#another day of me being incapable of writing a Tumblr post without turning it into a novel

[plantsjustwannahavefun]

I am once again begging Ed stans to understand that it's possible to love Ed and believe he deserves love AND also admit that he mistreated and tormented the crew during the Kraken era. Not only is this possible, this is the position the show wants you to have. You think Izzy deserved everything he got? Fine, whatever, forget about him for a minute. There's a whole crew in there you're supposed to empathise with and feel sympathy for, too. The six of them that Ed actively tried to kill or left for dead, for starters. Pay attention to the crew's experiences and reactions. They're shown to be traumatised, grieving, clinging to disassociation (Frenchie) and nihilism (Archie) as coping mechanisms and suffering from PTSD flashbacks. And, since this type of fans constantly go on about how it's racist to think Ed did anything wrong... what about the fact that a lot of the crew are PoC too? What then?

If you've watched the first 3 episodes of S2 and there was only one person on that ship you felt sorry for, then you're not a fan of OFMD, you're just a fan of Ed in isolation. And if the only way you can love Ed is by denying that he ever did anything wrong, then you're completely missing the point of the show. OFMD never said that people only deserve to be loved if they're morally perfect and flawless. The show doesn't subscribe to the dichotomy of Good vs Bad. Good people can do bad things. They can hurt the ones they love. Even if they didn't mean to, even if they themselves were suffering at the time, it doesn't mean they don't need to take responsibility for their actions or avoid the consequences. Stede didn't mean to hurt Mary and his kids when he left, but he still did. He had legitimate reasons for leaving, he didn't just do it for the lolz, but it was still wrong and Mary was right to be angry at him. And Stede needed to face up to this - not just for their sake but his too. Even though it turned out their lives were better off without him, reconciling with Mary was still crucial for his character development.

It was the same for Ed, it just didn't get handled quite as well due to lack of screentime, but the idea was the same. When Ed realises he'd been cruel to Fang and apologises, he isn't sinking into self-hatred and despair. Quite the contrary, this is a moment of growth for him. Because the fact is, just because you as a human being are inherently worthy of love doesn't mean you can go around hurting everyone and expecting them to put up with you. That's just not how it works. You don't need to be perfect, but you do need to listen to people when they tell you that you hurt them and apologise genuinely and try to be better. The show is very sympathetic to Ed but it does NOT excuse his actions. The crew aren't portrayed as villains or antagonists for being scared and angry at Ed for what he did to them. Even Stede was on their side with this one. If even Stede is able to see things from the crew's POV and have sympathy for them, then you should too. Stede doesn't love Ed because he sees Ed as a pure uwu angel. He loves Ed... because he just does. He loves being around him. They really click together. They have so much in common. That doesn't mean he approves of literally everything Ed has ever done. It just means he loves Ed despite that.

#another day of me being incapable of writing a Tumblr post without turning it into a novel #but I just saw another post from that one account and ugh #there's just something so depressing about this type of fans because they really miss the point of the show so badly #they honestly think that redemption isn't possible #that you can never get better as a person #that if you do something bad then you're condemned to be an Evil Person forever #which is a complete antithesis to the heart of the show #Ed is such a beautifully complex character #tbh I still think S2 did him a bit dirty due to the lack of screentime #but still #no wonder the Venn diagram of this type of Ed stans and Izzy antis is a circle #if they don't believe characters can change or be rendered than ofc they were never going to forgive Izzy or recognise his growth either #ofmd fandom critical #canon Ed appreciation post #crew of the revenge #ofmd #our flag means death

[ladymisteria]

Yesterday, wandering around here on Tumblr, I found another post about how Eristine fans (like me) prove to have absolutely no understanding of Gaston Leroux's original work.

Because we do not see how wonderfully perfect - and more importantly how absolutely healthy as a choice, for Christine - is Raoul de Chagny.

The post then concluded with a clear victorious note establishing how - given the canonicity of Raoul/Christine - this paring was obviously right.

Well, if you will allow me, I would like to respond to that post - by saying that yes, it is quite true.

In fact, everyone knows that:

sneaking - uninvited! - into a person’s dressing room and expecting everyone to leave to be left alone with an unconscious young woman is healthy;

waiting, once - rightly so! - being dismissed from the dressing room by said young woman, in a dark recess, for her to be alone in order to “get back at it” with an unsolicited courtship is healthy;

getting jealous when you hear her talking to a man, to the point - literally! - to becoming enraged and beginning to regard her as a prostitute is healthy;

entering her dressing room in her absence to see who she was daring (!) to talk to is healthy;

following her when she leaves Paris, raging when she apparently rejects your affections and - again! - practically calling her a prostitute when she tries to explain about the Angel of Music is healthy;

escaping through a window so that the innkeeper doesn't see you stalking the young woman in the middle of the night - again without her knowledge - to find out if it is true that she is going to pay her respects at her father’s grave, or if it is just an excuse to meet another man, is healthy;

questioning anyone who knows anything about her and her private life - even though she has clearly expressed her intention to break off your relationship (of friendship, let’s clarify! There is no engagement, secret or otherwise) - and even going so far as to show up at her home - again, uninvited! - to “put the screws” on his elderly and ailing foster mother, suggesting to her that the said young woman is (guess what? Bravo!) almost a prostitute just because she has not yet fallen at your feet, smitten in love with a spoiled child, is healthy;

“ambushing” the carriage in which the young woman travels, so that you can confront face to face the man with whom she dared to cheat on you (?!?), ending up for the umpteenth time considering her a prostitute “who led you on” (again, what?!?) is healthy;

considering her a saint or a whore depending on the time of day is healthy;

offending and humiliating her (accusing her, as is now ritual, of being the worst of whores) when she tries to explain to you, at the masquerade ball, what has happened to her and is still happening to her is healthy;

slipping - once again! - uninvited into her dressing room, spying on her as she writes a private letter, and even managing to rage when she seems to show pity for someone who is not you is healthy;

showing up - uninvited of course - at the young woman’s home, accusing her of not being herself, of being naive and a person completely incapable of judging the people around her, trying to get her to promise that she will never go out without you again, even managing to become enraged when she refuses to reveal the name of the “man who had the audacity to put a gold ring on her finger,” and her response to the proposal that certainly came with the ring is healthy;

taking seriously a fake engagement (which has very little secret about it, since the “third wheel in the triangle” himself urges the young woman to engage in it), and firmly claiming to turn it into a marriage - despite the fact that over and over and over again the young woman has told you that she has no intention of marrying you, and that yours is a game - is healthy…

Just tell me: should I continue? Because I don’t know how you feel about it, but it never seemed to me that Raoul was so much “the best choice” at the end of the day…

(To be clear: Erik has not a few problems and flaws, but at least he was honest and never claimed to be a "healthy choice'... and no honest Eristine fan would ever say that).

As for the "canonical = perfect" argument... I would like to remind you that Hades/Persephone is also canonical, yet everything is but a happy couple riding off into the sunset, so...

(P.S. I can no longer find the original post, so I would like to apologize to @textsfromthefifthbasement for using her screenshot).

(P.S. part 2: Thanks to @brendadaaedestler for pointing out how I needed to... "express out loud" this analysis of mine of the real 'healthiness' of Raoul de Chagny's character.)

#anti raoulstine #phantom of the opera #poto #healthier ah! #this is really funny #Is erik the healthier choice? #hell no! But at least he was honest #anti raoul de Chagny #raoul de changy #raoulstine #the not so healthy vicomte #eristine #raoul x christine #le fantome de l'opera

[space-cowboy-101]

🥽 Park Seonghwa, as depicted in a (hopefully near) future Fallout/Apocalypse au.

i’m kinda mad at myself for not putting a little perk picture for hongjoong because both seonghwa and yunho have one and i would’ve used this one for him had i done it. either Small Frame (because it’s hongjoong lbr), Magnetic Personality or Perception. but enough about hongjoong!

seonghwa’s cute lil bashful vault boys 😭 i searched through so many to find the right ones and those two describe him the best in the story, if i’m being honest.

and the nuka cola girl because 1. seonghwa sees the posters and definitely wants to try the outfit on, and 2. he loves nuka cola. who doesn’t. don’t tell him about nuka-world 😳

i’m not really sure where his story is going but i’m excited to write his involvement with hongjoong and how their relationship effects things.

anyway, his little summary thang! (that i now realized i didn’t do for hongjoong…i’ve failed my boy 😔)

Vault life is the only life he’s ever known, having been born into it unlike the old world that he’s heard about from folktales that may or may not be true. It always intrigued him how they had trains that followed tracks built above busy roads and could see a sky that wasn’t manufactured or a display created using a projector. The dwellers that travel outside the Vault told stories of the wastelands, the radioactive lakes and streams, the abandoned buildings and homes that can potentially house super mutants or raiders, and the bright blue sky that seemed to be the only thing not touched by the nuclear blast. But seeing it for himself was as possible as a radroach being killed by a good wack to the hard shell.

A Vault is what he started his own family in and a Vault is where he found a new one when the doctor and his scavengers carry in a dweller from another Vault, the features of the man dewey from the cryogenic system he was inside of before he was found.

‘Military Official’. ‘Air Force Pilot’. ‘Captain’. Those are the words they used to describe him and it caught his attention when he knew he shouldn’t have been listening to their conversation.

It wasn’t until he seen him with the baby the doctor had brought to him, that he came to the realization that this man—Kim Hongjoong—had charmed him with just a glance and the smile full of relief and love that he gave his son when he picked him up from his temporary crib.

…and remember; Vaults were never supposed to be where humans thrived under the pressure of a nuclear holocaust, but where they were tested during the events of one.

i know for a fact that i can’t post the yunho picture without spoiling his entire story 😩 i shouldn’t have added that obvious of a picture to it but i did…and now i have to live with the choice. oh well, i’ll probably post it next week or something 💀

what do you guys think of it so far? 🥹 i get so invested in these stories that they’re all i talk about for a while and honestly tumblr really do be getting it out of my system now. i feel like writing lil drabbles or whatever for my stories and posting it on here since my long stories will be on ao3 but i think i’m incapable of writing anything that isn’t longer than 30 chapters tbh. last time i did, the yungi one-shot was well over 30k words and it got turned into my dragon age story :D fun!

if you have any questions about my au’s or the characters, please don’t be afraid to ask! i will answer in paragraphs and in depth because i love them 🙂 i get so excited about people showing interest in the things i love and i get excited about ateez and yeah 👍🏻

which reminds me, thank you for the likes on my other posts 😭 i hope i can continue to fuel the ateez tag with as much au’s as i can think of and make someone’s day a little brighter with my little ideas!

bye y’all! 🫶🏻👋🏻

#ateez fanfic #seongjoong #hohong #ateez #ateez aesthetic #choi jongho #choi san #jeong yunho #jung wooyoung #kang yeosang #park seonghwa #kim hongjoong #seongjoongho or whatever their ship name is 💀 #song mingi #alternate universe

[tetsunabouquet]

Screw this bitch, absolutely god damn it. Two days ago, I mentioned to @vespersposts that I was working on a book with my mom but we only managed to complete chapter 1. I just deleted that chapter because of the conversation in between my mom's break that we just had. It started perhaps 2 years ago, with my mom saying she wanted to write about her experiences in the 90s. She was the cleaning lady of a brothel back then. Amsterdam brothels back in the 90s were the peak of wild so I agreed to help her because that's certainly a book with potential. After a year, she finally had a finished draft for chapter 1. Now, because of my mom being in that setting but also the content of the stories itself, it wasn't my most comfortable thing to write. I mean, chapter 1 was about prosititute who was so far gone on drugs that she comitted beastiality with a rabbit. I definitely needed a break in between writing chapter 1 because I found that scene so icky. But as I mentioned in that post a couple of days ago, she's now working as the cleaning lady at the police station and hears various juicy stories about the people brought in. So now she decided to write about that and told me chapter 2 wasn't going to be about that time that a couple of working ladies managed to lock up a police officer that they essentially robbed but about the police force instead. But I, as the person who's studying writing knows that those two whilst similar, still were very different settings and places at heart. You can't just combine those two without making a connection between those two, like having the prostitutes mirror the actions of the people arrested in modern day or holding them up against one another to make a statement about crime of the 90s vs modern day era, etc. My mom barely reads and writes, she likes to joke she's illiterate. So my mom doesn't understands these basic writing principles. It's why she approached me to help her- as to this day I have to do things like rewrite her emails because of her mistakes. Like even though I told her once or twice, she has a habit of writing locatie (location) with a K, that sort of stuff. So I tried to butt in and point out that's not the book we agreed to make and before I could even explain how the way she's going about it is going to make the book feel all over the place and how a book about the police force would be better as a sequel knowing my mom's writing weaknesses, she dared to tell me it was 'her book'. No it wasn't. Even during the earliest days of conception, my mom always spoke of this as 'our project'. We agreed to write together, we even created a psuedonym as she wanted it to be published under my name but I didn't. Because back then she could see that I was doing most of the heavy lifting of the writing and that I was going to be the one to bring it to the publisher. We even agreed I would get the majority of the profit because I put in the most work. I feel so hurt, because this is such a pattern with my mom; going to me because she's terrible or downright incapable of doing a certain something, telling me that she needs me and praising my skills and then I do it. Only for her to turn around and be like, "Please, what did you do?" And then I start crying, and then she's all surprised, wondering why I am upset. Rinse and repeat. She can re-write chapter 1 herself, make her own Tumblr (she actually wants to write on here as well and of course she was relying on me to make it), go to a fucking publisher herself. I am done doing all the hard work only to get spit in the face instead of getting even as much as a 'thank you'.

#tetsutalk #ungrateful people #i hate my mom #i deserve a thank you #i deserve someone who notices the shit I do for them #i hate being cinderella #where's my prince?

[mercurial-madhouse]

Anon prompted me with a Disney drabble and several plot-bunnies bounded and burrowed into my brain. This is the first that insisted on coming through my fingers and it is Sleeping Beauty inspired. I just couldn’t get the idea of Louis, Liam, and Harry as the three fairy godmothers (fathers? non-binary magical beings who aren’t parents?) out of my mind. The official prompt will come with the other drabble! Enjoy the light-hearted humour!

>*<>*<>*<>*<>*<>*<>*<>*< 

Got this spell on me (’cause everything you do is magic)

Niall loves his flatmates.  Truly, there’s never a dull moment when the four of them are all home. The three Brits are oddly protective of him, something about him living in a strange land or summat.

Louis will fight the weather to make sure they’ve got a footie match to watch. Harry will create a new designer store to keep Niall in the latest fashions that work for him. And Liam pulls every delicious food Niall ever wants out of thin air. No, it’s never a dull moment when they’re around.

That insanity might have a wee bit to do with their magic.

Something whistles through the air.

“Blue.”

As Louis’s tart declaration rings behind him, Niall flops back into the sofa and makes himself comfortable. He flicks on the telly and finds the most recent match.

Harry huffs somewhere on the opposite side. Another whistle sings from his end of the room. “Pink.”

Schwip.

“He looks brilliant in blue.”

Schwip.

“He’ll stand out in pink.”

Niall probably shouldn’t have let Harry and Louis decide his outfit for the Gala Friday night.

Schwip.

“He doesn’t need to stand out. He needs to look good.”

Schwip.

“He always looks good.”

“Batter?”

Niall glances up at Liam, holding out a bowl to him. He’s got a spot of chocolate dough on his cheek and some hair falling over one eyebrow. The bowl he’s holding has mostly been emptied, but he always lets Niall lick the containers.

Niall takes the bowl, peering over Liam’s shoulder.

The dishes are washing themselves, there’s another bowl stirring itself on the worktop, and Louis’s guarding the border between kitchen and living room. Hair fluffy and torso wrapped in a loose, royal blue jumper, he’s facing Harry, who’s defending the window on the other end of the flat. The early-afternoon light filtering in glitters off Harry’s rings and the shine in his fitted lilac shirt.

True to form, they’re glaring daggers past their wands in a British standoff over a flamingo-coloured Paul Smith suit that’s floating on its own in the centre of the room.

Niall tips his head left then right, impressed. “Full sentences, proper grammar, no swearing or name-calling. Sounds like progress,” he says to Liam.

Liam screws his face up skeptically. He sticks his wand over his upper lip like a mustache and rolls it between his fingers as he thinks, which twists his features up to look even more doubtful. “Ah...”

Louis twips his wand and crosses his arms in one fluid movement. Not quite a twirl, not quite a whip, it’s what Niall has dubbed a twip. Sapphire sparks shoot out of the end of his wand as it’s being tucked under Louis’s arm. They smack into the suit and it transforms into a beautiful periwinkle.

“Blue.”

Harry scrunches his nose and swishes his wand in an understated pointing motion. Magenta sparks shoot from the end and the suit blooms a lovely pale rose. “Pink.”

Without missing a beat, Louis flicks his wand up like he’s flicking Harry off with it. More cerulean sparks. The suit reverts back. “Blue.”

Niall rolls his eyes.

Liam just shrugs and taps the side of the bowl with his wand in a nudge, completely unaffected by the madness behind him.

Niall scoops a heaping fingerful of chocolate batter onto his tongue. His eyes widen. Feet flattening on the floor, he stares between Liam and the traces of batter. “Nandoca’s Choice?”

Liam winks. “I get it right then?”

Niall loves his flat mates. He’s certain there’s no one in London who would try to recreate Nando’s for him with magic. Actually, he doesn’t know anyone else with magic, just these three eccentric misfits who it feels like Niall’s known all his life.

“Pink.”

“Blue.”

Niall swipes up another glob of perfection, sucking on his finger as he jerks a nod towards the other two. “Is this still because Haz ‘flirted’ one smile too many with that bloke at the pub last night?”

Harry had turned on his blinding charm to distract the bartender because Louis got a mite too tipsy too early. Alcohol loosens the link with their magic and Niall, in his non-magic role as damage control, hadn’t been expecting anything to happen so soon. Louis’s pint had frothed teal and spouted out like a volcano when he’d burst out laughing. Niall hadn’t covered it fast enough and the bartender saw it.

But Niall knows that’s all semantics to Louis when he’s halfway to flutered and watching his partner make googly-eyes at a stranger.

Liam shrugs a yes, scooping out a small sample himself and giving it a taste. His eyes pop in delight. “They’ll sort it tonight.”

Niall snorts. “With which wands?”

The question is rhetorical because he knows the answer, but Liam responds anyway. Liam’s got the strangest and honestly quaintest quirk of being incapable of perceiving what’s rhetorical.

“Both, I reckon.”

“Blue!”

“Pink!” The tempo increases until Louis and Harry are practically shouting overtop each other. Magic whips behind him and Liam and ruffles Niall’s hair.

“Blue!”

“Pink!”

A small implosion resounds through the flat. Liam glances up and sighs. Niall gathers the last of the glorious Nando’s batter and hands the bowl back to Liam. He takes the bowl and disappears back to the kitchen, fwipping his wand by his shoulder towards the suit without looking.

In the silence, the excitement on the telly from the announcer buzzes as though the proverbial dust is clearing.

Louis flops down next to him and twists, throwing his legs over Niall’s lap. In the far edge of his vision, Niall watches Louis’s wand twirl in a circle. A bowl of Coco Pops appears in Louis’s hand.

“Should’ve gone left. Chelsea’s defense is weaker on the left,” Louis grumbles with his mouth full.

Niall glances at Louis and tries not to laugh. With his eyes trained on the telly, Louis dings his spoon against the bottom of his bowl like his hair and eyebrows aren’t a vibrant shade of bubblegum pink that, combined with the sleep-fluff of the strands, make him into a life-size piece of cotton candy.

The sofa dips on his other side before Niall can answer Louis.

“You say that every time,” Harry mutters as he lifts Louis’s feet and drops them on his own lap. The pout on his face matches the cobalt blue his brows and curls are now dyed. With the expression and colour combination, Harry looks like a caricature of an anime character and Niall barely manages to keep a straight face.

“Because it’s still true,” Louis gruffs back. His legs dig into Niall’s thighs when he shifts. Niall glances down to see him burrowing his feet under Harry’s hands until Harry starts rubbing them.

Niall chuckles and shakes his head. The suit is now a boring grey, like a canvas waiting to be finished. Whatever colour it is the moment he walks out the door will be fine with him. His flatmates are ridiculous, but he wouldn’t give them up even for the chance to have magic too.

>*<>*<>*<>*<>*<>*<>*<>*<

(I need to create a post on Tumblr and AO3 where all my drabbles can be found. Alas, it is not this day. But I promise there’s at least one more drabble coming that is Disney inspired, beautiful Anony!)

Have something else you’d like to see me write? Go wild! Pairing, situation, feeling… Send me an ask (anon or not) completing the sentence ‘I wish you’d write a fic where…’

Superpowers Drabble 

Invisible Drabble

Only one bed (H-POV)

Only one bed (L-POV)

ABO new-omega!Louis drabble that became a fic on AO3.

Spy AU Drabble

#trackinghome #hlcreators #hljournal #1dsource #yourlarrysource #tracksintheam #1d fanfiction #1d drabble #larry drabble

[asterian]

Moon beast (Captain Rex x reader) (Werewolf au)

Summary: Rex got bitten by a strange creature during a mission, leaving him wounded and unexpectedly transforming him into a beast.

Words: 2.3k

A/n: Hi, this was a request but Tumblr has been messing with my post and deleted some asks. Well, anyways, this was really fun to write and I hope you like it as much as I do. As always thanks for reading.

It was almost midnight when it all started.

The boys had returned from the battlefield a couple of hours ago, defeated and wounded.

The mission to liberate the planet from separatist occupation turned out to be a trap, leaving as its consequences the loss of at least half a battalion of troopers and a whole squadron of starfighters.

Rex was among the wounded, bitten by some sort of beast. And now, as he rested in the medbay, he felt … strange.

Something was off.

He could feel it in his bones, he could feel them moving, growing. He felt how every inch of his body burned hotter than mustafar lava. This was no good. He felt dizzy and soon allusions started to fill his mind giving him glims of images of the woods, the moon and a beast with sharp teeth and killer eyes. 

Rex shook his head in a desperate attempt to get rid of the images that haunted his mind, grabbing the sheets trying to hold all the pain he was feeling and regain some of the control of his body but instead felt his own nails digging on the flesh of his palms. The world around him started to get blurry and all Rex could feel was pain, it was like something was destroying him from within.  

A new and more powerful wave of pain ran through his body, enough to make him finally lose all the control as a scream left his throat. Then everything turned black.

At the other side of the ship, you were working on a very damaged y-wing, doing your best to repair the poor piece of metal that used to fly, but your mind was in another place, you were worried about Rex. He was wounded and alone in the infirmary, exhausted after the mission. You wished you could be there with him.

Suddenly the sirens of the hangar went on, getting you out of your thoughts.

Everyone on the hangar started to question if the ship was under attack since no one gave the "Battle stations" order, then the voice of Admiral Yularen came through the speakers:

"Attention to all stations. There has been a security break at the medical bay, the intruder is armed and dangerous. If you spot it, shoot to kill! I repeat, there has been a security break…."

"Rex" was all you could say before rushing to the medbay. 

Your  head was plagued with horrible scenarios about what could have happened as you ran through the maze that was the Resolute. Wishing nothing had happened to him, hoping he was safe.

When you arrived at the medbay you were greeted by destruction. Everything was broken and there were sharp claws marked on the walls. What kind of thing could leave such marks?  Well it certainly wasn't a battle droid. 

You desperately searched for any remaining troopers in hopes to find your beloved Captain, without luck.

You were about to keep looking for Rex when the lights went off.

The darkness only lasted a few seconds before the emergency lights came in, followed by the sound of blaster fire and clones screaming, not far from where you were. 

Something was killing the soldiers, something dangerous, something wild.

Fear spread through your body and unconsciously ran in the opposite direction, turning in every corner that came your way, trying to put as much distance  as possible between you and whoever was on board. But it was useless.

The monster was chasing after you, just like a hunter after its prey.

Your feet tripped over something, making you hit the hard durasteel of the floor. As you tried to get up you heard steps approaching along with a growl that send panic to your whole self. Gathering all your courage, you turned around as slowly as you could and then you saw it.

Big sharp teeth sticking out of its mouth, if that could be called a mouth; claws as sharp as a vibroblade that matched with the marks you saw on the medbay; the monster was covered from head to toe in a soft white fur and had bright golden eyes that seemed threatening yet familiar. At first glance it looked like a loth-wolf but then it stood on two legs, like a human would. It was as tall as a Wookie, maybe a bit taller but twice as menacing.

You were frozen in your place, incapable of moving and afraid to do so.

The beats took a couple of steps towards you, hunger and murder on its eyes. "This is it" you thought.

But then when it was mere inches from you it stopped, looking at you instead with kindness and compassion almost in a tender way. 

The killer eyes you saw seconds ago were replaced with a pair of loving ones.

Something was in front of you, it was a beast, a monster, yet in his eyes all you could see was a human, a lover. 

Rex.

Your eyes widened open at the realization. It was him, but how? Your hand unconsciously reached to touch his face but before your hand could get close to him a blaster shot came out of nowhere almost hitting Rex's shoulder, causing him to let out a roar that sent shivers down your spine.

"No!" You screamed. "Wait!"

Soon more troopers came storming the hallway, blasting your lover who desperately ran away.

You tried to go after him but were stopped by an arm around your waist. 

"Hey, easy there, (y/n)." you heard Jesse say as you struggled to get out of his grasp. 

"Let me go!" 

"That thing is dangerous" he said pointing in the direction Rex was seconds ago.  

"He's not!" you barked at him, "Jesse, please, let me go!" you cried out.

"The kriff is wrong with you?" 

"You don't understand." you told him finally break free, "It's Rex"

Jesse looked at you confused and surprised for a moment, not really knowing how to process the information you gave him. 

"What?" He asked.

"It's Rex, Jesse, I know it"

"No. That's impossible, it can't be him."

"You have to trust me." You begged

"How…" he was interrupted by another trooper that came running from the hall.

"Sir, we just received a report from the other sectors, there are no signs of the animal" informed the trooper. 

Jesse's gaze traveled from the trooper to you.

"Go to an escape pod" he told you."And leave as soon as possible."

"But-"

"Go!" he ordered you before turning back to his brothers, ready to command. "Alright, that thing is somewhere in the ship, there are a lot of places where it could be hiding" he told them "our priority is find it and execute it before it kills someone else." 

You paralyzed in your place. They were going to kill Rex, his own brother and they didn't even know it was him. The idea of losing him made you realize you had to find him before they did. 

A thousand questions started running through your head, questions such as Where in the world could he be? Where he could be hiding? Where to start looking? 

The answer was clear as kyber crystal. 

The place where you and your beloved Captain found each day, a place without cameras, away from curious eyes, a place where you could share your love without worrying about being caught.

"He must be there." you thought and hurried to that place that saw your love bloom.

When you arrived you found him curled into a ball, leaning against the wall, protected by the shadows. He seemed conflicted, as if he was battling with himself and the wolf, fighting over control.

It was heartbreaking seeing him like this but it was a relief knowing he was fine.

"Rex?" 

He looked at you, growling a bit and baring his teeth, a warning to stay away. 

"It's okay" you said softly "I'm not gonna hurt you" you raised your hands to prove you were unarmed "See? It's me, (y/n)."

He seemed to recognize you, and slowly, Rex started to calm down a bit.

You took one, maybe two steps towards him. He backed off.

"It's fine, you can come out now" you encouraged him, extending a hand for him to take. Nothing.

The more you tried to touch him or get near him, the more he retreated. 

"Love, please, I need to get you out of here before someone else find you"

Rex shook his head in response, getting further away from you. Was he afraid of you? 

He had killed his own brothers, murdered them without hesitation. Even though he was unconscious most of the time, he knew what he was doing, he knew what this new form could do and how dangerous it was.

Rex wasn't afraid of you, oh no, he was afraid of himself, of the monster he became. 

"It's okay, you are not going to hurt me" you told him as if you knew what was going on in his head. "I trust you"

The captain looked at you for a moment, and then he let you get closer to him.

Your hand carefully traveled all along his arm, feeling the soft texture of his fur, all the way to his large new face. Recognising and memorizing every detail of this new version of him, it felt familiar. His hazel eyes focused on you until they started to slowly close as he began to relax under your touch.

You kept gently stroking his head, the beating of your hearts softly echoing on the room. And for a moment the world outside seemed to fade away, the chaos of the Resolute, the clones screaming and running around, all of that disappeared. It was just you and him, human or wolf, you loved him.

You looked at him for a moment before pulling him into a tight hug. His fur trickling on your face made you smile but then you felt yourself melting under his warmth, closing your eyes and enjoying the moment.

"I love you, Rex" you mumbled against his chest, "I love you with all my soul and I want to be with you in this form or any other, it doesn't matter." you assured him, feeling the way his heart beated against yours. "I'll love you just the same, I promise"

The captain felt his heart full of love and hope. He was worried that you might have been scared of him, or that you might never want to see him because, who could love a monster like him? Now that he was one. Just the fact that you were there with him  made him feel loved and for that  he couldn't be more thankful, but he also couldn't help but wonder, what did he do to deserve someone as caring and loving as you. 

The fears and insecurities left his body and were replaced with peace, love. And as those negative thoughts left he felt the beast leaving too. He felt his body slowly changing, not painfully as the other time but more natural. Human again.

"I love you, cyare" 

His voice took you by surprise.

You were so immersed in your thoughts and his warmth that you didn't notice that he had changed, shifted back to his normal form.

"Rex." you breathed, looking at him, tears starting to form in your eyes as you placed a hand on his cheek. 

"Hello, love." he said simply, earning a little giggle from you. He pulled you close and rested his forehead on yours, and finally you felt the tears rolling down your face.

He looked exhausted and sick, like he could faint in any second.

Your beloved Captain began to shiver with the absence of the fur that a few minutes ago covered his body, leaving him now naked and exposed to the coldness of the ship. You noticed the fresh little scratches and bruises that decorated his tanned skin. You couldn't even imagine what kind of hell he went through.

You stayed like this a few minutes, before he spoke again, blame and sorrow dancing on his tone.

"It was my fault" His voice cracked. "I knew what I was doing while I was that beast, I just couldn't stop. And now my brothers are gone." His gaze traveled to the floor and you saw a tear rolling down his cheek. "I could have hurt you too."

"(Y/n), how many brothers did I-"

"No, Rex, don't do that" you stopped him, "it wasn't your fault"

"Rex-" you murmured, placing a hand on the side of his face.

"I would never forget myself if anything happens to you because of me." He told you, his hazel eyes looking right into yours.

"Hey, it's okay" you assured him, "I know you would never hurt me, don't worry about that"

"But what if that thing comes back? What if I can't control it? What if I'm not able to snap out of it again?"

"Hey, hey, easy" you said "Look, I don't have the answers for that, I have no idea what caused this or how to get rid of it, I don't even know what to do." It was true, you had more questions than real answers yet you wanted to be there for him no matter what.

"We'll figure a way to control this, okay?" You murmured gently stroking his face, meaning every single word. "Whatever this is, we're going to face it, together."

#asterian #captain rex x reader #captain rex x you #captain rex x y/n #werewolf rex #wererex #werewolf au #werewolf rex x reader #gender neutral reader #star wars #star wars imagine #the clone wars #the clone wars imagine #captain rex #clone wars #ct 7567

[duhragonball]

Disinterpretation

I finally finished the Sarah Z video about “pro vs. anti”.   It’s pretty long, and I ended up watching it in chunks over several days, but I think it’s worth watching, especially if you’re sort of partially connected to online fandom, but not enough to be aware of all the lingo. 

As I expected, the whole thing was vague and confusing because the people involved in the conflict made it vague and confusing.   In theory, the full terms would be “pro-shipping” and “anti-shipping”, but it seems like it’s more about particular kinds of ships that could be considered controversial.  But that’s a slippery slope, and apparently the whole conflict mutated into both sides deciding that every hypothetical relationship between fictional characters is either equally valid or equally dangerous.  

Long story short, it’s just purity culture, which was what everyone on Tumblr was calling it around 2012.  But now, if you’re a sane person who genuinely asks: “Who gives a fuck about Voltron?”, these people will jump your ass and accuse you of being on the side of their enemies.  “Children have died over the importance of Lotor/Hagger!   Your callous indifference proves that you yourself must have murdered children!” 

I think what Sarah Z really hit upon in this video was that media consumption has become so ingrained in our culture that people feel like it has to go hand-in-hand with our morality.   That is, it’s not enough for me to watch Star Trek, I have to justify Star Trek as evidence that I’m a good person.  Maybe this is where the expression “guilty pleasure” comes from.   Conversely, it’s not enough for me to not watch Dr. Who, I have to somehow convince everyone that Dr. Who was invented by the devil.

I’m pretty sure the Reylo ship has a lot to do with this, since it’s kind of understood to be a dark, problematic concept, and fans either embrace its flaws or recoil in horror because of them.   Star Wars itself is a dumb story about space wizards, so people try to give the debate more weight by linking it to freedom of self expression and/or enabling real world harm.   Suddenly it’s not enough to just think two actors would look cute making out instead of fighting.   Now it’s this battlefield for the soul of civilization or something.

I grew up in the 80′s, when “concerned parents” and grifters would accuse the Smurfs and metal bands of promoting satanism and witchcraft.   I used to hear stories of teens going out into the woods in the middle of the night to do occult stuff, and all I could ever think about was: “Why would anyone bother wandering out in the woods in the middle of the night?”  Which is why “concerned parents” turned their attention to things that were closer to home, like Saturday morning cartoons.   It had nothing to do with the content; it was just about finding a safe, accessible target for their hysteria.   Some people want to go on a crusade without leaving the house, so they pick a fight with Papa Smurf instead of confronting the real evils in the world.  Even as a kid, I knew this was a con, because I’d watched the show for myself and knew it was too saccharine to be threat to anyone.

The pro/anti folks have tried to disguise this with a lot of terminology.   I wondered why they seemed to reluctant to use the full terms “pro-shipper” and “anti-shipper”, and it’s probably a couple of things.   First, the word “shipper” is basically an admission that this is pointless bullshit that doesn’t matter, and they’d like to avoid that connotation.   Second, they seem to have decided that this goes beyond shipping itself, into practically anything else they want it to involve.  It’s all part of the con, which is to make you believe that it’s “us vs. them”, and you can be part of “us” by curating specific attitudes about Steven Universe.

Seriously, “about Steven Universe” is such an incredible punchline.  You can make anything funnier by adding those three words to the end of a sentence.   “Do not interact if you blog about Steven Universe.”   “Hey, what’s up, YouTube, this is SSJ3RyokoLover69, and this is going to be kind of a serious video about Steven Universe.”   “Mrs. Johnson, the results of your biopsy are in, and I have some bad news about Steven Universe.”   It’s a fucking kids show.   “Oh no, all the characters look like the characters in all the other kids shows!”   Yeah, that’s because it’s a kids show.   Marvin looks like Garfield, this isn’t new.

The common denominator here seems to be that both sides try to wrap themselves in the flag of vulnerable groups: impressionable minors, trauma survivors, harassment victims, etc.   The “pros” want to protect those people so that they can feel free to explore weird subject matter on their own terms, and the “antis” want to protect the same people from being exposed to weird subject matter that they might not want to see.   It’s all about establishing a moral high ground.   Back in the day, it was called “sanctimony”. 

But people get roped into this, because at their core, people want approval, and this stupid conflict offers them a sense of community.  As long as you support the cause, whatever it may be, you’ll have this online friend network that appears to support anything you do.   But if you deviate from their norm, you’ll be cast out.    Does this sound familiar?

To use a more familiar example, I still sometimes find people clamoring about Gochi vs. Vegebul.   I’ve never understood this, because both ships were canon, and I never saw much direct evidence of a war between them, but people would still talk about how crazy the Vegebul shippers were, and how crazy the Gochi shippers were, and it was like some huge thing going on just over the hills.   It’s the same idea, since the idea that you could like both or neither never seems to occur to anyone involved.   I never gave a shit, because I used to see the same dumb agendas in the Harry Potter fandom.

Okay, so let me take you back.  It’s 2005 through 2011, and I’m hateblogging all seven Harry Potter novels, because fuck you, that’s why.  The funny thing I encountered was that occasionally fans seemed to want to pretend like my bashing of certain characters was proving them right somehow.    They were like “See?  He hates Ron Weasley too!  That proves that Seamus Finnegan is the coolest guy ever.”   The Slytherin stans would do this all the time, because I would constantly take the piss out of the Gryffindor characters for being self-important dopes.   I think they just liked hearing it from an outside perspective.   But I had to keep reminding them all that I hated all of them.   Every character from Harry Potter sucks ass. Voldemort was my favorite, but only because he was the one guy who wanted to kill all of the others.   But he sucks too because he failed. 

And the shippers were the same way.   I’d say something shitty about Ron, because Ron sucks, and some smartass Joss Whedon fan would be like “Yes!  Boost the signal!  That is why Harry/Hermione is the best ship!”  And I’d be like “No, Harry and Hermione suck at least as bad as Ron does.  They’re all terrible and I hate them.”   I really do think there was some sort of Stockholm Syndrome going on with Harry Potter books, where everyone secretly knows they suck, but the fans sort of latch on to one or two characters and go like “Well, he’s not as shitty as the rest.”   Like finding spaghetti in the trash and picking out the meatball with the least amount of lint on it.   Then you’d go and start a flamewar with some other starving person over whether your meatball is shittier than theirs.  This is what people mean when they say to read another book. 

Anyway, the big thing I picked up from Sarah Z’s video is “disinterpretation”, a term coined by MSNBC columnis Zeeshan Aleem.   The Twitter thread is worth a read, but the short version is that he once remarked that a Julia Louis-Dreyfus routine wasn’t very good, and someone got mad at him for insinuating that women are incapable of being funny.    They just took his dissatisfaction with one performance by one comedian as being a universal condemnation of women comedians in general.  And this sort of thing is all over the internet.   Everyone sees what they want to see and then they take it as permission to overreact.  

I ran into this myself a while back, because someone saw who I interacted with on Twitter and decided that they’re all bad guys and if I have any interaction with them, then that makes me a bad guy too.   At the time I tried to play it cool, but the more I think about it, the more it ticks me off.   And over the course of that conversation, it was said that I don’t talk about myself much, and that’s kind of funny, because all I ever do on social media is write long-ass blog posts like this one.  I don’t expect anyone to memorize them, or even read them all the way through, but when I write all this stuff and someone goes out of their way to say they don’t know anything about me, the message is that they just didn’t pay attention to what I was saying, and they didn’t bother to try.

So I’m a little jaded from that, because I got called out for a bunch of stuff I didn’t even do or say, and apparently that’s just a thing that happens.   People will reject you for completely arbitrary reasons, not because of anything you actually said or did, and you’re left thinking you made some terrible mistake.   Except, no, I’ve seen it happen to other people, people a lore more conscientious than I am, and if they can’t satisfy the bullshit purity standards, then I never stood a chance.   If the game is rigged so I can’t win, then I’m not going to play.  

And it’s that same condition that probably draws people into these online holy wars, because if you declare yourself for the pro or anti side, at least then you’ll have a posse backing you up.   Only they don’t support you, they support your willingness to support them.    Once your commitment to their agenda wavers, even in the slightest, they will turn against you.   

Sarah Z suggests that both sides of the war drop the pro and anti terms, since they lost all meaning long ago.   But that just invites a new set of useless terms to perpetuate the same cycle.   Her more useful advice is for fandom people to broaden their horizons.   She got a lot of flak for tweeting “Go outside” once, but the ironic thing is that it’s sound advice.   I had lunch with my mom yesterday and it was just nice getting away from things for a while.   People need to do that more often, and unfortunately it feels like it’s harder to do than ever before.

But “go outside” isn’t just a literal thing.   It can mean going beyond your usual haunts, reading the same books, watching the same shows, rehashing the same conversations.   I think the reason this stuff always revolves around “shipping” is because there seems to be this deep-seated compulsion to pair fictional characters off like this, and for a lot of folks it’s the only way they can consume a story, so they do.   And they do it lot, and there’s a lot of them, and they do it the same way every time, and lo and behold the same old conflicts start up.   So maybe “go outside” should mean “go outside of that cycle once in a while.”   Just a thought. 

[chrisevansgoodgirl]

do you want more of this? isn't it glorious?

summary: requested: Imagine the victory sex after Andy wins a case. It’s a mix between the softest and most harried sex you’ve ever had, bc he’s so excited but he also wants to slow things down and just revel in the moment. also he feels guilty about working so late all the time and ignoring you for this case, so he of course has to make it up to you somehow

warnings: just smut. a lotta smut. pretty vanilla smut tho. it’s cute smut.

word count: around 5,000

pairing: andy barber  x reader

a/n: so okay, if you’re upset with me that i haven’t been writing. i am guilty, definitely, but the real culprit is this story! (okay, it was technically me for being an idiot and editing a post ON tumblr instead of the word doc, but) i just got really attached to this writing and when i lost some of it, it was actually really sad and i could not make myself finish this request until literally two days ago even though i started working on it at the start of june. and plus also, i really am about to have to find a new song, running out of lyrics l o l

Andy wasn’t anything close to optimistic when he left that morning. He was exhausted because he’d crawled into bed at three in the morning. He was scattered, his keys in his office, his phone upstairs and uncharged, the files he’d been looking at the entire night either in the kitchen, living room, or his office. He was nervous, something you only knew because he asked you to tie his tie.

But Andy wasn’t some overly emotional man who needed your support to win a case. He relied on himself first, you second—and that was okay, that was what you signed up for. Andy loved taking care of you and there were some lines that that meant you weren’t able to cross.

You wanted to tell him that you knew he would do the best he could, you wanted to claim that that was all that mattered. It was bigger, though. It wasn’t him that had failed, it wasn’t even the evidence or the police. It was about politics, he had explained when you asked a few days prior. It was about a case that he had known was always going to be a long shot at best, and well, impossible otherwise.

So, you simply knotted the tie, smoothed your hand down it, and told him you loved him in gray. He scoffed. How could you not be tired of seeing him in gray at this point? Instead of giving him an answer that would make him blush, you kissed him.

He asked you about work and you told him it was just another day. Actually, you would be skipping work, not much to do anyway, and you knew that this case was important. You didn’t want to chance getting caught up in anything and making it home after him. You wished him luck on his way out and he kissed the top of your head and thanked you.

Nothing major, of course. Because he didn’t want you to know that he was worried about this. When you were just dating Andy, picking up on these signs was almost impossible. As soon as you were living together, he was completely and unintentionally transparent.

Sometimes, he would come home and it felt like he had a raincloud with him. Sometimes, he would just lay with you, hold you in his arms for hours, just wanting to hear you talk. Sometimes, he was too disappointed in himself and holed up in his office until you forced him out.

Other times, he was sunshine and full of happiness and pride. He would hold you all the same, but he would kiss you and tell you how much he loved you. He would want to celebrate, go out for dinner, plan a small vacation. You loved him always, wholly, but when he won, that was when you were happiest.

As mentioned, there wasn’t much you could do. Andy was big on little gestures. He didn’t need you to be some cheerleader waiting at his side and telling him that he was doing everything right. He needed to do this alone, win or lose on his own, and then come to you with the results. He wasn’t too keen on letting you be involved in the cases anyway, he didn’t want you worrying or hearing about those terrible details that had made him cancel the newspaper a long time ago.

So, it was a Friday, and if he lost or won, that meant that you would have the rest of the day, Saturday, and Sunday to react to it. You guys could stay home and eat terrible food, watch movies, and just be with one another. He’d told you several times that being with you was the only thing that could make him feel better after a loss.

You were baking cookies, his favorite. Oatmeal chocolate chip. You didn’t bake much, and cooking was fairly equal, so this was definitely a “special occasion” type of thing. He’d informed you of this preference on your first date. Then explained that if he had one chance to go back in time, it would be used to find the person who thought up oatmeal raisin cookies and help imprison them for the rest of their life.

It was one of those moments that you realized you would be just as crazy to let him go as you would be to keep him. If only because you knew you were going to fall so deeply in love with him. Clearly, you were right since your third anniversary was approaching.

It was four when he got home and you rushed out of the kitchen. Early. Too early. That normally wasn’t a good sign. He wasn’t smiling but he wasn’t frowning. When he looked at you, you were even more confused. There was something in his eyes, but you weren’t sure if you’d ever seen it.

You set your oven mitt on the counter. “Baby?”

He walked up to you, just watching. His eyes never left yours as he tossed his jacket onto the floor, loosened his tie, then unbuttoned the sleeves of his button-up.

“Andy?”

He took your shoulders, turning you away from him. “The wall, walk to it.”

“What?”

He kissed the top of your head, then whispered, “Come on, baby, be a good girl and do as I say.”

You turned up to him curiously. It was one of those days, you were not allowed to argue. You would say yes, and he would make it worth your while. Currently, he was trying to call your bluff, he wanted you to say no almost as much as he wanted you to just say yes.

Andy liked it when you fought a little. Sometimes. To an extent. But never when he lost, and you were too scared of that possibility. Maybe the trial was extended and the stress was getting to him. He could use you for the relief, it was one of the most flattering compliments you’d ever received. Besides, he offered you the same when you had a rough day at work.

You looked forward and made your way to the wall. Was it wrong that you were already wet? There was something about Andy. Something irresistible when he spoke to you this way, when he was in one of these moods. Something so sexy when he let you have no room to breathe, to compromise, to pull away from him at all. You were his completely and he was reminding you.

“Take your shirt off.”

You did so, attempting to hide that you were shaking. You weren’t scared, but the things you were anticipating were terrible. The way you wanted him to fuck you until you were incapable of thinking or speaking.

“Touch yourself?”

Your hands immediately went to your breasts, uncaring of how cold your skin was. Your wedding ring, especially, something that never failed to make you smile whenever it brushed your skin. You pulled on your nipples hard, letting your head fall back as you moaned.

It was a few minutes of nothing but the whimpers that came from you, before he said, “Your shorts.”

Again, you obliged. Only, this time you did so with less haste because you weren’t wearing any underwear. You expected sex, that was always a given regardless of win or loss, but you hadn’t thought it would work out so perfectly.

You hadn’t heard him move closer so when he grabbed your ass, you startled. You reached back for him, but he took your wrists in his hands and set them back to your sides.

“Keep them there. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“I love you, okay?”

“I know,” you promised. “I always know.”

“I know sometimes I don’t take care of you like I should…I get lost in a case because I believe that’s the only way I will win. But I want you to know that nothing is more important to me than you. I could win a million cases, but it doesn’t mean a thing if I can’t come home to you after every single one.”

“Andy, there’s never been a second that I’ve ever doubted it. And I love you. You know that? I don’t care about the cases, I don’t care that sometimes you come to bed late or sometimes you’re distracted, you’re the best man I know and you’re just trying to help people.”

“I know you do, baby.” His arms wrapped around your waist and he set his chin to your shoulder. “I was thinking about you the entire time today.”

You smiled. “What were you thinking?”

“How badly I wanted to be inside you.”

“Because last night wasn’t enough?” It had to be quick, it had to be a lot of things. It wasn’t disappointing, he never was, but it seemed like it only left both of you wanting so much more. Sometimes, you had to wonder if he did that as encouragement to speed up whatever he was doing.

“I will never get enough of you, my love. You know, I have this awful fantasy… Wanna hear about it?”

“Yes.”

“It’s whenever I feel like I’m losing…like I’ve just made a mistake, and all I want is you laid out on the table before me. I want to watch you fuck your fingers until you can’t move, until you’re shaking and crying, begging me to get you off because you can’t do it anymore.”

“You want them all to watch?” you wondered.

“Yeah, maybe… Maybe I want them to hear the way you scream my name, the way you beg me to fuck you harder, when you ask me to choke you. I want them to see how wet I can get your pussy without even touching it.”

“Then what?”

“Then I want to fill you up and watch my cum drip out of you.”

You sighed longingly. That was your favorite part of Saturday mornings. Most of them were spent fucking and he loved coming inside you, loved making you stand up so he could see it trail down your thighs, or getting you down to your knees so he could see it on the floor after he finished in your mouth.

“Like the sound of that?”

You nodded.

“Then I’ll make you clean it off the table with your tongue.”

You tried not to blush, clearing your throat quietly. “The end?”

“Of that one,” he confirmed.

You turned up to him, a pleading look on your face. Andy rarely ever told you about the weird shit he thought of. It was always a relaxed progression and sometimes, you felt like he was holding back.

He smirked. “If you’re a good girl, I’ll tell you some more.”

“I’ll be good,” you promised.

“I know,” he assured. “You always are.”

You nodded. “Always.”

“Okay, ‘always’ was an exaggeration,” he scoffed.

“No, always.”

He kissed the pout off your face and took your chin in his hand to face you forward again. His palm trailed up your cheekbone and into your hair. As he pressed you into the wall, he angled your face so that your cheek was pinned there.

You shuddered when you felt the first smack across your ass. It was very light, more noise than anything else, but it was enough for you.

“This is another one,” he informed. “The idea of people watching you get so needy to be spanked. The things you say, the way your body moves because you need it so bad, how you cry because you want more. I want to bend you over that table and spank you for hours until your entire ass is red.”

You made a small pleading noise, pressing your hips back more. He understood immediately and repeated the hit on the opposite side. “Andy,” you whimpered. “Please.”

You weren’t sure what you were asking for. You needed relief, you needed an answer. You had to know if he won or lost because you needed to act accordingly. You figured him not telling you in a straightforward way was just another way of either regaining or maintaining control.

You reached back without his permission, which you knew was pushing it, but you couldn’t stop yourself. Your hands found the button of his pants and you indelicately tore them open. You pressed your palm up and down the length of his cock.

It took him a moment to recover but he swatted your hands away and yanked his pants down. His hands closed around your upper arms and he pulled them back, propping your chest up as he used his own body to press you completely into the wall. It was cold enough that you tried to squirm away, but he gave you no room to move.

“Andy,” you whimpered. “Please, I need you inside me.”

He slipped his arm between both of yours and your back, you couldn’t move and that was exactly what he wanted. He used his other hand to tease you with the head of his cock. He slid up and down your soaking cunt several times and when he finally pressed in, even though it was just a little, you shuddered.

“Ask for it, baby.”

“Please,” you choked out. “Please, please fuck me. Andy, please, I need you.”

He pushed in the rest of the way and you both moaned. It was humiliating how badly you needed this. Though, last night was different. He was stressed, you spent most of the time on his lap until he couldn’t take not being in control anymore and threw you down on the coffee table.

He let you adjust around him, all the while kissing your shoulders and the back of your neck. When you turned your head back slightly, he kissed your cheek and nudged your attention back to the wall with his nose. He placed one hand on the wall for some balance, set his chin on your shoulder, and slowly pulled out.

You let your forehead rest against the wall. “Fuck, Andy.”

His hips bucked forward and yours slammed into the wall. Perhaps this was potentially dangerous, perhaps not the best investment for your hips in the far future, but fuck, this was too good to suggest that he be gentler. Last thing you wanted.

As he found a steady pace, pulling out almost completely, and pushing back in as deep as he could, you couldn’t stop moaning. He had found that spot inside you and didn’t shy away from it. There would be no teasing tonight, just him fucking you until you couldn’t stand.

His hand on the wall slid down, catching your attention. You were sure he was about to reach for your neck, but instead, he placed it over your mouth to stifle your screams.

“I want them all to hear this, too,” he muttered in your ear. “How absolutely wet your pussy is for my cock.” You had never heard anything more obscene than when he would thrust back in, to the point where his body was flush against yours, the wet sound echoed and your cheeks burned but Andy truly seemed to love it. “And this sound,” he pulled his hips back at an agonizingly slow pace, “when your pussy is desperately trying to lock me inside because you know there’s no better feeling than my cock.”

You felt as though you currently had no control over your body. It always did what it pleased in reaction to Andy, but when he decided to take advantage of the desire you felt for him, that was enough to make even you blush. It wasn’t like being married to Andy left any room for modesty or even tradition. He was a creative and demanding man who wanted to explore you in every way he could imagine.

He kept you as quiet as he could, all while grunting in your ear. Normally, you were much louder than him and you could barely hear the sounds he made, now it was all you could hear. And you had been under the impression you couldn’t get wetter, but those deep sounds that you felt from his chest where he was pressed against you and his hot breath against your skin did something to you that you couldn’t explain.

He chanted your name when he was close and it was enough to give you a completely numbing orgasm. You knew Andy loved you, but sometimes you got so lost in your own pleasure that you weren’t sure where he stood. Andy had the complex job of reassuring you that he physically wanted you just as badly as you wanted him, he didn’t seem to mind having to do so. Actually, it seemed he enjoyed the creativity that was required.

You were shaking as he continued to pound into you at this agonizingly slow pace. He was never slow because he simply couldn’t make himself hold back, but that was no longer the case. You felt the tension in his body, you could feel his muscles moving, struggling to hold onto that admirable restraint that first attracted you to him. He let his hand move to your jaw and you instantly began blurting out his name, how much you loved him, how you just needed him to keep going, and pleaded for him to fill you with his cum.

When he did, he pressed his body flat over yours. You paid no mind to how uncomfortable your arms felt trapped between your bodies or how some of your bones were digging into the wall, you simply reveled in the feeling of him finishing inside you and the moans that poured from his open mouth.

His breaths were short and his chest was moving quickly. He stayed inside you while he was coming down, chin still laid on your shoulder, head now angled to rest against your hair. He continued to hold your arms back and your jaw in his hand, and now his thumb and fingers were moving, rubbing these delicate shapes into your cheeks. “Tell me you love me.”

“I love you,” you echoed. It always gave you butterflies when he requested that. It was so simple, so sweet, so little. But his voice always told you that was all he needed. Andy was not a high maintenance husband, he just wanted to be loved wholeheartedly and unconditionally.

He pulled you from the wall and his hands roamed over every inch of your skin. He started with your hips, working up to your breasts where he grabbed them hard and pinched your nipples. He moved down your stomach to your pussy, spreading you with one hand when his other hand traced a soft, careful circle around your clit.

You rested back against him, sighing. “I love you.”

“Mhm,” he hummed in encouragement. He kept you against him even as he began to walk back from the wall.

“I love you,” you repeated. “I love you.”

He turned you both around, moving toward the table while you continued to say it. It was awkward trying to walk with him still inside you and would have been impossible if not for his impressive length.

You had assumed he was going to bend you over and fuck you. That he would pull your hair, spank you, make you tell him how bad you wanted it. Nope, he wasn’t feeling predictable. It wasn’t like you ever minded Andy’s predictability, he still made your toes curl. In fact, you liked the stability of how he made love to you. You liked that he made the world outside just disappear with his insistence on taking care of you and letting you take care of him. However, that didn’t mean you would turn down anything else. You were always humiliatingly eager for whatever Andy wanted you to have.

He pulled out and took your arms once more, turning you to face him before he pushed you back onto the table. “Lie down.”

You were careful as you obliged, trying to keep the cum from dripping out of you. You gasped when he took your waist and yanked you down to the edge of the table.

He angled your hips up and you set your calves on top of his shoulders. He pushed in and then pulled out inch by inch, watching the entire time. His cock was covered in cum that he would have much preferred to see on you, so he took himself in his hand and spread what he could over your pussy and your thighs.

“Andy,” you said quietly.

His eyes flit up for a moment before his hand pressed down between your legs and his gaze followed.

“Andrew,” you huffed.

He lifted an eyebrow at you. “Y/N?”

“What happened? With the case?” After what he just did, you would spend the rest of the night on your knees with your mouth around him if he wanted it. Normally, when he lost, he did.

“Number one rule, baby. We don’t talk about work here.”

“The table?”

“Well, we said the bedroom—”

“You said the bedroom—”

“But I’m fucking you here, so it still counts.” Before you could protest, he leaned over and kissed the center of your stomach.

You snorted, rolling your eyes. “What are you doing?”

He didn’t respond verbally, he merely kissed up the middle of your torso, between your breasts before veering off to the side. He gently kissed around your nipple, then swiped his tongue over it.

Your eyes fluttered shut and your hand came up to tangle in his hair.

He repeated the same on the opposite breast before trailing up to your mouth. You loved kissing Andy. Sometimes, you would both spend the entire morning in bed just kissing. Hours. Just pressed against each other. Smiling. Laughing. Whispering against the other’s lips. It was also Andy’s favorite recovery activity. The quickest way to get him hard again.

He was resting on his forearm, opposite hand touching your face as his lips moved with yours. His kisses were long and breath-taking, just like the first time he kissed you and how he had been kissing you ever since. Sure, there were the chaste goodbye kisses, the moments when a kiss like this would result in both of you not wanting to separate even if the world was ending so you would have to keep them short and innocent, but most of the time, Andy acted like his job was to pour as much love into every kiss he gave you.

He broke away to touch his lips to your cheek, your jaw, your forehead, your nose. That was always how he liked to end it as he was stroking himself until he was ready to fuck you again.

He stood as he pressed into your asshole, eyes fixed on where your bodies connected.

Your back arched as your arms shot out to grab to the edges of the table. He was slow about it, you would even say cruel. He watched you with unconcealed smugness, a truly animalistic part of Andy enjoyed how much you enjoyed him fucking your ass. It was the noises you made, the tears that would fill your eyes because it was so good, the way you would press your body back further, wordlessly pleading for more. When he wouldn’t give in, you became impatient and bratty, and he loved having to put you back in your place.

He wouldn’t do it this time, however. He could tell you were too tired, too focused on him and the case. His hand found your center again where he rubbed your clit with just the tips of his fingers.

You were whimpering, your hips jumped, your legs pulled him in closer where they were still draped over his shoulders, you clawed at the table, possibly left some marks. This was always his goal, to get you so mindless and dependent on the things only he could make you feel, and it was an exhausting process, but you wouldn’t want anything else.

He grabbed one of your hands and brought it to your clit. “Don’t stop unless I tell you to.”

With two fingers pressed flat, you began tracing sloppy circles over your pussy. You didn’t have the muscle control to focus on one small area at this point, but you caught your clit enough times to get yourself close.

He leaned over you, hands pressing down on either side of you as his hips picked up speed. His eyes were locked on yours, desperate to see that overly loving look you gave him every time he made you orgasm.

You let your legs fall from his shoulders, wrapping them around his torso. He couldn’t be slow anymore or even remotely controlled. His hands pushed you up the table as he crawled onto it as well. He practically collapsed on top of you, his hips driving into you so hard the table was starting to move just a little.

You pulled your hand away even though he didn’t tell you that you could and grabbed his shoulders. He pressed his body flat against yours so that his pelvis would rub against your clit with every thrust.

It had been so long since you left scratches on his back. He liked them, but you were sure they had to hurt, so you attempted to find other coping mechanisms. But then, it had been so long since he was this uncontrolled, and as your nails dragged down his skin, that only encouraged him.

The table squeaked against the hardwood floor, skin slapped skin, and moans and curses fell from his mouth. You were breathless, a scream caught in your throat while he coaxed you closer to a finish. Anywhere you touched him, you could feel his muscles moving, his back, his ass, his thighs.

He fucked you without his usual concern of possibly being too rough, he simply did not care in that moment. He grabbed a handful of your hair and yanked your head back. He kissed and bit over the parts of your breasts he could reach. His hands moved along your sides, fingers digging into your hips or pressing your thighs up further to open your body even more for him.

When you informed him you were close, he leveled himself to see your face. His brow was furrowed and it was fascinating to see the way the blue of his eyes moved. Not to sound like such a cliché, but it reminded you of waves in the ocean.

“Come on,” he panted, “I want to hear you begging.”

“Please, please, please.” You wrapped your arms around his shoulders, pulling yourself just a little closer to him. “Please, I want to feel you come inside me.”

“Yeah?” he cooed. “In your ass?”

You nodded frantically. “Please. Please come in my ass.”

His head dropped to the bend of your neck where he bit down rather hard to drown out the sound that followed his orgasm. You didn’t mind even though you knew there would be a mark, even though you knew your coworkers would eye you. No one was surprised anymore, they had this image of your husband as the sex-crazed lawyer, and in reality, were they wrong? Not exactly.

You were just seconds after him, wrapping yourself around him as tight as you could. You sobbed his name and about a million other incoherent things while he kissed around that tender spot that his teeth had just been, whispering how much he loved you and how good you were.

He pulled out and kissed you after you whimpered. He rolled over, lying flat on the table and bringing you up to his side. His fingers brushed through your hair and you both attempted to get your breathing back to normal.

You were silent, reveling in the feeling of his cum slipping from your ass down the back of your thighs. Your skin was sticky and you were sweating, your hair was sticking to your forehead and your back. You couldn’t have looked beautiful, but Andy still kissed the top of your head and claimed otherwise.

You turned your head up to him after you had both settled. “Did you lose?”

He scoffed. “You have such faith in me.”

“You’re the only person I have faith in. The jury? Well, any time you lose, they’re morons.”

He smiled. “I guess they were smart this time.”

You lifted yourself onto your forearms. “You won? Baby, you should have told me! I baked a billion cookies, but…we should celebrate! I can make a reservation, we could go—”

He took a handful of your hair and pulled your mouth against his for a slow kiss. He was the one who broke away, just to see that dumb look on your face whenever he surprised you with a kiss. “We did just celebrate.”

“No, I want to do something special for you.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Well, I have a few ideas.”

You realized exactly where his mind was going, the last place you had suspected. Really, you should know better by now. “What other boxes do you want to check? You’ve tied me up. You’ve bent me over a Paris balcony. You’ve fucked me everywhere in this house. You’ve fucked me in the car. My childhood bedroom in my parent’s house.”

“I have a long list of all the things I still want to do to you.”

“So, tell me what you want.”

He leaned up and kissed your nose. “Let’s clean up and order some food, I’ll think about it.”

You rolled your eyes as you watched him get off the table. “And was ‘list’, like, a figure of speech? Or do you have a physical list?”

He hesitated a moment before glancing back at you.

It was totally an existing list that he had hidden somewhere and suddenly, you wanted it more than anything else in the world. “I will burn this house to the ground if that’s what I need to do to find that list, Andrew.”

He snorted. “Well, good luck because you will never find it.”

#andy barber x reader #always accepting andy requests just fyi #my writing

[thesoloists]

Unsweet Dreams

Summary: Bucky may be free of Hydra’s influence, but he’s not free of that of the Winter Soldier. He’s slowly coming to terms with that.

Pairing: Bucky x Reader

Words: 2.1k

Warnings: PTSD, trauma and anxiety, brief graphic depictions of murder (assault & strangulation), chronic nightmares, fluff via post-nightmare comfort (if it’s any consolation, I tried to keep it balanced)

A/n: AHH, I’m so nervous! It’s been awhile since this corner of the interweb has seen my writing (I made a new tumblr and everything), so if whoever reads this could just, y’know, drop me an ask telling me what you think about this fic, I would really appreciate it. Also, I promise not all my fics will be this dark. I just needed the bit of catharsis at the end. :’)

Bucky used to live in constant fear. It was like a malignant tumor, slowly killing him and robbing him of the ability to live every damn day of his life.

To be in a crowd was like sticking him in a coffin full of nails. As he struggled to stay out of the swirl of hurried people, his anxiety would skyrocket to the point of short-circuiting his mental system. His whole body becomes stiff, his responses shortened and robotic, as he becomes helplessly overwhelmed by the blaring warning signs going off in his head. Until his brain, finding no other option, shut down enough to function on autopilot. Only when he was away from everyone, when his mind was sure they were a safe distance from the danger of the Winter Soldier, would he come back to himself. But, to be honest, was there ever a safe enough distance from such a mindless beast?

The idea of becoming him again was so crippling that before Shuri offered to fix him, Bucky would spend days at a time locked in his room and weeks without leaving the compound. Shuri said he would never be that man again, the crudely molded vague interpretation of one, anyway—not after whatever indescribable thing she had done to him with Wakandan technology that Bucky still finds respectfully confusing. Bucky wanted so badly to believe her, but why, even now, if she is as certain as she was then that the gangrenous part of him is gone, why does he still see him in his dreams at night? Sometimes standing before him like a ghost, void of his humanity, empty of soul, filled only with commands of murder and mission and the pain endured in every attempt to scrape away the bloodshed. 

There’s no place in Bucky’s mind he can hide where the monstrous Winter Soldier cannot find him. In pleasant dreams of sandy beaches with the smell of salt on the open air, the beast will tear open a gaping black rift right behind him, grab Bucky by the back of his collar, and drag him into the void as his screams fall on apathetic ears. Where he ends up is a place where his cries are heard by no one, Where color cannot penetrate the bitter black, and where shapes and barriers do not exist. He can run forever and never hit a wall, and all the while, the Winter Soldier will stalk toward him. Inevitable, just as Bucky is with his surrender.

Agony awaits him, but he knows it will end. It has to end. And when it does, he will wake.

Bucky has long given up trying to escape on his own. Every attempt has proved futile, and it only draws out the agony. He prefers his death to be as quick as ripping a band aid. So, he goes nowhere, just stands in the very place the Winter Soldier dropped him, and waits.

The Winter Soldier stands maybe twenty feet away. His eyes are shrouded in smears of dark black, but his eyes are a stark contrast of light blue shards of cryogenic ice.

Knowing the end will be the same as every other end before it brings Bucky no semblance of comfort. He is helpless to it. No more than a prisoner to his own imagined fate.

After a while of the Winter Soldier reducing the encounter to nothing more than a one-sided staring contest, Bucky hangs his head, shaking it at the absurdity of being made to wait. “Just get it over with,” he mutters.

The shape of the Winter Soldier flickers and disappears, manifesting with daunting intensity right in front of him. Bucky finds nothing but the hoard of his own past screams in the Soldier’s empty gaze. 

In a blink, the Winter Soldier moves. The plates on the Soldier’s metallic machine arm whir and shift as his cold metal hand latches around Bucky’s throat in an unyielding vise, squeezing tighter and tighter, killing the human, killing Bucky. 

Then it is over. In that particular dream, after Bucky dies, Bucky wakes.

Most of the time, however, it is Bucky looking through the lens of the Winter Soldier as a captive, unable to control his movements. It is Bucky’s traitorous metal arm around the throat of someone he cares about, tightening around their choked gasps and rasped pleas...

[Bucky has no desire to live out the Winter Soldier’s greatest hits on all of his friends, so he asks that the burden be left to another’s imagination. If it is any consolation, he is very sorry.]

He’s killed them all more times than he can count. Steve always knows when he’s had one of the dreams the next morning and who it was about because Bucky is incapable of looking that person in the eye. The image of his hand wrapped around their throat is still too fresh a wound in his mind. He’s nothing more than a shell on those mornings. His eyes are gaunt, his attention impossible to keep, and he’s left haunted for most if not all the remaining hours of the day. It’s an inevitability.

It wasn’t until he met you that Bucky allowed himself to believe Shuri’s words of comfort weren’t just empty words meant to reassure him. It’s taken months for him to get to this point, but you have been nothing but patient, never forcing him into anything, never questioning the slow speed at which your relationship progressed. You only take what he gives and in return give what he needs. He still has nightmares, though they occur far less often with you sleeping beside him. In fact, before tonight, Bucky hadn’t had one in months. To know what it felt like to be well-rested, he hadn’t felt that probably since he was digging his stupid five-foot-nothing best friend out of trouble. Before either had turned their gaze toward joining the war. 

When Bucky has either nightmare involving the Winter Soldier, it doesn't matter which, he always wakes up crying. Sometimes silently, sometimes with whimpers or explosive sobs—freshly rebuilt only to be destroyed by the horrors that play out in a hell of his mind’s own making. You sleep notoriously light, so it doesn’t take much for you to wake, and you never want him to apologize for it. His whimpers begin quietly, but they are enough. With the fast action of someone who has done this many times before, you move across the bed until your chest is flush with his back, throw your arm around him, and hold on tight as you whisper sweet assurances into the crook of his neck as his body is wrecked by sob after sob after sob. Grounding him in the existence of his humanity, in the reality of his life as it is now—good and warm and safe— until his tremoring body stills. It’s by no means a quick remedy, and perhaps the emotional exhaustion does most of the work, but with one final shudder, Bucky lets out a hard breath, his last few tears nothing more than wet stains on his pillow.  

In unspoken words of comfort, you press kisses along the jagged scaring where flesh meets metal, before resting the side of your face against his shoulder which is damp with cool sweat, and guide his ragged breathing to a slower, fuller calm with the warmth of your breaths on his back. 

In the now quiet dark of the bedroom, Bucky strokes the back of your hand, tracing lightly over every knuckle with his fingertips. 

With tender movement, you turn your hand beneath his to grasp his hand loosely between your fingers. Your gentle squeeze is simply to ask, Are you okay?

He squeezes twice. No.

He shifts his hand again and after a beat, makes a small request by tapping three times on the back of your head. Your voice breaks through the darkness as you whisper to him, “Who was it, my love?” 

It takes him a minute because he has to remember, and that involves reliving the memory of the dream, if only for a glimpse. But he wants to remember, if only for an attempted catharsis. 

“Steve,” he says hoarsely. Or Natasha, Sam, Tony, or someone else unfortunate enough to have been dropped into the role of victim—But it’s Steve who affects him the most, sometimes in aftershocks that last for days. 

Three taps means he wants to talk about it, but doesn’t want to speak first. Something about having to break the silence after having to relive that trauma just feels too daunting to him, especially now that he’s just been reminded of the monster hiding in his closet after months of silence gave him the false security of maybe being finally free. If anything, it was the sobering realization that he would never truly be free, but it’s an affliction of which he’s willing to find ways to cope. So far, his best success has been found in months of therapy and in the love he found with you. He doesn’t solely rely on you. That’s a burden, and he’s not about to expect you, an extraordinary ordinary human, to somehow be the cure for his chronic mental disturbance. But you bring him words of encouragement and a presence that puts him at ease, and if this is merely the baby-steps to learning to walk on his own, he’s willing to take it and continue practicing. No matter how much he falls, you have made it clear you will always be there to catch him if he needs it.

You wait until he’s ready for you to get up, spending several minutes brushing strands of damp hair away from his face and the rest of the uncounted time trailing your fingers up and down his arms and across his chest in an endlessly light, thoughtful caress. Only when he tells you it’s okay do you briefly disappear into the kitchen to put a kettle on the stove. It’s always been difficult for him to go back to sleep after a dream like this, but it’s easier after he talks through it, and it’s easier with tea.

He doesn’t find sleep again, but you fall asleep on the couch an hour before dawn and halfway through his fourth episode of M*A*S*H. Your whole body is curled in a tight ball on the other half of the couch as you hug an empty mug of tea close to your chest. He carefully removes it from your grasp one vise-like finger at a time (jeez, you have an insane grip for someone who’s asleep), vaguely feeling like he’s trying to disassemble a bomb, and sets it on the side table next to the couch . 

As the credits roll, Bucky carries you back to bed and is part way through tucking you beneath the covers, all warm and snug like a cute little sausage roll, when you begin to stir. Instantly, Bucky freezes. Then he remembers you always do this as if it’s part of some weird post-nightmare bedtime ritual and always manage to go right back to sleep. Comforted by the assurance, and also a little amused by the memories, he turns to close the blinds to block out the rays that would have cut unbearably bright lines against your face had he done nothing (and he’s never been much of a do nothing kind of guy), but when he turns back around, you’re rubbing your eyes with your fingertips—awake, it seems. (Aw, hell.) You blink blearily at him with a lopsided smile he finds adorable, a smile there just for him. 

Sometimes he forgets how lucky he is. 

When your mouth opens with an obscenely loud, drawn-out yawn, he's never loved you more.

After smacking your lips, still in the midst of a sleepy haze, you ask, “You okay?”

While you look at him, Bucky realizes you’re trying monumentally hard to keep your eyes from opening fully, narrowing them to the point that he wouldn’t even know you were still awake if you hadn’t said something. Bucky’s smile turns butter soft at that.

His heart swells. He’s just so appreciative of you. Your kindness. That you willingly sacrifice precious hours of sleep just to tend to the wounds of his own psychological warfare.

“Yeah. I’m good now,” Bucky assures you, and he means it. He lowers his hand to cradle your cheek, sweeping the pad of his thumb back and forth across the swell of your cheek beneath your eyelashes. At the caressing motion, your eyelids flutter, then fall completely closed in total surrender. He leans down, pressing a lingering kiss to your temple. “Sweet dreams, doll.”

Your response is swallowed by the pillow as you shimmy down the bed to bury your face beneath the covers, but he’s pretty sure he heard you say something endearing.

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #bucky barnes angst #bucky barnes one shot #bucky barnes #james buchanan barnes #bucky barnes fanfiction #mcu #marvel #marvel fanfiction #mcu fanfiction #beckham writes

[queenofthelanternfish]

Disclaimer: hopefully tumblr will be kind to the dirty bad fun fic and actually show up in the tags for my bae @anesther. She spent a long ass time on this and deserves praise for her oscar worthy smut. 

-

AN: why tumblr. anyway, gonna post this one to my girlfriend’s because, frankly, this took most of my day to get to and write out and I’m tired of tumblr gobbling up my posts pffft.

Title: Interfaces

Characters: Entrapta, Hordak

Pairing: Entrapdak

Rating: M (for smut, duh)

For the love of all gods, AO3 is best to check out.

                                                  Experiment

“How’s the armor?” Entrapta asks, shuffling over. “Has it been having problems like before?”

Hordak looks at her, “No. It’s been more than exceptional.”

Entrapta grins, “That’s great! I’ve been monitoring it, and it seems as though this is the longest it’s gone without a complication.”

“Have you now?” Hordak asks, glancing at her over his shoulder, smiling lightly.

“You’ve been monitoring me, then?”

“Of course, silly! How else will I be able to keep track of what the armor needs fixed?”

Nodding, Hordak returns to his work. Entrapta settles herself on a perch of hair, lacing her fingers together and propping her chin on them.

Hordak glances at her, “Is there anything else?”

“Oh, no! Don’t mind me. I’m observing the armor’s capabilities.”

His gaze rests on the table while hers remains on him.

Entrapta has never really stopped to look at Hordak before.

Everything about him is so much sharper than she gave notice to. She remarked his features and appearance the week they started to work together, but he seems different. He tilts his head to the side, and her eyes slide to the crook of his neck. Blue-grey skin clashes with white, the anomalies of his skin hidden beneath the armor and sleeveless attire he wears under that. That doesn’t eliminate the fact his neck is surprisingly interesting.

His expression stern, it softens as the minutes pass. He enters a state of mind that is almost tranquil, not concerning himself with anything except his inventions. Learning about his heritage, and the rage she knows is in him, these are the moments a youthfulness comes to his face.

She tilts her head, brows furrowing together. She should get back to work, but he’s being… fascinating. He is every day, yet her thoughts fixate on knowing about him for now. A dark strand of hair falls in front of his forehead. He blows it away to the side, hands occupied.

Entrapta kisses his cheek, startling him. He looks at her with wide eyes, stunned.

Holding up her hands, she backs away an inch, an apologetic grin on her face, “Sorry! I just wanted to know what that would be like…”

Recovering from surprise, Hordak clears his throat, “You wanted to know… what?”

“What it’d be like to kiss someone.”

Hordak stares at her, gaze flickering over her features. “Well, I don’t think… a, uh, kiss, can tell you much by just doing it on the cheek.”

“What should it be, then?”

Hordak turns in his seat, looking down at her expectant face. His eyes flicker to her mouth.

Entrapta’s expression is neutral, not betraying the rapid beating in her chest.

Leaning forward, Hordak breathes in. Unsure of what to do, his hands lift to her face. Hesitating. It was one thing to observe her as she slept, but another to have her be in front of him. It was always easier to look at her when she was unaware of it.

“It’s okay,” Entrapta says, tone low. She can’t help but be curious. There’s been a lot of time spent together, and, on occasion, she would wonder what this sort of interaction was like. It was a general thought, akin to musing over hypotheticals that were interesting in the theory of it. But as time went on, her ideas shifted away from staying only a hypothesis. And it went from general imagery to Hordak.

They were both friends, and she figured having him help her understand would make sense. He is her lab partner, after all.

He cups her face, thumbs brushing the curve of cheekbone, fingers brushing the tips of her ears. Bending low, Hordak feels her breath tickle his chin. He grazes her mouth with his own, light and chaste. The skin contact sending shivers down his spine, surprised by how warm her lips were.

Entrapta’s heart skips a beat, marveling at the gentle motion. Exhaling, she attempts to stay still. She didn’t want to interrupt this experiment they were doing. His eyes glow brighter when they’re up close.

Hordak stares at her, trying to keep his breathing even.

“Maybe if we close our eyes?” she suggests.

He nods. Hordak keeps his open as he bends down, her own softly closed. He shuts them only when he pushes their mouths together again. His fingers slide behind the back of her skull, fragile skin and bone possessing the brightest mind he’s ever known.

Thinking this, a hand trails down her neck. She shudders against him, gasping. Her body shifts closer, propping herself carefully onto her hair, her hands place themselves on his shoulders.

Entrapta knows there’s more to it, from what she recollects seeing. She opens her mouth, slipping her tongue past razored teeth.

Hordak pulls back, shocked; he maintains his hold of her, however.

“Was that too much?” Entrapta asks. “I’ve seen people do that.”

“When?”

“When I would watch couples from a distance.”

He raises a brow, confused, “You would watch couples from afar?”

“I wanted to know what osculation was and observation is the best mode of it.”

“I do not disagree,” Hordak replies. He draws near again, “We should attempt that...”

“Right…” she breathes, mouth parting.

Hordak’s hands wrap tight around her as she initiates the kiss, her tongue tentatively delving in. This isn’t something his species is designed to do—or rather, a clone is supposed to do. Her body is soft and warm. Her breathing quickens against his mouth, sensing her limbs wrap around his shoulders. Fingers touch the sides of his head, threading through his hair. A pleasant tremor runs up his body, and he holds her even closer, so that she’s arching into him.

She moans.

His thoughts freeze for the smallest fragment of a second.

Then he’s focused on heat and sound.

Entrapta’s arms tighten around him, pulling back for quick catches of air. Hordak moves her away from her seat, placing her on the table’s edge, pushing aside the contents laid there. She doesn’t resist, enthralled by this change. He ensnares her mouth with ferocity that leaves her panting, mind spinning. Pressing into her, his hands slip down the side of her frame. Nails scathe the side of her waist, causing her to grip the back of his neck with such force, he falls on top of her.

Propped up by his hands, careful not to crush her, he takes this moment to trail kisses along her jaw. Sighing beneath him, his mouth continues its course, gliding along her throat. She doesn’t protest, gliding the tips of her gloved fingers down smooth, cool metal. They lightly thump over the wires behind him, until she settles them on either side of his pelvis.

He keeps tracing down, nipping at narrow patches of exposed skin. She emits another gasp, her legs wrapping around him.

Without thought, he grinds his hips against hers.

Her squeal is muffled by his mouth, cheeks flushed. His teeth drag across her lower lip, bruising tender skin. Groaning, she raises her hips to meet his. She’s researched this before, but to actually feel something rub against her clit is so different from merely reading it. Mesmerized, her hair glides around them, guiding him to dig down more, press harder, faster.

She jerks in place, fingers clutching at the armor, a small cry of shock leaving her lips, deep moans following after. He isn’t sure of what’s happening, but a growl forms in the center of his chest. His hands clasp around her wrists, pinning them down, tips of her knuckles tipping over the ledge.

Kissing him on the mouth, locks of purple bind his wrists and legs in turn, keeping them in place. She wiggles her fingers, and he releases her, a silent command. Her hands slide down his chest, eyes barely registering the gem glinting. The back of her hand grazes the outside of his thigh, fingers bolder as they slip up and down the inside of it. She isn’t sure who spread his legs—himself or her—but they move apart, and her knuckles skim the underside of his cock, erect and ooh what if she did this—

A hiss escapes gritted teeth, reacting by biting her shoulder. Entrapta’s fingers don't stop, demanding he continue to move. The rough texture of her gloves leaves him incapable of doing much else, except thrust his hips forward. Her brazen nature is intoxicating, her legs keeping themselves tightly wound about his torso. The intensity of it is unlike anything he’s felt before. He’s locked in limb, thought and heart, burning.

“Hordak…”

His ears twitch at the sound, the tone. The complete deference and trust in her voice.

He withdraws, her scent in his thoughts, “Entrapta… is this part of kissing?”

“I think so,” Entrapta murmurs, brushing back his hair. “Do you want to stop?”

“No,” he says, a little too quickly. “I’m simply… not sure of what follows.”

“I know what does, but maybe it’s too soon? I’ve heard that it can take a long time to reach this stage, and for some it takes no time at all.”

“What?”

“Sex.”

Hordak raises his chin, “Ah.”

“Do you want to try it?”

He isn’t sure. It’s not something he has experience in.

Staring down at her, laying underneath him, lacking judgment in her expression, he feels his chest tighten. Tucking hair behind her ear, his thumb caresses soft skin.

“We don’t have to have sex.”

“I’m simply unsure of whether my body will give out or not,” Hordak half-lies.

Entrapta grins, “That’s okay! I can, as I’ve heard people say, ‘get you off.’”

“I don’t understand,” he says, blinking.

“I’ll show you,” Entrapta tells him. Sitting up, she shifts their position so he’s leaning against the table, and she’s back to being in the air.

Pushing aside the front of his outfit, Entrapta’s eyes widen at the member standing upright in front of her.

“Oh, wow… you’re not much different from Etherians in this aspect of your physiology.”

“...Is that a good thing?”

“Very much!” Entrapta answers, trailing her forefinger along the underside of his cock. It’s ridged there… At his shudder, she removes her gloves.

Her hands are so much better this way.

She starts with easy, slow motions. Despite her analytical nature, her cheeks brighten at the sight she’s given. Her hands slip up and down, and she remarks the precum dripping down its sides. She pumps faster, gazing up at his face. Head bowed, hands latching onto the table, Hordak’s breathing quickens. His gasps are broken apart by sighs, and when she adds the slightest pressure, he releases moans that she can say, both scientifically and personally, is the sexiest sound she’s ever heard.

His body, were it not for his defect, would imply a powerful, healthy specimen under the armor. Yet, she wouldn’t change him for anything.

His cock stiffens further in her hand as she slips her thumb around the head. Her face inches forward, mesmerized by the noises he’s making. Curious, she opens her mouth, and licks the tip of his cock.

Seizing in that spot, Hordak shuts his eyes.

“Did that bother you?” she questions.

“No… the opposite,” he murmurs.

Pleased with this, Entrapta continues to use her hands, occasionally licking up the shaft. She takes it one step further and places the head into her mouth, swirling her tongue around it. She gazes up at him, making mental notes of his reactions, his every gesture. How he bites his lip when she sucks hard on it, or how his face turns gentle when plants kisses along its length.

Panting, Hordak feels his body continue to burn with indescribable heat. He looks at her through slitted eyes, expression intense. Her face is focused, as it normally is, yet there’s something there he doesn’t comprehend. It’s her usual look, but he sees an emotion flicker across her face when their gazes meet.

It’s when their eyes lock for another flash of a second that his body tenses. His fingers crush the edge of the table, metal crunching between them, as he comes into her mouth.

Entrapta, not expecting it, barely manages to stop from choking, her knowledge keeping her from botching it. Breathing out, saliva and come trailing away from her mouth, she swallows whatever went down already.

They look at each other. Red eyes gleaming at one another, bodies flushed and sweaty, the two of them let the moment be.

Suddenly, she beams at him, “Wow! That was amazing! I really didn’t know you had such similar responses to sexual stimulus like Etherians do.”

“I… suppose I do…” Hordak says, smoothing back his hair.

“That was so much fun! I wasn’t expecting to go in that direction when we began kissing, but it proved to be a very interesting experiment.”

Hordak lets out a shaky breath, unable to really think.

“Thank you, that was enlightening!” Entrapta says, eyes alight with purpose.

“You’re… welcome?” Hordak states. He watches her put on her gloves, realizing something. “Where’s your recorder?”

She smiles, “That was between you and me.”

Hordak sinks against the table, “Don’t you usually… record things?”

“I’m going to make some notes on this subject later in my room,” Entrapta explains. She comes up to him, kissing his lips. She does usually pride herself in being thorough with her research. But, as she pats his cheek, she’s glad she took a more private account for this. At least for now.

“Hold on,” he says. “I feel as though this was one-sided.”

“Oh, you can make it up to me later!”

Staring, mute, Hordak watches her leave. The thoughts in his head don’t regain their normalcy for hours afterward. His fingers tap the gem nestled into his armor, shining in its case.

#entrapdak #entrapta #hordak #spop #shera

[lilfellasblog]

Lights Out

Summary: Logan's job consisted of many important things critical to Thomas' life. There was no room for error. He cannot make mistakes.

Until he makes a big one.

A/N: If you liked this, please reblog. It is the only way to help this fic reach a wider audience. This is a Tumblr ask! Thank you to the anonymous asker who waited patiently for me to write this, and then continued to be patient because I was trying out the queuing thing on Tumblr and accidentally made it so this posted here the next day. WHOOPS!! Sorry anon! You’re amazing and so kind and I REALLY hope you enjoy this fic!! I decided that since Virgil is usually the one getting hurt and needing comfort in these fics (esp in mine LOL), I wanted to switch it up for you so you could have something unique! And I figured that the central conflict in this story would also make it a little more unique for you! I hope you enjoy!

TW: crying, insecurity, self-doubt, negative self-talk, power going out and being left in the dark, mention of panic attacks, very vague allusion to a probably unsympathetic Deceit. If I missed any let me know!

Word count: 1864

AO3 here!

Fic Masterlist here!

Logan was hunched over his desk, in a posture admittedly not the healthiest but he could hardly be bothered. Thomas had three projects with outside channels and he had to update his Sanders Sides web series soon, even with the deal with Marvel. That, on top of meetings with his company, planning a video schedule for the second channel, and managing household necessities and bills, and one might find Logan rather frazzled.

(Thankfully, Patton had helped take over grocery shopping, meal planning, and cooking, only corresponding with Logan on the budget. It was one less thing Logan had to worry about.)

His forehead and back were tense, his eyes were terribly dry, and his mind was racing. His hands were shaking as he jumped from one task to the other, adrenaline flooding his system. Normally, he wouldn’t get to this point. However, with how scheduling with his company and outside individuals and companies for meeting and filming had gone, he’d been on high alert for almost two weeks now. Logan desperately hoped that the schedule would come together and Thomas would get a small break from filming and meetings; he’s seen the strain it’s taken on his Host and on the other core Sides, and they were running ragged as well.

Logan checked over the schedule Adri had sent them and compared that against the rest of the crew’s schedule.

Yes! Finally! This can work, I just need to mark this down and-

Suddenly, panic sweeps through the mindscape along with shock. Logan quickly rose up into Thomas’ realm to see… nothing. It was completely dark. As his eyes slowly adjusted, he heard Virgil rattling off possibilities that would inevitably end in their demise, Roman declaring he’ll slay any intruder that dares threaten them while offering to serenade everyone, Thomas trying to calm him and Roman down while he looked on his phone to see what was going on, and Patton tripping over things in the dark while he tried to comfort Virgil.

Logan was frozen stock still, realizing instantly what had happened.

I forgot to have Thomas pay his electric bill. The website was taking too long to load, so we were going to work on it another time when the website wasn’t so slow. This is my fault. They are upset and panicking because I have failed in organizing Thomas.

His heart shattered as he listened to Patton lead Virgil through breathing exercises.

I have caused my boyfriend unnecessary distress due to my incompetence. Such a simple oversight on my part. A foolish oversight. One that would not have happened were it another Side.

Roman was checking the perimeter of the apartment for intruders, hand on his sword while he sang Make a Man Out of You under his breath. Normally, he’d be belting out songs at the top of his lungs, which only went to show his level of distress. Thomas was realizing what had happened and looked at Logan, with only the light from his cell phone screen to see.

Thomas, Virgil, Patton, and Roman deserve a better Logic. I am clearly incapable of managing the simplest things, and now we have had our power turned off. Food will begin to rot, and we just went grocery shopping. This has impacted the budget. The increased stress of not having electronics will be incredible, and the lack of air conditioning in the Florida summer may cause health concerns. This is my fault, and my fault alone. I am incompetent.

Logan sank out to his room to figure out how to survive until the power came back on. He didn’t hear Virgil calling his name.

/////

Logan had been staring at his desk morosely for a half hour, shoulders hitching and silent tears dripping down his stoic face as he observed the chaos his desk had become.

I cannot manage Thomas’ schedule. I cannot manage his bills. I cannot manage his household needs. I cannot focus to even begin to help Thomas manage while the power is out. What good am I? I am no good. I am useless. A useless, dysfunctional Side who only makes Thomas’ life more difficult. I make him unhappy. I make the others unhappy.

Logan’s felt his chest tighten and a painful lump form in his throat. His face began to crumple despite his best efforts. Just then, several tentative knocks sounded at his door.

“Come in Virgil,” he called, managing to keep his voice mostly calm.

Virgil opened the door and walked in slowly, assessing the situation. He knew Logan rarely got this upset over something, and to tread carefully.

“How’d you know it was me?” he asked lightly.

“Your knocks are tentative, compelled by your concern to make sure you’re not interrupting someone. Regardless of how upset you may be or your level of need, your first concern is always the convenience of others. It is admirable to a point, though foolish after that point.”

Virgil huffed out a laugh. “Thanks L.”

“You are welcome.”

Virgil’s face softened at Logan’s factual response and his complete overlook of sarcasm. That was always one thing that could calm Virgil; Logan wouldn’t keep anything from Virgil or misunderstand something he said. Logan took what Virgil said at face value and spoke to him in a direct manner. There was no guessing his intent or the “true” meaning of his words, no chance to get it wrong, no chance to accidentally upset him because he didn’t read between the lines correctly…

Virgil shook his head to clear those thoughts from his mind. There was no use dwelling on the past, and it wouldn’t help Logan now.

He cautiously walked closer to Logan. “I saw how fast you got out of there. Couldn’t see your face too well though. How are you holding up?”

“My spinal column is intact.”

“That’s not exactly what I meant.”

“I know, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. Talk to me babe.”

Virgil patiently stood next to Logan in silence for several minutes, letting Logan gather himself and his thoughts, breath still hitching with the occasional sniffle. Emotions did not come easily to Logan, so processing them and figuring out how to express them were two challenges that required his full attention without interruption. And as much as Virgil wanted to comfort his boyfriend already, if Logan felt he didn’t express his feelings properly or felt that something was unresolved, there would be no making him feel better.

Finally, just as Virgil’s anxiety began to grow, Logan spoke.

“My job encompasses many things. I am the language center of Thomas’ brain, I manage his work schedules, and I assist in the management of household chores. Notably, this includes ensuring bills are paid on time.”

Logan paused, and Virgil didn’t dare say a thing.

“If Thomas had a more functional Logic, he would not have forgotten to pay his electricity bill. We were in the process of paying it, but I decided that the website was taking too long, and therefore we would return to the task at another time. Not only did I fail to notate that in our budget, I also failed to set a reminder to check the website at a later date, and I did not remember to ensure we paid our bill.”

Logan’s voice began to wobble as he stiffened his back, attempting to control his expression. “As a result, Thomas’ health may be at risk, we may have to throw out food, which will impact our budget, there will be a late payment and reconnection fee which will also impact our budget, there is increased stress on all of you, you nearly had a panic attack, Thomas will have to work exclusively at the office, and his sleep will be disrupted.”

Logan choked back a sob, his voice coming out thick. Virgil felt his face growing hot and pressure building behind his eyes, threatening to make him cry. “I am an incompetent, useless, harmful Side. I do not perform my job adequately, and as a result you all now must suffer for it and attempt to successfully think of how to survive until power can be restored.”

Virgil waited a moment to see if Logan would continue, audible sobs choking off in Logan’s throat. When Logan didn’t continue, Virgil put a hand on the back of Logan’s chair.

“Can I give you a hug Lo?”

Logan sniffled and nodded as a sob finally escaped him. Virgil pulled Logan up out of his chair and had to catch his intellectual boyfriend as he collapsed into Virgil’s chest. Logan was letting out heart-wrenching sobs, self-hatred and grief echoing around the minimalist room. Virgil held onto Logan tightly, rubbing his back and swaying them, his own tears flowing down his face at hearing his boyfriend so anguished. They stood there for 10 minutes, until Logan’s sobs began to peter off.

The genius pulled back slightly. “M-my apologies, I did not mean-”

“If you apologize for needing to cry, I am going to physically fight you!”

Logan let out a watery laugh, which mended some of the cracks in Virgil’s heart. Virgil wiped away his own tear tracks, then reached up and gently swiped his thumb over his lover’s sharp features before returning his hands to Logan’s shoulders.

“Babe, how many times have you helped me come down from a panic attack?” Virgil asked rhetorically.

“Since I’ve known you, 867 times.”

Virgil was stunned into silence for a moment. “...holy shit. Okay, and how many times have you helped redirect the three of us so we could actually be useful for Thomas?”

Logan smiled wryly. “I believe that number is beyond my reach.”

“Smartass. How many times have you helped Roman refine a script?”

Logan frowned and tilted his head. “I’ve done so for every script, you know this.”

“I know. And how many times have you helped Patton work through and accept his feelings?”

Logan hummed in thought. “309 times.”

“Logan, we’ve all fucked up on our jobs and needed your help. You’ve managed to carry that, plus your own responsibilities, really fucking well. You’re allowed to fuck up every now and then. Let us help you for once. Please.”

Logan sighed in defeat, unable to resist the pleading look in Virgil’s eyes.  “Very well.”

“Hey, L.”

“Yes, darling?”

Virgil stepped closer to Logan, their chests nearly touching. “You do so much for us. One mistake doesn’t make you a failure. It makes you human. And no one's mad at you. Not Thomas, not Roman, not Patton, not me.”

“Technically, I am a metaphysical human.”

“It makes you a metaphysical human. Come on, you’ve been working yourself to death lately. Let me take care of you for once. How does a back massage, some tea, and some cuddles sound?”

Logan smiled softly at Virgil, the smile meant only for his boyfriend. “I would love nothing more than to spend this evening with you.”

Virgil smiled back and kissed Logan, slow and sweet. He didn’t stop until he felt some of the tension melt from his boyfriend’s shoulders. And he didn’t stop taking care of Logan that night until he was asleep, fully relaxed, on Virgil’s chest.

#sanders sides #analogical #logan sanders #virgil sanders #fanfic #thomas sanders #roman sanders #patton sanders #deceit sanders #unsympathetic deceit #tw deceit #crying #kissing #fic #fanfiction

[slash-em-up]

With Apologies to Necroscia Sparaxes pt. 1: Collector X Reader Smut

So it turns out I’m incapable of writing a Collector pegging fic under the tumblr limits for a single post... so here’s part 1!

Story inspired by this sketch of Asa from @dashinslashin who feeds my creative juices like no other ❤️

——————————————————

“Hey Stu!”

You chirped happily, walking with a spring in your step into the front entrance of the science building at the university.

Work had been particularly slow today, so you decided to take an extra long lunch break and go visit Asa at his lab.

The grey-haired guard manning the desk looked up and offered you a wide smile.

“Hey there hon. Glad you’re here. Your boyfriend’s in a snit.”

Leaning casually against the wooden surface, you offered Stu a confused stare.

“Asa’s in a snit? My Asa?”

Stu chuckled and held his hands up.

“I know, I know. Doesn’t sound like him; but the Dean stopped by earlier to talk about funding… and there’s a new intern who’s making his life… interesting. I think you better hop in there and give him some help.”

You nodded, still a bit befuddled; and gamely strode down the hall into the main lab.

A loud tittering laugh was the first thing that met your ears, followed by an overly-enthusiastic “Dr. Emory, you’re so funny!”

No freaking way….

Sure enough, when your gaze finally landed on Asa, he was… Not alone, and not happy about it.

Asa’s shoulders were tight underneath his lab coat, and you could tell he was trying to casually regain some personal space from the woman standing next to him.

You nodded to the few other doctors and interns you’d met before, and they shot you looks that were both concerned and intrigued as you walked across the linoleum floor.

As you drew closer you began to catch bits and pieces of what was being said, and none of it helped to calm your feeling that something was just not right.

You watched as the intern leaned down next to Asa, clearly trying to distract him from his microscope with a view down her cleavage, and breathily asked

“So you’re telling me that stick insects can mate for 79 days in a row? Lucky. I wonder if someone’s tried to beat that record…”

By the time you were nearly upon them Asa had straightened from his microscope and removed his glasses, rubbing at the bridge of his nose in vexation.

“It’s necroscia sparaxes, Sarah. Not a ‘stick insect’. And I doubt a human could maintain that kind of mating cadence without dying of dehydration.”

As the newly dubbed ‘Sarah’ began to lean in, you quickly pulled in next to Asa, running one of your arms through his.

“Hey cutie. Heard you need a break. How ‘bout you take me to lunch?”

Asa flinched briefly at your first contact, but immediately relaxed once he saw your face.

He offered you a small close-lipped smile, and his eyes glittered.

“Hello.”

Your own smile widened.

“What are you doing here?”

“Work was dead, thought I’d surprise you!”

“I’m glad you did.”

You rose on your tippy toes and gently kissed his cheek.

Sarah took this opportunity to interject herself once more.

“Umm Doctor Emory, don’t you think with all that the Dean said this morning that we should keep working?”

She gave you a sour glare as soon as Asa’s back was turned.

You tried your best to ignore her and looked up at Asa.

“What did the Dean say?”

Asa sighed through his nose, looking annoyed.

“He said the board is reviewing our grants for the next year - some of our funding might be cut if we can’t get a paper published in the next quarterly journal.”

Clucking your tongue in sympathy, you rubbed the strong arm in your grasp. Offering a soft smile.

You knew that for as many… extra curricular activities Asa participated in, he truly enjoyed coming to his quiet lab and studying his insects. To have that threatened by bureaucratic finances must have cut deep.

“Doctor Emory and I are studying the mating habits of East Asian insects.”

God damn Sarah.

“He knows so much about mating…”

Her fingers ran suggestively across the side of the microscope.

You could feel your lips purse and your grip on Asa’s sleeve tighten. You weren’t naturally possessive or jealous; but this was just ridiculous.

And that fact that Asa seemed oblivious to Sarah’s suggestive comments somehow made it worse.

Leaning in closer to the large man next to you, you couldn’t help but snidely remark

“He certainly does.”

Asa looked down at you curiously. Noting the change in your tone.

Quickly offering him a smile and another kiss, you began to withdraw.

“I’ll see you for dinner?”

“I hope so.”

Stepping back, your eyes narrowed in annoyance as Sarah immediately inserted herself back nearly pressed to Asa’s side.

Your fists involuntarily clenched in anger as you turned and strode from the building.

————————————————————-

Hellstrom and Burkhard were only allowed up on the couch when you were home alone and they knew it.

So when you walked into the house and threw yourself down onto the leather sofa, you were immediately surrounded by two large warm furry bodies, licking at your face and thumping their fluffy tails against the cushions.

“Come on boys, get off!!”

Two pitiful whines of protest were your only responses as the licking continued.

Your phone dinged from the coffee table and you pushed through the furry barricade to see who was sending you something.

It was Asa.

‘Staying late at the lab. Have to miss dinner. Make it up to you later.’

You nearly screamed in frustration.

Whether it was reasonable or not, you couldn’t help but picture Asa having a late night at the lab… Sarah conveniently joining him… god, it wasn’t fair and you knew it; but that didn’t stop the ugly head of jealousy from flaring up in your chest.

You curled your feet under your body and began to think.

“Well babies…” you said to the twin sets of brown eyes watching you intently.

“Daddy did say he’d make it up to me… Won’t that be fun?”

Hellstrom whined.

You shushed him and stroked your hands down the dogs soft backs.

“Very fun…”

#jessica writes #slasher fiction #asa emory #the collection 2012 #the collector x reader #the collector 2009 #a full story already written split into two parts because tumblr is a butt

[scifinal]

DW s12e03 "Orphan 55" or The Importance of Not Conveying a Message

I swear this is not a Doctor Who fan blog - there's simply no denying that what DW has become as of now is a major and highly influential sci-fi franchise, and there's also no denying that last week I, regrettably, dedicated two days of my life to binging its, as of now, most recent season (and to think I could've been re-watching series D of Blake's 7 instead!), which, in turn, led me to doing what I've had in mind for quite some time now – creating this blog (and returning to tumblr, which I wasn't planning on doing). I wrote my review on the season's finale just yesterday, but there are plenty more things in this season that, I feel, need to be touched upon.

So, here I am, doing just that.

Part One: The Idea

Now, I ask you to imagine a story. Imagine a story in which a neglectful mother leaves her child and, as years go by, gets so overwhelmed with guilt she decides to give said child a gift hoping that maybe, just maybe, this gift will make up for that horrible thing she did years ago. The mother wants to give her child a literal world as a gift. So she picks a planet that nobody will ever claim, an orphan planet, and tries to raise money to afford terraforming it. She becomes a mother to an orphan planet in an attempt to become a mother to her orphan child.

This sounds like a beautiful story. It is a beautiful story.

Part Two: The Science

Doctor Who, which started out as an educational show for schoolkids, is, as of now, at heart, a space opera. There is nothing inherently bad in space operas: these are merely a subgenre of science fiction that focuses on relationships between its characters and social issues, with little to no regard or often at the expense of the "sci" in "sci-fi". Space operas can be beautiful. "Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed", one of my favourite stories by Ray Bradbury, and one of my favourite short stories period is a space opera. "The Stainless Steel Rat" series by Harry Harrison is a space opera. "Ensign Flandry" by Poul Anderson is a space opera. I love them all.

The surprisingly hard thing with writing space operas is that you have to be careful with science. What I mean by that is that a writer behind a space opera project has to be careful with inventing his technobabble in case he faces a necessity of explaining something. The writer has to be careful and make his technobabble so illegible yet science-y that his audience has no choice but to roll with it, regardless of whether they have the faintest idea what the words the writer has used mean or not. The space opera technobabble has to sound science-y but otherwise has no business using scientific terms that might happen to make some sense to an audience member that happens to be slightly more educated than average and thus more perceptive of your nonsense (bonus points if what the writer has created is not as good as they themselves think it is and that slightly more educated audience member has already gotten so tired of The Work that they unintentionally begin to catch more factual mistakes than they would had the author not oversuspended their disbelief), because at that point...

...Science Says "Hello, I'm Still Here!" (Part Three)

The third episode of the twelfth season of Doctor Who gave its seemingly made-up term "orphan planet" a very clear definition: a previously habitable world that, through processes which may vary in nature, has become unable of supporting sentient, if any at all, life. Here's an excerpt from the Doctor Who fan wiki:

Again, a fairly clear definition.

Except...

"Orphan planet" is an actual scientific term. There are many synonymous terms used to describe it, but, basically, an orphan planet is a planet that doesn't belong to a star system and travels on its own. Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia (I do realise that it isn't a reliable source, but in this case this actually is a correct definition):

And this isn't a rare term, either. In fact, the concept of a rogue, or orphan, planet is fairly common in science fiction – a strange cold, inhospitable world, incapable of supporting life, travelling through the vast cosmos all on its own, fearsome and unpredictable.

Now, why the difference between two definitions of an otherwise well-known occurrence?

Because the story I asked you to imagine in the beginning of this post wasn't enough.

Part Four: The Need for Relevance

There's no arguing that, in some way or another, every piece of media captures the time its creator lives in through the lense of their worldview. It might be obvious in things like clothing, technology, or societal constructs they, the author, perceive as normal or abnormal. There is no arguing that every piece of media ages, and no arguing that most media produced for mass audiences has to be relevant. And science fiction set in the future, surprisingly enough for some, is not an exception; more than that, it may even age worse than other genres as technology develops beyond what creators of science fiction of the past could possibly imagine.

One way of compensating that aging is creating an ever-relevant story. The reason the original trilogy of Star Wars still stands despite its dated effects and tech is not only that it's set in an alien world, but also that it tells a fairly simple story that is bound to be relatable for years to come: it's a journey a hero sets on to right the wrongs. The reason the original Star Trek is good after all these years despite its dated, er, everything technical is that its themes are relatable, its morals are clear, its characters – well-defined. Blake's 7 is wonderful (I mean, this is the third or fourth time I'm mentioning this fairly little-known show in two posts, it should be clear that I love it) not only because of its cheesy British-TV-sci-fi-show-shoestring-budget effects, late-70s-future-fashion outfits charm and well-done models, but because of its clear idea that's bound to last for ages: there will always be an oppressor, there will always be the oppressed, there will always be those who resist the existing regime.

But creating a story with a long-lasting theme is not the only way to being appreciated. We live in an era of information, and we live in an era of that information being at our fingertips, and we also live in an era in which, as always, people want to make profit. Fast profit.

And a much easier way of making profit is not making a story that will last forever, but a relevant story, a story with which its intended audience will resonate right now and not over a prolonged period of time.

This is the time for us to again return to the story I asked you to imagine in the beginning. That story is timeless. Its themes will last as long as there are orphans in the world, and as long as there are neglectful parents, and as long as guilt exists. It's a good story.

But people want more profit than a story that is merely good can make. People want a good story that is also currently relevant.

And so they add a currently relevant theme to it.

Part 4: Additions Have Got to Be Made

There's nothing inherently wrong with adding a new theme to your already existing storyline: it may lead to exploring new depths you didn't expect would open up. The problem arises when said theme is nothing but pandering and is there only to admit the existence of something so the audience can say "I know about this thing that they've mentioned", as if that gives them a figurative gold star, and get back to their business, satisfied that some story they connected with acknowledged a problem that they feel something about. This is pandering.

Now, what does this have to do with the two different definitions of one term and that story?

Part Five: Here's What I Think Is the Problem

I don't think that at the early stages of writing the screenplay for "Orphan 55" DW's definition of the term "orphan planet" was all that different from what an orphan planet actually is. On the contrary, I think the person who first pitched the story did have in mind actual interstellar objects – otherwise they would've devised a new term for uninhabitable planets; besides, almost everything in the episode makes sense without an orphan planet being a once inhabitable world. I also believe that this change was thrown in towards the end of writing the actual script, because then it would probably be written in a way that allows the idea of their version of an orphan planet to be more developed. So why did they, in my opinion, even add that?

You guessed it. Pandering. My best guess is that the higher-ups wanted to throw something "hip" into the story, to add something "relevant", because they wanted a bigger resonance and thus a more profitable episode. And what could be more relevant that the fact that we, the humanity, have kind of screwed our planet up and now everybody's talking about this?

This is the reason they've changed the definition of a pre-existing term. It's not that they wanted to make a statement: they wanted to make money. It's not that they wanted to raise awareness: they wanted to raise their profits. The message wasn't intended as a warning directed towards people who may not know or do not care about the subject: it was a corporation pandering towards those who already agree with it.

It hurts me to write this; I genuinely want to believe this isn't the case. I genuinely want to believe that the addition was made by some well-meaning script editor – but I can't. We live in a world in which corporations can and do use important messages as a means to profit off of people's beliefs. The optimistic option just isn't that probable.

And in the End...

Imagine a flower. Imagine a tender flower on a small flowerbed; a beautiful flower, carefully tended to, lovingly grown, a flower that will bloom for a long time. And next to it, a bigger, more colourful one, a flower that grabs your attention, but only for a short moment – and for no other reason that its life is so short. The big flower will wither, and it will wither soon, and the small one will go unnoticed simply because it's not as bright, and not as big... but it is beautiful when you notice it, and it will bring a smile to your face when you notice it again.

That story about a mother, her child, and a planet was a good story, but its theme about being an orphan wasn't what grabbed the viewer's attention: it was the blunt message about saving our habitat, and it distracted from the actual plot and its own underlying theme.

Your story is your flowerbed. A bright and resonating theme will live on for only as long as it stays popular, for as long as the public is interested in it, and the second that interest is lost, your flowerbed of a story dies with it. If that was your intent – you did well. But if you tend to your garden for the future generations to see, don't make it about here and now, make it about everywhere. Make it about always. Make it so the bright and eye-catching, and short-lived isn't what people know your garden for.

#doctor who #doctor who review #thirteenth doctor #critique #review #spilled thoughts #long reads #long post #sci fi #sci fi review

[icewindandboringhorror]

Another set of responding to asks lol.. As usual I have them numbered and will also write out the ask in the text, especially since the screencaps are all blurry and taken at various times/compiled together badly and probably hard to read ghghhggh..... answers under the read more ~ 

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

1. "Hi I don't mean to bother you at all, but I was wondering where you get your rocking horse shoes? (I think thats what they're called) I've been looking everywhere and I can't seem to find any :(( "

I don’t entirely remember, since I got them like 6 or 7 years ago.. I think maybe at some point that place ‘bodyline’ or something had some cheap ones? But I don’t see them on the site anymore, they were like $50 or $60. Now when I google it I can only find these insane like $600 ones from vivian westwood or whoever, or ones that are platform shoes but not necessarily the same type. Maybe you could find some on aliexpress or ebay or something? Usually you have to use weirdly specific search terms and look for a while, but you can often find stuff like that on those sites. Sorry I couldn’t be of more help!!! 

2. "I've been sick for over a month and my doctor tested me - everything came back fine. After some discussion it appears that my ptsd symptoms came back and the stress on my body is making me fatigued, sick and dizzy. I don't want to say that this could be similar to you situation, but if you have a therapist or someone to talk to about any stresses/your sickness, it might help relieve the pressure a bit. Good luck, I'm so sorry you feel so unwell"

Thank you for sharing! Yeah, I think stress definitely plays a part in why I feel sick so often. Currently I’m not still having the same problem I was having a few months ago when you sent this, so that’s good at least!! 

3. “Hi! Do you plan to ever have more sculptures for sale? Or would you do commissions? I haven't seen any in a while but wanted to buy one! :-O”

I have plenty that I want to sell, I guess it’s just hard for me to get set up. Since so much of the reason I procrastinate selling stuff is because I hate the stress of deciding on a price, I’ve thought for a while now that maybe I can just auction them (so I just set a base price, but people bid whatever they feel is fair and I don’t have to decide myself). But I’m just not sure of a good way to do that.. Ebay has auctions, but I don’t want random strangers buying them, I’d rather stick to just the pool of people who follow my art blog and are already familiar with my sculptures or etc. I could do them on here ?? (like, ‘reply to this post to bid, bids close 8am EST, whoever said the highest number sends the money through paypal and then I send the sculpture’ sort of thing???)   But I’m not sure if it’s legal to sell stuff through tumblr, or if there could be any other problems with doing it so ‘unofficially’ like that.. I don’t know, I have a vague idea, I’m just having trouble deciding the best way to set up something! I do want to sell some soon though, if I live through the pandemic and anything ever goes back to normal, of course (I wouldn’t want to be having to leave the house to ship stuff in the mail right now). 

As for commissions, I have actually done sculpture commissions for friends a few times, so I feel confident-ish that I’d be able to do something like that, but I also wouldn’t want to get overwhelmed since it takes a lot of work. Custom sculptures may also be more expensive, and again.. I always feel guilty and strange about pricing. I’ve thought about doing very limited sculpture commissions though (like, maybe just one at a time, first come first serve or something..?). If it seems like there’s actual interest in that sort of thing, I could definitely consider doing it in the future! 

4. " *picks up that smol blue kid and throws them across the room* "

ghgh .. the smallness is an advantage... they could just skitter back down your arm like a tiny squirrel the second you tried to pick them up.. Ythrili survival strategy is to be too small to catch in the first place 

(also forgive every sketch in this post, my screen that you can draw on broke, so I’m either drawing stuff in ms paint with a mouse, or drawing stuff on paper and coloring it in firealpaca also with a mouse ghghh.. not going to look Good)

5. "it sounds like you feel pressure to only post good content on the internet, and so you end up psyching yourself out of posting at all. Am I on the right track? "

Not necessarily, like I mentioned in the tags I think it’s more just that everything is complicated by my brain. I can’t just do something effortlessly. Whether it’s for an audience or not, I get caught up on every little detail and adding so much complexity to everything that all tasks take me longer than they take other people lol. I think I just tend to take everything very seriously?? 

Like for example, I’m often accused of ‘turning things into a discussion’ when someone was just intending to make an off-handed remark, because if someone is bringing up a topic to discuss, I end up engaging with it 100% and putting full effort into it, and it’s hard for me to be ‘’casual’’ about pretty much anything (so if someone was like ‘My day yesterday was a bit weird’ I wouldn’t be able to just respond ‘aw man, that sucks’, I would just be like ‘Weird how? what happened? what made it weird? Are you okay now? Are things still weird? Have you found a solution?’ etc. etc.). I was also bad at essays/open answer questions in school (despite usually being great at the class otherwise), because no matter how hard I tried to filter my speech and cut things out, I was always far too long-winded  and would get almost too engaged with the topic and lose the clear cut thought organization and focus that you’re supposed to have I guess. Even like, playing video games or something that’s supposed to be relaxing, I can’t just ‘jump into them’ and do whatever, usually any game I play (large ones at least, small 25 minute  point and click adventure games don’t count of course), I have 7 - 10 pages of notes, do hours of research, look up most of the main spoilers, plan out and organize exactly how I’m going to play it and this and that, etc. lol... 

So, that personality trait carries over into posting things online as well, I can’t just type something out quickly and hit ‘post’ without a second thought. Social media is hard for me because you’re supposed to use it casually, but I spend a long time re-reading drafted posts, thinking about them, etc. etc., and end up never actually getting around to posting anything. It’s not that I’m perfectionist about it and want it to be ‘good’ or appear a certain way, it’s just that my mind becomes preoccupied with things I guess.  I’m a natural information gatherer, part of my natural way of processing things is to learn everything possible before acting, and I want to make sure I’ve fully thought about everything always, and know as much as I can (so I wouldn’t want to publicly say something without giving it a lot of consideration first, or post a picture without really thinking about if I want to post it, what my reasons behind posting it are (like if I’m posting something just for a validation of a certain aspect of myself VS. genuinely because I like it, etc.), if a few months from now I’ll still like that I posted it, etc. lol.. even with like silly cat photos or something, I have to analyze it and be like ‘hmm.. will I still stand by this picture in 4 months? why am I posting it publicly vs, just keeping it privately to myself on my computer? what’s important about it?’ etc. etc. ghgjhgjh.. like.. shut up lol.)

ANYWAY, yeah, I don’t know if it’s about wanting online content to be “good”, as much as it’s just like... I take everything way too seriously and am detail-oriented, contemplative, and analytical to a fault, which means it just takes me 10x longer to do basic ‘’simple’’ things that it would for other people. Though I can still be quite quick-thinking and decisive (I don’t often waver back and forth between things too long), it’s usually because I have years of thinking about the same exact things behind me, so I already am very clear on my opinions on stuff, to a point. But when it’s new things I’m less familiar with (like playing a new game, or posting regularly online), I’m still in a phase where I guess I have to give it a lot of thought. I just process things in a different way than other people I guess? Or have some inherent inability to be brief/concise/careless? If you’ve ever read any of my worldbuilding posts (where I usually start off wanting to explain one thing but then have to derail into 400 other misc. details and explanations and it ends up being a novel), then maybe it’s more evident what I mean, where it’s just like... my natural manner of speaking is Too Much.. I guess? Even this answer is winding and rambly, and I feel like other people could have answered this ask in only a few sentences lol.. 

 If any of that makes sense? I don’t know how to describe how I am lol.. I just know it's hard to me to use social media in this ~~casual effortless~~ way most people seem to, since my brain is just inherently incapable of anything ‘’casual’’ or ‘’effortless’’ lol..  T u T ;; 

6. " Hi! I hope this isn't weird to say, I'm designing a race for my DND campaign and some of the aesthetics are a little bit inspired by some of your costumes and makeup designs. You're awesome and your art is awesome so thanks : ) "

Thanks so much, I appreciate it! It’s always cool to hear I can inspire people~ 

(I usually don’t include many compliments in these ask compilation posts, but I always try to include a few, just to let people know that even if I don’t respond to all of them I do see them, and appreciate it!) 

7.  ???

I ended up cropping out this ask and not answering because some of the content was questionable (the reason WHY/how they wanted to make the character) in a way that I didn’t feel like getting into a long thing about, but part of it was relevant to making OCs in my world, so I will just make a quick comment:

I do state that this is a closed world, so I don’t want anyone making OCs of my species or etc. at least not at this point. Once my game is finished (if ever lol), or I write a few books or something, then I feel it would be understandable if people like, made up a background story for their player character and thus maybe could have some form of OC in my world and etc.. So I may be more relaxed on this in the future as I create content that people naturally would want to engage with , but for now, I’m still a very tiny creator with a closed world and it just doesn’t feel the same as like.. making an oc based on some thing in a big TV series or something. My worldbuliding and etc. is still very personal to me. Unless we’re directly collaborating on things (like mentioned here (link) a bit), or you’re a personal friend of mine who’s gotten involved in the world with my own guidance (meaning I could tell you lore things you’d need to know to make it accurate, etc.), then I don’t feel it’s appropriate for strangers to do at this point. 

Especially since I don’t even have enough world info out for people to be able to reference (most species have half-complete guides, I’ve only ever talked about like, one continent, etc.). There are so many necessary details which I have only in my head and have never typed out, so again, idk, it’d just be weird. I’m not okay with it until I have a lot more lore published, and maybe a few actual works out there that people can reference/stories/games/basis for OCs to exist in the first place. If that makes sense? 

8. "Hey, is it ok to use your outfit posts as inspiration for a dnd character? I love them so much, you have such a unique way of combining crazy patterns and fabrics into something that gives off a good vibe”

Yes, that would be fine! Thank you for asking, and I appreciate the compliments~ Hopefully I can get back to posting that sort of thing more often lol.. I’ve gotten WAY off my routine and haven’t done many outfits lately.. aaa

9. "hi Luca! i just wanted to say i really love all of your costumes and fashions and dress ups, its all so cool and pretty and interesting. i actually wanna dress up for fun for myself, and now that i know about the bins i think i'll try to convince my mom to take me to similar places for cheap clothing pieces, since my mom is worried about how much all this costume stuff costs. anyway, please keep posting your cool and beautiful stuff! "

Thank you so much! I wish you luck with your costumes! Yeah, I think there’s a common idea in a lot of fashion communities (like with makeup, costumes, etc.) that you have to always have high quality things to look nice, and even if sometimes you can do more with a little extra money, really you can make anything look good with what you have if you just combine it right. As I’ve always been quite low income, being into fashion and stuff has be discouraging at times, that I couldn’t afford certain materials or items, but you just have to find a niche where what you’re able to do works. For example, a lot of even ‘cheap’ lolita style clothings are too expensive for me (like $30 - $50 for a dress??? then the more pricey ones can be over $100???) lol.. BUT, then stuff like mori kei, cult party kei, fantasy costumes, etc. you can do with nearly any fabric you can find, and it’s still just as fun and creative. Most of the outfits I take pictures of probably cost me no more than $1 - $10 for every single item combined. Obviously it depends on location - I have better access now that I live near a place like the bins, which I understand there may not be similar resources in small towns or etc. But even with generic thrift stores (which may not be as cheap as the bins), you can still find pretty good alternatives to all the money it costs to buy things brand new. There’s still some stuff I legit just can’t do because I don’t have access to the materials, but for the most part I can manage everything I’d like with $3 eye-shadows and 15 cent tattered curtain fabrics lol. You can still do really cool stuff on a pretty nonexistent budget!

10. “do you have any tips on growing your hair long? is it expensive to up keep? i wanna grow mine out but it grows so slow!”

Well, I know nothing about hair and am not a hair stylist or etc. so I really don’t have any tips lol??  And I think hair maintenance depends a lot on the type of hair you have, not everyone’s is the same. I assume we must have similar hair  (my natural hair is thick kind of coarse very dark brown/black hair, which is a bit wavy in some parts but mostly straight, but most of my hair currently (aside from the overgrown roots at the top) is altered because of damage from bleaching and etc., it’s more brittle. so that’s what I’ll be referencing) if you’re asking me this instead of someone else, but just know that whatever I say may not apply to you.  

Anyway, I really don’t do anything to my hair to make it grow or etc., it’s just that I’ve gone a long time without cutting it lol. I used to cut it all the time or change styles, and now I’ve kind of just left it for 5 or 6 years or so. Because of my mental illness I have trouble maintaining personal care and etc., so I do sometimes go a week or more without washing it, even though I’m trying to work that into my schedule more (luckily I don’t have stinky head, I’ve heard some people’s scalp oils and stuff can smell weird if left for too long, I have the privilege of being able to like.. skip on hygiene a lot without it severely impacting my ability to do things or etc. since it’s usually not obvious if I haven’t bathed in a week or two). 

My cat also EATS HUMAN HAIR for some reason, so I have to keep it up all the time, so that when I shed it doesn’t actually just fall loose onto the ground lol. Literally all I do to my hair is just keep it in two braids at all times and wash it with normal shampoo and conditioner occasionally, when I can. I really only think it’s gotten long because I’ve been leaving it alone and not messing with it, not really because of anything I’ve done (like I don’t use fancy products on it or etc.) And because of that, no, it’s not really expensive! It absolutely WOULD be if I were like..a normal functioning person and I regularly bleached it and dyed it and put products on it and styled it and used shampoo and conditioner every 1-3 days on it and etc. lol.. But I guess because I don’t do anything to it to maintain it, I’m not spending money on hairspray or dye or shampoo or etc.  I used to bleach it a lot and straighten it and use hairspray and stuff on it, and it seems healthier (at least on the new top parts) now that I’m just ... ignoring it basically lol. But I don’t really know what to do to make it grow faster! I’m bad at self-care, and even if I do costumes and stuff, I really am not into beauty and hair and nails and makeup and stuff, so I’m probably the wrong person to ask hghjhb.. My upkeep routine is just... eat and sleep. wash face with water daily.. do extra stuff if you can manage to despite your functioning issues, etc. I’m definitely not a Beauty Advice person, I barely brush my hair even once a week lol

11. "Maybe you should reduce the number of races if it's too overwhelming? A world can still be immersive with only a few races in it."

(sidenote - Not to be nitpicky, but I make a specific point that the groups of fantasy creatures I create are species, not ‘’races’’, even though it is a commonly used term in fantasy worldbuilding, I think it’s inaccurate/weird )

I know I don’t have to make so many different groups, but, I guess I just really want it to be a broad setting. Part of the point in creating Nanyevimi (aside from worldbuilding just being extremely fun and a hobby greatly suited to someone with my personality traits lol) is to have an established world that I can do anything within, a framework already built where it'd be super easy to just drop a character anywhere on the map and already have an idea of what their culture, background, experiences, etc. would be based on pre-existing details about that portion of the world, etc. But I also want it to be broad, and varied, where every area kind of has it’s own dynamics going on there, so if you’re in a different place, you get a different kind of story. (like in an elven alliance city, you’d be better suited to tell an adventure story centering around complicated local politics, or city life, or etc.. whereas out in some isolated mountains in the south, it’d be more suited for a mystery story about stumbling across ancient ruins, or running into a mysterious traveler, etc.) 

Which I guess doesn’t matter much, since I'm better at setting, world design, character design, planning, and details than I am at plot, so  I probably won’t actually ever do anything with it (god forbid I tried to write a book or something with my utter inability to be concise/brief in any imaginable way). I can craft settings/characters/history/world-details all day endlessly, never losing inspiration or etc, but my weak point is actually telling stories within those settings and formulating a solid plan, organizing plot structures long term and etc.. Setting up everything for something to happen/creating a place where many interesting premises could occur is fine, but then actually thinking of how those things should OCCUR, or how the set up should play out, is where I get kind of lost. I guess the ideal at some point would be to have people working with me, helping when writing stories in my world/outlining games/etc, to add more cohesion/structure and reign in the unfocused stream of ideas,  but that’s very unlikely since I don’t have any close friends that are good at organizing or plotting either, etc. BUT anyway, even if I can’t ever manage to do anything with it, the whole “having a setting I can use for anything I want if anything ever comes up, which is already established and thus makes it much easier to formulate ideas because all the background work is already done for myself” thing is at least a nice goal.. in concept...theoretically lol..  

And, it’s not really too overwhelming, I think the overwhelming part is actually just formatting and producing those ideas in a consumable form. It’s not hard for me to keep track of 20 different groups and make backgrounds and every imaginable detail for them, but it IS hard to actually take all that information that exists in my head, type it out as a worldbuilding post, format and organize it, draw pictures to go with it, etc. If I could just post long stream of consciousness style 300,000 word long posts with no paragraph breaks, 4000 typos, barely any punctuation, etc., then I’d have A LOT more world-building info publicly available (since that’s what all the initial documents on my computer look like lol), but that’s just so inaccessible it’d be pointless to have public in the first place. The hard part isn’t really coming up with or managing the information, it’s just... organizing it all, and finding a way to share it. 

12. "oh PLEASE tell me what boing peach beverage the elf looks like"

a quick sketch of them.. mysterious peach (and other produce) salesman   

13. "fun question: what are ur fashion pet-peeves?"

Well, basically none because I hate when people are rigid over Fashion Rules or etc. Like, people who take pictures of others in public because they “look weird” , or who constantly trash on what people are allowed to wear, what patterns can be mixed with others, etc. etc. I get that some stuff can look kind of bad sometimes, and it’s not that I think nobody is allowed to criticize fashion trends or etc. (especially if they’re legitimately problematic, like of course someone wearing a homophobic t-shirt or doing blackface should be criticized), but I mean just like... that sort of trivial bitter criticism that doesn’t do anything but make people feel bad about the way they look or make them afraid to dress in ways they feel comfortable. Like taking a picture of someone and posting it online to make fun of them because they wore socks with sandals, or bullying 14 year olds who just started doing makeup and haven’t totally gotten their look sorted out yet, etc. etc. (ESPECIALLY since this can often intersect with classism, racism, etc. if you really examine what people mock as 'ugly' or 'unacceptable' styles, it's often stuff like men wearing dresses/makeup, women not shaving, clothing associated with poverty (like wearing “”cheap”” clothes), physical traits commonly associated with poc, making fun of people who look a certain way likely due to mental illness (like fidgeting, dirty mismatched clothing, carrying stuffed animals or comfort items in public etc.), etc. etc.

I find costumes and makeup and outfits to be a very cool and fun way to express myself. So when people are complete freaks about it and set out to just relentlessly make others feel bad for no good reason, it’s like... obnoxious... How can you take something with so much potential and limit it and close others off and turn it into this rigid hateful thing, when it should be something that everyone is able to be passionate about and appreciate?? Outside appearance isn't everything, but it's a tool of expression for so many people and can relate to who they are as a person, people should never feel uncomfortable to be who they are or look how they look just because some dumbass rich person writing for a style magazine has the gall to declare some random thing to be 'Unfashionable' despite not having a genuinely creative bone in their body, or some bigot thinks that certain things are ‘ugly’ or ‘unprofessional’ due to their own mental associations, etc.

But anyway, I guess if I had to choose a few things that I just think look kind of odd to me personally/are generally off-putting...  

--- the overdrawing lips thing when you can see the persons actual lip-line and it almost looks like they have two mouths or something? (if not done intentionally for costume makeup). It can look a little strange to me sometimes, like an optical illusion where you see multiple mouth lines at once?? idk like this?

--- freckles that are just round circles and really heavy and don’t look realistic (though again, I also realize this could just be the person’s first time drawing them on or something and I’m not  mocking for lack of skill, etc. I just mean that it’s a little strange to look at, not actually BAD though) (and it can also be intentional, like for a cartoony costume look) ---- People adopting cutesy/childlike fashion and clothing and sexualizing it or using it as part of their sex/kink stuff.. I just feel like anything associated with children should not be sexualized..? If the first thing someone thinks when seeing children's school uniforms or frilly little girl’s doll dresses or whatever is that it could be a Hot Thing then hhh... like why is your brain making those connections lol.. People can dress how they want for whatever reasons they want, but that’s always personally creeped me out a little. Similar to our culture’s obsession with looking young being ‘hot’ (like a grown man wanting someone who’s a legal adult but still “looks 16″ or etc.), where it’s like.. okay, I guess yeah outwardly you can make that choice, and maybe aren’t directly causing harm, but.. the underlying tones of it and etc. still make it very unsettling to witness lol... ---- anything appropriated obviously, as well as fetishization or bastardization of cultures, like t-shirts with Japanese writing on them Just For Aesthetic, or taking certain culturally or religiously significant symbols or etc. and adopting them as ‘just a silly fashion’ thing when you’re actually being disrespectful, etc.  ---- those shorts or whatever that go up extremely high on the hipbones always look a little weird to me lol, like they give a person funny proportions, 

(you may have to right click open image in new window and zoom to see the text, but it’s like.. the blank space makes it look kind of weird to me? Like there’s too much where there’s just nothing going on? idk. That’s just my personal preference though, obviously I tend to lean towards busy designs lol)

That’s all I can think of though, like I said, I’m really not picky or judgy about fashion since I think people should be able to do whatever they want for the most part. I’m not like a “omg stripes should NEVER be worn with plaid!!” type person or something lol. 

14. "Hey Luca! I love when you post about your world. Do you have a favorite species you've made up so far? Also, I hope you're holding up well during the crisis!"

AAaa thanks! I’m okay mostly. It’s distressing since because of my particular mental illness I already have constant paranoia and obsessions about health, so of course hearing about so much illness can be really triggering constantly and I’m preoccupied in never-ending anxiety spirals about mortality and etc. etc. etc. , but situationally, I’m just very thankful that nobody in my household has gotten sick yet and I desperately wish that will continue to be the case. *** *** *** 

(ignore the *** *** *** , this is a text version of a physical compulsion (a hand movement) that I have to do when I mention certain topics lol.. the little man in my brain that controls my obsessive compulsive disorder says I must do certain things after saying or thinking certain things,, You Know How It Is ) 

And I really love worldbuilding questions, so thank you so much!!!!! Hghgh maybe it seems weird to favor any over the others, but of course I really like the Avirre'thel. Conceptually, I think their origin story and connection to ancient elves and their abilities and etc. put them in a really unique position in the broader world (some of the only truly immortal people to exist, the only people who can still decipher ancient elven texts in a way that makes sense, etc. etc.). Since Nanyevimi (my world) is really just a setting being built so that in the future I can set things within it (games, short stories, etc.), I think I'm drawn to the aspects of it that have the most potential to make interesting characters, and there are definitely a lot of pre-established dynamics with the Avirre'thel/in Navyete (their home country) as a whole that would make it an good place to set certain things, or a good group for a main character to be from, etc.

I do really like the Jhevona as a species overall too, even if I haven't developed them as much, they also kind of stand out as having some fairly unique features that put them in an interesting position in the world (being one of the most magically capable groups that exists but that also having downsides (health issues and infertility from magic exposure, etc.), how the necessity to keep control over their magic influences their culture, being some of the only natural shape-shifters, etc.). Within that, I REALLY love the Thastanri (a subspecies of Jhevona), like their connection to dreams, the Imkasyn, being one of the last few peoples in contact with real dragons, etc. etc. There are a lot of complex things going on in their area, so there’d be a lot of potential to tell a variety of stories or have interesting characters from that group. 

AND, though it's supposed to be Unknown in the world so I won't talk about it just in case I ever write a book one day or something and need to preserve at least a FEW mysteries that I don't just outright explain in worldbuilding posts, Jhevona do have the most interesting origins of any species in my opinion. There are some things from before the timeline break sort of thing (where all recorded history was seemingly wiped and everyone had a big memory loss about 50,000 yrs ago) that people aren't aware of anymore... but Jhevona used to have a cool backstory and quite interesting function in society prior to that. There are some remnants in the genetics of the species and how their magic works (at least for certain groups) that kind of hint at how ancient Jhevona used to look and what they used to do, even though in the modern day things are very different.

15. "Top 10 songs you've been listening to lately?"

I don’t have a top 10 since I listen to everything for different reasons, and don’t have as deep a relationship with music the way some people do (like I don’t really have a favorite band or group I have a connection with that’s “gotten me through hard times”, or music I cry to/any songs that are specifically personally emotionally meaningful to me, etc., etc.), but here’s a quick playlist of a few favorite-ish things I’ve had in my head a lot recently - 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPmQ4SZdFFHNkgKo7nAiEMgVvLcycX5Qc

the last song on the list specifically I’ve been replaying a lot for some reason, I guess since it’s good background music as there’s no words. Particularly the part that starts around like 38 seconds in, something about that melody reminds me of something distant, in a dreamlike way. The past few days I mostly alternate between that song, Outstanding, and And The Beat Goes On  lol

16. " Do you ever sell sculptures? I really like that little fawn!"

Yeah, I hope to eventually! Like I mentioned in question number three, if I can set up some sort of way to do auctions or etc, then maybe I can sell that one! 

17 & 18 : '"aaa yay!! i missed your outfits!!!" / "can I just say love ur outfits! They're so cool and inspire me to draw my ocs with new outfits > o < and I love your cat too, please give him a big ol pat!"

Thank you!!!! more compliments posted just to show I appreciate them lol, even if I don’t publicly respond to every one~ And, the Boyes appreciate the pats.. here is them.. big babbeys... 

#it bothers me still that I didn't take all the screenshots the same way and there's different colors of nu #mbers and etc. lol.... but some of those are from 4 months ago or more and I had already deleted the original ask #from my inbox so I can't go rescreencap it to match the others.. #this is the issue inherent in taking so long to answer things that I just respond in large batches lol #replies #okay also I know it's been months but... one of you has to like this post or at least show you read/interacted with my #response somehow because I cannot spend like 4-5 hours typing stuff for others if nobody will read it ghghg #( i know i make it take longer by being rambly and etc. but.. still...) #I'm sorry they sat in my inbox a long time and etc. but... also..... my pwecious time and effort #i hope at least one of the people I'm responding to sees that i did indeed reply to them lol

[afinepricklypear]

Mother’s Day and Mental Health Awareness Month

**Warning - This post talks about depression, mental disorder, and an attempted suicide. Please do not read if you are sensitive to these topics. The events described here are real and true to the best of my memory.**

I went to make a post May 1st and Tumblr was kind enough to inform me that May is Mental Health Awareness month. It isn’t without irony for me that Mental Health Awareness month occurs the same month as Mother’s Day.

My relationship with my mother is a difficult topic, it’s usually only one I can talk about with my sisters, but it’s this time of year that people most want to talk about moms. When I was younger, I didn’t know what to say when people brought up their moms and mom-like behavior in general, mostly foreign concepts to me. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned I don’t have to say anything at all, like in my work meeting this morning when our supervisor reminded us all to call our mom’s this weekend, you know, “if they’re still alive”, since most of our department are near retiring age, but I don’t always know how to feel. Here comes the guilt: do I call, do I text, do I take the risk that she’ll be in a good mood or will she turn it around, again, like the year I sent her a gift and she used my gesture as ammo to attack my “ungrateful” older sister that’s still trying to untangle her own complicated relationship with our mother. I’m ten again, twelve again, sixteen again, walking on eggshells around a house where the air is so thick with the constant fog of her misery, I can’t see farther than a minute into my future.

There were good moments, of course, like any home. She was always the more encouraging parent when it came to my writing, my father would pick it all apart – in the long run, both approaches helped me become a better writer. There was the time she was given two tickets to see Mama Mia at the casino where she dealt, and she chose to take me. We got dressed up, she leant me this white faux fur jacket and some of her jewelry, curled my hair and did my make-up, she was riding high on her emotions. She took me to a fancy dinner at the Hard Rock Café before the show. We didn’t get spoiled often, and to this day, Mama Mia and ABBA hold a special place in my heart. I always think of her singing along to the radio in the car, she has a nice voice, and maybe in another life, she could’ve been a singer.

There were moments when she was trying to be sweet and it still leaves me with conflicted emotions. Like the time the German shepherd she took off the hands of a coworker who was afraid of him violently attacked me. She bandaged me up, laid in bed with me and comforted me, it’s the most motherly I ever remember her being. She kept the dog for a while after that, I still have scars on both my arms from the attack, I’ll have them the rest of my life, just like my little sister will still have her scars from when it attacked her, and my friend who came to visit will still have the scar it gave her…my older sister was only lucky that it was muzzled when it went for her face. My mother was convinced she had a special connection with this dog, that in his heart of hearts he believed he was protecting her, so I get it, she didn’t want to get rid of something that she felt loved her unconditionally.

Sometimes it’s hard to conjure these kinder memories, they become overwhelmed with the harder, darker ones that feel infinitely more numerous. There are the moments that seem innocuous, when you could say I was acting a spoiled child, like the time I was in middle school and I wanted to keep my hair long, but my mother decided I needed bangs. My dad tried to stop it, but she had made up her mind. I cried and pleaded with her but she commanded the reluctant stylist to chop the hair off. Armed with a brush and blow-dryer, she attempted to show me “it was cute” that night and things escalated to the point my dad and older sister were stepping in, arguing with my mom to let me be. I went back to that same hair stylist with my friend who was getting her hair cut the next day, and the stylist apologized, confessed that she didn’t want to cut my hair, told me it was so healthy and beautiful too, and she felt terrible doing it. Years later, when I was an adult and decided to cut my hair short with sideswept bangs, my mother would throw this memory back in my face, “sure, now you want bangs”, still incapable of understanding that it wasn’t about her, but about me wanting to define my own body and style. She did the same to my older sister in high school, dyed her hair blonde – it took so much bleach to lighten her naturally dark hair color that the hair looked fried afterwards and we were all amazed it didn’t fall out. Never mind that my older sister never wanted blonde hair to begin with, it was antithetical to her personality, and she won’t even go near the hair dye aisle now.

There are the moments where my mom was so unreasonable that everyone felt helpless, like the day I was alone in my room, my sisters in the living room talking and watching television – doing I don’t know what – and my mom was sleeping in her room because she worked graveyard shift at this time. Suddenly, inexplicably, my mom came into my room in a rage, “how dare you call your little sister stupid,” she scolded me, she continued to berate me for being cruel and mean, even as I told her, baffled, I didn’t know what she was talking about, even as my sisters argued with her, “no one called anyone stupid. She wasn’t even in the room with us.” My mother wouldn’t listen, she knew what she heard, she grounded me and, matter settled, left back to bed. My dad got home from work not long after, and I was in my room still bawling, inconsolable and unable to work out what I’d done wrong. He asked my sisters why I was crying and they explained, and, again, my mom comes storming in my room yelling, “how dare you tattle on me to your dad!” I don’t remember much of what happened from there, my dad stepped in, they argued the rest of the night, and he would later assure me I wasn’t grounded. It was the only thing he could undo from that day.

There are other, harder to define moments. The nights my mom would argue with my dad, we’d be in bed, school in the morning, and she’d turn on all our bedroom lights, rip the covers off our beds, and scream at us to get out of her house, that she was putting us all out on the streets and it was our father’s fault. I remember vividly the fight between my parents that happened in the day, everyone awake in the house, I collapsed in the kitchen as my mother ranted that we all hated her so she should leave and we won’t have to deal with her anymore, and I cried and trembled, overwhelmed with the thought, I don’t want anyone to leave, I don’t want to lose my family. I had to get out, so I did, walked right out of the house, not sure where I’d go, and my mother panicked and raced after me, put an arm over my shoulders, coaxed me back to the house. The moment the door closed; she was yelling at us again for not loving her enough and I realized I couldn’t leave, I was trapped. There was the gambling addiction, every Christmas we would be prepared, “mom lost a lot of money at the casino last night, we might not have a Christmas this year” – we had learned not to expect anything anyways and that every gift came with a quid pro quo and years of ‘remember I did this for you’. My older sister and her then-boyfriend, now-husband, watched my mom gamble away more than a month’s mortgage and spend the entire night chasing it back.

I’m thinking about all of this more recently, I think, since I started writing some fanfics for the Bungou Stray Dogs community. One of the main characters of the show is named after and inspired by author, Dazai Osamu, a man that died prematurely from a double suicide. This is treated tongue-and-cheek by the anime and its original manga through Dazai’s many failed suicide attempts and his odd flirtation strategy of asking ladies to commit double suicide with him. I kind of like this approach to the topic, it might on the surface seem insensitive to make a joke of something so serious as depression, but humor can be therapeutic and give us an easier way to broach otherwise difficult subjects.

I was in high school when my older sister and I were allowed to be in on the conversations about my mother’s mental disorder, both undiagnosed and untreated. We’d all speculate, my father and his sister, my mother’s sister, my sisters and I, the favorite theory was bipolar disorder, but we may never know. My mom refused then and refuses to this day to seek help. There were little things about her past before marrying my dad that we were allowed to know as we got older, too. Like, how she’d been put in a hospital that wanted to keep her there for further treatment – they knew something was wrong but didn’t know what, this was during a time when bipolar disorder was unheard of and they called similar diagnoses ‘manic depression’ – and she had to threaten legal action to get released. When she was eighteen, she had married a man knowing he had a terminal illness in order to help him get his green card, he died two years later, and she still considers him the great love of her life. We’re told by the media, movies like A Walk to Remember, that this is romantic, but in reality, it’s an unhealthy fixation on a relationship that was doomed from the start. She idolizes the memory of it, puts it on a pedestal as the standard for all of her other relationships to compare to, but it isn’t realistic. It was a relationship with a known expiration date, it wasn’t a real commitment, nothing had to matter because it would all come to an end soon, and they never reached the hard parts of a marriage – children, growing old, changing bodies, financial struggles, loss and disagreement. She went through a deep depression after he died and it reached a point that her sister had her placed on a suicide watch and thus began her long and sordid history of depression.

There are a lot of fanfics in the BSD community that explore a darker tone to Dazai’s depression, to varying degrees of accuracy. I mostly steer clear of them. There is one writer in the community that I won’t name, they’re an amazing writer with beautiful technical skill, and they do an impeccable job of showing depression exactly as it is for those who live it and those who live with a person that suffers from it. I left a one-word comment on one of their stories, the only positive thing I could say, and I couldn’t write anymore without the comment turning into an emotional lecture, I don’t know that author’s personal emotional state, but I also won’t read any more from them. It wasn’t the accurate depiction of depression that turned me off from the story, but the depiction of Dazai’s depression being known by all the characters in the story, including himself, but he won’t seek treatment for it, and all of the characters are shown to enable his depression and put up with his abuses that stem from his disorder. In the story he was placed in an intimate relationship with the character, Chuuya, and Chuuya is painted as the patron saint of boyfriends, willing to overlook Dazai’s every episode, draw him back from the ledge and bandage up his scars with an endless patience and gentleness. I couldn’t move passed the romanticizing of this relationship dynamic. Chuuya is shown to be noble and celebrated for his self-sacrifice and unconditional love that compels him to stay beside Dazai despite everything Dazai inflicts upon himself and Chuuya, and more importantly, despite Dazai’s refusal to get treatment.  

My mother’s emotional state was constantly our responsibility growing up. She was sad because we didn’t love her. She was angry because we were ungrateful. She was miserable because we couldn’t see all that she did for us. If she hurt us with her words, if she lashed out at us irrationally, it was our fault, because we didn’t do everything right. Never mind that what was right could change within a minute in a day. Too often when someone in your life is suffering from a mental disorder, you’re made to shoulder the blame, either unintentionally by them as they suffer from their illness or intentionally by well-meaning individuals outside of the situation that don’t know better: you just need to give them love. If they take their own life, it’s your fault, you didn’t love them enough.

It was the Friday before Mother’s Day, I was in my early twenties, finishing up my degree in Anthropology (after changing my major, I don’t know how many times). My parents were long since divorced and my mom lived alone in the house where I grew up, still shrouded in all of those dark memories. My mother’s sister had recently left town after a short visit, she had called me a few days earlier to let me know my mother lost her job  that week and was struggling to get out of the depression. In retrospect, she’d been sinking for a while now, after the violent dog and so many other incidents like it left us all with too many scars to overlook and we didn’t know how to walk back into that house, how to feel safe there. She’d covered herself in tattoos, cut her hair short, wore different wigs to work every day, she’d gained a lot of weight and was chain smoking so much there was a permanent haze in the house. None of these things should be thought of as red flags for everyone, it should be taken on an individual basis, but for my mother they were all signs that she was spiraling. She didn’t like who she saw in the mirror and was desperately trying to cover it up, find someone she did like. I had promised her I would come over, make her a dinner for Mother’s Day, and I would take her to see a movie. I was on my phone with my aunt when I pulled up, snowballing ideas for what to do if things got serious and if we needed to think about placing her on a suicide watch, how that would work. I rang the doorbell; it was outside of the gate she put around the front yard for her dogs to go in the front yard.

No answer.

Rang it again.

Still no answer.

She knew I was coming over.

I opened the gate, went to the door, the door was cracked open, my aunt was on the phone in my ear, “what’s going on?” I opened the door fully and my mom’s dogs came to greet me. The house was in disarray, furniture toppled over, papers scattered across the floor, so many of the details are blurred out of memory, I remember distinctly a ceramic statue broken on the floor but I couldn’t tell you what it was a statue of. I could hear a low intermittent moan coming from farther in the house. I followed it down the hall to my mother’s room, into her bathroom, where she was collapsed, naked, on the floor of her shower.

I told my aunt I had to go, I hung up and dialed 911. In the moment, I didn’t know how panicked I really was, my voice unnaturally high, my body warm and shaking and electric with adrenaline. That feeling hits me again, sometimes, when I don’t expect it. There was white like foam around my mother’s mouth, her eyes stared wide and blank at the ceiling, her every breath was that guttural moan as she attempted to draw air in, an autonomic action, she was completely unresponsive. Her body was on autopilot, and so was mine. I’d been rehearsing for a long time what to do in that situation, it’s the only way I made it through everything that needed to be done. I gave the dispatcher the address, answered her questions, “I think she did something to herself but I don’t know what…no, there’s no pills nearby…no, I don’t see anything in the trash…she’s been severely depressed…she has a history of depression…”, between pleading with my mom, “please don’t leave me, please stay with me, mom,” and wrestling her dogs into the front yard and out of the house. The dispatcher told me the ambulance was on its way and asked if I wanted her to stay on the line and I begged her not to hang up, not to leave me with nothing but the moans of my dying mother, she didn’t say anything during that time, was just silently present as I talked to my mom and waited for the paramedics. They couldn’t come in until I got the dogs out back, I cursed and screamed at the unruly mongrels and felt an irrational anger that my mom never got them properly trained.

I took a seat in the kitchen, let the paramedics work and my brain shut down. I called my aunt back, told her what happened. The paramedics came to ask me questions, I tried to answer them but I didn’t know and my aunt was correcting me over the phone, so I handed her over and let her talk to them. They took my mother away to the hospital and I was alone, in that childhood house, that held so many horrible memories of my mother’s untreated disorder, and every aspect of our lives that it colored and perverted. Every Mother’s Day was always fraught with anxiety, I think it was my mother’s least favorite day, her mood was always sour, and no matter what we gave her or tried to do for her, it wasn’t enough. Even the year before, the Mother’s Day when she told us exactly what to get her. She was so happy with her present, a sterling silver ring with our birthstones imbedded that cost us all a pretty penny – I was paying my own way through college, my older sister was paying rent on a Starbucks salary, and my little sister didn’t have a job – but a week later we were ungrateful brats again. There was one Mother’s Day when I was maybe ten or eleven, we’d set her up roses and two cards – one from my father and one from her daughters. I was watching television and waiting for her to come home from work to wish her a happy Mother’s Day. She came in and years of practice had taught me to recognize she was in a dark mood, a cigarette on her lip, her posture tense, muttering under her breath about how nobody loved her, nobody cared. She stalked to the desk, ripped the cards in half without opening them and threw them on the ground in front of me without sparing me one glance or word, and stormed to her room, slammed the door behind her.

We would later find out that my mother drank antifreeze, a method that has about a 5% survival rate. She was in a coma for about a month. It was another few weeks before they took the respirator tube out and her throat recovered enough that she could talk in small sentences, and not without effort and pain. She told us she filled a cup with the antifreeze, showed us with her fingers set apart how high she’d put it in the glass, when she finished, she washed the cup and stuck it in the dishwasher, hiding the evidence. She’d always heard antifreeze was flavorless but it tasted awful – they add flavoring to antifreeze to deter people from accidentally ingesting it. She’d thought it would be quick, but it’s really an excruciatingly painful and long, drawn out way to die. She’d stripped in her deliria and taken a shower because her body felt so awful, feverish and almost on fire, as it was shutting down and her nerves fried from the chemical reaction. I wrestled for a long time with the ethical delimma of my choices in that moment after finding her, and there was a thought that stuck with me through it all: What did I get my mother for Mother’s Day? I saved her life, and it was still the wrong gift.

It isn’t noble or romantic to stay with someone who refuses to get professional treatment for their mental disorder. There is no amount of love or patience or understanding that will heal them. In most situations, the harder and braver thing to do is walk away. None of us is a perfect person and none of us should have to bear the burden of another person’s unwillingness to get help when they need it. It took me a long time to come to terms with the notion that there is no one to blame in this situation. It isn’t my fault that I can’t give my mother the love she craves. It isn’t my mother’s fault that she can’t see the love that her daughters wanted to give her. But it is her responsibility to get help. If she refuses help, no one can force it on her.

It’s been years now since this happened. My mother is now as recovered as she’ll ever be. Her mind isn’t as sharp, and she struggles with controlling her muscles and the devastating damage to her nervous system that will never fully heal. She remains undiagnosed and is not receiving any kind of professional guidance or treatment. There have been new, dark memories, added to the old ones, in those times when we tried to be supportive and “there for her” during her recovery. Episodes that remind us she doesn’t want to change and she never will. So, we keep our interactions to a minimum, answer when she texts, try to help her when she asks for it, check in every so often. She lives on the other side of the country with two cats and goes regularly to the neighborhood karaoke bar. In a weird way, she seems happier with this set up, this distance between her and all of the pain that my sisters and I seemed to bring her, that constant demand for love that we couldn’t fulfill, maybe it really was all our fault and we were the ones to blame, or maybe it’s because I’m not living with her depression anymore.

I don’t know if I’ll call my mother on Mother’s Day, but for anyone else out there with a complicated relationship with their mother, it’s okay if you decide not to call your mother either.

[kindar-life]

<h1>The problem with Crossing the Border (09-01-19)</h1>

The problem with Crossing the Border (09-01-19)

Or an alternate title: I have ADHD, Big Surprise Out of curiosity, anyone has border crossing stories? They don’t have to be horror stories; they can be good. I’m mainly curious how it’s been for other people. So this week could have gone great, and for one the problem wasn’t on my company’s side. We did everything right, it’s the shipper and the border who dropped the ball. So, did the delivery on Monday and as my manager is on vacation, St-Germain was the one handling it, and before they were done unloaded, I had my next assignment. a pickup, 5 hours away, for Wednesday morning. If my manager had been handling it, I wouldn’t have found out until later on Tuesday, forcing me to rush there, his justifications would be that he was looking for something better in the meantime, which is BS, since that shipper is about the only one we have in all of BC anymore. I only drove an hour, I mean, what’s the point. I’m on eastern time, so 3 hours ahead of them, and going to be a day early. Also, Hwy 3 from Hope to Grand Forks, is horrible and there is no way I want to do it in the dark. It was still dark by the time I left on Tuesday, but was light before I hit the really tight curves going up and down hills. It’s the summer, so it wasn’t as bad as it could be, and I was empty, but I’ve done them in the winter. I never look forward to driving on that road. Made it mid-morning for them, checked in, pointing out I was a day early and they said to drop it, their shunt driver would put it in a door within minutes and within a couple of hours it would be done. Which was great news for me. If I could get in the US a day early, I’d be able to take a two-day weekend. Remember that ‘IF’. The trailer is ready in three hours, but it takes another hour for me to find out because I was looking at the wrong drop lot. I decided to go in and get an update and, on the way, I saw it in the opposite drop lot. Got my papers, confirmed I was good to cross the border and headed to the Laurier crossing. I like it because it isn’t busy and the road on the US side is nice, even if it’s a 2-lane highway. No big hills, few tight curves and only a handful of towns. There is Spokane when it reaches I90, but I found a way around it. It’s a little longer, than driving through Spokane, but a lot easier. Get to the border, go inside. It’s so quiet they don’t have truck booths. I hand in the papers, the officer looked in his is system and asks. “Where’s your permit?” “I’m sorry,” I reply, “What permit?” “your permit to cross here.” Here is the thing. We’ve been crossing at this border for eight months. And we’ve never been asked for a permit. It turns out that no officer should have ever allowed us to cross there, but they weren’t doing their jobs properly. The reason we don’t have a permit is that the shipper never added us to the list of approved Carrier to cross there with their product. I did not know there was such a situation possible. So I turned around, stopped in an aside in the hopes it was an easy fix and called the shipper. Only to find out the person who deals with the border had already left for the day (it was 4pm locally, in the mood I was in, I wasn’t thinking good thing about a person who didn’t have to work until 5pm like all office workers.) I called dispatch to advise them. Drove back to the shipper to park for the night, they are only 10 minutes from the border, another reason I like crossing there. Next morning, 9am their time, noon mine, I go in and find out there’s nothing to be done about it, they can only add a carrier to their list once a year, in December. The closest crossing that is a ‘Commercial Crossing,” is in Ossoyoos, two hours west, over all those horrible hills and turns. Tell dispatch about it, get told it can’t be, we cross at Laurier all the time. I tell them, yes, but we can’t anymore, check with the shipper if you believe your driver is so determined to drive over horrible hills. By the time I bet close to Ossoyoos, I still don’t have my papers so I park at the truckstop there. Only have to wait an hour and I do. I have to drive later than I prefer but I make it to Post Falls, ID, where I like to park anytime I have to cross at that border. My 2-day weekend is gone, but I can take it easy, there’s plenty of time to get to Laredo. Or not. Friday morning my manager, the one who is on vacation, calls me to ask when I’m going to be there. I tell him something on Tuesday. I’m not concerned since it doesn’t need to be there until Friday. He starts asking why so late, it need to be there ASAP. I tell him I need to do a reset (not true, technically, but don’t tell him that) I tell him that the best I can do is be there Monday late afternoon, and he asks why? I have plenty of hours and it’s a holiday on Monday so I need to get there earlier so I can get a load. And here I need to pause. The earliest I could be there, pushing as hard as I legally can would be Sunday, and the office there is closed. If it’s closed on Monday too, what does it matter if I’m there on Monday? If there is a load there for me to pickup on Sunday, it’s still going to be there on Monday. I still don’t budge on my reset. I have stopped caring about them changing delivery times after I’ve done my pickup a long time ago. If I’m given inaccurate information, it is not my problem. He grumbles and tells me to be there Monday without fault, as if I told him I might not make it. So I had to drive a little harder but I got her on Saturday, and rested. One of the things I did while I waited for all that was get more writing done, so you get five chapters of Taking the Line, Chapters 44 to 48. If there is the usual wait time in Laredo, the last five chapters should be done next week. Chapter 16 of Blind Spot is written, and I finished book 5 of LRK’s origin story. 13 chapters. The longest one to date, I hope the longest period. So I’ve started the newest Going Home, which will explore McKannon, the industrial sector of Tiranis, as well as Eric finally making contact with one of his relatives. if you want to read all that, it's only 1$ on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/29632610 Another thing I did is take an ADHD test. There’s a warning about how it isn’t a medical tool, but if you score about a certain point, you really should talk to a doctor because, really, you have ADHD. And I do. I didn’t go in hoping I had it, but I strongly suspected I was somewhere on that spectrum. On the lower end, but on it none the less. There someone called ADHD Alien on Tumblr, and they post comics about how ADHD affects their daily lives and quite a few of them resonated with me, but one of the reason I never looked at the condition was that I was successful in school and the stereotype of someone with ADHD as that they aren’t good at school. Things is plenty of people with ADHD are good in school because it’s fun, there’s a lot of new things to learn and we soak up that knowledge easily, so easily most of us never have to bother studying, so we never learn how to study, and then when we hit college, of in my case the last two years of secondary school(I was in Quebec, they have their own system there) things start going badly. I was able to finish Secondary, but College was a bust. I just couldn’t figure out how to study and the concept I now had to deal with were so complex I couldn’t simply absorb them. I mean, I’m bright, but not that bright. So I dropped out, hit the work force and never regretted it. I was also lucky that my parents didn’t have expectations of me going to university and becoming a BIG SHOT™. They were surprised when I dropped out, but it was my life and they let me live it as I wanted. I love them for that. I love them for letting me screw up, then offering to help me up with a “See, that didn’t work, you might want to try something else, I can offer suggestions if you want but that’s up to you.” My mom picked up quicker than my dad that the suggestions that worked best were the kick in the ass kind of things and to then let me assimilate them and proceed. My mom told me months before I did it that I should write in the morning, that’s always been when I was at my best and I snorted, yeah right, mornings, who’s functional then? Eventually I ran out of things to try and did that. When I told my mom that she was right about it she smiled and said “I know.” But yeah, back on the ADHD thing. Learning that it was possible to succeed in school because you had ADHD and then fail for the same reason realigned my thinking. And add to that, that for the few things I can focus laser like on, like my writing, there are tons of them I am incapable of staying focus on. No matter how badly I want to learn them. So, yeah, I have ADHD. Will I seek treatment? No. for me to consider treating any condition I have, it has to either affect my ability to earn a living, or my health(and to be fair, when it comes to my health the potential down side have to be bad for me to even think about talking to a doctor about it) I can do my job without problem; I can do my writing without problems. The rest? Frankly, nothing else matter to a level I am willing to put those two at risk. I don’t Suffer from ADHD, I simply have it. I built my coping mechanism even without knowing I had something. Being Scatter brain? I either write it down, or accept that I will forget about it, and if I forget about it I accept the consequences. I don’t make myself a mess over forgetting it. I fix the problem it caused and move on. I do know now why Minecraft is such a trap for me now. It pulls at my focus by giving me things to do, always more things to do until I reached the point where I’m near panic because I can’t do all of them and I push it away. Until I’ve calmed down. But Minecraft commits the Sin of interfering with my writing by taking over that mental space. It’s why I no longer play it. It’s also why the craving is always there, but me and cravings are old friends. I have no issues staring him down. Okay, this is way longer than I expected so I’m going to pass on the movie and book review this week. You' all have fun, and come on, talk to me. Ask me questions, share your stories, it gets lonely talking to the void<chuckles> And that’s it, so I’ll see you on the next one.

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