Hello everyone, I’m back with a more up to date post about what’s been going on since this post.
First off: Thank you to everyone who had donated, reached out, shared this post and helped IRL. It’s meant the world to us!
Unfortunately, this post is a mixed bag of news. So, let’s start with the positive.
Jules’s Cancer is in complete remission!! Nothing showed on their PET CT Scan they got at the end of October! Now they just have to go in for check ups every few months, get their feeding tube removed and their port! They are back to work and doing great! We’re very grateful this is how this story ended. It couldn’t have been possible without all of you.
As for myself... My surgery went well. Despite the bumps that happened. I ended up having to have more tissue and organs removed than expected. Cervix, Uterus that had a ton of Adenomyosis and Fibroids, Fallopian Tubes, Necrotic Ovaries, 20 Spots of Endometriosis, and a Large Umbilical Endometriosis Tumor. My surgery lasted longer than expected and my healing is going to take 8 to 12 weeks verses the 4 we expected.
I am currently waiting on pathology reports to see if anything was cancerous. I was a high risk case so they sent everything in for biopsy. My Doctor saved my life and made the right choice in making sure this surgery happened sooner rather than later.
But, it seems as we were finally seeing some light – something else is testing us in a big way.
Remember the house situation from last year?
Well, despite our best efforts it seems we are back to square one. I want to make this clear: This is no ones fault. It is all legal technicality. My aunt has done her best, but she can’t even pull from the equity to gift us without the courts interjecting. She’s tried. And due to the nature of it I am legally not allowed to speak much more on the situation. Let’s just say a life lesson was learned: Never get private student loans. EVER.
Meaning: We’ll be homeless without extra help. We have a plan to get out of this house and into another place of living, but we need to raise as much money as possible for moving costs.
This is quite a blow considering Jules just beat cancer and I myself am healing from a major surgery. The worst part is we don’t know when we’ll be booted out – just that we will be and soon. There’s nothing we can do we’ve exhausted all resources that we possibly could.
I’m currently fighting disability in order to get my checks and time off approved. We’re down a paycheck and the money raised from this summer went into medical debt and equipment for Jules. Cancer is an expensive disease. From drip tubes to special care items to medication and medical bills we are drained.
Jules and my brother Stephen are doing as much over time as they can stand to earn extra money. And if I could I would be back at work. We’ve also pulled from certain savings accounts as well to get this ball rolling. But, since we’re still having to pay the bills in this place until the time comes that we get booted – it’s not quite enough.
We are in dire straights and anything will help us. Please help us keep a roof over our head! We are scared and not sure what else to do.
@jeweltonejules and @silverwhisp is Jules blog and my brothers blog respectively. Jules has commissions open currently.
good art is when something looks like real life, the more real it looks the more better the art. abstracted figures give my trad children nightmares, one time they were exposed to cubism and couldn't go outside for a week
legend tells of a mysterious being called “nuance” that allows multiple things to be true at the same time. some say you can still hear its voice whispering in the trees
fucked that you can’t fix other people especially when you really care about them. Oh so im just supposed to be there for you while you suffer. like a useless cunt gargoyle
Ooooo a Lucio stan. I'm wondering what's your take on Lucio's relationship with touch/sensation after not being able to feel anything as a ghost? It's pretty obvious he's touch starved with how much he clings to MC in his route, but i've been wondering another thing. Since he was incapable of having any sensory experiences for good three years do you think he would have moments where it gets overwhelming? I can imagine he wouldn't try to show it but going from nothing too all in a short span of time does sound really overwhelming. Then again this man seems to love extremes so...
It is both too much and never enough, in an odd, complicated way that he doesn't want to talk about. Or think about. He is a man of extremes that spent nearly two decades indulging in hedonistic debauchery! He doesn't get emotional over simple parts of human experience!
Except yes, he does. It's not just touch, either. Early on, there are so many "simple" things that might suddenly hit him with "it's been three years": food (repeatable), sleep, actually looking like himself (variable elements of that), travel, even pain in some ways. But touch is on top of the list, indeed. Not to mention that the MC adds a facet of intimacy, kindness, dare I say love, that Lucio might just be straight up unfamiliar with and that messes with his emotions the most.
Lucio is very good at "not thinking about it". I'd say most of the time, the sensations are not overwhelming him per se, but are definitely enhanced, he reaches a whole new level of enjoying life's pleasures. And whenever something is almost too much, he often manages to shove that feeling to the back of his mind fairly quickly*. How he learns to handle it will heavily depend on the MC, whether they notice, encourage him to talk about it, how they handle their own emotions, generally what sort of influence they have on him.
There's a fairly high chance for him to cry during/after sex though, especially if it gets particularly intimate and/or intense. That is something that I'd say can be overwhelming for him in those early post-route days.
Not that it'd stop him of course, he's got a few years to catch up on.
*I actually have a part of a draft of a rewritten scene that features this! It's a dragoat version of the moment they first arrive to the Realms 🐉💛🐐 Might change it into third person later because idk how many people even like first-person OC writing, but here's what I've got right now:
---
The first thing I feel as I slowly come to my senses is a dull sting of cold on my arms. Confusion cutting short my worry over separation from Asra, I try to open my eyes, but have to shut them again to blink away the stark white light reflecting off… is that snow?
Then, I become aware of several feelings at once. The warmth under my cheek, the scent of skin and fur and faint perfume, and then – movement.
I scramble onto my hands and knees as Lucio underneath me stirs with a groan. For a few long moments, I am transfixed by the color returned to his hair and clothes, the ghost I got used to over the past weeks now properly resembling the figure from the paintings adorning the Palace rooms and hallways. It is almost dreamlike, and when my voice comes back to me, all I manage to utter is:
“It worked.”
The bright red of his eyes’ sclera briefly startles me.
“What–“ With that single word, Lucio freezes with his mouth agape, meeting my eyes with a wide-eyed stare of his own. It quickly grows frantic, moving from me to his own hands, his clothes, and then he sits up so quickly that I barely manage to avoid collision. His right hand quickly shifts from feeling his own stomach to his chest, face, then raking fingers through his hair. When Lucio looks back at me, the shock and disbelief on his face gave way to the most sincere grin I have yet seen from him.
“You’re right! You’re right! Ahahaha!”
He jumps to his feet, getting a gasp out of me when he easily lifts me with him. Lucio’s laughter echoes through the snowy woods as he spins me around, giddy with excitement. I whoop and giggle along with his sheer infectious joy over something that seemed impossible just a few hours ago.
“I can feel things again! The snow’s cold, you’re warm… This is the best day ever!”
Lucio doesn’t let go of me after he sets me down on my feet, instead pulling me into a desperate, firm hug.
Firm, but not crushing. As I eagerly hug him back, barely keeping from self-indulgently nuzzling into him, I realise that Lucio still does not feel quite right. He is solid against me, certainly not a ghost anymore, but my senses seem slightly dulled, the touch missing just a small tinge of weight behind it, and his scent being weaker, less personal than someone should have. I recall Asra’s teachings about the magical realms, people visiting them with their soul and mind, but almost never – physically. I have to wonder if Lucio, too, cannot feel me like he would in the material world, but this is not the time for such questions.
Not if what he has now is already plenty, compared to his existence as a ghost.
Perhaps without analysing my own senses, I would miss the slight tremble in his arms, or how a few of his breaths have a quiet shake to them. With ache in my heart, I hold him closer until it soon passes, wishing I could do more, but that would be completely inappropriate—
Releasing his hold on me, Lucio plants a messy, lingering smooch on my cheek.
…
…
I touch the spot where he kissed me. My skin is still warm from his lips. When I speak, it comes out as something between a whisper and a squeak.
“Did you just… kiss me?”
My broken voice, or possibly my questioning of the obvious, gets a short laugh out of Lucio.
“Hmm. Pretty sure I did.” He winks at me. “And why not?”
I can think of plenty of reasons, the same reasons that I have been repeating to myself for the past week in futile attempt to still my own feelings, which sprouted like weeds and seized my mind in the most distracting fashion. Lucio’s casual compliments and teasing were not helping matters, but I convinced myself so firmly that this’d been nothing more than his manner of talking or entertaining himself.
Lucio does not give me the time to voice any of the thoughts rushing through my mind. His smile turns utterly shameless and he holds both hands out to me.
“I’ll just say it, Alastor. I’ve had a lot of fun ever since you showed up. You’re a wicked smart, adorable, hotshot magician. What’s not to like?” He moves a little closer, my face suddenly feeling hot under the intensity of his gaze. “And I know you like me, too.”
My breath hitches. “Oh, gods, I was not hiding it well, was I…”
“Hah! No, not at all.” Of all the foolish— “It’s hard to miss with those big, pretty eyes of yours.”
He brushes a few stray strands of hair away from my face and tucks them behind my ear, giving him a better view of the said eyes, and I finally have to look away. I can almost feel my pupils dilating as his fingers then gently trace my jaw until his forefinger rests under my chin, slightly tilting my face upwards so I look back at him again.
“So… how about I kiss you properly this time? I say we’ve waited for that long enough.”
This is a terrible idea, the rational part of my mind reminds me. I cannot offer nearly enough as a partner to someone like Lucio, once a count of Vesuvia married to Nadia.
Yet after the sleepless nights, the hours spent on wishful sketches and scribbling lamenting prose throughout my diary’s pages, whatever rationale I might have had to refuse this offer is overpowered by the selfish, emotional part of me. The part that hopes, yearns, desires this, him, so fervently that I can do nothing but follow its demands at last, breaking the silence just before it becomes awkward.
Basically, Mr grifter announced that he might be getting into the collecting side of yugioh, which would lead to the scalping hell that now plagues the Pokémon and One Piece TCGs
As a joke, MBTYugioh gave them pointers on what to “invest in”, recommending some of the WORST shit products that this game released in the years
He then followed up with a tongue-in-cheek, clearly trolling video recommending shit like Legendary Duelists sets, Duelist of Deep and Synchro Storm, and the Platinum cards, and exclusive COINS before ending the video with “Don’t invest in yugioh. You will lose money due to this game’s reprint policies”
Like, it was very obvious for anyone with half-a-brain cell and is familiar with Yugioh that the video is a joke
BUT a bunch of scalping bots took the video at face value and bought out these doodoo, worthless products immediately after his fuckass video came out
Now they’re sitting on unsellable trash. 100% deserved, I hope everyone whose trying to grift this game like Pokémon loses their money
genuinely i don’t think it’s possible to easily explain the explicit part of online friendships to people who don’t Understand. i don’t mean like, explicit in the sense of “oh you’re sexting” or whatever. no. i mean when you and your friend start gleefully making up explicit sexual scenarios for your shared blorbos and you get giddier and giddier as you add more detail and you’ll be grinning at your screen as you type away at mach speeds. and it’s entirely nonsexual in an interpersonal sense, you’re not really getting Into it, but ohhhhh it’s soooooo fun and satisfying. and you can NEVER tell someone who doesn’t also do this that your mood is actively improved like fivefold because you and your friend played Sexual Tuoys together because they’ll go “what the FUCK.”
The cops very clearly planted evidence on him because they had to make an arrest because all eyes were on them and whoever actually did the deed was making them look stupid.
Why would the real killer hero have kept the weapon on his person and traveled two states over while carrying it and a manifesto in his bag, conveniently turning the crime into a federal matter? The same guy whose bag they found in a park, filled with monopoly money? Why did the police turn off their bodycams, take Luigi's stuff, drive a block away, turn their bodycams back on, go back into the restaurant, and then arrest him?
From the moment of his arrest, even left-of-center media has been presuming his guilt without examining anything (e.g. calling him "the killer" instead of "alleged" or "accused") and then when I say he didn't do it, the nearest person chimes in with some quip that tells me they think he did do it but should go free anyway. Don't get me wrong, I would have the same attitude if he had done it. But he didn't. It makes me feel like the only sane person in the world, even among my staunchly leftist friends.
“you cannot ship these two fictional characters because—” actually I can because they are not real people. they are just toys I play with. you cannot apply real-world morality to fiction or how strangers play with their imaginary toys in their imaginary sandboxes.
you can, however, curate your own internet experience by minding your own business, muting/blocking/scrolling past what upsets you but does not hurt anyone in real life in any way, shape or form.
