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kohakhearts · 3 years

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a saga of light and dark masterpost

OK HI so for those of you who don’t know a saga of light and dark (ASLD) is my novel series. if you see me talking about OCs, there’s a good chance they live in these books. maybe you’re an AO3 subscriber and you keep getting emails about weird fics with weird, unfamiliar character names and you’ve come here to find out what’s up with that. so hopefully this post will help!

first, you can read about the whole series here if you’d like! all the options to buy the books (or read them in full for free!) are outlined on that link, but otherwise all you’ll find there are book summaries and reviews. if you want a more personal, in-depth explanation of the series (because it’s very close to my heart for a lot of reasons!), i’ll drop that under the cut! since this will constantly be updating, i’ll also put all the details about my fics under the cut, so if you want to read those i’ll make sure to include trigger and spoiler warnings for each individual one.

essentially, it’s a high/epic fantasy series about people who use magic and grapple with systemic magical oppression. the big themes are oppression, identity, trauma, grief, family, and government. it can definitely be read as a critique on western colonial powers told through the very personal, very complicated lens of a traumatized 16-year-old. that is to say, it’s plot-heavy but at its heart it is a character-driven coming of age story.

so let me tell you about nerissa! she’s a nerd. she’s a badass. she loves her little brother more than anything in the world. and she’s also a creation of a 14-year-old kid who needed a safely explore the experience of oppression they were dealing with: isolated, misunderstood, and socially outcast by my peers but simultaneously alienated by lgbtq+ people in western urban centres whose experiences of homo- and transphobia just didn’t mesh with my rural ones. obviously, i’m a lot older now and nerissa has developed significantly beyond this, but she is a chronically misunderstood, isolated, friendless kid forced to grow up too fast because it feels like the world hates her (and let’s be real...a lot of it really, really does).

the other most important part of nerissa’s character is that she goes through trauma and it is addressed. if you’ve read my fics, you probably already know i love dealing with trauma in my writing. this is a very different flavour, of course (though my ASLD fics might be more aligned with other fanfic i’ve written in this regard; i’ll get to those in a bit!), but a lot of us have gripes with media where the main character is obviously traumatized, right? where they have all these severe post-trauma symptoms...and they just get glossed over? at some point a lot of them just disappear, even? nerissa is not that. nerissa will never be that. nerissa’s trauma is addressed by other characters, by the narrative, and most importantly by herself (though it takes her some time to get there, which you’ll see if you read the books).

and she’s not the only one! even the adults in ASLD are given room to express their trauma and have it be seen. it isn’t always validated, because that’s how life unfortunately is. but this is a topic that’s really important to me. trauma and mental health is huge in these books, particularly in the latter half of the series. it’s not meant to be totally nice to read, either. frankly, some of it is intended to be downright uncomfortable.

which leads me to what you’ll want to be wary of. there are major character deaths (the first is in book 1). domestic abuse/child abuse come up fairly often. there’s violence and some of it might be kind of disturbing to read (decapitations, death by swords, all the expected blood and gore of that sort of thing). again, the mental health topic is pretty huge! suicidal ideation and behaviour comes up a lot, particularly around books 2 and 3. some characters curse, but that’s actually pretty minimal. overall, though, i don’t personally consider the series to be very dark or gruesome. compared to some of my fics, it’s pretty tame in this regard! but still - best to know potential triggers in advance!

obviously, there are characters other than nerissa. she’s the protagonist, but she’s accompanied from start to finish by her 12-year-old brother, poseidon. he’s a witty little shithead. he’s 12. he’s moody. nerissa loves him, even when he’s being an ass to her. their relationship is the most important one in the series. it gets pretty rocky, but again: family is one of the biggest themes in the series!

and that includes found family. yay! nerissa and poseidon are joined as the main characters by ada (17) and emmet (16). you will see a lot of memes about these four from me. you will also see a lot of shipping of nerissa/ada/emmet and its derivations. one of those ships is canon and it’s not a secret per se, but i try not to be too open about it anymore, because people have had a lot of fun so far guessing what the endgame ship is going to be (but if you really want to find out, it’s not hard at all hahahaha. certain fics on AO3 will probably reveal it via notes or tags).

there are also a considerable amount of adult characters, who are very dysfunctional and have pretty epically bad parenting moments (which are typically called out, because that’s another big pet peeve of mine. i am not always kind to my parent characters). those include adrienne (37), nerissa and poseidon’s mom. their father dies ten years before the first book begins, but there is a prequel novel! you can only read it on with a pledge on patreon currently, but maybe in a few years i’ll publish it. that’s about adrienne and her late husband, ely (died at 29), and how they met and illegally got married etc etc. the other two most presents adults are avery (38), who is adrienne’s estranged childhood best friend and ada’s aunt, and isobel (32), emmet’s mother. ada’s dad, adonis (41), is also a pretty important character, but the main six characters are nerissa, poseidon, ada, emmet, avery, and isobel.

other characters you might see show up in my fic, however, include adrienne and adonis, as well as nerissa and poseidon’s paternal aunt, emerson (36); their paternal grandparents, moira and cyril; their maternal grandparents, katina and galen; an old friend of ely’s who fell out of touch with him and adrienne when they got married, stella (46; was 28 when ely and adrienne knew her); stella’s good friend alexander (44), as well as her daughter, elnora (26), and elnora’s partner, nico (25); nerissa’s mentor/professor, ryes (74); and a couple erebusian political reformists we meet later in the series, orion (26) and alisha (24). the big bad villain’s name is aether, and he had a twin brother, erebus. that’s all very complicated so i won’t get into it here. you might also find names like circe and karsei. they’re nymphs, but there are some other god-like figures in the canon who show up too.

if you’ve noticed a lot of greek mythology references, you’re on the right track! the whole world is heavily but loosely inspired by greek mythology. aside from the gods (who are white-winged angels in the ASLD lore), the most important things of note relating to the world-building are the world’s “layers.” there are five of them: the Heavens, the Sea, the Underworld, Time, and Chaos. i can’t explain all the world-building here, but i’m happy to get into longer explanations if you ask! i capitalized each of those things because it’s important to note that they are all entities. the idea is that the world lives and breathes...and that the actions of the colonizers a long time ago have thrown it into a state of grief and disarray, which has forced the oppressed to have to fix it to their own detriment. i don’t think i have to explain why this is a huge allegory for our own climate crisis. to understand some parts of a lot of my fics, it might be helpful to know that chaos (which is a primordial entity, and supposedly supplies the world with infinite magic) shares a sort of bond with poseidon, and that the mythological angels were said to be subservient to chaos--and in turn were its anchor to the world. as in, without the angels, the world can’t function because chaos lacks regulation. according to the in-verse mythology, in any case. it is in fact considered by the characters as mythology, because science debunked it long before the first book. apparently, anyway.

the other one there to know about is time! it’s very arbitrary, but it can be accessed through this thing called chronos’s gate. it’s a passage through the space-time continuum, basically. and it is as funky as it sounds; it makes people who pass through it experience bits and pieces of past and future events. it is a very big 1:1 metaphor for ptsd, which is why it’s worth mentioning here! a lot of the fics i write are about nerissa’s ptsd (which is a very canon thing. even gets called that! lol), so her experiences with chronos’s gate are likely to come up.

all right! all that being said, here is the list of actual works. there are three categories here. for each novel in the series, i post the full .pdf to my patreon for anyone pledged $1+ to me one month prior to publication. one year from that date, i make that .pdf free for everyone to access in full. i don’t write for the money, nor have i ever wanted to. i’m very happy with my career; writing is just something i’m passionate about and particularly enjoy doing! however, the funds are very appreciated! after my own needs are met, and i’ve broken my publication costs, i choose to save all royalties i earn from my books in order to put that money entirely towards mental health initiatives for youth in rural areas of canada (whether that’s in alberta, quebec, the maritimes, etc. is all contingent on where i’m currently at! ideally, i’d be able to give to as many areas as possible, but that won’t be cheap!). given my occupation as a full-time student, however...most if not all money goes towards keeping myself afloat amidst a whole lot of student debt. but even now, i have a dedicated amount of savings for this! it feels fitting to me, considering the context of this series and much of my reason behind writing as a whole.

A Saga of Light and Dark and related canon works:

Of Storm and Ash - book 1 | published september 15, 2020 | 134k words/400 pages | warnings for: major character death, fantasy violence, implied/referenced child abuse, implied/referenced domestic abuse | you can read the entire novel for free here in a .pdf format or buy the paperback, hardcover, or ebook edition here.

FOR CENTURIES, the world of Komos has been neatly divided into two categories: Light and Dark, the kingdom of Aether and, beyond the uncrossable border, the kingdom of Erebus. The relic of a great war headed by the royal Evenellis brothers, said to be the first humans blessed with the ability to cast magic, the division between the Light mage Aetherians and the Dark mage Erebusians has been heralded by a long and bloody history of hatred for one other on account of their magical differences. Sixteen-year-old Nerissa Smith and her younger brother, Poseidon, are Grey mages: a perfect and unheard of mix of Light and Dark. Just months after the Heavens have lost their regular hue to an extraordinary, omnipresent grey, Poseidon is dreaming of the angelic diviners described in myth books across the globe, and their secretive mother is acting even more oddly than usual. When her past unexpectedly collides with their present, the three of them are forced out of hiding and wind up under the protection of a dedicated group of political reformists. Led by a childhood friend of their mother’s, the idealistic ex-noble Adonis Archer, these people want a revolution—and they think Nerissa and Poseidon can be the ones to spark it. But it is not only the social order of their kingdom that is falling out of balance; the infinite entity Chaos, giver of all the world’s magic and commander of the twelve mythical angels of Poseidon’s dreams, seems to have something to do with the disturbance of the Heavens. By virtue of their hybrid magic, it is suddenly up to Nerissa and Poseidon to find a way to restore stability to their world, even as they prepare for the war they were born to fight.

Of Earth and Sky - book 2 | expected release september 15, 2021 | 124k words/~350 pages | warnings for: fantasy violence, implied/referenced child abuse, implied/referenced domestic abuse, (brief, non-explicit) references to a past sexual minor/adult relationship, suicidal ideation and suicide | pledge $1+ on patreon to read the full novel ahead of publication! or preorder the kindle edition here.

WITH THE HEAVENS restored to their natural hue, it seems to all that balance has returned to the world of Komos. As revolution continues to stir in the heart of Aether behind Adonis and his reformists, however, Nerissa Smith and her companions find themselves caught up in a five-hundred-year-old conspiracy about Aether and Erebus Evenellis and the mythical envoys of Chaos, the angels. What’s more, Poseidon has told them that balance has not returned at all; the Heavens are falling, and it is only a matter of time before they drop for good. In surprising accordance with the sea nymph Circe’s guiding wisdom, they find themselves following in the footsteps of the legendary Atlas across the uncrossable border into Erebus, to the village Nerissa and Poseidon’s father grew up in. But Chaos’s bond with Poseidon grows more taxing by the day, and so too does the distance between him and Nerissa. Lost without her mother’s guidance, she is powerless to help him, and she is becoming less and less confident that this fight is worth losing her family for, when Poseidon is the only thing she even has left of it. One thing is certain, though: unless they can stop the Heavens from crashing down upon them, there will be no war to be fought at all.

Of Shadow and Flame - book 3; expected release september 15, 2022. will PROBABLY be ~250k words. warnings for: fantasy violence (including decapitation), implied/referenced child abuse, implied/referenced domestic abuse, suicidal ideation, themes of depression, minor character death, (minor and mostly internalized) homophobia

TWO WEEKS after the Heavens have been put back in their rightful place beneath Chaos, Nerissa Smith wakes up in her father's ancestral home confused, disoriented, and with a sudden and frightening inability to cast any magic at all. While her companions work to contact the Dark mage Stella of the Erebusian Civil Front, Nerissa must confront the absence of her magic around her brother's fury and her own horrific dreams, all the while left to wonder how or why she even survived bearing Atlas's burden in the first place. But outside the boundaries of their family's village, civil war runs rampant within Erebus, and if everything has gone according to Adonis's plan, Aether won't be too far behind them. Wielders of Chaos's angelic Grey magic, Nerissa and Poseidon will be stuck in the middle of it all no matter what, but unless Nerissa can regain control over her magic and they can find out the truth about Aether and Erebus Evenellis's bloody feud, there is little hope that any of them will make it out of this fight alive.

Of Light and Dark - book 4 | expected release september 15, 2023 | will PROBABLY be ~200k words | warnings for: major character death, fantasy violence, implied/referenced child abuse, implied/referenced child abuse, references to a past minor/adult relationship, suicidal ideation, severe and permanent physical injury

no working summary for this yet sorry!!!

Liberation - prequel novel to ASLD | currently a patreon exclusive as of october 6, 2020 | 89k words/254 pages | warnings for: physical, verbal, and psychological child abuse, homophobia, racism, fantasy violence, mild sexual content, misogynistic language. you can read it with a minimum $1 pledge to my patreon. there is no plan to make this public yet; i expect to do so following the free release of ASLD book 4.

Eighteen years prior to the events of Of Storm and Ash, nineteen-year-old Adrienne Cherri is deployed as an ambassador on a political mission to Erebus alongside a group of Aetherians, including her childhood friend Amery Archer and her mother, the esteemed Madame Katina Cherri. She is resolute in her mission, the truth of which is a secret she shares with her mother and her mother alone, but Katina is distant and impossible to please, and the Dark mages that have been assigned to guard her are not the horrific monsters she was expecting them to be. The longer she stays, the less certain of King Aether's agenda she becomes. Finding a friend in the Dark mage Ely Smith, she is forced to confront all sorts of horrible truths about her country, her family, and, most of all, herself, but for the first time in her life, she has been given a choice: Does she want to be Adrienne Cherri, her mother's daughter through and through, or can she find the strength to reject what she has come to see is wrong, embrace the uncertainty, and become something else?

[untitled birthday shorts] - a collection of pre-OSA scenes totalling to 22k words! each one focusses on one of the smiths’ birthdays and the povs alternate between ely, adrienne, nerissa, and poseidon. this was posted on december 25, 2020, since december 25 translates to pagnis 17 (nerissa’s birthday) on the komos calendar. if you’re interested in learning anyone’s birthdays or getting a look at the months and days of the verse’s year, there’s a calendar for the year 529 AE (when OSA begins!) that you can see without a pledge here. i update this before the release of each new book to include newly introduced characters. it is currently up to date for OES, when the foreword would have been written.

ASLD “fan”fiction:

i wouldn’t consider any of this canon, even if it is set within canon ‘verse or is tagged as canon compliant. just consider them fanfics like any other (which, for the record, others have written ASLD fic and they’re really excellent. because the tag has been wrangled into original work, they can be a bit hard to find, but check here or here. i love when people write fic or draw fanart or do cosplay. you don’t need to gift it to me or tag (in fact please don’t unless it is actually a gift or commission or something haha), but know you have permission to do any of that stuff and i would love if you linked me to it!). many contain spoilers, though, so i’ll mark those down!

as a note! some of these contain things that are inconsistent with the canon. that’s because they were written while i was still drafting OSA, or before i had changed certain plot details in later books, etc. where i use canon compliant, i mostly mean in terms of the timeline of major events. the very first draft of OSA was completed in 2016, and at that point nerissa and poseidon did not even know they were mages until the beginning of the book. the second draft was completed in spring 2019. in that one, the entirety of chapter 10 is not present, and adrienne never told the kids about her own family history (so, they didn’t know she was a cherri, or even really that she had been a noble). later in that year, i wrote a chunk of but did not finish the second draft of OES (i had done the same with the first back in 2016). some minor things like spellings and certain noun capitalization have changed as well. the final draft of osa, as it’s been published, was finished in the summer of 2020 i’ll include the fics’ publication dates. if it was published before may 2020, there are almost certainly inaccuracies with canon, possibly even characterization issues, but, again, the timeline of major events is consistent.

“Who told you I needed fixing?” Nerissa snarled. “And what made you believe them?”

Ada stopped. Something Nerissa could not quite read flashed in her eyes, but it was gone as quickly as it had come.

“I don’t want to fix you,” she whispered. “You’re not broken, Nerissa.”

She asked, “Do you know what exiguous means?”

Ada shook her head.

“It means small. Not taking up a lot of space.” She looked away from Ada, eyes fixing on the mirror again. “I died there, you know. Literally.”

“I know.”

“I think I left something behind, when I did.”

Ada was very quiet for a moment.

And then: “What was it?”

Immediately after their graduation from high school, Nerissa is heading off on her next big adventure in California, leaving Ada and their friends and family back in New York. Lost without her best friend, all the words Ada never had the courage to say before begin to fester painfully, and all she can think is that she really should've told Nerissa she loved her while she still had the chance.

They’ve all been best friends for so long, sometimes they forget they can function in groups of two just as well as they do in three.

We’ve already lost so much. I can't lose you too.

Nerissa has always relished any piece of her family she can: the old journals of her father's locked away in Emerson's home for twenty long years, the cherished bracelet around her wrist, diókes, even the sword her mother died on, the same one she wielded for so many years before. She knows it is different for Ada, though. She just can't really understand why.

Poseidon always works himself too hard. Somewhere, deep inside of herself, Nerissa does know the truth.

All of this is her fault.

So They’re Both Short Fuses [crossover collaborative fic with the author of what rises from the depths, k.a. crystal] - rated T | endric & nerissa | 17.3k words | wrftd universe setting, canon compliant, spoilers for OSA, OES, and up to chapter 7 of OSF | hurt/comfort, minor angst | referenced character deaths, referenced injuries, referenced suicidal behaviour, PTSD | april 8, 2020 (actually written summer 2019)

Endric and Mordecai thought their encounters with the weird and abnormally strange were over.

Then they find a winged girl unconscious in the snow.

She doesn't know how to stop the storm. Even if she did, she isn't sure she would want to. There is, after all, something very satisfying about the destruction of that which is outside of herself for once.

They have been through everything together.

But there was one place even they could not follow her to; after all this time, Emmet can still see the weight of the Underworld in her eyes.

Emmet started the pool. Now he just has to make sure these two idiots get him his money before it's too late.

Nerissa just wanted to learn Ipasian. It's not her fault Emmet's teaching leaves something to be desired.

“All right,” Ada said. “Deep breaths now, okay? It might hurt a bit, and you’ll probably have some scars, but they’ll look cool, I promise.” She winked. Poseidon responded with a very tired-looking smile.

In the silence, there's a voice, just loud enough to drown out her memories.

It doesn't matter that Ely can heal it. It won't change the fact that Adrienne hurt their daughter, the way she swore she never would.

The Sea’s Song - rated T | adrienne & nerissa, ely & nerissa, emerson & nerissa, nerissa & poseidon | 9.4k words | spoilers for OSA, OES, OSF, and OLD | angst, hurt/comfort | referenced character deaths, references to drowning, panic attacks, suicidal ideation, referenced suicidal behaviour, PTSD | october 18, 2020

It is full of grief and rage, that's what Poseidon is always saying. Like the Heavens, it feels the pain of Chaos, eternally, a never-ending reflection of balance lost to Time.

But all grief and rage have ever done is hurt her, and the Sea is no exception.

Nerissa's pretty sure it's her turn to pick, but her mother and brother are, as usual, being annoyingly stubborn, and her father really isn't helping.

ASLD modern AU:

this is a complete rewrite of the series, spanning from where liberation would begin to where OLD would end. it’s a collection of single-chapter fics from various character perspectives. it is fun and self-indulgent and people get some much-needed therapy. it’s also not written in order and will probably be perpetually unfinished. it doesn’t require any knowledge of the canon to read, and no one dies. probably the only place you’ll find explicit sexual content (written by me, at least) and it’s all adrienne/ely, so all m/f. there is a timeline in the series notes, but i’m happy to answer any questions too! this one is pure self-indulgence so i’m not vouching for quality here. i do have fun with it though.

Adrienne is way out of her depth here. There's Ely, of course, with his lingering touches, his suggestive words, all those little things he has been doing lately that drive her absolutely insane, but then, too, there is his sister and his father and his mother, and she cannot help thinking it must be pathetically obvious to them that she has never experienced this thing called family before.

The more she thinks about it, the more confident she is: she is the filthy whore her mother said she was. She wants to be.

Weeks after that horrible confrontation, Adrienne finally talks to Moira about it.

Quietly - rated E | Adrienne/Ely | 4k words | PWP, public sex, clothed sex | december 3, 2020

Maybe she is the one who said it in the first place, but it was a joke, and she’s not the one bringing it up now.

No matter how many years pass, Adrienne always stops to listen to her. It never changes, of course. She doesn't even know why she still hopes one day it might.

Adrienne remembers the first time she said that word aloud and really meant it. Abuse. Even years later, she doesn't like saying it. She knows Adonis won't be any different, but he has something she never did: someone who really, truly understands what it means.

Stray - rated G | Adrienne & Ely & Nerissa & Poseidon | 4.6k words | fluff | december 14, 2020

Adrienne isn't exactly a stranger to Poseidon's habit of collecting things from outside to bring home, but the cat... That’s new. All she can really do is hope it won't become a common occurrence, or they might need a bigger house.

[post last updated 11/08/21]

#original fiction #mine #masterpost #i'll keep updating this each time something new comes up so you can always find links here!#osa

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thinking-aromanticism · 3 years

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Do allos really think that?

This is a post for the Carnival of Aros (August 2021). The prompt I chose is “What are some things you do to mitigate the impact of amatonormativity on yourself, such as with self-care practices?“

Encountering amatonormative sentiments in media can be deeply alienating. Whether it’s a casual comment or the basis of a whole plot, the idea that (committed, monogamous, sexual, man/woman) romantic relationships are necessary for human happiness can leave you feeling isolated, pitied, misunderstood, vilified, pressured, and more alone than ever. There are a lot of ways to react to process these feelings and the texts that inspire them. Critiquing or transforming the text through meta, headcanons, fanfiction, and other personal or community based reflection, walking away and not looking back, and talking through the feelings that the texts inspire.

One particular question-critique that I see in a lot of aromantic discussions around media containing amatonormative sentiments is: do allos really believe this shit? They believe it, don’t they. Ugh, allos really believe this shit, huh.

But like, do they?

You may find it relieving to consider that a lot of the time the answer is no. Much of the time, you can find direct evidence for this in relation to specific media. Much of the rest of the time, you can extrapolate for yourself from general social attitudes and common analyses.

The Mirror Has Two Faces is a deeply amatonormative movie. A short summary: mathematics professor Gregory Larkin is tired of conventional relationships. He loses his professional focus and emotional composure in sexual relationships with romantic partners, but he wants company, connection, a person to be with. So he puts out a personal ad seeking a woman for a sexless relationship. This ad is answered by the sister of one Rose Morgan, an English professor at the same university whose unsupportive family and failed romantic affairs have left her feeling frumpy and alone. So pushed together, Rose and Gregory strike up an intellectual relationship, then marriage and cohabitation. She wants sex, he doesn’t. She gets a makeover, feels beautiful, leaves him, and the movie ends with him finally voicing the passionate love she wanted from him and them making out in the street while a neighbor sings opera off the balcony.

The movie casually equates sex, love, and romance. It supposes that a monogamous, sexual, romantic relationship between a man and a woman is the foundation for a happy life. It frames sexless romantic relationships as silly and doomed, and nonromantic sexual relationships as somewhere between impossible and cruel. It waffles a bit on whether achieving sexual desirability is a genuine antidote for low self esteem, but seems to suggest that it certainly couldn’t hurt.

Do allos really buy into this? Well, when it came out, reviewer Todd McCarthy called it “a very old-fashioned wish-fulfillment romantic comedy” and Edward Guthmann a "a silly affirmation fantasy.” Lisa Schwarzbaum claimed that “No modern romantic comedy could be more manufactured or … awful.” This wasn’t just a shitty movie. Barbra Streisand was praised for her appeal as a diva, and Lauren Bacall got a Golden Globe for best supporting actress. Culture writers in 1996, whether they liked the movie or not, consciously knew that this was a soppy, contrived plot cooked up for gay men to sigh over glamour shots of aging starlets and straight women to sigh over the idea of every family member and romantic interest in their lives lining up to apologize for not loving them in the right ways at the right time.

Granted, the reviews aren’t all so cynical, Roger Ebert of all people having opined that “it's rare to find a film that deals intelligently with issues of sex and love,” seemingly just because the movie addressed the concept of a relationship without sex. But in no small part, alloromantic-majority audiences recognize this movie as representing a scenario that is fun to think about but not reflective of real or ideal life.

Disney’s Beauty and the Beast is an amatonormative fairy tale - that alloromantic audiences frequently critique and that exists within a long textual tradition of likewise-critiqued adaptations of the same basic story, carrying differing and often complex messages about men, women, relationships, domesticity, threat, appearance, and love. If Disney doesn’t suit, why not investigate C. S. E. Cooney’s (NSFW, kinky, polyamorous) “Witch, Beast, Saint”, or some feminist film criticism? Learning the history of the story might inform, and give some better ground for understanding how the Beauty and the Beast tale has been produced and reproduced socially and how it functions as a romantic fantasy. Disney has also followed it up with multiple films about family, friendship, community, and culture, including films that have explicitly referenced the frequent feminist criticisms of romantic fairytales. Whether these films offer genuine insight into the problematics of the Disney ouvre is up for debate, but it shows that these criticisms are mainstream and that the empire of the Mouse has, at least performatively, turned away from such pat fare.

Amatonormativity in media is alienating and corny and makes for tired, unrealistic stories. And you are not alone in feeling that way! Your concerns are reflected in the mainstream, and there is plentiful, incisive criticism at every level of culture writing, academia, and blogging analyzing how amatonormative tropes set up unrealistic expectations, excuse toxic behavior, and create a social environment of romantic pressure.

When I read or watch or listen to media that features amatonormative, troubling representations of life and relationships, I think critically: what’s going on in these stories? Who is the intended audience? What is the author’s intent? Are these tropes that I’ve seen criticized before? By who? How frequently? What are the criticisms I’ve seen? What criticisms am I inclined to formulate? Based on my knowledge of popular and academic media analysis, how do I think others will react to this media? I look into professional reviews and fan discussions, and see what other people think. And much of the time, I find that other people are thinking critically too, and that other people have seen the cracks. I consider that many of these stories are meant to be compartmentalized as fantasy, and are produced specifically for audiences hungry for them.

Do alloromantics really believe in all this true love’s kiss, happily ever after stuff? I am comforted to come to the conclusion that the answer is, in large if not universal part, a hand-wobbling “well, what’s love anyway, it’s complicated, isn’t it?”

#amatonormativity #carnival of aros #carnival of aros august 2021 #the mirror has two faces #beauty and the beast

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starsmuserainbow · 3 years

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1OO IMPORTANT CHARACTER QUESTIONS

taken from beth kinderman and nikki walker’s the 100 most important things to know about your character. a good list to help develop a character’s background, personality, and general aspects.

(Template link here)

PART 1: THE BASICS

What is your full name?

"Koriand'r, but on Earth it is Starfire!"

Where and when were you born?

"On Tamaran, in the castle. We were still in the war with the Gordanians."

Who are/were your parents? (Know their names, occupations, personalities, etc.)

"Myand'r, the Grand Ruler of Tamaran, and Luand'r, his wife! They were very wonderful! They have cared for us as well as they could, I believe, and I do not doubt that they have loved us very much!"

Do you have any siblings? What are/were they like?

"... Blackfire is my older sister. I have always looked up to her, but she is very much not interested in a positive bond between us. She is a criminal, I believe many parts of the galaxy are searching for her, and she has multiple times before attempted to capture me or bring me into the hands of those who would not be very nice to me.

I much prefer to talk about my baby brother, Ryand'r, or Wildfire as he is calling himself on Earth! We have long thought that he has died when he was still very small, but he has survived and lived many years in complete isolation! He has grown to be very wonderful and nice and friendly, and I am loving him a lot! I am most thankful that he has by now returned to my life!"

Where do you live now, and with whom? Describe the place and the person/people.

"I am living with my best friends, the Teen Titans! Our home is commonly called the 'T-Tower', and it is a very accurate description as it is a building with many floors and in the shape of a T!

Raven is as close to me as I am imagining a sister to be that does not constantly wish to harm me! She is skilled in magic, and she has to meditate for calming her emotions because her powers can be dangerous when she is feeling too strongly! This is also leading to her appearing very calm or 'unemotional' in many situations, I am knowing that she is loving us as much as we her!

I am most admiring Beast Boy's talent for joking! It often is about things that I do not initially understand, but I am still certain that his jokes are always very funny and most entertaining!

Cyborg is very skilled with technology. He has equipped our home with its security, he created our communicators, and he is also very much enjoying to play the games of the video together with Beast Boy!

Our leader is Robin! He is very trained, he knows many types of the martial arts, and I am very much enjoying to fight alongside him! Some times he can be too focused on his work, but we are all trying what we can to make him realize it and stop, and I believe it has bettered over the time that we are together."

What is your occupation?

"I am a hero, one of the Teen Titans! We are using what we are capable of to protect the people of the city - and the planet - from dangers and any form of harm!"

Write a full physical description of yourself. You might want to consider factors such as: height, weight, race, hair and eye color, style of dress, and any tattoos, scars, or distinguishing marks.

"I am commonly wearing my tamaranean uniform, which is mostly purple and combined with silver metallic armor! I believe I am taller than the average human, I am thin and do not have any tattoos, scars or similar! As with all of us tamaraneans, my skin is more orange, or golden, than a human one, and my eyes are having their green color both in the sclera and the pupil! Oh, and I am having long red hair, which I preferto wear untied!"

To which social class do you belong?

"A... a social class? I have never visited the earthen schools!" [[Well, on Tamaran probably upper/highest class since she's of the royal family, and on Earth, average I assume? So probably middle, or something?]]

Do you have any allergies, diseases, or other physical weaknesses?

"I am allergic to metallic chromium."

Are you right- or left-handed?

"My right hand is the one that I am using predominantly!"

What does your voice sound like?

"I believe I am having a very friendly and light voice! But I cannot describe voices well."

What words and/or phrases do you use very frequently?

"There have before been people mimicking me by reciting 'glorious' or 'wonderful', so perhaps those!"

What do you have in your pockets?

"My communicator! A bit of cat food, oh! And this is a drawing that I have been given by a child earlier!"

Do you have any quirks, strange mannerisms, annoying habits, or other defining characteristics?

"People have before mocked me by using very many times of the 'the' in each sentence, so perhaps that is a thing? Although I have never understood this mockery. I am also very much enjoying to hug people - but that cannot be a bad thing, no?"

PART 2: GROWING UP

How would you describe your childhood in general?

"It was a very wonderful childhood! I have grown up with parents that loved me very much, I had two siblings, and I have been able to learn much! There also was our caretaker, Galfore, I am still very close to him and thankful for his advice. ... I would have wished for chances to explore and learn about other worlds already during my childhood, but I can understand how it was too big a risk!"

What is your earliest memory?

"I remember playing a game with my father! I am very happy that this is a memory I recall, especially since at a later time of our lives, he did not have as much time for us anymore."

How much schooling have you had?

"I have completed all the tamaranean schooling! It is not working in the same way as the earthen system, so I cannot compare it."

Did you enjoy school?

"Of course! It was most fascinating to learn about every thing!"

Where did you learn most of your skills and other abilities?

"Most of it has been trained on Tamaran! But with my friends I am also continuing to strengthen my abilities!"

While growing up, did you have any role models? If so, describe them.

"My father! He was wonderful to us, and also a great ruler even in the times of war! I have always admired him. ... I have also very much looked up to my sister. She has always been so strong, so independent and so experienced..."

While growing up, how did you get along with the other members of your family?

"I have gotten along very well with my mother and father! And Ry was most adorable and we were very close as well! ... I have always assumed that I was also getting along well with my sister, but by now I have realized that such never has been the case."

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

"... I have always wanted to be like my sister. ... And I have wished to be able to explore other worlds!"

As a child, what were your favorite activities?

"I have often strolled through the royal garden! ... as long as it has still existed. It was also very entertaining to be taught by Galfore, in cooking and about the history and the customs and how to fight!"

As a child, what kinds of personality traits did you display?

"I do not believe that my personality has changed much since my childhood!"

As a child, were you popular? Who were your friends, and what were they like?

"As children of the royal family, we were very... shielded. There were not many other children that we have met, so I do not believe that there was a chance to truly measure popularity. Those that I did meet liked me though, I believe."

When and with whom was your first kiss?

"Kissing does not carry such a meaning for my people. It is default that as children, we are having lip-contact with multiple teachers, to train the assimilation of languages and to learn the most important languages."

Are you a virgin? If not, when and with whom did you lose your virginity?

If you are a supernatural being (i.e. mage, werewolf, vampire), tell the story of how you became what you are or first learned of your own abilities. If you are just a normal human, describe any influences in your past that led you to do the things you do today.

"My abilities are normal for the tamaraneans, so while I am an alien to this world, I do not think that there is a story that I can tell."

PART 3: PAST INFLUENCES

What do you consider the most important event of your life so far?

"Having met my friends, and having found a home with them!"

Who has had the most influence on you?

"That is either Galfore or my friends of now!"

What do you consider your greatest achievement?

"It has felt like a big success when I had beaten my sister for the second time. And that even while she had used the Jewel of Charta, which was making her much stronger and less vulnerable."

What is your greatest regret?

"I am still feeling very sorry for the destruction that I have initially caused on Earth."

What is the most evil thing you have ever done?

"That destruction, I believe."

Do you have a criminal record of any kind?

"I do not know! But as I have caused damage on this world, I assume it would only be right if it is noted somewhere, no?"

When was the time you were the most frightened?

"After we have watched a movie, Raven's powers had once brought the monsters and the spookiness from the movie to life! It has been a very frightening situation."

What is the most embarrassing thing ever to happen to you?

"I have many times misunderstood the earthen phrases. At times, the people around me are laughing very openly about it. That is making me feel very embarassed."

If you could change one thing from your past, what would it be, and why?

"I would hope to be able to better the connection to my sister!"

What is your best memory?

"I will never forget how Robin has assured me that Blackfire would never have been able to replace me."

What is your worst memory?

"My brief staying in captivity was most horrifying."

PART 4: BELIEFS & OPINIONS

Are you basically optimistic or pessimistic?

"I believe I am more optimistic!"

What is your greatest fear?

"Being alone, and captive, without hopes of escaping."

What are your religious views?

"It would take much time to explain the beliefs of X'Hal to you! It is the tamaranean religion, and I am adhereing to that."

What are your political views?

"I... I do not know what you are asking here. My political views? On what?"

What are your views on sex?

Are you able to kill? Under what circumstances do you find killing to be acceptable or unacceptable?

"Yes. I do not enjoy to take a life, but if there is truly no other option for saving those that are in danger, I will not hesitate as much as I believe my friends would. But under any circumstances, and wherever possible, it should be avoided to kill someone."

In your opinion, what is the most evil thing any human being could do?

"Harming innocent children is most evil!"

Do you believe in the existence of soul mates and/or true love?

"Though I would not call it these, I believe in similar concepts, yes."

What do you believe makes a successful life?

"To be happy, to enjoy what you are doing, perhaps also to make those happy you care for."

How honest are you about your thoughts and feelings (i.e. do you hide your true self from others, and in what way)?

"It is difficult for a tamaranean to be dishonest about the feelings. It can very quickly become similar to a sickness. There are tamaraneans that still do not show what they are thinking or feeling, but I am feeling much better if I am simply being open!"

Do you have any biases or prejudices?

"Even when I am not happy about some thing, I would always do what I can to not let such connections endanger a new meeting."

Is there anything you absolutely refuse to do under any circumstances? Why do you refuse to do it?

"I would always refuse to harm my friends! Because it cannot be right to do such!"

Who or what, if anything, would you die for (or otherwise go to extremes for)?

"It is not a thought that I enjoy. But I believe me and my friends all would not hesitate to give our lives for those of the others."

PART 5: RELATIONSHIPS W/OTHERS

In general, how do you treat others (politely, rudely, by keeping them at a distance, etc.)? Does your treatment of them change depending on how well you know them, and if so, how?

"I am doing my best to treat every one politely! And I do not think that my behaviour is changing if I am knowing some one better."

Who is the most important person in your life, and why?

"All of my friends are!"

Who is the person you respect the most, and why?

"Raven! It must be very difficult to keep such a control of her emotions at all times!"

Who are your friends? Do you have a best friend? Describe these people.

"There are so many friends that I could name! My best friend is Robin! I have described him before, have I not? He is the leader of our team, and he is often willing to explain to me what I do not understand. He is very important to me!"

Do you have a spouse or significant other? If so, describe this person.

"I do not have such!"

Have you ever been in love? If so, describe what happened.

"I... Yes, there was... there was a connection that I have felt immediately as we have first met. We... We are still working on it, I believe."

What do you look for in a potential lover?

"I wish for some one who is friendly, who is there for me and who can rely on me in return. Some one that I am feeling at home and comfortable with!"

How close are you to your family?

"It... it is difficult with Blackfire, I would not call us 'close' at all. But I am very close to my baby brother, now that he has returned to us!"

Have you started your own family? If so, describe them. If not, do you want to? Why or why not?

"I have not! But I am most enjoying the idea. It is a delighting thought to picture myself having children of my own that I can care for!"

Who would you turn to if you were in desperate need of help?

"My friends, my team! The Titans!"

Do you trust anyone to protect you? Who, and why?

"I would never doubt that my friends would always protect me, as I them!"

If you died or went missing, who would miss you?

"I believe my friends and my brother would miss you! And many of my friends would attempt to find me, or find out what has happened. And Galfore certainly, as well!"

Who is the person you despise the most, and why?

"I am aware that she is merely a human, and that I need not feel as strongly towards her... but I do not like Kitten, the daughter of Killer Moth, at all."

Do you tend to argue with people, or avoid conflict?

"I do not like arguing! But if necessary, I would not avoid it."

Do you tend to take on leadership roles in social situations?

"I do not think so. But I am often talking much, so perhaps I am, and merely do not realize it?"

Do you like interacting with large groups of people? Why or why not?

"Certainly! There is an earthen saying, that it is merrier the more people are there, no? I find it very entertaining to have many friends around me!"

Do you care what others think of you?

"I am trying to lessen how much I am caring, but yes. It is most unpleasant when I am insulted."

PART 6: LIKES & DISLIKES

What is/are your favorite hobbies and pastimes?

"Exploring Earth! Oh, and I am enjoying to go shopping, or to cook or care for our Silkie!"

What is your most treasured possession?

"I... There is the 'crown' that I have worn when I came to Earth. My mother has gifted it to me shortly before we have lost her."

What is your favorite color?

"I am very fond of purple, as many of my people are. Perhaps it is simply some thing I have been raised into, as it is the most common color for clothing on Tamaran."

What is your favorite food?

"Glorg!"

What, if anything, do you like to read?

"Raven is recommending books to me some times! I am not very fast with reading them, as I have often some thing else that I am then thinking of doing, but they are most entertaining to read!"

What is your idea of good entertainment (consider music, movies, art, etc.)?

"I do not understand. Entertainment is good if it is keeping one entertained, and as the likes of such vary, it is difficult to have any entertainment that is not good!"

Do you smoke, drink, or use drugs? If so, why? Do you want to quit?

"I am not doing any of these things."

How do you spend a typical Saturday night?

"If we are not on a mission, it is often that me and my friends are making the nights of movies!"

What makes you laugh?

"There are many things that are making me laugh!"

What, if anything, shocks or offends you?

"It is not very nice when people are unfriendly to others based on how they look or which gender they are having. I am hearing bad words because of my looks and for being alien, as well. So perhaps these."

What would you do if you had insomnia and had to find something to do to amuse yourself?

"I would watch TV! There is always some thing interesting shown, no?"

How do you deal with stress?

"It is best to unleash any troubles I am having. Such includes stress. And my friends would certainly aid me in overcoming the stress."

Are you spontaneous, or do you always need to have a plan?

"I am not very good at sticking with plans."

What are your pet peeves?

"I do not understand what those are that you ask for."

PART 7: SELF IMAGES & OTHER

Describe the routine of a normal day for you. How do you feel when this routine is disrupted?

"It is often that our days are not going by routine. When trouble is coming, we are going to it as quickly as we can. It might not be pleasant, but it is necessary, so I am rarely feeling bad about it. On a routine, hmm... I am waking, I stretch and prepare myself for the breakfast. We are commonly eating together, and doing some activity for spending the day. On many days, there is also our training."

What is your greatest strength as a person?

"Perhaps that I am willing to trust others? Although my friends have also told me that it is a big weakness. Perhaps caring for the well-being of others?"

What is your greatest weakness?

"Perhaps my trusting too easily? I do not truly know."

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

"I would not change a thing! I am happy as I am."

Are you generally introverted or extroverted?

"Extroverted!"

Are you generally organized or messy?

"I prefer to have things look organized, but if I am too distracted, I can quickly be very messy, as well."

Name three things you consider yourself to be very good at, and three things you consider yourself to be very bad at.

"I am good at cooking! ... tamaranean dishes. My friends have before complained that I am often not following the recipes, and am creating different earthen dishes than what they expect. I am a capable fighter, and I am good at making friends!

I cannot draw well, um... I am not aware of many parts of the earthen sayings, and I am not good at recognizing when I should not be trusting or believeing someone."

Do you like yourself?

"Yes, I think I do."

What are your reasons for being an adventurer (or doing the strange and heroic things that RPG characters do)? Are your real reasons for doing this different than the ones you tell people in public? (If so, detail both sets of reasons…)

"I am a hero because it would feel wrong to not use my abilities, that are more than the average on this world, to aid others. It would feel egoistic, and I enjoy to help others."

What goal do you most want to accomplish in your lifetime?

"I do not have goals. All I am wishing for is to continue to be happy."

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

"I hope that I am still with my friends!"

If you could choose, how would you want to die?

"Either after a long living, or if it must happen earlier... I would prefer to die in saving someone else."

If you knew you were going to die in 24 hours, name three things you would do in the time you had left.

"I would visit and hug as many of my friends as I can! I would wish to tell them again how much I value them and how their friendship has delighted me. And I certainly must spend a lot of time with Ry! If there is no more time, I must do what I can to make him understand that he is worth much more than he is thinking! ... And I also wish to say goodbye to Galfore, and perhaps leave messages for those that I am not able to reach. ... Perhaps a message for Blackfire, as well."

What is the one thing for which you would most like to be remembered after your death?

"Perhaps for the good that we are doing as heroes?"

What three words best describe your personality?

"Friendly, cheerful, and very happy to explore and learn!"

What three words would others probably use to describe you?

"I am hoping some thing similar! Although there have also been words that were not as friendly, I believe that more people would not use those mean words."

If you could, what advice would you, the player, give to your character? (You might even want to speak as if he or she were sitting right here in front of you, and use proper tone so he or she might heed your advice…)

I don't think there really is anything I'd need to give her as advice. I mean, if I really have to say something, probably something like that she should stay how she is and not change only because of some bad experiences. Something like that.

#✫ There was a young alien girl who lived in a T ✫ | About Starfire #those were quite cool! and take forever to answer xD #I tried to stay as ship-neutral as possible; but in some answers I just couldn't avoid mentioning robin #since as you all probably know I default to robstar when nothing else is implied

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memory-hoarder · 3 years

Text

WARNING (LONG POST AHEAD)

I turn off the lights, scrolled my phone and clicked the Spotify app currently listening to (calming acoustic) 10: 05 PM, best time to unleashed all emotions that piled up from nowhere. I covered myself with a huge blanket and placed the laptop on my lap and decided to visit my page. I know, I'm being inactive lately but I'm doing my best to update my journal publicly to remind me of my long absences.

Tonight, I decided to post the questions I received a night before my birthday celebrated. I kept this on my file for a month now. Admittedly, this is the huge decision I made on my birthday. So, I asked a random people on my messenger lists - some are my work colleagues while others are acquaintances. At first, I am hesitant to ask for favor to anyone but I did. Well, I guess it was successful though I received different reactions - some confused and thought I was making fun while others are game on to sent their questions. Obviously, it took days for me to answered cos it turns out that I wasn't prepared myself for few questions that somehow affects me literally.

The twist here is I am not allow to send my answer to their questions. However, I can answer it through this journal. Which I described as bravery.

Here are some of the questions:

How’s Life? How’s Life?

A question that been asked me twice. Well, this year was the great sadness of my life that challenged me mentally, emotionally and drained me physically. Sometimes a mere struggle on financially. I’m doing fine but lots of times I seriously breaking down especially the trauma of what happened 8 months ago. But today, I accepted the fact and slowly healing me and appreciate what really God’s intention and plan for my life.

Are you happy right now?

Not sure how to put it into words but there is no reason not to be happy. Right? If you just appreciate the life you are living right now or even the smallest thing that makes you smile or giggle I guess there is no reason to be sad at all. Although, lots of times I felt happy, sad, angry or lost. But there are still lots of reasons to celebrate or be joyful too. I juts let myself felt all the emotions that life wanted me to experienced to remind me that I indeed exist. There are people who could bring me joy and sadness at the same time but all I know they are all part of my journey.

Have you ever missed me before we lost our communication? Do you consider me as true friend?

Of course, I do. I miss the old you the person who I genuinely treasured during my college days. And, you are one of the reasons why I indeed survived college. I just don’t understand why we both let this friendship died. Was it because we no longer catch up? But, how I hope building friendship again will no longer hard as I imagined. But, please know that you became part of my story. I always count on you whenever I am sad and confused. I feel comfortable sharing my thoughts because I know you will never judge me. Hope to see you again soon. Take care of yourself!

Why there are times you don’t have the mood to talk?

Because, I read my surroundings and I feel comfortable being alone not to isolate but to process my own thoughts with myself which my normal thing growing up and I choose this way - became aloof at times not wanted to talk to anyone or go out. It makes me sad to think only few understand my personality. However, I can't just normalize this because of extrovert people I knew. I don’t have mood to talk and I push away people closed to me because I find a happy place being alone. Its not sad or dark what it gives me is peace of mind that no on can offer.

Would you like to change your past or stay on your present path? Why and why not?

I believed majority will choose the past, we all wanted to change one thing that we regret of doing - apologies, goodbye's, places to travel, opportunities we must have and other important things we slip away that is why I choose the past over my present. One thing I am eager to experience all over again is my mom's precious life, only if I had the power to bring her back. I was just 16 years old when she died, and I think the years of her being a mother to us will never be enough. However, her life is a blessing and all the valuable teachings that she imparted on me and to my siblings will remain on us forever. How I wish for her to at least see as growing up especially my brother that she spoiled a lot, and for us to give back all the things she deserved. I imagined date her on a restaurant, buy her clothes, treat her to the salon or accompany her on the grocery store. I also wanted to visit the past to catch up with my high school friends – Mira and Jeno, I will never forget how they literally brings me deep joy and the reason I am early bird during junior high because of the dare. I just missed the sound of Jeno's sense of humor, I treated her more than a friend rather a sister and it broke me when I received the news that he's gone. I was not there for him nor visit his and mom's grave for years now. I wanted to comfort Mira, but I am too far away and impossible to have my own money for my flight expenses. What I did is to cried and prayed for his soul. All of the good memories flashed back once more yet I realized God might took away two beautiful souls in my life but I am confident they watching over and guiding me through life.

I am or was curious regarding James situation, did it ever cross your mind you regret James being your boyfriend?

In all of the questions I received this one hits me hard to the core. For everyone’s knowledge James and I are in a relationship for over 4 years now. Just like other couples we did fight over little things yet we matured and grow together. One thing I really loved about James Charlie is how kind and pure his heart. He helps people as long as he can even himself are struggling to live. Not to mention his over confidence that I am jealous of. I guess, because of how friendly and inviting his amour. Also, a talented one he knows how to dance, sing and imitate different kinds of sounds, He’s grammar and vocabulary are lit. He can also play guitar very well, draw portrait’s and even writing a poems. He knew, he won my heart through his creative abilities. I was also surprised how he interested over history of aliens, bermuda triangle, mermaids and what I consistently heard of the Pyramid of Giza, life documentaries and other related history of it. I find him sexy whenever he talked about some of it. Our age gap is never an issue on our relationship and I am lucky that he guided me on everything, considered my opinions or thoughts and when I freaked out badly which occasionally happened he handle me perfectly and I appreciated his temperament level during my anxiety attacks or whenever I choose to isolate myself him being shut off. He understood me in my own terms and be myself. Yet relationship will test your loved from one another, there were also things that I don’t like of him doing however James does listened to me. He listens to advises either coming from me or from other people that cared for him. He is a vocal person, that one thing that I fall for him is his sense of humor. I guess talkative and being clingy towards person is his nature especially growing up in a broken family. Consistent communication is a key. I remembered he told me that I was different to all the girls she dated on his past life. That I am out of his league, he doesn’t know that he is of out my league too but when I know him deeply he taught me lessons in life and felt his warm love. Over the course of our relationship he respect the limitless of our love language and he accepted and understood the love without intimacy is a different level of love and respect and from his perspective I wanted everyone to know that James has a huge respect towards me, my beliefs and reasons. How someone could wait for something that he can easily took away something on his past relationship. Our relationship is somehow changed us individually into a better person. Getting older, he became dreamer and goal oriented. I witnessed all his hard work, that he celebrated through silence. He wanted to build home and think of small business that will be our retirement in the future. How many kids we wanted or how many dogs we will going to breed. I guess, some people misunderstood James for so long, how miserable life that no one to talk and curse during your victories or failures? Friends and addiction in alcohol and other stuff are his way of escaped, escape from the reality that lead him to take his own precious life once. I know how difficult life for him way back on his early 20’s that he fought all his battle alone and how he overcome his depression and addiction without someone to lean on. And nowadays, everything makes sense to me that I realize being independent sometimes is not a choice but more on a decision. decision and accepting no one will guide you through your journey so you have to do it alone either it brings you sadness or happiness in a process, not to count living alone and make money all by yourself. I agreed he might do bad decision in life but that doesn’t mean his life has no purpose at all. Instead, God is confident that he will win this battle not for everyone, not for the sake of me or our relationship but for himself. As for our current situation, I know being with him and fight through the end will inspired him a lot. Yes, he currently working on his self and will prove to everyone when the time comes that he will be able to regain his new

life and continue living.

We introverts, tend to think a lot, like really overthink a lot. What do you mostly overthink and how deep? Deep, like does it leads you to think more negatively resulting to depression? (mild depression, maybe).

I overthink some scenarios on my head when it really affects my whole being and when every time I think of it, obviously it trigger my anxiety not depression I guess. I can recall one or two hard situations that happened to me, and I know it wasn’t me trying to act that way. I even punished myself and literally breakdown trying to hurt myself, call me freak or whatever cos now I asked myself too how I even allowed myself to did terrible things, because anxiety creeping on me and telling me to do it. But, mostly I think of is my future and myself – deep that it scared me a lot. I have lot of questions of this world that I keep on searching by myself until now.

Why it took for you to share your problems?

Honestly, when I’m having a serious problem I am not confident to share to anybody except to my family who already knew. It took too long because advises no longer work for me, I listened because it was normal people do – advise and advise. Maybe, it was me who are picky to share my problem with, sometimes people listened but never in heart. Not all people deserve to know your struggle and during your lowest times, I have my own terms of coping so you do.

How do you maintain your petite body? If you had three wishes, what would you wish for?

Wow! I never see this coming. Well, I guess being fit is what I inherited on my father's side. They not so fat unlike on my mother's side. I have no limit on foods I intake in other words not your discipline person to look up to. I do eat carbs, junk foods and sodas is always on my list. I never worried if I am physically fit aside from walking Maxine during days off. I don't know how do I maintain this body I guess I'm never. Being fit actually is my insecurity. However, I do loved my body whatever what happen.

Well, if I had 3 wishes in life - first, to end this pandemic so that everything will back to normal. second, for James to have peace of mind and good health while waiting for the process of his case. And, lastly, for me to be strong, lasting patience and strong faith.

How would you solve your problems?

Problems is always part of lives. But, I believed it is always about the degree of the problem. Whenever, I had problem sometimes I resolved it in time but other times I need more time and space to think what will be the resort of it. And, pray for some guidance.

As independent being, how do you handle depression and anxiety?

Good thing to end all of this questions, I became independent when I graduated from college. I have to commute 131 kilometers back and forth from another city just to apply on my first job and the process is never easy at all. When you sent all of your applications form on each companies but never accepted It brought so much sadness, one point of my life I am eager to seek job because I used it as my coping mechanism to walked away from home which I did now, I walked away to protect my peace of mind especially having anxiety growing up and having this thing is hard as people imagined. You might only see darkness and feel of losing but for me, I guess for a year now I handled myself perfectly I never allow this condition to swallow me whole and affect my way of living. I reminded myself to keep strong and remain optimist and always protect my peace of mind at all cost.

I am 24 now strong and happy and leaving Haruki Murakami quote: "And once the storm is over, you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what storms all about"

#self love #journaling #birthday #24 years old

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missluthorwillseeyounow · 4 years

Text

Never To Touch And Never To Keep

Westenray AU (NBC Dracula)

A/N: So, here it is, the Westenray AU where Henry Cavill is Lucy’s beard. Fair warning, I didn’t really watch much of the show, just the Lucy scenes, and not even all of those. Basically, this is a peeled-back modern AU of the whole story, without the Dracula stuff. It’ll follow canon for a little bit, unfortunately *cringe* but I need a happy ending for my gays.

Also, this gets quite dark before it gets better. TW: gaslighting, attempted suicide, poisoning, and manipulation. Like for real, guys, I promise a happy ending, but if any of these trigger you, please don’t read it.

Lucy and Mina have been friends since they were fifteen. Lucy's father is an affluent businessman, and Lucy grows up with her every whim catered to. She’s at the center of everyone’s attention. All heads turn whenever she enters a room, and she accepts the adoration as her due.

She and Mina meet at boarding school, and the bond between the two girls is immediate.

That first year is spent in bare feet and nightgowns, dancing idly to Fleetwood Mac, drunk on youth and the vodka Lucy stole from the headmistress’ office. In the acrid scent of illicit cigarettes being passed from one to the other, and the soft curve of Mina’s lips under Lucy’s fingers whenever she slips the cigarette into Mina’s mouth.

Mina is quiet and earnest, where Lucy is vivacious and impertinent. Mina gently chastises her when she breaks yet another boy’s heart, and Lucy merely laughs.

And when Mina breaks Lucy’s heart and falls in love with Jonathan Harker, Lucy just laughs and laughs, and cruelly breaks another boy’s heart in retaliation.

Between the two of them, Mina is the more logical one, whose head and heart are grounded and centered, while Lucy is a creature of flight and fancy -- the one who flits from one thing to another, the charming social butterfly who lights up any room she walks into and creates a spectacle to hide every insecurity she keeps inside.

Lucy lives with bravado, but retreats behind a glittering mask. Mina, she thinks, is the one who is actually brave, the one who is unafraid to live her life as herself.

At the time of this AU, they’re around 21, and Mina and Jonathan are engaged. They're still quite young, but they've been together for years. The "perfect couple", it was only a matter of time before they got married.

Mina is in med school at this time, when she meets Alexander Grayson.

Grayson is a wealthy businessman, the new owner of the hospital where Mina’s father had practiced before he died. He encounters Mina once, at a benefit for the hospital’s cancer ward. Mina speaks to him in her gentle, forthright way, and Grayson is immediately drawn to her.

The encounter leaves an indelible mark on Grayson, and he decides he has to have her.

He’s no stranger to manipulation, and he comes at the problem on all sides. The key, he knows, is isolation. If she has no one left to turn to, Mina will come to him.

Harker, he thinks, is easy enough. With his uncertain finances, the young man is insecure and doubts his place in Mina’s esteem or at least in her social circles. It’s easy enough to see in the way his teeth grit and his jaw tightens whenever Lucy delightedly plucks on this particular insecurity like a note well-played.

Grayson buys into Harker’s graces through his wealth, offers him a career in which he can succeed. The work keeps Harker rewarded and therefore docile, out of the shadow Mina’s condescending friends, and high on his own sense of self-importance for the first time in his life.

His seduction of Mina, however, requires more thought and subtlety. He applies himself to discovering more about her, the things that interest her and resonate with her.

He finds out about her admiration and respect for a prestigious doctor, Gabriel van Helsing, and he extorts van Helsing into offering his mentorship to Mina. He finds out about her passion for helping children and starts a charity for children in need, and offers her the chance to be more involved in the project.

Through it all, Grayson places himself as the supposed catalyst of her advancement.

And Mina, grounded though she is, is still fallible. Grayson seems to her a kind man, misunderstood by some perhaps because of his brooding disposition, but still -- a good man. And he is attractive, that’s undeniable. Enigmatic, charming in a mysterious way.

Slowly, but surely, Mina is lured in.

Because Grayson presents himself as a pleasant and urbane gentleman, most people rarely suspect him of anything nefarious.

Except for Lucy.

Like recognizes like, and Lucy has used her own charm to get her way enough times to know when people use it for their own machinations.

Grayson knows that Lucy is less susceptible to his manipulations and will be more difficult to eliminate as competition.

However, he learns that his intervention is not required. Someone like Lucy, whose emotions overrule even her own penchant for manipulation, will set her own self on fire. All it takes is a few whispers in Mina’s ear, and Lucy orchestrates her own destruction.

Lucy has been hiding her feelings for years, and she's become adept at it. But Grayson’s arrival has thrown Mina into turmoil and by extension, Lucy is thrown into turmoil as well.

And Lucy, when backed into a corner, always lashes out. She barely hides her resentment for Grayson, alienating herself from Mina, who thinks so highly of him, for the first time in their friendship. Not even her disparaging of Jonathan had lowered her in Mina’s esteem, but this causes the first real point of contention between the two of them.

For the first time, Lucy feels her slipping away, and her reflexive response is to pull closer, fearing the loss of Mina in her life. She holds fast to the bond between her and Mina, and clings to her friend.

And one night -- an ordinary night that finds Lucy stretched out on Mina’s bed as usual, their faces inches apart as they seek each other under Mina’s covers like they always do -- Lucy, grateful that no matter what contention they have about one man, they still find each other, becomes brave enough, desperate enough to close that familiar distance between them and press her lips to Mina’s.

"We could be so much more.... I've always loved you, Mina."

"Has our whole friendship been a pretense?!?"

Grayson’s insidious whispers flare in Mina’s mind, and every moment of their friendship is called into question. Every embrace, every sweet word, and every barb thrown at Jonathan viewed in the light of this new and terrifying revelation.

"You need to leave."

And leave Lucy does, feeling small and worthless and hollow, as if a crater has opened up in the middle of her chest. This is not a feeling she knows -- not this shame and this hurt and this dejection.

She’s suffered for Mina before, the heartache of seeing the woman she loves in love with another. But this.... it feels as if all the love she’d kept in her heart has been spit back at her in acid.

It rankles at her skin, and claws at her pride, and so Lucy does what she knows best. She claws back.

Harker is almost laughably easy, a pawn Lucy moves with disturbing ease -- she almost feels sorry for Mina that she loved a man whose loyalty can break with a pair of tear-filled eyes and a silk robe. Almost.

When Mina catches them together, as planned, Lucy catches Mina's eye with a level look over Jonathan's shoulder. She pushes Jonathan off, his erection twitching unsatisfied between them. Lucy rises to her feet, slipping on her silk robe -- never taking her eyes off Mina -- then brushes past her without another word.

And Mina... Mina knows Lucy. She knows how cruel she can be, and has long accepted it as a part of her, but never has that cruelty been directed at her.

This, more than anything, seals it all in Mina’s mind.

The two most important people in her life have betrayed her, and it feels as if the very foundations of the life she’s known until now have been shaken.

The only person she can confide in, who listens to her and comforts her with a solemn touch of a hand, is Grayson.

And Grayson thinks, now that he has her, he means to keep her.

He makes her happy, makes her smile and laugh, builds her back up when her life is at its lowest. When she cries at her losses, he embraces her, and bids her forget about them.

A year later, Mina discovers she’s pregnant, and her Alexander is overjoyed. It’s a difficult pregnancy and keeps her weak and bed-ridden for most of it. Through it all, Alexander is the one person she can depend on.

It’s an even more difficult birth, but Mina immediately falls in love with her baby. But her pregnancy took its toll on her body, and she’s still having a hard time bouncing back. Her energy flags more and more, and at first, she attributes it to the enormous stress of juggling her studies and a new baby. She's just stressed, Alexander says, maybe they should go for a vacation.

A vacation smack in the middle of her training?? It’s unthinkable at first, but as Mina finds herself more and more fatigued, she relents. Perhaps it will do her good.

During the vacation, without the stress of med school and all the worries at home, Mina finally has some time to think about her old life before this whirlwind romance she’s found herself in. As much as she loves Alexander and their baby, she knows there are some things that were left unresolved, and she’s been covering them up long enough.

When they return from the vacation, Mina begins to write letters:

Dear Lucy,

You cannot imagine how much I long to see you again. Today will make it a year, nine months and fifteen days since we last saw each other. I can't believe it's been that long. Remember when we had that fight in chemistry class and you didn't speak to me for three days? Before our separation, that was the longest we'd ever been apart. I miss those days.

Every letter I have sent to you has returned unread and unopened. I know you don’t want anything to do with me anymore, and after the way I treated you, I wouldn't blame you if you never wanted to see me again. But still, it doesn't erase the yearning to see your face again.

I miss the nights we would sleep in each other's beds, talking until midnight. Your face -- your dear, loving eyes and your beloved smile -- would be the last thing I saw before falling asleep, and the first thing to wake me in the morning. I never knew what a blessing that was, until I was deprived of such a gift.

Too much has happened. We both hurt each other, I know. You hurt me -- yes, it still hurts -- but I know, I hurt you first. I realize now that what you did was born out of anger and deep pain, because of what I did.

You were never anything but loving toward me. My sweetest friend who always stood by me, always lifted me up, and gave me whatever happiness you could. With others you were always so cold, so cruel, that I could hardly believe you were the same person, because with me, you were so soft, and you took such great care to be gentle.

And I cast you aside. I treated you as if your love as something to be ashamed of, when really, I did not deserve any of it. You betrayed me out of pain, but I betrayed you without provocation. And I am so sorry. God, if you could only know how much I regret everything I said that night...

My infant daughter is sleeping beside me as I write this. My daughter, Lucy. Can you believe it?

She is so beautiful. She has a shock of jet-black hair that is resistant to combing (I can already tell we will have problems with that), and such mesmerizing grey eyes, and the cheekiest smile. She reminds me of you, but that might be because I love her so much.

I've named her Lucy Alexandra Grayson. After Alexander, and after you. Her father likes to call her Alexandra. I'm afraid he doesn't like your name, my dear, but he can't stop me. I've taken to calling her Lucky, as I confess, there has only ever been one Lucy for me, and always will be.

And anyway, Alexander is far too happy, spending time with the baby. He's so proud of her, and it makes me happy to see Alexander happy. He spends all day with us, and is devoted to me and my happiness. He tells me every day that Lucky and I are everything to him.

Oh, Lucy dear, if you could only know the joy I feel at this moment. I wish you were here so i could share this with you. I so wish that you could see Lucky. If you did, you would love her, I know. She is perfection. I can hardly believe that she came from me. That I made something so beautiful and precious.

Oh, Lucy, today my joy knows no bounds, save for one. I feel as if you should be here. Your presence, as warm and sorely missed as it is, would complete my happiness.

Love, Mina.

Mina feels better during the vacation, but when they get back home, she becomes worse. Fatigue sets in quickly, and she gets daily headaches so bad that she has to stay home. She finally admits that her body is having a hard time bouncing back and handling the stress of it all, and after spending several sleepless weeks thinking about it, Mina finally agrees when Alexander suggests she take a break from medical school. This way, she can stay home and rest. Her body can recuperate, and she’ll have more time with Lucky.

What she doesn’t know is that her symptoms are not part of an illness. Grayson has been slowly introducing medication into her system. Nothing life-threatening, or anything that would raise alarms. He’s much too careful for that. But enough that its effects keep her weak and drained of energy

After they returned from their vacation and Mina had expressed her desire to reconcile with Lucy, Grayson had decided that it wasn’t safe yet to stop drugging her, and so the small doses of the medication resumed.

As for the letters, Lucy never receives any of them. Grayson makes sure of it. He even takes precautions to make sure that every email, every text is blocked. Now that Lucy has excised herself out of Mina’s life, he’ll make sure she remains that way.

As for Lucy herself, in the passing years since their separation, she’s made quite a few changes.

Lucy has always been... aware of the effect she has on people. She knows she appears as a charming coquette, and as she makes her own way in the world, she uses that to her advantage. In fact, she delights in it.

She rarely lets anyone see how clever she is until it's too late, and by then, she's already destroying their lives or their reputations. It makes people underestimate her abilities, and she gets to still play in her glittering little world.

Lucy meets Nick at a friend’s bachelorette party.

When they first meet, he’s a stripper hired for the night.

It would have been easy to dismiss him then, but Lucy, clever as she is, sees his potential and cleans him up.

She had been planning on using Nick’s past as a stripper and her role as his benefactor to hold over him as blackmail if needed, but she soon realizes that he genuinely does not give a fuck about that.

“What are you getting out of this, then?”

“Aside from the suits and the Maserati? Honestly, I’m just along for the ride. This beats dancing Friday nights at Hunk-O-Rama. Besides, you’re cute.”

Lucy laughs derisively. “You’re not my type.”

Nick throws his head back and laughs even louder. “I have a feeling you don’t hear this a lot, but you’re not my type either.”

Aside from Mina, it’s easily the closest relationship Lucy has ever had. Nick is one of the few people perceptive enough to really see her, and surprisingly enough, he’s not enamored by her. Which works well enough for both of them.

Nick sees Lucy for the mess that she is. When they’re not in public, he treats her like an annoying, reckless little sister, and it amuses him to watch her wreak havoc and play her little games. When she doesn’t annoy the crap out of him.

Nick, however, knows very little about Mina.

All he knows is that she’s a sore subject. He's deduced by now that Lucy was in love with her, but beyond that, he lets Lucy keep her secrets.

As for Mina, over the years, Grayson’s manipulations become more and more overt, and it becomes harder and harder for her to leave.

As Lucky grows up, Alexander showers her with affection and spoils her, making the little girl devoted to him. “Daddy’s little girl” he calls her.

"Mummy, why are you and Daddy fighting?"

"Daddy wasn't being nice."

“But Mummy, Daddy's the nicest! He loves us. He says so all the time."

Mina tries to leave once, when Lucky is 7 years old. She tries to take Lucky with her, but her daughter runs to Grayson and clings to him. “No! I want to stay with Daddy!”

And Grayson levels Mina a look, daring her to separate her child from her father, or leave her behind.

From then on, Grayson keeps Lucky close. She hears him whispering things into the child’s ear (”Mummy’s sick. She’s not well.”) and it reminds her so forcibly of the things he used to whisper in her ear.

That’s when she knows. She has to leave, for her daughter’s sake.

She takes some of the pills she keeps in the cupboard, carefully calculates enough to make her sick but not kill herself. She only needs enough to be taken to the ER, and put in a temporary psych hold.

It's dangerous, her plan. She could actually kill herself, and if she's on psych hold, Lucky will be left alone with Alexander, and though she's sure Alexander won't hurt her, because Lucky is his bargaining chip to get Mina back, she can’t be sure of what he’ll be putting into her daughter’s head.

Her attempt fails when Grayson brings in a doctor friend of his to help her instead of taking her to the hospital

He performs gastric lavage on her at home to flush the drugs from her stomach. As Mina lies on her bed, lethargic with the tube in her nose, Alexander grips her wrist and murmurs under his breath "You are everything to me. I won’t let you go."

As Mina recovers, she finds herself locked in her room. She asks in vain for Lucky, but Alexander’s only reply is that “She shouldn’t have to see her mother like this.”

Days pass, and the sense of urgency and panic rises, unstoppable, in Mina’s throat like bile. She knows she has no choice. When she’s strong enough, she pushes herself out of bed, locks the door to buy herself time, and breaks one of the windows. She picks up one of the shards, and thinking of her beautiful little girl, Mina cuts through the flesh of her wrists.

It takes a while before Grayson and the doctor realize what she’s done, and she loses enough blood that the doctor decides she needs to go to the hospital or she will going to die.

Once she's at the hospital, she asks a kind nurse to contact Lucy, but she’s told that Lucy’s number is unlisted. The nurse tries the business number, but gets the usual run-around.

And so, as a last resort, Mina gives the nurse the address to Lucy’s family home, hoping and praying that someone there -- Lucy’s father or her mother -- will see her name and remember it. Then she gives the nurse a bundle of letters. The ones that were returned unopened, and the ones she wrote but didn't send because she knew by now Lucy wouldn't read them.

The nurse kindly agrees, and Mina wishes she could tell her everything, that it could help her and her daughter. But Alexander is too influential, and he has Lucky with him, and Mina will not risk her daughter.

The letters are forwarded to Lucy. Nick hands them to her over the breakfast table. But when Lucy hears who they’re from, she goes silent and refuses to open them.

"Do what you want with them. Take them, or they'll end up in the fire. I won't read them."

Nick reads them. The next day, he approaches Lucy again, letters in hand. "The letters, that Mina wrote you..."

Lucy doesn't even look up from her cup of coffee. Her jaw twitches. "I don't want to hear it."

The letters drop onto the table next to her plate. "I think she may need your help. I think she's being abused."

Lucy applies herself to recovering Mina and Lucky, as well as sinking Alexander Grayson, like Nick has never seen her apply herself to anything before.

Nick loses track of how many people Lucy bribes, threatens or blackmails to get Grayson arrested and the charges to stick, or how long it takes for her to get Grayson’s properties seized and his assets frozen.

He’s lost count of how many times he’s seen Grayson’s face in the news, getting condemned and absolutely dragged by every news outlet Lucy and her family have access to.

Nick also has no idea know how she managed to get a decent-sized portion of Grayson’s fortune back for Mina and Lucky -- and honestly, given Lucy’s pervasive, systematic destruction of everything Alexander Grayson holds dear, he’s kind of afraid to ask.

As Lucy’s “business face”, Nick has to field everyone from the press to the lawyers. Fortunately for them, he’s a competent son of a bitch, and he tells Lucy the one time she’d asked "Don't worry about it, kid. Your family is my family."

Lucy doesn't quite know what to respond to -- the declaration that Nick considers her family, or that he thinks Mina is her family. "They're not my family."

"Sure, whatever you say, babe." Nick just laughs and walks away. "Oh, and I better get a raise after this."

Nick, however, does suspect that Lucy’s almost manic focus on sinking Grayson to the mud is at least partly so that she doesn’t have to deal with Mina being back. The fact that she had stashed Mina and Lucky in one of her summer homes, hidden away from her, is evidence enough of that.

Lucy says it’s to keep them out of the public eye, and while that’s true enough, there is also some truth to Nick’s theory.

Ruining Grayson is easy. Revenge is easier and altogether more satisfying that hashing out old feelings that never really died -- just got shoved to the back of her mind, and only came up whenever Lucy was with another woman and, instead of red hair, she'd see Mina's black curls; or when she said the wrong name in the throes of an orgasm.

And looking across the courtroom at Grayson with a triumphant smile on her face is infinitely easier than looking Mina in the eye.

Lucy puts off visiting the summer house as long as she can. But she has to eventually, to let Mina know how the trials went

For once, Lucy, the social butterfly who can charm birds off trees, has no idea what to say. Mina is quiet too. She wants to tease Lucy for her awkwardness, and if it had been 8 years ago and the Lucy of old, she would have.

Now all she can really do is stare at Lucy and drink her in, cataloging every feature that has changed or remained the same

In the end, Lucky saves them. The little girl looks up at Lucy with a sweet smile "Hi! You're Lucy!"

Lucy can only stare at her for a second before shaking herself with a nod. "I am."

"We have the same name! But my Mummy calls me Lucky."

Lucy finally meets Mina's eye. "So I've heard."

Lucky quickly warms to Lucy, and Lucy, who has never spent more than an hour with any person younger than herself, finds herself feeling strangely attached to the child.

Lucky is what brings Lucy and Mina together.

In truth, they're each so desperate to know the other again, to somehow find their way back to how things were before that night. They've both changed so much, but they both want to see how much has remained the same, how much they can still salvage and patch together.

It's too much to say, but too much to leave unsaid, so they focus the affection they can't give the other on Lucky

Lucy and Mina are never quite alone together at first. Lucky is usually a buffer between them

Then one day, Lucy brings Lucky a whole new wardrobe of dresses and Lucky tries them on for her and Mina one at a time. As Lucky flounces off to change into another sparkly tulle dress, Mina chuckles, “Remember that time we got drunk and we snuck into the the props room in school and tried on all of the costumes for ‘Hamlet’?”

Lucy smiles. "I remember having to drag you there because you were too scared of getting caught.”

"And I remember you trying on every gaudy thing you could find. Just like Lucky.” Mina laughs, her eyes softening. “I swear, sometimes I think she's your child."

Lucy looks away for a second, but Mina murmurs "She reminded me so much of you all those years."

Lucy hides the tremor in her voice behind an arrogant smirk. "She's amazing then."

Mina looks at her, eyes clear and bright. "She is."

Nick joins them some weekends, and Lucky adores him almost as much as Lucy. On one particular visit, he comes bearing some “sensitive information” for Lucy.

When Mina had first been rescued, she had asked Nick if he had any information on Jonathan Harker. When he reported this to Lucy, she had tasked Nick to find him. Not out of sentimentality for the man, she couldn't care less about Harker. But for Mina...

Nick finds Lucy and Mina in the sunroom, talking quietly. Mina is reaching over to brush a non-existent stray hair out of Lucy's face, and Lucy is smiling in a way Nick has never seen before. Gentle, almost tender.

And this is the woman who has left a trail of broken hearts a mile long behind her.

Nick almost doesn't interrupt them -- but then Mina leans forward, bringing her that much closer to Lucy... And the smile disappears on Lucy's face like water evaporating. She pulls away abruptly, her eyes sliding away from Mina's to find Nick in the doorway.

He holds up the folder for her to see. Lucy rises and leads him to her office, where they won't be overheard. When Nick hands her folder, she scans it silently, her jaw tight. The file contains all of Harker's information, including how to contact him.

"He's unmarried and working as a writer for a newspaper."

Lucy closes the folder and hands it to Nick, her eyes stony. "Give it to her."

Nick blinks and pauses. "Are you su--"

Lucy silences him with a sharp look that berates him for daring to question her. "Give it to her."

Nick's lips narrow. "Yes, ma'am."

Lucy cringes inwardly. She knows she was a little bit too blunt with Nick, but honestly she's in no mood to be nice. "Oh, and have my team prepare the jet."

"Where are you going?"

"Anywhere but here."

Lucy flies off to see a frequent bedfellow in Paris for a week. She heads to Italy for another the next week. By the time she gets back, she’s informed her that Mina and Lucky are gone. Nick tells her that he gave Mina the file on Jonathan and she left the next day.

Lucy arrives home to an empty summer house, and finds that she misses Mina and Lucky too much. She misses Lucky's mischievous giggles and Mina's light laughter. She misses having tea with Mina in the sunroom, and sitting in the library while Lucky reads her old children's books to her.

She misses the days spent on the lake, Lucky swinging into the water from the old rope on the tree, and somehow managing to coax Lucy along with her, while Mina, quietly radiant in her white linen dress, sips tea and watches them from the dock. She used to laugh whenever Lucy and Lucky emerged dripping wet from the lake, hair stringy and waterlogged, dresses stuck uncomfortably to their skin, but having the time of their lives.

Everyday there just reminds her more of what she doesn't have anymore. So she goes back to her home in the city. It's not much better there, but at least there aren't any reminders of Mina or Lucky there

Mina calls her several times, but Lucy ignores each call.

When they were younger, she used to listen to Mina talk about her relationship with Harker, not a secret between them, except one. And Lucy was just content to listen because it kept her in Mina's life.

And while she doesn't want to lose Mina again, she thinks she's grown up enough to set limits on what she can or will take. And she doesn't think she can take hearing about Mina's new life with Jonathan. How she's rebuilding her old life with him, and shaping her new one around it.

She does allow herself some bitterness over the thought of how perfect that new little family would be. Mina and her old love, Jonathan, a perfect new father for Lucky, to replace the twisted one she got.

It's perfect for them, she thinks. Absolutely fucking meant to be. A happy ending after the hell Mina went through. She deserves that, Lucy thinks as she downs yet another glass of wine

And Lucy bets that within the next six months, she'll receive a call from Mina asking her to be her bridesmaid. A year later, Lucky will be getting a new brother or sister.

On nights like these, when Lucy drowns herself in enough wine to numb the crater in chest, Nick has to scoop her up and take her home himself.

On one such night, she doesn't come home to an empty house. Mina's waiting for her there. She follows Nick to Lucy's room then gives him a small smile. "I'll take it from here."

Lucy is half passed out, but Mina manages to get her to drink some water and helps her change out of her clothes. Then she tucks Lucy under her covers and slips in with her.

Lucy's eyes open blearily, "Aren't you going back home to Jonathan and Lucky?"

Mina smiles at her. "I left Lucky with my cousin, and I'm sure Jonathan can manage without me."

Lucy mutters something into her pillow.

"What was that?"

"He doesn't deserve you."

Mina brushes her hair back "Then who does?"

"No one."

"You think too highly of me."

"Rightly so."

"Even after..... even after the way I treated you that night?"

"That night wasn't your fault," Lucy mumbles sleepily, voice slurred from the wine. In vino veritas. "It was my fault. It was me -- my feelings. I was responsible for them, not you. I was doing so well before that, and you, you my darling brilliant Mina, are so stupid when it comes to love. You would never have known anything if I hadn't opened my stupid mouth - or kissed you with it."

Mina's eyes search hers in the dim light. "Would you never have told me? Would you have kept it a secret from me forever?"

Lucy nods, making herself slightly dizzy. Her eyes close and she murmurs. "If I could go back, I would never have kissed you."

Mina doesn't speak for a while. She just listens to the sound of Lucy's breathing even out to sleep. She just stares at Lucy. "It's funny. I often think about things I regretted about that night. I regretted the way I acted toward you, the things I said.... But that kiss was the one thing I never regretted."

When they were at the summer house, there were several moments when Mina almost got carried away and kissed her, her eyes flicking down to Lucy's lips, lush and candy-pink. She's spent nights reliving that kiss over the years, trying to recall details of it, but it's been blurred by time and guilt and confusion.

She wonders how she never knew how Lucy felt. She wonders if Alexander hadn't been manipulating her, if she would have said the things she did. If she hadn't been so in love with Jonathan then, would she have kissed Lucy back?

She looks at Lucy now and wonders if she would taste the same.

But every time Mina lets any hint of these thoughts show on her face, Lucy looks away.

Lucy -- who, even after all these years and all this turmoil, has opened her heart and home to her and her daughter -- shows all the fear of a trapped animal whenever Mina looks at her with want in her eyes, and closes herself off.

Mina knows she's damaged that beyond repair. Lucy -- dear Lucy who never kept a secret from her but this one -- showed one moment of vulnerability and Mina had all but slapped her in the face

And she still knows Lucy well. Lucy always lashes out from hurt at first, but after, she hides in dark corners where no one can see, like a heart-hurt little kitten seeking the comfort and safety of being unseen.

So she doesn't bring it up in the morning, when Lucy pads softly into the kitchen where Mina is making her breakfast and the hangover remedy she came up with in college.

Lucy looks up at her gratefully, if a little confused. Her eyes are a little cloudy, and her perfect hair tousled just enough for Mina to want to run her hands through the golden mess.

She knows she can. This is Lucy, and since they were teenagers, touch has been a language between them. Mina's heart twinges, and she wonders if this is how Lucy felt all those years ago, wanting to touch her as she always does, but this time with a lover's hand, each nerve ending coming alive with the stark difference.

Lucy watches her with a question on her lips that Mina can almost see, even as she hesitates, her mouth fearful and unwilling to open.

Mina reassures her with a gentle smile as she places a plate of Lucy's favorite scrambled eggs in front of her. She leans forward and kisses the top of her head. They don't have to talk about it now.

Hope is a cruel thing to entertain, she knows from years living with Alexander. And she knows that sometimes the best defense from it is to reject it.

And right now, she knows they're both brimming with it. The rigidly suppressed hope in Lucy's eyes, marshaled by years of emotions never expressed, and the answering hope in Mina that prays she still feels the same way

This is not a conversation that can be had while Lucy is hungover and barely awake. Lucy waited for her for years before that kiss, then the duty of waiting fell to Mina. She thinks she can wait a little bit longer for Lucy.

After breakfast, when her wits are more collected, Lucy sits with her feet curled up on the wicker love seat, and Mina sits opposite her. Lucy's no longer drunk, but she nurses a cup of tea in both hands, gripping the porcelain as if her life depends on it

"Why are you here, Mina? Shouldn't you be at home with Jonathan and Lucky?"

Mina regards her with a tranquil look. "I told you, Lucky is at my cousin's place. And Jonathan... I don't know where Jonathan is."

At that, Lucy looks up. "What do you mean?"

Mina shrugs. "I haven't seen him since the day I went to visit him."

"Haven't you moved in with him by now?"

Mina casts her an exasperated look. "I've been living with my cousin for the past few weeks. You would know that if you answered any of my phone calls."

Lucy is quiet, and Mina ducks her head so she can meet Lucy's eye. "Did you think I moved in with Jonathan?"

Lucy looks up at her, and there's something almost accusatory in her green eyes. "You went back to him."

Mina gives her a level look. "Of course I went back to him. I loved him for years, Lucy. I owed it to Jonathan to see him again. We were together since we were teenagers! We were engaged to be married, before Alexander. I owed it to myself."

Lucy has turned away again, not wanting to meet her eye, and Mina wants to shake her. "..... But Lucy, above all that, I owed it to you."

“Me?? You went back to your old lover for me?" Lucy scoffs, tears forming in her crystal eyes. Her voice breaks, but Lucy is always Lucy, and her words bite back, even if she's hurt -- especially when she's hurt.

"Forgive my skepticism, Mina, but I fail to understand how returning to the man you loved first, the man who could have given you everything I never could -- the first man you chose over me -- could possibly be about me."

"Because!" MIna can feel her voice rising out of desperation and frustration and anger and love at this woman who owns her heart now. "Because you deserve the truth.... Because you deserve to look me in the eye and know beyond a doubt that I'm telling the truth when I say I choose you. Not Jonathan. Not Alexander. You."

Lucy's mouth drops open, and Mina feels a sense of satisfaction that she has managed to render Lucy Westenra, of all people, speechless.

"I went to see Jonathan, I let him hold me in his arms, and I knew that what I feel for him, even what I felt for him then is not even half of what I feel for you. After all these years. After everything we've all been through -- you are the one I choose.... It might not mean anything at all to you now, after what I did to you, but I know now without a single doubt that it's the truth. And so do you. I choose you, Lucy."

Lucy just stares at Mina, her eyes wide. Her hands are shaking so much, Mina fears the tea in her cup will spill. She crosses the room and kneels down in front of her chair. She takes the cup carefully from Lucy’s hands and sets it down.

Lucy has looked away from her again, like she does now whenever Mina tells her the truth, with her eyes or her words. Mina almost sighs, because she was right. She has damaged this beyond repair.

But then, Lucy's trembling fingers catch her own in a fearful, hopeful grip. "Please tell me it's real. Tell me you're telling the truth."

“Oh, Lucy...” Mina reaches up and her fingers curling around the nape of Lucy's neck. She brings their foreheads together, until she can practically taste the salt of Lucy's tears. "I love you. I'm so in love with you."

Finally she kisses her, the taste of Lucy touching her lips, unadulterated by blurry memory and guilt. This time, it's Lucy who hesitates, who is still beneath Mina's mouth, and Mina knows the terror of Lucy that night, whispers the same prayers Lucy did into the kiss of so many years ago.

Then Lucy's mouth parts beneath her with a soft sobbing moan, and bliss floods Mina's whole body. She never knew bliss tasted like Lucy and her tears. She laughs into the kiss, her own tears slipping from her closed eyes to Lucy's waiting lips.

Lucy's hands, greedy and fearful, grip onto her dress and haul her up into the chair above her. The love seat is small and cramped, but Mina doesn't care, not when Lucy holds her like she's never ever going to let go, like she's afraid Mina will change her mind.

She imagines that it will take some time, for Lucy to truly believe that she's here to stay. So Mina holds her gently and firmly, like a cherished thing, pushes her down into the soft cushion of the chair just so Lucy can feel her weight, the permanence of her and her choice.

Mina will wait and she'll show her. She will show Lucy every single day of the rest of their lives.

#westenray #lucy westenra #mina murray #katie mcgrath #jessica de gouw #dracula #westenray au #i am tired and aware that this is a mess #ANOTHER night without sleep w00t w00t #my writing #tw: abuse #tw: suicide #tw: poisoning

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mindwideopen · 3 years

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I’m a throw back. John carpenter was quoted as saying that if he started his career now, he’d probably be rejected. That blows my ever lovin mind.

John carpenter is hands down my favorite director. His movies are clear, concise, and steeped in character driven realism. His pacing, deliberate. His action films, a staple in film history. No one directs like John carpenter, because he has his own POV. His vision of story telling is one that only he sees, and we get to experience. He’s so involved in his storytelling that he even composed his own soundtracks with collaborators. He has a complete 360 degree full compact vision of each of the stories he wants to convey. And when it was time to stand up for his vision, he stuck to his guns. That kind of dedication to one’s craft, and deciding to be authentic is a choice that not many people are comfortable with, or are brave enough to voice, especially in this day and age. John supported and stood by himself.

Age is not a factor when it comes to artistic vision. You can be 100 and still see things from your filter, and tell your story. (John carpenter is not 100... 🙄). I relate to john’s filter a lot. His anti-hero story of “Escape from New York, is easily one of my top 5 favorite movies of all time. Snake Plissken, a guy who tried for years to fit into a mold that wasn’t him. And finally, something broke, and he went rogue. But the decision to go bad wasn’t the story. The decision to survive in the corrupt society of what the world had become, was.

Snake felt isolated and alien to the world around him. He felt the need to separate to keep his beliefs and self in tact. He trusted no one. He had been screwed over by people, and ended up in the jail of New York because of it. He was a man who felt and believed fully that to fight the establishment was futile, and the only way out, was within.

He was quiet and stealthy. He wore his heart no where. It was buried so deep not even he had seen it for years. He was working mainly from a serpentine way of behaving, an animalistic survival existence. He had separated himself from humanity, and was treated accordingly,

I can relate with Snake believe it or not. He and I are semi similar in the way that I have hidden myself from people knowing the full and entire me. I haven’t let many in. I’ve been on a self imposed lock down, no one in, and definitely if you opt out by the way you treat me, you stay that way. I am a loner, and now I create alone too. My writing is a solo act, and I resign myself to the fact that even though I sometimes long for collaboration, perhaps it’s better just to stay at bay.

Snake was a guy who tried to play by the rules until the rules started to hurt. John may not agree with that interpretation of the character, because I haven’t discussed it with him, but to me a person needs to be affected strongly by something to fight against it. Why was Snake so affected by the state of the world? Something had to happen to make him turn his back on everything he believed in. He was brought to this decision by his feelings. And whatever happened, those feelings rocked his beliefs to the core of him. You don’t just flip the script for no reason. He was pro government at one point, then somehow it became very very personal, and he was out.

I may be a chick, but I am, Snake Plissken. We all are, in a sense, or have at least felt that way before in our own lives. Someone somewhere disagrees with our stance, our view point, our values, our beliefs. That opposition creates a discord from within. We become offended, unsupported, and misunderstood, then subsequently betrayed by people.The world has become very divided and separatist if that is the reality that we choose to believe. We choose to believe that because of how we feel. People feel, then think, then believe then react. “They are WRONG. Their beliefs, not mine.” Reaction is knee jerk. Fuckers... they can ALL go to hell.. decision made. Next. Hurt is real, and that reaction is due to being unheard, unappreciated, and not considered. It drives people to be the complete opposite of who they thought they were.

Life is an outward expression derived from an internal perception. If we can get a handle or at least become more aware of what we are feeling in any given moment, we can head off a lot of our own upset at the pass. In turn, we would feel supported from within, and other’s opposing opinions won’t be so detrimental to us. We can have more of an understanding of our shared humanity, and start from there. When things seem hopeless, start with what you can control, and that’s yourself.

People are forced to evolve with the passage of time. And people’s personal evolution is their own choice too. And their experiences feed those choices. Corruption, imbalance, persecution, oppression; all of these contribute to the whole. Not just a few are affected. We are ALL affected. I have recognized that within myself. Eliminating me from the equation; my feelings, my emotions, my whole self, has been affected.

Ignoring and being complacent not an option anymore. The world is connected whether we like it or not. Even a dude like Snake Plissken who wants to be separate, isn’t. Being human alone connects us all. The separation is what got us in this fucked up mess to begin with.

Snake isn’t alone. The world as we know it is full of atrocities and injustice. The world is unfair, and not at all in a place of peace. But our focus on that fact, within ourselves and in our own interactions with others only exacerbates the issue. Staring at something for too long makes it bigger, more obvious. The worlds issues won’t disappear if we keep making them worse; in our minds, on the news, in our daily lives. This is not to say that the worlds problems can be solved by turning a blind eye, cause that’s ridiculous. But by caring about ourselves, is the first step in healing the world because of the injustice that we feel personally. The love we can supply ourselves can affect he whole in an unprecedented way. It can start a chain reaction that is fierce. If we ourselves choose to focus on the good, we will feel better. It sound stupid, but to my point, I feel better writing this piece. I’m paying attention to how I feel. I’ll be done writing, and be kinder to my son if he gives me pushback about getting ready fo bed, and so on and so forth. We affect one another in ways we feel are mundane and unimportant.

Oh please.... you might think, she’s comparing Snake Plissken’s plight to fighting with her kid to go to bed on time. Well, it’s about respect, and it’s about love. Same emotions. If we all respected and cared about one another’s feelings, and felt that same love and respect in the world there wouldn’t be any of this mishegoss to begin with! So argue with that, critic! Well, that critic is going to go yell at his/her kid, or dog, and affect the world negatively in that way.

I joke about the critic and the dog, but not really. I care about how you feel, cause it affects me. I care about how I feel, cause it affects you. As a society we tend to over-complicate life. It’s actually pretty simple; be good to yourselves, be good to one another, and whatever that implies, do it. We make things so convoluted. Just be fair. Treat people well. The whole of us, is what we are lacking. Be the whole, and your life, becomes real simple in the best way. Love dictates it. It’s the best leader of them all. ❤️

It’s time to follow the love....

#John carpenter #director #escape from new york #action #action adventure #movie making #movie reaction #movie review #mind wide open #kari keillor

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ambidextrousarcher · 4 years

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I love your blog. I don't know much about eastern mythology but I feel like arjuna is a lot like rhagar . Charming prince , decent and virtuous man and hated for no reason. I googled arjun and it says he loved his second wife more than his first wife whom he married out of duty. Will you please discuss more arjuna and rhagar parallels please.

Hi, anon!

Firstly, I’m glad you like my blog!

As for your question, I’d say that Arjun and Rhaegar are more like foils than true parallels. Superficially, I can understand that Rhaegar and Arjun seem like they have parallels.

I’ll give a list of them, yes?

1. Charming Princes, both of them. Known to have ladies fawn over them.

2. Introverted nature

3. Excel in fine arts (Arjun is an amazing dancer, I think he also plays the Veena and Rhaegar is a singer who plays the harp)

4. Abducted a lady/married her. Arjun abducting Subhadra nearly causes a war, Rhaegar abducting Lyanna actually causes a war.

5. Warriors.

This is where I add a statutory warning: I think Rhaegar is a disgusting git, not least because he abandoned his wedded wife and children, also probably raping her by coercion (I don’t think Elia was healed enough to conceive when she had Aegon, according to the timeline give in canon.) Hence, if you want me to agree that Rhaegar is a tragic, misunderstood man, I’m sorry, that’s not going to happen.

That’s where the similarities end. Because the more I read of Rhaegar, the more he seems to have a truly reprehensible personality. He was obsessed with destiny and gave no thought to his duty as a crown Prince, or to his legally married wife, the Princess Elia Martell of Dorne. He, indirectly, led to her gruesome death. The girl he abducted, Lyanna Stark, was underage. For all that I don’t like Lyanna, if the situation was not an elopement, Rhaegar is to blame for some really deep shit. He basically treated Lyanna like a prisoner, isolating her in alien lands, indirectly being the cause of her death too.

Arjun, on the other hand, is a man dedicated to his duty over his personal pleasure. Yes, he did abduct Subhadra, but, in his time and culture, that was an acceptable way of wedding a woman. Also, he had the permission of Krishna, her brother, who aided and abetted him, along with his brother too. That was why, as far as I know, the war that could have happened was avoided. Arjun was not egoistical at all. He did everything he did out of a sense of duty.

Yes, he wanted to excel in his pursuits, was supremely talented in what he did, but he never lorded it over anyone. As for him loving Subhadra more and marrying Draupadi only out of duty, that’s a misconception. For all that Arjun/Subhadra is my OTP, it is Draupadi who is mentioned in the canon epic as the love of Arjun’s life, not Subhadra. He did love Subhadra, too. But it was Draupadi who was the queen of his heart.

Unlike Rhaegar, Arjun was a man who explicitly refused the hand of a young girl when she was offered to him (Uttaaraa.) He accepted her for his age-appropriate son, instead, for preserving her honor. (He’d taught her dance for a year, it was, at that time, dishonorable for a maiden to be alone with a grown man). He refuses Apsara Urvashi, the most beautiful nymph in existence, because her position as his father’s courtesan and the wife of a long ago ancestor makes her a mother to him (KMG, not BORI).

Arjun, unlike Rhaegar, was a man of very dedicated duty and knew how to honour women.

Anon, thank you for this thoughtful ask. I would advise you to stop relying on Google and TV for information on mythology. It’s better to read the authentic versions (KMG and BORI Mahabharata) KMG, you can find at sacred-texts.com.

TLDR: Rhaegar and Arjun are very different in spite of superficial similarities, do not rely on untrustworthy sources to find the actual story when it’s mythology, refer to authentic sources.

I am sorry if I came off as rude.

#asks #anon asks #nice anon asks #arjun #anti-rhaegar targaryen #parallels #foils #scribbler answers #nila rants

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doomonfilm · 4 years

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Thoughts : I Kill Giants (2017)

Graphic novel film adaptations are certainly not a new phenomenon... as far back as the 1980′s, filmmakers have found properties to transition from the page to the screen. As studios like Marvel and DC gain a stronger foothold in the film industry, however, there has been a surge of graphic novels that may have flown under the radar of most that have found new life via the silver screen. One of the more recent adaptations that has found itself at the center of much buzz is the modern day fantasy fairy-tale I Kill Giants.

Barbara (Madison Wolfe) lives with her brother Dave (Art Parkinson) and her older sister Karen (Imogen Poots), who cares for the two. In an attempt to escape her harsh family life, Barbara finds inspiration in two unique sources : the fantasy of Dungeons & Dragons, and the legend of former Phillies pitcher Harry Coveleski, known as ‘The Giant Killer’. Because of the fantasy world Barbara has created for herself, she finds herself isolated from her family and peers. One day, Barbara meets Sophia (Sydney Wade), a young British girl new to the states, and based on their connection, Barbara confides in Sophia that she is a giant killer and protector of their city. At school, Barbara is bullied constantly by Taylor (Rory Jackson), and her standoffish attitude keeps her in hot water with teachers and administration, but school counselor Mrs. Molle (Zoe Saldana) makes continuous attempts to breakthrough with Barbara in hopes of helping her find peace. Barbara’s fantasies are so vivid, however, that it keeps her in isolation from everyone, including those that try to help her. Sophia and Mrs. Molle make repeated attempts to help Barbara, however, ultimately forcing her to face her fantasies and reality in equal measure.

Director Anders Walter wisely uses the magic, mysticism and fantasy of Dungeons & Dragons-style turn-based games to present an escape mechanism from reality, even going so far as to use video games represent modern day in direct comparison during the film’s opening moments. That escapism is paralleled against an unappealing reality, where struggles, love and loss can be immensely painful, especially when you’re too young to have to deal with these things. Using escapism to hide pain and avoid facing hard truths gives the narrative forward thrust, with heavy symbolism coming from all angles that makes the initially vague story start to become clear as the viewer learns more about the situation.

The way the film captures the awkwardness and social anxiety of childhood, which is amplified when you’re considered an outcast, is pitch perfect. The struggles of a non-traditional, broken home family format are also shown with cutting reality, as vicious fights occur even when deeply unconditional love is present and attempts at clearing up misunderstandings fall short. The film does a great job of capturing the standoffish nature of misunderstood kids, and how hard it is for genuinely concerned adults to connect. The use of fantasy elements is perfect for the story, as belief so vivid in something nobody else understands that it leaves you alienated from all is a very real thing, though not in the fantastic nature presented by the film, obviously. In my opinion, this is possibly a film that can help children understand both sides of bullying.

The film uses a wonderfully muted color palette that allows visual variety while setting a proper mood on multiple levels. The fantasy sequences resemble moving comic images, specifically due to their stunning colors and visual textures. The presence of an exhilarating score that livens up as the fantasy ramps up keeps the viewer’s heart racing, adding to the experience. The feel of a film from the 1980′s or 1990′s is present, but the advantages of modern CGI enhance the experience in new ways. The heartfelt writing that addresses heavy issues with tact and grace deserves praise and recognition. ‘Uncomfortable’ cinematography is used well, as the camera tends to get intimate with the subjects rather than standing back and being observant.

Madison Wolfe gives an incredibly dynamic performance for someone so young, combining introspection, biting wit and bold determination together in the form of a mythic hero. Zoe Saldana provides unconditional love and support to a lost child, while trying her best to understand what seems very real to the Barbara character. Sydney Wade also brings an attempt at understanding to the table, but her childlike innocence and fear shine through her attempts to befriend the Barbara character. Imogen Poots displays the hurt of a child forced to deal with adult responsibilities, and perfectly embodies how painful that forced transition can be. Rory Jackson provides proper intimidation as a real-world antagonist for the Barbara character, with her imposing height, cold stare and sharp tongue sending chills down the viewer’s spine. Appearances by Art Parkinson, Jennifer Ehle, Don Wycherley, Sonya Kelly, Noel Clarke and more fill out the world of the narrative.

If someone were to take all of the best ideas of The NeverEnding Story, eliminate the fluff, and reposition the events that take place in the fantasy world into a strange middle ground of reality and fantasy, you’d have I Kill Giants. If this film doesn’t achieve some sort of cult classic status in the oncoming years, I’d be wholly surprised.

#ChiefDoomsday #DOOMonFILM #AndersWalter #IKillGiants #ZoeSaldana #MadisonWolfe #ImogenPoots #SydneyWade #RoryJackson #ArtParkinson #NoelClarke #JenniferEhle #CiaraOCallaghan #JohnBoyle #DonWycherley #SonyaKelly

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lunamanar · 6 years

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Alright, then. What do you think would each character's favourite genres of fiction? Bonus points if you go into specifics per medium.

Wow, two inquiries for the entourage in a row. Like the last one, I might not do everyone in this response, but I’ll tell you what comes to me.

My Rinoa doesn’t actually read a lot of fiction, but when she does, it’s usually because there’s some character or other in it that really grabbed her attention, someone she could relate to on a personal level. She likes fiction that can help her sort herself out, haha. So what catches her eye really varies, sometimes it’s a standalone YA novel with teenager who’s particularly fed up with being held down, sometimes it’s a space opera with a misunderstood alien who feels isolated in a crowd, sometimes it’s historical fiction about a bisexual sorceress escaping with her knight from the tyranny of her own brethren. But really she prefers nonfiction! She’s curious and likes to know new things, and likes to read stories about real people, preferably autobiographical ones.

Squall...doesn’t read for pleasure that much. Usually he views it as a waste of his time. Unless he’s studying, or has otherwise been assigned to read something, it takes some specific circumstances for him to pick up a leisure book, and even moreso if it’s fiction. He read all of Battle series from Tim Mani because they [headcanon] described and illustrated actual martial arts and techniques, so they were an entertaining way to learn, especially when he was a bit younger. But as adulthood sets in? Not so much. If the environment of a piece of fiction really appealed to him...say, a complex, philosophical post-apocalyptic journey (he’s probably “enjoy” The Road, for instance), he might try it to see how the characters went about surviving. Or if Rinoa pestered him enough to convince him to read something less bleak but still thoughtful and not too purple, he might try it to satisfy her and then find himself getting sucked into it anyway.

Zell likes comic books. Super heroes. I don’t think he tends to like stuff that doesn’t have pictures in it, and I don’t mean that like he’s not smart--just the opposite. I think he’s a particularly visual person, and his brain is just sort of easily bored by information he can’t take in all at once. So actually having to read a book line by line is too slow for him, most of the time.

I think we already know what Seifer likes to read.

I like the idea that Quistis has a secret stash of raunchy romance novels and only Xu knows about it, and Quistis has no idea she knows about it.

I think Xu also has a bunch of raunchy lesbian romance novels and she displays them prominently on a shelf at eye level in her bedroom. Quistis keeps asking her how she can stand that stuff and Xu only says “you tell me,” and Quistis gets uncomfortable and changes the subject, every time.

Selphie reads novels that eventually get turned into action or horror movies. That is, she sees the movie, is dazzled by all the explosions and blood, then dives into the books because she knows there are even more gory details and swearing to be had.

Irvine...I think, probably, Weird West kinda stuff? Especially if there are ladies with big guns in it.

...Yeah, I’m surprised I got this far.

#ff8 #headcanon #rinoa heartilly #squall leonhart #zell dincht #seifer almasy #quistis trepe #xu #ff8 xu #selphie tilmitt #irvine kinneas #asks #ssnakey-b

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takaraphoenix · 7 years

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Best Animated Movies Through the Years

After I threw some shade at Disney with the sequel-thing I did earlier, I figured I’d do a list of what I consider the best animated movies. Not just including Disney. And since I’m shit at picking favorites and properly ranking stuff, we’ll go through them by years, in chronological order. All personal picks, obviously.

Basically, this is just self-indulgent because I want to ramble about my favorite animated movies.

Also, this is going to be really long so I’ll shorten it by making you click “keep reading” below!

And by “really long”, I mean this is literally a list of 65 animated movies through the years - yeah, that is the narrowed-down version because it’s only 65 out of the 282 animated movies I have on my overall “timeline of animated movies”.

I think the way this list makes most sense is... for scrolling through to see titles you might have never heard of before and getting a recommendation for a great animated movie that isn’t necessarily just your average Disney masterpiece (though those are of course also on the list).

1937 - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Disney

It might not be the best story-telling wise and Snow might not be the most fleshed-out Disney princess, but you can not talk about the best animated movies without respecting the first. This paved the way and this is what set the course for Disney. The animation is beautiful, even eighty years later it still looks stunning. And while not a genius in character-development, it is still a very faithful - by Disney-standards anyway - retelling of the fairy tale.

1942 - Bambi, Disney

Thumper will forever be one of my favorite Disney characters. Who watched this movie and didn’t love Bambi and Thumper and Flower is a lying liar who lies. It is beautiful, it is emotional and it’s the start of a wonerful tradition of talking animal movies.

1950 - Cinderella, Disney

I know I said in the sequel-thing that this movie is flat. But you got to keep in mind the time-period from which it is. And for that, it still stands strong. Many shame Cinderella as just being a girl after a boy and that’s it; same for Snow White by the way. All those “new age” Disney fans who think only the princesses from 2000+ are real heroines. That both Snow White and Cinderella were abused half their lives and that literally the only escape from that kind of abuse in that kind of time would be to get married and move out, is forgotten way too often. This girl has been treated as a house-slave all her life and all she wants is one night to feel like a princess - she never even really just wishes for a prince, she just wants to go to the ball - and she fights for it. It’s more a movie about overcoming abuse and issues of self-worth, of friendship and escapism than it is just a bland “That girl wants a boyfriend” movie and it deserves respect for that.

1951 - Alice in Wonderland, Disney

As a very big fan of the books, I hold a special kind of love for this movie because it’s actually a rather faithful adaptation. Of course it leaves out a lot and changes some things, but I think it stands very true to the source material and keeps a wonderful mixture of beautiful fairy tale land and creepy LSD trip in a great balance.

1959 - Sleeping Beauty, Disney

Aurora is my favorite Disney princess so I can not skip her movie. This movie wins on character design alone. Aurora gets a lot of shade thrown at her for being asleep half her movie, but you gotta try to look past that. We have a green-skinned, horned villainess who turns into a freaking dragon and spits fire. Maleficent’s design alone is amazing, but add to that the three quirky fairies and Aurora, as well as Prince Philipp who gets to not just kiss the girl as the princes before him did but to literally slay a dragon and save the kingdom for his princess and you got a real fairy tale masterpiece right there.

1967 - The Jungle Book, Disney

If I had to pick only one Disney movie, out of an artistic point of view, it would be this. Just as an artist alone, I marvel at this movie and the love for detail that went into animating the animals. The way they walk and move was done so incredibly well, you can see the effort that went into making this movie. The drawings are so beautiful. Bagheera will forever be one of my favorite Disney characters. Shere Khan is one of the three best Disney villains in existence - also, vastly misunderstood considering he really should have just eaten the brat and be done with this, I mean come on, like a pack of wolves or a panther wouldn’t have eaten the tiny snack and I still think this movie would have been improved by 100% if they had eaten Mowgli in the beginning because the brat is the only flaw this movie has.

1970 - Aristocats, Disney

This is such a beautiful story of family and love. I feel like it nearly doesn’t even need words to describe it because it’s a given that this movie should be on this list. The humor, the heart, the music, the animation, the characters. It’s adorable, and I’m saying that as a not-cat-person.

1973 - Robin Hood, Disney

It’s impressive if you just consider the fact that it was made with so much rehashed material (they reused a lot of old animation here). But it has a beautiful story, it’s innovative in the sense that it essentially introduces anthro characters and it’s just ridiculously cute.

1976 - The Twelve Tasks of Asterix | Les Douze Travaux d’Astérix, Goscinny & Uderzo

As a German, I can not do this list without including this movie. It is maybe one of the funniest animated movies in history. No one in Germany doesn’t know what a Passierschein A38 is. Growing up with the Asterix comics and other Franco-Belgian comics in the way the stereotypical nerds in American TV grew up with Marvel and DC comics, Asterix was literally the hero of my childhood and among all his movies, this one is definitely the best and the most fun to watch.

1981 - The Fox and the Hound, Disney

This is easily one of the most heartbreaking Disney movies and the only one where the love-interest is the real villain for coming between the main characters? Like? No. This movie would be perfect if not for Vixie. I love foxes, I love baby animals (when they’re animated; real ones creep me out) and I love a good story about friendship. This is really not a happy movie, which sets it apart from other Disney movies, but it’s still beautiful.

1986 - An American Tail, Don Bluth

For me, as a German kid, this was so weird to watch because the concept of immigrants and other continents aside from Europe being A Thing That Exists, it was totally alien and following Feivel and his family on that journey was a great way of being introduced into this literal New World of America. Feivel is such an endearing character, this movie is so heartfelt and has a pure focus on family and friendship that is simply beautiful to watch.

1986 - Fluppy Dogs, Disney

I know this one is a bit of a stretch because technically it’s not a movie but the pilot to a failed cartoon series, but this might easily be my favorite Disney movie of them all? The characters are so amazing, the concept of parallel worlds will forever be one of my favorite things and I was first introduced to it in this movie, the focus of friendship and overcoming differences is great and I’m sorry but this is a movie about rainbow-colored fluffy puppies that can talk and travel between universes, how is that not amazing?!

1988 - The Land Before Time, Don Bluth

Others cried when Bambi’s mom was shot, but to me this one was way worse. The pain and fear of isolation that Little Foot went through, this scary dark world around him. Those diverse, quirky and amazing characters that you met and fell in love with within this really short one hour movie - really, you have one hour and you have five main characters and yet it’s enough to make you fall for each and every one of them. How this ragtag team of dinosaurs finds together and how they become friends. It’s maybe the purest friendship-story among animated movies and I love it. Also, it’s literally the best dinosaur movie ever made and you can fight me on that.

1989 - All Dogs Go to Heaven, Don Bluth

This is so refreshing, because we don’t have this shining, pure golden boy of a protagonist. We have the first anti-hero in animated history, really. Charlie is a selfish dog and he has an amazing redemption arc. The guts to do such a thing, a redemption movie on an animated dog, I marvel at that, considering the time and that it had never been done before. You learn to love Charlie and you feel for him throughout the journey and you also feel for the little girl.

1989 - The Little Mermaid, Disney

Ariel is a brat. Ariel is maybe the only Disney princess that is mainly relatable if you yourself are a child and rebelling against your parents. As a kid, this was the best princess movie for me, I worshiped Ariel, she was so cool. As an adult, I mainly admire Triton and his patience and love for his daughter. This movie, for me, is what shows you if you’re grown up. If you still side with Ariel, you’re probably not as grown up as you like to think, and if you came around to feel for Triton, I got some bad news for you because you are officially an adult now. But even that aside, it has one of the most endearing sidekicks in Flounder, it has one of the most compelling villains in Ursula and it has some of the most beautiful musical numbers. Not to mention, the animation is gorgeously drawn.

1990 - The Rescuers Down Under, Disney

This movie is literally the only sequel in the history of sequel-making that outdoes the first movie. Its animation is beautiful, its story-telling amazing, its characters get proper arcs and are well-rounded and cute, it’s a stunning masterpiece of an animated movie (and I wasn’t even aware that there was a first one until my late teens, so it’s also amazingly done as a stand-alone movie).

1991 - Beauty and the Beast, Disney

Since I included all the other princess movies, I feel obligated to also include this. And it does have beautiful music and animation - outstanding animation, really - and it has endearing sidekicks, but I’m just not really a fan of the story itself. The whole violent, vicious beast kidnaps girl and girl completely changes everything about him and they fall in love with each other but somehow she never even bothers to ask him for his name and continues to call him Beast even though they’re already in love, not to mention this was kick-started because a 10 year old boy was rude to a stranger, what the heck Enchantress way to be overly dramatic... Yeah. That. But aside from that, as an animated movie, beyond just as a movie, it’s really beautiful.

1991 - FernGully: The Last Rainforest, 20th Century Fox

Not the English dub though. This is my third most favorite movie of all time, but I never got over the first 10 minutes of the English original because holy shit, that voice “actor” who plays the part of the male lead has never done voice acting, or any form of acting, before in his life and it’s just painful to listen to. But the movie itself is beautiful. Basically, it’s one half of Avatar, but in good (the other half being Pocahontas, of course). The message of saving our planet is done is such a beautiful, child-friendly way, the fairies and nature and the characters are so amazingly done and Hexor is like one of the best non-Disney-animated-movie-villains.

1992 - Aladdin, Disney

The weird part where it’s all about the hero, but in the end she’s the Disney princess and wins the fame and fortune contest, even though let’s be real, her plot in this is kinda weird. “Oh no, my life is too good”, yeah that’s such a relatable complaint especially for kids, and sicking your tiger onto a political ally is really great, princess, because even if you don’t want to get married, maybe try not to start a war, mh? And Aladdin’s approach of lying to get the girl is not the best either. What really wins wthis movie is, hands down, the Genie. Also the Sultan, who is one of my favorite Disney dads. The character dynamis and the growth of them throughout are also big plus-points.

1994 - The Lion King, Disney

This is one of the Disney movies that just hits the ball out of the park and it’s probably my third favorite Disney movie. The adorable animation. The mind-blowing songs. The compelling, eccentric villain, the emotions as you sob over Mufasa like a little child even when you’re over 20, the character design and the animals themselves, as well as the beautiful set-art. This movie is really very amazing.

1994 - The Swan Princess, Rich Animation

I mentioned once before that Toy Story is a perfect trilogy. So are this movie and its sequels. Yes, the first one is superior to its sequels and thus only it will find its way onto this list but the second and third are definite must-see movies too the others do not exist though and they should not exist. Odette is the original princess who didn’t just fall into the hero’s arms and had a love-at-first-sight romance. Disney gets props for Anna in Frozen like that’s the first time that happened, but if you look past Disney, it happened as early as 19994. Odette and Derek grow up not liking each other and when she’s pretty as a teen, he suddenly wants to marry her and she asks him why - and he answers because she’s pretty. And she flat-out rejects him. He has to fight for her heart and he falls in love with her on the way, really in love, and he makes her fall in love with him. It’s a beautiful love-story, with quirky animal sidekicks, endearing characters and beautiful animations. In many ways, this is superior to most Disney princess movies, really.

1995 - Pocahontas, Disney

I have always and will always love this movie, albeit I have to admit it’s... problematic. For children outside the US, who are only taught about US history in their teens, those “romanticized history” movies are a bit of a danger because we can easily fall to believe them to be true... er than they actually are (that there were no talking trees and that he didn’t learn the native tongue via singing, that much was obvious, thank you very much). But when you’re 14 and learn that her life was nothing like in the movie, that's kind of devastating. I feel like history is not the thing that should be romanticized like that. Still, it’s beautiful and great story-telling and characters and art and songs - even though singing them now makes you feel vaguely racist so that’s also a bit problematic?

1995 - Toy Story, Disney Pixar

I didn’t like this movie as a child. Mainly due to it being computer animated and fuck computer animation, gimme my 2D back. Yeah, I still have that mindset but by now I have learned to also appreciate animated movies. Not to mention, I think that for me as a kid the themes of betrayal and darkness (Sid’s house) were just too much as a child wheras I can very much appreciate them and see the complexity of the movie now as an adult. It’s great story-telling and if you consider that the animation is from 1995, it really holds up great (especially if you compare that with the animation from 2005′s Chicken Little, which might just be the worst animation-quality in all of Disney’s history, really).

1995 - Balto, Amblin Entertainment

Steele is one of the greatest non-Disney villains. This movie is beautifully complex because you get to follow this outcast on his journey of becoming part of society and rising to become a hero. It also got a beautiful arc of self-discovery, what with Balto’s status as a half-blood being what makes him an outcast to begin with. Not dog, but also not wolf. Yet in the end, he has to learn that he’s not neither, but rather both and that both sides are part of him and make him who he is. It’s a beautiful story about acceptance of one’s self.

1996 - The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Disney

Speaking of a story about accepting one’s self. This is really daring for a Disney movie, considering the lead is... deformed, whereas all Disney movies so far only include perfect people (unless villain). Also, the main character doesn’t get the girl in a semi-surprise twist. Not to mention, it brings us the first canonically gay Disney character in Hugo. Yes, he’s a gargoyle and yes, his male love-interest is a goat and yes he is not the representation you may want, but he’s the representation you’ll get, at least for now (and stop over-analyzing ridiculous shit like “Oh, two women are at the zoo with one child in Finding Dory. They must be the first lesbians *gasp*”... that is not representation, that is cheap and a throw-away). Not to mention, this movie has the best soundtrack out of all the Disney movies.

1997 - Hercules, Disney

We have a very complicated relationship, this movie and I. I love it to bits and pieces and it’s one of my favorite Disney movies, but at the same time I’ve learned to hate what an inaccurate adaptation of the Greek myths it is and particularly Hades’ misrepresentation makes me angry in a deeply seated way but on the other hand Hades is literally the most compelling and amazing Disney villain in existence. It confuses me. I love it so much, but deep down at its essence, part of me wants to hate it for what it did to my favorite god. But at the same time, I love that character in particular for being such a great villain.

1997 - Anastasia, Don Bluth

This is it. This is the best animated movie ever made. This is my favorite movie of all times. I’ve seen it at least 50 times by now - my guess, I stopped counting roughly ten years ago and I was at 27 back then. Just like Odette in Swan Princess, Anastasia actually falls in love with her love-interest. No love at first sight nonsense. They start off antagonizing each other, but learn to work together and ultimately fall in love. We have friendship, we have a great journey and also a great journey of self-discovery - but not just on Anastasia’s part, because her love interest is not just The Love Interest, he also gets his own arc of self-discovery. We have an intensely scary villain and we have beautiful, beautiful songs. Not to mention, Anastasia kicks major butt. She doesn’t need a man to save her, she saves the man and she literally kicks the villain’s ass. This movie is a masterpiece and a gem.

1998 - The Quest for Camelot, Warner Brothers

The movie is not as good as you remember it, believe me because I experienced the let-down, but it has one very major thing going for it: It includes a disabled character as a lead. Before Toph Beifong, this movie had a kick-ass blind character in it and that’s huge because it still barely happens and that’s a real shame. For that alone, it gets major props. Not to mention, it is kind of quite the unique take on the Arthurian legend and it’s a fun movie. But as a movie itself, it’s not overly outstanding, if you rewatch it now.

1998 - Mulan, Disney

While I said earlier that Fluppy Dogs is my favorite Disney movie, I’m aware that’s a lot of nostalgia talking and I know it’s not the best Disney movie. This right here is, though. The story-telling, the love-story and character development, the stakes of this movie are amazing, the emotions are intense. People cry when Mufasa or Bambi’s mom die, but I think the single most gut-wrenching moment of Disney history is when the most joyful song in the movie stops dead in its tracks and we see this destroyed village and we know that they’re all dead down there. The movie also has the single greatest moment, when all of China kneels before this one girl and acknowledges that yes, she is the one who saved China. She did this. Mulan is a heroine, but she doesn’t start out as that. She just starts out as a girl who wants to protect her father and she actually has to learn to be a hero. It’s amazing and emotional and yet still through it all funny and that is really mostly due to Mushu, who coincidentally was also the first time of me really liking Otto Waalkes (Mushu’s German voice and a very famous German comedian).

1998 - The Last Unicorn, Rankin/Bass Productions

This movie is so artistically beautiful and keeps such an amazing mystical vibe to it throughout. It’s very weird and scarily creepy at times that are maybe too much for a kid and a major downside of its German dub is that the songs are kept in English - I only realized a few years ago that the music actually tells a story, and that’s kind of disappointing to learn so late. But it’s just... breathtakingly beautiful and tragically sad.

1998 - The Prince of Egypt, DreamWorks

I really loathed this movie as a child. Mainly due to its Christan themes and I just got enough of that in class where they shoved it down our throats, not to mention among all the religions, Christian myths are like the most miserable, dark and scary ones, in my opinion. That movie was so not child-friendly. It was so dark and scary and brutal and miserable. Now, as an adult, I can totally appreciate those tones and I marvel at the amazing story-telling, but as a child? I was scared of this movie and I did not like it. But the animation, story-telling and the music are amazing and it really blew my mind when I rewatched it as a late teen.

1999 - The Iron Giant, Warner Brothers

I watched this movie for the first time this year, because my favorite YouTube nerds keep bringing it up during Movie Fights, so I figured I’d check it out considering I never heard of it before. I guess it must have slipped through the cracks. So I saw it for the first time, 20 years after its release. And you just don’t notice that. The animation, the story-telling, the movie - it completely holds up. It’s such a sweet but also sad story about friendship. It’s really great.

2000 - The Road to El Dorado, DreamWorks

I did not like this movie as a child. Don’t even really know why, to be honest. But when I rewatched it as a teen, I really loved it a lot. Miguel and Tulio are such great, complex characters and their journey together is amazing. Not to mention, I will never stop being upset about the fact that DreamWorks chickened out of making them the first canonically gay couple in an animated movie - which yes, was the first draft for this movie. It’d have been amazing if they had pulled through with it, really. I think that is why I hate Chel so much - and my hatred for her might be the root for why I disliked this movie as a kid. Because Chel was literally just created to get between Miguel and Tulio. But other than her, this movie is rock-solid.

2001 - Shrek, DreamWorks

Definitely not the best, but a fun movie and innovative in its parodic nature. Also has fun characters and an original story and I appreciate the way they inverted the original Disney tropes.

2001 - Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Disney

Again, one of those movies that didn’t work for me as a kid but ever since I’ve been a late teen, I watched it probably ten times because it’s amazing. It’s complex, has great character developing and story-telling and it has such a diverse cast and an original idea. I’m really sad that, most likely due to its complexity, it kinda flopped and fell flat. But, if there is one movie that does deserve the Disney live-action remake treatment, it’d be this because this movie deserves the attention and I think that in today’s time, it would do so much better.

2001 - Monsters, Inc., Disney Pixar

This was actually the first Pixar movie that I liked right away. It had cute and fun characters, a fascinating concept behind its story and it was both funny and emotional.

2002 - Ice Age, Blue Sky

They’re completely driving this franchise into the ground, but the first one was really good. I have a weakness for those “ragtag team of misfits needs to band together” kind of stories, if you haven’t noticed. And this movie does it in such a fresh, new setting. It was really enjoyable.

2002 - Lilo & Stitch, Disney

After Mulan, the best Disney movie there is. This movie is so incredibly deep and emotinonal that it never ceases to blow my mind. The sibling-love, this way they deal with the emotions and with Lilo and Stitch and both their arcs of self-discovery is just singular. There is no other movie like this.

2002 - Treasure Planet, Disney

A vastly underrated Disney movie, really. It’s spectacularly done and has such a great story-arc and development and emotional scale, not to mention the imagery that it offers. So beautiful and so much fun.

2003 - Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, DreamWorks

After rewatching and falling for The Prince of Egypt and The Road of El Dorado, I decided to rewatch all the movies I disliked as a child to see if I would actually end up liking them - and this one is another one of those. It has such an epic scale and does the one thing I missed about Hercules; it gives us the monsters and gods in mindblowing sizes and scenes. Eris, also, the greatest DreamWorks villain of all time, while still keeping her mythologically in character.

2005 - Hoodwinked, Kanbar Animation

The animation of this movie does not hold up. It looks outdated, yes. But the story-telling is superb. The parody-twist to the tale of Red Riding Hood, added with how it’s perceived by the different characters, as well as the humor of it. I remember in 2006, after it was released, I was really sick that one week and I literally watched it 32 times in a row. It was just so innovative in the way it was told and I really enjoyed how clever it was. Also, I was really out of my mind with that cold or otherwise I might have also wathced another movie or two...

2006 - Over the Hedge, DreamWorks

This is such a fun movie. I enjoy a good redemption story of an anti-hero who realizes that scamming the good guys ain’t the way to go. The fact that said anti-hero is a racoon only makes it all the better.

2007 - Ratatouille, Disney Pixar

It’s such a cute story and such an interesting take on story-telling that makes me like this movie, even though it’s not very deep and doesn’t have the most fleshed-out characters.

2008 - Kung Fu Panda, DreamWorks

The first one ought to be on this list, because it was fresh, it was funny and it was cute. The way the different characters played out and played with each other was really nice. Also, great action, for a kid’s animated movie anyway.

2008 - Wall-E, Disney Pixar

This is an amazing movie. With its message and story-telling, the way it connects to the viewer even though there’s basically no dialogue in it for most of the movie. I think as a kid I would have so not enjoyed it because of the lack of dialogue and its heavier tones regarding the overall message, but when I watched it when it came out - and I was 16 back then - I really enjoyed it.

2008 - Bolt, Disney

I adore Bolt. I mean, I feel totally cheated because the trailer was cut to make it look like we were actually getting the Bolt series from within the movie as the actual movie and the idea of a super-dog was really cool, but even as it stood, it was a great movie and Mittens’ arc was particularly amazing in it.

2009 - Up, Disney Pixar

Honestly, doesn’t really deserve to be on the list if you see it as an overall movie. Most people get hung up on the first ten minutes of it - and those ten minutes alone are a masterpiece and would totally win as a short-movie. But there is a lot more to this movie. And it ain’t that amazing, really. It’s funny and quirky, sure, but definitely not outstanding. It’s quite ridiculous, even for an animated movie. But for the first ten minutes alone, this movie deserves to be on this list.

2009 - The Princess and the Frog, Disney

Again, doesn’t quite deserve to be on this list in my opinion, because I hate how it completely disregards the original fairy tale - starting a startlingly concerning trend for Disney here - and the blatant plotholes. It gets plus-points for being 2D again and for introducing the first black princess, but personally I think the first black princess would have deserved better than this. I understand why this movie flopped, really. Even if it’s still a cute and nice movie, it is far below average by Disney standards.

2010 - How to Train Your Dragon, DreamWorks

Oh, this movie is glorious. I have to admit, this movie is actually why I went and rewatched all those other DreamWorks movies that I used to hate as a kid, because this movie was the first time DreamWorks became an actual household name, to me. Before that, DreamWorks was just another one of those “non Disney companies” and that was it. With this movie, for the first time, they earned themselves their own name and category in my mind and made me rediscover a lot of actually great movies. The story-telling in this movie is just so great and it gets extra credit for its adorable dragon characters that are so lovable and individual. Not to mention, this movie spawned an amazing animated cartoon series.

2010 - Despicable Me, Illumination

The first one is actually a really great and beautiful movie about family and self-discovery. And then the Minions took over and this franchise sank faster than the Titantic.

2010 - Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole, DreamWorks

This might be the most beautifully animated movie in history. It is simply gorgeous and even if you just watch it for the aesthetics, you have to see it. Though it also has a very compelling story. I just think it’s a bit too dark and too realistically animated to resonate with children, which might just be why it flopped too. But when I watched it when it came out, I really enjoyed it because it is more for an older teen audience.

2010 - Megamind, DreamWorks

Such a great, vastly underrated movie. It’s so much fun, it’s so fresh and new while playing with old and overused tropes and the characters are really refreshingly quirky.

2010 - Tangled, Disney

Mixed feelings for that one. Hate how much they altered the original tale, but still enjoy this movie as it stands. It’s so cute and sweet and how they actually take the time to fall in love is just as beautiful. Not to mention, Flynn Rider is definitely the most compelling male Disney hero/prince there is, right after Hercules.

2012 - Brave, Disney Pixar

It’s so nice to have a princess who actually stays single. Though, honestly, with the options offered to her... not a surprise. At least one of them could have been at the very least handsome, to show that it takes more than just good looks to love someone. But that all options presented were also... not nice to look at was just so typically superficial of Disney that it was a bit disappointing.

2012 - Hotel Transylvania, Sony Pictures

This is just so funny and cute. The monsters as dorky characters, the fun of it all. This movie is just a good time, whether you’re a kid or not. And I have to say, after I did mention in many of these entries that they only really connected with me as an adult, I want to include a movie that’s a bit more... simple and just real fun, because those animated movies should be fun for kids too.

2012 - Wreck-It Ralph, Disney

I think this would have been so much cooler with more casual gaming cameos - and I’m saying this as a non-gamer, but seeing characters like Link or Mario or someone recognizable there would have been real cool and I’m hoping for that in the second one. Still, the way the princess trope and the villain trope were handled here was just brilliant and it’s such a sweet story that that alone makes it a must-watch.

2012 - Rise of the Guardians, DreamWorks

And we’ve reached it. The best computer animated movie of all times, my second favorite movie of all times (after Anastasia, the number one spot for 2D animated movie). This is a true masterpiece. I marvel at its animation - the frost in particular is just so beautiful simply to look at, but also the dream-sand and the characters. The story-telling is so gorgeous to watch, the characters are so sweet and amazing - and it gets special bonus-points for not forcing an unnecessariy love-story into this as so many other movies do even though it’s not really a good fit for the overall movie. Also, I just adore Jack Frost as a character. If there is only one movie from this list that you’re going to watch, then please make it this one, even above Anastasia.

2013 - The House of Magic, Touchstone Pictures

This is a smaller scale movie, but it’s very sweet. This story of finding your place in the world, finding acceptance and a family is just one that will never get old. And if it’s told through talking animals and a cute stray little kitten, that’s a simple hook right there, really.

2014 - The Nut Job, Open Roads Film

I have been told that this movie is not as good as I think it is and I don’t care. It’s a heist movie with a purple squirrel in the lead role as an anti-hero with a redemption arc and it doesn't have any unnecessary love-story forced into it; it is as great as I think it is.

2014 - Big Hero 6, Disney

If you haven’t cried like a baby in this movie, you’re dead inside. This, also, a movie I would not have enjoyed that much as a kid because it’s so dark, so much death. Killing off the brother of a boy who already is an orphan and then having that ending, it's just brutal for a kids’ movie. But it’s also beautiful and amazing and the team-dynamics and fun are great as well as the action and it actually deals with the process of grieving and doesn’t just throw it away carelessly as most others tended to do in the past.

2014 - Mune: Guardian of the Moon | Mune, le gardien de la lune, On Animation Studios

This is such an artistically beautiful movie that I would have probably never found if not for a reader of mine who recommended it to me. It’s gorgeous and the mythology created in this movie, about the guardians of the sun and moon, is so rich and amazing. It’s so cute and compelling and I really think more people should know that it exists.

2015 - Inside Out, Disney

Again, not a movie I’d have liked much as a kid. Way too deep and meta, really. This whole psychological aspect and the depth of it are what make it so compelling and amazing, but also why I wouldn’t have liked it as a child. It’s kind of fun, but mostly it’s really deep. Also, a bit questionable in its choices of “emotions in charge of literally EVERY being”... they should have skipped the tagged on credit scene where we see that literally everyone has those very same emotions in charge. How does Disgust beat out feelings like Hatred, Love, Friendship... and also reduces some of those into islands instead of actual emotions? Yeah, a bit problematic there. But overall a great movie.

2016 - Leap! | Ballerina, L'Atelier Animation

It’s such a cute story about friendship, family and finding your own way in life. It’s also really compelling to see a character with a passion about something, but zero natural talent. The way she has to work hard to learn and become a great ballerina is half the fun of this movie.

2016 - Zootopia, Disney

I’ve been salty with Disney since Frozen and though Big Hero 6 and Inside Out were good, this was the one that restored my faith in Disney again after that huge ass disappointment. This is such a great story about friendship and redemption - even if it’s just the redemption in one’s own eyes. Not to mention; a fox and a bunny. Literally two of my three most favorite animals. It’s so good. So much fun. I mean, they totally overdid it when they faked Judy’s death because the kids around me in the theater strated crying and wailing because that was just a little too close to looking real for a child to understand that it’s not. Keep your audience in mind, Disney.

2016 - Moana, Disney

Ah, the last entry for this. The newest Disney princess. I really enjoyed this movie a lot. It was beautifully made, it was a lot of fun, had good musical numbers, was a very interesting story with an amazing pseudo-plot-twist there at the end (I mean, come on, it was really very obvious literally right from the start, but still brilliantly executed and very emotional). Also, again, princess who not just stays single but where finding a husband doesn’t even have to be mentioned. Very refreshing.

#Disney #Animated Movies #DreamWorks #Illumination #Don Bluth #Timeline of animated Movies #Best of List

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her-culture · 7 years

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Tim Burton and the Cult of the White Freaks

by Archita Mittra (20), India

I almost didn’t write this article. When I was 12 or 13, I went through an intense punk phase, complete with electric blue highlights, ripped jeans, inscribing Green Day lyrics on the walls of my room, and a vocabulary of extremely colourful expletives. I was a devoted rebel without a cause. I was suffering from a severe identity crisis. I’ve always been a weird person. I’ve always liked the strange and eccentric characters. I took to writing emo poetry and creating morbid art, because I couldn’t speak, because for the most part of my childhood and my teenage years, I didn’t have the right words, the right face, the right personality, to fucking speak. I’m 20 now, and I still make morbid stuff, and things have changed, but only a bit. I close my eyes and I’m back there in that dark room with no light, a child with sewn lips, trying to articulate a trauma that knows no language. Somewhere in that demented darkness, I discovered, among other things, the films of Tim Burton. I fell in love with him and just some months back, I think, he betrayed me. This is why I almost didn’t write this article. Let me tell you why I fell for him in the first place. My skin’s brown as a dried walnut, and I’ve resigned myself to the fact that it’s going to stay that way, even if in my fantasies I’m white as Mia Wasikowaska’s Alice exploring a Gothic wonderland and having tea with a Mad Hatter wearing too much of white face paint. And, for as long as I could remember, that was a problem to everyone else. Why wasn’t my skin tone as fair as my parents, all my relatives would whine at every wedding and social gathering that my shy and introverted self was forced to attend. In holiday pictures, people teased me by asking if I was adopted. My classmates and I would play a game where the person with the lightest skin tone would win. During the annual school play, I was supposed to be grateful because I was getting to wear an expensive and exquisitely beautiful gown, pretending to be a spoilt stepsister and not the beautiful and oh-so-white Cinderella. Hey, at least I got the limelight for a bit. And yeah, it’s so okay, that even the colour pencils I use to make my art, label the peachy-pink tone as ‘skin’ and my brown flesh as well, just brown. Brown as tree bark, I suppose. For a long time, I kept telling myself that my shyness, my social anxiety, my crippling depression wasn’t because of all the bullying I had to endure at school, wasn’t because I was darker than everyone else around me, that it was just a manufacturing defect. Isn’t it normal for people to make fun of those who st-st-stammer? Isn’t it abnormal to st-st-stammer when you’re talking about the things you love and the things you fear? So, I did the only thing I could. I stopped talking. I wrote instead, but even that frightened me. Tim Burton was the best friend I never had. Because his films with all their Gothic visuals and macabre aesthetics, were about people supposedly like me. Beetlejuice wasn’t my first Tim Burton film but it is significant in two respects. One, it was Burton’s breakthrough film that landed him the offer to direct the blockbuster Batman films and kick-start the superhero industry. Two, it introduced to the world what is now regarded as the popular stereotype of the Goth girl: the charming Lydia Deetz. For my depressed 14 year old self who was tired of making up imaginary friends to play with and slitting wrists, the black-clad, eye-liner-wearing psychic and photography enthusiast became both my role model and my mirror image. She was introverted (yay), creative, super duper depressed and could talk to ghosts. She was me! Of course there was something strikingly wrong with this image and I tried to ignore it by smearing a shit load of face powder on my brown brown face: she was white. Years later, Tim Burton’s trademark vision gave way to the pastiche dark fantasy comedy Dark Shadows, which although failed commercially, greatly pleased me aesthetically. Johnny Depp was playing a delicious vampire, fashion icon Helena Bonham Carter was a psychologist, a sassy teenage girl was later revealed to be a werewolf, the whole family was as dysfunctional as mine and the soundtrack included both the Carpenters and Alice Cooper. What else could a lonely POC girl, steadily losing her mind in a world of Gothic films that reflected back her own emptiness and strangeness, ask for? And even now, despite everything that has happened to me, Edward Scissorhands still remains as one of my favourite films, and although I pride myself as the type of person who doesn’t cry while watching a movie, my eyes were watery by the time Edward and Kim had parted ways and Edward remained in that dark castle, lonely as he ever was, making snow with his scissor hands. I was simultaneously Edward, this misfit-monster abandoned by God and his parent, and Kim, the suburban girl, slowly tasting what it is to love a stranger whose heart is so familiar and to dance for the first time in snow. And I thought, as I watched the pain in Edward’s eyes that it was Burton and not Edward, who was pleading to the audience to look beyond appearances and voicing for the first time, his childhood issues of alienation and misrepresentation. Soon after watching the film, my diary entries (I kept several journals because I didn’t have ‘real life’ friends to talk to) began to be addressed to a mysterious man named Edward while the Johnny Depp fan art I made bore the note ‘the only Edward I ever loved’ much to the annoyance of my Twlight-obsessed classmates. The movie wasn’t perfect, but then again, most beautiful things never are. And I’d long outgrown my fangirly love for Depp, long before those allegations about abusing Amber Heard began. But the love story with Tim Burton doesn’t end here. In 2010, when Alice having slain the Jabberwocky is preparing to leave, the Hatter softly requests her to stay. Alice promises to come back but the Hatter is unconvinced, saying she won’t remember him. Alice was not ready to comprehend the implications of that exchange, but I did and it terrified me to death. Tim Burton’s movies were the wonderland I would run away to, to escape my harsh reality, to forget this world that wouldn’t treat me as one of them, because I wasn’t fair enough, because fuck it, I wasn’t normal enough. I was trapped in the world of the Mad Hatter, a dream concocted by Alice, a world that is fragile and ephemeral, a world that disappears the moment Alice wakes up and forgets her dream. I’ll come back to this later, but for now, let me tell you the final lesson I learnt from watching Tim Burton’s movies: I learned to hope. In his delightful stop-motion animated feature Frankenweenie, Victor attempts to bring his dead pet dog Sparky back to life and he does so with disastrous consequences. Watching it and remembering all the pets I’d loved who died and would sell my soul to bring back, I was filled with a childlike sense of hope and the realization that I wasn’t alone for believing in and desperately hoping for impossible things, I wasn’t alone in being misunderstood and misrepresented. For once being the weird kid in class and scribbling poems and doodles on the sly, didn’t matter. Not having people to connect to, or appreciating me for the messed-up person I was, didn’t matter. I was okay. I didn’t have to be normal like everyone else, because there were people like Tim Burton who could totally get me. At least that’s what I felt when he said stuff like, ‘I think a lot of kids feel alone and slightly isolated and in their own world.’ And as much morbid a Tim Burton film may appear to a first time viewer (especially if it’s Corpse Bride), Burton’s characteristic brand of Gothic-ness wasn’t so much as a celebration of death, as it was a celebration of life. Working within the Hollywood system, Tim Burton has managed to retain his personality and also be, subversive. And that was so fucking inspiring to me. Why then did this man, who dresses up in black, whose films have tried to teach me to fall in love with myself and to believe in magic, miracles and impossible things, suddenly, betray me? Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children should have been my perfect film. After all, it’s a film about kids who are eccentric and don’t fit in, has time travel and a love story thrown in the mix and a secret house where they can be themselves. It is exactly the stuff I relate to and enthusiastically devour. But this is what Tim Burton did. When asked about the lack of diversity in his films, he said ‘Nowadays, people are talking about it more. But things either call for things, or they don’t. I remember back when I was a child watching The Brady Bunch and they started to get all politically correct, like, OK, let’s have an Asian child and a black — I used to get more offended by that than just — I grew up watching blaxploitation movies, right? And I said, that’s great. I didn’t go like, OK, there should be more white people in these movies.” In that singular moment, my whole carefully-constructed illusion came crashing down, so efficiently, I didn’t even realize it. Okay, I told myself, I’m a POC and I’m not ‘called for’. All through my life I have been worshipping a man in whose imagination, I have no space, I do not exist. I’m the Mad Hatter in Alice’s world, alive for a short time, useful as a plot device and erased out of the narrative, the moment Alice returns to the real world. Is this the kind of space WE occupy in the white imagination? Okay, I tell myself. At least unlike Steven Moffat, he isn’t famous for saying a string of problematic things. Okay, perhaps it was someone else’s fault- maybe Ransom Riggs or a Disney executive didn’t want too much tampering with the too-white source material( Never mind what he did with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by adding a back story to Willy Wonka that I totally loved). Plus if he really suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome, as his ex-partner Helena Bonham Carter claimed, we shouldn’t take his words to heart. Maybe he didn’t mean it. It’s just one blunder, I told myself. It doesn’t change anything. But it did. It changed everything. I couldn’t make any more excuses. Taking a look at his entire filmography-a career spanning over three decades- I realized that casting white, pale-as-death people is his artistic and directorial choice. It’s his fucking personal and creative choice. He just said that out loud. And it’s shoved into my face that this is a world running on white privilege and racism and hate crimes. That it’s the discrimination that POC face on a daily basis both from the whites and the communities who have internalized such values is the reason why I’m too afraid to even consider studying abroad in the UK or USA because Brexit and Trump administration yada yada, why I’m never ‘pretty enough’ to be considered to take part in college fashion shows built on patriarchal beauty conventions, why I still spend a part of my earnings on cosmetics that promise me ‘fair’ skin. My skin color isn’t an issue, most charming hypocrites will claim, it’s my shyness and weirdness and my lack of fucking ‘normal-ness’ that’s to blame. I wish someone would just tell me that I was born okay, that I am okay, that I’m not some sort of manufacturing defect most people think I am. In other words, Tim Burton’s niche audience wasn’t as inclusive as I made it out to be. It had outsiders and misfits yes, but only the white ones. Tim Burton’s fan club is a cult of white freaks, not Black freaks, not POC freaks, not any non-white freaks. I can’t be a part of this fan club, because in their world, I don’t exist. I am not ‘called for.’ When Ash Davis responds to Burton’s comment, she writes this brilliant article and says, ‘I write fanfiction for the people Tim Burton says are not ‘called for’. My mind, likewise, is a movie theatre where I edit my favourite films and include myself in the lead. I change the endings, add more romance when I’m lonely, put on costumes so outrageous that my mum won’t even let me wear on Halloween, deliver the dialogues my mouth will never speak, and feel a sense of belonging that is every bit delightful and artificial and illusory. In the films I direct in my mind, I look like the typical Tim Burton heroine. I’m white, not brown. This is what the white gaze has done to me. When I fell in love with his films, I thought I was seeing myself reflected back in Jack Skellington, in Lydia Deetz, in Edward Scissorhands, in Ed Wood, in Willy Wonka, in the Mad Hatter, in young Victor, in the Corpse Bride, in Ichabod Crane, but I never saw myself. I only saw what I wished so desperately to be seen as. Do I stop watching Tim Burton films after that racist comment? No. A part of me still hopes he’ll apologize or better yet include people who actually look like me in his next film. A fangirl, can hope, right? After all his films did help me to get through some dark times, albeit in a twisted way and I can’t erase those tense growing-up years when his oddball characters were all I could hold onto. But at the end of the day, he belongs to the mold of white film directors who make white movies for a predominantly white audience and think diversity POC-narratives aren’t important at all. But do Tim Burton films help me feel less lonely and less marginalized and less threatened by the big bad world out there? Not a bit.

#tim burton #white washing #whiteness #film #animated film

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piccoloisgreen · 7 years

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Hi , Just want to say I really love your vegebul stories, they're all well written and I just read your Gobul fiction, it's so interesting even though Gobul is not my thing but I really love your writing style. I wonder which one is you favorite pairing? Vegebul or Gobul ?

Oh boy nonny, that’s a tough question. First off, thanks so much for the kind words regarding my writing :)

I really love the idea of Gobul, but only when Goku’s character leans towards the naive/never-socialised-properly/but not really an idiot, just a country bumpkin side of things. In Dragonball and DBZ this is usually how he was portrayed - although some of the filler episodes portrayed him as plain ‘dumb’ (I don’t like that term but it’s the easiest way to describe it). The way that Goku has been portrayed in some of the Super episodes is, in my opinion, not in line with his character as established in DB and DBZ, and I can’t see this ‘idiot Goku’ ever being attractive to Bulma.

So yes I love Gobul and I think it works, but not if Goku is portrayed as an idiot. IMO Bulma needs to see some intelligence in a man, and Goku shows that through fighting - he’s a pretty good strategist. I think there’s potential for Goku to be seen as a sexy character - Racoom refers to him as a 'pretty boy’ in the Funi dub and I think that fits.

Things that are going for the Gobul pairing:- Shared history between the two - creates a deeper understanding of what makes each other tick- Both are misunderstood (Goku’s an alien but doesn’t know it until he’s in his twenties, Bulma’s a genius and appears isolated from regular people - all her close friends are misfits)- Both find each other attractive (Bulma makes it clear that he’s attractive at the end of Dragonball, and Goku has made statements in the Buu saga about Bulma’s attractiveness)- Both don’t like structure - Goku likes to train whenever he wants and Bulma likes to do whatever she wants. Bulma is messy af (my heroine) and her robots do all her tidying.- Bulma would be okay with giving Goku the freedom to train/fight - we see that in how she interacts in her other relationships - Goku’s going to go off training anyway so it’s helpful if his partner is ok with it.

One flaw I see is that Goku is a bit of a 'yes man’ - is that enough for Bulma? I don’t know if it is.

Onto Vegebul:

I’ve written (started) 40+ stories based around Vegebul, so you know I love them. 😉 Bulma helps Vegeta to grow (as a person, not his height, although he does seem to get taller throughout the series). She has a huge influence on his character arc.I think Vegeta has less of an influence on Bulma. She’s already her own person when he meets her - it’s more that with Vegeta, she’s challenged to remain her own person/stay true to her values when she’s faced with a guy like him. She has to be pretty damn secure in herself to put up with a guy who is so reluctant to admit that feelings exist. Perhaps this is the influence that Vegeta has - dealing with him solidifies her own beliefs/values and makes her stronger as a person.

Things going for Vegebul:- mutual attraction- both intelligent (he is not a genius like her, but he’s definitely smart)- they challenge each other - she’s not afraid to boss him around and he needs (likes) that- both misfits/had lonely childhoods (often gifted children like Bulma have trouble connecting with peers their age because their minds are so far advanced - I’m sort of guessing here, but from memory dragonball alludes to some issues at school)- Bulma has an understanding side - she tends to take (broken/lost) people under her wing and I think she has the ability/intelligence to sympathise with Vegeta without damaging his pride.

One thing I find challenging (despite all the Vegebul that I’ve written) is how Bulma can essentially ignore what Vegeta has done in the past. It’s something I think a lot of us who love Vegeta ignore too - if you really had to face someone IRL who had committed genocide multiple times I think you’d be pretty disgusted and not allow yourself to form a relationship with that person (even if they were coerced into to doing all those bad things like Veggie was). Because it’s all fictional my mind tends to brush over the genocide etc and focus on other things… But if we’re writing really realistic fanfiction - how does Bulma get around it? He did some pretty messed up stuff. My guess is that they work on a don’t-ask-don’t-tell basis and she doesn’t know exactly what he’s done.

Bulma’s no angel either, so perhaps that’s part of it. Her moral compass can be pretty broken sometimes.

Okay, so after all that rambling… which pairing do I love the most????

I love both of them. Sorry! I can’t decide. But I’ve always shipped multiple pairings.

I can tell you Vegebul is waaay easier to write. Partly because there’s less pressure - it’s canon so it’s supported by most people. When writing Gobul I’m constantly faced with self-doubt because I imagine a bunch of trolls attacking me for it! And it’s also harder because writing Goku well is more difficult - I think most authors would agree with me on that one. Where do you draw the line on his naivety/stupidity? That has a huge impact on how attractive he is, and you need both the other main character and the readers to find him attractive when you’re writing a romance! Goku can be a little 2-dimensional in the show, so it’s more work for the writer. Vegeta’s character comes much more naturally for me - probably because I tend to lean towards angsty stories anyway.

So there you go. I love both, but I write Vegebul more. I’m well and truly sitting on the fence with this one.

#pic answers questions #or fails to #vegebul #gobul #ramblings

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bandbacktogether · 5 years

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Estrangement Resources

New Post has been published on https://www.bandbacktogether.com/master-resource-links-2/family-resources/estrangement-resources/

Estrangement Resources

What Is Estrangement?

Broadly speaking, estrangement is defined as one or more relatives (or loved ones) intentionally choosing to end contact because of an ongoing negative relationship. (Relatives who go long stretches without a phone call because of external circumstances like a military deployment or incarceration don’t fit the bill.)

In the past five years, a clearer picture of estrangement has been emerging as more researchers have turned their attention to this kind of family rupture. Their findings challenge the deeply held notion that family relationships can’t be dissolved and suggest that estrangement is not all that uncommon.

Relationships are the dynamic between two people. Relationships take care, upkeep, and resources. However, they are not always easy, and rifts may develop between two or more people. When this rift grows, and two people grow apart, the relationship becomes estranged.

Estrangement can lead to many relationship consequences, such as separation, divorce, and alienation. Estrangement is a rift or division that is the result of unmet expectations or other disruptions in a relationship. Estrangements come in all forms, particularly in families: partner from partner, parent from child, sibling from sibling, grandparent from child, aunt/uncle from niece/nephew, and so forth. Even the best of friends can become estranged from one another because of unmet expectations or other disruptions in the friendship.

When families have endured disruption related to abuse, addiction, or other trauma, adult children may sometimes step back from their parents as they sort through their childhood experience. However, estrangement can also occur when adult children experience their parent as failing to honor established boundaries, when there is a conflict over money or when there are long-standing resentments. Parental divorce and remarriage are frequent sources of distress. The disconnection that occurs when an adult child alerts a parent of the need to take a break from the relationship differs from the type that results from an angry, unexpected cut off.

Estrangement is widely misunderstood, but as more and more people share their experiences, some misconceptions are being overturned. Assuming that every relationship between a parent and child will last a lifetime is as simplistic as assuming every couple will never split up.

How Does Family Estrangement Occur?

The Psychology of Splitting From Your Family of Origin

Estrangements from family are one of the most psychologically painful experiences to experience. Estranging yourself from family is absolutely counterintuitive: Who, after all, would think to terminate a relationship with someone who raised you? Sadly, the answer is that it’s typically only people who have been neglected, abused, or exploited in some way who would pursue such a tumultuous split within the family dynamic.

Adding more stress to the already-stressful mix, society tends to give harsh judgment on people who reject their family – even as disturbed as some families can be. We must work to find the empathy for anyone who shares his or her story, it’s hard to understand that some people can be so judgmental about others’ experience – especially when they have no real idea about how bad things may have been in the estranger’s family.

After years of discontent, some adults choose to stop talking to their parents or returning home for family gatherings, and parents may disapprove of a child so intensely that he or she is no longer welcome home.

Sometimes families become so dysfunctional that a family member decides that he can’t stay connected any longer to a specific person in the family or, in some cases, the entire family. Typically people who estrange themselves from family tend to be over the age of 18, because that is the point when they begin to reach adulthood and increased independence.

In a study published in June 2017, Dr. Scharp spoke to 52 adult children and found they distanced themselves from their parents in various ways over time.

Some adult children moved away. Others no longer made an effort to fulfill expectations of their roles, such as a 48-year-old woman who, after 33 years with no contact with her father, declined to visit him in the hospital or to attend his funeral.

Still others chose to limit conversations with a family member to superficial small talk or reduce the amount of contact. One 21-year-old man described how he called and texted his mother, but not his father, after leaving for college.

Estrangement is a “continual process,” Dr. Scharp said. “In our culture, there’s a ton of guilt around not forgiving your family,” she explained. So “achieving distance is hard, but maintaining distance is harder.”

Family estrangement is often experienced as a considerable loss; its ambiguous nature and social disenfranchisement can contribute to significant grief responses, perceived stigma, and social isolation. It’s amazing how little research actually exists on this topic, that lack is due largely to the stigma associated with estrangement:

Most people don’t want to talk openly about why they estranged themselves from family for fear of judgment.

A Few Statistics

On the website Estranged Stories, both parents and their adult children can fill out surveys about their estrangement. The results are surprising. For one thing, the parents who are estranged are older than one might expect, with over one-third falling into the 70-80 age group. When asked to describe the parent-child relationship before the rift, the most popular answer given by the adult children was “moral obligation.” The second most popular answer was “volatile and/or not close.” When asked whether they bear some responsibility for the estrangement, slightly more than half said yes. In 2014, 8 percent of roughly 2,000 British adults said that they had cut off a family member, which translates to more than five million people, according to a nationally representative survey commissioned by Stand Alone, a charity that supports estranged people.

Kylie Agllias, a social worker in Australia who wrote a 2016 book called “Family Estrangement,” has found that estrangement “occurs across years and decades. All the hurt and betrayals, all the things that accumulate, undermine a person’s sense of trust.”

Another interesting area concerns whether the children ever “concretely” told the cut-off parent the reasons for the estrangement. Over 67% said they had. This is a reverse mirror image of the parents’ response in a similar survey when over 60% said that they had never been told the reasons for the estrangement. This disparity reflects difficulties that parents sometimes have in communicating with adult children.

A British survey found that children are usually the ones who cut off contact. In fact, researchers found that members of the younger generation initiated the break about ten times more often than did members of the older generation.

Some Repeated Themes

Reasons for conflicts with adult children vary. Some adult children have severed relationships with parents due to traumatic childhoods: They were abused or grew up with parents who were alcoholics or drug users. Occasionally, family disputes have erupted over money. In the majority of cases, however, the reasons for estrangement are not so clear-cut. Still, certain themes occur over and over in commentary from adult children who have divorced their parents.

“You Weren’t a Good Parent.”

Some children feel that they weren’t loved or nurtured sufficiently. Sometimes, that’s because they were reared in a time or a culture that didn’t value open expressions of love. Sometimes it is because their parents truly had a hard time expressing their feelings. Occasionally adult children still feel hurt from episodes that occurred years ago, things that the parents may not even be aware of.

Therapists working with parents who are estranged from their adult children note powerful consequences from the cutoff. Depression related to loss and shame along with a strong sense of failure are commonly reported. Some have pursued grief counseling to deal with the overwhelming feelings of loss, while others have sought assistance to mend the relationship. There are others who suffer silently because they feel ashamed of their perceived failure.

Indeed, horrific parental behavior is sometimes assumed to be the cause of parent-child disconnection, an assumption that can heighten discomfort and despair.

“You Broke Up Our Family.”

The children of divorce often blame one party or another for the divorce. Sometimes that is due to what they have been told by one or another of their parents. Even when the divorcing parties remain civil, children often place the blame on one partner or another. After adult children marry themselves, they don’t always gain sympathy for their parents’ marital troubles. While they acknowledge that marriage is tough, they tend to feel that if their parents had persevered, they could have made it work.

“You Still See Me As A Child.”

Parents and children live for many years in a specific relationship, with parents in charge. Parents sometimes have difficulty giving up that construct. Children, on the other hand, are usually ready and willing to make their own decisions. When adult children say that their parents don’t see them as adults, they are sometimes correct. Many times parents persist in giving unwanted advice. Voicing disapproval of a child’s spouse or partner can definitely cause conflict. Finances, jobs, and lifestyle are other frustrations for conflict.

“We Don’t Have the Same Values.”

When children make choices that aren’t consistent with their parents’ values, the parents sometimes say, “We didn’t raise you that way.” They have trouble acknowledging that grown children are responsible for developing their own moral compasses. Also, trouble can arise when an adult child marries someone who differs in important ways from his or her family of birth. Sometimes the difficulty springs from differences in political leanings or religious beliefs. These issues present especially difficult challenges because political and religious beliefs tend to be closely held. Some families learn to live with such differences. Others never do.

Exactly what is meant by a “toxic person” depends upon the speaker. It’s not included in standard handbooks of psychological disorders, but generally, it’s understood to mean a person who is harmful to another’s emotional equilibrium. Those who are overwhelmingly negative, who blame others, who are excessively needy or who are casually cruel sometimes are called toxic.

Other labels that are often used to justify ending a relationship are narcissistic and bipolar. Both of these are genuine psychological disorders, but the labels are often casually applied, without any professional diagnosis.

What Are Some Of The Contributing Factors To Estrangement?

There are a number of contributors that may act as a catalyst for an estranged relationship. Unresolved issues such as trust, money, safety, emotional abuse, neglect, domestic abuse, anger, child abuse, sexual abuse or incest – all can contribute to two or more people becoming estranged.

In a study published in the journal Australian Social Work in 2015, 26 adults reported being estranged from parents for three main reasons: abuse (everything from belittling to physical or sexual abuse), betrayal (keeping secrets or sabotaging them) and poor parenting (being overly critical, shaming children or making them scapegoats). The three were not mutually exclusive, and often overlapped. Most of the participants said that their estrangements followed childhoods in which they had already had poor connections with parents who were physically or emotionally unavailable.

Along with individual characteristics, environment can play a factor. Extreme social isolation can lead to estrangement. In particular, social isolation is often key to the control exerted by strict religious sects and cults over their members.

In addition, if one or both of the individuals involved have any of the following personality disorders, there is a greater risk of estrangement occurring:

Asperger’s Syndrome/Autism Those who struggle with Asperger’s may have more difficulty with social skills and interpersonal relationships.

Bipolar Disorder: Impulsive behaviors and decisions may lead to troubled relationships. Further, irritability and paranoia may strain relationships.

Depression: Depression may cause social isolation, irritability, sadness, and other symptoms that may lead to an estranged relationship.

Borderline Personality Disorder: Extreme difficulty with interpersonal relationships can lead to estrangement in both home and work relationships

Narcissistic Personality Disorder: Self-centered approaches to relationships can lead to confused or one-sided relationships. There is also a tendency to project insecurities or attribute characteristics upon others.

Deciding Upon Estrangement:

Family estrangement or disownment is a complicated process. Each person has their own unique set of reasons for cutting contact or experiencing rejection from a family unit. Some of our community members have been distanced because of a lifestyle choice, their sexuality, a gender choice, disagreements over money, religious differences, marrying someone from a different background, or not behaving to the satisfaction of their core family members.

Family estrangement can be common for families with strong and rigid religious beliefs, where younger generations often feel conflicted about their cultural heritage and make decisions that are not seen favorably or are accepted by their extended family.

People say that they chose to become estranged after occasions such as a wedding, a death in the family or a bad Christmas. These people often felt their family could not work through the intense feelings of hurt and painful memories associated with something that happened on these occasions.

Some people become estranged from their family because their family has been emotionally, physically, or sexually abusive during childhood or beyond.

It’s immensely difficult to keep a relationship together if a member of your family has been abusive towards you, and it can be extremely risky to continue a genuine relationship with this family member without the right professional intervention and support. This can unfortunately also apply to other family members who may not have believed you, or were aware of the abuse but did not have the capacity to help you with the problem. For many, estrangement may begin when someone speaks about the abuse or tries to heal the hurt caused.

Family members who are experiencing the symptoms of mental health difficulties, which are often not acknowledged or treated, may also cause distance. It can be difficult to deal with inconsistency from a close family member, particularly if that family member can’t understand and acknowledge the impact of their behavior on your own wellbeing.

Marriage and/or divorce are common features in estrangements, and often when your parents get divorced it can significantly alter your motivation to stay in touch with one or both of your parents. If your parents become re- married, this could again alter how you feel towards your family of origin. There are, of course, many other reasons why you may feel a relationship is untenable. And the points above are in no way exhaustive.

But whatever your circumstances, people often speak of the sadness of not being able to take part in the concept of family togetherness that is seen to be at the heart of society.

People may feel vilified, even after making the ‘best’ choice out of a set of hugely difficult life choices, or after being denied a voice in the process of expelling them from a family unit. There is simply no easy answer here.

Many people report that the moment in which they became estranged with family members or loved one, was a particularly insignificant thing. The trigger for estrangement could be as easy as a disagreement over the shirt you’re wearing. See, over time, it’s incredibly easy to let the issues you have with another person be pushed away, in order to keep a positive relationship with a loved one. Unfortunately, much like a balloon popping, the years of anger, hurt, and sadness can build up until they boil over, at which time, you or your loved one simply explode over something previously innocuous. In this case, the grief and sadness and anger will be felt right up front, and dealt with as additional time passes – in a perfect world, that is. Many people feel extreme emotions and emotional triggers throughout their life on significant days and often use talk therapy to cope with their feelings.

If you are in a position to make a more level-headed decision to estrange yourself, do not simply drop the issue of estrangement on your family member if at all possible.

Make yourself an itemized list of the reasons you feel you need to estrange yourself

Try instead to do it by measure, slowly reducing contact with your family member

Decide what the best method of doing this may be for you – phone calls, emails, visits, texts. This is important especially if you know you won’t be able to get “out of their grasp” in certain situations.

Decide how long you want to use this pre-estrangement – do you think six months is enough time? A year? A week? Your answer is as unique as you and shouldn’t be given as a standard amount of time. Just do it as comfortably for yourself as possible.

Some may find it easier to put the dates on the calendar – as a reminder to reach out to your loved one and to fix a time in which you’re going to make your devision.

This action plan may cause you some anxiety or guilt or other unpleasant feelings. If/when this happens take out your list of reasons why, in order to stay true to your course. You don’t need the extra stress of this situation becoming heated enough that it drives you back to your dysfunctional family.

After your estrangement date, this may help, if you’ve not yet decided one way or another, and you’re still calm and level-headed, you can try these steps:

If you’re feeling as though you’re ready to stop talking to them, write a letter, call, text, email, whatever method works for you, let them know that you need a break from them. Explain that you feel that taking some time apart could be helpful for you and them to take some time to figure out how to navigate the relationship better, and state, “Because I do want to get along with you and I do hope we can have a better relationship in the future.” (If you feel this way)

Estrangements are messy and emotional for all parties involved. If you can avoid an estrangement and find a way to improve the relationship dynamics, that may cause you less stress in the long run – because the stress of maintaining your estrangement can be overwhelming.

A big part of an estrangement – whether or not you decide to stick with it is learning to create healthy emotional boundaries. If you’re estranged from your family, you probably didn’t have a healthy relationship with them. THIS IS OKAY. It’s NOT all your fault.

Emotional boundaries are put into place and can either affect the relationship as a positive or a negative, and you’re the one who gets to decide which way the boundaries go.

What Are Emotional Boundaries?

Emotional boundaries distinguish separating your emotions and responsibility for them from someone else’s. It’s like an imaginary line or force field that separates you and others. Healthy boundaries prevent you from giving advice, blaming or accepting blame. They protect you from feeling guilty for someone else’s negative feelings or problems and taking others’ comments personally. High reactivity suggests weak emotional boundaries. Healthy emotional boundaries require clear internal boundaries – knowing your feelings and your responsibilities to yourself and others..

It’s hard for people who grow up in dysfunctional families to set boundaries because:

They put others’ needs and feelings first

They don’t know themselves

They don’t feel they have rights

They believe setting boundaries jeopardizes the relationship

They never learned to have healthy boundaries

Boundaries are learned. If yours weren’t valued as a child, you didn’t learn you had them.

Any kind of abuse violates personal boundaries, including teasing. For example, my brother ignored my pleas for him to stop tickling me until I could barely breathe. This made me feel powerless and that I didn’t have a right to say “stop” when I was uncomfortable. In some cases, boundary violations affect a child’s ability to mature into an independent, responsible adult.

You Have Rights

You may not believe you have any rights if yours weren’t respected growing up. For example, you have a right to privacy, to say “no,” to be addressed with courtesy and respect, to change your mind or cancel commitments, to ask people you hire to work the way you want, to ask for help, to be left alone, to conserve your energy, and not to answer a question, the phone, or an email.

Make a list your personal bill of rights.

Examples include: What prevents you from asserting them? Write statements expressing your bottom line. Be kind. For example, “Please don’t criticize (or call) me (or borrow my . . .),” and “Thank you for thinking of me, but I regret I won’t be joining (or able to help) you . . .”

Internal Boundaries

Internal boundaries involve regulating your relationship with yourself. Think of them as self-discipline and healthy management of time, thoughts, emotions, behavior, and impulses. If you’re procrastinating, doing things you neither have to nor want to do, or overdoing and not getting enough rest, recreation, or balanced meals, you may be neglecting internal physical boundaries. Learning to manage negative thoughts and feelings empowers you, as does the ability to follow through on goals and commitments to yourself.

Healthy emotional and mental internal boundaries help you not to assume responsibility for, or obsess about, other people’s feelings and problems – something codependents commonly do. Strong internal boundaries curb suggestibility. You think about yourself, rather than automatically agreeing with others’ criticism or advice. You’re then empowered to set external emotional boundaries if you choose.

Similarly, since you’re accountable for your feelings and actions, you don’t blame others.

When you’re blamed, if you don’t feel responsible, instead of defending yourself or apologizing, you can say, “I don’t take responsibility for that.”

Guilt and Resentment

Anger often is a signal that action is required.

If you feel resentful or victimized and are blaming someone or something, it might mean that you haven’t been setting boundaries. If you feel anxious or guilty about setting boundaries, remember, your relationship suffers when you’re unhappy.

Once you get practice setting boundaries, you feel empowered and suffer less anxiety, resentment, and guilt. Generally, you receive more respect from others and your relationships improve.

Setting Effective Boundaries

People often say they set a boundary, but it didn’t help. There’s an art to setting boundaries; if it’s done in anger or by nagging, you won’t be heard. Boundaries are not meant to punish, but are for your well-being and protection. They’re more effective when you’re assertive, calm, firm, and courteous. If that doesn’t work, you may need to communicate consequences to encourage compliance. It’s essential, however, that you never threaten a consequence you’re not fully prepared to carry out.

It takes time, support, and relearning to be able to set effective boundaries.

Self-awareness and learning to be assertive are the first steps. Setting boundaries isn’t selfish. It’s self-love – you say “yes” to yourself each time you say “no.” It builds self-esteem.

Coping With The Guilt of Estrangement:

Do you have family members you choose not to see or speak with? If so, you probably feel very sad about that, especially at a time of year when most families gather together. But if you’re also feeling guilty over it, it’s time to stop. Recent research has shed new light on the phenomenon of family estrangement. Here are some of the most surprising findings:

You Are Not Alone

In a British survey from 2014, 19 percent of respondents reported that either they themselves or one of their relatives had no contact with the family. That fits with my own experience. I have several friends who either don’t talk to at least one of their family members or didn’t for many years. And I myself have gone through lengthy periods when I was not on speaking terms with one relation or another. I’d bet you also know several people who are or have been estranged from their families. It’s not fun, but it happens a lot.

There’s A Reason You Decided To Stay Estranged

Most estranged people who stay away from their families or individual family members to save themselves from dysfunctional situations or behavior. In one study, adults who reported being estranged from their parents usually cited (physical or emotional) abuse, being betrayed or sabotaged by a parent, or very poor parenting in which they were endlessly criticized or shamed by their parents. If you’re estranged from your family, it probably isn’t something you did lightly.

It May Seem Stupid But It’s Valid

We’ve all heard about family members who stop speaking to each other over strikingly minor matters. And in a 2015 study, a woman told researchers she hadn’t spoken to her son or daughter-in-law for seven years because of a dessert they brought to a family gathering.

But these things are never as simple as they appear. In some cases, there were resentments and disagreements going back to childhood, and the fact that as adults, the two joined opposing political camps didn’t help.

The case of the wrong dessert was similar. That woman said her daughter-in-law regularly disrespected her and also prevented her from seeing her grandchildren. She’d been asked to bring a specific dessert but instead made something else–something she knew her mother-in-law was also making. That final bit of rudeness was too much to bear.

You Gave Them Chances

Estrangement doesn’t usually happen as a result of one big argument. It takes years for someone to break contact with a family member or family members. It happens gradually, with the family member reducing contact over time before cutting it off altogether.

During that lengthy process, you likely gave your relations lots of opportunities to start a dialogue. You might even have talked to them about the behavior that was driving you away and asked them to change it.

If you didn’t do that, and you think there’s a chance that things could change, it might be worth reaching out one time and making a final attempt to fix your relationship. Or maybe not–only you can know for sure. Either way, if you’re estranged from some or all of your family, there’s one thing to remember: You’re not alone.

Divorce and Estrangement:

Similarly, divorce is another area where estrangement occurs. During a bitter divorce that is full of contention and fighting, it is not uncommon for one parent to become estranged from the children involved. This is known as Parental Alienation Syndrome, and occurs often after a divorce, although it can also be caused by any of the other factors outlined above.

Divorce greatly increases the risk of estrangement. It often creates a fundamental reshaping of alliances and can place parents at risk for greater distance from their children. Whether it’s a grey divorce or a breakup when the child is young, it often causes a child to see parents as winners and losers. Second, it can create the opportunity for parental alienation where one parent consciously or unconsciously (covertly or overtly) poisons the child against the other parent. Children, especially when they are young, are very vulnerable after divorce. Divorce can also bring new people into a child’s life (new sibling, half sibling, step-parent) and they may feel they have to compete for love, attention, or resources

Finally, in our culture, divorce can cause a child to see their parent as an individual with their own attributes and liabilities—and less of a family unit that they’re part of.he concept of one parent attempting to separate their child from the other parent as punishment or part of a divorce have been described since at least the 1940s, Gardner was the first to define a specific syndrome. In his 1985 paper, he defined PAS as “…a disorder that arises primarily in the context of child-custody disputes. Its primary manifestation is the child’s campaign of denigration against the parent, a campaign that has no justification. The disorder results from the combination of indoctrinations by the alienating parent and the child’s own contributions to the vilification of the alienated parent,”

>He also stated that the indoctrination may be deliberate or unconscious on the part of the alienating parent.

Gardner initially believed that parents (usually mothers) made false accusations of child abuse and sexual abuse against the other parent (usually fathers) in order to prevent further contact between them While Gardner initially described the mother as the alienator in 90% of PAS cases, he later stated both parents were equally likely to alienate.

The Grief Of Estrangement:

You may be estranged from your loved ones because of a fight or disagreement you’ve had. Attachment is often a part of estrangement. Issues with attachment can be expressed in many ways, which may result in an individual feeling the need or desire to fix or resolve conflicts or in individuals feeling that they are misunderstood or looked upon with disapproval.

You may also be grieving what you never got from the relationship—love, approval, attention.

Often those who have been cut off by a loved one react with anger, telling themselves, “I’m better off without her!” But, “underneath the anger, there’s usually sadness. You need to acknowledge, ‘I’m sad because this is a genuine loss.’ Otherwise your feelings will remain stuck.” Permanent estrangements can be cloaked in shame and stigma.

Estrangement causes a unique form of grief, in that hope is often held out for a reparation in the relationship, keeping the pain and grief current and raw. Further, repeated interactions that follow the same pattern of expectations and ultimate disappointment when those expectations are unmet, keep the grief close at hand.

When a person is estranged by a family member, they generally experience a range of immediate grief, loss, and trauma responses. Bodily responses such as shaking, crying and feeling faint are common, alongside emotional responses such as disbelief, denial and anger. People often ruminate over the estrangement event or the events that led up to the estrangement. Over time, most acute emotions and bodily responses seem to decrease in intensity, and generalized feelings of hurt, betrayal and disappointment might emerge.

Even when the estrangement has continued for years or decades, many people suggest the pain persists or re-occurs at particular times. Triggers such as birthdays, Christmas, Mother’s Day and funerals are difficult. So are sightings of the estranged person, or hearing about them from others. Triggers can sometimes cause a person to re-live and re-experience the initial grief, loss and trauma responses, while other times they can be managed.

Most of the people I have spoken to suggest that being estranged by a family member is one of the most painful events across the lifespan. It is intensified by:

It’s unexpectedness,

its ambiguous nature,

The powerlessness it creates

Social disapproval.

First, when a person is estranged by another, they generally do not expect it to happen. Studies suggest that trauma is increased when it is enacted by humans rather than an act of nature, and this is even more so when that human is a family member.

We are biologically attached to family and socially acculturated into idea of family togetherness. We do not expect an estrangement.

Second, estrangement is ambiguous. It has lacks transparency, and it cannot be readily understood. The loss is ambiguous because the estranged person is physically absent, but psychologically present (in the memories of the estranged person, and the triggers). It is not certain if the family member will ever return, so there is no finality or closure to the event.

Third, people who have been estranged by a loved one often describe feelings of incredible powerlessness. When someone has been cut off, they cannot tell their side of the story, ask questions or apologize. Without interaction the estranged person is often left wondering and ruminating about the truth, with no means of discovering it.

Estrangement of Mothers And Daughters:

The decision to go no-contact with a family member is a deeply personal one. For some of us, it’s impossible to heal ourselves and remain in connection with our mothers.

It’s still considered taboo to be estranged from one’s family; especially to be estranged from one’s mother. Sometimes the distance can be brief and short-term while for others, the estrangement can be permanent. It takes enormous strength and fortitude to follow through with this.

What can lead to estrangement?

There are so many reasons why people make this choice. But a core theme leading to estrangement is realizing that your mother’s dysfunctional behavior has demanded an enormous cost to your mental/emotional well-being and you’re simply no longer willing to pay that cost.

Estrangement isn’t something chosen in a flippant, cavalier way, but rather it is often a choice made after years of trying every other possible avenue to preserve the connection and see it evolve.

At a certain point, you may reach a crossroads where the cost is too much, and you have to make a choice. It may be the hardest thing you ever do in your entire life. And it may be the single most empowering thing as well.

Families are complicated systems. When one person stops playing their usual role in the family, this family will often experience some degree of disequilibrium or chaos. Conflict can serve to transform the system to a higher level, if the family members are willing and open to grow and learn. Unfortunately, sometimes, in an attempt to resist change, the family attacks the person trying to grow. That person has the choice to stay and suffer the toxicity or to heal and leave the unhealthy system.

The choice to terminate contact is often made when it’s clear that it’s impossible to heal while still involved in that family.

Daughters often play the roles of family mediator, scapegoat, keeper of secrets, or emotional caretaker. If a daughter on a path of growth and wishes to evolve beyond her typical role in the family, (perhaps by being more empowered, having firmer boundaries, being less tolerant of poor treatment) the degree of chaos that ensues is indicative of how dysfunctional the family is as a whole.

If the family members are each relatively healthy, stable, and open, the family may be able to find a new equilibrium without much chaos. However, if the family members are deeply wounded or traumatized themselves, a daughter’s evolution can be perceived as deeply threatening. This chaos can be deeply unsettling and extremely hard to navigate. Support is essential.

In an unconscious attempt to maintain equilibrium and resist change, family members may launch attacks against the daughter.

A common and virulent form of backlash is “Pathologizing” the daughter: Seeing the conflict as a result of some form of pathology in the daughter.

The message is “Your unwillingness to continue in the family system in your established role shows us that there is something deeply wrong with you.”

This shame-based narrative abdicates the mother and other family members from honestly examining their own behavior and taking responsibility. The daughter’s level of mental stability, her past mistakes, everything about her may be openly questioned, that is, except the role of her mother in the conflict.

It’s amazing how vehemently people resist looking at their stuff and the lengths they will go to remain in denial of it, including ostracizing their own child. This is actually an unconscious attempt to resist change by projecting all the conflict or “badness” onto the person initiating transformation of the family system.

Ultimately, this is not personal, it’s simply what happens when people who haven’t been dealing with their inner selves are confronted with their disowned pain through a catalyzing event, like a woman in the family growing beyond the predominant dynamics that have kept the family in a stable state for generations.

We can’t save our mothers. We can’t save our families. We can only save ourselves.

You don’t need your mother (or other family members) to understand you in order to fully heal.

It’s heartbreaking to realize that your mother/family are simply unable or unwilling to understand you. No matter how much you explain or how many attempts to convince them of where you’re coming from, it goes nowhere; like you’re speaking two different languages. Learning to understand you may cause a major shift in the very foundation upon which they’ve built their identities and worldview.

It’s painful to realize and still it helps to create a singularity of spirit within you. It becomes clear that your own understanding of yourself must be enough. Your validation of yourself becomes primary. You realize you can be okay even if others do not understand you.

After you go no contact, your life may begin to improve in many area; chronic illnesses clear up, neurotic fears vanish and life-long patterns dissolve. It’s worth noting that sometimes the challenge for you becomes enduring the pleasure of your own life.

See, with each new level of increased prosperity, increased intimacy, joy, freedom, you are reminded that your family is not there to share it with you. It’s particularly at these horizons where we may experience the turbulence of grief. There’s nothing to do but feel the grief that comes with that and allow yourself to move forward.

The grief doesn’t mean you’ve made the wrong choice. It’s actually a sign of health and healing.

Keep yourself grounded in your new life, the one that gave you the strength to leave the toxic connection. If you don’t, you could get pulled back through guilt or shame. It’s so important to get lots of support and give yourself time and space to process all the emotions that come with this choice. Ground yourself in exactly why you’re doing this and use it as an opportunity to birth you into a new paradigm in your life.

Estrangement Leads To Empowerment

You may discover something deeply profound: you realize that you can survive your family’s rejection of you. This can birth a level of freedom and determination within you that may initiate quantum leaps in your life. It can spur a fierce commitment to truth and carve out a radical integrity that extends to other areas of your life. It stokes a fire of truth within you that now can blaze fully.

You feel your own source within.

Grief, grief, and more grief gives way to… FREEDOM

Grief may arise every time you go to a new, higher level that your family have never been. It may feel like a bone-deep grief, almost tribal or ancestral, a grief of having to go forward without them. And it gets easier and easier with time; the more we lovingly allow ourselves to grieve, the more space is created for magic, beauty and joy in our lives. There is something deeply sacred about the grief that comes from making this choice. It can serve as an opportunity to deeply connect to your truth and to embodying it at the deepest level.

We must make meaning from this loss and use it to enhance our lives in new ways. That’s the key to long-term healing.

Your integrity becomes the solid foundation for the rest of your life.

It’s okay to walk away from toxic people in your life, including toxic people in your family.

Healing inter-generational wounds can be a lonely path. But within the space you created, soulful connections will come into your life. Our attachment needs are the most powerful need we have as humans.

To face this level of estrangement is to confront the depth of your pain, of your humanity, and to claim the full the value of your own life. Our greatest fear is that we will be alone. But the aloneness that we fear has already happened in the trauma of our families. You’re not alone and you will find your soul family in time, people who are capable of seeing and valuing you for who you are.

In a world where women are predominantly expected to stay silent, to cater to the needs of others and where the darker side of mothers is not acknowledged, the experience of estrangement can be an initiation into a new level of awareness that many people never experience. A space is cleared to allow your light to shine at full radiance.

What will you do with this light blazing within you?

Estranged daughters are finding each other, creating a new mother line; a connection of authenticity, realness and truth in each other that supports the arising consciousness in all. There is often instant camaraderie between women who have walked this path. There’s more of us out there than many people realize. You’re not alone!

You have to do what is right for you. Trust yourself.

Estrangement doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t love your family.

It doesn’t mean you’re not grateful for the good things they gave you. It just means you need space to live your own life the way you want to live it.

Women who feel no choice but to go no-contact with their dysfunctional mothers create the break because it’s the only way to send the powerful message that:

“Mother, your life is your own responsibility as my life is mine. I refuse to be sacrificed on the altar of your pain. I refuse to be a casualty of your war. Even if you are incapable of understanding me, I must go my own way. I must choose to truly live.”

Reconciling Estrangement:

The first step to healing an estranged relationship is forgiveness. This is a very difficult first step, but holding on to resentment, anger, and hatred does not foster healthy and positive relationships.

After deciding that a relationship is beyond repair, it can be overwhelming and scary to consider reconciling an estranged relationship. The following tips are important when beginning the reconciliation process:

Has emotional growth occurred since the last contact?

Can I set and maintain appropriate boundaries?

Do I need to “change” the other person or his or her beliefs about a situation?

Do I have my own identity, or am I overwhelmed by another’s opinion?

Am I still angry?

Validating your feelings about the situation is important during the reconciliation process, as a lot of feelings are likely to occur. Recognize that is may be a slow process of building trust and re-learning the other person, and establishing a new relationship.

Focus on the positive and find new ways to establish common ground. Meet in a neutral location, and do not discuss difficult issues.

Repairing an estranged relationship is often very similar to building a new relationship. Do not expect that everything will be perfect right away. There are often setbacks, hiccups, and issues that may need to be navigated throughout the process.

And finally, keep in mind that you are not responsible for the entire relationship, nor can you control the entire relationship.

If you never, ever feel like reconciliation, that too, is okay.

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7727's New World 1st Era's Character Sheet * Mental - Harmonious - Isolated - Alien * Emotional - Chaotic - Evolving - Understood * Physical - 6'7" - Athletic - Decisive - Diseased - Exoskeleton (Dark Heroic) * Physiological Capacities - Ninja Esc Athleticism / Ability - Telepathy : Brainwaves / Heartwaves / Familiars Waves - Astral Projection On Earths Sphere - Ancient Exoskeleton - The Disease - Iludaru, the oldest living spirit that inhabits Celestial Sphere Gaia, or Earth. It is primordial, it's thoughts, feelings, physical desires, they are nothing akin to human kinds although it has adapted methods of surviving throughout human eras. It lived in all organic matter on Earth during its earliest times in its maturing process as a planet. It could move lesser animals, control weather patterns, and manipulate many things in very beautiful yet horrific ways. It has only a handful of desires, it wants to survive, it wants to reproduce or in its case, elongate its existence. A standard life form of its rank and age given its own reality. It's still young, so it's still developing alongside its host planet. This organism cannot grow any wiser or knowledgeable than the information the planet contains as a whole. The innate desire of this organism is to stretch its reach out to the magnificent beyond, as it would so call space and other worlds. However simple it is, it is most definitely, the only entity capable of accomplishing the goals it sets for itself. Even if the probability of success amongst such life forms is relatively low. They succeed in their end dreams the most out of all other life forms in the Alien Love Archives. This one during these stories lives inside of 7727 with 7727's awareness of it. Iludaru understands its own stake in reality for itself. It knows that without 7727 dying in the right place during the right time, it won't escape back to the planet to regrow itself back to its former capacities. Iludaru also cannot overwhelm 7727 because 7727 knows to destroy himself in particular ways so that Iludaru dies with him. This is one of the battles from the old world which still lingers in this new world, and is one of the reasons 7727 is on his final quest on Earth. 7727's Old World Final Era Character Sheet * Mental - Ordered - Legendary - Alien * Emotional - Harmonious - Devolving - Misunderstood * Physical - 7'6" - Slim - Changing - Diseased Physiological Capacities - Instantaneous Thought Manifestation ITM Patterns - Empire Phenomena - Song of Healing - Shapeshifting - Mind Control - Various Telepathic Communications - Familiars - Telekinesis - Scrying - Calming Weather Patterns - Controlling Technology The Disease - Rampant God Hysteria, a state of being which human kind goes through when they are on the brink of a major alchemical shift either as a species, as a planet, or as a larger celestial neighborhood / verse. This is a inevitable occurrence which happens more often than anyone who has lived through it would expect / want it to. Some of the species develop lust for light and end up doing anything for more. Usually something elder to the human species going through this controls them through it, sometimes it happens without any intervention. Regardless, when it happens, it's very scary for everyone involved, observers or those within its sphere of experience fallout. It's often caused or catalyzed by the idea of grandeur, but behind it all is a facade covering up something deeper rooted. Eventually pride overcomes the desire for the dreams to come true, and the shear desire to overpower others fuels the fire until it's inevitably burnt out, usually after a rather larger event. Minor Characters - Iqoras - Iludaru - A Rogue Anima Girl - A New World Autozoid - A Old World Mage - A Old World Protocol Drone - A Family of Dragons - Guardians of the Realms - Kings of Humans - Gaia - Sol - Luna - Erudiku (Void Primordial ) - Ony ( Light Primordial ) - Xheldra ( Demon Queen ) Iqoras - 7727's spirit partner, and human mate during the times before the Earths Storms happened. They met each other in a dream, they were both really inebriated off the unusualness of the experience, but they remembered each other afterward. Which led both of them, individually, and simultaneously working towards attracting a way to each other. They met a year after their dream, and then were separated for a four year period to be reunited again. They lived for a while, then civil wars began to break out in the United States, and other countries took advantage of the situation and plundered everything worth while in the US. A SS group had been taking people at night for a while, they called them night raids mostly but if they were spoken about or anything too loud it would be shut down by military police. During the civil wars, lots more people disappeared, through lots of processes, and most the people who ended up on actual battlefields and battle-cities would be people who wanted nothing but to kill people for their hateful broken selves they were. 7727 was taken away, and placed in a new area of the surface world. Iqoras was taken to the Far East Asia, on the shores where she lived in a relatively nice place. After civil wars in America began to really hit more of a pirate bandit maurading horror land, the weather on Earth began to get nasty, not awful big, but constant weather of minor extreme, rains and heat with cloudless skies, frozen winters, hellish summers. Things got weird climate wise, and the vast majority of Earths known species were quite dead. However there were new species appearing at uncommon rates. From the ocean they rose, and not just new aquatic life, but things from out of the Earths crust and perhaps even deeper began to spring up and devastate human civilization further. Humans held a extremely strong front against the world. But after a swarm of void bugs swept down into the cities, humans broke quite fast. Most everyone was either safe or dead a day or two after the swarm came down and ate everything like sharks would eat anything. Very little life was left, just plants, small critters, and some humans. Which some still would die because they would not escape through a portal. For various reasons. But those that got through this portal, escaped the Earth as it shook and bathed itself in comets. Fresh water, fresh organic and microbial & organic / metal masses. Iqoras fell with her beloved city and all her people who wanted to stay behind and die with the certain death facing anything left on the planet. Iludaru - Seeded right after Earth was formed into being by the celestial contracts arranged by the forces unknown and some of the Alien esc life forms human archives associate with supernatural beings. Commonly called or labeled a "Old God" in the Alien Love Archive, due to its nature of being quite powerful but also it is one of the first born life forms for plenty of planets. The planets later creations always end up referring to these creatures as archaic, or ancient, elder, or old, but supernatural none the less. Iludaru and it's kind, is seeded, knowing it will lead to a eventuality of the celestial sphere becoming capable of interstellar / galactic / versal exchange in a larger way someday. Prolonging all life everywhere. However, Iludaru and it's kind, do not care for such concepts or ideals. Just fulfilling basic desires, using a physiological body with capabilities to do a lot of things. Iludaru has the same base story as any of his kind, at first it's simply a global bacteria with its mind set on fulfilling its hunger. Over time it eventually takes over larger life forms as they evolve, sometimes pushing them to evolve in a direction, using them to experience other pleasures and new things. Eventually it will seek to go to the places it's observed through the planets observations, and it eventually spreads into space beyond its hosts sphere. Fueled mostly by a desire for satisfaction. Never curious, never more or less than a simple mind obtaining the same satisfaction until it dies. In regards to the stories involving 7727 Iludaru plays a prime role in getting 7727 to the states of being he achieves and continues to seek. In the end, plays a major role in the stages of plenty of a celestial spheres life spans. A Rogue Anima Girl - A girl that reminds 7727 of someone he used to know in the old world. However, this girl was obviously from the new batch. Because she had features of a feline. And she didn't much care to be a part of the new world, in a sad way for 7727. So for a while he let her follow him through the wilds and through villages and cities, but never a wretched place. He wanted to help her see that this world was fine the way it was, and nothing could be better compared to what was. Eventually she scared herself using some of the things 7727 was using to perform his Legendary Spell. She changed a bit, and was spooked and shook for a long time afterward. 7727 healed her through it, he taught her it was a disease, and it was in her power to get over it. But it took a long time, and she spread it to a village, which 7727 then contained and had to deal with that problem. A New World Autozoid - A Wolf / Lizard machine life form powered by the Earths core system. However they also seem to have a alternative power source more based in light than matter, which is guided by Sol. These machines are uncommon, and they choose where to go and what to do. Sometimes they have voices sometimes they project holograms or use telepathic wavelengths. But they mostly only are around those who are asked to be a part of some task Gaia needs done, wether common or legendary. This machine leads 7727 around the safe wilds so the journey remains uneventful. They are generally regarded as a co creation between Gaia and Sol, something which happened because of the new era and its sum place in time & space. A Old World Mage - A stranger met to reflect the schisms and nightmare and disease still left to finish off. A Protocol Drone - A machine built for 7727 out of old parts by a tinker that happened to cross paths with 7727. Mostly used to translate, and used as a extra set of hands. Collapsible into a smaller form which can be carries around. Programmed to absorb the emotional wavelengths of 7727 and to reflect in actions and movements, sounds emitted etc. A Family of Dragons - In a cavernous / Mountainous region, 7727 runs into a family of Dragons which are obviously not from Earth originally. They were scared, there was a skirmish, everyone calmed down. They became friendly, and also gave assistance. From a star system that had seeded Earth in one of its first cycles as a newborn planet sphere. Guardians of the Realms - Multiple Guardian Spirits capable of various powers. Mostly watchers, but they also keep the laws and rules and regulations, or lack of, of whatever realm they happen to guard. Generally identityless because found everywhere, it's either one entity with many bodies, or many bodies made by one force. Almost like a law / chaos / enforcement of existential reality manifested in forms which claim recognition in many places. Kings of Humans - Basically a handful of humans which are on Earth in the new era to be the most renown idols over their particular tribes. Often watched over and intervened by 7727 especially after their first disasters they caused and almost repeated immediately. Babies next to old frozen bones 7727. Gaia - Celestial Sphere from a alien verse. Contracted to be symbiotically immortal until it doesn't desire so no more, so a very attractive place for immortal life forms to live on. Plenty of life forms actually do seek Earth, but it's cloaked, and hidden in the vast shadows of the void spaces. It is one of the most active places in its host verse. Meaning it is one of the most beautiful, and one of the most horrific, it just depends on your time & place in time/space. Came to this verse with the same convoy of life forms as Alien Love Prince 7727. So they have a complicated relationship to say the very least. Settings New World / Old World Variations - Alien Love Realm - Various Wilds - Various Cities - Various Villages - Space Submarine Yacht Fleet - Lunar Base - Underworld Remnants - Overworld Remnants - Gaia Dream Scape & Sphere

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