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SHADOW WORK: The Ultimate Guide

I. Why Focusing Only on the Light is a Form of Escapism

For most of my life, I’ve grown up firmly believing that the only thing worthy of guiding me was “light” and “love.” Whether through the family environment I was raised in, or the cultural myths I was brought up clinging to, I once believed that all you really needed to do in life to be happy was to focus on everything beautiful, positive and spiritually “righteous.” I’m sure you were raised believing a similar story as well. It’s a sort of “Recipe for Well-Being.”

But a few years ago, after battling ongoing mental health issues, I realized something shocking:

I was wrong.

Not just wrong, but completely and utterly off the mark. Focusing only on “love and light” will not heal your wounds on a deep level. In fact, I’ve learned through a lot of heavy inner work, that not only is focusing solely on “holiness” in life one side of the equation, but it is actually a form of spiritually bypassing your deeper, darker problems that, let me assure you, almost definitely exist.

It is very easy and comfortable to focus only on the light side of life. So many people in today’s world follow this path. And while it might provide some temporary emotional support, it doesn’t reach to the depths of your being: it doesn’t transform you at a core level. Instead, it leaves you superficially hanging onto warm and fuzzy platitudes which sound nice, but don’t enact any real change.

What DOES touch the very depths of your being, however, is exploring your Shadow.

II. What is the Human Shadow?

In short, the human shadow is our dark side; our lost and forgotten disowned self.

Your shadow is the place within you that contains all of your secrets, repressed feelings, primitive impulses, and parts deemed “unacceptable,” shameful, “sinful” or even “evil.”

This dark place lurking within your unconscious mind also contains suppressed and rejected emotions such as rage, jealousy, hatred, greed, deceitfulness, and selfishness.

So where did the Shadow Self idea originate? The concept was originally coined and explored by Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Carl Jung. In Jung’s own words:

“Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.”

When the human Shadow is shunned, it tends to undermine and sabotage our lives. Addictions, low self-esteem, mental illness, chronic illnesses, and various neuroses are all attributed to the Shadow Self. When our Shadows are suppressed or repressed in the unconscious long enough, they can even overtake our entire lives and causes psychosis or extreme forms of behavior like cheating on one’s partner or physically harming others. Intoxicants such as alcohol and drugs also have a tendency to unleash the Shadow.

Thankfully, there is a way to explore the Shadow and prevent it from devouring our existence, and that is called Shadow Work.

III. What is Shadow Work?

Shadow work is the process of exploring your inner darkness or “Shadow Self.” As mentioned previously, your Shadow Self is part of your unconscious mind and contains everything you feel ashamed of thinking and feeling, as well as every impulse, repressed idea, desire, fear, and perversion that for one reason or another, you have “locked away” consciously or unconsciously. Often this is done as a way of keeping yourself tame, likable, and “civilized” in the eyes of others.

Shadow work is the attempt to uncover everything that we have hidden and every part of us that has been disowned and rejected within our Shadow Selves.

Why? Because without revealing to ourselves what we have hidden, we remain burdened with problems such as anger, guilt, shame, disgust, and grief.

All throughout the history of mankind Shadow Work has played a powerful yet mysterious and occult role in helping us discover what is causing us mental illness, physical dis-ease and even insanity resulting in crimes of all kinds.

Traditionally, Shadow Work fell in the realm of the Shamans, or medicine people, as well as the priests and priestesses of the archaic periods of history. These days, Shadow Work falls more commonly in the realms of psychotherapy, with psychologists, psychiatrists, spiritual guides, and therapists.

IV. Do We All Have a Shadow Self?

Yes, we ALL have a Shadow Self.

As uncomfortable as it may sound, there is a dark side within every human being. Why is this the case? The reason why all human beings have a shadow is due to the way we were raised as human beings, often referred to as our ‘conditioning.’

“But I’m a good person! I don’t have a ‘shadow’ side,” you might be thinking. Well, the reality is that yes, you might be a good person. In fact, you might be the most generous, loving, and selfless person in the entire world. You might feed the hungry, save puppies, and donate half of your salary to the poor. But that doesn’t exclude you from having a Shadow.

There are no exceptions here.

The nature of being human is to possess both a light and a dark side, and we need to embrace that.

Sometimes, when people hear that they have a Shadow side (or when it is pointed out), there is a lot of denial. We have been taught to perceive ourselves in a very two-dimensional and limited way. We have been taught that only criminals, murderers, and thieves have a Shadow side.

This black and white thinking is one of the major causes of our suffering.

If the thought of having a Shadow side disturbs you, take a moment to consider whether you have developed an idealized self.

Signs of an idealized self include attitudes such as:

· “I’m not like those people, I’m better.”

· “I have never strayed.”

· “God is proud of me.”

· “Criminals and wrongdoers aren’t human.”

· “Everyone sees how good I am (even so, I have to remind them).”

· “I’m a role model.”

· “I should be validated and applauded for my good deeds.”

· “I don’t have bad thoughts, so why do others?”

Such perceptions about oneself are unrealistic, unhealthy, and largely delusional. The only way to find inner peace, happiness, authentic love, self-fulfillment, and Illumination is to explore our Shadow.

V. How is Our Shadow Side Formed?

Your Shadow side is formed in childhood and is both (a) a product of natural ego development, and (b) a product of conditioning or socialization. Socialization is the process of learning to behave in a way that is acceptable to society.

When we are born, we are are all full of potential, with the ability to survive and develop in a variety of ways. As time goes on, we learn more and more to become a certain type of person. Slowly, due to our circumstances and preferences, we begin to adopt certain character traits and reject others. For example, if we are born into a family that shows little interpersonal warmth, we will develop personality traits that make us self-sufficient and perhaps standoffish or mind-oriented. If we are born into a family that rewards compliance and shuns rebellion, we will learn that being submissive works, and thus adopt that as part of our ego structure.

As authors and Jungian therapists, Steve Price and David Haynes write:

“But, as we develop our ego-personality, we also do something else at the same time. What has happened to all those parts of our original potential that we didn’t develop? They won’t just cease to exist: they will still be there, as potential or as partly developed, then rejected, personality attributes, and they will live on in the unconscious as an alternative to the waking ego. So, by the very act of creating a specifically delineated ego-personality, we have also created its opposite in the unconscious. This is the shadow. Everyone has one.”

As we can see, developing the Shadow Self is a natural part of development.

But you also formed an alter ego due to social conditioning, i.e. your parents, family members, teachers, friends, and society at large all contributed to your Shadow.

How?

Well here’s the thing: polite society operates under certain rules. In other words, certain behaviors and characteristics are approved of, while others are shunned. Take anger for example. Anger is an emotion that is commonly punished while growing up. Throwing tantrums, swearing, and destroying things was frowned upon by our parents and teachers. Therefore, many of us learned that expressing anger was not “OK.” Instead of being taught healthy ways to express our anger, we were punished sometimes physically (with smacks or being grounded), and often emotionally (withdrawal of love and affection).

There are countless behaviors, emotions, and beliefs that are rejected in society, and thus, are rejected by ourselves. In order to fit in, be accepted, approved, and loved, we learned to act a certain way. We adopted a role that would ensure our mental, emotional, and physical survival. But at the same time, wearing a mask has consequences. What happened to all the authentic, wild, socially taboo, or challenging parts of ourselves? They were trapped in the Shadow.

What happens as we grow up?

Through time, we learn to both enjoy, and despise, our socially-approved egos because, on the one hand, they make us feel good and “lovable,” but on the other hand, they feel phony and inhibited.

Therapist Steve Wolf has a perfect analogy that describes this process:

“Each of us is like Dorian Gray. We seek to present a beautiful, innocent face to the world; a kind, courteous demeanor; a youthful, intelligent image. And so, unknowingly but inevitably, we push away those qualities that do not fit the image, that does not enhance our self-esteem and make us stand proud but, instead, bring us shame and make us feel small. We shove into the dark cavern of the unconscious those feelings that make us uneasy — hatred, rage, jealousy, greed, competition, lust, shame — and those behaviors that are deemed wrong by the culture — addiction, laziness, aggression, dependency — thereby creating what could be called shadow content. Like Dorian’s painting, these qualities ultimately take on a life of their own, forming an invisible twin that lives just behind our life, or just beside it …”

But while the Shadow Self may be portrayed as our “evil twin,” it is not entirely full of “bad” stuff. There is actually gold to be found within the Shadow.

VI. What is the Golden Shadow?

Jung once states that “the shadow is ninety percent pure gold.” What this means is that there are many beautiful gifts offered to us by our Shadow side if we take the time to look. For example, so much of our creative potential is submerged within our darkness because we were taught when little to reject it.

Not everything within our Shadow is doom and gloom. In fact, the Shadow contains some of our most powerful gifts and talents, such as our artistic, sexual, competitive, innovative, and even intuitive aptitudes.

The ‘Golden Shadow’ also presents us with the opportunity for tremendous psychological and spiritual growth. By doing Shadow Work, we learn that every single emotion and wound that we possess has a gift to share with us. Even the most obnoxious, “ugly,” or shameful parts of ourselves provide a path back to Oneness. Such is the power of the Shadow – it is both a terrifying journey, but is ultimately a path to Enlightenment or Illumination. Every spiritual path needs Shadow Work to prevent the issues from happening that we’ll explore next.

VII. What Happens When You Reject Your Shadow?

When shadow-work is neglected, the soul feels dry, brittle, like an empty vessel. — S. Wolf

Rejecting, suppressing, denying, or disowning your Shadow, whether consciously or unconsciously, is a dangerous thing. The thing about the Shadow Self is that it seeks to be known. It yearns to be understood, explored, and integrated. It craves to be held in awareness. The longer the Shadow stays buried and locked in its jail cell deep within the unconscious, the more it will find opportunities to make you aware of its existence.

Both religion and modern spirituality tend to focus on the “love and light” aspects of spiritual growth to their own doom.

This over-emphasis on the fluffy, transcendental, and feel-good elements of a spiritual awakening results in shallowness and phobia of whatever is too real, earthy, or dark.

Spiritually bypassing one’s inner darkness results in a whole range of serious issues. Some of the most common and reoccurring Shadow issues that appear in the spiritual/religious community include pedophilia among priests, financial manipulation of followers among gurus, and of course, megalomania, narcissism, and God complexes among spiritual teachers.

Other issues that arise when we reject our Shadow side can include:

· Hypocrisy (believing and supporting one thing, but doing the other)

· Lies and self-deceit (both towards oneself and others)

· Uncontrollable bursts of rage/anger

· Emotional and mental manipulation of others

· Greed and addictions

· Phobias and obsessive compulsions

· Racist, sexist, homophobic, and other offensive behavior

· Intense anxiety

· Chronic psychosomatic illness

· Depression (which can turn into suicidal tendencies)

· Sexual perversion

· Narcissistically inflated ego

· Chaotic relationships with others

· Self-loathing

· Self-absorption

· Self-sabotage

… and many others. This is by no means a comprehensive list (and there are likely many other issues out there). As we’ll learn next, one of the greatest ways we reject our Shadow is through psychological projection.

VIII. The Shadow and Projection (a Dangerous Mix)

One of the biggest forms of Shadow rejection is something called projection.

Projection is a term that refers to seeing things in others that are actually within ourselves.

When we pair projection and the Shadow Self together, we have a dangerous mix. Why? Because as psychotherapist Robert A. Johnson writes:

“We generally seek to punish that which reminds us most uncomfortable about the part of ourselves that we have not come to terms with, and we often ‘see’ these disowned qualities in the world around us.”

There are many different ways we ‘punish’ those who are mirrors of our Shadow qualities. We may criticize, reject, hate, dehumanize, or even in extreme cases, physically or psychologically seek to destroy them (think of countries who go at war with the “enemies”). None of us are innocent in this area. We have ALL projected parts of our rejected self onto others. In fact, Shadow projection is a major cause of relationship dysfunction and break down.

If we are seeking to bring peace, love, and meaning to our lives, we absolutely MUST reclaim these projections. Through Shadow Work, we can explore exactly what we have disowned.

IX. Twelve Benefits of Shadow Work

Firstly, I want to say that I have the highest respect for Shadow Work. It is the single most important path I’ve taken to uncover my core wounds, core beliefs, traumas, and projections. I have also observed how Shadow Work has helped to create profound clarity, understanding, harmony, acceptance, release, and inner peace in the lives of others. It is truly deep work that makes changes on the Soul level targeting the very roots of our issues, not just the superficial symptoms.

There is SO much to be gained from making Shadow Work a part of your life, and daily routine. Here are some of the most commonly experienced benefits:

1. Deeper love and acceptance of yourself

2. Better relationships with others, including your partner and children

3. More confidence to be your authentic self

4. More mental, emotional, and spiritual clarity

5. Increased compassion/understanding for others = who you dislike

6. Enhanced creativity

7. Discovery of hidden gifts and talents

8. Deepened understanding of your passions and ultimate life purpose

9. Improved physical and mental health

10. More courage to face the unknown and truly live life

11. Access to your Soul or Higher Self

12. A feeling of Wholeness

It’s important to remember that there are no quick fixes in Shadow Work, so these life-changing benefits don’t just happen overnight. But with persistence, they will eventually emerge and bless your life.

X. Seven Tips for Approaching Shadow Work

Before you begin Shadow Work, you need to assess whether you’re ready to embark on this journey. Not everyone is prepared for this deep work, and that’s fine. We’re all at different stages. So pay attention to the following questions and try to answer them honestly:

· Have you practiced self-love yet?

o If not, Shadow Work will be too overwhelming for you. I have starred this bullet point because it is essential for you to consider. Shadow Work should not be attempted by those who have poor self-worth or struggle with self-loathing. In other words: if you struggle with severely low self-esteem, please do not attempt Shadow Work. I emphatically warn you against doing it. Why? If you struggle with extremely poor self-worth, exploring your Shadow will likely make you feel ten times worse about yourself. Before you walk this path, you absolutely must establish a strong and healthy self-image. No, you don’t have to think you’re God’s gift to the world, but having average self-worth is important. Try taking this self-esteem test to explore whether you’re ready (but first, don’t forget to finish this article!).

· Are you prepared to make time?

o Shadow Work is not a lukewarm practice. You are either all in or all out. Yes, it is important to take a break from it from time to time. But Shadow Work requires dedication, self-discipline, and persistence. Are you willing to intentionally carve out time each day to dedicate to it? Even just ten minutes a day is a good start.

· Are you looking to be validated or to find the truth?

o As you probably know by now, Shadow Work isn’t about making you feel special. It isn’t like typical spiritual paths that are focused on the feel-good. No, Shadow Work can be brutal and extremely confronting. This is a path for truth seekers, not those who are seeking to be validated.

· Seek to enter a calm and neutral space.

o It is important to try and relax when doing Shadow Work. Stress and judgmental or critical attitudes will inhibit the process. So please try to incorporate a calming meditation or mindfulness technique into whatever you do.

· Understand that you are not your thoughts.

o You need to realize that you are not your thoughts for Shadow Work to be healing and liberating. Only from your calm and quiet Center (also known as your Soul) can you truly be aware of your Shadow aspects. By holding them in awareness, you will see them clearly for what they are, and realize that they ultimately don’t define you; they are simply rising and falling mental phenomena.

· Practice self-compassion.

o It is of paramount importance to incorporate compassion and self-acceptance into your Shadow Work practice. Without showing love and understanding to yourself, it is easy for Shadow Work to backfire and make you feel terrible. So focus on generating self-love and compassion, and you will be able to release any shame and embrace your humanity.

· Record everything you find.

o Keep a written journal or personal diary in which you write down, or draw, your discoveries. Recording your dreams, observations, and analysis will help you to learn and grow more effectively. You’ll also be able to keep track of your process and make important connections.

XI. How to Practice Shadow Work

There are many Shadow Work techniques and exercises out there. In this guide, I will provide a few to help you start off. I’ll also share a few examples from my own life:

1. Pay attention to your emotional reactions

In this practice, you’ll learn that what you give power to has power over you. Let me explain:

One Shadow Work practice I enjoy a great deal is paying attention to everything that shocks, disturbs, and secretly thrills me. Essentially, this practice is about finding out what I’ve given the power to in my life unconsciously, because: what we place importance in – whether good or bad – says a lot about us.

The reality is that what we react to, or what makes us angry and distressed, reveals extremely important information to us about ourselves.

For example, by following where my “demons” have taken me – whether in social media, family circles, workspaces, and public places – I have discovered two important things about myself. The first one is that I’m a control freak; I hate feeling vulnerable, powerless and weak . . . it quite simply scares the living hell out of me. How did I discover this? Through my intense dislike of witnessing rape scenes in movies and TV shows, my negative reaction to novel experiences (e.g. roller coaster rides, public speaking, etc.), as well as my discomfort surrounding sharing information about my life with others in conversations. Also, by following where my “demons” have guided me I’ve discovered that I’m being burdened by an exasperating guilt complex that I developed through my religious upbringing. Apart of me wants to feel unworthy because that is what I’ve developed a habit of feeling since childhood (e.g. “You’re a sinner,” “It’s your fault Jesus was crucified”), and therefore, that is what I secretly feel comfortable with feeling: unworthy. So my mind nit-picks anything I might have done “wrong,” and I’m left with the feeling of being “bad” – which I’m used to, but nevertheless, this is destructive for my well-being.

Thanks to this practice, I have welcomed more compassion, mindfulness, and forgiveness into my life.

Paying attention to your emotional reactions can help you to discover exactly how your core wounds are affecting you on a daily basis.

How to Pay Attention to Your Emotional Reactions

To effectively pay attention to your emotional reactions (I call it “following the trail of your inner demons”), you first need to cultivate:

1. Self-awareness

Without being conscious of what you’re doing, thinking, feeling, and saying, you won’t progress very far.

If, however, you are fairly certain that you’re self-aware (or enough to start the process), you will then need to:

2. Adopt an open mindset

You will need to have the courage and willingness to observe EVERYTHING uncomfortable you place importance in, and ask “why?” What do I mean by the phrase “placing importance in”? By this, I mean that, whatever riles, shocks, infuriates, disturbs and terrifies you, you must pay attention to. Closely.

Likely, you will discover patterns constantly emerging in your life. For example, you might be outraged or embarrassed every time sex appears in a TV show or movie you like (possibly revealing sexual repression or mistaken beliefs about sex that you’ve adopted throughout life). Or you might be terrified of seeing death or dead people (possibly revealing your resistance to the nature of life or childhood trauma). Or you might be disgusted by alternative political, sexual, and spiritual lifestyles (possibly revealing your hidden desire to do the same).

There are so many possibilities out there, and I encourage you to go slowly, take your time, and one by one pick through what you place importance in.

“But I DON’T place importance in gross, bad or disturbing things in life, how could I? I don’t care for them!” you might be asking.

Well, think for a moment. If you didn’t place so much importance on what makes you angry, disgusted or upset . . . why would you be reacting to it so much? The moment you emotionally react to something is the moment you have given that thing power over you. Only that which doesn’t stir up emotions in us is not important to us.

See what you respond to and listen to what your Shadow is trying to teach you.

2. Artistically Express Your Shadow Self

Art is the highest form of self-expression and is also a great way to allow your Shadow to manifest itself. Psychologists often use art therapy as a way to help patients explore their inner selves.

Start by allowing yourself to feel (or drawing on any existing) dark emotions. Choose an art medium that calls to you such as pen and pencil, watercolor, crayon, acrylic paint, scrapbooking, sculpting, etc. and draw what you feel. You don’t need to consider yourself an ‘artist’ to benefit from this activity. You don’t even need to plan what you’ll create. Just let your hands, pen, pencil, or paintbrush do the talking. The more spontaneous, the better. Artistic expression can reveal a lot about your obscure darker half. Psychologist Carl Jung (who conceptualized the Shadow Self idea) was even famous for using mandalas in his therapy sessions.

3. Start a Project

The act of creation can be intensely frustrating and can give birth to some of your darker elements such as impatience, anger, blood-thirsty competitiveness, and self-doubt. At the same time, starting a project also allows you to experience feelings of fulfillment and joy.

If you don’t already have a personal project that you’re undertaking (such as building something, writing a book, composing music, mastering a new skill), find something you would love to start doing. Using self-awareness and self-exploration during the process of creation, you will be able to reap deeper insights into your darkness. Ask yourself constantly, “What am I feeling and why?” Notice the strong emotions that arise during the act of creation, both good and bad. You will likely be surprised by what you find!

For example, as a person who considers myself non-competitive, that assumption has been challenged by the act of writing this blog. Thanks to this project, the Shadow within me of ruthless competitiveness has shown its face, allowing me to understand myself more deeply.

4. Write a Story or Keep a Shadow Journal

Goethe’s story Faust is, in my opinion, one of the best works featuring the meeting of an ego and his Shadow Self. His story details the life of a Professor who becomes so separated and overwhelmed by his Shadow that he comes to the verge of suicide, only to realize that the redemption of the ego is solely possible if the Shadow is redeemed at the same time.

Write a story where you project your Shadow elements onto the characters – this is a great way to learn more about your inner darkness. If stories aren’t your thing, keeping a journal or diary every day can shine a light on the darker elements of your nature. Reading through your dark thoughts and emotions can help you to recover the balance you need in life by accepting both light and dark emotions within you.

5. Explore Your Shadow Archetypes

We have several Shadow varieties, also called Shadow Archetypes. These archetypes are sometimes defined as:

· The Sorcerer/Alchemist

· The Dictator

· The Victim

· The Shadow Witch

· The Addict

· The Idiot

· The Trickster

· The Destroyer

· The Slave

· The Shadow Mother

· The Hag

· The Hermit

However, I have my own Shadow Archetype classification, which I will include below.

13 Shadow Archetypes

Here are my thirteen classifications which are based on my own self-observations and analysis of others:

1. The Egotistical Shadow

This Shadow Archetype displays the following characteristics: arrogance, egocentricity, pompousness, inconsiderateness, self-indulgence, narcissism, excessive pride.

2. The Neurotic Shadow

This Shadow Archetype displays the following characteristics: paranoia, obsessiveness, suspiciousness, finicky, demanding, compulsive behavior.

3. The Untrustworthy Shadow

This Shadow Archetype displays the following characteristics: secretive, impulsive, frivolous, irresponsible, deceitful, unreliable.

4. The Emotionally Unstable Shadow

This Shadow Archetype displays the following characteristics: moody, melodramatic, weepy, overemotional, impulsive, changeable.

5. The Controlling Shadow

This Shadow Archetype displays the following characteristics: suspicious, jealous, possessive, bossy, obsessive.

6. The Cynical Shadow

This Shadow Archetype displays the following characteristics: negative, overcritical, patronizing, resentful, cantankerous.

7. The Wrathful Shadow

This Shadow Archetype displays the following characteristics: ruthless, vengeful, bitchy, quick-tempered, quarrelsome.

8. The Rigid Shadow

This Shadow Archetype displays the following characteristics: uptight, intolerant, racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic, obstinate, uncompromising, inflexible, narrow-minded.

9. The Glib Shadow

This Shadow Archetype displays the following characteristics: superficial, cunning, inconsistent, sly, crafty.

10. The Cold Shadow

This Shadow Archetype displays the following characteristics: emotionally detached, distant, indifferent, uncaring, unexcited.

11. The Perverted Shadow

This Shadow Archetype displays the following characteristics: masochistic, lewd, sadistic, vulgar, libidinous.

12. The Cowardly Shadow

This Shadow Archetype displays the following characteristics: weak-willed, passive, timid, fearful.

13. The Immature Shadow

This Shadow Archetype displays the following characteristics: puerile, childish, illogical, simpleminded, vacuous.

Keep in mind that the above Shadow Archetypes are by no means exhaustive. I’m sure that there are many others out there which I have missed. But you are free to use this breakdown to help you explore your own Shadows. You’re also welcome to add to this list or create your own Shadow Archetypes, which I highly encourage. For example, you might possess a judgmental and dogmatic Shadow who you call “The Nun,” or a sexually deviant Shadow who you call “The Deviant.” Play around with some words and labels, and see what suits your Shadows the best.

6. Have an Inner Conversation

Also known as “Inner Dialogue,” or as Carl Jung phrased it, “Active Imagination,” having a conversation with your Shadow is an easy way to learn from it.

I understand if you might feel a twinge of skepticism towards this practice right now. After all, we are taught that “only crazy people talk to themselves.” But inner dialogue is regularly used in psychotherapy as a way to help people communicate with the various subpersonalities that they have – and we all possess various faces and sides of our ego.

One easy way to practice inner dialogue is to sit in a quiet place, close your eyes, and tune into the present moment. Then, think of a question you would like to ask your Shadow, and silently speak it within your mind. Wait a few moments and see if you ‘hear’ or ‘see’ an answer. Record anything that arises and reflect on it. It is even possible to carry on a conversation with your Shadow using this method. Just ensure that you have an open mindset. In other words, don’t try to control what is being said, just let it flow naturally. You will likely be surprised by the answers you receive!

Visualization is another helpful way of engaging in inner dialogue. I recommend bringing to mind images of dark forests, caves, holes in the ground, or the ocean as these all represent the unconscious mind. Always ensure that you enter and exit your visualization in the same manner, e.g. if you are walking down a path, make sure you walk back up the path. Or if you open a particular door, make sure you open the same door when returning back to normal consciousness. This practice will help to draw you effortlessly in and out of visualizations.

7. Use the Mirror Technique

As we have learned, projection is a technique of the Shadow that helps us to avoid what we have disowned. However, we don’t only project the deeper and darker aspects of ourselves onto others, we also project our light and positive attributes as well. For example, a person may be attracted to another who displays fierce self-assertiveness, not realizing that this quality is what they long to reunite with inside themselves. Another common example (this time negative) is judgmentalism. How many times have you heard someone say “he/she is so judgmental!” Ironically, the very person saying this doesn’t realize that calling another person ‘judgmental’ is actually pronouncing a judgment against them and revealing their own judgmental nature.

The Mirror Technique is the process of uncovering our projections. To practice this technique, we must adopt a mindful and honest approach towards the world: we need to be prepared to own that which we have disowned! Being radically truthful with ourselves can be difficult, so it does require practice. But essentially, we must adopt the mindset that other people are our mirrors. We must understand that those around us serve as the perfect canvas onto which we project all of our unconscious desires and fears.

Start this practice by examining your thoughts and feelings about those you come in contact with. Pay attention to moments when you’re emotionally triggered and ask yourself “am I projecting anything?” Remember: it is also possible to project our own qualities onto another person who really does possess the qualities. Psychologists sometimes refer to this as “projecting onto reality.” For example, we might project our rage onto another person who is, in fact, a rage-filled person. Or we might project our jealousy onto another who genuinely is jealous.

Ask yourself, “What is mine, what is theirs, and what is both of ours?” Not every triggering situation reveals a projection, but they more than often do. Also, look for things you love and adore about others, and uncover the hidden projections there.

The Mirror Technique will help you to shed a lot of light onto Shadow qualities that you have rejected, suppressed, repressed, or disowned. On a side note, you might also like to read about a similar practice called mirror work which helps you to come face-to-face with your own denied aspects.

XII. Shadow Work Q&A

Here are some commonly asked questions about shadow work:

What is shadow work?

Shadow work is the psychological and spiritual practice of exploring our dark side or the ‘shadowy’ part of our nature. We all possess a place within us that contains our secrets, repressed feelings, shameful memories, impulses, and parts that are deemed “unacceptable” and “ugly.” This is our dark side or shadow self – and it is often symbolized as a monster, devil, or ferocious wild animal.

How to do shadow work?

There are many ways to practice shadow work. Some of the most powerful and effective techniques include journaling, artistically expressing your dark side (also known as art therapy), using a mirror to connect with this part of you (mirror work), guided meditations, exploring your projections, and examining your shadow archetypes.

What is the spiritual shadow?

There is light and darkness within all areas of life, and spirituality is not exempt. The spiritual shadow is what occurs when we fall into the traps of spiritual materialism – a phenomenon where we use spirituality to boost our egos and become arrogant, self-absorbed, and even narcissistic.

XIII. Shadow Self -Test

https://lonerwolf.com/shadow-self-test/

As passionate proponents of Shadow Work, we have created a free Shadow Self test on this website for you to take. Like any test, take it with a grain of salt and use your own analysis to ultimately determine how ‘dominant’ your Shadow is in your life. Please remember that tests online cannot be 100% accurate, so see it as a fun self-discovery tool. And note: those who receive a “small Shadow Self” answer still need to do Shadow Work. No person is exempt. ;)

XIV. Own Your Shadow and You Will Own Your Life

If you are looking for some serious, authentic and long-lived healing in your life, Shadow Work is the perfect way to experience profound inner transformation. Remember that what you internalize is almost always externalized in one form or another.

Own your shadow and you will own your life.

Here are some final inspiring words:

“The secret is out: all of us, no exceptions, have qualities we won’t let anyone see, including ourselves – our Shadow. If we face up to our dark side, our life can be energized. If not, there is the devil to pay. This is one of life’s most urgent projects. — Larry Dossey (Healing Words)”

“If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we are not really living. Growth demands a temporary surrender of security.” — Gail Sheehy

“Who has not at one time or another felt a sourness, wrath, selfishness, envy and pride, which he could not tell what to do with, or how to bear, rising up in him without his consent, casting a blackness over all his thoughts … It is exceeding good and beneficial to us to discover this dark, disordered fire of our soul; because when rightly known and rightly dealt with, it can as well be made the foundation of heaven as it is of hell. — William Law”

“To confront a person with his own shadow is to show him his own light. — Carl Jung”

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moxfirefly · 3 years

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This comes as result of an idea and going through some hard times as of late. The reader here has their issues but hey we aren’t inherently perfect and I like getting into that mindset and seeing what comes up. So consider this somewhat introspective piece when a ‘relationship’ maybe isn’t the best.

Mikey x Fem!Reader

Rated Mature/Angst/Feels (18+ Only)

“I am human and I need to be loved”

A lifespan isn’t enough to understand that love is a complicated emotion. It’s addicting caress can remain in ones soul for ages. Love is kind they say, but what of those moments where it’s not? When the heart strangles itself and you choke on desperation?

Love isn’t perfect, that very imperfection glued us to those we worship. That hurt can be addicting as well.

He’s aware of it, he knows that his innocence only hides a questioning.

Because Mikey has gotten so good at hiding those dark parts that linger like shadows in his brain. There’s pain behind that smile, there’s sadness hidden beneath the foundation he’s lain.

You see it, you’re aware of it.

You can’t help but feel ashamed you’re the cause of it.

You want to take ownership of it but every time your mouth opens that tightness in your jaw increases. Before the words can be processed you’re doing most of the speaking with your hands.

And your lips.

Mikey’s never denied you, the thought of rejection paralyzes him so profoundly he aches. But it would be unwise to state there isn’t any trace of doubt. He’s mindful of your distaste for love, that you aren’t a believer. He’s mindful of what cracks inside of him when you flirt your way through the day. He’s at the forefront but he isn’t unwise to the way you linger a hand on Leo’s arm or how your eyes light up when April walks into a room.

Your eyes have that same bright hue when he’s the target. When it’s the two of you and your fingers map out a path on his thigh. It’s so palpable in the air that surrounds the two of you when you suddenly crash into him and swallow his soul whole.

You’re greedy.

The first time you had kissed him he swore there was no way he could verbally describe what erupted inside of him. He remembers it clearly like a fond dream, the way you had pushed him into a darken corner. Your hands on his waist, pink tongue tasting orange crush and sweets.

He had been so shy it had melted you. His hands tentatively resting on hips. Lips merely following your lead. When you had stopped with your lips lingering so closely to his, you had simply giggled and asked him where the night could take you both.

Mikey knows what whiplash feels like, but emotionally this was his first time. He let it go, slowly watched whatever this had meant leave his grasp.

He lets you lead.

You’re so greedy.

He can’t blame you as much as he can blame himself. This isn’t the only time naturally, he could switch the memories like tv stations, often settling on his favorite ones.

He tries to avoid the ones that hurt.

You want to blame life, blame all past events that led you to develop a thick skin. It’s so impenetrable, but the dents are here and there scattered across two decades. Mikey sees the road map of damage, it hides behind your smile and your nonchalant attitude towards the tomorrow. He kinda likes it though, that you can build up a wall for whatever tries to infiltrate your barrier.

He’s addicted to the fact that you allow him in, that your guard goes down when he’s there. Mikey just wishes he had a clearer read, that whatever is happening could have a description a fucking name tag maybe. But soon enough you’re jumping into his open and awaiting arms, pressing yourself so flush against him and whispering how much you just missed him.

Mikey doesn’t miss how you stick like glue to him one particular night. The gangs there, everyone watching some horror flick that Casey had brought over. He can’t keep his eyes straight when you’re so warm next to him, tracing lazy circles on his palm before gripping it like it was some habit.

You were a habit basically, a tick that comforted him and somehow kept him grounded into this plain of existence. It’s a rush of blood to the head. Something that swims inside of his soul, wraps around him like ivy.

You wish it could be simple, to face up and just accept the cards laid out. But you were never one to just take it at face value. Easy just wasn’t in your vocabulary and well, it’s obvious that it’s not in Mikey’s wether by proxy or his own doing.

So when you quietly excuse yourself and feel Mikey’s blue orbs follow you, you obviously text him to come with after a minute or so.

The minute he follows into his and Raph’s room and finds you sitting on his bed with your legs crossed looking pleased as punch, he knows he’s so utterly screwed. Cause he’d do anything to have that image frozen in time and place, just you and that beautiful smile that robs him of thought and oxygen. Even as you beckon him closer with a gleam in your eye that means trouble and a hundred more questions for Mikey to stay up all day and night over.

He follows.

He comes to the foot of his bed and almost overloads when the tip of that beckoning finger runs a path over what would be his navel. Mikey swallows hard, breathing through his nostrils.

It guts you how he reaches out to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear. Mikey honest to god admires you like living breathing art. He takes a sharp inhale when you press your face to his clothed crotch and moan at the sensation that greets you. Mikey can’t erase the image of you, looking up at him as you push down his shorts, lust and what he registers might be love in your e/c orbs.

Much less when you take him into your mouth and the heat rushes down your body to your core. Your red cheeks hollowing in and creating such a tightness that Mikey whimpers, one hand gripping the back of your head and the other somehow interlocking with yours. It’s the intimacy of it, with your eyes fluttering closed as you take him as deeply as you possibly can. How his fingers play with yours.

Mikey tries to mumble something coherent out, he wants to tell you that he’s close and he knows it’s proper etiquete to tell you. It’s actually sweet and you almost giggle with a mouthful of him even when you feel nails dig into the back of your head as Mikey tries to not moan too loudly.

The way your throat bobs, lips swollen with a sticky sheen to them. He’s punch drunk, loves struck when he cups your cheeks and kisses you, tasting himself and falling further down into the rabbit hole that’s become the two of you not questioning this.

And god he should question it before his mind keeps running every possible scenario that’s caused this to be so unidentifiable. Because after that night he’s got radio silence from you for four days. He feels like a ghost floating around his brothers, going from motion to motion until he decides to take that step.

He shows up at your apartment, contemplates knocking on that window for fifteen minutes but what can he say? What does he want to ask? What if it drives you and whatever this is away?

He caves, eyes not so bright when you pull apart the curtains and he’s met with the same look he’s been sporting these past few days. You do smile though, that smile that digs nails into his soul. You let him come in, already putting on a mask that fits too perfectly.

“What’s wrong...Are you mad at me?” Mikey asks tentatively like peeling a hangnail. You freeze on your way to the kitchen, looking down at your bare feet like the answer might sprout from beneath them. “Nothings wrong, was just busy is all” It’s a pathetic excuse and not entirely truthful because you’ve been stewing in your apartment knowing full well that the boy behind you has planted roots in your heart.

And it scares the shit out of you.

So you turn, that shield up so high that Mikey notices and the whiplash is hard when you close the distance and wrap your arms around his neck. “What? Miss me that much?” Your scent hits him like a fresh hit to an addict. Four days without the warmth of your skin burning him. Mikey wants to test that shield, destroy it with his bare hands and find the real you in there, he pulls back far enough to look into your eyes and drown in them.

He quietly accepts his fate right then and there, ready to hand over his heart into your hands and watch you squeeze. And you see it all, your chest tight and jaw set, you run a finger across his cheek in such soothing slow motion. You want to tell him that this isn’t worth the heartache and headache, that you won’t come around any time soon.

Instead, you start to strip off his gear, bit by bit, each carefully taken apart. You untie his sweater from around his waist, hands lingering and maping out every detail you want forever engraved in your brain. You grab his hand and put them on you, a silent agreement for him to do the same. Mikey strips you out of your hoodie, finding a sports bra beneath it, eyes glued to new skin as he kneels and hooks his fingers in your shorts and slides them down slowly.

You walk him to your room, hand tightly clasped around his and there’s no hesitation in your steps because you want this and he wants this but every question that’ll come from this will just have to wait. You truly do go about things the wrong way.

The innocent touching makes your heart twist, the way his blue eyes run over you like you’re stolen art and he’s got dibs on it. It’s so sweet, asking his permission with a look to strip you of your bra, to run his hands towards the newly exposed flesh. It guts you so deeply when he pulls you close against him and just holds you, cause it dawns on you that Mikey has never held somebody this intimately. You shiver with the way he circles your back in ghostly touches, just basking in what it feels to feel your skin so close to his.

“We don’t have to do this” ‘I don’t want to hurt you’

“It’s okay, I just...Don’t disappear on me like that please” Mikey feels you tighten your grip on him and it takes every inch of his resolve to not crumble and just say that he loves you, that he’s loved you from the moment you rested your head on his shoulder, from the moments you’ve kissed him and made his head so clouded with questions of ‘If’ and ‘maybe’ but he knows he won’t be met with the same words.

Maybe not now, or simply not at all.

So he holds you close, even as you start to tremble, feeling tears on his shoulder. You can’t say anything, you can’t say a single damn thing.

See I've already waited too long

And all my hope is gone

#I wanted to post it even as my heart keep breaking but I wanted all of you to have this #tmnt bayverse #tmnt michelangelo x female reader #tmnt michelangelo x reader #michelangelo tmnt #tmnt michelangelo #tmnt mikey #tmnt mikey x reader #mikey x reader #michelangelo x reader #angst #ns*w

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heavensturtle · 3 years

Text

Day 22: Glass

A short fic for day twenty-two of the YOI 20+ Club’s Daily Art Challenge.

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Note: This story takes place in the spring, maybe a week after Onsen on Ice, when Yuuri and Victor still aren’t used to working together and they haven’t had their beach talk yet.

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Yuuri glides slowly, letting his blade sink into the ice as he curves around to carve a precise circle into the center of the rink.

He’s been feeling all day like there are pins under his skin, his brain stuck on an endless loop composed of variations on the word ‘pathetic’. It had started when Victor tried to correct his camel spin, of all things. Something Yuuri should have perfected years ago. It only escalated when Yuuri, ashamed and annoyed, had snapped at Victor when for the third time Victor had failed to clearly explain his concerns.

Victor had gone quiet then, only making the occasional comment during their last hour of practice, though he continued to watch Yuuri intently. Yuuri had burned under his stare.

The problem with having only one student, Yuuri thinks, is that you have too many hours available to watch them. Normally, he finds the feeling of Victor watching him thrilling, but on a day like today all he wants is for Victor to be a little more distant. A little less interested.

Once he’s traced the circle enough times to leave a groove in the ice, Yuuri glides into a connecting circle to create a figure eight. It’s exacting, and draws his head away from the bubbling agitation that makes him want to scratch his skin raw.

As he often does when tracing figures, the longer he goes the more he imagines that he can see straight through the ice. He imagines that the bottom of the rink is about to drop away to reveal a stony lakebed through the surface, just like he’d seen his first time skating.

Yuuri had been five, visiting cousins in Akita prefecture, when his aunt had bundled them all up one morning and driven them into the mountains to visit a lake that had just been opened to the public for skating.

It was early, and they were the only visitors. The clear sky was slowly tinging with pink, giving barely enough light to see. Yuuri, the youngest of the cousins by at least six years, had let his aunt pick him up by the armpits and carry him, skates and all, onto the ice. While Mari and his older cousins had clutched at one another to stay upright, Yuuri had stood between his aunt’s skates and let her guide him as she glided across the ice.

The dim sky hadn’t been bright enough to be reflective; instead, it had lit the ice straight through, giving Yuuri the impression that he was skating across a thick pane of glass.

He’d stared down into the dark water and the multicolored stones that lined the bottom of the shallow lake, some of which were glittering even in the low light. The perfect ice stretched on forever, ringed by tree-covered mountains that steamed in the early morning sun.

Mari and his cousins had shouted and laughed as they fell and dragged each other around the lake, but Yuuri had been silent, utterly transfixed. He’d stared down at his skates as they scratched delicate patterns into the ice, and then stood still as his aunt demonstrated school figures for him.

His aunt had led him by the hand as he traced his first ragged circle on the ice.

Lost in thought, Yuuri is only dimly aware that his left leg is getting tired, but then a light comes on at the door of the rink, dragging him from his thoughts and making him acutely conscious of the burning in his muscles.

This late at night, there’s only three people it could be, and Yuko and Takeshi are most likely asleep.

Yuuri considers ignoring Victor. But then he realizes his agitation has gotten lost somewhere in all the figures, and he’d rather Victor stayed. He waves.

Victor walks to the boards and motions Yuuri over.

“Yuuri,” he says when Yuuri reaches him, “How long have you been practicing figures?”

Yuuri glances out across the ice, which is littered with circles and curlicues. He must have been out here longer than he’d realized.

“Um, a few hours?” he guesses.

“No, I mean, how many years?”

“Oh. Since I was five,” Yuuri says, scratching the back of his neck, “They were actually the first thing I learned. I mostly do them to relax.”

Victor looks between Yuuri and the ice, and Yuuri feels acutely self-conscious, certain that Victor is going to remark on the fact that this clutter signals something far more desperate than mere relaxation.

Instead, Vitor turns back to Yuuri, eyebrows raised in a silent plea, and says, “Teach me?”

Yuuri is taken aback. “Victor, you must already be better at these than I am.”

Victor shakes his head, “We never learned figures, only moves in the field. Yakov stopped teaching figures when they were cut from competition.”

Yuuri struggles to comprehend Victor’s enthusiasm. “But. Why would you even want to learn figures?”

“Because,” Victor says, as though the answer were transparently obvious, “You make them look beautiful.”

Yuuri just stares at him.

That day on the lake, after the sun had risen, the lake’s surface had become like a mirror, perfectly reflecting the world above it. Victor’s eyes, Yuuri thinks, are normally like that, so bright they mirror whatever it is the world sees in them.

But there in the dim rink lights, with Victor asking so eagerly for something so insignificant, it's like the slant of the light has shifted and suddenly Yuuri can see straight through to the bottom. To something that's just Victor.

Who wants to learn figures from Yuuri.

“Okay,” Yuuri agrees, smiling at the excitement on Victor’s face, “Did you bring your skates?”

#victuuri #victor nikiforov #yuuri katsuki #school figures #yuri!!! on ice #anxious katsuki yuuri #katsuki yuuri #figure skating #daily challenge

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dwellordream · 3 years

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“If parents and commentators were sometimes concerned about the safety of middle-class girls in city streets, however, they were increasingly concerned about the moral implications of ‘‘good’’ girls taking to walking the streets in such numbers. Fears of precociousness not only encouraged parents to postpone discussions of menarche, they also created a reactionary challenge— too late—to girls’ social freedoms. European observers had commented on the relative freedom of American girls from the routine restraints imposed on European girls for much of the century.

In his 1840 opus Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville noted the early emancipation of the American young woman from maternal control. ‘‘She has scarcely ceased to be a child when she already thinks for herself, speaks with freedom, and acts on her own impulse. . . . The vices and dangers of society are early revealed to her; as she sees them clearly, she views them without illusion and braves them without fear, for she is full of reliance on her own strength, and her confidence seems to be shared by all around her.’’

With the expansion of northeastern cities following the Civil War, and the increasing presence of middle-class girls unregulated in the streets, a range of commentators began publicly to reconsider that confidence. One of the first broadsides in a newly intensified public debate about the character of ‘‘the girl’’ came from Britain and the pen of a journalist and clergyman’s daughter. Eliza Lynn Linton’s essay was notable in part because of its description of a modern type, not limited to one class.

‘‘The Girl of the Period’’ was published as a pamphlet in Britain in 1868, sold forty thousand copies from a single publisher, and first ignited a controversy there. Linton’s British ‘‘girl’’—in future debates known simply as the ‘‘G.O.P.’’—was loud, brassy, and disrespectful. She had traded in purity and ‘‘delicacy of perception’’ for the slang and the conspicuousness of the demimonde. Linton went on: ‘‘The Girl of the Period is a creature who dyes her hair and paints her face, as the first article of her personal religion—a creature whose sole idea of life is fun; whose sole aim is unbounded luxury; and whose dress is the chief object of such thought and intellect as she possesses.’’

Linton’s ‘‘G.O.P.’’ was ‘‘far too fast and flourishing’’ to listen to her parents, ‘‘indifferent’’ to duty, ‘‘useless’’ at home, and dedicated to the pursuit of money. Henry James, who later made the character of the American girl a subject of his fiction, reviewed Linton’s pamphlet in the Nation. He began by denying its relevance to the United States.

‘‘The American reader will be struck by the remoteness and strangeness of the writer’s tone and allusions. He will see that the society which makes these papers even hypothetically—hyperbolically—possible is quite another society from that of New York and Boston. American life, whatever may be said, is still a far simpler process than the domestic system of England.’’ In contrast to Linton’s portrait ‘‘of youthful Jezebels with plastered faces and lascivious eyes,’’ James offered the ‘‘large number of very pretty and, on the whole, very fresh-looking girls’’ of Boston or New York, ‘‘dressed in various degrees of the prevailing fashion.’’

James’s use of the term girl to refer to wholesome and respectable teenage females was an early instance of its contemporary usage. No sooner had James denied any comparison, though, than he began to warm to the task of finding similarities. He found American girls excessively devoted to the idea of being well dressed, which had ‘‘a sacred and absolute meaning.’’

A girl of fashion ‘‘is undeniably a very artificial and composite creature, and doubtless not an especially edifying spectacle. . . . She has, moreover, great composure and impenetrability of aspect. She practices a sort of half-cynical indifference to the beholder (we speak of the extreme cases). Accustomed to walk alone in the streets of a great city, and to be looked at by all sorts of people, she has acquired an unshrinking directness of gaze. She is the least bit hard.’’

James’s novel The Awkward Age (1899) took up the consequences of the ‘‘exposure’’ in public of British girls for their marriage prospects. As much as James admired the independence of ‘‘the American girl’’ (always to be considered as part of American elite), his hypersensitive self was shocked by the toughness of her exterior. Several years later another literary figure entered the debate over the impact of modernity on middle-class American girls.

Louisa May Alcott acknowledged Linton’s influence in the preface to her book An Old-Fashioned Girl (1872), a tale of a simple, affectionate country girl of fourteen who goes to live with a sophisticated and unhappy friend, a fashionable girl of the city. ‘‘The ‘Old-Fashioned Girl’ is not intended as a perfect model, but as a possible improvement upon the Girl of the Period, who seems sorrowfully ignorant or ashamed of the good old fashions which made woman truly beautiful and honored, and through her, render home what it should be,—a happy place, where parents and children, brothers and sisters, learn to love and know and help one another.’’

Readers first meet Alcott’s heroine Polly when Tom, the brother of the family, arrives at the train station to pick up his sister’s friend and lights in error on a passenger who might pass for a G.O.P. She is in gorgeous array, with ‘‘a flapping of sashes, scallops, ruffles, curls, and feathers.’’ The passenger, ‘‘a breezy stranger,’’ eyes Tom with a ‘‘cool stare that utterly quenched him.’’

Just as he is gathering his forces to initiate conversation, up runs our heroine, ‘‘a fresh-faced little girl, . . . with her hand out, and a half shy, half-merry look in her blue eyes.’’ Like Little Women, published several years before, An Old-Fashioned Girl celebrates the beauty of girls’ devotion to home and family and their rejection of the material, selfish world of the modern city. A comparison of titles, however, suggests an important difference in the implications of the two books for female adolescence.

In contrast to Little Women, An Old-Fashioned Girl encourages girls to hold on to their status as children, rather than embracing too early the roles and manners of women. The problem of the urban sisters Fanny and little Maud in Alcott’s novel is their precociousness. Fanny explains to Polly, ‘‘You are fourteen; and we consider ourselves young ladies at that age.’’ Alcott, in contrast, describes Polly as a ‘‘fresh-faced little girl.’’

In fact, the family’s grandmother suggests that her own granddaughters scarcely were ever children. ‘‘’You mustn’t mind my staring, dear,’ said Madam, softly pinching her rosy cheek. ‘I haven’t seen a little girl for so long, it does my old eyes good to look at you.’’’ Her own granddaughters, she explains, are ‘‘not what you call little girls. Fan has been a young lady this two years, and Maud is a spoiled baby.’’

Even Maud, at the age of six, has the accoutrements of maturity in the form of calling cards, crimping pins, and a ‘‘box of dainty gloves.’’ Alcott explains that Maud ‘‘belonged to a ‘set’ also; and these mites of five and six had ‘their’ parties, receptions, and promenades, as well as their elders, and the chief idea of their little lives seemed to be to ape the fashionable follies they should have been too innocent to understand.’’ Alcott is so concerned with demonstrating the folly of precociousness that she turns fifteen- or sixteen-year-old Polly’s interest in the attractive son of the family into an object lesson.

‘‘Polly shut her door hard, and felt ready to cry with vexation, that her pleasure should be spoilt by such a silly idea; for, of all the silly freaks of this fast age, that of little people playing at love is about the silliest.’’ Alcott’s fear of precociousness cuts such a wide swathe that she admits little distinction between the pairing off of six-year-olds and the infatuation of teenagers.

The explanation for the precociousness of girls is their involvement in a new peer culture, facilitated and expanded by attending school. When Polly asks Fanny why she spends so much time getting dressed just to go to school, Fanny responds, ‘‘All the girls do; and it’s proper, for you never know who you may meet. I’m going to walk, after my lessons, so I wish you’d wear your best hat and sack.’’ In Alcott’s novel the custom of walking, encouraged to provide girls with appropriate exercise, appears as a vapid excuse for socializing, especially in contrast with the health of children’s play.

Polly scorns it. ‘‘To dress up and parade certain streets for an hour every day, to stand talking in doorways, or drive out in a fine carriage, was not the sort of exercise she liked. . . . At home, Polly ran and rode, coasted and skated, jumped rope and raked hay, worked in her garden and rowed her boat; so no wonder she longed for something more lively than a daily promenade with a flock of giddy girls.’’ It is the strength of urban peer culture which leads to the unhealthiness and unhappiness—and the unlovableness—of the bored and fashionable Fanny.

Other commentators as well attacked the danger of precociousness in the rearing of girls. Washington Gladden, liberal clergyman and promoter of the social gospel, was persuaded in 1880 to provide advice for girls in St. Nicholas to complement an earlier article for boys. He censured ‘‘a too early initiation into the excitements and frivolities of what is called society. It was formerly the rule for girls to wait until their school-days were over before they made their appearance in fashionable society. At what age, let us inquire, does the average young lady of our cities now make her debut?’’ Like Alcott, Gladden dipped down into the early years to see the onset of preciousness. ‘‘From my observations, I should answer at about the age of three. They are not older than that when they begin to go to children’s parties, for which they are dressed as elaborately as they would be for a fancy ball.’’

If Gladden focused on the social folly of children forced into early maturity, for Mary Virginia Terhune the practice was evil: ‘‘We sin in allowing the fears, hopes and flutters of nubility to obtrude, even in imagination, upon this most susceptible stage of the formative period. There is vulgar violence in the excitation of coy tremors and coquettish projects in the mind of one who is as yet incapable of comprehending the meaning or tendency of the novel emotions.’’

Employing the earthy, agrarian metaphors which were one way of objectifying girls’ maturation, Terhune expounded, ‘‘Premature bloom is imperfection, too often deformity. Forced fruits lack the flavor of the summer’s prime, the beauty and richness of seasonableness.’’ If Henry James felt that girls were becoming hard from their exposure in the city streets, Terhune and others feared that they were becoming blemished or prematurely soft—a different kind of distortion of the ‘‘girl crop’’ that was everyone’s property.

The allure of city streets was only part of the story, though. Critics cautioned that weakening family ties helped to push girls into the streets. In Alcott’s accounting, and in the ongoing debate over the Girl of the Period, the declining authority of parents played an important role in the dissipation of girls. Alcott’s fashionable fictional family is headed by an absent father and an invalid mother.

Mr. Shaw is ‘‘a busy man, so intent on getting rich that he had no time to enjoy what he already possessed.’’ He has a habit of lecturing his son ‘‘and letting the girls do just as they like[].’’ Mrs. Shaw is ‘‘a pale, nervous women,’’ an invalid, defined by needs rather than by her ability to give. The family might meet for dinner, but after eating ‘‘they all [go] about their own affairs.’’ Whatever else was to blame, there was no question that the ‘‘girl problem’’ was in part the problem of urban parents losing control over their daughters.

When Washington Gladden addressed the problem of girls, he titled his article ‘‘A Talk with Girls and Their Mothers’’ because he felt the problem lay with both. The commandment that children should obey their parents, he asserted, was disregarded by both mothers and teenage daughters. ‘‘The girl of thirteen regards herself as her own mistress; she is already a woman in her own estimation, and has a right to do as she pleases.’’

Despite his strenuous support elsewhere for longer and more vigorous walking for girls, Gladden could not countenance the freedom of girls in the city streets. ‘‘This habit of running loose, of constantly seeking the street for amusement, and even of making chance acquaintances there, is practiced by some of the girls of our good families, and it is not at all pleasant to see them on the public thoroughfares, and to witness their hoydenish ways. . . . The delicate bloom of maiden modesty is soiled by too much familiarity with the public streets of a city, and a kind of boldness is acquired which is not becoming in a woman.’’

Gladden’s worry for the ‘‘delicate bloom of maiden modesty’’ reflected a legitimate concern for how girls’ culture was being influenced by urban freedom. An article published in Ladies’ Home Journal in 1884 took a different tone in reporting on ‘‘an epidemic’’ of disappearances of girls: ‘‘One doesn’t bring up a chubby baby girl to bang upon a grand piano, outdress other girls and graduate with nuns’ veiling and sixteen hired bouquets, to have some dark night bring a rascal and a rope-ladder to steal her away just when she is getting big enough to do the marketing and darn her father’s socks. . . . The sympathy of the entire world goes out to the bereaved owners of these pretty girls, spirited away.’’ Despite its glib and knowing tone, itself a radical break from the earnest, idealist rhetoric which usually accompanied such discussions, the article had a strong message for mothers:

‘‘The fact is, the mothers of to-day do not exercise enough maternal authority and vigilance over their daughters. . . . Female chums call for them to spend the night, and who they meet while absent from the home circle mothers never know.’’ The pull of ‘‘chums’’ drawing girls away from their mothers’ households was a far cry from the idealized intergenerational domestic world promoted by advisers. A signed article republished from the Congregationalist in 1889 explored the distance between domestic ideal and urban reality.

Mrs. J. G. Fraser titled her piece ‘‘Our Lost Girls’’ and subtitled it ‘‘A Mother Sadly Regrets That She Can Not Have the Training of Her Daughter.’’ Fraser exclaimed, ‘‘Alas! just as our daughters are entering their teens, or before, we discover that we have lost them. Where have they gone?’’ Her answer was clear. ‘‘It is a fact that the average girl is restless unless she can visit or receive visits from some young lady friend most of the time.’’ Such chores as a daughter might have ‘‘are hurried through with unseemly haste, to the end that she may leave home as soon as possible.’’

Informed by the dictates of domesticity, Fraser knew what her maternal role should be: ‘‘Sympathetic companionship, little seeds of counsel dropped wisely here and there, a knowledge of what the girls are thinking about and what they are interested in; a wise ignoring of some girlish follies—all these are needed.’’ But there was one problem in applying techniques of domestic influence.

If they could help it, girls were probably not at home to listen to their mothers’ advice. Fraser uttered a complaint with a contemporary ring. ‘‘Our homes should not be simply boarding houses where our children eat and sleep, but dwelling places where they are to spend most of their time out of school hours.’’ If they were to sustain the culture of the ‘‘old-fashioned girl,’’ mothers must take their daughters back from the streets and from the friends they promenaded with there.

Girls who appeared in public and walked the streets were historically ‘‘public women,’’ prostitutes. What distinguished the debates of the 1870s and 1880s was that they were not about prostitutes but instead about a more broadly defined and owned group of daughters. Not distinguished by class or profession, the G.O.P. was not a fallen ‘‘other’’ but instead a creature of modernity, created by the industrial city.

When Henry James, Louisa May Alcott, Ladies’ Home Journal, and St. Nicholas wrote about girls, they were talking about their own daughters, or nieces, or grandchildren, or the daughters of their friends and colleagues. Mrs. J. G. Fraser, of course, most literally seems to have been writing about her daughter. In contrast with later discussions about ‘‘the girl problem,’’ these late-Victorian debates were explicitly not focused on working or shopgirls. Instead, such discussions hit closer to home, often debating the impact of modern culture on Our Girls, as an advice book published in 1871 was entitled.

These girls might even be considered to belong to an urban elite. Louisa May Alcott’s Fanny differs from her country friend because she is a girl of fashion, whose parents can afford to buy her the new offerings of urban dry goods stores. When Kate Tannatt Woods excoriated the rude and showy ‘‘Manners in Public’’ of a certain young concertgoer, she characterized her explicitly: ‘‘Sallie Ducats, whose father is a celebrated statesman, and whose mother bore a grand old name prior to her marriage.’’

The conduct of Sallie (spelled in the French fashion) and her friends sets a bad standard for other girls: ‘‘Their heavy steps and bustling noise disturbed the entire [concert] audience. . . . This was not all. They removed their wraps with much parade and noise, raised their seats and let them fall again, and then, after some further maneuvers, produced some bon-bons which they proceeded to eat with evident relish. During the entire concert they whispered, giggled, looked about, and made comments on people about them.’’ Woods concluded by asking: ‘‘What is to be done when young women belonging to our so-called ‘best families’ are guilty of such conduct?’’

…When pundits debated the status of the American girl, they were not likely to be referring to domestic servants or factory operatives; they were more likely to be referring to American schoolgirls, despite their distinct minority status. The debate over the conduct of the American girl gained an edge of urgency because of the class standing of the girls now out in public. At the same time, that urgency helped to create a more broadly defined and collectively owned group of girls.

If advice givers needed to vouch for the respectability of schoolgirls, however, they could still remain disturbed by some of the after-hour implications of school attendance, especially at the more suspect public schools. The Ladies’ Home Journal’s glib answer to the question ‘‘Why Girls Disappear’’ blamed mothers but indirectly it blamed school, too. ‘‘School-girls here have been seen year in and year out being joined on a certain corner by rakish-looking boys who carried their books.’’

Another article in the same magazine the next year lambasted the dangerous influence of the roller-skating rink on schoolgirls as well. Under the title ‘‘Flirting Girls,’’ the writer noted that ‘‘school girls in great numbers frequent these pleasure resorts and emulate each other in picking up the greatest number of gentlemen acquaintances. So large is this class of chance acquaintances, that the girls in our public schools already recognize these men by a slang term, a humorous but pitiful term, when one thinks of the underlying fact. These ‘pick-ups’ are not obtained in the skating rink alone but are made on the sidewalk with a bow, a smile, a word, or in a horse car or at a baseball match or at the theatre.’’ The outcry of concern over the modern girl focused on middle-class girls, and the impact of a range of social developments—school among them—which were breaking down the authority of parents, the strength of the home, and the domination of traditional morality.”

- Jane H. Hunter, “Friendship, Fun, and the City Streets.” in How Young Ladies Became Girls: The Victorian Origins of American Girlhood

#cities #gender #victorian #history #american #class #jane h. hunter #how young ladies became girls

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flightfoot · 4 years

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Abuse and how it plays into Identity in Tower of Nero

While abuse has played a role in previous Trials of Apollo books, and in the Greco-Roman main series as a whole, Tower of Nero digs into it most deeply.

Identity and recovery from abuse are deeply linked here, with much of the abuse recovery coming from forging an identity separate from the abuser.

Previously it mostly came up in The Hidden Oracle and The Burning Maze, with Meg’s relationship with Nero prompting Apollo to examine his own relationship with Zeus.

Apollo knew in the back of his head that Zeus was abusing him, that his rage against the Cyclopes for creating the lightning bolt Zeus used to murder Asclepius, for instance, was him redirecting his anger onto a safer target because raging against Zeus directly was so unsafe, but he tried not to let himself think about it too much, and he tried to fool himself into thinking that Zeus DID care about him, that he loved him, at least enough that he’d help him if he saw him in trouble.

Seeing Meg with Nero, how he manipulated her, how he subtly blamed her for anything bad that happened around her, for anything HE did, while trying to seem gentle and kind; seeing the abuse he went through reflected in this young girl led him to cope with his own abuse better.

His experiences with abuse, with Zeus treating him as a scapegoat and ‘forcing’ him to punish Apollo if he stepped out of line, with his own feelings about the abuse and his own coping mechanisms and behavior as a result, are a useful reference for understanding and helping Meg through her experiences with Nero.

And helping her cope, separate, and try to grow after being manipulated by Nero for so long? Helps him come to terms with his own experiences.

He’s pretty explicit about the comparisons too. Like when Meg talks about how Lu used to help her pretend to kill people for Nero, helped her how she could, but Apollo’s mostly just horrified that Lu stuck around and didn’t take Meg and run... and yet part of him understood.

And are you any better? taunted a small voice in my brain. How many times have you stood up to Zeus?

Okay, small voice. Fair point. Tyrants are not easy to oppose or walk away from, especially when you depend on them for everything. (TON 57)

Lu may not have been quite as dependent on Nero as say, Meg - at least psychologically. Lu’s not a child by any means.

But Lu’s only immortal because Nero is, and he can, presumably, revoke that. Nero provides her employment, a home, probably her entire social circle, AND he has the power and the will to go after her and anyone she cares about if she strays, if she tries to defy him.

In those ways, her situation mirrors Apollo’s even better than Meg’s does - and while he’s angry at her for not defying Nero, he also understands.

I suspect part of his anger and suspicion at her is also anger and suspicion of himself, for falling into a similar trap.

Still, though Lu has her own baggage with Nero, Meg’s is focused on a lot more, with how she’s grown and changed, and her desire to hang onto who she’s become while separated from Nero, to hang onto her own identity and personality and not what Nero attempted to shape her into.

It’s to the point that she can barely comprehend who she was under him, how she used to think, what she did.

“I betrayed you once,” she said. “Right here in these woods.”

She didn’t sound sad or ashamed about it, the way she once might have. She spoke with a sort of dreamy disbelief, as if trying to recall the person she’d been six months ago. That was a problem I could relate to. (TON 114)

Meg hasn’t really changed at her core as much as Apollo has - as much as she’s gone through, she at least wasn’t much of a jerk in the first place. Well, relatively speaking, when compared to Apollo. She’s abrasive, but not much beyond that.

But she HAS changed, in large part BECAUSE she’s more able and willing to stand up for herself in ways that she couldn’t do remotely safely while with Nero. She’s broken free of his psychological hold.

During The Hidden Oracle she was ALREADY rebelling against him, she refused to burn the woods, but... well, she DID go with him, DID believe she could change him for awhile.

But she broke free after realizing he wouldn’t, escaped and returned to Apollo, freeing herself from Nero’s grasp once more.

For her, I think the difference between who she was six months ago and who she is now has less to do with her actual personality and worldview - those haven’t actually changed all that much throughout the books - but just in being free, somewhat safe (well, safer emotionally at least), and genuinely cared for. To not be under Nero’s influence to the same extent.

With Apollo... well, it’s a bit different with him. Zeus wasn’t as controlling as Nero, Apollo COULD have kept his space from him before; his sister has been doing that for millennia. But he has still changed a lot, moreso than Meg did, to the point that he’s almost unrecognizeable from who he was when he first fell to earth in THO.

Newly experiencing kindness, regular affection, and just having other people care about him though? He shares that with Meg.

Not that people have never been nice to him before, that’s not the case. But to have people be nice to him who he wouldn’t think would need to be, when he’s vulnerable... there’s a reason he’s been extremely touched when that’s happened even back from THO, and in this book he breaks down pretty much every time.

Meg struggles with needing to retain her independence, the new sense of herself she’s acquired during her journey with Apollo.

“I have to go back,” Meg insisted. “I have to see if I’m strong enough.”

Peaches cuddled up next to her as if he had no such concerns.

Meg patted his leafy wings. “Maybe I’ve gotten stronger. But when I go back to the palace, will it be enough? Can I remember to be who I am now and not… who I was then?”

I didn’t think she expected an answer. But it occurred to me that perhaps I should be asking myself that same question.

Since Jason Grace’s death, I’d spent sleepless nights wondering if I could keep my promise to him. Assuming I made it back to Mount Olympus, could I remember what it was like to be human, or would I slip back into being the self-centered god I used to be?

Change is a fragile thing. It requires time and distance. Survivors of abuse, like Meg, have to get away from their abusers. Going back to that toxic environment was the worst thing she could do. And former arrogant gods like me couldn’t hang around other arrogant gods and expect to stay unsullied.

But I supposed Meg was right. Going back was the only way to see how strong we’d gotten, even if it meant risking everything. (TON 114-115)

Meg needs to keep her identity she’s created for herself away from Nero. But her question about remembering to be who she is now versus who she was back then fits Apollo’s conundrum better, something that is clearly not lost on Apollo.

I knew my anxiety about my own weakness was getting mixed up with my anxiety about Meg. Even if I somehow made my way back to Mount Olympus, I didn’t trust myself to hold onto the important things I’d learned as a mortal. That made me doubt Meg’s ability to stay strong in her old toxic home.

The similarities between Nero’s household and my family on Mount Olympus made me increasingly uneasy. The idea that we gods were just as manipulative, just as abusive as the worst Roman emperor… Surely that couldn’t be true.

Oh, wait. Yes, it could. Ugh. I hated clarity. (TON 225-226)

Meg’s captured, being fully under Nero’s influence once more, with him trying to twist everything to be Apollo’s or Meg’s faults, trying to twist it so that every bit of distress that he puts Meg through is somehow the fault of her or her allies.

She picked up the chair and threw it across the room - but not at Nero. It whanged off the window, leaving a smudge but no cracks. I caught the flicker of a smile on Nero’s face - a smile of satisfaction - before his expression fixed back into a mask of sympathy. “Yes, dear. This anger comes from guilt. You led Apollo here. You understood what that meant, what would happen. But you did it anyway. That must be so painful... knowing you brought him to his end (TON 235)

This kind of manipulation is Nero’s trademark, he uses it for most of the book. Telling Meg what she’s feeling, telling her that she’s feeling this way because of something wrong SHE did, not because of the horrible things NERO did. Trying to rewrite her reality to fall in line with what HE wants her to believe, to think.

Nero makes her change clothes, has her scrub up, even has her get a pedicure.

Normally this would sound like a good thing. But it’s just one of the ways he tries to rewrite who she is, to break her sense of identity and replace it with one more to his liking. By taking away things that showed her own personal style, he took away reminders of who she is, as well as showing his ability to exert control over her, make her believe she has no choices.

My heart broke. Meg looked elegant, older, and quite beautiful. She also looked utterly, completely no longer herself. Nero had tried to strip away everything she had been, every choice she’d made, and replace her with someone else - a proper young lady of the Imperial Household. (TON 285-286)

Nero continues to try to twist the circumstances, to brainwash Meg into believing that he’s her savior and Apollo and the others may harm her. But Apollo keeps protesting, leading to this scene:

I tried to contain my horror. “Meg,” I said. “There’s only one person you need to listen to here: yourself. Trust yourself.”

I meant it, despite all my doubts and fears, despite all my complaints over the months about Meg being my master. She had chosen me, but I had also chosen her. I did trust her - not in spite of her past with Nero, but because of it. I had seen her struggle. I’d admired her hard-won progress. I had to believe in her for my own sake. She was - gods help me - my role model. (TON 293)

Ultimately, MEG’S the one who decides. Who fights back. Because she was able to listen to herself, to not be twisted by Nero’s lies and deceptions.

“I didn’t kill my father,” she said, her voice small and hard. “I didn’t cut off Lu’s hands or enslave those dryads or twist us all up inside.” She swept a hand towards the other demigods of the household. “You did that, Nero. I hate you.” (TON 295)

This was the tipping point. When she announced, to herself and everyone else, the truth. The reality. Rejecting Nero’s attempts to rewrite it.

Nero hissed. “Ungrateful child. The Beast-”

“The Beast is dead.” Meg tapped the side of her head. “I killed it.” (TON 311)

I notice here she tapped the side of her head. Of course, she didn’t literally kill The Beast; Nero’s still alive after all.

But The Beast was a psychological trick Nero used on Meg, to make her separate him into two people; the ‘nice’ stepfather, and The Beast that takes over and punishes if she misbehaves.

She ‘killed’ it, because she killed the concept.

There was never a Beast.

There was only ever Nero.

And now that she’s gotten out from under his thumb? She reasserts her own identity.

Meg had thrown away her sandals, braving bare feet despite the arrows, rubble, bones, and discarded blades that littered the floor. Someone had given her an orange Camp Half-Blood shirt, which she’d put on over her dress, making her allegiance clear. She still looked older and more sophisticated, but she also looked like my Meg. (TON 323)

I like the emphasis on how she looks older, but also like herself. She looks like what Nero made her into still, in a way - she’s still wearing that dress after all - but she’s made it her own, integrated herself into it.

It nicely parallels Apollo’s own situation, with needing to integrate who he’s become as Lester, who he’s grown to be, with his godly identity. Because things WILL be different once he’s a god again; he’ll have power he doesn’t have now, will have exposure to other gods that he doesn’t currently have. So he needs to figure out how to handle that, how to be a god, how to be Apollo while not losing what he’s gained as Lester.

Even if I survived, I would not be the same. The best I could hope for was to emerge from Delphi with my godhood restored, which was what I had wanted and dreamed about for the past half a year. So why did I feel so reluctant about leaving behind the broken, battered form of Lester Papadopolous? (TON 327)

Like Meg was, Apollo’s struggling to get ahold of his own identity before he has to face his abuser again, has to re-enter that old toxic environment. He fears that if the trappings of “Lester” are destroyed, then like with Nero changing Meg’s clothes, that he’ll lose part of his connection to who he’s become.

As Apollo fights Python, his mortal body becomes less and less mortal, bringing him into an in-between, in-flux state that mirrors his internal identity crisis.

“YOU CAN’T HIDE!” Python bellowed. “YOU ARE NO GOD!”

This pronouncement hit me like a bucket of ice water. It didn’t carry the weight of prophecy, but it was true nonetheless. At the moment, I wasn’t sure what I was. I certainly wasn’t my old godly self. I wasn’t exactly Lester Papadopolous either. My flesh steamed. Pulses of light flickered under my skin, like the sun trying to break through storm clouds. When had that started?

I was between states, morphing as rapidly as Python himself. I was no god. I would never be the same old Apollo again. But in this moment, I had the chance to decide what I would become, even if that new existence only lasted a few seconds.

The realization burned away my delirium.

“I won’t hide,” I muttered. “I won’t cower. That’s not who I will be.” (TON 339-340)

Like with Meg before, he’s deciding, affirming for himself what kind of person he is now, who he wants to be, different from who he was before.

Even during the fight with Python, some small part of him hopes Zeus will intervene, will see he’s done enough and help him, save him. But here, that instinct is quashed for the final time.

I had done my best. Surely, Zeus would see that and be proud. Maybe he would send down a lightning bolt, blast Python into tiny pieces, and save me!

As soon as I thought this, I realized how foolish it was. Zeus didn’t work that way. He would not save me anymore than Nero had saved Meg. I had to let go of that fantasy. I had to save myself. (TON 341)

Much like with how Meg hoped back near the beginning of the series that Nero really would change, really was a good person deep down, Apollo kept up the hope in early entries that Zeus DID care about him and would come to save him at any moment. And even in later books, heck, even in THIS book, with Meg still calling Nero her stepfather a few times and the part of Apollo hoping that Zeus will intervene now, it’s hard to break the desire, the belief that that person who SHOULD care about you, surely will now.

But both of them break past that. Meg calls Nero out, rejects his attempts to rewrite reality, and Apollo kills the idea that Zeus might intervene on his behalf.

By the time Apollo’s a god again, he has a firm bead on the kind of person Zeus is, as well as the type of environment Mt. Olympus is, with most of his family just watching his trials and tribulations, everything he and his friends went through, and betting on the outcome. Only Artemis and Hera seemed to take things seriously, seemed to deeply care whether he lived or died.

Not that the others could have interfered against Zeus’s wishes.

As much as we pretended to be a council of twelve, in truth we were a tyranny. Zeus was less a benevolent father and more an iron-fisted leader with the biggest weapons and the ability to strip us of our immortality if we offended him. (TON 366)

Apollo just kind of hangs back for the council session, having little to say to anyone except Artemis, not caring much about what the other Olympians thought, and not really feeling like one of them as a whole. Though that was true even before he actually walked into the room.

I remembered my dream of the throne room - the other Olympians gambling on my success or failure. I wondered how much money they’d lost.

What could I possibly say to them? I no longer felt like one of them. I wasn’t one of them. (TON 358)

And finally, the long-awaited confrontation scene with Zeus. It wasn’t long. It wasn’t flashy. Unlike Meg, he couldn’t attack and get rid of his abuser, couldn’t get out from under his influence entirely. Zeus is King of the Gods; realizing that he’s an abusive asshole doesn’t change that.

But he COULD change his own response to the situation.

My father coughed into his fist. “ I know you think your punishment was harsh, Apollo.”

I did not answer. I tried my best to keep my expression polite and neutral.

“But you must understand,” Zeus continued, “only you could have overthrown Python. Only you could have freed the Oracles. And you did it, as I expected. The suffering, the pain along the way… regrettable, but necessary. You have done me proud.”

Interesting how he put that: I had done him proud. I had been useful in making him look good. My heart did not melt. I did not feel that this was a warm-and-fuzzy reconciliation with my father. Let’s be honest: some fathers don’t deserve that. Some fathers aren’t capable of it.

I suppose I could have raged at him and called him bad names. We were alone. He probably expected it. Given his awkward self-consciousness at the moment, he might even have let me get away with it unpunished.

But it would not have changed him. It would not have made anything different between us.

You cannot change a tyrant by trying to out-ugly him. Meg could never have changed Nero, any more than I could change Zeus. I could only try to be different than him. Better. More… human. And to limit the time I spent around him to as little as possible. (TON 367-368)

Apollo just... let go of any attachment to Zeus. It reminded me of the Cumaen SIbyl, with how she forgave Apollo for her own sake, how Apollo felt that he himself was being erased by that.

This isn’t a reconciliation; this is simply Apollo putting Zeus as far behind him as possible and trying to let him take up as little space in his life as he can. He may not be able to cut all ties to him, but he can at least minimize his connection to him, his influence over him.

In the end, Apollo doesn’t even really consider what he went through to be a punishment; not really.

To be honest, though, I could no longer consider my time on Earth a punishment. Terrible, tragic, nearly impossible… yes. But calling it a punishment gave Zeus too much credit. It had been a journey - an important one I made for myself, with the help of my friends. I hoped… I believed that the grief and pain had shaped me into a better person. I had forged a more perfect Lester from the dregs of Apollo. I would not trade those experiences for anything. And if I had been told I had to be Lester for another hundred years… Well, I could think of worse things. At least I wouldn’t be expected to show up at the Olympian solstice meetings. (TON 373)

Like with his conversation with Zeus, he’s minimizing Zeus’s control, his influence over himself and his life.

And in the end, Apollo leaves Mt. Olympus as soon as he can to spend time with all the new friends he’s made, away from the toxic influences of Olympus and of Zeus especially. Reaffirming his new identity, his new self by appearing in his Lester form, the form he’d grown in, that he’d forged for himself.

I just really love how in-depth Tower of Nero went, especially with the way it emphasized the identity manipulation and erasure involved with some kinds of abuse.

#trials of apollo #tower of nero #ton spoilers #lester papadopoulos #meg mccaffrey #toa analysis #my analysis

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theladysexpistol · 4 years

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Aaaaa thank you so much for answering my ask !! Now can we get Bucci gang with the witch ask please ??

Your wish is my command!

I added Trish to this one too 🌹

~~~

I love Mista’s smile in the other one but I really needed one with Giorno

Giorno

- I think less of the Bucci gang will be attracted to witchy based on their aesthetic. 😆 Giorno has kind of a mysterious aura. I think he would have caught the eye of witchy first.

- Giorno is a charmer, too. Gifts of flowers, showing them butterflies and birds and other beautiful living things; dare I say they fall hard and they fall fast for him

- He is also very attentive and observant of others though; especially of his s/o, he’ll notice something is different about them rather quickly

- As Giorno is prone to action, sometimes even to the extreme, he’ll get them to reveal their abilities to him in some extremely over dramatic fashion - maybe he gets himself gravely wounded, knowing he can heal himself with Gold Experience should his hunch be incorrect

- Of course, it isn’t, and his s/o will spring into action to help him, revealing their magic

- Depending on how they react to revealing to him they’re a witch, Giorno will reveal his own abilities only if they aren’t upset about it

- He did also just trick the person he’s supposed to care about most in the world, that’s not exactly something to be proud of

- As far as witches go, he’s not that bothered by it. Frankly, Polpo was weirder than this. Also I don’t remember if Giorno knows his father was a vampire or not, but if he does than a witch is nothing lol

- He can use Gold Experience to create animals and plants for his s/o’s magic, which they are incredibly grateful for

- Absolute power couple, you do not fuck with the boss of Passione and his s/o, or the absolute unit of a dog that seems to be always with them

Bruno

- Witchy definitely approached him. They probably even know who he is, cuz I feel like Bruno is pretty well known in the city. I can see how a witch would absolutely, totally want to get with a member of the Italian mafia.

- Bruno is more affectionate than anyone the witch has ever had in their life. They are completely and utterly charmed by him. At first they even wonder if it was some kind of spell, but no, it’s just Bruno and how charismatic he is.

- Bruno is ashamed of the blood on his hands, and wishes to keep his s/o from that world. Witchy wants to become closer to understand the underworld

- Similar to Risotto, he finds out about his s/o’s identity after he discovers a plot to kidnap them for ransom; he arrives to find a similar scene, the hellhound spitting fire and the witch kicking ass

- He’s mostly quite relieved at first. He doesn’t have to worry about them, because they are clearly capable on their own

- Bruno is a little worried about his s/o, however. He’s protective of those he’s close to after what happened with his father, and he fears if their secret gets out that Passione might want to try and use them

- He will continue to try to keep them out of the gangster life

- He will support them the best he can, and he will dote over them as much as I can see Bruno being extremely doting over any s/o of his

- The hellhound likes him a lot because Bruno respects its power, but is strong enough on his own to protect witchy

Abbacchio

- He is the exception. He is absolutely attracted to witchy at first because of their witchy goth aesthetic.

- Witchy was instantly attracted to him. I mean look at him, he’s literally the ideal goth husband

- You’ve never seen a hotter couple

- The hellhound is not a submissive pet, it only listens to the witch; except when it comes to Abbacchio. It is entirely submissive to Abbacchio

- I kinda have this funny headcanon that Abbacchio was very into the occult when he was younger, and he started getting back into it after his life fell apart but before he met Bruno; so he picks up rather quickly that his s/o is a witch

- He doesn’t bring it up for a long time though, because he didn’t think it was relevant

- It’s just so not a big deal to him that it shocks witchy

Mista

- Also probably was a little attracted because of the witchy goth aesthetic. He thought they were way out of his league, but hit on then anyway

- He was entirely shocked when they flirted back.

- Witchy thought he was extremely cute (I mean who doesn’t??)

- They absolutely love how superstitous Mista is. Superstition goes hand in hand with magic.

- Mista is enjoying his relationship with witchy so much that any indicators of what they are go straight over his head

- When they finally tell him his reaction is about as exaggerated and comical as you can imagine. His eyes practically pop out of his head and he’s yelling to high heaven “WHAT you’re a WITCH?!”

- Witchy probably has to kiss him to shut him up

- Mista thinks it’s really hot and would absolutely be down to be a little guinea pig for them

Narancia

- Narancia was blown away the first time he saw them and was nearly love at first sight

- His earnesty and passion won them over almost instantly as well

- He loves the hellhound and the hellhound loves him

- Thanks to Aerosmith and it’s incredible tracking, Narancia always knows when someone is approaching him

- His s/o notices the pattern immediately, wonders if Narancia has some sort of ability they’ve never come across

- They approach the subject of Narancia’s abilities, to which Narancia explains his Stand to them and they are just very confused

- Narancia gets overexcited and thinks they have a Stand too

- He’s very confused when they say no. So what has he been sending all this time on his radar around them?

- S/o explains what they are and Narancia has a very exaggerated reaction similar to Mista

- He didn’t know witches could exist! Stands are about as weird as he’s seen

- Will become incredibly protective; I mean, he is already, but as soon as the idea that someone might hurt them over their powers comes to his mind, it never leaves

- He and the hellhound have an interesting relationship because they both kind of annoy each other but at the same time respect

- Also is probably okay with being a guinea pig a little for their spells, as long as they give him lots of love and attention afterwards

Fugo

(I’m so mad bcuz Fugo was the one I had completely written out and it was so good and tumblr didnt save it and I totally forgot everything I wrote so it’s just lost to the void forever)

- Witchy approaches Fugo first. He catches their attention one day, and the look in his eyes has them very curious

- Fugo is guarded, immediately suspicious of them approaching him, and wants to determine if they’re a threat to Bucciarati

- Once he recognizes that they aren’t a threat though, his walls come down

- Like Giorno, hes very intelligent and observant. The closer he gets to his s/o, the more he realizes their odd behavior

- Eventually he confronts them and they come clean about being a witch

- Fugo doesn’t believe them at first and kind of gets angry, but he can recognize the sincerity to their words

- He is a cautious person, and is worried about their safety despite the hellhound.

- Witchy constantly reminds him how special he is, how he caught their eye in the middle of the street

Trish

- Okay you know that thing how they used to say Barbie vs goth but now it’s Barbies and goths love each other? That’s Trish and her s/o

- They met because they were both trying to compliment one another

- What a goddamn power couple based on looks alone

- I don’t think Trish would catch on to her s/o being a witch. She strikes me as a bit similar to Narancia in that regard

- Witchy probably notices some weird patterns too, that things seem to turn a soft jelly consistency for a moment when Trish is around

- When her s/o tells her they’re a witch, Trish is also shocked but at the same time, she isn’t. Stands were the thing that kinda shattered her perception of reality. Learning about witches so soon afterwards I think her surprise would be tempered

- Really gets into it when her s/o shows off their abilities. She finds them amazing

- Loves the hellhound even after finding out its a hellhound. It would never hurt her, it loves her too though it might act a little tsundere toward the affection Trish gives it

~~~

[A/N: sorry this literally took me forever some reason. I’m gonna blame it partially on tumblr pissing me off when it deleted all the Fugo I had written the first time]

#bree writes #jojo headcanons #giorno x reader #bruno x reader #abbacchio x reader #mista x reader #narancia x reader #fugo x reader #trish x reader #bucci gang #reader is a witch hehe

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a-dorin · 4 years

Text

selcouth | darth maul

word count: 1.256k

warnings: mentions of cheating, an affair, seduction, teasing, pining, pet names (angel)

a/n: this is a prequel to two previous works i’ve created! this is mainly how maul seduced gar saxon’s wife, and it was heavily requested! the first two parts are linked below if you need a refresher! i hope you guys enjoy! :))

lust

the truth

summary: mandalore is changing. under the new leadership of darth maul, you feel as if your home is shifting towards a new era. however, one night, you realize that perhaps your life will change forever as well.

(not my gif)

“are you ready my love?”

“as ready as i can be,” you mutter, your voice quiet as you smooth out a wrinkle, “gar, how do i look?”

“even more breathtaking than when i last laid eyes on you,” his flint eyes twinkle, glimmering with silver, “you look radiant. that gown suits you.”

a crimson gown hugs your body, flowing from the waist. the hue is a vibrant crimson, complementing the sash slung across gar’s chest. the gown brushes against the floor, a slit in the fabric resting above your left thigh. it’s a gorgeous gown, an off the shoulder cut, the lace sleeves reaching to your wrists.

“you look quite dashing yourself,” a giggle rises in your throat as you press a chaste kiss on his cheek, “we have a gala to attend, don’t we?”

“i would much rather stay here and have you all to myself,” gar lets out a huff, straightening his sash, “lord maul requested that the council, royal advisors, as well as all members of the death watch be in attendance tonight.”

the mention of his name sends a shiver down your spine, goosebumps prickling your arms.

lord maul.

ruler of mandalore.

the alluring zabrak had been making an appearance in your dreams lately, leaving you confused yet curious. after all, he was one with the force.

was he planting seedlings of himself in your thoughts, just before you fell asleep?

or were these fantasies your own doing?

shaking your head, you take gar’s outstretched elbow, “we should pop in for about twenty minutes, then ditch.”

“i like the way you think,” gar shoots you a wink, his lips curved into a wide grin, “can i at least have one dance with my beautiful wife?”

“if you ask nicely,” you shrug, earning a quiet chuckle.

“i wasn’t aware i had to ask nicely.”

the walk to the sundari royal palace is only a matter of minutes. an autumn breeze rolls through the city, promising of upcoming transition of seasons. it was late summer, the temperature dropping by the day. leaves were beginning to be painted golden, the local vendors pulling their summer produce, offering more fall varieties.

however, the season was not the only change on the planet of mandalore.

since a zabrak began his rule over mandalore, the power shifted from the people to him completely. the council had some say in matters, along with the members of the death watch. but the entirety of power rested within him.

one singular being.

and gods were you ashamed that he caught your attention, pulling you in with his sheer authority and strength.

the memory of the encounter in the throne room rang through your mind quite often. although it only happened a couple weeks ago, it was an ever-present thought, lingering at all times.

maker, the way his eyes drank you in as you stood before him. the amber depths blazing crimson with desire, burning with need.

“we’re here,” gar exhales, pressing a kiss to your temple, “let’s have fun tonight love.”

clutching onto his elbow, a blush spreads through your cheeks as you make your way into the sundari royal palace, escorted to the ballroom. the moment the doors of the ballroom were thrust open, your heart skipped a beat.

dozens of eyes fell on you, an applause echoing through the space. biting your lip, you fought the desire to bury your face into gar’s bicep, to avoid the stares and compliments.

however, one pair of eyes were carefully following you as you sat in your chair, taking gar’s hand.

“good evening,” his voice was smooth, edged with a growl, “you two are a lovely couple. so beautiful together.”

“thank you,” you could sense gar’s surprise, “i do believe that my wife is the beautiful one here, though.”

“do you mind if i steal her for one dance?” you nearly choked on your wine.

“o-of course maul,” gar stammers, his voice eerily hushed.

“shall we?”

your fingers trembling, you reluctantly take his hand. the zabrak leads you to the dance floor, where a classical mandalorian ballad seeps into your ears, your heart thudding against your rib-cage.

maul places a hand on your waist, careful not to dip too low. the other takes your hand, lacing your fingers together.

the moment his hand connected with your waist, you shivered, the touch so delicate yet so utterly blissful.

“there’s no need to be afraid, angel,” the zabrak tsks, a smug smirk enveloping his features, “i don’t bite.”

“i-i,” you stumble over your words, a blush dusting your cheeks, tinting them crimson, “i’m not afraid of you.”

“then why are you so tense?”

“because i feel an attraction to you,” the words tumble from your lips, “i’m not sure why or how, but you haven’t left my mind since that day in the throne room, when i brought gar lunch.”

his eyes lock with yours, amusement glittering in their depths, “i knew it.”

“but you feel the same way,” you counter, “you do not mask your true emotions very well, lord maul.”

the way his name, his title, rolls off your tongue sends his knees buckling, the zabrak nearly crumpling to the floor. gods, he wanted you before, but you kindled that fire within him, the feeling consuming him whole.

maul yearned for you.

and he wanted you now.

the hue of his irises harden into a deep honey, “then what am i pondering about at this very moment?”

“you want to taste me,” his jaw clenches, a growl rumbling in his throat, “you want to tear this gown off me and spread my legs. you long to leave your mark on me, painting my skin like a canvas. you want to make me yours, forgetting not only him, but every single thing about him as you fuck-”

“i’ve heard enough,” the zabrak nearly groans, “what are we going to do about our predicament angel? are we going to ignore this mutual desire, or are we going to act on it?”

the rhythm of the song picks up, signaling that the song is almost over, “i have husband maul. i am not sure if that thought slipped from your mind, but he is sitting over there, awaiting for my return.”

“yet you crave me,” maul counters, his tone firm, “we both long for one another, mrs. saxon. our time has already come angel, and you can’t just see it.”

every fiber in your being is screaming at you to stop. to end this now, before it grows into something much larger, something potentially more dangerous.

yet, your lust is burning, the fire in you desperate to be quenched.

your attraction to him is unfamiliar and strange, one that you have never encountered before.

but a part of you aches to experience it.

after all, change was eminent over mandalore. the tide was beginning to turn, shifting towards a future. one that promised of happiness and joy. as long as you were with him, you would be miserable. perhaps it was time to change your life. change it for the better.

the song ends, your throat tightening, “i-i need to see you.”

“after this gala,” maul begins, “meet me in the throne room of the palace.”

“what should i tell gar?”

“he’s incompetent enough, he’ll believe any word that drips from those lips of yours,” the purr is thick as it erupts from his mouth, “oh, and angel?”

“yes?” you arch a brow.

“you are the most breathtaking woman i have ever laid eyes on.”

#darth maul #maul #star wars #the clone wars #lust: a maul fanfic #darth maul x reader #maul x reader #maul fluff #darth maul fluff #angst #star wars x reader

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teatitty · 3 years

Text

Magecraft CE’s + Descriptions (Part 2)

Finally getting part 2 of this done! Part 1 is over here

Crystallized Wisdom Chocolate

Valentine's chocolate from Brynhild. See, it's perfect for you. I used runes to freeze it, so it will never melt again. You can display it eternally, or you can eat it immediately. ...Oh, I'm sorry. If you eat it, you may get a stomach ache. (A/N: I just think it’s neat that she used runes for this)

Threefold Barrier (I actually have no idea what this description is trying to say)

Fugu, Kongou, Dakatsu, Taiten, Chougyou, Ouken. The triple-layered barrier that he's surrounded himself with, as if he's woven a web out of spidering threads covering the ground and all spaces, flat surfaces, and three-dimensional objects. This circle is an unwavering philosophy. Those lacking wisdom, be ashamed.

Vivid Dance of Fists

"AzoLto!" This is a slightly new type of modern magecraft, a style of fistfighting blended with the sounds of music.

Mystic Eyes of Distortion

Bend, bend, bend... Distort. The repeated words became a curse, twisting and destroying everything within her sight.

Repeat Magic (idk what this description is about either)

A revolution in spell-casting! These old farts are seriously stubborn. Printing technology has ruined the Mystics, communications technology has poisoned the Mystics? Copy, repeat, that's totally fine by me! Like these words being propagated by a vulgar crowd, spell-casting, too, one time should be enough!

EXP Card: Kuji Kanesada

An ancient sword with a 9-character inscription on the back. This historic weapon is a Mystic that rivals magecraft.

Volumen Hydrargyrum

In the hands of a skilled wielder, Volumen Hydrargyrum's silver stream can turn into swords, its waves into shields, and even its splashes can become deadly.

This is the supreme Mystic Code of the Archibald family, the depths of which an ordinary mage could never pierce. All you lowly creatures who called yourself mages, you will know that your toys are of no match before true arts.

Self Geass Scroll

This is a set of laws that are unbreakable by mages, a type of spell that is so powerful it even binds the soul. When the contract is signed... No one can break it, nor escape from it. ...Only for the ones who signed it, that is.

EXP Craft: Burrowing Worms

Many creatures are often chosen as familiars, but not many mages would choose insects, especially those insects that are not of this world. This insect is the informant to hell itself. As a parasite, the host will gain various abilities, but ultimately, this insect's true nature is to devour, multiply, and destroy. There's nothing that awaits the host except terrifying demise.

Key of the King’s Law (apparently a Mystic Code! Who knew!)

In the Age of Gods, where man's domain was still limited, a king gathered all the treasure across all the lands and stored them inside a vault he had built. Those were known as the origins of all treasures that followed. The evidence of all mankind's wisdom and knowledge. People started to praise it as the "Gate of the Gods." Truly, it is. Eventually, the "vault" itself became a Mystic more mysterious than the treasures it held. Also, the key to the vault can only be used by the King. The key will constantly change its shape, and the vault will constantly store new treasures. Without the wisdom to instantly understand those Mystics, the key will never be able to open the vault's gate.

Bronze-Link Manipulator

A Mystic Code designed by a certain talented mage to cover for her own physical limitations.

However, its true function is not to assist in her daily life, but to be used in battle. It is said upon unleashing its true combat capability, it could even rival the proud El-Melloi family's Volumen Hydrargyrum.

Ath nGabla

NA Translation: When the Child of Light, Cú Chulainn, became aware of his imminent death, he tied himself to a pillar and would not allow himself to fall to the ground.To Celtic soldiers, this formation is the proof of their oath to be invincible and determined, that they shall never retreat as long as they are alive.

Direct Translation: Upon realizing his imminent death, the Child of Light, Cú Chulainn, tied himself to a pillar. Not as a form of defeat, but to proudly welcome his end on his feet. To the Celtic soldiers, this formation was proof of their oath to be determined and indomitable, as fleeing was absolutely unforgivable.

Jeweled Sword Zelretch

This is a Mystic Code designed and created by Zelretch, a magician known and feared as the "Kaleidoscope." Its true form is not a sword, but a staff. Although limited, it can draw out magical energy leaked from parallel worlds...Making the Second Magic a reality and creating slashes of light from concentrated energy.

Origin Bullet (doesn’t actually talk about the Mystic Code)

NA Translation: His origin is to cut and connect. He has cut away many things in his life, and struggled to reconnect with even more. The image reflected in the broken windows... May it be the one from those beautiful days.

Direct Translation: An origin of severing and binding. Having discarded many things and stroven desperately to connect even more. Afterimages reflected in a cracked window. I beg you, leave those beautiful days as they are.

Prelati’s Spellbook

NA Translation: It's said that the book he accepted is bound in human skin. It was composed of curses towards humanity in every conceivable way. By rights, the book deserves to be burned. However, as he is now, it was the truth of the world.

"You have crushed my saint." He screamed to the heavens. "Therefore, I too shall trample the miracles you have created. I shall slaughter those pure and lovable children to my heart's content." The man's pitch black eyes were utterly stagnant...

Direct Translation: The book he received was said to have been made from human skin. In every conceivable way, it was composed of curses towards humanity. This book is something that inherently deserves to be burned. However, to the current him, it was the truth of the world. [You have trampled my Saint.] He screamed to the heavens. [Therefore, I too shall trample the miracles you have created. I shall slaughter those pure and lovable children to my heart's content.] The man's pitch black eyes were utterly stagnant―

Sharing of Pain (the full description would be too long and also this is Chloe so I refuse to write out all of it)

NA Translation: Whew, curse access point, transfer of ownership complete! Now your pain is mine! ♪ Though it's a simple spell, it's surprisingly annoying... It tickles, and makes something shiver in the depths of my body.

Direct Translation: Whew, curse access point, transfer of ownership complete! With this your pain is now mine♪ Though it's a simple ritual, to be so surprisingly flustered... It tickles, and makes me a bit excited inside.

#fate series #lore post #hate to end this on Chloe but I'm tired tonight #so this is where part 2 ends!#keep an eye out for part 3 in future!

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faulty-writes · 4 years

Note

I love soft and shy boy Tamaki... I'd like a story where Tamaki has been in love with reader since the moment they met but oblivious reader, even though she's 'bunny' to him, believes he has a crush on Nejire and wants play wingman for him. Meanwhile, Nejire has been trying to set those two up since she figured out Tamaki was in love and plays wingman (wingwoman?) for THEM. Maybe Tamaki gets tired of it; maybe he finally explodes and ends up confessing to his bunny in a fit of passion in public.

[ I feel like this took me a long time. But the length is impressive, at least to me. Haha. I hope you enjoy it nonetheless. I love Tamaki. ]

“Hm...so they don’t connect the dots, even when you keep calling them bunny?” Nejire questioned as she walked down the hallway of U.A. with Tamaki who was currently hunched over, his hair hanging in his face and the look of utter disappointment painted his features. He let out a sigh before looking at Nejire, “I...t-tried to ask them i-if they wanted t-to maybe...h-hang out t-today but...they s-said no…” he explained and Nejire couldn’t help but pout.

She recalled passing by the hallway when she saw you with Tamaki, the shy boy had stopped you and tried to strike up a conversation. She smiled and silently cheered her friend on as she watched from afar, but she recalled the way the smile faded from your face when you noticed her. The untold truth was, you believed Tamaki had a crush on Nejire. After all, she was a third-year unlike you a second-year.

She was a hero and a beautiful one at that, you spent your days hanging out in the Development Studio as part of the Department of Support. You would never be seen as a front line hero and you knew that Tamaki though he was shy. Made an excellent hero, so brave and just. It was admirable and you...well your work was less...impressive. You believed Tamaki much like most heroes, didn’t get enough credit or praise for what he did and it often ate away at you.

There had to be something you could do, you sigh as you continue to think. Dressed in the protective gear as is standard for support course students. You were walking down the hall, originally you were looking for Hatsume because you wanted her rather...insane opinion on a part of your recent design. But instead, you found your thoughts drifting to Tamaki.

You were unaware you were heading straight toward the third-years. “Come on Tamaki! It’s a good idea, have I ever let you down before?!” Nejire exclaimed as she grabbed the boy’s arm and shook him some. He groaned in response, his head still hanging low. It was almost like he was ashamed to lift it back up, “I...I d-don’t know...b-bunny is...w-would they...a-agree to it?” he questioned, but before Nejire answered.

Tamaki watched her head turn and curiosity had him follow her gaze. But he almost wished he hadn’t seeing as he felt his heart skip a beat when he saw you walking toward them. Nejire smiled and grabbed Tamaki’s arm yet again, “Try now! They’re right there!” the girl urged, but was only greeted with another groan. His cheeks were dusted red and his mouth felt dry, he couldn’t talk to you! God...he’d just stutter and embarrassment himself, he didn’t need that.

Nejire, however, was insistent and continued to pull his arm, she eventually puffed out her cheeks. A signature move she made when she was utterly fed up with something and in this case, it was Tamaki’s attitude. “Fine! I’ll go talk to Y/n myself and you are going through with the plan! Mister!” she said as she jabbed Tamaki’s shoulder and yet another disgruntled noise came from him, but he made no attempt to argue with her.

Yet, that didn’t stop him from watching in horror as Nejire walked over to you, though you hadn’t noticed her as you were still lost in your thoughts. That is until you ran right into her, “H-Huh?” you blinked and came back to reality, finding yourself first looking at Nejire’s chest before your eyes trailed over her neck and eventually settled on her face. Tamaki witnessed the rather awkward interaction and slowly walked to the end of the hallway before hiding around the corner.

He was trembling slightly and his eyes were full of worry as he continued to watch Nejire speak to you, would she actually tell you what they had talked about? Oh God...a lump formed in his throat and he looked to the floor, a now horrified expression in his eyes. God, he just wanted to go home. “Oh...hi Hado, is Amajiki with you?” it was rare to see members of The Big Three without one another.

Nejire smiled, “I was just talking to him, but he had to run off to do something else.” she lied as she placed her hands behind her back, but you couldn’t help but frown. “Oh…” you said as you loosely tugged on the signature tie of your school uniform. “I was kind of hoping to catch him.” you said, feeling your heart sink in your chest. Nejire tilted her head, blinking innocently.

Curiosity got the best of her and she asked. “Really? Did you need to talk to him about something?” you reached up to rub the back of your head, ruffling your hair up. “Well...to be honest, I was thinking about...doing something nice for him. You know, show him how much I appreciate all he’s doing. He seems a little stressed lately and he keeps calling me “bunny”, I wonder why that is.” you said, tapping your cheek a moment before you looked back at Nejire.

“I wanted to...set him up with someone,” you confessed and gasped when Nejire lunged forward and grabbed your shoulders. “Set him up!? Really!?” she exclaimed and you felt a faint blush come to your cheeks, Nejire was awfully close and your nose brushed against hers. “Uh...yes?” you replied and proceeded to try and take a step back, create some distance between yourself and the third-year.

She seemed to have gotten the hint and released your shoulders, but her smile didn’t fade. “Whose this special someone you want to set him up with?” she questioned, you never took Nejire for a gossip queen and you couldn’t exactly admit you wanted to set Tamaki up with her. So instead, you took a deep breath. Parting your lips to answer, but Nejire spoke first.

“Wait a minute! I have a great idea!” she said, “Why don’t we go to a restaurant together? I can convince Amajiki to go and then you can set him up with this special person you chose for him.” you raised your hand in the air, your index finger up as if to argue with her. But...on second thought, her idea might work. If she could convince Tamaki to go, maybe you’d have a chance to leave him and Nejire alone and hopefully, some romance would bloom.

You found yourself smiling at the idea and nodded, “Actually, that might be a wonderful idea. Are you sure you can convince Amajiki?” you questioned, but Nejire laughed in response. “I can try my best, you know how he is. The heart of a kitten.” she giggled before looking over her shoulder, her eyes scanning the hallway for any sight of her longtime friend. She chuckled before turning her head back and reached out to grab your hands in a friendly gesture.

“Just let me know what date is best for you so I can tell him!” you blinked, you hadn’t honestly thought that far ahead. But, you knew Tamaki like most students had one free day during the week. “How about this Sunday? As for the place, Amajiki has mentioned this one restaurant a few times. I think Fat Gum recommends it.” you explained and Nejire nodded.

“Ah! I’m sure if I ask Amajiki he’ll tell me, it’s a date then! Let’s meet there at say five in the evening? That’ll give me plenty of time to get Amajiki ready.” she knew it was going to take time to convince Tamaki to go out in public, especially if you were going to be there. But, it was so obvious how Tamaki felt about you and she wouldn’t stand by and watch him pass up a good thing.

She’d get you two together, that was a promise. She thought over a few scenarios as she walked away from you, her finger tapping against her chin as she did so. Tamaki continued to hide behind the corner, his eyes following Nejire as she walked past him. He swallowed and reached his hand out, noticing his fingers were trembling. “N-Nejire….” he said as he shyly began to follow her, “Hm?” the girl paused in her footsteps and turned to face Tamaki, a smile coming to her face.

“Tama!” she said as she threw an arm around his shoulders, something that caused the shy boy to gasp. “You like Y/n, right!?” Tamaki’s heart accelerated at the mention of your name and he felt his mouth dry up, his thoughts seemed to jumble all at once. “I...I u-uh…” he swallowed and lowered his head, God he hoped his cheeks weren’t too noticeably red. Nejire giggled, getting some amusement out of Tamaki’s reaction.

“I’ll take that as a yes! Guess what! I have another plan that will guarantee Y/n to be yours!” she declared and Tamaki’s head shot up, his eyes wide. A plan? Oh God...he wasn’t sure if he should feel grateful or scared. What exactly was Nejire planning? Sure, he trusted her and he knew she wouldn’t hurt him. But he was so afraid of ruining any chance he had with you, he didn’t want to lose you.

You’d always be his bunny no matter what happened, yet he didn’t want to risk anything when it came to you. He nibbled on his bottom lip before daring to speak, “W-What’s the plan?” he questioned, despite the fact his heart was racing in his chest. But Nejire made the choice to tell Tamaki after school and her intuition proved to be correct because when she finally did, “You w-what!?” he exclaimed, his hands digging into the fabric of his sweatpants as he sat on top of his bed.

Nejire was sitting across from him and Mirio was next to him on the bed, looking rather confused by his friend’s reaction. Nejire sighed as she pressed her hand to her face, a frown was present when she turned to look at Mirio. Silently hoping for his input. “Come on Tamaki, it’s not that bad,” he said, trying to reassure his friend as he laid his hand on his shoulder but he grew concerned when he noticed Tamaki was trembling.

“You’ve liked Y/n for a while...maybe this will be good for you.” Mirio spoke in a gentle voice as he tried to soothe Tamaki by rubbing his back, Nejire nodded in agreement. “That’s what I told him! I’ll be there as moral support too! I’ll be your wing-woman Tama! Everything will be okay!” she assured as she leaned over and patted his knee. Tamaki groaned, covering his eyes.

“I...I d-don’t just l-like Y/n…” he began, his voice shaky and uncertain which concerned his friends all the more. Mirio’s hand came to a halt and he looked over at Nejire. “What do you mean, that you really like them?” Mirio questioned as he leaned close to Tamaki who in turn shook his head, he lowered his hands and turned to look at Mirio. “I…I l-love Y/n!” he confessed, despite the fact his face looked as though it was twisted with pain and his cheeks were toasted red.

“O-Oh…” Mirio leaned back, feeling his own face flush. He hadn’t realized that, sure Tamaki seemed smitten with you. But love? Nejire, on the other hand, seemed more than happy to have found out such a thing. Though she had always suspected Tamaki was in love with you, maybe it was just female intuition. But, she knew Tamaki held deep feelings for you and now that it was confirmed, it made her all the more determined to help him capture your heart once and for all.

Her hand tightened on his knee, “That makes this all the more worth it, you have to go through with this Tamaki! I won’t rest until I see you happy with the person you love!” she declared as she hopped onto her feet, a happy smirk on her face before she pointed her finger at the shy boy. Tamaki trembled, he had a bad feeling about this. “O-Oh no…” his heart sunk with fear as Nejire grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled.

The action caused him to gasp and he stumbled to regain his balance. “Miri and I are going to help pick out an outfit for you! When Sunday comes, you’ll be all set to sweep Y/n off their feet!” she declared, though Tamaki seemed to shrink in size. He wasn't looking forward to this. The next few days at school seemed like hell for Tamaki, each day that passed only brought him more anxiety.

Especially knowing what event laid at the end of the week, he couldn't even look at you without wanting to faint. You, on the other hand, had a more optimistic view. You were happy to have finally gotten this chance, you were going to make Tamaki happy and you knew that Nejire was the perfect match for him. It was so obvious, but part of you wondered what pet name Tamaki would give Nejire considering he already called you bunny.

You thought it strange, but it was actually a pretty cute nickname. Regardless, you were a little worried that Tamaki was avoiding you. Maybe he was just nervous, you hoped he hadn’t caught on or that Nejire spilt too much information. Even so, you trusted that she had kept her word and was able to convince Tamaki to show up to the restaurant. But much like Tamaki, you couldn’t help but feel a little nervous.

Especially on the day of the agreed date, unlike Tamaki, you hadn’t put much thought into what you were going to wear. But you decided to wear something casual, not too fancy but good enough to impress. You had shown up at the agreed time, but unknown to you. Nejire was already working her plan into the mix, she had purposely told Tamaki they needed to be at the restaurant an hour early.

That would give them plenty of time to get a table and calm any extra nerves Tamaki had and hopefully be able to put her plan into action when you walked in. But Tamaki was currently hunched over the table, dressed in a white button-up shirt with a dark purple vest and a black tie. He was wearing black dress pants and dress shoes while Nejire wore a simple blue dress.

She pouted at her friend’s behaviour and patted his shoulder, “Tama! Straighten yourself out! They’ll be here any moment!” she urged with her cheeks puffed out. She knew that Tamaki was shy and fragile, but she also knew this was good for him and that she wouldn’t stop until you and Tamaki were together! “A-Any moment?!” he responded with a horrified expression.

“Oh G-God...my s-stomach…” he groaned and wrapped his arms around his waist, once more lowering his head to rest it against the table. Nejire sighed, “Tama…” she said before a waitress approached, they leaned down to whisper something into her ear. “Hm?” Nejire blinked before pressing a hand to her chest, almost looking worried. “They just walked in!?” she exclaimed before rushing to stand up, “Tama you stay here! I’ll go get them!” she said as she took off running, the sound of heels echoed as she disappeared from view.

Tamaki continued to sit at the table, visibly trembling. His stomach was twisting with so many knots, he felt like he was going to throw up. He wanted to see you sure, but...what would he even say? What if he couldn’t form any words let alone a thought? Another groan escaped him, this wasn’t good. Butterflies continued to fill your stomach, you weren’t sure why you were suddenly feeling nervous.

But regardless, you walked up to the hostess and opened your mouth to speak. Yet, before you could ask anything, Nejire came out of nowhere and grabbed your arm. “Ah!” you stumbled back and looked at her as though she were crazy, well maybe she was. “Hado, what’s going on? Where did you come from?” you questioned and Nejire chuckled before pulling you off to the side.

“Amajiki is waiting for you at the table, I tried calming him down but it doesn’t seem to be working. Maybe you could try? You are his bunny after all.” you looked at Nejire confused, “You want me to...but...but no! I mean...you’re one of his best friend’s right? The Big Three.” you said with a nervous chuckle, but Nejire placed her hands on her hips. Looking at you almost like a mother would before punishing her child.

“Come on…he’ll listen to you! I know he will,” she said before pulling you along. You partly wondered if she was telling the truth, you knew of Tamaki’s shy nature. But you also knew that he’d push through anything he had to when it came down to it. Like when he was Suneater, he could show such bravery. Yet he was always shy in front of crowds, regardless if they were cheering his name or not.

You couldn’t help but feel your heart sink, he really needed someone to be there for him. You looked at Nejire, watching her hair flow behind her as she continued to guide you to the table. You narrowed your eyes, a hint of determination coming. You would get Tamaki with the one he deserved, you just hoped that Nejire was correct when she said you had the power to calm him.

As you approached the table you could see Tamaki’s hunched over figure, “Uh…” you weren’t sure what to say when you noticed he was trembling and his face was twisted with a certain emotion you couldn’t describe. It almost looked like he was sick, “Tama! Look who I found! Come on, let’s sit down!” she urged as she pushed you into the empty booth, you cried out and stumbled.

One hand grabbed onto the table and the other Tamaki’s thigh. You felt your face light up when you realized your involuntary action and quickly staggered to your feet. Your gaze immediately went to the floor, which might have been a good thing because Tamaki’s cheeks proceeded to glow a deep red colour. “S-Sorry,” you said before feeling Nejire slap your shoulder three times.

“Sit down already!” she urged and despite, being a tad annoyed at her insistence, you sigh and proceed to slide into the booth. Nejire quickly followed you, your shoulder bumped against hers as she smiled at Tamaki. “Tama! Say hi already!” she spoke yet another command, but Tamaki couldn’t help but tremble.

His heart was racing so fast, he was almost afraid he was suffering from a heart attack. But he knew he couldn’t just continue to avoid or push down his feelings, so he swallowed the lump in his throat and slowly lifted his head. Though his eyes only lingered on you for a second before he shyly glanced away, God...you looked so incredible to him...he had never seen you dressed up before.

Should he say something about it? Oh God...he parted his lips, “Hi...I blenah…” his words came out jumbled and he quickly covered his mouth, he felt the urge to slam his head against the table. But he didn’t want to scare you away, Nejire shook her head. Tamaki was such a kitten, “Uh...hi, are you okay Amajiki?” Tamaki felt a wave of embarrassment hit him as he heard your question and he slowly nodded, “I...I uh...I-I’m f-fine...b-bunny.” you blinked, there was that nickname again.

Nejire began drumming her fingernails against the table, this wasn’t going well. She needed to figure out a way to speed things up if Tamaki wasn’t going to talk that much. Maybe some food would help bring the romantic atmosphere up, “Well...I’ll be right back, I have to use the little girl’s room.” she said and you turned your head, a little afraid to be left alone with Tamaki.

“W-Wait…” you tried to stop her but Nejire was already up and walking away, and part of you wondered if she actually had to use the bathroom. Damn. How were you supposed to set Tamaki up with her if she wasn’t even present?! You nervously chuckled before turning to face Tamaki, your hands curling in your lap. “Heh...so...Amajiki.” you began, feeling a tad bit awkward.

“How are...things with Hado?” you questioned, honestly hoping for some type of intel. But Tamaki only lifted his head and looked at you with a confused expression. “N-Nejire? Uh...I mean s-she’s fine...um, you k-know she’s a-always been a good f-friend.” he said, his eyes focused on the table. Despite the fact he was a little concerned as to why you were asking about Nejire.

“She’s just a friend?” you questioned as you leaned over the table and Tamaki’s eyebrows came together, “Y-Yes?” he responded, unsure of where you were going with such a line of questioning. “S-She’s my friend, like...like you b-bunny but um…” he held his breath as he tried to look at you once more, he wanted to tell you how he felt. He hadn’t actually thought you’d show up, he was happy that you did nonetheless.

But, it had been so hard lately. With his feelings for you only growing, he had dreams about you and a lot of the time the only thing he wanted to do was hold your hand and just...be happy with you. Still, with each passing day, he felt as though he were losing his chances one by one.

You tilted your head, “Yeah...I wanted to ask you Amajiki, why the nickname bunny? Don’t you think that’s something you should be calling Hado?” Once more you mentioned her name and Tamaki grew more suspicious, “W-What do you m-mean? Y-You’re my...uh, t-the only bunny.” he said and you frowned, guess there was no shaking the nickname.

You nodded before pressing your lips together, sitting in silence which was slowly beginning to kill you. Was there nothing you could talk about? You continuously looked in the direction Nejire had gone, praying that she would come back. Unfortunately the silence continued, and you felt the temptation to leave. You raised your head, “Amajiki I think-” before you could finish your sentence, a waiter approached and placed two drinks onto the table.

A cart was off to the side and a few small dishes were on it. You and Tamaki shared a confused glance, “Um...excuse me,” you said effectively catching the waiter’s attention. “Hm?” they turned to look at you before you gave an awkward chuckle. “We didn’t order any drinks...did we?” you asked as you looked to Tamaki who in turn shook his head.

“Oh, someone else paid for these and the food as well,” they said and you only looked more confused before you came to the conclusion that it must have been Nejire who was currently hiding behind an empty booth, smiling as she watched her plan in action. You stared at the food and your stomach twisted, everything looked delicious but you also took note that most of the dishes on the table were meant to be shared and only one set of chopsticks had been placed down.

You looked at Tamaki, “Uh...you can take the chopsticks if you want I...I’m sure I can eat with my hands…” you insisted as you slid the wrapped up napkin over to him, but he shook his head. “N-No you...I d-don’t want y-you to...I mean uh, y-you can t-take it.” he said and reached over, placing his hand over yours. You jumped, noticing how warm Tamaki’s hand was and glanced down.

Oddly enough you could feel your heart skip a beat before you looked back at him. “Uh...Amajiki?” you questioned, “Hm? Y-Yeah?” he responded before you pointed to his hand that still covered yours. Tamaki followed your finger and gasped before pulling his hand back and cradled it to his chest. “S-Sorry!” he said and you chuckled, “There’s no need to apologize Amajiki I...maybe...we can share?” you suggested as you reached over to unravel the napkin and picked up the single pair of chopsticks.

You looked over the selected plates and noticed one of them was takoyaki which you knew was one of Tamaki’s favourite foods. You smiled, feeling the urge to tease the poor boy and picked up one of the octopus balls. Holding it steady between the chopsticks, you lifted it up to Tamaki’s mouth. “Go on,” you urged, “take a bite.” Tamaki’s cheeks flushed and he leaned his head back in response, “A-Are you s-sure?” he questioned and you couldn’t help but give an almost disappointed look.

“Amajiki...just take it,” you said, despite the fact part of you thought it was almost cute to see his cheeks flush like that. He swallowed and hesitantly leaned forward, parting his lips and taking the takoyaki into his mouth. You chuckled at the sight of his cheeks puffed out and happily took one for yourself. More time passed and you happily fed Tamaki who seemed to finally be at ease, though in the back of your mind.

You couldn’t help but continue to question where Nejire had gone, did she leave? Silence once more filled the air as you continued to eat and Nejire who was still hiding noticed the continued lack of conversation and romance. It was beginning to drive her mad. “Mm…” she frowned before stomping back over to the table, you had something in your mouth but turned to face her. Quickly swallowing, you spoke.

“Nejire, where have you been?” you questioned and watched as she turned to glare at Tamaki before shifting her attention back to you. “Oh yeah, the line was really long. Sorry about that...Tama.” she said, his name coming out of her mouth with a hiss. “U-Uh…” he swallowed before looking over at you, almost as if silently asking for help. Though you didn’t take the hint and gasped when Nejire reached over and took hold of the boy’s arm, yanking him from his seat.

“Wait, where are you going?!” you demanded, watching as Tamaki’s head turned and a desperate look was clear in his eyes. “Uh…” you blinked, what was happening? “N-Nejire!” Tamaki cried out as he continued to get dragged by the girl who rounded a corner and pressed him against the wall. She pointed her finger in his face, “Why aren’t you making conversation?! You need to tell Y/n how you feel!” she said and Tamaki couldn’t help but let a soft growl escape him.

Did Nejire think he wasn’t trying? It was so hard to get his feelings across to you, he started calling you bunny as a special pet name and it didn’t seem to do anything. Even when he attempted to tell you, he’d get tongue-tied and his anxiety flared up which caused him to give up altogether. But he was getting a little sick of Nejire continuously telling him he should just confess his feelings to you as if it was so damn easy.

His hands tightened into fists which shook ever so slightly, “I-It’s not that e-easy...and w-why did you send us f-food?” he questioned as he narrowed his eyes at her. “Well...I thought it was a good idea, I mean...you two looked cute together!” Nejire said, meanwhile you sigh as you continue to sit alone at the table. The waiter came over and took the empty plates, leaving the table bare once more.

You were a little disappointed that your plan wasn’t going as you had pictured, with Nejire gone from the table and Tamaki continuing to insist they were only friends. You couldn’t help but feel as though you were at a dead end. A frown was present on your face before you decided to leave the table and walk in the direction you saw Nejire drag Tamaki. “Hm? Is that Y/n?” Nejire questioned after having effectively scolded Tamaki. “Are they leaving!?” she exclaimed and before Tamaki could respond, she grabbed his wrist and dragged him.

“Y/n!” she called, extending her hand out to you. However, you had already passed the front door and turned to look over your shoulder as a gentle wind came. “Hm?” you turned to face Nejire as she approached, Tamaki shyly standing behind her. “What’s wrong? I thought you were going to wait at the table.” you looked down, you couldn’t say your plan had failed. So instead, you shrugged.

“Well Amajiki and I already ate so...you also seemed a little busy,” you explained as you scratched the back of your head, a little embarrassed. Nejire frowned, damn...maybe she had taken too long. But she was only trying to help Tamaki! Oh no, she could still fix this! Tamaki stepped around Nejire and shyly glanced at you. “I...uh, sorry…I...d-didn’t mean to l-leave you a-alone” he said as he hung his head and you couldn’t help but give a gentle smile.

You almost wanted to reach over and pat his head, but you kept your hand by your side. “It’s fine Amajiki...don’t worry,” you assured the man before Nejire stepped closer to you. “Dessert!” she suddenly said, causing you and Tamaki to flinch. You blinked, “W-What?” you questioned, “Dessert,” she repeated, “you two haven’t had dessert yet! I’m sure there’s a stand somewhere around here.” Tamaki groaned, “H-Hado...I don’t t-think…” he began but Nejire puffed her cheeks out and turned to face him, stomping her foot against the ground.

“It’ll give you another opportunity to try and tell Y/n how you feel…” she whispered before turning to smile at you. “Come on, it’s not a proper meal without dessert,” she said with a grin as she reached to gently touch your arm and you tilted your head. “Well…” you began, your eyes shifting over to Tamaki. “If...Amajiki is fine with it, I guess we could get some ice cream,” you said, watching as Tamaki gave a soft smile and nodded.

“Great! Let’s go find a stand!” Nejire exclaimed as she grabbed Tamaki’s hand and proceeded to reach out for yours, it was a little odd to be holding a member of The Big Three’s hand. But overall, you didn’t mind. But part of you wondered what it would be like to have held Tamaki’s hand, would he tremble or would the warmth from your hand be enough to keep him still? Regardless, you allowed Nejire to guide you to the desired dessert stand where she took the liberty of buying.

Though you weren’t too big on dessert, you ordered a small cone. “Thank you Hado,” you said as you walked toward a bench, the stand happened to be in a nearby park and the sound of small children playing echoed in the distance. Nejire smiled and walked closely behind you, “Oh, no worries it's my treat.” she said with a smirk, now maybe she could try another plan.

She bumped your shoulder which caused you to turn your head. Tamaki was walking behind you as well, but at a safe distance. “Oops sorry, I’m a bit clumsy today,” Nejire explained before purposely faking a trip, her hand shot out to knock the ice cream cone from your hand. You gasped as it hit your shirt, leaving behind a visible messy stain.

“Hado!” you screamed as you tried to wipe off the melting dairy product. “Oh my gosh! I’m so sorry Y/n!” she said, but you couldn’t help but glare at her. Her apology though you had no right to fully judge sounded fake, “Did you do that on purpose?!” you demanded and Nejire shook her head before glancing at Tamaki who still had his jaw dropped from witnessing the scene.

“Amajiki! I have an idea!” she said as she turned to the boy who shivered in response and nearly dropped his own dessert. “G-Gross…” he muttered under his breath as Nejire continued to smile at him, “Why don’t you give Y/n your vest?” she suggested as she reached over and tugged on the front of it. Tamaki felt his eyebrow twitch and tried to step away, but Nejire continued to hold onto him.

“Come on Amajiki! Show Y/n how much you care, give them the vest!” she insisted and you watched with wide eyes as she began to pull the vest over his head, despite his cries for her to stop. “Uh...H-Hado…” you said as you took a step closer. You didn’t really need Tamaki’s vest, but it was clear that there was something going on between the Big Three members you weren’t aware of.

Tamaki growled, stumbling back when Nejire finally got the vest off of him. His dessert had fallen to the ground and despite the fact, he was normally soft-spoken and the only real time he showed any anger was during combat with villains. A deep growl came from his throat, “T-That’s enough!” he shouted and you jumped at the sound of his raised voice. Nejire cradled the vest close to her chest and looked at Tamaki with the same shocked expression you held.

“I...I-I’m tired of...t-this, I d-don’t need a-anyone’s help to…” he clenched his jaw, tightening his fists as he looked away a moment. His eyes were moist over with tears, but not a drop spilt as he turned to glare at Nejire. “To...confess h-how I feel!” he finished before his glance turned on you and a shiver ran down your spine, you had never seen such an expression on Tamaki’s face before.

Your body was frozen as he walked over you and roughly grabbed your hands, holding them against his chest. Unlike before, he felt a spark of bravery but there was a chance it was only fueled by the anger he felt. He looked into your eyes and slowly leaned down, brushing his nose against yours. You felt your breath hitch, he was so close. Tamaki had never made your heart race before, but you could feel it rapidly pound in your chest.

You couldn’t rip yourself away from Tamaki’s intense glance. “Y/n...b-bunny, I…” he paused yet again, how could he say it? Just blurt out he was in love with you? That he can’t think of anyone else but you, that he even dreamt about marrying you? Well...maybe the simplest thing he could do was speak those three little words. He bit back the lump in his throat and parted his lips, “I…I l-love you!” he exclaimed and once more your jaw dropped.

“I k-know it...it’s a lot...t-to take in! B-But...I do, I l-love you! I-I’ve been in love w-with you f-for uh...w-well since I m-met you! Y-You’re my b-bunny because you m-make my h-heart race and I k-know that’s s-stupid and I-” he took a sharp breath, pressing his teeth together before turning his head. Nejire smiled and clasped her hands together, “Yes Tama! That’s it!” she cheered on, though it didn’t seem like Tamaki appreciated it at the moment.

In fact, he tried his best to ignore her words before he dropped your hands and cupped your face, your eyes grew wide as he gently forced your head up. “I-I’m sorry...b-bunny.” he said and you wanted to ask why he was sorry, but the next moment almost seemed like a blur to you. Tamaki had leaned forward and you remember the feeling of his soft yet oddly rough lips against yours.

You found your hands curling into Tamaki’s shirt just before he pulled away with a red face, he apologized once more before turning to run. “Tama!” Nejire called after him, but it was too late. She frowned and looked at you, it seemed neither of you knew what to do. Your heart was still racing, trying to process what had just happened. Tamaki, had feelings for you this whole time? You almost felt stupid for having thought he liked Nejire, everything seemed to click at once and despite wanting to run after him.

Your feet continued to remain frozen and Nejire’s chuckle was the only thing that seemed to break your thoughts and bring you back to reality. “Huh?” you turned to look at her and noticed she had a faint blush on her face. “Sorry about that…” she said as she approached you and handed you the vest, you were a tad confused but took it nonetheless. “Return it to him next time you see him, I think you two need to discuss a few things,” she said and you lowered your head, running your hand over the vest. Yeah...you had more than just a few things you wanted to know.

#tamaki x reader #tamaki amajiki x reader #bnha requests #Anonymous

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caitlinsfandomthoughts · 4 years

Text

Plato’s Symposium Summarised (for fun and definitely not education)

[Basically this]

Some random guy: Hey Socrates, wanna go to Agathon’s dinner party with me?

Socrates: Yeah Agathon’s good-looking!

Some random: We have to come up with something to say to them about why you’re here though.

Socrates: Oh yeah!

[They talk for some time about what explanation they’ll use, that they have to have a reason for why Socrates is with him etc]

Some random: How about we say that I invited you?

Socrates: Sounds good!

[They arrive at Agathon’s house]

Some random: Hey guys, Socrates is coming with me but he’s not here yet, he’s talking to the neighbours or something.

Everyone: That’s cool! Socrates is like that.

Somebody else: We should have rules for drinking.

Everyone: Good idea, drinking too much can be bad for you.

Also Everyone: So the rules for drinking are each man should drink as much as he wants.

Somebody I forget who: We should each compose a panegyric ode to the god/concept of love.

Everyone: Yeah good idea literally no-one’s ever done that before.

[I think somebody else goes first but the first one I remember is …]

Pausanias aka “Pasta Sauce”: There’s two types of love, the common vulgar type and the higher type. The lower type is the love of the body, the higher is the love of the mind. The lower type is for child abusers and straight men. The higher type can only be experienced between two consenting ‘of age’ men cause women don’t have minds amirite?

Some men abuse underage boys and that is shameful, but also some young boys are gold diggers/just trying to get status from their older lovers and in that case they are the shameful ones.

Being in love makes you do crazy things that would otherwise be considered crazy but it’s totally fine if it’s in the name of love.

Also the Persians are bad and homophobic (and coincidentally our enemies)

[Then it was Aristophanes’ turn]

Aristophanes: Hiccup!

Eryximachus aka “Eric Maxis”: You should hold your breath, or drink some water or just wait and I’ll go first. I’m a doctor, and love is a lot like the body, since I’m a doctor by the way, all my analogies are about the body from a medical perspective. Did you know that I’m a doctor?

Aristophanes: Now I’m totally not joking when I tell you this. Once upon a time humans were two people stuck together, with two heads, four arms and legs etc. Our backs were facing the same way as our heads and genitals. We were super happy then and this annoyed the gods. We used to cartwheel (the fastest method of travel) right up to the gods and be rude to them and they were like what are we gonna do about these humans?

So Zeus cut us in half down the middle, and turned our heads around so we’d be looking at the place we were cut and be ashamed (that’s what the bellybutton is). And then everyone was sad, except when they found another person and then they’d cling to them, all the time, to the point where they wouldn’t eat and would die. So Zeus was like let’s turn their genitals around, so now when they were clinging to each other and facing each other, they could come to something of a –resolution- of their feelings. Now they ate, but still they didn’t part from each other much.

There were three types of humans before they were split; one made of two females, one two males, and one was half male half female. So the people who came from one gender wholes are only attracted to the same gender and people from a male/female whole are attracted to the opposite gender [I never expected bi+ erasure to come from ancient Greece but there you go]

The male attracted men are the best cause that’s the most masculine. Agathon and Pausanias are totally in that group. [Wikipedia says Agathon was ‘notoriously effeminate’ so my guess is this is irony].

If you happen to find the specific half that you were separated from then you’ll be super in love and this is called soulmates.

And by the way I was totally not joking, why won’t you take me seriously? Is this cause I’m a comedy playwright?

Agathon: [Agathon has in my opinion the best speech about love, he says how it can be more than just romantic love, how it can be a passion for creating art/music etc, it’s good even though I can’t remember it that much]

Socrates: Instead of telling you my actual opinion I’m just going to quote this woman who once tried to recruit me into her mystery religion cult. [Mystery religion is an actual type of religious category, Christianity was one of them, though much later]. Her name was Diotima.

Diotima: Do you know anything about love Socrates?

Socrates: Nope I’m an idiot!

Diotima: That’s cool, I’ll tell you about it. It’s not all good and beautiful like you might think, in fact it desires what is good and beautiful so the god of love doesn’t have those things. So he’s not good and beautiful, or at least he’s somewhere inbetween, shades of grey and all that. He is the child of Poverty and Invention [I think. She goes on for ages and I can’t remember].

That’s the basic understanding of love but the only way you’ll fully understand it is if you initiate yourself into my religious cult! Just go through the initiation ritual and then you’ll have all the secrets revealed!

Socrates: And that’s my speech on love.

Everyone: Well I guess that’s it, I mean we left Socrates till last for a reason, pack your bags folks, that’s all –

Alcibiades aka “Alcopop”: [crashes through the doors] Hold my amphora!

Agathon: Hey Alcibiades we were just each saying an ode to the god of love do you want to join?

Alcibiades: I am utterly drunk so it won’t really be fair- Wait [sees Socrates] WHAT is THIS man doing here?!!!

[Socrates sighs]

Agathon: Well there’s a long and convoluted story behind it, you see someone I invited invited him, isn’t that crazy? [Ok I added that bit]

Alcibiades: Good luck trying to get me to speak in praise of love, this man [points at Socrates] REFUSES to let me praise any other man but him!

Socrates: It’s really the other way around

Alcibiades: Ok ok, I’ll compose an ode to Socrates and he can sit there and tell me if anything I say isn’t true. How about that Socrates? Would you agree to that?

Socrates: Sure

Alcibiades: Well fine then.

Alcibiades: Let me tell you what this man has done to me! I tried my hardest to seduce Socrates (and it should have been the other way around btw!) I tried to seduce him at the gym, I tried to seduce him after a dinner date, then I tried the direct approach in bed but he still refused to sleep with me!!! (Except in the literal non-sex sense). He won’t love me and it is a CRIME! Ugh but he’s such a good speaker no one else can speak like him, I want his wisdom listening to him speak is the only time that I don’t feel like I’m better than everyone else. I’m in constant awe of him even when we were in the military together he was noble and thoughtful and idiosyncratic and also saved my life that one time no matter how much salt I throw at this magnificent man GOD I can’t stop being in love with him it hurts!

Also he won’t let me sit next to Agathon cause he wants all the beautiful men to himself.

Everyone: Alcibiades we think you’re less drunk than you’re pretending to be.

[Then like, everyone in the street I guess, shows up at the party cause Alcibiades left the doors to Agathon’s house open and them’s the rules. Most people ended up crashing, Socrates stayed up all night chatting to someone (not Alcibiades or Agathon) cause he apparently is a superhuman who doesn’t get drunk, feel the cold or need to sleep.]

[And somehow this was all transcribed by Plato who, you may notice, wasn’t even there]

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cottonwoolsocks · 4 years

Text

Nobody Knows You Now (When You're Dying In LA)

AO3 | Masterlist

title from ‘Dying in LA’ by Panic! At The Disco

Summary: He had to prove he was worth their time. He had to prove he was worth something. He had to pay for the love that they gave, atone for their adoration, because if he stopped providing, they would stop giving, and he would be left alone and worthless and unnecessary and he wouldn’t, couldn't, can’t have that.

He had to prove he was worthy.

Word Count: 1644 Genre: angst, canonverse Characters: Roman, others mentioned Relationships: none

Warnings: slight/ambiguous u!Patton and other Sides (excepting Roman)

If I need to tag anything else, let me know!

———

An actor’s most cherished talent is their ability to reinvent themselves, donning any number of masks to hide their true face and instead portray that of another.

Roman was…exceptionally practiced at this particular skill.

From the moment he had first laid foot in the home of the Light Sides, he had been built up, celebrated; honoured as brave, courageous, noble. He stood tall and mighty, aware of his importance, aware of how much they loved him and how utterly indispensable he was—not only to Thomas, but to the other Sides, as well. He was strong, valuable, fearless, and enjoyed living up to these expectations, always meeting or exceeding them and never slowing down, because why should he? He was bold. He was powerful. He was unbreakable.

He was the Good Creativity. He was important. He had work to do, and challenges to face.

Innovation poured from his pen in great torrents, song after video after sketch, building Thomas up, building the others up, encouraging them all to meet and exceed their potential, to always take the extra step, make the extra leap forward to greatness and significance.

Roman became a symbol for more than just Creativity.

Courage. Success. Confidence. All things he now represented, titles to nurture and crowns to bear proudly. He was not ashamed of his achievements. And he was excited, ever so excited for each new day, each new challenge to face, each new obstacle to overcome.

He was the Good Creativity. He was a standard that had to be upheld.

See, the trouble with such an unwavering incline in achievements and innovation is that eventually it must slow down. Humans are, after all, not like machines or characters in a play, and need to take time to breathe, rest, reset. Creativity is not a limitless tap—but it does recharge, with time.

Roman found this incredibly frustrating.

Success, he argued, was not something you could simply wait to acquire. Success required a devoted, steadfast stream of accomplishments, effort, determination—because the moment you let up, the second you break character, those around you will dig their heels into your shoulders in order to elevate themselves. Success is a matter of how far and how fast you are willing to climb, and what you are willing to do to reach it.

Dreams unfold upon the ashes of dreams.

Roman’s work was never done. Script after script. Song after song. He churned out creations, works to display, musings to share with the world. Always improved. Each better than the last. Always refining, never slowing, because if he hesitated for even a second then those in his dust would catch up to him and he would be left behind, not good enough, never good enough.

He had to prove he was better.

What the others thought of his brother was no secret. His brother was Dark, his brother was evil, his brother was not wanted. They had no use or desire for him.

And what made Roman any different?

Your goodness, Patton would say. You create nice things. Remus creates horrible things.

But where, Roman couldn’t help but wonder, was the line? What separated ‘good’ from ‘evil’, ‘light’ from ‘dark’? Surely it was but a matter of preference, of opinion, of what the individual had learned throughout their life to be accepted or admonished?

That was, ultimately, the reason the Split had occurred in the first place.

Creativity had been torn into two entities, Roman and Remus, Remus and Roman, ‘good’ and ‘evil’.

And evil was not wanted. That much was clear, had been made clear from the very moment Roman had first grappled his way into existence. Evil lost friends. Evil lost acceptance. Evil meant nobody would listen to you, because you only caused hurt, pain, fear. ‘Evil’ was every villain of every show he had ever seen, always the losing side, never the happy ending.

And Roman was not evil. He made sure of that, tried so hard to make sure of that.

After all, could someone truly evil create such beautiful things, such exquisite artwork? And Roman was a prince! Princes were not evil, practically by default—this, of course, the reasoning behind why he had selected this moniker for himself in the first place, and fought so hard to make sure it wasn’t forgotten.

But he was running out of steam.

The quality of his creations was starting to diminish: not as popular, not as pretty, not as original. But he persevered. He had to keep going, because if he stopped, if they didn’t have a use for him anymore, if they saw through the cracks in his mask despite how he tried so hard to conceal them, then they would throw him away like they had done his brother. Like they had done Remus.

Roman did not want to be alone.

He had to prove he was worth their time. He had to prove he was worth something. He had to pay for the love that they gave, atone for their adoration, because if he stopped providing, they would stop giving, and he would be left alone and worthless and unnecessary and he wouldn’t, couldn't, can’t have that.

He had to prove he was worthy.

Minutes turned to hours turned to days spent locked behind his door, heaps of discarded scripts tossed offhandedly into empty space, neatly at first, then merely cast in the general direction of the trash as he clawed urgently for the next idea, the next project, the next success, because this would be the one, this one would prove it to them, this would show he was worth keeping around, indisputably, that he wasn’t evil, that he wasn’t his brother.

The papers piled up, Roman’s notebook overflowing with discarded ideas, and yet Thomas’s remained blank.

Once, Patton found him, head in his hands past four in the morning, torn up pages obscuring his desk and floor and half-full coffee mugs littering worksurfaces. He had been led gently to bed, and the next day Roman did not miss the sympathetic glances the others thought he couldn’t see. He didn’t miss the demeaningly cautious tone to Patton’s voice, Virgil’s uncharacteristic lack of teasing insults, the way Logan didn’t correct him, even when he purposefully misused the word ‘inchoate’ just to get a rise from him.

He had failed them. He was supposed to be strong. He was supposed to be confident, proud, indomitable. Most of all, he was supposed to be creative.

That was his symbol, his mark, his purpose. It had to be upheld. He could not allow it to slip between his fingers, fall and shatter, scatter into a million tiny, irredeemable pieces, each too small to be of any consequence or concern.

He couldn’t allow them to see him stumble, because in a moment he would be gone, cast out, forgotten. Not worthy, not ‘good’, not enough.

He had to be stronger, he had to be unyielding, he had to act the part—and act he would. Acting was one of the few talents he actually possessed, one of the few uses he had, and he would damn well make the most of it.

An emotional mask, to an actor, is elementary. Change your face, portray another, hide your true thoughts and emotions and instead channel those of someone else, someone without the meagre concerns of your own life.

Roman donned his mask—someone proud, someone self-assured, someone powerful and determined and Good.

He would not let the mask break. He would patch the cracks before they showed, with wit and charm, magnificence and splendour. Because if they couldn’t see him beneath the extravagance, if they were unable to peer too hard into the shining brilliance lest they damage their eyes, they’d never even know the cracks were there.

He would be brave. He would be proud. Most of all, he would be ‘Good’.

He was not like his brother. He was not horrible. He was worthy, he was wanted, he was loved, and cherished, and appreciated. He was. Of course he was.

He had to make it. He had to be good enough. Because if he wasn’t, if he couldn’t do the only thing he’d ever been good at, what use was he to them? What worth did he have?

Without his mask, what else was left?

The mask had become so rudimentary, so ingrained in his flesh that he wasn’t sure he even existed beyond it any more. He had been acting the part for so long, he wasn’t sure he could stop. He wasn’t sure he wanted to.

‘Roman’ had become nothing more than a character he portrayed, his greatest and most elaborate creation. And he had been playing this ‘Roman’ for so long, this bold and brave and extravagant prince, he wasn’t sure he remembered who he had been before.

Had he been anyone before?

Or was this all he was? A shell? A vessel through which a character was to be portrayed?

Maybe he was never supposed to change, to question. Maybe he was supposed to just keep creating, keep acting, continue playing the part of this bold, brave prince.

That was his function, after all. His purpose. And as long as he existed in some shape or form, he must continue to uphold it, no matter how much he may wish otherwise.

As long as he kept creating, as long as he paid for his place, upheld his standard, he couldn’t be forgotten. Couldn’t be overlooked.

These challenges strengthened him, fleshed out his character for a bigger and better and bolder performance. This pain led to amelioration. And if he kept pushing away the negative feelings, no matter how insistently they tried to tear him down, he would be able to soldier forward.

He is an actor, after all. And the show must go on.

#sanders sides #roman sanders #ts roman #sanders sides fanfic #thomas sanders #sanders sides roman #fanfic #rian writes #tw u!patton #not purposefully written that way but it could be read so.#angst #taglists to follow! in a reblog #lmk if you wanna be added!#i reeeally like this one #good follow up to logan's fic 'numb' that i posted forever ago jdgshfgh #they vibe similarly #there are some pretty rad lines in this fic if i do say so myself #feels good to finish writing something after so long!

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oatsn-honey · 4 years

Text

cornflowers and caramel cubes

chapter one - aches and anxiety

masterlist

ao3

summary: Kageyama was always observant of his boyfriend, small and beautiful, vibrant and loud. Drinking in each feature, every word that fell from his lips, he could never get his fill. He was utterly enamored. And yet, how could he have missed something as blatantly obvious as this?

Or:Hinata gets extremely ill -- it’s appendicitis.

notes: i'm back writing fics i'm not supposed to beeeeeee help haikyuu and kagehina is absorbing my life-force and commanding me to create content this was a little hurt/comfort idea (when is it not hurt/comfort with me) that just popped in my head! pls enjoy!! <333 thank u sm for reading!

btw, just some warnings!! this does involve vomiting and vomiting blood, as well as other mentions of illness. there are hints to anxiety, but purely situational anxiety!

He looked beautiful that day, Kageyama thought. But, he looked beautiful every day. That didn’t stop his eyes from sneaking glances at him -- his milk skin; tangerine-pink lips, soft and supple (he would know, after all); those freckles that were lovelier than the stars painted in the sky; and, of course, that smile that never ceased to make his heart skip a beat (or ten) and immediately send heat straight to the tips of his ears.

“Tobio?” His voice, the sound like the morning sun, broke the setter from the stupor he had unknowingly found himself in. (Though, if he were to be honest, this was becoming a daily occurrence.) “You good?” The boy in front of him waved a small hand -- everything about him was small, except for maybe his heart. And eyes. And tenacity. And . . . -- in his face. Wait, when had he started staring?

“Uh, yeah. All good, Hinata.” He could feel his cheeks burning, the back of his neck feeling uncomfortably warm. The sun beating down at them wasn’t helpful in the slightest. Briefly, Kageyama found himself groaning internally -- When did I become so sappy? It’s gross. He’s gross. But cute.

He slumped against the brick wall, poking absently at the lunch placed in his lap. With a sigh, he switched his chopsticks for a box of milk. His brows pressed together, and he willed the warmth from his face away, as he sucked through the straw. His eyes slid over to Hinata, his partner aimlessly gazing at his food. Oddly, a murmur of distress fell from his lips, and he abruptly closed the lid to his bento, pushing it aside.

Kageyama curiously curled his lips to the side. Cocking an eyebrow, he prodded at his boyfriend, “Are you good?” Cornflower met caramel as they shared a look. A small hum from Hinata told him that he was alright, but Kageyama believed otherwise. That look in his eyes; it was pleading.

Practice was more-or-less a bust. At least, that’s what thought was at the forefront of the small decoy’s mind. Hunched over, a sharp and nagging pain coursing through his abdomen, Hinata counted the minutes until practice ended. 98, to be exact.

It didn’t help that Coach Ukai clearly had a personal vendetta against them (at least in the redhead’s mind), each player in nearly the same position as Hinata -- if not, their hands were atop their heads and heaving chests faced the ceiling. As the others regained their vigor enough to joke and laugh, though, Hinata’s breaths continued to come in short, laborious gasps that left his innards feeling as though they were contorting and twisting about within his body.

A single shout is an executive order for Hinata’s head. “12 laps around the gym, sprint!” A simple task, really. But with his intestines so jumbled, breaths simple puffs of air, and head pounding against his eyes, blood pumping in his ears, Hinata didn’t know if he could take even a single step more. He starts anyway, mindful to blend in with the others -- don’t fall behind; don’t push ahead. Just inhale-exhale-inhale-exhale through that knife stabbing at your stomach.

Next, receives. He supposed it went fine, considering he already tended to do poorly in that area. He swallowed harshly when a sardonic laugh made its way to his ear; “It’s almost like it’s the beginning of the year again!” He didn’t question who said it, only focused on not collapsing on the hardwood floor. His stomach should be a gymnast, he thought, with all of its tumbles and flips. An involuntary shiver ran through him as a tsunami of pain made its way to shore.

“5 minutes!” A chorus of relieved sighs and exclamations echoed in the gym, and the boys made their way towards the bench. Unsteadily, Hinata followed suit, his legs quivering and body tense. It’ll pass with a swig of water, he told himself. But when his trembling hands brought the water bottle up to his mouth, the opening knocking lightly against his teeth, he came to regret that thought.

It was all too much.

The shouts of Nishinoya and Tanaka.

The choir of heavy breathing and the squeal of shoes against the polished floor.

The sweat dripping down his back, the migraine threatening at his temples.

That awful twisting in his gut.

Hinata found himself on the floor propped on his hands and knees, his entire body burning and aching. The whole team had encircled him. His arms shook, but he was soon held protectively in someone’s arms. He grasped at their shirt, a wet sob broke past his lips, and he turned his face into them as strong hands rubbed circles into his quivering back. Kageyama.

He was covered in his own vomit. The floor was. The equipment was. Everything.

A hand, slightly cold to the touch, tenderly pushed his soaked bangs back from his forehead. As the black dots, piercing at his eyes, fade away, he sees the blurry face of Suga, gentle brows furrowed and his face pale with worry. “Hey,” he cooed, voice as lilting and soothing as ever. As the ringing in his ears quieted, but never truly disappeared, he could hear someone on the phone. His eyes flitted around the room anxiously, and his heart rate spiked.

“Hey, now, Hinata, look at me, okay?” That hand, still holding back his sweaty hair, gently scraped at his scalp, and he surrendered to the touch. “What’s wrong?” So the interrogation began.

A pained groan was as suitable a response as Sugawara had expected “Understandable,” Daichi’s booming voice, disquieted, pitched in from behind the setter. “Here,” he whispered, handing something to Suga that Hinata couldn’t make out. He twitched nervously in Kageyama’s -- whom he was relying completely on to sit up -- arms. “Don’t worry,” Sugawara reassured, his presence relaxing Hinata’s frantic pulse, “I’m just going to check your temperature.”

His senses returned to him slowly, but he could feel the thermometer underneath his tongue as the thermometer read his temperature. His eyes, dazed and misty-eyed, settled on Suga, his soft features quelling his panic. A small beep-beep-beep reached his ears, and the thermometer was taken back. His eyes shifted up to his captain, who hissed as he read the temperature. “38.5.” A groan rang throughout the gym and only then did Hinata fully comprehend just how close everyone was. It was suddenly too hot, too stuffy, too close.

“Okay, kiddo. Give him some space, guys!” Daichi ordered. Had he said that last bit out loud? He didn’t care, Hinata decided, simply needing to end the agony riddling his stomach. His exhale was trembling as he weakly pressed closer to Kageyama.

“Is it your stomach?” the raven-haired setter spoke softly in his ear. He nodded minutely, hands snaking around his own midsection. He hissed as Kageyama adjusted his grip on his feverish body, the movement jostling his tender pains far too greatly. He couldn’t help the whimper from escaping, his eyes screwed shut, as Kageyama rose to his feet, carrying him with the grace that could only belong to a setter towards the bench.

Hinata could feel hot tears stinging his eyes, angry with himself (for his weakness, he supposed), ashamed, and unable to stop the small whines of pain that slipped past his parted lips. He fell asleep to Kageyama’s soft whispers of, “It’s okay, Shou, you’re alright. I’m here.”

30 minutes later, he awoke to the stabbing in his gut, but he was somehow in his bed, blankets tossed about from his tossing. Downstairs, he could hear, and smell, his mother cooking. But the thought of food simply made him blanch.

As he shuffled into the gym Hinata steeled himself for the inevitable confrontation with his team; their demands as to why he was there. Their eyes turned to him and he was already prepared to shrug off their questions and answer half-heartedly. But what he had expected to be simple turned out to be more difficult than the arduous bike ride across the mountains (he would be sure to keep to himself the fact that he had to take several breaks, and had once found himself collapsed on the side of the road, trying to keep from spewing on the asphalt).

Hinata received a massive chewing-out from the entire team, Suga’s own reprimands surprisingly harsh. Seated on the bench, he observed the other boys’ practice, watching but not entirely seeing, gaze distant and hazy. There were painful goosebumps tickling at his skin and a shiver coursed through his back.

Rubbing his tense neck, the muscles knotted and hot, Kageyama glanced over at his boyfriend, doubled over at the bench. A curse was hissed through gnashed teeth as he made his way over to him in long, agitated strides.

Knocking the redhead’s shoulder lightly with his clenched fist, the setter asked pointedly, “Hey, shrimp, when was the last time you ate?” Doe-eyes sluggishly turned towards him, and Kageyama found himself gulping back in apprehension, the heat leaving his body. He gnawed at his lip tentatively. “Hey,” he pressed.

A storm of violent tremors ran through Hinata’s small body, quivering and haggard, leaving behind the damage of a natural disaster. As he answers, “I think I had a banana yesterday?” Kageyama’s calculating eyes are glued to the decoy’s face -- the lines and contours gaunt, the dark circles (he had been kept up by pain all night) beneath those normally vibrant eyes unsettling.

The taller boy cursed, color draining from his face, “Hinata!” His face scrunched in what he wished was fury -- Kageyama wanted to be angry, he really did. He knew how to deal with anger. But this concern, all-consuming and disastrous, left his heart in disarray and his mind jumbled. He could feel his nails digging into his palms, carving small crescents into the skin.

“I swear, I’m not hungry!” Hinata defended, his voice weak and breaking. His hands, clumsy and shaking, reached out to grab at Kageyama’s sleeve -- what for, he didn’t know. He worried at the inside of his lip, a drop of frigid sweat trickling down his back. He leaned forward, just missing Kageyama’s arm as the player turned away.

Shouting, his voice reverberated throughout the room, the drills slowing so each teenager could peek at the situation, “Coach!” He threw on his jacket, quickly zipping it up to his chest. “I’m taking Hinata home!” In a huff, he switches his shoes with mastered precision and throws his bag over his broad shoulder.

“W-wha-! No, Kageyama, you can’t do that!” Hinata stammered, his arms crossing over his body as he firmly planted himself on the bench. “I have scho-” A sputtering gasp pushed its way through his lips. That pain that he had nearly become accustomed to had morphed into something loathsomely sharper; something localized. His stomach, set ablaze, convulsed excruciatingly, and his hand shot up to clamp over his mouth. The corners of his vision tunneled inwards, that obnoxious, drowning ringing returning to consume all sound.

“Shou?” When had Kageyama kneeled in front of him? His hand, comforting with its strength, yet tenderness, was braced upon his knee. The team stole glances from behind the setter, frozen mid-motion. They inch closer and closer still.

A look at his boyfriend, lip caught between his teeth, worry etched into that already pressed face, led Hinata to unsteadily clamber to his feet. “I-I’m fi-fine,” he jumbled out, swaying and lurching, his face green. He slipped, plummeting into Kageyama’s arms, safe, a haven. “S-sorry.” He quaked, willing the wave to pass as Kageyama eased him back down onto the metal bench.

His hand, sturdy and reassuring, rubbed shapes into his knee. “It’s okay, Shouyou, take your time.” Even with his arms wrapped constrictingly around his turning stomach, the redhead peeked through his curly bangs -- which were needing a trim -- to stare lovingly at his boyfriend, his powder blue eyes like the dusk sky, swirling with stars. “But,” Kageyama hesitated a moment to nibble at his bottom lip, “You really should get home and try to rest, you know.”

“R-right.”

Suddenly, a weight settles on Tobio’s shoulder -- Takeda’s voice filtered into their little bubble, “I’ll take him home, Kageyama.” The setter whirled around to look up at his teacher, a set of keys jangled in his extended hand. He smiled gently, “You should stay and practice instead, okay?”

Despite his better-intuition asking-- no, begging-- him to say otherwise, he sputtered out, “O-Okay. Thanks.” His eyes, wavering and uncertain, flicked to Hinata’s. The apprehension and panic he sensed made every fiber of his body scream, “Stay with him!”

But, 5 minutes later, Hinata was being guided from the gym, Takeda’s hand braced on his elbow, and Kageyama was twirling a ball in his hands, his teammates calling for sets.

“Are you sure you’ll be alright alone? Do you need me to walk you in?” Takeda broached gently, shifting the vehicle into park. He unlocked the car and turned to gaze at Hinata, slumped against the cold window, moving to rest his bent arm on the center console.

Twitching uncomfortably, the redhead clutched onto the small handle, pushing the car door ajar. “Mmhmm, I’ll be okay,” he laughed weakly, the look in his eyes entirely contradictory. As his feet hit the pavement of his driveway he stifled the urge to cry out, trapping the sound behind his teeth. When he turned around to retrieve his school bag, an attempt at a smile, which appeared closer to a pained grimace, lined his features. “Thank you.”

Hinata didn’t care to announce his entrance as he dragged himself into the house, bothering only to slip his shoes off while entering. His bags clattered to the floor, and he couldn’t bring himself to worry whether he had disturbed the others in the house. His vision faded as he trudged up the stairs, his knuckles bone-white as he gripped the stair-rail.

He crawled into his bed, clad into a soft shirt Tobio had left at his house, the smell and reminder of him helping to calm the churning and biting of his stomach. It was nice, but it never quite substituted for the real thing. He settled into his covers, burrowing underneath their warmth, and faded into a fitful sleep, arms snaking around his abdomen.

He didn’t wake up for several hours.

Later that evening, in the Karasuno gym, Kageyama wrung his hands, slick with sweat, nervously. “He’ll be okay,” He heard Sugawara call from behind him, his tone consoling. But, the first-year couldn’t help but feel apprehensive about the whole situation. Shouyou had honestly looked horrendous. And he was so scared, Kageyama could tell.

Attempting to shake the thoughts out of his head, the setter rolled his shoulders and took a swig from his uncapped water. It was stale and room temperature -- unsatisfying. He set it down again, screwing the lid on again. Toying with his lip, he watched as the other players stretched and joked, but couldn’t bring himself to join. He just wanted to see Hinata.

An obnoxious song blasted throughout the gym suddenly, snapping Kageyama from his stupor. Gasping, he frantically lunged for his bag, digging for his cell. It was Hinata’s ringtone -- his favorite song. A shiver ran up Kageyama’s spine when Nishinoya and Tanaka creeped over his shoulder, lurking. His hand clamped around the small device, vibrating and singing still. He slid his finger across the screen frantically, “Hello?”

He took a moment to worry about how rushed and jumbled his words were, breathless and too-eager. But all thoughts were fully erased when a sound was carried through the line.

“Tobio,” A heart wrenching sob echoed through Kageyama’s head as his eyes widened and his stomach dropped. “Tobio, help. I-” Shrill, choked cries cut him off, filling all of the vacant space created by Kageyama’s silence.

He bristled at the sounds, and the team took immediate notice, practice halting in its entirety. Many joined Tanaka and Nishinoya, all encircling Kageyama as he crouched on the floor, his breath spiking in anxiety. He swallowed. “Shou, what’s wrong? Shou?”

He only briefly thought about how he hardly used nicknames around the rest of his team.

Through wails and frenzied huffs of air Kageyama heard, “To-Tobio, please, my stomach--I-” He was interrupted again by his own wails.

Kageyama hissed a curse through his teeth, and each and every person present knew what it meant -- the situation was bad. No questions arose as he moved towards his bags and began slipping his jacket over his sweat-soaked practice jersey. “I’ll be there soon, Shouyou; just hang on for me.”

The other was nearly suffocating on his breaths, the agonized gasps sending spikes through Kageyama’s chest and launching his mind into a spiraling panic of what-ifs. The redhead on the other end, muffled by something, managed to answer yet, “H-hurry, please, Tobio.”

“Hinata,” his tone hardened: firm, terribly distressed, and endeared all at the same time, “Listen, I need you to breathe.” He was close to hyperventilation. “Breathe,” he reiterated, “In, out, in, out.” He ignored the alarmed looks he received, like spears thrust into his back. The unsteady breaths, still shuttering with each inhale, slowed, thank Kageyama’s stars.

Takeda is standing just where Kageyama had prayed he would be: by the door with keys clutched in his trembling hands. Never before had Kageyama been so thankful for his teacher’s talents for observing -- he knew he needed to get there quickly.

“I’m gonna stay on the line, okay, Shou?” The words tumbled from his lips as he stepped from the gym and towards Takeda’s vehicle, each stride long and rushed. “Talk to me, and breathe. Can you stand? There’s medicine in your cabinet.” He knew because Hinata had gotten a fairly nasty headache the other day, and Tobio was fortunate enough to find himself in the role of personal nurse. He would’ve taken care of him anyway, though.

“N-no… I-I,” Another whine resonated in his ears, the noise muddled -- a definite no. He only resisted the urge to bark vulgar obscenities for the sake of his ailing boyfriend and teacher as he clambered into the car.

“Just... Just hang on, Shouyou,” he murmured, mostly to calm his own hectically pulsing heart. He flashed a look towards Takeda, eyes swimming with tears, and the teacher grit his teeth, pressing his foot firmer onto the pedal.

At some-point during their frenzied drive, the entire event a blur and yet lasting a million years to Kageyama, the connection had been lost between the call. He cursed the mountains and cell towers, fully knowing that it made no difference what he thought or what situation was occuring.

When they finally pull into Hinata’s drive-through, Kageyama itching to launch from the car, the setter flung his door open and barreled into the house (he praised whatever deity had been so blessed as to tempt Hinata to slip him an extra key).

“Shou!” he bellowed, storming into the domestic home, unfit for the chaos raging through him. “Shou!” He teared through each room, careless for the state they were left in.

The whimpers filtering from upstairs queued him, and immediately he was bounding up the staircase, each step an insignificant obstacle as he pummeled through. Barging into the dark room, Kageyama took not a single breath before he dove for the small crumpled figure on the unmade bed.

“Hey, hey.” He kneeled, his hands instinctively flying to run through Hinata’s curly locks, untamely and wet with sweat. “I’m here now.”

His lips, vacant of all color, trembled. Fat tears rolled down his ghastly cheeks, path skewed as he curled in on his side, arms wrapped protectively, and yet tentatively, around his midsection, his hands pale and cold. “T-Tobi-” he tried, only for another torrential wave of pain to flow through him.

The panic wedging itself into Kageyama’s mind, he rushed out, “Hey, talk to me Hinata.” But as the boy before him blanched, green tinting his pallor, his heart sank to his feet.

“B-bathroo-” There wasn’t enough time for him to finish -- it seemed there never was -- before a harsh hiccup ripped itself from his throat, his hand slapping over his own mouth. Without thinking, and with brilliant speed, Kageyama scooped him into his arms, body feeling unnervingly small and fragile, he surged towards the restroom down the hall.

By the time they had crossed the threshold, it was far too late -- it had already begun.

It was all over Kageyama’s shirt, Hinata’s pants, his lap, his entire body.

However, it continued as Hinata scrambled towards the toilet, throwing himself over it, retching over and over and over again. Futilely, Kageyama took to rubbing his partner’s back, convulsing with each heave, and smoothing the sweaty bangs away from Hinata’s burning forehead.

At the time, Kageyama had thought the noises from over the phone were the most wretched things ever conceived, but as he was forced to listen to the unbearable gags he wished to go back. These were sobs stopped only by the terrible choking that came with the upheaval of one’s own stomach contents. He clenched his eyes closed, sick to his own stomach.

Only after Hinata had finally finished, panting breaths raw from innumerable rounds of dry-heaving, did Kageyama finally take notice. He stared, pupils shrunk, at Hinata, slumped limply against his chest.

Those lips -- stained red.

The toilet brimming with blood swirled bile.

Their clothes soaked with a deep crimson.

This was bad.

big thank u to @Tmalasia on the izuocha temple server for editing this!! ilysm! pls go check out mal's stuff, it's amazing!! <3

so i actually finished this last night but i couldn't post it cuz i only had my school laptop and um when i went to ao3,,, it turned out that i was flagged and reported to my school board for,,,,,, umm, y'know. and now i am terrified for my life.

anywho!! second chapter of this is in the planning stage, so pls stay tuned!!! i rlly hope u enjoyed this first part, hopefully it wasn't too OOC and jarring aha,,,

also, i have *another* kagehina fic that i'm planning rn that should just be a short one-shot, only maybe 2K, so expect that soon!!

now,,,,!! just a word about the crisis happening rn (if u don't care or think this could trigger you, pls skip!) with all of the chaos happening rn, i'd like to just advice everyone to stay safe and calm -- pls practice good hygiene and do all you can to protect yourself (do elbow bumps instead of high fives, cough into ur elbows, wash ur hands frequently, disinfect surfaces, etc.) without going to excess. that's what's making everyone freak out, so do your best to know your own situation and stay rational! i'm sending good thoughts to everyone and their health rn, pls stay safe and healthy!! <333

thank you for reading!!! much love~! <3

#haikyuu!!#haikyuu!! fanfiction #kagehina #kagehina fanfiction #tobio x hinata #hinata x kageyama #fluff #angst #kagehina angst #hurt/comfort #sickfic #appendectomy #vomiting #daisuga #daichi x sugawara #sugawara is team mom

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curiousartemis · 4 years

Text

Beard Daddy Harem Masterlist

Okay, so as everyone knows, I am what you might call a beard daddy aficionado; let’s just say that if there’s a beard daddy in a game or series he’s going to be my new husbando.

There are myriad reasons for this, chief of which is that which lies at the core of the beard daddy persona: hard outer shell harboring a soft squishy center (and belly). Masculinity minus the toxicity. Bearded angst with heartbreak reflecting in his tired, dark eyes. What’s not to love.

So I decided to do what any reasonable aficionado would do and create a ranked master list of all the excellent beard daddies who have been welcomed into my harem and into the warm loving arms of my OCs and would-be OCs.

The daddies will be judged according to three different ranking systems: 1. Beard Game 2. Daddyness 3. Nobility of Character

Beard Daddy #1: Blackwall

Some might call him the king of Beard Daddies, except he is no king, unlike some on this list. This lonely Warden-but-not-a-Warden is first discovered in Dragon Age: Inquisition training random farmer guys to protect themselves against bandits. He meets my OC and after five minutes has an immediate hard-on for him. What can I say, the man has taste.

1. Beard Game Blackwall’s beard game is not as strong as you might thing. While he is heavily bearded, his beard is very untrimmed, and if we add to this the fact that his skin is looking a little harsh (and I’m not talking about wrinkles, which add wisdom and majesty to the beard daddy’s face), we can assume that Blackwall is not really into personal grooming. Comments from other characters seem to confirm this. However, his beard is extremely full and thick; his hair is long and equally dark and thick, and in some mods he is graying. 👌 It must also be pointed out that many mods clean up Blackwall’s complexion and beard so that he still looks bearded and angsty but also like he occasionally bathes and combs his hair. 6/10

2. Daddyness Is not, in fact, a daddy; however, does appear to take the most youthful member of the team, Sera, under his wing. His willingness to train the farmers speaks of a promising streak of over-protectiveness. Low key wants children, as we catch him chiseling out a rocking griffon in the barn. He is suitably embarrassed as he glances up and gazes into what are clearly the amused eyes of the future father of his adopted children. 8/10

3. Nobility of Character Blackwall was ready to be killed for a crime he committed years ago, partly to save his own conscience, and partly to save the lives of the people he commanded. He is wracked with guilt, a guilt that consumes him and forces him to beg you to leave him to rot in jail. Even before this, Blackwall took the name and identity of the man he admired most and did his best to emulate him. In essence, Blackwall made one mistake as a young man and has spent the rest of his life paying for it. That may be fair, considering the mistake made, but his incessant desire to atone for that mistake exhibits his incredible nobility of character. 10/10

OVERALL RANKING: 8/10

Beard Daddy #2: Ulfric Stormcloak

Considered “controversial” because most people don’t know how to appreciate a truly fine specimen of beard daddy. That which makes him “problematic” is what makes him #1 in our hearts. Mostly because we are capable of exhibiting reading comprehension and complexity of thought.

1. Beard Game Look, there is no nice way to put this: Ulfric’s beard game is weak af. Even Ulfric lovers agree that that mess crawling up his face is a disaster that all of Skyrim should be ashamed of. Plus, even more so than Blackwall, Ulfric’s skin is wrecked. This man does not moisturize. This man also does not know WTF to do with his hair. Two braids on the side and then the rest just shoved back like he’s applied a buttload of mousse and prayed to the Nine it never moves? Shameful. Of course, like Blackwall, mods have helped to vastly improve his hygienic outlook. Males of Skyrim gives him the hair he deserves, and any decent face texture mod can clean those pores right up. However, the facial hair issue is still just that, an issue, which is why he has a full and proper beard in my story which he grows out even more because my OC is unapologetically hot for beard daddies. 5/10

2. Daddyness Canonically childless, but as there is an average of about 1.5 children in every major hold in Skyrim, we can hardly hold this against him. Many fan artists and writers give him children, and he’s the proud uncle of five in my story. He even made his eldest niece his heir. However, points must be taken for his refusal to even entertain the thought of having children with my OC. Never mind that he’s totally right in that he hasn’t the time to properly devote to a child, as well as in his stolid belief that a crying baby would make his husband want to tear his hair out and bash his face again against the palace walls. He remains child-free and stress-full. 6/10

3. Nobility of Character Immediate points for being an actual king, but this is on top of the fact that he exhibits such actual nobility of character that it literally makes him the most interesting character in the entire game. No, see, this man spent ten years of his childhood with what basically amounts to monks; then as a young man he was so crushed at the thought of turning his back on his people and his family during their time of need that he left what was supposed to be a lifelong yoga retreat to join the righteous war against the Evil Elves. Unfortunately, points off for the terrible way he’s handling the bigotry in his own city, not to mention the MURDERS going on right beneath his very well-endowed... nose. Of course, nobody’s perfect, and dishonorable actions make for angsty beard daddy pasts (see above), but this is also the reason approximately 10 people are currently typing up anonymous asks wherein they inform me that I am a Nazi and a Trump-supporter for not wanting to burn effigies of Ulfric in my front yard. However, like Blackwall, we do see him address these issues in my story, which as we know is the only canon taken into consideration for the purposes of this list. 9/10

OVERALL RANKING: 7/10

Beard Daddy #3: Ifan ben-Mezd

The sleeper agent among beard daddies. The fact that more people don’t know he exists is an utter travesty. The warmth of his voice alone as he gently pulls you close and tells you you’re amazing should be enough to make even the most stoic of beard daddy aficionados melt into a puddle of pure Source.

1. Beard Game Fierce and free. Ifan’s beard is practically a companion in its own right; depending on which piece of official art you’re looking at, this is either a good thing or a bad thing. In the right light, Ifan’s beard is wild, graying, and indicative of the fierce heart of the wolf which beats within his manly breast. In the wrong light, it looks like he bought it at the Party Store and pasted it on with Elmer’s glue. However, regardless of that, his hair is nearly always on point. Long and flowing in the breeze behind him as he gazes intensely into the camera, his hair simply says, “I will fuck you, gently, lovingly, and relentlessly.” As for his skin, it may be scarred and wrinkled, but at least it’s not covered in dirt. 9/10

2. Daddyness Unfortunately, we have to take a hit here. Ifan exhibits no real fatherly tendencies throughout the game, though we wouldn’t say he’s in any way unkind or cruel towards children. He never expresses hopes for the future in terms of building a family, and we don’t see him taking any younger members of the party under his wing. His fondness for the elves is something, but he takes on the position of child towards them more so than doting parent. Would he make a good father? Undoubtedly. But so far that’s all we’ve got. 2/10

3. Nobility of Character True, he starts the game as a “Wayfarer” and has the “Outlaw” personality type. But once again, we have a beard daddy who has committed an atrocious act in his past and seeks to atone for it. In Ifan’s case, he was completely and utterly duped, yet he nevertheless feels intense guilt and grief over his actions. His apparently innate desire to stick it to the authorities as well as the gods means he’s no pushover when it comes to fighting for what’s right. And let’s not forget that Ifan ultimately turns his back on the Lone Wolves and seeks to live a more just life. There’s nothing to make us believe that he wouldn’t have our backs no matter what the situation, and once he’s committed himself to my lovely OC, I know it’s the start of something beautiful. Wolves mate for life, after all. 9/10

OVERALL RANKING: 7/10

Beard Daddy #4: King Harrow

This surprise late addition to the harem is not a character in a video game at all; he is, in fact, a character from the animated series The Dragon Prince. Warm, wise, and chock full of dad jokes, there can be no question that he belongs on this list. Sigh, I just really need to make a TDP OC for him.

1. Beard Game A strong showing, but perhaps not as strong as one might thing. Harrow’s beard is nice and thick, but it’s also exceptionally maintained. Yes, a few other beard daddies on this list may have let their beards grow a little too wild, but Harrow seems to have moved too far in the other direction. Still, his hair is absolutely glorious, and his skin looks so soft and supple to the touch (Mmm). Unquestionably visits the royal barber several times a week. 8/10

2. Daddyness IS AN ACTUAL DADDY. Truly, no other beard daddy here can top this. Plus, Harrow has not just one child but two. The younger is his biological son and future king of Katolis. The older is the biological child of his wife whom he has taken under his arm and into his heart and helped raise as if he were his own. Harrow loves his children with all his heart, would undoubtedly do ANYTHING to protect them, and on top of all that is a pretty big dork. The level of dadness in this man is utterly unprecedented—and without equal. 10/10

3. Nobility of Character But every daddy has his weak spot, and this is Harrow’s. We learn throughout the course of the show that Harrow, while suffering from grief over losing his wife, fell under the influence of Viren and agreed to kill the dragon king. Not only was this immoral but it was dumb as hell. He also allowed Viren to practice dark magic, even knowing how incredibly evil and immoral this brand of magic is. And let’s not forget that it was Viren’s idea to steal the heart of an innocent creature, an act which starts a war against the elves, and Harrow went along with it. And despite ALL this, he still considered Viren a friend. The thing is, unlike the three daddies above, Harrow never really go a chance to atone for his actions. However, to play devil’s advocate, Harrow’s entire timeline is basically made up of one grossly immoral act after another. Don’t get me wrong; I adore the man, but he really needed a new best friend. 3/10

OVERALL RANKING: 7/10

And that’s it, folks. Honestly, I thought Harrow would take this, which is why I listed him last, but the more I thought about it (and the more I read the wiki, holy shit) the more I realized this man’s entire adult life has basically been one bad decision after the next. Still doesn’t take away from the fact that he has great hair, great fathering skills, and a pretty nifty crown to top it off. Nevertheless, that leaves Thom “Blackwall” Rainier as our reigning champ among Beard Daddies. All praise his name (whichever one you feel most comfortable using).

#blackwall #thom rainier #ulfric stormcloak #ifan ben mezd #king harrow #harrow #beard daddies

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