beyond the wide world's end

I actually did write an entire fic this past year and I don't think I ever mentioned it on DW (though if you follow me on my other socials I talked about it constantly): On Yonder Hill, an 80K Avengers Infinity War/Endgame AU. (actually, technically two fics, I just don't really count the follow-up as a fic on its own in my head because I'm used to only counting chaptered fic as ~real fic when it comes to my own work.)

On Yonder Hill (80393 words) by bedlamsbard
Chapters: 7/7
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Loki & Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov, Natasha Romanov & Avengers Team, Loki & Thor (Marvel), Avengers Team & Loki, Loki & Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov
Characters: Natasha Romanov (Marvel), Loki (Marvel), Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, Clint Barton, Bruce Banner, James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Nebula (Marvel), Rocket Raccoon, Scott Lang, Thor (Marvel), Brunnhilde | Valkyrie (Marvel), Sif (Marvel), Yelena Belova
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Background Character Death, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Roleswap, Loki Lives (Marvel), Canon-Typical Violence, Avenger Loki (Marvel), King Loki (Marvel)
Series: Part 1 of grim from the reaping
Summary:

“This is a terrible plan,” Loki said. “Absolutely dreadful.”

“But you’ll do it, right?” Bruce said.

“Of course.”
 

Five years ago, Thor died on the Statesman and Thanos wiped out half of all life in the universe. Now the Avengers have a plan to undo the Snap, but they're going to need the help of the last King of Asgard. That's not a problem; that's where things get interesting. That tends to happen around the God of Mischief.

In a new writing fandom for the first time in eight years and legitimately having an existential crisis about it, which does tell you something about how fucked up my relationship with Star Wars has gotten.

Like, I didn't expect it to be Marvel but here we are, I guess. It's not my fault Loki hit on nearly every single narrative kink of mine, several of which I'd never expect to see outside of fanfic I'd written.

My level of anxiety has been so bad for the past six months (and probably before, but something about 2021 tipped it over) that I can literally feel it knocking years off my life. Usually my terrible memory kicks in eventually and I forget what I was so nervous about it, but that hasn't happened this year and it's getting to the point where it's really, really hard to deal with on the near non-functional level. Which is bad because I do need to be functional.

(It's not even pandemic anxiety, it's grad school + career anxiety, though I'm sure the pandemic hasn't, like, helped.)

My anxiety has been so high for the past month plus that tonight I'm kind of feeling like I'm on the verge of having another nervous breakdown, which is, uh, less than ideal.

Current health whatever update, so I am actually keeping track of this somewhere I can see it again --

It hasn't gotten better and it hasn't gotten worse. It's also not consistently the same throughout the day or from day to day -- last night I was mostly...not fine, but capable of concentrating enough to write (I made word count!), but that kind of pressure/pain at the top of my cheekbone was bad enough that it didn't go away in the shower and I went to bed with it still hurting. I can't recall if I slept badly about it, but I think I did wake up a couple of times -- I slept for about twelve hours, which is, uh, not ideal. I got up at 3:30 pm, thinking about calling Student Health, but then it was 5 pm and they were closed. For most of the time after I woke up today (I can't call it morning because, like I said, 3:30 pm) I was definitely feeling it along my left eye socket, cheekbone, and the left side of my nose, and enough at the joint of my jaw on the left side of my face that I'm now wondering if it's tooth-grinding again. Because...all the weird stuff happens on the left side of my face: this is the side I woke up temporarily deaf on last year, the side I cracked a tooth on the year before that, and come to think of it, I think I had something really similar to this kind of pressure/pain five years ago on this side? I remember going to Tulane Student Health about it and they were like "we have no idea, but we're going to watergun your ears just in case." (It didn't help. I mean, it didn't hurt because I also have an ongoing earwax issue, but it didn't solve that particular problem, which eventually just went away.) (No, I've never figured out why I woke up deaf in one ear. It went away over the course of the day. Within the week my wrists and elbows flared up on both sides, though, so I just assumed stress.) (I assume everything is stress.)

It kind of faded over the course of the day but never went away entirely -- I'm feeling it in the jaw joint, top of cheek, and left side of my nose at the moment. Eyes are still scratchy, no idea how that plays in or if it's completely unrelated. (Humidity is back up in Atlanta, since we've had on and off rain -- yes, we've had pressure changes too, I'm probably just lucky I didn't have the joint pain I also sometimes get with pressure changes.) I did take ibuprofen at one point today and got nauseous afterwards; I don't know if it helped or if the nausea was related or if I just hadn't eaten enough food to balance out that much ibuprofen. (I never actually threw up, I was just slightly icky -- and was out on a walk at that point, so it's a good thing nothing happened.) Right now my right eye is hurting more than my left, but the left side of my face is where all the other stuff is hurting so my eye may not be registering. I think as I type this I'm also starting to get some upper cheek / eye socket pressure on the right, but who knows.

Added into this is the fact that I get sick every time the weather shifts (which it does CONSTANTLY in Atlanta, so I'm basically always slightly sick), every time I'm stressed (I'm always stressed), and oh yeah...the plague. I do have a covid test scheduled for tomorrow so I can be cleared to return to campus, so I guess the outside chance this is a weird covid symptom will be cleared up. (Of course, this involves a two hour hike because it has to be done through the university, but, well, sigh.) Anyway, ibuprofen does nothing, acetominophen does nothing, the eye drops (I've got Refresh Tears, currently) do nothing, nothing seems to be having any affect one way or another. I'm hesitant to try any other OTC medications because I'm not sure what the actual problem is and I react weirdly to some stuff (I can't take cold medicine, for example -- it doesn't do anything for cold symptoms but it makes me really loopy). I know several people said migraine, but I'm not hitting anything on the checklist except location and some earlier brightness sensitivity; my best guess is sinus? BUT HOW DO THE EYES PLAY IN?

anyway, I got nothing, suggestions welcome. I wouldn't mention it if I wasn't hoping someone would go "ah, this is the problem!"

I'll call Student Health on Monday, I guess -- there's a 24/7 telehealth option too but I'd rather just go through Student Health since I'm in Atlanta. I should probably also call an optometrist, which, well, the options are the one twenty minutes from me or trying to get an appointment with one up at Emory University Hospital (I'm not...super keen on going to a hospital right now, of obvious reasons, but Emory Eye Center is covered under my university insurance; the other place isn't). the term also starts Monday and that's going to involve looking at screens -- which, like, I can do, though I cut back a lot over the past week to absolutely no results.

in most recent "maybe a stress response, maybe something actually wrong" health developments, I've had aching eyes the past week or so -- no redness or anything, so I'm not sure if it's too much screen time (so much doomscrolling, and these days I basically spend all my waking hours on my computer which I'm pretty sure Is Not Good) or if it's that it's very dry in my house due to Winter (I'm certainly dealing with a lot of split skin across my knuckles, and because I have very little self-control clawed open one leg and one arm), if I really need to update my prescription (I do, this one is from 2017 and I'm stupid near-sighted) or if I'm just very stressed and this is the latest development. I dialed down the brightness on all my devices and am limiting my screen time as much as possible, and started taking eye drops -- though the ones I got were for redness and my advisor suggested a different brand meant for moisturizing instead, so I'll switch to those tomorrow and see if it helps. At least not being on the computer all the time (I'm down to about five hours in the evenings, which I guess is still a lot, but is also SIGNIFICANTLY less than "wake up, turn on computer, stay on computer until go to bed") means that I'm not seeing every awful thing that is happening as it happens, which is nice for my stress level.

I'm also sort of headachey and not sure if that's related or if it's dehydration (I am also trying to drink more water) or stress or if I'm just dying or what. So that's fun.

My birthday was last week and it was pretty awful, as birthdays go, and I traditionally have a pretty bad time at my birthdays. I'm exhausted all the time and I miss my mother and my father is still in Thailand and I should probably call a local optometrist but I'm still hoping I can go back to Washington in summer. I feel like eye issues isn't something I can actually call the Emory health center about. (I mean, like, my vision is fine (aside from its usual level of badness), my eyes just ache.) I'm a little panicky because not being able to look at a screen for a extended period of time is not like...doable for me. (I mean, I can; my eyes don't hurt just when I look at a screen, they ache all the time. But this is about the only thing I can control aside from going outside more.)

also like possibly between attempted coup and inauguration fears and birthday stress and school stress and pandemic stress and weather and I haven't seen my mom in a year...I don't know. I don't know. I'm just really upset all the time and this isn't helping. I am reading more physical books though so that's nice, except for the part where I have to buy them all.

I've been doing pretty Not Well recently, which, well, on the one hand, whom amongst us etc., but on the other is...not great for me.

My hands are...not good. I'm genuinely not sure what's up with them -- I'm still having some wrist issues on and off, but I'm also having joint pain in my fingers that may correlate with increased humidity and pressure changes, since it seems to flare up on days when it's raining or about to rain. (I.e., yesterday and today have been pretty bad.) It's not gotten to a point where I can't actually use my hands, but obviously it's not great, either, because ha ha, I can't concentrate when I'm in pain. It also has me extremely freaked out, which is also obviously not great, and isn't helping my anxiety either. I've been hesitating on calling the health center about it since I was there a month ago for my wrists and what if they can't figure it out either, or say it's just stress, or...these aren't good excuses. (Also I haven't followed up on the PT referral I got for my wrists, and what if they're like "uh, you need to do that first," despite the fact that this is my fingers.) And I'm scared that there's just nothing to be done -- that it's never going to get better and will just get worse and I won't be able to write or knit or anything. ETA: I think I'm also starting to get some pain in my ankle joints? But I'm less sure of that and maybe it's psychosomatic.

My anxiety is up pretty badly -- how badly fluctuates based on what else is going on around me and how much it immediately affects me, but it's um. not at my pre-2020 baseline, which was even then not good. (My usual measure for judging how bad it is, aside from the obvious physical panic attack symptoms, is if I'm having flashes of things going wrong that are fairly concrete and fairly innocuous -- knocking my glass over onto my keyboard or my bed as I walk by, for example, which is something that really only started happening last year. Like, it's something I always had in the back of my head as a possibility, but it's only within the past year that I started having sensory flashes of it happening.) School stuff going wrong, another possibility -- I actually missed the fee payment deadline and paid it late, because I got the dates mixed up. I had official (digital) paperwork to file for my candidacy, required information from the department, and didn't get it back until the day before the deadline, which meant that I was in a tailspin of anxiety for the week between submitting it to the department and getting it back to submit to the graduate school, since missing that deadline would have meant losing my funding. House anxiety is back -- I had a moment of Fridge Panic a few weeks ago (it's fine), there have recently been some sounds that might be animals in the ceiling, and there are weird tiny bugs in the bathroom (occasionally other rooms) that I've never seen before. Plus, as you know, plague and America and my father is still in Thailand.

My ability to Do Things is shot. I'm not tracking super well (evident in how many of the daily progress reports I do on Tumblr involve some variation of the phrase "I have no idea what I did today"), and while I'm supposed to be doing dissertation research I...am not. Or I'm doing so very slowly. (I'm also currently less willing to type because, well, hand/wrist issues.) I've picked up some library books from the university library (pickup by appointment only), so I have those to read, as well as a lot of other things; my advisor wants me to do some writing but I can barely even read right now. I need to clean and organize my house -- I've had art that's needed to go up on the walls for months (years in some cases), but right now it's on the couch. I have some projects (cosplay) I want to work on and have most of the materials for, I just...have not.

I'm sleeping a lot. This is partially because I'm not self-regulating very well -- I've been consistently going to bed at 3-4 am and then getting up between noon-2 pm, which I hate, but can only really change on a day when I have a meeting of some sort that requires me to be up, and then I'll get up at the bare minimum amount of time to be presentable on Zoom. Which I did to some extent beforehand, but when those meetings had to be in person I'd have to be up early enough to also eat and walk up to campus, and these days, well -- I have Old English at 10:30 on Monday mornings and usually get up at 10ish, don't eat, and drink my tea while in class, usually on about six hours of sleep because I can't seem to change up my going to bed time. I had a webinar at 2 today and got up at 1:30 or so, and didn't even breakfast until afterwards, at maybe 3:30/4. (Though I woke up at maybe noonish and then just lay in bed hating my hands because my fingers hurt.) There just never seems to be a really compelling reason to wake up -- on Saturday I managed to fuck it up so badly that I made myself sick because I was in bed so long I got dehydrated. So I know that's like, bad, and a capital D depression symptom.

I'm trying to go for a walk every day, which has been mostly successful even on days when it's raining (and it's been raining an unusual amount this past couple of months), but I know I'm still not getting as much physical activity as I would have done before, when I was walking up to campus and back almost every day. There's a lot of workouts on YouTube, I guess, and I should have access to my mom's Jazzercise streaming subscription -- I know the fact that I'm at my dining table on my laptop 90% of the day isn't helping anything.

I'm also...not interacting with anyone outside of Zoom, or those brief interactions at the grocery store or the farmer's market. I live alone and don't have any close local friends, and for that matter, even my caucus ignores me when I say "hey, let's hang out on Zoom," which was last week and getting zero response from them seriously shook me. Even last fall when I was working on my portfolio I knew not having human interaction for a while would drive me up the wall, which is why I ended up auditing a class all semester, and now it's...worse, because there are zero options. (I'm not even having social distanced hangouts because I DON'T HAVE ANY LOCAL FRIENDS.) And my mother is on the other side of the country, and my father has still trapped himself in Thailand, and all my plans got canceled -- I just feel a bit like I'm on the verge of meltdown. I'm trying to decide whether to go back to Washington for a month or two, and if so, when -- I don't want to be there during the election if my father is there, but ha, he's still in Thailand. I don't want to travel over the Thanksgiving or Christmas holidays for obvious reasons. I'm anxious about leaving this house for any extended period of time. Also, plague. There's been some conversation with an out-of-state friend of mine about her either coming to visit during election week so that no one's alone during Oh God, That; we were talking about going somewhere (and being Very Very Careful) but given that Florida just lifted all of its covid mandates...perhaps not. We'll see.

I just feel really bad generally because nothing is getting done and everything is on fire and my hands hurt and most of my coping mechanisms are off the table because my hands hurt and just...everything is bad. I did type all this, so like, I can type.

I've been buying a ridiculous amount of candles lately.

The wildfire near my hometown is at 80% containment as of this morning, which is just such an utter relief, good gods. It was between the Yakima and Kittitas Valleys, and at its closest point in Kittitas County was not that far from my parents' house -- I think the evacuation zone on our side of the county line was only a few miles away, though my mother was never under an evacuation order/advisory. My dad is still in Thailand, so she's home alone, and two nights ago she texted me to ask if there was anything important of mine in the house that she should have in her go-bag in case the situation suddenly shifted -- this was the day of the big windstorm in Washington/Oregon, so it seemed very apocalyptic all of a sudden. But the Evans Canyon Fire is now in the mop-up stage, so many of the firefighters there have been sent to other fires in Washington.

I know that on the scale of the entire West Coast being on fire this was not one that was on the scale of what's going on in Oregon or California right now, good gods, but this one was really close to my house and it was terrifying to watch from Georgia. It's not as though I could have done anything if I was there, but...I'm glad that it's under control now, and I hope that's the last one in Kittitas County this fire season.

(I'm also kind of glad that the fair and rodeo were cancelled this year, as normally they always fall over Labor Day Weekend and this Labor Day Weekend was full of fire and smoke.)

Anyone else feel like they've learned more about their face shape in the past six months than in the however many years previous? Going by how many face masks I've gotten that just do not fit my face (even the ones specifically made for women or sized small), I apparently have a very narrow, very small face, which is just...aggravating, because all the cute ones are made for not my face, which I find out after I get them.

I think I can do a certain amount of alteration on some of them, but the whole point of buying them from indie makers is so I don't have to sew them myself. Like, I've worn glasses for twenty years! You would think I'd know my face shape! Apparently I do not.

(I don't have a small head, I just...apparently have a very small face? Human bodies, how do they work.)

I am just so miserable right now that I had better note it down, since in the past I've had to look back at it later.

Ear...better? The tinnitus is still there, but either I got used to it or it's not as bad. The jaw just never got better, though, and it goes snap crackle pop every time I open my mouth. This has been a recurring problem for years (at least since college, maybe since high school), but I'm usually not as aware of it as I am right now, where it's just constant pressure. Usually it's on my right side (which was the fucked up ear side) and right now it's focused on the left. I might try the ear wax treatment on the left ear and see if that helps the jaw at all.

Hands are...well, the hands are mostly fine, to be honest? I've had worse finger pain in the past than I do now; mostly I don't have any finger pain. I was for a while the past week having some pain in my left wrist but haven't had much today. Mostly what I'm getting is up and down my right arm -- not stabbing pains, nothing centered in one place. I'm still really worried about tennis elbow, because I am getting some issues around the elbow joint, but I'm also getting a bit along my forearm and more around the bicep, some in the wrist. I do sleep in wrist supports and have for the past seven years -- since last year I've been sleeping in a wrist brace with a splint on my left hand, and last week upgraded to a splint on my right hand too. (I use this one, super padded, super comfortable. Can't wear it for anything but sleeping, but that's fine.) So it could be related to the fact that I've got a new brace there. I also usually sleep in earbuds since I use a meditation app to fall asleep (after years of taking hours to fall asleep, Headspace is the only thing that knocks me out within minutes, so I pay for it), but since I was dealing with the earwax thing for the last week I was using my phone on speaker rather than earbuds. The earbuds mean I sleep on my back. Without them in, I tend to sleep on my side, which happens to be my right side, so it could be that I've been falling asleep on my arm. (A few years ago, before I started sleeping in earbuds, I actually had this problem with jaw pain -- I was at home and kept sleeping with all my weight on the left side of my face, for some reason. Stopped doing that and the jaw pain went away.) I'll try going back to earbuds tonight and see if that helps.

Normally at the computer or when I'm having wrist problems I wear soft wrist supports, no splint. I ordered new braces with splints for both wrists, as well as an ergonomic vertical mouse in case that's part of the cause -- like everyone else, I'm spending more time than usual on the computer lately, and all in the same spot and mostly on the same computer, instead of moving around or doing intensive school typing on the Surface at various Starbucks tables.

I'm also just extremely tense right now -- obviously being a person in the world right now is super stressful, plus I have a major deadline which means I'm even more stressed than usual. (Prospectus went to my committee last Wednesday, defense is September 3.) Historically most of my tension settles in my shoulders and jaw, and hoo boy, are my shoulders tight at the moment, so it's possible that that's traveling along my arms -- I'm having trouble believing this is injury related rather than stress-related because it all happened at once, and while jaw and ear are connected, jaw/ear are not super connected to my traditional tendinitis issues. But, I mean, it could be? Human bodies, how do they work.

I did also go slightly overboard on knitting over the past month, which is what I had initially thought caused the wrist/finger problems -- I usually know better than to keep knitting for any extended period of time, but I was just very stressed. And I started doing things other than socks for the first time in years, which is different hand/wrist motion and weight (hat/cowl on circs rather than socks on DPNs), so I thought that could be it. But I put the knitting aside for now, so it can't be causing the current arm issues.

I'm trying to spend, at the very least, slightly less time on the computer -- I don't love getting on it first thing in the morning (afternoon) but have been doing so usually because it's at my dining table and I've mostly been reading ebooks, and haven't set my new Kindle up so have been doing all that reading on the Kindle app. The past couple days I've been keeping the computer off and doing my morning reading in hard copy, which tbh is better for my nerves, too -- Twitter first thing after waking up is a lot to deal with, especially these days when it's not even majority cute fannish stuff even with everything under the sun blacklisted. I got into a rut of not cooking, so I'm trying to do more cooking too -- which at the very least means slightly different hand/arm/wrist motions.

But I'm also just currently in a really bad headspace lately -- I'm exhausted so I've been sleeping more than I'm happy with, I've been crying all the time (I was crying less often before I started having ear/jaw/arm/wrist issues, but now I feel like I'm staring down the barrel of my tendinitis rearing its ugly head and cutting off all my coping mechanisms), I've got this huge deadline that will determine if I pass to candidacy and if I continue to receive funding, there's a pandemic, the U.S. government is an actual nightmare, my father is still stuck overseas, my mother lost her job, I'm really, really homesick and was homesick even before lockdown, I live alone so I never talk to anyone in person aside from grocery store checkers and people at the farmer's market, I haven't seen any local friends (of which I don't have many) since March. I'm just completely miserable right now. And now I'm miserable with health problems, fun.

Also I wrote this entire prospectus without physical library access. I want an award. (I think I have access now -- for pick-up, anyway, stacks aren't open -- but the prospectus is in.)

I've been really hesitant to call the health center about any of it because it's such a weird batch of stuff, but, uh, I guess at least none of these are covid symptoms? So at least there's that. And I do have to pay for university health insurance, and I guess they could either count in or count out tendinitis/tennis elbow/early onset arthritis (my other big fear, because I have a family history of it), so I should probably call them within the next few days. I'm just so miserable lately. And everyone else is miserable too, but..ugh, I don't know.

I'm also supposed to be at Star Wars Celebration Anaheim and Disneyland this week, and Dragon Con next week, and was supposed to have spent the rest of August in Washington. Unhappy. I desperately need a vacation right now but lol all I get to be is trapped in my house! Like everyone else so I feel bad complaining about it.

I'm also now slightly drunk because I went for alcohol since ibuprofen hasn't helped at ll and I was hoping it would make me relax slightly. Like, I will take moderate relaxation, okay. (Jaw does seem less aggressively bad after the application of most of a can of hard cider, but it's still poppy.) At this point I will take any kind of advice, tbh.