#until I decide I’m finally too old and accept my lot in life is to be a hermit

[vvitchering]

.

[agentstarkid]

This little story turns one year old this July 31st!

We hopped with Girlie on a rollercoaster of finding (true) love, being quarantined in a foreign country, lots of internet meanies, making new friends, angst, heartbreak, depresh sesh, finding love again and so much more to come -- What a wild journey it's been, and I'm so proud I took the leap!

Looking back a year ago, I can't believe how far this story and I have come. I remember being so full of uncertainty and nerves to post that first chapter, and now, a whole year later, I'm writing little blurbs and one-shots in a whole different language to my main one.

And to celebrate this milestone with you guys, the DAN-Y/N stans out there, and as a thank you for all these 365 days of support and love to Danielito & Girlie's love story—a.k.a. my baby—, I put together a list of dialogue prompts from where you can pick one—or as many as you'd like—and send it to me so I can write a little blurb to go with it!

You can request a specific moment on the fic you'd like to see more (c'mooooon, they were together for 2 whole years! Let's see if you've been paying attention hehe), or just make a general request with a quote of your choice (or you can suggest one! Can't promise much on this, but I'd try my best to bring it to life, unless it is smut. I can't write smut for shitzels yet soz).

I'll be accepting resquests for the next 2 weeks!

✧. ┊ Series Masterlist

P.S. Fingers crossed next month I can—finally—post a new chapter! Adult life has been kicking my ass these past months so please be patient with me! — But my inbox is always open to talk! :)

— All the dialogue sources are linked!

“These are way too many, omg, I’m being squeezed by these pillows, love!” “Well I just, you know, thought that since you like to hold on to me while you sleep but we can’t do that right now, I decided to bring you all these.” “Aww, I appreciate it, baby, but would you mind moving some? And even though I do have these, I will miss your warmth beside me.” 

“You weren’t uncomfortable back there, right? I just wanted to make sure you were all right.” “No, no, I wasn’t. Thank you for doing that.”

"You had no business looking that good back there."

"Those could be our kids one day." "What...?" 

“They don’t know you, love. They don’t know how much we love each other. Let them think what they want to. It doesn’t matter, you know why? Because you are enough. We are enough.”

“I don’t want you to be perfect, sweetheart. I want you to be who you are.”

“I…I wasn’t sure if you’d like this, so I just bought all the colors they had there.”

“Stoooop. Stop making me all…” “All… what?”

“Sorry. I just... like seeing that I have an effect on you, I guess.”

“Life would suck complete testicles if it weren’t for you.” 

“I like seeing you this way. so… at ease. makes me wonder how anyone could ever purposely put you under stress and live with themselves afterwards.”

"I know you're struggling right now, and it's okay, okay? We'll get through this."

“With you, I see a forever I’ve never envisioned before. Not that I didn’t want to, it’s more because I wasn’t able to… At least until I met you.”

“God, I really don’t want to leave”.

“I’m so deftly terrified of falling in love. Because what if I end up with a broken heart? That thought itself is just so scary to me. I want to, but I can’t get over that fear.” “Then how about you let me be that first step you take into falling in love? I can help you get over that fear, if you’d let me.” 

“People say they fall in love like they fall asleep — slowly, then all at once. But the way I fell for you can only be described as that feeling when you’re drifting off to sleep, only to feel like you’re falling, oh-so-suddenly. So suddenly that it ends up startling you awake; heart racing in your chest because it feels like you fell off the precipice of a cliff. It’s quick and sudden, and there’s no slowness to it. It’s a crash and burn type of love that I feel.”

“They say the second time’s the charm.” “Was the first time not charming enough for you?” “No, but the second time’s going to be even better, I promise.” 

“If people can hate for no reason,  then I can love for no reason too.”

“I dunno who taught you that love comes with conditions and limitations, but mine doesn’t. Not when it’s you.”

“I don’t know how to ask for help i just— I’ve never had anyone to ask for help from before.  so…this is me trying i guess.  I need it and i’m afraid to ask for it.  That's the best I can do.”

“You really think a relationship should be that hard?” “No one writes songs about the ones that come easy.”

“If you don’t kiss me, right now…” “Then what?” “Then I will have to do it myself.”

"I think destiny wants us to be together, and you should never argue with destiny.”

“What do you think is our song?”

“I can’t concentrate, when you look at me like that.” “Well, you should be concentrating on me instead, so…”

“Sing for me.” “What would you like to hear?”

“I feel like I can breathe better with you around.”

“You’re much better off without me.” “You’re not the judge of that.”

“I love you, okay?! And I can’t stay in your life when I’m just ruining it.” “You can’t just say that and don’t wait for me to answer.”

“Your mom is coming over today.” “Tell her to bring fried rice or she’s not invited.” “You tell her, she’s your mom.” “But she likes you more!”

“Wait, you can’t swim?” “I was always more into sports on land where, you know, I can’t drown.” “I will teach you!”

“Every night before bed I write three good things that happened to me. And every night I find myself writing down your name.”

“God, don’t do that. You’re going to make me go on Santa’s naughty list tonight.”

“This heart belongs to you, and only you. And I’d hope you want to keep it for a very, very long time.”

“What matters isn’t the place, but the person you’re with at that place. So this is to say, being with you is enough for me. So long as you are there, then all is well.”

“If you don’t wanna spend the night in a empty house, you could always come over to mine.” 

"Hey, i think i can fit over here in this corner." "What are you, a plant?" "Maybe. you shine on me every day, after all."

“I don’t know what the future holds. all i know is that i hope you’re in it. “

“Annoying you is what I’m best at.”

“You get to curl up in my lap, and I get to watch a cinematic masterpiece in peace and quiet. i think this is a pretty sweet deal.”

“This is your home, just as it is mine.”

“That was your master plan? Really?” “No, my master plan was having no plan actually.”

“When life gives you lemons, squirt the juice into your enemies’ eyes and watch them whimper.”

“Maybe i'm too late to be your first, but right now, i'm preparing myself to be your last.”

“Over everything, I choose you.”

“You’ve given me so many memories, I'd hate it if you become one”

“I hope you heal from the things you dont wanna talk about”

“I was gonna marry her…”

“Because you always been my ticket home…”

“Have you ever gone stargazing?” “yeah, i’ve seen your eyes a few times.”

"Oh God- why are you half-naked?" "nothing you haven't seen before, love" "it's freezing, go put on a shirt-" "Nah, you can warm me up." 

“You never have to fear that you’re losing me.”

“Aw, you brought out the smile.” “Which smile?” “The one reserved for the people you love.” “How could you even tell?” “Because that’s how you smile at me.”

“No, you’re not allowed to smile at me like that.”

“This is not some predestined soulmate shit or fate or whatever. I love you all on my own. Because you’re awesome and because I want to.”

“You know, I prefer you naked, but that dress also looks breathtaking on you.”

“Believe in the me that believes in you”

“Work can wait. You need rest.”

“I got the recipe from your mom, i hope i did it justice.”

“I think i deserve a cuddle for letting you stick your icy little feet on me all night.”

“Ok…so, umm I made this playlist for our first month anniversary. I hope it’s not too bad!” “Omg, this is- I can’t believe it! I always wanted someone to make me a playlist!” 

“You already are a handful. Together, you guys are insufferable.”

“I’m right here.”

“Careful, or I will fall for you.” “You’ll be fine. I’ll buy you some knee pads.” “Knee pads but no helmet?” “If you’re falling for me, you’ve already taken a hit to the head.”

“Uh-oh.” “What’s wrong?” “That’s their ‘oh, you messed with the wrong bitch, bitch’ face.”

“You look like an idiot.” “You know, other people would say it’s nice to see me so happy. Or that I have a beautiful smile.”

“I’ve never seen you this happy before.”

“(Congrats.) You’re one of us now.”

“Please, never apologise for wanting to be loved.”

“Come on. I’ll show you how to dance”

"Are you still mad at me? I mean, it's okay if you are. I'm mad at myself, too."

"Put your head on my lap and sleep a little."

 “I don’t want to go to bed angry…can we please talk about this?” 

“Your cheeks are really soft.” “Stop squishing them!”

“You didn’t have to do anything…” “But i wanted to.”

[lincolndjarin]

The Dragonfly & The Moon

main masterlist ✧ kinktober masterlist ✦

kinktober : day nine - afab!witch!reader x joel miller

prompt : blood drinking [ 18+ mdni ]

word count : 1.9k

summary : you and joel decide to take the next step in your relationship.

warnings, etc. : language, knives, cutting, ritualistic sex, religious symbols, blood, consensual violence, blood drinking (surprise surprise), gore, sort of body horror i suppose, premature ejaculation, and i used the middle name i head canon for joel whoops

a/n : hello my lovelies, i just finished this up before work i hope y'all enjoy this silly little story

“And you’re absolutely sure you’re okay with this?” You set each blade down in front of him, letting him watch as you soak each one in alcohol. He’s sitting up on the table, knees bent, elbows resting on his thighs.

“I did say I wanted to participate in your hobbies more.” He keeps his eyes on each one, you know he’s nervous despite the act he’s putting on but you just want him to be comfortable. 

“This is a bit more than a hobby.” You set the final blade down on the cloth, walking around the table to take his hand in yours.

“I really want to, I promise.” He murmurs before bringing your hand to his face, placing a kiss to your palm. 

He’s wanted to get married for ages now but you’ve been reluctant. It’s not that you don’t love him, of course you do, you’re just so… different. He’s a traditional man. He wants the wedding and the house with a white picket fence and the kids and the growing old together on a porch swing, and you want to live in the woods and sacrifice virgins to your dark lord. 

But hey, opposites attract. (At least that’s what he says every time you try to have this conversation.)

And while he isn’t fond of your so-called hobbies, he’s been understanding. (Although it took a lot of convincing. He refused to believe you until you cut your own hand off and walked it across the table to him before promptly reattaching it.) 

So when he got down on one knee you couldn’t say yes. Since then he’s been adamant that he be more involved in your life, desperate to prove that this could work. 

Initially you’d told him you were busy tonight, your lord required an act of depravity as sacrifice and he’d been all too eager to offer to help. 

He looks less eager now that he’s face to face with several of your blades. 

“You really don’t have to do this-“

“I’m doing this. End of story.” You arch an eyebrow at his stern tone but nod. 

“Okay. Take off your shirt.” You pick up the cloth with your knives on it, moving it to the counter as he unbuttons his denim top. He tosses it onto the chair as you light a few more candles around the room before lifting your sweater over your head and throwing it on top of his shirt, turning to him in just your bra and skirt. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.” He mumbles as you pick through the knives before settling on your favorite, a double edged small blade, the handle is shaped like a dragonfly. 

“You have to pick one.” You turn so he can see the selection. 

“I’ll take the one on the far left.” He nods in its direction as you take it by the blade, holding it out to him. You’re a bit surprised by his pick as you watch him examine the boline knife, tracing the curve with his finger before setting it on the table next to him. 

You whisper a quiet prayer to yourself in latin, praying not just to your god to accept this sacrifice, but also to make this easier on your partner. You can think of several occasions where he had chosen to be especially cruel and a small part of you is aware of just how dangerous this situation is for Joel but you push that down, ignoring it. 

You put the blade between your teeth, holding it in place as you climb up onto the table, straddling his lap before putting your hands on his chest, pushing him down flat onto the cold wood. You look down at him one last time, looking for any signs of resistance, when you see only determination in his eyes you whisper one last prayer before letting your own eyes roll back, feeling something darker course through your veins as it takes over. Your vision is clouded when you look back down at him and you know all he sees from them is white. You tenderly take the knife from between your teeth, spinning it in your hand. 

“Still good?” This time when you mumble you’re vaguely aware of the fact that your voice is being layered with another, much deeper voice, his eyebrows shoot up in confusion but he just nods. 

No reason to put this off any longer, you take his hand, entwining your fingers and lifting his arm up. You take the blade, gently drawing it across the side of his forearm, making an incision about four inches in length, watching as the thin line of red appears in its wake. You see his jaw tense but he doesn’t flinch. He gasps as you lean forward, dragging your tongue across the wound. You let out a shuddering moan as the sweet metallic tang coats your tongue. 

You went over the ritual in great detail with him beforehand. You explained everything you would be doing and everything that would be expected of him but his eyes still wide with surprise as you begin to lick his wound, not wanting to waste any of him, you feel the bitter, sweet liquid settling in your stomach, sending a flood of warmth through you.

You try not to be too loud but when you’re in this state your inhibitions are lowered, he tastes like heaven and you can’t contain yourself as you raise your blade once more, slicing him horizontally, making a cross on his skin. You watch the crimson bloom as you hold him still. The sight of it makes your pussy ache as you lean forward, lapping at the bleeding cross as you subconsciously grind your hips against his.

In a moment of weakness you bend down, biting his shoulder hard enough to pierce his skin, sucking in harshly as you drink him in.

“Christ…” He mumbles, gripping your waist as you recoil. 

“Fuck-“ You hiss. “Don’t say that, it makes you go sour.” You wipe the excess gore from your mouth on the back of your hand as he gives you an embarrassed smile.

“Sorry, I didn’t realize.” You watch how the blood rushes to his face, his cheeks flushing a divine shade of red. You can’t help it when you tangle your fingers in his hair to hold him in place, you aren’t in control anymore. You’re extremely precise in your movements as you carve a rune into the sun kissed skin of his cheek, careful not to go deep enough to scar. Once you’re pleased with your work you let out a content sigh before flattening your tongue against it. Thanks to the quick incantation he’s gone sweet again, an almost bitter sweetness that overwhelms your senses. “Jus’ a little more.” You mumble in your intoxicated state as you languidly drag the shimmering blade down the center of his chest. 

He inhales sharply once but when he realizes you aren’t applying any pressure he relaxes some. Much to your delight you feel a stirring beneath you, you angle your hips instinctually to rest your throbbing cunt against the substantial bulge forming in his pants. 

“Joel Arthur Miller, are you actually getting off on this?” He doesn’t respond, simply blushing harder as you scorn him with a breathy laugh, raising your knife again you press it into the soft flesh of his chest, tracing patterns into the salt and peppered hairs sprinkled across his sternum before finally digging the blade into the meat of his pectoral, a spray of blood gushing up at you. Your face is flecked with gore as your mouth falls open to eagerly lap up the rosy ichor, you feel the distinct sensation of his cock straining and twitching in his jeans as you do so, an orgasm fully driven by the pleasure you derive from the vulgarity of the act your performing is forming in your belly. 

As cold and unforgiving as your patron is, he has been known to be generous to his long term subjects, you know he’ll push you over the edge just like this if you’d like. 

And he does. Your teeth sink into the flesh surrounding the wound still spouting blood as you come undone with a snarl, your hips feverish and frantic as you grind against him, the force of your bite drawing more blood. The sensations swelling and filling your entire being consume you one last time as you sharply suck in, a rush of fresh blood flows into your maw and you hungrily drink it all in before finally sitting up with a satisfied look on your face, you chin coated in gore as your eyes return to their usual state. 

“Are you okay?” Your voice has returned to normal now as you search his eyes for a sign that this crossed a line but you never find it.

Joel still doesn’t speak, he merely stares at you in awe, nodding. 

“Your turn.” Your voice echoes throughout the house as he sits up, keeping you firmly in his lap as he grabs his chosen knife, bringing it between the two of you. “Remember, you can do it anywhere.” You murmur, anxious to feel the cool steel against you. He slides the curved blade down your sternum, hooking it on your bra.

“And I only have to drink a little for your spell, right?” His voice is quiet, he sounds positively enamored with you as his nearly black eyes stare into yours. 

“You only have to drink a drop if that’s what you want.” You cradle his face in your hands, he draws a hushed gasp from you as he slices through the center clasp of your bra, letting it fall before tossing it to the floor. He’s far more delicate than you were, opting to not pierce your flesh just yet. Instead he just traces little shapes into the curves and valleys of your chest. You bite back a moan as he runs the blade along the outline of your nipple before finally drawing blood on your shoulder.

One clean horizontal line, only an inch deep but six inches in length, the moment he’s made the incision he tosses his own blade aside, latching onto you. His hips stutter and his tongue traces the gash wildly and with a fervor you’ve never seen from him before. He isn’t deterred in the slightest by the fact that your blood runs a crimson so dark it basically runs a shimmering black, he just drinks, lewd slurping sounds fill the kitchen followed by an inhumane groan from your partner and in an abrupt instant a soft howl fills the space and the candles go out, both of you freezing in place.

“Shit, I guess we did it?” You sit up a bit, feeling a little confused as you light a small flame in your palm. “That usually doesn’t happen until the ritual’s done…” You furrow your brows as you look at him in the flickering light, a sheepish expression on his face before it clicks for you. “Wait, did you-”

“Sorry.” He mumbles, you reach down between the two of you and sure enough the front of his pants are soaked in a warm dampness, his cock now soft. 

“You are just full of surprises, aren’t you?” You can’t help but grin as you lean forward, kissing the bridge of his nose. 

Maybe opposites do attract.

a/n : happy oct 9th :)

[moreteethplease]

> Play it here!

There's a ghost that lives inside my piano. It hasn't always been there, but I'm not sure when it moved in. Can a narrative be haunted by an object? Mine may be.

The Ghost That Lives Inside My Piano is a short autobiographical tale about chronic pain and dead dreams, made in bitsy for bitsy jam #86: better late than never. Devlog (and spoilers) under the cut.

Art 

Due to a lack of time and energy, I opted to use nothing but images converted by pixsy for this jam. I took pictures of my piano, parts of my face and hands, and even my spouse’s hand at one point. I wanted to have all the images (except blank screens) be nothing but converted images for consistent style, even if they were not super clear in pixel form. It’s something I’ve seen a lot of bitsy creators do, and I’ve never done it before, so I was excited!

Ironically, there is one that I had to use a stock image for: the bold double bar line. I wanted to get a close up picture of one from a book of sheet music, but I forgot, and by the time I remembered I was out of energy. This seems fitting, somehow, for the theme of the game.

Anyway, aside from that one stock image, everything else is a photo of myself, my partner, or a part of the piano. Here are some that I think were quite interesting:

One of my fears with this is that 35 rooms in bitsy is far too much for a standard art game. I included so many because I partially wanted to capture the slow, tedious, painful process of chronic pain robbing you of your hobbies until you have to put them down forever (and the game ends). Hopefully I managed that without making it unplayable.

As an additional note, I took more time than usual choosing a cover image for the game. The one I ultimately chose (with the help of a unanimous vote from my friends) is art of the hammers inside the piano. These are the rejects (including a variation of the chosen cover):

Writing and Meaning

This story is autobiographical. Well, the ghost isn’t real, of course. But if you consider it a metaphor instead of a literal ghost, then I suppose it is real.

The idea for this bitsy jam entry first came to me in the shower, when I was thinking about haunted narratives. My brain began running with the mental image of a literal haunted narrative and going to silly places, as brains are wont to do. I imagined a ghost haunting the books on my bookshelf, or the files in my filing cabinet, or the sheet music inside my piano bench. This led to me imagining a ghost haunting my piano, which I thought was a fantastic idea to make something with, and I began to work on the script.

But that script took on a life of its own as I wrote, as scripts are wont to do. I slowly realized that my piano was already haunted, and it was a part of my haunted narrative. I was 8 years old when I decided that I wanted to be a pianist in an orchestra when I grew up, and I was 13 when chronic pain ripped that dream away from me permanently. I pretended it hadn’t, for a while, and I continued to play complex pieces even when my hands begged for reprieve with every press of a note. At 17, as the pain grew worse with each passing month and doctors continued to question if I was faking it for attention, I finally accepted that my dream was dead, and I stopped playing piano seriously for good. If I did actually have that whole “Midas touch” thing that I mention in the game, well, I sure don’t have it now. (Sorry, Teacher Katrina.)

This isn’t a sob story; I’m quite at peace with all of that now. I write, edit, code, and design for a living, which means I still get to do what I love every day and earn money for it, and I do it on my own time. I appreciate all the ups and downs that come with that and honestly wouldn’t have it any other way. And I do still play the piano! I will never abandon the art form; I love it too much! But I do miss playing the piano the way I used to. And sometimes when I struggle to play even a portion of a piece that I played effortlessly at 12 years old, I see that ghost lying across the piano, freezing my joints in place, its dead stare fixed on mine.

Thank you for reading this far. If you’d like to play the game, you can check it out here:

[pshattuck]

Hello everyone so this is going to be a pretty big blog about the upcoming future of my life as a artist. So to try to shave off some time I will be copying and pasting the Twitter thread I made to here.

Startiiiing now:

“Hey everyone I got another update for you and it’s probably gonna sound like “she’s changing shit again” but I feel like a lot has been going on in my life and a lot of it is changing too and I think I discovered something about me and my artwork that I feel like is important.

The reason I started pumping out content before this new job I got was well after I lost my old caregiving job YouTube and commissions were my only source of income for the last 6 month and I honestly was making enough for bills at that point it was my family keeping me afloat.

So yeah, life was not kind to me and I got.. well extremely depressed. I kept applying and no one was accepted them the one job I wanted I did not get and I was lucky to just get by. My brain all the time for the past few months kept saying I was a failure Until I got lucky.

I just got done with shadowing and orientation and I’m now officially working at a job that yeah can be stressful but I fully enjoy. I’m feeling happy and I’m finally healing from this dark cloud that’s following me. And with this month coming to an end I realized something.

Growing up my art was the one thing that kept me happy it was my happiness from real life issues and it got me to meet the love of my life along with great people in online community’s. However, the more it became a stressor to live off my art… the less it made me happy.

Not to mention the reason I shared my art to begin with because even if it was cringe or my art was not the best in the past … I always loved to see people enjoy it. It killed me to ask people to give me money to draw for them. It’s just not me.

I allowed a online algorithm, and a few words from a small handful of people to make me second guess what I loved to do, I allowed money to make me decide what I should work on…I realized I secretly hated myself for it.

This new opportunity in my life is why I’m writing what I am today and it’s my own choices and it’s one I’m actually happy with.

Everything I draw will be free to view I’m going to build it up on Tapas and Tumblr just for the multiple image support plus they have better age restriction on there platforms because I’m a adult and do want to dabble in NSFW stuff.

The one animation I have on sale in my store I will be making it free to view. For the amazing person who did buy the pack I will be dming them so once my paycheck comes, they will be refunded.

And now for the big thing.

The next few months I will be saving my own money and working on Concept Art for the next few months along with working on comics because by next year I want to work and pay people to help me bring my comics to life as animated projects.

The first project will more then likely be Jackie’s Everyday Adventure because it has the least amount of characters and backgrounds and will dabble in the form of 3D animation. This will be a strictly animated series with some rewrites from the original comic version.

Homebrew… is honestly the biggest project since there is over 30 chapters and I’m not even halfway done writing scripts. I won’t Even considering working on animating that until at least chapter 10 is out.

Everything else will be explained over on Tumblr that will be where I blog about my projects since there’s not as tiny of a character limit on there. Thank you all for reading this and I will link the full update on Tumblr and I will share a link to it on here.”

And now here we are on Tumblr!

The only thing I will be keeping for any financial support will be Ko-fi but that’s only if people want to, I’m not going to have anything locked behind a pay wall.

Commissions will no longer be open because I will just be doing art trades or request. Since my new job is full time I don’t need to worry about the stress of not finishing something quickly.

Physical print books are still gonna be a thing however not for a long while. Since my old client liked my original books ill be printing a small handful of copies of them so I can give them to her to read at the nursing home. And leftover copies will be for contest prizes.

YouTube on the other hand… I’m going to be honest I’m not sure if I truly will bring back Pshattuckproductions. The most fun I have had with YouTube was building up lunar comics. I will honestly be focusing on that channel in terms of any uploads.

So far this is all for now. So see you soon everyone.

[luxurybrownbarbie]

Hey Barbie,

I’ve been official with my boyfriend for nearly a year and we dated for a year before that. I spent last year studying in the US and he asked me out when I came home for Christmas. I said yes because I thought why not and he flew over to visit me in March too.

He comes from a very well-off family and has a year and a half left until he qualifies as a doctor. I’ve always worked my ass off to make money, but haven’t been able to get a job alongside my studies yet. I also come from a background where I can’t just ask for financial help or support.

My issue is just that before we were on the same page about so many things like tidiness, dates, career goals, and I’ve always been vocal about what I expect from a partner. But now that I’m back and we’re spending a lot of time together, he has just not been meeting my needs. Like before he would offer to get an Uber or buy me food and now he’ll look at me when we go shopping because he doesn’t want to pay the bill. I literally have to drag him to do it, and it’s giving me the biggest ick.

I don’t think these are big things either because I’ll take him on trips and pay for it (not food I refuse), but these small things mean everything to me because I rarely ask for big things. He is super sweet, has a photographic memory, and I know that he loves me but I feel so caged in. We also went on a break for a week last month, and I felt great for the time alone, but he literally barely left his apartment.

I decided to give it another try because he said he would work on the boundaries issues that led to the break. I’m just at this point where I’m 22, in my final year, and I just don’t know what to do. Do you have any advice?

Sorry for the super long ask, and thanks for reading lovely! ❤️

You are in bondage sister, omg! You are only 22 years old, you need to leave him!

You’re not imagining things, you’re not wrong. You’re feeling caged in because you are.

How is he super sweet? Nothing you’ve said gives me that inclination whatsoever.

He is actively making your life more difficult. If you are struggling for money, why are you spending it on trips for him? It’s about equity. You should not have to judge or force him to take care of bills on nights out or get you an Uber.

He’s not going to change.

He’s got a vibrant, smart, beautiful 22 year old he gets to suck the life and youth out of! Why would he ever change? You complain, but he knows he will eventually be able to get you to just accept his shortcomings as long as he promises to “work on them”.

He stopped trying after you were fully committed to him. (Not your fault, tale as old as time.) He’s moved into outright apathy. Ubers and food are literally the barest of bare minimums, this is just pure stinginess.

Don’t try to figure out why you should leave. You’ll gaslight yourself into thinking you’re overreacting. Figure out why you would want to stay.

Because from here, it reads like you're hoping he'll go back to being the person he was before (he won't!), or you're hoping that the love you have will see you through (it won’t).

You’re young. You should be having fun and enjoying dating, not dragging along a useless man who is actively making your life more difficult. It’s okay to leave. Don’t try to avoid the heartbreak just for the sake of it. Go start enjoying dating.

[soul-dwelling]

The one "positive" from MHA is... That it made me apreciate SE in comparison lol, hell even the mangas awful copout ending atleast was memorable in how bad, disgusting and rushed it was - in MHA it just feels like nothing, not even giving us those rushed redemptions - nah even that is too much for Hori, so lets just give the old "dead equals redemption" trope which is as lazy as it is cowardly - atleast Crona got the hope of getting bailed out of jail, and the society actually changed, even if unrealistically, with the witches truce - while in MHA the whole buildup of "maybe this society is bad, maybe heros shouldnt be worshiped, maybe civilians should not be infantalized and depowered and shouldnt just rely on fascists supercops when they literally have their own powers, maybe the villians should be integrated and understood...."- nah, they are all evil psychos, lets stigmatize mentall ilness as being violent...

It really was reduced to "one evil baby is at fault, so if we use our flashy moves and kill it, everything will go back to normal" - but no Hori then trys to have his cake and eat it too by trying to force the whole meta "actually live doesnt return to normal after a war!" - but it kinda does, besides the Endeavour misery porn which doesnt work after he got retconed to not be evil - because that is what happened and why it does feel weird when Natsou disowns him - because that would have worked with the og Endevour, showing that a redemption arc isn't enough and some scars will never heal and he has to accept it and repent for the rest of his life - but after it getting changed that Toya was unhinged from the start and Endy was just kinda bad at communicating...

Man I ranted a lot longer than I thought, apologys for that, MHA is just so bad that it happens

I debated whether to post this now or wait until Chapter 426 of My Hero Academia comes out on Sunday, given how many spoilers there are in my answer and in the question itself. 

But I would rather get the answer out now instead of letting it fester, especially as I’m guessing this will not be the last time I respond to this chapter, this extended epilogue to the manga, and how the beginning, middle, and end of My Hero Academia worked and didn’t work. 

So, screw it, here is my response, and I hope the spoiler tags are enough to prevent people from learning something they weren’t ready to read until Sunday.  

The ending, ongoing

A friend of mine had written something similar: it feels like My Hero Academia is ending with a whimper. 

The thing is, I have been struggling lately with whether I want something to be ambitious and fail at its own goals, or competent but cliche. 

You bring up how Soul Eater had a memorable ending even if it was, let’s be charitable, flawed. I’m not sure I agree, as Soul Eater’s ending was so bad that it’s hard for me to see MHA somehow having a worse ending. You’d need to resurrect Midnight just for a fanservice gag to get things as bad as Soul Eater’s ending. 

The comparison I’m grabbing is actually to Fire Force, as it does something similar to MHA: the final battle ends in glorious fashion, then the epilogue we’re dealing with is rushed, unsatisfying, contradicts earlier character beats, and re-stages the setting in a way that is bothersome (Fire Force is revealed to be the Soul Eater prequel no one was asking for; My Hero Academia should be showing life after near global destruction, or at least the destruction of most of Japan, and instead Cementoss is already rebuilding entire cities, so the stakes have evaporated--even if, I’ll admit, once you introduce a character who can do almost anything, that’d be pretty stupid to not have that character still out there single-handedly saving the entire world *cough cough* why is Yosano only with the Agency if she could be healing people of cancer throughout Japan in Bungo Stray Dogs *cough cough*). 

Ambitious or Competent? 

But to go back to what I said, that I struggle to decide whether I want a story that is ambitious or competent, it’s kind of how I feel comparing Chainsaw Man and Dandadan: I really cannot stand the storytelling direction of the former even as I have to admit it is more audacious and trying to say something really complicated even if I think it is failing at getting that message through to its audience, while the latter in terms of plot, character progression, paneling, character designs, humor, pathos, and dynamic artwork and action is all or mostly expertly crafted but not necessarily groundbreaking (minus the stunning artwork and two-page spreads). 

And even then, Dandadan doesn’t get it always correct, where a potentially thought-provoking detail is reduced to a cliche, and often an offensive one at that: the latest chapter as of writing, Chapter 158, takes a complicated idea about mourning the failure to live the dream of a childhood friend…and instead of using that to talk about hyper-sexualization within idol culture and maybe even the magical girl genre, it’s just a really bad joke of an underage girl forced against her will into a revealing outfit to put on a show she does not want to put on but is coerced into doing, and, oh, to keep the author’s exposure kink going, we got to make her a (forgive the insulting phrase) “mousy” girl with pigtails, glasses, and a more reserved personality so that the readers can also enjoy the author’s kink--gross, fuck this shit.  

So, do I want My Hero Academia to be competently done even if the ending is cliche, or do I want it to be ambitious even if it can’t quite reach those lofty goals and still ends up with a deflating ending or a confused final message it is trying to give to the audience? 

I’ve said before that Shoto Todoroki may work better as the protagonist of his own story. With that idea in mind, and based on your remarks, is it possible that Horikoshi had a very ambitious idea in mind--the tragedy that Endeavor and Dabi both got what they wanted, and the cost ended up making what they got a punishment rather than a victory--but that the kind of story Horikoshi is writing was not suitable for that tale? 

I really hate that argument I am proposing, because it makes it sound like the problems are the circumstances of genre (superheroes), demographics (shonen), and the publishing industry (weekly release schedule, etc) that hampered Horikoshi, when the more likely answer is either that Horikoshi just isn’t that good at writing that kind of a story, or that it was never that kind of story he was interested in, or that he succeeded in the story he wanted to tell and I just don’t like the execution or even the message itself. 

Too Many Characters?

A common complaint I read online is that My Hero Academia suffers because it has too many characters. I have never been convinced by that argument. 

MHA is like a good Pixar film: there is always some group of misfits in the background serving as comedic relief but who also have their own narrative path through the story, whether it is to give those misfits their own path for character progression or, as is more often the case, just a path to show what their characterization has been this whole time. 

Think of Gurgle in Finding Nemo when one of his last scenes in the movie is yelling at the Aqua Scum: that’s not showing his character progression, that’s clarifying what his characterization has been this entire time--he is indeed concerned about cleanliness, but even when the Aqua Scum gives him what he has always wanted, that being an absolutely clean tank, he is not overjoyed but horrified because it ruins his buddies’ plans to save Nemo. Gurgle’s characterization was never cleanliness above everything else; his characterization was he wants cleanliness _and_ to keep protecting his friends. That moment is more ironic than anything, as well as the start of his plot, that being, how is he going to save Nemo and fight against the very thing he has always wanted…only that plot never actually starts or reaches a conclusion because the title of the movie if Finding Nemo and other characters such as Gill are the actual protagonists or at least supporting characters that instigate the plot and progress along the way. 

That is my long rant about why I don’t really care that Sero and others have limited character moments in this final arc, and why I think it’s silly to say that there are too many characters for Horikoshi to satisfy for all of them. 

That being said, that doesn’t mean I don’t think he dropped the ball--because I think he did when it comes to the Todoroki family drama. 

Natsu as Audience Surrogate

As I said before, I am struggling to separate my thoughts from just whatever was the last thing I read online. But I can’t ignore what I think people in the Reddit thread got correct, that the final arc centers on Endeavor when the audience also wants the ending to center on Dabi, Shoto, and the rest of their family. It should have been enough to gesture at just enough of Natsu’s education, career, and dating life to give a sense of full characterization--and instead he ends the story still striking me as an accumulation of grievances against Endeavor, and it rings hollow rather than making Natsu our audience surrogate, someone we identify with and agree with and hence can characterize ourselves. 

I don’t know--would it have been better to lend less background information to Natsu to make him a better audience avatar? Should he be like a Fire Emblem protagonist or the OC you create in Sonic Forces, just bland enough that you can place yourself in their shoes? I don’t think that’d work either; it’d just make Natsu into a dull protagonist like someone out of a crappy isekai. But at least I’m trying to figure out what went wrong and how to improve on what is already in the story without re-plotting and completely contradicting the messages Horikoshi is trying to deliver. 

Move Up Dabi’s Confrontation with His Siblings

As I have also said, maybe I would have enjoyed parts of this final arc if they were not forced into the end of the story, which would mean moving them up to earlier in the story. This again is based on something elliotthezubat and I have been plotting as ideas about how My Hero Academia could have gone, but one idea I had discussed was having Dabi confronting Natsu and Fuyumi earlier and on their own. Between when Dabi puts out the video and when the final war starts, why not have a scene of Dabi sneaking up on Natsu and Fuyumi to confront them? 

I know that does not sound realistic, or even believable--I’ll address why that can still work, however, in a moment. 

And it disrupts the intended forcefulness of forcing all of the confrontation into one moment of the family trying to freeze Dabi together. But that is my point, forcing all of it at once undermines a lot of the more nuanced details you can pull from the complexities of the sibling relationship. It also would actually let Natsu and Fuyumi say something more meaningful than just repeating what Endeavor and Rei were already yelling at Dabi when trying to kill or freeze him, and it would address what is a repeated complaint in the Reddit thread, that Natsu and Fuyumi say next to nothing to Dabi when they actually face him at the hospital. 

As for why this would still work even if it doesn’t seem initially to be that realistic or believable: we already saw Dabi sneaking around to find Toga to deliver Twice’s blood. It is in keeping with his methods and skills that of course he could find some way to get to Natsu and Fuyumi when they are alone. “But aren’t they at the UA fortress?” Then write a way for them to not yet have arrived there; it can’t be any dumber than how they all happened to show up right where Dabi and Endeavor are fighting in the climax. 

Make This an Actual War Arc

Having Dabi track and confront Natsu and Fuyumi earlier has the added benefit of making your war arc into an actual war arc. I have complained repeatedly online that the wars in My Hero Academia don’t feel like wars, they feel like one big battle that constitutes the entirety of the so-called war. Wars consist of numerous battles, not just one big battle--and I don’t think MHA did a good job making this all feel like a series of battles leading to anything. It got better when it was Izuku and the Pros finding AFO’s base only to get the video message--that kind of covert work shows greater dimensions of a war beyond just fistfights and explosions. 

And that’s why Dabi on his own looking for Natsu and Fuyumi would suit this war arc: it’s a quieter moment of surveillance and covert work, not a major battle. 

One thing I never appreciated enough in the Season 1 finale of Justice League was how the World War II scenes are broken up into the various dimensions of war: Green Lantern on the ground with the infantry, Supes and Hawkgirl in aerial combat, but also J’onn and Wonder Woman on their own covert spy missions. 

MHA didn’t have enough of the covert spy stuff during the war arc, I anticipate because Horikoshi covered a lot of that before the war kicked off with Hawks infiltrating the PLF. But to not persist with that tone and style of warfare is a missed opportunity and hurts the pace and intensity of the war: we need those quieter moments that a spy story can provide against all the explosions and physical battles.

And it is a good spot where to stage Dabi, Natsu, and Fuyumi airing their grievances now so that we get where they come from in the final confrontations, rather than forcing all of it with limited page space, time, and dialogue to get at how the relationships between them have changed since Toya “died” and since Dabi’s video. 

Does Anything in Society Change?

I’m going to quote part of the initial question: 

“not even giving us those rushed redemptions - nah even that is too much for Hori, so lets just give the old ‘dead equals redemption’ trope which is as lazy as it is cowardly - atleast Crona got the hope of getting bailed out of jail, and the society actually changed, even if unrealistically, with the witches truce - while in MHA the whole buildup of ‘maybe this society is bad, maybe heros shouldnt be worshiped, maybe civilians should not be infantalized and depowered and shouldnt just rely on fascists supercops when they literally have their own powers, maybe the villians should be integrated and understood....’- nah, they are all evil psychos, lets stigmatize mentall ilness as being violent…”

There is a lot here, so forgive me if I go out of order. 

I think the story lost me about any chance of a changed world when it had, to repeat myself, Cementoss already rebuilding entire towns that quickly. As I said, of course that would happen--Cementoss has that power, he is a good person, it would not be pragmatic to do anything else, use every tool you have. But visually and thematically, it says, “Don’t worry about your emotional attachment to your original home and possessions--things are reset back to normal!” 

Add to it that the Cementoss moment is on the same page as a useless cameo by Koichi from My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, and I was sour. How do you stage the arrival of a popular enough spinoff character to just have him looking around at everything? You could have just as easily had him as a background gag, where he’s still having the same problems as before, to indicate he really hasn’t progress as a character (because, sorry fans, Koichi never progresses in Vigilantes, that is why the ending to that series is miserable to sit through). 

I think I understand your point about “death equal redemption,” as regards maybe Toga, if she is confirmed dead, and Dabi, whenever he finally dies having now given an unearned, barely registering apology to Shoto, as well as Endeavor’s attempted death to stop Dabi that has effectively killed his Pro Hero work and, in a rather disablist fashion, implies that with his injuries he may as well be dead--which is fucked up and offensive, but that could be my misreading, not Horikoshi’s intention or even execution. 

I do think that is similar enough to Crona’s willed exile to stop Asura, but I agree, there is the intention by the end of Chapter 113 that Maka will get Crona back--it’s just a matter of how much time and whether Ohkubo will ever wrap up that story (and wrap it up in a way that satisfies enough readers and not piss away continuity, canon, and the lasting message or theme of Soul Eater as a whole). 

I don’t know what to make of Horikoshi’s attempts to speak to the problems with Pro Heroes within his fictional setting and as suitable for real-world application to talk about policing and other power structures--because Horikoshi was never consistent. Maybe this would work better if My Hero Academia was split into different series. I hate to suggest the MCU model, as we have seen how that has hurt enough other stories, MHA being one of them. But what if each competing, potentially contradicting message was in its own story, even as they share the same setting? You can have your story about how being a hero, lowercase “h,” rather than a Pro Hero means that you are holding onto the ideals, and how you wrestle with your own failures to hold onto those ideals and need to be more pragmatic or else you burn out your body: that is the point of Izuku’s journey in MHA. Then you can have a spinoff about the dangers of such power structures as like a form of policing and how such structures do violence not only to society and the people injured by police but also to the police themselves: that is Endeavor’s story, and it’d be a hell of a lot better as its own manga so that the full tragedy of what happens to him is not getting in the way of whatever hopeful message Izuku’s story is offering. 

Furthermore, for all the praise Endeavor is getting right now, the guy was a bad Pro Hero. In Vigilantes he sends his flames out at random and burns to death a bystander [who turned out to be a villain anyway with a regenerative ability, so no lasting harm done]. During the Sports Festival he was a braggart about his son and burning bridges with All Might instead of focusing on collaborative efforts--something that then harms the mission to save Bakugo. His fixation on handling missions faster than his sidekicks fails to train them as effectively as he could, and it risks exhausting his body and attention, something that already happened against the Nomu, which he is still recovering from, and will persist when trying to save Natsu from Ending and stopping AFO. All of that works in terms of characterization, just not when the readers keep insisting he is a great Pro Hero and a great hero when the story is actively showing you he is not, and even Horikoshi is hammering this point when the only reason Endeavor got to be Number 1 is because All Might retired: Endeavor was a good enough Pro Hero, but he wasn’t a good Pro Hero or even a good hhero, if that makes sense. 

You point out how the story seemed like it would go in the direction of presenting a message that heroes should not be worshipped. I have to agree that this detail falls apart within the story, as Izuku still, correctly or not, gets praise for what he accomplishes: the hero worship has not ended. But I do think the story can still stick this landing if we see Izuku does serve as inspiration that people take on agency themselves to help others rather than waiting for someone else to handle it. 

You point out how the Pro Heroes are presented as akin to “fascists” and “supercops.” I think Horikoshi even backpedals on this point, getting close to the idea but refusing to commit to it. Endeavor is already one example I gave above. We can also take examples of Mount Lady and other seemingly selfish Pro Heroes--who are later shown to have actually decent reasons for their actions, understandable ones, defensible ones, or just pragmatic ones that are more so indictments against the system rather than only the individuals within it. 

Why is Mount Lady a glory hound? Her Pro Hero work does enough collateral damage that she has to offset that bad impression by making a good impression on people, which means she also has to do even more Pro Hero work to pay for the damage she causes and to get better insurance coverage as she keeps losing providers because of the damage she is doing, putting her into a viscous cycle of having to get more fame to pay for damage she causes but which itself causes more damage that she then has to get more fame to pay for and on an on: she is a victim of her own success because the system does not make best use of her abilities. Granted, maybe she should have stayed in her rural hometown where she couldn’t cause as much damage--but that’s also a waste of the talents she can offer across Japan, as she can get around faster by her size and is useful when dealing with rescues from tall urban buildings. And granted, a lot of what I said is based on gag comics and encyclopedic information that should have been in the text itself, otherwise Mount Lady’s progression comes across as lazy: she goes from showboat to serious fighter in Kamino to giving useful advice to the students without a hint of self-absorption. 

Society’s Fault or AFO’s?

I question how much of my problems with MHA are because I am asking the story to hit me over the head with its message and that I’m not practicing enough close reading skills to get the nuanced message it is offering, and how much of the problem is because Horikoshi is bad at this. AFO being responsible for so much misery should be fine because it does not detract from the responsibility Nana, her son, All Might, Gran Torino, bystanders, Endeavor, and others had for how Shigaraki was abandoned, Toga was suppressed, Spinner was ostracized, and Toya “died.” The problem is also that it is too coincidental even for a supposed galaxy brain-tier villain like AFO to account for all possibilities, at least with Shigaraki. Add to it how offputting it was for the story to need narration to literally spell out that AFO was always this bad since birth--no, that is not how babies work, they are not born bad, why is it now that the story is hitting me over the head with a message and one that is not believable? It’s not as if this could not work: show that Yoichi and AFO were taken in a few times since they were babies, hence each time was a chance for AFO to grow up and learn to work with others--and instead AFO got possessive and killed them all except Yoichi. Yes, that is still offputting that a child would be that lethal, but it also shows that he has been given chances over and over again--he was not born evil, he just refused to learn to live with others and that allowed him to be evil. 

Endeavor and Wrapping Up 

And I still didn’t tackle how the manga seems to retcon some details. As you point out, the conflict now comes across more as Endeavor being bad at communicating to Toya. And while the manga makes it clear that Endeavor’s bad communication with Toya doesn’t ameliorate the facts that he was practically buying Rei from her parents, hit her, hit Shoto, indirectly led to Rei scarring Rei, and indirectly led to Dabi leaving burns and scars on his mother and siblings, it is difficult to read this less as a complication for the character so that we see his tragedy and more as a late attempt to make him more endearing and sympathetic rather than maintaining his guilt. It’s as bad as the late revelation that all of this is inspired by Endeavor’s dad dying trying to save a child--something that should be poetic or thematically appropriate, that Endeavor’s dad died trying to do something he thought would help but only ended with both parties dead and a child without a parent, and Endeavor’s work to be a better hero did little initially to help society to prevent another father from dying and only stopped AFO after numerous failings ruined the lives of his wife and children--and even that victory fell apart because Endeavor didn’t stop AFO or even Dabi, it was Bakugo killing a child, then Izuku screwing up and letting AFO back, and the family having to contain Dabi. It’s a muddled mess where I don’t know what the point to any of this was except, “Endeavor must suffer,” and instead of that being cathartic or a lesson, it’s just a confusing mess. 

I’ll wrap up there for now. 

There’s more I want to say about Endeavor, but I think I touched upon the basics of how I would have responded to your point: Endeavor’s tale should be a tragedy, but that message is in conflict with the message we get from the stories of Izuku and everyone else, so, if Horikoshi wanted to get that message across, it would have been better as its own series running parallel to the initial My Hero Academia manga. But that was not going to happen without Horikoshi taking a slower pace or sharing art and writing with someone else. I mean, it sort of worked for some of Bungo Stray Dogs to farm out some of its art to other illustrators…

[b-lessings]

We’ve been mutuals for a long time so I remember your occasional mentions about therapy and healing, which actually played a role in prompting me to try and understand my own trauma I was in denial of for a very long time and starting my journey towards getting better I guess. I’m still really struggling with my anxiety, have been for a really long time, sometimes the triggers are too overwhelming and feels like therapy and trauma work only make me understand enough to want to run away again, due to how much my body reacts in social settings, or at the thought of how out of control everything is in my brain. Can I ask, perhaps in vague terms, what was your journey like in the beginning? Does the anxiety ever start to lessen in intensity? Do you ever get to the point where you can process your trauma enough to finally face the reality of it’s remnants in people and places? How long does it take till you begin to seek happiness instead of the vicious internal destruction? How (if at all) does the dynamics of your healing journey change when you let another person you love into your life?

By the end of (reading) this ask I was like ouuff 😮‍💨 that's heavy😅

Salam my dear, I appreciate you sending this ask, I see your courage and your will to get better and get a bit of control over your life, and that's only a sign of strength and bravery, I am proud of you 🤍

Now, I am not sure if I am gonna answer all your points or get carried away by my own thoughts but let me give it a try.

First of all, from personal experience (obviously all my answers will be based on that) I don't think anxiety is something we can totally heal from or get rid of, it is not a feature we can deactivate, and do not take this the wrong way, I will explain later, but with therapy we learn to cope with our anxiety, we learn to make peace with it, and live with it in the most cooperative non-impeding ways.

One of the most memorable sayings that my therapist told me so early on in my journey is that her and my anxiety are both trying to do the same thing: protect me, they are not working against each other, they would actually work together (if my anxiety wouldn't be so stubborn lol).

Anxiety is in simple terms or at a very primal level a reaction to a trigger, you brain detects something that it deems wrong or dangerous and it alerts your body - there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, as human beings we relied on that trigger-response for God knows how many thousands of years to survive and get to this point in history. But then anxiety is perceived as a problem once it becomes a disability, in the sense that it would prevent the person from going on about their day normally.

Now what happened is that I lived like 27 or 28 years of my life not even realizing I had anxiety. I would hear people talk about it all the time and it never clicked, for me not even once that hey that's what I have! Until my therapist said the word. And I was like " anxiety? Me? Noway! I am an extrovert, I have a lot of friends, I am not scared of crowds, I love trying new things and living new experiences blah blah blah" but I had no idea that I had actually been repressing it all in for all those years.

So after the acceptance, the second phase was that anxiety took over my life! I had become fully afraid of everything and I just retrieved to myself. Everything was emphasized. I sorta kinda cut off people and stopped going after things and experiences blah blah .. I remember telling my therapist, since the day I was faced with the diagnosis, seems like anxiety is all that I am! I want to get my old self back, I want to get my life back! Anxiety stole my life! It was painful, it was uncomfortable and it was also my excuse for everything..

But then, one of the biggest turning-points in my therapy journey was when I decided to love my anxiety, and understand it better, understand that it does not want to do me any harm but actually protect me, so I became more aware inward and outward, I became very attentive to the changes and the signs my body gives me, you can catch me whispering " what is it babygirl, what's wrong? " as soon as I feel that stomach ache, lol. I honestly do talk to it, I can proudly say I befriended it and that's how I managed to get on its good sign and take control of my life back.

Now I even anticipate it. I sorta know my triggers, so I can te that I will have an episode, I have learned a few techniques on how to calm myself down or distract my mind, sometimes when it is intense I would allow myself a day off or even an hour off just to myself to do something that brings me comfort, I journal a lot, I analyze my thoughts and whatnot.. and that's what therapy is good for, it equips you with tools to cope with the issue at hand. And yes, that's how it lessens in its intensity like you said. That's how you gain back control over your life. That's how you get closer to feeling and achieving peace, because listen boo, we are not looking for happiness, the goal is actually peace. Happiness is only a moment in time, it's fleeing, it's just an instant. Inner peace and mental peace is what lasts.

I can't tell you how much time it takes because every journey is personal and different, to each of us their path, and relapses do happen, setbacks do happen, after all we are only human, and especially for us girls, the hormonal imbalance is a nightmare and it does affect our psyche.. there is also life events always happening and affecting our mental health.. but the most important part is that you never stop, never give up, you keep walking your path of healing and you keep asking for help! I always say that the keys to having a good experience with therapy are the 3Ps: perseverance, patience and practice!

I have been in therapy for I think 3 years next month, and proudly I can say we don't have the scheduled regular sessions, I do not need them anymore, Alhamdullillah, now it is basically only in cases of emergency like if something really intense happens, other than that, Alhamdullillah I am capable of managing my anxiety attacks, which are neither that frequent not that intense anymore, Alhamdullillah.

P.s. I did not mention trauma because tbh with my therapist we haven't been working on that. And I am well-aware of how sensitive and different our traumatic experiences are, so I chose to sit this one out.

Anyways, I hope I managed to answer your questions or at least bring you some hope! And again, I am very proud of you, I know how gard and tricky it gets but I promise you it gets better, so keep going 🤍

[yukinarinn]

“Kissing Under the Fireworks”

Fuyuhiko Kuzuryuu x Peko Pekoyama

I got a lot of requests these days, two of them is from Amino, I made a writing commission post and one of them is this. It was commissioned by Floppythefish, I love this girl :) and btw, please tell me if you want me to change anything! and okay, I think it’s more than 500 words lol, but I actually loved writing about them!

cw: basically everything is fluffy

Yukizome decided to have some fun together with the class 77th, since it was the New Years, so they went to a Japanese Festival. They already have a school break, but Yukizome, as their teacher, just couldn’t help herself and almost begged them to come as well.

Of course, everyone accepted, especially Peko so she can spend some time with Fuyuhiko there. He barely has time for anything, whenever she wants to talk to him, he ignores, it’s like she doesn’t even exist. That’d be a good opportunity.

She dressed… pretty good. Even though it was just a festival, but she did everything to look good for her childhood friend, hoping he’ll finally notice her. Embarrased as she was, they played some games. Like, Goldfish Scooping. Fuyuhiko was a bit hesitant and just watched her as she was scooping some goldfish with a poi, she knew she’s being watched by the… perhaps… love of her life? That’s why, Peko was so happy and excited playing it, knowing someone behind her is supporting.

It was almost 11 PM before the New Years, and of course, before the fireworks showing up. So Peko got a sit on a random chair, while watching her classmates laughing and hanging out from afar. Surprisingly Fuyuhiko wasn’t with them, she tried to find him with her eyes, but her friend wasn’t there.

“I wonder where he is…” Peko said, sighing and looking down at her red covered in glitter shoes.

“I’m right here, I was trying to find you this whole time! this shitty big ass festival got me so mad!” Fuyuhiko said, visibly annoyed. “Anyway, I was playing Gun-Shooting and I got this teddy bear, and I want to give it to you before the fireworks starts to annoy the shit out of me, m-maybe?”

Peko blushed slightly and takes the teddy bear, looking at him so curiously and… happy, as if she was still 5 years old. Then looked at Fuyuhiko again, embarrased.

“T-That’s so cute… now that you’re here, and well, gave me a gift… I need to tell you something, we know each other for a long time and I just can’t hold these feelings back anymore! I have feelings for you, strong ones even. You’ve never tried to get a girlfriend so I thought I have enough time to prepare myself for confessing to you, that’s pretty confusing, isn’t it? and the fact that I didn’t show to you any sign of crushing on you until now will make you think I’m actually lying, but please, if you don’t like me back, just-“ Peko was interrupted by Fuyuhiko, putting his index finger on her lips.

“It’s okay, I actually thought that was the case. By trying to talk to me every single day even though I didn’t have time for you, it proves you have some feelings for me. The reason I was ignoring you is because I was trying to get over it, don’t you think? that’s why I didn’t try to find a girlfriend, because I wanted you to be my girlfriend, but I thought that would be impossible.” He said with a serious look on his face, coming closer to Peko’s flustered face.

Fuyuhiko grabbed Peko’s face in his hands gently, and as soon as the fireworks started to blow, he pulled her into a kiss.

“I-I love you, Fuyuhiko” She said breaking the kiss.

“I love you too, Peko” He said as he was looking into her eyes, smiling.

[eggnogablog]

Friendship issues

So I impulsively bought concert tickets for an older band I like a few months ago. And I say tickets plural because I thought, hey, this concert is in a city my old acquaintance X, who I recently started talking to regularly, lives in. I should invite him! It would be fun to get together and I feel like treating someone to something. So I did. He liked the idea and said yes.

Today I got a strong feeling that I should remind him of the date now that it’s only a month away. He quickly responds, “Oh, I won’t be back from my trip then, sorry.”

I know, from our conversations, that his trip details weren’t finalized until after I had invited him to this concert. I’ve never been to a live concert before, so I don’t know if my tickets are relatively cheap or not, but to me, it was a significant amount to pay. We hadn’t seen each other in person in some time. And it’s not some conflict with a significant other, since neither of us have one.

I told him that his forgetting hurt my feelings, he wrote me a carefully worded apology (which also implied that I had been told his trip details weren’t finalized at the time), and I accepted it. But I almost wish I hadn’t. It feels like, when someone is making an effort to apologize to you, you should accept it most of the time. It’s not that he didn’t apologize properly. The format was correct. But from the careless way he actually treated this invitation, and his failure to tell me on his own (having to be prompted) that he couldn’t make it, I don’t think he really sees this as important. And I feel like now that I have accepted this apology, there’s almost no way to express my continuing sense of hurt without coming across as unreasonable or as holding a grudge.

Blah blah blah, girls overanalyze and boys are straightforward. That’s kind of why I still feel hurt. I thought that this person respected me and my time, at least enough to give me a heads up if plans changed. And clearly, that’s just not the case. I had been looking forward to this, for a lot of reasons, and he didn’t even try to schedule his trip around it. I know the nature of the trip and it wouldn’t have been that difficult. So he just forgot it completely, didn’t even write it down. Wow.

(And honestly, I used to have a crush on this guy in college. Since we’re both single, and he is a rare unicorn who shares both my political and religious beliefs, I hoped to form a deeper connection. But obviously he doesn’t even think highly of me as a friend, despite our having talked almost daily for almost 6 months.)

I’m really tired and sad thinking about this pattern of friendships where I’m emotionally invested and the other person appears to be too, until they decide to just stop pretending and drop me. I had a friend I talked with regularly and had worked with. The moment she found out (how, I don’t know) that we voted differently, she spent multiple days messaging me long, condescending things trying to change my mind in time for the 2020 election before ceasing to speak to me altogether. She couldn’t put this one difference between us aside for a multi-year friendship.

Several times when I worked in New Jersey, I would befriend staff members that were close to my age. We had fun together, and I helped them drive to things or figure out American stuff if they were on a visa here. But often, after I would do something big for them (helping pick out a wedding dress, taking care of their pet, etc.), they would thank me and then just stop talking to me almost at all. They found my most useful point of existence for their life and decided that it wasn’t worth the time investing in a relationship with me anymore.

Not every adult friendship has been like this. But a fairly large portion of them have. It is hard to predict which relationships I invest in will continue for a long time and which will abruptly fall off a cliff.

[evening-in-a-reflection]

Cross posted on Ao3

A Bitty Drabble Series

- || Prologue -

Masterlist || Next >

- || Summary -

A series about you and your bitties.

Redoul was your first bitty. He was an unknown kind of Fell bitty that ended up being sold to a bitty fighting ring when he was still young. He was able to escape with the help from his cellmate and his cell’s neighbor, who helped him sneak out and run away.

Redoul, who’s life was saved by you, ended up falling in love with you... and you accepted those feelings and returned them.

...But as the story goes on, you soon find and meet those old friends of his, and they become just as important to you as Redoul is.

Of course, you don’t stop at just your three LV ridden bitties, and take in more as time goes on.

...Although, none of your more recent bitties have quite the same amount of LV as your first three do, and they might just be a little scared of the trio at first, but with time they do get along and eventually do find comfort in one another.

- || Notes -

The story is fairly lighthearted, so there’s not much drama nor angst, but the reader’s first three bitties share a rather unfortunate background in a bitty ring, but their background isn’t really the main point of the story.

The chapters are (or are planned to be) in chronological order, but there might be some significant time skips in between the chapters—especially between the prologue and chapter 1. If you get confused while reading you’re more than welcome to ask any questions you may have!

I’m writing this as I go, and there isn’t really any end point I’m looking to get to, since this mostly just me writing for my own enjoyment and to get my thoughts and ideas out, so a lot of the story is up in the air right now. There also isn't any sort of schedule I'm following for writing/posting the chapters, so the time between each chapter will depend on when my motivation decides to kick in...

On the other hand, if you have any ideas you want to share as you read, I would love to hear them! This isn’t me taking requests, so if you have an idea I don’t end up using please don’t be upset. I’m just trying to have fun, and I want you guys too as well!

     It was late, nearly past midnight as you laid there on your mattress, scrolling through your phone. It was your first night in your new house, and the moving van wouldn’t be there until the morning. The only things you had with you were the boxes and mattress that you were able to cram into the minivan that your friend let you borrow. Admittedly, you were able to pack quite a few things with you after playing the minivan version of Tetris, but that game was no stranger to you.

     You had done a lot of moving around when you were younger, never staying in one play for more than a few years before moving on to the next home. For every move you had gone through, your mother always had a minivan to do it with.

     You would be shocked at how many things you could fit inside of one. You even remember moving a whole couch in one at one point!

     Throughout those years of near constant moving in your life, your mother had gone through three different minivans and both you and your mother loved each and every one of them to their very last days. It was only until you were fourteen did your family finally settle down somewhere where your parents were likely going to stay for the rest of their lives.

     After about a year there, when the third minivan that had taken your family there was finally starting to come to the end of its life, your parents decided to get new cars for themselves. And since there were no plans on moving again your mother decided, for the first time since for as long as you could remember, to get a vehicle that wasn’t a minivan.

     That aside, your friend, Allira, is someone you’ve known since you moved to this little town in what felt like the middle of nowhere. She owned a flower shop you would often visit to buy some plants to help liven up your little apartment with, and after the first few trips, the two of you hit it off and eventually exchanged numbers—you’ve been close friends ever since.

     The minivan that she owned was most often used for their little business; transporting the plants from point A to point B when it was needed, but in this situation, Allira was kind enough to let you borrow it for your move.

     To be honest, you were debating on getting a minivan for yourself at some point, but in the end you decided to settle with your little car for now and instead move out of your old apartment and finally get yourself a place to truly call home.

     Though to be honest that wasn’t your plan to begin with at all, sometimes life throws you a deal you simply can’t—or more don’t want—to pass up.

     Like now.

     You see, it all started when you ended up becoming friends with a sweet old man who you’d often have a cup of coffee (or hot chocolate) with after you were finished with your work for the day. When you first met he was sitting alone at a table in a coffee shop, looking far too lonely for you to ignore. Which was unusual in and of itself, since you usually didn’t pay any attention to the people around you any more than you had to, but perhaps you were in a good mood that day. Either way, you ended up going up to the man and offering to sit with him to keep him company. Mr. Luther, or Grampa Luther, as he insisted on you calling him, was delighted to have the company, and that’s what started a long lasting friendship you weren’t expecting to make that day.

     Ever since, you had been going to that coffee shop after work every day to keep Grampa Luther company and listen as he told any story that came to his mind.

    Unfortunately, after three years had passed, Grampa Luther finally came to the end of his time and passed away peacefully in his sleep. It was sudden for everyone who knew him, really. His house was just outside of town and was within a short driving distance of his favorite coffee shop. He drove there almost every day and never had any trouble, but you suppose it truly was simply his time to go when he passed that night.

     In the end, you decided to buy his little house a few months after it went up for sale. And perhaps it was an odd thing to do, since you’re not even related to him, but something in you felt at peace with your decision, so you decided to stick with it.

     You sigh, and shake your head. Reaching over to your phone charger, you plug in your phone and set it to the side for the night. You rolled over onto your side and tucked yourself into your blankets, settling in for the night as you let sleep slowly take you.

     You wake up slowly, the light of the morning sun peaking through the windows of your room, softly brushing against your face.

     You sigh, letting your body wake at its own pace. You always did love waking up with the sun, it just felt so nice. You couldn’t quite describe nor explain why, but you always seemed to be in a better mood throughout the day if you got to wake up to sunlight seeping through your windows. Your eyes open, and you stretch, feeling your muscles pull taut as you do so. After hearing a few pops you relax and yawn, laying on your back as you stare at the ceiling. After staring for a few minutes… and doing what was probably the human equivalent of a computer booting up, you roll your tongue across the inside of your mouth to try and rid it of that odd morning taste you seem to sometimes get after you sleep. Finally, deciding that laying in bed wasn’t going to do anything, you bravely roll off the bed and onto the floor, taking your blankets with you.

     Your mattress was on the floor, so there wasn’t much of a drop, and with the cushioning of your blankets the “fall” is painless.

     Sighing once again, you pick yourself and your blankets up and finally stand. 

     You pause, and search your memory for where the bathroom is, only to remember that the master bedroom—where you are right now—has a bathroom connected to it. You drop your blankets onto your bed and walk towards the bathroom, fighting back a shiver brought forth from the cold morning air.

     …you were an odd mix of “morning person” and “night owl”, and not even you were quite sure how that worked. While you liked waking up with the light of the sun, you always had to fight yourself into actually getting up and not going back to sleep. While on the other hand, you could stay up until ungodly hours of the night and still not feel the backlash of “staying up too late”.

     You could fall asleep just around midnight and still wake up with the sun at six AM.

     Perks of not needing as much sleep as most people, you suppose.

     Later in the day, after hours of unboxing and organizing, you walk around and admire your work so far.

     Everything was only about half finished. The great room had a couch, loveseat, coffee table, and a TV still in its box, waiting to be mounted on the wall above the fireplace. The coffee table was oval in shape and made of dark wood, and resting on top were some flowers your dad sent to you in celebration for your move and some remotes for the TV and sound system—the sound system itself waiting in its own box to be set up. Surrounding the coffee table was a large black couch and matching loveseat, the colors nicely contrasting with the off-white walls of the room. The floor was a dark brown wood with a white carpet on top. The fireplace was made of dark gray stones and was sitting in the corner of the great room, angled in a way that it could face diagonally into the center of the room.

     “I’ll have to get some new plants to help get some color in here...” you mutter to yourself as you look around the rather monotone room. “Good thing I’ll be able to get my lemon tree from Allira tomorrow—among my other plants.”

     All of the house plants that you had in your apartment were currently staying with Allira for safekeeping, since you couldn’t safely transport them in the minivan with all of your boxes in there, and the moving truck was mainly only moving your furniture, so your plants couldn’t safely go with them either.

     And so, your plants awaited you safely within the arms of your dear friend.

     And among those plants was your precious lemon tree, which you have had since you were a teenager. It’s grown several feet since you first got it and to be honest it’s been due a permanent home in the ground for a while now, with its height now being above your own... you just haven’t had anywhere to plant it until recently.

     To be honest you didn’t really want to plant it, but sooner or later it’s going to get too big and you won’t be able to keep repotting it for much longer. So you plan on planting it either this spring or the next...

     .

     .

     .

     ...Ah, you're getting distracted.

     ...With a small hum, you turn on your heel and enter the kitchen.

     The living room led into the kitchen in an open floor plan. No food was there yet, and the cooking essentials and silverware—among other things—had yet to be taken out of their boxes, so the kitchen wasn’t even half done at the moment. There was an island and good shelving space along with a small four person dining table sat in the open space just outside the actual kitchen.

     The floor of the kitchen was made of cream colored tiles, and the walls a grayish green. The countertops, cupboards, and any shelves were made of a dark wood just a few shades lighter than the great room's hardwood floor.

     Walking over to a door connected to the kitchen/dining area, you opened it to reveal the laundry room. In there was a washer and dryer, along with a sink and small shelving unit built into the wall. Just beyond the shelves was a side door leading outside. Your boxes of cleaning supplies and extra blankets (and one or two pillows) have been emptied out onto the shelves, along with various miscellaneous items tucked away in there for storage purposes.

     Back in the kitchen was a pair of glass double doors leading to your back porch. There wasn’t anything out there yet but you were considering starting some sort of small garden out there, but hadn’t decided on it yet.

     “If I do put a garden out here I could totally turn this place into a little cottagecore house... I mean, I definitely live in the right place for it.” You say as you look to your backyard.

     Your back yard didn’t have much—or anything, really. Your house sat on a large patch of grass surrounded by trees in an oblique circle, with only your long driveway leading out of the circle of trees.

     It would have been a little intimidating, if you weren’t so familiar with the area.

     Farther out was a small, worn down path leading between the trees. You’ve been down that path only a few times, but at the end of the path was a small creek of slow flowing water; the water going down by only three feet at its deepest parts.

     The creek would be a good spot to hang out during the summer time to cool off. However, with the autumn weather as it is now, you have no intention of taking a walk down that path anytime soon.

     And since the trees were stripped bare from their leaves—with the end of fall approaching and winter coming even faster—there isn’t much scenery to look at.

     ...Back inside, on the other side of the room, was a small hall leading to three doors. The doors adjacent to one another were the guest rooms, and the door in the middle was a bathroom.

     You were planning on keeping the extra rooms mostly empty, with the exception of a mattress and a few basic decorative pieces in each of the rooms for guests to use in case you have any over. You thought about turning one of them into an office, but had a feeling you would have rarely ever actually used it, so you discarded the idea for the time being.

     You walked back to your room—the master bedroom—and looked around the space. In the corner next to the door was your queen sized mattress; now off of the ground and placed onto a proper bed frame. Sitting beside your bed was a night stand, holding things like any chargers you had and a small box of trinkets you don’t know what to do with. Your bed was now piled with pillows of various sizes and shapes along with two layers of mink blankets and another blanket you put somewhere in there—all in your preferred colors. Winter was coming soon and you weren’t going to be fighting off the cold with one or two pillows and blankets.

     …Not to mention the fact that you just liked the excessive amount of soft things.

     The cold of the upcoming winter was just a good excuse to indulge in your strange habit of collecting a mass amount of soft things—but that was beside the point.

     The floor of your bedroom was made of the same hardwood as the great room, with a rectangular carpet centered in the room. On the wall opposite to the door was a bay window large enough to seat two people decorated in—lo and behold—various different pillows for cushioning and a thin blanket you had thrown in for easy access when you would eventually use the window. Nestled in the corner at the foot of your bed was a black chair with, yet again, a pillow sitting on it; the chair angled in a way to where it faced near the center of the room.

     The chair was mostly just there to fill in the space, since you already had the bay window, which had plenty of seating room for you—but once again, that was beside the point.

     Finally, on the wall across from your bed were two sliding doors. One led to the master bathroom, and the other to your walk-in closet. The closet held about half of your clothes now, with the rest still waiting in their boxes. The bathroom didn’t have much either, with it mostly being the essentials you brought with you the day before.

     The house had more room than you needed to be honest. Three bedrooms was more than what one person would really need, but you didn’t mind much. More room can always be a good thing to have—so long as it isn’t too much extra room.

     You sit down on your bed and lean back, falling into your pillows. “Hmmm, it’s already past noon… I should go get some food and, y’know, actually get something to fill up the kitchen with.” You breathe in and let out a low sigh, tired from all the work you did that day.

     “Mmmh... I wanna take a nap...” you sigh again. “But if I do that I won’t be able to fall asleep tonight.” With a huff, you sit up and get off your bed, walking over to your shoes you left on the floor.

     Slipping them on and grabbing your purse, you head towards your front door and car—grabbing a jacket along the way.

     “‘M gonna have to unpack my winter clothes soon... it’s getting colder...” you mumble absentmindedly to yourself, starting your car and driving down the long driveway.

     You let your thoughts wander, making a mental list of all the things you needed to buy from the store. It didn’t take long for them to wander into making a list for what you were going to need for this winter.

      ‘With the house being about a twenty minute drive from the town, I’m gonna need to stock up on food before it starts to snow too heavily... I should also get something to help insulate the windows. Mom would use some pretty heavy curtains to keep the warm air in... oh, I should probably stock up on firewood for the fireplace too. The winters here can be brutal. At least before when I was living in my apartment there were people nearby to help if I needed it. But now, out here, it’s a twenty minute drive into town, and a thirty minute drive to the nearest hospital, so I should stock up on medical supplies as well...’

     As you drove down the road, small flakes of white began to dot your front window, melting into droplets as you continued to drive.

     You spared them a glance in surprise, eyes widening at the sight.

     “It’s snowing...? I know autumn is almost over, but snow isn’t supposed to be expected until mid November... What the heck? Hopefully it’s just a light passing, I’m not ready for an early winter at all!” You continue to watch the road, now going through everything you could afford right now for the possibly early winter.

     “Guess I’ll be spending a little more today than I thought... just in case... stars, I am so lucky I’m not short on money, otherwise I would be postponing my moving in and staying with Allira until winter’s over–”

     Before you even knew what happened, something small suddenly darted out of the tree line and collapsed in the middle of the road some distance ahead of you.

      “What the heck was that...!?” You hiss out, swerving to the left to avoid running over it and almost slamming on the break, slowing down to a stop.

     You put your car into park and step out, bracing yourself against the cold air and cautiously approaching the... the whatever it was.

    'Was it an animal? Perhaps it was injured and it had tried to cross the road?'

     Pieces of snow drifted down softly, bits of it landing in your hair and melting into it, slowly but surely damping it.

     You walk forward, and come to a stop a few feet away from the thing that fell onto the road.

     It...

     .

     .

     .

     ...It was a bitty.

Masterlist || Next >

Thank you for reading!

[fleur1005]

YiZhan fandom interviews!! 003 @OldObsess/overthinkingthis

I am so thankful that not only she accepted this interview, but accepted it with eagerness! 🙏 I was actually very excited about finally being able to talk to her because one of my first fics I read in this fandom was hers (and is my favorite to this day) and it was rec’ed by none other than Ren 😆 Now you can imagine what fic that is lol, but I digress. So without much ado… here’s Tee, aka @OldObsess!!!

▪️ Please, tell us about yourself. How you like to be called or how you go by in this fandom and how long you’ve been in the swamp.

i respond to a lot of names in this fandom, it's all good. on twitter, i'm @oldobsess... if i could do it again, i'd probably pick a new handle, but i had never used twitter before this fandom, so didn't know what i was doing! my first screen name was "too old to obsess over 💚❤️" and then sometime later i decided that there was no shame in being an older fan, so i changed it to "never too old to obsess over 💚❤️" 😂

on ao3, i'm "overthinkingthis" — i deliberately picked a different handle entirely because i had never read or written fics before, and wanted to keep my fic activities separate, like a secret side thing. that did not last long. again, shedding the shame!

on tumblr i'm "overthinkingyizhan" but i'm new to tumblr so there's not a lot going on there yet.

fandom friends also call me tee, and that works too!

how long have i been in the swamp? i watched cql in march 2020... my family watched it first, and i had no interest in watching with them until i saw xz's face. i literally asked, "why is that man so beautiful???" i watched the entire series twice, read mdzs a couple of times, and then one day i was listening to wuji and thought, "are the actors singing this as a duet?" i googled them, was horrified by 227, amazed by yibo's dancing, and then started mainlining the official bts and all the fan analysis videos on youtube. i was so charmed by how happy they looked together, but i'd never shipped anyone in my life before, so wasn't sure what to make of all the shippy stuff. i came to yizhan twitter in april 2020 to find out what happened to them after weibo night (aka "divorce night"). what finally threw me into the pit was seeing video of yibo looking teary in a ddu clip from the first taping after 227... i remember thinking, "oh my god, he really loves him."

wow, i'm rambling. let me let you ask your questions!

Ooh, I’m loving your story…! You could keep going and I can keep listening/reading it… 🥹🥹🥹

So it was the first time you shipped someone???

yes, this is my first and only fandom! i was very lucky to find really good friends in the fandom when i came to twitter, and they have been such good guides. that's one of the reasons i love what you're doing with this project (and i very much vibe with your "omg how can i organize all this information" panic because that's how i ended up on ao3!) i could go on, but let me answer your next question:

▪️ Where are you most active/ favorite place to dabble in fandom-wise? (Twt, tumblr, ao3, pixive, privetter, etc)

i'm most active on twitter as @oldobsess… i've posted more works on ao3 than i ever expected to, and i have a tumblr that i hope to use to archive more of my collected fandom candy if i ever find the time

▪️ I’ve also been very fortunate to be in friendly fandoms, but being this your first, were you surprised by the toxic side of it when you found out?

yes! i mean, because i learned about 227 right away (it had just happened when i started watching cql in march 2020), i learned about antis very early on. i don't really understand why anyone takes the time to hate a character or celebrity when they can spend that time on the character or celebrity they love, but sadly, i know now that there are people who do that in every fandom.

i was also very surprised that dynamics is a thing some people get very worked up about, especially with an rpf ship where no one has any idea what people do in private. i've tried to be more mindful about it now that i know it's a thing, but i wish everyone could assume more positive intent when it comes to this particular topic. personally, if i see or read something that isn't my thing, i don't stop to comment and i don't like to do callouts in public. (that's what private chats with friends are for!) instead, i scroll on by or use the back button. i don't like to give fandom wank more exposure by posting about it publicly. there's enough negativity in the world as it is — i don't need to add to it!

i'm also aware that as an rpf shipper, i have to be careful about where i do my screaming. i don't do it on posts by official accounts (whether in comments or qrts). also, i follow a fair number of solo accounts because we share a love for either xiao zhan or yibo, but i am careful not to say shippy things on their posts... i think that's basic courtesy, because they're entitled to do fandom the way they like. if i don't like the way they do it, i scroll by or i can block if it's really something i don't want to see. some solos block me, and i prefer they do that than to say unkind things to me.

basically, i try to follow the golden rule... how would i feel if something said X to me? i feel like i've had a relatively drama-free fandom experience by following these guidelines. fandom should be fun, so as long as you're not hurting anyone, you do you!

I very much share the same opinion about how to handle 🐜.

Now that you bring up the topic about the dynamics, I think it’s a cultural thing b/w Asian countries and Western countries. They simply have different backgrounds of how they came to be and have very different view points. They can’t really be compared. But I still love both styles.

▪️ What was your first motivation to start writing/ drawing about them?

before this fandom, i never read or wrote fic! and i had no idea rpf was a thing! to be honest, i was a little weirded out by the idea of reading or writing fic about real people. 🙈 but then after spending hours chatting about ggdd candy with my first fandom friends, i felt completely overwhelmed by the need to organize everything they were sharing with me. (also remember that the pandemic lockdown had just begun, so i was going a little stir crazy and needed something to do with all my restless energy.)

one night, we were musing over when ggdd might have first gotten together, and one of my friends told me that a significant minority of cbxg (chinese ggdd shippers) believe they got together BEFORE cql. i demanded to know more about this theory, and after countless hours of drowning in candy from 2017, i decided i had to write a fic with this alternate timeline or i would lose my mind.

i opened an ao3 account and started posting "we are made to love" in june 2020. https://archiveofourown.org/works/24669283/chapters/59612737 i had no idea what i was doing! i just wanted to write something about all the candy for myself and to amuse the three fandom friends i had then. 😂 but then what started out as "maybe i'll write 15k on this, 20k tops" turned into a 20-chapter, 83k work that took me six months to post in full.

i swore all along that i would write that one fic to get it all out of my system, and then never write again, but that did not happen. these two beautiful and talented individuals are just too inspiring! i've created or co-created over 50 works since then, but wamtl is still my best-known work.

sorry, these responses are just so long! renren was so much more succinct... please feel free to tell me to shut up hahah

No, I won’t cos I’m enjoying this way too much myself 🤭

▪️ How many fics/ fan arts have you written/ drawn so far? Which one is the one that you’re most fond of and why?

i've written 45 fics (including two drabbles that i drew art for, and one anonymous work). i co-wrote an additional eight fics with friends. i also posted two works (a recipe and a knitting pattern) that were part of an art/fic collab that i did with some creative fandom friends.

i don't know how to answer this question (about what fic i’m most fond of)! i've been asked before, and my answer changes all the time. it depends on my mood, and also on what it means to be fond of a work. sometimes a fic is bound up in the feelings i had when i wrote it, or who i was writing it with or for. if you asked me what fic of mine i would most want to reread, that would also depend on my mood. do i want to laugh or cry?

i am really fond of "talk to me," which is the fic i HAD to write after i saw an article about a japanese man who rented himself out as a "rental-san" to keep lonely people company... i was absolutely seized with the idea of writing yibo as a "rental-ge," hired by xiao zhan to listen to him talk about a boyfriend who keeps breaking his heart. it's also a wholesome t-rated fic, and soft getting-together fics are really my jam.

i'm also very fond of "lying in the dark (no sunshine)," which is my angsty break-up/make-up fic. it's based on the movie "eternal sunshine of the spotless mind," which is one of my favorite movies. i am also in love with the concepts of memory and forgetting, and this fic is a long meditation on those themes.

i'm really cheating now, but i am super fond of my tattoo and tentacle aus ("under my skin" and "wrapped up in you" ) because i wrote them with and for dear fandom friends, and so both were so much fun to write. when i re-read them, i think of these friends, and the warm feelings i have for this fandom.

Ooh, I’m glad you mentioned “Wrapped Up in You” cos it’s been one of my first fics I read when I came into this fandom and was rec’ed by none other than Ren and it’s one of my fave fics for so many reasons! 😆😆😆

*screaming* i cannot believe that you joined this fandom and read TENTACLES right off the bat 😂😂😂 i love that! 🐙

▪️ What’s your favorite trope to write/draw or a new one that you want to try this year?

"established relationship" is my most common "additional tag" for my fics! i just adore writing yizhan all soft and secure with each other, even if they're sharing insecurities or bickering. to me, they fit together like puzzle pieces, so no matter what i put them through in the story, when i get to the parts where they're settled and happy, with all the trust and fondness that comes with that, the writing feels effortless.

among the projects i want to finish these year is a getting-together rom-com, a sci-fi au, and a fairy tale! occasionally i think about writing more "canon" fics based on real-life candy that they throw out there, but i also feel like i've written so many of them already, and i have a lot of other ideas i'd like to try to write.

oh, i should say, since this is supposed to be a guide for baby 🐢, i've dumped a ton of links to candy in the endnotes to a lot of my fics, especially wamtl and the fics in the "extra chapters" series. since i started writing fics as a way to organize my thoughts and the fandom candy, i actually do continue to revise the endnotes as i come across new sources (and if links go dead, i try to fix them). ideally, i would post all these links to tumblr so people don't have to go to my fics to find the links, but there are only so many hours in a day!

Wow, I’m amazed at how organized and prolific you are!

▪️ Are you bjyx, zsww or lsfy? Is this dynamic important to you?

i would say i am lsfy. i do not care about who does what physical act. i do care about characterization, and to me, that is completely separate from how the characters have sex. if a fic is written well, and the way yizhan is written feels real to me, i don't care how they have sex (or if they do at all).

one of the things i've really enjoyed about writing yizhan fics is that because they are both men, i don't worry about gender baggage the way i might if i were writing a m/f fic. i have the freedom to flip things around to fit the story and i don't spend emotional energy worrying whether having a character cook, cry, or apologize — or bottom — is gender-coded. honestly, i spend enough time irl worrying about race and gender, so i like that these are not issues i need to think about when i write yizhan.

so yeah, at this point, i have written all possible dynamics (and with tentacles, you really can do everything, everywhere, all at once 😂)!

i do try to tag my fics for dynamics (the actual sex act, not for vibes or characterization) so that people who *do* care can find what they want to read. i'd rather that someone who cares a lot about such things is able to avoid reading a fic of mine that doesn't suit their tastes so they don't feel compelled to write me a nasty note (also, readers, don't do this. there's a back button for when that happens).

That seems to be a very important issue in this fandom, they even have names for each dynamic. That a first for me and it was another thing that surprised me as a new 🐢.

▪️ What’s your most fave 🍬? Have you written about it? Where do you get your 🍬 sources?

i don't know if i can pick a favorite candy! like renren, i love the tattoo cpn, and so i wrote an entire fic about them having tattoos ("under my skin," in which xiao zhan is a tattoo artist and yibo is an idol who meets xiao zhan and suddenly wants to be inked all over his body haha).

i am fascinated with kadian, which is a kind of number language that's popular in china. i honestly thought it sounded far-fetched the first time i was introduced to it, but over the course of the years i've been in this fandom, i've seen enough evidence to know that kadian is real and yizhan use it (for example, 520 means "i love you" because the chinese numbers read out loud (wo ai ni) are a homophone for 我爱你, or "i love you" — may 20 (5/20) is a nationally-recognized couple's day in china for that reason)... yizhan (and all of their endorsements) post at 8:05 or 10:05 frequently because those timestamps represent their birthdays. there are many examples of different codes in wide use in china that have shown up in yizhan's various socmed posts... and there there are all the 18s (一八 sounds like yibo) and 3s (三 sounds like zhan).

i do incorporate kadian in nearly all of my fics in some way (and there's a whole chapter about it in wamtl), often because i’ll have yizhan post not-so-secret kadian messages to each other over weibo and oasis.

i even embed kadian codes into the word counts for nearly all of my fics, i'm that obsessed.

twitter followers know i post about kadian a lot too!

my first fandom friends have been such excellent sources of candy... @ShirasagiS @VenOceanofStars were the ones who spent hours talking to me about the candy that cbxgs had unearthed when i was writing my first fic. they helped me so much with translations (translation from chinese can be so difficult, especially when it's xiao zhan who's posting... he loves the word play and can get very literary in his wording).

other good accounts to follow to stay on top of weibo/oasis posts, endorsements, past appearances and such are @wxyzybxz @bjyxiaos @bjyxnoa @sunhuas

i also follow some solo accounts... although they don't *intentionally* deliver candy, they always have great content about xiao zhan and yibo.

candy also comes my way through chats with friends!

i'm not on tumblr much, but i like UntamedConnotations and AccioVictuuri for roundups of candy that aren't captured as well in tweets

Wow, thank you for sharing with us so generously your sources! I for one am very grateful cos I didn’t know several of them.

▪️ Open topic: hot/latest topic of the boys and/or fandom.

the latest hot topic!? i think it has to be yibo's new song, his performance, and his many, many posts about them! it's ticking all the boxes for me... a GORGEOUS, heartbreaking song, a beautiful and emotional performance, and a tidal wave of posts about it, with kadian, possibly hidden messages, and yibo looking incredibly handsome.

just today, he posted pictures of himself in a hoodie with a rainbow logo and his ever-present 🦴 necklace, and combined with a song and performance that already feels like yibo baring his soul in a way we haven't seen before, it's just SO MUCH and i am just in awe of how comfortable he is in his skin, how unapologetic he is about who he is... and how safe and secure he must feel to be able to shout all this out. i realize i could be completely deluded, and that none of this has to do with love, or that maybe he loves someone who isn't xiao zhan, but after all that i have seen over the past few years, i'm not sure how else to harmonize it all if they aren't szd. if nothing else, it makes me so happy to imagine that they've really found a love like this with each other, and for me, that's been the joy of being in this fandom (especially these last few years, with all that has been going on in the world).

anyway, i like to tell people that i fell into the wangxian pit because of xiao zhan's beautiful face, and that i tripped and fell into the yizhan pit because of yibo's lovesick face. everything about yibo's "like a sunshine" song and performance is just making me even more emotional about them and the epic romance that i see between them, and it brings me so much joy.

▪️Now that you bring up about the the 🦴 necklace, do you think the necklace is actually XZ’s gift? Does it really have a 王 engraving on it? Do you think the 🦴 necklace some kind of statement?

i'm not sure if it's really engraved with a 王... but i think the 🦴 is (1) a gift from someone special because yibo wears it so frequently... you only come back to a piece of jewelry that often when it has great personal meaning... especially when you are someone who wears fancy accessories for work all the time. it has shown up in inappropriate times too, like under a period costume on set, when he's not supposed to be wearing personal jewelry... that tells me it means something very special, because he just won't take it off. and (2) i think it's from xz because he has called yibo a puppy (gouzaizai), there was that time yibo's co-star from LoF said in a livestream that he can't call yibo gouzaizai because he's not xz (which tells me that other people know about xz using that term of endearment)... also xz has called yibo clingier than jianguo (comparing him to a pet), so yeah... i think it's really only xz who could give yibo a 🦴 necklace 🥰

could it be another person? i guess if i am wrong about them being szd, it could be someone else... but to me that would mean he's in a relationship with someone else. i have jewelry that other friends have given me that i wear on occasion, but the pieces that i wear all the time are the ones my husband has given me.

In between this answer and the next question, we both became a crying mess remembering the beautiful and meaningful dance performance of Yibo’s LtS at the New Year’s Gala, till we regained our composure, lol

▪️ How did you come to meet your good friends when you first started out in fandom?

when i first came to twitter in early april 2020, i really didn't know where to start. i wasn't a twitter user, and i'd never done the fandom thing before. i lurked for awhile, following solo accounts (at first, just xfx, because i was really worried about how xiao zhan was doing... it was still very early after 227). i stumbled over ventus's (@VenOceanofStars) posts, and spent a few long nights scrolling her posts of old candy. she noticed that i was liking literally hundreds of her posts, and dm'd me to ask me "how old is too old to obsess over ggdd?" and that's how we became friends. 🥰 she introduced me to @ShirasagiS and the three of us spent a lot of time just talking about ggdd and c-ent generally, since they are fluent in chinese (i am also asian, and although i've been perpetually trying to learn chinese, it's been a slog!)

i also found @BjyxObsessed because i thought her pinned tweet was hilarious and it spoke to me (back then, it was all about the shock of falling into this shippy pit as an older fan), and because i am not a shy person, i slid into her dms and forced her to be my friend. 😂 she introduced me to the world of rp fiction, and her sweet and funny fics were among the first i read (in any fandom!)

that's generally been my pattern... i see people around who might share an opinion or a demographic (a lot of my fandom friends are older fans with families and irl jobs) and i might dm them to see if we click. sometimes we do, sometimes we don't (and that's okay!)

when i finished posting wamtl and realized i was not done writing after all, i helped put together a discord server with some other writing friends, a place where we could encourage one another as we prepared for an upcoming fic exchange that we were all participating in. that was a great way to make friends... gathering around a common creative interest, be it writing or art or maybe just yelling about the boys.

some of those writers have since moved on, and some new writers have joined... it's sad when friends go on to other fandoms or to other interests, but i'm told this is a natural ebb and flow of fandom, and so i've learned to roll with it and keep making new friends.

somehow, nearly five years after yizhan started filming cql together, new 🐢 still find their way here, and i like to think that that's a testament to how beautiful and real their story feels.

▪️ Okay, I have the exact same question. How old is too old? Because I regard myself as one of the older 🐢 age-wise. I was VERY relieved to see several 30+ or 40+ in fandom 🤭

well, i don't like to tell people how old i actually am because i feel like putting a number on it might make people wonder if they're too old (if they're older than i am)... i prefer the mystery! but yes, i've been told that my saying i'm an older fan makes other older fans feel more comfortable with being here, and that's nice to know!

i do have readers and followers who i know are older than i am, and i think that's awesome!

▪️ Lastly, a piece of advice for newbie 🐢, please!

i would second renren's advice to respect the boys, their business partners, and their co-stars/friends and don't write shippy things on their posts. think of the golden rule before you hit "send" on things... how would you feel if you were yibo or xiao zhan and people were yelling shippy things on your work projects? for that reason, i try to keep my nonsense within this fandom bubble... i don't hashtag with their names, and i don't interact with solo accounts unless i *know* they're tolerant of cpfs.

the other thing i would say is to spend your energy positively. being excited about yizhan's projects and their accomplishments does not mean you have to trash someone else... that's a really bad look, and can only make trouble for them (and especially don't do that if you're using them as your profile picture because it reflects badly on them).

finally, don't evangelize. if people see what you see and want to find out if they're szd, they'll find their way here. arguing with people and trying to "prove" to outsiders that they're together is bad form... remember that we really don't know anything. i might personally feel they're szd, but if other people don't see it, i respect that too. THAT SAID... if they trip and fall into the pit the way i did, i'll do what i can to make them feel welcome so they can enjoy a positive and joyful fandom as i have!

END

[kamaandhallie]

Femboy Son, Mob Boss Dad

Part 1

My name is Ainsley, and one of the first things you’ll notice about me is that I’m a femboy, but there’s a lot more to me than that. I’m 23 years old and I moved away from my family when I was 18 after I graduated college, ever since then, I’ve had no contact with my family and they’ve never tried contacting me either, which I always thought was kinda odd since my father was always looking out for me. 

I remember ever since I was a kid, my big brother often picked on me for being a weak sissy, because I was pretty unmanly even back then, being very skinny, small, weak, and having a pretty feminine build, despite my father’s attempts at trying to toughen me up. Eventually, he just gave up and stopped trying. While my brother picking on me was annoying, he did make up for it by protecting me from other kids who picked on me, so I was thankful for that. I always disliked the way I looked and how I was expected to act, it never felt like it suited me. My brother was always kind of a macho man, or at least he tried to be, but I’ve never really been interested in being like that. I’ve always prefered softer things, kinda…girly things, which I’ve always tried to hide from my dad and brother since I knew how they’d react. Even whenever my mom and dad tried to push the idea of me marrying when I grow up, the idea never really appealed to me, at least the idea of spending the rest of my life with a woman.

It wasn’t until I was in college that I fully realized I was gay. Happened pretty suddenly one night when I was sitting next to my drunk roommate who I had gotten pretty close to, and the idea just sprung into my head, and just as quickly came out of my mouth before I could realize what I was doing, heh, and then afterwards it came into my mouth when he actually accepted my offer. I don’t know what it was, but that moment really changed my life, I really felt free for the first time, and I finally caught a glimpse of the real me.

After I graduated and moved away, I decided I wanted to live my own life for myself, and the first step I decided to take was by changing the way I looked into a way I thought suited me better. I decided to experiment with different clothes, going for the girliest looking clothes imaginable, which I knew would’ve freaked my family out. Next I decided to shave and wax all my body hair off, as I inherited them from the men in my family and never liked the way they looked on me. I never really had much body hair, especially compared to my brother who’s really hairy, but I still thought I looked too hairy for my own good. The last thing I decided to do was let my hair grow out a bit and then dye it. My father would’ve passed out seeing me do this.

After all that was done, I took a look at myself in the mirror, and I think that moment was the happiest I remember ever feeling, as it finally felt like I was looking at myself in the mirror. I was now completely clean-shaven and without a single hair on my body, I wore a white shoulderless crop top with pink at the end of the sleeves and a pink heart in the middle, and I wore a pink mini skirt and black Mary Jane shoes with high white socks. Finally, my hair, which I dyed white with pink on the edges. I also put on fake eyelashes for good measure. I looked the best I’ve ever been. For the first time, I felt I really saw…Ainsley.

Now that I was completely cut off from my family, I had to figure out a way to actually make money for myself. I couldn’t really decide what to do at first, as getting a job was never actually something I’ve ever thought about. But one day, I found something that I felt would make easy money for myself and I would also enjoy doing. That was when I started getting involved in sex work.

At first, it just started with online stuff, with me just recording myself in my own room. But after a while, I started looking for more jobs that promised a lot  more money, which eventually led to me getting involved in prostitution. I actually quite enjoyed doing it, maybe it was due to all those years of repressed sexuality, butI still considered this to be the best job I could’ve chosen. Most of the customers aren’t too bad, and the guy who arranges my schedules was actually a pretty nice guy. Though my actual boss, he’s…not the best. But luckily I never have to see him too often so it’s still fine.

The job made me pretty good money, as I was able to rent a pretty good apartment, eat well every night, and be able to buy all the cute outfits I wanted. I felt like I was living the dream! I was pretty satisfied with where my life was. But everything changed when my father’s birthday came up.

Now, I didn’t receive any invitation or anything. In fact, I don’t really know what came over me since I haven’t had any contact with my family in years, but the moment I got that notification on my phone reminding me that it was my father’s birthday that day, something inside me told me to go visit him. Maybe I just really missed him deep down, I wasn’t sure. But after some long thinking, I decided to go for it. I packed my bags, bought some cannoli, my dad’s favorite, and took a cab to Howardsville, the small town surrounded by snowy mountains and misty pine barrens with constant grey skies where my family resided.

I arrived pretty late at night, and as I stood in front of my family house, I could tell most of the partygoers had already left, as my family’s parties are usually very loud, full of music, and people dancing. But I could still hear some faint music and people talking from one of the rooms in the house, so that meant that  luckily the party was still going on, and my father was still awake.

I walked into the house and came into the room where I heard the chatting voices, holding the box of cannolis in my hand. The moment I walked, the room went dead silent save for the faint music as all the men on the table turned their heads towards me, with my father sitting at the very end.

“H-Hey, Dad…h-happy birthday!...” I said nervously, holding out the box of cannolis.

My father, Roberto Giovanni Silano, boss of the Silano Crime Family, a large fat man with a very square-shaped body wearing a black pinstripe suit with a red flower on his lapel, as well as a black hat covering his dark slickback hair with grey sideburns, holding a cigar in his hand and staring at me with his squinty eyes.

“Son? Well, this is a pleasant surprise. I neva’ expected that you’d show up,” my dad told me, his expression, while subtle, told me he was happy to see me, before he took a good look at the rest of me and it changed into confusion. “Why’re ya dressed like that? Ya look like a clown, an’ not even a funny one,”

“Oh, it’s uh…it’s a long story. Before I explain, I wanna give you your birthday present, Dad! Your favorite!” I said, walking up to him, presenting the box in my hands.

My dad just looked at the box, opened it slightly to see its contents, expression still blank, before closing it and finally speaking again.

“Cannolis. I’ve actually already eaten way too many of ‘em today but…I appreciate it, son,” he said, his mouth almost forming a smile, but not quite getting there.

“Hehe…thanks, Dad.”

“So, uh…you gonna explain why you’re dressed like a Puerto Rican whore?” I heard a voice behind me ask, who I saw was my big brother.

Gabriele, or Gabe as most of us called him, was a pretty athletic guy, several years older than me. He looked the complete opposite of me in pretty much every way, having black greasy hair, wearing a white tank top with an unbuttoned yellow shirt over it, jeans, a gold necklace, and not to mention having an extremely hairy chest and arms. The guys called him ‘Stiletto Gabe’ because of how much he loved to use his trusty switchblade.

“Well, uh…funny you should say that, ‘cause, uh…I kinda…am one.”

“Puerto Rican?”

“What? No, of course not!”

“Oh, phew. For a moment I was worried Mom did somethin’ bad back then,” Gabe said in relief, which just earned an angry frustrated stare from our dad.

“No, Gabe. I mean, that I am…someone who deals in sex work,” I try to explain without outright directly saying it.

“Sex work? Ya mean as in…prostitution?” Gabe asked.

I raised my eyebrow at him. “Well, I don’t see what else it could mean.”

“As in you run the business?” another voiced asked.

I turned to the other face on the table to see it was Vincenzo De Luca, or Vinny as most of us called him too, the most powerful capo in the family and a long time friend of my father’s. He’s also Gabe’s godfather, Gabe hung around him all the time as a kid, and we called him Uncle Vinny. It was easy to tell Gabe was hugely influenced by him due to how similar they looked, have the same greasy black hair, except Vinny’s had grey sideburns, and also Vinny had more tan skin than Gabe, who was pretty pale. They had similar hairy arms, a gold chain around his neck, and he wore a purple silk shirt.

“Uh…well…no, actually. I…am an employee.”

“What d’ya work as there, exactly?” Gabe asked again.

“Oh my God, do I really have to spell it out for you guys?! I’m a sex worker! A prostitute!” I shouted, and immediately after the entire table went into stunned silence, and I started getting anxious again as I realized what I just said.

Gabe was the first to break the silence, his mouth agape. “Ho-lee shit!...Are you guys hearin’ what I’m hearin’?!”

“That ya brother just said he’s a whore? Yeah, I heard it,” Vinny replied, also in shock.

“Son of a bitch!” another voice yelled, this one belonging to Paulie.

Paulie Sirico’s a soldier from Vinny’s crew, but he’s easily been in the family the longest. He’s been working for us for around fifty years, ever since my dad was a little kid and my grandfather was the one running things. He was a pretty old guy, with black hair that had two large white streaks going through it above his wrinkly forehead, and he wore a light blue tracksuit.

My dad remained silent the longest. He just stared at me in complete disbelief, his mouth hanging open, but not too much that his cigar could fall out. 

“Is this supposed to be a joke?” my dad asked.

“N-No, it isn’t,” I answered nervously.

Gabe’s mouth was agape and his eyebrows were raised, as if he didn’t know whether to laugh or be distraught by the situation. At times, it looked like he was almost leaning towards the former. 

“Madone…” Vinny murmured under his breath, in complete disbelief.

Paulie lowered his head and raised his hands before getting up from his chair. “I can’t listen to any more of this. How much more betrayal’s gonna happen to me?!” he exclaimed before walking out of the room.

The room was filled with awkward silence for a few moments after Paulie left, and I just stood there beside the table like an idiot. Gabe still looked surprised, still processing what he just heard, while Vinny just looked down with a disappointed and defeated look on his face.

My father finally broke the silence. “I just can’t believe it. I spent all my blood, sweat, and tears to make sure you’d get into college so you’d have a bright future.” I was really tempted to say that most of that blood, sweat, and tears did not come from my dad, especially the blood. “And you throw away that potentially bright future o’ yours to…turn into this?!” I was expecting my father to sound furious, instead he sounded more distraught.

“Look at what you’re doin’ to yaself, son! You’re destroyin’ ya body as well as ya mind! Have you no shame?! Have you no self-respect?! We was hopin’ you’d be able to land a respectable job afta’ college, not seein’ ya gettin’ passed around between a buncha jackasses like fuckin’ soccer ball!”

I don’t know what came over me, but I just got the impulse to make a terrible joke in response to that. “Well, I am pretty good at handling balls–”

“Shut up! My heart is breakin’ into a million pieces right now an’ you’re treatin’ it like a joke!”

I jumped back slightly at my dad’s sudden outburst.

“All my life,I worked my hardest to give ya the best life! An’ now ya come back an’ spit in my face by tellin’ me you threw ya bright future away for…for…for this?! On my birthday too! You come here just to bring disgrace to me and my family! I can’t take any more o’ this! Just get outta my sight!”

I just stood there in stunned silence. My dad has said pretty bad stuff to me before, but nothing on this level. I felt like I was gonna cry, but I stopped myself from doing so, my expression hardening instead.

“Are you done?” I asked, my dad remaining silent in response, looking away.

“You know, Dad? We haven’t spoken to each other in years. Now, I could’ve stayed away and not come to your birthday this year like I have all the previous years, but I didn’t. I came all the way here despite knowing how you’d probably react to how I am now, but I still did. Why? Honestly, I’m not too sure myself, but it’s probably because you’re my dad. Sure, you may not be the best dad in the world, far from it, but you’re still my dad. So I guess I figured I should at least try to make your birthday party this one time! I just wanted to try and do something nice for you after we’ve been apart for years and hoped we could spend some quality time together instead of fighting! But if that’s what you want, fine! I don’t wanna argue any longer with someone I know doesn’t wanna be convinced anyway! Here’s your cannolis, hope you enjoy them,” I said as I tossed the box of cannolis in front of him, which he looked down at, and I immediately walked out of the room, and I could feel Gabe, Vinny, and my dad’s eyes following me as I left. 

Before I reached the front door, though, I stopped myself. Something inside me told me to check out what was going on in the other room. I guess I was just curious to see if my dad really did genuinely mean what he said. I went back and peeked into the room, and luckily nobody inside noticed me. I saw my dad pull the box of cannolis closer and opened it reading the note I had written inside (it was probably stained with cream, putting the not inside was probably not the smartest idea, but I just wanted to have the element of surprise to my gift). I wrote down “To my favorite dad in the world! Happy birthday! Sorry I couldn’t get anything better for your birthday, but I’m glad I get to see you again! ^w^”

I saw my dad just stare down in silence reading my note, his squinty-eyed face showing unclear and conflicting emotions. Part of me wanted to go back inside, but my better instincts told me to walk away, which I did. I stood on the sidewalk and pulled out my phone (which was also pink) and started to order an Uber home, but just before I could press the order button, I heard a voice behind me.

“Ay!” I turned to see it was Gabe. “Pops wants to talk to you before you go,” he nodded inside.

“I gotta go home, Gabe,” I protested.

“Ains, stop bein’ a pain in the ass an’ just get inside.”

I sighed and complied, I knew it wouldn’t be above my brother to forcefully drag me back inside. I followed him back to the dining room I just left a moment ago and saw Dad sitting in the same spot, except he now sat with his arms on the table, his fingers interlocking, and he stared quietly at me with his cigar in his mouth.

“Something wrong, Dad?” I asked.

My dad remained silent for a moment before speaking. “You really like ya job?”

“Uh…” I didn’t really know what to answer at first, since I really wasn’t expecting him to ask that. “Well…yeah, I enjoy doing it, and it helps put food on my table.”

“How much they pay ya?”

“Um…it kinda depends. But I make an average of around $500 an hour, and since I usually receive around four or five customers a day, I can make $2500 a day! I only work one day a week, though. Two sometimes, but that only happens once in a while.”

My dad just looked at me with a face of disbelief. “2500? 2500?! Ya have to get fucked up the ass everyday an’ they only pay ya 2500?!”

“Uh, Dad, I said it wasn’t everyda–”

“This is a fuckin’ disgrace! It’s an insult! Do they think my son is cheap goods or somethin’?! C’mon, Son! We’re goin’ down there!” my dad commanded as he git up from his seat.

“Going down where?”

“To the whorehouse ya work at, of course!” he said before turning to Gabe and Vinny. “Gabriele! Vincenzo! Come with us an’ get the car ready!” he ordered.

“D-Dad, you really don’t need to do this…” I nervously tried to stop him. I knew that once things get personal with my dad, things were gonna end badly.

“No, I fuckin’ do! C’mon, Son!” he said as he grabbed my arm and pulled me with him to the car.

After less than an hour of driving, we arrived at the town I was currently residing in (I didn’t have enough money to move somewhere further away) and we eventually arrived at my workplace.

“Ugh, what a dump,” my dad commented.

I didn’t blame him for saying that, from the outside it didn’t look remarkable. It was a pretty dark dingy alleyway that you’d usually try to avoid unless you wanna end up like Batman’s parents. The one thing that stood out was the door on one of the walls that looked slightly cleaner than everything else around it, with light shining through its small window.

We barged inside with me following behind, and the interior looked much nicer than the outside, with clean walls and carpeted floors. In front of us, we saw a lone guy sitting behind a counter, surprised but happy to see me, and also intimidated to see my family.

“Oh, Ainsley! Didn’t expect to see you today! Who are these guys you brought with you? Can I help you fine gentlemen today?” he asked my family, who just continued stared at him, not listening to what he was saying.

“You the guy in charge?” my dad asked, pointing at him, his cigar still in his mouth.

“Uh, I guess, yeah. Well, honestly, I more just kinda arrange the schedules and accept the payments and–” he got interrupted by Vinny who snuck up behind him while he was talking and slammed his face hard on the counter before pulling his head back and wrapping a garrote wire around his neck, not too tight that he suffocates, but just enough to know they mean business.

My dad leaned in close to him, looking down at his frightened face with a bleeding nose. “Lemme start off by tellin’ ya the difference between you an’ me. You’re a pathetic nobody an’ I’m a legitimate businessman. Y’know why everybody in my town knows who I am? It’s because people love me. People respect me. I bet my son ‘ere who’s worked ‘ere for God knows how long doesn’t even know what ya name is.”

“Actually, Dad, his name is–”

“Shut up, son! I’m talkin’ right now!” Dad interrupted me before turning back to who he was speaking to.

“My point is this, if ya disappeared from the face o’ the Earth, no one would give two shits,” he continued, and I restrained myself from saying I would. “So here’s what you’re gonna do; from now on, my son is the one who decides his schedules and when he wants to do his…job, an’ you are gonna pay him three times the amount ya usually pay ‘im!”

“Three times?! But that’s way beyond what any of the workers here are paid! No one here is worth that much!”

“Well, too fuckin’ bad, ‘cause I’ll make it worth that much!” my dad pointed with his cigar in hand. “It’s easy for you to say they aren’t. You’re not the ones takin’ it up the ass everyday! My son may be the one suckin’ cocks, but you’re the real cocksuckers ‘round ‘ere! If I find out you’re payin’ my son even a cent less than what I told ya to pay ‘im, I’ll make sure Gabriele ova’ here’ll cut the balls off you, an’ every otha’ fuckin’ degenerate that comes to this hellhole you call a place o’ business!” Gabe pulled out his switchblade to show as my dad said that. “Am I makin’ myself clear?!”

“Y-Yes, sir! You’re very clear! But I’ll have to talk to my boss about this, it all comes down to him! And he’s not someone who really listens to others!”

This time, it was Gabe who spoke. “Then maybe we’ll take one o’ ya fingers. Maybe then he’ll know we’re worth listenin’ to!”

Gabe grabbed one of my handler’s hands and held it down on the counter, preparing to bring down his switchblade on one of his fingers, ignoring his cries for mercy. But luckily, just before Gabe could do anything, I decided to step in.

“STOP!” I yelled, stopping Gabe who was halfway from bringing his switchblade down. “You don’t have to go this far! He didn’t do anything wrong! You’re just gonna make things worse for everyone involved if you shed blood here!”

The whole room felt silent, all eyes were now on me, and they were all looking at each other, not knowing what to do. Gabe and Vinny looked to Dad, waiting for what he had to say, who seemed to be seriously thinking about what I was saying. 

“Y’know what? He has a point. Put the knife away, Gabriele,” Dad ordered, which Gabe reluctantly obeyed. “But we should still make sure the message is heard.”

Gabe smirked. “Yeah, I was thinkin’ that too,” he said before punching my handler hard in the nose, ‘causing him to bleed, even I recoiled seeing it. “Let that be a message to ya boss that we’re not fuckin’ around.”

“We thank ya for ya time,” Dad said as he put his cigar out on the ashtray on the counter. “C’mon, let’s go,” he nodded us to the door, and we all followed, Vinny having to pocket his garotte wire again.

The ride back to my family’s house was mostly quiet. but around halfway through the journey, I decided I should say something about what just happened.

“Um…Dad? I appreciate what you did and all, but…you really didn’t have to all that. Y’know, hurt him and all. I’m just fine with the pay I was getting.”

“Nonsense, Son! I may tolerate ya gettin’ fucked for a livin’ but I ain’t gonna tolerate ya gettin’ fucked ova’ with ya livin’! If you really love doin’ this job as much as ya say ya do, then the least I can do is make sure ya get what ya deserve.” 

What Dad said actually made me smile, though the wholesomeness of the moment was kinda undercut by Gabe, who was driving.

“Fuck that ‘three times’ bullshit, I’d’ve made sure I get paid at least ten million bucks if I was gonna get fucked in my ass!”

Dad and I just stared at Gabe from the back seat. Dad went silent for a short moment before continuing. “Listen, uh…sorry for blowin’ up at ya back at the house, I was jus’ really shocked at the news I was gettin’. An’ to be completely honest, I’ve neva’ understood, or even liked this whole gay, queer, or that ‘LGBT fuckin’ whateva’ they’re called’ bullshit. I find it disgustin’ an’ sinful, an’ it goes against all Christian teachin’s!” I had to prevent myself from pointing out the hypocrisy of him saying that.

“But I’ve always said ‘family is everythin’’, an’ I guess I’d be a pretty shitty father an’ a massive hypocrite if I didn’t follow through with that statement. I mean, most fathers like me woulda disowned ya, an’ I considered it for a moment, but uh…I missed ya, Son. I’m really happy ya showed up to my birthday.”

I started tearing up a bit during that moment. I never expected Dad to say something like that to me. I knew he cared about me, but I can’t remember the last time he was this…open with me. I smiled at him, and he did the same.

“Thanks, Dad.”

Dad then put one of his large hands on my shoulder. It’s only during these moments I really realize just how much bigger my dad is compared to me, and everyone else around me for that matter.

“Remember, Son, I’ll always love ya, no matta’ how disgustin’ an’ sinful ya lifestyle is.”

My smile kinda faltered a bit when he said that, but I still appreciated what he was trying to say. “Uh…thanks, Dad. You too.”

He let go of my shoulder and we went back to staring at the road in front or beside us, but Dad had one more thing to say.

“You’re welcome to stay at the house however long ya want before headin’ home.”

“Thanks. I was thinking of doing that too.”

We spent the rest of the car ride in silence.

My name is Ainsley, and one of the first things you’ll notice about me is that I’m a femboy, but there’s a lot more to me than that. I’m 23 years old and I moved away from my family when I was 18 after I graduated college, ever since then, I’ve had no contact with my family and they’ve never tried contacting me either, which I always thought was kinda odd since my father was always looking out for me. 

I remember ever since I was a kid, my big brother often picked on me for being a weak sissy, because I was pretty unmanly even back then, being very skinny, small, weak, and having a pretty feminine build, despite my father’s attempts at trying to toughen me up. Eventually, he just gave up and stopped trying. While my brother picking on me was annoying, he did make up for it by protecting me from other kids who picked on me, so I was thankful for that. I always disliked the way I looked and how I was expected to act, it never felt like it suited me. My brother was always kind of a macho man, or at least he tried to be, but I’ve never really been interested in being like that. I’ve always prefered softer things, kinda…girly things, which I’ve always tried to hide from my dad and brother since I knew how they’d react. Even whenever my mom and dad tried to push the idea of me marrying when I grow up, the idea never really appealed to me, at least the idea of spending the rest of my life with a woman.

It wasn’t until I was in college that I fully realized I was gay. Happened pretty suddenly one night when I was sitting next to my drunk roommate who I had gotten pretty close to, and the idea just sprung into my head, and just as quickly came out of my mouth before I could realize what I was doing, heh, and then afterwards it came into my mouth when he actually accepted my offer. I don’t know what it was, but that moment really changed my life, I really felt free for the first time, and I finally caught a glimpse of the real me.

After I graduated and moved away, I decided I wanted to live my own life for myself, and the first step I decided to take was by changing the way I looked into a way I thought suited me better. I decided to experiment with different clothes, going for the girliest looking clothes imaginable, which I knew would’ve freaked my family out. Next I decided to shave and wax all my body hair off, as I inherited them from the men in my family and never liked the way they looked on me. I never really had much body hair, especially compared to my brother who’s really hairy, but I still thought I looked too hairy for my own good. The last thing I decided to do was let my hair grow out a bit and then dye it. My father would’ve passed out seeing me do this.

After all that was done, I took a look at myself in the mirror, and I think that moment was the happiest I remember ever feeling, as it finally felt like I was looking at myself in the mirror. I was now completely clean-shaven and without a single hair on my body, I wore a white shoulderless crop top with pink at the end of the sleeves and a pink heart in the middle, and I wore a pink mini skirt and black Mary Jane shoes with high white socks. Finally, my hair, which I dyed white with pink on the edges. I also put on fake eyelashes for good measure. I looked the best I’ve ever been. For the first time, I felt I really saw…Ainsley.

Now that I was completely cut off from my family, I had to figure out a way to actually make money for myself. I couldn’t really decide what to do at first, as getting a job was never actually something I’ve ever thought about. But one day, I found something that I felt would make easy money for myself and I would also enjoy doing. That was when I started getting involved in sex work.

At first, it just started with online stuff, with me just recording myself in my own room. But after a while, I started looking for more jobs that promised a lot  more money, which eventually led to me getting involved in prostitution. I actually quite enjoyed doing it, maybe it was due to all those years of repressed sexuality, butI still considered this to be the best job I could’ve chosen. Most of the customers aren’t too bad, and the guy who arranges my schedules was actually a pretty nice guy. Though my actual boss, he’s…not the best. But luckily I never have to see him too often so it’s still fine.

The job made me pretty good money, as I was able to rent a pretty good apartment, eat well every night, and be able to buy all the cute outfits I wanted. I felt like I was living the dream! I was pretty satisfied with where my life was. But everything changed when my father’s birthday came up.

Now, I didn’t receive any invitation or anything. In fact, I don’t really know what came over me since I haven’t had any contact with my family in years, but the moment I got that notification on my phone reminding me that it was my father’s birthday that day, something inside me told me to go visit him. Maybe I just really missed him deep down, I wasn’t sure. But after some long thinking, I decided to go for it. I packed my bags, bought some cannoli, my dad’s favorite, and took a cab to Howardsville, the small town surrounded by snowy mountains and misty pine barrens with constant grey skies where my family resided.

I arrived pretty late at night, and as I stood in front of my family house, I could tell most of the partygoers had already left, as my family’s parties are usually very loud, full of music, and people dancing. But I could still hear some faint music and people talking from one of the rooms in the house, so that meant that  luckily the party was still going on, and my father was still awake.

I walked into the house and came into the room where I heard the chatting voices, holding the box of cannolis in my hand. The moment I walked, the room went dead silent save for the faint music as all the men on the table turned their heads towards me, with my father sitting at the very end.

“H-Hey, Dad…h-happy birthday!...” I said nervously, holding out the box of cannolis.

My father, Roberto Giovanni Silano, boss of the Silano Crime Family, a large fat man with a very square-shaped body wearing a black pinstripe suit with a red flower on his lapel, as well as a black hat covering his dark slickback hair with grey sideburns, holding a cigar in his hand and staring at me with his squinty eyes.

“Son? Well, this is a pleasant surprise. I neva’ expected that you’d show up,” my dad told me, his expression, while subtle, told me he was happy to see me, before he took a good look at the rest of me and it changed into confusion. “Why’re ya dressed like that? Ya look like a clown, an’ not even a funny one,”

“Oh, it’s uh…it’s a long story. Before I explain, I wanna give you your birthday present, Dad! Your favorite!” I said, walking up to him, presenting the box in my hands.

My dad just looked at the box, opened it slightly to see its contents, expression still blank, before closing it and finally speaking again.

“Cannolis. I’ve actually already eaten way too many of ‘em today but…I appreciate it, son,” he said, his mouth almost forming a smile, but not quite getting there.

“Hehe…thanks, Dad.”

“So, uh…you gonna explain why you’re dressed like a Puerto Rican whore?” I heard a voice behind me ask, who I saw was my big brother.

Gabriele, or Gabe as most of us called him, was a pretty athletic guy, several years older than me. He looked the complete opposite of me in pretty much every way, having black greasy hair, wearing a white tank top with an unbuttoned yellow shirt over it, jeans, a gold necklace, and not to mention having an extremely hairy chest and arms. The guys called him ‘Stiletto Gabe’ because of how much he loved to use his trusty switchblade.

“Well, uh…funny you should say that, ‘cause, uh…I kinda…am one.”

“Puerto Rican?”

“What? No, of course not!”

“Oh, phew. For a moment I was worried Mom did somethin’ bad back then,” Gabe said in relief, which just earned an angry frustrated stare from our dad.

“No, Gabe. I mean, that I am…someone who deals in sex work,” I try to explain without outright directly saying it.

“Sex work? Ya mean as in…prostitution?” Gabe asked.

I raised my eyebrow at him. “Well, I don’t see what else it could mean.”

“As in you run the business?” another voiced asked.

I turned to the other face on the table to see it was Vincenzo De Luca, or Vinny as most of us called him too, the most powerful capo in the family and a long time friend of my father’s. He’s also Gabe’s godfather, Gabe hung around him all the time as a kid, and we called him Uncle Vinny. It was easy to tell Gabe was hugely influenced by him due to how similar they looked, have the same greasy black hair, except Vinny’s had grey sideburns, and also Vinny had more tan skin than Gabe, who was pretty pale. They had similar hairy arms, a gold chain around his neck, and he wore a purple silk shirt.

“Uh…well…no, actually. I…am an employee.”

“What d’ya work as there, exactly?” Gabe asked again.

“Oh my God, do I really have to spell it out for you guys?! I’m a sex worker! A prostitute!” I shouted, and immediately after the entire table went into stunned silence, and I started getting anxious again as I realized what I just said.

Gabe was the first to break the silence, his mouth agape. “Ho-lee shit!...Are you guys hearin’ what I’m hearin’?!”

“That ya brother just said he’s a whore? Yeah, I heard it,” Vinny replied, also in shock.

“Son of a bitch!” another voice yelled, this one belonging to Paulie.

Paulie Sirico’s a soldier from Vinny’s crew, but he’s easily been in the family the longest. He’s been working for us for around fifty years, ever since my dad was a little kid and my grandfather was the one running things. He was a pretty old guy, with black hair that had two large white streaks going through it above his wrinkly forehead, and he wore a light blue tracksuit.

My dad remained silent the longest. He just stared at me in complete disbelief, his mouth hanging open, but not too much that his cigar could fall out. 

“Is this supposed to be a joke?” my dad asked.

“N-No, it isn’t,” I answered nervously.

Gabe’s mouth was agape and his eyebrows were raised, as if he didn’t know whether to laugh or be distraught by the situation. At times, it looked like he was almost leaning towards the former. 

“Madone…” Vinny murmured under his breath, in complete disbelief.

Paulie lowered his head and raised his hands before getting up from his chair. “I can’t listen to any more of this. How much more betrayal’s gonna happen to me?!” he exclaimed before walking out of the room.

The room was filled with awkward silence for a few moments after Paulie left, and I just stood there beside the table like an idiot. Gabe still looked surprised, still processing what he just heard, while Vinny just looked down with a disappointed and defeated look on his face.

My father finally broke the silence. “I just can’t believe it. I spent all my blood, sweat, and tears to make sure you’d get into college so you’d have a bright future.” I was really tempted to say that most of that blood, sweat, and tears did not come from my dad, especially the blood. “And you throw away that potentially bright future o’ yours to…turn into this?!” I was expecting my father to sound furious, instead he sounded more distraught.

“Look at what you’re doin’ to yaself, son! You’re destroyin’ ya body as well as ya mind! Have you no shame?! Have you no self-respect?! We was hopin’ you’d be able to land a respectable job afta’ college, not seein’ ya gettin’ passed around between a buncha jackasses like fuckin’ soccer ball!”

I don’t know what came over me, but I just got the impulse to make a terrible joke in response to that. “Well, I am pretty good at handling balls–”

“Shut up! My heart is breakin’ into a million pieces right now an’ you’re treatin’ it like a joke!”

I jumped back slightly at my dad’s sudden outburst.

“All my life,I worked my hardest to give ya the best life! An’ now ya come back an’ spit in my face by tellin’ me you threw ya bright future away for…for…for this?! On my birthday too! You come here just to bring disgrace to me and my family! I can’t take any more o’ this! Just get outta my sight!”

I just stood there in stunned silence. My dad has said pretty bad stuff to me before, but nothing on this level. I felt like I was gonna cry, but I stopped myself from doing so, my expression hardening instead.

“Are you done?” I asked, my dad remaining silent in response, looking away.

“You know, Dad? We haven’t spoken to each other in years. Now, I could’ve stayed away and not come to your birthday this year like I have all the previous years, but I didn’t. I came all the way here despite knowing how you’d probably react to how I am now, but I still did. Why? Honestly, I’m not too sure myself, but it’s probably because you’re my dad. Sure, you may not be the best dad in the world, far from it, but you’re still my dad. So I guess I figured I should at least try to make your birthday party this one time! I just wanted to try and do something nice for you after we’ve been apart for years and hoped we could spend some quality time together instead of fighting! But if that’s what you want, fine! I don’t wanna argue any longer with someone I know doesn’t wanna be convinced anyway! Here’s your cannolis, hope you enjoy them,” I said as I tossed the box of cannolis in front of him, which he looked down at, and I immediately walked out of the room, and I could feel Gabe, Vinny, and my dad’s eyes following me as I left. 

Before I reached the front door, though, I stopped myself. Something inside me told me to check out what was going on in the other room. I guess I was just curious to see if my dad really did genuinely mean what he said. I went back and peeked into the room, and luckily nobody inside noticed me. I saw my dad pull the box of cannolis closer and opened it reading the note I had written inside (it was probably stained with cream, putting the not inside was probably not the smartest idea, but I just wanted to have the element of surprise to my gift). I wrote down “To my favorite dad in the world! Happy birthday! Sorry I couldn’t get anything better for your birthday, but I’m glad I get to see you again! ^w^”

I saw my dad just stare down in silence reading my note, his squinty-eyed face showing unclear and conflicting emotions. Part of me wanted to go back inside, but my better instincts told me to walk away, which I did. I stood on the sidewalk and pulled out my phone (which was also pink) and started to order an Uber home, but just before I could press the order button, I heard a voice behind me.

“Ay!” I turned to see it was Gabe. “Pops wants to talk to you before you go,” he nodded inside.

“I gotta go home, Gabe,” I protested.

“Ains, stop bein’ a pain in the ass an’ just get inside.”

I sighed and complied, I knew it wouldn’t be above my brother to forcefully drag me back inside. I followed him back to the dining room I just left a moment ago and saw Dad sitting in the same spot, except he now sat with his arms on the table, his fingers interlocking, and he stared quietly at me with his cigar in his mouth.

“Something wrong, Dad?” I asked.

My dad remained silent for a moment before speaking. “You really like ya job?”

“Uh…” I didn’t really know what to answer at first, since I really wasn’t expecting him to ask that. “Well…yeah, I enjoy doing it, and it helps put food on my table.”

“How much they pay ya?”

“Um…it kinda depends. But I make an average of around $500 an hour, and since I usually receive around four or five customers a day, I can make $2500 a day! I only work one day a week, though. Two sometimes, but that only happens once in a while.”

My dad just looked at me with a face of disbelief. “2500? 2500?! Ya have to get fucked up the ass everyday an’ they only pay ya 2500?!”

“Uh, Dad, I said it wasn’t everyda–”

“This is a fuckin’ disgrace! It’s an insult! Do they think my son is cheap goods or somethin’?! C’mon, Son! We’re goin’ down there!” my dad commanded as he git up from his seat.

“Going down where?”

“To the whorehouse ya work at, of course!” he said before turning to Gabe and Vinny. “Gabriele! Vincenzo! Come with us an’ get the car ready!” he ordered.

“D-Dad, you really don’t need to do this…” I nervously tried to stop him. I knew that once things get personal with my dad, things were gonna end badly.

“No, I fuckin’ do! C’mon, Son!” he said as he grabbed my arm and pulled me with him to the car.

After less than an hour of driving, we arrived at the town I was currently residing in (I didn’t have enough money to move somewhere further away) and we eventually arrived at my workplace.

“Ugh, what a dump,” my dad commented.

I didn’t blame him for saying that, from the outside it didn’t look remarkable. It was a pretty dark dingy alleyway that you’d usually try to avoid unless you wanna end up like Batman’s parents. The one thing that stood out was the door on one of the walls that looked slightly cleaner than everything else around it, with light shining through its small window.

We barged inside with me following behind, and the interior looked much nicer than the outside, with clean walls and carpeted floors. In front of us, we saw a lone guy sitting behind a counter, surprised but happy to see me, and also intimidated to see my family.

“Oh, Ainsley! Didn’t expect to see you today! Who are these guys you brought with you? Can I help you fine gentlemen today?” he asked my family, who just continued stared at him, not listening to what he was saying.

“You the guy in charge?” my dad asked, pointing at him, his cigar still in his mouth.

“Uh, I guess, yeah. Well, honestly, I more just kinda arrange the schedules and accept the payments and–” he got interrupted by Vinny who snuck up behind him while he was talking and slammed his face hard on the counter before pulling his head back and wrapping a garrote wire around his neck, not too tight that he suffocates, but just enough to know they mean business.

My dad leaned in close to him, looking down at his frightened face with a bleeding nose. “Lemme start off by tellin’ ya the difference between you an’ me. You’re a pathetic nobody an’ I’m a legitimate businessman. Y’know why everybody in my town knows who I am? It’s because people love me. People respect me. I bet my son ‘ere who’s worked ‘ere for God knows how long doesn’t even know what ya name is.”

“Actually, Dad, his name is–”

“Shut up, son! I’m talkin’ right now!” Dad interrupted me before turning back to who he was speaking to.

“My point is this, if ya disappeared from the face o’ the Earth, no one would give two shits,” he continued, and I restrained myself from saying I would. “So here’s what you’re gonna do; from now on, my son is the one who decides his schedules and when he wants to do his…job, an’ you are gonna pay him three times the amount ya usually pay ‘im!”

“Three times?! But that’s way beyond what any of the workers here are paid! No one here is worth that much!”

“Well, too fuckin’ bad, ‘cause I’ll make it worth that much!” my dad pointed with his cigar in hand. “It’s easy for you to say they aren’t. You’re not the ones takin’ it up the ass everyday! My son may be the one suckin’ cocks, but you’re the real cocksuckers ‘round ‘ere! If I find out you’re payin’ my son even a cent less than what I told ya to pay ‘im, I’ll make sure Gabriele ova’ here’ll cut the balls off you, an’ every otha’ fuckin’ degenerate that comes to this hellhole you call a place o’ business!” Gabe pulled out his switchblade to show as my dad said that. “Am I makin’ myself clear?!”

“Y-Yes, sir! You’re very clear! But I’ll have to talk to my boss about this, it all comes down to him! And he’s not someone who really listens to others!”

This time, it was Gabe who spoke. “Then maybe we’ll take one o’ ya fingers. Maybe then he’ll know we’re worth listenin’ to!”

Gabe grabbed one of my handler’s hands and held it down on the counter, preparing to bring down his switchblade on one of his fingers, ignoring his cries for mercy. But luckily, just before Gabe could do anything, I decided to step in.

“STOP!” I yelled, stopping Gabe who was halfway from bringing his switchblade down. “You don’t have to go this far! He didn’t do anything wrong! You’re just gonna make things worse for everyone involved if you shed blood here!”

The whole room felt silent, all eyes were now on me, and they were all looking at each other, not knowing what to do. Gabe and Vinny looked to Dad, waiting for what he had to say, who seemed to be seriously thinking about what I was saying. 

“Y’know what? He has a point. Put the knife away, Gabriele,” Dad ordered, which Gabe reluctantly obeyed. “But we should still make sure the message is heard.”

Gabe smirked. “Yeah, I was thinkin’ that too,” he said before punching my handler hard in the nose, ‘causing him to bleed, even I recoiled seeing it. “Let that be a message to ya boss that we’re not fuckin’ around.”

“We thank ya for ya time,” Dad said as he put his cigar out on the ashtray on the counter. “C’mon, let’s go,” he nodded us to the door, and we all followed, Vinny having to pocket his garotte wire again.

The ride back to my family’s house was mostly quiet. but around halfway through the journey, I decided I should say something about what just happened.

“Um…Dad? I appreciate what you did and all, but…you really didn’t have to all that. Y’know, hurt him and all. I’m just fine with the pay I was getting.”

“Nonsense, Son! I may tolerate ya gettin’ fucked for a livin’ but I ain’t gonna tolerate ya gettin’ fucked ova’ with ya livin’! If you really love doin’ this job as much as ya say ya do, then the least I can do is make sure ya get what ya deserve.” 

What Dad said actually made me smile, though the wholesomeness of the moment was kinda undercut by Gabe, who was driving.

“Fuck that ‘three times’ bullshit, I’d’ve made sure I get paid at least ten million bucks if I was gonna get fucked in my ass!”

Dad and I just stared at Gabe from the back seat. Dad went silent for a short moment before continuing. “Listen, uh…sorry for blowin’ up at ya back at the house, I was jus’ really shocked at the news I was gettin’. An’ to be completely honest, I’ve neva’ understood, or even liked this whole gay, queer, or that ‘LGBT fuckin’ whateva’ they’re called’ bullshit. I find it disgustin’ an’ sinful, an’ it goes against all Christian teachin’s!” I had to prevent myself from pointing out the hypocrisy of him saying that.

“But I’ve always said ‘family is everythin’’, an’ I guess I’d be a pretty shitty father an’ a massive hypocrite if I didn’t follow through with that statement. I mean, most fathers like me woulda disowned ya, an’ I considered it for a moment, but uh…I missed ya, Son. I’m really happy ya showed up to my birthday.”

I started tearing up a bit during that moment. I never expected Dad to say something like that to me. I knew he cared about me, but I can’t remember the last time he was this…open with me. I smiled at him, and he did the same.

“Thanks, Dad.”

Dad then put one of his large hands on my shoulder. It’s only during these moments I really realize just how much bigger my dad is compared to me, and everyone else around me for that matter.

“Remember, Son, I’ll always love ya, no matta’ how disgustin’ an’ sinful ya lifestyle is.”

My smile kinda faltered a bit when he said that, but I still appreciated what he was trying to say. “Uh…thanks, Dad. You too.”

He let go of my shoulder and we went back to staring at the road in front or beside us, but Dad had one more thing to say.

“You’re welcome to stay at the house however long ya want before headin’ home.”

“Thanks. I was thinking of doing that too.”

We spent the rest of the car ride in silence.

[buzzybee3]

From your post earlier, what are the two ideas in your head I’m curious. I also love goats! But I don’t understand why these images are together. I need to know! My curiosity needs this!!!

💛💙💛💙💛💙💛💙💛💙💛💙💛💙💛💙

Of course!! Also the goat is very important.

Sorry I didn’t answer sooner I’ve been busy with school 😓

Tw for traumatic and dark themes such as self harm, mentions of almost suicide, and violence. This is masked as a kids show as all good shows are, like gravity falls and she-ra. So strap in yall.

The goat is a god that has somehow manages to keep his universe from destruction and relatively peaceful. He created a tome by accident a millennia ago and while it looks horrifying, it actually has never brought harm to his world, if anything only healing. Except nobody knows this, there is no record of this book or its creation. Nobody knows the goat is the god in charge of the world. It’s supposed to be a sort of inside joke that he's in charge.

Our main character is an 18-year-old Aroace individual, who has suffered from trauma her whole life. Still, in small ways, she doesn't feel like she deserves to be upset or impacted by these ‘micro-traumas’, which she learns is not good eventually. She is very AuADHD coded and most of her mental health problems and traumas stem from that. Her friends in season 1 make her feel worthless, even if not on purpose, but I promise it gets better for her.

She finds a book by chance after a bumpy train ride and she becomes bonded to it and is able to use its magic to transform into creatures of light and power as she discovers more of herself and faces her trauma. These creatures in the universe stem from pure light and hope, like doves, phoenixes, and even unicorns, and of course, mister the goat god is in this category too. Again, this is disguised as a kids show, there's no direct talk about abuse and trauma, it is just heavily implied.

As the first season progresses, there will be little things that her current friend group does that make her feel left out, useless, or otherwise a bad person, when she is in fact not one. They seem like unimportant problems because she's still able to go on adventures with them and have fun, but this is just self-destructive behavior. During this time she starts making new friends who understand her, and who are like her, but she is unable to hang out with them due to outside circumstances, they make her happy though. We also get to see a lot of her thought processes for these events, and why she reacts the way she does, mostly just to prove to viewers that she is in fact not lazy or sloth, just burned out. This is based on many of my friends' experiences as well as myself in order to give something more relatable to viewers.

As time passes, shadow monsters start to plague the cities and the land near her, and she decides to start fighting them using her cool new light powers. her friends are taking advantage of her in small ways until the end of season one shows her new friends, specifically one who had been tasked with deciphering the words in the book, learn that the page that seemed to warn about this other evil that creates shadow monsters was actually a warning to the books user that by being bonded to the book and using the powers it grants them, allows their anxiety and mental health to manifest itself as monsters. The effect of using so much pure light causes more dark to show up to balance it out because the MC has no internal light to give back in return.

The main character ends up almost consumed by this darkness in the middle of the finale of season 1 before her true, new friends come to help her. However, they end up being taken down by the shadows as the main character learns that while she can get help from others, the only way to truly move forward is if she accepts this truth and fights this for herself. Not anyone else, just her, because in cases like these, people need to accept change and help in order to actually grow. And they win. and then season 2 is coming to terms with all of that. with her new friends traumas coming to light and all of them healing as they become harbingers of the light.

The shadow monsters are an allegory for self-harm as fighting them brings physical damage to MC, getting bruises and cuts as a result, and at the end of the first season almost consumes them, which is an allegory for suicide. and the light is an allegory for healing and learning from trauma, as the main character's powers become stronger the more they face and accept their trauma instead of run from it. However, MC’s new friends don’t make fun of her for getting hurt, they tell her she doesn’t need to fight the monsters alone, and basically call her a hero for living through all the battles, because she is, and anyone who survives this sorta situation is because they are heroes, just not those of a typical sense. There is also this random goat(mister god guy) that is connected to the book they meet at the end of season one, which starts at the end of episode one as a sort of random flash, with empty white horns, but in the book, there are pages that allude to it in modern language, and everything else is in ciphers. However, by the end of season one a good portion of its horns are covered in golden plates and coloring.

By the end of the show in the season 2 finale they can use the power of this light hope goat (mister god) to start helping to bring light back to the universe. Basically, it ends on a note that while not everyone can be helped, it is still good to be the light in someone's life, with the end credit scene being completely silent and having help call lines for things like domestic violence, suicide prevention, and many other topics before the credits actually roll. The main topics being, of course, suicide, mental health, LGBTQIA+ support, and violence of any kind. These hotlines are in all of the episodes, not exactly hidden but they only appear in episodes they correlate to.

I want the character design to be a very significant representation of the characters’ personality, such as circle, square, or triangle characters. and their emotions can be shown through their lines and exaggeration. So a triangle or square character can have softer edges when they feel vulnerable or sad or even lighthearted. while circle characters can have sharper edges when they get upset, mad, or snarky.

As for the second idea-

Mc is a siren. Her scales are the colors of the lesbian flag but inconspicuous. (because yes) Pretend it's the needed colors to camouflage in the sand hehe.

In this universe when anything or person dies they turn into whisps. And they actually look really cute, but only creatures can see them, not humans.

In this universe, when a creature eats a whisp it becomes more powerful.

Whips are very rare to find because they are in hiding. However our protagonist hates hurting them.

This results in a small cave being filled with them and the protagonist protecting them from other sea monsters.

One day they get caught by a giant monster and everyone has to flee. But this is just part of the backstory.

Getting to the actual storyline- MC lives in a world where humans live among monsters happily, except for a few. This is actually in the same universe as the last show, just different parts of the world have different effects on the magic due to something that will be explored in the shows ;).

There are lots of scientists that do experiments on these sorts of monsters illegally.

Less of a kids show, more for teens. Yes I know that sounds ridiculous. (Partially due to crazier fight scenes and also due to blatant talk about death.)

In this universe there are many creatures, most are the last of their kind, but can live for long periods of time, like hundreds of years, helped by the wisps they eat.

The point is that the main character has to evade both monsters and humans, and save their friends.

There is a human, a rich one, trying to kill her friends, mer and wisp, and trying to find a way to use their power for themself.

Some of her friends do actually die, and don’t come back as wisps due to the experiments.

But before we can get to that point, MC has to go on wacky adventures, getting a human disguise, learning to be human, and getting a ton of friends as she ends up learning way more about herself in the process of trying to get strong in a world where usually you need to hurt others to do so.

This idea is less fleshed out but I have a ton of ideas for things they have to escape.

At some point she and her human friends find an island with lots of beds that lower into tanks. The island is artificially made and has some rotting bodies inside of older mer. These are from before the ban and illegalization of hunting mer and cryptids.

That and having to find a way to sneak into the giant mansion. And having to find ways to stop the advances of men, because she doesn't like them, having to sacrifice self morals in order to get a ticket in. None of these people know she is not human.

There's a recurring character that is meant to be her partner, but they don’t get together until the last episode. She is actually a cryptid too, but neither of them realize the other's true identity till the MC’s is revealed in the mansion during a large party.

The other cryptid saves her life, along with her friends, and there's a small period of time that involves fixing everything, and finding and putting a stop to all others bringing harm to these creatures.

You might wonder how the wisp friends fit into this. Just know they actually make very good talking buddies, and also secret spies. Only creatures can see them, but somehow they still find trouble.

I am currently working on refs for everyone so I’ll post them by January hopefully.

[pernesophe]

Embarrassment

This is something that’s been on my mind lately, and with Halloween here and some embarrassingly cheap past Halloween costumes coming to mind I guess I just wanted to get my thoughts out there.

In my younger days I often felt embarrassed. Okay, I am an anxious individual, so maybe shame is a more apt word. I remember wondering, pretty frequently, how to not feel embarrassed. At 27 I think I finally have a half answer, maybe?

So, how do you stop being embarrassed?

The short answer is - you don’t. My long answer is, well, longer.

I think I’ll start by sharing a few embarrassing times of my own:

Most of these have to do with past relationships just FYI.

My first boyfriend ever, who I broke up with maybe 5 times over and kept asking him back out until he finally said no and that he’d had enough. Truly, fair enough. But I lived in a small town, so it was certainly awkward to see him, his family, and his friends around town. And of course my peers asked me about it a lot when I would have rather just forgotten about it.

My next three boyfriends were all brothers. I don’t really have an explanation, and honestly the family that let me date all of their sons in a row didn’t either. Anyway, in that same small town I certainly developed a reputation. Again, it was brought up often when I wanted to just forget.

And yet, I was smiled at and waved to. I was still welcomed at family gatherings. My friends and family still showed up to my birthdays and other life events. I still made new friends, and found my partner of 6 years who I plan to spend the rest of my life with… I guess what I’m really trying to say is that despite the embarrassment, and the shame - I was and still am loved.

In these past 27 years I have also found that there are much worse things than embarrassment. Not to say that it's not a valid feeling, but it is a passing one. Whereas death and grief are perpetual, and taxes may outlive us all.

Even as I’m writing this, even as you may be reading this - in just a few short moments a million embarrassing incidents have occurred all over the world… 

and now they’ve passed. 

Either cascading into joyous laughter, shameful anger, or messy tears - the world has continued turning, and tomorrow will bring a thousand new opportunities to be embarrassed.

It’s scary, and beautiful, but it’s all up to you whether or not that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Because another thing I’ve learned, and yes most of them are old sayings tossed around that I thought had no real meaning, but another thing I’ve learned is that nobody cares. Everyone is too worried over themselves to own your embarrassment as well as their own.

I personally like to think that’s a good thing, because that means you are the decider. 

So, will you be embarrassed about yourself?

I think it’s a waste of time, personally. 

No one else can be you, or do it as well as you will. And you wanna know the best kept secret?

No one gets to tell you that you’re being yourself in the wrong way. How can you be wrong when you’re just being yourself? And truly, honestly, the biggest pill of it all is the fact that when you own being yourself it is improbable that someone is going to fault you for it.

Because at the end of the day we are all embarrassed. From our mothers, to our fathers, to our teachers, leaders, siblings, spouses, children… all of us. Because we are human. So, if you’re ever feeling a little embarrassed, a little ashamed, just remember that you are not alone. 

You are just having an extremely human moment.

To add to that point, I know everyone says “just be yourself”, but we don’t always see that in practice. I think the idea of manifestation or “speaking into existence” fits here, because that’s all anyone is hoping for. To see someone else being themself - owning and accepting their embarrassment with a laugh - so we can finally see that it’s okay for us to do it too.

So why wait on the side of the pool while everyone else is waiting to jump in? Isn’t that first person to dive right in always the coolest? Even if it's cold and lonely - the water always warms up and you’ll have company before long. 

And just remember, you wouldn’t have been invited to the party if everyone didn’t want to see you there.

This poem was written by me and belongs to me - please don't share or repost it.

SP's Poem Collection

[strangestcase]

Like Ok sure the “twist” that Sadness is the most mature, level-headed emotion and has a very important role in Riley’s life not despite but BECAUSE she makes her bad is already set up by scenes like Sadness consoling Bing Bong (this is the moment I realize I sound insane) or figuring out how to get into the Subconscious without forcing the door. But (gestures broadly) having a role that contrasts with the way she’s perceived isn’t exclusive to Sadness. Take my hand.

While other characters’ personified emotions are invariably depicted as part of themselves, Riley’s emotions have personalities of their own and they arguably can choose what they look like- their gender presentation, their fashion sense, the way they talk. So the whole point with Sadness is that, barring the fact her role as an emotion is too abstract and “adult” for Joy to understand it, she doesn’t exactly LOOK like she’s the one sensible person in the room. She looks like a perpetually bullied teenager (which she arguably is until she’s eventually accepted), she’s whiny and pessimistic, she only gets excited by cute boys and sad movies.

Her being THE tool for Riley’s social life and maturing clashes a lot with her garbagegirl aesthetic, is what I’m saying. The thing is, that’s not unique to her. As I’ve said before, since Riley’s little brain buddies are, in-universe, people of their own, they make a conscious effort to carry themselves one way or the other. The most obvious example is Joy who looks like a manic pixie dream girl, is literally made of glitter, and seems perpetually optimistic- but actually is insecure, domineering, self-loathing. And you can tell she forms a dyad (not just narratively but LITERALLY) with Sadness because her secondary theme color is blue.

But what I was thinking last night is that the subplot with Fear, Disgust, and Anger getting frontstuck having to man Riley’s brain by themselves and pretending Joy is still fronting everything is okay ALSO acts as foreshadowing to the final reveal. Okay, it’s less obvious with Disgust since she acts catty and high and mighty and has all the right to be, though her gauge for what counts as “poison” is incredibly loose. But it’s more obvious, even a fucking plot point in the latter’s case, with Fear and Anger.

Fear carries himself as a rational, logical man. He dresses formally, can usually be seen writing stuff down or drinking tea, he acts like a film critic when dreams roll in. However, he’s far from rational. He is literally fear personified! The only moment in which he’s acting rationally is the reoccurring nightmare scene, only because he knows it’s not real. And Anger appears to be serious, no-nonsense, businesslike, ADULT, but he’s the one that decides running away is a perfectly reasonable plan, he’s a little goofy, and he thinks “piss shit” is the funniest thing a twelve year old can say.

So Inside Out (2015) just. Sat us down and said. Emotions meant for survival (avoiding danger, avoiding disease, righting wrong) aren’t rational, aren’t mature, can’t be human without the missing parts. Isn’t it funny that their personifications present themselves as rational and mature and human? Anyway the incarnation of maturity and empathy that the protagonist literally can’t live without and needs to grow up looks like she eats ice cream straight from the tub.

Woke up at like 3 am with the sudden realization that Inside Out was setting up the plot twist with Sadness all the time not just through plot beats but also through the other personified emotions and how they’re depicted. Don’t call.