Just Jenn

Concept Art of my piece in the @magizine

It’s available for order here: https://gumroad.com/magizine

mushroom: can you feel your heart burning? can you feel the struggle within? the fear within me is beyond anything your soul can make. you cannot kill me in a way that matters

So I’m aware I haven’t really posted anything in a while but I hope this reaches someone. My brother’s name is Efren. Growing up he used to tease and make fun of me, but among all the teasing he also helped raise me along with our mom. When he was little he wanted to be an architect. But his is the story that a lot of Mexican American working class families face: either take the opportunities available to you to attain your dreams, or curtail those in order to take care of your family. He chose his family. After graduating high school he turned down full ride scholarships in order to stay and work to help pay the bills. It was just him, my mom, and me. After a couple of years we got stable enough economically that he was able to go to college, but after graduation we fell on hard times again and instead of finding work in his field or applying to architecture school like he always dreamed, he decided to stick around and help us again. It’s because of his choice to help our family that I was able to go to college too, something that for a time I didn’t think was possible. It’s because of him that I was able to apply to and get accepted into a PhD program in the hopes of becoming a professor. It’s because of him that my mom has a house to call her own. My mom and I owe him everything. Yesterday, he was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). He’s uninsured. I’m a student, our mom works in childcare. There’s a high success rate for remission if he gets treatment, but we can’t afford it. He’s all me and my mom have, and we can’t lose him. He chose family growing up, and it’s my turn to choose him. Please, any donation helps. I just want him to come home.

I know times are tough with covid and everything so if anyone could please just spare a dollar or a reblog thatd be great. I can’t lose him.

paypal.com/Yulenni

cash.me/$pastandfuturequeen

venmo: @Yulenni

Just for fun, Emet’s outfit as… battle classes? 

Some old nonsense doodles took from my sketchbook, the caster one looks more like Gaia now lol 

Chapter 283: Faith  

You all know how big a rabbit is.  Jack Rabbits and hares are much bigger. they’re the size of large cats or small dogs or just-walking-age children.

They also like to hang out in gangs of a hlf dozen to over 30.

and in the middle of backcountry dirt roads.

perhaps they’re dustbathing

or blood sacrifce

I don’t know because when you come up the road at night because your dog has a tiny bladder and needs to go out at midnight and you have no yard so you’re walking him on the dirt road around your neighborhod because you might aw well get some stargazing in, and you come just over the ridge to see a coven of twenty jackrabbits in the middle of the road

and

they

all

stand

up

not just onto all fours like a proper prey animal

No they get up on thier hind legs and don’t just sit but STAND like tiny rabbit-skinned toddlers, wobbing slightly as they stare directly at you eyes shining in your flashlight’s glow

…Blood Red.

And a chill goes through you on that warm july night because while they’re a puntable size and allegedly herbivores they’re standing and watching you just like people and you are vastly outnumbered.

everyone freezes

you’re considering your odds aganst roughly 200lbs of Suspiciously Humanoid Hare

and they’re considering their odds against you

the only sound in the never-ending high desert wind 

somewhere in your peripheral vision you can see the streetlights but they seem awfully far away

The nearest Jack Rabbit

Blinks

and takes a single shuffling step

forward

You area an overdevloped monkey and your prefrontal cortex is capable of some amazing feats but it runs very slowly compared to the reflexes of a rabbit and you’re frozen as you desperately scramble for the appropriate course of action, hands feeling thick and useless, mouth dry and feet imeasurably heavy there’s no way you’d outrun THESE, god there’s a rabies outbreak going around that shit’s not curable-

The Dog

L U N G E S

It’s only the briefest of movements but the animal you’d picked out for his gangly legs and floppy ears and goofy smile is suddenly a dark shape of muscle and teeth and had flung himself at the horrible goblin rabbits faster than mere physics should dictate, appearing in the circle of the flashlight for only the briefest of moments before the jolt from the leash makes you stumble and the light falters

The Jack Rabbits

Scatter

Vanishing into the faintly starlit sagebrush in as so many faint gray shapes that might be mistaken for the dustclouds they kick up

Later, you sit on the couch disquieted

and you wonder

If the sight of the Jack Rabbits standing and studying you was frightening enough to make you yearn for the safety of the yellowed streetlights

what must it be like from thier end?

what terrifying creature 

deliberately ties itself

to something so horrible

CONGRATULATE, THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT I WAS GOING FOR.

“You all don’t get it. I live in Trump country, in the Ozarks in southern Missouri, one of the last places where the KKK still has a relatively strong established presence. They don’t give a shit what he does. He’s just something to rally around and hate liberals, that’s it, period. He absolutely realizes that, and plays it up, they love it, he knows they love it, and the fact that people act like it’s anything other than that just proves that liberals are idiots, all the more reason for high fives all around.

“If you keep getting caught up in why do they not realize blah blah blah and how can they still back him after blah blah blah, you are not understanding what is the underlying motivating factor of his support. It’s fuck liberals, that’s pretty much it. 

“Have you noticed he can do pretty much anything imaginable and they’ll explain some way that rationalizes it that makes zero logical sense? Because they’re not even keeping track of any logical narrative, it’s irrelevant, fuck liberals is the only relevant thing, trust me, I know first hand what I’m talking about. That’s why they just laugh at it all, because you all don’t even realize they really, truly, don’t give a fuck about whatever the conversation is about, it’s just a side mission story that doesn’t really matter anyways. That’s all just trivial details- the economy, health care, whatever. Fuck liberals.

“Look at the thing with not wearing the masks. I can tell you what that’s about. It’s about exposing fear. They’re playing chicken with nature and whoever flinches just moved down their internal pecking order, one step closer to being a liberal. 

“You gotta understand the one core value that they hold above all others is hatred for weakness, because that’s what they believe strength is, hatred for weakness. And I mean passionate, sadistic hatred. And I’m not exaggerating. Believe me. Sadistic, passionate hatred, and that’s what proves they’re strong, their passionate hatred for weakness. Sometimes they lump in vulnerability, a compromised circumstance, or an overwhelming circumstance in there with weakness, too, because people tend to start humbling themselves when they’re in those circumstances and that’s an obvious sign of weakness. 

“Kindness=weakness. Honesty=weakness. Compromise=weakness. They consider their very existence to be superior in every way to anyone who doesn’t hate weakness as much as they do. They consider liberals to be weak people who are inferior, almost a difference species, and the fact that liberals are so weak is why they have to unite in large numbers, which they find disgusting, but it’s that disgust that is a true expression of their natural superiority. 

This is why there is no bottom of the barrel and why so many of them will tell you he’s been such a successful president. They don’t care that he’s the reason they’re getting fucked in taxes or that his border wall is a failure, they don’t care that he hasn’t managed to really pass any landmark legislation or make good on the promises he made during his campaign. They don’t care because the ONLY measure they’re using to determine how successful he’s been and how much they support him is how much he pisses off or hurts liberals and the more he does it the better he looks to them, the more support they give him and the more bullshit he doubles down on. It’s a never-ending feedback loop and it’s ALL about the performance rather than his actions. It’s why we’ve devolved into whatever mess of a country you’d like to refer to the US in 2020 as with seemingly no rock bottom. 

These are people who don’t understand politics as an entity that actually affects them, they can’t be reasoned with because they know being like that pisses off liberals. It’s honestly the most juvenile, immature tactic that elementary school-aged bullies use but they get a rise out of liberals repeatedly by doing it. It’s why so many of them comment on social media “trump 2020″ on posts that aren’t even about politics: because they know just posting that on a tasty video or something will piss off a bunch of liberals. We need to just stop responding to them when they say this type of shit, we need to ignore them, we need to stop giving them the outrage they want. 

realize they genuinely can’t understand them

like they speak the same language and Guda knows, consciously, that at some point they were the same, but now talking to normal humans is looking at your reflection in a broken mirror

someone talk about this or that mage who betrayed them in the past (like “stole my fucking paper” or “made me pay their parking ticket” kinda low stuff) and it hits people that… most people DON’T expect to be betrayed and/or an attempted murder from the people they love. and in fact that kind of betrayal would bring HATE as well as pain. most folks don’t still hold love for those who held a knife to their throat. 

Guda wears a swimsuit for summer events and the chaldea staff flinches at the burns and scars and curses rippling off their skin and guda barely register they have a body at all

people talk about their college experience or some shit and Guda realizes how long it’s been since they’ve experienced time in a linear manner. since they’ve bonded with someone who wasn’t by nature stuck in a spiral

The snow that hailed Camp Dragonhead was nothing short of a blizzard. It was a blizzard in every way possible and you felt like a fool for believing the people at Mor Dhona that this week was the best time to travel to Camp Dragonhead to see the sights.

It’d be clear of snowstorms, they said. Yeah right, this is a full blown blizzard! I can’t even feel my face! You pulled your hood tighter over your head. The tips of your ears felt frozen and you felt like you no longer had a nose to call your own. Even with the Ishgardian coat that you had been gifted from various lords presiding in Coerthas Central Highlands, you still felt unadjusted to the bitter cold winds after living in Ul’dah all your life.

Despite knowing that your loyal chocobo would stand by your side through rain or shine, you refused to subject your dear friend to the harsh blizzard you faced today. After all, you barely had enough layers to protect your fluffy ears and tails from the frigid welcoming that Coerthas decided to greet you with.