#which actually makes you more right than you think just not for the reasons at the end of your original post

[girlgenius1111]

study buddy

solstråle engen ft. @wileys-russo 's fresa! sol struggles with school, and facing the threat of having to repeat the year, ingrid and mapi try to get her some study help. it doesn't go... exceptionally well.

—

It was more frustrating than anything. For years, you hadn’t really given school much thought, or put in very much effort. And then, suddenly, you’d been shipped off to Spain and everything was different. Everything changed again six months later, and suddenly, school felt like something that held a lot more weight.

You didn’t have many opportunities to make Ingrid and Mapi proud of you. Sure, they’d say they were proud of you when you asked for help while having a panic attack, or for setting some sort of boundary. That just didn’t feel… right. It didn’t feel like it was enough. They were bending over backwards, every day, to make you feel known and seen and loved, and the least you could do was show that they were helping you, right?

So, very suddenly, school was important. Grades were important. It seemed, though, that the years of not caring and not paying attention had taken their toll. Because you studied, and you actually tried but it wasn’t enough. Your grades were still… mediocre. Nothing to brag about. 

You worked harder, to no avail. You tried different methods of studying, you devoted hours and hours to your schoolwork, and… no improvement. So much of your work felt like it went way over your head. 

You had promised yourself you wouldn’t be upset when you handed Ingrid the test you’d gotten back. She had a busy week and she really didn’t need you breaking down over a stupid test, like you had earlier in the school bathroom. Your plan was to bypass your sister and her girlfriend, head straight to your room, and maybe slam the door. If you acted angry, they were more likely to give you space to calm down, which meant there was much less of a chance you’d get all pathetic and upset.  

Only, you’d forgotten that Ingrid had known you were getting the test back today, having seen you study and study and study for it. Your sister was sure that since you studied so much, it must be a good grade, and she had a magnet all ready to attach your exam to the fridge. 

The minute you walked into the house and saw her waiting in the kitchen, freshly showered from training, an expectant and excited look on her face, you shrunk in on yourself, very suddenly wanting a hug more than you wanted to cry silently into your pillow all alone.

“How’d you do?!” Ingrid asked excitedly, her smile only faltering when your lip began to wobble. “Solstråle?”

“I’m sorry.” You choked out tugging the collar of your shirt up over your eyes before she could see you begin to cry. Ingrid’s arms were wrapping around you only a moment later, holding you tight against her as she floundered, confused as to what had upset you.

“Hey, it’s okay. Whatever happened, it’s alright. I’ve got you.” Ingrid promised, making eye contact over your head with Mapi, who had wandered into the kitchen and caught sight of you trembling against your sister. 

Ingrid thought something must have happened at school, and Mapi quickly came to the same conclusion. The thought that you’d done poorly on your test, and this was the reason behind your distress, never even crossed her mind. Ingrid had never known you to care much about your grades, and while you were trying harder now, she didn’t think something like a bad result could get you this upset. 

“I’m really sorry. I tried my best.” You whimpered, briefly wondering when you’d turned into this person who cried at the drop of a hat and allowed her sister to hug you whenever you were upset. It was so different. Everything was so different. 

“What are you sorry for?” She asked, heart melting a bit as Mapi walked closer and pressed a kiss to the top of your head, before perching on the counter. “Tell me, Sol, tell me what’s wrong.” 

Wordlessly, you withdrew from the comforting embrace of your sister and swung your bag off your shoulder. You unzipped it, pulling out the exam from the red folder Ingrid had neatly labeled for you. You handed it to her, eyes brimming with tears again at the sight of all the red marks all over the first page. 

Ingrid’s first instinct was to sigh, but you’d been with her long enough for her to know you’d just shut down. Not to mention that she knew how much work you’d been putting into this specific exam. Prepared to ask you what had gone wrong, she looked up to see that the tears had stopped. There wasn’t a hint of emotion on your face, like you were preparing yourself to be yelled at. Ingrid had no such plans.

“Oh, Sol. Kjære, come here.” She said instead, pulling you back into her. There was some hesitation on your part, but after a second you melted into the hug, knowing that if Ingrid was upset, she would have told you so by now. “You studied so hard, I’m sorry it didn’t go well.” 

“I’m sorry.” You said again, frowning when Ingrid pulled back and placed both her hands on your face, tilting your head up to look at her. 

“You have nothing to be sorry for. You tried your best, that’s all I want from you.”

You shook your head, but didn’t say anything, instead opting to stare at your shoes. You hadn’t taken them off at the door, breaking one of Ingrid and Mapi’s rules. This additional mistake, regardless of how small it was, made you feel even worse. You couldn’t do anything right. 

A tattooed hand grabbed yours, and you looked up at Mapi. She had moved closer, holding the exam in one hand, her other gripping yours. 

“This is a passing grade, mi sol. Why are you so upset? It’s not like you to get so worked up over school.” Your face flushed, but before you could step away, Mapi’s grip tightened, as if she’d sensed you were about to run. “Come on, it’s us. You can tell us.” 

“I.. It’s not good enough.” You stammered, looking between your sister and her girlfriend with genuine despair written all across your face. “I wanted to do well. For both of you., I wanted you to be proud of me.” 

“Oh, Sol,” Ingrid sighed, exchanging a look with Mapi that only served to make you feel even more foolish. It had taken so much for you to admit why you were working so hard, and though you knew, logically, that Ingrid wasn’t trying to make you feel dumb, she had. 

You wrenched away from her, suddenly deciding that you didn't need her pity. Backing up until you hit the wall on the opposite side of the kitchen, you began to ramble. Unable to look either Ingrid or Mapi in the eye, you missed the sadness on their faces. “No, forget it. It’s fine. It’s really fine. It’s not a big deal, It’s my own fault, I’m too stupid to learn stuff my classmates already know-”

“Hey!” Mapi cut in, sounding uncharacteristically stern. “You are not stupid. Don’t ever say that again.” 

You froze, staring at her with your mouth agape. Ingrid took a cautious step closer, aware she was toeing a thin line between you breaking down again, and pushing you into anger. 

“You aren’t stupid.” Ingrid echoed. “You’re not stupid, and you know you aren’t. It’s just one exam, Sol, it doesn’t make or break anything.” 

At this, you averted your eyes, a blush creeping up your neck. This exam could be a determining factor in your educational career. Ingrid just didn’t really know that information yet. Like a bloodhound, though, Ingrid caught the scent of your secret, her eyebrows raising as she stared at you. 

“It doesn’t make or break anything, right?” 

It was a staring contest for a few moments, one you and Ingrid both knew she would win, yet you kept it going all the same. The silence became too intense, the gazes of your sister and her girlfriend breaking your resolve rather quickly. With a heavy sigh, you reached for your bag yet again and pulled out a slightly wrinkled envelope. 

Ingrid held her hand out expectantly, apprehension clear on her face. You handed her the envelope, eyes still training on the floor. 

“Solstråle. This is addressed to me.” Ingrid huffed, removing the letter from inside and beginning to read it. Mapi moved forward, peeking over her girlfriend’s shoulder, eyes quickly scanning over the letter. You braced yourself, prepared for the worst. 

The last time you’d brought home something like this… you’d ended up living in Spain. Which was potentially the best thing that could have happened, but you had a feeling the consequences of this letter wouldn’t work out as well. 

Your sister placed the paper down on the counter, raking her fingers through her hair as she thought for a moment. She wasn’t quite sure what to say. Part of her wanted to yell, but when was that ever the right choice? Before she could decide, María’s shoulder bumped into hers. Her girlfriend nodded in your direction, clearly trying to get Ingrid to see how terrified you were. 

And Ingrid couldn’t yell at you when you were like this, all sad and scared with your head bowed and your arms folded across your chest protectively. 

“Sol?” She said, her tone much quieter and kinder than you were expecting it to be. You looked up at her, shocked further to see that she didn’t look very angry. “Why didn’t you give this to me last week when they sent it?” 

Ingrid nodded towards the date on the letter, and you exhaled shakily. “I… I was hoping I could just try really hard for the rest of the year and do really well in all my classes and it would be fine.” 

Your sister nodded slowly, reading the letter over again. 

Mapi took the opportunity to chime in, her hand absentmindedly resting on your sister’s back, even as she fixed her warm gaze on you. “Nena, that is a lot for you to carry all by yourself. Having the threat of maybe needing to repeat the year hanging over your head… you should have told us.” 

You shrugged, blinking away the moisture pooling in your eyes at Mapi’s tone. “I didn’t want to disappoint you guys.” You mumbled. 

“You haven’t disappointed anyone!” Mapi exclaimed, frowning when you just scoffed in response. “I’m serious, Sol. We saw you study and study for this exam. You did your best, you’re doing your best. That’s all we can ask from you.” 

“My best isn’t good enough! I’m going to fail and have to repeat the year.” You cried, throwing your hands up in the air in exasperation. The mere thought of another year of school was horrifying. 

Ingrid finally put the letter down, a blazingly determined expression on her face. “No. You’re not going to fail anything. We’ll help you, we’ll reach out to your teachers, we’ll get you extra help. We’ll figure it out, Sol, but you’re not going to fail. Not if I have anything to say about it.” 

For anyone else, that may have sounded overbearing. For you, though, it just felt supportive. It felt like you weren’t dealing with this yourself anymore, and that was a relief you didn’t know you needed. 

“Okay.” You said quietly. “Thanks.” 

Luckily, your sister knew you well enough to understand that after such an intense conversation, you’d need some time to yourself to process. 

“Hey,” Ingrid said, catching your wrist and turning you around slightly before you could leave the room. “I’m already proud of you, and the person you are. You could fail every test for the rest of your life, and I’d still be proud of you. Okay?”

You blinked at her for a prolonged second, before you nodded jerkily. Turning to head up the stairs to your room, you changed your mind, spinning back around and falling into your sister. She hugged you tight, as she always did, and you wondered briefly how you got so lucky. 

—

It was the following day that Mapi and Ingrid proposed their plan. Before they’d even said anything, you knew a few things. 

One, that they were excited about whatever plan they’d cooked up that day at training. 

And two, that you weren’t really going to have a choice in the matter. 

As a general rule, Ingrid and Mapi didn’t make you do many things. If they thought something was important, they’d encourage you to try it a few times, and then they’d let you stop if you still didn’t like it. That was how it had been for the school’s climbing club, the school’s hiking club, and the school’s baking club. All those were activities you enjoyed, but… activities you enjoyed doing yourself.

Well, not always.You loved to climb and hike with Ingrid. Frido, too, sometimes. And you could bake for hours with Mapi helping, measuring out ingredients and getting baking flour everywhere. But doing any of the above with strangers who spoke in rapid, fluent Spanish or catalan, was not fun. It was anxiety inducing. 

You knew this was about to be another one of those ideas, the ones you had to give a fair shot. 

It was at dinner, and you were trying to hide the wince everytime you picked up your water glass with your right hand, your wrist intensely aching after the time you spent in the climbing gym after school. It always hurt when you climbed for too long, though it was getting worse with every passing day. Another problem for another day, you decided, seeing the barely contained glee on Mapi’s face as she cleared her throat. 

“What?” You said suspiciously, putting your fork down and narrowing your eyes at the Spaniard. 

Mapi opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, Ingrid chimed in. 

“Mapi’s made you a playdate!” She said, smirking when her girlfriend wacked her in the arm. 

“Ingrid, that is not going to help me convince her.” Mapi huffed, sitting back in her chair and crossing her arms over her chest. 

Still unamused, you continued to frown at Mapi. “I’d love it if you didn’t keep proposing ideas that you’d need to convince me of. Teaching you how to rock climb, trying to get that stain out of my favorite sweatshirt yourself, being the keeper while you practiced your free kicks, helping you build that bonfire–”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Mapi dismissed. 

“You got stuck on the rock wall, my sweatshirt has a hole in it, the ball hit me so hard in the stomach I threw up, and both of us lost part of our eyebrows!” 

Mapi glared at you, while Ingrid hid her face behind her hand as her body shook with silent laughter. 

“Well this plan,” Mapi sighed, “is Ingrid AND Alexia approved.” 

That wiped the smile off your face. 

“Alexia? What does she have to do with this?” 

There were a few things you knew for certain about Mapi. One, she didn’t give up easily. Another, that she wanted more than anything for you to be friends with Alexia’s little sister. And from the sly smile on her face, you were almost sure you knew where this was headed. 

“I asked her to ask Fresa to tutor you!”

“No.” You said immediately. 

Mapi continued like you hadn’t spoken. “Fresa is a bit younger than you, but already finished your year! She’s studying to be a nurse, she’s very smart. Fres speaks English and she can help you with your Spanish and any other school things you need help with.” 

“No.” You repeated, looking helplessly at your sister. Ingrid looked to finally be taking the situation seriously, a familiar look on her face; one you knew meant that no matter how much you argued, she was going to get her way. Meanwhile, Mapi was still droning on. 

“–get along great with her! I think you guys have a lot in common, and it could be fun and educational!” 

“And you know all the best things are fun and educational.” Ingrid chimed in cheerily, this time her face telling you to go along with Mapi’s idea because she was excited about it, or else. 

“Educational.” You said sarcastically. “Super!” 

Still, you agreed, Mapi grinned at you, and Ingrid patted your back reassuringly. Mapi had a lot of bad ideas. You were pretty sure this would turn out to be the worst. 

—

You always spent more time at the climbing gym when things were rough. Back in Norway, you’d spend multiple hours a day, everyday, there. It was one of your tells; Ingrid always knew something was bothering you if you went to climb right after school. It was your way of shoving your emotions down before you could feel them, before your sister could read the hurt on your face and give you one of those tight hugs that brought tears to your eyes. 

Only, sometimes climbing didn’t do it. Sometimes, it felt like the walls were closing in, like you were about to suffocate, if you didn’t have some time completely by yourself to think. On those days, you really preferred to hike. You hadn’t felt that urge in a while; the urge to just disappear for hours, walk until your legs felt like they were going to fall up, and sit at the top of the trail until the world felt like a place you wanted to be in again. The last time had been back in Norway, after a day you didn’t even want to think about. 

Yet you found yourself in that same familiar mindset after your first study session with Fresa. 

It hadn’t gone well. You tried to go into it confident, sure that if you acted chill enough, she’d maybe miss that you had no idea what you were doing with your schoolwork. 

Confident, even as you arrived 15 minutes late. Scout had gotten his favorite toy, a small tiger that squeaked, stuck under the sofa, and it had taken you time you didn’t have to get it out for him. You could have left it, but Ingrid and Mapi weren’t home and you knew Scout would just sit by the couch and cry the whole time you were gone if you didn’t get his tiger out for him, and you couldn’t bear the thought of leaving him to be so upset. And then you’d had a hard time finding a parking space at the library, and the directions inside were all in Spanish and Fresa had texted you to follow the signs to the study rooms but you misread the sign and went to the opposite end of the library before figuring out your mistake. And you would have texted you were going to be late, because you hated being late, but your phone was dead and the cord from your car had gone missing. 

When you entered the room, Fresa already looked annoyed. 

Annoyed, with her hair pulled back into a ponytail, twirling a pen repeatedly in an almost unconscious manner. She looked very… put together. 

“Llegas tarde.” She commented, rolling her eyes when you didn’t reply. Your face flushed a bit as she must have picked up on your confusion, repeating herself in english. “You are late.” 

Any other time, you would have known what she said. Your issue wasn’t really understanding Spanish, it was more speaking and reading it. You felt weirdly flustered though today, like your brain was distracted and not quite able to follow what the other girl was saying. Anxious, too, at this social situation you’d been forced into. 

Briefly, you thought about explaining about Scout and the tiger and the parking space and the signs being in Spanish, but then you realized Fresa wouldn’t care about any of that. So instead, you just nodded and apologized, feeling your heart start to pound from the anxiety of the situation. 

You didn’t like talking to new people. Especially pretty new people who spoke a different language and were looking at you like you weren’t very smart. Even if you thought that yourself… you didn’t want anyone else to think so. Any intention of actually asking Fresa for help with the mountains of stuff you were confused with went out the window, then, and you almost subconsciously decided to just… try to get through without letting her know quite how lost you were. 

Fresa was alarmingly smart. She kept asking you questions about your work, about what you needed help with. Everything didn’t feel like an answer you wanted to give. Fresa seemed organized, though, and you assumed letting her take the lead and decide what to work on would placate her. Instead, she just looked more and more annoyed with every passing second.

 She kept asking questions about this paper and that paper and you didn’t know what papers she was talking about. You felt so stupid. More stupid than when you’d failed your test last week. 

“How do you even find the right paper in there?” Fresa asked, pulling a judgemental look as you rifled through your bag, searching for the article she was asking for.

Your bag was a mess, you knew it was a mess. You’d knocked your coffee over all your folders a few days ago, sitting at the counter when Scout barked and startled you. That was oddly upsetting in and of itself because Ingrid had gotten you the folders and labeled them for you and you felt like you’d destroyed something nice she’d done for you. You hadn’t told her, not wanting to hurt her feelings or anything, so now your school papers were living crinkled and disorganized in your bag.

And you were pretty sure the article Fresa was asking for had been a casualty of the coffee incident, because you’d scanned the paper and thought it wasn’t important before throwing it out. The Spanish had confused you, and you hadn’t realized you’d need the article for an assignment. Stupid. 

 You were feeling more and more embarrassed as the minutes passed. And, maybe, your reaction to feeling embarrassed was always anger. You pulled out a random piece of paper, slamming it down onto the table with more force than necessary in your haste to give the Spaniard something. 

Fresa instantly knew that what you’d given her wasn’t the right article, asking again if you had it as you shoved the other paper back into your bag. 

Logically, you knew you should just… admit you threw it away because you didn’t realize you needed it. For some reason, you just couldn’t get the words out of your mouth. You couldn’t get any words out of your mouth, feeling shockingly like crying. Nothing was going right and you were making yourself look like an idiot and all you could do was shrug as Fresa looked at you and took a deep breath. 

Then, she seemed to come to some kind of realization, her expression softening slightly. 

“Can you not read this? The spanish?” 

You flinched, feeling your face flush. Again, the reply of ‘no I can’t, would you please help me?’ seemed to evade you. Instead, you spewed some lie about being able to read the article, calling Fresa’s questions stupid and telling her she was wasting your time. 

Fresa seemed to have reached her breaking point, her voice rising as yours had. You didn’t really hear what she said, much too distracted by the way her eyebrows knitted together when she was frustrated, and the way her hand tightly gripped the pen she was holding. 

Then, she made an offensive impression of your shrugging. And if you hadn’t been angry before, you were absolutely fuming now. 

So what if you were quiet? It wasn’t like you really needed to talk much, considering how many questions she’d asked. You were furious at being called out for all your bullshit, feeling like a mess compared to the perfect girl next to you. A very angry mess who’d had a long day and was cursing one María León for making her do this and cursing the beautiful girl next to her for being so infuriating.  

“Alexia’s super little sister. Everyone says you are so smart. Can you not see I do not want your help? You want to be a doctor, no? So go find someone who does.” 

Fresa’s nostrils flared as she shoved her chair away from the table and got to her feet. She began angrily putting her stuff into her bag, and you remained completely still, unable to stop this whole meeting from going up in flames. 

“Eres un maldita idiota!” Fresa snapped, her face red with anger. 

There wasn’t really anything worse she could have said to you at that moment. 

“Snobbete kjerring.” You threw back, feeling a sharp spike of satisfaction when she zipped her bag angrily, completely incapable of understanding what you’d called her. 

“You know, I did this as a favor, tonta. I have worked all day, I came right here after my shift, on time. I have my own studies to do because yes, I want to be a nurse. I am smart, and I know what I want to do with my life. Maybe if you get your head out of your own ass, Engen, you might too! And you are right, this is a waste of time. My time!”

Fresa stomped out of the room, then, and you waited until she was out of sight before dropping your head into your hands with a deep sigh. 

That couldn’t have gone… any worse. And though it was probably all mostly your fault, you couldn’t help the resentment building for the intelligent, stuck up girl that had thrown insult after insult at you, hitting you in all the places it hurt. You packed your own stuff up once you were sure you wouldn’t run into Fresa again in the parking lot or something, shuffling dejectedly to your car.

The overthinking had begun. Was it really overthinking, you wondered, if you’d actually completely fucked up and the reasons for your anxiety were entirely reasonable? You weren’t sure, and you supposed it didn’t matter, your thoughts quickly spiraling as you rewinded the short meeting in your head. 

The shrugging had really gotten to her, but you weren’t sure what else to do. When in doubt, you had learned silence got you the best results. Often, no one really cared what you had to say anyway. Fresa was different, though, looking at you with her wide eyes, expecting an answer. It was intimidating. It scared you, honestly, how well the other girl seemed to see right through you. 

And maybe… maybe there were some other feelings brewing. Ones you didn’t want to consider. Feeling that didn’t even matter given the way Fresa had stormed out. It didn’t seem like there would be another study session.

This led you to your other problem. You’d fucked this up. Something your sister and Mapi had gone out of their way to set up for you, because they didn’t want you to have to repeat the year. 

You didn’t like to make mistakes. Every single one you made carried the risk that Ingrid would lose her patience with you, and give up. She hadn’t yet, and you’d messed up a fair amount in the past several months, but you couldn’t let yourself believe that no mistake could push her away. That just wasn’t a possibility. So, rather than face your failure, tell Ingrid and Mapi how awkward and weird you’d been, you ran. 

Or walked, you supposed. Your study session with Fresa had ended at 4:00, and it was almost 8 when you found yourself at the top of your favorite trail, legs scratched and aching, as the sun slipped below the horizon. Your phone was still dead and now Ingrid was absolutely going to kill you for going off the grid. 

You broke traffic laws on the way home, any peace you’d found at the top of the hiking trail entirely gone as anxiety began to build up inside of you again. 

Stepping into the house, you slipped off your muddy shoes, wincing at the blood trickling down the few cuts on your legs. Before you could even set your car keys down, though, footsteps were pounding down the hallway towards you. 

“Oh, thank god.” Ingrid gasped, sounding alarmingly emotional as she rushed forward and crushed you into a hug. “She’s here!” 

“Dios  mio.” Mapi muttered, appearing over your sister’s shoulder a moment later. Ingrid pulled away from you, her hands on your shoulders keeping you at arm's length. Her face quickly transformed from relieved to furious. 

“Where the hell have you been?” She hissed. 

“I–”

“Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been? You didn’t call, you didn’t text. You were supposed to be home hours ago, Sol. Your location wouldn’t show up on my phone, Fresa even said you ended your meeting early,” Ingrid ranted, though you began to tune her out at the sound of her name. 

“You talked to Fresa?” You interrupted, ignoring the incredulous look on Ingrid’s face, turning your attention towards Mapi who was staring stonily at you. 

“That doesn’t fucking matter right now. Where were you? Are you drunk? High? Were you fighting?” Ingrid demanded.

Each accusation felt like a bullet to the heart as Ingrid grabbed your chin and yanked it towards her, looking intently at your eyes. You shoved her away angrily; Ingrid wasn’t supposed to see you as that person anymore. She had promised that she didn’t, that she knew you weren’t a bad kid, that you had just been having a hard time. Now, though. She was looking at you like she didn’t trust a word that was about to come out of your mouth. 

“No.” You spat at her, grabbing your phone from your pocket and slamming it on the front hall table. “I went on a hike after I met Fresa and my phone died. I lost track of time. I wasn’t getting drunk or high and I wasn’t fighting anybody, but thanks for having some faith in me.” Your voice dripped with sarcasm, and even though you expected Ingrid to soften with a bit of guilt, she only seemed emboldened with anger. 

“Don’t you dare turn this around on me. You were supposed to be back four hours ago Solstråle. Four! This was so irresponsible. Do you not care that we were worried? Do you not care that we were here waiting for you? That Mapi made dinner, and you were going to work on her bike? Or that we were supposed to make cookies? After everything we’ve done for you, Solstråle, I expect more.” She was shouting at this point, pacing back and forth in front of you. 

You looked to Mapi, hoping for her to step in and talk her girlfriend down, but she looked almost as mad as Ingrid was, and you shrunk in on yourself.

“You are…. you are grounded. This is unacceptable, and you better never let it happen again. That is not how family behaves Solstråle. Did you think about how worried we would be? I am so upset with you, so disappointed that you didn’t think about anyone but yourself, that you were so selfish–”

“Alright, Ingrid. Enough.” Mapi cut in finally, stepping forward to grab her girlfriend's hand and squeeze it. You were frozen in front of your sister, fighting the sob that was building in your throat. 

Ingrid stepped back, her face still red with anger. A hint of regret flickered across her face at the sight of your lip trembling and the tears in your eyes. Still, you looked confused, and Ingrid couldn’t shove her anger down at your lack of understanding. She turned, stomping off towards the kitchen, leaving you and Mapi behind. 

“Sol-”

“I’m going to shower. Sorry, Mapi. I’m sorry.” You mumbled, pushing past her and heading up the stairs before the Spaniard could get out another word.  

Mapi sighed tiredly, rubbing her hand over her face. Her Engens were going to make her go grey. 

—

You had only just pulled some pajamas on after your shower when Mapi knocked, her gentle voice calling to you from the hall. 

“Yeah?” You called back, voice gravelly from all the sobbing you had done in the shower. 

Mapi entered, the first aid kit in her hands and a much calmer expression on her face. She was in her pajamas, too, clearly having been waiting up for you to get out of the shower. It had been a long one. Another thing to be sorry for, keeping Mapi awake. 

“Can I help with your legs?” She wondered, gesturing to the many cuts that littered them.

Shrugging noncommittally, you sunk down onto the edge of the bed, Mapi soon taking a seat opposite you. She pulled your calf up to rest across her lap, getting out the antiseptic spray and a few bandages. You purposefully looked away, barely having been able to get the blood off in the shower without getting light headed. 

“Are you okay, mi sol?” Mapi murmured, fanning her hands over the cuts so the spray would dry faster. Mapi had a way of looking at you, eyes crinkled with concern and kindness, that made you want to burst into tears. You fought that instinct. 

“I am fine.” 

Mapi sighed, unwrapping a few of the bandages and beginning to carefully put them on you. 

“Then someone else was crying in the shower while you were in there?” 

No reply came, and Mapi sighed again, tapping your leg to tell you she was done with that one. 

“Look, I know Ingrid was harsh, but you have to understand how worried she was. How worried we both were. I know you still remember the things you wrote in that letter all those months ago. Things like that don’t just go away, Sol, and when you disappear for hours without a word, we worry.” 

This time, Mapi got a shrug in reply, and a small sniffle. She finished up with your other leg, gently pushing it off her lap and pulling you into a soft hug. “It’s okay, Solstråle. Everything is fine now.” 

You scoffed through your tears. “Nothing is fine, Mapi. I screwed up with Fresa, I screwed up with Ingrid. They both probably hate me. Please, just go. I’m tired.” 

Mapi shook her head. “You’re upset, I just want to–”

“No Mapi, just leave me be.” You tried to sound firm, but your voice was shaking almost as much as your hands were, and you were sure you just came off as pathetic. 

“Alright, nena. I love you, hmm? Don’t be too hard on yourself.” 

You remained silent, flopping back onto your bed as Mapi walked out of the room. Scout hopped up on the bed in her absence, licking your cheek twice before curling into your side. 

It wasn’t being too hard on yourself; the self hatred you felt in that moment was completely justified. You were very sure of that. 

—

You were tucked into bed when the door creaked open again, Scout not even bothering to lift his head from where it was tucked into the comforter draped over your leg. You blinked your eyes open and they widened in surprise at the sight of Ingrid walking into the room, hair messy as though she’d been tossing and turning. She neared the edge of your bed, leaning down and kissing your forehead gently. 

“Goodnight, sweetheart. I don’t hate you, okay? I love you very much. Everything is going to be okay, so just try to get some rest.” 

You nodded weakly, impatiently pushing a tear off your cheek with the back of your hand. “I’m sorry, Ingrid. Really sorry.” 

“It’s alright. You’re safe, yes? And that’s all that really matters.” Ingrid promised, and you nodded, sniffling pathetically. “We can talk more tomorrow, but just go to sleep, okay? Everything is fine.” 

“Love you.” You mumbled, Ingrid smiling softly down at her. You didn’t often say that first, something Ingrid attributed to having said it to your Mamma and not heard it back so many times. 

“I love you.” Ingrid replied, patting your cheek twice before tucking the covers up tighter around you, and heading out of the room. 

—

You woke up to a few unexpected things the next morning. One, it was almost 11 and Scout hadn’t woken you up demanding a walk. In fact, Scout was nowhere to be found. Two, the sounds of Mapi’s Spanish soap and Ingrid’s clanging around the kitchen echoed through the house. You’d forgotten they had the day off today. Ingrid must have taken Scout out to let you sleep in. 

The first two unexpected things, then, were explainable. The third… was not. 

A text from Fresa. 

Tuesday at the library. If you want to give it another shot. I think I can help. 

You thought about the way you’d behaved, and the way Fresa had spoken to you. Before you could delete the thread with her and close your phone, though, you thought about the letter you’d hidden from your sister. The excited smile on Mapi’s face when you’d agreed to let Fresa tutor you. 

Before you quite knew what you were doing, you pulled the message back up, your fingers typing away without you telling them to.

Yeah. I’d appreciate that. What time? 

There was something that drew you to Fresa, even as she infuriated you. Maybe it was how her voice had softened when she’d asked if you couldn’t read the Spanish on the paper, or maybe it was how she’d smiled unconsciously, watching Alexia score a goal the past weekend. It was a nice smile. And she had a nice voice. 

None of it really made any sense to you, but you’d already sent the text. 

—

For some reason, you felt a bit awkward. There was something very odd about knowing Mapi had been upset with you, because normally that was just Ingrid. But you knew Mapi had been just as worried last night as Ingrid, and just as upset. She’d been in the garage all morning, too, and you wondered if she was avoiding you or allowing you to decide to come to her if you wanted to talk.

After the 5th time you glanced at the door to the garage, though, Ingrid rolled her eyes from where she was sitting at the other end of the couch, typing away on her computer. 

“Go talk to her. She’s not angry, I promise.” 

Ingrid wasn’t angry anymore, either. You’d spoken with her practically first thing when you’d woken up, apologizing again and again and emphasizing that you hadn’t really realized how your actions would have affected Ingrid until it was too late. 

You’d told her about a time back in Norway when you’d stayed out all night after a fight with your Mamma, and when you’d come home the next morning, she hadn’t even noticed that you’d been gone. Ingrid understood a bit more, then, and was quick to hug you tight and whisper that she forgave you.

And even though Mapi had come in last night and tried to make you feel better, you knew she might have been waiting to be upset until she knew for sure you were okay. That made you even more nervous. 

Ingrid snorted from behind you when you knocked on the door to the garage, as normally you just walked right in. You shot her a glare, stepping inside the garage at the sound of Mapi’s quiet come in. 

The defender didn’t glance up as you walked in, but you took a seat in the chair next to her. Your chair. 

It was quiet for a moment, the sounds of Mapi’s metal tool gently clanging against the bike. 

“What did Fresa say to you last night?” You blurted out, face flushing red because why was that the first thing out of your mouth. 

Mapi fixed you with a half amused look, shaking her head. “That is what you’re asking?” 

“No.” You sighed. “Are you mad at me?” 

“No.” Mapi echoed, going quiet for a moment as she thought. “Not mad. It’s just hard for me, Sol. Last night, you didn’t even think that we’d be worried about you and where you were. It just makes me a bit sad.”

“Oh.” 

“And it’s not your fault, nena. I just worry for you.” 

You nodded slowly. “I’m really sorry. I should have thought about how worried you guys would have been.”

Mapi gave you a half smile. “I know you are. And you won’t do it again sí?” 

Your head bobbed up and down rapidly as you agreed, more sure than you’d ever been that you’d not be doing something that stupid again. 

“Now. Why are you so concerned with what Fresa said to me, hmm? What did you do?"

—

[girl4music]

The responder to the TERF is absolutely correct.

Human or any kind of animal body interaction at all is based on environmental interaction. They come and go together. Fixating on the body is the same thing as fixating on the ego, since the body only exists in the mind. All ideals of the body that is. The material properties themselves are shared with the environment.

Basic atomic theory should really tell these TERFS this. So I can only imagine the reason why they still insist they’re right is because they don’t want to learn even high school levels of science - let alone anything more complicated than that. However biology and physiology alongside the external environment and its physics is still something we do not fully understand to this day.

The body itself does not actually exist beyond the cells that make up what it is, - but that gets completely replaced with what’s around it every 7 years or so.

So technically… We’re all trans if we looked at it that way as a collective consciousness. It’s only our ideals of gender that are remembered and recollected by the mind that makes us think that we can’t change bio sex.

Of course we can. We do it more often than we realize.

We just don’t assign a gender identity to it.

We simply just get on with our lives without ever paying attention to what cells (atoms) have been replaced with the cells of something else that’s in the environment.

But you try explaining that to a TERF and they’ll think you’ve gone mad. Not madness, friend. Just education.

Try it sometime.

But yes, biological sex is not inherent in a human simply because it was never a permanence in the first place

What we are we share with what everything else is - which has to have a specific name or “identity” to it.

That’s a lot of identities. I’m someone that has never believed that the external and the internal are real existing phenomena on their own. That is, separated.

It’s never made any sense to me to believe that way considering we are made up of the exact same stuff as what everything else in the Universe is made up of and we consume that of the exact same stuff as that does.

To believe that the world or Universe exists separately from the animal that questions it is just insanity to me.

If that were really the way things worked, we’d all be standing on our heads because there’d be no space.

If everybody in this world understood the innate relationship between themselves and the environment there’d be none of this TERF shit being perpetuated by faux scientific or spiritual intellectualism. They’d simply just accept that anyone can change their biological sex because gender and “identity” in itself doesn’t exist.

It is nothing but fixated ideals and ideas. Concepts. We cling to concepts as if the brain was a mechanical thing.

Or as if everything was mechanical or technological

It’s mad to me that a lot of TERF ideology comes from religionists when they’re the ones that don’t want to think of the world mechanically. They go against their own ideology just because they’re not educated on science enough. If they were, they’d realize just how much their own spiritualistic understanding is correct.

[kinardsevan]

i wrote a whole ass psychology breakdown (for the first time in FOREVER) about the break-up. enjoy (if you so choose):

so I've been reading a lot in relation to Tommy's speech during the break-up (and have actually gotten through the scene several times now, mostly as a creative reference for these fix-it fics. I think one of the first things that I've seen completely tossed aside (that bothers the shit out of me as someone with over a decade of therapy treatment and a psychology degree) is whatever trauma Tommy carries.

We know that there are issues with his dad. We know Lou's lore behind him is that he spent a lot of his childhood alone. We don't know anything in relation to his mom, but she may or may not be the cause of more trauma. We know that his way of dealing with abuse of authority is to shut down and follow the leader, which is likely a mix of his military time and growing up in his father's household (and when I say this, I mean from what we saw of him under Gerrard's command). This is a person who has put years into getting himself into some version of okay after all that he's endured, and we know he still generally does it on his own.

To that end, here, have my breakdown of the break up (roughly right about the time Buck says "I want you to move in with me"). (with pictures!)

Prior to the offer, we watch Tommy process through Evan's explanation about his relationship with Abby, things being transformative for him, etc. We have to bare in mind that this is where we also start to get what I've dubbed "starry-eyed Buck". He's so in the throes of what he's saying that I don't think he's really considering the connotation of his words. At the same time, Tommy doesn't know what lore Evan is about to drop him about this prior relationship. Remember that he now has to contend with the fact that they both have strong opinions on their relations toward Abby, and Tommy can't know if their feelings toward her as a person will be the same. I think Lou played this beautifully, appearing anxious and apprehensive as Tommy listened to Evan explain that Abby was transformative for him. Then he shifts into how Tommy has been transformative for him (which, he has, and we as the audience know this, but we understand it from a bigger POV than what Evan is saying with his words.)

There have been posts about Evan putting Tommy up on a pedestal throughout this speech (and really, possibly even sooner, but this is where we really get it expressed). Tommy tries to rectify this to a degree by countering "I wasn't always that way".

To that end, we then get Evan telling him "I know, and it just makes me admire you more." Tommy gives a bashful smile, clearly heartened by the statement, and even opening his mouth as though he's going to respond to it in some form. It would be interesting to know what was on Lou's mind of what (if anything) he thought would've been said there. Are there lines that were removed in this scene? Was 'I love you' actually going to come up? We can't really know. However, there's this part of me that thinks that Tommy thought that they were having a discussion on the depth of their relationship which would've possibly brought those 7 letters to the equation. Either way, this entire bit of facial acting is SO important, because it speaks volumes about how Tommy feels about how Evan feels about him.

From there we get the "I want you to move in with me, and this, THIS, THIS is such an important point for this ENTIRE scene. It's two seconds, but it holds SO much for the narrative. This man, who seems to be on the verge of ...something, clearly (who knows if I Love You was on his mind, or if it was just the fact that Evan was expressing how much he cares about him.) The reason this is all so important is THIS REACTION:

Now again, we don't know Tommy's trauma, but the joy literally drops out of his expression and shifts to panic. Now, speaking solely from the standpoint that these two haven't even said "I love you" yet, his boyfriend steamrolled over him from a possible declaration of love straight to moving in together without discussing semantics. Further, it's not even "I want to live together", it's "move in with me". We don't know much about Tommy's house (because these shitheads haven't built him a set yet), but we know that he has a HOUSE. With a GARAGE. Buck lives in a LOFT. Regardless of how much of an asshole this makes me sound like, it's crawling with red flags. It comes across as "fit more into my life" instead of "lets do this thing together". Further, if that's not bad enough, mention of getting engaged and married is thrown at Tommy as well, which holds two major bits of information: One, these are on Evan's mind. We've NEVER heard him talk about getting engaged or married to anyone. This speaks to the importance of their relationship to him, but the lack of I Love You also speaks on his own trauma. If we truly are getting the rom-com trope, at some point there's likely to be a conversation about why he lept over it (*cough* Taylor, his parents *cough cough*). Meanwhile, as he's continued in his starry-eyed speech, this is what Tommy is giving:

Now for those who don't know how to spot it, this my friends is a PANIC RESPONSE. The shift forward, the move to get up, the literal deep breath. He's having a panic attack. Now, obviously we don't know what brought this on, but god-willing, we WILL get the answers.

Now, to his own point, Tommy doesn't just straight up pop Evan's pink bubble. He does express that it's a sweet sentiment, but that it's a bad idea. To which point we get:

"Evan, that is so sweet. But I can't move in with you." "And why not?" Because. I know how this ends." "Uh, what-what's that supposed to mean?"

At which point, we clearly get the qualities about Evan that Tommy likes. "Incredible guy. Big-hearted. Hot as hell. Impulsive." I don't feel that the expression here matters as much as his tone of voice, because we can see on his face that he's expressing these qualities from a good place. The next point of reference isn't until Tommy's next line, when he says that Evan's reaction is out of things being "new and exciting".

To that end, the way Evan is talking to him makes this statement valid. He's not talking to Tommy like they've been together for six months and have built a relationship that should be moving in this direction. (For the tenth time I will repeat, he couldn't even dignify whether he was in love with Tommy when Josh asked).

Furthermore, I think when you consider this part of the scene, you also have to consider the strain in Tommy's voice. Something about those concepts (living together, getting engaged, married) is terrifying. It definitely gives the impression that Tommy has been faced with some version of this before and he got burned. Why is this important? Because of this:

"I'm saying no matter how bad I want it to be, I'm not your last." Those 9 words are important on their own, but when you couple them with the expression on Tommy's face and what we've just seen him go through, there's a clear point to the fact that he's been through this before. I also think that there can't be enough importance placed on the way he intonates "how bad". This is not a man saying no because he doesn't want to. He's backpedaling because he's sure that he's going to get burned. We get this point further driven home with this exchange:

"I'm your first." "But hey, they can be the same thing." "But, they usually aren't."

See this doesn't read to me as someone who's scared because he knows Evan has never been with another man. They're both fully grown adults who have had multiple relationships. What this speaks to me (now) as, is someone who has let someone convince him before that he would be their forever, that they were all in, and then broke him. When you include his childhood trauma and whatever abandonment issues it's left him with in correlation with all of this, yes, it's still an extremely biphobic set of lines. But in the context of what he's expressing and why, it's not about telling Evan he needs more experience, it's about telling him that he doesn't believe that he'll want to stay settled down with him six months, a year, etc., down the road. And THAT my friends, is abandonment issues 101. "Everyone else has left, so it doesn't matter that I'm in love with you, because you will leave too, and I need to protect myself from that."

Following that, we get this: "if I were to move in with you, you wouldn't mean to, you wouldn't plan for it, but you'd end up breaking my heart."

This line is SO important, right next to Evan's exchange with Josh about his relationship with Tommy. Why? Because even though neither of them have said it, it spells out that these two are in fact in love with each other, even if they haven't said it.

"I don't think I could deal with that." Tommy is fucking GONE on him. He's expressing that if he gave himself fully over to what Evan's referring to, losing him would break him. Again, we don't have the full picture on his trauma, but we know there's a mountain there. It's also worth noting again, that the intonation he uses in these statements clearly come across as someone trying to reign in their emotions and keep it together. That says to me that we're dangeously close to touching his trauma.

I don't feel like I have to include the final few bits of the scene in gifs because they're all over the site now, but the next line gives over the fact that he hasn't really been open about his trauma to Evan, given that his immediate response to expressing all of this is "I should go". This kind of reaction is generally brought on as not being accepted for having certain feelings. Now, obviously Evan is caught off guard by the entire interaction, the same way Tommy was (but for different reasons), so we have to take all of that into account when we think about the fact that instead of countering Tommy's logic, he asks instead if Tommy is breaking up with him.

Body language is also so important here for Tommy. His shoulders are hunched in, we see him wipe his face (meaning there are likely tears), and when he turns around, he's so caught up in whatever wave has taken him over that it takes Evan asking him for Tommy to state "yeah, I guess I did" about breaking up. Further, there's the fact that he states that he didn't see the break-up coming, which goes back to my point at the top of this post, that he clearly thought the conversation was going one direction, and instead it goes the other. From this point, we have Evan reeling, because he wants to create more of a life with Tommy, while Tommy is shutting down because of whatever is holding him back.

Finally, as I've referenced before, we get this line:

"Should've known that parking spot was too good to be true."

That line makes zero sense out of context, but in consideration of someone trying to lighten the weight they're carrying (which you can literally see by the way he has his hand on his neck, which you generally only see people do as a stress response). You can also double entendre this statement that getting to be with Evan was too good to be true. We get that little inhale with the smile, and I swear to God the only time I've seen that kind of reaction is right before someone cracks.

And then in closing, we get the "I'll see you 'round, Buck," our closing gut punch. Evan is still reeling, clearly. His face is very "what the hell just happened". Tommy is clearly not okay. This entire scene has opened an entire can of worms on them without a whole lot of answers.

Now, I've owned the fact that basically from the end of 806, I felt like this had to be a swerve, and that there has to be more to the story. I've also pretty much owned the fact that if the writers did actually just do this for kicks and don't have a resolution for it, I may not keep watching. However, in the context of the fact that, for the moment, I'm choosing to put hope in some kind of resolution, these lines make so much more sense. It is worth noting though, most people in the fandom, let alone the general audience, aren't going to psychologically break this shit down line-by-line. They're not going to lean into whatever trauma Tommy has that we don't know about yet. Its why the internet has been a mess since Thursday night. But it's also why I talk about how, when this situation gets resolved (because right now I refuse to say if), Buck has to give up the loft and give more of himself. Tommy, by the nature of the show, has fully immersed himself in Evan's life, but we haven't seen or heard mention of Evan doing so at all in Tommy's life. That doesn't mean he hasn't, but we haven't gotten any version of that. So when I say Evan needs to give things up... it's about matching what he's asking Tommy to give up. Because at the end of the day, when this circles back around, he's effectively going to be asking Tommy to trust that he won't break his heart like others have, and when you have a lifetime of abandonment issues and have learned to cope by being hyper-independent and alone, moving in the opposite direction is more terrifying than anything else. ESPECIALLY when you love that person, which we saw Tommy spell out. Evan has the ability to break him (and probably already is via this cut-off-at-the-quick break up.)

So, I'm really gonna need these shit heads to figure out that they'll be more miserable apart than they'd ever be together.

That's all. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

[loudclan-clangen]

So, here is the pitch:

AU where Siltsplash finds out they are pregnant around the same moon that Eklutna gives birth to the boys. (Rather than an AU where Owl doesn’t cheat because then we wouldn’t have Song, Dance, or Dash and that won’t do)

It makes the betrayal even worse because it’s even more pointless since they were going to give Owl an heir.

Anyway, meet Spindlekit

She will eventually go blind I imagine, but if Owlstar suggest she retire she tells him that he should retire for being old lmao.

Warrior name is open to suggestion

I love her and I’m so mad that she doesn’t exist now.

The fact that Song doesn’t have a little sister is a CRIME. This is what he was born to do.

Not only am I okay with it, I would love to see it!

You are so right, here's a flashback that was cut for time from Moon 28:

Erminepaw has had a crush on Songpaw since they were in the nursery together, he just never called attention to it. He honestly probably doesn't even register that it is a crush, he's doing that thing that kids do where they're like this is my best friend, of course I want to marry him that's how everyone feels about their best friend. Nothing out of the ordinary here! Just my best friend that I must be holding hands with at all times for best friend reasons!

Yes! This is Fox----, he has been causing problems since the literal day he was born. You've met both of his parents, but I would be a little bit surprised if you guessed them correctly. Parental drama is kinda part of his whole deal. He's one of the first 3rd generation cats born in Loudclan.

I have SO much advice, about the images, the recommended size is 1280 x 1920 pixels, that's always a little too short for my panels, so I try to aim for 1280 x 2000 - 3000. It still deteriorates them a little bit, but people can always click on them for better quality. Bigger text and variation in values also help for readability regardless of size. (value meaning how light or dark a color is. if you want something to stand out it's more important to change the value than it is to change the hue generally speaking.) As for grabbing attention, I would recommend making sure that the image you're trying to show is visible above the cut off for longer posts, posts with only text visible are a lot less likely to get interaction. That being said, the most important thing for the longevity of your blog is making sure that it's something you are doing for yourself. There's nothing wrong with liking when your posts get attention, but it's not likely to happen for a long while (I think moon 5 was the first time I got double digit likes which was three months after I started.) I appreciate all of the love that Loudclan gets now, but if I had started with that as the goal I never would have been able to reach the point of it happening. (I actually started posting Loudclan with the intention of proving to myself once and for all that posting art was not a viable endeavor for me, so... I'll consider that a successful failure!)

You CANNOT DO THIS to me anon- "the canadian city"- YOU MEAN JUNEAU? YOU MEAN THE CAPITAL OF ALASKA JUNEAU?!?! JUNEAU?!?! CANADIAN?!?! When I catch you anon- anon when I catch you-

Come here, anon. I just want to talk. I just want to have a word with you.

[throesofincreasingwonder]

Actually OP's advice is very helpful, and I genuinely think it's worth considering. I get how it could be interpreted the way you describe, but I think it's a bad faith argument to say that OP is 'telling disable people to concede that they suck and are wrong all the time.' Instead, we could think of it more like an "I feel" statement. By reframing your apology as 'action → feeling → action' the way OP did, you take ownership of what you did while also helping the other person avoid triggering that response again. This is a lot more helpful than saying 'I have x, so y.'

They also aren't mutually exclusive! If you think that someone being aware of your specific issue would be helpful to you or them in the future, you can make them aware of that without just offloading your apology onto your disorder or disability.

To use the example above, you could easily reframe "Sorry I snapped when you and your friend spoke at the same time, I actually have sensory issues." as "Hey, sorry I snapped at you earlier. I have sensory issues, and when two people are talking to me at once I can get really overwhelmed, which sometimes makes it hard to regulate my feelings. I'm not mad at you, and I'll try to make you aware earlier or remove myself from the situation if I'm getting to that point of overwhelm in the future."

The latter makes for a better apology (the specific situation OP is trying to give advice about—sometimes you may not need to apologize, but this post is about when you feel the need to do so) for several reasons. Firstly, it gives a specific triggering action to the other person. You included this in the above example, which is great, but took it out of the revision ("I just hate the sound of your voice"). It's important to recognize that first revision is not including the technique OP is employing here.

Second, it takes ownership over your actions. There are obviously some symptoms of disability that you cannot control, and therefore should not need to apologize for (or at least apologize for in the same way as other actions). That mention of convulsing is a great example, because it's and involuntary physical response. You shouldn't apologize for convulsing unless it hurt the other person, because generally apologies cover actions you intend to do differently from here on out.

But there are other actions that you are responsible for, and that you need to take ownership over. Yelling at someone in OP's post is a great example; RSD may mean you can't control feeling of betrayed or hurt, but it doesn't make you yell at anyone. That is an action you have control over and can change in the future. You have every right to have that feeling but not to attack others, which is what the apology is for.

The reason OP's apology structure is more useful than just explaining symptoms is because it focuses directly on the action you're apologizing for. When you apologize only by telling someone your behavior is a result of your disability, it can make it hard for the other person to respond and shut down further conversation. An apology that focuses on actions instead sets clear expectations for both yourself and the other person going forward, and opens a dialogue about what you can both do to avoid that situation in the future.

Sick list of symptoms bro. Now try humanizing your behavior instead of pathologizing it.

[dogtoling]

General life- and blog update , since I assume at least a few people might have been wondering where I've been and what i've been up to recently. I obviously haven't been posting or drawing much this year in general. This will probably be an important post if you care about stuff on this blog, and I already rambled on Sheezy, but that site isn't very populated yet and it's also very good at hiding journals so let's just ramble again...

The summary of this post if you hate reading: I'm heavily considering just stepping away from Splatoon. That decision obviously would affect this blog (mostly, my OCs, which is kinda most of the blog at this point). I don't think the blog itself will go anywhere, and I'll probably use it for something in the future... alternatively i'll cherry pick stuff from here into an archive for people who like the worldbuilding.

Longer post under cut:

So what have I been up to this year? The answer is quite simple: NOTHING. Like, actually absolutely nothing. Aside from Art Fight, this has probably been one of my worst art output years of all time, which is really frustrating. That's between my horrendous mental health and depression chasms this year and a complete lack of both focus and inspiration (which can also get chalked down to the depression to a degree, yeah). So the very real reason to why there hasn't been much activity on this blog this year is because I just haven't Done Anything in general.

Now because I know there will be a few people who think "that's fine! you shouldn't judge yourself based on productivity!" you're right! I also agree. However the issue for me specifically is that most (if not all) the time I spend NOT drawing or creating, I spend sitting around wishing I could start drawing or creating, because that is like the 1 thing that keeps me sane on this freaking earth. Unfortunately coming up with OC scenarios in my head doesn't really result in output I can feel fulfilled by in any form as much as I wish it did, lol.

Now; The Issue. It doesn't take a genius to see that if you spend 9 months trying to finish like a dozen OC pages that you COULD do in a week or 2 if you wanted to, then there's probably more than just the problem of executive dysfunction (even though that's at least 60% of it for sure). Obviously my other major problem is that I live by imaginary rules and structures that make sense, but aren't actually useful at ALL in reality and are more than a hindrance if anything (the mental to do-list in my head that says i can't do X until I've done Y doesn't do very much if task Y takes 10 months and I also don't want to do it, and it also has no structured ending).

How does this tie into stepping away from Splatoon, you may ask. Well, the issue is that I have foreseeably fallen out of love with the series. Which isn't exactly news lol. Currently, I'm not even sure i will get the next game, if and when the time comes. Yes, the loss of interest is also expected, given that Splatoon 3 has ended and every fandom has this kind of downtime and lukewarm in-between-titles period. But the truth is that modern Splatoon (almost 10 years old!!!!) is tangibly different from the way the series was back when I fell in love with it. That was Splatoon 1, and while the series has improved in a lot of aspects and is thriving, it's grown in a direction that I just don't really like. Splatoon 3 had the most freaking horrendous, immersion breaking story mode they could've done, then they followed it up with a DLC story that was pretty cool but also compounded a lot of my fears about the series' future and played into every single thing i do not want Splatoon stories to be - fully character focused, random fucking villain, mundane event that's unrealistically world-threatening just because a kids video game needs a scary climax even though it's immersion breaking AGAIN, the whole thing taking place in cyberspace and thus offering basically no worldbuilding even though there is SO MUCH WORLD. I COULD GO ON.

The gist of it is that nowadays, rather than playing Splatoon and being inspired and excited at what comes next, I mostly find myself dreading what dumbass plot they will do next to throw a wrench in the otherwise good stuff. And when that's like THE main approach I have to what's supposed to be my favorite series, it is HARROWING. I can't even really blame the game for this; the story is NOT its selling point, the developers probably do their best to get the bits to us that they really want to tell, and at the end of the day the game is unfortunately a product. Worldbuilding for Splatoon is fun to a point. It's less fun when in order to actually write or create something coherent, instead of filling in the blanks, the blanks are 90% of the freaking thing. At that point you're just better off making something of your own instead of being anchored onto an IP that gives more problems than answers and occasionally shoots you with like a machine gun. Working in the realm of Splatoon is frustrating because more often than not, the questions I have ARE NOT MINE TO ANSWER, and the likelihood that the specific-ass questions I need answers to will ever be actually addressed is really low.

Tying this back to my OCs. Obviously I love my OCs more than I love myself which admittedly isn't that high of a bar but you get the point. The problem is that I spend a lot of time mulling over worldbuilding that, again, frankly isn't mine to do. Because if I want it to be Splatoon, then it should be mostly accurate to how Splatoon is! But the problem with that is that there's really not THAT MUCH worldbuilding in the series that you can work with, and most of the core game mechanics are just abstract enough that it's actually horrendous to try and come up with workarounds and ways for things to make sense that don't require just constructing a full knockoff version mirror dimension of the game and saying fuck everything that's in place here because Inkopolis Plaza literally has no roads in or out of there and I have no fucking idea how that's allowed when your only option is to jump the fence (or, nowadays, take the train which also isnt connected to a street as far as I remember). Between the face value issue and the lack of REALLY IMPORTANT worldbuilding, like - I will always come back to this - THE INK TANK'S FUNCTION 10 YEARS DOWN THE LINE - there's a goddamn ocean of plot holes and things that end up being obstacles to creativity rather than inspiration. I feel like I'm pretty solidly at the point (and have been for a while) where hanging onto Splatoon is really only contributing to creativity block and frustration with lack of freedom and the ability to actually do things.

So I guess those are my reasonings that I've put together just sitting here for the time being. The TL;DR is that I wish I could just do stuff without Splatoon's canon getting in the way, which is a really stupid problem to have if you're making Splatoon OCs. I feel this frustration extremely strongly every time I have to work with actual bigger aspects of the world; we still don't have an Inkopolis map, we don't know what the world around Inkopolis looks like, we don't know what the wilderness is like aside from Just Normal Forest and Desert and very few snippets as to what modern wildlife MIGHT be, I still don't know how the fuck the Inklings teleport to the goddamn arctic ocean to play a turf war at Shipshape Cargo co. These are all actually really important things if you're trying to establish a setting in any kind of storytelling that's outside of immediate city bounds (and even there, you need to know the layout of the city and its important areas). Also a fucking mutant bear and a baby salmon and a squid not wearing suitable gear went to space and fought on a rocket in space. These are some things that would give me peace of mind to not have to deal with in my own writing, probably.

So where do we go from here? Unsure. I haven't really made a decision on this front yet, though right now I'm leaning more towards actually going ahead with trying to do my own thing. That will result in obvious design and setting changes for my OCs whenever I get around to it. This blog probably won't go anywhere (again, unless I impulse delete it during a mood swing like i've almost done on like three separate occasions this year), but it will probably get less use, and I will probably end up making a new blog to post about whatever I end up doing once I get to a point where it feels like it makes sense. There's a chance that I will delete this blog and put all the interesting stuff on an archive blog for the people who are here just for the worldbuilding. My actual true passion for a long time now hasn't even been Splatoon anymore, it's just been cephalopods. I'm kind of done having Splatoon get in the way of the cephalopods, as thankful as I am that it introduced me to them...

If you read this to the end heres a treat for you = 🍪

[fanofstuff01]

Okay this post was originally supposed to be longer and going into more depths of the subject but I decided to separate it in parts. Because I cannot write that long of an essay in one day lmao

But anyway here's part one

Wohoo

Why Adam from Hazbin Hotel Not Coming Back In Future Seasons Doesn't Make Sense (To Me)

Part One: Logical Problems

Now this section, even though it is still my favorite in the parts, can be fixed easily if Vivienne just gives a logical answer to all of it. But it is just my perspective and what I saw from this show.

Let's get started yippie

-

A: Him not coming back contradicts the show in my opinion.

-You see, when Sir Pentious died to Adam's holy light, all the other characters react like they think he's one hundred percent gone. And it was previously stated by Vivziepop that sinners cannot die unless it's from an angelic weapon, otherwise they just respawn somewhere else in Pride hence why the exterminations exist.

So this implies that Sir Pentious died permanently here, from an angelic attack and then became a winner, in other words respawned in Heaven.

Then.. Why can’t Adam, someone who we know (for now) that died to a weapon designed to kill souls permanently, come back exactly Vivzie? This doesn't make any cucking sense for me. Why are you showing us that a soul can rise after being perma killed, but then treat as if the other Alex Brightman died permanently and now there's no way for him to come back?

-"But maybe they didn't know that Sir Pentious could come back, they just learnt that angels could be harmed. (Yes someone literally said this)"

Oh you mean these characters, who include the Princess of Hell and a literal ex exorcist, don't know about one of the core reasons why exterminations are held in the first place?

Suure.

-"You wouldn't be sad and attack the person who did it if someone killed your friend even though you knew they'd be back? Their reactions don't essentially translate to them not knowing about the permanent death thing."

I would and I can definitely understand them still being incredibly devastated and going feral about his death even though it’s temporary, but then why does the show treat Pentious' death like something these characters think is permanent? Why does Charlie refer to his death as “Ultimate sacrifice”? Hell, this entirely contradicts the sense of finality and sorrow his sacrifice had. 

And to add to both questions, why would Adam come to the exterminations with a weapon that doesn’t kill sinners permanently? Specifically one where he knows that there’ll be folks that will try to fight them and folks he would be more than pleased to wipe out permanently? 

-I know I sidetracked to talking about Sir Pentious more than Adam here, but since he is the only soul we know that changed the place he was in afterlife he is the most relevant character when it comes to this discussion about Adam in my opinion.-

-”We don’t know if angel souls are equal to sinner souls when it comes to this. Maybe the angels simply cannot be killed unless it is permanent, and the show actually hints at this given everyone thought that the angels were invincible.”

This is the only argument I can get behind actually. But it is not because it’s a valid one for the right reasons, it is the only one that makes sense to me because the writers were lazy on this too. 

Then what happens when an angel is harmed with a non-angelic weapon? -Also maybe off topic but what makes something an angelic weapon? We see Cherri Bomb throw bombs at them or okay maybe angelic bombs are a thing, but Charlie shoot-kills the exorcists with the fireworks that come out of her fingers?- Do they just.. Respawn? Or it just doesn’t hurt them? Then wouldn’t a character as smart as Vaggie would’ve figured out that they can very well be killed permanently if they are able to get hurt? 

Not answered. And it’s not helped by how the show openly portrays winners, which may I remind you Adam is one no matter how powerful he is, as the complete opposite of sinners, which would take you to assuming the angelic steel works like it does on sinners for demons. It just doesn't make sense to me.

And it wouldn’t make sense in the next section either.

B: Him not coming back doesn’t make sense in the story or the worldbuilding in my opinion

Just a little disclaimer, I’m not all means a professional media critic and do not say what I say here comes from that distinction. It's just me sharing myself lol.

Also I may use the terms incorrectly due to my broken English skills.

-Okay. So what is Hazbin about? Demons getting redeemed and therefore getting into Heaven for becoming better people, right? Also showing us that everyone can change and they shouldn't be seen as who they are at the moment and they all deserve a second chance.

At least that's what I get from the show. Now..

Why isn't the previously good now bad, being punished at the same level the previously bad now good is being rewarded? Why are you saying that becoming bad would give you an easy escape through death, while becoming good can get you to somewhere better?

Being on Hell is a PERFECT way to punish corrupted holy souls. Because you often become corrupted in the way of arrogance in Heaven, and now you're humored by the universe and by the people you used to mock and see yourself above as but this world's ways don't allow that.. Okay?

Speaking of, this also frustrates me on the world's mechanics and how they work. Sure, it can be that way, but.. Sorry if thinking about a "Divine Judgement" that makes you rise for being good but doesn't make you fall for being bad doesn't make sense in my book..

I can't express my point in this one quite well like I did with the other one but it just melts my brain dude. Like on one hand, on the positive hand, you're saying that if you're on the bad side you can change for the better and that's what matters, but you can't change from good to bad and have the same levels just negative and simply.. Die??

I just.. Can't. Sorry if this part is messier.

-

So this is it.

Will be multiple parts stay tuned ig

@things-arent-what-they-seem66 @beef-brisket

yea im delulu sue me

[ameriatenebrae]

Updated version

Why was Bellamort always canon

Delphini Riddle;

I actually don’t believe Delphini was born in 1998. I think it was in 97.

The reason is that in the books, Bellatrix is absent from the entire book. (Except that event in Spinner’s End, which happened in the summer-autumn of 96 and after that we see Bellatrix at the Death Eater meeting, which happens in July 97 but that's in the Deathly Hallows).

That means Bellatrix was absent for at least nine or ten months in that book. You think that’s just a coincidence? And where was she?

In my opinion, after rereading the books for I don't know how many times now (xD) she was glued to LV, who was in my opinion, fully aware of her pregnancy. And since he was traumatized by his mother dying in childbirth (which is also implied in the books), it also makes sense that he wanted her by his side. Another thing is that he certainly didn’t want anyone to see her pregnant. Because I think the death eaters were aware of something going on between them two and LV didn’t want anyone to know that Bellatrix is, indeed, pregnant with his child.

Bella wasn’t there, when Dumbledore was killed. Which I consider strange, because if you like it or not, Bellatrix was a very powerful witch and the highest ranking death eater, considering Lucius failing LV over and over. And no, Snape wasn't the highest ranking either, since LV didn't trust him 100%. LV sent Peter Pettigrew to Spinner's End so he and Snape could spy on each other basically (xD, very mindful, Tom, very demure). (And do you know why? Because Bellatrix had been telling Tom constantly that she doesn’t trust Snape, it seemed like LV ignored her opinion but I think he rethought it and sent PP there just to be sure.)

So why on earth ?! From a strategical point of view, it doesn’t make sense for Bellatrix not to be there?! And LV was aware of that so it must’ve been his meant decision to not send her there.

Just think… It had to be something really, really important… She would’ve been there if it wasn’t.

Delphini could be born in May – June 97. (It would be actually ironic, if she was born the same day Dumbledore died, 30th June 1997… Just a thought!)

Bellamort;

Secondly, I know it’s hard for some people to accept this, but Voldemort did CARE… He maybe didn’t love her or maybe he did, in his own twisted way, because we aren’t talking about fairytale love with these two. But he certainly wasn’t ignorant towards her. (opposite of love). It was unhealthy and toxic but at the same time they were kindred spirits who just accepted each other and even tho LV would never say it out loud, they also needed each other.

“But hE TrEaTeD hER BaDLy”

When exactly did Lord Voldemort treat Bellatrix badly? I can’t recall one time he was harsher to her than to other death eaters. And if you want to bring up that scene at Malfoy Manor, when he humiliated her and the Malfoys. You're right, he did, he enjoyed humiliating people. And yet, he took the shame from her in the next few sentances and focused solely on the Malfoys, because Lucius failed the Ministy mission, not Bellatrix. And he even made it up to her in the next paragraph. He didn't have a reason to be mad at her.

He actually treated her with the most respect he could.

He never punished her badly. Not so harshly like the Malfoys. She is described as unharmed after that fiasco at Malfoy Manor. And what’s more, she is by LVs side in public shortly after, whereas the Malfoys are home prisoned and I think Lucius might've been tortured even. He personally trained her, put his energy and time into her, because he saw potential in her. He saw her madness as a source for her powerful dark magic, not something she should suppress, that’s also why she was so devoted to him. Because he was the only person who respected her for who she was. Because in the end, they were both just two extremly broken souls (pun intended).

Further:

He was the happiest he had been in 14 years when she escaped from Azkaban. You may try to say that he was happy because he had 10 more death eaters. That would make sense if the other page wasn’t talking mainly about Bella. (Remember, JK Rowling was intentional when writing, it’s not a coincidence, that she’s focusing on Bellatrix after that statement. She chose every word of all their interactions and Harry's perspective on them intentionally).

He called her “Bella”, a short version of her name, that only few wizards, mainly her family used. He even called her Bella when he was angry about the borken prophecy.

She was the only one, who wasn't scared to speak first when talking to him or touch him even when he said no.

He entrusted her with his soul, whereas he gave the diary to Lucius just to get it to Hogwarts, never telling him that it’s his horcrux. But the cup was given to Bellatrix for protection. And it’s even symbolic, because that cup was Helga Hufflepuff’s, the founder of the Hufflepuff house which stands for loyalty… and who’s the most loyal servent of the Dark Lord?

He rescued her from the Ministry, I think that’s obvious. He certainly didn’t have to. And yet he did risk the whole operation and exposed himself to the whole Ministry. And we’re still talking about the most selfish man here… but he did it… and he did it just for HER, because he CARED. There’s no other logical explanation to this. He came the second she called him and rescued her because he didn’t want her in Azkaban again.

And you can see the difference in LV's behavior towards Bellatrix, Lucius and the other DEs. He didn't help Lucius to get out of Azkaban right away. Instead, he tasked his only son to kill a man, he himself wasn't able to kill simply to mock and torture him mentally.

Yes, from Dumbledore’s words, we were made to think that Tom really doesn’t care for anyone other than himself. But Dumbledore wasn’t aware of Bellatrix’s status at all! Because he didn’t suspect that Voldemort would give his horcrux to her. But we know, Voldemort did just that. And another problem with Dumbledore's preception on this is that he didn’t know much about Tom’s life (certainly not his private life) after his years at Hogwarts, so he couldn’t know about Tom’s realtionship with Bella. It was just his opinion, not a fact. He said, he *thinks*.

And Voldemort’s reaction to her death… That made everything clear, He cared for Bellatrix more than for the piece of his own soul living in Nagini. He had a worse reaction to Bellatrix's death than to, mind you, Nagini’s death… and she was HIS LAST HORCRUX. He lost the control of his magic (which doesn't happen often, since we're talking about THE Lord Voldemort here). He was so furious that McGonagall, Kingsley and Slughorn (all three very powerful wizards) were blasted through the air because: "Voldemort's fury at the fall of his last best lieutenant exploded with the force of a bomb. Voldemort raised his hand and directed it at Molly Weasley" he even tried to avenge her death and kill Molly. If Bellatrix hadn't meant so much to him, why would he waste his energy and time on killing Molly? Have you seen him avenging the death of someone else except Bellatrix? And if Harry didn't intervene, he would do just that. Because he lost it at that point. Death took another person (first his mother), who loved and admired him uncoditionally. All of his other DEs fleed or died. He knew he was alone and mortal. A human.

In my opinion they led, let's call it a Dual Relationship. As Bellatrix implies that LV tells her everything and yet he tells her to be quiet often. He calls her Bella when they're is just the two of them and mocks her in front of others. There's a disconnect between his behaviour towards her. So, in my deduction; there was Bellatrix Lestrange, the most loyal sevent of Lord Voldemort: which was basically their work mode. (And I'm a bit sad we didn't get more of their team work while fighting because I think they made an excellent work duo.) And then there was Bella and her Lord and their private life. Bellatrix wouldn't be against it being public, I'm sure about that. But I think LV didn't want others to know about him having some feelings or a soft spot for her, it would make both of them more vulnerable = since as you can see above, he lost control over his magic because of her dying. But he didn't manage to hide it that well because even Harry (from whose perspective are the books written) notices that there is something between them; "As to a lover"...

And on top of that, Bellatrix was the ideal match for Tom; a very beautiful, powerful witch from a pureblood family. Devoted solely to him.

So Bellamort had been canon even before the CC was released.

But the biggest question is; Why would Lord Voldemort want a child? A hard one… yes

Some explanations:

a) to continue with the Slytherin bloodline.

b) it was an accident, but he let Bellatrix keep the child, so she could be later trained into really powerful weapon (just like Bella)

c) it was that reward beyond Bellatrix’s dreams, he mentioned earlier in the series. He talked about it in the fourth book when he said that the Lestranges will be rewarded beyond their dreams.

d) last possibility, the most out of Voldemort’s character; In the case horcruxes failed, he would be still “alive” through his daughter. – I personally don’t believe this was the case… but who knows?

To sum it up: Bellamort makes more sense than people think. And the CC just confirmed it. period.

Delphini could be conceived around October 1996 and could be born, not in 1998, but in 1997 (before the Battle of Hogwarts). THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING THIS <3

[eroticcannibal]

It's still a minority view (plenty of varied viewpoints do get conflated with those things though, by people who have also grown up with the criticism of men = man hate line and internalised it in the other direction). It's still heavily exagruated by bad actors. Have you not actually talked to these people? Have you not looked at what they feel is man hate? Have you seen the examples the radicalised will list? Evil radfems saying all men are scum on twitter is a *tiny* fraction of what they feel attacked by and is almost never what they feel *most* attacked by.

I saw an intelligent, reasonable, compassionate, previously explicitly feminist man become *violently* (and I do mean violently, I was the target) antifeminist overnight because I expressed on Facebook I was having a trauma response (wariness of men) after an assault. And you know what else? Not a single man in that room defended me from *actual violence* because to them, fear looked like hate. Anything that made them uncomfortable looked like hate. This was during a time where publically discussing online your experiences with sexual assault was first becoming a Big Thing, the original #MeToo (interesting that it had to happen twice), and there really wasn't anyone going all men evil, just all men can be scary because we don't know who will hurt us. There was SO MUCH EFFORT to add nuance to the discussion, to let men know hey! We aren't saying *youre* bad! And they would not listen. Why? Because they'd rather listen to other men saying we are man hating feminists who are calling them all rapists even when we explicitly say the opposite! And that got me assaulted by a friend. The same shit fucking led to elevatorgate ffs. How dare a woman say she is uncomfortable, that's man hate, ignore all evidence to the contrary.

And yknow I did see an uptick in *performative* man hate at the time, but it was purely reactionary and it was a *test* (and a lot of current supposed "man hate" is still a relic of this era). Since you can make clear you don't hate men all you want and they will still say you do, "yes all men" became a sort of password. If you could here that without being a little bitch about it, if you knew the context because you actually bothered to listen, then you were cool. You knew no one actually meant that because you bothered to listen to them instead of people lying for political gain.

This is a tactic that has been going on since *before feminism even existed* and it is effective! It relies more upon the constructed belief that feminism is anti man which has become very well established over the years than it does the actual behaviour of feminists. I would strongly encourage you to look at anti-feminist sentiment throughout and predating the history of feminism (starting with the votes for women movement, that's the earliest I am personally aware of, there may be earlier examples) and see how we got to this point. Convincing every feminist to never again say "men are evil" will not create any change. (Which is not to say people *should* do it, but just that it's not the true root of this kind of radicalisation). Actual examples of it are *convenient* but not necessary for this tactic.

I would never *entirely* discredit the viewpoints of someone who has escaped cults and cult tactic using groups (I've been through that, I get it), but I would encourage caution with how much you trust the narrative of the *whys* from someone who has escaped. Leaving is quicker than undoing the thinking, and I really do believe that user isn't quite there yet. Best case scenario, that user is right about *them*, but it is not correct of radicalised men in general.

Because you can be as gentle as you like to these people getting radicalised, you can have all the nuance in the world, you could make it so that no one, not even as a joke, says anything about hating men, and you know what will happen? Just like has always happened, they will listen to who they want to listen to. They will listen to the people promising them superiority, they will listen to the people giving them a reason for their economic suffering (we must remember how much economics plays into radicalisation), that reason being evil feminists. They will see the man hate regardless of if it is there or not. Because they have been told to. Because it is convenient for them. And even if you convince them that we don't hate *men*, now you've got to convince them we don't hate them for being *white*. The point is not the hate they perceive but the superiority they seek and the power they desperately want.

Radicalisation and cult tactics do not rely on facts.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

[welcometothejianghu]

Welcome to another round of W2 Tells You What You Should See, where W2 (me) tries to sell you (you) on something you should be watching. Today's choice: 致命游戏 / The Spirealm.

The Spirealm is a 2024 drama about two young men who fall in love while basically playing a whole bunch of horror-themed escape rooms that can for-real kill you.

This show/book combo has gripped my entire ass. The second I knew I wanted to watch this, almost immediately after it started airing, I muted the tag. I was so right to do this, because this is worth not spoiling yourself about. If you are a Guardian fan in particular, you owe it to yourself to watch this for reasons I think will become clear as you go about watching it.

So! If all you need to know is that I think you need this show in your life, great! You don't even need to scroll down to the end of the post for the links; go to Viki and press play. In case you need more convincing than that, though, I'm going to give you here five reasons to watch it that are as spoilerless as I can make them.

Before we start, though, I'm going to take a moment to note that I had to torrent the video files so I could make screenshots of my own, and if I hadn't, this would have been a much uglier rec post than the others I've done. Not only were there not many promotional materials or official stills released, the show itself barely stayed up two hours on iQiyi, and that's because this drama is a...

1. (Barely) Censored Adaptation Of Same-sex Original Work

Ah, you know that MyDramaList tag well, don't you? Yeah, the original novel, Kaleidoscope of Death (which has a rec post of its own!), is supernatural story about grief and loss built on the love story between the two male leads. Now of course you know already that a mainstream Chinese television adaptation of something like that is going to straighten up everything and turn the horror romance into the sci-fi platonic love of besties.

...But damn, folks, it's still real gay.

Ling Jiushi, the sweet-faced newbie, is a canonical virgin and loving cat dad who plays the mysterious video game once, then finds himself suddenly able to enter the game worlds bodily -- and of course, if you die in the game, you die in real life. He's pretty much doomed, until he meets...

Ruan Lanzhu, the cool-as-a-cucumber veteran of the door worlds, who falls pretty much immediately for the completely oblivious Ling Jiushi, then has to spend the rest of the series consumed with lust while trying to keep him and a couple other dipshits alive.

The show preserves so many overtly gay beats and declarations of affection from the novel, to the point where it's just this side of suggesting that the romance is actually, textually happening just offscreen, every time the camera cuts away. I am forever grateful that working with Zhu Yilong on Reunion seems to have perfected sweet baby Junjie's ability to look at a man with nothing but love in his eyes.

I adore so much the dynamic they have, one where a man who has never told the truth a day in his life encounters a man so sincere and naive that you cannot seduce him with anything but absolute honesty or he's never going to get it.

There are three (3) separate door worlds where they share a bed, and in every one of them, they both sleep with their shoes on. Like the absolute freaks they both are.

2. It's puzzle solvin' time!

So if you've read some of my rec posts before, you know that I am critical of stories that center around cases that are unfollowable, uninteresting, or both (e.g., Mysterious Lotus Casebook and White Cat Legend). I am therefore thrilled to tell you that the door worlds are actually (largely) thoughtful mysteries with reasonable solutions, where you care about what's happening and why.

The way each door world is set up is that you have to solve the puzzle to find a key and unlock the door that will let you leave. One of the challenges is each world's door ghost, who has the key and does not want to give it up. The other challenge is the world-specific set of taboo conditions, where violating them means the door ghost can kill you -- and you are not always told what those taboo conditions are. That means that solving a door involves 1) figuring out what will insta-kill you, 2) not doing that, 3) finding where the hell the exit door is, 4) placating and/or scamming the door ghost long enough to snatch the key from them, and 5) running like hell to the exit door with that key before the door ghost fucks you up about it.

As the show goes on, you get introduced to the concept of door-passing shepherds, which are experienced door-finishers who take through lower-level players, building them up in the process. A lot of these shepherds work for organizations, such as the one Ruan Lanzhu runs. And a lot of them are ready to reach the exit by climbing over everyone else's corpses.

That's part of the fun of the setup: You're not just thrown in alone. You show up with a random number of other players, some with very different levels of experience. At least one of you will make it out; not everyone will. So you can add a step 6) to the list above, which is: surviving all the other players who will gleefully stab you in the back in order to be the first player out the door.

The door worlds are also lovely. They all feel like sets -- and I know that's a weird thing to say about places that are literal sets, but they manage it feel it even on film. In fact, even the show's uses of clunky-ass greenscreen feel appropriate, because of how unreal everything is supposed to be. Everything looks like a dream, which is only amplified by how beautifully everything's shot.

(What's that you say? You say the guy who directed this was the editor on Infernal Affairs? No kidding.)

From a fandom perspective, what's great here is that even though there are technically just twelve doors, there are canonically way more than twelve door worlds out there. That means that whatever worlds you want to create are valid. The best pieces of fanfic I've read are the ones that dream up their own door worlds, complete with taboo conditions, key puzzles, and world-specific perks that lead to gay sex, because come on.

3. A good middle ground of horror

So at this point you are perhaps wondering: How scary is it?

And the answer is, kind of as scary as you're willing to let your mind go with it. Everything has been science-fictioned real hard, including the video game premise that "explains" what's happening with these doors. It relies on dread way more than jumpscares. The blood/gore/gross content is extremely low, again on account of Chinese content censorship. Most icky things are done with offscreen sounds and shadows. I'm pretty squeamish about pain and injury, and I can't recall a time I had to look too long away from the screen.

However, that means the show works some real conceptual horror. That picture up there is of a man forcing three young girls to hold raw eggs unbroken in their mouths. There's nothing about that image that's not technically G-rated, and it's awful in context.

The best bits are when the monsters don't need a lick of CG to become horrors. They cast a contortionist in the Waverly Hills door world, and she absolutely earned her keep.

I have a lot of critiques about how the show handles things, especially in terms of defanging the horror elements (which it does), but one thing I think it absolutely gets right is that it understands that ghost stories are first and foremost tragedies. That's a thing I've always liked about Asian horror in particular, how often you wind up siding with the ghost. Yes, sure, she tried to strangle you with her hair, but have you ever considered she's the real victim here? There's always a bit of a calculus: Can you negotiate with the door ghost, or do you just need to stab them and run? The Spirealm prefers negotiation, and frankly, so do I.

So yeah, it's about as scary as you let it be. If your horror tolerance is low, watch it in a well-lit room and focus on the unreality of it, and you'll be okay. If you're looking for something genuinely spooky, spend some time thinking about the existential dread of the entire situation, and that'll be good for a couple good spine tingles.

4. The Obsidian Family (& Friends!)

In a show where death is always an option, you have to have characters where you actually care if they live or die. Fortunately, all your allies are charming and loveable enough that you are going to be real upset every time they get put in danger!

Obsidian is one of the organizations I mentioned earlier. It's run by Ruan Lanzhu, and it includes a cool and collected doctor, a mom friend who cooks for everybody, a guy who's maybe not having the best mental health day of his life, and two identical twins who could not be more different if they tried. They all live in the same amazing big fancy house, which is where Ling Jiushi too goes to live when he joins the group. They have big family meals, they look after one another, they hang out together -- I mean, if this is the kind of setup you love, then you will love this setup.

There are also plenty of allies who aren't technically part of Obsidian, but who are our friends nonetheless, and who come over to hang out in the Obsidian house from time to time. Some of them are rivals turned friends, some of them are clients turned friends, and some of them were just friends all along! Surely nothing bad will happen to any of them, and they'll all live happily ever after, right? ...Right?

5. Toast and Chestnut!

Of course, the true heroes of the show are Toast the Corgi and Chestnut the Kitty.

Animals are so good.

Truly, I love that one of Ling Jiushi's defining characteristics is that he is a Cat Dad. He is a simple man with simple needs, and one of those needs is to pet his kitty or he'll explode.

caveat: Some thoroughly bad adaptation choices

Yeah, so I keep talking about the novel (and talk even more about the novel in its own rec post), but I assure you, you don't need to have read the novel to feel the degree to which this is an adaptation -- and one that's had its rough, nasty, spooky, gay edges all sanded off in the desperate hope of ever seeing daylight.

Now, sometimes I consider batshit nonsense janky creative decisions to be a selling point for a show (see: Mysterious Lotus Casebook, Legend of Fei, Sand Sea)! In this case, however, I'm going to have to take points off for how incoherently bad they are here. We're talking Psych-Hunter levels of Why Would You Do That-- and the answer, as always, comes down to how you write around what censorship won't allow on television.

The novel says the doors are supernatural. The show says they're a virtual-reality computer game. Now, on the surface, this move sort of makes sense -- you can't have ghosts, but you can have computer games that make digital ghosts, which, sure, okay. But then the problem quickly becomes that the plot of the novel is not remotely built to support a sci-fi premise, so a lot of things have to be grafted awkwardly on. Like, say, a bad guy who stole his corporate logo from Even Worse Twitter. Or a game-designing bestie whose face is never seen. Or [late-stage spoilers about a major character].

The eventual explanation is that this whole setup is a righteous and good game that has somehow been corrupted by evil game-designing capitalists from the West, and that's why it can abduct you in broad daylight and kill you if you fail it. There are good people who want to purify (???) the game, and evil people who want to make money off the game. And I don't mind spoiling you for that part, because it's garbage nonsense. You will be deeply unsatisfied with the show's half-assed attempt at resolving it all. (You may, however, have that disappointment tempered with the amazing concurrent display of heterosexuality that is apologizing to your best bro by coding his perfect man for him. The Spirealm is a land of contrasts.)

Look, I consider myself a mild to moderate socialist, and even I was yawning and making jerk-off motions every time someone started to wax halfheartedly poetic about how evil American capitalism is. Like, yeah, but not because some college student made a vile and wretched video game that eats people! This show is a critique of capitalism like a five-year-old crying because he doesn't get ice cream before bed is a critique of authoritarianism.

And even this, I can't be too mad at it about, you know? I just assume that this was some absolute Hail Mary attempt at getting past censorship -- you know, maybe if we make all the right "grr, USA bad!" noises, they'll let our gay ghost story slip by? And it worked! I mean, just barely, but it did.

So yeah, fair warning that the Spirealm is a show that, if you love it (and I do), you will have to love despite some glaring flaws that haunt it all the way through and hit especially hard during what should otherwise have been an amazing endgame. But hey, we're c-drama fans! We're good at loving janky things, right?

Want to enter the World of Doors?

As I said at the start of the post, Viki's got it -- and only Viki. I'm not sure what circumstances got it up on Viki after iQiyi pulled it, but I'm glad. Watch it quick, before Viki changes its mind!

Hug him! Hug that boy!

[katherinakaina]

I keep seeing once in a while people pondering on an apparent contradiction in Daniil’s character – he is said to be a rationalist but he is evidently extremely emotional. Those things do not go together, right? People notice their confusion. They find all sorts of interesting explanations. From him being manipulative and performative, using his displays of emotion like tools to control people. To him not being rational at all actually, him lying to himself and others, not even knowing who he is, pretending and failing.

Every time I get over it and completely forget and then another one of these hits me in the face. What I forget is that in common understanding rationality is opposed to being emotional. While in the community it is a basic level understanding that there are rational emotions and irrational ones. The same way there are rational beliefs and irrational beliefs (which is to say true and false basically).

From here:

A popular belief about “rationality” is that rationality opposes all emotion—that all our sadness and all our joy are automatically anti-logical by virtue of being feelings. …

For my part, I label an emotion as “not rational” if it rests on mistaken beliefs, or rather, on mistake-producing epistemic conduct. “If the iron approaches your face, and you believe it is hot, and it is cool, the Way opposes your fear. If the iron approaches your face, and you believe it is cool, and it is hot, the Way opposes your calm.” Conversely, an emotion that is evoked by correct beliefs or truth-conducive thinking is a “rational emotion”; and this has the advantage of letting us regard calm as an emotional state, rather than a privileged default. …

Becoming more rational—arriving at better estimates of how-the-world-is—can diminish feelings or intensify them. Sometimes we run away from strong feelings by denying the facts, by flinching away from the view of the world that gave rise to the powerful emotion. If so, then as you study the skills of rationality and train yourself not to deny facts, your feelings will become stronger. …

I visualize the past and future of humankind, the tens of billions of deaths over our history, the misery and fear, the search for answers, the trembling hands reaching upward out of so much blood, what we could become someday when we make the stars our cities, all that darkness and all that light—I know that I can never truly understand it, and I haven’t the words to say. Despite all my philosophy I am still embarrassed to confess strong emotions, and you’re probably uncomfortable hearing them. But I know, now, that it is rational to feel.

Daniil probably suppresses some of his emotions to be taken seriously. But this is masking. And he is bad at it. He has strong emotions and strong convictions and they spill out of him regardless. He also values truth and honesty and that’s another reason why he can’t fully suppress his authenticity.

But all of it is about how to behave in polite society. How not to freak out neurotypicals. It has nothing to do with his thinking process, his beliefs and his goals. His rationality.

Now you can argue that his sincerity and his openness are irrational instrumentally, which is to say they lead to his downfall. He should have masked better and become more cynical if he wanted to succeed. Maybe? But that would also have its downsides, I’m pretty sure. (we’ll see what apathy meter does to his decision making soon enough)

Anyway, that is not the point I see people make. And I just really want people to stop making it. Strong emotions, strong ideals, passionate belief in a better future for humanity – those are all perfectly rational if they align with truth. And he does fail as a rationalist quite a lot as well, but this is purely an epistemological issue that has nothing to do with him being emotional.

[theredch3rry]

Sigh *sits down while looking at her own ten month old notes* (srry im just a girl who spent too much time analyzing sl!shinyduo) the reason why gem is holding a grudge against pearl isnt because pearl killed her. in fact, gem never refers or implies that pearl killed her, but that she played a part on her death (wording is important here, because what she says is "she 2v1'd me!" nothing more, nothing else). which she did, both directly and indirectly: directly in the "yes she started the attack and swung two times at her, and before that hit her with bow shots" way and indirectly in the "pearl attacking gem send her dogs to target her, dogs that made considerate damage and restricted her movement"

gem doesnt care about who killed her; she doesnt hold anything against scar. she cares that pearl choose his side at the end, and this is were the "gem is actually emotion-driven" little thing that some people are realizing takes part: yes, gem killed pearl two times, the first one was a complete accident because the trap was meant for scar, and the second one is special for multiple reasons. despite them arguing in front of the secret keeper about it, gem doesnt try to hide that she feels guilty about killing pearl, and i believe this is the sign that makes pearl trust her enough to get on the camel.

the experience they had together with the camel made them closer in lengths it shouldnt have. by the end of session 8, pearl stopped caring about her death, she had fully forgiven gem. gem, on the other hand, probably felt closer to pearl than with her own alliance.

and in session 9 it's made clear the lengths that gem was willing to go for whatever-tf they had together. gem doesnt resent pearl for choosing the mounders, gem chose scott and impulse. gem, just like pearl did for her, avoided hitting or attacking pearl for as long as she could; pearl knew that, of course she knew that.

at the end it’s all about perspectives: gem thought that pearl would choose her because of their special bond, after the mounders were gone. ofc that doesn happen, and all gem heard as she was dying was pearl cheering for scar after pearl had swung against her (she doesn’t hear pearl asking in the middle of the battle for more time to think, or her request for a sword fight), after she had asked pearl directly "what are you doing?!" in regards of going against her and all pearl answered with was "i don't know". in her pov pearl betrays her because gem didnt attack until pearl did it, it’s a betrayal in her pov because she thought their bond was one that they could return after trying their best with their alliance. she never gets a better understanding of pearl in the finale because, well, pearl didnt provide her of answers. gem dies and she never knew of pearl's side, so now she harbors a grudge born from the actions and missing words.

(pearl isnt bad for doing what she did, just like how gem is in her rights for feeling hurt over what happened. they were just trying to do what they thought was right)

I love this

[kizzer55555]

Alternative idea. They are chasing Danny ‘the betrayer’ down and as they follow the leads and clues and leftovers of where he’s been, they start slowly piecing together the mystery of who Danny is and why he’s doing this. And they find out just how deep the betrayal went. Because it was the Justice league that made the first move.

They finally catch up with him and he’s decoding something and he just snaps at them to leave him alone. He’s cold, not even acknowledging at them, this is nothing like the Danny they knew. They try to talk to him and when that doesn't work it breaks out into a battle. But Danny knows all their moves and weaknesses and they don’t know the first thing about his limits. He’s ruthless and efficient, not showing the barest hint of emotion on his face like this battle against his ‘friends’ means nothing to him. He doesn’t even have to reveal his powers. And once they are all completly immobile he whispers “I never wanted to hurt you.” Someone scoffs. “You have a funny way of showing that.” Danny rolls his eyes. “It’s your own fault. You really should have seen this coming.”

“Oh really?” A hero speaks, venom dripping with every word. “Is it really that easy to betray your friends? To betray the ones you trust?”

Danny just laughs without any emotion behind it. “Trust? Nah, I never trusted you. Let me tell you something, when my home town was invaded, we called the Justice league. But they never came. When we were besieged every. Single. Day. By monsters and demons and entitled government agents that had no regard for casualties, they never came. Do you know what it’s like? To always have to look at the sky in case something comes down a snatch you? To hide behind a trash can or alley wall and pray that skin peeling cyborg will pass you by? To be scared of the very food you eat wondering if it was poisoned or the meat was going to attack you? To wake up realize no one is moving and wonder if your friends and family will ever wake up again? We called over and over but they never came. So we had to find our own way to fight back. We had to build weapons to protect ourselves and our children. We had to fight tooth and nail just to make it to tommorow and finally, finally we figured out a system. We managed to push them back enough to breathe. And it was only then that your people arrived.

You abandoned my town to face their death. You took me from my home. You locked up my family and tortured them.” By now, Danny was screaming and crying. His eyes looked absolutely devastated. “How…can you possibly ask me to trust you after that?”

Danny doesn’t even explain himself and his reasoning. That’s how little he thinks of the heroes. He doesn’t care if what they think he’s doing is right or wrong or if it’s justified. Some think he’s doing some sort of master plan to take over the world rather than just rescuing his parents which makes even more devastating to them when they find out what he’s actually doing.

It’s a race against time and by the end, Waller launches a strike against the heroes and it ends up being Danny that built a counter solution to the anti super weapons. He still doesn’t care about them but he was a protector at heart. He always will be. He just didn’t need someone’s ‘permission’ to do so. When he finally frees his parents (possibly dragging in the help of his classmates for a break out) they stand and Waller says that they’ve lost as they are surrounded, no weapons, and all the heroes/former villains powerless because of machines specifically designed against them. And that’ when Danny looks her right in the eyes and says that there’s one thing he forgot to mention.

He has powers too.

Danny held up a large sign from the background like a man at an airport as thier leader, Robin, gave his report to this "Justice League". The first sign said, "Help! I'm surrounded by daddy issues!" Earning a laugh from someone off camera. He then pulled the next card out from behind the first one.

"Can you send air fresheners? It smells like teen angst in here"

This one got a cackle from someone on the Justice League side of things. Score. No one here really wants to laugh. They're all edgelords and Danny is suffering. He didn't really want to be here, but things in Amity had ended in a way he never expected.

Both he and his parents had been arrested.

Not by his worlds government, mind you, but by the government of another Earth. This Earth that he was currently on to be more accurate. Who knew that so much of the stuff he and his parents had been doing was super illegal and wouldn't ya know it? He was in the middle of doing something really sketchy looking in his parents lab when the feds busted in.

Thankfully, the Justice League presented him with a deal: they take him out of Juvie and the reformation program he was in, and in return, he joins a team of former teen/child villains and anti-heros.

Figuring he had nothing to lose at this point he agreed.

He was not expecting to be surrounded by angry angsty teens. His fault really. He should have known better. Thankfully it seems like nobody knows about Phantom and he'd like to keep it that way.

Psaro was his calm in the storm. The other boy was proud and almost as arrogant as Robin, but he had been proven to be very kind and reliable. If Danny ever needed advice or if Robin was getting a bit too much, he could just knock of Psaros door.

The last time Robin had a fit and was starting a fight with someone, Mr. Pointy ears stepped up and told Robin that his outburst was undignified, especially for someone of a higher class like Robin seems to be presenting himself as. He also said something about there being a big difference between a king and a tyrant, but Danny had been trying to rush Robin's victim to the medway and didn't hear all of the convo.

Psaro was some kind of half demon prince who was also from another world. He didn't have a superhero name yet, but the program was brand new, and to be fair, Danny didn't officially have one either.

Some lady called Raven was supposed to be coming in to help Psaro and convince him to embrace his human half and help him with magic and...something about a curse? What did Danny get himself into???

[kiddycup]

hi!!! i wanted to ask you if you had any tips for going about choosing colors? your art provokes very distinct feelings/atmospheres via the colors & i do hope to do the same someday ^_^

hello! thank you... i'm actually quite insecure about my colouring, but i think a big thing that helped me was putting down one base undercolour that i base all my other colours around and not just picking random colours from wherever (sticking close to it on the colour wheel)

i'll use these colours from my comic as an example bc it has 2 different schemes for mood change effect:

the left panel is kinda goofy or whatever, so i chose that green/yellow in the bg there to have a happier/sillier tone. their skin/clothing are still around that colour, though.

this is for ena's (girl on left) skin tone and shirt respectively:

the top half of that colour preview is the undercolour i used, and the bottom half are the subject colours. you can see that if that shirt colour is isolated, it's orange; but put on top of this green, it looks red. you can also see that i dont deviate too much from that undertone on the side slider.

you can see the same thing done w the right panel, which a red tone was used instead of the green/yellow (because red=scary/tense) etc.

these are for clare's (shocked one) skin tone, and then renee's (girl on her right) shirt colour.

you can see that for the left panel, i tended to stay on the upper yellow, while for the right panel i stayed more within the bottom red range on the slider. for both of these, i stayed within the top left of the picker area--thats where the earthier/soft look comes from. it would be different if i strayed further right, which is much more saturated and bright.

i also usually like to choose a less severe line colour, in this case its more of a very dark brown instead of black. i find that it tends to compliment these colours more with the same reasoning as everything else i talked about.... and it kind of gives it a faded vintage look?

anyway, im usually more of a sketcher than an illustrator so take it as a starting point... and don't hesitate to colour drop drawings with colours/moods you like and see how they interact with each other on the sliders/wheels. that's how i learned when i started out.

also, a little colour overlay on top of your drawing is an easy cheat to get your colours more cohesive--i still use it at times. learning the ins-and-outs of how it works without resorting to it is still useful though, and in my experience it makes your colours more specific and stand out

i hope this makes sense and/or helps!!!!

[ponyregrets]

I wanted to write about Buck and Eddie going in the ocean and I'd written most of it before I thought to check what the weather in LA is actually like right now (look, I'm in New England, I just think of it as Warm down there, okay?) and I decided to go with it anyway. as @frightfullytreeish said, get chilly, idiots

(806 coda, 1900 words, also on AO3)

"Hey, what brings you joy?"

Eddie is expecting some waffling in Buck's response. Maybe some suspicion. It's a weird thing to ask, obviously. Joy isn't a word he uses much, isn't a go-to. But even if what makes you happy is a more normal question, it's not right. He needs something deeper.

And of course there's the Tommy of it all. Buck hasn't exactly been mourning or anything, but he's obviously down. It wouldn't be unreasonable for him to say that nothing is bringing him joy at the moment. It's not a particularly joyful time.

But Buck doesn't hesitate, doesn't question. He just says, "The ocean," and doesn't even ask why Eddie wants to know.

"Really?"

"Yeah. I never saw it until I left Hershey. We never went to the beach or anything when I was a kid. The first time I saw it, I fell in love. It was the best thing I'd ever seen."

"I didn't know that."

Buck shrugs. "Doesn't come up that much. And I guess I always think I'll get used to it? But it's amazing every time. I never get tired of it."

He should have known, right? They've gone to the ocean together. Or--well, they've had calls near the water before. That guy who got struck by lightning. The shark.

The tsunami.

But they've never just gone. Buck has never tagged along with him and Chris on any of their trips, and he and Buck have no reason to just take a beach day together.

Joy doesn't need a reason, right? He can just do it.

"Cool," says Eddie. "Let's go."

"Now?"

"What else are we doing?"

It hasn't been a problem, exactly, their lack of things to do. It's just kind of new, the way they're hanging out in the last week. Usually they have Chris, or girlfriends, or boyfriends. They have some reason to stop being together, and now they just…don't. And Buck just keeps on coming over, hanging out on Eddie's couch, in his space, like he can't bear to be in his loft now that Tommy isn't there.

Or something.

"You got some trunks I can borrow?" Buck asks.

"Are we swimming?"

"You want to go to the beach and not swim?"

Most of the time, that's what he does. When Chris was younger he'd get in the water, but the last few years it's been Eddie supervising while Chris does his own thing far enough away that it doesn't look like he's being supervised.

But Chris is in Texas. And, yeah, it's November, but Buck doesn't seem to care.

"I'll see what I've got," he says and finds he has two pairs of trunks in good enough shape that he's not embarrassed about anyone wearing them. Small miracles.

He throws the bigger pair to Buck and then goes to change in his bedroom. Buck will be doing the same thing in the bathroom, not for the first time, but he's never been changing into Eddie's trunks before. Did Ana ever wear anything of his? Marisol didn't. Buck might be the first person since Shannon.

As long as they fit, it's fine. Not a big deal at all.

They take Buck's car, the podcast he's listening to about the issues with the keto diet resuming as soon as he turns it on. Hen has gotten tired of explaining why his diets might be a problem herself and is outsourcing, which Eddie can't blame her for, but he doesn't find the resources nearly as interesting as Buck does. He already knows he doesn't want to do keto.

"You don't need to cheer me up, you know," Buck says, about halfway to the beach, without bothering to pause the keto thing. "I'm doing okay."

"I know."

It's mostly true. Buck has seemed fine with the breakup. Not happy, but not heartbroken either. He's been a little quiet about it, more so than Eddie was expecting. All he'll say is that Tommy initiated it, but he understands why.

"I'm trying to be happier," he tells Buck. "For me."

"Is that a thing you can try? Like, aren't you just happy or not?"

"If that was true, the ocean wouldn't bring you joy, right?" He lets out a breath, his stomach tied in inconvenient knots. "Someone pointed out that when I had the choice between something that would make me happy and something that wouldn't, I picked the one that wouldn't."

Buck mulls this over for a long moment. "I always figured that's because you're more mature than I am." It's only half a joke.

"Yeah, that's one way of looking at it." His breath shudders more this time. "Anyway. I'm not doing that anymore. I'm looking for things that bring me joy. So I figure if the ocean does that for you, maybe it'll do it for me, too."

"I hope so."

They set up like Eddie would with Chris, towels and belongings planted in the sand, the only difference that they left their phones in the car since no one is staying behind. He keeps his back turned as they shed the layers of clothing they have on, but when Buck hands him a tube of sunscreen, he has no choice but to stare at the expanse of bare back. The motions are familiar, nothing he hasn't done a thousand times for Chris, but…

Well, he's never done it for Buck.

Buck makes him turn around so he can return the favor, a much less familiar process. These days, he usually leaves his shirt on.

But he knows Buck's hands. They're familiar, all heat and callus. Careful, incongruously so. Buck looks like he's built clumsy, someone who can't do delicate work, and maybe he knows that too. Like happiness to Eddie, precision doesn't come naturally to Buck. He has to put the effort in, and he does. Eddie's skin lights up with every stroke of Buck's hands, so he's sure that Buck gets every inch.

And then he keeps going a little longer. Just to make sure.

"Okay," says Buck at last. "We're good to go."

Eddie is expecting Buck to run into the ocean like an overgrown puppy, all bright enthusiasm despite the chill, but he's cautious. He dips a toe in, then his foot, then the other. He walks in slowly enough that Eddie overtakes him, even though he's not running. He's just eager.

"The first time I went into the ocean, I was in Virginia Beach," Buck explains without making Eddie ask. "It was May, and I thought it would be warm enough, it was a hot May. But I ran in and it was so cold. I ran right back out."

"Goes to show," says Eddie.

"What, exactly? I know how the water's going to be today. It's cold."

The water is probably around the same temperature as it was in Virginia Beach in May. Eddie shivers, but doesn't stop, not until he's up past his knees. He smiles at Buck, who's still just letting the waves lap his toes. "Yeah, it's nice anyway. It's hot out."

"Not hot enough."

"It's fine."

He's in up to his ankles now. "You're not getting the joy, though."

"I am."

"Eddie."

"I'm getting used to it."

"You're not supposed to get used to it. You're supposed to be be making choices that make you happy right away, right?"

"I am happy," he says again, and it doesn't feel like a lie. "It's nice, there's no one else here. And it's not cold enough for us to get hypothermia."

"Are you sure this isn't just for me?" Eddie cocks his head, and Buck clarifies, "For my benefit."

"Should it be?"

Buck kicks at a wave. "He said I wasn't ready. Tommy. That's why he broke up with me. I asked him to move in with me, and he broke it off instead."

"So he's an idiot," Eddie says. "Always knew there was a chance, but I was hoping I was wrong."

"Is he, though? Was he wrong? I didn't really want him to move in. I just wanted…" He huffs. "I want to be done with this, you know? I'm ready to be with someone. And I think it could have been him."

It's not like getting shot, or even like getting punched. It's like a bullet or a fist going past him, close enough to graze the skin. Close enough that he's thinking about how much it could have hurt.

"But that's shitty, right? Like, how long could I have kepg going just because I didn't have a reason to break up with him? He was…fun. I liked him. I liked feeling like I'd figured it out. Like that was the last piece. I like guys too."

"Maybe it was," Eddie says. The water is lapping against his legs, the surf gentle. He's used to the temperature where he's submerged, but it's only halfway up his thighs. Every time the droplets splash higher, there's this shock of sharp little pinpricks.

He's so fucking happy.

"Maybe that was the last piece, but that doesn't mean Tommy is it. Maybe you're ready, but you're not ready for him."

"I'm just tired," says Buck. "I'm tired of waiting for someone to want me enough, you know? I'm ready to settle."

"You shouldn't," says Eddie. "You shouldn't be with someone just to be with anyone."

"You can build it," he argues, like Chris angling for a later bedtime or more video games before homework. "Love. Like you and Shannon did."

Nausea roils his stomach. "We didn't. It wasn't like that."

"I know it wasn't perfect, but you two were working on it. You were going to--"

"She wanted a divorce. Before she died. That was one of the last things she told me. We weren't going to have another kid, we weren't going to get married again, we weren't going to be together." He's not crying, but in that way where he is very aware that he's not crying. Where Not Crying is currently defining his existence. "I think we could have been friends," he says. "And maybe we could have figured it out. Been together again, made it good. That's what I told myself. And that's…easy."

"Easy?" Buck asks, in a small voice. Like Eddie is telling him a fairy tale he wishes could be true.

Which Eddie is, actually.

"If she was the love of my life and I lost her, then that was it. No one else would ever measure up. Nothing else could ever be as good. It was never going to work."

"But she wasn't?"

"Maybe she was. Or maybe--" He's Not Crying. "Maybe I don't just get one love, or even just one life. Maybe it doesn't have to be about finding her again. It can be about finding someone new. Someone who…"

He chokes then, the words dying in his throat. Buck is dazzling in the sunlight, his eyes as blue as the sea, his expression open, waiting. His whole existence focused on Eddie.

Eddie would marry him today. Eddie would marry him tomorrow, Eddie would marry him yesterday. Eddie would tie himself to Buck in any way Buck could think of, in every way, with wills, with contracts, with mortgages, with handcuffs, with string.

"Someone who brings me joy," he finishes.

"Joy," says Buck. He looks over the horizon, smiles, shakes his head.

Eddie's chest is too small and too big. He's never had so much in him.

"I've never had that," he muses. "Someone who makes me feel like the ocean."

"Like the ocean," Eddie says. "Yeah."

[thatsveryvortex]

Writing Tools for Planning Your Story

I've tried tons of writing apps and sites, so you don't have to. Here's a list of free sites to plot out your novel, with my review and some images of how I use it.

Milanote

Milanote is like having a giant pinboard with folders. You can upload anything onto it [yes even your main doc] and then draw over it or connect things with lines and arrows

Milanote lets you add up to a hundred things for free, not including drawing. This is one of the downsides of the site as I've found myself reaching that limit recently.

For me, the best part is being able to draw over stuff, and the color swatches.

Milanote is a lot less structured than other sites I've used, and personally, I don't think their templates are worth using.

8/10 overall, Milanote is what I mainly use. Here are some pics of how I use it:

Miro

Miro is a flowchart website mainly used for corporate jobs, however, it can be a great plotting tool for that reason

Miro has a lot of great starter templates if you are looking for a more structured freeform experience. It also comes with a blank page as well.

Unfortunately, I'd argue that it's a bit of a hard tool for beginners to use without a template, I've learned copy-paste is my best friend with Miro the hard way.

It's much better than most platforms at making timelines though.

It has a limit of three boards which is a bit disappointing but overall, I think it's worth the try.

5/10 Miro is very middle of the road for me due to the limited ability to customize things and the free limit. Here are some pics:

[I wrote that part weeks ago, I am now fully using Miro and believe it's the best for making timelines and charts, I just wish it let me make more boards 8/10]

Hiveword

This might be someone's jam, I can't really say it's mine though.

First off, the unpaid version is really just a few boxes saying "Write a summary here." which makes it just not worth it in my opinion

There really isn't any way to customise things which is my favorite part of most of these softwares

I've barely used this, so maybe there's something I'm missing but

1/10, Just use Google Docs at this point, here's a couple pics

World Anvil

People like this software, it's mainly used for tabletop, which is just a different way of writing adventure, and I've seen it recommended by authors.

Unfortunately, I'm going to disagree with a lot of people and say it's hard to use and isn't even really good at plotting.

I may be biased on this one as every time I've tried to use it in the past I've struggled. However, it seems like another just write it in a document and create a folder.

I'd say it's closer to an organizing tool, but even then just use something else.

3/10, I have nothing to say about it but maybe you'll enjoy it, all here are two photos

Campfire

This is the one I think I've heard the most about, but have never actually tried.

right off the bat, I'm going to say this is 100% worth it, you'll see at the end with the photos but this is like if Miro and World Anvil had an organization baby.

It's extremely easy to understand, and it makes timelines, it's more for writing your whole book but idk about that yet.

7/10, its themes are really pretty but it limits how much you can do to 20 I believe. Here are the photos

That's all for now, honestly, I think you should use Miro if you are looking to plot things out, and Milanote if you want to collect and organize your thoughts for writing, as that's what I do. Obviously what I like won't be for everyone, but hopefully, this helped you see some options