IAN GALLAGHER + his journey with bipolar disorder

╰┈➤ “At times, being bipolar can be an all-consuming challenge, requiring a lot of stamina and even more courage, so if you’re living with this illness and functioning at all, it’s something to be proud of, not ashamed of." - Carrie Fisher

It's alright to scream

I'm screaming too

Why'd you think I do the things I do?

For shadows haunted me like ghosts

So I became what I feared the most

I conduct fear like electricity

A manmade monstrosity

Killer — The Hoosiers

i woke up from a nap with this song stuck in my head and. yea

Love all the dark urge players who saw larian go "look! They're all fixed now!" after durge rejected Bhaal and immediately went "what if they weren't tho"

sighh when all the songs i keep listening to are about romance and feeling heartbroken and not about being exploited by your boss and being exhausted.. sighhh....

Some matador studies :)

+ ref pic I like but couldn't even attempt to draw 😭

it's so funny (read: sad) that if bigoted fuckheads didn't insist i was a woman simply by virtue of my body at birth, i'd probably be chill with she/her pronouns in addition to he/they. if my mom didn't insist i was her daughter, i'd probably let her call me that, and we could still have a relationship.

i'm nonbinary and 'gendered' words are hypothetically meaningless, but because there are so many people who are more interested in telling me who i am rather than lovingly and curiously letting me express my own sense of self, those words carry trauma.

there's no reason a nonbinary person like myself can't be a son and a child and a daughter. there's no reason a nonbinary person like me can't go by he, they, and she.

'she' is not a slur. 'daughter' is not derogatory. 'beautiful' 'pretty' 'gorgeous' 'feminine' are not insults.

to the contrary, they're parts of language that express certain facets of a multi-faceted human existence, like mine.

and i have this sad, mournful feeling that if it weren't for unloving, condescending people, i'd probably be down to be called any of those things alongside my usual masculine/neutral terminology.

but i'd rather die than let anyone tell me what i have to be called.

The wonderful Guardian Bingo Fest mods put 'lollipops' on my card and my brain went 'ah yes let's be as weird as possible about this'.

Bonus photo for anyone risking pressing on a read more on one of my posts. You're safe from me rambling for once.

Zhao Yunlan has company now! ☺️

There was something so heartbreaking about how scared of being alone Basim was when he realized he would never see Nehal again. She might not have been real, but she was real to him and to me 😔. There was terror in his voice when he asked if he would be alone. Nehal was his best friend, his past and present. She was his constant companion throughout his childhood, a time when he probably felt very alone. His father is dead and he has to find a way to survive. He is alone. No parents, no brothers, no one. Yet there was Nehal. The one who he could always find. The one who kept him company. The one who kept him grounded and focused on important things. It was her face he saw when he awoke from his nightmares. It was her who comforted him and tried to help him get rid of them. It was her who appeared when he felt alone or conflicted. She was there when he needed her the most. At Alamut, he was never really alone. He was surrounded by people who encouraged him and cared about him. But when he left, she was there for him. They may have drifted apart, but you can't deny that they still loved each other (platonically). They had differing opinions and motivations, but they would still find peace in each other's presence. Their friendship was one of devotion and care for one another. There was never any fear that Nehal would abandon Basim. She always told him that she would never leave him and stay by his side forever. No matter where he was, he knew Nehal was out there. He knew she would be back in Anbar. She was his home, everything familiar to him. The part of him he could never leave behind. The part of him that would haunt him if he had not gone searching.

Now, he will never see her again. He will never talk to her again. He will never joke with her again. He will never hug her again. He will never rest knowing she would be there to wake him if he had a nightmare again. He will never hear the words he so desperately needs again. He will never be able to return to Anbar and find the house inhabited by a familiar face again. She is gone, and he will be alone. Not even a mentor to guide him. With Nehal's "death," Basim also died. He is now Loki, with all of his rage.

While Nehal was the manifestation of Loki and her appearance was concurrent with Basim's nightmares and him getting closer to the truth, that isn't how he saw it !! He associated her with comfort and home !! He never pieced it together. Why would he? His feelings were real and genuine. They were the truest besties ever

I would like to know exactly how luke asking annabeth to run away with him went down.

ooooo so interested in Treacherous!!

Okay this one is still very much an outline/mess of notes so I don't have any snips to share and it's probably the one I'm most shy about, idk why exactly, just feels like it would be less interesting to other people, so I'm just vibing by myself lol.

Anyway! It is an Anna!Lives AU where she ends up as a FEDRA lab rat for ~10 years and escapes right after Marlene finds and sends Ellie off with the fireflies. So then Joel and Tess take Anna to try to catch up at the state house but they miss them. Tess still gets bit (sorry) and then it follows Joel and Anna across the country to try to track down Ellie and as they spend more time together Anna keeps telling him more and more about little Ellie from when they were together a few years before they got separated. By the time they catch up to Ellie, Joel's ready to level the hospital for a kid he hasn't even met, and her mother.

Fun fact, I actually mentioned this one in an earlier chapter of Stubborn Love. It's one of the books Ellie gets at the library 😁

Thank you for the ask!

ah yes, people who accompanied kiana in her journey and life as well as had great influence on her all shown in the "graduation trip" preview

elysia

could not imagine being mentally ill enough to read 3 THOUSAND chapters of the same book especially when you are waiting for a new chapter every week

the higher-ups (and Yaga) immediately trying to leverage Gojo & Ieri's absence to put Yuuta on the roster??? God that's such a stark moment. Thank god Nanami and Gojo saw through that one immediately, because Yuuta wants to justify his own survival so badly he would've fallen straight into it.

That whole scene, with Yuuta immediately jumping on the opportunity to help people even though something is Extremely Wrong with him and he's on the brink of physical collapse--this boy is selfless to the point of self destruction and I am chewing the drywall about it. I love him so much.

If only he was able to summon his newly found homicidal rage in defense of himself, the higher-ups would no longer be a problem. Alas, this boy is Extremely Unwell.

(Sea Glass Gardens is absolutely incredible and i am obsessed with it in a way that is totally and 100% normal. I'm so normal about it, trust me <3 )

The thing about Yuuta is that he really is prime to be taken advantage of right now and the higher ups know it. They had him try to kill himself for them--they know that there's a window of opportunity that they can use to get him under their thumb and avoid The Problem of Gojo, which is, namely, having a human weapon who you cannot fully control. Gojo nailed it from the beginning: they want a magic gatling gun with no personality or free will. They learned their lesson with Gojo and are trying to rob Yuuta of his agency before he learns how to protect himself.

And Yaga's part in that scene really was meant to kind of emphasize how, even with the best intention's, he just doesn't work to protect the kids. Like. everything he said was technically true, and he meant it with the best of intentions. He's the guy who has to think of everyone's needs. he has to manage this crisis. he's got a lot of people hurt badly who just came out of a war, and a lot of people going into fights with some very aggravated curses spawning without sufficient manpower to address the danger and no healer to save them if they cut it a little too close. He didn't have the intention of manipulating or sacrificing Yuuta, but he was aware that it would come to his detriment and risk.

The issue is the higher ups. They don't give a shit about the people in their workforce. They should be the ones doing whatever it takes to solve this crisis and save their people--and if that means giving up on their machinations? They should have already done it. It's their responsibility.

They just don't care. They want Okkotsu Yuuta under their thumb, and their society hemorrhaging is treated like an opportunity, not a dire problem to be solved. They don't care if half a dozen of their own people need to die to do it. Hell, it's better if they do die--they can put it straight on Okkotsu for not being willing to sacrifice himself, when they should have been making whatever promises they had to in order to make this work.

Gojo's done this before, is the thing. He was Yuuta, a long time ago. Nanami was right there watching it happen. They both know what the higher ups do: They let society get to a crisis level and put all the responsibility on you to save it. they let you maneuver yourself into a vulnerable position as a result, and then they use it as leverage to put their goddamn boot on your neck.

The thing is that Gojo adopting megumi all those years ago really did put them into a crisis state. the zenin pitched the mother of all bitch fits trying to secure his unconditional return, and they were a huge percentage of jujutsu society's labor force and resource pools. instead of the higher ups managing the problem at all, they took advantage of the situation and shoved more and more of its weight and responsibility onto gojo, until he was dropping off his own kid at his abusers' compound thinking it was the only compromise that could resolve things. megumi paid the price for gojo not calling bullshit, and right now, with him in a hospital bed? gojo's less willing to repeat mistakes than ever.

he knows that they're going to use the safety and suffering of everyone else as the leverage against him, and he knows that as terrible as it is, he cannot blink first. He's played this game before, and he knows that the only way to get the higher ups to back off on something like this is to dig in your heels.

I think what happened to Megumi all those years ago and how bad it got before they put a stop to it is something that haunts all three of them. When they first started raising him, they were very young, and they were very broken, and they loved him very, very much. He was their little boy, and he was never the same after the Zenin. They were supposed to protect him, and they didn't, and not a single one of them has forgiven themselves for that.

Megumi was sort of sacrificed for the greater good when he was a kid. None of them thought that that was what they were doing when it happened, but that's what happened. His happiness, safety, and wellbeing were sacrificed to pacify the Zenin and make it easier on everyone else.

Megumi and Tsumiki had to become their non-negotiables after. They had to become the things they refused to compromise on. The Zenin would take miles and miles if you gave them a millimeter, let alone an inch.

Gojo didn't think he was compromising them when he left them on their own to deal with Geto's war. They were disgustingly self-sufficient kids. They had been alone for longer stretches of time when they were practically toddlers--they should have been fine on their own for a couple of weeks.

But they were still his kids, and he still left them alone for everyone else's sake, and now his kid is blind and half dead in a hospital bed. It's like being punched in the face by old mistakes.

So they're off the roster completely, all of them. And they're not compromising an inch on what their focus is, and they're not letting anything happen to any of the other kids in their care.

It's terrible that their coworkers are suffering, but it wouldn't be happening if the Zenin hadn't fucked with Gojo Satoru's kid, of all the goddamn people. It wouldn't be happening if the higher ups would actually do their job and start managing shit.

And if they use Yuuta as an anxiety riddled bandaid on the bullet hole in their society? Then they'd be sacrificing him the way they sacrificed Megumi all those years ago. And they have never been less willing to do that.

I'm so so glad you like the story! Thank you for talking with me!

I forgot how much I fuckin hate the game mechanics in me2

and the limiting of what guns each class can use.... man they made some stupid ass decisions

God. One of my little sisters is such a bitch. She's done me some genuine damage in exacerbating my already social bad anxiety. But when I have dreams where she's been hurt or killed, it's so horrible bc she's still my lil sister :-(

pondering