#the distinction between some of them is really fuzzy

[falmerbrook]

Ear Headcanons

So this was meant to be just my headcanon for the differences between the different mer races' ears (size, shape, if they can move on their own, etc.), but there's a tinge of just general visual differences between them in there too (because this ended up being really good face practice for me). I'll mostly talk about ears though. Obviously this is more meant to be general trends than hard and fast rules.

I'll start with the playable races.

Altmer

Tall and skinny ears that can move out and back a bit (moderate range of motion). They mostly are close to the head but can also stick out a bit.

Dunmer

They have a wide variety of how their ears can be shaped; small, tall, wide, big, straight up, curvy, etc. The typically stick out more than Altmer's and have a larger range of motion.

Bosmer

The largest variety of any of the races. Their ears can look like just about anything any other race has (except maybe Maormer) from any mer ears, to more human ears, to more animal-like ones. They have a large range of motion regardless of how they look.

Orsimer

Small, almost human-sized ears, but they stick out more from the head than humans and can be wider. The pointed end tends to stick out. They can rarely move.

Breton

Breton basically just have human ears with a little point at the top. I thought it would be fun to draw a sort of comparison to your average Nede and average Breton to highlight the subtle more merish look that I think Bretons should have too.

Ok now for non-playable races

Snow elves/Falmer

Ok so I have terminal Falmer brainrot so I have a lot of completely made up headcanons for these guys sorry lol.

Snow elves have the least variety. They are usually shorter and closer to the head than the other mer races (which evolved as an adaptation to counter frostbite in my headcanon) and can't move. Conversely, I like to headcanon that falmer are on their way to evolving rudimentary echolocation, and therefore have huge ears that stick out far from their head, and are very mobile (this is also why their faces are covered in wrinkles). They can look more traditionally merish, or some of them have real funky shapes.

Chimer

Basically a mix between how the Altmer/Aldmer and current Dunmer look (both in their general appearance and ears). Think of it like the transition between the Aldmer look and Dunmer.

Dwemer

Dwemer have relatively short ears (compared to other mer) and don't stick out much, but they can be wide along the side of the head. Their shape is usually pretty angular and have limited mobility.

Aldmer

Your standard pointy fantasy elf ears. So I technically headcanon the Aldmer as many different (although similar) groups that are referred to as one group due to the nature of retelling history and some propaganda sprinkled in there, but in general, since the other mer of Tamriel descended from them, I see them as sort of generic. Nothing particularly notable in their ears. Minimal to moderate ability to move them.

Ayleid

Curvy. They have Aldmer sized ears with twisting and curving in different directions. Limited movement, and not too much range in size (just shape). I have 0 reasons for thinking this, I just thought it would be fun and unique and maybe fit their aesthetics.

Maormer

I like that canon Maormer ears look fin-like but I want to turn it up to 11. Large variety of shape and size, but usually large and fin-shaped as a general trend. Huge range of movement.

Ohmes/Ohmes-raht

They aren't elves, but they are described as human/mer-like, so I figured I'd include the Ohmes. They usually have pointy, mer-esque ears, but less distinct than most mer. Despite being relatively small, they have a wide range of movement for their size (and move in similar ways to the way cats ears move for the rest of the Khajiit). They can be extra fuzzy or have little tufts at the end for Ohmes-raht.

#the things i spend my time thinking about.... #these were so fun to make though #tes #the elder scrolls #skyrim #morrowind #eso #headcanon #mine #my art #do i dare tag all of them... #altmer #dunmer #bosmer #orc #snow elf #falmer #chimer #dwemer #ayleid #maormer #i was putting a lot of thought into the general trends of other racial characteristics while making this too but im just gonna stick to ear #for this post #maybe ill make one for eyes one day #long post

[drdemonprince]

It’s 9:30 am on a Monday, my regularly-scheduled time for a workout. Like always, I pad across the floor of the living room, roll out the yoga mat, arrange the dumbbells, and flip open my laptop to find a follow-along strength training video on YouTube.  The algorithm knows my patterns and proclivities. Populating the first row of content is a perfect encapsulation of my weekday psyche: a thirty-minute shoulders and abs video, a fresh episode of The Bald and the Beautiful to listen to while I complete it, and for relaxing afterward, a 60-minute livestream in which a sweet-faced middle-aged mother named Sammie is repeatedly dropped into a hypnotic trance and made to repeat mantras of obedience and servitude by her loving hypnotist and boyfriend.  I love all the sides of hypnotized Sammie: when she is made to be a giggling maid, and when she dons fuzzy ears and mewls like a cat; when she devotedly calls her hypnotist Master and erases her memories for him, and when she freezes, smilingly, into a happy doll begging to be played with. I’ve watched all of her hours-long livestreams in their entirety, some of them multiple times, her vacant, entranced stares and stiff, robotic movements sending my own body roaring into a satisfied climax, sometimes without even touching myself.  But I am not attracted to Sammie at all. In fact, I’m not at all attracted to women. To the extent that my sexuality involves making contact with other people, I’m a gay man, exclusively interested in other queer men. But to even bother with that distinction confuses things a bit, because ultimately my sexual orientation does not hinge upon people’s identities or bodies. Though I can admire the beauty of all kinds of people, and even feel a handsome man igniting my curiosity at times, ultimately I’m just not really “into” human beings at all. What I’m into is hypnosis. Or mind control, brainwashing, and conditioning, if you like. Hypnosis is the bedrock that holds my psychosexual landscape together; without it any potential engagement in sex slips, and falls apart into nothing. Hypnosis is the anchor that keeps my insatiable libido grounded; without it, any possibility of having satisfying sex floats away, and my mind dissociates from the event as it’s happening.   I’m a deeply sexual person, and I always have been. I discovered masturbation early, at around four or five, and took part in it actively, getting caught a few times as a kid before I learned to sequester into my bedroom for it early in the morning and late at night. Beginning in my teen years, I got into the habit of pleasuring myself for between an hour and a half to two hours per day, and that rate has continued throughout much of my adult life.  And yet, I am also asexual — because as much as my body craves sexual release, and as often as I pursue sex, my drive has no relationship to how other people look, or anything else about them, and my release doesn’t need to involve any specific sexual activities at all.  Hypnosis is sex to me. Even in its most stagey and sterile forms, I find it inescapably erotic — and that leaves sex itself as just some boring party trick. You can touch me, or you can perform a series of backflips in front of me on the floor; either way I’ll tell you that you’ve done a very impressive job and all but it will not make me cum. 

You can read (or listen to!) the full essay for free at drdevonprice.substack.com

#asexuality #hypnosis #hypnokink

[vintagerpg]

This is the Science Fiction Book Club first edition of Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood (1984). It concern a family living near the titular forest. Dad’s obsessed with it, Mom is going to pieces because of that obsession, kids are largely neglected. One brother goes to war, the other stays. Mom and Dad die. The war brother comes back years later and find things…strange.

The forest is larger on the inside than it is on the outside. It is also inhabited by unusual people, like Roman centurions, Robin Hood-like huntsmen, barbarians and a giant rage god that is a man with a boar head. These inhabitants are both manifestations of the land’s memory and also somehow connected to the minds of the regular people who enter the woods — everyone brings their own set of mythagos to life. The edges of this are fuzzy and never fully explained. Its the best part of the book and it speaks somehow of a primal human consciousness in such a way that I’ve never really been able to stop thinking about it (even though I have very little desire to read the subsequent novels in the series).

The bulk of the novel consists of a rivalry between the two brothers. The one who stayed has spent years roaming the strange landscape inside the wood (which houses many ruins and a couple of distinct culture groups) as a barbaric reaver who seeks the affections of a young Boudica-like woman/archetype that the war brother also loves (some of the relationship stuff here is yicky, fair warning). Christian’s (ironic name) transformation into a violent, filthy bandit king is striking and also resonates strangely. Things come to a head near the even-weirder heart of the wood and end rather enigmatically (and subverts expectations for a violent score-settling).

Curiously, despite there being like eight books in the series, I don’t ever hear folks talk about them. That, somehow, makes the secrets of this book even more appealing.

#roleplaying game #tabletop rpg #dungeons & dragons #rpg #d&d #ttrpg #Robert Holdstock #Mythago Wood

[auncyen]

I think one of the funniest things (...in a "hitting your funny bone" kind of way) that could happen post-game is

Siffrin faints suddenly while they're traveling. He's only out for a few seconds, he says he feels fine once he comes to, but no one's having it and they make him sit for a while and eat some of Bonnie's snacks while peppering him with some questions to try to figure out what might have caused it. He admits his head's feeling heavy, fuzzy, but it's starting to clear up, and he thought he got enough sleep, he ate breakfast, etc. It doesn't seem like he's hiding anything and while he still has concerning moments he's been getting better so they figure he might have just gotten less sleep than he thought or maybe went too long without eating (which the snack would have already helped with) so they just make sure to stop traveling a little earlier and let him rest.

And the next day Siffrin's fine! Better than fine. They seem in a genuine really good mood and they're making stupid puns with Isa at everything and they just seem...very comfortable in their skin. Which everyone is glad to see. They're getting better! The group is having a calm, peaceful moment around a campfire, Siffrin whittling a wood bird, when they pause mumbling, pause carving, and contemplate the bird. Mirabelle asks them what's on their mind.

"Oh. I just started thinking of my parents," Siffrin says. "I hope they're okay? I haven't seen them since..."

Their words trail off as they think about when they last saw them. And how after that, they couldn't remember 'last seeing them' at all. But they remember two distinct faces, blurred by time yes but there, and everyone else is watching as Siffrin's face grows pale and his eyes go wide until Isa suggests they put the whittling knife down, please, because both their hands are shaking.

"I remember...I remember? I--" They quickly say a name, and Odile's eyes widen.

"That's the island that disappeared. But--"

"I shouldn't be able to say it!" Siffrin says, and then says it twice more. "I shouldn't be able to say it, last time I tried saying it it killed me!"

This sets off a small eruption of "THEN WHY ARE YOU SAYING IT NOW, STOP" around the camp, and Siffrin quickly shuts his mouth, shuts down, ducking his face into the collar of his cloak.

"Sorry," Mirabelle says. "We're not mad at you, that just...that scared us. But just now, you...you didn't hurt yourself saying it, right?"

Siffrin shakes his head, but still seems upset, staying hunched into his cloak. The whittling project is completely forgotten, both bird and knife discarded on the ground as he wraps his arms around his legs.

"We're not mad," Isa tries to reassure them.

"'m a little mad," Bonnie says, because why is Siffrin going and yelling things that killed them once. That's just dumb.

Then Odile says the name of the island. "It's not a taboo word," she says, "but something's strange. I can think about the island now, too. Why is that? Siffrin," she says. Pauses.

They're trembling like a leaf, and she sighs.

"This isn't an accusation. But did you...use Wish Craft? I can't think of how else that kind of mental barrier could have been lifted."

"Not, not on purpose," Siffrin says. "I don't remember--but I must have, and not just on me--if you remember too--I used Wish Craft on you and I didn't even know and it could have gone wrong it could still go wrong I'm sorry 'm sorry sorry sorry,"

The rest of the night is spent between trying to calm Siffrin down. He's extremely upset because he doesn't even remember when he would have made the wish to try to remember exactly what he wished for, to be sure it's not going to go horribly wrong like the last big wish. He didn't like not having his memories, yes, but he was happy with the others and doesn't remember any wish, any ritual, but he can't see what other explanation there is. They get him to sleep and discuss what's happened a little more. Mirabelle and Isabeau remember knowing about the island too now; nothing's really changed for Bonnie. No one remembers Siffrin engaging in anything like a ritual besides his muttering while whittling, and while rituals can be subtle, Siffrin seemed so honestly upset that none of them doubt he wasn't trying to use Wish Craft. Which...begs the question of how he could have managed to accomplish lifting the memory suppression on the four/five of them (does Bonnie count?) now when from the sound of it he consciously tried to remember during the loops, when he would have been most desperate to remember, and failed. The only thing they figure out is Odile and Isabeau piecing together that the fainting episode the day before might have been when the Wish actually went into effect; they'd all felt something slightly strange right before Siffrin fainting, but concern for their friend's health had obviously taken priority. The effect of the Wish Craft might have hit Siffrin harder because there was more for them to remember, yet they hadn't consciously realized they could access those memories until something--likely the whittling--caused them to think back to their childhood.

The group had been headed to a harbor town. There they learn that it's not just them remembering the island. And it's not just memory, either. Sailors are practically bursting with excitement that an island lost years ago has suddenly reappeared.

At this point Odile and Isabeau are 100% convinced Siffrin's not responsible because yes he nearly broke the world once with Wish Craft but that was when the intent and ritual of his wish had gotten combined with the intent of all the Vaugardians, Siffrin alone and without a clear intention could not have accidentally Wished an island back. ...They just need to convince Siffrin that he's not going to turn into a final boss again, now. Also, everyone wants to know what is going on. So it looks like they're going to the island!

tl;dr I don't actually have a plot for this but like. Could you just imagine. The island isn't forgotten because it's actually gone, but because a large part of the population wished for it to be hidden/isolated from the rest of the world for whatever reason. Either the original Wish had an expiration date or circumstances changed enough to make the Wish lose its power (the people no longer wanting to be isolated). And just. post-game. Vaugarde having to have dealt with the King. And Siffrin having lived so long with their head and memory and life so heavily impacted by the Wish. Are just like "SO YOU COME BACK NOW?"

#in stars and time #in stars and time spoilers #I mean it sounds like we're never finding out about the island anyway #it's free real estate for the plotbunnies

[thetomorrowshow]

took turns a-starin'

shout out to the comment that told Jimmy to get here right now bc his fiance is really sad. sorry

cw: graphic depictions of violence

~

The current pulls him, further and further . . . he doesn't want to go with it, he thinks, yet he floats along, the water cool and cleansing over his many wounds.

He doesn't want to go.

He flails as he falls, reaching out for something, for anything, falling and falling, the dark water growing ever closer below—

He's floating—

He's falling—

He hits it with a crash—

Scott wakes with a gasp of breath.

Something is missing.

What's missing? How can something be missing? He needs to find it, he needs to follow—

He tries to sit up and immediately feels the consequences, his breath stolen in a gasp of pain. His entire body hurts like a boulder fell on him, which wouldn't be good in any circumstance, but he can't really recall being underneath any boulders recently.

The odd feeling that something is missing remains (it's as if. . . .), but Scott pushes it away, takes in a deep breath.

Right. What . . . what happened?

He grits his teeth, gathers what strength he can find and properly sits up, blinking back the fuzzy blackness that envelops his vision.

Dear Aeor, everything hurts. What did he do, fall off a cliff?

He sits there for a moment, just breathing through it. His left wing is asleep, filled with pins and needles. His right wing must be caught up in some blankets or something, because he can't move it, something binding it to his back. His entire body is sore, his head pounding, his throat and nostrils raw, his limbs aching. He's hungry, too, he notices after a moment. Did he not eat anything for supper?

And that, really, is when Scott realizes that he isn't in his bedroom.

This isn't his bed—it feels like a wooden cot, creaking and stretching under him. His blanket is coarse, pillow naught but another blanket bundled up.

The floor is grass, the walls of whatever hut he's in seem to be made of leaves and branches as his eyes adjust to the low level of light, uneven slats between branches letting in sunlight from outside. It doesn't have a door, either, just vines hanging down one side instead of a wall.

Scott slides off of the cot, his legs almost too weak to keep him up. He steadies himself against the low cot (half bent-over, not quite enough room to stand tall) as his vision once again goes black.

Where is he?

The last thing he remembers—

The last thing he remembers is dying.

Losing against Xornoth, his body burned and broken, Rivendell surrendering to the demon because Scott failed—

"I'm dead," he whispers, wrapping his arms around himself, his vision returning in blurred pulses. "I'm—I died, I fell off the cliff and died, I—"

Is this the afterlife? A hut made of branches on the grass?

Scott limps toward the vine curtain. It feels like his knee got injured again (it feels like his legs are stumps of aching wood), just like it did when he was in the dungeon and fWhip kicked it, and if this is the afterlife shouldn't his body be healed?

He draws the vines to the side, his hand trembling, and steps out into the sunlight.

This is a proper camp, he notices first of all, shielding his eyes from the sun. There are several more huts made of tree branches, and plenty of tents and lean-tos set up. People mill about, cooking over open fires between tents, sharpening weapons, scraping at animal skins. A child sprints by in front of him, bare feet pounding against the ground, another child not far behind.

They look. . . .

They look, for the most part, like Cod. There's a couple of people here and there who clearly aren't—they lack the distinctive scales and fins, but they don't seem out of place, cooking and eating and working with the rest of them.

The camp is set up in the clearing of—of a swampy forest, it looks like. There are small pools of murky water here and there, the leaves of the trees hanging low and weighed down with vines. The camp stretches far, too far to properly tell where it ends, and Scott finds himself wondering just how many people are here.

"Oh! You're awake!"

Scott turns to find a teenage girl beside him, earfins flicking curiously. She's clearly Cod, scales spreading outward from her nose like freckles and mousy brown hair pulled into an intricate braid, and she smiles brightly at him.

"Don't tell him I wasn't with you when you woke up, okay? I'll go get him."

And with that, she walks away, leaving Scott to flounder for a moment before deciding to follow her.

Walking is absolutely not his strong suit right now—which would make sense, he was thrown off a cliff—but he limps behind her, doing his best not to lose her.

She weaves between a group sharing out bowls of some sort of porridge—Scott's stomach growls—then past four or five children drawing with sticks in the dirt.

Scott goes to sweep his hair out of his eyes, only to find it already pulled back—into a braid, and feeling with his fingers he can't even tell which sections of his hair are tied into which. He doesn't have very long hair, but it's somehow been so well done that there aren't any loose strands.

Who braided his hair?

And whoever had hadn't washed it first, he notices, wiping a bit of grime from his hand on whatever it is he's wearing—and at least that's familiar, torn and dirty black mourning clothes. Not that he expects someone to wash his hair while he's unconscious. That would be odd.

How long has he been unconscious? How was he so out of it that even braiding his hair didn't wake him?

How is he alive?

He can't be alive. He shouldn't be alive. He died, didn't he?

The girl gets fairly far ahead, but she pauses, talking to an elderly man for a moment, who points to the left. She follows his pointed finger, and Scott follows her.

It comes to his attention that he doesn't really know who he's being led to. He could be a prisoner here and have no idea, this could be his death.

If he isn't already dead, that is.

He's still unclear on that front.

And then the girl goes around a tent, and Scott goes around it as well, and there's a circle of Cod there, pointing at a map and talking and planning something, presumably.

And Scott sees—

His jaw drops.

No.

This isn't—it isn't possible, it can't be—

Right there—on the other side of the circle, frowning a little bit, scratching at the beard that he hadn't had before—

Jimmy.

Beautiful, perfect Jimmy.

He looks different. He has a beard, for one—not at all long or very thick, but not patchy either, short and even. His hair is a bit longer than Scott remembers, pushed back behind his ears—one of which is half missing, part of the fin cut cleanly off. There's a sword strapped onto his back, the hilt visible above his shoulder.

He looks the same, though. That's his sharp jawline, that's his golden hair (lighter than it was last time he saw it, he knows that somehow, he can tell that Jimmy's been out on the sun), that's the way his brow furrows when he's trying to figure out a problem, it's Jimmy through and through in all the intimate ways that Scott knows him and it can't be.

It's Jimmy. It's really him.

Jimmy's dead. Jimmy was killed by Mythland, buried in a mass grave, the Codlands fallen under Sausage's rule. That isn't him. That can't be him.

Then Jimmy looks up, his eyes (and he sees, wavering in and out, desperate and beautiful brown eyes) meeting Scott's.

"You're awake!" he says, crossing over to him in a couple of long strides, as the people behind him fall back into conversation.

Jimmy.

Jimmy is coming very very close to him, very very quickly.

He takes Scott by the hands, and Scott pulls away at his burning touch, he hasn't been touched in over a month, not in any sort of tenderness, he doesn't know how to handle it—he almost falls over backward, his stomach swooping as his legs are too weak to account for pulling away—and in a smooth action, Jimmy catches him around the waist, sets him back upright.

Scott can only blink at him.

"Hey," Jimmy says softly. "Let's get you back to your bed, all right? We can get you something to eat, and . . . and I'll explain."

There's a lot of explaining for him to do. Scott's honestly almost convinced that he really did die, despite his pain, because Jimmy's dead, and if Jimmy's dead and he's with Jimmy, he's dead too.

But he follows Jimmy back down the same path the girl had taken, bare feet stumbling and body numb.

Jimmy stops in front of a pot of whatever the porridge is that Scott had seen earlier and scoops up a bowl of it. Scott watches, watches his arm move, watches the way his back stiffens when he bends over, then straightens as he stands, the sword strapped there shifting ever so slightly.

This can't be real. None of this can be real. It's been a month—it's been longer than a month, he thinks, since they got the news that Jimmy was dead and he would have to go on without his betrothed, and every morning was a struggle to get out of his lonely bed and every day was a struggle to not break down in front of everyone and every night he cried himself to sleep and Jimmy's just here.

It can't be real.

That pain can't be for nothing.

Jimmy draws back the vine curtain of the hut when they arrive, loops it up on a handy twig above the doorway to keep it open. Then he sits on the edge of the cot, pats the space beside him.

Scott sits. He can't help but stare at Jimmy—he thinks it's Jimmy, and not some trick. Why would a trick add a beard, or bother to lengthen his hair that little bit? The scars where his scales had been (tugged out by the pull of the Void in the End) glimmer here and there, and as Scott looks closer, he realizes that new scales are beginning to push through the scar tissue.

A trick wouldn't give him that.

This can't be real.

Jimmy sets the bowl in Scott's hands, warmth spreading to them near-instantly. "We don't have very many spoons, sorry," he apologizes. "I'll whittle you one if I get a free moment."

With no other way to react, Scott raises the bowl to his lips and drinks.

It's different than he expects—he doesn't recognize the grain, something a bit chunkier than he anticipated, and it's savory, likely flavored with boiled-down fat. Scott can't tell if it's meant to be a breakfast or a supper, and he doesn't really like the slight chewiness, but it's warm and feels good on his throat and in his empty stomach.

This can't be real.

How is any of this real?

"I really missed you, Scott," Jimmy says quietly after a moment, and Scott starts. He hadn't forgotten that Jimmy was there, per se, but he hadn't quite made up his mind about whether or not he was a hallucination. "I wanted to go to you, but . . . it wasn't time yet."

Time yet? Time for what? It wasn't time for his fiancé to contact him to let him know that he wasn't dead?

Unless they're both dead. And this is the afterlife. 

But the longer Scott is awake, the less it feels like the afterlife.

"It's difficult to explain," Jimmy says when Scott doesn't respond. "But I've been out here for a while, now. We're leading a rebellion against Mythland, actually. We have a whole system going—fighters, spies, people who have volunteered to stay in the towns to ferry out runaways. We just launched an attack last week that got us fifty new rebels, actually, it was huge. It did kind of give away that we aren't just a little group of refugees, but some sort of organized force, but we couldn't keep totally hidden for long. I mean, we have almost a hundred able fighters, and—"

"You died," Scott interrupts, his voice a croak. "Sorry, but—you died. I can't—how?"

Jimmy bites his lip, one hand twisting his trousers. "It's a long story."

He doesn't look at Scott. He doesn't even look at him.

Scott takes another sip of the porridge, barely managing to swallow around the lump in his throat. His eyes are burning, tears welling up. Jimmy was dead. Jimmy was dead, people saw him die, he—this isn't something that can be explained away!

"Tell it, then."

Jimmy looks at him, now—straight in the eye, and Scott never thought he'd see those beautiful brown eyes again—

"Okay."

-

Jimmy's shaking.

He can't stop, even as Pix gets a fire going. Even as Pix drapes a blanket over his shoulders. Even as Pix puts a cup of something warm in his hand.

"Does it still hurt?"

Jimmy nods. Of course it still hurts, he was stabbed several times and he died and he doesn't know how he's here—

"Well, you woke yourself up fairly well, so it should heal quickly," Pix tells him. "Drink that. You'll feel better."

No, he won't. He can still feel the steel parting his flesh, the cold grasp of death, the blurriness and the fuzziness and he died—

He wants to know how Pix is here. How Pix knew what to do. How he isn't actively dead.

But he can't make himself speak. He can't find the strength to open his mouth.

Pix takes the blanket away with a word of warning, lightly touches his upper back, right around the stab wound.

Jimmy flinches forward, whimpers when the movement sends jolts of pain down his entire abdomen, following the path that he can so vividly remember the sword taking in his body.

"Sorry," Pix mumbles, but doesn't pull his hands away, tracing around the wound and down his back.

It hurts. It hurts to touch, it hurts to move, he shouldn't be conscious let alone alive, all he knows is that some force beyond himself had given him the strength to heave himself out of the pile of bloated bodies and stumble out of town, walking through endless blurred fields until Pix appeared beside him and supported him with an arm around his waist, led him into a cove of trees.

And more than anything, it hurts.

"Do you need water to heal?" Pix asks, a clear frown in his voice, and Jimmy has no idea how to answer that. Water to heal? Heal how?

He just stays still, staring into the fire.

He should be dead. He was dead. Why isn't he dead? Why isn't he dead?

He's still shaking. He's cold, he hasn't stopped being cold since he died, he didn't die because he's still here but he died—

"Drink that," admonishes Pix, setting the blanket back on him. "You nearly died, you need your strength."

"I did die," Jimmy manages, too-loud, too-loud in his echoing, stinging ear. "I—I died, I don't—"

"Not quite," Pix corrects, sitting cross-legged on the ground before Jimmy. "Your flame certainly flickered out a few times, but I kept the embers alive. Long enough that you began to heal."

That doesn't make sense. That isn't how the body works, Jimmy shouldn't have healed at all, he was dead—and how would Pix know any of this?

Pix shifts, frowns. "You've seen the Candles of Pixandria, yes?"

He has. Pix brought him there once, three or four years ago. A seemingly endless cave under the desert, filled with candles, a dry fountain at the center with a special candle set out for each of the emperors.

"They represent the lives of all of the people of the Empires," Pix says, and Jimmy vaguely remembers him saying that before. "When a candle goes out, that life has passed on."

"How do the candles get there?" Jimmy finds himself whispering—more to distract himself than anything else, he doesn't really have the interest, everything just hurts and he can't bear to think about it any longer.

"A good question," Pix says. "I put them there. And when it is time for a person to pass on, I put out the flame. Think of me as a . . . steward. And I have been watching your candle all day and night, fanning the embers, coaxing it into holding on."

Embers. So his candle had gone out. He had died. Or—or almost died, maybe? 

He tries to take a deep breath, bites his lip to keep a noise from escaping when his insides scream in pain. He was stabbed in the shoulder, the blade missing bone and slicing through the muscle and tendons there; his ear was partly chopped off; his thigh was slashed open, cutting a major artery and sending his blood spewing everywhere; he was skewered by a sword, going in just below his shoulder and all the way down his body, passing down through his ribcage, piercing all sorts of vital organs in its path. Short of slitting his throat, all that could be done to kill him had been done.

And it all still hurts. His left arm is still mostly useless; his ear stings and all sound on his left side echoes oddly; his thigh still bleeds sluggishly against his drying trousers; he can feel that his organs definitely aren't doing well. He's probably bleeding internally, actually. That would explain the throbbing pain in his stomach, the coppery taste in his mouth.

It doesn't feel like it's getting any better from when he was killed. It almost—it definitely feels worse, the aching cold beginning to bite.

"Drink that," Pix tells him a third time. "It's just broth, with some herbs for pain. You can have a healing potion once your innards properly begin to heal on their own."

Jimmy would drink it, but he thinks he might throw up said innards if he lets anything into his injured stomach right now.

He shakes his head just the slightest bit. "Can't," he forces out between gritted teeth as another wave of pain hits. "Hurts."

"It's going to hurt, but you need to continue healing. This should help take some of the sting away, give you a bit of warmth."

Right, then. He should probably try to drink it. He owes that to Pix, who apparently somehow saved him.

But as he goes to lift the mug to his lips, it slips from his trembling fingers and falls to the ground, spilling hot broth all over his waterlogged boots.

Pix is saying something, picking up the mug, but Jimmy doesn't hear it. He just stares down at the ground where the broth is soaking into the earth and tries not to cry.

It all hurts so bad. He can barely even think. He shouldn't be alive.

He shouldn't be alive, clinging to this painful not-quite-life, it's a disservice to keep him alive at this point and he just wants to lie down—let the cold take him again—

"—Jimmy? Jimmy? Right, I'm going to pick you up, and we're going to find you some water."

Then there's arms around him, lifting him up, and Jimmy can't hold back the cry of pain as his insides slosh together unpleasantly.

"Shh," a voice soothes. "Sorry if I drop you—I'm sure Scott can lift you just fine, six-foot-something elf and all that—but those of us not quite there might struggle—"

Scott.

Jimmy really, really wants Scott. Just to hold his hand while he drifts off. Just to be here. Just to love him in his last moments.

And then, before he can fully give in to the darkness, head slumping and eyes fluttering shut, he's laid carefully in water.

His gills flap open and Jimmy sighs a little, relaxing into the soothing hold of the water. It feels nice, so very nice against his wounds, cold but not in the way that the darkness is cold—caring, homey, like Scott, like Lizzie.

His head tilts back, pressing into the mud a bit. Last time he got mud in his hair, Scott was jokingly annoyed. He had sighed and shaken his head and clearly tried not to laugh.

He misses Scott.

It hurts less, now. Jimmy opens his eyes, takes in the water's surface just above him, the blurry face of Pix looking down at him.

Then he closes his eyes again, suddenly too tired to care. He could just fall asleep here, despite the pain.

And maybe he does. He isn't really sure. He just knows that he closes his eyes for a very long time, and when he opens them, his entire body feels heavy.

He's underwater, which is nice. He likes being underwater. Sun is filtering in through the surface, the sky bright blue above him.

He doesn't usually take midday naps in the shallows. What brought him here?

He died.

He died, didn't he?

Jimmy sits up, head breaking the surface, and bites his tongue to keep from crying out as the breath is stolen from his chest.

His body hurts. Hurts bad.

He remembers . . . everything. Every wound he suffered, the end that he finally accepted.

He thinks, though, that these wounds used to hurt more.

Jimmy lifts his arm, tests its range of motion. His shoulder still hurts, but he can move his arm, which is nice. It feels almost good to stretch, but he's careful about it, not wanting to push it and reopen the wound that surely still exists.

His thigh looks all right, though, from what he can tell past the hole in his trousers. 

He prods at his stomach, hisses between his teeth at how sore it feels. Right. That one's still bad. Not like it was, though. He thinks, as painful as it is, his insides have somehow stitched themselves back together.

"There we are. Feeling better?"

Jimmy starts; looks up. Pix is sitting under the shade of a nearby willow tree, looking almost relaxed. He stands when Jimmy sees him, dusting off his hands.

"You're practically healed, now, so if you'd like to come out of the water, you can."

Practically healed?

From death?

He doesn't understand.

It still hurts. It's not like it really feels too much better.

But he pushes himself to his feet anyways, leans on Pix's arm when it's offered, clutching his left arm around his stomach as if to hold it together. His abdomen feels uncomfortably warm inside, almost over-full in a strange way, and it doesn't seem unreasonable that his organs might burst out of his skin if he moves the wrong way.

"You slept the rest of the night and for part of the day," Pix tells him, as they begin their slow walk back to wherever it is they're going from this clear little pond in the middle of the woods. "You almost died again, I'm sorry for not noticing sooner—I thought you'd be fine after the distance you walked—"

"Roll it back," Jimmy says through gritted teeth, his thigh smarting and stomach panging with each jostling step. "Why are you here? What happened?"

Pix hums. "I'm here to save you, and to pass something on to you. Something you can probably put to far better use than I can."

Save him. Rather nice of one his allies to try and save him, if it is rather belated. He likes it when his friends care about him.

His steps are uneven, right foot falling heavier than the left as he leans a bit more of his weight on Pix. He could really do with a health potion right about now.

At least he doesn't feel cold, now. That's a good sign, right? And it doesn't really feel like his body's falling apart from the inside anymore, which has to be good.

"The Codlands," says Jimmy after a moment, just trying to keep his mind on something other than the pain. "What happened?"

"Mythland won," Pix says, a little blunt but not at all unkind. "Your soldiers fought for far longer than they ought to have."

Jimmy feels a surge of pride, despite knowing that Pix is right. Fighting past the end of the battle just means that more of his people died, probably too many to support the land as it is. But they had defended their country even when it seemed utterly hopeless, and Jimmy knows that whatever the afterlife is like, they'll receive welcome.

Like that one soldier had told him. Unless that was a dream. He could have imagined that. His . . . the end, there, is a bit foggy.

He's pulled out of his thoughts as they arrive at a small, vaguely familiar clearing with the remnants of a fire in the center, a log for a seat beside it, something long wrapped in cloth beside a pack leaning against the nearest tree.

Pix helps him sit on the log, easing him down slowly, which is surprisingly less painful (though still quite painful) than expected. Jimmy just tries to situate himself while breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth. He's fine. He died but he's fine. He's going to be fine.

Holy moly, he hurts.

Pix goes over to the bag, rummages through it. "Right," he says over his shoulder to Jimmy. "I have got a health potion, if you want it. And also. . . ." his hand hovers over the long, covered item.

And Jimmy, despite everything, feels curiosity spark.

-

Scott waits.

Jimmy doesn't continue, seemingly lost in thought, staring at the grass.

"Well?" he says after a few long moments. "What was it?"

Jimmy starts a little, looks back up. "Oh, uh, this sword," he says, gesturing to his back, where the sword is belted. The hilt looks old, so old that the leather of the handle is stained almost grey, wearing thin in places. "It's pretty cool. It's got some kind of enchantments or something, but we haven't figured out what yet."

"Oh," Scott says, for lack of anything better to say. Then, "Are you feeling better?"

"Like it never happened!" Jimmy says cheerfully, but the tight lines around his eyes say otherwise. "The scars haven't gone away, yet—you can look if you want."

This is all so much. So very, very much.

"So," Scott says slowly, "you . . . died?"

It hurts to say. He wants to cry so badly, even though Jimmy's alive and here and he mourned him for so long but he's actually here so he can stop crying.

Jimmy shrugs. "Not exactly? I thought I was . . . er, dead, but apparently I was kind of in a really deep hibernation?”

"And then—what, you just miraculously healed?"

"I don't really understand that part yet, either. But I guess I just have some kind of healing magic, now? Because I can use it, not just on me—I healed a woman who broke her leg, just put my hands over the break and she was good—and I healed you, too! When you washed up!"

It doesn't make sense.

People don't just magically gain healing powers, unless in some defiant act of deus ex machina they rewrite their ending. Jimmy can't have died.

But he did die. Jimmy died. He says he went into hibernation, he says that Pix kept his candle alive, but if he didn't die then why did Scott mourn?

He doesn't want Jimmy to be dead, of course. That's—well, it's just ridiculous. He loves Jimmy, of course he wants him alive. He wants Jimmy here, he's happy that he's here!

None of it makes sense, though.

He just can't put it together. It doesn't fit in his head, it doesn't work. He can't look at his beloved right there beside him (so close he can feel his warmth, can almost sense his chest rising and falling in very real breaths) and know that he's been alive this whole time.

Jimmy, apparently, died? But didn't die. And instead of going to Scott, he's been leading a secret forest rebellion? No communication with him at all? Not even two words? No “I'm alive”?

Scott had waited so long those first couple of days, waiting for news that Jimmy had managed to escape, waiting for Jimmy to just walk through the door. It hadn't happened, and he'd accepted that it never would.

He had sailed across the ocean, heart grim.

He had dressed in black for the first time in years.

He had sat there as Sausage spewed such vile things, spoke of Jimmy as nothing more than the dirt he walked on.

He had sobbed. He had grieved. He had come to face the fact that he would never see his beloved ever again, even denied a final sight at the memorial. He had mourned, and changed, and borne this grievous burden alone.

Yet here Jimmy is.

And here Scott is, beside him, still dressed in the torn remnants of his sorrow.

Softly, carefully, Jimmy lays a hand on his knee.

Scott shifts his leg away.

Jimmy quickly pulls his hands back together in his lap.

And it isn't—

It isn't that Scott doesn't still love Jimmy. He very, very much does. He's still in love with him. He doesn't know that he would be able to stop.

But he doesn't know what to do here, in this strange moment alone with his dead fiancé after mourning him for so long.

"I know it's a lot," Jimmy says after a long moment. "I don't really know what's going on out there. But now that you're here—we can go to Rivendell, and, and we can take back the Codlands! With my rebels, and your armies—or—"

"We can't," interrupts Scott, too loud.

He hadn't thought of Rivendell yet.

It's surely been conquered by now, hasn't it? After all, he silently encouraged them to surrender.

Jimmy's hands drop from where he's begun gesturing. "What?"

"We can't," Scott says, and there are sudden tears in his eyes as he remembers the absolute despair that he'd felt on that clifftop.

He'd been so alone.

He'd been so certain that he was going to die.

He'd been cast from the cliff, knowing that at least if he died he wouldn't have to feel such pain.

For some reason, he's still here.

After failing.

"Rivendell surrendered,” he says hollowly. “The other countries will probably follow."

"Sorry, what?"

"Rivendell surrendered," Scott repeats himself. "I—I couldn't stop Xornoth. I tried. I swear I tried—" and it's all coming out, spilling from him like tar, sticky and burning— "I thought I was Aeor's Champion, and I found both of the artifacts, and I tried to fight Xornoth. But it didn't work, he beat me, and I couldn't let anyone die, so we surrendered—we—and—and Xornoth rules Rivendell now, and probably the rest of the world soon."

Jimmy doesn't answer for a long moment.

Scott doesn't dare look at him, eyes on his lap, on the bowl of porridge that he doesn't feel hungry enough to finish.

They lost.

It's basically over.

And it's all his fault.

"Did that . . . did that give you ice magic?"

Scott blinks, glances around. The grass has frosted over, icicles hanging from the ceiling of the hut.

What?

"Did the boots come with me?" Scott asks. He sets the bowl down and stands, gripping his arms around himself. He'd forgotten about the whole ice problem—he froze Gem, he might have killed her, he has to message her and see if she's all right—

Jimmy frowns. "We found you barefoot. What boots?"

Then why. . . ?

It can't follow him. Did it follow him?

Then he remembers—his room was always frozen, even when he moved to other rooms they froze too, the boots all the while in the Codmade bag in his bedroom.

The ice had followed him, not the boots. It always had.

Great. So now he's cursed, because he put on the magical boots without checking to see if they had a warning label. Wonderful. He's just . . . so happy about this.

And Jimmy's just sitting there, looking up at him with that adorable little crease between his eyes, and he should be dead—

Scott runs.

He slips a bit on the frozen grass but just keeps running, he ignores Jimmy calling after him, out of the hut and away from the camp, running and running through the woods until there's an angry stitch in his side and his body hurts too much to keep pushing.

He collapses on the ground up against a tree trunk, burying his face into his knees. He can't do this.

He can't do this! He's tried all his life to do everything right, be the perfect little firstborn prince that everyone expected him to be. Through his younger brother constantly trying to kill him for the throne, through his parents passing away from an unexpected illness, through the entire courtship mess, through the death of his fiancé, through the battle preparations, Scott has done his absolute best to be perfect! And so far, he's done pretty well, he'd say! He hasn't been perfect, by any means, but he's been good enough, and now he's properly failed for the first time and he doesn't have any clue of how to go forward, especially when said failure was so monumental that his entire country fell under enemy rule because of it!

He was supposed to die. He should have died, rather than live in his failure!

Scott sobs into his knees (and the tears freeze on his cheeks)—they lost, everything is lost, and he hurt so long and so terribly and now he has to hurt even more.

It's all just too much. That's all it is.

He's happy he's alive. He's happy Jimmy's alive.

Right?

It would be easier if. . . .

And how can they even continue on like this? What can even come next? It's not like Scott can defeat Xornoth. Nobody can. Alinar's ritual failed.

He failed. Scott's the first ever hero who actually failed, full stop, and now he has to face the consequences of that without any prior reference for how to do so.

Not to mention, he hasn't bathed in who knows how long, he's wearing dirty and bloodstained mourning clothes that hang from his shoulders like axe hangs above a prisoner's neck, his wing is itching to be free from whatever binding it's wrapped in, his entire body aches, and he's so tired.

It's too much! He can't do this!

Where even is he? Out in some wood somewhere, with bugs and dirt and rudimentary camps, where he doesn't have anything or anyone—

His ears twitch at the sudden sound of soft footsteps, and he quickly stifles his crying. Nobody needs to hear that.

But the footsteps get closer and closer, until they pause just before him, and whoever it is crouches down near him.

"Don't get close to me," Scott gasps out, valiantly ignoring the stuffy quality of his voice.

He's not sure if it's because he doesn't want to be touched, or because he doesn't want to hurt someone by accident. He can't control the ice—he already hurt Gem, he can't hurt anyone else, he can't let anyone close!

"I won't."

Jimmy.

Gentle, perfect Jimmy.

Jimmy, who Scott can't stop feeling strange about because he ought to be dead, but isn't.

Just like Scott ought to be dead, and yet isn't.

Maybe. . . .

"Would it have been better," Scott manages around the lump in his throat, "if we were both dead? And—and in a happy afterlife together?"

A happy afterlife that doesn't, of course, exist. Scott knows what awaits him at the end of this, and it isn't Jimmy.

But he can let himself believe in it, if only for a moment.

Scott hears a bit of rustling, as if Jimmy shifts against the ground.

"I can't say I haven't thought that," Jimmy says eventually, something reluctant in his voice. "I—I spared you the details, Scott, but . . . it was rough. Dying, fully dying—and then hours later, there I am, being forced to live again? I wouldn't wish that on anyone."

Scott basically died, too. But he doesn't think it was as bad for him as it was for Jimmy. All that happened for him is he passed out when he hit the water. Jimmy felt his life bleed out of him, went cold and stiff, felt his heart beating slower and slower until it became too slow for him to hold on to consciousness.

Scott can't imagine how hard that must have been.

It doesn't make him feel any better. Worse, actually.

Jimmy suffered all that, and didn't need Scott's support.

Whereas Scott would have given anything just to see Jimmy one last time.

"It was really, really hard. It still is, sometimes. But I know that if you and I are both still alive, and here, and together, after everything? Maybe . . . maybe we're supposed to do something big. You know?"

Jimmy might be meant to do something big, but Scott kind of feels like he's only alive by chance. Clearly he isn't that favored of Aeor, seeing as he couldn't use the artifacts and is now cursed with ice magic.

He doesn't feel like he has any sort of divine purpose. He doesn't feel like he's alive for a reason.

He's just here.

A failure.

A failure that shouldn't be alive.

"That's what I like to think, anyway," Jimmy continues. "It gives me something. A reason to keep going. I mean, if you think about it, I shouldn't be alive. But I'm here, and that means I have something left to do. I have to do good with the new time I have."

That's . . . that's something. Right?

He's here. By chance, maybe, but he's here.

Perhaps he can do a little good?

Nothing world-changing. He can't stop Xornoth. He can't free Rivendell. He can't even free himself from this curse.

"I can't control the ice," Scott warns, lifting his head a little. He doesn't look up enough to see more than Jimmy's boots, worn and dirt-encrusted. "I can't . . . I can't do it. There are a lot of problems, and I don't know how to solve any of them."

"I know," Jimmy says softly. "I'm here."

Jimmy's here.

Jimmy is here.

Okay.

If—if Jimmy's somehow, miraculously here, and he thinks they can do something good, maybe Scott can try.

"Okay," he says, staring hard at Jimmy's boots. "But—but nobody can come close to me until I figure this ice thing out."

He thinks of how his room never defrosted.

He thinks of how cold he's been lately.

He thinks of Gem lying limp on the ground, hair white.

"Nobody," he repeats. "Nobody can come close. I'm sorry, it's just—I can't hurt anyone else."

"I know," Jimmy says again. "Whatever you need."

"I need to be separated," Scott says immediately. "A—a tent, or something, away from everyone else. Will that work?"

"We'll set one up right here," decides Jimmy. "What else?"

"Nobody comes over here."

"Okay."

"Nobody," Scott emphasizes, for perhaps the billionth time, and finally, he drags his eyes up to meet Jimmy's.

Those beautiful, soft, loving brown eyes.

"Not even you," he forces himself to say. "I'm sorry."

Jimmy doesn't argue. "I'll do whatever you need," he says, maintaining the eye contact. "I just want to help."

There's nothing else, then. That's all he needs from Jimmy. Solitude.

It hurts. He doesn't want to push Jimmy away, after so long of believing him gone forever.

But there's a discrepancy, there. There's pain and grief and confusion and maybe a little anger between Jimmy right here and Scott's need for him.

He doesn't know how to reconcile all of those feelings with the living dead man in front of him.

He doesn't think things between them can just go back to normal.

Everything would be a lot easier if they had both died. There wouldn't be any false loss to mourn, no results of utter failure to live with.

But he's here, and Jimmy's here, and maybe he's right.

Maybe there's something important they need to do.

#esmp #empires smp #empires s1 #flower husbands #scott smajor #jimmy solidarity #trust au #krcu #mas writes #020624 #hello welcome back to trust au #will this series ever end? #yes #there are three more parts after this #if um #you don't include the short stories i wrote #or the sequel that i'm almost done with #uhhhhh forget i said that #anyways everyone ready for some angst!!?!??!?! #that is all i write #everyone who thinks i only write angst should read my scarian fic #which is unfinished and unpublished #i digress #i hope yall enjoy this part #lmk what you think #love you guys #(hi from oasis! sorry for the late in the day post I was going insane over this <3 also not mas out here leaking things from themself. bye!

[cheesecake-the-chicken]

Im going to try to simplify a lot of things here (big word is try). Because there's a lot. We're a traumatic osdd-1b system btw!

However, being a median system varies from person to person. So keep in mind my experiences aren't fact for every median system out there.

1.) Commination & Memory

Commination for us is very limited. We mostly communicate through feelings and emotions. If you will, pure vibes.

I can hear people talk from time to time. If I really focus. Or if the situation calls for it. (Ex. Someone in front is having a hard time. And someone speaks to talk them through it.)

If I do something someone doesn't like I can feel a general vibe which then can easily translate into words. (Think like a language translator). If I fuck up someone's art piece by accident I'm gonna feel that "fuzzy talk" and understand what they're saying.

We don't have massive memory barriers. So it's easy to recall what someone did last. However, we still forget things. Sometimes someone fronts, leaves and a new person fronts. The new person fronting might not recall what they did exactly. But, have a general idea of what was leading up before they switched out.

A really good example for us is Minecraft. Person B played a shit ton, took a break, and switched out. Person A fronted, got on Minecraft and tried to figure out what the fuck they were doing. Oh, they were mining for iron. We call it "Sticky Note Memory" because we didn't completely forget, but we need to do some reading into to remember. Sometimes it's harder for other people.

2.) Fronting & Identity

Fronting isn't what most systems think it is. It isn't a snap and you're no longer fronting. Because we're a median system we never collectively consciously leave the front. We're all here. Currently, I'm just closer to the front. I am aware of my identity. Whether that because I want too or because the brain has decided I'm the favorite guy.

Fronting and switching is more of a flow. I'm slowly melting into someone else. It might take us awhile to figure out hey, I'm someone new. Sometimes we have what are called "Fillers" where there's an in-between. Sometimes people can spawn sometimes it's a temporary thing. However, we're collectively the "same person." Here's a diagram I have of our experience.

Some of us are less distinct than others. Some have more identity. 90% of us are facets. The 10% are fully formed headmates. But, still melt in with us to create our epic system. But, I can't speak for them on their experiences since I'm a facet and they're not. Whether they ID to that term is up to them.

Most of us are copied and pasted but have wildly different appearances and maybe a little something else added to it. I may act like a lotta my headmates because we're the same people. But, also very different at the same time. It's hard to explain.

Think of icecream. Icecream is icecream. It isn't a sandwich. But there are different flavors of icecream! I'm just a different flavor and texture. But still icecream.

But yeah, that's all I can think of at the moment. There's a lot more but I don't want to go overboard on this ask lol. Again, happy to answer any questions and such!!

thank you so so so much!!!!! this is really relatable for me

definitely with communication, like there’s a difference between what i imagine us doing vs what we do lmao. like i’ll want us to agree on something but the others are behind me like “…ehhhhh” my thoughts are often shared with them though, and i only hear them speaking, not thinking

AND THE FRONTING THING!!! i thought “well i’m definitely not a system because there’s no switches and i’m always here to some degree” (except that time the other day when i had a crisis because i didn’t know who i was and then snapped out of it lmao 😂) but the others tend to come and go, most often being at least a little here except for when they’re asleep

we are definitely separate but share consciousness to some degree. there’s a couple fragments that are part of others (like puzzle pieces that complete them), but we all have distinct personalities, appearances, roles etc.

again thank you!!!! like i’ve said i can only say so much for the others’ comfort and our safety, but it really means the world that there’s others out there like us :’]

#cheesecake’s perch #system #multiplicity #pluralistic #pluralgang #actually plural #plural community #plural system #actually median #median system #actually cptsd #plurality #plural culture #endo safe #pro endo #anti syscourse #anti sysmed #mediple system #hydraconcious

[sinnabee]

as often seems to be the case @gigiree and i have gotten into the same thing around the same time and been having some fun ideas :D oooh i also had fun trying out a different brush than my pencil texture one for this!

below the cut is two little blurbs we wrote (first one gigi, second one sinna) about an idea we had!! idk if it’ll ever be more than some cute little scenes but we wanted to share! there is definitely a doc of planning and shit in my folders but again we’ll see if anything ever really gets written

POV: You are just a dude. Just a regular little fella (gender neutral) who works from home, makes lots of zoom calls, and lives in a cozy little house on the outskirts of a small town. Recently you are sure that there is SOMETHING (some-things??? Mothman????) living in the woods off your back porch, and honestly you’re about ready to throw hands with it if it knocks over your FUCKING TRASH CANS AGAIN.

Excerpt by @gigiree

You squint up at the glaring red eyes cutting through the inky darkness between the trees, a good five feet or more above your very human head.

You blink once, rub your eyes and pinch your cheek. The red lights are still there, narrowed in what you would have called amusement if there’d been an actual face to put them into context.

You point a finger up at them, threateningly.

“Fuck this. Fuck you. I don’t have the energy tonight for this cryptid fuckery. Are you the one who knocked down my trash cans and didn’t put them back?”

There’s a distinct fuzzy sound then, like someone tuning into bad radio frequency. The hairs on the nape of your neck stand on end, and like you always do when you get scared, you rely on your pride. The little shards of pride you have left, rearranged to poke and prod your spine into formation until you actually resemble some sort of intelligent vertebrate.

You straighten your spine. And straighten your middle finger in The Thing’s general direction.

“Good night, Big Devil Mothfoot .” You say, in a mad bout of daring. Worst case, this thing tears you to shreds and you don’t have to show up to Zoom work tomorrow. Sounds like a sweet deal.

But wonder of shitty wonders, a long, spidery appendage slides past the tree cover, silvery bells catching the faint moonlight. And the red eyes are accompanied by a giant, clawed hand giving the one-finger salute too.

Seventh wonder of the world, this ain’t, but it’s nuts enough to get a witch’s cackle bursting past the knot of fear in your throat.

Excerpt by @sinnabee

You swallow down your laughter and continue to stare up at the lights swaying menacingly above your head. They're just...hanging out, you guess. The weird spider-y arm slunk it's way back into the shadows. The longer you stare at it the more you feel like your eyes were adjusting, and you could see the faint outline of...something there in the tree. Like, lots of long skinny appendages sticking out every which way in order to keep it suspended up there. It was becoming kind of ridiculous, the longer you looked at it.

"Listen," you say, voice coming back stronger now with the thought that whatever this thing was was desperately trying to hold itself in place in order to scare you, "I don't care if you dig through the trash cans. You can kick the shit out of them if you want.

As you watched, the lights narrowed even further and the whatever the hell was holding them rotated. Alright, that one creeped you out.

"Y-Yeah. Just - just put them back in the morning, and don't put any holes in the bottom. As long as the trash guys will still take them, I don't care."

You stare at the lights for a few more tense seconds. You blink, but by the time you’ve opened your eyes, they're gone.

You frown and glare harder at the trees, as though squinting angrily would make them come back.

"Fuckin rude. Whatever, Big Devil Mothfoot. Just put my cans back next time!" You shout the last words into the darkness and turn around to head back across the yard and into the comforting light of your home. There's a static-y laugh that echoes way too close behind you and causes you to sprint the last few steps.

You slam the screen door shut, but make sure to flip the back porch off for good measure.

#fnaf: security breach #y/n x sundrop #y/n x moondrop #y/n fic #fnaf sun and moon #fnaf sun #fnaf moon #reader #y/n #reader fic #drabble #fnaf fanart #fnaf fanfic #fnaf fandom #moon x y/n #sun x y/n #my art #my writing #friend writing #gigiree #funky little jester boys

[shut-up-its-funny]

My AUs in a list, with pictures and links to the AO3 if there are fics attached.

There are other designs and stories I have made that are not attached to an AU I will not be including those.

I will however include AUs I have thought about but have not made anything for under a notable mention area!

Under the cut, I have no idea how long this'll be! (Pretty fucking long)

My canon sides! (RemRom) (LoMoCeit)

AO3 Link These are for the canon Thomasphere. Note: I have since revamped Remus' design in touch his titties Tuesday and plan on doing so with Roman eventually.

On The Sidelines! (RemRom) (SleepAlity) (DeMas) (AnaLogical)

AO3 Link This is my RemRom band AU where they were separated when they were teens and by coincidence meet back up as adults because Roman's band buys the space under Remus' apartment. (Feat: Patton and Logan)

Slice of Life AU! (RemRom) (MoCeit) (AnaLogical)

AO3 Link This is what I dubbed my human AU when I first started it but it's basically just a slice of life AU of them as humans, being and doing people things. (I do have other AUs where they are human but those have more of a distinction to them.)

Punk AU (RemRoMas)

AO3 Link Just as the title says, I honestly don't have much for this story wise (just yet) I just thought it would be fun (also Roman is more goth-esque) (Feat Patton & Thomas)

Ghost AU (RemRomLoCeit)

I don't have any writing out for this (I did start it a long time ago though) and I only have two drawing for it. But It's what it says ghost AU! Where Remus is dead, and Roman wants to find his killer cause he knows he was killed but the police issued it a suicide. Then one day Roman finds the murder weapon! (Remus' own dagger) and now Roman can see Remus who is bound to the dagger!

Troublesome Trio AU (RemRomAlity)

Blog Link This is an ask blog about Roman, Remus and Patton owning a drive in theater, in the middle of the woods where cryptids and mythical creatures live.

Circus AU (RemRom)

Another thing that I have not exactly done anything for except started writing for it a long time ago, but it's basically Remus and Roman are fleeing from someone and they end up working at a circus!

Borrower AU (RemRom)

I have... done nothing but this one picture for this AU but I love it and I do intend on doing more with it.

R3 AU (RemRomRem)

I have got almost nothing for this too, except that Remus and Roman and married and they both get a crush on Remy at the same time and try to woo him. (as you can see... I kinda changed a few things between these pictures)

Murder Bros AU (RemRom)

Blog link Just a fun silly little blog about murderers, and considering I made this 4 years ago and only now started another post for it this picture, really doesn't do them justice.

And Now! For The Notable Mentions!

These are AUs I have thought of doing, but sadly have not done anything for, some I have talked about some I have not.

Cryptid/Ghost Hunter Remus and Creature Roman AU! Roman is a huge fuzzy creature living in a dilapidated estate deep in the woods, when one day Remus stumbles upon it and decides it's the perfect place to investigate.

Sugar Baby Remus Big Celebrity Roman AU! Just as it says, Remus is the older brother who is the sugar baby to younger brother movie star/singer Roman.

Ghost Soulmate YouTuber Remus AU! Everyone is born with a marking of their soulmate, it turns up when you turn 18, Remus however doesn't get one, until he does a ritual in a graveyard For The Views and ends up accidentally summoning Roman -who also doesn't have a soulmark and is very salty that he died without one- but neither of them notice at first that theirs show up when Roman is awoken, and is now bound to Remus who gets Roman to do things to get him more Views.

Reaper AU! Based on the TV Show Reaper, Remus' parents sold his soul to the devil before he was born now on his 21st birthday he has to hunt down escaped souls from Hell.

Pushing Daisies AU! Again based on the TV show of the same name. Roman has the gift to bring back the dead, and if it exceeds one minute the person stays alive but something of equal value nearby dies. Remus is obviously in the role of Chuck.

Lisa Frankenstein AU! This one, kinda speaks for itself through the name, I also have not fleshed it out all the way yet, except that Remus is in the role of Lisa, Roman is in the role of The Creature and Patton is in the role of Taffy. Will update when necessary.

I have thought of an Intruality AU for this moodboard that I wanna do more of. So maybe!

If I think of any more I have missed or if I come up with more I will update!

@pleasedonthurtcjstar

#remrom #romrem #creatnativity #Sonnys AUs #I love doing shit like this 😊

[bellshazes]

I was going to reply on your post about C vs CC distinction but I couldn't, so I hope you don't mind me asking here - my brain wasn't cooperating today so I was struggling to read it and comprehend it properly as written. But does it basically boil down to the fact that it's difficult to create a distinction between what's considered "character" vs "creator" in the digital medium Minecraft offers for storytelling? That there's no real way to draw a distinction between "this PERSON did this in the game" and "this CHARACTER did this in the story's world" because it's told on a platform and in a way that makes it hard to find a non-fuzzy divide, and that we shouldn't necessarily try to find that line anyway? Basically that - when it's so hard to define canon when "canon" is influenced by the person both on and beyond the screen, and interactions between "characters" are often colored by the creators behind them, and when the story being told is never really fully concrete anyway, it's just...better and, honestly, more fun to just enjoy the nondefinable art form for what it is? Because if that's what you're saying, I wholeheartedly agree. ^^

When the story's medium is a sandbox game, it's much more fun to interpret canon and its connected fanon as a sandbox too, something malleable and formable and explorable in a flexible way that doesn't rely on defined boundaries to be enjoyed. It's sand. You can make a solid sandcastle for a while, but eventually the water that packed it together dries and the wind blows and things shift again, because that's what sand does. Just - let sand be sand. :3

(And if I've totally misinterpreted then I apologize, it's been a long day and like I said, my brain's not cooperating hah.)

~ Pixie

I definitely didn't get back to my original point in that rambling reblog, so I think you've gotten what I was trying for up until the idea that the SMP Thing is nondefinable. I really struggle articulating this all the time and people often do take it the way you have, so it's a failure of explanation on my part...

It's not resolvable into a single truth, but currently the dominanf response to that is to throw the baby out with the bathwater and say if there is no canon, everything is equally true no matter what the text says, because the text is as (un)real and unknowable as my own imagination. I comprehend that this is very fun and believe this approach has absolutely no moral valence. often this evolves into annoying (imo!) fandom standards that become quasi-canonical due to sheer popularity in the group sandbox but whatever.

However my patented peter bellshazes perfect world involve not this kind of overwriting being a dominant fandom mode, but people taking the lack of One Single Master Story all other pieces fit into as a joyous invitation to pick apart all the threads on their own and how they relate without forcing them into anything and seeing them more clearly. It's to me like the difference between trying to force jigsaw puzzle pieces to fit that are from different boxes and - I don't know, like a complex 3D sculpture that is one object but portrays different images at every angle its viewed from. And people discovering that instead of taking photographs to find the One True Angle in 2D, walking around to examine the previously unstudied backside.

that's abstract but in practice it means like... idk treating it more like a vivisection. I love taking different perspectives apart as standalones, and also interrelating them, but finding joy and spaces to explore and discuss and feel through in those individual examinations, and not forcing them to make sense in some master truth. It makes me appreciate different approaches to the medium more, how tone and technique contribute beyond C!Cubito Is This Trait or whatever. I like it when people articulate if we think about THIS event and how it was shown in THIS way (in terms of acting/performance, editing, cuts made or not made, ) then the story is like this and what's in the gaps or what if it extended or what would it have looked like if different choices were made from a craft perspective or how does that contrast with or contextualizes a different series or scenario. throwing nothing out but never looking for a grand unified theory of truth.

Again no moral valence but i just feel like maybe if I can articulate my brand of fandom joy people might want to give it a try! and I genuinely appreciate people who care enough to try and parse what the hell I'm getting at bc it's almost always only when I try and answer questions that I feel like I get better at explaining what I was trying to say, so!

#mc meta

[thorraborinn]

What's the difference, if any, between fylgja and hamingja?

I'm still a little messed up in the head from a cold but I'm gonna take a crack at this, just be advised that there's really no way to summarize this in a blog post no matter my cognitive state so I'll just try to get you started by focusing on the problems of differentiation in the border between the two concepts. I'm going to draw heavily from Zuzana Stankovitsova's MA thesis on fylgjur, and if you want to understand the depiction of fylgjur in the sagas I highly recommend you read the whole thing.

This is kind of a constantly ongoing discussion. The problem isn't that there isn't a discernible difference, it's that each one is internally inconsistent, and within those spans of inconsistency, there's some overlap. So you get instances of fylgjur and hamingjur that seem to have hardly anything to do with each other, but then also separately instances of things called fylgja that you'd have expected to be called hamingja, etc. This honestly is very common in Norse literature generally. We expect consistent, distinctive, taxonomic categories but you can't do a DNA test on a norn or an isotope analysis on a dís's fossilized skeleton. But with fylgja the fuzziness might be a little above average even for Norse concepts. It also probably changed over time, within the span of time documented in the sagas.

The crux of the confusion is the fact that while the fylgja most often appears as an animal, sometimes there are scenes in the sagas where a figure in the form of a woman (usually in a dream or vision or some other exceptional, non-normal context) is called fylgja, which resembles what we would expect to be called hamingja. Most scholars have treated animal-fylgjur and woman-fylgjur completely separately.

I'm at least partially inclined to agree with that approach. I think the word fylgja (which just means 'follow') gets thrown around a little much, and that not everything referred to with that word was ever meant to be seen as the same thing. In modern Icelandic the word fylgja can even refer to just a regular ghost that haunts a person (rather than a place, so it follows them from place to place; and an ættarfylgja haunts successive generations of a single family). When fylgjur appear in sagas in the form of human women, they sort of bleed into other categories like hamingjur or dísir and on the extreme end maybe even things the word valkyrja might apply to. If the word fylgja can be applied to any figure that follows a person, then a hamingja is a type of fylgja, just one that is different from the animal-fylgja.

To demonstrate, here are two very similar scenes from two different sagas:

In Hallfreðar saga, Hallfreðr suddenly gets deathly ill. His fylgjukona 'fylgja-woman' appears to him, big and wearing armor, able to walk on the sea as if on land (characteristic of valkyries in Völsunga-related mythology), and Hallfreðr declares that he is formally severing ties with her. Then the woman asks Hallfreðr's son Þorvaldr whether he would like to accept her. He says no, so she asks Hallfreðr's other son, who consents, and she becomes his fylgjukona.

In Víga-Glúms saga, Glúmr dreams of a huge woman, so big that her shoulders take up the entire breadth of valleys, touching mountains on either side. In the dream, he went outside to greet her and bid her welcome into his home. When he woke up, he interpreted this as meaning that his maternal grandfather had died and that his hamingja had come to Glúmr.

I don't personally find it clear whether these are supposed to be the same "type" of being or not. I think the easiest way for someone to try to simplify this would be to say that the author of Hallfreðar saga simply chose confusing wording, and could have said hamingja, or that fylgjukona is not the same as an animal-fylgja. I'm not gonna make that call, as I have no problem with the idea that the evidence really just is confusing and contradictory and I prefer not to give into the impulse to systematize.

Most often, when a figure is described as a fylgja, it's a sort of animal double. They're often deployed in the story to foreshadow death -- an animal representing a main character will be seen in a dream being attacked by other animals representing their enemies. A recurring motif is that people will be suddenly overcome with fatigue in the middle of the day and be unable to help falling asleep, in order to have these extraordinary dreams. People with special abilities, or people in highly unusual situations, may be able to see them without being asleep (I think this only happens once in the literature we have). In rare instances, these visions serve as warnings that enable the relevant people to actually avoid the fate they were headed toward (making it very different from other kinds of knowing the future in Norse literature, which in almost every other case is unavoidable).

The animal fylgja (or other things like it) has a place in later Scandinavian folklore but with all of the change, development, and speculation around it it's not possible to systematize or summarize it; this is a whole continuum of belief and not a single cohesive thing I can summarize. If you're interested in that a good start in English would be Scandinavian Folk Belief and Legend, edited by Reimund Kvideland and Henning K. Sehmsdorf. It's also very easy to conflate the fylgja with other kinds of animal affinity, like Kveldúlfr becoming a wolf at night or seiðmenn projecting their awareness outside of their bodies in the form of animals, but most scholars have considered this separate and I agree with them.

Despite the fact that hamingja is a little less all over the place, I find it even harder to describe. Usually the word just means 'luck' or 'happiness' in a general sense and doesn't refer to a discrete being or personality, yet the etymology suggests that, at least when the word started being used, it was applied to a specific sort of non-physical being. The word is believed to come from ham-gengja, something which "goes" (ganga) and is of hamr (roughly 'shape' or 'form' but a complicated discussion on its own).

Presumably this has made you have more questions than you started with but hopefully I have at least moved the locus of confusion somewhat.

For some further reading (for convenience, including the ones I already mentioned):

Kvideland, Reimund and Henning K. Sehmsdorf, eds. Scandinavian Folk Belief and Legend

Murphy, Luke John "Herjans dísir: Valkyrjur, Supernatural Feminities, and Elite Warrior Culture in the Late Pre-Christian Iron Age"

Sommer, Bettina Sejbjerg. "The Norse Concept of Luck"

Stankovitsova, Zuzana, "'Eru þetta mannafylgjur?' A Re-Examination of fylgjur in Old Norse Literature" (see also her bibliography)

#heathen #fylgja #hamingja

[kiwisbell]

How do you think javi and his wife are spending Christmas? 🩷 I was just reading their series yesterday and I love them so much.

HI NON!! thank you so so much for your kind words; i'm thrilled that you like this series so much! you inspired me to write some more about these two, so here are a couple christmassey headcanons/drabbles i dreamed up about javi and his girl that make me feel all warm and fuzzy 🤗 (some very light nsfw below the cut, so 18+ please):

(thank you so much @northernbluess and @tieronecrush for helping me brainstorm/contributing your sweet sweet hcs, and for always loving LM the way you do, i love you both to the moon and back 🫶)

1

while they're still in colombia, she and javi don't have much spare time to decorate their shared apartment for christmas. the holiday is a bit of a sore spot for javier. it's tough to spend so much time away from his dad, and even tougher to brave christmas without his mom. he has fond memories of decorating trees and making cookies with her, and now that she's gone, it's hard to feel lit-up at the sight of a christmas tree.

early in their friendship, javi spills his soul over morning coffee about how christmas is too commercial, too saturated, too expensive—how the holidays are a ploy to sell chocolate and how it's only fun for kids. she nods and smiles and sees a faint flicker of faraway fondness in his eyes when he talks about how christmas should be spent: quietly, with family.

she brews another pot for javier and offers a bit of her own history with christmas—her dad lifting her up to put the star on the tree and her mom gifting her the very first piece of jewellery she ever owned: a pair of plain gold earrings. "i still keep them in my jewellery box. she probably doesn't think i remember them at all."

javier concedes that they can meet in the middle: christmas is shitty when you're an adult, and all right when you're a kid. she rolls her eyes fondly. "gruñón."

"you show me a good christmas, and i'll show you a good fuckin' bottle of wine."

"i'll take that action, agent peña."

they shake. he feels the contact like a node placed right on the vein.

2

sometimes, javier finds himself sitting silently in bed, smoking out the window with her asleep next to him, and he wonders: am i fucking dreaming?

he's still waiting to wake and find his bed empty as usual. he's still waiting to find that the girl of his dreams was, really, just that. he'll wake one morning and grasp cool bedsheets, and her warm naked body will not be there for him to touch.

but he looks down and she's there. her chest heaves gently in deep sleep, her lips slightly parted, her body tucked closely into his own. javier sighs like an angry bull, smoke billowing from his nostrils, and reaches out to brush her hair away from her forehead.

he'll go back to sleep still expecting her to disappear.

but he wakes to pillowy-soft sunlight streaming through the sheer white curtains and his girl—his girl—clattering away in the kitchen.

still rubbing sleep from his eyes, javier pads over to her and buries his face in her throat, arms around her waist, yawning into her sweet-smelling skin. "mmm, morning."

"morning, javi. you want coffee?"

he blindly kisses her temple, cheek, jaw. she's fussing with a pad of butter, slicing off pieces and tapping them off the knife so they fall into an empty bowl. "por favor," he mumbles. "what're you doing?"

"we are making cookies," she says.

javier groans. "baby, you know i can't cook for shit."

"you're being dramatic, javier, and you aren't that bad. as long as you listen to me. hmm?"

"i always listen to you."

"okay, casanova. let's see if you can flirt your way into a batch of gingerbread."

he perks up, the gash between his brows softening. "gingerbread?"

she gestures to the recipe on the little card before her, and javier feels a distinct pinch in his throat. "this is my mom's recipe."

"i called your dad," she says softly, her thumb smoothing over his brow. "he thought, since we can't make it to texas for christmas, we could bring texas here."

javier swallows. his jaw working, he reads the recipe card: it's his girl's handwriting, but it's his mom's recipe, to be sure. he's slipped once again into dreamworld, fingers idly tracing the jagged edges of the cardstock.

"you didn't have to do this, baby," he rasps.

"christmas doesn't have to be shitty for adults," she says, bringing her lips to his bicep, his shoulder, his collarbone. "we can make it okay. just the two of us. i won't go crazy and get a tree or anything, but... will you let me try?"

javier chews on his tongue for so long it begins to bleed, pressure building in the T of his nose and forehead. he can only press his lips to the crown of her head and squeeze his eyes shut. it's then he begins to smell nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger.

home.

she ends up buying a tree. javier doesn't hate it, all things considered.

3

his little mariposa is a flight risk.

in the months since she learned to walk, javi and his wife have devised a foolproof plan to keep her in their sights at all times on christmas eve.

she keeps their baby girl all happy and satiated in her lap: her favourite place to be. her big brown eyes stare in wonder at her mamá, her little fist curling around locks of her hair. coos and happy cries escape her bumbling mouth as her mom reads to her.

"'twas the night before christmas..."

downstairs, javier dusts flour on the hardwood from the chimney to the table where the milk and cookies sit—well, where the spiked 'nog and cookies sit.

javier, you cannot tell our daughter that santa prefers whiskey to milk.

why not?

because she's a baby.

so she doesn't know what whiskey is, cielito. santa should be allowed to have some fun.

santa is going to bed without sex if he doesn't behave himself.

aw, baby, don't do that to me.

javier carefully manoeuvres his feet through the flour, ensuring his boots make imprints. he polishes off the eggnog—a compromise, and a little too sweet for his taste—and the cookies, hiding his flour-dusted boots in the closet.

"and all through the house..."

the calming lilt of her mamá's voice has their baby girl blinking sleepily in her lap.

"not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse."

at this, she gently pinches her daughter's cheek, earning a boisterous giggle. she bounces up and down in her mamá's lap, overjoyed but not quite knowing why, as her mother finishes the rhyme and coaxes her slowly to sleep.

"goodnight, my little star."

once the house is locked up and the presents are tucked under the tree, javier creeps back up the steps to their bedroom. in the bed lies his wife and his baby girl, fast asleep next to one another, in their matching candy cane-patterned pyjamas. the book lies abandoned next to them both.

javier approaches the bedside and lowers himself onto the mattress, letting his eyes fall closed, his little mariposa sandwiched safely between mom and dad.

4 / some extra little headcanons about family peña

~ javier is not a last-minute christmas shopper. not when it comes to his family. he makes notes of everything his wife mentions she likes in the months leading up to christmas and has all his shopping done before december starts. he refuses to disappoint his wife - not when disappointment is all she knew with her ex-husband. he's a fucking giver, dammit!

~ javier spends hours assembling toys (so his baby girl can play with them right away on christmas morning) in the days leading up to christmas and enlists his wife to wrap them, because he gets one too many paper cuts and she's a lot more patient

~ he still can't believe this is his life. he's watching his wife, his baby, open their presents on christmas morning, and there's a wedding band on his finger, and how the fuck did he get here?

~ there's an ornament hanging from their tree imprinted with two pink handprints; it's from her first month in the world, when her mom decided their tree deserved a special touch. javier doesn't have the heart to store it away throughout the year, so in every month but december, it dangles from the window above the kitchen sink.

~ when she sees a big dollhouse in the living room, from mommy and daddy, their baby girl shrieks, hurling herself at them with her stumbling baby steps. they share a look over her head of dark curls and shake their heads in watery-eyed disbelief. this is our baby, they think. our little star.

~ they head to chucho's for christmas dinner, and her mom has flown down to join them. their little girl is wearing a dress that matches her mom's, with a little red bow on their headbands. chucho gifts them a series of framed pictures of the three of them on the ranch: in one, their mariposa is beaming as she sits stationary on a chestnut mare named billie; in another, they're wearing matching cowboy hats, and it nearly swallows her little face. chucho tells a teary javier that the pictures remind him of their family, back when his mom was still here. he tells him that she'd be proud, that she'd be thrilled to see him so happy, so caring, so present for his baby girl.

~ that night, when their mariposa is tuckered out from a long day of excitement and javier and his wife are lying together in bed, he gets that look on his face, and she knows she's in for it. already caressing her naked waist, javi pulls her closer: "i want one more present." she plays along, brushing her knuckles under his chin: "is that so?" he nods, rolling on top of her. "wanna play a game, baby. think you can handle it?"

~ the game? one orgasm for every christmas they've shared together. oh, and she has to keep quiet, of course.

#kiwisbell answers #las mañanas #headcanons #these are very silly and were written super fast so i'm sorry for any mistakes!! #but this was fun

[drdemonprince]

i’m kind of curious about if you have any comments on ableism, specifically towards queer autistics, within the queer community.

My gut reaction to this question is that is honestly that I see so much more homophobia, transphobia, queer phobia, and moral sex panicking within neurodiverse spaces than I see the reverse. Hell, I see more of those problems within the actual queer community as well than I see ableism.

Most genuine queer community spaces recognize the intersections between queerness and disability pretty intimately. That's because in order to function lastingly and have meaning, good queer community spaces are inclusive of elders, who are more likely to be disabled themselves and who remember the mass disabling event that was the AIDs epidemic. ACT UP was a disability justice movement. There is no separating queer history from anti-ableist work. And no separating anti-ableism from queer liberation, of course, but queer groups seem more aware of this than many neurodiversity spaces are.

But certainly one does encounter massive neuronormativity and a lack of accessibility in queer spaces, if one's gauge of queer spaces is locations like circuit gay clubs and bars and the cruising/dating scene. And I don't intend to minimize those problems, I just don't think those spaces are community spaces so much as they are places of business that have targeted a queer demographic.

Obviously the line between business and community space gets fuzzy in lots of places. Non-circuity Gay bars filled with old timers are a real fucking treat. Every young queer person who thinks badly about cis gays should spend a lot more time in old timer gay bars meeting actual older cis gay people and realizing how many of them are embracing of transness and neurodiversity as well. They get it, because many of them have lived it far longer than we have.

Cruising spots and gay saunas can be amazing spots for disabled queer people to visit too. if you haven't ever been you'll likely be surprised by the number of disabled people there, both physically disabled and neurodivergent people. Lots of trans people too. People with all kinds of bodies and accessibility needs.

In short, I really can't say I have ever been part of a queer community that wasn't made, founded, and led by disabled, neurodivergent people. And I've moved through quite a few realms. I know the ableism is out there, just as I know the massive superficiality and fatphobia is, and it operates in some parallel and some distinct ways. But I think for a queer community space to even really be one it has to have already had disabled people shaping it from the very start, and in my experience the communities dovetail so much that that's always been the case.

[emilysidhe]

This is a plant runner:

I made it a few years ago. It’s double knit, which is a knitting technique where you cast on stitches that you intend to be on the front of the piece alternating with stitches that you intend to be on the back of the piece and use two balls of yarn in alternating knits and purls to keep some stitches in the front and let som drift to the back, so that you’re basically knitting a giant pocket. You can switch the front and back yarn to make a reversible color pattern.

It’s also felted. Felting is when you take 100% wool yarn and use agitation, heat, or friction to induce the fibers to fuse together, essentially shrinking it on purpose. This makes a much stiffer and sturdier fabric that holds its shape and is more watertight.

This happened because I wanted a plant runner and I thought, “Why don’t more people make double-knit, felted plant runners? I’ve never seen a pattern for one, but it makes so much sense! Double knitting is super flat even with color work, so the pots will be stable, and felted wool is so waterproof that water actually beads on it, so it’ll help with spills. Plus it won’t felt any more in a delicates bag with cold water on a delicate cycle, so I’ll be able to machine wash it. This is a great idea - I’m gonna try it!”

Well, I found out why more people don’t do this, because it was a pain in the neck to make. Because I was shrinking it, it had to be larger than I wanted the finished piece; because it was double knit, I had to do twice as much knitting to get the front and back done; and because of the color work, I had to pay attention to what I was doing the whole time. Most of the time when I’m knitting rectangles like this, I only have to repeat the pattern 3-4 times and it internalizes to the point where I start having an intuitive sense of what to do next and start only having to glance down occasionally to check where I am. I can do complex cables with the TV on and watch the screen most of the time - I’ve knit simpler stuff with an ebook open on a propped screen reading as I go. This thing I had to keep looking at the entire time. Between the double knitting and the leaf pattern, I had to constantly watch what I was doing. This thing took forever! If I calculated out the hours I spent on this as money, there no way I’d spend even a fraction of it on a *plant runner.*

And yet … I had barely finished it when I was already thinking about making another one. You see, I was right. This really does make a fantastic plant runner. It catches the dirt and dried leaves that fall off the plants and keeps them from messing my table, water does bead on it so it protects my table from spills beautifully, and the plant pots sit very stably on it. It’s great!

But I used a kind of wool that comes in several different colors, but is all undyed - it’s from white or brown sheep. I was worried the darkest and lightest colors - that cream that you think of when you hear undyed wool and a dark chocolate brown - would be too much contrast and I went with the second darkest and lightest (a heathered dark brown and an oatmeal off-white). But I forgot how fuzzy wool gets when felted like this and I want a second crack at it with the higher contrast colors to make the pattern pop more. (This is one of the rare cases where the pattern is actually slightly more distinct in photographs than irl.) There’s even a small voice that I think of as, “That is the craft-devil talking,” whispering that I should try it out again with wool yarn that comes in actual colors and see what it looks like as green-and-something.

Fortunately, everyone I know seems to be having babies at the same time, so it’ll probably be 3-5 years before I make anything for myself that isn’t a quick, weekend project between yet another baby blanket.

But every time I wash it, there is that craft-devil. Whispering.

#knitting

[olderthannetfic]

The weirdest thing abt being a young adult in fandom spaces IRL and online is that I know people who will straight up give weed to minors (no it’s not legal in my state) but will go on and on about how they can’t possibly even mention sex to a minor bc that’s “pedophilia”— even when they’re 18 and the “minor” is 15/16 and they just smoked with them. Like girl what? To me that’s hypocritical, but I don’t smoke so idk…

The whole dichotomy of people putting “minors dni” in their bios as soon as they turn 18 seems really strange to me because… I’m 18. I’m a senior in high school. I have friends that are 15 and friends that are 22 and in college. Not gonna lie, I’ve been participating in 18+ fandom spaces since before I legally could, but I never really saw the point of the divide because the age of consent in my state is 16. When I see people my age going on and on about how there’s some huge distinction between under 18s and over 18s, it’s kind of ridiculous. The black-and-white boundary exists purely in a legal sense and the cultural + developmental border is much more fuzzy and fluid.

--

The main danger is going to be to other, older fans. 16 may be old enough to fuck, but it might not be old enough to be given porn across state lines or the like. But generally, if you don't have a vengeful parent trying to get people on the sex offender registry for life or the like, nothing bad is going to happen.

Overall though, yeah, I very much agree. People are ridiculous about the magic line that is 18. I was substantially the same person all through high school and college. Of course I grew and changed, like everybody, but there was a lot that was set early, and it's not like I had life figured out at 18.

It's both infantilizing to the 17-year-olds and a hell of a lot of pressure on the 18-year-olds.

[abimee]

i need to flesh out tock's lore more cause theres a lot of stuff that sort of floats around about her that i dont know if i want to make canon to her or not but i do want something concrete. especially in regards to her and luka cause endwalker brought some tasty ideas forth

like i personally really like the general comcept of her and luka's footsteps being out of sync in terms of parallels between wol!luka and wol!tock but their paths still paralleling each other, since mags started playing this game much earlier than me, but since we experienced endwalker together they momentarily came really close to this sort of nebulous/metaphorical/magical idea of their worlds "touching" --- they exist in each others lore as non-wol counterparts (luka in tock's lore is just a catboy back home who likes to go fishing and isnt an adventurer, and tock in luka's lore is a dwarf on the first who wants to write music about luka's adventures since she herself cant leave kholusia), but even their wol selves are interconnected in a way

ultima thule is where they truly get to "meet" in a way --- i do however like the idea that their paths became one earlier in endwalker though, but it was in ultima thule that these two seperate universes could collide since ultima thule is a nest at the edge of the universe, so its here where two distinct worlds could only ever truly meet. and thats where the depiction starts of Tock sort of "feeling" someone here

even though i technically experienced ultima thule first irl, i like to imagine Tock hearing an echoe (for the song, Echoes in the Distance) of someone else walking alongside her, and a sort of metaphorical foot path she follows after this apparition (coming back to Footfalls), and it gets loudest at Base Omicron. I always played around with the idea that the graha tia in Tock's universe of Shadowbringers who gave his memories to Tock's Graha was in some way connected to Luka, so Shadowbringers was where Tock first felt this sensation of someone beside her, since Shadowbringers was the endgame when i started playing. Its nothing either of them are fully aware of, but Graha is one of the "bridges" between their two universes that is papee thin yet there

and of course at the walk up to the elpis flowers I think that sensation returns, and simce dynamis is what manipulates ultima thule and made these apparitions of others appear, that the little piece of wol!luka that exists in wol!tock's heart made his existence manifest to her side, not as his own person/recreation of him, but more like dynamis drew down that barrier that these two from colliding, yet neither were fully present --- Tock was still in her timeline and Luka in his, but in ultima thule their footfalls briefly lined up and the two becames, as they say, "close in the distance"--- and as Tock walked herself up the path to meteion, luka was doing the same in his own timeline, and they briefly walked together through the hardest and final test of their hope

From there the concept becomes fuzzy because i always try to keep tock and luka as wols seperated so i dont wanna step on mags own oc lore, since luka is not mine and hes got his own rich and complex meanings for endwalker and ultima thule, but sometimes i like to think about what it wouldve been like if in that moment of using the azem stone and standing before meteion Tock saw Luka, the true Luka, for the first time.

but this is all again not necessarily canon because mags is always putting crazy good thoughts in my head and due to not writing down my endwalker thoughts and how. OUGH endwalker is im always reworking these ideas and moments because ultimately all i need is to know that where tock walks is the same path luka walks and they both walk forward together even if they dont know it. Because to Tock Luka is a catboy back home she needs to return to because hes waiting for her return with a warm meal and to Luka Tock is a dwarf on another start he needs to return to because she'll have a new song for him. But little do they know they are so much more to each other in places close in the distance

[clever-and-unique-name]

Hey, this isn’t an ask, I just wanted to thank you.

I first came across the word “dissociation” years ago, connected with it a lot and promptly ignored it- only recently (the past few months or maybe it’s been an year- my sense of time isn’t great) did I start delving into it.

Initially I was reading ab depersonalisation and derealisation and really connecting to it and getting super scared but I eventually slowly got myself to accept it and read about it.

But then I watched moon knight/ and in trying to learn more about DID just as a generally mental health-aware person- I started relating to alOt of things in a very painful way.

It was a weird up and down months long journey of being scared/ not wanting to consider it at all/ not even wanting to bring it up to my therapist/ thinking I’m making it up/wondering what the like between “normal” and “dissociative” was etc.

But I’m finally in a place where I think either it’s C-Ptsd/ OSDD (even now I don’t want to fully accept it’s the second one). But a big Big Point of acceptance for me has been blogs and memes and infographics from systems.

Of all the books and myths and confusion around dissociative disorders/ it’s always the sincere experiences that I keep relating to the most/ and the explanations from real systems which resonate with me the most.

And your comics were easily the Biggest turning point for me. Because it was explained in a way that entirely totally intuitively made sense to me.Down to them being different colours and circles and mixing. Your descriptions of introjects and passive influence and blending are what really made it make sense to me and genuinely validated me and made me able to see my personal experiences as a dissociative disorder Without feeling wrong and scared and hate myself.

Instead of new terms and talk of trauma that overwhelmed and alienated me, when I was first dipping my toe in, your comics showed and explained my own daily experience and how I’d been seeing the inside of my head for so long. When I was little I had 6 “imaginary characters” I would play as/ my handwriting has always changed/ I’ve had 6 google accounts for years now for “efficiency”/ diff YT accounts that subscribe to diff channels coz “don’t wanna contaminate the different vibes” and these are just some of the little things that were always a little off or weird but in learning that all those little weird things tied up with my big weird things? And that none of them were weird at all but rather something that could be explained and Shared with a community of people who Also Experienced it and could connect and guide each other?

That feeling of connection, understanding, and clarity- the embracing and empathy and forgiveness I’ve been able to have for myself -is something I am so so ever grateful to you for.

So thank you so much. You made me feel how magical and human it is to share, connect and belong with others. And be seen.

(Side Note- I still use singular pronouns as 1- I still have some internalised stigma to work through and 2- with my OSDD it’s more like I in different fonts rather than “we”)

(but I will say I absolutely identify with your descriptions of more distinct parts and they were what allowed me to go “haha just as like.. a fun experiment what if I tried to imagine what it would look like if I had diff-“ when I tell you my head imMediately sorted itself into different trains of thought/roles/personas/ even sense of physical appearance…they settled into and took that “experiment” so so easily and it was so comfortable that I had to look further into it)

(And as I’ve kept going and been genuinely curious and compassionate I’ve started noticing “memory fuzziness” / introjects of my parents/ realised I have a “little” who I have been severely neglecting/ been able to make my therapy about 70% more effective and finally finally feel seen and understood in these communities)

(I’ve acc been able to be aware of diff parts and encourage them to use words- where before they’d be impulses or emotions or visualisations so I could assume it was just “thinking” - now I just encourage a little bit by thinking “hmm is this a part? What are you trying to tell me? Please use words” and it has absolutely changed my life and made so many things clearer and so so much guilt and self hate has been cleared up)

As of now my therapist and I are unsure if it’s more an IFS kind of thing or C-PTSD or OSDD but whatever it is I want to thank you so So So much for putting this out into the world - reminding me of a story about one boy who saw hundreds of fish beached and started throwing them back in one by one and someone asked “why would you do that? You can’t save all of them it won’t make a difference” and he responds “he made a difference to that one”

I don’t know how much interaction you get on your platform but I just want you to know you really made a difference to this one.

And I am very grateful.

(Sorry this was long)

Sorry this has sat unanswered for a bit, I ah...struggle to put words to how much it means to me, not only that my little infographics helped you in such a way, but that you took the time to write so thoughtfully to me. (I did read every word of it, even though I don't have the spoons to reply to individual points.)

For a while I've actually been debating taking down my DID/OSDD Casually Explained posts, because they're by far my most popular posts and tend to draw in people who expect me to be the same sort of "educator" I was 4 years ago when I made them. And I'm simply not. I work full-time now, and the relatively little time I have at home is spent trying to wrangle my own mental health.

I suppose I got wrapped up in thoughts of disappointing people, no longer providing the informative content that most people followed me for, nor the personal content they could find relatable...

All that to say, I forgot how impactful content like that can be for people. I've certainly come across mental health comics or art that clicked things into place for my own experiences, I just didn't think my own creations could have that kind of effect on others (thanks imposter syndrome.)

Truly, thank you for telling me your story. I am so honored and humbled to have a place in your journey. Your words have convinced me to keep my infographics up indefinitely--I suppose we're taking turns tossing each other back into the sea.

I'm wishing you all the best (and try not to worry too much about diagnostic labels if you can help it, it sounds like you're doing The Parts Work just fine regardless!)

#from the bottom of my heart: thank you #this has been a softly glowing ember of warmth in my inbox for a little while #answering asks