#realized i dont have anything resembling a project here so here you go

[ghostsberry]

the deal

#realized i dont have anything resembling a project here so here you go #loveeed doing the vehile conceptds #the headshots were done after eveything to give thecharacters more personality maybe ill draw them more #made it as a homage to 70s/80s mafia films #vis dev #character design #artists on tumblr #my art #art #illustration #concept art #visual development #sketch #visual design

[ask-fgod]

Coming back from after he fell, Error was expecting a lot of things. He can't say he didn't expect this, but somehow it still makes him angrier than he's ever been.

hey guys... guess who just finished their one-shot instead of working on their other fic!!! it me. text under cut if you dont want to click on the link.

Error didn’t know what he was expecting when he landed back into his multiverse.

But it wasn’t this.

A figure resembling him stood over Ink, a hammer hovering above him. The only reason he hadn't struck yet was the fact that Dream was holding him back. None of them had realized his presence yet, minus…

Nightmare. Unlike the others, his gaze was solely focused on him. He wasn’t doing anything to stop the figure. 

That figure, though… Who…?

“E- Error…” Nightmare breaks him out of his thoughts, and with that, all attention is placed on him. Error holds his two children, Null and Void, closer, ready to defend them at any cost. 

He isn’t holding them close because of NIghtmare, of course, but he knows Dream and Ink would do everything in their power to take them away from him. Him being the “God of Destruction” and all, surely to them he can’t be safe.

But right now, he has to deal with the fact that all eyes are on him.

“Is that…” 

“WHAT THE SHIT???”

Dream loosens his grip, and the hammer bonks Ink on the skull, hard enough to make a crack drip ink from his skull.

“Owowowow… Yeesh Blue, did you have to hit me that hard?” Ink retorts.

Blue just hits him again in response.

“AGH! Error’s here now, so you can stop beating the absolute everything out of me! I’m gonna die if you keep this up!!!”

Blue shouts back. “Do you think that I care?! The whole point is to leave you dead!!! You made it to where I kind of have to kill you because little mister ink blot won’t stop overflowing this multiverse with his bullcrap!!!”

Oh…

Oh.

Error realizes what’s going on right at this moment. Who this person is, who their role is, it’s all obvious.

And it makes him very, very angry.

He knew Ink didn’t stop when he left. He knew that someone was forced to take his place because of that. But seeing it with his own eyes is something else.

In the millenia he has lived, never before has he been so fuming.

“Void, Null.” He tries to hide the anger in his voice, pointing at Nightmare. “Go to the goopy man over there. I have to do something real quick.”

‘But Roro…” Null shyly replies.

Error looks down at him, faking a smile on his face. “Don’t worry, He may seem scary, but he’s a really nice man. He’ll keep you safe, like I do.”

Both children run off to Nightmare, Null leading Void along the way. 

With that done, and the comfort that his kids will be in safe hands, he approaches Ink.

"You." He growls at Ink, inching closer by the second.

Ink looks from one side, to the other, and points at himself. "Me…?"

Error spreads his strings through the air, and tangles up him. In his surprise, Ink doesn't run away fast enough. "Yes, you! Do you have no respect for other people? Other life???"

"Y- Yeah! Of course I do! I create things, you're the one with no respect for others!!!" He shouts back.

"Then explain," Error gestures at Blueberror, "him!!!"

"I don't know what happened to him to make him that way! Honest!!!"

The strings tighten around Ink. "You must at least know that you are a part of the reason why that happened, shouldn't you? Or are you just going to lie about that too!!!"

"Error!!! Stop!" Dream shouts.

"Keep going!!!" Blue yells.

Error keeps going. "You didn't stop when I left, even though you knew that it'd doom this place! The only reason that this multiverse hasn't collapsed yet is because of Blue!!!"

Ink just stares at him like he's stupid. Like he's making stuff up. "I have no idea what you're talking about!"

"You have," Error shakes Ink in his grip, "every idea what I'm talking about! Just admit it!!!"

"I don't know what to admit to you, Roro! I dunno 'bout anything you're saying!"

"So who made him like that, then? He retorts. "What made it to where this place needed another thing like me???"

"Uh… Hm… Erm… I dunno! Maybe ya did somethin' to him! It'd make sense, since you always blame me for everything wrong that you do."

The world goes silent. Everyone, Dream, Nightmare, Blueberror, Void, Null, and Error… especially Error, just stare at Ink.

Error closes his eyes, and takes a breath in and out. 

Calm down. 

He isn't worth your time.

Calm down. 

How could he say that?

Calm down. 

Stop thinking about it.

Calm down. 

Why did he say that?

Calm down. 

He shouldn't snap.

Calm down.

But he's going to.

"Void, Null, look away. Plug your ears. Roro is about to do something he probably will regret later." Error commands.

Nightmare blocks both of the childrens' eyes, and the both of them put their hands over their ears. 

"Wh- Whatcha thinkin of doing, Error bud? I didn't say anything bad! I'm just- just layin' it to you straight! Roro c'mon!"

Error doesn't listen. It's like he doesn't even hear him. He slowly raises his hand, high up to the point of his face.

Blue and Nightmare watch. Dream stares in horror. 

And as Error balls his fist, the strings tighten around the other God, slowly cracking him apart. 

Bit by bit, til the tension is so high that the strings quickly tie up, breaking him into pieces. 

The ink from his body stains the ground, and for that moment, Ink is gone.

Error had just killed Ink.

And for him…

It was the first time ever.

#mod kris #fgod #forced god of destruction #blueberror sans #blueberror!sans #fgod blueberror #fgod!blueberror #error sans #error!sans #fgod error #fgod!error #nightmare sans #nightmare!sans #fgod nightmare #fgod!nightmare #dream sans #dream!sans #fgod dream #fgod!dream #ink sans #ink!sans #fgod ink #fgod!ink #utmv #undertale au

[sholiofic]

I dont kno if ur still into agent carter at all but i was wondering about daniel/peggy/jack established relationship and how they are with their kids growing up - maybe in the same verse as the ‘steve is found in the 70s’ ficlet

Same universe as this ficlet (the one in which Steve is thawed out in the 70s). This is a few days later.

--

"I thought you weren't going to be home for my graduation, Dad," Debbie Sousa declared, flinging her arms around Jack's neck hard enough to make him stagger backwards.

"Plans change, kiddo." Jack caught her up in a hug, whirling her in her graduation gown. "Got in late last night. Hey, watch it, you're going to break an old man's back."

"Old?" she laughed. "You're not old!"

Peggy didn't think so either, but Debbie certainly made her feel old -- both of the kids, honestly. She watched the byplay with her arm around Carol, whose profusion of blond curls made it clear which of the men in Peggy's life was her biological father -- for all that it mattered; Carol had hewed to Daniel's quiet calm from an early age, while fierce, driven Debbie, who had just become one of the only women in her graduating law class, was just as evidently Jack's daughter despite her clear resemblance to Daniel.

And not a single person in Peggy's life would have really understood (the closest anyone ever got were the persistent rumors that she'd had an on-again, off-again affair with Jack for the last twenty years) but at times like this, it didn't really matter, on green grass under a clear blue sky. Ironically, the thronging crowd at Yale's commencement ceremonies provided almost as much privacy as total isolation. All around them, graduates and their parents or siblings were having their own little reunions, hugging or wandering about their arms around each other. The reporters had gotten tired of Peggy (and tired of Debbie, one of the only girls in her graduating law class) early on, and now the five of them enjoyed a rare kind of anonymity, just one little family group among many. In this kind of setting, no one was going to ask which of the men was Debbie's father and which was her uncle. They could stroll off, as they did, with their arms around each other -- Peggy with Daniel's hip bumping hers, and her other arm around Debbie, and Debbie with her arm laced through Carol's -- and the only thing anyone would think, looking at them, was There's a family.

And Debbie had never asked why Jack was home from Berlin days before he should have been.

*

Peggy had picked him up at the New York airport late the previous night. Jack was jet-lagged and grouchy, and she was already dreading the night drive up to New Haven for the ceremony. Daniel and Carol had driven up earlier. Peggy hadn't yet seen them, because she herself had only just gotten back from Norway less than twelve hours before. She was dazed and tired and still trying to convince her brain of the difference between midnight and dawn, and she kissed Jack without really thinking about it, then pulled back when she realized what she'd done. But no one at the gate was paying attention, she understood an instant later; no one thought her anything other than a middle-aged woman with gray streaks in her dark hair kissing a tall blond man, dapper despite the creases in his suit and his obvious jet-lag, who must be her returning husband or European paramour.

"Where is he?" Jack asked, as if she might have Captain America in the trunk of her sensible Chrysler.

"They flew him directly to SHIELD headquarters in DC. They have the facilities to deal with him there."

She realized after she said it that she was speaking of Captain -- of Steve as if he was some kind of superpowered threat to be dealt with.

But ... in some sense he was, wasn't he? She didn't know how to think of him, and most particularly she didn't know how to cope with the feelings that had been stirred up after nearly thirty years of laying dormant.

"He wake up yet?" Jack asked her, as they walked to her car in the parking garage adjoining the terminal.

"No," Peggy said. "He may not, you know. The serum appears to have preserved his body, but --" It came out steady. "Perhaps not his mind."

She had seen him in Tromsø, before he was hustled onto a plane for the US. The sight of that face had taken her back a quarter century, kicked her right back into the head of a completely different woman, one who had seen a very different future for herself.

The future she had imagined as a young woman would have completely erased Debbie and Carol. It would have washed away the life she'd shared with Daniel and Jack. And now here was the ghost of that life, dangled in front of her, while her real life went on: Debbie's graduation and Carol's angry diatribes about Vietnam and the mortgage on the new house in New York and the work on the permits for the New York SHIELD construction project and the vet bills for their aging Jack Russell terrier (currently boarding with the Jarvises while the family went up to Connecticut for Debbie's commencement) and midnight airport pickups and last-minute paperwork and ...

It was a life she had here, filled with her friends and her lovers and her children and the job she'd devoted her life to. She didn't even know how to fit Steve back into it.

"So who's driving?" Jack said, dragging her back to reality.

"Me. Obviously."

"I think you've had less sleep in the last twenty-four hours than I have."

"Me," she said, and he didn't argue.

*

Debbie and Carol were chattering about where to go for drinks after the traffic cleared out a little, the sisters' political differences washed away in their simple pleasure at seeing each other after several years of infrequent get-togethers at family holidays. Peggy rested against Daniel's hip and enjoyed the feeling of Jack's arm sliding around her from the other side, and the way their hands clasped briefly behind her back, letting go only with a light stroke across the wrists that she was aware of only because it happened across her hip.

If circumspection was a lifestyle for her and Jack, then Jack and Daniel had raised it to an art form. Thus far, even at the SSR, no one had guessed the second component of the secret the three of them shared.

The life that she loved was a house of cards, resting on a foundation of secrets. Any number of things could bring it crashing down. But never, in all her thoughts along those lines, had the thought occurred to her that Steve might be the agent of that destruction.

It didn't have to happen, she told herself. But ... she really didn't know what was going to happen when he woke up. She didn't know.

"Someone's moody today," Jack said, resting his head against hers.

Here, today, where familial gestures of affection were not uncommon; where she could stroll with two men while the girls giggled mere feet away, and she could feel Jack and Daniel's hands linked behind the small of her back.

"Just today?" Daniel said, like a tennis player batting back a serve, and she aimed a nudge at his ribs, but not hard enough to actually knock him off stride

Well. Okay then, if that's the way they wanted it. This was an oasis, with the real world still out there. The world, and Steve; the past she'd left behind; the politically uncertain present in which she lived.

But they'd lived their lives leapfrogging from oasis to oasis. And she had learned to take those warm feelings as they came, and not to worry too much about the future, a future that could break them apart.

She dragged in a breath. They had found Steve. They found him.

"But the real question is, who drives us to the restaurant," she said, and Jack laughed and Daniel kissed her temple, and things were good. Oh. So good.

#agent carter #peggysouson #peggy carter #daniel sousa #jack thompson #alternate universe #fanfic advent #Anonymous

[lizzieraindrops]

Your chance to make the sun rise thrice (Chapter 2)

a river that still runs (8803 words)

Beth Childs has come to Helsinki to meet her best friend Veera for the first time in the Herbs on the windowsill universe, an alternate timeline where the original Helsinki massacre was prevented and DYAD routed by Clone Club Alpha’s successful publicity stunt back in 2001. Veera Suominen and Niki Lintula survived and decided to live in a little apartment together as qpp’s. Numerous Leda clones worldwide are now in contact via a secure online network that Veera maintains. 

Note: This chapter is a bit heavier than the rest of the AU. Beth is still struggling with a lot of the same challenges in this universe, even if the events causing them are somewhat different because of such early canon divergence. But the whole point of this story is that things can end up okay no matter how rough it's been. She's getting the help she needs and she's gonna be alright. That said, warning for soft discussion of past abuse, the effects of trauma, depression and anxiety, and some suicidal ideation. And of course, lots of love and learning how to heal, with support from her best friend.

Fun fact: Veera's username is 3mika, and she always sets her font to the precise warm turquoise of hex color #2299aa. She thinks she's hilarious, and she's right. 

Also on AO3  |  Playlist  |  Aesthetic sideblog

Part 1: Herbs on the windowsill

Part 2: Someday colors

Part 3: Your chance to make the sun rise thrice  |  Chapter 1  |  Chapter 2  |  Chapter 3

***

Beth wakes on a squashy couch that isn't hers. Morning-soft sunlight pours through the window above her, bouncing back off the walls to fill even the shady corners with a warm secondhand glow. Her limbs are soft, splayed under unfamiliar blankets and sinking into the cushions. She doesn't move yet.

The apartment. Helsinki. Beth's really here. She holds herself still, letting the truth sink into her. She half expects the usual anxious tension to clench her into a ball the instant she moves a muscle, but it isn't there. Neither is the invisible weight that so often pins her immobile. She still wakes frequently with both of them holding her body hostage, keeping her muscles unmoving but restless, even in sleep. Right now though, they're gone. She just lies there, soft beneath the window.

It's quiet but not silent. The occasional car on the little road outside chuckles as it passes. A soft rush of water echoes through pipes in the walls, running toward an early riser in another unit. These sounds fall strangely on Beth's Toronto-bred ears, isolated in the stillness of this of this little apartment on the outskirts of the city. Still, the early-morning atmosphere settles comfortably into her jet-lagged bones, murmuring a rhythm for her to sink into. The temporal upheaval of a transcontinental red-eye and a series of exhausted naps yesterday have left her a little unbalanced. And yet, here she is waking up with the day, and the ground under her feels so much more stable than she’s used to.

Beth breaks her stillness with a deep, deep breath that she can feel expanding all the way down to her feet. She stretches, too, but soon pulls the toes that get exposed back underneath the warm, scratchy blanket. The cushions of the old couch creak a little in complaint as she shifts, but her limbs remain supple. For a time, she just observes the sensations. Then, her awareness spreads beyond the couch and the window to the rest of the room.

All around her, an oddly blocky pattern covers the walls. It's one of the first things she noticed when she walked into the apartment yesterday afternoon. The pattern isn't wallpaper like it appears at first glance, but actually a multitude of small photographs. Most of them are unframed, but taped up in crisply aligned rows. In them, she sees the same face infused with a hundred different lives. Just above her, a sleeping, slack-jawed redhead with bulky headphones around her neck sprawls on the very same couch Beth's laying on now. A few rows down, a brunette and a blonde with their long hair in matching wild waves are leaning all over each other and grinning like devils. One of the few framed photos shows a girl with a hospital-short buzz cut and a delighted expression, sitting in front of what looks like a mouthwatering strawberry shortcake. Beth can see at least six others in the background behind strawberry girl. Among them are Mika with her unmistakable scars and Niki with her bright blonde hair, their arms around each other's shoulders.

Morning light glances off the glossy surfaces of the photos on the west wall. The particularly bright reflection off one of the framed photos draws Beth's eye. With a tiny jolt, Beth recognizes one of her own selfies beneath the glass. In it, she's wearing the same old turquoise blue sweatshirt that's spilling out of her suitcase next to the couch right now. Underneath it, she's wearing her track gear, so the photo is at least two years old. She'd had to quit cross-country so she could try to get the shitshow her life had become under control. She vaguely recalls sending it to Mika a long time ago. It's strange to think that her presence has been in this apartment for so long.

She's here. In Finland. Staying with Mika – Mika - and Niki. Far, far away from everything.

Sprawling on the couch she slept on with a sigh as if she hadn’t a care in the world, Beth can't believe she's really gone and done it. She's run so far away that there's an ocean between her and her problems. It’s so much better than she's dreamed, even if it's only for a little while. It’s worth it, even though she'll be going back far too soon. For the first time in years, it feels like she’s where she’s supposed to be right now.

It had all started out as foolish idea she'd floated one Saturday morning, months ago. She hadn't been serious at all. She'd woken up so relieved at not having to get up and go to work, until she remembered her weekly therapy appointment with a hopeless groan.

Putting off the genuinely daunting prospect of hauling herself out of bed, she reached out to snag her phone from on top of her dresser, checking to see if she'd heard from Mika overnight. After all, Helsinki was nine hours ahead, so Mika had already seen most of the day that was just beginning for Beth. They talked so often these days, since they'd first made contact over two years ago. Rarely a day passed without touching base. But there wasn’t anything since Beth had checked last night. She took it upon herself to send the first message of the day.

runwaterblue: god, i dont wanna get up and deal with any of thsi shit today

After her world fell apart, after finding out about Project Leda, after realizing that all her nightmares and more were real, after her father...

runwaterblue: wish i could come visit u and get away form everything for awhile

Mika replied almost immediately.

3mika: you can

It was evening in her time zone, but to be honest, Beth had no idea if she had anything resembling a regular sleep schedule. The girl was always online.

3mika: though you really should go to your appointment. you always feel better afterward

runwaterblue: howd you know i have therapy today

3mika: you always have an appointment saturday afternoons

runwaterblue: yes but how do you remember that? i cant evne remember my own appts lmao

3mika: you mentioned it months ago when you switched from sundays to saturdays

Beth shook her head with a smile. Mika was so good with details.

3mika: anyway. you’re welcome here, if you can get here

3mika:  it would be great to see you

3mika: Niki wouldn't mind. we've had a bunch of Ledas visit us here, it's always fun

3mika: except that one time Dani and Ary got into a fight over football. some French-Italian team rivalry thing. that was not fun.

Beth laughed. It was funny how Mika was so good at making her do that, even on days like these. She leaned back against her pillow and held her phone over her head without sitting up, being careful not to drop it on her own face. She'd done that before. More times than she'd admit.

runwaterblue: i was kidding. id love to visit, but idk how id get there

runwaterblue: u should see the americans go off abt their football lmao. they're nerly as bad as the hockey freaks here

3mika: pls no

3mika: no more sports. it was a year ago and I’m still exhausted

3mika: sports are banned in this apartment.

Beth snorted. Mika wanted nothing to do with sports of any kind, and with Beth's athletic record, the topic had become a point of mutual teasing between them.

In so many ways, they were such different people, DNA be damned. Mika was reticent where Beth was outgoing. (Or at least, Beth had been. She was never quite sure how to think of herself these days.) Clone drama aside, Beth had been a pretty average Canadian high schooler. She got reasonable grades, played a few sports, and kept mostly out of trouble because there would be hell to pay if she didn’t. Mika was a brilliant homeschooled autistic orphan who had been raised in near isolation by her guardian after surviving the hospital fire that marked her skin for life. Beth mostly listened to pop music, and where no one else could hear, the occasional classical symphony. Mika held fast to Finland's weird obsession with death metal and dabbled in literally everything else.

And yet, Mika understands Beth like no one else does. And it's not just because they've both been through all this Project Leda bullshit. Though Beth doesn't know what she would have done without Mika to help her through that, too.

Beth won't ever be able to forget the moment that everything changed. Recognizing a her own face from the mirror on the evening news stopped her in her tracks, as something in her gut caved in with the hollow certainty that it wasn't her. Then face after face flickered before her, a flipbook barrage of déja vu. Blonde and smiling. Scarred and pensive. Braids and piercings and a rakish grin. Beth was rooted in place as people she had never been wearing things she had never worn said things she was never supposed to know.

That utter strangeness on the screen immediately seeped into her life like an oil slick into a river, tainting every thing she thought she knew with clinging uncertainty. Her father was inexplicably even more upset about it than Beth was, yet adamant that they shouldn't look into the matter. But it was already too late to stop herself from thinking. With slow horror, the truth of what exactly his behavior must mean dawned on her. And yet, even with the desperate growing certainty about who her Leda monitor must be, it was hard to believe that he could be anything other than her plain stern father.

He was always a bit strict and overprotective - probably well more than a bit, she realizes these days. But she’d thought that's just what it was like to be a cop's daughter. He'd never done anything really extreme, nothing beyond the firm discipline any kid could expect. He was just not a man to be trifled with, that was all. So until everything she thought she knew shifted that day and threatened to topple every assumption she’d built her life on, she had never truly dared to cross him.

Outright daring him to say to her face that he wasn't her monitor was probably considered a step beyond trifling. He did not take it kindly.

Two months later, Beth and her mother were living in an apartment on the opposite side of the city. It took two months for the two of them to lay plans to leave together, for good. For two months, her every move was watched. She spent two months knowing there would be hell to pay if she didn't give the performance of a lifetime pretending everything was fine, even while sirens blared inside her day and night. Two months was more than enough to teach her things she never wanted to know about the hidden marks fear leaves on the body.

Even after she finally escaped, her life was in tatters and nothing made sense. It wasn’t just the sudden jarring discovery of Project Leda, or the crisis it had forced her to confront. It was learning that, deep down, she had known that she’d never once felt free. She’d unconsciously kept herself from knowing to avoid exactly that conflict of wills that she’d known she would lose.

Trying to come to terms with what had happened and how it changed everything, Beth was continuously losing her balance. Questioning which parts of her life had been screwed over by her father and which by being part of some ridiculous supervillain science experiment was like trying to stand on two kickboards in a pool. She couldn't find her footing, and all she could do was try and stay afloat. She had to repeat her whole junior year of high school that she lost to this shitshow, while starting over at a new school, and only barely scraped her way into senior year. Now that she knew how honestly terrible she'd been at judging who in her life she could trust, it was as hard to talk to old friends as it was to make new ones.

Therapy helped her start sorting out what she was feeling, and how the environment she’d grown up in was really not the healthiest. She hadn’t realized how much she’d learned to doubt her own perceptions. That made constructing any kind of new understanding of her situation an uphill struggle. And of course, her therapist couldn’t help her confirm anything about a human experiment that was so illegal it had been an international secret. As she continued to stumble forward, Beth even started doubting her former certainty of the identity of her Leda monitor. She questioned herself and everything she knew until she wanted to scream with frustration or weep with confusion. The floor of the counselor’s office could have been mopped with her tears. It was, quite literally, driving her mad.

So, finally, Beth had taken up the invitation on the banner of every Leda news feature to "Contact the secure, clone-run Clone Youth Group Network (CYGNet) for answers by emailing [email protected]."

She wanted something concrete that would help convince her brain to stop reenacting these head games that warped her reality. It still insisted on playing through the patterns it had been taught, even in its teacher’s absence. She needed something that could brace her against the ideas that she was really just paranoid, overreacting, accusing, that this was all her fault for making a big deal out of nothing. Even with his other faults (cruelties, her mind whispered) aside, at least his involvement with Project Leda was unforgivable, and she wanted proof of it. Maybe if she had that, she could stop being mad at herself for not wanting to forgive. And if anyone had that proof, CYGNet would.

Maybe it was just because of the sheer blunt honesty about her motives, or the inescapable vulnerability of the message Beth sent, but Mika had replied to her within a day. And she'd been so gentle about it, too, enough to make Beth later question where the stereotype of autistic brashness came from. Then again, over email, Mika had all the time she needed to compose her thoughts and lay them out as softly as she wanted. She didn't have to spit them out as fast as she could to keep pace with a quick and painfully overwhelming world.

Hi Beth Childs,

I'm so sorry for what you had to go through. I still don't know how they got away with doing things like this for so long. I suppose people will always find ways to be cruel. But we've survived this long, and the whole point of CYGNet is to help us all heal. The experimental network has been dismantled, and we are assembling resources to help us. We've brought mental health professionals on to the project to develop custom programs for our needs. We can make them available to you, if you are interested.

I attached scans of some of your files that we recovered from DYAD. There are a few case reports with the signature of the person you asked about, spaced throughout your lifetime. There are also financial records with his name in the list of paid employees. He was without a doubt part of the Leda monitor program. I can provide all of the documentation that we have related to you, if you like, but I thought that would be too much all at once. I know these are hard to look at, but I hope they help let your mind rest. They are very real, and every awful thing we have experienced was also real, no matter how they tried to convince everyone that we were making it all up.

Please take your time with these, and stay in contact if you want to. You can join our mailing list, if you want to know when we have new information or new resources available. We're here for you.

And hey, if you just want to talk to someone who knows what it's like to deal with all of this, I'm here, too. You can reach my personal inbox or IM me at [email protected]. It'll be okay.

-Veera

Beth had started crying before she even finished reading the letter, much less opened the attachments. She cried so often these days. She only knew why half the time. But this time, it felt like the tears were extracting some of her pain as they left her, instead of just overflowing from the unending wellspring of her directionless distress. All of this was real, and someone else knew it.

Though she was grateful beyond measure for her mother’s untiring support, they were each other’s too-close, ever-present reminders of what they’d survived, trying to act like they weren’t, trying to convince each other and themselves that they were okay. Beth had needed something else, too, something until now unnamed.

This was a handhold, a backstop Beth didn't know she'd been desperate to find. It wasn't just the confirmation of what she’d concluded about her father. The ability speak plainly to someone she didn't feel the need to pretend around was an exhale of a breath held too long. At least one person in the world not only understood, but really and truly didn't want or expect her to act like any of this was normal or okay, or that she would ever be the same again.

Veera – or Mika, as she often went by online – made good on her offer of a sympathetic ear. Their correspondence started off with awkward, grammatically correct messages about the less painful details of their lives. Mika told her about the farmer’s market three blocks away where she went walking early in the morning before it got busy, and the plant stand there that her best friend and roommate Niki (also a Leda) had to ask her to stop buying so many succulents from.

At first, Beth tried to chatter like she used to, but there were no safe subjects. What had happened had touched all of her life. Normally, she’d talk about school, or sports, or her friends. But she was trying to start all over again at a new school with all the struggles that came with it. She didn’t have the time or energy for sports anymore, and talking about them hurt, now. Running used to make her heart sing. But no matter how she tried, there was no joy in the motion anymore. To top it all off, it was as hard to connect with old friends from her old life as it was to try and make new ones. She spent most interactions either doubting her own character judgement or dreading the moment people recognized her Leda face from the news.

She didn’t know how to talk about any of it to anyone. Maybe she could have if it had been just the clone thing or just the dad thing. But the two were inextricably entangled, and she still couldn’t even explain it to herself. It was all unbelievably horrifying, and any time she tried to be honest about it, people ended up disbelieving or horrified. Shocker.

Maybe, though, it wouldn’t be weird to talk about it with Mika. Mika already knew the worst. Beth didn’t have to hide that hurt from her to keep from shaking her world, or to keep her dismissal from hurting Beth. Maybe that’s what was hurting the most: the feeling that even after escaping, she still had to pretend to be okay. That compulsive stifling feeling choked her whenever it bubbled back up. On her bad days, a simple “how are you?” could reduce her to a blank face plastered over a raw tangle of emotions held motionless her own iron grip.

But Mika mentioned having bad days, too. Days came where she was too scared and nightmare-weary to do anything but make herself some tea and soak up some sunlight in the safety of home. Beth could casually say things like after those two months, i still twitch every time i hear a door open, and i wish my body would quit feeling like it doesn’t exist, my legs feel numb. It barely broke the surface of what it was like in her head, but was discomfiting enough for people that she held her tongue at school.

Sometimes, Beth got tired of constantly thinking about all this shit and tried to lighten things up. On one comically disastrous occasion of cultural exchange, she liveblogged Mika her attempt at eating the infamous Scandinavian lutefisk, along with an audio recording of the incoherent horrified noises she made after tasting it. In return, she received a recording of someone, presumably Mika, laughing harder than she’d ever heard anyone laugh before. It made Beth smile. Not many things did, back then.

Slowly, as the formality fell away from their transcontinental conversations, their heavier stories seething below the surface seeped in. Beth had been in therapy long enough now to know that she couldn't just recklessly unload on people the way she did in counseling sessions. But a counselor couldn't always provide the same kind of unspoken solidarity that someone in the same boat could.

Bit by bit, slipped into the chats that were becoming a daily occurrence, they talked about monitors, about what the experiment had really all been for, why that both was and wasn’t important, and how they'd discovered they were a part of Project Leda. Putting words to the pain hurt, a lot. But the ability to lay out long-unspoken truths in front of each other, knowing they were believed in the way that only people who have shared something can, was a healing kind of pain instead of the festering one Beth had been living with.

The two of them had more in common than they'd thought, growing up a world apart. Beth's experience raised under the subconscious wariness of her father's hovering thumb felt a lot like what Mika described growing up largely isolated with her former guardian. But sometimes, whenever they realized that something they'd both thought was normal was pretty not, they got a good laugh out of it despite the weight of their pasts. Mika seemed somewhat accustomed to her normal being considered pretty weird, so she usually took the revelations in stride better than Beth did. Beth wouldn't find out for at least a year after meeting her that it was because of her Asperger's, since it was a topic Mika seemed quite sensitive about.

Mika explained it once, in a conversation full of long pauses on her part and watching the typing icon disappear and reappear on Beth’s. The way she put it, it just meant that her brain worked a bit differently than most people's, processing sounds and sights and all the information it took in at different speeds and with different emphases. The difference could turn everyday things like the sound of a refrigerator running into a splitting headache, or something as simple as the soft texture of her favorite jacket into a kind of bliss. That alternative way of processing also extended to things like words and emotions as well. Sometimes, it took her longer than the world was willing to wait to process them into something that made sense. It often made communication tricky, trying to compensate for the gap in mutual understanding with most people. The world and the people in it could be so overwhelming sometimes, so fast and bright and full of noise and uncertainty and bewilderingly arbitrary social conventions. But the biggest challenge was other people expecting her to do everything the same way they did, ignorant of the fact there were any ways to exist other than their own, and completely oblivious to the fact that she was already putting in at least twice as much effort to communicate with them as they were with her.

And yet, even coming from such a different perspective, Mika gets it. Beth says sometimes i dream of drowning and its not a nightmare and i wake up not knowing how to feel, and Mika says I still dream of burning and wake up not knowing which fires are real, and they both say yeah. And they sit there across the world from each other knowing these things, knowing that it doesn't fix anything. And yet, it does change something. Nothing's any better, really. But somehow, the knowledge that someone else understands makes it a little easier to bear.

And that's just it. Somehow, without ever even having seen her face, Mika sees Beth clearer than anyone. All of her, all the ugly parts she hides so that they can't hurt anyone, and all the good parts that she also hides so that nobody can hurt them or take them away from her. Mika sees all of that and then just tells Beth another story about the Northern Lights she sees on the regular. Apparently, in Finnish, they’re called "fox fires." Beth hardly ever sees the aurora, living relatively far south in a bright city. But her stories about life in the metropolis by the lake intrigue Mika as much as the tales of the twisting green lights do her. And Beth can talk about something lighter again while not having to pretend that the heaviness isn’t there, too, even while she’s just once more trying and failing to explain poutine. For her, the weight never really goes away. But the effort of pretending she’s not carrying it takes more out of her than the weight itself. Mika understands that.

Maybe that’s why Beth had talked it over with Mika first, even before her mom, when she was considering taking a gap year after she hopefully managed to finish her senior year of high school. (God, it was so hard to think about English or math or whatever when just that morning she’d woken from a nightmare about being back in a not-home house that she never escaped.) Beth's mom had been so unbelievably supportive of Beth's recovery, even while she herself was adjusting to the wrenching change in both of their lives. It was both inspiring and a little intimidating. If her mom managed to run a household and raise a daughter all on her own, even while trying to heal from her own trauma, how could Beth not do her utmost, too? She was grateful to be able to talk to Mika about it, to get a reality check from someone who both understood her situation intimately and didn't make Beth feel that pressure of expectation. In the end, Beth did decide to take a year or two off before considering college, and her mom was again nothing if not supportive. Beth figured, after this entire mess, she deserved some time to herself to work on sorting her shit out, and her mom agreed.

After graduating with reasonable if not flying colors, Beth worked a series of part-time and odd jobs that didn't stress her out too much, letting herself focus on her own healing. In between her mom's support, seeing a counselor regularly, and the security of having a friend she could really trust, Beth felt like she was making progress. Slow progress, sure, but progress, nonetheless. Considering that she had seventeen years' worth of lies to unbelieve and emotional trauma to finally acknowledge, Beth figured that there was only so much she could do in the three years she'd had.

Her days were still hard. Getting sleep and waking up and eating and even just existing were still so fucking hard sometimes, and it was horrible. Some days, the thinnest sheet trapped her in bed like it was a car pinning her down. It felt so stupid for such simple things to be so hard. But then her therapist would remind her that that’s what mental illness and trauma was, that this was what the wounds in her mind and heart made her feel like. And once in awhile, sun broke through the shadows, and she had a day that reminded her what an okay day felt like – that okay days existed. That more might.

Now, she’s here, lying in a bright living room so far from home, with her dearest friend in the next room. She’s comfortable, except for the knot in her neck from sleeping oddly on the couch. The soreness pales in comparison to the usual tensions that are so strangely absent. Beth can’t remember the last time she felt this okay. She’s not steeling herself to go to work. She’s not dreading the next conversation with her mother that goes quiet as they both remember awful things they don’t mention. She’s not bracing herself for the next time her brain runs rampant worrying about whether she’ll run into the subject of her restraining order somewhere in the city and have to wonder if he'll honor it.

None of that reaches her here. There’s something about this quiet little pocket of space. It’s overrun with a proliferation of potted plants, from the sprawling lacy-leafed monster in the corner, to the fern peeping out of the kitchen, to the vine cuttings spilling out of an oddly familiar leaf-shaped glass bottle on the sill. Sunlight streaks through leaves and windowpanes and across the colorful patchwork of rugs on the floor. In the midst of it all, Beth is held by a palpable aura of gentleness. It holds her so softly that she doesn't need to hold herself in. It's like the layer of caution that she always keeps wrapped between herself and the rest of the world has simply dissolved away. In this moment suspended in morning light, she is okay.

She feels safe.

The realization undoes something in her. She feels the tears starting, and she expects the taut tension of involuntary stifling that always comes with them to return. But it doesn’t. She lies still and soft on the couch with the water creeping over her cheeks, breath occasionally catching but flowing freely. She savors it in the quiet.

The soft thunk of an ill-fitted door opening breaks into her odd reverie. Mika’s up. Beth sniffs and scrubs at her eyes halfheartedly, but she can’t hide them right now and she doesn’t want to. Mika notices immediately, and comes trotting over with quiet steps, leaning forward all concern.

"Beth," she says softly. She shifts from foot to foot like a nervous cat, watching Beth with enormous eyes. Beth has never met anyone else with such an intense stare. Or maybe it's just the fact that Beth knows beyond all doubt that she's being looked at by somebody who really sees her in her entirety. It's like she's staring right into Beth's soul. But Mika was able to do that long before they saw each others' faces. They've shared so many thousands of words over screens and seas, so many emotions that have gone otherwise unspoken, so many too-early mornings and too-late nights on the fringes of each other's dawns and dusks.

“What’s wrong?”

Finally, a flash of that sick tension runs through Beth’s body. It’s been okay when Mika has asked that before, when it was just silent letters on a screen. But out loud, the question falls on her ears like every well-meaning inquiry she’s ever had to scramble to find an acceptable answer for. The strain begins to cinch tight around her again like coarse ropes across barely-healed skin, ready to compel her to replace the truth with something safer. Her arms and legs tied, she begins to freeze, railing against herself for tainting the softness, the safety of this place.

"Beth." Mika says again, softer but more urgent.

In the gap between thoughts created by hearing her name, Beth seizes the chance to redirect them to the present. She clings to the welling in the corners of her eyes, the warmth of the sun caressing her back. The leaves of trees whisper outside the third-floor window in a mild breeze. The brightness spills over the sill and across Mika’s asymmetrical, half-craggy face and lights up tufts of her short hair as she steps closer. The couch dips as Mika sits down next to her, tilting Beth toward her.

Without meeting her eyes, Mika lifts a hesitant hand that hovers in the air between them, uncertain yet reaching. Her gentle palm falls onto Beth's forearm as softly as a floating leaf. The fingers curl around Beth’s arm just below the wrist, firm but not tight. Comforting.

The softness surrounding Beth seeps back into her, saturating her. As the memory fades like a ripple into water, the tension slackens. But it leaves her shaky, with traces of a familiar ache in her neck muscles, one that goes deeper than the simple stiffness from the couch. She sucks in a few unsteady breaths while Mika gives her arm a gentle squeeze.

“Sorry,” Beth says in a small, awkward voice.

Mika tilts her head. “Why?”

“Uh, I didn’t mean to bring all – this mess, in here.” Beth rubs the back of her neck with her free hand. “It’s so... soft, and okay, and – I don’t wanna ruin it,” she says, trailing off into a mumble.

“Hey.” Mika moves her hand from Beth’s arm to her shoulder. When Beth looks at her, she’s looking right back. Mika's eyes dart down to the floor for a moment, but then return to hold Beth’s with deliberate steadiness. “It’s alright. It’s like this here because we wanted it to be safe to be messy. You’re not ruining anything.”

“... Oh.” She’s steadied by Mika’s fingers curling around her shoulder, by the tendrils of sunlight spreading across her head and back and arms. Mika’s voice is small but steady, and somehow it comes from the same throat that makes that huge pealing laugh. It’s so strange how they sound nothing alike. Until yesterday, Beth hadn’t heard her voice since the lutefisk incident. They’d mostly kept to text and pictures. It had seemed easier, the way it gave them both plenty time to think before they spoke through their different uncertainties. Beth was already planning her trip before they realized that they’d never actually called each other. By that point, it sounded like more fun to meet in person the old-fashioned way.

"I'll make you some tea." Mika abruptly stands and lets go of her. Beth is sad to lose the contact. She flits across the room toward the kitchen in her soft cotton pajama pants, complemented by yet another black graphic tee for yet another Scandinavian metal band Beth's never heard of. Or at least, she'd never heard of them before Mika, who has something to say about all of them, and now Beth knows more than she'll ever need to.

Mika moves in and out of view behind the half-wall that separates the little living room from the kitchen. The fronds of the fern on the counter make a green rustling as she brushes by them. It sends soft feathered shadows waving across the wall opposite the window. Beth hears the rush of water boiling out of sight, and soon sees steam rising from the mug that's being handed to her.

"It's hot," Mika says unnecessarily. She sits down next to her again, this time leaning into Beth with her arm. Beth’s glad for it.

"Have you ditched the bags and gone loose leaf?" Beth says, eyeing the fragments of bright green leaf free floating in her mug.

"It didn't come in a bag. It came from the window."

"The window?"

"It's basil tea. For the fear and pain. Five large fresh leaves in two hundred and fifty milliliters water. We grew it here."

Beth takes a cautious sip. It's surprisingly sweet, and the savory smell of the steam rising from it curls into her sinuses. The aching in her head and neck begin to relax. It's unfamiliar, but it feels like home should, just like everything else here.

"Thanks," Beth says. On an impulse of craving closeness, she leans her head onto Mika's shoulder with a sigh. The sensation of contact deepens as Mika leans against her, too.

Beth holds the cup close, fingers wrapping around its warmth. She takes another sip and gets a bit of leaf stuck in her teeth. The way she scrunches up her face trying to dislodge it pulls a tiny laugh out of Mika.

“You don’t have to be okay here,” Mika whispers. “You can just be. That’s what we do.”

Beth finds her eyes wet again, but she smiles while she sets her mug down and wipes them away. “Kinda already wish I could stay here,” she says with a chuckle.

“... That’s probably not impossible.”

“Really?” Beth asks wryly. “Not even twenty-four hours, and you’d already be willing to put up with me?”

“Twenty-four hours and twenty-seven months.”

Beth melts a little even while waving the idea aside. “I wasn’t serious.”

“I know, but... weren’t you looking at the school here?”

“I mean, yeah, but... really, my mom just thought I deserved a break to get away for a little while. She’d saved up a bit, and I didn’t want to make it a big deal or anything, but she really wanted me to. She knew I wanted to come see you. Checking out the school was mostly an excuse. I know it’s a great place, but... I don’t really think it’ll help with what I wanna do.”

“What do you want to do?”

Beth sighs and leans back, looking at the ceiling. Mika follows her so that they’re still shoulder to shoulder, and pulls her feet up to tuck them in cross-legged.

She flounders for a moment, trying to find where to begin. She hasn’t told anyone this yet.

“This Leda crap has been kind of awful, right? It’s screwed so many of us up. But there’s only, what, a few hundred of us? And that’s not the only reason things get messed up.” She swallows. Her eyes trace irregularities in the ceiling: a knot in an exposed wooden beam here, a sealed and repainted crack there. “Kids like me are a dime a dozen. There’s so many people out there going through hell, just because they got stuck with people who are hurting so much that they hurt other people. And then they go on and hurt more people. It’s a cycle that’s really fucking hard to break.”

Breaths that have become harsh force her to pause and let them lengthen again. A touch on her knee draws her eyes down to a hand resting on it palm up, offering. Beth takes it. Mika squeezes her fingers in reassurance.

“When I was little, I wanted to be a cop like my dad, did you know that?” Mika, eyes wide, shakes her head. “Yeah. That was always my plan. I used to think he was so brave. Wanted to be just like him.” She shudders. Mika grips her hand, steady. “Even if I could do it better than he did, the system is still full of people like him. It’s broken. I couldn’t – I can’t end up like that. I can’t keep being a part of this shit. I want to actually help people.

“I never thought about it before I met you, but the people you brought in to do therapy programs and all for CYGNet? They’re amazing. The stuff I’ve gotten from them has helped me so much. And I don’t know what I’d do without my regular therapist. These people really help people like me. Like all of us. Those are the kind of people I wanna be like.”

Beth’s voice drops and becomes small and secretive, but firm. “I’ve been looking at the social work programs at home. There’s some really good ones at the uni near where mom and I live now. And that’s the city where I grew up. I know how things work there. I know it won’t be easy, but. I could really... do stuff.”

Silence stretches. Beth looks at Mika, only to be completely thrown off by an expression she can’t make heads or tails of. “What?”

Mika’s face is blank yet soft, only barely hinting at her thoughts in the faintest crinkling of her eyes. It’s funny, how quiet her face is most of the time. Beth never would have guessed, going off her online impressions of her. Mika’s so expressive and eloquent with her written words. In person, she is much more subtle. But even after only a day spent around her, Beth is already starting to see how her movements speak volumes in a language of their own. The flickering of her hands flares to life with excitement. The casual shake of her head tosses her hair out of her eyes even when it’s not in the way, like she’s clearing the slate of her mind. And much like Beth these days, she goes very still and tense when she’s getting uncomfortable or overwhelmed, the way she did after a particularly loud whistle at the train station. It shows in her shoulders. They’re soft now though, and she just watches Beth and squeezes her hand once more.

“You’re really amazing, you know,” Mika says.

“Wh- huh?”

“Well.” She looks away and turns their hands over, but doesn’t let go. “After the awful things you’ve been through – nnnh! Don’t pretend,” she says, looking back sharply as Beth begins to protest that she didn’t have it that bad. Mika knows her so well. Beth can’t help but laugh a little. “After all that, you just want to help people. All I ever want to do is get away from them, most of the time.”

Beth quirks a brow at her with a bemused grin. “Really? Because setting up and running an organization that provides mental health resources and extremely important information to a few hundred people is a really shit way to not help people.”

“I never talk to most of them! And CYGNet only has one hundred and thirteen members, not hundreds.”

Beth rolls her eyes with an exaggerated motion. “Yeah, so, you’ve somehow convinced, what, a whole freaking third of a huge group of scared strangers to trust you?”

“A lot of that was Niki and the press team, she’s way better at talking to people th–”

“And you’ve been careful enough and clever enough to keep them and all the information you got from DYAD safe and secure? I can’t even imagine the organization and, and cyber-security and whatever the hell else you put into all this. That you still put in. And look what you’ve done. You’re helping so many people. You found something only you could do, and do it really damn well.”

Mika looks down into her lap, half her face flushed. The raised ridges and swirls of the scarred side are pink, but not as dark. Her shoulders curl in a little, but she doesn’t pull her hand away from Beth’s. If anything, she holds on a little tighter.

“You don’t have to like talking to people to help them. You don’t have to be someone you’re not,” Beth says gently, then pauses as a new thought occurs to her. “Why did you talk to me?”

Mika gives a tiny shrug, eyes still downcast. “You reached out to me. Most people are scared, or suspicious, or hard to talk to, but you were just... honest. You told me exactly what you needed, even if that meant sharing your painful secrets with a stranger. I...” She trails off, looking toward the closed door of Niki’s bedroom. She blinks slowly.

“It reminded me of something Niki said a long time ago. When we first met. We didn’t trust each other at first. But when things got bad, we needed to, and she just... We’d only known each other for a day. She told me a true story that people had called her crazy for, and trusted me to believe her. And when I told her about... my Asperger’s, about being autistic, she just told me something about herself, too, another thing that a lot of people get cruel about when they know. This was back before she came out, too. She was hardly out to herself, then, really. But she told me anyway. ‘Secret for a secret,’ she said.”

“She’s really special to you.” It’s not a question. How could it be, with the sheer softness of love rounding out every syllable and making Mika melt into the couch and into Beth’s shoulder.

“She’s... yes. She’s my family.” Mika looks out the window, and the bright light dances over her nose. “I don’t remember ever having one.”

Beth slings an arm around Mika’s shoulders and smiles as she curls closer into Beth’s side. “Looks like you’re part of a pretty big one, now,” she says, waving a hand at the dozens of photos on the walls circling them.

“I guess so.”

“No need to guess. The evidence is right there. And I’m right here.”

Mika turns those huge eyes on her again. She’s done that multiple times now, even though Beth knows she rarely looks people in the eye. Eye contact is too much, most of the time. She describes it as too intense, too distracting, too intimate. Meeting those eyes – so like Beth’s own, but filled with such a different kind of light – Beth thinks she understands a glimmer of it. If every eye she met were as overwhelmingly expressive as Mika’s, Beth probably wouldn’t meet them all either. It keeps taking her by surprise, coming across their eloquence in an otherwise quiet face. Caught by that gaze, every emotion that lives in it touches Beth. Right now, it’s soft with adoration but shaded with a gradient of doubt. The width and depth of Mika’s eyes reveal a clear view of a vulnerable, aching, healing heart that spent eleven years starving for the love it needs and still hasn’t forgotten the famine.

It might be breaking Beth’s heart. No wonder Niki is always showering her with hugs and kind words and gentle hands on rounded shoulders. Maybe one of these days, Mika will have spent long enough finally getting to soak up all that affection that she won’t look at Beth like this when she says the simple truth.

“Hey. Here I am. Really.” Beth’s voice is a little choked up. She pulls Mika into a proper hug with both arms. Mika squeaks in surprise at being squeezed so emphatically, but returns it all the same. God, but she gives the best hugs of anyone Beth’s ever met. All contact and even, firm pressure and steadiness. “It’s so damn good to see you. I can’t believe you’re...” real, Beth thinks but doesn’t say. I can’t believe I didn’t imagine you. I can’t believe you’re just as kind as your words. I can’t believe how good it feels to be around you. “I can’t believe I’m really here.”

Mika doesn’t say anything. For a moment, one of her hands leaves Beth’s back to fiddle with something, then comes back to give her a little squeeze that Beth returns.

Beth’s phone buzzes a notification behind her on the little glass-top table next to the couch. The table’s wooden base is a round blob carved into the shape of a very fluffy and very ugly sheep with curly horns. Beth’s arms loosen from their embrace as she turns to look at it, bemused. No one but Mika really messages her except for her mom. But if it’s morning here, it’s about time for bed at home. She checks it, just to be sure she’s okay.

But it’s not from her mom.

Mika reaches out to gently grasp her forearm again as Beth shoots her a quizzical look and opens the message.

3mika: I'm glad you're here.

Beth's heart quails.

To think, that her darker days might have kept her from ever being in this moment. Beth might never have gotten to this point, hurt but healing and here. Here, she's seven time zones and an ocean away from the cycle of pain she grew up in, barely aware she needed to escape. She might well feel safer right here in this crossroads of time and place than she has at any other in her entire life. It's a realization that's as humbling as it is nourishing.

Already, the distance this journey has taken her has given her so much perspective. She wasn’t sure, before, whether the work she’s been considering was just a response to what she’s been through – or just a way for the cycle to keep her within its spiral. But she’s seen what Mika can do, what Beth could do one day, if she keeps on.

It won’t be easy. She’ll go back, and deep-seated memories will try to drag her back into small dark places. But being here, even for only a few hours, has already changed her. She can change, and she can grow, and she is already tapping into new strengths that her past has yet to reckon with. She is here, right now, in spite of all of it. And today is not a dark day.

“Me too, Mika. I’m glad to be here, too.” Beth’s tongue stumbles over the name, because she’s never said it out loud before, only read it on a screen.

Surprise sends Mika’s eyebrows up and her eyes wide again, like she’s never heard it before, either. Maybe she hasn’t. She tilts her head again like a question, touching her ear and looking at Beth.

Beth grins. “Mika.” A smile blooms on that curious face, lighting it up. She’s the one who pulls Beth into a hug this time, and it’s both fierce and soft. When she lets go, she leans into Beth’s side again and they stay like that, arms over shoulders and comfortably curled up together, soaking in the warmth of each other’s presence like leaves drink in light. The simple sweetness and companionship of it soothes Beth’s heart, seeking its way into the aching crevices. It’s an odd feeling, both seeping inward and flowing outward, trickling all the way through her until it warms her cold toes in a way that feels both new and strangely familiar.

A long, sleepy yawn announces that Niki’s awake now, too. Soon, she comes out of her room stretching her arms over her head. Mika reaches a hand out toward her to wave in greeting, though she leaves the other arm draped over Beth’s shoulders. Niki smiles at them. That kind smile, too, adds to the warmth washing through Beth. Her feet practically itch with it, and with a growing sensation of déja vu. She fidgets her toes against the floor as Niki walks over to brush Mika’s outstretched hand like a touchstone.

“How'd you sleep? Isn’t that couch the comfiest?” she says to Beth.

“Well, I’ve got a crick in my neck, but I still slept better than I have in years.”

Niki turns her sunny smile on Beth. “Good to hear it. Weird, though, I nap there all the time and my neck’s always fine. Huh. Anyway, I think I might make waffles. You two want some breakfast?”

Mika nods, but doesn’t let go of Beth yet. Beth is lost in thought, trying to remember what that light, floating feeling in her feet reminds her of.

“Sweet.” Niki ambles toward the kitchen and bends down with pursed lips to peer at the fern perched on the counter. “Hmm. You still look a little pale. Let’s get you some more sun.” She brings the plant over to the living room and is fussing over settling it on the sheep table when it clicks for Beth. A physical memory washes over her, for once welcome. She lets it fill her, refreshing like a deep breath of cold morning air her lungs are suddenly hungry for. She flexes her calves and ankles, her legs remembering the joy and freedom of stride and strike. Her bones are finally recalling how they once carried her with ease, even while they're adjusting to the new weight of who she's become. Fully alive again for at least this moment, her soles are practically prickling with the desire to eat up ground.

“How about you, Beth? Do you like waffles?” Niki asks, fluffing the fern’s crinkly green leaves. Mika squeezes her shoulder.

Beth grins and plants steady feet on the blue rug in front of the couch. “Save a few for me? I think I might actually go for a run first.”

#orphan black #clone club #veera suominen #beth childs #niki lintula #mk ob #mika ob #herbs on the windowsill au #lizzie taking up space #lizzie's adventures in writing #welcome back yall #long post #fic #ob fic #that a garden will grow

[fancycakedragon]

Undeniable Attraction

Reader x Reader?

[Not my gif]

Source: @butteryplanet

Warning(s): some risque experimentation with reader's duplicate.

A/N: This is for a request that was made.

Masterlist

Finals were always a stressful time in college, but this year they were different. Before starting your spring semester you spoke to your advisor and decided on double majoring. It seemed a little daunting at the time but your advisor suggested you try it out this semester. If it didn't go well you could drop one to a minor or all together.

Now you were overwhelmed with all you had to do, projects, presentations, tests to study for. You knew you weren't going to make it but you didn't plan on failing for classes you already paid for. So you did all you could with the time you had. It was 6 in the evening when your study group decided to end the session for that day. They decided on going out for dinner but you declined telling them you were staying to do some reasearch. 

One of your classmates Drew shook his head, "You're gonna need one more of you if you wanna get all your work done." You looked up at him in realization, he probably didn't even know what idea he'd given you in that passing comment.

"Yeah, I would need one more of me," you said to yourself. "You know what, I'm going back to my dorm. I think I left some stuff there." You packed up your stuff and rushed off.

You went to your room and searched until you found the spellbook that had been in your family for generations. Flipping through the pages you looked for the right spell you needed. Then you saw it, a duplication potion. 

Your familiar sat next to you looking at the page suspiciously. You were glad your roommate transferred to another school. It made it easier on you not trying to hide Zenia or any of your witchcraft from someone living in such close quarters with you.

"Don't do this," was all she said but you could hear the warning in her voice.

"It's gonna be fine Zenia, I just need to make the duplicate for a day."

Zenia looked at you irritation evident on her face, "I dont care about you using it for a day, I care that you'll get caught. This spell-"

You looked at Zenia scratching under her chin affectionately. '"It'll be fine, assuming I don't get caught I'll just have the duplicate do as much work as she can before I break the spell."

Zenia looked at you with a stern expression. Then you went to work putting together the ingredients for the potion. Zenia helped you of course but she made it clear this was against her better judgement. One you were done you held up the crystal goblet carrying the teal liquid. A eery mist hovered over it some spilling towards your hand. 

Looking into it you said the incantation making the mist dissappear and revealing your reflection. Tipping the goblet back against your lips you gulped down the bitter drink. 

You felt a piece of your being ripped out of your chest and in a flash you stood in your room staring at, well, you. You grinned knowing that it had worked. "I might just pull this off," you said to yourself. Your duplicate stared back at you with a naive smile.

You led the duplicate to the desk at the end of your room. You eyed her for a bit, "You don't really talk much do you?" 

She only answered with a shake of her head, "I am a part of you, I know why I'm here."

You nodded with you lips pressed together. "Ok, we've got a lot to get done. I'm gonna have you do my final essays and projects while I study for the tests." 

Your duplicate wordlessly began working and you layed on your bed to study. It felt good to have a the load reduced a bit. The more you got done the more confident you became. If this wen well you might look into making a duplicate more often. 

Hours passed and you decided on taking a break when your stomach grumbled. 

"I'm getting some dinner. Do you want anything?" You addressed your duplicate.

"No, also I need to go to the library and get books for this presentation, is that ok?"

You thought for a moment, "Ok but be back here as soon as possible. Don't talk to anyone!" 

"You know I'm not that stupid," your duplicate said with a roll of her eyes before leaving for the library

The days passed and you had grown fond of having you duplicate around more. Enjoying your time spent with her was something you hadn't expected. She was just a means to get through finals. Still, you noticed yourself becoming more aware of yourself. You tried to fix your hair at random times, you used your chapstick more to keep your lips from drying, you even thought more about the outfits you chose. The reason it was so unexpected was that this was your duplicate, not an entirely different entity. There were a lot of territories still unexplored in your new emotions and trying to think about them only confused you more.

Suddenly she walked into your dorm room with a grin, "We should go clubbing!"

"Um, what do you mean we?" you asked sitting up on your bed.

"You, me and your friends. They wanted to celebrate and I thought it was as a good idea."

You shook your head in refusal, "No, we can't both go out. It's too dangerous."

"Oh come on! A simple glamour spell and some makeup, no one will ever notice a resemblence." your duplicate took a step into your personal space, "We both deserve this." She tipped her chin downwards her identical eyes batting their lashes at you.

You sighed knowing your resolve was weakening, "Fine." Once you made sure neither on of you looked like eachother you decided you were ready.

Turning to you with sudden panic in her eyes, "Wait? What's my name?"

You shrugged, "Jane Doe...man Doeman."

Jane nodded, "Ok. Ok, Jane Doeman." She shook off any remaining nerves before the two of you left.

The club was filled with with other college students trying to let off some steam as well. You noticed Jane was getting along with your friends. Which wasn't a surprise, she was you after all.

After a few drinks, a light buzz set in and you began to worry less and enjoy yourself more. Without a word you lead Jane to the center of the club for a dance.

The neon lights and pumping bass only added to your inhibitions. Your body moved closer to hers as the two of you danced in a sea of sweaty bodies. Even with the other people bumping against you, all your attention was on Jane. Her perfume-your perfume-somehow smelled way better on her than you. Her head was thrown back a carefree grin on her face as she moved in time with everyone else. Not thinking twice you grabbed Jane's face and smashed your lips against hers. How were her lips so soft and when did she buy peach flavored lip gloss? Pulling back for air she stared at you with a new found desire. In an instant you were stumbling out of the dance floor towards a booth in the back of the club.

Jane's mouth was back on yours with a frevor you weren't expecting. You moaned when she pulled your bottom lip between her teeth. Her hands reached behind you squeezing you bottom. You soon turned your attention to her jaw then trailing nips and kisses down her neck. She let out a mix between a moan and a sigh, her hands squeezing your sides. "We should probably got somewhere more private."

"This is crazy right?" you asked looking into her eyes. Every part of what you were feeling wasn't supposed ti make sense. Yet here you were making out with your duplicate feeling youself fall deeper into your feelings. 

Jane stared at you with a mischevious glint in her eyes, "Hell yeah this is crazy. So are we gonna go back to your dorm or what?"

-----

Requests are open.

#reader #chilling adventures of sabrina #fanfic #y/n #reader x reader #reader x duplicate #6-20-19

[pidgezero-one]

dont message me about this please. I just need somewhere to dump it

I had a falling out with my best friend at the end of july and he completely cut off contact with me. i trusted him more than anybody in the world and there are no words to describe how much his friendship meant to me. the way this happened destroyed my sense of self-worth and I isolated myself from people and tried to fill that empty void with drinking and shitty eating habits (namely starving myself followed by binge eating). fell into a pretty bad depression and was constantly lethargic and unproductive. hated going out in public because I hated myself and didnt want to be seen.

suffered a death in the family at the end of august. this isnt something I cope with in a healthy way. especially during that period of time

started talking with my friend again in september but that didnt go very well either. still felt shitty about this every day, just having this constant nervousness and wanting to throw up and feeling like im carrying a huge weight on my shoulders, every day 24 hours a day. i had dreams about our situation all the time and it fucked me up. cant remember the last time I got a good nights sleep. developed a lot of trust issues from revelations that came out in the few discussions we had. we havent spoken in almost 2 months now. still really miss him but also still hurting over the things he said and did

2 weeks later, boyfriend of 2 years broke up with me when I got back from dreamhack. it wasnt really a surprise and there's no bad blood but was still a really hard adjustment. we had lived together since before we started dating.

we were splitting rent on a 1 bed apartment so now I have to pay for it myself. i dont really have the means to move. this fucked me over financially bc I was in the process of paying about 8000 dollars worth of debt accrued from when I was unemployed in 2014. so that's why none of you have really seen me since then, im saving money instead of going out to do things. this is also around when I decided to cut the drinking to prevent it from getting out of hand and decided to fix my eating habits, both of which are saving me money

met someone new in november who I got close to pretty quickly. he knew I was hurting from something, a lot of things, and helped me recover and was somehow over time able to convince me i didnt deserve any of what was going on. i started to believe it too. we spent a lot of time together and became very good friends.

around the same time i saw another friend have a falling out with his best friend and the way it got him down made me really angry. he didnt deserve to feel that poorly. this helped me realize that neither did i.

start of december, i fell mutually in love with the new friend. although it was just the beginning of the relationship, it was unprecedented in how genuinely loved I felt. we were supportive of each other in ways I didnt even know I could be. never enjoyed someone's company so much before or felt so totally safe telling them literally anything, and after I was having so much trouble and anxiety over opening up to anybody like that again, this was really really special that he could make me feel that way. especially considering the vulnerable state I was in, I tried to be cautious about getting this attached so quickly, but I decided to trust him. you kinda had to be there to understand just why I let myself feel this way despite it looking like a textbook mistake and me being well aware of that fact. he was thoughtful and respectful and considerate and was the most loving person i've ever known. we live a long distance apart and decided we'd take things slowly until we had the chance to spend some time together in person and discuss what our future looks like at that time. we spent a lot of time together calling each other around the holidays and never let a day (or an hour, really) go by without making the other feel loved and appreciated and worthwhile. for a christmas gift he contacted a lot of my friends and compiled a series of video and audio clips from all of them sending me kind words at the holidays to remind me that i'm loved. he really was a wonderful person.

being able to really believe that I didnt deserve to feel as badly as I had been since the summer, combined with falling in love again... I was finally something resembling happy again, I got my confidence back, I was energetic and productive and in an improved state of mind... not completely, things still hurt and I think they always will. but I was at least functioning. the wounds were still there and they were still fresh but I was at least starting to heal.

had to replace my pc because too much of my hardware was just not working anymore. that was a big financial setback I wasnt prepared for. my laptop mobo also broke so now I dont have one of those anymore. oh well. once im done paying off the last part of my debt im going to save up for a new one

start of january, one of my closest friends goes radio silent and unresponsive to texts and calls for over a week. i was a fucking mess worrying about him. (we hung out a few days ago but at the time holy shit)

my coworker at my job (the only other dev on my team) is leaving, so I have to learn a ton of new stuff and also train who we hire next, and im pretty stressed out about that on top of the status of my current major project

i didnt go to agdq this year, but that entire week was rough. wanted to stay off social media and stuff to not be reminded of it but this is where all my connections are and I need to work on shit. I spent a lot of last agdq making good memories with the friend i had the falling out with and thinking back to that just makes me really sad now.

was finally starting to enjoy streaming again and I injured my hand recently and cant use it to use a dpad or joystick, so now im not doing that either. it got infected pretty badly and ive been worried about that for a while, but it's healing up now. hopefully ill return soon. also having numerous other alarming things happen healthwise that are too TMI for here but... yeah

last week the guy i loved dumped me. not going to go into detail on this but i feel very very slighted by how he chose to do it. it had only been a month but im pretty messed up and blindsided by it. despite the short length I can't remember the last time I had any kind of interpersonal relationship that was so emotionally fulfilling. i still don't really understand. being around him hurt so much that I left my favourite discord server where a lot of my close friends are cause he's in there too. i miss being in there so much but i just cant do it

on saturday I got the news that one of my friends from the smash 64 community passed away unexpectedly. i went to the visitation on sunday. it still doesn't feel real.

i dont want to talk about it, I dont want any offers to talk about it, I dont want to relive it, I dont want to think about it, and especially especially I d o n t w a n t t o t a l k a b o u t i t. just getting it out there bc I feel kinda overwhelmed atm from everything. i just wanna focus on doing the things I need to get done to keep my mind occupied. i want my best friend back, i want the person I love back, i want my friend to come back to life. there's nothing else that can be done for me

[itsrach161]

3 Ideas

Coming up with 3 ideas to fully expand on and work through the advantages and disadvantages of each idea this was quite a difficult task for me to complete because I like to come up with lots of little ideas quickly and don't often think about the advantages and disadvantages of each idea. But this was a great way for me to see which idea might be the strongest for me to work on. This is a real chance for me to go create a list of ideas and work through which ideas might be the best ideas and which ones aren’t worth using as my final idea.

Coming up with 3 ideas was a difficult task to fully expand on them and consider all the advantages and disadvantages of each one. I also have to consider how I'm going to actually make each idea a reality which is actually knocking some potential ideas off the board because I am realizing that I am actually not able to create some of the ideas I'm coming up with. 

My top 3 ideas:

Write my 3 ideas in here, copy and paste from doc sent to Chris! Check spelling and grammar over and make sure all is correct.

An image relating to each idea, this blog needs more visuals.

Designers Collaborate

Overview

Collaborative Mobile application for designers to collaborate on projects together for an agreed percentage.

This will be a collaborative application for designers to collaborate on projects. If as a designer you lack certain skills to complete a project or a certain part of a project then this application would be useful for you. You can search this site for other designers who possess the skills for the project that you might lack.

For example: If you were required to produce a website for a client with a quick turnaround but the website required the use of JavaScript, you don't know how to use Javascript and don't have enough time to learn it, then you could use this application to find someone with the relevant skills to complete this project with you for an agreed percentage of the price.

I would imagine the interface of this to have an image of the person who you would potentially be employing and below that a selection of their work that they have completed in the past for you to look at. Contact information would then be displayed below this, with the option to instant message them through the app or call them direct to their phone for an even quicker response. There could also be a rating scheme for people to be rated based on their performance - this would work for both parties. The person who gets hired through the app is rated based on their performance and the work they produce and the person hiring using the app could be rated based on how quickly and fairly they pay the person they employ.

Pros:

Useful for people in the design/UX industry

Could be used across all art related industries (animation, painting, web design etc.)

A good way for people to get freelance work

Potential for repeat business with people you worked with before if you liked the work they produced.

Cons:

Could be a very simple idea to create

Unsure how to build a working app

There are lots of different jobs this app could be useful for, could it be too much work to produce in the time frame

How might it be built:

I think this site is most useful as an app however i'm not sure how to create this, I do have basic skills in HTML and CSS and I am very willing to learn new skills to create a working application. I am keen to challenge myself to create something I never have before. In this instance this project could be a good idea because there are lots of different techniques I would need to learn to create this application. There are also lots of different ways I can challenge myself throughout the creation of this application.

Who’s it for:

I think this application will be mainly used by people in the art industry who are looking for freelance work to complete in their free time. However, it could also be used by people from other industry’s who need to find someone to help them out with a project or job. For example: if a builder needs to hire a plumber to help finish the build of a house, then this application would be useful to help find the plumber that may be used for this job.

What is the business model:

I imagine people who will use this app would be willing to pay a small fee for the use of it. There is also the opportunity for me to add a percentage fee to any work obtained through the app, this would take away the need for the initial fee to download the app, but still make money from this application by charging a small fee based on any work that is passed through the app. I would need to make sure that if work was obtained through the app that all payments would be protected in case someone failed to get paid. This will help entice people to find jobs through the app rather than going elsewhere.

Puberty App

Overview

Puberty app for young people only beginning puberty who want to know what’s going to happen to their body during this change. 

Going through puberty is something that everyone experiences in their lifetime, yet it's something a lot of people are scared to talk about. Therefore I want to build an app that will teach kids all about their bodies and what happens. Stopping all the immature rumours that go around about the subject. I want to be able to help those kids who are too afraid to talk to their parents about what's changing in their body and whether what’s happening is normal or not.

User will create an account and insert their age so they can only view content relevant to them. This will stop young people getting content they might not need to know yet. This might also help reassure parents to allow their kids to download this app because they can be sure that their kids wont be receiving content they don’t need to know about. 

This would be a puberty app for mobile devices. I will include animations to explain how certain things happen and how to perform certain tasks e.g. shaving, using a tampon etc.

I will focus on both male and female puberty as I believe in schools they only teach the girls about female puberty and the boys about male puberty, but I believe it may be more useful for kids to learn about both genders. 

Inspiration for app icon could be the clue app icon, clue is a period tracker app that doesn't resemble anything to do with periods and for people who are embarrassed about it being on their home screen other people won’t know what it is unless they have this app too.

Could include potential audience interaction within this app using short quizzes or questions to test the user to see if they are understanding what they are reading if they get the answers wrong then there is a short explanation as to why it’s wrong. If they answer correctly then they get a short answer why they are right. I might also include a leaderboard as this could be used to motivate people to read the information correctly in order to get the answers in the quizzes right ad be top of the leaderboard. I also think I need to have the option for the information to be read aloud for accessibility purposes.

I have also thought about furthering on into informing the user about intercourse and what to expect but also explain the potential risks involved (std’s etc) and where they can go to get help with these. Although I’m not sure if this might be too much information to include in one place. It could get confusing for the user with all the information. 

I think I also want to include a print version of all the information in the app. I think i could do this through the use of AR where the user holds their phone over a book and diagrams move to show what changes in the body.

Can also include content about STI’s etc and explain symptoms of these and where to go to get help.

Pros:

I have relative knowledge of some of these areas

Research can be conducted to find out the information I don’t know

Relative knowledge of after effects to complete the animations

Links with college sexual health nurses from placement

Links with doctors who have said the app would be a great idea and can link me to the right people in the NHS to get this app certified when completed properly

Very useful for people of different ages

Illustrations and visual graphics might make this a lot easier for people to understand

The use of AR could help this information come to life for the user

Cons:

Lots of work to do, will be a very busy year to get it all done properly - this is also a good thing of course.

Bit of a taboo subject - people dont like to talk about puberty or whats going on in their bodies

People might be put off using and reading it because of embarrassment

I need to be very aware of all the graphic images that I would be showing and how this might effect certain users and how parents might react - they might be put off it if they think their child is going to get information they don’t really need to know yet. 

A lot of graphic content for me to be illustrating - all images need to look correct

How it might be built?

I'm unsure how to build a working app and would need to look into this properly. I also don’t fully understand AR so would need to look into this. I do have basic skills in HTML and CSS and I am very willing to learn new skills to create a working application.

I am keen to challenge myself to create something I never have before. In this instance this project could be a good idea because there are lots of different techniques I would need to learn to create this. Including the workings of an app and AR. I also like the idea of a printed version through a book because it gives the users different ways to take the information.

Who is it for?

This would mainly be used by pre-teens and teenagers who’s bodies are changing or who maybe want to check over the information. Parents might also use this app to collect some information before they chat to their kids, or some parents might want to check over the information before they put it out to their kids.

What is the business model?

I think this would be a free app to download but the book would be charged at £14.99. 

Best Places

Overview 

Best places is an application designed to help people work out where to go to do something E.G. Where to go for food? This will help people to work out where to go based on the top rated places around the area. 

This app is designed to help people work out where to go for different activities or for food. 

Many times I have been out with my friends and we are hungry or bored and looking somewhere to eat or something to do but never known what we should do or where would be nice to go. An app like this would solve this problem and we could look on it to work out where we should go based on reviews by other people. 

Pros: 

An app like this could be very useful for a number of people

This will help people try new things or eat in new places

Having an app where you can look at the places or activities and read reviews by other people my be useful all in one place. 

Cons: 

An app like this is very similar to Yelp! 

Is there a market for this, or is it too similar to Yelp! 

There are a lot of different topics included in this covering all different areas, there could be too many to cover in the time frame given

How it might be built? 

This will be an app, I am or yet sure how to make an app so I need to look into this to see the best way to make an app. I am very keen to learn how to make an app so this would be a good project for me to teach myself these skills on. 

I have basic knowledge of HTML and CSS so this might come in useful for the creation of an app. It might on the other hand not be of much use. 

Who would use this app? 

The audience for this app could be quite wide, there could be a lot of people who might find this app useful. Therefore the overall of design of this needs to be something that would appeal to all different audiences and not be too immature but also not too difficult to understand for younger users. 

This app would be very useful for all different kinds of people and I think there is a need for a site like yelp to be made into an app and use a very nice UI to set the design off. 

#ixd501

[skychaser787]

180608 - Thoughts that came to my mind after reading John Green’s Turtle All the Way Down

[I actually finished the novel a few days back on my flight back from Stockholm to Paris. Here’s what i wrote in my phone’s note after finishing the series.]

"I felt a sliver of what must have driven Davis to astronomy. There was a kind of relief in having your own smallness laid bare before you". Doreen said during astronite 2015 how she liked astronomy because when being faced with the grand scheme of things, all her troubles, all her worries and all herself just feels insignificant. And how it felt calming for her. I thought that i didn't feel the same way. I always thought that i was attracted to astronomy because i marvel the grand scheme of things and don't think of myself as being insignificant. But then i realized how i never put myself in the equation, that i don't even think that i exist. That thought and moral burden of actually being able to claim yourself as someone, or even as a thing in this grandiosity seems too much for me. Thinking back, would i even have the rights to say that it would make me feel insignificant and that all these bad things in life doesn't matter? Because you are obviously insignificant at the first place, you are nonexistent in the grand scheme of things, and you don't even have the right to feel, the good and the bad.

Hugo told me how he found John Green's novel are sensible - that his sensibility made him rediscover the joy of reading. Ah Hugo’s always the poetic and artistic kind. For me i just think that his novels are very honest and relatable. I like how everytime i read a new novel or a new series, i would keep trying to convince myself that the character is me, or forcing that imagination that a character is an accurate depiction of myself and my life. Well of course the resemblance can only reach as high as 80& in some series.. (be it personality, interests or how we share the same thought process.) Tho it occurs to me... if many teenagers do relate to such novels, and there is such universality in his theme that everyone can relate to, and if these work of fiction are based on real story... why was it so hard for me to find someone who thinks the same way, who feels the same way as i do? Of course fiction is not real life and my own eccentricity won't make reality easier. But i do wonder how many people out there think & feel the same way as i do... how many people out there that i could have been friends with in a parallel universe?

Frankly speaking it feels weird reading these novels aimed for 13-17 years old as a 20 years old and find it still largely relatable. I mean research did show that adolescence only ends at 24, but on the other hand have i not grown up? Have i not become more mature? Even though maturity is overrated but am i still trapped in the mind of the naïve, adolescent self? Granted i skipped 2 years of my adolescent life... i somehow managed to convince myself, mentally that i was not growing up at the age of 13. Thus tbh it felt that my 14 and 15 was nonexistent. (It wasn't until i was 16 that i thought it's better for me to just grow up but anw) it's weird how i can mentally manipulate myself that it alters my perception of time and past self... (am i insane yet?). When novels mentioned that a character is 14 or 15 of age i could not really relate because i have erased that life period in my life. And i guess emotionally that made me mature 2 years later than everyone... everyone was being their childish self at sec 1 and 2 but i was still being depressed and suicidal. Everyone was starting to be more mature and had a sense of identity at sec 3 and 4 but i was still in my rebelious phase, being an immature prick. Everyone settled down, being leaders, charismatic people and proper young adults in jc, but there i was, still trying to figure out my sense of identity and had no confidence in my life. Now in uni everyone has clear, specific, one life goal but here i am, as if i were still in my explorative stage. Not that i dont have any concrete life goals but it's just that i have too many interests and i am not willing to sacrifice one for another (i'm pretty sure we are called a multipotentialite or sth...). And now here i am, still writing tumblr posts, ranting about myself at the age of 20 where most people would have done this when they're still 16 and are done and over with it by the time they're 18. As much as "age is a number", how "youth is overrated" and "we are all still kids at heart' goes, you can't help but to succumb to societal pressures and expectations at times. Even though you have come to the realization that life is your own race and that you should only compare against yourself and not for other people, and thought that you have figured out the healthy balance of comparing yourself against others and yourself, i guess i was too focused in doing it in academic setting and not other domains in life. Even though i might just be talking about emotional maturity, specifically.

One thing that i wish people mentioned if there was some sort of guidebook on how to grow up for young people who came from difficult background.. was that transition phase. Sure you will find friends that care about you nonetheless, sure you will eventually create your own support circle. But then that part of your brain just decided that your life gets too comfortable and you need to restart and rechallenge yourself and you found yourself eventually feeling loss and lonely. In that novel davis said that he felt really lonely most of the time. I understand loneliness. I'm living it. Yet when i was 16, and even though i was supposed to feel alone and lonely, i didnt feel it as i've never had anything to begin with. It wasn't until i had people who cared about me, until i had friends, and after some other turbulent life events that changed some people, and had it all taken away from me that i've discovered the real loneliness. And yet bizzarely when we were going through puberty somehow these hormones just wreck a havoc on your brain and made you be able to feel, think and do the unimaginable. Not now that i'm 20. Have i lost that spark? That adventurous feel that i used to had? Like how i was lonely and depressed but my mind managed to find other things to care about more instead and occupy me with "deep life questions" and i can just pass off my loneliness as me being an introvert?

Reminds me also how i used to really hate confident people. I hated them, i loathed them. How could one be so comfortable with themselves and project their self to other people while there i was, hating every single bit of myself and unable to love myself. I hated how people can think that they deserve to be loved or can be loved. How can one be so self centred and arrogant to think that they can be loved by others... Though frankly, after 2 years in jc and meeting my first ex i became less cynnical to that. Thus i hated you, (that cute prc senior scholar in green) but i respected jiaqi, doreen, jiaen, freda and minghui

Some people reacts to domestic violence, turbulent childhood and early adolescence, as well as abusive parents differently. Some are angered, became strong and will do anything for vengeance. Some crumbled down and cry and became depressive and suicidal. I hate that i was the latter. Add to that the toxic masculinity, conservative gender role expectations and how boys are always expected to be strong and rough, i hated myself even more then...

[3inghao]

HI CRUSH ANON HERE AND I WANT TO START OFF BY SAYING TO ALL THE PEOPLE THAT FEEL EMOTIONALLY INVESTED IN MY LOVE LIFE I LOVE YALL HAHHAHHA I DIDNT EXPECT FOR ANY OF THIS TO HAPPEN :'))))) at the same time tho i feel like things might have to be put on hold for a while i dont know !!!! ok sorry sorry ill explain so ,, ive figured out that im like really really into this boy. in a way thats probably not the best for me right now, esp bc ive got a lot of things to juggle right now (1/17)

but also bc ive been thinking and like ,, ok so this story might put things more into perspective. so its like monday and i get a text from him thats just like ‘hey what are the rest of your classes for today/do you have like 15 min or something to be in a shoot of mine before it gets dark’ and im like PANICKIN bc ofc hes asked some of us to be models for his photography hw before and its always super casual BUT this is the first time that IVE ever been asked specifically (2/17)

and so obviously i jump at this offer and im like ‘umm i dont have any more classes today so sure just lmk when and what to do :) also whats the shoot about?’ and hes like ‘ok cool we can meet at your room at like 5:15 and ill tell you about the shoot when we meet up :)’ and he wanted us to go to this reaaaaally pretty park at sunset and do the shoot around that time and i was like ‘ok do u want me to wear anything specific’ and he was like ‘nothing in particular :)’ (3/17)

and so i start getting ready and im nervous af bc it meant spending more time alone with him and i felt so unprepared for that LMAO but yeah so he comes up to our room and i open the door and my heart skips a fucking BEAT and i almost slam the door in his face but i force myself not to aha and so we go and hes like ‘ugh im so tired i want coffee lets get coffee’ and so we went into the starbucks around the corner but then i was like yo will we make it to the park in time (4/17)

and hes like ‘o shit yeah’ so we leave without getting coffee rip but yeah we go to the city park and oh my gskldgskd it is so fucking pretty its right before sunset so everything is golden and the sky is rainbow but you can already see the moon and holy one of the prettiest views i think i have EVER seen !!!!! and then he explains to me what the project is finally and hes like so its an experimental photo set thats supposed to represent all the things we left behind in modern society (5/17)  

and so for me he said he wanted me to pose in the city park at sunset sitting on a bench with my hands cupped like i was holding a heart (hes going to photoshop the heart in later when hes editing the pics) and then like leave it behind on the bench and look at the sunset behind me which is supposed to represent and i quote “leaving love behind in the pursuit of beauty” and i literally was like 😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍 the whole time LMAOOOOOOO (6/17)

but yeah so we did that in like 15 min but after we were done i legit didnt want to leave bc (i wanted to spend more time with him but also) IT WAS SO FUCKING PRETTY SKDHJDFH and ahhhh i like looked over at him and he looked sooo at peace just like looking out over the water and the sunset and the scenery was so beautiful i almost blurted out hi i think ur beautiful but i stopped myself in the nick of time thank god LOOOOOL (7/17)  

but he like made eye contact with me and i like held myself together but there was a moment where i felt like djdhskjdkd idk how to describe it i was kfskshdhdjdh idk it could be just my imagination but I FELT LIKE THERE WAS SOMETHING THERE AHHHHHHHH and i was so tempted to ask him about the hand holding on saturday but i didnt i held myself back again thank god lol and then all of a sudden he goes ‘hey do u want pics’ and im like wot (8/17)

and hes like ‘do u want some pics of urself? like we r already here so !! plus i want some photos to put on my photography insta’ and i was like sljkddjkd ok why the hell not so he directs me into different poses and stuff like that and after the sun sets we finish and then we r walking back bored af so we start wandering around the little shops nearby and then we finally get home and then our friend texts the group chat like ‘hey anyone want dinner now’ (9/17)

and we were already really close to a dining hall so the two of us went and got dinner and our friend just joined us later and then during dinner when it was just the two of us we started talking about me losing the bet of when our friends were gonna hook up and so i have to treat him to japanese bbq and we were talking about when and hes like ‘well theres nothing im gonna celebrate for a while except my best friend from home is coming bc her sisters getting married here” (10/17)

and i was like ‘omg thats great ??? congrats to her !!!! omg’ but idk this is where it gets kind of confusing bc idk we were talking about maybe going this weekend but his best friend was coming and he was planning on spending all his time with her but i think he said that we could go get japanese bbq with her too ?? and i think i said ok but i dont think we locked down any like specific date and time at all ??? this part is a lil confusing to me (11/17)

so anyways that happened and i havent really interacted with him after that whole thing like we still have a streak on snapchat lol but he will do this thing where he wont open or respond to my snapchats for like literal hours ,,, even though i know hes ON snapchat bc he will like watch my stories ??? like w o t ???? i dont think hes doing it on purpose if that makes sense ?? but its still annoying and borderline infuriating and sldkghsldkgh (12/17)

and also like ok ,, his best friend came like yesterday and i saw her on his snapchat story and h o l y g o d she is the most beautiful girl on all of fucking planet earth i shit u not like i actually !!!! screamed when i saw her shes so fucking gorgeous and on his story theres a bunch of snaps of the wedding etc and a pic of him and her in a photobooth and sldkgsldkghs holy ???? i dont know how to put this into words but they are p e r f e c t for each other (13/17)

like in every way possible they are literally best friends and shes an actual goddess and together they look sooooo aesthetically pleasing it is legitimately intimidating and ahhh sldkgldgkh so the thing is !!!!! i already have practically no self esteem left ,, and a dinner with like HER and THEM will probably d e s t r o y m e from the inside out i will literally just feel inferior in every single way possible and i have NO IDEA HOW TO EXPLAIN THIS UGH !!!!!! (14/17)  

but yeah that kinda just made me realize that i might need to take a couple steps back ??? from this entire thing and him in general ,, and also that before anything happens i really want to work on me first like obv x has got his shit together and theres that whole thing with his best friend and idk !!! i like have pledged to go to the gym way more and get my fucked up sleep schedule back to some resemblance of normal and f o c u s on my academics and skincare and eating more healthy !! (15/17)

like i wanna be a person that everyone can look at and be like yes !! u go girl shes got her shit together and yeah !!!! aha :’) and also i need to COOL IT with my feelings about x like as amazing as he is and as fun as it is to spend time with him and as much as i want to pursue everything about this relationship i dont think im in a place mentally and emotionally where i can handle that so !!!!!! for now im gonna (try to) just distance myself a lil (16/17)

and yeah !! if he asks to go out for japanese bbq tonight/tomorrow i think im just gonna be like ‘ahh i wish i could but im super swamped with work rn sorry :(((‘ (which is 100000% true) and just leave it at that *deep sigh* anyways thats where i am at this point thanks for tuning in yall aha :’) i just need to not be hurt in this relationship and distancing myself for now is the only way i know how to prevent that ,, and i probably wont be that successful but !!! heres to trying :) (17/17)

awwwwwwwww crush anon BUT THE SUNSET DATE (yes im calling it a date) does his best friend go to the same college as you guys?? bc if he’s single and she doesn’t live anywhere near him there probably really isn’t anything between them that you need to worry about. I def support the focusing on yourself bc the more confidence you have in yourself the less insecure you will be once you actually get into a relationship so go you!! my gf and i are actually starting to facetime each other and work out together too so all of us can struggle in that tryin to be healthier lyfe! i think in one of the other asks you mention more happened? but i also think that maybe a bbq date with him wouldn’t be bad? and i think you should try to have it with just him and no one else! idk fill me in on any new developments :0

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