All twelve chapters of The Patience of Hope have now been released! I ended it a day later than planned because I had to take one of the days off, but with the last chapter having just been posted, that wraps up this story, which clocks in at 18,280 words and tips into novella land. If you like explicitly autistic characters, hopeful themes and surety of Christian love, you might like this story.

A couple of acknowledgements - thanks to both @graycedelfin and @stealingmyplaceinthesun, who helped me with betareading. Thanks also to the @inklings-challenge; I wouldn't have written this story without the Christmas challenge it's for.

I love this story so much, and I'm delighted to share it with y'all, even though it's far from its best, having had perhaps not enough time to marinate before I shared it. I hope to edit it in future.

Each chapter was set one day after the previous one. Don't squint too hard at the worldbuilding, either, because it was sort of set in the present time but also sort of not really.

Chapter one: Nativity was for Christmas day itself. Chapter two: Stephen introduced a character and plotline that featured heavily in the rest of the story. In chapter three: John, there was a somewhat difficult conversation, and a kind-of-sort-of cliffhanger. Chapter four: Innocents looked more at how the results of that conversation were going to affect Patience. Next up, chapter five: Shepherds brought a surprising situation into the mix. Chapter six: Joseph had a spot of conflict, as well as much-needed reassurance for Patience. Chapter seven: Magi brought more fluff, as well as a necessary conversation. Chapter eight: David showed one of Patience's favourite things, knitting for people. Chapter nine: Baptism was shorter than I would have liked, and I intend to revise to add another scene at a later date, but it's okay as it is. Chapter ten: James briefly brought back a character sidelined in an earlier chapter. In chapter eleven: Mysteries, her father returned to take care of Patience and try to clarify the situation she was in. Finally, the chapter that just released (chapter twelve: Epiphany) contained a hard conversation, surrounded by discussions of Bible verses and wordplay, and closed the story on a hopeful note.

Thanks for reading, and please reblog this post, and please tell me what you think of the story! Also see the most recent story on this post (or one of my most recent tumblr posts), for a short story from Rhona's POV during the events of Patience, Changing, "Patience in Recovery"!

HACKS | 3.04: Join the Club

Anyway. Bi and Mspec Lesbians aren't a hotly "debated" topic or even new to queer culture, it's just the newest thing that bullies who REALLY want to be homophobic and even racist use to justify harassing gay people they don't like.

It's the thinnest possible veneer of progressive language wrapped around TERF and reactionary rhetoric so that they can feel righteous for forming an angry mob against vulnerable targets. If you're gullible enough to fall for the newest wave of bigotry within the queer community, and turn on your allies because they're "confusing" or "invading your spaces," the SAME way they turned on bi/pan labels, trans people, xenogenders, neopronouns, and aroace people before this, then get lost.

Meadow Troll ~

"Your Creator understands the subtlety of your soul. He knows of all the things you've learnt to hide and silence in the crevices of your heart, so know that you can never truly be alone. Not when you have His Company."

-honeyliruh

One day, one day, one day.

thanks for giving recovery 600 kudos, that is actually crazy?? i will never understand how this fic became so successful but i'm seriously so honored, so here's some quick little doodles <:D

his eyes are higher doctor 🙄

Not to exclaim over my own writing so much but it genuinely means so much to me that in Patience, Changing and The Patience of Hope - set about five years apart, though I've not made the difference so sure yet, the timeline is fairly loose at this point - that you can see the difference in how much more comfortable she is in The Patience of Hope.

Like a couple of paragraphs in Patience, Changing:

She wondered if her parents would love the other child more, assuming she was ‘normal’ like Patience was not. If pressed they would exclaim that nobody could love a child more than they loved Patience, but she had long since learned to take that advice lightly. It was not that she felt unloved; just that she was alien. There were ways in which she was utterly unlike everyone she knew. A part of her wanted to blame it on the fact that she was autistic, but somewhere deep inside she feared she was simply broken, a question that had never been allowed to rest. Patience had always been too afraid to ask it of her parents, just in case they confirmed her worst fear and said that yes, she was just broken. If ever it was confirmed she didn’t know how she would bear it.

Later on, she's still struggling with self hatred:

Why could she not let it go? She'd been assured that they loved her despite the way she was, and it wasn't like she disbelieved her parents. No, they were sincere, and yet - And yet! Rhona was so normal, so easy and relaxed. Patience was a ball of anxious energy who sat in the corner and knitted her way out of her many panics. She didn't really want to admit how much she envied and resented Rhona's apparent ease when dealing with others.

She's still worrying about it in The Patience of Hope, but not so much:

Was it my fault? she wanted to ask, tossing a diced potato in the slow cooker. Was I too difficult a child to raise, and caused fractures? Was I just too standoffish, too self reliant, too autistic? But her mother would never answer it honestly. At least - she couldn’t trust it would be honest, because it was too personal, and Mum would not want her to carry the guilt of separating them. She already carried that guilt, in the secret parts of her mind. It didn’t plague her always - just sometimes, when she was trying to get to sleep.

Nathan, though, tries to reassure her:

She laughed, bitterness edging her voice. “I’m autistic, Nathan. What if that’s just - unacceptable?” He sighed. “Autism isn’t a death sentence, nor does it make you broken, Patience. It’s a difference. It means you’re different. If you weren’t autistic you’d be different from the Patience I know and l-like.” He flushed, looking unaccountably guilty.

And she's working on it, she really is:

“For one thing - the thing I try and remind myself, and forget far too often - I’m a child of God, and that’s more important than the fact that I’m autistic, or anything else I am. - Thank you, Chloe.”

Anyway I don't know why I wanted to make this post, I just did.

Seven days to go until I hopefully receive my own autism diagnosis, God willing.... Frankly even though multiple clinicians are absolutely certain that I am autistic I'm scared in case the person assessing me doesn't think so. Or if they do, I don't know what the next step is.

should i stay or should i go?

Guys... I think we might have a type.

I'm miles away, he's on my mind / I'm getting tired of crawling all the way

GOOD OMENS + “Which Witch” by Florence + The Machine (1/?)

my @gospexchange gift for @witchyforest! this song has so many layers and i loved analyzing it through the lens of crowley and aziraphale. i like florence but had never heard this song, so thank you for introducing it to me!

a lifetime of indentured servitude

used this frame from the mv of "femme fatale" by kedarui as ref for this piece ! just thought that it fit them perfectly orz

if captain kirk irresponsible? why huge baby cow eyes???

if captain kirk bad captain? why-

you thought i was gonna talk about his voluptuous titties fat ass sparkling personality and unflinching moral character ? no.

if you say kirk is a bad captain i will kill you. I will shoot you into space like they did to bill shatty when he wouldn’t shut tf up about going to space

except unlike bill shatty ill send you up naked and defenceless into the vast chasm of space your lungs will explode and your eyes will fall out or some shit (i saw that in a doctor who episode)

kirk drift is getting out of hand and my response to this is ending all kirk drifters and repopulating the earth with kirklophiles such as myself and my dad paul.

and on some random thursday afternoon i realised that life isn't so bad after all. there are so many beautiful things i haven't experienced yet, so many places i've never visited, so many people i haven't met. i realised life is too short to hate myself.