#i'm likely not even a blood relation (have no idea what the white side of my dad's family was and no idea whatsoever about my mom)

[thewertsearch]

Asks Comp 1/5

We don't even need to speculate about Vriska's hidden motives - even her stated motivation is dangerous.

As I said before, we know exactly how she 'helps' people.

Thank you! It's good to be back.

Act 5.2 has been fun so far. I didn't realize how much I missed the kids until we got back to their PoVs.

Homestuck could have opened on Rose, watching her mother drink herself into a stupor - or Vriska, tossing a corpse into her spider's pit. These events are canonical, but bringing them into sharper focus would turn the story into something very different.

That Homestuck chose to start with John tells us a lot about its identity. It's a dark story, in a lot of ways - but there are much darker stories, two steps to the left.

Sburb Any% in 23:59:59 (Green Sun skip)

Haha, that's fair, actually. Although you're probably not chastising them for failing to understand the time loops you're both navigating.

(If you are, though, you have the coolest job imaginable. Are you hiring?)

@gravity-rocks asked: Ooo, saw the person who asked you about your thoughts on lusii and troll evolution and thought I would pitch in with my little theory. I like to believe instead of lusii being the parasites, maybe TROLLS evolved as brood parasites. All these lusii seem to have consistent blood colors, and the blood colors always match the troll theyre a guardian of. I know we havent seen baby lusii, but maybe before they become "white" their babies are a bright color, and the bright blood colors of the trolls evolved as a way to trick the lusii into caring for them. Now, not all animals actually care for their young, so it's not a perfect strategy, so some creatures taking 'advantage' of this parasitism couldve evolved side by side, which I find super interesting. And with troll genetics and slurries, that made me wonder if troll genomes are particularly unstable and able to incorporate all sorts of other dna into it, like some bacteria - perhaps lending to this ‘infiltration’ power. The troll powers and mutations relating to their lusii is really really interesting, I mean we saw sollux’s ogre lusus with similar powers. I wonder if that sort of matching dna in subtle ways influences which trolls are adopted by which lusus. Alternatively an even more interesting explanation. Trolls grow their powers over time with their lusus and incorporate more of their dna over their lifetime with them. With huge wiggled populations, the way the genetics slurry with each other, and ease of mutation, perhaps it explains how intense their anti mutant and culling sentiments are, and why they might have evolved to be as extreme as they are.

This is some great speculative biology - I particularly like the idea that trolls are highly prone to mutation, like an alien Eevee.

It is interesting that Sollux shares his eye-beams with his Biclops. Their powers are identical, so there has to be some casual relationship between the two - we just don't know what direction it's in.

Aw, Kanaya. Neither of you is the Stupid Girl - it just feels that way when you have a crush!

I started shipping these two because they're my favorite characters - but I'm continuing to ship them because their relationship is cute as all hell.

For sure! The added context of Hivebent really adds a lot of texture to the plot. The playing field feels wider, and the stakes are much higher.

@manorinthewoods asked: What are your favorite songs from Homestuck? [ they listed their own faves but some are technically spoilers, will send them later! - C] . ~LOSS (25/4/23)

My current favorites are Descend, Dissention, Sburban Jungle, Upward Movement, and The Beginning Of Something Really Excellent!

Another album review is well past due, but Homestuck Volume 5 is longer than the first four combined, so I'll need to set a day aside to really take it in.

I never got an ask about this, so send away!

Zathura! Damn, it's been a while since I've thought about that movie.

I love the idea that every 'real' game in fiction is actually taking place in an infinite sea of monsters.

That's true, I guess, and you do need to get there to fight the final boss - but Sollux proved that you can freely fly between planets, if you have the means. The houses seem kind of redundant, if that's their only purpose, but I don't think it is.

Act 4, I think! Hivebent's troll worldbuilding is great - but Act 4 focused a lot more on Sburb's game mechanics, and that's still my favorite part of the comic.

We don't yet know the circumstances of his Exiling, but he probably needed to lose, to be Exiled the way he did.

As for why he needed to be Exiled the way he did... well, we've already talked about how weird and arbitrary these loops are. In the end, WV's army was just a casualty of causality - and messing around with causality is beyond the scope of the game.

Not impossible, necessarily - just beyond the scope of the game. Rose knows what I'm talking about.

It's either that, or the meteor's seed was what fell into the portal, and it grew to full size after it left the Medium. Either works.

It's impossible for me to choose - but I'll default to Descend. It was a great bookend to pre-Hivebent Homestuck.

Thanks for the list of names - and congratulations on your evolution to full blog status!

That's all true - and I never considered that Karkat would be jealous of John's social circle. Things are just easier for him - his friends all get along, and he doesn't need to needle them into working together. From Karkat's perspective, John barely has to do anything as a leader, while Karkat worked his ass off and still failed. Damn.

[ this post! ]

Hahaha, damn. I forgot about those early predictions.

I was right about the terraforming, I just wasn't thinking big enough. In retrospect, it's pretty funny that I only gave it a 1% probability - for all the help they were, I may as well have pulled those numbers out of thin air.

John's the kismesissitude mascot, after all!

Earth's a big place, so there could easily be thousands of unseen temples - but I'm starting to doubt they'll ever get any focus.

I've slowly begun to accept that Earth's other sessions might just be out of scope for this story. That's for the fanfiction authors - and, maybe, for 'semi-canon' spin-offs.

Yep, this chicken/egg stuff is so common for Sburb that it's practically routine by now. It's simply not possible to say whether Titles cause personalities, or vice-versa - both were 'simultaneously' encoded into the Alpha Timeline. The point is moot.

Yeah, quadrants really haven't shaken out the way the original infodump implied they would.

Karkat's Dark Crush on John doesn't seem nearly as toxic as whatever's going on with Jack and the Queen.

Is Karkat wrong about his feelings? Do Carapacians experience kismesissitude differently? Has Hussie quietly retconned some of Hivebent's quadrant stuff?

At this point, who knows. Alternia's original view of quadrants might not even matter - it's gone, and the surviving trolls are free to do their own thing.

#asks #full liveblog #act 5.2

[charmac]

Heyo! I'd be interested to hear your theories on the macdennis writer's room situation!

IMO it's not as simple as 'Rob is pro and Glenn is anti' (and we always ignore Charlie in these conversations even though he's quite into it in the dvd commentary and pod), so your suggestion that the subtlety (lol it's really not subtle, but yeah r/iasip ig) in the writing of their relationship might be glenn's idea is quite intriguing to me, and I wonder how this all relates to the opposing views on whether Dennis is a serial killer amongst rcg. So much of the writing of Dennis comes from Charlie and also Rob, but it's definitely influenced by them observing Glenn (like the cereal story) and by Glenn's performance. And ofc we know Glenn pushes back if Dennis is written as too heartless because he maintains that he does have feelings and is quite sensitive in a way. Not sure where I'm going with this... I don't have a full theory fleshed out in my head yet, so I'd really like to hear your thoughts!

(not trying to stir anything with this ask btw: in fact, iirc there were some posts about this subject a few months ago and I didn't engage then because it pissed me off when the conversation turned into a "who supports the quuer fans more" kind of competition, as if macden is something so basic between rob and glenn, when we really have no evidence about what happens fr bts, beyond some fun speculation. just enjoy theorizing in drought times.)

Hey, thanks for the ask! To address your final point first, I don't want to talk publicly about what may or may not be the motivations of Glenn and Rob as "queer allies" or how they think this may affect their careers or whatnot. These kinds of discussions I don't believe are ever effective publicly when you don't know the truth. I'm not speculating on their motivations as people but as writers who care about the story they're telling and, more importantly, their characters.

When my message was "anti" and "pro" it was really just from the discussion that someone had to be pushing back against what I believe is Rob pushing forward (This was a black and white, who wants Macden now and who is saying no, wait. I truly do and always have believed Macden will happen. The nuanced discussion came after, in messages I'd rather not share since they are not just my personal thoughts but a conversation with another user.) I

t's not necessarily that Glenn is anti-Macdennis (and I think you understand that) and I want to clarify first off that I definitely don't think it's as simple as that, so here we go:

For Glenn pushing the subtlety, I think we agree completely that it likely links to how Glenn wants the audience to perceive his character (and how I love perceiving him): Dennis talks a big game that to the untrained eye makes him seem like this cold-blooded psychopath, but it's all a complete front you can easily see through. He gets a thrill out of these terrible things but would never act on them. It's interesting to hear of the live show "Dennis is a serial killer" talk brought up right along side all of this, because it's a perfect example of how Rob and Glenn clearly have opposing views on Dennis' character, and how that definitely plays into why they don't agree on canonising Macdennis. (As I understand, Dennis gets a thrill out of the idea of murder or harming people, but he could never act on it. Reddit (and to some lesser degree, Rob), don't get this, and think he probably does act on it and it's just not shown in canon (despite the mountains of evidence that Dennis is much too weak and feeble to ever do anything).

If you think about their current dynamic (actually, ignore 15, we'll get there), they've completely flipped from early seasons, and I don't think that's accidental or a fault of bad writing, I think it 1. is a result of Mac labelling himself as gay, finally, in S12 and 2. is a result of Glenn continuing to fight for Dennis' character staying consistent.

From point 1: Dennis was always the more effeminate, more coded to like men one, more touchy with Mac, a little obviously in love with him, until Mac outwardly expressed those feelings back. As early as M&DBU you can see how terrified Dennis is of being seen as gay, and in a relationship with Mac. For Dennis, as gay as it got, it was okay until it was labelled. Now that Mac is labelling himself as gay, now there's a hard stop for Dennis. Being with Mac is something Dennis could act on, and then be labelled as. (gay, bi, likes men, fucking Mac, boyfriend *shutters*) This is something that would happen if he didn't keep full, hard control against it.

To point 2: I think this was a bit of a divide in the writers room that Glenn couldn't control. S12 he bowed out, clearly he was feeling lost in Dennis and the writers room. When he left for S13 and 14, and you can see how Rob's want for Mac to be out, canon, very gay, in love with Dennis, comes through full-speed in these seasons, because Glenn wasn't writing (mostly). Rob wanting this directly conflicts with Glenn's writing for Dennis. Dennis is opposing Mac in every way, he has this exterior he has to put on, anti-Mac, anti-whatever they were, he's completely thrown off by Mac, hates their old dynamic.

Rob wants canon Macden, but he perceives Dennis differently than Glenn does, and likes this opposing path of the two of them, and that's obviously creating an issue. Clearly I don't know Rob's intentions, and maybe I'm talking out of my ass, but I don't think I'd be far off to say that he'd enjoy putting Macdennis through some desperation-hell (ala, Dennis gives in and gets with Mac because he's horny, uses him, DENNIS systems him, the result is Mac has always been the long-con for Dennis, which I admit, I wouldn't hate hate).

I think Glenn is against it, because there's always been something there for Dennis and there's a reason he came back, there's a reason he's always stayed around, always supported Mac. He is in love with Mac. It's not a system or a game, but a fucking fight for his life to oppose his true feelings and hide his identity, not be labelled. Dennis is stuck, and there's nothing pushing him to do anything about it. He'll get off with his systems and his kinks and he's okay.

Now we move to S15 and look, they aren't...all that opposing...during Lockdown, they...got along. And then, here goes Dennis, yelling and screaming about Mac obsessing over his own labels and identity so he can ignore his internal struggle. It's clear, he needs something to push him.

How do they go about it? Dennis jealousy arc seems like the perfect fucking beautiful compromise. Rob gets something raw, a little insane from Dennis, and Glenn gets to show that Dennis really is in fucking love with Mac.

TL;DR: Rob wants Macden now in some kind of dirty, get on with it, Dennis is using Mac kind of way. Glenn doesn't want it canon until they reach the conclusion of this arc that shows Dennis really does have big feelings (good and bad), and those feelings really kinda have a lot to do with Mac.

--

AGAIN THESE ARE JUST MY THOUGHTS AND I OFTEN WATCH THIS SHOW WHILE HIGH OR CROSS FADED SO IF YOU DISAGREE THATS TOTALLY 100% OKAY I DO NOT CARE IF YOU READ ALL THIS AND THINK IM STUPID OR WAY TOO INSANE ABOUT THIS ALL THATS TOTALLY VALID FOR YOU TO SAY! IF THERES NO JEALOUSY ARC IN s16 I AM A CLOWNNNNN!!!

#ask #macden #sorry this took me like an hour to write

[craycraybluejay]

I notice this trend where there's just "the 'leftist' version of old conservative rhetoric"

Like.

It's racist to find specific race-related traits (like common stuff for a given ethnicity or race or whatever) attractive and it's also racist to date someone of a different race because What About The Power Imbalance. Which sounds (to me) really similar to "interracial marriage is bad." And ikik I'm speaking from a place of white privelege and I'm open to criticism ab not personally knowing how certain shit works but like. I'm pretty sure the concept of segregating love and marriage is pretty racist. My main question there is why is it ok to find common features from your own race attractive but not another one. And in general I find this weirdly prevalent thing among young leftists where it's immoral *in general* to have a type in dating and sex and whatnot. If you like skinny girls you're feeding into bad beauty standards. If you like fat girls you're a gross evil fetishizer. If you like long hair on a woman you're too traditionalist and if you like short hair you're some strain of chaser and blah blah blah (and vice versa with men).

Or like. Old conservatives think it's bad to marry someone in a different socioeconomic class because muh status purity. But leftists do the exact same shit with talk of power imbalance. Y'all WAY too comfortable imposing strict rules on random people's relationships. Tankies gonna tank I guess.

Or self-proclaimed "leftists" same as conservative evangelicals talking about how sexual or violent (or sexually violent) acts depicted in film, videogames, books, etc. will make you act them out in real life and/or are immoral simply because the depiction is gross or tasteless in their opinion.

Or how any woman is always oppressed by any man, ignoring any intersectional analysis whatsoever about factors other than sex or gender. Conservatives think this should be the case and leftists (usually) claim they think otherwise but both sides seem to forget that sex and gender aren't the end-all-be-all of the oppressive hierarchies in society.

Or the whole "I got mine" rhetoric where, even with the supposedly more tolerant and open-minded left, that leftism and seeking of progress stops as far as it doesn't personally affect you or your circles. You know, like conservatives. "What's the point in defending psych survivors or paraphiles or youth or other people who it's socially accepted to hate and/or harm?" Do you hear yourself. Do you hear how lazy you sound and how quick you are to jump on the bus to throw other groups under. Leftists fought and still fight for your right to exist as a queer person and your right to be of an ethnicity that isn't the majority in politics or in your country and your right to being treated fairly in the workplace and you won't fight? You think the tide of progress is done? You jump on the bandwagon now to scream at people you hate for being too weird and too different and bad but believe you me; progress has Already Lost the moment vulnerable groups are allowed to be acceptable targets to wipe out, imprison, assault, abuse, etc. It's not a slippery slope fallacy; it's written in ink and blood- the blood on EVERYONE'S hands for letting it happen. They're writing in official documents who they're going to come for one by one. You let them take an inch, they'll take a mile. They'll come for you and yours too, you can fucking count on it. "Left" nowadays is synonymous with moderate. Nothing too crazy, of course the gays are fine but god forbid someone identifies as catgender or some shit; they should definitely be treated badly lol. This definitely won't come back to bite me in the ass.

There are so many parallels you can draw between political ideologies once you realize all people have some serious history to read up on and reflection to do. And it's hard to blame the ignorant ones who DO want to do the right thing but we have to stay alert, stay angry, stay willing to change ideas and reimagine movements. Sometimes some blame needs to be placed. But the reason it's hard to blame is because we are all so busy trying to survive in such an unfair and brutal world that most people don't have the time and privelege to spend doing the research and inner work to stay on top, to really understand politics and how important they are to how we live our lives. They say we have a CHOICE in how the machine runs but we are the ones made to run it, and are any of us actually given the ability to make those choices fully informed? There is no break from it; from work, from war, from death and chaos and division. And even if there was, we're so heavily propagandized and all cogs in machines.

But even if you don't get it yet, if you don't have time to actively pursue the research and all that, you have to TRY to be the best you can be. You can't take time off work to flesh out your life, let alone your political knowledge. That's ok. I know. No blame there, and if there is it's on your boss, it's on the way things are. But when someone comes to you you gotta use those critical thinking skills and try to do good by people. Don't turn the other cheek. Don't accept certain forms of oppression believing that if this is allowed they won't come for you instead. Don't be coming after easy targets. Just take a breath, think how you'd feel if you were that person, and be kind. Choose to be different, to extend your sympathy even to those you don't like. There is no such thing as a world without people you don't like. Look past yourself and always be willing to learn and change. Even if you don't have the ability to facilitate that on your own; life will give you many situations where you can choose how you act. Choose wisely, because what you do matters.

#rambles #this isn't that well put together #i'm not talking here as a professional just a super tired and fed up leftist #just drawing parallels and finding general annoyance in people #as disco elysium said the most important part of the leftist experience is arguing with other leftists #or something like that #i don't like any of y'alls ideologies but that comes with the territory lol

[never-ending-fanfic]

OCD Kallus WIP

@sapphic-loser16 and @seth-shitposts thank you for asking about it 💙🩵💙

(Disclaimer #1: if you're a person with OCD and you don't relate to this or think this is unrealistic compared to your experience- idk what to tell you. I write this for me and it reflects my point of view, OCD is not black and white, it's different for everyone, so yknow, don't like, don't read

I did something similar when I was invested deeply into the Atla fandom and I'm doing it here- projecting my experience onto a character, as nice way to put my own mentality in perspective. In short: OCD is a bitch, so I'll use it to torture a character)

TW: mention of intrusive thoughts, compulsions, non-graphic violence. I'll place a cut here

The thing about OCD Kallus WIP is: do I think Kallus could have OCD based on the show? No. Will I give him one in fanfiction? Absolutely.

I don't really think I'll even publish it- it feels personal in this wild manner. I might change my mind sometime. But in the meantime, the general idea consists of this (and bear with me, it's long):

Kallus has had OCD ever since childhood, but he doesn't remember that well. He can recall a few strange things he made himself do just to be safe, but not much beond that. In the Empire he didn't have the symptoms, because when he was in the academy, a medic prescribed him meds for said symptoms and they worked (who cares that he had a ton of side effects like insomnia and stuff like this, it worked so he didn't complain). And slowly he forgot he's ever had to deal with that.

After he defects, it's logical that he doesn't take the meds anymore. For a while it's fine, he got a dose before Atollon happened so it still works for some time. Until it doesn't, of course.

All the intrusive thoughts, all the paranoia and all the obsessions hit him like a train one sunny, lovely day when he's having tea with Hera and they're talking gossip about the base. And then he gets a very visual idea to pull out a blaster and shoot Hera in the head. It's very explicit and he clearly sees every part of it happening almost in front of his eyes.

And he's (kriffing rightfully so) terrified. And because he's never been in therapy or recieved any sort of help except those blasted meds, he spirals into panic pretty quick. He gets more thoughts like that, about not only the Spectres but anyone he interacts with, about hurting them, assaulting them or killing them. The thoughts appear out of the blue at any moment and he's never prepared for them. Assuming that he's going crazy, he doesn't tell anyone, scared of what the people might thing and scared of loosing everything he has because of it. He tries to take care of it by himself- by distancing himself from people he's scared of hurting, by never going near weapons, by throwing his own blaster away, he's even avoiding kitchen knives and forks, because he know that with his training, it could be turned into a deadly weapon.

The others see it and try to help, but he only distances himself further and further, to the point that he's scared of leaving his room, imagining he might hurt someone if he goes out.

Oh right, add to that a huge number of rituals he has to do now, to keep everyone around safe from himself- he needs to turn the light in his room on and off five times, because if he doesn't, he's going to stab Sabine in the back, tap his fingers together in a pattern before settling for the night or else he will blow the base up. And he doesn't want any of that to happen, so he does all these things and more.

And then one day the Spectres decide to use force to get him out of his room and he finally agrees for the sake of looking somewhat like his normal self in front of them. They have dinner on the Ghost. Before he can grab a fork though, he claps his hands in a pattern. He reaches for a fork and hears Ezra snort, asking what was that he did with his hands. Kallus' blood runs cold at the thought that someone saw him and he's so stressed that he feels the urge to flee- he needs to perform a ritual, but he can only do that when nobody else is around. And he almost does so, before Zeb stops him and a whole mess starts because Kallus panics and says he absolutely needs to get out and go to his room and Zeb, misunderstanding the situation, is insistent on him staying. And then Kallus blurts out that if he doesn't go to his room this instant, he could kill the entire crew and he doesn't want to do that, so will Zeb please let him go, so he can-

And then Zeb let's him go. And they all watch stunned as Kallus bolts out of the Ghost.

No plot beyond that, I have no idea what goes on besides that, but I know that- the ending is gonna be happy, with the crew realising what is going on and chasing any info on what OCD is, Kallus goes to therapy, gets diagnosed and gets the necessary resources to battle that fuckery with the help of his family and they live happily ever after the end

I kinda felt like crying as I was writing this down

(Disclaimer #2: OCD is a fucked up thing to have and just to be sure that I said it, just so I can carry on with a clear conscience: intrusive thoughts are NOT some unspoken desires of your mind that you actually want to happen- intrusive thoughts are chaotic wild messes of things you fear you're capable of doing and you're so terrified of doing them that you must perform tasks so they don't happen- it doesn't make any sense and believe me, anyone with OCD is aware of how irrational it sounds, you don't need to tell us. But it works like that. Intrusive thoughts are things we would never do, but they scare us so badly to the point of making up inexistent connections between them and our compulsions.

And for the last fucking time, OCD DOES NOT MEAN YOU ARE A CLEAN FREAK WHO JUST LOVES ORGANISING THINGS BY COLOUR- and if a person with actual OCD does that, it's certainly not because they like it)

#star wars rebels #star wars #alexsandr kallus #agent kallus #kallus #garazeb orrelios #zeb orrelios #swr #star wars fanfiction #wip ask game

[therobishow]

Saw your post and who am I to deny an opportunity to rant about terrible terrible twilight knock offs?

Okay so ever since twilight came out in 2005, there's been a load of knock offs inspired by the "vampire=hot and sexy/mysterious" and while some of them are, this author P.C cast and Kristen Cast saw the idea and cranked it up more than was necessary because what the hell.

The book is called House of Night and there are lots of books. And the idea of being a vampire was that you had to be marked/chosen in order to undergo it's transformation which. If you were chosen, you had to be with a fully fledged vampire until you were fully fledged yourself which is a long process (around four years) and what is a better place than being with a bunch of fully grown vampires than a academy with other chosen with the fledglings as the teachers?

I'm not gonna lie, it's a great concept but it's terrible what the authors done with it. Transformations don't always work and the chosen sometimes die, but in order to prevent this- you had to be pretty and not fat. Shockingly this isn't the worst thing on the list of how many messed up things this book had done

Then the authors worsen the book more by having the characters be problematic. (They sl#t shame a lot and this doesn't make sense since it's common knowledge that drinking human blood /blood in general is sexual in the story)

Examples include saying the r word, fetishizing queer characters, making a white character "twins" with a black character because they're just so alike like using aave as an example (and the black character she's twinning with is terribly written as well so it just ends up more terrible)

And absolutely terribly horrendous relationships!!

The main character is the "not like other girls tm" and so she gets the bad boy, some sort of thousand year old grandpa boyfriend, a TEACHER boyfriend, and a human boyfriend 😭 (for the amount of shaming this book has, the main character is getting busy with every boy she meets)

AND WHAT MAKES THIS BOOK MORE WORSE is that they thought it was cool to use Indigenous culture but strip everything about said culture so they can fit use what they thought was cool to use in the story. Im happy for any type of indigenous reputation as an indigenous person myself but WHY

They just made the main character (who was named Zoey redbird btw, cool last name tbh but absolutely shitty character) have op powers and call her a "Cherokee princess" with no respectful mention of Cherokee culture at all. They just made their own thing and slapped the word Cherokee on it and shipped it as representation.

For a character that's supposed to be non-white, she was acting the opposite despite being close with her grandma who was Indigenous (+ being stereotypical) and inheriting op powers that were meant to be from her "culture"

PISSES ME OFF SO MUCH

I don't even know how I saw past the red flags as a kid reading this book but now that I have, I'm just so angry just thinking about it 😭

I hope this rant of mine was entertaining

I was just on the right side of too old to hear about this series back when it came out. So let me tell you, it was an absolute trip to see what was in these books when my friends started raving about them a few years later.

Like, this? This is what they were so hyped about? I'd rather them tell me how much they love 50 Shades - well, okay, that's a little too far, but still.

I truly don't understand how any woman survived the absolute peak of fatphobia that we hit in the 2000s. And I'm including myself in that. No idea how I lived through it. These were the days when people were calling Britney Spears fat for being a size 4 instead of a 0. How did women not just collectively die off? Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that we made it through, but holy hell it was by the skin of our teeth.

So someone really needs to tell me what the actual hell was going on in the 2000s that made every piece of teen media present teacher/student relationships like a totally cool and not abusive and traumatizing thing. Remember how grossed out everyone was by the Archie/Grundy relationship in Riverdale? In the 2000s, no one would have batted an eye at that. It would have fit right in with every other teen show at the time. I can't watch hardly any of my favorite high school shows anymore because of that. Ugh, so gross.

And holy shit I forgot she was indigenous! Well, in heavy quotes at least. That Cherokee Princess nonsense is such a White People move and I just can't. I don't know what's worse regarding indigenous rep, House of Night or Twilight. My man Charles de Lint isn't perfect and he's fucked it up a few times, but at least he actually tries and shows respect (um, hey, if he's actually far worse than I think, please let me know).

But, hey, in maybe possibly good news, apparently the writers are trying to convince the publishers to let them rewrite the series so they can do something about all the problematic stuff. That at least has the potential of growth for them

#literature #books #house of night #Asks

[creature-wizard]

Am I in a cult ? If yes, is there a specific name to this kind of pipeline ? Is that some kind of domestic-abuse-survivor-to-antivax-wellness pipeline ?

Sorry for the massive ask, it's very long, I'm planning to talk to a therapist about that.

For context : I live outside of US, in Europe, english isn't my native language. I've spent my early years in a very religious christian environment, then teenhood in New Age type of environment (they say it's not New Age, but I don't see any differences with that, it's repackaged Eastern spiritualities and religions mixed with pseudo-science self-help wellness cure-for-all-sickness).

I think I might spend all my childhood and teenhood in a cult environment. Very isolated. Very us-vs-them, we're specia and they're borinfg, mindset.

Multiple trauma layered within each other, school, home, medical, family, youth movements, deaths, suicides, being forced to watch horrific stuff for "good benevolent samaritan savior" reasons, other horrific stuff happened.

I'm still in it. This situation got worse with time since 2020.

My parents keep saying they're not partaking in cult interactions, they're skeptical and free thinkers, wich makes me even more confused. I mean it's like they're in a cult but it doesn't look like a cult and they say it's not a cult.

I'm not sure about it since it doesn't look like what I've seen portrayed online and in movies.

We don't go to church, attend public events. The only information sources and interactions are on social medias like youtube. Politicians talking about pfizer and "big pharma corruptions" and how freedom patriots will save everyone. That kind of tropes. But apparently it's not social media because it doesn't look like Facebook or Instagram. I stopped doing that very recently, 2021-2022. Seriously it was so hard to quit this habit, I'm so glad I did it.

Every time I learn about post traumatic stress responses, new age psychology cults, wellness spiritual healing mlm marketing, cult behavior, codependent issues, white supremacy pure blood tropes, I get terrified because I relate a bit too well. I'm living in this ideological nightmare. I had similar experiences in a different context.

I've been fed all kind of conspiracy theories (they're not "conspiracists" just skeptical and free thinkers), spiritual "healing", "I choose what happened to me and I'm a special soul" kind of karma tropes, had forced exorcism on me while having a mental crisis because I had "bad spirits" controlling me, heard all the time about apocalypse scenarios where vaccinated people would die within a few months, heard horrific stories about covid vaccines side effects, red-pill "we live in a society and others are mindless NPCs" stories, I can't even describe all the things I've gone trough those last three years.

I'm still really scared of the idea of escaping this pipeline. I don't even know what exactly it is, how to escape this, what to expect and how to leave properly when my parents will learn about that. It feels like it's been all my life. Maybe I'm wrong and it's just me being "psychotic" like they say.

How do I make sure I'm not interpretating and making false assumptions ? Most of the time, I don't even know how to check my own stories, beliefs, opinions from actual facts. Am I in a cult or am I making things up ?

Thank you for reading to the end.

Cults in real life rarely look like the ones on TV, which are based more on conspiracy theories about cults. Real cults look like the kind of thing you're describing. You are absolutely in a cult; you're literally describing the same stuff I'm talking about when I write about the bullshit that New Agers/QAnons/Q Agers are into.

There are support groups for people in your shoes, including ReQovery and QAnon Casualties on Reddit.

Maybe some of my followers have more ideas?

#answered #suicide mention #cults #cult behavior #cult abuse #religious abuse

[queenofthursday6599-blog]

When I was little I didn't know that racism between white and black people was a thing

It's going to sound weird, but while I knew that racism existed when I was little, I didn't know that racism from white people against black people was a thing.

Because on both sides of my family I've got cousins (like second cousins and stuff, people from my parents generation) who married black spouses.

So I grew up with cousins who were black (step cousins? my mom's cousin adopted them when their parent married in, then there's their younger half siblings who I'm blood related to) and mixed on both sides of my family, but I was closer with the cousins on my maternal side, probably because there were more of them closer in age to me.

So the idea that there was a time in history where white people and black people weren't allowed to get married was shocking to me.

Racism against other kind of POC however I was far more familiar with, for various reasons.

Either by way of the vaguely racist jokes and slurs that would get tossed out by older relatives against asian, latino, and middle eastern people (very few of those in my family).

Or- OR various members of my family getting mistaken for being latino. Specifically my dad, older sister, aunt, and cousin (both from my dad's side of the family) who all have been mistaken for latino at one point or another.

But the person in my family that this happens to the most is my dad.

For being what I can only describe as a dark skinned white person.

Like literally.

My dad did one of those at home dna ancestry tests once, nothing but german, english, and french as far as the test could tell. Man should be pasty as far as the dna results say, but he stays 2 shades darker than the rest of us year round.

He gets mistaken for latino by actual latinos regularly, it's a whole thing. Especially if he ends up working a job with multiple latino co-workers.

Which is also hilarious because his dad (my grand dad) was technically legally mexican because he was born in mexico (even though my dad's grand parents on that side were born and raised in the USA, so I don't even know the story of about how my grand dad ended up being born in mexico), but that's a whole other thing.

Anyways there was a 2 or 3 year gap between me learning that racism as a concept exists (only so many times your mom can tell you not to repeat what your older relative says because it's racist before the idea clicks), and learning that white people being racist against black people specifically was a really big thing that existed, specifically in american history.

There really was a brief period of my life where I thought racism was a white people vs latinos vs asian vs middle eastern people thing.

Which is a different kind of horrible when you take into account that I have a younger cousin who's adopted from pakistan who I literally heard another older relative of mine call Sand N*gg*r when he was out of ear shot when he was like 5 years old.

SO yeah, I knew racism was alive and well, but the people I was around growing up tended to keep black people out of the conversation due to the multiple interracial marriages involving black people, along with like a half dozen mixed cousins in total, in my family.

#family lore #at the start you maybe thought I lived in total blissful ignorance as a child #but the ending the ending is where it gets ya

[quaranmine]

How to Be a Human Being (Chapter Three)

Grian and Mumbo meet with someone who's more than happy to help them test if their souls are linked.

Masterpost | Chapter Two | Chapter Four

Words: 4395

CW for blood and character killing themselves. It's not meant to be suicide and is more referencing Minecraft respawn mechanics where dying isn't a big deal. It is, however, meant to be written in a slightly worrying way so take that as you will? I think we're getting to the better parts as we get deeper in the story, so I'm very excited. Thank you for reading <3

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

Three days later, and Mumbo’s wings were gangly now. They were an annoying size: far too big to wear an elytra with, but still too small to fly with. They were, however, just the right size to be in the way of everything Mumbo tried to do. He kept whacking them on door frames and while Grian was sympathetic since he too had whacked a few door frames in his time, it was also really funny. Mumbo had refused to practice the shape-shifting since their day in the alley, claiming he’d rather like to know what was going on first before he caused any extra problems, thank you very much.

Which left them walking to Zedaph’s instead of flying. Or rather, Mumbo walking and Grian annoying him by flying circles around him and then landing up ahead to wait before repeating the process again when Mumbo got close enough. That’s what you do to your slow walking friends, right? Grian was really looking forward to teaching him to fly. 

“So what did you tell Zedaph?” Mumbo asked, again. 

“I just requested that he do an experiment on us since we wanted to learn something. He told me to bring you by today.”

“Oh, well, this should be fun.”

“I figured he could have some ideas about how to test our, ah, soul-sharing. Or hopefully lack of it,” Grian explained. “In return he gets some interesting data I guess.” Said as if Zedaph didn’t practically fall over at the chance for a dual study. Grian didn’t even have to pay him!

“I’m fairly sure he’s not actually a scientist, you know,” said Mumbo conspiratorially. 

“Where’s the fun in it if he is?”

Eventually, they arrived at Zedaph’s base, the blue glass glinting in the morning sunlight. Some sheep baa’d from their place over on the sheep wall. Zedaph was an interesting fellow, Grian thought. 

The man himself greeted them at the door wearing a lab coat and smiling wide with a twinkle in his eye that meant they were probably in for a wild ride. “Welcome!” he said. “I’m happy to see you here. I hope you’re ready! You know, I planned to pull Mumbo aside for a study soon but this works as well. Come in, come in.”

Mumbo shot Grian a glance while Zedaph chattered, but Grian just shrugged. 

They entered the hall, but before they were allowed onward, Zedaph handed both of them clipboards. “Sign this,” he said. 

Grian looked at his page. It read:

 I, Grian, allow Zedaph to hereby conduct scientific experimentation on me. I understand it may be dangerous and Zedaph is not responsible for any soul-related shenanigans that may happen. You knew what you were getting into when you asked Zedaph to perform an experiment on you, and you will listen to his requests no matter how weird they appear. You approve Zedaph’s use of your data for the furtherment of scientific knowledge. Also, Zed is very smart. Have no fear. 

“Yes, yes,” Grian said, “I’ll sign.”

After he collected the clipboards, Grian followed the man down the hall to what he assumed was an observation room. But before they got there, Zedaph opened a door on the side of the hall and led them in there. It was a basic room with stark white walls and harsh lighting. In it were just two chests and a bed. 

“Set your spawn here,” Zedaph instructed brightly.

“Spawn?” Mumbo asked, alarmed. “Should we be worried about dying during this?”

“Worried? No!” Zedaph exclaimed. “But yes, you may die. Don’t worry, the highest level of ethical deliberation went into these experiments. I would never harm you . . . unnecessarily.”

Grian sighed. “Well, I guess it might be necessary to test what happens when we die. Since . . . you know. It may be connected.” God, he hoped he wouldn’t die whenever Mumbo did. At least this didn’t happen to him with Scar. 

“Speaking of which,” Zedaph began, “can you tell me more about what you would like out of this experiment? What are your goals? I have to know what sort of notes to take.”

“The difference between messing around and doing science is writing it down,” Mumbo supplied seriously, and Zedaph nodded rigorously. 

“The shortest explanation is that I suspect Mumbo and I may be sharing a soul,” Grian said. He kind of hoped that Zedaph wouldn’t ask about why. He didn’t really mind if Zedaph knew, since this was bound to become common knowledge at some point, but he just didn’t feel like telling the story. Thankfully, he seemed to accept the simple explanation. “Our goal is to test that and see if my suspicion is correct.”

“Of course,” replied Zedaph, “a hypothesis.” He wrote it down. Grian caught a glimpse of the paper, which just read: Soulmates?

“Not when you put it like that,” Grian muttered, too low for anyone else to hear.

He and Mumbo began putting their stuff in the chest while Zedaph studied something on his clipboard. Then they both set their spawn. When they were done, Zedaph spoke again.

“So I figure there's a few things we need to test. First, your reactions to each other’s pain. Can you feel it, or is it entirely separate? From there, I will test respawn. Then we should test how each of you think and feel, as well as your senses. Sounds good?”

“Sure,” said Mumbo. 

“Fantastic! Follow me,” he replied, and led them back into the hallway. Grian was right, one of the rooms on the end was an observation room. It was filled with knick-knacks and seemingly random items. There was a second room beside it, though. “I built another observation chamber, which is why I had you wait a few days,” Zedaph said as they arrived. “Studying two people at once is such a great opportunity, I couldn’t pass it up. I will be able to see both of you now from my control room, but you won’t be able to see or hear each other.”

He shooed them into their rooms. The tinted glass made the control room look dim, but the lights were bright enough on the other side that Grian could still see Zedaph. He was about a meter above Grian, looking over him. Grian’s own room was pleasantly lit and a little cluttered. The air felt muffled and quiet. 

Zedaph said something on the other side of the glass that Grian couldn’t hear, and gave a thumbs up. Grian hesitantly returned the gesture, not really knowing what he was agreeing with. 

He . . . he wasn’t sure he really liked this. Being scrutinized. The urge to hide and bury any sort of feelings was strong, but somewhere along this journey he’d sort of committed himself to trying to be more open, if for nothing else but Mumbo’s sake. And, this was of course, his idea. So he stood and waited patiently for them to begin, trying to not feel like a mouse in the grass being stalked by an owl far above him.

A loudspeaker somewhere above him suddenly crackled, and Grian tried not to jump. “You can’t hear me unless I use this,” said Zedaph. “It seems like you’re both ready. Mumbo told me he’s been taking regen for the pain from his wings, so I told him to drink some milk to cancel it out before we began. So tell me if you feel anything.” Grian had a bad feeling he would.

The difference was sudden and unpleasant, like being drenched in a bucket of ice cold water but much less refreshing. “Ow,” he said eloquently. His back was sore again, feeling like he’d wrenched his wing and pulled the muscle. Or like a growing pain. 

“Did you feel anything?” Zedaph asked. 

“Yes,” Grian replied. 

“Interesting!” He scribbled something on his paper. Grian kind of hoped he would be allowed to see the paper at the end. 

Next, Zedaph instructed Grian to pull out and plant a berry bush in one of the chests. They were surprisingly well-stocked, and he had both dirt and bone meal to grow it with. When he was done, he told Grian to prick himself on the bush. “Ugh, this is the worst,” Grian complained, but did as he was told. Berry bushes had to be one of the most useless and annoying plants to deal with. After an agonizingly slow minute: “Can I please stop now?”

“Yes,” Zedaph said. He spoke again where Grian couldn’t hear him, and Grian realized that it was because he was probably speaking into the other chamber. “Mumbo told me he didn’t feel anything.”

Huh.

Grian was afraid that maybe the pain connection only went one way–with just Grian feeling Mumbo’s pain–but it was soon assuaged. Zedaph had Mumbo jump off the tallest thing in the room and report back about fall damage. Grian hadn’t felt it. The room was tall, but not tall enough to kill or seriously injure yourself from falling, so the pain must have been minor. 

Their new working hypothesis was that yes, the two did share pain, but it was only bigger or more persistent pains. Grian really hoped this was the case–while he’d prefer to not be connected to Mumbo at all, that ship had already sailed a long time ago so it was all he could do to just hope that he didn’t have to feel every minor paper cut Mumbo ever got. Mumbo wasn’t nearly as clumsy as Scar, but he had an oblivousness about him that Grian just knew was probably the cause of all sorts of minor bruises and scrapes. 

Grian, of course, never did stupid things like forgetting where he was midair and flying into the side of his mountain and dying of kinetic energy. He . . . he had gone through a few pairs of glasses since the season started. 

They tested again with a pufferfish that Grian ate with only minor persuasion from Zedaph.  The room spun sickeningly. He closed his eyes against the vertigo, but even just moving his head with his eyes closed made his stomach lurch. Against the darkness of his eyelids, it was disconcertingly difficult to discern up from down, even though he knew he was still standing up.  He settled for staying as still as possible. If he didn’t move, maybe he could stop existing for a moment. 

“Grian?” the loudspeaker crackled. “Are you doing okay?”

“Mm,” he replied. 

“You can take the milk now,” Zedaph said, and Grian hastily drank it. He’d almost forgotten he was holding the bucket. Like a switch being flipped, the nausea vanished. Grian blinked, and shook his wings out. 

“Please tell me there was a point to that,” he said. 

“Mumbo told me that he felt sick too,” Zedaph said. “Although, to be frank, he looked a lot better than you do right now. He said it felt less severe than normal.”

“I think it’s like . . . muffled,” Grian suggested. “I can feel his pain and he can feel mine, but it seems like it’s not as strong.”

“Like an echo,” Zedaph mused, and wrote that down too. 

Another test. This time, with a hunger effect on Mumbo. Grian had felt that too, a sudden gnawing ache where there hadn’t been any previously. He’d absentmindedly started to snack on a berry from the bush he planted earlier. 

  Next was a little more severe: a sword swipe. Actual blood spilled. Potion effects and fall damage and berry bushes were all different from the type of injuries that could be sustained in a PVP fight, so it was wise to test those too. Unfortunately, it was Grian’s turn–they’d been taking turns to test that the pain-sharing things were fully reciprocal. He wasn’t particularly afraid of being hurt or dying; living in a world with infinite respawn fostered a rather casual attitude toward death. Sometimes a little death was fun, like in death games like Demise or Cleo’s headgames. Or like dropping Scar into the void, or killing fellow Boatem members with a sneak end crystal attack.

Hermits as a whole were pretty casual toward death. If you killed someone, you replaced their items or lent them the use of a farm to get their levels back, but it wasn’t really a big deal.  He wasn’t particularly looking forward to running himself through with a sword this time, though. If for nothing else than the temporary inconvenience of pain. 

“Have you got a sword, Grian?” Zedaph asked. 

“Yes,” Grian replied. “Just made one with the supplies in the chest.” He’d left his normal one in the chest in the respawn room. The new one was just iron, the shiny new blade glinting in the light. Although it was unenchanted, the blade was sure to be sharp without any past use to make it dull or chipped. 

Bracing himself, he counted 1, 2 . . . surprising even himself when he shoved the sword into his own abdomen before he made it to the count of three. Best to make it a surprise when you try to hurt yourself, otherwise you may lose your nerve halfway through. Don’t ask where Grian learnt that. It didn’t hurt at first, just an uncomfortable sudden pressure. He gasped, feeling the pain beginning to rush in as he slipped the sword back out. Instinctively, he threw his hand across the wound, feeling the blood beginning to flow through his fingers despite the pressure he put on it. 

That was a little more than he expected. The sword clattered to the floor, and he wrapped his other arm around the wound too. It felt hard to breathe, and he breathed shallower like it would stop the bleeding faster. It burned. His heart beat fast. He didn’t make a sound, didn’t have enough breath to.  

His hand was wet. Blood dripped on the floor. The air tasted metallic, no–his mouth did, and he was just panting. Did he bite his tongue? He didn’t remember doing that.  

“Grian!” Zedaph shouted, worry edging his voice. He sounded a bit fuzzy, further off than normal. Or was that just the intercom? “I only meant a small cut!”

Interesting. The room was colder. His abdomen was white-hot. His hand was wet. 

“I think I may test the respawn now,” Grian mumbled, before blacking out.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

“Do not do that again,” someone scolded Grian when he woke up. It sounded like Mumbo. Grian opened his eyes. It was Mumbo.  

“I’m awake now,” he said as a reply. He looked around the room, which was still empty save the chests and the bed, but Zedaph was also here now. Or, was also here when he woke up. Grian wasn’t really sure–respawn was always a little disorienting for the first two seconds. 

“You scared Zedaph,” Mumbo said. 

“I wasn’t-”

“Zedaph told me to do that!” Grian defended. 

“No, I just wanted you to cut yourself with the sword, not fully stab yourself in the stomach,” Zedaph said. “But we were going to test respawn anyway so you saved me the trouble.”

“So?” Grian prompted. 

“I did not die when you did,” Mumbo replied. 

“Good, so our deaths aren’t connected. I can sacrifice you to the Boatem hole anytime I want if that’s the case.”

“Hey-”

“Well, we still need to test Mumbo’s respawn,” Zedaph reminded him. “If you’re okay, we can go back to the observation room?”

“Of course I’m okay,” Grian said and they left the conversation. 

Zedaph led the way back to the observation room, making notes on his clipboard in favor of actually looking where he was going. Grian’s room had a puddle of blood still in it, a little tacky and half-dry from the time that had passed. Grian’s sweater–and body–had mended itself upon respawn, but a little evidence normally remained. He uncomfortably cleaned it with a towel while Mumbo and Zedaph spoke through the intercom. Apparently, Mumbo had, in true Mumbo fashion, found the end crystals in the chest, and decided to simply blow himself up. 

Well, if he’d stabbed himself like Grian did, or maybe shot himself, it might’ve shown up as a player kill, ruining his stats. Leave it to Mumbo to find the loopholes. 

Grian didn’t know when he set up the crystals, but he knew it when they went off. Normally he couldn’t hear through the walls, but the explosion rattled the room and left a few small holes in the wall between them. He looked over into Mumbo’s chamber, seeing the broken blocks and item frames on the floor, and no Mumbo. 

“Maybe I should’ve saved this part for last,” muttered Zedaph, with the look of a man who knew he was going to have to fix the room before they continued. 

“I’ll help,” offered Grian, reading his mind. 

Next on the agenda after they fixed the room was a little less deadly and a little less painful. Zedaph wanted to test how closely they thought, or something like that. Just in case they shared that. Grian was pretty sure already that they didn’t, since he probably would have noticed being able to read Mumbo’s mind by now. They tested regardless. 

“Tell me how you would make a piston door,” Zedaph instructed. 

“Uh . . .” Grian wracked his brain. He wasn’t totally inept at redstone–he’d built a storage system last season, thank you very much, no mind that he used a tutorial–but it definitely wasn’t something that occupied a place in his brain normally. Given time he could probably make a simple piston door, but off the top of his head? “Well you need sticky pistons, some redstone, maybe a repeater, and something to trip the system with like a lever? I, uh, don’t think this is the kind of answer you were looking for, Zed. There’s no magical Mumbo redstone knowledge in my head and I don’t think I’m going to find it if I keep going.”

“Hm,” Zedaph said cryptically, and left it at that. 

Mumbo had improved tremendously at building recently, so Grian figured it wouldn’t be as effective to ask the question the other way around. He sniffed. If Mumbo was going to turn into a builder, while still being awesome at redstoning, then what would Grian have left? Mumbo was coming for his brand! (He was thrilled, personally, at his improvement.)

“Pick a number between one and one hundred,” Zedaph asked next, after taking a moment to speak with Mumbo. 

“Uh,” Grian said. “37.”

“Hm.” Zedaph scribbled on his paper again. “You didn’t pick the same thing as Mumbo. He picked 82.”

“Was I supposed to?”

“Did you know what number he picked?”

“No.”

“Then no.”

Next, Zedaph put a book into the slot. Grian took it, flipping to the first page. It was an ink blot of some sorts. “What do you see in it?” Zedaph asked. “I’m going to compare your answer and Mumbo’s.”

Grian looked at it. It did indeed look like a blot, but maybe with a few holes that could be eyes and some legs sticking out. “It looks a little like an alien,” he replied. “Like one of the ones from Space Invaders.”

 “Very good.” Zedaph nodded, and walked out of eye shot of Grian to ask the same thing of Mumbo. 

“What did Mumbo see?” Grian said, when Zedaph walked back around.

“He said he saw a stag beetle. Like the-”

“The ones that push poo?”

“Yes, those. Tells me a lot about him, actually.”

Grian furrowed his brow. “Mumbo and I are clearly not on the same page here. I don’t know if this is supposed to see if we’re sharing thoughts, but I don’t think we are.”

“Well, one more chance to test that,” Zedaph said. “Next we’re going to play a little bit of a game. I’m going to ask Mumbo a question. He’s going to answer it, and then you’re going to tell me what his answer was. Sound good?”

“Sure,” Grian said.

Zedaph came back after getting Mumbo’s answer. “I asked him how old he was when he joined the server.”

“Seventeen,” Grian answered immediately. “But I didn’t know that because he just said that in the other room, I knew that from before. I think you need another question.”

Zedaph frowned, but came back with another question. “If Mumbo had a dog, what name would he give it?”

Grian paused. “I . . . don’t know that one. He doesn’t have many pets.”

Zedaph checked his clipboard. “He wrote ‘Kubo.’”

“Oh. I didn’t know that.”

Now it was Grian’s turn for questions Mumbo would have to answer correctly. He thought it was a bit of a waste of time at this point, but he wasn’t the scientist in charge. 

“When did you meet Mumbo?” Zedaph asked. 

“Just before I joined Evo–wait. Are you making us play the Newlywed Game?” Grian exclaimed. 

Zedaph stared at Grian silently. “. . . No.”

“You totally are.”

“No! They’re totally different games. See, this one relies on seeing if you can know what the other person is saying because your thoughts are connected. The Newlywed Game relies on seeing how well you know each other.”

“All of these questions could be answered by us knowing each other well. I’m not answering any more of these.”

“. . . You have me there. Let’s move on to our final test.”

The final test was just to see if any of their senses matched. Sight, smell, hearing, taste, touch. Mumbo was apparently entirely disconnected to Grian in his chamber–none of the senses seemed to carry over. But it was important to study reciprocity, so Grian was questioned as well. 

“You can’t hear anything that has happened in Mumbo’s chamber, right? The walls are designed so that under normal circumstances you can’t, but we are not testing normal circumstances with you two.”

“No, I can’t,” Grian replied. 

“Can you smell, taste, or touch anything?”

“No.”

“Can you see into Mumbo’s chamber?”

And, well, that one gave Grian a pause. Because he could, if he wanted to. He could see into Mumbo’s chamber. He could also go see what Scar was doing back in Boatem, or see where TFC was in the mines, or see into Zedaph’s bedroom if he wanted. It’s what Watchers do. They see, and they’re extraordinarily good at it. 

But Grian didn’t like to do that. It felt like spying, and spying felt wrong, and he’d hated that part of being a Watcher. He’d sworn to not use his Watching power except in times of necessity. It also activated a part of himself he had no problem admitting to hating–a version of himself that didn’t pass as human, or close to it. A version covered in eyes in all the wrong places and glowing skin that altogether moved in a slightly wrong way. 

. . . Mumbo had only just learned to use the shapeshifting powers. He didn’t even know how to fly yet. He didn’t need to see that version of Grian, not yet. 

Grian realized Zedaph was still waiting for him. It didn’t take a Watcher’s instinct to know he was being looked at. “No, I can’t see into Mumbo’s chamber,” he replied slowly. Not because of a soul connection. Not without activating something else. 

Zedaph spent a few moments flipping through his papers. He buzzed the intercom again. “Okay, that concludes our tests. Thank you for your time! Please meet me outside the laboratory and I will discuss your preliminary results.”

About five minutes later, Mumbo and Grian were back in front of the sheep wall outside. 

“So, did we pass?” Mumbo joked. 

“I have a lot of interesting data,” Zedaph said. “Thank you for allowing me to study you. I can’t say you passed, since this wasn’t a pass or fail type of procedure. But I can say that, unfortunately–or fortunately, I can’t speak for you–that I think your hypothesis is correct.”

“Oh dear,” Mumbo said. “So we do share a soul?”

“In as scientific as I can test soul-sharing, I believe so,” Zedaph replied. “You both scored much higher on pain than you did on sharing thoughts, though. I believe that you both share significant pain or discomfort between you, but that you do not have access to each other’s thoughts or senses.”

“I don’t think I could survive a day in Mumbo’s head, to be honest,” Grian said, and Mumbo elbowed him. “Ow!”

“The only thing I was unable to test was strong emotion, as it is difficult to correctly evoke that within a lab setting, so watch out for that. May I ask . . . how did you two end up sharing a soul?”

“Accident,” Mumbo said. “Don’t mess with things you shouldn’t in order to get things you shouldn’t.”

“Oh, say no more,” replied Zedaph, and he looked like he actually did understand. Grian’s curiosity was piqued. “Could I ask that you update me with any new discoveries so that I can add them to my report?”

Mumbo looked at Grian, who just shrugged. “Sure,” he said.

Zedaph grinned. “Thank you! And good luck!”

Mumbo and Grian’s walk back to Boatem was long, and mostly silent as the two of them thought about their new discovery. It was odd how everything you knew could get upended in a day. It had happened several times to Grian. This time, though, he was still here to fight for it. 

They shared a soul. It answered Grian’s question from the first day of their little adventure, but he didn’t really seem satisfied with the answer. They shared a soul. Was this forever? Was it caught between them, like a soul in limbo crossing between the overworld and the afterlife? Did they share the same powers? It seemed so big, and vast, and permanent, and unfixable. 

Mumbo’s my best friend, but I don’t think I’m ready to be tethered to him from now on.

If they found a way to fix it, would one of them be left without a soul? Would they die? Grian had so many questions. There weren’t any answers. 

And in the meantime, Mumbo was now most certainly a Watcher. Maybe they could learn to live like this, but it wasn’t a happy ending for him. This isn’t something Grian would have wished to share with anyone. Mumbo was now a Watcher, and as such a new private viewer to Grian’s personal little hell. He deserved better. 

Grian wanted to give him better, but he didn’t know how. 

<< Chapter Two | Masterpost | Chapter Four >>

#hermitcraft #grian #mumbo jumbo #zedaph #watcher grian #watcher mumbo jumbo #hermitcraft fanfiction #quara fanfic

[kitsunesfandomtime]

His escape from hell - Ch 1

Characters: Yoichi Shigaraki, Second One for all User, Third One for all user

Warnings: Hallucination, truama response, and Yoichi just a bit frazzled.

Summary: Sequel to Treasure Vault. Yoichi has escaped the vault with the help of these rebel forces but he is still suffering the truama and effects of the vault. He refuses to let that stop him, one way or another even if no one on his side. He has a goal he wishes to achieve.

Yoichi had escaped his prison and it was supposed to be the start of a new life. The beginning of his story of finally becoming a hero despite what his brother says.

He was more than happy to tell the rebels everything they wished to hear. They fed him, they clothed him in something other than slacks and even were kind enough to give him a doctor. When he wasn't a mess it was only natural that he wanted to help they were even saying he could join the fight if he trained.

They were a group that was angry at the lack of government action against All for One instead claiming he doesn't exist. Just random groups that weren't at all related to each other all because the leader was hiding in the shadows or possibly too afraid to admit someone that can gather so much power in one person existed.

So Yoichi learned that the government would rather cover up and hide All-for-One existence. They were trying to bury his brother but as a result, it allowed people to get hurt in the crossfire constantly. It left a bad taste in his mouth unsure if he should be more repulsed at the government for their indifference or his brother for not backing down.

He could understand how a rebel group unaffiliated with either could form. Though they didn't tell him everything as it seemed, they had different intentions when they broke into the base. There was still distrust and they hadn't even told him their names. It was a chance to connect with them.

So why...?

"Ah...." his voice seemed to crack when they asked for his brother's name. A strong feeling of dread hit him as if suddenly everything had become real.

That these men he called heroes were in fact after his brother's life for all the terrible crimes he had picked. They looked at him puzzled at his reaction but his hero seemed kind enough to move on.

"How about your brothers main location...?"

Another thing but this time one he doesn't know. A strong sense of helplessness at the fact he has no idea how to help. That if he could have given at least something maybe they wouldn't feel like he was a waste.

The one who extended his hand to him stared intently waiting for him to tell them just as eagerly as he had his name. The weapon at his side gleamed reminding Yoichi of one thing he tended to ignore.

These men likely wanted his brother dead.

They told him how many atrocities his brother had committed and how the government did nothing. How their goal was to stop any more victims from being made by this power-hungry man.

They were honest. They didn't claim the title of heroes even if saved Yoichi out of the goodness of their hearts they exposed the blood on their hands.

"I'm sorry," Yoichi can't provide them with anything despite how much they were risking to help him. He was useless to them. Nothing more than a liability just like his brother always acted like he was, "I don't know."

The man besides his savior let out a loud frustrated groan. Yoichi honestly agreed feeling frustration and annoyance at himself as well.

"Are you SERIOUS? Nothing? Nada?" His hands dramatically gesture toward Yoichi as he looks at the head of the rebel command, "What are we suppose to tell the others? They will definitely be recognizing him and they are going to throw a fuss."

The white-haired male can't deny that. Even though Yoichi was grateful to be saved he hasn't done anything.

"I promise I can help! I will fight for your cause I am against my brother," Yoichi was quick to interject wanting to make it clear that he wasn't useless and can still contribute.

He couldn't bring himself to say his own brother's name. As if saying it would make this reality more real that his brother was right about joining those that 'wish him dead'.

Even though his brother was the reason he went this far! If his brother just stopped no one would be here in this situation!

"I really don't know anything else," Yoichi's voice was firm yet uneasy unlike when talking to his brother he didn't know how they might take this.

He wasn't on his brother's side maybe at first had thought it was good. But he now knows it was a lie that he refused to be a part of still he expected more contempt. More harsh words and interrogation.

Unconsciously he looks over at the man who reached out his hand to him. He wasn't much of a talker though he had been quite clear that Yoichi wasn't to be harmed. Saying he's as much of a victim as anyone else under AFO.

"Come on we need something. The other guys aren't going to believe you are on our side if don't say anything," the ponytailed man sighs as though it was clear he was losing faith.

His hero finally spoke up in that calm and stern tone, "He was locked in a vault for who knows how long. You can't expect him to say anything after that even if he did hate the man."

"I don't hate him!" It was a knee-jerk response. Standing on his feet as his hands slam on the table, "He's an asshole, and a villain that he needs to be stopped but I don't hate him!"

Liar.

His body was shaking as the two stared at him like he was insane. Yoichi then realized how he must sound, not hating the man that literally locked him away from the world while destroying his sanity.

"I-I'm sorry. It just... This is a lot," Yoichi moves his hand through his hair feeling like an idiot.

"...Are you guys going to use me as a hostage? Make deals with him?" Yoichi mutters softly feeling uneasy.

The two glanced at each other then his 'hero' gets up and walks over to his side to place a hand on his shoulder. Their expressions were of concern almost worried even which he hoped didn't mean they had been considering it.

"You should go rest we won't ask you about your brother anymore. We really appreciate you talking to us and don't worry we know you are genuine," the interrogator seemed to have softened his stance looking at him with something akin to pity.

...Even though Yoichi wished it why did it feel like he shouldn't be treated so kindly? Able to feel himself about to shout about how they can't just trust him when they don't know him. "You-"

"Go rest, Shigaraki-san. You need it if you want to get better," his hero stopped him with a firm voice as if somehow able to know exactly what he was about to say. Cutting him off before could end up making the conversation worst.

There was no arguing with them. Slowly he leaves the room but he couldn't help but stop just outside the door. Leaning against it after closing as he felt like he needed to hear them.

"He really got fucked up by his brother huh?" It's the second in command, "Like yikes talk about stockholm, family or not I would be running for the hills. Man was basically skin and boneswhen we saw him! Even if we done some terrible stuff even I couldn't bring myself to shoot someone on death's door even if was the plan."

Yoichi feels his heart drop learning that the original intention was to kill wasn't a surprise. Still remembering the weapon pointed out his face staring down the barrel as his 'hero' had been moments from pulling the trigger.

And yet it never came. Instead, that weapon lowered and held a hand out to him despite knowing exactly who he was. In their eyes, it likely really was just childish and nativity to be unwilling to hate his brother despite everything he has done. Especially since his brother has done so many things that crossed the line. His big brother was bad but it because...

"We don't know their relationship prior to him being trapped but we know his name and he is sincere. We will just have to convince the others he deserves to be here and help him out," his hero was kind. "If he wants to help, he is allowed too."

Yoichi takes a sharp breath as his chest tightens knowing he is being a burden unable to trust them it is only natural no one would.

He needs to make himself useful. He needs to make sure to eat and get stronger with the stockpile quirk he should get strong. He just needs to train.

...He can't listen to any more of this.

With this in mind, Yoichi straightened himself up feeling a surge of determination. Returning to his room he was going to rest and make sure that he was ready in the morning to eat and possibly train.

And then kill me?

That voice keeps plaguing him!

Despite leaving that vault he could still hear the whispers of his brother always in the corner of his eyes. Watching and looking at him with pity or amusement.

"You're not there," Yoichi whispers mostly to himself as he returns to the room his heroes were so kind as to give him. Least anyone sees him talk to these hallucinations that have not left him since entering this rebel camp.

He walks toward his room as he suddenly feels like everything was too loud. His hands moved over his ears as he wanted to turn back and ask why they weren't pressing harder. Why aren't they using him like he expected? Why are they being NICE!?

Seriously, do you believe they actually care about you? It's called buttering you up

Hiding in the room at first sight he slams the door to finally look at the assailant out of his mind. "Shut up! You aren't here, did you steal some telepathy quirk!?"

God he hopes not. He didn't want that to be real. He doesn't want it to be because of him that everyone here dies... But the figure that looks like his brother just hums.

The whole place felt different. Dark, gloomy yet so very very real just like that vault as if was still trapped there.

"Who knows," his brother feels... too real. Yet also not at the same time slowly looking around with a lazy smile. It felt... Like this was a version of his brother from long ago his presence wasn't as terrifying. So familiar-

"Get out of my head!" Yoichi shouts and like that suddenly he was back in his room feeling his chest aching while his vision was blurred. Feeling almost shaky knowing the doctor told him his condition was bad.

He takes a heavy breath as he stumbles to his bed barely able to resist throwing himself upon it. Tears in his eyes as he slowly realized he had lost his mind every part of his body ached and hurt. Wondering if it was even ok to relax knowing so many others might die.

He has to ignore that voice.

His brother wasn't there. He was going to make sure his hero didn't regret taking him in.

He was going to escape this hell of his brothers making one way or another. He will become a hero.

#yoly's fanfics #all for one bnha #all for one mha #yoichi shigaraki #Second One for all user #third one for all user #his escape from hell

[angelonasher]

my last post was an elaborate ruse to get to ramble about my own hanahaki au idea

because i dont anyone will read this but i need to talk about it-

(it's myct btw)

ahem anyway-

So we mainly follow Pearl, our wonderful Pearlescentmoon, as she hacks out flowers into her trash can. Does she know why she's coughing up petals? No. But she's been doing it for a while, so maybe its time to stop procrastinating and search up her symptoms online.

Hanahaki. (wha-)

anyway she finds a website about a (somewhat experimental) program relating to the hana-diseases. she's like aight seems legit, seems cheap, why not?

So, hanahaki's been around as long as soulmates have been around (nobody knows when soulmates became a thing) but its only in the past 10 years that people have really started studying it (and trying to find more reliable cures)

Hanakanjo and hanauso have been studied for even less, but apparently this program is reaching into those too.

Anyway, she goes to the program place, and meets some people, other patients, basically.

A larger facility, with more patients and volunteers, it would be sorted by which hana-disease you got, but this is fairly small, so it's separated between platonic and romantic love.

(There are some other sections of the program, such as the very experimental stuff regarding the side-effects of/recovering from hanahaki surgery. but not what Pearl's here for)

the person in charge of our little ragtag group of flower-related relationship problems is uh- i never actually thought- Stress. yeah. why not.

to top it all off, here's a list: (everything's platonic unless i say otherwise)

Pearl: hanahaki. it- it's scott. of course it's scott. they were really good friends but the second they became/discovered that they were soulmates, he suddenly wanted nothing to do with her. very sad :( she got yellow roses and burgundy dhalias. can't really tell that they're yellow- cause- blood- but yeah

Tango: hanakanjō : got lots of flowers and a lot of thorn-shaped scars. poor guy :(

Joel: hanahaki : he mostly just vibes and makes jokes. and coughs. his hanahaki's gotten pretty bad, and he's had it for a while. he's got a whole array of flowers, but mostly irises and yellow roses

Scar: hanauso : at first, he'd make small talk, show around his cat jellie, scam everyone else out of small things like pencils, and started making a credit system. (except he somehow scammed jimmy into life-long loyalty? pearl has no idea how that works) but as his disease got worse, he can't talk so much. now it's just jellie. he still manages to scam people, though. He refuses to talk about whoever's causing it, and mostly grows poppies.

Martyn : double hanahaki : pearl hates him. that's all you have to know

Fundy : hanahaki : everytime i think i'm out of the dsmp fandom I stuff dsmp!fundy somewhere- is the dsmp even a fandom still? he's had his hanahaki for the longest out of anyone (although it's not as bad as joel's), familial hanahaki, actually. wilbur bcuz why not. he's accepted that he's just going to have it instead of opting for surgery, and he uses an oxygen tank a lot. purple hyacinths and petunias. he's in the program not because he thinks it'll help, but because "his friends convinced him to"

Jimmy : he's just there to be Tango's supportive soulmate. and he brings little gifts and snacks. he's very much appreciated (and by very much appreciated i mean everyone teases him but wouldn't trade his friendship for the world.)

Etho : he's actually from another part of the program but pops in from time to time. gives advice on how to manage hanahaki while he's there

Lizzie : Joel's fiance and sometimes comes to say hi. brought cupcakes once. she's apparently jimmy's brother

Bdubs : came twice with etho, once looking for him. apparently a volunteer at the program.

Grian : he appeared once and seemed to know Scar and Jimmy. in a very strained relationship kind of way. he had a whole lot of white lilacs in his outfit. seems familiar

as you can see it's mostly double life people because yeah. i am not big brain enough to think of more people right now

if you got to the end, thanks for that, actually /gen

#life series au #hanahaki #myct #au #soulmates #platonic love #word vomit #hanahaki au

[anotherghoul666]

For the "what do I look like" thing:

I know you're short, this has been established. I picture longer legs and shorter torso. Jeans and band shirts. Boots, obviously. No tattoos, maybe pierced ears but that's all for body mods. Pale skin with short blond hair. Light eyes. Will occassionally dress up irl, but will do it more willingly as part of a power play situation. (This is solely based on the boots with fishnets pic).

How did I do, my dear?

Never before now have I put in any thought in whether my legs were longer than my torso, so I had to look XD I guess they are a bit? Like a 3/5 legs 2/5 torso maybe? I have no clue hahaha

Jeans and band t-shirts are a yes. Boots when going out is accurate too, tho I preserve my leather boots, especially in winter. So I have several pairs depending on the weather I'm heading out into and how much I care about said boots. My real nice dom(me) boots are almost exclusively an indoors wear.

Wrong on tattoos, I have several! And something like 50+ ideas I want in my tattoo list XD I fucking love getting tattooed. If my artist lived closer, I would be COVERED already. Unfortunately she lives in a whole ass other province, so opportunities to further our projects are limited. I'm trying to find a local artist I vibe with enough to continue getting inked. I hope before I die I get to have every inch of my skin real-estate covered and beautifully decorated (besides the hands, feet and the face which I'm not interested in getting done as of right now.) Life goal! Pierced ear one one side only, three lobes, and I hated every second of it. Never getting another piercing in my life, no matter how much I love the look. My body HATES healing them and I have some medical trauma related to my attempts XD I got the hint hahaha.

Pale skin is right, I am TRANSPARENT XD As in, legit see-through white, my veins are super visible and blue, I love it. I turn into a boiled lobster within minutes in the sun, #IrishHeritage As for the hair, yes to short, blond-adjacent? It's more of an ashen blonde / chestnut leaning with a red tone in the sun, that's also the #IrishHeritage along with the Nordic, Canadian European mutt-blood XD When I don't dye it of course, which right now I'm not doing to give the hair a health recovery break. My eyes aren't super light but they're not dark either, they're kinda right in the middle. They do that amber with the green circle around thing.

Literally the only reason I'd ever dress up would be, indeed, for a BDSM party or for a high protocole date or something like that. And even then, I am very much a "play in your pjs if you wanna, you're still dominant" kind of person, because dominance is a mindset and actions taken, not a way to dress. So it's very rare I dress up, but it will happen once in a blue moon, for events with a dress code or for pictures or a specific goal. But like, I'm the person who will go to a job interview, a funeral, a big family dinner and a fancy restaurant date in a metal t-shirt and I don't give a fuck XD

You did pretty good! You were either spot on or pretty close for most things, besides the "no tattoos" thing that's a big -1 point haha. Well done Miasma, thanks for playing!! :D :D :D

#asks

[lawluenvy]

anyways there are two types of kaeluc shippers:

1. the problematic ones, obviously, who ship it because they like incest and do in fact consider them brothers but hide behind the idea that they aren't related by blood to deflect criticism

2. the ones that don't consider them brothers, and view them more as close childhood friends. kaeya was "adopted" rather late to be truly considered a "brother" in the blood sense, related or not. family? yeah of course. he was taken in by diluc's dad as if he was a son- but friends are just chosen family, aren't they?

honestly, a lot of the discourse about this reminds me of sheith. i was a mega sheith shipper and we would get so much hate from immature tweens and teens who make everything unnecessarily sexual and problematic because they're on the internet unsupervised and exposing themselves to questionable content from questionable sources before they've developed the ability to understand these terms themselves, and so they latch on to whatever idea they see first and if it's a hateful one, then that'll be it until they grow up and start building a sense for these concepts themselves with a cummulative, better informed definition. this happens at different ages for everyone, but one thing for sure is that people on the internet are really stupid sometimes. people like things to be black and white, because they think it's easier, and they're scared of being wrong, so they impose strict worldviews on everything, disregarding every other person's experiences to put theirs on top. but that's not how the universe works. people see and experience things differently from one another, so you could be equally wrong as you are right about something somewhere.

looking into kaeluc more, i recognized some of the sheith shipper struggles in the kaeluc shipper struggles, and realized i was judging kaeluc shippers unfairly. i hated the idea of kaeluc right off the bat even before looking into it cuz i heard "brother" and envisioned a situation where kaeya was adopted as a baby and thus would truly have been raised alongside diluc as a brother, never having known different. i doubt i'm the only one who thought that.

but it turns out that's not what happened.

kaeya was already his own person by the time he was taken in, and had memories of another father and another family. no matter how close he may have grown to crepus and diluc, he has clear, indisputable memories of other family before them. yes, crepus became his "adoptive" father. but that doesn't mean he ever truly viewed diluc as a brother in a familial way, and vise versa. they were "sworn brothers," whatever the hell that meant to them. it could be; hell yeah you are my brother and i am reluctantly related to you the way i would be a blood brother, or; i feel very close to you, we've shared many experiences together and you've seen sides of me that typically only family would see.

it is well within the realm of possibility, and not even weird, that kaeya and diluc could have had romantic feelings for each other at some point. it would be no different than crushing on the boy next door. just because they eat dinner together and sleep in the same house doesn't mean they're automatically related. residential and family law would get super weird if shared tenanacy meant you became immediate family.

my first crush was at the age of like 4 years old and i still remember it well. it was silly, but it was innocent. kids love each other all the time, and no, it isn't weird to talk about or acknowledge that. you can't just throw around loaded terms like "pedo" every time someone discusses children. respect them the way you do other human beings and recognize that kids have feelings. and they're allowed to have feelings. it's not weird, it's just fact. it's our job as adults to help kids with their feelings and to understand them- and we can't do that if we pretend they don't exist in the first place.

and as far as kaeluc goes, they were like 11 /12! we don't know the exact age but this is the estimation since kaeya was old enough to accept a secret and serious mission.

do you remember being that age? it was fucking wild. i was hormonal as fuck. i developed crushes on anyone who treated me like a person for one brief second cuz most other people were mean, and bullies. i had a new crush everyday and honestly that was so valid. it's not like i was harassing people, i just let other the presence of nice and cute people make parts of my day a better time.

proximity and a smile is all it takes at that age. any age, really.

so basically, shipping kaeluc doesn't automatically make you an immoral person, because, as is fact, they aren't brothers by blood, opening up the concept of their brotherhood to interpretation. they were already growing individuals at the time they met and lived together.

so yeah, some kaeluc shippers are fucked up and gross but others really aren't at all. some just genuinely respect their relationship, and see two men that have a beautiful bond.

i didn't think of it that way until i came across this kaeluc fanart that just really stuck with me. it wasn't sexual at all. just tender, and sweet. the artist really captured this idea of two men that care a lot about each other despite their complicated history. it didn't feel like i was looking at something that should be wrong. it looked like a worried partner kissing the other goodbye before a dangerous mission. it looked just like any other romantic relationship where someone is at risk of dying everyday they go to work.

so i gave them a chance, and looked more into it.

and now, i've really warmed up to the kaeluc ship if i take the perspective i did with sheith: they aren't at all related, they're friends who happened to grow up together and could be seen or described as brothers but really it's up for debate because no one version currently has any more validity than the other.

it's all pedantics, and we could argue this forever cuz unfortunately, we don't really have a way of determining to what degree they are "brothers" since they don't call each other that anymore, and there has been conflict surrounding the translation of the term that has been used in the first place.

the only way we'd know is by talking to them. but they're fictional characters.

and we're allowed to headcanon things about fictional characters.

you could be right or wrong and we might never know for sure. it's not like i can sit kaeya down and be like "how do you really feel about diluc?" or do the same with diluc.

one thing for sure is that they do care about each other, all the fighting aside.

and that's sweet, and it shouldn't be punishable by death to see that caring as romantic because it very well could be.

we really don't know

if any more clarity comes out i'll be paying attention to it but as of now, i no longer have any qualms with kaeluc as a ship in its own right

reallllllly excited for the diluc event tho!!! i just adore his new skin!!!!

#rant #mine #kaeluc #sheith #genshin #fandom

[wildernessuntothemselves]

The only two cents I will be giving about the trigger warning discussion is that taking any ideia to the extreme is not good. What I mean by that is that simply being pro or con the use of warnings, without taking context and other nuances in consideration can be dangerous.

Being completely against trigger warnings and simply disregarding the effect of what you put online can have on others, is just being irresponsible and causing a lot of unnecessary stress for others that happen to be wondering online. On the other side, trying to be overly wary of everything and anything that could possibly trigger or even cause the slightest bit of unrest to someone is, honestly, near impossible - the variety of things peoples fears and traumas can relate to are infinite, and no one could possibly dodge mentioning all of them.

I am not saying that your arguments are in favor of one of those extreme (you have been relatively moderate in your responses). It is however important to remind ourselves to not be so black and white when dealing with those matters, cause when we start reproducing a set idea on automatic, without giving some thought to context, that's when we make the most damage.

I also am aware that you work in the medical field, and so you are probably way more desensitized to bodily fluids and gore-ish elements in general (it comes with the job, that's normal). When something becomes comum on our day to day it can be difficult to remember how much the mere mention or display of an image with it can affect others. I deal with suicide, child abuse and sexual violence on a daily and constantly have to remind myself that despite the fact that me and my coworkers talk about those things unceremoniously (because we have to) among ourselves, for a lot of people those things are taboo, nearly unspeakable, and can be very triggering.

You most probably had no ill intentions, and some of the points you made in your responses make a lot of sense. I am not nagging at you or anything like that. But I also do agree that blood is a fairly common trigger, and maybe in this case it would be better to put a warning or switching the picture for something more campy where blood doesn't look like blood at all (like in 1977's Suspiria where the blood is straight up pink).

Don't stress too much about it, please.

~♡anon

Thank you for giving your two cents babe. It's always appreciated when an expert on the topic gives their thoughts.

As I have said I definitely understand the use of trigger warnings for specific things, and while yes I work in trauma and see horrific things all the time, I'm perfectly aware that things like bones breaking out of your skin or splattered brains aren't something the average person would be okay with seeing and if my picture had been graphic in an even much lesser extent than this, I would’ve put it under the cut from the start.

Again I understand blood itself is triggering to some but I believe it falls under the umbrella of such things like spiders, snakes, etc. Things that could potentially be triggering to a subset of people, but in of themselves they aren't distributing.

Anyway I will probably include a "tw blood" in the future for such images so it could be filtered out for people but those are my opinions on the topic.

#mort talks

[gh0stbunnii]

Win! The! Eulogy!

I had been pacing back and forth outside the funeral home entrance for an hour. Listening to sad voice after sad voice start their eulogies with something like, "Dad, Uncle, My friend will be sorely missed." I could barely keep myself from gagging. He had died just over a week ago, and everyone in the family or immediate vicinity had raced to lawyer up and get their share of the fat inheritance he had bragged about leaving behind for years.

Only to be roadblocked by a fastidious lawyer, Mr. Alberton. A squat, middle-aged man with circular glasses and a walrus mustache. He had dropped the bomb on everyone that dear old dad was leaving the inheritance up to chance. He left Mr. Alberton a list of criteria for eulogy speeches, and whoever racked up the most points would get everything, the money, the estate, the legal rights to numerous cash cow ideas he'd had over the years. The catch was no one was allowed to know the criteria.

Mr. Alberton was inside with a typewriter like a pretentious hipster writing down every word people were muttering about dad, kissing his ass even in death. If I rolled my eyes any harder, they'd detach from my skull and bounce away. I could hear my oldest sister wrapping up hers with her well-known fake sobs and crocodile tears. Always a flair for the dramatic, that one. With trembling hands, I finally pushed the doors open and marched directly to the podium; I could feel surprised eyes on my back from the crowd as I had never made it quiet; our relationship had been…strained. Yeah, let's go with that.

Melony tossed me a nasty look as she was ushered away from the casket to make room for me. Her crocodile tears had stopped; just steam poured from her ears that her production had been interrupted. Clutching the sides of the podium until my knuckles went white, I could hear the blood pounding in my ears. "I haven't prepared a speech. I'll just be speaking straight from my heart today." I felt sweat droplets drip off my forehead. I could see everyone roll their eyes and shift in their seats as I'm sure many others had said something similar. But they weren't ready for this. "Remington, my father, is a piece of shit." Gasps scattered around the crowd.

"He drank, he abused his children, cheated on and beat his wife, stole money from family and friends, and happened to hit it big at a casino with money he used from pawning my bike when I was 7." The crowd started calling out to have me removed from the building. Loud boos and how dares filled the air. I held my hand up to silence them. "Then he stole old ideas from his younger brother, who is now in the process of fighting the patents with proof they were stolen ideas." People began squirming and whispering to each other. I could hear the vigorous key clacking from Mr. Albertons typewriter. I knew that would hit home, the money and estate were nice, but those patents were what kept my father afloat.

"After winning that money at the casino and patenting his brother's ideas. He went on to abandon his children and wife, messed around with countless other women having who knows how many of my half siblings he never cared for or paid a dime towards. He was in and out of jail for countless alcohol-related offenses that he bailed himself out of within days. Then finally, at the ripe old age of 60, with a suspended license from DUIs, he got behind the wheel of his new mustang, drunk again, and crashed into someone on the freeway. The crowd stared at me, mouths open. You could hear a pin drop in the room. "This story was covered up to leave a squeaky clean image, of course, but this is actually how he died and, in my opinion, not a moment too soon."

"If my father had any semblance of dignity or a soul, these conditions for eulogies would be honesty. I do not want his money, and if somehow the pea-brained jackass did leave it to me, it would go straight to the family he put in intensive care last week. I don't believe in god, but I sure hope you're in hell, dad." Mr. Alberton had even stopped typing at this point, staring dumbfounded.

"So to whoever wins this asinine contest, enjoy fighting with uncle Reed over the patents. Word has it he's an aerospace engineer these days with quite the case built up." I smiled, genuinely, maybe for the first time in my life. I strode out of the funeral hall with my head high and a weight lifting from my shoulders. Whatever happened next didn't matter to me anymore; closure had been sweet and everything I ever needed from that man.

#writing #creative writing #writers of tumblr #dark romanticism #soft grunge #2014 grunge #gothic aesthetic #romantic goth #witch #fairycore

[anemia-rp]

I say if you're once fucked up you will stay fucked up for the rest of your life, no matter how long that may be. Maybe the brain can heal slightly in some ways and under the right circumstances, but I believe those are rare. I personally think that being fucked up gives you an advantage because you view things from a different perspective than most others. I guess I could be considered artistic in a way, after all I draw a lot while being in the process of developing a game.

Even though I'm most responsible that it works properly and also find if there are any errors during test plays. Because as I said before my way of thinking is considered strange. And I learned that a lot of people prefer the version of someone they have made up in their head over the real person.

Whenever I feel like someone wants to see a certain thing from me I'll do the opposite. Nobody tells me what to do and they better learn that right away. Showing different sides of yourself should simply happen without deciding to do it and seeing a new side of the other person at some point. I think most humans and supernatural beings have a good and a bad side. But I admit that it's possible that some may have only a small side of good or bad.

It's fun in the beginning, but it does get boring rather quickly. I prefer some back and forth even though the outcome is clear from the very start. It sure is more fun if you have to work for what you want. And I understand where you're coming from. Maybe they do deserve the things you say, but I personally am not sure I can give them what they want. At the back of my mind I would always think if I'm being too nice to them they will think there is something between us if there clearly isn't.

I'm sure there are humans out there that will love for a vampire to drink their blood. I bet it's a kink for some of them. I can't really relate because I don't drink blood, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy biting and being bitten for the fun of it. I decided to only give people what they want if I feel like it. So far I didn't meet anyone I would want to stay with me. It's very likely there is no such person out there for me or at least no person to get romantically involved with. It's more likely to encounter someone you want to stay for company, I guess a friendship of some sorts. As you said though those people are rare.

I think it's the best you can do, adapt to the situation whenever it changes. It's the only way to survive.

I would say most of the people in this other world simply want to stay alive to get out of there some time. And others enjoy a place without laws and only certain rules in the games, people like criminals, that only awaits prison or death in the real world. Also I got to talk to quite a few while being there so what I just said are motivations I know of.

Damage is done easily, but healing is difficult, yeah. And it's definitely nothing you can heal with some pills, like a headache. You can draw? That's cool. If you're really that good I could imagine you designing something for a shirt of mine. I'm better at sewing than at drawing.

Most would find it boring if someone isn't the perfect villain actually. If they could handle it or not. But this way they have a certain control if they depend on their own picture they created.

Is that so? Lately I'm similar to that in fact. Don't perform according to plan. So reverse psychology it is for you. Now that's been a big confession. Anyway, 'good' and 'bad' lay a lot in the eye of the beholder in the end.

Especially if the submissive doesn't have own ideas and is rather just like a white sheet you should perform the stuff you wanna perform on. In the ideal case a submissive is in fact a very powerful person with an own will. Not a squeak toy. I never met someone though who was like that. Having the balls to tell me directly what they wanna have done. If people can impress me then cool stuff can happen. Yeah. And then try to get rid of someone who has fallen for you. You've ever been in such a situation?

You're some feral fucker after all. No surprise people are afraid to tame you. They're even afraid if a chihuahua bares their teeth onto them. Who knows. Depends on what you understand of 'romantically involved' anyway.

Guess you can tell then how often a vampire has to adapt to the circumstances. Especially when population will decrease what will be most likely the case in the future. Maybe vampires will have the world domination then anytime soon though.

Okay, yeah, that makes sense. They would /hate/ me there in this other world. Or love me. Guess there wouldn't be an inbetween. My only 'problem' is that I'm not able to hurt people weaker than me so dunno if I'd win in the end.

[xoteajays]

If you ever get blood on your clothes, use peroxide, soak the stains in peroxide before washing the clothes. That helps remove the blood for you. Just in case you need to remove blood from any of your clothes.

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Exactly! Rocky is the only one who could convince Koo to do things if you needed someone to convince him about anything. And I could be able to see Koo not listening to Rocky's girlfriend either... But that will be until she convinces Rocky to convince Koo. Because I can see that happening between those three. Rocky would be the only one to even be able to convince Koo to dress up for Halloween on occasion. But it would only be for group costumes. No one else could do that. So I am sure Kizzy would complain about Koo a lot of the time when he never does what she says. Cue the bickering from the one sided argument.

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I'm adding onto my sexual canons for Rocky.. I might have mentioned this before. I can't remember. So I could imagine Rocky incorporating food into sex. Mostly candy, fruits, creams, sauces, honey, all of that.

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Well.. I just looked at the poll. Not a single person voted Rude Boys at all, even though there were people who said they'd really love to see a character affiliated with Rude. So I might still have her being affiliated with Rude Boys in some way while being affiliated with Rascals at the same time. I'm not sure how yet. But I'll think of something... I may be able to figure that out. I do like the Rude Boys. But I felt like not many ideas I had for her as Rude seemed interesting, her backstory actually seemed more fitting for someone in Rascals (even if she's not abused by anyone). White's natural hair color is that golden honey brown, just like how Takeshi's hair was in the show and first movie - so maybe the other characters would think they were related even though they may never have a blood relation. But she could be friends with Rude in the same way as Rascals (along with other gangs too). Maybe since she's friends with Rascals and Rude, she helped stop the war between any of these gangs with Kuryu was selling the redrum drugs. Because the gangs were ready to go to war over that - especially between Rascals, Rude and Sannoh mainly. And she could also be a witness to so many other events that happen around Rascals. And! Besides those almost wars between Rascals, Rude and Sannoh over the drug factories that were in Nameless City. She could also be witness to the a lot of shady secretive dealings with the Rocky's businesses, like the situation with Dan being framed by Lala and the bald man (before you'd find out his character is affiliated with Doubt). And there is also the fight between Rocky and Jesse too. Amongst many other situations that I can't ever think of at the moment for some reason. But those are my examples.

I can't think at the moment for many reasons. My mind is scattered in this moment. So between having a migraine and a slight panic attack from anxiety.. I'm just trying to regulate my breathing at the moment.

So her signature color is somewhere between white and green. Like a light green? Obviously she's technically my White character whenever we are talking about the gangs, but I would also like to give her colors that isn't only white though. Maybe there isn't much I can do with the color white as themes for her character.. I know that actually does not make sense to you, but it makes sense to me. I'm figuring things out.

And like I said.. White is someone who wants to help people who have been less fortunate in any way she can. So I do keep imagining her as one of my characters who actually wants to help Rude Boys in a lot of ways, in ways she can. Even if they're able to provide for themselves.

So I want to make her charitable but not too charitable. Because I will say that I don't want Rude to hate her for thinking that they can't ever provide for themselves, their friends and everyone else in the city too.

I don't know if White would have a romantic ship. I'm not sure. But! If I ever do give her a romantic ship, that person is not Rocky in any ways at all. Her relationship with the Rascals are just platonic. And maybe a familial relationship in a friend way with certain people (with Rocky as one of those people). He would be a close friend, even like her brother in some way. But I'm still figuring out her relationships with everyone.

And as for Blue. I don't know if she would have a romantic ship. But if she does, the only person I could actually possibly imagine her with in any way would be Murayama. And that is not because they happen to be the blue characters. Mostly because.. Orange's endgame ship with Cobra is most likely going to happen. And even though Rocky is not a man who discriminates any woman, I can't imagine Blue being even a little romantically involved as a couple - they're just friends. And I just can't imagine her with anyone in Sannoh in a romantic ship, same for the Amamiya brothers. Not sure about anyone in Rude Boys though. Murayama would probably be her romantic ship between that would be how I imagine them? She's introverted, he's extroverted. She's shy, and he's outgoing. He could be able to get her more out of her shell in a way, just like she could be able to slightly mellow out his energies. A typical opposites attract in that way. If Blue is romantically shipped to another character though. I'm not completely sure if she really will be.

White is born in 1995... So she is the 'middle sister' of the color coded characters. Red would be the eldest sister since she is the oldest one. Blue and Orange are the youngest, Orange would be the baby though since she was born months after Blue. They're sisterly to each other.

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Yeah.. I can't remember. How many times a week they force people to play the games. Almost every day is a game, but I think they only ever participate if the actually need to. So imagine being intoxicated when going to these games. Have fun dying then. And they do mention this whole game of Borderlands does have duplicate cards.. I doubt that if there are people who accidently got the same card would comes ever come from the same exact game. If that game for that specific card's actually the same, that would be boring, but also very ease enough to beat then. At least of the most part. But that's up to you when writing your story though. I still wish they elaborated on those details for any person who would be curious about that though. But maybe if there's a chance that the games are the same game for duplicate cards, then I could see that working if people didn't already play that game if that makes sense. Panic attack made me tired so I'm not making sense.

Yeah. The only people you see wearing regular clothing would be only some of the militants. Wait.. When Aguni shoot Hatter in the building, was he wearing his swimsuit? I'm really not able think at the moment.

But Kuina really wear some regular clothes though.. Mostly jeans over her swimsuit whenever she leave the hotel, but sometimes she wears those jeans at the hotel too. And the executives always really seem to wear clothes too. But that is based on what I can remember though.

Let's say this is a scenario where Chishiya wasn't already a part of the Beach hotel. He's wearing clothes (more clothes before and after they were at the Beach hotel). Since he starts wearing clothes after Beach.

And he made his own weapons too. He had headphones so he can be able to listen to music, I know that isn't a weapon but he was still able to use those headphones. And he had his homemade taser that really was made up spare parts that he could find. So he can create his own weapons to protect himself. I doubt he could be able to at the Beach.

And if Chishiya only recently became a part of the Beach? That could have taken two to three weeks for him to become a very high ranking member of the counsels. Which is impressive in a short timing with a lot of that to have happened to and for his character then. So.. Yeah...

Aguni's like me.. He hates at first sight. So we'd have that in common.

Banda is definitely hearts.. Yaba would either be a hearts or diamonds person. They're not capable of clubs or spades for obvious reasons as they're both murderers. So hearts and diamonds for those two. But it is obvious that I would be stuck on what their level would be though.

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Seeing color palettes swapped for the opposite person (or character) is a mind fuck. In a good and bad way. But it's interesting to see every different appearance out of curiosity though. I don't know why. But I'll always see difference appearances for them is very interesting to me.

- 💋

sorry this is late(and short) i had a shitty couple of days.

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rocky is the only person koo listens to. that’s his boss and his bestie and he’s listening to literally no one else, and especially not kizzy - which you know annoys her. rocky can convince koo into costumes if it’s like, a duo costume.

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i think mint green or olive green accents would look good if she’s connected to both rude and rascals. most of the rascals seem to accent with black, but there’s rocky’s red gloves. so it could work.

i always plan for romantic ships when i make characters, it just helps me develop them a bit more i think. sometimes i make characters just to fit in the world, but most of the time i’m planning for (usually romantic) dynamics between characters.

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since the games are every night, i assumed they’re sending them out every night. and it looks like they were assigned to game locations as well, since they had papers telling them where they were being sent. and they can’t send them out to specific suits games since apparently they don’t know what kind of games they are until the registration is done, which i didn’t realise on my first watch but i’m not changing in my fics whatever fuck it agshdkdl.

i haven’t gotten up to that ep yet (been distracted writing), but i think he was? like i feel like i remember him wearing board shorts and the robe.

i don’t think kuina started wearing the jeans until the second season after the beach was done. since she was just in her bikini in the lightbulb game and in the witch hunt.

chishiya is very manipulative so i could see him endearing himself to hatter to land himself in a high position with the executives. i don’t think really any of the other members liked him much tho. like ann or mira, and especially aguni and niragi. i think kuzuryu might’ve found him interesting but i don’t remember much about the king of diamonds game.

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looked at all those links!

#💋 anon #tj answers #long post //