#which is to say chronic inability to shut the fuck up

[cescalr]

I LOVE HOW YOU TAG PARAGRAPHS THEYRE FUN TO READ!! /gen

Thank you!!! I love to ramble!!!

#i'm so wordy. i am SO wordy. i never ever fail at a minimum word requirement #but oh god the second my uni says no MORE than 2000 words i freak out. what do you mean no more than 2000 words. does less than 2000 words #and tumblr not yelling at me about tag length even exist? #is it possible to not type out an entire paragraph when i have even a single thought? do people really go around with one word sentences in #side their heads all day? do you see a cool thing and go oh cool thing! and move on #instead of oh cool thing! this reminds me of my very specific brainrot! #which is to say chronic inability to shut the fuck up #so i'm glad. you are entertained lmao #that's all i intend! i'm literally blogging tumblr is a blogging platform. the point is to put my thoughts out there! throw them out! into #the void! the dark abyss (i use the goth rave dashboard theme so this is literal) and hope #just hope i get like a call back. a little nod. and i got one <3 thank you <3 #also (genuinely) i'm assuming /gen means /genuine but like it could also mean /general or some kind of acronym like pos (piece of shit) so. #am i right? im not. up to date. the last time #i paid attention to txt spk and it's ilk was like 2015 #i make assumptions but i am Often Wrong (i still don't know what tfw stands for my brain just goes 'time for when' and it's like 'yeah that #sounds legit' and i'm like 'what the fuck are you talking about? time for when? that doesn't even make sense. #why do you think that sounds legit?' #but i'm asking myself that question so i dont' get an aswer. ah well #you can tell i should be sleeping rn. i get even more verbose and use words like ilk when i'm tired. hence: sleep time now yes. #but again; for real all jokes and minor japes aside: thanks! i'm glad i'm really not just shouting into the void for nobody to hear here.

[beanghostprincess]

Adding on to generalized chronic pain issues, specifically Devil fruit users-

The human body is about 60% water.

There's water in bone too, sorry Brook, no saving yourself there.

DF users have to keep up on hydration, but what if their inability to tolerate water includes ANY kind of water.

Luffy v Crocodile last fight in Alabasta, fighting with his blood - it affected him.

Tears? Big impacts.

Humidity? Rain? Storms? The affects are relatively minor but they are Still There. Most DF users, after an overexposure to water/rain/heavy humidity, will at best have a slight headache. At worst? Those old wives tales of staying out in the rain leading to sickness are REAL.

With my Buggy obsession, I am leaning heavily into impacts to him and those around him. So Buggy's immune system is WACKED out, both bc hus nervous system never quite got with the program of his powers and genetic predisposition. It's one of the reasons he got sick just before Laugh Tale. Fevers weren't uncommon for him AT ALL which is why none of the other Rogers were very concerned.

Shanks, though? He knew. He and Buggy had a whole ass SYSTEM for dealing with it. ((A system he drunkenly regaled Mihawk with often enough for the swordsman to have it committed to memory.))

Buggy studies medicine a bit, and so any Devil fruit users on Karai Bari have a specialty medicine made specifically with their abilities, biology, etc, in mind - including Crocodile. He doesn't let them suffer alone, bc he knows how it is and he refuses to let any of HIS be subjected to that.

Buggy just also doesn't reach out himself when he isn't doing well - enter Mihawk being like "Hello, I - stop screaming - I brought you your tea. Shanks waxed poetic about your teas for hours. Yes, I am aware of the time. No, I do not care that you are under dressed. Lay back down. I brought medicine for your headache."

Cue goth swordsman awkwardly going through the motions of caring for a sick, needy but very hesitant clown. And eventually he even finds the other... rather cute, all sleepy and smiling and soft spoken.

Gross.

Crocodile eventually catches on and swings by, intending to bully Buggy a bit, but then he ALSO get charmed and reminded of the balms for his scars, the specialty drinks Buggy had made for him, and he just... can't.

It becomes p normal when Karai Bari has a higher humidity level or rain incoming for even the regular, standard officers to remind the DF users among them to take it easy, not push it, and it's silly and over the top bc they can't he expected to do anything less.

((Bonus silly idea, Buggy is out helping with muscle work before a big storm hits, even the typical human mercs can feel the moisture in the air, and one dude just. Scoops Buggy up, all sunshine smiles like "let us handle this, Chairman Buggy! Someone as incredibly kind and courageous as yourself can rest easy with us here!"

Buggy is both flattered, offended and flustered in one go. Flattered bc "oh they DO care...", offended bc this guy did NOT just baby him did he???, and flustered bc aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaBeingHeldHELP?????

Croc would either choke on his cigar or just scoop buggy up from the other guy like "i got this, carry on"

Mihawk thought would probably shatter his wine glass, expressionless, and grab n go.

No they are NOT jealous, no they did NOT think the blush was cute on their clown- THE CLOWN, no, everyone shut up, the rain is getting to their heads, fuck off.))

This is awesome. The whole concept about DF users being affected by regular water too is great because it just adds more angst to the whole thing and it becomes more of a risk to eat the fruits. Gonna skip directly to the Cross Guild thing and say that I am SO soft and weak for Croc and Mihawk to end up smitten by Buggy somehow when they weren't planning on it. And they're so protective and take care of him and,,,, That's their boyfriend idc idc idc.

#my beloveds #they're so silly #i absolutely love cross guild asks #i am sorry for the lack of passion in this one i woke up at 6 am to go to work and i am tireeeed #but i absolutely love this idea #one piece #buggy the clown #dracule mihawk #sir crocodile #cross guild

[bunchofdoodlesinspace]

Usually I just go on reblogging sprees after episodes but I just can't stop thinking.

About how in the original mythos, Ouranos, the primordial sky god, was rebelled against and killed after the mistreatment of his other children, who he threw into Tartarus. How Kronos cut him to pieces, urged to do so by his own mother, Gaia.

And then how, during Kronos's ruling, "The Golden Age", when he has his own children, he fears them doing the same to him. He eats them, but misses one, who is saved by his mother Rhea. She then prepares him to save his siblings, and so he, Zeus, urged by his mother, kills his father and cuts him to pieces.

And now, in the show, we see Zeus, the current ruler, dismissive of Percy's warnings. Ruling with an iron fist and insisting on total obedience from his siblings and children, lest they make an enemy they will regret. His own solution to maintaining control, one that does not seem to be holding up super well.

And Percy calls him out on it.

Because he knows the myths, and by now, he's seen it for himself with his own eyes. This isn't working. This is just perpetuating the mess, continuing the cycle of violence against each other. It punishes cooperation in favour of total obedience, which just does not work for some. It's not just the Olympians that are a mess, it's their whole family tree. This shit is generational, and had Percy not been there to say something about it, to try and confront the God of the fucking Sky himself, Kronos probably would have risen and taken over before Zeus would have been ready to admit he needed help with the problem. The fact that Poseidon stepped in to back Percy up just proves that.

As much as Zeus would hate to ever admit it, he's lucky this impertinent child has a chronic inability to keep his mouth shut.

#percy jackson #percy jackon and the olympians #pjo tv #pjo spoilers #cupcake rambles #disclaimer I am writing this just past 2am my time I apologize if my myth summaries are not perfect KJFKHG #but I needed to get this out of my brain #bc if you needed proof that this show is about breaking toxic cycles #this is about as blatant as you can get

[clotpolesonly]

Niall Lives AU sounds very interesting!!! I've never read one either except a non-magical au. How would it go do you think? Or any headcanons?

(sorry this took me 3 days, and i hope you're prepared for how long it got cuz i have a chronic life-long inability to summarize, also there's no ending cuz it's an ongoing narrative that lives in my brain, sorry not sorryyyy)

OKAY SO, generally speaking, i fall somewhere in between Niall hater and Niall apologist, i have complicated opinions on Niall as both a character and a father. however, i am first and foremost above all else a Declan girlie, and therefore, for the purposes of this concept, i err on the side of Niall hater 😂 (cw for child abuse afkdljgh)

because what i want most out of this AU is for Niall's secrets to come out while he's still alive. canonically, Declan sort of inherited the burden of Niall's lies. he became personally responsible for them when he chose to carry them forward and keep keeping them when Niall was no longer around to enforce that keeping, but the root of the problem for most of their lives was Niall and his choices.

after spending much time musing on the concept, i realized that i end up with almost an inverted Declan & Ronan dynamic, without the loss of Niall to catalyze them in the directions we know them to have gone in -- Declan shutting down and repressing/denying any love he had for his father because he didn't want to feel the pain of his loss, and Ronan putting his father up on an untouchable pedestal and foisting his father's flaws solely onto Declan instead.

without that loss, Declan still loves and obeys his dad. for all the problems he may have with his father and the way he does things, which is plenty, he is still his father's obedient right hand. and without that loss, when the secrets come out, Ronan isn't searching for a scapegoat. he's seeing his father plainly and realizing that he is a liar. that what Declan does, he does because Niall told him to.

Declan, conflicted but loyal. Ronan, betrayed and disillusioned.

it's a really interesting role reversal that i personally think is entirely in character under these conditions.

SO, as for the specifics:

i figure Niall is attacked in the driveway but lives. probably Greenmantle only called for intimidation, rather than a hit, to try and strong-arm the Lynches into giving him what he wants. he was making a point.

the point is successfully made and Declan, at least, is deeply stressed by this. they came to the house, dad, they know where we live and you could've been killed. what happens then? what am i supposed to do then? what happens to us when they take you out and you take mom down with you? (bonus points if Niall hadn't realized Declan was old enough to remember that Aurora was a dreamt replacement. they've certainly never discussed it.)

he thinks Niall needs to be more careful, that he's in over his head, that he can't keep running off half-cocked or running his mouth off without thinking of the consequences. he thinks they should read Ronan in, because he's the one these people are fucking looking for and he's not made any safer by not knowing there's a target on his back.

Niall thinks he's worrying too much. Niall thinks he's got the situation under control. Niall doesn't appreciate having his way of doing business questioned. it takes three or four arguments about it before they both lose their temper, before Declan calls Niall selfish for putting the whole family at risk, before Niall slaps him for it. if Declan doesn't like the way he handles things, his father says, he should go back to playing in the mud with Matthew, let the grown-ups worry about business.

Ronan is in the hall when Declan leaves. he was planning on giving Declan shit for giving dad shit when he's recovering from, ya know, being beaten half to death, and can't Declan chill the fuck out for five fucking seconds?? all the yelling and fighting is upsetting Matty 😤 but he stops dead when he sees the red mark on Declan's cheek.

"dad thinks he's invincible," is all Declan says. "and we're the ones who are gonna pay for it."

Ronan is.....destabilized. trying to rationalize away what he saw and what he knows it means with what he (thinks he) knows of his father. it just doesn't compute. it can't be what it looked like. right? he checks on dad, asks what they were fighting about. dad says he and Declan had "a gentleman's disagreement", nothing to worry about. there's not a single new mark on him. (if it had been mutual, Ronan could've accepted it. like a boxing match. but that's not what this was. he can't convince himself otherwise. not when he's getting the feeling, for the first time, that his dad is lying to him about something important.)

now Ronan has questions. he's suddenly got a lot of questions. dad said it's business stuff and not to worry about it. when he asks mom what he and Declan have been arguing about, she says they're just too similar not to butt heads. don't worry about it. but he IS worrying, and being waved off only makes him worried and mad.

no answers from dad or mom. so brother it is, then. he drags Declan out to spar with him. Declan's got some serious pent up frustrated-frantic-feral energy to work out, and that only gets worse when Ronan springs the question on him -- what the hell is going on?

Declan, already anxious af and now feeling distinctly cornered, says to ask dad. Ronan says he did and if one more person blows him off he's gonna lose his shit. Declan doesn't have an answer that he's allowed to give, and that feels even more like shit than it always feels because Ronan doesn't sound whiny and bratty like he usually does when he complains about being left out of grown up stuff. he sounds serious. genuinely concerned. Declan still tries to evade, so Ronan pivots to another angle of attack.

"has dad hit you before? or was that the first time?"

even as it feels like a punch to the sternum, Declan has to give him credit for the way the question is phrased. either/or, two options both incriminating, no option on the table for "he never did that". it's the kind of rhetorical trick used by cops and lawyers. cleverer than he usually gives Ronan credit for.

it's a reasonable consequence, he says. you yell at your father and you get punished for it. even Ronan couldn't have gotten away with what he'd said (probably). he's not expecting Ronan to argue back that it depends on why you're yelling. Ronan's never taken his side before, never defended him. (he'd never really thought that Declan needed defending.)

"please," Ronan says. "none of this is right. i just wanna know what's going on with my family."

Declan cracks. not all the way, but enough to admit that dad's business is......not exactly aboveboard. there have been some unsavory dealings and that's why dad was hurt. he did some stupid, reckless shit and it followed him home. (he doesn't say that he's expressly forbidden from telling Ronan even this much, even if he certainly can't forget about it himself.)

Ronan tries to be mature and reasonable and cautious when he confronts his dad about it, but frankly, confronting him in the first place was not particularly well thought out. he has the forethought to not start off the conversation with "Declan told me you're a criminal" at least, lmao, but he's kinda sorta on Declan's side here?? Niall keeps saying that Declan is worrying too much, but, like

"oh Declan worries so much, Declan needs to relax -- people came to our house and attacked you with a fucking tire iron, dad!!! maybe Declan's worrying the right amount!!!"

Niall does not appreciate Ronan's tone. (he also does not appreciate his children unionizing.)

Ronan's so upset that it's easy to dismiss him. so emotional, so worked up, so childish. this is why he didn't tell Ronan anything before, he knew he wouldn't be able to handle it.

his dad has never talked to him this way, dismissive and condescending, deliberately undercutting his confidence. he's never made Ronan feel bad about himself (at least not in a way that Ronan could tell it's on purpose), but now Ronan leaves feeling small and insignificant and twisted up inside.

Niall has a talk with Declan. he expresses his displeasure that Declan could be so willful and loose-lipped as to go sharing their secrets around. hasn't he made it clear how important secrecy is? has he failed as a father if this is how his son behaves? their secrets are crucial for the safety of their family, look at what already happened, and that was just because some unsavory people learned things they shouldn't have.

as far as shaming tactics go, it's very effective. shifting blame onto Declan, as if it wasn't his own loose lips that put them in this position. he digs up some incident from YEARS ago, when Declan was a kid, to use against him, which both hurts and is so fucking unfair that Declan snaps again. Ronan deserves to know this stuff, he's a target as much as Niall is. he's old enough to know what he's involved in and it's not fair for Niall to --

Niall slaps him again. (twice in one week. that's a record.)

"he's not involved in anything, and you won't be either if you don't learn your place, son."

Declan has never been afraid of his father. this isn't a regular thing, maybe two or three times over the course of his adolescence, and he's never really felt he had reason to fear for his safety. what he is afraid of is falling out of favor. (further out of favor, i should say.) he's afraid of disappointing Niall. he's afraid of losing his position at Niall's side, of not being trusted or needed anymore. being cast aside. being abandoned.

it's the most effective threat his father could've levied against him.

Ronan corners him at school the next day. (he would've tried talking to him before school, but Declan left the house early specifically to avoid him.) he's not even sure exactly what he wants to talk about, it's just a general big mess of bad emotions in his chest and the feeling that, somehow, he and Declan are in this together now in a way they've never been before. only to finally find Declan on campus and notice that the bruising on his cheek is worse today than it was yesterday. bigger. fresher.

he suddenly wants to set things on fire. Declan tries, again, to put him off. he's not supposed to be talking to Ronan. last time he talked to Ronan, he fucked up. if he fucks up again, dad is gonna be so mad. Ronan is a persistent little fuck, though, and he keeps pushing, keeps asking questions, keeps saying that they need to fucking talk about this and they can't keep him in the dark and Declan agreed yesterday that they shouldn't and --

Declan snaps that he never should've told Ronan anything.

the only reason Ronan doesn't follow him when he walks away to [react however tf he's gonna react, even he's honestly not sure, but it probably wouldn't have been pretty] is that Gansey finds them then and intervenes. they've only been friends for a couple of months, but he already knows it's safest for the Lynch brothers' tempers to steer clear of each other on campus. esp when Ronan has been distinctly out of sorts all week.

he invites Ronan over to continue helping him clear out monmouth manufacturing, aware that invitations to talk are more often met with scoffing and jokes than they are with actual talking. and Ronan, as much as he kinda sorta desperately does want to talk about all this shit actually, is pretty sure that he can't, or he shouldn't, or they're not Close Enough™ for this kind of shit yet, or something.

he does end up telling Gansey a little bit. everything is awful and wrong and confusing, and he feels like he might explode, so he tells Gansey that his dad's into something. there's something going on, something big, and Declan knows about it, but nobody's telling him anything.

Gansey doesn't push for details, even though he is......concerned. he's polite like that. he makes a point that he is available to provide support, should Ronan need it.

they pass aglionby as Gansey is driving Ronan back to the barns. and that's when they stumble upon part II of Greenmantle's plan -- Declan, having had a run-in of his own with the Gray Man. not in fantastic shape, but it was, again, intimidation more than anything. a statement made that none of them are safe.

a mugging, Declan says. Gansey has his doubts, but he helps Ronan get Declan into the passenger seat of the volvo so Ronan can drive him home. asks carefully if this is part of that Big Bad Something.

Ronan remembers his dad, shortly after his own assault, clapping him on the shoulder and saying there was nothing to worry about....but also that he shouldn't bring Gansey around for a little while, just in case. all said with an easy laugh. no explanation, no indication that it might be dangerous for Gansey, or for his own fucking sons.

just a mugging, Ronan says. he'll be fine. thanks for the help.

in the car, fear taken over by anger because anger is so much easier to handle, "are you gonna try and bullshit me with this mugger story?"

and Declan, so fucking tired.

"I told you we would be the ones paying for it."

Ronan loses his shit a little bit at Niall. he's lucky mom and Matthew aren't home, cuz he ain't quiet about it. he wants to know what the FUCK is going on, everything. who is after them? why?? how much fucking danger are they in? how dare their dad keep something like this secret? it's his fault that now Declan's gotten hurt too.

Declan tries reining him in. as bitter and resentful as he may be that Ronan can yell at their dad like this and get away with it unscathed, that doesn't mean he wants Ronan pushing his luck. (Ronan sort of wants to. a big part of him wonders what it would take for dad to hit him too.)

it's a giant mess of a confrontation, emotions running high for everyone, and Niall takes a cheap shot at Declan for getting in the middle of it. something about not being able to handle himself, how one thug could take him down and Niall thought he raised him better than that. something about meddling in things that are none of his business. which pisses Ronan off because, hey, Declan is the only one who's even trying to tell him the truth about anything.

Niall, again, does not like this. he doesn't want his sons on the same side, against him. that's not a scenario where he has the power anymore. and so.

"Declan tells you the truth, eh?" he sneers. "are you sure about that? go on, son, ask him what else he's keeping from you."

because why would he require his sons to keep secrets from each other? why would he go out of his way to make sure that they didn't and couldn't communicate about things that were so formative to both their lives? why would he keep such a tight leash on information that did not need to be hidden within the family unit itself?

so that he can weaponize it to drive a wedge between them someday, if need be. control information, control emotions, control behavior.

deflect Ronan's anger away from him and toward Declan instead.

throw Declan entirely under the bus for a secret that was not his decision to keep.

Declan, stunned. betrayed. it takes him a moment to process what his dad is doing here, that he's being sabotaged. because it's not the business or the dreaming in general that he's being put on the spot for here, it's Ronan's dreaming. that Declan has always known about it. a secret that he knows, and his dad knows, is liable to destroy whatever fragile relationship he has with his brother.

"what do you..." Ronan looks between them. Declan, pale and horrified and wounded. Niall, sharp-eyed and satisfied. he would've called his dad a liar if it weren't for the ringing silence. now his stomach is already sinking. "Declan, what does he mean?"

Declan retreats. Ronan chases after, even though he's got plenty more words for his father, even though he knows on some level that he's being manipulated on purpose, because he can't just not know. he follows Declan out to the barn they do their boxing in -- anywhere but where dad is, as far away as Declan can get -- and begs him for the whole truth. there's no solid ground under his feet at this point. he feels like his entire life has been a lie, everything he thought he knew turned upside down and inside out. please, Deklo, just tell me.

and Declan is just.... he's injured from getting interrogated by a fucking mercenary hit man a few hours ago, everything hurts and he's got blood dripping in his eye and his dad's cruel words are bouncing around in his head still and everything is falling apart around him and it's all his fault and there's nothing he can do about it because Ronan is there, looking somehow young and scared and more grown up than he's ever looked at the same time, staring at Declan like he's got the answers when Declan knows the only answers he has are gonna ruin them.

but there's nothing left to hide behind. so he tells Ronan. that dad's business isn't cows or artifacts. that he knows what dad can do, what he can create. that that's what he's selling.

and maybe Ronan shouldn't be as caught off guard by that as he is, but it's one secret that's been so deeply buried that it doesn't even occur to him that anyone might know about it, not even his brother. there's the immediate, instinctive feeling of threat. of fear.

Ronan, through a tight throat: "you.....you know about dad's dreaming?"

Declan, resigned and so so tired: "and i know about yours."

Ronan feels like he's been suckerpunched. this is a load-bearing secret, okay, a secret that his entire life and sense of self have been built around. he cycles through so many emotions so fast, he doesn't know what he's feeling, but anger is the easiest to grab hold of. especially with Declan, who's always been quick to hit back.

he doesn't hit back now, though. not when Ronan shoves him back against the wall, not when he growls "how long have you known? why didn't you fucking say anything?"

because the only answer he has is "dad said." dad said it was for the best, dad said he had his reasons, dad said to trust him, dad said to do as he was told. and he's been saying it for years, since Declan was far too young to know how to be properly skeptical. it's not that Declan didn't want to tell him. he's been pushing for dad to tell him, for weeks they've been arguing about it, but dad was adamant they keep the secret.

Ronan demands to know why dad would do it, why he would keep all this from him, why he would make Declan keep things from him, and he's so full of bad feeling that he wants to hit something, and that's the moment he realizes.

that was the reason. this right here was the reason the whole time, this is what Niall wants. he stumbles back, suddenly sick to his stomach. he turns his back and just stands for a while, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes and breathing, trying to wrap his head around the understanding he's coming to. he doesn't get less angry. more angry, honestly. but he thinks of the wounded look on Declan's face when dad turned on him. the look of satisfaction on dad's. and he makes the conscious decision that Declan is not the person he's angry at.

dad said, dad said, dad said

what is a kid supposed to do if not what his parents tell him to?

by the time he's wrangled his feelings down into something he can manage, for now, Declan has slid down the barn wall to sit on the floor, head down and hands on the back of his neck. he looks small. and Ronan, not knowing what the fuck else to do but needing to do something now that he's resolved not to vent his boiling rage in Declan's direction, snatches up the first aid kit. Declan's still got a bleeding cut on his forehead and his knuckles are scraped to hell from the few hits he got in against the Gray Man before he went down.

Declan just stares at him as he rummages around for antiseptic and shit, trying to figure out why Ronan isn't yelling anymore. this is one of those moments where saying nothing feels safer, though, so he doesn't risk asking. he lets Ronan pour peroxide over his knuckles and dab at his forehead in careful silence and it's not until Ronan is putting a butterfly bandage on his forehead -- cut not bad enough for stitches, at least -- that Ronan breaks it.

"were you scared? is that why you didn't tell me, even though you wanted to?"

"i'm not scared of dad."

and he's not lying, per se. he's not afraid of Niall in the way Ronan's implying. (at least, he wasn't before this week. the tight fear pulling at his chest now when he thinks of going back inside is.....new.) he doesn't think that Ronan, of all people, could ever understand what he was truly afraid of. Ronan, the favorite, the golden child, has never been made to feel like he's disposable. replaceable. like his worthiness of love and acceptance has conditions.

this right here -- Niall deciding he no longer cared about Declan at all -- is what he was afraid of.

he reiterates that this is an outlier. it's not a regular thing. Ronan asks if dad calling him names is a regular thing. Declan points out that Ronan calls him names all the time.

"i'm your little brother! i'm supposed to give you shit, and you give it right back, and that's how brothers work. you're not supposed to get shit from your father. and you're definitely not supposed to get hit when you try to give it back for once."

(Ronan is the only one allowed to bully his brother, thank you very much. and it's only fun when it doesn't actually hurt.)

Declan's done talking about it. admitting that it hurts is a fresh wound of its own, and he's already got plenty of those to deal with right now. and there's still more that Ronan doesn't know, more secrets that he deserves to know, and there's nothing standing in the way anymore. he figures dad ripping the fucking bandaid off is the closest to permission he's ever gonna get on this front.

except that Ronan's head is fucking spinning. as much as he wants to know everything, and he DOES, he just....he needs time to process. he's learned enough for one night. so he and Declan sit slumped on the dirt floor of the makeshift boxing ring, side by side, in weighty wrung-out silence, until they hear mom and Matthew get home from wherever they've been.

.....

AAAAAAAND that's all i've got so far, i am deeply invested in this narrative as it plays out like a movie on the back of my eyeballs, i am thinking about it all the time. idk where it will go next. there's gotta be some kind of action plot ramping up with Greenmantle upping the ante, pushing to collect on the fancy artifact that Niall claimed to have but actually doesn't because it's his fucking kid.

idk what the endgame would be here 😂 if i did, it could actually be a fic, but instead i'm just examining the immediate emotional fallout of events with a microscope cuz it pleases me aldkfjgh and that does not lend itself to one cohesive story that actually wraps up in a narratively satisfying way.

so anyway. hope you've enjoyed this EXTENSIVE ramble and glimpse into my internal monologue cuz this is what the inside of my brain sounds like most of the time.

(ps i asked my peeps if a complete and utter inability to summarize is a specific flavor of neurodivergent or just a general all-purpose ND mood, and their response was, and i quote, "it's the tism babe" lmaooo, so i guess we have my newly peer-reviewed autism to thank for this 4k monstrosity of an answer 😅)

#and the answer is #Anonymous #Declan Lynch #Ronan Lynch #Niall Lynch #TRC #fics by me #in a manner of speaking #tw abuse

[sasster]

Fun quastion.. which of your ocs suffers from the worst or most frequent nightmare & who tends to have the best dreams?

Honorable mention, up until about a few months ago I would said that Zurven had the most inconvenient dreams, since he had absolutely no control over his powers he would have a vision pretty much anytime he went to sleep. (Inconsequential. About people he doesn’t even know, we will never meet.) So while I wouldn’t call them nightmares, they would result in some pretty restless days. (Conversely, Orfuse does not have dreams at all).

Somnae also has inconvenient dreams because of their powers, and again while they aren’t straight up nightmares, all of the people that pop up in her dreams are people that well they are going to die shortly after her having the dream. Upsetting.

Reid, darling Reid suffers from night(day) terrors. He has PTSD from his stay over at casa de Lycaon, and was already a chronic victim of sleep paralysis. That’s not a good mix, if you were wondering. These days most of his nightmares revolve around that fucking man, but before he would have stress dreams about school, career, the future. He’s just a very nervous man. He hides it all under his inability to shut up.

I would Soleah has the best dreams. She’s one of my trolls that’s generally happy to let whatever stressors she’s experienced during the day roll off her back and stay in the past while she looks forward to the future. She sleeps relatively peacefully and at ease. I don’t have anything else to say beyond that!!

#zurven things #somnae things #reid things #soleah things #dis-asterism #askter

[jacqcrisis]

so i am in the midst of reading watch the tide come in (am v slow reader so it is taking me a while, which i am enjoying immensely bc it means i get to live in here for So Long) and i am on the beach chapter n i gotta ask, since i haven't found it mentioned elsewhere in your blog: Charon's thoughts on Hermes' Very Short Shorts? Charon's thoughts this chapter in general, about Hermes going on dates or the sunscreen bit or uh any of several Moments shared ooorrrr anything really whatever u got, I like them very much and this chapter REALLY made me want to drive out to the beach today

I'm glad your enjoying it!

This chapter was jokingly called the Trial of Charon... by me. It’s also his ‘bonk go to horny jail’ chapter. This chapter exists exclusively for self-indulgent purposes and the idea of tormenting the lonely guy who’s finding out how to love again with a hyper-active wet horny dude in the smallest of shorts is *chef’s kiss* to me. And I know I've answered this kind of question before, but imma do it again

In 2nd person. As is my God-given right.

So imagine you're in your early thirties and you haven't had a relationship in five to six years. You're somewhere on the ace spectrum and are generally ambivalent to casual sex so this also translates into not having gotten laid in just as long. Which you're fine with as intimacy is generally lackluster to you if you don't have a connection with the person, its a lot of work and effort for not a lot of payoff, and your libido and capacity to be attracted to someone is a lot like a radio frequency that keeps changing. You've never been in tune with it, it comes and goes, and you've long since accepted this about yourself.

And Hermes is a guy you're interested in mostly romantically at this point and you'd really like your friendship to go in that direction, but you have reservations. The last relationship you had ended with enough heartache on your end that you swore off the whole deal in general, and as much as you like this goofy dipshit with all of his problems and his chronic inability to shut up, he's also young and probably isn't looking for the same amount of commitment you are and you aren't looking to get your heart broke again. Doesn't mean you're going to stop trying though cause you really like this guy and you'd be damned if you missed your shot.

Which is why you suggest the day out on the boat. Nice time alone together that, if you play your cards right, maybe can have more romantic angle? At no point do you factor in the reality that Hermes will be in swim trunks this entire time considering you’ve spent most of your life in Styx Beach and the sight of wet dudes in swimwear is, while aesthetically very nice, not exactly physically exciting. 

Then you walk into the shop and get blindsided by Hermes looking less like a snack and more like a whole goddamn buffet. For the first time in a long time, that radio frequency is coming in loud and clear thanks to this guy you’ve got a thing for who you know wants to get dicked down by you and you’re going to be alone with him on a boat for the whole afternoon. If you were a different kind of person, you’d say fuck it to your convictions, pick him up, and take him upstairs.

But you don’t cause you’re an adult with four businesses and more self control than you can shake a stick at and even if Hermes is interested in you, you’re not about to ruin a friendship by being a sex pest. You can survive one afternoon on a boat, though the whole sunscreen bit does make it one hundred times harder given Hermes’ bare back is quite inviting and you haven’t touched anyone like this in so long. It should not be understated how difficult it is not to slip underneath the waistband of the swim shorts and see if Hermes is amiable to your hands between his legs. 

At that point, you’re certain this afternoon is going to be a bust when Hermes joins you at the helm, but something takes your mind off the distractingly toned lines of his thighs. You should have known he’d start dating given you rejected him after the party and haven’t made much of a move since, but the words coming directly from the horse’s mouth leave you cold, panicking, and irritated completely with yourself. You had a chance weeks ago to clear the air when he was apologizing for his drunken pass, a chance to state what you really wanted out of this and maybe set you on the road to something more, but your apprehension and cowardice won out in the end and now he’s started dating in the meantime. 

He's not going to wait forever, and now its entirely up to you to make that move. But you're not great with words, and even if Hermes is flirting like it's his day job and looking at you like that while looking like that, you still can't bring yourself to say anything. But you know that all its going to take is one pretty girl and one good date and he's going to be out of your reach so you spend the rest of the afternoon hatching a plan.

Words aren't your strong suit, but actions are, and an idea occurs to you for one loud enough that you won't have to say a goddamn thing for Hermes to know exactly how you feel about him...

#beach fic #one of my favorite subjects: the swimming chapter #poor charon doesnt know what to do with himself #i didnt know if youve read the next chapter or not so i let that end vaguely #im never not ready to write a short in 2nd POV at the drop of a hat #i think hermes would be delighted to know how very hot under the collar #he made charon on that day #if he ever found out #at some unforeseen amorphous time in the future #i wouldve linked more posts and fanart but i did not have time unfortunately

[transsexualhamlet]

asmr i psychoanalyze my favorite war criminal, aka calling out norman the essay

basically all of my thoughts on norman on one callout post because i care him (both manga and anime are discussed)

LINK TO RAY PSYCHOANALYSIS:  https://chaoticgaymess.tumblr.com/post/646749875570196480/ray-81194-the-long-explanation 

this is going to be ungodly long so here’s a keep reading, essay below the cut

((tw for suicidal ideation and self harm, brief discussion of eating disorders))

Disclaimer: no shipping is included here this is just about norman also they’re kids who call each other siblings

Thoughts: So you may be thinking, Rowan, why do you yell about the colorless war criminal so often? Well the answer lies in your honor the court hates to see a girlboss winning. Norman is a girlboss :) Yes norman is a tiny twink who can't lift a milk jug. And he is a girlboss :) Obviously I don't condone, um, eugenics and all, but that's not the point the point is that he satisfies my need for more characters like Levi motherfucking Calder from Unwind because I’m apparently an edgy 13 year old. Also all of his problems are violently things I can fix and I keep him around as a pet project because someone needs to give him a hug and slap him on the face

I diagnose him with things: 

-pisces man :pensive:

-is he albino? Not literally. Is his skin so pale he would catch fire if he went outside at noon? Yes.

-autism: Yes I’m aware that calling him autistic makes him, problematic rep by perpetuating the autism unfeeling savant stereotype whatever but have you considered i’m autistic and I’m projecting also he’s L with standards? Anyway traits of AuTism he has: hyper   fixation, canonically breaks and fixes things over and over because like ofc he does, doesn’t understand Emotion, hyperaware of body language at the same time as it all somehow flying over his head, low empathy, sensory experiences™, min maxed in certain areas, and I don’t think he’s got social interaction quite right? There’s something off about it

-gifted kid (derogatory) This is self explanatory but basically him being the smartest and the best in a competitive environment caused most of his issues, such as the perfectionism, the need to succeed, the lack of self esteem and ridiculously high expectations on himself, giving himself no breaks or time to relax, the “i must be productive with every second of my day or i will die” deal, the “peaked at 11” thing, the way in which he goes through life like there’s going to be a fucking test on it

-Eldest Daughter™ lmao. Norman’s always had to be mature, he’s always had to be the best, he’s always had to do the things Ray got out of bc he’s a snitch and Emma got out of because Isabella likes her. Norman gets respect from Isabella only if he excels, and her bar for him is astronomical. He doesn’t have the Mommy Issues that Ray has, but it’s because for him Isabella basically just reflected his expectations on himself, whereas with Ray it was more personal.

-low empathy (part of the autism thing): this one needs more explanation, but it’s not a bad thing in and of itself. Cognitive empathy is a thing and he can use it, but he does not instinctively understand other people’s emotions, or even recognize them properly, especially when the person is not like himself. This is obvious in Emma. Man has no fucking clue what’s going on in her head or why she does what she does, but he can predict what she will do in any given situation very well. He could understand the suicide attempt from ray he predicted more because Ray’s an easier equation to solve, and someone who’s more similar to him. I know he gets it because, well, motherfucker’s just as self desctructive as him, just in a more dignified manner.

-he’s got some sort of chronic illness. This is also me projecting and a headcanon but he’s got something going on, even before lambda pumped him full of growth hormones or whatever which they maybe should have Not Done but oh well. (I assume this just didn’t happen in the anime, since he’s still so fucking short) But he's So weak. He passed out when it was too hot. He passed out when it was too cold. He can’t open a pickle jar. His skin is too pale and he’s skinny af. He’s much more prone to sickness and probably has asthma too? But in the case that he did actually have something going on, I don’t think grace field would see the need to treat it, if it didn’t impact the quality of his meat? Isabella’s probably just “you have chronic pain and you get migraines? Great, take some tylenol and do some calculus.” Can’t say that probably helped anything.

personality type: ISTJ

Basically, he’s the most boring personality type to exist, and personally as an enfp i do not respect him. But basically this means he’s a fucking nerd that gets his projects done for school the day they’re assigned, is probably the president of the Anime Student Council™, and could probably get away with premeditated murder (ok actual istjs this is a joke don’t skin me)

The only trait that norman doesn’t have on the istj thing is telling the truth. Yeah, he values the truth, but like, that doesn’t apply to him, clearly. Bitch is a notorious liar.

The only other personality type he has any similarity with is intj, which is the same except it’s more rare and a purple theme instead of a blue theme. Sadly, that’s not him though, because although he can care more about some kinds of philosophy overall this isn’t the case and ray already occupies this personality type tbh. 

strengths and weaknesses: This one’s kind of obvious, but he is aside from the crazy insane intelligence good at planning. Extremely good at planning. He can predict any outcome and figure out how to prevent it, using all his resources. For example he’s physically weak and someone could literally just walk up and stab him, but it doesn’t impede his progress on his goals because he’s surrounded himself with strong, mentally inferior people who would die for him in a heartbeat. He never gets stuck in some “everything is shit and i can’t do anything” deal like Emma and Ray do, he always works through it and has confidence in his abilities (in as much as he will solve the problem or die™. Weaknesses other than his twink body include his Low Wisdom score. It’s funny how he’s often associated with an owl, the mans is 14. He thinks he knows what he’s doing. He doesn’t. Plus obviously his fundamental misunderstanding of so much of everything going on around him, the fact that he lies not just to the world but himself, his refusal to take care of himself and his incredible cowardice. His achilles heel is being forced to, actually confront his actions.

what he likes about himself: He does pride himself on his mental abilities, and his judgement, which in his opinion is the only correct opinion and the only correct way. In the past, he likes being seen as a leader, he likes being responsible for other people. He likes his ability to manipulate and lie, because he sees it as an asset, and I honestly think he enjoys being william minerva more than he enjoys being Norman. He prides himself on his unhealthy expectations and the fact that he is able to meet them. Honestly, he does think he’s better than everyone else, mentally, though it’s humbled by his self hatred. Cursed thought: If Norman had self esteem he would be light yagami. 

what he doesn’t like about himself/insecurities: Oh god, nearly everything. His appearance, his status, his superiority, his physical inability, his own mess of a mind, also have I mentioned his appearance. He’s obsessed with self control. He wants everything he sees wrong with himself gone. And I understand why having control of everything is necessary and appealing, everything for him has always been rigid and planned out from moment one, he was even more regulated in lambda, and though he desperately wants to Not Be Food, he has no idea what to do with the chains now that he’s broken out of them. So he just wraps them around himself. Regulates to an unhealthy degree when he sleeps, what he eats, when he actually takes even minimal care of his own problems, what he looks like, how much of himself he lets show, the expressions on his face, the literal thoughts inside his own head he will shut down if they are not Correct. It’s literal self harm. Norman, please stop it.

motivations/goals in life/general philosophy: To be honest, I’m not sure he knows what he wants. He sure thinks he does, he could sure give you a memorized answer, but it means nothing. He wants to excel. He wants Emma to be happy. He wants to be perfect and for that to make everything perfect. But he doesn’t realize everything he’s working towards will do pretty much the opposite of that. He’s a crippling perfectionist, and pretty much everything he does is motivated by his fear of failing. He picks the certain path, he doesn’t wait for anyone else, he doesn’t care if it’s not nice. Emma foils that a most of the time because he cares about her, but it can only go so far, especially after he’s had so much time without her to develop a Complex. His philosophy is very contradictory, basically the tokyo ghoul “everything bad that happens to you stems from a lack of ability”. All of his problems are his fault. All the world’s problems are his to fix. If he can’t fix them, it’s his fault, it’s because he wasn’t strong enough, and not being perfect condemns someone forever, including himself.

how he’s perceived by others vs how he actually is: In most people there wouldn’t truly be much of a difference, but with Norman things are different, because, well, most of his personality in grace field is a put on, as well as the tough guy dictator thing he radiates after lambda. How he appears to someone is determined by the context of their meeting- the kids at grace field see him as a nerdy, weakish, pretty boring kid who is really caring and kind. The researchers at lambda see an obedient, beaten down and perfectionistic boy. The lambda kids see him as an infallible leader, ruthless and genius, a good man who knows what’s right. But in truth none of that is him. It’s a fucking chess game to him, putting on different faces, lying and pretending and treating everyone differently. In truth? He’s a fucking coward. He’s scared out of his mind and he’s tired and he can’t take pain, he’s obsessed with reaching some goal he deems is necessary that in the end is going to be his death because he doesn’t want to face the consequences of his actions. He’s taken on the role of someone evil, though deep down he’s not, he feels it’s easier to live that way because it strips him of his conscience. 

interpersonal relationships: In general, Norman sees all relationships in a pretty dim light. He sees everyone as black and white, for the most part, and other people make no sense to him intuitively, he has to figure them out like a puzzle. He’s manipulative and not particularly kind, but he follows all societal expectations to a T, overly focused on his appearance and placing the person he’s interacting with into a Category™. So he can be truly kind, to people he feels deserve it, to people who he values and doesn’t see flaws in. He gets incredibly attached to people he loves, protective, though he often doesn’t take their own feelings on the matter into consideration, and he’s ruthless with anyone who he deems a bad person. With people he understands and relates to, though, things can be different. If he sees someone as like himself, he will drop all the social interaction police bullshit and cut to the chase of whatever he wants or needs from them, and he’s not very forgiving in any manner, if he thinks what someone did is actually bad.

Emma: Norman obviously cares a lot about Emma, and honestly views her as better than anyone else. He realizes her moral integrity and all of the things she has and he doesn’t, and admires it. Because of his black and white view, Emma is like an angel to him. She couldn’t do anything wrong if she tried. But he comes to treat her as something to be protected instead of respected, and although he realizes she wouldn’t like what he’s doing, he fundamentally cannot empathize with her and doesn’t try to understand her. Their personalities are very literally opposite. Norman really needs to fucking listen to her. And Emma needs to understand that Norman doesn’t have a single ounce of empathy and you really do need to spell it out for him. Emma can only convince him when she has logical reasons for her actions, which she, doesn’t often have. And Emma gave Norman too much slack, because she didn’t see past the surface, and Ray never wanted to warn her, even though he knew the dude was showing a bunch of red flags, because you know. It was kind of an unspoken deal between them. (on ray’s part)

Ray: His relationship with Ray is a lot more complicated than with Emma. He understands Ray, where he doesn’t understand Emma, and he can see right through anything Ray does. And this makes things really tense between them, because Ray doesn’t, take kindly to being psychoanalyzed. If someone perceives him he will deck them and Norman is just there silently perceiving him at all times when Emma doesn’t see it. They are both constantly in competition with each other, but they care about each other a lot, though it’s kind of in a derogatory way. They both recognize each other as fundamentally fucked up, and silently agree never to bring it up with Emma. They’re nice to each other when she’s around, but all pretenses disappear when she’s gone. Ray is always frustrated with Norman, because Norman’s never been intimidated by him, and though he tries his best not to be vulnerable around him, Norman can always see through it, whereas Ray can’t crack Norman’s fake fucking smile no matter what he does. Norman will always take Emma’s side, and doesn’t see Ray as a good person at all, but he still understands and can excuse him, he takes measures to be… worse than Ray, which is better in his mind, because it’s rational, and ‘not selfish’.

Isabella: She has always had ridiculously high expectations for Norman, and treats him kind of harshly compared to the others. Bitch has heat stroke and Isabella’s first question is a calculus problem instead of like, “are you ok”. She knows he doesn’t complain about anything ever and she doesn’t stop him from being Terrible to himself, because it makes her job easier. They want smart kids, not mentally adjusted kids. She does really care for all of them, but she basically overrides it, she gives them what they want, not what they need, lets them be exactly what they’re making themselves. Isabella is distant with Ray but gives him anything he wants, she’s close and super nice with Emma, but Norman is… it’s weird. Isabella is proud of him because he meets her astronomically high bar. But at the same time, Norman never really cared for her that much and has never pretended to. Once they discover The Thing, though, he has a revelation, and it doesn’t take him long to switch his entire perspective about her. He’s pretty much like. Oh. She’s like me. That explains it, time to treat her like I treat myself: fucking brutally. Passive aggressive as hell. The kind of energy the :) emoticon at the end of an email gives. He does like just go “yeah we should kill her” at one point, which. You know, ok. When he got shipped out it was hhhh really interesting because Isabella knew full well he knew he was walking to his death and Norman was like “are you Truly Happy?” and just went :) and she was like h u h and tried to get him to talk while they were walking there because she feels Bad about it and he just. Did not. He didn’t say a single word just kind of smiled menacingly at her and I think it was half a sort of rebellion and half because he viewed her as similar to himself and therefore felt no need to put up any front with her, no words were necessary for him to impart exactly how he felt about it

Lambda kids: His relationship with the lambda kids is weird and bittersweet. I think he really truly does care about them, they were in a similar situation to his and he wants them to get what they want. However it is not a healthy or beneficial relationship, they see him as a god and don’t realize that he’s killing himself to give them what they want, he’s basically adopted them when out of anyone norman’s the one that should least be in charge of kids. I think he’s honestly younger than them but I’m not sure if they even know. He acts like their fucking mom, and that’s from what he thinks mothers are like… like isabella?? Giving them what they want, not what they need, lying to them, showing a front, caring deeply for them but at the same time using them for his own ends. And it’s not helpful for him. He thinks he knows what they need, but what he’s doing is what they want. What they need is therapy,(and so does norman), and he doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with using them as weapons because they love him. It makes him feel good, to be seen as perfect, to have people who don’t know how weak he really is. But it’s only making him worse, and he’s enabling everything the lambda kids are doing wrong as well. They need like, Yuugo and Lucas. Some actual adults who are actually wise and have the ability and the knowledge to take care of them and understand their mental problems and maybe actually address them. And actually be nice to them. But um sadly. 

what he’s doing wrong: It’s pretty obvious, but… Norman, you maybe *shouldn’t* commit genocide? You’re not helping emma, you’re not making anything better. You’re not helping the lambda kids, you’re enabling them. You’re not helping your friends from grace field, you’re ignoring what they want. You’re not helping the world, you’re eradicating an entire race from the face of the earth and murdering the poor for the crimes of the fucking 1%. You’re not being a martyr, you’re a selfish piece of shit liar you little coward, you just want an easy way out and you want to die on your bloody fucking hill instead of admitting you’re wrong. Grow up, cringe little man.

why he went wrong: I think most of the reason this happened was the way he was raised combined with the kind of person he is. Norman would have turned out fine, if there has been good adults in his life who actually cared about his well being. Instead he got people who just wanted to control him and make him what they needed, and family who largely didn’t realize there was anything wrong. Ray being an ass to him most of forever probably didn’t help but well, that’s just Ray. Even then, he would have managed alright if he escaped with the rest of the kids because he would never have been separated from the experiences that caused the rest of them to realize demons weren’t all evil. In lambda he didn’t have anyone supporting him or telling him when things went too far, so he fell into relying on himself alone, pushing himself further with absolutely no limits. All he saw was enemies and allies, and things got stratified. He never had a lucas or a yuugo or mujika when he would have needed it, instead he found children who wanted him to be in charge and a world that made it so he had to be. Everything was an echo chamber for his worst thoughts, so they just became more and more dominant.

what he needs: To put it simply, he needs Emma and Ray to cut to the chase and slap him across the face and make him take care of himself. He needs to be forced to see everything for what it really is- this edgy 14 year old committing atrocities to feel better about himself? He needs to be told that what he’s doing is irrational, because in reality, it is. There are better solutions that he’s ignoring, both to his own suffering and the demons, and the way he’s going now no one will truly be happy because of it, that there is no requirement that things be perfect and this bullshit doesn’t make him stronger. He needs someone responsible to take the fucking dagger out of his hands. He also needs someone to babysit him and make him go to bed at a reasonable time.

i describe his personality through songs on my spotify playlist for him:

-outrunning karma by alec benjamin: this one super applies because it calls him out for making shitty decisions, being manipulative and a liar, and having blood on his hands in a very calm and subdued manner, that he knows this is wrong and yet he chooses to keep running faster and faster towards destruction, that he means to escape it through death

-empty by boyinaband and jaiden: yes this is a song about anorexia yes it also applies to norman i’m not saying norman literally has an eating disorder (but honestly it wouldn’t be far out of character if he did) but metaphorically this applies to his method of ignoring his needs, both emotional and physical, in favor of seeming in control 

-toxic thoughts by faith marie: this one speaks to his gifted kid trauma. Man’s got perfectionism running his entire soul. He’s terrified of failing, because he’s always been at the very top, he’ll beat himself up over any miniscule mistake and forces himself to keep at bad habits that keep him Productive, but he won’t ask for help no matter how much he’s suffering because that would be failing, he fights with his mind, this song basically tells him “yeah i feel you but you need to stop that”

-no time to die by billie eilish: ignore the romantic overtones but this is emma and norman, emma who trusted norman and was lied to, betrayed, for norman’s greater good, and norman who refuses to feel or hurt because of it, who refuses to apologize or see himself as wrong, pushes forward because he’s going to Pass Away

-achilles come down by gang of youths: hhhhh it's like. His vibe. Obviously you can disregard the lifestyle specific shit but it's. It's achilles come down you have to understand it’s like the same deal as friend, please just like french and longer

-friend, please by 21 pilots: i feel like i don't have to explain this one but it’s more to the manga (not the anime where he kind of figures out he done did wrong by himself instead of committing unforgivable sins and still going yeah this is valid before emma is like holy fuck). He is like sorry emma I cannot fix anything I’m going to die :) *coughs blood* and emma going like stop it stop it stop it fuck you see you fucked up and i forgive you just stop don’t walk away while he’s like “no<3”

why im a repressed little norman kinnie even tho he’s my exact opposite: I don’t generally kin ppl like norman, honestly he’s an infj I have no clue how it happened but I’m pretty sure it’s because of my intense desire to project onto a little man who cannot lift a milk jug and has chronic pain and decides you know what I AM tired of being nice i DO wanna go apeshit. Also he’s a twink. A little bastard. He’s a terrible person and I go mood every time he does anything. I said mood when he fell out of a tree. Don’t know what this says about me, I swear I wouldn’t commit no genocide. He’s like the inverse of Yoichi Saotome, and somehow i kin him too. Damn.

Miscellaneous headcanons:

-man’s SO attached to his william minerva cloak. He’s a wispy little bitch, you know he’s wearing that thing inside the house, he’s fucking cold. It also makes him Look Important he can retreat into it like an emo middle schooler with an oversized sweatshirt

-although you could probably get Mad street cred from having two whole brands you know he’s not gonna whip it out and show off his lambda thing he’s incredibly self conscious and his chest hasn’t seen the sun in years

-norman’s got MAD laundry skills to be able to wear like, all white all the time while constantly murdering people. I think he’s the only one who knows to do the laundry. And Ray is the only one who knows how to cook.

-but even then there’s gotta still be a few questionable stains on that thing, but if anyone asks he’s like “ketchup” “I’ve literally never seen you eat anything with that much color” “ketchup :)” *coughs blood*

-he’s probably thought “well i have not literally coughed blood yet today so I am not legally obligated to take care of myself”

-He probably adopted much of his current personality from taking on the persona of william minerva. I’m calling him out for being like me, he’s a blank motherfucker, he absorbs personality traits from characters he plays! He’s just not in theatre so it’s a bit more intense!

-the first time he sees barbara Eating Demon Meat he kinda stares and goes oh cool! not for me and violently exits the room. Like it's hilarious bc he thinks that's really gross on a moral level though he understands why she would do it 

-Which is even funnier bc I’m not sure about the canon on this but there was That Chapter Cover that one time that kinda seemed to imply norman eating demon meat which i absolutely latched onto because I’m terrible. He was just politely eating it. With a knife and fork like why dude. As to a possible reason for him doing that I can come up with, of course barbara does it out of spite, but man we don’t know the properties, if it had some sort of painkilling aspect to it or it was like, caffeine, you know he would, but he would Definitely not talk about it

-I kinda disagree with what the anime did in episode eight? It was good I liked it and the imagery was fantastic but also have you considered Norman could not kill someone with his own hands if he tried, or even physically injure them? That’s what his minions are for shawty. That doesn’t make it any less bad, of course, but the manga captured it perfectly by the fact of he carries around a dagger and a scepter in the capitol battle, but he never even raises it out of more than intimidation. He walks through calmly like he’s not scared at all but he makes sure all the lambda kids do all the actual murder, he just stands there impartially, clearly The Mastermind, as the kids fucking murder the queen of the demons. And I think that’s more profound because he’s, a coward. And he doesn’t realize being the one who orders the strike makes you just as responsible as the one who sticks the knife in someone. The knife is just there to Compensate™  for the fact that he weighs like eighty pounds.

-he’s more of like lady macbeth (because he’s a girlboss) than macbeth himself. He has blood on his hands, but it’s the kind of blood that you can’t wash off. He never killed anyone himself, and he cannot admit he never would have been able to.

-the last thing is that there are definitely epic things about the anime, episode 8 was my favorite so far, goddamn that imagery and the bitch walking through the city while it burns down with the screaming asmr going on behind him my god. We stan. But like the downside of, letting Emma and Ray get to him before he commits first degree murder makes the whole thing lose a lot of his value. In the manga (oh my god look at me being a pretentious manga fan please) it fit more of his ideas- he never backed down, and he planned for Emma coming and trying to stop him. Of course he wanted Emma to stop him, he wanted it with all his fucking heart he was pleading for it to happen but the man wouldn’t give himself what he wanted if he was held at gunpoint. He knew she’d come and he made absolutely sure she wouldn’t be able to stop him. So when she came and he said “you’re too late”??? It kind of said it all, in the fact that he was disappointed that he got his way. He still thought he did the right thing, but deep down there where he shoved all his thoughts and feelings he desperately wanted to be saved from himself.

So yeah, those are my thoughts. Feel free to eviscerate me if these are not Correct he is just my favorite girlboss who I feel the need to yell at

#tpn #the promised neverland #yakusoku no neverland #tpn norman #norman tpn #essay post #god why do i do this to myself #dear god help me this is 5000 words #rowan's hyperfixation essays

[skeletalroses]

I was going to submit this anonymously to one of the bigger aspec blogs but it got so long that I’d feel like a pain in the ass. I’m posting this because I’ve recently landed in a bit of a difficult situation in the vein of Just Aroace Things, and I’m not sure what to do or even how to feel. I’m hoping to get some advice from the community re: a topic that comes up from time to time---navigating roommate/housing situations as an aroace, particularly when your potential roommate’s romance fucks you over.

I met my best friend, A, our sophomore year of college when we got paired up via roommate lottery. We clicked right away and had a blast living together. Unfortunately it only lasted a year, since the best option for my major was to transfer to another campus while for her it was best to stay put. We’ve known each other for nine years now and live in different states, but we visit regularly and had always talked about living together again once we both moved away from our parents.

I’m aroace, sex- and romance-repulsed. A is super considerate and supportive of this. She even discovered recently that she’s demisexual (which she learned about while researching the symbolism of the asexual flag! On her own, completely unprompted! Because she thought it would help her understand me more! See? Super supportive!). She is, however, very, very alloromantic. Up until now this has just been one more facet of our overall odd-couple dynamic (I’m an Addams and she’s a Disney fairy), which has always been something we’ve laughed at and reveled in.

A couple months ago, however, A moved out of her parents’ place and in with her boyfriend of a few years. I’m still with my parents, which suits me fine for the time being, but I eventually want to move out. Like I said, A and I have long talked about living together. We never made any specific plans, but I’ve asked her before to verify that yes, this is a thing we’re both Actually down to do when the time’s right. But that was a good while ago, before she moved in with Boyfriend. We visited last weekend and I brought up the subject again, because I’ve been unsure about it since that whole development.

“Feel free to say no; I won’t be offended; I just want to know how my options stand at this point. We’ve talked in the past about rooming together again. With Boyfriend in the picture now, is that still on the table?”

A’s answer: “Boyfriend has a lot of anxiety, so probably not. Sorry. He doesn’t even like having his family stay over. You’re welcome to stay a few days but not for like weeks on end.”

This was a calm conversation had over cocktails in the mall. She asked to make sure my parents weren’t threatening to kick me out or anything; I assured her that they weren’t, and I wasn’t moving anytime soon, and it’s okay that my rooming with her is out.

Only I’m not that okay with it. I wasn’t confident she’d say yes, but I did kind of think it was likely, and moreover I’m realizing how much I was unconsciously banking on that plan. I’ve been sans income during the pandemic, and I have a fuckton of economic anxiety to begin with. A’s a STEM major in a big city who easily found a solidly-paying job right out of college. She gets promotions and raises and shit. I’m a humanities major in the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere where all my impressive qualifications (which I do have) can’t get me anything with a living wage below management level, let alone something in my field. And I’m never going to have that built-in cohabitant in the form of a romantic or sexual partner that allos like A can take for granted. A was the person I could split costs with so as to maybe live semi-decently with someone compatible. Without her, my chances of having that have plummeted.

And it’s all because she got a romosexual partner. This guy who’s known her half as long as I have; who never worked her through the trials and eventual breakup of her previous long-term, engaged-to-be-engaged relationship; who has himself caused her massive amounts of grief, suffering, and sometimes outright danger through his inability to competently handle the drama in his personal life that should never have touched her, all while her mother would write letters to me asking me to come visit because, actual quote, A only smiles when I’m around. He was the reason she would be too depressed to function, and I had to long-distance therapize her through it even though she refused to take the basic step of leaving this grown-ass man at least until he got his shit together, because “he needs me.”

It’s like this dude calls the shots in A’s and my relationship now. I hadn’t seen her in seven months because every time we planned a weekend to hang out, it’d get canceled because Boyfriend wanted to go see his family or something (and he can’t do that without her, I fucking guess). Even this last visit got cut down to overnight when it was supposed to be the long weekend, because Boyfriend wanted to make other plans. And now my best option for future living arrangements is apparently down the shitter because of him. It’d have been one thing if A doesn’t want to live with me anymore because she and he need their allo space or whatever the fuck couples do (still amatonormative and lousy for me). But as far as I understand, it’s not even that. It’s not her. It’s Boyfriend. A and I can be planning something for the two of us for weeks, for months, for years, then it all goes away in a minute because ehh, it kinda cramps Boyfriend’s style. I’m, as A called me, her “best friend soulmate.” I Was Here First. I never fucking made her cry. But I can’t kiss her or fuck her, so I automatically take a backseat to the one who can. I don’t need to be her Number One, but I don’t appreciate being pushed aside at Boyfriend’s every whim.

A, I’m sure, doesn’t realize how it looks from my angle. I know she cares about me and doesn’t want me to feel devalued. She’s just an oblivious alloro. I’m not even sure Boyfriend’s intentionally hogging her. (To be clear, I don’t think he’s a bad person; I’ve only met him a handful of times but I reliably clock my friends’ truly shitty partners on less. I haven’t heard about any crises in the past year or so, so I guess he’s finally managing his baggage well enough that A’s life can go smoothly and not suck.) I’m not unsympathetic to anxiety either; I’m chronically mentally ill and I’ve had my share. And I get we’re little more than strangers at this point. But I hate that he can just singlehandedly veto me and A rooming together ever. It’s much more of a blow to my likely quality of life than he or A---or tbh even I did, before this point---realize.

I hate feeling like I’m being jealous and needy. Maybe A just genuinely likes him better and it’s not only an amatonormative thing. I know I’m not entitled to live with her; it’s not like we promised or anything. But the option getting shut down really made me realize how much I resent not having it, and how much I kind of resent Boyfriend in general.

Which brings me to the asking-for-advice part, to the maybe two people who’ve read this far. Aspecs on here have talked about how amatonormativity fucks over single people and especially aros in terms of housing and life in general. Has anyone dealt with a situation like mine? How do you manage the amatonormative behavior of people in your life snatching your prospects out from under you, or feeling like it has? Is my reaction even reasonable? If so, how should I bring it up to A? This would be the closest thing we’ve ever had to a conflict, and also I’m...not great at being vulnerable. I can’t even vagueblog about these topics because my social media presence is limited to Tumblr and hers to Facebook. Hell, maybe I should just forget it for now, since I’m not changing housing anytime soon anyway, and cross that bridge when I get to it. I wouldn’t ask her to leave him, since their relationship seems to be going a lot smoother than it had been. But goddamn, am I filled with aroace salt about this.

#aromantic #amatonormativity #arophobia #asexual #aroace #might delete this later #sorry about the rant #why this is hell nor am I out of it

[mydisasteracademia]

Quirk Oddities: LOV

A/N: Warning, reeeeeeeeeally long post under the cut lol yeet

Gotou Imasuji/Muscular:

You have NO IDEA how happy I am that we F I N A L L Y know this man’s name,, anyway

Due to his Quirk having to do with his muscles (and obviously, augmentation of said muscles), he’s constantly in danger of muscular dystrophy if he doesn’t exercise them enough, even when not tapping into that muscular form.

Also feeds into his ‘blood knight’ behavior -- his eternal battle to fight stronger and stronger people and his own fight code matches with his Quirk, which gives him a stronger and stronger physique. He’s literally always itching for a fight.

Needs to eat a lot more than your average person, more on par with someone like Fatgum. Eats a ton of proteins and has a relatively healthy diet compared to a lot of other people. He’s very strict about what he eats so that he can get the maximum amount of energy for his muscled-up form.

Mustard:

His Quirk makes him more quiet and chill than most of the League; due to its somnolent properties (and due to the fact that he likely accidentally exposed himself to it far too often when he was younger), he reserves his energy for when he truly needs it.

As a negative side-effect, however, he suffers from chronic insomnia, which is mostly to blame for his irritability and (relatively) fragile mental state (not ‘fragile’ as in ‘literally an inch away from snapping’, but moreso ‘this close to mania at all times’.)

Drinks a lot of tea to try and calm himself down in the evenings. Lavender and chamomile are his teas of choice. On the flip side, tends to drink energizing drinks during the day so that he has enough energy to function.

Really prone to emotional lows. If he’s not careful, he can fall into depression and can get anxious very easily.

Moonfish:

Eats a ton of meats. Just... raw meats. All the time. He’s incredibly unhealthy. The bloodier the meat, the better. Will not eat anything cooked more than medium.

Will try to bite your arm off if you try to take food away from him. Actually, probably just tries to bite your arm off regardless. Don’t feed him unless you have a Quirk to subdue him in like 0.58 seconds.

Has to keep his teeth in pristine condition so that they don’t... accidentally break off when he’s trying to attack someone. Spends an obsessive amount of time brushing every morning and night. It’s one of the only times you will ever see this man even close to sanity, ironically.

Kenji Hikiishi/Magne:

Used to have to be cautious with using her Quirk when she was younger. Due to her inability to wield it correctly, she ended up magnetizing everything within a 2.5 meter radius. Eventually, she learnt to control it, but this caused some upsets when she was in school and people learned to avoid her if they didn’t want to get thrown like a ragdoll.

Very attracted to people. Not in a sexual way, but she loves socializing and can often wander near groups of people without realizing at first.

This isn’t an oddity with her body, per se, but she used to constantly be careful about magnets getting stuck to her giant magnet. It’s a pain to pluck them all off, so she eventually just started wrapping it, which negated some of its effects on anything close by.

It’s honestly good that her Quirk doesn’t work on herself, for many obvious reasons. When she was a young child in the first years after it manifested, she always questioned it. Now she’s incredibly glad it doesn’t, considering how much havoc she could wreck on other people. Instead she’s more in-tune with it, in a sense. She can tell apart red and blue ‘magnets’ very easily due to that.

Kurogiri:

Y’all don’t know how tempted I was to put Oboro’s name in there lmao

Constantly has a dark aura around himself that looks like a thin fog. I know, that’s canon, but unlike his actual fog created around his neck, this stays around his actual body shape so that even if the collar is gone and he can’t form more fog, the aura would be there enough to obscure some of his more defining features.

Due to him being a literal reanimated corpse, the reason his eyes are glowing and yellow is due to being reanimated. That, and yellow looks cool as hell with black and purple, amirite?

Prefers totally dark rooms. If he’s by himself just chilling after a long, hard day of being a babysitter to about 6-9 societal outcasts, he’s sitting or lying down, eyes closed, with all of the lights off, just basking in it.

Adding to that last point, enjoys misty, foggy days. He doesn’t so much enjoy rain as much as he does the general vibe of a fog-dense area. Really feels at home in it.

His sense of pain is highly muted, and his body is incredibly cold to the touch. I mean, he’s literally a reanimated corpse. It takes a lot of force for him to actually feel anything, and this goes for non-pain sensations too. Often loses feeling in his hands and feet and they feel like wisps of mist.

??? Shigaraki/All For One

Due to his Quirk’s innate nature of taking and giving, he’s a huge kleptomaniac. He just can’t resist swiping things (and maybe giving them back later).

He’s drawn to studying Quirks. Like a certain someone else we know, he’s obsessed with hashing out the more intimate details of a person’s power, and then he can truly decide whether or not he’s taking it.

His body is more naturally suited for taking on more than one Quirk at a time, but without his life-support system he would be royally fucked. Many of his Quirks require a lot of energy and his body is just too weak in its current state with all of his injuries to sustain them all. I know, he’s still incredibly powerful, but he’s considered ‘weak’ right now. Imagine him at his peak. How many Quirks did he have? 50? 100? More?

Adding onto his kleptomania, this applies to people too. He’s incredibly possessive of people he deems worthy of his time (his brother and Tomura being two notable examples) and will do whatever it takes to keep them at his side in the name of ‘keeping them safe’. If he had a family somewhere and he found out about them, you bet your ass he would go full yandere on them, but isn’t hesitant to lay the emotional/mental manipulation on thick.

Tomura Shigaraki:

As I’ve stated a few times before, due to his Quirk, Tomura’s body is constantly destroying itself, from within and outside. His skin is the outward reflection of it; after being found by AFO he was weak and easily sick due to his immune system not fully ready to handle the destructive properties of Decay.

Sometimes he’ll choke on debris from his own mouth and throat, as I’ve stated before. Very prone to ulcers and muscular dystrophy, so he has to be careful to exercise just enough that he staves off his body totally shutting down.

Has to be incredibly careful with his diet, because the wrong foods could damage his body more than before. CAN NOT HAVE SPICY/HOT FOODS. His taste buds have already been damaged enough due to forays into it before, and he can’t afford to sustain even more damage to his throat.

Has to drink a ton of water, not just to flush down debris in his throat but because he’s very prone to having a dry mouth. Part of the reason his voice (well, English Dub voice anyway) is so raspy is because his throat is constantly dry. If he doesn’t have enough water, he’s prone to bad coughing fits.

His nails are actually quite brittle, and when he scratches his neck he has to be careful not to break them. His lips get chapped easily and will split and bleed unless he lays on some ointment.

AND SPEAKING OF OINTMENT! I know the jokes about him needing moisturizer/Chapstick are hilarious, but Tomura has extremely sensitive skin and can not put on anything that has perfumes of any kind in them, otherwise it triggers a severe reaction and it takes him a while to heal. There’s a specific brand of ointment that he and Dabi use, and like the flame user he has to be constantly reapplying it during the day, otherwise his skin dries out even more.

He’s drawn to death/destruction, much like Toga is fascinated by blood and death (and birds). Much of the time, he causes said death/destruction. It’s so morbidly fascinating to him and it fills him with a weird sense of pride or calm.

Prefers humid conditions. If it’s more arid, he suffers. Can’t go out in the sun too much, because he burns very easily (more than Dabi, surprisingly). He likes lukewarm, cloudy weather, and especially autumn (can you guess why?).

Can’t do alcohol. Not just that he legally can’t drink (I doubt he’d give a damn about that), but consuming too much would further damage his body and he can’t afford to do anything too reckless.

Himiko Toga:

Her Quirk makes it so that she’s prone to anemia much easier than a normal person. She needs to keep her iron levels up, especially as a teenage girl, so she usually goes for more iron-rich foods (and especially meats). Give her a blood bag and she’ll drink it like a Capri-Sun.

Normally, a person can’t ingest much blood through their digestive system, otherwise they get sick. Himiko doesn’t have much of a problem, thankfully, but she still has to be careful not to drink too much otherwise she does feel nauseated (kind of like eating too much food will leave you full and vaguely sick).

Like Tomura, she’s fascinated with death, but to a more obsessive degree (given that we’ve seen her literally eat a dead bird before). Unlike him, she actively seeks it out, and most often creates death herself.

Jin Bubaigawara/Twice:

Oh boy, what else is there to say that hasn’t already been revealed in canon? I’ll try my best to go with headcanon here, but Twice is a complicated person to speculate about given that we’ve seen most of everything there is to know.

His body constantly feels like it’s about to split apart. It’s not much of a painful feeling as it is an odd sensation. He’s constantly aware of it and it does a toll on his overall mental state Every time he does create clones, the feeling briefly intensifies, and he finds it very hard not to keep splitting.

Needs the suit to feel like he’s ‘contained’ himself, if that makes sense. Like, he’s less likely to physically split in half if he’s wearing it. That, and of course, needs the suit to keep his crumbling mental state in check.

Atsuhiro Sako/Mr. Compress:

Much like AFO, he’s a compulsive kleptomaniac, especially for expensive/shinier things. He just can’t help but swipe things up, but if the other members ask for it back, he’s generally good about handing it over.

Sometimes is filled with a lot of nervous energy that manifests itself in fidgeting with his marbles. In those periods of time, he feels even stronger compulsions to steal and they mostly go away when he does.

Shuichi Iguchi/Spinner:

There’s so much to put here. Mainly gecko-related things.

As I’ve stated before, he thrives in hot, humid weather. Loves chilling on sun-warmed rocks the best. SUFFERS in the cold.

It’s a legitimate struggle not to eat worms or bugs whenever he sees a juicy one. When he was a kid, he just ate them whenever, but after being bullied for this compulsion, he tried to stop and eventually just hid it from others.

Sometimes when startled, he might make a chirping noise, much to his irritation. If any other gecko-type people are around, they might chirp back.

Sheds a few times a year on a fairly regular schedule. Gets really uncomfortable and itchy for a bit and gets irritated more easily as he sheds. Once it’s over, his mood gets back to normal.

Enjoys dark places to just hide in sometimes. If you can’t find him, maybe you’ll be able to find him in a dark crevice or a hidden nook or cranny. He feels a degree of safety in spots like this.

As we’ve already seen, he can stick to walls. I don’t know why, but that just makes me happy for some reason.

Touya Todoroki/Dabi:

Hoo boy. This one is a doozy.

Despite his Quirk, his body is more suited to cold temperatures, as seen in canon. This means he greatly prefers cold conditions and suffers in heat. He’s one of the only ones of the League who can be out in winter weather without bundling up.

Burns extremely easily, especially when it comes to consuming hot/spicy things. If you’ve ever burnt your tongue on a hot drink, that happens to him at least 70% of the time, but not just his tongue. His entire throat gets burnt, and it takes a while to recover.

His skin is incredibly sensitive to temperature, and whenever he uses his Quirk too much he burns more and more of it. But due to the large amount of his body that’s burnt and scarred, a lot of his sweat glands don’t work properly, and this can overheat him even more. He constantly has to be careful about his internal temperature and often carries a thermos of something cold to help himself cool down. He needs to take colder showers otherwise his wounds get aggravated. It just soaks up the moisture and he’s more prone to bleeds.

As I’ve hc’ed before, Dabi needs eyedrops. Due to his tearducts being damaged enough so that he can’t cry tears (as he’s stated himself), much like Aizawa, his eyes get dry and irritated way too easily. He constantly has to be reapplying eyedrops to keep his eyes moist and try to heal some of the damage already done. If he goes for too long without them, he’s prone to bleeding, and witnessing this man literally cry blood is viscerally disturbing.

His staples can get easily irritated and due to his fire they stay hot for longer. If he’s not careful when dealing with them, he’s liable to get burnt worse just from the metal. If he’s too rough, they will start bleeding and he’ll have to disinfect his wounds yet again.

The purple parts of his body? Third-degree burns. He can’t feel a damn thing. Doesn’t mean he can’t rip and tear, but he’s likely not gonna feel it. He’s had to throw away a lot of shirts because the bloodstains were just too hard to get out.

Prefers drinking things to eating things whenever his jaw is sore from his wounds. While he was first healing as a teenager, all he did was drink things until he could reliably work his jaw again. Cold brew and ice-blended coffees are his drink of choice.

Gets sick really easily. Ever since he was a young child, he’s been more susceptible to ailments like the flu and needs to constantly keep up his health. His body is weaker than it should be, and that frustrates him a lot. As he’s stated in canon himself, he can be easily motion-sick.

#lov headcanons #quirk theory

[jereviendrai]

||| ooc; does every character on this blog have bpd symptoms? is this problematic, considering they’re all villains or would-be villains? is there a way to give a villain a mental health disorder without stigmatizing the disorder? well--

OH AND BIG TRIGGER WARNING FOR A WIDE RANGE OF MENTAL HEALTH TOPICS SUCH AS: eating disorders, mental illness, stigmatization of mental illness, self harm, suicidal tendencies, and a fuckload more. I don’t go into detail. There are just mentions. I’m not gonna say a bunch of graphic shit, I promise! If I went into graphic detail, this would turn into a PhD thesis proposal, and that’d be WAY too long to be worth writing. Also I have BPD, but I’m not going to pretend that I’m an expert on the subject. I’m not. My word is not law, but it’d be nice if my word was taken into consideration.

this post got so fucking long and disorganized jesus christ

The answers are: yes, not inherently, and absolutely.

I want to get into the mental health of all three characters in a second, but I think it’s important to talk a little about the other two points first. That said, though -- yes, they’re all borderline. All three of them! And they all experience it differently! I will come back to that. Anyway--

I feel like it’s important to talk about villains, mental illness and stigma. There’s a really common (and insanely lazy) tendency for writers to explain a villain’s villainy by simply saying, “oh, well they’re a psychopath,” or, “they’re just crazy.” This is not only lazy and offensive, but it contributes to an unfair stigma against the mentally ill.

Mental illness might, say, compel someone to steal a chocolate bar or snap at someone out of anger. It might make a person’s emotions volatile. It might make someone unreasonable. They might suffer delusions of abandonment, of some plot against them, of people’s secret intent to humiliate them, etc. They might suffer and handle their suffering poorly. They may cause harm. But that doesn’t make them... evil. It makes them complex. And how they react to and handle their negative actions says more about them than any diagnosis could.

When you have a villain with a mental illness, you need to examine how the illness is hurting them. Write about how it hinders their progress. Write about how isolating it can be for them. Write about the impact and struggle. Not how the illness makes them so evil or so irredeemably awful. The illness should be what humanizes them and helps to make them relatable. No matter how untouchable and powerful your villain is, they have some personal struggle that is independent of their villainy. When done correctly, it can go a long way in fleshing out your villain and adding interesting inner conflict!

I know, I know. You might be asking, “yeah, but don’t people with mental health issues sometimes cause harm directly related to their symptoms?” To which I say: yeah, duh, of course. Just like a depressed person might say something mean when they’re having a bad day. Just like someone with ADHD might make someone feel like they aren’t being listened to. Just like someone who has social anxiety might make a friend feel unloved. Just like mentally healthy people also occasionally cause harm.

I’m not saying mental health issues don’t cause problems and maladaptive behaviors. I’m just saying it doesn’t... make someone inherently bad -- real or fictional. And I need people to internalize that.

ANYWAY ON TO THE CHARACTERS AND THEIR BPD

(i know, you’re probably like, “dude oh my god shut up and get on with it” sakjlfdkjsa)

I’m going to be referring to the four subtypes. I know these are controversial to some people. Some really don’t like these labels, others feel comforted by them, etc. They’re just to make it easier to talk about this whole thing. No one fits neatly into any one subtype! Some people don’t resemble any particular one! Everyone is different! Don’t box people into these subtypes if you haven’t been given consent, thanks!

Mr. A / Clark Donovan Mr. A is a classic example of the Quiet Borderline. Someone with quiet BPD mostly directs their symptoms inward. It’s harder to detect than other types, as the symptoms that are most prevalent are mostly expressed, well, inwardly. Self-esteem issues, self-blame, insecurity, withdrawing emotionally, pretending you’re not angry when you are, self harming tendencies, suicidal thoughts, etc. He’s also kind of clingy. Mr. A is an extremely loyal person to a fault. He is a people pleaser and will go to the ends of the Earth to make his loved ones happy, even if it hurts him. This is of detriment to him, as he often finds himself getting hurt on behalf of people who might not care as much as he does. He’s let a lot of bad people into his life solely because they made him feel loved, wanted and useful. He views everyone he loves through rose-tinted glasses and only takes them off long after he’s been laid to waste by them. He has terrible issues with self-image and has thus developed an eating disorder. He also has severe depersonalization/derealization disorder, which is a result of how his mental health interacts with his reality-warping powers. It creates a lot of anxiety with him, watching himself phase through things and bend the world around him on a whim. His motivations in life are connected to this, but his motivation to do evil things is not. He wants to bring other superpowered people together as a united front against humanity, as he feels that humanity is a threat to their continued existence. This has nothing to do with his mental health issues. The part of it that does tie in is that he’s painfully lonely and has chronic feelings of boredom, so being surrounded with a shit ton of different people mitigates that. It’s a motive for him bringing people closer to him, but it is not a motive for him to launch an attack on all humanity. He’d be really offended if you tried to accuse him of doing this on the basis that he’s just a bit ill. His illness literally just makes him crave contact with other living beings just like him. He sometimes does bad or stupid things because of this, but it literally has nothing to do with his motives as a villain. As an addendum of sorts, Mr. A’s alias and reluctance to use his given name (Clark Donovan) are a result of identity issues he suffers due to his BPD. He finds it hard to maintain a stable sense of identity, so he just... doesn’t.

Ivan Chanteur Ivan closely resembles what we like to call an Impulsive Borderline, comorbid with ADHD. He is an impulsive person, as the name of the subtype suggests. He’s a thrill-seeker who suffers from extreme levels of chronic boredom, which he desperately tries to combat by any means necessary. Staying still and doing repetitive tasks is literal torture for him. If he cannot get up and move and do whatever it takes to keep himself feeling fulfilled and occupied, he is probably going to fucking lose it. When he is actively vocalizing his boredom on a regular basis, this means the chronic feelings of boredom have reached critical mass. It’s not just boredom. It’s anxiety, it’s agitation, it’s existential dread, it’s an inability to focus, it’s pent-up energy that needs to go somewhere and can’t just stay in him anymore. If he can’t get it out in healthy ways, he usually resorts to self-harm or less-than-healthy pursuits. He’s been known to dabble in drugs, self-harm, occasional promiscuity on a bad night. While therapy’s helped him get a handle on it, there’ve been a lot of stressful and traumatic things going on in his life have have made it a lot harder to keep himself in check. Ivan is pretty charismatic, able to cast a wide net and catch all sorts of people in his social web. He has a sort of natural magnetism that, on a superficial level, should make him quite popular. But underneath it all, he has difficulty trusting people long enough to actually let them into his life. He’ll act like an open book, only to slam himself shut and reshelve himself before anyone can get anywhere near the end. He’s easy to befriend, but difficult to get close to. This has caused him to feel lonely and frustrated. He wishes he could easily form deep connections, but it’s hard and it hurts him. In addition to all of this, he engages in a wide variety of attention-seeking and risk-taking behaviors. He often spends time with people who are not good to him, simply for the thrill of it. This has often gotten him hurt, but he finds it hard to cut this habit in spite of everything. This leads to a lot of frustration and self-hatred, as it makes it hard for him to protect himself. Every time someone hurts or betrays him, he beats himself up over it and tells himself he should know better by now. All that said, though, he’s come a long way in therapy. He’s not quite able to keep a handle on all of it all the time, but he’s managed to secure one or two decently stable friendships along the way.

Eve Laurier Eve is particularly difficult to talk about, but I’m going to try my best. Eve is what happens when you make a conscious decision to be bad. He knows beyond a shadow of doubt that what he’s doing is wrong, but he feels so wronged by the world that he just cannot seem to motivate himself to care. This... again... has nothing to do with his BPD. If anything, it’s his struggles with this disorder that keep him at least somewhat... grounded in reality. Eve suffered a personal tragedy -- the loss of his twin sister in a housefire. Though ruled an accident, he cried foul play. Consumed with grief at the loss of the only person he felt could truly understand him, he vowed to find the culprit and make them pay. This set him down a path of vengeance that would make John Wick blush. Eve grew up as the heir to his family’s criminal enterprise. This put him in a position of power the very moment he was born. This also left him exposed to a lot of terrible, violent crimes from a very young age. Because this was normalized by his family, he internalized and compartmentalized any misgivings he had about violence. By the time he was ready for university, he had been thoroughly trained to carry out hitjobs on behalf of the family. He was a weapon from the moment he left the womb. He was groomed to do terrible things, and it’s because of this ongoing and continuous trauma that he developed his particular cocktail of mental health issues. He mostly fits in with the label of Petulant BPD. Repeated and violent trauma did a number on him, leaving him angry and hurt over what his parents let him fall victim to. He also experiences feelings of self-loathing over the part he feels he played in his own trauma, despite the fact that it started in early childhood. He is self-defeating and self-blaming. He has a difficult time expressing his feelings and has angry outbursts fairly regularly, often resulting in self-harm and suicidal ideation. He’s been known to reach for the nearest mind-altering substance just to get out of his head for a bit. His mood swings are intense and leave him feeling fatigued and anxious. He has severe social anxiety that sometimes manifests as cold indifference. He also has issues with control, has paranoid delusions about the people in his life and doesn’t often believe it when people say that they care for him. He will find any and every piece of evidence that points to the contrary, even if he has to make it up himself. This usually ensures that he’ll end up alone again. He doesn’t have very many close relationships, if any at all. His BPD is not the reason he hurts people. Any hurt caused by his BPD is directed at himself, not at others. His BPD is a direct result of what actually has primed him to hurt people. It’s a direct result of trauma. He’s traumatized. And no, trauma is no excuse for what he’s done -- but his BPD didn’t make him kidnap and torture Ivan while he waited for Ivan’s parents to send in the ransom. That was all Eve. That was his conscious decision to make, in spite of everything in his head telling him how awful and wrong he would be to do such a thing. He knew it was wrong and ignored it, as he was under the impression that Ivan’s family had a hand in his sister’s death. If anything, his BPD aggravates his feelings of shame and self-loathing when he does precisely what his parents had been training him to do his whole life.

Anyway-- I hope this was helpful or at least interesting.

The point I’m trying to make here is that mental illness isn’t some kind of ultimate litmus test of good and evil. A disorder doesn’t make you good or bad. It’s just another facet of who you are.

So... to that end... please for the love of fuck stop using personality disorders as the reason for someone’s villainy. Please. I am begging.

I wrote a bunch of BPD villains in various stages of villainhood because I have BPD and this disorder often makes you feel like you’re evil, a monster, etc. Honestly, on good days I feel like an inherently bad person who consciously chooses to do good. That’s very flawed and I know that logically I’m not inherently bad, but that’s kind of what stigma does. It makes you feel like you’re inherently bad. And that feeling influenced how I write all three of these characters.

This is an incoherent mess but today’s the day I find out if I have coronavirus and I’m so fucking stressed out and hopped up on DayQuil. Thanks for reading any of this, I guess?

#||| ooc; #||| canon; ivan chanteur #||| canon; mr. a #||| canon; eve laurier #||| canon; #PLEASE READ THIS I SPENT SO MUCH TIME #I LITERALLY SPENT HOURS ON THIS FOR NO REASON AKLJFJSAJDLKSKJDKSL #i'm listening to 'the spider' by weezer and it's a fucking mood right now #fucking christ ok tumblr lags so goddamn much when i open this in my drafts so i need to post this now #also yeah i guess this is me telling the world i have a personality disorder hi surprise i'm Messy and Traumatized who knew haha

[spookyspaghettisundae]

After All These Years

Snow gently fell outside the diner’s window. Danielle sipped from her cup of steaming hot coffee and watched the spectacle of Sheriff Blake arguing with Old Gambino, whose snowplow had broken down and now blocked the narrow road. Gambino’s arms flailed as he flapped his mouth and Blake visibly recoiled from him. The window and distance almost turned it into a silent film and gave it a comical look.

Michelle, who sat in the same booth, leaned over the table and clicked her tongue to draw Danielle’s attention.

“You know this is crazy, right?”

Danielle peeled her eyes away from the roadside conflict and let the exhaustion from the fifteen-hour drive weigh down her eyelids. Soaking up the warmth inside the diner that slowly dispelled the tingling cold from outside, with the sounds of Eva tinkering and toiling away in the kitchen, and that pleasant smell of the black coffee rising into her nostrils, it was easy for Danielle to imagine that her twin sister Michelle didn’t exist.

Still feeling the weariness of rolling up the roads from the city all the way to the sleepy town of Evergreen, she opened her eyes again and gave Michelle a tired smile.

“You know as well as I do that I had to come here. It was a letter from Harry. Our best friend,” she reminded her sister.

“Who has been dead for over ten years,” Michelle countered.

Danielle shrugged and sighed, taking another sip from her cup. Michelle hadn’t touched the cup in front of her on her side of the table.

“Like we haven’t seen our share of hoaxes. You’d think that the supposed UFO lights over the old reservoir, or the kids gone missing in the Misty Pines, or Butcher Benson’s grisly murder would have made us just throw that out. Just disbelieve such a thing flat out,” Michelle continued.

Danielle put her cup back down and poured some sugar into it. Michelle just glared at her in the moment of awkward silence, filled by the clink and clank of Danielle’s teaspoon mixing the sugar into the cup.

“I could really go for some of Eva’s pie,” Danielle said.

“No, you’re not gonna just drop that and—no. Even with what you and I know about all the, y'know, all the—occult stuff? You don’t believe that Harry’s ghost just up and possessed a pen, wrote a letter, got proper fucking postage, and sent it to you in the mail. Come on.”

Michelle crossed her arms.

Danielle peered over the edge of her cup at her and said, “Allie got a letter too.”

“Yeah, all the more reason to think it’s bullshit.”

“I thought so too, but she said it was his handwriting. And she had some guy she knows test it. Some expert. It was written recently. How do you explain that?”

Michelle’s lips formed a thin white line and her silence expressed a deep-rooted frustration. Invisible fumes rose from her head with her inability to rattle out a rational explanation for that.

“I don’t know, maybe Harry’s ghost possessed someone and, had them send the letter he wrote while riding the body?”

Danielle shook her head.

“No. I mean, maybe? That’s so far-fetched. Though it would explain a few things.”

Danielle craved a cigarette. The bad old habit crept up in the back of her mind, tickling her lizard-brain. She fought it by looking over to the pies on display. Eva was still busy in the kitchen, whipping up some breakfast for the truck driver sitting in the booth at the other end of the diner.

“So how about a little séance? We go to the cemetery, visit Harry’s grave, and—”

“Allie and Ryan came to Evergreen, too,” Danielle interrupted her.

A shadow passed over Michelle's face and she said, "Not Ryan. Rhiannon."

Danielle shrugged and continued on, "We all got a letter from him each. Looks to me like Harry wanted to get the whole gang back together again."

“And possessed someone to write a letter to the three of you. Yeah, this still makes no sense to me.”

“Allie also said she was attacked by a naked man wearing a horse’s head and carrying a street sign.”

Michelle just stared at Danielle upon hearing her say that. Stared right through her. Like her gaze consisted of two Superman-like eye-laser beams, and they were burning holes through the wall behind her.

Danielle leaned over the table, closer, and lowered her voice to a hiss to add, “Rhiannon said that Sheriff Blake told her to leave town when he got here.”

Michelle clicked her tongue again and shook her head, “So what? Blake always hated us. Doesn’t mean there’s any conspiracy going on in this crappy hick town.”

She leaned back in her seat and spread her arms across the length of it to lounge there with that same level of laziness that she always used to display.

“Okay. Sure, fair enough. It’s just weird, though. Also, look—even if this is just some prank—”

“You bet this is a prank. Listen, I think one of those jock assholes did a good job at faking Harry’s handwriting, and they’re gonna punk us if we show up at the reunion party.”

“Or, we could show up and then show them up with a prank of our own,” Danielle said with a feeble smirk.

“Oh, right,” Michelle said with a derisive giggle. “Like that’ll work out how you expect it to. Like that ever worked out.”

The smirk faded from Danielle’s face as those words cut through her confidence like a hot knife through butter.

“I have not forgotten that time when Bradley—that jerk—pantsed you in front of the team when you tried to mess with him,” Michelle said. “The cheerleaders sure had a—”

“Yeah, right. Okay, enough,” Danielle said to stop her.

Then her stomach growled.

Michelle grinned at her, “Isn’t that inconvenient? If only we could all be ghosts, without the need to eat and sleep, and all that.”

With a sigh, Danielle said, “Shut up.”

Michelle’s grin widened, stretching from ear to ear like the Cheshire cat. Danielle broke eye contact and took a bigger and greedier gulp from her coffee cup to squelch herself from replying with any profanities. The dark brown substance cooled with each passing second.

Eva had returned from the kitchen and served the truck driver a plate of eggs and bacon. The man over there replied in gravelly grumpy growls to Eva’s cheery tone, though it was far away enough for the jazzy background music playing from the speakers to drown out the precise words.

Taking a break from staring at her twin sister, Danielle looked back out the window and saw Blake helping Gambino push Mills’ tow truck. She had to stifle a giggle when the wheels spun without traction or moving the truck, and instead just shot a pile of muddy slush onto Blake’s jacket, prompting him to step away and glare at Old Gambino, then shout something at Mills.

When she looked back up at Michelle, her sister had tilted her head and just stared at her in that typical fashion whenever she expected her to admit she was right.

Danielle just shook her head and chose to continue ignoring her, so she waved Eva over.

The elderly waitress and now owner of the diner approached with a big beaming smile plastered across her face.

“What can I get'cha, darlin’?”

“I could really go for a slice of that apple pie,” Danielle said with a tired smile.

“Not for nothin’, but you do look like you could use some meat on those bones o’ yours,” Eva said with a mischievous wink. “Bet the boys in the city never leave you alone, huh?”

She turned to follow up on Danielle’s request. Danielle somehow wanted to feel mad about Eva’s comments—but couldn’t. This place hadn’t changed one bit in all these years.

Out of the blue, Michelle asked, “Allie said she slept in Room 214 of the Lakeview Inn, right?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Danielle said with a shrug and feeling more tired than before.

Maybe it was the mention of a place with warm beds—conveniently ignoring that Room 214 was “the suicide room.” Maybe it was just the stress and slow, grueling exhaustion from the long drive catching up on her, coupled with a chronic lack of sleep. Maybe it was having Michelle around all the time.

“Which is where the horse-headed freak attacked her.”

Danielle didn’t even merit that non-question with a word, she just nodded and mumbled a sound of confirmation through tight lips.

“She said that she woke up from a nightmare with a real injury that the freak had caused,” Michelle continued drilling.

Danielle didn’t feel like talking anymore, but she always appreciated the futility of saying so to her sister. Michelle always did whatever the hell she wanted and Danielle never felt like stopping her.

Not since the incident.

“Anyway, there’s no fucking way we’re staying in the Lakeview hotel,” Michelle said. “Wembley offed himself in that creepy-ass old Shining place. And Allie said she was attacked there. So. Just, no. No fucking way.”

Danielle set her jaw and decided she had to push back. Even if just a little bit.

Harry’s letter wasn’t a hoax. Allie wasn’t imagining things.

Something was wrong in their hometown. Always had been. And she had to get to the bottom of it.

“But what if there are ghosts? What if Evergreen is haunted? Shouldn’t we—of all people—be the ones to do something about it? To investigate?”

Michelle rolled her eyes and groaned.

“Okay. Fine, Nancy Drew. You win. We sleuth around, prove there are no ghosts, and get the fuck out of dodge again, before we get snowed in in this God-forsaken town.”

“I’m actually kinda worried about that,” Danielle said, shooting a glance outside to the beached snowplow and the combined efforts of Blake, Gambino, and Mills failing to move it from the ditch it was stuck in.

“Worried about what, sweetie?” asked Eva.

She had returned to the table with the pie Danielle had ordered. She put the plate down in front of her and gave her a smile, but it didn’t quite reach the woman’s eyes. The bright fluorescent lights reflecting in her irises flickered with worry.

“Oh, it’s nothing serious,” Danielle said. But her voice cracked and trembled with a hint of concern. “I do have to get back to work in a few days, and the snowfall is getting worse by the hour.”

“Yeah. But don’t you lose any sleep over it. Old Gambino will have it cleared out, just you wait. You can go to that high school reunion o’ yours and leave on time, no problem-o.”

Danielle forced herself to smile a sad smile at that, as she had zero interest in going to the high school reunion.

“You’re right, Eva,” Danielle said. She had to squeeze out the rest alongside a sigh, “You’re always right.”

Eva shuffled two steps closer and bit her lip before leaning in and whispering, “Maybe try to stop the, uh—you know what I mean? Them bullies might still hassle you over it. Y'know, some boys just never grow up.”

Eva’s pained smile poorly masked pity and it made Danielle more uncomfortable with each passing second. She forced herself to nod and peeled her gaze away from the waitress, then trained her eyes on the three men outside struggling to rescue the snowplow.

“Uh, do you want me to get you another cup o’ coffee? This one’s probably all cold now,” Eva asked.

From the corner of her eye, Danielle saw her point at the one on Michelle’s side of the table. Michelle’s gaze wandered back and forth between the two like someone watching a tennis match.

“Nah, it’s all good,” Danielle said. “I kinda like cold coffee.”

Eva took a deep breath and said, “Alright, knock yourself out. You need anything else, honey, just holler.”

Then the waitress left.

Danielle grabbed the cold coffee from Michelle’s side of the table. Michelle did nothing to stop her in any way, just giggled. Danielle poured sugar into the cup and stirred once more. The two of them remained silent while Eva visited the truck driver again, who had waved to her from across the diner.

Danielle asked Michelle with a frown, “Couldn’t you have, y'know—warned me? That I’m talking out loud again?”

She took a sip and winced. While the smell still enticed her, no amount of sugar could mask how strong the coffee was—and Danielle remembered that she didn’t even like coffee that much.

Michelle sprung forward and leaned over the table again, grinning, “And spoil this? I fuckin’ love watching you squirm whenever you gotta come up with excuses for this.”

Danielle shook her head and put the coffee down. Grabbing a fork, she sampled some of the apple pie. Her eyes went wide with the explosion of a delightful taste unfolding in her mouth. It obliterated any frustration she felt welling up, pushed back all the complaints she wanted to level at Michelle.

She just chewed and savored the sweet flavor and the silky feel of the pie on her tongue.

Observing Danielle’s face, Michelle’s lips curled into a warm smile. It was untypically warm and gave her a glow—a somewhat surreal appearance. She was fuzzy around the edges and almost translucent as daylight outside the diner grew brighter, and the sun rose.

“I love you, sis’,” said Michelle. “This is gonna be great. We were destined for this. I miss Harry, too. Who knows, maybe he is a ghost, too? Maybe we’ll get to talk to him.”

Danielle swallowed the delicious bite and returned the smile. Genuinely happy that Michelle was still with her. After all these years.

After Michelle had died in the car accident all those years ago.

—Submitted by Wratts

#spoospasu #spookyspaghettisundae #horror #short story #writing #my writing #literature #spooky #fiction #submission #Evergreen #reunion #ghost #mystery #sleuth #detective #Nancy Drew #supernatural #unnatural #possession #snow #isolation #insanity #madness #ghosts #diner #twin #sister #Danielle Witt #unknown armies

[odderancyart]

A Yellow Sky

Chapter 2

First

AO3

Ten foster homes in three years. Alexander Hamilton is chronically unable to just shut up and do what he’s supposed to, even when he’s trying, which has certainly had consequences for him in his short life. The Washingtons are his best shot, his caseworker keeps telling him, but Alexander is a realist. They’ll realize how annoying he is, hate how much smarter than them he is, and after a couple weeks they’ll send him away.

But it’s nice there, he finds. Far too nice. Almost like the calm before the storm.

Alexander was just in time when he stashed away the last of his belongings, placing the unimportant ones – clothes, old schoolbooks, etc – in obvious places and the ones he treasured inside the armchair. There was a flap beneath it, he’d found, and he could just fit everything there. The same moment as he straightened, he heard the thundering of footsteps in the staircase and he quickly made his way back to the bed, grabbing the book lying on top. It was from an elective in Political Science he’d taken at his last school. Just as he laid down on the bed, eager knocking came from the door.  

Expecting them to just step in, he waited for a few seconds. When they didn’t, he blinked, and hesitantly called out, “Come in.”

The door immediately flew open and a dark-skinned, black-haired boy stepped inside, grinning from ear to ear as he saw him. Alexander just stared at him. His dark-grey jeans were artfully ripped, he wore a black and white-striped shirt with a brown leatherjacket over and a pin with the French flag. There were two black rings in one of his ears and a small white stone in the other. With heavy Dr Martens’ like that, it wasn’t strange he’d been so loud in the stairs. And fuck he was tall.  

“Bonsoir!” the boy exclaimed, jumping up on the bed next to him. Alexander flinched, quickly sitting up and drawing back a bit, putting distance between them. The boy held out his hand. “Je m’appe- My name is Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier. But you can call me Lafayette.”

Cautiously, Alexander reached out and shook his hand. “Bonsoir. Je suis Alexander Hamilton,” he replied, continuing in French. Their accents were different, but it felt good to speak the language again with someone who wasn’t incompetent at it or a teacher. “Lafayette?”

With a thrilled gasp, Lafayette clapped his hands together. His eyes almost sparkled. “Tu parle français?”

He nodded, smiling hesitantly. “Oui. It’s my first language. English is my second. You didn’t answer my question.” As he added that, he braced himself. Maybe he wasn’t allowed to question the son of the house either.

“Pardon moi.” Lafayette threw an arm over his shoulder, pulling him close. Alexander stiffened. He spoke quickly, so fast most other would’ve tripping over their own words, but his were perfectly enunciated. “You’re my best friend now. None of my other friends have bothered to learn my language, so they can go fuck themselves.” He looked betrayed, but the sparkle in his eye told Alexander he wasn’t actually upset about it. Despite his better judgement, he liked the other immediately. “And Lafayette because these Américains couldn’t pronounce my name properly if I held a gun to their heads. Not even George and Martha, though they insist on calling me Gilbert. At least Lafayette doesn’t sound awful when they say it. It’s my title, you see, mon ami.  Je suis le Marquis de La Fayette. Though we call ourselves Lafayette instead in honour of our ancestor who fought in the Revolutionary War.”

A grin had begun to form at Alexander’s face as the other talked, but it fell, and he jerked back, staring at the other boy.  

“Que?”

“Marquis?” Alexander repeated, gaping. “You’re nobility?”

“Oh, yes.” Lafayette nodded, gesturing at his pin. “Not that it means much since the revolution, especially not here in America. The people seized the power then, as I’m sure you know. With all right! My family was lucky enough to keep our land and riches, though. Anyway!” His grin returned. “It’ll be so fun to have you here. My friends are excited to meet you. We’re going shopping tomorrow, getting you some new shit and stuff to decorate your room with. You’re from the Virgin Islands, non?”

Stunned into silence for once in his life, Alexander only nodded.

“Maybe you’d like the flag painted on your wall then! You must miss it. I know I miss my homeland, even if America has been very good to me.” He gestured toward the wall opposite of the bed. “I have Le Tricolore painted there myself.”

“Wait,” Alexander said without thinking. “Wait, wait, wait. Why are you talking like I’m staying? And that’d be much too expensive anyway. I can’t afford that.”

Blinking, Lafayette cocked his head. “Because you are staying, mon ami, are you not? George and Martha are your new foster parents.”

He let out a curt laugh. “Yeah. For now. No one wants me around for that long.” They were intimidated by his brains, or annoyed by his inability to shut up, or got too mad that he wouldn’t break beneath the pressure. He refused to break.

Lafayette raised an eyebrow, and Alexander leaned back. Shit. That big mouth of his acted again, indeed. There was something about his new foster brother that made him talk too freely, he started to realize already, and that was dangerous. He couldn’t trust anyone. Especially not a member of his foster family.  

“Sorry,” he forced out. “I didn’t- I didn’t mean-”

“Ah, Alexander.” Lafayette smiled, rolling the R on his tongue. There was something akin to concern in his eyes, which confused him. “Don’t underestimate us. The Washingtons are very kind people and I’m quite used to getting what I want.” His eyes glittered. “And I am thrilled to have you here.” Fishing up his phone, he looked at the time. “Merde. We are late for dinner already.”

He stood, grabbing Alexander’s wrist and pulling him toward the door. Alexander only just managed to hide his wince as he squeezed some old bruises that had almost healed, and followed. He pursed his lips, nervous. Would they be mad they were late to dinner? It wasn’t his fault, Lafayette had obviously been supposed to tell him. But they wouldn’t care about that, now would they?

As they came downstairs, a heavenly scent of cooked meat laid over the ground floor and his stomach grumbled loudly, causing Lafayette’s grin to widen. “Martha is an amazing cook. Not as good as the one home at my châteaux in Chavaniac-Lafayette, but really fucking good.”

Alexander smiled nervously back, filing that information for later. Chavaniac-Lafayette. Once he was allowed to go to school and could get on a computer, he’d google his new foster brother. If he really was a marquis there had to be some information available somewhere.

“Language, son,” an amused voice came from inside the kitchen.  

Lafayette chuckled. “Pardon, George! She’s really hecking good.” He rolled his eyes at Alexander as he spoke.

Clenching and unclenching his hand nervously, giving the other a small smile, Alexander followed the other into the kitchen. Just like the rest of the house it was huge, but it was a weird mix, which somehow worked, between old and new. A firewood stove covered a lot of one of the walls, while the one opposite of it, there was a modern one and marble-covered kitchen benches in front of which Mrs Washington stood. The floor was grey stone and in the middle of the room a huge wooden table that could easily fit ten people stood. Mr Washington was putting out white plates painted with flowers on it. Alexander frowned. Why was Mr Washington helping? Sure, many of his foster families had forced him to assist in the kitchen but that was because he was, well, unimportant in their eyes. A nobody. But in none of the homes he’d been in, including his own back when his father was still around, had he seen the husbands help, and his mother had never asked him or James for help.

This place was already weirder than he’d expected, and he hadn’t had many expectations for normalcy.  

“Ah, boys,” Mr Washington said, and Alexander stopped dead in the doorframe. The commanding tone almost made him want to stand in attention. “Take a seat, you’re just in time.” He grinned at Alexander. “We suspected that Gilbert would keep you busy so we sent him up early.”

That made Lafayette scowl as he slid down into one of the chairs, and he stuck out his tongue at Mr Washington. “Connard.”

Mrs Washington turned around, a wooden spoon in her hand. She stared at him strictly, though Alexander saw the corner of her mouth twitch. “We may not be fluent in French, Gilbert, but we still understand you when you insult us.”

Blushing slightly, Lafayette opened his mouth, likely to apologize, before he suddenly sat up straight. “Oh! But Alexander does! He speaks French. Fluently!” he exclaimed, bouncing in his seat.

Alexander swallowed as all attention was suddenly on him where he was still standing in the doorframe. Hesitantly, he made his way over to the table, nodding. “Oui.”

“Impressive,” Mr Washington said, looking at him up and down with a hint of a smile on his face. “Do you speak anything else?”

Once again, he nodded. “English, obviously,” he began hesitantly. They wouldn’t ask if they didn’t want to know, would they? Except that two years ago he lived with a family who’d constantly ask him things and then get furious every time he revealed he knew more than them. “Spanish, almost fluently, and I understand Hebrew and some Danish.”

“Danish?” Mrs Washington asked, sounding confused.

“St. Croix belonged to Denmark for a long time,” he explained softly. “Most of them left when they sold it to the United States, but when I lived with my first foster family before the hurricane, we had some neighbours descended from Danes who still spoke it between themselves. They taught me some.”

“Woah.” She stepped back, gesturing toward the food on the stove. “That’s incredible, Alexander.” Her voice was warm, and his heart skipped a beat from the unexpected praise.

“Re- really?”  

When was the last time someone had told him that in such a motherly tone? He swallowed. Not since he left St. Croix, he was sure. His foster family there had been wonderful, but he’d only stayed there for a few months before the hurricane tore the island into pieces. Eventually, most of the orphans had been shipped off to the mainland.  

Mrs Washington stepped up to him, reaching out to stroke his cheek. Alexander flinched away, his breath catching in his throat, before he realized what she’d actually done. Blood rose to his cheeks as he stared down at the floor, embarrassed. Now they’d think he was a coward. Scared of something that small. Or worse, that he was broken.

Her hand had stopped mid-air. Pulling it back to her side, she nodded instead, still smiling gently. “Really. We saw from your grades that you have to be smart, but that’s astonishing.”

“Indeed, mon ami,” Lafayette agreed, watching him closely. He grinned again when he saw that Alexander was looking at him, leaning back in his chair. It turned into a smirk, and he raised an eyebrow at Alexander, almost in a challenge. “Maybe I’ve finally, how you say, met my equal.”

Turning around, Mrs Washington slapped him gently over the head, and Lafayette turned to grin at her instead. “Very modest of you, Gilbert.”

“You know me,” he replied, grin widening. “L’homme le plus modeste sur la terre.”  

The most modest man on earth. Alexander snorted, causing Lafayette to wiggle his eyebrows. “Sit down, Alexander.”  

He pointed toward the chair next to his, and Alexander obeyed automatically, folding his hands in his lap. He eyed the food on the stove, wondering how much he would be allowed. His stomach ached, and he hoped it’d at least be enough to soothe it if not enough to really sate him. I’ve never been satisfied used to apply to his place in the world, but lately, the words had taken a much more literal meaning.

With a smile, Mrs Washington gestured toward it. “Bon appetite, boys.”

Immediately, Lafayette was on his feet, plate in his hands as he rushed up to the stove and started shovelling food from the pot. At Mrs Washington’s urging gaze, Alexander followed. His hands trembled as he slowly made his way to the food, looking it over. A stew in a pot and potatoes, and there was so much of it and he didn’t know how much he was allowed to take. His breaths grew shallow as he reached out for the potato spoon. Careful not to spill a single drop, he put two potatoes and a spoonful of stew on his plate. It wasn’t enough, but it was safe.

“Non, mon ami,” Lafayette said, grabbing the spoon from him and laying on more food. “You are a growing boy. Eat.”

As the tower of food on his plate grew, Alexander stared at it in pure shock. He didn’t think he’d had that much food at once since he left the island. His eyes were wide and confused as he looked up at Lafayette. “I don’t- I don’t need that much,” he got out, eyes flickering to Mr and Mrs Washington. He desperately hoped they wouldn’t mind it, wouldn’t get mad at him.

“Fadaises.” Nonsense. ”You are my age, non?”

He nodded. “I think so. Sixteen.”

“Oui. I know me and my friends are hungry all the time. You must eat, Alexander. You are much too thin.” With that, he went back to the table and Alexander followed, watching the other beginning to devour his food while Mr and Mrs Washington went to serve themselves. His stomach growled, but he laid his hands in his lap, squeezing them together as the delicious scent filled him. He hadn’t been given permission to eat yet and he really didn’t want them to take the food away because he rushed into it.

They sat down as well, opposite of him and Lafayette, and Mrs Washington nodded encouragingly at him as she grabbed her own cutlery. “Aren’t you hungry, Alexander?”

“I’m fine, ma’am,” he replied as neutrally as he could, but his stomach protested, growling again. He winced.

Mr Washington chuckled, though there was an odd undertone to it. “It doesn’t seem to agree. Eat, son, or Martha will think you don’t like her cooking.”

“Thank you, sir,” he mumbled before grabbing his fork and shovelling the first forkful of it into his mouth. He only just held in a moan as the thick flavour spread in his mouth, full of spices, and he closed his eyes for a moment, savouring it. When he opened them again, he found the others watching him in amusement. Going red, he ducked his head. “It’s delicious, ma’am.”

“Thank you.” When he dared look up again, Mrs Washington was watching him with warm brown eyes. It sent another rush of blood to his cheeks. It was so weird to have anyone look at him like that. And while it was nice, it also made him uncomfortable. Left him wondering when the penny would drop and there’d be no more sweetness. When they would realize how annoying he was.

“So, Gilbert, what did you, Hercules and John get up to this time?” she asked Lafayette, and Alexander sighed in relief as the attention was moved away from him. He ate quickly, determined to get as much into his stomach as physically possible before they decided he’d had enough. Still, he raised an eyebrow. Lafayette had a friend named Hercules?

Lafayette lit up. “We went to the mall! John needed to buy new art supplies and toys for Juggler – his dog,” he added, obviously for Alexander’s sake. “John’s family is from South Carolina where they have like, an enormé farm, and he brought with him this big hairy sheepdog they moved here. Then we tried out the new coffee shop. They’ve got the fanciest fucking drinks, it’s delightful!”

Unable to help himself, Alexander perked up at the mention of coffee. Maybe if he was good, they’d allow him to go out on his own and he could go there. He had a few dollars saved up.

Noticing this, Mr Washington turned to smile at him. “You like coffee then?”  

“Yessir,” he replied quickly, fiddling with his fork as he sat up straight. Dammit, if they were talking with him, he couldn’t eat.  

“Maybe you’d want to go with Gilbert and his friends there someday?” he suggested.

“They’ve been dying to meet you!” Lafayette exclaimed, gently punching Alexander’s arm, and he couldn’t help his flinch. The other boy’s hand froze mid-air and he dropped it again, but kept grinning.

The idea of going out with Lafayette and his friends was foreign in Alexander’s mind. Why would they want him to come with them? A stranger, a nobody, and an orphan. There was no good reason for it. At least not one he liked. His eyes flickered to Mrs Washington, who was the only one who hadn’t given her opinion yet.

“I think that sounds like a marvellous idea, if you’re feeling up to it,” she agreed. “Of course you don’t have to if you don’t think you’re ready yet, but it might be good to know some people other than Gilbert when you start going to school.”

School. Oh, right. With his last family, he’d been home-schooled so no one would notice the very suspicious bruising. He couldn’t help but grin at the thought. School. Fuck, he couldn’t wait until then. “If you think it’s a good idea, ma’am. When will I go to school?” He couldn’t hide his excitement.

“We’ll have to get you written in first,” Mr Washington said, a smile on his face. “But if you feel you’re ready, I’m sure we can have you start at Monday.”

He nodded eagerly. “Please sir.”

“I’m glad to see you’re that interested in going to school.” He hummed, amusement written over his face as he looked to Lafayette, who made a face. “You’ll find not everyone in this house is.”

“It’s so fucking early,” Lafayette moaned. “It should be illegal to make teenagers get up at that time.”

“I don’t mind,” Alexander said timidly. Not like he slept much anyway. That reminded him, he was going to need a new journal soon. Hopefully he could get to a bookshop or steal one from school. And maybe also some instant coffee powder. It was what kept him alive during those times when he wasn’t allowed to go downstairs and make coffee whenever he wanted.

Lafayette gaped, looking between Alexander and his adoptive father with wide eyes. “You can’t be a teenager, it is simply not possible.”

Mr and Mrs Washington laughed, and even Alexander couldn’t help but smile. He just couldn’t dislike Lafayette... yet.

“So, Alexander,” Mrs Washington eventually said, just in time for him to start to feel full. He looked up from his plate, where there still was food, debating how the hell he was going to manage to finish it all. “Why don’t you tell us a little about yourself?”

Dread filled him. “There’s- There’s not much to tell, ma’am.”

“Call me Martha, dear. And I’m sure there’s something. What do you like to do?”

‘Call me Martha’. Alexander almost laughed at the mere thought. Thanks, but no thanks, he’d like to keep his teeth. But then a cold feeling washed over him. “I- I like to write, Mrs Washington,” he replied quietly.  

If she didn’t want him to say ma’am he wouldn’t, though he couldn’t imagine why. He sent out a quiet prayer to the God he’d stopped believing in many years ago that they wouldn’t ask to read what he’d written. The last family had forced him to give him his journals, and then laughed in his face over the fact that he dared to dream he could become someone.  

She looked interested, and so did Mr Washington and Lafayette, leaning in over the table. He swallowed.

“What do you write?” Mr Washington looked at him in interest.

“...Mostly essays.” He didn’t want to be here. Leaning back in his chair, he stared down in his lap.

“Mon ami,” Lafayette interrupted. “You don’t need to talk about it if you don’t want to. We understand.” When Alexander looked up at him, wide-eyed, he smiled gently. “Have you finished?”

After a moment of hesitation, he nodded, glancing at Mrs Washington to check if she got mad he hadn’t eaten it all. To his relief, she didn’t stop smiling.  

“I’m sure you must be very tired, it has been a long day.”

When he said that, Alexander realized he was right. After all that food and all the excitement of today, his body felt heavy. He hid a yawn behind his hand.

“Oh of course,” Mrs Washington said. “Go to bed, Alexander.”

He nodded, standing up at the clear dismissal. “Thank you for the food, Mrs Washington. Goodnight.”  

Annoyance hit him, but he hid it well. He was sixteen, and had taken care of himself since his mother died. He hated when his foster parents told him to go to bed. Particularly after all the times he’d been sent to bed ridiculously early as a punishment. Better than being beaten, but still fucking awful. Especially if it was before dinner.

“You’re welcome, dear.” She smiled warmly.

“Sweet dreams,” Mr Washington said. “I’ll pull some threads and see if I can get you written in before the weekend ends.”

“Thank you, sir.” He was grateful, he really was, but resentment still simmered in him as he turned around and went upstairs, back to his bedroom. Go to bed, Alexander.  

How controlling would the Washingtons be, was the question. Alexander almost didn’t want to admit it to himself, but he was scared to find out.

#hamilton #lafayette #alexander hamilton #george washington #martha washington #a yellow sky #foster care #past child abuse

[huphilpuffs]

flares

chapter: 12/? summary: Dan’s body has been broken for as long as he can remember, and he’s long since learned to deal with it. Sort of. But when his symptoms force him to leave uni and move into a new flat with a stranger named Phil, he finds that ignoring the pain isn’t the way to make himself happy. word count: 3103 rating: mature warnings: chronic illness, chronic pain, medicine a/n: you may have noticed I only updated once this week. my new job has taken a toll on my own health situation, so until further notice I'll be updating only on Sundays (and may miss some of those, in which case I'll try to update during the week). I hope you guys understand and know that my dedication to this story is unwavering. and a huge thank you goes to @obsessivelymoody for beta reading this for me!

Ao3 link || read from beginning

Dan’s chest doesn’t feel like it wants to collapse when he wakes up Sunday morning, and though his whole body is sore from being pressed into the mattress, he supposes that it’s some improvement. The blanket is tangled around his legs and his hair is pressed to his forehead, matted and unwashed. He rolls onto his back, running his fingers through it, feeling the grease on his hand.

“Fucking hell.”

He reaches for his phone, ignoring how oil smears across the screen when he unlocks it and opens his texts.

Taylor: how are you doing?

Dan smiles, rolling onto his side so he can press his phone to his chest and let the mattress support his arms.

Dan: my roommate is crazy

Taylor: not what I expected but okay

Taylor: did he try to kill you?

He rolls his eyes, mind drifting to wonder if Phil’s up, sitting in the lounge and going about his life. If he’s waiting for Dan to drag himself out of his bedroom and spend another day doing nothing on the sofa. If there’s a twist of anxiety at the idea, after every that happened yesterday, like there is in Dan’s stomach.

Dan: the exact opposite actually

Taylor: he tried to have sex with you ???

His cheeks flush, the memory of Phil’s hand on his back, curled around his shoulder, holding him close.

Dan: what

Dan: no

Dan: if anything about this week made him want to have sex with me he’s actually crazy

Taylor: you do tend to stay mostly naked when sick

He tries not to think about it, how he’s spent most of the week in nothing but pants. How Phil’s touched his bare skin, how he’d stared at Dan’s chest, watching him breathe.

Dan: shut up

Dan: I’m serious

Taylor: okay fine what did phil do

Dan: he called in sick all week

Taylor: didn’t we already know this

Taylor: i stg we already had this conversation

Dan: no now I know know

Taylor: you sure you’re feeling okay today?

He frowns, because sometimes Taylor really is joking, but sometimes there’s guilt and concern gleaming behind her eyes when she says things like that. And they’re not sitting in the darkness of Dan’s uni dorm anymore, not staring at each other and wallowing in different but mutual despair.

Dan: i’m doing fine

Dan: we talked yesterday and he said he was glad he called in

Dan: taylor

Taylor: dan

Dan: fuck off

Dan: normal people don’t do that

Taylor: don’t do what

Dan bites his lip. The little bubble is already there to tell him Taylor’s typing and his chest tightens at the sight.

Taylor: don’t call in sick to take care of a friend

Taylor: or don’t care enough to do it for you

---

Phil’s sitting the lounge again when Dan drags himself out of his room. Today’s pyjama pants are Star Wars themed, paired with a green hoodie from York University. Dan swallows at the sight, ignoring the twist of guilt in his stomach.

He should call his mum, but the idea of telling her what happened has terror settling in his gut.

“How are you feeling today?” asks Phil.

Dan shrugs. His fingers are a little shaky and his chest is tight, and he can’t remember if it felt this bad before he left his bedroom. Phil’s sitting there with his head tilted back against the sofa, an easy smile on his face and his fringe half pushed up into a messy quiff, and all Dan can think about is the press of their sides together and the drape of Phil’s arm over his shoulders.

“A little better every day,” he mumbles.

His knees are still weak and he’s still not wearing a shirt, though he did manage to pull on a pair of joggers with minimal pain. Taylor’s words flash in his mind in taunting grey text bubbles, and he knows he shouldn’t let it bother him, but Phil’s looking at him and he can’t not remember how wide his eyes get when he’s staring at Dan in worry.

He swallows the thought away. “I need to eat so I can shower.”

“Okay,” says Phil, nodding his head and pushing himself off the sofa before Dan’s even taken another step into the lounge. “Are you, you know, okay? To shower?”

Dan’s stomach twists, because he doesn’t know. Showering has been an ordeal for as long as he’s been sick, marked with dizziness and pain and exhaustion so bad he’d often find himself lying on the bathroom floor, waiting for his blood pressure to return just enough for him to stand. His arms feel too weak to lift over his head and his mind feels like it may spin at the slightest bit of heat and he’s sure his back is still too sensitive to handle the beating of droplets against his skin.

“I have to,” he answers.

“Have to?”

Dan swallows, reaching back to press against the wall and push himself deeper into the lounge. He reaches the sofa, and only feels the subtle swell of guilt that he’s going to sit while Phil cooks for him before settling onto his blanket. When he turns to glance into the kitchen, Phil’s leaning back against the counter, brows furrowed and a bowl of egg in his hands.

“I, uh, work tomorrow,” says Dan.

Phil almost drops the bowl. “You what?”

“I have a job I need to show up to,” he says. “Apparently Taylor explained why I’d need a week off but I’m scheduled for tomorrow.”

Phil just stares, long enough to have Dan squirming. He hisses at the movement of fabric against his skin, and it’s enough to have Phil setting the bowl down on the counter, rushing into the living room with clumsy steps.

“You’re going to make yourself sick,” he says, so heavy and sincere and worried that Dan’s heart clenches. “You’re going to be in pain again and I–”

“I’m always in pain, Phil.”

He realizes a moment too late that it might be too much. Phil’s face falls, his eyes darting over Dan’s body. A few days ago, there was a heating pad under his back and an ice pack on whichever joint needed it the most and Dan wishes Phil could see that struggling with sunlight and fabric is an okay day. He can walk and eat and talk and breathe.

Wishes that saying as much wouldn’t make Phil look even more shattered than he already does.

Dan exhales slowly, shrugging one shoulder. “It’s fine,” he says. “I’m used to it. My life can’t just stop because sometimes I—”

“End up in so much pain you can’t move?”

Dan gasps, his chest going so tight he can’t make himself exhale. He wants to draw his feet onto the sofa, curl himself into a ball again and pretend Phil still thinks his problems stop at inconvenient fatigue. To ignore the voices that swirl in his mind, echoing constant reminders that he’s supposed to be fine while every part of his body screams in agony.

Instead, he presses a hand to his sternum, digging the heel of his palm against the bone.

Phil’s still staring, eyes wide. He glances down, watches Dan’s hand. “Shit,” he says. “I’m sorry. You need to breathe, okay?”

Dan nods, glancing down. His stomach is drawn beneath his ribs, skin pulling taut over the bones. Phil reaches over, his hand closing around Dan’s.

“On three, okay?”

He nods again, letting his eyes fall closed.

Phil squeezes his hand. “One, two, three.”

Dan feels the jerk of his chest when he exhales, the shudder when he immediately gasps in pain. Phil lets go of his hand, and Dan’s falls to rest on his lap, only for Phil’s to press to his chest instead. Dan eye’s snap open at the feeling, still looking down at where Phil’s fingers are splayed over his ribs, rubbing little circles against Dan’s skin.

“Am I hurting you?” whispers Phil.

“I– No.”

“Okay.”

His fingers rub another circle against Dan’s skin, warm and soothing and Dan knows he’s staring but Phil’s practically massaging his chest to help him.

“On three again, okay?” says Phil. “One, two, three.”

Dan exhales, closing his eyes again to keep tears from welling. He wonders if Phil can feel the strain of his chest muscles, the way they buckle when he breathes, the racing beat of his heart beneath his ribs.

“Better?” asks Phil.

Dan nods. He can wait a moment this time, fight the desperate burn in lungs to inhale more slowly and save himself the pain of another gasp.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” says Phil. He’s still rubbing circles against Dan’s skin. “I’m just worried.”

Dan doesn’t wait for the count of three, his chest deflating at the crack in Phil’s voice. He opens his eyes and brings his hand back up, resting it over Phil’s.

“I know,” he says. “But I’m fine. It’s nothing.”

Phil’s eyes widen. It probably doesn’t look like nothing. It doesn’t feel like nothing, sitting there, struggling to breath because of a gasp. But Phil doesn’t protest and Dan’s mind is too scattered to explain all the reasons it is nothing, all the experts who have told him as much, all the days spent wishing things were different.

He offers a half hearted smile. Phil’s thumb sweeps across the ridge of his ribs.

They don’t talk about it more.

---

Phil cooks. Dan eats his eggs, swallowing back whimpers with every bite. They don’t talk.

Dan notices how Phil keeps looking at him, hesitant little glances that make Dan’s insides twist. He wants to apologize, erase the worry where it creases Phil’s brow, but he’s sure Phil would only get more upset if Dan tried to apologize for his body’s inability to handle existing.

So he sits there, eats, and then quietly excuses himself to go shower.

Dan brings clothes with him, tucking a shirt over his arm even though he’s not sure his chest could handle it. His imagination reminds him of how scratchy and coarse his work shirt is, how the fabric feels against his skin, but he pushes the thought away.

He sits down on the toilet to pull off his joggers and pants, shivering at the rush of cold air. His hands shake when he turns on the water, setting it to a temperature he hopes will be okay.

When he steps in, the water feels like pellets against his skin, too cold and stinging where they hit. Dan squeezes his eyes shut, feeling the trails of ice cold pain running down his spine and soaking into his hair, and he reaches back to adjust the temperature.

It burns. But there’s already tears rolling down his cheeks, leaking into the rush of the shower. He crosses his arms over his chest, and tries to stabilize the weakness there before his breathing gives out again. Nerves cut paths of pain across his back, spread like wildfire across his torso, and his voice cracks on a sob.

Dan tries to lift his arms to shampoo his hair, but pain cramps in his biceps and his shoulders grow weak, so he lets his hands fall and watches the shower wash unused soap away. The heat already has his head spinning, dizziness leeching across his scalp and making his vision go spotty.

He lasts a minute before his knees give out and he’s reaching out, flattening a palm against the shower wall as he falls. His vision goes black for a second, and Dan presses his face to the valley between his knees so he can pretend his blood pressure isn’t falling.

The soap is too high and Dan can’t drag himself back to his feet. Water beats against his skin. His chest buckles when he tries to breathe.

Dan sits there, crying, hoping water alone will be enough to make him feel human again.

---

He drags himself out of the shower without standing, hands clenched tight around the edge of the tub, fingers blanching under the pressure. Muscles in his back spasm and his legs can barely lift enough to crawl over it, and he ends up collapsing onto the bath mat the moment his weight sinks over the ledge.

His eyes are squeezed shut, but tears still leak from the corners. His vision is still spotty. His hands shake when he tries to snag the towel from its hook on the wall, so weak that the cloth falls from his hand in a second. The bathroom is cold, making phantom bruises burst across his body even though his shoulders and stomach are still bright red and burning.

Dan doesn’t stand. He lays there, muscles spasming and chest buckling with every breath, and stares at the ceiling until he can actually see again.

It must take a while, because there’s a knock on the door.

“Dan? Are you okay?”

He swallows, tilts his head back so he can stare at the doorknob. All he’d need to do is reach up and snag the handle to unlock it. But he’s lying there, naked, still dirty from the week. His dick is resting against his thigh and he can feel the pattern of the mat pressing against his ass, and he feels his cheeks flush at the thought.

There’s another knock. “Dan?”

He swallows, reaches to the side and snags his towel between his fingers, dragging it over. The fabric isn’t soft, and hurts when he drapes it over his lap.

And then he reaches up to unlock the door.

The click echos through the room. Phil must hear it from the other side because the door’s cracking open in a second.

“Dan?”

He steps inside, already staring at where Dan is lying on the floor.

“Oh my god,” breathes Phil. “Are you okay?”

“‘M dizzy,” Dan mumbles. “Hurts. Showers hurt.”

Phil frowns. He looks like he wants to say you can’t even wear a shirt of course it hurts, but he just turns away from Dan and reaches into the cabinet under the sink. When he stands again, he’s holding an old looking blue towel between his hands.

“It’s softer,” he says. “I’ll go get you crisps and you can–” He motions vaguely to the white towel draped across Dan’s hips, cheeks going pink as he darts out of the room.

Dan makes quick work of switching the towels, sighing in relief as the worn blue fabric rests softly against his skin. Phil knocks again when he returns, and crouches down to hand Dan the bowl he brought with him.

“Do you want to sit up?” asks Phil.

Dan nods, and Phil reaches for him carefully. His hands hook under Dan’s arms, draw him upright slowly. He grabs the white towel, bunches it up and sets it on the edge of the tub. He helps Dan lean back, frowning when Dan hisses in pain at the press of cold porcelain to his shoulder blades. His head falls back, towel cushioning the press of his skull.

Phil sits next to him, legs drawn up and arms crossed over bent knees.

“I’m fine,” Dan croaks.

Phil’s responding laugh is bitter. “I’m not blind, you know,” he says. “At least, with my glasses I’m not.”

He cracks a smile, pained and tense. His heart is racing, beating itself against his ribs and he can feel the weight of every breath settling heavily on his insides. Phil sets the bowl of crisps on his thighs, and Dan’s fingers shake when he reaches for one, but doesn’t bring it to his mouth.

“Too sore to eat?” says Phil, and there’s no accusation there but–

“I’m still going to work tomorrow.”

Phil frowns, brows furrowing. “Dan,” he whispers, but no words follow. They’re not necessary, when his voice is so low and somber, when he’s staring at Dan like he just announced that he’s dying.

“I can’t lose this job,” says Dan, letting his eyes fall closed.

“Why? It’s hurting you.”

His exhale shudders, lips drawing into a frown. Dan wants to reach out, curl his fingers into Phil’s palm. Touch, warm and gentle and soothing, is more grounding than the cold tub pressed to his back, the towel draped over his lap. He cracks his eyes open, vision gone hazy again, still dotted in black, but clear enough to see the way worry creases Phil’s features.

“I need to pay rent. Need to try,” answers Dan. “Don’t wanna go back to Wokingham.”

Words stay tight in his chest, but Dan doesn’t say my parents don’t get it or my dad still thinks I’m faking to be lazy. And he definitely doesn’t say I’ve never met anyone who treats me like you do and don’t want to lose it.

Phil reaches for him, though. His hand lands on Dan’s knee and smooths over bare skin there, before falling into the space between them so their fingers brush together.

“I’m not going to kick you out because you’re sick.”

He says it like it’s not a burden, not a problem, like he’d never even considered the idea and Dan’s heart clenches. He reaches out, rests his hand over Phil’s so his fingers can curl into Phil’s palm.

“You have to pay rent,” says Dan.

Phil shrugs. “I’ll figure it out, get help if I need to,” he says. “I’m not going to kick you out. You’re my friend and you’re sick and– I care about you, okay? I’m not going kick you out.”

Dan almost says: nobody’s cared about me this much before, but he swallows it back. “It’s been less than a month,” he says instead.

“So?” says Phil.

If his eyes didn’t hurt, Dan would roll them. Because it should be obvious, why this is a terrible idea. It’s been obvious to everyone before Phil, the uselessness Dan carries with him, the worthlessness of a body so broken. He almost says that, too, mind hazy and echoing a constant strain of you can’t just leech of us your whole life, Daniel.

“I’m gonna try,” he mumbles. “I need to at least try.”

Phil smiles then, so soft Dan wants to reach out and hold onto the way blue eyes gleam with understanding, with caring.

“Okay,” says Phil. “But if it doesn’t work out, you still have a home here, okay?”

Head still spinning, hands shaking so much his crisp falls from his fingers, Dan manages to smile back. His mind lingers dumbly on the word home until Phil reaches into the bowl and brings a crisp to his mouth for him.

#phan #phanfic #phanfiction #flares #callie writes words

[genderfluidmollymauks]

highlights from last nights session

a continuation from this campaign

the dm, before even fucking starting: i would like one of you to roll a d20 me: i’ll do it. just a straight d20? dm: yah me: i got a nat one the entire party: *laughing* dm: i- ok, so there was a mechanic involved that you had to roll literally anything but that.

also, since i rolled the first nat 1, i have to make the highlights reel. buckle up.

the bard woke up first, and tried to make breakfast. rolled a 3 to make breakfast. we all wake up to the smell of smoke and i, thinking quickly, throw a rock at the fire the bard made

bard: what are you doing! me: it was on fire! bard: i made the fire! that was for breakfast! me: ... oh

the bard braids my hair and several things happen during this time

i ask if she stole a hankerchief

she gets blue hair dye all over her hands

we realize “oh, where’s the ranger, you know, your half brother”

the bard freaks the fuck out when we realize the ranger is missing bc they are. siblings.

me: i call for bambi (the ranger’s deer companion) dm: bambi is right there me: great, can you lead us to febey? dm: bambi looks exasperated. she just goes to a tree and lays down.

the ranger was asleep in the tree. 

the bard threw a rock at him

lots of rocks being thrown this session, as you can tell

after this rock throwing session, we all kept following the trail from yesterday to find the person we were hired to find and then out of nowhere, the dm goes :) roll a perception check

the ranger got a NAT ONE and heard a wounded animal. fun!

there was no wounded animal. just a swamp. 

which we got stuck in

me: fuck me: that was in character

i did that several times throughout the session

me: we need to go to that swamp.  carter: we need to follow the markings me: no, i remember, specifically, loki said to go to the swamp. they said the guy we’re rescuing was stuck in a swamp, and it would be kinda funny if i got stuck too, but that isn’t the point, we’re supposed to go to the swamp. so unless i remembered wrong, or my dm fucked up-

oh, by the way, i was RIGHT, the markings did lead to the swamp :)

we enter a scary hole in the swamp, and we hear a scary disembodied voice ask “WHO GOES THERE”

the artificer, trying to be practical: carter. me, being myself: i’m a paladin the bard, trying so hard to get us safely out of here: we’re the circus 

scary voice: A PALADIN? WHO DO YOU SERVER, PALADIN me, realizing my mistakes: loki scary voice: TELL ME, HAVE YOU HEARD OF THE ROTTING GOD? me, very aware of my mistakes: uh, no, but i always like to keep my options open scary voice: ARE YOU READY TO COMMIT YOUR SOUL TO THE ROTTING GOD? me, so so very aware of my many, many mistakes: im not ready to commit to anything, but if you have an hour long power point presentation-

me, ooc: in the back of my head im just going “loki loki loki help help loki help” dm: loki doesn’t respond me, who knows loki has never shut the fuck up a day in their life, comforted me when i cried, and has always made a point to be there for me when i need them: oh no

a tiefling in a big goopy sack descends from the ceiling and the entire party basically goes “this is either florian or rose’s romancable npc”

me: jeremy i swear to GOD if this is my girlfriend-

it was florian, all is well

the scary disembodied voice turned out to be a lady with wings, a tail, and horns, who looked vaguely fiendish, and we all kind just went “hot” and referred to her solely as “hot lady”

the bard almost seduced her. almost.

during the fight florian was a BADASS with all kinds of fire spells

dm: florian goes up to you and touches your shoulder and says “flame on” me: i ask him if he’s a flaming bisexual dm: he gives you a wink

i, the paladin with a chronic inability to hit anything, ever, got a NAT 20 to hit

dm: i’m giving you a free divine smite for that

dm: roleb, you can’t see this, but the rest of you see their sword light up with a soft green light as they hit the hot lady, and she screams me, in character, after I hit her: yah. i’m a paladin.

after the bard sang a CUSTOM BARDIC INSPIRATION SONG FOR CARTER i took the opportunity to hand the lady (who had at some point ceased to be hot and was now just an old woman screaming at us) a poster about loki

dm: she’s going to take a swipe at you with her nasty claws me: wha- oh right, her turn is right after dorami’s. dm: you take 4 points slashing and 6 points of acid damage me: what the FUCK me, in character, to the lady: i guess you’re not a fan.

after the battle:

florian: so simon sent you to save me the other members of the party: yah me: nope, loki sent me. me, handing florian a poster about loki: you’ve been saved by the paladin of loki! congratulations! i’m not asking you to convert or anything, but a little gold thrown their way wouldn’t hurt

im basically just like “unless theres loot anywhere around here, i want to get the fuck out” bc im scared as fuck and cant contact my deity, who literally never stops giving me unprompted advice

we find a chest, and when i open it, i, bad dex mcgee, had to make a dex save. i failed, and took a dart to the shoulder. i kept the dart.

we all also rolled ridiculously high perception checks, so:

dm: you pull out the linens, and the three of you look at it, and you all at once kind of go “false bottom”

we find 420 gold

florian: i think i was useful in that fight, and i deserve a share of the gold carter, not having that bullshit:  if you want me to help, i get my fair share, which does not include paying the damsel in distress

we also find a fancy dagger (i took it) a fancy ring (the bard took it) and the fucking rock (which the artificer took)

i need to explain something about this rock.

this is the rock that when we tried to roll arcana for it, with a NAT 20, we couldn’t understand it, and it just felt old. this is the rock that we found in the domain of a woman proclaiming shit about a rotting god taking my fucking soul. this is a rock we found in a place i could not reach my deity.

tHIS IS THE ROCK THAT WHEN CARTER TRIED TO SKIP IT, SHE HAD TO ROLL A WISDOM SAVING THROW, AND THE ROCK TOLD HER NOT TO THROW IT AWAY.

I HATE THIS FUCKING ROCK

me, literally at half health, running around after the battle: does anyone need healing :)

i use my lay on hands points to heal 2 points of damage to florian, 3 points for dorami, ANOTHER POINT FOR FLORIAN AFTER CARTER SLAPS HIM, and five points healing a disease florian had, that the dm later revealed he DIDNT ACTUALLY HAVE

meanwhile i’m basically bleeding out going :) this is fine :)

me: i run out dm: where to? me: the exit

me: as i go to the path i’m just going “loki? loki? loki?” dm: as soon as you get to the path, you hear in your ear, loki going “rose? caleb? ROLEB?”

loki: i couldn’t hear you, i couldn’t see you. i have been around for a very long time, and that was the most scared i’ve ever been me: yah but you’re the all powerful god, try being the squishy mortal

loki: you should heal yourself, you should- me: what what no no i’m fine, listen have you heard of the rotting god? loki: you know i hear your friends telling you to take care of yourself, and i agree, you should me: i’m fine but i feel like you’re dodging the question. do you know anything about the rotting god, because that scared me loki: you know whats even scarier? i don’t know anything about that.

artificer, ooc: are you talking to loki out loud? me, ooc: yes. bard, ooc: dorami is just like “is this normal paladin behavior??” loki: you should probably go, you’re freaking out your friends me: no i’m not! bard: uh, yes, sweetie, you kinda are 

we are officially booking it back to town, and the bard and florian are hanging in the back flirting grossly the entire time

me, yelling back: IF YOU TWO WANT TO HAVE AN EVENING ROMP IN THE WOODS, BE MY GUEST, BUT WE’RE TRYING TO GET BACK TO TOWN bard, yelling back: I CAN DO BOTH

we also had to roll perception checks on the way back to town, and i got the highest, and i was the only one who saw a fucking shadow in the forest beside us

like i cannot stress this enough i think we accidentally stole an unholy relic from a rotting god and its the GODDAMN ROCK

we all start playing with matches on the way back, because i’m a pyromaniac, florian is a fire magician, and the bard has pyrotechnics

fireworks were made

dm: you get back to town and you realize it’s been overrun by mandated soldiers the party, currently consisted of an ex-soldier who deserted, a professional liar, the ex criminal we just rescued, an actual criminal, and a sixteen year old with a sword: oh shit

#dnd #dnd shenanigans #artificer #paladin #ranger #bard #the bard had to leave halfway through :/ so this is mostly a recap post for him #which is why its so detailed in places i think are important #rose

[artificiary-fr]

Hi, hello, I'm so sorry to intrude- genuinely. But if you feel like you're intruding on people in a group discord- please take it from a fellow RSD person: it's not you. often times people within a group don't know how to 'properly' respond to a share of ideas. most often they wait for a signal from other members. and if someone post something more 'reactionable' after you? then the conversation shifts to that person rather than you. This isn't about 'finding better friends' just... about (1/2)

(2/2) knowing that your friends are probably at least half as awkward as you, and don't know how to respond. If you talk to members individually and they like the idea? Yes!! But if you don't talk to more than one member individually? Know your view is biased. Not negatively or rudely somehow- just. Factually. People with rejection sensitive dysphoria get real fucked up about some... 'nothing' shit sometimes. ... uh. sidetracked 3/3: share your OC's. Talk about the things you love. BE WHO YOU ARE. and find the people that will love you /FOR/ that, not /BECAUSE/ of it.

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

Hey anon! There’s no need to apologize - an ask is never an intrusion (unless it’s like.... aphobic or homo/transphobic or smth but that doesn’t apply here / isn’t the point) - rather, I appreciate it a lot. I put all three of your asks together in one, I hope you don’t mind! I’m gonna answer under the cut as well so my own words don’t take up a ton of space n’ such. I have a rambling problem.

Okay, so. First thing’s first: I really appreciate you approaching me and saying what you've said. I feel like I guilt tripped y’all into it - that’s the real bad downturn of venting about stuff like this I guess, like when people do pay attention due to the topic matter you’ve forced them into it - but either way, I still appreciate it. It’s definitely not an intrusion.

So a little before-note: I myself have been diagnosed with GAD / SAD (generalized/social anxiety disorder) and have suffered from diagnosed chronic depression for... uh... about 8 years? Anxiety for about 11-12 years. I’ve gone to therapy for it for around four-ish years (I think???), but my therapist left her job at the beginning of this year and felt I’d progressed and learned enough coping skills that I’ll be OK on my own with periodic check-ins with someone. I’ve also got untreated/untested ADHD of some kind - my therapist never got around to doing some other tests with me beyond one preliminary simple one. Relevant bc I understand how sometimes it’s not not-listening but an inability to focus. Some background/context, woo!

Anyway... I felt like I’d heard the term RSD before somewhere (can’t remember where) - but I didn’t know what it was at all. So I looked it up! I try not to attribute mental illnesses or afflictions to myself unless I’ve been diagnosed, but based on what I was reading, I just kind of went “...oh.” Next time I have a therapy check-in, whenever that might be, I wrote a note about it to maybe bring up or talk about it.

But on the other hand non-RSD, it’s like.... normally, and in the past, I’ve been able to shrug this kind of stuff off. Does it sting/hurt a bit? Sure, and I’m sure it would for most people! In this case though it’s something that’s just been building and building and building for a few months now, with multiple people in multiple groups, both one-on-one, in discord servers, and IRL. The servers just happen to be most relevant because of the covid isolation. So it’s like a... straw on camel’s back, rather than everytime situation. Does that make sense? I’m rambling, sorry. If that’s still RSD, cool! (...ish!) I’m still gonna bring it up either way. I’m just unsure if the compounding still like... counts or not?

TL;DR for there - sounds like what RSD seems to be, but instead of overnight or every occurrence, this little breakdowns been building for months from multiple sources. Unsure if that’s still RSD or not, bc I also have GAD/SAD.

Anyway continuing on.

I’m sure it wasn’t meant like that, but the bit about “ if someone post something more 'reactionable' after you? then the conversation shifts to that person” kind of hit different in a really big ouch sort of way.  I get where you’re coming from and what you meant by it, definitely! It just sounded kind of like a.... hm. “If someone else posts something more interesting than you, of course conversation will shift to them.” Which... is exactly part of what’s been hurting so badly ahaha. Nobody wants to be ostracized or treated like they don’t exist - especially if it wasn’t long after they talked in the first place. Nobody wants to share their happiness or excitement and then be deemed “not interesting / reactionable enough”. Y’know?

The problem with the talking to more folks in groups one-on-one to share is that’s where the possibility of RSD falls aside and my diagnosed GAD/SAD takes over. I get scared sharing one-on-one because I’m afraid people are gonna call me stupid or shut me down or even then pretend I don’t exist bc it hasn’t been the first time - especially IRL. Talking to people or making friends is really really hard. And when that fear gets reinforced it just.... snowballs.

It’s kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

But anyway, god, I just wrote a rambling essay, which yikes for a whole other reason bc once I start I just don’t stop, eh? Sorry, Anon! I’ll go ahead and quit while I’m ahead, but I just want to reiterate - I really appreciate you sending me this. It was really nice of you, and I appreciate that you shared your own experiences via having RSD and how that can affect how things look - especially since it gave me something to look into.

Thank you. <3

#not fr #arti parties #vent #askbox #...should i put this in askbox since its a serious topic? idk #cw: anxiety #my personal posts being called 'arti parties' feels so inappropriate right now

[diarrheaworldstarhiphop]

The announcement last week that the Trump administration was shutting down the "covert" CIA program of arming Syrian "rebel" groups could not have come too soon.

As I've reported here in more than three dozen articles over the past three years, the CIA support program had suffered chronic failures, including defections of groups "vetted" by the CIA to al-Qaeda and ISIS, and leakage of weapons provided by the CIA into the hands of those same terror groups.

The pinnacle of this failure came in Obama's last few hours in the White House in January. He ordered the bombing of a terror training camp that also hosted fighters from a CIA-"vetted" group embedded with al-Qaeda; that same group officially partnered with al-Qaeda a few days later.

Another defining moment of the debacle came last year, when CIA-backed groups fought against other CIA-backed groups:

The Washington Post announced the cancellation of the CIA support program last week, claiming -- without evidence -- that the move was made to placate Russia:

The termination of the program was confirmed by SOCOM Gen. Tony Thomas at the Aspen Security Forum on Friday:

Gen. Thomas specifically refuted the Washington Post's Russia tie-in:

As I reported here at PJ Media in February, the CIA had already begun shutting down the weapons pipeline to the "rebel" groups:

Predictably, the "rebel" groups began flocking to al-Qaeda as soon as the CIA pipeline began to slow.

In response to the cancellation announcement, cheerleaders of the "vetted moderate rebels" complained that the U.S. hadn't supported the groups enough. But that talking point was rebutted by Obama nearly three years ago. In an August 2014 interview with Tom Friedman in the New York Times, Obama dismissed the notion that more weapons would have given the "rebels" any kind of edge, and he expressed frustration at the inability to find enough "moderates":

With “respect to Syria,” said the president, the notion that arming the rebels would have made a difference has “always been a fantasy. This idea that we could provide some light arms or even more sophisticated arms to what was essentially an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth, and that they were going to be able to battle not only a well-armed state but also a well-armed state backed by Russia, backed by Iran, a battle-hardened Hezbollah, that was never in the cards.”

Even now, the president said, the administration has difficulty finding, training and arming a sufficient cadre of secular Syrian rebels: “There’s not as much capacity as you would hope.”

And yet, just a month later the GOP congressional leadership passed $500 million in additional funds for an eventual U.S.-backed, Pentagon-trained army of 15,000 "vetted moderates" to combat ISIS. In less than a year, that half-billion dollar boondoggle approved by Congress turned into a disaster. By July 2015, fewer than 60 fighters had been successfully vetted and trained -- costing taxpayers nearly $4 million for each fighter:

And immediately after the Pentagon-trained and -armed fighters left their camp in Turkey and crossed the border into Syria, they promptly disappeared. As I reported here at PJ Media, most of the fighters had been captured -- along with all their weapons -- by al-Qaeda.:

The Pentagon quickly denied the al-Qaeda abduction -- but our report was confirmed by a published statement shortly thereafter:

The remainder of Obama's 54-man anti-ISIS army were plagued by more abductions and attacks by al-Qaeda:

Some reports indicated that the fighters of the Pentagon's "train-and-equip" program had been sold out by our NATO ally Turkey:

Just a year after GOP congressional leadership passed $500 million for a "vetted moderate" anti-ISIS army, Pentagon officials were telling Congress that only four or five trained fighters were still left in the field where 5,400 had been authorized to be trained by December 2015.

Obama refused to take responsibility. The White House quickly shifted the blame for the "train-and-equip" debacle:

By any measure, President Obama’s effort to train a Syrian opposition army to fight the Islamic State on the ground has been an abysmal failure. The military acknowledged this week that just four or five American-trained fighters are actually fighting.  

But the White House says it is not to blame. The finger, it says, should be pointed not at Mr. Obama but at those who pressed him to attempt training Syrian rebels in the first place -- a group that, in addition to congressional Republicans, happened to include former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Remarkably, the Pentagon unsuccessfully pushed for another round of "train-and-equip" just a few months later. Congress wisely demurred:

All that was left following that disaster was the CIA weapons program:

Weapons Leakage, Defections, and Betrayal

One of the chronic problems with the CIA support program was that weapons would regularly leak from "vetted" groups associated under the so-called "Free Syrian Army" (FSA) to designated terrorist organizations, including Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate, as well as ISIS. This especially was true after the CIA began shipping U.S. TOW anti-tank missiles to the rebels.

This weapons leakage would occur with astounding regularity, and yet Obama, with the full blessing of GOP leaders, waived restrictions on arming terrorist organizations to be able to transfer weapons to the "Syrian opposition."

Initially, the transfer of weapons from CIA-backed groups to jihadist organizations was so prevalent that the U.S. and the UK suspended their weapons support programs in December 2013. One report in February 2014 claimed that ISIS had seized $500 million in weapons intended for the FSA.

Yet in April 2014, the CIA began shipping weapons again. The problem only got progressively worse:

A German journalist who spent 10 days embedded with ISIS in Iraq and Syria told France24 that ISIS was obtaining weapons supplied by Western governments and being sold by the FSA:

Todenhofer went on to say that the IS militants are being armed by the West -- if only indirectly -- as Western moves to arm moderate Syrian rebels have backfired.  

“They buy the weapons that we give to the Free Syrian Army, so they get Western weapons -- they get French weapons … I saw German weapons, I saw American weapons,” he said.

“The best seller of weapons is the Free Syrian Army, which is financed by NATO, financed probably also by France, but at least by the United States.”

There were also wholesale defections from CIA-backed "vetted moderate" groups to the same terrorist organizations:

And in at least one case, there was outright betrayal by one of the CIA's "vetted moderate" partners:

ISIS leaders openly bragged about elements of the CIA-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) defecting to their side:

For a long time, Western and Arab states supported the Free Syrian Army not only with training but also with weapons and other materiel. The Islamic State commander, Abu Yusaf, added that members of the Free Syrian Army who had received training — from the United States, Turkey and Arab military officers at an American base in Southern Turkey — have now joined the Islamic State. “Now many of the FSA people who the West has trained are actually joining us,” he said, smiling.

That basically sums up the quality of the CIA's "vetting" efforts. These defections raise serious questions about who performed the vetting.

READMONER (tHIS FUCKING POST IS A PAIN INT EH ASS AND IS SEEMINGINGLY BOTTOMLESS LLOL)

#syria #syrian civil war #cia #trump administration #obama administration