this is sort of pathetic, but when you were younger, you were sort of puzzled by the cartoon representations of fathers: how a kid would be outside with a mitt, waiting to play catch.
it's not that your father never played catch with you, but you also didn't like when he did. something about a hard ball coming quickly towards your face doesn't seem exciting. not that you'd ever say you don't trust him. you trust him, right?
it's not like he never tried to teach you anything. or never tried to parent. on rare days, a strange person would walk in your father's skin. bright, happy, magnificent. this version of your father was so cheerful and charismatic that you would do anything to keep him. and this is the version of your father that would laugh and gently coax you try again. this is the version of your father that would break down the small elements of a problem and point them out so you have an easier time with them.
as a kid, those days happened more often. but somewhere around 11, you started being too much of a person, and he was often cross about it. when he'd try to sit you down to learn something, you spent the whole time with your shoulders around your ears, nervous, uncertain. terrified because you didn't immediately understand how to navigate something. worried you will run out of his goodwill and then you will have the Other Father back, and you will have ruined a good day for your entire family. something about you being visibly afraid - it just made him angry. he would accuse you of not wanting to learn and storm away.
on tv, it's not like there's a lot of versions of men-who-are-mostly-fathers. they can be good dads, but usually their stories are not told in the household. so it's normal that your father is there, but he's never around. you know he was in the house, somewhere, it's just not that you guys ever... "hung out". he just seemed to get kind of bored of you, annoyed you weren't made in his perfect image. frustrated with how much energy it took to raise a kid. over time, you kind of adopt a bittersweet band around your throat - he knows nothing about me. he says at least i never abandoned my family.
and it's technically - technically - true. he was there for you. sometimes he even made an effort and made it to the big moments; the graduations and the dance recitals. he grins and tells everyone that he taught you. it almost erases the days in between, where he complains because you need a ride to school. the weeks that go by where he doesn't actually ever speak to you. the times you say i am struggling and he says figure it out on your own. i can't help you.
and that's fine! that's all fine. you can call him if you are having a problem with your car. or if you need a ride to the hospital. he loves playing hero, he just doesn't like the actual work that comes with being a father. and you've kind of made your peace with that; because you had to, because you don't want to live your life like he does; the whole world at a managed distance, a little rotating and controlled orb he can witness and take credit for but never truly love.
as an adult, you are rewatching some dumb cartoon - and again, the child standing in the rain, with a mitt, waiting for their father to come play catch. as an adult, there's this strange creeping dread - this little thing? this little thing, and their dad can't even show up for that? oh god, holyshit, it's not about the mitt, is it. oh god, holyshit, your father spent most of your life leaving you hanging.
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i’m no fanartist, but i couldn’t help but get in on the dracula book club hype with a knitalong after finding Dracula’s Bride by Renee Linville on ravelry!!
my wonderful datemate gifted me a gorgeous gothic-lit-inspired skein pack for christmas last year, and this is the PERFECT project for it. after a lot of winding, a little math, and a few rounds of swatching to test-drive the needle size and gradient technique, we’re off to the races to the tune of our boy jonathan’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad business trip to transylvania - played to perfection by ben galpin in @re-dracula‘s audio drama production!!
i meant to post these earlier to properly track my progress, but i forgot XD
further updates to be posted as work progresses~!!
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thinking about how honest the hope is in disco elysium, if that makes sense. how you face consequences for the actions and life you can’t remember. how your nightmares come back and they just might be there to stay. how you still wake up in pain and have to very actively fight off the cravings of your old addictions. how it isn’t easy trying to chose not just life, but living better, living for yourself. how it doesn’t mean any of the problems will go away, or the pain will stop, but it gives you an option other than constant suffering. there’s always a silver lining, it’s just a matter of being able to look up and find it.
hope isn’t always easy, and sometimes it is a choice, but in a torn up world and a torn up body, it’s something. it’s not always pretty or perfect, it’s clumsy and sometimes foolish and hard to keep close, it’s difficult, and maybe it’s all you have but it’s something - streets and sodium lights, the sky, the world, you’re alive
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"not to ocpost-" please oc post (as long as you're ok with it) i would love to learn more about holly and chun-run!! (as long as you're ok with it!!)
! oh its absolutely ok, i love being enabled ^w^ kjfngdkjf um um. this is another Entire Thing(tm) that requires Exposition(tm) so um hope youre ready to read More Paragraphs !
the short answer is
the long answer is: i went 'hey i have two* ruina-era ocs, what if i put them next to each other for fun? haha they'd hate each other ^w^' ... 'Oh God They'd HATE Each Other.'
so uh, the exposition.
Holly! You've Never Met Her Before. certainly not. ttttechnically. out of narrative, Holly was originally a branch of what Cocoa's character would have been when I was first developing her. in narrative, Holly is what would have happened if they'd never been picked up by LCorp. she's... an entirely different person, basically.
in essence, if you thought the other one was unstable, Oh Boy(tm). Holly is what happens when the city Actually gets the chance to sink its claws in. it's just this time, she was far, Far less quiet about it. girlies who completely fucking failed their stat check Again. there's only so much 'keep your head down and take it' you can really handle before you're just about ready to tear a bitch apart, and well. Well! anyway.
Holly is another angle of the Human/Monster/Object tangle, in where Cocoa's development hinges on the equivalent of trying to balance several spinning plates and Fucking Up Miserably, Holly has started hurling plates directly into the audience with intent. if you will.
humans are always talking some hot shit about how high and mighty they are, the "value" that comes with just being Human, and yet their entire lives are a horrible, animalistic dance of clawing each other to shreds while hiding behind ideas and roles they themselves put into play, like it's some stupid game. that harm is just an intrinsic part of the human nature. she can't fucking stand it.
essentially, she's an odd argument between the Human and Monster corners of the tangle. not only hates the binds that the city places on them of obligation, but also the ties of human emotion-- namely guilt and connection. that endless dance. she wants nothing more than to shed these ideals completely-- unfortunately, she still intrinsically and unconsciously clings onto them, afraid to let go. a human trying to claw its way out of humanity. it doesn't matter what it takes-- she's not letting this city take her first.
...and then there's Chun-Run.
we just don't know where chun-run came from. but she sure Is, and she's Immediately going to make it a Huge Fucking Problem. being aligned with the musicians of bremen, she has.. very normal views about art, and what it means to be Alive. she's the closest thing to a human time bomb i can think of, probably.
she doesn't have much of a character... honestly kind of intentionally? her entire being is solely rooted in the present, the What Is and the What Will Be. she strives to feel what the pianist's performance invoked that day-- through any means necessary. whatever happens to Her, to anything around her-- none of it matters. first and foremost, she is a conduit. it's all secondary to that singular experience.
horrifying. painful, disgusting. striking, poignant, pungent. it makes her sick to think about, but some part of her wishes she was closer to truly Feel it. its repulsive– but she Needs to hear it again. to witness, to experience. what is it– what was it? to grasp onto an ephemeral feeling she physically cannot understand– frustrating, frustrating. but she Needs to. to make the soul sing, cry out in reverence... to call it a Song is almost insulting.
so you have the worlds most unstable walking contradiction with absolutely no outlet and an unidentified fucking thing intent on wringing some undefineable meaning from the soul through physical violence.
so like, moth meet flame.
chun-run is pretty much Instantly infatuated with holly-- but for the Entire Wrong Reasons. it's pretty much "Yeah I Could Make Her Worse." all the way down, but expressed entirely through Murder. yknow, girl things. and holly, of course, fucking hates this are you for real right now??? shut the fuck up about reaching Art through Violence there is something WRONG WITH YOU. chun is entirely convinced that she's what will harmonize closest to that sound she's chasing-- that dissatisfaction, desire, rage... it's so painfully close. and yet she refuses to acknowledge that spark! refuses to engage entirely! is it not the nature of the soul to sing? so sing girl, sing.
girlies who are trying to claw their way back to stability and girlies who want nothing more than to burn to ashes in a beautiful blaze of Being. in conclusion:
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