I have been corrected about that in the past, thank you. I know now that Miss Marshal [a black trans woman] threw the shot glass heard around the world. However, I can’t do anything to stop a post I reblogged in ignorance years ago from still doing the circuit. You know how Tumblr is about circulating things.

If I reblog or queue that post again, I will make an effort to amend history with what I have learned since.

I remain, as ever, a simple soul attempting to learn how to be a better one. May all your past mistakes find you in a better place.

Likely, but given that they’re angry about it, I can also assume that there was no codicil of “here’s some things you could try to help you stop doing the thing” which is a huge obstacle in otherwise helpful instructions.

Yeah solving the problem isn’t always as easy as it seems. I never said it was a logical reason for anxiety though. Illogic is always the problem with brain stuff.

Hyper-awareness sucks. Under-awareness also sucks because you [me] end up self-punishing for months on end because hyper-empathy is also a GD thing tangled up in this [my] nonsense.

Me is not you. You is not me. Neither of us is OP and trying to help with available information inevitably ends up in the mire.

Pretty sure we can agree that “Just stop [DOING X]” never firkin works?

Strictly IMHO, that’s still a bit of a red flag about the people in OP’s life. And there’s a difference between “here’s how you can help tone down the self-accusation” and “stop guarding yourself from potential attacks” and “stop reading social cues altogether and leave yourself vulnerable to being hated via your own social blindness.”

…I’m probably reading things into this too. There’s untold things in every story.

Anxious people are anxious for a reason, is what I’m saying. Finding ways to ease the reasons should be more reasonable than telling an anxious person to completely stop their primary coping strategy.

Personally, playing “best case/worst case/most likely case” is a better way of handling all of it. Practice with the shrink/understanding folks and get into the groove of it by the time the high stress event occurs.

ALL of this is strictly IMHO. I am ASD, socially anxious, and reading people is an important skill I still fail at. If I could just read people, I’d be in a lot less trouble during my life.

Absolutely do share, I love learning things.

There’s one source that says exotic meat farmed for the rich were prior vectors for things like SARS, and it’s looking like the same practices might be responsible for Covid-19…

My source is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPpoJGYlW54 and roughly at time index 7:21 the expert says that the wildlife meat market is primarily with the rich and powerful.

Not the poor.

While it was initially a move produced by food scarcity, the wet markets’ use of exotic animals for a wealthy minority is what caused Covid-19 to become a thing. China’s poor, for example, can’t afford a side of Pangolin. They might visit the same wet market where it’s sold, but they’d never get to eat it.

Similarly, the exotic meat farms are no longer owned by people living in poverty. It’s highly funded and industrialised now.

The blame for this lies in the rich. Not the poor.

[AN: Monty doesn’t need these levels of bullshit in his life. The poor snan(snake man) ]

Being a teenager is awkward for any species. Technically speaking, Elves can be teenagers twice. Once in their actual teens, and again between their seventies and nineties, when they were handed all the responsibilities and expectations of adults and none of the freedoms. For an Elf, though, the time between their twenties and their eighties was just… too many years of awkwardness. On top of the harrowing experience of gaining on adulthood but being prevented from it, there was also the ever-increasing risk of a First Luume.

Or, as the young and lovelorn viewed it, the promise of a First Luume.

There was a thriving market of tawdry books on the topic from the penny press. Young Elf of either or an indeterminate gender with an older, more experienced, and above all understanding mentor in the bedroom. Usually following chapters upon chapters of dreamy longing on behalf of the younger Elf.

The mentor’s point of view, it might be noted, was conspicuous by its absence.

Young Elves of a certain age bought them by the ton.

Taako, who discovered boys on the exact same day his sister did, had been buying, stealing, or borrowing books in that genre for more than a few decades. He had memorised the basic plot of all of them, but that never mattered. If he saw a new title with the plot of a young boy’s first time with an understanding older man, he would snatch it up quicker than you could say ‘impossible attraction’.

If he owned them, he read the covers off them. He read them to pieces. He daydreamed that plot over and over again. Always with himself in the arms of his biggest crush, Kustaad Trifel. He was vaguely aware that he was also the crush of Kustaad’s kid - Kri. What had almost skipped his notice was that Kri was starting to read Those kinds of books, too.

Kri had picked up a lot of habits from the Twins, up to and including loafing off on top of the caravan they slept in. Taako, coming up for air from a particularly nice climax in the penny novel he’d been reading, noticed that Kri was loafing off on the roof of the caravan he shared with his family. Kri also had a battered penny novel with a lurid cover, and the same dopey expression on his face that Koko had been wearing just a few moments before. He rolled over and looked towards the caravan Koko shared with his family -blood and and adopted alike- but not to the rooftop where Koko was lounging.

Kri’s gaze was fixed to the campsite below Koko’s little nest. A dreamy look that fixed solidly on… Koko’s adopted mother - La’Ming Ton. Currently in her riding leathers and scrubbing at a stubborn stain in the washtub.

What? Koko lined up the angles to make sure. Okay. Ran an Insight Check just to be sure. Okay, fine. Good news: Kri was over his crush on Koko. Bad news… he now had a crush on La’Ming.

“…gross,” Koko muttered. He’d have to talk to the kid about this nonsense. Sort him out. Set things… back to normalcy.

He got his chance after dinner, sitting with his ex-crushee as they both worked their way through Lulu’s five-alarm stew. “So… uh. Gettin’ over the heartbreak okay?”

“Sure. I know having a crush on you was… a little bit immature.”

Koko didn’t know whether to be offended or relieved. “Into the more… uh… mature scene, eh?”

“Yeah,” sighed Kri, looking dreamily in the direction of La’ming… currently in the world’s ugliest khaftan and arguing with Lulu about exactly how many chili peppers the average intelligent lifeform could safely withstand.

“Yeah… uh…” Koko tried to figure out how to do this. “So… uh… Romance books are fine ‘n’ all… but -uh- reality’s kind’a… not that.”

Kri was a picture of innocence. “Why not?”

“Uhm. Well. People who write books… uhm… they don’t write stuff that actually happens?”

“They’ve got real names, though,” said Kri, whose picture of innocence might have used a little bit more scrutiny, but Koko was otherwise distracted.

“Yeah, but… uhm. The good adults? The ones who actually care? Uh… They… they’re more likely to -uhm- Have you heard of the ‘off switch’?”

“Oh, but the really good ones would want to help in the best way.”

“Uuuhhh… Depends on how you define that… I’ve met the bad ones, and… yeah. It’s not as great as the books make it sound.”

“Aaah, but they sound so nice,” he said. “I wanna help her through her next Luume…”

“Yeeks. Nope. No. Don’t go there. She’s gonna fuckin’ adopt ya, pal. You know why?”

“You mean the other kind of adopt… as a bedmate. A lifelong bond…”

“She’s old enough to be your parent. She’s gonna adopt you as her kid because you are a kid. There’s no way a grown-ass adult is gonna want anyone like you because… they’re…” The ‘oh shit’ landed heavily on his heart and shattered it to bits. “…’cause they’re gonna feel like parents around us…” He wiped away the sting in his eyes. “It’s the bad ones who do the stuff in the books.”

All his daydreams came crashing down around him. He didn’t see much of the world outside his head from that moment on. He was peripherally aware of Lulu coming to comfort him, because she was the one person who could understand his pain before he could articulate it.

He certainly didn’t notice Monty, Kustaad, and a few other circus people slipping Kri some shiny new coins.

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It was quite the crime scene. The miasma of burned sugar and almonds filled the house. Half a cake lay under a cover of preservation. Some blackened blobs of… something… lay on a baking tray. Bubbles were frozen in the blobs’ surface, and Kravitz noted with alarm that there was no parchment nor any baking paper between them and the tray, which meant that the tray was essentially ruined.

Opposite the cake and the tray was a spread of marzipan fondant, patterned with candy canes and snowflakes, as evidenced by the rolling pin with embossed shapes on it. There were holes cut in the layer, yuletide shapes of gingerbread men, snowmen, trees, and bells. There were those shapes of cookie cutters laying nearby, as well as a large spreader knife.

This was not a Taako experiment. This was… a series of bad assumptions.

The house was quiet, save for the pleading mewls of the household cats. It was past their dinnertime by nearly half an hour, so they were clearly starving to death. Wait. Not quite silent… there were two separate sets of sobbing.

One in Angus’ room, one in Taako’s.

Kids came first.

He found Angus trying to pack to run away from home. He had an umbrella, which he was clearly planning to use as a bindle stick, and a large scarf upon which he was laying out what he thought of as the essentials. Since he was actually only three and a half, those things were mostly toys and favourite books. And a family portrait.

“Packing to leave?” asked Kravitz.

“I have to,” sniffled Angus. “…’m evil now.”

Um. What? “Nobody turns evil overnight, kiddo… Tell you what… I’ll talk about this with Apa. I don’t know what went wrong,” he could guess, but… “Just like Caleb Cleveland, I need all the facts.”

Taako was in a depression ball inside one of his terrible Candlenights sweaters. The one with the googly-eyed reindeer on it, which he utterly despised.

“Dove? Is there anything you need?”

“…jar of super-crunchy peanut butter an’ a jar of fuckin’ peanuts.”

Aaah, crap. This was bad.  He had to be stern with one of them, and Taako was obviously the toughest. “Dove… Taako. I need to know what the fuck happened here. At least come out enough to talk to me.”

He’d let his glamour go, and his makeup run, and his hair tangle. This… was fucking terrible.

“He thought… my marzipan fondant… was sugar cookies. And he tried t’ bake ‘em… while I was on the Stone to Marvellous Magic Magazine. I told him to wait… He didn’t wait… Do you know how long it takes to make marzipan from scratch, Krav? Do you know how long that takes?”

Kravitz could guess ‘more than a little while’ and moved on to the next obvious question. “Why were you making marzipan from scratch, love?”

“Fucking Suzan and her gods-damned neighbourhood Candlenights’ party. Like fuck am I using anything store bought for anything I bring there.” He shuddered and sobbed. “And worse, that baking tray is fucking ruined… It was one of our wedding gifts…”

Kravitz wrapped around him and let him cry it out. “So our boy made some bad choices… In his defence, we had been making sugar cookies all week…”

A shuddering breath in. “I know…”

“He probably thought he was trying to help.”

“I know…”

“So what’s the real trouble?”

“I dunno what t’ do about this,” Taako whimpered. “I might’a overreacted…”

“Angus did tell me he was evil now… and was trying to run away from home.”

“…oh gods…” Taako broke down in incoherent blubbering, but the gist of his teary babbling was that he never wanted any baby to feel unwanted. He never wanted to make Angus feel like he was hated, that life sucked. He was a bad parent and so on and so forth.

Kravitz carried Taako to Angus room so they could both bawl out their apologies to each other under his wing. In this case, literally under his wing… because the shelter of his wings hd always helped both husband and son feel safe.

They finally wound down to coherent words. “I’m sorry I didn’t wait. I wanted you to be proud I could do it all by myself.”

“I’m sorry I overreacted, baby. You’re not evil. And you’re not… anything else I said, I swear I don’t remember a lot of it, and I never meant a word. Apa got way too upset about a silly mistake.”

“All right. Now for a new house rule. You cause a mess, you at least try to fix it.”

“Guess that means tryin’a scrub burned marzipan off’a the baking tray,” mumbled Taako. “I’ll put all your stuff back to rights. Then we all learn Fabricate because fuck making marzipan from scratch after this meltdown.”

Taako could re-order Ango’s room on his own, but Angus would need supervision to at least try to get rid of burned marzipan. It was hard work, for sure, and Angus was not allowed to use Prestidigitation to clean it. He had to understand how much recovery was involved in a mistake like this one.

Angus managed to chip most of the bubbly blobs off and scour two burned marks off the surface before Taako declared, “Okay. That’s enough. You’re gonna wait when I tell ya from now, aren’t you, Ango?”

“…’essir.”

“M’kay. Lesson learned. Now for a fun one. Fabricate…”

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[AN: Sorry for taking WAY too long to get to this. My life is chaos with a side-trip to bedlam]

It was dark, and Angus was scared. He could smell the reek of ammonia and felt a chill that should not have come with the heavy blankets weighing him down. He lay stock still, trying to make the shape of something familiar out of the shadows.

If he moved, if he made a sound, if he cried… he would be sent to the Quiet Room. Angus strained his ears for the faintest creak of bedsprings, tried to find shadows in the darkness that meant that one of the other boys was taking aim.

Carefully, he slid one hand up to grab his pillow. If he could get it before he heard the slide of pyjama pants, he could curl up completely under the shield of its bulk and let the stream pool around him. He’d get in trouble for the pool unless he stayed under the pillow until dawn.

He hated that. He hated hardly being able to breathe for the stench and for the claustrophobic space under the pillow and the faint mildew stink of the pillow stuffing. It always felt like he couldn’t breathe.

Angus barely started to bring his feet up when a weight dropped on the bed. There was nothing like it in his memory, and he remembered a lot of horrible things. He screamed without thinking about it. Cringed and held his breath as the tears began to sting. He didn’t want to go into the Quiet Room! He hadn’t done anything wrong!

Instead of the ungentle footfalls of Nurse Stronginthearm, he heard a pattering of footfalls and a snap as lights came on. This was… this was not the orphanage. The weight on his bed was one of the household cats, currently kneading the comforter and glaring at Angus as if he was the asshole.

There was a blur in the doorway. The colours were all wrong for the orphanage. Angus tightened up in his huddle and at least tried to keep it to a whimper.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” singsonged the blur with golden hair. “You got your glasses right here, sweetie. Here they are…” Dusky brown hands offered his familiar frames.

Angus’ hand shook as he took them, and he couldn’t stop breathing hard as the blur resolved into one of his adopted dads. Mr Taako.

“…’m sorry sir…”

“It’s okay, pumpkin, nightmares in a new place are natural. You want me to sit with you?”

The cat was still treadling the comforter. It was now concentrating on its biscuits and not getting involved in the drama. Another one jumped up and the two felines wrestled with each other in a non-serious manner.

“…’es please,” Angus managed.

Taako sat on the bed, offering his presence as comfort. “I lost count of the nightmares I had whenever I was in a new place,” he said. “It was always the same kind’a dream. I was trapped in the worst place I’d ever been in before.”

Oh. Oh that was… way too close to the bone. He said, “You too?”

“Absolutely. Kind’a a handful of assholes after Saint Vingo’s, I gotta tell ya. After I lived through that one, everywhere else was a field of daisies.” He reached to touch Angus’ hair, but stopped when Angus flinched away. His hand hovered in the air for a couple of seconds but lit once more in his lap. “You were back in the bad place again, weren’t’cha?”

Angus nodded.

“Okay. Okay. Did you ever get into trouble for snapping your fingers?”

“…dunno how to do that, sir…”

Mr Taako showed him, demonstrating and always asking to touch before he did so. He remembered so many bad places. He knew what they could do to a kid. He knew that healing wasn’t easy. He knew that even the smallest things could cause abject terror at a moment’s notice.

“One snap is a little sound,” said Mr Taako. “They can’t track one snap. And it kind’a puts off any targeters, y’know. They think you got something on ‘em.” Mr Taako had a very knowing smirk, “I can teach you a li’l bit of my tricks, too. Give you an edge.”

One of the cats investigated Angus’ lap. It was warm and soft and friendly. The world seemed safer already, especially after he learned how to snap the lights on at a moment’s notice. Most especially after he learned that the Casa de Taako cats were the friendliest creatures in Faerun.

[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 1]

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Taako watched their adopted son going around in circles. Anxious or excited or just plain not wanting to go to sleep because the previous order of things was disrupted. It was easier to watch than trying to chase the kid down for sure. It had already been a long-ass day and he was personally too worn out to do extra pre-bedtime calisthenics.

Ango was obviously tired and just as obviously too stubborn to admit it. Going around the place in circles because keeping his body moving kept his brain awake or some shit like that. Taako, now a grown-ass adult, was more than a hundred years from that behaviour or those levels of energy.

How had his poor mother survived himself and Lup racing up and down the stairs on the twilit summer nights of Tre-Llew Ddion? No wonder she handed them off to Uncle Ench at summer’s end. They must have plain worn her the fuck out.

No, that was unfair. His whole family had secret weapons. Loggy foods. Pre-bedtime treats that were guaranteed to nail a kid down, stomach-first.

Taako smiled, leaving Angus to his orbits, and got out the kid-stopper ingredients. Sweet-pop fritters. Whipped cream, natch. The family recipe for hot chocolate… Flour, milk, cream (doy), honey -Ango was old enough for honey, but still too young for processed sugar- maple syrup, cocoa, maple sap, drinking chocolate, maple crystals, malt… herbs and spices…

Taako set up his prep station so he could keep an eye on Ango. All these recipes were the sort that could be put down in a second or less if an orbiting kid managed to trip and fall or otherwise hurt themself during their extended shenanigans. He seemed fine going around and around, but Taako wasn’t about to take any chances.

The thick, rich fritter batter was loaded with the nicer spices. Nutmeg, cinnamon, cardamom, and just the right zing of ginger, then peppered through with small cubes of green apple, sweet corn kernels, and a generous handful of raisins. A dash of just the right amount of maple syrup and they were ready to become fat golden blobs in the deep fryer.

Taako started the milk warming up. More cardamom and nutmeg, less ginger and cinnamon. Cocoa, of course. Malt was the new secret ingredient. The old one, Taako recalled, was a carefully-measured spoonful of medicinal rum. Not allowed in this day and age, no matter how medicinal it claimed to be. He sweetened the whole thing with honey and added a dollop of cream for richness before he began whipping the rest up for garnish, sweetened with the slightest dash of maple sap.

Once the fritters were fried on both sides, Taako let them drain and dry a little on Fantasy Paper Towels before dusting them over with a sparkling of maple crystals. This was magic enough to lure his boy to the kitchen counter, where wide, dark eyes watched the ordinary magic of meal prep in progress.

Long years in Sizzle it Up! gave Taako the knowledge of just the right amount of horseshit to add into the presentation. So when he plated up, he not only added some whipped cream flowers to Angus’ two middle-sized fritter blobs, but also some sparks from his Prestidigitation.

The hot chocolate was strained into Angus’ favourite mug, loaded with pink marshmallows and topped with more of the cream. It also got a light dusting of drinking chocolate.

It was better than a Sleep spell, and far more enjoyable to boot. Ango was nodding before he got halfway through his second fritter. Those freshly-sticky fingers of his were the perfect segue into tooth-brushing and bath time.

A warm bath, with the white noise provided by the bubbles, had Ango floppy and complacent before the last button was done up on his fluffy, flannel PJ’s. Taako purred as he carried their boy to the big family cuddle cote.

“…w’nna wait f’r daddy,” Ango complained muzzily.

“I know, pun’kin,” Taako cooed. “Daddy’s havin’ a big adventure and we can’t be awake the whole time. ‘S bad for your health.” An idea came to him like a brilliant new recipe. “How about I teach you a way to get the same rest faster so you can be awake for longer? Would you like that?”

“Mm-hmm…”

Ango would probably fall asleep on the first attempt… and maybe up to the tenth, but it was worth a shot. Little half-Elves didn’t Trance as easily as the full-blooded ones. It all depended on how dominant his Elven side was, actually.

Taako helped him sit properly and taught the correct breathing rhythm. He got it straight out of the tin, brilliant lad. Next, guiding him into the meditative state of mindfulness and memory. This was where, according to the clever souls who wrote all those books, a half-Elf was most likely to slip into sleep.

Ango defied expectations and lifted off of the cushions of the cote for a solid minute. Of fucking course Taako took a Fantasy Polaroid of the event. Then, he fell into slumber and Taako guided him down into a comfortable sleeping position, tucked in with a warm, fluffy blanket and weighed down by one of the cats.

Gods-damned adorable.

Taako scooted a little away so he could Trance peacefully. When he came up -and floated down- Krav was just entering the cote, crawling inside with exaggerated care. They smiled at each other in recognition of the Parental fear of waking the baby.

“Hey, Dove,” Krav whispered. “Sorry I missed bedtime.”

“I got him rested anyway,” Taako whispered in turn. “I’d better be big spoon so our baby can see you when he wakes up.”

They enjoyed a good, long kiss before Krav settled down. As he got comfortable, he murmured, “What is in those fritters? I thought I was bone tired before, but… you could knock me out with a feather.”

Taako snorted at the pun. “Ancient Elven secret,” he said, playing with Krav’s hair. “Get some rest. I’ll watch over us.”

Krav didn’t need much more convincing. Those fritters packed a punch.