#have been kind of like a low level of obsessed with myself today like with my how I look ever since I did my hair lmao

[femmeidiot]

Do you guys ever just like... impulsive slutty blurry boobs image by wax warmer light or is it just me?

#have been kind of like a low level of obsessed with myself today like with my how I look ever since I did my hair lmao #the hair is key #Mine

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

I used to somewhat frequently get really bad chronic physical anxiety symptoms, like I’d mentally feel not that bad but I’d still feel dizzy and lightheaded and feel like throwing up and a bit numb everywhere and my chest would hurt, and then of course I’d worry that this means I’m dying so then I would start to feel anxious, and that would make it worse. I even went to the emergency room a couple of times when these feelings were accompanied by particularly severe chest pains. They hooked me up to machines and did all kinds of tests and eventually said it’s just that I’ve got so much anxiety happening so chronically that it’s causing physical symptoms to also happen chronically. That or there was some physical cause that they missed with all their EKG tests and breathing tests and blood tests and other things, which would be quite a coincidence, if I had my several different anxiety disorder diagnoses and also a different thing that caused all the same symptoms. I don't know. They did find my blood pressure runs low and tell me to eat more salt, and someone said something about a thyroid being a possibility but never followed it up. Maybe I should follow that up.

But these were weird and extra scary because they weren’t just happening during a panic attack, or while I was freaking out about something and I could make them go away by calming down. They’d come on with seemingly no warning and they wouldn’t go away and I hated it so much. There have been a few years in my life where this has happened regularly, most days, and I’ve generally had to make some major life change to get it to stop.

Outside of those few years, this has been something that happens occasionally, and it freaks me out, but I try to remind myself that I’ve had it before and it’ll pass, and it usually does within a few days. As of now I actually hadn’t had it for quite a while – not in that way where the physical symptoms just come on with no obvious warning or antecedent, that is. And yet it’s been happening all day today. I feel fucking terrible and I’m writing this post because of course I hope it’s just that again, but I can’t really know.

It’s really frustrating, because I’ve just gone three weeks without drinking for the first time in many years. And I’m pleased about that. But I’m always hearing and reading people saying that when they stopped drinking they felt so much better and healthier physically and psychologically, and I’ve had the opposite pretty much from the start, and it doesn’t mean I’m going to abandon my plan to cut back but it does seem unfair. To my justice-obsessed brain, if I have to live without doing that thing I really enjoy, which is drinking whiskey and watching old comedy videos every weekend, I’m supposed to feel better in exchange, not have my anxiety levels ramp up to the point where I’m dizzy and almost throwing up and a bunch of other physical symptoms that I could get from alcohol too, but at least if I got them from drinking then I’d have fun in he process. Last night I woke up in the middle of the night convinced the world was going to spin off its axis and I was dizzy and I couldn’t get back to sleep for two hours. That’s what’s supposed to happen during a drunk/hungover sleep, as a price I pay for having fun drinking. It’s not supposed to happen when I haven’t had a drink in three weeks.

I don't really know why any of this is happening because things are actually going relatively well right now, maybe it's low blood pressure. I'd just like to say, I feel cheated. I know that not drinking is still a good idea and it's what people should do and everything and it's what I'm doing, but I was promised that this would feel better in at least one way and I feel cheated because I'm still waking up in the middle of the night panicking and I'm still dizzy and lightheaded. It would sure be great if these symptoms would slow down before I have to go to work on Monday. This is exactly the sort of thing that I'm afraid of when I worry that I'm not functional enough to keep a fulltime in-person job longterm, that this sort of thing will happen when I'm working. Hasn't really happened since I started working in person last year, but it is now, so that's good. I'm living in a friend's house at, as the British say, mate's rates, but I still do have some rent to pay.

[thathetaliablogg]

I I personally really really like your hairstyle and the way you personify these basttard nations, and I especially love your use of body types.

Like YES ARTHUR IS A STICK, yes France is t h I c c as well as a lil chubby and both Arthur and I love it.

But if you would, regale us with your thoughts for either their body types or anyone elses in this fuckin show

I like my hairstyle too if we're being honest, I cut it myself >:) Hehehe jokes aside though, thank you!!! :) Im rly glad you like my artstyle but im also really glad you like the body types I give to the cast!! I'm even happier u want me to talk abt it because i do have some thoughts HKDJHGFJ

Gonna start with Arthur and I think he IS a goddamn stick insect but he hasn't always been that way!! Actually for a lot of his life I think he was quite heavy and beefy, he kept himself that way on purpose and maintaining strength and the image of it was VERY important to him! He had pronounced muscles at one point and that lasted for a while! I think he started to slim down in the last couple hundred years and it was a slow enough process at first that nobody really noticed! He then lost most of his muscle mass in the last century or so and he actually quite likes his current, slim build. He doesn't exert as much exercise nor does he need the same physical strength, and Francis makes sure that he eats well whenever he's around but Arthur has a quick metabolism and weight won't really stay on him the way it used to. He doesn't mind or care, really!

Francis has a medium amount of body fat and I see him as a gorgeous mid-size monarch, but again, he wasn't always like that. I think Francis was actually quite skinny for a while and put on weight later in his life as he started making and eating better food and especially desserts! For a while and still today, because of shit beauty standards Francis has found himself insecure about his tendency to put on weight and has put himself on restrictive diets to lose it only to put it back on immediately after (since those diets do NOT work!). He's beat himself up about it before since his appearance is so important to his self image and how valuable he sees himself to be. Arthur adores his body though and thinks his curves are stunning :') In the past couple of years Francis has been much kinder to himself and his body so he is healing in that aspect!

Alfred has always been STRONNGGGG and he's always been muscular!! His current body type is a healthy combination of body fat and muscle - he's one of those guys who looks as if he has a lot of body fat and no muscle mass until he flexes and reveals the muscle mass underneath! He's obviously a big eater but he works out a lot too and overall just has a very strong but very healthy balance!

Kiku has always been lean and prefers not to be overly built up or muscular like some of the others - but he does have visible muscular structure underneath his clothes despite his otherwise slim appearance. He's broad at the shoulders too and his upper body is where most of his strength is! He tends to put on and lose weight almost seasonally, since he goes for a lot of walks and exercise in warmer months but stays in snacking and laying around in colder months!

Ludwig is just ripped, he works out, eats a rather low carb diet most of the time, and is kind of obsessed with healthy food and doing lots of exercise. He mostly lifts weights and is all muscle mass with very little fat on his body. he has big boobs

Feliciano is almost the opposite of Ludwig, he doesn't have much muscle mass at all but has a high amount of body fat! He likes to lie around, take naps, eat a loooot of pasta and similar food so his lifestyle does affect his body! He's just as healthy as anyone else though, with his round stature and squishy body :)

Yao is actually kind of muscular but not to the level of say, Lud or Alfred, he enjoys working out but also likes having a slim appearance at the same time so he is pretty buff but he's no bodybuilder...

Ivan lastly is kind of similar to Alfred where he has quite a lot of muscle mass but also a lot of body fat! His high amount of body fat helps keep him warm in winter but the combination of those two things makes him look as if he's built like a brick wall and definitely adds to the overall massive feel that he has to him!!

#ask #rambling #my headcanons

[joe-england]

The Anti-Muse.

That's what I call it.  It comes in various forms, whatever takes me away from my work.  Negative feelings, obsessive-compulsive distractions, or just mundane obligations.

You ever have one of those Summers when everything needs to be fixed?  The stove exploded, we had to sell a car, we're babysitting dogs, the deck needs painting, the gutters had to be repaired, the garage has to be emptied, and the backyard....

We have a pool.  And a spa.  Which makes it sound like we're rich or something, but we're not.  So when a huge branch fell on the pool cover during a winter storm and tore it all up, it was a headache.  But then we have to OPEN the pool when the weather turns, because otherwise the whole thing goes to Hell, and it's a chore.  Then it springs a leak that lowers the water level by several feet, which is a problem.  So then we have to order a water truck after getting someone to repair the lining, which is going to have to be entirely replaced next year, which is a bother.  Then the motor dies, so the algae grows, and we have to get a replacement, which is a nuisance.  Then the computer which controls the motor has to be replaced, which is a twist of the knife.  Then the water level stays low and I gotta fill it intermittently with a hose, which is a hassle.  Then I accidentally leave the hose on for too long at a stretch and our well gets drained so we have to avoid flushing the toilets for half a week, which is nasty.  Also, the spa somehow sprung a leak too and will also need to be repaired, which is a joke.  And we still haven't fixed the pool cover, because the pool company changed management and the people who work there got terrible, terrible illnesses, which is honestly tragic.  So now I'm struggling to talk with the pool cover company directly, but of course the thing is so old that no one can figure out when it was ordered and they won't return my messages and it'll be at LEAST another month before we can close this damn water hole for the winter, which is daunting.  And then the bills start coming, and that's some brutal money on top of NY State taxes.

I don't even LIKE having a pool.  I haven't set foot in it this whole year, but I have to go out and rescue bugs and animals that fall into it constantly.  I can flick the spiders and ants and beetles back onto the grass, but salamanders and frogs need to be relocated, so I gotta trudge through the backwoods all the way to a stream to deposit them in a better place, which is awkward since a big damn tree fell on the forest path and I gotta brave the tick-infested marsh to get around it.  Yeah, we need to take care of that tree, too.  Add it to the list.

Woof.

Hey, don't mind me.  I just feel awful about not giving you more content so I'm waving my arms in the air a little, but I'm hyping myself up to start the new comic before the year ends.  It still seems kind of impossible, but interim projects are helping me feel capable again.  Actually, I already started a comic, but I'm not sure you would approve.  It's fan art, which is something I really never do.  I hope it's alright with you, I'll show it off when it's closer to done.

I've also been writing the last footnotes of the Omnibus (believe it or not), and I've got a particular passion project for the Halloween season, which I hope you'll enjoy.  See, I'm working!  I'm not always posting, but I'm working!  On one thing or another!  You'll see the fruits of my labor soon.  If I can just beat the Anti-Muse.

That said, today is a heavy day for a lot of us for far more significant reasons than anything I listed above.  I can gripe about housework and art and distractions, but this is the anniversary of something that still affects many people very deeply.  If that's you, then I send my best wishes.

As usual, I'll provide a few links if you have the inclination and means to help make things a little better for someone, somewhere.

Thanks for listening.

Everytown for Gun Safety

Top-Rated Charities for Ukraine

The Trevor Project

National Abortion Funds

- Joe

#patreon #rabbit #my art

[uboat53]

I want to rant a bit about Medieval History, but I want to be clear that I'm doing this as a rank amateur and not an expert of any kind.

You see, I write and I play tabeltop RPGs which are set in the medieval world. Actually, I haven't "played" the games for a while, eternal DM syndrome has hit me. What this means is that I'm writing a lot of stuff about the Medieval era which means that I'm reading and watching a lot of stuff about the Medieval era to get myself in the mood, because I find it intersting, and also to try to get the details of what I'm doing right.

And here's my complaint: almost everything you can find about the Medieval era, particularly English language but also French and German, focuses obsessively on a few centuries at the end of the period.

The Medieval Era (also known as the Middle Ages) covers a huuuuuge span of time from the late 500s to the late 1400s, a period of about 1,000 years. That period is then divided up into three, the Early, High, and Late Medieval Periods and the vast majority of sources talking about "life in the Middle Ages" are talking about the Late Medieval Period.

And I get it, I know why this is. The states that emerged in the Late Medieval Period are largely still the states of Europe today so there's been a good deal of political stability which tends to work wonders for record retention. This is also the period during which there was a boom of universities and inventions like Gutenberg's printing press means that there was also a lot more written records to begin with. All of this means that we have a ton more surviving material from this period.

But what if you want to, say, write about something in the High or, God forbit, Early Medieval Period?

This isn't the age of Chivalry, plate armor is almost nonexistent until very late in the High Medieval Period, and the structure of Feudalism and the way it interacts with mobilization for warfare is very different than in later periods. And if you're writing about ordinary life rather than warfare, well, the norms of behavior are very different, class distinctions are a bit more fluid, and everything is significantly less grand and wealthy than it is at the end of the Late Medieval Era.

So yes, I am a bit annoyed that it's so hard to find resources about the Early Medieval Period. This is the age during which Charlemagne forged the Carolingan Empire only to have it collapse into three upon his death, forming the basis for the modern states of Germany, France, and Italy. This is the age in which Vikings roamed the North Sea and as far as Constantinople (modern Istanbul) and Sicily in search of loot and adventure. This is the age when missionaries spreading out from Rome and Constantinople ignited civil wars within nations across central and eastern Europe as peoples were converted to Christianity.

Even as far as English history goes (my primary language) this is the period when divided kingdoms like Mercia, Wessex, and East Anglia contended both with each other and invaders like the Great Heathen Army. There should be more information about this period; who they were, how the lived, what they thought and what they desired.

And look, I get it, there's a scarcity of written sources, that's why it's called the "dark ages". But surely we can get significant information from archaeological sites and other records. In fact, I know we do because I find hints of it everywhere; references to digs and locations that turn out not to have any information about them posted online.

So yes, I've been nursing a low level frustration for the last decade or so about how difficult it is to find good information about the Early Medieval Period and the transition to the High Medieval Period instead of just more and more information about the Late Medieval Period. I'm writing a novel set in that transition period and I'm working on a D&D game set solidly in the early period and it's taken me a lot longer than I feel like it should have to get the information I'm looking for because I have to sort through a veritable mountain of High Medieval writings, documentaries, and books in order to get to it.

All I ask is this: Medieval Historians and those who curate such information online, please differentiate which period you are writing about with more easily searchable terms. I should not have to sort through dozens of articles about Late Medieval sieges if I search for "early medieval sieges", there is no other era in history in which I would have to do something like this and one of the most influential eras on the shape on modern Europe deserves better.

Please and thank you.

#history #medieval history #middle ages #medieval #early medieval #late medieval

[purpledragonbae]

Day 8 of following my joy:

Wow yesterday was rough. It felt like a rollercoaster of emotions with the breakup and all.. today my intention is to reconnect with gratitude.

Side note: is anyone else having this hard of a time with life? For some reason it feels like there’s a dark force working against me at all times and maybe i’m just not that strong or something.

Anyways - enough complaining because holy fuck - even with difficulties I am BLESSED. Maybe that’s the thing. If you don’t count your blessings you lose them.

With life constantly in motion, I find that sometimes it’s hard to stay entirely grateful for something. Sometimes it feels better to move the energy and move on.

So anyways - today I am grateful for my family. I am grateful for playing soccer last night. I’m grateful that I am healthy. I am grateful for my puppy. I’m grateful for sleeping in. I’m grateful that I have a big heart. I’m grateful for salt baths and salt lamps. I am so grateful for kind people and new friends. I’m grateful that I am strong. I’m grateful for my support system.

I’m realizing what I’m needing to do right now is leave behind an old version of myself. I need to cleanse my life from a chapter that I don’t want to continue. The healing journey needs to be done and I’m ready to live a joyful, fulfilling, loving high vibe life.

It’s been a bit of a spin back into the old the last few days. It’s crazy how easy it is to fall back into what is comfortable. We need constant intentional living to transform.

I just had a session with my coach who JUST read the untethered soul too & is as obsessed with it as I am. She really helped me recognize my clinging pushing energy dynamic and how to really get in touch with where it is in my body.

It came from my childhood, where I felt pressure or felt expectations or felt fear and guilt and all this stuff. It literally gets reflected into everything in my life. Relationships, money, career, family, I mean what else is there really. But fuck it’s exhausting. I just want acceptance and peace.

So this awareness will bring that. If with these pulls I can remain centred and as a witness, nothing can take me away. But Damn I sure have been tested lately.

Right now I’m bringing my nervous system back down to a calm level. This is why practices like yoga and breath work are so effective: because they do just this. And then from that stillness, our purpose speaks. We become a clear channel for creation.

I have multiple big creative visions, which has make it increasingly difficult to make anything come to fruition. But the best thing to focus on is the one that feels the most fun.

Right now it feels like my self belief is so low. I don’t know if that’s because of who I’ve been spending my time with or if it’s because I’m just unendingly insecure; but I’m ready to transcend this.

I don’t really know what it truly means to believe in myself, but I’m going to figure it out. I’m going to stay lazer focused on the vision and believe in it as much as I possibly can.

Believing in something that you’ve never seen done before is hard. Believing in love when you’ve never witnessed what you’d like to have yourself, believing in a successful artist career, when you’ve only ever been surrounded by the classic career path, believing in anything that you’ve never seen requires consistent envisioning.

Your brain doesn’t know the difference between real or imagined, so you can train it to feel like it has experienced something that has never existed before by painting the picture in your mind over and over again.

I have felt like mushrooms has been especially effective at helping me move past my limiting beliefs as it feels it opens up my imagination to realities unseen.

Committing to a vision, whether that’s a script or a painting or a book or an album, and to see it come to fruition- that is transcendence.

I am writing a story of transformation and healing. I am writing a story where multiple characters come together to change the world. It’s a massive vision, and I’m afraid to go for it. I’m afraid I won’t be able to pay rent. I’m afraid I won’t do it justice. I’m afraid i’m not worthy of telling it or not good enough to really create such a vision. Im afraid that I’ll talk about things that will hurt people. Im afraid that it won’t be good and I’ll be rejected, judged, abandoned. All these fears are why committing to this is transcendence. It is the act that pushes through all these limiting beliefs and proves them wrong.

#spiritual blog #tranformation #artist blog #beginner artist #artist journey #make art #how to be happy #spiritual lessons #how to find happiness

[thefanficmonster]

My Kind

Corpse Husband x Reader (Female)

Warning: Swearing

Genre: Fluff, RPF (Real Person Fic)

Summary: Having been chosen by the gang to be a guest streamer on today’s stream of Among Us, it’s safe to say Y/N’s super excited but also a bit nervous. The whole of her anxiety gets lifted off her when she meets someone with the exact same vibe as hers - yeah you guessed it.

Requested by @monizzle96 Hi dear! Thank you so much for your wonderful request! I’m so terribly sorry it’s taken me so long to write and post it but here it finally is! I hope you come across it and read it and if so I hope you enjoy it! Love, Vy ❤

This has to be the fiftieth time I’ve checked my setup in the past twenty four hours. But no, I’m definitely not nervous, what are you talking about. Pshhh. Nah, being nervous isn’t in my brand. Plus, what do I have to make me nervous - a group of famous streamers inviting me onto their stream to play Among Us with them because they enjoyed my own streams? Ok yeah, that’s a pretty good reason. Not gonna lie, I almost chucked my phone out of excitement when I received that DM from Toast, telling me they’d picked me to be their guest streamer for today’s date. My stomach was doing somersaults for a good forty-eight hours following that text and then the anxiety slowly started setting in fueled by the expectations they probably have of me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not inexperienced in the streaming field, I’ve been a streamer longer than some of the members of Toast’s streamer gang actually. But I never managed to garner that big of a following which I’m honestly quite ok with. I have a modest - ok, maybe larger than modest - following consisting of incredibly loyal fans which I will never stop being grateful for. They are all so respectable of me, my privacy and my boundaries. They know the main rules: no shit-talking in the chat or in any of my comment sections, no bashing other YouTubers in my comments/chat, and most definitely not asking for a face reveal. Fun fact: I didn’t even set up that last rule, they all just collectively know not to ask for it. 

I’ve been keeping my brand pretty low-key to avoid garnering some unwanted attention - some of which I’ve already experienced on certain social media platforms following the full body pictures I posted on there - face not visible of course. I tend to also have my webcam on, facing towards my hands working away on the keyboard sometimes when I stream. I don’t know why people obsess over faceless content creators’ hands, but I appreciate the enthusiasm - it also drives me to do a manicure every now and then which ain’t so bad, self-care and all that you know.

Now, back to the subject of my ridiculous nervousness.

You see, it has layers.

I’m nervous of ‘preforming’ underwhelmingly and I’m nervous of what my own fans will think of the person I will become during this stream. They know me as a super chill and laid-back person, which I am by the way, but they might think I’m putting on a show if I exhibit any nervous gestures/vocabulary. I highly doubt they would, but the possibility is not letting my mind rest. And now that it’s about ten minutes till the stream starts, I’m getting doing my best to calm my nerves.

They are all just people. You know they are super chill too. Just be yourself, that’s why they invited you, because you are yourself on all your streams. They liked you for your personality, humor, maybe even your gaming skills. So chill the hell out and be yourself, damn it!

Easier thought than put into action that’s for sure.

I start my stream five minutes early just so I can vibe with my viewers for a little while before I have to meet the gang. My fans always have a way of injecting me with confidence, they remind me of where I was when I started and how far I’ve come. How much I achieved when I thought I’d be nothing and no one, someone the algorithm would simply overlook. But then they entered my life and I entered theirs and it all became much better than I ever thought it would get to be. I rarely tell myself ‘good job’ for the milestones I’ve reached or the hard work I’ve put into my content, but that’s probably cause I orient myself based on that quote from the movie Whiplash: ‘There are no two words in the English language more harmful than good job’ - simply put, I’m never satisfied with what I do and I always strive to do better. My fans, however, make sure I don’t go overboard with it - always serving as a reminder that I’ve done plenty for myself and others. And that’s what makes an amazing fandom, one I consider family.

Whoa, when did those five minutes fly by?!

Ah shit, here we go. Deep breaths, Y/N you got this.

“Hello!“ I say as I enter the Discord call, subconsciously biting my lower lip, grateful the camera isn’t capturing it. However, I make a mental note to keep my hands steady cause that’s the one part of me people can actually see and the last thing I want is for them to see how much my fingers are trembling.

“Oh hi, Y/N!“ Toast is the first one to greet me, “Welcome to the stream! Thank you so much for accepting our invitation.“

“Thank you for having me and inviting me, Toast. This is a huge deal for me. You guys are basically YouTube legends, this is unreal to me.“ I reply, cringing immediately afterwards because of my fangirl rambling. Great way to make first impressions, Y/N. Bravo.

To be fair, they already have an impression of you. Quit stressing.

Aright, you’ve got a point, me.

“Oh please, we owe all that to our fans. We’re really nothing special. All streamers are almost completely alike, we all owe where we are to the people who helped us make it there - our fans. We’re no legends.“ Toast says, bringing a small smile to my face as well as a light pink blush to my cheeks, “And from what I’ve seen, you yourself have quite the following. And your fans seem to adore you.“

“And I absolutely adore them.“ I chuckle, “They mean the world to me. They are the reason I’m here today.”

“Then we have to give them a special thank you, don’t you think?“ The teasing, familiar giggle, widens my smile - it’s Rae, “Nice to meet you, Y/N! I’m Rae, and, no cap, I’m quite a fan of your content. No joke, I binged your entire series of Resident Evil 7 as soon as I found your channel when Toast said he’d invite you.“

This rattles me a bit. I can hardly believe it - am I really receiving a compliment from an A-list name in the streaming world? My fans must be hella proud of me right now. A quick glance at my chat confirms that they indeed are. That in and of itself fills me with joy and newfound confidence.

“Oh Gosh, thank you so much Rae! That means the world to me. You’re all so sweet.“ I reply, lifting my ice cold hands to cool down my burning cheeks, my lips spread into a grin, my stomach filled with butterflies.

“Oh please, we have some real savages around here.“ A male voice, seemingly Charlie’s scoffs, “Don’t overlook us please.“

“Wait, we do?“ A deep voice, one I immediately know the owner of speaks up, “Who? How come I don’t know about that?“

I can’t help bust snort, “Nice to meet you, Corpse. Sarcasm central, I see.”

He laughs, “Just returning it to where it’s due. Nice to meet you too, Y/N. Sick Outlast series, by the way.“

Ok, wait, I have two A-list streamers complimenting my content. Ok, I’m bound to crack open a few beers to celebrate later cause OH MY GOD.

“Thanks! I’m a horror junkie so I’d be lying if I said I haven’t binge watched all your story-times. Personal favorites are the deep web ones, they fascinate me.“

“Oh, you’re one of my kind even more than I expected, huh?“ He replies, the tone of his voice changing, raising a bit due to what I can only describe as excitement and enthusiasm. “I’ve had people tell me it’s twisted, but I really like seeing the lengths to which the fucked up human mind can go to. Like, the shit I’ve read is insane! Some stories I didn’t narrate cause I would’ve probably had my video taken down, it was that messed up.“

My eyes widen, sharing the same excitement at the thought of digging deeper into this phenomenon, “Careful, Corpse, you’re walking a dangerous line of tempting me to deep-dive on Reddit in search of those exact stories.”

“No need.“ Corpse says, his tone now taking up a bit of a cocky note, “I still got them all saved, I can send them to you no problem.“

“Please do! I seriously gotta read them now. If I can’t sleep afterwards, I’m blaming you, Corpse. Just FYI.“ I say, giggling slightly, finding myself all but completely comfortable now. I wonder where all that anxiety went? 

“Blame fully taken. Given that I’m not much of a sleeper, I’ll keep you company whenever you think there’s a killer hiding in your closet or fear a red room pop-up will appear on your computer screen.“ He replies, chuckling.

“Um, that’s oddly specific.“ Charlie comments, “Been there yourself, buddy?”

“Perhaps.“ Corpse wheezes, getting a laugh out of me too, “I will neither confirm nor deny.“

“You know what, I’ll just private message you my number so if you see it call you at some ungodly hour, you don’t freak the fuck out. Sounds good?“ I ask, already prepping to type it out and send it to him. 

“Perfect. Wait...“ he pauses for a second, sounding puzzled for a second, “You don’t have mine.“

“Oh, do I not?“ I reply with a sinister tone - thought to answer the question, I of course don’t have his number.

“Oh, do you?“ He sasses me right back. “If so then you don’t need me to send it to you. Cool.“

Ah, shit

“Wait, no! I-I need to confirm it’s the correct one!“

Damn, never did I think I’d be complimented by some of the most important streamers on this platform, but to get a number of theirs too? That’s a whole another level that will take me time to process. But I’ll do that another time, right now, I have to kick these people’s butts in Among Us and later I have some deep web stories to read.

Turns out, all it takes to get comfortable in a new surrounding is someone of your kind. And Corpse is definitely one of my kind.

@maat-the-prescriptive  @simonsbluee  @save-the-sky  @itsminniekat  @hacker-ghost  @bi-andready-tocry  @imtiredaffff  @jazzkaurtheglorious  @hereforbeebo  @fandomgirl17  @chrysanthykios  @maehemscorpyus  @loraleiix  @letsloveimagines  @annshit  @i-cant-choose-a-username-help  @enigmaticmaze  @divine-artemis  @waterlilypat  @idontknowwhatthisisfam  @evi-ka  @classyandfabulous00  @redperson58  @lilysdaydreams @solowheein  @mythicalamphitrite  @axen-gers  @luckygirl144  @nj01  @buddyemily   @the-albino-lioness  @stardream14  @gdhdkfnn  @nomadicgypsyy  @preciousskye  @fluffysuicideunicornsworld  @o-kaelin  @manacharlotte  @awkward-youtube-trash  @lolalee24  @bonky-beerns  @meme-lord-and-savior-sebastian  @strawbrinkofdeath  @teenloves  @tams0527  @browneyespinkhair  @starstruckllamapuppy  @daisychains012  @y0ulooked  @tinytacosuitcaseflap @supernatural-is-my-only-life  @jula-pauline  @melodykitty  @just-that-bi-girl  @crazybutconfidentaf  @lowellshade @alphakees  @bellero  @weallneednamjesus  @starryhanji  @boiled-onionrings  @husherstan  @fockingwhore  @melaningoddessthings  @prettypastelpetals  @haleypearce  @godwhyamiawkward  @y-napotat  @daisychainyoonmin  @little-miss-rebel3  @free-wheelin-bi-sexual  @redmoon261 @darkacademic2  @wiseflamingoqueen  @into-the-end  @namikhai-i  @nastiablr  @thelittleplantlover  @mirktuan  @dont-hyuck @jjk-bunny  @vintagegothlover  @easygoingtheatre  @itsrandombooklover  @miiaivi  @emmybaybee  @befourgolden  @jjk-is-my-shit  @eternalteaaars  @spacebadgerx  @princesslunalight  @acequinn14  @samm48  @misselsbells06 @simp-lykawa  @fo-love  @marishimomura-blog  @therealglenncoco  @cinnamonbun332  @killtherandomness  @sanshinexxxsan  @fee-btheweeb  @press-lay  @cathleenpotgieter16  @jazzydoesstuff  @moonlxghtbay  @forestrain2000  @hyunjinhugs  @blood-of-fandoms  @lovellylies  @ukiyolixx  @simpforhpcharacters  @chrisdylan17  @parkerjisung  @pedernille  @theodonyous  @wineandionysus  @malfoystilinskii05  @morbid-x  @coryisagee  @jessewa26  @scoobydooluver97 @mindintheskies365  @raeanneinwonderland  @indecisive-empanada  @gluttonypalace  @loriane2503  @btsiguess-kpop  @khaoticbunny  @lucidlycactus  @smiithys  @rottenroyalebooks  @kpopgirlbtssvt  @fangirl-tc27  @fr0z3n-1  @notmesimpingfortechno  @shotarosleftpinky  @kunoi-chan  @idk-whats-wrong-with-me  @yikeroonie  @goldenstarofthunderclan  @poetry-and-tea  @ama-do-writing-stuff  @wishbonewolf  @emeraldxhope  @t0xick1tty  @kusuinko  @speakyourselfloveyourself  @sophia902103  @lo-manburg  @classsykittykat  @dmgama  @depressedpuppythatneedscoffee  @btsiguess-kpop  @akaashi-baby  @gun-jong-simp  @geschichtenfee  @yerapotato-wp  @browneyedgirl365  @thysagclub  @sparklycloudnight  @helloatomicshadow  @queentorresstuff @vtte @val-gal  @lucy-bunny17  @aaliyahh0  @katluckybear  @boyleanti  @straybids  @franchesca-791  @cosmicstorm19  @averyisbackinthetrashcan  @aomi-nabi  @xlanawriter  @allensimpsforcorpse

#corpse husband #corpse #corpse fanfic #corpse fanfiction #corpse fluff #corpse fic #corpse fandom #corpse simp #corpse x reader #corpse x you #corpse x y/n #corpse imagines #corpse imagine #corpse husband x y/n #corpse husband fanficiton #corpse husband x reader #corpse husband fanfic #corpse husband fluff #corpse husband fic #corpse husband fanfiction #corpse husband imagine #corpse among us #amigops #fic #fanfic #fanfiction #fandom #fluff #fan #request

[princesssarcastia]

Thoughts on Star Trek AOS? (And do you think Kirk was on Tarsus?)

i have SO MANY THOUGHTS about star trek aos, so buckle up.  brace yourself.

star trek aos is a terrible disaster and i love it SO MUCH.  for me, star trek 2009 is still in that class of unreasonably pleasing movies like the mummy or stardust or jumanji: welcome to the jungle.  what they are isn’t exactly top notch but you love them for being exactly what they are.

star trek aos is a star-studded fucking phenomenal cast of some of the best actors working today, which makes up for the very inconsistent writing and unfortunate low-level current of sexism.

literally where would i be today if chris pine could not make faces Like That. i honestly couldn’t tell you.

overall, I have quite a few bones to pick with JJ Abrams for setting up a star trek universe that is less Wacky Space Utopia adventures with liberal political commentary ranging from unsubtle to im-hitting-you-over-the-head-with-my-opinions-like-they’re-a-brick—

to this kind of overtly militarized action-hero adventure porn where one white man saves the universe from Scary People Who Don’t Look Like Us And Are Crazy.  I also don’t appreciate what they did to Jim Kirk, turning him into this womanizing self-centered bastard who has to be in charge.  I REALLY don’t appreciate the casual misogyny, what with the last of rank stripes for women and the gratuitous sex-ed up scenes and the way that Amanda Grayson gets fridged for man-pain and and and— you get the picture.

Or at least, that’s what they tried to do to jim kirk.  and god fucking bless chris pine for being able to make facial expressions, because i firmly believe if pretty much almost anyone else had played Jim Kirk as written by JJ Abrams, that’s exactly what he would have been.

But because of chris pine’s acting, instead, most of the AOS fandom and I realized/decided that this “womanizing” version of jim kirk actually really really hates himself so much, most likely for trauma reasons. 

we took that shit and ran with it and never really stopped.

zachary quinto is also like god tier casting.  unfortunately the writers for the first two movies mostly gave him Anger as a primary motivator, which like, is not exactly how I would interpret Spock at all, but quinto played this Angry Spock so so well.

ZOE SALDANA PLAYS THE LIGHT OF MY LIFE, NYOTA UHURA, PERFECTLY AND THAT’S ALL I’LL HEAR ON THE MATTER.

john cho should be cast in everything ever he’s amazing and I love seeing him.  this man has the range. hikaru sulu is the backbone of this fucking ship.  this man wins the big damn hero award every single movie. 

i still miss living in the same world as anton yelchin. i really, really do.

I also have found family feelings all over these movies, where these baby versions of iconic characters from the sixties are brought together too early to witness too much fucking trauma.  harry potter references aren’t exactly in vogue right now, but there’s this one piece from a—well, actually, its a harry potter reference in an mcu fic i read years ago, now that i think about it, but anyway:

it was something like, there are some things you can’t go through with a person—like that mountain troll in harry potter—without becoming friends for life.  there are some crucibles that will bind you together forever.  and awful as it is, I think Nero and the Vulcan genocide were the AOS crew’s mountain troll.  there’s no going back or separating, after that.

also I feel like there’s a ton of competence porn in this trilogy that i deeply, deeply enjoy.

star trek: 2009 and into darkness are both grimdark male power fantasy bullshit that only accidentally hits all the right buttons for me.  I love them dearly but i know EXACTLY what they are, thank you.

star trek: beyond is a delightful movie with no real plot where our favorite crew are finally Adults With A Modicum Of Common Sense And Stability, instead of Disaster Children Angsting All Over The Place, and they get to save the universe with the power of excellent rock music and friendship. how cool is that?!?  i wanna give simon pegg a high five for making this movie.

on a more meta note, what I find kind of satisfying about these movies is that—for all his many faults that i’m always happy to expound upon—JJ Abrams actually went for it.  He Did That.  He just made his own brand new timeline, killed jim kirk’s dad, then gave him an abusive uncle/step-dad, then literally destroyed one of the founding planets of the Federation, then he, in an iconic fashion, switched Jim and Spock’s places in the infamous “wrath of khan” death scene, so instead Spock gets to watch Jim die. 

and you know what? I can forgive a lot of bullshit for that kind of poetic angsty fanfic plot detail. 

every time uhura says, “an alternate reality,” in star trek 2009 just gives me chills.  every time she says it, you feel the weight of sixty years of history and legacy sitting on these people’s shoulders, the weight of arguably one of the most popular TV shows of all time.

imagine, living in a new world you’re aware isn’t the one that was supposed to be.  imagine that!

oh! and on the question of tarsus:

what I think is probably true irl: JJ Abrams has never thought that far ahead in his life.  correct me if i’m wrong, but hadn’t he.....not even watched star trek.........when he made these movies............like lol i’d bet you this man didn’t even really know Tarsus was a thing.  And even if he did, I don’t think he thought it was part of the new canon he was creating.  AOS is much more self-contained than the serialized universe the original star trek was, so I don’t think that AOS was intended to encompass all those things, like tarsus, that we as a fandom like to obsess over.

what I personally enjoy: i love me some AOS fic that explores the ridiculous amounts of trauma that comes from living through a genocide.  I think that, given we all decided AOS Jim Kirk hates himself, and engages in a shit ton of self-sabotaging and destructive behavior to cope, it’s a reasonable jump to think that at least some of that comes from some survivor’s guilt bullshit from Tarsus.  And honestly, hit me up if you want recs for this, because boy do I have them.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: no one does angst quite like AOS!Jim Kirk.

what I believe wholeheartedly: this is like Schrödinger's Plot Point, okay, it both exists and doesn’t exist simultaneously.  it’s easy to read tarsus into some of jim’s behavior, and it’s easy to read none of it in, and both of those choices are valid.  go with your gut, go with what makes you happy, go with what you think makes sense.  This is where fandom lives, in these little details that fall through the cracks.

anyway WOW did I talk a lot.  those are at least some of my star trek thoughts.  i do have others, but i’ve expounded on them before on this blog, and y’all don’t need me to repeat myself

ask me my thoughts on ______

#star trek #aos star trek #jj abrams #ask meme #actually i also had the tarsus convo with a mutual recently #and like 99.99% of my fandom opinions it boils down to: You Do You Babe We're Doing This For Fun #long post #(oops) #lupanymeria

[nyomkitten]

🐄 🪰 on The Power of the Dog

[ID: the phrase “No emotionally manipulative camera angles”, said by Ari Wegner, digitally handlettered in off-white on a denim-y textured background that, incidentally, has been eyedropped from the Power of the Dog poster.]

i wrote the following rant right after i watched the movie, a few months ago; but that same night i listened to a couple of interviews with the filmmakers, in one of which the cinematographer said the above phrase. so much TIL i got, both from this phrase—and from the interviews in general—that i felt almost annoyed by the stereotypical, “leading question” camera angles deployed by Disney Film Maleficent 2, which i watched right after this.

i have this very stupid urge to rant in the most nontechnical, non-nuanced way about this film. and this is my very own blog, that nobody reads, so why the everloving fuck not.

(disclaimer: i do not know anything about film. this is very very nontechnical and highly layman-speak. please don't read if that annoys you.)

there's very little dialogue?!!?!? 🥺🥺🥺🥺😭😭😭

now. the fact that i was Not Fully Immersed In The Story might have to do with several factors, all of which are my fault:

i watched it over almost a day — dinner last night to breakfast-lunch today — in the middle of a fixation with Call Me By Your Name and some very frantic repeated watching of Some Clips. (i haven't actually watched this movie. i will when i can handle the ending.)

i spoiled the story for myself by (intentionally) reading the synopsis on Wikipedia. because i was suddenly reminded of this movie (by Netflix or something) and then i realised it's out by now and then i watched the trailer because Cumberbatch and then i read the synopsis because it created an intense longing in me to know the story. (i understand that a normal, well-adjusted, reasonable person would simply have watched the movie but i was not at all in a frame of mind to get into visual media without Knowing What To Expect. i wasn't even planning to watch the movie at first, just to read the synopsis.)

i watched it at home on a laptop screen. blame this on living in a Global South country where local theatres probably didn't screen the movie anyway, and during a global pandemic during which i haven't stepped out of my home for a few decades now.

anyway. phewwwwwww. it's well-made and all, and the framing and visuals are absolutely fuckin gorgeous. (we are graciously neglecting to mention the period lighting so dim you can't see the subjects' faces properly. also the strangely low audio levels?)

Kirsten Dunst is fucking amazing. and i took forever to place Thomasin McKenzie lmao (Jojo Rabbit). but i haven't bonded with the characters!! even though one of them is bendystraw cummerbund!!

i mean, i clearly have if i'm still thinking about the characters hours later. but i can't help wondering if the lack of dialogue is a drawback to pleb minds like me. :( especially since benadryl coriander has such a lovely speaking voice IRL and didn't have enough lines in the movie to do it justice.

and why such non Western American casting lmaooooo. maybe the accents are historically accurate?? i, an uneducated brute, find the lack of Exaggerated Twang a severe drawback.

some general thoughts on This Tone Of Film

now this is partially because i haven't been brought up with queer media, and i'm very poorly versed in mainstream visual media in general. but i've been wondering why this kind of film — which could be misinterpreted as Actually, Not Wholly Supportive of Cishet Sexuality And Deviant Performance — is still being made. (by this i mean—it's highly likely that everyone involved with the production, from the camera crew to the catering staff, is either fully supportive or affirming of queer rights or is queer themselves. but the storyline is such that it doesn't directly confront the question of The Gays. it deals with sexual power and politics, and this main character's obsession with performing heterosexual masculinity despite having homosexual feelings; but the narrative doesn't directly take a side. which is good with respect to the plot of this story, because it tells it really well; but not good with respect to Is It Okay To Dehumanise Or Otherise Queer People. because we still need media that takes a side about this.)

i don't know if i'm making myself clear. it's like (analogies are limited! pls bear!!) a film about rape, which shows the physical assault very luridly and in detail. i would be interested in watching something that deals with rape culture, or with investigating a rape allegation (Broadchurch S03! The Morning Show!), but not in something that shows sexual violence on camera just for the sake of it. for 'art', or whatever.

anyway. what i'm trying to say is that i would feel comfortable watching The Power of the Dog with my parents. but i might not feel that way about Call Me By Your Name. and this isn't just because there's sex in that movie. it's because of the very gorgeous tone it takes with queer people. (although the parents in that movie remind me a lot of my own parents aaaaaaaaaa. except for that one time my mother reacted the way she did when i brought up the fact that i might be gay. :P )

also what a gorgeous title ooooooofe. Mister Savage, I bow down to you.

[ID: crying cat meme captioned "hunting for thinkpiece reviews to read after watching the movie and finding a fluff piece article that highlighted how the "no animals were harmed" disclaimer was missing"]

#nk:txt #nk:vis #nk:reviews #the power of the dog #jane campion #benedict cumberbatch #ari wegner #kodi smit mcphee #kirsten dunst #jesse plemons #movies #cinematography #netflix #LGBTQIA+ #nk

[welllpthisishappening]

All These Things and More

Festive nature is not something Emma Swan is particularly familiar with. Even less so after nearly breaking her ankle in the middle of Central Park, and she can’t believe it isn’t someone’s job to de-ice those stairs. 

As it is, her ankle appears to be swelling with every passing moment, and she can’t get her keys off the floor, and she’s pleasantly surprised she doesn’t flinch when the door across the hall from her apartment opens. Or when the guy who presumably lives behind that door offers his help. With her dropped keys, and, it turns out, just about everything else in Emma’s life. 

‘Tis the season, or whatever. 

----

Rating: Teen Word Count: 8.8K, let’s all act surprised that these keep getting longer AN: Today’s prompt(s) come from @illicitaffairslongingstares and while she did say “or,” my mind was like LET’S USE ALL OF THEM, so here we have: "people are jerks, but not you.""a thunderstorm is rolling through town and you’re scared of lightening/thunder so i’ll protect you.""this is probably a bad time, but marry me?" Thank you for the prompts, babe. I hope you enjoy this massive pile of fluff. 

|| Also on Ao3 if that’s your jam || 

----

“Are you alright?” Emma bites her tongue. So as to also bite back the rather immediate and far too snarky response sitting there. Of course she’s not alright. She doesn’t normally walk like this — trying very hard not to bend her knee because somehow that makes everything hurt more, and she can’t quite believe that anything could hurt more than the twelve blocks she essentially dragged herself down, but there are also scrapes on either one of her palms and the lack of any creaking floor behind her means the voice has not left yet. 

That only kind of frustrates her. 

Hopping on the one good foot she has left, Emma nearly falls over more than once. Which is very impressive, actually. Both because she hasn’t moved very much and because the lack of stability in either one of her knees isn’t entirely biological. 

He’s stupid good looking. 

The voice, who she suddenly realizes belongs to that guy across the hall and she knew that guy across the hall had very nice eyes, from the few times she’d allowed herself to acknowledge such a ridiculous thing, but now she’s also got to deal with the knowledge that his hair kind of artfully falls across his forehead when he bends his neck at that very precise angle and—

“How did you manage to get up the stairs?”

Shoulders slumping, Emma lets out a breath she wishes she hadn’t been holding. She’s already running low on functioning body parts, doing any extra damage to her lungs just seems like a bad choice. Although that could be the sub-headline of her night at this point. 

“Sheer force of will,” she replies, not quite able to keep the sarcasm out of the words and that almost feels like a vaguely twisted victory when one side of the guy’s mouth tugs up. The one she’s inexcusably staring at. 

So as to distract herself from the overall color of his eyes. 

Maybe she’s concussed. 

That’d make her feel better, honestly. 

“Still not really an answer, though.” “I’ve almost forgotten the question,” Emma mutters, and she’ll use her injury as an excuse. For the continued sarcasm, and what feels suspiciously like a fluttering heart because the guy’s mouth is starting to twist into something that looks suspiciously like a smirk. 

Directed at her. He’s wearing gym shorts, it’s absurd. And no socks. 

“Aren’t your feet cold?” Absolutely smirking. Still at her. There’s no one else in the hallway, it’s two in the goddamn morning. “They are, in fact,” he nods. His hair moves. It looks very soft. So she’s probably insane now. “But you’re very loud, so—” “—Shit, did I wake you up?” “Not really. I was admittedly a little concerned you were being attacked over there, though.” “Were you going to defend my honor from unknown enemies without any socks on?” “I was seriously considering it.” Laughing somehow makes several different muscles and at least half a dozen joints ache, but Emma can’t seem to help it and the overall tightness between her shoulder blades lessens ever so slightly. “Very gallant of you.” “That’s my schtick, for sure,” he agrees, far too charming and far too easy and Emma’s keys are still on the floor. That was her problem, really. 

Getting her keys out of her back pocket was something of a challenge when she was trying to balance all her weight on her right foot, and the lack of feeling in her fingers after spending the last four hours chasing a skip through Central Park made it all but impossible to get the kind of grip she needed and, well—

Cursing every single God she could think of when she dropped those keys and then was apparently unable to bend the right way to pick them back up seemed entirely reasonable. 

She hopes her ankle didn’t swell too much. 

She hopes that skip also trips down some ice-covered stairs in Central Park and twists one of his ankles. Either one, Emma’s not going to be specific. And she hopes every single member of the New York City Department of Public Works gets coal in their stocking. Or whoever is in charge of de-icing Central Park stairs. 

God, she hates Central Park. 

Navigating that place continues to be an insurmountable challenge, no matter how long she lives in this city. 

“So, uh,” sockless, very good looking neighbor guy continues, leaning across his doorway and Emma can’t believe she doesn’t know his name. She can’t ask him his name now. Then he’ll know she’s as insane as she absolutely is. “Should we rehash, then?” “About your question?” “And if you’re ok.” “Oh, right, right, right, I’m uh—”

Lying should be easier. Should be second nature, honestly. Lying’s part of the gig, lulling skips into a false sense of security that makes catching them easier and getting paid inevitable, and Emma would very much like to lie. If only to try and convince herself. 

She shakes her head. 

So, that’s a weird chance of pace. 

Sockless, very good looking neighbor guy whose shirt is actually far tighter than Emma realized, gives her a tight-lipped smile, nods his head once, like that’s that and crosses the space between them. Which also feels much smaller, all of the sudden. 

He picks her keys up on the first try. 

Figures, he’s still in possession of two functioning ankles. 

“Which one is it?” “Hmmm?” “Your keys, love,” he says, as if that’s something he can say and it’s entirely possible Emma simply imagined that. Delirium is admittedly starting to sink in just a bit. Everything hurts. 

“Oh, uh—the uh...the one with the dot. The—the green dot on it.” Humming, he somehow makes sense of her garbled instruction and neither of them try to move closer to each other, but it happens all the same and he’s undeniably solid when Emma slumps against his side. 

She still doesn’t know his name, it’s ridiculous. 

She swats her hand against the wall as soon as her door swings open, finally finding the light and illuminating her apartment. Which is not very welcoming. Now or ever, really — but the inherent loneliness of the place feels as if it reaches out and slaps Emma in the face, while the very good looking sockless guy with questionably jacked arms is standing next to her. 

Her cheeks ache. When she forces herself to smile. 

“Thanks,” Emma says, “for the willingness to defend while not properly clothed and—”

One of his eyebrows lifts. “Do you not think I’m properly clothed?” “You’re not wearing any socks.” “You know more curse words than any sailor I have ever met.” “Have you met a lot?” Lifting a shoulder in what Emma can only assume is a shrug and a wordless brush-off, the glint in his eyes dims ever so slightly, but she also should not be noticing any sort of glint and she’s got to sit down. She’ll fall over otherwise. 

“You should go to the doctor,” he says instead, nodding towards an ankle Emma can’t bring herself to look at. Feels like it’s swelling. To grapefruit-level proportions. “Urgent care, or something. Like—as soon as possible.” “Are you a doctor and a knight in sockless armor?” “You might be obsessed with my feet.” “Nah, there’s a name for those kinds of people and that’s not—” Heat rises in Emma’s cheeks when she notices him smirking again, and it’s disappointing to realize this is the first time a guy has been in her apartment in months. She’s so lame, it’s ridiculous. “If I tell you something will you promise not to laugh?” “Scouts honor.” “You were not a boy scout,” Emma challenges, which is patently unfair when she also doesn’t know his name, so—“Can I insult you if I keep referring to you as sockless guy in my head?” Leaving out very good looking is a victory she will cling to for the foreseeable future. 

As is his answering laugh. 

Not quite boisterous, but loud enough that his shoulders shake and his hair moves and she deserves at least two medals and possibly a plaque for not pushing her fingers into the strands.

“I’d rather you didn’t insult me at all,” he says, “but it does seem rude not to introduce myself when I know your name.” “Less knight-like, honestly.” “One of your friends has a habit of kicking on your door and shouting your full name. It’s exceedingly loud and absolutely impossible to ignore.” “You’re an eavesdrop.” “That’s not the right way to use that as an adjective, but your ankle is closing on pumpkin-type dimensions and—” An arm slips around her waist, directing Emma back towards her couch before she can even begin to object and she doesn’t want to object and he smells like soap. Nice soap. The kind of soap that could help lull her to sleep. As if that’s something a cleaning product is capable of. “Anyway,” he adds, “my name is Killian Jones, we should stop discussing my sock situation and I promise not to make fun of whatever you’ve already forgotten you were going to tell me.” “Rude.” “Your friend is ridiculously loud, do you know that?”

Emma nods. “That’s part of Ruby’s charm. And, uh—I don’t know that I can get back down the stairs. Plus, this isn’t really that bad.”

Liar. 

Lying liar who lies. And Killian’s other eyebrow moved that time. 

“I’d hate to see what could have possibly been worse. So, fine—don’t go down the stairs by yourself, then.” “Do you see a lot of other people in this apartment?” Bitterness replaces the sarcasm, which is far too telling an emotion and quite possibly Emma’s base emotion, but Killian doesn’t blink. He smiles, waving a hand through the air and it’s only then that she notices there’s only one hand and she’s got more questions and vaguely distracting thoughts about his eyes and his face and her lungs are doing that thing again. Not functioning properly. 

“And here I thought we’d gotten past the insults.” Emma’s jaw drops. And pops slightly in the process, which is one of the more embarrassing things that’s happened to her that night. “You don't know me,” she argues, louder than she’d like, but she’s so ridiculously tired and that’s a much more sweeping commentary about her life than she’s willing to admit. “I could—I could be a murderer!” “Can’t be all that good at it if your murders end with broken ankles.” “Ah, shit you think it’s broken?” Killian shrugs. “I’m not a doctor, or a murderer. For the record as it were.” “Saying it makes me more suspicious, quite frankly.” “That is frank,” he chuckles, “and it’s not a trick, or anything except the kindness of relative strangers. Which, as everyone knows, gets accentuated at Christmas.” “Not for another two weeks.”

“Christmas lasts for all of December, don’t you know that, Swan?” Last names probably don’t count as endearments. This one sounds that way, though. As if it’s easy for him to say, and that probably has something to do with the return of the glint and her growing obsession with the various shades of blue in his eyes and Emma’s nodding before she’s totally come to grips with what she’s agreeing to. He gets her Tylenol before he leaves. 

It’s not broken. 

So, that’s something. And about nothing else. Negative else. 

Purple bruises and some other color that almost resembles black swirl across the skin covering Emma’s absolutely worthless ankle, a pair of crutches under either one of her arms that are already starting to chafe her sides, and she took a perverse pleasure in the overall circumference of Killian’s eyes when let out a deluge of curse words in the Urgent Care office. 

Part of him almost looked proud, though. 

Which is just—it’s ridiculous. 

Emma blames his ability to smirk as potently as it does. It’s throwing her off entirely. Although that might have something to do with her inherent lack of balance as well, and this might be Bill de Blasio’s fault. None of the sidewalks in this stupid city are clear. 

And that is why, Emma will eventually argue, it makes entirely perfect sense to hobble up the stairs back towards her locked apartment door, drop her keys in Killian’s upturned palm and say—“Do you want to come in? I have tequila.” “It’s eleven in the morning.” “Ok.” The smirk gains power. Festive-based power, because they walked by at least four stores with garland in their windows and Emma’s always prided herself on her ability to ignore such emotional nonsense, but now this guy who is presumably wearing socks since he’s also wearing boots, keeps looking at her like she’s fascinating and not entirely depressing and there’s this little inkling of hope in the pit of her stomach. 

‘Tis the season, or whatever. 

It just kind of happens, really. 

Over the next five days, Killian Jones doesn’t quite move into Emma’s apartment, but he becomes something of a presence at the end of her couch and he’s very good at dialing for delivery, and reminding her to take the medication the doctor at Urgent Care prescribed, and it’s so goddamn nice she cannot begin to cope with it. 

He makes her laugh with startling regularity — helpful since August had adamantly told her she couldn’t come back to work without another doctor’s note because, as he put it, he wasn’t getting sued, Emma, but that also meant it was very difficult to get a paycheck, and it’s far too easy to fall into this routine. 

Even when she starts to wonder—

“Don’t you have a job?” Emma asks on day six, which also happens to be a Friday and it’s kind of insane he doesn’t have something better to do on his Friday night. Than sit in the corner of her couch and scroll through GrubHub listings. 

She’d do something drastic for some Indian food. 

“Of course.” Widening her eyes, Emma waits for the rest of the explanation. It doesn’t come. Patience has never been one of the virtues she possesses, though. So. “And that job is...”

“Are you worried about my ability to pay rent, Swan?” “In theory. And curious, I guess. About—” “—Me?” Killian quips, but he’s far more accurate than Emma wants him to be and the overall force of his ensuing smirk sends her flying into the metaphorical stratosphere. Of friendship, or whatever. She figures they’re friends now. 

If he orders her extra garlic naan. 

“I teach,” he continues, “some gen-history classes at CUNY. Finished the semester about a week and a half ago, which is why you only sort of woke me up before. Grading is exhausting, and occasionally depressing and I was trying very hard not to fall asleep on top of all the essays like a giant cliche, when you announced your presence to the hallway.” Gritting her teeth, Emma fights off the wholly unacceptable wave of disappointment cresting her consciousness. She’d sort of—well, she’s not really sure what she hoped for, honestly. Maybe something sort of sweeping. 

As if he simply had a sixth sense that she was in need of a quasi-rescue, and woke up to do that. Finding out she’d just interrupted his job is almost a little crushing. 

In a friendship type of way, obviously. 

“How does one become a teacher of gen-history at CUNY, then?” “I’m a professor, technically.” “Shit, that sounds very fancy.” He grins. Wide and honest, and almost like he’s preening a bit under Emma’s less-than-genteel praise. She’s going to eat at least three samosas too. “It’s exceedingly fancy,” Killian agrees, “and care of the United States GI Bill, which—” “—Didn’t stop after World War II?” “You learn something new every day, love.”

Flicking her finger against his arm happens far too easily. As if this has been going on for months, or years and that’s probably not a sign. Emma’s still firmly entrenched in Ebenezer Scrooge territory. 

Although, some soft and distinctly traitorous part of her mind is quick to point out, even Ebenezer Scrooge had a girlfriend. 

God, if she gets visits from obnoxious ghosts any time soon, she’s going to be really annoyed. 

“Is that why you knew sailors?” “Past and present tense,” Killian amends, and the grin is still there but it also looks a little forced and Emma’s leaning forward. When exactly she decided to do that, she’s not entirely sure, and it obviously doesn’t matter when Killian’s hand flips. 

Against hers. 

He’s very warm. 

Not a sign either, she’s positive. 

A million more questions jump to the tip of her tongue, and Emma’s spent way too much time thinking about her tongue in these last six days. She doesn’t voice them. The questions, or the thoughts. Not when she can see the muscle in his clearly clenched jaw jumping with an almost alarming rhythm, and she’s always been very good at reading people. 

It’s what’s made her such a good bail bonds...person. At least when she’s not nursing a high ankle sprain, and she hardly notices Killian’s hand shifting against her calf. To move that same ankle back up onto the pillows piled on top of her exceedingly wobbly coffee table. 

Goosebumps explode everywhere. Possibly in her heart too, just for maximum absurdity. 

“What’s the most random and historic Christmas fact you know?”

Narrowing his eyes makes it difficult to see whatever shade of blue they’ve evolved into, but Emma’s a bit more concerned with the inevitable pink on her cheeks and she desperately needs Killian to move his goddamn hand. To several other places. Across her body. Ebenezer Scrooge probably didn’t want to make out with his girlfriend this much. 

Would have scandalized Bob Cratchit. 

That wasn’t the right timeline for the story at all. 

“Jingle Bells was written as a Thanksgiving song initially,” Killian says, “and was also the first song to be broadcast from space.” “Very different aspects of this fact.” “I like to bring a lot to the table.” “The Thanksgiving one?” “Any holiday,” he shrugs, expression not quite as lined and just a hint easier and Emma’s heart sputters. Like it’s flipping and flopping and possibly expanding, which is a totally different pop culture reference and she’s starting to lose track. “I think Trans Siberian Orchestra is overrated.” “Sounds suspiciously like an opinion.” “That’s also absolutely right,” Emma promises, and she doesn’t get into specifics. For what is very obviously an opinion of the emotion-based variety, and Killian doesn’t press and they order enough Indian food for the entire apartment building. 

She doesn’t know anyone else in the building. 

That’s not as depressing as it once was. 

“Screw Steve Jobs.” “That’s the spirit, for sure.” “What about the other one?” “What other one?” Killian asks, not glancing away from the TV screen or the streaming options that limit their Christmas movie-viewing choices. “Are you just shouting names at me?” Emma tuts, wrestling the remote from his hand. “There’s no shouting involved, I’m just expressing my frustration at whoever is in charge of Apple now, and Steve Jobs and his legacy and how it’s preventing me from watching A Charlie Brown Christmas.” “I’m not sure how those things go together, but I can get behind hating on Apple if that’s actually what we’re doing.” “It is. Do people actually pay for Apple Plus, or whatever it’s called?” “If the overall popularity of that soccer show is any indication. And that one with Reese Witherspoon got a bunch of Emmy nominations, I think.” “Why do you know that?” His shoulder bumps hers when he shrugs. They’re sitting very close. “I know everything, I thought that was obvious.” “Can you get A Charlie Brown Christmas to play on my TV without giving any money to Steve Jobs?” “Technically, I think it’d just be his estate getting the money.” “Don’t get technical.”

He nods once, all confidence and charm and there’s got to be something else he could be doing with his time, but Emma doesn’t want him to be doing anything else and he pulls her laptop across the coffee table. She will never admit to counting the minutes it takes, or the exact way his eyes flit her direction more than once during those minutes, but then the laptop dings and Killian announces “done,” and asks if she “has an HDMI cable?” She doesn’t. 

It takes three minutes for him to jog back to his apartment. And back, hooking up several things that genuinely impress Emma, and the first few notes of the Vince Guaraldi Trio tug on whatever heartstrings she’s still in possession of. 

He calls her out for mouthing along with the lines, laughter clinging to his voice and the crinkles she’s only just realized exist around his eyes and Emma shifts out of habit. When the Peanuts start dancing on stage, all too aware of Killian’s eyes. 

And how they linger. On her, specifically. 

She’s less prepared for his wrist to flip the way it does. “May I?”

Thinking seems stupid in a situation like this, so Emma doesn’t think and the calluses on his fingers are enough to inspire a whole slew of other ideas, and they don’t really dance. Neither do the Peanuts, though — so, there’s something to be said for consistency and lower-body strength and they just kind of bob in time together, content to exist in each other’s space and there’s not that much space and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. 

Neither are the tears that sting Emma’s eyes nearly twenty minutes later. She always cries during Linus’ speech. 

Going stir crazy is inevitable and happens at precisely two forty-seven on the Tuesday before Christmas. The walls of Emma’s apartment suddenly feel much closer than they were at two forty-six, and she doesn’t bother grabbing her crutches. Before huffing out a frustrated breath, hopping across the hall and effectively falling against Killian’s front door. She resists the very legitimate urge to knock with her head. 

And it doesn’t matter anyway. 

The door swings open, another pair of gym shorts that make Emma’s brain short-circuit just a bit and Killian’s hair is damp. “Were you in the shower?” “No,” he shakes his head. 

Oh. Oh. So, she’ll probably just die in this hallway then. That will inevitably be preferable to the realization that he works out, and she kind of knew that already because there’s absolutely no way people just have biceps like that, but she also cannot deal with even the idea of him doing something as absurd as burpees in his apartment. Not when the walls were already doing that thing before. “Should you be in the shower?”

Leaning against the door frame feels like cheating. On his part. Crossing his feet at the ankles is even worse. “Are you suggesting I should?” Killian drawls, and Emma’s come to realize he’s got this habit of only lifting the left side of his mouth when he’s trying to tease her. It’s very effective. 

“Maybe before we go out.” “You want to go out? Where, exactly?” “I don’t know,” Emma admits, “anywhere. Somewhere. That is not my kitchen, or like—the mailboxes downstairs.” “I’ve gotten your mail.”

That’s true. He figured out which key it was on his own too, which shouldn’t have any lasting effect on Emma’s pulse at all. “Whatever,” she grumbles, “that’s not the point.” “What is, then?” “I want fresh air and—” “—Where are your crutches?” “In my apartment.” “Did you hop over here?” 

Nodding, she’s not entirely prepared for the force of his laugh or the hand that lands on her hip as easily as if there are magnets there. “You’re going to have the most impressive calf muscles of any bail bonds person in the greater Tri-State area.” “Flatter me some more when we’re outside, please.” “I should probably shower first.” Emma hums, biting her tongue until she can taste blood because suggesting anything involving Killian and water and a distinct lack of clothing is only going to get her another smirk she cannot possibly be expected to deal with. He smirks all the same. So, the world hates her apparently. Waving an arm behind him, Killian ushers Emma into the apartment like it’s not the first time she’s hopping inside. “Make yourself at home,” he says, already halfway down a hallway that must lead to the bathroom because that’s what her hallway does and the layout is almost identical. “There’s coffee too.” “Do you drink coffee while you work out?” His eyes goddamn sparkle. “Sit down, Swan. Then we’ll figure out where else you can hop.”

He’s gone before she can even consider an appropriately sarcastic response, leaving her balanced between his living room and kitchen and there are very soft-looking blankets draped over the back of his couch. Music plays softly from a nearby speaker, not quite festive, because it’s 90s rap and Emma can’t decide which part of this is the most endearing. 

Probably the frames. 

Lining nearly every flat surface of the multiple bookcases he has, smiling faces gaze back at Emma from what looks like a dozen different places, and several faces repeat themselves. A woman with soft brown hair and a smile that makes it clear how nice she inevitably is, her shoulders are often covered by another man’s arm and occasionally that man’s in uniform. 

She has to hop to the next frame, another uniform, although it has more medals, and this man’s eyes are familiar. Not blue, but the glint in them is unmistakable. Especially when he’s standing next to Killian. 

Their smiles make something ache in the very center of Emma, the kind of deja vu she doesn’t want to understand. The man’s only in a few of the pictures. He looks happy in all of them. 

Overjoyed, occasionally. 

The water in the bathroom turns off. 

And Emma only just manages to throw herself into the corner of the couch before Killian’s back in the living room, a towel pressed to even more damp hair. “You ok?” he asks, a very symmetrical question she can’t answer. 

With the wad of emotion currently taking root in the middle of her throat. 

Piecing things together is one of her better skills, after all. 

“Fine, fine,” she stammers, “can we go?” “Have you decided where you’re going to hobble?” “Ah, that’s mean.” “Am I going to have to carry you down the stairs?” “Don’t be a dick.” He smirks. The bastard. And doesn’t really carry her down the stairs, per se — even if there’s more leaning involved than Emma would like, but that also means she gets to take full advantage of just how warm he is, and she’s starting to wonder if Killian retains heat solely for her benefit. It’s a very dangerous thought. 

This can’t last forever. Not with modern medicine the way it is, and she’s been taking the medicine and the swelling has gone way down and—

Emma gasps when she puts more weight on her ankle than she’s entirely prepared for. Spinning on the spot, Killian’s center of gravity must be better than hers and that probably has something to do with sea legs, and waves, and his hands are back on her hips. 

She’d very much like them to stay there. 

First kisses aren’t supposed to happen in the middle of the sidewalk. 

Outside a Duane Reade.  

If she doesn’t kiss him soon, she might scream. 

“C’mon,” Killian says, tilting his head towards the automatic doors and this wasn’t quite what Emma had planned. She had no plan, but it did not involve Duane Reade carpet or the holiday aisle, and Killian’s hands don’t move. They direct her. Towards that aisle, and the gingerbread houses on its shelves and he grabs one that has deluxe in the name. 

“Makes it fancier,” he explains, presumably when he notices the overall height of Emma’s eyebrows. She doesn’t argue. Inflating his ego anymore isn’t part of her unplanned plan, either. 

And there’s not really much of a discussion, but they somehow end up back at his apartment, pieces of gingerbread strewn across his kitchen counter while he changes the music, and—

Emma tosses a sugar plum in the air. So she can catch it with her mouth. “Color me impressed,” Killian says, and it’s her imagination. There’s no allusion. Nothing passably secret or unspoken in those words, and Emma refuses to let herself consider the possibility. Not with Bing Crosby in the background. 

He was kind of a jerk in real life. 

“Although,” he adds, “you’re using up all our decoration.” “They give you so many sugar plums! Who would need this many?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Gingerbread.” “I’m sorry, what?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Gingerbread,” Killian repeats, “who live in this deluxe, undeniably fancy gingerbread house.”

“Why would their last name be Gingerbread when that’s what their house is called? It’s like someone being named—” “—Wood?”

Emma sneers. “I’ll throw sugar plums at your face.” “Then we’ll really run out, and the peppermint swirls aren’t as decorative.” “Because peppermint is the inferior Christmas flavor,” Emma announces. “Tastes like you’re eating toothpaste, also they don’t make houses out of wood anymore. Learn about the industrial revolution, please.” He’s already started positioning gingerbread walls. “Mr. and Mrs. Gingerbread met by happenstance. Had passed each other in the Sugar Forest before, but—” “—These are absolutely horrendous names.” “You’re ruining the flow of the story, love.” Emma mimes zipping her mouth shut. “Anyway, they’d noticed each other before, but hadn’t ever spoken, until fate and festivity intervened, and they realized they had more in common than they expected and got along very well, and eventually they got married and lived happily ever after.” “Just like that?”

Her voice likely does not crack the way she imagines it does. That would be impossible. It’s because of the sugar plum, and all that extra sugar. Caking the inside of Emma’s throat, or something and that’s a kind of disgusting idea, but Killian’s staring at her with enough intensity that her cheeks are starting to heat on their own and it’s a crime she hasn’t gotten her fingers in his hair yet. 

“Just like that,” Killian echoes. 

He’s moving. Emma’s positive he’s moving. Maybe that’s her. Or the entire goddamn Universe. Flying off kilter and possibly right into the sun and it’s so stupid when she opens her mouth. 

“How’d they get engaged?” The left side of his mouth tugs up. “They went ice skating.” “Did that not dissolve their legs?” “It was magic ice.” “Oh, right, right, yeah of course.” Definitely getting closer. “And the future Mrs. Gingerbread had fallen over. Wasn’t used to the skates, which Mr. Gingerbread found oddly enchanting, and while she was sitting there on the ice, cursing every one of Santa’s elves, he bent down and said, ‘This is probably a bad time, but marry me?’”

“What’d she say?” “She swatted at the sugar plums on his chest, but she was also swooning a bit and—” “—Losing frosting from sitting on the ice?” “That’s not how frosting works at all.” “They don’t give you much here,” Emma says, not a perfect change of course, but she wasn’t the sailor in this relationship and she's so stupid it's painful. “Can you make more?” Killian nods. It makes his hair move. And Emma’s pulse trip over itself. “Absolutely.” They make several batches of frosting, because deluxe gingerbread houses are apparently thicker than usual and require more, and at least half of it gets wasted when Emma keeps eating it. And swiping some across the bridge of Killian’s nose. 

Neither one of them mention Mr. or Mrs. Gingerbread again. 

Their house turns out very nice, though.

She blames the medication. 

For telling him about the one high school she went to in Minnesota where they decorated their lockers for spirit week, and how the foster house she’d been living in gave her exactly one roll of dollar store wrapping paper and a box of ancient tinsel, and Killian barely flinches at the words foster home in that particular order. 

He’s a rapt audience, like this is fascinating information, and not decidedly Scrooge-like, and “we didn’t have that at my high school,” he tells her. Which just about seals the deal, as it were. 

Emma nearly kills herself more than once, burrowing through her closet and calling in favors from Ruby who only furrows her brows slightly when she shows up on a Thursday morning with a bag of Christmas decorations that—

“What are we doing, exactly?” “Decorating,” Emma says, and to her credit Ruby doesn’t object. Or kick on Killian’s door. Which is in fact, what they’re decorating. Lining the frame with garland, and lights that require an extension cord and are probably breaking their lease somehow, but he doesn’t wake up and no one tells them to stop, and the whole thing turns out pretty fantastic. If Emma does say so herself. 

They opt not to hang ornaments off the door. For fear that they’ll shatter. But there are window clings taped to the imitation wood now, in addition to the garland, and Emma can’t imagine where Ruby found tinsel, but it’s appropriately festive and she uses her crutch to knock. 

Killian only needs five seconds to answer. 

Blinking at the scene in front of him — and an almost overjoyed-looking Ruby, who still mercifully hasn’t expressed the opinions Emma can practically hear vibrating around her skull, but then Killian’s turning and exhaling softly and the press of his lips to Emma’s cheek is jarring and sudden and absolutely perfect. 

“You’re blushing,” Ruby drawls, soft enough that it can’t be heard over Killian’s praise of what may be lower Manhattan’s most obnoxiously decorated door. 

Emma’s crutch collides with her shin. 

“Thank you, love,” Killian says. Sincerity colors every letter, that particular shade of blue like the sky and the ocean and it’s not exactly a holiday color, but it might be Emma’s favorite color now and her mouth is very dry. 

“That should be the other way around,” she objects, “for everything you’ve done and—” “I wanted to.” Ruby’s still standing there. With that specific wolf-like smile on her face. “Well,” she proclaims, “I’m going to go, eventually we’ll get officially introduced across-the-hall guy who’s very cute and—” The tips of Killian’s ears go red. More festive. “Take care of Emma on Christmas, will you?”

She leaves almost as soon as the question’s out of her mouth, Killian staring expectantly at Emma because she hadn’t admitted to the inevitable singularity of her Christmas in three days, but she just kind of figured he’d have other things to do and she didn’t want to be depressing. 

They’d progressed past depressing by now. 

And even the thought of going back to Storybrooke made her ankle ache. 

Because well...what if he didn’t have actually anything else to do? What if he was home alone too? What if she left and there wasn’t anyone here and—no, Emma’s not doing that. She hasn't asked. She’s willing to risk the answer. 

Or admit it to anything. At least not completely. 

“You’re not going home for Christmas?” Killian asks lightly, but Emma can hear the rest. She shakes her head. “Ruby wants me to, and I’m friends with her friends, but—” Her shoulders don’t move very easily on that shrug. “My ankles still kind of messed up, and they’ve got families and traditions and it always feels like I’m—” “—Overstepping?” “Something like that, yeah.” “You want to order Chinese food on Christmas Eve or Thai?” “Both?” Killian beams. Emma’s cheek is on fire, she’s positive. “Deal.”

“Lift with your legs!” “Would you like to come down here and help?” “Not really, no,” Emma laughs, leaning over the railing at the top of the second-floor landing, and the Christmas tree guy at the end of the block had been understandably concerned that they weren’t going to get the tree back to their apartment in one piece. 

Neither one of them mentioned that they live in different apartments. And aren’t a couple. Or dating. Whatever, Emma’s too worried about Killian straining something to care about other adjectives. 

“Invalid,” he calls back. Her smile’s going to stretch her face muscles. 

“Put those arm muscles to good use!” “Are you ogling me, Swan?” “You show them off.” “Little of column A, little of column B.”

She clicks her tongue, the smile obvious in his voice even when there’s a tree blocking his face and they put the tree in her apartment. After getting a blanket out of Killian’s closet to put underneath it, and the guy had taken pity on them earlier, adding in the star as part of the tree cost because it was Christmas Eve and no one else was buying trees and Emma honestly does not mean to fall asleep with her head on Killian’s shoulder. 

Waking with a start, Emma has to blink. More than once. To make sure she’s not still dreaming, but if she were there’d still be a shoulder under her cheek and preferably an arm around her waist, or maybe less clothing, and none of that is happening, so this has to be real. 

“Are you ok? 

Her voice doesn’t entirely sound like hers — still tinged with sleep and Emma’s only marginally worried there’s bits of tinsel in her hair, because obviously she’d had an extra box of tinsel from the door decorating and they’d thrown that, quite literally, at the tree. The one that almost appears to be shimmering in the bit of moonlight creeping through her curtains, Killian staring out the window at the—

“Is it thundering out?”

He nods without glancing at her. “Happens sometimes. Not often in the winter, but—” Another clap echoes around them, and that must have been what woke Emma up. Not the lack of shoulder, or her recently-acquired ability to read the exact angle of Killian’s shoulders and what that means and he flinches. 

“Hey,” Emma says, almost able to walk towards him without wincing, “what’s going on?”

“I didn’t mean to fall asleep.” “That’s not a big deal, what’s happening with your shoulders?”

Turning slower than any human should be able to, Killian levels Emma with an incredulous stare. She juts her chin out. In something akin to almost romantic defiance. “Staring at my arms, now my shoulders. You’ll give a man a complex.” “Stop being an idiot, then.” “Huh.” Lightning joins the fray, snow swirling just outside that window and Emma’s not sure she’s ever been so grateful to be inside. Warm and maybe not entirely content, at least not yet, but definitely safe and even more happy, all of which seems as good a reason as any for everything that happens next. 

“What happened to your brother?” Killian’s eyes widen, surprise mixing with something that’s almost dangerously close to anger. Only to disappear just as quickly, morphing into what Emma’s sleep-addled brain can only describe as disappointment. “He’s dead.”

“And?” “That’s usually the end of things.”

“Nuh uh,” Emma objects, which isn’t the worst thing she’s done, but Killian flinches again when she rests a hand on his tension-filled shoulder. “It’s depressing.” “Why’d you wake up?” He tells her. Only after forcing her back onto the couch, because “your ankle’s going to start swelling up again, Swan,” but then the story is as depressing as advertised, with storms and ships and the dead brother who has since achieved hero status in Killian’s brain. And the tears clouding his eyes don’t ever actually fall—which is probably for the best, because Emma isn’t convinced she’d be able to do anything except kiss them away, but he doesn’t look away from her either, and at some point her fingers start tracing over the blunt edge of his left arm. 

He doesn’t move. 

Doesn’t tell her to stop, or pull away. Just lets her trace over scars that are equal parts metaphorical and literal, and that’s enough. To help ease the cracks in her, swallowing once and meeting his depressing with equally atrocious, and to Killian’s credit there’s no interruption. 

Not through foster home explanations, or the whole thing with Neal, meeting Mary Margaret and Ruby, and how it’s never felt like that life could be totally Emma’s, even when she wants it so much she’s certain it’ll explode out of her. 

Minutes turn into hours and evolve into the middle of the night, and the snow doesn’t stop and the thunder doesn’t stop and there’s enough light lingering around them that Emma’s able to notice the flickers of blue in Killian’s eyes and the quirk of his lips and—

It was about time, honestly. 

Her fingers curl into his t-shirt, all but yanking him closer because not kissing him is the dumbest thing she could possibly do right now. And she’s not dumb. So, that’s her only option, really. 

And it takes him a second to respond. 

Like he hasn’t also been counting down to this one, exact moment. It’s that moment that almost gives Emma pause, ancient worries rising up in the back of her throat and threatening to spill out her mouth, but then Killian’s mouth is moving and there’s more tongue than she’s entirely prepared for and fingers pushed into her hair, and she genuinely has no idea how she ends up in his lap. 

Not that she’s complaining. 

Makes it easier to find a rhythm, anyway. Rocking against each other with a sudden burst of friction that’s somehow not nearly enough, roaming hands and lips that trail across the side of Emma’s neck and underneath her chin, and it takes all her willpower not to groan too loudly when Killian laughs. 

As soon as he notices the goosebumps on her skin. 

“A complex,” he mutters, but it sounds like a compliment and something close to a promise and Emma’s rolling her hips before she can think of all the reasons she shouldn’t. 

The groan she gets sends her flying. Metaphorically, literally. Some other adverb that doesn’t matter when there’s an arm around her waist and her legs wrap around Killian on instinct. 

They don’t stumble once — although Emma’s feet never touch the ground, so she’s not sure she should be part of the equation, and her laugh bubbles out of her as soon as her back bounces against her bed. 

Strictly speaking, the rest is a bit of a blur. Clothes are thrown with abandon, tossed this way and that, and Emma’s teeth find her lower lip when Killian pulls his shirt off, but then his eyes noticeably widen as soon as her leggings are gone and that’s a rather large boon to her confidence. And his hair is somehow softer than she expected it to be. 

They’re also very good at kissing. 

She considers both things very important. 

And Emma’s got no idea what time it is by the time she’s flopped back to her side of the bed, only that there was no discussion about sides and that leaves her feeling warmer and safer and—

“Don’t leave, ok?” Killian flips his head. To smile at her. Like he could—no, not yet. They’ll get to that eventually, maybe. “I don’t really want to.” “Good, thunder kind of freaks me out anyway.” Sheets twist underneath them when he inches closer, and for half a second Emma wonders if he’s going to kiss her again, eyes already fluttering in anticipation. He does, just not where she expects. Not her lips. Everywhere else. The bridge of her nose, either one of her cheekbones and the edges of her eyes, across her brows and the tiny wrinkles in her forehead, each one feeling as if it stamps something onto her soul and her heart and she’s such a goddamn sap at whatever time it might be.

“I like you,” he whispers. “Yeah?” “Yeah. “Good.”

Snow covers the street when Emma blinks awake on Christmas morning, the scene looking like some idyllic version of a city that only a few weeks earlier left her with an abnormally large ankle. Now she can’t feel much except how much she loves this place, and this slightly drafty apartment and—

The noticeably empty right side of her bed. 

Huh. 

Flopping onto her back, Emma tries very hard not to let her mind wander, but her mind is already in the hallway and there’s talking in the hallway. The loud kind, not totally annoyed, but sounding genuinely confused and that cannot be the first time Killian has grumbled “this is not a big deal” in that exact tone.

Not thinking is really Emma’s greatest talent. 

She doesn’t bother putting on shoes before she opens her front door, hair still a tangled mess and there may very well be hickeys on her neck if the look on the face of the guy standing outside Killian’s apartment is any indication. 

“Oh,” the woman breathes, and there are apparently two people in the hallway. Emma’s admittedly staring pretty intently at Killian. 

Who is not wearing anything on his feet either, and the whole thing is symmetrical and confusing and it takes her way too long to recognize the hallway people. From the frames. Ones that also included uniforms and wide smiles and the guy sticks his hand out like this isn’t the weirdest thing in the history of New York City. 

“Will Scarlet,” he says, “and this is my fiancée, Belle. You must be the ankle girl.” Killian pinches the bridge of his nose. 

“He did tell us your name,” Belle adds, and Emma’s breathing very loudly. Out of her mouth. Which is hanging open. 

She can’t believe she’s not wearing socks. 

“Were you stalking me?” she asks Killian, who immediately flushes and grits his teeth and it would be very easy to fall in love with him. Potential felonies not withstanding. 

“No, no, no, that’s not what’s happening here.” “And what is happening?” “We’re inviting you both to Christmas,” Belle explains, “because Killian said he couldn’t come if you were here and—” “—You’re certainly here, aren’t you?” Will adds. Killian punches his arm. 

Emma’s frozen. Stuck, and still breathing abnormally, eyes like pinballs as they try to figure out who exactly she should be glaring at, but none of the emotions currently churning in between her ribs resemble anger. Confusion, definitely. Possible attraction to the exact way Killian squeezes one of his eyes shut. But nothing even in the realm of frustration. 

Huh, again. 

“Explain what’s going on,” she demands. Both Belle and Killian’s arms move when Will opens his mouth, a soft grunt of pain that should not be as gratifying to hear from a stranger. 

“Can you walk?” Killian asks. 

“Are you kidding me?” “No, we kind of forgot about the medicine last night, so—” Hands flying to her mouth, Belle barely manages to contain her response, and Will doesn’t seem to bother, noise bouncing off the hallway and its ugly carpet and Killian’s hand finds the small of Emma’s back when they move. Away from his door and her door and he hisses in a breath through his teeth. “There’s no stalking involved, I swear.” “What is it, then?” “Pining, maybe?” “Pining?” Emma echoes, and the noise Will makes is way closer to a guffaw now. 

Killian grimaces. “Not—I mean, not in a totally creepy way. I just...I wasn’t kidding about Ruby being very loud when she kicks on your door. So I’d seen you, and heard like...of you and—” Flustered is admittedly a good look on him. They all are, but Emma hasn’t had any coffee yet and there’s a peanut gallery watching this entire conversation, which is more accidental symmetry and Killian visibly exhales when her hand finds his chest. Still questionably solid. “Anyway, uh—you know how you’re aware of people and think they’re good looking?” “You think I’m good looking?” “Did I not make that obvious enough yet? That’s disappointing.” It’s her turn to blush apparently, ducking her gaze to stare at her bare feet so she doesn’t do something ridiculous like jump him. Emma’s ankle isn’t capable of doing that yet. “And then I heard you cursing Poseidon or whatever Gods you were beseeching that night—” “Ok, Poseidon was not involved,” Emma argues. 

Killian’s thumb taps the side of her jaw. She doesn’t snap her teeth. Points. Christmas points, even. “So I opened the door, and found you there. Not being attacked, like I was legitimately worried about, and it all just—” “—Happened?” “Kind of. You kept inviting me inside.” “Well as far as I know you’re not a vampire, so that wasn’t a requirement to come inside, but—” “—I wasn’t just going to barrel into your apartment, Swan.” “No, no, I know,” she promises, waving her hands because she’s suddenly kind of flustered and she never responded last night and she’d like to respond with some emotions, but that’s never really been her thing, so all Emma can do is mumble, “most people I know are jerks, not including Ruby or Mary Margaret, who you don’t know, but—” Killian catches both her wrists in one hand. It’s patently absurd. “That’s not the point.” “What’s the point?” “You’re not.” “A jerk?” “No,” Emma says, trying very hard to smile without crying and it doesn’t really work. Tears land on her cheeks, throat apparently collapsing, and only one of those things seems like the end of the world. Until there are lips on her cheek again, following a pattern that can’t possibly be the one he traced last night. 

Or this morning, she supposes. 

That’s not the point, either. 

“Why?” “Why?” Killian repeats softly. “Because you’re very easy to like.” “That’s not true, at all. I’m—prickly, and angry and I hate Bill de Blasio.” “Everyone does, that doesn’t make you special.”

Exhaling the way she does only ensures she sags against Killian’s chest, and he doesn’t mind all that much. If the way he smirks at her is any indication. “I didn’t want to go to Mary Margaret and David’s for a gazillion reasons, but it wasn’t just my ankle and I—” Her fingers tighten in his shirt. That helps, honestly. Makes her a bit braver and bit surer and kissing him once is more than enough to make Emma’s lungs function normally. “I like you too,” she says, loud enough that she kind of sounds like she’s announcing it and she supposes she almost is. “With or without all the Christmas stuff, but the Christmas stuff was really fun.” “That’s the first time I’ve cared about Christmas in a very long time.”

“Rude,” Will shouts, but Killian’s eyes don’t leave Emma and at some point these imaginary Christmas points became very important to her internal dialogue. He’s got, like, forty billion now.

At least. 

“I would have wallowed,” Emma admits, “sat on the couch and hated on everything festive, but...well, I kept calling you good looking in my head.” “When? Before the cursing?” “Yeah, but especially during the cursing and like...now. Were you going to blow off your friends to spend Christmas Day with me?” “Yes,” he says, easy as anything and that’s absolutely, one-hundred percent a sign. One Emma is very willing to read. For as long as she possibly can. “Because he’s only a jerk to us,” Will yells. “You can come too, Emma. We weren’t going to leave you here by your lonesome!” “Except we wouldn’t call it that,” Belle adds, “because this isn’t a Dickenson’ian novel.” “She’s a librarian,” Killian explains when Emma glances questioningly at him, and his fingers are very close to the hem of her shirt. 

“Oh yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I should probably shower before we go though.” Eyebrows jumping and smirk settling onto the mouth Emma is totally staring at makes it all but impossible to do anything except ignore the slight twinge in her ankle when she pushes up on her toes and kisses the ever-living daylights out of the good looking guy she hopes is her boyfriend now. They’ll get to that, eventually. 

“What are you doing on New Year’s Eve?” she asks, not bothering to move away from him even as Will and Belle jeer from the other end of the hall. 

“Whatever you want, Swan,” Killian says. They probably lose some Christmas-type points when he flips off his friends. 

They don’t go out for New Year’s Eve. 

It’s snowing again, and while Emma's ankle is the right color, it’s easier to claim sitting on the couch is a relationship-tradition when they’re both very eager to use that particular qualifier, and it’s more fun to make out that way. They'll go ice skating eventually.

#cs ff #captain swan #captain swan ff #captain swan fic #cs fic #festive fic a thon 2k20 #the prompt i'm working on today may turn into several chapters because i have absolutely no chill whatsoever #and am starting a new job tomorrow so naturally my brain is like TIME TO BE INSPIRED #anyway these have been very fun i hope you guys enjoy them

[multicolouredbeanbag]

pt 3 sorting characters into hogwarts houses

Part 1    Part 2

Tl;dr: April Stevens is a Hufflepuff who projects Slytherin; at her core she is a loyalist and she values community, even though her definition of a community has become GREATLY limited due to… reasons.

so here’s the thing. April looks like a Slytherin. She talks like a Slytherin. She walks like a Slytherin. But I don’t think she actually IS a Slytherin.

Today I defend the idea that April Stevens is actually a Hufflepuff (primary, ie. her motivations/values) and a Ravenclaw secondary (methods/tactics). I absolutely love this character even tho she is a lil mean, and I think that viewing her through this framework does justice to her complexities/core of who she is.

I mention the primary/secondary sorting hats system in Part 1 so feel free to google that or read my other analyses first.

Spoilers below:

Let’s talk about April’s secondary first, which addresses the HOW of person. How they approach situations, how they problem solve.

HP canon often posits Ravenclaws as the “intelligent” character, and while April IS very smart, that’s not why I consider her a Ravenclaw.

April is a HUGE planner and collector of information. She likes to be prepared because it gives her control over a situation. She’s an excellent strategizer. She’s less comfortable with improvising without having some tools/contingency plans to draw from, so when she’s stressed, she has a tendency to fall back on the tools that she’s brought with her (in contrast to Sterling, who absolutely thrives in improvisation)

My first example is the debate tournament - as team captain, she’s in it to win it. Her strategy of choice is to prepare detailed dossiers on all the other team captains. This works well enough for her, until opponent debater Craig pulls a move she couldn’t anticipate (using his own research against her), and she falls to pieces. Still, she takes some time, gathers herself again, and pressures Sterling to use the dossier on Craig to take him down (contingency plan).

Other examples:

Asked Sterling to debate her when deciding whether to come out or not - girl RUNS on logic

April’s approach to school is very organized/planning based, she’s also kind of a major nerd OBVIOUSLY, so this is a more conventional representation of her Ravenclaw-ness

S1E1, she snatches the condom wrapper but retreats with the information probably for processing purposes. She makes a plan - use threat of exposure to blackmail Sterling into giving her the fellowship position, and doesn’t deviate from it, even when the plan fails. Sterling has to save her from that situation ultimately.

This is a little more vague, but I’m thinking about how April comes off as a rigid, somewhat inflexible character. She’s not very easily persuaded to change her behavior (this, of course, makes so much sense! When you think about being gay in the south like? Her reluctance to come out is completely understandable) which contrasts very severely against Sterling’s expressive fluidity. April is a lot more static, and part of that is because it’s difficult for her to thrive when it’s an area that she hasn’t had the opportunity to prepare/plan/study.

Now for the much more interesting and complicated part, April’s PRIMARY.

Again, the Primary is all about WHY someone does something. Their motivations and values. I argue that April Stevens is a true Hufflepuff because she places utmost importance on community.

The HP canon defining qualities of being Hufflepuff are patience and loyalty. It’s the fair and inclusive house. However, it would be reductive to suggest that all Hufflepuffs are friendly, warm individuals. They are bonded together not by their shared amity, but by their value of people and groups—community.

April’s “community” on the show is unfortunately tied to her family and the Christian community. She fears not belonging (bc homophobia) so she overcompensates by conforming aggressively (see, Straight-Straight alliance S1E1).

The episode that really sold this analysis for me was S1E7, when April and Sterling had a number of conversations about April’s dad.

April: “My dad used to call my family a team. And I worked so hard to be the very best version of myself because Team Stevens wins. Teams Stevens is perfect, except that it’s not.”

With these words, we get some insight into why she’s so intense and high-achieving and obsessive all the time. It’s not so much because she wants to win for herself, it’s more the fact that she’s part of a team. She does her part for the team by excelling everywhere she thinks it counts, and of course her underlying gayness contributes to her NEED to be perfect. In practice, it comes off as personal ambition, which is why April seems, at least on the surface, pretty slytherin-y. In reality, it must be more about compensating for something she feels she lacks. Team Stevens can’t be perfect if they’re ostracized by the community due to their (only?) child being gay, so of course she has to keep it to herself, and she has to be the best on all other counts so no one can ever touch them.

Another example, S1E6, at the tournament April says, “You know what’s going on with my family right now; we have become the black sheep of the entire community. I needed a win!” She projects her personal problems onto external academic goals.

This framework of achievement as a prerequisite of community, flawed as it is, seemed to be working for her, at least up until her dad was arrested for attacking a prostitute. In a conversation with Sterl, back when April was trying to steal the fellowship title:

S: Why are you doing this? Is it because of what’s going on with your family?

A: What John did is his problem.

S: He’s still your dad.

A: I don’t care. He beat up a prostitute! I’m not a fan of sex workers but they deserve to be safe!

She obviously feels confused and hurt that her dad lied to her and was violent to women, which is something she cannot stand. For a while, she drops her father like a hot potato, throwing away his letters from jail and ignoring his calls. Hufflepuffs value people—fair is fair.

But she kind of still supports him at the end anyway, when he comes home (s1E10). She must be feeling so conflicted when this happens. Dad is a part of family (established community) therefore she has to support him. Dad possibly hurt someone, but then he did get cleared of his charges. April is essentially making a choice between Dad and Sterling, established community vs. possible (in fact PROBABLE) community alienation.

Hufflepuff and Slytherins are both loyalists because they both care about people—Hufflepuff because they’re people, Slytherin because they’re THEIR people. For all intents and purposes, by S1E10, Sterling is one of April’s “people.” So how does April choose? She goes with the established community, which is really to say she chooses culture and tradition.

April has spent her entire life locking away a significant part of herself for the sake of her family and more generally, her religious community. In S1E8/S1E9, April is almost convinced to come out—FOR Sterling. She probably would have gone through with it were it not for her dad showing up the next episode. April obviously has (justified) reservations about coming out because it’s honestly pretty dangerous to be out in the south, and these circumstances haven’t changed just because she found a girl that she likes. But she is reluctantly on board because Sterling would have been there to take the leap with her… at this point, April had expanded her definition of community to include Sterling, and for a moment Sterling’s optimism had broken past April’s defenses. Then her dad comes back, and April realizes that she has to make a choice even though this choice hurts them both terribly—Sterling is after all, one person, and what is one person in the face of boundless historical tradition and family values?

Hufflepuff morality tends to be influenced by external inputs, while Slytherin morality tends to come from the internal, the gut. Hufflepuffs can and will ignore their internal feelings when they contradict with the needs of the community. Slytherins are less easily swayed by external influences if they are sure they are right.

April has shrunk down her loyalties to a more manageable level (truly, a very LIMITED circle), but still prioritizes fairness and loyalty and of course, second chances. It’s partly why she’s open to reconnecting with her father. Maintaining these loyalties comes at the cost of her relationship with Sterling, but this is something April is willing to do: self-sacrifice for (greater) community.

Just to take a step back, April and Sterling’s relationship back in 5th grade is just… fascinating. In S1E6, we find out that April’s whole grudge against Sterling comes from when Sterling “gave her away” to another group at recess. An odd event that they both remember differently, and who can say what really happened? All we know is that April’s animosity comes from this perceived slight— the abandonment by someone she once trusted and considered part of her community. It’s very telling that their rivalry stems from this particular moment, the fracturing of a loyalty, as opposed anything else.

April: “the past is the past, we’re all adults here” but alsooo April, >:’(

Another example: at the tournament, when April is trying to convince Sterling to use the dirt on Craig to secure their win.

S: I don’t know if I can stoop that low.

A: He did it to me!

April’s first instinct was a quid pro quo, you attack me, my group will attack you. Which is why she is so offended that Sterling refuses to take the shot, because in April’s mind, it’s only fair. This exchange supports the idea that April considers community first, ambition second.

I like to think that April hides her vulnerable side, her honest hopes and dreams, behind her external perfectionism and ambition. I like to think that she cares a lot, that she’s a prickly, distrustful, kind of Hufflepuff who craves validation because she thinks it’s a substitute for connection. And I would like to see her find that type of community, that she and EVERYBODY deserves: love that doesn’t contain (in her words) “a post condition that we follow their rules for love.”

#teenage bounty hunters #tbh #april stevens #sterling wesley #stepril #devon hales #character analysis #hp houses #ok but if the tbh characters actually did go to hogwarts april would HUNDO P be in slytherin #it's alllll about the choice #gotta live up to the clearly elite pureblood upbringing that she would have #an abrasive intense gal trying her best #I LOVE APRIL STEVENS and devon if ur reading this? love u too #y'all i'm not religious but is it obvious who I project onto? #if u read the tags #thank u

[the-hoziest-archive]

why do your homework when u can write essays on tumblr dot com

it's so FUCKED UP i spent years and years thinking that my parents fucked me up because like, i cannot function like a normal person, because i went to uni for a psych degree, got a 2:1, and an anxiety disorder lmao and just thinking back about all the horrible things and identifying the abuse for what it was? abuse. and u just.. u think ur the only person walking around with trauma but ur not. not even to minimise anyones suffering but i think there's a lot of people whose parents fucked them up? even in minor ways? for me it was realising that the damage is not.. irrepairable. like i say a lot of the time. i am fucked up. damaged beyond repair. but thats not even true because i'm doing SO. MUCH. BETTER. even right now my relationship with my parents has never been better as it is today!!!! what!!! they're still insufferable and i cannot live with them and i will fight with them but like.. ok and. that just happens lmao. it means i care. if i stop fighting it means i dont care anymore.

AND THEN after all this to come to the realisation that like, ok i have anxiety, and i had undiagnosed adhd as a child and since neither me nor my parents nor teachers nor ANYONE in our immediate circle had ever even HEARD of adhd, it just went unnoticed, it was Difficult Child Syndrome and it made things so so bad BUT. I TURNED OUT PRETTY GREAT LMAO. i dont even care if the road that brought me here was hell.. i think through hardships i did learn kindness? like i want to break the cycle. i want to be nice to my sister. i want to forgive and move on WHICH IS SUPER HARD and nothing i could have done willingly. it just happened one day. i let go. i wasn't angry anymore. but! they did a great job raising me! for real! at least i'm not an asshole (not a big one anyway, asshole with a small a) at least i'm not completely self absorbed? at least im not obsessed with shit like looks, fame, money? at least i have like, at least SOME common sense (the rest of it i lost in the war <3)? at least i know how to take care of myself and cook for myself and can do a decent job cleaning my house lmao i mean. at least i understand what respect looks like, when given and received. no offense but my parents raised me to be a capable adult who can handle her own shit idk what they did right but kudos hey. and i'm not even trying to brag here, i am a very flawed person i know that! and i can even say that i LIKE that i can acknowledge that and work on myself, instead of being confronted about my behaviour and replying with, "i am okay with myself" lmao

but! i think i'm pretty okay and i do owe it to my parents. despite all their flaws and mistakes and what they did to me when i was just a kid, at least they have some solid...morals? life philosophy? now that money is not much of an issue, they're honestly just. better. and i think a LOT of the anger and lashing out and all that was just because poverty anxiety does that to a person (and like, the rest of it was, ykno, cycle of abuse, bc abused people abuse people, and generational trauma dating back to the 1800's, probably) like. idk i look at our relatives and social circle and cant imagine having anyone else as my parents.. the bar is fucking low but they are the best. and they have been supportive of me and continue being supportive, it doesnt matter if they have a different idea of me in their head, and they dont know a lot of shit about me that they'd disapprove of lmao. at least they'll never leave me stranded?? at least i can rely on them? like there's things they can't help me with but they'll help in the ways they can.

like i wanted a fair resolution for the deposit return since my ex flatmate was pushing to keep the full amount of her half and i kept telling her that's not fucking fair but like. i think after talking to my mum i realised it doesnt matter. she made some really good points and she's right im not going to stoop to her level. bc in reality i dont care about money. if i put things in plain numbers, im struggling a lot more with my financials, and i dont have her salary or job security or even her parents 6-figure salaries to fall back on. but im not the one who basically threw away a friendship of 11+ yrs for like. £1038 lmao i mean yeah that's a lot of money but at the end of the day its fucking money. looking back, everything basically comes down to the money, the way she acted once we gave our notice. kinda pathetic actually. never expected her to be this greedy, immature person. but i guess i can't expect much more from someone who can't handle doing anything on her own. and when i talked to my mum and she put things in this perspective and i realised that's what it was, and it was never going to work out, because this is me trying to be fair and resolve things peacefully, putting in the effort, and just being met with aggression and pettiness and snakiness. but yeah. at least my parents raised me right

#emma.txt

[wxldchxld]

Life Update/Vent

I’m not taking an official hiatus, I just wanted to kinda talk about where I’m at currently and what all has been going on in my life.

I’m having a really hard time keeping track of my threads currently. And while I know a lot of your responses will be like “use a thread tracker” or draft everything that’s just not... plausible atm. I don’t have the emotional spoons for that kind of task and it’s honestly really overwhelming, and even when I attempt to get people to tell me what threads we’re missing only about three people respond to me, which makes it even harder for me to get my shit together. And that’s not a blame thing, I just get really easily distracted and even looking for old threads can be next to impossible. Again, no one’s fault but my own, but it is where I’m at right now.

And I’m gonna put the rest of this under a cut. Just kind of telling y’all what is going on in my life and why writing is hard right now in case you’re interested or you’re thinking my lack of engagement is about a lack of desire to interact.

So I knew at the start of the summer I was going to go for some pretty intensive psychoanalytical testing. Over the years of working with autistic students, I noticed a lot of similar behavior patterns in myself. Issues with social interaction, sensory processing, emotional regulation, etc. After much reassurance from my therapist I agreed to go in for formal psychological testing. I came to her with my suspicions and got very lucky in scheduling.

Right out of the gate my summer was filled with anxiety about what was going to happen and how things would go at the intake, and then after the intake was done my anxiety ramped up about the testing. The testing was extremely emotionally taxing. It took hours and was very repetitive and just overall didn’t make me feel good about myself. I felt like every time they repeated a question about depression or anxiety that I was falling even deeper into the pit of self loathing. But I told myself that if these tests could help me get extended insurance coverage for therapy and some correct medication then all of it would be worth it. Well then before I even had the chance to recover from the experience of testing, I found myself getting extremely anxious about the results of the test and if I’d messed anything up. Not to mention during this time my family from out of town was here for nearly two weeks, and I had to do a hands on crisis management training (where I had to touch and be touched a LOT).

So honestly, while I haven’t being doing a lot from day to day this summer, emotionally I’ve had so much going on that if I’m not in near tears from anxiety I’ve gone completely numb and can’t get out of bed.

Today I got the results for my testing and I just have a lot of mixed feelings about it. I found out that the woman testing me (who I thought was just passing time on her phone ignoring me) was actually watching me the whole time and taking notes on me and while I think the report was meant to sound clinical there was some language in it that kind of feels untrue and dismissive. At one point it says I blame a lot of my issues on my parents. Which isn’t false, but it is weird language when I have years of documented treatment for chronic PTSD due to childhood abuse from those parents. 

They also took away my diagnosis for OCD and Idk how I’m going to wrap my head around that. I’ve had this diagnosis for years and I feel like it really accurately describes me and my experiences. And the clinician flat out told me that the tests strongly indicated toward obsessive compulsive disorder as well as obsessive compulsive personality disorder, but that she didn’t put that in her diagnosis because “I already had 4 diagnoses and adding any more was too many.” And not only does that kind of throw me for a loop in terms of where I stand but it also concerns me about the accuracy of my diagnoses if real results were discounted just because she didn’t want to go “overboard.” 

This is honestly a lot. I’ve gone from feeling pretty neutral about the information I’ve gotten, to being optimistic about it, and now to feeling kind of shitty about a few things after reading the full report myself and not just having it summarized. 

And I say all this possibly just because I have no one that I can really talk to about it and I need to get my thoughts down because it’ll be nearly a week before I get to a therapist, but I also need you guys to understand I’m just in a trash emotional space. I also found out that the people who preformed my testing don’t provide psychiatric care so I have to go through contacting more people, getting another intake with someone, and going through all of this before I potentially find any medication that could help relieve my stress. And to top it all off school starts back in a week.

So I’m very sorry on multiple levels. I’ve been a flaky communicator and dropped the ball on talking to several of the people I call friends on here. I’ve lost things. I’ve dropped threads. The only replies I can get to are the ones directly sitting on top of my draft pile because they’re the easiest ones to find/respond to. I hope you understand the problem is just with me and my very low tolerance for my every day life experience lmao. I appreciate those of you who are supportive of me, who talk to me and reach out and are patient. I haven’t left tumblr, I have no intention of leaving tumblr, and I love my threads and my partners very much. Life’s just hard folks. And I’m sorry.

#negativity cw #i don't know what else to tag this with so if anyone #needs me to put an extra tw or cw please lmk

[promiseiwillwrite]

Balancing Life

I talked to my biological father today.

Yes.

The same one I just blogged about the other day as Stalking my Mother.

Yes.

Suffice it to say that this is Asami's fault. After the events of the Second Season of legend of Korra, she went to See her Father in Prison, and she tells him that she doesn't know if she will be able to forgive him, but "that doesn't mean she shouldn't try."

That is kind of how I feel about my father.

With an edge of Low Key Retaliation.

My father is Alone, and I am one of the only people he is regularly in contact with. And I am absolutely using him to Help Myself Heal. I am asking him about Anger, and talking with him about spirituality, and I know it causes him Great Pain and I Don't Really Care.

His Pain is Not my Fault or my Problem.

Perhaps you find this Blisteringly Unethical.

But When you balance it against the fact that this man held me up by my right arm and Beat me repeatedly with a 2 inch leather belt with a Brass Buckle when I was 5 years old, perhaps you will find you prefer my methods to his.

I talked to him today.

I asked him about Anger. He had talked with me about it before. I have anger issues, and I've taken my anger to a very suppressed place. I have denied it, and disowned it, and made it wrong and cut it out of me, in an effort not to be like HIM or like my Step Father... I was terrified that I would be like them, and that my anger would Hurt Other People.

When we talked about it before... He told me it would come. It would be there, once I had cleared away other problems, and made progress on my mental health journey. My Therapist had been telling me that it would come, and that I needed to buy a Huge Block of Ice and get a Big Hammer and just Kill it. Even the book I read about boundaries, it was very clear that boundary injured persons tended to feel anger when they began instituting boundaries for the first time, and that they needed to expect it and make space for it.

I knew it was coming.

And when I encountered some Exiled Anger, It was a Shrieking Karen, a version of my Step Father that I was terrified of being. She went on and on in her disrespected indignation.

My father told me that he dealt with his anger by challenging himself. By holding himself to an intellectual standard where his 100% was at least 50% better than other people's 100%.

Now, this immediately smacked of arrogance to me. And also some rather Unhealthy Comparison thinking. I am not really comfortable with the idea of being better than anyone else. I tend to stick more to Being Better than I was Before.

But it DID beg the question...

What is my 100%? And is it wrong or bad, inherently, if I AM objectively more intelligent than another person?

And for that matter, It also honestly felt like I already lived my life by my father's stated standards. I hold myself to absolutely Ruthless perfectionist standards. They keep me in this dissatisfied state all the time, where I am constantly not good enough.

Not Good Enough because I wasn't a Boy. (And I don't know if my mother made that one up, or just voiced a viewpoint my father had unconsciously, but it definitely got into my head somehow.)

Not good enough because Sorry isn't good enough, and Mistakes were not only not permitted, but they made you bad in a way for which there is no forgiveness, because they can Never be made right.

But I cannot see where, back there in the mist, I was Not Allowed to be Angry. I feel like maybe that happened sometime back before I was five, but I don't remember anything that would let me anchor a memory to it.

So I talked with my father. When I was on the phone with him, I spoke in half truths, because I wasn't trying to pick a fight. I told him I denied my anger because I didn't want to be like Spider... Which is True, partly. It's just actually a List of people I don't want to be like, And He is On It.

So I entertained his idea.

I told him that I really wasn't sure what my 100% was, intellectually. I feel like I have a narrative in my head and my heart that some things are wickedly easy for me. (I am pretty good at taking tests) I also have no sane metric for how much effort should be placed into scholastic tasks relative to their GPA weight, and generally give my all in all but a few cases in college. I DID graduate with Highest Honors. But I was miserable. I did college wrong. I had no friends. I didn't do any activities. I spent an entire semester in a fucking Closet on the second floor of the Biology building. When I was asked to speak at graduation I almost laughed out loud at the person who asked me. I told them they Really didn't want that.

I hated my college experience, and honestly, I found out that I just Hate School. My Father may value his intellect more highly than any other part of himself, but I am not sure I can use it as any kind of bar or metric. I don't think placing myself above others, even objectively, is going to be how I answer my subjugation of my anger. I don't like feeling superior to others. When I Catch myself Doing it, for Any reason, I am immediately Ashamed. I have a Very rough relationship with pride and arrogance and conflating the two... Which is why I am currently working with Lucifer.

But he told me today that I was quite a unique flower, and that he had never been called to work with someone with my set of proclivities regarding anger and pride. I get the impression that he usually has more to work with.

I catch myself feeling different or special, and I run away from it like it's a cliff edge in the Dark.

He's not a quitter, of course. He IS pride. But I don't think he's fully felt out how to approach the problem without running me out of my own skin.

I told my father that On the Flip Side of my anger conundrum, was the very distinct possibility that I have been obsessive about my mental health work. I have spent a great deal of time and energy on it, often to the exclusion of all other discretionary activities. I have never been very good at relaxing or having fun.

So my Father said I would Clearly have to solve one problem before I could solve the other.

I would need to find a way to prioritize relaxation and rest as strongly and effectively as I have made time for the mental health work. And I would have to get an actual minimum set up for myself before I would have the Energy and Strength to support the Anger work.

And perhaps that is true.

I told Lucifer that I want to be special, and I feel that that desire is a character flaw.

And he asked me Why.

He told me that it is honestly pretty fucked up to disparage yourself for such a thing, because Literally Every Human Feels the same thing. ESPECIALLY if you take it down to the level of wanting to be special to particular others.

Loki told me the last time we spoke that if I Trusted Him, that I should ASK for what I want in our relationship. I have not made a habit of asking Loki for anything. Ever. Maybe help with a parking place now and then... But I was legitimately afraid to. When I asked Loki for help with my Anger issues, he said that this was why he'd brought Lucifer into my circles. (Yes, before I even asked, he had already answered)

I'd thought it had to do with my Pride and Arrogance issues... but there is a lot hidden with him, and he's always on top of the game (unless it's time to be a bottom...)

But there is some resentment that I am noticing as a very low energy, easily ignored sort of anger that surfaces around the arrogance/pride issue. I think they are linked, and I may come up with two skeins unknotted instead of just one when I finish this particular dance with the Devil.

[thefreakishmuffin]

Hetalia is coming back, and I have some thoughts...

Alrighty everyone, here we go! As if 2020 couldn’t get more insane...

(This is a longer post, so I’ll add fun gifs to separate the walls of text so it isn’t so exhausting to read).

So, if you’ve been on the internet since the early 2010′s, you’ve most likely seen, or at least heard, of an odd show called Hetalia. This anime, with the manga originally created by Hidekaz Himaruya, was later adapted into an anime. For those who are either new to the internet or have been living under a rock for the last decade, Hetalia, first going under the name Hetalia: Axis Powers, is a show about different events in world history and world politics, all being portrayed by people who represent different countries. Each country - or character, you could say - is essentially the embodiment of all their respective country’s stereotypes. 

For example, Germany is extremely strict, loud, militaristic, and often angry or stubborn. Italy is an absolute coward who is obsessed with pasta and beautiful women. And America is an over-the-top, loud, bombastic, arrogant dork who is constantly downing fast food and calling himself a “hero.” The list goes on and on, but you get the idea. 

Hetalia was, and still is, an extremely weird show. And with season seven on the horizon, coming to us in Spring 2021, I feel like I ought to talk about it. And why am I taking the time to talk about it?

Because I am a veteran Hetalian. 

(Me laughing but slowly dying inside)

You read that right. Throughout all of middle school and the first few months of high school (almost four years), I was an absolute obsessive Hetalia fangirl. Outside of the internet, I was the biggest fan I knew, along with the guy who was my best friend at the time. We’d binge watch the show, read and write fanfiction, bring others into the cult fandom, talk about it almost constantly, draw fanart, watch the funny mmd video compilations on YouTube, delve really deep into world history, quote and reenact all of our favorite scenes - we even cosplayed England and Prussia one year for Halloween! This was the show that made me the HUGE history nerd I am today! I even got a book on the complete history of Prussia one year for Christmas.

Yep. We were those kind of fans. (Not gonna lie, as a now twenty-year-old woman, I still kinda cringe looking back at my middle school years. But I was having fun, so who cares?)

So when I heard we were getting another season after a five year hiatus, you’d think I’d be super stoked that a show I was once madly in love with was coming back from the dead, right? 

(The part of me that is thrilled about Hetalia returning)

Well... It’s a little complicated. I won’t lie that I am really excited for this new season, and I’m of course gonna watch the entire series over again in preparation for it. But I have some hopes, worries, and mixed emotions about everything happening, and everything that may or may not go down when the season eventually airs, including the time leading up to it. I even have a particular topic I want to get to, but you’ll see that later in the post.

To address my worries, we first have to go way back to the early days of the fandom. For the most part, the Hetalia fandom was just really weird, fun, nerdy, and quirky. Nothing wrong with that. I feel like the fandom already had an odd reputation, but at least it wasn’t a bad one. That is until we had some... How should I say... Toxic behaviors and incidents start to take place. 

Allow me to explain. How I see it, every fandom has some kind of toxicity level. The toxicity level is from the fans who are, well, toxic. We all know who they are, and you’ve likely met at least a few here and there. And the toxicity levels vary from fandom to fandom. In some it’s very low, and in others it’s very high. I wouldn’t say the Hetalia fandom’s toxicity level was super high, but it wasn’t incredibly low either. We had the usual problems, like some intense shipping wars and people debating on different ideas and headcanons, but the Hetalia fandom had something a bit different going on.

(My two personalities trying to coexist in peace)

You see, a lot of people didn’t like - or even hated - Hetalia, because they saw it as racist and offensive. If you admitted you liked Hetalia outside of the fandom, you ran a definite risk of getting either shunned or degraded for it. And if that wasn’t bad enough, you had a group of fans - a rather small group of fans, mind you - who did some pretty insensitive things that ended up landing the fandom in some serious hot water.

You’d have people in that small group of fans who’d openly do the Nazi salute while cosplaying Germany at conventions, and there was even the incident where you had fans cosplaying as Nazi Germany to the holocaust museum, where they decided to pose doing the Nazi salute. I even saw a cosplay of Germany and Prussia pointing guns at the Star of David, which is a well known symbol of the Jewish faith. Not to mention the fans who seemed to fetishize Nazi Germany and Prussia. Now, I may not know about everything these people did, as I was pretty good at staying on the light side of the fandom, but these were some pretty well known and disgraceful problems that everyone would find out about sooner or later.

Sadly enough, it was that small, tiny percentile of the fandom that did things that were so offensive, so wrong, that it was greatly magnified by others, thus giving the fandom its toxic, even cringey reputation. And I really hope we don’t have to relive that all over again.

(Me singing songs about punching Nazis and eating pasta)

So what I hope is that we are able to leave all of that behind us. Though I’ve already seen some Twitter users try to start drama all over again by reposting the offensive cosplays, and Tumblr users getting their panties in a wad because they apparently have nothing else better to do. But because a vast majority of the Hetalia fans are like me in that we’ve grown older and matured, I’m hoping we can help guide the younger, newer fans in the right direction.

And I won’t deny that I am very worried about the newer fans getting harassed and bullied on social media. I don’t have a lot of advice when it comes to the haters, other than the usual ‘ignore them and don’t respond’, tactic. But just know that if they don’t leave you alone, you can always block them.

And here’s another bit I want to touch upon. While I can completely understand why people see this show as racist and offensive, I honestly don’t think it is. If anything, I think it actually teaches us something. And no, I’m not talking about history right here. I’m talking about the stereotypes, and how they are portrayed. I think this show helps us to understand that all of these different stereotypes we have about different people and countries are all stupid and silly.

Do we actually know a German who is exactly like Hetalia’s Germany? No. Do any of us know an Englishman who is identical to Hetalia’s England in every way? Of course not. This series helps us to understand that the stereotypes so many of us hold onto today are nothing more than just stupid, silly old ideas that have been blown far out of proportion over the years. 

Many people try to claim that this show is overtly racist and tries to divide, but in my opinion, I think it ties us together.

(My last two braincells writing up this post at around midnight)

At the end of the day, I’m incredibly excited and eager to see the new season of Hetalia, and everything that it will have in store for us. And it’s fun too look back on all the nostalgic memories I have of this show. This is all I have to say for now, but I may or may not be coming back to this topic in the future. Might even make another blog for Hetalia while I’m coming back to the fandom. After all, this is known as the fandom you can’t escape from.

Now if you excuse me, I’m gonna go press play on Hetalia: Axis Powers episode one, and let myself spiral into insanity once again!

#aph #hetalia #hetalia is back #hetalia 2021 #aph thoughts #hetalia thoughts #hetalia analysis #aph analysis

[chachkayes]

Whiskey Business

So I had the idea that Grey’s may pull a Jovery moment on us and reveal that Meredith and Hayes already kissed off screen and kind of ran with it in this fic. I really need to learn how to write for other couples that aren’t Merhayes. So, here’s how I’d play out that scene if I were a Grey’s writer. I’ve been talking about this fic idea with @herrera-n-hayes for days now, so I’m glad I was able to find some time to write it!

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

Hayes was distraught – he’d just found Meredith lying unconscious on the ground. He’d gotten her back to consciousness just before heading into the ER, and she seemed to be doing better with the oxygen mask they’d placed on her. She’d been terrified about what had happened, as was Hayes. Meredith felt awful that Hayes had found her in such a dire state, but she was glad that she had someone familiar near her when she woke up. Yet 2 days later, Meredith Grey began to destabilize and crash. Hayes had been on facetime with her when she began to complain that she was having a hard time breathing, and her monitors began to beep like crazy.

Hayes could see the terror in Meredith’s eyes as she struggled to keep herself breathing and awake for him. His heart dropped and he quickly turned around from his place in the hospital, racing to her room. He’d got there just in time, and he placed an O2 mask over her face. “I’m here, Grey. I got you.” He held her hand as she tried to take deep breaths in, and as tears ran down her face. “Hey, hey, you’re okay. You’re not alone. You’re going to get through this.” Hayes was glad he had his surgical PPE on, so that Meredith could focus on him and focus on breathing. He stroked her hair with his free hand. Meredith took her hand and took off her O2 mask for a moment.

“You… could get… sick…. Hayes.” She said through deep breaths. Hayes closed his eyes and she put the oxygen mask back on. Her breathing began to stabilize as she looked at him. “I know. But I’m going to stay with you and I’m going to comfort you anyways, because right now you need it. I care about you too much to let you struggle alone.” Meredith let out a sigh and gave Hayes a grateful look. She took off her oxygen mask again, and luckily her oxygen levels didn’t drop significantly. “You always know how to distract and relieve me.” She said with a weak smile. Hayes chuckled softly, thinking back to the last time he and Meredith had hung out together, drinking whiskey in his office, before the pandemic took over their lives.

A slight knock on the door, “Hey, you said you had whiskey?” Meredith poked her head into Hayes’ office. She’d had a long day, as did he, and she was excited to have some down time, hanging out with her friend. Hayes nodded back at her, holding up the bottle he kept hidden in his office. Meredith entered the room, quickly closing the door behind her, and she smiled excitedly at the bottle and then at Hayes who had begun pouring the drinks into 2 glasses. He shot her a half-smile, it looked like the same slanted smile that Alex always had, and he handed her the drink and she sat down beside him on the couch in the office. “So,” Hayes started, his gaze catching Meredith’s excited eyes – he felt his heart flutter as she smiled and took a sip of her drink. “How crazy was your day today?” He finished. Meredith shook her head and scoffed. “Insane. The pileup resulted in 9 traumas coming into the ER, 7 of which needed a general surgeon, and Jo and I were the only ones available since Bailey was handling the ER. I think I did 4 surgeries today. My feet are killing me now.” Meredith laughed, giving Hayes the same butterflies he felt every time she smiled or laughed around him. He made a mental note to not let him or Meredith drink too much – the spark between the two was electric and he knew it, but he didn’t want to feel as though he’d taken advantage of her, because he seriously wanted to kiss her.

“I can just imagine – most of my surgeries today were elective surgeries, but we had one kid come in from the pileup.” Meredith raised her eyebrows – she hadn’t known that there was a kid in the crash. “Did they make it through?” Meredith inquired. “It was touch and go for awhile, but he did.” Meredith smiled again, which Hayes reciprocated. Meredith downed the rest of the whiskey in her glass, which was quite a significant amount and Hayes looked at her, bewildered.

“What?” Meredith said with a laugh. “I never would have pegged you to be the kind to be able to down a glass of whiskey.” He told her. She laughed again. “A whole bottle of tequila is my drink of choice; whiskey is nothing. Doesn’t mean I’ll ever say no to it.” Hayes’s brows furrowed as he looked at her, impressed. He seriously wouldn’t have assumed Meredith to be a tequila girl – but it made her even more attractive to him. “Interesting.” Hayes smirked.

Time passed quickly, and before he knew it, his once full bottle of whiskey was getting increasingly low. ‘So much for not drinking too much,’ he thought. Meredith still talked as composed as she was when she entered the office, as did Hayes, but the little voice in his head telling him to tell Meredith about his feelings for her and kiss her was getting increasingly loud. Whiskey made Meredith incredibly giggly, which did not help Hayes keep his self-restraint in check. He found himself inching closer and closer to Meredith on the couch, which she never resisted.

Their conversation got increasingly flirtier as they talked, and Hayes knew at that point that there was no stopping it – if Meredith Grey did not get up and leave that office within the next 10 minutes he’d give in to the voice in his head that was, at this point, screaming at him to kiss her. Little did he know, Meredith’s inner monologue was also practically begging her to kiss him. Conversation died down ever so slightly, and in a moment of total silence, Cormac Hayes blurted out the words he’d been keeping to himself for months. “I like you, Grey.” Meredith was taken aback. “I’m sorry, what?” She asked him. He shook his head. There was no going back now. “I like you. I have for months. I’ve been denying it and going crazy because every time you laugh or smile around me, I get these feelings that I thought I’d never experience again after Abigail died. And I might only be telling you this because my prefrontal cortex is incredibly inhibited but that doesn’t make it any less true. I like you. And I realize this may ruin our friendship, but I can’t keep denying to myself that I want you.” Meredith’s inhibitions were completely gone. She quickly turned around and shut the blinds behind them. “What are y-“ Hayes began to say before he was sharply cut off by Meredith pressing herself against him and kissing him passionately. Instinctively, his arms wrapped around her so he could get her as close to him as physically possible. She hooked her leg around his, pulling herself even closer to him, as if it was possible that there could even be any more space between the two of them.

10 minutes later and they finally pulled away from each other. “That was…” Hayes’ voice trailed off. “Wow.” All the tension that had been building since they met reached its boiling point. “Yeah. Wow.” As soon as it hit Meredith about what had happened, she immediately found herself worrying about Hayes. She knew how hard those firsts could be. “Are you okay? How are you feeling?” Hayes laughed at how quickly Meredith could switch from being so flirty and passionate with him to someone who wanted to comfort him. “I’m good, Grey. Promise. I don’t think I could’ve imagined going through that first with anyone else.” Meredith smiled knowing that he was okay. 

It was getting late, so Meredith stood up. “I’m glad you’re okay.” A period of silence, so Hayes stood up as well, facing Meredith. “It’s getting late, I should probably get back to my kids, shouldn’t I?” She said to him, part of her not wanting to leave him at all. “Yeah… yeah, you probably should.” Hayes took Meredith’s hand in his, in a moment of pure confidence. “Just for the record…” Meredith leaned into Hayes and brought her lips to his ear. “I like you too… and I really want to do that more often.” Meredith leaned back and smirked at Hayes. He stared at her as she turned away from him and headed for the door. Before she left the office, she turned back to look at him one last time. “Goodnight Hayes. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Hayes smiled warmly at the woman in front of him. “Night, Grey.” He winked at her. She smiled back at him and turned around, walking out of the office over to the attending’s lounge. Hayes watched her walk away, a smile still on his face. For the rest of the night, both surgeons thought obsessively about what had happened.

#merhayes #merwidow #grayes #meredith x hayes #cormac hayes #hayes x grey #meredith x cormac #cormac x meredith #hayes x meredith #mcwidows