#i don’t even get the meme fully I’ve just seen it around with text similar to that sentence

[mrburnsnuclearpussy]

I found this image with the text on a google search and I find it so funny for some reason like it looks like that one meme

#like #idk but I needed to make it after seeing that #he is admired by his superiors #:0 #Carson #Charles carson #Downton abbey #meme #tony stark meme #i don’t even get the meme fully I’ve just seen it around with text similar to that sentence

[mettywiththenotes]

320 bits I wanna talk about

Iieda looks like he’s doing the *inhale* before the BOI IF YOU DON’T- meme. Something along the lines of “BOI IF YOU DON’T GET YOUR ASS BACK TO UA-” kind of thing lol.

He holding something in definitely. Maybe charging up for an attack? Idk but he sure seems concentrated

Actually, Iieda seems kinda considering. Maybe he’s weighing up if he should join in the fight, as if he’s asking “Will I have to fight Midoriya, if it comes down to it? Or can the others handle this?” Something tells me he doesn’t want to have to weigh in on the fight. Maybe tear into Izuku verbally, but fight? No I don’t think he wants to do that

But also, I find it interesting that that black panel of text is under him and then it cuts to Bakugou yelling at Izuku. I mean, it could very well be Bakugou thinking that, but if that’s so, then why is Iieda the first person we see?

So, I think it’s Iieda thinking that. Tensions are rising, it seems. I’m expecting his turn to be full of a lot of emotion, or at least trying to get across to Izuku that he feels betrayed but mostly just wants Izuku to come back home.

I don’t really know what’ll happen with Iieda exactly, but I’m totally interested to see what happens

I know Bakugou has problems with his emotions and words and stuff, but I also think here he’s trying to anger Izuku in order to get him to fight back, maybe so he’s more angry than flexible in a fight, so the end result would be Izuku getting too angry to predict anything and eventually tripping up, and that’s when 1A could capture him.

The one thing to remember about Izuku is that allowing him to think is going to be the opponent’s downfall. We saw in the Kacchan VS Deku 2 fight that Bakugou knew this and so kept attacking as much as possible so Izuku wouldn’t have time to think. Which worked, because Izuku is great at analysis, so making his “Win” attitude [getting competitive therefore putting more energy into attacking than strategy] come out over his “Save” attitude [you’re my friend and I want to help you] is kind of a weakness of his. That’s kind of one of the reasons he lost that fight.

Then again, maybe Izuku has improved since then? I don’t really know but I think enough time has passed for him to have maybe improved more on that so idk we’ll see

I really love Bakugou’s expression in that bottom screencap lol

His wound!! All bandaged up!! I wonder if there’s a scar there or smthg :O

LET’S GET READY TO RUMBLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

I know Enji or Bakugou probably gave them details about the multiple quirks but I still find it wild that everyone just knows now

KOUDA! MY SWEETHEART! I’m glad he’s getting a part in this too, along with Sero. Two of them who didn’t really hang around Izuku but still want him to come back :’)

Sero and Black Whip! Finally! I mean it’s not much but it’s still better than nothing

Also, seems like Sero is trying to taunt Izuku to get him to attack him maybe [same as Bakugou feeding into Izuku’s competitive side] soooo idk Sero following Bakugou’s lead? Maybe :)

Look at how,,,, innocent Izuku looks,,,,, *head in hands* AND SERO TEACHING HIM!!

I knew this lil moment would come bite me in the ass at some point, I knew and yet I’m still tearing up goddamn

That “I thought she was going to tell me its a useless hobby” bit really drives home how Izuku’s friends are 1A, that he loves them and they were the only friends he’s ever had [except Bakugou but he was a bully at the time so I’m not really gonna count him for back then]. HOW many people before UA had gone around and told Izuku his taking notes hobby was useless? SHOW me the people!

I, mettywiththenotes, will NOT allow anybody to slander one of my own!

I know it’s like the only moment Izuku and Ojiro shared, with the sports festival thing, but it’s still really sweet that Ojiro sees that Izuku stood up for him

*head in hands*

Shouldn’t this kid be more worried that he’s likely going to get kidnapped?

“Yeah this super evil villain guy has decided he wants to kidnap me and take me away, but like nbd guys really, that’s why I left in the first place! So I wouldn’t be a burden!” Somebody get this kid a fucking therapist or some shit

This is kind of a chilling and pretty scene though. The rain falling above Izuku and him looking down with these piercing green eyes likely being the only light between them. Good stuff.

Satou! Aha I like how he’s pulling all the stops, such as “I WON’T LET YOU BORROW MY INGREDIENTS FOR ERI!”

Also let’s appreciate that Satou caught Ojiro and Jirou and managed to land on a freaking traffic light. The balance on this kid! Very well done

Kaminari putting Izuku in a headlock! How cute :)

Be cuter if they weren’t trying to subdue a martyr-complex cryptid from killing himself, but still

Does Shouji have some kind of support-item?? Or could he always do the stretchy thing?? Or I guess maybe he’s just stretching his arms out like branches [like he usually does] and using them as more like a capture weapon rather than his usual stuff. I don’t think we’ve ever seen him use his heteromorph body and quirk for anything other than the 5 senses, though I could be wrong

Also Shouji remembering what Izuku said at the training camp, I’m so glad! Shouji always seems like the kind to be so protective over his friends, so I’m glad he remembered that. Then again, Izuku did compare them to freaking ALL MIGHT, but if the nice analytical kid in your class who knows your limits and strengths says you could basically beat A GOD, then that’s definitely one for the memory scrapbook lmao

“It’s nice and dark here, Dark Shadow.” Who said that?? Kami or Izuku?? I just have this mental image of Izuku being shrouded in darkness and trying to keep his eyes open from falling asleep haha

Tokoyami remembering that from all the way back then!! It makes me think that not only have Bakugou and Izuku been watching each other, but that Izuku has always had everybody’s eyes on him! Which is true, he’s inspired everyone! It goes both ways; Izuku loving his friends, and them loving him back :’)

Kami telling him to take a bath lmao I love it. Finally somebody said it

*ugly sobbing noises*

This kind of segment, with a mask falling, a space in-between and a reveal, reminds me of Compress’ reveal :) In that, the person is hiding their identity and then when the mask comes off, they reveal who they truly are underneath

While Izuku is of course determined to go after AFO and is quite the fearsome powerhouse, I really think when he takes off that mask, he’s showing who he really is underneath - a scared little boy who just wants everyone to be happy

JESUS, SHOUTO REALLY IMPROVED HIS QUIRK HUH!! LOOK AT IT, IT’S EVEN HIGHER THAN THE SKYSCRAPERS!!

“The burden placed on you... it doesn’t allow for tears, right?” He sounds so sassy here.

Kind of like saying “Oh you look upset. But that’s weird, I thought Heroes weren’t supposed to cry.” Lol it really shows here how pissed Shouto is at Izuku

But then he relents from that snark and is like “Hey, come on, we’ll share this burden. I’m not letting you go it alone, remember that we’re all here.” :’)

I love when Shouto is sassy and passive aggressive but I also love it when he shows that soft side of him

Okay, this is something I really love.

Tsuyu didn’t join the Bakugou Rescue Squad because “they would be just like Villains breaking the rules”

But here she is, learning from that regret of hers and coming right back to make sure Izuku isn’t the one struggling. She wants to be a part of this rescue squad and pick up where she left off :)

Tsuyu has always struggled with her regrets. It was shown after Kamino when she cried, but for me, I only realised this fully during the Joint Arc when she had her regrets about not making better decisions and not being quick enough [I think that was it].

“I won’t cry in such a flurry” reminds me of “I want to live a life without regret” and so that’s what she’s saying here. This won’t be another regret of hers. She wants to do her best to save her friend

“When scared, you’re allowed to tremble when it’s tough, you’re allowed to shed tears. That’s how you become a Hero like in the comics.”

I feel like that quote piggybacks off of Shouto’s “Heroes cry too”, in that, this is now 1A comforting Izuku. This is them fully coming up to him and telling him that they can help, and that he’s allowed to feel sad about his situation. Shouto’s quote was the teaser, while this entire chapter [and the rest that come to follow] is the main course.

And this is exactly who Tsuyu is. Reassuring, comforting, someone dependable. It says a lot that she’s come from not going to help in Kamino, confessing her feelings and crying about it, then coming back in a similar situation and offering her help - that she’s not willing to just let an opportunity go to better herself. I think I remember reading a few posts on her crying after Kamino and saying it was “performative” or that she just “wanted attention” or smthg like that, but I think she’s really just quite an honest person, and here she is making a great show of how she won’t let something like her guilt slow her down from being the hero she wants to be.

[A part of me feels like this is also a little more evidence with the whole People Not Caring About Bakugou’s Feelings Of Helplessness but like. I digress. It kinda counts but at the same time, it’s not what is going on at the moment.]

Seeing everyone try to reassure Izuku was lovely, and I can’t wait for the rest. I’ve seen a lot of people waiting more for Bakugou’s portion of the battle [AND YEAH DUDE ME TOO] but I really feel like Bakugou’s won’t come until like 2 chapters later or something.

Cause, if this chapter is anything to go by, we’ll probably get through Mina, Mineta, Kirishima, Hagakure and Aoyama next chapter, and then we’ll move onto the “more important” conflicts which will be Iieda and Uraraka, and if their segments are chocked with tension drama and tears, then Bakugou will have a whole chapter to himself hopefully.

Which means we’ll probably have to wait 2 more chapters until we get that sweet, sweet Bakugou chapter :( I hope I’m wrong and it comes sooner than predicted but whatever

I know for some people, that’s all they want, but personally I love these little bits that reflect on the background characters. As someone who isn’t really obsessed with the background characters but also likes them enough to appreciate their development/the little moments they have, I gotta say I really liked this :)

#bnha #bnha 320 #bnha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #class 1a

[c-aureus]

Ok, here’s a post I’ve been waiting to make: Why I’m worried about BotW2. Wall of text incoming. Now, I’m gonna preface this with a few things. Firstly, I waited to post this so that all of the immediate reactionary hype would die down a bit, and also so that I could contemplate on my thoughts for a while, before posting them. Secondly, this is not at all a criticism of the setting, or gameplay, both of which look incredible. However, for me at least, none of that was ever in doubt. Thirdly, I will freely admit that all of the forthcoming arguments are speculation. We do not yet know much of anything about the direction of the sequel, and I fully understand and admit that there is every chance that I could be completely wrong. In fact, I’d very much like for that to be the case. Alas, I am English, and cynicism is literally encoded into my DNA, so here’s a few things that I think are likely to happen, and why I’m so worried about them. My first point is kind of a big one, but honestly, it kinda sums my entire argument up: I’m worried that BotW2 is going to do everything it can to basically be a ‘soft reset’, regressing to the norm of BotW. What do I mean by this? Well. From a gameplay perspective, it will almost certainly use the time honoured Zelda tradition of resetting Link to 3 hearts and no powers at the beginning. Needless to say, I really do not want them to do this. From a story perspective, Link’s entire character arc in BotW was regaining the power he lost due to the Shrine of Resurrection. From a narrative perspective, I really do not want to see all of his growth and progress wiped away because ‘New Game lol’. Furthermore, on the topic of the Champions’ abilities... I honestly don’t think that any of them would just abandon him, however this argument goes 10x more for Mipha specifically. Mipha’s promise to Link in BotW was to ALWAYS heal him, and it is one of the most hauntingly beautiful things about her tragedy that she gets to fulfill her promise to him in death. Therefore, I simply cannot reconcile Mipha leaving Link (not sticking around to heal him) with her character. Because, BotW shows that her love and her devotion to Link are selfless, and absloute. She would NEVER renege on such a promise, even though Ganon was ‘defeated’. To do so is antithecal to her entire character. There’s also the matter of Link’s equipment. In a similar vein, I’d argue that much of Link’s equipment (including the Champions’ weapons and Zora Armour) hold enormous sentimental value to him, and if he is stripped of them for no good reason, then I will also be upset. Also, furthermore, BotW2 seems to be very strongly implying that Ganon was not ‘defeated’, which means that the Champions’ spirits cannot even be ‘at rest’, since surely their duty is not complete? Not that I think this should ever factor into Mipha’s personal motivation to continue healing Link, but whatever. What I fear is that there will be no mention nor presence of the Champions’ abilities, which... would really suck. Honestly, I’d even go so far as to say that it absolutely ruins Mipha’s character. Even if we’re being fooled and it’s not actually Ganon who is causing trouble (it does look pretty Malice-y, though...), I honestly, truly believe that they would not simply abandon Link. However, if it IS Ganon(dorf), then there is no excuse nor reason for their absence. This comes into my second point. I’m strongly suspecting that the plot of BotW2 is trying its absolute hardest to simply ‘reset the status quo’ that existed in BotW. By this, I mean that the trailers have already shown Ganon and implied him to be the villain, and Link and Zelda have been separated, presumably with Link having to rescue her. Again.

(On a side note, I do not believe that anyone truly believes that they’ve actually killed Zelda off, do they? I mean, come on. Her plot armour is thicker than the belt of a WW2 era dreadnought battleship. Which is a shame, tbh, becasuse it really prevents any kind of tension in the story, or interesting twists.) (On another side note, idk if I’ve actually seen anyone elaborate on how... depressing it is to have Ganon as the main villain AGAIN. The entirety of BotW was dedicated to defeating him, and many characters literally gave their lives to fight him, and now, after having been successful and defeated him, ‘lol he’s back again, lol.’ *Shrug*. I guess that it feels kinda cheap to me, along the lines of a last minute ‘oh wait, you didn’t REALLY beat him’, because they want to pad the game out more. Especially if there is no real consideration of this point from Link and Zelda’s pov: Namely, just how depressing it would be to lose everything to Ganon, finally defeat him, only to have him immediately return. At this point, I’d be lamenting on the unfairness that Ganon gets literally infinite chances to try again, but not all of his victims, which could be a really interesting psychological point of exploration, but I fear that the sequel will not make any effort to mention it. Hence my low-effort meme on the matter. ) So, basically, instead of giving us a new plot, in a new direction, with the consequences and events of the prequel fresh in mind and influencing character behaviour, we’re resetting the situation to how things were in BotW. Which... I’m extremely un-keen on. Since, it’s going to probably feel like a ‘we’ve already done this before’ kind of thing. A staleness, if you will. Again, I’d love to be proven wrong. However, what I suspect and fear is that we’re going to get this kind of situation, which I would really hate. The thing that I have been waiting for with the highest of anticipation was seeing how Link and Zelda would react to post-Calamity Hyrule, and how their failures and losses would impact them going forwards. I’m not going to give the Resurrection/Time Travel speech again, but I will mention it, since it is an absolutely valid goal, given the ‘rules’ by which the Zelda universe operates, and a valid response to the grief of losing characters that BotW/AoC establishes that they love. Again, I fear that the sequel will make no reference to this, which also feels like a massive disservice to the characters of the Champions. Also, it would be really unique, and not just the standard ‘defeat the Big Bad Evil Ganon’ that is every Zelda game. Ok, I really am done on that point here. It’s a topic for another rant, lol. TL;DR: I’m very, very worried that BotW2 will forgo narrative progression to simply reset the situation to how it was before, without any care for how that impacts the narrative. I mean, we saw how bad this ended up for the Star Wars sequels, so I think I have a right to be concerned... We know that this game grew out of being DLC for BotW. What I fear is that it will really end up looking like BotW DLC, rather than a sequel, from a narrative perspective. If anyone has any opinions or thoughts to add, then I’d love to hear them.

#long post #botw #botw2 #botw 2 #zelda #legend of zelda #breath of the wild #link #loz link #botw zelda #ganon #mipha

[norgestan]

norandro, eva/nora, amiris 👀❣️

NORANDRO:

i mean, starting off pretty strong with my favorite eskam couple. oh god. THEM. as someone who cannot stomach season 2 and also skipped william's clip and william's clip only when season 4 of skam came to an end... i will ALWAYS love what eskam did for this couple. i think i explain it pretty well on my season 3 review, but to sum up those thoughts: i think this is what noorhelm was truly supposed to be, they're both pretty flawed characters with great arcs who make their get-together super interesting and organic, alejandro is my baby and the most developed william and i'll die on this hill, etc.

especially i think that norandro, for a ship that got way less screentime that all their other counterparts, is by FAR the most developed couple in all of them and up there in eskam too, and although they weren't the focus of most of the show, it's clear as day that the writers really tried to tell a compelling story with these two - and they succeeded. it's shocking to me that eskam actually got to link the "everyone is fighting a battle" motto that has become a meme for how poorly incorporated it is on the skamverse, as alejandro effectively behaved around that motto: during season 3 and onwards, which is where i believe he's fully reformed as a character and love interest, he never hurts nora - nor anyone - in any way. he struggles to tell nora how he doesn't want a relationship because he doesn't want to hurt her, and in the miscommunication fest that their first clip of s3 is, i've always LOVED that nora calls alejandro a "fuckboy" still, and he's clearly annoyed by this, but doesn't bite back. he's always so mindful of her feelings even though he's struggling himself, BECAUSE he understands that his suffering is not the center of the world! because treating people with kindness is a strength in itself! and it continues like that for the rest of the season. like, at his most petty, he just sends a text to nora calling her a "fuckboy", which is honestly hilarious. he deals with a lot of jealousy because of nora's new relationship, yet he values her friendship so much that he never snaps at her, he never lets it show when he's talking to her, and he's never passive-aggressive about it - you can tell that he's so genuinely glad that they're still friends after all. god, the clip where he realizes that miquel is a shit boyfriend while he's talking to nora... imagine the things any other william would've said there. imagine the ways alejandro could've been petty or overprotective and fuck everything up. instead, he recognizes nora needs space and even though it hurts to be away from her, he does it because he understands it's what she needs - and his own feelings and entitlement (that he previously showed, too!) aren't the most important thing. it's beautiful. UGH. what a great character eskam crafted, there.

i like them well enough in s4, too. i think, for what they had to work with, they took them in a good direction and their happy ending feels deserved. it's just that... personally, i wish there was more introspection of nora's aftermath in s3, which is also one of my complaints with season 3 - and where characters like emma could've been SO good. although i understand the intentions, a lot of nora's internal turmoil regarding her abusive relationship with miquel are only tied to her desire to be with alejandro. it's frustrating that it became so boy-focused when the girl squad was the center of the emotional climax of nora's season. to me, the solution is still in giving the pov's to the girl squad and not... random characters lol, but oh well. i think eskam did good there and i still love this couple the most!!! i just wish there was an universe where their story doesn't have to be wrapped up in one season and we can get actual glimpses of a beautiful slow burn where they can finally get together and make their relationship work - and this is where the fanfic part comes in, i guess! as someone who loves the couple, i liked seeing them lovey-dovey in the background of s4, but also i wouldn't have been too mad if they held off from making them completely canon and only hinted their status as endgame, kinda how they did with eva and jorge. oh, and speaking of eva, i guess...

NOREVA:

i guess, the main thing with them is that i love norandro so much that i can't really see nora with any other love interest??????? now, platonically. UGH. 12/10. anyone who's seen season 3 should know and i shouldn't even have to explain it tbh. i love the focus that is put on their friendship and how emotionally charged it is when it comes to miquel and the aftermath of all that. like, a similar thing is done with norandro - because at that point, nora and alejandro were exclusively friends, but it becomes even more relevant when it's about eva. eva who, you know, was in a toxic relationship herself. i love that she herself brings up her relationship with jorge when she's talking about miquel, and how wary she is of everything that happening. the fact that she's the first one to sense it feels so right!!! i love that eskam really made them close and gave them the window scene, which is both so powerful on its message and a true love letter to female friendships.

i think eva is a really underrated eskam character as it is, like... people really don't understand how great of a character she is and how much she's grown. they are quick to call her a boring, ooc party girl once s2 rolls around, like eskam didn't spend TIME making eva herself declare that hooking up with cristian (and cristian ONLY!) was something she did out of fun and she was decided to stop as soon as it stopped being fun for her. moreover, eva is such a perceptive person: she's been that way since s1 and it has only carried across for the entirety of the show since then. and when pairing two really good characters together, like eva and nora, you really can't go wrong. their friendship brings great things out of both of them and it goes through its own arc during nora's season, whereas other seasons either dump eva as noora's bff midway through or just make them really close to introduce character drama but don't really do anything to their dynamic as it is.

romantically... sigh. i'm sorry LOL as much as i love girls kissing and wlw romance done right... i don't see potential for this relationship outside their platonic dynamic. which is, btw, incredibly strong and beautiful. i'm super contented with how eskam handled their friendship and therefore i wouldn't want anything else from them, and it's not like nooreva where the chemistry was THERE. however! i'm always open to see people's interpretations of what romantic noreva could be. wasn't it you who wrote that beautiful fic of nora realizing she's bi and falling for eva after season 3? because now THAT'S the shit i'm looking for. i think there's a lot of potential there which i'd like to see explored in fic, but other than that, i love their relationship how it is and i've never felt a desire to see them as each other romantic interests.

AMIRIS:

first things first: why did eskam NEVER confirm cris having an embarrassing, sweet, confusing childhood crush on amira? i mean, it's my headcanon that she'll later realize it and she'll jolt awake and think "holy FUCK" but like... it's a thing that isaks are into their jonases. why didn't it happen here :(((((

being honest, childhood friends to lovers has never been my thing? a simple friends to lovers doesn't do it for me: i like my relationships rocky, with lots of character moments and whose survival and success depend only on the people involved making efforts to change and do better. if you've seen s4... yeah, that's not really the case. it's just disappointing because damn, amiris is the realest thing indeed, but also... what case are the writers doing for them? because it was only irene and hajar doing the intense gazing and bringing all the chemistry home. s4 cris is a mess and a half, and while i like the idea of the bench scene featuring both of them, and being more about cris reminding amira the reasons she's made it this far instead of lecturing her about sucking it up better... the result is still lackluster. there are SO many issues on their friendship that were introduced and then dropped, and it's really nice that cris finally is there to comfort amira when shit goes down, it truly is! but what else is there? it's just a small part of s4 being a bunch of missed potential. they could've REALLY done something great with their relationship and bring back and close cris' development in the show, but we only got... well, nothing. back to 0. amira has to live with those problems, now. things like that really make it seem like once amira broadens her horizons, she won't really go back to her friendship with the girls, and cris will be a lingering wound of the past. oh well.

ehem. romantically!!!!!!! as i said, cris was totally crushing on amira at some point. like... canon really makes a point at making cris' brother amira's love interest, where dani has nothing to offer to amira than cris hasn't done yet. iftar on a rooftop? ha, loser, cris did it first. admiring her passion and her faith? cris does it arguably way better than dani. longtime pining? dude. go home. okay, i'll cut dani soto some slack since it's not about him lol. point is, if amira was charmed by all of those things, then what tells me that the option of her and cris being a thing is off the table? at the end of the day, they're indeed a relationship that needs a lot of work and patience to last. the 500k slow burn is writing itself, really.

(regardless of amiris' future, i still think irene and hajar have to do a cute romcom romance at some point. their chemistry is off the charts.)

#skam españa #putting a read more thingy because as usual i've gone in too deep #also yes. i did mark 'i want to kiss them' in every ship. and what about it #thank you so much for your ask adelaide!!!!!!!! <3 #answered

[mulletcal]

if my heart had a voice - a (bi/aro) calum hood blurb.

a/n: okay so i’ve had this idea in my brain for so, so long and i had hesitated a lot writing it but i’d like to give a special thank you to: @frontmanash​, @softbabiestan​, @sexgodashton​, @goth5sos​, and @irwinkitten​​ for giving me motivation and being so sweet while i wrote this, i appreciate all of you so, so much you have no idea.

this is my first time writing something like this, so i hope you enjoy. it’s a genderless reader insert!

word count: 2.6k

warnings: struggles with romantic orientation, mentions of smut but no actual smut.

---

Friends with benefits - it’s something that sounds easy in theory, but movies and TV shows would lead you to believe otherwise.  Complicated was a word that was often associated with it as well, stating that no two people could simply have sex, that feelings would always end up involved.

That wasn’t the case for Calum, well, not really.  He had met you, and the two of you hit it off right away.  You talked into all hours of the night until the sun came up about anything and everything; he felt heard, he felt appreciated, he realistically felt what most people would deem as a crush, or romantic attraction.  Calum couldn’t bring himself to call it that though, because that’s not how it seemed to him.  It felt natural when the two of you fell into bed together, a tangle of limbs and breathy moans, but he never was drawn to the idea of asking you to be his partner.  You never seemed to mind either, which Calum was grateful for; he had so many questions that constantly circulated through his mind, he wasn’t sure if he was ready for a conversation about why he didn’t want more with you.

Calum’s racing thoughts seemed to never cease, a constant question of why didn’t he want more with you; or simply why he never wanted more with anyone.  His last relationship ended because what he thought was love turned out to be nothing more than just a physical attraction, lips never parted long enough to sort out emotions before it was too late.  Love had been uttered in a fruitless attempt to keep her around long enough to hopefully truly feel something, but it never worked. 

Another Saturday night rolled around, and the two of you had started a movie you never saw the end of, too distracted with exploring each others’ bodies.  Seeing you lie next to him, chest heaving with a small smile on your face brought a smile to his own lips, admiring you basking in the glow from the TV screen.  Calum often wondered what you were like around your other friends, if you made them laugh as hard as he did, or would also text them in the middle of the night with a random thought or meme.  Panic crept up on him at the thought, suddenly fully aware that he could be caught up in some sort of TV trope - did you have romantic feelings for him? Was there a possibility of losing you forever if he didn’t reciprocate the feelings?

His mind couldn’t settle that night, tossing and turning, mind racing at the thought of losing you.  Would he lose you? Banished to a new level of weird and uncomfortable - running into someone in public who you know has seen you naked, or even more seen your face when you’re about to fall over the edge. 

Morning came much too soon, and Calum sighed, glancing over to you as the sun came streaming in through the curtains and casting you in some sort of ethereal glow.  Maybe if he went to make some breakfast rather than staring at you it could help to clear his head.  It wasn’t often that you decided to stay for breakfast, but he hoped that sharing a warm meal together would encourage him or sway him one way or the other - to talk to you, or maybe feel something more romantic towards you.

Stretching as you came into the kitchen, you smiled at the sight of Calum there flipping pancakes, “Eating for two, are you? Calum, is there something you’re not telling me?” You faked a gasp, laughing lightly.  He swatted at you with the spatula, just barely missing you.

Calum knew you could sense something off with him, just by the way you carried yourself about the kitchen, taking a seat at the island.  Your movements were gentle, calculated, as if one small thing could set him off - not that had ever happened, but you were walking on eggshells and he knew he needed to say something.

The two of you ate in silence for the first few minutes, Calum glancing up at you to make sure that you were enjoying the food alright. 

“Can I ask you something?” Calum had stopped eating, a serious expression on his face, causing you to put your fork down.

“I was going to pull the old ‘you just did’ bit but it doesn’t seem like the time for that,” you chuckled, tucking your chair in so you could lean your chin on your hand. “What’s up?”

“What’s wrong with me?” He asked, worrying his lower lip between his teeth.

You furrowed your brow, slightly confused, “I’m not following.”

“Like… I’ve been thinking a lot lately. I broke up with my last girlfriend because while I felt a connection and we got along great, the… romance just wasn’t there? I’ve gone on dates, and there’s nothing. I thought it was just that I was going on shitty dates, but then I met you - you have all the qualities I could want in a partner, and clearly I’m attracted to you; but I don’t find myself wanting to be involved… romantically?” Calum was playing with his fingers, not meeting your eyes. “I hope that doesn’t hurt you.”

You laughed lightly, reaching across to take his hand in your own to stop the wringing of his hands, “Calum I’m not offended, not in the slightest. What we have going on is good, but I understand if you want to stop that too.”

“I don’t-” He said quickly, laughing as he scratched the back of his head.  “I feel like it sounds like such a stereotypical dude thing to say that I’m cool with continuing to have sex with no emotional attachment.  Not that I don’t feel anything towards you, I just-”

“Calum, I get it,” You grinned.  “I hope you know I wasn’t here looking for love, yeah? Me and you get on great, and the sex is great.  But if I wanted a boyfriend, I would have told you from the start, I promise.” Your reassuring words had Calum letting out a breath he wasn’t aware that he was holding, squeezing your hand that was still in his.

“I just feel like I’m… Cold, I guess? For not wanting more?”

“Love, you’re the least cold person I know.  You’re so genuine and kind, and you have so much love for your friends and family.  You’re so cuddly, always down to hold hands, or just hold someone if they need to be held. It’d be different if you didn’t show you care, but you do in the ways that matter.”

Your answer seemed to be good enough for Calum, because he went back to eating with a small smile on his lips.

It helped to ease Calum’s worry that he was going to lose you because of how he felt, but the lingering question in the back of his head ate away at him of why he felt the way he did; also, why it was just bothering him now.  So, when you left,  he did what any millennial would think to do: he Googled it. 

He wasn’t sure what to search for at first - it wasn’t something like an ache or pain in his body where you could look up ‘shoulder pain’ and find out you only had 4 days to live.  It seemed much more complicated, to put into words how he felt; but he ended up settling on ‘lack of romantic attraction’, and he was shocked to find that it was, indeed, a thing.  Calum had learned within minutes of his Google search that this wasn’t just a ‘one or the other’ kind of thing, but that there was a whole variety of people.  It made his chest warm to read blog posts of people coming to terms with their romantic orientation, seeing how many had struggles similar to his own.  The term ‘Aromantic’ seemed the most fitting to him, and he liked the idea that maybe one day romance could happen, but if it never did he wasn’t weird for wanting the physical only.

**

It was a few after Calum had come to his realization about his orientation overall, and he found himself as he usually did - in his backyard with Ashton, a couple cups of coffee deep while they both scribbled into their songwriting notebooks.  He knew that none of his friends would judge him, they may be a little confused because no one in their group had “different” romantic orientations - they simply assumed they’d end up with a partner one way or another.

Ashton had been in the middle of a thought when Calum interrupted, “Hey Ash?”

Ashton furrowed his brows, eyes lifting from the page to look at his friend, “Yeah?”

“You ever heard of the term ‘aromantic’?”

“I don’t believe so, why?” Ashton placed his pen inside his book, closing it to give Calum his full attention.

“I’ve been kinda struggling a lot lately, doin’ a lot of self reflection and all that,” He started, letting out a heavy breath before he continued, “It seems like a term that really resonates with me.”

Calum couldn’t really read the expression on Ashton’s face, instead being met with the man’s furrowed brow and fingers lightly drumming on the cool metal of the table. 

“What does it mean?” Ashton was now leaning on his elbows, more engaged in the conversation.

“In like… Simpler terms, it mainly just means lack of romantic attraction.” Ashton’s face read a little confused, but Calum carried on anyway, “I’ve learnt in the last few days that there’s a difference in sexual orientation and romantic orientation.  With my last girlfriend, I thought I loved her, but it was more about the sex than anything. I d’know if it really sums me up, but you know my whole friends with benefits scenario.  I thought it would make sense for me to fall in love with them.”

“But you haven’t? Fallen in love with them, I mean.”

“No, which is what led me to this point to begin with.  If I were to make a list of everything I’d want in a partner, they would check all the boxes.  I do care for them, deeply and genuinely, but it’s not in a romantic sense - more of a ‘you’re one of my best friends in the whole world, and sometimes we fuck’.” Calum hadn’t realized how red he had gotten, but it definitely made him fan himself as he let out a small chuckle, “I’m sorry, that was… A lot of information.”

When Ashton broke out into his signature grin, Calum couldn’t help but to mirror it with his own grin, “Well brother, you know I love you and support you no matter what you choose to do.  I told you I’d help you hide a body, but I do hope it never comes to that point.  Just don’t be an asshole and I’m always here for you.”

Calum laughed again, rubbing a hand over his face, “That made me so fucking nervous man.  When I was thinking about it, I was kinda like ‘this sounds so cold’.”

Ashton cut him off from going any further with a scoff, “We all know that’s the last thing you are.” With that, Ashton reopened his book and continued on with a lyric he was talking about previously; and Calum couldn’t wipe the grin off of his face.

Over the next few days, Calum had told his friends individually - being met with open arms and plenty of questions. Of course he didn’t mind, but it was relieving to him to feel like things were going back to normal, and he was starting to feel more like himself again.  He hadn’t gotten to see you since that morning at his house, but he had texted you to tell you about his new findings - your congratulating text in return, saying how you loved him and were proud of him, had him grinning the rest of the day.

The Fourth of July came quicker than any of them had anticipated, and Calum’s group of friends scrambled to come up with some last minute plans.  You had to work during the day, so you would miss the planned barbeque at Michael’s house, but you would be off in time to meet them at the local park to watch the fireworks that Calum had seen a sign for a few days prior.

There was nothing easier for Calum than being around his friends; and while he knew they accepted him and easily accepted his realization about his romantic orientation, he still worried.  Worried that things would be different, or they would feel the need to treat him differently.  But as he sat there, beer in hand, warmth washed over him when he noticed no palpable tension in the air; instead his ears rang with Ashton’s giggle as he laid on the lawn with South and Moose, wrestling with the two dogs.

With everyone thoroughly fed (and a majority tipsy), they all decided to make the small trek to the park, Calum offering to walk with Moose along the way - his secret favourite of Michaels’ dogs, though he’d never say so.

It was long after they had gotten there did you arrive, the sun finally starting to set to hopefully cut through some of the heat from the day. Moose launched herself at you to signal your arrival, which in turn set off South - before you knew it you were on the ground being bathed in puppy kisses.

“Quite the welcome,” You teased, scooping up South into your arms when the pair had finally eased up.

“They know how to roll out a welcome mat, what can we say,” Calum laughed, pressing a gentle kiss to your cheek, enveloping you in a warm hug.  The hug was more rigid than you were used to from Calum, and it gave you a weird sense of tension off of him.

Sitting down next to him, you frowned when you noticed his breathing was shallow on top of the weird tension that was coming off of him in waves, “Are you okay?” You never hesitated to be honest with Calum, and you’d hoped that he’d be as honest as he was that morning, especially if something was wrong.

Calum nodded, pursing his lips in thought for a beat before finally speaking, “This is just the first time I’ve seen you since that morning, I just wanted to make sure we were good.  I know I haven’t been the best at keeping up communication lately.”

“You were never much of a talker, love,” Your shoulder nudged his, prompting him to look at you.  “We’re good… Never better, I’d say.”

Calum’s shoulders visibly relaxed, his wide, charming smile reappearing on his lips.

“There’s the squishy man I know and love,” You said, reaching your fingers up to pinch his cheeks.  “You gonna come lay here like they’re doing or what?”

Glancing around, Calum saw everyone paired up one way or another, couples and best friends alike had one person leaning against the other; the last bit of sunlight casting a glow over all of them.  A feeling of calm settled over the crowd, and Calum especially - he had waited to feel like he had purpose, waited to feel wanted.  As he settled against you, you began to play with his hair gently; and he understood that his purpose was just to be who he was - a man who loved his friends and family wholeheartedly, to want what was best for others, rather than want for himself alone.

tag list:  @haikucal​ @talkfastromance4​ @softbabiestan​ @boyfriend-cal​ @calum-uncrowned​ @wildflowerirwin​ @irwindoll​ @gosh-im-short​ @atlcalm​ @thesubtweeter​ @heavenisapeach​ @ridingcthood​ @loveroflrh​ @mantlereid​ @inlovehoodx​ @irwinkitten​ @n-ctarinenga​​ @g-l-pierce​ @thecurlsofgod​

#calum hood #calum hood blurb #calum hood fluff #bi!calum #calum hood fanfiction #5sos fanfiction

[wendell-or-something]

it is time.

I want to compile a more complete rundown of my thoughts about homestuck 2. I want all the stuff in my head to be in one place, and I know this is going to be incredibly long winded and I don’t care. I want to be honest... I want to understand why I don't like this media. on more than a "but of course" level because there are a lot of people who have it as a gut reaction that this stuff isn't right. but I think there are layers to what produces that. I wanna get in depth with this. so that's what I'm gonna attempt to do.

okay, so, the first thing I think I wanna say is a disclaimer. I have not actually read the epilogues. or homestuck 2. I have a peripheral knowledge of what happens in them because, as a concerned citizen, I poked around enough to pick up details and know that I wouldn't enjoy this media if I fully engaged with it. my assessment of the material may be flawed because of this, but I mean... if the things I've heard about the epilogues deterred me from reading it, then I guess that's what I'm analyzing? not only what I understand based on my limited knowledge, but also why it is so limited to begin with. why this media is such a huge deterrent to so many people who care so much about homestuck. ultimately, this is not to shame people who like this media... I will be addressing common takes I've heard from people who defend the epilogues, but I'm not singling anyone out, and anyone who reads this has a right to disagree, or better yet, ignore me and find enjoyment where you are able, even if I cannot. I will not begrudge you that. additionally, I am considering the epilogues and homestuck 2 to be one unit. not necessarily in terms of structure, but because the events of one lead directly into the events of the other, and the two have similar issues. I think I'll shorthand the combination of the two as EP/HS2 for simplicity, and refer to either individually if I have something specific to say about one or the other.

I think the main problem that people have with EP/HS2 is that it's depressing. and it's depressing for a myriad of different reasons, but I'll get to those in a minute. first I want to establish why them being depressing doesn't work for so many people. I feel like this should be examined first, because a lot of the supporters of EP/HS2 are viewing the complaints against it as over sensitivity from fans who only liked the comic for its lighter elements. I keep seeing a "y'all just wanted your rainbow cotton candy fluff ending" kind of sentiment going around. and like... you are right that this isn't a fluff ending. but I think it's unfair to treat the particular type of content that EP/HS2 brought to the table as the only kind of substantial, fulfilling narrative that we could've asked for.

and I think a lot of the dissonance that people see between homestuck and EP/HS2 is based in the ratio of tension to levity, and how far it's shifted toward pure tension... especially because, at the end of homestuck, all the outside threats to this group of friends have already been resolved. and yet, shit feels leagues more catastrophically bad during the epilogues than it did during the comic when the characters were actually under attack, which is super weird when you think about it. I mean, "epilogues" my ass, am I right? it is true that homestuck was never 100% sunshine and rainbows... in fact, some of the darker events that it brought to the table became some of the most hyped shit in the comic. murderstuck is mostly what I'm thinking of first in terms of this, but there was a lot of popular angst laden content within homestuck that the fans latched onto. the thing is, the fans also latched onto the content that was super goofy, and the fan works that you can still find online from the era of homestuck's initial popularity reflect both sides of its tone in equal measure. there was a huge amount of goofy fan content (octopimp's youtube channel is still a record of that, and that wasn't even the half of it). and there was a huge amount of angsty content, and there was a huge amount of heartfelt content... turns out, homestuck had broad appeal, and spoke to different people in different ways. and back then, I never really felt like the goofy stuff was being treated as any less important than the heavy stuff. it wasn't brushed off just because it was seen as lighthearted. people liked to laugh, and I fully believe that Andrew Hussie began doing homestuck as a fun activity.

the reason why I bring this up is because homestuck as a piece of media could beget all of these various takes. the fan works could be tonally dissonant when held side by side with each other, but when held against the parts of the comic that inspired them, they made perfect sense. homestuck could spawn jokes, and angst, and social commentary, and theories... and even extrapolation on canonical events, in ways both silly and serious. and when you look at the kind of content that the fans produced during homestuck's height, you see what was important to them. they put time and effort into crafting even their dumbest meme shit. the fans reflected what the comic gave to them. and humor and heart were among the most beloved core engagements that the comic provided... these were pillars on which a lot of fan enjoyment rested... you really can't begrudge a person their fun.

and treating darkness and angst as the sole indicator of maturity in a work seems misguided to me. because, speaking personally for a moment here, one of the biggest lessons I had to teach myself when I was growing up was how not to wallow in negative emotions. how to find the fun, sometimes rather aggressively, so that you don't just drown. and with EP/HS2, it feels like at every turn, readers are constantly grasping for something nice or fun to keep them afloat in all this heavy stuff, and either they come to accept mere scraps of positivity, or everything they reach for is eventually dissolved as well. and I think the character of a piece of media as a whole can sometimes tell you what level of maturity it's operating under. like, if the text lingers over making the characters miserable, or seems to revel in shooting holes in people's positive interpretations of these people, you have to kind of wonder if this is serving the narrative, or just producing author schadenfreude when they release what amounts to shock content.

it almost feels like a twisting of the way homestuck used to treat the fans, because during it's run, homestuck was very reactive towards the fanbase. this kind of canon responsiveness to the readers was baked into homestuck from the very beginning, back when Hussie was accepting reader suggestions for what John Egbert should do. and need I remind everyone that the trolls were made as parodies of different types of personalities that were common to find online during homestuck's era? they are internet trolls, who are actually an alien race known as trolls, who communicate primarily online, and whose culture and species developed to produce an ornery and antagonistic population, so like... it's trolls all the way down. that's the whole joke. but the real, valuable benefit of parodying your fans with your characters, is that when the trolls act, they reflect the way real people acted. which means that when, say, Nepeta shoehorns RP lingo into casual conversation, some people will be like "it me!" and some people will laugh/cringe because they've seen people actually talk like that, and some people will be like "aww, that used to be me!" and every time a character produces this sense of identification with the audience, it works to create familiarity, and eventually, a sense of fondness.

that fondness is fucking powerful.

that fondness is born out of recognition and empathy, no matter which character you feel it for, and when a giant community of people loves a character that you have seen yourself reflected in so clearly, that is an incredibly validating experience. especially when you’re young, and the pieces of yourself that you saw were some of the nerdiest, weirdest, most awkward parts of you. a very large community of people loves a character that is like you, even, or perhaps especially, because of the flawed parts. and of course these characters were meant to tease the fans a little... these characters were also jokes to some extent the whole time. but they were never seen as cruel or insulting, because these characters were also important. the story literally built whole worlds around their identities... these kids altered universes. and they were allowed to be that important and special without being perfect first. they were dumb, and awkward, and nerdy, and cringey, and allowed to be there anyway. they were you, and you were important.

and this is where I think that EP/HS2 really misses the point. because in homestuck, the characters experienced hardship, but that hardship went on to fuel an overall sense of accomplishment when it was overcome. the road might be long, and it might be tough, and you might face shit that you don't feel prepared for, but when triumph is achieved, it feels that much more earned. and that is a key phrase I want everyone to remember homestuck for:

triumph.

it's the feeling that cascade gave me. it is the highest of heights that this whole thing reached. and it really has so much to do with how homestuck had built itself up until that point. we were mired in the minutiae of these kids' lives. we read their every chat log. we saw them dicking around doing next to nothing. we saw them contact each other and talk to each other for basically no reason other than to catch up. we saw them sharing stupid memes, and yelling at each other for wasting time on pointless bullshit, and dunking on each other's shitty taste in media... every one of them was "you" at some point. "you captchaloged this" or "you decided to do that" and it made a subtle connection in your brain that convinced you to feel things with them and accept what they "decided" as something that you had done alongside them. in some small way, you did homestuck. and this notion was further supported by how much of what the fans were doing would make its way back into what the comic was doing. the comic and the fans existed in a kind of symbiosis, and that fed into the feeling of connection that the fans had with this particular story. this thing was alive, and it moved in tandem with the community.

so when something big like cascade happened, you were right there with them. you were deep in the center of it. and you wanted to be, because this was your payoff. you did the work with these kids... you put in the time. and the triumph was yours too.

this is why EP/HS2 shouldn't be depressing. the core of the story was triumph against all odds. to take the triumph that was earned over the course of the whole story, and ruin it for the sake of generating angst... it misses the point. I did not read all 8000+ pages of homestuck multiple times because I wanted a tragedy. if I wanted tragedy, I would choose a different story. of course a lot of fans would have trouble liking EP/HS2... this wasn't what they signed up for. it pulls the rug out from under the fans of the original comic by pulling a mean genre bait and switch. why would people who liked a story like homestuck want a story like this? and I mean, obviously some people were okay with this. some people like EP/HS2. but you have to admit that it is an entirely different thing than what homestuck was.

I’ve heard some folks try to compare the darker parts of EP/HS2 to the darker parts of homestuck, and this is why they aren't the same. the darkness performs different functions in each story. in homestuck, it contrasts the lighter parts and creates a reason to keep everyone moving. in EP/HS2, it is the whole darn thing. the story is simply woven from it to begin with. I have heard some people say that they think of EP/HS2 as cathartic... as a reflection of life when things are painful or hard. but I think we really need to remember what catharsis is. catharsis doesn’t begin and end with pain. catharsis has to do something with that pain, or it’s just pain for pain’s sake. and the further I look into EP/HS2, the more I feel like the story is just playing it straight as a tragedy... though sometimes I wonder if it knows this.

so let's pull apart the tragedy of EP/HS2. because while I don’t really enjoy tragedies, (hence why I liked homestuck, and didn’t like EP/HS2... they are opposites in this sense), I still understand how tragedies work. catharsis can be part of it... to see something sad happen, and relate to that sadness, and feel a deep emotion... that does make sense. but the line between catharsis and just plain agitation is whether or not the pain actually provides you with a sense of relief. if the story leaves the character stuck in a bad emotional place, you feel stuck too... unable to confront the emotional burden that the story has saddled you with in a satisfying way, because it isn't even your own. in real life, when you are hurt, at least you have the ability to do whatever you need for yourself, in order to eventually feel better. I have grieved before, and somehow found it in me to laugh again since. but in stories, you rely on the author to construct the characters' response to bad events, and if things just go from bad to worse, sometimes with little resistance, the audience is eventually going to feel really agitated by the lack of relief. even stories that end in death provide catharsis due to the finality of it. the life ends, and provides a sense of closure. but EP/HS2 doesn’t give you an out. it just keeps driving many of the characters into more and more mundanely uncomfortable and dissatisfying lives, or turns them into people we would rather not know or read about.... which feels like a loss to the reader, even though the character is right there. at that point, the character's presence only makes you feel worse because they used to be someone you liked, but now they're just a reminder of your disappointment. and this level of your emotional discomfort isn't even something that the narrative will address, because it's just a side effect of how things are going. it isn't poetic, and there is no real comfort given to lighten that load... it's just unpleasant.

and on a more technical level, I would like to point out that stories create a kind of transaction between author and reader. and once you understand the status quo between you and a particular author, you can gauge the level of investment you feel safe putting in the characters. at their core, it stands to reason that stories should require conflict to be interesting. but in order to stay interesting, they also need to give us a reason to care about the conflict. in homestuck, I felt like the story set up a status quo in which we felt comfortable caring about certain characters, because we subtly trusted that the author wasn't wasting our time or jerking us around. like, you knew that a lot of crazy shit was on the table, but it felt like the story was growing, the author was interested in that growth, and thus he would not kill it. even if you couldn't begin to guess what was gonna happen next, you at least didn't have to worry about the author hugely ruining things that you liked about the story. he seemed like he liked those things too. we were all on the same page in that regard.

this is where character investment was very important to homestuck... the readers needed something to hang on to, or they'd lose interest in what was going on, and in homestuck specifically, the thing that kept us hanging on, was our love for these characters, and our wish to see them prevail against the odds. we were hoping for a satisfying ending, and interested in how we'd get there. and by now, I think homestuck fans in particular are very determined to stick to the characters by nature. if we weren't, then we would've been bored out of reading the comic in the first place back in act 1, when the most exciting thing that had happened was John going through his house and finding his dad in the kitchen. if you don't love John at least a little, you won't want to keep reading about him picking up items and describing them to you for a whole chapter, with not but the entertainment value of his character's particular perspective and voice to sustain you.

obviously, character investment isn't always a story's draw... but it was definitely homestuck’s. and even giving EP/HS2 the benefit of the doubt... let's say we're just judging it on the merits of being a tragic story. there are many levels of engagement that a story can hit, and in a lot of tragedies, the interest comes from the machinations of the plot. you already know it's going to end sadly, but you have the ability to process the sadness (a negative emotional experience and potential reader deterrent) while still maintaining interest, because you want to know how it will happen. it is unfortunate then, that EP/HS2 isn't a stand alone story, independent from homestuck itself. because if you tell a homestuck fan that the story will now only end in sadness, they likely won't want to know how it happens. because they already decided to like and relate to these characters, and wish for their happiness. they were taught it was okay to hope for that, based on the way the story used to be. basically, one of the essential appeals of homestuck (character investment) is actively working against the core appeal of a tragedy (understanding how sad events came to pass) because homestuck's appeal worked so well to begin with. it's basically nonsensical to try and jump track from one to the other, because the reader is much more likely to fall off the wagon entirely, and ignore your story in order to preserve their enjoyment of the story they already consumed.

but to get way more blunt about this... homestuck was good, and ruining what it left us with was unpopular for obvious reasons. fans were successfully invested in the story, the final triumphant payoff was a satisfying way to cap the narrative, and honestly... I think homestuck probably should've just stopped while the vibes were good. people were satiated. they were sad that it was over, but the sadness came from fondness, and that just sort of felt appropriate. we had it so good.

the transaction between author and reader was stable at that point. we had conflict. we had a reason to care. we got a resolution. there was a level of trust established, and honored... we trusted that there was a rhythm to the story. a push and pull between the kind of threat that would necessitate action from our heroes, and the ability of the characters to overcome the conflict well enough that we'd be left with something satisfying in the end. this trust no longer exists in EP/HS2. the epilogues broke it, and homestuck 2 has failed to repair it because, to be honest, it was already too badly damaged. it would take a full retcon to actually bring that back after the epilogues, but then it uh... screwed the pooch all over again. sorry, that was insensitive.

anyway. so like... what about the particulars of the story's content? I mean... I know I'm dissatisfied because a lot of the characters have been blatantly destroyed. Dirk will be my example for this bit, I mean, just look at him. in one epilogue route he commits suicide, and by making Ult. Dirk a thing, they effectively unestablished the identity of Dirk as he was in homestuck. and my limited knowledge of the epilogues doesn't allow me to really know about this, but was there even any acknowledgement of how death works in homestuck? Dirk must've known that if he killed himself, he'd end up as a ghost out in the dream bubbles. that is still a thing, right? Dave could've gone looking for him. considering Dirk's pesterquest route, he should've wanted to. and see, there's an example of what might've approached catharsis in a situation like that... pain, but also a human person dealing with that pain in a way that feels like fulfillment. but as far as I've heard, the story didn't go there? so it's just pain for pain's sake... or maybe just a bid to get rid of the more complex version of his character and replace him with an anime villain. and the method doesn't even make any sense, like, Dirk is the last character that would ever commit suicide because, by his own canonical words, he is scared to not exist. he literally couldn't bring himself to destroy the AR because of this, in spite of having every technical and emotional reason to want to. this is a major pain point for him, and I know it's typical to think of someone with self hatred wanting to kill themselves, but Dirk is a particularly different case. he should not be shoved into such an ill fitting generic narrative for shock value.

and beyond that, let's say you're someone who identified with Dirk. let's say that when homestuck said "you are now Dirk Strider" you were like "oh fuck I kinda am tho" and you were invested in him ever since. let's say that the points of investment you felt with him were in his troubles with self loathing, his fear of not existing, or his trouble communicating his true feelings to others. this is a rather dismal end for Dirk to have come to... and a rather dismal story for you to read if you still relate to this character. if you're coming off the end of homestuck still securely relating to him as heavily as you did when he was allowed to triumph, how fucking bad is it gonna feel to see him so thoroughly obliterated? to whiplash so hard from a perceived success to such abject failure is just mean. this story is so mean now, like, everyone's got the bug it seems.

and not only do several characters perish (literally, or by being mismanaged) for cheap drama in EP/HS2, but some just turn into shitty people? like, Rose recently revealed that she cheated on Kanaya. I simply hate the idea that Rose would grow up to be the type of person who would do that. I remember Rose in acts 1 through 5 being the kind of person who had misguided ideas about what course of action she thought would be effective. she would make some pretty big decisions, and act on destructive impulses, often in spite of what her friends thought was safe. in essence, I can see where the authors of homestuck 2 would get the idea of Rose going off and doing big shit without telling people. but this ignores why she was so determined to do any of that stuff in the first place... Rose was just as invested in protecting the people she cared about as anyone. and besides that, I thought her arc in those early acts had taught her something about that approach? I thought she got closer to people, to the point where they could voice a concern and she'd listen.

in regards to her relationship with Kanaya in particular, there's a huge difference between knowing someone for a day at the age of 13, and spending 3 more years getting to know and love that person before deciding to marry them. so even if this was the reflection of a quality that Rose had back then, I thought she grew past it... she had ample time and opportunity... we even watched her get better about this sort of thing. literally this rolls back her character development to when she was a child, and makes her a shitty adult. and if I’m being really scathing here, I might as well say that this feels like an example of that thing that stories sometimes do, where they only care about a relationship while the characters are struggling to get together. and then once they are together, it timeskips past their relationship being functional and lands you at a point where they're experiencing turbulence. at which point it leverages their relationship trouble for drama, rather than letting the two function well as a unit against an outside threat of some kind. like, no happy couples exist in fiction! gotta wring your conflict out of the fact that they’re falling apart! it feels like they’re being exploited by the writers.

and worst of all... this betrayal of trust by Rose either ruins Rose and Kanaya's marriage, or makes Kanaya seem like a fool. I keep thinking back to their time on the meteor, when Rose asked if Kanaya was breaking up with her because they finally reached that tipping point where Rose's drinking had to be acknowledged as a problem. and Kanaya said that no, she wasn't breaking up with her, and stuck with Rose because she was dedicated to loving her even if that meant helping her with a serious problem. that was such a strong character moment for Kanaya. it displayed her loyalty and dedication to Rose, but also a nuanced understanding of when a problem can actually be solved by dedicated effort. having her be so committed to staying with Rose in spite of Rose's transgressions is like a perversion of those positive qualities. now it just feels like Kanaya is irrationally willing to put up with anything from Rose, no matter how egregious. it takes a trait that was so nice about Kanaya, and uses it in such an upsetting way... and honestly, there was no reason to do that.

but this is a huge problem with EP/HS2... there's like, juuuuuust enough of a through line for people to think that it makes sense. so when I try to say that the characters are just better people than this, and that they're smart enough to do the most basic fundamental things to prevent pain in people that they care about... when I say I believe in the integrity of these characters, I could very well get someone adamantly insisting that I was just being naive. that sometimes, in reality, people disappoint you. what can I even do about that, without sounding like I'm in denial, or like I'm only interested in liking these characters when all their rough spots are smoothed away? how can I begin to articulate that these aren't decisions being made by the characters... they're decisions being made by authors who I don't trust for exactly this reason. and I very especially hate this because just... no! I know what these characters' flaws actually were! and what their strengths were! I had a solid read on their identity, because homestuck was so friggin good at establishing that! I know that a huge part of Rose coming into her own was learning how to cut all the snarky passive aggressive sarcasm and just be honest about her feelings... something that she actually advocated for when talking to Dave, but also had to learn to do herself. the logical escalation of Rose’s character would be a trend toward more openness... but also, just in general, Rose never had a kindness problem. like, I guess that’s the biggest thing I have an issue with. Rose was never this unkind.

it just feels like the writers want us to believe that not only was Kanaya played for a fool, but we were as well. we thought Rose was better than this. we thought we were better judges of character than this. and honestly... we were! the writing was not on the wall about this development. but that just doesn't mean anything because EP/HS2 said that it happened.

and this also harms the relatability of Rose for the people who used to identify with her. I'm not saying she has to be perfect... obviously, characters can and should be flawed. and characters can have flaws that you don't perfectly relate to the specifics of. Rose developed a drinking problem at a young age, which a few people might've related to, but it's very specific. but if you broaden the implications of that in the context of a story... a ton of people will be able to relate to the concept of developing an unhealthy coping mechanism, or doing something you don't really enjoy just to relate to a relative who has been distant to you for whatever reason, or even just having a complicated relationship with a parent. so what if you apply this kind of broadened meaning to Rose's cheating? the idea that she is not trustworthy. that she hides major, life altering information from people who are very close to her and should've been told. that she doesn't trust her partner, and would rather sneak around and hide this for years, rather than either letting her partner be involved in this part of her life, or accepting that her partner isn't comfortable with this development and respecting that boundary. this sort of thing is really alienating to people who know that they themselves are better than this. and “alienating” is the exact antithesis of what homestuck always was to the people who loved it.

what's especially interesting to me, is that the effects of this alienation actually come through in the way that people talk about EP/HS2 nowadays. I don't know if anyone has noticed this trend yet, but people tend to talk about the events of EP/HS2 as decisions made by writers, rather than decisions made by characters. which is weird, because people didn't do that so much with homestuck. and for this I wanna break out Vriska as an example. a lot of people like Vriska, and a lot of people hate Vriska. she's controversial. but no matter what, people always take Vriska's actions as though they're hers. and if they hate what Vriska does in the story, then they hate Vriska. not Hussie, for writing her that way. not even the vague concept of the narrative. they consider Vriska's actions to actually belong to her and form her identity, which they then pass judgment on, one way or another. Hussie is even a character that canonically exists within homestuck, and nobody ever thought to blame him, in universe, for being the origin of Vriska as a trouble causing entity in the story. compare that with how many times you'll see someone say that they don't like what the EP/HS2 writers have done with Rose, Jade, Jane, etc.... they tend not to actually level blame at the characters themselves. obviously this does vary a lot from person to person, but as a vague trend, I would say that people are starting to detach themselves from the characters, or at least detach the characters from their actions in EP/HS2. and to me it reads as a bit of a defense mechanism. it is a degree of separation that lets these characters keep their integrity, and the potential for positive development that they had when homestuck initially ended. it is a trend that, to me, proves the point that the level of pain for pain's sake in this story is too much. without relief, people disengage. even if they want to keep up with how the characters are doing, they no longer want to buy into the narrative's reality... so they acknowledge the author, and the fact that this is fiction. they remove themselves from the act of being invested. and the more adamantly you see people doing this, the more uncomfortable you can assume it feels for these people to buy into the events of the story and treat them as real.

to jump track to another odd point that I think creates a further barrier between cast and audience... has anyone noticed the age of the main cast's children that we've seen appear so far? all of them seem to be similar to the ages of the beta kids when we first met them. they're teenagers. and that means that, if my knowledge is correct, we kinda skipped a chunk of these people's lives. we never really spent time seeing the original homestuck kids as new parents... we never saw them raising their babies. and I get that this is an odd complaint, but it's an example of the story not growing with its audience. it's missing a huge opportunity, not only to show us this portion of their lives, but to fill in with some major world building when it comes to Earth C. are we supposed to assume that absolutely none of the main cast of homestuck made any new friends on Earth C? did they not explore what kind of culture popped up on this planet? what if one of the main cast had gone out and met someone totally new to befriend or love on this planet? but no... we're strictly only interested in the original cast and their kids, which they only ever had with each other, and nobody is really friends anymore, but nobody has met anyone new either... basically depression and isolation is the only option for these characters if the writers aren't willing to actually let them live in the world they're living in. and besides that, at time of writing, there is one friend of mine from my friend group that is just now planning on getting married. he'll be the first of all of us. and while he and his fiancé want kids pretty quickly once they're settled down, it still hasn't even happened yet. we're in our late 20s. and believe me, I understand the desire to timeskip to when the kids are old enough to be full people, but you have to remember not only that there are other ways to introduce new characters, but also who we're even trying to relate to here. is it the new kids, or their parents? because most of us aren't parents yet, much less the parents of teenagers, but we aren’t teenagers anymore either, and this isn’t framed as their story anyway. how are the majority of homestuck’s older fans represented in EP/HS2?

and when EP/HS2 skips the portion of these characters' lives that we, in real life, are actually living, it subtly hints that a story that would reflect what our lives are like isn't interesting, and tells us that not much good is expected to be waiting in our futures either. and the bigger problem with that is that the writing decisions in EP/HS2 represent the authors' answer to the question: how do we make this interesting? clearly they didn't think that anyone would be satisfied with a nice little romp through the lives these characters might've built. like, a slice of life type of story? or maybe something with a smaller stakes conflict? I dunno why, but my first thought was like... what if Jane ended up actually becoming a detective, and the story just had an intermission-style detour into her solving a case or something? at least a weird, hyper specific detour like that would signal that we care about what she's doing... that'd be fine by me! but they couldn't even give us something that would frame her as a good person... they just treated her like she never got un-possessed by the Condesce, and called it a day. it just feels like these are authors who wouldn't be satisfied with a story that lets the characters be at ease in their private lives. peace is something that is off the table, like, if the characters are living good, satisfying lives, we will never hear about it because apparently that counts as nothing to report.

but also... in the absence of the larger plot machinations that SBURB provided, what was left to create a struggle for these characters to face? it couldn't be Jack Noir, Lord English, the Condesce... those threats all got resolved. and they couldn’t let the characters exist in any facsimile of peace. so the writers needed something to stir things up. and in trying to find a new challenge to drive the story, they dug into the stuff that, in my opinion, should not have been used in this way. they began grasping at character drama, trying to wring conflict out of the deterioration of the relationships between the characters.

but at the same time, they're trying to capture the grandeur of homestuck during its more iconic moments. and okay, this is a pretty far out there speculation, but I've always made this observation about homestuck, and the way it got popularized. early on, fans would get into it with no real idea of how big or ambitious the story was going to be. going into act 1 blind, you wouldn't suspect this comic of being much more than a quirky, funny little weekly strip, set up for the sole purpose of making weird jokes about Nic Cage or Harry Anderson. then you get to the big shit. which in act 1 could just be the meteor destroying John's house. but that's a pretty impressive amount of escalation based on the expectations you had. fast forward to a bigger moment, like the reveal that the trolls' SGRUB session created the human universe, and you're super excited about this. so you tell whoever will listen that they should really read homestuck! and maybe they listen, and they go to page one and... well... they seem kind of unimpressed by the way the comic looks. this is what all the hype was about? and you really wanna sell it to them, so you're like, no, seriously, it gets so much better. and maybe you show them bits like the LOWAS walk around flash game, or maybe [S] make her pay, or something. and they're like, whoa, the comic gets like that? so perhaps they slog through the early acts, or maybe they just skip to the trolls and double back when they're confused enough... but either way, the comic's selling point is now it's climax, not the buildup.

and the problem with viewing the comic this way is that homestuck is both things. proportionally, homestuck is actually way more composed of the tedious little stuff than the grand big stuff. but homestuck was popularized via the grand big stuff, and sometimes I feel like EP/HS2 is attempting to fill itself with big stuff like that, but it isn't doing the legwork right. it's using character drama to fuel itself, but it's also trying to be highly epic in terms of its presentation. the lack of contrast flattens everything out, and as I described earlier, the story no longer has that essential push and pull between the terrorizing forces that threaten the characters/raise the stakes, and the unity and likability of the cast that makes you care about their struggle/gets you invested in seeing the conflict resolved. and I just wanna point out that those little interstitial bits... the ones that are typically viewed as the stuff you have to slog through in order to get to the interesting part? those were our main source of knowledge when it came to the characters. it's how we got invested in them and came to know that we liked or related to them in the first place.

the larger ramifications of this lean away from the little things, while also leaning into character drama to fuel conflict in the plot, leads to the overuse of bombastic character drama. sensationalized character drama. everything is always a huge fucking deal, while also being primarily concerned with the existing characters, rather than any kind of outside threat. so what are the tools? a wedding? a funeral? terminal illness, betrayal, a change in ideology that creates a schism... the loss of identity. all these high drama moments that generate conflict by sacrificing the bonds these characters shared. you know... letting that core piece of investment self destruct. the story is basically eating itself in order to sustain its momentum, but there's basically no point anymore. it's been gutted of the stuff that really mattered.

so why did everything go so badly? why do half of the characters not even like each other anymore? why do we not even like half of them anymore? why did the writers feel the need to dismantle them like this? well, because what else do we have to work with... how do you introduce a new threat to these characters without it being either SBURB all over again, or something entirely different that just makes these characters seem overwhelmingly put upon by the universe, like, more than any other individuals that have ever existed. it's actually a very rudimentary power escalation problem. gotta find that next level of bigger problem to set on everyone.

but do you wanna know what kind of homestuck fan I’ve been since the very beginning? I started reading homestuck 9 years ago. I think I was like 16 or 17? and at first I wasn’t sure how to interact with the comic, so I went to the “about” section of the website. it told me, in a broad sense, what mspaintadventures.com was, as a collection of work, and suggested that I begin by reading problem sleuth. not knowing that it wasn’t part of homestuck, I did just that. I read all of it. before I even got to homestuck. I am a fan that lives for the small, stupid, tedious fucking around. the slow buildup of total bullshit... the complex setup that gives you a million microscopic payoffs on it’s way to god knows what end goal. it’s like watching an explosion in reverse. all the tiny little pieces fly chaotically together and coalesce into a whole story, and you got to watch it build itself, piece by tiny little piece. I live and breathe for that level of detail. and the most fun I ever had with the story was when the characters were wandering around an environment, exploring and using various objects to set up these wacky chain reactions, half of which you’d never see coming, but which would all retroactively make sense in the end.

what I’m saying is that small scale conflict is interesting. and there are whole genres that build themselves off of this. I actually think that in certain instances, homestuck may fall under the slice of life genre. and slice of life is largely misunderstood as a rather bland genre, but the appeal is watching people with personalities that you enjoy. you watch them live their lives, and you go along for the ride. true slice of life is not a soap opera... it’s just enjoying the company of people who happen to be fictional. there's always been an element of that in homestuck... these were characters that you could see yourself getting along with if you met them. they were entertaining because of how they saw the world... how you would see the world if you were looking through their eyes. and homestuck gave you that opportunity. sometimes, that actually is all that you need.

I'm not saying that homestuck's ideal form is as a purely slice of life type of story... but wasn't that kind of what a lot of the fan works felt like? little comics about funny scenarios, or preexisting comedy bits with roles assigned to the characters they reminded you of... that stuff was the form that fun took for the fans of this comic. why is that so easily dismissed as frivolous? why is it so bad to want a little of that back? sometimes, you do wanna get into the hard stuff. maybe you wanna see Dave and Dirk have a conversation where they both admit that all they wanted as kids was a brother, and neither felt like they got to have that, but in very different ways. maybe you wanna see Roxy and Rose compare their similar feelings of estrangement, and explore the emotions that led them into their respective struggles with alcohol. maybe you wanna see John have a moment of sadness when he decides he wants to raise a kid, because he misses his own dad, and while Jane's dad is definitely family, he isn't the guy that actually raised John for the first 13 years of his life. maybe you wanna see Jade get inordinately clingy with every single one of her friends until one of them finally voices a concern about needing some space, only to see a glimpse of Jade's absolute terror at the thought of being alone again. and that pain is something that could definitely find a place in a story with more actual down time. maybe these moments of actually cathartic lingering pain could be explored with sensitivity in a story that gives them room to breathe. if the writers played their cards right and let the characters heal in meaningful ways, they might've even gotten tears of happiness out of a few of us. wouldn't that have been wild.

I just hate the idea that something is more realistic if it's dark. that's not true at all. I understand where the sentiment comes from. I understand the merits of taking an unflinching look at hard truths. but cynicism is not the same as realism. and realistically, people will try hard to seek good things for themselves in life. and even if they miss the mark... even if they fall into depression, or lack the ability to make their dreams a reality, these particular characters had already sought and found good people. people who would, realistically, absolutely help a friend if they needed it. I know this, because I watched them do that. the whole first five acts were literally about the trolls yelling at the humans because there was a huge problem that they blamed the kids for causing, and what did these kids do? they said "hey wait, let's fix that" and they did. even though the trolls made a horribly rude first impression. even though it was monumentally challenging. these kids have fought and died for each other's sake. they are family. if not by blood then by bond. and when that part of a story resonates with an audience, it is valuable.

I feel like I shouldn't have to defend the value of connecting positively with an audience. I get that this may be kind of a hokey take... I get that the people who currently like EP/HS2 will probably think I'm asking for something far too saccharine. but at this point I don't even care. once again, this is just my personal opinion, long and rant-like though it may be. and clearly it will change nothing about the current state of homestuck's most canon non-canon continuation. I guess my one major frustration is the extent to which some people have bought into what I consider to be blatant character defamation. it pains me when people talk about the actions of some of the characters in EP/HS2, because while many blame the writers for the unsettling behavior displayed by them in EP/HS2, some will readily consider this to be where the kids from the early acts really ended up as people.

#homestuck #homestuck^2 #fair warning this is all criticism #don't like don't read #and all that jazz #I'm pinning this post cuz I don't wanna lose it #because looking at it will be my self control when I wanna rant about it again and I know I will #like no you asshole you already ranted you don't have to do it again #cw: suicide #I legit forgot to tag that til I went to get a shower and realized halfway through #I basically info dumped all this here and then my head was well and truly empty #also #cw: cheating #? #idk that's the only other thing I can think of that I discussed here which might be a problem for some folks #btw subtle tag whispering that the reblog with tags explaining where a couple of the things I mentioned were addressed a little was nice #I knew I wouldn't get everything spot on... this is definitely criticism coming from a not 100% informed place #but yeah... I still kinda feel like even if the epilogues acknowledge the writer as an entity that differs from the characters... #that just kind of doubles down on the inability of fans to engage? like it cements it. #and even if meat does focus on their 20s while candy timeskips (which I wasn't aware of) like... #look at what happened to meat #look because I don't want to lol #is there anybody left who isn't sad? #cuz real talk I like using happy characters as wish fulfillment when I'm sad #and seeing a character get challenged and still come out with some determined positive energy... I love that #anyone remember when Aradia went god tier? I was overjoyed #literally all it took was her beating apathy and regaining her personhood #I love that stuff #god fucking damn it I'm still ranting what is even up with that

[tigstripe]

Gacha Impression #1: Fate/Grand Order

Total Score: 3.3/5

Full review under the break

Presentation (3/5): FGO presents itself as a waifu/husbando simulator (and yes, there are valid husbandos!) with pretty typical anime flair. The artwork is top-notch (most of the time...I’m looking at you, Nightingale) and the animations are clean and flashy when they need to be. The music is appropriate, but forgettable at times, ultimately dragging this score down. The in-battle sprites are so obviously Flash puppets it hurts, but their actions are still quite dynamic. The best part about the game’s presentation is that they hired so many unique artists to help vary up the art styles between characters and craft essences. It suffers a little from long load times, alleviated mostly by the Download All Data option.

Story (5/5): It’s a game made by a company that made itself known for publishing popular visual novels and establishing one of the most fleshed out worlds in digital media. This game’s story is good. It’s very good. There are dozens of hours of texted cutscenes, with added mini-stories for characters and special events if you care to read them. You will fall in love with the supporting cast. Some of the in-world magic systems will go over your head. It’s okay. Just take it in - this is a vividly written story in an immensely developed fictional universe.

Combat (2/5): What I used to think was a solid combat system has proven to be quite stale and not terribly deep. You have characters with three skills each and a super move, and you have some gimmicks to throw in the mix when you need to. There are quite a few strategies to use when you approach the combat system, but they’re very straightforward and don’t vary much from team comp to team comp. The most customizability you have are some bonuses gained from Craft Essences (the game’s form of equipment), which are arguably more important than which characters you choose to use. New characters rarely offer anything unique to combat, and when they do, they’re pretty damn broken as a result.

Noncombat Mechanics (3/5): Character development is a commitment, especially for higher rarity characters, but it’s quite straightforward and easy to grasp. Fight mobs, get drops, boost Servants. That’s it, and it’s real boring. Real world money will not help you enhance your Servants outside of rolling for additional copies to enhance their Noble Phantasm strength. Craft Essences and Servants level up in very similar ways, allowing a very low learning curve to effectively enhance your cast. The game’s energy system can be quite restrictive during special events, but at this point in the game’s life, completing the primary story is smooth enough with new accounts constantly leveling up and getting refreshed energy reserves. The devs really like to dish out energy replenishing items, too, so you can often go entire months without running out of opportunity to play the game. Weekly missions help you to nab extra rolls in the gacha, and the game will reward you for devoting time to extra content. The monthly store is mostly a trap, but can be a boon for casual players.

Events (3/5): Their special events vary greatly, too greatly to give them a stellar score, because some events are simply “run this specific combat a billion times” while others are legitimate, fun Story events with very strong writing. Overall, the game focuses too much on farming for enhancement materials to be considered “fun,” but some events can really come out of left field, especially with their story. Time gates often prevent people from just abusing the more story-driven events, but some events (like the Christmas Roulette) are so openly abusable the game made a meme out of them.

Gacha Mechanics (2/5): This is one of the only gacha games I’ve seen that has no pity mechanic, but the game and devs throw free rolls at you via story completion, events, and social media drives all the time. That being said, you roll for both Servants and Equipment (called “Craft Essences”), and the 4 and 5 star Servant drop rates are abysmal. The “Story” gacha is a trap except for brand new players. The daily free friend point rolls are very nice and are often undervalued.

Free to Play Friendliness (4/5): Between getting handed lots of extra rolls as noted above and the inability of real world money buying you enhancement items, the game is surprisingly Free to Play Friendly considering it’s still one of the (of not the) most lucrative gachas in existence. Even lower-rarity characters can carry your team with proper planning and support (we’re talking about you, Andersen!). Plus, most of the story-driven special events come with 4-star “Wellfare Servants,” which allow you free, high-quality characters you can easily max out simply by participating in the events fully. Some of the best 4-star characters in the game are free Event Servants! While quite a few characters are event-specific, many of them will come back eventually through event reruns or specialized gachas around the holidays, allowing F2P players more chances at pulling their faves. If a character shows up in the main story, they wind up in the Story gacha. Still, it’s best to wait for events to fish for your faves.

Total Score: 3.3/5

It’s charming, easy to get into, and its story is very good. It has some boring bits and the combat system isn’t terribly riveting, but being able to use your favorite Fate characters is always fun, and the cast is constantly growing with new, colorful members. While the gacha is punishing, some of the best characters in the game are given to you for free during events.

#Gacha games #Fate/Grand Order #Fate/Stay Night #Fate/Apocrypha #Fate/Extra #Fate series #anime #mobile games #game review #Fate/Zero

[stomachflu]

a bit of rambling about Why I Have This Kink, under the cut for length + discussion of sexual stuff. please don’t rb this, i’ll talk about it, but i don’t really want it spreading all over.

this is really, really, REALLY long. I don't even feel safe writing about kink stuff in my own physical diary, so, here, read like 2k about my life if you wanna.

the other week i saw someone make a “is this a ___” meme, where the bird was “h/c” and the text read “is this a substitute for being cared for and loved?”. you know the one. don’t make me recreate it.

anyways, it got me thinking a bit, at first about a comment thread i recall participating in... idk, on livejournal, circa 2010 or so? though it could’ve also been on a dreamwidth community; i was active on both. anyways, it was in a thread about h/c. one comment said that the person liked reading about h/c because their parents had been pretty strict and neglectful when they were growing up, and the only time they were shown affection is when they were sick. another person replied to that comment and agreed, saying that they had a similar upbringing, except that their parents didn’t even pay attention when they were sick, so they enjoyed h/c because it let them fantasize about being the center of attention for a bit.

i still remember that conversation to this day, because it really resonated with me. like many other people, my parents also didn’t treat me well when i was sick. they were very strict about stuff like school, and would send me there with a 102 degree fever, loaded up on Tylenol. stuff like whining about not feeling good wasn’t tolerated.

(i’ve seen quite a few bloggers talk about how, as a kid, they used to be afraid of illness/injury scenes in media, and i was no exception. if, for example, a character on a tv show got a cold, i would run to the other side of the house as quickly as possible and put my fingers in my ears. i wasn’t a squeamish kid; i wanted to be a doctor and pretty much everybody knew that i was interested in characters getting sick or hurt. a lot of people say that, for them, it was due to the shame and embarrassment of knowing that they enjoyed watching characters suffer. for me, that was... sort of it? but also, i was embarrassed for the characters. being miserable from something like a cold wasn’t allowed in my house, so i felt like... weirdly bad for them, but also bad about enjoying something that i wasn’t allowed to experience or enjoy myself, and also because i knew it wasn’t a normal interest.)

anyways. i don’t think it was a coincidence that the only times i was ever allowed to stay home from school were when i had thrown up. like i said above, any other illness or injury was an automatic “do not pass go, go straight to school”, but, for some reason, if i had vomited even once, my mom would let me stay home.

i think at this point i should mention that, when i was like... 6-10? ish? my brother got very, very sick. i’m talking, “going to the hospital every week for infusions” sick. as a kid, it was very alien for me to go from being told that a sore throat didn’t “count” at home, to tagging along to my brother’s appointments and seeing the doctors get really concerned if he had a sore throat, making a huge deal out of the tiniest illness symptoms. (and for good reason! a cold really could’ve made him sick at that point.) anyways, i think that that’s another point on the “developing an interest in h/c” scale for me.

he got special treatment i could never even DREAM of. in school, he was allowed to wander around and do whatever he wanted, because he often felt sick and had to go on a walk to feel better, and he was allowed to bring hard candy and chocolate into the classroom, because he had sores in his mouth that only felt better if he had another texture to focus on. all of this was, like, 100% justified – he was really, REALLY sick, and i didn’t fully realize it at the time. he’s a great brother.

but more often than not, he was staying home at school, being cared for by my mom. it’s not a coincidence that the only way i could experience the way he was cared for – lap trays, eating in front of the TV, cold washcloths, even just being told, “i’m sorry you’re not feeling good” – was if i’d thrown up.

to me, “throwing up” became The Worst Symptom. i used to make up imaginary universes of characters who only existed to get sick or hurt and go to the hospital (in my mind, A Place Where People Cared About You And Always Made You Feel Better). i would have them go through every single illness symptom, no matter how plausible, and it would culminate with them vomiting, because, for me, that was the One True Thing that showed that they were really, actually sick.

so... nearly 1k into this post, What Does That Have To Do With Me Having A Kink? dude, i don’t fuckin’ know.

okay. maybe i do, a bit?

ANOTHER weird thing i used to do (and still do!) is like... save certain things for when i was gonna enjoy them the most? for example, if i had a snack or dessert, i would grab a book to read as i ate, so it would be more enjoyable. i was a very inattentive kid, but i would NOT daydream about my h/c scenarios in class, especially if i had something “good” planned, because i wanted to save it for when i got home, and then i’d daydream as i ate.

okay. we get a bit tmi & nsfw here.

i don’t wanna talk about this bit TOO TOO much, but due to, like, depression & medication and stuff, i was a very late bloomer. but when i did, uh, start masturbating, i didn’t... really connect it to any thoughts, i just realized it felt good. so i did what i always did when i was doing something pleasurable, and daydreamed about my characters “during.” and since all i daydreamed about was h/c scenarios (yes, even, like, YEARS LATER), it would culminate with the characters vomiting.

probably also something to be said about the fact that a big part of the way i was being punished for being sick as a kid was that, like, nobody would love me if i was whiny and gross like this. the thought that not only someone would love me BUT that they would find me attractive while i’m sick? is really [chef’s kiss]

anyways. there’s probably a lot to be said about like, stuff other people have pointed out, like how the buildup of nausea is similar to the buildup to an orgasm, but for me, it’s less about that and more about [gestures] All Of This.

i guess this also explains why for me it’s strictly about illness – as opposed to other stuff, like motion sickness, that i never experienced OR was comforted for, or like... self-inflicted stuff that i was either punished for (like, drinking, or self-induced vomiting) or stuff that was seen as My Fault (for example, eating expired food).

anyways. lotta words to explain why i’m big horny about puke, huh?

weirdly enough, tummblr dot vom has helped with a LOT of this stuff. once i realized that this WAS a kink (i was... 19 when i realized i was feeling Sexual Stuff about puke, oh my god, although looking back, it should’ve been obvious earlier, and i wonder if i always knew), making this blog and interacting w/ the community really made me unlearn a lot of the shame i felt, both about having a fetish AND about being sick. it’s really cool, y’know?

this has gotten long enough so i’m just gonna leave it here.

#here! i'm vulnerable on main! please clap! #this is the most i think i've ever shared abt my life with yall. you're welcome. #i hope that anon last year who was like 'please don't ever stop being horny' knows that i owe them my Life. #anyways! i've dealt w a lotta shame around this so that's why i'd prefer if you don't rb.

[cloudfiles]

☁  ˙ ∙   — — — 𝐈𝐓'𝐒  𝐌𝐄𝐌𝐄  𝑺𝑨𝑻𝑼𝑹𝑫𝑨𝒀 !!!  check  the  notes  to  see  who  is  participating  &  send  out  a  text  to  everyone.  that  being  said ,  be  patient  when  waiting  for  texts  to  arrive  to  your  inbox.  you’re  getting  some ,  we promise !  +  you  do  not need  to  be  doing  the  meme  yourself  to  send  stuff  out  to  other  muns.  in  fact ,  we’d  love  it  if  you  did  just  that.

remember ,  you  only  need  to  reblog  this  post  TODAY  (  saturday )  in  order  to  participate.  however ,  you  may  answer or  send  out memes  anytime  throughout  the  week.  * don’t  reblog  or  like  this  post  if  you’re  not  apart  of  hqclouds.

disastrio's 'the pin list' text starters.

src  :  aurorasmemes. tw: nsfw, mention of abuse.

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   u should know by now i’m not as much a complete person as i am several sitcom tropes stacked in an anxiety blanket

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   things that should not be present in making spaghetti and meatballs: sparks 

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   things that were present when i was making spaghetti and meatballs two minutes ago: sparks

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   give it a good deep fry and it’ll make reddit front page

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   you piece of fuck

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i’m not making this up it’s a real post

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i just really don’t like the look of american hollywood boys apparently

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   quit trying to post porn [name]

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   what’s deeper than emotional? are you going to /fuck/ the house?

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i genuinely don’t know what i expected googling that thing but that was not it

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i legitimately don’t know how you’re expecting me to reply to this

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i’m setting up my bfu episode

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   u might finally be free of “[full name] fucks.”

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   plural of jerry’s is jerry'ses

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   you’re sharing so there’s a trail in case someone ( maybe yourself ) goes missing when ur backs are turned

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i have yet to whip out dicks young lady

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   lizard brayo

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   fuck the fuck off tunglr

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   what are Christmas goblins if not depression goblins with prettier aesthetics

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   we’re just two bitches trying to watch [actor] and then go to bed

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   maybe complaining is what gets it off.

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   well yeah, it’s hard to knock on a door that doesn’t exist

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   murdered by demons is our go-to

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   we sound like the casting calls for the leads of the same gay cowboy movie

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   any blanket is a weighted blanket when u carry the weight of ur sins

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   We have some Amazing 🌈Bottoms🌈

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   [name] i am confiscating ur thumbstacks

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   YOUR HUBRIS BECAME YOUR DOWNFALL

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   what can i say i’m a sexual deviant and i can’t be stopped

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   the stars neglected me. they haven’t assigned me a fetish

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i’m pretty sure 'you are going to be the death of me’ was like. the disclaimer of this entire squad

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   swipe right if you dare!

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   but it tracks for the pachycephalosaurus

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   I SWEAR TO JESUS FUCKING CHRIST

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   this chat is going to give me an aneurysm

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   “fully automated luxury gay space communism” is the best tag i’ve ever seen

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   why don’t you have a stockpile of mothman memes

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i really do owe my life to the aesthetic

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   u coax the worst things out of my mouth and then [screenshot/save/pin] them to record my mistakes

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   ur not allowed to die its just the rules

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   you two are going to be the death of me

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   why are you paying for microsoft office in 2019

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   it’s nearly [zodiac] season, bitches

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i see your “will make content for rarepairs” and i raise you “will make content for pairs literally no one has ever considered and probably for a good reason”

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i was DOOMED and thus so are all of u

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i am going to snap your fingernails vertically in half

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   own that garbage

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   oh fuck that suck

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   we were building a desert set which was less exciting and more construct-y but it did lead to the following conversation:   [ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   guy walking in: chickenwire, huh. what’s gonna come out of that?   [ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   me: quicksand

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   viva la resistance motherfuckers

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   well the ass and the face are the most disturbing part

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   it was still very much about the shape of his teeth

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   a real whoosy boi

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   if i suffer y'all suffer that’s the rules

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   also icb ur liveblogging your crime

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   granted i do still want the [body part(s)] to be attached to the person and not just laying around somewhere

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i’m gonna go with “have repressed all memories of this by tomorrow and even looking at this conversation for context isn’t going to provide us with information”

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   … Well if u ever commit a crime and need to change ur hair ur all set

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   oh god i’d completely forgotten about the teeth conversation

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   something about that ass Haunts me

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   [name]’s teeth are,,,,,,, h*t

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   ur not late, any time is a good time to hate capitalism

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   oh shit [name]s pulling out the big guns

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   listen as far as the things you could come back to go i think this is a good one

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   Amateur theatre energy is alarmingly similar to redneck ingenuity energy

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   threat acknowledged

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i take it back i don’t want any more information

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   what do we say to the god of baby germs

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   and then Goth happened

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   turn everything into a photishooot

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   but u also would have got pictures of me depositing the tiger in the cow shed

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i feel like you constantly forget that i’m always full of Good Points

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   you want to punish urself by seeking unhealthy relationships. also the stars say u may want to have ur feet fucked

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   “white orc sex slave” is not a phrase i thought i’d hear today

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   yeah raw sexual energy

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   [name] perks up at the mention of lying to the fbi lmao

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   yall are dumb and i love u

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   HOW CRYPTID IS THE COWBOY IF U CAN TELL HE’S INDIFFERENT

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   [image file saying 'mothman respects your position but must express his dissent. also you’re going to die.]

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   …do i need to make the vampire joke

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   ur amazing and so good and so important and lowkey i’m crying abt how much i love u and u deserve every good thing i love u thanks for coming to my ted talk

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   look me in the eyes and tell me steve wouldn’t crawl up thanos’s butthole to save the world and get bucky back

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   [name] i am going to choke you

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   my brain was immediately with “she took the shirt off to wipe away the blood of someone, possibly someone she murdered, and then had to put the shirt back on

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i literally never know what i’m going to come back to when i open this chat

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i make no excuses for who i am as a person

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i am going to jump off the edge of the earth.   [ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   and that’s not me saying flat earthers are right that’s me saying i will flatten it myself and then jump off

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i’m trying to show sympathy you fuck

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   what can i say, i’m an escapist bitch

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i never want to see dick and clown in the same sentence ever again

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   oh fuck off. i don’t know what they’ve done but it’s [name] so it’s gonna be bad.

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   icb we have a test run on new year’s eve

#( meme day )

[sagamemes]

disastrio’s 'the pin list’ text starters.   below and under the cut, you can find ~100 messages dug up from the pins of the cursed group chat of three international friends. slightly edited for roleplay purposes. spelling errors opted to keep in tact to maintain the Energy(tm). edit as you please. tw: nsfw, mention of abuse.

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   u should know by now i'm not as much a complete person as i am several sitcom tropes stacked in an anxiety blanket

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   things that should not be present in making spaghetti and meatballs: sparks   [ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   things that were present when i was making spaghetti and meatballs two minutes ago: sparks

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   give it a good deep fry and it'll make reddit front page

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   you piece of fuck

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i'm not making this up it's a real post

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i just really don't like the look of american hollywood boys apparently

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   quit trying to post porn [name]

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   what's deeper than emotional? are you going to /fuck/ the house?

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i genuinely don't know what i expected googling that thing but that was not it

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i legitimately don't know how you're expecting me to reply to this

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i'm setting up my bfu episode

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   u might finally be free of "[full name] fucks."

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   plural of jerry's is jerry'ses

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   you're sharing so there's a trail in case someone ( maybe yourself ) goes missing when ur backs are turned

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i have yet to whip out dicks young lady

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   lizard brayo

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   fuck the fuck off tunglr

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   what are Christmas goblins if not depression goblins with prettier aesthetics

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   we're just two bitches trying to watch [actor] and then go to bed

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   maybe complaining is what gets it off.

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   well yeah, it's hard to knock on a door that doesn't exist

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   murdered by demons is our go-to

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   we sound like the casting calls for the leads of the same gay cowboy movie

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   any blanket is a weighted blanket when u carry the weight of ur sins

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   We have some Amazing 🌈Bottoms🌈

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   [name] i am confiscating ur thumbstacks

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   YOUR HUBRIS BECAME YOUR DOWNFALL

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   what can i say i'm a sexual deviant and i can't be stopped

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   the stars neglected me. they haven't assigned me a fetish

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i'm pretty sure 'you are going to be the death of me' was like. the disclaimer of this entire squad

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   swipe right if you dare!

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   but it tracks for the pachycephalosaurus

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   I SWEAR TO JESUS FUCKING CHRIST

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   this chat is going to give me an aneurysm

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   "fully automated luxury gay space communism" is the best tag i've ever seen

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   why don't you have a stockpile of mothman memes

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i really do owe my life to the aesthetic

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   u coax the worst things out of my mouth and then [screenshot/save/pin] them to record my mistakes

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   ur not allowed to die its just the rules

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   you two are going to be the death of me

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   why are you paying for microsoft office in 2019

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   it's nearly [zodiac] season, bitches

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i see your "will make content for rarepairs" and i raise you "will make content for pairs literally no one has ever considered and probably for a good reason"

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i was DOOMED and thus so are all of u

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i am going to snap your fingernails vertically in half

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   own that garbage

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   oh fuck that suck

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   we were building a desert set which was less exciting and more construct-y but it did lead to the following conversation:   [ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   guy walking in: chickenwire, huh. what's gonna come out of that?   [ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   me: quicksand

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   viva la resistance motherfuckers

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   well the ass and the face are the most disturbing part

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   it was still very much about the shape of his teeth

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   a real whoosy boi

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   if i suffer y'all suffer that's the rules

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   also icb ur liveblogging your crime

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   granted i do still want the [body part(s)] to be attached to the person and not just laying around somewhere

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i'm gonna go with "have repressed all memories of this by tomorrow and even looking at this conversation for context isn't going to provide us with information"

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   ... Well if u ever commit a crime and need to change ur hair ur all set

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   oh god i'd completely forgotten about the teeth conversation

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   something about that ass Haunts me

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   [name]'s teeth are,,,,,,, h*t

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   ur not late, any time is a good time to hate capitalism

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   oh shit [name]s pulling out the big guns

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   listen as far as the things you could come back to go i think this is a good one

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   Amateur theatre energy is alarmingly similar to redneck ingenuity energy

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   threat acknowledged

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i take it back i don't want any more information

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   what do we say to the god of baby germs

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   and then Goth happened

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   turn everything into a photishooot

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   but u also would have got pictures of me depositing the tiger in the cow shed

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i feel like you constantly forget that i'm always full of Good Points

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   you want to punish urself by seeking unhealthy relationships. also the stars say u may want to have ur feet fucked

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   "white orc sex slave" is not a phrase i thought i'd hear today

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   yeah raw sexual energy

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   [name] perks up at the mention of lying to the fbi lmao

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   yall are dumb and i love u

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   HOW CRYPTID IS THE COWBOY IF U CAN TELL HE'S INDIFFERENT

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   [image file saying 'mothman respects your position but must express his dissent. also you're going to die.]

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   ...do i need to make the vampire joke

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   ur amazing and so good and so important and lowkey i'm crying abt how much i love u and u deserve every good thing i love u thanks for coming to my ted talk

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   look me in the eyes and tell me steve wouldn't crawl up thanos's butthole to save the world and get bucky back

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   [name] i am going to choke you

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   my brain was immediately with "she took the shirt off to wipe away the blood of someone, possibly someone she murdered, and then had to put the shirt back on

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i literally never know what i'm going to come back to when i open this chat

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i make no excuses for who i am as a person

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i am going to jump off the edge of the earth.   [ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   and that's not me saying flat earthers are right that's me saying i will flatten it myself and then jump off

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i'm trying to show sympathy you fuck

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   what can i say, i'm an escapist bitch

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   i never want to see dick and clown in the same sentence ever again

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   oh fuck off. i don't know what they've done but it's [name] so it's gonna be bad.

[ 𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃 ]   icb we have a test run on new year's eve

#rp meme #text meme #texting meme #rp text meme #sentence meme #* meme. #* texts. #disastrio

[letsperaltiago]

We’ll sweep out the ashes in the morning |CHAPTER 1|

Heeeere comes the Peraltiago scandal ! 

This story takes place in an alternative universe, where Amy applied for and got the job as 'data analyst' for for Major Crimes (See episode 1.15: 'Operation Broken Feather' for further reference). This means that Jake and Amy no longer work together and havent for a few years. This also means that I don't know what right and technical job title this new job would get Amy, so I'm just going with/imagining that she was still a detective even after her transfer.

Read it on AO3 or simply enjoy it here! I appreciate comments more than you know <3 

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CHAPTER 1: I didn't mean to start this fire and neither did you

It really had been the best yet also most disastrous kind of accidental occurrence that day. Best back then, when Amy Santiago was promptly striding down the sidewalk on a just as coincidental cold, February morning.

Her head was dipped in a downwards adjustment, simply enough for her to absorb the new information on her phone which had just led her to pick it up from the pocket of her navy blue coat just a few seconds ago. Out of what seemed to be nowhere, it all came to a halt. Maybe more a thud and burst actually, when suddenly her phone flew out of her hand in one direction meanwhile the still warm coffee in her other hand travelled in the opposite direction. It took her a much startled second to realise that herself, her coffee, phone and a stranger suddenly had one thing in common; they were thrown off their respective paths with quite the vivacity. All that her eyes managed to grasp in the few fatal seconds was a black coat covering a masculine figure and chestnut-like hair. The remaining details remained undefined in her state of shock. All she knew was that she’d ignorantly stumbled into someone.

“Oh my goodness, I am so so sorry, sir!” She exclaimed immediately after her brain had put all the facts together and suddenly felt the guilt of being just another typical phone-addict; she used to be so good at limiting the amount of attention she’d give it. “I was reading an email and wasn’t paying attention to where I was going.” She kneeled to pick up her phone from the icy sidewalk as well as the now empty cup (even an accident like this was no excuse to be a litterbug).

“Wow, Santiago. Who would’ve thought I’d ever experience you on your knees and calling me sir?”

As she was practically on her knees, the figure standing in front and above her allowed himself to speak; right then and there Amy Santiago could’ve sworn that she felt a scrap of familiarity rush through her body’s nervous system. The octave of the voice, deep enough for man’s but not enough to hide the manchild behind; Calling her Santiago? No one else would do that without a preceding ‘Sergeant’; the facility of the fall of the joke? Like it came from a place of practice and habit? It could only be…

“Peralta?” In contrast to how her head had previously been tilted forwards and down, it was now tilted backwards to look up at the half-stranger and take in the indeed chestnut-like hair (still messy and curly), cinnamon eyes and surprisingly unsurprisingly mischievous smile.

“The one and only,” the chuckle was just as familiar as the rest of him. “Here,” he kneeled down to her level and started to pick up things she hadn’t even realised she’d dropped. “Let me help you out.” He started reaching out for her keys and lipstick that’d been resting safely (or so she thought) in her purse.

Meanwhile Amy was still kneeling but with her back now straightened in bewilderment whilst her eyes followed his every movement with the purpose of figuring out if he was actually real. For how long she did this exactly, she doesn’t recall, but next thing she knew he’d followed her example and straightened his back as well. Still on his knees and eyes directed at her whilst holding her stuff in his hands. Rushing people walking by, or rather around, the kneeling couple didn’t seem to give in to their New York-curiousness. It was 8 AM and everyone had places to go. Including Amy herself, she suddenly realised and snapped out of her until now absent state of mind.

“Oh, wow! Uhm- thank you,” she fumbled with her words and hands as she grabbed her things from him before hastily standing back up. Once both back on their feet it hit her that she was being suspiciously far-flung considering the fact that Jake Peralta was no stranger and had been looking at her with nothing but kind and inviting eyes ever since she took a first dive into them approximately 30 seconds ago. Her body’s response to this realisation was a swift shake of the head. “And oh my goodness- hi!” She stuttered overwhelmed and awkwardly (Santiago-stylez) in the act of finally smiling for the first time post collision.

“Hi,” the reply was followed by his figure instantly leaning in to hug her like he’d been holding it back since realising who he’d collided with. Of course she automatically let her arms wrap their way back around his broad shoulders, hating how completely right and practically overwhelmingly good it felt. Almost like something that’d been missing had made its way back home. This was only proved right by the fact that it almost, just almost, made her heart drop when he pulled back.

“How are you doing? It’s been forever!” There was a swift switch in the direction of his gaze upon noticing a few drops of coffee on his coat, provoking him to quickly brush them off before redirecting his attention back to her. She could’ve sworn he’d fumbled just a bit too much in the process. Almost like he’d hoped that she hadn’t noticed him taking his eyes off of her for just a second. Attentive as always, she thought.  

“I’m good! And yeah it has been a while, hasn’t it?..” she couldn’t help but notice that the present dread in her voice was on the edge of obvious. Ever since Amy had gotten the job and transferred to Major Crimes to be a data analysts (with the Vulture), she had barely to never seen Jake since. Sure, they’d texted a bit back and forth, sent the occasional joke or meme, but even this had died out once they’d gotten used to the other’s absence at work and each their new life-partner: Teddy and Sophia.

“I’m glad to hear that,” Jake smiled brightly and Amy could never doubt the fact that he fully meant it. “…And I’m sorry I haven’t texted or called. Life, yanno?” He shot a look down at his carefully shuffling feet.

“Hey,” an impulse within her, like an overwhelming craving, brought her left hand to reach out across the space between them to gently squeeze his arm. “No worries. I’ve also been super busy and haven’t reached out. We’re cool.” To her delight his shoulders dropped in a sign of relaxation, his eyes rose back to hers and everything seemed to be as it should be, when you run into someone you used to know so well and maybe even used to consider your best friend. Pleased with this she allowed her hand to drop from its spot on him.

“No wonder why you’re out here running into people then, Santiago,” they both had to laugh at the comment, relishing in the resurfacing of familiar banter that used to and once again lead Amy to push a lock of her dark, freely hanging hair behind her ear. This triggered a thought that couldn’t help but welcome into his mind: would she still wear her hair up in the famous pony-tail he still remembered? Or was this lose hair her new thing? Her hair was so much longer now. Gosh, he had so many questions.

“Yeah, sorry about that. I got an email from work and had to check it,” she bit her bottom lip nervously, briefly holding up her phone as emphasis of her explanation.

“Always so devoted to duty,” Jake could barely tell if he was smiling again or just hadn’t stopped since he realised who he’d bumped into. “Anyways… I’m sure you have tons of things to catch up on, like emails and whatnot…” They both chuckled nervously, dancing around the fact that they both logically needed to go but seemed to lack the will. “… So I’ll let you get to work, detec-“

“Sergeant, actually,” there was a sense of pride and authority behind her correcting. Both in her voice and eyes. Something Jake couldn’t deny suited her incredibly well.

“Of course,” he picked up his now corrected point with a cheesy smile. “Why doesn’t that surprise me? I always knew you’d outrank me…” Jake couldn’t entirely tell if it was because of the cold or if it was because she was flattered, but her cheeks definitely bloomed with a shade of pink; just a tiny bit and enough for him to notice. “Anyways, I will let you get to work then, Sergeant…” he made sure to emphasise her new title, which to his enjoyment and suddenly lightly racing heart earned him an even wider smile in return. “Bye then.”

“Bye, Jake,” she smiled, before stepping beside him and picking up where her path had been interrupted.

With each clack of her heeled boots, each sound of her walking away and out of his life again, Jake felt his heart race beneath his increasingly clenching chest. Not that this had to mean anything specific, but it definitely brought along the manifestation of curiosity and the feeling of wanting to know more; he wanted to have a real conversation with her; he wanted to sit down and know her again… He felt his body push him to edge of actually asking which was oddly similar to wanting to throw up. There was nothing to lose or dangerous about catching up, right? They weren’t strangers, simply friends who’d drifted a part. Now was not the time to strive away from his otherwise so straightforward personality.

“Hey! Santiago!” He turned around on the spot, calling for her attention before she could get too far away and drown in New York’s sea of oh so important and busy people. Luckily she hadn’t been in a rush to get away from him and was simply a few feet away. “Would you like to catch up over a drink? Or crappy Chinese food?”

Hating how aware of his question he was, he was thrilled to see her smile at his last comment, resulting in the deflating of his question’s denseness.

“That…” She paused for a second, before realising that she was about to overthink it all which would mean giving the situation more meaning than actually needed. They were old colleagues, for Christ’s sake! Catching up was normal. Not weird. Not meaningful. Just… normal. Besides that there was this muted, constant thumping in her chest and gut. Somehow it was telling her that saying no would be betraying herself more than anything or anyone else. He had been her friend before, so it made sense that he hypothetically could become it again. “That would be nice, Peralta. Let’s do that. You still have my number right?”

Almost like he’d been holding his breath in anticipation (which he hadn’t ‘cause this was just Amy; Amy his old partner and friend), Jake breathed out a reply. “Yes! Awesome uh-  I’ll text you!”

Her smile was accompanied by an approving nod, before she turned back away from him to continue her already twice interrupted journey to work. Apparently Amy Santiago still provoked his blabber mouth; two interruptions wouldn’t let her go without a third. “Or I’ll send an email since you’re apparently so absorbed by those these days.” His half-yelled comment fought its way through the noisy crowd and earned him the impeccable sight of Amy Santiago doing a quick 360 mid-stride, only to send him an iconic eye roll and ‘annoyed but it’s funny’-smile. It all happened so fast, yet in slow motion if you’d asked Jake, and before he knew it Amy continued straight ahead like nothing had happened. Jake could’ve almost (just almost!) sworn to God that he’d never seen anything more thrilling and satisfying than those three seconds that it took her to do that.

She hadn’t changed, had she? And neither had they, had they?

#jake x amy #peraltiago #peraltiago fanfiction #fanfiction #brooklyn nine-nine #b99 #fanfic #jake peralta #amy santiago #jake and amy

[notalk-justthought]

all of them >:3c

ooooh boiiiii time for some gay-ish answers :luigidab:

how tall are you? -5′2

what is your body type? -uhhh idk 

what is your favorite part about your body? -my hands,,, perfect for handholding,,,, 

is your current hair color your natural hair color? -yeah

are you more outgoing or more shy? -shy i guess

are you more femme or butch? -neither

are you tol or smol? -smol

wine mom or vodka aunt? -hard cider cousin

weird habit? -i can’t think of one right now :I

favorite meme? -there are so many memes, i can’t choose lol

do you sing in the shower? -nah

ever used a bow and arrow? -once

are/were you a theatre kid? -kinda? i’ve taken theater classes, but i wasn’t a Theater Kid^TM

have you ever seen a broadway musical? -ye

do you think musicals are cheesy? -they can be

have you ever been a part of a protest or a march? -yeah

favorite Cards Against Humanity Card? -Bees?

last movie you watched? -Grave of the Fireflies 

behind the camera or in front of it? -behind

favorite tv show? -i don’t watch enough shows to say a fav

meaning behind your url -i don’t talk much but boy do i think

reason you joined tumblr -i thought “why not?” and here I am, still here 6 years later

who’s your closest tumblr friend? -probs @one-for-all-plus-ultra 

what’s something most people love that you hate? -something i’m sure, can’t think of it rn

have you ever taken narcotics? -nope

have you had sex? -no

have you ever gotten caught sneaking out or doing anything bad? -nothing really bad, just dumb on my part

worst/funniest lie you’ve ever told? -idk

describe your passion without mentioning it. -idk uhhh

describe your best friend. -successful, taller than me, gives great hugs, knows what she’s doing with her life

give us one thing about you that no one knows. -idk if i ever stole something or not cuz I was either really young, or it just happened in a dream, but I’ll never know

how do you feel right now? -im tired

what is your biggest fear? all my friends leaving me

what’s a song that always makes you happy when you hear it? -i cannot think of a song rn

what is the best decision you’ve made in your life so far? -idk if that’s happened yet haha

have you ever tried your hardest and then been disappointed in the end? -yea

something you fantasize about. -being in a healthy relationship :sadclown:

last time you cried and why -last week when I watched Grave of the Fireflies

what was the last thing that made you laugh? -some video on tumblr idk what it was

do you really, truly miss someone right now? -*yeah britney spears gif*

who do you feel most comfortable talking to about anything? -myself

the last time you felt broken? -probably earlier this year

are you starting to realize anything? -there’s so much going on and idk what i’m gonna do with my life

are you more dominant or more submissive? -idk

i’ll only date you if _____. (fill in the blank) -fuck dude idk my own dating standards

do you prefer to date people the same age as you, younger, or older? -older

describe the person you’re in love with/have a crush on in great detail. -n/a

do you have any kinks? -let’s not talk about it

first thing you notice in a person? -their humor

how can someone win your heart? -if you can cook good food,,, gotdam

been rejected by a crush? -ye

have you ever had feelings for someone who didn’t have them back? -oH YEAH ;-;

would you have sex with the last person you text messaged? -no, that’d be real awkward

is trust a big issue for you? -yeah 

did you hang out with the person you like recently? -no

is confidence cute? -i guess 

what would you say if the person you love/like kissed another girl/boy? -good for them (if i liked someone)

would you be able to date someone who doesn’t make you laugh? -no, gotta have similar a sense of humor

does the person you have feelings for right now know you do? -no, i don’t have a crush

ever embarrass yourself in front of a crush? -probably

do you want to get married -maybe, maybe not

worst thing you’ve ever done? -i don’t wanna say

three things that turn you on. -idk lol

who do you hate? -no one 

favorite term of endearment? -baby or love or my love 

who was your celebrity/fictional gay awakening? -there are so many,,,, one was vanessa hudgens for celebs, Elizabeth Swan in pirate of the Caribbean 

intimidating girls or kind girls? -kind with some intimidation

what do you look for in a possible partner? -good humor, good communication skills, can be silly and serious

do you tend to like more masculine, feminine, or androgynous girls? -androgynous

are you good at flirting? -haha nope

who was the first person you came out to? -daria

do you have any friends who are wlw? -yeah

is your crush wlw? -i dont have a crush

last person to make you reconsider your sexuality? -idk

write a short love poem to your crush/self? -i haven’t

do you fall in love easily? -sometimes

is there something that happened in your past that you hate talking about? -yeah

are you good at hiding your feelings? -kind of?

are you a forgiving person? -yeah

what is your “type?” -i dont even know anymore

fall asleep in her arms or rub her back until she falls asleep in yours? -rub her back until she falls asleep in my arms

tall girls or short girls? -yeAH

hugs or kisses? -hugs

twirl her around or get twirled? -twirl her around

tummy kisses or thigh kisses? -thigh,,

hairline kisses or neck kisses? -neck

play with her hair or stroke her tummy? -play with her hair

making out or soft kisses? -soft,,, kis,,,

hugs around the neck or hugs around the waist? -i just like hugs okay

how confident are you in your sexuality? -sometimes

when you like someone do you blush or get butterflies in your stomach? -yeah,,,

have you ever liked a friend as more than a friend? did you tell them? -yeah,, but i didn’t tell them 

how old were you when you realized you were into girls? -uhh fully, like 15

most embarrassing thing you’ve done in front of a cute girl? -something i’m sure lol

do you have a favorite lesbian ship? is it canon? -yumikuri back in my snk days.... was canon, but not good enough :sadclown:

what is the most aggravating thing someone has said to you about your sexuality? -no one’s told me anything bad to my face about my sexuality

when was the last time a girl made your heart flutter? -like early 2018

what is love to you? -i think it’s when you can be open with others and be there for them, and just be yourself around them. 

#ask #one-for-all-plus-ultra

[moonguardsecrets]

hi im berenal

So I'd like to preface by saying I don't really use this blog too much, I mostly read it every now and again but that's about it. I've been relatively quiet concerning this issue but frankly I don't think that's the right way to go about it anymore, so I'm just going to address some stuff.

I've always believed in being pretty transparent about my issues, especially beef with other people. So while this blog is all about being anonymous, I'm just going to put up my side of this whole thing.

1. Concerning my guild/our story. There's a post I've seen pop up a few times that we've accused Blizzard of copying our stuff for Drustvar. While there's some striking similarities between some of our stuff and Drustvar, we know that Blizzard doesn't care about some random guild on MG. It was a meme. Maybe it's cause sarcasm gets lost in text, idk, but we've never actually believed that our stuff was stolen. We've actually fully embraced the similarities and have been super looking forward to the Drust stuff cause it's a cool concept, but this idea that we've somehow been slighted by Blizzard/earnestly believe that there was a copy thing isn't true. It was a joke that I guess went over poorly outside of our guild. We still say it as a joke in our casual conversations, accusing a specific guild mate of being a blizzard spy whenever something funny happens. It's a little outlandish to me personally that it got taken seriously but hey I'm not going to point a finger around, I'm just clarifying that the Blades as a group doesn't actually think this.

As for my character, which I've seen people saying I try to roleplay Greymane, thanks I guess? Berenal as a character is meant to be insanely patriotic. If they ever turned Genn into a villain, Berenal would follow him, unless it was done so in a really weird way like old gods or something overtly obvious. The character is meant to echo Greymane's statements, but I've never tried to pass myself off as Genn IC or state I have absolute authority from him or whatever.

Our guild is centered around Gilneas foremost and we put a lot of our narrative in-house rather than post it up publicly because we don't believe in forcing an intrusive narrative. I know I've been accused of such personally when Flames of War was doing Ashenvale, though I'll address that a bit later.

2. Concerning the titles of ranks in the guild. Recently a post came out, which was deleted because it did include the name explicitly of our stuff, that was talking about a title given to one of my officers. The post included a mistranslation, saying it translated to queen. That's just blatantly not true. For some background, the position was a recent creation because our previous council system wasn't working too well for this branch so we downsized it to the main officer in charge of the branch of the guild.

Given that this is our pagan project, and they have their own language (which yes, we do proxy with Irish cause I'm not a linguist and I don't have the means or time to make my own language up), we used an amalgam of a few words to describe it. The title roughly translates to an arbitrator of law/leader of law. Not king, not queen. In fact it's not even a noble position either, it's an elected one that if Aleyina were to ever step down, it'd go to whoever was elected next. We use the title Grand Master, Spymaster, Rionasai, and a few others throughout the guild. They're all on the same level of 'power', and countless other guilds have similar structure. I'm not sure what drove the need to lie about that but I'd just like to clear that misconception up before I go into my next point.

3. Concerning the pagan project in my guild. My guild has had a pagan project in it for roughly 4-5 years. I put up the original article for it about almost a year after we started it. It's a story I personally started back in Mists of Pandaria and have cultivated alongside several others for years, it's something I only recently managed to hand off into other people's hands for running it because I couldn't focus on it, I have other narratives and stories that I tell in my guild, but here's the proof of how old this story is. (Note, at the time the Pagans were called "Wickers", which is actually where the whole drust meme even comes from on our side.)

https://i.imgur.com/7rgG9t5.png

I was fascinated with the bare minimal lore that Blizzard provided for the Old Ways and Harvest Witches/Wizards that I tried to expand on that by making a group of people based around the ideology of an expanded religion that roots its self from a common point in druidism.

What started originally as a side group grew into an entire branch of our guild and has since been something I've personally invested years worth of time growing and developing as a writing project alongside others. We've made a point of making nearly everything in this branch original content and it's at the point it's at after four to five years of growth and development alongside the main narrative of the guild. It's a project that I have personally cultivated with the help of others for years and has been personally invested into by the guild as a whole through nearly three expansions now.

On top of it, a while ago we were accused of having said our runes were celtic or something. That's not true. They're stylized elder futhark, we've never bothered to hide that. In fact, I've attached some images below.

https://i.imgur.com/q5MHveU.png

This is an image from Varian's grave in Stormwind. The runes are translatable elder futhark, and this is the closest representation to Common we have in the game.

https://i.imgur.com/C9jc7sG.png

This is an image from Haustvald in Stormheim. These runes too are Elder Futhark, though they've been slightly stylized and include some runes that are gibberish it's meant to represent Vrykul. The angle's a little bad but if you go there in game Elder Futhark is literally lining most of Stormheim. You can translate these as well, it's pretty nifty.

The premise of our written language for the project we have for runes has never been 'celtic', we just based it off whatever Blizzard ended up saying was 'humanity's language'. Our group takes some minor inspiration from norse and celtic themes, but the majority of it is original writing, and the runes themselves are based around the idea of having descended from vrykul runes; so we just kept to the format that Blizz themselves are using for humans in the game.

4. Concerning Flames of War. While this one has largely died down, I'd still like to address it. Flames of War is a team effort, something with over ten coordinators that all of us still actively communicate with one another fairly regularly. During this time I'd been claimed as a dictator, or that I was giving special attention to myself/my own. Flames of War has never been solely 'dictated' by my actions. Every major decision has been either voted on or come to consensus one way or another, including story decisions. Sure I'm the dude who made the server but I've forfeited any real 'power' that gives me in favor of a council system. Ergo, if you're mad at me for something that happened in Flames of War, I highly encourage you to re-assess the things that happened and either speak to myself or another coordinator. We're not in this for some weird power play or whatever, this is a video game in the end of the day and unlike some past 'moguls of the server', I'm earnestly just looking to make my virtual barbie doll be in some cool situations, not make him grand poobah of the alliance or whatever. I can speak on behalf of the rest of the team and say they feel the exact same way.

5. Concerning our adherence to lore. I know there's been some people who have accused my guild of breaking lore/saying I don't care about lore. Anyone who knows me knows I'm a giant lore fanatic and for whatever reason people use me like an almanac in a few servers for lore questions. I really honestly do try to keep the boundaries of my guild within reasonable lore parameters. Despite the rumors, no, my character doesn't have regular casual chats with Genn Greymane, no, our lands are not 'flawless with millions of gold and soldiers', no, we don't RP like we run Gilneas either. All we're trying to do is have fun with the game and tell a story of a rundown kingdom trying to get back on it's feet.

6. Concerning deleted secrets. Yes, I've requested secrets be deleted before because, honestly, ever since this nick-name stuff started it's stopped being remotely ambiguous. Sword of Genn isn't even remotely ambiguous. Neither is Knives of Greymane, that's just changing one word. The rules for the blog on the side state anything that can be considered trolling or abuse of anonymity is grounds for removal of secrets; so I've just used those rules since honestly, a lot of these are really weird accusations. Each time I've been willing/or have provided screenshots to prove the contrary. Not all secrets concerning my guild have been deleted; only the ones that break the rules. This segways into my final point.

As I said at the beginning of this huge post, I've always been a believer of transparency. If you have issue with me, or any of my guild mates, I'm honestly imploring people to contact me over Discord or in game. My tag is:

Berenal#0693 In game it's just Berenal, no weird letters. I'll be online in Boralus.

You don't need to contact me on your main account if you're afraid I'm going to 'out you' or whatever. Any conversation we have will be one on one between us. You can even delete it afterwards, I don't mind. So come to me on a throw-away discord account, let it out to my face, or maybe we can even hash out our differences. I'm more interested in getting this shit done with than trying to start a flame war, honestly. In the end of the day this is a game to me and mine, and we're all paying 15 bucks a month to have fun. I've cleared out my block list entirely, so there's nothing stopping people from contacting me.

I do hope folks reach out so we can hash our differences out and do our own thing, instead of whatever vendetta seems to have brewed up over play pretend for god knows what reason. I earnestly don't understand the point of the majority of these vitriolic posts; it just seems to subsist off the idea of throwing words around for what real reason? To upset people? I don't get it. I don't see what posting incessantly here about it does to fix anything.

If you've got issue with me or my guys come talk to me about it, my door's open.

[izzyfandoms]

Centuries - Chapter Two

This is basically just an angsty human au (with magic) Sanders Sides fanfic.

Pairings - Mentions Prinxiety and Logicality (more focus on Logicality in this chapter) and platonic Logince.

Chapter Warnings - Mentions Death and Mentions Major Character Death and grieving. Let me know if I should tag anything else.

Taglist - @royallyanxious @itsjustmeandmisterfinch @fight-or-flight-amirite @memepool1 @some-lost-meme-boi @quillfics42 @ajdraws0430 @sanderstalker @quietlypondering @so-many-fandoms-in-kc @applecantbebothered @shippernaturalsanderspjoandscifi @rileyfirstname @creativity-killed-thekitten

Masterpost

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Three

----------------------

It was just a normal day... at least, that’s what Roman had thought when he woke up.

Although it was a Saturday, so neither of them worked that day, Logan still got up bright and early, just like he did on every other day of the week. He had been sitting at their kitchen table, sipping coffee and reading a book about space, when Roman walked in. He was dressed in his pristine white prince outfit and gave Logan a wide grin when he stepped in the room.

"Morning, Nerd, did you make me coffee too?"

They both preferred to talk out loud to keep up the illusion of normality. That is, unless they had some reason not to.

Logan didn’t look up from his book or open his mouth to respond and he instead replied telepathically: ‘No, I didn’t think you’d be up so early. You’re not needed at the theatre today.’

Usually, Roman would complain over-dramatically in situations like this, but he could sense Logan building up an internal wall between them. He was hiding something. So, as Roman moved around their slightly cramped kitchen, making his coffee and humming a Disney song, he searched his brain for the reason as to why Logan felt this way.

When he realised, he nearly dropped his mug in shock.

Roman sent feelings of concern and sympathy to Logan as he spun around to face him, taking note of the way Logan’s hands clutched the book tightly, as if it would just disappear if he let go. "I’m so sorry."

‘It’s fine.’

"No, really, I should have realised it’s today."

Logan still didn’t look up. ‘It’s okay.’

"I should have remembered. How could I have forgotten? I always remember it! Just as you always remember mine!" Roman leaned back on the counter behind him and ran a hand through his hair. "I’m so sorry, Logan."

This seemed to be the last straw for Logan as he dropped the book and stood up, glaring at Roman as he snapped. "I said it’s fine, Roman." There was a beat of silence before his gaze and his voice softened. "I... I just..."

The wall he had built between the two crashed and Roman felt an almost overwhelming wave of grief and sadness hit him all at once.

Logan pushed his glasses up his nose, hoping they would hide the tears forming in his eyes. ‘I just miss him so much.’

Roman moved forward to pull him into a tight hug. ‘I know, so do I.’

They stayed like that for a few minutes, their connection more open than usual as feelings and memories of the past flowed freely between them and tears flowed freely down their faces.

"Happy anniversary. I just wish Patton was here to spend it with you."

A loud sob was heard, followed by a voice replying shakily. "Me too."

After a few moments, Logan pulled away, grabbing two tissues from the box on the table and giving one to Roman before drying his own eyes with the other. He then stood up straight and spoke again, trying to make his voice more serious and emotionless.

"It won’t do me any good to dwell on the past." He ignored the look Roman gave him. "I should just try to forget about him and move on. That’s the most logical thing to do."

"Logan..."

"No, Roman, you can’t change my mind."

Roman sighed, he knew that Logan wouldn’t give in easily, especially not on a day like today, so the best course of action seemed to be to leave the subject alone. He wouldn’t let Logan just give up, but this was a conversation for another day. So, he used his sleeve to wipe away any leftover tears and plastered the (fake) smile back onto his face.

"Well then, what are we doing today?" Roman began, and when Logan opened his mouth to answer, he continued. "And no, I’m not letting you stay home and mark homework all day. We’re going out. Let’s live this life to the fullest, who knows where we’ll end up next."

Logan looked like he was about to argue, and he usually would, but, instead, he just sighed and agreed. "Fine, just let me get dressed first." He gestured to the crumpled pyjamas he was currently wearing.

Roman laughed and joked. "No, you have to come on a walk dressed just like that."

It took Logan a few moments to realise that it was sarcasm and, when he did, he just rolled his eyes at Roman and turned away to walk back to his bedroom to change.

When he returned, he saw Roman laying on the couch, taking up the whole thing and typing something on his phone. Through the connection, he knew that Roman was texting one of his friends from work, someone named Valerie. They were probably just having a casual conversation that Logan had no interest in, so he didn’t pay the conversation itself much attention, but he did have one question for Roman.

"Why?"

Roman glanced over his phone at Logan. "What?"

"Why do you waste time making friends? We’re going to die soon anyway, there’s no point befriending people. You’ll just lose them in the end."

Normally, Roman would have gotten defensive, the duo bickered about things like this all the time. But he knew that today wasn’t the day for that. So, instead, his voice softened and he put his phone down.

"You’re right. We will die soon and I will lose all my friends in the end, I know that. But that doesn’t mean I should stop making friends." All of a sudden, he leapt over the back of the couch to stand next to Logan and put his hands on the shorter man’s shoulders. "We can’t let this control us. No matter what’s happening to us, we can still live our lives. We can still pursue our dreams and make friends. We can’t let this stop us."

Logan paused for a second before sighing reluctantly. "I suppose you’re right-"

"I know I am." Roman smiled smugly and Logan almost wanted to take it back. "Now, we’re going to go on a walk to clear our heads, so go change and then we can go."

"Okay- wait... why do I have to change?" Logan looked down at himself, he was wearing a blue polo shirt, a black tie and black trousers. "I’m already dressed."

"You can’t go out like that! You look like a teacher."

A confused look was starting to form on Logan’s face as he looked up at Roman. "But, Roman, I am a teacher."

Roman gave a long exaggerated sigh. "Fine, but don’t blame me if you realise that that’s not the outfit to go on a walk in. People will judge you."

"Says the fully grown man dressed up like a Disney prince." Logan responded dryly, arms crossed.

It took fifteen minutes of bickering for them to finally leave the house and start walking. Eventually, they reached a small nearby park by a pond that reminded them of a pond in the courtyard of Roman’s old castle. The one from their first life. It was sometimes painful to visit there, considering how similar it looked to the original, but the happy memories it brought back made it worth it.

‘Patton and I had our first date by that pond.’

Roman turned to look at Logan and, when he saw the tears forming in the other man’s eyes, he grabbed his best friend’s hand and squeezed it. He already knew this story, having heard it millions of times, but he listened anyway.

‘Remember? I had finally summoned enough courage to tell him how I felt, after months of you annoying me about it.’ Logan removed his glasses to wipe his eyes with his hand before placing them back on his face. ‘I told him on this day, three years before we died. We spent the rest of that day by the pond together.’

Roman squeezed his hand again and was about to reply telepathically when they heard something behind them.

"Gurl, you will not believe what I just heard!" That voice... it sounded very familiar. "She was, like, totally cheating on him. But then he found out and cheated on her with, get this, her brother. I know! I know! TBH I would too if I was him, but I would, like, never have gotten together with someone like her in the first place. Cos, like, I’ve still got standards."

Roman and Logan glanced at each other in shock before Logan let go of Roman’s hand and they both spun around quickly. Pacing back and forth by a nearby tree was a very familiar looking man talking loudly on his phone. They hadn’t seen him in years, centuries even, and, even though he was clutching a Starbucks cup and wearing a leather jacket and sunglasses (instead of being dressed like a knight and holding a sword), they recognised him immediately.

The man stopped walking suddenly and went silent for a second, looking around himself suspiciously. His eyes passed over Logan and Roman as if they weren’t even there before he started talking again.

"I have, like, no idea where I am." He then continued to converse with whoever was on the other end of the phone like nothing had happened.

But something had happened. Logan and Roman recognised him and both of them had gone silent: questions and exclamations moving rapidly throughout their connected minds.

It was Remy.

#sanders sides #logicality #prinxiety #platonic logince #angst #human au #magic au #reincarnation au #death #mentions death #major character death #logan sanders #roman sanders #patton sanders #virgil sanders #remy sanders #centuries chapter two #centuries au #chapter two #writing

[ualscout]

Captain’s Log: Cask of Amontillado 10x

I totally misunderstood the prompt initially and did a week of preproduction for a project I would end up abandoning…

I was assigned Flowers for Algernon, which hit really close to home for me. Losing my intelligence or memories is by far my worst fear and I saw a lot of good imagery to the story I could use in a simple but meaningful animation. I wanted to represent intelligence by flower height in a garden. The main character, Charlie, is a small sunflower (flowers known for their height) and other flowers bend down to interact with him. Some help him and some mock him. The different characters would have different flower types to represent their personalities. Charlie’s flower starts low to the ground, where Algernon can be seen scurrying around the ground, and the two scientists start to help it grow taller. As the flower grows taller and taller, it shows how Charlie is not only isolated by idiocy, but the intelligence he thought would help him relate to his peers better isolates him as well. The petals on him become more and more elaborate and big, and Charlie’s flower comes to represent the sun in the sky. Then he starts to wilt. He struggles as he goes back to what he used to be, trying to fight back, then giving up. Once the withered husk of the sunflower is left, someone picks the flower and puts it on top of a grave labeled Algernon. Do you know how much easier this project would be if I just stuck to that?

I wrote the script, did a ton of character exploration, and started designing characters. After all that, I decided to scrap everything and do “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allen Poe. Even though the story is dark in tone, I always saw it as comical. I mean, this guy just walks right into a very obvious trap. It’s so PAINFULLY obvious. The story is kind of a meme in the American educational system, and even online. I think I could tell the same story 10+ over in an even shorter amount of time...

I started with writing a series of situations similar to how the murder happens. It’s always some sort of betrayal with very little blood on the murderer’s hands. I wrote a series of short scenarios, ranging from tense with actual dialogue to basic internet jokes the modern high schooler would understand (we read it in like 9th grade, the kids need an abridged version). One included the character getting tricked into getting possessed, one is the character foolishly saying yes to a “free candy” van, one was getting hooked on addictive stuff from drugs, tabletop gaming, and bad social media sites like reddit, one is him just being yote off a cliff, one is a callback to the Cincinnati Zoo incident that I couldn’t finish storyboarding not out of lack of time but because of moral obligation and guilt. Anyways, they get increasingly absurd and stupid. I was challenged to fit as many as I could into one minute.

The script underwent a ton of revisions, this was the most time I’ve spent on a script. It was hard because I had to shave off as much as I could, but I think it made the stories better. They’re not supposed to be long set up jokes, it’s a series of punchlines. The joke is set up in the intro, when the characters meet in the original setting and say abridged versions of the lines. Everything else is what happens after. 

One thing that was challenging, but fun, was the character design. Since the characters change outfits, have their faces covered, are often not fully in the shot, and otherwise obscured, I had to design characters that were identifiable by every single angle. That means I had to really stretch the shape of the characters and lean into the cartoonish nature of design. One is a warm and innocent character, so I made him more likable and approachable with a bigger body but shorter stature. The other character is more cunning and harsh, so I gave him harsh angles and lines with a tall pointy stature. I tried to keep both of them in as similar a style as possible, and I think I did alright. Still used a lot more lines than I should of- whenever the characters had to have lined clothes, it was hell to draw. In retrospect, the physical dynamic is similar to two characters I used to draw a lot of in high school... 

The character designs had a base, but the outfits changed. I designed the costumes based on what I needed in the moment, so they weren’t filled with thought, unlike the first ones in the masquerade. I was just playing with shots and angles mainly, keeping information from the viewer and getting the drama across without heavy pauses or shots, just by angles. I also liked drawing the characters with the style, I kept it very simple and it made the process much easier. 

I also considered sound design heavily while the script was being written. I made a list of sound effects I would need for each scene, a list of songs to download for background music, and audio cues. I also designed one if the characters around a voice actor I already had in mind. The other character, I was entertaining using text to speech. 

I got much more comfortable with animating in Photoshop, which was nice. It’s still annoying keeping track of the frames and not drawing on the wrong frame, though. I need one of those set ups for animating on paper, just don’t know where to get one… I have a Lightbox, just need the paper and hole puncher. I found a lot of cool tricks in animating Photoshop, like taking advantage of stretching a frame and using layers. The style I was aiming for was very quick, yet stiff, and I had a lot of issues getting that style completely. It’s something I have to work on, but it all just felt too fluid. 

… I wasn’t able to finish this project. 

It was a lot, even when I cut it all down. I had big dreams and not a lot of time. I also had a bad case of depression which I’ve been dealing with since winter break. It all just felt like an uphill battle. I had so many ideas and stuff I wanted to do, but I couldn’t be happy with what I did or always ran into roadblocks which I would ignore for working on something else. Like, I was working on the project in some way, just not in a way that would help me progress in the way I needed. 

I liked connecting, writing, and concepting it all, but when it came down to animating it, it was just too much to do. I did learn a lot about Photoshop animation and feel a bit better using it, but I do need to learn aftereffects so I can use flat images and animations together more effectively. 

I enjoyed being able to flex my comedic writing skills and push them to the limit. My last comedic venture was more about telling a story with the assistance of a joke that already existed, but this one was coming up with new ways to tell the same punchline in increasingly comedic and unpredictable ways. The audience should know how the joke starts and ends, but how the joke gets to the end is the fun and mysterious part. Writing was where I felt my energy was most effectively spent even if it wasn’t the thing I spent the most actual time on (that would go to struggling with ProCreate and Photoshop). I did get to figure out my drawing and animation style a lot more effectively, though. How I draw characters feels a bit more established and defined, which does feel good. However, I think I need to start even smaller and just work on making small second animations or something. 

Anyways…

Your move, Poe. 

[thereoncewereflwrs]

in where my body is an anthology, and literature knows more about people then we do

Today I feel ugly, my facial features angular and put together in a way that makes me feel like someone cut pieces of faces from a magazine and placed them together to create me. My clothes feel confining, probably because I haven’t worn regular clothes since lockdown and probably because I’m fat and most of my clothes fit this way anyway. Today I crave a discipline my body and mind cannot give, and this desire makes me melancholy and agitated. I keep thinking about this boy - or man, because he’s over 25 and at this stage even if we don’t feel like adults we are still deemed thus by society - who sent me a link to a tumblr page at 4 in the morning last night. I had been asleep, going to bed as early as 6 or 7 these days with little energy spent, but had woken up to the link and a casual text forewarning of nudity. The post, titled “why chloe moretz eating spaghetti from wooden boxes? why everyone lookin in the camera?? WHY SOME DUDE SUCKIN DICK???” (linked) had several comments below the picture (which showed exactly what was titled - Chloe Moretz eating spaghetti, several people in the room looking directly at the camera, and two dudes in the back, with their pants down, glimpsing over their shoulders at the camera while one of them received oral stimulation by another man). The comments all posed questions about the absurdity of this picture, revealing pieces of it to be false or photoshopped, and finally presenting the “legitimate” picture of the two men receiving blow jobs, that culminated in a scene with a large black bear walking casually by as they did. I’m confused by this, and if I’m honest, I’m also disturbed. It’s not that I’m without a sense of humor. Most of the time I believe my humor to be flexible and sarcastic, as long as it’s not offensive or insensitive. But like most of the absurdities of men, I’m confounded as to where the humor of such a post lies. Is it the homosexual blow job itself? Is it the actress consuming a meal in public? Or the fact that someone decided to photoshop such random components together in an attempt towards the casualness of such absurdity? Clearly there is something humorous about this, otherwise it wouldn’t have received such attention (241,846 notes on tumblr), and I’m left thinking that maybe I’m more ordinary and less obscene in my character after all. But beyond that, I wonder why this man decided to send me this at the time that he did. How did he come upon the link? And why, at a time when you can presume a stranger to be asleep, did he think of me and decide to send it? 

We had met only once before, and had been talking casually for the last couple of weeks. This mostly consisted of me listening to him talk about how tired, stressed and hopeless he was about the current state of his life and the world in general. It has not been an unusual connection; most of my intimate interactions with men have been like this - men needing to be heard and I playing the role of a vessel to be poured into. It’s only lately that I’ve found the act of “making space” rudimentarily extractive and imbalanced. And a lie to myself. There have been these small ways in which I’ve consented to this “extractive” practice, you see. Listening endlessly to men talk about their unloving fathers, their insecurities around mediocre sexual performance, their lack of careers or intelligence, any culmination of experiences that they deem traumatic, etc., This willingness towards extraction on my end has come about from a configuration of ideas I’ve put together in order to convince myself that this is the ultimate level of intimacy, and thus one I’ve been craving all along (to know what is not knowable to others, to know what hurts or is tender or needs healing). 

In other ways I’ve not consented to what’s been extracted - my body, my emotional entanglements, my intelligence, my victimhood that comes along with the rage of my own vulnerability. Tumblr-man is not different or far from this pattern of giving and taking, of capturing both the spaces available and the spaces I wish to be beyond grasp. I considered a series of actions to acknowledge the text he sent me, to reduce awkwardness and thus affirm that he was not wrong in sending me adult porn unsolicited or without evidence of past history of such behavior being acceptable. I considered creating further space through question and curiosity, to let him know that while I might not have appreciated it, nothing was off limits when he deemed it actionable. But as of now I can only muster enough energy to think about my own psychological patterns. My contract with this phenomenon (the “rudimentary extractive” one) makes me want to dig deeper into the superficial agreement of our relationship, to a place where I reach farther then surface level grief or joy. I want to hear, and have heard, deeper sensory, sensational information that at once makes me feel as much as the person is feeling by telling me something they’ve never considered uttering to a stranger before. I know this is just my own lack of experience around me. I am bored and perhaps numb from the lackluster stimuli that is at my disposal, and thus I want to find it in others - in men - so that it can replace my sense of unworthiness in myself with a false, brief sense of importance to someone else.  

I’ve lived in the South almost all my life. I’m more regionally Southern then most of my current peers, and yet, the culture of ‘Southern living’ did not meet me until I moved to rural Tennessee. Here we eat boiled peanuts (a practice I learned came from the dietary patterns of civil war soldiers) and biscuits with gravy and sometimes fried chicken. Here the tea is sweetened unbearably so, and moonshine is a thing, although never anywhere authentically anymore. More then anything my fat body despairs at these dietary rituals. I feel alienated from my own practices and find it hard to enjoy things. It’s really not that uncommon, however. As a millennial, feelings of alienation and displacement are common.

Tumblr-man (which previously I’d deemed LARPeg - since he both enjoys this strange phenomenon called live action role playing, and being pegged) tells me he is jealous of my ability to enjoy reading. He, in a bizarre series of events, is a Creative Writings major at an obscure liberal arts college in Asheville, NC (the same one, he informs me, that James Franco went to). He tells me that he really “likes the idea of dropping a big plot piece...” and that “writing a big, long, cheeky complaint with lots of pith is very attractive” to him. He recommends I read ‘Consider the Lobster’ by David Foster Wallace, and I do, mostly because I’ve read everything he’s sent my way thus far, and I wasn’t going to prove my own behavioral patterns wrong that day. He sends me memes about Dungeons and Dragons and LARPing that I assume I’m suppose to understand but I do not, although by his own admission, an immigrant like me is not meant to, and is hardly to blame for not understanding “cultural references.” I don’t get it, either LARPing or D&D, but I read both essay assignments he wrote for the semester around a fictional LARPing scenario. I do this because he’s a socialist, and half Venezuelan, and because I can’t help my own internal desire to show a man that I am fully engulfed in his own preferences and passions. I am not entirely foolish, I express my own passions and desires, and hardly authentically adopt theirs, but if he does not ask I do not say, because it’s always easier to listen and be seen listening, then to explain and feel the potential signs of disinterest and boredom. I am not boring. But men can be, and I do not wish to engage with bored men. Anyways, I read ‘Consider the Lobster’, the essay in the book titled the same, and it was, surprisingly, spectacular. How thrilling that something, anything, this particular man had suggested spoke to me in such a way. I preceded to read reviews and an excerpt from a New York Times article titled “How Should a Book Sound? And What About Footnotes?” in where DFW says “Most poetry is written to ride on the breath, and getting to hear the poet read it is kind of a revelation and makes the poetry more alive. But with certain literary narrative writers like me, we want the writing to sound like a brain voice, like the sound of the voice inside of the head, and the brain voice is faster, is absent any breath, and it holds together grammatically rather than sonically." I find this beyond interesting - it jolts me deep down where I safe keep my ideas around literature and its realities. I want to send it to Tumblr-man because it reminded me so specifically of what he had said right before recommending DFW: “I only recently have come to understand that the real sort of fingerprint of a writer can be where they place periods and commas. Because “She left, yesterday.” And “She left. Yesterday.” Sound similar if read aloud but read differently.” I wonder now if he, too, read this quote and had his sense of literature jolted in an inexplicable, but concrete way. 

I’ve once again picked up ‘Normal People’ by Sally Rooney. Thus far, my favorite lines are as follows (of the first U.S edition by Hogarth publishing group):

“This “what?” Question seems to him to contain so much: not just the forensic attentiveness to his silence that allows her to ask in the first place, but a desire for real communication, a sense that anything unsaid is an unwelcome interruption between them” (pg 26);

“One night the library started closing just as he reached the passage in Emma when it seems like Mr. Knightley is going to marry Harriet, and he had to close the book and walk home in a state of strange emotional agitation. He’s amused at himself, getting wrapped up in the drama of novels like that. It feels intellectually unserious to concern himself with fictional people marrying one another. But there it is: literature moves him. One of his professors calls it “the pleasure of being touched by great art.” In those words it almost sounds sexual. And in a way, the feeling provoked in Connell when Mr. Knightley kisses Emma’s hand is not completely asexual, though its relation to sexuality is indirect. It suggests to Connell that the same imagination he uses as a reader is necessary to understand real people also, and to be intimate with them” (pg 72);

“Connell paused and took another drag on his cigarette. This was probably the most horrifying thing Eric could have said to him, not because it ended his life, but because it didn’t. He knew then that the secret for which he had sacrificed his own happiness and the happiness of another person had been trivial all along, and worthless” (pg 80);

“He kisses her closed eyelids. It’s not like this with other people, she says. Yea, he says. I know. She senses there are things he isn’t saying to her. She can’t tell whether he’s holding back a desire to pull away from her, or a desire to make himself more vulnerable somehow” (pg 96).

I am struck by the way the book’s composition demonstrates a realness unfamiliar to the readings I often take on. The book reads the way people speak, and cares very little about the grammatical composition of words/sentences. Instead, characters and their thoughts and the narrators own mind speak the way one speaks in ones mind, unfiltered, scattered with anxiety and directness, with an approach to ones own truth above all else. ‘Normal People’ reads almost opposite to the narrative guidelines David Foster Wallace deems necessary, and yet, it embodies his sentiment almost as if the two had been birthed from one another. I wish I and those around me were as brave and as vulnerable as the compilation of sentences in this book. And yet, we’d all fall apart doing so. I want to recommend ‘Normal People’ to Tumblr-man, along with a series of other writings I have not yet finished but have found impactful nonetheless. I know, ultimately, that I won’t, in the same way I won’t send the NYT’s article. Maybe this is an inability to be seen on my end, or a foolish willingness to be something for somebody else without being an actual something to that somebody. Or maybe it’s too much labor and I’m satisfied with thinking through these things on my own, knowing the depth of my own thoughts without needing them to be seen or understood. In the same way my ears strain and struggle to hear noise while wearing my noise canceling headphones while no music plays, my body strains and struggles, leaping for noise and yet feeling bound by the confines the lack of it creates. 

I think about my own mortality often, and wonder whether this existence, this very moment even, I am dead or dying, with only a delusion of existence playing forth in my mind. These thoughts cause congruent sensations in me - anxiety, because of the potential of this reality that has not been proven incorrect or impossible in my mind, and strangely, a dissociation that elevates me beyond that anxiety. I think to myself, and know deep in my bones, that it is true, that it turns out I’ve been dead all along, and that my body has just been decomposing in motion this whole time, waiting for my bones to turn to ash.