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justmenoworries · 18 days

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Alright, original anon is back. Sorry for the delay, and for the wall of words I'm sending your way, lol. I'm going to split it in two, with the second part being my thoughts on Smith-Bravern as a character.

When it comes to the overall arc, this is the crux of things for me: there is no version of this show where Smith is not Bravern. It's the central conceit of the entire story, and every decision about how it was structured and framed was made with it in mind. If it wasn't literally the original idea that led to everything else, it was at the very least an extremely early decision in the writing process.

They wanted to tell a story about a human guy being transformed into his ideal robot hero through the power of love in order to be piloted by his most important person, who is another man. That's a specific concept, and it's not one that's any more common than human/robot romance. It's its own fantasy with its own appeal, and I'm glad that story was able to be told.

Wishing Smith wasn't Bravern isn't suggesting a way to make the show Bravern better, it's saying "I wanted a different show that isn't Bravern at all." Which is fine! That kind of disappointment is one of the most powerful drivers of innovation in popular art. I would be overjoyed if a few years from now we get a sudden burst of gay super robot media responding to Bravern. I just don't believe what Bravern did was inherently shallower or less interesting than that hypothetical other show, or that they were in any way taking the easy way out.

And, well… A show with a similar opening to Bravern where he was never a human is unfortunately not guaranteed to talk about any of the deeper subjects you mentioned in your post, like working through internalized homophobia. It could just as easily never take the relationship further, playing it off as a joke about the robot not knowing what sex is.

(I admit that part of your post made me raise an eyebrow, both because I think the story we actually got was very much about internalized homophobia– for Smith– and because I don't think Isami's discomfort was ever really framed that way? He was struggling because a bunch of confusing, traumatizing stuff happened to him in quick succession, and he didn't have a choice in any of it. Whatever feelings he had about his attraction to men only became obviously relevant to his relationship with Bravern after Smith died, imo.)

I get what you're saying and I politely disagree.

Personally I always saw Bravern as sort of a deconstruction-reconstruction of the Super Robot genre by using the Real Robot genre's often pessimistic and nihilistic approach to mecha as a contrast to the embodiment of robot hero shows that is Bravern.

It would be easy to paint Bravern as a naive idiot whose ideals about heroism and understanding the people you're fighting get crushed by the harsh realities of war. But the show doesn't do that. Bravern's heroism is flashy and not in the least bit grounded. It doesn't fit and it irritates the military and (at the beginning) Isami that Bravern seems to treat this conflict like a stage show. But that's not what Bravern is doing. He's being overly hammy and larger than life to give the people around them someone to look to for hope. And it works. It's Bravern with his impractical flaming swords who defeats soldats and death drives. It's thanks to Bravern that the heroes are able to communicate with and in the end gain an ally in Superbia.

Bravern is for all intends and purposes a war machine like the death drives, but he isn't motivated by a selfish desire to die. He's motivated by a selfless desire to protect life and especially the life of the one he loves. His love for Isami is literally what makes him stronger. And Isami accepting him is what saves them both. Yes, Bravern still messes up, both in battle and when it comes to his relationship with Isami. But it's made clear that hurting Isami in any way is the last thing Bravern would want.

But why?

That's the driving question for most of the show before The Twist.

Why isn't Bravern like the Deathdrives? Why does he want to protect Earth? Why does he love Isami?

We could've had all sorts of interesting answers to that.

What we got was... eh, he's just a guy who became a robot.

Okay.

Also, I have to add: the way that the show never makes it explicitly clear whether Bravern's feelings for Isami were really Smith romantically loving another man or just Knuth being an overly horny weirdo and influencing Bravern's behavior annoyed me. It's very telling that the deathdrive that would become Bravern/Smith is the only female deathdrive of the bunch with an established Yandere personality. It gives the writers a very easy out that isn't "a guy loves another guy romantically".

#bang bravern spoilers

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clayticklish · 2 years

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Hey I’m sure you’ve answered a lot about polyamory but I wanted to know how does jealousy steam for you and how can you work with it? My partner recently told me they’re thinking of wanting to play with others. I can handle this because it’s sfw but I still feel jealous. How do you deal with Jess being fawned over?

Good question! Jealousy is very common in any kind of relationship (not just open/poly ones) so it’s important to have some thoughts/strategies on how to work through it. For me personally though, I rarely get jealous with Jess these days for several reasons:

We’ve now been together a long time and I know her so well. I know her motivations and desires and how willing she is to talk about everything going on in her life with me. I feel very secure in our relationship and how she feels about me. I don’t have a fear she would leave me for someone better because that’s not a real thing with us. All people have good and bad qualities, but I’ve been an overwhelmingly positive part of her life. So any new person who scratches any kind of itch for her, or fulfills some need that I can’t will just be integrated into her/our life in whatever way works. I know I’m not replaceable and I don’t need to be replaced because we are open to have multiple connections at the same time. Neither of us has any desire to be monogamous, so it would be a dealbreaker if any new connection suggested it or tried to push for it.

Because I feel so secure, it’s super easy for me to take pleasure in her happiness and get genuinely excited and happy for her whenever she has a good experience. On a more selfish note, it also helps me feel better about having my own connections and experiences outside our relationship if I know she is having them as well. I want her to have access to different perspectives, and have many people to encourage her and build her up when she is feeling low. I want her to feel sexy and confident and loved.

She also fulfills so many of my needs and makes so many of my fantasies come true that there’s really nothing to be jealous of. If she has an experience with someone else, it’s either something we’ve already done, something I have less/no interest in, or something that we could try together in the future. We learn new things from our other partners and bring this knowledge back to our own relationship. It really is a win-win-win-win…(repeated indefinitely).

So now that I’ve gushed so much about my own relationship, how does this help you? No promises, but maybe somewhere in my ramblings above you can identify some of the things that might be missing in your relationship that might help you feel more secure. Maybe there are some goals here to work towards. Maybe it can help you identify why you are feeling jealous or what you are afraid of which will help you find more specific ways to address your jealousy depending on where it steams from for you. And once you’ve done some introspection, feel free to send a follow up ask and I’ll do my best to give you advice on your particular situation 😊

Jess also wrote a whole post about jealousy here! Feel free to give that a read as well!

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satteliteswaying · 1 year

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Right well apparently there’s a waiting list to create an AO3 account which I was not aware of oops lol. I’ll post my scribblings here for the time being I think? This feels very cringe but also being cringe is being free so in fact this feels very freeing

______________________________________________________________

Beatrice sat down in her chair facing Mae.Same old plastic chairs,same avoidant stares.

“What did you call me for?” She asks.

“We need to talk” ,answers Mae

“Mae,I run a business,practically by myself,might I add,I’m really not thrilled at the idea of spending the little free time I have constantly trying to comfort you. You’re an adult for fuck’s sake,why can’t you behave like one for once.”

Her words lacerated Mae but no reaction came from her,she never expected this to be easy,she knew it would hurt but she also knew that this was the only way to move forward.

She stood firm,looked up straight at Bea and opened her mouth in retaliation.

“Why do you treat me the way you do?When I came back here I never expected things to turn out the way they did.We used to be such good friends,what happened?”

“What happened was that you came back to this place even more childish than you left it;you destroy everything in your path Mae,and you do it with no regard to those you hurt.”

“I – you can’t just go and say that Bea! You don’t know anything about what’s happening in my life, about what’s happening in my head!”

“Damn you and your fucking head! You had the opportunity of a lifetime, you got to go where no one in this dead end town could, you could’ve made a life for yourself out there, and you decided to give it all up because of some nostalgia? Because you missed your friends? Because living alone was too hard? Some of us don’t get the chance to sit down when we’re tired, some of us don’t get to live in our little teenage fantasies forever Mae. Why is it so hard for you to understand why I’d be jealous?”

“You’re… jealous?”

“Mae, how could I be anything but jealous? I constantly excelled in school, went to shit like math camp, put everything into my education only to end up as a nobody who runs a hardware store in a dying town all because of my mother’s death; all the while I had to come to terms with the fact that I would probably never go to college and never leave this godforsaken place. Just imagine, imagine living through all that and having to watch someone you used to know, parking lot trash, borderline criminal, doing jack with their life, getting to go to college, getting to experience life away from Possum Springs, the parties, the people, the freedom…”

Beatrice took a deep breath.

“...and then one day they just choose to throw it all away. Just. Imagine.”

“Bea– I’m– I never knew about your mother… I’m so sorry, I didn’t even think about how you would’ve felt about my decision to quit…”

“Okay, first off, you knew about my mother, I told you about it. Maybe you just didn’t think it important enough to remember. Second, of course you didn’t think about how the people around would feel about your decision, because that’s what you do Mae, you act without even taking a moment to think before you do. I can’t even begin to think about how your parents must feel.”

The words hit Mae like bricks were being thrown at her, everything that Bea was saying was correct, she did act without thinking, she did act without considering how others would feel. But she had her own side of the story to tell. Among all the morbid reality Bea was throwing her way, Mae genuinely wanted to believe that her actions and lack of judgement were not fueled solely by selfishness, that maybe, just maybe, there was something deeper that had pushed her to act as she did. She felt like she wanted to cry,like tears were ready to pour out of her eyes at any moment;her throat was aching, her fingers were sore from all the fidgeting.

But she didn’t give up, if Mae had decided to invite her friend to the party barn to talk, it was to make a change, to fix whatever had gone awry in their relationship, to be better.

“Bea… I’ve been having these recurring dreams, these dreams of ancient gods and untold tales, these dreams where I bash things into the ground, these dreams where I swing and jump to the rhythm of astral music. And right when I started having these dreams, things in my life just went wrong, everything in this world was slanted and had lost all its meaning. I couldn’t see a person as a person, only as an amalgamation of shapes.

It’s like something inside me just broke…”

Bea was listening silently as Mae tried to explain her side of the story,she was devout to demonising Mae after everything she had done but couldn’t help but feel a sort of empathy for the teary eyed cat standing in front of her. Something deep inside her was telling her that she had maybe jumped to conclusions too soon regarding Mae’s situation…

“...And these dreams came in waves, Bea, sometimes I would have them for weeks at a time and nothing would feel real during those times, sometimes they would disappear; if just for a short while the world felt right again for a bit, like someone had pushed a lopsided picture frame to be straight again.

Do you… do you remember the incident from six years ago? I don’t want to go into details because I’m sure you already know all about it; hell, this whole town does, but that happened during one of my dreaming phases. It was worse than usual, way, way worse. Things started out relatively normal when the softball game began, I was half there mentally but when the whistle rang everything went black and when my eyes reopened I was beating Andy senseless. You could ask me a thousand times and I wouldn’t be able to tell you how it came down to that, how my balled up fists were mercilessly landing on an innocent boy’s face.

I was sent to see Dr.Hank after the incident, he said something really vague about me anchoring myself in reality through anger. Frankly I don’t remember half the bullshit that bootleg of a doctor told me.”

Beatrice’s brow dropped,she could feel the anger leaving her body,she knew how this was going to end.

“Well, Mae, to me it just sounds like you’ve got problems, and that maybe… you needed better treatment than what Dr.Hank gave you. But um… What does this have to do with what we were discussing earlier?”

“Bea, the dreams never stopped… not after that incident, not after any fit of anger, not after the countless visits to Dr.Hank…

I just grit my teeth and kept on living that way,trying to endure the dissociative phases with the least damage possible and making the most of my “normal” phases. I was a thrashing machine, I – I wouldn’t be surprised if my parents were secretly glad to see me leave because of all the weight I was putting on their shoulders.

When I left for college I… I really tried to make a life for myself, to not let myself get beaten by my own condition, but ultimately nothing helped, I was having my worst episodes yet and people looked less and less like actual people and more like shapes..

Shapes… that’s the only constant in this story, everything and everyone becoming a scribble of shapes.

One thing led to another and I started isolating myself from people,refusing to face the admixtures that everyone had become. ‘Goes without saying that I stopped showing up to classes too, I lived a pathetic, miserable life. Sometimes I didn’t eat for days, sometimes I ate days worth of food in one sitting. Bea, what other choice did I have? I could only come back home. It's the only place where I could get unconditional love,care and support for my condition, where I could find my old friends, where I could try to get better before actually starting my education. At least that’s what I told myself, but we can both see how that turned out. My own mom isn’t talking to me right now and one of the few people I wanted to count on just keeps beating me down with words and making me feel guilty for the choices I had to make for my health.”

Beatrice sat shocked following the wall of information she had just listened to. Mae was counting on her? Why would Mae count on someone like her? How dare Mae count on her? Thoughts were racing in her mind, she struggled to form a coherent sentence in her own head.

“Mae, I’m… I’m so sorry. I knew you had issues but I never thought it would get that bad, I never thought it would get to a point where it would jeopardise your education and change the course of your life… I’m not sure what I should say, jumped to conclusions, and for that I can’t do anything but apologise. I was so keen on hurting you, my own shortcomings didn’t become apparent to me…”

“I think we were far too caught up in our little worlds to understand what was going on in each other’s lives, Bea, and for that I could never be angry at you, not only because you are dear to my heart but also because I was doing exactly the same. We both walked like titans and destroyed everything in our paths… it’s okay Bea, I could never hold a grudge against you. I only need to ask… do you forgive me?

Without another word being said Beatrice leapt forward and took Mae into her arms, hugging her as if to never let go, hoping this moment would last forever.

“Mae, of course I forgive you… I’ll say it as many times as you need to hear it, I. forgive. you.

Mae could hear her friend shedding heavy tears,she hugged Bea back and held her just as tight, basking in this intimate embrace.

“I missed you BeaBea”

“I missed you too Maeday”

#nitw #night in the woods #fanfiction #fanfic #spoilers #spoiler

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aeimygdala · 2 years

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I have no idea if you'll ever see this, but it'll be your own fault if you do.

abuse tws for anyone else. childhood etc.

sorry, it's been an awful few days. Maybe I'm just writing this to get words out.

I don't have enough followers to care about posting this at dead of night o'clock. Gonna drown it anyways in posts idk.

You hurt me so fucking bad. Learning from everything how you tried to emotionally manipulate me a deliberately change your story, exaggerate things I KNOW you were exaggerating, warping your story to try and appeal the most to my entire, from birth to now, neglectful, traumatizing childhood, because you wanted to emotionally manipulate me into identifying and relating to you... it's sick. You're fucking disgusting.

I hope you see this and know how badly I panicked. I was physically ill learning about how badly you wanted to be my saving grace or to fix me. I have been a wreck trying to process something so difficult for me to accept as is being seen as something so Easy for you to try to imitate or relate to. If it was the same as you, then it couldn't be as as bad and as damaging to my core as, you know, long lasting childhood trauma is,

And it's only due to efforts by others to help me that you didn't manage to reverse months of progress. And then it hit me how little you actually cared about me. About anyone.

You either know what you did or you're in denial, and I don't know what's worse. I think what you believe about others is repulsive. You wanted to be coddled by everyone and wanted nothing but kindness, without ever actusllly caring about anyone but yourself.

You hurt every single person you ran from. Who believed you. Who didn't realize what you'd been doing to me, did to him, felt about them. Who you used to justify your behavior to yourself. Seething about them, about the support you didn't earn, about the support you wanted to "be" for me.

You're a manipulative person. You've been nothing short but vile and predatory and two-faced when people didn't give you a fantasy. You didn't want to have a real, genuine relationship with anyone and put in the effort to actually understand people. You're selfish, and cowardly, and I wanted to believe the best in someone I'd known for so long, but the truth is that you never cared about any of us. You cared about the weaklings you saw and thought you could "fix." You cared when people formed bonds and supported each other without you. You hate when your obsessions aren't what you dreamed and aren't focused on you. You reject and turn on people who aren't coddling you, who aren't emotionally vulnerable or weak or too kind to speak up about it. I know what you did to others, how this is a pattern. You aren't fucking special when you make small mistakes; all friendships involve slip-ups, but you wanted all the good and refused to actually engage and discuss a problem if it ever made you feel bad. You're pathetic.

You've disgusted and hurt everyone you knew. And you're going to move on and think you're right in running, that you're the tragic victim of a campaign or something, when you were cared about. Nobody knew. I didn't want anyone to know until it became clear it was largely me you were avoiding (and don't get me started on how you stewed about them.) You left too many places. What am I supposed to do? Sit there and say nothing?

You've never been kind. You've been nice and about as shallow and weak as a paper cup.

I hope you look at the image on your skin that I made and gave to you as a friend, something that should be treasured, and feel nothing but shame for how you acted. You made your own choices, and you decided it was nicer to run.

I hope you're proud of yourself. You ruined every friendship you'd made over the past two years because I wanted you to hold yourself accountable and be a better person. But you can't let yourself be anything but a victim.

#and fuck you #you dont have a personality disorder youre just pathetic #and its insulting to people with pds for you to even fucking do what you did #i saw the ask you sent #what the fuck is wrong with you #never contact any of us again

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chapters-of-mylife · 2 years

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You've Reached Sam by Dustin Thao {Book Review}

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GENRES: Romance, Contemporary, Young Adult, Adult, Fantasy, Fiction

rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5 out of 5 Stars

------------------------------------------- Seventeen-year-old Julie has her future all planned out—move out of her small town with her boyfriend Sam, attend college in the city, spend a summer in Japan. But then Sam dies. And everything changes.

Heartbroken, Julie skips his funeral, throws out his things, and tries everything to forget him and the tragic way he died. But a message Sam left behind in her yearbook forces back memories. Desperate to hear his voice one more time, Julie calls Sam’s cellphone just to listen to his voicemail.

And Sam picks up the phone.

In a miraculous turn of events, Julie’s been given a second chance at goodbye. The connection is temporary. But hearing Sam’s voice makes her fall for him all over again, and with each call it becomes harder to let him go. However, keeping her otherworldly calls with Sam a secret isn’t easy, especially when Julie witnesses the suffering Sam’s family is going through. Unable to stand by the sidelines and watch their shared loved ones in pain, Julie is torn between spilling the truth about her calls with Sam and risking their connection and losing him forever. (From Goodreads)

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This book was good! It wasn't as emotional as I thought it would've been, but it had moments I couldn't help but cry while reading them! You can read this book if you want a good cry, I actually picked it up because I was starting to feel numb while reading the last few books and I wanted something to move my feelings, and this book moved them on more than one scene! Actually, this book felt like a closure to me, yeah I know this feels strange but let me explain, in the middle of this book, the more I read about Sam the more he reminded me of Sam Cortland from the THRONE OF GLASS series by Sarah J Maas! (a little question here, why does it always need to be the wonderful, sweet guys that need to die) anyway I really was sad when he died and when Celena and he never got to say goodbye, so while reading this book I felt like reading the goodbye I wanted those two to have too. I know it's a strange thing, but I think that is probably why as much as I was sad while reading this book after I finished reading it I felt as if a weight was lifted from my chest!

This book was beautifully written!! and I'm excited to read more of the author's books when he releases them in the future! Sam was a wonderful character, and I really loved him!!

- “I missed you. I missed you infinity.”

Julie on the other hand, I didn't like her that much, yes her grieving way was a little bit selfish but at the same time I can't blame her, the grieving way is different for everyone, what I didn't like about her is how she acted on some of her memories! TBH she gave me the feeling that she was a snob. Even though I wasn't a big fan of her, she made me cry for her more than once, and I was happy with the ending!

- " Letting go isn’t about forgetting. It’s balancing moving forward with life, and looking back from time to time, remembering the people in it.”

This one really hit me

- “Life will pass right by you,” she says, her eyes focused on the road. “And you end up missing the little things, the moments you don’t think matter—but they do. Moments that make you forget about everything else.”

#you've reached sam #dustin thao #romance #contemporary #fiction #fantasy #young adult #sad books #book #books #book quotes #book review

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hanarchy · 2 years

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Phantom makes me remember the little girl I used to be and how weird she was, how little she understood how to interact with other people, how much imagination she had, how much she needed to express it and how creative she was at finding ways to do that and how little she cared what others thought of that. She was bold and funny and she made friends and was unafraid.

And then I moved and I got bullied at my new school, and I had to deal with a depressed mother and I became a teenager and I so vigorously and thoroughly tried to erase and bury her. Over and over again when I felt I acted weird I punished myself. I stopped sharing my inner life with people, I tried so hard to not be imaginative. I didn't allow myself any creative outlet because sharing creative endeavours is embarrassing and revealing and I couldn't risk either of those emotions.

Then in my late teens and my 20s so much of being an adult felt like killing her entirely, like there just wasn't space for her between having responsibility for myself and for others and having to perform in academic or professional environments. Always believing that she wasn't useful and that every part of me had to have a use for the world. Fandom was the way she always escaped though. It was her safe place because it allowed for dreams and fantasy worlds in a sheltered place. A place that had clear enough rules to not feel too daunting and allowed for creativity that wasn't too revealing.

And now at 30 I'm finally starting to grieve her. I'm finally starting to realise what I lost and what that did to me. I've been wondering for so long why I don't have ambition and discipline and motivation. It's still a complex topic and has many causes but the part where Rina says 'I don't wanna do this without you' really boils a big part of it down. I've been trying so hard to stay alive, to just exist and not be in constant pain. And I have been doing it without her, have been living my life without my inner child and letting her be free (or freer). Everything I do and every decision I make was in service of like, common sense, of what feels least painful.

And I wanna make decisions based on what feels ecstatic and what feels dangerous and what feels like fun. I want to actually /feel/ things again and find my creativity and my imagination again. I don't want to live my life without her anymore, I need to find a way to find her again and to let her out and I think tbh that's probably gonna be what the next like at least 10 years of my life are gonna need to be about...

I made myself so palatable and so easy to get along with but I lost like, all the emotion... And the dumb fights and the dumb mistakes and the dumb pain were in hindsight... all worth it for the dumb joy of it. And the thing is... that's growing up. People will call you immature and selfish and like a million other things if you cling to that stuff but... I think it's what makes life worth it. I'm tired of being a grown up and of only asking for reasonable things. I'm already no good at it! I can barely keep my house in a liveable state. The only reason I have a good job is because of good will from my employers. It's ironic how much I tried to be palatable given how fuckin hard it STILL is for me to make friends irl. I'm sick half the time and stressed the rest of it... I'm just done being half a person all the time and so AFRAID every time I'm not.

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golbrocklovely · 2 years

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since i got asked about posting some more tweets, here is the rest of colby's tweets from 2018.

i don’t have proof that these are his tweets, but believe me, they are his.

if it’s bold and italicized, it’s someone’s tweet to him.

if it’s in (), that’s just me commenting lol

~~~~~~~~~~~

Oct. 3 - livin in a fantasy world

Go off!!! modeling?? Is it in his future? Who will know

Oct. 4 - that would be a dream

moments w you last forever

Oct. 6 - “wonder who you’ll love when i die”

@/ColbyBrock what do you want in a girl?

Oct. 9 - best friend

Oct. 10 - even though i’m forgetful af ill always remember moments that were so special to me

the stars don't make me think about you like they used to

Oct. 11 - it’s rare to find people who can handle your soul just right. hold on to those people

Oct. 14 - you know someone’s emo if you can hear their clothes before you see them

Oct. 18 - i’ll never take someone to the movies for our first date.. idk why people do that, i wanna make a moment together that we’d remember forever

someone wrote something but it’s been deleted

right? that’s like middle school dates lmao

Oct. 19 - you ever meet someone who leaves you stunned cause they’re so beautiful? like someone who literally glows and radiates beauty? without even trying? yeah. i met a girl like that today.

(ngl I think about this tweet so often… COLBY BE MUSHY AGAIN ☹ also imagine being the girl this tweet is about…. Im dead)

Oct. 23 - who’s left to trust other than myself ?

Oct. 26 - she’s nothin but trouble. but i like to get in trouble

Oct. 27 - im scared to get too close to anyone

Oct 29 - tonight's one for the books

Oct. 30 - so the cops came last night ... we got fined for HAVING THE BEST HALLOWEEN PARTY IN LA HAHAH

Nov. 1 - her memory haunts me in a perfect, beautiful way

Nov. 2 - i wanna see if i’d suck complete ass at making music

Nov. 4 - timing is everything, and i just wish we didn’t miss our moment

Nov. 9 - i wonder if my old friends from kansas think of me as much as i think of them

i’ve been so much happier recently doing things for myself. putting myself first and what i want before others. it sounds selfish, but sometimes necessary if you’re feelin down

Nov. 13 - things are so different without you in my life

Nov. 17 - some days are easy some days are hard

Nov. 19 - as obvious as this sounds, just want to remind you that YOUR LIFE is controlled by YOU. if you want to change, create, experience, manifest anything .. it’s up to YOU. so easy to forget this sometimes. become the person you want to be

Nov. 20 - i can’t live here forever

Nov. 22 - i love u and i am thankful for u in my life

Nov. 23 - lmao social media LA is like high school

Nov. 25 - i’m gunna be single foreva where the dogs at ?

one time i held a girl's hand, but i got too nervous

Dec. 7 - you’re different and i like that

Dec. 8 - why is it that people only start to care when you don’t ?

Relationships scare me yooo like I don’t even have enough time to devote to myself lol

Dec. 9 - that’s why we wait for a while. nows the time to be single and focus on ourselves

Dec. 12 - with all the insecurities/negativity that derive from social media and the entertainment world present day , i’m so scared for the next gen of kids and what they’re gunna have to deal with

social media is great for many reasons i’m not going to address now, but also very harmful for mental health. ESPECIALLY for young, impressionable kids who look up to dumbass content creators. us creators forget the impact we have on our fans sometimes.. and that’s terrifying

subconsciously comparing yourself to others constantly, # of likes and followers, being judged for everything you post are all great examples of “the bad” part of social media. SOCIAL MEDIA IS GOING TO BE THE CAUSE OF SO MANY MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS IN THE FUTURE

end: not saying you should stop being on social media or supporting creators at all, just PLEASE take breaks if you ever feel that it’s consuming you. too much of anything can destroy you inside. take new tech. at your own pace and don’t get caught up in it all

Dec. 17 - sayin goodbye to all fake friends

Dec. 19 - simple. negativity creates negativity. positivity creates positivity. you decide what you release into the universe. forgive. learn. find yourself in others.

Dec. 24 - some girls on social media act like the cliche popular cheerleaders in highchool 🤣 #foreverstuck

Dec. 26 - sitting next to the most talkative person in the world on my flight back to LA *slowly putting my headphones in*

Dec. 29 - rather waste my days w you

Dec. 30 - damn i’m sad about moving out and we haven’t even moved out yet

Navi’s been sleeping next to me every night. my heart

#colby brock #cb tweets #personal #text

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yoan-portfolio · 9 months

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The Fiction of Online Dating

Are we just writing a fantasy novel through texts?

As a dating app addict with a PhD in disappointment, I’ve had my fair share of trying to romanticise hopeless situations. I’ve been an unpaid psychologist, a trauma dumpster and so many other things that I just wish I could put down as job experience on my CV, since that’s what they feel like – work, that isn’t your classic 9 to 5.

And I blame myself – there’s something so enticing about turning men online into a cute little arts and crafts project! It can be hard to imagine this person residing in your phone has a life of their own. So you give them one – which coincidentally is everything you need in a partner. My best friend summarised the phenomenon perfectly:

“We fall in love with the potential of what someone could be. It sounds selfish, but when you’re online you don’t think about this person’s life, just how they can fit into yours.

“Then as soon as you find out this person is separate from the idea of them in your head, you feel disappointed.”

However, when it comes to online dating, are we all just volunteering as fiction writers?

Once you fall into a routine of doing the same thing and seeing the same people, meeting people “organically” feels almost impossible. No matter how much I manifest the cute Tesco cashier asking me out, dating apps still feel like the best bet – an easy way to find someone who is a romantic interest – nothing more or less.

It’s so easy as well – it’s like if you could put a filter on dating IRL. No getting the ick (unless they are REALLY bad at texting), no more seeing your date trip on the street… It’s a reduction of attraction to lines of text, which you can interpret in a way that’s convenient to you.

While it’s fun at first, after you’ve ghosted half of your matches, you might want to meet your newest cyber crush. And this is where the fantasy comes crumbling.

The person you have fantasised over and seemed perfect over text is hardly ever what you expect. Sooner or later you are faced with the harsh reality – dating apps are more than a game, and it’s not a Player 2 on the other side.

When meeting people in an online bubble, they are more of an attractive concept. When things get serious and the fantasy novel we’ve been writing in our Snapchat DMs ends, we may find ourselves repulsed by the completely human qualities of the person next to us.

And if you think the “D” in dating stands for “Disaster”, you’re not the only one. 45% of users say they felt frustrated from online dating, 35% say dating platforms made them feel pessimistic, and 25% say using the platform made them feel insecure.

Is online dating just a race to disappointment then? Not necessarily.

Worst case scenario – it can be a learning experience. Forget about your cousin and her boyfriend who show up at family dinners and make it all seem so easy! Take the opportunity to learn more about yourself – what you enjoy and what you are looking for in a relationship.

Be honest with your date – be upfront about what you are searching for in a partner. It’s a good conversation starter and can save you the frustration of finding out they want to sleep around or hate dogs on your fifth date.

Do you always feel let down by your matches? Maybe it’s time to tone down your standards, go out of your comfort zone. Grab a coffee with someone who isn’t usually your type. Once you learn to let go of your fantasies, you will find it is easy to appreciate something about nearly everyone you meet.

And most importantly – have fun! Nobody said dating needs to be serious. Enjoy the process and take your time, gush over your success and laugh at your failures.

Like, did you really want to get married to your Tinder match at 22 anyway?

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you-can-be-what-you-want-to-be · 10 months

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{{ Fun ask meme you made: Everything with a 4 in it! (4, 14, 24, 34, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45.)

oh that’s a very fun way to do it! I already did 40 but I’ll give you the rest. Thank you for giving me so many!

4: if you had to loose one of your senses or physical abilities, which one and why?

im a chatter box but I’d loose the ability to speak. It’s kind of selfish but speaking is one of the only abilities that’s primarily for everyone else’s experience of the world. I mean you can’t talk and share ideas as easy and some of the puns and stuff you do get limited but you still get sunsets and art museums and books and musicals and cat purrs and all that. I still get things, I just can’t give anymore.

14: preferred form of travel i know tumblr doesn’t like them but car for SURE. Used to have ten hours in it every weekend visiting my dad and like. You can sing. You can have arguments with yourself and imagined people. Go noom. Pretty sights. And I’ve had the best conversations I’ve ever had in the car, because what else are you going to do? If there are two people in a confined space and one of them can’t look at anything you can only talk and I love that it’s a wonderful feeling. And falling asleep in the back of a car while people you care about talk in the front? Being able to leave home at any time? Getting sonic at 11pm? Ough it’s so good. I get home and spend an hour in a non moving car love being in a car I am no better than a dog.

24: what is a food or experience you miss from being a child? This does not mean things like paying bills, and is more about the time period you are from.

1 burning cds

2 a lack of cool people on tv. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Napoleon Dynamite but yeah things like that. Like there is no one cool in invader zim.

3 toxic waste (candy.) I haven’t seen one in ages

4 PEANUT BUTTER TWIX.

34: name a way someone has helped you before

car got stuck on this pile gravel. It had been snowing, next to a busy highway, thirty minutes by car away from any town, and it jammed up all the way up like into the entire bottom, not just the tires. Spent like an hour by hand trying to dig the stuff out with bare hands. Some guy with a truck hooked me up and pulled my car off. I’ll never forget it

41: what’s a hobby you want to get into? Disregard whatever skills money or tools you would need, listen to your heart

I want to learn how to make music and video essays. Both of those cost money and your own private area (instrument, mic, and a place you don’t disturb people with sound). Also animation I’m a very bad artist and don’t get technology so it’s a pretty hard no but I’d love to do it someday

42: what’s an experience you’ve wanted to do or have for awhile but not been able to justify to yourself?

I want to see hadestown on broadway. Or anything on broadway really but hadestown is the dream personally

43: a part of yourself you are fond of?

I like that soft spot between your lower ribs and thumb nails

44: favorite supernatural being

I’ve always been fond of ghost, because they’re the only one just about that gets to be sad or helpful instead of just scary. The idea that you felt something so strong it outlasted your body…. Yeah that’s what emotions feel like. That’s why you can be haunted by things that aren’t there, like war or an old friendship. It’s just emotions out of place that followed you.

Sad ghosts, lost ghost stuck in a loop, ghosts that save people from similar situations as their own, ghosts that come back to love their loved ones, ghosts who taunt the person who killed them and haunt them in the literal and metaphorical sense. Idk man. Just ghosts. They’re so important to me.

45: favorite fantasy being

Fae but only the fucked up kind who like find people fascinating but mostly as entertainment and make them dance till their feet fall off or see how long it takes them to loose a deal. Idk they’re just fun.

thank you so much this was mega fun to talk about

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itsatoyboat · 3 years

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i finished true colors and i’m having a lot of thoughts that i NEED to talk about.

(if this is gonna be long idk, i apologize for your eyeballs)

1. i honestly didn’t like alex at all when i saw the trailer, i was thinking “hmm idk about this one” but as soon as i started to play the game i fell so in love with her, she is so freaking smart and funny, she genuinely cares about the people around her and her story it’s very different from the other characters from LIS anthology. i truly enjoyed seeing alex’s development throughout the game especially her realizing that her powers can actually help the people around her and not harm anyone, the way she controls it after her conversation with gabe was such an awesome upgrade from the alex who was so ashamed of her power to alex superwoman. i liked how the game explored her emotions and her mind about the past, the mine part where alex was struggling to feel everything she felt in those days and then embracing everything was one of my favorite parts. it shows a lot of growth.

2. this game has AMAZING CHARACTERS, every single one of the characters was well written, they had life, they had problems, they had their own emotions with private stuff that was going on in their lives and you could actually talk to them and meet their “layers”. mac for an example was an asshole but i couldn’t pretend i didn’t felt his concern and fear around typhon, the way he was terrified about everyone hating him, he was scared for his life and being very paranoid, i was concerned about him and the game giving you the choice to speak to him or leaving him was a tricking decision cause you could leave him alone suffering or try to help him out, maybe saving his life and this is a lot but he’s alive. the game makes him real and that’s what makes me INSANE about the characters. i know, i’m talking about a game where you’re supposed to feel the characters’ feelings but that could possibly go wrong as well if the characters were shallow and poorly explored and that’s not the case with true colors. they had purpose.

3. alex’s power it’s probably my favorite power. the choices in this game was way harder than the first two games, the craziest thing is you can choose if you want to take someone else’s feeling so they can stop feeling that way, saving them from themselves making alex suffer instead and that's selfish. don’t get me wrong, i’m not calling alex a selfish person but taking someone else’s feeling doesn’t make anything better, you’re taking their right to heal, to be alive and that is so fucking awesome. you have this power to help someone, to “take their pain away” and you will learn that people need to feel what they are supposed to feel so they can move forward cause if we don’t, we are never going to learn. we see that charlotte is pretty angry about gabe’s death, she blames everyone but mostly ethan, she is miserable. alex can choose between taking charlotte’s anger or leave her. if alex takes charlotte’s anger, charlotte is left completely empty, she doesn’t feel anything and when i say anything it’s anything. she is left emotionless and bitter, she doesn’t pass through her way of mourning for gabe and she doesn’t have alex’s back when alex confronts jed. if alex leave charlotte to her anger we have a nice moment between them on the festival, talking about what happened and charlotte gets alex’s back on the black lantern and that’s what i mean from being selfish, if we take someone else’s feelings we are being unfair to them, we are choosing for them and people are supposed to feel, heal in their own time or overcome. by taking charlotte’s anger we deprived her from healing, we are not helping her, we are just making an natural process even more difficult and slower. alex being able to hear what someone is thinking and enter that person’s world from what they are feeling at that moment it’s the best detail for me, everything changes, we get to see the world through that person’s eyes, we can understand them but we decide what to do with that, we can be selfish or actually help. of course, we can take pike’s situation for an example also, if we take his fear we can help him overcome typhon and we get to expose jed but pike’s fear was necessary to take and charlotte was not necessary, pike at least had the pendrive with the recorded calls on it so we had a chance for things to get better.

4. chapter 5 was an amazing ending. finding out the truth about typhon, jed was never a hero, alex confronting her past, the confrontation and seeing who was going to be on your side, alex’s final conversation with gabe and the end, it was better than i thought it could be. i truly loved seeing alex’s past, even with everything that went down she turned to be a good person who wanted to be loved (her passion for music being the thing that helped her connected to me in a lot of levels, that creep cover though i screamed so hard when she started to sing). the mine part was absolutely insane not just alex surviving that fall discovering that gabe was looking for his dad for so long, jed knowing it and all of this time his dad actually died because of jed, alex finding the truth by taking her mom’s necklace back from what was left of that accident it’s so heartbreaking, the confrontation was crazy, i thought no one was going to believe alex because jed was so loved by everyone there it would be so easy to doubt alex and just be on jed’s side which was what ryan did but it’s understandable, jed was his dad, his hero. alex’s speech on jed exposing him after everything was one of the best monologues on that game and man this game had AMAZING dialogues and monologues, everything felt so real and beautiful, the best part of it it’s to forgive jed that’s where alex break him, he regrets everything even more cause when we find out the truth. we find out why jed never enjoyed talking about being the hero of haven springs. at the end jed wasn’t entirely a bad person cause when we forgive him he gives back alex her dad’s jacket talking about how he wanted to give it to gabe but couldn’t, that’s something that made me love even more the characters even jed that was the “villain”, which i don’t think he is. what he did was terrible and he knew that, he tried to pretend nothing happened when alex started to talk but at the end he broke, that always haunted him and that’s the difference between him and jefferson who was actually the villain in life is strange he wasn’t forced to do those things, he killed rachel, he killed chloe, he manipulated nathan, he was going to kill max and if max didn't stopped him on the arcadia bay ending he would kill even more students at blackwell.

5. alex and steph relationship was the purest thing on this game, it was smooth, it was organic, it wasn’t something out of the blue, steph liked alex since the beginning. the plan to pick someone to flirt with diane and get her pendrive i chose ryan and afterwards steph started to feel something, she was so upset that alex used to think ryan was “hotter than her” (i only chose ryan cause i didn’t want to see steph flirting with diane but i saw the scene where we pick steph and omg i should’ve chosen steph cause that scene it’s hilarious), steph was happier around alex, every time she had an opportunity to flirt with alex she took it. seeing their love grow through the chapters was beautiful, i know we can choose ryan over steph but i don’t believe ryan liked alex the way steph did, you can literally see that no matter what alex did steph was going to support her and look at her with so much love and respect and that’s why i think alex and steph’s relationship it’s so pure and right. also they looked so good playing together it’s so cute that they have the same passion for music and THAT LARP SCENE FOR GOD’S SAKE MY HEART MELTED!

6. this part is exclusively to talk about LARP and the fight scenes, it reminded me so much of final fantasy it was so COOL, well thought and so fun. it was awesome to see everyone taking care of ethan and doing their best to make him happy.

7. talking about ethan, this game opened a conversation in my head about charlotte and ethan, i started to think a lot about what charlotte said about ethan how she felt happier when gabe was around and now she was stuck with only ethan again, it made me think that maybe charlotte didn’t want to have a child or if she didn’t had ethan she could have gabe again. that could open a conversation about women who didn’t want to become a mom but it doesn’t mean that charlotte would hurt ethan which makes total sense to decide to leave her alone and not take her anger, she would never hurt ethan. it was again another tricking decision cause we get concerned about ethan when charlotte starts to talk but we know deep down she cares so much about her son, she does everything for him.

life is strange true colors became my favorite life is strange, the story it’s different and great, it’s literally finding the truth about everything, when we understand people’s feelings we discover the truth about them and situations, we understand everything. this game actually made me cry harder and think so much even more than the first one and boy i love the first one so badly. it talks a lot about empathy and how we react to people’s emotions, your choices in this game are way harder than messing with time or moving things with your mind, it’s choices about things that could happen in real life eventually and that is what makes this game so important to me, it’s real.

and also it's the first life is strange to have happy endings like.. ok big steps for my non depression finally

#life is strange #life is strange true colors #alex chen #gabe chen #max caulfield #chloe price #square enix #game #games #gaming #god i wrote so much #steph gingrich #life is strange 2 #life is strange before the storm #ryan lucan

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traumasurvivorshelpingsurvivors · 2 years

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tw: csa, low self esteem, self-destructive fantasies. i don’t really know how to explain it but i wish i had been raped as a child. i was sexually abused, one instance of which could be called assault, but it was a weird kind of abuse. the only time he really hurt me he ignored the first couple times i said no, sure, but he stopped when i put my foot down. it doesn’t feel like it really counted. somehow i feel like if i had been really raped i would be more worthy. i don’t have any right to be as traumatized as i am by what happened to me, it wasn’t even that traumatizing in itself. i just overreacted and ruined my own life by obsessing about it once i realized what had happened. i’m just a stupid whiny bitch who has to make everything about herself. if i had been really hurt, then it feels like i would be justified to react to it the way i do. it feels like if i had been raped i would deserve to be loved & treated with kindness but as it is i’m just selfish and worthless.

So, I want to start with what I wish I could tell every person with trauma. A common symptom of trauma is convincing yourself that what you went through isn't as bad as others. As we begin to devalue ourselves, we warp our view of how much pain something actually caused us. We start to see our trauma differently than how we see the trauma of others. We are taught that our needs aren't important, that we're over exaggerating what happened. Tldr; your trauma caused you harm, as everyone's trauma does, and your pain is not less important than the pain of others, regardless of how different it may look or be. We all have a point where we start to get hurt, and everyone's is different and still real.

It's also a symptom of trauma to idolize trauma that seems worse than yours, because it's easy to believe that if the abuse was worse, you might actually deserve help. You are not a stupid whiny bitch, and of course you're making it about yourself, because it's your trauma. That includes fantasies of what could have happened, and reactions to something that may not have happened. You are reacting to your trauma in a way that is 'normal', this is a common symptom involved with trauma.

You deserve to take space with your trauma, to look at it and begin to work with it. You deserve love and kindness, and I absolutely mean that even if you don't believe it yet. With skills, you can start to work on it on your own. Try out different ways to ground yourself when your emotions seem to be top much. I like using 54321, 5 things you can see, 4 you can touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, 1 thing you can taste. Grounding yourself is a way to begin holding your trauma rather than fighting it. Writing out what's going on in your head just to get it out can help too.

As always, I want to suggest looking into therapy, specifically consider EMDR therapy. It's made for people with PTSD symptoms, and it begins to desensitize and reprocess the trauma in your brain so you can work through it. It creates new neuropathways to go around the paths your trauma caused so your brain begins to build itself out and away from the pain. It's helped me a lot so far, so I always like to suggest trying it.

-Mod Erion

#trauma talks #tw r word #tw csa #self deprecation #mental health #mod erion

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delimeful · 3 years

Text

neither calm nor quiet

BTHB: Trapped In A Net

warnings: miscommunication, past familial and domestic abuse mentions, injury, violence, terrible decision making skills

When Virgil finally decided to brave shallower waters, it had already been nearly half a moon cycle since Logan had vanished.

He’d made excuses at first, telling himself that the dread he felt was just his normal brand of overwrought paranoia. For the first few days, he was half-convinced that his curiosity-prone friend would appear at any moment, probably lugging some sort of stray litter or ‘interesting human artifact’ along with him to explain why he’d been late.

Things would be normal again. Virgil would find some rocks for them to sun on and Logan would ramble on about the potential uses of his find, and maybe Virgil would teasingly suggest some outlandish way the trash was secretly a violent human weapon, just to hear Logan thoroughly refute it.

After another three days passed with no sign of the other selkie, Virgil was forced to let that fantasy fade. Logan had never been this late before, not even that time he’d managed to carry an entire minifridge along with him for Virgil to identify.

Something had to have happened to him.

He’d spent the next week scouring the currents for any sign of his missing friend, even approaching other pods and asking around, requesting that they keep an eye out for any signs of Logan. He didn’t expect much from that; the two of them didn’t socialize with other selkies often enough to make any friends, and their two-person pod was too small to spare any food during winter, so there was nothing for the other pods to gain by helping them.

Virgil knew better than most how selfish pod politics could be.

Every few days, he would return to their meeting spot and catch a few hours of sleep to keep himself from crashing, always naively hoping that Logan would be there when he woke. He never was.

In the end, he had to face what he’d already known from the beginning: either Logan was dead, or he’d gone onland and gotten himself bound by a human.

He didn’t want to believe Logan had decided to brave the human world even after Virgil’s many, many warnings against it, but believing the alternative was even worse. So, he steeled himself to do the one thing he’d sworn to never do again, and headed for the cold, rocky shores of the nearest human settlement.

Naturally, he spent so long swimming back and forth between different stretches of beach, trying to force himself to take those literal first steps, that he didn’t notice the woven fibers dancing in the water until he’d plowed right into them.

A fishing net, dyed skillfully to blend in with the water, and large enough that when he tried to twist out of it, he only became further entangled.

Panic set in, then, clouding his mind and leaving him thrashing ineffectively like a simple animal. He couldn’t help it-- he couldn’t breathe underwater in either form, had no gills to keep him steady as he was dragged along by the current. He couldn’t untangle himself while adrift, couldn’t find solid ground while tangled. He would drown.

Between one blink and the next, he found himself in open air, gritty sand pressed against his face. Waves crested gently around him, a sharp contrast to the headache pounding around in his skull.

He never thought he’d be relieved about blacking out and beaching himself, but then, he’d never been worried about drowning in his own element before.

Okay. There weren’t any humans around to see the stupid idiot seal stuck on the beach. This was still salvageable.

Taking a deep breath, he attempted to bite through the netting with his incisors, and got a mouthful of sore gums for his trouble. The dyed fibers seemed to be woven around a base net of fishing wire, because of course they were. He let his head thunk back to the sandy ground, groaning at the new surge of pain the motion caused.

Sun-warmed saltwater continued to wash over his tail, and he blinked slowly, measuring his breaths. He could figure this out. He wouldn’t dry out. He just needed a moment to put himself back together. He could�� He…

His eyelids grew heavy, and everything went dark.

Roman thought the guy was a pile of garbage at first, to be quite honest.

Not on purpose, of course! But, come on, when one sees a mound of mystery washed up on shore, it generally ends up being a bunch of tangled old fishing nets wrapped around half-rotted driftwood, not a bunch of tangled old fishing nets wrapped around beautiful strangers wearing expensive-looking fur coats!

His next thought, once he’d gotten closer, was that the beautiful stranger wearing the expensive-looking fur coat was dead, and that a body had washed up on his little strip of shoreline. Pallid skin, blue lips, and deep shadows under their eyes-- the beautiful stranger wasn’t exactly giving off an aura of vim and vigor.

He’d spent a few moments staring at his contact list, trying to figure out what in the world he was supposed to do about a body. Should he call 911? … Should he call Remus?

Before he could make a decision either way, he finally picked up on the shallow rise and fall of the beautiful stranger’s chest, and realized that they were still alive! Potentially not for much longer, laying out in the cold all soggy like that, but Roman could work with mostly alive!

And so, he found himself here, carefully carrying the small but surprisingly dense stranger up to his home by the cliffs, and risking looking like a total serial killer doing it.

He couldn’t help but theorize as he walked. A beautiful stranger in expensive clothing, tangled in nets with what appeared to be a head wound… It read like an old unsolved case in a detective novel, where the mysterious stranger in question got in too deep with some dangerous people and ended up clubbed over the head and dumped into a river to tie up loose ends.

“Except you managed to survive, obviously,” Roman said to them, mostly to reassure himself. He really had to stop eavesdropping on Remus’s true crime podcasts. “And you made your way to me! Excellent choice, I’m great at nursing people back to health. Probably. I don’t have much practical experience, but, you know, I’ve read extensively about this exact thing. In romance novels. As one does.”

The beautiful and mysterious stranger continued to be unconscious. Roman was starting to feel grateful for it.

His house was empty, thankfully, since his brother had work to attend to today. He fumbled with the keys for a moment before pushing the door open and carrying the stranger inside, sighing with relief at the warm air.

“That’s got to feel much better, hm?”

He sat the stranger down in the foyer, removing his shoes to go grab some scissors from the kitchen.

“First order of business,” he announced in his best announcer voice, “getting all that netting off of you. While I’m sure you could rock fishnet leggings, fish nets on their own just don’t have the same je ne sais quoi, you know? Also, they look very uncomfortable. You’re great at staying still, so just keep that up.”

He carefully cut his way through the looser parts of netting, pulling it off piece by piece until all that was left were the abrasions where they’d formerly cut into skin. Roman had no idea how they’d even managed to get that tangled up, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. It couldn’t have been pretty.

In the process of removing the net, however, he’d noticed another rather pressing matter.

Going by the flash of thigh he’d accidentally witnessed while shifting the net around, the stranger definitely wasn't wearing anything under that fur coat of theirs. Like, nothing.

(Exactly what kind of situation had the stranger been in before this?!)

Even so, leaving them in a sodden coat couldn’t be good for their constitution. Or his poor couch’s upholstery.

Roman spent a few moments puzzling the situation out before coming up with a brilliant solution. He retrieved the fluffy gold comforter from his bed and draped it over the stranger, covering their front half with it. Then, he carefully worked their arms out of the coat’s sleeves, very pointedly not focusing on the adorable freckled shoulders this operation revealed. Finally, he tugged the entire coat out from behind them, wincing at the slight furrow that appeared in their brow.

“Sorry, sorry, I know the cold floor can’t be comfortable…”

Soggy coat removed, he was free to continue bundling the rest of the comforter around the stranger’s back, therefore making it easy for him to pick them up in a neat little bundle of blanket and deposit them on the couch. No nudity awkwardness required!

Pleased with his solution, he draped a fluffy towel over the stranger’s head and carefully dried some of the dampness from their hair. Next, he wasted no time in stoking the fire higher in his hearth, sending waves of warmth into the room and making it so the stranger’s skin didn’t look quite so clammy.

Once he’d cleaned up the mess left in the foyer and grabbed the first aid kit from under his sink, he planted himself in a chair next to the couch, feeling ready to handle anything.

“Okay, Google. How do I treat a head wound?”

Virgil felt as though he’d woken to a nightmare.

He was in the wrong body, surrounded on all sides by heavy fabric and warm air, and his coat was missing. That list of facts alone was just about as bad as any night terror he’d had.

The humming was unusual, though.

A soft tune, occasionally broken up by a half-muttered lyric or two, carried through the air, voice completely at ease. His mother had never sung to him in front of others, and it sure as hell wasn’t his father.

He tried to remember where he’d been last. The back of his head stung… he’d ended up on a beach? The tide had been turning, from high to low… He must have dried out up there, changed into his less durable form. And now he was warm and dry.

He clenched his fists weakly and grit his teeth, knowing that a human had found him and stolen him away. Just like his mother. He’d come to find Logan and lost himself before ever even starting. Typical.

“Are you with us, Sleeping Beauty?” a bright voice asked.

The humming had broken off while he was absorbed in his thoughts, and now he could hear the shift and rustle of movement next to him. He opened his eyes, already aiming the coldest possible glare at his captor.

He was sort of surprised to find that the human sitting at his side wasn’t holding his coat. His father used to make a point of handling his mother’s coat at any opportunity. He’d liked to watch his mother stare at it, resting assured that so long as he held it in his possession, she could do him no harm.

This human was much younger than his father had been, probably around as old as Virgil was now. He had dark skin and soft eyes that reflected the firelight, and he was smiling hopefully at Virgil.

“Hello there! It’s excellent to see you looking a little more lively! I was starting to think about actually calling the hospital, heh.”

Wordlessly, Virgil slowly shifted to sit up, shoving the thick blanket out and shaking the cloth from his head. He looked down, confirming what he already knew. No coat. The human hadn’t even bothered to dress him up in human trappings to ‘make up’ for the absence.

“Ah, yeah... I sort of basically pulled you out of the ocean and what little you were wearing was completely soaked.” The human rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. “I figured it’d be less of an invasion of privacy to just let you get dressed yourself once you woke up?”

Oh, the human was worried about his privacy? What a joke.

“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, truly!” the human continued, oblivious to Virgil’s rising ire. He gave a mocking little bow, pretending to respect the one he’d abducted. “My sincerest apologies.”

He was done playing along with mind games like these. Better to let the human know where they stood right off the bat.

“I’m going to kill you,” Virgil promised, and then lunged for the human’s jugular.

To his genuine surprise, he actually made contact, hands clamping onto the junction between collar and throat. The human let out a high-pitched yelp as his chair toppled over, taking both of them with it.

Virgil landed knee-first on the human’s sternum, and paused to blink down at the wheezing stranger, who apparently had been so confident in the weakness of his victim that he hadn’t bothered to bind Virgil from harming him in advance.

Unless.

His grip loosened slightly, just in time for the human’s fist to catch him squarely in the mouth. He threw himself backwards, rolling with the force of the motion to get some distance and hunkering in a crouch. It had been too long since he’d been active in this form, his sense of balance was in shambles.

The human scrambled to his feet, and grabbed the back of the chair, eyes wild. He thrust it out between them like a barrier, as though it could prevent any more strangulation attempts.

“What is wrong with you?!” he shrieked, voice cracking as his gaze flickered back and forth between Virgil and some far off point. “I tenderly nursed you back to health, and your response is to try and murder me? Unfair! Cruel! Rude!”

“Where is my coat?” Virgil replied, voice hoarse and split lip stinging. A test, because humans were tricky and loved to lie.

“Your— your coat?” The human pulled up short, head tilting slightly in a bewildered manner. A convincing actor, if nothing else. “Is that what all this is about? I put it on the coat hanger to dry! I know better than to try and wash someone’s fancy fur coat without permission, yeesh.”

A low warning growl in the back of his throat, Virgil turned his gaze from the current threat and followed the gesture the human had made.

Sure enough, there it was. His freedom, draped on a peg in the open with all the rest of the human’s fabric outer layers like some common garment.

“Do you… want me to get it— eep!” The human lifted the chair back up in paltry defense as Virgil snarled at him. He rose up and crossed the distance to his pelt in five wobbly strides, before the human could try and return it to him and lock them both into a loveless marriage.

Some of the tension eased from his shoulders as he quickly wrapped his second skin around him, that grounding weight settling back where it belonged. He still couldn’t shift back, not here, but the ocean was close enough to taste in the air.

The human was still huddled defensively by the fireplace, looking indignantly bewildered and not at all like he knew he’d just given up the perfect opportunity to control Virgil.

Which meant that-- barring some incredibly convoluted scheme-- he really had no idea. And Virgil had tried to strangle him, even if under false pretenses. He drew the edges of his pelt closer around him, rolling the beginnings of an apology around in his mind.

The mysterious stranger was still glaring at Roman like they were contemplating continuing to try and strangle him to death at any moment.

He’d brought a half-drowned stranger into his home and tenderly treated their injuries, and what had he received in return for his efforts? A murder attempt, which now that he thought about it was maybe an outcome he should have considered earlier. Remus would never let him live this down.

Assuming he lived long enough for his brother to give him shit about it, that was.

The stranger seemed to at least be a little calmer now that their reclaimed coat was thoroughly wrapped around them, rendering them more lump-shaped than person. Roman felt much more secure in glaring back, too.

He set his impromptu shield/chair down firmly on the floor. “I have no idea what your problem is, Gloomy B. Jones, but where I’m from, the response to someone saving you from dying of hypothermia is ‘thank you’, not a strangulation attempt!”

The murderglare intensified. “I didn’t ask for your help.”

“Yes,” Roman said, disbelieving, “because you were too busy being unconscious. On the beach. In 40-below temperatures!”

“That’s my problem, not yours,” the stranger responded snappishly.

Roman threw his hands in the air, but his impending frustrated rant was impeded by the sight of a stifled flinch running through the stranger. Feeling a stab of guilt, he lowered his arms slowly before continuing.

“It seems I made it my problem when I dragged your soggy self all the way to my house, so--”

“Great news for you, then: I’m leaving.” Baring their teeth in a distinctly unfriendly manner, the stranger turned to do just that.

“Hold it!” Roman called, alarmed. “You’re going into town like that?! People will think you’re a flasher!” Even his brother wouldn’t go out dressed in nothing but an oversized coat. ... Probably.

The stranger paused, squinting at him warily. Roman took it as a cue to continue.

“Look, clearly we got off on the wrong foot here. Several wrong feet. Let’s try again. I’m Roman Faroe, I work for the local newspaper, and you are…?”

“None of your business,” replied the stranger, with all the stubborn petulance of a toddler digging their heels in and refusing to move whilst smack dab in the middle of an overcrowded supermarket.

“Would you like me to call you ‘Almost-Corpse-I-Dragged-Off-The-Beach?’ Perhaps make up a thematic nickname or two for you? Because let me tell you, this is exactly how you get called--,”

“Hold on,” the stranger cut him off, a realization seeming to dawn on him, “did you say you worked for the news?”

“Yes, I mean, the newspaper not the news. Although I’m sure I’d make an excellent anchor,” Roman gestured to all of himself for effect, “my true passion lies in my carefully curated romantic advice column!”

“So, you get all the information in town,” continued the stranger, who had a strange glint in their eye.

“I mean, if you want to be a nerd about it.”

“How about this.” The stranger stepped forward, straightening out of their defensive slouch for the explicit purpose of being just tall enough to loom over Roman. “You want to know my name? I’ll tell you, if you help me track down something important that I lost.”

An investigative quest for a mysterious MacGuffin? Roman swallowed, feeling his heart flutter wildly with what felt less like intimidation and more like excitement. He could totally keep his cool, he just had to open his mouth and say something suave.

“I also want to know your origin story,” he opened his mouth and babbled instead.

The stranger narrowed their eyes for a moment, and Roman belatedly remembered the near-strangulation. Perhaps he shouldn't be agitating a femme fatale type, what with all the emphasis on the fatale.

To his surprise, it only took a moment before they capitulated, sticking a hand out. “Fine. After my thing gets done.”

Roman shook gladly, trying not to shiver at the cool touch. Had they checked to make sure the stranger wasn’t hypothermic yet? “It’s a deal, then.”

“Great.” They twisted on their heel, stalking to the door. “Let’s get this over with, already.”

“Hold on there, Surly Temple.” Roman called, hand on his hip. “I hate to break it to you, but if you go into town mostly naked, the only news we’ll be hearing about will be your immediate arrest.”

The stranger glanced down at his attire, and then released the door handle with a low sigh. “... Pants first?”

“Pants first.”

#sanders sides #ts virgil #ts roman #selkie AU #bthb #bad things happen bingo #writing #my writing #neither calm nor quiet #ncnq #oneshot #... theoretically #disclaimer: do not do anything roman does here #he is a lucky fool #logan is fine btw #theoretically.#i feel like im forgetting tags. well whatever #selkies

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