There's something to be said for the strangeness of therapy and understanding not only why you do things, but why certain things make you feel like Death for no reason and sometimes why other people do things as well.
And its all well and good except its... tiring.
You go, you pay, you scoop out the seeds and flesh with a blunt spoon until you hit the rind, and then you sit there across from a sad, kind professional while the two of you try to sort out how to put it back together.
And no one thanks you for it outright. Your mom calls and you actually pick up for the first time in a month and she says you sound clearer. Your brother has nothing to say about the amphetamines in your bag because he knows something changed enough that he says an "I love you" at the end of a visit and gets one back. Your wife pulls you back to reality and you find affection and touch tolerable enough to do the same for her the week after without your skin crawling.
But then you start to feel muscles pull and things strain. Anger comes (real anger, not snapped frustration, not survival fighting, but deep, indignant flares) and it fires like an engine left to coagulate for years. It feels like an unwieldy hammer too large to control and too easy to swing all at once. You're afraid to pick it up. You're more afraid to have it taken away again.
So you start to demolish your own foundation. You find the rotten pylons holding up your childhood and leave them in the mud. You cannot move them now, only balance new beams better than your parents did.
Then the hardest room is next. The cozy sitting room with the day bed you kept open all hours and days for anyone to rest on, it goes down with the rotten floor. You never knew the mold had reached out here--you thought that was hidden behind the other doors, under your own bed, not in this space. Not here in the warm light of pride, of being kind and useful, where you curled up in too small of a chair and basked, knowing you had earned love with your tired limbs and heavy eyes. You drag the day bed to the curb and apologize to everyone who knocks. The new floor is bare and cold, the silence echoes in the empty room, but you start to ponder what color paint you might like to decorate yourself in. The roller is lighter than you expected. Maybe the bedroom deserves a coat.
And you brace for some pushback. Not everyone likes the color. Someone else compliments the new couch (only a couch now, an overnight bed for the cats and no one else) and someone else asks why you took the old one to the dump without telling them first. Some of them leave. Some of them put a crack in your newly painted drywall as they do. Others stay, asking if movie night is still on. You wipe your eyes and sweep the dust and ask if they'd like a drink before starting. The foundation shivers, but the walls remain.
Its mundane and earth-shattering and boring and the most terrifying all at once. No one will stop you from quitting. Healing is voluntary and the easiest responsibility on a long list to drop, and yet now that the mold is gone you understand, maybe, what it might be like to even want a home in your own mind and skin. Not a hotel, carefully crafted with beige walls and fluffed pillows, but a home.
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*deep breath in*
the fears 👏 have always 👏 been (in one way or another) 👏 parallel 👏 to 👏 desire 👏
let me explain.
so many of the statements given by actual avatars center around some sort of need that was met by their entity. Lots of them even had a positive relationship with the fear that drove them.
Jane Prentiss is an excellent example - the Corruption has always been about a form of toxic and possessive love, but she personally has a deep desire to be “fully consumed by what loves her,” and finds a perverse joy and relief at allowing herself to be a home
Jude Perry is another - she fucking loved watching people’s lives be utterly destroyed. The Desolation only offered her a power of destruction on a grander scale, and then gave her a more intense rush of joy as she did its work. When she tells Jon that he needs to feed the Eye before it feeds on him, it’s almost as an afterthought; she was happily feeding the Desolation long before it burned her into a new existence.
Simon Fairchild. Every time that old loose bag of bones wanders into the picture, he is having a fucking EXCELLENT time playing with the Vast. He loves showing people their own insignificance, and he loves luring them into situations where he can throw them into the void as he smiles and waves.
Peter Lukas (hell, the whole Lukas family (except Evan. RIP Evan.)) hated. people. all he wanted was for them all to go away, to leave him alone. The Lonely only fulfilled that desire.
Daisy, Trevor, and Julia, all devoted to hunting those things they deemed monstrous.
Melanie, holding tight to that bullet in her leg because on some level, she wanted it. It felt good, it felt right, it felt like it fit right alongside the anger and spite that drove her to success.
Annabelle Cane first encountered the Web when she was a child, running away from home in order to tug on her parents’ heartstrings in just the right way to have them wrapped around her little finger. Later on she volunteered to be the subject of an ESP study. Hell, she’s the one who dangled the “Is it really You that wants this?” question over Jon’s head in S4.
And that brings us to Jon, beloved Jarchivist, the Voice that Opened the Door. Ever since he was a child targeted by the Web, he was looking for answers. He joined the Magnus Institute’s Research Department looking for them, he stalked his coworkers in search for them, he broke into Gertrude’s flat and laptop out of desperation for them. And when he realized that all he had to do was Ask to get truthful answers to his questions? It was only natural for him to jump at that opportunity.
Elias told S3 Jon that he did want this, that he chose it, that at every crossroads he kept pushing onwards, and the inner turmoil that caused was one of the focal points for Jon’s character through the rest of the podcast.
There’s a certain line of thinking in many circles about the power of the Devil: he’s not able to create anything new. All he’s able to do is twist and warp that which was already present, making it something ugly and profane while still maintaining the facade of something desirable.
Jon didn’t choose the Eye. But he did wander into its realm of power, exhibiting exactly the qualities it was most capable of hijacking and warping to its own ends. Jon didn’t choose the Apocalypse. But Jonah picked at him little by little, pointing him towards each Fear individually. Jon didn’t want to release the Fears. But the Web tugged on his strings just so and laid a pretty trail for him to follow until he reached its desired conclusion.
Jon didn’t choose ultimate power, or omniscience, or even his own role as Head Archivist. But he said “yes” to the right (wrong?) orders and kept on pushing for the right (wrong?) answers. He wanted to succeed at the work he had been assigned. He wanted to protect his friends. He wanted to rescue them when they were lost. He wanted to prevent the apocalypse, to save the world. He wanted to know why he was still alive, when so many had died right in front of him.
The Great Wheel of Evil Color that is the Entities might not fit as neatly into categories in this universe - maybe there was no Robert Smirke trying to impose strict categories on emotional experiences, or maybe the ways they manifest in the world has turned on its head (goodness knows many of them have been showcased and blended in some very fun and new and horrifying ways so far) - but their fundamental foundations seem to be the same. Hell, in episode one we learned that there had been enough individual incidents to create a distinction between “dolls, watching” and “dolls, human skin.”
Smirke’s Fourteen isn’t going to be relevant as common parlance, RQ said that already, but I don’t think that means the Fears themselves (and their Dream Logic-based rules) are different - I think it means that the levels of understanding, language used, and personal connections among people “in the know” are going to be entirely unfamiliar
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GRRL SNAR: a fem!sasunaru fanmix
usually when I make fanmixes I do them pronoun and gender blind (bc who cares right?) but for SNS MONTH 2023: Day 27 FEM!SNS I have concocted a very special narusasu fanmix: GIRL VERSION!!! in which all songs have female vocalists and no mentions of dudes.*
listen to sasuke and naruto's full epic journey, from angsty childhood to fanfiction happily ever after... as beautiful wonans
*there is one 'boy' that slipped in... I didn't catch it... but I'm allowing it because Baby One More Time is irrefutably about snar
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The thing is. Bad/gross food is rarely a DISH - when food is bad it's because it's been badly made, whether because of skills or available ingredients. but a dish p much only exists recognisably and has a name because someone likes at least one version of it.
which is to say. there isn't really a way of naming a dish, school of dishes or specific food culture and going EW ISN'T THIS DISH UNILATERALLY CONCEPTUALLY DISGUSTING without denigrating quite a lot of people.
like you don't have to like it in any form. but it's eaten and shared because it's good to a not insubstantial number of people when cooked right.
(and I don't really understand how you approach that with total incuriosity when it's a dish you haven't tried like. ARE rocky mountain oysters good? Maybe! I would very much eat some to find out!!!!)
this is actually something the British food poll did in a way the American ones I've seen haven't really - they described how the food they're imagining is, specifically, badly prepared (grey meat and veggies; unseasoned shepherd's pie). which is wildly tipping the scales by calling it British Food but. like. that is an on point definition of why that food is gross.
(this also applies to American chocolate, which like. Broad category but I think most of us understand this refers to low-cocoa high-sugar chocolate, probably with bucolic acid. so we are being invited to imagine Badly Made Chocolate not. the concept of chocolate)
personally I just think it's very rarely a good or funny idea to shittalk how gross any given food culture is. partly because food is important and culturally evocative for most people, partly because it's very...alienating? to be like WHO COULD EAT SUCH A THING? just because you wouldn't, and largely because to be frank it says more about you than about the food that you have so little imagination or curiosity that you can't imagine why a food might be enjoyable to folks who aren't you.
yes this includes jello salad, I would like to try it. ONCE. if it wasn't appealing to someone it wouldn't be so widespread.
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✧°ɞ♡ Fuck It Friday ✧°ɞ♡
tagged by the lovelies @honestlydarkprincess @spagheddiediaz @wikiangela @hippolotamus @daffi-990 & @steadfastsaturnsrings thank you so much! I will get to your works tonight!✨💗
Okay so today was a weird day… ended up in the hospital. Still managed to write as I came back, but I’m feeling a little out. However! I’m finally writing one of the fics I promised y’all, and it’s a 5 + 1, so here you have a lil snippet! Sorry if it’s not my best work, I’m genuinely in pain. 🤧
─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──
Eddie reached for him the moment he tried to take a step back. He placed his unoccupied hand on his hip, hooking his index finger on the waistband of his sweats. “Don’t you dare,” he breathed. “Don’t even move.”
Buck licked his lips, shifting his weight. “We gotta get this done, Eddie,” he said, his tone a little more serious now. Eddie breathed in, looking up and down his body. God, okay. Okay.
“Here,” he mumbled, handing him a bucket of liquid soap. “Lets- lets get on top of the truck and uh-, we’ll- you’ll make the soap drip down and-,”
“Okay,” Buck stopped him, putting his hand on Eddie’s mouth, covering it. “You’re digging yourself a deeper grave.”
Eddie nodded, looking at Buck with wide eyes. He felt a drop of sweat go down his spine, but it was hot. Oh, so hot.
─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──
Tagging @buckleyobsessed @disasterbuckdiaz @jamespearce9-1-1 @lover-of-mine @wildlife4life @bucksbirthmark @honestlyeddie @evanbegins @malewifediaz @thewolvesof1998 @your-catfish-friend @butraura @giddyupbuck @eddie---diaz @mattsire @jeeyuns @loserdiaz @smilingbuckley @callmenewbie @theotherbuckley & @fortheloveofbuddie 🤍🕺🏻 and of course anybody else who’d like to participate!
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