less followers than Jimin, I think. Harry has been touring non-stop for more than a year, now. You'd think he wouldn't have fans to attend his shows when you look at his posts with 1 - 2 million likes. He sold 500k albums the first week on the US. BTS sell ~200K. Beyonce gets less likes than any BTS member, too. Yet she's on a sold out stadium tour around the world right now. Coldplay has less than 20 million followers yet they've been active as a group since 1996, and they also are on a stadium tour right now. The same stadiums that BTS played in two or three times, Coldplay has had up to 8 sold out dates in those stadiums.

Now, for the final bosses. Taylor Swift gets around 7 millions likes on her posts. She's also on a stadium tour right now. Her albums that were released 15 years ago and she's re-releasing now, are still getting one million preorders in the first day, only in the USA. She gets 80 million streams on her spotify profile, DAILY. Everyday.

BTS right now has 73 million followers on their bts_bighit account, and it was a smaller number before but in 2021 they were already getting 100 million views for butter in the first 24 hours.

For Christmas 2020, Jimin released Christmas Love, unannounced. Literally they just posted a link, and the youtube audio got I think 10 million in the first day. Later that day, Taehyung went on weverse to announce he'd be releasing snow flower that night. It debuted with less views than Christmas Love, even if it had been announced. The members opened their instagram accounts on December 6th 2021 (I'm just going by memory here, so I might be slightly wrong on the date). Taehyung immediately was "on the lead" regarding followers, immediately gathered a few million more than any other member. Taehyung then released Christmas Tree in the end of December 2021. Debut streams: roughly 1.5 million. If even half of his followers had tuned in (on Spotify) for his song, you'd think he would've done better than 1.5 million streams. With you was released four months later and, despite having only half the tracking time and despite "unpopular" Jimin having less instagram followers than Taehyung, with you got a better first day streams. To this day, it still gains streams faster than Christmas Tree.

As a sidenote, I don't think it's a small detail that instagram followers and likes are way easier to fake and fraud than streams. In the end, Jimin is a musician and the only way he can "prove" anything about himself, or his popularity or success, it's through his music and his performances. I think it's clear he himself doesn't even care that much about his instagram profile.

The same goes for Jungkook's lives viewers, which was something I was thinking about the other day. He released music last year, and last year he was already getting 15, 20 million viewers (which his fans claim are unique viewers), but his songs debuted with not even half of that. And we know how streams work; one person could stream the same song 10, 20 times. So how come he doesn't get 40 million streams a day? Or at least one day in the year? If we were to assume that 20 million different people watch his lives, those 20 million could also play his song once or twice at least one day in the year. But that doesn't happen.

So that's why I could never be bothered about instagram followers and likes... it really never mattered to me. Records in general don't matter to me, and I've said it plenty of times. There are some Jimin "records" and numbers that I wasn't even aware of until FACE was released. I didn't know that with you was more streamed than stay alive or christmas tree, for example. There's some stuff I'm finding out only because other people post about it, not because I'm constantly checking up on Jimin's and other member's numbers.

I can only go with Taehyung's old releases numbers because he hasn't released anything in a while. Also, a random OST is not the same as a proper debut, so I am aware that nobody really knows how well he could do with his debut. But the truth is that -IN THE PAST- his streams and singles sales have always been lower than Jimin's; the only member who's on par with Jimin on that, is Jungkook. Maybe for his debut Taehyung will finally release a fun song that people actually want to listen to.

On the other hand, now that Jimin has "set records" with his debut album, when Taehyung and Jungkook's albums come out, they will try to out-do Jimin's numbers, and when the next Jimin album comes out, people will try to out-do taekook's numbers and so on and on. So unless it's a really extraordinary thing that could hardly be replicated (like Jimin's BB #1), other than that, records of numbers are a really fickle thing to hold on to. The only reason I talked about them in this post was to make a point that instagram followers really do not always correlate to how "successful" or loved, or supported someone is.

As for your last paragraph, firstly I'm really uncomfortable and tired of the backhanded "compliments" like Jimin is doing great, but not as great as Taehyung or Jungkook. Like what is the actual purpose? I know they will do well, but the undermining of Jimin's achievements is insane and so unnecessary. The day Jungkook's and Taehyung's albums were announced too, it was "the most successful kpop soloists in the world" when Jimin is literally right there, being exactly that right now. Why have most people in this fandom incorporated the backhanded compliments in their vocabulary? Being lowkey or even highkey shady towards Jimin is almost like an unconscious thing for most these days.

Talking specifically about the hate he gets from Taehyung's Jungkook's stans, what you mentioned is half of the reason why. The other half is, ships. The other half of the hate is because of taekook.

They have convinced themselves that Instagram followers and such, are a measure of success. They have convinced themselves that Jimin is not talented, that he can't sing, that he can't dance, that all these years he was pushed by the company as something he's not and that his whole personality is a lie. They fight so hard against the love he receives because they genuinely think he doesn't deserve it for all of those reasons they've invented themselves. Then some YouTuber shows up and reacts to a BTS live song and goes "oh this Jimin guy sounds the best" and they think he's been paid to say that. The idea they have of him has never correlated with the image the real world has of him, and that's what bothers them. If someone says I love this song, they just HAVE to be on his business and spam "this song is awful" because they think it's wrong to like him and want others to feel that way about him too.

That's never going to happen because the real world isn't chronically online, feeding themselves lies the way Taehyung and JK stans are.

It's also interesting, but not really, that according to them Jimin is a "flop" but Jimin is the only one they're always trying to surpass. So how exactly is he flopping if he's their biggest competition. All BTS members are competing with themselves as of right now, none of them stand a chance next to already stablished artists with proven global, stable success like Harry or Taylor. Didn't bad bunny get 1 billion streams on his album the FIRST day? That happened last year. And JK stans were so proud of Jungkook getting it in 409 days. I'd like to see Jungkook or Taehyung stans try and argue how successful they are compared to people like those I mentioned. All BTS members are competing with themselves, but none of them are actually stablished as solo acts, especially in the states. All of them are still confined to kpop so far. Jimin has probably started to crack the surface because Like Crazy was quite successful in the USA and even the UK, and there were a lot of things that gave it publicity, but even then that's just a crack and it takes time to settle as an undisputed successful solo artist. No BTS member has the time to do that.

[veliseraptor]

2022 Writing Stats

it's time for Fun With Numbers: Lise's Hobbies Edition, 2022!

So I keep a daily word count writing tracker so I can monitor my own writing pace/patterns, and sometimes it's fun to see what comes out of it at the end of a year. This data does not include writing I do on this blog answering asks/writing meta/etc.; it only includes any fiction I write (original or otherwise) and more serious/structured essay works. For the most part this tracker is meant to serve as a descriptive, not a prescriptive, tool - I use it to record rather than to set goals.

And now: the charts.

To start with, the basic graph of my daily word count in 2022:

This one looks pretty similar to graphs for previous years, though it did trend a little lower than historically. However, the big outlier there in October is the highest single-day word count I've had since 2019, apparently. I wrote 5.2k on October 24th, which (looking back), wasn't even a travel day, just a random Monday, so I have no idea what was happening there. My best guess was that I was hit with a whale of an inspiration boost for some reason, but I have no recollection of what it was about.

A quick look at data distribution shows that there were 56 days in 2022 with a word count of 0 (i.e. 56 days where I wrote literally nothing; actually fewer than I expected, and fewer than in 2021 when there were 67 zero word days). Altogether I wrote 388,095 words in 2022, an increase over 2021's historic annual word count low of 386,721. (I am making fun of myself here.) My average word count per day in 2022 was 1,063 words, which is roughly on par with last year's (more on comparative daily averages later).

Looking more broadly at the patterns month over month:

Obviously something happened in July and October where I lost my mind somehow, but I don't really know how to explain that. Neither beat out September 2021 as one of my most insane writing months on record (over 60k) or even approaching my all time high in November 2017 (63k), but still. They were probably the main factors in pulling the ultimate monthly average to just above 32,442 words, given the lows in June, November, and December. June was particularly dismal this year; it's the lowest word count in a month since I started tracking this in August 2016.

June was rough, you guys.

Now to compare 2022's final total word count to previous years overall...

While continuing to track lower than earlier data (2017 and 2018 in particular), the trend for 2022 held close to 2021 and within a reasonable range of 2019 and 2020. 2020's boost likely came from the several weeks of unemployment there in the middle, tbqh, so I think I'm looking at what's probably an approximate of my "typical" output in a year at this point in my life (hovering around the 370-420k mark). The overall yearly average for these past six years is 454,899 words in a year; for the past three it's 409,647 words. All told, between 2017-2022 I recorded having written 2,729,334 words.

To look at seasonality I graphed out the month-by-month word count total, graphed by year (this one's probably hard to read):

But I failed to note any significant deviation based on any particular month year over year. Total word count per month hovers around a median of 38,726 words per month.

Breaking it down more particularly to average daily word count per year, to see how my average pace day to day changed (or didn't) from year to year:

As seen with the overall totals for the year, the daily average roughly lines up, with 2019, 2021, and 2022 forming a cohort of similar range after the apparent outliers of 2017 and 2018. (It does make me curious what data would look like, had I been gathering it, for earlier years, particularly when I was in college.)

Finally, for a completely unreadable chart that shows the daily word count graphed for every year, including a line for the average across all years:

gorgeous. absolutely illegible, I love it. But it does arguably illustrate what I started this project to prove, which is the remarkably consistent up-and-down nature of my writing pace. Peaks and lows, at a slightly varying pace and with different levels for how high or how often those peaks show up, but it does tend to come back around.

You can see this more clearly when I cut the graph down to just show the line that averages out all six years:

Now if only I could internalize that better and stop panicking about how I've lost the ability to write every time I spend a few days feeling sticky and slow. It's a goal, anyway.

That's all I've got. Thank you and I'm sorry I'm like this.

[onward--upward]

Any chance we could get another snippet (or more, we’ll take anything we can get :))of the crohns Buck au?

oh my goodness, hello!! yes of course, here's a crohns buck snippet for you, lovely anon <3 sorry i am being so slow with this one, i'm a little stuck with it at the moment, unfortunately! but here is a long(ish) snippet to make up for it, i hope you like!! xx

“Buck!” he says, face lighting up. There’s another nurse there with him this time, a brown-haired woman who gives off the strongest no-nonsense vibes Buck has ever seen. 

“Hey, Eddie,” Buck smiles. And look, if he feels a little bit warm at the way that Eddie remembers his name – his actual name, not just the one on his chart? Well then, that’s his business. Buck’s allowed to feel a little enamoured with a cute boy if he wants to be. 

“Wanna get me a weight and grab a seat?” Eddie asks. “I’ll be with you in just a sec.” It’s not a dismissal – the clinic is much busier today than it was last time, and several of the cushy recliners are taken up by other patients already. The other nurse is crouched at the side of a girl in sweatpants with chunky headphones around her neck, and Eddie is prepping the supplies for an IV for an older guy with a square jaw. You would think that the other patients would sometimes be familiar – how many people can need an infusion clinic, right? But no – every time he comes in, it’s a new batch of strangers. They don’t ever talk much – Buck mostly just puts in his headphones while he reads, or sleeps, or watches a couple of episodes from Netflix. 

He brought his headphones today – he hadn’t been expecting Eddie again. But he doesn’t get them out. He steps onto the scale up against the wall, frowns at the number that pops up. Down again. 

Eddie materializes at his shoulder. “Not good news, this week?” 

Buck shrugs. “Been trying to get back to the kind of bulk I had before… well, before.” He lost a bunch of weight when he was first diagnosed, and he’s been diligently trying to get himself back up. It’s harder than he thought it would be: it’s tough, not really having full control over his own body. No matter what he does, he can’t seem to bulk the way he used to. “Not going as well as I want it to.” 

He turns just in time to see Eddie’s gaze travel down his arms. “You look plenty bulked up to me,” he says, and the blushes. Buck watches, fascinated by the way the tips of his ears go pink.

[lunarsilkscreen]

The Belgian Election; 2003

21 years ago now; Belgium held an electronic vote where one candidate ended up with more votes than voters. There were backups and records of every individual vote, and they hand tallied the erroneous vote.

But this sparked a scare because "How does a whole country wind up with a fraudulent election?" Despite Belgium having about the same population as the mitten part of Michigan.

This terminology; U.S. Americans think "country" means the equivalent of 50 Belgiums.

And since it's in that *whole part of the world* responsible for the world wars and non-stop espionage and subversion. (As well as all that; colonization business.) This becomes a part of the overarching conversation.

"Why; if you can take over Belgium that way; you could take over the world!"

And so the question asked is; could the election have been subverted? If not by the "bit-flip" itself; then possibly using the bit-flip as a distraction. And analysts pointed to several breaks in the chain where subversion *could* happen that were not the big flip itself; the electronic records maybe being swapped; the physical records being swapped; and the entire voting registry being altered.

Despite that, there's an intense focus on only the bit-flip itself. Here's the thing; the big flip could be cause by any number of things; a cosmic ray is only a single possibility. (But a possibility nonetheless) more likely it was one of two things; hardware issues from a bit-overflow. *Or* A software issue. I'll cover these after the theories;

They *could* have been cause manually with a strong enough magnet; but more likely than not you'd see a lot more variables than the one being affected.

This could have been caused by a malicious attack known as a "bit-flipping attack". In which case; the attacker would have been much more precise and discreet.

Now, the hardware. Cause; a bit-flip can just occur sometimes. It's the source of the old adage; "have you tried turning it off and back on again" and with the volume of votes happening; that's potentially what happened. But I don't think it's that either.

I'm going to suggest that it was software. And this goes against the official report that says "It was not software".

Because; the software itself could *look* on the surface pristine. What they're actually saying is; "It wasn't a software issue that could be foreseen".

How do I write this so the layman can understand;

An "Integer" or a "natural number" [1,2,3,4...] Is the main way that a computer stores numeric data. It doesn't care about decimals, it doesn't care about fractions. Just simple counting numbers.

In computing, you can set a maximum number to display, *and* use numbers larger than that for other purposes. (Like displaying a minus sign for negative numbers)

However; in some languages: you can also add things that aren't numbers to a number and get some strange results.

Like characters [a,b,c,d,e...] Which are also stored in a computer as integer numbers. (Search for: [ASCII Character Chart] to see how they correlate.)

It's quite possible for a computer to get the wrong memory address for a variable (especially in C where you need to manually assign a lot of pointers {a pointer is a memory address for a variable}) or in older languages, like cobalt and Fortran, where you need to manually assign absolutely every memory address and pointer. (And open up a lot of mistakes)

<aside>Office space famously obfuscated funds sent to a personal count for Embezzling transaction funds. It was obfuscated because nobody understood Cobol or Fortran *even* back then.</aside>

However, we have two options when it comes to data storage and displaying the count of these votes.

It's not like they used a singular variable *only* for the entire count; no they stored each vote separately. And only displayed the vote after a digital tally of every vote. This is how they had one set of their backups to begin with.

They display an integer; sure. But they get that count from tallying every vote, which is essentially stored in a database. And instead of hand counting every vote. The computer hand counts every vote.

So this one single integer, bit-flip or not; had absolutely no impact on the overall count. It was simply an error displaying the total when officials performed the digital tally.

It would matter if you changed the entire display to run doom in the tally count display. Because you'd have to affect the entire backend database *AND* alter every single vote manually in order to subvert a thing.

Well, you could do it programmatically. But it'd take as long as it took to do the vote itself. And that would raise some obvious questions when officials went to check the counts.

[cyarsk52-20]

CULTURE, NEWS

20 More Songs That Almost Every Black Person Knows

Because we heard we missed a few of your favorites earlier this month.

by Leslie D. Rose

June 24, 2022 at 1:07 pm

A typical Saturday morning in a Black household between the ’70s to ’90s consisted of blaring soul music with sprinklings of hip-hop videos and a few episodes of shows like A Different World and Soul Train to the tune of cleaning the house. The music of the day made up a relevant portion of many Gen X and millennial childhoods, branching out to GenZ as traditions often do. Credit to these Saturday morning experiences is the intergenerational soundtrack to Black life.

To close out Black Music Month, and because we heard we missed a few of your favorites earlier this month, here are 20 more songs that almost every Black person knows.

1. "Killing Me Softly" by Roberta Flack/The Fugees

Roberta Flack recorded this song in the summer of 1973. The Grammy-nominated hit reached number three on the Billboard charts and went double platinum that year. Twenty-three years later, The Fugees put a hip-hop spin on the tune, topping charts in more than 20 countries.

Their version went triple platinum and is still listed as one of the top-selling songs in several countries. Even if every Black person can’t sing the song word for word, you are sure to hear enough people hollering “one time!” even if it’s Flack’s version playing. 

2. "Tyrone" by Erykah Badu

First of all, poor Tyrone. He didn’t do anything but come pick up his shiftless friend, and yet the name is now synonymous with a no-good boyfriend. Erykah Badu took over radio stations in 1997 with this freestyle-esque tune about a man she wanted gone from her home. Starting the song with the now-common phrase, “keep in mind, I’m an artist, and I’m sensitive about my s**t,” Badu likely had no clue she was creating the get-gone anthem of a generation.

3. "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now" by McFadden and Whitehead

Philadelphia artists McFadden and Whitehead created a backyard classic with this 1979 disco song about resilience and the release of negativity. Its intergenerational groove infused itself into the brains of Black folks young and old and is a feel-good song no matter how you slice it. 

4. "I'm Going Down" by Rose Royce/Mary J. Blige

Women have likely been crying it out to this song since its original release in 1976. In 1994, the queen of hip-hop and R&B soul, Mary J. Blige, did such an impeccable rendition of it on her My Life album that the two-decade-old song reigned in a few more tears from younger women. It was even prominently featured in a talent show episode of Sister, Sister.

5. "Sweet Love" by Anita Baker

If your mama didn’t blast Anita Baker on Saturday mornings, then did she really clean the house? There’s something about Black mothers and Anita Baker that is somewhat inexplicable. But because of this love, generations of Black folks can belt out the lyrics to many of her songs. “Sweet Love” is among the most popular and has even received a coveted New Orleans bounce version that can get a Louisiana nightclub popping.

6. "Can You Stand the Rain" by New Edition

New Edition was the soundtrack of many a Black person’s life. Their career began in the early 1980s, later revitalized in the mid-’90s with a successful legendary return in the mid-2010s. Among their many, many hits, this song seemed to resonate with a multi-generational audience, as it has the type of modulations that make up for a fun performance. An example of this type of fun is featured in the movie The Best Man Holiday. 

7. "My Girl" by The Temptations

This song is a historic artifact. It belongs to many of our grandparents, but because of its sweet nature and easy-to-remember lyrics, it’s a timeless classic that keeps ringing on. It was released in 1964 but has shown up over the years in many ways, even on popular sitcoms like Martin.

8. "Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud" by James Brown

This song may actually be the reason Black folks even identify with the word Black. Before this 1968 mega-hit, Black Americans were widely referred to as “negro.” Brown, with the help of this song, was key in ushering in the Black Power movement.

9. "This Christmas" by Donny Hathaway

It’s totally not Christmas until this song plays. It has to be played loudly and you are required to sing along. Released in 1970, this song is like a welcomed family member during the holidays. Mariah Carey creditedthe happy spirit of the song as a muse for her mega-hit “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” as Blavity previously reported. 

10. "Anniversary" by Tony! Toni! Toné!

These guys absolutely knew what they were doing when they made the undisputed anthem of celebrating marital bliss. There’s likely not a Black couple in the country who hasn’t at least once celebrated their anniversary ala Tony! Toni! Toné!.

11. "Make It Last Forever" by Keith Sweat and Jacci McGhee

When it comes to getting a crowd to sing in harmony at a nightclub, this is a DJ favorite. Released in 1987, this tune took over the hearts of young lovers and helped cement Keith Sweat’s legacy as a R&B legend and New Jack Swing sub-genre pioneer. In 1998, Mariah Carey remixed her song “Thank God I Found You” to incorporate the classic featuring Nas and Joe.

12. "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday" by G. C. Cameron/Boyz II Men

This song is a prominent part of the 1975 film Cooley High, which starred Glynn Turman, who later went on to play Col. Taylor on A Different World. Since its recording, the song has become synonymous with final goodbyes. It was covered by Boyz II Men in 1991 for their album Cooleyhighharmony. During the last episode of A Different World, the main cast joined together to sing it as a way to end the show and a nod to the movie that popularized it as the star was among them. 

13. "Happy" by Pharrell Williams

This song took over everything, everywhere in 2014. Released as the only single from the Despicable Me 2 soundtrack, people of all ages quickly found themselves singing and clapping. It became a social media trend and the tune landed itself some major accolades like spending more than a year on charts across the world.

14. "Empire State of Mind" by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys

Anytime anyone sets out to create an anthem, they’re either going to fail miserably or win like nobody’s business. This ode to New York City did the latter and continues to be a mega praise piece for the concrete jungle. It’s also the foundation for a great inside joke among Black folks, and you know what we mean, Lil Mama.

15. "I'm Every Woman" by Chaka Khan/Whitney Houston

Chaka Khan recorded this song in 1978. It has since been sampled in multiple genres more than 20 times. It was famously covered by Whitney Houston in 1992 for The Bodyguard soundtrack. Houston’s version featured a fun video with other women singers including Khan, who did background vocals on that version. In her 1993-1994 season, Oprah Winfrey used a modified version for her talk show’s promos and opening credits. 

16. "Respect" by Aretha Franklin

Another anthem, this song was written by Otis Redding and originally recorded by him in 1965. It blew up when it was rearranged and covered by the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, in 1967. Adding the necessary amount of sass and spelling out the word made Franklin’s version one for the history books. It shows up often in pop culture, including a fun episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

17. "Juicy" The Notorious B.I.G.

Maybe your grandmother doesn’t exactly know the words to this early Biggie hit, but she might know the hook because it’s a direct sample of Mtume’s 1983 song “Juicy Fruit.” The original song spent eight weeks on the Billboard Hot Black Singles chart. “Juicy” solidified Biggie’s career and has been hailed as one of the greatest rap songs of all time. 

18. "One Love" by Bob Marley

​​

Thanks to ’90s television promotions for the island of Jamaica, this song has had an extended shelf life far beyond its original recording. Unfortunately, Bob Marley didn’t get to see the commercial success of his music since he actually never had a top Billboard hit in his lifetime. His family famously sued Raising Canes Chicken Fingers for infringement in 2013, as the restaurant had been using the phrase “one love” as its trademark. 

19. "Hip Hop Hooray" by Naughty by Nature

Once a song gets covered by The Muppets, it’s a clear choice for an intergenerational bop. This 1992 rap mantra was another feather in the trio’s hip-hop anthem hat. The certified platinum song landed itself on the U.S. pop chart at number eight and also found itself scattered among other charts internationally. 

20. "Alright" by Kendrick Lamar

This song became the unofficial theme song for Black rights. Maybe everyone doesn’t know the verses, but “we gon’ be alright” is certainly chanted by varying age groups at protests. What’s interesting is that the lyrics don’t exactly match a civil rights movement, but the hook was enough to infuse the tune into the struggle.

Black Music Month is a time to celebrate the contributions of Black artists to the music industry. What better tribute to this than showcasing how these artists have infused their work into the very fabric of our cultural existence.

Sent from my iPhone

[thebibliosphere]

Hey I uhh spent a while looking through your health tag and I was wondering how do you manage to have the language to talk about your pain. To describe how it feels and where because right now I am a puddle of pain and can barely think well enough to to type this out let alone talk about my pain in a way that makes sense to someone who might be able to help or give advice.

I'm sorry to hear that :(

Unfortunately, Tumblr wiped out a bunch of the chronic pain tags when they did their NSFW purge, but I learned how to advocate for myself from other chronic illness bloggers, and also by working with a physical therapist (his tag on here is #magic physio man) who helped me to distinguish between different types of pain (sharp vs dull, acute vs chronic, radiating vs localized) and also how to rate them appropriately on those chronic pain chart doctor's have, taking into account that my baseline tolerance is much higher than the average person who doesn't live daily with chronic pain.

So say my baseline is a 5 daily, a new pain might push me to an overall 8, which is what I should relate to my doctor, not that the new pain is only a 3. If that makes sense. He got me to use the Defense and Veterans Pain Rating Scale to describe my pain, which is actually one of the more helpful pain scales out there:

Link to download PDF here (x)

Not every physician will be familiar with this scale, and you don't even need to tell them which scale you're using (I don't. Some doctors get surly over patients bringing this sort of thing to their own appointment, so I wait to see how they handle my care first before I bring my own resources to them), but it gives you the language to better convey your pain in terms the physician will relate to, and also what number you are realistically at.

From what you're describing to me just now, you're in the severe zone where your ability to focus is impeded. If I were telling a physician this, I would let them know my pain is around a 7-8, making it hard to focus, and prevents my ability to do daily tasks.

I would then describe what kind of pain it is, i.e.

Radiating: not in one place, possibly body-wide

Localized: restricted to a certain area, e.g. a toothache

Acute: sudden onset, usually from an illness or injury or surgery

Chronic: has lasted over 12 weeks, possibly a result of injury/illness or an unknown cause. (migraines fall into this category) Followed by a descriptor like:

Achy

Stiff

Burning

Stabbing or piercing

Raw

Cramping

Throbbing

Tiring

Heavy

Tender (sensitive to touch)

Shooting

Sickening

Other things they will ask include:

Does anything make it better/worse? What pain relief methods have you tried? Does it get worse throughout the day? Does it prevent you from getting restful sleep? How does this affect your mood? I'm sure I've missed something, but I hope some of that is helpful for you and maybe gives you some of the language needed to advocate for your pain. Take care, and I hope you get relief soon!

[andmaybegayer]

Last Monday of the Week 2022-10-03

Several parts for a project got lost in the mail and if I don't blow up a motor doing something ill-advised with transistors soon I'm going to become the Joker.

Listening: I went to see the Ndlovu Youth Choir, a youth music group out of Limpopo who became extremely well known after they got on America's Got Talent a few years ago. Great style, they do a wide array of different styles and songs over a pretty wide time period, here's two songs:

Reading: Mostly scraps of SCP stuff, but a bad week for reading

Watching: Finished Arcane. God damn. Yes I know it's been like a year since that came out shut up.

It's so good. The animation is beautiful, it's so carefully considered, there's so few shortcuts taken. There's a scene where Jayce throws up on the bridge and it's a really close shot that sells the physicality of vomiting so well, it's messy and unpleasant. Another studio might have cut to a really long silhouette shot for that kind of thing. The Ekko/Jinx fight might be one of the best fights in the show. Even basic conversations have thoughtful blocking and framing, very little simple shot/reverse, there's always a focus on body parts and movements.

It's very predictable, which is probably because it's very character driven and the characters don't change much, you could write a comprehensive study of most characters on a post-it. There's a few major pivotal moments and twists for a few characters which are huge, but for the most part you can just run what you know about them forward to predict what happens next. Even having no knowledge of LoL you can guess that the Firelighters are led by Ekko in like zero seconds.

Jinx and Jayce are the main sources of unpredictability but that's because she's Da Joker Baby and paranoid and has psychosis, and he's a very smart boy who doesn't know what he's doing so the moment someone suggests any kind of solution to him he immediately does it without thinking.

Every single characters' design slaps. They did not make the mistake of trying to be sensible. Why is the cop uniform kind of demure but hot in a sexy maid kind of way? How does Jinx maintain twin braids longer than she is while also being on fire some of the time? How does Ekko fight with all that stuff on? These are not questions to ask. The question to ask is how fucking cool does this look and the answer is very.

The levels of tragedy are off the charts. Every second episode there's an opportunity for things to be resolved and for peace to succeed and everyone to talk and it doesn't happen ever.

Viktor and Jayce should have fucked at some point if only to make the breakup even worse.

Playing: Brought my desktop's storage back online so I have somewhere to put games again, but I haven't actually done much with it. Fortunately since I moved to Arch again my Proton is more stable, I got Ace Combat working under Linux.

Making: weekend making time was lost to a number of minor emergencies, but I did have to pop a door off its hinges because the lock completely failed which was fun. Unfortunately it was the door to the toolshed so I had to scrabble together the tools to do said pin popping from whatever tools I keep in my desk.

Tools and Equipment: Treating a minor injury in the family so here's a reminder to check your first aid kits, I had to run out and grab a bunch of non-absorbing gauze because we were all out.

I'm currently in the process of stocking a more severe trauma care kit for the family because my dad is on anti-clotting and blood thinning medication for a while which makes all his wounds one level of severity worse, so also learn how to use Chest Seals and Tourniquets, there's good online resources but you can probably also find a Stop The Bleed training course near you, it's a big international programme.

[thegardenchronicles]

Astrology in Harry Potter

Decoding Harry's Birth Chart

Harry Potter made my childhood, so I thought it would be interesting to combine my love of astrology with it. Obviously, Divination in Harry Potter seems a bit 'wooly' as Hermione puts it. Though, there are several instances where it actually seems accurate.

One of those seems like our favorite main character's birth chart. In my opinion, it makes a lot of sense. So let's get into it!

First, we need to calculate Harry's Birth Chart. Of course, we do not know his exact birth time or his birth location, but we can take a guess.

The Harry Potter Fandom page says:

"Harry James Potter was born on 31 July 1980, at Godric's Hollow in the West Country, England, only hours after his classmate-to-be Neville Longbottom."

For his present-day birth location, The Harry Potter Lexicon states:

"Godric’s Hollow is located in the West Country of southwestern England (DH16), putting it in the heart of perhaps the most wizarding-friendly region in Britain. Ottery St. Catchpole is in this area, as are Cornwall, Devon, several Quidditch teams, and a number of known Quidditch stadiums built on the abundant local moors. We have a couple of more specific clues that could lead us to its location as well:

Godric Gryffindor is described as being from “wild moor” (GF12), suggesting again the rural nature of the town.

Hagrid’s flight from Godric’s Hollow to Surrey after picking up Harry takes him over Bristol (PS1), suggesting that the town is located in the northern region of the West Country, near Exmoor and not far from the Bristol Channel. There is some question as to where Hagrid was actually flying from, however – see Steve Vander Ark’s essay Is Godric’s Hollow in Wales? for more."

For the purposes of making his birth chart, let's assume that he was born in or near Exmoor in West Country, UK.

Because I am a nerd, here is a Google Map of a plausible route Hagrid may have taken to deliver Harry to the Dursley's.

So we have the Birth Date and the Birth Location, though we still do not have the Birth Time. However, in the Goblet of Fire Chapter 14, as Alice Sparkly Kat states, Harry gives us a clue to what his rising could be:

"......'Why don't you get stabbed in the back by someone you thought was a friend?'

'Yeah....cool....' said Harry, scribbling it down, 'because.... Venus is in the twelfth house.' "

Here, Harry and Ron are making their astrological predictions for the month of October in 1994 as their Divination homework. Looking at the Venus transits for that year, we see that Venus is in Scorpio. Since Venus is in his 12th house as he states, we can come to the conclusion that Harry is a late Scorpio rising or early Sagittarius rising.

Sure, Harry is spontaneous and rash in his decision making, but he is also always thrust to the center of attention against his will, which he does not enjoy most of the time. He is also quite observant and has great intuition. He is a shy, quiet kid and likes nothing more than his peace, no matter how much he does not get it, and can be quite a judgemental character. Therefore, I like thinking of Harry as a late Scorpio rising. I put in his birth time at 1600, thus giving him this chart:

(Exmoor seems like too small of a town to be on the Location list, so I put in Somerset, which is the county Exmoor falls under.)

So now we know Harry's big 3 :

Leo Sun in the 8th house

Aries Moon in the 4th house

Late Scorpio or early Sagittarius Rising

(I'm not taking the degrees into consideration since we don't have his exact birth time.)

Sun in Leo ~ 8th House

I think we all know that Harry is the sterotypical Leo Sun. He is always attracting attention, good or bad, whether he likes it or not. I mean, the boy's famous for love's sake. It being in the 8th house brings with it the matters of the occult and death, which is a huge part of Harry's life. He likes his secrecy, always taking out the invisibility cloak, especially in the 4th book, when he goes to Hogsmeade wearing it, so that he can stay away from the criticism he received after his name came out of the goblet.

That isn't to say of course, that Harry didn't like some attention. There were times when he pictured himself winning the Quidditch cup or something, but that was just plain Leo behavior. Besides, most of the time, he wanted to impress some girl, whether is was Cho or Ginny, which could partly be the result of his Gemini Venus in the 7th.

One a more serious note, I noticed that he has his Sun squaring his Chiron. Pain is part of Harry's life, unfortunately he has to deal with it, and it takes him a lot of healing throughout the series, to accept completely what his destiny is.

Moon in Aries ~ 4th House

Harry's Aries moon sits all alone at the bottom of his chart. It feels lonely, just like Harry does, all misunderstood, because no one has to go through what he does, no one understands him. Everything that he has to face, he thinks he has to do it alone. His moon in the 4th as well as his 8th house influence in his chart only further enhances this secrecy. Moreover, Harry is also quite hot-headed, he is quick to anger, just like the sterotypical Aries.

Coming to the aspects, what stands out to me is that his Moon is in opposition to his Saturn. This confirms Harry's daddy issues, as well as his trouble with authority figures. (But more on that later.) His Moon is also in opposition to his Midheaven, signifying again, how Harry values his privacy and would love to stay out of the public eye.

Ascendant in Scorpio

Harry's Uranus is conjunct his Ascendant, which reminds me greatly of the varying opinions people in general have of Harry. For the majority, Harry, being as famous as he is, is always regarded as some great, renowned individual and people mostly have a respected opinion of him, except maybe Snape and Malfoy of course. But this opinion is never really constant, as we know from quite a few examples from the books.

In the Chamber of Secrets, children start to be afraid of Harry since they think he has been killing Muggle-Borns. But once it has been confirmed that he has in fact, not been killing anyone, they return to the pleasant opinion they have of him.

Once again, in the Goblet of Fire, after Harry's name comes out of the goblet, people take offence, thinking that Harry just wants some more attention to himself. He has to endure taunts and insults from all the houses for weeks, until they quiet down by the end of the first task.

In the Order of the Phoenix, Harry has to go through the entire year looking like some unstable child who just wants to cause trouble mostly by the Ministry, but when they realise he was saying the truth all along, they are on his side again.

A thing to note is that Uranus being in his 12th house, (and Uranus being an outer planet anyway) gives this external but unwanted influence to Harry's ascendant. None of the opinions formed arise from Harry's direct actions, but rather from some external force that twist and distort their perception of him repeatedly.

10th House Stellium

Harry has Saturn, Mars and Pluto in the 10th house. These are extremely intense and powerful planets to be situated at the top of his chart, but it resonates completely.

The Mars-Pluto conjunction makes for a determined, strong and passionate individual who is capable of many great things. Being in Libra, he is a fair person, who strongly believes in good over evil.

Pluto in Libra signifies fairness and justice. Libra is the sign of the scales, balance and two sides. So it seems relevant that the entire premise of Harry Potter is the fight between the good and the bad.

Under The Influence of Saturn

In the Goblet of Fire, during Divination, Professor Trelawney tells Harry:

"I was saying, my dear, that you were clearly born under the baleful influence of Saturn,' said Professor Trelawney, a faint note of resentment in her voice at the fact that he had obviously not been hanging on her words.

'Born under – what, sorry?' said Harry.

'Saturn, dear, the planet Saturn!' said Professor Trelawney, sounding definitely irritated that he wasn't riveted by this news.

'I was saying that Saturn was surely in a position of power in the heavens at the moment of your birth ... your dark hair ... your mean stature ... tragic losses so young in life ... I think I am right in saying, my dear, that you were born in mid-winter?'

'No,' said Harry, 'I was born in July.'

Ron hastily turned his laugh into a hacking cough."

Trelawney, knowing what she does about Harry and his life comes to the conclusion that Saturn plays a significant role in his life, however, unfortunately, resorts to Sun Signs, obviously thinking that Harry is a Capricorn.

Saturn as a planet is about lessons and challenges, as well as authority figures and fathers, and we know Harry's relationship with these all too well.

Harry longs to have a father figure, and so, whenever a certain male figure comes into his life, he gets too attached, blinded by his love or admiration for them, without seeing them in their true form. We see this in his attachment with Lupin, Sirius, Dumbledore and even his idea of his father James, which he is adamant about even after Snape continually talks about James as though he were a, should we say "swine"?

Speaking of Snape, it's quite interesting that Snape is a Capricorn as well as an authority figure (hello Saturn) who Harry probably has the most trouble with, after Voldemort.

Voldemort himself is a Capricorn and again, that Saturn influence playing a big role in Harry's life.

We also talked about the Moon-Saturn opposition, once again displaying the effect Saturn has in his life, and if Harry were a Sagittarius Rising, it would be safe to say that the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction would only add to that influence.

Another thing to note, Saturn is conjunct his Midheaven, bringing him the challenges that he has to face early on in his life, which the vast majority is aware of.

And sure, I suppose Saturn can give a lean, thin and dark stature, as far as physical appearance goes.

Therefore, Trelawney was right in thinking that Saturn influenced a lot of Harry's life, however, blinded by her need to please people by giving them a more concrete understanding of astrology, she resorted to giving a very surface level answer. (Alice Sparkly Kat explains this beautifully here.)

This is in no way a complete chart analysis, it's just what I found interesting.

What do you think of Harry's chart? Any placements that stand out to you?

Would you like to see some charts of other Harry Potter characters? Maybe i'll turn it into a series! Let me know!

pictures: 1 2 3

[pinky-the-polar-bear]

…[offers you disco bear] him…gib me ur disco bear

Excellent choice!

Disco Bear isn't his birth name. That honor (or dishonor, if you're Disco) goes to Barry Honeysuckle. He legally changed it to his stage name at the height of his fame.

Why? Because his home life sucked. His parents never approved of anything he did, let alone disco music. They saw it as a stupid fad that would fizzle out and leave Disco without a job. Plus, they never believed he would be a successful musician. But did that stop Disco? Nope! He pursued his dreams and became a one-hit wonder.

The one hit he managed to get was massively successful. It hit #1 on several charts all over the world, including his home country. To this day, he still earns royalties every time his song is played on the radio. Thanks to this, he quickly earned himself a spot amongst the hot disco singers. This man used his newfound fame and fortune to party like the animal he was.

Beautiful women would have one night stands with him, he'd get higher than a kite on cocaine and booze, and he'd pull all sorts of crazy stunts in the midst of his drugged up stupor. But just like every other celebrity, his days in the spotlight were numbered. Disco music fizzled out of popularity and was replaced by the next hot genre. On top of this, Disco developed a nasty addiction towards cocaine. In fact, he needed to go to rehab after he nearly overdosed on it.

Sure, rehab fixed his dependence on cocaine, but there was now a void in his heart where cocaine used to be. He took his loss of relevance poorly. Prior to his worsening addiction, he had a woman who actually loved him for more than his fortune and fame. His feelings towards her were mutual. Sadly, his obsession with drugs left her no choice but to burn this bridge permanently. After she walked away from Disco, he never saw her again. By the time he conquered his addiction, he knew he fucked up majorly. Knowing he'd never have her love or affection again killed him inside.

That's when he moved to Happy Tree Town. Almost dying to cocaine was a rude awakening for him in more ways than one. As an effort to hold onto as much of his net worth as possible, he sold everything he didn't need anymore and moved to Happy Tree Town. But living in a small town hardly improved his life. He ended up spending over a decade going through the motions. He'd hit on women, get rejected, and drink his sorrows away. Because of where he resided, he also had to deal with the curse placed on Happy Tree Town. However, just like everything else, that merely became a part of his routine.

Suddenly, Pop decided to befriend Disco out of nowhere. I'm sure you guys know the rest, but in a nutshell, they bonded over being middle-aged losers hanging on by a thread. In a twist of fate, they even fell in love.

Nowadays, Disco is much happier with his husband and spiritual son. As a result of growing more confidence in himself and his identity, he became a drag queen on the side, much to Fuzzy's embarrassment.

[keilemlucent]

I saw your requests were open and this thought has been on my mind FOREVER- I saw you wanted some Gang Orca asks and I'm his slut so- He has a mutant quirk which gives him animal characteristics like how it does with Hawks right? Okay now hear me out; Gang Orca going into rut. How does his demeanor change? Does he stoically sort it out himself or does he call y/n and ask you to come over? What is his behavior like pre and post rut? 👀 Okay- thanks for thinking with me 💀(I love you btw, thanks♡)

okay first off, THANK U for this request, i once again get to indulge my monster-fucker tendencies

second off, THANK YOU for the love, i tried to fulfill this one with a bit of world building!!!

warnings: rut cycles, a wittle monsterfucking, no actual smut, opulent interior design

----

You swallowed down your anxieties as you stood in front of the door to Kugo’s quiet, residential home. The gardens were preened to perfection, the walkup clear of any fallen leaves or seeds.

You had a small suitcase with you, all of your essentials and several outfits, though based on what Kugo described to you, they were inconsequential at the end of the day.

It was unlikely you’d be wearing anything most of the month you were staying with him. 

It was scary, at first, when Kugo sat you down and explained more of the intricacies of his anatomy. You’d seen his cock already, but you didn’t truly know how far his animalistic traits ran at that point. 

You worked at Kugo’s agency as a PA for his publicist, so it wasn’t hard for him to pull some strings and get you an entire month off to be there for his summertime rut. 

You’d learned, through his rolling bass and gentle words, that the whole biological process was one of the reasons he wasn’t higher on the hero charts. Being knocked out out of the field for nearly five weeks each year took a toll on his numbers and popularity, especially since he wasn’t particularly open about the reasons for his absence. 

It was all daunting, but you stepped up to help your partner without question.

Kugo had prepped the week prior, calling you at least once a day to sweetly ask your preferences and opinions on particularly... weird things. 

“What are your favorite smells? Textures?”

“Do you have an aversion to any types of tastes?”

“How good is your hearing on a scale of one to ten?”

You’d been exercising more at his request as well, slowly pushing your stamina to be at least a bit more solid.

(Not like it was going to matter, Kugo was going to break and ruin you even if he tried him damndest to be gentle and cautious. You knew that going in.)

Once again, you swallowed, this time forcing your fear back down your throat.

You rang his doorbell.

It only took a moment for him to answer, the door opening with more force than you’d expect. 

You both took sharp inhales.

Kugo was barely dressed, just a tight-fitting t-shirt and sports joggers. You tried not to stare, you really did, but when you caught the outline of his tapered cock, your breath caught hard in the back of your throat.

“(Y/N),” He gestured inside. “Come in, please.”

He’d leased a new home for his rut this year. He wouldn’t tell you why, but as soon as you stepped in the door, you understood.

The house seemed to be one floor, all rooms off a main atrium and living space. It was grandiose, well-furnished with hard-looking stone and bright fixtures. The center of the room held the focal of it all.

A massive pool.

Gurgling, blue-lit water swirled in the tiled pool, different lips and varying heights of cement visible underneath the ripples. There was a floating basket tethered to one of the side. Even from your distance, you could see the large bottle of oil-based lube, differently elegant bottles of oils, ear plugs and other assorted and very necessary items.

(This did include, you noted, a slick black collar you and Kugo had used a few times. You rubbed your thighs together at the thought.)

You leaned into Kugo’s side, staring the opulence of the whole set up, “This is... amazing, Kugo.”

He hummed, seemingly calm, but you could feel the sweat coating his skin already, “Overwhelmed, I assume?”

“A little, but it’ll pass,” You leaned up on your tiptoes to press a kiss to his slick cheek, though you weren’t able to pull away much. Kugo’s hands, clawed and curled, circled your waist and dragged you close. You could feel his cock, hard and writhing against your thigh.

You gulped as your feet were lifted off the ground, Kugo nuzzling into your neck and nipping, though the pressure and sharpness of his teeth were more than enough to get you gasping and squirming.

“It will,” He placed a kiss under your ear. He palmed as your ass, rolling his hips lightly against your own as you hooked your thighs around his waist.

There was something heady about it all, warmth prickling over your skin as your eyes went half-lidded. You vaguely noticed you were already dripping slick, despite hardly being touched.

Kugo sharply inhaled, growling and gripping under your ass, squeezing and walking into the threshold of the atrium as you clung to him.

“Let me show you how well I can take of you, dear,” Despite the sweetness of his words, his tone was low and rumbling. You keened, tucking into his neck as he slowly descended into the pool, not even bothering to disrobe.

You had no doubt he’d show you plenty during that month. 

[tinyboxxtink]

"Weird Secret Friends" *Chapter 14*

Chapter 13

Chapter 15

This chapter literally took me all day, and it's kinda super long, but since I'm only going to 15 it had to be done. Also, I wanted to get a certain part and all the bullshit detail action needs to be written before we get there so I just kept writing to get there. Lulz.

Tag List

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@mrsrafaelbarba

Okay and can I just say about the Goodbye Love thing it was in my head since I had her say "I need to go away".

This was supposed to be the preview:

Mimi Please don't touch me Understand I'm scared I need to go away

Mark I know a place - a clinic

Benny A rehab?

Mimi Maybe - could you?

Benny I'll pay

And this is for chapter 15: Mimi Goodbye love Goodbye love Came to say goodbye, love, goodbye Just came to say Goodbye love Goodbye love Goodbye love Hello disease....

*DUN DUN DUNNNN*

---------------------

The next thing you knew you were waking up in another room. This one was more lavish and beautiful; the sunset was peeking through green silk curtains with a matching chaise lounge. You were now in pink silk pajamas as opposed to a hospital gown, and you weren’t hooked up to near as many wires. Just a pack attached to your arm linked to your sides.

“What the…?” You cautiously crept out of bed, examining the room.

So many questions flew through your mind at that moment. How did you get here? Where exactly were you? Who the hell changed you while you were passed out? It was too much to imagine. You walked over to the full length mirror and examined yourself. You were still semi pale, but you looked pretty damn good for just having surgery this morning.

You walked back towards your bed where your phone was laying on the nightstand. You went to check your messages when you saw the date-- it had been three days. THREE DAYS?

“What the actual fuck--?” You muttered.

Were you in a Black Mirror episode? How did you lose three whole days of your life?! You began to panic, making you pace the room. Wasn’t there a button you could do? You quickly looked around the room for anything, but all you found was a TV remote.

“Oh are you fucking--” You started to curse the world when you saw a little drawing of a nurse on one of the buttons. You frantically pushed it until a girl who looked like she was a nurse out of a porno as opposed to a hospital came running in.

“Oh my god, I thought you were like, dying or something,” She rolled her eyes and twirled her hair like she was a teenage stereotype.

“Where the hell am I? Why am I---”

“Okay you need to like, chill babe,” Nurse Betty put her hands up. “

“I’m not your babe, mmkay pumpkin? We are not friends,” You pushed her hands down. “Now why don’t you get your little chart and explain to me what’s going on in the Twilight Zone?”

“Alright, well--” She whipped out a mini tablet from her scrubs and flipped through it. “You got here three days ago with an order to keep you in a medically induced coma-- Ooooh, wow that sounds like some soap opera shit. Where your organs harvested on the black market?”

“WHAT?” You grabbed the tablet. That DID sound like some soap opera shit. “You read the tablet, all it said was the details about the coma and then FILES SEALED.

“Can you-- unlock this, please?” You shoved the tablet back in her hands.

“Um no, you need a supervisor for that babe,”

“Can you please get someone to unlock this then, BABE?” Your eye began to twitch from stress.

“Yeah, sure I’ll try,” She shrugged and walked back out of the room. You continued to pace faster now, googling “HARVESTED ORGANS ON THE BLACK MARKET”, when a doctor came in wearing navy blue scrubs, looking like Derek Shepherd.

“Well hey there, beautiful,” He grinned at you.

“...What is happening?” You muttered, staring at him. He was gorgeous, you’d probably be more flustered if you weren’t so freaked out and pissed off.

“What kind of soap opera hospital is this?!” You scowled.

“Hey, just because we take care of ourselves around here doesn’t mean it’s Grey’s Anatomy up here,” He made a face.

“...Could’ve fooled me, McDreamy,”

“....Just because my name is Derek doesn’t mean I’m that tool,” He frowned.

“Oh my god you’re kidding me right?” You had to laugh at the irony.

“You’re probably just grumpy because you haven’t eaten for three days,” He patted your head. “How about a nice filet mignon?”

“Wha…?” You looked around the room in disbelief. “How about you tell me where I am and how I got here?”

“You’re at Whistling Pines Hospital and Rehabilitation Center in Hartford Connecticut, Miss Y/N,”

“Connecticut?!” You gasped. “Sonny said it was just upstate New York. Jesus Christ he sent me out of state?!”

“Calm yourself,” Derek put a hand on your shoulder. “We’re basically on the state line, Mr. Carisi didn’t send you to Siberia,”

“...And why exactly was I brought here against my will?” You crossed your arms.

“Against your will?” He snorted. “Your paperwork says you requested to be out while you recovered so you wouldn’t be tempted to ask for pain meds or anything. Part of the detox, you understand,”

“Detox?” Your face scrunched. “Seriously? So...so now what, you escort me down to the padded room now that I’m healed?”

“No, no of course not,” He shook his head. “Our rehab rooms are much nicer than this. And yours is all ready for you,”

“....Yeah, alright,” You shrugged, looking around the room.

“Wonderful,” He gave you another 100 watt smile before opening the door and motioning you to follow him. You walked for a while through what seemed like a normal hospital wing, then you came to two large doors that said “REHABILITATION WING”.

Derek opened it and let you go through first, into a beautiful lobby. The walls were made of marble, there was a koi pond with a waterfall in the middle of it, sparkling water stations next to big leather chairs. It was like a spa.

“Wow...” You whispered as you admired it while you walked.

“Yes, I know,” He chuckled. “It’s quite impressive, isn’t it?”

“Yeah…” You began to feel guilty; how much was this costing Sonny? This place looked like it cost the down payment on a house to stay in. You followed Derek down a hallway that looked like a hotel room hallway more than a rehab center, until he stopped at a door labelled 312.

“Ah here we are,” He opened the door and let you go inside first once again. It was an even more lavish room than you woke up in. A nice king bed with fluffy pillows and silk comforters were covered with extra blankets if you needed them. There was a huge sofa in front of a large screen TV, and a little kitchenette with a small fridge, cabinets, a dishwasher, and a microwave.

“....Wow,” You continued to stare in awe at the luxurious amenities this place had.

“Indeed,” Derek smiled. “Now, the TV comes loaded with digital cable and all the streaming services. Our WIFI password is LIVELAUGHLOVE, the fridge is stocked with organic, healthy foods only, but if you’d like to request something you can give our front desk a ring,”

You just nodded as you checked out the room.

“Now,” He cleared his throat. “For the icky part,”

“...The icky part?” You sputtered with a sarcastic smile. “Where did you go to medical school, Sesame Street?”

“Ha ha,” He rolled his eyes. “You will need to stay in your room at all times unless it’s social time, or group time. We do have several common areas such as a pool and a gym, but you’ll need to schedule times to use them, you can’t just walk around on your own,”

“Ah,” You nodded. “So it is a prison, just a very nice prison,”

“It’s not a prison, Miss Y/N,” He shook his head. “Not for you, anyway,”

“Really? Because it sounds like--”

“Your cousin did pay for your residency here, but you’re not under a court order or anything so you’re not confined here. Most of our residents have to be here several months before they’re even allowed out of their rooms at all, you should consider yourself lucky,”

“...Right,” You rolled your eyes. “Where is my cousin, anyway?” You asked. “Is he back at the hospital in New York?”

“Excuse me?” He looked at you in confusion. “I’m not sure I understand,”

“Oh I guess it’s been a few days,” You thought out loud. “He must have gone home by now,”

“...Well I’d sure hope so,” He chuckled.

“So..” You took a seat on the couch. “What am I doing now, warden?”

“Well like I said, I can have food sent up to you if you’re hungry,” He explained as he handed you your own tablet. “We have these for you so you can browse our menu for food and amenities,”

“Mmmkay…”

“Tomorrow’s social time is at 10 am, and your group therapy is at noon,”

“..Uh huh,” You nodded as you absent mindedly flipped through the menu.

“It’s mandatory,” He added.

“...Right,”

“Wonderful,” He beamed. “Now your bathroom is there, obviously,” He nodded to a door on the other side of the room. “It has a shower with three different pressures, and a spa bathtub. I recommend you take a long hot bath and relax, the first night is usually the hardest to get used to.

“Right…”

“Alright well I’ll leave you to it,” He nodded at you with another dreamy smile.

He walked out and left you to your own devices. You walked over to the drawers and pulled them out. They were full of your clothes, how did they get these so fast? It was so bizarre all of this happened while you were out, it really did seem like some kind of episode out of Dynasty or something.

You decided to call Sonny and get some things sorted out. You picked up your phone and dialed his number and let it ring.

“Oh hey...you, how you feelin’?”

“I’m good,” You went and sat on the bed. “How are you feeling?”

“Me? I’m good,”

“Really? Not sore or anything?”

“What? OH-- Yeah, y’know, of course, obviously,”

“...Thanks so much for this, Sonny. It’s gorgeous here,”

“Anytime….sweetie,”

“Is um, is Rafael doing better? Do you know?”

“Uh he’s...he’s fine, I’m sure,”

“...Well that’s good,”

“I’ll be up there next week to see you, you hang in there okay?”

“...Yeah, alright,”

“Night darlin’, you sleep well. I love you,”

“Love you too,”

Sonny hung up the phone and glanced over at Rafael who was busy writing his closing arguments for their case tomorrow.

“....Who was that?” He raised an eyebrow.

“Niece,” He lied.

“Mmm,”

“...How are you feelin’, by the way Barba?”

“Carisi, we’re not discussing anything personal, ever again. I told you that,” He grumbled, not looking up from his desk. He winced in pain every so often when he pulled on his stitches while writing.

“...Right,” He nodded sadly. He did feel guilty about all of this, but he knew in a few weeks it wouldn’t matter. You’d both forget about each other and move on, it was for the best.

--------

The next day you woke up and felt this overwhelming sense of dread. It was like everything had finally caught up to you, all the memory of how you got here came back to you. You missed Rafael almost immediately, Sonny’s words about how you had traumatized him rang in your head.

You wanted so desperately to call him and apologize, tell him how you would have never hurt him on purpose, and that all you wanted to do was make it up to him-- but you knew you had no way of doing that, and there was nothing you could do about it.

Your tablet began to go off, alarms for SOCIAL TIME were set on it. You tried to turn it off, but apparently a counselor had to do it when you arrived. Sneaky bastards. You sighed and pulled on some PJ pants, trying to ignore the blaring sound. You stomped out of your room and down the hall, down some stairs to a huge room labelled “REC ROOM.”

“Welcome Y/N!” A bright and cheery nurse came over and greeted you. “We have lots of activities for you here,” She began to show you around. “We have arts and crafts, several board games, and the Cards Against Humanity rounds get quite rowdy!”

“...Right,” You nodded softly, feeling more and more hopeless as you saw all the other “residents” mingling-- and by mingling, meaning most of them were walking around like soulless zombies. Was this your life now?

----

One Week Later

“Hey…” You saw Rafael laying down in front of you, reaching out for your hand. You took it, not believing this was real.

“I love you, Y/N…” He smiled at you, his green eyes sparkling.

“I love you too Rafael..”

You shot up in bed, it happened again. You had been having the same dream ever since you had gotten to Whistling Pines. It felt so real, especially when you touched his hand. And you always woke up alone, stuck in your prison. Never to see Rafael ever again; It was torture. No matter how fancy the prison was, it was still a prison. You looked at the clock on your bedside table- 3:30 am. You wondered what Rafael was doing at that moment-- well, probably sleeping, duh. Or maybe he was up late, working on law stuff.

You wondered if he was thinking about you, if he ever thought about you. He didn’t seem angry the last time you saw him, in fact you were pretty sure you remembered him holding you and crying. Well, like Sonny said he was probably just upset having to see someone like that again. But-- something inside told you that you didn’t leave on bad terms. Maybe you had been too quick to just delete and block his number. But it was too late to do anything about that now. You laid back down and cried yourself back to sleep for the fifth time that night.

=============

Two weeks later

Sonny drove up to Hartford early Friday morning, hoping to get back to the city that night. He signed in at the front desk, muttering obscenities under his breath. He paced the lobby waiting for you, trying to keep his calm. Finally you emerged from the big double doors: You were dressed in a t-shirt that used to be tight, but now it draped on your shoulders. Your hip hugger jeans were more like men’s jeans, hanging off your pelvis. Your hair was pulled into a messy ponytail and you had no makeup on. You walked over to Sonny who crossed his arms at the sight of you.

“Hey, Sunshine…” He pulled you into a tight hug, your face barely moved into a small smile.

“Can we talk?” He asked as he led you to one of the leather couches.

“Sure,” You nodded like a robot as you sat next to him.

“So Sunshine,” He sighed. “They tell me you haven’t uh, been doin’ so hot,”

“Oh, have they?” You mumbled, playing with a hole in your jeans.

“Yeah they said you’re not eating, you skip the group, you won’t talk to anybody,” He put a hand on your knee. “Is everything okay? Is it your new liver? The diabetes kicking yer ass?”

“...No, I’m fine,” You shrugged feebly.

“....Seriously?” He removed his hand, his soft tone gone. “So, nothing’s wrong with you physically? You’re just being a brat?”

“Excuse me?” You suddenly blinked in surprise.

“Here I came up here because I was worried somethin’ was really wrong with you, like you were rejecting the donation or-- or the trauma was too much, but you’re tellin’ me you just won’t cooperate?” He snapped at you.

“...What do you want me to say, Sonny? Sorry?” You snarked back.

“I want you to tell me why!” He tried not to yell but this was ridiculous. “Do you know how expensive this place is?!”

“Oh wow,” You scoffed. “Well I’m sorry my recovery is so expensive for you, Son,”

“It’s not even recovery, Y/N! You’re-- You’re just laying around here like a fuckin’ angsty teen!” He barked. “Why aren’t you trying? Don’t you wanna get outta here and get back to your life?”

“Maybe I don’t!” You yelled and stood up. “Maybe I don’t care about getting out of here, or not. There’s no point anymore,”

“What?” Sonny furrowed his brows. “Why not?”

“...Because,” You looked down at the floor.

“Oh for fuck’s sake…” Sonny threw up his hands, finally standing up himself. “Is this about Barba, really Y/N? You knew him for a few fuckin’ days, gimme a fuckin BREAK,”

“He was wonderful to me, Sonny! He was wonderful and loving and caring and YOU made me go off on him, and then I--” You paused, tears caught in your throat. “I fucking traumatized him. I hurt him so badly he didn’t even want to see me when i was dying,”

“I mean-- how bad of a person am I?!” You tried not to break down in the lobby. “I shouldn’t be allowed to be around anyone anymore, I just destroy things. Hurt people. I shouldn’t be around anyone,”

“Oh Jesus Christ,” Sonny sighed. “You need to stop, alright? If you actually tried to get better, you wouldn’t--”

“I don’t want to get better!!!!” You flat out stomped your foot, not caring about making a scene now.

“Y/N, tough love time. You need to get your shit together and forget about Barba, alright? I can’t keep paying for you to stay here--” He put both hands on your shoulders.

“So let me out,” You glared at him.

“....And if I let you out, are you going to stay sober?” He gave you a suspicious look.

“Nope,” You said with a smirk.

“Y/N come the fuck on,” He threw up his hands.

“What?” You crossed your arms. “I’m being honest. So either you keep wasting your money here, or let me go,”

“And what, let you kill yourself?” He asked angrily.

“...Maybe,” You muttered.

“Sunshine, come here--” Sonny went to wrap you in a hug, his t-shirt caught up on yours causing it to pull up on his torso. Your eyes went wide when you caught sight of it, letting go of him.

“....Where’s your scar?” You blinked in disbelief, trying to wrap your head around what you were seeing.

“What?” He began to panic.

“Your scar,” You pulled your t-shirt to reveal your own scar from the transplant. “You should have one,”

“Oh, Um--” Sonny began to rack his brain for an explanation, but your brain was moving faster.

“.....You didn’t give me part of your liver, did you?” You pulled away from him.

“Uh well--” He sighed “Not exactly, no,”

“Then who did?” You eyed him accusingly.

“They got you an anonymous--”

“Oh don’t even give me that shit, Sonny,” You stopped him. “This-- this whole thing, when I got here. It felt so much like, like a set up. A soap opera plot,”

“A soap opera?” Sonny laughed. “Come on Sunshine, don’t--”

“Why did you ship me here so fast, Sonny?” You asked, your brain now on a roll.

“What?” He half laughed. “So that you could get started early--”

“No,” You stopped him. “You could have just let me come here on my own, CONSCIOUS,”

“Well I just wanted you to skip the DT’s--” He tried to think of a defense.

“DT’s don’t happen to you if you get drunk ONCE, Sonny!” You raised your voice.

“Well how was I supposed to--” He looked around nervously.

“Who really gave me their liver, Sonny?” You narrowed your eyes.

“I told you, I don’t--” He began to lie again.

“I’ll look it up,” You threatened, making his eyes go wide.

“Y-You can’t do that,” He protested.

“Why wouldn’t you want me to?” You challenged him.

“...Because--”

“Rafael did, didn’t he?” You weren’t letting him think of any more lies.

“Look Y/N, he just wanted to help you out so that you wouldn’t die, like his dad. He couldn’t save him so he saved you. Doesn’t that sound like him?”

You had to admit, it really did. But why lie about it?

“So why didn’t you tell me that, Sonny? Why tell me you did it? Why didn’t you just tell me he did it to be nice, and not that he hated me?”

“I never said he hated you--”

“If you lied to me about that, what else have you been lying to me about?” You put your hands on your hips.

“What?”

“Oh my god…” You started to remember your recurring dream. “It was real, it was real. I know it was real!”

“...What was real?” His eyebrows furrowed.

“I keep having this dream where Rafael is across from me lying on a table, and he tells me that he loves me. And I know that happened I know it did,” You explained.

You were absolutely sure of it now. So many thoughts were running through your mind, you hated that you didn’t remember any of this before.

“What?” Sonny laughed again. “Sunshine it’s just a dream, don’t you think you would remember something like that?”

“They...they gave me something before I went into the OR,” You looked off into nowhere as you tried desperately to recall that morning. “The nurse called it…’giggle juice’,”

“Giggle juice?” Sonny rolled his eyes.

“Did you make them give me that too?!” You went for his collar, but a nurse came out of nowhere to hold you back.

“Wha who whoa, Sunshine calm down,” Sonny waved the nurse off of you. “I got her, thanks ma’am,”

“I didn’t tell them to give you anything,” He said softly.

“Yeah, just to keep me out for three days so I wouldn’t ever see Rafael before you sent me here,” You accused him.

“...Not true…” He shook his head.

“Why wouldn’t you want me to talk to him, Sonny?” Tears choked your throat.

“He didn’t want to talk to you--”

“Bullshit!” You stomped your foot, eyeing the nurse who had her eye on you in case you lost it on Sonny again.

“Bullshit, were you scared he was going to tell me what you were really doing? That you were trying to keep us apart?” Tears began dripping from your cheeks. You couldn’t believe this was happening, you couldn’t believe you could have been with Rafael this entire time.

“No!” He protested, his eyes darting back and forth. “No, I--”

“I don’t believe you!” You pushed him, the nurse stepped forward but you put your hands up in defeat. “You’re keeping him from me right now, aren’t you?”

“What?”

“That’s why you sent me so far, he has no idea where I am, and he wants to know doesn’t he? He wasn’t traumatized by my ‘incident’, he’s traumatized he lost me!” You hated that you cried when you got angry, it made you so much less intimidating.

“Traumatized is a strong word, Y/N…” Sonny rolled his eyes.

“Y’know what Sonny,” You shook your head while you wiped your eyes. “I’ll make you a deal. You bring Rafael here, and I’ll try to get better,”

“...I can’t,” He looked at the floor.

“Wha--Are you serious?” You half laughed sarcastically. “You’d rather me rot in here than--”

“I don’t know where he is, Y/N,” He looked up at you seriously.

“...What?” You asked, not wanting to know the answer.

“He…” He rubbed the back of his neck. “He left,”

“What do you mean ‘he left’?” You air quoted left.

“He went on some campaign trail, Hilary I think. He took off across the country, I literally have no idea where he is right now,” He explained.

“Why would he do that?” You asked.

“I don’t know, he said he had to get out of the city--” He shrugged.

“And you couldn’t imagine why?” You gave him a knowing look.

“Oh puh-lease Y/N, he’s not a drama queen like you--” He stopped, thinking about it. “Okay well he might be a drama queen but--”

“You can call him,” You pointed to his pocket.

“I can’t,” He looked down at the ground once again.

“WHY NOT?!” You were getting fed up with him.

“He was….he was super pissed at me for keeping you apart, alright? You’re right. He...he changed his number when he took off, he wants nothing to do with me,”

“So he’s just...gone?” Your voice cracked.

“Sunshine, I promise you. In a few weeks you won’t care about him, and you’re gonna wanna get out of here,”

“Why, you're gonna start adding memory pills to my regiment too?” You scoffed with angry tears in your voice.

“Jesus,” He rolled his eyes. “No, because you’re 22 and you can fall in and out of love like that,” He snapped his fingers.

“No I won’t,” You shook your head. “You’re gonna have to let me out of here or I’ll die in here,”

“God you’re such a--” Sonny sighed in frustration. “I can get them to get you to eat, y’know that right?”

“Do it!” You dared him. “Start treating me like some kind of mental patient, control my life like you think you need to,”

“...I can’t deal with this,” He waved his hands and started to walk away. “I’ll be back in a few weeks, I’m sure you’ll be over this by then,”

“Don’t count on it,” You stomped back into the ward.

-----------------

A week later

You let the night nurse into your room, she brought your meds and a nightly snack.

“Well, are you excited for tomorrow?” She asked, making conversation.

“...What’s tomorrow?” You asked as your downed your pills.

“Your last day!” She smiled.

“...What?” You quirked an eyebrow.

“Well, honey you’re not here on a court order or probation, and your cousin only paid for 30 days. So, you’re leaving tomorrow!”

“You’re just...you’re just letting me go??” You asked in disbelief.

“You’re not happy about that? I’m sure we could talk to your--” She started.

“No!” You stopped her. “No, No I’m totally excited, ready to get back to real life,”

“Good!” She smiled and patted your head. “Make sure you’re all packed, we’ve already filled this room once you leave,”

“...Of course you have,” You rolled your eyes.

She left and you began to frantically pack, ready to get out of here as fast as possible. You would find Rafael on your own, you knew you could.

----------

Sonny’s phone went off while he was out on a call, he saw it was Whistling Pines so he excused himself from the scene and answered it.

“Hello?”

“Yes, Mir. Carisi? This is Sylvia at Whistling Pines, we were just checking on Miss Y/N,”

“....Why would you be checking on her? Don’t you have her?”

“...No sir, she checked out a few days ago,”

“WHAT?!”

“Well it had been 30 days and you had only paid for a month--”

“So you just let her leave?! Why would you do that?!”

“Well sir, for one she’s a grown woman who’s a law abiding citizen, she wasn’t committed here by any kind of law enforcement. And like I said you only paid--”

“For a month,” He growled. “That’s all that matters to you people, isn’t it?”

“Well sir, this is a very expensive--”

“Where did she go?”

“What do you mean where did she go? She left with you,”

“Uh she sure as hell did NOT,”

“...Well she got in a car with a man…”

“Oh my god,” Sonny almost dropped the phone. “I swear to God if something happens to her because of you people I will sue you SO fast--”

“Okay no need to get hysterical,” She began to panic. “Why don’t you just come here and we’ll figure it out…”

“No I think you’ve done enough,” He growled before hanging up on her.

Where the hell had you gone? And with who?!