#well at least tumblr isn't where i learned these things

[threadmonster]

My coworker quickly covered the suggested searches to try and save me from character death spoilers in a popular series. Girl, you think people keep spoilers under wraps anymore? I already knew these characters die. I don't even go here and I knew that already.

[omgthatdress]

Sooooo ummmmmmm this is something that's probably going to piss a lot of people off, but I feel like I really need to say it.

If you get a message from an account claiming to be a Palestinian fundraiser, it is a bot. It is a scam. You need to report & delete the message and encourage others to do the same.

I know because I get messages on this account DAILY. I have a very high follower count and I'm pretty active and I interact with my followers a lot, and apparently that all adds up to one big bot magnet.

Bots following and messaging this account was a MASSIVE problem before Tumblr fixed its new account policies. I used to spend literally hours blocking and reporting the hundreds of bots that I would get following me each day.

I learned a lot about bots and how to identify them. The easiest way is with no avatar, "untitled" in the blog description (BTW if your avatar is still set to default PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD change it because you run a substantial risk of being accidentally blocked & reported as a bot).

One of the dead give aways of a bot was what I call "word salad" names. Three seemingly random words strung together making no sense, always adjective, adjective or noun, noun. If you reported a lot of these bots, you'd notice the same words kept showing up.

Nowadays, I am bombarded with fundraiser requests and sometimes, they don't even bother to hide the fact that they're a bot. The avatar is default, the blog title is "untitled," and the blog name is a classic randomly-generated word salad.

However MOST of the requests I get come from at least semi-legit looking accounts. There are pictures, a name, a story. Never mind that I've gotten that message three times from different accounts.

Sometimes, they claim to be vetted, but the whole vetting system essentially adds up to "trust me bro." There is no way of guaranteeing that this account isn't just lying about being vetted, claiming to be vetted by a false person, or are using the identity of a real Palestinian to scam people.

Previously, I've seen a lot of people getting attacked for raising questions about these fundraisers and getting attacked for being racist or for harming Palestinian families in danger, like Tumblr isn't a website famous for its scams and the words "The Arkh Project" "All or Nothing" or "Miss Officer and Mr. Truffles" mean nothing to you.

I personally have been scammed by people claiming to be charities on Tumblr before, specifically, The Leelah Project which used the name of a trans teenager who died by suicide to swindle people out of their money.

Luckily, there are actual, respected charities out there you can give money to if you want to help the cause:

Palestinian Children's Relief Fund

Palestine Red Crescent Society

United Nations Relief Works Agency

Islamic Relief

World Central Kitchen

Médecins Sans Frontièrs

One of the hardest things to accept about the situation in Palestine is that realistically, there is very little that your average outsider can do to change it. However, these large, well-respected and trustworthy charities are out there doing the hard work to keep people alive, and should be where the donation money is going

These scam bots feed on people's naïvety and need to believe that they are making a difference, and even worse, feed on the fear that by ignoring them, it somehow makes you a racist doing direct harm to a refugee family, when in fact they are using the suffering of Palestinians to take away money from those in need.

As far as fundraisers that don't send out random asks for donations, I honestly don't know. You'll have to do the work yourself and approach with much caution.

Be careful out there.

[lethesbeastie]

Hi, I saw your post about practicing drawing fat people and I was wondering if you could compile like a list of resources or references?

It can be difficult to find resources for drawing the wide variety of forms fat bodies can occupy, so I've done my best to bring together some resources I've been able to prove have some degree of diversity in the references they offer!

My primary resource recommendation for drawing fat people is Morpho Anatomy For Artists: Fat And Skin Folds! It does a wonderful job breaking down where fat accumulates on the body, how it interacts with the familiar landmarks of human anatomy, and what sort of shapes it tends to form under the influence of gravity. It's a phenomenal reference and my top recommendation for anyone seeking to improve at drawing fat people!

When it comes to finding decent photo references for fat people, the pickings are frustratingly slim. Most sites that specialize in pose references either don't have fat models or have all their images behind paywalls. Of the resources I looked through, the best sources for pose references were Adorkastock and Line of Action.

@adorkastock actively seeks to provide an incredible profile of pose references with diverse body types, and as an added bonus you can access a lot of their images for free on their site/Tumblr or join their patreon for early access to images! Line of action is a site aimed towards practicing figure drawing, providing images and a timed function to challenge artists to sketch within a set time limit. I took the time to go through roughly 300+ images and was pleased to find that during my session around two-to-three out of every ten photos were fat models. The only caveats to this was the fact that most of the images were of the same individual, limiting the applications for studying the variants of fat bodies. Still, it's an amazing tool that has a free mode and allows you to filter the types of references you want based on age and level of nudity.

Beyond sites that specialize in art reference photography, there's also the ever popular Pinterest, which is the site where I typically seek references for my personal studies. Due to the nature of Pinterest's extensive collection, there's a vast variety of references for different fat body types that includes a lot more "everyday" people. The primary issue with Pinterest however is the rampant reposting and lack of proper credits for images, which can make things dicey depending on how you wish to use the references you find. For personal studies this isn't really an issue, but for any sort of professional or paid work is something to be aware of just for the sake of accountability.

* For those who are 18+, porn photography of real people also offers an incredible wealth of visual resources for fat bodies and how they interact with gravity/movement/etc. The variety of positions and angles offer many opportunities to study human anatomy, and it's a pretty well-known fact that drawing NSFW art can be an important learning experience for those struggling with drawing anatomy. In the end, it depends on your personal level of comfort with viewing/drawing explicit images, but it's not something you should completely overlook.

Last but not least, look at the work of artists you admire who draw fat people! While I typically recommend sticking to photo references for learning anatomy, studying artist's portrayals of fat people is also incredibly helpful for learning different tactics for simplifying and/or stylizing fat bodies to better fit ones own style. There are also plenty of artists who've crafted tutorials detailing their approach to drawing fat folks, so I highly recommend you check them out as well! I hope the resources I've linked here can help you in your studies, and feel free to drop another ask if you have any more questions! I'm planning on posting a tutorial on how I do studies for fat people soon, so that will be an additional resource for you once I've got it posted!

[starshinegazer]

Shoutout Sunday

I just wanted to collect some of the most memorable Astarion fanfics I've read so far and to give them and their authors a big ol' shoutout. These are some of the fics I strongly suggest others to check out, if you haven't yet.

Also, please feel free to comment and recommend your favorites as well! And, if you know of some of these authors on tumblr, lemme know, so I can add them too :) I'm not too good with words, so I'll be slapping some of the authors own words as descriptions (for now). Oh, and do be mindful of tags etc etc... Here goes, in no particular order:

Pieces Still Stuck In Your Teeth by howlsmovinglibrary (@wetcatspellcaster) "The Vampire Ascendent has crossed a line. Eleven years after making the biggest mistake of her life and losing the man she loved, tiefling wizard (now Archmage) Rosalie decides it’s time to put this Astarion in the ground for good. Hopefully, both her head and her heart are strong enough to see this awful task through to its end."

An Honest Lie by howlsmovinglibrary (@wetcatspellcaster) "Astarion and Rosalie think they understand each other perfectly, but they have each fallen prey to the other’s mask. As they both go forward with their adventure, will either of them dare to be honest?"

A Crooked Touch by eyes_of_the_lamb "If you want to read a story where Astarion is sweet from the start and Tav is here to fix him, this isn't the one. If you want to read about two terribly broken men spending a good long while making each other worse before they make each other better, this might be for you. If you thought the in-game romance was a little too easy and it should have been ten times more painful and difficult to convince Astarion he's worthy of love, this is definitely for you."

Perfect Slaughter by Imagineitdear (@imagineitdearies ) "Tyrus, a low-born drow with aspirations for necromantic wizardry, finds none of the hospitality he expected from his new noble patron, Cazador Szarr. Quickly he loses his life and future, his hopes and dreams—only to find something new to fight for in the unlikely arms of Cazador’s least favorite spawn."

A Novel Experience by meanboss (@meanbossart ) "Initially just an epilogue for my own game campaign with my big meaty dark urge drow, turned whole story which I accidentally deleted and am now reuploading, my bad LOL

Hope you enjoy!"

Carving Through The Dark by skitter "The realm is safe and the story is over.

Wren and Astarion descend into the Underdark in search of a new purpose, and learn a few things along the way. Namely, that healing isn't linear and sometimes love takes the long way round."

Blood In The Weave by gingealish "There is no need to breathe, but I miss it all the same. The suffocating silence, the desperate darkness have encapsulated me for I don’t even know how long; It could have been tendays or years. I’ve long since accepted my punishment, stopped trying in vain to crack the seal of my tomb against the onslaught of panic and hunger. Now I lay here, thinking of the friends I’ve lost, the lover who turned on me, and how to finally get even.

Astarion is the new Big Bad Evil Guy. Spawn Tav is rescued by a familiar face. "

When He’s all but Forgotten How to Love Again by bg_brainrot "You saved Baldur’s Gate almost 300 years ago. You died 150 years ago. On a new life now, you find that memories from your past lead you to a specific silver-haired man. Who was he, and why won't he leave you be? tldr; An Elf-Tav reincarnation story where Tav dreams about Astarion in their nightly reveries and eventually seeks him out once they reach maturity. Things definitely totally go well."

More Than Any Words by mataglap "They have saved the city and possibly the world. All is great and everyone is happy... except Astarion has been banished back into the shadows, and Tav is stuck in an uneven battle with his own oath. He's losing the fight. He knew he would from the moment he fell for Astarion. But he can't lose yet, not before they find a way for Astarion to walk in the sun again."

Inexhaustible Oil by homeward_bound "This is the absolute opposite of a redemption fic. A post-canon, fall-from-grace, "I can make you infinitely worse" kind of story, in which there is no simple happy ending. But there's mystery on the way. And dragons. True love, even. So if you're fine with that, come aboard. It's going to be a wild ride."

[ettawritesnstudies]

Etta's Guide to Writeblr (March 2023)

So you fled here from Twitter/TikTok... Where to start?

Welcome to Writeblr! Pull up a chair, open those documents, and pour yourself a cup of your favorite tea, coffee, or cocoa. The first thing you'll want to do is start following other writers. Check out this post for recommendations! Search through the notes to find hundreds more. Since I made that post, a bunch of people mentioned they're lurking and still trying to figure out tumblr, so I thought I'd make this post to help people get settled.

How to set up your blog

Make your blog name something not resembling a pornbot - it can be whatever you want, anything fun goes, just not [name###]. If you include "writer" or "author" somewhere in the url it makes it easier to spot writeblrs at a glance but it's not a requirement

Change your profile to something that's not the default, Make sure you have a blog title, and add a little description in your blog header if you feel like it!

Make a pinned post introducing yourself (pls don't use your real name or any IDing information for privacy's sake, this isn't facebook), a short summary of your WIPs, and links if you have an author's website/newsletter/ao3/etc. You can check my pinned post for an example

Make intro posts for each WIP! You can spruce these up with graphics (canva and unsplash are both great free resources to make edits/moodboards), excerpts, lists of tropes, character intros, etc. Link to the WIP intro in your pinned post so it's easy to find! You can update these as often as needed

If you want to make character intros, go wild. If you can't draw, piccrew is a great option. Just start talking about your WIP!

Come up with a tagging system to keep your blog organized. I recommend individual wip tags or at least one for your original writing in general so it's easy to search for your work on your blog

Keep track of Taglists for your WIPs. Whenever you post a new thing about your story, tag the people who asked to be notified to make sure they see it! Only tag people who ask to join the taglist, but it's a good way to keep track of interest. It's normal to have multiple taglists for each story+ one general writing taglist.

How to make writer friends

Reblog their work and add nice comments, either in the tags, comments, or the reblog itself People notice regulars in their notes and appreciate the attention. I promise it's not weird to compliment a total stranger

If that's too intimidating, community events are your friend!

Weekly Ask Games: These are weekly events that are loosely themed where writers send each other asks about their WIPs! The most common are Storyteller Saturday (about the writing process), Blorbsday (aka Blorbo Thursday about characters), and Worldbuilding Wednesday (about the setting of your story). If you answer these late, nobody really cares, but it's a fun way to receive prompts and learn more about other people's stories.

Ask Games/Memes: These are posts with lists of questions you can reblog from other people, sometimes themed or listed with emojis. It's common courtesy to send an ask from the list to the person you reblog it from, then people can send you questions as well, so you can talk about your stories! You can search for dozens of them

Tag games: There's a ton of different types of tag games, but basically someone @s you with a challenge/question, you reblog with your answer, and then @ a bunch of other people to continue the chain. Some common ones are Heads Up 7s Up (share the last 7 lines of your WIP), Last Line Tag (share the last line you wrote), and Find the Words (ctrl+f the given words in your doc and share the results, then give new words).

Formal events: These are community wide participation challenges organized by certain blogs! @writeblrsummerfest is every July?? August? I think? It's run by @abalonetea a few years strong, and there are daily prompts and ask games! @inklings-challenge is a month-long short story entry for Christian writeblrs. I think there was a valentines event in February. @moon-and-seraph is hosting a pitch week soon! Since these are more organized, it's very easy to find similar blogs and support!

Misc. Notes on using Tumblr

Follow the tags #writeblr and #writeblr community to find other writers, as well as other tags that interest you like #fantasy for example

If you want to bookmark a post to read later, you can like it and/or save it to your drafts

The queue/schedule function is very useful if you want to space out posts or have a backlog to keep your blog running when you get busy. This is good for the community because it gives older posts a chance to be rediscovered! You can change the posting frequency in the settings.

REBLOG YOUR OWN STUFF. People aren't always on at the same times and so it's the best way to account for people with different schedules and timezones. If you're worried about being annoying, you can tag those #self reblog or something similar and other people can filter the tag, but otherwise it's a welcomed and accepted practice.

If your excerpt is pretty long, put it under a cut. On desktop you can do this by selecting the squiggly button on the far right when you make a new paragraph, on mobile type :readmore: then hit enter.

It's polite to add descriptions to images and videos for visually or auditory impaired people. If you don't know how to write descriptions, here's a good resource

In your dashboard settings, it's best to shut off the options "Best Stuff First" and "Based on your Likes". These function as the website algorithm and suppresses the blogs you actually follow, which defeats the purpose of the site, letting the dash be in reverse chronological order. Also turn off Tumblr Live because it's malware as far as anyone's concerned.

Curate your experience, block the trolls, and be nice

Update for March 2024

How to shut off AI Scraping on your blog

Go to settings and find the Visibility tab

Scroll down to the tag that says "Prevent Third-Party Sharing"

Turn that knob over so that Automattic can't steal your work for their language training model databases >_<

The other settings will just hide your blog from search engines so they're useful for hiding from nosy parents or other Tumblr users but if you're trying to build an author platform you can leave them off.

Again, welcome to the community! I hope you have a ton of fun!

[chaos-in-deepspace]

Can't believe I gotta do this, but okay...strap on in guys because this isn't only a rant, but informational. Gonna show you how to clock AI writing, why it's bad, how to abuse AI for writing, and how to prove something was written using a chat bot.

Have you ever read a fic and had to pause for a moment? Contemplate a few things? You almost feel like a few times you just couldn't figure out. Or perhaps you saw something that just read super awkwardly.

If this describe you reading some fics, then you might've fallen victim to "AI Writers". Yes, that's correct! A writer who uses AI to help them write their fics. Mind you most people when using this method actually use chatbots! So it's not like they just run into ChatGPT, give it a prompt, and then post it. Oh no. They RP it, maybe clean it up a little so it reads more like a fic, and then they post it.

If any of you are use to RPing with Chatbots like Janitor.ai, or even C.ai, then you might occasionally read a fic and realize it's strikingly familiar to chat you read in your own chats. I, for one, dabble in RPing with bots when I get bored, which is how now and days I can read a fic, see certain lines, and just know.

Now I'm certain I don't need to sit here and explain why this is so bad. However, I'll explain anyways if you'd like to hear my opinion, as well as many other artists and writers:

AI is Plagiarism!

Ya, this is plagiarism. How do you think it's generating responses? Or for artwork, where do you think it's grabbing the images from. It doesn't do it itself. AI is basically giving a program information so it can generate things. A lot of programs that uses AI, as well as websites, uses that written information to generate your responses. You know Google Docs? Ya, it can take information from your writing there. Archive of Our Own? Bingo. Tumblr? Ya, it takes writing from here as well. That means the people who have spent a lot of time on their writing, spending years honing their craft, are having their writing styles and voices stolen from AI in order to make those generated responses. Now when it's just you RPing something, pop off. It's just you and your bot. Share it with a few friends, sure! If you post it online though, those words are a mashup of millions of stories written and posted online. So it's plagiarism. Plain and simple.

2. It sets you back as a writer

Ever wondered why some people can write the most amazing things ever? It's because they wrote. They learned. They practiced. It took time and effort in order to build up those skills. They got there by writing. So how is using AI affecting your writing? Easy, you're not writing. At least...not a lot. If you use a chatbot to write half the things in a fic, you're only doing half the work. You're also bouncing off the idea from your bot and going with it, instead of using your writer brain to figure out how this scene would best be executed. Imagine it like this. Someone uses AI to draw an image for themselves. Then they trace over it, add a few of their own touches, and color it the best they can. Did they suddenly learn how to draw? No. Because they didn't take the time to learn why something is placed like this, how the composition works, etc. Same thing with writing. If you're using AI to do all the work then you aren't learning, and you're not going to be getting better as a writer. If that's the case...why are you writing? It should be a fun experience to write, after all. It should be something you want to get better at. So why are you just having AI do it? Attention? You realize your fics need to be pretty well written to garner attention, right? That brings me to my third point.

3. We can tell...and it's not fun to read

Today a friend showed me an paragraph from a fic he found here on tumblr. I saw it. Without even having to ask I knew it was written by AI. Nobody talks like that except a robot. The wording? Repetitive for AI to use. "Their bond grew with every passing moment." | "Their shared connection." | "His voice was barely above a whisper." | "It was a testament to their relationship." | "He's determined to face this challenge with her, hand in hand, and to make the most out of the second chance he's been given." | "A renewed sense of purpose." | "He's determined to face this challenge with her" If I see these lines, I clock it as Janitor in a heartbeat. Sure, not every time it's used is AI, but those are the most common things I see in every RP with a bot, and I actively need to correct the bots or else they'll use it in every fucking reply. Another thing is...RPs read differently from a fic. They're not made to be read like a narrative story. It's a bot replying to someone, so when you do that things get weird. Not to mention sometimes clothes appear and disappear, a position is changed, etc. It's just not good writing...

4. It's lazy

Simple as that. It's fucking lazy to get AI to write a fic. Trust me, I am one lazy motherfucker. I hate doing things. I want to sleep for literally a solid week. However I made the decision to write things, so I write them. I put in the effort. Other writers who don't use AI? They put in the effort. I know at least 20 people who are depressed as all hell, can barely get out of bed unless it's to go to work, who decided to still write. Not everyone is going to be a fast writer. Not everyone is going to find writing easy. If you're going to commit, though, commit to it. Write it. Don't use AI.

With these points being made, I'm sure you can see why in the writer community, it's frowned upon to use AI as well as bots for your writing...especially when you don't disclose it. I could probably put everything aside if you just said it was written using AI. Honesty is the best policy.

People might not want to read it then, but at least they know that you used AI. At least you admitted to it. Using AI and then passing it off as completely original is disgusting.

So you clocked something as AI written. You’re pretty freaking sure this was written with a Chatbot. So you plug it into an AI checker and what? No AI detected? No fucking way.

Yes fucking way.

The detectors use a range of things like: Language Model Comparison, Repetitive phrases and structures, contextual awareness, among a few other things. Now look at the "Language Model" part. What if a Chatbot doesn't have the most common language models? It doesn't detect it as easily, that's what.

Where does that leave Chatbots? Well, it means it’s not really checking for things like Janitor or C.ai. A lot of times it flies under the radar because of this. I have found that there is at least one site that doesn’t do this. Instead of more or less checks the context of the text to see if it was written using AI, rather than relying on ai models.

Quillbot

This is what I use to check. I also did run it through some tests. Mind you, not every program is going to be completely accurate. This just happens to, after thorough testing, be the best at being able to tell if a chatbot was used.

As you can see here, the one on the far left is a fic that I ran through that was my own writing. In the middle I had copy/pasted my own responses, and my bot responses from Janitor. On the far right I pasted only Janitor responses. While it’s not accurate, it could still detect human written from a chat bot!

In comparison to me running it through other AI Detection softwares (one of them being Grammarly), where they detected nothing in the post that were written by both me, and the bot.

The entire reason I’m even making this post is because I happened to come across a fic that seemed like it was written using AI, so I was curious and ran it through. Mind you, the detection software only lets you paste 1,200 words of the writing, so this was just a snippet. The same size snippets that I had put for all of my own tests. This was the result:

So we can make a good guess that this was…probably written by AI. If you’re wondering, no. This isn’t a call out post. I won’t be stating the user who I did this. I ask you not to speculate in the notes of this post either. I don’t want to cause unnecessary drama, because honestly the writing community for this fandom already has that.

I will say, to the writers who are using AI, I’m not the only person who will probably get curious. If you’re going to use AI for your writing, at least state it in the description. It’s manipulative and wrong to not state it.

I know I said AI is bad, but it's also like Thanos. It's inevitable. I fully think we should abuse the hell out of it and make it our bitch. Now how to do that without using it to actually write? Easy.

Force it to give us ideas. Once upon a time I wanted to do some writing, but couldn't think of anything I wanted to write. Sure there's prompt lists out there, but a lot of them didn't fit what I needed. So I grabbed ChatGPT by it's lil grimy throat. I whispered in it's ears "Write me some prompts."

I then took said prompts to jog some ideas in my head, then wrote my own original content. I used AI to help give me a basic idea for my writing and then came up with my own stories. That's a simple way of doing it.

I know people who will RP with a janitor bot because they have a plot in mind for a story, but are uncertain with how they'd want to execute it. So they RP with a bot first, and then once they have an idea, they write a fic based off their RP. They don’t take what the bot said, copy/paste it, then say it’s their fic. They use it as a tool to help them with their ideas. Sometimes if the bot has a really good line, they might take that singular line from it as well. That’s not taking the entire story, it’s just a line that they knew would flow with the fic, and half the time they edit the line as well.

You can also use it for story titles. Can’t come up with a title? Tell ChatGPT the synopsis of your story and then ask it to generate 10 titles for it (actually I just tried to this see the results and am currently laughing my ass off, maybe don't do this).

Don’t forget things like Grammarly. That’s also AI! You can use it to check your grammar and fix awkward wording in your writing.

There’s ways a writer can use AI as a tool. In my opinion, it’s no different from an artist using the symmetry tool for their art. Or using a 3D model to help them make a pose for a drawing in their program. It’s a tool that should be used to help and improve your own content.

[goat-guy-tm]

I was talking about deep analysis of Curly and Jimmy's dynamic in my discord server (which you should join), and I thought "Hey! Maybe tumblr would like this!" So, here this is! It's a rough copy paste of what I said, edited slightly to fit better in a post format:

Also long post warning.

I feel like because a lot of ppl haven't experience people like Jimmy irl they have a hard time understanding why Curly acts the way he does, and by no means is it still 100% okay, but when you know someone that's been mentally manipulating you for years if can become easy to be tunnel visioned to they pain they cause others. I think a big example of that is when Anya shows concern over Jimmy's last psych evaluation but when Curly does it Jimmy (from the little text we get about it) tells him it was just all jokes, which could have been, but when it's just Jimmy and Curly it's much lighter in perspective, because Curly believes him, and Curly sees no reason for Jimmy to lie to him about his mental state (which he obviously was doing as he has quite the psychotic break a few days later)

Not to mention, Jimmy gets quite aggressive at Curly when he notices that Curly is rethinking his career. He activly calls him horrible things for 'not appreciating his position and wanting something new' (<not direct words but overview), when if Jimmy was a good friend he would have been talking about it with Curly. Instead he shames Curly for it, that in Jimmy's mind it's unfair for Curly to not be happy cause Curly has a better seat than him, but he'll frame it as them, the whole crew, to make Curly feel bad about it.

Like, when the rest of the crew learned they were going to be let go after that haul, none of them were really mad at Curly for him being the only one to be given a recommendation and compensation. Yeah Anya and Swansea are upset about it, but only Jimmy is the one to call out Curly for being the only one to relieve special treatment, when it's pretty established Curly is/was one of Pony Expresses' best pilots. But Jimmy doesn't talk about himself during the party. Swansea mentions how unfair it is that PE is throwing them to the side after all these years, Anya almost has a panic attack over not having any money in savings, Daisuke isn't really phased since he's only an intern, but Jimmy gets mad at CURLY, not Pony Express. He even full on calls it Curly running away, as if Pone Express closing them down is Curly's fault for wanting something different for his life

I mean what's wild to me is I'm p sure Curly even has a conversation with Jimmy in the game about how he hasn't been handed anything and has been working hard for where he is. Curly never out right really says it, but he does make mention of both of them working hard. Then again Curly doesn't talk about himself a lot even in conversation (minus the "on the edge of a bridge with your feet in the cememnt" one cause Jimmy made it about him)

When going back through the playthrough, I realized Jimmy is such a well written villian because he convinces even Curly that Curly is the villian here, the one in the wrong. Curly isn't perfect, he is quite literally the imperfect victim, but Jimmy is such a big manipulator that he convinces Curly it's HIS fault all this is happening, that Curly needs JIMMY so that he can fix all this, only for Curly to realizes what Jimmy's been doing when he finds Jimmy curled up outside the cockpit with a ship wide system failure blaring.

Buddy Corl: "Hey, just an idea, would Jimmy keep Anya alive so that Curly can stay alive? He berates her medical expertise but never elects to care for Curly beyond feeding him pills."

I'd say 50/50. A big thing is Jimmy quite obviously doesn't view Anya as a person, or at the very least views her as bottom of the barrel useless, but after the crash and with Curly how he was, there was no way he'd be able to do it and survive, because the entire time Swansea has the axe and Jimmy even recognizes that if he steps out of line too far within the lines of "I'm captian so I say so", then Swansea would basically usurp him. His own personal caring for Curly was most likely to keep him suffering. He voted on keeping Curly alive, and unless he was just trying to blend in with the others, then he did it because he wanted to keep Curly suffering.

Friend Corl again: "There was a Tumblr post that claimed the hands of the others were missing (the overview angle of Curly on the table was used as evidence) but this could just be the angle of the scene itself as he was going to die shortly after."

Hm, it could have been either the angle, a rendering choice from the devs or Jimmy could have cut their hands off. Idk why he would only go for the hands though, since he seems to show full intrest in cannablism. But you could chalk it up to a concept of keeping them from being able to do anything. Yes they are dead but Jimmy is far gone enough to believe that cutting their hands off could still make him better because they can't do anything to change what he's done.

Anyways that's it! For some context on why this is so important to me, from elementary school to the end of middle school I had a 'friend' that I was extremely close with. She was a horrible person who mentally, emotionally and physically tortured me for years, but since I was a child I never saw anything wrong with it. I would even rush to her defense when people would point out to me that what she was doing was bad. Now a days I hate her, and I love to talk shit about her, but I think a lot of people don't fully take in Curly's actions because they haven't gone through that (and they shouldn't, mind you).

I feel for Curly a lot, because I see myself in him in how he tries so desperately to protect someone he didn't even realize was killing him. Curly isn't perfect, and believe me I wasn't perfect when I was friends with her. She made me act out against people to gain her approval, she made me bitter and mean to others, do things I would never do. Very few people acknowledge what an over powering manipulator that has been controlling you for years can do to a person.

[lyraeon]

A while back I learned something important from my therapist, and since I was trying to recount it anyway to share with a friend, I thought I would bring it to y'all as well.

We have all had at least one of those days where we've stayed up way too late doing something fun but we just don't want to stop doing it. Logically I figured that's just because "well yeah I don't want to stop, I have to go to sleep then to work and those suck compared to it."

Except then that starts happening often and you feel bad about always staying up every night, but then you feel worse and get more stressed because you know you're doing something you're "not supposed to", but because you're more stressed you want more fun time... endless cycle.

But as I was talking about it all and told her I thought I was self-sacrificing, the therapist had a very useful question for me:

"How do you normally know it's time to stop having fun? Like you know it's time to finish work because your shift's over, you know it's time to stop doing the dishes when they're all done or the washer's full, what is your signal to stop having fun?"

And I had to search for a while to answer.

"When the activity is done" - okay sure, but many games and books and series, or doing your own creative thing, "done" may take days upon days or even be non-existent.

"When I had to pass the controller" - obvious and easy one! If you knew you had a finite turn then the defined end is readily there, and you're also prepared for it! But requires pre-arranging the limits.

"When I got in trouble for it" - ding ding ding, we found the big problem.

When you grow up with "fun" being a forbidden activity you're only allowed to do after everything else is done to 100% perfection, then you learn to sneak it in where you can fit it. And you need that shit, seriously - you cannot get through life without some source of enjoyment, some tiny glimmer of joy among the tedium.

Many of us learned to read under the covers, or to play our gameboy in the bathroom and hide it under the sink, or that we could get away with running around the backyard for another 20 minutes if we just learned which intonation of "come inside" was the actual trouble line, or whatever other ways to cram in as much joy as we could before the hammer came down, for whatever severity that meant in your house.

And so that feeling of "I shouldn't be doing this, I'm going to get caught, but if I'm going to get in trouble anyway I might as well get as much out of this as I can" becomes part of what you expect to feel when you're having fun. And you only know how to stop having fun when you feel that way when you get in trouble for it - and in absence of anyone else controlling your behavior, that means the bad guy becomes either whatever task pops up to remind you responsibilities exist, or your significant other pointing out it's really late and they wish you'd come to bed, or your boss yelling at you for being tired all the time... or it becomes you.

If you don't learn that fun isn't a forbidden activity, if you stay stuck in the mindset that it's something you have to cram in in secret and hide that you're even doing? It becomes so so easy to hate the voice of reason in your head that's trying to encourage moderation and we're going to regret this tomorrow.

And that escalates. You keep being too tired the next day. You keep feeling even worse when you sit down to enjoy yourself the next night because now you're already tired, so stress gets to you faster, and now you feel guilty about how late you're staying up so you're not really enjoying playing your game or scrolling Tumblr or whatever anymore, you're just nervously glancing at the clock, "have I spent too long yet? How much longer can I do this before I get in trouble?"

Even though now you're in your 20s or 30s and it's been a decade since the last time anyone else told you it was bed time.

Learning that you're allowed to have fun isn't easy; guilt and shame are emotions that run very, very deep. And neither is learning to have a healthier relationship with saying "okay, that's enough for today".

For one, you have to stop threatening yourself. "Tomorrow is gonna suck" and "You're going to regret this" and "we're going to get in trouble at work" don't work. You already feel bad, you already know it's gonna suck, so why wouldn't you try to cram in one more hour now while it's not the day that's going to suck yet? Punishment is not incentive.

Because by now you're in a situation where sleep is a horrifying punishment that ends any fun, but you're not enjoying your fun anyway because you're tired all the time on top of feeling ashamed for doing something fun, and you're spending the entire time beating yourself up for being an idiot with no self control who can't even handle going to bed on time like a normal human being...

etc etc etc.

You will hear a lot of people give advice on how to get rid of the idea of having to "earn" sleep or fun or happiness by doing "enough" other things. To learn to accept that just being alive is enough reason to "deserve" to do those things. That will work for some people, but for others it just ends up one more thing to scold yourself about, especially when you're already in the habit not of denying yourself entirely but instead of doing it and feeling guilty the whole time.

But learning to set limits ahead of time, so that you're not anticipating some unknown time that a nebulous authority figure is going to finally have their horror monster timer run out and leap out at you but instead know when and what to expect? Holy shit it helped.

Don't get me wrong, it hella felt like depriving myself at first, like I was being grounded, and I looked at my phone beeping saying it was bedtime quite often and got annoyed.

But then I stopped treating fun as something that had to wait until the end of the day and everything else had to be done first. It is way easier to stare down sleep and go "I don't need you", especially if you have any kind of insomnia making the idea of being in bed a dreadful one on top of it. It is harder to say that about dinner, or calling a friend, or walking the dog. Plus then the day isn't over yet, so giving up on your fun isn't also accepting that as the defining moment of the end of your day!

So you have to start practicing looking for places to squeeze in a little more fun - "I've got an hour before dinner, that's perfect to make some tea and watch two episodes." "My favorite youtuber just put up a new video, why don't I take a break to watch it before I finish this homework?" "I need to go grocery shopping tomorrow anyway, and if I leave an hour early I could go kick around the bookstore first."

And once you do, fun starts to feel less shameful.

Don't get me wrong, if your issues run deep enough it still does sometimes. But when you get to have these moments of joy that you don't feel the need to hide or apologize for and where punishment isn't part of the routine, then fun stops feeling like something you have to dig your claws into for fear of having it taken away from you once someone catches you with it. And that means that finishing a level and glancing over at the clock is something you do because it actually managed to click a satisfaction switch in your head and you wondered if it was a good note to end on for now, instead of something you do with your breath held and the berating words already cycling in your mind.

I am not offering this advice expecting it to work for everyone or be easy or anything like that. I am someone with Depression, ADHD, and pretty severe PTSD sharing a technique that one therapist told me that really happened to click for and help me specifically, in case it might help someone else be a little nicer to themselves today, too.

[ceruleanwhore]

I know it's been a minute since Hazbin dropped and I'm late to the hate train but I have things I want to say, so I shall.

First off, the whole thing makes absolutely no fucking sense, conceptually. There is really no good way to execute this batshit idea of Lucifer having a daughter and that daughter deciding to start a fucking hotel in Hell to redeem sinners so they can go to Heaven. Also, the culling shit with the angels showing up to just kill already dead souls for no reason also makes no sense and there really isn't any way to make it make sense.

Secondly, when making yet another piece of media inspired by Christian canon, even if it is Christianity and you hate the religion, you absolutely have to know the source material before you go fucking with it. That's why, for example, Dogma is such a good movie but this series falls flat even though both are comedic critiques of Christianity - Dogma understands the subject well enough to criticize it intelligently whereas Hazbin feels like it was conceptualized and made by someone who only watched like two episodes of Veggie Tales and otherwise knows jack shit about the religion. Throwing Lilith in there is worse because she isn't even in Christianity and it has the same vibes as when CCD classes host a Passover Seder by and for a bunch of gentiles to 'teach' about what Jesus was up to when he was around. It's just so disrespectful. Actually, that's what it is - the creators learned everything they know about Christianity, Heaven, and Hell from Tumblr posts which is definitely why she's in there.

If they knew more about the thing they're trying to make a whole ass show about, Adam and Eve wouldn't have been angels, there would be no hotel because you could just have the creation of Purgatory instead or, at the very least, some take on the harrowing of Hell and salvation of the virtuous pagans in Limbo. Also, even if you don't want to touch the Bible because it's icky (and I mean yeah), all you had to do was read like Dante's Inferno and peep the Ars Goetia and then actually make a structured Hell with a hierarchy and everything. I think kinda like what Rachel Smythe did with the worldbuilding in Lore Olympus, they wanted to modernize Hell for some reason, so the turf war/mafia type shit was supposed to replace a stronger hierarchy of Hell with princes and dukes and presidents and such, but I fucking hate it and there's no goddamn structure.

More importantly, the worldbuilding of Hell itself completely misses the fucking point of Hell as a thing. Hell is there both to contain Satan and the fallen angels who joined him in that uprising thing that one time and also to serve as a place where sinners go when they die and are punished for their sins. We never see even once any sort of actual system for sorting all these souls and punishing them for their sins. On the contrary, characters like Angel Dust appear to get to do drugs for the rest of their immortal lives and, since they're dead, it's not like those are going to kill them so it really doesn't read like a punishment. The closest we get to actual punishments are when the sinners/demons have gone and made deals that give other residents of Hell control over them, like how Husk is under Alastor's control and then Alastor apparently also has some kind of deal screwing him over, and Angel's situation with shitty boa dude is pretty similar too. It feels like they did the extermination shit to replace punishment in Hell along with these deals we see here and there, which is utterly fucking ridiculous and makes absolutely no sense.

The other thing I'd add kind of going off that is that Heaven in this series also makes literally no fucking sense. It's actually also the biggest issue I have with Good Omens that it makes NO SENSE for the angels to have no clue what God's plan is or, in this case, how souls even get into Heaven. The whole fucking point is that there's an entire, nicely structured hierarchy for exactly this. Seraphim, cherubim, and thrones are all closest to God, so they can get the info from Them and pass it to the lower ranks. Hell, this could even be how you get problems, like you make it a bit of a gimmick that Heaven runs on a massive game of telephone. It also could've been a way to have some really cool variety in character design, so maybe some of the higher ranking angels look like the weird biblical shit with all the eyes and fire and they get progressively more normal as you go down the hierarchy. Instead, they picked like three recognizable names, made them into pretty people with wings and potentially also stupid Homestuck looking masks, and threw them in our face while just refusing to actually bother with worldbuilding or character design.

That brings me to the third thing which is that, when doing a series like this based on something like Christianity, you really have to sit down and figure out what kind of God your Christian God in your series is going to be, even if They never show up on screen. Is this God distant and neglectful and that's how all this shit is happening? Or do we have the wrathful God of the Israelites who regularly exterminates Hell out of pure sadistic rage? Or do we have a weak God on the verge of death who is barely present out of necessity while the angels take advantage of that absence and run amok? And it's not even just that determining what kind of God is supposed to be the God of this series would inform why stuff happens like it does, it would also help the writers to have a sense of direction and motive for what happens.

The writing in the show is all over the fucking place and figuring out what kind of God this God is meant to be is the very first question they should've asked themselves and it would've prevented most of the problems that currently exist in the show. If we had that, then maybe we wouldn't have weird shit with Lucifer where he very much does not feel like he's the devil at all and also Charlie is supposed to have daddy issues but then he shows up and is just a really adoring and supportive dad so that doesn't make sense. If we had that, then maybe Hell would have a fucking structure because we would actually have the motive behind Hell itself and why it exists. If we had that, then maybe we could get into the nitty gritty of the ethical/theological complexities of Hell and how, no matter how you slice it, it's really God's will at the end of the day so we could get a whole debate over if Lucifer is even evil or if God is just controlling and sadistic and all that. If we had that then maybe we could even have some reveal about how sin isn't even a concrete thing and the true nature of Hell is that it's a place people choose to go when they die because they don't feel worthy of salvation and they feel in their soul that they need to be punished. Anything, really.

Fourth is that it really, really shouldn't be a musical series. The pacing fucking sucks and they overexplain everything and I just feel like if you took all the time spent on shitty musical numbers and instead put it into showing, not telling, and also developing characters and relationships, it could be a lot better. If there was more time for shit, then maybe Charlie could not be a Mary Sue and Vaggie could have a personality and Angel could be an actual fucking character that isn't just an animated twink with trauma who gets off on violating people's boundaries. Also, I just really didn't like most of the songs in the series (outside the series they're fine) and I skipped a lot of those scenes.

Fifth and final is that it really just wasn't funny. A lot of the stuff that was supposed to be funny was just excessive swearing that felt completely unnatural, like that tiktok going around of that girl saying the n word. If you're bothering to do a whole series set in Hell that's ostensibly about Christianity, then why tf aren't you leaning more into biting criticism of Christianity for your humor? If they'd just gone full Dogma with this, it would've been so much better but no.

So yeah, it fucking sucked and so did the character design.

[galedekarios]

Hi!! Hope I am not bothering you (if so please feel free to ignore!) with a Gale lore question, but I figured you're the person on tumblr who would most likely know given all the cool shit you've been posting, but do we have any idea *where* gale was when he got snatched by the mindflayers? I can't seem to find a straight answer about most of the companions, but there seems to be a fairly straight forward answer for most of them except Gale (and Astarion to some extent) I know he had his year of solitude that he seemed to have left willingly and from what Tara says about Waterdeep it doesnt seem like they had a massive nautiloid attack the city a la the opening. I figured he either left Waterdeep in search of more items to sate the orb/protect the city in case of rupturing and was taken there or he was just maybe beaten over the head and abducted in the city by one of the few Absolutists that are in Waterdeep.

thank you for your message! i really appreciate your words.

sadly, there is no indication at all where precisely gale was before the events of the game take place.

i've collected some pieces of the puzzle, however, that i thought are relevant to at least paint a broad picture of what likely happened:

gale is well aware of how unstable the orb is. when he escapes the nautiloid, his first thought is that the illithid tadpole is very likely to have adverse effects on it:

he has lived with the orb for about a year or longer, knowing well what its effect might be. i have wondered often just why gale would know so much about ceremorphosis before the game starts. perhaps the devs just needed another exposition machine, which is likely, too, of course.

but considering the very real and very present danger of the orb, i think it's also likely that in his desperation to find a way to heal himself, reading up as much as he could on everything that even resembled some sort of solution, gale perhaps even read up on ceremorphosis, before deciding that it's just not viable, that it would do more harm to than good.

i think it might be in line with the same reasoning as to why the player can bring up the nightsong to gale as a possible solution to the orb.

2. gale is aware just catastrophic the consequences of the orb being unleashed are. when gale goes to rest in his origin playthrough, sleep will not find him and once more, his thoughts turn towards the orb first:

it's likely that this is why we find him staring into the flames playing a custom protag. these two scenes seem to mirror each other.

3. we also learn from the same dialogue two important things: that gale made tara promise to stay in waterdeep, concerned for her safety. we also learn from his conversation with tara that he is not only concerned about her safety, but his mother's as well and that he left her behind in waterdeep as well:

morena isn't aware of what her son tried to do. he kept it from her. not only had he disappointed her faith in him and his talents, now, with the orb, he was actively putting her in mortal peril. along with everyone else in the city.

from a later dialogue we also learn that gale is afraid of bringing shame to his family name:

player: So, your last name is Dekarios? gale: It is. Courtesy of my mother, the inimitable, dare I say it sometimes unavoidable, Morena Dekarios. It's been so long since I've used it. 'Gale Dekarios' cuts a poor figure next to the wizarding prowess of 'Gale of Waterdeep.' player: You're right. Just 'Gale' is better. gale: I agree. And on the plus side, if I get myself into any truly cataclysmic straits during the remainder of our journey, my family name will go untarnished.

we also learn that while news of the absolute seems to have reached waterdeep, tara doesn't seem to think that they have infiltrated waterdeep yet. which in turn means that waterdeep wasn't affected in the same way baldur's gate and other cities and regions were.

4. the next morning, gale can have the following conversation with tara:

"you left the tower in such a hurry you didn't leave an address." is what stands out to me here.

what exactly did make gale leave so suddenly?

was it a particularly bad flare-up of the orb? i think it might be likely because i also found this line in the files:

player: i fail to see why you need me to help you this. you've done fine without me so far. gale: A fair point - however, until recently I was able to rely on a supply of artefacts stored in my tower in Waterdeep. A supply that has now run dry. The reality of the matter is that a lone wizard with a chronic impairment such as my own is not in the most ideal of situations with regards to self-defence. The manner of artefacts I need are not often found waiting patiently on a shop-keep's shelf. One usually has to lift them delicately from trap-filled tombs or prise them from the hands of violent ne'erdowells.

so not only does this validate the fact that gale indeed suffers from chronic pain due to his condition even more, it also clearly states that he had nothing left in his possession to treat his condition anymore.

(as an aside, larian really did the seriousness of his condition a grave disservice here on a multitude at levels and this is another point where the narrative is at odds with the game mechanics of the full release. in ea, it truly required great artefacts (the sword of justice blessed by tyr or even the idol of silvanus) to soothe the orb.)

so to bring all of these points together, this is what i believe:

i think gale left waterdeep in a hurry after he felt the orb destabilising.

having no artefacts great power left, staying was no longer an option, lest he puts his mother (and waterdeep itself even) at great risk. he hurriedly packed what he could.

i assume tara was there and that it was then that he made her promise to stay because he didn't want to put his longest (and now only) friend at risk, too. perhaps he also felt better knowing that tara would be there for morena.

i think he was abducted while on the road, trying to find information about artefacts of great power and perhaps even setting out himself to acquire them.

[r4izx]

Blooming flowers, Wilting love

lyney x g/n reader!

6,212 words and 33,475 characters

summary: lyney feels love when he sees you. but he feels itchy in his throat when he also sees you. he sometimes cough up petals as well... is this love?

warnings: mentions of blood, slight cursing (one curse word lol)

a/n: as i was writing this, i saw a tumblr post all about their love-hate relationship with hanahaki disease fanfics. it made me pause and go like, ʘ‿ʘ oh.

this is my longest fic so far but also...!!! one of my least favorites as i wrote this during a writer's block. •́⁠ ⁠ ⁠‿⁠ ⁠,⁠•̀ nevertheless, hope you still enjoy!

"do you think we'd stay together, forever, yn?"

you and lyney were gazing at the sea that time. staring at the constellations, counting the stars, you think you won't ever forget that moment. the sound of the waves, the wind's breeze, it was so... peaceful for the lives of two fatui members. but his question was a bit abrupt, you think. especially for someone like you who thinks it's pointless to believe in such thoughts.

"there's no such thing as forever, lyney." it's the truth you think. nothing in this world lasts forever. that's why it's better to cherish the things you have now while you still can. this was your point of view of the world. for you the world had limits. you always thought that in the end, everyone will die anyway. so you didn't meddle yourself with beliefs about 'forever'. although... "-but i don't think i can live without you, all, beside me, lyney." you, of course, was referring to him and his siblings. you know how much lyney loves his family. after all, they're the only ones he has left to take care of in his life. compared to you who has no one, he had a responsibility.

lyney loves his family more than himself. from when you were kids staying at house of the hearth, you watched how much he cares for them. to the point where he'd sacrifice himself if he needed to. just for the sake of his family. and just like lyney, you cherish your family a lot. although not connected by blood, you view lyney, lynette, and freminet as your family. you've been together since childhood, you all grew up together, what else could they be but family?

what else?, you say?

contrary to your view of the three as family, lyney views you more than that. at first, he didn't know what he was feeling. he didn't know when it all began either. he just remembers when he started to think about you everytime you weren't there, everytime you weren't by his side. everytime you were with someone else. all of a sudden he started to feel jealous when he sees you with someone else. but it quickly goes away when you go to him at the end of the day. you were always there for him. lyney often bottled up his feelings. he had no one to vent to. it would be awkward to talk to father about it and he doesn't want to burden his siblings with his worries. but he has you. you were there to comfort him. at moments where he was at his lowest, you were just... there. he was sure you didn't learn any magic tricks, how come you always surprise him by being there when he needed someone? as if you knew what he was feeling. but still, he isn't complaining. at this point, he couldn't go by a day without you and he felt reassured, ..you cherish him more than anyone else, you feel that you have a duty to protect him, ..just like family! you are his family. that's all it is, ..-right?

but if that was the case, then... lyney thinks why doesn't he feel the same way towards his siblings, his family. he never got jealous when lynette and freminet was with someone else, no. he never relied on somone this much and felt comforted just by their presence. and sure enough, lyney was sure about his feelings for you. his love for you. and no, not love for family way but more like... a romantic way. he was sure of it when he noticed the fact that his temperature rises slightly when you both make contact. when you make cheesy remarks not knowing what it does to him cause you just view him as family. he felt butterflies in his stomach. and lyney thinks that this is what romantic love felt. it felt warm. it felt like he found a bonfire in a cold, snowy mountain. that fire was the only thing keeping him alive. it made him feel safe, warm and...

itchy?

is love supposed to irritate you like this? it started with an itch. lyney has been feeling itchy in his throat ever since he figured out his feelings for you. it was so irritating and annoying he wanted to take his throat out but he couldn't. he doesn't know what it is, he doesn't know anything at all. it's his first time loving someone in a way that's more than love for family, after all. so he goes to a doctor since he couldn't tell anyone about this. not father, not his siblings, and not even you. he doesn't have the courage yet. the doctor began examining him. asking him all kinds of questions. when did you start feeling the itch? are you able to eat properly? and... did you do anything that triggered it? well, that question definitely triggered something in his memories. and all of a sudden, he started coughing. his throat stated to ache unbearably. he couldn't breathe, he felt his airway being blocked no matter how hard he tried. it was a good choice to go to the doctor earlier, the doctor quickly moved to help lyney breathe. slowly, the coughing was going down but lyney's throat was getting itchier and itchier. he couldn't take it anymore. he coughed up whatever was making him feel that way despite the immense pain. to say that he was shocked was an understatement.

blood.

and...

..petals..

lyney wasn't stupid. he's heard of this before. he heard it a long time ago. when someone's love doesn't get reciprocated, they start to grow flowers in their lungs and cough up petals. he heard it when he was younger and thought it was stupid. that whoever was in love was stupid. clearly they were gonna die because of love, so why do they still continue? it wasn't even love for family. but now that he's older, lyney thinks he understands now. it doesn't make him any smarter for understanding though, rather he thinks that maybe he is stupid. he became the person who he thought was dumb for continuing to love someone despite that being the reason for why they're hurting so much. but how could he ever stop? he thinks that if he stops loving you his heart would as well. you made him feel safe, warm, comforted and... loved. he trusted you so much that it scared him how easily you could hurt him. but still, he won't stop. how could he when he can't even imagine a life without you?

the doctor explained to him in detail. how people only get this disease when they're love is unrequited and the fact that it was so rare to get it but he still did. he didn't know if he was lucky or not. although the doctor did tell him there was a way to remove the flowers though, it was basically a cure. he could get surgery in exchange for his memories. he would have to forget all about you. and so... "What! NO!" lyney couldn't help but shout out of surprise and annoyance. was this doctor crazy? do they think a person would want to forget someone they love? the thought of not remembering you sends lyney shivers down his spine. he can't even imagine forgetting all those memories. when you both went sparring together, got lost during a mission, when you wiped his tears when he couldn't keep his emotions to himself anymore, and even when you both first got taken in at the orphanage. it scares him. he doesn't want to forget you. so he never will.

the doctor just chuckled, fortunately they understood and gave some 'advice'.

"then, you better tell 'em what you feel soon. take the chance while you still can. you don't possibly think that you would live forever, right? ahaha..-"

forever.

"...there's no such thing as forever, lyney."

that memory suddenly popped into his mind. is this what you meant? that death will await for us in the end anyway? it's not like you were wrong though.. you were right. there's no forever in this world. but the doctor was also right. he should go ahead and tell you how he feels soon. he just needs to muster up the courage and confess!.. but how could he? how could he have the courage when he sees the way you look at him?

lyney always felt something odd about you everytime that tangerine head harbinger passed by. he sees the way your breath slightly hitches. the way you'd steal secret glances at him, the way your eyes glimmer for a bit when you see him, the way you turn your head to hide your reddening face.

he hated it.

he hated the fact that you liked someone else when he's right beside you and has always been right there since childhood. but what he hated even more is the fact that he pays so much attention to you. he'd notice things about you that he was sure you probably didn't know about yourself. you never acted this way around him... does he even have a chance? how can he possibly confess to you at this state? he feels his throat ache even more now. breathing felt more of a curse than a cause to live at this point. everytime he inhaled, he could feel petals going up his throat. truly, his time is limited now and he has to do something before it's too late.

by now, you've probably noticed that something was wrong with lyney. when he sees you, instead of usually greeting you with a bright smile and a hug, he just smiles, sends a wave, or even worse- he just nods at you! he barely talked you don't get what you did wrong so it was getting slightly annoying.

scratch that-- it was REALLY annoying.

you both finally met again after a busy week cause of father's orders at fontaine. it was a fatui meeting. everyone had to attend. you were glad cause that meant you would be able to see your family-- lyney, lynette, and freminet of course, --and also see lord childe. the harbringer who you oh so look up to. well, okay, maybe it's more than just admiration.

you like him.

you like that ginger head.

maybe it was because of the stupid smile on his face whenever he made you laugh, maybe it was because of the fact that you felt safe around him, or maybe it was simply because he was outgoing that he ended up stealing your attention. you didn't expect yourself to be the type to fall for someone really quickly, but you got to know him for a few months in a mission together and you... really liked him. he didn't just steal your attention, he stole your heart as well. although, you had no one to talk to about this and you don't think you would actually tell it to someone.

so here you are, at the fatui meeting, waiting for the harbringers to finish their speeches when it finally ended. originally, you took this meeting as an opportunity for you to catch up with your family. but it seems that lyney

had the same intentions when you feel a tap on your shoulder. you turn around and face him. you almost couldn't control the smile on your face when you remember that he's been acting differently towards you the past few weeks. you quickly compose yourself and speak to him with a stern look.

"don't you think you have something to say to me?" you cross your arms and stare at him, waiting for him to speak up. lyney suddenly mutters something incoherent, he sounded as if he couldn't form words probably in his mouth. the only thing you understood was his almost incomprehensible "wa--t--r. wah-... ter!!". for a moment, you were really worried. you've never seen lyney in such state before. you grabbed the nearest bottle you could and gave it to him as he takes a deep breathe and clears his throat. "well,... where, do i, begin?"

"oh ho, from the very beginning. lyney. we haven't seen eachother for so long, i can spare some time for you." despite your sharp tone, the sweet smile on your face was quite unsettling. oh boy, he's doomed. you were gonna scold him. you always did this. from when you both were a child, you always scolded lyney when he did some outrageous things like hurting himself just to rescue a cat stuck on a tree. you scolded him for a while that time. you were quite protective. after all, it's your duty as his family.

lyney tells you that he was feeling unwell and couldn't speak properly these past few weeks which explains the situation earlier with the water. "--but why didn't you tell me anything!?" that's right. why didn't he tell you anything? the lyney who always relied on you, who felt safe and comforted when he vented his feelings to you was now the same lyney who started acting a bit distant and different. when did he change so much? you just don't get it. did you really do something that he didn't like for him to be like this with you? he seemed fine with others which made you even more concerned. but before you could finish worrying, --lyney interrupts.

"..y/n.. i have something to tell you, okay?"

what's this? all of a sudden the atmosphere changed. it was gloomy yet felt somewhat reassuring. you didn't know what was gonna happen next. what is he gonna say? why is he being so serious? is he gonna drop some big news? why can't you understand him at all right now? and why is the 11th fatui harbringer approaching you? wait-- what?

"y/n!! so you were here!~" the ginger head was approaching you with that same stupid smile on his face again. you couldn't control yourself from slightly blushing. you could feel your ears reddening a bit as you try and look away from him. you cover your mouth to hide the fact that your mouth is slightly raised upward as you turn away from childe's direction as an attempt to hide from his gaze only for you to catch a short glimpse of lyney's expression.

you don't get it. you don't understand at all what that look on his face was. you, who's one of lyney's closest companions, someone who he could consider as family, for the first time was unable to know what lyney felt. he's been hiding too much stuff from you these days. he hasn't been opening up to you. you can't help but worry that he might be bottling up his feelings again and doesn't have anyone to vent to. but the thing is... lyney always went to you. he would go to you and you would comfort him. so why isn't he?... 'don't tell me.. that, he lost his trust in me?' the thought sent a shiver down your spine. you quickly looked at lyney's face again, only to see him gently smiling. was that just a trick of your eye? you were sure it wasn't. you look at his odd smile. unlike what a smile should do, it didn't reassure you at all. it made you worry even more. you really can't read him. he looks sad yet happy. he has a solemn face yet it felt as if it was filled with so much guilt. unfortunately, your thoughts was cut off when the man whom you liked stands before you.

"i've been looking for you everywhere! i'm hosting an after party with some of my companions, wanna join us?" childe asks you when he finally noticed lyney and continued, "--oh, and, you could invite your friend over there too." you glance at lyney who heard the offer. he understands that you're trying to ask him if he wants to attend. so, he looks at you with that unsettling smile again. "y-ou- ...you should go.. y/n, i'm.. fine.." he clears his throat mid sentence. he wasn't fine at all. his throat is so itchy, he feels that his lungs is about to burst, his chest feels heavy, his airway feels blocked and he feels that something is going up his throat and he's trying so desperately to hold it in. but there's only so much a person could handle. but... in the first place, lyney was a person who had no one he could rely on, who he could vent to except for you. but he can't bear it. he can't bear the sight of you with that tangerine. he thinks he really won't be able to handle this hanahaki disease thing. and for some reason, seeing you so in love with someone else hurt him more than the flowers threatening to spill from his body.

so he gathers some remaining strength to tug at your sleeve when you were about to leave with childe. he grabs your hand, flipping it to the side of your palm and does a little magic trick. he takes his hat, rummages through a bunch of items in it until he finally stops and grabs something. he grabs it and closes his hand and places it on top of your open palm. when he finally opens his fist, he then revealed a flower. a rainbow rose, to be exact. before you could even say something, lyney just nudges your hand a bit as a sign for you to just go already. you hadn't even left when he himself took the initiative and faced the opposite direction and left in a hurry. you didn't know why he was rushing you and himself so much. and at this point, you don't what your efforts to talk to him was all about when in the end, he just leaves. without leaving a word behind.

childe takes your hand in his and that was all it took for you to snap out of your daze. your heart instantly started beating faster. you think he might even be able to hear your heart pounding so loudly right now. was it because of the fact that he's holding you? the fact the he came all this way just to invite you? and that he was looking for you, and only you? or maybe it was because of a certain flower you were holding in your other hand. on one side, you were holding childe, and on the other, was a rainbow rose.

'a rainbow rose, huh.'

lyney couldn't sleep that day. nor could he breathe. nor could he eat, speak, and think properly. his heart felt like bursting. maybe it really was. when he saw the way you light up when childe came, he was hit with an arrow of reality through his lungs. suddenly the air around him felt warm. but not the type of warmth your presence gives him, rather... it felt suffocating. he felt like throwing up. he was doing all he could to keeo himself from vomiting. he really was. it was the hardest battle he has ever done. a battle between him and his own feelings. there is a saying that one's greatest enemy is theirselves and in this battle, lyney thinks he's at the losing end. when he left you there after giving the rainbow rose, he felt his heart throb in pain. he saw the look on your face. a face full of confusion, worry, and a small hint of happiness. at that moment, he just wanted to chase after you, hug you and never let you go. yet..., all he could do was send a small smile. a smile filled with mixed feelings, a smile you wouldn't be able to understand, even if you tried. lyney himself doesn't understand what he feels too. jealousy? anger? happiness? relief? sad? he didn't know! but one thing for sure was that he felt like he was...

about to die.

he immediately went to the nearest secluded place he could go to. making sure nobody, was around. and after all his efforts to not throw up, he started vomiting. blood. it was so bloody. not even enemies has hurt him to this point, yet... his own feelings did this. and lyney thinks again, 'is love supposed to feel like this?' he wanted to blame you, blame you for not returning his feelings and put him to such a miserable state like this, but he couldn't. cause he knew it was his fault. it was his fault for falling for someone who only views him as family. and if he wanted to he could just take surgery and forget about you! --but he won't. he's sure that forgetting you will hurt even more than this disease.

the downpour of blood and petals wasn't stopping. he was starting to choke on the petals. his throat was hurting, so, so badly. it was aching, it was itching. he wanted to scratch it out of him and just end his suffering. especially when something really rough went up his throat. it even got stuck there. he was coughing and coughing, trying to vomit it out. he was having such a difficult type to breathe and aside from petals and blood, even tears was spilling out from him. he was dying yet living. and so, he spitted it out. a flower. no, flowers. such beautiful flowers came out tainted with blood. at first, he didn't recognize what flowers it was because it was painted red from the blood, but he looked really closely and...

rainbow roses.

he scoffed, really? these, again? was teyvat making fun of him right now? cause it sure feels like it. the rainbow roses that was supposed to be filled with a bunch of colors was now just red. for some reason, that color reminded him of his fate. and so, he kept that rose.

lynette and freminet has caught on to lyney at this point. they started wondering what was wrong with him when they saw that he's been having too much so-called bathroom breaks, --especially, when you're around. they noticed how lyney's breath slightly hitched when he sees you, they noticed the fact that he now tends to avoid your gaze rather than look up to you and stare at your eyes as if he saw something beyond it like before. at first, they just watched. they waited, and they observed. just like in their missions. they knew for a fact that lyney won't open up his problems to his own siblings. which is why he always relied on you, opening up to you. you were his source of fresh air. in a place where he felt suffocated and had nowhere to go to, you were there. so surely, if lyney didn't want to tell them, they just have to wait, ...but if it takes too long and progressively gets worse, they have no choice but to interrogate him.

it's been a few weeks since lyney has been acting strange and there was no sign of him telling the truth to lynette and freminet. they were growing impatient to their brother's antics. they aren't usually this bothered but when it comes to health, they have to step in no matter what. family comes first and their brother showed them that. which is why, it's totally valid to do this right now because it's out of love and concern, ...right? lynette and freminet decided to follow lyney when he needed a bathroom break. they followed as lyney goes to a secluded area instead where no could see or hear him, which was perfect for them. --and almost immediately when lyney got there, he started throwing up.

how can they explain what they're feeling right now? watching their own brother suffer, vomiting blood and petals. their heart dropped. it felt like it. the world froze around them, only lyney was moving as if the time stopped. all this time... lyney was suffering this much and didn't tell anyone...? they couldn't help but think he was greedy, for not wanting to burden others but himself. they couldn't make a sound. they needed to be... patient. --like how they were trained and taught to be by their very own brother. tears were starting to blur their vision when the sound of raspy coughs kept on going as it becomes even more rougher than the last one. patience.., they both think to themselves. --but only when they heard their brother utter a name did they lose it.

"...y-/n--..."

blood, petals, and the way he acted around you. everything seemed connected somehow. it all cleared up. and it was so obvious that lyney was suffering an unrequited love. but they had to confirm it. their patience? gone. lynette and freminet look at eachother and nods, a signal saying 'go' as they rush towards lyney's side. just as they went beside him, lyney collapses to the ground, although still conscious. the other two immediately went to support him and lyney finally looks at them. he looks them in the eye and send a sheepish smile as if saying, 'don't get mad'. but how? how could they not? they wanted to scold lyney, scold him for keeping all his problems to himself, scold him for doing nothing and bearing the pain all this time, scold him for liking someone who only sees him as family and of course, ...scold him for continuing to love you despite everything.

lynette says it first, despite the cracks and sniffles between her words she still says, "brother--!!.. wh-..why don't you just.. get surgery and forget them?..". and lyney is shooked. how did they know who he really liked? was he.. "..so obvious.." freminet continues his thoughts. now, lyney couldn't hold back his tears anymore. he started crying. it wasn't about you, -no. he cried because after a long time again, he could open up. he could breathe again, although he knows not for long. literally. so he thinks he has to say everything now before he loses the chance. he has to explain everything to lynette, to freminet, and of course, to you..

"..--c--can't.." he can't. he can't forget you. why did everyone think this way? the doctor and even lynette. he wanted to tell lyney that he would rather lose his vision than forget you. he would rather duel with father than forget you, he would rather bear this pain than forget you. he would rather lose his life.. than forget you. he wanted to say all this to his siblings but he can't. he couldn't even imagine a life where he doesn't know how to utter your name. the thought scared him. to him, a life without you was a life without a home. no safe place. he wouldn't be able to breathe. most importantly he couldn't stop thinking about what you would feel if he forgets you. how ironic though, he doesn't even think about what you would feel if you found out that he's suffering all because of his feelings for you.

once, twice, thrice, it kept going on. petals enough to make flower crowns surged from lyney's throat. and now freminet speaks up, "--p-please, ..just, tell y/n what you feel..". ah, that's right. another cure for this disease aside from the surgery was to be loved right back. but he knows it's impossible so he just shakes his head in response. "h-he's telling you to confess..!, --n-not to get your feelings returned.." "stop being so stubborn!" freminet adds. for once, lyney let his siblings scold him, after all it's a first, and perhaps even the last time this would occur. the thought made lyney cry. salty tears came flowing down his eyes along with blood and flowers from his mouth. it was mostly because he thinks that sooner or later he'll end up leaving his loved ones behind, both his family, and you.

a week had passed and his disease showed no signs of getting better, only getting worse as time passed. it was the same thing over and over again except for the fact that he has his siblings to help and rely on now. but then again, nothing would change if he doesn't tell you what he feels, that's why he's been preparing himself. for the entire week ever since lynette and freminet found out about his condition, he's been taking a break from missions with the excuse that he got a severe injury from a recent battle. which lead to him to being stuck in his room for the whole week, unable to see anyone aside from his siblings and father. nobody raised suspicions about him faking his condition, after all, he did look like he was suffering. but during that period of time, he didn't need to control his vomiting which helped him, ... sorta..? anyway, it simply meant that he's ready.

ready to tell you what he truly feels before it's too late,

...or not..

"i'm confessing to childe soon.."

hah...

...-ahahaHah"--ahaHahaha..--"

lyney couldn't help but laugh. should he have just stayed in his room for a couple more weeks? he laughed. watching your amused yet confused expression, you're probably thinking 'what's wrong with him?' and he laughs even more! he was laughing so hard tears started forming in his eyes, atleast, he thinks it's because of that. it was a bittersweet laugh. he starts to ponder, 'maybe i should've just gotten surgery..' but he smacks his head with his palm. that's right. his hat nearly tumbles off his head.

"lyney-?! what's wrong? -you.. okay..?"

you probably questioned if he was okay because he was still smiling and chuckling. "-pfft. i was just so enamoured by your eagerness to confess! ahaha-!!" contrary to him, that is. it took him so long, to build up the courage to tell you his feelings, and now he just feels like running away. he starts to feel that sooner or later tears won't be the only thing pouring out of him again. he may be chuckling right now but his mind is

it took a while for lyney to calm down again, while you were stressing over what's going on. why was he being like this? he's acting weird, again. the lyney who opened up his heart to you before is long gone now. replaced with unreadable expressions and held back words. you knew, something was off. enamoured? really? something was off about lyney in a way he was only like this towards you. but no matter what you do, you can't seem to remember anything you might have done to put him in such state. you might be a bit oblivious but you aren't stupid. yet, you still can't pin point why he's like this.

lyney interrupts your thoughts. he clears his throat and with a shaky voice, he asks,

"y-you... you're confessing, today?"

hm?

why would lyney be so curious about your confession? maybe he's curious as a friend just like others would be, but, something smells fishy. lyney isn't the type of person to be so caught up on topics like these, as far as you know. so, what's up with him now?

"..yeah, later. ..he invited me to go to on a mission with me. it's these little acts of him that make me so heads over heels for him." and that was all it took for lyney's courage to vanish. all bark yet no bite. you who was once his home, a person he could confide in, where he could breathe and feel safe, is now the reason why he is unable to breathe. he's inhaling, yes, --yet he feels that he can't exhale anymore. just endlessly gasping for air.

-fuck. he has to do this. he knows it himself, --that it isn't long before he has to go. he has to. -no, he needs to. he needs to confess. lyney takes a long, deep breath and finally let out some air. he looks at you, --you who's blushing so meekly, fiddling with your fingers like a teenager texting their crush, only for him to remember that it's all because you're thinking about him. someone else.

"y/n... y-you know, you're really special to me right, i just wanna know if you feel the same.. do you love me too?" maybe lyney should've made it clear, --or maybe he shouldn't have asked because- "--of course i do, lyney.. were family okay? always remember that." oh he is for sure gonna remember that. until his last breath most likely.

at this point he just had to go. "i-i see, well- y/n, I'll get going, goodluck!" lyney is rushing to get out of here, his heart his thumping so fast but the butterflies he feels is in his throat, he needs to go, -as soon as possible. just as he turns around to leave you immediately say something, "-lyney! wait-". and he gulps, but doesn't turn around to look at you. there was a short pause until you continued, "i want you to know that you're special to me, okay? you're one of my closest friends.., family-, even, ...just wanted to say this so you know.. goodluck! stay safe! let's watch the waves again next time, when we have time. see you!"

that time never comes.

he can sense that you're waving but he doesn't wave back. you hear his footsteps and watch as he leaves. something was wrong with lyney today so you wanted to reassure him. albeit it was just an inkling.

liquid trails on the ground as lyney walk-runs. he doesn't know whether it's from the tears running down his face or the blood pouring out of his mouth. maybe a mix of both. the trail leads to an room that served as a dormitory for the fatuis, but fortunately for him, it was empty. unlike his mind that was full of thoughts and his heart full of emotions. he couldn't stop thinking about what you said. sure, you may have said that he's special and all but what he heard was the word friend. a reminder that he'll never be more to you than that.

maybe it was just him.

maybe he was the only one who felt like his day is complete when he sees you. maybe he was the only one who thought that you were eachother's back. but now he feels as if he's the only one watching your back as you take a step forward while he's just there, watching you. maybe he was the only one who thought he had a chance. considering you were childhood friends and all. fuck- friends. it was right there all along. you both were childhood friends, nothing more, nothing less. this was his destiny. but for once he wants to stray from the path towards this so called destiny and it leads him to this current situation.

flowers.

there's no point in holding back now. he really feels like he's reaching the end of the path he's walking. he lets it all out, coughing up different kinds of flowers. heliotropes, chrysanthemums, rainbow roses... this time it's not just petals anymore, it's full on blooming flowers coated in red.

everything hurts.

his throat, his lungs, his heart... even his mind! he can't take it anymore yet for some reason his mind starts drifting back to the memories he and you had together. these memories felt like home. the sound of waves crashing onto the land, the sound of his heart beating along, and the sound of your comforting voice. for a split second he felt like the pain he was feeling eased for a bit, but he was brought back to reality when he realizes that these moments are really just memories, ...and will forever stay like that. he will no longer be able to be with you again, no longer have the ability to make more moments like these. and it dawns on him,

his friends, his family, the fatui, childe, father, and... you. his life flashes before his eyes. and he didn't even realize it but he was shedding no tears. weird but, maybe this was just too much pain for him to even process. he feels his body weakening, his legs barely able to stand makes him fall onto his knees. the way he starts to feel dizzy and his vision is blurred-- even without tears in his eyes. the way he feels like something pierced through his stomach, his heart-, even. he knows, his time is up.

lyney wishes he could say his last words, but he isn't able to. so he just says it in his mind,

...thank you,

and that was his final words. to you, to his siblings, to everyone.

he falls down the ground, and with all the strength he could muster, he tries to open his eyes, ...only to see a rainbow rose. the rose he kept. though, it wasn't covered in red anymore, and it was fresh. it was blooming.

then lyney smiles,

maybe there was forever in this world, but it was just... not meant for lyney.

[sagescented]

@autisticslp asked (on the old blog):

So a lot of cooking advice that people tend to give that seems very basic honestly comes from decades of experience; there's a post that floats around Tumblr sometimes, actually, that talks about how a lot of "cooking from intuition" isn't actually intuition at all. It's deeply ingrained memorization about the "laws of cooking" that we've learned over time, that feel like second nature to us to the point where we no longer have to think about it or physically reference recipes or tutorials anymore.

In essence: We're good at "taking what we have on hand and making a meal of it" because we have a lot of practice! We've built up a skill! A skill you're lacking in. And that's not a bad thing! But it also means that you shouldn't be too hard on yourself because you don't know or can't seem to grasp this stuff that seems so "second nature" or "easy" to a lot of the cooks you know. You're still really new at this! And with various disabilities and mental illnesses, cognitive issues, etc? Of course you're going to struggle harder at it than "most" seem to, to you!

As a secondary aside to that, you mentioned growing up on a farm. But farming and gardening, and the various forms of food preservation that frequently comes alongside small family subsistence farms, is a very different skill set! Knowing what's seasonal in your garden doesn't necessarily inherently translate into cooking it, and building a full meal up from scratch unless you also had someone who had that skill as well to teach you that.

I know my Husband's mom sure as hell didn't. He grew up on a farm like that, and she could can all day ... But Lord. She couldn't cook to save her life. She attempted to impart neither of these skills to my Husband, either ... I grew up on one, as well. But where my mom couldn't can or garden to save her life, she was a damned good cook and imparted those skills to me. Now I'm passing them on to my Husband decades later, because his mother failed to.

What you're ultimately missing is a fundamental set of basic skills, and a knowledge set built up over time and practice. And the good news is, those are really simple skills to learn. The bad news is, it does take a while to learn them and to build up that pool of knowledge. Most of it's experimentation, though, and not a lot of it's super difficult.

For basic knowledge of cooking science and spices, I'd recommend The Science of Cooking and The Science of Spice- both by Dr. Stuart Farrimond. I own both and love them dearly. They'll debunk some common myths, and give you a basic understanding of certain food sciences that are honestly really helpful.

When you feel like you're ready to actually sit down and experiment with spices, I love The Encyclopedia of Spices and Herbs: An Essential Guide to the Flavors of the World by Padma Lakshmi. It has information on various spices, tells you their cultural contexts, mentions what they're usually used on in those contexts (vegetables, which meats, etc), and even gives you some common cultural spice blends (though doesn't provide measurements). It's a thick boy, but it's a really fun one to work through if you have no introduction to spices or idea how to use them.

Past that, something you need to build yourself is a well stocked pantry with staple basics. I can't tell you what those are for you. That's something you have to figure out for yourself based on what you cook, how often, etc. But my minimum has always been at least 2 months worth of food in my pantry at any given time, across a broad enough spectrum that I can pick just about anything out of a recipe and only really need to shop for the fresh or immediate-need ingredients each week.

Staple Grains like Rice, Lentils, Cous Cous, and Quinoa.

Pasta Noodles of various types- like Elbow, Rigatoni, Bowtie, Penne, Fettuccini, and Spaghetti

Potatoes in the form of Mashed Potatoes and Scalloped Potatoes both, as well as a "fresh" bag each of Russet, Yellow, and Red Potatoes

Onions. I keep a mesh bag each of Red and Yellow (or White; whichever's cheapest at the time I'm shopping) on hand at all times.

Boxes of Stock (Chicken, Beef, Vegetable, and Protein Broth when I can find it)

Canned items that I use a lot of, like Diced Tomatoes, Tomato Sauce, Tomato Paste, every kind of Bean (Cannellini, Great Northern, Dark Red, Light red, Black, Pinto, etc), and Chickpeas; plus canned fish (Tuna and Salmon, Sardines, etc)

Condensed Creams Of (Chicken and Mushroom are the two we use most often)

Spices. Of every kind. You literally do not want to see my spice box. It's insane. Yes I'm proud of it. But it would make the average person cry with confusion and fear.

Frozen Veggies in the freezer (Green Beans, Brussel Sprouts, Broccoli, Carrots, Squashes, etc; personally I prefer the frozen to the canned)

I'm sure there's stuff I'm forgetting. But ultimately when you have a full pantry and only have to buy your fresh or immediate-need ingredients? It not only massively saves your grocery bill each week, but it also makes it so much easier to "make things with what you have on hand". Because a large part of the trick is, honestly, having things on hand to make stuff with in the first place. And that's really the big secret that goes unspoken in a lot of circles. But it really shouldn't be an unspoken secret, because it holds so many people back.

Another secret is just knowing basic cooking methods. What is chopping vs dicing? How do you pan fry? What's a dry fry vs a wet fry? What about baking? Broiling? Boiling? What happens if you stew an ingredient instead? How big does it have to be for each of these methods? How does it perform with rice as opposed to cous cous? How is it raw- if it can be eaten raw? Other than that, just knowing recipes is really going to be the big key.

Unfortunately I don't have a recommend for learning any of these ones, since I learned all this the hard way. I do see some cook books that could be useful (like Veg-table: Recipes, Techniques, and Plant Science for Big-Flavored Vegetable-Focused Meals by Nik Sharma; or Vegetables: The Ultimate Cookbook Featuring 300+ Delicious Plant-Based Recipes by Laura Sorkin). I can't personally recommend them, however, because I've never read or used them. But there's a lot of information out there on youtube that can be very helpful, especially for methodology since it's a visual medium- which is, I think, the best way to learn some of these skills in particular.

Personally, I did the recipe thing by looking at cuisines from regions where those foods or ingredients were really popular. So take your Eggplant for example. Eggplants feature a lot in Mediterranean, Levantine, and Middle Eastern cuisines. So when you want to learn how to use Eggplant and build up your knowledge about it? Looking at the people in those regions who use this ingredient a lot already is going to be really helpful to you. They know what they're doing with it!

When you've made those dishes a few times, you're going to get an understanding not only of how to prepare Eggplant for various methods of cooking, and how to cook it for those methods. But you're also going to get an understanding of what flavors pair well with it. And after a while of doing that, you're naturally going to start thinking "what if I do x instead?" and start experimenting on your own. Play with them. Get to know the ingredient on the most foundational level. And yeah, throw some herbs on it if you're comfortable! See what meshes with what flavors. What do you like? And yeah, some of those are going to be flops. But by the time you start thinking "what if" your skills are usually further progressed than you'd think to give yourself credit for. Just ask my Husband, ha!

As for the stuff regarding disability, mental illness, and cognitive function, I gotchu, babe! One of the most distressing things for me when I became disabled, started suffering really bad from cognitive decline, and started dealing with memory loss, was looking at the potential of never being able to cook for myself again. And that scared the piss out of me, because cooking is my joy. And so my Husband and I sat down and prioritized cooking and making it disability friendly for me. Here's some of the stuff we did.

First step: Get your butt a stool that's a comfortable height for your counter height. Once acquired, sit as much as you can in the kitchen. It conserves energy and lets you use more of it to focus your head.

Second: Get yourself all those fun little gadgets you think look interesting or helpful. Personally I have a fruit slicer (that works on more than just apples), a slap chopper microplane thingy, and a few others. Mostly I got these because occasionally my body loses my hands and has no idea where they went and it's safer for me. But I can't tell you how nice they are even when my body knows where my hands are, ha; they speed up prep, keep your fingers safe (usually), and leave more room for the brain to do its thing.

Third: Make as many lists as you can! I have a list on the inside of all my pantry doors of the staples that are in that section. When something needs refilling it allows me to put a mark there so I know to put it on the grocery list. But it also provides a quick reference when my brain's tired; it's so much easier for me to read a list than try and decipher box labels with various colors, font sizes, etc. Make lists wherever you need them and always keep them accessible.

Fourth: The recipe box. Yes. A good, old fashioned, classic recipe box. I have mine filled with tried and true recipes that I know for a fact my Husband and I love, that I know we have at least 90% of the ingredients on hand for at any given moment. So if all else fails and I can't think of anything? I can just go pull something out of the box and have him jot down to the store for anything we don't have.

Fifth: Keep easy meals on stock, because some days you really can't cook. Your brain won't let you, and that's ok! That's fine! But you still gotta eat, right? So we keep stuff like bagged Blackened Chicken Alfredo, Dirty Rice, Mongolian Beef, Jambalaya, Broccoli Beef, Red Beans & Rice, etc, on hand in the outdoor fridge. If at any point I just can't do it? We grab some of those instead.

And the good news is, you can spruce up a quick meal! Making Dirty Rice? Throw in some bread and butter, and a side of boiled Green Beans from the garden. Blackened Chicken Alfredo? Throw some Bell Pepper on in there; you can bulk this stuff up easily with your produce, and it takes even less effort most of the time.

As for the Covid sense of taste / smell? Keep trucking. It does get better; I suffered bad from Post-Covid Parosmia for nearly 2 years after I caught Covid the first time- bad enough to the point I couldn't bathe myself because of the smell of our water being nauseating to me; couldn't eat anything with Corn, or Wheat, or Onion, or Garlic in it for a year, either. the second I tried, my body auto rejected it. Bananas tastes like Iris flowers smelt ... I feel your pain so hard.

But it does get better. Your system is just rewiring itself completely from scratch right now. And Lord, it's so unpleasant. But the more you give it to taste, and smell, the better it does and the faster it rewires itself. Don't force yourself to eat things that are nauseating or unpleasant. But do branch out. Experiment. Even if it tastes left of how you remember it, keep going! I can't promise you'll get everything back (Lord knows there's still some things that aren't quite right for me, even 4 years later now). But it gets better!

I hope any of this helps- even if it's not as helpful if you'd like it to be. Hang in there, love.

My ask box is always open and Anon is currently ON.

[girlwithherheadinthestars]

study tips i made instead of studying

first and foremost, do as i say not as i do (as in don't post study tips on tumblr when you have seven tests to study for)

make it aesthetic, that's always super motivating. put a playlist in the background like the "you're a princess researching about your mother while trying to overthrow your father" or "solving a mystery in your elite boarding school" or "studying in a library with the ghosts" (look them up they're good god knows i'm too lazy to link them) also mcu soundtracks help me so much!!

pretty notes!!

DRINK WATER (go now fr or i'm going to find you)

something i like to do is keep a big cup of water next to me and force myself to sit and study until it's empty

open windows!!! wind helps me focus personally

pretend you're studying in hogwarts or in the dead poets society or something. imagination is very powerful

snacks!!!!!!

more snacks!!!!!!!!!!

get interested in what you're studying. like fr. stuff we learn in school is amazing af like what do you mean we found out the universe is expanding through red-shift??? ok i know this is very nerdy of me but it's cool af. BE NERDY.

take breaks <3 always

pretend you have a rival you need to destroy (if you have one that's even better, personally me and my rival sometimes study in the same room to motivate each other just by glaring at each other from across the room)(side note: this could also be his method of flirting i will never know)

stand up and walk around every once in a while. for all my figure skating besties -- try to do an off-ice axel in your kitchen. it tends to wake me up because i tend to fall when i try to do a double but whatever that's a me problem.

find somewhere comfortable and wear something comfortable

make a to-do list

SEPARATE SECTION ABOUT TO-DO LISTS BECAUSE I HAVE A WHOLE SYSTEM FOR THIS

first of all you're going to brain dump everything you have to do. every little thing. including walking your dog. everything that has to be done in the next 24 hours.

let's take a sample to do list:

- math quiz

-math homework

-physics presentation

-chemistry test

-french oral

next, you're going to give each of them a score. how do we put scores? well

give it an easiness score from 1 -> 10 (10 being you can do it upside down with your eyes closed)

give it a stress score from -1 -> -10 (-10 being it causes crippling anxiety)

give it a priority score from 1 -> 10 (10 being your teacher will hunt you down if it isn't done in the next hour)

finally, give it in a convenience score from -1 -> -4 (-4 being i don't know where my notebook is my pen is in antartica i have no material to do this atm)

for me it would be something like

- math quiz (5E, -1S, 10P, -2C) 12

-math homework (7E, 0S, 8P, -1C) 14

-physics presentation (6E, -2S, 5P, -2C) 7

-chemistry test (2E, -2S, 10P, 0C) 10

-french oral (10E, -3S, 8P, -1C) 14

then sort everything. do the highest scores first and the lowest scores last (so you get the easy stuff done and get motivated to continue) and there! your to-do list is done in the least painful way possible <3

[idoodlestuffsometimes]

DRAWING BACKGROUNDS: TIPS AND TRICKS

So many people are afraid of drawing backgrounds and I think it's a shame, so here's some tips and tricks, because I'm not perfect at it myself but I think the hardest part is really just knowing where to start.

First off: Perspective

Yeah, yeah, that's the scary word. But I promise you, once you're familiar with the basics, backgrounds are a LOT less intimidating. Don't get discouraged if WHEN you have trouble with it. Even professional artists struggle with it. I promise you, screwing it up is good and normal. That's how you learn after all!

Now I'm not going to go into detail on how to do it here, because honestly there are a thousand and one free resources online and in libraries that can explain it far better than I ever could in a singular broad-strokes tumblr post. But I AM at least telling you you should familiarize yourself with these basics:

Important Terms: Horizon Line: A horizontal line across your canvas, showing your viewer's eye level and providing a location for most of your vanishing points. Vanishing Point: Integral to drawing in perspective. The sides of a 3D object get smaller as they become farther away from the viewer in space. This point is where the parallel lines of a side eventually meet.

The Basic Types of Perspective: One Point Perspective: Good for drawing things that you're looking at straight on. Two Point Perspective: Good for drawing things at an angle. Three Point Perspective: Good for drawing things the viewer is looking up or down at, especially at an extreme angle.

[Click images for ALT descriptions]

And if you're comfortable with these and serious about improving your skills for use in storytelling, I also might suggest looking up:

4 Point Perspective: Great for extra wide or tall shots and for camera tilts if you're doing an animation or animatic. I think some other names for this in animation include "banana pan" and "warp pan."

5 Point Perspective: Fish-eye lens. Good for all your angsty anime boy slipping into madness needs!

Some perspective tips I wish someone had told me earlier:

Objects' relation to the horizon line is constant. A super helpful tip to remember when placing a character or object in space is that they will always (assuming they aren't changing in size or moving up or down) have the same relation to the horizon line no matter how far or close they are. If your horizon line is at shoulder height for your focus character in the foreground, any character of the same height in the background will still line up with the horizon line at the shoulders.

How to pick the distance between your vanishing points: 2 pt perspective uses 2 vanishing points, 3 pt uses 3, etc, etc, but how close should they be? Well, first of all, for anything that isn't one point perspective, one or more points will usually be off the canvas. Super annoying, I know, but the closer your vanishing points are, the more warped your drawing will become. Second, a helpful thing to know is that choosing the distance between your points is basically the illustration equivalent of picking your camera lens! Photography buffs will know that wider (shorter focal length) lenses show more space and make the distance between foreground and background more dramatic, while longer focal length/telephoto lenses are flatter, and more focused and intimate. The same is true of vanishing points that are closer (shorter focal length) or farther apart (longer focal length).

2 point/3 point/etc doesn't actually mean you're limited to that many points total on your page. this one confused me a lot when I was getting started, lol. A lot of examples will show you drawings of nice, neat cities or something, in which all the buildings are facing the same way in order to demonstrate perspective drawing. But in real life, buildings don't all face the same direction. They're at all sorts of different angles. So how do I do that??? Answer: Just because you're drawing in 2 point perspective or whatever doesn't mean you... have to actually keep your 2 points in the same spot. You can move them around, just keep them the same distance apart, so you're not screwing up your camera lens.

Other Tips:

Use reference! The instant you try to draw a house, you're going to forget every house you've ever seen. That's just how it goes. Buildings are complicated. Do yourself a favor and collect a few reference images first, buddy!

Consider details (like architectural style, amenities, and materials) Your building will look more like a building when you keep in mind that buildings have gutters and door knobs and light switches and paneling and stuff, and aren't just boxes with roofs on them. Again: reference! You will forget electrical sockets and baseboards exist immediately. Art brains are dumb.

Use details and texture to fill in negative space Giant stretches of blank space tend to be boring and distracting. Put a few suggestions of wood grain or something on that wall back there, bud, just don't overdo it.

Line weight Darker, thicker lines draw more attention, look heavier, and look closer to the viewer than lighter, thinner lines do. Take advantage of this to draw the viewer's attention to your focal points, de-emphasize less important details, and imply depth. It's up to you to decide how you want to use this and what your style is, especially once you start getting into combining or replacing it with shading, values, and color, but a helpful rule of thumb is to try reserving your thickest lines for focal foreground characters and use thinner lines on backgrounds, especially details in the far distance.

Perspective guides If you're drawing digitally, take full advantage of any perspective tools you have access to! A lot of art programs lately have begun adding perspective guide features that let you set up vanishing points and then literally guide your hand as you draw so you stay in perspective. Some of these include Procreate, Clip Studio Paint, and Adobe Fresco. (still sadly none in Photoshop as far as I'm aware, what the heck, Adobe!). Check through the settings of yours to see if it gives you any perspective guides or other similarly useful tools. They're 100% worth it! And for god's sake, if you've got any skew or perspective warp tools, draw your complicated shapes flat and then warp them instead of spending an hour on it! Don't make my mistakes!

[olderthannetfic]

fandom social justice history anon here - aaah, thank you, early fandom being dominated by academics definitely connected the dots I was missing, thank you! Yeah, now looking at it with this in mind, it's pretty obvious how the tone of the meta essays from that era, while often snarky or even outraged, definitely sounds more like the tone of people who are used to passionately arguing in a setting that doesn't allow you to just throw whatever ad hominem accusation at your opponent's head. In contrast, tumblr's (and as a result, twitter's and tiktok's) style of fandom drama now reads to me even more blatantly like a catfight between high schoolers who have just recently learned some Big Words they only care to use as ammunition. I've read multiple older fans (including your invaluably informative blog) talking about how tumblr definitely reshaped fandom and brought in a TON of new people, and how slash was far from the "mainstream" of fandom even in the livejournal-ffn.net days, and I'm having a feeling that, for all the imperfections of this first tumblr generation of fans' activism ("let my gays marry" etc etc) the thing that got slash to be "mainstreamed" within fandom the way it currently is, also has to do with this pretty sizeable influx of new fans being mostly teenagers. As in specifically, overwhelmingly teenage girls who were having their first sparks of interest in romance during the height of the "I'm not like other girls" era + everyone shitting on twilight & "girly" musicians, because if you look at the posts from that period, they often contrast being a slash reader with being the slutty partying "other girl" or annoying hipster & at my school too slash kind of spread as a "not like the other girls" alternative to mainstream romance. Yes, not the healthiest attitude either, and it's good we've mostly grown past that, but like I said, there's a good chance that was what buffed up the numbers of slash fans to the point where today people are surprised fandom ever even was hostile to it, and at least in my environment, fandom activism, for all its flaws, was most people's first exposure to any sort of "-rights" activism at all. But (as is probably obvious) I did not experience most of even that era personally (I joined tumblr fandom in 2014). Anyways, excuse the rambling, if you feel like adding anything to confirm or deny my hypothesis, I greatly appreciate it, and I hope you have a nice day/evening!

--

M/M still isn't mainstream in plenty of fandom contexts, just not the ones I hang out in, and "not like the other girls" of the type you describe was already big in the 90s among people who'd heard of fanfic. It's just that fanfic was harder to stumble across overall.

I think the two biggest factors are the changing attitudes towards gayness in mainstream culture in a number of countries and... well... AO3 getting popular.

FFN was the big place in the past, though not for my crowd. Now, AO3 is taking a massive bite out of not only its market share but now, in the last few years, Wattpad's.

When the visible institution around which fanfic revolves puts filtering out het front and center, it sends a strong message that previous fandom platforms did not. You had your m/m-only archives and your f/f-only archives and your places that let you filter for those but that treated het as an unmarked default.

Look at early discussions of AO3. There's an undercurrent there that we all assumed it would be one of a number of archives and that we didn't expect it to get this big.

Nobody could have foreseen the Het-Is-Eternal-Default Wattpad crowd being forced by their own platform's suckitude to come camp on the thing built by slashers. Now, we are the admins and they are the also-tolerated. That never happened before.

The thing that makes people not report gay hand holding as evil porn that must be eradicated is simply AO3 putting its foot down.

Anyone who thinks that virulent slash hate is gone just hasn't looked at other spaces.

This is not about individual fans behaving better: it is about institutional power.

[x-press-it]

Devilish Desires - 4/9?

Dangerous Temptations, Irresistible Touch 🎞️❤️‍🔥🌹⚔️🖤💻🖱️

Sub!Logan Howlett x Dom!OC (They/Them)

Summary: Logan, typically guarded and dominant, finds himself captivated by E, a mysterious being with a devilish allure and ancient presence that challenges his control.

Context: This story unfolds 'within' the "Days of Future Past" new timeline, during Logan's early years as a history teacher at Xavier’s School. It’s set well before his consciousness from the original timeline reconnects with him in 2023, as seen at the film’s end.

Content Warnings (for the whole story): Smut 18+ (Dry humping, Edging, Unprotected p in v.) - Dom!Logan into Sub!Logan - Pet Names (Good boy, pretty boy, pet, pup, amongst others...) reversed age gap (Logan is younger) - OC Notes: Established name, backstory, powers, fighting style, female body but gender fluid character (Logan misgender them at first because he doesn't know, even in the descriptions) - Mention of other character from the MCU and subtle references to the comics for flavor (not mandatory to understand what is happening) - Flash back and mention of past trauma - Fluff with Dark Undertones: Emotional tension and possessive affection - Worship Themes: Religious imagery, reverent language and awe - Ancient Mysticism: References to otherworldly or demonic presence - Mental Health: Power dynamics, personal vulnerabilities - Trope: Rivals to lovers. I'm back after 10 years of iatus and fairly new to how things are done on tumblr now, so sorry if I missed any warnings. Also english isn't my first language so there might be typos/weird sentences...

Notes: Got very inspired by sub!Logan and repeated listening of "Between wind and water" by Hael. Cover made with canva from an idea I got from this post. If you know who made the picture, tell me so I can credit them - Click on the divider to find the creator. Also this was meant to be an imagine turned into a full story. Just so you know, some chapters are very short, other are long. I'm in the process of editing/writing/rewriting parts so I'll post a chapter everytime I have one fully edited. This was another hard chapter to edit/rewrite, but I did it ^^ I hope you guys like fighting/sparring scenes ^^" Ok, let's feed that hunger, shall we? ;)

Need some music? I've got you

Previously: in Devilish Desires

Chapters: 4/9?

Word Count: 9.9K / 50K+ for now

In the days that followed their meeting in the library, E kept their distance from Logan. They must have been tangled up with all the contract adjustments and whatever else came with their mysterious agenda, or at least that’s what he assumed. Logan couldn’t say he minded their absence; if anything, the tension between his shoulders had finally started to ease, and his routine felt a little less invaded.

He hardly saw them around the mansion. E would appear in passing, usually on their way to Charles’s office or briefly dipping into the library, but they seemed to vanish as quickly as they appeared. They never crossed paths otherwise. Not in the gym, where he’d half-expected to catch them training, nor in the kitchen, where they always managed to get there before him and leave behind only faint traces—a mug in the sink, an empty coffee pot. Even Ororo, who spent most of her time outside tending to the gardens, mentioned she hadn’t seen them lingering around the grounds. And as the days dragged on, Logan felt the empty space they’d left lingering.

A part of him was curious now, his wariness easing as he'd learned more about them. He’d gotten a glimpse of them beneath that composed exterior, enough to see that they weren’t the threat he’d originally thought, maybe even enough to say they weren't so different from each other—if he squinted. Their goals didn’t seem so far from his, and neither did their need for freedom. He found himself wondering, almost against his will, what they were doing when they weren’t working. It didn’t sit right, not knowing.

And soon enough, he realized he’d started keeping an eye out for them. Them, the person who’d been in his face day in and day out for weeks, was now barely a shadow in the mansion’s daily rhythm. It was… odd, and the feeling only grew with each day they didn’t cross paths.

But then, on the fifth day after their meeting, Logan’s curiosity finally got a break when Charles called the team to his office. He could sense something was coming—the air in the room was thick with it. The team gathered, shifting uneasily, the only absentees being the three younger members. Logan leaned against the wall, arms crossed, his gaze as sharp as ever as he watched each person in the room. His eyes kept circling back to E, who stood slightly off to the side, their expression a wall of carefully constructed calm. They didn’t look at him or anyone else, a clear signal they weren’t here to play nice.

Charles cleared his throat, drawing their attention as he settled behind his desk. “I’ve called you all here to discuss an important matter regarding the security of the school.”

Logan’s gaze narrowed, his instincts already piecing together that this had to do with E. Sure enough, Charles’ steady look swept across the team, his voice carrying a calm authority. “It has been decided that E will be training with you all from now on. They won’t be part of the team, but as they work here at the school and have the right to defend it, it’s important for everyone to understand their abilities. In case of an attack, we all need to be on the same page.”

The discomfort in the room was tangible. Everyone shifted, casting skeptical glances at E, who remained silent, almost impassive. Their appearance looked more severe today—dull skin and eyes, their horns lacking their usual shine, and their hair pulled back in a tight bun. They wore mostly black, save for a few touches of dark red, with no jewelry and only the barest hint of makeup. Jean watched them closely, brows furrowing as she tried to read their thoughts, but E’s sharp glare in her direction made it clear that wall wasn’t coming down.

Scott was the first to voice his hesitation, clearing his throat as he looked between Charles and E. “Is that really necessary? We’ve never had any outsiders train with us before.”

Logan couldn’t help the low chuckle that slipped out. “Forgot about me, Summers? I was an outsider once, too.” The words hung in the air for a heartbeat before he cast a quick glance at E. Just as he expected, their attention—once fixed on their perfectly manicured red nails—flickered to his, briefly meeting his gaze before quickly looking away, the moment slipping by as quickly as it had come.

If they weren’t friends, Scott would’ve probably fried him with his visor for that comment, but Charles remained patient as he waited for the room to settle. “E works alongside us here,” he said, voice steady but unyielding. “They have every right to protect the students, just as we do.” His gaze swept over each person, settling on them a moment longer than necessary. “It’s important we trust one another in times of crisis.”

Logan’s gaze drifted back to E. They stood rigid, a subtle tension in their posture that hadn’t been there before. If he was reading them right, they didn’t want to be here any more than the team wanted them here. It wasn’t just distance, it was a quiet wariness, like they were on guard against everyone, Charles being the only exception. Even Jean’s curiosity only earned another glare from E, a silent warning to stay out of their head.

As the murmurs of agreement wrapped up the meeting, Logan lingered, eyes settling on E. He wasn’t wary of them anymore, not exactly, but something about them made him curious. He’d seen a glimpse of who they were under that mask. He wasn’t sure he trusted them yet, but he respected them—at least enough to want to see more of what they were capable of. And there was that other thing, too; he’d noticed it in the faint shadows under their eyes and the worn edges of their aura. Whatever was keeping them going seemed to be running thin.

“Hey,” he called out before they could leave. They turned slowly, an eyebrow raised, the only indication they’d heard him.

“When d’you have time to spar?” he asked, trying to read their reaction.

Their face barely shifted, but he could see a glint of amusement behind their guarded look. “Right now, actually,” they replied, their voice steady and even. “Unless you’re busy.”

Logan pushed off the wall, straightening his posture. “I’ve got time.”

They nodded, excusing themselves to change and, twenty minutes later, they met him at the bottom of the staircase. They were both now dressed in gear more suitable for what lay ahead, and Logan couldn’t help but notice the way their presence had shifted from the last time they spoke—the carefully polished exterior was there, but the energy behind it was dimmed, like they were holding something back. As they stepped outside, Logan led them to a secluded corner of the grounds, far from prying eyes. The shaded glade lay far from the main paths, ensuring no students or teachers would wander by, a quiet space with plenty of room to move freely.

As they reached the clearing, he rolled his shoulders, flexing his arms and testing his range of motion with a low, almost eager hum in his throat. “Alright,” he said, a smirk tugging at his lips. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

E’s lips curved into a faint smile, tight at the edges, as they removed their shoes, grounding themselves in the cool grass. Logan studied them, and it seemed like even the glint in their eyes was dimmer than he remembered; they looked tired, worn.

“You sure you’re feelin’ up for this?” he taunted. “Look a little beat.”

At those words, a faint smirk tugged at their lips, a dangerous spark lighting in their eyes—not quite playful, but charged with a hint of anticipation as they settled a few feet from him, their toes curling slightly in the green blades. “Looks can be deceiving,” they stated, their eyes narrowing with a brief, steely flash. “So don’t hold back.”

Logan chuckled, a low growl under his breath . “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

They shifted into their stances, circling each other slowly, and Logan took a moment to assess them, noting their balance and posture, looking for signs of fatigue or hesitation. E looked drained, their skin and eyes lacking the usual intensity, their expression guarded but when they lunged forward, it was with a speed and grace that took him off guard. They were light on their feet, with an economy of motion that spoke of years of training. Even so, they lacked their usual edge. He’d felt their agility before—those brief, charged touches when they went after him over the past couple of weeks. But now, with their first steps, he saw a whole new side to them.

As Logan moved in, he blocked their strike, and the force behind it surprised him. They were damn quick, and strong enough to make him realize he couldn’t take this lightly. He dodged a swift kick, aiming a punch in return, but they twisted smoothly out of his reach, moving with a precision that was… stunning.

A flicker of respect—maybe even awe—stirred in him, and he noticed the shift almost immediately. E’s movements, initially strong, suddenly sharpened, a faint glow sparking in their eyes as they draw strength from his reaction. Each impressed thought, every ounce of admiration, pulse under their skin like fuel, strengthening them further.

Their smile widened, feeling the strength coursing through them now, a flash of teeth as they spun around him, arms a flurry of open-palmed strikes and swift fists. Logan blocked most of them, dodging the rest. They weren’t just good—they were damn good. And as his recognition grew, he felt an odd, almost tangible energy radiating off them, a surge that seemed to seep from the esteem they stirred in him.

“Not bad,” he grunted, his breath steady despite the exertion. The thrill of a real challenge was humming through his veins, the kind that made his blood come alive. But he couldn’t ignore that other feeling creeping in, like something slipping just beyond his control, something wild and powerful in E that his respect seemed to unlock.

They closed in again, and as their bodies met, Logan realized just how agile they were. It wasn’t only that they were fast; it was the precision of each movement, the way they slipped around his strikes like water weaving through rock. He found himself pushed harder, each dodge and block requiring his full attention.

Their style was unlike anything he’d seen before: smooth, swift, each movement flowing into the next like a performer weaving between shadows. There was a seamlessness to their steps, an exotic grace laced with foreign influences he couldn’t quite place—Arabic, maybe, or something even older. As they exchanged blow after blow, it felt like choreography, mesmerizing—E’s motions were fluid and graceful, carrying a rhythm and elegance that Logan could respect, even as he fought to keep up. This wasn’t just skill; it was... Art. And the more he admired it, the stronger they became, each spark of his interest feeding into their movements like an unseen force binding them.

Realization struck him like a blow—yes, they were good, but their power was intensifying, fueled by him.

He’d heard of mutants who could channel the emotions of others, drawing strength from positive thoughts like attention and interest. But feeling it now—feeling their strength mirror his thoughts… it was unlike anything he’d experienced.

They were more than a match for him, and his respect for their skill, their grit, surged. The moment that thought crossed his mind, E’s strikes grew even faster, their focus intensifying, and he was almost sure of it now. His every impressed reaction were seeping into them, fueling their intensity.

Their strikes picked up speed, and Logan found himself on the defensive more than he’d anticipated. They were fucking sharp. For every hit he blocked, two more came at him from new angles, as if they were testing him, pushing him to see just how far they could go. And with each strike, with every dodge, their energy grew, their fatigue seemed to melt away. The fire in their eyes reignited, and their form tightened, honed into something intense and unyielding.

He went in close, using his instincts to counter their movements, but with each passing moment, he witnessed how his respect only made them stronger. It was mesmerizing—and unsettling. The bond felt tangible, like an invisible current between them, and it was taking on a life of its own.

Logan ducked under a high kick, his instincts leading the way, and countered with a low sweep that nearly knocked them off-balance. E rolled out of reach, landing on their feet with a fluid twist that made Logan pause, even for just a fraction of a second. The way they moved was intoxicating—a mix of elegance and deadly purpose that sparked something inside him. He couldn’t help it; for a split moment, he was simply watching them, almost spellbound.

But there was no time to linger. E closed the distance with a burst of energy, a flurry of controlled, powerful strikes, fists and open palms, that had Logan moving on impulse alone. Each hit was controlled, precise, but damn, the force behind them kept him on his toes, like they were trying to push him to his limits. And maybe, deep down, he wanted them to. He blocked, deflected, and when he caught their wrist mid-swing, he allowed a small, knowing smirk to flicker across his face. That’s when he saw it—the glint of mischief in their eyes, quick and bold. E twisted out of his grasp with a move so smooth it felt like he’d tried to catch water.

Logan tightened his grip as they shifted, pulling them back to him, but the moment their faces were mere inches apart, time seemed to pause. Their eyes were locked onto his, unflinching and intense. There was something fierce there, a silent challenge that pulled at something deeper inside him, stoking the embers in his guts. It was like they were daring him, testing him not just as an opponent but as someone who understood the fire behind their eyes.

E must have seen the battle between reason and desire flicker in his gaze because they seized the moment, breaking free in a swift motion. Logan let them go, both impressed and curious, wanting to see what they’d do next. They didn’t waste a second, attacking with renewed vigor, moving like a force of nature, their body a seamless weapon of precision and raw determination. Logan could feel the shift—a resolve in them, the power that had been lying dormant now fully awakened. They weren’t holding back anymore, weren’t playing it safe. The series of blows they threw with rapid precision drew him into that primal place where his instincts ruled, and he was forced to meet them there, letting the feral part in him slip closer to the surface. The thrill of it sparked through his veins like wildfire.

“Alright,” he growled under his breath, almost laughing as he absorbed another blow and stepped back, chest heaving. “So you’re not playin’ around.”

Their eyes glimmered, never breaking eye contact, that confident grin tugging at their lips. They let out a breathy laugh, low and challenging. “You finally noticed?” they teased, their voice smooth with the thrill of the fight. There was something almost predatory in the way they held his gaze, the way they readied themselves for the next round. The air between them was tight, charged, every breath a shared battle. They circled each other once more, both panting heavily now, both intent, and Logan shifted his stance, ready for whatever came next.

He braced himself as they lunged, and this time, he met them head-on, gripping their fist mid-swing. The impact sent a shock through them both, a raw electricity that stilled the moment. E didn’t pull back, and neither did he. The space between them buzzed with an unspoken understanding—a recognition of equals, of opponents who respected each other enough to give everything.

Logan’s gaze drifted over their features, taking in the fierce focus, the glint in their eyes that had come alive in the heat of combat. He could feel his own pulse thundering in his chest, the thrill of the challenge, the sheer admiration for their skill. Whoever they were, whatever their story, they were damn impressive.

Their faces stayed close, eyes locked in a dance of silent words and wild, racing thoughts. He realized then, amidst the push and pull, that they weren’t just sparring. They were testing each other, challenging what they thought they knew.

When they finally broke apart, their breath heavy, Logan took in the slight rise and fall of their chest, the gleam of sweat on their neck. He let out a slow, impressed hum. “You weren’t holdin’ back, were ya?” His voice was low, rough with something more than exertion.

“Not my style.” E’s sly smile was full of restrained satisfaction. “But I thought you’d be a little faster, Wolverine,” they taunted, breathing hard, a mischievous edge to their tone.

Logan chuckled, the sound more rumble than laugh. He rolled his shoulders, a smirk playing on his lips as he nodded. “And you’re better than I thought. Maybe I misjudged ya.” The admission came with its own weight, but it felt right. “Wasn’t expectin’ you to get that fired up.”

And there it was again, that pull in the air between them, a flash of mutual acknowledgment that only seemed to heighten E’s energy. It hung in the air like an invisible thread, binding them to something that was no longer just a sparring match.

“Guess you bring out the best in me,” E added, their voice softer now but no less charged as they straightened, wiping a sheen of sweat from their brow.

This fight, this moment, was more than just a test of strength; it felt like a line had been crossed, an unspoken understanding forged in the heat of battle. Logan’s heart skipped a beat in his chest, and for once, he didn’t bother suppressing the feeling. He’d had his fair share of fights, of sparring matches, but this had felt different—charged, almost like a trial, a test that had changed something between them.

He let a smirk tug at the corner of his lips. “Seems like we both do, huh?”

Their gaze glinted, a hint of mischief mixed with something he couldn’t quite place. “Careful,” they said, voice low, “You might actually start liking me.”

He shook his head, though a glint of something warmer shone in his eyes. “Don’t go gettin’ ideas. I still don’t trust ya,” he said, though there was a reluctant admiration in his tone. “But I can’t deny you’ve got skills.”

They both stood there in the quiet clearing, the tension between them heavy and electric. It wasn’t just the fight that left him on edge—it was that undeniable force that surged through them, the energy that seemed to bloom under his attention, his respect.

They held his gaze a moment longer, something unspoken passing between them. And finally, E’s expression softened, the intensity in their eyes dimming as they nodded slightly. “You ever want another round, you know where to find me,” they said before turning on their heels, the tension between them lingering like the echo of a battle not quite over.

As they walked away, carrying their shoes in one hand, Logan felt a strange pull, something magnetic urging him forward, a reflexive need to know more. Before he could think better of it, he called out after them, half-jogging to close the distance. E paused, glancing back with a raised eyebrow and a hint of amusement in their eyes.

They were checking their phone, frowning at a few missed calls, their thumb hovering over the screen to call back. But before they could hit the button, Logan spoke up, his voice steady despite the racing of his heart. “When d’you reckon we could do this again?”

They looked up, and for a second, there was a gleam of something mischievous in their eyes, a playful spark that was hard to miss. Their lips curved, and that teasing smile tugged at him in a way that caught him off guard. “Oh, can’t get enough of me now, huh, pretty boy?”

Logan felt a tingle in his gut, the playful edge in their voice threw him for a second, that casual nickname landing unexpectedly. They made him feel like he was fifteen again, trying to play it cool in front of someone who seemed way out of his league—a completely new feeling for him. A part of him wanted to fire something back, maybe a quip about how he wasn’t in it for them, but for their skills. But he deflected instead, maintaining his composure. “I want to know more about your style. It’d be good for the team. Could give us an edge, y’know?”

“Good for the team,” E echoed, amusement flashing in their gaze as they cocked their head, weighing him. “If you say so.”

They turned their phone over in their hand, clearly tempted to tease him further, but before they could say anything, he cut them off, “Remember the training sessions Charles mentioned in the meeting? Did he told you about the Danger Room?”

E raised an eyebrow, a smirk playing at their lips. “I might have heard of it… but maybe you could tell me a little more?”

Logan nodded, sensing an opportunity. “Well, it’s…let’s just say it’s our own personal, high-stakes training ground. If you want, I can walk you through it sometime.”

E considered him for a moment, their posture straightening as they regained their composure. “Alright. How about we meet back here tonight, after dinner, for some sparring again, and then you can tell me more about this danger room you’re talking about.”

“Tonight, huh?” he said, a hint of a smirk returning. “Yeah, I can make that work.”

“Good,” they murmured, their hand brushing his arm as they stepped past him, a fleeting, electrifying touch that sent a shiver through his skin. It was nothing—a casual touch—but it was enough to spark that strange charge between them again, something he could feel deep in his gut.

“See you tonight, then,” E said with a half-smile, their voice low, almost intimate. They turned, heading back toward the mansion with that damn sway in their step, every move as deliberate as their fighting style, leaving him there, watching and feeling just a bit off-balance. He couldn’t shake the feeling that, tonight, he was in for more than just another spar.

Logan was no stranger to being haunted by his thoughts, and most of the time, it was his past. But this was different—it wasn’t memories lingering in his head, it was someone alive and present, shifting through his thoughts like they had every right to be there. He’d spent the better part of the day moving from task to task, hoping that the routine would get his head on straight. He’d given three history lectures to classes who looked mostly bored out of their minds, walked the mansion perimeter twice, and even joined Hank in the lab for a solid hour before irritation got the best of him.

And still, every damn time he tried to clear his head, they were there. E. A quiet thrill snuck through him at the memory of their last spar, at the way they’d moved with that sharpened focus, picking up on his admiration like they could feel it.

Which they probably could. If his suspicions were right, E could sense admiration the way he could sense a lie—and that alone was a reason to keep his distance. But he hadn’t, not really. He’d leaned into it, watching the way they seemed to glow under his attention. That look in their eyes when they caught his gaze? Couldn’t shake it.

Damn it, it was making him question everything.

You’re not some lovesick puppy, bub, he thought, dragging his hand through his hair, frustrated. Get your head on straight.

E wasn’t his responsibility, not in the usual sense. He wasn’t there to watch over them or protect them. That wasn’t his job. Not that they needed him to, anyway. But the pull they had on him—some strange mix of curiosity and something else—wasn’t something he could easily shake off. He wasn’t sure if it was admiration, attraction, or something more dangerous, but it gnawed at him all the same.

Things never ended well when he got close, especially with someone like them. It was better, safer, to keep his instincts in check.

But still, when he thought about seeing them again, it felt like a twist in his gut, like he was waiting for something he couldn’t name, something primal. It was maddening, intoxicating—a feeling he hated as much as he longed for. And he couldn’t help himself.

His thoughts braught him back to them again, as he remembered the way E’s strikes had picked up speed, their movements sharpening with every surge of his admiration. The memory sent a chill down his spine. His jaw clenched as his mind raced. The urge to spar again—to see how far he could push them, what more they could become—tugged at him. But damn it, he had to remind himself to focus. He was here, not in the damn glade.

“Get ahold of yourself, damn it,” he muttered, hoping the sound of his voice might help break the spell. “You’ve got enough ghosts followin’ you around, don’t go invitin’ another.”

But E wasn’t a ghost. They were sharp, present, and so fucking alive. He didn’t want to admit it, but that made all the difference. This wasn’t some lingering regret or phantom from his past. It was real. And that made everything harder.

It wasn’t just his admiration—it was the way they challenged him, the way they made him feel. That pull, that instinctive response—it was there, simmering under the surface. And maybe that was what scared him the most.

Because even now, he couldn’t decide if it was them or their powers making him feel this way. The pull was real, but was it them? Or just some side effect of them feeding off his admiration?

Damn it. Logan clenched his fists, trying to shake it off. But no matter how much he fought it, E’s presence lingered, just out of reach, but never really gone. They weren’t his responsibility, not really—but hell if his instincts weren’t practically begging to make them his.

Hours dragged on, the sun dipping lower in the sky, but Logan found himself waiting for night to come. Waiting for the next sparring session. His body was wound tight, focus frayed, and he knew damn well it was because of them. No matter how hard he tried to pull himself back, some part of him was already leaning forward, eager to step into that clearing again, to see how much further they could go, how much more they could push each other.

His reason fought to resist, but he honestly wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep fighting it.

Logan settled into his seat in the dining room, but he wasn’t really there. He’d forced himself to join the others for dinner, hoping that the casual chatter would ground him, help shake E from his mind. But as plates clattered and conversations flowed, he found his thoughts still circling back to them—and to the way their strength had fed off his admiration. It gnawed at him, that feeling he’d fueled them somehow, that his respect had made them stronger, sharper. A part of him didn’t want to go down that road, but damn if he wasn’t already obsessing about the next sparring session, counting down the minutes.

He tried to focus on the idle talk around the table, but most of it only seemed to make his hackles rise. People were talking about E—debating whether they’d be joining the team in the future or if this was just a one-off thing. To them, it felt like E was edging their way in, and they didn’t like it. He could see the unease in Bobby’s frown, the way Marie’s gaze flitted to him, clearly feeling out where he stood on all this.

Eventually, the young woman turned to him, her brow raised in question. “So, Logan… what d’you make of her?” she asked, misgendering E without a second thought. “You’ve spent more time with her than the rest of us. ”

His reaction was swift and sharp, his tone a bit harsher than intended. “Them,” he corrected, voice edged. He took a steadying breath, reigning himself back. “They prefer ‘them.’”

Marie and Kitty exchanged a glance at that, a silent conversation that didn’t escape his notice. He forced himself to ignore it, though the sting of irritation remained, mingling with a faint, unexpected defensiveness. He wasn’t the type to stand on ceremony or correct people just to be polite. Still, he wasn’t going to stand by and let them talk about E without a damn bit of respect. But again, why the hell did he feel like he needed to stick up for them?

He tried to keep his tone casual as he shrugged, downplaying it like he didn’t care one way or another. “They’re alright. They’ve helped me out with some legal work, actually. Seems like they know what they’re doing. We sparred too… they’ve got a style that’s different. Pretty sharp. Could be good for you all to pick up some of that.”

The more he spoke, the harder it became to keep the admiration out of his voice. It wasn’t just that they were capable—there was something in the way they moved, the way they fought. Respect had never come easily to him, but with E, it was there, raw and undeniable.

Kitty raised an eyebrow, intrigued, and Logan felt a small spark of irritation as she leaned in. “What’s so special about it?”

He tried to keep it casual but the words flew out of him before he could stop them. “It’s… fast, strong, fluid… almost like watching something crafted. Like art.” Damn it. He hadn’t meant to let so much appreciation slip through, but it was hard to ignore how their moves had lingered in his mind all day.

His comment hung in the air, and he could see the others’ gazes shift toward him, noting how his tone had softened. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes, feeling a bit exposed under their scrutiny.

“What’s their power, though?” Bobby asked, curiosity written across his face.

Before Logan could even think of a response, a smooth voice coming from the doorway cut him off. “Don’t you know it’s rude to ask a lady about their powers?”

Logan turned, catching sight of E leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed over their chest, a teasing smirk on their lips. They looked different than they had after sparring earlier—not as radiant, but still damn good, with that casual confidence that could set anyone on edge. They had changed again, now in some kind of foreign traditional outfit, somehow looking both beautiful and dangerous as their gaze shifted over each face at the table.

Bobby’s cheeks flushed pink at E’s words, and he fumbled for a response, while Marie shot them a half-hearted glare. Logan didn’t miss the slight flicker in E’s expression—a hint of something softer, like a crack in their armor, but it was gone in an instant, too quick for anyone else to catch.

Ororo was the first to break the silence. “What brings you here, E?”

E straightened, sauntering into the room with an air of nonchalance, though their smirk said otherwise, metal chiming on their ankles and wrists. “Sorry to interrupt,” they said, though the smirk made it clear they weren’t sorry at all. “I’m just here for Logan,” they added when reaching him, their hand finding his shoulder and resting there, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Logan’s frown deepened at their words and actions—like they owned him, like he’d just been summoned. Something primal flared within him at the look in their eyes, and he fought to keep his own expression in check, unwilling to let that part of himself show.

“We had another sparring session planned,” he explained quickly, shrugging off their hand, his tone a bit too abrupt. He didn’t want them getting any strange ideas about what this was.

E gave a small nod, a glint of mischief in their eyes. “Yes, a sparring session,” they repeated, voice low and almost playful. Their gaze lingered on him for just a beat too long, that glint sending his instincts flaring.

They turned with a casual wave of their hand, bracelets chiming with the motion, before glancing back at him over their shoulder as they sauntered back toward the hallway. “I’ll be outside. Don’t take too long,” they tossed back with a wink, disappearing around the corner.

The room went quiet as E left, the tension hanging thick in the air. Logan forced himself to finish his meal, trying to ignore the eyes on him. He could practically feel the questions lingering unsaid, the looks exchanged behind his back. But he kept his focus on his plate, forcing himself to eat slowly even as impatience thrummed beneath his skin. Finally, he excused himself, heading into the kitchen to put his dishes in the dishwasher before slipping out the back.

When Logan reached the clearing, he found E sitting cross-legged in the grass, the deep black of their tunic blending with the shadows, disturbed only by the dark red sash at their waist. When they shifted, the golden and crimson bracelets at their wrists and ankles chimed softly, each note cutting through the quiet night. Even their hair and makeup, immaculately done, added an edge to their poised, lethal beauty—a sharp contrast to the rawness of their last sparring session.

They looked like they were dressed to perform and, for a few heartbeats, he was mesmerized. They were utterly still, chest rising and falling so slowly that they could almost pass for a statue, something sculpted by a master, with an eye for each curve and line. The moonlight washed over them, casting an ethereal glow that only added to the aura around them, one part mystery, one part raw strength.

They had felt him, of course. He didn’t have to make a sound; the energy rolling off him was enough. A faint, knowing smile blossomed on their red-painted lips, soft at first, then sharper as it settled. Eyes still closed, they spoke, their voice smooth as silk in the quiet night. “I’m glad we’re doing this again, Logan.” They paused, savoring the weight of his gaze. “I couldn’t focus all day. You… lingered.”

Logan felt his pulse kick up a notch, his mind flicking back to his own restless day—the way he’d had to force himself to push through the usual motions, when all he really wanted was to get back here, back to them. He tried to keep his expression steady, giving a small shrug as he stepped closer. “Your style’s… intriguing,” he said, hoping it sounded casual, unaffected. But he knew better, and they did too; the spark of warmth they felt from him seemed to seep into their own energy, feeding them.

They savored it, and now he could tell. He watched as something in them shifted, as if they were becoming more than they had been a moment earlier, like his presence and attention added a new depth to their form. Finally, they opened their golden-hooded eyes, meeting his gaze head-on. The shimmer of the powder accentuated the sharpness of their stare, turning it into something almost regal.

Rising to their feet with the delicate chime of metal, they moved with an effortless grace, stretching in a way that was deliberate, flexing their muscles as though reminding him of what he was about to face. “It’s called kalaripayattu,” E said, their voice steady. “It was my foundation. But… it changed, especially in Turkey.” Their gaze darkened momentarily, a flicker of something painful passing through their expression before it settled into a smirk, masking the past. “Not all evolutions come from the best places.”

Logan's jaw tightened at the admission, a familiar pang settling low in his chest. He’d seen that look before—the one that spoke of scars hidden under skin, memories too heavy to carry yet impossible to drop. The urge to say something, to tell them he understood that kind of burden, nearly surfaced, but he bit it back. This wasn’t the moment for words; they both knew that. Instead, he nodded, letting the unspoken understanding hang between them as he rolled his shoulders, cracking his neck as he watched them, that low hum of anticipation lighting up in him again.

E grounded themselves, digging their toes into the grass like they did before their last fight, finding their balance in a way that was both practiced and primal. Their stance shifted, flowing into something new—a crouched position, one leg stretched back and the other supporting them low to the ground, arms raised toward the sky, palms pressed together, like a warrior in prayer. The pose was unexpected, striking, and undeniably dangerous.

“You ready for round two, pretty boy?” They smirked, mischief dancing across their face, challenging him in a way that was hard to ignore.

Logan felt his pulse spike at the nickname, an involuntary reaction he stubbornly refused to acknowledge. It got under his skin in a way that was both infuriating and exhilarating, making his chest tighten with something unspoken. He cracked his knuckles, returning their smirk with one of his own. “You think you got it in you to keep up?” His tone was thick with confidence, with that hint of wild pride that only emerged when he faced someone capable of pushing him to his limits.

“Oh, I know I do, sugar.” They let the word roll off their tongue with a teasing lilt, eyes gleaming with challenge.

They shared a look, two rivals who’d found a rare equal, sizing each other up, caught between the thrill of the fight and the satisfaction of knowing that tonight, there was no one else who could possibly match them.

And then, as the tension reached its peak, both held taut in that breathless moment, they launched at each other. Their bodies collided, a clash of motion and control, every inch a dance of precision—not with brute force, but with a dynamic grace, a synergy that felt almost primal. E moved first, sliding low to the ground, almost flowing, their actions fluid and deliberate, bracelets and anklets chiming with every shift. Each touch, each brush of their hand along his arm, shoulder, and side was deceptively soft, like a caress meant to lure rather than harm. But Logan wasn’t fooled. He felt the energy coiled in every motion, understood just how deadly each one could be if they chose it to be. He knew the strength they were capable of. Those strikes—gentle as they were—carried a restrained power, and he sensed it, a whisper of the damage they could inflict if they changed their mind and decided to hurt him.

They circled each other in a rhythm that came as naturally as breathing, bodies weaving in and out, almost as if bound by a magnetic pull. E struck out with an open palm, a grazing motion that skimmed across his ribs, a warning rather than a blow. Logan responded, ducking low and twisting around, countering with a restrained swing that they sidestepped with ease, pivoting on one leg, the other extended gracefully behind them. Their fighting style was a thing of beauty—each move sharp, controlled, yet inherently lethal. It was all in the restraint, the elegance in the way they flowed around him, closing the distance only to slip away, like waves ebbing back from the shore.

The touches, brief as they were, left lingering warmth against his skin, almost delicate in contrast to the fierce intent that lay beneath them. Logan could sense it with every shift in their stance, every breath they took—if E wanted to, they could bring him to his knees. It was a tantalizing threat, one that made his blood sing with the thrill of the fight.

In return, he matched their intensity with his own. He countered with his own practiced moves, his ferocity meeting their grace—rougher, rawer, like fire pushing against wind. He didn’t back down, wasn’t about to let them get too close without a response. He dodged, weaved, barely avoiding some of their strikes, slipping by with mere inches to spare. When they made contact—a calculated strike to his shoulder—he could feel the charged intent behind it, even as they held back, making him stagger back just enough to shake it off, smirking, before charging in again. They danced around him, a perfect, untamed rhythm building between them, and he found himself moving faster, sharper, like every step forward fueled the energy between them, both testing the other without any intent to truly harm. He could feel it in the air between them—something feral, almost like a mating ritual, the way their movements mirrored, challenged, and matched.

They struck again, this time low, forcing him to leap back and adjust, his grin widening with every movement. It was as if they were bound not by competition but by an unspoken connection—a bond that thrived on the intensity, the way they pushed each other without ever holding back. They were not opponents, nor allies in the typical sense. There was no give, no yield. Neither wanted to win or lose. They just wanted to keep moving, to stay in that almost sacred moment, as if time could stretch itself around them, infinite, like two forces swirling endlessly into one another, an ouroboros that neither began nor ended.

E’s presence seemed to shift, to pulse with each strike and dodge, a captivating intensity building under the lights as if drawing energy from the exhilaration in Logan’s gaze. The more he felt—admiration, awe, the raw thrill of the dance—the more vivid they seemed, their form almost transcending reality in the moonlight. Their eyes gleamed with pure, unfiltered joy, and he saw it, saw the way they thrived under his gaze, every ounce of respect and challenge he sent their way amplifying their allure, making them seem more vivid with each passing second. They absorbed his fire, his strength, and reflected it back, their entire being moving with an entrancing grace that felt more alive than the world around them, their movements turning quicker, sharper, a need to show him more, to perform for him, to be seen. It was like they wanted him to witness the full extent of who they were, to understand how much he fueled them, empowered them.

And still, they did not relent. They wove through their attacks with such artful grace, arms sweeping in wide, lethal arcs that never quite struck him, but came close enough to make his heart race. Logan could feel the tension build in every swipe and brush of their hands, a coil wound tight within him, a primal urge to keep going, to fight like this until the stars themselves faded from the sky.

In a final sweep, they pivoted and leapt into the air, their body twisting mid-flight as they spun over his head, landing with barely a sound, crouched low, their gaze burning as they looked up at him, alive with energy, skin aglow. They seemed transformed, radiating something almost otherworldly, as if their exchange had unlocked something deep within them.

They rose slowly, never breaking eye contact, a faint smirk tugging at the edges of their lips, and Logan felt a surge of awe and something deeper, something inexplicable. This hadn’t just been a fight—it was communion, the give-and-take of two forces that could spend eternity bound in this endless, exhilarating cycle. In that timeless, breathless exchange, Logan felt the truth of it. He’d found someone who matched him, who fed off the same fire, who thrived under the heat of his gaze just as he could under theirs. And as he steadied himself, breath ragged, he knew one thing for certain—he didn’t want this moment to end.

But then, unexpectedly, E burst out laughing—an honest, unrestrained, melodic laugh that broke free as if from a place long hidden. They threw their head back toward the sky, eyes closed, arms open, an untamed joy that caught Logan completely off-guard. That sound—it wasn’t mocking, nor was it triumphant. It was raw, genuine happiness and it sent a ripple through him, something deep and visceral. His chest tightened at the sight, at the way E’s expression softened for just a breath, letting the mask slip enough to reveal the humanity underneath all that skill and bravado.

It lasted only a few heartbeats, but in that space, Logan felt a shift. The air between them crackled differently, heavier, as if the laughter had broken down an invisible barrier neither had admitted was there. E’s eyes met his, searching, almost daring him to react, to see beyond the sparring and the guarded quips. For once, there was no battle in their gaze, only an invitation.

Logan’s eyes lingered on them as he tried to steady his breathing. A slow grin creeped across his lips, a rare thing that made the edges of his face soften, the soft, unguarded joy in E’s laugh still echoing in his mind. “Enjoying yourself, huh?” he said, voice rougher than he intended, a mix of exertion and something deeper. He’d seen them as fierce, elusive, hidden behind layers that only cracked in quick, playful smirks. But tonight, they’d shown him something true, almost sacred, and he couldn’t look away .

E’s smile didn’t fade as they stepped closer, their chest rising and falling in time with their breaths. “More than you know,” they replied, voice low and charged, carrying a promise unspoken yet understood. They stood close enough that he could feel the warmth radiating from their skin, the space between them almost humming with potential.

Logan’s gaze couldn't leave them, their bare sincerity, their easy grace, the way they stood under the stars as though they belonged there more than any place he’d ever seen. For once, he was stripped of any clever response, any guard. He didn’t look away, either, though something in him warned he probably should. He could feel it—how much more they seemed to want to show him. How much closer he wanted to be.

They could feel the fire burning in his gut, feeding their hunger in a way that made the ache to stoke it grow stronger. Under his curious eyes, they began moving in slow, hypnotic turns, delicate and precise, metallic chimes echoing from their wrists and ankles. They were dancing—an ancient and untamed choreography, meant only for the night air, the moon, the stars, and him. Logan could almost feel the pulse of their energy in his bones, awakening that place deep inside him that almost never stirred, except in moments like this—moments fleeting and rare. His reason urged him to keep his guard up, but his defenses were slipping, worn down by the rhythm of their dance and the raw humanity of their movements. He found himself stilling, breathing slow, caught in the silent music only they could hear.

Then, they stopped, releasing a deep, contented sigh, like someone freed after being bound for far too long. They looked at him, an unfiltered calm in their gaze, and the sight of it drew something close to an ache in him.

“Thank you, Logan,” they said, their voice holding a warmth he rarely heard from anyone.

He gave a short nod, gruff as always, but inside, her words struck him with a strange weight. “Didn’t do much,” he muttered quietly, shrugging it off.

“Oh, but you did.” E’s lips curved up, but there was no teasing, no facade, only quiet gratitude. They extended their hands, twisting their fingers and wrists slowly in delicate, almost playful movements, while their bracelets chimed softly against their skin, as though savoring the freedom, the lightness they’d reclaimed. “Since you gifted me peace, tonight, I’m gonna give you a gift of my own,” they whispered, stepping forward. They reached out, their fingers brushing his forearm, a casual touch that set his nerves on fire. "You’re leaving yourself open here," they murmured, their skin grazing his, their voice close enough to send a shiver down his spine.

A current shot through him, sharp and electric, but he rolled his shoulders, masking his reaction behind a rough mutter. “Ain’t used to sparrin’ against dancers.”

“You’ll learn,” they replied, their smirk tugging back into place, the hint of that earlier mischief glinting in their gaze again.

For a moment, they both fell silent, the night air cooling around them. E’s eyes shifted upward, to the expanse of stars overhead, and Logan felt the pull too. The sky was scattered with pinpricks of light, stretching endlessly into the dark. It reminded him of how vast everything was, how small he was within it, how his years—his long, battle-hardened years—were just a blink in the vastness above. And yet here, with them, under this open sky, he felt strangely anchored.

Beside him, E’s voice softened, thoughtful. “You ever feel like you don’t belong anywhere?”

Their words hit him, catching him off guard, reaching into places he usually kept sealed. It gnawed at him, the way they stood there looking like a piece of the sky had touched down, that soft glow in their eyes, one of peace, of gratitude, maybe even of kinship. There were few people who’d ever asked him something like that, fewer still who might actually understand the answer.

“More often than you’d think,” he muttered, the words escaping before he could second-guess them. He kept his eyes trained on the stars, the expansive sky above, as if it could ease the ache that always lingered somewhere in his chest. “Don’t matter where I go, or who I’m with—there’s always this… hole. Even when I’ve got a good thing goin’ on.”

They stayed quiet, listening, and somehow that silence gave him the space to keep talking.

“I got a family here, I know that. Hell, got more people than I ever thought I’d get who actually care if I stick around or not,” he said, his voice gruff, but his words open. “But sometimes… feels like I’m just borrowin’ time. Waitin’ till somethin’ pulls me back out there.” He motioned vaguely to the woods, to the wild that always seemed to call his name when he lingered too long within four walls.

E shifted, their eyes softening, and that glow in them brightened almost imperceptibly, as if his words, raw as they were, had stirred something in them. They looked at him in a way that felt like understanding, a wordless acceptance of the parts he rarely let anyone see. He felt his pulse stir again, just under his skin, something vulnerable and hungry for connection clawing its way out.

“Maybe you’re meant to belong somewhere that’s not on a map, you know?” They tilted their head thoughtfully, a gentle shrug in their shoulders. “I know that sounds… vague, but some of us are a little too wild, even for this world. Doesn’t mean you’re without a place, Logan. Maybe it’s just somewhere different.”

Logan let the words sink in, feeling the honesty in them settle like warmth into his chest. He wasn’t used to anyone framing it like that. Usually, the mansion’s residents treated his absences like quirks, a fact of his nature, but it was different with E. They seemed to see through his wanderlust, to recognize something in it that went deeper than just the need to roam.

“Hell, maybe,” he murmured, running a hand through his hair as he tried to shrug off the sudden vulnerability that gripped him. “Dunno if anyone ever told me it was all right to be that way.”

“Guess I just did,” they said, that teasing gleam returning, but softer this time. “Wherever you belong, Logan… you’re welcome in my orbit.”

He raised an eyebrow, a smirk tugging at his lips. “What happened to ‘I don’t need anyone, especially not you’?” His voice was rough, but there was an unmistakable spark of curiosity in his eyes.

E’s expression faltered for a moment, a flicker of defensiveness tightening their features before they smoothed it out. “I don’t need anyone,” they repeated, but the words held a different tone now—less sharp, more open. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t offer a place to someone who needs it… if they want it.”

The words hung between them, suspended in the night air. Logan felt himself drawn to them again, a subtle battle between reason and instinct churning inside him once more. The reasonable part of him couldn’t fathom giving in to that unspoken need, but another part of him, primal, wanted to reach out, to take up their offer without a second thought. So against his better judgment, he let himself step closer, studying the way they seemed to radiate with a quiet strength, a calm that fed into his own unrest in a way he couldn’t quite grasp.

E met his gaze, eyes steady and searching. “Who knows, maybe it could calm the need to wander for a time.”

A flicker of something softened Logan’s expression as he watched them, the words settling deep. “Not a lotta people see me,” he admitted, his voice gruff but his gaze locked onto theirs. “Not like this.”

E smiled, soft but sure. “Maybe because most people aren’t looking in the right places.”

They reached out, their hand brushing his forearm lightly once again, this time lingering—grounding him as much as it startled him. The tension between them was palpable, gnawing at his insides, at that hollow void that filled him. It felt like their connection was solidifying, and it was dangerous. It made his pulse race, his mind screaming at him to pull back, even as every fiber of him longed to stay close. He felt the warmth of their fingers as they pulled away, leaving a faint tingle in their wake. And suddenly, he wanted to know more about them—where they came from, what scars they hid beneath their words and allure, where they honed their fighting skills, what their true power was. So many questions burned on his lips, but he settled for something less intrusive instead.

“What about you… you ever stick around long enough to feel like you could belong somewhere?” he asked, voice low. He didn’t know where the question came from, only that it was out there now, drawn out by a need to connect, another piece of himself he rarely showed.

E paused, searching his eyes. “Once, maybe,” they murmured, and for a moment, a flicker of something deeply personal passed over their face. “But not for a long time.”

The weight of their words hung between them. They shifted again, the lingering sorrow barely visible before it was replaced by their usual confidence. But Logan caught it, the faint sadness, the echo of a familiar ache that mirrored his own. For just a heartbeat, they weren’t his rival, his partner in combat—they were something else, something fragile and human, someone who understood, and it awakened his protective instincts, making his claws itch under his skin.

“Guess we both got a little lost along the way,” he said softly.

They nodded, still holding his gaze, that warm glow growing just a touch brighter. “Then maybe we don’t need a map tonight. Just… a moment to be here.” Their eyes softened, catching his, and the way they looked at him, as if he was the only other soul in the universe, chipped away at some wall he hadn’t even known was still there.

Logan managed a rough smile, a smirk that barely covered the pull he felt toward them. “Guess I could live with that.”

E’s smile spread, almost in relief, as the two of them stood there—not fighters, not strangers, but two people sharing the same quiet space under the stars, filling the empty places between them, if only for a little while. Before he could stop himself, his thumb found its way to their cheek. The pull between them felt almost tangible, a lifeline connecting two drifting souls lost in the unending current of life.

Their face relaxed instantly under his touch, their eyes closing as a deep sigh escaped their lungs. They sensed his desire before he even realized what he was about to do. The world around them seemed to fade, the rustle of leaves and distant hum of crickets dissolving into the quiet thrum of their hearts. He leaned in, his lips so close they could feel the warmth of his breath, the space between them charged with anticipation.

And then they felt it—a subtle, almost magnetic pull as the energy began to flow, unbidden, from him to them. It was faint, like the first tremor of a storm. Panic flickered behind their eyes as they opened, the realization sharp and immediate. With a graceful tilt of their head, E shifted just enough for his lips to brush their cheek instead, the warmth there a bittersweet reminder of what could have been.

Logan froze for a moment, surprise flickering across his expression before he blinked, as if shaking off a spell broken by the soft press of his lips against their cheek. He pulled back, eyes searching theirs for answers, confusion and something deeper swirling in their depths. The space between them thickened, heavy with the unspoken.

“I—” E’s voice wavered, a soft, apologetic smile tugging at their lips as their fingers drifted to the necklace at their throat, the cool pearl grounding them. “It’s late,” they said, each word layered with unexpressed longing.

Logan’s brows knit together, confusion still etched across his face as he took in their expression, the unguarded look that spoke of things they couldn’t voice. E took a long, steady look at him, memorizing the rough kindness in his eyes and the silent question he wouldn’t push. The pull between them ached with what they had to refuse.

With a deep breath, E took a step back. “Goodnight, Logan.”

The silence lingered as he watched them walk away, their silhouette fading into the night. Logan couldn’t shake the feeling that something had shifted—something deeper than he’d anticipated. And for the first time since they’d met, he wondered just how much control he truly had over the pull that tethered him to them, an unknown force that defied the walls he’d spent a lifetime building.

To be continued…

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