#this will be her 9th kid in barely 9 years

[myriadium]

written notes:

does her hair herself

steals her brothers' clothes

ballet sneakers (stolen)

"purple" vs "red" mode

gets into fights a lot

Nene (no last name), she/her, 13, japanese, 4'8'', ventus

i was debating on who i wanted as the 9th place person on the leaderboards (as you know, in the legaseries 7-9 places were absent). to be funny i wanted to pick a super random side character (like literally black hair, barely drawn face background character) to be on the leaderboards but then i remembered nene and i was like yes. i need her to fill the last position as 9th brawler in the entire world. a 13 year old! she's going through her rebellious phase so when some dweeb masked loser came up to recruit her she thought he was with the cops and decided to run away.

so presenting nene no last name! a rascal of the Bakugan underground, nene comes from an underfunded orphange where the kids run the place more than the adults do (she is the king). to earn money she and the other kids enter betting contests to fight against one another, and purposefully rig the battle so they go home with a pay day. she realizes she can earn more if she enters high level games, so she uses her sweet baby face to lower her opponents' guards, then demolishes them with a highly aggressive strategy rarely seen in ventus players. she is not above underhanded moves and prefers to finish battles quickly so that opponents can't adapt to her.

it was fun to redesign her; i recently thought of a character with partial heterochromia in both eyes, and depending on the angle in which they look at you, it would appear they have different eye colors. when nene is looking up to you, you see a sleepy purple, a girl who seems slightly dazed and not really all there. when she is looking down on you, you see a street urchin peering into someone's pantry.

also she keeps her triple ponytails. i feel like this would be exactly the stupid funky hairstyle a kid would give themselves because they think they're doing something so unique and different.

another note! i saw some ballet sneakers (specifically akiko aoki's "giselle") and thought they looked amazing and worked very well for the kind of fashion i want to draw. nene wants to be a ballerina when she grows up, and she stole this pair from a store. she keeps it in mint condition and is willing to throw hands to anyone who wants to dirty them.

[acertainmoshke]

Redoing the Intro One More Time!

Updated 9/30/23

Call me Moshke Palmoni (they/them). I spend as much time as I can writing, but that is not as much as it might be because there's also a lot of life going on right now. I also like to read, knit, collect vintage ephemera, and play with my cat.

General WIP tag list: [your url here!]

Active WIPs:

7 Days for Fae

Coming October 2024

10-year-old Fae is isolated by her disabilities—autism and ataxia—that causes her communication and mobility issues. She doesn’t have any friends her age, and she’s accepted that. She reads a lot and plays pretend in the forest at the end of the street. Her family loves her for who she is and so far that’s been enough. Until, that is, she meets the new kid. His name is Brownie and for reasons Fae can’t imagine he wants to be her friend no matter how weird or awkward she is. When he still invites her over after a meltdown in class gets her suspended for a week, she decides to take a risk and accept. The ensuing adventures are marred only by the other sudden change in her life—an aunt Fae barely knows has moved in with her family. She doesn’t know how to talk to Fae and, worse, refuses to accept Fae’s nonbinary parent’s identity. But since no one else seems to know how to deal with the mess their home life has become, Fae tries—with Brownie’s encouragement—to sort the situation out herself.

Cold Iron

In 1956, Shakatra Zoawin is 40. Or they might be 20, depending on how you look at it. They are a changeling and their aging is kind of weird, but that doesn't matter to them because they have a good life in the subway tunnel with their brother, Kris. Both of them are changelings swapped as infants for human children and then rejected by their human families. Their wits and powerful magic have kept them alive this long, and Shaka is perfectly content to keep going. After they do one little thing to appease their guilt: find the 40-year-old they were swapped for and free her to have her own life in the human world free from servitude in the courts of the Fae. And so begins an adventure that will have repercussions neither of them could have imagined.

Intro posts for the books in this series: Cold Iron, City of Frost, Song on Repeat, and Future Not Found

Character Intro Posts: Shakatra, Kris, Lynn, Tatiana, Liliana, Harry, Doug, Beth, Aaron, Cassie, and Althea

Tag list: @pga-books

Blades of Ice

In the kingdom of Halara, orcs and elms and slimes and centaurs live peacefully side-by-side with humans. Less peaceful is the relationship between Halara and their neighboring kingdom of Eng. The generation-long conflict has drawn in other nearby kingdoms and stagnated artistic and social works. All Aryel ever wanted to do was be left alone to love who they want and practice sparring with their axe, but as a royal child they have responsibilities, namely leading the entire army. There's no talk of ending the war in any way but victory, just as Halara won its initial freedom from Eng 300 years ago, but this endless fighting is getting them nowhere but too many funerals and not enough bread. And then when a familial tragedy leads to Aryel leading both the army and the kingdom, they know they can't balance the tensions and demands of everyone at once and win this war. Something has to give, and they just hope it isn't the entire kingdom.

Backburnered and still-in-planning WIPs under the cut.

Time Traveling Anthropologists

(permanent title coming soon)

Set approximately 2 generations in the future. Esther Dahan has her dream job. She gets to time travel with her new team, and against all historical odds they are there to study ancient cultures rather than do anything violent. Their first assignment is 8 months in the 9th century Jewish kingdom of Khazaria. Everything is going great—illicit romance with a Khazarian blacksmith notwithstanding—until Esther finds a plate that doesn't belong in this time. Curious and suspicious but without enough evidence to involve her boss, she investigates on her own, discovering much more than she planned—and leading to far worse consequences than she could have imagined.

Tag list: @amielbjacobs @kingkendrick7 @moonluringfrost @another-white-hole

To Die Among the Stars:

20 people have been chosen to test the effects of faster-than-light space travel on human minds and bodies. They were taken from prisons, wellness centers, and other areas where near-certain death seemed like a reasonable chance to take. Each have their reasons for being there, and their secrets. Against all odds, the jump to FTL doesn't destroy the ship. But the further away from Earth they travel, the more strange things begin to happen that call the purpose of the experiment into question. And then the impossible: a human distress signal in deep space.

Told from 4 rotating perspectives: Pixel, a semiverbal illegal human modder; Ri, whose body and mind are overloaded with mods; Zippy, a young disabled woman desperate to support her family; and Peppermint, a genetic experiment combining human and cat DNA raised in an isolated lab.

Tag list: @hd-literature

Falling Petals

A multigenerational story about trauma, love, and disability set against the backdrop of one Jewish family. Beginning in the 1920's with Ira Katz, who is brilliant and charming with no understanding at all of tact or why the best way isn't always blunt observations and mean jokes. It follows him as he grows up, marries, and inherits his father's drugstore, and then moves on to following one of his sons, Daniel. Daniel grows up in the 1940's and is naturally gentle, kind, and sensitive, but is treated so harshly for these traits he learns to hide himself away inside and only show emotion in explosive bouts of anger. It follows him through adolescence, college, and marriage, before moving on to one of his daughters, Shoshana. Shoshana grows up in the 1960's and is colorful, young for her age, and full of social panic. None of them know how to relate to each other or survive in a world that each of them see the beauty in but aren't allowed to connect with in their own way. And yet through the pain and confusion, they are full of love. And then everything changes for them with Shoshana's niece, Naomi, growing up in the 1990's, who will not be allowed to see herself as broken.

[tilbageidanmark]

MOVIES I WATCHED THIS WEEK (#192):

TRANCES (1981) is an infectious documentary about the influential Moroccan avant-pop band 'Nass El Ghiwane'. It's like 'The last Waltz' but in Casablanca. A must for fans of traditional Arabic music.

This was the first film that Martin Scorsese restored when he launched his "World Cinema Foundation" in 2007. My 4th Moroccan film. A transcendental experience [with one caveat: They gave amazing concerts to large, ecstatic crowds - and not a single woman in the audience!] This is the 9th film from the Scorsese's list that I've seen. I must remember to come back to it very soon.

🍿

(Another concert, but of a completely different kind: Andrea Bochelli's LOVE IN PORTOFINO. This is for the folks who like to sit in the square by the water when the evening falls, dressed in white cottons, sip white wine while eating fried clams or seafood pizza, while listening to Bochelli's frothy, sentimental baritone.)

🍿

POOL OF LONDON (1951), my 5th drama-Noir from mostly-forgotten master Basil Dearden. Sailors on leave and a jewel heist, as well as a sensitive interracial romance, the first white and Jamaican relationship in British cinema. Crisp on-location scenes and good character development.

Next: His 'The League of Gentlemen'.

🍿

I've developed an interest in the emerging sub-genre of 'Domestic Workers’, mostly movies from South America and Southeast Asia. Many of these are fantastic; 'Àma Gloria', 'The second mother', 'Lina from Lima', 'Roma', 'The maid', 'Ilo Ilo', 'The chambermaid', Etc.

But I did not expect for the documentary YAYA (2018) to emerge as the most touching of this week's movies. A young filmmaker in Hong Kong, Justin Cheung, turned the camera on his own family, to explore their relationship with the woman who took care of him the first 22 years of his life.

Philippine Au-pairs in Hong Kong are some of the most exploited and abused workers in the world. And while his helper-maid was not mistreated, she gave up her own life to take care of somebody else's kids. Recommended! 8/10.

🍿

FELLINI X 2:

🍿 (I have no idea why I never seen this masterpiece.) LA STRADA (1954), is the sad and poignant story of simple-minded Giulietta Masina, who was sold to 'brutish strongman' Anthony Quinn for 10,000 lire. She's a mythic, Chaplinesque 'Fool' who's being abused and mistreated as she joins him traveling round the countryside in their little freak-show. Until she dies of a heartbreak. Its tragedy is accented by Nino Rosi's sentimental score. 8/10.

🍿 THE MAGIC HOUR (2008), my second screwball comedy [After 'Welcome back, Mr. McDonald'] by Kōki Mitani, "The Best Japanese Filmmaker You've Never Heard Of". A failed bit actor gets a job to play a mysterious hit man, not realizing that the movie he's starring in is going to be 'real'. It's a lighthearted meta-film about making a movie, not unlike 'Day for night', but set in some seaport gangster-land. It's like 'Casablanca' but with a Nino Rosi like score. Includes a cameo of director Kon Ichikawa, the last before his death.

🍿

3 MORE BY KEN LOACH:

🍿 THE OLD OAK, the latest (and probably his very last film) from the 88-year-old socialist Brit. A warm and 'humane' story full of small and heartfelt emotions, it kept me in tears from opening to the end. Ordinary people who suffer in so many ways. The inhabitants of a decaying ex-mining town can barely manage to hang on, and now they have to deal with a group of Syrian refugees - "Foreigners!" - who had lost it all in the war, and are being repatriated to their midst. Loach's films are usually about working-class Brits who's been getting the shaft for generations, and sometimes retain their humanity. And so is this one. 9/10.

🍿 “First they called you a terrorist, they they called you a hero”.

11′09″01 SEPTEMBER 11 is an anthology film from 2002. Eleven filmmakers contributed each a segment of 11 minutes and 9 seconds with different perspectives on the World Trade Center attacks. Some of the productions were better than others. Ken Loach had a Chilean exile in London write a letter to the families of the victims with the story of the Chilean September 11 attack of democracy (1973/CIA/Kissinger/Pinochet). In the Iranian segment, a teacher in a refugee camp was trying unsuccessfully to tell her young pupils about the attack. A poor boy in Burkina Faso imagined that he saw Osama bin Ladin in the market, and that he can use the $25M reward money to help his dying mom. Claude Lelouch told of a deaf French woman who sits next to the TV, but misses the news because she can't hear it. A Bosnian woman goes to the scheduled demonstration about the Srebrenica massacre. Etc. A mixed bag.

🍿 TIME TO GO is his 1989 documentary, pushing for British withdrawal from Northern Ireland. I actually don't know more than the average laymen about Irish history, so I need to take a reading course about the "Troubles" and what brought it.

🍿

Another first watch: TRAINSPOTTING (1996). There were half a dozen films which I avoided until now, because I felt, rightly or wrongly, that they are too distressing: 'Requiem for a dream', Lars von Trier's 'Melancholia' (actually, all his movies), 'Salò', 'Funny Games' (both versions), 'A Serbian film', 'Kids', Etc. But now that I crossed 'Come and see' off this list, I also took a stab at this disgusting Scottish Heroin-chic shite-storm. Now I can say that I saw it too.

Well, I like Kelly Macdonald, and didn't expect her debut in an under-aged sex scene... Another plus, an appropriate use for Lou Reed's 'A perfect day'.

🍿

TIME PIECE, a terrific experimental 9-minute short by Jim Hanson which was nominated for an Oscar in 1965. A rhythmic masterpiece: "Help!" 8/10.

Extra: ROBOT (1963), another prophetic Hanson short, precursor to 'HAL9000'. I'm sure that both these films will be mentioned in his new bio-pic.

🍿

2 EARLY FILMS BY LINDSAY ANDERSON:

🍿 THE WHITE BUS (1967) told of a a taciturn young woman without a name who takes a double-Decker bus tour in a city without a future to experience some bizarre scenes without any rhyme or reason. It includes some surrealistic flourishes (A sudden tableaux of 'Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe', a fantasy about suicide, a long tour in the library where the pompous major keeps complaining about filthy books...). But what is the point of it all?

It was edited by Kevin Brownlow, and filmed by Miroslav Ondříček, But it will mostly be remembered as the film debut of one 30-year-old Anthony Hopkins, as a German Thespian reciting Brecht. 2/10.

🍿 O DREAMLAND (1953) is a macabre documentary short about a loud amusement park in Margate, Kent, and the multitudes of middle class patrons (and their many children) who visit it without much amusement in their eyes. It's melancholy and miserable and dour. 7/10. A fun Fair without the fun. (Screenshot Above).

🍿

"This guy is a one-man crime wave!"

FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE (1926), one of Harold Lloyd's most successful films. Including some great chase and slapstick gags.

🍿

The first time I saw DEREK DELGAUDIO's IN & OF ITSELF, I was blown away. The next 2 or 3 times I thought it was great. There's something that compelled me to return to this Magician-"Mentlist" installation piece again and again. But after 4 or 5 times, i realize what he's doing, and his shtick is not as polished as f. ex. Derren Brown's. Yes, he has a few numbers that looks fantastic (A random audience member picks a random letter from a pile, and opens it to read a personal letter from her dying father... The final sketch where he "knows" what secret cards did each and every member of the audience had picked), but for the rest, he's mostly manipulates us with shaggy anecdotes and tall tales of personal pains. And really, they are not as profound as he wants us to believe they are.

🍿

Hiroshi Teshigahara's HOKUSAI is a 1953 documentary about the woodblock artist, but a bit too old fashioned. I recently saw his 'The face of another', and should have watched 'Woman in the dunes' instead.

🍿

THE SUITCASE was episode 7 of 4th season of 'Mad Men', the exact middle of the series (46/92). I've seen it numerous times, and it's still one of the most emotionally gripping. Jon Hamm will never be as perfect as he was as Don Draper. And it's pretty amazing that he and Peggy Olsen never even kissed, let alone sleep together. 10/10. Re-watch ♻️. [*Female Director*]

🍿

"If there's one thing about me, it's repetition"...

My first by British comedian Steward Lee, his latest LIVE AT THE LOWRY came recommended by Hoots maguire, so here I am. Lee is a different kind of a stand-up: Dry, self-referential, erudite, and circular. His improvisations are jazzy. Recommended.

🍿

2 ALTERNATIVE-QUEER ANIMATIONS:

🍿 THE FINAL EXIT OF THE DISCIPLES OF ASCENSIA (2019) is a strange - and weird - story made by one young Jonni Peppers. It is done very much in the aesthetics, and spirit, of Don Hertzfeldt's 'World of Tomorrow', although it's far from being that coherent. A confused young woman joins an all-women UFO-cult, which, like the Heaven's Gate dudes, eventually "ascends". It doesn't really have a clear message, but it has quiet a few moments of beauty. Peppers is working with Victoria Vincent, whose film 'A dog that smokes weed' I've admired. The two songs she plays are very pretty. [*Female Director*]

🍿 HOW TO FIND LOVE IN AN UNBECOMING AGE, a first film by a young lesbian about hot dating today. Could become a series. 7/10. [*Female Director*]

🍿

3 MORE SHORTS BY FEMALE DIRECTORS:

🍿 3 MINUTOS (1999), a short Brazilian masterpiece. The phone rings in a kitchen, and the answering machine picks it up. A woman's voice is telling him that she decided to leave. Recommended. 9/10.

[This is actually the second film by Ana Luíza Azevedo I've seen. She co-directed 'Barbosa' with Jorge Furtado.]

🍿 LIKE TWENTY IMPOSSIBLES, my first by Palestinian Annemarie Jacir. A small Palestinian film crew is trying to cross a border checkpoint, and is subject to humiliating abuse by the Israeli soldiers. There were other films about the exact topic, the grinding brutality, the hopeless struggle just to stay human - "The cruelty is the point". And this was made in 2003, before the whole occupied territories turned into the big concentration camp it is today.

I promised myself that I will stop watching these traumatic films, and I will. But surprise! When the credits rolled, it appeared that this horrible true-to-life documentary was actually "Fiction"! The ugly film was so realistic, that it was a huge relief to discover it was "Only Art". 8/10.

🍿 THE INCREDIBLE THEFT OF CELINE'S BELOVED (2020), a cute French love letter to Wes Anderson. A 14 year old girl receives a surprise package in the mail. It's as if girl herself directed this story. 6/10. [*3 Female Directors*]

🍿

2 EARLY SHORTS BY RIAN JOHNSON:

🍿 I started watching his heist story 'The Brothers Bloom', but couldn't finish it. Maybe I'll do it next week. Meanwhile I tried -

In BEN BOYER AND THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF AUTOMOBILE MARKETING, the voice of Carl Jung approaches a guy taking a shit with an archetypal explanation through the air-filter vent. The topic? The subconscious meaning of car brand logos. Made for $99 in 2001. With Pink Floyd 'Atom Heart Mother' score.

🍿 In THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DREAM ANALYSIS (2003) a young woman dreams somebody else's dreams. A student film that feels like one. 2/10.

🍿

(ALL MY FILM REVIEWS - HERE).

[dragon-in-the-watery-bowl]

Utsuro's Sister Info

Now that I've finally finished the sprites for that fan-sister that I gave to Utsuro, now I'm going to add her personal information:

Name: Sachiko (幸子).

Age: 9 (Child), 25 (Adult).

Gender: Female.

(Possible) Ultimate Title: Ultimate Lucky Student.

Birthdate: August 15 (Leo).

Height: 137 cm (Child), 181 cm (Adult).

Weight: 35 kg (Child), 74 kg (Adult).

Chest Size: 65 cm (Child), 84 cm (Adult).

Blood Type: O.

Likes: Stars, sweets, comics.

Dislikes: Her brother (Only as a child), her parents, coffee.

Having been conceived just to be a replacement for a brother she will never know, Sachiko spent her entire early childhood treated as nothing more than a lucky charm by her parents, who only had her to get back the power that turned them into the greedy monsters that drove their son away, trapping her in a constant cycle of being berated and punished by them for not being able to fulfill their greedy desires with her inherited power, and be exactly like her brother, an abuse that culminated with her being abandoned in a orphanage at 5 y.o. once her parents realized that her existence didn't gave them her brother's power back, and showing her how little they cared for her as a person.

Even if the orphanage she was abandoned into was one of the few good ones in Japan, the abuse she had suffered since the day she was born left her as a skittish kid with both a pathological need to be accepted and needed, and a big grudge towards her older brother, which made it hard for her to make friends with the other orphans in the place, who either avoided her or picked on her, something that only exacerbated her issues even when the orphanage caretakers tried to do something about it.

After the Tragedy started some months before her 9th birthday, and the orphanage she was left in was attacked by a group of Despairs, she and the other orphans were taken by the Future Foundation, where she became one of the few survivors of the attacks caused by the Ultimate Despair's mole in the Foundation, sending her under the care of a low-ranking member after she healed from her injuries, finally giving her a good parental figure and a chance to start healing from her mental injuries.

As an adult, she's much calmer and mentally healthier, which has given her the maturity to realized that her brother, unlike what her parents always told her about him, was as much of a victim of their parents' abuse as she, which has motivated her to search for any information about him, so she can at least have the closure of knowing who he truly was.

Trivia:

Her listed ages are the years she was going to turn the year the Tragedy started (Child) and her age 16-17 years after the beginning of the Tragedy (Adult).

She was born around a year after Utsuro left to the streets.

She has some scars in her abdomen from being attacked by the Future Foundation mole.

She has some more physical similarities to Utsuro as a child than as an adult, thanks to her parents' efforts to turn her into a copy of her brother in their ill-fated plan to get the Divine Luck back.

She has some level of Divine Luck, but isn't very strong.

Thanks to the Divine Luck of her parents being somewhat involved in her birth, during the Tragedy, she became slightly more accident-prone thanks to the loss of Divine Luck, culminating in the attack by the Future Foundation's mole that she barely survived.

[katebishopfan]

No Vacancy: Pt. 1 (H.S)

Summary: Hailee thinks her crush on Y/n is doomed when the older girl moves up to high school but what happens when the bus is packed one day? (Hailee isn't famous in this oneshot).

Y/n's age: 16

Hailee's age: 15

Y/n is in grade 10 and Hailees's in grade 9. (The high school is grade 10-12).

Hailee POV:

I quietly get off of the bus and cringe at the popular kids yelling loudly and chasing each other. I walk in front of the high school and wait for my transfer bus to arrive. I'm about to put my airpods in when I see her.

Y/n L/n, aka the hottest girl in my school... Or at least she was last year before she moved up to high school since she's a year older. Y/n's walking in my general direction when some idiot interrupts her.

"Y/n, get your fine ass over here!" Brian, the most obnoxious guy in the entire school calls catching the attention of the y/h/c girl. She rolls her eyes and changes her course of direction away from me and towards her friends.

"Ahh Brian glad to see you're still annoying as fuck, how's 9th grade treating you?" Y/n calls out as she reaches him.

"It's been good but it'd be better if you were still here." He replies and Y/n shrugs.

"Well, I've moved onto bigger and better things." She jokes as the bus pulls up. I walk over to it slowly and everyone rushes in front of me trying to get a place in the back. I'm the last person enter and what I see is horrifying.

Every. Single. Seat is filled up except for the popular kids who are sitting at the back. I turn to the bus driver who shrugs and points at Y/n.

"Hey L/n scooch over." The bus driver yells and she does moving over slightly barely looking up. I walk over nervously and when I get to her seat she looks up.

"H-hey, th-the bus driver t-told me to sit here." I stutter and she nods standing up and letting me in so she can still talk to her friends.

"Right, so I was with Mr. Smithe and he was bitching on me for not doing the homework but I literally handed it in!" Brian continues annoyedly taking no notice of me. The bus swerves to the right and I'm pushed into Y/n's lap. She turns over to look at me and I smile sheepishly up at her.

"Y'okay there Steinfeld?" She asks and I freeze.

She knows my name!?

"Uh yeah, I-I'm fine sorry for bumping into you." I reply nervously and she shrugs.

"The bus is always doing crazy shit and causing people to get jostled around it's no problem." She reassures me and I nod moving away from her.

"Hey wait, you're that quiet girl in my math class!" Brian exclaims and I nod awkwardly as Y/n turns to me.

"How have you literally never noticed Hailee?" She asks partly joking and partly curious. "I remember Haiz and I'm a year older." She adds and I blush deeply. Smiling to myself about the nickname she just gave me. "I don't know she's just quiet so I never notice her." He replies shrugging.

Y/n POV:

I'm baffled at how anyone could be in the same class as Hailee and not notice her. She's literally the most gorgeous girl I've ever seen.

"So, how's grade 9 been?" I ask Hailee and she shrugs. "Some ups and some downs." She replies seeming slightly nervous. I nod and place my hand on her thigh.

"Yeah I get that." I murmur watching her face blush deeply as I softly pat her leg before removing my hand completely.

"So how's high school?" She asks and I smile.

"Really great, all the teachers actually want to be there which is a big step up from junior high." I reply and she giggles.

God. That's the cutest sound I've ever heard.

Her phone starts buzzing she smiles apologetically and picks it up.

"Ella I can't talk right now I'm in the middle of a conversation with Y/n." She tells the person on the phone.

"Oh my god Y/n L/n the girl you had the biggest crush on. You go girl! I remember you were heartbroken when she moved up to high school." A voice replies and Hailee blushes.

No way she has a crush on me.

"Uh yeah, I'll call you back later." Hailee mumble before hanging up the phone. I smile at her and go to say something but Brian taps on my shoulder.

"Hey Y/n, I have Jenna on the phone and she wants to talk with you." He says when I turn around. Back to reality I guess.

"Hey babe, how're you doing?" I ask and she smiles up at me.

"I'm doing good, do you wanna come over tonight my parents are out at some wine tasting event a couple hours away so they won't be back until tomorrow." Jenna replies and I nod.

"Sure, I'll see you tonight."

A/N

Here's another oneshot for the collection :)

[ohheyaghost]

OC STORY DUMP TIME!! :D

lots of text under the cut so ooh beware

general info to keep in mind: everyone in this group except for Cody & Aviru is 13-14. The story takes place the summer between 8th grade and 9th grade for them all.

The main guy, Robbie. On his way home after the last day of school ended, Robbie took a shortcut through the woods to his house. A random deer shows up, bites his hand and then leaves. Robbie ignores it until he brings his brother(he gets mentioned later) through the woods and the same deer shows up, turns into some weird eldritch horror and attacks his brother. Robbie tries to help but accidentally finishes off his brother, killing him. Robbie tells his friends about this and they all are like “well that’s weird.” They go to the woods to investigate and that’s where all the weird stuff happens. They form a plan to get rid of this monster thing so it doesn’t hurt anyone else. I’m not gonna say much else because I’ll probably post more about these dudes :D

random cool fact: often has nightmares and cannot sleep as a result. (This was a problem before everything happens.) he’s also a trans guy :D

May is Robbie’s best friend. She was the first person Robbie told about anything. They’ve been best friends since 6th grade. She’s super smart and does most of the research about what the thing in the woods is. She’s also got some insane paranoia after the first arc ends because of all the stuff that happened when it ended. not to mention she has zero idea what she’s going to do after Highschool. She feels like she needs to figure everything out now so everything is okay later. (Can you tell im projecting?)

random fun fact: both her parents are engineers which puts more pressure on her.

Juliet is the groups caretaker and #1 “what the hell is going on” person. She blindly trusts most of her friends wich leads to a lot of issues both now and what happened when she was younger. Shes been friends with May the longest out of anyone in the group. Random fun fact: she was born without the lower half of her right leg and uses a prosthetic.

Teagan recently moved into the town and barely knows anyone except for Juliet. They’re aggressive and is constantly one upped by her sister. (She’s not in this post because she doesn’t really show up in the story.) Teagan only agreed to anything with the group because “the cute girl who I live Nextdoor to is doing it and I want her to like me.” (Juliet is the cute girl Nextdoor.)

Random fun fact: she played baseball in their old town and got kicked off the team for smacking a kid in the face with a bat. (On purpose.)

Cody is Robbie’s younger brother (9 years old). In the first arc the only thing he does is die. That’s literally it he just dies. In the second arc he appears again as a weird living corpse that’s actually [HUGE SPOILER WOAHH!!] random fun fact: knows the entire plot of dog man (yes the graphic novel by dav pickley) from beginning to end.

VILLAIN TIME!! Aviru is a shapeshifting monster that but Robbie because it was “in need of someone to carry on the legacy.” Aviru is a master when it comes to making Robbie freak out. It often messes with Robbie’s head and if Robbie is freaking out hard enough, it can sneak on in and take over Robbie’s mind. random fun fact: when I first created the characters and idea of this story (back in 2022 when it was a gacha club miniseries I made for myself with one episode yeah yeah point and laugh I was a gacha kid) aviru did not have a name and was just a goofy creature.

and that’s them!! There’s other side characters who aren’t as important to the plot but they’ll show up some other time. That’s the group though and I felt the strong urge to infodump and introduce them so here we are!!

[writingsandmishaps]

she

9:00 in the morning. Monday. September 8th.

“Daddy, why are you taking us to school? I thought you had work? Where’s mommy?”

My knuckles turn white as I grip the steering wheel even harder, trying to concentrate on driving and not think about my wife. I know the kids are concerned, but they don’t need to know this. They don’t need to be involved in any of this. I don’t want to think about her.

“Mommy’s at Grandmas for a little bit, baby. Everything’s fine. She’ll come home soon.”

It’s gut-churning how easy it is to lie to my kids. I stop the car at the curb of the elementary school. My boy and girl hop out as I bid them farewell and wish them a good day. I pull away and head to work reluctantly. It’s futile because all of my thoughts are about her. It makes me sick. I can barely eat. I can’t sleep. My kids need me though. They are what’s important.

10:38 in the morning. Thursday. July 9th.

“Mr. Miller, Director Baker is on the phone asking for you. Again. Do you want me to forward it to you or take a message?”

I can feel Alexis’ worried eyes on me as I cradle my head in my hands after a shitty client call. I groan in frustration and look up at her.

“Please take a message. I really don’t have the fucking mental capacity to be screamed at for losing another client. I’ll take you out for coffee later for dealing with it.” I smile weakly at her and give her a small wink. She smirks and nods, closing the glass door softly behind her.

I watch her. Her effortless elegance as she picks up the phone and speaks to Director Baker, easily lying to him about an imaginary client or emergency or whatever she decided this time. I can just barely hear him yelling at her. She has a small smile on her face as she writes down his “message” of profanities on a sticky note. She glances up at me from above her glasses, licking her lips as she resumes speaking with him. It’s almost seductive. I can’t pull myself to tear my eyes off of her though. My wedding ring suddenly feels heavy.

She turns away from me to hang up her phone and type something on her computer. The phone rings again. I can see red creeping up her neck. Blushing.

6:27 at night. Thursday. July 9th.

The window of my car is rolled all the way down. I’m silently begging my face to stop burning. Cursing the wind and the max A/C for not cooling me off in time. I pull into the driveway, roll up the window and turn the car off. I sit. My body feels like it's shaking. Should I tell Laura? No. It won’t happen again. I love Laura. I love her. I love my family. I love her.

It will never happen again.

2:40 in the afternoon. Tuesday. July 28th.

Laura sits on the edge of my desk, using her hands to prop her body up. She knows what she’s doing. Wearing that white silk blouse I got her for Christmas a few years back. The jeans she has on hug every curve. She’s staring blankly out the glass door of my office where Alexis sits. I turn back to my work, typing out an email. The clack of the keys fills the room.

“Where did you find Alexis at?” Laura looks at me, with a curious look in her eyes.

“She was here when they hired me. She was the last guy's assistant too.” I answer easily, turning back to my email. She hums in response. I feel her hand run through my hair and then down to rub my cheek with the back of her hand. She hums again, dropping it an octave. Suggestive.

“You do know I have glass doors, right honey?” I smirk, not taking my eyes off the spreadsheet on the screen. She laughs. It’s angelic.

“Maybe she’d like to watch?” She looks over her shoulder, eyeing Alexis. The same way she eyes me at home. In our bed. I swallow as I turn my head ever so slightly to look past my monitor and through the glass. Alexis is just sitting there. Fiddling with a pen while talking to Heather, an intern. She tucks some of her hair behind her ear. My wife hums again.

12:14 in the morning. Wednesday. July 29th.

I can hear the soft breathing of Laura next to me. Sleeping peacefully. I stare at the ceiling. She said it was just a bruise. That she must have hit the counter with her hip or something. No idea how she got it. No, it doesn’t look like a hickey, why on earth would I say that? She laughs. The only person who gives her hickeys is me. That doesn’t look like teeth marks, oh my God. I don’t know, Steven. Maybe I did it and don’t remember.

I know I would remember.

She smelled different when she came back to the table at dinner. She said it was a new perfume. I must not have smelled it at the office. She got it from her mom. Anyway, what should we order for dessert?

I look over at her in bed. The sweat that used to be on her skin has dried. Her hand felt kind of sweaty when she held mine at the table. When she was asking about dessert. Maybe it was just from washing her hands. No. It was sweat. I know it was.

I know it was.

11:59 in the morning. Friday. July 31st.

Trying to do the monthly reports is hell. I’m just staring at the spreadsheets and the papers on my desk. My fingers won’t move on the keyboard. I can’t stop thinking about Tuesday.

Alexis’ laugh startles me and I look up. Laura’s standing there, holding a Tupperware container. Smiling. She tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, slightly pulls at her bottom lip with her teeth. What the fuck?

Alexis is leaning forward in her chair, eyes wide as she speaks excitedly about something. Probably a show they both watch. I don’t know, I didn’t even know they really spoke. Laura leans forward now, leaning on the desk, whispering something and then giggling. Alexis laughs loud, proclaims for Laura to stop, and leans back in her chair. Just staring, wide-eyed at her. There’s something else there. It’s all very lighthearted. Flirtatious?

No.

Laura tells Alexis to give me the Tupperware container. My lunch. I forgot it at home. She leaves it on the desk, not bothering to look in my direction. She giggles, blows Alexis a kiss, and wiggles her fingers as a goodbye. I watch her disappear around the corner.

1:32 in the afternoon. Friday. July 31st.

“Hey, Steven, did you need me to print any of those reports from last week out, or make copies from the last intake meeting? Ya know, for the monthly reports?”

I whip my head up to look at Alexis. She’s right next to my chair, sorting through some papers in her hands. I blink at her, trying to process what she just said to me.

“Uh, no. No, I think I’m good. Do you think you could go get me a coffee from Starbucks or something? I’m gonna be here late I think. Shit, I gotta…”

I let my sentence trail off and pick up my phone to shoot Laura a text. I smell something. Perfume.

“Is that a new perfume Alexis?” She’s rifling through some files on my desk, trying to keep them organized for me.

“Huh? Oh! No, it’s the one I’ve been wearing for years. I have to order it online since it comes straight from Paris! It’s pretty expensive, but god I absolutely love it.” She giggles, “I have extra bottles! I can give you a bottle to give to your wife for Christmas this year? Or- oh! When’s her birthday?” She’s excited. Like she was earlier. With Laura.

“Uh- no. No, she has a perfume she swears by. Says it makes her smell like peaches or something. It’s nice. Thank you though.”

She leaves, saying she’s going to go get my coffee and run an errand real quick. Something about her girlfriend. I sit in my chair, watching her pick up her bag. She tugs at the bottom of her shirt, pulling it down to show off more cleavage. I suck air in through my nose. My mouth feels dry. She looks at her watch as she scurries around the corner out of my view.

Oh my God. My mind starts racing. Images that I don’t want to think of flash through my mind. Of her. And my wife. Various places. Various positions. Sneaking around. In the office? In our bed? Fuck.

No. It cant be. It’s gotta be a coincidence. Those weren’t teeth marks. Maybe her mom can afford that perfume from Paris.

This isn’t happening.

8:53 at night. Sunday. August 23rd.

The kids are at Laura’s mom’s house. She wanted a weekend to herself since I was going fishing with the guys. I’m getting home earlier than I thought I would. I stopped and got flowers and wine. The kids have some kind of holiday off school tomorrow, so we’ll pick them up tomorrow afternoon. Which means we can stay up as late as we want tonight. We haven’t gotten to do anything in a while. I know she’s been getting restless. Our daughter has been having nightmares though and wanting to sleep with us. 55 in a 40 isn’t that bad, right? I just want to get to my wife.

I see another car in the driveway of our house when I turn on our street. The light in the bedroom is on. My chest feels so fucking tight. I park by the curb. I feel like I’m on autopilot as I get out of the car. I shut the door to the house as softly as I can. God, how many fucking stairs do we have? Why does it seem like so many?

Noises. Another voice. Laura moaning. My brain short circuits. The door to the bedroom is slightly ajar. My feet somehow get me to the doorway. The wine and the flowers end up on the side table outside the room, next to a framed picture of the family. Our family. Me, my wife, and our kids. My hand pushes the door open further, not of my own accord. Alexis’s wide brown eyes are filled with shock as they meet mine.

[fundielicious-simblr]

(Since it’s been a while I was gonna do a quick recap [and maybe drop some hints], but decided to get creative with it and show more of Kyleigh’s personality whilst also catching you up on the storyline 😂 - Enjoy!)

(Kyleigh’s POV)

I love summer! There’s the fun of heading to camp for a week early on in the summer where you make new friends, see old friends, and of course bond with family. There’s been so much that’s happened since then: Adalynn had her two precious boys Caleb and Jonah, so the boys got two more cousins to play with! We love whenever we get to meet up and whilst we talk on the phone and video chat when we can, we usually see them in person when she and Mason bring the boys into Newcrest for family functions; so it was great to be able to see her in person for a whole week straight! She shared how she felt at the end of her pregnancy, and we guessed what gender the babies were (I guessed two boys since she’s currently on a boy streak, and I know she’s happy with her boys but I pray that she’s blessed with a girl one day!) 

In more family news, both Maggie and Stacie shared that they’re both expecting babies around the same time! We don’t see them as often as they live in the city, but I’m so excited for them to be having babies, especially Mags as this is her first child! We might not live our lives in the same way, I know that they have a deep love for the Lord, which is all you can ask for really. Mags is having her baby shower here in Newcrest soon and she says she’s got a surprise for us, so there’s that to countdown to! It’ll be a great time to catch up with family. Priscilla just got married recently so it’ll be good to see her again and pick her brain on how she’s finding married life (and who knows, she might have some news of her own to share with us!) There’s always something happening in our family, we’ve barely gotten over the excitement of Priscilla’s wedding when we have to redo it again for Amira’s wedding in a few months! The kids love weddings, they get to see all the cousins and sometimes we get to travel elsewhere for weddings. No doubt they’ll miss their aunts when they move away, they’re happy that they’ve got new places to potentially visit. 

In more recent news... I’m pregnant! Olivia is almost a year old, and since my usual timing is a positive test when they’re between 9 and 12 months, I had a hunch that turned out to be correct! I’m only a few weeks pregnant, but the sickness has been minimal and I’m thankful for that because cleaning the toilet 10 times a day isn’t fun. Baby number 9 is going to join their very excited siblings, well, Marigold and Olivia don’t really understand what’s happening but excitement is contagious so they’re just happy to be here I guess. Sometimes I sit back and count my blessings, who knew when Barrett and I got married that we’d have 9 children in almost 9 years! Both our parents joke with us that we have a decent chance of making it to 20 children, I’m sure what the Lord has in store for us, but if we end up with 20 children then I’ll take whatever blessings he gives us. 

Life is great, we’re about to restart for the new school year so I’m taking it all in and letting the kids enjoy the last vestiges of summer. I wake up and make breakfast for all of us on most days, sometimes the older kids like to fix themselves and the younger kids breakfast, so I prep some non-stove meals that they can make for themselves. Barrett and I try and have our breakfast together in the morning before he heads off for work, sometimes a few of the early risers will wake up and join us, which we don’t mind.

Sometimes they’ll be enough time for Barrett to tackle a diaper before he heads off to work. We’re definitely working overtime to potty train Marigold so that when the new baby comes theres only 2 in diapers - once upon a time when the triplets and twins were young, all 5 were in diapers 😭We emerged from the trenches victorious, with loads of help from the girls at the big house coming over to help with potty training and the various diaper changes required. Having the kids be old enough to do chores is such a blessing to me, they take turns with taking out the trash, clearing up the dishes, and now they also do some loads of laundry.

I love hearing the sounds of the children playing outside! I always wanted my children to have the childhood I did, always out in nature, getting fresh air and appreciating the Lord’s creation. My older girls are each others bestfriends and sometimes that makes me tear up! I didn’t get to experience having siblings, so to see them love each other, support and uplift each other, and work together to get things done on a daily basis makes this mama’s heart want to burst! 

We also got to take the kids to see my parents! We loaded up the rv and made the trip to Brindleton Bay, the kids love coming here because there’s the beach where they can explore - as well as seeing their granny and papa ofcourse! 

We rented a 4 bedroom cabin for a few days on the coast so that the kids could experience the beach as it’s their favourite. My parents live in the countryside in a smaller town, so we all came out to the shore to enjoy and see some of the sights.

My parents love being grandparents! They were over the moon when I told them that baby #9 is on the way! The whole holiday was spent with them loving on their grandbabies and taking it in, last time we saw each other was at camp right at the end of spring/start of summer, which if you ask them is way too long.

[poetofthedyingstars]

you know what. i kind of suck. when i was in kindergarten, my parents dressed up really well - clothes, they usually just wear for special occasion. i was graduating from kinder and well for a small kid, it's a big thing! i had like a medal - 'second honor' my teacher said. my parents were lil happy that they gave me a fast-food chain treat.

when i entered elementary, well. life was pretty shit. i had a pretty much bad influenced on my first grade at school. and there's this girl who ALWAYS steals my food at recess. and kids stuff. second grade was just dumb. third grade was okay - i finally get to attend Recognition Day again. i was top 9 and had a sticker that says Most Neat and Clean. i remember my Dad kind of mocking me about it. most neat and clean? u that good at cleaning at school, you never do that at the house? Top 9 only? woah, bro. thanks i guess. grade 4? pretty good. i had cool friends. i discovered my first favorite artist - Avril Lavigne. puppy love. i managed to well sneak my self into Recognition Day again. as Top 8, if my memory serves me right. grade 5? downright bad. had to adjust to a new environment because my grandparents went back to our hometown and my parents had work so now we moved houses. friends? barely had one. can i still go outside and have some fun? no, never. stricter than ever. school? so fucking bad that my mom would scold me every weekend. so bad that i cry myself every night thinking that i will never be good enough for my parents - i have to do GOOD. i have to. it was a really rough time trying to adjust and i was just so alone. my mom's way of letting out her own steam had always been talking. but being with her 24/7 now makes it so much harder. she literally badmouths me every fucking day. she notices my hair? god, your hair is the worst. looks? uniform? friends??? everything. 6th grade was okay-ish. i have friends. they're okay. i kind of adjusted. my teachers are kind of no better but that's okay. im passing and im still inside the top 10. that's cool! 6th grade was elementary graduation. fun stuffs. i hated the graduation ceremony the most. it was not fucking awesome but okay. not like i can change it now.

7th grade? oh man. first year of high school and you be thinking "i gotta do better now" and i fucking did. i recited a lot. i studied hard. i was president class - that's a first time. never been inside the school council. i get perfect scores in quizzes and long tests. it was awesome. i even get 42/50 at math now. holy shit. that's never happened before. basically. i peaked. best year of my academic career. i even join quiz bees and win :0 ikr?! that's so cool. i was talented and gifted for a while. and my teachers loved me. god i never experienced that kind of love before? i was competitive and consistent and well. anyways. 7th grade had to end and then next year i got into the Pilot Section. 8th grade? hope it's not that harder. it really wasn't but something changed and i had to adjust with the Smart Kids. some of the kids there have been in the pilot fucking section ever since elementary. tf am i doing here. welp. anyways. i still do what i do best. study. quizzes. recites. i can tell that my performance that year wasn't as great as 7th grade because i have lots of competition. in that class, u have to strive and socialize. god u know i can never beat that one student there she was always at the top and i love her for that!!! she's actually quite deemed as perfect which fits her well. im sure she also have struggles bc ive seen some of them but can't help but to be insecure by her. she's so awesome. and im always her SECOND but our averages are always so close to each other. 2 points difference and i could have been the top 1. whatever. as long as im cool alright. haha. 8th grade was sucky but okay. (i also had toxic relationship ☠️ why i had a relationship? don't ask me. i hate myself for it.)

9th grade to now, 10th grade is online class which i won't bother to tell. it SUCKS and we all know how's it been for all of us.

god. it's just. i have nowhere to fit in??? im not a sad gifted burnt out kid. those labels are for u know the ones who's been achieving stuffs since elementary. was never that kind of kid. not overachiever. am i average and normal? as far as my friends are concerned, NO. definitely not. but i know im fucking tired and school definitely sucks.

i just want to be great at things again. i miss that and i just can't do it with online classes. can't. can't. can't.

so hopefully senior year will be BETTER because if i do not achieve any by those 2 remaining years of high school i better just fucking die.

[stonertransdad]

Life Update since I hadn't been on here in forever

The pandemic was/is wild! Lockdowns started literally around the time we were going to the fertility specialist to get her pregnant. I lost my job to COVID in March shortly before we did the procedure, but we decided there's never really a good time to have a kid. Why not during a global pandemic when one of us in unemployed? (BTW, I don't recommend having a kid during a pandemic. Not being able to go to all of the appointments and having to sit in the parking lot was brutal.)

Let's talk about May friends...it was rough. (TW for mention of suicide btw. I'll post a gif where it's safe to start again if you wanna skip over it.)

So May 1st is the anniversary of my father's suicide. It had been 4 years. I found his body and since he wasn't married, I had to handle his affairs and arrange his funeral. May 1st, 2020 my wife and I had a Zoom game night with our friends and I got drunk because everyone was drinking (except my wife because she was pregnant). After our game night at like 2am, I had a psychotic break. I threatened to kill myself numerous times. My wife tried to talk me down, but eventually called the cops to take me. I thank her for that because looking back, that was the moment I knew something needed to change. I was convinced the cops were gonna kill me because I'm a trans dude in rural West Texas. I legit took the phone out of my wife's hand, hung up on 911, and yeeted her phone across the backyard and tried to hop the fence. Eventually the cops came and talked me down. They took me to the hospital an hour away in handcuffs (for their protection I did nothing wrong). They took me to the religious hospital that I was born in. So when they looked up my info by my name and date of birth from my driver's license (I only changed my middle name) literally all my paperwork and my bracelet had my deadname and wrong gender despite all of my legal stuff saying male with my new middle name. I mentioned it to them and they didn't care. They misgendered me the entire time I was there. I had hit my head hella hard on the bath tub when my wife was trying to snap me out of it, did the hospital even check me for concussion? Nope. I had punched so many things and my hand and wrist were swollen and discolored. Did they check out my hand and wrist? Nope. I was there for over 10 hours before I was able to convince them I was okay and that it was just the alcohol. Did I mention during that 10 hours I was literally out in the hall on a gurney with no mask and this was when COVID was running rampant in Texas (the first time)? I heard people die that night. I had nothing to distract me because they took away all of my personal items and clothes. My wife picked me up and we went home and I have been sober ever since. It's not the first psychotic break I've had with alcohol in my system. Alcohol just doesn't agree with me, but I'm finding new things to replace it with.

TW has been lifted...it's safe now.

A couple of weeks after that I began teletherapy because I had been on the same mood stabilizer and anti-depressant for almost a decade. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense that I felt like it hadn't been working for at least a year. This is a reminder to check in with your doctor if you feel like your meds aren't working. You may just need a different dose or a new med. There's no shame in that. I bounced around on various medications trying to find the right combo, some side effects scarier than others, but we got there. Before this, I had been diagnosed with ADHD, Major Depressive Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. My therapist threw out my Borderline diagnosis and said it was CPTSD instead, which made sense.

Fast forward to December because my wife was pregnant, I was unemployed still, and we did absolutely fuck-all because the global panini was still raging.

Our son was born on December 3, 2020. He weighed 5lbs 9oz and scared the ever loving shit out of us. He wasn't breathing when he was born so they called NICU in ASAP. I'm freaking out because I can hear and see what's going on while my wife was asking if he was okay as they put her guts back in place to sew her up. 5 or so minutes pass and a nurse asks if I want her to take some pictures. I'm like is he okay, he still hasn't cried. She's like "oh yeah, he's chillin." This goon was being held by a nurse and was just looking around not crying or anything. Chillest baby ever (he still is btw). I held him next to my wife's head until it was time to go back to the room. Little dude did have to spend 4 nights in the NICU because he couldn't keep his sugars or temperature regulated, but he was healthy otherwise. He's now 4 months old and is starting to sit up on his own a little bit and he's OBSESSED with standing. He's still a little guy, but very healthy and growing like a weed. He saves my life daily.

So after being unemployed for over 9 months, I started a new job working in a call center. I absolutely hate talking on the phone. It gives me anxiety and throws me into panic attacks, but I had been putting out hundreds of job applications since I lost my last job and this was the first offer I got. I wasn't really in a position to turn it down since my unemployment had ran out 2 months prior. It was 2 months of training, then we'd be on our own. I got thru the training and thought I could handle it...until they started putting us on live calls with someone helping us if we got stuck. My mental health hit the lowest point it had in a few years and my wife was terrified she was going to lose me. She convinced me to quit on February 28th (not because I didn't want to, but because I'm a stubborn ass who felt guilty). My meds got tweaked a little bit more dosage wise during this mess.

Starting about mid-February, I was experiencing severe shakiness, tremors, and spasms. I've always been a shaky person and never really thought too much about it, but at some points I could barely feed myself, or get a drink, or hold my son. On March 7th, I tried to make an appointment with my doctor about the weird symptoms I was experiencing, but she was out of town and her next opening wasn't until the 31st. My body said that won't work and my wife rushed me to the ER on the 9th...I had begun having seizures that day. I had no previous history of seizures. Got to the ER and had a seizure literally as I was walking thru the door, so they rushed me straight back. They took some blood and that was literally it. No MRI. No CT. They pumped me full of Ativan and said it was just a panic attack and to go home and chill.

Spoiler Alert: It wasn't just anxiety. I was having 20+ seizures a day. On the 10th, my wife rushed me to a different hospital...the good hospital over an hour away. First we had to drop off our gremlin with my mom to make things a little easier. Yet again, I had a seizure as I walked in the door and was taken back immediately. I don't really remember much because they kept pumping me full of Ativan and morphine because I had been in excruciating pain from the number of seizures I'd had. I do remember them doing a CT pretty quickly after I got there. Then they weren't happy with the results of the CT, so they took me to get an MRI, which showed possible signs of Multiple Sclerosis (but I didn't find that out until AFTER the notes showed up in my patient portal after being home a few days, so I raised hell...more on that later.) They did a 24 hour EEG on me and it showed nothing abnormal. Also, EEG glue is a bitch on your hair and scalp. After looking at everything and given my previous mental health history, they diagnosed me with Psychogenic Non-Epileptic Seizures, or PNES. It is a subset of Functional Neurologic Disorder, or FND. I couldn't walk well anymore and had to use a walker when I was discharged. I was in the hospital for 3 days.

When I had my follow-up appointment on the 23rd, I asked why the possibility of MS was never mentioned to me since it was very clearly in the notes. The doctor didn't have an explanation. He called in a referral to neurology so I could get a 2nd MRI to confirm MS and marked it as high priority. He also didn't take my pain seriously. My pain levels had been at a 5 or higher every single minute since they took me off of the morphine in the hospital. He told me to keep taking prescription strength doses of ibuprofen and Tylenol, which I had been. I let him know I had been and it didn't even take the edge off the pain. He ignored me. Leading up to this appointment, I had also added urinary incontinence to my growing list of symptoms and was forced to wear diapers so I didn't have to do laundry all the time. The doctor also took me off my ADHD meds because they were lowering my seizure threshold. He also took me off of my sleeping meds and nightmare meds for the same reason I'm assuming.

I kept my appointment on the 31st with my primary doctor because she's been my doctor for 5 years now and I knew she'd take my pain seriously. She did. She immediately wrote me prescriptions for a muscle relaxer and Tylenol 4. She also told me that my referral had been rejected by neuro. She said my case wasn't a good one for what she called a "wallet biopsy" and the doctors in neurology could be real assholes. She immediately sent the referral to other locations to get an approval. I am still waiting on that despite it being marked as high priority. She wrote me a prescription for a wheelchair because we both agreed my wheelchair was not enough for particular days.

Yesterday my wheelchair was finally ready for pickup, so my wife drove me to go get it. I'm still unable to drive due to my seizures and my tremors and twitches as it's predominantly in my legs and arms. I am an ambulatory wheelchair user now. Some days I can go short distances without my walker, some days I can't go without my walker, some days I can't even get out of bed, and some days I will be using my wheelchair. Don't judge a book by its cover, not all disabilities are visible. I have managed to keep my daily seizure count down in single digits and have even had a few seizure free days. They are still incredibly taxing on my body. I feel like I can't ever replenish my spoons fast enough to keep up with anything in my life.

So all in all, life has been chaotic. We are moving from Texas to New Mexico in the next few weeks, which should be interesting considering I can't overdo it without throwing myself into seizures. We will be closer to my mother-in-law so she can help us with our son and I can start resting a bit more on the more difficult days. Being a stay-at-home dad with an invisible illness has been one of the most challenging things I've done in my life, but I wouldn't change it for the world.

Sorry this is so long. I just wanted to update my followers since it's been over a year since I posted before a few days ago.

[leebrontide]

A true, 30 year, tropetastic, queer love story. (Part 1)

Pls open the link if you'd like to read a 30 year, trope-tastic true queer romance featuring pining, instalove, swords, childhood-friends-to-lovers and a happy ending.

We THINK the story begins in 1991. We know it starts at theatre day-camp for kids, a summer when we were both in elementary school.

The earliest memories are vague- I remembered a super cool kid from the older class with dark eyes who I was desperate to eat lunch with every day.

It's taken us years to reconstruct the timeline. We have figured out I did go to her house outside of camp that first year, because I remember her bird that tried to bite me. We can only guess at years based on camp themes.

Because we were little kids. I was 7. So we lost touch.

But here's the thing- we kept going to the same camp. She was always in a class ahead of me, because I'm a year and a half younger.

And every year- apparently without remembering we'd met before? We became summer best friends. Drawn together over and over.

But, being disorganized kids in a world of lesser tech, every year, when camp ended, we lost phone numbers- we lived a good 30 minutes away from each other, so I have to imagine our parent's weren't exactly heartbroken at the loss. It was a lot of driving.

In 4th grade, when I was 9, I made a new best friend, named Meredith. My parents heartily recommended the summer theatre camp to hers, and she was sent with me, the next year.

She, was older than me, so she was in Ty's class. & having excellent taste, also made friends with her.

The three of us played together all summer.

Then came the fall, and the inevitable lost contact. I remember being sad about that much more clearly, that year.

BUT, the big change happened when I was 10.

Again, sent to camp. Again, my friend Meredith was there to.

At lunch, I found them playing together. I went to introduce myself to the obviously cool older girl.

For some reason I tried to shake her hand? Little weirdo.

Ty reacts to me the same way- oh hey! Cool new person! I want to be friends!

Meredith looks at us both like we're out of our minds.

"You know each other. We played all last summer."

And suddenly, the spell of childhood amnesia was broken.

I DID know her. We were FRIENDS.

We HAD BEEN FRIENDS for years.

She LIKED ME.

SHE LIKED ME.

(love with memory disabilities is a trip, folks. And her lil ADHD kid brain was struggling right alongside mine)

We were elated.

But that wasn't the last shock to my little 10 year old heart that 5 week summer camp would bring.

Meredith was, and is, a poet. Somehow she had a habit, at 11 years old, of making up poems about people's eyes.

Weird stuff. I remember a pair of green eyes being compared to a deep sea, were the bones of drunken drowned sailors floated.

Very Anne of Green Gables.

And- I remember this part with perfect clarity. She turned to me and said, do you know who has pretty eyes? Ty.

We were crossing the stage, Ty was carrying a box of props like 15 feet ahead of us.

I said "does she?"

And then, ever the romantic I screamed "HEY TY TURN AROUND I WANNA SEE SOMETHING!"

She did.

And for the first time, I looked into the dark eyes I'd been drawn to for all those years, and saw them anew.

There's a reason cupid's supposed to have arrows.

I swear to you that this is true. It felt like an actual blow to my chest. Like a physical blow.

I was stunned. My little heart was hammering out of control.

I have no idea what I said, or did, or looked like after that.

But I figured out pretty quickly what that was. It was not subtle, even to a prepubescent nearly 6th grader.

But I was a pragmatic little almost-6th-grader.

This was a crush. Middle schoolers have crushes.

And they're supposed to fade over time.

I don't remember if I was worried that my crush was on a girl. I just remember the certainty that this was just a child's crush, and therefor nothing that would last or cause problems.

And when fall came, I lost her number again.

But this time I was devastated.

But, this time a hero saved the day! Meredith, sweet, wonderful, more-organized-than-either-of-us Meredith, still had the number.

And this time, I held on to it.

We became year round besties.

For the first year of adoring her year-round, I didn't worry about my little crush. It'd go away in time.

By 7th grade, it started to be a problem.

We were having sleep overs, and I started to feel guilty about how much I wanted to look at her and cuddle her all the time.

I don't think I told anyone right away. But Meredith was always the smartest of us three.

She's the one who proposed we play "wedding". She presided over the ceremony herself, and her little sister was our wedding photographer.

Oddly, even though I didn't know about this photo till years later, this is a game both of us remember playing.

It meant... something.

Image

I started to feel guilty. We were having sleep overs, talking every day on the phone. I wanted to look at her all the time- I wanted to be with her all the time. I wanted to kiss her, and started to realize she might be bothered by that.

I never wanted to hide anything from her.

So, I confessed my love. I didn't think of this as being especially radical or brave, but in retrospect, I'm impressed by 12 year old Lee's behavior.

She smiled brightly, and said she loved me to!

As her best friend.

I clarified my position.

She repeated that she loved me as her very best friend.

And these feelings were a bit scary and BIG, so that was all good. She still wanted to hang out all the time. Life was good.

By 8th grade, I was starting to worry. The crush hadn't worn off yet. Everyone told me these things wore off.

But I was more in love with her than ever.

And when Meredith moved to Nashville, we got even closer.

We joined the MN sword club. Made new friends. In the way of these things, a whole lot of them turned out to be some evolving variety of queer. Friends started coming out.

I barely needed to, my crush was horrifyingly obvious to all our friends.

Image

I promised you swords. The swords don't feature prominently, but the club was a major connection for us for years, and this detail has always struck me.

I'm not an especially good fencer. Especially then. I was constructed out of raw spaghetti noodles and moved like creaky budget claymation most of the time. I was calculating, but slow.

She was fast, and brash, and more skilled than me. She eventually beat some nationally recognized fencers. We called her "fiery Tybalt" because we're a bunch of big ol nerds who wanted to sound smart. She eventually took her name from that nickname.

Even at only 5ft tall, she should have beaten me handily and reliably. She could hold her own against much better fencers.

But we actually got BANNED from sparring together, because we were so evenly matched we could never get enough points for a win.

My one and only expertise in fencing was knowing her. But she knew me just as well, so there was a stalemate.

Our friends laughed at us.

I confessed my love again in 8th grade.

And 9th.

10th.

11th.

I never wanted to lie to her. It was important to me that she knew what I was thinking and feeling, but it was also important that I not burden her with it.

She always gave me the same answer. She loved me. She loved me SO MUCH.

What a shame she was straight.

Now, readers, let me remind you we're looking at two queer kids in the 90s at this point.

There were pressures at play.

When I was in 11th grade, she left for college. And she was far enough away that long distance calls were expensive. I couldn't call her every day.

What I remember most about senior year was being depressed and lonely.

But also, that after years of my family despairing of my ever learning to type, and eventually getting me the (then very expensive) dragon speech-to-type program so I could type my homework and not fail school- my contact with her was suddenly all in text. AOL messenger.

People have commented at all my workplaces about my typing speed. I type 120 words per minute now.

Specifically because it was the only way to talk to her most days.

I went to college the following year. We both got boyfriends. Both nice boys who liked and admired us.

BOTH broke up with us because we so obviously preferred each other over them. To an embarrassing degree.

The boy I was dating- bless him he only lasted 3 months- specifically told me "if I go out with you any more I'm going to fall in love with you. And you're in love with her."

Slick bastard.

He was right tho.

I couldn't be mad at him.

But this is when I started to really panic.

It'd been 6 years. My first crush was still absolutely roaring. Nobody else came close to tempting me.

And nobody else wanted to, when it became obvious they couldn't compete with her.

And she was still my best friend, so of course I told her. I told her I was miserable, because I was going to be single forever because nobody else would want me, because I was so in love with her.

She felt bad. She loved me so much. So much she'd been dumped to.

Such a shame she was straight.

I wouldn't find out till much later that that conversation had started something on her side, that, for once, she knew to keep from me.

She spent the next 6 months in intense contemplation.

She DID prefer me to all the other boys (and girls) who were chasing her in college.

And there were a lot of them.

She did think I was pretty, and she did love me. And she did want to be with me forever.

She'd been as dedicated to me as I was to her through this whole time. As caring, as invested, as, frankly, obsessed. Everyone could see it.

But she wasn't straight. She was bi.

And ace.

We wouldn't learn that word for many more years. All she knew was that the story of falling in love didn't match the love she was feeling.

But then she realized- she'd never felt the feelings she was "supposed" to feel for her boyfriend, either. She was not more attracted to him than to me. And he was a good looking guy. A catch by most any standard.

And she also hadn't loved him.

But she did love me.

So, my sophomore year of college (her junior year), we were preparing our trip to the Renaissance festival. A bunch of her friends were driving into town for it, and we'd see each other again at last. (we'd been back at school like 2 weeks, so naturally were desperate to meet up)

I am still flabbergasted as the next series of events.

She asked me out. On AOL instant messenger. After over 7 years of my pining, and adoration. After 7 years of choosing the pain of being near her and not being able to kiss her, over the desolation of not having her beside me

She very logically explained her reasoning.

I had a meltdown.

My poor room mate walked into our room to find me crying and throwing things at the computer screen.

I was convinced she was offering to date me because she felt bad for me. Because she loved me and wanted me to stop hurting and feeling alone.

So I turned her down.

That, friends, was HARD. REALLY HARD.

Thankfully, she was having none of it. She insisted it only made sense for us to date. I tried to stay firm. I refused repeatedly, all in that damned AOL messenger.

We reached a compromise- one date, at the Ren Fest, as a test.

And if it failed we'd never speak of it again.

Because the prospect of dating and breaking up was terrifying to us both.

If we were going to be together, we'd be defacto engaged. Neither of us could tolerate breaking up.

The weekend came- my college friends all knew, and accompanied me, made sure I was decked out in the best fair garb we could cobble together.

She drove up with her friends- including the ex- who had no idea what was happening. She had on her finest cape & boots & a swishy dress.

We could not manage to be alone together. Like it was a proper rom-com ridiculousness. All damn day.

But at least we were together.

She came back to my dorm that night, to spend the night, and drive back the next day.

Shout out to my room mate who stayed at her boyfriend's house that night. Love you, Lindsay.

We finally managed to kiss.

She abruptly decided kissing wasn't some weird thing people only pretended to like because it was normal, and was in fact an amazing wonderful thing we should do frequently.

I don't actually remember us deciding that the experiment was successful, and we'd be a romantic couple from then on.

Pretty sure the kissing melted my brain.

It was not like kissing my old boyfriend at all.

She went back to college the next day.

I do remember, that, MORE THAN ONCE, I nervously asked my roomy if this had all really happened. I was truly and genuinely concerned that I'd dreamed or fantasized the whole thing. I'd done both enough times before.

I couldn't just ask outright so I'd say something like. "Hey did anything- important happen yesterday?"

And she'd look at me like I was speaking some alien language, and tell me I was dating Ty now.

I wandered around in a dream-like stupor for a WEEK.

This is a good place to stop for now. More tonight. I need to go snuggle my baby and help my wife with lunch. 💖

Popping in briefly for the next installment.

All our friends knew immediately. Some of them- the newer ones, were confused because they had assumed we were always dating, on account of how blatantly in love we were all the damn time.

We decided tho, to hold off on telling our families. We decided to date a year first, to show that it was serious, and that we meant it.

It was a good year, full of the kind of pining that is regularly rewarded by happy weekends and spring breaks and summers.

The next august, before we went back to school, we each sat down our own parents. Hers were sort of "yeah ok whatever." I was not there for that conversation.

I went to my favorite restaurant with my own parents, and told them I was seeing someone. Dad was enthused. Wanted to meet him.

Well. I said. You have.

Because it's Ty.

[shannendoherty-fans]

People, September 9th 1991

High School Confidential

By Tom Gliatto and Michael Alexander.

Photos by Mark Sennett.

Beverly Hills, 90210 Gets Its Heat from a Dangerously Cute Cast of TV's Hottest New Stars CONFIDENTIAL MEMO: FROM: The Vice Principal TO: The Faculty, High School U.S.A. I'm sure I don't need to remind you what happened when we didn't prepare for Bart Simpson last fall. The school was flooded with rude, antieducational T-shirts. Some cows were had. Well, as a new school year gets under way, I believe we face another daunting challenge: Brace yourselves for Beverly Hills, 90210. That's the Fox drama about unworldly twin teens Brandon and Brenda Walsh (played by Jason Priestley and Shannen Doherty), recent transferees from Minneapolis to the Hills of Beverly. There they struggle to assimilate into the fast-lane lifestyle of West Beverly Hills High School, where the kids come equipped with BMWs, call waiting and designer surfboards. In the process, the teens examine their emerging identities and the problems that adolescents everywhere face.

The show languished in the Nielsen ratings against Thursday powerhouse Cheers last year. But Fox had no replacement, so it stayed. While we were on summer vacation, new 90210 episodes began airing, and the show landed in the Top 20, becoming the most popular show among teenagers. To some extent, I take responsibility for having ignored 90210. I made the mistake of reading newspaper critics instead of my daughter's diary, and so I believed, as Howard Rosenberg sniffed in the Los Angeles Times, that the show was merely a "ZIP code for stereotypes and stock characters." Little did I know that this show would mesmerize teens by doing emotionally realistic shows that involved adolescent rebellion, alcoholic; parents, a breast-cancer scare and plenty of worrisome teen sex. "Most shows for adolescents," says 90210 creator Darren Star, "seem like they are written by 50-year-olds who think teenagers behave like 7-year-olds."

It also doesn't hurt that the show's male stars, Priestley and Luke Perry (who plays brooding loner Dylan McKay), are "to die for," as my daughter puts it. These two have each been receiving about 1,500 fan letters a week. So be vigilant: Surely some of these will be written by our students...during class! And I'm afraid that 90210 is only going to get bigger with our kids, if producer Aaron Spelling is to be believed. "I thought The Mod Squad and Charlie's Angels got a lot of publicity in their heyday," says Spelling, whose company produced those shows, "but it doesn't compare to this. It's crazy. We have merchandising coming out of our ears"—a complete line of T-shirts, beach towels, notebooks, etc. "And now these actors can't walk down the street!"

Or even streak through malls. You probably saw those alarming news reports about a frenzied mob of 10,000 fans that stampeded Perry when he appeared at a south Florida mall last month. "It's a little scary," says Perry. Scarier is the amount of time students will waste this fall discussing Luke. And Jason. And who is sexier. I provide some information on the two. Jason Priestley, 22, plays Brandon Walsh, a model of thoughtful level-headedness. In real life, however, the brown-haired, blue-eyed star, who started acting in commercials at age 4 and played an orphan on that very nice NBC sitcom Sister Kate, is no Oliver Twist. He likes dirt bikes, bungee jumping and is a chain-smoker (just about the whole cast puffs it up—but not on-camera). Vancouver-born Priestley likes to hang out in Las Vegas. As for his real romantic life, he was reportedly dating actress Robin (Doogie Howser, M.D.) Lively last spring, but it seems likely that now he is too busy for such dalliance;. He must be on the set 14 hours a day, five days a week. To avoid ever-present fans, Priestley says, "I look different from my character when I'm just walking around. I don't shave, I don't dress like Brandon."

On the show, 26-year-old Luke Perry (Brenda Walsh's boyfriend, Dylan) sports a leather jacket, dagger sideburns and a squint that spells t-r-o-u-b-l-e. Although he grew up and graduated from high school in Fredericktown, Ohio, he seems to have attended James Dean wise-guy classes. Perry, who played country-boy Ned Bates on the ABC soap Loving, entertains the 90210 cast by strutting around bare-chested making jokes. Does he have a girlfriend? "No. You know how I can get in touch with Linda Hamilton?" What kind of music does he listen to? "Tom Jones is awesome." Are he and Priestley ever mistaken for each other? "He's mistaken for me on his good days." And 90210, he says, is "the best show on television, except for Jeopardy!" We should act quickly, faculty, when we see any signs that Beverly Hills, 90210 is disrupting normal student activity.

How abnormal might things get? Consider: "It's almost like there are cults," says Brian Austin Green, 18, the North Hollywood High grad who plays the cutely dweeby David Silver. "Girls go to school the day after the show, and they actually become these characters. They say, 'Okay, today I want to be Dylan, you can be Brenda, you can be Brandon.' " Needless to say, students caught pretending to be TV characters should be brought directly to my office for detention. But you know, it might not be a bad thing if our students could show some of the good sense that the 90210ers display in coping with the pressures of fame and fortune. Jennie Garth, 19, who plays the very sexy, very blond, very snotty Kelly Taylor, is particularly admirable. The youngest of seven children, she grew up on a farm near Champaign, Ill., until her schoolteacher parents moved to Phoenix when she was 13. "Living in a small town and coming from a very tight and close family instilled a lot of standards that I need to live up to," says Garth, who just bought a home in Sherman Oaks. She also recently supplied her parents with the down payment for their new home, setting a splendid example for today's youth.

According to a tabloid that someone left in the faculty lounge, Memphis-raised Shannen Doherty, 20, a veteran of such wonderful shows as Little House: A New Beginning, is the only cast member to be accused of behaving like "a spoiled brat" on the set. But she maintains she is no such thing. "I think everybody gets in a bad mood," Shannen says. "You do not work 16-hour days and not start feeling it. But I have never thrown a tantrum. I've gotten upset on the set, but it's never been just to be a bitch. You have to stand up for yourself in this business. That was something I was told when I was 12 years old and working with Michael Landon."

As with about half the cast members, Doherty is in a relationship—in her case, a real-estate developer with whom she's exchanged commitment rings. "You really have to date a while before you decide if this is the person you want to marry," she says with Brenda-like candor. Almost sounds like the relationship could be a future 90210 plot. "The problems of young people have accelerated," says Aaron Spelling, "and so have their feelings and thoughts." The show, he says, has kept pace: Even with their Clearasil-perfect complexions and plump allowances, the students at Beverly Hills have encountered their share of problems. "We had the guts to make Luke Perry be a member of AA," says Spelling. "We had Jason, our star, drinking and driving. That's reality."

And, apparently, the adulatory fan mail often includes a sad dose of that reality. "I got a letter the other day from a girl who mentioned the show we did on parental drug abuse," says Perry in a rare moment of seriousness. "She wrote about catching her father freebasing in the basement. I get letters like that all the time, from people all over the country." Gabrielle Carteris (at age 30, she's 90210's oldest cast-kid), who plays Andrea Zuckerman, the bright student who comes from the wrong side of Rodeo Drive, remembers an encouraging close encounter in a grocery store. "One girl came up to me after we'd done the breast-cancer show," says Carteris. "She said, 'I went home with all my friends and we checked our breasts for lumps.' "

In conclusion: Maybe I didn't need to write this memo. Maybe things won't be that bad, even if every locker in every corridor has a picture of Jason, Luke, Shannen or Jennie in it. Perhaps our dear little school is more like West Beverly Hills High—at least the TV version—than I thought. That's what Ian Ziering, 27, thinks too. "The reality on the show pretty much mirrors the way life is all over, in terms of teenagers," says New Jersey—bred Ziering, who once did Fruit of the Loom underwear ads and now plays 90210's curly-headed jock, Steve Sanders. "There's a mystique about Beverly Hills. But that's not what keeps people tuning in. The show could have been Montana E-I-E-I-O." By the way, should any student pronounce his name "eee-an," correct him or her, please. It's "eye-an."

-- WHEN BEVERLY HILLS, 90210 PREMIERED last October, Highlights, the student newspaper at Beverly Hills High, ran articles mocking the school's TV counterpart, West Beverly Hills High. "They said that the show was a joke," says Jenny Brandt, 14, a sophomore at the 1,900-student school. But as the story lines improved and Jason Priestley and Luke Perry became stars, the jokes stopped, and Brandt found herself, like many of her pals, glued to the set on Thursday nights from 9 to 10 P.M. "No phone calls allowed," says Brandt. "Except during commercials." Hope Levy, a 17-year-old senior, has taken fandom a step further with her friends. "We have little handmade cards," she says, speaking from her mom's car phone. "They say you're a member of Club 90210." While some kids think the show treats them as snobby stereotypes, most agree with sophomore Jordan Rynes when he says, "It's like a soap opera for teens. The shows dealing with drinking and drugs are the most real—adults don't realize how accurate it is."

[maekwn-archived]

     –– intro . 

is that [ROH JISUN]? no, that’s just [MAE KWON]. [SHE/HER] is [TWENTY ONE] years old and is a [WAITRESS AT SUNSHINE DINER]. rumor has it they’ve been in town for [TWELVE YEARS]. on a good day, they’re [LOYAL & DEPENDABLE]. but watch out! they can also be [IMPULSIVE & STRAIGHTFORWARD]. [WANNABE BY ITZY] plays in my head whenever i think of them. can’t wait to see them around springhill!

tw: seasonal affective disorder  

mae kwon –– roh jisun fc

birthday: June 25, 1998 - 21 yrs old ; cancer

waitress at sunshine diner

born in gwangju, south korea. moved to new york from a very very young age with her biological parents. 

mae was in the foster system for as long as she could remember and was moved from one place to another a lot. all she knew about her birth parents was that her father was dead and her mother didn’t want anything to do with a child in the first place.

the longest she stayed at a foster home was with a couple consisting of two married korean women who loved children and wanted to take care of them, but could only take in one kid, and that happened to be mae. they loved her so much that on her 9th birthday, a year after being their foster kid, she was adopted by them.

she’s been permanently living in springhill, new jersey ever since then

she’s been in the US her whole life that she only knows a tiny bit of korean and feels like she’s been missing a lot when it comes to her true culture. her parents help her with korean when she needs it, and she studies it on her own. she’s been taking language classes recently to get better. 

mae is a very creative person. her room looks like an art studio if you happened to walk in. loves painting with a passion and it helps her get through some hard times. she’s currently in her last year at university, majoring in art. 

she’s had multiple jobs throughout being in high school and university working as a barista or a receptionist. she’s currently a waitress at sunshine diner. while her parents are big on helping her out financially if she needed it, mae is someone who likes to save up and depend on herself. 

thrifting queen. invented thrift shopping. idk how she does it but she always pulls the cutest outfits out of there

mae comes across as someone who’s silent and barely smiles, but once you strike a conversation with her, you may or may not find out that she’s actually really sweet and friendly. and if you really get to know her, you might just unleash the crackhead meme that she is

on the topic of memes, she has a shiba inu dog named haruki and he’s her meme partner in crime 

mae has SAD; seasonal affective disorder. depression hits hard for her in the winter, and she still finds difficulty in dealing with it. 

there’s more to her, but it’s 9:30 am right now and i still havent slept lmao so i’ll post wanted connections for her when i wake up. but other than that, feel free to message me for plots for wanted connections of ideas you might have. or you can like this and i’ll come to you :) 

[mariacallous]

My history education from K to 4th grade was not super Rigorous (because private Catholic school in suburban San Francisco Bay Area but like...Oakland/Berkeley suburbs leading up towards Fairfield and Sonoma. Fortunately I was a fucking nerd with two heavy reader parents so I got to feel superior because I read history and stuff for fun outside of school). 4th grade was CALIFORNIA HISTORY because I remember the Missions (where we briefly, if at all, touched on the colonial and hardly at all on what many could/would/did call genocidal aspects).

5th grade was your basic history and I remember at one point we had to dress up as historical figures and present our life stories? And i chose Nicholas II because of course I fucking did and I got dinged for not being fully creative with my cotume, which was meant to be his under house arrest outfit? IDK, my family didn’t have a ton of money and I wasn’t going to put too much effort into it since other people did more work on the costume and less on their history.

6th grade was history from “ancient times” up to about the early middle ages? We made pyramids out of sugar cubes, made papyrus parchment art, traced someone’s body to make a greek god/goddess (we got Athena and I was very pleased and I also posed to be Athena), and we also made a mummy which was basically drawing on pieces of paper and decorating and layering.

7th grade history was from wherever we theoretically left off in the early middle ages right up to maybe World War, if not maybe late 19th century.

8th grade was back to US history and I will never forget writing a ton about the causes of World War I and then being told that while I was technically correct I didn’t discuss enough about the US.

9th grade history was some bullshit newly created social studies class that was a mishmash from all over the place with a blatantly copywright-infringing “reader” that was just a ton of chapters and articles from various sources photocopied together - we spent some time talking about the indigenous tribes of Northern California which is the only coursework related topic I remember - the teacher was way past their prime and drank mouthwash out of their coffee cup. I got my first referral to the administrative office from this teacher because I was trying to correct something that was being said and defend a classmate who was being hectored by the teacher, which gave me my in with the cool kids group who went to a different middle school and out of which I still have my best friend after all these years (who was a frequent challenger of the teacher as well because she also loved history and didn’t tolerate being treated the way this teacher treated a lot of people - her mom actually sat in on a class once just to see and he didn’t notice for the longest time even though it had all been arranged and discussed).

10th grade history we were back to Europe and I liked the class and the teacher liked me but he was also kind of a jockbro (but an at least over-45 one, if not over-50) and also kind of a chauvinist dick. But I was in my element once again. We may have touched on non-European history but I don’t think it was prioritized. And this class had geography quizzes and whatnot.

11th grade was AP US History and it had the best teacher and was my absolute favorite and I will never forget how great it was even though we barely got to 9/11 and the textbooks ended right when Clinton was being impeached (because that was happening when they were being published). We did Jeopardy and I had to be told that I wasn’t allowed to answer at a certain point every game session.

12th grade was AP Government and Economics - one semester of each. The teacher was a fusty old basically libertarian dude who did not want me to discuss too much about Keynesian economics or governmental relations because it was a very cut-and-dried, both parties are basically the same and driven by interests and power. And this was in the middle of the 2008 recession too and so my classmates might have had some of the basic mechanics of how things worked but that was it. And we had the various issues discussions too which was fun.

We spent a lot of time going over the EPA, I remember, and particularly like Reagan’s appointees and how they interacted with Congress.

And then I took various history classes in college.

Suburban San Francisco Bay Area K-12 public education history classes, y’all. 

[thetexurekid-1312]

I was in 2nd grade when I was taught about 9/11 and were shown clips of the planes shooting through the buildings

I was in 3rd grade when I had to accept the fact I might be a victim of school shooting. That one day I will walk into school with the k-5 grade school fellow students and possibly be carried out in a body bag. I had accepted that fate. At the age of 9. Wasn't even double digit age. And I had to accept the fact that one day, I will not see my baby brother anymore because someone thought it was funny to shoot up an elementary school.

In 5th grade...I was in the classroom, when all of a sudden the announcement came on the loud speaker, that Sandy Hook elementary school was shot up. That happened a few cities away from me. I was in 5th grade when I heard that someone took the life of those who hadn't even got to experience 1st grade. They never finished kindergarten.

In 9th grade I was still in class when someone outside started shooting at the windows of my school. It never made the news.

The ache left my throat in 3rd grade when I heard another school had bullets crashing into students whose lives had barely started.

I was in 1st grade when I had experienced racism first hand. A majority of my classmates were treated like garbage, never given a sticker or a prize from the prize box when we did good because we weren't white. But these 2 kids who had the same skin color as my teacher, were treated like royalty. Good or bad, it was clear who were the favored students.

I was taught to fear cops at the age of 4, when I asked my mother why we couldn't file a report, that our one bedroom apartment was broken into and our rent money gone. She told me they would deport her even though she was a legal citizen. And they would separate me and my infant brother because they could. They still can.

War wasn't fun to play anymore after seeing and hearing what happened in those camps back during WW2. I was still in elementary school.

I was always taught to be strictly prohibited in the 2 gender binary system and cried every night ever since I was 5 at the thought that one day I would have to marry a man who doesn't love me. To a man who could do as he pleases to me. To a man who I couldn't stand up to or else any and every violation of my body would be my fault. I was only 5 years old.

By the time I was in 7th grade I was numb to death. I wasn't afraid to die anymore because dying before your time is up is inevitable in America. The death of children was normalized, the death of innocent and wrongly convicted people are not taboo, death of anyone who wasn't a cis white straight person was no longer a rare possibility.

It shouldn't be.

It really shouldn't be.

Spread the word. Spread the word. Spread the word, if you heard.

[hellyeahheroes]

Building Molly Hayes in D&D 5e

So I noticed that I have now one build more for DC than I have for Marvel so how about we build something straightforward and easy and yet very fun to play? How about one little girl who really can beat everyone up?

Since I follow the blueprint set by Tulok the Barbarian, we need to establish our Goals for this build. First of all, we need to punch like a true Bruiser, someone worthy the title Princess Powerful. Second, we need to be as hard to kill as someone whose creator forced into the contract a clause she will never be killed or maimed. And finally, we need to do that while being able to fool people into thinking we’re just a harmless little girl, so they won’t realize the problem before it is too late.

Ability Scores: We Will be using the Standard Points Array - 15, 14, 13, 12, 10 and 8. If you want to roll or use point-buy, go ahead but remember to keep your Strength high.

Strength: 14, your nicknames aren’t just for show.

Dexterity: 13, we will boost it in a moment

Constitution: 15, Molly can take as much as she can diss.

Intelligence: 8, it represents formal education and Molly has few years of a hole in that and even without it is still in her early teens so she had even less of it than many other characters we did.

Wisdom: 10, should be higher but we cannot have everything.

Charisma: 12, Molly is adorable aaaand much smarter than people give her.

Now for D&D version of species, Race. Molly is a mutant and last time I checked mutant considered themselves a separate species altogether. So we’ll go with Stout Halfling. Your size is small, to the point Halfling passing for a human child is a known thing in D&D. You get +2 to Dexterity and +1 to Constitution. You are Lucky, allowing you to reroll natural 1 on any attack roll, ability check or a saving throw. You can move through space of any creature larger than you, you have an advantage on saving throws against poison and resistance to poison damage. You can speak Common and Halfling and your base speed is 25 feet.

Alternatives: If you want to play Molly Hernandez, who is not a mutant, pick up Variant Human and grab Lucky feat.

We will make Custom Background - pick up Deception and Acrobatics, any language that could be campaign relevant, artisan tool proficiency to play tuba and City Secrets feature from Urchin background. 

Class Levels: First we will get us some punching. First level Fighter gains proficiency in all simple and martial weapons, Strength and Constitution saving throws and proficiency in two skills, I’d go for Insight and Athletics. You get to pick a Fighting Style, Unarmed Fighting makes your fist deal 1d6+ Yoru Strength Modifier damage instead of static 2, 1d8 if you use two hands at once. When you grapple a creature, you can deal them 1d4 damage whenever you hit them by a melee attack. You also get Second Wind, letting you once per short rest use your bonus action to regain 1d10+your Fighter level hit points.

2nd Level: Molly is known for wearing cute hats. But do  you know what she doesn’t wear? An armor. Which is why we will quickly grab the first level of Barbarian for Unarmored Defense, letting you add your Constitution modifier to your Armor Class when you're not wearing armor. You also get to enter Rage, in which you have an advantage on Strength checks and saving throws, lets you add extra damage to attacks made while you rage and resistance to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage. You can enter it a limited number of times, it lasts 1 minute and ends if you decide to, lose consciousness or do not attack anything for one turn.

3rg Level: Fighter of 2nd Level gains Action Surge, letting you take extra action for a turn between every long or short rest.

4th Level: 3rd Level Fighters get to choose a martial archetype. Brute lets you add 1d4 to any damage you deal with a melee weapon you’re proficient with. Meaning now this little girl hits with her bare hands like a guy with a sword.

5th Level: 4th Level Fighter gets an Ability Score improvement, but we will pick a Feat. Second Chance is a Halfling feat that lets you once per battle force a creature to reroll an attack roll that would hit you. You also get to Increase your Dexterity by 1.

Alternative: If you build Molly Hernandez instead, either grab Tough for more HP or increase your Strength.

6th Level: On 5th Level Fighter gets an Extra Attack, letting you attack twice in a single attack action, four times with Action Surge. You can punch fast because you have the power of youth...wait, that’s from some manga.

7th Level: 2nd Level Barbarian gains Reckless Attack, letting you before the first attack decide to gain an advantage on melee attacks during this turn but at the cost of enemy attacks having an advantage against you during the next turn.

Unearthed Arcana also gives Barbarian Survival Instincts, letting Molly become proficient in Perception and Animal handling and doubling her proficiency bonus to these skills. Between Old Lace and psychic cat Rufus, Molly is pretty good with animals after all.

8th Level: 3rd Level Barbarian gets to enter a Primal Path. Path of the Zealot is lore-wise hard to fit, as it is a fanatical follower of the gods. But you can easily refluff it - Molly is so devoted to protecting her friends that it gives her outright fanatical empowerment. Or maybe ask your DM which god in their setting is a patron of friendship and found families. 

You gain two features. Warrior of the Gods ensures that if you’d die and someone, say your goth surrogate mom, cast a spell restoring you to life, they do it without having to pay a, usually high, material price. The second feature, Divine Fury, makes Molly hit even harder. Now when you rage the first attack you hit with on each of your turns deals an extra 1d6 + half of your Barbarian level of radiant or necrotic damage.

9th Level: 4th Level Barbarian gets an Ability Score Improvement, boost up your Strength to hit even harder.

10th level: 5th level Barbarian is sadly a doozy because you get Extra attack you already got from Fighter. It sucks but they do not stack. Cheer yourself up by the fact you can now puch so well to make Punisher write it in his journal. And you get extra 10 feet of movement when you’re not wearing armor to cheer you up.

11th Level: 6th Level Zealot gets Fanatical Focus, letting you to once per rage (which at this level raises to four uses per long rest) reroll a failed saving throw while you rage. As with previous features that let you reroll things, you must accept the new result even if its worse.

12th Level: 6th Level Fighter gains another Ability Score Improvement, increase your Constitution for better AC and more Hit Points.

13th Level: 7th Level Brute gains Brutish Durability, which allows you to add 1d6 to any saving throw you make, and if it’s a Death Saving Throw and it would push you to or above 20, you treat the roll as a natural 20, making you automatically regain 1 hit point.

14th Level: 8th Level Fighter gets to round up Constitution with another Ability Score Improvement.

15th Level: 9th Level Fighter becomes Indominable, allowing you to once per long rest reroll a failed saving throw and accept the new roll, even if it's worse.

16th Level: 7th Level Barbarian gains Feral Instinct, giving you an advantage on Initiative rolls and letting you act as if you’re not surprised in case an enemy surprises you, but only if the first thing you do is enter Rage. Which is what you should do if X-Men show suddenly to kidnap you to their weird cult island.

17th Level: 8th Level Barbarian can increase Strength with our last Ability Score Improvement.

18th Level: 9th Level Barbarian gets Brutal Critical, allowing you on a critical hit roll one additional die of any type you use in an attack, and since you use multiple ones, you can pick the highest one.

19th Level: 10th Level Zealot can make a Zealous Presence, letting you once per long rest as a bonus action rally up your teammates in need, giving them an advantage on saving throws and attack rolls for their next turn.

20th Level: Our capstone is 11th level Barbarian, giving us Relentless Rage. If you are raging and drop to 0 hit points but not outright killed, you can succeed a DC 10 Constitution saving throw and drop to 1 hit point instead. Every time you use it between rests the DC increases by 5 and goes back to 10 after short or long rest.

Overview: Molly Hayes is a Stout Halfling Brute Fighter 9/Path of Zealot Barbarian 11, let us see how good this build is.

Pros: First of all, your damage from various sources can stack up to pretty decent damage. Second, you are ridiculously hard to put down, with over two hundred hit points, resistance to damage, multiple ways to succeed saving throws and even more to get yourself out of the death situation - Indominable, Fanatical Focus, brutish Durability - and Second Wind, you can stay in combat for a long time. Your AC is at 18, which is also decent. Finally, you get to reroll so much you really feel like someone who is contractually set up to not die.

Cons: You are not as strong as you could be, we didn’t round up Strength in the end. Molly is strong but not as much as guys like Colossus. You also don’t deal much in magic damage and many creatures will have resistances or immunities against your punches, so you better hope DM gives you something to make your fists magical. And finally, you're a bit of a one-trick pony, you just punch people and I know from experience playing someone who just hits can bore some players fast.

However, this is pretty in character. You’re still a kid, so you have still time to surpass powerhouses like Hulk. But in meanwhile remember to keep your found family safe and teach everyone this kid is not to be underestimated.

Alternatives: I was considering Rogue but it didn’t really work with it since Molly doesn’t use anything that can deal Sneak Attack. if you sacrifice that character bit, you can start as a Rogue to get better skills. Going up to 4 levels and picking Swashbuckler or Scout for an Archetype will combine well with Cunning Action to make you move on the battlefield with an energy an excited kid like Molly has.

- Admin