#and a song about withdrawing from the things that are killing you accepting all that pain and finding peace with your lover

[midnightsslut]

actually maybe folklore is an album about looking back on all the things that have made you go from a wild, innocent, open child to a damaged, pained, often duplicitous adult

#hence ‘our coming of age has come and gone’ on track 15 #a song about all the trauma that pulled you apart as the original closer #and a song about withdrawing from the things that are killing you accepting all that pain and finding peace with your lover #while excavating that trauma for art #as the real closer #that’s why seven - this is me trying - peace - hoax - the lakes kind of sum up the entire story #of the album #folklore #the lakes #mirrorball #this is me trying #seven #hoax

[anne-i-write]

moriarty the patriot headcannons

| requested by anon: “uhhh kinda weird lmao but how would the moriarty bros react to an s/o from the future? (Headcanons) thanks! OwO” |

william x reader; louis x reader; albert x reader

word count: 1355

tw: a few swears, if i’m missing any please let me know!

a/n: i’m so sorry that these are coming out so slow please enjoy!

william: 317 words

please

as soon as you wake up he’ll be staring at you intently

“where am i?”

“durham, england, 1880… and in my room”

it takes you like ten minutes to process everything that’s going on because: “i’m dreaming right??? or did i actually shift???

after finally accepting the fact you indeed did not shift and are not dreaming, you finally looked at the man who had stayed silent during your incoherent ramblings

“you seem more awake now, is it alright if i ask a few questions?”

hhh he’s such a gentleman

you both honestly take this whole time shift thing really well

louis definitely walks in on you two and he’s like,,

“who tf are you and how did you get in”

sdjkfhd pls its so funny when you guys converse

his speaking manner is so refined and yours is just,, yours

but he loves it

he thinks its cute

he comes up with a story for you because there were people who were no doubt going to question how you came into his life

and from there you two hit it off really well

accidentally said you two were to be wed during a conversation and the nobles went insane

when you are on the carriage ride back from the party he apologizes for saying something so out of line

“i wouldn’t mind being married to you, william.”

this man always has something to say but THIS

YOU

he wanted to respond with something witty but you just,, existed and made him melt

“let’s go buy a ring tomorrow then.”

asks you questions about the future

only trivial things, never if his plan works in the long term

but judging by the way you talk about your previous life he can tell that everyone is somewhat equal, except for “the dumbass politicians” you speak about

oh did i mention he picks up your swears too LMAO

louis: 459 words

 he’s heading back to his room when you come OUT of his room

“who tf are you, how did you get into this house, and why are you here”

instant kill mode

you think you’re dreaming so you’re like,, ok cool and you tell him most of your life story and he’s like

??????

has never been more dumbfounded in his life

who is this person and what are they wearing and why are they telling me their life story

eventually the rest of the moriarty team gets involved and matters are settled lmao

you all agree that staying in the manor is the best course of action at the moment

louis thinks you’re taking this a little too well so he’s still a little sus of you

like seriously,, the future?? cmon now

the people you’re working for probably made those weird clothes for you

but anyways

you’re helping him clean the house and cook

“this is fun,,, but honestly?? if i have to do this by myself everyday i would cry”

you keep saying this and you know it’s getting annoying for louis but he ISNT TALKING

if you can’t beat em, annoy em

finally gives in

“how did you used to wash clothes in the future?”

and you get this big smile on your face and you start TALKING

you’re so excited that he finally spoke to you

even tho you know you lowkey annoyed him

but you’re talking and louis is like,, huh

you’re talkative, but not annoying at all

you have little stories that make him laugh sometimes

needless to say you both get closer

but it isn’t until one night louis is making rounds around the manor that he passes by your room and hears crying

so he’s worried and he goes into your room

bruh you try pulling that shit where you wipe away your tears and be like “oh i’m okay!”

like,, no u aren’t

louis makes you spill what’s bothering you

“my friends, my family… are they okay? are they looking for me?? they must be so worried”

note that you’ve already been at the moriarty estate for about two months without any word that you can return to your own time

and louis holds you

he teaches you more about the year that you’re currently stuck in and he tries to take your mind off of the bad things

asks william to buy more books to indulge you bc you have some book withdrawals bc “WHAT DO YOU MEAN A TALE FOR THE TIME BEING HASNT BEEN PRINTED YET” followed by a short crying session

he’s a really good boyfriend

you taught him what a boyfriend was and he couldn’t stop thinking about how much society’s view on relationships changed

albert: 579 words

is walking down the streets at night when he sees you barreling down the road in your clothes

you look pretty scathed when you run right into him

“are you alright?”

you’re scared and out of breath but he’s wearing what you can only assume is a uniform of england

he takes you to his place and tries to calm you down

he asks you questions and you tell him everything straight out

you know you look crazy but you couldn’t bring yourself to care

you were just walking back from a friend’s place IN BROAD DAYLIGHT and you felt dizzy and you woke up alone in a dark alleyway

“where are you from?”

you obviously give him your city but he corrects himself

“what year are you from?”

“2019”

doesn’t want to believe you bc you’re all frantic and maybe insane

but your clothes just seem to different for him to brush off the possibility

tells you to sleep it off and gives you his bed

he’s already writing a letter to his brothers that he’s possibly coming back with someone

“ohoho brother albert has a suitor now?”

anyways, albert asks you more questions about your other life as you’re both on the train to durham

albert went out to buy you more fitting clothes before leaving and you couldn’t even repay him

but he tries to get you in a comfortable position so you don’t spiral again

but he’s genuinely nice about it when he finally accepts the fact that you are in fact from the future

funny enough, you both don’t get each others names until you get onto the train

“oh, my name is albert james moriarty”

and you’re briefly like “oh like sherlock’s nemesis” but then you remember that this is only the victorian era

sherlock holmes doesn’t exist, it’s just a coincidence

so you both get to the manor and he introduces you to the moriarty team and this is where you’re like,,

oh my God

this is real and i know the ending

you suddenly want to travel back further in time and never meet them bc they’re all really sweet towards you

and you got attached to them more than you should have

albert notices you’re a little tense so he makes small conversation to get your mind off of things

“i do like to play the piano”

bro

they have a piano delivered to the house to make you feel more comfortable and hopefully keep you occupied

itching and nostalgic (ironic), you play songs from rachmaninoff and joe hisaishi, despite it being from the future

everyone knows chopin so shhh

“that’s beautiful, did you compose that?”

“no, but another composer did, i don’t even think he exists yet”

you’re very adamant on keeping things the same

like,, no i’m not going to tell you how to create a washing machine because i don’t want to mess up the timeline if i do go back to the future

you do get very sad occasionally because you are homesick and being placed in a world where you have only heard stories of is very disorienting

but albert and the boys make up for it

albert always tries to be by your side and if he can get his hands on a piano sheet he’ll buy one for you and see if you already know it

it’s always nice to have them around, but you know the troubles you’ll eventually have to face

moriarty the patriot taglist: @zoehanji

#moriarty the patriot #moriarty the patriot x reader #yuukoku no moriarty #yuukoku no moriarty x reader #albert james moriarty #albert james moriarty x reader #louis james moriarty #louis james moriarty x reader #william james moriarty x reader #william james moriarty

[scotianostra]

23rd August 1305 saw the trial and execution in London of Sir William Wallace, one time Guardian of Scotland.

I posted yesterday stating the trial happened then, it came u in a source I was reading about Wallace, sometimes the historians can get it wrong, but the post yesterday served as more of prelude and a taster of todays more detailed one. Wallace is said to have accepted his execution without resistance and a brave heart. He even made a final confession to a priest and read from the book of Psalms before his punishment.

Types of execution at The Elms ranged from burning at the stake (for heretics) to the tried and tested hanged-drawn-and-quartered method for those convicted of high treason. For those unfamiliar with this method, it involves being dragged by a horse to the place of execution, hanged  until almost dead, then disembowelled whilst still conscious, beheaded, and finally being chopped into four pieces (i.e. ‘quartered) and subsequently having these pieces put on display across the city, or in Sir William Wallace’s case, the country.

I think it only right to give a background post about Sir William Wallace so hang on to your hats, there’ll be no mention of French Princess’s, Blue painted Australians or the like. 

Much of what we know about Wallace comes from  Blind Harry, also known as Harry, Hary or Henry the Minstrel, is renowned as the author of The Actes and Deidis of the Illustre and Vallyeant Campioun Schir William Wallace, more commonly known as The Wallace. The trouble is how reliable can Blind Harry’s account be, it was written over 150 years after Wallace's grisly demise, the stories about oor erstwhile hero would have been handed down through  word of mouth, possibly even in song. 

Harty claims that Wallace's father was named Malcolm, and on this basis Wallace has traditionally been identified as Sir Malcolm Wallace, a minor landowner from Renfrewshire. Sir Malcolm was a descendant of Richard Wallace, a native of the lordship of Oswestry on the Welsh border, (Wallace itself meaning Welshman),  who first came to Scotland in the twelfth-century in the service of Walter Fitz Alan, first High Steward of Scotland. This Stewart connection has also been used by historians to explain Wallace's place in the 'patriotic' struggle of the 1290s.

But  Harry’s story has some flaws, now I’m not decrying the story, just some details like his age.

No reliable evidence exists to gives us an estimate of his age. Harry claims that Wallace was 'forty and five [years] of age' when he was executed,  but also states that he was 'bot eighteen yer auld' shortly before the Battle of Stirling Bridge, which would place the year of his birth around 1278/9.

It shows how difficult it is to build a picture of Sir William.

The contemporary English chronicler William Rishanger implies that Wallace was a young man when he emerged as the leader of armed resistance to the English in southern Scotland in 1297, but this does little to narrow things down. According to Hary, Wallace was raised by his two uncles - both clerics - who saw to his education after his father was killed by an English knight named Fenwick

 One of his uncles was from Dunipace, a wee town not far from my home in Falkirk, it is through this uncle we get an oft quoted phrase  “This is the truth I tell you: of all things freedom’s most fine. Never submit to live, my son, in the bonds of slavery entwined.” The second pic shows part of the quote, it is on a paving stone on Falkirk High Street  that I often walk past.

He does seem to have had two brothers, Malcolm - who would provide Wallace with much-needed support in the later part of his career - and John - who would later be executed for supporting Robert Bruce after 1306. His activities before 1297 are also uncertain, but they may have been less than wholesome. Contemporary English accounts describe him as a 'brigand' and a 'thief', suggesting he may have lived outside the law even before the English invaded. Of course, these may simply be attempts by hostile writers to blacken his reputation. However, a legal document of August 1296 mentions 'a thief, one William le Waleys' as an accomplice of a cleric named Matthew of York who had in June of that year been convicted of robbery at Perth. This could well be our William.

Again I am not trying to blacken his character, I am merely pointing out the difficult job that historians have when piecing together his life. 

Whatever the details of his early life, following the English invasion of 1296 that Wallace first emerged into the mainstream of Scottish affairs in a big way. The death of King Alexander III in 1286, followed by the death of his granddaughter Margaret of Norway in 1290, had provoked a major succession crisis in Scotland. Efforts to settle the ongoing dispute between the competing Balliol and Bruce factions had led to increasing English interference in the governance of Scotland, culminating in a full-scale invasion of the kingdom in 1296. I’ve covered all this in posts regarding King John Balliol, the sacking of Berwick and  the first Battle of Dunbar all in 1296.

One of Wallace’s first encounters with the English is told in typically dramatic form by Blind Harry, the story goes that William was fishing  when he is accosted by five soldiers in the service of 'lorde Persye'  Henry Percy, 1st Baron Percy who was the warden of Galloway and Ayrshire .  The honest, unsuspecting Wallace offers them some of his fish so long as they leave the rest for his uncle - 'ane agyt knycht' - Wallace hopes to feed, but the soldiers demand all of his fish and attack him when he refuses them. Remarkably, Wallace disarms the first attacker using only a 'poutstaff' ('fishing pole'), seizes the discarded sword, kills two of the soldiers, severs the hand of another, and chases the survivors off! 

The earliest confirmed encounter between Wallace and the English administration occurred in May 1297, when Wallace and a small band of supporters killed William Heselrig, the English sheriff of Lanark, shortly before an assize was due to be held in the town. According to the indictment against him in 1305, Wallace and his men also dismembered Helelrig's corpse. Famously, Hary claims that Wallace's attack on Heselrig was in retribution for the killing of Wallace's wife - Marion Braidfute, as Harry identifies her. 

It is apparent from contemporary English accounts of the incident at Lanark that it proved to be a powerful recruiting tool for Wallace's rebellion. As Walter Guisborough put it, 'the common folk of the land followed him as their leader and ruler; the retainers of the great lords adhered to him; and even though the lords themselves were present with the English king in body, at heart they were on the opposite side'.

What I find remarkable is that the killing of the soldiers and then Heselrig kickstarted, the uprising against Edwards army and around 4 months Wallace and Andrew de Moray had assembled a combined army of over 6 thousand troops that ambushed the English as they crossed the Forth at Stirling.

Before Stirling we also had the capitulation of the Nobility at Irvine, I have also covered this in a previous post.

In the wake of the Scottish victory at Stirling Bridge, the English administration in Scotland all but collapsed. The Scots were once again able to form a government of their own, and at its head - now as Guardians of Scotland - were Wallace and Murray, although Murray's tenure was cut short when he died - probably of wounds sustained at Stirling Bridge - in November.

This was the zenith of Wallace's career. He had emerged from obscurity to the very summit of Scottish society, all in the space of a year. It also meant he had a price on his head and was the most wanted man in Scotland.

Edward I returned from the Continent in March 1298 and set his sights on Scotland, he marched with an army North in late June and quickly discovered that Wallace's response to the threat had been to devastate southern Scotland and withdraw with his army out of reach of the English. A bitter and frustrating campaign followed, with Edward almost abandoning the chase altogether. However, in late July Edward got wind that the Scots had been sighted near Falkirk, and hurriedly moved his army to meet them. 

Precisely why the confrontation at Falkirk happened is, as with so much of Wallace's career, uncertain. Until this point in the campaign Wallace had carefully avoided the English army, a prudent strategy that would later pay off for the Scots under Bruce. Guisborough claims that Wallace had learned that Edward planned to withdraw and hoped to attack the English in the rear. This would at least explain why Wallace so suddenly abandoned his previously cautious strategy. However, given the potential challenges he was facing from the nobility of Scotland it may equally have been the case that Wallace felt compelled to face the English in open battle sooner or later and prove that his success at Stirling Bridge - which was after all arguably at least as much Murray's as it was Wallace's - was not just a lucky accident. 

Whatever the case, the battle that followed was an utter catastrophe for the guardian. Abandoned by the cavalry, who may have lost their nerve as they had at Irvine or - as claimed by subsequent Scottish chroniclers - betrayed Wallace, Wallace's schiltrons - tightly-packed bodies of infantry armed with long spearmen - repelled the English cavalry but fell prey to English archery, which broke up their formations and left them vulnerable to a renewed assault by the cavalry. Wallace escaped the battle with his life, but his position as guardian had been irrevocably damaged. It is not entirely clear precisely when or where he resigned the guardianship, but by the end of 1298 Robert Bruce, earl of Carrick (the future king), and John Comyn, lord of Badenoch, were jointly exercising the office of guardian.

Wallace's time as guardian may have been decisively ended, but he remained an active opponent of the English in Scotland. The resistance he offered to the English in this period was not always in keeping with the wishes of the guardians. For instance, in August 1299 an altercation took place at a council at Peebles at which Wallace's plan to travel to France was condemned by Sir David Graham as being 'without the leave or approval of the Guardians'. Wallace's plans were defended by his brother Malcolm, who argued that they were at least 'for the good of the kingdom'

Wallace did indeed leave for France in 1299, apparently on a diplomatic mission to seek the support of King Philip IV against Edward I. Wallace's reception in France was initially hostile, since at the time Philip was himself seeking peaceful relations with Edward I, and Wallace was briefly incarcerated by the French king. However, in November 1300 Philip was writing to his envoys to the pope asking them to promote Wallace's case at the papal court. It is possible that Wallace himself visited to Rome assist in making the Scottish case to the pope in person, and the fact that when he was eventually he reportedly had on his person a safe-conduct from King Hakon V of Norway may suggest he also travelled to Norway on diplomatic business (although he may simply have planned to do so at some point). By 1303 - possibly earlier - he was back in Scotland and again involved in armed resistance to the English

By this point the tide in the war was slowly turning against the Scots. The French were once again pursuing a peaceful policy towards the English following their own military reversal at Courtrai in 1302. Scottish nobles were gradually making their peace with the English, and the surrender of Stirling Castle marked the effective end to organised Scottish resistance on a large scale. In light of his increasing success, Edward I was generally willing to be fairly accommodating towards those Scots who were willing to submit to him, but this was not so with Wallace. Indeed, in the general amnesty offered to the Scots by the English, Wallace might at best 'render himself up to the will and mercy of our sovereign lord the king, if it shall seem good to him' - hardly an encouraging prospect. When Wallace's long-standing cohort Simon Fraser submitted to Edward in July 1304, he was welcomed into the king's peace only on the understanding that he would assist in the ever-intensifying hunt for the fugitive Wallace. Nevertheless, Wallace remained at large until 3rd August 1305, when he was seized near Glasgow by men in the service of Sir John Menteith, keeper of Dumbarton Castle on behalf of King Edward. Menteith - identified as Wallace's 'gossop' ('godfather') by Harry.

Having finally captured Wallace, Edward I refused even to see him. Instead, Wallace was taken to London for what for want of a better word might be called a trial.

Sir Peter Malory, one of the king's justices, presided over the proceedings, which were little more than a formality. The charges were considerable. Wallace had, according his accusers, been a traitor to King Edward, perpetrated armed resistance against him and slain the king's officers (William Heselrig was mentioned by name), assumed the authority of 'a superior' of Scotland, submitted 'to the fealty and lordship of the lord king of France and [gave] him help to the destruction of the kingdom of England', made war on the northern counties of England, 'feloniously and seditiously assaulted, burned and devastated religious men and nuns...[and] inflicted [upon] all, old and young, wives and widows, children and babes the worst death which he could devise', and 'harmoniously and eagerly...refused to submit himself to the lord king's peace' even after being defeated at Falkirk. According to the Annals of London, he 'answered that he had never been a traitor to the king of England, but granted the other crimes charged against him'.

In the eyes of the English as an outlaw, Wallace had no recourse to a defence. Instead, he was summarily sentenced to be executed in the manner reserved for traitors. Wallace was thus 'dispolyeid of his weid' as Hary puts it and dragged naked on a hurdle through the streets of London. At Smithfield he was hanged by the neck 'for the robberies, homicides and felonies which he carried out in the kingdom of England and the land of Scotland'

Before he could suffocate he was taken down and emasculated and disembowelled 'for the dreadful wickedness which he did to the church'. His 'heart, liver and lungs and all the bowels...from which such perverse thoughts proceeded' were then burned. Presumably now dead, Wallace was beheaded - the punishment for outlawry - and his body was divided into four parts. His head was to be displayed on London Bridge (where it remained until at least September the following year, when it was joined by that of his former comrade Simon Fraser). The remaining quarters were to be displayed on gibbets at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Stirling and Perth, 'to put dread in and to warn all by-passers and observers'.

The savagery with which Wallace was dispatched contrasts sharply with Edward I's attitude toward the Scots in general, but let’s not forget it was the usual punishment for any person deemed to be a traitor.

However it appeared that Longshanks earlier experiences with the Scots had convinced the ageing English king that a more conciliatory approach to establishing a lasting English administration in the kingdom. Edward's new plan for the settlement of Scotland envisaged a ruling council composed primarily of Scots - including the likes of Bruce and Comyn - which would advise an English lieutenant who would retain overall authority. Scots law and custom was to be respected, at least in the short term, and it may have seemed to many at the time that the objections that had fuelled Wallace's original rebellion in 1297 had been addressed. 

As we know, the matter would be rendered moot less than six months after Wallace's death when Robert Bruce killed Comyn, forcing him to make public his ambition to become King of Scots. In many senses Bruce's struggle was quite unlike Wallace's, being primarily motivated by his own ambitions and perception of his rights. That being said, if Wallace had not maintained the momentum behind Scottish resistance to the English, particularly in the crucial year of 1297, then Bruce may never have had his opportunity to make his successful bid for power.

Pics are statues of Sir William Wallace around Scotland in order, Bemersyde near Dryburgh, Aberdeen, opposite His Majesty's Theatre,  Edinburgh Castle, Newmarket Street Ayr, St Nicholas Church, Lanark, Stirling Town Centre, The National Wallace Monument Abbey Craig, Stirling, showing it before and after it’s recent restoration,  Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh and his memorial at Smithfield, London. There are others around the world that remember the Scots Patriot who so bravely stood up to fight for his country.

#Scotland #scottish #Sir William Wallace #medieval history #judicial murder #execution #history

[pi-creates]

I hope people don’t mind – but I have a theory… one that’s been mulling around in my head for ages but didn’t really know if people would be interested in hearing it. I shared my thoughts with a few people and they seemed supportive of me sharing my theory further, so here we go.

Basically, I feel like something that the fandom deems as crucial to Violet’s character might actually be a misclassification. The short version of this post is that I theorise that Violet doesn’t have excessive abandonment issues (at least not to a significantly greater extent than any of the other characters), and what she is actually displaying is signs of survivor’s guilt.

From a behavioural view point, there’s a lot of overlap between both issues – withdrawing from others, fixating on other’s and their actions, being irrational at times as a defence mechanism, and applying unrealistic expectation on oneself and others. But the difference is the reasons behind those behaviours.

Someone with abandonment issues assumes that everyone will inevitably leave them. It leaves them insecure and assuming that they are somehow at fault for other’s leaving them. The thing is, this form of dependence on others tends to lead people to constantly be seeking approval, and they reel their neck in when they feel like someone is not going to agree with them. Basically, they become people pleasers who need constant reassurance that you aren’t planning on leaving them – but at the same time they keep things shallow, because they don’t feel like they can expose anything that the other person might leave them for. Then if things are on the rocks, they sabotage, if you push someone away before they reject you, then it doesn’t hurt as bad if they decide to leave. It’s a self-destructive cycle that centres around the person being anxious and not having trust in others to accept them as they are.

And while parts of that fits Violet, other parts don’t. I don’t feel like Violet comes across as insecure in what she offers to others or being afraid to have a contrary opinion. In fact, she seems quite confident in her skills and choices. There isn’t any hesitance to bring up tough questions or to  speak her mind when she doesn’t like something. She takes on a leadership role and makes decisions that she knows the bulk of the group don’t agree with at that point. It doesn’t come across as someone who is afraid that those people she’s disagreeing with will leave her. Basically, I don’t feel like she acts out of fear that people will leave her – she does express not liking that people leave and believes that certain levels of loss are inevitable, but it feels like cynicism rather than fear.

A big example of this is her asking Clementine in the first card game “Out of all of us here, which one is going to die first?”… to me, that doesn’t read as someone afraid of loss, it reads as someone who views loss casually and also doesn’t feel compelled to sugar-coat the morbidity of such thoughts to a newcomer or old friends.

But if you look at something like survivor’s guilt – it has some similar behavioural patterns, but those behaviours stem more from guilt than fear. They survived a situation when others did not, and I don’t think there’s any denying that everyone who’s still alive in an apocalypse situation has outlived a friend/family member, and potentially also been there when they died. And those thoughts of “Why did I survive when they didn’t?”, “Could that have been different?”, and “Was it my fault?” eats away at them. They start picking apart every detail of an event and questioning if they were responsible, or if someone could have done something to prevent it.

It doesn’t matter if it’s logical or not, they fixate on the idea that they could somehow have changed the events if only they said/did something different, they should have known the outcome and stopped it. It’s irrational, it’s placing the blame on oneself or others for situations that they had no means to avoid or predict. And all of that guilt and stress makes the people irritable, withdrawn, and regretful. They get so stuck in that moment of loss that they don’t move forward. They lose interests they used to have, they feel disconnected, they don’t trust people or the world to be safe or fair, they pull away from others...

And I think this sounds like Violet. It makes more sense with how she talks about her grandmother and the twins – we hear how she processes these events. She tells us what she was doing when someone died (or she believed they died) and how she should have been doing something else – for her grandmother she should have called for help, for the twins she should have been there and not in the greenhouse. And since we hear more about the twins, she goes further and talks about how she also questions the actions made by others – she feels like she could have changed the outcome if she was there instead of Brody or Marlon. When in reality, she couldn’t have known, she can’t change what happened, and it wasn’t her fault that those people died (or were taken).

I feel Violet did lose herself to a degree in those fixations, that’s why she withdraws and seems apathetic about things until after we learn that Minnie is still alive. Some of that guilt is somewhat absolved when it becomes clear that Minnie isn’t dead, it opens up the possibility of fixing her perceived ‘wrongs’ of the past (e.g., out surviving her). She talks about not liking arts and crafts – but she makes you a pin. She suddenly wants to dance with you when we had no indication this was an interest of hers before. She sings a song that she clearly used to hold to high regard when Minnie sang it – though we never hear her sing or hear her talk about her own voice. She’s a different person once the guilty moment is re-framed as something she can fix. Those interests she lost before are suddenly back, or maybe she’s just more open to reevaluate things and move forward with new interests.

And I think this also explains part of Violet’s ire in the captured route – it’s not just that she feels like you chose someone over her, it’s a literal replay of the thing she felt guilty about for years. She’s in Minnie’s shoes, but this time the people at the school know she was taken and not killed at the school – they could have stopped it in the way she wished she could have done with the twins. Then Clem shows up, and she isn’t exhibiting the same crushing guilt that Violet carried for so long when this happened to her friends – and that has to hurt.

Not only does the situation suck, but she’s being confronted with someone who isn’t coping with the “loss” of an important friend in the same way she did. I feel like it would only be logical for Violet to wonder why, and she is also clearly not in a good frame of mind and will come up with some of the worst possible answers.

Is she not as important to the others as Minnie was to her? Is she not worth the same emotional devastation? Was she wrong to feel the way she felt, or is Clem wrong for not feeling that way now?

The situation may be different, but after dealing with the traumatic experience of being captured, seeing Minnie again, and being manipulated into behaving – I don’t think Violet can think clearly enough to realise the differences of the situation. Clem isn’t dealing with the same level of guilt because her method of coping with the tragedy is immediate action… an option that Violet never had. It has nothing to do with Violet not being worth the same devastation as the twins, though I bet it still feels that way to her. So not only does the perceived betrayal sting worse, she also is being told she has the option of protecting Minnie by going along with the Delta – it just feeds into her preexisting guilt that she didn’t save her before, so of course she’s going to act in a way that she believes will make up for it.

And yeah… that’s my theory. Whether you agree or not, I’d be interested in hearing other’s thoughts on this – especially when I’m very aware that the abandonment narrative is seen as near universal amongst the fans. It just happens to not have been my initial stance, and I dunno, maybe an alternate point of view will be interesting to you guys.

#twdg #twdg talk #twdg theory #twdg violet #this is a long one #and i apologise for that

[ichayalovesyou]

~Act One: In Denial of Pon Farr~

Blood Moon~by Saint Sister, Madrid (Album)

“To return home, and take a wife… or die.”

Spock is feeling anxious and unusually lonely, more resentful of his complex heritage than usual. Feeling rejected, but not by Jim, he finds his thoughts wandering to T’Pring. Who he feels deep resentment toward, she hasn’t contacted once him in the two decades he’s been gone from Vulcan. He has yet to realize it is the beginnings of Pon Farr.

“I am sure, you craved me once before. When I think of all the fruit I’ve found, and how easily you left it on the ground.”

Evening On The Ground (Lilith’s Song)~by Iron & Wine, Woman King (album)

“I hoped that I would be spared this.”

Spock’s yearning and loneliness transforms into anger and frustration. He knows Pon Farr has begun, and he hates it. He has no desire to return to Vulcan, worse still, he loathes that he yearns for someone who he does not know. Worse still, she’s not the only one he’s longing for…

“We were born to fuck each other one way or another but I’ll, only lie, down by the water side at night”

I Want You (She’s So Heavy)~(Originally) by the Beatles, performed by the Cast of Across the Universe, Across the Universe (Album)

“How do Vulcans choose their mates… Haven’t you wondered?”

Spock cannot bear the tearing between Human & Vulcan halves that has come ferociously to light under the stress of Pon Farr. His duty is to that man on the bridge, but the call of Koonut Kalifee is only getting louder. He has no desire to burden Jim with horrible display of emotion. Yet desire is quickly becoming all that he can think about.

“I want you, I want you so bad, it’s driving me mad, it’s driving me mad.”

~Act Two: Blood Fever, The Nightmares of Plok’tow~

Howl~by Florence + The Machine, Lungs (Album)

“To have their logic ripped from them, as this time does to us.”

The first, foreboding rumblings of Plok’tow have begun. He dreams of a hunt, he’s chasing someone, he does not know who. Each time the blood of this faceless, slaughtered, ravaged victim is a different color, every time he turns around, green, red, green, red, green, red, green, red…

“Like some child possessed, the beast howls in my veins, I want to find you, tear out all your tenderness.”

The Horror of Our Love~by Ludo, You’re Awful, I Love You (Album)

“It strips away our veneer of civilization.”

The dreams are getting worse, more violent, detailed, intense. He knows his quarry-

Jim.

He tears his captain apart in a thousand visceral, grotesque ways, physically, mentally, no love, no hate, no want, just blinding hunger. And the most frightening part, he enjoys it. He begins withdrawing from Kirk, for fear of what may happen should dreams threaten to become reality.

“Carnivorous and lusting, I’ll track you down among the pines.”

Become the Beast~by Karliene, Become the Beast (Album)

“It is the Pon Farr, the time of mating.”

The last of his Blood Fever dreams occurs after Kirk confronts him about his behavior. This one is, much to Spock’s relief, not violent. The lyrics are spoken through the faces of fellow Vulcans- T’pring… childhood tormentors… Sybok… his cold and disapproving father… T’pau… Surak… himself.

The rage and hunger has cooled into ice rather than fire, for now.

“Do I terrify you? Do you feel alive? Do you feel the hunger? The desert howl inside?”

The Woods~by San Flemin, Jackrabbit (Album)

“You humans have no conception.”

When James Kirk grabbed the shiv from Spock’s hand in their confrontation, a shard of Spock’s Blood Fever came with it. Spock was spared a nightmare this final night, but not Jim. The dream even dared to be pleasant initially, alone together in the woods. Before the arena of Koonut Kalifee erupted violently around them, as did Spock. Yet, before Spock could deal the final killing blow, Kirk found himself sinking into the sparkling sands below. He startles from his slumber, feeling suffocated.

But he does not remember how, or why.

“The nights are lovely dark and deep, but I’ll appear when you’re asleep. You’ll wake up with a sudden hurt, your mouth and nose all full of dirt”

~Act Three: Kalifee, the Death of A Friend~

Take Me Down~by Brother, Pax Romana MMV (Album)

“I’ll get you to Vulcan somehow…”

All Jim knows is that Spock is getting worse, and that he needs him. Not knowing, and not daring ask whether the shiv was meant for himself or Spock haunts Kirk, as does the ghost of his forgotten dream. He does not know what will come of this wedding. Only that he will do whatever it takes to make certain Spock lives. No matter what, it’s a race against time.

“The powers that be, the powers that run you through, I’m taking a stand I know what it comes down to, God knows I do.”

Hunting Grounds (feat Joe Cotela of Ded)~by In This Moment, Mother (Album)

“He is deep in the Blood Fever, he will not speak with thee again.”

Kalifee has begun, Spock has completely lost himself to the Blood Fever, and Kirk must fight for his life. He finds himself outmatched by the environment, and by Spock’s rage. He knows two things, he has no desire to die, but he cannot, under any circumstances, kill Spock. (I imagine this duet could be as seen as Maria Brink=Kirk, Joe Cotela=Spock)

“Like a predator sink my teeth into your neck.”

Die Today~by The Txlips Band & Guitar Gabby, Queens of The New Age (Album)

“Kill Spock? That’s not what we came to Vulcan for is it?”

The Kalifee has been an intense drain, Kirk knows, deep down, that not even the “Triox Compound” could save him in this fight. He feels his life flash before his eyes, he bears no ill will toward Spock, he’s not in control of himself. He reflects on their relationship, and how much it has meant to him, and accepts, that for Spock to live, he has to die.

It was worth having known him, saving a friend isn’t the worst way to go out…

“If you die today, if we die today, at least I’d be in your arms.”

Pearl Diver~by Mitski, Lush (Album)

“You may find, that having, is not so pleasing a thing as wanting.”

Spock is absolutely distraught, he’s disgusted with himself, he loathes every single Vulcan he’s ever known, but most of all he is angry with Kirk. That he had to be the moth to his flame. How dare he want to get close to him! How dare James Kirk ever have the stupidity, the courage to love him?! The wanting had driven Jim to his death, and himself to murder. It was illogical, and he will never, forgive either of them for it. Curse having, curse wanting, and curse himself too.

“But hunter you were human don’t forget it and go safely. And I? I’ll live without you, though the struggle will be daily.”

Sweet Dreams~by JOSEPH, I’m Alone, No You’re Not (Album)

“I shall do neither, for I have killed my Captain, and my friend.”

Spock languishes in the agonizing hours between the Kalifee and confronting Bones about what must be done. He prays for a short and cruel life… and dares ponder the question, do Humans have Katras?

“I’ll return to my sleepless night, dreaming with my eyes open, watch the shadows play on the ceiling.”

[The final act is a little on the smutty side, here’s a read more just to be safe.]

~Act Four: The Need is Met~

To Be Alone~by Hozier, From Eden EP (Album)

“I shall offer no defense, their is no excuse for the crime of which I’m guilty.”

Though overjoyed and relieved that Kirk is alive, Spock continues to anguish over the reality that had Bones not intervened, he would have killed him. Jim knows better this time, he will not let Spock continue down this path. A tender and honest conversation puts salve to Spock’s fears. In any event, while the Kalifee burned away the Blood Fever, it becomes clear the needs of Pon Farr still remain. Kirk suggests, delicately, to put a new Bond in place of the old.

Spock accepts.

“You don’t know the hell you put me through, to have someone kiss the skin that crawls from you, to feel your weight in arms I’d never use.”

Mermaid’s Calling #2~by the Cast of The Lure, The Lure (Album)

“The ancient drives are too strong, eventually they catch up with us.”

The thrum of Bonding needs no words, it is not just a joining of minds, but of bodies as well. They complete one another, no thoughts, no voices are required. They soon find that the physiological differences between them can be more than a little… fascinating.

“…”

The Deep~by PHILDEL, Wave Your Flags (Album)

“One touches the other, in order to feel each other’s thoughts.”

The tangible, physical world of course has it’s pains and pleasures, to be joined physically is one thing, to be joined in soul and mind alongside those sensations is a different ordeal entirely. If this, completeness, is what it means to be Bonded, Kirk now understands why Vulcans go mad over it.

“Give me a sign ‘cause it runs through my mind like your heat, caught in the web you’re so easily lead to the deep.”

The Mermaid~by Kate Rusby, Life in A Paper Boat (Album)

“In this way, our minds are locked together...”

Unbeknownst to anyone else in the universe, James Kirk & S’chn T’gai Spock are now Bonded, and neither has ever felt less alone. For once, it does not matter to Spock that he is of two worlds, here, he is home. For once, Kirk does not feel as though he is forced to live the Enterprise’s life, this time, she helped him live his. A shining, blissful moment in the vast, expansive sea of stars that they have devoted their lives to exploring.

For them, the journey itself, is home.

“In peace now, the sea it comes, and peace now, in her arms where I’ll be love, sleeping in the sea.”

#spirk #amok time #pon farr #kalifee #koonut kalifee #plok'tow #vulcan #k/s #kirk/spock #space husbands #fanfiction #smutty #mild smut #fan playlist #pon farr: an Amok Time tribute #spotify #saint sister #hozier #florence and the machine #karliene #san flemin #iron and wine #kate rusby #phildel #joseph #the lure #in this moment #mitski #the txlips band #guitar gabby

[witcher-and-his-bard-archive]

Good as Gold pt.9

[part eight] | [part ten] [prostitute!jaskier masterpost]

The appointment in Vattweir turns out to be a contract and not one Geralt is enthusiastic about taking on. He'd rather be on his way back to Hagge, rather be in Jaskier's bed. But the pay is good and he can't exactly keep visiting Jaskier if he doesn't have the money to do so. So when he's offered extra coin to haul the corpse back to have it stuffed, Geralt regrettably accepts. He's sure the lord will just claim to have slain the beast himself, but Geralt's mind is already drifting back to Hagge and taking credit for one of his kills is hardly the worst someone could do to him.

So he takes the contract - a highly irritable forktail - and spends far longer than he'd like to trying to take it down without damaging it too much physically. It's well past dark when he's finished but he manages to drag the beast back into the city and he's offered a room in the manor so he can present it to the Lord himself in the morning. Geralt is regretful for the further delay but glad at least that he will be rested and clean when he travels to Hagge in the morning.

Thankfully, the lord is more than happy with his work and is quick to have him paid and sent on his way. It's barely midmorning before he's riding out toward Hagge. There are a few more delays - a horde of nekkers, a washed-out road and a travelling merchant in need of a guide - and Geralt doesn't ride into the city until twilight. He dismounts outside the inn, walking Roach to the stables where they'll keep her for the night. He considers renting a room at the inn but remembers Jaskier's words the last time they met and decides against it.

The brothel is close and Geralt makes his way toward it; if he isn't allowed in tonight, he'll just return in the morning. But he finds the door unlocked and no one around to ask him to leave. He takes the stairs slowly, anticipating his likely removal and doesn't relax until he's outside Jaskier's door, one hand held out to knock. But the door opens first and Jaskier appears, leaning in the doorway in nothing but his blue, silk robe. Geralt swallows back the urge to touch him.

"What kept you?" Jaskier asks, mock-impatient.

"Doesn't matter, I'm here now."

"Mm, true." Jaskier pushes himself from the doorframe, stepping forward to wind an arm around Geralt's waist and he shuts the door as he guides him into the room. "I had a bath poured as soon as I heard you were in town."

"Presumptuous," Geralt hums but there's an odd warmth that blooms in his chest knowing Jaskier was thinking about him.

"Maybe. But it's still hot and I don't see you as the type to turn down a hot bath." Jaskier gives him a cheeky smirk, moving to stand in front of him. Geralt is in nothing but his shirt and trousers and Jaskier makes quick work of getting him out of them, tossing his clothes to the side and taking his hand.

Jaskier leads him to the tub, pausing to run his hands down Geralt's chest. They settle on his hips, smiling softly up at him.

"I'm glad you came tonight."

"You said you'd let me in," Geralt says and Jaskier's grin widens.

"I did. Come," he says, "get into the tub. I want you nice and relaxed tonight." Geralt looks up at him as he lowers himself into the steaming water.

"You do, hm?" He spreads his arms, resting them on the edges of the tub and leaning back. From here he has a perfect view of the bed and as Jaskier steps toward it, Geralt lifts an eyebrow at him. "Where are you going?"

"Why don't you watch me and find out?"

Jaskier loosens the tie around his waist, letting the smooth fabric of his robe slip down past his shoulders as he saunters toward the bed. Geralt couldn't look away if he wanted to. There's something about the garment that drives Geralt absolutely wild. It hangs just below the swell of his ass in a way that begs Geralt to just push it up out of the way and take him from behind. And he could, if he wanted to, Jaskier would let him - would probably encourage it. And Jaskier's naked under that dark, tantalizing silk - he always is.

Geralt's fingers tense around the edge of the tub as Jaskier kneels on the bed. He's not even doing anything yet and already Geralt's cock swells between his legs just imagining the things he might do with Jaskier tonight. He can no longer count the number of times he's visited, but somehow Jaskier can still rile him up like it's the easiest damn thing in the world. He watches as Jaskier adjusts himself, moving carefully enough that his modesty remains intact - as well as Geralt's frustration.

Geralt shifts, letting his legs fall open against the sides of the tub. He resists the urge to reach between them, to take himself in hand and let himself properly enjoy the view. But that's not how this game works and Jaskier is so fond of these little games. He likes making Geralt wait until he can't stand it anymore and then drawing it out a little longer. And at any moment, Geralt could stop him, could cross the room and haul him into his arms, but he likes it, too. The longer Jaskier makes him wait, the better it is when he finally touches him and Geralt is already aching for him.

He shifts his hips as Jaskier's hand slips back over his own hip, tugging the robe open in the same motion. Jaskier's cock sits against the sheets, half-hard and far too enticing. Geralt considers climbing out of the tub and closing the space between them, pushing Jaskier over onto his back and sucking him into his mouth. The way Jaskier would swell between his lips, the soft little sounds that he'd make, the heady scent of his arousal as Geralt would press his nose against his skin. It's all too much and Geralt finds his eyes dropping shut, the softest sigh slipping from his lips.

There's a stuttered gasp from across the room and Geralt blinks, eyes searching for Jaskier for any sign of what caused the sound. It doesn't take long to figure it out. Geralt can’t see what he's doing, but Jaskier's arm is bent behind him, and the little huffs continue. He's touching himself, Geralt realizes, working himself open and preparing himself to take Geralt’s cock. In all the time Geralt's been coming to him, he's never seen him do this; Jaskier is always well-prepared in advance, happy to take care of all the prep work beforehand. But Geralt is fascinated by the slight shift of his arm and the way his face contorts with pleasure. Jaskier likes this part of it and Geralt is struck with the need to do it himself, to be the one to work into him and stretch him open on his fingers. Another time, he thinks, but it doesn’t ease his breathlessness.

He may not be able to see what Jaskier is doing, but he can imagine it as clearly as though he's watched every other time. The way his fingers would press into himself, the little gasps of urgency as he thrusts in and out. But his breath remains mostly steady, only faltering when he presses deeper, and if anything he slows down. Fuck.

Jaskier lets himself enjoy it, slipping his fingers into himself and mumbling nonsense. Once or twice, Geralt hears his own name amongst the jumble, but it's mostly unintelligible. And Jaskier just goes on and on and the little sounds that drop from his lips are incredible, then he shifts just so, giving Geralt a full view of what he's doing.

It takes all of Geralt's strength not to leap out of the bath and have him right there and then. He's so hard, desperate for it, but he doesn't dare touch; he knows if he waits long enough, Jaskier will come to him and give him everything he wants. And he does, once he's finished, sweeping up behind Geralt and reaching down over his shoulders. His hands slip down Geralt's chest, winding around the base of him and stroking him deliciously slowly.

"Oh, you do like watching me, don't you?"

"You know I do," Geralt hums, "why don't you join me?"

"Love to, darling."

Jaskier withdraws his hand from the water, brushing it along Geralt's shoulder and down his arm as he comes around to the front of the tub. He slips out of his robe, letting it fall to the floor around his feet and for the first time, Geralt can see the full length of Jaskier's cock, jutting proudly from his body. And fuck, he's stunning. Geralt wants nothing more than to get his hands on him and taste his cock, but he waits. He doesn't think he'll ever tire of seeing Jaskier this way.

Jaskier steps into the tub, nudging Geralt with his foot to get him to move forward - and he does, casting an inquisitive look up at Jaskier. Jaskier settles behind him, wrapping both arms around him. One finds his cock, the other slipping up his chest, just touching. He sings softly under his breath, slow in contrast to the quick way his hand moves along Geralt's cock. Geralt slips his fingers around Jaskier's wrist, steadying his pace.

"That song," he breathes, "it's lovely. What is it?"

"It's nothing," Jaskier whispers, "one of my own, but it isn't complete without the music." Jaskier's grip tightens a little, but he continues at Geralt's slower pace. His heartbeat is soft and steady, his breath a warm puff on the back of Geralt's neck and Geralt finds himself relaxing in his arms. He leans back against Jaskier's chest with a soft sigh.

"'S lovely."

"Hm." He gets the feeling Jaskier wants to say more about it, but he doesn't. He just brings his hand up, thumbing over the head of Geralt's cock and leaning over his shoulder. "Do you want to fuck me, tonight?"

"Yes," Geralt says because it's fine to want to know what's going on in Jaskier's head, but his hands are doing their best to drive him mad and it's distracting.

"Sit forward," Jaskier says and Geralt does, shifting back into place as Jaskier comes around in front of him.

Jaskier slips to his knees, pressing between Geralt's thighs. He runs his hands up his chest, kisses the line of his collarbone and Geralt's hands fall to his hips, holding him lightly enough to let Jaskier move beneath them. He rises up and Geralt's hands slip to his ass as he presses closer, slotting his cock alongside Geralt's and giving a short, sharp thrust.

Geralt groans, wrapping both arms around Jaskier's waist and hauling him closer into his body, rolling his hips up to meet him. He lets out a little gasp as Jaskier's teeth graze the side of his neck and tips his head to the side. The feeling is surprisingly welcome and his skin tingles with it even as Jaskier moves on. He nips and sucks at Geralt's skin, just lightly enough not to leave marks, but absently, Geralt wishes he would.

He doesn't say anything for fear that it's too close to something he shouldn't want, but Jaskier's body is more than enough to occupy him anyway. Jaskier winds his arms around Geralt's neck, using him as leverage to grind up against his cock with long, stuttered motions. And Geralt shudders beneath him, fingertips digging into Jaskier's skin as he drops his head back, opening himself up to Jaskier's mouth again.

The combination of his teeth and his cock is dangerous and Geralt finds himself creeping toward the edge of too much. He huffs against Jaskier's ear, groaning with every little twitch of Jaskier's hips. But Jaskier doesn't let up. He waits until Geralt is panting against him, practically begging to fuck him, before he gives in.

Disentangling himself, he rises to his knees again and turns around. Briefly, he reaches back to stroke Geralt's cock before readjusting to straddle his hips and sit back on him. He doesn't hesitate once he's ready, sliding onto Geralt's cock with ease. The hot, even pressure around him is overwhelming and Geralt has to shut his eyes and clench his jaw to keep from thrusting up too quickly. But Jaskier doesn't make him wait long, seating himself and shifting his hips to adjust.

"Fuck," Geralt groans, "you're tight."

"Yeah," Jaskier huffs, "'s been a while since I wasn't just prepped and ready to go for someone. Never done it in front of someone before. Well - not since I first started."

"Why tonight?"

"Not working tonight," Jaskier hums, "but I knew you were coming to town. Fuck, it feels good though. Most of my guys-" he stops himself, glancing over his shoulder, "sorry, I know you don't like it when I talk about them."

"It's fine. Tell me."

"Most of them are small," Jaskier huffs, shifting his hips forward, "even the ones who do have nice cocks don't know how to use them. But fuck, Geralt, just having you inside me is incredible."

"Do you need more oil?"

"No, I like this."

"Fuck." Geralt's eyes flutter shut as Jaskier tentatively lifts his hips. He's right; it feels fucking good like this, like it's just the two of them with nothing between them.

Geralt tries to hold back, to let Jaskier adjust and take things at his own pace because this isn't like every other time and if Geralt can feel it, Jaskier certainly can. But he's so hot and tight around him and even Geralt can only control himself for so long. His hips twitch up and Jaskier groans loudly, flopping back against his chest.

"Fuck me," he grits and Geralt's hips snap forward hard. He gives in to the thrumming need under his skin, thrusting up quick and hard. He snakes one arm around Jaskier's body, sliding his hand down his chest to follow the arch of his body as Jaskier pushes off of him.

Water sloshes around them and it doesn't take long before Jaskier's dripping, his cock red and swollen where it bounces off his stomach. Geralt keeps one arm on the tub to steady himself, but the other holds Jaskier against his body so every movement has them bumping against each other. Jaskier drops his head back, pressing his nose under Geralt's ear with a soft groan.

"Fuck," he breathes, "you feel so fucking good, darling. You're gonna make me come like that." He bites at Geralt's neck, dragging his teeth against the sensitive skin and it obliterates the last of Geralt's control.

He thrusts up hard, keeping a steady rhythm, but as Jaskier pushes back onto him, trying to match his pace, Geralt's hips stutter. He buries his face in Jaskier's shoulder, inhaling the scent of him, clean and crisp but entangled with the heady aroma of arousal.

Jaskier comes suddenly, one hand working quickly over his cock as the other digs into Geralt's thigh. Geralt's certain there will be bruises in the morning and even if they won't last long, a rush of anticipation washes over him at the thought of it. Jaskier's mouth is hot and damp on his neck, soft words disappearing into his skin and Geralt comes almost immediately after him, groaning as he leans forward into him.

And Jaskier continues, pressing him back against the tub and rocking back on his cock. Geralt gasps at the sensations that surge through his body, gripping Jaskier's thighs and throwing his head back. He groans and whines and Jaskier doesn't stop until he's pulled every ounce of pleasure from his body and Geralt's legs are shaking under him.

"Jaskier," he huffs, "you're gonna get me hard again like that."

Jaskier tips his head back, smiling up at him. "You want me to?"

Geralt huffs a soft laugh, smoothing his hands up Jaskier’s thighs. "Another night. Tonight I'm tired and I'd like to hear your song."

"Really?" Jaskier asks, rolling his hips slowly.

"Fuck, if you keep doing that, I might change my mind."

"In that case..." Jaskier grins. He lifts himself carefully from Geralt's lap, taking the cloth from the side of the tub to wipe himself down. He barely gets the cloth around Geralt's cock before Geralt bats his hand away, taking the cloth to do it himself. "Forgot how sensitive you can get," Jaskier hums, he looks up at him through his lashes and Geralt knows he's considering going for a second round. Evidently, he decides against it, rising to his feet and offering a hand to pull him to his feet.

Geralt steps out of the tub and gets his hands on Jaskier's hips again, pulling him close. He lets Jaskier dry him off and then he's being pressed backward until he hits the bed and sits. He climbs up to lean against the wall and watches after Jaskier as he retrieves a lute case from a closet he never noticed before. He handles it so delicately, setting it down on the edge of the bed and pulling the lute from within.

Jaskier sits at the end of the bed, lute in his lap and not a scrap of clothing on him and something in Geralt's chest tightens. Jaskier doesn't look back at him before starting, fingers picking out the notes with ease.

The song is slow and sad and Geralt isn't much of an expert, but he thinks it's quite lovely. With the gentle music and the looseness in his limbs, his body relaxes and he settles in the sheets with a blanket bunched under his arm. He shuts his eyes, breathing softly and focusing on the sound of Jaskier's voice, the twang of his lute.

Geralt has never had much time to enjoy music or poetry, but he does enjoy Jaskier's voice. The song itself is sad, a tale of unrequited love or forbidden love or something of the sort. Geralt is too tired to be able to fully understand right now but the feeling flows through him as if the emotions were his own. When it's over, Jaskier is quiet for a moment and Geralt hums softly.

"You've got a beautiful voice," he says, "would you sing another?"

Jaskier is more than happy to comply and he plays through a couple more songs before Geralt starts to drift off. He can't keep his eyes open now, even if he wanted to, and there's a soft huff of a laugh from across the room and the music stops. It's quiet again for a few minutes, just Jaskier shuffling around the room before he climbs up onto the bed next to him.

Jaskier settles next to him on the mattress, rolling toward him and brushing a stray strand of hair from his face. He says nothing but continues running his fingers through Geralt's hair as he picks up the last song where he left off. This one is happier than the first, though it seems to fit the same theme of forbidden love and Geralt finds he likes it quite a lot. It's like this, with the soft lilt of Jaskier's voice in his ear and the brush of his fingers against his scalp, that he finally drifts off.

#i woke up to approx. 10000 comments on this on ao3 #i am overwhelmed my dudes #you guys are amazing and i love you #💖💖💖 #geraskier #geralt x jaskier #jaskier x geralt #prostitute!jaskier #good as gold #the witcher #rex writes

[black-quartz-sphinx-judge-my-vow]

Exalted 3e Villain Analysis

When I was first going through the various Adversaries of the Righteous, I skipped right past Adeimantus, because I’m shallow. His art just isn’t evocative. But ho boy! Beneath that pale, bland exterior lurks a villain worthy of an entire campaign. So let’s talk about that.

Adeimantus is the ruler of a utopian City from the Shogunate named Beimeni-Ta. A city which was consumed by the Wyld ages ago. It now creeps into Creation like an infection transforming cities and slums into itself.

What a great freaking idea, wow. The sidewalks the towers, the people all transform into echoes of a golden age lost to time. Can’t you just see the brick back alley suddenly becoming a marvelous marble tunnel? The building torn halfway between one style and material and the next? The crowds of excited peasants waiting for their shacks to complete their transformation into mansions? Now that’s a threat! How do you even deal with something like that? Do you burn down the infected part of your city to keep it from spreading? Do you jail the new citizens to stop the from singing the praises of utopia, and converting more people to their cause? Or do you go after the Raksha that’s behind it all?

What I like most about Adeimantus is that he’s totally on the up and up, at least in my interpretation. He’s not doing this because he wants to eat every baby in Creation. He genuinely wants everyone in the world to live in his perfect city. So much in fact that he has a charm that not only changes the city to match the desires of an individual, but he himself changes to match that desire.

After the players have defeated Adeimantus and sent his city back to the mists: “That’s alright, we’ll start over as many times as you need. This is all for you.”

Which brings another terrifying aspect of Adeimantus into view. When he vanishes, so too does the city, and all of it’s people. Any buildings and individuals changed by Beimeni-Ta get whisked away to the Wyld, even victory can mean that a entire slice of a city is amputated. Spooky.

As far as a combatant, meh. If you’re using Adeimantus to beat people down, you’re doing it wrong. Although he does have a knife that can make you ugly to anyone who can read, which is fun. His main power in combat comes from his ability to summon battle groups of his followers to attack the pcs. Plus ya gotta involve the city itself in any combat you do. Potholes open up beneath your feet, shingles slide off the roofs onto your head, and other such irritants. Maybe give the city it’s own initiative, and stat block, why not?

His real strength comes from his ability to manipulate intimacies. Not only can he instill them in people through their dreams, but he can also make you disregard any that make you oppose him. Very fun, and could be interesting if you have players who are very dedicated to rp. Otherwise think of all the NPCs you can target, and turn against the players. Now that’s high drama. Solars want to live in Utopia too right?

Especially since as I said before Adeimantus is a chill dude. He doesn’t want to resort to violence, he rules a utopia, and wants to share it’s bounty with the world. Of course his Utopia ends up being pure madness when it returns to the Wyld, but no one seems to be dissatisfied.

So I’ve gushed on about this beautiful bald man long enough. What are some ways you can use him in a game?

1. A world saving device was once held in Beimeni-Ta, and it’s needed once more. Do you: look for a city infected by Beimeni-Ta. Crusade into the wild to reclaim the lost city. Or maybe infect a nearby city, long enough for the vaults of Beimeni-Ta to manifest.

2. Beimeni-Ta begins to arise within Great Forks. How does the city of a thousand gods react to such an intrusion? Is the draw of Utopia enough to tempt even a deity? Or do they hold firm as more and more of their followers join the cult of Adeimantus?

3. Every Winter Adeimantus visits a struggling village in the north, and provides them with supplies needed to survive the harsh winter. What scheme is he up to? It’s been generations since he started doing this, and no apparent harm has been done. The villages are convinced he’s a benevolent god of winter, how will they react when the players try to destroy him before he can corrupt their village?

4. Beimeni-Ta is ruled not only by Adeimantus, but also a Senate of Demons. So this Fair Folk, has an alliance with demons, as well as a permanent city in the Wyld. There’s something deeply interesting going on with Adeimantus. In his Stat block it does say the Senators are Raksha too, but I much prefer him being a complete weirdo. But as for plot hooks. A city has already fully fallen to Beineni-Ta. Now there is only one thing left to do. Characters must introduce a bill to the demon senate which will revoke the city’s hold on creation, at least this part of it. Can the pcs, get it through sub-committees, and over come a filibuster lead by a second circle demon?

5. Burns 100 Poets is a monk of the Immaculate order who has thrice vanquished Adeimantus from creation. He carries the weight of the many poets he’s killed to keep Adeimantus from spreading his corruption. He is retired now nearly 200, and works day and night to craft the poems which could have been were it not for his diligence. He may hold valuable information in how to stop Beimeni-Ta from spreading. However this gentle poet of an old man may suggest methods the pcs would consider frightful.

Finally let’s talk about a campaign that has Adeimantus as it’s big bad.

I call this one: Lookshy, Rise of The Shogun.

The basic premise of it being Beimeni-Ta was a city during the Shogunate Era, a pretty important one. Reclaiming it would finally give The 7th Legion reason to accept a new individual as Shogun.

Act 1

The Players, Dragon-Blooded protectors of Lookshy are tasked with looking into strange happenings around the city. The marching band plays a song hundreds of years out of date, a new building appears seemingly out of nowhere. Things escalate when a section of the city’s rampart’s becomes infected with shiny new lightning ballista. Suddenly the General Staff is torn on how to deal with the situation. with some opting to let the infection spread to access Beimeni-Ta’s ancient resources, to others wanting to combat the plague before it’s too late. The group is forced to navigate this tenuous situation, while beating back Adeimantus’ growing cult, and corrupted gentes. Culminating in the final confrontation with Adeimantus, and a member of the general staff he’s corrupted. Adeimantus vanishes with his pawn defeated, and takes however much of Lookshy he’s corrupted away with him, back to the wild. The walls are breached, the city is in ruins, the army is divided, and things are looking dire. Were The Realm not crippled by The Scarlet Empresses’ disappearance, this would be the end.

Act 2

After a brief recovery clarity comes to the surviving populace of Lookshy. The Shogunate Bureaucracy has records detailing this Beimeni-Ta many of the afflicted citizens were rambling about. It was once a seat of power for the Shogunate a place of immense importance, that fell into the Wyld never to be seen again, until now. Most importantly it was the final resting place of The Imperial Seal. The stamp with which The Shogun made words on paper law. With it, a simple document can be stamped and a new Shogun can be appointed, the shogunate will live once more. If only Beimeni-Ta can be dragged back out of The Wyld. If only... we could find it.

No maps of Beimeni-Ti’s location survive, only records of military assignments. Letters for a general to withdraw from the defense of the city, a general by the name of Tepet...

With the only lead they have the players are sent under cover to The Realm to find what they can about Beimeni-Ta from it’s ancient defenders. There’s investigation, spy work, a heist. All of which ends in a social confrontation with Tepet’s ruling Council which presents them with an offer: fulfill their oath to the Shogunate, regain their honor by retaking Beimeni-Ta.

Act 3

The impossible has happened. The players have convinced Lookshy to break with tradition, and march on the Wyld. House Tepet has given their only legion to the cause. The two armies of the Shogunate unite like something unseen in anyone’s time, and march through the river lands towards the end of the world. It’s a long grueling march, through an untold number of kingdoms. The centuries of Lookshy’s political favors, and military threats fray with each border they cross. Threats seeks to divide them with armies and from within. The Lookshy soldiers see their Tepet allies as traitors, and the Tepet aren’t too fond of the scavengerland barbarians either. The players must use their genius to get their army through in one piece. Until they reach, the border marches.

Act 4

From here on it’s all out warfare. The players and their small army must reclaim creation step by step enduring every machination the Wyld can through at them, from raining lava, to forests of grass as tall as a warstrider, and as sharp as a blade. All until they lay siege to Beimeni-Ta. At last the jewel is within their sight. They just have to overcome Beimeni-Ta’s endless militia of maddened citizens, their 100 Demon Senate, and of course Adeimantus fully empowered by the wyld and Beimeni-Ta itself. Who can with but a look, a touch, who’s very presence beckons you to join him in Utopia, in oblivion.

And what are the rewards for such an epic journey? A brand new city to rule over? The title of Shogun, and resurrections of the shogunate? An arsenal of first age weapons from the shogunate’s richest city? Who’s to say what dreams await you in Beimeni-Ta? 

Only Adeimantus knows.

Only Adeimantus can show you the way.

#ttrp #ttrpg campaign #exalted rpg #exalted #exalted essence #exalted 3e #campaign ideas #rp #rp ideas #rpg #onyx path #white wolf #lookshy #Adeimantus #adversaries of the righteous #plot hooks

[duhragonball]

Battle Tendency Liveblog JJBA Ch.48-52

This is the “Joseph vs. Straizo” arc, so I’ll just lead off with one of my favorite moments from the entire JoJo franchise, when Joseph furiously declares war on Straizo with tears in his eyes.   In the anime, voice actor Tomokazu Sugita delivered this with such intensity that it actually overshadowed the machine gun.

None of the dubs or translations can do it justice, including this panel from the JoJo’s Colored Adventure scanlation project.   This is a faithful translation of Joseph’s line, as far as I can tell, except they always leave off the last part: “宣戦布告だぜ!!”  In romanji, that’s: “Sensen fukokuda ze!!”    And it means  “This is war!!”  

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Last time, we saw the Joestars treating their new friend Smokey Brown, to dinner at a fancy Italian restaurant.   Some mafia jerk caused trouble, Joseph whooped his ass, and then a second mafia guy apologized and shared a rumor he recently heard: Robert Speedwagon was found dead in a Mexican riverbed, apparently killed by a Tibetan monk.  

From there, we see that Joseph immediately realizes that this must have been Straizo, and Erina suspects that it must have something to do with the Stone Masks and the battle with Dio fifty years ago.   Smokey warns Joseph to consider the source, but Joseph is pretty sure it’s credible information, since mafia guys are all about money.   I’m not sure what that has to do with whether he’s telling the truth, though.   Either way, Joseph slugs the guy for just blurting out such terrible news in front of Granny Erina.  

Now, at this point, Joseph and Erina are making all these Phantom Blood references, and Smokey has no idea what they’re talking about.   And I think seeing this panel helped me understand Smokey’s role as a viewpoint character.  When the Part began, it seemed like Smokey was sort of the narrator for the thing, which works because he’s a good viewpoint character, and he seemed to be settling in as a sidekick like Speedwagon and Poco in Part 1.   But shortly after this he just vanishes from Battle Tendency altogether, and then he shows up at the end like it’s no big deal.   I never quite understood that, and I think this is the sort of thing that fuels the “Araki forgot” memes, but it actually makes a lot of sense.  

See, Smokey’s primary function is to be the viewpoint character, specifically for the readers who missed out on Phantom Blood.    BT is a direct continuation of the previous part, in a way that none of the other JoJo parts are.   Most of the main BT cast was deeply affected by what happened in Part 1.   A few of them lived through it, and the ones that didn’t have personal connections to it.    So they constantly talk about Stone Masks and Dio without really stopping to explain any of it.   Well, if you don’t know what they’re talking about, you can take heart in the fact that Smokey doesn’t know either.   So as long as he can keep up with the story, so can the uninitiated readers.  For now, all that matters is that he’s impressed by the Joestars’ great kindness, and he’s intrigued and disturbed by these hints of a tragic past in their family.  

And eventually, Smokey learns just what happened to the Joestar Family, or at least everything that the reader needs to know to follow Part 2.   But that doesn’t happen until near the end, which is why he shows up to hear the secrets revealed.   But for most of the story, he steps aside, because that’s mostly about Joseph dealing with events in the here and now, so Joseph can act as his own viewpoint character.  

But is Speedwagon truly dead?   The story flashes back to the previous night, after Straizo killed his own disciples and clobbered Speedwagon.   They’re in this temple where Speedwagon discovered more Stone Masks, like the one Dio used, but Speedwagon also discovered an immortal man petrified in a stone column.    Straizo was enlisted to destroy this “Pillar Man” with his Hamon power, but instead he wants to use one of the Stone Masks to turn himself into a vampire.  

Before he does this, he reads Speedy’s translations of the writing on the walls of the temple.    The ancient Aztec cultists who built it said that the Pillar Man was immortal and had many powers, but he was vulnerable to the sun, just like the vampires from Part 1.   But the writings warn that the Pillar Man created the Stone Masks because of this weakness, and one day, “when he befriends the sun, the world will be his.”  That doesn’t seem to follow, since the only thing the Stone Masks seem to be able to do is make new vampires, who are just as vulnerable to sunlight as the Pillar Man.   

Anyway, Straizo doesn’t seem to care.   He just doesn’t want to die of old age, and he’s become disillusioned with the Hamon power he has, so he’s turning heel and going full goth on us.   To avoid Dio’s mistakes, he plans to eliminate any witnesses, including Joseph and Erina.  Then he’ll go into hiding and figure out a long term plan, with the rest of the world unaware of his existence. 

You know, now that I write that out, I’m amazed by how similar that plan is to what Dio ends up doing in Part 3.   In Part 1, he set about turning a whole town into zombies, and planning to unleash them on the world without any real agenda.    But in Part 3 he eventually holed up in a swank mansion in Cairo and took great pains to stay hidden while he acquired more power.   Parts 5 and 8 carry that same idea even further, with villains who go to great lengths to cover up their very existence.   

At any rate, we only see Speedwagon pass out in this scene, so it’s unclear whether he actually dies or not.   Really, using Speedwagon in this way is a pretty smart play.   He’s an old man, and he was never going to survive another 50-year time-skip into the next part, so it’s safe to assume that Part 2 is his swan song.   But how will he die, and when?   It could be at the very start, or maybe somewhere in the middle.  

Anyway, Straizo just walks up to a cafe in New York to confront Joseph, and Joseph whips out a machine gun and shoots his ass.   This whole time, Straizo had assumed that the untrained grandson of Jonathan Joestar would be easy pickings, but Joseph’s a lot more skilled with Hamon than he expected, and he’s tricky too. 

As Joseph fires on Straizo, he recalls how worried Erina was about all this.   The story kind of glosses over it, but Joseph seems to have worked out Straizo’s entire plan.   I guess that’s not much of a stretch.   He and Speedwagon were together with a temple full of Stone Masks, and then Straizo turned on Speedwagon.    Why else would he do that, unless he used the Stone Mask to turn into a vampire like Dio did?   And once you arrive at that conclusion, it isn’t hard to figure out what Straizo’s next move would be.    And that’s how Joseph was so prepared for this.    After the shooting stops, Smokey freaks out about Joseph murdering a dude, but Joseph was expecting a vampire the whole time. 

I also like Joseph’s line in the flashback.   Erina isn’t worried for herself, but for Joseph, because it looks like he’s being pulled into this same tragic fate as the rest of the family.   But Joseph resolves to face this head on.    “If this is my fate, then I accept it.”  Pretty sure Will Zeppeli said the same thing when he discovered that he would die saving Jonathan.  

There’s similar “call-to-adventure” moments in the other parts.   Jonathan has his when he accepts Zeppeli’s offer to train him to battle Dio again.  Jotaro has his when he defeats and saves Kakyoin, then learns what’ll happen to his mother if he doesn’t go.   Josuke has his when Angelo shows up and he has to avenge his grandfather.   Giorno kind of always had a hankering to take on Passione, but I think things got serious once he had a choice between killing or sparing Bruno.  There could be no turning back from that point.  For Jolyne, it was the moment she had a clear path to escape the prison but decided to go back in because that was where her enemy was.    For Johnny, it was that one battle where he chose to crawl towards the danger to save Gyro instead of withdrawing to safety.   For Gappy... I’d have to study that a bit.   

But for Joseph Joestar, it’s this moment.  Erina never sent Joseph to learn the Ripple from the Hamon monastary, and she seems to have taken great pains to keep him out of trouble, but now trouble has come to them, and Joseph isn’t about to back down.   

So yeah, bullets don’t actually kill vampires, but Joseph was hoping to destroy his head with some of those shots, or at least slow Straizo down long enough to finish him off.   Instead Straizo reveals that he has the power to shoot high pressure fluid from his eyes, the same move Dio used to kill Jonathan at the end of Part 1.   He calls this “Space Ripper Stingy Eyes” which is either stupid or brilliant depending on your mood, I guess.   He used it to protect his head from the machine gun fire, and then he uses it again to shoot Joseph... except he hits Joseph’s reflection in a nearby mirror, and I guess he didn’t notice the real thing standing behind him.

What makes this fight so awesome is that these two are determined to kill each other, and they each have extremely simple moves to defeat one another, but they have all these tricks and schemes to protect themselves.   Joseph manages to hit Straizo with Hamon, but it does nothing... because Straizo was a Hamon master before turning into a vampire.   He can’t use the Ripple without destroying himself now, but he still knows how to defend against it.   For instance, he’s got this scarf woven from dead bugs, because it conducts Hamon energy far more effectively than his own body.    So it just absorbs Joseph’s attacks and disperses the energy harmlessly away.   

Does it really have to be made of dead bugs?   I feel like Tonpetti just told him that as a prank.   “No, really (snort!) the only thing that works is dead bugs.  (tee-hee!)   It smells awful but you have to wear it (ha!).”

But Joseph has his own tricks, like... putting a dozen grenades on his opponent’s back when he isn’t looking!  Seriously, there was zero opportunity for him to do this.    One moment he steps over Straizo’s body to see if he’s still alive, and the next moment he supposedly planted all these things on his scarf.   I get that he could pull a string connected to the pin without being noticed, but that’s the only part that makes sense about this.   It’s still awesome, though.   If Jonathan had access to explosives, Part 1 would have been a lot shorter.  

I really think this was the battle that set the tone for Stand Battles in later Parts.   Araki loves these off-panel tricks in combat, and they’re a lot easier to explain when all of your characters have magic super powers.   If Joseph had Hermit Purple in this fight, there’d be no problem at all.   He could just use Hermit Purple to snake through the ventilation shafts and hook up all the grenades.   In fact, it’s tempting to suggest that Joseph was unconsciously using Hermit Purple throughout Part 2, but I don’t want to get into that right now.

Anyway, explosions don’t stop vampires any more than machine gun fire.   Straizo’s body is in pieces, but the pieces just slither back together and regenerate.   Wait, wouldn’t his head have been vaporized in that blast?   Also, Straizo spends the rest of this battle in the nude, so we know that stupid scarf is out of the equation.   Why didn’t Joseph just go back in the cafe and finish Straizo off while he was still in pieces?

Again, it’s easy to say “lol Araki forgot”, but I think it’s a lot more sensible to suggest that Joseph forgot.   As clever as he is, he went in with the Ripple, a machine gun, and a dozen grenades, and Straizo had an answer to all three.   He doesn’t want to press the attack because he’s out of tricks.   All he’s got left is another Hamon attack, which means Straizo will see it coming.   Or he’s still worried about the scarf, and hasn’t realized that it’s gone now.    In any event, he’s running away, creating some distance before Straizo can make his next move.

Also, there’s a lot of bystanders gathering around, so it makes sense to take the fight elsewhere.   Some guy named “Bruty” tries to stop Joseph to impress his girlfriend, but that backfires spectacularly.  Was Bruty in the anime?  I feel like he wasn’t, but I don’t want to check. 

The one I do remember is this girl photographer.   Spider-Man hadn’t been invented yet, so in those days photographers just sort of wandered around with their camera, waiting for Spidey to debut.   This exploding vampire diner is the best she could do in 1938.  

I just really like this lady.   There’s a spark in her eye and I just assumed she would end up being Joseph’s love interest by the end of the story.    Well, we’ll get to that.  

Instead, she’s a hostage.  Joseph and Smokey run to the Brooklyn Bridge?   I guess?   It’s a bridge, I’m sure of that much.   Anyway, Straizo catches this lady and takes her with him to intercept them.   He threatens to kill her unless Joseph faces him again.   But Straizo offers to spare Joseph and never trouble him again if Joseph runs away.   This is because Straizo figures that if Joseph chickens out now, then he’ll never be a threat to Straizo in the future, no matter how powerful his Hamon abilities become. 

Joseph tries to call his bluff, but then Straizo rips out one of the girl’s teeth to prove he means business, and Joseph gets furious all over again.  I don’t think he was ever planning to abandon this fight, but he was probably hoping to get Straizo to give up his hostage at least.   Now he’s just pissed, and Straizo is impressed.  Joseph tries to act cool, but he just can’t hide his passionate feelings.    This is in stark contrast to Jotaro, who wagered his own soul in a poker game and bluffed his way to victory. 

So Straizo tries again with the Space Ripper Stingy Eyes, but this time Joseph blocks it with two shot glasses charged with Hamon power, and then he lands the decisive blow.   But before Straizo dies, Joseph demands to know why Straizo dumped Speedwagon and the others in the river.   Not only does Joseph want to give him a proper burial, but he doesn’t understand why Straizo would have dumped them in the river, since that was how Joseph knew to expect him.  

Wait, I thought Straizo wanted Joseph to know he was coming.   Oh well.

Anyway, Straizo explains that he had to do it, because the Pillar Man was absorbing the blood from his victims.   Straizo was worried that the Pillar Man might awaken, so he put them in the river instead to be safe.    Nevertheless, he suspects that the Pillar Man will reawaken eventually anyway, and Straizo now realizes that it will be Joseph’s destiny to face him some day.    Then Straizo just uses the Ripple one last time, and self-destructs. 

It always seemed strange to me that Straizo saw the danger of the Pillar Man and just left things the way they were.   Maybe he planned to deal with him later, or maybe he just didn’t know or care about it until Joseph defeated him, and he felt a moral obligation to warn someone. 

I guess he could have destroyed the Pillar Man like Speedwagon wanted him to do in the first place, but it seems like Straizo didn’t realize that blood would wake him up until after he was already a vampire, and unable to use the Ripple.  For that matter, it remains to be seen if Hamon will work on Pillar Men.   

Anyway, what else is going on?   Oh, yeah, Europe is getting closer and closer to World War II.   The official start of the war is usually considered to be September 1, 1939, but Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935, and Japan invaded China in 1937, and Germany annexed Austria and conquered Czechoslovakia in 1938, the year Battle Tendency is set.  So we’re in this weird time period where there’s Nazis in the story, and the British-American protagonist doesn’t care for them, but isn’t trying to kill them on sight.   I’ll be coming back to this topic later on. 

I think the main reason for including Nazi Germany in this story was to draw parallels between their goals and those of the fictional villains.    The Nazis believed themselves to be the “Master Race”, the most “evolved” people, and this made them worthy to rule the world.   Araki notes that they turned to all sorts of sci-fi/occult/fantasy stuff in their war.   Similarly, you have villains like Dio and Straizo turning to mysterious Stone Masks for spooky powers, and then you have the Pillar Man himself, who apparently sought the means to “befriend the sun” and rule over the world.    So the Nazis fit into this theme of trying to claim some sort of supremacy over other beings.  

But what’s their role in this story?   Well, the Germans have an “information base” in Mexico, run by a guy named Stroheim.   He makes pretty ladies shave him with a straight razor, and if he gets a nick he makes them lick the blood off, and then he threatens to cut off their tongues.   Also, he trained his dog to not eat treats until given permission. He’s a sick fuck, is my point. 

Wait, no, my point was that his staff discovered the bodies that Straizo dumped in the river, including Speedwagon, who’s still alive, somehow.      I guess Straizo was going to finish him off but he got in a hurry when he saw the Pillar Man absorbing the blood from the others.  Not sure how Speedwagon survived that ordeal, but Stroheim’s men have been taking care of him this whole time, and he was unconscious until recently, so it might have been touch-and-go for a while. 

            Back in New York, Joseph doesn’t know what this is all about, but he decides to go to Mexico himself to get to the bottom of it...

#jojo's bizarre adventure #battle tendency #joseph joestar #erina joestar #smokey brown #bruty #straizo #rudol von stroheim #santana #robert e o speedwagon

[beauty-grace-outer-space]

you mentioned something a little while back about trauma anniversaries? would you be comfortable explaining what it means and what its about?

Sure thing. 

So.. trauma anniversaries are complicated, and vary from person to person, but the general idea is that when one experiences a traumatic event (or events, plural, centered around a specific time period), the brain/body stores that information and (as with other PTSD reactions) sometimes has an uncontrollable and unpredictable response to it. 

“Many trauma survivors experience challenging “anniversary reactions,”  which are defined as ‘unique set[s] of unsettling feelings, thoughts or memories that occur on the anniversary of a significant experience.’ When a survivor finds themselves in the midst of a trauma anniversary, they often are forced to re-live feelings from the traumatic event, causing symptoms like increased anxiety, depression, trouble sleeping, loss of appetite, nightmares, and irritable outbursts.”

Our bodies hold on to trauma in an effort to protect us, but sometimes those signals get mixed and bad feelings get tied to a time period, which is not particularly useful in most cases. 

This time of year makes me a bit wonky in general, with the changing of the seasons and the temperature drop, but October is also an anniversary for an event that changed my life and dramatically impacted my mental health... and I didn’t realize that it was affecting me until I was already deep in it this go round. 

I hate talking about it like this, because of the age old dichotomy of “it wasn’t that bad” and “it was bad enough and it’s affecting me”. I’m still working on accepting this stuff without falling into the mental trap that I’m “whining about nothing” and that “other people have it worse”. They do. Someone always does. But that doesn’t mean that the stuff that’s happened to me isn’t bad. 

I don’t know how much information you’re looking for, or if you’re asking about my experience specifically, but I’m still a bit off so what the hell. 

I already have issues with fall and the beginning of the school year for various reasons that I won’t go into. So this time of year is always tricky. But...

For those who don’t already know, five years and fifteen days ago, I called my grandmother and she told me she was going to kill herself. I was the only one home, I had just turned 23 years old two weeks beforehand, she had told me she was having a hard time affording some things, and I had offered to make her an appointment with a therapist and with a new primary care physician and to pay for it all so she could keep taking her medication. 

I called to ask her what day might work for an appointment so I could take the time off work, pick her up, take her to lunch, and then drive her to the appointment, and she told me she was going to kill herself. She told me she had been saving up her pills, and that’s why she hadn’t been taking them. She told me she had discussed it with my grandfather, and that he knew and was ok with it, and they were going through their belongings so there would be “less for him to deal with” once she was gone and that she was “surprised I hadn’t caught on sooner”. 

I kept her on the phone, kept her talking on my cell, and grabbed the home phone to start calling anyone I could think of. My mom, my dad, my aunt (with whom I had only reconciled five days before-- big misunderstanding, but still a lot), my mom’s cousin... no one would answer. 

By the time my mom got home, I had been on the phone with my grandmother for over an hour, mid panic attack, and I was hyperventilating so hard I couldn’t see and I couldn’t stand. Your limbs go all tingly when you don’t retain enough carbon dioxide, and I remember trying to walk to her and collapsing. I gasped out an explanation, my mom took the reins, and we were able to get in touch with my aunt and get the necessary medical professionals on hand to give my grandmother a psychiatric evaluation and put her on a 72 hour hold. 

We were at the hospital until nearly 4 in the morning before a nurse told us that they legally couldn’t release my grandmother because the doctor had mandated a three day safety hold, and that we should go home and get some rest. By the time we made it home, there was a message on our answering machine that a county examiner had released her and there was nothing more they could do. 

I found out later, much later, that she had never stopped taking her meds. She’d never said a word to my grandfather. She had no intention of killing herself. She wanted a reaction from me, and she got one. She called my cousins and told them I was a liar. She called family members who have never even met me and told them how awful I am, and that I make things up for attention.

I waited a little over a week to call her. I recorded the call, so that I’d have proof if I needed it. It’s still on my harddrive somewhere. Two plus hours of her calling me a liar, telling me that conversation never happened, telling me that she’s ashamed of me, that she hopes no one in their right mind ever loves me because I’m a monster, that she pities my friends and anyone who has the misfortune of knowing me because I’ll stab them in the back too as soon as I want some attention. The list goes on and on. 

That continued for a while. Whether or not it’s true, when someone you love tells you things over and over again, you can’t help but wonder. 

I started having dreams that she was hitting me, and that people were letting her do it. I started having dreams that I was in a loving, committed relationship but came home one day to a seething partner who had just gotten off the phone with her and realized I was a worthless liar, and of them, too, turning abusive. I started having dreams that I was alone at the bottom of a deep, dark hole, and no one could hear me or try to get me out. 

She decided one day that we were going to pretend nothing had ever happened, and I was forced to play along. All the while she’d still call and say awful things to me, then show up at family gathering like nothing was wrong. She’d say one thing to me, another to my family, and call me a liar to my face and behind my back. She kept telling friends and family that I was being abusive and manipulative to her. 

It hit the point that I truly, genuinely couldn’t remember what she had said in that initial call, and I worried I had made it all up. Gaslighting at it’s finest. 

It’s taken years to realize it, but every interaction I had with her following that date has been either abuse or manipulation. She spent months and months refusing to speak to me unless it was to tell me how horrible I am, then like flipping a switch one day I came home and there was a gift on my front porch from her. She’d ease up for a while, then suddenly be awful again. My entire life, she had always been the epitome of a perfect grandma... she’d take me on outings, buy me little gifts, bake with me at the holidays, sing songs with the grandkids, loved playing with us, we’d talk for hours on the phone, they came to dinner frequently. And now... it’s like a veil has been lifted and she’s unrecognizable.

I tried to maintain a relationship with her. She screamed at everyone at Easter a few years back that her silverware was more important to her than a relationship with me. I kept trying. She told a lawyer that my mom and I had “stolen her medical records” and were “forcing her to have medical procedures against her will”. I kept trying. She threatened to send a police officer to our house, accusing me of stealing. I kept trying. 

And finally, last fall, I called to wish her a happy birthday, she began a tangent, and I realized I was so tired. I asked her outright if she wanted a relationship with me. She told me she couldn’t be bothered to think about it. I haven’t spoken to her since. 

That one phone call cost me so, so much. I lost my relationship with my grandmother and my grandfather, by extension. Other family members have questioned if I’m lying to them, or if I made things up. I’ve questioned if I made things up. 

In the midst of all of this, my father also completely shifted and I don’t know why. He started picking fights with me, almost constantly. If I tried to change the subject, I was too stupid to have a discussion. If I stayed silent, I clearly knew I was wrong. If I said anything in reply, I was lying. He throws things, when he’s mad. He kicks things. He used to punch walls. My mom has since said to me that if she had any idea that he would turn into this person, she wouldn’t have married him. Sometimes he’s great, sometimes he’s awful. I never know which version I’ll be dealing with. 

I’ve spent nearly five straight years in therapy trying to deal with this. My original goal was not to hate my grandmother, or my father. It had to adapt to not hating myself because of what they said to me. 

So October is hard. Because October is when my mind and body unconsciously remember things changing. Relationships I’d always counted on turned abusive. Nothing I said or did was safe. It’s dangerous. 

I blew past the actual anniversary just feeling sort of... jittery. I’ve spent a few weeks feeling withdrawn and anxious and not knowing why. I had a noticeable uptick in old thought patterns and intrusive thoughts about self worth, self harm, etc. 

Whether or not it’s logical, whether or not it makes sense... my self preservation has locked onto this time of year as unsafe, and it falls into old patterns in an attempt at protection. Old patterns include anxiety, difficulty eating regularly, issues with self worth, withdrawing from others, emotions very close to the surface, and a few other things. 

And that’s where I’m at. 

I’m ok, and I’ll be ok. I’ve got some experience dealing with this under my belt now, and I still see my therapist regularly. I’m talking to her next week. At the moment, I’m just trying to take care of me however it makes sense, and not doing anything dangerous or dumb. 

So... that’s what I mean by trauma anniversary. 

#trigger warnings #abuse #self harm mentioned but vaguely #trauma anniversary #I... really cannot control my words right now #I'm sorry for the word vomit #this is probably not at all what you were asking for

[honestlyhufflepuff]

Just Another Analysis of Steven’s Trauma, and How That Led to Behavior Changes:

Do you guys ever think about Steven sticking up for Peridot and wanting to give her a chance to change when nobody else did? He did the same for Lapis and Bismuth, even after they tried to kill him. He did the same for Eyeball, and for the first time it backfired, leading to him nearly being stranded in space forever. He befriended and worked with the Diamonds to restore peace and create a new order, after they imprisoned him and put him through horrible things (especially White).

In the main series, he was always relentlessly, recklessly compassionate. He was willing to bear his entire heart to every enemy.

To a degree, this is admirable. Steven accomplished things no gem ever could because of this.

However, going back and re-watching the series, it’s obvious that Steven repressing his issues and denying his own feelings has been a habit he’s developed over a long period of time. It was a coping skill he utilized more and more as the problems, responsibilities, and traumas he’s faced became too complicated to solve with a few musical numbers.

I’ve been on team “this boy needs therapy” for a long time now, but especially after the episode “Bluebird.” Future Steven never let down his guard with Bluebird. There was no attempting to sing with her or to teach her the wonders of the earth like he did with Peri. He was constantly on edge, always trying to talk himself down into thinking she wasn’t about to murder everyone. He gave her a chance to change in order to stick to the principles he still held, but his heart was never really open to trusting her. And imagine how damaging it must have been to this child clearly dealing with symptoms of trauma when it turned out his mistrust of her was justified.

Let’s break down some of the many PTSD symptoms Steven has exhibited:

1. Nightmares/flashbacks: None showed yet in SUF, but he had more than his fair share in the main series. Think about the dream with him throwing up Rose’s hair.

2. Avoidance of reminders of the trauma: He avoids any reminders of Rose, especially by hiding her painting- which has apparently been bothering him at least since “Storm in the Room” back in season 4. This has progressed to him losing control of his powers when new things about Pink are even mentioned. Just as recently as the movie, he was able to at least talk to Spinel about what Pink did, but with Volley (a completely friendly gem who wasn’t trying to kill his entire planet), he couldn’t even hear a word of it without exploding. The time skip between the movie and SUF is a few months at the most, implying that Steven is decompensating at an alarming rate. In psychology terms, decompensation is defined as a worsening of symptoms, an inability to cope with stress and change, and difficulty with normal life situations.

3. Irritability, agitation, heightened arousal, hypervigilance: Just the entire episode of “Bluebird.” Also, in “Little Homeschool” Steven goes up to help Jasper and loses his crap when she squashes a bug. That escalated pretty quickly considering  Steven’s prior baseline for being patient with others. We’ve never seen Steven get that mad at her even when she was actively trying to kill him.

4. Emotional detachment: Steven used to be so skilled at getting others to be honest with their feelings, but the reason he’s “lost touch” with that is because he no longer knows how to be honest with his own. Even his most earnest attempts to help now often seem superficial, inconsiderate, manic, and rushed. This was demonstrated especially in the episode “Guidance,” in which Steven was made aware of this problem, but just because he’s aware of it does not mean he’s able to change his behavior immediately. He demonstrated the same detachment later in “Volleyball.” He has moments where he allows himself to be emotionally vulnerable, like when he admitted to the Rose Quartzes that he’s “not fine,” but later in “A Very Special Episode” he stresses that he fine although he’s clearly not (if we can include that episode as canon, that is). Recovery from ingrained behaviors like being emotionally closed off is not as linear or simple as stopping after you intellectually understand them, or learning your lesson once and for all in a single episode. Changing behaviors is more often a day to day struggle, and requires learning over and over again. Backsliding is normal, and doesn’t mean you’re not making overall progress.

5. Unwanted thoughts/feelings: Steven visibly shuts his eyes and blocks his ears to drive away unwanted thoughts. Even back in Garnet’s wedding, the chipper lyrics to the song are “There’s an awful lot of awful things we could be thinking of, but for just one day let’s only think about love.” Kind of has a dark tone in hindsight.

6. Mistrust or severe anxiety: Again, the entire episode of Bluebird, ok?

7. Self-destructive behavior: No indications of this at the time (aside from his lack of healthy personal boundaries), but if Steven’s corruption is as eminent as the fandom thinks it is, there will be soon.

8. Insomnia: Steven is often animated with bags under his eyes, and mentions to the Quartzes that he gets up pretty early.

9. Direct exposure to a traumatic event or set of events: Steven has had multiple attempts on his life. He has been abducted at least 4 times (by Jasper, Aquamarine, at the Zoo, and even one time by Ronaldo). He also witnessed his father get abducted and blamed himself. Him and his best friend were prisoners on a hostile alien planet for long enough that they were very hungry and dehydrated upon release. He has experienced identity issues due to almost everyone he knows thinking he was his mom at some point. He went from thinking his mom was a perfect, impossible ideal to live up to, to thinking she was a murderer, to learning she was a Diamond with a whole new set of messes to clean up he never anticipated.

Steven’s story is so important. His story shows that mental illness can cause even even the kindest, strongest, most patient person struggle with less kindly regarded symptoms like anger and withdrawal.

The line where Steven said he felt like he was “losing his touch” actually cut me pretty deep, because he’s comparing himself to when he was younger and being emotionally intuitive came easier. There’s this notion that things should come easier when you’re older. He’s expecting a lot of himself, figuring that there’s no reason for him to be so on edge when no one is trying to kill him anymore (which he has to constantly remind himself of). The truth is, trauma symptoms are often delayed months or even years after the incident(s) occur. Steven may never be as happy-go-lucky or as easily trusting as when he was a rolly-polly kid, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Part of his healing shouldn’t be getting back to where he was, but moving forward and accepting who he is.

#watch out y'all i have a psych minor #ptsd #su meta #suf spoilers #steven universe #text post #character analysis #lizzywrites #bluebird

[aty-altiria]

Is That Color Normal?

No 22. DO THESE TACOS TASTE FUNNY TO YOU? Poisoned | Drugged | Withdrawal

Word count: 1009

Universe: Harry Potter, Witcher

Pairings: Fem!Harry/Geralt

Themes: 

Summary: The sorceress has zero survival instincts, she’s a mess of air-headed stupidity but for once, Geralt will take advantage of it. Because without healing he’s going to bleed out and she’s the only one to offer help for miles in any direction. 

“You’re eyes are black… like… really black. Is that normal?” 

 @whumptober2020

---

"Hullo?"

The world was spinning, he was suffering intense blood loss, and his blood was on fire. As a result, Geralt was relatively convinced the voice he was hearing was a side effect of the poison. It was a sound enough guess. The poison wasn't one of his, it had been put into his drink when he'd been unaware, and its effects were still revealing themselves out. The first… was the dizziness during the battle, delayed enough that he'd made it to the monster's lair long before it occurred. The next was his body becoming sluggish, which had resulted in the blood loss when the damned beast stabbed straight through his side when he'd been too slow to bring up his sword.

"You're eyes are black… like… really black. Is that normal?"

So… voices following that wasn't a surprise. After all, what else could it have been?

The oddly welcoming village had clearly collaborated to ensure his death. They'd accepted him without malice, offered him food, lodging, and drink, and seemed genuinely thrilled to have a Witcher arrive for their monster. Worse yet, they'd filled their buildings with such intense scents that he hadn't been able to scent the lies from their truths. They knew… a little too much about him to do that, and that should have been the only clue he'd truly needed. Even if Jaskier's songs were increasingly his 'popularity,' kindness in humans only went so far.

Geralt knew now the villagers wanted him dead, why else lie about the monster, so he went in unprepared? Why else drug him to ensure it killed him? Why else leave him for dead after he'd actually killed the fucking thing?

Or perhaps the woman was real, maybe she was there to finish him off.

"They're veiny too… is veiny a word?" She squatted beside his body in the mud, and Geralt blinked slowly at her. Even taking a breath was a challenge at that moment, but as he did, he focused on the figure beside him. Small, curled hair, green eyes, her entire being screamed sorceress. It was in the way she dressed, and in the electrical current of her scent. Likely, she was an illusion within his mind, but then… he might actually survive this if she was real.

"h-healing- I can-…" he choked on the blood in his lungs, "-pay."

The eyes hidden behind glass blinked, "I already am."

Geralt felt himself frown, then he realized he couldn't see her hands. Looking downward, he realized she had them pressed against his side, which was oddly warm. As he looked closer, he could see that his skin was knitting together- how- what was she giving up to do that? He'd never seen such swift healing before.

Swallowing, Geralt forced himself to ask, "How much?" Another sign of her skill, only moments had passed, and already his mind felt clearer, his body less sluggish.

"It's not a big deal," she tilted her head like a bird, "though, I am curious about the eyes. Is that normal? Or do you have creature in you? I knew someone who had read eyes… oh! It's fading! Wow- oh." Her eyes went a bit wider as she stared into his eyes like he was the most interesting thing in her life. Perhaps she'd never met a Witcher before, maybe - all though more surprising - she'd also never heard of one before. It would explain her lack of a reaction to his eyes. But the lack of fear in her scent… that was all the more shocking. Even Jaskier had feared him when he saw the black bleed into his eyes. But this woman, she scented of only curiosity.

She'd also named her price, relatively cheap considering what she must have paid for his healing.

His strength was returning, and Geralt dared to sit up; he did it slowly, not dislodging her hand or her spell. As he did, she continued to gape at his eyes even though Cat had faded from them. It caused him to frown.

"What?" he demanded.

"Your eyes are gold."

"…yes."

She bit her lip, and he scented tears… for some insane reason, his eyes were making her cry. Why?!

"My god-son, his eyes were gold…"

Were.

Ah.

"Sorry?" The word's delivery was painfully awkward and made her crack up brokenly; she then shook her head at him and forced a smile.

"He's alive, I just… won't see him again, sort of… fell into a portal and ended up in a new world."

What?

"Anyway," she pulled her hand from his chest, "I'll just be on my way then, nice to meet you… you."

Geralt watched the woman stand, moved helplessly and blindly in the wrong direction. She was heading right back toward the nest instead of the disastrously dangerous village, and he made a face.

Geralt told himself the next words out of his mouth were because the woman had asked for payment in answers, and he hadn't given them yet. Said to himself that the reason he said it was because he intended to repay his debt, and he needed the damned sorceress alive for that. "My name's Geralt, and that's the wrong way."

"Ah." She stopped and turned back face red.

It was the debt involved; it had absolutely nothing to do with being mildly lonely in the absence of Jaskier's obnoxiously loud voice. Or the fact that the lack of fear in her scent was as soothing, especially with how rare it was to find.

"This way." He started off expecting her to follow.

She did, and he smirked.

Perhaps this contract wasn't as unlucky as he'd first thought.

#whumptober2020 #Harry Potter #witcher #Witcher fanfic #Xover #Fem!Harry Potter #poisoned #drugged #no.22 #HP fanfic #geralt

[make-it-mavis]

Homesick (Entry #20)

01/07/88  11:56 PM

Hey.

That first night was rough.

The following six would not be much better.

Honestly, most of my time spent in the dump has excused itself from my memory, on account of being so profoundly unremarkable and entirely unpleasant. I’m pretty sure I know what I did, but a large sum of the details are basically gone. Thankfully, none of it’s all that important, but I still feel like I should write down what I can recall. It’s kind of weird -- it feels like the more I write, the more I remember. Maybe once all’s said and done, I should try keeping a journal or some corny crap like that. A real one.

‘Dunno if I could stay regular on it without the added benefit of pretending to talk to you.

Anyway. Seven-ish days, I stayed there, and each day, relations with Wreck-it stayed just as strained, clipped, and awkward as the day before. I found out on the first morning that he had a strike system in mind -- I break three rules, that’s three strikes, that’s my ass hitting the road. Of course, I found out about this shortly after making my first strike. Literally seconds into the first day. 

I hadn’t slept at all, being too sick and anxious and plagued by a snoring gorilla. So, when he woke up, before he could even stand, he was greeted by a violation of Rule #2:

“Hey, Maestro, what’s it like havin’ an entire brass section lodged in your nose?”

Then he, let’s say, ‘explained’ that I’d just struck one of three.

The second strike was not long for this world, either. Just hours later, I’d break Rule #5, completely by accident.

Business was pretty slow that day, being so early in the School Year (I heard some things here and there about so-and-so’s throwing First Day of School parties, but there was no festival this year -- not in the climate for it, I guess). Fix-it had a fair amount of free time between gamers, and made the incredibly ill-advised decision to try to talk to me. I was curled up on my pillows trying very hard to sleep when I heard him climbing up the bricks, calling out cautiously, “Mavy? Are you here?”

I didn’t say anything. I just grabbed a brick and tossed it in the direction of his voice. I then heard a yelp, a handful of Nicelander gasps, those tumbling sound effects, and that morbid little funeral drone. I didn’t expect to actually hit him, let alone K.O. him. He’s so damn easy to K.O., it’s like cracking an egg.

Regardless of it being an accident, regardless of the fact that Fix-it was assuring everyone he was fit as a fiddle seconds later, regardless of the fact that Wreck-it wasn’t even in the dump at the time, but watching from the roof of Niceland, it was a strike. So I had one left until I was out on my ass. I really had to pull it together in that regard. And I did, sort of.

I spent each day more or less the same: Looking for distractions that didn’t break any rules, puking, and trying to sleep.

I wandered around when I could. I took sporadic catnaps. I took very, very cold baths in the river, which I did not miss doing at all, but I certainly couldn’t use the showers in your game anymore. I drew sketches of the gamers’ faces as they played. I spent lots of time hugging a bucket. I very quietly played my guitar, more for the motion than the music. I snuck into the building from behind and raided apartments during gameplay, stockpiling food and water as my appetite slowly came back. It was all repetitive, futile, and not nearly enough to distract me the way I needed. I wanted buffs so, so bad. Even a drink. But for the life of me, I could not leave the game.

I tried many times, often several times in a day. I’d go stand at our dinky little train station, staring at the dinky little train I’d have to use as a newfound ground-dweller, and shiver. I’d pace. I’d kick the train, usually. It was so demeaning and frustrating. Nobody can keep me locked up. Yet there I was, too afraid to leave my own Dev-damned game out of fear that I’d be murdered. That had to be exactly what my attacker wanted me to feel. Just crippling, paralyzing fear. She may not have killed me, but maybe she was counting on other ways to make me disappear. And there I was, giving her what she wanted.

Wreck-it, on the other hand, left the game nightly to go to Tapper’s, right after closing. He’d check in with me beforehand, and it’d be the same each time.

He’d say, “Hey. Holdin’ up okay?”

I’d say, “Yup.”

He’d say, “Think you might leave soon?”

I’d say, “Hopefully.”

He’d say, “I’m going to Tapper’s, if you’re interested.”

I’d say, “No, thanks.”

End scene.

Word for word, the same every night. Those were really our only brief windows of communication, right up until the fifth night, after he had come back from Tapper’s and settled in. 

The withdrawals had cleared up by then, but, needless to say, I still didn’t feel too good. I’d been stuck in there for nearly a week, feeling more broken and pathetic than I’d ever felt in my life. Everything was weighing down so, so hard, it was like I could barely breathe. Being unable to find you, nearly being murdered, being villainized, practically losing my brush -- it all had me cornered. There was nowhere to run. I was wishing so deeply for a way out. So, like I’ve done countless times before, I stared out into the arcade through the screen, trying to imagine a reality where I could break out and leave all of this behind.

The thing is, though, I’d only ever dreamed of that when no one else was around. This time, I was peering over the mound of bricks that I’d been sleeping behind, barely ten feet from Wreck-it’s stump. I was lying there for Devs know how long before, completely by accident, a question slipped from my mouth.

“What do you think it’s like out there?”

Wreck-it jumped. “Huh?”

I jumped. “What?”

“What’d you say?”

I felt my face burn up. I couldn’t have that conversation, not with him. I slipped back down the bricks to my privacy, and instinctively grabbed my guitar. “Forget it. Doesn’t matter.”

Wreck-it didn’t press, but I didn’t expect him to. It was the heavy, awkward silence after that I was worried about, so, without a second thought, I started playing my guitar. I’d played quietly while Wreck-it was around a few times before, and he didn’t seem to mind. Up until that point, though, I’d been silent on the vocals, because… y’know, I guess I just didn’t feel much like singing since you’d left. But in my panic, I started singing the first thing that popped into my head. It was this song I’d started writing about a concrete world and a neon storm. It wasn’t done. I’d forgotten most of it. It was a freakin’ mess -- eventually, I just gave up. I sighed and started plucking no tune in particular. Me and my unpredictable mouth.

That’s when Wreck-it piped in again, casually.

“Was that a new one?”

I cringed. “Yeah. It’s... not done.”

He paused. “It was nice. When it’s done, you should play it at Tapper’s.” He paused again. “...Y’know, after… things die down a bit.”

“...Yeah, right. As if I’ll ever play there again. Certainly not at Qix, either.”

“No?”

“No. Sprites at Qix are there for a good time, and I’m not super conducive to those anymore, so… even if it ever opens up again, I’m off the setlist.”

Qix had, indeed, been barred from the public not too long after the incident. It had become even more of a hotspot for buff use and dealing. Hardly stopped users and dealers from finding new places for it, but, still, the arcade lost its one and only nightclub. So that was grand.

“And, as for Tapper, I kinda doubt he wants the arcade’s most hated sprite playing at his bar.”

“Tapper still likes you,” he said. “I mean, he even talked about you the other night, said he’d run into you at the memorial. Wanted to know how you were doing.”

It was true -- I had met Tapper briefly at the memorial, and I remembered that he said that I was always welcome in his game if I needed company. It really was a sweet thing, looking back. But I didn’t take him seriously at the time, ‘cause I still thought it was a big joke. And after that, I definitely made him regret his offer. All I’d done at Tapper’s was drink myself violent and end up throwing punches and breaking glass. I was certain that he’d changed his mind and started hating me like everyone else. That thought really stung.

I waited, for a moment. “...What did you tell him?”

“I just told him I wouldn’t know.”

“Good,” I nodded, “good.”

We were both quiet for a long while, before words slipped out of me again. “I’m gonna miss that bar.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well… whether Tapper likes me or not, I’m… bad for business, now. I could draw sprites in with my music, before, but, now… Even if he says I’m welcome there, I’m not really. It’s not entirely up to him.” I sighed, and felt my voice drop so low, it practically dragged. “I’m not welcome anywhere, anymore, so… that’s great.”

“Nowhere at all?”

I said, “Nope. Didn’t you say yourself that I’m trouble? Big trouble? Everyone seems to think that. Bigger trouble than anyone can deal with nowadays.”

Once again, we were both silent for a moment. I’d stopped playing, reduced to flicking one string with my thumb, just enough to hear it.

I heard Wreck-it take a deep breath behind me. He paused, and then, in a slow, awkward voice, said, “Well… Yeah, maybe, but… You don’t scare me, kid.”

I wished that could have made me feel better. It was, objectively, a pretty decent thing to say, and another sprite probably would have been very comforted by the chance of an ally in this mess, or at the very least, someone with something resembling loyalty. But it just made me feel worse. I felt too smart to believe any of that crap could last. He didn’t know it yet, but he’d change his mind. I’d always figured that sooner or later, everyone would decide I’m too much. That was just the way of things. 

However, given my bleak circumstances, I had little choice but to accept his… tolerance while it lasted. Having someone on my side, even for just a little while, seemed like it could have proven helpful.

So, after a long, sullen silence, I just went back to plucking idly on my guitar. “Good to know you’re not as dumb as you look, then.”

His breath caught in disbelief for a second, before he dropped right back into growling, “Name-calling. Watch it.”

“It was a compliment, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, a super backhanded one.”

I closed my eyes, trying to play myself to sleep. “Just take it, pal. I don’t got that many kind words to share, so I gotta ration them out wisely.”

He grumbled. “You would call that kind.”

“I do. Now, can we cut the yammerin’ and sleep?”

“Fine. Yeesh.”

He slept. I didn’t. Not ‘til midday the following day, anyway. I fell asleep during gameplay hours, and woke up just after closing when Wreck-it stomped his big ol’ stumps up the bricks. We had the usual pre-Tapper’s exchange, ending, of course, with me refusing his offer to come along. I was tired as hell, and I still wasn’t ready to go out there.

But, as I quickly discovered, it didn’t matter if I was ready or not.

I’d been in a fitful sleep for what must have been barely half an hour when Wreck-it’s feet woke me up again. This time, he came around behind my bricky knoll to stand next to me, towering with this look on his face that I didn’t like at all.

He said, “Hey kid, guess what.”

“I’m being evicted?”

“No,” he grinned in a way I couldn’t read -- don’t really see him smile that often, honestly, “but you are leaving. You’re going to Tapper’s!”

I was not following. “Uh… ‘kay, you do know that I said ‘no thanks’, right? That’s a thing you remember?”

“Yup, yup, I do. But listen to this -- I talked to Tapper for you, and all that stuff you said about him hating you or -- or, y’know, all that --” he shook his head, “-- not true. He misses you, kid. You gotta get out there and show him you’re alive.”

I felt my face burn up.

“You-- You--” I sprung to my feet, “You TOLD HIM I’M STAYING WITH YOU!?”

He put his hands on his hips nonchalantly. “Yeah, maybe I did.”

“HOW-- WHEN I SPECIFICALLY SAID NOT TO?! THAT WAS RULE NUMBER ONE!!”

“Ah, ah,” he pointed, “polite request number one, and, request denied.”

I’d have throttled his fat neck if my fingers could fit around it.

“WHY’D I WASTE MY TIME BEING POLITE, THEN, LARD-FACE!?”

He seemed thoroughly unimpressed. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m gonna let that one slide, because you can bellyache all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that you’ve been in here way, way too long, kid.”

“QUIT CALLING ME KID! I’M GONNA LEAVE, OKAY! SOON! ON MY OWN!”

“Uh huh, I’m sure you were going to,” he nodded in a condescending sort of way that made me want to hurl a brick between his eyes, “but now you get to leave with me, right now.”

“NO, I DON’T!”

“You said you’re here ‘cause you had nowhere else to go, right? Well, now you’ve got somewhere else to go, so get up off my bricks, and come go to the bar like I know you’ve been dying to do all week.”

He wasn’t wrong. But I was so angry. And I was still so scared.

“I DON’T WANT TO GO, AND YOU CAN’T MAKE ME!”

His eyebrows raised for a second, and he shrugged. “Alright, I guess we’re doing this.”

Then the colossal bastard grabbed me. Me, as in, my entire body, in one of his huge, meaty paddles he calls hands. It’s not that he’s never done that before, but it’s always been to throw me, and lasted only a second. This time, he started walking down the bricks, with the clear intention of just carrying me the entire way to Tapper’s. His code is still less dense than that of Fix-it, but that prolonged contact still made my binary crawl. Devs, did it crawl.

So, after a quick burst of threats and shrieking, I conceded. I agreed to go with him if he would just put me the hell down. He dropped me, I ran back to grab my book bag, and we trudged to the train. The way he walked behind me made me feel like he was marching me to some grim fate. Some grim, unnatural, unspeakably awkward fate.

As much as I lamented being reduced to riding the train like a chump, seeing the way his massive ass just barely fit into one of the cars was pretty rewarding.

Once we started rolling, he told me, “You know it’ll do you good to get out. You’re just not coded for life in a box, kid.”

I don’t remember if I sighed or gave the flattest laugh of my life. “Yeah, tell that to the Devs. And for cuss’ sake, quit calling me kid.”

In all truthfulness, as scared as I was, I really was so relieved at a chance to finally leave. And as much as I hated not being able to do it on my own, I was, admittedly, glad to have a second pair of eyes. It was probably a pretty decent thing of him to do, scouting out a safe place for me to go. Even if I really, really didn’t want or ask for it.

But I’m still pissed at him for denying my incredibly polite request.

#fanfiction #fanfic #wreck it ralph #make it mavis #turbo #original character #homesick

[dawnie1988]

Summary: So many thoughts can crop up when one is trying to make an important decision. For Birdie, it’s bringing up all the regrets she has in regards to the way she has chosen to live her life. Or, in which fear and complacency can be a slippery, downward slope.

Words: 4,656 

Pairings: Platonic Dean x OFC (not actually named after sir jensen’s pup, just a name i’ve always liked)

Tags: Angst, One Sided Pining, Pity Parties and More Taylor Swift Song References Than Would Have Been Deemed Necessary

A/N: This is my entry for Sabrina’s - @winchesterxfamilybusiness​ - Make Me Swoon 250 Followers Writing Challenge. I can say with much certainty there will be no swooning going on here though. My prompt was:  “If I knew it was going to hurt this much I wish I never laid eyes on him.”

Big, big thanks and love to the ever amazing @there-must-be-a-lock​ for taking the time to go over this and doing some big time beta work, not only saving any potential readers a nightmare load of grammar errors but also for the many helpful tips and suggestions along the way and helping to shape this into a more manageable and thought out piece. Seriously, this thing was nearly 10,000 words of nonsense before she started dusting her magic over it. You’re incredible, and I adore you 😘

=======

Athens, Ohio - 2011

- can i come by?

The text had come in about an hour ago, just as Birdie was ushering the last patron out for the night. She didn’t have the time - or the emotional strength - to deal with it at the moment, so she did what she did best: ignored it.

She took her time wiping down the counters and table tops, washing out all the glasses and drying them with care. She stacked all the chairs on top of the tables, took out the garbage and emptied out the cash tills, counting and recording that night’s take. She finished up her nightly routine by double checking that all doors and windows were locked and secured before turning off the lights and making her way up the old creaky staircase to her loft above the bar.

After allowing herself several moments in the shower to wash the day off, Birdie slid into some soft sweats and an old Mickey Mouse sleep shirt. She grabbed an apple to munch on, as well as the stack of papers. She needed to make a decision, and was quickly running out of time to do so. 

She settled into her favorite overstuffed chair by the window that overlooked the city, enjoying the peaceful quiet of the night, before skimming through the contract in her hands for what felt like the hundredth time.

A month ago, a lawyer had come into the place (Jacob something or another the Third) inquiring about buying the bar from her. He worked for some mid size fast food chain that was looking to expand. She had scoffed at the idea in the beginning, told him she wasn’t interested, but he was a persistent little weasel, that was for sure. He kept in touch and eventually got her to the stage of accepting the very contract she held in her hands to look over. 

It was a fair offer. In fact, it was more than fair, which had made her leery at first that she was getting screwed somewhere. But she had visited three separate lawyers, and after combing through it, they all agreed there were no secret loopholes, just a company who badly wanted a specific location and were willing to pay extra to get it.

Jacob what’s-his-name would eventually call back, giving her a whole speech about how he could appreciate what a tough decision this must all be for her, but that they would need an answer by the end of the month or else the company would officially be withdrawing their offer.

She had two days left and was nowhere closer to a final answer than she was when he first brought the proposition to her. Every time she felt like she was leaning one way, a new thought would crop up that would have her tilting the other way. On the one hand, this was a lot of money they were talking about. If she wasn’t responsible for this place any more, maybe she could finally take a chance on the little flower boutique she had silently dreamed about owning since she was a teenager. Every time she started thinking like that though, she would immediately start spiraling down the rabbit hole of how this bar was her home.

Except… was it really? Was it honestly her home, or just a place where she worked and lived? How much of it all was just the obligation she felt to her Uncle to keep the place going?

It was never meant to be a permanent thing. She had just graduated college with her MBA, the only thing she ever did in her life that she was truly proud of, the only thing that required hard work that she ever stuck through and completed. The courses were grueling, but she pushed through, mostly motivated by her father insisting she’d never last. Well, she had shown him. 

She refused to end up like him; it was what fueled her through it all. Her dad had gone bankrupt three times, every time he tried, and ultimately failed, at a new business venture. 

And not only did she complete the courses and graduate, but she ended up Valedictorian of her class at Ohio University.

She had been undecided on where she wanted to work afterwards, still riding the high of actually earning her degree and halfheartedly submitting résumés just for the hell of it and to get some feelers out. It was her Uncle Grant who stepped in to help out while she worked on getting a real game plan together.

He was the original owner of this bar, a decent sized roadside style place in the city. From the outside it wasn’t the kind of place that really grabbed your attention, but it always supported a large gathering of misfits. 

The deal was pretty simple in nature. He was sixty-one, with two bum knees from a nasty motorcycle accident five years prior. It should have killed him and almost did. It was getting increasingly harder for him to take care of the place, despite his little staff of two, and retirement was looking more and more like a better idea. But he was dead set against the idea of selling the place. So, he presented her with the prospect of taking over the majority of the office and business side of things.

“Put that fancy degree of yours to good use.”

That’s what he had said. And of course he would need her to pitch in with the more physical, daily tasks that came with running the place. For that, she could stay in the small loft above the bar. Plus he even supplied her with a small salary, just enough that she could take care of necessities. All under the table, of course. He was very against mixing family and taxes. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to get her by until she moved onto her next phase in life. 

It was a pretty sweet deal. What was not to like?

Except, her next phase of life never really came.

She found more and more things that she quite enjoyed about running the bar. The mundane practices were almost like a form of meditation for her: preparing things every morning to be ready to open by 4:00pm, and tedious office work. It lulled her into a sense of security, that one thing she always needed to have in her life in order to function like a real adult. Sure, her Uncle’s name was still on everything, but for all intents and purposes the place was hers. And when he died in 2007 from liver failure, it became hers entirely. She never knew he had a will, let alone that he intended to leave the place to her. 

It was now her name on the lease, and her responsibility to make every call and decision.

She never meant to stay forever, but she became seduced by the comfort of knowing what to expect. Year after year passed and it became easier to stay with the known than to venture out, to try something new just to fail, to crash and burn. Then she’d have to come crawling back to all the jeers about Miss Smarty Pants thinking she was too good to stay here.

Birdie took a deep breath and held it for a few seconds before blowing it out slowly, trying to calm her racing mind. As her thoughts started wandering in circles again, so did her eyes as they landed on her phone she had tossed on the side table when she first came up.

- can i come by?

Such a simple sounding question. It should have an equally simple yes or no answer, but it wasn’t simple. Nothing about Dean Winchester — about her and Dean Winchester, to be precise — was simple. 

Their history began nearly ten years ago and all the dirty, dark secrets she had learned about him since only complicated things more.

She was still just getting her feet wet working for her Uncle when this boy came strutting into the place: young, oh so tall, with a pair of enchanting jade green eyes, a smile she was sure could charm the pants off of just about anybody, and a whole lot of arrogance. 

The cocksure attitude, like the world was his oyster, was enough to keep her from transforming into a drooling, giddy mess. She managed to ask him his order without making a fool of herself.

There was some minor chit chat while she fetched his first beer of the night. She had definitely never seen him around before so she hit him with her standard ‘coming or going? business or pleasure?’ questions. It would take years for her to peel back the many layers that made up one Dean Winchester and learn the true nature of his illustrious family business and what he actually did for a living.

They kept in touch through it all, good, bad, and the ugly, and he was her truest constant in life, after the bar of course. It was during his last visit, however, that things changed drastically and for the worse. At a time when he needed a friend the most, she had ruined it by putting him in jail for something he didn’t do. All because of her history of backing out.

=======

2010

Birdie was awoken in the middle of the night by the all too familiar rumble of the Impala. Groggily, she stumbled out of bed and over to the window to take a peek outside. She was already making her way downstairs when his first knock came, so much softer than usual. The moment she unlocked and opened the door and got her first good look at him, even bathed in the night’s shadows, she could see how utterly broken he looked, how close he was to cracking.

In that moment she just knew. He didn’t need to speak a single word.

They had finally won the war, on their own terms, but it had cost them dearly. It had cost him Sam and she didn’t know how, or if, he ever would be able to recover from it.

She grabbed his hand gently and pulled him in before relocking the door. As she turned back around she saw that he was still just standing there, at a loss. With a hand on his back, she guided him over to the bar where she fully enabled him to drink his sorrows down. Or try to numb them up some, at the very least. 

One of the very first things Birdie had ever learned about him was that he wasn’t the fondest of talking out his feelings, and it was always best not to push and just to let him open up on his own time. So she didn’t try to talk him through things, didn’t try to recite lovely sounding messages of time will heal and Sam was in a beautiful, peaceful place now, that he had single handedly raised the world’s greatest hero never known. She just continued to let him drink in peace and kept a hold of his hand. And when she reached the point that she could no longer refrain from hugging him, she allowed him to hold onto her like a lifeline, even when it felt like she could feel every bit of his broken heart in that crushing hold.

“I’m so, so sorry,” she whispered the soft apology several times, alternating between kissing his temple and running gentle fingers through his hair. His grip tightened every time the words passed her lips.

She eventually got him dragged up to her loft with her.He lay down while she settled in behind him, playing the role of big spoon, continuing to hold him as tightly as she could, as he ultimately gave in to his tears and anguish. He held her left hand tightly in his own over his heart and she placed her forehead between his shoulder blades, silently crying along with him.

As morning came around, when they finally decided their grumbling tummies needed to be attended to, he held her in place a moment longer, bringing their still joined hands up to his lips to breathe a kiss over her knuckles before releasing it.

It was a quiet affair, their usual eggs, bacon, toast and coffee combo being picked at and pushed around by both, forcing small bites down here and there. 

“So,” Birdie ventured out hesitantly. “What…what now?”

She gave a wince at how casual the words came out, but it went unnoticed by Dean as he was still staring intently at his plate.

After several moments of near suffocating silence for Birdie, he finally answered.

“Gonna head to Lisa’s.”

Birdie suddenly felt like time had frozen. 

“…Lisa?”

“Yeah, the one with the kid I told you about before. In Michigan.”

There was nothing but silence for a few moments. Dean finally looked up at Birdie to see the slack-jawed expression on her face.

His own face drew up in confusion. “What?”

She tried to get her mouth working, but her tongue felt so heavy now, trying to block the onslaught of words that wanted to come spilling out.

“I…” She paused to clear the forming lump at the back of her throat. “Why are you going there?”

Dean tilted his head slightly and cleared his throat before answering.“Sam.”

Birdie raised a questioning brow, urging him to elaborate, even though he was clearly uncomfortable. She wasn’t feeling very concerned about his comfort level at the moment.

“I…promised Sam that when all this was over, that I’d walk away, try to live a normal life for once.”

It was like the air had been physically pulled from her lungs.

She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, but it wasn’t that. It wasn’t spending such a painfully raw and intimate night together just for him to hit the road to another woman the moment he had a chance. But then, what did it matter? He wasn’t hers, she certainly wasn’t his, they had never had that sort of relationship or even discussed the possibility of one. She knew it wasn’t fair, to harbor any bad feelings or ill will towards him when she never once tried to divulge the deeper feelings and emotions she had developed towards him over the years. Why should he be blamed for something he never had any knowledge over?

“It ain’t like I got any place else to go.”

That one sentence snapped something inside of her that was long out of her control before she had time to try to reign it in.

“Here!” she all but shouted, slamming her hands down on the counter and actually causing him to flinch. “You idiot, you could have stayed here!”

He held his hands up, almost as if to placate the raging storm of emotions that seemed to be building within her. With his chin dipped down so he could capture her line of sight fully, he slowly asked the one question he was unaware would send everything into a full on tail spin.

“Why would I stay here?”

She threw her hands up in exasperation, “For me!” she let out in what could only be described as a cross between a grunt and a sob. She turned away from him when it all dawned on him and the realization hit. 

Years and years of feelings pushed aside and pining from afar, revealed in two simple words. She wiped angrily at her face when she felt the wet trails beginning to track down her face. “You would stay for me,” she concluded, not able to face him fully in her ultimate admittance.

The ensuing silence was near deafening, the loudest she had ever heard in her life.

Of all the ways for this to have come out in the open, why did it have to come out like this? Every beat of silence, every second that went by that wasn’t filled with the sound of his gravelly voice, was all the confirmation she needed: she had been right to stay silent all these years. 

And yet, there was still that glimmer of hope that had been buried down deep within her. The hope that one day this would happen unexpectedly, except in that version it would be like the movies. He would make some overly grand gesture of kissing her silly before informing her that he was just as crazy about her as she was about him, at which point they would laugh at how stupid they had been for wasting so much time, before vowing to make up for it every day for the rest of their lives together.

But this was no movie. It wasn’t a fairytale in disguise, she wasn’t the princess he would sweep off her feet and lead her up the stairwell, and she would be getting no happily ever after. There was no changing this ending.

“Bird, I…" 

She raised her eyes slightly, watching his reflection in the mirror behind the bar and admiring, even now, how beautiful he looked. The early morning shadows peeking through the covered windows were dancing across his face in a near mesmerizing fashion.

He looked utterly lost again. "I never knew…”

Birdie had to close her eyes against the sting of fresh tears building up, not able to stand the shame and self loathing she could already detect in his voice. He was putting this on himself. Classic Dean. He saw her hurting and instantly took ownership of it. She hated that. She hated that he was blaming himself for the mess she had caused. 

It was bad enough this was happening at all, but how selfish could she be for letting it play out now? After everything he had just lost, she was fulfilling her duty to him as a friend by pulling the rug out from under him, making him feel guilty for something that (by her own design) he knew nothing about? What kind of friend was that? She wasn’t worth any more grief than what he was already dealing with.

“You should go,” she mumbled.

He was running a hand over his face when her words halted his movements completely. "What?”

“You should go,” she sniffed, attempting to gather herself as she busied her hands, getting out the little bowls from under the counter that would later be filled with nuts and pretzels. “You’ve got a pretty decent drive ahead of you,” she continued, as she then stacked up their dirty plates. “If you leave now you should be there in time for dinner without even having to break the speed limit. Maybe you can even find a nice scenic route to help decompress…”

She had nearly made it to the kitchen when he cut off her path, taking the plates from her and placing them out of the way before laying his hands on her shoulders to keep her in place.

“No Birdie, we…we can talk, we should talk, and…”

This time she stopped him by placing a hand over one of his.

“No, Dean, really. You should go. It’s fine.” She did her best to keep her tone light, to smile as best as she could, even though it felt more and more like she was about to crumble. 

He grabbed her chin then, forcing her head up so she would have no choice but to actually look at him. She could see on his face that she was nowhere close to coming off as ‘ok’ and she scolded herself for it, wishing she could be as good as he was when it came to turning off the emotional switch. She looked him in the eye, shrugging it all off with an air of 'what can you do?’.

“It’s fine. Go. Go do something for yourself for once. Take a break big guy, you earned it.” He still looked torn, like he wanted to stay and fix things, or like he felt like he should stay. She gave him a wobbly smile. “Please.”

She gave an internal sigh of relief when she saw the resignation finally color his features. He didn’t try to say anything else; they both knew it was a moot point. Instead he pulled her in close, in one of his patented bear hugs that she always cherished so much. They were always like a cocoon of warmth and safety and everything good. Birdie could physically feel him trying to transfer all of his own feelings through that one hug. To let her know how much he truly loved and cared for her, even if it may not have been in the same vein as her.

When he eventually pulled away, he left a lingering kiss on her forehead before backing away and slowly making his way to the door.

Birdie’s mind whirled the whole time.

Don’t go. Stay with me. Pick me. Turn around.

The closer he got to the door the heavier her chest felt. Could she really just let him leave like this? Why couldn’t she ask him to choose her now? Why couldn’t she ask him to try to make things work with her? Why shouldn’t she?

This is a mistake. Don’t let him go. Don’t let him leave like this.

Just as his hand was on the doorknob, her voice broke out to stop him.

“Dean.”

He turned around, waiting to hear what she had to say. And the words were right there on the tip of her tongue, ready to be let free, when suddenly she thought of Sam. That’s why Dean was doing this, to fulfil some sort of dying wish to his baby brother, and that’s what stopped her. Who was she to try to infringe on something like that?

No one. She was no one.

“…drive safe.”

Something unclear settled in his eyes. He dropped his head momentarily before throwing her a weak smile and walking out the door.

The sound of the Impala’s engine starting and fading away would haunt her for a long time to come.

=======

That had been roughly a year ago. A long, lonely year filled with the occasional call to catch up. Her unintended declaration may not have ruined their friendship, but it certainly changed it. Now here she was, mind bouncing back and forth between the documents in her lap and the phone in her hands, trying to decide what to do. 

But she already knew what she was going to do. There was a part of her, subconsciously, that knew from the very beginning what she would do in regards to both situations. 

She would fold. She always did. 

She always put the bar first and she always put off taking a chance in any aspect of her life. She was a creature of habit. It was simply easier to go the path of least resistance, because the idea of failing or losing something was far too terrifying. She’d rather sleepwalk her way through a life that was comfortable enough than risk not having the security of a roof over her head. She wasn’t brave enough to really take a chance in any area of her life. 

It didn’t make the regret and longing hurt any less, though. 

The worst part of it was that it wasn’t even that hard of a fix. It wasn’t as if she was in her twilight years, too old to start over… not even close. It just always came back to the fact that she was too much of a chickenshit. 

Her parents’ mistakes and failures had ingrained a fear of uncertainty within her, as if it was printed in her very DNA. She knew that was why she clung so desperately to the guaranteed security of Dean’s friendship and why she always bailed at the last minute when it came to taking a chance on her own dreams. She needed that safety net of a sure thing after watching her mom and dad fall without one so many times. 

Plus there was the obligation side of things. That was something Dean had always understood. Even when he would try to encourage her to do something that would truly make her happy, he still empathized with the idea of feeling like you had to stick with and honor your family. They were peas in a pod in that sense. Her uncle had generously given her this place, all so she would be set in life and so he could keep his beloved bar in the family. Wouldn’t it be ungrateful of her to sell it off now herself? To her, it felt like a slap in the face. One she didn’t have the heart to make.

She glanced around her little loft, eyes falling on the corkboard that was filled with postcards Dean had sent her from every city and town he visited. They were all the standard ‘Greetings From..’ type that you could pick up at any local gas station. She tried to imagine not being there and she couldn’t. She couldn’t imagine not hearing that creaky sound of the old stairs as she walked up and down them each day. She couldn’t imagine not being able to observe the vast amount of colorful characters she met while working. It may not have been the life she wanted or would have chosen, but it wasn’t a bad one by any means.

As her uncle would always say, why fix what isn’t broken? 

But maybe it wasn’t about fixing things, maybe it was about enhancing them. Once more her thoughts drifted to Dean. She’d bet he was still up. She wondered if he ever did this: perched himself in a chair somewhere by a window where he could look out over the night sky, thinking about her in some way like she always seemed to be doing. 

Maybe she shouldn’t answer this time. Maybe it was time to give up the ruse of being fine with the way things were. She’d come close once, a drunken night with her mom that loosened her lips just a little too much.

“If I knew it was going to hurt this much I wish I never laid eyes on him.”

That’s what she had said, but as much as Birdie wished it was the case, it simply wasn’t true. She didn’t understand it, how compelling he could be. How his smile could light up your world for a while, how he could make you feel like you were the most important thing when he gave you his undivided attention. How she could tell him absolutely anything, regardless of how silly or stupid she felt about it, and he would still make her feel like the old cardigan that nobody else wanted but that he still appreciated. Or how his very existence made her feel whole, somehow, even if it wasn’t in the way she truly desired. She didn’t understand it, but she knew she needed it as much as she needed this bar.

The sudden beep of a new message alert brought her back to the real world. She lifted her phone again to look at the screen.

- Bird, please

He rarely called her Bird. 

She had learned over the years it was like a safe word of sorts for him. If he called her Bird, it was his way of sending out the S.O.S and asking for help. It meant he really needed her. And wasn’t that what friends were for? Wasn’t that what she had been telling him for ten years now? If he ever needed anything, just call.

This was him calling.

Birdie rose from her chair and headed to her dining area, tossing the contract in the garbage bin before typing out a quick message.

- i’ll leave the light on for ya

#make me swoon #sabrina's 250 followers writing challenge #supernatural fanfiction #dean x ofc #platonic relationships #angst #one sided pining #life regrets #supernatural fanfic #spn fanfic #dean winchester fanfic #an easter egg hunt of taylor swift song references #obligation is a dirty word

[eveningclouds]

How is only angel sad ?

i definitely went overboard w this i’m sorry 😭 also disclaimer that i’m not, like, Smart i just tend to be incapable of accepting that generally things are Not That Deep :)

mmith starts with ‘i just left your bedroom’ / ‘i’ll be at the door, hoping you’ll come around’ so, he’s left ‘you’ behind & is struggling to cope w that (likening the separation to drug withdrawals?). in only angel, he sings ‘broke a finger knocking on your bedroom door / i got splinters in my knuckles crawling ‘cross the floor’ which to me, he’s gone from passively waiting at the door for ‘you’ to acting recklessly in ‘your’ absence until u return. so his obsessive need for whatever he’s ‘going without’ is escalating (dangerously?).  

he positions himself as a powerless figure throughout the song – ‘end up meeting in the hallway every single time’ / ‘and there’s nothing we can do about it.’ he emphasizes his bodily precarity (?) a lot – compared to the ‘angel,’ he’s super mortal. he can’t help but being drawn to his ‘angel,’ he’s vulnerable & not in control of himself, even though he knows that the angel’s bad.

also: deception/secrecy. he’s lying to everyone else abt their relationship (‘couldn’t take you home to mother’), he’s lying to himself about the angel (‘as i went about my business through the warning signs’), & all the while, the angel is lying to him about her nature (‘well it turns out she’s a devil in between the sheets’). which to me is also sad because this song is clearly about Sex…but it is So Lacking in Intimacy…

& the upbeat music juxtaposed w darker lyrics makes the song sadder imo. it implies that although he’s aware their ‘relationship’ sucks, he’s still satisfied as long as he has (his only) angel, even tho it’s unhealthy. which :(

personally, i think that mmith & only angel are, on some level, addressed to his audience (us). how he’s grappling with the allure of (inherently isolating?) fame while still trying to form his own identity (where u could certainly make a genderly reading of this too). ‘open up your eyes, shut your mouth and see / that i’m still the only one who’s been in love with me’ is a v powerful line to put in an album after being in the Spotlight for so long, w a tonnn of v invasive fans who think they know/love you best. 

esp. since imo, hs1 as a whole is about death, in some ways. he sort of ‘killed’ his previous 1d self & had to figure out: what next? who is he now? u know?? but i’m going to try and not be TOO annoying since this is long enough as it is

#sorryyyy if the read more doesn't work #tbh i hate seriously engaging w my own opinions because they're dumb but i also like analysing (misinterpreting) lyrics so #what's Ur interpretation of the song tho :) if u wanna say #mail #hs1

[365daysofsasuhina]

[ @sasuhinabigflash2020​​ || Day Seventeen: Craving ] [ Uchiha Sasuke, Hyūga Hinata ] [ SasuHina ] [ Verse: Best Years of Your Life ] [ AO3 Link ] 

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Lying on her bedroom floor, Hinata stares up at the ceiling, occasionally giving an owlish blink. The little glow-in-the-dark stars and planets she stuck up there when she went through her space phase are still there, their oddly pale yellow-green dim and listless in the daylight hours of morning. About how she’s feeling right now, as a matter of fact.

It’s quiet today. Like it is every day. And has been everyday for...gosh, how long has it been, now? She’s lost count.

Lost count of the days since everyone disappeared.

Not just her father and her sister, either. Everyone. One day Hinata simply woke up...and found she was the absolute last person on earth. Or at least...she’s yet to encounter a single other person. And it’s been months, at the very least. The phone never rings. No cars drive by. Turning on the television shows the same programs as per usual, but they’re all reruns. And the news stations are just endless cycles of advertisements.

Online is much the same. Nothing updates. But nothing completely stops, either. Somehow she still has power, internet, phone connection...it’s odd.

She goes to the store a few blocks away. Everything is still there. And nothing is going bad. The produce still looks the same as the first day she went.

At first...it was extremely hard to wrap her brain around, as one would likely expect. Theories clogged her brain for days. Was she actually in a coma, dreaming all of this? Was she dead, stuck in some weird limbo? Had she simply...lost her mind?

And then the thoughts of absolute loneliness. Never seeing her family again. True, she didn’t have the best relationships with either of them, but...to have any chance at that changing ripped away made her realize how much she’d truly wasted a very final opportunity.

In the end, however...there was simply acceptance. Deciding to, at least until she reached some unspoken limit, to just...try living. See how far she could get.

And so far, it’s been...okay. While she can’t explain (and maybe doesn’t want to explain) the seeming lack of passing time beyond a day and night cycle (how else could nothing be rotting?), other things change. The weather still varies. It just rained yesterday, and it’s a balmy seventy-two degrees today according to her phone, and sunny. And thought it’s not been quite long enough to confirm seasons, Summer does seem to be conceding to Fall.

Which makes her wonder how that’s going to go. There’s been no shut-off in the power, but what if something happens? She’d never know how to fix it! Maybe just...find someplace where the power was still on. Or steal a generator. Eventually though she’ll run out of gas, right…?

Many of the rules of this new (?) world escape her.

But for now, those life-changing questions aren’t what’s on her mind.

...she has a craving.

For a few moments longer, she maintains her position on her floor. But then enough will musters up, and she sits upright with a grunt before hauling herself to her feet. Putting on some shoes, she then leaves the house and heads down the road.

The door she leaves unlocked. How’s she going to get robbed, being the last person left? And that way, no ever worrying about locking herself out, either.

...it happened once last year when Hanabi was out of town with a friend and her father on a business trip. Most embarrassing reason to talk to her neighbor ever.

Plugging in earbuds to her phone, she keeps one ear open, just in case. Otherwise, her favorite pop songs play in the background of her walk, humming absently. A few times she’s mustered up the courage to sing out loud, given no one is around to hear. But even being completely alone...she’s still shy.

Twenty minutes sees her at the supermarket. Not bothering to take a cart, she instead tries to remember what aisle she needs, wandering down the front and reading the signs above each. What category does it fall under, again…?

Lost in her musing, she actually squeals out loud in surprise at a sudden crashing sound.

W...what…?

Frozen in place and barely daring to breathe, only her eyes flicker in search of...something. Anything. It sounded like it came from the back of the store...maybe some animals got in? Those, at least, she’s seen plenty of. Squirrels in her backyard, cats sunning themselves on porches. She tries not to think of all the abandoned pets with no one coming home for them anymore.

But in the subsequent silence, she doesn’t hear the scurrying of surprised feet like she would expect of anything inhuman. Instead...an impressive string of oaths and swears reaches her ears.

...no, it...it can’t be…

Throat suddenly dry, Hinata weighs her odds. On one hand...it could be someone friendly! Maybe she’s not as alone as she feared! But...on the other...they might see her as a threat, and kill her. Or do...other horrible things to her.

Loneliness can leave one wanting, after all. Or just drive a person to a sick, brain-rotted edge.

Eventually, she overcomes the absolute tension in her legs and shuffles forward a few inches, doing her best to remain absolutely quiet. There’s now just vague rustling sounds as...whoever it is rummages through...whatever they’re doing. Part of her still wants to run screaming, but her curiosity about another person existing in this unreal reality is just a bit more convincing.

She peers down each aisle as gingerly as possible, finding each empty as she gets closer and closer to the noises. And with every step, the nerves in her gut wind tighter and tighter in apprehension. Could this be any more suspenseful?!

Finally, reaching the last aisle, she lets one eye look past a display of chips before withdrawing with a hint of a gasp.

They’re there! Whoever they are!

Calming her racing heart just enough, she then glances back around. An entire display of boxes - of what she can’t tell from here - has been completely obliterated, creating a huge spill of cardboard across the back corner of the store. And right in the middle of it is a person.

Clearly scavenging for certain types of...whatever those are, they stuff the occasional box into an oversized duffle bag slung over their shoulder. Seems someone else is making a supply run. Looking at another box, they weigh the option before tossing it nonchalantly.

...for some reason, that makes her frown.

Once the bag is full, however, the person in question starts heading back her way.

Panic.

Withdrawing and not knowing where to go, Hinata dances in place for a long moment before ducking behind a “pixelated” display of cases of soda depicting the local football team logo. From there, she watches as the stranger walks right past her.

He looks to be about her age. Messy dark hair, fair complexion, typical clothes of boys she’s seen at her highschool. But she doesn’t recognize him...not that she’d know everyone anyway, her school and city are pretty big. Or maybe he’s from out of town, passing through and gathering more supplies.

The possibilities are endless, and she’s only getting more curious.

Once he reaches the doors, he slings the bag to the floor and...picks up another one? Where’d he get all these things, anyway? Then back he comes, clearly on a second round as he ducks into another aisle.

Realizing she’s safe, Hinata makes to follow, creeping up to the same aisle.

Only to scream when he comes back out.

Seems he took a wrong turn.

To his credit, he doesn’t shout back. Rather, he stumbles back with a wheeze, going ghostly pale as Hinata manages to trip over her own feet and fall on her backside.

“P-please! Don’t kill me!” she cries, arms lifting to shield her face.

“W...what?”

Hearing his own panic, Hinata risks a glance. He just...stares at her in obvious confusion.

“...I...I thought, um…” Well now she’s embarrassed. Heat floods her face. “...it’s just been so...so long since I…?”

“Christ lady, you scared the shit out of me,” he then cuts in with a heavy sigh.

“S-sorry!”

“The hell were you doing?”

“Well, I...I came to get -?” Oh hell, that’s not important. “...I heard a noise, and...saw you. I haven’t seen another person in...in months. I wasn’t sure what to expect, I guess.”

“...you too, huh?”

She blinks.

“Everyone else just up and disappeared on you?”

“Y...yeah. I thought -?”

“You were the last person on earth?”

“...mhm.”

“Me too. But it seems there’s at least two of us. Which makes me wonder if there’s any more.”

“I honestly thought this was all some strange dream...maybe I just h-hit my head and fell into a coma.”

“Yeah, same here. But then I started getting hungry and no one but me was gonna feed me.” He gestures to his bag. “Hence a supply run.”

“Yeah, I...I know how those go.” After a pause, Hinata sheepishly gets back to her feet, posture withdrawn. “...I’m Hinata, by the way.”

“Sasuke. I’d say nice to meet you, but uh...kinda biased given your the first face I’ve seen in months.”

At that, she can’t help a giggle. “True. Still...I’m g-glad to know I’m not alone. Where do you live, if...you don’t mind me asking?”

“Like eight blocks west of here.”

“I’m three to the north.”

“Makes you wonder how we haven’t crossed paths until now, huh?”

“Yeah...weird.”

They fall into an awkward silence.

“...W-well, I...I better let you get back to…” Hinata gestures to his bag.

“Hey, you wanna share numbers?”

At that, she jolts. “... I -?”

“Just in case we want to talk or something. Not like we have anyone else to chat with, right? And we might need help at some point.”

“Oh...g-good point. Um…” Fiddling with her pockets, she pulls out her phone and trades her digits. “Sasuke, right?”

“Yeah. And Hinata?”

“Mhm.”

“Cool.” He tucks his mobile back into his sweatshirt. “Guess I’ll, er...talk to you later.”

“Guess so. Um...b-bye.” Giving a very awkward little wave, Hinata steps past him and just..scurries for the door, heart once again pounding in her chest as she hurries back up the road.

If...if this Sasuke guy is still here...who else could still be around? Suddenly everything she’s assumed for the past few months is thrown into doubt. A few blocks apart, and it took them this long to cross paths. How many more could there be…?

Or is it just them?

So shook up is she, Hinata doesn’t realize - until she’s back in her house, leaning wearily against her front door - that she didn’t actually get what she went out for.

...well...maybe next time.

She’s had enough excitement for one day.

     I have...no idea what this is kjdfdjhg just a cliche “last two people on Earth” idea that hit me completely out of nowhere xD The actual prompt has very little to do with it beyond never being revealed because...reasons.      (I dunno what she wanted, she wouldn’t tell me lol)      Anywho, I guess not...much else to say? Random piece is random, but hopefully still enjoyable! I need to start doing these at better times but I always write better at night...and today was busier than I expected. Take all my excuses :’D But on that note, I’ll see you guys later - thanks for reading!

#sasuhinabigflash2020 #shbf2020 #sasuhina #uchiha sasuke #hyūga hinata #best years of your life [ au ]

[eclecticlanie]

Child Spirit claps back!

OK! SOOOO. A little back story first. I left my first husband 10 years ago. I left EVERYTHING with him except my daughter. I use to write novels (never published), songs, poems, draw all sorts of artwork, and my clothes were my life (I was particular about my fashion choices). I left everything: books, original artworks, basically my soul and identity. When I left I did not write or do any art ever again. I had to focus on being a first time mother, go to work full time, and school full time. I had a new identity that left no time or room for who I was from that day forward.

 My Hubs (2nd husband) produces Drum and Bass music and has since he was a teen. I support and help him as much as I can doing whatever I can (singing, speaking, picking out sounds, synths, etc; telling him to remove certain things that don’t work well, so on so forth). He has always taken music seriously and wanted to go much further than he has with it in the past but has held himself back due to fears of being in public eyes and what the media could do to him. Understandable. 

We decided recently to go for it-to take this to the next level if we could. In this process, Hubs decides I need to unpack that 10 years of exiling my talents. He bought me a notebook and now hounds me to speak to him so he can write or have me write my own songs and poems again. I say hounds but really he is trying to inspire me and find me a muse, there is no true negative connotation on it. I am just naturally pessimistic. Hubs is most definitely an optimist and before anyone asks, yes, sometimes it makes me sick (figuratively). In reality we balance each other extremely well. I never have had a more healthy relationship with anyone other than my mother in my life with the exception being Hubs. He is my everything, next to our kids. 

So that brings us to today. We, Hubs and I, are in the kitchen. I am cooking ground beef to make tacos on the stove. We were talking about how I don’t like my voice on recording but I do like it raw and natural and how I don’t understand why I feel I sound different on recording versus not recording. I then decide we need to discuss what we want to change and not to change if we happen to go next level with this music endeavor. As I leave the stove and go into the fridge (literally the fridge is next to the stove so it is only one step away) to make a glass of soda, I ask, “If we do go next level what do we want to stay the same and what do we want to have change?”

I turn around with the soda bottle in hand to go to the counter where my glass is waiting and Hubs is standing. I see a child standing next to him that isn’t mine with sandy brown or sandy blonde hair down to its cheeks. I’m not entirely sure which would better describe the kids hair. I assume it’s a non-binary child right off the bat. This child scares the shit out of me. It was not there prior to this moment. I never have seen this child before in my life and it is standing next to Hubs. I let out a short loud scream upon seeing this child and at this exact moment the child swings it’s hand and hits my Hubs glass of soda out of his own hands. The glass went up then hit the floor. It did not shatter, break, or crack. It was in one piece. Soda was on my upper and lower cabinets, on the floor and the side of the stove. The child was gone. Vanished. 

“What was that?” Hubs looked at me. 

“I don’t know why i screamed like that.” I tried to rationalize with myself, “It was a child.”

I pour myself a glass of soda and go back to cooking. Hubs and I discuss what just happened and didn’t continue the previous conversation we were trying to have about our possible future. We agree to invite the ghost upstairs to have a conversation via tarot after we eat dinner. Tacos took maybe another 3 minutes to cook and construct. We ate at the stove and the kids ate at the dining table. So a whole ten minutes maybe passed before we ran upstairs and grabbed my Nightmare Before Christmas Tarot Deck, pendulum, and pendulum board. 

I’m sitting on the bed and my back is killing me. This spirit is sucking my energy to stay present so I can receive it’s message. I start shuffling and right out of the gate cards are spilling.

The first five:

1. XIX The Sun: 

Directly from the guidebook: 

“When cloudy skies pass, the sun comes out, shining warmth and happiness on everyone’s lives. The excitement, renewed energy, and joy Jack experiences when he discovers Christmas Town perfectly embody the energy of the Sun tarot card. 

Upright: If you’ve been sad or troubled lately, the Sun is a sign you’re about to feel a very positive shift in your life. Use this rejuvenating energy to reconnect with good friends and enjoy yourself. There’s so much enthusiasm in this tarot card. It signifies a powerful time for inspired brainstorming.” 

Interpretation: I believe this represents both the child I seen and the situation. The child had no ill or negative feeling. It was a joyful and happy child. As for the situation, the Sun is calling me out on how I’m very negative and down on myself and that positive things are happening in my life. I need to start removing myself from being pessimistic and join ‘Team Optimistic’ by following through and doing as my Hubs has been pushing me to do. 

2. XVIII The Moon (Reversed):

Directly from the guidebook:

“Moonlight illuminates Jack in the graveyard as he reflects on his feelings. The moon represents a great lament, the subconscious, and intuition.”

“Reversed: In order to move forward, you need to be honest about your feelings, with yourself and others. Expressing yourself will life a weight off your chest and get you out of a melancholy headspace. The Sun is about to come out, and a new day will bring new possibilities.” 

Interpretation: I was in the process of expressing my feelings on my voice right before the glass was thrown. I was being negative and hurtful to myself. The child did not like it and that is why they hit the glass to gain attention and to give me this message thus “the sun is about to come out”. I will be enlightened by the other side as to their feelings rather than focus on my own. 

3. X of Needles:

Directly from the guidebook:

“Upright: X of Needles indicates something is coming to a painful ending. Whether this refers to a friendship, relationship, project, or job, you may be left with heavy emotions. Give yourself time to grieve, but trust that it’s for the best. Fresh beginnings are ahead!”

Interpretation: The 10 years I am unpacking is the means to an end. The hurt will end. I’ve hurt myself enough. My talents no longer need to be buried and not used. They are valid and need to be expressed. They will bleed and feel rushed because the flood gates are now open.

4. Queen of Needles:

Directly from the guidebook: 

“Upright: The Queen of Needles is intelligent, intellectual, and sensible. She takes time to make up her own mind and isn’t easily swayed by trends, fads, or popular opinion. Fair and practical, the Queen of Needles shouldn’t be underestimated. This card is a call to remember how strong you really are.” 

Interpretation: The child is 

5. III of Needles (Reversed): 

Directly from the guidebook:

“Reversed: III of Needles reversed symbolizes coming to terms with the past It’s time to pluck the needles out of your heart, and let it heal. Nurse your wounds and go forward.”

Interpretation: I need to let myself move forward and not punish myself. I need to allow my gifts to thrive and be of use in my life. 

I decided to use the Pendulum board a little bit to confirm everything I had seen. I asked the spirit if I was correct with the sandy brown-blonde hair color. The pendulum swung ‘yes’. I continued, “Definitely not a red head then.” The crystal swung ‘no.’ “Is there more you want to tell me?” ‘Yes.’ I picked up the cards and started shuffling again. Five more cards popped out. 

6. IX The Hermit:

Directly from the guidebook:

“The Hermit is a thoughtful, introverted figure who likes to spend his time ruminating alone--like the Creature Under the Stairs.

Upright: Now’s the time to get inspired by example and withdraw for some quiet alone time. The Hermit calls for reflection, so do a bit of soul-searching. Consider your current position, goals, and dreams. Remember your past, and learn from it so you can bring those lessons with you into a successful future.”

Interpretation: The child wants me to really look deep into myself and accept who I am. 

7. III The Empress (Reversed):

Directly from the guidebook:

“The Empress is a maternal, nurturing figure who enjoys self-indulgence and life’s creature comforts. Our Empress is the Corpse Mom, who is often seen leading her child on a leash.”

“Reversed: Are you being too hard on yourself? You may have been feeling self-critical lately, but beating yourself up about perceived failures and flaws won’t help. Be patient, and give yourself room to make mistakes--they’re learning opportunities.”

Interpretation: I couldn’t have interpreted this card any other way than as they described. I needed to stop bullying myself. The child seemed very adamant with this message.

8. IX of Needles (Reversed):

Directly from the guidebook:

“Reversed: Has your confidence been dealt a blow recently? If you’re feeling low, you may be your own biggest bully. Start focusing on your positive qualities instead of fixating on your perceived negative ones. A shift in perspective is what’s needed to get you out of despair.”

Interpretation: Again, I couldn’t have interpreted this card any differently. I need to get my head out of my ass.

9. VI of Needles:

Directly from the guidebook:

“VI of Needles usually indicates you’ve been through a difficult time. Have you recently been in conflict with someone or experienced an unexpected setback? It’s time to pick up the pieces and get on track again.”

Interpretation: I need to make peace with myself, pick up the pieces I left behind and put them where they belong in my life-not outside of it.

10. Queen of Candles (Reversed):

Directly from the guidebook: 

“Reversed: The reversed Queen of Candles lacks self-confidence. Have you been giving too much attention to the opinions of others? Don’t stifle your ideas and lose your voice. Make time for a bit of soul-searching, and express yourself. Don’t worry what others may think. You have so much to offer!”

Interpretation: Another hard one! All jokes aside, this child couldn’t have been more direct. I need to keep my opinion on myself out of the picture. I need to use my voice-literally. I need to see the value in me and gain confidence. 

I then started telling the spirit I really understood the first time around about their message. Hubs is half laughing at me that I got called out by a child ghost. I continue to state out loud that I understand I need to be nicer to myself and use my talents with the focus of the future in mind. I also state that my back is really starting to kill me and that i would like it to leave if it had nothing more to say. I start shuffling and what do you know... Five more cards...

11. XIIII Death (Reversed):

Directly from the guidebook: 

“Death is often a feared tarot card, but that’s just because its misunderstood. It’s a card of transformation and transition-beginnings and endings. Like the creaky, old gates in Halloween Town’s cemetery, the Death tarot card is a spooky symbol of change and transformation.”

“Reversed: Are you putting off a life-changing decision? Resisting change is impossible and will only cause harm in the long run. Letting go of the familiar can be tough, but trust that accepting transition will make way for positive, fresh beginnings.”

Interpretation: Clearly a change is coming. Whether it be my attitude about myself or how I manage my mental health? Only time will tell. 

12. IV of Needles (Reversed):

Directly from the guidebook:

“Reversed: Here, the restful energy of the IV of Needles card becomes static. Are you feeling stuck? Have you reached a plateau? It’s important to shake yourself out of your routine. When you take a different perspective, you’ll see you have all kinds of opportunities around you.”

Interpretation: I need to look outside of the box when I think about myself.

13. XIV Temperance (Reversed):

Directly from the guidebook:

“Like pouring magical potions into a cauldron, Temperance represents the act of combining different elements together in perfect harmony.”

“Reversed: If life is feeling hectic, it’s time to bring things back into balance. Pay attention to areas of your life that may be a little neglected. The recipe for success requires a pinch of self-reflection and a dash of Temperance. stir thoroughly, and enjoy.”

Interpretation: I need to balance my negativity with positivity. 

14. IV of Candles:

Directly from the guidebook:

“IV of Candles represents celebration. People are recognizing your accomplishments! You’re feeling stable, secure, and comfortable. Be proud of yourself and enjoy the attention, but remember there is still work to be done when the party’s over.”

Interpretation: Although, at our current status as a family, we are successful and doing decent for ourselves but, individually, we can always work and build our characters. 

15. III of Presents (Reversed): 

Directly from the guidebook:

“Reversed: Reversed, III of Presents represents an imbalance within a professional or financial collaboration. If you’re working with others on a project, make sure everyone’s doing their part. Disaster strikes when things become inequitable. Prioritizing teamwork will get you where you want to go.”

Interpretation: I need to be more open about my thoughts, opinions, hopes, fears, etc towards Hubs on this new adventure. 

With this I felt a lot of my back pain let up. I started to slip the cards back into the deck and shuffle them again just to give them an after reading cleanse. Hubs randomly states he was thinking about splurging on a cyber whip rave toy and then another two cards popped out. 

16. XX Judgement:

Directly from guidebook:

“We all have pivotal decisions to make in our lives. Will yours land you on the naughty list or the nice list?

Upright: Now isn’t the time to be hasty and impulsive. Consider your actions and choices carefully, and take time to think things through. Remember that all actions have reactions. Be sensible, and stay true to your conscience.”

Interpretation: The Childs leaving statement is to be mindful as well as ‘you do you’. Apparently, Party time is not on its list of things to do. I may have taken this a little condescendingly. This ghost doesn’t like to have fun. 

17. IV of Presents (Reversed):

Directly from the guidebook:

“Reversed: Is your relationship with money healthy? Is it getting you where you want to go? If not, it may be time to look over your budget and reevaluate your priorities. Make sure you’re not spending frivolously if your cash flow can’t support it right now.”

Interpretation: The spirit child was telling us to maybe not go out and buy a light up whip to dance with. No parties for you! Well... In our house, raves will persevere! GLOW STICKS OUT! RAVE ON! 

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