#this is the most self indulgent bullshit i have EVER done

[gay-dorito-dust]

“Cut the bullshit Klaus.”

“What! It’s the honest to god truth, I pinky swore and everything! Does that mean nothing to you!” Klaus whined, lifting up his pinky finger to wave it in your face before you smacked it away with an indignant scoff. “Yeah right.”

Klaus has brought to your attention that his douche of a brother, Ben, has formed a crush on you in recent times, before going on tangents about how he couldn’t look away from you, his eyes widening with awe whenever you stepped into the same room as him before straightening his posture as you cut across his line of sight, leaving behind a lingering trail of your scent. He would then add on how Ben would try to show off subtly to you and even stand closer to you whenever his family called upon yours for a one sided meeting that naturally ended in raised voices and threats of violence.

ludicrous doesn’t even begin to describe what you were feeling when hearing the shit that came from your friends mouth without suspecting that he may have snuck himself a couple of drugs beforehand despite being clear for a long while now besides the occasional self indulgence of a drink. You trusted Klaus but sometimes the things he says aren’t exactly grounded in reality and so you were suspicious to say the least when he started claiming that Ben, the man who’d done nothing but stare daggers into your back and berate your friends to elevate his own ego, had somehow aloud himself the time to grow a crush on you.

“I assure you it’s the truth! Only I could tell when Benarino is in love and you my dear friend are his object of desire.” Klaus said airily as he crept closer to you, throwing an arm over your shoulder and bringing you into his side, “I can see it now. Y/n and Ben sitting in a tree, k.i.s.s.i.n.g-“ you cut off his teasing by shoving him away by bringing your hand to his face. “Nice to know I’m nothing more then an object to him then.” “You know I didn’t mean it like that!” Klaus whined, swatting away your hand from his face to pout at you before becoming serious.

“His eyes literally turn into hearts when he looks at you! He’s only ever looked at you like that whenever you laughed at something stupid being said or when your eyes brighten up with joy whenever we actually act like a proper fucking family for once. He looks at you like that whenever you say something snarky and smart or when you do something really cool and this doesn’t take an idiot to not notice but Ben really and truly can’t get enough of you y/n.” You didn’t say anything afterwards and instead opted to look into Klaus’ green eyes for any indication that the impassioned speech was nothing more then a lie but all you could find was pure and genuine emotions.

He wasn’t lying, he’d never lie to you about how Ben felt when he’s known his the longest out of any of his siblings, so if anyone knew of Ben’s feelings for you it’d be Klaus. You look away from him briefly to compose your thoughts and what your next move would be but a snicker brought your attention back to Klaus as he stared at you knowingly with a mischievous smirk across his face. “I know your secrete.” He prods your cheek with a finger. “Oh yeah? Enlighten me then.” You snarked, crossing your arms over your chest, feeling quite confident that Klaus was going to utter the most ridiculous shit you’ve ever heard…until.

“You like Ben.”

…Shit

#klaus hargreeves x reader #klaus hargreeves imagines #klaus hargreeves imagine #klaus hargreeves fanfic #klaus hargreeves fic #klaus hargreeves fluff #klaus hargreeves Drabble #tua fic #tua fanfic #tua imagine #tua imagines #tua x reader #the umbrella academy x reader #the umbrella academy imagine #the umbrella academy imagines #the umbrella academy fic #the umbrella academy fanfiction #tua drabble #tua fluff #ben hargreeves x reader #ben hargreeves imagines #Ben hargreeves imagine

[hamletshoeratio]

Pride was Theseus' fatal flaw.

He abandons Ariadne, the literal only reason he survived the labyrinth, because he feels he can do better or because he doesn't want to acknowledge that he couldn't defeat the minotaur and survive the labyrinth alone. He gets so caught up in his victory that he forgets to raise white flags so his (mortal) father knows he survived, and said father throws himself into the sea in despair and dies thinking his son is dead. Becoming King of Athens as a result of that, he becomes a tyrannical king because of his pride and because a toxic friend uses his pride to manipulate him. Where once he was brave and cared for other people, only attacking after first being attacked, after meeting Pirithous, he began doing dangerous and cruel things without thinking about the consequences of his actions. He becomes cruel and self-serving. He kidnaps a thirteen year old Helen of Sparta, intent on making her his wife (never mind the wife he already has) because she is a beautiful daughter of Zeus, the most beautiful girl on the Earth, who else would be worthy of her?, he thinks. He tries to help his friend kidnap Persephone, a goddess in her own right, so that they both can be married to daughters of Zeus, who could stand in their way? Hercules saves his ass from Hades' punishment, but even despite all of the above bullshit, the Gods still don't abandon him. Not until he murders his own son do they abandon him. He kills his son out of jealousy and out of pride. Now he's old, and his own people despise him, even the gods have abandoned him, so he decides to try and be a hero again. He fails. He's lost everything because of pride. Eventually, he is either pushed or he himself jumps (depends on the retelling) into the sea and drowns. If he was pushed, he was too proud and thought that he couldn't be tricked. If he jumped, maybe he was too proud to believe that his father had abandoned him, or maybe he realised his fatal flaw, realised the devastion that he left in his wake as a result and couldn't live with it.

Theseus represents the worst aspects of Poseidon. He's possessive, temperamental, violent, selfish, impulsive, and all-consuming. He doesn't take no for an answer. He's too proud. If Poseidon is anything, it's a prideful god. See the Odyssey, where he has a long vendetta against Odysseus for killing his son. See the Illiad where he sides the Greeks because Laomedon, the mortal King of Troy generations before Priam, Hector and Paris, promised a temporarily mortal Poseidon great reward for building the walls that would later protect Troy from the Greeks for over a decade, then when the task was done told him that setting him free is the best reward that Poseidon could hope for. Posedion took every opportunity to attack Trojan ships and even sent a blood thirsty sea serpent to terrorise the city. There's countless stories where Posedion's pride is the driving force behind them.

Pride is not all that Posedion is, but it's one of his faults.

Do you understand how significant his surrender is? Because I do and it's driving me insane. He sets it aside and he surrenders to his brother, a brother who once took his powers and made him mortal, the brother who is the very last person in the universe he would ever want to submit to. He does it to save Percy because Percy matters far more to him than his pride.

Posedion is one of the Gods who have grown the most since ancient times. He's no Saint and he will never be one, but he's calmed, he grown, he can now set his pride aside.

It's probably why Kymopoleia was banished (she deserves better from Rick because she is full of untapped potential and ngl hoo did her dirty and I can and probably will rant about it someday just not in this post), because she reminded Posedion too much of his dark side, a side he isn't indulging in as much because he's not conspiring to steal Zeus' throne, because as far as we know he doesn't have any vendetta currently ongoing (other than doing significant damage to Florida when Hera kidnaps Percy in tlh).

We do see Posedion set his pride aside for Percy in the books, in the last olympian when joins Zeus and Co in the battle, letting his own domain face destruction. Kronos doesn't expect Posedion to join Zeus & co because of his pride and he's both shocked and pissed that Posedion has done so. It wasn't part of his plan, he never considered that happening (which makes Hades showing up too so much sweeter). Percy had to ask him to do that. Seeing Posedion set his pride aside without a single word from Percy, who has closed his eyes and accepted his fate? I'M A FUCKING WRECK

#pjo #pjo series #percy jackon and the olympians #percy jackson and the olympians spoilers #percy jackson #pjo show #pjo spoilers #pjo tv spoilers #pjo tv series #posedion #posedion pjo #toby stephens #give him every award

[see-arcane]

Clarimonde, the Parisian Party Vampire You Never Read About

Quick, without touching Google, what gothic vampire tale came before Dracula, had a first-person narrator, involved a romantic/sensual undertone between the vampire and the victim, and some knowledgeable older man who revealed the nature of said vampire?

Did you guess Sheridan le Fanu’s, “Carmilla?” You’re close! The lesbian vampire escapade did predate (and surely influence) Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Carmilla went around nibbling her girlfriends in 1872 while the Count started his bloody spree in 1897. But before both of them we had the French short story, “La Morte Amoureuse,” (The Dead Woman in Love) by Théophile Gautier, translated into English alternately as, “Clarimonde,” “The Dead Leman,” or simply, “The Vampire.” But our girl Clarimonde often doesn’t get her Ye Olde Classic Bloodsucker badge as she’s owed, because her English translation only came out in 1908. But her original publication year was a dusty old 1836.

So. Who is Clarimonde? Clarimonde is, in essence, the most fun way to die and/or join the undead you could ask for in any era. Without giving everything away, she and her story, as narrated by the now-elderly priest she once seduced, are one of the most startlingly religion-risqué pieces of work ever dared in the 19th century. Hell, it would push some buttons today.

The gist for Clarimonde’s character is that she’s a beautiful prince’s consort with her own gifted castle to throw lavish bacchanals in. Her traits reveal she’s seemingly psychic, possibly Fae, and a combo of vampire and succubus. She sets her sights on the priest, Romuald, when he’s a handsome and earnest young man just about to undertake his final rites and become an official priest. Their eyes lock, minds connect, and bam, instant fairy tale Love at First Sight. Romuald doesn’t shy away from describing his adoration of her beauty, but also his pining for the potential of genuine romance with a soulmate; the fulfilling life and family he’s just now realizing he’s throwing away for the priesthood.

This undercurrent of bitterness, doubt, and disappointment with the austere nature of a clergyman’s life follows him from that moment onward. Even the old abbé who suspects what foul female evil is afoot can’t soothe him by saying, ‘hey, just pray about it.’ In fact, in all the old abbé’s appearances, Gautier/the Narrator Priest manages to sneak in a lot of stealthy “Young Goodman Brown”-esque hypocrisy. Like when the old abbé scoffs and sneers about Clarimonde’s latest bawdy party and all that went on in it…

(What were you doing at Clarimonde’s revelry, sir? Or are you just parroting bullshit you don’t actually know about??)

The love story between Clarimonde and Romuald is split between the priest’s increasingly exhausted daylit hours, while his dreaming self (if it is just a dream?) seems to run away to live with Clarimonde where they indulge in all the joys and heady vices they feel like, but each other most of all. It’s all as raunchy in its detail as was allowed at the time, but made more so for the fact that Romuald—who is, again, a priest—revels in the memory. Any shame is vaporous if it’s there at all. And then, blood comes into it.

Clarimonde (in the dream) takes to pricking him with a needle so she may keep herself alive on less than a thimble of blood. Romuald declares he would have given her all his veins if she’d asked. Clarimonde likely knows so. But no. Just a drop.

I’ll leave the exact details of the climax murky. But the last lines…

I returned to my presbytery, and the noble Lord Romuald, the lover of Clarimonde, separated himself from the poor priest with whom he had kept such strange company so long. But once only, the following night, I saw Clarimonde. She said to me, as she had said the first time at the portals of the church: ‘Unhappy man! Unhappy man! What hast thou done? Wherefore have hearkened to that imbecile priest? Wert thou not happy? And what harm had I ever done thee that thou shouldst violate my poor tomb, and lay bare the miseries of my nothingness? All communication between our souls and our bodies is henceforth forever broken. Adieu! Thou wilt yet regret me!’ She vanished in air as smoke, and I never saw her more.

Alas! she spoke truly indeed. I have regretted her more than once, and I regret her still. My soul’s peace has been very dearly bought. The love of God was not too much to replace such a love as hers. And this, brother, is the story of my youth. Never gaze upon a woman, and walk abroad only with eyes ever fixed upon the ground; for however chaste and watchful one may be, the error of a single moment is enough to make one lose eternity.

From. A. Priest.

A priest, so old and grey and—we can almost hear—choking with a young man’s mourning tears over the loss of a woman who in any other context would be painted as a vile Lilith archetype, a sexy-evil demoness embodying the temptation of the Devil (a ploy the old abbé uses, of course). Romuald only let the ‘separation’ happen for the sake of clarity in the end—his brain was being sawed in half by the waking VS sleeping worlds he lived in. That and lack of coherent thought are likely all that allowed [REDACTED] to happen, and that with him utterly miserable once the work was done.

It all plays out less like a horror story and more like a romantic tragedy wrapped in commentary so cutting against the stringent dogma of the Church you’d think it was a modern-day subversion of an older story. But no. Gautier churned this thing out, again, in 1836. “La Morte Amoureuse,”/ “Clarimonde” is free to read on Project Gutenberg and I sincerely recommend giving it a look if you want a taste of one of the earliest depictions of vampires (or any monster) as something other than the 110% Evil Demonic Threat Here to Sully Your Virtuous Soul with Impure Goings-On, and something almost Guillermo del Toroish in the daringly loving greys it plays with.

tl;dr: Clarimonde deserves more love and her own turn in the classic vampire spotlight. In the meantime, she’ll go on partying into the night and breaking hearts.

#tagging this as #dracula daily #because everybody's in a mood for some classic vampire lit to chew on while Dracula snacks his way through the Demeter #please go read about my girl Clarimonde #she deserves more love #she's one of the only raucous and unabashedly fun babes in classic literature who really gets away with being herself #even post-dramatic breakup #if only because the narrative paints her as flawed--but explicitly Not Evil #just not the norm and with only a vampire's method of engaging in a relationship with a mortal paramour #anyway #Clarimonde #La Morte Amoureuse #vampire #horror #love #dracula #carmilla #theophile gautier #literature

[swamp-spirit]

So You’re in Effexor/Venlafaxine Withdrawal

Had some provider change bullshit and went from 225 mg a day for years to cold turkey for five days. Effexor’s pretty famous for being The Fucking Worst withdrawal wise, but it honestly works great for me. I’m a dumbass with ADHD, so I often end up without a day or two, but HOO BOY five days was a lot.

Unfortunately, most withdrawal advice I’ve found it targeted at people who are intentionally going off Effexor and focused on working with a doctor and weening slowly, not super relevant to me. I wanted to write up what I’ve learned to help other people who might be going through the withdrawal and not have access to Effexor or a doctor. None of this magically fixes it, it’s just making the shit timeframe until you can get your meds a bit less shit.

Note, this is pretty much all personal experience, and there’s not much research. This is not formal medical advice, and if you can talk to a professional, please do. Also note that I have a number of side conditions that may influence my experience. (Withdrawal is actually something that can be so personal.)

Know the Emergency Signs I’m not gonna fully list symptoms here, plenty of people have done that, but know which symptoms are normal ‘yup this sucks‘ symptoms and which are ‘oh shit‘ symptoms.  If you’re in this situation, I imagine the odds are good money is part of the problem, but know Urgent Care and the ER will usually give you an emergency prescription, so if you feel like things are getting that bad anyways, it’s good to go before it gets worse.

Don’t Drive I can’t drive ever, but pls don’t do this in withdrawal. I know you might have obligations, and I know calling a ride is expensive, but getting in a car crash is more expensive.

Try Not to Be Alone If you can, ask a friend over, go to a family members house, whatever you can. A lot of the emergency signs (delirium, seizures, losing consciousness) mean you can’t seek care for yourself. It’s good to have somebody around who knows what to look for. The biggest danger to people in Effexor withdrawal tends to be the mental symptoms. If it’s safe, let your loved ones know that you’re at higher risk for self harm and suicidal thoughts, and what you’d like them to do if  they’re worried. Most situations aren’t going to be that bad. Usually, it just sucks, but like... it’s good to have somebody around who can bring you soup and listen to you feel sorry for yourself. Treat it like having the flu, and know you deserve the same care as anyone else in that situation. (Yes, even if it’s ‘your fault’ you ran out of meds. If punishing yourself for not thinking ahead/missing an insurance detail/forgetting something worked, I’d never miss a dose.)

Chill Out Your Nervous System A lot of the symptoms (brain zaps and shivers esp) are your nervous system going out of control, so doing calming techniques can actually help. Getting hugs, bundling up somewhere cozy, and doing deep breathing is legit medical treatment for soothing out a haywire system.

Track When In the Day It’s Worst Being sick, unfortunately, does not always mean you don’t have shit to do. I realized pretty quickly my shakes were a ton worse at night, so, even though I didn’t want to do much during the morning, if it had to get done, that’s when it was going to happen. It can also be good just so, when you’re symptoms are at their worst, you can remember that it won’t be like this the entire time until you get meds.

Indulge Cravings When your body’s doing heavy lifting, it starts yelling for whatever weird shit it thinks might help. That’s what weird pregnancy cravings are, and that’s what you need now. Save the diet for later, get a little lax on the grocery budget, and have zero shame about replacing dinner with pickle juice mixed with gatoraid or whatever. If you deal with nausea, try to stick to small meals of whatever seems doable. My personal buddy was Morningstar Veggie sausages since they’re high protein without being too dense or fatty.

Medicine Cabinet Helpers Dangerous layman advice!!! I saw medical pages advise it but still be careful!!! That said, holy shit, those dramamine lemon ginger chews are my best friends now, followed shortly by melatonin gummies and advil.

Room Temp Baths Hot baths can be a lot on an overtaxed nervous system, but I found pleasantly warm water was very pleasant.

Sick Day Entertainment When electronics are overwhelming, books are hard, you can’t get out of bed, and you desperately need a distraction, it’s good to have things you can handle. Some ideas -Calling somebody -Audiobooks/podcasts -Coloring Honestly, more suggestions here would be great. My go to was podcasts, but I know a lot of people, trying to track a podcast in withdrawal sounds like hell.

Anyway, cheers to making it out the other side, because you will. In the meantime, spoil the shit out of yourself.

#effexor #venlafaxine #withdrawal tw #snri #self harm tw

[jess-abides]

Vacation body thoughts below the cut (I should really just journal lol)

The last time I went on vacation in April, I was the biggest I’ve ever been. I wore my bikinis and was trying really hard to rock with body neutrality and tbh I was in a decent place with it. But I was super uncomfortable on the plane, and it was probably the most unpleasant travel experience that I can remember.

While I was on that trip, I started wanting to exercise…like idk why but I remember thinking “I want to start doing squats when I get home” lol and I got on the peloton the day after I got home and rode every day for like 2-3 weeks while I convinced my trainer friend to coach me after I realized he offered virtual sessions. I don’t know what changed, but something flipped basically overnight - when we first got started, I told my trainer “I’m really good at starting over, but I really want this to be the last time” and tbh it still feels like it could be.

I haven’t missed a single planned/scheduled workout since the day I got back from that trip, and I’ve enjoyed the process so much more this time around because it came from a place of actually just wanting to exercise (as opposed to my typical pattern of ‘hate self > must be smaller > deserve punishment > must eat less and move more’).

I also very intentionally did not diet at all, because I still have to work very hard at not spiraling when I try to ~get healthy~ and I am sick to death of dieting and burning out and being afraid of food and the scale.

So I decided to just focus on the one thing I was excited about, which was getting stronger. Which naturally led me to make some different food choices based on what my body was craving (and plenty of well-intentioned bullying from my coach when I wasn’t eating enough). I’ve just been having so much fun getting stronger that it started to feel like a shame not to at least try to get enough protein to actually let my muscles recover and grow.

So I headed off on this vacation 30 pounds lighter than the last, inches gone from my waist, hips, thighs, wedged comfortably into the middle seat between two strangers and not silently apologizing for my existence. Happier, stronger, more confident. A little nervous to get out of my routine, tbh, but I could also really tell my body could use a break.

And, for once, not at all worried about my diet or whether I’d gain weight; knowing I’ve been learning to trust myself and basically eating whatever I wanted anyway. I enjoyed good seafood and good ice cream, but never felt like I needed to over-indulge or overcompensate for indulging. I went for long walks on the beach because I wanted to, and sat on the porch when I decided I’d rather do that instead.

Out of sheer curiosity, I weighed myself this afternoon (something I would never have done in the past - early morning only, iykyk). And wouldn’t you know it? I weigh the same as the day I left. The number itself isn’t the victory - I would have been fine with being up a few because bodies will be bodies, and I guess that’s really what I’m proud of!

And I’m looking forward to being back on my bullshit tomorrow morning and seeing how this break plays out in my workouts this week. After I sleep A LOT tonight 😌

[honeysweetcorvidae]

hey would you like to do all the prime numbers for the ask meme too. :3

i WOULD i’m gods bravest soldier and i can answer questions

i am, like mango, going to put this under a cut, because good grief this is a lot of questions.

2. Do you plan each chapter ahead or write as you go?

lol. I tend to have a general shape in my head for what the whole thing will look like when i do multichaps, but no, i wing it; if i allow myself to do an outline then it will be Done in my brain & therefore dead in the water

3. Describe the creative process of writing a chapter/fic

1) go on swingset, play music on shuffle 2) put that bitch in a Situation in my brain 3) enter fugue state 4) hit post

5. Do you like constructive criticism?

ehh. i am very sensitive, but from people i trust & when i have time to brace myself it can be helpful? most of the time i am just sitting here though. love 2 have fun and indulge.

7. How do you choose which POV to write from?

fugue state.

genuinely, it’s just whatever feels best at the moment! I have a taste for outsider POVs, but what i do for things that aren’t that varies from story to story— WTA flips back and forth from chapter to chapter where playing heroes is scattershot, etc.

11. Link your three favorite fics right now

oh geez picking “favorites” is an ASTONISHINGLY difficult thing for me— i have read probably hundreds of fics in the shuake tag alone, and the things I like I like for different reasons, and my MEMORY is so terrible that the word ‘favorite’ fills me with dread— so I’ll go with ones I immediately think to recommend? for p5, @malevolentmango’s what you’ve already buried and everything or nothing at all are phenomenal (i am marking this as One because mango is sooo specialwonderfulthebest and i could just list everything on their ao3. god wait how could i not also shout out no ballad will be written)

and then there’s interminable ballistics, which rewrote my brain, first step, which is frankly ASTONISHING, killing care and grief of heart by @jortsbian, which made me want to tear down an office building with my nails(honorific), and so on and so on and so on. this is way more than three. @ceilingfan5 has some of the best taakitz fics out there, if you’re into taz.

i would also, of course, be remiss not to nod to the fic i’m most insane about of all time, my guiding light my life my joy my favorite most special little enormous incomprehensible sadomasochistic bug alien clown porn religious worldbuilding space opera epic, @birchbow’s price of forgiveness. i’m super normal about everything they’ve ever written for homestuck tbqh BUT PoF is my darling. (it’s NOT the one i wrote a whole real actual literary analysis essay about. but that’s because it’s too long.)

okay moving on. i did not answer this question correctly.

13. What’s a common writing tip that you almost always follow?

uh. um. uh. does “don’t misuse punctuation too badly” count as a writing tip? man i don’t know i am an insane person about writing styles

17. What do you do when writing becomes difficult? (maybe a lack of inspiration or writers block)

if it sucks hit da bricks >:/. no but actually for real though, i tend to go out on my swingset, switch to a different project, or just Do Something Else for a while! i’m a big proponent of taking breaks.

19. What is the most-used tag on your ao3?

well,

23. Best writing advice for other writers?

please for the love of god punctuate your dialogue correctly

no, but sincerely— i think that the best possible thing you can do for your work is to write what you actually want to write. do the stupid self-indulgent bullshit! write tropey nonsense, write the same shit over and over in different permutations, who cares! if you love it it’ll show.

31. Do you start with the characters or the plot when writing?

the characters make the plot happen and the plot makes the characters act? so i mean i guess characters, but they’re interminably linked.

37 I already answered;

41: Do you tend to reread fics or are you a one-and-done kind of person?

ha. hahahaaaa. according to ao3 i have visited price of forgiveness one hundred and sixty-seven times. i know i have read it logged out at least twice. so, you know,

43. Do you take a sadistic joy in whumping your characters, or are you more the “If you hurt them I would kill everyone and then myself” kind of person?

i like recovery! I like to see people brought down and still swinging, and then for them to be happy again after. so i guess the latter?

47. How many times do you usually revise your fic/chapter before posting?

that’s between me and god

53. How do you spend your time when it comes to fanfiction? Are you primarily a fic reader, writer, or a perfect 50/50 split of both?

well it took me going back ~50 pages into my ao3 history to find PoF, and the last time i read it was in june, so i’d say i read more than i write

59. Does anyone in your personal life know you write fic? if not, would you tell anyone?

everyone i know knows everything about me because I have cannot-shut-up-ever-disease, yes. my mom has been forced to hear the plot of my NG+ au.

61. Why do you continue writing fics?

I enjoy writing, and I like to have a community! when I’m not writing fic I write original stuff, and I miss the engagement when I do that, but it’s still the same compulsive joy, I think. I doubt I could ever just stop writing forever.

67. Do you prefer prompts and challenges, or completely independent ideas?

independent ideas, generally! I am very bad at sticking to a prompt; my mind tends to wander ALL about the joint.

71. When it comes to more complicated narratives, how do you keep track of outlines, characters, development, timeline, ect.?

[LAUGHING]

(the answer is severe autdhd and being an extremely fast reader.)

73. What do you think makes your writing stand out from other works?

um. uh. um um uh. someone told me the other day that i am a fizzy mocktail and i don’t know what that means but i’m gonna go with that. i think my style is pretty distinctive, and i know i’m a skilled writer, so I guess. that? and i mean who else would write quite so much deeply emotionally vulnerable tentacle content. really.

#my writing #SORRY FOR THE TAGS EVERYONE. i wanted to credit people whose tumblrs i knew

[cyberslam]

baby, don't deny what your poor heart needs

trans! 1-2-3 Kid/Razor Ramon

hi! On my bullshit again but god I've got Kid/Razor on the mind and I wanted to write something purely self indulgent between commissions. So here's some absolutely dripping in personally inspired trans narrative Kid.

Anyway I got to talking with Scotty and we talked about how getting your first suit as a trans man is such a big thing, and I thought it'd be sweet if Razor bought Kid his first suit.

I have a whole list in my head of headcanons for this version of Kid I may or may not post?

Also loosely related to Xentex's lovely standalone fic for his trans Diesel muse.

TWs:

needles/injections in the first part, nothing descriptive, internalized and mentioned transphobia, NSFW content.

[Ao3 Link]

Kid was laid flat on his stomach on the cushy hotel bed as he watched Razor tapping away air bubbles from the syringe in his hands. Ever since he began running with the Cuban, he insisted on doing Kid's t-shots for him. He had said it was something nostalgic for him. Kid was a little annoyed at first, but he was quick to relent given that Razor was a hell of a lot better at injecting him than he was. It sucked to have to do his shots in his thighs, and having to wrestle right after usually would put him in a ton of pain.

Instead, having the shot done by his hip was just more comfortable.

"What're you wearing to the charity dinner?" Kid asked, smushing his cheek against the pillow he was resting on as he caught Razor's eye.

"Eh, maybe just gonna throw a white suit over the usual on and call it a day." Razor shrugged. He was already replacing the needle. Kid didn't know how Razor had it all memorized. It basically took him half an hour to get through all the steps, having to consult the worn out instructions sheet he kept with the vials. Sure Razor had a good memory, but he did it with so much ease.

"Man, even you're wearing a suit?" He pouted. He'd basically asked every wrestler what they'd be wearing at this point. Shawn was gonna be in a suit, Diesel was going to be doing just a button up with a sportcoat, hell even the Bushwhackers had suits! Kid didn't even own a button up. Most events Vince made them do were casual enough he could get away with a t-shirt, jeans, and his leather jacket. But this one was all fancy, way more formal and stiff than anything Kid had attended. The last time he wore a suit must've been…never. He frowned more, realizing he'd never owned a suit.

Razor ruffled his hair, taking him out of his thoughts as the taller man rounded the bed. He pulled Kid's waistband down, wiping the injection site down with an alcohol pad.

"What, you're not?" Razor asked, waving his hand over the alcohol to dry it off.

"I don't have a suit, Raze. Never did. Always had to wear dresses to big stuff." Kid sighed. He couldn't help the way it made him feel. His mom had always spent so much on those dresses, he never had the heart to tell her he didn't want to wear them. He knew how important having a daughter was to her; for a long time he was worried he'd just break her heart so he kept quiet.

He was thankful puberty never hit him too hard, though. A loose enough shirt usually got the job done to hide his body.

Kid came out to his mom when he first broke into wrestling. He couldn't make himself wrestle the women's division, or in any women's promotion. His mom had struggled with it. They fought. He moved in with his grandparents who were somehow more understanding.

The King had helped him out a ton, too. He owed him for being the reason he got to wrestle in the men's divisions.

"Ready?" Razor's voice brought him out of the past. He nodded, the slight sting hitting him as Razor pushed the needle through the skin he held taut. "So you never had a suit? Never been fitted for one?"

Kid shook his head as Razor pulled his hand away, depressing the plunger. "Never Raze. Makes me kinda nervous, going to buy a suit. I mean I can get one off the rack at Macy's or something I guess, but I can only afford the discount stuff and all that's too big on me. I'll look like a kid playing in his dad's clothes."

"Then get one tailored, chico."

"I don't think I need to tell you why that makes me nervous." Kid scoffed, rolling his eyes as Razor pulled the needle out, replacing it with an alcohol pad held gently against his skin. "Like, y'know what if they take inseams and they like…notice."

"If you pack they won't." Razor took care of disposal as he spoke, gently pulling Kid's waistband up.

"I don't know man…you know I usually don't anyway.

"Oyame, chico. I'll take you to my tailor. He won't say shit to you, he made suits for Vinnie. Does suits for dykes too. I'll explain it to him, okay?" Sharps disposed, Razor sat on the edge of the bed with a smile as he looked down at Kid.

The young man wouldn't admit it to his face, but he loved when Razor actually smiled. Not that slimy smirk of his, but a real smile. He couldn't help himself from smiling back.

"Alright Raze, but I don't know if I can afford that."

That got him a smack to the back of the head.

"The fuck you think I am? I'm gonna make you pay for this? It's a gift, niño. From me. You wear that shit and if anyone asks, you tell them Razor Ramon got it for you, got it?" He had pulled the toothpick from his mouth, pointing it at Kid as he spoke, making him laugh.

"Yeah I hear you big man. Mr. Ramon so kindly bought me my suit."

"Damn straight." He leaned down, pushing Kid's curls back as he placed a kiss to his forehead. Kid stuck his tongue out in response, before sighing.

"Thanks Raze."

"You're running with me. That means you get the best, or nothing." Razor patted him on the back, "we'll go tomorrow, all right?"

"Alright. You're the boss, Mr. Ramon."

"Damn right I am."

—

Razor managed to pull off a pretty comfortable experience for Kid's first time getting fit for a suit. Measurements weren't any different from when he would get fitted for wrestling gear, there was just a lot more to measure. Thankfully, his tailor offered private rooms so Kid didn't have to deal with any of the anxiety provided by someone potentially walking in.

He also couldn't deny the way it made him feel a lot more like a man to even go through the experience of getting fitted.

To save time, they had picked out a premade suit to be altered, given the charity dinner was that weekend. Razor had been pretty upset he couldn't pay for a suit to be made for Kid, but Kid reasoned that he didn't even need to wear them all that often in the first place.

Come Friday morning, the suit was ready.

Razor had picked it out, not that Kid had a problem with that. It was navy, with a black trim on the inside. According to the big man himself, he chose it because cool colors suited Kid more than blacks or anything warm.

For the most part, Kid had no idea what Razor would be going on about so he just nodded along and agreed.

Still, trying it on was something different. Razor had pretty much picked out everything else: the dress shirt, shoes, tie, belt…

“I’m worried I’m going to look stupid.” Kid was frowning as Razor was tying his tie for him.

“Ay niño, you look handsome. You look like the man you are.” The taller man chided him, speaking with a cigar in his mouth as he tightened the tie up to his neck. “That comfortable?”

Being called handsome by Razor of all people always made Kid’s chest swell with joy. “You really think so?”

“Don’t be stupid. The fuck would I lie to you for?”

Kid grinned as he was scolded, putting on the coat jacket as it was handed to him.

“There’s three buttons, you just button the top two.”

“Got it, boss.” Kid rolled his eyes, secretly appreciative of how much Razor gave instruction. If it wasn’t for him, he’d end up going to the dinner looking like he rolled in right off the street and Vince would’ve had his head for it. Slim fingers worked on the buttons before straightening the jacket out. He had to admit, it was a lot more comfortable than he expected. There was something nice about having the layer of the jacket to hide any awkward bumps the dress shirt wouldn’t.

“Alright. Now that’s a handsome guy. Turn around.” Razor was grinning at him pulling his cigar out of his mouth as he looked down at Kid. With one hand, he gently turned Kid around to face himself in the mirror.

Kid normally tried not to let his emotions really get to him in any big way, but this time he couldn’t help it. There was just a prick of tears in his eyes as he looked himself over in the full body mirror. Head to toe, he looked like he actually belonged in men’s formal wear. The pants gave enough of a drop near his crotch he wouldn’t be too uncomfortable even if he did pack, the jacket drew away from his chest and gave him a boxier looking frame instead of emphasizing how petite his body usually looked. Even his shoes didn’t look too small. He couldn’t help but smile as he checked himself out in the mirror.

“That’s not all. Here.” Razor pulled a small box out of his pocket, giving it to Kid. “Open it, c’mon.”

“Geez man, just like wait a second.” Kid huffed, pulling the golden cover off of the small box. Inside was some actual gold; two gold cufflinks and a chain. He was stunned, mouth slightly agape as he looked down at the gift and then at Razor.

“It’s real gold, chico. We’ll have matching cufflinks. And I figured you can wear the chain with just the shirt sometimes. When I take you out, I mean. You’ve been rolling with me this long. I can't have you without at least some gold, yeah?” Razor looked real proud, moving closer to Kid, pulling the cufflinks out of the box and affixing them to the ends of the sleeves of the jacket.

“Raze, this is too much isn’t it?”

“What, you stole my money and now you’re too good for my gold, huh? This shit is as real as it gets, chico.”

“Okay you like, already got over that. And I mean, this is different. You bought this for me. This must’ve been expensive.”

Razor took a puff of his cigar before he pointed it at Kid. “Nothing is too expensive for Razor Ramon, comprende?”

Kid huffed, before grinning. “Only because it’s you Raze, am I even worried that you spent money like this on me. I’d be out the door with anyone else.” He looked at the cufflinks, admiring the way they complimented the deep blue of the jacket.

Razor just shook his head in response as Kid looked himself over again in the mirror.

“I almost don’t want to take it off.”

"Mm. I can help you with that niño."

Kid watched as Razor put the cigar out in the ash tray. The larger man stepped in closer, pressing himself flush against Kid's back. He rested his chin on Kid's left shoulder, clearly scheming something.

Kid watched the two of them in the mirror. For once he didn't feel like he was fighting to look like a man, especially next to Razor. Not that anyone said shit to him ever since they started rolling together. Anytime some jobber even whispered that Kid looked "girly" in the locker room, they'd suspiciously have some injury and never end up on any of the shows.

Razor's rough hands began wandering around Kid's body, undoing his belt buckle as he watched the reaction of the younger man. Kid squirmed, feeling his face get hot.

"Razor…" He huffed, watching his belt being tossed aside as his dress shirt got pulled out. His coat jacket was pulled off next, laid gently on the ottoman to their side, and Kid wasn't sure if he wanted to be transfixed on the image in front of him or look away. "I can undress myself, c'mon. You know I don't like looking at myself like this."

"Kid." Razor's voice was stern, and the lack of a nickname made the slimmer man stand up a bit straighter. "You look so fucking handsome. C'mon, look." He grabbed Kid's face, turning him towards the mirror.

Kid's eyes met with his own, struggling to face the feelings stirring inside him. His eyes wandered down as Razor's deft hands undid his buttons, one at a time. Exposing skin. Before he undid the last few buttons, Razor slipped a hand in to cup his chest, calloused fingers rubbing at his nipple. Kid bit his lip, trying to stifle a moan as he looked away. Quickly, a rough hand turned his face to the mirror.

"Don't look away." It was a command.

The reflection was uncomfortable. His clothes were the only thing that made people see him as a man. Some days he didn't mind looking at himself. Hell, usually he didn't, but it wasn't like he spent time checking himself out in the mirror naked.

Kid watched his flushed face, the way he kept biting his lip, the lazy but hungry look in Razor's eyes as he fondled him. He kissed up Kid's neck, sending shivers down his spine. Wet, sloppy kisses to his ear made his knees nearly give out.

"You look so handsome, niño." He was practically purring into his ear. That low, rumbly voice was made of wet dreams.

"I look–"

Always a little dramatic, Razor pulled the dress shirt apart, fully exposing his torso. "Like a man."

The shirt was discarded as Kid looked on at himself. The way his chest curved. Razor grabbed at each pec, squeezing them, playing with him. Kid whined, leaning back against the broad chest behind him.

"Remember what I told you. If anyone tells you you ain't a man, you come to me?"

He nodded. "Yeah, I remember."

"That counts for you too. Cause you've got more machismo than half the guys we work with. This chest? This face? These hips? All a man's." With each body part, Razor put his hands there and gave a squeeze.

Kid was happy he wasn't prone to tears, because he'd be crying just about now. He knew he was a guy. A man. Not just some boy. And he knew his body was a man's body, but being around a bunch of cis guys who were bigger than he'd ever be, comfortable being nearly naked in a way he'd never be; it would give him some pause sometimes. Maybe Razor noticed. Maybe he saw how Kid had been lately and knew he needed his.

"Alright don't get a big head about." There was that smack to the back of the head to ground him. He shot Razor a nasty look, getting a slimy grin in return. "Sit."

He was gently pushed back onto the chaise chair, until he sat down on it.

Razor kneeled in front of him in a sight that Kid wished he could take a photo of. He watched as the man at his feet undid the laces on the oxfords, slipping them off his feet and placing them to the side. He lifted Kid's heel up to his mouth, kissing his ankle.

Kid wanted to squirm at the sensation. He held his breath watching Razor, who looked up at him and gave him a wink. He pulled the dress socks off before moving up, kissing at Kid's thighs through the fabric of the pants. His hands snaked up the outside of Kid's thighs until he was grabbing a handful of his ass, kneading his fingers into it.

His lips made it up to Kid's stomach, before kissing back down to his happy trail. His hands slid around to undo the fly as he looked right at Kid. Razor pulled his pants down, until they were completely off, and laid them next to where Kid sat.

The Cuban firmly pressed his lips to Kid's crotch, eliciting some small moans from him. His fingers snuck into the waist band of his boxers, pulling them down to expose Kid fully. Razor tasted how wet he was, his tongue licking through his folds and up to his clit before sucking on it.

Kid couldn't keep himself from moaning then. He panted, Razor working him up quickly. His hand found it's way to that slicked back, curly hair as he pulled Razor forward. It didn't take long for Razor to make him come, fucking him with his tongue and sucking him off like he was.

Climax overwhelming him, he tried to wriggle away from the overstimulation but strong arms kept him in place. Kid bit down on his own hand to keep himself from nearly screaming. He collapsed backwards, feeling his muscles twitching as they tried to relax, not even noticing that Razor had pulled his boxers back up.

Breathing slowly, Kid slowly sat up. He didn't know when Razor had grabbed his cigar and relit it, but he sure had.

"Gotta say of all the guys I've given head to, you're my favorite." Razor teased him, taking a puff of his cigar before blowing the smoke in Kid's face.

The smaller man frowned as he waved the smoke away. "Oh shut up."

He stared down at his legs for a moment.

"Thanks Razor."

"No problem niño." Razor ruffled his curly hair, before stepping away. "Get dressed, let's get outta here."

"Sure thing, Mr. Ramon."

#d is writing #razor ramon #123 kid #the 123 kid #wwf #wwf fic #this was probably the quickest ive written a fic to be posted in a while! #trans!123 kid

[deepestbluesky]

i was tagged by @minnarr to list my 5 favorite fics i've written! it's actually very funny to me, because i saw one of these posts yesterday from a writer i like very much who i've followed for ages, and then i got tagged today, and i realized the connecting thread is literally just one person in between. anyway!

note: in case you haven't looked closely at my ao3 page (or. not closely tbh. to my eternal regret, it's still my top fandom), i used to write hockey rpf. i don't anymore, because i think hockey and especially the nhl is morally bankrupt and actively harmful, and i no longer feel comfortable writing about nhl players or sharing fic about them. this is all to say: 1, i actually don't think i've explicitly said that before and it's important to me, and 2, i will not mention any fics from this fandom.

LUCKILY, i've somehow???? written a lot????? since then????? this continues to baffle me. how did i get here. (🎶letting the days go by🎶) (if you think, gee, did sky have trouble picking 5 fics? it has been fully half an hour and i'm still at 11 fics. the lengths i go to for tumblr posts that don't matter.) (have now picked fics, didn't take much longer bc i decided to try and go for a wide spread of fandoms, and also to pick the ones in that 11-fic list that had the lowest kudos lol)

give thanks to the broken bones. this is a batfam fic in which bruce wayne gets kidnapped as a civilian and dick grayson comes to rescue him. i have some defensive feelings about this and about the way dick and bruce's relationship is written here, but i often feel like i'm not great at writing complicated relationships that aren't just fluffy, and i feel like i nailed it here. also: gen fics.

tired of waiting for tomorrow to come. another batfam fic! this one a character study of sorts about jason todd and also my love letter about bruce springsteen's music. it's one of the most self-indulgent fics i've ever written and i'm really satisfied with it, even tho there are definitely things i wish i'd done differently too. i wrote a dvd commentary companion too so if you want Even More Of My Thoughts about it, they are on ao3 :D

daydreamers please wake up. there are goddamn NINE fics for this fucking fandom and mine is the LONGEST??? this is a fic for another dc comic, Far Sector, written by nk jemisin and drawn by jamal campbell. i loved far sector, i think it's gorgeous and fun and a cool sci fi story with very fun characters, and so when i had a chance to write a fic for it for yuletide, i was DELIGHTED. and then i realized i had to figure out how to write horror for the first time. it was a lot of work and i think it turned out really well.

don't let the stars get you down. this is a fic for the untamed, and it's jiang yanli and jin zixuan. i have now written TWO platonic marriage fics for the untamed, and i'm personally thrilled about this fact. this one is shorter but also, in some ways, more interesting to me. i really love fics that dig into jyl and what she's doing and thinking and i haven't written as many as i'd like, but that is very much what this fic is. also i just have so much love and affection in my heart for the idea of two people being married and having a kid while not being In Love and in fact having sex with and falling in love with other people.

you're a curious one. this is a word of honor fic, and it is, of course, hanwenzhou. so, to be clear, if you count shl/tyk/qy together, it's CLEARLY my second most written fandom. and yet it ended up with only one representative on this list, partially because i have more kudos in this fandom lol. but that said, if i was only gonna pick one, it had to be REALLY on brand, and this fic is PEAK sky is on her bullshit. inspired by a critical role scene with sexy dangerous vampire attacks. the whole fic is building tension that never quite resolves bc building the tension is way more fun to me than writing sex scenes usually. spoiler: everything is actually fine and there's a happy resolution. this concept still lives in my head rent free.

idk who to tag, so AS USUAL, if you see this and want to play the game, do it and say i tagged you! i am very serious, you can tag me even if we've never interacted. you can also not tag me but say you got it from me! whatever works.

#my fic #ask games

[businesstiramisu]

Okay I rewrote the post. Thoughts on the last tenth (or so) of Worth the Candle:

[I don't really expect this to be interesting to anyone except me, but i do want to save these for future me, lol]

 I found the ttrpg Fel See Incident much more satisfying than the Aerb version. No, not satisfying, it was horrible. But it was exactly what the story had been building it up to be, for 1 million plus words, and that's quite an accomplishment. Whereas the Fel Seed of Aerb.... I think the problem is scope creep? When the stakes get Too High and the antagonists (or protagonists, for that matter) get Too Powerful my brain just gives up and I disengage. Like "sure, whatever, just tell me who wins". Whereas the ttrpg version, and the real world-level drama around it, felt horribly plausible.

I did like "we'll win the second time because, if Joon had gotten a second chance at the game, he would have let the players win." That was a nice bit of narrative reinforcement/article of faith.

 I love the Long Stairs. It's almost enough to make me think I should give SCP a more serious look, but I'm still worried the horror will be Too Scary for me. (And don't get me wrong I would hate to play a ttrpg campaign in it... actually, maybe it wouldn't be worse than usual? I could just follow the RDP instructions instead of my usual choice paralysis. well, depends on how often they come up. I probably wouldn't like having to make new characters constantly b/c they keep dying.) But like when Juniper wished they could've stayed in the labyrinth and explored the other cultures living there, I was right there with him.

The final reveal of Uther/Arthur..... hmmm, complicated feelings. On the one hand, ugh! why couldn't he just apologize, and admit to being terrible!! Well, he kinda did later... to Juniper, after they'd spent a long time rebuilding camaraderie and basically giving each other a pass for the horrible shit each considered the other to have done. And that was depressingly realistic. Well, idk that anything in my life compares (fortunately) but the most serious, scary arguments in my life have mostly gone like that.

Juniper and Arthur's ultimate goodbye felt appropriate, even cathartic. Raven and Bethel didn't get anything comparable though. Just Uther brushing them off (or in Ravens case saying "I understand this is hard for you but you've got to suck it up", basically). Which, yeah the world ain't fair. It wasn't justice, though. They didn't get their due like Juniper did.

The final conversation withe the dungeon master was also surprisingly satisfying! I liked it a lot more than when Sophie's World did the same thing. (And I've probably read more books that have the character confront the fact that they're characters in a novel, but that's what came to mind lol).

Maybe b/c it was really funny how the DM told Juniper "you're all characters in a novel I'm writing" and Juniper immediately rejected that explanation as bullshit.

Similarly, the Narrator, as the actual Juniper who was writing WTC

Heaven!Fenn though, felt overly self-indulgent to me. Which is maybe ridiculous, b/c the whole story is an exercise in self-indulgence/self-examination, but i dunno she just didn't work for me

Well, it's pretty hilarious that she was The One Person In Aerb Ever To Go To Heaven, and was always destined to be that one person. Hilarious in a pretty arbitrary way.

Someone in the comments to Ch. 245 or 246 said that "Worth the Candle but Reimer died instead of Arthur" is a great fanfic premise and... i dunno, it would be a massive amount of work, but it's tantalizing to think about. Seems like Aerb would have to be very different with--well, idk, would it be a whole collection of Reimer's characters, since he never seemed as devoted to one of them?-- instead of Uthur Penndraig, but with the themes of putting people on a pedestal, using their tragedies as an excuse to wallow in your own grief and depression and rage, and also the DM presumably having the same goals, I have to wonder how much it would even matter?!

Wow, the void beast was a metaphor for global warming?! kinda kicking myself for not picking up on that. Unless I just forgot about it; this story is really long.

#worth the candle #my own liveblogging #justice for bethel #justice for raven

[angel-zophiel]

Goodnight // Azrael One shot

Azrael x reader: short one-shot fluff

Summary: Its the middle of the night and Jean-Paul decides he wants to annoy you.

Content:

Self indulgent bullshit is what it is

Your fingers smoothly glided through Jean-Paul's hair, the sensation sending a wave of bliss across his scalp. His head was buried in your shoulder as the two of you lay in the other's arms.

"...you trying to swoon me isn't going to change my opinion." He playfully chided, making you giggle at your found deception. For at least 20 minutes now, the two of you had debated about what the best film was, you going with the same one that you've loved for years, and him choosing something so out of left field you wanted to leave him cold and alone just for having the audacity to compare the two.

In reality, however, Jean-Paul didn't care which movie was better. Having never been exposed to very much media growing up, he didn't have much knowledge of 'pop culture' prior to meeting you. And as an adult now, he never got around to watching anything as he day job -as well as the night one - took up most of his free time. The rest he would much rather prefer to spend loitering in bed with you. But when you had firmly sat him down and forced him to watch the film one day so that he would be 'assimilated into society', he was surprised that you were so familiar with it. It really was your favorite and due to that, you weren't able to really keep quiet when the two of you were watching. He didn't mind. In fact, he loved to hear how excited you were that day. So now, using your movie as bait, he dragged you into a little skirmish to hear your passion again, much to your bitter amusement.

"I would never try to manipulate you with affection, Alley. Thats treacherous." You faked offense at the accusation he threw at you, a giddy smile plastered on your face. He knew you knew it was useless, but you had to make sure he recognized what the attempt was trying to do. And that being get your way. Alley chuckled under his breath, the sound lost as his head was laying against your neck. You continued to scratch your nails across his scalp, knowing exactly how much he enjoyed the feeling as he would often lay in your lap for you to do just that. It was cute that you were trying everything you could think of to make him 'see what you knew to be the truth' as you had stated earlier.

With your first attempt to coerce him failed you moved on to his second weakness, praise.

"I just dont understand how such a sad...sad sad sad movie could be so highly regarded by such a strong, handsome," you placed extra emphasis on the word, "smart, gorge-" "Yeah, yeah keep it coming." He laughed, "Dont try to flatter me because you're losing th-"

"Losing!?" You scoffed, your fingers halting in their path. He whined at the loss of contact, "Im losing?" You started to turn away from him, not getting very far before he tightened his grip on you. You both knew you weren't going anywhere, far too comfortable and tired to even put much effort into the action. But you had to get your point across.

"No, no. You win," He conceded, awkwardly reaching for your hand and trying to replicate the motions you had done, you were being difficult though, and pulled away from him, unable to keep your smile concealed, he groaned in response.

"Your movie's better. Way better than-" "Yes, it is." You interrupted, "Yes, now..." he lay back against you, throwing his arm over your chest, and buried himself further in your embrace. Your legs were tangled together, trapping you in the process. The notion made you roll your eyes and laugh as your hand came up and began combing through his hair again, dragging them down his back. He really did do the most at times to be near you and hardly ever shied away from accepting your affection. It was intoxicating to him. Any chance to be near you, he gladly and swiftly jumped on. Be it sweetly asking you to shower with him because he was lonely, or hell, depending on how bad the wound was if he ever came home injured and you were still awake he always asked if you would tend to it because he loved feeling your hands on him. This however was not something you were happy with as you would rather him go to the hospital with some of the injuries he sported, than struggle his way to your place just because he "felt better when you did it".

You adjusted to get a little more comfortable, but with him nearly enveloping your entire form, you really weren't able to move much at all. It didn't matter much though, he seemed to have an effect on you that totally relaxed you. He always has. Many nights you would struggle to fall asleep, something in you not allowing your brain to stop and rest. But whenever he would finally slip in through your window and join you in bed, you would instantly doze off. It was a blessing you had become far too dependent on.

Jean-Paul kissed your neck, drawing out a lazy grin from you.

You couldn't see his face with the way you both were positioned, but you could feel the smile he had against your skin.

"...goodnight."

----------------

I violently love the idea of calling this little man 'Alley', it keeps me goin at night

#azrael #jean paul valley #dc #azrael x reader #jean-paul valley #batman imagine #dc imagine #Azrael imagine #jeanpaul valley x reader #no beta we die like jason todd #really only wrote this bc im tired and about to go to sleep #the demon that haunts me likes to whisper sweet nothings in my ear #and theyre always about Jean Paul #i cant take much more

[sammysdewysensitiveeyes]

"I wasn't like that at all, and neither were any of the children I grew up with."

“What, back in the Stone Ages?  Had they not invented crying yet?”

“I’m just saying that child could make more valuable use of its time.  Or the parents could perhaps enforce a little discipline.” 

“It’s a baby, Sha – I mean, Mr. Rockefeller.”  Sebastian’s undercover name was rather obvious and self-indulgent.  “Maybe you came out of the womb with an engineering degree, but crying is all that most babies know how to do.” 

“Yes, human babies are sadly underdeveloped compared to their animal counterparts,” Sebastian said.  “But, Mr. Hemsworth – “ Perhaps Pyro’s undercover name was just a little bit self-indulgent as well.  “-that’s no excuse for its parents subjecting us to its demanding shrieks.”

“Welcome to commercial air-travel, Rockefeller.  Put on your noise-cancelling headphones and quit whining.”  Pyro put in his ear-buds as he spoke.  Some nice classic rock could block out both the actual baby, and the massive side-burned businessman toddler sitting next to him. 

Pyro wasn’t entirely sure why the mission required Sebastian and him flying in on a commercial airliner like humans – maybe something to do with establishing their cover, maybe the Council was punishing Sebastian for something and Pyro was just caught in the crossfire.  But he didn’t care.  Pyro had done a lot of traveling in his youth, including hours on packed trains and buses with standing room only, some very dodgy small flights, and some even dodgier ships where he’d worked his way across the ocean as a crew member.  Getting to sit and drink a beer while choosing between watching some recent flick or working on a book chapter sounded just fine.  Even with the usual inconveniences of screaming children and cramped seats and someone in front of them releasing Geneva convention level farts.   

Sebastian “Multiple Private Jets” Shaw was clearly having a more difficult time.  Pyro could see the man’s clenched fists out of the corner of his eye.  Not Pyro’s problem.  Pryo was gonna watch Crimson Peak and hope they didn’t edit out Tom Hiddleston’s bare ass. 

He was also going to ignore the child that started kicking the back of their seats, just like he ignored Sebastian Shaw’s grinding teeth. 

Ten minutes into the movie, it became Pyro’s problem, as Sebastian stood up and began to yell.  Pyro took the time to heave a dep sigh before yanking the ear-buds out.

“-most undisciplined, spoiled, little monster that has ever been shat out into this world, and if you do not cease swinging your legs into my seat, child, I shall break them – “

The boy had started to bawl.  The mother had stood up to start shouting back while a stewardess was rushing down the aisle.  The baby across from them woke up and began to wail again.

“Rockefeller, sit down!  We don’t want to be causing a scene, yeah?”  Pyro yanked on Sebastian’s coat, but it was like trying to pull down a Sequoia.

“Sir, please calm down – “ The stewardess started.

“Calm down?”  Sebastian thundered.  “I am trapped in this metal tube with the absolute worst dregs of humanity, like this future spring break rapist – “ he gestured at the boy behind them, “ – and this barely sentient sack of shit and noise pollution – “ the mother clutched the baby to her chest with a look of outrage, “- and whichever one of you two – “ he now pointed at the passengers just in front of them, “- is committing toxic war crimes with your asshole, do NOT sit there and feign innocence sir or madam, I know it is one of you, get your basic bodily functions under control, or at least have the courage to own it – “  

“Sir, I’m gonna need you to sit down and put your seatbelt back on,” said another stewardess, this one clearly the senior and in no mood for passenger bullshit.

“Or what?  You’ll throw me off the plane?  God knows, oblivion would be preferable to this living hell of – “

“We’ll be landing shortly, now please – “

“Actually, that doesn’t sound like a bad idea,” Sebastian said, suddenly pulling out his phone, and tapping the GPS.  “It looks like we are close enough to our rendezvous point.  And I don’t care to stand in line at customs.”  He shoved aside the two protesting stewardesses, and walked down the aisle.

“Sh – Rockefeller!  What the hell do you think you’re doing?”  Pyro was on his feet now.

“The same thing you usually do, Mr. Hemsworth.  I’m causing a scene and leaving someone else to clean up the mess.  Have fun with that.” 

And then Sebastian opened the emergency door.  The younger stewardess, who was closest, screamed as she fell forward towards the opening.  Shaw easily caught her with one hand, and flung her back into the arms of Pyro and the older stewardess, who pushed her into a seat. 

There was another scream, although Pyro wasn’t sure who it belonged to, as Sebastian calmly jumped.  Pyro managed to pull the door closed with the help of the older stewardess, cursing all the while.  Bloody Shaw.  He’d survive the fall, unless Pyro got lucky and the man was impaled on a telephone pole or a helpful weathervane.  Meanwhile, Pyro would be left trying to stitch their cover story back together, no doubt getting pulled aside and interrogated for hours the instant the plane touched down, and Shaw would be so fucking smug about it.

Pyro looked up, and realized that virtually the entire plane was staring at him and the now closed door.  He shrugged, and said the only thing that popped into his mind:

“No ticket!”

OOC: Why yes, Pyro has seen Indiana Jones, why do you ask? 

[neroli9]

hi, your fanfic is very cool, i was lucky that i stumbled upon it this summer, if i found it at the beginning, it would be crazy to wait so long (let it be worth it) this is the first time for me when the plot part is more interesting than intimate , although all these interactions between sans and the reader are undoubtedly beautiful.

I'm wondering if you have any other plans for your future as a writer after you finish your current fanfic?

Aw, thank you so much! 🥰

I am planning on writing original works once I'm done writing APJFM. However, although I have some ideas on what I want to write, I don't actually know what I'll decide on. My head is too filled up with APJFM to write anything else just now. I get so obsessed with things that I can only handle one obsession at a time!

APJFM came about when I sat down, thought about exactly what I wanted to read at that point in time, and made it happen. (I never intended to publish it. I promised myself I could write whatever melodramatic, explicit, inane, self-indulgent bullshit I wanted and no one would ever read it but me.) So I believe that I'll finish APJFM, I'll clear my head, I'll sit down and I'll think about what I most want to read.

And then I'll make it happen.

[hiccanna-tidbits]

HICCANNA MONTH WEEK 2, DAY 2 - WAYS TO SAY “I LOVE YOU”: LOUD, SO EVERYONE CAN HEAR COLLEGE AU

*Collapses into exhausted heap* IT’S DONE IT’S DONE IT’S BARELY IN TIME FOR THE END OF HICCANNA MONTH BUT IT’S DONE

Y’all git HYPED, because this is my first-ever crack at Established Relationship Hiccanna!!! Get ready for some of that sweet sweet “Anna is insecure about ‘not standing out’ in any super obvious way but Hiccup reassures her in the most blunt but effective way possible” trope that I’ve been meaning to really delve into since forever :D I love how he’d be really calm and patient with her when she needs it but also would straight up say “Uhhhh that’s bullshit???” when she starts talking bad about herself. Like YES king say it how it IS :O He’s also just. Genuinely confused, like??? HOW is it possible for people see his girlfriend as any less awesome than he sees her??? Including (and ESPECIALLY) his girlfriend herself??? Like it straight up Does Not Compute, Hiccup.exe has stopped working, please try again later

Yes, Insecure Anna is just as worthy of love as Confident and Self-Assured Anna and if anyone wants to dispute this and act like she doesn’t “deserve” Hiccup because she hasn’t totally conquered her self-loathing tendencies yet (but she’s working on it!!!) then I will throw ALL the hands with you I stg

Fair warning that this ended up being a shamelessly self-indulgent, projection-filled ventfic, because I needed an avenue through which to bitch about a very specific issue XD Anyways, to all the girlies who have ever sat in awkward, uncomfortable silence while your friends all talk super excitedly about some piece of media you’ve never seen/weren’t that into and you feel like you have nothing to add and also your friends aren’t bothering to bring you into the conversation...this one’s for you!!! :D

Also, not me using Anna to deal with my ADHD issues again XD Sadly, that classic shit attention span extends to literally everything, not just boring and lame school and work stuff. I can zone out during practically anything, even the most interesting movie/show/RPG game. Like I’m not bored, my brain just needed a smoke break and now all my friends are gonna think I’m stupid af for it ^^; Fun times! Also not me writing Hiccup reassuring Anna the same way I wish someone would reassure me--

Apologies in advance for potentially OOC Jack...I needed someone for Anna to squabble with a bit, so I upped his Little Shit tendencies just a bit XD In my defense, I DO think given whatever the Modern AU equivalent of “300 years of loneliness” is (probably something mental illness related), Jack would be drawn to more dark, “broody” media because he would feel like it better reflected his experiences. Anna, meanwhile, is like “To hell with this bleak grimdark shit, why would I watch something that just makes me even more miserable???” I do have them bicker a little For The Drama, but it’s mostly all in good fun XD

Not me writing fics set in winter/involving snow in some way to combat the horrible heat wave I’ve been getting where I live XD Physically I am braving 90+ degree weather, but mentally I am rolling around in a snowdrift.

Fic under the cut!!!

***

9:40 pm. The numbers briefly light up Anna’s phone screen as a text from Elsa slides in.

Sorry I couldn’t make it tonight. Hope you’re having fun!

Anna twirls another mozzarella stick through her marinara sauce, watching the viscous red liquid seep into the gaps in the crumbly, golden-orange crust. With a little imagination, it could be a very crispy, basil-speckled submarine being sucked into a massive blood whirlpool. Now that’s a movie she would see—provided the blood looks fake enough, anyways. (She does not go to the cinema to get nauseous and uneasy, thank you very much—school does that plenty enough as it is.)

She is having fun. She’s having immense fun. How could she not be? She’s eating delicious empty calories, she’s surrounded by her best friends, and Hiccup is turning 19 in about an hour and a half. She’s at her best friend’s—pardon her, her new boyfriend’s—birthday outing and she is having the time of her life.

Or at least she should be.

It was an event they had all been planning for months. The new sci-fi thriller, Cold Life, was all Hiccup could talk about. An ambitious project based on a comic book series Anna had never heard of (as so many sci-fi thrillers were), the plot centered around a ragtag group of time travelers trying to prevent the heat death of the multiverse while also not causing too many timeline overlaps and unraveling reality. So you know. Very low stakes.

They made a movie night out of it, buying tickets a week in advance and surprising Hiccup with reserved seats in the back of an iMax theater. They bustled their way in and paired off, as they so often did, organizing by who was most comfortable whispering and joking under their breath to who. Anna watched the movie eating popcorn with one hand and holding Hiccup’s with the other (she’s still getting used to being allowed to do that), and now she’s sitting in a sparkly blue plastic diner booth, delicately picking at her food in such a way to make it last as long as possible.

It isn’t that she’s not hungry. She’s always some degree of hungry. In a world where she was her most authentic self, the chicken Florentine panini, the mozzarella stick appetizer, the onion rings, and the honey mustard sauce would be gone within minutes of being delivered. The reason they are all still on her plate in some capacity is because they’re keeping her busy enough to not look���

Well, busy enough to not look like she shouldn’t be there.

She looks up for the first time in a while, tearing off the end of the marinara-soaked cheese strip as she scans the diner booth. The lively conversations—the same type that usually give her some degree of comfort and belonging—are starting to agitate her.

They shouldn’t be. The topics are innocent enough. Merida and Astrid are raving about how epic the movie’s fight choreography was, occasionally ripping off pieces of honey chipotle wings with their teeth for emphasis. Rapunzel and Moana are wrapped up in an animated discussion about all sorts of visual imagery and motifs and other such things, trying to meander their way toward a conclusion about the meaning of the recurring pink glow on the horizon. Flynn and the twins are rating the explosions (of which there were many, despite explosions being impossible in the oxygen-devoid environment of outer space) with a surprising amount of thought. Mavis is spearheading a deep dive with Tooth and Johnny into the psyche of a character Anna found rather irritating. Finally, next to Anna, Hiccup and Jack are arguing over themes, and whether Cold Life is making a statement for or against the idea of inevitability.

Usually when they go out with friends like this, one of Hiccup’s hands is always reserved for Anna to hold. They’re still getting used to being together, and sometimes Anna (or both of them, for all she knows) needs a reminder it’s real. For years and years it was only ever friends—Anna gazing longingly when his back was turned, drawing hearts around their names in her notebook margin and covering them up when anyone looked. Wondering how he’d feel wrapped around her, or pressed up against her while they slept. Daydreaming about flooding his locker with candy boxes on valentine’s day. She’s still in shock from bumbling her sorry way through asking him out and him actually saying yes.

Yeah, I’ll go see Black Hole Tyrannosaur with you. You want to grab ice cream afterwards? Absolutely fucking surreal.

Black Hole Tyrannosaur, for what it’s worth, was very good. The concept of going through a wormhole and finding a planet containing several extinct animals who had fallen through gaps in space-time sounded ridiculous, but the practical effects were solid and the characters funny enough to make it a delightful ride.

They’d held hands across the seat, sprouting a tradition of linking one pair of hands and using the other to share popcorn. Anna glances at Hiccup’s hands now, one making slicing motions to indicate how distinctly the movie laid out that butterfly effect-style change is always possible and the other clutching the side of his head the way it always did when he was frustrated.

Usually he can convey his points well enough with one-handed gestures, but today is his birthday. He deserves to utilize the full power of elaborate, sweeping hand motions to discuss Cold Life. She’ll let the hand-holding rule slide, if only for one day.

Anna takes a long sip of the cookies and cream milkshake she and Hiccup are sharing, and feels a deep pit start to settle in her stomach.

It isn’t that she didn’t like the movie. It had some interesting concepts, and it entertained her well enough. She rarely got bored, per se.

It’s just that it’s one of those movies where you have to have your whole brain turned on. Whirring at 100% capacity the entire time, or you’ll miss about 16 important details. And then later details build off those details, and later details build off those ones. It’s an endless cycle of “if you zone out for a few minutes, you’re fucked.” And then when you try to play mental catch-up, you miss yet another plot-relevant piece of info.

Hiccup loves this kind of stuff. He loves sinking his fingers into complicated things and picking them apart to see how they work. He has an eye for detail that she could never dream of, and a knack for piecing them together like some kind of mental jigsaw puzzle. He’s probably the smartest person she knows. (Still a little shocking to her that he found her to be anywhere near his supreme Level of Brain.)

It's not that Anna isn’t smart. She can usually follow Hiccup fine when they’re chatting about this or that or the other, discussing pressing concerns like the future of AI or whether single-biome planets like the ones in Star Wars could actually exist. Not to mention she’s beaten him in chess. Several times.

It’s just that her brain is constantly running on full power mode. It’s the only way to keep up with her classes, no matter how wired and anxious it leaves her 24/7. And nowadays, even during what’s technically her downtime, her poor brain is spluttering and overheating like a computer that no one ever shuts down.

She couldn’t keep it on full power for an entire 2 and a half hour film even if she wanted to. It always flutters away mid-movie, demanding rest and leaving her at the mercy of shallow, mediocre movie takes developed by an Anna Runeardsen only half there.

And now, between her failure to keep track of Cold Life’s many timelines, her merciless confusion at the vague symbolism, and her frustration with mean characters everyone else seemed to think were fascinating and deep, Anna suspects she arrived at a very surface-level and mediocre take indeed. From what she overhears of the babble around her, she wouldn’t have anything to add—or worse, would cause a stir by accidentally disagreeing with something everyone else is in solid accord about.

All right, no more lying to herself. This sucks. Never in her life has she felt so painfully boring.

She considers trying to butt into Flynn and the twins’ conversation—how hard could it be to have a discussion about explosions? When she checks on them again, though, they’re packing up. From what Anna overhears, Flynn is apparently taking Ruffnut and Tuffnut to some monster truck show, so they can’t stay all night.

Do they even have monster truck shows in this city? If they do, Anna sure wasn’t aware. She wonders if the three of them are bored and faking an excuse to leave, although Ruffnut’s enthusiastic speculation about which unlucky car would be crushed the flattest seems to indicate otherwise.

Anna scans the table again, assessing her remaining options. Rapunzel and Moana have moved on to talking about some weird little piano leitmotif Anna completely missed. Mavis’s miniature discussion circle is now analyzing the main love interest, a rather nasty woman who used her tragic backstory of finding out she was an “accident” and her general bitterness over being infertile as justification to implode an entire timeline.

Her eyes pause on Jack and Hiccup, now discussing the “brilliance” of the ending. Though they seem to be disagreeing over what details they did and didn’t like, the general consensus was that the entire finale was very, very good.

Jack is being particularly insufferable about it, seemingly incapable of shutting up about what a mad genius Directorman Whatshisface is. During his spiel, he seems to be on a mission to dip his fries in every available substance on the table—honey mustard, ketchup, Merida’s chipotle aioli, Hiccup’s side of Ranch, the table sugar jar, someone’s abandoned spare BBQ sauce, Hiccup’s soda, Merida’s lemonade, his own mint chocolate shake. He barely seems fazed by even the most disturbing of combinations.

“Hey Jack,” Anna pipes up. “Which one tastes the best?”

“Huh?” He looks at her, blinking in confusion before he realizes what he’s subconsciously been doing.

“The ranch,” he says cheekily. “No question.”

And just like that, he’s back to gushing about the poetic cinema of the last 20 minutes of Cold Life. So much for getting him to change the subject to something she could talk about without making an idiot of herself.

“Okay, yeah, yeah, I get it, you think it’s brilliant that all their efforts were for nothing. I want to hear what Anna thought.”

Anna isn’t sure how long Jack has been going on when she hears Hiccup say her name. “Huh?”

Hiccup turns and smiles at her. “I want your input. I know those like…hopeless, depressing endings movies do sometimes aren’t your cup of tea, so I was wondering how this one fared.”

Anna blinks, eyes widening with shock. “You remembered?”

“Uh, I’m in love with you?” He looks at her like she’s completely lost her marbles. “Of course I remembered.”

Anna’s entire face grows hot, probably turning redder than the marinara sauce.

It isn’t like they haven’t exchanged “I love you”s. They’re six months in. Anna dropped an “I love you” after four (although rest assured, she knew long before they started dating—she just didn’t want to scare the poor boy off right after she somehow managed to woo him. Somehow.). He said it back after only a little contemplation (which she considered a win, from the guy who overanalyzes everything), soft and slow under a blanket fort. They’d been huddling for warmth and telling ghost stories, and when Anna accidentally came up with one so alarming she freaked herself out, she took a break from the spooky tale marathon to confess her undying love.

So yes. Factually speaking, he loves her. She loves him. It has been stated aloud many, many times at this point. Not exactly a surprise.

But every time he says it, it still feels like one.

Maybe it’s because she still, even after all this time, worries she doesn’t deserve it. Maybe it’s because she’s not used to people loving her and being so upfront and straightforward about it. Maybe it’s because the mere concept of someone she loves reciprocating the sentiment with equal or greater intensity will never not shock her.

Anna has never had reason to hold a particularly high opinion of herself. The idea of anyone thinking so much of her is still a little hard to grasp.

She’s never been first-in-line for anyone’s heart, or been anyone’s top choice. But now, with Hiccup looking at her like that, she can believe she’s his.

He isn’t exactly talking quietly, either. Hiccup has never been particularly loud—much to the chagrin of many of his more rowdy, boisterous family members, who always complain he’s no fun at parties. While not exactly soft-spoken, he didn’t often care to raise his voice and preferred a tone that could devolve into inconspicuous mutters if needed. Generally speaking, Hiccup cared quite a bit more about the cleverness of the things he said rather than the volume at which he said them.

And yet here he is, announcing that he’s in love with her so noisily that several of their friends look up in surprise. His enunciation leaves no room for argument, either—the oft-present incoherent mumbles and splutters have apparently gone on sabbatical.

He’s speaking with an open confidence Anna doesn’t often hear.

“I mean…I, uh…”

Anna isn’t so lucky.

“Good, right?” Jack cuts her off, mouth full of French fry, before she can stumble very far. “There’s something so beautifully ironic about them ripping themselves apart hopping between universes and sacrificing their own timeline versions of themselves…and then their plan still doesn’t work. And for a second there, you really thought everything was going to be fine! Like the way they set it up to trick you was brilliant—”

“I don’t necessarily think—”

As usual, it’s difficult to get a word in edgewise once Jack is off on a rant. “Kinda underlies this idea that you can try really, really hard, and still fail. That people with the best intentions can do everything right and still get fucked over. Like, that’s just life, you know?” He punctuates the statement with a bite of an onion ring dipped in tabasco sauce.

Anna frowns. “That doesn’t really—”

“And the twist of the heroes being punished when they fucked up, but the villains ultimately getting rewarded? Solid.” The bite of onion ring is not nearly long enough to slow Jack down. “I never see movies ballsy enough to flat-out show that evil rich people can buy their way out of trouble. At least not without some kind of ‘karma’ coming for them. Which it doesn’t in the real world, since karma isn’t really a thing.”

“Seems a little bleak, don’t you think?” By some miracle, Hiccup manages to cut in. “This idea that any efforts to spearhead positive change in society are ultimately doomed.”

“That’s not really the point, though. It’s more about how all societies will eventually end, and trying to prolong the inevitable is a waste of your own existence—”

“Will they, though?” Hiccup interrupts Jack a little more boldly as they fall into their usual movie-arguing rhythm. “I mean, no future time travelers have come from the end of the universe and told us for sure.”

“It’s likely.” Jack takes a noisy sip of his green-and-brown milkshake. “Entropy ultimately prevails and all that.”

“But there’s no point.” Anna finds herself shoving her way in before she can second-guess it. “I mean, like…what’s the purpose of showing us a story where nothing gets accomplished in the end? What am I supposed to take away from that?”

For a moment, Jack looks surprised before the usual air of self-assurance returns. “No, no, I think you’re misunderstanding,” he says around a mouthful of fry. “There’s not supposed to be a point for the characters. The point for us is that there’s no point for them. It’s kind of showing how everything we do is meaningless in the face of a cold, uncaring universe.” He grins, like he just put in the last piece of a particularly tricky jigsaw puzzle.

Ah, so this is the answer that she’s been missing for so long. Complete and utter nihilism.

“You seem oddly sanguine about all this,” Hiccup notes. Jack only smirks, raising his milkshake like he’s making a toast.

“What can I say? I’m just speaking the facts.”

Anna felt one hand clench into a fist under the table, the other starting to whittle away at the wood beside her placemat with green fingernails. It’s hard to tell if he’s actually that smug, or if he’s just trying to get a rise out of her. Maybe both.

Probably the latter. He’s not above causing a stir to get the attention on him. She’s not so different from him that way—dismissed and overlooked for much of her life, always wanting to be seen.

Still, there are other ways to go about it without talking over her. Or her boyfriend, for that matter.

“I guess you aren’t wrong,” Hiccup says, though he sounds resigned.

Jack looks briefly appalled that that was even considered a possibility. “Psh. Of course I’m not. Seriously great ending, though. I was more impressed than I’ve been in a while.”

“Yeah, kept you on your toes.” Hiccup doesn’t sound quite as enthusiastic as before. “Certainly couldn’t say it’s predictable, that’s for sure.”

“Really subverted all the stuff you—”

“Well, I thought the ending was stupid.”

She surprises herself with how ferocious she sounds.

As so often occurs, the entire table happens to go quiet the second she calls attention to herself.  Her friends all turn to stare, and she suddenly wonders if she’s made a grave mistake.

Maybe she should take it back. Force an anxious laugh, say she was kidding. Let Jack have his fifteen minutes of movie analysis fame while she goes back to hiding behind the remains of her panini. Maybe she shouldn’t stir up controversy and strife at her very own boyfriend’s birthday outing.

Then something warm settles over her fingers, still digging nervous trenches in the wooden table. She feels a thick hand curl around her own, and some of the tension trickles down her back and out of her body.

A couple quick squeezes, subtle but unmistakable. It’s a small gesture, but Anna knows exactly what it means.

I’ve got your back.

He’s taken to doing it when the old, rusty metaphorical springs that make up her body get coiled a bit too tight. It helps drain out the worst of the anxiety, social or otherwise, and get her bent back into place.

She glances up. Hiccup is giving her a soft look, encouraging and perhaps even a little…eager.

Right. He’s in love with her. He’s probably not lying about that. If he’s in love with her, he’ll probably want to hear her opinions. That logically tracks, right?

He gives her a small nod, as if to say go on.

And so she does. No turning back now—she has to commit to the bit, at least.

“So nothing they do will ever be able to save the multiverse.” She crosses her arms. “They try, and they fail, and they go back in time, and they try, and they fail again, and they keep doing that until they dissolve into the space-time continuum and cease to be, blah blah blah. It’s boring. It’s the same objective with the same result every single time.”

“Well, yeah, but the thing that makes it entertaining is the variety of ways in which they fuck up.” Jack smirks.

“Sure, the first few times. Then eventually it’s like…okay, is this going anywhere? Is it gonna show me some epic thing that makes all of this worth spending three hours getting my brain sliced up and handed to me? And then, to top it all off, you get Clinical Depression: Movie Finale Edition!”

She spreads her hands wide as she says it, mouth hanging open in mock wonder.

“I still don’t think you’re getting it.” Jack’s smirk turns to a frown. “It’s not really about some big dramatic reveal. In the real world, you don’t always get to know the how or the why of things. They just happen.”

There’s a note of bitterness in his voice, like he has quite a few of his own unanswered questions. A predicament that apparently he wants to see reflected in media everywhere so as to not feel alone.

Anna almost feels sorry for him until he continues talking.

“I mean…come on. Not every ending can be this cheerful ‘friendship and teamwork save the day’ thing. Anyways, it wouldn’t make sense for the story. If you pay attention to the plot structure, like Hiccup was saying earlier, it’s more narratively satisfying to end on a bleak note.” Jack sips his milkshake smugly before popping another handful of fries in his mouth. Hiccup looks away, eyeing the table guiltily. “Honestly, I think more movies could use endings where—”

“Oh, shut the fuck up, Jack.”

Jack freezes mid-chew, the end of a French fry poking from his lips. The entire table turns to stare at Anna again.

She glances over the shocked faces of her friends, suddenly feeling mortified. Jack looks like he got smacked with a mallet.

“Oh, gosh.” She shrinks back into her seat, studying the few bites left of her panini. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped. Geez. That was so rude, I—”

“Are you kidding?!” Hiccup’s voice cuts in, and a hearty hand slaps her back. “Annihilate him, babe.”

She looks up to see the shock has faded from Jack’s eyes to be replaced with…an almost playful glint. He’s not mad, she realizes. Not even annoyed. More intrigued than anything.

He’s challenging her. Which is good, as he is, from this moment forward, essentially consenting to being annihilated.

“I can’t deal with you right now.” She leans back in her seat, letting out the most exaggerated groan possible. “You’re so ridiculous. ‘Ooooooh, look at me, I’m such a deep and profound movie where everything sucks and nothing gets any better! I’m gonna win an Oscar because the movie awards committee loves pain and suffering and they think the only way to be respectable is to wallow in your own sadness and misery!’ Give me a fucking break. You think I need to be told by some...brainscrewey movie that sometimes things go to shit?! My life has been going to shit for years. And I don’t think I’m the only one. I mean…we’re all kind of fucked, right? Not like our majors are gonna make us more than pennies.”

She looks around at her friends, all studying liberal arts or humanities or whatever other field that was absolutely not hiring. Hiccup was maybe the only exception, with his path toward an engineering bachelor’s.

They stare back at her, eyes growing even wider. Apparently the perpetual optimist talking with absolutely 0 filter whatsoever isn’t something you see every day.

“The Adderall doesn’t always work, y’know.” She knows she’s oversharing now, but she doesn’t care. “Neither does the Zoloft. Or whatever else I try. I’m panickey, I’m stressed all the time, I pretend I have a promising future to keep myself sane but I really, really don’t. I see the world and the economy and the environment and all this stuff like…falling apart around us, and I need to delude myself into believing maybe everything’s going to be okay or I’ll lose it. And you think a movie about people giving their all to prevent a disaster and failing miserably every time is what anyone needs?!”

There’s a short pause before Jack speaks up again, this time lifting a finger insightfully.

“But narratively speaking—”

“Well, fuck the narrative!” Anna starts frantically waving her hands around, copying Hiccup’s over-the-top gestures in her desperation to get her point across. “Maybe if its message is this shitty ‘nothing you do will ever matter’ thing, then the narrative is what needs to change, not get an equally-shitty ending to go with it. I mean, last I checked, people watch movies for fun, and like…who enjoys feeling hopeless, crushing despair?! How am I supposed to leave a movie theater feeling satisfied and like…generally okay about the state of the world when none of the good guys get a happy ending, and they all died for nothing?”

“Arlin got a happy ending—”

“Fuck her too!” Before Anna knows it, she’s picking up an onion ring drenched in honey mustard and chucking it across the table. Drops of yellow goo fly onto her friends’ faces, and the fried vegetable lands on Jack’s cheek with a wet splat. He peels it off his face, eyeing it with distaste.

“She’s the worst,” Anna goes on emphatically. “Look, we all have problems, but you don’t see me going around and destroying timelines over it. Sorry, but I’d be different. Also, can we talk about how sexist it is that only the ‘traditional’ lady who wants babies gets a happy ending?! Bet they thought I wouldn’t notice that. Ha!” She smirks triumphantly, ripping off a piece of a mozzarella stick. “I see how it is. They think the one who wants to be a mom is the pure and virtuous and innocent one by default, so she’s the one who gets to live. But I see right through their bullshit, and I think Karis and Suret should have lived! Everyone else can die, I guess, if the plot really needs them to, but give us someone to root for, you know?”

Hiccup whistles, nudging Anna playfully. “That’s my girl!”

Anna gives him a sidelong glance, sure she’s blushing an embarrassing amount. “I’m your girl?”

He blinks. “I’d think so, unless you’re only dating me as a friend. In which case it might be necessary for us to have a talk about the nature of our relationship.”

“Did Arlin get a happy ending, though?” Moana asks. “I mean, she got stuck in that eternal time loop. And wasn’t the implication it was just a fake dream dimension?”

Rapunzel is temporarily distracted from their conversation, watching Jack with Merida and Astrid in a sort of morbid fascination. He pops the earlier-chucked onion ring in his mouth before beginning an elaborate routine to lick up the honey mustard splashed across his cheeks.

Anna shrugs. “Happy comparatively. It was still better than what everyone else got.”

“She had growth, though, man,” Johnny pipes up. Casual but insistent, in the way he has a habit of being. “At least she’s less of a jerk than she was in the beginning. So she kinda deserves it.”

“And Arlin’s psyche is so interesting!” Mavis stretches out her fingers, grinning. “Like…why did she feel so incomplete without kids? She was super well-loved by everyone for like…her whole life, so it’s not like she didn’t have a support system. And she was smart enough and rich enough to basically become whatever she wanted, so…why was she gunning so hard for her own kids? I mean, she could’ve easily been a pediatrician or a teacher or a social worker or something, if she wanted them around so badly. But she was so insistent on being a mom, so like…what is her deal?”

Before she can stop herself, Anna lets out a puff of frustration. “To be honest, it was hard for me to care when she spent most of her screentime being an asshole. Like, I know ‘unlikable main characters’ are the new fad or whatever, but they’re just…draining to watch.”

Mavis gives her a puzzled look. “Really? I love picking them apart. Trying to figure out how they work.” Johnny and Tooth nod emphatically.

Anna frowns. “So you don’t ever get like…aggravated, having to see somebody be a huge jerk over and over?”

Tooth shakes her head, rainbow-dyed hair forming a bright blur around the dark skin of her face. “Not if it’s fiction, no. I mean I would assume any reasonable person would know not to emulate that kind of thing, right?”

“But it’s not like…disheartening?”

Johnny shrugs. “Honestly makes me appreciate real actual nice people more.”

She hears a shifting in the chair next to her, and glances over to see Hiccup turning back toward them. For a time, it seems he was distracted by Jack’s show. The other boy has, to the best of his ability, cleaned the honey mustard off his face, and is now sipping his milkshake and watching Anna—the contrarian of the day, apparently—with great interest.

Hiccup opens his mouth to speak, and Anna preemptively winces. She can only imagine how inane and childish the love of her life will find her views on unlikable characters. Honestly, if this many people are looking at her like she’s nuts, she probably deserves for him to make a snide comment—

“Anything else I can get for you kids? A dessert, maybe?”

A new voice interrupts before Hiccup can realize Anna’s movie takes are probably horrendously wrong. Their waitress is standing by the booth, notepad in hand.

“Oh! Ah—” Hiccup looks down at his lap nervously, and Anna sees his eyes drift to the wallet in his back pocket. His brow creases, a note of sadness drifting onto his face.

She knows what he’s thinking. Even before they started going out, it became second nature for her to tell.

He thinks he can’t afford this.

They’re all broke college students, some more comfortable asking their parents for handouts than others. Hiccup’s the stingiest with money, with his need to prove to his dad he’s independent ensuring he spends nearly every spare moment working on-campus jobs and every paycheck only on rent and essentials. He doesn’t have much left over on less than minimum wage.

But it’s also his birthday.

“Oh—oh no, I think we’ll be okay—”

“I’ve got it.” Anna pulls out her duck-shaped purse and nearly slams it down on the table. “Are you still doing the February special? The one where you sub out chocolate ice cream for strawberry and you get a discount?”

She read about it online when they first picked the place. Something to do with having leftover strawberry-flavored stuff from not as many people ordering Valentine’s desserts as the diner planned, Anna guesses. Today’s technically the first day of March, since Hiccup’s “actual” birthday comes only once every 4 years, but perhaps it’s close enough.

The waitress nods, and Anna launches into the dessert order.

“Can we get a banana split? February special, so two strawberry scoops and a vanilla scoop. Extra caramel and hot fudge sauce. Oh! And, uh…I don’t know if pineapple’s in season this time of year, but if you have any…could you sprinkle a bit on the top?”

After the waitress leaves, Anna turns to see Hiccup gawking at her. “What?”

“I love you.”

He says it with so much force that Anna’s surprised the table doesn’t shake. Several of their friends smirk, and Anna feels her cheeks burn.

“Oh, stop it.” She rolls her eyes, smiling nervously. “It’s your birthday! You deserve nice things.”

“But…that thing costs like $10!” he spluttered, waving his hands around. “Plus tax! And…you remembered I like caramel sauce?”

It’s her turn to stare at him like he’s been claimed by insanity. “I’m in love with you? Duh.”

He dissolves into incoherent stutters, blushing like a madman, and Anna smirks triumphantly.

If her doing a nice gesture can evaporate his dignity this quickly, then perhaps he isn’t exaggerating about the high regard he views her in.

“But back to Arlin,” she says, sitting up a little straighter. “Was it just me or was the scene where she goes on and on to Cyndilla about how she wants a baby completely out of nowhere? It was so annoying—”

“You sure you’re not just projecting because you don’t want any babies?” Jack asks, cutting her off as he slurps annoyingly at his milkshake.

Anna narrows her eyes. “Say that again and I’ll use you as a projectile missile.”

Merida snorts out a laugh, giving Anna an approving nod across the table. “Drag him, lass! Ah swear, someone’s got tae.”

***

It’s snowing when they walk out into the parking lot.

Hiccup shivers, mouth no doubt still feeling the last traces of his birthday sundae. Smiling softly, Anna takes off her puffy magenta jacket and slips it over his shoulders. No trouble getting those skinny arms in the sleeves, though the bottom of the coat hangs a ways above his waist.

He frowns at her. “But aren’t you gonna—”

She pats his arm. “You ate ice cream. You need it more.”

The group is starting to disperse across the curb, finishing up conversations and texting their older friends for rides. No one, save maybe Jack and Rapunzel, seems keen to walk back to the dorms in the snow.

Elsa’s coming to pick Anna up soon. To what Anna’s sure would be the shock of her earlier self, she feels a prick of disappointment. She doesn’t want the night to end.

“I agree with you, by the way,” she murmurs, looping her arms around her boyfriend’s neck. “I think it was pro-inevitability—the movie, I mean. Nothing in the greater timeline changed in any meaningful way—nothing that I noticed, anyhow.”

“Ha!” Hiccup scoffs triumphantly as he wraps an arm around her waist. “I knew it. Jack’s an idiot.”

“But…” She slides a hand into his thick hair, starting to twirl stands around her finger in little circlets. “I also think its entire statement on inevitability was complete bullshit.”

He looks taken aback, leaning away from her. This only presses him farther into her massaging fingers. “What? Really?”

“Yeah, absolutely.” She snickers. “Nothing is inevitable. There’s so many of these like…” She shakes her head. “Chaotic…chance…equation things I could never hope to understand that determine the probability of everything. And as I do understand it, they have to line up just so for literally anything to happen. Saying any cause will only ever produce one specific effect no matter what, and no matter if new outside stuff crops up and complicates everything—which it inevitably will, by the way, because random unexpected shit is always happening—seems…pretty improbable to me? Like, saying you can’t avoid a certain thing when there’s so many factors that have to work together to lead to any like…event…thing, and there’s like a billion other slightly and largely-varying event kinda things possible, acting like one is all special-weshial and can’t be altered no matter what seems kinda stupid.”

“So you’re saying…nothing is inevitable?”

“Yup. Same way nothing is certain-certain.”

“Oh? So not even us falling madly in love?”

Anna scowls at him as her cheeks begin to burn. “Okay, first of all, stop trying to be cute when I’m getting a point across. Second of all, especially that.”

She snorts mockingly, and Hiccup raises an eyebrow. “Care to elaborate? I mean…I had a crush on you for ages. You liked me even longer. Why wouldn’t we have gotten together?”

She rolls her eyes. “Oh, we had all kinds of things working against us. You were so dead convinced I was out of your league for some reason, and I was terrified you’d friendzone me and it would like…totally ruin me. No offense.”

He boyfriend shrugs. “None taken.”

“Point being that it would have been so easy for both of us to just never say anything. And voila! There you have it! No more being in love and making everyone else tell us to get a room.”

She spares a sidelong glance at Merida, who’s currently glaring at them with her tongue stuck out.

“Well, we’d still be in love though, right?” Hiccup says, frowning. “We’d just be a lot more miserable about it?”

“Not necessarily. Maybe one or both of us would meet someone else we were convinced was our soulmate or whatever, and we’d get super obsessed with them. Like, to the point it seemed stupid to like anyone else. Or I’d get frustrated when you put walls up like Elsa did, and I’d stop trying to get through to you. Or you’d hear me fart in class or something, and then decide I was disgusting and never worth considering as a romantic option again.”

He pouts. “You really think I’m that shallow?”

“I doubt it.” She shrugs. “But it’s what I’ve come to expect. You ever hear that ‘never ever ever do anything gross or lame in front of the guy you like or he’ll be turned off and never consider liking you back ever again’ stuff on the internet? Had me watching my every move around you for a long time.”

Hiccup scoffs. “Well, you didn’t need to. I’ve known for years that you snore, and sometimes you stink to high heaven because you forget to put your deodorant on in the morning, and you can get so overwhelmed that you can’t bring yourself to shower for days, and you still have all your toys from when you were a kid, and you love predictable and critically-panned movies because surprises and endless trope inversions stress you out, and you panic when you have to make big decisions or decisions where you think people will hate you for getting it wrong, and guess what? I still love you.”

His volume drifts up on the last sentence, like he’s speaking over a blizzard instead of a light, silent snow shower. Anna catches glimpses of several of their friends turning to look at them.

She tenses against him, sliding her hand out of his hair. Suddenly she’s looking at the snowy concrete, unable to meet her boyfriend’s eyes. “Why do you always say it like that?”

“Say it like what?”

“Like…like loud like that. So like…any old person can hear.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Aren’t you embarrassed?” She finally looks up, grimacing slightly. “I mean—well, it’s just—I guess I wonder—aren’t I embarrassing?”

He looks genuinely perplexed. “…are you? This is news to me.”

“You’re not like…” She bites her lip anxiously, somewhat dreading the blunt answer she knows she’s going to get. Her voice softens, as though if she speaks too quietly for him to hear, she’ll have an excuse to drop the subject and put off learning what has to be a painful truth.

“You’re not embarrassed to be with me? Like…at all?”

To her surprise, his confusion only grows. “In what world would I be embarrassed to be with you?”

“I mean…I’m barely passing college. I’m addicted to Starbucks and posting food pics on Instagram and a bunch of other unoriginal ‘basic girl’ stuff. I can’t go more than a few sentences without accidentally saying something stupid. I’m super gross and can’t take care of myself half the time. My brain overwhelms itself over the dumbest things, and then I can’t function at all. I’m not really on track to become anything like…exceptional. And smart people movies fry my brain, and I probably form a whole host of bad opinions about them while I’m watching them. I’m kind of a failure.”

After a small pause, Hiccup lets out a deep sigh. “Okay, I don’t even know where to start with all that. First of all, half that stuff doesn’t matter to me. That’s what I’ve always told you, and like…let’s be real, I’m not a good liar. If I was bullshitting, you’d know by now.” He shakes his head, smiling fondly. “If any of those things did bother me on any significant level, I can assure you I never would have gone out with you in the first place. I knew you long enough to know what I was getting into, Anna. Secondly…”

He casts a glance behind her, Anna following his gaze. Jack is stuffing snow down a giggling Rapunzel’s shirt, the smug air from earlier long gone. Anna looks back to see Hiccup rolling his eyes.

“I didn’t get most of Cold Life, either. Really, I was humoring Jack more than anything, but it’s no crime not to be able to wrap your head around that clusterfuck of a movie. I was impressed that you were able to analyze as much as you did. Thirdly…”

His hands slide up her waist to firmly grasp her shoulders. “You need to listen to me here. You’re the farthest thing from a failure. You get up every morning and you work your ass off ten times harder than anyone I know—just to get through the day. You bite and claw your way through advanced high school classes and college applications and now these terrifying exams that are worth 60% of your grade, and you still somehow find the energy to look out for me when I can’t do it myself. You keep on smiling and trying to see the best in everyone and everything, even when people are awful to you and you feel like no one wants you around—absolutely not true, by the way. Honestly, I do all right in school because a lot of technical, mathy stuff comes easily to me, but…” He smiles meekly. “I wish I had half the resilience you do. I wish I knew how to bounce back when I do eventually find a class that’s too much, because gods know it takes the balls of steel you have. Or…” His cheeks flush in embarrassment. “Boobs of steel, I guess.”

“Nice.” Anna grins. “I have natural protection if someone tries to stab my lungs!”

“Precisely.”

“But…” She meets his eyes, a little embarrassed by how desperate she probably looks. “You think there’s still hope for me?”

“Absolutely. You just haven’t found your niche yet. Which is fine—most people our age haven’t, despite what stupid college marketing campaigns will try to tell you. But when you do find it? I know you’re going to kill it. Zero doubt in my mind. When you funnel all that energy into something, it’s going to blow people away.”

And then Anna Runeardsen stands on her tiptoes (curse her boyfriend’s growth spurt the last year of high school—now he towers over her and it’s really rather unfair) and kisses Hiccup Haddock like never before.

They’ve kissed probably dozens of times at this point, some more memorable than others. This one feels different, though—like something straight out of a cheesy Hallmark Christmas movie.

(One where the actors have good chemistry, though. Not those lifeless budget movie kisses where it looks like two fish trying to eat each other.)

Her hand slides back up into his hair, and she breathes him in. He tastes like Oreos and hot fudge and ice cream and a shameless burst of self-confidence when she needs it the most. His lips are dry and chapped from the cold late winter air, but Anna doesn’t mind. It’s him, and that’s what matters to her.

Her heart still pounds every time, just like it did holding hands with him for the first time during a 6th grade game of Red Rover. All these years, and he still makes her feel like she’s floating on a summer breeze, wildflower aromas all around her and the sun in her hair.

Ironically, being with him is also as tranquil and easy as cloud-watching in the grass on a clear day. He excites her endlessly and keeps her grounded all at once, and she doesn’t know what she’d do without him.

Nearby, she can hear Merida gagging. This only makes Anna kiss her boyfriend harder.

When she pulls away, Hiccup’s hair is dotted with snowflakes. She smiles, brushing it out fondly.

“So,” she says cheekily. “Out of all the infinite possible timelines we exist in, I’m glad I’m in the one where I got to date you.”

He raises an eyebrow teasingly. “Are you sure? There’s probably several where you marry some famous actor, and get to livestream from a private pool all day.”

“Well…if you get that Silicon Valley job you’re striving for…” She pokes him playfully in the chest. “What’s the difference? Financially, anyhow.”

He raises a teasing eyebrow. “Anna, I don’t think you understand how money works—”

“Sure I do. There’s three categories of the monetary elite: ‘Rich’, ‘Richer’, and ‘Filthy Fucking Rich.’ And I, sir, am more than happy to just be in the ‘Rich’ category.”

He gives her a skeptical look, and she wonders if he knows she’s joking. She quickly backtracks.

“Or not. We could also be mega-broke together. I’m all right with living in a cardboard box under the freeway as long as I’m doing it with you.”

“Yeah, don’t get your hopes up about being rich.” He leans forward and kisses the side of her head. “I don’t think it’s time for us to start packing our bags for San Jose yet. I haven’t even passed my upper divs.”

Anna snorts. “You will, though. You really are the smartest person I know.”

“Maybe you have low standards, then.”

“I absolutely do not.”

“Debatable.”

There’s the soft crumbling of snow under tires, and Anna looks past Hiccup’s mop of brown hair to see a pale blue fiat pulling up to the curb.

“Looks like my ride’s here.” She leans up and plants a last kiss on his cheek. “We’ll have to continue this dispute some other time.”

“Good.” Hiccup snorts, crossing his arms. “You’ll have adequate time to realize you’re wrong.”

“I’m not,” she says breezily. “But even if I was, and you start failing absolutely every class starting tomorrow…” She blows him a kiss as she backs toward Elsa’s car. “You know I’m sticking with you no matter what, babe.”

“I love you!” He shouts the words at her as she closes the car door, loud enough for all their friends to glance at him again. Elsa snorts with laughter.

“Seems like your relationship is in terrible jeopardy,” she deadpans.

Anna snickers as her sister drives away. “Oh, yeah. I’m so concerned.”

***

...y’know, I thought up the “Eugene takes the twins to monster truck shows” completely on accident, but now I can’t stop thinking about it, like. Hilarious yet oddly wholesome??? For whoever was asking for more interactions between the side/supporting RotBTFD characters, I come here to deliver XD

Yes, Anna swears like a sailor because the only reason she canonically doesn’t is because she’s in a disney franchise XD She’s also older and wiser and just a little more cynical and not nearly as sold on the concepts of “destiny” and “one true love” as she once was XD I also find it extremely funny that I was combing over the dialogue and noticing some of Anna’s lines sounded more Hiccup-esque than I intended, and vice-versa...but then I realized that adopting someone’s speech patterns and mannerisms happens naturally when you date them/are around them a lot ;____; They’re absorbing parts of each other because they’re in love hELP

Amateur psychologist Mavis is so valid, I love her ;____;

For whatever reason I feel with an odd certainty that Hiccup would be a caramel guy. Also I was inspired by him ordering a pina colada milkshake in one of @lovestrucklyuniverse‘s fics and now I think he’s a pineapple guy too.

#hiccanna #hiccannamonth #hiccannamonth22 #hiccannamonth2022 #hiccup x anna #anna x hiccup #hiccup #anna #hiccup haddock #princess anna #hiccupxanna #annaxhiccup #fanfic #fanfiction #rotbtd #rotbtfd #modern au #college au #httyd #frozen #crossover

[stoicallyshi]

February 13th

It wasn't a very fair and good thing that I did to myself when I stopped reading all together after I was done with my high school. Moving into college life I still tried to keep pace with some of most delicate heart warming stories but in those years more than reading I was into writing. Writing and testing my own creativity, like how far my imagination could chase words on the blank papers. I moved from stuffing my dairy with daily entries to writing short stories and mere poetries which I still think looks bizarre and like some sort of venting paragraphs in progress.

I always loved reading not just the idea but to actually indulging myself with any of the story I felt was worth given a chance. I read mostly romance novels because that's what I always loved the most. Whether it was poetries or books I always had eyes for romantic genre. I read not only because it gave me thrill and butterflies which it did but I read because I felt like one day maybe one day I might be able to portray my own emotions like these amazing writers and poets who could easily write a 300 to 400 pages story without caring about if the words in the lines were perfectly grammatized. I always thought reading was my safe escape from all this bullshit going around the world. I always had a feeling that nothing else in this world mattered more than the characters getting a happy ending in the book I was luring in for hours. I read like I didn't give a fucking fly about anything happening around me. I read like I could let the books and my fictional characters consume me with themselves and just keep me there without letting me go back into this cruel world ready to pounce and drown with its negativity on me any given minute. I never wanted to deal with this real world until I had to forcefully. I loved living in my bubble world and a universe that I myself created to keep me there from all these realistic things that could hurt me and break me down. I never wanted to leave my fancy fantasy life but the more the years and time added to my youth the more weary I became of myself. I was starstruck when I was shoved into believing that none of what I read will ever be real or was real for the first place to sit in. It didn't hurt me that bad when I first realized how incomprehensive all these felt to soak in.

When everything around me started getting complicated and real I felt the world under me as if the more I was running from it the more deniable I was getting to myself. The more I tried to just keep me there the more loathing it was becoming. I had to push myself out of that world, the world that felt safe and happy, the world that felt mine. But like every good book that ends one day I had to come to par with my own self to keep it as a beautiful memory to cherish forever in the hindsight of my brain.

Like no matter how much I might love that manually created, psychologically decorated universe filled with pictures of myself just happy, cozy, warm and fuzzy. The truth is also that I had to stop running from who I was with this body and I had to start accepting who I could be if I did justice to my this very self who is always waiting to be heard, to be believed in and to be made into a truly amazing person I could be without trying to find solace into the books I read, though a part of me still wish I could just be able to read and read without having to care about if I could make a career out of it or not. I always will long for days to have more hours, months to have more days, and years to have more months, so that I could just be done with every other things that requires my attention then come back to the unread books in my shelf gawking at me everyday, asking just to be picked up and read. I wish someday I might find enough time to just let myself balance the two worlds, both the worlds that I wanna dwell in !

#books & libraries #books and reading #books #novels #academia #bookblr #literature lover #classic literature #english lit student #february #i wish i had more time

[collymore]

Has Kate Middleton as yet, quite mastered the skill of walking on water as well?

By Stanley Collymore

Kate Middleton giving her brats a normal life oozes her dreadfully and risibly literally infatuated father-in-law, discernibly self-evidently literally undoubtedly no classic father himself evidently, by any sane means and who by his own admission had a really lousy upbringing with distinctly pathetically hopeless parents, simply as he himself, clearly unquestionably subsequently became when crucially he too, evidently became a biological father and purported parent of sorts! So Charles' recommendations I'll not take as gospel logically to what Kate is doing! Anyway, it's all essentially a load of bullshit! A normal life literally enjoyed by these sprogs? Truly what planet does Charles' actually solitary brain cell reside on? Fittingly Normal would clearly be, to automatically go to the local council operated school!

Playing games or just relaxing with other children of the same age in a local park and simply without having armed security routinely in tow. Effectively, very unquestionably simply having the undoubted freedom while growing up and undeniably also in adulthood to essentially determine and literally make one's own choices in life, rather than being obviously so indoctrinated in as to what one can't or shouldn’t do. And it crucially sure as Hell, simply isn't remotely normal to live in a bubble of privilege, where you effectively specifically dream up PR projects, or essentially have your numerous lackeys quite distinctively do that for you, simply to boost your own discernibly non competitive but basically and unquestionably all the same that self-entitled ego of yours!

(C) Stanley V. Collymore 14 November 2023.

Author's Remarks: It's a contradiction in terms of reality to equate to Britain a standardized form of normality, since apart from being a deeply entrenched class imbued society Britain is likewise a very  impermeable mongrel based society which each strand of this construct clinging on most tenaciously to what it not only considers is specifically its own but quite ironically in this process as well, what obviously in their myopic interpretation is unquestionably not only best for where such groups do essentially reside but equally as well similarly for Britain also

So there's no earthly way that an out rightly, thoroughly class obsessive and an intensely fixated social climbing mare like Kate Middleton would ever have wanted to either personally, or have it consciously or arbitrarily done, as regards what she would unquestionably consider as the obvious societal dumbing down of her children inflicted on them, relative to any socializing by them with those whom they evidently perceive as and essentially patronizingly regard as the inferior plebeian, serf masses; nor would William, come to that!

Since the discernibly obvious, social mores that they themselves, as well as the entire Windsor family, regard as so imperative to them individually and likewise collectively, live on unchangeably in their delusional exposition of all things; and accounts for what they undoubtedly rather firmly believe makes them most exceptionally what they are. And for them or anyone else to overlook that would undeniably be a most horrid pollution of everything they rightfully and righteously stand for and divinely represent!

As for Charles' effusive, exaggerated and self-indulgent feelings of tenderness for his daughter-in-law Kate, I've no problem whatsoever with that, as he presumably knows her personally while I don't relish any notion on my part to do so. However, my Bajan upbringing instinctively triggers an alarm button internally in me whenever someone exaggeratedly lauds another person and does so on the flimsiest of pretexts and with no conclusive evidence to substantiate their trifling discourse.

And on a personal note and something quite relevant to me, in every Barbadian school, firmly and prominently emblazoned on the wall of that school's Assembly Hall, where school assemblies with their Christian religious content are unfailingly held and other communal activities similarly held also, there's this prominent sign: "Cleanliness is next to godliness!" A statement that every Bajan child, past and present, knows by heart so deeply embedded is it and what it literally as well as psychologically means to us Bajans individually and collectively as a nation. In two words then: Personal Hygiene!

So reverting again to Charles Windsor and my full awareness of what tampons are and most essentially used for, I can't really take any man seriously regarding what he says and wants that utterance to be universally regarded as distinctively significant when that same male person has a most bizarre and very unhygienic fetish about used and self-evidently unhygienic tampons that were undoubtedly used by his married mistress, while he himself was also legally married to another woman, who he treated most appallingly. So frankly, Charles' sentiments pertaining to Kate Middleton, even if true, strike no empathetic resonance with this thoroughly mentally liberated British/Bajan!

#stupidity #self-entitlement.

[nonbinaryhatboxghost]

2:33pm. Been a minute. I am still overall doing okay. The Maine trip I mentioned back in September did successfully happen. All of the stuff that was in Maine was great. I got to experience so much New England autumn. Quality time with my dad went well. My Stephen King nerddom was very much indulged. Maybe I’ll post pictures at some point.

The RI part of the visit was not so successful. Seeing my grandparents was great, but being back in the RI house that I lived in for so long was a terrible experience. I don’t think I can ever stay in that house again. Without Jack (my late family cat, he passed away this year at age 19), there’s nothing really there to hide the sad cycle that’s happening in that house.

Work bullshit continues. That is admittedly my norm now.

Personal life stuff is generally going well. My anxiety does continue trying to find ways to ruin it, but I’m doing my best to not let that happen.

I recently did a week and a half of cat-sitting/apartment-sitting for a couple friends. The cat-sitting part went great, she was a sweetheart to me. That definitely helped with the isolation part of the gig. I really didn’t think hard enough about what staying in an apartment without a car and far from my social circle would do to my brain.

I’ve accepted that December holidays no longer make me happy due to many memories of forced interactions and pressure to Do Something & Be Happy. I instead did a couple of low-key things this year that were what I wanted.

I’m feeling a bit off today because I’m doing some mild self-isolation. A friend of mine recently tested positive for COVID and while I have tested negative, and it’s been 5 days since I last saw said friend, I felt like I should be safe and stay in. It’s also cold and I’ve been so mentally exhausted from work that I’ve been using this extended weekend mostly to catch up on sleep and recharge.

But while I have done things like go to a movie theater or sometimes out to eat over the last couple months, I feel like I’m reverting a little bit to lockdown mode. Maybe it’s the rising case numbers, maybe it’s hearing about all the airline shenanigans. Maybe it’s my whole hiding-from-everything instinct that happens when I’m low or upset.

A little while ago, I became very fixated on The Weeknd. There was a live performance of his that I found from 2020. Specifically the November 2020 American Music Awards. LA was still in lockdown. He walks up and down an empty bridge street that is lined with fireworks. At the end, the camera pulls back and up and up as the city is shown behind the bridge, and The Weeknd gets smaller and smaller. Fireworks burst outside of the bridge. I have revisited this performance more times than I can count not just because of the music, but because it captures the specific time and place and feeling of lockdown for me in 2020. The Weeknd sings over and over again “save your tears for another day” as the city behind him is quiet and empty, even though there are still people there trapped inside their homes.

I keep rewatching it. I think it may be because I still feel trapped. Again, I’ve been outside, I’ve interacted with folks. But I still wear a mask at work every day and have just accepted that I’m one of the only people in the office that does that. If I’m invited to a gathering of more than half a dozen people, it is more likely that I won’t go. I left the choir I was a part of because I didn’t feel safe singing inside with a large group of folks without masks. I made the mistake of going to the zoo with a couple friends on the 26th and was completely unprepared for the LARGE number of people and families there, most of whom were unmasked. I was masked the whole time but I still felt unsafe.

Wearing a mask isn’t a problem for me. I just know that I can’t keep cutting myself off and distracting myself with fixations long-term. I need a social or creative outlet again, but I don’t feel safe enough to look for one.

On a petty note, Avatar: The Way of Water is a bad movie. I recommend not giving it money. It has enough.