#The lack of checking in in my experience is just telling me you have issues being in the real world
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perfect || steve rogers x f!reader
summary: reader breaks up with steve over insecurities regarding lack of experience. he insists she is perfect, and proves to her just how perfect she is.
warnings: unprotected sex, fingering, multiple creampies, brief size kink, brief daddy kink, virgin reader, hints of a darker steve, blowjob. I think that’s it?
misc: just know, never written steve before so this is VERY new for me. I’m trying to move past my comfort zones. Also this was written on my phone, so. If the format is off that’s mostly why.
also some people I think may enjoy this, @sweetieswiftie @a-bang-for-your-bucky @grippingbeskar @castlesnchurches
You had broken up with him via text.
He didn’t respond well to that. For the life of him, he couldn’t understand what he had done wrong. So, he went to the nearest flower shop and bought a dozen brightly colored dahlias…your favorite. The next thing he had done was go out of his way to get takeout. It was your usual order from the Vietnamese place you had brought him to. Last, he stopped to get you a book. He knew you were reading a series, and decided to get you the next one in the series. Then he found himself at the door of your apartment. He was nervous. Clearing his throat, he knocked.
You pulled the door open without checking, the one thing Steve always got on you for doing. You spoke first, “Steve, I just br” -
“I brought a few things so you might let me in, and tell me why.”
This was the last conversation you were wanting to have. Yet, you knew Steve and he wouldn’t just step away. So, reluctantly, you stepped back and gestured for him to come inside. The aroma of the food he brought followed him to the kitchen, and you smiled at the thought of him going out of his way to get you one of your favorites.
Then your eyes registered flowers as he turned and offered them to you. You looked down with a shy smile before taking them from him, whispering a thanks. Steve’s eyes stayed glued to you as you walked around the tiny island to open it and pull out a vase, filling it with water to drop the flowers inside.
You decided to place the merry vase on your coffee table and as you moved them around in the vase and didn’t look at him, Steve spoke up, “So, are you going to tell me what went wrong? Because last I checked, we were doing wonderful. More than that even.”
You looked at him then, your cheeks redding as you thought of why. You hugged your arms to your torso and Steve looked at you, patiently waiting. There was a reason you broke up with him through text message and you were hoping to avoid this conversation. Desperately. Your eyes were beginning to water and you looked away. Steve stood there, still as a statue. Reluctantly, you come clean, “Look at me, Steve.”
Not understanding, a bit of a laugh escaped him before he answered, confused, “I am.”
“No…look at me. Why do you want me? No one else ever has. I’m not thin enough, not social enough, not bright enough, not…good enough.”
Steve’s face was scrunched with confusion, before he shook his head, “I’m not understanding.”
He watched as you threw your head back with a frustrated sigh. You stomped off to your bedroom in a dramatic fashion that would have been adorable under different circumstances. He bit back his smile. Then, just as swiftly as you exited, you came back and threw a magazine at him. Steve turned to the page you had dog eared and saw a photo taken of the two of you. You were walking into headquarters in streetwear. He didn’t see the issue until he saw the caption.
Captain America Dating Grunt
You watched as he read the article, words ripping you apart and pointing out everything you’ve ever had an insecurity about. When he was done, his hands made quick work of ripping the pages apart. He crossed the space between you and you stepped away, “They’re not wrong Steve…I’m not a good fit for you. Between the looks and the lack of experience, I’m not exactly batting the best.”
Steve came to a still. His blue eyes pierced through you, “You’re perfect.”
“I just…literally anyone else could be better for you. And don’t even get me started on reading everywhere in gossip columns how you should be with a model or the elusive redhead in photos that we both know is Natasha. It’s tiring.” You averted your gaze and picked at your nail beds, an old nervous habit that Steve knew was your bluff. You were lying about something. He just wasn’t sure what.
Instead of hiding it though, he called you out on it, “That’s a lie and we both know it. C’mon beautiful, those comparisons never bothered you before. I know that’s not the issue.”
You knew it wasn’t the issue, too. No, the truth was, the night before last the two of you had gotten much closer and that terrified you for more than one reason. For starters, you were already well in love with him and terrified any time he went on missions. What would happen if you became even more attached? Was it even possible? Then, what if you were bad at it? Sure, the heated kisses and level of intimacy already were wonderful, but you didn’t really know what to do besides that. And, part of you was insecure. What if he didn’t appreciate or even want the full package once it was opened?
Biting at your lip, you mumbled out, “I’ve also…never had sex.”
Steve stared at you in disbelief, his blue eyes taking in the blush on your face.
“I’m sorry?”
“God Steve, I know you heard me.” Your eyes landed on the floor. That seemed the safest option at this moment. Though part of you felt like you might spontaneously combust at any moment. Tears pricked at your eyes in embarrassment.
A small smile hinted at the corners of his lips before he cleared his throat, “I’ve only ever had sex once sweetheart. It’s not like I would have much comparison myself. What if I’m god awful?”
Your head shot up. Only once? How could that be the case? You blinked away your forming tears before sniffling, “You’re just saying that to make me feel better. Look at you. Who wouldn’t be trying for that? You’ve had to have offers.”
“Well, I didn’t get many looks before the serum, and afterwards I was a bit busy with war. It was right before I ended up on the front lines though. So, roughly eighty years ago…” he winced at the way that sounded before laughing, “And now I feel old.”
You found yourself feeling a little better. A laugh escaped you before adding, “You are…but I like that about you. You’re the only grown man I’ve met that likes to dance with me.”
“Sweetheart I will do absolutely anything with you.”
A fierce blush spread across your face and you cleared your throat, “Wanna help me eat the food you brought?”
“Only if it means you’ve rescinded the breakup.”
“I suppose I acted with haste.”
“You can say that again. And just know, I will never ask you to do something that would make you uncomfortable.” His hand found yours, engulfing your small hand in size and warmth and comfort. That was just Steve.
The two of you sat at your small table in the kitchen and ate in peace with one another. You moved to clear the table and Steve stood and began to help. You moved in comfortable silence. Though, there was an odd electricity in the air, knowing what each of you knew now. And, as he brushed your hair back and kissed you goodbye, his lips lingered on yours and you ran a hand through his hair before deepening the kiss.
He chuckled deeply as he broke the kiss, thumb stroking your cheek, speaking softly, “I have to say, there is no way you’ll be bad at it, and there is no way I won’t enjoy it. But I have to go sweetheart. Bucky and I are getting shipped out in less than an hour now, but I couldn’t leave things the way they were. You’re too important to me.”
He kissed you again on the cheek and you called out once he turned around, “Hey.”
Steve looked back at you, a smile spreading on his face as you said three words, “I love you.”
“I love you too, sweetheart. I will see you when I get back, yeah?”
As you nodded, your heart feeling lighter with your revelation, he left out and you softly closed the door behind him, whispering, “Be safe.”
Steve made it in record time to the military air strip, weaving in and out of traffic on his bike. When he pulled up he saw Bucky already there. Even as Steve climbed off the bike, Bucky was impatient to learn, “How did it go with your girl?”
“Well, she said she loved me for the first time…” Steve wasn’t sure how much to divulge to his best friend.
Though, over the course of the mission, Steve accidentally slipped up on just what the problem was. They were at a small cafe grabbing a bite to eat when Steve slipped up. Bucky put his food down and looked at Steve incredulous, “No, there’s no way. A girl that looks like that” -
“Hey, watch it!”
“Steve, I was just saying, I don’t believe it. There’s no way no one has really tried before.” Bucky remembered when he first met you, how if you were anyone else’s but Steve’s he would have tried to take you away.
Steve was getting uncomfortable with the conversation though and dismissed it, “No it makes sense. She spends so much time at work and in that lab. It’s the only reason I met her when I did. I was with Natasha and she brought me with her. Said she needed to pick up some new equipment. But now? She was absolutely trying to fix us up.”
Bucky nodded as he finished his meal. As Steve went to take another bite, Bucky offered his unsolicited advice, “Eat with enthusiasm.”
Steve choked a bit on his last bite and once he cleared his throat gave Bucky a shove, his friend laughing playfully.
Meanwhile, back home you paged Natasha to come and meet you in the lab. When the redhead got there, looking around as though expecting to see a reason she was there, you waved at her and stated, “Natasha I need your help.”
She walked over towards you and cocked an eyebrow when she saw your face already getting red, “Everything okay?”
“I, uh…I don’t know what to wear for an…event.”
“Okay, well, what’s the event?”
Your blush spread to your ears and you timidly showed her your phone screen. You had been looking at lingerie. It didn’t take long for you to realize that you were incredibly out of your depth. Which is when you called her in. Natasha tried to bite back a smirk but you could hear it in her voice, “And what an event it is.”
“I wanted something special but also everything I’ve found just feels a bit…”
“Much?”
You nodded, feeling relieved she understood and also kept you from over explaining.
Natasha reached below your work space and grabbed your purse and nodded to the door, “Take the lab coat off and come with me. You’re taking a personal day and I don’t think anyone will mind.”
A week later found you looking at your phone in your apartment, nervously eyeing your last text received. As much as I want to go home and shave before you see me, I missed you too much. On my way to see you.
You had slipped into what you and Natasha had settled on as soon as you received his message. To cover it, the two of you had decided on a loose fitting silk slip dress in a light pink. You tied the nude colored silk sash around your waist. It still baffled you that stockings could cost so damn much, not even acknowledging the rest of it. You had always been a mismatched sports bra and panty kind of girl. A blush spread over your cheeks as you thought of what you were wearing. Huffing, you looked up at the ceiling and spoke to no one but yourself, “Get it together, girl.” A yelp followed as a knock interrupted your self talk, and you could feel your heartbeat already beginning to race.
Walking to the door, you looked through the eyehole and your breath caught in your throat. It was Steve. You fumbled with the locks long enough for it to be noticeable. Was that sweat on your palms?
By the time you got the door open, Steve’s face held a questioning look. That was, until he drank in the sight of you. His tongue reflexively licked his bottom lip, blue eyes traveling slowly up your body until they rested on your face, “Jesus sweetheart, you look incredible. I hope you didn’t get dressed up just for me though...”
Looking down to hide the new blush erupting on your cheeks, you took a step back to let him inside.
When you looked back up, you felt your insides clench at the sight of him. He had a beard. His hair had gotten the tiniest bit longer. Something about him not looking as polished as he normally did had your stomach fluttering. That was when you realized you were just staring, your mouth slightly open and eyes glazed over with lust. Snapping yourself out of it and doing your best to ignore his knowing smirk, you cleared your throat and responded brutally honest, “You're exactly who I dressed up for.”
You winced at the way it sounded. You turned and walked away, face in hand, wondering just how red your face could get. Steve let out a sympathetic laugh before walking in behind you and closing the door. He sat on the couch as you went into the kitchen. You opened a bottle of Pinot noir and poured a rather…healthy glass. Taking a sip you called out, “Want anything to drink Steve?”
“No I’m good sweetheart.”
Letting a sigh escape, you downed the entire glass before dry heaving at the feel of so much red wine at your throat before chugging water. Walking into the living room, your eyes immediately fell on Steve.
At first you were looking at his face, tired and eyes closed. However, soon your eyes fell lower. Your mouth ran dry. You had never understood the excitement over sweatpants weather. Until now. Resting between his legs was the larg-
-“well sweetheart I came here to see you, so come over here please?”
Pulled as though by attraction alone, you found yourself standing before him before straddling his hips. Your fingers were shaking as you threaded them through his hair, whispering, “I missed you.”
Before you could think, you found your lips slowly working on his neck. A groan escaped him as you continued along his shoulder. Your hands grabbed hold on the back of his biceps before you rocked your hips slightly, experimenting.
Steve’s hands instinctively grabbed at your thighs to try and steady you, to try and slow you. You looked at him, studying the face you knew you loved more than you thought possible. His blue eyes looked at you, silently questioning. It had you thinking of what you wanted. Him. Leaning forward, you whispered softly to him as though scared anyone else might hear something so private, “I’m yours, Steve. And I want you to take what’s yours.”
The two of you stared at one another in silence, your turn to smile at the disbelief on his face. He only snapped out of it when you rocked your hips forward again. His fingers wrapped around your thighs as he stood and picked you up. A shriek of laughter at the unexpected movement escaped you before his lips found yours, your own hands weaving into his hair to eagerly return the gesture.
As Steve backed you into your bedroom door, you let go of his hair to open the handle. Just as you did and broke the kiss Steve asked you, “Seeetheart, are you sure?”
“I am sure, Steve. Just promise you’ll still love me after?” Just as you asked, your door opened and the two of you fell through. His lips were once again on yours, answering your question with a kiss.
You landed on your bed with Steve on top of you. Your legs parted for him immediately to make space and his hand ran along the outside of your thighs, pausing where the stocking gave way to soft lace. He buried his head in your neck at the same time. Possibly to hide his own blush. But then you heard his voice, teasing and affectionate, “Did you wear these for me sweetheart?”
Just as he asked you, he bucked his hips into you. Both of you were still clothed. You suddenly realized there was too much fabric in the way. And yet, the feeling of his cock straining against the fabric of his sweatpants elicited a moan from you. Steve nearly whines as he repeated the action, another lustful sound escaping you, before whispering, “Such pretty stockings for such a pretty girl. Gonna keep them on you, is that alright?”
There was a question. Yet, you weren’t sure what it was as Steve’s free hand caressed your face before kissing you again. The pressure on your lips was bruising but it didn’t matter. You just needed more of him. Your hands found his back, clinging to him as he continued dry humping you.
You were so quick to respond. It didn’t take long for your arousal to spread through your body, soaking your pretty nude panties and leaving a damp spot against his sweatpants. Then, the smell of you reached Steve just as he grunted at the feeling of your arousal wetting his sweatpants. You smelled divine. You felt heavenly. Now? He needed to taste.
Steve’s mouth slowly worked down your neck. You moaned as his tongue grazed over a sensitive spot on your neck that neither of you knew you had, licking along the soft line of your clavicle, before he placed a kiss between your breasts.
It was there that he paused and looked down…wanting to know what you looked like. This dress, as pretty as it was on you, was in his way. A soft smile as he glanced up to you before muttering apologies had you confused until his hands made easy work of the dress, ripping it down the middle. The soft silk pooled around your sides as he let go and his blue eyes roamed over you before huffing, “Sweetheart, I will say it again and again till you believe me. You’re perfect.”
Something shifted in him and he fell onto you, mouth hot and hungry as he explored your body. His wet tongue on the delicate lace cup of your bra as he kept rutting against you. Another moan tumbled from your lips before it turned into a desperate whine, his tongue through the fabric igniting your core.
Steve was running on autopilot now, thinking of everything he had wanted to do for so long, your pretty little sounds driving him on. His hands pulled at the cups so that you spilled out. His mouth closed over your nipple, the direct contact causing you to arch your back…getting closer to him. Cool air hit your damp nipple, causing it to peak. Steve’s mouth fell to the other, his fingers lightly pulling and twisting at the one his mouth abandoned.
That combined with the way his cock grinded against you was sending you somewhere you hadn’t been before. You had cum before but suddenly your own fingers felt so lackluster as they clutched to his back, your nails giving him pleasure in an unexpected way. And then, just when you felt yourself on the precipice, Steve’s hand came between the two of you. His mouth continued sucking and nipping at your sensitive skin and his fingers slipped beneath your underwear, the slickness of your arousal making it far too easy to slip his middle finger inside of you.
Just like that, you called out for him, your cream covering his thick digit as he pulled it from you.
You watched, equally hypnotized and mortified as he pulled back and sucked that finger into his mouth, licking it clean. A soft smile was on his face as he looked down at you, his voice coming out almost strained, “Yeah….perfect.”
It was only then that he looked down at himself, arousal evident, that same teasing affectionate voice from earlier surfacing, “And you thought I could possibly not want you, sweetheart?”
Your eyes were large as you looked at him. Timid at first, never having done this, you hooked your fingers around his waistband before pulling them down. His cock was heavy as it fell free and you were suddenly intimidated by the size of it.
On your hands and knees before him, Steve sitting back on his heels now, you slowly smeared the precum coming from his top down…surprised by just how soft the skin was.
Steve moaned at your slight touch. His head fell back, eyes shut, relishing at the tiniest amount of contact. What he wasn’t expecting was what you did next, sucking on the head of his cock while lazily dragging your hand down. A hiss escaped him before he looked at you. Your ass was in the air as you dragged your tongue around him. It was like you were teasing him with it. Come and get me.
The movement surprised both of you. You, because it felt so good to be stretched just a bit more, and him because it forced you to take about half of him into your mouth. Steve made to pull back but you were so encouraged by the noises he made that you had the opposite idea in mind. Instead, you took more of him into your mouth and Steve cried out, “Fuck!”
It sounded so unlike him, so uncharacteristic. Grunts came from him as your head moved up and down. A growl came from him. And suddenly he was giving you praise that you never expected to hear from him, “You look so pretty like this. Gonna leave that delicious cream on my fingers again, this time with my cock in your mouth, huh?”
“Oh g…Steve!” His words, his fingers, were driving you crazy.
You took him back into your mouth just as you came, the vibrations of your moans causing him to follow behind you. You eagerly sucked down everything he gave you, the taste of him salty on your tongue.
He slowly pulled his fingers from you, again watching him lick them clean. You felt your pussy flutter when he took them away, a whine escaping you that wasn’t missed by him. He helped you lay back down, your legs once again eagerly splayed open for him. A soft smile appeared on his face as he slowly ran the head of his cock along your folds, “I have a confession sweetheart.”
You were confused, “A…confession?”
“I planted a bug underneath your bed one day, a few months back, and I’ve touched myself listening to you whimpering around your fingers, knowing how much better you’d sound with your pretty pussy taking me. Does that bother you?” His confession had you more aroused than anything and you shook your head no while bucking your hips up for friction against his cock.
“After I claim your pretty little pussy, you’re mine in every way. Are you ready for that?”
You felt your pussy weeping with arousal at the anticipation of it. Frantic, you shook your head yes before barely managing to say, “Yes. M’yours.”
Steve shifted and slowly pushed his cock inside of you. You cried out at the stretch before commenting, “S’not gonna fit.”
“Oh it will sweetheart. You’ll be taking all of me soon, and then you’ll feel so good and full.”
His thumb fell on your exposed clit, the stretch he was already inflicting on your pussy giving him easy access. He rocked the first few inches back and forth inside of you while rubbing circles around your sensitive bud. Steve shuddered a bit. Even this bit inside of you felt like heaven. He screwed his eyes shut and muttered, “Gonna cum already sweetheart. Feel so good. Are you…oh god.”
He couldn’t finish asking if you were on birth control before his cum was filling you, his still hard cock pulsing inside of you. Steve bent his head down and took one of your nipples in his mouth, pushing further inside of you. You moaned at the sensation before begging, “Fill me with your cock Steve. I’m ready. I - oh fuck - I need you.”
In one fluid motion he pulled you up as he sat back, impaling you on his cock. You cried out at the sensation before instinctively rocked your hips with a moan, settling skin to skin.
Steve held your face with his hands, checking in, “Is everything alright sweetheart?”
You nodded before commenting, “I never expected something to feel so right.”
“Gonna lay you down now sweetheart so I can see my cock fucking you. I’ve wanted it for too long.”
He kissed you deeply before laying you back down and leaning back. He pulled out of you, his semen from before spilling from you, before he pushed back in and watched a bulge in your lower stomach appear. He slowly rocked before pressing on the area where his cock was moving, causing you to spasm with pleasure. Excited by your response he picked up the pace, “That’s my cock deep inside you sweetheart.”
The words escaped you before you realized but it didn’t matter. Steve had heard you before when he listened in…your pretty little voice begging. He didn’t expect you to feel so comfortable so soon though, “Feel so good buried in me daddy.”
Steven doubled his effort at your revelation, fucking away any doubt that what you said was wrong. At his sudden increase you felt your orgasm hit you. You were calling out for him, skin slicked with sweat, nails scratching along his back. Steve swallowed your cries hungrily as he leaned over to kiss you, his second orgasm rushing over him. He gasped out, “G-gonna cum sweetheart. Gonna fill your pretty little pussy with me.”
“Gonna fill me up till I can’t hold anymore daddy?”
Steve growled out, “Fuck.”
At that, he shot his cum deep inside of you, stilling for a moment with his blue eyes fixated on you, “See? Fucking perfect. And mine.”
As he claimed you with words you felt his cock stir inside of you once again.
“Yours. Only yours, Steve.”
As he drove his hips into you, he hung his head, “I was so eager, I forgot to…eat with enthusiasm .”
Feeling emboldened, you used his moment of uncertainty to flip him to his back…sinking down onto him just the slightest bit more. You looked down at him before rolling your hips, “Plenty of time later, Steve. I’ve waited too long for this.”
The two of you spent the next few hours like this until finally, your pussy was too tired, too bruised.
You lay there in the bed, your leg and arm over him with your head on his chest. All of his cum was slowly leaking from you and down your thighs, though there were also splattered with it from him fucking your breasts too. He traced an imaginary pattern on your back as he whispered, “I love you so much, sweetheart. I’m yours.”
A chill ran down your back for some reason as he added, “And you’re mine.”
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Maybe I'm just too much of a utilitarian but it seems to me that the moral dilemma of "should I vote for Biden and tell the Democrats that genocide is fine or not vote and possibly help Trump into power through my inaction" can be solved with lying. Call up your rep or whoever's in charge of your local democrats and tell them that you won't be voting for Biden because of his lack of action with regards to Palestine. Then go vote for him anyway. What are they going to do? Check? If you haven't voted yet, there's nothing to check, and if you have, then it could be that a change in his actions prompted it. They don't know if you're lying to them. And that's if they bother to check at all. It's not illegal to lie to politicians about your voting plans.
no you're 100% correct about this.
and like, there are other "representative democracies" (calling this system "democratic" is a sad joke but whatever) where this is not really an issue; I really enjoyed Mia Mulder's latest video on the topic, where she gets into the nitty-gritties of her experience with politics and how her election played out in Sweden. Just the example of how another system worked gave me a lot of useful perspective on our's! (in Sweden, each party's candidates are elected in proportion to the percentage of votes the party got; even if the party only gets 10% of the total votes, they'll still have a couple of candidates representing them, rather than that being considered a "loss" like it would be in the US).
We need to set up ideal conditions to push for systemic change, and reducing harm & electing the easiest people to push into what we want is practically the best way to do that. Lie about how you intend to vote. they won't check.
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Hey, allo anon with an ace partner here. I wanted to say thank you so much for the well wishes! I figured I would send this in here again, so anyone else who is curious about what this experience looks like from the other side can see it.
My girlfriend came out to me a little over 2 years into our relationship. At the time it surprised me a lot, because she'd never given me any signs that she wasn't enjoying what we were doing. After we talked more I understood that she wasn't repulsed by sex and she didn't hate it, but she didn't really love it either and wanted to stop doing it for a while (so a sex-neutral ace).
Honestly, at the time, I did get anxious about it. Not just because of social conventions, but because I had viewed sex as an important bonding part of our relationship. I don't do well with change, and I was super worried about how a lack of sex would change our dynamic. I also had some insecurities about my own body, and my girlfriend admitting that she didn't see me as sexy was upsetting. But after speaking to my therapist, I realized that I was projecting my own issues on to the relationship. So I spoke with her again, and she reassured me that she wanted to be with me, and that she was confiding these feelings because she trusted me. She likes how I look, she just doesn't have the same sexual impulses I do.
So, I realized this was pretty much like cuddling. I love physical touch a lot, and I want to cuddle for a much longer time than she does. I like it when someone lies on top of me. She doesn't want me on top of her chest during cuddling. She still cuddles with me, but she tells me when she's satisfied, and we stop.
A few months went by, and I noticed that she wasn't spending any less time with me; she was actually spending more. We would still call every evening when we didn't meet up in person, we would still joke around, and she still told me she loved me and did everything she could to show it to me. We also began trying out new stuff together, and playing games and watching stuff more often. We also still had plenty of physical intimacy with things like cuddling and kissing, which made me really happy.
I realized that I didn't feel like anything was missing from the relationship. I just needed her to show and tell me she loved me in the ways she normally did. Sure, I am still attracted to her that way, but it wasn't something that would make or break the relationship.
It's been years since she came out, and at this point, I never expect anything sexual. It happens rarely, and I always check in with her multiple times before and during. We stop at any point she tells me. There are quite a few hard boundaries about what is and isn't off limits, and I always keep them in mind. I would rather satisfy myself forever than make her uncomfortable, and she knows it.
It's been over 5 years and we are still going strong. I am hoping to ask her to marry me in the next few years, because honestly, I can't picture wanting anyone else by my side. She is kind, funny, beautiful, intelligent, and treats me well. I could never ask for anything more from a partner.
Thank you SO MUCH for sharing. I myself definitely lack knowledge of what it feels like from an allo's perspective, so this was very educational for me, but beyond that... You have no idea how much hope this gives me.
From you being aware of how much sex meant to you in the context of your relationship and still being fine without it, to just... Heck, even your therapist for not blaming her for the situation. Therapy is still very much, in my country at least, an area where the absence or lower levels of sexual attraction will be hastily labelled as something wrong physically or mentally, so... Yeah, the amount of relief I felt reading that, you have no idea. And I can only imagine how much your partner appreciates it too.
Honestly I teared up a bit reading this - I sincerely wish you guys all the best and I hope you have a bright future ahead! (Also fun fact, seems you guys have been together as long as my partner and I have, it's nice to be able to relate to that too hehe^^)
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Public service notice
Remember how I said I haven't blocked you just yet @chaotickoalacat ?
Well, got your reply ask, and let me tell you this:
I'm really tempted to do it right now.
I am not going to answer this ask, more so because I know how you will be literally crucified in the comments not only for the utter nonsense you are spewing but the way you are doing so.
I will address a couple of things you are saying though. Because seriously dude, I'm in utter shock as to how you are actually able to come up with this stuff.
You believe MHJ? Really?
You tell me that because she created NJ then her saying that Illit are copying her then that's it? It must be true? She also said that BTS copied her concepts in the past, that true too? You are aware of the fact that she is all about the visuals and has nothing to do with the music part of things, right? Just checking.
And in the same breath you are also full on acknowledging that she was the one behind the BTS leaks, including the damaging leak of JM's private info.
So, let me get this straight, you have no issue in believing a person that is untrustworthy and moved to hurt your fave, as long as it suits your current agenda? Seriously? I kind of think that once untrustworthy always untrustworthy. Or in your world is it once untrustworthy sometimes trust worthy as long as what's coming out of their mouth is what I want to hear?
Btw, you most definitley showed your true colours with the whole "JK's fling" idiocy. Prey tell me what does it say about JM, or more so, what does it say about what you think about JM if he sticks by JK's side while JK, in your warped mind, is an untrustworthy copy cat cheater? You must think so highly of JM for sticking by JK's side when JK treats him like shit (according to your warped views).
And let me make my views clear as day here. JK did not copy JM nor is JK an asshole cheater that can't keep his dick to himself. Balloon busted for you, I guess.
And yes, we are both BTS fans (or are we? cause you seem to be a solo stan and not a fan of BTS the band and all it's members), but clearly you lack the basic emotional intelligence that someone who is mature enough and with some life and long term relationship experience has. Either you are very young and inexperienced or for some reason lack that healthy relationship experience. Because thinking so low of JK and yet believing at the same time that JM would stick around someone like that, yeah, there is something lacking in your life experience. Maybe no experience, maybe bad experience, maybe too much Kdrama watching experience. Whichever it is, please, do not try and compare us.
There is NO comparison.
You say that you don't view JM as a damsel in distress, that he is a strong person, stronger than JK seeing how well he did in the army. Let me start by saying what a load of bull (not the him being strong part, but the part where you claim you aren't out to 'save' him). He's strong when it suits you, which is when you want to prove he's better than JK and/or the others (I'll get into how disgusting and disrespectful that comparison you are making is in a second). But at the same time he, supposedly in your fantasy world, allows JK and the company to step all over him, to copy his ideas and creativity and to scorn him and mess around with others, and continues to play along with their game, of showing up for JK, going on trips with him, enlisting with him even after he's supposedly, again, been mistreated, disrespected, cheated on. I would kind of suggest that you make up your mind which is it?
As for this constant comparison with the others when it comes to their army service, I've been vocal about this in the past and I will say it again. It sickens me how disrespectful you are towards not only the other BTS members, each and every one of them doing their utmost best within their army placement, but it's disrespectful towards every single other SK young man that is doing their compulsory military service. How easy it is sitting on your comfy chair in the safety of your own home or wherever it is you are sitting, which isn't an actual war zone, behind your screen and keyboard, grading these young men that have left their lives behind for 18 months to enlist into active duty in a military that is at war with another country. Please have more respect not only for every single one of the members (each serving at their utmost best within their assigned duties) but also for all the other young men that are doing just the same. JM is amazing, he's assigned duties are utilizing his high level of intelligence and mathematical abilities. Kudos to him for excelling at it. But why is it so hard for you to say that and at the same time say the same about each and every other member? Why is there this need not only to uplift one, but to do so at the expense of the other, diminishing what the other is doing? This whole attitude is just so childish and stupid. And you know what? Like I said, it's disrespectful not only to the other members and to every single other soldier, but also to JM, who doesn't need to bring down the others to show just how amazing he is.
This is it. Let me make this as clear as day that even if I end my sentences with a question mark, it's a rhetorical question and not an invitation for your response. I will not reply to any more asks you might throw my way. Obviously you are intrenched in your ideas and opinions, as warped and unhealthy as they may be.
Good luck trying to save JM from the one person he is showing us all that he wants to spend every second, every minute, every hour with.
And good luck with it all when Jikook Karma strikes, cause it's coming and it's coming strong, and when it does come well, all those that lack the respect to either JK or JM, those who are willfully closing their eyes and ears to what they have been showing and telling us for years now...
...the day is coming when it can no longer be ignored.
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Hi, I really enjoyed reading your indepth post today on how to fulfill ourselves. I really admire you and the “states girlies” a lot because you guys really know your stuff!
I have a bit of a scenario that i’ve been “stuck” in and in my own head about, if you have time i would really appreciate some advice.
So i’ve been “manifesting” my sp for a little over 2 years now using law of assumption, but in reality i’ve only TRULY been manifesting him using states for the last 8 months. I have a really good understanding of states thanks to you and twitter pages, edward art and neville. I promise I don’t focus on time (until recently when i was making plans for my future which i always assumed my sp would be here for) and I never intended that manifesting takes a long time. I’ve experienced many quick manifestations and I know sp is no different but im not sure where im going wrong. I always catch myself when im out of the state and redirect myself back and have been doing this daily for the last 8 months. I do feel fulfilled in my mind with him since I no longer have a “longing” for him nor do I expect him to take any action in the 3D because thats not my true world. I dont even feel bad/sad when “opposite” things seem to happen (such as him unfollowing me out of the blue) and I give stuff like that NO meaning because it GENUINELY doesn’t affect me since I know in imagination im happily married. I know you’ll tell me that im not truly fulfilled if the 3D is making me feel some type of way, but Im not sure how else to explain that I don’t know why not even the tiny bit of movement has happened (I dont want movement, I want my whole desire, just trying to say how in my physical senses there has been nothing experienced).
I keep up with your posts weekly and I know you’ll tell me that if im noticing the absence im not in the state, that im dominantly still in lack, etc but I truly felt like I was fulfilled. I never check the 3D, I never even have “opposing” thoughts (since thoughts are an indicator of my state) so I thought for months that everything is fine. Even now I am prioritizing my state because I know that by writing this, I am being in an unfulfilled state, but im not sure what else to do. After a while it gets a little weird noticing it hasn’t reflected even though im fulfilled within. Am I doing anything wrong? I dont have a strong desire for my sp anymore because I worked a lot on myself and no longer need him, but I do wish to be with him still.
Thank you rem.
hi love! so im not in your brain, so i don't know every little thing you think/do throughout the day, so im gonna give u some examples of things i was accidentally doing whenever i was manifesting an sp that was keeping my 3d from reflecting, even tho i was sure i was 100% fulfilled. maybe you'll realize you're doing something similar and be able to stop it?
i'd prepare myself for what i'd say to my sp when he finally reached out, or i'd daydream about yelling at him when he did bc i knew before we got back together we'd have to talk about our past issues. this was contradicting the fact that i was manifesting already being in a relationship with my sp. why would i be identifying with those thoughts when i was already with my sp?
i like to daydream in order to fulfill myself, but sometimes i'd stop paying attention and accidentally slip into a state of longing without even realizing it. like i'd be daydreaming about something bc i desperately wanted to experience it in my reality, not because i was experiencing it in my 4D, if that makes sense. what i like to do to combat that is while im daydreaming i just like to tell myself that im re-living a memory and that im so happy this thing already happened/is happening. it helps me think from my desire instead of thinking of it!
my friends have shared that one of their mistakes while manifesting an sp was still wanting their sp to be missing them/obsessed with them/constantly thinking about how badly they wanted to be with them, daydreaming about scenarios of them being jealous, etc. this was making them identify with separation, when they really wanted to identify as their sp's partner.
similarly, an issue i had was focusing way too much on how my sp was feeling about me, instead of focusing on how i was feeling about them. when i'd daydream or imagine, i'd imagine them loving ME or confessing their feelings to ME, but then i realized that how i feel matters more than how they feel, because this is my reality! so instead i'd focus on how much i loved them and how amazing i felt being loved by them. that's why, as i mentioned in my most recent post, i changed from affirming "my sp loves me" to "i love my sp."
while manifesting my sp, i knew the first step of us getting back together would be him texting me, so every time i picked up my phone and i saw he hadn't texted me yet id feel sooo discouraged. what helped me with this was telling myself things like "ofc my sp didn't text me, he's literally in the same room as me why would he text me lol?" this would help me feel like we were already together!
i was still PISSED at my sp. idk what your story is with your sp, but mine was an ex, and i was mad at him for breaking up with me still. i had to forgive him because i was constantly holding onto that anger and fantasizing about yelling at him over it. this one might not apply to u depending on your relationship with your sp idk!
similarly, i'd find myself getting mad at my sp for not "conforming" to my affs? even tho he didn't even know i wanted him back? so once again i focused on feeling positively towards my sp and imagining how much i loved him. once i started focusing on the version of my sp that was such a good and loving and attentive boyfriend, he started showing up that way in my reality. remember, there is NO ONE TO CHANGE BUT SELF! focus on changing how YOU feel about your sp instead of how he feels about you!
i know you say that you never feel negatively about your sp or your situation, but as i've mentioned in other posts, sometimes the feeling of knowing feels like nothing. so while you're noticing nothing is happening in your 3D, you can still be accepting the fact that nothing is happening without it giving you any negative emotions.
my advice would be to implement the distraction technique. this is what helped me finally manifest my sp. i had a favorite person attachment to my sp (bc of my bpd) so i was thinking of him ALL day long, and sometimes i wouldn't be paying enough attention to know if i was thinking of him from the state of the wish fulfilled, or from the state of lack. so instead, every time i thought of him at all (negatively or positively) i'd say "it is done" (which instantly shifted me into the state of the wish fulfilled) and then force myself to think of something else. so many of my followers have had success with this technique! this technique isn't necessary at all (you're 100% allowed to think of your sp) but i found it rlly helpful for my adhd brain. it can also be really helpful for you if you can't pinpoint what you're doing wrong!
i really hope this post was helpful to you!! <3 let me know if anything helped!
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former limiting beliefs i used to hold and how i let them go ♡
(disclaimer: these are based off of my own experience! share yours on your own blog 🥰)
“the 3d HAS to reflect the 4d just understand you have it in your 4d no matter what.” um there is no separation between the 3d and 4d when you are already 1 being (consciousness). theres no need to live in a separate entity known as imagination when its the same as the “3d” anyways. the concepts of “imagination” “physical world” or “3d” are just false forms of consciousness youve made up and personified it as real. they are not. only you are.
“the more you repeat your affirmations the more likely they will come” theres nothing to “do” or say that will bring me my desires since i am everything i already am my desires. the idea of “doing” anything to “get something” outside of me doesnt make sense when its all in me. affirmations can be used to “bring things to your awareness” but understand the affirmations themselves are STILL not bringing you anyway. just making you aware of things.
“dont check the 3d! you’ll be in a state of lack/showing yourself you dont have it!” PLS GIVE ME A BREAK?? why the fuck are you telling urself you are with someone but afraid to check their socials or for their notifications? either date someone u like or you dont think you have it. because lets be honest. if you really were in a relationship with your desired person the idea of “checking the 3d”- which u already claim IS your 4d- shouldnt be an issue. and if it is then something aint right but i wont judge!
“youre in a state of neutrality if you dont care ab not getting your desires and you dont have them” damn yall strict asf. you cant even be indifferent without it meaning something. you either have it or you dont. if im indifférent its bc i have it why stress? fucking decide already
“neville taught ab non dualism!” here we go. then why tf did you misinterpret his words like that and make it sound obnoxious? i believe he did, just like his teacher, teach non dualism (the power of awareness by him is great) but his teachings are a far cry from the nonsense most of you spew in his name. and dont even get me started on how neville used to refer to the law of assumption as the “law of consciousness” but i digress. if you separate yourself or any aspects of being then it isnt non dualism.*
going into my next point “you HAVE to read source to understand!!” i am so glad most of the law of assumption community is breaking free from this mindset cuz you infact do not HAVE to read anything. if you are the operant (main) power doesnt this mean you are your own source? oh i thought so…
“work on your self concept to manifest your sp if you dont have them your sc is shitty” well it wasnt shitty til you told me i had work to do 💀. once again there is NOTHING you need to do but “be”. working on your sc can help u feel better ab yourself for sure but its not required!
for supposedly limitless beings, a lot of yall are very limited. be careful who you get your advice from because personally i wouldnt take after someone whos too scared to text their sp- oops i mean significant other. (disclaimer: once again not bashing loa just the users who can’t decide that they believe and switch every other day. very common on law of assumption twitter!)
if you realize youve been limiting yourself this whole time and now youre like “what now-“ well as ive stated before, theres STILL nothing you need to do. youre not missing anything. this isnt a blog on why you dont have your desires, i cant tell you the answer im not your creator. (you also are everything so you in fact have your desires)
like non dualism, i hope to share this way of life with you as you’re not getting anything so theres no need for limitations. LIVE YOUR LIFE. if someone is advising you to fear your own power then ignore them cuz wtf! life is suppose to be fun not a rule book!
*disclaimer: i have nothing against neville goddard. i really like some of his teachings. however i would never go to one of his living students for advice, ESPECIALLY on twitter. not only do most parrot the same limiting beliefs he himself didnt hold, but most are obnoxious about the topic of the law of assumption. i don’t even “manifest” but if i were trying to and had them to go to I’d probably cry. if you really wish to read “source”, read The Power Of Awareness by Neville Goddard and Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle 💜 learn from the teachers themselves FIRST <3
© itgomyway
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Bro you just killed my Kid Cudi listening sesh for this. How many times are we going to go over this with you people for fuck's sake
Rhaelya stans hate Sansa because...
Let me stop you right there. I am a Rhaelya, a Jonrya, and a Jon stan. I don't think about Sansa unless I'm forced to. My hyperfixation is on certain characters. Sansa isn't on my radar enough for me to hate her. Like Jon, I feel little else but indifference for her.
Sansa being a hostage makes Lyanna...look like she was a hostage...because there are parallels in both their situations.
But it's *not* a parallel, and here's exactly why.
Rhaegar is not like Joffrey.
Rhaegar actually died with Lyanna's name on his lips, as was confirmed in the official World of Ice and Fire App.
He was also described as a "love-struck prince" by the author himself:
At last I was able to ask him the question I had sent for the tombola. I have always been fascinated by how ASOIAF embodies the theories put forward by Acemoglu and Robinson about countries with extractive institutions (which hamper development). So my question was: Why do you think the political institutions in the Seven Kingdoms are so weak? His answer: the Kingdom was unified with dragons, so the Targaryen's[sic] flaw was to create an absolute monarchy highly dependent on them, with the small council not designed to be a real check and balance. So, without dragons it took a sneeze, a wildly incompetent and megalomaniac king, a love struck prince, a brutal civil war, a dissolute king that didn't really know what to do with the throne and then chaos. Interesting answer.
[Source]
Joffrey had no real love for Sansa. He saw her as an object to mistreat and misuse. He had no empathy and a deep lack of consideration for other people. He had her beaten because it gave him momentary gratification, because he was a psychopath. How is this comparable in any way to Lyanna at the tower of joy?
In fact, the whole point of what we are finding out about Rhaegar through Dany's chapters is to prove that Rhaegar is literally not the monster Robert has been making him out to be. That all Robert has said was due of his blind hatred of him and little more. So again, how is Lyanna's experiences in the tower of joy comparable to Sansa being beaten and harmed as a hostage in King's Landing?
How could this be a parallel, and can you back your claim with anything other than headcanons that have no basis in the books?
There is a reason why the tale of the winter rose was told to Jon specifically — because Bael the Bard and the Stark maiden is analogous to Rhaegar and Lyanna.
George says this about romance:
It's interesting, to get back to this issue of romance that you raised earlier. When I was in Spain a few years ago, I had dinner with a woman — a Spanish academic — and a big fan of both science fiction and romance, and she had read a lot of my stuff because people said I was a very romantic writer. And she sort of launched at me and said, "What are you talking about?! You are not a romantic writer, you know. Nobody ever lives happily ever after in your books!"
I was defending it, saying, "Well, but that's a different tradition of romance. I don't — I'm a romantic writer in the tradition of The Great Gatsby and Romeo and Juliet, and, you know, the Beauty and the Beast. These things don't necessarily have happy endings, but aren't the most powerful romances the unfulfilled romances — the romances where people go their separate ways, but they'll always have Paris, like in Casablanca, one of the films I showed here. You know, they go separate at the end, but they'll always have Paris." And she basically said, "No, you're wrong. They have to be happily ever after together for it to be romance, otherwise it's just sad."
[Source—clip starts at around 03:19]
This traditional telling of romance is shown quite clearly with both Bael the Bard with the Winter Rose and Rhaegar with Lyanna. Bael the Bard's tale was briefly happy:
No. They had been in Winterfell all the time, hiding with the dead beneath the castle. The maid loved Bael so dearly she bore him a son, the song says...though if truth be told, all the maids love Bael in them songs he wrote.
But also ended in tragedy:
"The song ends when they find the babe, but there is a darker end to the story. Thirty years later, when Bael was King-beyond-the-Wall and led the free folk south, it was young Lord Stark who met him at the Frozen Ford...and killed him, for Bael would not harm his own son when they met sword to sword."
"So the son slew the father instead," said Jon.
"Aye," she said, "but the gods hate kinslayers, even when they kill unknowing. When Lord Stark returned from the battle and his mother saw Bael's head upon his spear, she threw herself from a tower in her grief. Her son did not long outlive her. One o' his lords peeled the skin off him and wore him for a cloak." (Jon VI, ACoK)
Rhaegar left to fight in the War of the Usurper, lost and died. Lyanna died giving birth to Jon. And Jon died trying to save "Arya" from Ramsay.
This is what George means by a romantic love story.
And they also love Arya, because...Arya...looks like Lyanna
Or maybe we just like Arya because she's a fantastic character. Idk OP, could be that.
and isn't as hyper feminine as Sansa
This ties in quite well to the misogyny some "fans" of the series have to women like Arya. It's not because Sansa is "hyper feminine" that I don't care for her. I'm just indifferent to her. Femininity has absolutely nothing to do with it. I don't know if you know, but women can and do express themselves in different ways.
therefore her fans think she aligns with Rhaegar
?????????????
because they...hate Sansa and pretend its a love story
That is 100% the way George is taking R+L's story. This is quite literally his preferred telling of a romantic story. One where they share a brief affection for one another despite the eventual consequences, but end up separated, or worse.
Even though the point of Lyanna Stark is that her untold narrative is comparative to both Sansa and Arya
How is Lyanna's narrative comparative to Sansa? The only thing you've given was a non-parallel of being in the Red Keep/tower of joy, but there's nothing to suggest that Lyanna was trapped, beaten, or harmed there.
The king frowned. "A knife, perhaps. A good sharp one, and a bold man to wield it."
Ned did not feign surprise; Robert's hatred of the Targaryens was a madness in him. (Eddard II, AGoT)
--
For the first time in years, he found himself remembering Rhaegar Targaryen. He wondered if Rhaegar had frequented brothels; somehow he thought not. (Eddard IX, AGoT)
You do not find it strange that the brother of the woman who was supposedly trapped and imprisoned at the tower of joy has no ill words to say about the man who supposedly committed such heinous crimes?
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So, I've got kinda a comic making question I was hoping you coukd give some insight to. I've been planning on making a webcomic and I wanted to know how you go about outlining a chapter? You see, I have scriptwriting experience for comics, but I was doing it in the way you might for an issue of a typical western comic book, so I had a cap of 22 pages. And since webcomics don't have that cap, I was wondering how you handled how many pages each chapter would be? Is it just as many as you deem fit for the beats of the chapter to flow well? Or do you have a page count you aim for per chapter and adjust as you see fit? I know there aren't any like. Rules for doing this, but it's just something I've had on my mind lol
hmmm unfortunately for the most part my process is oops all vibes: I definitely tend to work under "as many as I deem fit for the beats of the chapter to flow well," but i think there's probably at least a few things about my process that I can elucidate that might help.
i tend to organize my written outline by ACT [ general idea for what takes place and what conflict is taking place in the character,] and then underneath that would fit CHAPTER [what ideas i am trying to establish] , and then underneath that would fit SCENE (written dialogue, setting descriptions, stage directions). I like to start with the biggest overlying connective tissue between scenes and then get smaller and nitty grittier as i write.
this is very quickly made and generalized, but for example if i was telling a story about someone going to the grocery store:
ACT ONE: the discovery of the secret
a girl goes to a the grocery store and discovers the secrets of the sinister, hidden, dark grocery store underground. character should be set up to be so driven by hunger that she just might do anything to satiate it.
CHAPTER 1: (set up)
how does she get to the grocery store? how do i succinctly establish the character of this story? what is she lacking that she should grow to be able to receive by the end of the story?)
scene1 (girl wakes up from violent nightmares with a dark pit in her stomach. she reluctantly gets out of bed).
scene2 (girl goes to pour her cereal and notices that she is completely out of coco puffs. her previous gut feelings that the day would go poorly are confirmed)
scene3 (girl drives to grocery store, for aforementioned coco puffs. another dark feeling tugs at her and is yet again rewarded for it's honesty by a cheerful grocery store employee slipping her a note simply reading "help."
CHAPTER 2 (building tension)
how does the character respond to the call of action and what does that say about her? what are the red flags i should establish now that will foreshadow just how wrong and disturbed this work culture is? what am I trying to SAY by writing it like this- what will the viewer take away, inadvertently or not, by framing the grocery store underbelly like this?
scene1 (girl is alarmed but calmly walks down the aisle. this is not her problem. she is so hungry. she walks toward the coco puffs. her heart sinks: they are out of stock)
scene2 (her heart lifts again when another employee calls out to her, holding the coveted puffs. the girl accepts them, grateful that she will finally have breakfast, when suddenly she notices another note has been slipped to her under the box. "i know who you are. meet me in the bathroom in 5 minutes and change everybody's life here forever."
scene3 (she's had enough. she races to the check out line with the puffs and in her hurry, she notices the box isn't making any noise as it shakes by her side. not like coco puffs in a box often do. she realizes with a heavy heart that it's empty. she sighs and turns around. she reluctantly walks toward the bathroom... almost like she's done this before.
ACT 2: doing something about the secret.
character is officially thrust into this underground network of grocery store vigilantes against her will...she is not happy... she swore she left her days of fighting middle management crime behind her and yet..... these embittered employees are stoking old fires in her heart she had once thought unstokable. we learn about her relationship to this lifestyle and how it led to the person she is today.
etc, etc, etc, and so on, and so forth.
Basically, I don't plan out how many pages I'm going to have. i usually only find out by the time i'm finished sketching it all; and usually by drawing it all out you end up having more ideas, which adds more scenes, etc, etc, etc, webcomicing never ends and never will
My general rule of thumb is to always use as few pages as you can possibly afford without taking away from the story. make it as short as you possibly can while still letting it be as long as it needs to be.
Pacing is everything. the page count truly does not matter as long as the flow is flowing; it entirely depends on your story! your chapter could be 2 pages long if it made sense in the story for it to be 2 pages long (side note: desperately been trying to find a place for a 2 page long chapter for years now but it's never reached fruition. one day. you wait).
IK this is coming from a girl who writes 200 page long chapters, haha. I like to think that I'm getting better at being briefer, but somehow, i never end up briefer than 200. your story could be different! most are. it should be. don't do what i do.
that being said, my overall advice is to always prioritize pacing and writing over an arbitrary page count quota. if the length feels good for the story, then do it. I hope this helps! mwa.
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Ancestral Karma Through Astrology
Lately, I have been wondering why I seem to always experience such heavy karma in situations that are unjust on my side. I examine my actions, recall any wrongdoings or lack of integrity, and evaluate intentions as best as I can, and every time, I come out on the other side feeling as if I have been accountable in all areas and most importantly, aboveboard.
Maybe this isn't just me, or that's the thought that prompted this; So I decided to look into ancestral karma and let me tell you... What I have found to be my personal inheritance of karma that I have been doomed with since birth, completely aligns with issues that go unfavorable for me in this lifetime.
I checked my 4th and 8th house placements, 12th house placements, saturn placement and harsh aspects, pluto placement and harsh aspects, as well as north node. Combining all of these was so incredibly helpful because now, I can actively address these issues if that is my choice, or I can severe chords with inherited karma, knowing exactly what it is I am healing or severing. I'll post a synopsis of what my ancestral karmic inheritances are and how I can go about healing them in case anyone would like a reading.
DM me, it's an $18.00 guide toward healing ancestral karma and will include a chord cutting ritual I have done thorough research on.
If you feel like life just constantly brings you tower moment after tower moment, yet you are living in your purpose, doing right by yourself and others, you may also have pent up karma that needs to be addressed in some capacity!
this is absolutely a form of self love and in perfect time for the full moon we are gearing up for!! this is also an 8 karmic year, universally, so if you take action, with intention, you are for sure likely to receive all the fruits of your labor x10!! I'm so excited for this full moon, who wants to join?!
Ancestral Lineage Signatures:
Jupiter in 12th House Libra - Foreign cultures, global connections, working across divides, issues around truth vs deception.
Moon in 8th House Taurus - Generational resilience, survivalist instincts, loyalty, and possessiveness.
4th House Capricorn/Aquarius Stellium - Legacy/dynasty builders focused on establishment of enduring structures.
Pluto in 2nd House Scorpio - Financial power struggles, regenerative capabilities around resources.
Inherited Psychic Gifts:
12th House Jupiter - Prophetic visions & dreams, spiritual attunement.
8th House Moon - Unconscious psychic absorption abilities.
Water Astrology Emphasis - Intuitive receptivity and emotional intelligence.
Sagittarius North Node - Exponential wisdom over lifetimes.
Karmic Patterns Needing Healing:
Hidden agendas and denial of truth - Jupiter lies
Addictions and avoidance of emotions - Moon
Control issues and power battles - Pluto square Saturn
Past life tyranny and lack of integrity - Pluto
Ancestral Lineage Signatures:
Occultists, healers, strategists and potent mystics rest in your genetics
Executives who forged dynastic outposts
Forces who worked unseen realms behind curtain
Wisest counselors occupying chambers of power
Those governing populous regions stamp your ancestral tree
Healing Directions:
Process pain through rituals and artistic expression
Practice brutal self-honesty
Establish healthy boundaries
Forgive self and predecessors through spiritual practices
Invoke freedom from contracts binding you to past errors
Step fully into destiny as a teacher, healer, guide
#astrology#zodiac#natal chart#love#sagittarius#libra#capricorn#astro notes#astro observations#virgo#taurus#gemini#cancer rising#ancestors#ancestry#scorpio#pluto#aquarius#horoscope#transits#astroblr#astrology notes#astro placements#aries#leo season
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Titan: Don't Fuck With the Ocean
So this has been delayed, and everyone and their mother has already commented on this. We’re well past the virality mark on this topic. But whatever, I want to crack in and get this thing wrapped up anyways.
For context, I study mechanical and manufacturing engineering. I’ve grown up around submarines with my dad being an engineer on US Navy subs, and I was able to ask him about this. I’ve also got a diving cert and enough experience living coastal to at least get me a knowledgeable respect for the ocean. Being 60 ft under should instill that, at least.
I will not make any comments on any of the other four victims. However, I reserve the right to be fully derogatory to the CEO who died in the submersible, Stockton Rush, for his disgusting flippancy towards safety in such a dangerous environment as 4,000m below sea level, for disregarding multiple warnings against the project, and for subjecting other passengers to this. I intended to start with my favorite source on this, but it looks like I’m beginning with spite. I claim that in engineering, if safety disregards don’t immediately boil your blood, you have to turn in your card.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65998914 “Titan sub CEO dismissed safety warnings as 'baseless cries', emails show”
Some people may have seen the quote “At some point, safety just is pure waste,” Stockton told journalist David Pogue in an interview last year. “I mean, if you just want to be safe, don’t get out of bed. Don’t get in your car. Don’t do anything.”
Stockton Rush has typed "We have heard the baseless cries of 'you are going to kill someone' way too often," he wrote. "I take this as a serious personal insult."
*Frankly*, the response to this should very much not be personal insult, but a call to action. There is no reason to take this personally.
“I have broken some rules to make this…The carbon fiber and titanium, there is a rule that you don’t do that. Well, I did.”
“At some point safety just is pure waste…I think I can do this just as safely by breaking the rules.”
“[The sub industry is] obscenely safe, because they have all these regulations…But it also hasn’t innovated or grown—because they have all these regulations.”
This is gruesomely hilarious when you remember the CEO isn’t the actual person running the stress tests, manufacturing it, checking materials charts and costs, calculating max tolerances, or anything else. He’s the little funny man with the money and the reputation who tells people do what he wants anyways. He has no right to play maverick when he is hardly doing any of the work, and especially when it involves other innocent people. While he has a bachelor’s in aerospace engineering, a very commendable thing to get, that’s not what he does hands on as the CEO, and aerospace does not directly translate to submersible understanding. You do not get to be flippant with other peoples’ lives. These comments would be bad enough for anything on the surface, or even in the sky. But again, the ocean is a completely different beast, where it is much more difficult for emergency services to reach people.
As well as this, I need to state the difference between submersible and submarine. If I don’t, I feel the entire US Navy breathe down my neck. It’s like boat vs ship.
Submersible: needs to be supported by a vessel up top, not designed for long term deployments. Smol boy.
Submarine: can be operated independently, can go on six month or so deployments. Big boy.
Going forward, the primary difficulties of the ocean are first and foremost the atmospheres of pressure on the vehicle. The dangers of no breathing air in the ocean are of course, a major issue, but the pressure of the ocean will be what breaks this and makes that lack of air a huge issue. A submersible needs to be properly pressurized to withstand the changes and keep the passengers inside also safe. The ocean is also very difficult to reach communication through. https://www.hindawi.com/journals/wcmc/2019/6470359/, so the submersible losing connection isn’t entirely unsurprising. But other factors listed here lead to its delay.
#siege engineer#titan submersible#titan#oceangate#stockton rush#submarines#submersible#engineering#engineer#siege engineer talks#aerospace#oceangate submersible#titanic
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As semi-promised on Thursday night: here is a fuller explication of my thoughts after reading @zephrunsimperium's post about Ford and anger (which you should go check out their various Ford analysis pieces if you haven’t, they’re excellent and, unlike me, actually get to the point in a timely manner!)...thoughts which ultimately melded with some attempts at another essay I had semi-abandoned a few months ago, so hold on tight, friends, you’re in for quite the long ride with this one, should you choose to wade through it to the end, for this essay is more than 10,000 words long. Numbers in parentheses indicate endnotes, which can be found at the, well, end. Trigger warnings for extended discussions of multiple kinds of abuse portrayed/only thinly made into metaphors in the GF canon, and for discussion of mental health. For anyone feeling up to dealing with all that...read on below the cut.
To my way of thinking, one of the most essential things for understanding Ford lies in recognizing all the gaps between who he is, who he wants to be, and who he wants other people to think he is, and the intersection of anger, the performance of masculinity, and his long, long history of relational traumas is the fateful crossroads which those gaps emanate from. At the risk of sounding unduly like a pop psychologist, I also think his father is an important individual to consider in light of these issues.
Filbrick, as Stan tells us in ATOTS, was a strict man who had “the personality of a cinderblock.” Stan is not always a terribly reliable narrator, but he seems to lack the ability to lie to the flashback camera, and the first few flashbacks of the episode give us a glimpse at what the Pines family was like in the sixties which supports Stan’s assertion about his father. In those scenes, Filbrick is the only character we don’t see expressing strong emotion of some kind before the science fair, something that makes the ‘sound and fury’ of the scene where Stan is disowned, when it comes around, all that much more shocking. Until this point, Filbrick came about as close to physically resembling a cinderblock as his personality was said to; even when he expressed approval of Ford in the principal’s office, it was a relatively muted display, barely more emotive than his earlier “I’m not impressed” or his silent disappointment in the season one flashback when Stan recalls the summer Filbrick first sent him to boxing lessons. We learn after the science fair that he can, apparently, express anger very vividly, but “Lost Legends” further underlines how he is otherwise mostly emotionally inaccessible to his family; Stan (despite being far more aware of his emotions than he might like to admit that he is) cannot just talk to his father about how he feels, and once again, the only concrete emotion Filbrick shows on-screen is anger. Pictures near the end suggest possible mild experiences of a few other feelings, and the adult Ford, narrating many years after the fact and very probably after Filbrick’s death, speculates about what might have been going on in his head, but those feelings are never made explicit the way his anger is. We don’t know why Filbrick is this way (the closest thing to a hint we get is the information that he was a World War II veteran - there is, after all, a reason for the common portrayal of the Stan twins’ entire generation as one which was saddled with cruddy fathers in the aftermaths of World War II and Korea – but for all we know, Filbrick could have been like that before the War, too. What was his family life like, growing up? His financial condition? Could he just be someone who was born with a strong predisposition toward an emotional or personality disorder, regardless of whatever else happened in his life? We just don’t have enough information about him to say for sure), but it seems safe to speculate that he was this way pretty consistently: whatever else was going on with him, the only emotion he seems to have felt comfortable expressing was anger.
And this is the guy Ford and Stan had held up to them as their first, and quite possibly most influential, example of what being a man is.
I’d argue that – when they were children, at least – this was more of a problem for Stan than for Ford. Filbrick presumably saw them both as shamefully weak as children, but Ford, at least, had another route to the old man’s approval readily available to him. If Filbrick was at least grudgingly proud of Ford’s intelligence, then Ford could receive the measure of parental approval which Stan craved and could never get; we also see that Ford could apparently hold his own while sparring with Stan by the time they were teenagers, so it’s likely enough that he no longer had to worry about physical assault from his classmates by the time he was in high school, either. Though still isolated and insecure underneath it all because of his childhood experiences and probably in part due to his ongoing social isolation, Ford was able to find a path to a kind of self-esteem: he was both brilliant and quite capable of using his six fingers to break your nose if you had too much to say about them, and he knew it, and everyone else knew it, too. He also had his brother as a constant source of support. When Ford was made to look ridiculous by having a drink thrown in his face in public, Stan promptly threw a drink in his own face in order to look even more ridiculous. When Ford won competitions, which he seems to have started doing at an impressive rate very early in life, Stan seems to have been almost over-enthusiastic in his approval: he looks as delighted about Ford winning the science fair (at the time, before the meeting with the principal) as Ford himself does, if not even happier about it. Even his habit of copying off Ford’s papers in class could have served as a reinforcement for Ford’s ego: he not only could manage for himself, but he could even allow someone else to depend on him.
In this way, by the time everything went wrong, the teenaged Ford had probably already developed a degree of self-respect and self-sufficiency that Stan was still struggling to reliably maintain forty years later. Neither of them could ever be the kind of man Filbrick was, or of which they thought he would approve, they were both too emotionally vulnerable and expressive for that, but it’s probably noteworthy that Ford kept pictures of famous scientists (instead of family photographs) around him during his college and young adult years: because he could also do something Filbrick never could, he was able, to some degree, to carve out an idea of “how to be a man” on his own terms. If Filbrick’s approval was an immovable object in the path between Stan, Ford, and healthy expressions of adult masculinity, then where Stan flailed against it, Ford simply walked around it by choosing new conscious role models.
Tesla, Sagan, Einstein, and company were “great men,” successful (well, at least remembered posthumously) and respected, who were also given to Nerdy Enthusiasms. Said enthusiasm, an open delight in the marvels of the natural world, was therefore an emotion besides anger that Ford could express freely without compromising his view of himself, and it seems that he did so regularly. This appears to have worked well for him; we know very little about his college years – only that he worked very hard, that he made at least one close friend and (based on his usage of the plural ‘friends’ when discussing DD&MD) possibly even had a social group of sorts, and that he continued to indulge his creative side to a degree by playing DD&MD, which was as close as someone in his late teens and early twenties could probably get to continuing the kind of fantasy play he’d enjoyed as a child without sabotaging his probable adolescent desire to feel very grown up – but it seems they were productive and reasonably happy. Six years after them, a slice of his life comes into focus for us in the form of his journal. He was probably around thirty to thirty-three years old when it was written(1), give or take a year or two, and we find him several years into the circumstances he was in when he says, as a much older man, that he’d finally found somewhere to belong. He could be lying - Ford, unusually, even has the ability to lie to the flashback camera, or at least omit things - but we don't really have any reason to believe this; when the flashbacks turn to Stan making an abortive attempt at contact, Ford on the phone sounds cheery. His lack of paranoia and surprise about someone phoning him is also not the only evidence that, at this time, he may not even have been totally socially isolated in Gravity Falls – in the same years, he goes to the public library with some regularity, he declines to buy cookies from a zombie Boy Scout, he converses sometimes with the mailman, and he is on friendly enough terms with Dan Corduroy, even some years after Dan finished building Ford’s house, to know that Dan’s family had a holiday cabin and to ask to use it. Clearly nobody was too close to Ford even then, but his chosen path was going reasonably well for him; it's possible that Stan might have found him rather harder to replace at this point than he did later, after an unspecified time lapse, which may have lasted as long as a year,(2) during which Ford had gradually became a complete recluse as he became more and more consumed by his relationship with Bill Cipher. Before that time lapse, Ford the man seems like a logical enough place for Ford the boy to have ended up; after it…..
Well, after it is where we get back to the topics of anger and its intersection with various aspects of identity and self-concept.
A decent place to begin is with Fiddleford, and with why, exactly, Ford asked him to come to Gravity Falls. Ford tells us that he asked Fiddleford to come because he (Ford) did not have the technical know-how to complete the Portal. There is some evidence to support the veracity of this idea: Fiddleford is, after all, the man who later proves able to build astonishingly lifelike robot monsters whilst homeless (and thus, it seems safe to assume, without conventional sources of funds or supplies), and he is the one who sees the flaws in the Portal design. Indeed, he seems to start spotting them before he even has a chance to physically see them: Ford tells us that Fiddleford started suggesting revisions to the plans over the phone while still in California, in the same conversation where he agreed to come. In the third portion of the Journal, the sixtysomething Ford also mentions hearing about how a Parallel Earth Fiddleford was convinced to come back to the project, at which point the Parallel Portal was stabilized and became something that could be used the way Ford had intended to use it (as opposed to how Bill had intended to use it). The implication is that Ford not only didn’t understand how to complete the Portal, but that he also didn’t understand the plans even as far as he thought he understood them. Certainly the Fiddleford of the main timeline, who would have worked with him before, was instantly suspicious about the existence of a third collaborator once he saw how far Ford had gotten without him, which further supports the idea that Ford was more of a theoretician than a mechanic. This does, however, run somewhat against the grain of much of what we see Ford do on-screen. As a teenager of modest economic means, he was shown to be as comfortable working with his hands as with his pencil, and he was able to build something which acted enough like a perpetual motion device that he won a state-wide competition and drew the attention of an elite university. At university, he created the mind control tie – something which appears, both by its existence and by the glimpse we get of how it’s wired in “The Stanchurian Candidate,” to involve electronics more sophisticated than what Fiddleford was shown working with in roughly the same time period. I tend to run with the idea that the events of the episode “The Stanchurian Candidate” only happened in a particularly vivid nightmare of Stan’s, and therefore include the tie simply because it was in the Journal, but if one goes with official canon and accepts that “Stanchurian Candidate” happened, then Ford somehow, in a matter of hours, with no budget or supplies, invented a thousand-year lightbulb that also improves the complexion of the user in the same episode that shows us the wiring of the tie. In the eighties, he also seems to have developed his mind-encrypting machine as a private project, and in the Multiverse, he survived entirely on what he could steal or construct for thirty years, and it seems he had progressed a long way toward the development of the Quantum Destabilizer on his own before he stumbled into the ‘Better World’ dimension; Parallel Fiddleford really just sped the completion process up because he’d happened to discover a useful fuel source for presumably completely unrelated reasons years before Ford showed up. Clearly, Ford can more than hold his own as an engineer, and as one with a particular flair for doing impossible things with electricity and the laws of energy conservation; even Fiddleford trusted his gift in that area enough to, however reluctantly, briefly accept his claim that he had been working alone despite his serious doubts about the idea, and to allow Ford to bully him into silence about the Portal’s design flaws for weeks or possibly months before the confrontation at the diner. Why, then, did he suddenly become convinced, during that fateful July, that he could not finish the Portal without Fiddleford?
The answer may lay a few pages further back in the Journal. Not long before he calls Fiddleford, Ford makes notes on the plans for the Portal that Bill had showed him in a dream. One of these notes is “I MUST NOT LOSE MY NERVE!” Later, in a state of mind where he is increasingly paranoid and beginning to lose a degree of touch with reality, he reflects repeatedly about Fiddleford’s nerve in similar terms. There may well have been some level, deep down, on which Ford knew he was getting in over his head, and he was scared out of his mind by that realization. If this is true, then, on some level, he knew something was...off, with what was going on around him. He knew he needed help from someone he trusted and who was not Bill. And so he reached out to his college roommate for that help, and he did so in a way that allowed him to still plausibly deny just how much trouble he was in, both to himself and everyone else, and he didn’t only need that deniability because he was inviting a third party into the isolation of an increasingly abusive relationship and would need an excuse if Bill took exception to the idea of Ford relying on anyone or anything other than Bill. He also needed that plausible deniability to preserve his self-concept, because by this time, whatever he had or hadn’t been earlier, Ford Pines had become a deeply, deeply dishonest man.
One of the key moments for understanding this - and, in many ways, the character overall - occurs in “Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons.” There, Ford delivers the exasperated line, “if my hands were free, I’d break every part of your face!” If that line was taken totally out of context and shown to a casual viewer, the casual viewer would likely misidentify it as a line of Stan’s. Stan is, after all, the character with the hair-trigger temper and violent tendencies, right?
To an extent, yes. In “The Golf War,” Stan asks Soos if it would be “wrong” to punch a child (Pacifica) – probably more of an indirect threat in response to Pacifica’s insults toward the Pineses than a true question, but Stan’s moral code is sufficiently different from the standard issue that one can’t completely dismiss the possibility that he really wanted to, well, punch a child. And who can forget his antics in “The Land Before Swine” or “Scaryoke,” where he punches his way single-handed through monsters which had defeated the rest of the cast? Or in “Not What He Seems,” where he takes on multiple government agents in zero gravity while, for at least part of the time, he had his hands fastened behind his back? Or that glorious moment in the finale when he did, in fact, break every part of Bill Cipher’s glitched-out face? Stan is also the character who lost his temper to the extent that he lashed out at Ford physically in the middle of the save-the-world ritual, and Stan is the one who keeps his old boxing gloves around his bedroom, along with owning at least one set of brass knuckles. As an old man, he still seems to take pride in having learned to fight back against the world physically as a child, and he recommends that Dipper try knocking Robbie unconscious bare-handed when Dipper is challenged to a fight. And, of course, the man is a menace whenever he gets within a certain radius of the Stanmobile, the vehicle that can take out roadway railings, light poles, and theme park gates without showing a scratch. There’s no denying it: Stan is perhaps many other things, too, but he’s also a very physically aggressive kind of guy. If, therefore, someone in this series was going to threaten to break someone’s face, it seems obvious it would be Stan…but it wasn’t. It was his supposedly milder-mannered, “goody nerd-shoes,” brother who, on examination, actually behaves far more casually violently than Stan does throughout his sadly short time in the series. To demonstrate:
Ford sets foot in his house for the first time in thirty years and identifies the first person he sees as his brother. Later, writing in his reclaimed journal, Ford describes his own reaction thus: “instinct took over and I punched him right in the face. I feel kind of bad about that!”
In the very next episode - aside from his antics in the first scenes(3) and the already-mentioned description of what he’d like to do to Probabilitator after the wizard captures him - we also have Ford’s immediate reaction to the wizard’s materialization. Stan is, naturally, most clearly unnerved by an evil math wizard suddenly materializing in the TV room, but there’s a moment where he glances sideways at Ford after Ford pulls a gun; to me, at least, this glance made it seem like he found that behavior pretty disturbing as well. For the past several hours, after all, Ford had been playing board games. Most people do not bring concealed guns to game night with their nephews. Ford does.
Stan and Ford both have wanted posters that show up ‘on screen’ – Stan’s in his box of memorabilia in “Not What He Seems,” and Ford’s in Journal 3. Stan’s talks about “scams, frauds, and identity theft” - all potentially serious crimes that can ruin the lives of the people on the other ends of them, but ones which follow the general tendency (per the reading I did last March) of real-world con men to avoid violence in the commission of their crimes. Ford’s, on the other hand, refers to its subject as ‘armed and dangerous,’ and as someone with a bounty on his head. From the way Ford depicts his own appearance in it, it seems likely that particular version of the poster is at least ten to fifteen years old, but in “Lost Legends,” he is still instantly recognizable in the multiverse for his criminal shenanigans, even in the company of his near-identical twin. In his own words, “a number of dimensions consider me an outlaw to this day.” If one uses the dictionary definition of the term - and considering how much variety comes up just in the few examples Ford gives of worlds he’s visited, there’s no reason to assume he hasn’t visited a few Premodern Justice Dimensions - this means there could be multiple dimensions out there where the authorities took the time and trouble to formally declare that he had done something shocking enough to justify the revocation of all rights and protections he might have otherwise enjoyed under the law, thus allowing anyone to do anything they could physically manage to him with no fear of any negative repercussions except those he could personally inflict on them. He also refers to his own exploits as “swashbuckling” (a term which brings piracy to mind) and offhandedly mentions travels with “bandits” (a term which describes practitioners of behavior usually classified under the ‘organized crime’ umbrella due to the cooperative nature of the often violent or potentially violent crimes in question).
Much of this behavior, it’s true, can be attributed to a combination of trauma responses and, in the Multiverse, sheer necessity. He refers in the journal to talking “my way into and out of food and shelter,” and the “out of” comment underlines how, like Stan before him, he very abruptly went from having a relatively stable situation (at least in the material sense) to being homeless, which would be at least a serious shock to the system of almost anyone, including people in much better mental health than he was in at that time. Then there’s the more complicated non-material aspects of his previous situation. As an adult reader, it’s stomach-knotting to go through the 1980s portion of the journal, because if you look at the behaviors and dynamics and leave out the “incorporeal eldritch abomination” element, it only takes a very little extrapolation from the material for his ‘partnership’ with Bill becomes an uncomfortably realistic depiction of a domestic abuse situation. Considering that either of these major traumas of 1981-1982 could (and, if the fantastical elements are stripped out, regularly do) induce PTSD in nearly anyone, and considering how many more traumatic events he doubtless went through in the years following, it’s not implausible that the man would develop a tendency toward believing that the best defense is a good offense. However, there is also evidence that at least some of these tendencies predated Ford’s major traumas, and that – despite how he would very likely insist this was not the case - the trigger-happy adrenaline addict we meet in “A Tale of Two Stans” may not represent a total change in character from who he was before the Portal – or even before Bill. The evidence here is admittedly scarcer and more ambiguous, but to illustrate:
In Journal 3, Ford seems sincerely puzzled about why Fiddleford would show signs of trauma after the gremlobin incident. This incident involved Fiddleford being shown his worst fear (something which ended in tourists being removed from the Mystery Shack via stretcher in apparent catatonic states. Fiddleford was a man who probably had an anxiety disorder to begin with, who was just accepting the reality of the supernatural, and who was living, for at least several months, hours away from where his wife and young son were, something which seems to have troubled him at the best of times. It's remarkable he was functioning at all after the gremlobin incident). He was also hit with a bunch of venomous quills, and flown through the air by something which clearly had no good intentions for him in mind…and that was all before the solution to the situation ended up involving Ford crash-landing everyone through the roof of a barn, breaking Fiddleford’s arm in the process.
The gremlobin incident is not the only time Ford, even before the multiverse, appears bewildered by perfectly ordinary responses to frightening stimuli. While Fiddleford admittedly may have had some form of anxiety or compulsive disorder to begin with (an idea supported by events like his tearing out his own hair under stress and his need to correct the Cubik’s Cube), his reactions to monsters appear far more reasonable than Ford’s offhand assertion that he has survived many monster attacks without registering any of the experiences as traumatic.
When Fiddleford was in danger, Ford’s automatic response involved, essentially, jumping off a cliff and hoping the magnet gun-to-hyperdrive attraction would first catch and then carry him long enough for him to catch up…and that he would then somehow figure out how to land the improvised gremlobinmobile without killing himself, Fiddleford, and the monster all in one go.
When we go into the bunker in “Into the Bunker,” Soos finds a candy dispenser in a cabinet filled with weapons. These weapons appear to be a mix of firearms alongside various medieval or Renaissance-style pieces. It is, of course, possible - though to my mind, improbable; Fiddleford seems to prefer indirect methods of aggression, mostly in the form of homicidal robots - that some or all of these weapons belonged to Fiddleford, but there is also evidence that there was a similar mix of weapons in the house which later became the Mystery Shack: sside from Ford’s singular ideas about how to answer a door in “A Tale of Two Stans,” we also see a box of other manual weapons which Dipper has access to in “Boss Mabel,” and which Stan is seen rifling through to find a crossbow - presumably the same one which had come alarmingly close to his nose thirty years earlier – at the beginning of “Love God.” Stan further asserts there are ten guns in the Shack during “Fight Fighters,” but we never see them; even while fighting against zombies, while following pterodactyls into caverns beneath the town, and during Weirdmageddon, Stan routinely arms himself with bludgeoning weapons, not ranged ones. The only time we see him use a ranged weapon (at least that I can recall) is the time he aims the crossbow at a balloon, which was out of reach. Ford, however, despite demonstrating almost immediately upon arrival that he’s quite capable of fighting without one, repeatedly uses ranged weapons even in close quarters: the crossbow in Stan’s face, the handgun in the living room, the Quantum Destabilizer during Weirdmageddon, the spear in the closing montage of the finale. These examples are, of course, all justifiable enough in their various contexts, but the combination of several incidents and all the weapons around the house and its environs makes it seem eminently possible that Ford was a bit of a weapons nut long before he became an interdimensional fugitive, and that if there actually are ten guns in the house, Stan may have more or less 'inherited' them along with the Stanford identity.
When Bill - who knew Ford very well before the Portal - shows Ford a vision of a possible future in an attempt to convince Ford to join him in his conquest of the universe, it is a vision of complete destruction. We see Bill’s giant finger tearing cities apart in an uncomfortable amount of detail, and are treated to the sight of planets being munched on like apples…and this is Bill’s sales pitch, the ‘party’ he is inviting Ford to and really, really wants Ford to agree to attend. This leaves us with two options: either Bill can’t understand that anyone might ultimately desire anything beyond or besides the chance to participate in unlimited, consequence-free violence (something which doesn’t square too well with Bill’s otherwise apparently excellent grasp of human motivation and how to manipulate it to serve his own ends), or Bill has some reason for thinking that the prospects of immortality and a group of ‘friends’ to destroy things with on a massive scale might genuinely appeal to his “old pal” just as much as the prospect of being “all-powerful” and “all-knowing” would. This is also hinted at by how Bill appears to try to convince Ford to relate to him by revealing that he was once mortal himself and explaining that he burned his dimension before offering Ford the chance to effectively do the same to the universe of the canon timeline. 'Become a god of destruction' or 'get tortured a lot' were also not the only possible options Bill could have offered; he could, for instance, have tried to convince Ford that if he (for all intents and purposes) became a god, then he could save at least some sapient life-forms in the universe from Bill by setting up his galaxy as a benevolent dictatorship or the like, with the alternative being that everyone would die if Ford didn’t take that deal. Bill did not attempt anything of the sort. Bill, at least, thinks Ford is not only capable of observing or even committing acts of great violence, but that he is capable of relishing the opportunity to do so.
Why are all these things easy to overlook? In part, it is because Ford wants us to overlook them, because they do not ‘fit’ with the person Ford wishes that he was. He wants, very much, to see himself as a cool-headed, utterly rational, cultured figure – not least because this would represent a total contrast to his twin brother and everything Stan stands for, either in reality or inside Ford’s imagination - and so he uses long words and is usually fairly softly-spoken. He emphasizes his “well-ordered and scientific mind” even as he behaves in ways which suggest he’s highly volatile and puts in writing (however carefully concealed the information might be behind veils of words) that he planned to make his name on a scientific project which wasn’t of his own design, a behavior which indicates a comfort with shortcuts even more potentially disastrous than Stan’s. When he does, rarely, have to acknowledge something that he would rather not acknowledge directly, he always immediately justifies the potentially unflattering behavior in fairly grandiose ways - stealing radioactive materials, for instance, is rationalized as a ‘doing a public service,’ and all the things he did to become a wanted man in multiple dimensions are, similarly, lumped together and dismissed as crimes committed “for a noble purpose.” No doubt some of them were, but on the page about the Infinity Die, one doesn’t really get the impression that he was particularly discriminating about when he used that thing, considering the usage statistics we’re given. The page informs us that the Die saved Ford’s life three times, endangered it “around 20,” permanently changed the color of a sky one time…and that it’s been used enough other times besides these that he can note the odd frequency of rolling a four(4). When talking to Dipper, he also seems quite confident about just how far the Die can warp reality - he doesn’t speak as if “the universe could turn into an egg” is an exaggeration. Use of the Infinity Die would not be a reliable way to limit damage or even to advance his goals while committing other crimes, so it becomes a bit difficult to justify his apparently relatively casual use of it as something he did only as a last resort and/or only in service of a noble purpose. Most fans recognize that he clearly started over-identifying Dipper with himself toward the end of the series, but he identifies Dipper with himself only when it comes to traits he is proud of having; otherwise, the “grammar, Stanley” remark is one of the few criticisms he has of Stan which doesn’t also come across as something he might want to say about himself and his own less desirable qualities, if he could only bring himself to acknowledge them for what they are in plain language. It reads, to borrow from someone I once talked about the character with on Reddit, like “my man is just as chaotic [as Stan], he just manifests it differently.”
Part of this difference lies in their respective approaches to the truth. Neither is anything you could reasonably call an honest man, but the distinction lies in how Ford appears to lie to himself a lot more often than Stan does. Stan, outside of ‘working hours,’ is utterly up-front about who and what he is and what he cares about: he’s a crook and a grifter and a liar, interested only in that which benefits him and the small number of people he personally cares about. Only once, when contemplating his epitaph in “The Stanchurian Candidate,” does he show anything even vaguely resembling shame about this, and even then, he still includes the detail that he would, of course, be a crooked mayor if he became one. It's entirely possible that the only ultimately sacrificed himself to destroy Bill because of the direct and imminent threat Bill represented to his individual relatives. As the man himself once said: it wasn’t enough for him to be the town’s hero, because his real agenda was being Dipper and Mabel’s. Ford, on the other hand, seems to have shared many of Stan’s desires (wealth, respect, shortcuts to these things) as a young man, but also to have always felt some need to convince himself that he wanted more (for lack of a better term) socially acceptable ‘side features’ as well. When he dreams of scientific accomplishment, he will admit he looks forward to riches and glory...but he also throws in that he wants to revolutionize science to enhance the well-being of all mankind, too. When he writes down the story of how he began his quest to kill Bill, he acknowledges that he wished to “wreak vengeance for the life he stole from me” - but only after saying he would “save the multiverse from [Bill’s] wrath.” Later, though, when talking about his meeting with a parallel Fiddleford, he refers to his vow as a “vendetta” - a word defined as “a blood feud in which the family of a murdered person seeks vengeance on the murderer or the murderer's family; a prolonged bitter quarrel with or campaign against someone.” The word can be used far less precisely in casual conversation, of course, and he probably does sincerely see it as his duty to atone for his mistakes by removing the entity which seeks to exploit them, but at the end of the day, despite his attempts to frame his behavior in terms of doing what is objectively right, there’s also a massive degree to which his quest is personal. Anger and revenge and personal concerns ultimately prove just as important to him as they are to his brother, if not even more important. This is illustrated perhaps most dramatically in the lead-up to the Final Deal: one can only imagine what Bill’s back-up plan was, because Bill came close to not needing one. Ultimately, when put to the test, the principles which went along with the persona Ford tried so hard to project crumbled: the family was, in the end, more important to him than saving the world, just as it was for Stan. He never mentioned the idea of making any attempt to save himself in the deal (on top of doubtless believing that such an effort would be doomed to failure, there are hints that Ford always planned to die in the execution of his revenge, or at least never saw a way around doing so), but he was willing to let Bill take over the galaxy “or worse” just to save (or at least exempt himself from the responsibility of personally dooming) three other people on a probably quite temporary basis. If Bill was unraveling reality all around them, after all, where exactly were Stan and the twins supposed to go?
“What other choice do we have?” It took no few viewings of the finale for it to register why I always find that line so wrenchingly uncomfortable to watch. At that moment, finally, for the first time on screen, Ford admits that he cannot save the situation, or even himself. That he’s been backed into a corner – trapped – forced to acknowledge that another entity can and will hurt him, and that it can and will hurt him on as many levels as it pleases. He’s been taken right back to where he was when his first grade classmates nearly put him in the hospital, and he can’t hide it from himself or anyone else anymore...and it’s after this moment that we almost immediately see a dramatic change in Ford’s behavior and self-representation. The same man who remained remarkably defiant, all things considered, when tied up by an evil sorcerer who was gloating about its plans to consume his brain, or even in the midst of what was probably several days of severe torture,(5) visibly flinches, his hands shaking, while using the memory gun; in the aftermath of that moment, we then see him standing in a corner, looking helpless and at a loss for what to do while other people (specifically, mostly Mabel) try to figure out a solution without his assistance, as he's meekly accepted the situation instead of trying to change it. Dipper notes that some point in that day was the “only time” anyone had ever seen Ford cry, a statement that implies there had been other occasions where Dipper expected him to cry when he didn’t do so – perhaps it’s just because Dipper is used to Stan, who cries rather a lot, but for some reason, Dipper regarded this observation as specific enough to underline the severity of the situation during the first hours of Stan’s amnesia. The closest Ford really gets to his pre-Weirdmageddon demeanor again is when he takes the long way around the block in order to ask Stan to accompany him to investigate some anomaly up north, just as he’d previously made the same excuse about being too old to manage on his own anymore for asking Dipper to stay in town after the summer ended; since even unbending enough to, effectively, ask anyone not to leave him was already a step away from his isolated-hero act, it’s far from one of his more distinctive adult characteristics reasserting itself. Something, it seems, in the man profoundly broke in the throne room of the Fearamid, and based on his worryingly fervent attempts in the last pages of his journal to represent both Stan and Fiddleford as plaster saints, it doesn’t seem like it’s getting fixed any time soon.
I noted earlier that I suspected Ford had no intention of surviving his duel with Bill in the Nightmare Realm during “Not What He Seems.” There are a few reasons for this. One is simple probability, of course (even if he had destroyed Bill, there would have still been plenty of creatures around that would have been more than happy to eat him, and his death ray was almost out of power). More pertinent, however, are a few of Ford’s own words. Twice, he refers to Stan as having “saved” him – not ‘rescued’ ‘retrieved’ ‘gotten back’ or any other possible combination of words, but “saved.” The first, where he’s still grumbling about it, is when he shows Dipper the Rift and explains why he was angry at Stan for this seemingly charitable behavior: he saved Ford’s life, but at the cost of endangering the world, and at that time, Ford was still deeply committed to the idea of himself as someone who sacrifices, not someone who sacrifices are made for. On the second occasion, while trying to explain what just happened to Dipper and Mabel after they realize that Stan no longer recognizes them, he sounds almost bewildered as well as moved as he makes the statement. Shortly before that second occasion, in the Fearmid itself, he also, infamously, uses the word “suicide” on the Disney Channel, when he tells Dipper and Mabel that any attempt to take on Bill – or, in other words, to undertake the very task he was attempting when the Portal reopened in NWHS – was a “suicide mission.” His behavior, from the moment he comes back, is usually varying degrees of reckless, and the Journal illustrates that this isn’t an entirely new tendency: aside from vowing to undo the damage he’d done “or lose my life in the attempt” at the end of the 1980s section, he also put himself through the kind of work conditions that can literally kill a person for, it seems, months before he realized Bill had played him; afterward, he proceeded to have a breakdown while continuing, or even increasing, his dangerous habits of sleep deprivation and stimulant overuse. And even before that, as previously noted: he once didn’t think twice about jumping off a cliff. There has, at least since he came to Gravity Falls, always been a part of Ford which seems to have had some inclination toward self-destruction; he may not have been suicidal as such in the early years, but even then, he seems to have been more than merely indifferent to his own well-being. It is at this point that all the disparate threads of this essay will begin to gather back together into a single line, because this behavior can be interpreted as Ford, essentially, daring the universe to so much as try to make a victim of him, because it was at in those years that he began to feel the need to assure himself that he wasn’t one. After he admits he’s out of ideas in the Fearamid, though, he finally has no other choice but to admit that he has in fact been victimized – specifically, by Bill Cipher.
When Ford chose to adopt famous scientists as his models for how to be a man, he began to lie to himself about himself to some degree. He insisted he was rational and unemotional when he was anything but. He retained some pride in being in better physical condition than the other men close to him during both his scientist and hero arcs, but he downplayed his quite real attraction toward violence (recall that on two of the three occasions where he and Stan came to blows, Ford was the one who escalated the conflict) and thrill-seeking, trying to veil them from himself as well as the reader. Ford’s tendency toward black-and-white thinking didn’t disappear at the end of the show; he simply reversed the polarity, so that now, instead of him being the hero, he recast others in that role and was at least attempting to accept a place among the ranks of those who’d needed saving. This was something that he’d been denying he was for a very long time, even at the price of focusing on anger-inducing aspects of the past, perhaps distorting them out of proportion in his memory so he could keep his mind on the future. Unable to cope with the loss of control implicit in his situation with his 'Muse,' acting as the agent of something else and being manipulated in deeper and deeper over his head, he directed his attention to a future where he would be on top again, focusing on anger toward the past instead of on his fear of the present.
For most of the show, Ford has real issues with anger, and I tend to believe that quite a lot of them had to do with the need to protect two things after the disintegration of his relationship with Bill Cipher. One is his image of himself, and the other - arguably, something dependent on the maintenance of his self-concept - is his sanity – or at least, if not his sanity, then his ability to function. As noted the other night – anger might not feel good, exactly, but it can feel so much better than hurting that it can be mistaken for feeling good. Fury can be paralyzing, yes, but it can also, when directed outward, keep you moving – spite, as they say, is the source of many an accomplishment Self-loathing, on the other hand, will crush you like a boulder, sooner or later...and it’s painfully obvious, in the scrambled, increasingly unhinged journal entries between the Portal test and his decision to call Stan, that Ford is capable of intense self-hatred. Even in later years, when he has focused his entire mind on revenge for decades and reviles the traits in his brother that he dislikes in himself, there’s still that undercurrent of guilt and self-hatred running just beneath the surface, so close to the top that even he can never really fully ignore it. He doesn’t really know how to accept help while maintaining his self-respect, and here’s where we get to him being both an abuse survivor and, arguably, specifically a male one.
Earlier, I referred to his partnership with Bill as an uncomfortably realistic depiction of a domestic abuse situation when you strip the supernatural frills away. Bill could well have marked off items on some kind of manipulation checklist: he would flatter Ford to draw him in, and then withdraw without explanation, leaving Ford despondent and thus that much more dependent on Bill upon Bill’s return. Bill convinces Ford that nobody else really understands him like Bill does, and that nobody else ever could do so. They are all parasites who want to ride on Ford’s coattails, or steal his work, or are people who will hurt him because they are jealous of him; Bill is the one who inspires him, because he’s just that deserving of inspiration...except, of course, when he isn’t. When the Muse would go silent for long stretches of time, waiting with highly uncharacteristic patience until he got just close enough to desperate for a breakthrough. Then the whole cycle would begin all over again, until finally, by 1980-1981, Bill had succeeded in reducing Ford’s world to little more than himself. Based on the state of Ford’s study, he was, by the end, probably literally worshiping Bill as a god.(6) It is therefore possible to argue that the relationship included spiritual abuse in addition to the blatant psychological, physical (“enjoy the mystery bruises”), and financial (in that much of the grant ended up being used to pursue Bill’s agenda instead of for its intended purpose) abuse...and all of that happens before the possession sub-plot after the Portal test, where any illusion that their association is consensual or in any way for Ford’s benefit falls apart. Bill systematically violates every understood boundary within the relationship during the weeks between the Portal test and the Portal incident, and Bill very clearly enjoys doing so. He takes the time to taunt his victim by scribbling in the Journal when Ford blacks out. He seems to derive a great deal of satisfaction not only from the ability to completely deprive Ford of all mental and bodily autonomy on a whim, but from reminding Ford that he had this ability: he seems to have gotten a twisted satisfaction from knowing that Ford knew that, sooner or later, he would be unable to physically prevent himself from sleeping any longer. The hopelessness and inescapability of his situation are thrown in Ford's face again and again, and apparently for no better reason than that Bill is a physical and psychological sadist. Other people's misery and horror are like a drug to Bill, and we see, again and again, in the series that Bill will even undermine the pursuit of his own goals in order to enjoy it.
And the person he did all this to was Ford. Someone who already had profound trust issues (from his point of view, everyone he ever cared for had betrayed him to one degree or another), and whose formative years were during early fifties. This is significant, even aside from the impact of personality flaws specific to Filbrick Pines on his son’s development. Even today, in our rather better-informed times, many people dismiss the idea that men and even boys can be victims of abuse entirely, and even some of those who acknowledge the possibility won’t take it as seriously as the idea of men abusing women and girls. When Ford was physically and verbally bullied in elementary school, the only solution his father could offer was “learn to hit harder than the other guy.” If someone hurts you, you hurt them back; this, in the earliest examples he seems to have had, is how you reclaim power, and if you can’t do that, then Filbrick thinks you’re weak, that you’re an embarrassment, and that he just wishes you were gone, to very nearly quote Stan from “Dreamscaperers.” This was also a general attitude of the surrounding culture, without a lot of prominent examples of better options. Years later, it follows - horrible though it is to say – reasonably enough that when Ford realized he’d been manipulated and used by something that couldn’t be punched in the face, he began to have a breakdown, which only began to resolve in a small way when he convinced himself there was, in fact, a way to do something at least equivalent to punching Bill in the face. His plan was irrational and poorly strung together, and it did require him to ask someone for help, which must have galled – but it’s only Stan he has to ask, after all, and Stan doesn’t really count, and Stan owes him anything he might choose to ask for anyway, and besides, he’s not really asking Stan to help him deal with the problem, is he? He’s going to be the one who defeats that bastard or dies trying. Stan’s just...going to hold his beer, so to speak. Or book, as the case may be. Because he doesn’t need Stan. He doesn’t need anyone. Because he’s in control of this situation. He’s going to save the universe, and then everything will be fine again (or so he tells himself), because then he will be, once and for all, beyond the reach of anyone who might want to hurt him again. Because if he can pull this one off, then who would dare? Who would even want to? He’ll be a hero, a savior, someone deserving of everyone’s respect – and if not, he’ll at least be a martyr, which to him likely seems like a better second choice than continuing to live with the thought that he’s vulnerable and that everyone knows it.
An interesting thing to examine at this point is the similarity between his approaches to Fiddleford and Stan in the eighties. Earlier, it was argued that Ford may have reached out to Fiddleford as much out of repressed fear as from any real need for technical assistance. When Fiddleford first comes to Gravity Falls, Ford cannot stop talking about Fiddleford’s excellence, praising it even above his own. Fiddleford is his friend, his partner, his companion on this path to glory. Slowly, though, it changes. He begins to cast more and more doubt on Fiddleford’s capabilities, in a way, at first, which almost seems reasonable due to Fiddleford’s neuroses. He begins to feel that he is doing Fiddleford a favor – many favors, in fact – by allowing him to participate in “making history” like this. He projects and lashes out. This shows up even more clearly when he writes to Stan. He does not, admittedly, start out with praise in that case, but he still clearly goes through the same process of progressing from acknowledging a need to twisting it around in his own head so he no longer has to do so, just at a higher rate of speed. Almost as soon as he decides to write to Stan, he adds in his journal that “perhaps he can prove his worth to me.” This is followed by some prevarication – the line about how perhaps the mistakes of the past can be made right could apply to his thoughts on how he feels Stan wronged him, his thoughts on his situation with Bill, or even his past actions toward Stan, and when Stan arrives, Ford initially seems to present the matter as one where he needs a partner-in-crime because Stan is the one person he can trust – but within minutes, he shouts about how he’s offering Stan the one chance he’ll ever have to do something meaningful in his entire life. He’s progressed again to the idea that he doesn’t need help, and that he’s just doing these people - people who he has ostensibly asked for help - a favor. He is still in control. Because he doesn’t need them. He doesn’t need anyone. And when he triumphs over Bill, then….
...Then….
...Then we get to the bit I did write about on Thursday night. Specifically, how there’s very likely going to come a day when Ford will start finding it very, very hard not to have Bill around to hate anymore. To paraphrase zephyrsimperium - even when anger is hurting you so much that even you can see that it’s doing so, even when you know, intellectually, that it doesn’t really feel very good at all, it still hurts less than actually cleaning out the psychological wound.
To a certain extent, Ford’s anger did save him in 1982. Coping mechanisms can be necessary, for a time, when a trauma is too close to deal with. Truly dealing with it would be healthier, but there are situations where some distance has to be put between oneself and the trauma before it can be addressed; situations where you’ve just very suddenly become homeless and are being hunted by your reality-warping abuser would, it seems safe to say, be among these. Too much pain from too many sources could not be addressed all at once, especially by someone who, for reasons both cultural and innate, possessed none of the psychological tools or self-awareness to even begin to work through it all, and so when survival became a priority, focusing on hating Bill more than he hated himself probably was the only choice Ford realistically had in that moment. At the end of the show, however...Bill’s gone. Ford no longer has that mission to focus on, and at some point, that’s likely to mean waking up and realizing – if I may be forgiven for quoting a song from the Dark Ages, aka, my childhood -
“Wherever you go, there you are/You can run from yourself, but you won’t get far.”
Learning to defend himself as a child wasn’t enough – he still had to seek validation, acceptance of some kind, through all those competitions. Winning the competitions wasn’t enough – he still needed to find a place where he could fit in, somehow, either as a genius or as an anomaly. Going to college, finding someone he considered even more brilliant than himself, winning a grant – somehow, it still wasn’t enough, he needed to discover a new theory and emblazon his name in the history books...never realizing that even if he’d succeeded in that endeavor, it still wouldn’t have been enough. And all that was before Bill. Afterward, sure...he killed Bill. The being that made him feel weak and stupid and helpless all those years ago, it’s gone now. He won. And it still won’t be enough, because removing Bill doesn’t undo what Bill did to him. It doesn’t take away the difficulty of trusting anyone else after such an acute betrayal. It doesn’t take away the anger at himself for being someone who got duped. It doesn’t take away all those years out in the Multiverse, and the memories of whatever less-than-ideal things he had to do to survive them, or the impulse to hit first and ask questions later that he’s developed, or anything else. Nor is throwing himself into being the Perfect Friend or Perfect Brother in an attempt to make up for the past going to ultimately help much – he can’t undo whatever wrongs he did Fiddleford or Stan any more than they can undo the ones they did him, and all three of them are likely in for a rough ride of learning how to have relationships where sometimes you clash and disagree, but you trust the other person enough that you can have a relationship with them when neither of you is a Perfect Anything to the other…and where you trust the other person to still want to be your friend after you demonstrate that you aren’t perfect, or even able to perfectly fit into a simple, clear mold. As hard as accepting onself as a flawed individual with vulnerabilities that can be exploited is, it's probably still child's play compared with then, after having been taken advantage of in the past, to trust anyone to not do so at the first opportunity again.
Despite the somewhat gloomy tone of this essay, there are reasons for hope. One lies simply in the fact that Ford got this far. His story, after all, follows the arc of many a tragic hero, and yet, he manages to end the show alive and without having gone over to the Dark Side (even if he came dangerously close and was only pulled back from the edge by Stan’s quick thinking and acting skills). Another, more promising, is in "Lost Legends," where we get a glimpse of the Pines family in the week between Weirdmageddon and the birthday party. We see that Stan has recovered his normal personality and memories enough that he and Ford manage to annoy each other throughout the adventure. They disagree on how to proceed, which of them is more competent to look after the twins, etc...and the incident ends with a truce, rather than each of them slinging blame at the other for the situation Mabel ultimately has to rescue them both from. Ford is able to accept that they both contributed to the problem, rather than it being a black-and-white situation, the way he seems to have viewed most situations for quite some time. He even lets Stan play with the super-glue gun of science. It's progress. Here's hoping, for everyone's sake, that it's one step among many to be taken.
Notes
(1) See my essay “The Trouble With Timelines” on AO3 for an explanation of this assertion.
(2) Reasoning for this hypothesis can also be found in “The Trouble With Timelines.”
(3) Based on his lack of alarm when a second specimen later attacks him in the lab, my theory is that Ford staged the near-escape of the Cycloptopus at the beginning from first to last - note how he appears to have a pretty solid grip on it when he enters the gift shop, and later turns to the family, holding it up and smiling brightly, after subduing it as though looking for approval from others before indicating that he’d like to be included at meal times. Later, in “The Last Mabelcorn,” we learn from the read-out of his thoughts that he lurked closely enough behind the vending machine to eavesdrop for at least long enough to hear Stan refer to him as a “dangerous know-it-all;” since his other thoughts in that sequence all involve loss, anxiety, regret, and childhood bullying, it seems reasonable to assume that whatever he had hoped to overhear, it wasn’t that. Considering how Ford agreed to avoid the children at the end of “A Tale of Two Stans,” it seems likely to me that Ford staged the Cycloptopus incident just for an excuse to interact with the rest of the family for a moment without obviously trying to do so, and that the creature was not actually especially dangerous.
(4) Though it is possible that some of the times Ford rolled a four were among the 20-odd times the Infinity Die allegedly endangered his life; if he was already in a bit of a bind and decided to risk getting a solution that way, rolling a four with something that is highly illegal to own - and, therefore, probably even more highly illegal to roll - would be unlikely to improve his situation
(5) I saw an essay once where someone actually tried to figure out what, if Bill was accurately portraying his own usage of electricity, happened there: best-case scenario involved convulsions violent enough to dislocate joints accompanied by severe internal and external burns. It seems, considering the contrast between his first appearance in “Take Back The Falls” and his relatively physically normal behavior during the rest of the episode, that being turned into gold again resulted in the instantaneous restoration of his pre-torture physical condition, but this would probably provide small comfort if you are under the impression that every time you ‘wake up,’ you’re just going to go right back through the same thing again...and again...and again….
(6) Comments in the codes of all Journals and in invisible ink in the blacklight journal make the question of Ford’s religious beliefs another interesting one; we know he was raised Jewish, but his few remarks after dealing with Bill could suggest that, by the story’s main time, he may have become some form of dualist. An argument which can be used either for or against this idea is the apparent existence of the Axolotl cult, as shown in exclamations by space refugees, carvings in Jheselbraum’s shrine, Bill’s dying invocation, and a bumper sticker in “Lost Legends.” On one hand, Ford expresses confusion about what the refugees meant by “praise the Axolotl!” and makes no explicit connection between the statement and the carvings he later sees in Dimension 52; when he speculates on “the opposite of Bill?”, it is unclear if he is referring to Jheselbraum or her background art/presumed patron deity (“Oracle” is suggestive of the Oracles of Delphi, who were priestesses of Apollo and were supposed to prophesy through divine inspiration, so it does seem likely that Ford, Jheselbraum, or both believe that another entity is the source of her prophetic gift). It is also unclear what, exactly, the power dynamic between Bill and the Axolotl is; the fact that Bill invokes it in the hopes of returning from his deletion implies it is far more powerful than him, but it is unclear (both in Bill’s invocation and in the Axolotl’s prophecy in “Time Pirates’ Treasure”) if the Axolotl could choose to ignore the invocation if it wished to do so. Bill, we know (or are at least told), was once a mortal being which sought escape from all laws, including the laws of nature which dictated his own mortality; we do not know how the Axolotl came to exist outside of time and space, or what this implies about its nature. When Bill muses on his enemies, however, he swears that neither Time Baby nor “the big frilly jerk” will stop him; this could imply that he sees Time Baby and The Big Frilly Jerk (most likely Axolotl, unless the canon version really does have a twin brother) as equal threats, and that perhaps “the ancient power” is something they are all in some way bound to/reliant upon for their seeming immortality? Bill was able to reduce Time Baby to his component molecules, but word of author is that TB is not actually dead and will eventually manage to pull said molecules back together into a Time Baby-like shape again, which renders the issue of power levels even murkier.
#gravity falls#gravity falls characters#gravity falls analysis#character analysis#essay#footnote time!#stan pines#ford pines#thoughts form as typing happens#drafts
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Hiiiii bb, it’s actually a “success story” lmao. so in the previous ask i was talking abt a project and it weighs around 70% of my grades, it’s super imp. i had a deadline of 30th dec, tbh i was very lazy and didn’t do much (ik ☠️). so this week i was slightly anxious BC they actually gave an extension i.e 30th dec. i got that extension like i deep down knew they extend and they did, it was 30tg dec BUT then there’s like 3/4 days left, i was slightly anxious (usually i’d be dying by now). but then i was like oh this problem isn’t mine. the deadline doesn’t exist, it only exists bc i’m making it more real by being aware. that doesn’t lack anything, and everything is instant, knowing this i was very laid back 😭💀. Tbh i was just thinking (my mind is never quiet) i just realized i’m internalizing failure is an option, then i just said to myself, failure is an illusion but i’m just going to remove that. Failure doesn’t exist for me. then i was like every single time, when i was faced w difficult situation, everything will be alright. ngl i was like if i don’t submit, i’d have to repeat the sem. and that’s scary af, but then i’m like it’s an illusion who cares🧍🏻♀️, but then i didn’t want that as an option☠️. i literally went on w the day like it’s going to fine, i’m lucky as hell. I KID U NOT i get a notification the submission date is 30tg dec. for some reason i was really calm, bc i detached my self from the whole issue, like it’s all an illusion including the problem, the deadline. In the noon, i get another notification, it literally says “GOOD NEWS, THE DATE HAS BEEN EXTENDED TO 10th JAN” 😭💀. istg i wasn’t over the moon or anything, i just smiled. ITS CRAZYYYY, ND is wayyy better than loa. where they keep telling persisting, and it’s just exhausting. it’s crazy WHEN u feel like this whole thing is like a game, and that can decide what this illusion wants.
i rambled a lot 👩🏻. but to everyone who’s like why aren’t the desires materializing?? pause, ND you’re not doing anything to get. it’s like you know you breathe? do u check or like constantly are believing that you breathe? nope, you just are aware, aware of reading thsi rn, aware of comprehending this. the most freeing thing is, none of this is real, it’s all illusion, concepts don’t exist. everything is instant for that. the moment you’re aware of xyz or your let’s say desired life, it’s already there. don’t go asking where? i don’t see it? it’s not real etc. it’s bc you still believe you’re a limited human experiencing through the 5 senses. i’d like to recommend everyone to make their own opinion of ND, bc at the end of the day, you’re the game maker not the player.
THANK YOUUU, it’s like i’ve gained the cheat code to life rn, it’s so relieving that, everything is instant and nothing is real, it’s all illusion, hence we have all possibilities to choose a whole another illusion.
~ 👿
heyyy 👿 anon!! omgg please this was so entertaining to read, thank you so much for not only sharing your experience, but updating us on what happened! having a project be 70% of your grade is so crazy, i would've also been feeling anxious! just as you seemingly extended the due date, i am sure with your dedication you got an A++!! i couldn't have put it any more perfect than you have :) there is no need to thank me, anon! this was all you, sun beam <33 i hope to hear from you again, have a fantastic week!
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Pierre confessing to his wife he's afraid he won't be a good father because he's away a lot, and her confessing she's afraid she wont be a good mother because she didn't have a good role model growing up.
Tw: mentions family issues
"That's in two weeks", you heard Pierre say on his phonecall, his tone already indicating the frustration that was building inside him. He thought he had the whole month at home, remote meetings, and very few things to do in the factory that needed him there for the whole time, hence he thought the had that time to spend with you, near you. He had begun to set up the nursery, had been to every appointment with you and was counting on accompanying you to the rest of them. You were in the kitchen, sitting by the kitchen island checking the calendar to make sure you had written everything down correctly, "what are you doing, amour?", Pierre came up behind you, looking at the appointment you were erasing, "the nurse just sent a message in saying this appointment has to be moved forward, something with a machine not working", you shrugged your shoulders, "she said it isn't anything urgent", you finished, showing signs of not being bothered by it.
Just by Pierre's luck, the appointment had now been moved to the week he had to travel, "Amour, I just got a call and I'm not here from this day to this day, will probably arrive late too", he pointed to the calendar, making you mark a small line on the days he wouldn't be in, nodding to make sure you had it right, "I'm sorry, amour, I really thought I'd be here this whole time", he offered, "it's okay, my love, no worries about that", you said before putting the calendar back up on the wall and heading to the living room once you held his hand in yours, desperate for some comfy cuddles.
Dinner had been weird, Pierre didn't talk much, and it scared you a bit, had you done something wrong? Was it not tasty, not good enough? Had he been worried about something else? Questions ran through your mind while your husband showered, rubbing your body oil on your growing bump while you waited for him to come to bed. It didn't take long before he left the bathroom, only a pair of shorts covering his body, the frown on his face marked, "is something bothering you? Did I do something wrong?", you asked in a small voice, making him break his expression, "No, no, no amour, what makes you say that?", he conforted immediately, his hands coming to hold yours, "You've had an angry expression all afternoon, you didn't say much at dinner, and it's weird, it's not your usual", you listed, enjoying the way his thumbs, almost reassuringly, rubbed your hands, "it's nothing with you, amour, I promise. I've just been thinking about how I have to leave you in a few days, and how that is something I have to do a lot, like, I will spend some days away from you, and I won't be here as much during the season. How is that something of a good father? I don't want to make you follow me everywhere, I know how hard it is to have that routine, or rather lack of it", he expressed his concerns, making you unlatch your hands so you could caress his cheek to make him look at you, "Pierre, that is not what defines being a good father", you said, "you don't think?", he said, trying to gather his thoughts, knowing that it was a sensitive topic to you but also knowing you'd want to hear his concerns and worries, "I can't know for sure, but I can tell from experience that it's not because of that. Little one will love you because you love them to bits, and it won't be because you're not always here. Maybe they'll be confused but I know you, and I know you'll always make them feel loved and cherished", you replied genuinely.
"I'm sorry to bring this up, but it has been bothering me recently, I know how much this is important to you", he said, "I feel like that too sometimes, I mean, I did not have the best role models, and while I know what I don't want to do, and will never do, I'm still unsure of what I want to do, how I'd like to do it", you gulped, "if I'll be good at it".
Smiling reassuringly, he held your face between his hands, "So this all just means that we will learn as we go", he comforted, "day by day, we will see what works, what doesn't, I'm sure we will do the best for our family, because I love you, and I know you love me, and we have everyone around us showering us with love and help", he kissed the top of your head, "we will be just fine".
(Thank you for submitting an ask 🤍)
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helllooooo i am absolutely obsessed with your macden sugar daddy fic. i’m not kidding when i say it has become a household name for me (in the dms with my poor, dear friend who does not even watch sunny. i have, and will continue to, bombard her with messages such as: “the macdennis fic i’ve been creaming over hasn’t been updated i’m in shambles” and thankfully you did update after that).
i went through your tumblr for a bit and saw in one of your responses you mentioned feeling a lack of encouragement to write when it feels like no one is actively requesting so i suppose this is my formal request. i am quite literally so emotionally invested in this fic. this is my high class literature (as a lit major). this is my magnum opus and i’m talking about the experience of READING it, not trying to imply this work is in any way mine.
i have sooo much i’d like to say about it but i get so scatterbrained when i think about it. i read the entire thing in one sitting and was in agony when i finished. then you updated on christmas and i read the entire thing AGAIN and i keep going back to that most recent chapter where (spoilers ig!) mac calls dennis daddy because it simply /felt right/. because he felt /safe/? oh i’m on the floor and begging for mercy. you’re brilliant. this story is brilliant. i’m a mess.
if you ever feel like people might not be interested: listen to me when i say your writing has permanently altered the chemistry of my dna and has conditioned me to check ao3 every single day with bated breath HOPING there’s an update. i love it. that’s an understatement. i LOVE IT.
i would also like to clarify that if you ever run into issues with writer’s block or even simply losing the excitement over this specific story, pls don’t feel obligated to write something you don’t want to. it’s your life!! i saw your 2023 update post and it seems like a fucking fantastic one at that, so live it to the fullest and do what you want!!
i think you’re neat. i think your writing is what leads good men to ruin (like me. i’m supposed to be reading jane eyre rn and all i can think of is your fic) /pos. truly my favorite source of sunny content across all your sunny social media.
question that i do apologize for asking if you’ve answered: the title is a fall out boy reference, right? big fan of that band. if it is, can i ask for details on the inspo?
thank u for your service solider o7
p.s. this was so needlessly long so sorry for bothering lmfaoooo but i had to say this somewhere and i think my friend is tired of hearing about the fanfic on a ship for a show she doesn’t even watch
First off, thank you so much for this, and second off don’t apologise for writing too much to me after you’ve seen the word count I spew out at random.
I really appreciate your words, and I’ll tell you I’ve been in so many similar positions where I’ve been obsessed with a fic and had no one in it to relate to and have just ended up spamming a close friend instead, so to hear that’s done about my fic is really, really cool.
About prior asks, etc. I think I get down on myself a little, when I say I don’t get why people are reading or what they like and it’s hard to find motivation, it’s really just kinda my own internal struggle with all of that. (Also, I keep answering those when I'm drunk, my bad.) I get what I’m doing and what I’m writing, but I wanna make sure the audience does too. But you’re reading my words, so you must, even if you can’t (or just, don’t want to) sit down and go line-by-line of a 23k word chapter and tell me what’s going on.
Cause, I couldn’t sit down and write a full detailed list of every new episode of Sunny like that. Like, I just straight up couldn’t when they dropped. My reviews were like ‘5 stars, keysmash’ So I think there is something to be said about people really liking something, really wanting more, but maybe not having the words to vocalise or not having the time to vocalise why that is.
About wait times, updates, etc.. It is mainly about motivation, and like you’ve said I would never put out something just to put it out if it’s not reflective of what I want it to be (and know it can be). I mean, I’m not on a real deadline and I’m not getting paid, I'm writing this first and foremost for myself, so why would I rush it? Sometimes I can write thousands of words in a day, if the spark hits, but sometimes it can take months to fully form when it’s just me in my head and I still have to do shit in my daily life. And maybe I could do something to speed up that process, but I think my best work forms this way. But it does make updates painfully slow for you guys, and I apologise, cos I get that sucks.
Though, it is also spurred by external motivation: people pointing specific things out, telling me why they like something or what they see under the surface here, that stuff actually gets the gears in my head turning, back in focus. The ‘waiting for an update’ ‘pls write more’ isn’t motivation, it’s demand. (And understanding there is demand is definitely a motivator, don’t get me wrong, but that’s not a spark, it’s a push.) So the balance there is sometimes hard to match, I understand there is demand (though after Ch 7 or 8 whatever it was I genuinely thought maybe there wasn’t), and I appreciate being told that, but it can only go insofar as I have the motivation to bounce off of it. Sometimes, that’s literally just my own issue and no one can help me. You (not you, specifically, anon) just gotta trust an update will come... and if you fall out of care for Sunny in the meantime, oh well. Know I won't, lmfao.
About the Title, well, no one actually has asked me... I don't think (maybe 'cause it seems obvious?). I guess the answer is.. kind of? It is a lyric pulled from the Fall Out Boy song, but, well, a meme says it best:
The inspo is kinda what's written on the tin, wanted a title that makes it clear what it is. Don't read too much into the baseball metaphor though, it might hurt you a little in the spoilers department, if you think we're just purely having fun here...
Thanks for the ask, really really appreciate it, and knowing people like you are reading and enjoying my fic is awesome :)
#i do LIKE the song btw lmfao#i had a huge fob phase in 9th grade when save rock and roll came out#it just makes the meme funnier#but also it is true#the only inspo for pulling from the song lyric is that it worked on the level i needed it to#convey info for the plot#also now all my macden fics are song lyrics or titles bc of this one lmfao#ask#sugar daddy au
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The other day I said something and I guess I just wanted your thoughts on it. What I said was that the term "asexual spectrum" really bothered me for the following reasons:
It implies that allosexuals are inherently crazy nonstop sex machines (which is already a stigma bisexuals face) and it can create confusion among people struggling with their identity (which genuinely happened to me, a so-called allosexual with what was at the time an extremely low libido due to various mental health struggles)
There are near infinite ways to experience an emotion (ie attraction), but there's only one way to not experience said emotion
I just wanted to run it by you since you pop up a lot in my feed, seem to have a good head on your shoulders, and are actually asexual and can provide insight that I wouldn't have as an 'allosexual' (God I hate that word, it feels bad in my mouth lol)
Just a quick note: I am not asexual. I thought I was for 7 years (those last two years I used the split attraction model and believed I was asexual AND a lesbian). But after more of my own journey I realized I was just a straight trans man (the lack of attraction stemming from dysphoria in my case). And while I may not be asexual I 1. Was very much involved in the community for a long time, and 2. Firmly believe that everyone has a right to their opinion and are allowed to voice it even if you aren't in that group (with there being respectful ways to discuss things).
Also you can just say non asexual lol. Or just what ever your sexuality is. It's all good.
That said, I 100% agree with you. Your two points are some major ones. My FAQ has links to a ton of posts where I explain more issues with the split attraction model. But a quick summary based on my memory:
-like you said. There's only one way to experience a lack of something.
-boundaries (ie. What you want out of a relationship) are not a sexuality.
-it allows so much overlap between other sexualities that it starts to invalidate and take meaning away from them.
-the model is so broad that anyone can fit into it. It can be used to define anyone, asexual or not. And that leads to lots of confusion and makes the asexuality lose meaning.
-defining every single part of yourself and how you experience attraction is harmful. How you experience/express attraction can change with time. Who you are attracted to (used broadly) cannot. By defining things based on something that can change you head down the slope that sexuality is a choice rather than just who you are. This fuels homophobia and will fuel aphobia. I have met actual people who claim to be asexual and claim sexuality is a choice without any understanding of how homo/lesbo/bi/aphobic that is to say.
-asexuality at this point means something different for everyone. This means I know nothing if you tell me you're asexual. You could be dating everyone on the block or have no interest at all and saying you're asexual. I can't tell. What's the point of using a word to describe yourself if the word doesn't have any concrete meaning?? If someone says their gay or bi I know what that means. I can't say the same for asexuality and I feel bad for actual asexuals who's identity has been taken away like that.
-I have legitimately seen it used to justify being with someone you aren't attracted too. One of my links in my FAQ has stories from asexuals who have had the split attraction model used to coerce them into dating or having sex and how much that messed up their mental health. The justification being "I can have sex to make my partner happy even tho I don't actually find them attractive." When no partner should be asking you to do that. Ever. Every single one of those stories explained how the person thought they were fine until they realized how fucked up it made them.
Check out the FAQ for more. Hope that helps.
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@vonlipvig answering on this blog!
4. How easy is it to earn their trust?
Answered here for Orsinio but I'll talk about Samuel! He trusts everyone until he doesn't, and he mistrusts everyone until he does. "Well yes, but actually no." You understand. No one is barred entry from his bar, but if you cause problems, you get physically removed, no strong feelings, simple as that.
15. How do they speak? Is what they say usually thought of on the spot, or do they rehearse it in their mind first?
Orsinio is talkative and impulsive, inclined to speak without thinking first. He can come up with words quickly on the fly, exhibiting a cleverness in arguments and verbal fights. If he has a more serious emotional thing to talk about, he plans out a scripted response but rarely actually winds up using it before breaking to a more spur of the moment thing. When he's stressed, it's common for him to lose speech, so sometimes he does not talk at all. A quiet O means there has been devastation.
Similarly, a Samuel who is talking means there has been even more devastation. Normally, Samuel tries to say as little as possible, unless he's telling a story, and he never phrases anything as a question.
20. If they were asked to explain the difference between romantic and platonic or familial love, how would they do so?
I, the author, struggle to explain the difference
Well, almost none of my ocs experience romantic love! Lucretia is the only one that does and is still demiromantic. Aro spectrum for the win.
40. How sensitive are they to their own flaws?
Orsinio is almost always introspecting. He's gotten better with time but still will dwell on mistakes or times he could have done or said or felt something better. He can have a black and white approach to morality at times. Obsesses over things and knows when he's in too deep but can't stop. Considers mental health issues to be a flaw because of the time period and blames it on "a weak constitution." Has a hard time letting people help. Orsinio is very hard on himself. Flaws he forgives in others are not forgiven in himself. He's really trying to get better though, especially since not studying the discordance and getting a handle on the grief process after nemesis. The Neath doesn't have therapy but does have cosmic horror vibe checks.
D. Have they always had the same physical appearance, or have you had to edit how they look?
When I first started playing, Orsinio used to have brown hair. He wore goggles everywhere and then his design got spectacles for outside the lab. I imagined him in adventurous gear, like belts and pouches and things, before switching to the more elegant outfits of the late 19th century, though he's always had a cloak. It was part of his character arc when he got a cane, when he got white streaks in his hair, and when he started to dress in heavier layers. In the future, he'll get a beard, and as he recovers from trauma will gain some weight. I've been seriously struggling with health since I started playing in 2020 so there's a bit of projection there but yeah. He deserves healing. Dilf Orsinio is endgame.
Everyone else has pretty much stayed the same! Orsinio was my first when I didn't know a lot about the game or how I wanted to roleplay, so he went through the most changes.
E. Are they someone you would get along with? Would they get along with you?
We would be able to relate on disabilities and love for literature and music, but I'm not sure we would be able to get on more than that. Orsinio would annoy me with his lack of self awareness and reluctance to get help. I have self preservation instincts. We can both be stubborn and inflexible in thinking at times. If we were just meeting for an afternoon in a coffee shop, sure we'd get along. A passionate discussion about Shakespeare and astrophysics, and then I tell him about the marvels of the MRI.
Miles is a no, absolutely not. Ignoring all the robber baron things and dark magic, they have a social media influencer personality. They would dislike me for shopping at thrift stores and I'd make them wash one dish and they'd cry.
Samuel yes, totally. I sit at the bar and talk for an hour while he nods and provides interesting drink recipes. Great time.
Captain Min, sure, I'll be a space adventure story side character and can be very useful doing ledgers and maps
Lucretia is one I'm not sure how to answer. We're both pretty reserved. I think I could have a friendship with her like I have with some of my friends from grad school who are >25 years older than me. Pleasant and encouraging on both sides with a strong awareness of me being young for her to be my parent slakdsfdls
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