#I COULD HAVE BEEN A FUNCTIONAL ADULT BUT NO. NO. INSTEAD I SAY WEIRD SHIT AND CANT TALK TO PEOPLE

[slocumjoe]

I know a lot of people like the "all synths are autistic" thing and i understand, but the idea that they intentionally made Danse like that is so fucking funny to me, and the idea that X6-88 just ended up like that is even fucking funnier

#danse gets diagnosed somehow and has a fucking fit #YOU COULD HAVE MADE ME A PERFECT SPECIMEN #WHY DID YOU MAKE ME HATE CERTAIN TEXTURES AND BAD WITH EYE CONTACT??? WHAT THE FUCK #I COULD HAVE BEEN A FUNCTIONAL ADULT BUT NO. NO. INSTEAD I SAY WEIRD SHIT AND CANT TALK TO PEOPLE #meanwhile x6 gets diagnosed and is like yes? and? #call it whatever you want. you wish you were me #a perfect specimen. flawless in every way #perhaps they should make more synths like danse and i #(danse losing his last marble in the background) #fallout 4 #fo4 #paladin danse #X6-88

[unpretty]

a fact about me is that i was an early bloomer who hit puberty in elementary school and was immediately, obnoxiously horny in ways that were uncomfortable for everyone because no one is prepared for an elementary schooler with b cups and a deep fascination with movies where people get tied up. another fact is that because i was considered smart for my age in the ways that mattered, i just accepted all this as a single package, the many ways that i was not really a child the way other children were children but was instead a miniature adult. i was technically a child, but not really, as far as i was concerned. it also did not occur to me until around high school that i was fat, because i instead considered myself to be sturdy, to be buff, to be built like a tank.

so somewhere around middle school i am noticing the ways in which i am Not Like Other Girls, the ways in which i am not what society says a girl is and the ways that things marketed to girls do not appeal to me. i don't know how other girls dealt with this, but i very rationally decided that i was only technically a girl, in the way that i was only technically a child. so i looked at the things that did appeal to me, and that i did enjoy, and reverse engineered my demographic to decide that on a practical and functional level i was a middle-aged man. i had also gotten really hornily into wolverine because of the first x-men movie, and ended up reading a lot of comics, so as you can imagine the comic book version of wolverine who is short and built like a tank and older than he looks despite being for all intents and purposes a middle aged man really had some appeal to me.

there are idiots who say shit about how tomboys would be considered trans these days or whatever, but i can assure you that was not what was happening here. by middle school i already had to special order bras and i was fine with that because of the many weird fetishes i was developing, none of which can be blamed on the internet because i hadn't found that shit yet and also to this day you would have a hard time finding anything similar to the things i wrote in my secret notebook and immediately destroyed. the fact that i was technically a girl was vital to all this. media where there was a big reveal that some cool dude had been a hot chick the whole time was my shit. weird feral beast people who turned out to be hot women once they took a bath? fuck yes. i would never have cut my hair because that would have ruined my chances to take off a helmet and reveal that i had girl hair. at no point did i think i was anything but a girl, it was just that i was functionally a middle-aged man, who was a girl.

what this means is that i still liked all the things i already liked, such as leather jackets and comic books and anime and old stand-up comedy, but i also did extensive research on the other things i felt i should like according to the demographic i had assigned myself. i watched vh1's 'i love the 70s' with the air of someone trying to hide their amnesia, even though my parents were children in the 70s. i got into the beatles. i tried to get into cars for a while before accepting that i only liked the vintage car aesthetic and couldn't be fucked to know actual car facts. i wore nothing but cargo shorts and aloha shirts for a while, which didn't really stand out that much because it was middle school. i bought a fedora and became a libertarian atheist. i made plans to buy a motorcycle (i could not ride a bike).

i gave up on it after a while because quite frankly my titty situation meant there was never really going to be a big reveal that i'd been a girl the whole time. it was pretty obvious even with the cargo shorts. also the older of a teen i was, the more likely it felt that i could maybe get laid, except i could tell that was never going to happen as long as i kept wearing cargo shorts. it took longer to give up the fedora because it was leather and i wore it with my leather jacket and fingerless gloves, which i convinced myself worked a lot better after i'd gone full high school goth. i lived in the desert so you can imagine how well that worked out for me, smell-wise.

anyway that's how my female socialization went, i don't think it was particularly successful tbqh

#original #the funniest part to me is the vh1 thing #i watched so much vh1 while inexplicably behaving as if i was already familiar with everything i was seeing

[maggicsorceress]

I have so so very much to say about Chayanne and Tallulah so buckle up mfer’s this one is gonna be a long one!!!

Ahem, now that that’s out of the way…

I’ve been thinking a lot about these two while they were away, and especially now that they’re back. I was thinking to myself that they were really starting to give me the vibe of two siblings who have become MASSIVELY codependent on each other. And for a while I was all “oh they’re kids and it’s adorable so I’m gonna let this slide”, and while I do still think they’re adorable, since they’ve came back it’s become really blatantly obvious how attached to each other they are.

There’s nothing wrong with that! They basically have grown up together, been through a lot of traumatizing shit, and have rarely if at all left each other’s side during all those months that Tallulah lived with them. It makes sense that they’d be very attached to each other.

But I think now that Tallulah has started to really embrace the fact that Wilbur is probably not coming back, and she’s starting to move forward and heal from it, we’re getting to see her step into her independence a little more. She has her safety net, Phil and Chayanne and all the other eggs and parents on the island who love her dearly, so now she’s ready to take a step away from them all to be herself and independently herself. Which we see in her wanting to stay overnight in her house alone now, instead of in the bunker with Chayanne and Phil. It’s not because she doesn’t love and care for them, but because she wants to make her own space. Kinda like growing up in a way!

I think Purgatory really taught her a lot about herself in all honesty. She wasn’t alone even after she got separated from the rest of her siblings. She had Ramon and Dapper, but while they care about her and no doubt made an effort to make sure she was safe, it most likely wasn’t the almost overbearing overprotectiveness of Chayanne. I think her being out there with those two taught her a lot about exactly what she’s capable of when she is on her own to define herself.

When it comes to Chayanne, I think Purgatory and the weeks before taught him the exact opposite.

From the day he met Tallulah, he’s been responsible for protecting her. It’s evolved since then to encompass all of his siblings, but with Tallulah it’s a more pressuring responsibility. He’s the oldest, he needs to take care of them all, but he especially needs to take care of Tallulah. It’s a weird mixture between obligation, put on him by his dad, Wilbur, and himself, and a genuine love for his sister. When all the eggs returned from being basically in a coma for a week, Chayanne was apologizing to Tallulah so much. Not because he did anything wrong, but because for weeks he had no idea if she was safe or in danger, alive or dead, and he had no way of knowing if his decision to take all of his siblings and flee that night had been the right call or not. For all he knew during those weeks of Purgatory, Tallulah could have been dead and it would have been all his fault.

This poor kid probably had no idea what to do with himself, and I guarantee it was Leo’s presence that kept him from going crazy with worry and anxiety. He had to focus on making sure Leo was safe, therefor he couldn’t afford to worry himself sick over Tallulah.

Protecting others is and was what defined Chayanne for so long. His very identity became tied solely to what he can do and provide for his siblings, and specifically that he can protect and take care of Tallulah when the adults aren’t there (and even when they are in most cases). But now that Tallulah is taking that step away, that step into independence and towards functioning herself as a separate entity to him, he’s been thrown for a loop.

Without her there, he isn’t sure what space to take up himself, and hell I don’t think he even really knows how to define himself if it isn’t as the protector of his sister. Even on today’s stream, when Tallulah decided to sleep alone in her house again, Chayanne spent a few minutes in the basement unsure of where he should even sleep that night, like where she slept was what was guiding him. Without her, he’s vulnerable and he feels that vulnerability so deeply that it completely turns his world upside down. So he reaches out to his dad to guide him instead, to tell him that he made the right decision getting all of his siblings out of there, to invite him to sleep next to him for the night, to tell him that things will work out and there’s no point in dwelling on the past.

I love these two siblings dearly, but I do really hope that the admins continue writing their characters growing independently from each other. Not only because I think it’s good for their characters, but because I also think it’s good for some internal conflict.

#qsmp #qsmp chayanne #qsmp tallulah #the siblings ever #i hope this is the way the admins are gonna go #it’s ripe territory for emotions

[copperbadge]

Hi Sam! I’m really interested in what you said about taking an adderall before socializing so that you don’t have to spend the next several days agonizing about the awkward shit you said. I’ve never heard anyone talk about that as a benefit before.

Is it because taking it makes you less likely to say the awkward shit at all? Or because it just makes you less likely to fixate on it later? I mean, either way sounds pretty good, I’m just curious and intrigued.

Yeah, it's pretty fascinating. I'm going to try to put this in coherent order but there is a lot going on here, so let's start with the disclaimer that a lot of this is anecdotal or based in casual research, so I don't have sources to cite, but you should be able to google and explore for yourself.

SHORT VERSION: Adderall doesn't alter my behavior, at least as far as I can tell; it might somewhat inhibit my bad habit of interrupting, but that’s not why I take it. I take it because it prevents me from reacting emotionally to awkward moments in a social situation or remembering those moments later. The result is that instead of thinking "Oh, that thing I did was super awkward" and obsessing over it, when it probably wasn't awkward and if it was nobody remembers it anyway, I just don't have any strong emotion attached to it so I don't remember and feel bad about it later.

It's like if the color red constantly burned your eyes, and you could take a drug that would turn down the saturation. You still see the color, but now you see it the way everyone else sees it, and it doesn't hurt anymore.

The long version is...more complex, but I'm including it because I want to talk about why this maybe happens.

The reason I have such fraught emotions surrounding socializing is that I have Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, which is a common aspect of ADHD. It's not the only reason one might obsessively relive embarrassing moments, but if you have ADHD, RSD is the likely cause. RSD is linked to poor emotional regulation which derives from a deficiency in executive function. So this whole family of ADHD symptoms -- poor focus, poor short-term memory, time blindness -- all come from a basic failure of executive function, and so does RSD. And luckily for me, my poor executive function can be treated with stimulants (some people, even people with ADHD, don’t respond well to them). 

Even though RSD seems dissimilar to other aspects of ADHD, because the stimulant addresses a neurological root cause, anything stemming from that cause is, to some degree, alleviated by the medication. 

RSD can manifest in various ways. I'm generally fine when I'm present in a social situation, but I struggle to resolve shame and anxiety around past behavior. I have spent a lot of time worrying that people who, let's be clear, I know love and respect me, have finally had enough of me and something I said or did was the last straw. I know intellectually this is not the case and I have spent my adult life striving to remind myself of that so that I don’t come off as a needy creep who constantly has to be reassured of other peoples’ affections. Emotionally, however, I was incapable of reconciling these memories. They just hung around in my brain, causing me a lot of pain and regret.

So there’s a chain reaction of saying something, realizing it may have been somewhere between "slightly weird" and "deeply upsetting", and encoding it in my memory with strong emotions of shame and fear attached to it. I then involuntarily relive those memories and the emotions attached to them afterward -- usually only for a few days, but depending on the event, sometimes off and on for years. I suspect this derives from our very early ancestors, who had to hard-code dangerous situations into their memories so if they encountered them again they'd recognize them as dangerous. My brain simply encodes every social interaction as having a fairly high level of danger. This situation is fucking life-threatening, don't go near one again or you'll feel like this forever. Except in my case "this situation" is not dangerous, it's just a dinner party with friends or a meeting with a colleague or a first date. 

It seems that the Adderall switches off that instinct to categorize social interaction as inherently dangerous by allowing me to regulate my emotions. If I’m not feeling fear in the moment -- because there’s no reason to be afraid! -- then my brain doesn’t categorize the moment as dangerous, and won’t remember it negatively later. I won’t really remember it at all. So my memories go from “A dinner party where I said three terrible things that I feel shame over” to “A dinner party where I had some really nice conversations.” Do I remember the conversations? Not in detail, and that’s fine. That’s how memory is supposed to work. 

And now, because I know if I take an Adderall half an hour before a party starts I won’t feel shame or fear after the party ends, I’m even more capable of relaxing and enjoying myself, meaning I’m even less likely to feel negative emotions that would cause me to remember things with shame later. I just thought shame was a price you paid for socializing; I knew the amount I felt wasn’t right, but I thought everyone else just put up with some amount of it. But no, it turns out when your brain isn’t constantly looking for a fucking lion trying to eat you in the middle of cocktail hour, the reason people go out and socialize is that it’s...fun to do. And it turns out when I’m not subconsciously terrified that I’m about to be drowned in quicksand, I actually form fond and positive memories of things. 

Which is a little wild to be experiencing for the first time at the age of 43, but better late than never. And it means that while I still struggle a great deal with emotional intimacy, I’m much, much more capable of maintaining social contacts and deepening friendships because my friends can see and talk to me face-to-face and I can enjoy my time with them more. 

#sam has adhd

[random-ln-stuff]

What role do you think the Eye has in the LN world? Since in ur languages hc, u mentioned The Lords having a connection to the Eye which allows them to speak the language of the kids-so what exactly do you think the Eye is?

I think the Eye is a sort of Eldritch Abomination that’s responsible for why the world is how it is.

Like look at the Pale City. There’s a ton of evidence that it used to be an actual, normal city. No transmission or monsters or anything. The best proof right now is the fact that it’s decaying in the first place. The Viewers and various non-Transmission-based Monsters (The Teacher, Doctor, ETC) that inhabit the city are completely unable to keep the city functioning, letting it crumble around them. But the fact that the city exists in the first place must mean that there was a time when this wasn’t the case. When humans were able to build it properly.

Even when you take into account that the Transmission’s takeover wasn’t an instant thing and people slowly became more addicted over time (evidenced by the fact that the Lady lived there at some point and left once the Transmission started spreading, meaning that it wasn’t just an instant takeover), there’s still signs throughout the world that there was something here before.

In my interpretation of things, the world was normal at some point in the past, with humans living perfectly normal lives. (Based on evidence found in all 3 games, especially LN2, we can safely say that this would have been around the late 1940s, shortly after WW2)

However, even then, the Eye was still slightly influencing things, evident from things like toy building blocks, bottles and other various things found across the games having the symbol of the Eye on them. Many of these objects WERE made AFTER the world went to shit, but many were also made BEFORE. Point is, the Eye wasn’t physically present or able to truly affect things in a meaningful way, but it did have an (albeit very small) affect on the world.

Then around 1948 (the latest that the timeline could possibly take place in), the Eye showed up physically and threw everything into hell. Adults became monsters, reality warped in various locations (which is why The Nest has really weird gravity AND why the Lady chooses to live and raise her child there) and the world became what it is today.

This is a long response so I’m putting the rest under a cut

Because of the Eye, No adult remembers what the world was like before, believing that it was always like this. Children remembered at first, but those children grew up, replaced by new children that only remembered this new world.

Lords like the Broadcaster, Lady, Ferryman, North Wind and several other powerful adults that rule over various other locations made deals with the Eye either before the apocalypse or when it first showed up. After all, the exact amount of sanity and intelligence that an adult retains in this world isn’t always the same, so some were able to maintain some semblance of sanity and make a deal.

The Lady made a deal for eternal youth, and the Eye replaced her soul with an artificial one that cannot die of old age, but must consume the lifeforce of others to keep going, but did not give her a way to keep herself young on top of the immortality, instead providing her with the resources needed to learn powerful magic and having her figure that out on her own (eventually resulting in the Lady’s Pretender Ritual).

The Broadcaster made a deal with the Eye and in return the Eye built the Signal Tower, but did not provide a way to keep it permanently powered, instead informing the Broadcaster that his power source was out there somewhere and he’d need to go out and find it, eventually resulting in the Broadcaster finding Mono and creating the Loop.

What exactly the Ferryman made a deal for and what he got is unknown, but given how he can mess with the North Wind without fear, he definitely made a deal and is on par with the other Lords.

The North Wind did not make a deal, but was instead directly created by the Eye and sent off to cause chaos. He’s equally as powerful as a Lord, so he’s considered to be one.

For all of them, the Eye provided sanity, intelligence and humanity above all other adults (which is why they can speak Child (aka English) along with the warped Eye-Speak that adults normally use), in return for worship and souls. The Lady consumes souls to stay alive, the Broadcaster’s tower eventually consumes the souls of the Viewers that watch it, leaving behind only the clothes, The Ferryman doesn’t seem to have his own method of soul collecting, but works with other Lords to increase THEIR output of souls (for example, working with the Lady to bring Children to the Nest and Maw) and the North Wind rips across the wilderness reducing anything they touch to bones, stealing their souls in the process.

However, the Eye has one weakness. Two actually. Well. Not actually weaknesses, but more things it simply can’t affect.

One is children, who are immune to the Eye’s corruption and are basically the cockroaches of the Eye’s world. Children in the Little Nightmares Universe aren’t born naturally (with exceptions made for the Lady’s various children), but instead just appear in places where no one is looking. They just spawn in as babies with basic knowledge on how to walk, feed themselves and talk (in very basic words at first, but they learn more over time), with a heavy feeling of “Adults Bad” in their minds. Siblings appear right next to each other with the intrinsic knowledge that they’re siblings.

However, while the Eye can’t corrupt them, the world sometimes does affect them.

For example, rarely, children can be born with powers. Known children born with their powers include The Refugee Boy, The Humpback Girl, Mono, The Pretender and all previous mask wearers, as they were also pretenders.

The powers children can have is usually somewhat based on where they appear. For example:

The Refugee Boy was born in an area where the North Wind is a frequent presence, and he was born with a natural resistance (but not immunity) to the North Wind, which resulted in the North Wind and Ferryman making a bet on who could take him first.

Mono was born in the Pale City, and was born with the ability to control the Transmission that makes it so dangerous. This is why the Broadcaster seeks him out, as Mono’s ability that he was born with makes him the ideal power source for the Signal Tower.

The Pretender is the Lady’s daughter, and she inherited her shadow powers (although lacks the ability to properly control them).

Mono’s case is particularly noteworthy, as his Signal Powers that he was naturally born with are nearly identical to the powers that the Broadcaster had to make a deal with the Eye to get. There are some slight differences though, as the Broadcaster’s powers are far stronger, but Mono’s powers are more broad, with Mono being able to travel through Radios and Telephones (although he is unaware that he can do this) while the Broadcaster is limited to TVs.

And then there’s the dreams that children have.

Many child dreams are prophetic, showing glimpses of events that are likely to happen in the near future. This isn’t limited to children with powers either, as RCG has a prophetic dream at the beginning of VLN and RK has one at the beginning of his DLC.

These dreams aren’t 100% reliable, as they only show or reference events that are likely to happen (not 100% GOING to happen), there’s a good chance that the child won’t remember their dreams at all and not all child dreams are prophetic in the first place, but it’s still a thing that can happen.

When children grow up, they slowly lose this immunity, losing their ability to speak the language of children, their occasional prophetic dreams, their ability to be nice to children, etc, until they’re just regular, monstrous adults.

The second weakness is one that all magic creatures in this world have: Obsidian. I’ve got a whole other headcanon post on it, but just know that the Eye is too powerful to be directly harmed by Obsidian, but it also can’t affect obsidian in any way, being unable to corrupt, warp or destroy it.

#little nightmares #headcanons #asks #the eye

[yeehawgame4ever]

cracks my knuckles cause im abt to write a lot about something i haven't read

'the cursed heart is a fantasy book for adults who ought to know what is and isn't healthy to safely indulge in escapism and that Thrilling, Taboo Lifestyle' argument or whatever the fuck, second verse same as the first,

while adults typically have better judgement and more life experience than kids, it's also not actually something we can expect of everyone. the romanticization of abusive relationships Does also impact the judgement of adults, and the proliferation in media and fandom hurts people who have been in or are in abusive relationships. uncritical consumption of media that refuses to acknowledge when something is wrong on a large scale has an impact. people who know about as much about bdsm as pb does, even if they're told some things in the book could be 'unsafe', won't know which parts, or how much. im not saying that kinksters are an oppressed class or anything, but it's not like what isn't described by the book is going to make oblivious readers less judgemental or even fetishizing of the lifestyle + people who participate.

if it's 'unsafe bdsm', it's not bdsm, and they could just call it, like... man idk, a 'fix them' simulator, or something. 'can you flip this piece of shit into a functional person, and perhaps a lover? or will you be killed?' might be a more honest description-- give readers more warning as to what to expect instead of some vague bullshit that doesn't tell you that verbal abuse or actual violence are going to be on the table and discussions of boundaries and consent are not

there's some actual, idk, Story? to be had when two people enter into a relationship but one is some kind of immortal from a different world and social culture and another is just a human being. differences in expectations could be like, world building. abusive relationships can be explored in fiction, and in fiction if your weird little fairy prisoner wants to try to Get It In With The Bad Boy that's still a character choice, but they need to be up front about it + tell people who might be seriously effected by it what to expect so that they can safely make the decision to read or stop before something really serious happens. no, 'some rough unsafe bdsm' doesn't count, because that could mean Literally Anything.

k bye

#or #wow i really hate the mobile post editor lmfao how many times can i try to highlight a word #in the half inch of typing space provided

[pelle-ohlin]

I want to talk for a little while, anonymously, about how hard it was to get diagnosed properly with mental illness as a person “assigned female at birth”.

(For the record, I don’t consider myself “female” except as in body. I recognize all people with this anatomy will share a certain experience and bond that can not be undermined or even shed. I have always been male on the inside since I was a child, but the world was never ready to give me the . . . uh, reception I desired, so I repressed it - More on this later. At this point I honestly consider myself a “starseed unconcerned with gender, but somewhat obsessed with its presentation due to toxic patterns from the previous generation.” I think of gender presentation as a way to fuck with people and get what you want, and nothing more.)

But anyways. 

It took me ten years and more false diagnoses than I could count to get diagnosed with the proper conditions and to find a medication that would actually help. The conditions I actually have are “Autism Spectrum Disorder” (formerly known as aspergers, which I greatly prefer. I hate the new umbrellization of it), ADHD, and OCD. There is also some schizophrenic overlap, but my psychologist can’t really figure that one out to this day and says it’s probably just the autism and OCD manifesting in weird ways. He does not think I have true schizophrenia.

The only drug that actually helps me is Adderall--also known as Amphetamine-Dextroamphetamine--basically meth. Benzos would MASK the symptoms but not HELP like Adderall does. (And thanks to constant fuckups from doctors and endless misdiagnoses, I’m still addicted to Klonopin to this day, although now I mainly use it to get to sleep)

Things I’ve been misdiagnosed with:

General anxiety disorder

Panic disorder

PTSD

Schizophrenia

Bipolar disorder

Depression (I probably do have this because I talk about killing myself like every other day lol. But it was a symptom, not a cause)

And this is ALL BECAUSE DOCTORS CAN’T ACCEPT THE FACT THAT PEOPLE BORN WITH FEMALE ANATOMY “CAN’T HAVE AUTISM OR ADHD.”

After FINALLY. FUCKING FINALLY. getting diagnosed with (SEVERE) ADHD as an adult last year, I’ve completely turned my life upside down. I’m serious, it’s fucking clown world levels of bizarre. I’m able to function socially on a level that makes no sense. I was able to get a job that pays more than both my parents combined in like 2 months. I can sit down and write 4,000 words in one day where before I would struggle with a couple hundred.

And when I look back, the signs are fucking absurd. I have fucking EVERY PRESENTATION of early childhood severe ADHD. Screaming in the halls, getting up and walking around during class, doing bad in school despite being really smart, blah blah blah. I was abused by the Catholic school system instead of actually being treated, but that’s another story in itself.

Same with Aspergers. Jesus fucking christ how obvious was this one? I used to run an entire fucking blog focused entirely on dead. I get hyper-interested in things and lose my goddamn mind. Socializing is like navigating a fucking mouse maze in flowers for algernon for me (after he starts getting stupid again). I’ve felt like an alien since my first sentient memory.

But no, since I was born “female,” doctors always wrote it off as “anxiety.”

When I take Adderall, the anxiety is gone completely. It feels like I can focus. It feels like I was blind all my goddamn life and now I can fucking see. 

The benzos would just fucking put a god damned blanket on the fire. This shit actually calms me down and makes everything clear. Imagine the shit I could have done if I got on it before I was 30 years old.

But anyways, I was also thrown countless antidepressants, weird anxiety medications, even antipsychotics . . . But when I for the first time took that little blue pill . . . I was like ...... Oh.

I’m not talking “I shift around a little bit in my seat and feel edgy” I’m talking the ADHD was so bad my mind would be racing in fucking crazy thought loops LITERALLY 14 hours straight sometimes. It was literal torture combined with the pure O-type OCD. Horrible.

It feels like I’m alive again when I take this shit. When I take the benzos I feel dead.

(I have an atypical response to all SSRI-type antidepressants so for anxiety benzos are my only option. But surprise, IT WASN’T ANXIETY you god damnd idiots)

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

What would happen if you were sent back and ended up in the orphanage with Tom Riddle—and say you also had magic?

Oh boy.

Well, there's a lot to question here. Judging by the... spirit of this ask, I presume I'm... pretty much reincarnated. I'm in the orphanage, I'm much younger than I am now and a child, I'm pre-Hogwarts age, and I retain my current knowledge.

For the purpose of this ask I suppose I also retain my current mental faculties. Despite being in the body of an eight-year-old, I'm not The Carnivorous Muffin at eight.

Welp, there's a lot to consider here.

First, I probably don't realize I'm in Harry Potter for quite some time and instead assume I've been reincarnated to some parallel universe. It's the 1930's, I'm in England in the depression, WWI has occurred and the vast majority of major historical events I know about seem to have happened in the right order, and this Earth is eerily similar to the Earth I left behind.

Strange that I appear to remember everything of my past life with my adult mental abilities, but alright universe, I guess that's how we're going to play this.

What I do know is that I'm dirt poor, presumably still a woman which does not bode well for my career prospects, and if I want any prospects in life period I'm going to have to fight tooth and nail for it. It'd be great if I got adopted to help with this, and might be nice to have people in my life who love me, but there's a lot of orphans in the world and a lot of orphans who are much less weird than I am.

The orphanage is the orphanage and not great, Mrs. Cole is overworked, the orphanage is chronically understaffed, and the kids are running wild beating the shit out of each other.

Being a girl, I probably don't have to worry about getting the shit kicked out of me quite as much, but I still probably try to keep my head down and don't aggravate the particularly beefy looking orphans.

Yes, there's some very angry gremlin named Tom Riddle around who will shove you down the stairs in retribution, but that's just a weird coincidence. And then supernatural shit starts happening. Billy's rabbit hangs itself, people get injuries when Tom is nowhere near them, and I start wondering if this is really the Tom Riddle.

I'm in Wool's Orphanage, my matron is Mrs. Cole, Tom Riddle is running around lighting things on fire. It's possible, though it could all be a strange coincidence.

Now, how things go from here depends on how controlled my own magic is. Since accidental magic typically does manifest at least once or twice, it probably does manifest for me for.. something. If Tom Riddle's there to witness it then...

Well, I imagine he's very offended. Here he was, special, different, better than everyone else, and then some girl in the orphanage (who dares to get very good grades on her assignments in school) has it too.

And I just stand there, smiling, going "Tee hee".

He probably confronts me to prove that he's better at it than I am, and he probably is unless the universe hates both him and me, but having someone else with the Shining around probably prompts him to take me as his protégé (in part so he can show off and in part because he's genuinely excited to be able to share this super cool talent).

I am now apprentice to eight-year-old Tom Riddle. Whoop de doo.

Well, I don't remember this part of Harry Potter, so now I'm probably confused as to where I am again. Regardless, I try to advise Tom on how to tone it down and not, say, traumatize Amy and Dennis for life and antagonize all the other orphans forever. He probably doesn't take me seriously. What do I know, I can't even light that patch of grass on fire?

Hanging around Tom Riddle gets me a reputation to, given the difference in genders, probably a fairly nasty one at that. When Dumbledore arrives he's undoubtedly told hot gossip about how eleven-year-old Tom and I have had sex in a ritual to summon Satan. Dumbledore takes this seriously.

Dumbledore probably meets us both at the same time and it's a disaster. I tried my best to prep Tom without revealing I'm a prophet, Tom first doesn't believe there might not be others, then doesn't believe they would be antagonist/anything but amazed by how awesome he is.

Well, Dumbledore lights his wardrobe on fire while I sit there. Dying inside. Dumbledore probably also does something to me too, to teach me some kind of lesson about something.

I imagine he temporarily disfigures me/makes me appear very ugly, then sticks a mirror to the wall, that way I realize that looks aren’t everything/being a whore is wrong. Tom, still traumatized over the wardrobe, is no help and my magic’s probably not controlled enough to do a thing about it.

I spend a day looking like a pig, Tom and I are given just enough money to buy new wands and second hand/barely functioning everything else and given the world’s worst directions to Diagon Alley. Thanks, Albus.

Well, months pass, we get our wands, Tom gets excited for Hogwarts and I... start seriously considering the future. WWII is coming, the Blitz is coming, Tom and I live in east London and must be able to evacuate during the bombing of London (which went on well past the Blitz to the end of the war). I also start considering my future in the wizarding world. Do I now actually have career prospects?

Probably not because I’m muggle born and a woman. My best bet is doing very well in useful subjects and finding employment with the goblins, I can’t imagine they have the same hang ups as the wizarding world.

Tom wants to go to Slytherin, of course, I tell him this is a bad idea. “Gee Tom,” I say, “Not sure how I know this but I have this feeling that Slytherin is filled with people who loathe our very existence and will shank us. Why don’t we pick Ravenclaw or Gryffindor instead?”

No one shanks Tom Riddle! Tom says. Tom is still eleven and while he admits that sometimes I may, in retrospect, have been right about certain things that doesn’t mean he wants to go to the house known for hard work. That’s code word for everyone there being a moron and having no other redeeming features than tenacity. As for the other two, Ravenclaws sound like smug, elitist, nerds and Gryffindors like dumb jocks.

Better to be known for ambition, cunning, and actually being competent.

Well, there’s no talking him out of this one, and goddamn it we’re all each other has.

I’m the closest thing Tom Riddle has ever had to a friend in all these years and in the orphanage the only one who could hold a decent conversation with him. And while it’s not my moral obligation to keep Tom from becoming a domestic terrorist, and there’s no guarantee I even can, dumping him for one of the other houses and drifting apart won’t help.

Not to mention that, after all these years, I’m undoubtedly lonely, I’m in this foreign land, and he’s now the closest thing to a friend I have.

Looks like I’m going to Slytherin, YOOOOOLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOO! I shout as a battle cry as tears run down my face. I may have to convince the hat to put me in Slytherin, but like all human beings I am a mixture of many qualities. I’m not cunning in the least, mind games exhaust me unutterably, but I’m full of ambition. 

This confirms every bad opinion Dumbledore had regarding me and Tom.

For the next several months, Tom probably beats the shit out of dormmates who steal his things/harass him. He beats up mine too because feminism (TM) means that he should treat all people equally when guilty of the same crime. I... am not sure I can win that fight so I just resign myself to having to adopt some of Tom’s tactics to make sure I’m not shoved in lockers, have tampons thrown at me, or pig’s blood dumped on me at the prom.

Once again, everyone thinks Tom Riddle and I are dating. I don’t even know if they’re wrong at this point.

Well, being in class with eleven year olds who seem to have had little to no prior education, Tom and I are undoubtedly blazing through class. I imagine I’m bored out of my mind (the Hogwarts curriculum sounds unbelievably boring) and Tom is... well, probably devouring the library but probably also bored. I decide to try and see if I can find some real history texts on this world (there are probably none, the wizarding world seems to only have two historians and both... have a different approach to history than current modern thought as I know it) and discover what magic even is. That shit is fascinating: wingardium leviosa is not.

Dumbledore likely gives neither me nor Tom points in class, I think the house cup is stupid, so I really don’t care. I have no interest in playing quidditch, neither does Tom, so that doesn’t happen.

The second world war starts up, Tom, me, and the muggle borns are the only ones who give a flying fuck. I work harder on figuring out how to get lodging during the Blitz/the bombing of London. Unfortunately, Mrs. Cole hates me too for being the Bride of Satan, so that’s a no go. Third year, 1939, I probably write her in earnest anyway telling her to PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, send Tom and I instructions for the summer/where the orphans are staying/how they’ve been dispersed to the countryside. As a back up plan, I try desperately to shmooze shopkeepers in Hogsmeade during every Hogsmeade weekend to get myself and Tom part time jobs and lodging over the summer. As a back up back up plan, I spend my time badgering Tom to become very good at survivalist wandless magic and if the Lord has pity on me gain some ability in it myself.

Hopefully, either Mrs. Cole or one of the Hogsmeade shop owners take pity on us. If not, then Tom and I are going extreme camping. Given Mrs. Cole (and the brain damage brought on by Dumbledore erasing memories left and right) and the likelihood of Hogsmeade shop owners just not getting it, Tom and I probably go extreme camping.

(Tom, meanwhile, asks Dippet and Dumbledore if we can stay in Hogwarts over the summer. He’s told no exceptions. London’s being bombed, you say? No exceptions. Toodles. Tom is never the same.)

Me, Tom Riddle, a tent we made ourselves, several rabbits we had to catch and skin ourselves, and the pitiful fire that we can keep going through pure will alone because if we try to use real people spells then we’ll get arrested. It has the benefit of making Tom feel very manly and impressive, catching his own food, but both of us are well aware that this sucks.

But hey, we aren’t dead.

Well, I’m sure Tom doesn’t appreciate that and this is where I imagine he seriously starts talking about violent revolution. I imagine much of my time is spent discussing the merits of not violently overthrowing our ant overlords. I imagine a thirteen-year-old Tom isn’t impressed by my pacifism, but he’s not married to Voldemort yet (probably).

Then I imagine the horcrux thing comes up and... Well, I will argue hard against it. Humans die, it is a truth of the universe, and simply something we have to accept. Horcruxes are not a measure against that, they can be destroyed, given infinite time they will be, and the sacrifice they require is too high: human life as well as the very essence of who you are.

What is a soul? I’m not sure, we never really learn in HP canon, but whatever it is, it is in some way the essence of yourself. If you take half of it and throw it somewhere else, you will cease to be you, someone or something else is walking around in your body while the other half of you exists in endless agony.

If you must chase immortality, create a philosopher’s stone (as I darkly wonder why it was that couldn’t be replicated and what Flamel had to do to make it in the first place). On second thought, maybe we should search for the Holy Grail.

Whether I can talk Tom out of this or not is... unclear. I’m going to say that I can, in part because I imagine he’ll want to show the chamber off to me, tell me when he realizes he’s Heir of Slytherin, and in doing so I can prevent the basilisk incident from occurring. Without that, there’s no dead Myrtle, which means no first victim. That summer, when he goes to the Gaunts, I’ll go with him and convince him that it’s not worth it. He can just turn around and leave these people alone, I hopefully can talk him down. Which means no second victim.

I start writing Flamel to see if Tom or I can get an apprenticeship (Dumbledore probably beats us to the chase and poisons him against us, but it’s worth a shot).

Then, should all go well, I can convince Tom to find employment with the goblins rather than shady antique dealers on the bad side of town. Hopefully, I can convince him to never become Voldemort, and instead we travel the world together looking for the origins of magic or something.

Dumbledore goes around taking people’s memories of us in preparation for when Tom becomes a dark lord and I his lady of the night darkness.

TL;DR Apparently my life would become an SI/Tom Riddle fic. So, thanks anon.

#harry potter #harry potter meta #harry potter headcanon #tom riddle #albus dumbledore #anti albus dumbledore #meta #headcanon #opinion

[gay-otlc]

Can we talk about how Sophie has trichotillomania?

Because I've been involved in KOTLC fandoms for over two years and I've heard it mentioned exactly once.

Trichotillomania is a disorder characterized by uncontrollable, repetitive pulling of hair. This can be scalp hair, eyebrows, arm hair, leg hair, eyelashes, really any type of hair. Even though the person knows they aren't supposed to enjoy pulling, they get a weird sense of pleasure or calm from it, and it's difficult to stop. Pulling is frequently done in stressful situations.

Does that sound familiar to anyone? Ring any bells?

Yeah, it sounds like Sophie Foster.

In the books, it's played off as sort of just another nervous habit, a weird quirk of Sophie's. It's mentioned a few times by other friends/adult figures as they ask whether it hurts, but when she says no, they don't tell her to stop. She's often described as "pulling on an itchy eyelash," but it seems to be more of a stress response than something causing her stress.

I thought it was just another weird quirk of hers until I started pulling out my hair. I would pull it most when I was stressed, and it always felt "itchy" just before I did.

It was horrible. Trichotillomania is fucking destructive. At my worst point, I had a huge, gaping bald spot. I didn't talk to people because I was ashamed of my hair. I missed class once because I couldn't tear myself away from the mirror and stop pulling. I spent hours in front of the mirror each day, checking and checking to make sure no one would know anything was weird if they looked at me.

It was so hard. And I felt so alone.

Now, as I said before, I read KOTLC nearly three years ago and have been making fan content for over two. Suffice it to say that series means a lot to me. How do you think it would have felt, if the protagonist of this huge part of my life, was just like me, struggled like me, and it turned out okay for her? I would have had so much hope that it could get better instead of climbing and clawing for every shred of progress.

Now, how do you think it felt to see that protagonist go through something similar, but it didn't matter much to her? It made me feel like some whiny bitch for being this upset about my hair. If Sophie Foster could have trich and go through life functioning fine (well, not really, but the trich doesn't make anything worse for her is my point), why couldn't I? Pathetic.

Like most days, today is a good day to get pissed at L*ura, so I'm going to use her art as an example. This is a close up screenshot of Sophie's eye (please ignore the cursor in the middle, my computer hates me).

[Image ID: A close up picture of an brown eye. It has long, dark eyelashes surrounding it and a cursor covering the pupil.]

(Please tell me if my image ID is shit idk how to write these.)

As we can clearly see, Sophie has long, dark eyelashes. The top eyelashes are most obvious, but there's a fair amount on the bottom as well. It's been a while since I've read the books, but Sophie doesn't wear makeup much, if I recall correctly. So she probably wouldn't be wearing mascara.

Then why the fuckity fuck do her eyelashes look so, for lack of a better word, normal, when she pulls them every three paragraphs?

People with trichotillomania look like they have trichotillomania. I have a bald spot. When I did all my research on trich in an OCD spiral, one writer said she had to wear wigs. Another said she had zero eyelashes for years. Someone on here (not saying who just in case they don't want me to) said their left eyebrow was nearly gone.

I hated how I looked in the worst of my trichotillomania days. It's less noticeable now, but I still hate it. I feel like a freak, to not have hair like a 'normal' person.

Now, Sophie Foster is described as beautiful. She has all the boys and the girls after her. She's an elf, all elves are beautiful. But she pulls out her eyelashes, and she pulls out her eyelashes so often, that unless elf hair grows at really different speeds (which I doubt it would, considering that would have been very noticeable when Sophie lived with humans), she would have no or very few eyelashes.

And yet, that was erased in her official art. Why? Because apparently, people can't look like they have trich and still be beautiful.

But that's bullshit. People with trich are beautiful. I am looking in mirrors and trying to tell myself I look beautiful instead of crying. Bald spots are beautiful. Eyes without eyelashes are beautiful. Brow ridges without eyebrows are beautiful.

People with trich are beautiful, dammit!

So give us that, Shannon. Give that to your readers who don't have trich, so they understand it, and your readers who do, so they see themselves for the first time and don't feel alone.

Give us Sophie Foster thinking she's ugly and a freak because she doesn't have eyelashes, and give us Keefe or Fitz or Biana or whoever telling her she still is.

Give us Sophie Foster trying to sit on her hands, telling herself not to pull, doing it anyway, and hating herself.

Give us Sophie Foster standing in front of the mirror and crying because she can't stop, she can't stop.

Give us Sophie Foster seeking help and trying to get better, trying to heal.

Give us Sophie Foster trying and relapsing and trying and relapsing and trying and relapsing and trying.

If you're going to give us Sophie Foster with trichotillomania, give us a character with trichotillomania.

#trichotillomania #trichotillomania tw #trich #bfrb #bfrb tw #sophie foster #kotlc #smh do better shannon #fuck l*ura #cursing tw #ocd tw #shai is sO oCd #this was really hard to write but i think it's important #f u c k my head is so itchy now #just one hair... #fuck #anyway #ask to tag #rant tw #kotlc discourse #sophie foster trichotillomania

[johannas-motivational-insults]

For those who were asking, life’s gone to shit in the sense that my mood took a huge downswing early in November and has never really recovered. I’d also been having some weird side effects from my ADHD meds (which replaced my antidepressants) so instead of upping the dose my doc and I decided to try a different medication. I felt like a zombie the first few days but now that seems to be improving, but it’s also kinda hard to tell because a couple days ago I got yet another head injury (hopefully not too serious, but they tend to be exacerbated by stress so that bodes poorly) and that too affects my motivation and energy and arousal levels, so it’s all one big clusterfuck right now. And the extra fun thing is that my grandad went into the hospital about a week ago with a not too worrying infection in his hand, but since going there he’s gone downhill in other ways and he got moved into palliative care a couple days ago. I saw him today and we had a pretty emotional conversation, he was clearly trying to say goodbye even though tbh he could still recover, it’s all up in the air and very surreal. Anyway shortly after that I dropped my phone and the screen got smashed despite the protector so I also lost a couple hours of my day dealing with bullshit stemming from that… getting a new one and such. But this Otterbox I have on it is so slippery and I think I might need to exchange it but idk if I can without the packaging and the whole idea is stressing me out right now, it’s something that should be simple but with my brain in both injury and grief mode everything is overwhelming. I’m facing a big pit of “I can’t” that I haven’t in a while. I’m usually pretty good at compensating for my deficits and being a mostly functional adult but right now I feel like a child who can’t complete simple tasks or regulate my emotions… brain injuries often do this to me and this one came at the worst possible fucking time.

#personal #brain injuries #adhd #mental illness #depression #grief

[the-final-sif]

Okay, so I think I’ve got a solid timeline of events for villain!Katsuki

Katsuki leaves UA just before the provisional license exam, he’s at the point where he no longer things the hero system can be fixed without outside intervention. He’s done with how the media acts, he’s done with the blame being shifted to victims based on their quirks, and he’s done with the lies he’s been fed all his life.

Prior to this he started researching and planning what actual change would look like and require.

He meets up with Dabi, who’d only let the rest of the league know about the bet a few days prior. He was curious if Katsuki would keep his word or not. Dabi prods Katsuki gently, saying he knew the kid took honestly seriously but he’s still kinda surprised to see him go this far over a bet. Katsuki replies explaining it’s more than the bet. He talks about what he’s seen, and the failure of hero society to change. It’s more than enough to convince Dabi.

Dabi brings him to a secure location, then relays information to Shigaraki. Shigaraki is hesitant, he’s surprised Katsuki came back to them, but when Katsuki explains his side of things, and with Dabi vouching for him, Shigaraki decides to let him in. He can understand what it’s like to fall for hero society. He did for awhile too. Katsuki just needed more time on his own to realize that.

There’s an introduction period, the league is still figuring themselves out and most of them are hesitant to trust Katsuki. It’s about a week before he’s properly reintroduced to everyone and gets the sense that they’re not headed in any particular direction.

After that week, Katsuki decides “fuck that, I’m going to do shit, y'all are coming along” and since Shigaraki doesn’t really have anything better in mind, he decides to go along with Katsuki’s plans.

UA started panicking as soon as they realized Katsuki was gone, but nobody really knows what happened to him yet. Since he took all his stuff with him, all signs point to him having run away.

Izuku refuses to believe that, and most of the class holds out hope for awhile, but as no evidence turns up, more of them start to think it might be true and start discovering the amount of harassment and guilt he was facing.

There’s about a month and a half period in which Katsuki focuses on getting the league in shape. During this period, they do a forcible take over of the Shie Hassaikai.

Overhaul is killed, Eri goes under Katsuki’s care, and the league is established as a much more powerful force.

The Hero Commission is starting to get nervous, but not overly so. Not yet.

After this month and a half, Katsuki makes his first public appearance as a villain.

He’s in an updated version of his costume, most of it has stayed the same, but he’s added what looks like muzzle to the costume that covers his mouth. The muzzle actually functions as face shield/oxygen system so he can move at much faster speeds safely.

Katsuki’s villain debut is a full scale attack by the league on the Hero Commission directly. An event meant that the Hero Commission had gathered in a relatively accessible location, and the villains take advantage.

Importantly, Katsuki is enforcing a policy of limiting needless harm or deaths, because it ruins their message. The league reluctantly agrees, so they’re being a bit more careful than they were before. However, they’ve still got a hit list for this party.

The list consists of officials who they have confirmation deliberately manipulated polices or actions of heroes at the cost of people’s lives, all for some private gain. They do a lot of damage, and manage to kill 7 people on their list.

Katsuki’s first kill happens here. Previously, he’d managed to defeat Overhaul, but wasn’t quite able to kill him. He just wasn’t ready.

Shigaraki took care of it for him, and told him it was fine if he needed time to learn to kill. He was kind and understanding about it in a way that was genuinely weird to Katsuki. Not only because this was all about murder, but it was the first time in his life that he failed and an adult supported him rather than punishing him for his mistake.

At this event, one of the people he takes down tries to appeal to him by offering him a position as a hero to save themselves, and that pushes him over the line. He ends it quickly.

The league escape afterwards, and footage plus eyewitnesses confirm Katsuki was there, and he didn’t say a word to anyone he attacked.

UA, the Hero Commission, and the media collectively assume / sell the story of him having been brainwashed. It’s the only thing that doesn’t make them look horrible.

Aizawa has been weighed down by a lot of guilt during all of this. He should’ve done more, should’ve reached out, but he’d been waiting for Katsuki to come to him. He’s tried to find Katsuki, but Katsuki has purposefully avoided facing him in battle as Aizawa is one of the few people he doesn’t feel like he could hurt or allow one of the other villains to hurt.

The attacks start getting frequent over the course of another month, primarily targeting the people behind the scenes of the heroic’s system, with a lot of other targets of corruption along the way.

On his third attack, Katsuki has his first run in with Izuku, the first of any of his classmates to face him in battle.

Katsuki refuses to speak a word to him, despite the fact Izuku heard him giving directions to Toga, and the two clash.

Katsuki manages to pull ahead in their fight, but he’s distracted from their fight by someone caught in the crossfire. He diverts course to protect them. Izuku was so hyperfocused on Katsuki he didn’t notice the person. It throws him off enough that Katsuki is able to win their fight complete his goal.

After their clash, Izuku’s finally realized Katsuki isn’t brainwashed. Given what happened, he can only assume it really is Kacchan making all these choices, which leads him to reflect on why.

 Between slowly uncovering what Katsuki was suffering through, and watching Katsuki’s actions and their very real impact, Izuku finds himself struggling with the idea of heroes as well. Most of Class 1-A and society as a whole really are.

Shouto & Izuku talk, and Izuku confirms that it really is Katsuki. Not a brainwashed version of him.

At the end of their conversation, Shouto assumes that because it’s really Katsuki, they’re gonna go join him. He defects, and is a bit surprised when Izuku doesn’t follow him right away.

Dabi almost has a heart attack over this, but he can’t really judge.

Shouto is accepted into the league after he and Katsuki talk and he apologizes for not having done anything. Katsuki doesn’t blame him for it, as he understands Shouto had no real sense of what was okay.

Eri gains a new older brother, and she could not be more delighted.

During this period, after the first attack, Hawks was sent in to infiltrate the league. Katsuki can smell the commission on him from a mile away, but tells Dabi to kind of let Hawks in anyways.

The league begins slowly working Hawks out of the Commissions control, before finally after about three months, Hawks realizes how shitty they are and defects properly.

A big part of this happens after Hawks finally comes to terms with the fact that Katsuki isn’t brainwashed, and after Hawks meets Eri and realizes how happy and safe she is with her new family vs how he felt at that age with the Commission.

By the end of that three months, a number of other class 1-A kids and a few kids from 1-B have dropped out of the hero course, or in some cases, UA entirely. The public at large has started to become more disconnected from the hero system as they start to see some of it’s major flaws. The Commission comes under more and more questioning and is seriously losing power.

During this same time, you’d expect to see an increase in crime, but you actually see the opposite.

Katsuki has been very careful and forged an alliance with the MLA such that they’ve been able to crack down on certain types of crime (domestic violence, quirk kidnappings, sexual assaults, etc) while also steadily funneling money into getting social services in theses areas.

This means that you start to see less crime, people feeling safer and more secure, even as the hero commission and system is crumbling.

All of this comes together after a year or two of solid in the form of the government submitting to a major reform driven by figure heads planted by the MLA, but only after the league manages to eliminate the last key figures standing in their way.

Since so many heroes have either fallen from grace, stepped back from the system, or been killed in certain cases, Izuku ended up as an unwilling symbol of peace due to his connection to Katsuki.

Izuku is tasked by what’s left of the heroics system with stopping Katsuki from killing the final major figure whose all that’s standing in the way of the reform.

Izuku, in the end, makes the active choice to step aside, giving Katsuki the key he was given to the room so Katsuki can get to the person to kill them.

Izuku finally decided that he’s had enough of this too, and he’s done defending a broken system based on ingrained ideals that don’t add up.

Aizawa is watching inside the room up in the rafters, he’s stayed a hero of sorts but still functions like he did before.

Inside the room, Aizawa had the chance to cancel Katsuki’s quirk and stop him from killing the person. Instead, he chose to close his eyes and let Katsuki go through with it.

Katsuki looks up to where Aizawa is once it’s done, and Aizawa realizes he knew he was there the entire time. He hops down out into the open and speaks plainly as he always did.

“I’m sorry.” Is all he can really say. There’s so much he’s sorry for. For not speaking up. For letting Katsuki be put through so much. For letting him be driven to this.

Katsuki looks at him for a long, long moment, before he finally looks away and shrugs his shoulders. For the very first time in years, he speaks to a hero. To the only hero who ever tried for him, even if it wasn’t enough.

“S'okay. The problem was bigger than you every could’ve fixed.”

“I should’ve tried. I should’ve done more.”

Again, Katsuki needs a moment to consider that.

“Yeah. Probably.”

There’s silence for a few moments, and then Katsuki’s radio crackles to life. Dabi’s calling him back.

They share one more glance, and Katsuki turns on his heel and walks out.

Aizawa watches him go. There’s nothing else for him to do. His right to change this story ended when he failed to speak up all those years ago.

#villain katsuki bakugou #katsuki bakugou #shouta aizawa #izuku mydoria #todobaku #the league of villains #dabi #shouto todoroki #tomura shigaraki #sif speaks #bnha #mha #this is a repost #thank you to alex for saving the text for me! #hopefully tumblr won't eat this one too

[cellsshapedlikestars]

jonsa prompt fic/modern au

(look at me, making my way through the rest of my prompts from *checks watch* five months ago)

This one was from the lovely @chispas-and-broken-bindings and the prompt was: “I'm sorry 'bout the other night and I know I could be more creative and come up with poetic lines but..”

1) had to google these lyrics, and I have to say, I had never heard of this song, so thank you for also bringing it to my attention

2) I have no concept of what a drabble is, apparently. I meant to keep all of these at under 1k words but nooooope

.

.

Jon grunts as he reaches deep into the fridge – he can see the label of one of those craft beers Theon had (with shockingly good taste) brought in the back and he'd really like that instead of the cheaper swill crowding the front.

Sansa's birthdays are always massive and he honestly forgot the way she goes all out for them. After high school, he just never really made it back for her big, late-September parties and then after college, he'd taken a job down in Dorne. It's his first year back and he sort of forgot how overwhelming it all is - how many friends she has, how her entire extended family shows up.

It doesn't help that he barely knows any of her friends anymore. He recognizes a few from her high school years, but other than that he knows no one. Thank the gods the Starks and Theon are here, because otherwise, Jon's lost in a sea of strangers.

“Jon Snow!” he hears a voice behind him, light and airy and filled with what almost sounds like glee. His fingers finally manage to grasp the neck of the bottle he was aiming for and he pulls back and stands up and turns around to see – fuck, what's her name? Margaery, that's right. Sansa's best friend from high school.

“Hey,” he says, giving her what he's sure is the smile that Robb always calls ‘weird’ and ‘awkward‘ (how you've ever gotten any woman to sleep with you is a miracle, he remembers Robb telling him once).

“It's so nice that you could come,” Margaery says, voice oozing with... something he can't quite place.

“Uh, yeah?” he agrees, because he guesses it is nice? He starts to move around her – they're the only two in the basement right now, everyone else is outside at the party, he'd only come in to grab a drink.

“I mean, I guess we're all adults now, high school is so a decade ago, am I right?” There's a sort of glint in her eye that Jon doesn't like and he really, really wants to get back outside, but there's also a part of him that wants to ask what the hell she means.

“It was a decade ago,” he agrees again, edging towards the door.

“It must have been so awkward for you, I guess that's why you've been avoiding her all these years,” Margaery sighs and tilts her head with a piercing stare, like she's trying to look into his soul or something.

“I... what?”

“Oh, it's ok,” she smiles, leaning forward and starting to whisper even though there's no one else around, “she told me everything.”

“Everything about what?” he asks, mind going suddenly blank because he cannot think of a single thing that Margaery could be talking about.

“Your crush, duh!”

For a moment there's silence in the basement, before, “my crush?”

“I mean, you were like... obsessed with her!”

Jon blinks, feeling both very confused and very stupid as he says, “what?”

“Oh come on! We were all there when you sent her those flowers. You clearly wanted everyone to know, you had them delivered in the middle of lunch! She even read the card aloud – what did it say? Oh my god, they were lyrics, that's right! I'm sorry 'bout the other night and I know I could be more creative and come up with poetic lines but..” she trails off with a giggle. “I'll be honest, I never pegged you as a Rihanna fan.”

Jon feels some sort of creeping horror filling him because he has - one, never sent anyone besides his mother flowers and two, doesn't think he knows even a single Rihanna song.

“Excuse me.”

He walks out of the basement with Margaery's tinkling laugh following him and when he's outside, he immediately spots Sansa, surrounded by a group of her friends by the pool, laughing with a glass of sangria in her hand and a flower crown on her head and a sash that reads Birthday Girl! across her body.

Arya calls to him, but he ignores her as he pushes through the crowd of Sansa's friends and family, making his way to her. She spots him right before he gets there, a smile forming and then fading when she takes in his face – and then panic seems to cross her features and she looks around, like she's going to try to run.

“Sansa,” he says before she can bolt, and her friends part to let him through. “Can we talk?”

She opens her mouth, but he takes her by the arm and starts dragging her away from her friends and behind them, he thinks he hears a few of them start to whisper and giggle and the annoyance that's been simmering in his chest flares.

“Jon, I'm so glad you could make it!” she says brightly, plastering a smile on her face that he can tell is completely fake. “It's been-”

“Why does Margaery think I had a crush on you in high school?”

He watches her open and close her mouth a few times, eyes darting around for an escape and he tightens his grip on her arm.

“I don't...” she starts, but her voice isn't very strong.

“Sansa,” he tries to keep his voice calm and even.

“Ok, fine,” she hisses, eyes snapping back to him and narrowing and there's the Sansa he knows. She may look sweet and innocent, but Jon has known her long enough to know she isn't the wilting flower she sometimes pretends to be. He watches her spine straighten and her head rise and she looks him in the eye. “I told some of my friends back then that you had a thing for me, so what? It was like, a decade ago. It's nothing to freak out over.”

“Well, Margaery is bringing it up to me at a party a decade later. Why does she think I sent you flowers?”

Her confidence falters then, pink staining her cheeks. “I needed to convince them you had a crush on me, so I... may have... sent myself flowers and made the card from you.”

He stares at her, dumbfounded, before asking, “why did I never hear about this before?”

Sansa shrugs and says, “you were away at college at the time. And then you went south and this is the first time you've been around my high school friends since then?”

“Why?” he asks, mind still reeling over this (and, oh gods, he hopes none of Sansa's high school friends ever said anything to Robb or her parents. But no, if they had, Jon's pretty sure he'd be dead in a ditch or, at the very least, banned from family functions by now).

He watches her struggle to come up with something to say, watches the blush spread from high on her cheeks down to her throat and she visibly swallows and for a moment he thinks she might cry and he feels suddenly horrible. Except no – she's the one making up stories about him. He shouldn't feel bad!

“It was... we were at a party and they were all talking about-” she lowers her voice to a whisper, eyes darting around, “-sex and they kept making jokes about how I was a virgin and they knew I hadn't slept with Joffrey before we broke up and I was sick of them making fun of me so I just... I told them I wasn't a virgin. And then they wanted to know who and... well, you were the first person I thought of.”

He's not quite sure how to take that and he doesn't really know what to say (though honestly, he wants to tell her that her high school friends were shit then and they're still pretty shit now, if Margaery cornering him in the basement to taunt him about his supposed crush is any indication).

“And the flowers?”

“Ok,” she says, letting out a forced, breathless laugh, “here's where it gets funny. I promise, you're gonna laugh...” He keeps frowning at her and she gives a subtle tug to her arm and, finding it unmoving, realizes she's going to have to tell him. “Margaery asked a lot of questions and I could tell she didn't believe me and it turned into this whole thing where you were like, obsessed with me? I told them you wrote me poetry and then I sent the flowers to myself...” she trails off uncertainly and Jon wills himself to breathe deep and bite his tongue against his initial retort.

“And you never thought that your gossipy high school friends might spread this around and it could get back to, I don't know, your brother - my best friend? Your parents?”

Her eyes go wide in horror and Jon can tell that no, she never thought of that. Her eyes dart around the party and Jon turns to look behind him and he can see a group of her high school friends whispering together and not too far away is her parents talking to her Uncle Benjen. He watches her eyes well up with tears and he fights back a sigh of annoyance because he wants to be furious with her, but he can't quite manage it (he is weak to tears, yes, but he also remembers high school Sansa – how insecure she was, how desperate to fit in with her friends, that little shit boyfriend who made her feel even worse – and he can't bring himself to be mad).

“Did it have to be Rihanna?” he sighs eventually, giving her what he hopes is a reassuring smile.

“It's a good song,” she says, hesitantly, a small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth in return.

“You really should ditch those friends,” he tells her, serious again.

“I honestly don't hang out with them anymore, I just invited them because we all still live around here and Margaery DM'd me a few weeks ago about my party and I felt weird not inviting her. If you want, I can tell them the truth. I should have years ago.”

“It doesn't really matter,” he shrugs. “As long as it never gets back to your family, I do not want to deal with them thinking I deflowered their precious daughter.”

She huffs out an incredulous laugh and says, “I almost wish it had been you, Harry...” And then she stops and her mouth drops open and her eyes go wide like she can't believe she said that and honestly, neither can Jon. It hangs between them for a moment and suddenly he is very aware of his hand still on her arm, how smooth her skin feels beneath his touch. He lets go of her like it burns.

“Well,” he says, shifting back to give a few more inches of space between them. “I should probably let you get back to your party.”

“Yeah,” she says and then, just before he turns to go, “I'm glad you're back. In Winterfell, I mean. I guess I'll be seeing you around more?”

He stares at her for a few moments, the pink stain back on her cheeks, teeth biting into her bottom lip, fingers nervously playing with her birthday sash and he should say no because he can feel this leading down a road he was not prepared for, but instead he says, “yeah. Yes. I'll see you around.”

“Good,” she says and she smiles and as he walks away, all he can think is – Robb is gonna be so annoying about this.

#jonsa #jonsa fic #oh look it's another modern au #shocking #prompt fic

[willow-salix]

Ok, so, here's the next chapter.

It's a wee bit weird, so feel free to skip most of it, it won't affect the story at all. It's just there, doing it's thing.

Here's the first part, you can follow the link to read the rest of dip out here if you don't want to read a full ritual.

---

“What do you mean Lin is in the hospital?” Selene gasped, unable to believe her ears. “I just saw him no more than...” she glanced at her phone, “four hours ago.”

“Yeah, well, that was before the arrow hit him,” Vera snorted, tugging at Selene’s dress as she unzipped it and yanked it down.

“Arrow? What arrow?” Selene asked, her voice muffled as a new dress was slung over her head.

“The one that hit him in the leg,” Alegra answered as she bustled past with an armful of candles, clearly heading outside to the circle clearing.

“What the hell was he doing to get shot in the leg?”

“Teaching an archery class, it appears someone had very bad aim. One legged Linden strikes again,” Alegra replied.

“That name is because he is the master of Tree pose, not because he only has one working leg!" Selene argued, starting to feel more than a little stressed. “Who the hell is going to be my Priest if Linden is out of action? There’s no one else I’ve worked with enough to even have a connection with let alone one enough to raise the power needed for the circle.”

“Don’t you worry your head about it,” Vera snapped, tugging violently on Selene’s arm, yanking her down in a chair where she sat as still as a statue, allowing the old lady to attack her hair. “Tanzi said she had a plan, so give her some time to see what she can pull out of her arse before you start your panic flapping.”

“But there isn’t anyone here,” Selene argued. “Why don’t we let Tanzi take my place, she’s worked with far more people than I have, she'd know how to work their energy better than me.”

“Because it’s your role, that’s why.”

“But I- OW!”

Vera pulled the brush back like she might donk Selene on the head again.

“We’ll have none of that negativity, my girl, I taught you better than that. You know negativity before a circle is a no no. Just trust the Gods, trust they have a plan and a reason.”

“Linden won’t like that he was part of whatever plan they supposedly had,” Selene grumbled but stayed still as Vera slapped a flower crown on her head and set to work curling her hair around it.

"Well, it's not like he has a say in it now, is it?"

-x-

“I feel ridiculous,” John complained as Tanzi straightened his tunic, giving him the once over.

“Oh hush, you look gorgeous, she’s gonna shit a brick when she sees you.”

“I swear, if anyone even dares to take a picture I’ll make sure that they never get an internet connection again for the rest of their lives,” John threatened, wincing as Tanzi grabbed a comb and a pair of scissors to start attacking his hair. "Are you sure this is completely necessary?"

"Oh yes, very necessary, you have to dress the part, besides, it'll be worth it, you'll thank me later," Tanzi grinned admiring her handiwork. "That bitch is gonna send me a gift basket for making you look so good."

"And there's really no one else to do it?"

"No, I already told you. Linden is out of action and it's been years since she's worked with anyone close enough to lead a ritual with them. You're bonded to her, you're basically her familiar, you're the perfect solution. Don't worry, it'll be fine, believe it or not she does know what she's doing, she won't let you mess up."

"I never thought for a moment that she wouldn't be completely capable and in control, she always is. She may seem flighty but-"

"You don't have to tell me," Tanzi interrupted, patting his shoulder. "I've known her since she entered the craft, in fact I think tonight will be quite eye opening for you. You've never seen her in a ritual before, have you?"

John shook his head.

"Then you're in for a treat, she's a natural performer as well as a talented witch."

"My wife with a penchant for dramatic performance? Never."

Tanzi sniggered under her breath but declined to comment, focusing her attention on the back of his head as she worked.

"Are you sure this is all I have to do?" John asked, unfolding the instructions he'd been given and reading them through again. They seemed simple enough, follow Selene, stand where he was told, do as she directed and only speak when she spoke to him first or asked him a question, it sounded like a standard social event to him.

"Yep. You've got your part of the performance there too, just make sure you give Sel her part."

"Tell me again why we aren't warning her about this?"

"Because I want to see the look on her face," Tanzi shrugged. "I'm old, I have to get my kicks somewhere."

John snorted out a laugh. "Don't let my Grandma hear you complaining about being old, she gets very defensive when anyone under sixty even dares to mention they have a wrinkle."

"Good job I'm over 60 then," Tanzi answered distractedly, tugging at the side of his head as she tried to wrestle his hair into submission. He resisted the urge to flinch and instead focused on her words.

"Sure you are, and I'm planning a career change to become a game show host." The woman didn't look any older than he did, let alone old enough to appease his Grandma.

Tanzi grinned evilly. "Look me up if you don't believe me, but sit still while you do it."

For want of anything better to do John pulled out his phone and did as he was told. It took him less than two minutes and a tiny bit of government file delving to find the truth.

"There's only one Tanzanite Summerland, who is apparently seventy-eight years old."

Tanzi hummed a little sound of acknowledgement as she worked on his parting, trying to force his hair to lay in a way that didn't come naturally to it. "Why won't your bloody hair stay where I put it?"

"Selene asks the same thing, I gave up trying to change it years ago and just work with it, but don't think I don't know you're trying to change the subject," he retorted, on to her game.

She huffed, giving up on the parting, deciding to work with what she had, smoothing it back into place instead. "I'm mated to a full bloodied Shifter, Nikos is 297."

"He's what?" John spluttered, turning to look at her. "That's impossible."

"Dude, you turn into a cat, nothing should be impossible to you," she drawled, her tone implying she thought he was being particularly dense as she grabbed his head and turned it to face forward. "Avery is 413."

"Avery too? What does he turn into?"

"Nothing, though I'm sure he'd love to embrace the bat cliché if he could."

"Bat? Why would h-"

Tanzi raised her curved fingers to her mouth in a crude depiction of fangs and hissed.

John's eyes widened.

Tanzi nodded. "Yeah, and he's still not matured into a fully functioning adult, he'd be lost without my sister, I swear. Now, you've got your words, I've done the best I can with your hair, I think you're good to go."

"What? No! I've got questions, you can't just dump this kind of information on me and expect me to just accept it. I need answers."

"No time my friend, chop chop, it's getting dark, move your arse, your wife's waiting."

-x-

"Seriously?"

Selene couldn't have been more shocked if Tanzi had produced a monkey from her pocket to slap her around the face.

"You think John is the solution to our problem? How? Why? He hates people!"

"Oh hush," Tanzi soothed, brushing away her concerns. "He'll be fine, it's only a little ritual-"

"Little? There's a hundred and fifty people out there joining in!"

"In at the deep end," Tanzi shrugged, "he married a witch, he's gotta learn sometime. He said he'd do it."

"But why him? Is there really no one else?" Selene fretted, more worried about her husband's social anxiety than the ritual itself. "Can't you do it?"

"Nope, you're our poster child, you're the one they came to see, we can't let them down. He's the only person here with a connection to you that won't dull your energy. You know a Priest is supposed to enhance it, not drain it."

Selene wanted to argue, but her friend did make a good point, not that she wanted to admit it. She had worked with John in little ways before, working on his intuition and raising his personal power quicker and easier before each shift he attempted; it really wouldn’t be that much different for him, you know, apart from all the people staring at him.

“Fuck it, we’ll make it work,” Selene huffed. “Did you at least prepare him, even a little? Gods, he’s never going to leave my side again after this. I walked away for an hour and he was drafted.”

“Of course I prepared him, I gave him a script and everything,” Tanzi promised her, crossing her heart.

“Which script?” Selene asked suspiciously.

“This one,” Tanzi grinned, handing Selene a book of Shadows already opened on a page.

Selene quickly scanned through the pages, recognising the revised ritual instantly.

“I’m going to make a few adjustments,” she stated in a tone that allowed no arguments.

“Wouldn’t expect anything less,” Tanzi assured her, knowing that she had won that round.

“Fine,” Selene sighed, checking the time. “Then I guess I'm ready.”

“Good, let’s go,” Tanzi said, draping a cloak around Selene’s shoulders.

“Hang on, where’s my chapstick?”

“Do you really need it?” Tanzi asked, desperate to get the other woman moving.

“Yes, I do, especially as I have a lot of foreheads to kiss out there,” Selene answered, already scrabbling through her bag looking for the elusive little tube.

“Where the hell is the bloody...Oh, thanks, babe,” she said in response to the chapstick that appeared in her line of sight, recognising the ring on the hand that held it. She took the stick and slicked on a generous amount, making fish out of water noises at her reflection in the mirror before turning around. She stumbled, reaching blindly behind her for something to hold on to, because praise be to every single deity for the God that was her husband.

“Holy shitballs Batman!”

“See, I look stupid!” John huffed, his cheeks burning. He should never have let himself be talked into it.

“Rubbish,” Tanzi scoffed.

“Wow,” Selene breathed, seemingly unable to form any full sentences.

“Told you she’d like it,” Tanzi grinned.

“What...I mean...how the...my Gods,” she breathed, unable to tear her eyes away from the pure gorgeousness she was seeing. Her eyes kept darting to a new part of him, there was simply too much beauty to take in in one go. “Wow.”

“Yes, I am a miracle worker, I know this,” Tanzi preened, brushing a non-existent speck of dirt off his shoulder.

“Is that a wig?”

“Clip in extensions.”

“My Gods,” Selene whispered again. John’s hair was now brushing his shoulders, falling in shimmering red waves that perfectly matched his own colour. His usual side parting had been maintained, the extensions having obviously been trimmed to blend in with his forelock, which somehow made it look less alien on him. Her fingers itched to run through all that silky looking hair and she actually reached out a hand but Tanzi slapped it down.

He was dressed in a black shirt with loose fitted sleeves that laced up across his chest under a dark forest green tunic. His legs were encased in black leggings and dark brown lace up boots that came up to just below his knees. He had a black cloak over one arm and a metal headpiece that encircled his head looking rather like a crown. But it was the pointed ears that peeked out from his hair that really pulled the whole look together.

“Fuck...me,” Selene was absolutely stunned, taking a few steps towards him, wanting to be close, to touch, to kiss...

“Later,” Tanzi ordered. “You two have to get moving, I can hear the drums already.”

Snapping out of her dazzling husband induced daze, Selene grabbed a sword that had been laying on a table in one hand and reached for his hand with the other.

If John felt nervous dressed in his ridiculous costume, it was nothing compared to how Selene seemed to be feeling. He could feel her hand shaking in his and hear the way she kept sucking in a deep breath before letting it out slowly.

He wanted to say something to make it better, but knew that in times like these words made very little difference to her. Instead he repositioned her hand in his, linking their fingers and giving it a comforting squeeze. She looked different tonight, he’d seen her in ritual robes before, but this time she had replaced the dramatic makeup she had been wearing earlier with something much more subtle. She looked younger, less sure of herself, with pale golden eyeshadow, pink blushed cheeks and no lipstick, maybe that was part of the reason that she looked a little less confident than normal.

They waited just outside the perimeter that had been marked out for the circle, around which a ring of people stood, others seated in little huddles on blankets, obviously not part of the actual ritual but wishing to observe. The whole clearing was lit up by the crackling flames of a large bonfire, which warmed the chill air to a more pleasant temperature now that the sun had gone down, taking its heat with it.

The drumming that had been growing louder with each passing moment reached its crescendo and abruptly stopped. He felt her stiffen and heard her inhale deeply once more, holding it for the count of five before letting it out slowly.

“Show time,” she whispered, more to herself than to him. “Just follow my lead, babe, I won’t let you down.”

“I know,” he assured her, bringing her hand to his lips and placing a gentle kiss on her knuckles.

Link to Ao3

#john tracy #selene tempest #thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds #thunderbirds 2015 #witch #thunderbirds fanfiction #paranormalromance #thunderbirdsarego

[robotnuts]

i stayed up for 26 hours and wrote some ideas for an rvb season here it is. it’s a s14 they stay on chorus au

-epsilon is recursed and all the fragments are split but theyre shoved back into an orb because i ! miss orbsilon. so it’s basically all the fragments copiloting the orb body with the orb glowing the color of whoever is speaking. ep2ilon is his own dude who is heavily influenced by the fact that all of the fragments were put in caboose’s head immediately after the charon battle because he was the only person with a head empty enough to Handle It so he still has the caboosification which is so important to orbsilon, but he also doesnt view himself as the old epsilon with amnesia but like the steven universe to original epsilon’s rose quartz

-caboose goes through his teen angst phase because epsilon doesnt remember who he is and wont go by church anymore and he backtalks wash like a teenager saying i hate you dad!! while wash is scandalized 

-wash in general is just desperately trying to make the blues and the reevbs in general... not morally better people, because he doesn’t know how to do that himself, but more competent and functional adults who don’t have a youtube channel where they review how different metal spoons blow up in the microwave. 

-simmons gets tucker’s s16 arc where he goes mad with the power hes gotten from being a war hero but in a disctinctively simmons way where he doesnt like his description given in a newspaper that calls him lanky and describes him as like somehow an overgrown bird was given all the properties of a chihuahua being held at gunpoint so he doxxes the reporter, dylan, on twitter

-the mercs show up at one point because i miss the mercs. in this season anyone i want to bring back from the dead can come back because the philosophy is 100% whatever is funny to me and not thematic coherence with the rest of the show. i still think it would be a better sequel to chorus than shisno

-felix shows up trying to break up grocus because grif has become too friendly with locus and he’s Mad about it and so is Simmons because simmons is an awful freak with many flaws, which is the best part about his character. he like thinks grif is cheating because grif keeps talking about how great locus is but he doesn’t realize that’s because grif is imagining locus’ backstory as like, the ideal Hot Guy riding a motorcycle dean winchester archetype that he thought was the coolest someone could be. this is fueled by locus’ blatant autism which let him adapt to talking like an edgy batman villain for so long because the only person he was friends one ups him by being essentially an edgy joker motivational instagrammer who microdoses LSD to make himself more productive and read somewhere that “macrodosing” was the new hot trend, so he gets tricked into having a horrible trip. so felix is much worse and have allowed locus to put up this act for so long

-aforementioned unbearable narcissist teams up with simmons in order to bring down grif and locus because neither of them have a healthy or normal approach to relationships and think this is an acceptable reaction, and anyone who knows better is too busy doing other shit to notice. they mostly ineffectively try to sow discord between the two but it keeps failing due to both grif and locus’ ambivalence to their respective partner’s antics at this point, along with the fact that locus often just doesnt understand what the fuck felix is talking about. grif just thinks simmons is being neurotic as usual until they pull a tatami galaxy and send the both of them obviously fake letters from the other being rude and trying to get the two of them to fight, but it’s immediately seen through and grif is like, god DAMMIT simmons you’ve been off lately but this is so obvious i actually have to address your weird behavior instead of continuing to let it slide in favor of doing literally anything else

-the literally anything else is grif’s arc with sister where he has to learn that she’s grown up and doesn’t need to be protected from herself as much anymore because hes so used to being her Big Brother,  but also she has to learn that he wasnt just being annoying like mom and dad but he was protecting her from real shit that she had no idea about. this isnt funny i just want more grif siblings okay

-locus somehow manages to make himself a dependent of washington and place wash under community service arrest which wash, after being unable to remedy this, forces tucker and caboose to come along with to help Build character or something but it really ends with all of them bitching about how bored they are and pinching each other with the grabbers theyre supposed to be using to clean up litter in symphonia’s long abandoned shopping center so it can start being used again. as people move in bitters can achieve his all time intended character role: snarky store employee at the asexual tech repair store

-they keep matthews in a sealed box in to fix the laptops and make palomo hold everything wearing oven mitts

-the lieutenants were promoted to the same rank as the reevbs because the pelicans got to charons ship extremely quickly and the reevbs’ role in the battle was pretty much the same as the other soldiers in the end, the reevbs just got the cool gear out of it, so now the lieutenants are on the same leeel and want the bgc to admit that they suck and the fednews rule. palomo especially has gotten way too big for his britches and now thinks tucker is lame and hes the new hot shit in town. sarge was very angry about this but kimball isnt easily bullied like doyle was and he couldnt get a promotion above grif and simmons. it really eats away at him so he diverts effort into trying to get new recruits lower on the food chain to join the red army because hes getting empty nest syndrome.

-sarge is also upset that red and blue team both have equal representation by having one seat in the new chorus government, so he demands that chorus recognize a new robot faction run by lopez and FILSS to try to get another red team vote in chorus parliment. church has been tormented by emily grey since shes in charge of rebuilding the new goverment’s infastructure and she registered ep2ilon as 0 years old so he joins the movement. and since FILSS is always loyal to the director lopez actually gets outvoted by the blue team 2-1. sarge is devastated. 

-they tried to veto ep2ilon joining the robot union but hes the one in charge of doing calculations for like their supply runs and agriculturral seectors to make sure food doesnt run out (because it turns out that the sangheli were really into redbull, which is disgusting, and thats all they left behind in the temple of bountiful harvest) so he has enough leverage to protest the robophobia in the capital

-doc and donut take pity on how pathetic wash’s attempts to improve the blue team are so they try to get wash to come with them to their open-polyamorous morning routine and juice cleanse which is where you go like a spa or a massage to clear your mind once a week and do yoga and other homoerotic slash homeopathic related shenanigans. donut swears it’s not like, actually gay it’s just like a new high tech way that people who make startups and spend all of their time trying to emulate billionaire’s routines for maximum productivity do now according to a ted talk donut found, and is totally normal, he promises. doc is doing it just because he does all sorts of new age medicine or treatments and donut because he’s working really hard on his pyramid scheme idea startup that everyone keeps telling him is a pyramid scheme but he refuses to admit to. anyways wash says yes and when he gets there during their warm up stretches as he’s helping donut stretch his leg even higher in the air donut says “so... why did you shoot me in the chest wash!” and he instantly realizes this was a bad, bad idea.

-doc also takes carolina to a pottery class because he thought she needed a more active relaxation strategy and it ended with carolina being dragged out of the building by caboose and wash because she smashed clay in the instructor’s hair in a public meltdown. emily grey was the instructor and it was because she had keept making passive aggressively rude suggestions in an overly cheery voice and she just snapped. carolina is forced to go to court ordered therapy but the thing is emily is also the only licensed therapist on chorus because doctors registration paperwork hasnt been overhauled for the new government yet. there are other therapists still operating but none of them are “licensed” yet so wouldnt you know it, it seems like carolina is gonna be seeing emily every week from now on :)

-wash is still trying to strike the balance between blue team leader who barely keeps all of them from cutting their fingers off while cooking and overly regretful overcome with guilt for his past actions so he like, organizes everyones sock and underwear drawers by like size and color because he thinks this is like, a normal Good Deed to show appreciation on the level of doing everyones dishes in the sink instead of something extremely creepy that tucker tells him he needs to stop doing immediately

#long post #journal entry #ive had this in my drafts for a while and i finally got around to cleaning it up #simmons #grif #sister #doc #carolina #donut #grey #wash #tucker #caboose #epsilon #locus #felix #sarge #god so many tags

[allsassnoclass]

The Inherent Domesticity of Target’s Home Decor Section

Pairing: Michael Clifford/Calum Hood Rating: Teen Word Count: 2076 Read on AO3

Michael has mixed feelings about Target.  On one hand, Target is better than Walmart, and he appreciates that they get to design different album covers and sell special editions there.  On the other hand, walking into Target makes him feel like he should have his life together more.  That’s not to say that his life is a disaster; his life is actually pretty great, and he feels like a fully functioning adult.  However, the store still gives him the niggling feeling that he should buy a planner and some post-it notes and turn into a suburban mom.

“Do you think I should buy a planner?” he asks.  Calum hums, reading the back of a DVD that’s on sale for $5.  When he shifts to put it back on the shelf, Michael shifts right with him, arms around his stomach and cheek plastered against his shoulder.  It’s earlier in the morning than Michael would like, so Calum gets the privilege of holding him up as punishment for dragging him out into the world at this time of day.

“Why do you need a planner?  Ashton takes care of that stuff for the band,” Calum says.  He picks up another DVD and flips it over.

“Yeah, but maybe I should put down everyone’s birthday or something,” he says.  Calum snorts and Michael pinches his side, because he’s apologized for forgetting his birthday that one time sincerely and profusely and gave Calum a pretty spectacular blowjob to make up for it.

“Would you even use it?” Calum asks.  Michael considers and has to concede his point.

They look at DVDs for a few more minutes because Calum gets a kick out of what a place like Target choses to stock in their meger selection.  Michael lets him slip some animated thing he thinks he watched once as a kid into the basket, content to stand there while Calum takes his time and just breathe him in.  He loves being close to Calum, letting his familiar smell fill his nostrils and leeching body heat.  He lets their breathing sync up and imagines that he can hear his heartbeat, slow and steady and almost putting him to sleep standing up.

Nowhere feels like home quite like Calum does.  Even in the middle of Target, Michael feels better than he ever has alone in his house.  It makes him wonder why he’s even living alone, and why Calum pulled away and they stopped messing around when neither of them have girlfriends.

The bottom line is that he misses Calum nearly every moment they’re apart, but he doesn’t know how to articulate this without the crushing fear of rejection.  Calum loves him, and he knows that a significant part of Calum’s world revolves around Michael, but that doesn’t mean they necessarily love each other in the same way.  Michael wants grocery shopping and kisses and late night cuddles regardless of if they have somewhere to be in the morning and lazy sex and laughing at each other’s ridiculousness so hard that he can’t breathe.  Calum wants a platonic best friend.

“What else do we still need to get?” Calum asks, shaking Michael out of his reverie.

“Toothpaste, I think.  And vitamins.”

“Look at you, being healthy and shit.”

Michael pokes his side and Calum tries to wriggle away, giggling because Michael knows exactly which spot tickles the most.

“Just because I don’t let Ashton drag me to yoga like you do doesn’t mean I’m unhealthy.  I get the most sleep out of any of us and I drink a fuckton of water.”

“I know, I know,” Calum says.  “Want to check the CDs?”

It’s a distraction tactic, because Michael will always check the one-shelf CD selection, especially so soon after one of their own releases.  Michael makes the conscious decision to allow himself to be distracted.

“Okay.  CDs, then toothpaste, then vitamins, then I want to look at the home decor.”

“What do you want to look at the home decor for?”

Michael shrugs, knowing that Calum can feel it.  There’s just no non-incriminating way to say I like to see your reactions and pretend that we’re picking out stuff for our house because I might be fully in love with you and I want you in every single crevice of my life.

That’s the issue with Target: it makes him feel domestic and long for things he can’t have.

“Excuse me?” a new voice says, and Michael first feels a twinge of annoyance at someone interrupting his moment and then a twinge of panic that it could be a fan when he definitely doesn’t have the emotional or physical energy to put on a public persona.  One look at the owner of the voice dispels that notion.  The woman is on the later side of middle-aged and looks pretty much exactly like the kind of woman who cooks meatloaf and has 3 cats and actually does go to Target to buy planners.  As inclusive as the band tries to make their music, Michael can admit that she’s not exactly in their immediate wheelhouse for fans.  Nevertheless, he straightens up a bit, but the woman is smiling so he thinks he can maybe get away with still locking his arms around Calum’s waist.

“Sorry to bother you, but I just wanted to say that you boys make such a cute couple!  It’s so nice to see young people in love.”

Michael stiffens, but Calum puts a hand on his arm, effectively anchoring him in place before he can pull away.

“Thank you.  It’s nice to be in love,” Calum says, and Michael’s breath stutters in his throat.

The woman beams and for a moment Michael thinks she’s going to reach out and pinch Calum’s cheeks, but she just bids them a good day and continues towards the books.

“CDs?” Calum asks, casual as anything.  Michael nods and fully pulls away, not trusting himself to speak or to touch.

It was just a nice thing to say to a romantic woman, but it’s nice to be in love plays on repeat in his head like a broken record.  He knows, he knows that it doesn’t mean anything, but Michael would give almost anything to have it be the truth.

There are five copies of the Target exclusive edition of CALM on the shelf.  There’s also a Neil Diamond greatest hits collection and a few random soundtracks that Calum points out, but Michael can barely focus.  He kind of wants to skip the toothpaste and go straight home, but he also doesn’t want Calum to question why that small interaction with the woman threw him so off kilter.  By the time they make it through the checkout and back to Michael’s car, he feels like he’s going to vibrate out of his skin.

Calum waits until they’re out of the parking lot to start talking.

“I’m sorry for making you uncomfortable earlier.  That wasn’t my intention.  I just figured that was the easiest response.  I know we’re not--I know we don’t do that anymore.”

In a different world where Michael hasn’t kept a very tight lid on his feelings for his best friend for the past eight years, he would have crashed the car.

“I know,” he says instead.  Silence fills the space, heavy and uncomfortable.  Michael keeps his eyes resolutely on the road and tries not to read too much into how Calum keeps taking a breath as if he wants to talk before cutting himself off.

“And I understand,” Calum says suddenly, almost causing Michael to swerve.  “I understand why we’re not together anymore.”

“What,” Michael says.

“I’m not trying to get you back, or whatever.  I know you don’t think of me like that.”

“That I don’t--” Michael chokes.  “I’m sorry, what?”

“Come on, don’t make me say it,” Calum says, shifting in his seat.

“No, hang on.  I don’t understand what you’re saying to me right now.”

“Mike, stop it.  Now you’re just being mean.”

“Calum, you’re the one who pulled away from me.  Personally, I don’t understand why we’re not together anymore.  I didn’t even know that we were!”

“That’s bullshit!  What did you think we were, if not together?”

“I don’t know, fucking around?  I thought we stopped because you got bored of me.”

“Michael, we stopped because we got asked about ships in an interview and you got really weird about it.”

“Yeah, because I’ve been in love with you for half my life!”

Silence descends, and Michael absolutely cannot look at Calum right now.  The only things that exist are the steering wheel in his grip and the strip of road in front of him.  There’s still a good ten minutes until he reaches his house, and Michael is very content to spend those ten minutes pretending like he is alone and has not just revealed his biggest secret during an argument that he still doesn’t quite understand.

“Pull over.”

No such luck, apparently.

“Michael, pull over right now.”

He eases over and puts the car in park, letting his hands fall into his lap.

“You’re in love with me?” Calum asks.  Michael nods.  “We’re so stupid.”

“What?” Michael asks, finally looking over at Calum.  He doesn’t look uncomfortable or sad, he looks exasperated.  Michael isn’t sure what that’s supposed to mean.

“We’re idiots.  We could’ve been happily dating this whole time.  Hell, we probably could’ve been married by now,” Calum says.  “I’m in love with you, too.”

Michael blinks at him and really wishes his brain was operating a bit faster.

“Calum,” he says, for lack of anything else.

“Michael,” Calum grins right back.

“Are you serious?” he asks.  Calum rolls his eyes.

“Why would I joke about this?”

Michael shrugs helplessly.

“Michael,” Calum says seriously.  “I made you park the car.  We just had a conversation that obviously made you uncomfortable.  Why the fuck would I be joking right now?”

Michael shrugs helplessly again.

“You love me?” he asks.  Calum reaches over and grabs one of his hands.

“I’m head over heels, crazy in love with you.  It’s pathetic.  It’s ridiculous.  I want to jump you in this car right now.”

Michael laughs.

“Not in broad daylight,” he says.  Calum smiles in a way that makes something settle in Michael’s stomach, something that he hadn’t realized had been unsettled ever since they stopped seeing each other.

Fuck.  He’s so lucky.

“I’m in love with you, too,” he says.  Calum’s smile widens.

“I know,” he says.  “You just told me that.”

“Well, I wanted to tell you again.”

“Well, I’m in love with you, too.”

They’re talking in circles now--wonderful, love-sick circles--and Michael is thankful for multiple reasons when Calum breaks it by leaning over the center console to kiss him.  Calum’s lips are familiar under his, and even after months without feeling them Michael has them memorized.  This kiss feels different, though.  There’s a surety to it that they haven’t had before, a question and agreement that thrills him.

“You’re sure you don’t want to roll around in the back seat right now?” Calum asks softly when they part.  Michael grins and knocks their foreheads together.

“You’re funny,” he says.  “Ha, ha.”

Calum kisses him again.  Michael could definitely get used to this.  If their previous conversation is any indication, he’ll have plenty of time and opportunity to get used to this.

This time when the kiss breaks, Calum fully leans back rather than keep breathing his air.

“Okay,” he says.  “Let’s go home, Michael.  We’ve got years of a honeymoon phase to catch up on.”

Michael puts the car in drive and eases back onto the road.  They’ll have time to drive around again later, because Michael definitely wants to do another circuit of the Target home decor section with this new revelation.  Maybe he’ll try to find a card for the woman who confused them for a couple, just in case they happen to run into her by the post-it notes or planners.

Either way, Michael thinks that Target might be his favorite store now.  He glances at Calum to find him already looking at him and his chest warms.

Yeah, Target is definitely his favorite store, but he’d be okay with never setting foot in it again if it meant he could keep spending time with his favorite person.

Thankfully, the way that Calum leans over to kiss him at a red light seems to mean that he agrees.

#my writing #malum #5sos fic #5sos fanfiction #i began this in may of 2020 so it's an alternate universe with no covid #can you believe it took me this long to finish lol #also i feel like this is an interesting way to see how my writing style has changed #this is very helen-influenced i think #the title for this in my google drive is t-t-t-t-TARGET

[rpbetter]

Reblog Etiquette (and ships)

At this point, we all know about “reblog karma” and “reblogging from source.” Though, I say that...and am questioning it. You should fucking know this by now, but in the event you don’t, let me define that shit for you.

Reblog Karma: the RPC’s oldest attempt at keeping people from clogging notifications and using others as meme resources. Essentially, don’t reblog a meme from a mutual unless you are sending them something from that meme first. Not all blogs practice it, or practice it the same way, please see their rules.

Reblogging from Source: another effort to stop being used as a meme/aesthetics resource. Many RPers would like you to reblog quotes, aesthetics, and memes from their source (original post location or the meme/aesthetics/quotes resource blog they got it from), even if you are sending them a meme. This is especially applicable when not interacting with the RPer.

Okay, that’s out of the way.

There is more to Reblog Etiquette than this!

And, when that etiquette is nonexistent, it almost always deals with a RPer’s ship. Mentioning ship partners and/or tagging ships on a reblog from another RPer, not removing that RPer’s mentions or tags, and even dropping a mention or outright RPing in the comments of another RPer’s reblog.

Don’t reblog from another mun and tag your ship or mention (@) your ship partner(s).

Don’t reblog a post with someone else’s mention still stuck to it.

Don’t reblog a post and leave the previous mun’s tags still in the tags.

Don’t go into the comments on someone’s post and mention your ship partner(s).

Don’t roleplay in the comments of someone else’s post.

None of this is alright, I have no idea what would make anyone think this is appropriate reblog etiquette, but it very much is not. It’s incredibly rude and lazy. Because I know that many people have similar ship aesthetics and so on, I’m not saying you shouldn’t reblog something for your own ships that a mutual has for theirs. (That’s a whole other in depth conversation we’ll have later.)

I’m saying that this is how you should be going about it:

Reblog from the source.

-What if there is no source because it’s deactivated, or there is another reason why I can’t access it? 

Go into the post’s notes. At some point, damn near every post that could be used as an aesthetic, quote, or prompt for a ship (and RP in general) has been reblogged by at least one source blog. Look for RP meme, aesthetic, help, and other resource blog urls. If you cannot find one of those, look for urls that are general resource-style blogs. Personal blogs reblog aesthetics etc. as well, and there are many such resource blogs out there. -If you’re uncomfortable reblogging from a personal, that’s tough shit; I hate to break it to you, but most of your resources came from personal blogs. Deal with it, or don’t reblog anything you can’t find filtered through a RP specific resource.

-- “But this takes time/effort lol I just want to use it for my ship.” Again, tough shit. Sometimes, it does take energy not to be rude and do the right the thing. In all honesty, it’s fairly rare that doing the right thing is effortless, even when it’s something as simple as RP. Grow up.

--- You went through the notes, but there’s no appropriate blog to reblog from, now what?

Just because it’s a rare occurrence doesn’t mean it’s impossible. I know this one isn’t, I’ve had it happen too! My choice was to not reblog it at all, I just sent the link to my ship partner privately instead. If you don’t have that kind of friendship, you really wanted it on the dash, or another reason, you are now left with one option, and you’re not going to like it. Message the mutual you want to reblog from. Politely, explain that you’d like to reblog the post for your ship, and ask if they’re comfortable with it. No guilting, begging, or general, weird ass rudeness. If they decline, accept it just as politely, thank them for their response. If they accept, thank them, and especially if this isn’t a mutual you interact with much, be sure you’re showing them continued support on the dash by reading and liking/commenting on their headcanon posts and other appropriate material. (You should be anyway.)

Remove any mentions present (@’s)

Seriously, this is incredibly rude! Yet, with the typical lack of self-reflection and awareness of others in the RPC here, I see it multiple times a day on my dash. Not just with RP-blog-to-RP-blog interaction either, I also see RPers reblogging from personals and leaving their mentions attached. (I see it the other way around too, but I’m not here to school personal blogs.) For all the excessive emphasis RPers put on appearance, you’d think they’d want to get rid of something that looks this sloppy, but no. Not if it takes one extra second of effort!

-I know that xkit’s editable reblogs tends to break whenever tumblr gives us a new, exciting, hideous, insulting, limitation, I mean update, but come the fuck on. It is also one of the quickest things to regain functionality, so, maybe you should save the reblog to drafts, be following xkit’s blog for updates, and edit it once there has been a patch. If it’s worth it to you, it’s worth a short wait. When it’s working, you can easily remove that mention with editable reblogs.

--If you’re going to use being mobile as an excuse, or if you don’t want to wait on it/don’t use xkit, again, go to the source. And, also again, if that isn’t an option, you can find where it has been reblogged by an appropriate blog at some point in its history, sans mentions. Reblog from there.

Do not reblog someone else’s tags (#)

Some people have their xkit set up to reblog automatically with the previous poster’s tags. While that can be useful in some situations, I can think of, very literally, no situation this is appropriate for an RPer to use. If you have this set up on your personal/resource blog/wtfe and your RP blog is a sideblog (or you are using certain methods of having your browser open to two separate blog accounts where your xkit settings are transferring over), it’s up to you to delete the tags on these posts.

-It takes maybe one full second to click in the tag field and hit your delete button a few times to clear it. Do that. It’s never, ever, appropriate to keep someone’s ship, muse, verse, or other personalized tags attached to a reblog.

--If you are a personal blog reading this somehow, maybe you’re wanting to get into RP, please take note of this. This is one of the many reasons why most RPers will not interact with personals. We don’t like you reblogging an aesthetic post and keeping our tags on it.

In the case of both situations, not only is it rude and lazy, it’s fucking with someone else’s tags and privacy. Most RPers don’t want their content showing up in generally searchable tags, it’s one of the reasons that personalizing tags came about. Furthermore, if I’m on my dash and click a mutual’s custom tag for aesthetics, verses, ships, and so on, it’s now going to come up with instances of those tags on someone else’s blog as well.

Delete the fucking tags if they auto-populate. Don’t use someone else’s custom tags of your own volition either.

“Subverting” reblogs to mention in comments is a hard no, too

-So, you don’t want to reblog the post, but do want to @ your ship partner(s) in it? There’s no way to do that without being rude and strange. To be honest, this is even worse than just reblogging and tagging your ship.

I may not be the OP, but you came onto a post on my blog, one very likely tagged for my ships and/or having my ship partners mentioned on it, and commented on it mentioning your ship partner. It’s every bit as offensive and more so than someone reblogging from me and using it for a ship I’m not a part of. I don’t know what’s worse, when that other mun is a ship partner, casual mutual who doesn’t interact, or a writing partner but not ship partner. It’s all deeply fucked up. No one’s RP blog is here for your use like this!

--You’re also not subverting anything. I think the idea is to be polite or go unnoticed. People seem to lack a basic grasp on how tumblr works; you get notifications on reblogged posts you are not the OP of when someone comments on them just like you get a notif when someone likes it. The only way to genuinely be secretive about this would be to comment on it from the source or a resource blog. They will get the notification.

If you are commenting on, liking, or reblogging a post you see on the dash, the person having reblogged it, putting it there for you to encounter, will be notified of your interaction with it.

---What I’m saying, just in case it isn’t abundantly clear, for the third time now: you’re not being slick. Your mutuals will see that you weirdly @’ed someone in a comment on their reblog. They know.

----The appropriate behavior is to do just as advised in the above points: GO TO THE SOURCE. If no source exists, find an appropriate resource blog in the notes. You may then, and only then, give that mention in a comment.

Frankly, it’s still weird, and I would recommend you just reblog it from the source to interact with it. There is always the option of sending it to the intended party by way of tumblr’s messenger or linking the post in an off tumblr messenger like discord.

I say this because it hasn’t escaped my attention that the only time I have this issue on my own RP blog is when the imagery or text is fucking filthy. As in, Other Mun didn’t want something that sexual, kinky, violent, and so on to be posted to their own blog. You need to grow up if that’s your deal. Like writing smut or violence, if you need to do it in private only, you’re obviously not adult enough to handle the topic.

Keep your roleplay where it belongs; in your inbox and threads

-It’s not appropriate to start up RP in the comments of another RPer’s reblogged ship aesthetic. (Or anything else, this just happens to be the most common.) It’s incredibly odd and offensive to look in your notifications and see that a mutual and their ship partner are flirting, or outright fucking, in the comments of a post you reblogged for your ship.

It’s just as awkward feeling and offensive when someone reblogs the post and begins full-blown RP on it. It’s one thing when it’s a post originating from an RP resource blog, or when it’s kept to something like a mention and a short line that your writing partner can start their original post in inspiration of. But...

--You know how I said above that auto-copying tags thing is one of the reasons why RPers are iffy about personal blogs? Well, this is one of the reasons why personal blogs think RPers are exceedingly weird members of fandom that need to be excluded and devalued. It’s odd, especially if you’ve never encountered RP, to see someone reblogging your quote, moodboard, or other original post and RPing on it.

Listen, we all need to RP some crack and commentary sometimes, but it’s best left in the tags or put into a new post.

---Instead of RPing (not sorry, especially if it is smut) on that post, link the image to show in a new post, and go from there.

Please remember to be polite about artists, including photographers and gifers, when you do this! Tumblr automatically gives the source of imagery when you use a link to display the picture, that’s why I recommended doing that instead of saving, then re-uploading the image as though it is your own. If you’re going to do that, even if it’s just silliness going on, give mention of the artist, photographer’s blog/site, or gifer’s blog in the tag or below the image.

Tumblr is deeply unfriendly to artists of all sorts, don’t be fuel that. When you upload artwork for the sake of RP, again, even if it’s just crack, that’s literally violating what artists ask people not to do; you’re reposting their art without permission and credit.

#rp better #reblog etiquette #rp advice #rp help #psa #rp psa #mun behavior #ships #tumblr rpc