#like. from his perspective she's some random stranger who was in the woods the day before yesterday.

[hyperfixation-or-death]

Thinking about a Parallels AU where the main four + Camille are all different ages at the start of the show, and all the dynamics are different because of it.

The only main characters who have met at the start are Sam and Victor, and Sam and Bilal.

Sam is fifteen years old, so he's the closest to his canon age.

Victor is nine years old, so he's the youngest by a lot in this.

Bilal is thirty years old, and he's working with his mom on the tests. He also tutors Sam in math on the weekends.

Romane is nineteen years old, and hasn't met any of the other main characters.

Camille is nine years old, and she and Victor go to the same school.

Episode one starts when Sam is supposed to go to tutoring, but ends up needing to bring Victor with him, because their parents weren't able to pick him up from some activity or other.

I haven't figured out how they get to the woods from there; for the sake of convenience, let's say that cat Romane and Camille feed shows up injured, and they end up following the cat to try and help it? Work in progress.

Anyways, once they're close to the bunker, they run into Romane. Assuming we're going with the cat plot device, because I can't think of anything else right now, Romane was also trying to find the cat. The cat is gone now, though, and they're all about to turn back.

Then Victor notices the bunker (the key is in the door, idk), and wants to go inside. Sam and Bilal don't think it's a good idea, but Romane also wants to go inside for some reason, and the four end up going to check it out.

The test goes off, of course, and the timelines split.

Timeline 1 - Romane and Victor are left in the bunker.

Victor definitely blames himself for the disappearances, since he was the one to suggest going in the bunker in the first place. Romane also definitely blames herself for the disappearances, since Victor is nine years old, and she should have known it was a bad idea, but she didn't, and now this kid's brother is probably dead because of that.

Romane ends up talking to Victor afterwards, and realizes that he goes to school with Camille. The conversation turns to that, and Victor mentions that he's not doing great in some subject or other; a subject Romane happens to be good at. Feeling like it's the absolute least she could do for him, she offers to help him with homework after school.

Since Victor is literally an elementary school child, his parents are not sending him to boarding school. They do become increasingly distant and harsh, and Victor becomes increasingly convinced that they don't care about him.

Victor ends up spending a lot of time at Romane and Camille's house. At first, it's just because Romane's helping him with homework. Then it sinks in that no one else understands what happened in the bunker, and that fact starts playing into their dynamic. Then he starts to become friends with Camille. By the time four years have gone by, Victor and Camille are close friends, and Romane sees Victor as another sibling. (She hasn't moved out yet because a. She's attending university nearby. and b. She doesn't trust Herve and wants to keep an eye on her family.)

Then Vanessa Chassangre dies, and Romane is faced with the possibility of losing her sister. She's trying to figure out if she has any chance at getting custody, when Victor shows up to ask if she wants to go back to the bunker. Neither of them have figured out the correlation with the test in this AU, but they still go, out of sentimentality and curiosity and several other complicated emotions.

Test happens again; Victor and Romane time travel.

Timeline 2 - Romane and Bilal are left in the bunker.

Bilal connects the dots between the tests and the disappearances pretty quickly. He tells his mom. Then he tells Romane.

Bilal decides to try and find a way to save Sam and Victor. This time, it's less out of personal grief and more out of a sense of responsibility for what happened and guilt.

Romane graduates high school feeling completely lost. She doesn't know what she wants to do with her life, and she can't shake the guilt over what happened.

Haven't planned it out too well, but Bilal and Romane stay in contact. I'm not sure how it's going to work, but he's able to get her accepted for an internship at some point, and she ends up working with Bilal and Sofia.

The three of them continue to work at the time travel. Along the way, Romane becomes close with both Sofia and Bilal, viewing them as family.

Vanessa dies; Herve tries to take Camille. This time, it doesn't work. Romane has a support net, a steady income, and a future in the physics field. Romane gets custody of her sister.

They figure out the time travel. Bilal decides to go back.

Timeline 3 - Sam is left in the bunker; Bilal travels back to this one; Victor and Romane travel back to this one.

Since Bilal was already an adult before the time travel, Sam still recognizes him. He's clearly aged several years, though, which everyone is very confused about. Bilal has his canonical memory loss.

Idk what happens for the first day, but then Romane and Victor show up to the timeline at the same time they do in canon.

I haven't thought about how the plot changes from there, but the timeline where Victor kills Sam and then disappears after time traveling again doesn't happen. The official explanation is that they're able to stop it from happening the first time; the actual explanation is that I can't keep track of that many timelines in an already complicated AU.

Notes on the AU:

Camille ends up being there for the finale's events, both because she's a little older in the AU and because she's friends with Victor in the AU, so she insists on coming with the main characters.

Victor's emotional conflict ends up being roughly the same, because on the one hand, he's had more of a support net for those four years, but on the other, he's younger with more intense emotions, so it all kind of evens out.

For obvious reasons, none of the canon romantic relationships exist, with the exception of Sofia and Lieutenant Retz.

Obviously lots of things are different with this one, but I can't really think of a lot right now because I'm tired, so I might add to this later.

#parallels #disney parallels #paralleles #disney paralleles #probably won't do anything with this AU. but i'm gonna name it the Age Shuffle AU just in case i do. #also romane mostly just hangs out with camille and victor in her timeline. #she doesn't really have any other friends because a. it kind of adds to the dynamics and b. i thought it'd be kind of funny #Vanessa: romane you should make some friends. Romane: i have friends. i have two friends. #Vanessa: are you talking about your nine year old sister and her nine year old friend. Romane: yes. #also once everyone reunites victor is obviously so glad to see sam again but he also links his parents treatment of him back to sam. #so he's kind of resentful and stuff still. but he's also younger now. idk my point is that romane and sam's dynamic is basically: #Sam: why did you steal my brother. why does he like you better than me now. Romane: you were dead. free sibling. #Sam: I DON'T EVEN KNOW YOU. #like. from his perspective she's some random stranger who was in the woods the day before yesterday. #he probably thought for at least a few minutes that she kidnapped victor at first because she's the only one there he's never met. #and from her perspective he's the kid who's been basically haunting the narrative for four years. idk it's interesting. #i am so sleepy. this whole concept might be nonsense idk. i'll decide in the morning. #anyways. fun little AU idea. any thoughts?

[theroastedwretch]

Between the Lines- Ep. 4

Warnings- PG-13 due to Swearing and Explicit Language, Mature Themes, possible Violent References

Index Ep. 3

The quick succession of Dan’s revelations the night before, the kidnapper’s threats, Dan’s accident, and Jake reverting back into his more calculating side after I thought we’d started moving past that all piled on top of my brain’s sluggish resistance to starting the day made the morning rather bleak.

I agreed not to send the video, even though something in my gut told me it was wrong. I was the one of the two of us that predicted people better, as unbelievable as it was. But the facade seemed to crack for a second as he pleaded, and I reminded myself again that it was not about me as my jealousy spiked at the memory of the initials on the bracelet.

I was quickly proven right, of course, when the kidnapper sent it to Cleo once he realized I wasn’t going to send it, and I knew I’d lost a little bit of the trust they’d had in me when they found out that I’d gotten it already, and it wasn’t my first.

The first one hadn’t mattered, it was just pointed at me. But this one had been more personal to them, and I could see the cracks in the group growing because of it.

Lilly, especially, seemed angry, and I knew nothing about her to be able to predict what she’d do. At least Dan wasn’t here to make me look even worse.

Too soon, MC, too soon.

Still, once the adrenaline faded and my phone quieted, I found myself sitting on the edge of my bed, staring blankly at my shaking hands. The threat may have been empty, just meant to scare me, but it worked. We could rationalize it all we wanted, logic our way through it, but the truth is that none of that would really be enough to stop the cold fingers of fear crawling their way up my stomach through to my chest and making it hard to breathe.

This was all a show for me, and I hated every second of it. 

But no one would forgive me for turning it off, either. Especially me. ___

Richy’s story about the dare house, and sudden attempts to connect with me, only compounded the unsettling feeling I’d been dealing with since the call.

First of all, Duskwood was weird. Maybe I was just sheltered but I didn’t start to do stupid shit like wandering through woods and knocking on random doors until I was like sixteen, not eleven. At that age, the worst I got was playing Bloody Mary or Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board.

But their stuff seemed actually dangerous. Were there no homeless people or drug addicts in Duskwood who might take up residence in that house and be none too pleased to be subjected to kids getting their danger fix by making noise every night?

Maybe I was overthinking it, but Duskwood seemed to have more than its fair share of legends and monsters, and it seemed like they were coming to life.

Especially once the same Raven from Hannah’s phone ended up on Richy’s door.

I couldn’t blame Lilly for her fear. In some ways, she made the most sense of the bunch. As mad as her accusations made me, I knew I’d be just as angry. From her perspective, I was a total stranger that only got pulled in because of a message that Thomas got, but it seemed like no one else saw because it vanished.

Then, for seemingly no reason, I stuck around, charmed some of her friends, ignored threats to their safety, got them riled up and digging into fairy tales, and somehow had a picture that her sister took.

Yeah, I looked almost as shady as Thomas and Dan had acted over the stupid key.

Still, it hurt to hear, and to be reminded of just how tentative my place in the group really was, even after all the time and energy I’d put into them. Jessy’s defense soothed me a bit, but I still found myself wrapping my arms around my chest and staring at my phone sadly as I got to hear what people really thought of me. And I didn’t even get a vote.

Middle school all over again. 

So when Jake intervened in the vote, I was torn. On one hand, strong-arming them into keeping me around, threatening them, and revealing that we were spying on them was not the way to gain their trust back. 

On the other hand… It was pretty hot.  ___

My more reasonable, less hormone driven reaction to Jake’s video was confirmed nearly immediately, when Jessy freaked out about him reading our conversation. And there wasn’t much I could do to reassure her without lying, since he definitely was reading most of the time (and maybe sometimes it was part of our weird flirting ritual? No way I’d tell her that though), and she had every right to be freaked out by it. Like a normal person.

I couldn’t be surprised when she dropped our chat, and told myself not to take it personally. Still. If she changed her vote, I would be out no matter how Dan voted. And I knew how Dan was going to vote. Other than when he was drunk, he’d made it clear the whole time that I was a pest to him.

I wondered if the vote was just over the group chat, or the group as a whole. If Lilly managed to evict me, would I lose Jessy, who I’d come to adore? I didn’t feel as close to Cleo, but we had started getting closer recently and I enjoyed our conversations too. I didn’t fool myself into thinking her vote was much more than a combination of wanting her friend back and the same false bravado that had led to her dismissal of the video, though.

I tried to reflect on what the vote so far had revealed rather than letting myself worry about the result. Lilly and Jessy were obvious— both were guided by emotions. Lilly was terrified, and Jessy was loyal.

Thomas had surprised me a bit. He’d been so pushy towards me at first, wanting me to stay. But thinking back, ever since we’d found the body he’d had little to do with me, even once discovering that it wasn’t Hannah. I guess the lack of results made me less relevant to him.

Richy. Well. On one hand, he was definitely a people pleaser. He knew Jessy and I were close, and I can’t imagine she’d be pleased with him if he tried to vote me out. But Lilly would be mad if he didn’t. So instead  of making things worse for someone, he made things better for no one.

But really, it was his reason that was interesting. Even before Jake had intervened, Richy mentioned my connection to him. And he’d brought it up with the picture of the Raven earlier. But then, he’d considered it a bad thing, and now it was good?

How did he even know for sure that I was working with Jake? The picture might have been a one-off, and Jessy was the only one I’d discussed him with to any length, and even then it was mainly to say I liked him.

Nothing more would be decided until Dan joined us, so I tried to put the vote out of my mind to discuss the bracelet with Jake.

His theory about Thomas was interesting, but I wasn’t sure it fit his personality. I hadn’t seen him as a man of action much, though I guess Breaking and Entering with an illegally made key could certainly be called an action. 

He was up to something, that was for sure. But if he took Hannah, then would the body they actually found just be unrelated? Were there two bodies in the forest but only one had been found? 

I had wondered why the police would tell him that the body wasn’t Hannah’s. Maybe they didn’t, and he just knew it couldn’t be based on the body’s location?

I didn’t mention this to Jake (and totally not because I was still worried about the J being for his name), but the theory about the initials didn’t sit right either. I didn’t have much engraved jewelry, but the pieces I did have were engraved with my initials, not who gave them to me.

My parents’ wedding rings had been engaged, but it was both of their initials to symbolize their love. But custom jewelry was usually customized for the wearer, not the giver. Right?

I was starting to get frustrated with the number of clues that were refusing to fit together in any way. So even though I was still kind of ticked about his refusal to vote, I let myself relax and joke with Richy about the mark.

His humor was pleasantly irreverent at times, and I wondered a bit what was below that. He didn’t strike me as the sort who joked about serious things to be an ass like Dan, and he didn’t seem just clueless. It was the sort of laughter designed to make others relax, and cope with whatever he was feeling.

For me, mine had started as a way to handle my depression, finding light where it seemed impossible. It worked well to deflect, too. Keep people from seeing if you were really upset, or about to break. Richy Roger, what are you feeling?

His point about being watched gave me goosebumps. The Man Without a Face had already proven he had eyes on Cleo, and now Richy? 

I didn’t see much of note in his conversation with Phil, though. It didn’t strike me as much more than normal warnings to back off from a man who didn’t like being pushed.

Not for the first time, I appreciated Jake’s constant monitoring of my phone when my thoughts were interrupted by the kidnapper’s night call, strangely even more threatening without words. 

Jake was clearly bothered by it too, since for the first time he didn’t rush to label it a good thing, or an empty threat. I found myself cracking jokes to reassure him, and felt a little warm when he laughed. 

His discomfort was explained further when he gave me the name of Hannah’s doctor. Right. The depression thing, he clearly still struggled with the idea.

When he asked me to find the password, I was glad to be able to help with something. Just to take some pressure off him and definitely not because I wanted him to praise me. Nope.

The password the doctor used made me roll my eyes. At least use an exclamation point! But also, I needed to change all of my passwords. All of them. Even if I used an exclamation point, that was too easy.

Dan’s return started my anxiety up all over again, since I’d already decided how that was going to end. But hopefully between spy mode, and whatever I could glean from Jessy if she was willing to work with me still, I’d be able to figure something out. 

It was good that he was awake, though— I hadn’t expected him to recover quite that quickly. I might not be close to him, but I didn’t want him to die. Hopefully he learned something about drunk driving. I wouldn’t get into it with him, that wasn’t my place, but I was definitely more mad at him than his friends seemed to be for his reckless endangerment. He could do what he wanted to himself, but what would have happened if someone else got hurt?

I wondered if there would be charges.

When Lilly brought up the vote, I quickly forgot my anger and tensed up, waiting. 

His breezy support of me left me wide-eyed and confused. Lilly, too, seemed caught off guard, and I remembered he’d been the one she asked to come over with her when she’d found out about the body. Since he’d asked out Jessy not long after, I didn’t let myself think too much about it. But were they close?

I wondered if things would have been easier if he’d just voted me out. I knew from experience that adding betrayal to an already hurting mind could end very poorly. Her abrupt departure sounded like a slammed door in my mind. ___

The psychologist’s recording that Jake found was a lot to take in, and I found myself replaying it several times to digest before saying anything.

It was clear he didn’t believe her, despite his protests, and while her kidnapping made that infuriating in hindsight… she’d been followed before? 

I hadn’t heard of depression manifesting with hallucinations, but who knew if that was her only diagnosis? Didn’t I know about comorbidity better than most, after all, with the ADHD and Borderline Personality? There were so many things that weren’t treated with meds, just therapy and coping mechanisms, so without her full records, we’d probably never know. The fear in her voice was real, no matter if her stalker was or not. 

I tried to imagine the stress, the frustration, of telling someone about a terrifying experience and having them smile and nod, humoring you. No wonder she wouldn’t have told her friends. 

Sadness overwhelmed me, and I hoped her doctor felt guilty now. With privacy laws what they were, would he be able to tell the police about her stalker? I knew he’d have to tell if it were someone else in danger from her, but what about when she’s the victim? 

Like so many of our clues lately, this really only made more questions than it answered. The guilt she felt was clearly immense, but why? What could she have done? As a child, even? Something so bad that she’d bury it for years and apparently catch the ire of a vigilante hiding behind the mask of a legend?

When Jake asked me that same thing, he sounded so sad and vulnerable that my heart broke for him. I didn’t know how they knew each other, or what he felt for her, but it was clear that this investigation was hurting him. I wanted to tell him everything was okay, but he’d never believe me, and he didn’t seem like one who appreciated empty reassurances. 

I was trying to cheer him up a bit with my teasing, and his sudden confession caught me off guard. I stared at my phone in shock, he’d never been this open with me, ever. Hearing that he thought about me even when I wasn’t pestering him felt better than anything I’d had in a long time. But the crash, as always, came soon after and the whiplash made me tremble. 

When he logged off, fury temporarily flooded the sadness and made me want to scream. How dare he? How dare he tell me all of these things, reject me, and then just run away and hide? What the hell was I supposed to do with that? Was I meant to just soldier on, helping him find his friend and quietly fuck off after it was over? 

Was that what they all expected of me? 

I locked my phone more violently than was probably necessary, but I couldn’t stand to look at it for a minute longer. 

It felt wrong in my hand, so I chucked it onto the couch. The device bounced harmlessly from the cushion to the carpet and I found myself almost regretting it didn’t break.

I stared at the wall for too long before crawling into bed on my side and wrapping my arms around my knees. I thought I’d cry, I wanted to even, but no tears came.

Once, when I was a kid, I lost my footing in the ocean while I was at the beach with my parents. I remember it as having happened in slow-motion stages, with first the wave smacking me in the face hard enough that it stung. Next came the part where my feet slipped out from under me, it made me dizzy and disoriented and made it so I didn’t even notice that without my legs keeping me anchored, I was being pushed and pulled along into the deeper water where the bottom would be out of reach even if I found a way to right myself.

By the time I was able to brace myself enough to open my eyes in the salty water, I couldn’t find which way was up anymore. I was weightless, lost. It was almost peaceful other than the knowledge that my air was running out and that peace would soon give way to the need to take in lungfuls of water in search of air. Even that young, I knew it would hurt. But as I hung there, suspended in the dark, there was nothing.

This time, the water was Hannah and her life and her secrets. Her friend group I’d slipped into like I was holding her place for her. And as I closed my eyes to block out the world, I wondered if someone would save me again, or if I’d be forever drifting through someone else’s story. ____

When the morning came, I could barely bring myself to get out of bed. My mouth was dry, and I must have cried at some point because I could feel the slightly tight residue of tear tracks on my cheeks, and the pounding headache from dehydration. I could have gotten up to deal with it— should have even. But instead I rolled back over and forced myself to drift off again. ___

“You are alive, right?”

Annie’s voice at the doorway startled me awake. She either hadn’t knocked or it hadn’t woken me, but it took a second to process her standing there. The whole time we’d lived together, we’d had a firm policy around our bedrooms being sacred, and if the door was closed, it meant we didn’t want to be bothered. Period. She must be really worried.

“For now,” I groaned, rolling away from her. 

“Have you come out at all? Your door’s been closed since before I even went out last night.”

Without my glasses or phone, I couldn’t see the clock, and I’d invested in heavy blackout curtains and hung them close to the window to keep any light out. “What time is it?” 

“Seven.” 

Jesus, it was Sunday, why was she bothering me? Neither of us were religious, and she normally stayed out till two or three. Sure she functioned on less sleep that I did, but that was ridiculous.

“Go away, I can’t wake up before ten on the weekends.” I waved my hand at her to try to shoo her away, covering my face with my pillow.

“PM, honey.” Her voice was soft in a way I’d never heard it before, and I jolted with surprise. 

“I slept for an entire day?” I guess that could explain why I felt like I’d been hit by a truck, and one filled with salt at that. I had no real sleep rhythm, and if I didn’t set an alarm I could easily sleep for 12 hours or more at a time. But 24 was a new record. Probably not one I should brag about, though.

“I guess so. What’s going on?” She came into my room and sat at the edge of my bed uncomfortably. For all of our teasing and provoking, we weren’t actually that close. We’d never had an actual serious conversation that wasn’t about apartment ground rules. 

Maybe that’s why her question broke the dam. 

I started sobbing, wrapping my arms around myself like I was afraid I’d come apart if something didn’t hold me together. She looked startled at first, blinking in surprise, but then started rubbing my back and murmuring to me.

I didn’t say anything, and she didn’t ask again, just letting me cry it out. I’m not sure how my body had any fluids to make tears by that point, but it managed, and even found some snot to make it a good, ugly cry. 

When I started quieting, Annie brought me some tea and toast, filling up my water bottle for me. She coaxed me into eating most of the toast, though the tea was cold by the time I finished. The water I gulped down greedily, and felt slightly more human when I collapsed back onto the bed. Even that little bit had me exhausted.

“Do you want to talk?” 

I shook my head without lifting it from the pillow. To feel a little less ungrateful, I muttered a small “sorry” even though I wasn’t sure which part I was apologizing for.

She seemed to understand what I didn’t because she pointed to my phone that she’d brought and plugged in at some point when I wasn’t looking. “If you change your mind or need anything,” she said simply, then turned the light back out and closed my door.

I called off the next day, wanting to let myself nope for a little longer. I felt so pathetic, losing it like this over a guy, but deep down I knew that it was only the tip of the iceberg. 

This had been building for weeks now, maybe even since the first message from Thomas. And the message I got from Richy the second I went online reminded me that it wasn’t over yet. ___

I watched the newest call from the MWAF numbly, not even sure why I’d bothered to pick up. I knew the only reason I wasn’t afraid was the dissociation, but couldn’t bring myself to care. It had been a while since I’d detached this fully, and it felt good not to feel, so I leaned in.

I didn’t bother to tell Jake about the call. He’d see it, or he wouldn’t. He’d care or he wouldn’t. It really didn’t matter.

Even Lilly’s video took me several views to care about. And there wasn’t anger, fear, or shock. Just a general sense of annoyance.

Fucking great.

NEXT

#duskwood mc #duskwood fanfic #duskwood fanfiction #duskwood #duskwood fandom #duskwood episode 10 #duskwood everbyte #duskwood jake x mc #duskwood jake #jake x mc

[ckbookish]

BATMAN BINGO MASTER POST 2020

1 "I thought you were dead.": I Still See Your Ghost 

Today was just not Dick's day. First he overslept his alarm and was late to work. Amy had been less than impressed at his tardiness... Then He had bungled what should have been an easy take town... But the straw that broke the camel's back was Tim. Dick had forgotten to call Tim. 

2 Friendly fire: Fratricide 

Jason was pissed. No, Jason was enraged. Yeah, he was enraged at the whole mess his family-- if that’s even what they were to each other anymore-- had gotten him in. It was meant to be a simple night. Break in. Torch the drugs. Maybe shoot a couple of people and go home. But no, Batman heard about his plans and decided that arson was too extreme. “Someone could get hurt.” Well someone had gotten hurt, a lot of someones. 

3 Hypothermia: Weekend Commute 

Dick Grayson makes his way home during the first snow fall of the year, when he finds himself confused and cold, miles from home.

Chapter two Bruce's perspective.

4 Superman: Bringer of the Dawn

The Aftermath of when the Joker shoots Dick.

or

Where do you go when your family tells you to get out?

5 Shot: The Gratitude Trap

Bruce finds himself in the dark, a place he never thought he would be when it came to Clark Kent and Dick Grayson. Yet here he is digging for answers, because he is too scared to pick up the phone and call. 

6 Two-face: The Better Choice 

How do you reconcile the man who was once your friend with the monster he has become? Bruce reflects on how the man he once called his best friend changed. How could the man who helped him foster Dick, hold that baseball bat? 

7 Drowning: Omori’s Law

Deep in the sewer's under Gotham, Batman is trapped. There is no back up, no Robin. He is faced with the single truth that he tried to teach each of his partners... You have to save yourself. 

  8 Found Family: A Restoration from a Resilient Heart

Dick just wants to not be alone with the shadows in the house. Bruce doesn't realize he has lived with them for far to long, and maybe he doesn't have to anymore.

9 Adoption: The Irrefutable Truth

When he reached the reception, he found himself looking around a fairly empty room. There were a few call girls in the corner filling out forms, an older woman holding a dog, a kid that looked about twelve and a middle aged man who looked like he was ready to cry. He knew no one. Dick was about to turn around and head back to his desk when the on duty officer called out to him. Officer O’Conner was one of his fellow rookies, he had a thick accent. Dick thought he might be from Louisiana. “Grayson! Why didn’t you say your brother was coming to see you?” Dick looked at him with his mouth slightly open. There was no way he heard that right. “My what?” 

10 Bruises: Mr. Wayne

Tim is new to this. He's only been Robin for a little over six months. It was going well. But now he was going to be fired. Batman wouldn't want a partner who got caught at school with a black eye. Would he?

11 Bruce is dead: You Have One Saved Message 

Gotham gossip columns spread lies and smear good people's names. But yet Damian can't help but think maybe this mornings article was true.  That despite all his claims of being the true son of Bruce Wayne, he was in fact the only unwanted one.

12 CPR: Vital Signs 

Robin wakes to find him and Batman in an exploded factory. With Batman injured and the building burning around them, Dick struggles to get them both to safety.   

13 Dad:  Storge 

Bruce could have sworn his spirit had left him momentarily.  The sudden hollowness that filled him couldn’t be explained in any other way. 

 “Your dad must have his hands full with you.”  Elizabeth Ribbons leaned forward and patted Dick’s shoulder, as he reached for yet another slice of cheesecake from a passing waiter’s tray.  

Bruce fixed his eyes on the ice sculpture that hid him from view.  It suddenly seemed like the most interesting design in the world.  The soft lines of the ice on the otherwise insignificant over sized swan seemed like a lead shield...  Because Dick would read it easily in his expression. He wanted to be Dick’s dad.  But he wasn’t. 

14 Stealing the Batmobile: T-Minus Six Hours

Some days Tim is sure that he’s gonna be killed. Usually it’s some luck shot or near miss that made his life flash before his eyes. Not today though. Today he was positive Bruce was going to kill him. Yes, today was the day that Timothy Jackson Drake was going to be put down. He’s not sure that even Nightwing could save him. He was going to go down in history as the first sidekick to be murdered by their mentor. Because the Batmobile was definitely not where he’d parked it.

15 Wayne Enterprises: Amidst the Absence of Meaning 

Bruce is worried. He's running on less than three hours of sleep, and way too many cups of coffee. He had messed up. That much was obvious. The question was would Dick forgive him?

A gruesome night on patrol bleeds into Bruce's work day and now all he can wonder is if this is the thing that will push Dick over the edge? Had he finally seen to much pain?

16 Ransom: Sum of My Worth

The ring of the phone seemed to echo through the manor’s still too quiet long, winding halls, and everyone present collectively held their breath. Bruce lunged for the phone.   

17 Secret Injury: Hiding in Pain Sight

“What?” Dick asked sharper than he meant to. He was tired.

“Nothing.” Tim said with a small smirk. “Heavy is the head.”

Dick closed his eyes, glad that Tim couldn’t see them. He was so sick of this. Tim, Jason, Damian and Cass all didn’t think he was good enough, well Cass hadn’t said that, but Dick could read her. They didn’t think he was up to the job. Well they didn’t need to tell him that. He knew it.

18 Superboy: An Interlude in Breathing 

Tim looked out over the water in a daze. Bruce and Dick had gone somewhere below deck and he was alone. Well there were strangers on the ship mingling and talking excitedly--but Tim gave them no notice. Instead he watched the water lap up against the hull and crash down back to meet the dark, cold waters. They were far enough out that he could no longer see the shore. It was just endless expenses of sea and sky. Something tickled his neck and he started, only to realize he had been crying. It was only a tear slipping under his collar.

The days after the battle of Infinite Crisis

19 Betrayed: Smother

She took another drag of the cigarette, letting the smoke roll in her lungs for a long moment before allowing it hiss out between her teeth. The screams from the warehouse weren’t completely muffled by the distance, or the walls. Perhaps she was only imagining them. But then, sounds like that, she didn’t think she could dream up. She jumped after a particularly high pitched yelp. “Get a grip.” She dropped the cigarette and pulled out another. Her hand shook as she lit it. “It’s just some random kid. He’s not--” She bit back a sob. She didn’t deserve to cry. She had no right to tears, not when it was her fault.   

20 Crowbar: Breaklights

The mail fell to the ground and the paper smacked the tiles hard.  The sound in reality couldn’t have been all that loud, but it seemed to echo around the entryway.  Bruce didn’t look at the dropped bills and the invitation to a fundraiser for the new Gotham women’s shelter.  He was too fixated on the small stamp with the queen of England's head on it.  Wolverhampton.  

The large envelope was far heavier then it should have been.  Bruce could feel bile crawling up his throat.  

He had forgotten.

21 Deathstroke: Debts and Dues

There were some things that were never pleasant, getting caught in the snow without socks, losing your keys, and not being able to remember the name of a song. Having a gun pointed at your chest, Dick felt, qualified as extremely unpleasant. He stood stock still. The barrel of the gun was still hot, it burned slightly as it dug into his sternum. Even with his uniform he could still feel the heat left over from previous rounds fired. He didn’t flinch. He couldn’t flinch. “Move.” “You know I can’t.” Dick wondered if Slade had the guts to do it.   

22 Mission Gone Wrong: Murmur in the Quiet Hours

Superman? Clark froze. He knew that voice. But-- he had never heard it sounding so sad. Was that-- no. Clark dove for his phone, still on the counter from when he got home last night. The screen was black. Dead. Clark swore and dropped it. He was in his coat and shoes before it hit the counter top.   

23 Kidnapped:  Chum 

Dick trumped through the leaves, stopping his feet roughly. He relished the sound of the crunch beneath his shoes as he tread on the brown, dead leaves before him. He felt rather justified in his satisfaction. After all the world had taken so much from him, why wouldn’t he do his best to crush it in return. The woods were cool and as he went deeper into them they grew darker. The sun had long set, and the sky was quickly vanishing as the trees grew thicker. Wayne Manor was far behind him. He was never going back. He hated those pristine walls, those old floor boards. He hated the quiet. He hated the stuffy furniture and the rules and the vases and pictures. He hated his new guardian and that… that… Dick couldn’t remember what Alfred was called, but he hated it. The bag on his back felt heavy. It had everything Dick owned in it. Well and a toothbrush that Alfred had given him. But he didn’t think that was really stealing. 

24 Riddler: Seeking Silence on Shortwaves

Normally Dick would be happy to listen to Tim talk. In fact, Dick thought it was one of his favorite sounds in the world. Tim rarely allowed himself to be excited about things. Hearing him speak so freely and openly to Bruce and him about his plans was refreshing. Dick only wished it wouldn’t be at the cost of his life.

Batman hadn't always been so strict about talking unnecessarily over comms. When it was just two of them it hadn't mattered, their walkie talkie system had always worked. But now that Nightwing and Robin were in Gotham, it seems insane that they never realized: if only one person can talk over the radio at a time... how could they call for help?

25 Mr. Freeze: Glimpsing the Sun While Trapped in the Rime

He almost called Bruce between his fourth and fifth class. He pulled his phone out, leaning against his locker, and half dialed his number when a warm hand fell on his shoulder. “Hey.” Dick spun around and blinked back black spots as his body protested the sudden movement. A blaze of red hair filled his vision and Dick felt a small fire build in his chest. His face split into a wide smile.

After a run in with Mr. Freeze Dick finds himself feeling odd at school, but he can't go home, not when Barbara's asked him to drive her to Betty's party after school.

#batman bingo 2020 #Master Post #Batman #CK Writes #Nightwing #Dick Grayson #tim drake #Jason Todd #Damian Wayne #Red Hood #Red Robin #robin #My Writing

[itswildwinters]

Seeing as it’s the holidays for me, I’ve had time to read (and re-read) quite a lot of fics, and I felt like sharing some of them with you. It’s my first time doing a fic recs post, so I hope it’s useful and not too much of a mess, especially since it’s quite long!

If you do end up reading any of these stunning fanfics, don’t forget to leave kudos and comments to show your appreciation!

Enjoy!! ✩

✩ baby blue by @soldouthaz​ (39k)

summary: Harry Styles takes his time coming out to greet them. Louis only knows what he’s seen on file and what he’s heard them talking about, but he fully lives up to the image he had inside of his head. 

He saunters down the front steps of the farmhouse in his Levi’s, brown snakeskin boots curving out from underneath the denim Louis’ sure he had specially made. He’s got on a plaid button-down tucked into the jeans because of course he does, curls spilling out from either side of his cowboy hat around his sunglasses and country-tan skin. 

“Harry Styles,” he drawls, extending a hand to Louis’ manager, “Pleased to meet ya’ll.”

I loved the dynamic between Cowboy Harry and Celebrity Louis. What I also really enjoyed about this fanfic is that the depiction of farm life was accurate. The way the story is written really gets you into action, so that you can picture everything quite well through the Louis-centric third point of view. 

✩ The Space Between by @lads-laddylads​ (39k)

summary: Harry Styles is the alpha rockstar who can’t sleep and doesn’t know why. Louis Tomlinson is the omega PhD student who helps him figure it out.

A/B/O fanfic. I loved how Alpha Harry acted upon seeing Louis for the first time. You can really feel the tension and attraction through the screen, which is one of my all time favourite things. The way their relationship builds up is a delight, and Louis is a darling and so courageous in the end with how he deals with Harry, even when Harry is being an idiot. The connection they have at the end... just wow!

✩ fae series: Boiling Blood Will Circulate and Warming The Air Of The World by @crazyupsetter​ (42k and 3k)

summary of Boiling Blood Will Circulate: The wait isn’t long before something starts rustling in the bushes. Harry takes aim, squeezes the trigger, body moving unconsciously. They’re motions he’s done a thousand times before, and his body knows how to do it without the input of his brain now. It’s what makes him such a good shot.

He misses. The shot misses.

Something howls in the woods, a pretty clear indication that Harry hit it, but there’s no telltale sounds of a big body dropping, no animal charging out at him to take him out before he can finish the job.

Something does turn and run, though. “Fuck,” Harry spits out, scrambling to his feet and slinging the rifle back over his shoulder, giving chase. He’s not going to lose this hunt.

The trail of blood goes on longer than Harry thought it would. He doesn’t know how long he runs for, but his muscles are burning, chest heaving with exertion, until the trail just - goes dead. No more blood, just like that.

“Fuck,” Harry says.

I am a sucker for fantasy/supernatural fanfics, and this one is absolutely incredible. The suspense in there is well-built, and the dynamic between Louis and Harry leaves you hungry for more. There’s a lot of blood in this series, so if you’re not into that you should be careful, but for me the author really puts into perspective how complicated and different from mankind faeries are.

✩ With a whimper by @kitundercover​ (132k)

summary: Dystopian AU. Louis has been alone for too long to remember how not to be, and Harry has too much to worry about to deal with a scrawny, wild, stranger.

---

The man grips his arm tightly. “You’re not going to say anything.” It’s not a question.

Louis shakes his head, his body twitching.

“Fine.” Large green eyes survey him before letting go. “It’s cold. Take this. Wear it.”

Louis can’t help another flinch as the man’s long scarf is wrapped around his tender neck, it’s still warm. He touches the soft material. “Thank you.”

The man bears his teeth. “Don’t thank me. Don’t ever thank me.”

If you are into dystopian works, and doesn’t mind violence, blood and gore, this fic will make your day! I loved the world-building, the way it’s written, how Louis’ character is portrayed and how strong he is. I just couldn’t stop reading once I began. The secrets of the plot, the fear of the characters, and the curiosity that sparks within you as you read contribute into making this fic a unique one that’s so worth the read.

✩ Soaked In The Blood Of Angels by @crazyupsetter​ (40k)

summary: The boy looks drugged, caught between a man who’s almost twice his size and a girl who looks like she wouldn’t even break a sweat snapping him in half despite her small stature, eyes closed and mouth open as he pants, arching up between them almost as if he’s trying to escape.

Normally, Harry would ignore it and continue on his search for someone to drink from, someone who wouldn’t mind his sharp teeth and rough hands. He’s seen plenty of boys like this one, ones who picked the wrong playmates, and if he stopped to rescue every single one of them he would have died from thirst a long time ago.

This one, though. There’s something about this one, the sheen of his bright blue eyes as he blinks slowly, looks around as though he doesn’t know where he is, the weakness of his hands as he tries to push the girl off of him and make his escape.

Another magnificent creatures/fantasy fanfic. The writing is absolutely exquisite, and I love how hard to get Louis is. The violence between Louis and Harry might bother some people, but to me it really spiced up their relationship and made Louis and Harry, who are creatures of gloom, particularly interesting and even real, somehow.

✩ Play Pretend, Find a Friend? by @angelichl​ (40k)

summary: They had to pull back for air. Louis surveyed the guy’s face, in awe of his blown pupils and sharp jawline, the way their shared spit glistened on his lips.

“Hi,” he breathed. He blinked, and came back to himself a little bit, blushing at his own boldness. “Sorry. Is this okay?”

The stranger removed his right hand from the curve of Louis’ waist in order to cup his jaw, tilting it up to the angle he desired. He pressed their lips together, murmuring, “Definitely.” And then he kissed harder.

When Louis sees his ex-boyfriend kissing a random girl at a party, he acts out of blind jealousy. He kisses the first guy he can find. It turns into a thing.

Where do I start? I usually don’t like fake-relationship AUs since most of the time Louis and Harry are famous, which make it less fun to me. But in this fic, they’re students and Harry is a frat boy while Louis is a nerd, but it’s not cliché or anything. It’s actually so well-written and the relationship between Louis and Harry takes time to progress which I absolutely love, seeing as I am a sucker for slow burn. Harry is so sweet as a frat boy, and Louis is an angel. Really loved reading this.

✩ at your fingertips by @risthebrave​ (27k)

summary: He finds himself wrapped up in sheets in bed on Thursday night, staring at the familiar name on a new story that was posted the night before.

His fingers twitch, ready to hit play and surrender to his impulses, saving the regret and turmoil for later.

And still he hesitates, internally praying that he’ll somehow gain the strength to exit out within the next few moments before he inevitably loses his patience and hits the button.

Three…

Two…

One.

Play.

-

Or, Louis really should have seen it coming.

Besides being well-written, the whole plot is quite original. I absolutely loved Louis in there, especially since all of his insecurities made me relate to him. He’s so sweet, and I’m glad Harry was there to get him to open-up and see how amazing he is. I had so many moments of secondhand embarrassment haha, and they made the fic all the more amazing. Honestly, what really struck me in this fic is how the author managed to make Harry such an amazing person, and how intrepid Louis is while he learns to overcome his insecurities.

✩ Nothing But You On My Mind by @absoloutenonsense​ (83k)

summary: Louis Tomlinson is a PR manager hired to improve the image of royal bad-boy Prince Harry Styles. Unfortunately for him, that means being faced with the Prince's constant innuendos, incessant dirty jokes, and relentless flirting. Louis just wants to make it to Princess Gemma's coronation; once she's crowned Queen, his contract is up and he never has to see the Prince again.

It was such a joy to read this fic. Even though Harry pissed me off on more than one occasion, I took great satisfaction in how Louis ignored him or replied with one of his witty comebacks. The plot twist was just awesome and Harry’s stubbornness ended up being very much welcome.

✩ push you out, pull you back in by @behisoneandonly​ (31k)

summary: Harry grips his head in his hands helplessly, yanking the base of his dark curls and squeezing his eyes shut.

“Fucking hell,” he whispers, knuckles turning white from how hard he’s gripping the strands of his hair.

“Hey, hey,” says the petite stranger in front of him, quickly standing up. “Stop, you’re hurting yourself.”

–

Or Harry hates feeling vulnerable. Louis is set on breaking through his tough facade.

Oh my god, this was truly wonderful. The size difference made me go crazy! The smut was just wow too. What really made this fic so incredible is how protective of Harry Louis is, and how Louis seems to just... understand Harry despite his issues. Jealous Harry also! I loved it. Moreover, Louis’ character is literally perfect in this.

✩ thinking about the t-shirt you sleep in by @absoloutenonsense​ (52k)

summary: Harry's alpha fraternity donates to a local thrift shop (because of Liam's latent crush on a cute beta in his lecture). Louis' financial situation (and confusing omega instincts) lead him to make some interesting fashion purchases. Lots of pizza, feelings, and not-really-lying.

I’ve read and re-read this. I love Louis and Harry’s dynamic, and how they solve their troubles in the end. Harry is such a sweet soul, and Louis deserves the world!

✩ Canyon Moon by @eeveelou​ (40k)

summary: For as long as Louis has remembered, he has been promised to be mated to Harry, his best friend and the future pack alpha. But Louis’s heart belonged to the forest and to the hunt more than he could ever imagine it belonging to Harry.

Then Harry’s father dies in a violent accident, and Louis’s future alpha disappears on the wind.

An A/B/O Lion King AU

What really drew me in is that I’ve never before seen a larry fanfic on the Lion King, and honestly? It was so beautiful. The way the author made the plot of the cartoon go along with the A/B/O world was truly surprising, and absolutely interesting to read. Also, when Louis is introduced to the modern world? It’s such a sweet part of the fic.

✩ a trail of honey through it all by @yvesaintlourent​ (27k)

summary: The boy in front of him, well really, the man in front of him, was like something out of a confusing wet dream. Built, tall, tan and muscular, his skin glistened with sweat after a long day of working outdoors with his hands. He was wearing a cut up old American football shirt, the bottom hem was torn and the sleeves were cut off to the point where the t-shirt was really just a loose tank top. The shorts he had on had clearly been full length jeans at one point, and were now just crudely cut off above the knee. His white socks were pulled up too high on his calves, and the brown work boots he had on were old as fuck, the leather peeling along the edges of the soles. Curly brown hair stuck out from the edges of his backwards snapback, and there was a smudge of grease wiped along his brow bone. The smattering of hair along his jaw proved that he hadn’t shaved in a week or two, the hair growing in thicker across his upper lip and around his chin. His sinfully bowed mouth was pink and plump, and Louis was suddenly hyper-focused on the way that he chewed at the toothpick stuck between his lips. He looked like he needed a shower. Louis wanted to lick him.

Or, the TPH fic we’ve all been waiting for.

Trailer park Harry? HELL YEAH! The concept has been going on in the fandom for so long that when I saw someone finally wrote it, I was genuinely excited. And I wasn’t disappointed! The writing is wonderful and the way Louis and Harry grow closer is just so sweet. Loved it!

✩ The Healing Song series: The Healing Song and The Wedding by 2204 (111k and 3k)

summary of The Healing Song: Louis was carrying the large stuffed elephant like it was a baby, it’s trunk hanging over his shoulder and down his back and it’s front legs were resting around his neck, like it was hugging him. Said elephant was a present from Louis’ close friend Steve, who had thought Louis needed something to hug on bad days and had gifted him with a stuffed elephant the size of a one year old.

Steve had been right. Some days Louis did need something to hug, and this elephant was as good as anything.

Louis was having one of the rougher days. The harmonious state of the anxiety free life of a fearless Louis had ended the week after he met with Harry. It ended as abruptly as it had started. It was like pushing a button. Lights out. Almost as if the universe said “You’ve had your fun, crazy one, now go be sick” and slammed the door in his face.

Or where Louis is a single father of two, suffering from PTSD, and Harry is there providing soulmatey and loving support while he heals the wounds of past abuse.

God, this fic I swear! This made me cry, laugh, scream... this is a roller-coaster of emotions. It’s quite a hard fic to read, because it deals with past abuse and trauma. And it’s even harder knowing this story is based on real life events that the author went though. But the way it’s written, the way Harry helps Louis through his struggles and issues, it’s so beautiful and inspiring.

✩ Sunrise and Pixie Dust by @moonyblouie​ (14k)

summary: Harry's taking a walk at sunrise in the forest he knows like the back of his hand when the wind starts blowing, the sky turns pink, and golden glitter starts to fall from the sky. He’s not sure about what’s happening, but when he comes face to face with a gorgeous winged-creature, he can’t help but be immediately mesmerized.

Or an AU in which Harry finds himself crossing the borders between two worlds.

I loved this, the smut is so hot!! But the end... I really hope there will be a sequel! But other than that, the way Louis is written? Wonderful!

✩ Weightless by @smittenwithlouis​ (25k)

summary: He hopes that Harry still thinks of him. God knows Louis thinks of him every day.

Or: Harry is the best dragon racer the world has ever seen and Louis is an almost-vet who feels like he is carrying the weight of the world.

This was... just amazing, honestly. I loved loved loved every time Louis interacted with dragons, I could picture it and it’s just so so sweet. The way Louis is concerned about Harry’s safety, and Harry’s will to make Louis’ life better, to give him the freedom he deserves... it’s just beautiful.

✩ The Blood of Love by @mugglemirror​ (25k)

summary: Harry is a nurse and Louis is a painting worth more than a thousand words. As desire and darkness encompasses him, Harry has to learn the secrets of Thorne Hills manor before he succumbs to the mystery that surrounds him.

I absolutely loved this! The plot, the writing, the suspense, the secrets... everything was on spot and left me yearning for more. The atmosphere really makes the reader completely engrossed into what’s going on, and the end doesn’t disappoint. Dark fics have always been something that I enjoy reading, and this one definitely didn’t disappoint. Just wow!

✩ Latibule by @quelquesetoiles​

summary: Louis had worked in the infamous resort placed in the median point of all worlds for longer than he could remember. He went through everyday with a soul-crushing emptiness filling his mind, going through the same routine over and over again. Despite all the happenings around him, his soul never wavered, his emotions stayed superficial, and nothing took his breath away anymore.

Nothing, except the intoxicating smell of lavender and the contemplating green eyes that came along for the ride every now and again. His heart always seemed to wake up full force whenever those pretty lips formed around even prettier, yet empty promises, and he felt the magic sizzle in his bones again only when contact was made between the divine body and his own deceivingly normal one. He hated it for the fact he really didn’t.

Or : A Spirited Away AU of sorts where Louis just wants to heal and be left alone, only for all his plans to be destroyed by the hands of an infuriating British God.

I have read this at least three times, that’s how good this fic is. I am a sucker for mythology, like truly, and Louis and Harry’s dynamic in there had me screaming! Jealous Harry is the best thing, and the semi plot twist at the end made my heart jump. But besides the universe we readers are diving into, it’s also the writing that’s left me pleasantly drunk. The words flow together perfectly, at after each paragraph you just long for more. Also the pet names!!! Just beautiful.

✩✩✩

If there’s any mistakes, please let me know! 

#fic recs

[seizethecarpe]

Just Around the Riverbend || Dave & Grace

Timing: Current Parties: @seizethecarpe @silveraccent Summary: Grace and Dave meet in the classic way: finding a dead body together

In an attempt to get to know the town better, Grace had been taking it upon herself to take walks both before work, and after work. For whatever reason, she wanted to see the town in all its hues, as she had always felt as though it brought out a different perspective in her surroundings. The tips of Grace’s shoes scattered the gravel ahead of her, the sound of rushing water bringing her to a dip in the trail. At the base of the trail was a pathway Grace assumed forked to the lake she had seen on the maps application on her phone. The further she walked, the more she felt isolated. Portland hadn’t offered the same kind of isolation as White Crest, and Grace had been appreciative of its efforts as a small town. Grace took a seat on the bench and pulled out her sketchbook from her bag. Before she could open it, however, she took notice of a strange object floating about fifteen feet from the water’s edge. It looked as though to be a burgundy sweatshirt, or some kind of fabric. Grace squinted as she slipped off of the bench. The sound of somebody behind her made her jump, but she didn’t want to take her eyes off of the figure. Grace hadn’t known who was behind her, but she asked anyways, “do you see that?” Finally, she turned her gaze back to her company-- a rugged man who she had never seen before. “Sorry, I just-- I think there’s something out there.” She said again, taking a step closer to the water’s edge, her converse now partially submerged in the water. 

Much like every other day of the week, Dave was getting a feel for the structure of the town. Most specifically, the water ways. Everything had a flow to it - the air, the clouds, the trees, the streams leading into rivers and lakes. He needed to get to know as much of it as possible, so he could always have an escape route if he was out in the open, so he could solve cases, so he could understand this town. Besides, he found it easiest to navigate other places relative to the water features. East of the river, south of the docks, north of the cliffs. It was how he’d been raised to think, how he’d spent his whole life. When he’d been in the midwest it had been hell because of how far he’d been from the ocean. He was wandering along when someone called to him, a young woman sitting on a bench by the river edge. He didn’t quite catch what she said at first, but when he followed her gaze he saw it. Something caught in the river. “Stay back,” he warned, thinking just long enough to throw his phone into the grass before he plunged in. He’d known before he’d even hit the water. He knew when his hands caught the material that he wasn’t saving someone, just pulling up a corpse. He lugged it back onto the grass. Wasn’t even really bloating yet. Can’t have been that long. “Shit.”

Grace hadn’t ever been the type to believe in the best of things. It hadn’t been that she was always faced with the worst, but she certainly hadn’t been dealt cards that were in her favor. She knew, just by looking at the way the current rocked the figure, that this person wouldn’t be coming to shore alive. A part of her had hoped that it was just fabric attached to a log, but when the man next to her told her to stay back, Grace knew that he saw it, too. She followed his orders, taking a few steps back. Her socks squished with every step, but she didn’t have time to focus on it, instead, she watched as the stranger ran into the water without a second guess. It took a minute, but once he had managed to bring the corpse to the shore, Grace approached. As she knelt down next to it, she examined their face. The blisters told Grace that bloating hadn’t set in yet. Grace glanced up to the man next to her, “it looks like they died only maybe a day ago.” Grace was careful not to touch the deceased, not wanting to cause any additional cross-contamination. Grace wracked her brain for textbook definitions, for what Regan had already taught her in her short time in the morgue. All of it, for whatever reason, was coming up blank. “Do you see that?” Grace asked as she shifted around the body. “It looks like something tried to tear their throat out, could’ve been the fish trying to get a meal.” Grace looked up at the man. “We should probably call the cops, right?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Dave agreed. “Guessing they ended up in the water further upstream.” Maybe it was someone drunk who had a bad fall, or got tired while taking a dip. He’d seen hundreds of drownings, and as much as one might think there was foul play involved, most of the time, it was just bad luck. People didn’t realise how fast they tired in the open water, in a current, in the cold. Even as she’d pointed out the injuries, which she was right about, Dave wasn’t about to commit either way to these things. He just looked at her and nodded sharply. He also didn’t want to do too much investigating with some random witness around, because looking like you knew what you were doing near a dead body was a great old way to look suspicious as hell. “I’ll call them. You know what the nearest street is called, by chance?” He asked, picking his phone up from the bank, and dialling the local sheriff’s department. 

Grace kept her eyes on the body, looking for any more injuries. The least she could do was brief Regan, or even Dr. Rickers before they got to the body. Grace stayed crouched, barely registering what the man was asking her. “Uh,” Grace hummed as she looked around. Grace got up from her position and wandered to the left where she thought she’d seen a sign, “Dark Score Lane?” Grace guessed. After she had confirmed their location, she returned to the body. Grace pulled out her own phone and shot a quick text to Dr Kavanagh, “I work at the morgue,” she said after a moment. This was a stranger, but a stranger who had helped her locate a dead body, no less. Half of her wondered why he wasn’t having a more adverse reaction to the decedent, and she wondered if he, too, were wondering why she weren’t. He seemed relatively calm, which surprised Grace. Most would be panicked by now. “Just so you don’t think I’m some weirdo who likes to be around dead bodies.” Grace crouched down once more, “it looks like they’re missing an eye, do you see how this socket is kind of sunken in?” She pointed to the part of their face she commented on. 

“Dark score lane,” Dave repeated, rubbing his face as he explained the situation to the officer. He was still dripping wet from the swim, and idly tried to wring out his ratty t-shirt to no avail as he explained over the line. Finally, he hung up and looked over to Grace. “The morgue, huh? No wonder you got your detective eyes open and examining things. Uh, wouldn’t touch it. Drowned bodies can get real grim.” Explained why she wasn’t half as freaked as he’d expected. Still, it was different seeing a dead person on the job, and just finding one while you were out reading a book. Or so he figured. “Yeah, I see that. Could be a fish. Eating the soft parts first and all that. But I ain’t exactly an expert. Can’t be easy, looking at dead bodies day in and day out on a job like that.” It was useless. Without much shame, Dave pulled off his t shirt, exposing the long mermaid-tooth scars that raked across his body to wring out his shirt properly. “‘Scuse me. Nothing worse than sitting in wet clothes.” Once he’d gotten most of the water out, he tugged it back on again. Not much better, but it sure was something. 

Grace got up from her crouched position and slipped her phone back into her pocket. She looked out towards the water and half-wondered, half-guessed what had happened. No matter how strong of a swimmer you thought you were, the current could always destroy that in a moment’s notice. Grace crossed her arms over her chest and nodded ruefully at Dave’s words, “We’ll be able to look into it a little more once we get them to the morgue, I’m sure Dr Kavanagh will be able to figure out what happened.” Grace was still learning, but she could tell the telltale signs of what happened, surface level. It didn’t seem like there had been any marks on the neck to indicate strangulation, but the bite mark interested Grace. She barely looked up when Dave took his shirt off, and as soon as she caught a glimpse of the scars, she quickly averted her gaze back to the body. “Nah, I get it,” Grace said as she felt the squish of her own shoes as she retreated to the bench she had been at, “did the police say when they’d get here?” She asked him as she draped her bag over her shoulder. She figured she’d need to go in now, and that the rest of her day was cancelled. Comes with the job, I guess, Grace thought to herself as she looked over the body a bit more, noticing the way that they were also missing a few fingers. “The fish must’ve been really fucking hungry,” Grace said as she looked down. 

“That the coroner?” Dave asked, not knowing that Dr. Kavanagh would hate that description more than anything else. This kid was smart thugh. He watched her searching eyes with admiration, because to him it looked right like she knew what she was looking for. “Uh, round ten, fifteen minutes. Apparently there’s some major animal attack thing taking up their resources, but they’re getting it under control.” Which, realistically, probably meant that whatever supernatural beings they’d encountered had been successfully chased back into the woods. Hopefully with no one being eaten, but realistically someone had gotten bit. “You packing up? Ah, guess you’re figuring you’ll have to go to work.” He looked back over to the dead body curiously. “Mmm, yeah, maybe.”

Grace nodded, “she’ll be able to figure out exactly what happened here.” Grace could put it together, some parts were obvious, but until they cut into the body, they wouldn’t truly know the cause of death. Whatever flesh was missing at their neck, that was purely postmortem. At the very least, who they had found hadn’t been alive-- if the police were taking that long, then Grace would think they’d have a problem. “Yeah, I should get going, call Dr Kavanagh.” Grace pulled her phone out of her pocket to check for a text message back from Regan, but found nothing. Maybe she was already there. “Well, it was great finding a dead body with you….?” Grace looked at him expectantly, “I’m Grace.” 

“Yeah, let’s do it again some time,” Dave replied with a dry smile, a little too blasély. Maybe he shouldn’t make it sound like finding bodies of one sort or another was a common part of his day to day life, but, well… he’d found hundreds of dead bodies in his lifetime. He’d made a few of them. “I’m Dave.” The sun shone a little more brightly, and Dave shrunk a little into his t shirt. People didn’t tend to be as observant as all that, but this one was. She might notice that his shadow, really didn’t match his body. 

 Grace wondered if this happened a lot, or if he had said it because she told him she worked at the morgue. Regardless, Grace gave him a double thumbs up, “Hopefully ones that don’t smell as bad as this one,” she joked. She knew she should be taking it more seriously-- this was somebody who had gone missing. Why was it she was fine with a dead body washing ashore, yet she was ready to light her apartment on fire at the sight of a mouse? “Dave, it’s nice to meet you, and I’d say under better conditions, but I get paid overtime for going in on my day off, so…” Her gaze swept out across the water again. She wondered if they’d send a recovery unit into the depths to see if there was anybody else. Her gaze tracked back to Dave for a moment, missing that his shadow didn’t quite match what it should’ve looked like. “Does this happen often?” She asked, looking back to the body, “finding something like this? You seem pretty calm.” 

Dave huffed. If she thought it smelled bad, she should have a turn in his nose. Just because haulouts stank by necessity didn’t mean he got used to a whole new level of stink in his nose. He’d grabbed the damn thing either way. “Hey, I get it. You get paid extra for finding a whole ass body on your day off.” He turned back as he spotted some flashing lights in the periphery of his vision. “Looks like our company’s finally arriving.” He turned back to Grace, and shrugged. “A handful o’ times. You don’t get to live this long without seeing some weird shit.”

She was grateful that he didn’t seem to question the way in which she was calm-- at first, it had spooked her, but once she was able to focus on the fact that it was her job, just in a different setting, she had been able to regain composure, and quite quickly, too. Maybe all of her work in regards to containing her emotions when other people were around was what made it easier to calm herself down in situations of duress, at least, when she wasn’t in danger. “This one is interesting, too, so it won’t be a boring car accident--” Grace bit her tongue, “that was insensitive, but…” Grace carded her fingers through her hair as she looked onward as investigators approached them. “Looks like it.” She looked back to Dave, “thanks for you know,” Grace motioned towards him as she sidled up to the police officer who approached the body, spitting off what had happened as he wrote it down. 

#para #chatzy #grace

[logophilism]

Fractured Starlight - Part 1

Hi. So this is part 1 of my fic for the Grishaverse Big Bang. It’s probably a bit late. Probably a lot late. Welp. @grishaversebigbang 

My gang: 

Corporalki: @aragentum, @rebooka17 

Materialki: @abaduchi, @paphns, @catpidgeon, @wavesofinkdrops, @erlaszx

Fic summary: A series of perspectives following the crows pre-SoC and post-CK. Canon compliant.

Word Count: 1065

--------

Part 1: Matthias

  “Lisbet!”

  The little girl giggled, running -- well, what counted as running -- through Matthias’ legs.

  “Lisbet!” Matthias swivelled around, only to find the girl hiding under the table with her hands over her eyes. He grinned, then bent down and picked her up. “Now, Elisabet.” She pouted. “No running away, okay? If you do, the evil Grisha will come get you.” He bared his teeth for a second. “And we don’t want that.”

  The girl just giggled again and swatted at him with a chubby fist. Matthias smiled again, then, still carrying the girl, turned around and called out, “Mamma! I’ve got her!”

  Not that it had been particularly hard, of course, but his mother still smiled and ruffled his hair.

  “Stay safe and be home before dinner, okay?” she said, taking Lisbet from his arms. The girl wiggled and pouted. 

  Matthias grinned at her, then grabbed his coat. “Yes, Mamma! Bye, Lisbet.” Shrugging on the coat, he headed out. 

  The town was small, and cozy, with haphazard rows of houses made with brick or wood and roof tiles dusted with early snow. In the center stood a giant ash, splayed branches bare in preparation for winter. The town was small, for on one side stood a wide river, its edges just beginning to freeze, and on the other, a forest. Just south of the village was a small hill, crowned with sparse shrubbery and the occasional bare tree. 

  On the hill were three boys.

  “Thaddeus! No fair!” Matthias cried, the skinny boy vaulted over a low bush. The smaller boy stopped, turned, and stuck his tongue out at him. Matthias, panting, stepped around the bush and charged after him, overtook him. Just a little further.

  When he reached the clearing, he collapsed. Groaning, he heaved himself onto his back, only to see his other friend crouching over him with the smuggest expression on his face.

  “For the record,” said Mikkel, “That’s the third time I’ve won.”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  “Thaddeus is coming. I can hear him,” The boy lay down beside Matthias, “You got better. Still not as good as me, though.”

  “Shut up.”

  Thaddeus arrived, then, heaving for breath, and crumpled to the ground next to Mikkel.

  They stared at the slowly darkening sky until Matthias broke the silence.

  “So,” he said. They all sat up.

  “So,” Thaddeus countered.

  “Who wants to--”

  “Guys,” Mikkel interjected, staring at something downhill, “Who are those?”

  Matthias sat up straighter and looked. Emerging from the edge of the forest were perhaps half a dozen people, dressed in deep blue and holding torches. The group made their way to the boundary of the town, then stop.

  “That’s your dad, right?” Matthias nudged Thaddeus, pointing to the lone figure stepping out to greet the newcomers. The other boy nodded. Thaddeus’ father gestured to something and shouted, then pulled out his sword, pointing it at the strangers.

  All three boys sucked in a breath.

  One of the figures dressed in blue stepped forward. They raised their hands. Time fractured.

  With a large, broad motion, the stranger pulled the fire from one of the torches, sweeping it through the air like a fiery whip. The man with the sword tried to step back, stumbled, fell. The ribbon of flame struck him, then, enveloped him, the flickering red and gold stark against the melting snow. His scream was audible from the hillside.

  “Inferni,” Mikkel breathed, his voice low and shaking, “Bloody-- bloody inferni.”

  But Matthias and Thaddeus were already tearing down towards the village, ignoring the path as they ran through the sparse shrubbery, trying, trying desperately to reach the houses in time. Before they even reached the foot of the hill, however, it was too late.

  The town was burning. 

  The houses, with their wooden frames, went up like matchsticks. Flames leapt between them, from house to house to tree to house as if in tune to some hellish dance, accompanied by an orchestra of screams and shouts and great plumes of black smoke, clogging the air with death. 

  The town was burning. The town, the town Matthias had been in all his life, the town that currently held his entire family, was burning. Burning.

  Matthias stumbled towards it, choking, crying. The blistering heat pressed in on him, the acrid smoke surrounded him. He couldn’t see his own feet. Mamma, he thought, Pappa. He opened his mouth to form the words, but inhaled a lungful of soot instead. He stumbled, and fell face-first into a pile of coarse ash that burned his skin. Ash. The remains of some part of a home, and the remains of some family. Djel, the remains of people. 

  He tried to crawl forward, tried to reach his family, his mom and his dad and Lisbet -- Lisbet! -- but only fell again. He lay there, coughing.

  A hand reached out and grabbed him around the middle. No, no! He tried to twist himself free, but his limbs were weak and his vision was swimming. Someone clapped a cool cloth around his nose and mouth, and the world went dark.

  It was a dream. It had to be a dream. It had to have been some kind of horrible nightmare, nevermind the ashes in his torn clothes and the bandages on his hands. Nevermind the smoke that still hung in the sky over the patch of empty land between the forest and the river. Nevermind the charred remains of bones and twisted lumps of metal. Nevermind the kind words from the drüskelle -- for it was the drüskelle, following the inferni, that had saved him.

  Nevermind all that, because it was agony. His family -- his Mamma and Pappa and his little baby sister -- was gone. His friends were, too. Had Thaddeus burned like his father, lighting up like a torch? Had Mikkel suffocated, like Matthias should have? There were no survivors, bar him.

  And it was the inferni that had done it. The inferni. Witches, demons, Grisha.

  It was days before he spoke again, days before he coaxed his throat to form the words, quiet and rasping and empty though they were.

  “How do I become a drüskelle?”

  And one of the soldiers turned to look, look at the boy with the flat eyes and singed hair and the desperate, dark hatred in every tense line of his body. And he tilted his head.

  “We’ll take you to meet Jarl Brum.”

--------

A/N: The names are Scandinavian and the right time period, and I tried to pick ones that seemed similar to Matthias’. Lisbet is a shortened form of Elisabet, which was what a random generator picked, but I’d think of it as the Fjerdans acknowledging the bravery of a Ravkan saint without knowing she was a Grisha. So, feedback please!

#grishaverse #six of crows #grishaverse big bang #fractured starlight #fanfic #matthias helvar #sorry this is late #gvbbcreation

[kellylouise-blog]

Learning How To Idea

A few weeks ago, an ad on Facebook caught my attention. It was an ad for a writing course specifically about how to conjure ideas! Clearly Facebook knows all because that’s (shockingly) something I’ve always struggled with. My ideas for writing tend to just show up when I’m not looking so this was a new challenge to actively seek them out!

The course was called “Seven Ideas in Seven Days” and was offered by Writers HQ. It was short and sweet but I honestly learnt so much from it; about how ideas are literally everywhere, in everything you hear, see and think about. The structure of the course meant I got a new idea every day! I unfortunately caught the flu half way through which threw off my writing storm a bit but I made it through and honestly think I have some good ideas on my hands!

I wanted to post what I’ve written here (below the cut), with a brief look at the tips in the course! If you choose to glance through the ideas I came up with, let me know if anything looks promising to you or if you have any other ideas or feedback, anything is appreciated!

DAY ONE (take a mundane event or everyday task and look at it from different perspectives):

Channel 0: [omniscient] A large family is only ever together at funerals (and weddings, stuff like that.) The youngest sibling has recently died after a tragic accident. There are six siblings in total, their parents long gone. 

Channel 1: Viewpoint of the second youngest sibling, Matthew, who was closest to the deceased and considered his brother to be his best friend. The duo were inseparable and he is heartbroken to be without him. He hasn’t seen any of his other siblings in over two years, since the death of their mother (the father having died years before that). And he doesn’t want to see them, either.

Channel 2: Viewpoint of the deceased brother - a kind of ghostly perspective. He looks over the scene of his funeral, introducing his siblings to the reader, critiquing them and silently joining their awkward conversations. 

Channel 3: Viewpoint from the eldest sibling, who is dying from terminal cancer. She too, notices how seldom she sees her family and notes that she likely never will again. 

Channel 4: Game-of-Thrones style perspective switch between each of the characters throughout the day of the funeral.

DAY TWO (use a random literary quote generator online and take the last couple of words as a title! Then visit Flickr and take the third featured image as your book cover. Now, what’s the story?)

R1 (developing the story, random ideas): 

A detective story or murder mystery. A body is discovered in a marshy, boggy, forest area by passerbys (hikers? joggers?)

Maybe someone who’s been missing a while - search party discovery

Maybe something more supernatural - a group or couple out hiking and then, suddenly, one of them disappears. Found later, butchered. 

More horror film-esque - a night camping in the woods

A serial killers territory or dumping ground

Or the moor is alive - it swallows you whole

R2 (favouring supernatural idea): Who - A group of friends (18-25yrs) out camping. The forest/moor is rumoured to be haunted and dangerous. Amy is the most scared and skeptical of the group. But boyfriend Tom promises to protect her. (see where this is going?)

Two groups of couples (one hetero, one homo) and two single, “platonic” friends.

One of the “platonic” friends (Sophie) is first to disappear - later found by the other singleton James.

Throughout the night, the group starts to disappear, one by one, murdered by unknown forces. Eventually, it’s just Amy and Tom. But in the end, the moor gets him too as it swallows him whole, faster than quicksand. 

Finally, Amy makes it out of the living moor, but just barely. The lone survivor. 

Pitch:

The Moor is a suburban legend, a myth, a mystery and naturally … a tourist attraction. A group of fearless young people decide to investigate the legend of the “living moor”, treating it as nothing more than a regular camping trip. Amy tried to warn them.

The Moor is a living thing. And you just walked right into its mouth.

DAY THREE (Image Prompt):

Where are they/it? Suburban. London. 

When is it?-  1940’s

Why is it/they there? A young woman packs her belongings into her suitcase. She contemplates one last time about her decision to leave home.

Who are they? This young woman has had enough of her rough home life. She wants to see more, she wants to experience the world. But still, she is afraid. She has never done much of anything on her own, having gone straight from school into a less-than-loving marriage. 

What happens next? She finally makes the decision to leave home, packing what clothes and other things she can into her suitcase. And she’s not about to leave the dog behind with that man, either, no siree. She and her dog make their way to the train station, their destination unknown. 

Abigail Winston has not had the easiest life. But then again, she can’t complain, it could’ve been much worse. Mother always said that once she had a roof over her head, she had nothing to be sad about. And yet there she was, crying her heart out into her pillow, a pillow which has soaked up far too many of her tears over the years under this blessed roof. She could hear the music blaring from the gramophone downstairs. It was the same as always, the same tune, the same routine. She made her way home from her day job as a seamstress to be met by the backside of his hand for whatever reason he could pluck out of thin air. The dinner wasn’t done. The dishes were dirty. The dog was barking. The neighbours were noisy. The floor was a mess. 

“Why do you make me do this?” He asks, seeming to be genuinely perplexed at her nature. His hand is red raw from slapping her thricefold across the face. “You know I don’t want to hurt you.” He says, as he pulls her in towards him and kisses her right where he had just slapped her. His lips sting. 

But finally, as if some kind of cosmic epiphany had just hit her, she decided that she had had enough. It wasn’t her fault, it never had been. There was nothing wrong with her, it was all him. It was all down to the voices in his head that told him it was his right to treat her this way, she was his wife after all, his property. 

But no more.

She scribbled a note upon her vanity table, almost deciding to throw it into the bin altogether. Maybe it would be better to leave without saying anything. What would be the point in trying to explain her reasons for leaving? He would never believe them. He wouldn’t care. But she wrote it anyway, trying to keep her words as devoid of emotion as possible.

She didn’t love him, perhaps she never did. Marraige is just something everyone has to do, right? What a world. 

She pulled out the suitcase from the closet and threw in her most prized possessions, but mostly clothes. She hurried down the stairs, knowing he’d be back from the public house any time soon now. Pausing at the door, she turned around to find him standing there; Toby … the dog. 

“He’s never been kind to you, either, has he?” She found herself asking. The dog yapped and ran towards her and the decision was made. She wouldn’t be alone after all. 

She made her way down the suburban street with little Toby running along beside her. She caught the questioning glances of many neighbours as she passed them. Of course, she could not hope to leave unnoticed. Jonathan would be well informed of her departure, suitcase and all. But still, she carried on and tried to ignore the ball of anxiety building in her stomach. 

A half hour later, she had finally reached the gates to the train station. “Where am I even going?” She thought to herself. She hadn’t thought this far ahead. It had been a spur of the moment decision in the end. Maybe she should turn back. Yes, back to what she knew, that would be best. 

Toby yipped up at her, snapping her to attention. No, this was the right thing to do. She had to leave. She needed to get on the soonest train, that would take her farthest away, somewhere he would never guess to look for her. 

Cornwall. She had never been there. She barely knew where it was, only that it was pretty far out of London. She didn’t allow herself to hesitate and bought herself (and Toby) a ticket. A one-way ticket. There, she had done it. There was no going back now. 

Her heart hammering in her chest, she turned towards the gate leading to the train at a steady pace. Perhaps she wasn’t paying enough attention to her surroundings as suddenly, someone bumped into her, causing her to drop the suitcase and for it to burst open, spilling out some of her hastily packed things. 

The stranger stopped and bent down to help her. “So sorry, miss! I should’ve been looking where I was goin’! You alrigh’?” That voice. It couldn’t be. 

She looked up at the strangers face and realised he was no stranger at all. “Well, I’ll be … Abigail. It’s been an age.”

DAY FOUR (choose an emotion that you want to invoke in the reader and work backwards)

Emotion: Inspired

Need to experience: Success in the face of adversity. A hopeless situation turned hopeful. Perseverance. Never giving up, despite the odds being stacked against you. Succeeding. Leaving behind a good legend. Paving the way for others.

Who: A homeless person with a wacky invention idea. A single mother on the cusp of poverty who’s just trying to do right by her kids. A severely bullied kid who intervenes in someone else’s bullying. A political activist who keeps going despite being arrested, even beaten, a number of times. A dystopian world where the smallest voice can be the loudest. 

I can often feel inspired to suddenly change my life, to stop just accepting how things are and do something about it. I am in control. But they want to take that control away from me. 

Young girl in a world that wants to suffocate all that she is. A very strict world with lots of rules and regulations. Akin to a dictatorship. 

A single mother, Margaret, circa 1960’s Ireland who had to have her child in secret as she was unmarried. She leaves home, determined to protect her child. The father doesn’t know. How far can she go before the child is discovered and they are ultimately pulled from each other? She finds friendship in an older woman who was once sent to the “mother and baby” home after her own unmarried pregnancy in her youth. “It’s like a prison,” she says, “A torture chamber … under the guise of God’s work.” 

She fears every day for the life of her child. But it won’t stop crying. She tries to keep it happy but its screams echo right through the walls. She can’t stay in one place too long, lest somewhere see her and report her. Her family have reported her missing, her face is plastered across every town that she can get to. She alters her appearance as drastically as possible, new haircut, new hair colour, different clothes. She has barely any money to her name, and she can’t get a job since she needs to mind the child constantly. She turns to prostitution, a quick job with high pay. Anything for the child. 

The older woman tells her all about her time in the home, of the daily routine and the daily “retribution”, the punishment for having betrayed her promise to God. 

As she listens to the stories, Margaret becomes determined not only to save herself from the grip of the Church but to save other mothers too from their righteous judgement. She tries to find others who have survived the homes and learns more and more horror stories from them. The babes were stricken from their breasts, never to be seen again. Those that died in infancy were tossed aside in a mass grave, little more than garbage in the eyes of the nuns. 

Margaret starts to draw up flyers, leaflets and posters to alert people to the real goings-on in the homes. The homes designed to “reform” and “rehabilitate” wayward women. The propaganda must be subtle at first, a whisper in the collective unconscious until more and more women wake up to the problem in their society. The propaganda must be spread without its source being known. Margaret’s connection to it can never be discovered because of course, the child would be too. 

She develops a steady group of friends, women who have all been subjected to the Church’s law. One such woman, Josephine, only 15 years old, was impregnated by her local priest. Together, they round up more and more women and stage a protest outside of the home. They infiltrate and extract the imprisoned mothers and snatch up the innocent children. The mass grave is discovered and the Church’s secret is revealed. 

In the end, Margaret and her group of friends set up a real home for unmarried mothers where both woman and child are cared for until they are able to care for themselves. 

DAY FIVE (take a paragraph from a book you’re reading and pose what-if questions)

A Storm of Swords: Steel and Snow

Pg 75

The queen-to-be invites a traitors daughter to supper.

What if the daughter bears the queen ill will?

What if the queen bears the daughter ill will?

What if the queen is worried that the daughter (a servant) will cause the king to stray?

What if the queen fears that the daughter, too, will prove to be a traitor?

What if she is a traitor?

What if the daughter uses the invite as an opportunity to enact a plan against the queen or some other vendetta? 

What if the supper goes horribly wrong and the queen is murdered and the daughter is accused? 

DAY SIX (Analysing the ideas): 

Idea One: The Family Funeral

Idea Two: The Moor at Night

Idea Three: Abigail

Idea Four: Mother and Baby

Idea Five: The Queen and the Traitors Daughter

 IDEA #1:

What interests me about it?

I’ve thought about this idea for a while, sparked by an observation on my own family. I come from a pretty big family and the prospect of only ever seeing them at certain events such as weddings and funerals is disheartening. But I think it’s something most families can relate to, especially as the children get older and separate into their own lives. We all get too busy to meet up until ultimately, we lose our last chance to see each other at all. Writing this story would be interesting to explore family dynamics and how they can be affected by tragic grief.

Will I be interested in it long term? 

I intend for this to just be a short story so it shouldn’t take more than a few weeks/months of my time once I get down to it.  

Is there an obvious journey?

I see this as a scene in the funeral home with the family reuniting. I would like it to show the frayed family coming together again in the face of their united grief, choosing to set aside their differences and grudges because life is short. 

Has it been done before?

I guess that episode in “Haunting of Hill House” (episode 3?) is rather similar with the family, once torn apart, coming together for their sisters funeral. Tensions are high, and they argue quite a bit but ultimately, it’s a lovely reunion. I guess it’s likely it inspired me subconsciously to think about this story and my own experiences. But I wouldn’t quite go down the spooky route with my story!

What about the research? 

I guess it would be worthwhile to seek out other people’s stories of how their families reunited and came back together after a tragedy - or perhaps the very opposite. I don’t know if I’d be brave enough to quiz my own family about how they feel!

Why do I need to write it? 

Because yes, life is busy and we all have our own things going on but family is important. You never know when someone may be taken from you, tomorrow is never guaranteed. I want people to pause and think about their relationships and whether they’re holding onto unnecessary anger. If that person was gone tomorrow, could you live on knowing you’ll never make amends?

Who’s going to care about it?

I think this is something a lot of people - particularly those from larger families - can relate to. 

Is it a goer? 

I think this is a great opportunity to explore characterisation and storytelling so yes, I intend to work on it!

#2: The Moor at Night

What interests me about it?

I’ve always wanted to write a spooky horror story. I love watching horror stuff - especially supernatural stories - although I haven’t read many. 

Will I be interested in it long term? 

This is a fairly fresh idea and I think it’s a little too “cliche” yet and needs something else to really interest me. 

Is there an obvious journey?

Uh, everyone dies?? Except the girl who was warning everyone that the Moor is serious business. So, not really, other than the survival. Or maybe Amy starts out extra scared but has to become brave to escape, yadda yadda, who knows.

Has it been done before?

In the sense of a devouring swamp, I don’t think so. It makes me think of the Blair Witch stories that I loved to read growing up. But it needs something to pull it out of being a “basic horror” monster eating story.

What about the research? 

I think I need to sink my teeth into more horror stories if I ever hope to write one. I watch plenty of movies but finding a book that is actually scary is rare, I think. And well, movies are all about the cliche so maybe more novels can open me to new ways of thinking about horror and how to scare! That, and research into pananormal/supernatural stuff could breed new ideas!

Why do I need to write it? 

This one would just be fun to write, I think.

Who’s going to care about it?

People who like horror stories, I suppose??

Is it a goer? 

Not sure yet. Think it needs a lot more development or rethinking more creatively.

#3: Abigail

What interests me about it?

I like writing stories that show characters coming out of a bad place and into a better life. I think this story could show people that they are in control of their lives. Too many people settle and just “make do” with their life situation even though they’re desperately unhappy. 

Will I be interested in it long term? 

Hmmm, again there’s not much here in terms of a “story” just yes. A traumatised, abused woman finally leaves her unhappy home behind and … what?? She meets an old friend at the train station, perhaps a past sweetheart. What happened there? 

Is there an obvious journey?

This would be quite a character driven story. Abigail’s goal is to get out and make a new life for herself. Does this make her into a sort of outlaw? Does she have to fashion herself a new identity? Likely, her past will eventually find her again. What lengths will she go to to escape it? Hmmm, maybe there is something here….

Has it been done before?

Given how bare-bones this idea is, most probably. The story of an abused woman running from home has likely been done to death (although I can’t think of any in particular). So I’d have to find something to let this stand out.

What about the research? 

I think I should start by reading similar stories, particularly non-fiction books of women who have escaped abuse for extra inspiration.

Why do I need to write it? 

Again, I think people need to realise that they are in control of their own destiny. You don’t have to just “put up with it.” This would be a story about empowerment and learning to put yourself first.

Who’s going to care about it?

I guess this could cater to the feminist cause and female empowerment.

Is it a goer? 

Again, not quite sure until I’ve developed the idea a little more but I think there might be something there, alright.

#4: Mother and Baby

What interests me about it?

This is a topic that’s quite prominent in the Irish consciousness. The whole scandal around the mother and baby homes won’t be forgotten anytime soon. This idea was born out of a “what if” really concerning that topic. What if we had known sooner? Could we have stopped these terrible things from happening?

Will I be interested in it long term? 

Not too sure, this one isn’t drawing me as much as the other ideas I’ve had. Yes, it’s an interesting topic and one we should never forget but I’m not sure about this story.

Is there an obvious journey?

This story is quite about empowerment as well, standing up for what you believe in and refusing to back down. It’s about change and fighting for the greater good. Many of the characters involved will go on their own journeys of growth.

Has it been done before?

Of course, the Magdalene Sisters covered this topic pretty well (although I haven’t actually seen it) but that story takes place entirely within the home itself. So, it’s similar but doesn’t mean this story is invalid. This idea also makes me think of Fantine in Les Miserables who went to such depths for the sake of securing her daughters livelihood. 

What about the research? 

Being related to an actual event, I would have to do a good bit of research for accuracy. But that actually sounds exciting! Love me some research. Most importantly, I would seek out stories from women who actually experienced these atrocities and go from there.

Why do I need to write it? 

Because we can’t forget what we, as a nation, did to so many women and innocent children all in the name of “God”. 

Who’s going to care about it?

I should hope mostly anyone. 

Is it a goer? 

Maybe??

#5: Queen and Traitor

What interests me about it?

This was mostly a bunch of what-ifs but I think the scenario of the Queen being murdered at their dinner together could be interesting. The daughter is already of ill-repute thanks to her family and is naturally accused. This is, of course, a period story and that could be quite interesting to look into medieval stuff and how the royals live and lived. Of course, the daughter did not kill the queen, so it would also be a story about judging a book by its cover. 

Will I be interested in it long term? 

This idea sounds like a classic whodunnit, something I’ve always wanted to write. And in a period, medieval, royal setting? That could be interesting. But again, this seed is so little I can’t say if it will bear fruit just yet.

Is there an obvious journey?

The daughter will have to prove her innocence and discover the true perpetrator in the process. 

Has it been done before?

I don’t think so? Whodunnit’s are a genre unto themselves and I’ll have to investigate the likes of Agatha Christie to see what’s been done (and hasn’t!)

What about the research? 

Loads of research here into royalty and medieval life. But again, I love research so that just makes this idea even more appealing!

Why do I need to write it? 

A good old murder mystery would just be fun to write!

Who’s going to care about it?

Wannabe Sherlocks?

Is it a goer? 

I kind of want to develop this a bit more and see where it takes me!

DAY SEVEN (Idea Development):

I chose to focus on the murder-mystery actually as it excites me the most!

There’s a hero! Something happens and her life totally changes. She’s now got a problem to solve. Shit!

So, the hero is the daughter, perhaps a princess or just someone who lives at the palace. She comes from a family of ill repute. Her father previously betrayed the trust of the Queen and was extradited. But the Queen is loving and forgiving and takes his daughter under her wing. But no one else in the palace trusts her nearly as much. The Queen invites the daughter to supper with her. This is a rare occurrence as the daughter would usually sup alone since the rest of the palace people disliked her so. The supper is going well and everyone is having a good time until suddenly - tragedy strikes and the Queen begins to sputter and choke. She falls facedown onto the table, dead. The stain on her lips and wineglass make it clear that she had been poisoned. All eyes fall on the daughter as she is instantly accused of the crime. Guards are called and she is instantly pulled away into the dungeons before she even has a chance to defend herself.

She tries to solve the problem.

Not only has she been accused of murder, but she’s also locked in the dungeon! She has to find a way out and prove her innocence. She befriends someone in the cell beside her. A young boy, around her age. He’s been here a while, locked up for snatching a piece of bread that he swears he never touched. 

Somehow or other, they get out of the dungeon. Maybe they trick a guard or find a hollow point in the wall. But they remain in secret while the girl tries to find clues to clear her name. She listens in on conversations around the castle, discovering all sorts of goings-on. 

She fails miserably at solving the problem, or she solves it with unexpected consequences, and the story pivots and there is a new, bigger problem to solve.

She eventually discovers the true culprit! It’s not someone anyone would’ve expected. But, boneheadedly, she decides to confront him alone but he gets the better of her and knocks her unconscious. She wakes to find herself tied up and helpless once again. This man is someone of power, high up in the hierarchy of the palace and has everyone wrapped around his little finger. It will be difficult to prove him guilty.

The problem is fixed or remains unfixed. The hero is happy or unhappy. She is CHANGED in some way.

She eventually gets to expose the true culprit to the other people in the palace and clears her name in the murder. Of course, she is disgruntled that everyone immediately turned on her without giving her a chance to defend herself. She opts to leave her life in the palace behind and with her captive friend, they seek out a simpler, happier life together.

#whq #writershq #writeblr #irish writers #writers #ideas #story ideas #writing #originalblog

[gotatext]

PREFERRED NAME — nora. i think i started going by it in like, 2009?? my full name is eleanor but i hated it n thought it was way too pretentious n i never felt like it fitted me so when i started writing on forums i decided i’d be a nora rather than eleanor and then my school friends called me it and it just kinda stuck, the only person who calls me eleanor is my mum

PRONOUNS — she / her / ethereal being beyond comprehension

AGE — 23 but i tell everyone im 21 because even tho time is literally fake im desperately clinging to that fleeting thing we call youth trying to catch it like smoke in my hands

PINTEREST — i actually have two. this one is my main one where i just cram all my shit n i’ve had it for years and some of its super unorganised. then i also have this one which is one i made for exclusively female characters. it started as mythological figures but now its like, women in literature and the occasional oc as well. variety is the spice of life!

DISCORD — lindsay lohan’s meth#8664

TUMBLR (PERSONAL/MUSE/RPH) — i used to be froseths but now im pvrscphones cos ya gal is a fucking whore for mythology 

OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA YOU’D LIKE TO SHARE — oi oi guvna ere’s me twitta. also here’s my letterboxd n my goodreads if anyone still uses tht

MYER-BRIGGS — enfp / infp border .... the classic profile of a lit student

HP HOUSE — hufflepuff, am fuckin mad. 

ZODIAC — libra which is a joke because i am in no way balanced but i guess i AM indecisive and a peacekeeper so?

DO YOU BELIEVE IN ASTROLOGY? — i believe it when it says good shits gonna happen in my life and blame it if bad shit happens but i don’t strongly follow it i just find it interesting

HOW OLD WERE YOU WHEN YOU STARTED RPING ON TUMBLR — maybe like 14?? my first rp blog here is literally so embarassing i wrote as clove from the hunger games n my best friend irl wrote cato :/ it was wild

WHAT YEAR WAS IT? — like 9 years ago?? 2010 maybs

NAME A RANDOM ROLEPLAY THAT STICKS OUT IN YOUR MEMORY — me n my friend ellie made this really cool group the summer before we left for uni which was loosely based on a concept mentioned mayb once in the divergent series, but it gave us loads of freedom to make it our own thing. it was called the fringe n it was like..... this dystopian society where people with different genes were cut off from the rest of society n lived in overrun slum cities where different groups had like, a monopoly over weapons, produce, etc.... my character jack was the leader of this lost-boy-esque tribe called the wolf pack who were hunters n used to run across the rooftops wearing the skins of animals they’d killed and engage in tribal rituals with sacrifices to the gods n shit. sounds lame but everyone there was so invested in their character arcs that it was a shame to see it go. but ! it kind of reached its end point so we blew it up w nukes n they all died. tragic.

WHAT WEIRD ANIMAL WOULD YOU HAVE AS A PET IF IT WAS REALISTIC — a fox?? do ppl keep foxes? idk i’ve always just felt a sense of connection w them like when a fox stares at me im like this shit is life i am living and breathing in this bitch.... visceral

NAME THE FIRST SONG ON YOUR DISCOVER WEEKLY ON SPOTIFY OR THE FIRST SONG THAT COMES ON APPLE MUSIC / ITUNES SHUFFLE — everbody party tonight by cobra man n summer girl by haim..... not my usual stuff but big summer chillin vibes,.....

NAME A BOOK THAT YOU READ IN SCHOOL THAT YOU SURPRISINGLY LIKED — lord of the flies and also the handmaid’s tale. one of assignments was to write a chapter from another character’s perspective n i chose moira

NAME A BOOK YOU HATED THAT MOST PEOPLE LIKED — skellig. fuck off with ur asprin ugly bat man i don’t care. also of mice and men. don’t care about the rabbits or curley’s goddamn wife.

WHAT TV SHOW DID YOU RECENTLY BINGE? — im not a big binger bc i find it jst makes me depressed if i watch tv all day but im nearly finished stranger things season 3 n i recently finished euphoria (big rec but proceed w caution as quite triggering content)

FAVOURITE QUOTE — cool girl speech from gone girl. but also “there’s something dangerous about the boredom of teenage girls” i know its like.... such an overused quote but it really encapsulates this kind of feral girlhood that a few of my characters like bridget n greta have tapped into. i also loved the line “i feel like i could eat the world raw” from song of achilles, that really captures this kind of.... pure n childlike enthusiasm tht i wanna achieve w rory 

LINK TO A VINE THAT EXUDES YOUR ‘ENERGY’ — this is my energy completely am always covered in glitter n staring broodily out of the windows of ubers at 4am like im in the sad bit of an indie film 

DO YOU WRITE OUTSIDE OF RP? WHAT DO YOU WRITE? — uhh.... not as much as i shd.... i want to be a writer so i shd be makin some effort to get my stuff Out Into The World but im just not.... lol. ive done a lot of poetry collections . i wnt to finish a novel @ some point too.

THREE YOUTUBERS YOU STILL TRUST — bold of you to assume i trust any youtubers

A CELEBRITY CRUSH THAT JUST WON’T QUIT — id literally die for saoirse ronan n timothee chalamet :/ chance perdomo also owns my ass. 

EVER MEET A CELEBRITY? SHARE YOUR STORY — i once high-fived dani harmer, the actress who played tracy beaker. today my sister text me tryin to make me guess what celebrity she just saw on holiday in wales and for ages she let me think it was timmothee but it was actually bradley walsh from the chase :/

WHAT’S YOUR PICTURE-PERFECT NIGHT? — i am in a bomb ass crop top and mini skirt, several scrunchies in my hair, glitter all over my face, wearing cowboy boots. we eat dinner in a trendy but affordable pub that doubles up as a cocktail bar n then we drink zombies or sex on the beaches n go to a rave where everyone is on the same wavelength n i share drugs with girls in the toilets and we swap numbers knowing we will never text each other but its ok bc in that moment we feel like we are soulmates and everyone is super drunk n touching everyone else n its all very visceral and we walk through the woods when the rave ends and lie in the grass because we wish to suck out all the marrow of life 

A CONSPIRACY THEORY YOU KINDA BELIEVE IN — princess diana was murdered 

ARE ALIENS REAL? — maybe the real aliens are the friends we made along the way

PLAY ANY PHONE GAMES? WHICH ONES? — love island game im addicted and way too invested in my fictional relationship with bobby, a cartoon

WHAT’S A FILM YOU LOVED WHEN YOU WERE YOUNG AND RECENTLY WATCHED, ONLY TO FIND OUT YOU DON’T ANYMORE — bold of u to assume i remember my childhood. but if we’re talking last 10 years angust, thongs n perfect snogging is so so cringe 

DO YOU COLLECT ANYTHING? — pairs of glasses belonging to other ppl when they break / get new ones even though i can see perfectly well. 

WHAT’S SOMETHING YOU WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT BUT YOU’RE TOO LAZY? — mythology...... always a craving and a wish i’d read like ancient texts but my school wasn’t good enough to do greek or latin or any of that shit n even tho i could read english translations i cant be bothered. also criminal psychology

THREE LANGUAGES YOU DON’T SPEAK, BUT WISH YOU COULD — italian, french and latin

MOVIE YOU’VE WATCHED MORE THAN 5 TIMES — ladybird, about time, angus thongs, shrek 2, what we do in the shadows, the history boys, atonement, coraline, the breakfast club, ferris bueller’s day off

NAME A FICTIONAL CHARACTER FROM TV/FILM/MOVIE/GAME/BOOK THAT YOU FIND YOURSELF PROJECTING ON / YOU RELATE TO — cecilia lisbon. rue in euphoria. alison brie in glow. adam parrish in the raven cycle. richard papen. olivia cooke’s character in thoroughbreds. allen ginsberg in kill your darlings. lily in sex education. holliday grainger’s character in the film animals --- i too am an aspiring writer who never writes and just gets drunk instead .

DO YOU FOLLOW ANY SPORTS? WHO DO YOU ROOT FOR? — no. cba

HOBBIES BESIDES WASTING AWAY HERE? — i go to the movies basically every day bcos i work in a cinema. im also a voracious reader n i occasionally do theatre or costume making

PLUG A TV SHOW / MOVIE / BOOK / VIDEO GAME / ETC… YOU WISH MORE PEOPLE WOULD CHECK OUT — where the wild things are (film by spike jonze).  animals. beats. the book fen by daisy johnson and a girl is a half formed thing by eimar mcbride. andy warhol’s biography from a to b and back again

WHOSE BRAIN WOULD YOU LIKE TO PICK, ALIVE OR DEAD? — phoebe waller-bridge on how i get her life. carey mulligan on how she got to be such a good actress n how i can become her. maybs wes anderson. maybs gillian flynn. i tend to listen to podcasts w the ppl i really wanna pick the brains of.

TEAM EDWARD OR JACOB? — edward :/

LAST MOVIE SEEN IN THEATRE — blinded by the light n i lovd it

DO YOU STILL READ? — when i finished uni i kinda got out of the habit but this week i finished two books so ive set myself the challenge of a book a week.

IF SO, WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY READING? — i finished song of achilles yesterday n i also finished call me by your name yesterday. started circe by madeline miller today, im also partway through milkman by anna burns and the plays of annie barker

ON A SCALE OF 1-10, HOW MUCH DID YOU HATE FILLING THIS OUT? – 3 i didnt hate it bcos at heart i am self-indulgent and love fashioning some sense of self when i feel lost in a world that is scary and constantly changing 

#wshedtask002

[frangipanilove]

The “Daryl as a Mary Magdalene-figure” theory

Part two:The Da Vinci Code, “The Last Supper”, glass pyramids, greenhouses

In my opinion, TPTB’s effort to establish Daryl as a Mary Magdalene figure essentially start in 4x13 “Alone”. This is also the episode where the “The Da Vinci Code” references become really obvious. The episode starts with a musical montage where we follow Bob right before he is found by Daryl and Glenn. We see him wandering around on his own, looking lonely and depressed. At one point he builds some sort of “cage”, so that he can later sit in it and drink his cold medicine (Cold-Z, a “cooler” reference, keep this in mind until later). We then watch him climb on top of a trailer (@wdway reminded me of the fact that this trailer is identical to the wolf trap trailers in 5x16) and we get this shot:

This seems like a good time to say a few words about “The Da Vinci Code” plot. Our hero, Robert Langdon, is called to the Louvre museum in Paris to assist in the investigation of the murder of the museum curator Jacques Sauniere, whose dead body is posed like The Vitruvian Man, a famous sketch by Leonardo Da Vinci.

Back to TWD. Bob’s pose in “Alone” is similar to both Da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” and Jacques Sauniere’s dead body in “The Da Vinci Code”. This, in my opinion, indicates that TPTB intentionally inserted TDVC imagery into this particular episode of TWD. And there is a good reason for that.

The premise of TDVC is that Mary Magdalene and Jesus were in a relationship, had a child, and that the Merovingian kings of France were descended from the bloodline of Mary Magdalene and Jesus. Throughout history, this secret was protected by a series of prominent characters such as Da Vinci himself, who according to The Da Vinci Code inserted certain clues in the painting “The last supper”. The most central clue suggests that the character officially recognized as the disciple John in reality is Mary Magdalene. With that in mind, one can see how it is easy to compare the painting to the White Trash Brunch/kitchen scene from “Alone”, like here:

In addition to the similarities between “The White Trash Brunch” and “The Last Supper”, comes of course the shot of Daryl taking a good, long moment to admire the plaque of “The Last Supper” in 5x2 “Strangers”.

From a TD perspective this is interesting because it is yet another way of establishing Beth as a Christ figure. From a Bethyl perspective it is interesting because if there is a TDVC template in “Alone”, one has to remember that in TDVC Jesus and Mary Magdalene were actually romantically involved. Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ love interest, and if Daryl is Mary Magdalene to Beth’s Christ, it also suggests that Daryl is Beth’s love interest. Furthermore, in many accounts from early Christianity Mary Magdalene is the first person to see the resurrected Christ, something which calls for interesting speculations in terms of who will be the first person from Team Family to see the “resurrected” Beth.

The TDVC template doesn’t end with the kitchen scene. In TDVC, after Robert Langdon has solved numerous mysteries across all of Europe, in the final pages of the book he follows “The Rose Line” a fictional name given to the Paris meridian line, in search of the “Holy Grail”. He suspects that if he follows “The Rose Line” it will lead him to it, and he eventually realizes that the Holy Grail is the bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. The relevance to TWD, TD and Bethyl is that “The Rose Line” has lead Robert Langdon to the inverted glass pyramid outside the Louvre Museum, and he realizes that Mary Magdalene’s sarcophagus is secretly hidden underneath the smaller pyramid below the inverted glass pyramid.

In 6x6 “Always Accountable” Daryl is initially taken captive by Dwight and Sherry. When Tina has an accute illness incident and faints, Daryl takes the opportunity to escape. He runs through the woods, before he eventually stops to untie his hands and get his crossbow ready to take down an approaching walker. As the walker falls, we see a Cherokee rose attached to its back, and it is as if the sight of the rose change Daryl’s attitude towards the situation. He notices a cooler containing insulin, and decides to return the medicine to Tina who is obviously in a bad place without it (take note of the cooler, it’s part of a “cooler” theme I will expand on later)

So in TDVC we read about Robert Langdon following The Rose Line through Paris, eventually realizing that The Holy Grail is the bloodline from Mary Magdalene and Jesus, and that the sarcophagus of Mary Magdalene is secretly hidden under the smaller pyramid below the inverted glass pyramid by the Louvre Museum.

In TWD, there aren’t any inverted glass pyramids, but we do have a recurring theme of greenhouses (glasshouses) with holes through the roof.

Think back to the greenhouse with the hole through the roof in 4x4 “Indifference”, when Rick and Carol come across Sam and Ana. They aren’t really the surviving kind, but before she dies Ana makes sure to emphasize that there’s a greenhouse there with a hole through the roof, so that the water can come in and the fruit can grow. It seemed like an incredibly random storyline at the time, but nothing is random in TWD.

Also think back to the greenhouse “tomb” in 6x6 “Always Accountable”. Think about how there’s a Cherokee Rose that leads Daryl to turn around and return the insulin to Tina, Sherry and Dwight.

Think back to the greenhouse with the hole through the roof on 4x4 “Indifference” and the greenhouse “tomb” in 6x6 “Always Accountable”. Think about how there’s a Cherokee Rose that leads Daryl to turn around and return the insulin to Tina, Sherry and Dwight. Think about how the Rose Line through Paris eventually led Robert Langdon to Mary Magdalene’s sarcophagus underneath the inverted glass pyramid outside the Louvre. Think about how the holy grail turned out to be the bloodline from Mary Magdalene and Jesus. Think about how the Cherokee Rose, that represents hope of finding lost loved ones, led Daryl to return the insulin to Tina, so that she was able to properly control her blood sugar, “wake up” from her almost unconscious state. The Cherokee rose eventually led him to ...not a glass pyramid but a glass house/greenhouse with a hole through the roof. There are some clear parallels between TDVC and TWD here.

In TDVC, Mary Magdalene’s sarcophagus was revealed to be hidden under the inverted glass pyramid in front of the Louvre museum. A pyramid is a tomb. We haven’t seen glass pyramids in TWD, but we have seen glass houses/greenhouses. We’ve seen “glass-sarcophaguses”. We haven’t seen Mary Magdalene’s sarcophagus under a pyramid below an inverted glass pyramid (tomb), but we’ve seen Daryl in a coffin in a funeral home. And we’ve seen Beth and Daryl share the trunk of a car, universally accepted by TDers everywhere as a foreshadow of something that happened off screen during those missing 17 days, something which ended with Beth for some reason being “gone”, something that no one talks about, something that was “hinted to” by having Maggie find the Beth-walker in the trunk of a car in 5x10 “Them”. And we’ve of course also seen the car with the white cross drive away with Beth, leaving a panicked and heartbroken Daryl to chase after it all night.

To be continued in part three

#bethyl #team delusional #team defiance #beth greene #beth x daryl

[daddysfavouriteboytoy]

Astra Junica Umelen

Name: Astra Junica Umelen Nickname: Ash, your highness Age: 23 Birthday: unknown, but the king told the folk it was the 2nd of April Gender: Male Sexuality: Pansexual Species: Half Nymph, Half Human Appearance: just with milky blue eyes (Face-claim: Criedwolves)

Height: 1,89 m Personality: Astra surprisingly has no interest in having power over others and doesn’t care for domineering attitudes at all. He prefers a more democratic approach and works hard to ensure that every voice and perspective is heard. His unshaken belief that all people are inherently good, perhaps simply misunderstood, lends itself to an incredibly resilient attitude in the face of hardship. However, Astra often takes his idealism too far, setting himself up for disappointment as, again and again, evil things happen in the world. At the same time, the man gives the benefit of the doubt too often, and so long as his principles and ideas are not being challenged, he’ll support others’ right to do what he thinks is right. Astra’s open mind combined with the ability to connect many far-flung dots into a single theme, makes it no wonder that his loved ones celebrated him as a poet while most strangers call him an airhead. When something captures the prince’s imagination and speaks to his beliefs, he goes all in, dedicating his time, energy, thoughts and emotions to the project. Even though his shyness keeps him from the podium, he is the first to lend a helping hand where it’s needed. However, only as long as he knows that what he is doing, is meaningful and gives him a sense of purpose and even courage him when it comes to accomplishing something he believes in. Meanwhile, Astra sometimes sees himself as selfish, but only because he wants to give so much more than he is able to. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, as he tries to push himself to commit to a chosen cause or person, forgetting to take care of the needs of others in his lives, and especially himself, even going so far as to neglect practical matters like day-to-day tasks including bathing, eating or sleeping. While putting all this effort into making others feel good, Astra often takes challenges and criticisms personally, rather than as an inspiration to reassess his positions. Avoiding conflict as much as possible, the prince will put a great deal of time and energy into trying to align his principles and the criticisms into a middle ground that satisfies everybody. Astra is also private, reserved and self-conscious. This makes him difficult to really get to know, and his need for these qualities contributes to the guilt he often feels for not giving more of himself to those he deeply cares about. Relationships: Xylia Faodonara – biological mother; 52 years old; human; farmer Esthan Leern – biological father; 232 years old; nymph Aasca Liluth Umelen – mother; 60 years old; human; queen Gorred Wynna Umelen – father; 58 years old; human; king Luthais Folwin Umelen – older brother; 29 years old; human; princ Arielle Olora Umelen – younger sister; 21 years old; human; princess Likes: the smell after it rained, growing flowers, fruity teas, bubble baths, so called “bad people” turning out to be actually kind/friendly, being read to, touching soft things, swimming, his hair being played with, not being judged for being blind, being hugged from behind by loved ones Dislikes: being told he looks good or bad, black tea, horse riding because he can’t see where he’s going, his biological parents, war, loud sounds, cold weather, being touched without being asked first, not being allowed to leave the castle’s ground, lying and being lied to, people disrespecting him/making fun of him, people disrespecting nature Hobbies: swimming, being read to, gardening, dancing, daydreaming Occupation: Prince of Islubia  Powers: can grow flowers and plants up to the height of 3 meters wherever he wants, can help plants to grow faster, he has very sharp senses besides his eyesight Housing: Castle Room: 👑 Virgin: Yes Position: Switch Turn-ons: unknown Turn-offs: unknown Other:

he’s blind

owns a white German shepherd named Nasir as seeing-eye dog even though he doesn’t really need him

is allergic to gold, it burns his skin if it touches the metal too long

has forbidden feelings for his brother but would never dare to act on them

knows he’s actual adopted

Backstory: Astra was the sixth child of a poor farmer’s wife and her affair. A bästard child like he was, definitely wasn’t something unusual in the village the small boy was born, after all, it was surrounded by a thick forest and therefore all kinds of attractive wood-creatures lived just next door, seducing both the married folk as well as the lonely ones. Normally, those mixed-humans were raised by their biological mother. However, Astra’s family hadn’t even enough money to feed themselves and their none bästard children, besides the baby boy’s eyes were a strange colour of milky green, an obvious sign that he was blind and therefore useless as another worker on the farm. His parents quickly decided to just put him in a basket and abandoned him on the river near the forest. They thought, if God would want the child to survive, he would help their son someway. It seemed like destiny really had planned greater things for Astra because to his luck, he was gently carried by the waves of the water quite far away from the small village he was born in, right into the arms of some reed. Near these plants, a maid, belonging to the king of the kingdom, was cleaning dirty clothes with the clear river water, humming some joyful tune while doing so. When hearing the lovely melody, little Astra began giggling and laughing, nearly immediately catching the attention of the maid. Said woman was always terrible at containing her curiosity and therefore quickly got up, abandoning the wet and dirty dresses, to look from where this childish laughter came from. After slightly pulling the reed out of the way, she found the young boy still giggling and laying in his little basket. Her heart of gold was too big to just leave the small child alone and to the dangerous creatures which would come for him to get an easy meal as soon as the sun would set. Finishing her duty, she took the basket with the baby in one hand while carrying the wet clothes in the other. Soon the whole castle knew about her found, the news even reached the king and queen themselves after some weeks. The sudden appearance of the baby seemed to be a sign of God himself for the royal couple, because not too long ago their only son and the future king got terribly ill and soon after him, his mother. The future of their kingdom was in danger if it wouldn’t have been for the homeless baby boy. Immediately, the king demanded that the maid should hand over the child, so he could raise him as his own flesh and blood, in the case of his biological son dying. The young woman was devastated, she really started to see the boy as her own child even though he was blind but of course, she knew, being a prince would give the small boy a brighter future than she ever could. Thus, Astra once again changed parents and was now raised as the son of a great king with a gigantic kingdom to rule over. Only a day later, the king announced that his wife had given birth to a new son and named the baby boy Astra. Already from the first day on with his new title, the blind boy got pampered by more than five young maidens who had to take motherly care of the new prince. Opposite the king’s expectations, neither his wife nor son died from their sickness and both recovered fairly well. The big question was now, what should they do with their more or less adopted child? The queen, not caring about some random kid now that her real son was alive and she was healthy enough to bear more children for her husband, wanted to just kill the baby and tell their people it was an accident, however, the king who learned to love the small boy like he was his own, disagreed with his wife and decided to just raise him like one of their own. Unwillingly the queen agreed, only being a mere woman, she had no right to speak against her husband’s words and just accepted the situation. However, the royal lady intended to never speak to Astra and just avoided him, obviously caring only for her biological son, who was also next in line for the throne. Said one, also didn’t really care too much for his new brother, seeing him as weak because of his disability to see, the two only ever interacted when they had classes together or when the older boy was forced to play with his younger brother by their father. Even though Astra was always quite the outsider, he never complained and actually grew very independent while learning to cope with his loose of sight and to use his other instincts more instead, gaining a very special skill, the human echolocation. Meanwhile, the queen gave birth to a daughter and started to ignore everyone besides her little baby girl. During this time, Astra and his older brother started bonding over the ignorance of their mother and instead started spending time together, growing inseparable even to this day on.

Starter

#medieval oc #nymph oc #supernatural oc #oc #gay oc #male oc #pansexual oc #homosexual oc #pan oc

[theliterateape]

Those of Us Who Reject Loneliness

By Don Hall

It turns out that we Americans are really lonely. One would think that a natural conclusion to aging with its concomitant loss of capacity and the dying off of those whom we knew would be some semblance of loneliness, but it seems improbably true that the young are experiencing loneliness like never before.

Feeling lonely and isolated has become the default condition in America, and lonely people become like the drowning man clutching at anything wildly to prevent being swallowed up by water. Like a wounded bird, he lashes out in indignant rage and despair for one more gulp of air, one more moment of life, not going gently but with the strength of the last gasp reserved for those ridiculous moments of adrenaline-fueled individuals who lift cars to save a life or the crazed fury of someone on PCP.

I suspect that Donald Trump is crushingly lonely. In looking at the man’s life, he has spent his days bamboozling others, rising to power through a P.T. Barnum view of suckers and marks. Without genuine intent upon becoming president, he was elected to a position he didn’t really want and was (and is) woefully unqualified. Beset by a fourth estate that made billions on his rise and then makes billions on his fall, of course loyalty is his metric. Of course he attacks the fickle press. Married to a stranger, a wake of botched affairs and tax fraud that follow him no matter how powerful he becomes, vapid and stupid children (except Ivanka who gets by because she’s pretty but not because she’s brilliant), the knowledge that he will be known in history as the worst president of this country has to be a daily horror.

This seems to be an effect on us for a variety of reasons and angles. The slow decline of religion, once the center of social life. The rapidly changing technology surrounding courtship effectively eliminating the slower attempt to get to know one another and replacing it with a finger swipe. The increase in bureaucracy in pursuit of simple life alienates us from one another whether it is to procure a driver’s license or see a physician without bankrupting oneself. 

Whatever the causes, the effects of this bizarre loneliness in the midst of more humans populating the planet than ever in history (and in contrast to how many the planet can sustain) are dire.

I think back upon the opening sequence of Mike Judge’s Idiocracy. An educated white couple keep putting off having children because they have things to accomplish before they make that commitment intercut with an uneducated white couple who have babies with abandon. Judge’s point is that the more kids coming out of idiots balanced by the lack of children from the learned class equals idiocracy. From a slightly shifted perspective, one of those couples seems unbearably lonely and the other doesn’t have time for all of that.

I lived with a woman off and on for four years who wanted to have kids because “I need someone to take care of me when I’m old.” At the time, I thought that was among the worst reasons to reproduce but, in light of our national individualism resulting in a country filled with lonely people, may be her motivation wasn’t complete lunacy.

We are a culture of individuals. The customer is always right. Our feelings of oppression are tantamount. Lived experience replaces evidence and objective information. We couldn’t possibly have taken this pandemic seriously because our connections with one another are so frayed and torn, the myopia of seeing ourselves as important and special prevents us from seeing anything else. Like a nation of people drowning, we grasp at the closest belief system (White Supremacy, Black Separatism, Ecological Doom, The Cult of Identity) and frantically use ideology to replace the illusion of individual significance we thought we had.

We are lonely because to acknowledge that the rest of humanity is the Ark with which we avoid the Flood is to admit that we each are expendable. We are lonely because to recognize that every one of us is replaceable is to confirm that our feelings and our lives are simply not as important as we deluded ourselves into believing. This is the true meaning behind the pejorative snowflake handle. Not that we are delicate and notable but that we are highly individual flakes in a bank of similarly highly individual flakes amounting to nothing but crystallized water subject to the temperature to survive.

Thus the clawing at relevance and fame and influence. The drowning reach for recognition and power. The furious cries of “See ME! Look at ME!” and the outrage when everyone else is too busy yelling the same to acknowledge your need.

The price of individualism and self-importance is inevitably loneliness.

Some of us are loners by nature or nurture. We are alone frequently but are not lonely. We are apart yet not isolated. It seems that those of us of that proclivity are better suited to the pandemic than the rest. We grew up without the illusion of stability or security. We are the latchkey kids, the children of divorce and fending for ourselves. We learned to be just a bit more self-reliant than self-involved. Few indoctrinated us into believing we were important or notable and those of us who become notorious and known are less impressed by it than others.

Granted, we still yell “Look at ME!” yet refrain from getting all butt hurt when no one notices. We carve out our places and read our science fiction novels and watch our movies (from VHS to DVD to cable to streaming). We were the kids who hung out at Blockbuster Video on a Saturday night, who sat in parking lots smoking found squares, who roamed the byways of malls making random but harmless mayhem. We saw the farce for what it was and still find it funny.

Instead of clawing for purchase to avoid the sea, we simply dog paddle our way to something solid and hang on for a bit until we get a second (or third or fourth) wind so we can paddle our way to the next floating piece of wood. We know there is no truly solid ground and are fine with that knowledge. We, like most, fell prey to the siren song of being youthful and embraced the trappings of the young in order to avoid facing our decaying bodies but some of us get past that. I’ve said before that I’ve been waiting to be in my fifties since I was a teenager and it was (and is) true.

This rejection of loneliness is not nihilism. It is the acceptance of less. Less social interaction with a higher quality to that which we ultimately give and take. Less need for dopamine spikes and commendation and more gratitude for autonomy. We understand the social contracts required and still skirt the rules.

We are John McClane, Martin Riggs, and Ferris Bueller. We are Veronica Sawyer, Princess Leia, and Sarah Conner. We are Ash, Axel Foley, and Beetlejuice. Dante and Randall, Cher and Josh, Wayne and Garth. We are Ellen Ripley. We are Mark Renton.

And we, for the most part and at most times, are not lonely.

#loneliness #donald trump #self importance is a dodge #generation x

[tashmitchviscom]

It is probably the most over-used word in the United Kingdom: whether they are sorry about the weather or sorry because someone else has bumped into them, chances are your average Briton has blurted out at least one apology in the past hour or two.

A recent survey of more than 1,000 Brits found that that the average person says ‘sorry’ around eight times per day – and that one in eight people apologise up to 20 times a day.

“The readiness of the English to apologise for something they haven’t done is remarkable, and it is matched by an unwillingness to apologise for what they have done,” wrote Henry Hitchings in his aptly-titled Sorry!: The English and their Manners.

Getting reliable data on the frequency of apologies in different countries is harder than you might think. “There’s certainly speculation that Canadians and Brits apologise more than Americans, but it’s difficult to study in a way that would provide any compelling evidence,” says Karina Schumann, a psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh who studies apologies and forgiveness.

One approach is to ask people what they’d do in a theoretical situation. For instance, a recent YouGov poll of more than 1,600 British people and 1,000 Americans revealed that there would be approximately 15 British ‘sorries’ for every 10 American ones if they sneezed, if they corrected someone’s mistake, or if someone crashed into them.

But the survey found similarities between the British and American respondents, as well: just under three-quarters of people from either country would say sorry for interrupting someone. And 84% of Brits would apologise for being late to a meeting, compared to 74% of Americans.

However, asking someone what they’d do in a theoretical situation is very different to measuring what they’d do in real life. Take the last example; in the YouGov survey, 36% of British respondents said they would apologise for someone else’s clumsiness, compared to 24% of Americans.

But in her book Watching the English, social anthropologist Kate Fox describes experiments in which she deliberately bumped into hundreds of people in towns and cities across England. She also encouraged colleagues to do the same abroad, for comparison.

Fox found that around 80% of English victims said ‘sorry’ – even though the collisions were clearly Fox’s fault. Often the apology was mumbled, and possibly people said it without even realising it, but compared to when tourists from other countries were bumped, the difference was marked. “Only the Japanese seemed to have anything even approaching the English sorry-reflex,” Fox writes.

The origins of the word ‘sorry’ can be traced to the Old English ‘sarig’ meaning “distressed, grieved or full of sorrow”, but of course, most British people use the word more casually. And herein lies another problem with studying cultural differences in languages. “We use the word ‘sorry’ in different ways,” says Edwin Battistella, a linguistics expert from Southern Oregon University and author of Sorry About That: The Language of Public Apology. Brits might say sorry more often, but this doesn’t necessarily mean they’re more remorseful.

“We can use it to express empathy – so I might say ‘sorry about the rain’,” says Battistella. “It might be that British and Canadian speakers use that kind of ‘sorry’ more often, but they wouldn’t be apologising, per se. Other researchers have talked about the use of ‘sorry’ to communicate across social classes, where you’re sort of apologising for your privilege.”

British society values that its members show respect without imposing on someone else’s personal space, and without drawing attention to oneself: characteristics that linguists refer to as “negative-politeness” or “negative-face”. America, on the other hand, is a positive-politeness society, characterised by friendliness and a desire to feel part of a group.

As a consequence, Brits may sometimes use ‘sorry’ in a way that can seem inappropriate to outsiders, including Americans. The British will say ‘sorry’ to someone they don’t know because they’d like to ask for some information, or to sit down next to them – and because not saying ‘sorry’ would constitute an even greater invasion of that stranger’s privacy.

“Our excessive, often inappropriate and sometimes downright misleading use of this word devalues it, and it makes things very confusing and difficult for foreigners unaccustomed to our ways,” says Fox. Still, she adds, “I don’t think saying sorry all the time is such a bad thing. It even makes sense in the context of a negative-politeness culture… Of all the words that a nation could choose to scatter about with such random profligacy, surely ’sorry’ is not the worst.”

There may be other benefits to saying ‘sorry’, too – such as fostering trust. Interestingly, that is true even when people are apologising not for mistakes they’ve made, but rather for circumstances beyond their control.

In one study, Harvard Business School’s Alison Wood Brooks and her colleagues recruited a male actor to approach 65 strangers at a US train station on a rainy day and ask to borrow their telephone. In half the cases, the stranger preceded his request with: “Sorry about the rain”. When he did this, 47% of strangers gave him their mobile, compared to only 9% when he simply asked to borrow their phone. Further experiments confirmed it was the apology about the weather that mattered, not the politeness of the opening sentence.

“By saying ‘I’m sorry about the rain’, the superfluous apologiser acknowledges an unfortunate circumstance, takes the victim’s perspective and expresses empathy for the negative circumstance – even though it is outside of his or her control,” says Wood Brooks.

“People worry that an apology will serve as an admission of liability, rather than as an effort to empathise with the wronged party,” says Wood Brooks. But she adds “effective apologies address the recipients’ feelings – they don’t prove a point. A good apology is unlikely to backfire, and is more likely to increase trust than not apologising at all.”

As for how to do it, Battistella has the following advice: “The right way to apologise is the way your mother taught you.” Say you threw a stone at a sibling. “She’d have you go and look them in the eye in the eye and say: ‘I’m sorry I threw the stone at you and I won’t do it again’. It’s important to name what you did wrong, to show yourself as being penitent in some way and to indicate what might be different in the future,” Battistella says.

Just how many times you’ll need to repeat the apology may vary according to where you live. Wood Brooks and Harvard PhD student Grant Donnelly have collected preliminary data that suggests that, for a minor transgression, the optimal number is a single “I’m sorry”.

“If the transgression is large, then making two apologies seems to be the magic number for conveying empathy, remorse and restoring trust and liking,” Wood Brooks says.

Of course, if you’re British, you may need to double that. “A single ‘sorry’ does not count as an apology: we have to repeat it and embellish it with a lot of adjectives,” says Fox.

#Final Major Project

[a-hunter-in-storybrooke]

The Dangers of Being Slow to Get Back on Tumblr: A Game of Thrones Speculation Post*

*I use the term "speculation" loosely here, since at least one of the ideas that I'm discussing in this post has all but been confirmed.

SPOILERS after the cut.

So here's what happened:

For the months and weeks leading up to the season 7 premiere, I had every intention of coming on and posting some of my theories and hopes for the final two seasons of the series. However, as I've mentioned in a previous post, I have been on a hiatus from Tumblr for quite a while, for some very specific reasons. These are the same reasons that led me to not make this post earlier.  It should also be noted that I didn't even see the trailers for the new season, so it is possible that some of my ideas were already addressed in those.  Then, before I knew it, season 7 was here and I hadn't yet posted what I'd intended.

So then, my thought process was as follows: "Okay... so I missed posting before the premiere. I'll just post between episodes 1 and 2 and really my ideas should still be valid, because surely nothing is going to happen in the first episode that will conflict with them. Right?"

Well... this was actually true for the season premiere. And then… I saw the episode 2 preview. At that point I immediately realized that one of the major plot points I wanted to discuss was being addressed much sooner than I had expected/hoped.

From this point on this post contains spoilers. These spoilers involve season 7 episode 1 and the preview for season 7 episode 2. There are also POTENTIAL spoilers based on a theory I accidentally saw a few days ago. Again… This is your SPOILER WARNING. If you do not want spoilers or potential spoilers, stop reading here.

One of the things I had hoped to do before season 7 started was write up a wishlist of things I wanted to see in the remaining two seasons. We have so few episodes left to wrap up all the storylines and there are certain things that I really want to see happen. Realistically, I know that many, if not most, of these things will not happen. There's just too much else to tell in the story for screen time to be devoted to these. But… a girl can hope. I'm still planning to write up a post or two involving some of these ideas, but one or two of these have already been hinted at, either in the context of the show itself or in a fan theory. So these I feel I need to address now, before they actually become canon on screen.

One of the things I've wanted for quite some time now was to see the reunion between Arya and Nymeria. I had always thought that one of two things should happen:  One, ideally, would be Arya herself finding Nymeria again. The other would be Sansa finding her, now that she seems to finally have reclaimed her place as a Stark. Either of these events would be symbolic: Arya, because she is now back in Westeros and seeking to avenge her family. Sansa, for the reason that I stated above.  

While I have not yet read the books (I'll get to them eventually, I promise), I know that there is evidence in them to suggest that Nymeria is still alive and is running around Westeros somewhere. Based on that fact, my mind formulated what would be my IDEAL situation for an Arya/Nymeria reunion.  Again… This would be my absolute ideal, not what I remotely believe would actually happen.

So, in my mind, the scene went like this:

Arya, in her travels around Westeros, hears a rumor about a boy seen traveling with a direwolf. Arya, thinking that this could be one of her brothers, decides to investigate the claims. She comes across a wolf in the woods, and, upon realizing that it does not, in fact, belong to one of her brothers, she realizes that it's Nymeria.  The wolf then leads her back to a campsite where she sees a cloaked figure waiting. She asks the stranger how he came to have a direwolf as a companion. The reply, which comes in a younger voice than she was expecting, tells her that he befriended the wolf because she reminded him of someone he once knew. At that point there would be some sort of clever back-and-forth between the two, before he removed his cloak. And it would be Gendry.  They would finally get their reunion and… hopefully… be able to start the romance that they couldn't when Arya was younger.  

So yeah... this was my ideal. But I've had many people argue with me that we're simply not going to see Gendry again. That he was one of those characters that comes into the story, stays long enough to fulfill a purpose, and then disappears. And certainly characters like that do exist in the ASoIaF universe. But none of the others have left the kind of impact on me, as a fan, that Gendry has. The way his story just dropped off seemed like a plot hole to me. A four season long plot hole. However, it was realistic to not see him while Arya was in Braavos. Now that she's back in Westeros, however, this is a story that I want desperately to revisit.

Now… here's why it sucks that I was very late to the game when it came to posting my ideas for the season: Those of you who have seen the preview for episode 7x02 know that there is a quick flash of a scene showing a snarling wolf… a very large wolf I might add… and then flashing to Arya looking shocked.  As we all very sadly know, almost all of the Stark direwolves are now dead. The ones who remain are Ghost and... if the book hints are to be believed… Nymeria. And the wolf in the preview definitely was NOT Ghost. Is it possible that it's just a random wolf… or even some stray direwolf that never had a connection to House Stark? Yes, it is possible. But I think that it's much more likely that we are about to see the reunion that Stark fans have wanted since episode two of the series.  

So that addresses the return of Nymeria. And in all honesty that was something that I truly did believe was going to happen some point before the end of the series. Unless the clues in the books were simply red herrings, it just seemed like something that needed to happen.  But that brings me back to the subject of Gendry. His return was something I expected to be far less likely. It was something I very, very much wanted, but because of the reasons mentioned above, knew would likely not happen.  But then…

After watching the season premiere, I went on to IGN to see if they had given it a rating. I have mixed feelings about IGN and their ratings, so I do take them with a grain of salt. However, while I was on the site I accidentally stumbled across a theory that they had. I did not read it fully, because I had not yet posted here... and since my Nymeria theory was already out of date, I had wanted to keep something fresh for this post. However, the title of the article made me click.  Basically, the main idea is that they are theorizing that the gift Euron intends to give Cersei could involve Gendry finally making a reappearance. Gendry is, as far as we know, the last surviving bastard of Robert Baratheon. This would mean, in Cersei's eyes at least, he would be one of the greater threats to her... that is, if she was aware of him. If Euron has somehow found out Gendry is still alive, he might see this is his opportunity to give a grand gift to Cersei.  

This theory is one I have mixed feelings about, personally. Part of me really wants it to be true, because that would mean that we really are going to see Gendry again. But the other part of me knows that this means that he would be in mortal danger, and would very likely end up being killed. Euron is a dangerous man and I don't want to think about Gendry crossing paths with him. The idea that they could bring him back just to kill him off would really upset me. Yes… from a storytelling perspective, it would certainly tie up a loose end. But just… No.  

So I guess these are my final thoughts on the subject:

It does definitely look like we are going to see the return of Nymeria tonight. I am still holding out hope for a reunion, at some point this season, between Arya and Gendry as well.... But I don't want to hold my breath for that one.  

Expect more posts for me on a few other GoT related subjects over the next few weeks.

#game of thrones #got #game of thrones spoilers #got spoilers #ASoIaF #asoiaf spoilers #got season 7 #got season 7 spoilers #arya stark #gendry waters #nymeria #arya x gendry #arya/gendry #gendrya #theories and speculations #this is why i need to stop procrastinating my tumblr posts >.<

[i-am-a-fan-of-empty-spaces]

in which i revisit everything i’ve written in the past year to mine for quotes. don’t bother reading.

romance goals: no jealousy, no insecurity, no pressure, no forced friendships, no pursuit. just me, like i always am, only full of fawning adoration

“1P-LSD was a very emotional experience, intense for a guy like myself who considers himself something of a tough guy and an egghead. I had many moments-- thank God nobody saw me--- of simultaneously laughing and crying with extreme intensity. The very things in life that are pathetic... are staggeringly hilarious, and vice-versa. And for the same reasons. The crying had to do with becoming aware of how all creatures hurt and suffer at times... and the laughing is all about my instinctive knowledge that 'God' is always there with infinite forgiveness. So one minute, I'd find myself crying with shame and pathos... then the very next moment finding it all uproariously, staggeringly, cosmically funny, because I knew that God always loves me and forgives me.”

i have a fascination with fungi. the way they sprout out of bodies, the way they turn bodies into these blooming colorful gardens no longer living but also not quite dead. i dream a lot about dead things, sick things, blind and naked writhing things, things covered in beetles and ants and beautiful fungi.

“I've got a really detailed fantasy world that I escape into in my imagination when I'm lying in bed at night or driving alone, where I've been in an accident and my life was saved by transplanting my brain into the body of a ten year old girl. She was in a vegetative state and her body had been donated to medical science. The doctor performed the operation illegally and therefore had to pass me off as a real ten year old girl. In my new life, I get placed into foster care and then adopted by a family whose ten year old daughter I go to school with, and have a lesbian relationship with. I have been having this fantasy for over ten years now. I could fill thirty seasons of a bad harem anime...”

“The first time we had dinner together, I told her a story from high school about sitting on a porch swing and thinking about all the things that might happen to me, and how I never thought I'd end up in Chicago across a table from Sarah Urist. And she said, "Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia," which I put in my book Looking for Alaska.”

“Pedal, since just a you when you’re sucking beneath shut a grinning wriggling, trembling spruce over nothing arms. “

“[Ikuhara] On this point, Anno-san and I differ in our way of creating. I'm not trying to connect anime and voice that much. But if I have a sentiment close to that, I think it's the complex about the body. I have moments where I think that, not just anime, but nothing can win against the human body. A while ago I was watching the Nagano Olympics on TV. There was this girl who was nothing special during her interview, but who became sublime when she started skating. It was only for instant while she was doing it, but I felt like God was dwelling in her body. A moment when I thought there was nothing more beautiful in the whole world. And it's not like her body changed, either. It's that kind of complex towards the human body that I've got. Even though my work is in anime, I have moments when I doubt we matter compared to a real body. When counting on the actors to do something, I wonder if what I'm actually looking for is corporeality.”

if i were a ghost who couldn’t move on to the next life, it would be because i wouldn’t be able to stop watching the people i love. i would be so unable to look away and so filled with longing for them and enthralled by their actions that i would forget i was dead. i would stir shit up in their lives and bring in fun and excitement. i would throw things off their shelves and cause a commotion so loud they would know it’s me.

“ The last thing I can recall while inside the van was everything switched to a birds eye view. I saw the entire accident occur but from about 50ft in the air. This is likely a vivid concussion of some sort but I can't at all remember "feeling" the crash just observing. I woke up in some random ladies arms whom was crying immensely trying to comfort me, all while I had no idea what happen. When I was watching from above I saw myself in my mothers arms but woke up to a stranger.”

“Sandwiched in-between the enthusiastic, conversation-seeking Ne and the opinioned, action-driven Te, is Fi. It’s pesky, because it’s not a dominant, so often at the time, they don’t know how they feel about things. Unlike Fe-users,talking about how they feel won’t help them solidify their feelings; they find it uncomfortable to discuss their deepest feelings. Even though they are extraordinarily kind and loving, their inability to fully put their feelings into words can make them look “cold” to outsiders. ENFPs would rather take an outsider’s perspective to their own emotions, in an attempt to understand them; they’ prefer to discuss how they reacted to something (through action … Te) than how it made them feel. Typically, when something bad goes down in their life, they work through it alone. Sometimes, they might want to open up to someone and talk about it, but the idea of doing so is so deeply uncomfortable that they suppress it, or never send that e-mail, or tear up that letter. Because their Te is such close friends with their Fi, though, they are more obviously emotional than their introverted cousins, since they’re not as good at hiding their feelings. It channels into Te, which kicks into action (and can make us cry, dammit, even if we don’t want to).

Fi is private, but it’s also directly behind Ne, which is very forthcoming in “sharing,” while channeling into Te “directness,” so often they can “over-share” when they are young, and as they get older, may become more reserved and private (particularly if being too open with their views in the past has caused them pain). They’re most comfortable using metaphors and indirect ways of expressing their emotions and although they can be very kind and helpful in a bad situation, are somewhat envious of Fe’s ability to say the right thing at the right time. Their Te enables them to act on their feelings, morals, and principles, and be confrontational if necessarily, but typically these confrontations are objections to shutting down ideas (Ne), moral judgments they disagree with (Fi), or general unfairness (Fi), rather than confrontation on their own emotional behalf. If you hurt an ENFP, they will turn on passive-aggressive behavior rather than call you out on it like a Fe-user might.”

we were stopping at a place to rest for the night. the town wasn’t right, it was probably a town of vampires. this house we stopped at had doors raised a foot and a half above the ground. inside, the window curtains were sown shut. a door leading to the next room was only a foot and a half high. a song was playing, some kind of folk song. the place was empty.

god was not there in the beginning. god robbed our mother of her children. god killed mother and cut her into 21 pieces, now she lies asleep at the bottom of the world. on the last day she will climb back to heaven, she will eat his flesh and drink his blood, she will carry us home.

“When I was about 10 my parents sent me to summer camp in Minnesota. It was a large establishment right by a thick forest. The first night we played capture the flag, and I got lost in the woods. It was getting dark out and I distinctly remember the fireflies starting to light up around me. There was one in particular which was larger than the rest, so out of juvenile instinct I thought I should try and catch it. Every time I swiped for it it would disappear and reappear further in the woods. I did this for about 5 minutes when I finally looked up and realized I was deep in the woods and it was almost pitch black. I started screaming out of fear and luckily people came to my aid. Looking back at it I know deep down that I was not chasing a firefly. I frequently look up what it could be, but honestly haven't the slightest.”

i want to tell a story about a world like where i am right now, in a town that is warm even in january, with big skies and quickly moving clouds. it will be about me and my spirit friend smoking cigarettes on roofs, and a friendly android that works at a cafe in the neighboring town, and a train that passes through the town every so often, and huge storms in the spring, and an old schoolhouse, and the smell of wet grass. we will pass our days like this for a while.

if i were to write like a manifesto for what i want to do in life, i think it would be to experience the intensity of feelings in the moment and hold them close to me and know that i’m alive, and to watch this aliveness in other people, and to celebrate it, and somewhere in there is the hope that everything, morality and God and truth, will unfold from this if I hold it closely enough.

i think when i'm sad the world and God together become this beautiful thing for me. some non-self that i want very badly to consume the self. to transform it through suffering and sex and beauty and horror. i want to throw myself into the open arms of the world. i feel very much like i'm in love a lot of the time, but not with any person. just an intensity and excitement that grows and grows and when i'm sad looms over me like the weight of heaven

“I came to this dilapidated temple when I was thirty-two. One night in a dream my mother came and presented me with a purple robe made of silk. When I lifted it, both sleeves seemed very heavy, and on examining them I found an old mirror, five or six inches in diameter, in each sleeve. The reflection from the mirror in the right sleeve penetrated to my heart and vital organs. My own mind, mountains and rivers, the great earth seemed serene and bottomless. The mirror in the left sleeve, however, gave off no reflection whatsoever. Its surface was like that of a new pan that had yet to be touched by flames. But suddenly I became aware that the luster of the mirror from the left sleeve was innumerable times brighter than the other. After this, when I looked at all things, it was as though I were seeing my own face. For the first time I understood the meaning of the saying, "The Tathagata sees the Buddha-nature within his eye."”

NEXT TIME I GO ON VACATION I WON’T BRING GLASSES OR CONTACTS. I WON’T BE ABLE TO READ ANYTHING OR SEE ANYONE’S FACE. THE WORLD WILL BE A MUDDLED BLUR. I WILL HAVE TO PRACTICE THE ART OF SURRENDER AND TRUST IN MY LOVED ONES. IT WILL BE FUN.

“writing is catharsis. it aids the reader in catharsis. it must be written as an act of catharsis. in doing it, you must feel absolutely compelled to do it by some divine force. it must be written with a beating heart if it is to have a beating heart. the best writing comes when in moments of unspeakable joy you write letters in gratitude to everything and everyone around you, without pausing to press backspace, then hide the writing away for future selves to read. it comes when in the midst of drunkenness you ramble incoherently about everything that has been happening in these past weeks because you’re sick of keeping it to yourself. it is like deep conversations.

writing is a description of the self and requires that you live honestly and keep your gaze fixed on yourself. feel intensely, spend time with your thoughts, pinpoint and dissect them in pictures and words and conversations. every feeling in your life is part of a larger map of something holy that can’t be described in words, some feeling of the Fullness of Being Alive. maybe you’re on the bus coming back from a town in the mountains late at night, and you pass by a forest, and something about it feels strange and sick and wrong. hold that feeling close, take a shitty picture of trees in the dark, let yourself feel the sickness and wrongness so much that it scares you, remember that moment. you read a poem about a stream divided by rocks, and it makes you fall apart and cry, and you don’t know why—it doesn’t matter why, copy that poem, write it on your shirt, write it in abandoned buildings, make it a manifesto. you see a picture on tumblr that’s absolutely angelic and holy. get that picture printed on a poster. hang it in your room, look at it often. over time the picture of that Something Holy will slowly become clearer. you’ll become more loving and accepting of the darkness in your own heart and in the hearts of others, you’ll become more comfortable expressing it.

writing is performance. when i was in in 9th grade, my art teacher loved absolutely everything i drew and believed i was special among her students. she asked me questions about my life, shared moments from hers. i felt like she was seeing me through my art, and that i was an interesting person, and perhaps this wasn’t true or healthy, but i was compelled by this to keep creating, creating interesting things, pretentious things, bold things. angels with holes in their hearts, flocks of crows, haunted dolls. that was the year i wanted to be a manga artist. i felt like i had something interesting to say that nobody else could say. if you want to create, you must be brave, you must believe that you’re interesting and that the contents of your heart are interesting—to yourself, to friends, to the General Public, to God? i don’t know. but if you can believe that, and art becomes a way of breathing for you, letting yourself into the world, i believe that you’ll one day write well, or express the contents of your heart beautifully however you choose to do it. 

technique does matter a lot, sure. it’s a tool for conveying, it’s how you speak to the public and to yourself. writing is an act of clarifying, technique gives you the skills to express with greater clarity. but the message you bear, the beating heart of art, that’s the real point. if you focus on making what you think is good, the technique will always follow, as you try desperate to shake out that feeling of not being able to write how you want, as you search for the right words and images in the quiet moments of your life. “

What is the creepiest thing you have witnessed out at sea? “When diving, a huge seiner net drifting towards you. It wasn't anchored or attached to anything. Just a huge whirling cloud of death, full of barnacles and dolphin skeletons and decomposing fish.”

“When you were born, your mother told me, a hush fell over the delivery room. A great red birthmark covered the left side of your face. No one knew what to say, so you cried to fill the vacuum.”

“When I was coming round from the operation, I remember the light they shone in my eyes to check for pupil contraction. It was like staring up at a moonlit sky from the bottom of well. People moved at the summit but I could not tell if you were one of them.”

after an accident, whenever a man closes his eyes, he sees a hole in a wall looking out to an opposite wall in a hallway. this persists for several years, and then one day it goes away. years later, he comes across a hallway with the same wallpaper. disturbed, he looks over the wall for holes.

“When a person relies too heavily on Fi at the expense of Te, their outlook will be too subjective. This leads to feelings of isolation or disconnectedness because you will feel like an island, i.e., you will have no way of verifying whether what you believe or value is appropriate or healthy or adaptive because you have nothing outside of your own experience to use for comparison or measurement. This is why high Fi users have an underlying need for validation. They need some way to verify the worthiness of their own beliefs and values. What they actually need is to learn that all humans share certain universal values and, until they can get in touch with those universal values through better balance with Te, they will be very prone to developing some form of low self-confidence, or they will easily fall into feeling insecure or uncertain about things.”

i think that one of my greatest assets is my ability to communicate honestly to others about my own feelings. i’m able to express my discomfort with a situation while not placing blame on them. “i feel this way right now,” but also “i have this motivation here and it might not be right and i feel bad about it” and “i understand you might feel this way and i’m not trying to invalidate that, i just want to talk”. it’s something that takes a lot of effort to act out, usually. my gut reaction is to get defensive or angry or abrasive when i feel something threatening my values or identity, and it takes quiet time alone and deliberateness and urgency to feel the need to communicate more nuanced and honest feelings. usually, it’s something that happens after a whole lot of frustration has built up with no resolution. but the fact that i can, that i have in the past put my defensiveness aside in talking to my parents and to people who have hurt me, i think it’s something i’m glad i can do. i also think it’s about a state of security, as in, there are states where it’s absolutely impossible to do this. it takes a safe place alone and security in my own worth for me to reflect without feeling my identity threatened. i don’t think suffering automatically creates moral strength—that’s an idea that gets tossed around in the bible study. i think in most people who lack self-worth already it further hardens the walls around them against the world. but i think when you finally do find a place of security, suffering can reveal who you are. the security is important, though.

“I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.”

i am getting tired of drawing and i tried drawing today and it seemed so pointless like lines on paper, and maybe writing lacks the INSTANTANEOUSNESS and REALITY i am looking for. on nights when i am especially reckless my main thought is always that i need something new something LOUD, that broadcasts the message like a punch, that knocks the SPIRIT out of you. practice is boring, patience is boring. they say dig a six foot well instead of six one foot wells. i say dig one hundred million one foot wells with speed and recklessness until the entire top layer of soil is gone then dig another hundred million one foot wells and then continue until there is no surface and the ancient seas are all that remain. this requires no skill, only sincerity and a willingness to scream.

i think there's a tendency for some people to want to look for reasons and lessons from events in their life so they have a sense of control over what went wrong, so they can feel that it’s no longer a problem for them. the problem with this is that you’re looking for reasons as a defense instead of thoroughly figuring out what this event means to YOU. like, you may be totally right, but WHY do you need reasons for what happened? why do you need a lesson from the event? why is your first instinct for every small event in your social life to find a life lesson to learn from it? is this self-serving in any way? i would say: logic is a terrific tool for self-deception. don't look for lessons first thing. the real lessons you need to find will find you if you examine yourself enough. never have unshakable faith in these moments of insight. entertain the thoughts, let the thoughts pass and if they're right they'll show themselves to be right. it’s more important to ask the right questions than to find the right answers.

there are events in life that will absolutely change your perspective and stay with you forever. when you come across them in life, give thanks to God. but your whole life has become an attempt to maximize these moments and that misses the point. you will not climb your way to heaven through these moments. if you let go of all of these moments, the things that you need to find you will still find you. once in awhile, learn to let go of everything entirely and let God come to you.

“Artaud expressed his admiration for Eastern forms of theatre, particularly the Balinese. He admired Eastern theatre because of the codified, highly ritualized and precise physicality of Balinese dance performance, and advocated what he called a "Theatre of Cruelty". At one point, he stated that by cruelty he meant not exclusively sadism or causing pain, but just as often a violent, physical determination to shatter the false reality. He believed that text had been a tyrant over meaning, and advocated, instead, for a theatre made up of a unique language, halfway between thought and gesture. Artaud described the spiritual in physical terms, and believed that all theatre is physical expression in space.”

“I am not ashamed of reading self-help books, or of liking them despite the fact that they do not possess the subtlety or nuance or pacing of the classics. "Show, don't tell" kind of disappears: you are being told more often than you are being shown in these sorts of reads about how to deal with feelings and emotions, which can be off-putting to like-minded fiction buffs, but I feel like my readings in fiction led me here. This is in part because I was seeking counseling in my fiction: counseling in sadness, wisdom on relationships, insights into how to stay enriched in life despite how awful life can be. Fiction can do this for sure. But at some point I felt like the slow-drip of self-help for which I was exploiting fiction - and the pressure I was placing on the form of the novel to grant me these answers - was a means by which I was misreading fiction and doing a disservice to myself.”

“at the risk of sounding super kiss-ass, though i think this is true - i don't think your personality punches people in the face. i think your personality is super magical and amazing and externalized with an uncompromising honesty and stark clarity that makes it difficult to not be changed by”

It is Thursday, April 14, 2016. I am on a bus returning to Taipei from Taichung. The ride has put me in a strange mood. I wish I could capture it for you. I’m passing by these buildings lit by colored lights, bright blue and green and red, and the night is foggy, and the lights bleed into the fog and make it glow strange colors. There are big concrete highway overpasses weaving over and under each other, illuminated by rows of street lamps giving off an orange glow. I will attach a picture if I have the time. I’m happy. The world is holding me close like a womb. I am thinking of people I know and love, people I do not yet know but would love, I’m thinking of wandering into this night with them, sitting in cafes and looking them in the eye,

excerpts from hearn letters:

i am living in a sea of endless chaotic ideas, flying from one to another at seeming random, unable to zoom out. my spirit animal is a magpie, collector of shiny objects, trapped and dying in a box of christmas ornaments.

everything in life is so terrifyingly uncertain and every rule has its exception, and i am paralyzed by the complexity of it all. my other spirit animal is the trilobite: immobile, thoughtless, asleep for eons under petrified oceans.

i float above the tops of the trees in the night and arrive at your door by morning

salvia:

“I noticed the entire courtyard starting to shift, not with my eyes. But with a very strong feeling, akin to a grand Ferris wheel starting it's cumbersome first spin after a season of dormant winter.”

“The first time I thought I was a book and my pages were flipping in the wind. Turned out I was spinning in the kitchen against the wall.”

“With eyes closed, I could see these spinning wheels diving left to right, and the force was there, a very carnival-like yet child-like force I must say.”

“The wheel is something all too common. I always get the impression that this wheel is rolling over our reality, or creating our reality in its wake.”

there’s an answer somewhere in the tangled mass of thoughts in my head, and i keep reaching in that direction, trying to bring this thing out of myself and lay it out before the both of us, but i don’t know, i feel like it’s not making sense to you. i don’t think i’m speaking the right words. when it makes sense to you, it does only in bits and pieces. i’m sorry if this comes off as harsh: sometimes i feel like you’re grabbing for familiar reference points in order to understand me.

“Honestly though, I think sometimes people just dislike someone, maybe for a legitimate reason, but then constantly look for more reasons to justify it and find it in things that don't really matter.”

“Sentimentality is simply emotion shying away from its own full implications. Behind every sentimental narrative there’s the possibility of another one — more richly realized, more faithful to the fine grain and contradictions of human experience. The distinctive characteristic of sentimental art is not, as is sometimes claimed, that it “manipulates” (all art does this in some measure) but that it manipulates by knowingly simplifying, Photoshopping or otherwise distorting the human experience it purports to represent. It isn’t sentimental for Dickens to want us to feel compassion for Jo, the homeless street sweeper; it is sentimental for Dickens to try to secure that compassion by making Jo more virtuous, humble and forbearing than any boy who ever lived.”

maybe to make art requires a kind of discipline, a kind of insistence that everything else must be sacrificed for the product, for the beauty, and i lack this discipline. i want too badly to satisfy other, momentary impulses.

“I think that sometimes people place their faith too readily in the ways in which consuming narrative or art makes us more empathetic. I feel like The New York Times puts out an op-ed every six months about empathy and reading! But Empathy and the Novel, by Suzanne Keen, basically poses a skeptical view of that and even suggests that there’s a way in which empathizing for fictional characters relieves—we feel like we’ve done our work, but there weren’t really any stakes to that work. Because empathizing with a fictional character didn’t necessitate any kind of action.”

“Religion is the outcome neither of the fear of death, nor of the fear of God. It answers a deep need in man. It is neither a metaphysic, nor a morality, but above all and essentially an intuition and a feeling. ... Dogmas are not, properly speaking, part of religion: rather it is that they are derived from it. Religion is the miracle of direct relationship with the infinite; and dogmas are the reflection of this miracle.”

a few years ago i went back to virginia with my parents and i thought everything would have disappeared but it didn’t. everything was still there, the people in my church hadn’t changed at all. i was invited to play tabletop RPGs with my friend again. i took a walk to my high school. the hallways there were all the same. that week i was filled with all the feelings i used to feel, that guilt and loneliness but also the longing, and i didn’t want to leave.

“In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is surrender to them. When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualising you probably hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose — not simply accept — the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impressions one's words are likely to make on another person.”

“We have no idea, now, of who or what the inhabitants of our future might be. In that sense, we have no future. Not in the sense that our grandparents had a future, or thought they did. Fully imagined cultural futures were the luxury of another day, one in which 'now' was of some greater duration. For us, of course, things can change so abruptly, so violently, so profoundly, that futures like our grandparents' have insufficient 'now' to stand on. We have no future because our present is too volatile.”

dipping hands in cool water in an empty garden. wet leaves stuck to skin.

there is a sort of joy in the scrambling of the tarot cards, like the scrambling of the contents of the mind. then in the drawing of the random cards, saying "the truth is for sure this" and believing it. surrendering the self to novelty. every act of magic is a surrender of self. the results are irrelevant.

a few gods of light and countless primordial gods

“Days, weeks, or sometimes even years later, such people may suddenly emerge from the fugue state and find themselves in a strange place, working in a new occupation, with no idea how they got there.”

“Jones (1909, as cited in Kihlstrom & Schacter, 2000) studied a patient with dense amnesia and found that although he could not remember his wife’s or daughter’s names, when asked to guess what names might t them, he produced their names correctly. “

one of inio asano’s techniques is those moments where panels are suddenly cut away but a huge spread of a single frozen moment. speech is cut away by a shocking reveal, extraneous actions of people are frozen by shock, etc.

“The first time this happened to me was when I was pregnant with my 3rd child. I heard what I thought was my husband coming home (our bedroom was upstairs), I heard the door shut and him run up the stairs, i laid in bed w my eyes closed waiting for him to get back in bed, i figured he got rained out at work. Well he didnt get back in bed and when i lifted my head to look for him there was a man standing in front of me in a running suit, he had his hood on and no face, it was shadowed out, i was sooo scared and couldnt move! then he leaned down to me with his hand reaching out to my belly--i closed my eyes really tight as i was so scared and felt sumthings weird as if something went inside my stomache.(this happened 8 years ago) throughout the pregnancy there would be times when my body would vibrate and I was unable to move, the day I gave birth to my son it happened again in the hospital only this time felt like something left my stomache”

maybe i would say at its core i see religious belief as a language that can be used to sacralize concepts. religion makes things holy, religion creates worlds where these holy-fied things become the central pivot for their reality. i want to play with this language, write stories with it, change my world over and over again in interesting and beautiful and scary and fun ways.

rule: overkill is always better than underkill. everything should always be a little bit too much. beauty should be overwhelming, sweetness sugary and cloying, music so loud it hurts. things aren’t effective on the psyche unless they have the power to threaten. the mind’s natural inclination is always to fight to remain in control, but the problem is that so long as the mind is in control it will make things ugly, because to exist is ugly. art is effective when it crushes you in between its teeth.

if someone genuinely loves something deeply and is changed by that thing and you don’t respect their love as sacred then i think you’re doing something morally wrong

maybe you ARE fucked up, but maybe (i don’t yet agree, but MAYBE) it’s not important to find out a standard for ultimate good and bad or to fix everything about you that’s bad, and instead maybe you should just do what you can to make you feel okay about yourself and group off with other people who are more or less okay with your fucked up ness. and if you still get in other people’s way and ruin stuff by oversharing or crossing boundaries or saying mean things accidentally then maybe shrug and say whatever.”

“Go higher than every height and lower than every depth. Collect in yourself all the sensations of what has been made, of fire and water, dry and wet; be everywhere at once, on land, in the sea, in heaven; be not yet born, be in the womb, be young, old, dead, beyond death. And when you have understood all these at once—times, places, things, qualities, quantities—then you can understand God.”

reading pun pun has made me more aware of just how little control we have over who we are… like, shimizu who joins a cult, and pun pun who can’t seem to connect to other people for any good reason, their lives are not all that different from mine. i think of the very real possibility i could go down some dead end road, it feels realer than it did before. usually i believe that if we follow goodness and beauty we will find fulfillment in our lives, and that this is something we can reach by being honest about our feelings. but lately i’ve been thinking that we need help from outside ourselves and a whole lot of blind luck to get there.

“York’s comment—his criticism of New Age shamanism because those shamans do not fear—is the key to understanding the unique features of this modern spirituality and the reason it has become so compelling. The person who practices modern magic doesn’t fear the jaguar’s claw or anything else (like dark supernatural forces) because on some fundamental and basic level, the person knows that the magic may not be real and so magic can be simply fun. This is not an ontological claim about magic but an observation about secular modernity. Those who practice modern magic are acutely aware that other people like themselves do not believe in magic. They set out to make the magic real in the face of a presumption of its non-realness. They are not describing an enchanted world but a re-enchanted one, which is a very different proposition, because the baseline—for practitioners—is non-enchantment.”

“Media theorist Jonathan Sterne, writing of early sound documentation and reproducibility as a result of the advent of phonography, explains how progress in aural archiving coincided with improvements in archiving the human body through embalming techniques. He writes, “…if sound reproduction simplifies vibration in new ways, if we learn to ‘hear’ other areas of the vibrating world, then it would make sense that we might pick up the voices of the dead. In this formulation, the medium is the metaphysics. The metaphorization of the human body, mind, and soul follows the medium currently in vogue””

THE BLACK BOX: in the story, there will be something like a computer terminal that connects to something like the internet. the catch is that when people use it, they go into a trance state, and because of this, what they see will be SLIGHTLY distorted by their own dreams and fears.

people who spend too much time inside the box are immersed in their minds to a degree where they begin NOT to see who they really are, they begin to get USED to seeing with their own cognitive distortions. when this happens they get more disconnected from reality. this is a type of burnout that happens frequently with the people who use the box—they have to take a break and use grounding exercises to remain grounded in reality.

one subject of collective fascination is the contents of the box from hundreds of years ago. this stuff is distorted beyond recognition, and many people believe that the distortions have turned it into something like a holy book for the collective unconscious.

one way to avoid the distortions is to fragment your personality so that the part of you that’s consciously in control of your body isn’t the part receiving information from the box. this is the origin of familiars in this world—fragmented selves who are always connected to the box, who become feral and alien but also holy and fearsome because of prolonged exposure to it.

great paradox of life: the more stuff i CAN do, the more bored i am. i'm like "yeah this is alright but i could be doing something better". but when i'm on a vacation with no internet, every game and anime i have on my computer is suddenly way cooler. boredom relies on the promise of better things.

“A mandorla is a vesica piscis shaped aureola which surrounds the figures of Christ and the Virgin Mary in traditional Christian art. It is commonly used to frame the figure of Christ in Majesty in early medieval and Romanesque art, as well as Byzantine art of the same periods. The term refers to the almond like shape: “mandorla” means almond nut in Italian. In icons of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the mandorla is used to depict sacred moments which transcend time and space, such as the Resurrection, Transfiguration, and the Dormition of the Theotokos. These mandorla will often be painted in several concentric patterns of color which grow darker as they come close to the center. This is in keeping with the church’s use of Apophatic theology, as described by Dionysius the Areopagite and others. As holiness increases, there is no way to depict its brightness, except by darkness.”

#not the most interesting or insightful #but the most un-internalized #the stuff i forgot ever writing and strikes me as fresh #a collection of