#i think it's funny that as traditional as my parents were my upbringing was very genderless. My sister got a /lot/ more pressure to be Girl

[anglerflsh]

"the way you interacted with your peers gave you access to the gendered world" good thing I didn't do that then

#[.art] #self #i think it's funny that as traditional as my parents were my upbringing was very genderless. My sister got a /lot/ more pressure to be Girl #my school's uniform wasn't gendered I was always called by my surname and the gender ratio never made splitting the class like that possibl #so. surprisingly for a very christian environment I was very neutrally treated (also because I didnt talk to my peers) #and as a child I reasoned it as 'well angels dont have a gender. so checkmate binary system i'm just more aligned to god' #<-objectively funny because now I can see that and realise it's just. The Delusion at it again but still #gender

[collegetennisoriginstory]

(same anon as about the difference in m&f ROs & attraction) Thank you for your reply! It was an interesting read. I will add that some of what I was thinking about was also based on fashion choices and looks (based on the previous art breeder images) - f!G and f!Sam both looked aesthetically very feminine to me, which is not my style, while if I remember correctly from a different post f!Rayyan dresses more sporty/masc-leaning/gender neutral. But behavior/personality/energy is also an important part of this of course. I don't know if the characters themselves would identify as more feminine or masculine, if either (or if the art breeders even were a very good representation re: make up and styling and such)... but it's something that really affects my own attraction to ROs, so I sort of go off whatever impressions I get when it comes to that! Things like, "would this woman wear a dress or not" and long versus short hair and styling etc... Like, for even more context, my ideal female ROs are butches and studs -- but those specific identities are extremely hard to find in anything hahah...

Ooohhh that totally makes sense. I go into more detail on how I picture the F!RO styles in (slight) relation to the ask, but let me know if you guys are interested in M!RO styles too.

I'd say F!Rayyan definitely dresses more masc (a longstanding sore spot with their traditional muslim parents) BUT as I mentioned previously, in casual "civilian" clothes, F!Rayyan does wear a headscarf at the very least, and tries to avoid outfits that show their midriff. Just a nod to their upbringing. They go for a more outdoorsy/tough look.

But yeah f!Tobin doesn't dress femme per se, in casual clothes they'd be just as likely to wear something like a simple t shirt and jeans or a thrift store find, but they clean up nicely and would go to say, a formal event in something more femme, like a low cut v-neck dress. They go for comfort, yes, but of all the f!ROs they're probably the most stylish (perhaps tied with G when G is "trying".)

F!Sam's eclectic in their dressing and goes through different phases / is versatile in their style, but I'd say their go-to is something a little more casual/nerdy/laidback, like graphic tees with funny slogans, video game/book references, and/or something fun and unique.

F!G straddles edgy-chic (leather jackets and skinny torn jeans) with femme-chic, can rock anything from boots and a pantsuit to a full-on femme fatale gown to an ordinary cotton shirt /jeans combo.

[murderballadeer]

i feel like i've told this story before but it's still so funny to me that my grandfather had the entire family convinced long after his death that buying your kids new shoes for passover was an old and storied jewish tradition and not just something he most likely made up like basically my grandmother lost her parents as a child due to the whole being jewish in 1930s and 40s russia so her religious upbringing was pretty limited so when she got married and had kids and her husband was like "we have to buy them new shoes for passover it's tradition" she was like sure why not sounds real so my mom and her sisters grew up assuming it was real and they lived in a very homogenous suburb where they didn't really have jewish neighbours or classmates so there was nobody to correct them. and then when they grew up and had kids of their own three of them ended up starting families with gentiles so why would they know what is and isn't a real jewish tradition, and then the one who did marry an ethnically jewish guy married a guy who wasn't raised religious bc his parents were hardline soviet communists when he was a kid and didn't engage in anything religious so he didn't know anything either. it wasn't until like two years ago that i was with my mom and i went hey do we know anyone else who does passover shoes and she was like huh i don't think so so we googled it and found nothing and then started asking everyone we knew and the closest we got was people saying they did new shoes for rosh hashanah. by that point my grandfather had been dead for over 30 years. my grandmother still sends all of her daughters money every passover for new shoes. incredible

#soapbox

[oumaheroes]

NZ and Artie hcs pretty please! Something 🥺 thank youuuu

Sorry this took me so long to answer!

I should start with something 'overall' first. I've enjoyed seeing different fandom interpretations of New Zealand throughout the years- as a shy golden boy, to rambunctious fellow play fighter, to mud weary tomboy, to a poised daughter, or all at once. For me, potentially due to how Zea has been canonically drawn, New Zealand is non-binary. What they've got going on under there ain't my business and they certainly don't care. I’ve therefore given them the name ‘Alex’- for the feminine or masculine version, who’s to say.

They very much live by the feeling 'I am New Zealand', and whatever that entails. Nothing more, nothing less.

Childhood/ Teenagerhood:

England had really settled into the swing of things at this point. He was used to children, used to parenting in general- the ups and downs of it - and used to keeping his children at more of a distance emotionally than he had with Canada and America. So, by the time Zea came about there was a smoother transition into family life than there had been for poor old OZ. Australia, who had a few brief years of England as a more affectionate, happy, and relaxed parent, was abruptly cut from contact for a few years and then reintroduced to someone stricter and far more distant and which has left their relationship a bit strained at times.

Zea knew nothing else. From the get go, England set a standard of behaviour and maintained it. On the one hand this was good: Zea never struggled around England, either in being comfortable in his presence or with the 'new' rules that were in place, and also never suffered from any sort of consequence that came from having a parental figure suddenly do a 180 on you.

On the other hand, they did grow up slightly lacking in the affection department. They knew England loved them, but as soon as they became a little older there were less hugs, less kisses, less of playing silly games and more study, learning, and filling their days with their own company. They were used to this and it didn’t bother them at the time, but compared to their older brothers, or younger ones (seeing him with Sealand does spark some bitterness), they certainly missed out, and have inherited England’s current (in)ability to interact physically with loved ones- they’re not overly touchy-feely and express love through acts of service or gift giving.

Mainly though, Zea's childhood was good and quite stable. They were home schooled, but England also used to like sending them off for playdates with noble families with children to get them more acquainted to people their physical age, or would take Zea with him into town to work with their politicians or their tradesmen. Zea thus spent a lot of their time waiting, either sitting on the floor of England's study, or somewhere around him outside, watching and listening to him work and talk shop with people.

Nations are robust things, sturdy and, surrounded by their people, not really in too much danger. I think England was rather lax in this regard with his children (someone who had a childhood of wandering around villages, foraging for food, and being personally thrust into war from a young age will hardly find a town centre in the 1800s dangerous) and used to leave New Zealand with some local children for entertainment if he needed to go and do things that required a bit more time than a quick chat.

Because of this, a humdrum of business is something New Zealand finds to be a soothing white noise, something they can filter out or tune into easily, and they appreciate this unorthodox education. They’re also very happy with their own company and can entertain, and soothe, themselves independently.

Not to go on too much of a tangent (because I do do that, in these posts), I just want to quickly touch upon Zea and Oz’s relationship because I think that helped cover up for what they were lacking in terms of openness and easy affection from England- Zea because they never really had it, and Oz because he was missing it. Due to how close they are geographically, and potentially because England on some level felt guilty for his inability to fully let himself go and open up to them, New Zealand and Australia spent quite a lot of time with each other in either of their lands from England moving them about with him when he visited one or the other. Both were also sometimes taken back home with him to the UK and a lot of Zea’s exposure to a more ‘traditional’ Kirkland upbringing comes from their time with their bother- playfights, arguments, mischief, and an open easiness with each other’s raw and unfiltered company.

Back on topic and to summarise, New Zealand's childhood relationship with England was a good one. As I mentioned in my Canada headcanon post about a similar topic, England is very, very good with small children and Zea was no different. But as they got older this decreased rapidly, something that they considered perfectly acceptable at the time but now is something they sometimes look back on with a small amount of hurt and confusion.

Teenagerhood they were very used to being on their own and, funnily, when you think about what England was trying to do, very independent. Not independent like America, with his fights for recognition as an independent entity removed from England, but independent personally. A childhood of watching England work and playing often by themselves meant that Zea as a teenager was studious, quiet, and happy to be left alone or taken out for company (similar to Wales in personality, I reckon. Need their alone time and will take themselves away if this is not given).

Arguments with England were rare- Zea’s not one for butting heads but would much rather learn the ins and outs of everything and then put forth and argument for change. England may be a hothead and stubborn, but he’s not closed minded. It’s how you approach him that matters and Zea caught onto this early. Whereas Australia would shout or refuse to do that he was asked if he didn’t want to, or would put up some form of fight, New Zealand would instead do the task, do it well, and then request time with England to formally present him with all of the reasons their proposal was far better.

England being told he is wrong will likely not listen if he believes himself to be right (even if he has doubts, someone telling him that his way is bad will make him stubbornly cling to it just to prove them wrong and himself justified for doing it in the first place- clawing and scraping for even an inch of a victory). But England being told that someone has thought of a different way, and asking for his opinion on it, is far more likely to inspire change. He feels valued and goes into the discussion with an open mind that most often went in New Zealand’s favour.

Because of this, they do have a reputation of having England wound around their little finger from a young age. But really, they were just smart enough to figure England out and use it to their advantage. They were also smart enough not to overplay this hand, and so their teenagerhood was peaceful and calm.

Adulthood:

As adults, the two are on very good terms. England prefers adult children to teenaged ones, especially calm, well-mannered ones, and this relationship improved after Zea got their independence. Rather like a burst of relief from England’s end, I feel- he’d spent so long paranoid about his colonies leaving him that this clouded his enjoyment of them. With them finally independent, that worry is redundant and he can enjoy them for the people they are. And Arthur likes Alex, he really does. He finds them mature, funny, and intelligent. The two have similar hobbies and interests and England often spends time with them travelling about to beaches or passing book recommendations back and forth.

Being nations heavily shaped and surrounded by the sea, this is something that is a huge passion for the both of them and they often go sailing together on the ocean, either on smaller boats by the shore or for larger trips out to sea. Arthur willingly took all of his children out to sea, but Alex was the only one who really took to it and shares a similar hunger for it as he does. They’re probably the least openly affectionate pair of all of the Arthur- child relationships, but that doesn’t mean he loves Alex any less and, most of the time, Alex knows this and is content with the way things are. As mentioned in my Canada post though, England is trying to improve himself in this area in the modern day and he’s trying really hard with Zea, (though this is sometimes awkward for the both of them.)

#hws england #hws new zealand #aph england #aph new zealand #arthur kirkland #hetalia headcanons #aph #hws #hetalia #heroes headcanons #heroes answers #rein-ette #aph australia #hws australia

[logsfm]

hey my loves   !   i’m mia  ,  21 from the east coast   !   i have not roleplayed in sheeeesh   ...   like five or six months   ?   but i am so excited to be here for opening with all of y’all   .   i spent like all morning trying to weed out this gal logan right here   ...   she’s a trip   ,   that’s the best overall description i have for ya   .   anywho   ,  lets get to the actual thing you’re here for her lil intro   .   also if you wanna mssg on discord here ya go   𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐯𝐬 𝖜𝖍𝖔𝖗𝖊#7040   .

logan samara-de jaager was spotted in the fashion district adorning  air force 1’s university blue  , with some airpod pros on . they’re most likely listening to  benz i know by kelvyn colt  . you may know them as  @delogan  or as that  bella hadid  lookalike . their  twenty fourth  birthday just passed . while living in  the upper east side  , they’ve gained a bit of a reputation . they’re known to be  querulous  but on the other hand  passionate  . wonder if they’ll be the next person to hit the headlines . ( cisfemale / she/her +  mia / twenty one / she/her ) + ( “ logan de jaager seen shoving ex in hotel footage during heated argument , not so sweet huh? ” / “ miss de jaager was spotted sneaking into ex beau’s apartment , what could she be up to? ” / “ sweet socialite or greedy trust fund baby ? milan de jaager publicly accuses daughter logan of stealing $1M … ” )

born into the true lap of luxury . the daughter of real estate magnate & high - profile attorney milan de jaager and his wife , british born socialite lana samara . the two of them held high favor within the 1% but were also able to find a perfect balance . they did a great job of separating personal life from the tabloids . it was rare to really know the happenings of their day to day . they had this particular kind of mystery to them , if you will .

it wasn’t long before lana began to instill the very same rhetoric she received as a child into her own   .   quality over quantity   ,   was the motto   .   just not in the way you’d assume   .   the quality at which a de jaager presented themselves to you was much more important than than quantity of time you spent with them   .   looks   ?   they’re everything   ,   in the de jaager household   .   time was simply a societal construct implemented to catch you on a bad day   ,   for that very line of thinking they embodied being late   .   rushing out of the house to finish your make up in the car   ?   a literal sin in the eyes of her mother   .

she was encouraged to take part in ballet and beauty pageants growing up   .   anything that could showcase how beautiful their daughter was lana and milan were on board for   .   personally logan hated ballet but she couldn’t deny she loved the applause the night of a showcase   .   she also couldn’t stand pageants but loved having all eyes on her as she went on stage   .

it became quite clear as the years went on that her parents were much more like close friends to their daughter than like rule - instilling guardians   .   she would text them to dismiss her from school   ,   get them to buy her   &   her friends alcohol for sleepovers  /  parties   ,   was very much so that kid who got high with her parents   .   really anything you could do with your friends   ?   was fair game with logan   &   her folks   .

at sixteen a friend of her moms who was going to be a designer for spring fashion week that year asked if logan would want to walk for him   .   she was quick to accept the offer and before she knew it she had multiple offers to walk in that years fall fashion weeks   ,   because of how easy it came to her   -    though   ,    she’s the first to admit she never really took modeling all that seriously   .

it was just a year later that her way of life changed drastically , logan and her twin brother had been caught by paparazzi on a friends boat in the hamptons snorting a white substance , anyone with eyes knew exactly what the group of teenagers were doing . upon returning home the two received the crackdown of the century . their once friendly parents turned to strict jail like guardians . often reminded that they put the families reputation at stake . the pressure to be perfect was something logan had never had to deal with until now & she almost cracked under the pressure at every turn .

it wasn’t until she left for college that she was finally given some room to breathe , attending the university of florida was the best choice for what logan truly wanted to do with her life - become a sports analyst . growing up she was infatuated with sports & and would have been involved in much more than just cheerleading had her mom allowed for her to get so much as a speck of dirt on her . during her time in florida the paparazzi seemed to find her more often than not , something her parents often denounced both over the phone & in public . the longer she spent away from the upper east side the more she became america’s sweetheart & simultaneously a thorn in her parents side . she graduated from university in 2018 , only returning back to new york for the sake of work . she’d been offered a reporting job with espn , on top of taking up modeling gigs here & there when ever she felt necessary .

personality …

one thing is very true about the de jaager’s & is very much so the same for logan ; she is not to be trusted . she can be extremely charming when she wants to be . she could sell a bag of rocks to a beach & get a princess to sell her sole to sex work . she knows exactly what people want to hear & when they want to hear it and has no qualms about lying straight to someone’s face if it means she gets something out of it . in fact sometimes , she might lie to your face just for the sheer fun of being able to call you gullible .

she’s very much so a spoiled brat although she hates when anyone call her one , she feels like she has more layers to her than that broad term . hand in hand with that is her drama queen like tendencies , any situation were there is a simple solution she will find a way to blow vastly out of portion .

due to her mother’s heavy influence growing up , she can be rather vein & materialistic . catch her like “ i can’t date a garbage person ” to someone simply because they’re not as rich or known enough for her liking .

it’s rare that you’ll ever see her jump out of character . she’s very calculated & aware of who she is ( or who she needs to seem like ) so if you ever see her emotions getting the better of her , you’ve really broken her .

she’s the type to dabble in a little bit of anything   ?   she’s a rich nyc party girl who’s been partying well before anyone should have allowed her to so she’s done it all   .    you’d be kidding yourself to think you could surprise  /  scare logan on a wild night out   .

she’s quick   &   creative with her sense of humor   .   she has both a crude / dry sense of humor   ,   as well   ,   and really just doesn’t find goofy things to be funny but more or less embarrassing   ( so if she ever tells you you’re goofy , remember it’s not a compliment ) .

her upbringing   &   parents sentiment on tabloids once reflected massively on logan   ,   but now she couldn’t quite care less about it all . after all she spends hours in front of cameras on a regular basis for work . although she does tend to shy away from people who she deems are hungry for fame or attention   .   she’s been used in the past for fame   &   will never let it happen again   , plus she’s the type to lap up attention so she likes to have as little fame whores around her as possible , more shine for her .

when she isn’t being a total nightmare though she’s actually really fun to be around ? she’s playful & loves to keep the party alive . often can be found claiming “ i’m high on life ” although everyone saw the pictures , logan , we know what you’re really high on , girl .

very chatty girl , too . victim of foot - in - mouth syndrome , big time . she doesn’t try to be disloyal & spill people’s secrets ( or does she ? ) but she can’t help herself . if she has piping hot tea she’s gonna spill it because she doesn’t wanna burn herself .

very observant girl , who loves to people watch but her observations can sometimes get muddled when she starts judging people a little too hardcore .

she’s also a undercover couch potato    &    by that i mean if you give her an option to go out   &   do something she’ll never outwardly choose to stay home to watch netflix and snuggle up under the blankets but secretly she’s hoping   &   praying she gets a chance to do so   .

plots   ...

END THIS ( L.O.V.E ) / her first love   .   these two brought the absolute worst out of one another   .    they messed her up so much that she has a weird perspective on what love between two s/o’s should even feel like now   .   maybe they had another s/o at the same time as her   &   kinda just strung her on   &   when it came out were able to lie so much to her that she believed them   .   idk   ,   in truth we could really plot something completely different as to what they did   &   inevitably what the breaking point was   .   maybe they broke up with her   &   had they not ended it maybe she would’ve still been okay with being in the relationship   .   idk i just feel like this one could be fun as hell   .     also they’d be the one whom she was caught arguing with in one of her headlines   .   ( 0 / 1 )

AFTER PARTY / this is a more reckless take of party buddies   .   im envisioning a group of people who when the parties over they all pull up to close by gulf course   ,   indulge even more in their choices of substance   ,   there is a naked gulf tournament going on   ,   there are drunks driving golf carts   ,   swerving and pouring bacardi all over the course   .   running from security when they pop up   .   it’s tradition at this point   &   if someone doesn’t come it’s almost disrespectful at this point   .   idk i just love the thought of this kinda vibe   .   ( 2 / ? )

SECRETS / okay so this one is messy   .   basically logan was very private for most of her life   (   thanks mom   &   dad   )   and during the early stages of highschool she lied to everyone saying she was a virgin   .   she told each one of these individuals that they were her first whether it be to make them fall for her   “   innocence   ”   ,   want to chase after her   ,   or whatever else we might be able to plot out   .   inevitably they compare notes at some point and find out that she’d been lying to them all   .   we can plot out how they confronted her i feel like we could make this real dramatic though   .   this would also be a backstory plot so   ,   we  can also plot out how things have transpired since for them   .   ( 0 / 3 or 4 )

BEST FRIEND / these two girls take best friends to the next level   .   they relate to one another on every level and are there for one another at all times   .   there is never a moment where they are competing with one another because they know that their #1 in there respective category   .   they are one another’s ultimate hype beasts   .   they truly embody chaotic goddess vibes   .   it’s like they were placed on this earth simply to be friends because they compliment one another that well   .   ( 0 / 1 )

LETS FALL IN LOVE FOR THE NIGHT / they are the one that’s there whenever she’s down   .   they have the ability to make her feel like they have some sort of old love whenever she’s around them   .   those feelings only last for the night though   .   they enjoy when she rambles on about sports or the novel she just recently read or really just anything she enjoys can put a smile on their face   .    they know better than to ever confuse what is going on between them though   ,   they know that she’ll never be theirs   .   whether they’re okay with this or not we can definitely plot out   .   ( 0 / 1 )

MOANA / they are not a fan of logan   .   they see her for what she is   :   an attention seeking   ,    spoiled brat and the fact that they don’t want anything to do with her makes her want them all the more   .    when they finally slept with her it was only to prove a point to her s/o at the time   ,   to prove that she’s not the sweet girlfriend she claimed to be   .   basically they’re the person who outed her for being a ho ho ho but despite knowing that they outed her for that she still tries to hook up with them because they were the best she ever had    .   they often turn her down but after a while not even they can deny that they’re attracted to her   .   they still don’t fuck with her though   .   also i think it’d be cool if their were two of them   &   maybe they worked together to out her to her s/o that didn’t believe she was a cheater   ( 0 / 2 )   also bring the s/o that they outed her to   ( 0 / 1 )

ELEVEN / the type of relationship that is stuck in the grey area   .   they’re more than friends but they don’t necessarily admit to having feelings for one another   .   honestly they probably don’t even think they have feelings for one another   .   it’s a weird dynamic   .   they spend the most of their time together late at night   .   there meeting time    ?   11pm   .    they go on wild joy rides to the beach   .   heads out of the sun roof as they let out a loud woo   .    the only thing accompanying them is a big bag of weed   .    sometimes they have deep talks   ,   honestly they probably know more about one another than anyone else   ?   because of these adventurous of theirs   .   when they aren’t having deep talks they’re running across the beach aimlessly   &   rolling around in the sand with one another   .   it’s really just a very pure plot that i need in my life   .  ( 0 / 1 )

TRUST NOBODY / this is someone who used logan for fame / attention   .   they either became close friends or even started dating   &   they used everything they learned about her or what went on between them to relay back to a tabloid / would call paparazzi to come and take pictures of them together whenever they’d go out   .   ( 0 / 1 )

some other plot ideas i’d love to see   :   x   ,   x   ,   x   ,   x   ,   x   ,   x   ,   x   ,   x   ,   x   ,   x   ,   x   .

#wealthyhq:intro #hellurrrr *

[4evamc]

Misha Tweets

Transcript

Ed Levine: Welcome to Special Sauce 2.0. Serious Eats podcast about food and life. Every week on Special Sauce we begin with Ask Kenji, where Kenji Lopez-Alt, Serious Eats Chief Culinary Consultant, gives the definitive answer to the question of the week that a serious eater like you has sent us.

J. Kenji Lopez-Alt: Generally, sort of like delicate leafy herbs like cilantro, parsley, basil, they tend to not be very good in their dried counterparts. Thyme, rosemary, oregano, they actually work pretty well in their dried forms.

EL: After Ask Kenji, a conversation with our guest, today in house, Misha Collins. He is, of course, an actor best known for his role as the angel, Castiel. Did I pronounce that right?

Misha Collins: Castiel.

EL: On the CW television series Supernatural, and has now written with his wife Vicki Collins, The Adventurous Eaters Club: Mastering the Art of Family Meal Time.

EL: Now it's time to meet Misha Collins. He's, of course, an actor best known for his role as the angel, Castiel?

Misha Collins: Castiel.

EL: On the CW television series Supernatural, which has had an insane run, right? It's like 2008 to 2019.

MC: Yeah, we're in our 15th season right now.

EL: That never happens.

MC: No, it doesn't. I don't know why they kept us on the air.

EL: Collins is also the co-founder and board president of Random Acts, a nonprofit organization dedicated to funding and inspiring acts of kindness around the world. He's also a published poet. Very impressive dude.

MC: Thank you.

EL: And has now written with his wife Vicky Collins, The Adventurous Eaters Club: Mastering the Art of Family Meal Time. So welcome to Special Sauce, Misha.

MC: I'm very happy to be here.

EL: So the first question I always ask, in your case it's particularly relevant, is tell us about life at your family table growing up. Your family table was not exactly traditional.

MC: That is true. I was raised by a single mom. My parents separated when I was three years old and I visited my father on every other weekend for most of my childhood, but he wasn't really a cornerstone of my upbringing. But my mother and my brother and our dog were a very tight family unit, and we lived in Western Massachusetts primarily growing up and moved a lot. We were in a new home I would say on average once every nine months or so. I think I lived in 15 places by the time I was 15.

EL: So you were like an Army brat, only you were a different kind of brat.

MC: Right. An Army brat without the parents building up a pension plan.

EL: Right.

MC: Another thing I think that an Army brat family has is a cadre possibly, of other kids that are going through the same experience, and I was generally going to a new school every year and meeting kids that were in fairly stable childhoods and who knew one another and who were familiar with the school, so I was always approaching schools and new towns-

EL: You were the permanent new kid.

MC: Yeah, with a little bit of trepidation, and trying to figure out how I could ingratiate myself to the new communities and the new schools. My mother was very eccentric and iconoclastic. She talked about the revolution a lot. I was born in 1974, and we lived through a tumultuous political time in our country, and she didn't want to have us grow up being conventional young men, so she would do things like dress me up in pink tights and paint my nails and send me off to Cub Scouts. Which I think in 2020 might actually fly, but in a working class community in Massachusetts, when you show up at Cub Scouts in the boys' locker room with nail polish and long hair-

EL: Not so much.

MC: And pink tights, you're ostracized. So, I kind of had to find a way to blend in and disappear a little bit as a kid in new schools, and I think that it built a lot of character in a lot of ways, and made me more resilient and adaptable and independent than I otherwise would have been. But at the same time, there's a certain lack of stable foundation that was challenging.

EL: I had not the same kinds of travails in my own childhood, but you do become resilient and eminently adaptable, but it also has a cost. It exacts a cost that you can't deal with as you're going through it, but you almost have to deal with it at some point in order to really resolve some of the issues that came out of it, I assume.

MC: Yeah. I'm sure you've found the same thing, but I feel like I'm a 45-year-old man and I'm still discovering things and unpacking them and repairing them, I think. There are definitely things that you take away from a childhood like that that give you real strength.

One of the things that I love about my childhood is that I know that you don't need money to be happy and you can get by on just about nothing, and that gives you, I think, quite a bit of power going into the world because you don't feel beholden to the comforts of ... I don't feel beholden to the comforts of money. I'm okay with scarcity. At the same time, I don't know that I was really terribly good at connecting with people or making friends, and I probably still struggle with that.

EL: Yeah. So, you wrote this amazing piece in The Times, and you wrote that “times were often lean, but one luxury we always had an abundance was food, even if it came by the five finger discount. My mother taught me how to steal peaches from the Stop and Shop grocery store when I was four. We were stealing from the man. It was a justified rebellion against an unjust system.”

EL: So, whoa. Okay, those sentences made me stop in my tracks. That's pretty intense. I was actually thinking about this movie, Shoplifters. I don't if you've ever seen it.

MC: Oh yeah. Yeah.

EL: Because in there the father figure, who turns out not to be the father, teaches the kids how to steal so they can eat. And so, wow. I mean, talk about that. Talk about getting conflicting messages from your mother. It's like, whoa.

MC: It's funny, because now hearing you read that, it paints a portrait of a parent who was raising children without a moral compass, and I think that was not at all the case. This was righteous rebellion. We were stealing ... We would never have stolen from the local co-op, but this was from a corporate entity, and these corporations were out to exploit the proletariat. I actually felt the exhilaration of feeling like I was part of a rebellion at that point, and frankly indoctrinated into that at a really young age. At the age of four, I was aware that it was us against them. We were the little guys and that we had a justice on our side. At the same time, it's a complicated thing to be training a little four year old how to steal.

MC: I have a very distinct memory of the fruit island in the Stop and Shop, and me grabbing a peach. This was the first time that I remember ever shoplifting anything. I grabbed the peach and then I ducked down behind the island, and my mother said, "No, no, no, no, no. You can't do it like that. You have to take it. You have to be very calm. You have to not look around. You can't show that you're distressed at all or that you're nervous, and then you put it in your backpack." Then we would go up to the cash register and we would pay for some of the groceries, so that we were distracting them, and then scoot out the door.

EL: And you just, I assume, felt that there was nothing particularly abnormal about this because you had nothing to compare it to.

MC: Right. Yeah, this was my normal.

EL: Yeah. You weren't stealing from somebody or something that needed the money, you were stealing as part of an ethos. Right?

MC: Right.

EL: As part of like, this is the way we work the system to fight the man.

MC: Right, precisely. Yeah.

EL: You also wrote, and I'm going to quote a couple of more sentences from the piece because it was so beautiful, "My upbringing taught me you didn't need money to be happy, that you didn't have to play by the rules, that the whole world was just begging to be explored. But now by the hindsight of fatherhood and from the comfort of a therapist's couch, I see that while my childhood had been rife with adventure, it also had been lonely and frightening and wanting." So you were always reconciling those two things, weren't you?

MC: I wouldn't say I was always reconciling them, because as a child I struggled at times. I felt sad and lonely, but I didn't think that it was because of my childhood.

EL: Got it.

MC: I thought my childhood was full of adventure, and I was proud of my childhood. Up until when I was 25 I don't think I looked back on it and thought that there had been any damage done by that.

EL: Right, and that there was anything dysfunctional about it.

MC: Right. And on balance, my childhood was incredibly ... I think I had a secure attachment with my mother. My mother was there. She was loving. She never failed to convey that love to me and my brother. So she served as my anchor emotionally, and that was unfailing. But because the rest of our life was so fractured and so nomadic, she was my only anchor.

EL: Yeah, because as you said, how do you establish connections with any kids when you're moving every few months?

MC: Right, and when you're showing up at school in pink tights at a working class school you're also getting alienated by your peers, and so the other kids actually ended up being kind of frightening to me.

EL: I read your Wikipedia page, and somehow you escaped and you ended up at a prep school, Northfield Mount Hermon, and then the University of Chicago. What a narrative your life has been. How did that happen?

MC: Now that you're asking the question, I'm reflecting on it possibly for the first time. But one thing that I know happened as a result of my childhood and and partly as a result of feeling like I wasn't fitting in with other kids, is that I was a smart kid and I could win the favor of my teachers. So when I was in school, I did very well in school. It was like the thing I could throw myself into and be safe and get some accolades.

EL: Some positive feedback.

MC: And some positive reinforcement. So I did well in school, and we lived in the town of Northfield for a little while, which was where Northfield Mount Hermon is. They had a program that had been implemented from the inception of the school where local day students could get pretty much a full ride if they were in need, and we were in need, so I could go to a fancy high school for free as a day student. Then I ended up basically getting the same deal at the University of Chicago.

EL: Amazing.

MC: Yeah. At the time, I thought I was going to go into politics, so I was sort of on a very clear path. And that wanting to go into politics was also born of my childhood and of my mother talking about politics all the time, and making me and my brother very aware of the plight of people in need in our country and around the world. It felt like that was the right place for me.

EL: Yeah. Again, and this is the final sentences I'm going to read from the Times piece, because it gets us back to food. Which is, "I recently found an old journal in a box in the back of my closet, and on the page from a decade ago where I had taken inventory of the good and bad of my upbringing the word cooking is circled and underlined with urgency in the plus column, as if I was thinking that food had been the cornerstone of happiness in my youth." Elaborate on that. I mean, that's an amazing statement.

MC: I think as a nomadic family, we moved around and we brought with us what we could, and in terms of material objects, there was very little that was a through line. But we did bring with us from place to place the tradition of sitting down for family meals every night.

EL: Even if you were in a teepee or in a park.

MC: Right. Even if we were sitting on a log in the woods in the rain, we would be sitting down and eating together. There were no distractions. There was never a television on, and there was no coercion in getting to the dinner table. There was no question about it. Not because it was an edict from an authority figure, but because we all just coalesced around dinner and loved it.

EL: You needed it.

MC: Yeah.

EL: It was a permanent form of glue for the family, right?

MC: Yeah. It really was important to us. We would go spend Christmas with my mother's mother, my grandmother, and she was a cook as well, and food was a centerpiece of that family interaction. And for me now that I have kids, I notice that when I'm feeling like a guilty or absent father, the way that I most quickly show my affection and love for my kids is I just make them food. It's like the way that I know to convey to a child everything's safe, everything's okay, and I love you.

EL: Yeah. But in 21st century America, and maybe all around the world, it's hard to do that, right? There are lots of pressures that are forcing people not to eat together.

MC: Right.

EL: Both parents are working, kids are all over the place. But you obviously, I think as a result of your upbringing, it was important when you had a family and a wife that you made that same time for dinner.

MC: Yeah. It feels very important to me. I think sometimes I'm actually kind of maybe forcing my agenda of cooking on my kids. Like, "Come on guys, let's make something in the kitchen." A lot of times they want to go outside and I want to work in the kitchen, and I have to check myself and say, "Okay, we'll go play a little bit of soccer first before we get to canning the pears."

EL: Right. Because the act of eating a meal and preparing it is imbued with so much more meaning for you than it is for them.

MC: Yeah, I think that's true. Yeah.

EL: So you end up being an actor, and I'm just assuming that like all actors, you struggled for many years before you found yourself on the set of Supernatural. So, tell us in a few sentences the arc of your acting career.

MC: Well as I mentioned earlier, my intention after college was to go into politics. I interned at the White House and I got a job at NPR in Washington, DC, and I was really disappointed with what I saw at the White House, and I thought, "Oh God, I have to come up with a whole new plan here." I thought it was going to be the best and the brightest minds under one roof. This was the Clinton administration. And instead what I found was the halls were filled with people who were sycophants, whose parents had donated money to the campaign. They were all yaysayers. There was no real discourse about political ideas, which of course is actually what you need in an administration. You need people who are going to be in lock step and are going to support your decisions, but I was too young and naive to know that.

So when I saw it, I thought, "This is not for me." I thought, "I will try to find another way that I can have an impact." I think there's a lot of hubris in this, but I thought, "I know what I'll do. I'll become an actor. I'll get famous and then I'll parlay my celebrity into some sort of political influence."

EL: Oh, because that happens all the time.

MC: Right. I mean really, really completely naive, and totally full of myself. Then I moved to LA and I thought it was going to take a couple of years to attain a certain level-

EL: To become rich and famous.

MC: To be rich and famous. And it took a long time to become-

EL: It took a decade, probably.

MC: To become moderately comfortable and a C-list celebrity. But somewhere along the line I stopped thinking about that end goal of I'm on this path so that I can have influence, blah blah blah, and I just started becoming an actor, and I was just acting for the sake of acting and not for this aspirational, high-minded goal.

Then a couple of years ago we got a new president, and that lit a fire under me. It was actually during the campaign when I started to think, "Oh, Trump might get elected. Oh, this is serious," and then my C-list celebrity started to come into play and I thought, "All right, well I can use the platform that I have."

EL: By the way, I think it's at least B-minus, okay?

MC: Well you, as everyone knows, grade on a curve, so thank you for your charity. In a strange way it feels to me a little bit like it's come full circle, and now that the show's ending and after 15 seasons I'm asking the question, "Okay, how can I be of use in the world?" I don't know what's next for me. I don't know if I spend a lot of time on television sets after this or not. I'm trying to do some soul searching and figure out what I really want to be when I grow up. But that's, in a nutshell, my path.

EL: It's an amazing path, and you accomplished much more as an actor than almost any actor I know. To be a working actor and to have made some money doing it is actually an incredible accomplishment, and maybe it's to the resilience you discovered you had in your childhood.

MC: Yeah, I think possibly. I think obviously there's a lot of dumb luck that comes into play. It's not my fault that the show that I'm on has been on for 15 seasons or has the devoted fan base that it has.

EL: There are conventions for Supernatural. I notice this-

MC: We have conventions. There are tattoos with face on them. I mean, it's hard not to be full of yourself in this context. But yeah, we have a really, really devoted fan base, and it's quite remarkable to be a part of.

What was it? I think it was Freakonomics at one point. Maybe it was in the book Freakonomics, but they said that pursuing a career in acting is like pursuing a career as a drug dealer. It's very, very difficult to be one of the kingpins, to be successful in the field.

EL: Right.

MC: The odds are so bad that it takes a certain personality that's defective that wants to even pursue that in the first place, because 99 out of 100 people are going to fail at that and then you're just going to be a low level street corner drug dealer, or barely getting food on your table as a background actor.

EL: Yeah. Well Misha, we have to leave it right here for this episode of Special Sauce, but you're going to stick around and tell us all about your two terrific kids, West and Maison.

MC: We just say Mason.

EL: West and Mason.

MC: Yes, we anglicize the French spelling.

EL: And your wife Vicki, and your family collaboration on The Adventurous Eaters Club. Thank you for spending so much time with us on Special Sauce.

MC: Thank you so much for having me, and I can't wait to talk about the book.

Listen to the podcast here

#misha collins #vicki collins #the adventurous eaters club #misha talks #chef!misha #misha tweets #seriouseats #podcast

[oikawa-tuwu]

🍬 Halloween Candy 🍬

Pairing: Gn!Reader x Tendou Satori

Rating: T

Synopsis: Tendou watches you make Halloween candy and thinks about love and the joys Halloween. Post-time skip, established relationship. (1.8k words)

Warnings: One swear, mentions of past bullying, dealing with insecurity things

(A/N: lol remember when I said I was going on hiatus?? Yeah so I was making hard candy last night and was literally slaughtered in the middle of boiling the sugar when I remembered that Tendou is a chocolatier so my lonely, Halloween-loving, and candy making self wrote this self indulgent thing. Enjoy, but its kind of a mess D: )

-

Tendou Satori’s favorite holiday is, without a doubt, Halloween.

There’s nothing quite like the buzz in the air of a brisk October 31st, children in costumes, ready to consume ungodly amounts of sugar, teenagers giggling as they leave a haunted house, only to turn right around with more cash in hand. Even adults get into the festivities, using the holiday as an excuse to drink copious amount of booze.

Its indulgent and its creepy and Tendou loves it with all of his heart.

In the past, if someone were to ask him why he liked Halloween so much, he'd just laugh and say he had a sweet tooth, because really, he didn't know how to articulate the joy that he gets from costumes. He could remember, as a kid, gleefully skipping down the aisles of a shop, flipping through the mass produced costumes on the rack until he found the perfect one.

The ones that came with masks were always a plus, too.

He supposes, looking back on it, Halloween was his favorite holiday because it was the one day where being “creepy” benefited him. It was on-brand, in-season, like the pecan pies that sit neglected in the summer months before being sold out by mid-November. And even if his hair or his gaze or his height was still terrifying, it was easier to hide behind a Batman mask. Perhaps it wasn’t a healthy way of coping, but somewhere along the way, he’d learned. He’d grown, and shifted, and costumes weren’t his favorite part of Halloween anymore.

No. This is his favorite part of Halloween. The build up to the day in question, preparing for the hordes of children coming to his apartment door, and you, standing in his kitchen, holding a candy thermometer.

It had been your idea at first, to make the candy at home and give it to the trick or treaters, rather than just handing out store bought. Of course, getting homemade candy from a stranger is usually a red-flag for parents, but not if said stranger is a somewhat C-list celebrity chocolatier, as you so kindly put it.

And it was true. There was some hesitation at first, but after a moment of putting together his face, the name on his apartment door, and the clearly professional design on the bags, parents were much more willing to accept the treats. Now, it’s a tradition of the apartment complex, and last year, he ran out of candy by 7 PM.

“You need to make more next year,” you had said, with a sort of confident finality that made him laugh. “Don’t you feel bad for the kids who got there just a little late?”

Did he feel bad?

Now that was an interesting question.

The thing was, he had been that kid. He’d gotten the short straw in life and it had been up to him to make something of it, even when others decided to cut the straw even shorter just for fun.

With an amused glint in his eye, he watches as you lean down, narrowing your eyes to read the fine print of instructions on your phone.

The kitchen is a mess, there’s no way around it, and although he’s deemed you proficient enough to be trusted with his equipment based on your past attempts at culinary efforts, he can tell you feel out of your league as you stir the molten sugar. Your cheeks are flushed from the heat and he’s certain there’s a few more hairs sticking out of place than there were ten minutes ago. Still, you square your shoulders and crack your knuckles as you read the temperatures, one oven mitt armored hand bracing the handle of the pot, and he idly thinks that the apron is officially his favorite piece of clothing on you.

Apparently, you didn't hear the door open and close, because your eyes are still trained on the soon-to-be caramel, and you let out a frustrated, "Why won't this sugar caramelize already?"

"It's stubborn like that."

He always expects you to jump at his voice. Somehow, you never do. Instead, your eyes flick up to him where he hovers in the entry-way, the barest of a smile gracing your lips.

"Welcome home," you say, pulling your eyes away from him to peek at the candy thermometer's temperature. "I feel like this sugar has been at 240° for way too long, is that normal?"

Tendou clicks his tongue, daring to venture further into the candy coated mess. "You have to be patient."

"Funny, coming from you," you smirk, but he notices the way the tension in your shoulders relax, and deep down, he knows he doesn't have the fight to even try to feel offended.

Still, he scoffs and leans against the counter next to you and puts the effort into looking offended, one hand fingering through the petals of the dying roses in a vase. "I'll have you know, I'm a very patient person."

You just give him a look. That look, specifically, with the skeptical eyebrow and wry tilt in the corner of your mouth. The look that always managed to see right through him, reaching in and sorting through each and every memory and quirk and thought and yet still managed to say I love you at the end of the night with a genuine smile.

Tendou knows you. He knows you, understands you, memorized the posture of your sleep deprivation, the quick bite of your words when you wait too long to eat dinner, the strange laugh that, to be honest, sounds more like a car backfiring, when a joke catches you particularly off your guard.

But also, on a much deeper level, he didn't understand you at all.

Why had you chosen him? Was it for the same reason you brought those half-dead roses home, saying, with a self-conscious flush, that they looked sad, dying all alone in the shop.

Was he those flowers? Bruised and beat-up and something to take pity on?

"You're too quiet," you muse, and Tendou realizes that he had been too quiet for much too long, the only sounds coming from the boiling sugar and the soft music playing over a speaker in the corner. "What's wrong?"

He doesn't know how to phrase his insecurities out loud like that, doesn't know if he even should, so instead, he asks, "Am I the roses?"

For a moment, you're silent, and he can see the way you're processing his words, toying with them until you figure out whatever metaphor or inside joke he's referencing. "I would say you're more of a lily guy, if that's what you're asking."

His next question is more blunt. "Why do you like me?"

This one surprises you. He can tell from the way you blink, just once, but also the slight curvature of your eyebrows. He wonders how long it's been since this expression was used in reaction to him.

"I don't understand," you say, finally. "Love and attraction are virtually indescribable emotions that poets and writers spend their lives trying to capture. I don't know why, exactly, but I do know that I enjoy being around you. You make me laugh, and my heart feels happy when I see you walk through that door. Isn't that enough?"

It should be, but Tendou has bad impulse control, and he can't stop the next words from falling out.

"But I'm weird."

The word weird sounds trivial. Weird is the word that girls who dye their hair and listen to indie music and post cryptic pictures on Instagram call themselves, not him. Maybe freak would have been a better word.

"And I don't like the sound of my laugh. We've all got insecurities, things that the rest of the world doesn't like about us so they force us to not like it about us. I know my voice is fine and there's nothing particularly ugly or abnormal about it when I giggle, but I can't help from hating it."

"I like your laugh," he says, and by speaking it aloud, he knows it's true, like whispering a spell that only makes him fall more in love.

"Exactly. And I like you. Weird bits and all. Keeps things interesting."

And just like that, it's gone. It shouldn't be this easy, to dismiss his fears like that, just a few confident words and a smile and suddenly years of his childhood and upbringing are null in comparison to you.

The sugar boils.

As he watches, you leave the almost-caramel on the stove to search for the pan to put it in to cool, already greased and ready for the molten sugar. It's a significantly bigger pan than last year.

When you notice his gaze, you say, "I wasn't joking about making more this year."

Tendou grins.

In high school, Ushijima briefly had a girlfriend. A cheerleader, if Tendou was remembering correctly. He wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't, he didn't pay much attention to her. But, one day, he walked past the gym and found the two of them. Ushijima was teaching her how to serve. Now, Tendou knew Ushijima was a strange person. The only thing he cared about was volleyball and his comically stoic, social ineptitude is what bonded them in the first place, but still, Tendou remembered thinking that bringing your date on your day off to play volleyball was really weird.

But, he supposed, now he understood, as one of your hands reached over to clasp his, the other, still stirring the sugar. He understood before that want, no, the need to share a passion with the one you love.

He squeezes your hand. Absent-mindedly, you squeeze back. And then he squeezes back and you squeeze back and back and forth and back and forth, until you realize the temperature hit the blessed 340° and now you're swearing like it's a prayer, oven mitt hand clasping the pot handle and pouring and hoping it didn't actually burn and-

-

The candies last until 8 PM this year.

He watches you hand the last one over to a kid dressed like some vaguely tropey children's superhero, watches that soft smile slowly warning whatever chill leeches in from the open door.

A wave and a nod to the child's mother later, you slowly shut the door, grin lingering still moments later. You turn to him, that determined gleam in your eye, and say, "We're making more next year."

Tendou laughs. "Fuck no."

But then you smile again, and he knows he can't say no, and, internally, he's already working on a timeline to get all the candy ready by the 31st.

And for some reason, the only thing he can think of is the we in your statement, and it cuts right into his heart faster than a knife as you pull him close and the words just seem to slip out faster than a well-greased cake pan.

-

"I love you."

-

"I love you too."

-

(A/N: Happy Halloween, nerds. Nowwww back to hiatus)

#haikyuu #haikyuu!! #hq #hq!! #hq tendou #tendou x reader #tendou x you #tendou scenario #layne writes

[mor-beck-more-problems]

Face Off || Morgan & Cece

TIMING: Current

PARTIES: @thebickedwitchoftherest & @mor-beck-more-problems

SUMMARY: Morgan and Cece go digging for buried witchy treasure. Cece faces more than she bargained for.

CONTAINS: gun (salt rounds, not fired), shenanigans 

Blanche had told Morgan that having an object, especially one belonging to the spirit in life, might help the seance go better. Morgan knew from the summoning that bones would probably be the most ideal if there was such a thing, but the idea of planning a trip to Texas ahead of the one she had already scheduled between the anniversaries of her parents’ deaths was more than she could bear. The next best thing? Finding Agnes Bachman’s trove of witchcraft. “So, fun fact, I actually tried to dig this up before, but I got attacked by some wild vampires and had to hole up in that shack until dawn,” she said, looking over her shoulder at Cece. “But that’s why we’re coming back here in broad daylight! Besides, I think this is still sort of on my property line?” She gestured to the pile of rubble around across the street and the brown, barren field between it and where they stood in the Bend, shovels in hand, beneath a suspiciously robust tree. Morgan tried to run the distance measurements in her head. “Maybe not, but that’s gonna be our story if anyone comes asking. But, you know, probably not.” She stuck the shovel into the ground with her foot, pleasantly surprised when it broke the ground with ease. Zombie strength had its advantages sometimes. “So, how’ve you been?”

Drinking and researching a stolen box with Morgan? A-okay. Breaking into a woman’s home to steals some books? Great time. But Cece might have to draw the line at the physical labor. It wasn’t the trespassing on property or potential danger. It wasn’t even the casual mention of vampires attacking Morgan the last time she was here. It was mostly just the digging that Cece wasn’t up for. “We tend to break the law whenever we hang out now,” Cece mentioned, digging her own shovel into the ground and leaning against it, “Not complaining. Just a fun observation. Girls really do just want to have fun apparently.” While digging holes wasn’t one of those things that Cece considered to be much fun, the promise of some sort of buried treasure had certainly piqued her interest. “Aside from the whole being blown up in a Morgue thing, worse than that is dealing with Regan’s replacement.” Cece made fake vomiting noises for far longer than necessary and then forced herself to recompose, “Otherwise I am freaking phenomenal. Clearly you’re living your best life. Loving the Holes vibes that we have going on. So what exactly are we here for today?”

“I heard about that,” Morgan said, wincing. “Regan’s just having a time and a half right now. Hopefully it’ll just, you know, be temporary. Haven’t heard any stories about the new boss, though. Is he, what? Evil? Creepy? Mean? What’s the likelihood of your being able to hex him without him noticing? I put a monkey’s paw on Eye of Newt for a little while, and that was pretty fun.” She reached into her bag and passed Cece a thermos of mulled cider. She could see how, well, not well her share of the digging was going, and aside from the magic ability and know how to work on identifying their finds, Morgan had mostly asked her along for the company. “Here. Have some of this and sit back, I think it only takes one gal to dig a hole. When she’s dead anyway.” Morgan stuck her shovel in deeper, flinging dirt behind her. “And we’re after great great grandma Agnes’ trove of magic. She left home with one bag after the curse started taking her family, which means everything in her trove got left behind in good ol’ White Crest.” She waggled her eyebrows. “Mostly, I want something special of hers for a seance, but it’s gonna be pretty neat to see what kind of stuff she used for her magic back in olden times, right?”

“No, god, even worse.” Cece rolled her eyes. Rickers was the last thing she needed to talk about. “I can handle evil or creepy. He’s way too personable. Keeps telling me about his grandkids. It’s insufferable.” Usually, Cece welcomed casual conversation of any kind. She was a social creature after all, she liked the company of others. But something about that man made her want to jump into a river. “I could hex him so easily. He’s so gullible. Moron.” She wasn’t about to let Rickers ruin the fun though, and instead focused on Morgan’s time with Eye of Newt, “Amazing. I love being friends. Do I mention that enough?” Cece questioned, taking the thermos that Morgan passed over and taking a long sip of the alcoholic beverage. “So you’re saying you just want me to sit back, drink and chat? You get me, Morgan.” Cece happily obliged, leaning back against the grass and watching Morgan use that superhuman strength to dig holes deeper into the ground with a certain fascination. She had always wondered what having super strength must be like. Sounded dope. “Good ol Gram? Let’s hope she left behind something fun. Can’t say that I’d be thrilled about finding some magically glued dentures or alchemical ointment for her joint pain.”

“I love being friends with you too,” Morgan said, smiling bright. There was a certain specific ease with Cece that was hard to articulate to others. Their magic philosophy was different, but neither of them took themselves so seriously that it was a problem. And sharing a lack of compunctions about the law and uses of violence to get out of tight spaces was more important between friends who wanted to stay honest with each other. Morgan wasn’t even sure if Cece had a judgemental bone in her body, except for, you know, reckless cruelty like any halfway decent not-fae. But Morgan’s harm ritual wasn’t reckless. She was full of very specific intent, and every care was being taken. And giving Agnes closure with the news she was deviating the woman who’d condemned her to a painful death? Made for some very thoughtful icing on the cake. “Oh, it gets better than that,” Morgan said, grinning as she shoveled back more dirt. “She was just in her twenties when she left home. So this should hopefully have all the fun shit. Well, whatever fun amounted to in the 1890’s. Maybe it’ll be magic ointment for that poofy old-timey hair. Or old beauty charms? I’d love to see what baby witches got up to back then, like what was magic education even like then?”

Cece liked thinking about witches throughout the years. There was something fascinating about studying how witches evolved with the rest of the times, as well as how spells did. If spellcasters were ever a legitimate field of study, Cece might actually consider going back to school. For now, she’d have to settle through learning about magic through any witches she knew with a long line of witches in her family. “Great question. Can’t say that my witchy upbringing was exactly conventional. If my parents were spellcasters, being adopted didn’t exactly help me learn about it as a kid.” Cece had of course wondered what life might have been like had she actually grown up learning about magic from a young age. “My first exposure was from a coven. A very non-traditional one.”

“Your coven wasn’t with your parents?” Morgan asked curiously. She’d heard them mentioned in passing enough times that she’d just assumed it was at least partially a family thing. Morgan started digging, stopped, and looked at Cece quizzically again. “Wait, so you are this good without having to study your whole life?” She shovelled a few more times. “Jeez, are you some kind of magic prodigy?” She had a decent sized hole going. A  few more feet deeper and she’s start spreading outward and--clang! Morgan grinned. “I guess this means you get to pick a prize from grandma’s treasure box. At least something in here should go to someone who can actually use it. But holy shit, Cece. I know I say this a lot when you’re doing me favors, but you’re seriously amazing.” She started working double time until the trunk, just as impressive as you would expect from your average 19th century well-to-do family. Morgan pulled it free just with brute zombie strength and dragged it up from the hole. It was heavy,  “Now, before I literally jinx myself, do you think you can run something on this baby to dispel any magic seals and protection? As my ancestor, I’m fairly confident she wouldn’t throw this in the ground without protections.”

Cece shook her head, “Nope. My adopted parents had no clue about my witchy background. I didn’t figure out until like sixteen.” Cece shrugged. She had never considered herself to be uncommonly talented when it came to magic. She was aware that she was able to take care of herself under stressful circumstances but the thought never went much further than that. “Very funny,” Cece let out a sarcastic laugh, “I’m hardly a prodigy. The nice thing about moving around with a travelling coven is that I got to learn from all kinds of witches that specialized in different things. Plus being around nothing but other witches all the time gave me lots of chances to practice.” Morgan finally found the box she had been digging for and pulled it easily from the ground. It landed on the grass with a loud thud and Cece whistled, “Damn girl, those muscles though.” Cece sat up and eyed the box. It was larger than Cece thought it was going to be. Honestly, she was pretty curious about what was inside. “Let me take a peak and see what I can sniff out” Cece rubbed her hands together and crawled over to the box, rubbing her palm across it and feeling the magical energy emanating from it. “There’s definitely something going on here. Give me a few minutes to try to get rid of it.”

Morgan was familiar with the number of ways you could talk small magic into showing itself. In another life, her old life, she would’ve offered some ground thistle and raw energy to do it herself. But Cece had a home brew with the stuff she needed. A little Latin later, the potion absorbed into the wood, and the lock, apparently just an illusion, disappeared from sight. “I know you’re not a coven gal anymore, Cece, but I’d do you a solid anytime if you asked.” Out of habit, fae promise, rose to her lips, casual and earnest, but somewhere on its way up her throat, Morgan remembered Chloe in Lydia’s basement and swallowed her words back down, feeling sick.

A layer of dry flowers and fragrant herbs coated the items. Morgan had to sweep them all away to get to the rest. There were some things she expected, such as a handwritten grimoire, and some she didn’t, like an old party dress and petticoats. Morgan didn’t know anything about enchanting textiles, but she set them carefully aside just in case. They must have mattered to Agnes in order to be included in her trove. Beneath this were more papers, some torn from other books, ink and fountain pens, a few alchemical circles painted crudely on tanned hides, and a lot of jewelry and talismans. “So, she’s my great great grandma, so I get the pretty dress and the books, but you, my wonderful partner in crime, can pick something you like from the rest. I still haven’t thanked you for helping me go against that murder alchemist, so don’t be shy.”

As Morgan looked through the chest, Cece eyed the contents from far away. The chest’s magic had been strong, so it made sense to think that whatever was inside had been valuable to her grandmother. As far as Cece was concerned, that all belonged to Morgan. But aside from a few off limits items, Morgan seemed to think otherwise. “You don’t have to do that. I’m sure you could find some use for them. Somewhere.” But even as she said the words she slid closer to get a better peak at the contents. She pulled out a few things, including a vial of liquid that glowed a bright red color, “Hm. This is peculiar” Cece questioned, holding it up against the sun. She felt a prickling against her fingertips from holding the bottle. She eventually decided to uncap the thing, sniffing at its contents and jolting from the sudden sensation. “Hm. That shit is strong. Wonder what this stuff does?”

Morgan was flipping through the books, unable to resist the urge to find something interesting. She had to remind herself that it was all useless to her, pure sentimental and academic value, but even the method of preserving alchemical circles was fascinating. What did they use the hides for? Practice? Regular exercise? Were there research experiments in here like what Ruth had done? There were notes and letters in here too, some written in a kind of code, others in Latin. Looking at all of this, Morgan realized she didn’t actually know Agnes Bachman at all. She was the family scapegoat, but she was also just a girl when she left all this stuff behind, too terrified of being the cause of her family’s suffering to stay another year. Poor thing, she didn’t realize that Constance had covered them all. She hadn’t needed to make herself alone on top of everything else. “What did you find? Anything good?” She looked over her shoulder and— “What the fuck, who the hell are you!” She fell back with shock and fumbled for her salt pistol, aiming it at the stranger. Morgan hadn’t even heard her approach. It had to look enough like a normal one to keep the stranger stalking them on her toes, right? “Where’s my friend? What is—Cece! Cece!”

Bored with whatever the liquid was, Cece discarded it back into the pile of unclaimed goodies and moved on to see what else Agnes had to offer. Cece realized that aside from the fact that they had been spellcasters and the curse, she didn’t know all that much about Morgan’s family. Learning a bit about her family through these belongings was more interesting than Cece would be willing to admit without a few drinks. Way too sentimental. She heard Morgan from over her shoulder and didn’t even look back as she began answering, “I don’t know what a lot of it is actually. I’ll need to do some-” she was cut off by her friend’s scream. Morgan was freaking out, tumbling backwards and pulling a fucking gun on her? “What the fuck Morgan? What do you mean who am I? Why do you have a gun pointed at me!” Cece waved her hands wildly, half up in the air in surrender and half accusingly towards Morgan. “Your friend is right here, wondering if she’s about to get capped by a dead girl! You suddenly lose vision or something?”

Morgan scrambled to her feet, still holding out the salt pistol with trembling hands. The woman was middle aged, wild eyed, and a heck of a lot taller than Cece had ever been. She wasn’t sure where she got off trying to pretend they were one and the same. Her angular features had none of Cece’s stubborn charm. They gave the woman a look that was off-kilter even unnerving as she waved her arms around and cried out in her raspy voice. “I am not kidding, whatever magic bullshit you did, some summoning trick, o-or—I don’t know! But you aren’t keeping her!” Morgan shouted I am not losing one more friend to my personal bullshit, you got it? You—” It came on her slowly: the woman’s clothes looked a little like Cece’s but also...not. And she had Cece’s keychain, and there was a bottle at her feet, not quite close right, dripping slowly into the ground. Morgan slowly lowered her pistol, not quite ready to give up the pretense. “If you’re really Cece, then how do we know each other?” She asked.

Something was wrong. Whether that something was with Morgan or with Cece herself was still unclear. Cece stood up, Morgan backing away again but not moving the pistol from it’s target. “Can you point the gun away from me? This isn’t the Wild West.” Though something was clearly off, Cece hadn’t pieced it together yet. For whatever reason, Morgan seemed to think Cece wasn’t who she claimed to be. Was there some illusion? Cece stared at her hands, vaguely aware that something seemed different but realizing that she didn’t look at her hands enough to realize what the difference might be anyways. “How do we know each other? I didn’t know I was signing up for a pop quiz tonight.” Cece laughed, but clearly Morgan wasn’t joking, “Former roomies, forever besties, current hostage.” Cece quipped, “Care to tell me what the hell is going on?”

Morgan lowered the salt pistol, her face melting, touched. “Aw, you consider us besties?” Her face twisted into an expression of cringe. On Cece, that was endearing. On a crazed woman who looked like she was nearing fifty, it was a little...odd. Maybe sad. Morgan tried to find the words to explain to her friend how bewildering this looked from her perspective. Whose face was this? How did Cece change her face and not...know. “Okay, okay…” she started, tucking her pistol away. “Uh, fun fact, the pistol is salt rounds only. I just, you know, couldn’t be too careful. Also: what happened to your face! I said you could take something home, not give yourself a weird makeover!” She fumbled for her phone, still keeping her distance in case this was all a trick and she was just being stupid and gullible. “You did something!” She put the selfie camera on and held it out for Maybe-Cece to see. “A very, very weird something! Are you...mind or body swapped? Are you glamoured into one of my dead relatives? You aren’t really...I mean, look! What would you think if you were me!”

“Of course I do. There’s not many others I’ve broken into a house and been held at gunpoint at!” Despite the awkwardness of currently being held at gunpoint, Cece couldn’t stop the lilt in her voice as she confirmed that the two were basically besties. They had been through quite a bit considering they hadn’t known each other at the beginning of the year. “Well I actually do feel marginally better knowing I would have only gotten blasted with salt. Thank god I’m not a ghost.” Cece laughed, taking steps closer to Morgan following the whole debacle. “I didn’t do anything! Just rooted around in your grandma’s chest and-” Cece stopped talking when Morgan offered her phone camera towards her and Cece got a look at who was showing up on the screen. Except this was very clearly not Cece. “What the fuck?” Cece jumped back, visibly shaken for the first in what felt like a truly long time. “Who the fuck am I? Why the fuck do I look like this?” Cece began rubbing her hands against her arms, chanting a dispelling glamour effect to herself and then looked back at the camera. Nothing. “Why isn’t it going away!?”

Morgan’s face quirked into a smile. She wasn’t as vulnerable or demonstrative with Cece as she knew she could’ve tried to be. Cece was just so breathtakingly together and at ease with whatever chaos came her way, like it was no more than a fly she could spike out of her sphere with a swipe of her hand. However much she accepted the mess Morgan dragged them into, Morgan worried the limit of ‘too much’ was just around the corner. But here they were, standing over a hole in the middle of the woods with a salt pistol and dug up treasures and a haywire spell between them—and still friends. “Ghost, creepy middle aged lady, whatever comes next, I’m still glad we’re friends,” Morgan said.

But, obviously, Cece being her friend as Cece was probably best. “Idea one: this is some weird subconscious thing and you’ve got some stuff about your age or your size to deal with. Idea two: you are wearing the face of one of my dead relatives, or their neighbors, or...something. But either way, there’s a solution! We just don’t know it yet. But we will and you will look...w-well, you don’t look bad, really, when you, uh, think about it, but just more...you.” She winced and came around the side of the hole to offer Cece a hug.

Morgan offered a list of options to Cece, who hated all of them. “Definitely not subconscious. I accepted my height many years ago.” Cece waved the first away but backtracked, “That being said. I get that objectively I’m not that tall still but I do feel like a tall glass or water.” The second option seemed likely. Perhaps it was a type of hex that was put on something she had touched by Morgan’s grandma. If that was the case it was some bullshit hex. “Well either it’s a strong ass hex or some new type of magic I haven’t worked with before.” That frustrated Cece more than the hex itself. She could handle looking like this Milf. What she didn’t like was not knowing how to fix it immediately. Morgan came around for a hug and as their arms wrapped around each other Cece smiled, “You know we’re kind of like the same height now.”

“You do have the energy of a tall woman, I guess it’s just a little closer to being official now,” Morgan said with a smirk. “You’ve got, what, a whole inch on me now?” She raised her hand to touch the top of Cece’s head, fluffing some of the brown hair falling in front of her face. “Stars, if you are wearing one of my ancestors’ faces, does this make you like a temporary cousin? Temporary grandma?” She smirked at the idea. “Sorry. Let’s take everything and hit the books at your place, huh? Do some old fashioned trial and error experimenting. Whatever’s going on, we’ll figure it out.”

Though her head was still spinning at the prospect of looking twice her actual age, Cece tried to compose herself. This had been the most flustered she had allowed herself to be for many, many years. She had no interest in completely losing her cool. Morgan was right, they would fix this. Eventually. Maybe it had a time limit, and Cece would simply wake up in a day or two back to her old, blonde self. In the meantime, how was she supposed to explain this to her roommates? “That’s a good start. Whatever’s going on, I clearly don’t have nearly enough alcohol in my system to deal with it.” Right about now Cece was sure that she had far too much blood in her alcohol system. Depending on how long this lasted, it might be time for a never ending party. “I like to think I just became your cool aunt. I think the moniker suits me.”

#wr cece #wr chatzy #wr cece chatzy #face off #gun tw #wickedswriting

[sapereaude-habemut]

It is confusing.

You were born only two years and four months after I was. I do not remember life without you. Our brother was born only fifteen months after that. I barely remember life without him either.

I had very little time to have “girl” toys. By the time I was four I was sharing a room in a tiny house with my two little brothers. The “girliest” toys I had were horse figurines--but before you two started getting superhero action figures and little green army men, you had animal toys too, so what’s the difference? Even when I got Barbies and dolls, they would play in the same world as your amy men, they would also fight and explore, because I always played with you two. Most of our time was spent outside though. Our house was so tiny, our backyard so big. We rode bikes, we dug in the mud, we built little houses out of sticks and rocks. We played our imaginary game, where we were knights on a quest, explorers of a new world, we fought with sticks, we got dirty, scraped our knees. My upbringing was far more stereotypically “boyish” than “girlish.” Except for, well, everything aside from that.

I watched you and our other brother pee on trees in the backyard, our parents would laugh as you freely, laughingly had contests to see whose pee stream could reach higher. It was “cute” it was “funny.” It was something men did. Meanwhile, for me, using the bathroom was secretive, it was hidden. It was something never talked about. Vagina was a word uttered only in whispers.

I grew up watching you and our brother run around without shirts on, in our backyard, in our house on snowdays when we came inside to hot chocolate so you would not stain your shirts. At the beach, the pool, family and neighborhood barbecues--freely, without a second thought. Everyone accepted it. Meanwhile, I had been taught that it was inappropriate for a girl to not wear her shirt around other people at such a young age that I do not have a memory of thinking it was okay. At such a young age I could not yet understand WHY it was not okay. For my entire living memory, I have just known my torso was something that had to be hidden, to be ashamed of. 

Long before I had anything on my body that could make not wearing a shirt, or certain clothes “inappropriate,” I was chastised if I tried to leave the house in a shirt or pants too tight, a skirt or shorts too short, the neckline too low--anything really. My body, for my whole life, has always been something I just knew had to be hidden. While you and our brother ran around freely, peeing on trees, without shirts on, like it was the most natural thing in the world. 

I changed diapers. So many diapers. When our brother was born and I was only four, I was taught to change his diapers. I changed so many of our sisters’ diapers. You changed none. I was always the mother's helper, I was expected to be. I changed the diapers, I babysat for the first time at eleven years old, over you, our other brother, and both our sisters, one of whom was a new born. I was the eldest sister, I was a woman, I was mother’s helper. It was expected. I continued to babysit until I left for college, despite the fact that you and our brother were far older than I was when I first began watching all of you. I would cancel plans and miss out when I was seventeen in highschool to “babysit”--while you, fifteen years old, got to sit around, play video games, watch television, read. When our mother was sad, tired, overwhelmed, busy--I cooked dinner, I set the table, I cleaned up dinner and loaded the dishwasher. I bathed our sisters, and sang them to sleep. You and our brother were never asked to do anything. You were never expected to do anything. It was all woman’s work. 

On the holidays, I was always sent to the kitchen to “help the other women”--to help our mother, grandmother, and aunts, cook, bring out dishes, set the tables, and clean up. As the men in the family at around the table, or on couches, laughing and talking, and you and our brother played, or when you got older, joined in on the laughing and talking. I served you. I cleaned up after you. Because I am a woman. 

I grew up watching you and our brother be “gross”, get dirty, play rough. Sit however you wanted. But when I joined in, when I got dirty, when I shoved one of you too hard, when I sat, somehow, incorrectly, I was scolded and told it was not “lady-like.”

My whole high school career our relatives unceasingly asked me when I would bring a boyfriend home. Despite the fact that I was a three season varsity athlete, the captain of the track team my junior and senior years, despite the fact that I was top of my class, despite the fact that I took every AP exam I could, passed nearly all of them with perfect 5′s, was going to college on a scholarship with nearly a full semester of college credits. You and our other brother got commended for being smart, but if you acted up, it was brushed off with my grandpa, our uncles saying “ah well, you take after me--boys will be boys.” You were never asked about bringing a girl home. But if you brought it up, you got a pat on the shoulder and an “atta boy.”

My whole upbringing was being forced to grow up too quickly to help cook for everyone, help clean up after everyone, do everyone’s laundry, take care of all of you. While you got to play. My whole upbringing was being taught to hide my body, that it was somehow inappropriate, shameful. While you got to run about freely, your bodies unencumbered by shame.

When I was fifteen, a grown man told me I had “child-bearing hips.” Horrified, I told my mother, and she just said sadly, but shruggingly, “You get that from my side.” When I was sixteen, playing volleyball, a senior from another school said he would like to “pipe” me. I have been grabbed, jeered at, sexually assaulted. At a family barbecue the summer after my freshman year of college, an older male relative who had not seen me since I was a child said “damn she’s an Amazon” as I tried to toss around the football with you and our other brother. I was uncomfortable. I have always had to deal with being uncomfortable. You never felt as though you did not have ownership over your body, as though your own body endangered you. As though your flesh somehow made you more vulnerable, but also more shameful, weaker, but giving me these great burdens of “womanhood.”

And it was not even like, as our mother tries to argue, that maybe this is why you were so adverse to sports, why it was so burdensome to have expectations of athleticism on you. I was more athletic than both you and our brother, I played more sports than both of you, I was better at more sports than both of you, I enjoyed sports more than both of you. One of our sisters is also far more athletic than both of you. 

It also was not, as our mother also tries to say, our father’s hyper-traditional ideals of masculinity and feminity that drove you to this, or made you hide it. Because I was not always feminine. I worked mucking stalls, doing manual labor all summer. I more often than not wore athletic clothes, rarely wore makeup. Both me and our sister went through long “tomboy” stages, where we wore clothes from the boy’s department. Where we cut our hair short. We were permitted to do that. Our brother, our athletic, funny, “ladies’ man” of a brother, loves fashion. He loves to style outfits, to wear brightly colored or pastel floral button down shirts, pair them with patterned ties, he loves well fitted pants, fancy shoes, likes to make sure his socks go with his outfit, but also “pop” so when he sits and his pants reveal them, they are stylish too. He likes to wear his hair longer so he can style it. He was permitted to do that. He wears pink ties, he wears cologne, he cares about his skin. Our father and grandfather may joke, but in a good-natured way saying “well he’s never had trouble with the ladies, so maybe *we’re* doing something wrong.” It was not that.

So what was it? When you tell me you could not imagine not transitioning, not being a woman? What do you mean? What is this woman you speak of? 

The first time I saw you after you announced you were transitioning, you were wearing a black choker, and off the shoulder top revealing a pink strappy sports bra, your nails were painted black. Is that what you think it means to “feel” more like a woman? Painted nails, trashy jewelry, and cutesy flashes of undergarments? Is it breasts? What is it? 

This is not the womanness I was burdened with.

You received every single privilege of being a male in a very traditional, Catholic, Italian family. You never tried to take on any of the burdens I was forced to bear because it was my “role as a woman.” You took advantage of all of it. Your entire life. 

#radfem #gender critical #gendercrit #feminism

[quinnmorgendorffer]

because i need to get this out here somehow...hopefully the cut works so you guys don’t feel obligated to read this lol

church was always a part of my life growing up, i know i’ve talked about it on here before. i know i’ve mentioned getting “saved” at recess and going to church lock-ins. i’ve mentioned missing some of the christmas traditions our church did, like ending on “silent night” in only a candle-lit worship hall. but religion has just a much heavier part of my life than i’ve talked about.

my family wasn’t always the best in attendance until i was around nine. to quote arrested development “i don’t want to blame it all on 9/11, but it certainly didn’t help.” but actually, yeah, i blame it all on 9/11. we went to a vigil the night of the attacks and suddenly every sunday my sisters and i were woken up to go to church.

i didn’t mind all of it. i liked being an acolyte when i was one on the first or last sunday of the month - first sunday was communion, which we helped with, and the last sunday was the “noisy offering”, where we went around with buckets to collect change for one charity or another. i liked singing in the children’s choir. i never cared for the sunday school or youth group stuff as i grew older and people i enjoyed hanging out with in my age group left our church to join different ones for various reasons. my parents had to deal with the multiple youth pastors we had over the years telling me and my sisters that, basically, believing in evolution was a sin. my parents were NOT okay with that since they, you know, actually believe in science.

i don’t regret all my time in church, though, if only for the music. i still love and miss the songs. it’s how i got my first solos, where i got to test performances at the annual variety show. i had a really bad relationship with my high school’s choir director, but i could always count on getting compliments and praise and love from my church community every time i sang. it was something that really kept me going when i felt very untalented.

when i was 13, i got to join the adult choir because the music minister thought i was good enough, which i was so proud of, because normally you had to be in high school before you could join, but i was asked early. and i even got to sing the soprano solo in fauré’s requiem, my first ever classical solo (which is funny to look back on now seeing as my voice is nowhere light enough to do that piece lol anymore lol). i would practice with the children’s choir every hour on wednesdays, then wait the half hour for the adult choir practice. the children’s choir didn’t perform every week, but the adults did, and we used to do two services every sunday, so i’d wake up early to sing at the first one, go to sunday school, and then go to the second service, where we would normally leave before the sermon started. eventually we went down to just one service (no pun intended but thank GOD for that). eventually i was asked to be the song leader for at least three years of vbs (vacation bible school, a summer camp for kids, normally some over-the-top story being taught through videos). i may have been asked/done more, i can’t remember for sure. 

outside of church, my family wasn’t super religious - most of us, most of the time. my dad still had some hang-ups about gay marriage due to what i have to say is religion, because i don’t think there was any other reason. we’d say grace whenever my grandfather came over for dinner, and sometimes during our own bigger meals when he wasn’t there. it used to be a thing with my sisters (and my mom, i think?) when we’d go to bed that we’d say something about “don’t forget to say your prayers”. oh and at one point, when my sister and i expressed a desire to not go to church, my dad said he was worried we’d go to hell. that was fun. 

all of this to say that.....i remember doubting a belief in god a lot. as i’ve grown older, i still haven’t been able to figure out my beliefs. i find it hard to believe there’s a god when there’s all this suffering, but i also find it, well, depressing to think that there ISN’T a god. i feel like it’s not “smart” to believe in god, at least not Christianity, but i’m afraid i’ll go to hell if i even speak that thought out loud. i’ve found comfort in prayer.....

......except, over the years, i’ve developed a bit of an ocd-style relationship with prayer. i’m terrified of flying, enough so i got a prescription from ativan just to help. and though it can knock me out, i always have to say prayers while the plane is taking off, or else i *know* i’ll die/we’ll crash/everyone on the plane will die. because somehow it’s all my fault, you know? it doesn’t leave me calm at all, but it makes me feel like i have SOME control over things. i’ll say my prayers during bad turbulence, too, any time we shake at all.

and i don’t know when i got back in the habit of saying my prayers at night, but i’ve been trying to prayer every night since covid hit. i’m sure i was praying again before that, too. they’re all silent and in my bed, no kneeling or anything. if it isn’t clear yet, i was raised in the united methodist church, so i was taught that we had a friendly relationship with god and could talk to him whenever. very much unlike how i’ve seen all my catholic friends talk about their upbringings. but i always do a silent prayer and then the lord’s prayer, just like how my church would do it.

and, again, it’s been a compulsive thing where i’ll start saying things in a certain order and HAVE to say them in a certain order with a certain wording, some of which i’ve kept since childhood. sometimes i’m spending several minutes just trying to get through everything because i’m falling asleep since it’s so late and i keep drifting off and i feel like i have to start over or something will go wrong. 

i prayed so hard for joe biden to win. i’m still praying he can get power peacefully. i pray for the covid vaccine. and i spent the most time every night praying that my family, friends, and loved ones don’t get covid. i specifically list my family members, i try to bring up every group of friends - friends from school, theater, the internet, my rocky group, music, opera, etc. - and pull out specific friends who i worry about the most for various reasons and try to remember to pray for their families, too. i pray for my voice teacher and her family. and for everyone i single out, i have to have a reason for why they’re singled out. i pray for my roommate and her family, and then lastly i pray for myself, and always add that if i get it, my roommate will most definitely get it and vice versa.

so all of this is just to say that my faith has turned from any semblance of faith to something i think i’m holding onto just from anxiety. and i hate this jaded dumb story that they do on sitcoms and the like, that someone’s prayers wren’t answered so they don’t believe in god. that’s not my only reason, of course, but having my sister get sick with something she may not survive has led to me feeling this dumb guilt, like i didn’t pray hard enough, that i was falling asleep during prayers, that i wasn’t being a good christian. and i know it’s not true, but it’s how i feel and i hate myself for even trying to take any blame on top of it and i’m just a mess and i’m so scared.

#this is long and about relgiion #specificlaly mine and christianity #and my anxiety

[mwolf0epsilon]

Hey look I love your au and I was wondering if you could do Sammy x Susie or Sammy x Jack up to you and maybe see him get along with Wally and another guestion can you please make Sammy’s different personalities please thanks 😊

I'll be honest, this ask was the equivalent of mental whiplash and it made me blank out for half a day.

I'm assuming you were either requesting art or a written prompt, so I went with the latter due to currently being on a commissions only basis for art requests.

I took the liberty to assume this was for SillyTunes AU, where relationships are currently strained, so it's mostly just Sammy and Jack having a heart to heart about past-relationships and repressed feelings.

---

It's not that Sammy resented his father for giving him not the best of upbringings. He couldn't entirely hate the man who paid for his education and who told him to do good by himself if he ever wanted to be better than the city abercrombies that ran about thinking they were better than southern joes like them. He was grateful, even, that his father had tried to raise him clever instead of letting his mind rot like the other kids back in their home town (the ones that threw rocks at birds, blew up rats with smuggled fireworks, and who broke property to entertain themselves because their parents couldn't be bothered to teach them any better).

What he did resent was the ideals he'd rubbed off on him. The bigoted views, the generational shortcomings of the Lawrence men that had been passed down like tradition. Views that had gotten Sammy black eyes, split lips, and busted noses. Worse yet, he resented how confused they made him.

Samuel Lawrence Sr. had been the kind of man to sneer at people he thought unsavory. Called them by their skin color like they were disease riddled animals, things Sammy slipped up on even after promising to be better. But where his father simply glared and commented offhandedly what he thought of others who did not share his skin tone, nothing could compare to his hatred of homosexuals. If anything, Samuel Sr. took glee from spitting out the most soul crushing things he could muster to anyone who looked at the same sex "funny". He aimed to hurt the "freaks" that went against the Bible.

How ironic that his own son was a closeted bisexual.

"You know, if anything I thought you'd be focused on the whole 'holy shit I'm a talking sheep' thing, not your repressed feelings for Norman..."

Bless Jack Fain for being who he was. Sammy had gotten along well with the slightly older man from the moment they met. A rarity if you really knew Sammy. He wasn't a people person and often had to be encouraged by his little sister to play nice. But Jack? Jack just eases him into being more open, more honest. He was a safe person to be vulnerable around, and one he could entrust with his little secret.

Mostly because Jack had his own secret: The fact that he was a gay man married to his best friend, a lesbian who'd orchestrated quite the grifter act so that both of them could be married and happy. Sammy had never personally met the woman, but he was grateful she'd managed to make it safe for his friend to be able to be spiritually married with the man of his dreams.

"That's not even the issue right now and you know it..." He sighed, covering his face (muzzle) with his gloved hands as he lay in the hammock he'd claimed for himself. The furthest one in the corner of the 'communal room'.

"Well, there's also the awkwardness with Susie..." Jack carefully tuned his fiddle as he talked, not once needing to look at Sammy to read him like an open book. "Between one and the other, you're pretty strung up on this whole mess."

"Jack, Susie and I ended on really bad terms, and falling back into friendly banter and hugs is physically painful when we both remember what happened." He looked at the shorter and rounder cartoon sheep. Jack was looking at him now, frowning slightly.

"And Norman?" The other asked calmly.

"Hates me because I apparently killed him while I was all whacky from drinking Satan's blood in inky form." Sammy stated dryly. "Cultist shit aside, Norman's married and has kids... Or uh, was married. None of us know who's out there waiting for us..."

"Norman's married life is none of my business but I'm pretty sure he was on the same boat as you. I've seen him eat up both broads and blokes with his good eye like you eye up a chocolate cake..." Jack pointed out, raising his gloved hand when Sammy went to cut him off. "I'm not saying he'd cheat on his wife, I'm just saying the man isn't as straight as you think... Now on the subject of you killing him... Err... Yeah that's rough, but not your fault."

"Because I can walk over to him now and say 'hey sorry for ripping out your heart with an axe, I wasn't myself'?" Sammy huffed and curled up into a tight wooly ball. This was hopeless. Between pining over Susie and Norman, and feeling guilty over all the shit Joey Drew and his damn magical Ink had put them through?

He felt like a fuck-up. A very confused fuck up that couldn't even figure out who he wanted in his life. And, to make it worse, in came someone he really didn't want to talk with...

"Hey guys, whatcha up to?" 'Wally' walked in with a wolfish smile and a chipper tone in his voice.

"Hey Wally." Jack greeted him back, while Sammy ignored the imposter. He didn't trust this guy as far as he could throw him, and it still annoyed him that the others ignored his very valid concerns. He was miserable enough as is. "Just resting... Sammy wasn't feeling well."

"It's all them inkwells he's been draining. It don't hurt us no more but it can't be good for ya to booze it up like that." The cartoon wolf chuckled as he went to his own hammock to retrieve something. "My ma used to say visiting the gin mill when you was down was only gonna put ya in an evil mood."

"You don't have a ma..." Sammy grumbled under his breath, getting a sharp look from the wolf.

"What was that?"

"Baa. I said baa. Laugh it up twit..." He lied as he gave up on getting comfortable. Might as well get up and move on with his life. Do something productive while he was in a funk.

"Don't pay him mind Wally, you know Sammy's not the nicest when he's joed and yearning." Jack laughed, getting an annoyed glare from the taller cartoon sheep.

"Jack!"

"Yearning for what exactly?" 'Wally' blinked in confusion. "Another drink? A slice of that delicious all the way from the cafe? Uh... Miss Campbell?"

Sammy took off his bell and chucked it at the wolf. It bounced off his snout harmlessly before it vanished and reappeared around the music director's neck. Damned thing! The wolf grinned.

"Awww you're still dizzy with the dame! That's real cute Sammy!"

"I'm not having this discussion with you!"

"Half a discussion you mean." Jack snorted.

"Silence Judas!" Sammy stamped his foot (hoof) and snorted loudly, electing to ignore the visible cloudy puffs that exited his nostrils. Toon logic was mind-boggling and the particle effects a bit annoying with how much they made it easy to read his moods.

"If it's about how screwy things got, why don't ya sit down and talk about it? Miss Campbell is a sweet dame, she'll listen." Wally suggested. "Think she might need t'talk it out anyways... She's pretty down about it too ya know."

This caught Sammy by surprise.

"What do you mean?" He couldn't help ask out of curiosity.

"Heard her venting to Norman. Was none of my business but hard not to eavesdrop when them walls ain't up to code or whatever Thomas goes on about with regulations and stuff..." The wolf shrugged. "Anywhos, she felt bad that she blew up on you when Joey gave her the slip. She didn't know Drew literally only told you and left ya to tell her she was fired..."

"I... How does she know that...?"

"Norman. Turns out Joey used to ramble to himself in his office when he thought he was on his lonesome... He was gonna try warn ya both that Joey was being shifty, but by then t'was too late and the damage was done. He felt awful that he wasn't too fast, but then again he wasn't really s'pose to know that anyway. I wonder if Joey would'a known he was watching him if ya both didn't blow up at each other like ya did over the whole replacement thing..."

Norman had told Susie that Joey had screwed things up between them on purpose? The guy had avoided him since going through Thomas and Henry's version of the machine! Why would he go though the hassle?

"See? That counts for something Sam." Jack smiled. "If he hated you he wouldn't be defending your honor."

"Norman Polk, hating on Sammy Lawrence? You guys crack me up! Guy don't have no mean bone in his body... He's all bark and little to no bite unless you deserve a beating!" Wally laughed.

"None of us have bones anymore idiot... But..." Sammy sighed. "Thanks... For the advice. And the information."

"..." The wolf sat down. "Well I'll be. I must be dead, cuzz there ain't no way Sammy just thanked little old me."

The bell was thrown once more and Sammy stamped off as the fake Wally cackled. Jack merely shook his head and muttered something along the lines of young love.

"You're only five years older than me!"

"That's five years worth more experience than you Sam!"

"Fuck off Jack!"

#Eps Writes: #bendy and the ink machine #batim #sammy lawrence #jack fain #wally franks #SillyTunes AU

[astroismypassion]

Hi I'm the June 17th birthday. I couldn't respond to your message on Kofi but I am totally fine with you putting my reading on your blog. Thank you for doing your best to work around the messages issue!

Hi!

Thank you for buying me this delicious hot beverage. I drank irish cream black coffee with rice milk while writing your interpretation. I hope you will enjoy reading it as much as I did writing! I listened to some old George Ezra while writing. ;)

Your dominant planets are: 1. Sun, 2. Jupiter and 3. Pluto. Your dominant signs are: 1. Scorpio, 2. Gemini and 3. Leo. Your main mode is Fixed. You are Water dominant.

FAMILY, SIBLINGS, EARLY LIFE

You have Aquarius IC. You had an unconventional, unique upbringing. Your 4th house is in Aquarius and Pisces. You like to play on your own. Or you created an imaginary world for yourself. Or you could have escaped through music, arts, TV series or film. You were sheltered from what was really going on around you. You might have a hard time establishing healthy boundaries with your family members. They seem to completely merge with you and rely on you emotionally or be completely cold and detached. There were many traditions and superstitions in your family that might have been passed down through generations. If you have any siblings, they are Capricorn, Aquarius or Pisces. In your elementary and high school years you might have been drawing a lot during classes you didn’t find stimulating. Or you daydream often. You were a mature and responsible student. You seemed a lot older than your peers. You might have viewed your schoolmates as weird sometimes, but they viewed you the same back. You might have often asked yourself if you’re the “weird one” or they are. You have Uranus in the 4th house. You may have changed residence or moved around often, even change schools. There were a lot of unpredictable, sudden changes and events in your early life that were hard to control (and to grasp). You have Sun square Moon. Your mother and father have different personalities and traits. They did not agree on the parenting style, how to raise you. They might have had different views. You have Sun conjunct Mercury. Your father emphasized the importance of communication or that you keep good relations with your siblings. This is also a writer’s placements! You can flatter or cut deep with words. You know how to appeal through words and find exactly the right words. You can sometimes think you “feel” words, because some words would be funny to you or have a “weird” sound to it. You might visualize a lot in your mind. Words, think in imagery and pictures and you have a strong, vivid imagination. You have Sun conjunct Mars. He probably met your open emotional expression with resistance.

PARTNERSHIPS AND FRIENDSHIPS Your friends are Pisces, Aries, Cancer, Sagittarius, Libra and Virgo. In your romantic relationships you attract Taurus, Gemini, Leo, Virgo and Aries. You have Taurus Venus in the 7th house. You desire, respect and value (also attract) stable, loyal, stubborn, highly opinionated people. Those who like to debate with you. People that have “go to” phrases and are polite, kind, have good manners. You might easily sense fragile egos, self esteem and weak points of other people. You have Gemini Mars in the 8th house. This is how you take action. How you approach your crush. You like to play mind games a bit, use a bit of world play and double entendre. You like to know everything about them and how their mind works. You wonder how they are thinking, what their thought process is. You like to have shared learning experiences with potential partners or dates where you go to an escape room or take a cooking class together and learn a new skill. You like to constantly evolve, expand and regenerate. You need a mental connection and great mental rapport to introduce physical intimacy into a relationship. You have Aries Moon in the 5th house. You have the potential of a serial dater. You need some passion, excitement and playful energy to get the connection started. But even in the early stages of your love affairs, you need a great deal of emotional comfort. You have to feel safe and secure around the person, like they are your family already. You know what you like and you might cut off people instantly when you notice red flags or just something that you don’t like. You know you can’t save people, so you understand the person needs to help themselves first. Otherwise, they would become another one of your problems. You have Venus sextile Jupiter. You might be very generous when you’re in love. You like to spoil your partner and take them out for dinner often. You might be over generous or over loving. With you money, time, affection, attention, praise and compliments. You have Venus square Uranus. You might like some odd, quirky, hard to figure of people. You are fascinated by those. You might have a long distance relationship at some point. Or you could date your friends or online date. You might even have a platonic connection with someone before it being romantic. You have Venus trine Neptune. You might idealize your partner or they do that to you. You might view them through rose tinted glasses. You are attracted to musicians, artists, singers, creators and people who play instruments.

CAREER, PROFESSIONAL LIFE, PUBLIC IMAGE

You have Pluto in the 2nd house. You fear poverty, homelessness and being hungry. You are very private when it comes to your financial matters. You don’t discuss it openly or ever. It’s a weird topic for you. Sometimes you fear it, it’s like you’re scared of what it can do. You are very passionate about gaining financial stability. Sometimes your dreams scare you or you might think “too big” or see just the bigger picture and forget to focus on the now as well. You have Sagittarius and Capricorn over your 2nd house. You might be over indulgent and flashy when you have money to spend. But with Capricorn there you also work hard for it. You have Leo MC. You might gain recognition for your accomplishments. You could also be attracted to film, theatre, drama, modelling. Or politics, governmental jobs, administration. Even publishing, media, public relations and public affairs. You could be a representative for a company. You might like to post on your social media. But you perfect your image, caption and you check for grammar errors. You like to be seen as creative, funny, healthy, bright and hard working. You have Virgo North Node in the 10th house. This indicates your life purpose. In this lifetime you are called to organise, to establish healthy boundaries with others, routine, daily habits. To take care of your daily duties, responsibilities, your health and even your pets if you have any. If you don’t. You’d benefit from owning a pet greatly, so that it calms down your Virgo mental restlessness. You could work in accounting, counselling, therapy, even health fields, such as nutrition, dietetics, nursing etc. You could be interested in physical and mental wellbeing. You could be into fitness and wellness. You might like communication, publishing, bookkeeping or even library work. You could use your keen eye for details. You have Leo and Virgo over your 10th house. You will shine and be in the spotlight, yet you’ll have to learn humility as well. Sometimes you might feel underappreciated or undervalued by authority figures, such as your parents, mentors, teachers, bosses. You might feel like you are putting much more effort in your responsibilities and work than you get credit for it. You have Aries and Taurus over the 6th house. This means you like a stable job, because it means stable income (Taurus in the 6th, Capricorn in the 2nd). But at some point in your life, you might desire to be your own boss, be self employed or become a businessperson, since it gives you the freedom of expression, expansion you value (Aries in the 6th house, Sagittarius in the 2nd house). You might even do something athletic or sporty daily or even as a part of your job! You have Cancer Mercury in the 8th house. You need to communicate a lot with your intimate partners. You like to think about your family, siblings, your home, your comforts and safety. You like talking about deep, occult and taboo topics. You might entertain the idea of conspiracy theories as well. You have an excellent memory. You can remember scents, colours, how people made you feel like no other. You have a long term memory. You have Mercury square Jupiter. Sometimes you might be a bit judgemental or be prone to overthinking and overanalyzing. You might also read between the lines. You have Mercury sextile Saturn. You have great power and focus to concentrate for long periods of time when you have a tunnel vision.

ADDITIONAL OBSERVATIONS

You have Pluto, Jupiter and Saturn currently transiting your 3rd house. You might spend more time alone and less with your friends, siblings and family members. You might have to work hard daily or commute to another city for work or just travel daily to a different part of the city. You might reevaluate and reconsider, rethink and transform your attitude to the local community, neighbourhood, city, to your siblings, peers, schoolmates. You might meet some new people, some new friends too, when Jupiter enters the scene since it’s a one and a half to two years long transit. You have Scorpio Chiron in the 1st house. You might not like your own name, or there is a visible spot, mark on your face, body that you don’t like. Or you could have been picked on by others for that. You might not like your physical appearance and you’re self conscious about it. You often nit pick it. At some point in life you might have had an identity crisis or just really doubted your personality, ego, self worth, character and traits. You might have been bullied or the power was taken away from you. You often felt powerless. Or scared of your own potential and power. You have Taurus Ceres in the 7th house. This represents how you wish to be nurtured and how you nurture others. You like to cook for them, buy them food, share meals with them and buy them little gifts. You like to listen to them. You might be a therapist for many. I’m sure you received compliments as “you’d be an excellent therapist”. You might empathize with them and really try to understand the other’s perspective and where they are coming from. You like to put yourself in others' shoes. You have Virgo Juno in the 11th house. This indicted your “ideal soulmate”, ideal partner, be it platonic or romantic. You like someone friendly, intelligent, who isn’t afraid to discuss social issues, society and question it all. You like someone who is clean, smells nice and grooms themselves. You like platonic, friendly connections at first. You need a lot of mental simulation. You have Libra Lilith in the 12th house. You might have been accused that you lack ambition. But you just don’t like competition that much or participation in the rat race. You value the inner core and being. You have rich inner workings. You have Leo Part of Fortune in the 9th house. This is where you experience good luck and charm. You might be praised for your views, beliefs, opinions on life. How you choose to constantly expand your horizons. You are at your happiest when you travel, even when you get lost in a good book, TV series or a foreign film. You like to constantly learn something new and you’ll be a life long student.

CHART RULER

Your chart ruler is Pluto. The chart ruler of the 1st house is in the 2nd house. Your ego is directly tied to your self worth, financial status, your talents. You might develop your personality, character, ego, self esteem through 2nd house topics, such as working on your talents and pursuing new skills, earning money and becoming financially independent, self care and developing your own set of values.

HOUSE RULERS

The house ruler of the 1st house is in the 2nd house. The way you look depends on your self-esteem. Life is oriented to discovering personal values and creating self-esteem. Appearance is a source of security issues. The house ruler of the 2nd house is in the 5th house. You use your money for artistic projects. You are possessive of creative projects. Financial security depends upon your personal creativity. The house ruler of the 3rd house is in the 6th house. Daily conversation revolves around work and health. Your mind is oriented to daily life. Thoughts are oriented to daily routine and work. You are curious about diet and nutrition. You have an efficient mind. You take information and organize it. You have an actively curious mind. The house ruler of the 4th house is in the 4th house. You want a home of your own. Private time is spent with family. Home and family bring up strong core feelings, for better or worse. You want a family for the sake of having a family. The house ruler of the 5th house is in the 3rd house. Creative talents and gifts are hidden. Hobbies revolve around the taboo or occult. The house ruler of the 6th house is in the 8th house. The daily work environment must serve your need to form deep relationships. You use your knowledge of diet, nutrition and exercise to help other people transform. You want an intense work environment. The house ruler of the 7th house is in the 7th house. The partner needs to be willing negotiate and cooperate with you. Marriage partners are business partners, business partners are marriage partners. You want to be with someone who is cooperative. You want a partner who is a good negotiator. The house ruler of the 8th house is in the 8th house. You enter sexual relationships for sex. You get emotionally entangled with other people to form deep connections. Your attitude to life and death affects your ability to deeply connect with other people. The house ruler of the 9th house is in the 5th house. You are philosophical about the way you raise children. You find meaning through the creative arts. You like to take romantic getaways. You enjoy the artistic expression of other cultures. Traveling is for leisure and pleasure. The house ruler of the 10th house is in the 8th house. You bring a professional approach to depth psychology. You find your true vocation by exploring occult subjects. Your career revolves around the need for intensity of experience. Your career involves working with other people’s emotional baggage. Your true vocation involves depth interactions with other people. You achieve recognition as a researcher. You receive awards for your work with people on the fringe of society. The house ruler of the 11th house is in the 8th house. You associate with people who are involved in the occult. Your friends have emotional baggage. You keep your group involvements hidden. You don’t talk about your long term hopes and wishes. The house ruler of the 12th house is in the 7th house. Your partner desires to escape from reality as much as you do. You lose your boundaries when it comes to significant relationships. Your grief and sorrow affect your relationships. The desire to escape reality affects your ability to maintain a serious relationship.

#astrology #astro chart #natal chart #birth chart #chart reading #chart interpretation

[theglassbell]

Being mixed is honestly an experience I find hard to talk about, but I’m feeling some type of way so I’m going to try and talk about it now. Sorry if this isn’t the content some of y’all want to see, but it is my blog (and also I have a #personal tag if y’all wanna blacklist)

My father is black and my mother is white.

When someone asks me which “side” I identify with more, my entire brain literally has a tug of war contest. (Btw don’t ask mixed kids this, it’s isn’t funny). On the one hand, I would say white. My father was an only child and he never saw his extended family often, ergo I never saw his extended family pretty much at all. The only family I saw often was on my mother’s side, all of whom were white. I also don’t see them often anymore, but that’s because my parents moved the family from New Jersey all the way to Georgia when I was young, not because I never knew them. In Georgia, I grew up in a small, conservative, not-very-diverse town. Every friend group I’ve ever had was all white except for me (there was one girl in one group who was Mexican but that’s it). I was more influenced culturally and socially by my mother. My dad is a very “manly man” and I used to be super girly, so that’s why most of my social upbringing was from my mother who was also into girly things. My mom even had to help me with my hair. She definitely did not do 100% on that front but I give her an A for effort. And before anyone asks, yes, we could have gone to my dad’s mother - my grandmother - for help, and we did once, but she wasn’t really helpful (and that’s a whole nother story lol) and I’m not very close with her anyway. I grew up one the blandest most boring chicken, frozen veggies, and instant rice dinners known to man. I still eat those now when I come home from college. My own cooking skills are solidly in the yt people column. So basically, culturally I feel like a white person. My answer to the question above might have been “white.”

However, everything is always more complicated than that. Everyone around me saw me as black. And there was definitely that undercurrent of “you’re not one of them, you’re a cool black person” but I was still clearly in the “black” category. I used to get looks from my friends when I mentioned that I had a crush on a white dude because they subconsciously expected me to date within my race. (I should mention that these friends - the ones I keep in contact with at least - have grown and expanded their beliefs and are no longer like this) And when I looked in the mirror, I saw black. I looked at my tan skin, and my bushy eyebrows, and my thick kinky-curly hair and I saw a black girl. (And honestly I used to have a lot of internal anti blackness and tried to make myself fit Eurocentric beauty standards by getting my hair treated and straightened, but at the end of the day I still considered myself black). I still look in the mirror and see a black girl, but now I’m finally comfortable with embracing that identity.

So I had this issue where i was seen as black by myself and others, but culturally I was raised very white.

It’s such a hard line to balance. Truthfully, I’m almost 50/50 down the middle when it comes to the genetics I got from my parents. My mom is super pale, my dad is pretty dark, and I’m like.. caramel. Or like, mocha? Idk I’ve never really been into using food to reference skin color. I have features from both of their faces and my hair has my fathers texture (hence the kinky curly) but my mother’s coloring (brown with some red occasionally thrown in for fun). I’m also 100% uniquely myself. But in a society where everything and everyone has a label, idk what to do with that.

Like I said before, my white friends see me as black. All white people I come into contact with see me as black. Yes, it’s sometimes the whole “oh but you’re not like other black people” that I know comes from the lightness of my skin, which I believe is a form of colorism?(I’m sorry if I did not use that term correctly) But, picking one or the other, to them I am black.

Black people tend to see me as white. This makes sense on the basis of my cultural upbringing, but not knowing AAVE well and the different social cues just makes it harder for me to connect with black folks and engage with the culture that’s in my blood.

In an attempt to feel connected to my dads side of the family and my blackness, I got into hoodoo and ancestral veneration.

It’s still really hard though. The only family members I could talk to about hoodoo and folk traditions and such would be my dad or my grandmother. Both of them are verryyy Christian (and like I said before, I don’t have a good relationship with my grams anyway, nor do I have a good relationship with Christianity. Hello, queer here!!). But honestly, that’s how I feel about magic traditions in general. I live on stolen land. My ancestors from one side of the family were kidnapped and forced to work said stolen land (though after the civil war ended I know of an ancestor who kicked ass and owned his own farm. He’s a real g). My ancestors from the other side of the family were either immigrants that came to America in hope of a better life or slave owners. Yikes.

I feel untethered from any culture, socially and spiritually. I thought about looking into italian and Irish witchcraft, since those are the strongest lineages on my white family’s side, but I got discouraged before I even started. I’ve never been to Ireland or Italy. I don’t know either language, I barely know of any meals from those countries. Who was I kidding? And then of course I don’t know any ancestry past the end of the civil war on my black side, because they were torn from their homeland. I still feel that urge to learn about hoodoo, which was specifically created in the americas, but it’s such an intimate practice with emphasis on the handing down of knowledge, and I don’t have anyone to do that for me. I want to connect to the local land, but then I think.. it’s not my homeland. It was the homeland of indigenous peoples and my country stole it from them. Would the land even be willing to work with me? Top this all off with having no “extra” senses to converse with any spirits (including my own ancestors) that could possibly teach me something. Add a sprinkle of depression and anxiety (and it’s genetic!! Yay!!) and you get me. An idiot sandwich.

I feel so deeply for witchcraft and hoodoo and for learning about them and practicing them, but I also feel like I have no right to. I mean, hell, the deities I worship are from lands and times I have no connection to. I love them so much, but sometimes I just wonder if I should worship deities from my own cultures. And then I remember that I don’t feel enough of a connection to any culture anyway, and... it’s a vicious cycle. I don’t know what to do with myself.

- signed, a depressed mixed witch + beginner rootworker who is so fucking lost

#vent #personal #witchcraft #hoodoo #biracial #this is okay to rb unless youre jusy going to be mean :( #i never write a vent post with the express purpose of getting like #free therapy in the notes #but i am always open to advice and if i need to make a correction or something (still not sure if used the word colorism correctly) #hence why its ok to rb

[sixmorningsafter]

An Apology Letter, SMA Love Letter, & Gabi Appreciation Letter

Let me begin this review by apologizing. Not just for waiting almost a year to review this insanely awesome chapter (don’t even tell me I don’t have to; I’ll drive up state just to take you by the shoulders and shake you and that silly thought out of your head; it is an honor and privilege to tell you how awesome you are!), but also for the tone of this review feeling so haggard. 2018 was, as Damon told Kai, “not a good look”, and I feel like it’s digested all the gall and sass and shit-starting energy I usually dole out for these reviews, so here I am, a regurgitation, still holding to the fact that you’re a fabulous writer who deserves all the praise I can possibly muster for your efforts. Despite having a life (or not, considering, ya know, med school), you still post on this page; you’re clearly still carrying the headcanons and the plot and the characters with you. I know the feeling of having the desire to write but feeling too tired, physically and emotionally, or disinterested or unmotivated, or whatever so I can’t even sit in your inbox like “hey love sma! You write soooo good. You’re awesome! and uh when are you gonna update?” Of course, I’d love an update, but I also know you. You want to put out your best work, what you’re at least 95% proud of, and it’s so obvious in Chapter 17.

Side note: I reread Chapter 16 and my review to give myself context and bolster some pizazz just for you.

REPLY: Let me begin my response to this review by apologizing for MY TEARS. Cass, you’re just an absolute light in this bitchy eclipse of a world and your ridiculous kindness radiates off every sassy, stubborn, talented, vulnerable, open-hearted part of you and I’m so, so happy I get to call you a friend. The fact that you took the time to write all of this despite your ridiculously busy, full, grad student, WEDDING-PLANNING (at the time) life, largely because you knew it’d put an idiotic smile on my face? You’re just a gem of a human being. I don’t know what else to say. I’m trying to keep my responses as succinct as possible because I’m so eager to post this and share your insights and writing with everyone else, partly because they always make me and my dumb writing look smarter than it actually is, but mostly because it’s a crime to keep it from the world. Anyway, onward and upward:

Bamon + Kai + the Pig Cadaver

To remind the audience, Bamon had a pretty petty and deep-cutting fight last chapter; Damon got over himself, with the help of Kai (kinda), and now Bamon are on better terms. That being said, these two dumbies are so… nerve-wrackingly good at detaching themselves from conflict. Like, I feel like Steroline would have put up walls and ruminated hard on something as harsh as Damon’s mention of Bonnie’s shitty life, but Bamon are King and Queen of sweeping the bad shit under the rug.

REPLY: I think it’s so cool that you point that out because it made me realize that’s one of my favorite things about writing Bonnie and Damon: they’re ability to both deliver and take hits. They’ve both gone through some really dark, messed up stuff - the kind of stuff people with more traditional upbringings tend to tiptoe around because they don’t know how to talk about it - so it’s almost like to be accepted in their entirety, they need to be around people who are unafraid of that stuff. Unafraid to go there. Unafraid to bring it up, unafraid to cross lines sometimes, unafraid to make jokes about messed up experiences and accept them about each other without flinching. I think they can recover quickly from those kind of blows from each other because in a weird way, at least they’re being acknowledged. At least someone’s talking about it without getting that wincing, deer-in-the-headlights look and acting like it’s a forbidden topic. Obviously in the last chapter, Damon took it too far and was trying to actively alienate her with his comments, but in general I really enjoy writing their budding sense of familiarity with each other. Anyway, good thing I’m being succinct right the review hasn’t even really started GOOD LORD.

Damon jolting Bonnie like she’s being electrocuted is so unbearably cute to me. So domestic. So friendly but also playful but also coupley… I’m dead.

“Wow, you’re really going full nerd.”/”Oh… you sweet summer child, you haven’t even begun to see full nerd.” In my previous review, I (demanded) mentioned wanting more nerd!Bonnie, and you delivered. What an honor, truly.

“It was like he’d [Kai] never left, except now he was surrounded by a bunch of wires and a mini Tesla coil.” I don’t know if I ever mentioned this, but I think it’s so funny and silly that you embedded some serious sci-fi shit in this romcom fic. Like, we’re really out here, considering is Kai an alien? Can Kai really teleport or “dissolve in and out of the time-space continuum as he pleases”? He’s not just creepy or socially inept. He’s also fucking extraterrestrial.

lmfao in chapter 16 or 15 or whichever it was where they explored Kai’s apartment while he went swan-hunting, I had to make a choice about whether to keep things semi-realistic or just go balls-to-the-wall cray re: Kai and I think we all know which route I decided to take 😂

“Still, it was a surprisingly appealing thought, the idea of having some kind of effect on him.”/ “Snagging the unsnaggable.”/ “Ruffling the unruffable.” We out here, making up words and shit; my Word doc spell-check is having a field day. But her observation about having dealt with guarded people kind of relates to what I was tryna say earlier on: both Damon and herself are very guarded, and her ability to see that nothing truly sticks to him is reflective of that same for her.

“It was like he was coated in oil, like his entire personality was adapted to glide through life without ever catching on anything around him.” / “Even the good things.” Talk about knife to the gut (why yes, this is a reference to the future Steroline conversation, which I am using to demonstrate how fucking enamored I am by this understanding of Damon’s character). I feel like Damon started as the kid thinking “if things are good, then something bad is gonna happen” to “good? bad? what are those and, more importantly, who fucking cares?”

Just another day of Cass making me feel like a far better writer than I am because she always gets exactly what I’m going for and then explains it better than I do. That’s precisely his trajectory, man. He went from a kid with no control of his own life, constantly bracing for impact, to a kid who realized nothing can control if you don’t give a fuck. If good things don’t make you happy and bad things don’t make you sad, you’re always at equilibrium. You’re always at a steady-state. And most importantly, you’re at a steady-state that no outside factor controls.

“Maybe the oil coat went more than skin-deep.” Foreshadowing! I like this conversation a lot though. Insight about Bonnie’s past (another gracious gift promised last review, thank you SMA goddess for such a blessing) and her PTSD and embarrassment about the shit show that is her parents.

Bonnie’s “I wish I could turn it off like that.” Speaking of shit shows, nice nod to canon.

😂😂😂

“Was that—vulnerability?” Yes baby, revel in it! Idk if you did this on purpose, but it’s like Damon is leaning into his previous realization of her cracking his “varnish” (just realizing his description of a glossy seal is an almost visual parallel to Bonnie’s description of him being slick with oil (I’m thinking like petroleum)… anyways). Like, “she’s already seen me lose my fucking mind in the cellar, being a little vulnerable about it won’t hurt, right?” I mean, yes, but also, Bonnie is a shit-starter too, babe.

“Were those—emotions?” / “I hate knowing you.” / “Are you okay? Do you need some water?” and later paired with “How does it feel to be a human being?” / “Stupid.” / “That means you’re doing it right.”

You know how I feel about Kai’s “Friends!” He is so weird, and I love it, but I’m also afraid that I love it. Thanks!

Yeeeesssss, I wanted to show him slowly starting to adjust to the fact that she’s seen things. Him.  And you know what, here they are anyway. The world’s still spinning. She’s still being her weirdo competitive self. So maybe it’s not the worst thing to have (albeit accidentally) let someone in a little. A big motivation for me re: Bamon in this chapter was getting them to the point where they eased into being comfortable sharing things with each other. Not everything, obviously, but way more than they share with the average person. Kind of like a ‘well we’re stuck in this ridiculous situation and we’re unexpectedly more alike than we think so maybe we just lean in a little’. So I’m really glad that’s what you got out of this, WOOT.

Kai’s everyone’s friendly neighborhood son/serial killer and I think it’s best to just let yourself adore him and hope for a minimal body count. 

The Matt Talk

I think I already told you I was so emotionally distraught this chapter. If you’re new to SMA, hi I’m Cassandra and I’m always an emotional mess when it comes to Gabi���s writing. But, this was some next level shit. You’ve said so many times you’re worried about how these emotional scenes go, but like fuck dude. You went hard, and it was so difficult for me not to be actually crying. Idk, I’ve never been in Caroline’s situation or known anyone to go through this, but the whole injustice of it, you know? The possibility that any woman could be going through this or has gone through this. I’m not belittling the men who have been abused in their relationships, of course. What I am saying is if I am taking this personally, having never experienced it, but as a female, knowing this could very well happen, that means your writing is fucking spot on.

Full-disclosure, your entire breakdown of this scene is just the most beyond fantastic thing that I don’t even want to break it up with shitty responses. I’m pretty sure reading your insights about it affected me more than the entire multi-week process of actually writing it, so idk how you did that but here we are. For the millionth time, your responses are the only reason I think maybe all my fumbling and exasperated editing is somehow producing something half-okay. I’m dying whale noises. Bye.

Setting the scene up with Steroline in the tub, for being their poetic selves tryna be symmetrical in their emotional moments and emphasizing how thick the silence around them is… oof dude. I know you have that “movie” mentality when you write, and idk how you fucking do it, but it definitely translates. Idk if you’ve ever been in a moment like this, where you need to say something of Importance to someone of Importance, but your voice has just gone on vacation for a minute, and you’re sitting there with an empty tongue, and, in my experience, the person tries to prompt you about what you’re trying to say, but I’ve been in moments like this. So, this set up was so poignant for me. Luckily, she’s talking to Stefan, the boy who listens to even Rebekah earnestly and wholeheartedly.

Caroline’s Gazania daisies metaphor: shit breaks my heart. How long did she think about this? The metaphor is like… a detachment. Like, how light bends in water. Her story is the light, the flower metaphor is the water, allowing the story to refract, to be that much more removed from the reality.

“A flicker of intimacy based not on things they’d experienced together, but rather things they’d experienced apart.” I think it loops back to Bamon too, whether neither are eloquent enough to make that seamless connection. I think that should be the tag line of each ship; these very different people are tied to one another by feeling what they’ve felt and relating it back to what the other(s) has (have) felt.

I think you’ve very skillfully woven canon and SMA for Matt’s story. TVD made him the human golden boy, and SMA has him resentful and dark… and it just goes to show how environment can really shape a character’s outcome. tvd!Matt saw the supernatural as the reason his life was so shitty and suddenly had a purpose; sma!Matt didn’t have that scapegoat, so without rhyme or reason for his shitty circumstance, he fabricated that it was somehow Caroline.

Fucker.

“Senior year was kind of a train wreck” to “We were still okay, though. Still us.” Rereading this part made me seriously think of like… a slingshot. Like, all of this is just leading up to the snap and the release of Matt’s true colors. And how devastatingly it was that Caroline didn’t know, honestly couldn’t know, that it was going to happen.

Shit like Matt being mad at Caroline for proudly blurting out she got accepted into NYU when Vicky had just OD’ed is so fucked up to me. To be actually mad about it. Bro, stay mad about it. But that’s the point, isn’t it? That this was the final straw for him, the last thing to tip him into batshit abusive fuck mode.

As a therapist, I could easily say, he is clearly shaped by his circumstances, he didn’t have enough support or self-esteem to fully develop the core values and strengths that he needed to not become this abusive piece of shit, that there might be some self-awareness by the way he tries to remedy a bad fight with a great breakfast (or a learned behavior to get approval again). Even if I do consider those things, irl and even with Matt, it’s in no way condonable, and I don’t think I could ever be able move from this point of view.

“She’d lived like that for months, a blur of turtlenecks and concealer, of overbright smiles and obsessive thoughts, of guilt and blame and normalizing the abnormal, of questioning if what she thought was happening was actually happening.” / “Could actually be happening.” Just reading this summarizes all the females who are in relationships like this, who question whether their partners’ could actually be raping them… ugh. It breaks my heart even now, writing this review.

(Honestly, I had to step away and resume the next day)

Caroline’s comeback: “He was staring at the old Caroline. The one he hadn’t broken in. The one that ran on gall and instincts, that didn’t dim herself for anyone, that’d jump in front of a bus for the people she loved… She’d grown back into her skin. Unshrunken till she was towering over him, a bright, brilliant light staring down at a meager lick of flames.” This whole bit was so good, so relieving, so satisfying. I know what Matt did still haunts her, but Caroline coming back and reclaiming who she is, even to present time, is so, so satisfying.

“Let’s be real, though, Bonnie could probably beat us both up.” / “Definitely.” – these were my thoughts when Caroline was defending her lol.

The Universe Speech: ilysm but also fuck you for being so good at this lol. I am so mad at how good you are at this, and you’re kinda like shruggy shoulders, I’m-just-trying-my-best. Get your humble ass out of here. “I think you’re a universe. I think you’re full of suns—and comets and black holes and everything in between. And when one sun burns out, you’ll just flare into a million more, unapologetic and infinite, because nothing… not pain, not heartbreak, not even the entire exec board of Emory apparently, can stop a universe from expanding.”

And Caroline immediately clicking with the metaphor? (rewriting her Gazania metaphor story I hope) And she runs with it like, “It couldn’t help but make her feel like maybe she hadn’t lost anything. /  Maybe she’d just outgrown it.” and “An infinite, chaotic expanse of dazzling light and annihilating dark… capable of anything but responsible for nothing outside of stretching out toward an invisible horizon fiercely, constantly, even in the face of billions of years of gravity pulling her back”. THIS IS MY SHIT DUDE. First off, this visual representation of a person is so beautiful and inspiring and so full of grace and forgiving, you know what I mean? It just shouts volumes to how okay it is to fail sometimes or to feel Feelings, and how it shouldn’t and couldn’t be used against her. It’s literally the expanded and improved version of “reach for the stars” – more like be the universe, among the stars, and reach for the unknown. BIG OOF.

“I can’t possibly follow that up with my dumb Elena drama” / “Hey, not a competition.” – someone recently quoted someone else to me, saying It’s not the suffering Olympics, and it’s resonated with me so hard, dude.

Steroline throwing back things the others have said, Stefan’s “Whatever nice thing you feel like you have to say, it’s okay” and Caroline’s “You can’t escape me! / I’m unapologetic and infinite!”

I don’t remember if its this chapter or last, but Stefan indulging in Caroline’s playful side, and Caroline recognizing Stefan’s sassypants is by far my favorite Steroline Thing ™ in this story. Parallelly, Bonnie’s Damon-ain’t-shit attitude, and Damon’s she’s-more-than-I-anticipated revelation is my favorite Bamon Thing ™.

I am overwhelm-sion. 

I am aegoifhjaeoeagidhy.

That scene took me weeks of editing to get in a remotely publishable place and even then I was like WELP SURE HOPE THIS ISN’T OFFENSIVE FLAMING GARBAGE LOL ONLY ONE WAY TO FIND OUT *POST* so. Needless to say. This response means el mundo. I am in full turtle.

But real quick, exiting emotional turtle stance to say that I feel like you and I have always been super in sync about liking writing that celebrates messiness and imperfections and humanity in all it’s mistake-ridden earnestness so I’m not surprised you liked the universe metaphor as much as I did. Fuck suns and their one-dimensional asses. We stan universes in this bitch. Asteroids. Supernovas. Blow some things up. Crash into some planets. Sink into some really deep darknesses. It’s okay. There will always be bright, brilliant stars all around you, too. 

Bamon, Kai, Bonnie’s Feral Sweet Tooth, and The Food Fight

Speak of the devil: “She shook her head, lips curling into a droll ‘get over yourself’ of a smile, and for some reason, something about the look stuck out to him a bit.” AND, MY FAV: “For some reason, he liked it.” YES YES YES YES.

He’s hopeless.

The “Love It” arc (why yes I did use that word very specifically to refer to the sassy snap). On a tangent, Kai on Twitter, Kai on Pinterest… for an alien, he’s very adaptive.

He’s got his entire home planet hooked on snapchat. 

Oh, here it is again: “Now that he knew what a genuine fucking weirdo she was, he was a little curious about what she’d actually been thinking.” I know fluffy moments such as Never Have I Ever (before shit hit the fan) are most likely over, but if they were to return, I suggest Truth or Dare, and Damon asks Bonnie what she thought of him when he’d met Caroline (and her) at that club. Listen, both Damon and I want to know. I’m not saying make it happen, but I am.

There’s another dinner coming for their last snowed in night because I’m nothing if not repetitive and I think Truth or Dare is a trope I can definitely work in. I mean, I wouldn’t want it to feel left out given that I’ve used every other fanfic trope known to mankind.

“Wow!” Bonnie exclaimed, leaning forward to peer at the uncanny cake topper with a bewildered look. He even got her one earring right. – I’m cryinggg

He’s special.

“Can we just… go through what all of these heavenly things are, because I may look calm, but I’m actually losing my mind.”

“Absofruitely!” This is a mine of just so many fucking gems.

Kai Knowing: I feel like he’s just a mind-reader, because he already stated he can’t read people very well. But I absolutely love how both Bonnie and Damon are like, oh yeah totally super in love you betcha bud, and Kai’s like, I see it for realsies this time. Bamon 4 Eva bb. Love at first bicker, honestly.

lolololol I just loved the idea that their growing connection was so goddamn obvious that even the self-declared Worst Person Reader Ever was like ‘wowza so this is love huh?’

The Food Fight. I love the “She was glaring at him, eyelashes coated in frosting” line so much. It’s both cute and endearing, and the fact that Damon is paying that close attention.

“Cupcake Quidditch seems kind of fun.”

“It’s stupid dangerous, not to mention a giant waste of food.” Lol Bonnie.

Bonnie being on the shooting team—and Damon also being good at shooting. AU of an AU where SMA Bamon are spies or assassins (Mr. & Mrs. Smith). But only sma bamon. Fuck canon.

We don’t know her.

But also yes to this AU. @coraxes​ once wrote this awesome drabble where Bonnie and Damon met as teenagers and because of it I’ve always wanted to do some alternate timeline where they grew up in the same city, weaving in and out of the same seedy social circle as teens, flickering in and out of the periphery of each other’s lives, but always having this strange tension whenever their paths happened to cross, you know? Just these rare, vaguely loaded interactions where they both saw glimpses of the fact that the other was smarter than this, better than this, you know? That they both were. The point of this all being that I could imagine them both showing off whatever it is they know about guns, lololol. 

“It’s not very captain-y to bathe in the blood of my enemies either but hell if that’s going to stop me.”

She’s also special.

“Temporary timeout” leading to the “Truce” leading to “she suddenly hit him with the look, like Bambi and Tiny Tim and sixteen puppies and every Pixar character ever created had been thrown into one of those face-combining apps” which ultimately leads to Damon’s “fine” and his absolute bewilderment “He just blinked in confusion, unsure of what the hell had just happened.”

From “he held out his [launcher] and she stared at it for a beat before grudgingly taking it” to “in the split-second before she spoke, he suddenly knew exactly what was about to happen” STRAIGHT UP, UNFILTERED GOLD. Like, there’s no other explanation, really. You’re the Midas of Belvafore. I’m calling it, it has been declared, no take backsies or arguments from you, young lady.

I AM NO SUCH THING BUT I WILL TAKE IT ANYWAY.

The Elena Talk

Stefan’s safe space being Bonnie’s room – my heart. There are a lot of things I don’t like about canon, you know, but it would have made so much sense to have a stefonnie friendship (more than bamon, honestly). I didn’t know I needed it until SMA lol.

Listen, I was never into it until I wrote this. I don’t even know where it came from - I legit think the clips for the first trailer I made just worked out that way so I rolled with it, but once I started writing it it felt so natural? They just bounce off each other so easily, it’s one of my fave dynamics to write in a fic full of dynamics I love to write.

The glow-in-the-dark stars: I can totally imagine Stefan helping Bonnie move into every new place, and once all the boxes are in, he’s like, all right now for the real reason I helped you move in, and he rearranges the constellations by memory.

LMAO YES.

The fire escape call backs lol. I feel like every single person in this universe is a shit-starter—it just comes easier to Daroline lol.

The segue from the glow-in-the-dark stickers to “Bright things fade” in reference to the bright, warm, gooey-ness that was Stelena. You already know, I am impressed times a thousand, as always. I also think using this space theme between them is interesting and something to be explored. (I feel like an English teacher, and like maybe it was intentional, maybe it wasn’t. Either way, there is something there, and honestly, as the writer, it was your gut feeling to go with this theme, so maybe it was a subconscious effort, if not fully intentional). (Fight me).

We can go with me having complicated, writery instincts with layers and intricacies that are all very intentional or we can go with me not being creative enough to come up with another metaphor. 

The Meet-Cute has a quality that makes it perfect for Stelena. Yes, you are the author, and yes, you created what is ‘perfect’ for them, and yet? It could have easily been a different meet-cute, not Stefan’s speechlessness or her instant smitten-ness. God, he is such a Ted Mosby. But, at least, he’s learning from his Elena experience, that love may not exactly work like that. Maybe love-at-first-sight is a thing (hard maybe), but like Caroline soon alludes to, it’s more devastatingly impactful if love is grown as between two friends or even two people who don’t even like each other (both ships, honestly).

THE TED MOSBIEST. I honestly had trouble writing some of that scene because I was trying to walk the fine line between ‘this guy is sappy and unrealistic but ultimately earnest’ and ‘this guy has imposed wildly unrealistic ideals onto the world around him and it comes from a place of entitlement and privilege and neither the narrative nor the characters condone it’. I’m a big hater of the Ted Mosby’s of the world because I feel like they go through the motions of ‘growing’ but actually just keep doing the exact same thing and falling head over heels for girls that ‘disappoint them’ without ever seriously looking at themselves, so what I tried to do in the scene was show the side of Stefan that’s kind of messed up AND the side of him that realizes he’s kind of messed up. I wanted Caroline’s original dislike of him to make a little more sense, but also wanted to show you why he’s different from the prototypical Nice Guy. He knows that he was unrealistic. He knows that he purposefully turned a blind eye to red flags. He knows that he was putting too much weight on something that had a flimsy foundation at best. But he’s still human and admits that he’s never felt something that electric before, despite all that knowledge, and that’s why he hasn’t been able to shake this for two years. SO yeah, he’s an interesting one to pin down.

Sidenote about the Salvatores: I think it’s interesting that the first person Rebekah calls is Stefan, Stefan calls Lexi. Does that mean Lexi calls Freya? Freya probably doesn’t call a damn one of them lol. It’d be interesting if Lexi or Freya called Rebekah, for non-logical thinking, you know what I mean? I feel like Freya (even though it should be impossible to feel anything about her, considering she’s just a thought at this point) is very well-grounded, and she has a harder time thinking with her heart—and that’s why she might call someone like Rebekah. Omg, could you imagine that they all want to call Stefan, but if he’s busy, they call one another like, “Okay what would Stefan say? What would Stefan do?” Lol, headcanon.

Honestly this is perfect. And you’ve got Freya down to a T so idk how that happened. One of my fave things is getting headcanons about the Salvatores because they’ve basically had like one scene (two for Rebekah) on the phone and yet everyone just gets them. Every headcanon I get is spot-on. It’s delightful.

“Sounds like you and me”… “You said scowls and blizzards and vomit-inducing disdain, right?” lol oh Caroline. Allergic to a sincere moment, either reacting very, very violently or with a joke to help alleviate his discomfort.

She’s a syrupy little thing.

“Nothing could diminish the drug-rush feeling that’d flooded his veins”. I think it’s interesting that his reaction is “Nothing could ever make him forget that he was capable of feeling that much” and not that he wanted to feel that feeling again. It seems like him staying with Elena was him resupplying that feeling, but irl, it seems like people are more likely to relationship-hop, thinking that the relationship/the significant other was at fault, that love in its full drug-like capacity is worth it and they need, need, need it. It’s interesting that he turned inward and actively avoids feeling that way. He later says “It’s so hard not to want to feel it again” but what keeps him from feeling that way again? Is it Caroline’s fear of a person’s potential to ruin? Or maybe it’s just that he hadn’t found someone who is like that? Does Stefan even date around? I’m curious about your insight.

This actually took me a while to pin down in the story because canon was so all over the place with Stefan’s love life - I feel like he had a new love-of-his-life-from-the-past every season and if it wasn’t this random guest star, it was the other one, you know? He was kind of a serial monogamist in canon and yet still managed to have this distinct air of believing in a singular soulmate/’Elena’ lowkey being the be all, end all, you know? So I basically ignored that confusing shit and conceptualized him as a very picky person when it came to love. He doesn’t fall easily - or before Elena, ever. He mentions dating Valerie in high school and I’m sure he went on a few dates here and there in early college, but Elena was a punch in the face for him. He didn’t know what it was about her. He’d never felt that way about anyone before, not even close. Love wasn’t even really the drug-rush, it was her, specifically. That’s why he hasn’t felt it again, that’s why he’s scared he never will - it was entirely tied to Elena. If we wanted to analyze the ‘why’ of it all - why her, why would someone so picky just see someone and feel something they’d never felt before - I would probably say that Stefan grew up with a very specific picture of what he wanted in life, and for whatever reason, she looked exactly like what he’d imagined. The dark hair. The soft features. The romantic eyes. I think it also ties into canon a little, too, since in TVD he was immediately drawn to Elena because she looked exactly like Katherine. Immediate, visual enrapture. So yeah, long story short, I don’t see him as a guy who dates around a lot. I see him as a guy who, pre-Elena, thought he knew exactly what he wanted and never really compromised until he (thought) he found it. And now I see him as a guy who realizes that was an incredibly stupid way to think about love but worries it’s the only approach he’s capable of/that’ll make him feel that incredible feeling.

“But I’m scared I will anyways… And you’re scared you won’t.” Oof. Biggest oof.

I like how Stefan says he doesn’t want to sound like a cliché, but he’s a Disney prince. It only makes sense that he would feel that way, you know? It only makes sense that his life would play out that way. Who are this boys’ parents? How did they indoctrinate him? Or, rather, what thing made him this way?

He’s a mess. This is what happens when you’re the lone golden boy in a family of six and everyone indulges your unrealistic bullshit as cute/funny.

Your writing, for this movie montage of their love, is so perfect. Rude. The imagery! The word-choice! The whole thing reminds me of a caramel-candy commercial, where everything is warm and gooey and slow-motion. Clearly I’m not as cultured to compare to a Sundance film lol, but nonetheless, you did an excellent job describing that warm-toned, rose-colored-glasses kind of love.

Wow, I just realized how much Stefan sounds like the stereotypical ‘male author’. Except he has some decency not to describe the weight of her breasts or her aura during sex (eyeroll). Even his “and he was happy to be her anchor to that for the rest of their lives if she needed him to be”. Idr when, but Stefan shakes off some fairytale notion, saying ‘life doesn’t work that way’ or something – that is character development that we didn’t know we needed!

CAN YOU IMAGINE STEFAN DESCRIBING THE WEIGHT OF ELENA’S BREASTS now I need it

Yeah, honestly, I already said it but I’ll say it again - half the battle of writing that scene was giving Stefan just enough Ted Mosby/Male Author vibes to make him realistically flawed but not going too far as to making him someone you’re actively not rooting for anymore. I think you make a great point, though - he’s growing out of it and recognizing the role he played in his relationship failures and I think that’ll hopefully be what sets him apart.

Also, kudos for the Colorado trip call back. I think it’s very telling how invested and how thought out your process is for these characters by how you using some passing details like, Steroline skirting around their Matt and Elena stories, and then actually using them in their ‘origin’ stories… like, again, you didn’t have to, but you! went! there! and you did a phenomenal job, dude. Again, just a testament to how invested you are. Sure, you could say you wrote it out of order or something brush-off-y, but  to even consider, oh hey continuity is a thing, is great. We stan an Awesome Writer!

lmao I’m so happy you get as much enjoyment as I do from little details like that - I’m usually pretty terrible at it because updating within a normal time frame? Don’t know her. But anytime I see a chance to make a random detail I threw in years ago feel remotely deliberate, I’m all over that shit.

“He felt the barest flicker of defensiveness shoot through him… instead he thought back to the trip”. Hopefully, before I submit this, I would have submitted a list of headcanons I have. One of them is that Stefan’s so well-adjusted via his introspection, that I think one of this parents are a therapist of sorts. I’m just calling it.

oooo, I LIKE that. Largely because Therapist Parents would annoy the everloving hell out of Lexi, lmao - I feel like she’s the prototypical daughter of therapists who goes out of her way to be unpredictable just so her parents can’t psychoanalyze her/figure her out.

I wonder if Stefan still thinks he and Elena could have OTP. Like, he says “or, at least, as much sense as the idea of her and a guy like Liam will ever make to me”. Because if Liam is like canon Liam… she and Liam made total sense (aside from her still being a vampire). Oh but wait… Elena is an artist, not pre-med. Because Elena x Liam made sense in TVD, being pre-med kids, flirty and competitive and ambitious. If she’d never known about the supernatural world, it would make sense for her to be with a Liam, and not a Damon, because Liam is the human version of intense/consuming… Sorry about that canon tangent. Canon, I don’t know her?

Who is she? I think I went to high school with her but we weren’t friends. 

What’s SMA Liam like? Or is Stefan’s bitterness getting in the way of seeing, maybe, that Liam did make sense for Elena?

Re: Liam - it’s basically what you said above. Very different from canon Liam. Definitely played more of the canon Damon role re: this cocky, morally ambiguous bad boy that appealed to the darker/superficial/more selfish parts of Elena (that she felt she had to hide from Stefan). I think at the start of the story, there’s still a part of Stefan that thinks Stelena was OTP but the further it goes and the deeper he falls into this thing with Caroline, the more that part disappears. I think it’s really easy to idolize something when you have nothing to compare it to, and even more so when you have no closure so you stay stuck on it and time keeps passing it and making it more and more immortalized.  With Caroline in the picture now, though, I think it’s shifting his relationship with Elena into a different, more exposing light and revealing some of the insubstantiality of it all. 

Elena’s “it’s was like all those awful parts of me were allowed to exist again” speech is so heartbreaking. I know we’re here to cheer for Stefan, be on his ‘side’, and in no way am I saying cheating is condonable, but it’s another great example of how a writer can make you root for both sides of a broken-up couple. A mentor of mine once told me the sign of a good therapist is for each person in a couple to think you’re on their side. And I’m applying this to writing now. Not, in anyway, can I apply this to Matt (fuck that guy), but I get it for Elena. And it totally makes sense that Stefan was like that, or has a potential to be that way.

This was exactly what I was going for so I’m so happy that’s what your fancy talented therapist brain got out of it. 

I love how Caroline’s conversation of ‘you can be this way and the situation was not your fault’. Basically, to say to Stefan ‘you don’t know if you could have loved the real Elena’ and ‘you didn’t deserve what Elena did’ is such a good conversation to have. Because knowing this Soft Boy and knowing how most people feel when their partners cheat, it would make sense for him to blame himself. It seems he does that by the way he holds himself back from doing that to Caroline.

Wow, he even comes to this realization, “he hadn’t been able to reconcile the idea of both of them being a little right”. Don’t I look dumb lol… time to retreat….

NO because as I was writing that dialogue I kept getting it wrong and either making it sound like Caroline was blaming him completely or too much on his side and I was struggle-bussing to strike the exact balance you’re describing so NOT DUMB AT ALL. Exactly what I was flailingly going for.

Caroline’s “Okay, now, you’re just indulging.” Another headcanon, Steroline have made a rule to say, “do you need a moment” for any self-indulgent emotion in a conversation. But they only allow a moment. That’s it. ~feel and let go~

Wow, Caroline a combination of all the Salvatore Sisters? Works like a Freya, thinks like a Bekah, talks like a Lexi.

😂this just got vaguely Freudian but also, yes.

“I don’t want to be the guy who makes people feel like they have to pretend around him. That guy sucks.”/ “That guy does kind of suck” BUT ALSO “You may have a certain gooey idealism about you that makes people want to, I don’t know, believe in good things.” My fairly-new/just-for-SMA Steroline heart!

There’s hope for them yet.

The Knife Speech: yes. Wouldn’t it have been kinda funny if, instead of pretending to stab herself in the stomach, she pretended to stab him, a perfect foreshadowing. Also her “I’d imagine that’s when you’re really fucked, so… best is yet to come for you, Salvatore.” BUT WAIT. Perhaps the knife stabbing of oneself is the imagery of allowing one’s self to be stabbed, to be gutted, to be vulnerable enough to be in love. (Here goes English-teacher Cassandra again, please forgive her, she’s eager and truly a huge fan).

This is a perfect example of you making me sound like a hundred times better of a writer than I actually am because I legitimately do not remember who she pretended to stab in the gut and I also thought you were going to say ‘wouldn’t it have been kinda funny if she actually stabbed him and he died gurgling in shock’ and was ready to enthusiastically agree.

On a different note: “Wouldn’t you like to know.” / He’d very much like to know. How does one create such sexual tension in one small exchange? Big oof again.

Honestly this makes my life because I always feel like I’m SO BAD at getting these mood whiplash lines to pack enough punch. Like they always do in my head when I can see the delivery and the camera shot and whatnot, but when I write it I’m always like ‘eh. I mean. I guess’. TRUST YOURSELVES FRIENDS.

Bamon in the Bathroom

First off: “In my defense, you goaded me into playing” / “Yeah, well in my defense, I didn’t know I was releasing the fucking Kraken”. L O L

Bonnie’s winning – “But hey, a win was a win, right?” – I love it. Never underestimate Bonnie Cutthroat-Competition Bennett!

“You’re kind of a maniac, you know that?” paired so deliciously with “Didn’t say I wasn’t a maniac, too.” AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. I think I forgot how much I loved bamon and all their goodness? Especially your version. Ahhhh!

“You know, for a doctor, you’re really bad for my health.” Bad for your heart! ‘Cause she’s got it racing! Oooo, burn!

That’s such a Kai line I’m dying.

Bonnie getting all defensive and going off about how she doesn’t mind “being the person that someone needs at the end of the day” (serious Stefan vibes, doesn’t he say this at one point also?), and Damon being all, like, heart-eyes and shit, calling her ‘surprising’ and stuff. Good content, yes, yes, please continue.

Ooo, didn’t even make that parallel between Stefan and Bonnie (because I am, in fact, a garbage author) but it’s so cool that you bring that up because on Stefan, that line can easily sound a little self-aggrandizing - it’s coming from (again) a place of privilege, of playing the hero because he’s had this charmed life and it’s the right thing to do, but from Bonnie, it’s almost the exact opposite. She didn’t have that growing up. She was the person without anyone in her corner. So with her, it’s not a hero complex, it’s a victim-turned-survivor motivation. I feel like I’m being really mean to Stefan in these responses lmao I gotta back off, I adore that kid. Just keepin’ it real. 

“Maybe I’ve handled enough” in a playfully dramatic way, and yet, Bonnie’s full realization that (the man of her dreams) Damon probably has been through enough, and she knew what that was like. Sad boy hours.

Sad boy days.

Bonnie avoiding tension by returning to tending to his wound, Damon avoiding tension by returning to his sexy-mysterious-guy vibes. I almost titled this “SMA and the Many, Many Ship Parallels”.

The whole scene that I shall call “I go by daddy, actually” which is just vague enough to make me laugh wildly in this library full of undergrads studying for finals—and because the scene is so ridiculous and hilarious and so, so Bamon, I will die cackling.

I’m brainstorming ways to bring more ‘daddy’ energy into chapter 18.

Belavafore

“Why are you like this?” / “We’re embracing the great outdoors!” Use what he loves against him, honey, you’re doing great.

“Okay, you’re right, I’m sorry.” / “No, you’re not.” / “No, I’m not.” / “Would it help if I said I’m proud of you? … I really am.”

I love how much lighter Steroline has become. Like Caroline just casually throwing the responsibility of “Go for it” / “Forgive yourself for something” to Stefan is so… unlike her. I feel like she’s the type that shows people up whenever they’re afraid to do something, like tell their waitress this is not what they ordered. Because that’s exactly it. This whole forgiving themselves thing was not what Caroline ordered- just a side of cheesy jokes on Stefan.

GIRL YOU AND ME BOTH, I was so tired of writing their tension oh my Gooooooodsicles. I basically spent sixteen chapters trying to earn the ability to write them this light and this comfortable and this open with each other so I SAW MY CHANCE AND TOOK IT.  

“I can’t believe we’re listening to happy4eva dot com.” / “We’re not, we’re listening to me” / “Is that any better?” I agree with Caroline and am fully happy to admit I am in love with Stefan’s sass.

“Some of us are capable of taking this seriously” / “What makes you think I wasn’t serious about the printer ink?”

Leash him.

Caroline’s “Here was all she needed to be” realization and acceptance is giving me so much life, I’m teeming with so much love and pride and straight up inspiration, dude, bless.

Caroline’s cathartic sobbing, and Stefan’s, “I think you might be forgiving yourself.” My whole heart is just FULL and maybe I TOO started crying, YOU CANNOT PROVE ANYTHING.

Filed under: scenes I wrote horribly the first few times and still was not convinced I got right by the time I finally posted it so thank God it made someone feel something because ya girl was skressed.

Bonnie going onto the fire escape without coat or shoes, despite hating the cold, just to be there for Caroline, to hug her and be happy for her forgiveness journey is the most Bonnie thing, and I am living for it.

Tag-line for Damon: “She could always count on Damon to be a shithead”.

Bonne saying her date was horrible, Damon mentioned Kai still being present – so mom and dad of them! Did I mention this in a previous review? Maybe. Ugh, I love them so much, I don’t mind if I ramble the same few things about it and your incredible writing of them.

Baroline deciding for the boys ‘this is something we are doing’. *arc snap* love it!

<3

“You jump, I jump, Jack.” I’ll be honest with ya, when I first read this, I was like, dude I love you madly but it feels a little too late to bring this friendship quirk up in here, but then I was like, who the fuck says? You did a great job explaining the context of it, and I love it! Please bring it back! You know, when you write more…

LMFAO no girl I thought the exact same thing, so much so that I went back and edited it into the chapter where Bonnie apologizes to Caroline after her bender. It was totally too late to introduce but I was like ‘I don’t really know what else to put here so we’re gonna pretend this has always been a thing, join me friends in this who cares revisionist approach to writing’.

Steroline being protective of Bonnie’s feelings paralleling with Damon’s protectiveness of Bonnie’s physical wellbeing. It’s just much like, ‘I’m not good at the emotions thing, may I offer you a blanket and some boots instead?” Very in-character of him, this is good, good stuff.

YES, exactly what I was going for! I feel like my entire reaction to your review is either going to be YES EXACTLY YOU WORDSMITH or ACTUALLY I AM FAR TOO DUMB TO HAVE DONE THAT ON PURPOSE BUT I LOVE IT LET’S GO WITH IT.

Bonnie using the ‘you were mean to me’ to get Damon to participate!!!

Caroline’s only known Damon for a month?????? This would make sense, a little, but also it feels like so much longer. (this isn’t me side-eyeing the author, she’s busy and doing important things, but also…)

😂😂😂😂

Bonnie’s prompting of Damon, “And?” felt very much like when you’re at the doctor’s office, and they’re listening to your heart, and they’re prompting you to take a deep breath “again” and quiet and waiting. Was this on purpose? Even his “how many do I have to do?” and her “Just one more.” Feels very much like when they’re in the bathroom, and he’s being a literal child under her medical care.

This definitely falls under the ‘not smart enough to have done that on purpose but I love it so let’s go with it��� category.

“Fuck you world, I’m perfect!” inspired by our resident sociopath (who has no regrets, naturally lol). LOVE. It really aligns with Caroline’s “here” realization, and later, Damon’s “okay, noted” response. It’s kinda messy of them, considering they’re clearly not, but the acceptance and willingness to say, fuck you world, I don’t need to conform to whatever, is so nice. So, so good. So much growth. And the title name-drop! And all of them cheering one another on (especially Stefan)!

“…Damon sasses, making Bonnie’s bright laugh even louder, and in that exact moment, with Damon’s hand caught in some kind of Z-snap and Bonnie gasping for air and Stefan’s eyes crinkled from the size of his grin, she felt something shift for her… And looking at the laughing faces surrounding her, their movements arrested in some kind of vibrant slow-motion, the glint of the flurrying snow around them like magic, she couldn’t help but think that it had to be something good.” (okay maybe now I will admit to more crying).

Kai vs the Neighbor and Caroline’s realization of ‘this guy is crazy I like him’. She doesn’t like a cat, but Kai, she’s here for. “That was amazing!” / “Thanks! I still don’t understand you.” love it!

I think I’ve edited this scene (what don’t I edit) since you read it but I think all the parts that stood out to you were ones I mostly kept the same, so that makes me really happy. I had a blast writing it, particularly Kai vs. The Neighbor and everyone just giving in to hedonistic self-acceptance for that one, sparkling minute. It felt needed and I’m so glad it seemed to trigger all the right emotions. 

Scrabble, Backstories, THE Kiss

I know this is not what I was supposed to take away from this, but I like Bonnie’s dark moments, lol. Like her joke about her mom not being around. Like, it makes her more real. Like Stefan’s sass makes him more real. No one is just the One Trait that ‘defines’ them, whatever the fuck that means.

I love writing those moments. I talked about this a few paragraphs up, but a big part of why I love writing Bonnie and Damon is exactly those moments - the ones where she can make a joke about her absentee mom and Damon can laugh at the idea of Kai assassinating them. They need that. They need to be able to do that. It doesn’t feel real to me otherwise. It doesn’t feel special, you know? Why are they so drawn to each other if not for precisely that? Their ability to be every part of themselves around each other - the hopeful parts, the selfish parts, the angry parts, the vulnerable parts - is what makes them tick the most, so I’m excited I’ve gotten to the point in their development where they can do that. There’s a scene pretty early in chapter 18 where they have another one of those moments, where Bonnie lets Damon get this sort of ugly/twisted glimpse at her that she’s hiding from everyone else, and she does it with this casualness that I really enjoyed writing. She’s not afraid of judgement. She’s not afraid of what he’s going to think. She knows he gets it, and he does, and it’s simple but I think it means so much more than grand gestures or big sex scenes do for them (but those are fun too lol).

Aw Damon wanting to know more about Bonnie. We see a lot of Bonnie’s curiosity about Mr. Enigma, but he’s embarking on this conversation without really knowing where it’d go or what he wants from it.

That’s a big shift that’s carrying into 18 - Damon’s officially starting to get hooked. It’s been so fun writing him in this shifting context of developing confusing feelings because he’s kind of a disaster about it - especially because Bonnie’s distracted by all the Steroline drama so she’s not even full cognizant of it. 

Wow, why am I just noticing this: “He thought about the fire escape, about the things she’d claimed to forgive herself for, and dwelled in the awareness that they’d all been just as performative as his” !!!! excuse me! NOT OKAY. I guess they haven’t had the chance to talk it out like Steroline did, and maybe that’s part of the reason it was more difficult to jump onto the forgiveness train right away.

Yeah, they still have a long way to go. Honestly, I don’t even know if forgiveness really fits what they need. Bamon strikes me more as just needing to accept themselves, and I think being able to accept each other so casually and completely will play a big role in that. 

“He wasn’t sure when she’d started taking up actual real estate in his thoughts, but it was kind of a disorienting realization.” !!!

“He used to let himself feel every last lick of it [his anger], blistering and white-hot… it’d bite and fester at the inside of his skin till it wore itself out slowly bled out of his pores” that’s good stuff there, dude, great description.

“That was all before he’d met Katherine, though. Before she’d shown him how to turn it all of instead.” Nice nod to that dumpster fire of canon. Datherine was such an interesting thing that could have been cool. The debauchery, honestly, instead of Damon desiring to be ‘good’ or some shit.

I honestly don’t even remember their canon dynamic and I think it’s probably better that way.

“She’d moved on from the question. He’d had an out. But for some reason, he had this weird, anxious feeling, like an opportunity was flashing past him and he didn’t want to just let it. So he kept going.” We stan character development and growth. You go, baby!

I wonder what it was like for Damon, to re-testify. Was he all shelled-up, the Damon who jokes his way through, who doesn’t give a single fuck about anything, or was he Lily’s scared son, traumatized and hurt, unable to make eye-contact or even lift his head during his testimony?

I think he was forcibly numb to the whole thing until he saw her. Probably being sarcastic under oath, acting like this was a waste of his time, but distinctly edgier than usual. I don’t think he was planning on seeing her and I don’t think he was even supposed to, given the whole witness protection thing, but knowing Lily, she probably dreamed up a way to make sure she was being transported at the exact moment she knew he’d be there, and seeing her and how entirely unchanged, unrepentant, undulled she was after seventeen years, daring to look at him like a project she was coolly proud of, just flipped him out a little. 

“She looked protective./ He wasn’t sure anyone had ever looked protective of him before.” AHHHHHHH.

Once you have a Gryffinpuff in your corner there’s no shaking them.

Damon’s “Here” paralleling to Caroline’s “Here”. Two sides of the same coin, though. Caroline’s “here” was liberating and existing meant so much for her, but Damon’s “here” is just existing, not feeling or holding on to anything.

Okay, I will admit this one I did on purpose.

“Kai could probably kill them both if we asked.” Dark!Bonnie, yas queen, slay!

“They didn’t just ‘happen’ / “I did them. I actively ruined those people’s lives.” I know it seems like I’m grasping here, but this just really seems to echo Caroline’s speech to Stefan, that Elena made choices. Bonnie made choices too. Does this mean Elena is just as redeemable as Bonnie is? Stay tuned to probably never find out.

Elena Redemption Arc 2029

Damon: “In fact, it’s [accepting the ‘bad’ parts of her] not going to change you at all—they’re already part of you, they’ve always been part of you. I’m not saying they’re shiny or pretty but honestly, fuck shiny and pretty.” Stefan’s rejection of Elena’s ‘darkness’, Damon’s acceptance of Bonnie’s ‘non-shiny, non-pretty’ elements. I’m just saying dude, conscious or subconscious—your Inner Writer is doing amazing, sweetie, please keep it up forever, thanks.

“Goodness wasn’t default coded into you but having some perfect life that never tempted you to be anything else.” / “To me, that’s a hell of a lot prettier and shinier than someone who never had ugly as an option.” *sings quietly* Tell me how I’m supposed to breathe with no air? 

lmfaoooo why do your expressions always murder me

‘I’m too tired to be funny’ fuck you this entire review is either poignant af or hilarious I was ill-prepared I was MISLED

“Your desperation to paint me out as some kind of reluctant hero is your real flaw—in fact, that should be the part of yourself you’re ashamed of.” OKAY THEN STOP BEING ONE

He’s so dumb. And we haven’t even gone into the Tyler arc. 

Baroline quoting Defan to throw their own words back at them like ninja stars, pinning them to their words’ truths.

We love a good Pin The Truth Bomb on the Idiot game.

 “I’m just saying there’s a chance you aren’t a complete supervillain.” / “I’d be a great supervillain.”

(I just had an overwhelming sense of maybe, someone in this very library, could be a SMA fan also. How wild would that be???)

I wrote this HP fanfic a long time ago that got weirdly popular and someone once left a review saying they saw someone else reading the new update at the airport and they ended up talking about it together for a little while and it was the greatest moment of my entire life

“He wasn’t sure what made him do it. Wasn’t sure if it was a pride thing, a contrarian thing, or a product of whatever weird mindfuck of a thing had been brewing between them over the course of the night, but before he even knew what was happening, he slid his hands up her face and caught her mouth in a swift, deliberate counterargument.” !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Damon’s analysis of Bonnie: more exclamation marks

“And that even without the varnish, even with all bitterness and fear and anxiety bursting through his cracks like light, he was worth seeing.” Actual tears in my actual eyes. I am not a crier, Gabi, what have you done

He’s a love-starved stray, LOVE HIM. PET HIM. 

Bonnie being all weirded out by the intimacy of the kiss, Damon apologizing about it, “He felt a flicker of resentment over the charm of her awkwardness.”

“If he didn’t know any better, he’d think it was the beginnings of another panic attack.” It’s the knife! (you know the Vine where the kid is running alongside a pool, and the woman behind the camera says, “what’cha got there?” and the kid is like “a knife!” and she’s like “no!” that’s this.)

I’M DEAD.

INEVITABLE. BOOM.

LOOK AT ALL THOSE CHICKENS

Steroline and the Case of the Heart-Eyes

“Laughing on that fire escape was the happiest he thought he’d ever seen her.”

Stefan being unable to deal with Caroline’s weirdo silence. Being nervous and worried about it, being super boyfriendy without actually noticing it. Him finally, full out, asking her what’s her deal.

“I’m out of reasons.” It’s so simple, yet so awwwww inducing.

Stefan going into straight up panic mode is so hilarious to me, even though it’s supposed to be more on the serious side lol. Like, I can just imagine Paul Wesley’s scrunched face, pushing away, avoiding any sort of physical interaction—and I’m cackling.

oh my God now I’m cackling

why is he like that

lmao I just see eyebrows I can’t

“I’m not that guy.” / “I’m the guy who can barely breathe right now because of the smell of your shampoo / who literally can’t open his eyes because if I look at you right now, I’m going to kiss you / who’s a few involuntary stares away from having the exact pattern of your freckles memorized—in fact, I honestly might already. Six on the right, six of the left, rebel freckle.” My heart. Gabi, stoppppp! I didn’t even ship this ship before SMA!

He writes his Boy Scout-ass self blame him.

“I’m pretty sure what makes me happy is you.” I cry so many tears. “I think I might finally be at the point where I’m more scared of missing out on that than I am of what letting it in might do.”

“His heart began humming in his throat at the way she was looking at him.”

“The hope in her eyes grabbed his stupid heart but its stupid heart throat and why the hell did he even pretend he had any actual choice in any of this?” There you go, buddy, finally getting with the program. A parallel to Bamon, and Damon’s wtf is happening to me caring about this cupcake of a person?

“No banning of the full spectrum of human emotion.” / “Do your worst, Disney prince.” / “Don’t know if you can handle that.”

Another artful sex scene. I know they’re not your Fav to write, but you do a real good job. Especially for these two and this moment of it being Real.

Bless, I just never know how they’re going to come across. So easy for them to feel cheesy. Glad this one didn’t tip too far into that territory. 

Caroline’s “No” and Stefan’s “a soundless projection of determination so palpable it bent the air into a word.”

“Her eyes were mosaics, art made out of jagged pieces – chipped trust and cracked pride glued together into something flawed and lovely.” Stefan has ruined every romantic thing for me. Thanks, bud.

He sucks.

Caroline’s ‘shift’ (which I am now just realizing she refers to as ‘a lock snapping undone’; giiiiiiiirl) and Stefan’s “and he felt the knife go straight through his gut.”

I can’t read that metaphor now without thinking about her legit stabbing him like a black widow and just completely 180ing this into a slasher fic.

Bonnie and the Contract

Short scene, yes. Bonnie’s absentmindedness, not just because of Damon, but because she doesn’t have eyes for this lol. It’s so casual how you described it too, “just some clothes, abandoned mugs, scatter of papers”, the usual, ya know, nothing to see here lol. Damon’s attempt to keep her from looking at the contract. Like, he was all mischief and trickery a few days ago, waiting for this very moment, and now, he’s all ‘oh uh you may wanna….’ tongue-tied. Short scene, yes. Great cliff-hanger, absolutely. Awesome way to close off what felt like whole movie worth of content? A million percent yes, sign me up for more!

Writing it def felt like a whole movie’s worth of content lmao so getting to that short, final, zippy cliffhanger scene was glorious. Felt like delivering a placenta. Like I’d already birthed the thankless succubus of a baby and all I needed now was the placenta I barely had to push to get out, you know? This metaphor got lowkey gross but fun fact one of the women whose placenta I delivered in OB wanted to keep it so her and her husband could eat it and I was like coolcoolcoolcoolcoolcool.

Okay, so this is a monster of a review for a masterpiece of a chapter (100+ pages, right?). Coupling happy and silly scenes with these intense confessions was amazing, and your fear of the emotional scenes not clicking is unwarranted! You’re truly a phenomenal writer, and I know I tell you all the time, but you need to hear it always and forever! I was recently telling my sister writing is my actual passion, and by the way in which you write, it seems like it’s, at least, one of your passions too. Like yeah, medicine is gonna be great, you’re gonna be awesome, and maybe I too will be successful as a therapist, but your passion and talent shines through your writing. YOU! ARE! GREAT! TRULY!

I will not apologize for such a long review, like I always do (13 pages babyyy), but I will apologize for basically rewriting the chapter in this review. I tried my best to simplify and summarize, but bro, so! many! good morsels of gorgeous similes and metaphors and descriptions and dialogue, and did I mention I am in love with your characters? your writing? your goddamn brain? Lol.

(Okay, I think I’m done. This took me almost three weeks to write.)

I truly hope you’re doing well, and if you’re writing, YAS, but if you’re not, you know what? You do you, girl, slay in whatever you’re doing. I am your support! I am your cheerleader! I’m here to bolster any sort of feeling you need! Love ya, toodles ;)

(If you’re new here and you got to the end of this review, hey I’m Cassandra, and you’ve made the best decision to read this fic. Gabi, look away, you’re not supposed to see my gushing about your story yet again. You, Reader, good on ya!)

Girl, I don’t even know what to say at this point. Your reviews are always just so lovely, so funny, so thoughtful, so insightful, so goddamn smart - I’m honored to have you as a reader, dude. Truly. Knowing you’re going to be reading challenges me to write better (and that’s actually true of a lot of you, if you’re reading this!). I adore having your therapist brain reading this, too, because it’s such a character-driven story and I’m writing about a lot of things I’ve never actually been through but have done my best to inhabit, and having your perspective is so wonderful. You find the motivations and you see the dimensionality and half the time your reviews actually give me ideas because you see things I don’t. So basically, all of this to say thank you. I adore you. You’re wonderful. And the one good thing about having taken so friggin’ long to post this response that I AM ACTUALLY WRITING lmao, and despite your busy life of saving people’s sanity and BEING FRIGGIN’ MARRIED, I hope you are, too! Love ya, babe. This was so kind. You’re a universe. 

#reply #review #six mornings after #17 #can I just call this a drabble #we're gonna do it #drabble #submission

[girlrottn]

the 𝑃𝐸𝑅𝐹𝐸𝐶𝑇 night for a 𝖙𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖊𝖉𝖞 ──

╰ °✧ ( MARGARET QUALLEY, CIS WOMAN, TWENTY-THREE, SHE/HER ) : — ❝ here comes ECHO CLEMONS to help guide the tour !  they’ve lived in deadmore for twenty-three years and do know that the myth is true. besides helping guide you all today, they are also a knife thrower at the deadmore grand carnival  !  they’re known around town for being adventurous, courageous, foolhardy, and impulsive. they’re said to give off  the sound of roller skates against pavement, curious glances, unmade beds, and autumn leaves stained with blood vibe. some people suspect that they're hiding that they recently joined the cult worshipping the deadmore monster. hopefully the town and tourists don’t find out ! ❞

howdy !! i’m spence, ur local weirdo with unhealthy obsessions w southern gothic shit & vampires !! i’m here to introduce you to my crazy baby echo uwu even tho she’s a little bit evil and a lot a bit weird, she’s not shy at all so feel free to hmu with any and all connection ideas you may have !!! i’m also in the process of getting a wc page set up for her so i’ll make a post linking it when i do !!!

TRIGGER WARNINGS for very brief mentions of death, violence, stabbing below the cut

𝐁𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐂𝐒: a rose by any other name would still have thorns.

full name: isabel lynn clemons nickname(s): echo, izzy to family only age: twenty-three date of birth: march 21 gender: cis woman pronouns: she/her orientation: pansexual panromantic religion: raised southern baptist, currently a member of a cult worshipping the deadmore monster occupation: 1/2 of a knife throwing duo at the deadmore carnival / circus, occasionally picks up gigs in the deadmore cabaret at right hand casino in the off season

character & aesthetic inspiration from: rose summerspring ( bad times at the el royale ), donald ray pollock’s ‘ the devil all the time ’, gillian flynn’s ‘ sharp objects ’, every kaleo song asdvadf

𝐏𝐀𝐒𝐓: resurrection is natural to beautiful things; a flower dies in autumn to be reborn in spring.

        isabel clemons was born on the first day of spring in deadmore, georgia. her dad’s side of the family, the clemons’, were an old money family, with roots laid down in deadmore just about as far back as it was founded. and he was expected to keep it that way ─ stay in the town, start a family, continue the tradition that his ancestors started generations back. which is why when he and isabel’s mother, a mississippi woman with strawberry blonde hair and a scowl that could knock a hog dead, had trouble conceiving for a number of years, he was terrified he would disappoint his family. but time, perseverance, and a healthy amount of prayer must have done the trick, because after four years of trying, they finally saw that little blue plus.          little isabel was a miracle, it seemed, so she was treated as such. from the time she could toddle, she was handed everything she could ever want. but along with being spoiled, as her parent’s only child, a lot was expected of the girl from a young age. she began ballet when she was four, violin when she was six, always made it to the finals in every spelling be, and only received one b in her entire school career. she had a strict curfew, wasn’t allowed to date, and her parents carefully cherry-picked each of her friends. well mannered, soft voiced, legs crossed, chin down, ladylike. she never lived the life of a teenage girl; instead she existed as some unreachable ideal ─ something to be bragged about, doted on, and appreciated from afar. it was only a matter of time until she snapped.          when fall of her senior year in high school rolled around, isabel made the first decision she had ever made without her parents’ expectations in mind. after months of silent contemplation, she decided to forgo sending in college applications. of course, she didn’t tell her parents about it until they confronted her, asking about the lack of letters they had been receiving in the mail and wondering if she was hiding the results. she explained to them what she had done, and that she didn’t want to go to university at all, and unsurprisingly it resulted in an enormous fight. for most eighteen-year-olds yet to finish their senior year in high school, being disowned and kicked out by their parents would be a tragedy, but for isabel it was liberating.         she went wild, embraced her newfound freedom. she was reckless, and did things without thought for the first time in her life, even changed her name to something she thought sounded more fun. it didn’t take long for her to lose her grip on reality, to become a hedonist who thrived on adrenaline. maybe that’s why it was so easy for her to say yes when the deadmore grand carnival’s knife thrower ( i may end up putting a wc up for this character so hmu if ur interested !! ) needed a new target girl. she giggled in the face of death in a way that only an unhinged teenage girl could. and she never stopped.

𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐓: the rose discovers she is an instrument of war

        in the years since echo impulsively took on the role of target girl in the carnival’s knife throwing act, she has picked up the skill herself ( her dedication seems to be one of her more redeeming qualities these days ), and the two performers know act as one another’s targets throughout their set. and given her volatile and impulsive nature, it wasn’t difficult for her to be drawn to the cult living in deadmore’s underbelly. she’s always had morbid fascinations, especially about the hushed whispers of the monster that the townspeople keep satiated. inevitably, those fascinations along with her inclination for the grotesque have led her straight to the cult, which she has promptly devoted herself to entirely despite the short time that she’s even known about it. 

𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘: i want to kiss a god or two on the mouth.

echo is usually pretty nice upon first glance ; she grew up being pressed hard to be well mannered, and it isn’t something that immediately dissipated as she grew out of the persona her parents had made of her. 

beneath the surface, though, she can be snide and she loves messing with people for no good reason. no joke. like, fucks with tourists and tries to scare them all the time, tells them she’s a vampire or a ghost or something and pulls a whole rouse just because she thinks messing with people is funny. 

also has a nasty habit of spreading gossip.

an enormous flirt. she never really did it before, because she wasn’t allowed to date so she just tried to steer clear, and now she’s making up for lost time. *mushu voice* she’ll flirt with you, she’ll flirt with your cow, she’ll flirt with your whole family

undying interest in things she was sheltered from as a kid, most notably chaos, violence, and anything grotesque. eats the shit up. straight up you could stab her hand or some shit and after she got over the pain, she’d just stare at it in fascination. not really averse to death, a late bloomer when it comes to the idea of mortality, doesn’t really subscribe to it. enormous god complex.

all that said, she’s pretty easily manipulated a lot of times, largely because of that same sheltered upbringing. she’s seen a lot more in the past couple of years than most can handle, treating everything like it doesn’t matter and life is just a dream-state she’s stuck in helps, but it also means it’s not hard to get her to go along with what other people want (as long as some kind of benefit for her, no matter how trivial, is presented). pair that with some wild impulsivity and nonchalance about danger and death and you’ve got a fun combo baybee

i’m gonna stop there because i’ve already written waaaayy too much... if you read this whole thing u truly are my hero wow... but that’s my baby !! catch her roller skating around deadmore being nosy in everyone’s business. call her isabel and she’ll slap u ! feel free to come scream at me if u wanna do things with her, thanks for coming to my ted scream goodnight

#no proof reading we die like men #dm.intro #i rlly don't know when to stop huh

[jonah-wright]

trying to get it wright || noah&jonah

Date: April 6th, 2019 

Location: The Lounge 

Summary: After everyone leaves the lounge for the evening, only Jonah and Noah are left, forced to confront each other, and of course, it doesn’t go very well. 

@noahwrightx

Jonah: Just as quickly as the lounge had filled up and was bustling, it had emptied, and even the last of the other occupants had left, leaving Jonah sitting on a chair, trying to keep himself a distance away from the reaper that looked both tired and agitated and all too much like he didn’t want him there. He should have left a while ago, but maybe he didn’t want to leave. It was no secret he wanted to know his brother, but avoiding probably would have been the better decision here. Teeth chew absently on the corner of his thumb, any current attempts to break the bad habit lost in his distracted state. “I-I’m sorry.” God he hates the way his voice stutters and cracks, taking a second to breathe and clear his throat. “I can um, go.” He says, though he doesn’t move other than his gaze shifting up, finally landing on Noah for once.

Noah: Noah could not seem to sit still in the newly silent lounge--he never could when he was uncomfortable, the anxiety that he couldn't hide leaking out in fluttering, bird-like hands, bitten nails. His fingers ran over the edge of his thumb as he watched Jonah bite at his own from the corner of his eye, a humorless laugh sticking in his throat at the thought that he did that, too. He swallowed it, shook his head at Jonah's apology, gave him strained, sad little smile. "No. You don't have to," he said, and ducked his head to rummage in his bag of candy--picked up a bag of chocolates, dumped them back in, began searching for something else, not that he knew what. His eyes flicked back up, met Jonah's briefly and then danced away again as he observed, "You're not from Kentucky."

Jonah: Jonah was so overly aware of his own movements, the way his knee bounced, the sting in his thumb where he was chewing, probably about to make it bleed with the way he was irritating the hangnail. He was so focused on his own nerves he barely registered Noah’s anxious movements. He lets out a little breath, catching himself and forcing his hand to drop from his mouth, curling it against his other hand as if to physically restrain himself from continuing to chew on his thumb. God he’d been stupid to come here. The lounge, the institute, all of it. Noah was probably better off not knowing him. He caught the smile, and honestly didn’t know how to interpret it. Noah was hard to read, to say the very least, not that Jonah had ever been very good at reading people. He’s not sure if he’s relieved or more nervous that Noah didn’t want him to leave, but at least the reaper didn’t seem angers, or if he was it was being contained. He watches, knee bouncing relentlessly as Noah digs through the bag, eyes shifting around the room, trying to figure out what to do himself, feeling all too restless. Eyes flicker back to Noah when the older man speaks again, and Jonah’s lips part, pausing for a moment before forcing a nod. “Oh yeah, I’m uh, from Denver.” He says his head continuing to nod, figuring when he’d met the other that he was from somewhere more south than him. Honestly his dad has refused to give him much info about his unknown brother. “I’m guessing that uh, you are?” He says, more or less returning the question because it seemed like the safe option, even though he had a million other questions in his head.

Noah: Watching Jonah's nervous shifting out of the corner of his eye, Noah could not help the guilt that swelled in his chest--he really had scared the poor kid, and fuck, yeah, okay, he'd meant to scare him, had been glad of it in the moment, but now... Well. He really was just a kid, on an island that he didn't seem particularly prepared for. It had been cruel. Noah's jaw worked as Jonah spoke and he plucked a candy from the bag, began picking at the corner of the wrapper with his nail, said, "Right. Denver. That's where you knew Rowan." A shrug at the question, a nod. "I'm from all over. But I--yeah. Louisville. Where my group home and foster homes were. It's--I mean, I guess I always assumed--your dad, he ain't--isn't he from around there?"

Jonah: Jonah allows his head to keep nodding, because that's what allows him to feel like he's got a grasp on this moment, when in all reality, he's does not have a grasp on anything. "We went to high school together." As if the small tidbit of information would give Noah was he was really looking for.  His knee continues bouncing, numerous questions caught on the tip of his tongue, but suppressed by the fact that the last thing he wanted to do was piss Noah off again. He shouldn't of come here, he knew that now, and he shouldn't have expected that Noah would want anything to do with him. But regardless of all that, he was here, and and it was just him and Noah somehow stuck in the lounge together and while he knew he should leave, he just didn't want to . Jonah listens, because as much as he questioned his dad about Noah, he'd been given minimal information, but the curiosity ran deep. He felt a twinge, a tug at himself somewhere deep when Noah mentioned foster homes, his eyes flickering down, feeling...guilty? Yes, guilty. "He uh, he always told us that he'd traveled a lot." He says, his head continuing to nod, teeth chewing on in the inside of his lip, forcing his hands to stay on his lap. "But uh, yeah, he's not from Denver."

Noah: "Oh," Noah said, which was an inadequate reply, but it was all he could think to say for a long moment. For all that he had imagined information about his parents, told stories as a child, he had never actually known anything real about them, not outside of their names, a photo found on an otherwise private social media page, the hazy, dream-like memories of toddlerhood.

He always told us that he'd traveled a lot.

He turned that around and around in his head for a long moment, and then--his face did something funny, confusion mixing with a smile that looked a little bit pained. "Us?" he asked. The word came out as a squeak and he had to pause, clear his throat, try again. "You said--us. Who is--who?"

Jonah: Jonah tensed slightly at the small 'oh' that fell from Noah's lips, his head that seemed to be continually nodding finally stopped, eyes shifting downwards because he didn't know if what he was saying was what Noah wanted to hear. The words spoken between them seemed to float in the air for a moment, and Jonah,  while he wanted to fill that silence, he forced himself to remain quiet.

Us.

Right. Jonah nods, because Noah didn't even know about the twins. A part of him didn't want to tell the older man, because he felt as if he were to tell him about the twins, suddenly he would be less important, or at least, that was always how it seemed to go.  

"Yeah uh..." He says with a nod, fingers picking at a thread on his sleeve, this part harder than the rest, because well, he'd always been used to being second to the twins, and it felt like that could be the case right here and now. "My uh, my older brother and sister." He says, tensing slightly. "Rebecca and Isaac. They're uh, they're twins." He says, forcing the words out, eyes refusing to look up, refusing to see whatever interest the other had in this new information.

Noah was utterly silent for a minute at the news that there were two more of them--twins! a brother and a sister! older! His father had forgotten him and moved on even earlier than he'd imagined!--and then, of all things, he laughed.

It was a laugh that was verging on hysterical, a strange, almost-giggle that probably made him look a little bit crazy, but hell, it felt good. It was a release, maybe, some of the unacknowledged emotions he'd been burying slipping out. When he stopped, he scrubbed a hand over his eyes, propped his head on one fist and smiled at Jonah--the first real smile he'd given the kid, wry but soft, genuine.

"Well. Old man loves his biblical names, don't he?" he said, and then laughed again, another little peal of giggles that he tried to stifle with his hand. "I'm sorry, I'm not--I'm not laughing at you, I'm just--fucking--Isaac and Rebecca. He ever actually pick up the good book?"

Jonah: Jonah tenses, because of all things he wasn't expecting what was about to happen. He was used to people fawning over his brother and sister, because well, they were good... at everything . But he certainly wasn't expecting the laugh that bubbled up from Noah, small for a moment and then building until borderline hysterical that forces Jonah to look up, brows knitting in confusion because this was not what he was expecting.

If he was being perfectly honest with himself, the way that Noah laughed at first caused his heart to hammer against his ribs in double time, worried that the other would much rather have known Isaac or Rebecca. But instead, Noah seemed... caught up on their names? Okay well, it hadn't taken Jonah long to realize that his father clearly had a thing for catholic names, especially when he'd been forced to sit through years of Sunday school until his parents had finally given up on that part of his upbringing.

The small flicker of a smile breaches on the corner of Jonah's lips because well... the fact that his father had decided that Rebecca and Isaac were good names for twins was pretty humorous. "He uh, he's always been pretty.... traditional." He says, not really sure what other way to phrase it.

Noah: "Traditional," Noah repeated with a little shake of his head, the laughter finally drying up, though that tentative smile still lingered. "Reckon that's one word for it, yeah," he said, and then, almost absently, "God, fuck that guy."

Of course, he seemed to catch himself as soon as he'd said it, expression turning sheepish as he went back to rummaging in his candy, gave up, searched his pockets for something to busy his hands instead. "I mean--sorry, he's your dad, whatever, I don't mean nothin' by it," he assured, dumping a handful of assorted trinkets onto the sofa in front of him. A shiny green button, a tiny wooden carving of a fish, half a pencil, a little tub of playdoh. It was the latter that he settled on, artist's fingers fidgeting with a lump of blue clay.

That was good. Better than the candy. Some of the tension seemed to ease from his shoulders, funneled into the clay in his hands.

"Did he--" Noah started, and then stopped, fingers pausing their movements before they started again and he cleared his throat, shook his head, changed tracks. "How old are you? You didn't--I ran you off so fast. I didn't ask."

Jonah: Jonah tries to pull a smile onto his lips as he watches the other's laughter start to subside, but it probably looks pained at best. He wasn't always the best with dealing with awkward or tense situations, never really knowing how to handle them. He blinks at Noah's next words, because even though he's thought the same sentiment before, many, many times, it had always remained just that, a thought. He had never once insulted his father out loud, the closest to which was if he complained lightly to Rowan. But he'd been taught to be polite, and respectful, and if he was honest, he would be way too scared to see just how angry his father would be if he found out he'd said anything against him.

Jonah however, shakes his head, because Noah had every right to hate Winston Wright, the man who had left him. The thought made him shudder a little, thinking of the other abandoned as a child. It was a thought he had to push aside, much like so many other things that were too much to deal with. "It's okay." He says quietly, watching the other with his distracted rifling through the candy bag. "I get if you hate him. Actually... you should hate him." He says, even quieter this time, almost as if Winston Wright, thousands of miles away, would be able to hear him if he spoke too loud.

Jonah watches curiously when Noah starts rifling through his pockets, pulling out all sorts of... stuff , and his head cocks slightly. Eyes watch the other's hands, focusing on that for a moment before his eyes flicker back up when Noah starts a question, but then stops. "Oh..." Jonah says, almost caught off guard with the question directed at him. "I'm 20." He says. "Isaac and Rebecca are 25, almost 26." He adds quickly, out of habit bringing up the twins, so used to them over shadowing him that he practically did it on his own at this point.

Noah: Noah's eyebrows raised at the quiet assurance that Jonah understood the way he felt about Winston Wright. He did hate him--more than he'd realized, actually, before Jonah's arrival stirred it up.

But there was no need to say that now. It was probably best not to, in fact--not to stir up his anger at Winston Wright and risk directing it at Jonah again. For all that he still wasn't sure he wanted anything to do with the kid, Rowan and Jude and Mercy had been right about that. It wasn't him that Noah was angry at, and the poor kid didn't deserve anything extra to be afraid of on the island.

And he really was just a kid. Twenty. Twenty, fuck. Noah was thirteen years older than him, had been on the street a year already when he was born, and he'd been at home, with parents, and older siblings, and--no, okay, that wasn't his fault. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, said, "Jesus. You're just a baby," and then, when he realized that might have been rude, "I mean--sorry, fuck, just--why did you come here? Looking for me? I don't get it."

Jonah: Jonah’s heart was hammering in his chest so hard he could have sworn that he could hear it with every awkward silence that fell between them.

He would have given anything to know what Noah was thinking. Did he think that Jonah was weird? Was he angry? Annoyed? Disappointed? Jonah lets out a breath, wondering if this would have gone better if he was Isaac or Rebecca.

Brows furrow a little when Noah says that he’s just a baby, lips parting to protest, because god, he hated being called a baby. He’d always been the baby of the family, more emotional than the twins, and it had garnered him ridicule and relentless teasing, so it tended to be a bit of a sore spot.

But Noah speaks again before he could get a chance to say anything, not that he’d have even known what to say. Jonah swallows, pausing at the question, because it was something he’d been asking himself since he found out about Noah. Why did he come here? He didn’t want to tell Noah that it was because he could never measure up to the twins and he so desperately wanted someone, anyone to relate to, to be proud of him. But he couldn’t say that. “I guess I just...” he starts slowly, trying to articulate himself carefully. “It just didn’t seem fair.” His gaze falls to his lap, not really doing a good job of this so far. “I just uh... I wanted to know you. I’m sorry that I came here.” He adds the last part quickly, because he knows now that the last thing Noah probably wanted was to know him.

Noah: He let Jonah take his time to answer, fingers anxiously working the clay in his hands. By the time Jonah began to speak, it had taken the shape of a tiny, crude turtle; he laid it out in his palm, began drawing lines in the shell with his thumb nail, eyes focused intently on his work because it was easier than looking at Jonah.

Eventually, though, Jonah stopped talking, and there was nothing more that Noah could do to the clay in his hands. He fell still, sighed.

"No, it's not fair," he agreed. "But it ain't your fault, sugar."

Of course, he couldn't only address that part, as much as he wanted to. I wanted to know you, he'd said, and then, I'm sorry that I came here, and hell, Noah couldn't blame him if he had regrets. Dragging himself around the world, away from his family, expecting--well, Noah didn't know what he'd been expecting, but it couldn't have been him.

He'd been a disappointment plenty of times in his life. It wasn't a surprise to be one again.

Shaking his head, his fingers curled around the turtle he'd sculpted, smashed it, started again. "Yeah," he said, not sure what he was agreeing to. "I'm sorry I ain't what you were hoping to find, kid. You--make yourself into things, life like mine. They ain't always good."

Jonah: Like Noah, Jonah’s eyes were fixated on the way the other’s hands moved against the clay, marvelling for a moment at the way it takes shape. Brows furrow when the others restless fingers stopped, the small turtle sitting in the other’s palm, eyes finally flickering down. He knew it wasn’t his fault for the way his father had left Noah, but he couldn’t help the guilt. Jonah swallows and stays quiet, trying to still his bouncing knees.

He was scared for the others reaction, dreading being told that Noah didn’t want to know him. That Noah would have preferred that Jonah stayed away. He honestly expected that, not the words that came out of Noah’s mouth.

“What? That wasn't what I—” Jonah says, shaking his head quickly, brows knitting together with stress, that guilt settling a little bit deeper. “I mean I wasn’t expecting uh, the wings or the um... other stuff." He says, glazing over the fact that his brother was dead, and was not acknowledging that yet. "But I know that you're uh, not happy that I'm here, and I uh, I'm sorry for that. For coming here and uh... inconveniencing you." He says, now avoiding the other's gaze, his own shifting to the side.

Noah: His head lifted at Jonah's response, expression unusually bare in his surprise, though of course it only remained that way for the briefest of moments before he mastered it again. Eyebrows furrowed, he gave Jonah a wry, amused sort of smile, tilted his head to one side as he considered him.

"The dead stuff?" he asked lightly, fingers still once more, the clay in his hands still formless, though it was clear he'd been shaping it into something. "Or the mean stuff?" he added, lifting one hand and miming punching himself in the face, as if he needed to explain what he meant.

A pause, and then his eyes turned back to the clay, his fingers resumed their movements. "I'm not--" he started, and then paused, shook his head. A second to consider, and then he tried again. "I don't know that I'm unhappy you're here," he said, and it was true. "Or if I am, it's not really you, it's just--you tell yourself certain things, to get by, you know? I've told myself a lot of things, over the years. And you--the fact that you exist means some of them ain't true." That was a lot of vulnerability, more than he liked, so he was quick to add, "Besides, I'm a fucking asshole, and I'm not really sure what I've got to offer you, kid."

Jonah: Noah's expressions only seemed to vary slightly, the other having far more control over what he was feeling than Jonah felt he had. He could feel the way the lines of stress on his forehead had formed and showed no signs of going away.

The stress only seemed to appear more evident in his features when Noah brought up the whole being dead thing, and it was bizarre to Jonah that he said it with a smile, like it wasn't something to be concerned or taken aback about. He watches the small punching motion that Noah makes, and well, yeah that had been... startling, it wasn't something that seemed to hang in the back of his mind like the other topic. "The first one." Jonah says quietly, continuing to attempt to hold his own hands still.

He couldn't seem to get himself to look away from Noah's moving hands, heart skipping a beat, because a part of him wonders if Noah is just going to tell him to get lost, to go back to where he came from, because he wasn't wanted here. He'd understand, if that was what Noah wanted, but that didn't mean it wouldn't hurt. He swallows, listening, and he just can't help the way his stomach twists in his gut, wishing, desperately that this could just be easy.

Jonah nods, the last few weeks giving him time to mull over what he hadn't really thought too much about before he'd come here. Since finding out about Noah his mind had been put into a whirlwind and all he could think about was how much he wanted to meet the other, not really how he would react. But now, now he understood. Of course Noah would be pissed, and hurt, and probably so many other things he couldn't comprehend. His head keeps nodding because he doesn't know what to say, knowing there's nothing he could do to make that hurt, or whatever Noah was feeling any less. "I'm sorry." He says again, because it feels like the only thing he can say right now that was even close to being appropriate.

His own expression shifts, because in all reality, Jonah felt like the one who had little to offer; not like Isaac or Rebecca would. They were the popular, likable ones, the ones that everyone got along with. But Noah seemed... different from the twins. Sure, he wasn't small and scrawny like Jonah, but there were faults, and something about that only made Jonah feel drawn towards him, the relief that at least one of his siblings wasn't perfect. "I just um..." He says, trying to find his words, letting out a little breath as he looks down into his lap again. "I don't really want anything... I just wanted to know you, I guess. But I understand if you don't want that." He says, his words a little slower, purposefully picked, and steady, an attempt to not show too much desperation.

Noah: “I can see how the dead thing might be a hard pill to swallow,” Noah said mildly, his eyes trained on his clay again. It seemed to be taking the shape of a bird this time, practiced hands shaping a beak and folded wings. “If it’s any consolation, it was either this or, you know, proper dead. Probably ain’t, but uh—ain’t a bad deal on my end. No heart beat, but my brain works fine. Well—much as it ever did.”

The last was offered with a self-deprecating smile, a brief knock of his knuckles against his skull, but it was a defense mechanism more than an actual joke. It was the same thing that drove him to undo spelling corrections in his texts, the undeniable instinct to make himself look less intelligent. It was largely useless now—he did not need to be underestimated by marks, or cops—but some habits died hard. He did not know why he was doing it with Jonah.

He shrugged at the apology because he did not know what to say to it. It was not okay, but it was not Jonah’s fault either, not really. He’d meant well, Noah understood, though he could not entirely understand why he’d been interested enough to travel all the way here.

“Nobody knows me,” he said mildly, an automatic response. It had been true, once, but he was not so sure now. He sighed, drew lines into his little bird’s tail with his finger, shook his head. “Or maybe they do, hell. I don’t know kid.” His hands fell still, the little bird held gently between them.

“I had a sister,” he admitted after a moment, and then, clarifying, before Jonah could panic, “A foster sister, I mean, and that went—“ he shook his head, lifted one hand to mime an explosion. “I don’t want to—“ Another cut off, the words ‘fail again’ dying on his lips, the unspoken truth tucked away, compartmentalized for another day, another session with Miss Jude.

He dragged his eyes away from the bird in his hand to look at Jonah. He could see the resemblance now—the hint of shared DNA, traces of his own reflection in Jonah’s face, except… Well. Except that Jonah’s face was so much more open. He had not learned to lie the way that Noah had, no trial by fire for survival to craft him into a thief and a conman and a fine actor. He was still soft.

And for whatever reason, he thought he wanted to know Noah.

“Can I think about it?” Noah asked finally. “It’s not—it’s not you, I just—I don’t know how to do—family.” And he was scared. And he did not want to agree only for Jonah to be disappointed when he realized what sort of person Noah was.

Jonah: Jonah opens his mouth, closes it, and repeats that two more times. He wanted to ask, the question on the tip of his tongue, his curiosity trying to get the better of him, but instead, he closes his mouth once more, the question lingering only in his mind. How could you possibly go about asking how someone died when they were sitting right there in front of you? It wasn't a situation he'd ever pictured himself being in. No heartbeat? Jonah works to keep his expression neutral, but even he knows it's a losing battle, the stress showing so clearly on his features.

The comment, the little gesture, he knew it well. Jonah, while he was someone that wanted to be smart, and perfect, and live up to the legacy that his siblings had created, he was also someone that put himself down more than anyone else. It was as if it would hurt less if he just pointed out how dumb he was so others couldn't do it for him.

Jonah swallows, listening, the whole conversation, or rather the few sparring words shared between them strung together by awkward looks and idle hands, was making him more than uneasy. He wonders how he ever could have come here thinking that he was just going to meet Noah and everything was going to be okay. Once again, he would be the first to admit how stupid he really was.

He had no idea the kind of life Noah had. He knew the other had been in foster care, he'd mentioned that, but for someone like Jonah, he'd only ever seen something like that from the outside. He knew he was lucky, he had a home, with two parents and siblings, and while things weren't necessarily ideal, he had no reason to complain.

Eyes flicker up at the mention of a sister, the other answering unformed questions in his mind with the additional information. But that didn't stop his heart from plummeting into his gut. Even now, when he knew that this was a bad idea, and he should have never come, he was hopeful. But of course, Noah already had someone, or he'd had. He wasn't sure what exactly Noah meant but he guessed it hadn't been good. But Noah had someone. The twins had each other. And Jonah had... his studying. He swallows again, nodding, looking down because he doesn't want the other to see the disappointment. He know's that it's not within his right to be disappointed, but he can't  help it. He doesn't see the other looking at him while he avoids Noah's gaze.

Fingers curl together, because he knows that this isn't going to work. He'd made an assumption, one that wasn't his to make, and he'd come here when he shouldn't have. Noah was better off not knowing that he existed, and all he'd done by coming here was stir up past hurt. "It's fine." He says, this time his voice feels hollow, because it's one he's manufactured for himself. Years of disappointment, of being told no, of having the twins walk all over him and do whatever they wanted while he was forced to linger in the shadows, it had taught him enough to pretend to be okay till he could find somewhere to be on his own.

"I shouldn't have come here." He says, eyes flickering up again, shoulders squaring, face shifting into an ambiguous expression that he'd be able to hold long enough to get out of there. Escape. That was his focus now, his mind shifting to it's more analytical state. There was a problem, a tension between them, and Jonah was the issue, so he knew to make it better he'd need to remove himself from the equation. "It wasn't fair to you, for me to just show up here. I'm sorry." He pushes himself up with one quick motion, standing somewhat rigidly. "I will..." He thinks for a moment, mind shuffling through his options. "...I might have to finish the semester here. But I'll start looking for places to transfer." The words weren't angry, or sad, rather spoken in a factual was as if this was just how it was, and how things were going to be.

Noah: Noah’s brow furrowed and he flinched visibly in his surprise at—well, at what felt an awful lot like a rejection.

He was silent for a moment, lips parted as he went over everything he’d said, tried to figure out what he’d done wrong. Hadn’t he been nice? He did not feel like he’d been unkind, or unreasonable—he’d been trying his best, in fact, to be open to the idea of allowing Jonah in his life, he’d been reminding himself who he was truly angry at, and yet…

“Oh,” he said finally, when it became clear that he needed to say something. Jonah seemed to be waiting for his response after all, lingering stiff and uncomfortable on his feet. His expression remained unguarded for one more second, confusion and perhaps a little hurt visible in the line of his brow and the slight down-turn of his lips, and then, as usual, he found his resolve and masked it.

“Alright, I guess,” he said with a shrug, as if it didn’t matter to him one way or another—which it didn’t, of course, why would he care? He didn’t. Jonah could leave if he wanted, it was better that way, the island was a shitty place and Noah was a shitty person and his being here did neither of them any good. He stuffed the clay he’d been fussing with back into its tub, destroying the bird he’d been crafting in a hurry, suddenly desperate to be out of here, before the ache in his stupid chest got worst. He didn’t care.

“Good luck then, kid,” he said, as casual as anything. He got to his feet, hesitated, then added, “You don’t have to go. I’ll go. From the lounge, I mean. Guards don’t really check here much, better than your cell.” He didn’t know why he was saying it, it wasn’t his business, Jonah had changed his mind and Noah didn’t care anyway, so why was he giving him advice? But before he could stop himself, he added one last thing—the tub of clay in his hands, dropped on the coffee table between them, a clear offering.

“For your hands,” he said, wiggling one of his own in the air, PlayDoh visible beneath his fingernails. “It helps. With—“ Another little wiggle, clearly meant to demonstrate the fidgeting that they shared, and then he nodded, once, stiffly, stuffed his hands into his pockets, and headed for the door.

Jonah: If Jonah had been anyone else, maybe he'd have noticed the flinch, or the way that Noah's face seemed to deflate. But instead his mind had switched over to autopilot, focusing on extracting himself from the situation that he had so clearly made uncomfortable. It was like something clicked into place that this wasn't going to work, that Noah would be better off without him around, and he needed to accept that now before it hurt too much.

But the swell in his chest and the prickling behind his eyes was enough to tell him that it still hurt, even if he didn't know the guy. Just another sibling that didn't want anything to do with him, nothing new, he'd get over it. Right? Right.

When Noah spoke again, Jonah nods, seeing now, the way he shrugs it off, of course only taking note after the other's mask had been put back on. It felt like a confirmation to him that this was right. This was what had to be done. Eyes blink for a moment when the little bird that, in Jonah's mind had taken shape so quickly and masterfully was suddenly crushed. Hands shove into his pockets to distract them.

He needed to get out of there, away from Noah, because he could feel that telltale build in his chest, the one that made him know he needed to be alone. But it was better this way, he kept repeating in his mind, over and over. Noah didn't want or need another sibling that was just going to disappoint him or whatever had happened with his foster sister. He didn't need Jonah. He gives another stiff nod at the wishing of good luck, shifting slightly but pausing when Noah moves to leave instead, telling him to stay.

He's scared to talk, fearing the way his voice would shake, so instead he stays silent for now. Eyes follow as Noah the small tub of PlayDoh is placed on the coffee table, and at first Jonah is confused. His gaze flickers back up to Noah. Oh.

"Thanks." There's a slight waver to his voice that he hates, but he says it anyway. He wants to say more. He wants to ask Noah to stay. But he just watches as the man walks away, waiting until he was completely out of sight, standing there for a few minutes longer. Swallowing, his eyes glance back down to the tub of PlayDoh, and before he can even think about it, his hand is reaching down and shoving it into his pocket. Raking fingers through his hair, Jonah paces back, and forth, and back again, stopping for a moment to kick the side of a couch. "Shit, shit, shit." He breathes in a whisper to himself, heels of his hands pressing into his eyes. It felt so final.

This wasn't how it was supposed to go.

#( chat. ) || noah wright #( jonah&noah. ) || for you there's nothing in this world i wouldn't do #( ooc. ) || why can't these big dumb idiots just get along