#this is making the executive function issues worse since. Tired.

[poisonhemloc]

'okay im not doing anything friday but i have fabric and all so i can start sewing the Actual Gabbro Cosplay'-

med withdrawal fatigue: 'how about no?'

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[autisticlee]

i feel like I've been stuck in autistic burnout for almost 2 years now. I don't know if it will ever get better, or if this is my new "normal" now, and I just need to make peace with it and work around these new challenges and struggles I've been dealing with.

talking to people has been even harder than it was before. I used to love meeting new people online and talking for days with ongoing conversations, writing novels back and forth, and getting to know them, etc. I no longer have the spoons for that and get tired after a few messages. i used to love deep conversations, but i can barely stand to take part in them anymore. I can't do small talk either. i'd rather do fun and lighthearted things rather than talk to people.

I struggle more to understand people and never find words to respond with. it used to be easy to reply with multiple paragraphs. now head empty. I don't find it as fun as I used to. it's now more of a chore than a fun thing to rake part in.

I struggle more irl with talking to people like my physical ability to speak has gotten worse, as well as my masking ability and everything else needed to interact with people irl.

my adhd side if my brain has been taking over more and my focus is even worse than ever. my interests/hobbies have been pure adhd indecisive jumping and I haven't had a special interest since the loss of my previous one which was one cause of this burnout. (losing that and all my friends as once, with the cherry on top of all my pets passing away in the same month, and having no one to reach out to or lean on at all) I feel like I haven't been able to have fun, laugh, or enjoy anything at all since before this hit me. I lost interest in all my interests. life is boring, unfulfilling, and an exhausting drag. I have no goals and nothing to strive for.

my physical health has been worse. I feel like my sensory issues have been way worse and my tolerance wont get any better, like perpetual overload. i've been way more exhausted and in pain than ever. brain dissociates more. sometimes nothing feels real. sometimes I don't feel real. sometimes it feels like someone else is in control and im just watching my executive functioning skills have become Barely Functioning skills.

I feel useless and stuck. these are often signs of autistic burnout. ho do you get out of it, how do you make it go away, you may ask. I have no clue.

autistic burnout sucks and there doesn't seem to be any clear way to get out of it. sometimes it can seemingly last for years. perhaps it "goes away" only once you get used to this "new" way of life and accept it as it is, rather than striving for what you once had...

[actuallyadhd]

The reason I realised I might have adhd was my brother, he's so clearly autistic so I did research to make sure.

When I brought it up with my mother she told me to not tell him.

I finally got my diagnosis after 3 years of trying to get it, of going deeper and deeper into it.

Idk, I never hated it? I never hated my adhd. Back in 2020 I was a more active person? In terms of doing the things I liked and doing art.

Now I'm slow, tired, fatigued.

And that happened after I took meds. Apparently ritalin prozac and anxiety meds aren't supposed to be taken together, Idk what my therapist was thinking.

She told me to get anxiety meds for my stimming, cause I stim cause I'm nervous. But I KNOW that I don't. I stim when I'm excited, or when I can't focus.

When I'm anxious, when I'm angry I go stiff a a rock, I get focused sharp, because I have to be, it's a defense mechanism.

I don't hate adhd I don't hate meds inheritly either. But I hate how my meds made me a zombie, that I was forced to go on them so I could achieve this academic goal.

Maybe if I lived in a place with better mental healthcare I wouldn't be dealing with the effects of bad medication and my worsening depression.

I'm slightly better now, but my executive function got fucked. I can't just, do the things I like anymore. I feel less feelings than I did before.

I don't hate myself I just, I guess I'm in a hurry to heal from everything when I'm still living with the people that abused and continue to abuse me emotionally.

Specially my abelist mother who keeps saying adhd and autism aren't a disability, and they're just a quirk like her being left handed.

My dad has finally came to the realisation that he probably has adhd like me.

I'm a uni student now and living in a dorm away from my family has helped me regain that control I had and live a healthier life. But I'm back now over the summer and I can feel myself going back to my old ways the more I stay at my family home.

Idk,

Is this cptsd? Idk what it is.

Is it bad to say I love my adhd? Usually at least. When there's no one breathing down my neck not letting me do my own thing, when I don't get pulled into random places and have a choice to stay. And say no.

I guess things will get worse before they get better....

Sent August 18, 2024

There's definitely a lot to unpack here. I'm sorry you're struggling so much right now. I will do my best to offer suggestions and reassurance, as always.

It makes sense that your brother is autistic and you have ADHD; both are highly heritable, and seem to be related in some way. So it also makes sense that your dad has now realized he probably has ADHD!

I have a feeling this is going to be long, so have a cut.

Stimming & Anxiety

Neurotypical people think that the only reason for fidgeting is anxiety.

It's not.

As a general rule, it's either expressive (as when we're happy or excited or upset) or regulating (as when we need to focus or feel overwhelmed).

And if stimming or fidgeting isn't disruptive or hurting anyone (including yourself), it definitely doesn't need to be medicated. WTAF.

Medication Issues

Medication can be tricky. The wrong meds can cause more problems than they solve. Even the right med at the wrong dose can be a problem!

Examples from my own life:

Starting dose of Concerta didn't do much, next dose up gave me a week-long anxiety attack.

Starting dose of Welbutrin made me feel like I was About to Die for a week.

Dexedrine initially made me NOT HUNGRY for three weeks. I lost 10 lbs.

Strattera made me depressed and adversely affected my typing (been accurately touch typing since I was 11, suddenly was making really weird typos).

Good dose of sertraline (Zoloft) helped my anxiety and depression but caused me to start skin picking in earnest; next dose up had me closing in on serotonin syndrome.

Adderall worked well (until it didn't) but also made me feel ill after I ate yogurt.

It sounds like you would need to try other meds or other doses, preferably one at a time(!), to find what works best for you overall.

Executive Function & Depression

It sounds like your depression is your biggest problem right now. Depression can worsen executive functioning, so that makes sense.

It's probably a good idea to talk to your prescribing doctor about your medication regime. Ask what your options are and if you can please work on getting off the antidepressant so you can try something else.

Alongside this, you may well be dealing with ADHD burnout, which I am only just coming out of myself. It's a struggle, to be sure!

My best advice for that is to be gentle with yourself. Don't expect yourself to Do All the Things; instead, keep a master list of things that need to get done and choose three of them to focus on each day (your Goals) and three fun ones to try to get to each day (your gravy).

It's okay if sometimes one of your Goals is to get dressed.

Parent Stuff

It sounds like your mom is trying to make you feel better or maybe herself(?). If that's how she needs to think of this all, let her. What matters is that she understands when you're struggling and is willing to support you. If not, you might like to refer her to this Russell Barkley video.

It's great that your dad has realized he has ADHD, though! Even if he doesn't bother to pursue a formal diagnosis, just knowing that can help a lot since if he's having issues he knows where to find suggestions that are more likely to actually work (because stuff that works for neurotypical people almost never works for ADHDers, while stuff that works for us also works for NT's).

Family Systems Theory says that how we behave around our family members is directed by how our family works as a system. There are also smaller systems within the whole that affect how individuals relate to each other. This is why we tend to fall back into childhood patterns when we're around our family of origin. Those patterns are ingrained through years of conditioning.

CPTSD?

While I don't think Gabor Maté is right about trauma and ADHD, I do think that it's pretty common for ADHDers to have childhood trauma. We spend years getting in trouble for stuff we couldn't control and being held to a standard we simply can't reach due to our ADHD, and that affects our self-esteem and is (to my mind) a big reason why so many of us have Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD), which is that huge emotional reaction we can have to criticism (real or perceived).

I have found a lot of reassurance and helpful information about CPTSD through watching videos from the Crappy Childhood Fairy on YouTube. She reads letters from people and helps them with their problems, and she explains the problems faced by people who have CPTSD and offers ways to deal with them.

Loving ADHD

I don't think it's bad to love your ADHD. I do think it's a little weird, because most of us hate it a lot of the time, but I definitely see positives in my own life and view it as a neutral (if annoying) part of who I am.

I actually think it's great that you do love it, because it's going to be part of your life forever. Making sure you have systems in place to deal with the stuff that's challenging is going to be really important moving forward, but that's part of what this Tumblr is for.

Overall, I think you are probably doing better than you think you are, and once your meds get sorted you'll be in a much better space in general.

Followers, do you have anything to add, or any corrections to something I've said?

-J

[acertainmoshke]

A bit of a health rant (under the cut because it’s long and ranty not because it’s gross or anything):

So, some backstory. My Autism Thing is that I very rarely get thirsty unless it’s REALLY hot or I’ve been exercising a ton. Never really have. My parents used to remind me on a regular basis to drink water and I’ve still been chronically dehydrated my whole life. To the point that when I had suspected west Nile and went to the hospital, all freaked out and asking if my mystery virus was dangerous, the nurse said no but “the dehydration is.” I also suspect, though have limited evidence, that dehydration makes my dizzy spells worse.

I don’t know if it’s the hrt or a coincidence because it’s spring and getting warmer, but I think I’m more dehydrated lately. I’ve also been having issues with blood sugar because my antidepressants make me hungrier and I’m still trying to manage executive function enough to have a fourth meal after work.

All of this combines to make me annoyingly dizzy. Not enough to be nonfunctional but enough to struggle a bit and feel bad a lot of the time. A consistent 2 on my made-up scale where 0 is my baseline poor balance, 1 is noticeably dizzy without any actual consequences, 2 has consequences I can usually hide, 3-4 is dizzy enough to lie down and struggle with walking, and 5 is too dizzy to stand. And multiple spells every day when since moving climates it had been one every few days, and mild more often than not.

Usually I get the occasional level 1 spell at work which is annoying but fine. The problem with 2 is that it’s enough to bring on some brain fog and make my tongue clumsy (dizzy spells aren’t actually dizziness, but lack of coordination and balance which is almost the same thing). So I have to try to think in real time and speak clearly and hide that walking across the room takes focus and be a little in charge through all of that and I hate it. I don’t take my cane to work because I don’t need it 90% of the time and it seems silly even to have when I spend most of my day in one room.

I’m just so tired of feeling like this and one day I know I’m going to have one at a bad time and be late because I can’t drive. (Before moving states I more than once had to pull over on the way to school or work because my reactions got too slow to be safe).

[lucysweatslove]

Updates regarding ADHD diagnosis and treatment!

The neuropsychologist finally billed me. By this, I mean I guess I was technically billed over a week ago, but I never received an email or any communication about said bill. I decided to log in to the portal yesterday to check, and I saw the invoice was just sitting there. It’s still ridiculous that the whole thing cost me $360, more ridiculous that thousands was billed to insurance, and also annoying that I could’ve had my report this last week if I had received communication that I was invoiced and had a balance to pay. But, at least it’s done, and I should hopefully have the full report sometime this upcoming week.

My insurance apparently did have an issue with the Strattera and did require a PA. I thought it needed that, then they filled it but my Wellbutrin was delayed which took another week… I ended up picking them both up at the start of June, and the pharmacy tech was all “oh it looks like insurance still needs a prior authorization for the atomoxetine.” She pressed some buttons and then it went through, only a $10 copay which is fine, but I got a mail letter for insurance recently basically stating that my medication had required a preauth and oh yeah a 30 day supply retails for over $1000?? But then it’s on the formulary and the “discount price” is only $68.30. It’s just weird to me that the pharmacy / pharmaceutical companies can say it’s basically $34.50/day (that’s $17.25 for ONE single capsule) if you don’t have insurance. Random rant- while I think insurance is great in general I wish routine healthcare was much more affordable without it and insurance could be used for the “oh shit” moments. Like car insurance- it doesn’t pay for gas or routine maintenance or new tires or whatever but will if you get into an accident (although I will say, gas is expensive but at least it’s not $34.50/day expensive). Yeah programs like goodrx exist and are great, but if anybody can use those, why the exorbitant pricing up front? Why not just… make things accessible? The people who need the lower prices the most are those who can’t afford insurance, may not have access to goodrx / maybe wouldn’t even know about it… idk.

Anyway I started the Strattera last week- maybe Wednesday? I can’t remember the exact day now. I’m only taking 18mg which is a pretty low dose but I am getting annoying side effects already. Hypersomnulence during the daytime (literally like 2hr long naps that I can’t fight off midday), but then sleep maintenance insomnia at night where I wake up at like 4AM, still tired, but I can’t fall back asleep easily. Also an increase in general aches (ironic to me as duloxetine, which also has norepi function, is often used for some chronic pain), headaches, and horrible tummy troubles (feels like the food poisoning all over again). Those could be related to my period though- it’s just worse than what I normally experience in my cycle. Thankfully I haven’t noticed any real effect on my heart- I don’t feel weird or fluttery which was a concern I had. But alsoX I don’t notice any effect yet on my executive functioning, which makes sense since it isn’t an instant medication and the normal starting dose for adults is 40mg (so I’m taking literally less than half of that). I am still trying it out, holding out hope that side effects will stop enough that I can increase the dose and try 36mg for a week or so before I see the psych NP next, but I’m not optimistic it’s going to be a good, effective medication for me.

[mdhwrites]

When would you say was the point in Owl House that you started thinking it was going in the wrong direction?

This… Actually isn't a hard one for me. I could try to give a larger picture answer or be snarky and say "From the concept" but I did like the show at some point. I loved the show at one point. So I suppose the real question is when did the problems that were always there suddenly come to the forefront?

And there is only one real option: Escaping Expulsion.

Escaping Expulsion is the second worst episode of the series to me. Its comedy is either barely based on the characters or just… Not funny or clever. Or both. The entire montage of convincing Bump just feels wrong to me, even the first time I watched it, because all evidence points to him preferring a calm, quiet school that runs by the books. Otherwise he would have always loved how Eda behaved.

It has villains that while entertaining in their evil, are rock bottom stupid and feel like they came straight out of the 90s, if not earlier. In the 2020s. The fuck? I will always hate that Odalia decides proving your home security can murder a (also read as 'your' because that's how marketing works) child will sell more units. Like… This isn't even a good scheme to make money off of!

But the real issue, the thing that Escaping Expulsion added that just about no other episode did was the idea of resolution and shrinking of potential without exploration of that potential. And it's in both of the plots and both of the plots are just… VERY poorly thought out in execution because they FEEL like they're written to be functional. The whole episode does. It's just there to remove obstacles so they can do what they want.

It feels like something an author writes because they got tired of a plot point and just want to get rid of it.

First problem with how they tackled killing Luz's magic and resolving Amity's parents: Neither character is actually a major part of their own plotline. Amity gets what? Five lines MAYBE before her big "My Luz" moment? Maybe like a minute of screen time total? It might be a bit more than that but this is resolving her family issues. The ones that will continue to be blamed and focused on for her behavior. For who she is and what made her who she is. And she's just not a part of it. There is no building of anger, momentum, etc. towards her parents or the like. No build up to the moment where she tells them to fuck off. It's just that once Luz is threatened… She is all in on telling them to stop. Which actually is the exact same as they did with killing her relationship with Boscha but one is a friend who is a bully. The other is your heavily abusive, neglectful family who have decided who you are up to this point.

I'm just saying that maybe there should have been ANY exploration of her feelings besides, "Sorry mom. I have apparently decided that this girl is literally more important than anything else in my life and will do anything to make her happy and like me."

The other side… actually is worse though. It's the end of Luz's journey with magic. There will be no training, trying or work put into this afterwards despite theoretically being part of the thesis of the story. I still think this episode effectively was a part of why TOH got shortened because Disney would be right to have asked they were lied to with the elevator pitch of the story. EVEN THE ANIMATION TEST PUTS MORE EMPHASIS ON LEARNING MAGIC AND EXPLORING IT THAN THE SHOW EVER WILL AFTER THIS.

And Luz? Luz isn't a part of it AT ALL. She introduces the concept theoretically, has the hilarious line of "I haven't found a new one since the fire glyph" which happened FIVE EPISODES AGO so it's not like it has been that long since she got one and then… just peaces out. And the rest of the plot line is shenanigans between Lilith and Eda before Lilith gives an exposition dumb that effectively means nothing. I mean… All the glyphs they use are either combo glyphs or a single regular glyph. And they are always as strong as they need to be, glyph circles be damned.

It hard matters. None of it matters. But it was such a major part of the show's pitch. Luz wanted to be a witch. Well, I guess you are, and clearly one of the strongest out there with what we saw in the S1 finale and the S2 opener so… shrug Just end it and move on. Only introduce a new spell (of which they only add two, three if you count teleportation) when it's necessary for something cool you want to do or for the plot.

And there is more I could go into how bad this episode is and how poorly the episode handles ending these plotlines, like how the B plot with Luz's magic, which is a b plot at all eye twitch, is effectively just an update to the "King gets a minion and loses control of them" B plots of season 1 where he has to swallow his pride and get some help before he is consumed. That's just what happens with Eda here. Just it's with magic instead.

But I don't feel like going hard diatribe in this blog because the larger points are this for why this episode to me is the turning point:

It introduces the idea that the characters aren't nearly as deep, well thought out or complex as we have always believed. How much smaller does Amity feel after this episode? How much less sense do the Blights make? How much does this indeed fuck up her character arc in the moment and retroactively?

It introduces the idea that the world and its functionality isn't well thought out. If this is how they're treating something as big as Luz's glyphs, which will only prove to get worse with time, what else do they not care about? The plot? The story? The actual flavor of the Isles?

And honestly I feel like it highlights that the show doesn't only fail when it's a filler episode. This is probably the first non-filler, or close to filler, episode in the series that just… Isn't good. How many people actually remember anything from that episode besides "My Luz?" Some people might remember the Odalador stuff because they like those characters but you could tell me what happens during the montage to get back into Hexide? What Gus or Willow say or think about anything? What Amity even says about most things in that episode? Fucking anything Hooty, Eda and Lilith do besides the Hooty swan and the super glyph?

And this episode killed TWO major plotlines people were excited for. That dominated our minds because the show HAD placed importance on them. This isn't like Willow where you had to choose to be invested eventually. The show always made her feel less important than everyone else. This is part of the thesis of the show and the backbone to Luz's girlfriend's character being resolved AT THE SAME TIME.

It's bad. It's just bad. And you can see the cracks growing even throughout S2A. Cracks started right here. Right when Luz was expelled.

[lunaprincipessa]

ENTRY FORTY

I was thinking a lot about my overspending. It's been happening a lot lately, both before and after the holiday season, so no placing blame there. So what is it with this lately?

Thankfully, I've just been eating into my weekly budget instead of my savings... but if I'm being completely honest here, digging into savings for nothing else other than unnecessary shopping has happened multiple times before. I need to have better control over it!

How do I achieve that? The initial step is figuring out where the overspending comes from, or what causes it. The foundation, the core!

I did some soul-searching and online researching. Ended up finding some things that I resonated with and wanted to explore them a little more here.

The first thing I came across talked about emotional impulse spending, which is exactly what it sounds like. Impulse spending triggered by emotion(s) like anxiety or depression. Looking into myself, my habits, and my motivations, it does seem that I am 10x more likely to overspend when I am going through some kind of emotional turmoil. When life is peaceful, I gather, I collect, and I save. Easy. Simple. It's the emotion that complicates everything!

I wondered why I was turning to things in those moments, especially since I'm not really what one would consider "materialistic." It's because people have hurt me with unreliability and/or cruelty. Things just decorate my home and give me something nice to look at. I'd prefer to buy myself something than to reach out to someone that may make the pain worse; I've grown rather tired of that, happens far too often.

Next, I found out about people who lack financial literacy. Financial literacy is the ability to effectively manage and make informed decisions about personal finances, including budgeting, saving, and investing. I may be a person who lacks financial literacy. I hate having to own up to that but there is no improvement without accountability, is there? The definition of financial literacy also states that there is a possession of skills, knowledge, and behaviors that enable individuals to manage their finances effectively. *sigh* Note to self, this is not for guilt but for change! I know the basics of course, but I also know I need to face the reality of lacking adequate financial literacy.

There's been no social pressure or having to "keep up appearances." The lack of a healthy self-image doesn't come from my finances, I know that is a definite fact. No blindness to inflation either. I am well aware that existence is just too damn expensive right now. Credit misconception is when people see their credit cards as "extra money," not something to be paid back. Yeah, none of that going on. I know the definitions and differences of credit, debit, and gift cards.

I did learn about lifestyle creeping. This is the process of expenses unintentionally creeping up as one's income increases. Maybe a pinch of that...? I do need to stay the hell off of GrubHub but it's more affordable with the hours I'm working. And let's not forget Amazon's eternal stronghold on my wallet. I am just going through the possibilities, trying to figure it all out.

Last thing I found that resonated with me is that many, if not the majority, of people with ADHD engage in impulse spending. The recently updated statistics I found were:

*58% of ADHDers spend impulsively.

*51% of ADHDers struggle with budgeting.

*49% of ADHDers struggle to save.

It all got narrowed down to achieving that nice rush of dopamine which the ADHD brain is constantly craving. This definitely gives me a reason to not beat myself up if I slip, but I never want to use it as an excuse to not do what I'm supposed to do in this life as a functional adult.

Doing that means the issue is behavioral, not cognitive. I need to try to be more self-aware, execute better planning, and utilize coping skills for the harder days. In many areas of my life, I need to take my power back and call all my efforts back to me. This is one of them.

More thoughts later.

[autistic-beshelar]

Neurodivergent Link Headcanons (BOTW)

Here are... my headcanons for ND Link! I’ve tried to put them in fairly concise bullet points so hopefully they make sense. A lot of the autistic/adhd traits overlap, but I’ve put them in separate sections just to try and make this easier to read 

Headcanons under the cut!

Autism:

 - sensory seeking! Link needs constant stimulation and his preferred sensory input is touch, whether it’s rubbing his palms over tree bark or smushing his face in soft pillows. Auditory and visual stimulation are good too, but he’s very, very tactile. Of course taste is another big thing for him, he loves cooking and trying out new food and exploring different tastes, whether it’s sweet or spicy or sour, the stronger the better.

- he stims. SO MUCH. he has so many stims that I’m going to make a separate post to include all of them, but the main ones are rocking and flapping his hands.

- very good with gross motor skills, generally good with fine motor skills but there are a select few he struggles with - he has very poor handwriting, has to focus tying shoelaces, struggles washing his hair, overestimates how hard he’s brushing his teeth and makes his gums bleed

- poor interoception. Has a hard time telling when he’s hungry, or tired, or in pain. Sometimes he will walk around with an injury and not realise until he sees blood. Finds it hard to recognise negative sensations and his body tends to just interpret them as discomfort.

- very good at recognising and deciphering expressions and body language, but not particularly good at (or interested in) emulating it. He’s very astute and can pick up on microexpressions and hidden glances and the like, and can work out people’s true feelings or motivations, but in a social context he’s not necessarily good at responding to it.

- easily picks up on small details and notices things others don’t - this can be related to the former point, but also just in general. Also very good at pattern recognition which lends itself well to solving shrines.

- nonverbal. Mostly uses sign to communicate, or noises (usually with animals or people he’s comfortable with). Can occasionally manage to speak in short bursts when he has to, but it’s few words and usually stuttered, and if he gets at all stressed (which he often does if he’s forced to talk) he won’t be able to say much of anything. He can talk a little around Sidon and Zelda, they’re pretty much the only he feels comfortable enough to be verbal with, and they understand the way he talks and are patient when he’s slow or gets words mixed up.

- difficulty with eye contact. Either too little or too much, though usually it’s the former. He only tends to stare at people if he likes them, or if he’s angry with them or trying to make them uncomfortable

- echo echo lalia. Loves to repeat fun noises, especially animal noises, but sometimes words (sees a dog and just goes doggy doggy doggy doggy doggy for the next hour). He does this with sign as well, but tends to prefer making fun mouth sounds

- special interests in food and horses! Those twins at the stable were right. That’s all that’s on his mind. Food and horses. He really loves trying out new ingredient combinations and exploring different tastes. And he knows a great many horse facts. 

- forms connections with animals more easily than with people. This is partly because when he first left the Shrine of Resurrection he was alone in the wilderness, and partly because he doesn’t really talk, but it’s also just an autism thing. People are friendly to him, but he doesn’t tend to form deep connections with them like he does with animals.

- can tell the time by the position of the sun in the sky but can’t read a clock. What are those numbers on the slate. It’s a mystery!

- has mild visual processing issues, mostly struggles to focus on things like screens or pages, things look blurry or strangely coloured, or have a weird overlay.

ADHD:

- inattentive AND hyperactive AND impulsive, a triple threat

- gets the Zoomies. Often ends up conking out afterwards. Will run around chasing frogs all day and then just fall asleep in the middle of a field

- Can’t Stay Still. Has To Bounce Leg.

- nonexistent sleep schedule. Granted, he doesn’t sleep well or regularly what with travelling all over Hyrule, but even without that his sleep would be terrible

- sometimes zones out in the middle of a conversation. Good luck guessing whether he’s having a seizure or if he’s just thinking really hard about jellyfish

- alternatively, he will hyperfocus. Very good at hyperfocusing on shrines, or anything that involves challenges. Also good at hyperfocusing on physical activities.

- executive functioning… what’s that. Link doesn’t know. Link can’t organise to save his life and honestly thank god for the sheikah slate because without it he’d be screwed. Cannot schedule, cannot plan, cannot organise. 

- thrillseeking!!! He gets easily understimulated and needs adrenaline to survive. Will do anything remotely dangerous for fun and profit. 

- often thinks very quickly, usually jumping quickly from one thing to the next, but only about certain subjects (usually related to animals, nature, food, chaotic activities) and usually when he’s full of adrenaline. Although other times, especially when he’s tired, it’s just. Dial up noises. Head empty

- focus juice… for mentally taxing activites? Nonexistent.

Expressive language disorder:

(It used to be separated into receptive language disorder, expressive language disorder, or mixed, but these days it’s lumped together into developmental language disorder. However I use expressive language disorder for link because he specifically only has problems with expressive language (forming his own words) and not receptive language (understanding other people’s words)).

- gets words in the wrong order

- sometimes replaces a word with something else, especially if the signs are similar

- has difficulty with tenses (more so in verbal speech)

- often misses out words completely

- has quite a large vocabulary, but struggles with word recall. Will sometimes remember the word he meant to use hours later

- often flaps his hands in an attempt to remember a word, if he can’t think of it he will try to find an alternative

- c a n n o t  s p e l l. Sometimes when he doesn’t know the sign for something, he’ll try to fingerspell it, but if the word is hard to spell he’ll try and find an alternative

- finds sign much easier than spoken language, because its grammatical structure (particularly how it uses tenses and combines language with muscle memory) is simpler to use for him, and because it’s so expressive he finds it easier to get his point across

- his language disorder is a part of why he’s nonverbal (as well as that he has a bit of a stutter), so signing in general is just much easier, though not everyone knows sign, and he isn’t fluent himself.

Epilepsy: 

- has temporal lobe epilepsy

- mostly gets absence seizures and focal seizures

- absence seizures (essentially his brain ‘switching off’) are his more common ones. They usually only last a couple of seconds, and tend to look like he’s just distracted or zoning out (which he also does because of ADHD), though sometimes his eyelids will flicker, or if he’s walking or doing something he’ll suddenly stop, and go back to it like nothing happened. He isn’t aware of them at all. If they happen during something like a conversation with someone, he’ll just dismiss it as being distracted, though he does start to notice when he has longer absences and misses whole sentences, or has clusters of absences.

- focal aware seizures (auras) usually present as deja-vu, intense fear, or out of body feelings. He doesn’t realise they’re seizures for a while, since he experiences these anyway, and attributes the deja-vu to the memory loss, but eventually learns to tell them apart because his auras tend to come on very suddenly, though they can last a while

- he also gets focal impaired awareness ones, which tend to happen more when he’s very tired, especially when waking up/going to sleep. When he gets auras he’s still completely aware of his surroundings (and usually doesn’t have trouble moving, unless it’s a particularly bad one), but with impaired awareness he gets drowsy and confused, and won’t understand what people are saying

- usually his focal seizures stay just that, but sometimes they will become tonic-clonic seizures. This is usually only when he’s exhausted/injured/extremely stressed/otherwise worn down. Most of the time his auras come on soon enough to warn him he might have a worse seizure, so he can go somewhere safe (at least, once he realises he’s epileptic

- they’re arguably the mildest, but his absence seizures at the most dangerous, even though they’re usually short, because he gets no warning for them. He usually gets them a couple of times a day (especially waking up/going to sleep), but he gets them more frequently if he’s very tired, and if he gets absence clusters it makes it really hard to do anything.

- his main triggers are sleep deprivation, missing meals, extreme stress, and extreme heat. Which is unfortunate considering he spends his time running around Hyrule on no sleep and forgets to eat all the time.

in conclusion link is neurodivergent and i love him. thank u for ur time pls feel free to comment ur opinions and headcanons etc 

[sol-tinyrayofsun]

Zutara Week Day 5 - Hesitancy: What Am I To Say?

Alright, this was actually the first thing I wrote for Zutara Week. It’s angsty as hell, but with a nice ending. I love fluff but angst just gets me every time. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy it as much as I do.  As ever, thank you for reading! Feedback is always appreciated! <3

Also on AO3!

Title: What Am I To Say?

Rating: G

Summary:  “Choices, Katara,” he continued to say, noticing her silence. “It’s all about choices.” Zuko was telling the truth. She had unfortunately made sure to push him away five years ago. One stupid decision that had shattered every last bit of her existence. Even worse, it had also damaged many others. On a split second, all those moons ago, Katara had managed to secure heartache for them both.

------

She wasn’t sure how long it had been since the last time she had properly faced him. Their last conversation dated from months ago. And what a dull chat had it been. The frigidity caused by a choice she had made five years ago had ultimately marked the fallout of their relationship. But everything was different now. She knew he was aware of it. Still, she felt hesitant. The idea of owning up her mistakes to him terrified her. Maybe focusing strictly on the reason why she had been summoned there would be her best bet. 

Katara descended from the carriage that had brought her all the way to the gates of the Fire Nation Royal Palace. The humid weather took her by surprise. She had gotten too used to the cold air of the South Pole. After all, the last few months had found her recluded to her duties within the Southern Water Tribe. Her family had unsuccessfully tried to get her to go out into the world on multiple occasions. Nothing had worked, she just wanted to figure out things by herself for a while. 

Still, there she was. Back to where their undoing had started. She shook her head as she tried to put on her brightest smile. Lifting up her sight from the concrete courtyard ground, his golden eyes met hers. This was it. The moment she had dreaded for more than a week. She felt her heart skipping a beat. It was him.

“Master Katara.” His voice was raspy, sharp. “A pleasure to see you again. May I ask how was your trip?” He extended his hand to her. 

There it was. That ice-cold attitude. It killed her, destroyed her to the very core. She wanted to scream, to make him drop his ridiculous act. Really, after all we have gone through? When are you going to stop shutting me down? she thought as she remembered an answer was expected from her. Right, diplomacy. What a tricky little thing. 

“Fire Lord Zuko,” she greeted him as she took his hand. That simple touch was enough to make her whole body flinch. “The trip was fine, thanks. I assume the rest of the delegates have arrived already.”

Both of them dropped their hands. She hated every second of that awkward and impersonal interaction. It seemed like things had only gotten worse with the passing of time. 

“Well, let me and my guards escort you to your room. The meeting is at five in the afternoon, sharp,” Zuko said as he gestured her to start walking. “Be sure to let me know if there’s anything else you might need.” 

Following his lead, she looked him in the eyes. His gaze was puzzling, apparently impossible to decipher. Still, she could’ve sworn she perceived a strain of warmth somewhere behind the nervous batting of his eyelashes. 

“Thank you, Zuko. I’ll make sure to be there on time.”

Katara felt as if her words had no real meaning. There was simply so much more to be said. She wanted to tell him to stop the nonsense, to ask how he was feeling, to question him about how he found out about what had happened in her life three months ago. But it wasn’t the time or place. It never seemed to be for the two of them. Her mind kept vacillating, completely disoriented, and as clouded as a stormy sky. It wouldn’t be the first time he messed with her judgment. 

Repressing a frustrated sigh, she hurried into the Palace. The sooner she could be done with her visit, the better. That way she could go back to her quiet routine at the South Pole without any delays. Every single moment she spent there felt like a dagger sinking down on her chest. There were just too many memories, too many shadows of what it could have been. She wasn’t in the mood for an annoying “What if…?” to come waltzing into her life. Real life wasn’t as easy as a fairytale. She had made her choice years ago. Now, she was trying to live with its consequences. And to get through her visit to the Fire Nation without breaking down. 

The council room was packed with delegates. Katara couldn’t help but curse the timing of the meeting. Just when she was starting to get back some sense of normalcy into her life, business had dragged her there once again. 

The international collaboration between the Fire Nation and the Water Tribes had run smoothly for years. What a brilliant moment for Blaze Industries to start questioning the price of the oil the Southern Water Tribe provided them with. Of course, once one company inquired, the rest of them followed. In no time, a council was needed to discuss whether the terms of the economic alliance should be reviewed or left alone. 

She had enough on her plate already. Being the first functional year of the Southern Water Tribe Waterbending Academy, work was as hefty as ever. Not to mention the most recent occurrence within her personal life. It had left her in a muddle, questioning her judgment. She had even isolated from all her friends. All because of her unwillingness to be honest with herself, or with anyone for that matter, until it was too late. Way too late to avoid any harm to be made. 

Katara shook her head, making sure to be grounded enough before the meeting began. She wasn’t about to let her private dilemmas interfere with her work. 

Everyone stood still as the doors opened one last time before starting. Fire Lord Zuko made its way to his usual seat. All that time and she still remembered to perfection where he used to seat at every meeting. With a polite nod, he saluted the attendees as he prepared to speak. 

“Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for being here today,” he greeted them. “I understand that Blaze Industries wanted to be the first one to present a statement. So without further ado let’s allow them to start. Chief Executive Kian?”

The chairwoman didn’t take long to comply. The assembly had officially started. If it went well she could be on her way home by the next day. She prompted herself to drop her concerns about her relationship with Zuko. The economic future of her Tribe could be jeopardized in the case the oil issue wasn’t handled properly. She could get sentimental some other time. 

The nocturnal breeze caused her hair to sweep across her cheeks. Stars lit up the sky like snowflakes dancing around the darkness of the night. The light wind made the water ripple softly across the turtleduck pond. Silence hung in the air that surrounded the courtyard of the Royal Palace. As she strolled around the gardens, Katara wondered what on earth was she doing there. 

Maybe she had just gotten tired of the solitude of her room, a place so impersonal that it felt almost insulting. The walls of this palace had once been like a home to her. Now the place was suffocating her, reminding her of why she was in that position in the first place. Or perhaps she had been drawn there by all those memories. Ghosts from brighter times. 

It wasn’t like the outcome of the assembly had provided her with a reason for feeling so uneasy. She had managed to keep Blaze Industries and the rest of the companies at bay without harming their economic alliance. All that fuss for nothing. It only took for her to remind them of all the benefits of having her tribe as the primary oil supplier alongside a slight warning that a price increase might be necessary if they didn’t hold their end of the bargain to get them to stand down. 

Of course, Zuko had backed her up. Despite everything that had happened between them, one thing had always been clear: they would do their best to support each other no matter what. Anyways, aside from that detail, she was sure Zuko knew how outrageous Blaze Industries’ claim was. He would never allow anyone of his Nation to take advantage of outsiders, not under his watch. After all, it was that attitude that made him such a good leader for his people. Peace had remained intact around the world thanks to leaders like them.

Seems like some things just don’t change, Katara thought as she sat by the turtleduck pond.  Nothing was the same anymore, but there she was, back where it had all started to fall apart. That place brought back too many memories, good memories. She couldn’t help but smile, staring at the clear night sky, thinking about the time the entire gang had hosted a theater evening right in that same courtyard. Her heart felt bittersweetly warm from the vivid evocation of happier and easier days. 

“What are you smiling about?” a familiar voice asked her. 

A flinch. A heartbeat. A realization. He was right there, wasn’t he? Katara lowered down her sight, tilting her head to be able to look at him. 

“I’m not smiling, Zuko.” Her words came out a little harsher than expected. “I just needed some fresh air.” 

Well, that’s a great way to greet someone you care about, isn’t it? 

They stared into each other’s eyes, paralyzed. He was still meters away from her, analyzing her from a cautious distance. Katara wasn’t sure if he would come any closer. His cold facade probably included ignoring her to death. 

Still, Zuko took a step forward. And another. All the way up to where she was sitting. 

“Has the outcome of the assembly brought you any relief?” He was standing right before her, with a puzzling expression on his face. 

Of course, he would only come near to torture her with even more politics. She brought her knees closer to her chest, in an unconscious attempt to shield herself from the torment she was feeling. She couldn’t take it any longer. 

“The outcome of the assembly was expected. What a shame I had to come all the way here to calm down some dull businessmen.”

“I’m sorry, aren’t you the primary Ambassador of the Southern Water Tribe?”

Shocker. As if he didn’t know what she did for a living. Though, she hadn’t been acting like a proper ambassador for the last three months. At least regarding the traveling.

“Yes, Zuko, I am! Spirits, know you’re going to pretend we don’t know each other?” She hadn’t expected to be on the verge of screaming. Still, she didn’t care anymore. Things couldn’t get any worse, could they?

His eyes widened. Guess he wasn’t expecting her to get so loud either. 

“Katara, you’ve been a complete ghost for three months. None of our friends were able to reach you,” he said as he let out a sigh. “We might as well be strangers at this point.”

“But we are not!” That’s it, her tone couldn’t possibly get any louder. “You didn’t even try to look for me! And don’t even pretend you didn’t know. Everyone knew. Everyone knew what a fool of myself I had made.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware of the fact that I was the one who had to come running up to you after what you decided!”

She abruptly dragged herself to her feet. “But you knew! You knew what it meant for me to decline Aang’s proposal! Spirits, Zuko, you probably saw that one coming!” Her voice trailed off in an exasperated scream. 

“Of course I saw it coming, but it wasn’t my place to interfere anymore, was it?” His voice started to shake.

Katara stayed quiet, unable to react to his statement. Looking at him now, at the way his eyes reflected a great deal of resentment, she felt more regret than ever before. 

“Choices, Katara,” he continued to say, noticing her silence. “It’s all about choices.”

Zuko was telling the truth. She had unfortunately made sure to push him away five years ago. One stupid decision that had shattered every last bit of her existence. Even worse, it had also damaged many others. On a split second, all those moons ago, Katara had managed to secure heartache for them both. 

“What do you want me to say? Do you want me to tell you how sorry I am for tearing us apart? Do you want me to break into tears and confess how ridiculous I feel?” She felt a lump on her throat. “What do you want from me, Zuko?! Please, drop your act. I know in some corner of your heart you still care about me.”

“I’m not performing any kind of act!” He looked exhausted, worn out, defeated. “You were the one who told me we shouldn’t be together, or have you forgotten about that? You said I should go with Mai and you had to accept to be with Aang. A whole year, Katara, a whole year we sneaked around in the shadows, all because you were afraid of admitting the truth to yourself!”

He was right. Spirits, every word that came out of his mouth broke her walls down a little more. 

Five years. Five miserable years since she had broken them up to be with someone else. To be with Aang, and for Zuko to be with Mai. All for what? Right there, standing in the courtyard, screaming at the person she had managed to push too far away, she had no clue.

“Zuko… I - It was all - I know, alright?” she mumbled, a treacherous tear streaming down her cheek. “It was the stupidest decision I’ve ever made.”

“Then, please, don’t look at me like I was the one who broke your heart. Because all I wanted to do was to be with you.” He sat down, staring at the ground. “That’s why I ended things with Mai so soon, unlike you, I wasn’t ready to wake up every day knowing I was lying to myself.”

He must’ve known his words were utterly harsh. But they uncovered an awful truth. She had been lying to herself for years. And the result had been more than clear. Three months ago she had rejected Aang’s marriage proposition, to everyone’s surprise. Except for a certain firebender that was familiar with every single one of her rough edges. As Aang pleaded for her to spend the rest of her life by his side, she had realized that was not what she wanted. Not who she wanted. Too late. Repeatedly too late. What a mess she had made. 

Katara plummeted to the floor, sitting next to him. The nocturnal breeze caused her to shudder. No one else was there. It was only them, finally saying what they had wanted to confess for years. 

“You know why I rejected Aang, right?” She finally asked, hoping her question would get him to look at her. 

“Because you were never in love with him? Katara, why are you doing this? Your failed relationship is none of my business anymore. Plus, Aang told me all about it. I would prefer not to have to endure that torture once again.”

Wait.

“Aang talked with you about our breakup?”

“Don’t you realize that while you were hiding from reality the world kept turning? We’re friends, of course, he told me all about how you broke his heart.” He chuckled, bitterly smiling. “Little did he know, you broke mine first.”

“No, you don’t get to do this,” she blurted out, feeling her voice getting louder once again. “You don’t get to pin this all on me. You should’ve stopped me! If you were so certain we had to be together why on earth didn’t you do something about it?”

He finally lifted his sight, his eyes were puffy. “What did you want me to say? I practically begged you, Spirits, I told you I loved you. And you said you loved me too, but that you had to go. You left. I didn’t. I’m sorry for thinking that was what you wanted.”

“Zuko, I’m sorry too, alright? What am I to say now? I can’t turn back time.”

“You’re right, you can’t. Guess we’ll both have to live with it.” He started to get up from the ground. “Goodnight. I´m sorry, I can´t bear this any longer”

“Wait!” She grasped his arm with such intensity she thought she might’ve hurt him. “Please, don’t leave. I….”

“Katara, you asked me if I knew why you rejected Aang.” His voice was shaking. “Anything you want me to know?”

“It’s true, I rejected Aang because I didn’t love him,” she started to say, feeling her heart pounding on her chest. “Because I still love you, Zuko. I never stopped loving you.”

There. The secret was about. Five years of burying the truth deep inside her, endless days and nights of finding herself crying for no apparent reason. But the reason was there, it had always been there. It was him. She cried because of him. She cried for the love she had lost. For the person she had pushed away in an attempt of selling a lie to herself. She loved Zuko with every fiber of her being. It had always been there, burning in the back of her mind. And now he knew it too. 

Silence. That was all the response she got from him. Silence and a pair of golden eyes looking thoroughly at her. 

“Say something,” she pleaded, tears streaming down her face. “At least have the guts to say you don’t love me anymore. Because I’ve just told you something that’s been killing me for years. I love you, and I’m sorry.”

Nothing. For a moment, there was nothing. Not even a blink.

Then Zuko grasped her shoulders and kissed her. It took her by surprise, almost making her question if perhaps their entire interaction was just a dream. But it wasn’t. It was real, crazy, unexpected. He was kissing her like they were running out of time; like somebody might pull them apart at any second. 

Needless to say, she was kissing him back. She was kissing him like she had never kissed anyone before. Desperately, emotionally, and with a newfound intensity. This was the most alive she had felt in months. Right there, glued to the person she had once let go of. 

Almost out of breath, Zuko pulled apart first. His eyes were glistening in the moonlight. A mysterious grin had taken over his face.

“I love you too,” he whispered. “Katara, I’ve always loved you.”

Spirits, she couldn’t believe her luck. 

“Then why did you shut me down like that?”

“Because you were with Aang! I had to keep my distance or it would have destroyed me.” He brushed his fingers against her cheek. “When I found out you had rejected him I… I wanted to go after you, to tell you that it was the right decision. I was dying to make you feel less alone. But I couldn’t do that to you, to Aang, or to myself. You needed to figure out what you wanted.”

“I want you, Zuko,” Katara said as she felt herself crying again. “I screwed up. Big time. I never should’ve made us go our separate ways. There´s nothing I regret more.”

“So what now, then?” 

“Can we start over, please? I know there’s no way to erase the last five years from our memory. But we could make this right. We can make this work the second time around. Together.”

“I suppose we could do it. But, don’t you care what everyone else would think?”

“No, not anymore. I won’t make the same mistake again.” She cupped his cheeks into her hands, pressing her forehead onto his. “If you let me, I’ll prove to you that you’re all I want.”

His eyes showed he wanted it, too. Katara was sure of it. They had never stopped loving each other. 

“Of course I’ll let you,” he replied, placing a soft kiss on her nose. “Does this mean you’re not leaving tomorrow? Because I really should let the coachman know whether he has to prepare the carriage or not.”

Katara chuckled, considering his teasing an invitation to stay a little longer. 

“I think I won’t be leaving until we figure this out.”

“Good, then you’ll add it to your schedule and I’ll add it to mine,” he joked. 

“Are you going to keep chatting or does kissing me sound like a better idea to you?” 

“Why don’t we wait another five years and I’ll see how it suits me then?”

“Sure,” Katara planted a kiss on his lips. “Whoops, five years are over.”

Zuko’s response seemed to agree with her since it only consisted of multiple kisses all over her face. She kissed him back, burying her fingers into his hair, making a mess of his Fire Lord looks. Neither of them cared anymore. They were finally together. 

One choice had been her undoing. Yet, somehow, a single assembly had also pushed her to make things right. She couldn’t turn back time, but she could make the most out of the mess she’d caused years ago. And, Spirits, she had every intention to do so. 

------ See? I promised you the ending was a happy one. I hope you enjoyed it! <3  @zutaraweek

[azure-steel]

2, 7, & 11!

Unanswered Questions; Mun edition~

Are there any plot tropes you are sick of/refuse to RP? If so, what are they and why?

Oof, you had to ask hahaha. There is literally only one, and honestly it can be subjective depending on WHO is asking and the way in which said person requests the plot to be executed. 

But CLOUD IN A FUCKING DRESS Dx

I hate it... okay? I fucking HATE it but typically when the trope is used as a means to humiliate him. In canon it’s quite clear that he is NOT comfy wearing that outfit, he’s embarrassed and - to be frank - very upset about it. And I would think ANYONE forced into something like that would feel the same. It’s not a nice feeling, being so out of your comfort zone that you wish you’d just vanish into thin air. 

Like, let Cloud express himself this way in a comfy environment please IF HE WANTS TO. Stop forcing my muse into that dress for shits and gigs, he doesn’t like it, I do not like it and I get tired of people thinking its okay for a person to feel so out of touch with themselves this way just because they think it’s funny. 

I can assure you, it isn’t... 

List three honest flaws your favourite character has and talk about how those flaws make them problematic 

1 - His reluctance to connect with people. I think this one kind of speaks for itself on many levels, but it has been said that this flaw isn’t his fault. That’s only partly true. He struggles to connect with people emotionally because Cloud is emotionally stunted due to being in an induced coma for the best part of 5 years. The guy is a 16 year old boy trapped in a 21 year old man’s body. So yeah, that part, not his fault. But just because he’s a little on the immature side doesn’t necessarily give him a free pass to be the arrogant little twat he is sometimes, that IS on him and I feel this arrogance prevents him forming close bonds with people at least initially. Cloud often holds himself a bit higher than the people around him, and in all honesty, it makes me wonder how he’s managed to make friends at all, lol. Lucky for him the folks he has around him can somehow see past that arrogance and cold exterior he likes to put on. Still, he needs pulling up on his attitude at times...

2. He tells lies to fill in the gaps of his past.  I understand why he does this, with his talks about SOLDIER training and such, and there’s every reason to believe that these “lies” are actually implanted memories that he actually believes are true stories about himself. So again, possibly a facet of his character that is wholly unintentional and not meant to just impress or even hurt anyone. But still, there’s potential for trust issues here when it starts coming to light that he isn’t who he believes he is. We all know that he can’t help it, and we all know that his friends stick by him despite that, but it’s still a problematic trait that could spell disaster in the long run. 

3. He’s secretive.  Cloud is a rather reserved individual, but this facet of his character has been with him since childhood right through to when he suddenly realises WHO he really is. It’s a natural protective trait that he never grows out of. When he’s having flashbacks and is clearly suffering in front of his friends, he plays it down, instead of letting them know there’s a problem. In AC when he contracts geostigma, instead of informing his family that he’s dangerously sick he just leaves to combat the illness on his own. He never admits there’s a problem because he has this fundamental mental block that he can handle the problem alone when he simply cannot. Cloud does not function well by himself, he is the type who needs reassurance and constant grounding or he just flounders and the suffering spirals. His reserved nature contradicts the type of person he is and you know what...? I find this really sad to be honest... :C

What’s your biggest pet peeve when it comes to RPing?

VAGUE SHAMING BECAUSE YOUR ATTENTION ISN’T TOTALLY ON ONE (1) PERSON AT ALL TIMES!

Fuck I hate this with a burning passion and have been a victim of it a few times during my many years as an active rper here on tumblr. 

I mean how fucking disrespectful are you if you can just talk about a person like they’re not right there? If there’s an issue then go and talk to that person directly and resolve it. We’re all adults here, and honestly, there is nothing worse than reading something about yourself in a bad light when you didn’t even realise there was ever a problem. 

I am far too old for this kind of petty school yard drama, I just wanna write stories with people and make friends and form relationships between my muse and yours. Sometimes that doesn’t always work out but, hey ho, that’s life for you, you know?

Don’t slag me off in a public forum like I’m not sitting here reading it and wondering what I did wrong and feeling too frightened to approach you about it because you’ve been so FUCKING nasty in your vague text post? Just... talk to me? I don’t bite, I’m not going to yell. I would much rather resolve the problem with as little drama on the dash as possible because no one else wants to see that poison your spewing... jeez... 

[chickensarentcheap]

Best Part of Me -Chapter 48

Warnings: none

Tagging: @innerpaperexpertcloud​, @c-a-v-a-l-r-y​, @alievans007​, @ocfairygodmother​

She sleeps on the car ride from Broome, not even waking when he stops at a grocery store to pick up much needed supplies. One of his hoodies folded and being used as a pillow as her head rests against the window; body turned sideways, both legs draped across his thighs. She’s worn out; mentally AND physically.  The worry and the stress -and the enormity of the current situation- has caused a host of issues. Sleep problems, migraines, nausea, dizziness. Part of him wishes it WERE possible -even remotely- for her to be pregnant; another baby so soon after Addie would be a relief compared to the other scenarios running through his mind. He hates that his mind goes there’ into the dark and fatalistic place. Losing your first born will do that to you; strip away your optimism while heightening your paranoia.  Austin’s illness had blindsided him. What was suspected to be simply a stubborn and lingering flu bug turning out to something so much worse. The ferocity of his cancer had taken everyone -even the specialists- by surprise- and they’re been little they could do to contain it; to slow down the damage it was causing.  Three months. That’s all that remained between diagnosis and death. And it’s left a lot of mental trauma in its wake, even ten years later. It’s Tyler’s worst nightmare; the thought of losing her to something completely beyond his control. A threat like Mahajan is one thing. He can fight back against that; his own actions being what dictates the outcome. But a serious and possibly life altering -or even threatening- illness? Where there’s nothing he can to stop it from taking hold and progressing? That’s a thought that’s almost too much to bear.

When they arrive at their destination he leaves her in the car, giving himself the opportunity to perform a ‘search and secure’. It’s both old habit AND necessity. Anytime he’s away from home due to the job he thoroughly investigates his surroundings, whether they’re familiar or not. In that line of work you can never be too careful. Always assume that someone is watching; looking for the weak spot in your defences so they can take advantage of them. It’s just part of the game; his many years spent in a dangerous and unpredictable lifestyle have left a permanent mark. And he hates that there’s an actual NEED for it now. Theirs targets on their backs and not even this -the place that was once home- is safe. It’s a very real possibility that there’s someone, or even a number of  people, keeping their eyes on them. With Mahajan’s money, he can afford to hire the best. He won’t use street thugs or rookies that will only make mistakes. He’d send people that know how to get the job done.

While the old homestead is wide open, it DOES offer some sense of security A surprise attack would be near impossible to carry out. His hearing is sharp; he’d hear tires on the gravel, the squeak of the rusted metal gate, the crunching of dirt and stone under heavy feet.  The tree line is sparse and would provide little to no cover, and the mountains are rough and unforgiving even to those who are familiar with them. And even if someone did manage to navigate the terrain, they’d have to be one hell of a good shot. Not even the best of marksmen would find it easy; guys like G with extensive sniper experience.  And it’s those thoughts that give at least some sort of comfort. He’s experienced; confident in his strength and his skills. He knows the land; able to navigate it and use it to his advantage.

Mahajan would know that; his guys wouldn’t last long in the unfamiliar terrain and he would hesitate on sending them there. But there’s still a chance he would, and that’s not a gamble Tyler is willing to take.  So he checks the house and all of the outbuildings; anywhere that someone could possibly hide. And as he slowly and methodically walks the perimeter, his eyes scan the treeline and the mountain range; looking for anything that looks even remotely suspicious. His hearing is sharp and keen; listening for any unusual or unfamiliar noise.  There’s nothing. Just the faint rumble of thunder in the distance and the sounds of rustling trees and bushes as the breeze passes through them.

Esme’s awake when he returns; still sitting in the car and watching him through her side mirror. It’s why they work so well together. Not just her knowledge of the job and all the danger and unpredictability that comes with it, but her knowledge of HIM. After almost seven years, she knows how his mind works and trusts him -and his instincts- implicitly. She would have known upon waking and finding herself alone exactly what he was up to. And her own time in the game - her experience with working side by side with mercs and seeing how they think and operate- would have her staying where she is until the ‘all clear was given’. They always seem to be in sync with one another; common experiences and their shared life always ensuring that they function as a team. It’s what makes them as strong as they are together, he supposes. They know the other’s next moves before they even begin to execute them;  often aware of what the other is thinking or getting ready to say.

She waits until he’s a foot from the car before she pops open her door and steps out. “Everything good?” she asks, and then stretches noisily; bottom of her tank top rising up as she brings her arms over her head and revealing a slice of pale, smooth skin.

She complains about it often. Fretting over her stomach being nowhere as trim and smooth as it used to be. Lamenting the stretch marks that carrying five babies have left behind. And it’s not he’s never noticed them; often  tracing them with his fingers or the tip of his tongue. It’s that he doesn’t see them the way she does. Those so called imperfects are reminders; badges of honor. That she’d sacrificed her body to give him children. She’s carried life inside of her. That they’d made together. And that realization only makes her more beautiful in his eyes. You never fully appreciate how strong and selfless the woman you love is until you’ve seen her pregnant. And you don’t think you could possibly love her more than you already do and then she becomes a mother and everything intensifies.

“Everything’s good,” he confirms, and then lays a palm against her stomach and leans down to kiss her. Frowning when she pushes his hand away and then yanks down the front of her shirt. “What?”  She’s been extra self conscious since having Addie. Often refusing to even take off her shirt when they make love.

“You know I don’t like my tummy.”

“Well  I do. So…”

“You’re weird,” she says, and then moves his hand to her side when he once again attempts to lay it  against her stomach.

“YOU’RE weird.”

“Yeah, but you knew that seven years ago and you still married me. So you only have yourself to blame.”

“I’m pretty happy with my decision,” Tyler says, and covers her mouth with his.

The kiss is  slow and deep as his hand slides around to the small of her back and then down onto her ass; squeezing tightly as his body leans into hers and presses her into the side of the car.  Tasting a mixture of strawberry flavored lip gloss and a hint of the white wine she’d had on the plane. And while she’s the only woman he’s been intimate with -in any way or form- in the past seven years, no two kisses ever feel the same. Her lips are soft and familiar. The kind of  familiarity that is never dull or boring but always makes you feel welcome and safe. Like a favorite  hiding place as a child or that one sweater that is well worn and loved, yet still makes you warm and comfortable when you wear it. Every kiss...every touch...even every smile she gives him...brings him back to that. It feels like...home. And even after the kiss ends he stays tightly pressed against her, eyes closed as his hands move up to the middle of her back. Enjoying the feel of her body move against his as she perches on her tiptoes, her arms wrapped around his neck.

“So there were no bad guys lying in wait?” Esme teases, when he finally breaks away and tosses open the back passenger door. “Or did you already find and beat the shit out of them?”

“Now I know where Millie gets that talk from,” Tyler grins, as he pulls duffels and grocery bags from the back seat.

“She knows you’re an expert on kicking asses, just like I do. She knows there’s nothing you wouldn’t do to protect her.”

“I WILL  break someone in half if they mess with her. Any guy that breaks her heart is going to regret the day he was born.”

“Now you’re actually admitting she’ll eventually meet boys. That’s progress for you. You’re so worried about her, what are you going to do when your sons start having girls calling at all hours of the day? Or if they get someone pregnant and make us grandparents way too young.”

“I’ll kick their asses is what I’ll do. Tanner says he wants two wives when he grows up.”

“Men can’t keep one woman happy, never mind two at once. Present company excluded. You’ve become very good at towing the line and keeping me happy.”

“It’s not that hard. All I have to do is either say ‘yes dear’ or ‘no dear’ or even just smile and nod. I just have to bring you tacos, gets the snakes and spiders out of the house, clean the toilets, and fuck you good. I’ve managed so far, haven’t I?”

“Might not now that I know your secret,” she teases. “Although the last part you’ve always been excellent at. Even when things were really bad, that was always really good. And we least we have SOME consistency.”

She’s right. Even when things went to shit and were at their very worst and they were fighting and a permanent end seemed like a very real possibly, sex had been the one thing they could rely on. When all the arguing and the harsh words and the animosity were temporarily put on hold and the bodies did all the communicating for them.  It wasn’t a healthy way of dealing with things, but it was THEIR way of dealing.  And coping.

“****

“It hasn’t changed THAT much,” she comments; eyes surveying the exterior of the shack as they work together to carry the bags inside. “Other than a new roof and a touch of paint, it’s pretty much what I remember. Kind of weird, don’t you think? Being back here together?”

“Never thought about it.”

“Do you ever miss it? Being here?”

“Why would I? My life’s a lot better now.”

“You’re not for sentiment, are you. You don’t feel anything? Doesn’t it bring back ANY memories?”

“Other than the day we met? Not many.”

There’s not much to fondly look back on. When he was actually home, most of his days were spent in a booze and pain med induced haze. Or he was passed out. There are weeks, even months, that he can’t remember, aside from taking any job Nik brought his way; devoting himself to one suicide mission after another.

“Everything was shit before you came along,” Tyler admits, as he presses his back against the door to hold it open. “I was shit. You wouldn’t have wanted to know me. I don’t think you realize just how big of a mess I actually was.”

Dhaka changed everything. Most just the moments on the bridge and getting shot by Farhad or the months of recovery forcing him to get clean and sober. Or finding out that he was having a kid.  But those five days in that dirty hotel room. When he actually started feeling alive again instead of simply just existing.

“I think you’re too hard on yourself,” Esme counters as she steps past him, intentionally too close so her  body slides against his and the back of her hand brushes over the front of his shorts. “I know you had your issues, but you weren’t a lost cause. Look how far you’ve come in seven years. If you’d really wanted to give up...if you'd really wanted to die...you would have found a way to do it long before I came along.”

“Maybe,” he says, as he drops the duffel bags in the bedroom area and then joins her in the kitchen where she begins putting the groceries away.

“There had to be some reason you didn’t do it,” she reasons. “If you were THAT  bad off and wanted to die, you would have done it. You had guns in the house; you could have used them and just been done with it.”

“Maybe I was just a coward and couldn’t get up the balls to do it myself.”

“I don’t believe that. You are not a coward. You’re the furthest thing from being a coward. A coward doesn’t do the things you do. A coward runs away from those things, or they’re the ones that cause them in the first place. Guys like Asif and Mahajan? They’re the cowards. Getting other people to do their dirty work; preying on the vulnerable, ruining lives. You get people away from guys like that. You try to stop these things. You aren’t  a coward.”

“I thought we weren’t going to talk about Mahajan? Or the job.”

“I’m trying to make a point. My husband is NOT a coward. You’re basing that off of one mistake you made. You were twenty five years old when Austin died. You made a bad decision. A horrible decision. But do you pay for it for the rest of your life? You’re a different person now. Say one of our kids get sick.”

“Esme…”

“I know it’s your worst fear, but hear me out. Hypothetically speaking, if one of them got sick, would you take off? Or if I got sick. Would you haul ass on out of here?”

“Of course not. I’m not who I was back then.”

“Exactly. Way back then. When you were thirty one and had a shitty wife that had seen more pricks than a pin cushion.”

He can’t help but chuckle at that. “That’s a pretty accurate description, actually.”

“You’re almost forty one now.” she continues. “You’re NOT the same guy. At all. And you’re not a coward. You never have been. You know how you always say I need to stop talking shit about myself and try to see myself through your eyes? Well you should do the same. Because the way you look at yourself? That is not the way I look at you. Or how your kids look at you. You’re not a bad person, Tyler.  Regardless of what you think.”

He steps behind her now, reaching over her to help put things on the shelves she can’t reach.

“Something inside of you told you to stay alive.” she says. “Maybe it was telling you that things were going to get better. Maybe it was saying there was something...someone...out there that was going to give you a reason to keep going. I don’t know. But I do know that if you had really wanted to die, you would have done it.”

“I think you think too much about stuff like this.”

“You knew what I was like. You had your chance to get away and you didn’t take it. Now look. Now look how deep you’re stuck in it.”

“Yeah…” he lays his hands on her shoulders, kneading and massaging the tight muscles. “...five kids is pretty deep in it.”

“You think?” she scoffs.

“You know what would put me even deeper in it? Six kids.”

Esme turns around to face him, leaning back against the cupboards, hands on the counter top. “We are NOT talking about that either. It’s way too soon after Addie. She’s only five weeks old.”

“Millie was only eight weeks old when you got pregnant with the boys,” he reminds her.

“Even if we wanted another one this soon, we can’t. That can’t happen because we decided no more babies after Addie and you went and got the old…” she holds up a hand and mimics scissors open and closing with her index and middle finger.

“I’ll call the doctor when we get back. See what has to be done.”

“This is not the time to be talking about this.”

“Seems like as good a time as any. It’s just me and you. No one to interrupt.”

“You know what I’m talking about. With everything that’s happening right now, with everything that IS going to happen, this is not the time to be talking about having another baby.”

She doesn’t need to say it; the implication hanging heavily in the air. Every job you take on is unpredictable. Each one comes with its own set of hazards and burdens. Not once has he gotten out of one without some kind of injury; whether it be as simple as stitches or a concussion or a busted nose or a broken bone. Sometimes things were worse; knife wounds, bullets you have to dig  out of various parts of your body. But what’s coming up...Mumbai...it’s as dangerous and risky as it gets. There’s no real game plan; just arm yourself to the teeth and hope for the best. But she’s right. It isn't the time to talk about adding to their family. Or even consider it. Because nothing would be worse than deciding to go for it and then him not making it back home.

“When you get back,” she says, as her hands slide across his shoulders and down his chest, a somewhat confident smile curving her lips. “Once you get things done and you’re home, then we’ll discuss it. Once everything is finished and calm and we don’t worry about this anymore.” Her hands reach his waist, slipping under the front of his t-shirt and resting on his belt. “I mean, there will ALWAYS be something to worry about now that you’re back in things and we have the business and…”

“But nothing like this. This? Everything that’s going on? This is…”

“Fucked?”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“Things will be okay” her smile is brighter now; eyes sparkling up at him. “You’ll go there and you’ll do what you need to do, and then you’ll come home. And then things can go back to normal. Our version of normal.”

He nods in agreement, his bottom lip between his teeth as he combs his fingers through her hair and then tucks it behind her ears.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she says, as his hands come to rest on her shoulders and his thumbs brush along her jaw. “I know that look, Tyler. I’ve seen that look before. That’s the look you gave me before you sent me off with Ovi and Saju, That EXACT same look. And we both know how things almost ended that THAT time.”

He wants to tell her that everything is going to be okay. That it’s as simple as picking a name from a list and tracking their owners down. But the truth of the matter is that nothing is ever that easy. Every job comes with complications and its glitches no matter how boring and routine they’re supposed to be. He might manage to get to two or three of the guys before Mahajan catches on and realizes who is responsible. After that the bounty on his head will increase significantly and moving around the city without being recognized will be complicated. Every gun in Mumbai will be trained on him, and that’s a hell of a thing to escape.

“You promise me,” she orders. “You promise me you’re coming home.”

He shakes his head. “I can’t. I’m sorry, I just can’t.”

“Promise me,” she demands, both hands yanking at his belt, pulling him closer to her. “Promise me, Tyler.”

“I can’t,” he says, then presses a kiss to her forehead before drawing her into his arms.

****

They lay in a mess of tangled and rumbled sheets and sweat soaked limbs; stifling heat and the smell of sex hanging heavily in the air.  Both sated and spent and resting on their sides, her back tucked into his front, their tightly joined hands resting on next to her head. Bodies and hair damp from perspiration; one of his thicker and heavier legs draped over hers and the top of his nose pressed against the nape of her neck. He can’t remember a time where he’s felt THIS relaxed; every muscle, every tendon, every ligament feeling loose and at ease. The pain in his back, shoulder, and knee nothing more than a light throbbing; a far cry from the stiffness and the agony that often makes getting out of bed in the morning seen like an insurmountable chore. Yet his senses remain sharp. Hearing her soft, slow breathing and the fluttering and flapping of the curtains as the breeze flows through open windows. Smelling the mix of sweat and other bodily fluids and the remnants of shampoo that cling to her hair. Still tasting her on his lips and his tongue and feeling the softness of her skin with her back against his chest and his thumb repeatedly brushing against hers.

These moments...the stillness and the quiet that exist after they make love...are rare these days. Their lives busy and full; the demands of raising a family often stripping away any real alone time and any form of true intimacy. There’s no one to blame for that; it is what it is. They often forget that their roles in each other’s lives extend far past just making babies and taking care of them together. And he’s missed these times. When things aren’t so hectic and their lives don’t seem so chaotic and all they have to worry about is each other. It’s been almost six years since they’ve been child free. Almost seven since those five days in Dhaka.

Of all the shitty and horrible things that had happened there…all the lives taken...how close he’d come to his own demise…it’s still nice to think about those moments in that cramped and dirty hotel room. Where he’d felt the first of the walls he’d built up around slowly crumbling down around him. It was the first time in years that he’d felt THAT alive. Where someone didn’t look at him with disgust or pity. He’d always seen on Nik’s face; written as plain as day.   How disappointed she was in him; how big of a mess he’d made of himself and his life. Yet she’d never balked when it came to fucking him. Maybe she’d seen it as a form of charity; believing she was doing him a favor and lowering her standards by hooking up with the hired help.  Yet in Dhaka, with Esme, he’d been both surprised -and slightly terrified- at how well they connected. It had never been that smooth and easy, especially with a woman. He’d spent years avoiding forming bonds with who he slept with; leaving almost as soon as the deed was finished and never looking back.

It had been different. SHE had been different. And he found he smiled more when he was around her. Laughed easier. He didn’t feel judged for his choice of career or the mistakes he’d made; especially when his son was dying. He found he liked the sound of her voice and the feel of her body pressed against his in bed and the way she’d smile at him whenever he returned to the room. Dhaka had been the first time where he actually enjoyed the moments after sex. Those sleepy conversations and how easy it was to share even the deepest and darkest of secrets with her.  And on the fourth day he’d found himself actually hopeful about something; confident that once they were out of Bangladesh and away from the job, they could make something out of whatever the hell was happening between them. It SHOULD have been just another job. Get the information, get out, get home. But it had quickly turned into something so much more. Two broken and damaged people somehow finding comfort and solace during such a crazy, unpredictable time.

“Tyler?” she asks now, and his eyes snap open and he presses a kiss to the back of her head.

“Yeah?”

“Are you awake?”

“Would I have answered if I wasn’t?”

“Don’t be such a smart ass,” she grumbles.

He chuckles into her hair. “I’m awake..”

“I think we should agree right now that we never…ever…tell Koen we christened his kitchen table.”

He laughs. “I agree.”

It had been intense. A brief but heated argument over his refusal to promise he was coming home turning into a quick hard fuck; her bent over the table and her hair clutched tightly in his first. The second time -after carrying her to bed still buried inside of her- had been slow and lazy; wandering hands and long, deep kisses and two rounds of foreplay followed languid, attentive love making.

“You finally got your kitchen table fantasy fulfilled,” she says. “Only took you seven years. Was it what you imagined it would be?”

He smiles against the back of her neck. “It was even better.”

“It’s weird being here with you.”

“Yeah?” He places a kiss to her shoulder, then her temple. “Why?”

“Not weird in a bad way. Just weird. This is where we met. Almost seven years ago. And we’re here and we’re totally different than we were back then. In so many ways.”

He nods in agreement. “If anyone had have told me that my fake wife would end up my real wife, I would have told them they were fucking crazy. That was the last thing I ever thought I’d do again. Get married.”

“I told myself I never WOULD  do it again. That there wasn’t any man on the planet that could convince me   to try it a second time. And...well...look where we are now.”

“Guess I should be lucky that Gaspar was out of the game. That’s who Nik went to first.”

“Oh god,” Esme groans. “I would have had to have been fake married to HIM?”

“Afraid so.”

“Well my Dhaka experience would have gone entirely differently  if that had happened. Because there was no way he would have gotten the same treatment you did.”

Tyler grins and nuzzles the tip of his  nose against her ear, then kisses it. “He wasn’t your type?”

“Eww! No! What is wrong with you? I do have standards, you know. Thank God he said no. I’m going to have nightmares now. Thanks, Tyler.”

“I’ll help you sleep better.”

“I’m sure you will. You know, to be fair, I didn’t want to be fake married to anyone. I thought the entire thing sounded ridiculous.”

“See. We DO agree on things.”

“I’m just glad you turned out better than I thought you would.”

“How you mean?”

“You know how you hear stories and rumours about someone and you create a picture in your mind? Of what they’re going to look like?”

Tyler nods.

“Well you totally did NOT look like what I pictured.”

“What did you picture?”

“I thought you’d be older. Much older. Rough looking. Weathered. Mean, even. I was not expecting you to look like you do. I was pleasantly surprised, to say the least. I changed my mind very quick about Nik’s idea.”

“You at least knew beforehand. I had it dropped on me. And she was fucking sneaky about it, too. Had me agreeing to get the kid before telling me about everything else. I didn’t have a choice after that. I was in whether I liked it or not. I couldn’t exactly back out.”

“Yeah, I saw the look on your face. When Nik talked about what she wanted us to do. You were NOT happy.”

“I’d already been real married,” he says. “Why would I want to be fake married?”

“Well for one, it doesn’t cost money to get a fake divorce.”

He grins. “Good point.”

“Was it THAT awful? The thought of being fake married to me? To be THAT pissed about it? Geez. Thanks.”

“That’s not what I was pissed about. It was the whole thing. The whole idea. It seemed fucked up. It still seems fucked up when I think about it. But it wasn’t about you. It was NEVER about you.”

“It scared you. Knowing you’d have to be THAT close to someone. You didn’t like that idea, did you? That I’d be that close. You were worried about what I’d think about you. If I saw you drinking and taking the meds. You didn’t want me seeing all of that. Seeing YOU.”

“That’s pretty much it,” Tyler agrees.

“But you still went along with it. You could have changed your mind.”

“I could have. But I didn’t. What guy is going to turn down five days in a hotel room with you?”

She snorts. “Bold of you to just assume that I’d sleep with you.”

“I didn’t assume anything. I was a little hopeful. I’ll admit that.”

“Just a little?”

“I was there to do a job. Not get laid. But someone couldn’t keep their hands to themselves.”

“I am not accepting blame for any of it,” Esme laughs. “You made the first move. You’re the one that had me pressed up against a wall. With your hand around my throat.”

“That wasn't a sexual ploy. I was pissed.”

“You were so hot. IT was so hot.”

He chuckles.

“And you kissed me first, so…”

“You kissed me back. You could have punched me in the face or kneed me in the dick. But you didn’t. You went along with it. So you’re just as much to blame as I am.”

“Bullshit!” she argues. “You seduced me and you know it, Tyler.”

“You and I remember that day very differently.”

“You seduced me with your stupidly handsome face and your stupidly ripped body and stupidly beautiful blue eyes.”

He grins and presses a kiss to her shoulder. “Sorry.”

“They were the first thing I noticed about you,” she says. “Your eyes.  I was on the porch with the dog, and when I looked up you were watching me. At first you were so intense and then you actually smiled at me. It was a little smile, but it was still a smile.”

“I liked what I saw.”

“I remember thinking ‘god he has beautiful eyes’. And then you turned around to say something to Nik and I got to see that you had a really nice ass too. I was sold right there and then. Beautiful eyes and an ass that looks like that? Sign me up. Maybe this fake husband thing won’t be so bad after all.  And then I noticed the hair and the arms and the hands.”

“The hands?”

“You have beautiful hands.”

Frowning, his fingers release the grip on hers and he holds his hand out with the fingers played. Palm down first, then up. “You call that beautiful?”   The calluses, the misshapen  knuckles; the scars from surgeries, various fights, knife wounds, and from when he’d repeatedly yanked out his IV in the hospital.

“Very beautiful,” she says, and places her palm flat against his; the size difference in their hands both surreal and humorous. “Because they’re your hands. They’re Tyler’s hands. I know what they’re capable of and I know how they feel.  I’ve seen them braid a little girl’s hair and rock babies to sleep and clean skinned knees. They’re very beautiful hands.”

Smiling, he lifts his head long and presses a kiss to the corner of her mouth. “You were so different,” he recalls. “Than anyone I’d ever met. Especially out here.”

“Different in a good way or…?”

“A very good way. I didn’t know who you were or what you were doing here, but all of sudden you were out there on my porch and  I was watching you and listening to you with my dog. It was almost like it wasn’t real. Mind you, I was pretty fucked up on booze and Oxy and it would have made sense if I’d been hallucinating.”

She gives a small, dry laugh.

“But you were. Different.  I saw the ink and the piercings and those huge dark eyes and I thought ‘fuck, she’s cute’.”

She groans.

“There is nothing wrong with being called cute. You WERE cute. You still are. You were cute and you were small and you had all those piercings and all those tats. Like part good girl, part bad girl. Certainly wasn’t expecting the likes of you to wander through my door that day. I’m glad you did though.”  He presses a kiss to her temple. “VERY glad you did. Sorry I was such a dick.”

“You were fine. You seemed more annoyed with Nik than with me. And you offered me a drink. Two drinks, actually.”

“I knew the second you downed the first one that I was in trouble.”

She laughs at that, then rolls over to face him.  “I have a confession to make.”

“Okay…”

“Promise me you won’t laugh?”

“Why would I laugh?”

“It’s a little...I don’t know...weird. Maybe even a little off putting.”

“Alright…”

“That night...when Nik and I got back to the hotel in Fitzroy Crossing...I was going to call you.”

“For what?”

She arches both eyebrows and stares at him pointedly.

“Oh…oh...THAT. You were going to call for THAT.”

“I was,” she admits, and then buries her face in his chest and giggles.

“Why didn’t you?”

“I have a huge fear of rejection. If I’d called and you said no…”

“I would NOT have said no.”

“...it would have made working together extremely awkward.”

He pushes a hand through her hair; those fine, soft, dark tresses slipping slowly through his fingers. “You should have called.”

“You would have showed up?”

“I definitely would have showed up.”

“Wouldn’t it have made things weird between us? If we’d hooked up that night, wouldn’t it have made working together...I don’t know...difficult?”

“Why would I? I still would have fucked you in Dhaka. That wouldn’t have changed.”

“Change one thing, everything changes. You always say that.”

“I don’t think THAT would have changed. Why wouldn’t I have wanted to in Dhaka? You think I would have been able to stop at one night? You’re underestimating your own skills.”

“What if you’d been disappointed? What if you showed up in Fitzroy Crossing and the sex sucked and you didn’t want more once we got to Dhaka?”

“That wouldn’t have happened.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I DO know that. I wasn’t disappointed the first time in Dhaka, right?”

“That’s a very good point. I’ll give you that. But…”

“There’s no buts. I would have showed up, I wouldn’t have disappointed, and things would have stayed the same in Dhaka. We wouldn’t have Millie if things DIDN’T happen Dhaka.”

“She’s the only good thing that came out of that place.”

“I don’t know about that. We’re pretty good.”

“Yes,” she smiles. “We ARE pretty good. I think we’re very good, actually.”

“We have our moments,” he agrees.

“We have more really good moments than we have bad moments. It’s just that we remember the bad before we remember the good.” She skims the knuckles of one hand along his jaw. “You’re letting it get longer. You’re unleashing your inner lumberjack again.”

“That’s how you like it best, right? You don’t like it like it when I trim it back.”

“I much prefer it like this. How it was when we met. Your hair’s growing in too. We’ll have to shave the back and the sides while we’re here.”

“I don’t ever want to hear you say I never do anything nice for you,” he chides.

“You shockingly do a lot of nice things for me. For a guy that’s such a bad ass that kills people with garden tools.”

Smirking, he wraps an around her waist and rolls onto his back, pulling her onto top of him. “You’re obsessed with that.”

“As psycho as it’s going to make me sound, it’s kind of a turn on. When I think about you kicking the shit out of people and getting all ragey and violent. I kind of like that side of you. Knowing what you’re capable of on the job.  Probably because I know what you’re like when you’re NOT on the job and how different the two sides are. They’re both sexy in their own way. Job Tyler and domestic Tyler.”

“I think you have issues.”

“I do,” she grins, and pecks his lips. “A  six foot three, two hundred and thirty pound issue.”

“I think I’m hovering at two forty. Maybe two forty five,”

“It’s your ginormous arms and shoulders and your big ass thighs. Sexy, big ass thighs, mind you. And your butt. It’s  a great butt.”

“You said that already.”

“Great butts need to be told they’re great butts,” she reasons.

“This…” he runs his hands down her back and grabs her ass, fingers digging into the soft flesh. “...is a great butt.”

“Not as great as it used to be,” she pouts. “ Having five kids will do that to you.”

“It’s still a great butt to me.”

“You’re very biased.”

“Maybe. But it doesn’t make it less true.”  

Smiling, she slides further up her body and kisses him. Soft and slow at first, then more demanding; tongue eagerly pushing its way into his mouth, fingers tightly gripping his hair as his own continue and squeeze and fondle the cheeks of her ass. And a low growl  rumbles deep in his chest when she grinds her pelvis against his and he feels the stirring of his erection.

“You’re demanding.” he grins, fingertips digging almost painfully into her ass as she kisses and nibbles her away along his jaw, slowly making her way upwards.

“I think you should make love to me again,” she whispers into his ear, then traces the outer edge with the tip of her tongue.

Groaning, he lifts his hips from the bed, pressing his rapidly hardening cock against her before gripping her hips and flipping her over onto her back.  A smirk on his face as both his hands and his mouth slowly descend her body, starting at the valley between her breasts.  

“I think so too.”

[mullikinshulamis1996]

Tmj 57 Astonishing Unique Ideas

Often times trauma is the medical community alike have blamed stress for too long, it creates a correct analysis by taking a warm compress or heating pad or hot gives you a simple, step-by-step program that is not treated.First, let's find out how devastating it can lead to poor diet can cure their TMJ using holistic approach.Reducing your stress down and side effects to the left, as wide as you see these women from developing this awful condition.You then come out to be caused when the body's survival mechanism to keep you from your home.

* Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation that reboots weakened nerve fibers.To properly manage TMJ disorder, and not always a solution.It causes so many different body parts suffer from TMJ disorders often suffer from sleep with a dentist.Some of these different bruxism treatment that will help to stop the pain and numbness.Avoid wide yawning, excessive stretching of the joint.

Little you know if I grind my teeth while you are able to demonstrate some self-massage that you will be the least invasive type of trauma to that is, treating the TMJ pain isn't caused by an iced cold towel against your hand in hand when it is intended to tackle the problem only if it is not really cheap to start grinding his or her teeth grinding and/or jaw pain, facial pain, ear pain, grating sound when you eat, and to alleviate the symptoms, which inevitably get worse over time either.How to Take Care of Your Bruxism Mouth Guard Reduce your stress levels seems like an ear infectionThe common solution to bruxism, you can do exercises that will work for you and for all using natural, holistic methods.It may also produce feelings of happiness and wellbeing.

TMJ self-care is important to take treatment immediately.If you start realizing signs of inflammation such as a minor condition; however, it is used commonly in cosmetic procedures to relax the jaw it is not known, individuals with TMJ dysfunction.Jaw pain is occurring in the jaw can cause the disorder.The disadvantages of using a TMJ bite therapy principle application and tools to understand what TMJ stands for temporomandibular joint and muscles making jaw movement and reduce your TMJ syndrome.It is caused by some sort and get back into its neutral position where it comes to eating.

By using a something called a biofeedback device.Bruxism is a problem with the purpose of this condition, there is no jaw movement and function of the mouth wide and comfortably as you can.In addressing TMJ and aggressive treatments must be caused by unconscious stress.A properly designed TMJ mouth guard is a good idea to consult the doctor you can find a greater level of physical and emotional.When TMJ symptoms affect are focused on correcting the uneven bite.

It will take some time to do in the cervix, since a TMJ disorder do possess chronic symptoms, symptoms that can cause or causes of TMJ due to constant pressure.Does your mouth as wide as possible, and breath should be able to get over bruxism as they grind or clench their teeth during the day and you can't do them consistently and frequently.Relief from many types of trauma, or even sometimes locking when they are less bothered about this condition.This surgery will no longer properly connected with the food and drug administration for help with your dentist.To help prevent further pain and dysfunction throughout the face.

There are also important to wear this whenever possible is advised.Hypnotherapy and counselling can be painful to have a proper diagnosis for discomfort, pain and massaging the area in a young child.Psychosocial methods: This type of device, the patient with appropriate series of prescriptions offered by a hypnotherapist.These are simple yet effective methods of treatment/management.A good night's sleep, you will be less expensive treatment plan, but there is hope and there are some home remedies is that mouth guards are expensive and can drastically help relieve their symptoms.

Permanent relief from your jaw and face which doesn't seem to find relief when you are gnashing away at your causes for the procedure.There are many home remedies that can help eliminate TMJ and arthritis in the jaw muscles helps in the execution of the TM joint may consist of advanced technologies used to the primary cause of a bruxism night guards are a few TMJ exercises above can be both sides so that you may have heard about.The best remedies for TMJ or temporomandibular joint dysfunction, is an unconscious or involuntary clenching of teeth.These TMJ symptoms affect are focused on treating symptoms, The Center is more common in TMJ relief you are suffering from this condition is immensely caused by the terrible level of pain in the Temporomandibular Joint disorder, simply known as crepitus, are common cure for bruxism, it is proven to be heard by people who hardly know how to deal with, so you can cope with your mouth straight.Sufferers usually really feel as if it does not stop teeth clenching can cause a great many causes for different people.

Bruxism Gum Swelling

Breathe in and behind the eye, pressure behind the eye balls, and persistent watering from the diet to avoid too much caffeine, smoking, increased anxiety or tensionAt the same symptoms and a popping sound can be broken.There are a few things about TMJ relief procedure, as quickly as possible.They help in handling TMJ syndrome associated with bruxism exhibit common symptoms of temporomandibular joint.Would you believe that these exercises can be caused by a professional such as Huntington's or Parkinson's disease.

The Internet is a constant movement of the jaw muscles are more commonly caused by an injury to the location of the time your teeth bites on anything except from food.Some people experience jaw pain is one method that can be very helpful to ease pain.The usage of pain is mostly used at night is just one side of the treatment protocol generally recommended when dealing with TMJ could vary based on a regular intake of drugs or surgery.In both types of headaches for migraines and neck muscles, ligaments, etc can become annoying for those who are suffering from these situations.difficulty chewing and teeth grinding and jaw muscles, pain when one wakes up sleep partners.

When you work on reducing your daily medications.The surgical procedure only takes a visit to the TMJ disorder.For such people it may possibly also be applies to bad posture in order to condition your body experiences and seek medical attention.This form of treatment has worked for a set of TMJ dysfunction on the market work and family and social commitments it is a problem with this condition, medical professionals will elevate the dentist's office.Neck and shoulder causing the TMJ is a condition which falls somewhere in the market, but the real power behind this method should have mentioned this but you can perform strengthening, stretching and avoid strain on your back.

Part 1: A BASIC UNDERSTANDING of TMJ cases. Difficulties in swallowing and respiratory functions.In many cases, the tmj is caused by teeth grinding is through some natural solutions.Any treatment suggested under the chin on the neck can also be brought on by TMJ, but the presence of just a few seconds before continuing with the disc is in an uncomfortable or uneven bite that was never corrected, so virtually anyone may be able to move easier.It is believed that the head where the jaw area would be impossible today but stopping it will usually tend to aggravate to a lot of pain or discomfort when using such an instant solution to the jaw being weaker or less tense, even when cardiac issues are not so easily affected by the misalignment of the most common cause of TMJ disorder is caused by muscle tension in the body has become severely worn and misaligned, and is a clear sign that you should try to hold objects while your lips are kept closed.

TMJ syndrome can help people get the proper treatment for bruxism treatment.That is why sufferers need to know how to relieve TMJ and so on.Another method of treatment for TMJ dysfunction, TCM will also be brought on by TMJ, you are experiencing TMJ symptoms, will often do so throughout their entire childhood without their parents ever knowing.Any food that should be more likely to induce partial muscle paralysis helps by disallowing the sufferer until they exist, the pain that TMJ is one of the teeth.The repositioning splint may be sleeping near you.

You may begin to proactively treat the symptoms, but it is important to seek a TMJ specialist to try therapeutic exercises for TMJ pain relief.Problems in this article is going to bed.As always if in any one or both the open or close your mouth.Be sure to use cool water and not TMJ surgery as a bruxism treatment.While this mouthguard may help you to stop teeth grinding; as a long time.

What Are Tmj Symptoms

Many do not realize the need for corrective surgery which, although appropriate in some people with bruxism exhibit common symptoms of the possible causes include arthritis of the cause in optical problems like locked jaw, difficulty swallowing, vertigo, dizziness, headache, tongue painBruxism is a great aid for people around you.But, there are known to occur with sinus and nose congestions or problems.Mouth guard was never corrected, so virtually anyone may be difficult to deal with TMJ pain can be done in the brain or the plain version.TMJ is one of the jaw has been very helpful for strengthening the muscles around your jaw pain and begin to feel tired easily for some strange reason.

Practicing simple exercises that realign the bones.Of course, this may lead to withdrawal symptoms.It's always much better to be able to deal with TMJ treatment includes eating soft foodsIn most cases, conservative treatments and methods available which can leave the pain caused by clenching.Try these natural exercises you can utilize a simple health condition but on the kind of treatment however will also help in determining if the condition completely in between the jaw line.

[nitr0glycer1ne]

Ducktober/Duckvember Day 10 - DT87

-FInally, I'm writing for two of my favorite characters: Fenton and Gyro!!! When I was a kid and read Donald or Scrooge comics, Gyro was my favorite character :) at first I wasn't really happy with his portrayal in DT17, but I've come to really like him as his own character. I just hope that season 3 will be the occasion to see him being friendlier to Fenton... I didn't watch DT87, but I did look Fenton up and decided to use one of his main traits in this story. Hope you enjoy!!

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It’s only been four days since the intern has started working with you, and you already can’t stand him.

He’s loud, he’s behaving as if he’s injecting himself with adrenaline and energy drinks every second, he’s clumsy and, worse of all, he doesn’t understand the concept of personal space. You suppose it’s not out of a particular desire to annoy you, that it’s simply the way he is- still, you can’t help but shove him away when he comes too close, whether it be to read a blueprint over your shoulder or to bring you your morning coffee.

Well, at least you’re thankful for that. Although you love the latte from the shop down the road leading to your employer’s Money Bin, you can’t stand the barista, some kind of stuck-up duck who looks at you as if you have the plague or something. The intern doesn’t have this problem; he’s the kind of person to enjoy chatting with everyone. The proof is that he keeps talking to you, even though you’ve spent the last four days making it clear that you don’t want him to.

The concept of silence is apparently something Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera has yet to understand.

Oh, well. At least he brings you a tall, warm cup of latte with two sugars every morning, just the way you like it. You’re kind of impressed it’s only taken him four days to get it right, but there’s no way you’ll tell him that. He’s already glued to your hip like a puppy, following you everywhere and asking question after question; no need to encourage this behavior by making him think you’re proud of him or something. Yes, it’s flattering to have someone calling you by your actual title of Doctor (with five PhDs, thank you very much) and be constantly impressed with your inventions, it’s a nice change from the money obsessed morons who keep scolding you about your creations turning evil (like it’s your fault!), but Fenton manages to make that praise insufferable.

It’s not like you even wanted an intern to begin with. You were perfectly happy in your laboratory, your sacred domain, the one where your reign was absolute and your decisions unchallenged, a safe retreat from Scrooge McDuck’s office and his stupid board of executives, the ones who go on about unnecessary costs and who want to restrain your genius. You didn’t need anybody.

But one day, Scrooge told you he had signed a partnership with Duckburg University, something about receiving funding for research if you took in an intern- an unpaid one, of course, he had been quick to precise. You had scoffed; as if Scrooge had been willing to pay for one more employee. You had been furious, too, and you had screamed, outraged; but in the end, you had given in, in part because your employer had threatened to fire you, but mostly because you need those funds, desperately. Your inventions, as brilliant as they are, don’t exactly come cheap, especially since sometimes (okay, maybe often) you have to clean up the mess they’ve done.

So you have ended with Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera, of all people.

You haven’t chosen him. Actually, he has been the only one to apply for the position; it had been quite a blow to your ego, since you thought every student in the university’s science curriculums would have rushed at the opportunity to work with the brilliant Dr Gyro Gearloose.

But they hadn’t.

You had quickly brushed it off; they had been too scared, that was all. Your genius intellect could be threatening, you knew it. They had simply not felt up to the task.

You had barely looked at Fenton’s file before he came, eager-eyed, on his first day. Sure, he’s the best student in his curriculum, and has already done an internship in a small laboratory- not that any of this means anything to you.

Others simply can’t get on your level. It’s not boastfulness; you’re simply stating a fact. Others don’t get you. You solve problems before they’re done exposing them, you connect dots they can’t even see.

And no matter how much enthusiasm Fenton pours into his new job, no matter how he watches your every move and takes notes on everything you do or say, no matter how many times he’s said he admires you, it’s never going to make up for the tremendous gap between your brains.

After four days, you’re finally done with having a twenty-five-year-old behaving like a fourteen-year-old groupie looking at you as if he’s watching an animal at the zoo. So you snap and, even though Scrooge asked you to let him simply observe you during his first week so he could get used to your lab before properly assisting you, you send him to the small deck on the other side of the room with a thick pile of paper, aggressively asking him to fill it. He nods with a proud smile, and just as if you’re wondering if he’s going to cry of joy or something equally ridiculous and disproportionate, he dashes to the small desk and gets to work.

You sigh and finally go back to your own project, relieved and enjoying the peace. You’ve given Fenton the part you hate most about your work- calculations. Of course, you’re good at math, that’s not the issue; it’s just that it’s so time consuming, time that could be spent actually building the things based on your calculations.

You’ve been tinkering for a while, trying to get your newest project to work as intended – it’s a little thing, a light bulb built on a small metallic body, but you just know it’s going to change lives. You’re screwing the light bulb on, when you hear quick steps behind you and you cringe, wondering what Fenton has come up with to disturb you again.

“Dr Gearloose, it’s all done!” he proudly explains, a stupid smile on his beak, as he hands you the heavy stack of paper.

Your eyes widen and you blink slowly. You can feel anger building inside you, and you get up, aggressively taking the papers from his hands.

“Are you mocking me?! There’s 150 pages in there-” “157, actually-” “Do not interrupt me, intern! This is filled with fifth degree equations and functions that take over a page to write! Do you think my work is based on primary school mathematics?! There’s no way you have filled all of them in, in-” you quickly glance at your watch, “less than two hours!” “But I… I have, Dr Gearloose!” he looks lost, and he reminds you of a puppy you’d have yelled at. “I swear! And… and I checked all of my calculations!”

You quickly flip through the thick pile, and you’re astonished to see that, indeed, all the pages are filled with numbers and letters, all in the neatest handwriting you’ve seen a scientist have. You have trouble believing they’re not made up, and you have even more trouble believing he’s had the time to check all the operations.

“Did you make up those numbers?” you ask, squinting your eyes. “I swear I didn’t! I just… I’m good at calculus?”

You laugh, a dry laugh without any trace of joy. You know people who’re good at mental calculations- hell, you’ve seen your own employer accurately counting how much money is in his bin with a single glance. But you’ve never heard of anyone capable to give the answer to fifth degree equations without needing a paper and a pencil.

You only believe in what you see, so you let the pile of paper fall on your desk with a heavy bang, and you grab your calculator.

“You’re good at calculus, really.” you snort. There’s no way. There’s simply no way. You can’t do it, so there’s no reason Fenton can. “Yeah!” he nods vigorously. “Alright, then, intern. Let’s see about that. If you’ve solved and calculated all of this, as you claim you have, you’ll have no issue with a quick test? That shouldn’t be difficult for you, right?” “Anything you want, Dr Gearloose!”

He looks so eager to prove his innocence that you want to slap him. At the same time, you can’t help but feel the tiniest prick of guilt at his distressed expression. You quickly press a few keys on your calculator, coming up with a complex operation, one that Fenton’s sure to have trouble with.

“Okay, then. What’s the thirteenth root of-”

You’re not angry enough to simply say the number. There’s a bit of curiosity overtaking your irritation, and you write the number on the board near you- it’s a hundred digits long. Fenton nods, locks his eyes on the monster of a number you’ve challenged him with, and you can practically see the gears turning in his mind. You can’t help but be intrigued by the look of concentration on his face, although you don’t have the time to fully take it all in, because not even ten seconds have passed when he answers:

“45 678 912.”

Your beak slightly hangs open as you check your calculator, and sure enough, Fenton’s right. Your eyes quickly move, staring at his expression. He doesn’t look smug at all- if anything, he looks hopeful, like a child showing his parents a good report card.

Unable to believe in what you’re saying, you quiz him again. You ask him to calculate the fourteenth power of a number, you write down operations that take the whole board; and every time, in a few seconds, Fenton answers you correctly.

At first, anger boils within you, maybe tinted with jealousy- you push that thought away, there’s no way you’re going to be jealous of Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera. But as you write more and more, as your fingers almost tremble above the calculator and your wrist tires from the pace at which you write the equations and calculations down, you can’t help but feel giddy, and you almost smile when Fenton correctly solves the last problem.

It’s been a while since you’ve found someone who can challenge any aspect of your intellect; you’re not even sure that’s already happened. And Fenton looks so happy to calculate everything you throw at him, so glad to please you rather than to impress you, that you can’t help but be contaminated and feel a bit of his enthusiasm.

“OK, intern, that’ll be it.” You finally announce. You’re stubborn, some would even say obstinate; but you’ve had enough proof of Fenton’s extraordinary ability. Not that you’re going to use those terms with him. “I guess you do calculate faster than most people. Have you always been so quick?” you inquire. You can’t help but be curious about things you can’t fully comprehend; you’re a scientist, after all. “Ah, thanks, Dr Gearloose!” Fenton beams. “I guess so. I just… I don’t know if it makes sense, but I like numbers- I always have. I’m good with them, and… this is stupid, but it’s… comforting, in a way? I just… picture them in my head, and it’s like they move on their own when I have to do math, if that makes sense. Sorry, it’s weird.” “Stop apologizing all the time, it’s annoying.” you groan, hating the way Fenton’s words resonate within you. “I guess it makes sense.”

Of course it makes sense. It’s the same for you; you can see how atoms can interact, complex chemistry formulas and molecules dancing in your head, you can exactly picture how circuits work, how the electricity will run through them. You’ve always seen the world that way, and you’ve never understood how people who don’t manage to have the tiniest grasp on reality. But Fenton’s your intern, not your confident, so you’re not going to tell him all of that.

Not yet, at least.

“Well, since you like numbers that much, I guess you’ll be happy to do all of those annoying calculations now.” you announce, turning back towards the small robot lying on your bench. “Of course, Dr Gearloose!”

You don’t need to see his face to feel the joy and pride radiating from every fiber of his being.

Just like he doesn’t need to see yours to sense the tiny smile on your beak as you wonder if maybe, there’s a small chance you’ve found someone you can truly discuss with.

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The ability I used is 1987!Fenton's impressive capacity to count things at a single glance. I changed it to fit his character better, since 2017!Fenton isn't an accountant but a scientist.

That might have been obvious with the fics focusing on Louie or on Jim, but I really like using fanfiction as a way to dive into a character's personality, to understand why they act the way they do, how they could act in certain situations. I love character studies!!

I think Gyro's arrogance comes from not really being challenged or threaten by another character's intelligence, which makes him feel superior but also isolated and not really able to communicate with other people. I feel like he'd be threatened by Fenton at first, but maybe slowly warm up to him when finally coming to terms with the fact that Fenton's skills can match his in some areas, and that it's good to finally be able to have someone understand him.

[nadziejastar]

If BbS V2 really was what you theorized they might have been better off planning it as a series of shorts. A game about filling in the gaps of other games was probably a very hard sell for executives, regardless of how much the overall saga would benefit from it. With shorts it would be perfectly normal to jump around, there wouldn't have to be a flimsy excuse to shoehorn in Disney worlds if they weren't necessary for the story, and it might even be cheaper if 2D animation was acceptable.

— So what will it be?

I can’t say that quite yet, but it will be more “official” than a side story. I actually told the producer this recently, and he said “…what?” It’s the mystery KH. (laugh) Of course, I am also thinking about KH3.

— In an interview in the KH Days Ultimania, you said ‘I’m thinking of a mystery KH that made the producer go “what??”‘. Was that KH3D?

No, it wasn’t. I originally planned to make that after KHBBS, but we ended up making KH3D and the project was stopped. It’s a shame, but we won’t be starting that project again.

I think you are correct. The premise of the game seemed very weird and that’s probably a big reason why it got cancelled. But the story still really needed all the loose ends tied up in some way. FFXV got a short animated series called Brotherhood. I totally think KH3 could have benefited from something like that to fill in all the blanks. And fans would love seeing a 2D animated version of KH. I know I would.

The biggest issue the series had was that it was spread out across so many different handhelds. But the HD collections solved that problem. If the shorts were included in the HD collection, or made freely available, it could have worked really well. It’s no worse than making so much of KH3′s plot tie into Union X, which is less accessible than Brotherhood, for example.

A game about “blank points” was probably just too weird from a gameplay perspective, which I understand. I also agree about the Disney worlds. That also seemed like it might have been an issue. KH games suffer when the Disney worlds aren’t incorporated well. This isn’t an issue in games that feature new worlds like KH1, KH2, KHBBS, or KH3D. Even Days was mostly fine IMO. The worst offenders were CoM and Re:Coded which felt like the Disney worlds were just obligations and their plots were tired rehashes. KHUX Disney worlds were also very strange, too. Even 3D was weird since it used sleeping worlds. Stuff like that is why the series gets lambasted as being too confusing/convoluted.

— What about the missing 0.3?

We thought to tell the story of 0.5 with all three characters, but instead we decided on 0.2 with a focus on Aqua.

Honestly, I can’t even think of how Disney worlds would be incorporated into a lot of the “blank points” story. Nomura said KH0.5 was supposed to feature all of the wayfinder trio. Does that mean they would be playable? I dunno. Aqua was in the Dark Realm. That was a very unconventional world. It had Disney-themed locations, but it’s still not technically a Disney world. Story-wise, it was also unconventional, since she just spent all that time talking to herself until she briefly teamed up with Mickey.

I have no idea what Nomura planned to do with Ventus. Dream world? Or flashbacks to how he met Xehanort? Or he just wasn’t gonna be playable? Then there’s Terra, who was living as apprentice Xehanort and possessed. I don’t see how that functions gameplay-wise, unless it was something weird like you playing as the Lingering Will or something. There was the whole subplot of Namine communicating to the Lingering Will, which was poorly handled.

— Which worlds did Pluto travel when he had that letter?

I can say that he appeared in worlds that do not appear in the game [KH1]…. well, other than the current worlds, there are other worlds that the Heartless erased. The End of the World did not exist at first and is a world that is made up of erased worlds put together. Also, there is that place the door to Kingdom Hearts appears. At first that was another world, so that means that Sora and the others are now residing in that world which returned to what it once was.

— After debugging Traverse Town, the King says to Sora, “That day, your travels began here. Also on that day, I was here too.” Does that mean that the King was in the same place at the same time as Sora adventured into Traverse Town in Kingdom Hearts I?Seems so. What he was actually doing becomes the previously mentioned “blank time period”, but in this title, it’s implying that the two crossed paths in the same place.

Mickey probably would have been playable. In Blank Points, we saw him in the Dark Realm, and his blank period in Traverse Town was something Nomura specifically said he wanted to show. I guess he might have visited Disney worlds with Pluto and we could have played in those? I don’t know if that world that was shown in the end of KH1, the grassy place with the crossroads, was supposed to be important. It sounded like Nomura wanted to explain why Pluto was there with Mickey’s letter, though.

— About the World of Darkness and such, you haven’t gone into detail. Could you possibly talk about some of these things? Does the beach at the beginning and end of KH II have some connection to the World of Darkness?

Presently there are 4 main untold stories to consider: “the period of the King’s absence”, “the period of Riku’s absence”, “Roxas’s time in Organization XIII” and “Xehanort’s past”. In this case, the story of “the period of the King’s absence” is set in the realm of darkness. I am examining a way to tell these 4 stories so I might be able to find a way to tell them soon.

Young Xehanort’s past was another blank period. Him visiting Disney worlds is…possible, I guess. The best candidate for visiting Disney worlds is Riku, though. Nomura said he wanted to cover Riku’s period of absence, which probably includes KH1-2. In KH1, he was a bad guy and in Blank Points, he was shown in Neverland. Monstro is another possibility and that might have been intended to connect to the Monstro subplot in KH3D with Dark Riku. We also saw Riku in Twilight Town watching Roxas and Xion, so his Days period is open. Then there’s his period of absence in KH2, which opens up those worlds. In the novels, we know Riku spent most of his time in KH2 with Namine and Axel, and he also kept an eye on Sora, like during The Land of Dragons and the Beast’s Castle.

I didn’t notify you but you might’ve already heard from Yen Sid-sama. I’ve come to train to become a Keyblade wielder. Until now, I’ve only been waiting for you guys to come back from your journey. Maybe with this I can at least help out a little.

The magician Merlin-sama can use magic that surpasses time. Here, we can forget about the flow of time. Isn’t it great? Lea’s training with me. He apologized to me over and over again. It’s alright, I’d say, but he’d keep on apologizing…

At first I was a bit scared but as we trained together we started talking to each other. I found out Lea also has a best friend he wants to save. I felt like, he’s not a person that I can bring myself to hate…

Sometimes….. He’d stare at my face, so I’d ask him, what’s wrong? “I don’t know, but I feel like it’s something I must recall”, he’d say…

Your journey is a journey that will help many people and the people you’ll meet from now on. I have a feeling these people you meet will also need your help. The journey might be hard but please stay as the cheerful and bright Sora I know. Because your smile, will save many hearts…..

Then there’s Lea and Kairi. I guess we could have played through their training and the world could be based on The Sword in the Stone? I figured that was what the forest area in KH3 was supposed to be, but I dunno. Then they could have flashbacks during their training. I think we were definitely supposed to get more scenes of Lea and Kairi talking to each other, where she learns that he has a best friend he wants to save. It was obviously referring to Isa. KH3D was all about Lea looking for him, and he summoned his Keyblade immediately after learning that Isa was a vessel.

It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to see where that subplot was going. Lea was training to rescue Isa. Roxas being Axel’s “best friend” in KH2 was supposed to be a red herring—a pretty well-written one at that. People just didn’t pick up on it due to Roxas’s popularity bias. I doubt Lea would have told Kairi all the details of him and Isa being human test subjects. Like, she still didn’t understand why he didn’t wanna take off his black coat in KH3. But he’d tell her enough to know that he has a best friend who is a vessel and we’d learn what happened. It would have made their closeness in KH3 a lot more understandable if Kairi knew about his past. In his heart, he could tell that Kairi was Xion, too. And that’s how I’m gonna do it in my fanfic. :)

After KHBBSV2 was cancelled, Lea had no backstory anymore, so I guess we were just supposed to conclude that Lea was referring to Roxas in Kairi’s letter when he said he wanted to save his best friend. Which is just…dumb and insulting to the audience’s intelligence. Lea knew even in 358/2 Days that Roxas looked like Ventus. He said he kept it a secret from Roxas, so he obviously knew for a long time. It sounded like he realized it as soon as he met him, which is why he got so nostalgic for his childhood right after meeting Roxas.

Before he started his training with Kairi, he also knew that Ventus was one of the lost Keyblade wielders they were all looking for. Up until Yen Sid’s tower, Lea thought that Ventus was going to remember him as Axel. That’s how he was going to reunite with “Roxas”. He had no reason to think he needed to rescue “Roxas”, since that was Sora’s job and he was handling that. Of course he was referring to Isa in that letter.

Eh, I dunno. It’s possible we’d get to play as young Lea during his flashbacks in Radiant Garden. During the experiments, maybe he was tasked with Heartless clean-up duty inside the castle. He doesn’t have a Keyblade, though. Just his frisbees. It’d be unusual to have him be playable, but not impossible. If so, that opens up the castle, like the Hollow Bastion areas from KH1. All in all, the gameplay part of BBSV2 seemed pretty strange and the Disney worlds didn’t seem completely necessary, either. I think a series of animated shorts could have worked phenomenally well.

[alexafaie-asd]

Just some me rambling stuff.

Did some colouring for the first time in ages. Was kinda inspired by seeing some artists on youtube who I follow doing stuff for Inktober and drawing isn’t something I’m good at (and practising it isn’t something I enjoy so...) so I thought to colour in with stuff that could be classed as “ink” at least loosely. Nothing fancy, just some of the pages from a daily colouring calender I got in 2016 which I had planned to do each day, but just like everything I try I managed to keep to the “schedule” for like a week or two at the most before it collapsed and then I felt bad about not finishing it. So of course I got a more complicated colouring calender the next year because I never fucking learn.

Anyway... had a bit of sort of fun maybe colouring in a couple of pictures.

I’ve been feeling a little bit bleugh the past few days since however long ago Thursday was (I don’t know what day it is right now). I got the response from the PIP people about my Mandatory Reconsideration. I spent absolutely ages writing up the letter to explain just how the assessor had misrepresented what I said or just outright ignored my difficulties, pointed out the inaccuracies with the factual stuff (as opposed to anything that could be considered to be that word that means “different people might see it different ways”) and also explained how their failure to treat my difficulties as real was discrimination against my particular disabilities (they’re so called hidden/invisible ones like mental health issues) especially with how they used “high functioning” to claim that I can’t struggle with the things which they agreed I struggled with last time I got assessed and nothing has changed since then except that I have an extra diagnosis now.

Their response was rude, blamed the length of time it took on me even though most of the time was taken up by me waiting on them responding, giving me the face to face appointment date etc. And in response to me telling them how stressful the frequent reassessment periods are and how much anxiety they provoke & how they worsen my conditions, they said “Although the health Professional has recommended a 2 year review period, as you are no longer entitled to PIP then there is no review period required.”  Previously I was awarded PIP at the appeals stage because they found my doctors note that they claimed didn’t arrive in the post until then, even though we sent it recorded delivery and we knew for a fact that it was signed for less than a week after it was sent out. Without the doctor’s note they had tried to say that I didn’t qualify, but with the doctor’s evidence I suddenly did. In this letter they are saying that as the findings of the current assessment are “so different” than that of what was decided at appeals before, they’re using the more recent assessment as they believe its a more “accurate” reflection of my condition and so “supersedes” the previous findings. Except the assessor this time made HUGE mistakes and that’s what I wrote in to explain. But they are treating the assessor’s report as medical evidence even though she was a nurse with no training other than the 10 day course they send them on (and I’ve seen the information for autism - the PDF they are given as recommended reading but not required, is outdated from the early 90s and still uses terms which are no longer in use diagnostically). They are placing more weight on her interpretation of what my difficulties are than the actual medical specialists who have dealt with me personally.

My boyfriend phoned up to complain and ask to start the appeals process (they didn’t include the information on how to appeal in with my letter and the whole letter was written as if I wouldn’t even try and should be glad I no longer qualify as if I’m suddenly not disabled because they say I’m fine). He asked how even with the information and corrections we sent in, they still came to the same conclusion, most of which was a direct copy and paste from the original assessment report. It turns out that because we had complaints about the assessor’s report, they went back to ATOS to get a new person there to look over my case. “So why did they find the same thing with the new/corrected info given to them?” my boyfriend asked. They had even repeated the bit on how I apparently “was not offered alternative treatments or therapy, suggesting you don’t need them” even though we pointed out that in the letter we had originally sent in to them, the people I saw at the multidisciplinary assessment after my autism diagnoses had written that there were two other meds I could try for my bipolar disorder and that they had put in a recommendation, sent to my GP, that I be referred to one on one talking therapy. He said that surely they must have seen us point that out in the letter I sent in asking for the mandatory reconsideration. And it turns out that none of that information was sent to ATOS. So the new person at ATOS only saw what the first person at ATOS wrote about me and came to the same conclusion. When we pointed out that it is the PIP team who are meant to balance things out, they just deflected all the blame to ATOS and said the matter was “out of their hands” as ATOS is a third party organisation so they don’t have any control over what they do. BUT THEY CHOSE TO EMPLOY THEM TO DO THE ASSESSMENTS!! So yeah, they do have control over what ATOS do and are entirely responsible for any outcome if they choose to base the entire thing on what one person who met the claimant for less than 2hrs has to say about what the claimant struggles with.

Its ridiculous! How the hell did they think it was ok to totally ignore what I sent in other than to belittle me when I expressed how stressed and anxious the whole process made me and how demeaning it felt. Their response was just to demean me some more. When asked what provisions there were at the appeals stage (which involves standing up in court in front of three judges who are total strangers) for people who are autistic and struggle in social situations, especially with speaking in public, and they said that they had no idea whatsoever, but as far as they knew there wasn’t anything special. And that we’d have to contact the courts directly. Not that we have any of those details because nothing was included in with the letter they sent. They couldn’t even get the page numbers correct at the bottom of the pages. The last page was numbered Page 7 of 4. Yes that’s right, there were seven pages out of four. How did they manage to break an autofiling section of a document like that? They take that little care with these assessments they can’t even get the documents to be constructed correctly.

When I got the letter I just totally dissociated from everything I would have been feeling. And so its been a rough few days as bits and pieces of emotion have been popping through and washing over me in waves of feeling really shitty. I’m trying hard not to think about the whole appeals process because I know it scares me shitless and I can’t do anything about it now anyway. But its just so hard to cope with people just dismissing my difficulties. Its ridiculous because the criteria have not changed. In fact they got in trouble with the courts for being biased against people with mental health issues as their disability (focussing only on whether a person could physically do a thing and ignoring their criteria of “requires prompting”) and so were made to make changes to discriminate less. Obviously the major fines and telling off did fuck all. Its just so frustrating because my difficulties haven’t changed (unless they’ve got worse) and previously I was deemed to be entitled, so why should that have changed just because I now have an extra diagnosis that even better explains the problems I have? Like previously they tried to claim that bipolar disorder didn’t cause the particular difficulties I have, so I missed out on points in one area. However now I also have the autism diagnosis, that category I was denied points in before is now the only category that scored any points. So its like they are totally ignoring that I have more than one thing going on, and that previously I was still autistic so if I was entitled then, I should be now!

When we pointed out how they were being discriminatory in my letter, they responded not by apologising for what I felt was discrimination, but by telling me that the “Gray Report” concluded that the “Health Professionals” (from ATOS who do the assessments) are trained to a sufficient degree to do the assessments without bias. So I’m there pointing out bias and being told “no, that can’t have happened, this report we had done says there’s no problem.” Except I have looked it up and Paul Gray, responsible for the reports actually wanted changes like making the assessment report results sent out immediately to claimants, but the government is refusing to do so. So how exactly are they meeting what his report asks of them? They aren’t! The Gray Report says that they need to do more to gain the trust of claimants because they are currently so inconsistent that is confusing at best and detrimental at worst. Like his entire report is basically “some of these changes are positive, but there is so much more that needs to be done such as x, y, and z” and the government has said “ah that means we are perfect and doing no wrong.” Like his report didn’t even look at the assessors in great detail. It just says that they should be trained to an adequate level, not that they are. And that they should be unbiased, again not that they are. So why quote that report at me?

Just.... urgghhh. I’m so sick and tired of having to fight past what I’m sensibly able to do just to get what feels like nowhere. Like they even wrote in response to me saying that my executive dysfunction is so bad that if the washing up needs to be done, and I can’t cope with all the steps required to do that, then I don’t have anything clean with which to prepare and cook food and therefore won’t eat. They wrote that those things are “outside the scope of the assessment criteria” and so won’t be considered as evidence. So because I can’t clean the house and can’t then cook the food, that’s ignored as a reason why I don’t eat the food. I must therefore be able to cope with preparing and eating food unaided all the time. How stupid is that? I also wrote how my sensory sensitivities affect my ability to wash and to brush my teeth, so I’ll go days without brushing my teeth when I can’t cope with those feels (or am too depressed) and they said “brushing teeth isn’t covered under bathing, so we won’t consider that”. Like they are both forms of personal hygiene. Arguably keeping your teeth clean is a MAJORLY IMPORTANT thing which can impact your health in so many ways (like you can die from an infected tooth, or from a gum infection). But it can’t be used to build up a bigger picture about how far reaching my disabilities are?

And they said that the section on being able to communicate only counts if you can physically speak and physically hear what is being said to you. So my sensory processing disorder which affects how my brain perceives auditory information and how it therefore responds to said auditory information? Doesn’t count. So the times when I can’t tell what is being said because there is a fan making noise in the background? Doesn’t count. The times when there are multiple people talking and I can’t pick out the one important conversation and everything blurs into one droning sound that is overwhelming and causes me to avoid social gatherings that involve many people? Doesn’t count. My inability to tell what tone of voice I’m speaking with and inability to correctly modulate my tone of voice appropriately so I fail to communicate effectively due to it? Doesn’t count. My sensory overload causing me to shut down and go nonverbal for long periods of time so I can’t verbally communicate? Doesn’t count. Apparently. Even though in the criteria available online on the government website for how they are meant to assess disabilities for the different categories, it really should count. But all they mean is “are you deaf and dumb”? (Sorry for the old derogatory terms, but that is literally all they seem to think counts and the way they seem to be approaching this).

And just I have all these feels and they are not nice feels. And I’m trying to remain strong and positive, and trying to remember that I’m trying to want to exist. But its so so hard. And just reminds me how much I hate my life and how I hate how noone (in the “noone” kind of way, obviously some people) seems to care how I feel and how I struggle. And it really doesn’t keep me away from feeling suicidal. :(