#its the most primal and natural response to pain..... I am hurting and I just want my dad | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

looooooooomis · 3 years

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F I N A L G I R L | F O U R

You were his final girl. And there was no chance in hell that anyone or anything was going to mess that up.

p a r t f o u r | k e y s

masterlist here

pairing: Billy Loomis x f!reader word count: 4.4k warnings: angst, s m u t, some more s m u t, teasing, finger-licking good billy boy, implied/referenced cheating, def not a healthy, functioning relationship (but like eh we persevere), some more s m u t.

Despite your best efforts, the last few days had been miserable without Billy.

You hadn’t realized just how much of a routine he’d become over the last seven months, how much you’d both come to rely on each other and, fuck, did you miss him. You missed his smell, you missed that small little cheeky grin of his, you missed curling up beside him and feeling him over every inch of your skin. Your body craved for him in an almost primal way but, while you could live with denying your body its needs, it was your heart that hurt the most.

What was supposed to be a quick release for the two of you had never been that easy. You’d been in love with the idiot since freshman year, seen him through his various ups and downs and he’d seen yours, too. Which was precisely what made this entire situation that much harder. Not only were you dealing with your own heartache, but you were witnessing his, too.

Billy’s grief was more or less a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it sort of thing. Ever the stoic silent type, you hadn’t expected to see much of what he was feeling splayed out on that handsome face of his, but shocking even you, his regret was palpable. And each and every time those brown eyes met yours, that grief that was as clear as day struck you blind.

You’d tried telling yourself that it was for the best because, in all honesty, it was but that didn’t make the pain go away. Nor did it make you miss him any less. You were trapped in a vicious cycle of missing Billy, sticking to your guns, and worrying about him all at once.

God, you’d really fucked up with this one.

“You sure you’re okay?” Tatum asked, narrowing her eyes at you as you shoved a handful of books into your locker. “You’ve been scatterbrained all week.”

“I’m fine,” you shrugged, “why wouldn’t I be?”

“You tell me,” she leaned her hip against the locker. “Is this about Steve?”

You blinked as the question played on loop in your head. “Steve?” You asked, giving the strawberry blonde your full attention. “First of all, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart: ew. Secondly, huh?”

Tatum smirked. “Don’t play dumb, you’ve been acting all weird since Billy went psycho on his ass last week.”

“No, I haven’t,” you hoped your laugh didn’t sound as fake as it felt. “Also, Steve’s an asshole. If the day ever comes when I am interested in that big oaf, feel free to euthanize me.”

“Promise,” she made a motion of crossing her heart, “but in the meantime, you swear nothing is up?”

“Cross my heart,” you mimicked the gesture and shut your locker. “What are you up to after practice tonight? Want to go see that new Brad Pitt movie?”

Her shoulders fell. “Can’t, Stu’s coming over,” she unwrapped a lollipop and shoved it in her mouth. “I’d say ask Sid, but she got into it with Billy last night so she’s in a mood.”

You tried not to care, you really did, but her words hit you like a freight train. “They did?” You asked, hoping beyond hope that your voice didn’t sound quite as high pitched as it sounded in your head. “What happened?”

“Who knows,” Tatum shrugged, “Billy’s always been a little intense and Sid’s been a little cagey since…well, you know – so, it’s bound to happen.”

You swallowed hard and continued to nod along to Tatum’s words. Were you nodding too frequently? Did you appear too interested all of the sudden? Catching yourself, you focused on the leftover gum on the locker just behind your friend’s head and cleared your throat. “That’s shitty.”

“Relationships,” Tatum waved off, “they’re all pretty shitty sometimes.”

Before you could finish putting your foot in your mouth any further, the third bell rang out signaling your next class. Your most dreaded class: Biology. With a groan you tossed your bag over your shoulder and frowned across at Tatum. “See you at practice?”

With a nod, Tatum took off towards her class as you slowly sauntered towards your own. You were halfway down the hall when you heard a set of heavy footfalls running towards you from behind. Glancing over your shoulder, you barely had time to register Stu’s smiling face before he threw an arm around your shoulders. “How ya doing, pal?”

“Peachy,” you scraped your eyes along his profile and blinked. “If you’re about to play the rule of dutiful henchman for you know who, I’ve got a class to flunk.”

“Harsh,” Stu beamed, “I see why our boy’s so smitten.”

With a roll of your eyes, you glanced around at the people around you and glowered up at him. “Stu,” you warned, “I’m not in the mood for this.”

“For what?” He feigned innocence. “I haven’t said a word.”

“But you want to,” you mused. “And I don’t want to hear it.”

Stu chuckled. “All I was going to say is, like, I get it.”

You shouldn’t have taken his bait. What you should have done was push him off of you and continue on your merry way to class. That would have been the smart thing to do, the responsible thing to do.

Too bad you were neither of those two things.

Roped in, you sighed in defeat. “Get what?”

“I’ll be the first to admit,” he began, “when Bill told me that you and him were…you know, I laughed. I mean, two broads, man? I can barely handle the one how’s he going to deal with two of you?”

“I’m hoping there’s a point coming,” you groused.

“Right,” he laughed again, “my point is that I get it. I get why you two work. Why he’s knee deep in this big fucking mess because of it. You two work.”

“Stu,” you threw your head back and glared at the ceiling. “Stop.”

“What?” He asked. “Am I wrong?”

You gently pushed him away from you and dropped your voice into a whisper. “That’s not the point. He’s with Sid.”

“So?” Stu made a face. “Her mom just died, what do you want him to do? Dump her and break her heart? Her mom just died, that’d callous, man.”

“We’re breaking her heart either way, whether she knows it or not.”

Stu stopped walking and there was a compassion in his stare that left you reeling. For as long as you’d known him, Stu Macher had always been the goof. The reckless, chaotic idiot that seemed to fit just perfectly into your little mish mash of a group. But the sincerity in his blue eyes as the two of you stood in the emptying hallway was a look you’d never seen before.

“And by doing this, you’re breaking yours.” He limply shrugged. “Billy’s, too.”

Your shoulders fell as the weight of Stu’s words sank in. You couldn’t exactly say much in terms of a rebuttal, naturally, because he was right. There were no happy endings for either of you at this point in the charade. Sid had still been lied to and cheated on, Billy was still trapped in a relationship he no longer wished to be in in fear of hurting the girl he once loved and you were stuck in the middle, watching two people you cared for fall to bits while having to remain stoic in fear of showing your hand.

What a fucking mess.

After another minute of silence, Stu wriggled his eyebrows and squeezed your shoulder reassuringly. “Just something to think about.”

Taking off down the hall, Stu left you to your own devices as you stood in the middle of an empty hallway with far too much on your mind. In an almost zombie-like trance, you took off in the direction of your biology class, not quite caring that you were about to be marked as tardy for the third time that week. But, before you got to that god-forsaken class, you heard the click of a door not far off before a pair of arms encircled around your middle, yanking you into the nearest classroom. A surprise yelp tore out of your mouth, but the full-fledged scream died in your throat as soon as you realized just who it was who had grabbed you.

“Jesus, Billy, you scared the hell out of me.” You grasped your chest and took in the dark, empty classroom around you. He was still holding you against the nearest wall, you could feel the heat of those large hands through your thin shirt. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Sorry,” despite the desperation in those brown eyes, his voice never wavered. It was still as calm and collected as ever. “I’d go to your house, but it’s been like Fort Knox for the last week or so.”

You chewed on your lip for a moment before averting your eyes to the ground, not quite being able to stomach the weight of his stare just yet. “Billy, unless anything’s changed, I—”

“In case anything’s changed?” He reiterated with raised brows. “Everything’s changed. I miss you, Y/N, more than you can even comprehend. I know I’ve fucked up, I know that, but I need you. The last nine days without being able to really see you or feel you or kiss you or—”

“I get it,” you held your hands up and gently pushed him away. “And it’s been hard on me, too, Billy. But it doesn’t change anything.”

For a few, long, agonizing moments, Billy remained still as a thousand different emotions splayed out across his face. There was anger and grief, sadness and desperation. But the look you got as he dropped to his knees in front of you was pure, unadulterated fear. “I promise you, Y/N, the second I can, when the time is right, Sid and I will be no more. But me and you are it, sweetheart,” his hands gently circled around your hips before embracing you around your middle. “I’m so fucking sorry that this is how it has to be right now. And I’m sorry that I’m too fucking selfish to let this go, but I can’t. I need you. I need us. You’re everything good in my life and I know I need to start proving that to you.”

Still, you remained quiet. Your fingers itched to reach out and run your fingers through that slightly greasy, unruly mop of hair, but instead you kept them pinned down at your side as you considered his words. There was no doubt in your mind that he meant them, the desperation on his face said as much, but you had your reservations. Taking your silence in stride, however, Billy simply reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, velvet box.

Your heart nearly stopped.

“Oh, jesus,” you grumbled, burying your head in your hands. “You better not be doing what I think you’re fucking doing.”

“Open the box, Y/N.”

“No,” you held your hands up. “Not if it’s…that.”

Billy sighed. The muscle in his cheek twitched. “It’s not a fucking engagement ring.”

Somewhat relieved, you continued to stare down at the box in slight disdain. “So, what is it?”

Billy sighed. “Fucking open it and you’ll see.”

“Buying the ‘other woman’ jewelry, Billy?” You shook your head. “You’re like a walking cliché at this point.”

“Shut-up and open the goddamn box.” Standing up to his full height, he continued to hold the box out towards you and breathed out a quiet laugh when you remained unwavering. “It’s not a fucking bomb, Y/N, open it.”

With a sigh, you snatched the box out of his hand and, rather unceremoniously, opened it up to reveal a key. Not a fancy skeleton key or a charm in the shape of a key but a regular, run of the mill house key. You blinked, mildly surprised. “Okay, I’ll give you a point for creativity with the box,” you pulled the key out and observed it. “But what is it?”

“It’s a key,” Billy said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

“I see that,” a small smile pulled at your lips as you looked across at him. “What’s it for?”

“It’s a key to my parents’ cabin.”

If you were meant to understand the significance, the story was lost on you. Looking back down at the key, you surveyed its tiny ridges briefly before nodding. “And what’s that have to do with me?”

He took a step towards you and grabbed the hand still clutching onto the key. “My dad doesn’t go up there much ever since my mother left and I figure we could both use a place where we can just…be.” His raked his thumbnail along your knuckles. “No Sid, no anyone. Just you and me.”

You were trying to remain unfazed by the sentiment, to remain icy and cool to the man you were supposed to be pulling away from, but between the softness in those warm brown eyes and the weight of the key still clutched in your hand, you could feel your defenses waning. “You expect Sid to just not care that you’re disappearing up north every once in a while?”

“I’ll make it work,” he shrugged it off. “And, to be honest, I don’t care what she thinks.”

Your answer came in the form of a long, drawn out sigh. “Billy,” you began, but before you could dive into the rest of your speech, his large hands slid up your arms and neck to cradle your face.

Slowly, he backed you into a nearby desk and traced the apple of your cheek with his thumb. “We can sneak up there whenever we want. Spend a whole weekend up there, just the two of us. I can worship this fucking body of yours in every square inch of that cabin. I can go into town and hold your fucking hand in public. We can do whatever the hell it is we want to do up there, whenever we want, without worrying about any of our idiot friends seeing us.”

Your pulse quickened at the thought of being able to parade around like a normal couple in a town where not a single soul knew who you were. You swallowed, trying to steady your excitement with a dose of realism. “It’s still not fair to Sidney.”

“Fuck Sidney!” Billy’s voice echoed out around the vast, empty classroom, alarming you with just how angry he sounded. His chest heaved with a white-hot rage that you couldn’t fully comprehend, and his jaw was wound shut as his nostrils flared with each and every heavy, uneven breath he took. You swallowed hard and watched the man steady his nerves, unsure of your next move. You’d seen Billy angry before, but that level of emotion was definitely new.

You weren’t sure whether to be terrified or turned on by the sudden outburst.

But, just as quickly as it happened, Billy’s eyes slowly opened to reveal those molasses coloured eyes again. “Sorry, sweetheart,” he appeased. “But I can’t have her stand in the way of this. I won’t.”

You remained silent as you shimmied on top of the desk that had been poking into your ass for the last few seconds and tried not to focus on the way your body seemed to melt into Billy’s as he stepped in between your legs, still looking at you with all the intensity of the world.

“If we do this,” you found yourself muttering, “there’s going to be some ground rules.”

A sense of hope blossomed in Billy’s chest as he vigorously nodded his head. “Anything you want,” sliding his hands up the sides your stomach, he gently held your waist and gave it a small squeeze. “You name it.”

“When we go up to the aforementioned cabin, we go out.” You told him. “While I’m more than happy to blow you in the living room without worrying about your dad walking in, it would be nice to go on an actual fucking date.”

Billy nodded and, with his hands still on your waist, he tried not to focus on the thin cotton of your shirt bunching between his fingers as his thumb danced along your ribcage. There was so little between you in the empty classroom, barely any space as the two of you were practically nose to nose. And between that short little skirt you had on and your pert nipples beneath your thin tank top, it was enough to make his cock twitch inside of his pants. “Anything else?” He asked, his voice husky as he nudged his nose against yours.

“Yeah,” you ran your tongue along your now parched lips as you sat with Billy standing between your thighs, holding you in place as his thumb traced agonizingly close to your tit. Were you even breathing? It didn’t feel like it. You were wet, too, which made his inhumanly close proximity almost too much to bear. “Lock the fucking door this time.”

A roguish grin enveloped his features as he stepped out from between your legs. Crossing the threshold of the classroom in two seconds flat, Billy locked the door and made his way back to you with that same mischievous glimmer in his eye. His eyes were hungry and, as his hands shifted down to your ass, he tugged you even closer to the edge of the desk. Closer to him. With your legs still open and on either side of his hips, you just about died when your clit managed to rub against the zipper of his jeans.

A quiet, low moan tore out of your throat from the sensation.

“Anything else?” He asked, leaning his forehead against yours.

“Yeah,” your breathing was ragged as Billy’s slow, methodical fingers, trailed up the side of your stomach. He was being extraordinarily temperate and slow to further tease you but, despite knowing how risky this was, you were putty in his hands. “Touch me.”

His nose brushed against yours again as he shifted his hips just enough for the zipper of his jeans to rub against your clit again. The bastard knew what he was doing.

“This feel good?” He asked as his hips toiled into you again.

You were practically dry fucking against the desk, you could have been caught any second. But, fuck, when he pulled you in a little more and slowly gyrated his jean-clad pelvis against your clit again, you couldn’t care less. “Mhmm,” you hummed.

Slowly, Billy’s dept fingers slid up from your waist towards your breasts. Raking his thumb against the swollen bud, he leaned in and placed a gentle kiss on the side of your neck.

He knew his jeans were rubbing against your clit and, as he looked down and saw the visible wet patch on your blue thong, he wanted nothing more than to rip them off of you and bury his face in between your legs. “God, I’ve fucking missed you.”

When his hand squeezed your breast, you arched into his grasp. “I bet you did.”

Billy smirked and rolled your nipples between his fingers through the fabric of your shirt. With every roll of your hips, the strap of your shirt slipped down just enough to expose your breast. Without missing a beat, Billy leaned into your chest and allowed his mouth to consume your nipple, swirling his tongue around it expertly before biting down. You hissed as a combination of both pain and pleasure ripped through your body.

Your fingers curled around the hair along the nape of his neck and gave it a firm tug as is hands held you firmly in place. “Fuck, Billy” you moaned, breathless.

He released your nipple slowly, nipping at it one final time before leaning his forehead against yours again. You wanted like hell to close the distance between you. You wanted to feel his lips on yours. Feel the tickle of his stubble along your upper lip and have that expert tongue brush against yours.

But you also wanted to make him sweat a little.

You weren’t sure what had come over you as you slid your hand down your torso. Maybe it was adrenaline of being caught or the relief of having Billy in your arms again but as you allowed your fingers to dip beneath the hem of your exposed thong, the look on Billy’s face made it all worth it.

“What are you doing?” His Adams apple bobbed up and down as he watched you touch yourself. You were in an awkward angle, but as your finger circled your clit and you watched the bulge in his pants grow, you were coasting high.

“What’s it look like I’m doing?” You hummed, feigning innocence. “When I say touch me, I mean it, Billy. I’m taking matters into my own hands.” You pinched your clit and arched your naked chest into him. “Fuck.”

You heard him swear under his breath as his lips ghosted over yours. “You’re doing my head in, woman,” he growled, sliding his fingers beneath your panties. You gasped when his thumb began to circle your clit. And when he slid two fingers inside of you, you nearly saw stars.

His mouth found yours, mid-moan. Reaching the hand that had just been down the waistband of your shorts, you ran your fingers through his hair as his tongue coaxed yours. Everything about this man was electric. His fingers quickened their pace and before you knew it, you were thrusting into his hand. Placing sloppy kisses down from your mouth and along your jaw, Billy nipped at your ear. “How’s this for touching you, sweetheart?” He hissed, licking and biting his way across your neck.

Your breathing was rampant as you felt yourself edging closer and closer. “It’s alright,” you teased with a cloudy grin.

“So stubborn,” he laughed into your neck and curled his fingers so that he hit an area inside you that felt almost primal. The moan he got in return made him bite down on your collarbone. He curled his fingers again and you nearly choked. “You sure?”

Pulling his hair, you steered his face back to yours and crashed your lips against his. “Fuck me.” You mumbled into his mouth.

He applied the smallest bit of pressure to your clit and flicked his fingers one final time, sending you over the cliff. With a long, shaky moan, you bucked your hips uncontrollably as you came into his hand. Every inch of you felt as though it was on fire as Billy made you ride out your orgasm, not for a second easing up on your clit as you writhed beneath him.

“Play with your tits,” he barked out through hooded eyes.

“You play with them,” you argued, but the resolve in your voice was gone. You weren’t entirely sure if you knew your name at that point. All you could focus on was the feeling of his finger pinching your highly sensitive clit and that was it. Everything else was a blur.

“God, you’re so fucking stubborn.”

You were so wet and so turned on you could barely think straight. “Billy,” you pleaded, your entire body heating up almost unbearably so. When he ignored you and instead continued his attack on your clit, you whimpered. “I need you to fuck me.”

With a bruising kiss, Billy released your clit and, in seconds flat, tugged his jeans far enough down his hips before slipping inside of you. The moan that escaped your lips was undeniable as he pumped into you. Reaching up, he grabbed your tit and squeezed as he bit down on your exposed neck. It was a sensory overload coming from all angles.

“Fuck,” Billy’s hoarse voice was in your ear as he pumped into you. “You feel so fucking good, Y/N.” He reached for your face and tilted your chin up towards him, meeting you halfway with a sloppy kiss. Moaning into his mouth, you managed lose yourself in that instance.

Gone was the room around you.

Hell, gone was everything up until this point.

All you could focus on was the feeling of Billy inside of you. Biting down on his lip, you tugged it back as he rolled his hips in a way that made you quiver. He was thrusting, hard, in an almost animalistic that made your entire body shake with the velocity of every desperate push. He moved between kissing your lips, to biting them to suckling your neck as he continued to rail into you with all of passion in the world. He was a man, unhinged, and you weren’t sure if you’d ever seen him so sexy.

Not surprising in the least, it didn’t take him long to come. You’d riled him up to the point of no return and, as you felt him come inside of you, you all but laughed when his forehead dramatically fell against your own.

For a few minutes, neither of you moved, simply just remained still and firmly pressed against one another. But, as the weight of your current whereabouts slowly dawned on either of you, you both slowly pulled away from each other, both wearing a small smile as you re-dressed yourselves.

Once his pants were done up, Billy stepped into you once again and placed a kiss on your forehead. “Cabin this weekend, okay?”

You nodded and hopped down from the desk. “Yeah, maybe,” you teased, fixing your skirt.

Billy’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, maybe, eh?”

“Yeah,” you winked, “I’ll think about it.”

“Smart ass,” Billy smirked. “That mouth of yours is going to get you in trouble one of these days.”

“I’m counting on it.” Once you were both fixed up, you nodded towards his hand which was still slicked with your juices. You laughed. “Oops.”

But Billy didn’t seem fazed. Instead, your breath hitched in your throat when he raised his hand to his lips and licked your slick clear off, relishing in the taste of it with a knowing smirk on his face. “This weekend.” He reiterated, driving the point home.

“This weekend,” you agreed, walking towards the door. Ensuring nobody saw the two of you leave an empty classroom together, you unlocked the door and gave Billy a small, knowing smile. “See you at lunch, lover boy.”

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enavance · 3 years

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hi i’m here to once again start a discussion / meta about a song that i relate to cherry. on this episode, we’re pulling apart falling in reverse’s popular monster. some of the lyrics are hit or miss because you know obviously this is based on ronnie’s own experiences, but some of the lyrics are really suited to cherry and i’ll bold the relevant lines as i go or omit things as needed.

also holy shit this is like over 1600 words, not including the lyrics of course, and . . . congratulations if u read this jkbdfbkvd

i wake up every morning with my head up in a daze i'm not sure if i should say this, fuck, i'll say it anyway everybody tries to tell me that i'm goin' through a phase i don't know if it's a phase, i just wanna feel okay, yeah i battle with depression, but the question still remains is this post-traumatic stressin' or am i suppressin' rage? and my doctor tries to tell me that i'm going through a phase yeah, it's not a fuckin' phase, i just wanna feel okay

okay, yeah, i struggle with this bullshit every day and it's probably 'cause my demons simultaneously rage it obliterates me, disintegrates me, annihilates me

cherry has always been hot - tempered since she was younger, but now as she’s grown and grown into her role as the warrior of light and coupled with all of the things she has endured from the beginning of her journey to where she is now. she lived a relatively peaceful life until imperial garlean forces invaded her village and uprooted her life and destroyed everything she once knew and forced her to make anew. cherry struggles with severe depression and ptsd, and much of that contributes to her trauma response and why she’s so quick to lash out in a form of a defense mechanism.

'cause i'm about to break down i'm searchin' for a way out i'm a liar, i'm a cheater, i'm a non-believer i'm a popular, popular monster i break down falling into love now with falling apart i'm a popular, popular monster

with everything cherry goes through, it’s a wonder she hasn’t snapped completely yet, but she has come so, so, so close so many times. she is self - destructive in her coping methods, whether intentionally or not. sometimes she realizes and notices her harmful coping methods, sometimes she doesn’t, but her mindset is that if she’s not hurting anyone else, it’s fine.

however, what she doesn’t realize is that her distance and cold shouldering and keeping people at arms length is hurtful because people are just trying to be there for her, but she won’t allow them to due to her debilitating fear of allowing anyone to come near her, physically or emotionally, and risk them forming an attachment to her and vice versa.

she doesn’t want someone to feel hurt or pain in losing her and having to mourn her. cherry is a serial escapist in that she will disappear for months at a time and wander off looking for the most dangerous jobs, not only because she needs the money and thrives off of the adrenaline and that she has an inherently reckless nature, but it’s that deep - rooted self - destructiveness.

i think i'm going nowhere like a rat trapped in a maze every wall that i knock down is just a wall that i'll replace i'm in a race against myself, i try to keep a steady pace how the fuck will i escape if i never close my case? oh my god, i keep on stressin', every second that i waste is another second sooner to a blessing i won't take

cherry doesn’t see herself as a hero. to a degree, she understands that it’s not her choice whether or not she is seen as a hero. other people will call her one regardless based on her accomplishments and achievements and decorated contributions to the preservation of eorzea and the shard as a whole. as vain as she is, and as much as she boasts of her strength as a warrior, which she takes quite a bit of pride in, she’s surprisingly somewhat humble when it comes to being seen as a hero that people look to for light in the darkness and idolize. she just sees nothing special in it because of how many people still die, how many things are still lost and destroyed. her own pessimism stops her from feeling positively towards any association with being a hero. she doesn’t want to be celebrated or praised, but she won’t be mad if someone compliments her skills and says she’s strong.

cherry is an extremely guarded person and this is something i discuss at length with her keeping extremely tall and thick walls up to protect herself and the people around her due to her life experiences and the trauma she has been through from before ARR to where she is now post - SHB. she’s afraid of letting anyone in. she’s afraid of caring about people, despite the fact that she does because deep down she is caring and kind and soft and she just can’t help herself. she tries to convince herself that she’s not as close to some people as she thinks, but she is and it would kill her to lose anyone else. and deep down, cherry knows that it’s much the same for her friends as well, that it’s too late, that they do care about her and someone will be there to mourn and grieve her and she hates that. this is why she flinches at softness, any soft gesture or touch or kindness, even more so when it comes to romantic avenues. she will run and run and run until she’s sure you’ve given up on pursuing her. much of this is also tied into the fact that caring about someone is a weakness to a fault because an enemy can sniff that out and use that against her. they could take someone that she cares about and use them as leverage or kill them or hurt them to get to her and she is so deeply afraid of that most of all.

cherry refuses help constantly. she shoulders everything and is the first to volunteer to do anything dangerous. she makes her own recklessly stupid and dangerous plans and rushes in headfirst without much thought. she is stubborn and will insist on doing everything herself, even the most menial tasks. she doesn’t want to look weak, not that she is or that anyone even thinks that of her, but she doesn’t want it to appear to anyone that she has any weaknesses because she doesn’t want them to be turned against her. she refuses help that would otherwise be blessings to make her life easier.

okay, motherfucker, now you got my attention i need to change a couple things 'cause somethin' is missing and what if i were to lie? tell you everything is fine every single fucking day i get closer to the grave i am terrified, i fell asleep at the wheel again crashed my car just to feel again it obliterates me, disintegrates me, annihilates me

cherry is as honest as they come. perhaps too honest, sometimes. however, when it comes to her own wellbeing, she will lie to fool others into thinking that she’s fine so that they don’t worry about her. she doesn’t want to be worried or fussed over, and most of all, she doesn’t want to add to anyone else’s stress or make them waste their time with her. cherry doesn’t take very good care of herself, physically or emotionally or mentally. she barrels into danger without thought, is impulsive, extremely reckless, and she doesn’t talk about her feelings to anyone or discuss the traumatic events that happened to her with anyone. i think the only people she may have opened up to are haurchefant, maybe thancred on occasion, ardbert because she’s fine talking to him because her logic is “ who is he going to tell ? no one else can see him, ” maybe aymeric but never wholly in detail, and maybe estinien. cherry is terrified of opening up to people. she doesn’t care if people see her as being awful or anything, but she’s afraid of being seen as vulnerable and having all of those parts of her open and raw.

she’s not actively suicidal or anything or ever thinking about dying. in fact, she’s deathly afraid of dying because of the people who care about her and because the fate of the world rests on her shoulders. she doesn’t want anyone to ever feel the pain she did losing her loved ones. she doesn’t want them to mourn her. she doesn’t want to risk the dying of this star just because there’s so much at stake and so many people and the world depending on her success and her being alive.

still, despite that, despite knowing that and that being an enormous fear of hers, that doesn’t stop her from being reckless. she is extremely self - destructive and impulsive and doesn’t think too much, if at all, before committing to something, even if it’s an extremely bad idea. she does do harmful and self - destructive things just to feel things, hence her being somewhat of an adrenaline addict and chasing danger and diving headfirst into fights or battles and facing off with dangerous people, even if outnumbered. she revels in danger and the feeling of adrenaline rushes and actively being battered and bruised in a fight. she probably would crash a car, honestly, just to feel something that is beyond the despondence and depression that she’s come to know post - shb.

yeah, here we go again, motherfucker, oh we're sick and tired of wondering praying to a god that you don't believe you're searching for the truth in the lost and found so the question i ask is, yeah, where the fuck is your god now?

and by the end of shb, knowing the things that she knows of hydaelyn and zodiark, she’s extremely jaded and even more pessimistic than she was to begin with. in the beginning, she didn’t know what she was coming into, when joining the fray with the scions and learning of her own abilities with the echo and hydaelyn’s will and her involvement. as time passes and hydaelyn’s absence becomes more noticeable, she begins to feel abandoned, and she wonders if hydaelyn is simply content to allow the shard to die and with it, its people.

even upon learning of the mother crystal’s weakness in strength, learning the truth of everything, the forming of the worlds and hydaelyn and zodiark being primals, she begins to heavily distrust hydaelyn and wonders if everything had been a lie. what else had hydaelyn hidden from her ? what else was a lie ? cherry has never been religious, not really, and she wonders if the gods are really out there. hydaelyn certainly isn’t the god they all thought she was — she is a primal. they have placed their faith and worship in a primal who disappeared and left them in darkness and silence.

cherry is left in a pretty fragile state come the end of shb. she has lost so much more, and she feels as though she managed to accomplish nothing despite everything that she has had a hand in doing. there is always something else, always something more, and she feels as though it’s never going to end and she is exhausted. she will never tire of helping people, not truly, but she feels such an emptiness within her and i really think that losing anyone else important to her, specifically people like thancred, the twins, estinien, aymeric, she is really going to spiral harder than ever before and i really don’t know how cherry would come out of it in one piece.

#hc.#long post -#uh ask to tag ?#self harm -#kind of ????#suicide mention -#just in case #shb spoilers -#u get 500 cookies if u manage to read through this kdjfbvd #i didnt mean for this to be this long but like idk!#this song really speaks to me about cherry #this is actually quite an important hc djkbfvfd #i'll post her playlist someday if i ever finish it #not that it'll ever be finish #it'll always be a continuous wip but u know

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junkyardlynx · 4 years

Text

As the wind stroked his boyish face, Gran found himself smiling softly. Not one of previously unrealized joy, nor the fragile countenance of someone on the edge of sorrow. No, it was a smile of resignation. Not over anything huge, really, but more a persistent fact of his strange life.

He would always be underestimated.

The breeze’s affection turned fickle and slipped away, leaving only stillness and birdsong to fill the tree he was perched in. The light armor he wore fit him well - a black ensemble, decorated with geometrical splashes of red and trimmed in gold. The plates were near-weightless, but they were tough enough to take all manner of punishment; the master artisan six islands back claimed the whole set was forged from adamantite. The matching gauntlets fit him like a second skin, responsive and pliable and even as he leaned forward on the spindly branch, the greaves gave not a creak or a groan.

By all accounts, the armor was fit for a majestic king, or perhaps a revered general. Not a boy who barely looked sixteen summers. So, who then? One would be forgiven if they mistook him for a prince, or perhaps an up-and-coming knight-commander. His features were handsome, if boyish, and people always told him that he had a “very dashing” air to him. As if that actually meant anything.

No, Gran was none of those things. By birth, he was a nobody from the edge of the known sky, left with his friend that was definitely not a lizard. By trade, he was a skyfarer captain. By destiny, one who shared his life with the Girl in Blue. And by effort? Well, that was the one he was most happy to share. Not that anyone ever believed him at first.

By effort, he could be summed up in four words.

Conqueror of the Eternals.

A boy of sixteen, now going on twenty-two, was the one who bested all ten Eternals in single combat? Even to himself, it sounded like a nice story and nothing more. Even though he lived every moment of it. The more spectacular details, like the defeat of the Erste Empire and his rejection of the True King’s offer were public knowledge. Though, well, it was true that they tended to draw his likeness a bit taller, and his face a bit more rugged. Artists paint what they feel, even if they don’t know it, even if they try and hide it. The bias creeps in. Surely whoever performed these fantastic deeds couldn’t be a sixteen year old kid. It was probably a part of the tale added later to spice it up and make it marketable for local papers.

Well, they were sort of right. When he rejected the “True King” and his poisoned wish, Gran was just about to turn twenty-two. Four months later, he now found himself intervening in a messy war between two kingdoms with his friend and crewmate Altair.

Six years. Six years had passed. Six years that showed nowhere on his face, his countenance. Nowhere save his eyes.

It started six years ago. He’d died protecting a terrified girl. A girl he didn’t even know. Even now, if Gran was left to his own devices, he could taste that choking pain -- not the way his lungs seared from the hydra’s flame, nor the gash in his side from the hydra’s claws. No, it was the pain of being powerless. The pain of not being able to reach his hand up to the sky and ask his father in hated grief if he was proud. Proud that unlike his old man, Gran didn’t abandon a child in their time of need.

So when that girl in blue did something impossible, he made two little promises inside of his weak heart.

One, never let anyone hurt her again.

Two, never feel that way again.

Six years and four months showed only in the tone of his muscles and the strength of his gait. The softness of his steps, the way he would round a corner like a prowling lion due to the endless combat he found himself engaged in. How long was it until he figured out the peculiarities of his resurrected body? His hair and nails grew, he still had to eat and sleep and still smelled awful when covered in silverslime after a successful hunt. Open wounds bled and illness forced him to bed.

But he didn’t age.

He probably realized it after teasing Rackam about his patchwork scruff one day. Rackam had lost his razor and was pilfering through the kitchen for a spare, muttering about the “damn gremlins” who “sneak aboard even though people are on watch duty.”

The exchange wasn’t noteworthy, really. Rackam had laughed and jabbed his index finger into the captain’s cheek, wondering when his peach fuzz would finally pack its bags and leave for more hairy locales.

Rackam’s voice echoed in his head.

“C’mon cap, aren’t you eighteen now? You gotta have more than this in ya!”

---

Weird how such a statement could open a can of worms. Last he checked, he wasn’t in the worm business, either. Well, unless Altair’s little solo mission for me involves worms somehow.

Gran hadn’t honestly asked for details since Altair didn’t seem to think they were important. The gist of his part in the greater plan amounted to “stop the western advance.” Simple and concise, really. The field he was scouting below the tree was still and peaceful, seemingly unaware of both the passage of time and the rumblings of war. The breeze kicked up again, carving gentle waves through the grass, and memory pulled him back under.

---

After that, it was impossible for Gran not to notice everything strange thing going on with his body. Despite nearing the age of nineteen, not a single hair managed to grace his face. Meanwhile, he could still tan (and burn) under the blazing sun and if he chose, he could grow the hair on his head as long as he liked. As an experiment, he’d left one toenail to grow as long as it could, just to see what happened. Other than a supremely stubbed toe one early morning followed by a string of swears angry enough to make Eugen blush, nothing came of his experiment.

If was as if nobody has given his body the blueprints for life after sixteen, as if the existence of “Gran as a person” was tied to his current general appearance, as if something altogether removed from natural biology had decided that “this” was Gran. Whatever was supposed to come after simply...didn’t. Naturally, Gran lost his mind a bit. Only a bit, though. He had the good sense to seek out the famous alchemist and self-proclaimed cutest girl in the world, Cagliostro. She’d joined the crew a while ago and had a keen intellect when it came to matters of the body and it’s intricate workings. After all, she’d made one for herself, probably countless times. Her verdict?

She was stumped.

Apparently, senescence - the process of cells deteriorating after copying themselves over long amounts of time, leading to aging - had stopped in Gran. Sort of. The truth was much stranger. She’d been having him report to her little workshop on the Grancypher twice a week, taking blood and tissue samples much to his immediate and mildly painful dismay. This process continued on for three months before her exasperation and wonder lead her to discuss her findings with “cute, baffling little Gran.”

“Basically, captain! You’re aging just right for the first eight samples. The only way to tell is to be able to “find” the itty bitty little bit of info that goes missing from the blueprint of “you” every time your cells divide. I imagine the Astrals put it in as a sort of safety fe-errrrr, moving on! So! Being the inimitable genius I am, I noticed something about the ninth set of samples. They’re alllllmost the same as the first. Way too close. You don’t just get that bit back for no reason, and you really don’t get THAT much back for any reason.”

Gran nodded slowly, already onto what she was talking about. However, knowing that Cagilostro loved a.) having a captive audience and b.) herself, he let her continue.

“I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t sure, and positing a hypothesis that early on when I might have just mixed up the samples would be irresponsible. So I waited until that Saturday when I got to stab and slice you again, triple-checking that alllll the samples were out of my workshop. Same result! They looked just like the second sample, even fresh farm-to-table.”

She turned an adorably calculated and seemingly malicious smile to Gran as her explanation ended. Though it wasn’t exactly news, her words were still unnerving. After all, his cells were basically rolling back the clock of aging every four weeks. You know, normal things.

“You know how much I’d give to figure out your secret? Even ignoring the fact that it certainly has to do with whatever Lyria did to you three years ago, this is a discovery so amazing you’d think I’d invented it. Your body is pretty much just removed from time! It’s almost envious enough to make me cry. I can’t believe you, making a genius cry. It’s honestly ridiculous. You can obviously still put on muscle mass and your brain isn’t fried like one of those Golden Friday SHRIMP.”

For a bit there after that, Gran lost a...well, a bit more of his mind. If he had to be honest. Three days locked up in his room, not letting anyone in, not even Vyrn. He poured over alchemical texts, medical documents, arcane and state secrets, anything the Grandcypher had that might be pertinent. After three days of intense study, stopping only for the necessities of life, Gran came to an answer. Well, his answer.

Did it matter?

Had his sword arm stayed the same over those three years? No. Was his cut not deadlier, his stab not sharper, his fist not faster? Had his body not taken on the tone and muscle of someone who fought primals -- and prevailed? The difference between the weak Gran of three years ago and the Gran of today was immeasurable. The young man who had once fallen to a single tortured hydra now found himself battling ancient primal beasts of war and guile on a monthly basis.

He may not ever have a thick Draph-sized mustache and his cheeks might permanently retain their tender charm no matter his age, but his body was fit to fight. To protect. To chase his absent father until the end of the sky. That’s what mattered. Though he was quite sure Cagilostro would tease him endlessly for his answer.

With newfound determination, Gran threw himself into what the rest of the crew considered hellish training simply because he knew he could endure it. It was a way to prove himself - even after death, even after abandonment, he was worth something. He had value and merit and talent, but also the drive and yearning to turn it into something. In the wake of this new regiment for himself and his little visit to a certain alchemist on board, rumors crept up. Slow and steady at first, they soon burned like wildfire through the decks of the Grandcypher, spreading out of context and control. He finally became privy to a good chunk of the downright goofy rumors via his afternoon footwork training on the vast open deck.

His footwork training was simple. He would empty his mind and fill it with visions of attackers, then repel those attackers as they came at him from all sides and angles. Though it didn’t hold up to real battles, it offered a sort of vision training and group combat scenario that duels never quite could and best of all, it could be performed anywhere with ample space as the only thing required was himself.

Being simple in those relative terms, it provides opportunities for a capable multitasker to easvesdrop things they shouldn’t, like the hottest Grandcypher gossip. On one such afternoon, in the early days of summer, things came to a head as crewmates found themselves unable to contain the rumor mill around their captain any longer.

“I heard the captain’s immortal!”

Not entirely inaccurate. His nonexistent blade swung a tight arc, lopping off the head of something never there. With his arm extended, he challenged the thin atmosphere between the islands. Nothing came.

“Yeah, I heard he was like a six thousand year old primal beast?”

Missed the mark a bit there, he quipped internally. It seemed both directed at the conversation and himself as he danced between the attacks of no ones and nothings. His sweeping kick, though near-flawless in form, barely grazed the torso of his last imagined attacker in that scenario. With a click of his tongue, he noted to himself that an actual attacker couldn’t simply stop on a dime like the one he imagined did. Even in his mind, he was tough on himself, as no one else seemed to want the responsibility. With a little consternation, he ended up giving himself the point for his made up little game. The points didn’t matter, but they made him feel better.

“We have a few of those in the crew, so it makes sense.”

It would, but that’s not the case. Gran’s feet shuffled to and fro, dancing softly across the wooden deck of the Grancypher. To the casual observer, it almost appeared as if he was simply rehearsing one of the dances Anthuria had choreographed with him. He ducked under an imaginary bullet, fist rising from below to smash the jaw of the illusory gunman.

The nothings and nobodies fell to his invisible sword strikes, his matchless kicks and punches, to the spells he snap-conjured between the thrust of a lance and the flight of an arrow. Finally, panting hard with exhilaration and the flow of combat, Gran slew the final “attacker” with a quick reversal and stab to the gut, ending the dream with its own weapon. Nothing and no one fell, other than comfortable silence, but he still felt a measure of success as he picked up the warmed vacuum flask that had his lunch in it.

“No, no, he’s only thirty-six and he’s the son of that one legendary adventurer. It’s his hero’s blood. I hear his dad bathed in the entrails of the primal beast he slew, though, so maybe that’s what caused it in the end?” Why would a hero be forced to stop aging before he could legally drink? The snort of his barely contained laughter sent soup up his nose, straight from his vacuum flask. Hot soup. Hot, spicy soup.

“That makes a lot of sense.”

More than the six thousand year old primal beast bit, yes.

“He’s still our captain, so who cares? That’s good enough for me.” Oh. Ah. I...

That last overheard comment had humbled him, but the clear ring of all the affirmations that followed from crewmates in it’s wake shook him to his core. Somehow, he’d gained the loyalty and friendship of some of the most accepting people under the great blue sky. His training, already considered to be a form of self-punishment by the rest of the crew, grew in scope and desire. If there was a mountain in his way, he would cut it. If there was a river in his way, he would part it. If even the great ocean of stars spanned the distance, it would be crossed.

For all the things he could still protect.

For the dreams he had thought beyond him.

For the sake of surpassing the absent father that had abandoned him long ago, leaving only a note.

When still a boy in a backwater nothing, Gran wielded a simple short sword and fancied himself a sort of knight as he grew up. Wearing a slightly ragged blue tunic with a hood, a few pieces of spare platemail strapped to his right arm, and holding a sword containing more rust than blade. Training with Vyrn in the forest every day, the boy dreamed of something bigger. A fighter, a protector, a guardian of what he loved and treasured, not a bandit that cut and run from his family. That’s what he wanted to be... That dream was, for lack of a better term, driven from his chest. By a hydra. Just so we’re clear.

He abandoned defensive posture after that, seeking to end fights as quickly as possible. An axe found it’s way into his hands and for a time, he was satisfied by the devastation it wrought. Teenage postmortem angst seemed to be quelled by a felling cleave to an enemy’s collarbone, and chunky plate scraps held together with red leather and white fur served him well enough as protection from the elements and the enemies he faced.

Nothing so simple satisfied for long, though. Gran took to himself in a sort of hermitage for a while, studying magic under the occasional tutelage of his talented crewmates. There was a certain ripple of insecurity in his scouting party’s mood when he’d shown up late one day, his usual armor stripped down to basic protection and his axe nowhere to be found. They tossed light jeers at his green cloak and the staff he carried, even as they set off for their destination - a bandit camp they had been hired to uproot. Peace talks were attempted by the bandit’s leader and an Erune comrade of Gran’s, one better suited for diplomacy than the boy-faced captain.

Things deteriorated quickly. Gran had quietly stepped forward once the leader made it clear he had no intention of retreating peacefully. With the green hood still covering half his disappointed face, Gran slashed the tip of the staff in a dismissive motion to the right, as if telling them their time here was over. Before they could protest or retaliate, wild magic burst into life around them, sealing off all escape and action. Concentric rings of frost and fire cradled in the stony embrace of the earth, carved into being with the fierce wind tore at everything inside the bandit’s camp. With the oxygen burnt out, the earth lashed and the encampment in shambles, the dazed and injured bandits were easy prisoners.

No one jeered after that.

As his prowess grew and the crew took on more work, that cloak had weathered with time. It faded to an almost dull grey, and with this Gran had added a black half-mask to the ensemble. Admittedly, it was mostly to hide his youthful features and force enemies to take him somewhat seriously for once, as the sting of his blessed curse grew more apparent as he approached his twentieth year.

For combat, a middle ground was found. He embraced not pure swordsmanship, nor did he place his trust only in magic. Instead, he channeled his power into debilitating his opponent’s often unworldly vigor and vitality, then coaxed those weaknesses open with his unmatched swordplay. Victory after victory piled up at the crew’s feet, and the legend of the “boy captain” grew.

It also provided the fodder for what Gran considered a highly embarrassing piece of “art.” Somebody had caught him resting his right hand on his jaw, leg crossed over the other almost lazily as he read a scrap of paper in his left. It was a failed betting ticket, so close to winning millions of rupees, save for the upset victory in the sixth match. An enterprising somebody, who’s name begins with L and ends with -unalu, had committed this terrible and dreadful sight to memory. She then committed that memory to paper with her talent.

Only, well.

She’d used her license of artistic interpretation to replace the slip of paper held in contempt with a comically oversized sword. Stabbed unceremoniously in the ground. The barstool? That was now a throne carved of stone. The title of the piece, an unknowing and fortunate soul might ask?

“Chaos Ruler.”

The print she made was reproduced and sold to more than a handful of people on and off the Grandcypher. Copies of it hung from stray support beams and walls on the ship, as if to lovingly taunt him and people switched their mode of address from “captain” to things like “my liege” or “ruler” or “chaos kid” for the better part of a month. Gran said nothing, choosing to keep what little of his dignity he felt he had left.

Nobody saw Gran wear that outfit again.

In hindsight, he had to agree that the metal half-mask was a little much. But, ah, Ejaeli and Predator had convinced him it was cool. They made masks look cool, after all. The palpable disappointment from them almost made him walk back on that decision. Almost.

From then on, he’d taken to wearing a simple outfit when on duty, reminiscent of his teenage years. Having turned twenty some time ago, he decided to make a simple blue hooded tunic the mainstay of his combat attire. On top went a basic but functional steel breastplate, covering his heart and ribs. His arms were covered in gauntlets of the same make, and steel greaves offered his feet and shins ample protection as they went on over a pair of loose beige pants. What it lacked in flair it made up for in comfort and capability. A sensible choice. It gave nothing about his combat style away either, other than the obvious caveat that he might engage in it at some point.

---

Funny to say teenage years, he supposed, looking down at the peaceful field. Fires were beginning to rise and march in the distance, headed this way. An army. For now, though, he had time, and the world seemed to move so perilously slow. Memory reeled him in once more, as if the grass and the trees of this island made him long for another time and another place.

---

Thinking seriously on it, the reason his legend had spread as that of the “boy captain” probably had to do with two things. One, the Grandcypher traveled an awful lot between three different skydoms, and two? The crew of the Grandcypher loved events.

It probably had to do with a third thing, too.

His crew really, really loved to tease him about his age.

Every birthday, it’d be “Happy sixteenth, Cap!” They reused the same banner six times now, adding a tally mark just above “sixteenth” every single time. It was as endearing as it was maddening. Eugen and Rackam pulled the same thing at every new bar, ordering three beers and then pretending to flip out at Gran when he took his. It caused its fair share of problems for Gran, so sometimes Gran would flip the script before they got the chance and get angry at his “dad” and “brother” for getting drunk while “mom” was at home alone.

Some of the Grandcypher ladies would tease him with lines about “when he was older” and what an “earnest young man he was” if they saw him during the more romantic holidays, much to his chagrin. He learned to reverse that too, going on the offensive by playing the straight man to their act. He paid them straightforward compliments with toothy grins and presented them with chocolates during White Day as a form of playful revenge.

A few times every year, the crew would be called to an ancient island where a sort of...war game took place between skyfaring crews. An Astral experiment run amok meant that otherworldly and ferocious beasts overwhelmed the singular island now and then, and their presence courted the attention of primal beasts. As the people of the skydoms always sought to turn misery into growth, they established a way to turn it into a competition. Extremely rare treasure was brought in from all across the skyrealms and the monster problem on the island was handily taken care of in what they called Guild Wars.

Ten times, the Grancypher emerged victorious. Each time, for his troubles, the Captain would receive an ancient weapon of unparalleled power, power that courted disaster - and inevitably the attention of those that would protect the sky from unparalleled threats.

The Eternals.

Ten times over the years, Gran wore his convictions on his sleeve and fought the strongest people in the sky, all to prove that he would remain himself in the face of that dread power. In truth, Gran didn’t plan to use those relics of war. He simply reveled in the chance to face those brilliant, blazing souls in single combat.

It was a way to prove himself. Both to those who he had grown to admire after hearing their legends, and to his eternally absent father. Surely, even his father would have to notice if he conquered the ten strongest people in the sky--

He didn’t, but it didn’t matter.

In the end, the people he met and bonded with mattered.

After an incident involving the mafia bearing down on Stardust Town, the Eternals got together and presented Gran with a suit of armor and his own cloak, signifying his status as the eleventh Eternal, an irreplaceable part of their group. While Siete was still the de-facto leader and Uno was the first of the Eternals, Gran - given the new title of Jedenáct - was the end-all-be-all when it came to pure combat strength. As they had joined the Grancypher’s crew, they wanted him to join the crew of the Eternals and share in that camaraderie.

He might have felt sixteen behind those misty eyes when they draped the white jacket over his shoulders and popped the celebratory drinks open, but he’d never admit it. Openly. Nio knew, because of course she did. His heart’s plaintive melody was clear to her ear from the moment they’d met. He’d been seeking a place to belong, a place that respected him since the day he understood that his father had abandoned him. Between the Grancypher and the Eternals, he’d finally felt like part of a family.

A family more real than the blood that spawned and abandoned him, all the while burdening him with purpose.

This is where I belong.

---

Of course, it was just after this heartfelt moment that Altair had been roped into this awful and brutal war. As a member of the Grancypher family, Altair’s problems were Gran’s problems. And now, that advancing army was coming into ambush distance. Concentrating his mana for a second, Gran summoned forth an ethereal bow, shaped like the one Song used but made of pure, blue light. Standing up on the branch of the tree, he took aim at the ground some twenty metres in front of the enemy general’s advance. Luhua was said to be a fearsome combatant, and Gran secretly hoped for a chance to resolve things with a non-fatal, honorable, one-on-one duel. The best kind of fight.

Of course, he would always be underestimated. There was a chance that no such duel would be found, and it might turn into a bloody melee.

Either way?

Time to keep the sky’s sweet peace.

#granblue fantasy #gbf #gran #fanfiction #writing #my writing #self-indulgent bullshit

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illegiblewords · 5 years

Video

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Sephirot, The Fiend

What is it like when you pull back the curtain

And realize every wrong is a right?

Your world is rusted like a dirty razor

The edge is calling tonight

The edge is calling tonight (The edge is calling tonight)

The sun is setting, darkness taking over

A date with chaos and you're dressed to the nines

Salt of the earth salting your own fields

Road to destruction that is true and tried

You walk the path laid before you

The call of reason, you refuse to abide

Necessity is an inventive mother

Promising sanctum that

She cannot provide

She is the hand that rocks the cradle

The wind that breaks the bough and leaves you to die

And there She leaves you to die (And there She leaves you to die)

You'll find slumber when the world comes tumbling down

Sweet dreams, baby. Sleep tight!

Retreat where lesser men lead

Flee from what you do not see

Heed the dark within your being

Turn away

Disobey

I'm the end and the beginning

The faith that feeds the unbelieving

A tightening knot to staunch the bleeding

Say my name

Sephirot

The seventh hell's become your seventh heaven

Rose of redemption but a thorn in your pride

Waste no more time fighting your demons

Lay down your arms and let the evil inside

And then you let it inside (And then you let it inside)

You let it eat you till there's nothing left at all

So you can feel that you are truly alive

Better to serve in a waking nightmare

Than rule in their paradise

What is gold, always glitters

But it still comes with an unpayable price

Treading out upon the stagnant waters

Our savior waiting for a turn in the tide

You are the night at the end of the tunnel

The empty void where the serpent lies

Where the serpent lies (Where the serpent lies)

The angels graze in the meadows of excess

They must needs go that the devils drive

Retreat where lesser men lead

Flee from what you do not see

Concede your mind unto the fiend

Turn away

Debts are paid

I'm the end and the beginning

The drug that gives the wretched meaning

The answer every soul is seeking

Say my name

Sephirot

People talk a lot about Sophia, The Goddess. I’ll do a talk for her too but frankly Sephirot is hugely underrated imo and the Warring Triad as a whole deserves serious analysis.

Before anything else, I need to make a bow to higherallagan on reddit for pointing out “someone let Fray write the lyrics.” Because there is no better response than that lol.

In terms of analysis, there are hardcore layers going on.

First, for the triad as a whole I’m going to pose the possibility that they represent the Freudian trio structuring the psyche. These are Id, Ego, and Superego.

Id would be base, instinctive desires stripped of all reason. This is the only personality structure present at birth and ties into bodily needs, wants, and impulses. To feed, to fight, to flee, to fuck, these all tie to the Id. It is immediate gratification, it is to seek pleasure and avoid pain or “unpleasure”, it is unconscious chaos and drive without will. The Id offers no judgment of value, no morality. The union of Eros and Thanatos, or sex and death, exists here.

Ego I would argue is represented in Sophia, while Superego is Zurvan. I’ll go more into Ego and Superego for each of them respectively, but the very short version would be that Superego is intellect and morality while Ego is pragmaticism and the negotiation between Id and Superego in the context of reality.

Naturally Sephirot would absolutely, 110% be Id. This isn’t just because he’s introduced first but also ties into the lyrics of his theme and the motif woven into his nature as an eikon. He is cited as representative of the first tree and its worship. Beyond this, Sephirot through the fight is shown using attacks including Ein Sof Or, summoning Binah and Chokmah, etc. These, along with the name Sephirot itself, all reference the Tree of Life in Judaism as well as Kabbalah specifically. There are ten sephira (singular for sephiroth), or individual nodes on the Tree of Life.

Disclaimer, the English transliterations can be read a few ways. I personally write and pronounce “Kether” as “Keter”, sounding like “kee-tehr”. In actual Hebrew it’s probably pronounced “keh-th-ehr” or “keh-tehr” but I’d need to see the vowel forms to know for sure. I am not known for my ability to pronounce things correctly haha.

Anyway. The singular English words listed under each sephira are not necessarily a clear indicator of what each stage means in practice. I’ve actually done a huge amount of research and do know how to articulate every step. Ex. Keter/The Crown is the moment in which the very possibility of change begins on an internal level. This is well before any externalization of change. It could be the instant that potential energy could begin its transformation to kinetic energy. It could be the seed of an idea that has yet to grow, let alone breach the soil of the mind into action.

The Tree of Life as a whole can be mapped onto any kind of change, from mental to physical to emotional. It also happens to map onto the Big Bang, which is its original representation. It is creation and change, navigating internal and external.

As a concept, the Tree of Life is hugely sacred within Judaism as a faith. Being as Sephirot is an eikon (or primal) specifically however, it exists as a simplified corruption of that concept. This was, in the context of the game, interpreted as being an Id-defined Satan figure similar to what is found in Christian tradition. The serpent lying in the empty void, which ties to negative change or the creation of evil rather than something divine. This is the tempter in the Garden of Eden.

The role of temptation is hugely present throughout The Fiend’s lyrics, again tying to Id specifically. As much as I love the joke about Fray, honestly this does resonate strongly with themes presented in the Dark Knight questline.

If we interpret the song as being specific to the Warrior of Light, it reads something like this:

What is it like when you pull back the curtain

And realize every wrong is a right?

Your world is rusted like a dirty razor

The edge is calling tonight

Warrior of Light has been following the path set by Hydaelyn throughout the storyline, often at their own expense. This has at times been extremely painful on a personal level for the WoL, and requires ignoring the easier, safer, or even more pleasurable alternatives. On top of this, the idea of pulling back the curtain to realize something implies that the WoL has been in deep denial that not only is there another option, but it would feel better to take that option.

Besides being 3edgy, the dirty razor line states that the WoL’s world is old, filthy, ineffective, and painful. Despite this, the WoL forces interaction with it in such a way that is not only self-destructive, but could very well kill them. After all, even after you’ve finished getting split open by something rusty the infection sets in and tetanus will follow.

The edge is calling tonight (The edge is calling tonight)

The sun is setting, darkness taking over

A date with chaos and you're dressed to the nines

WoL is giving up and on some level eager to succumb to temptation and selfishness.

Salt of the earth salting your own fields

Road to destruction that is true and tried

You walk the path laid before you

The call of reason, you refuse to abide

Working hard destroys the earth, or more specifically the WoL themself. It is a form of rendering themself barren on a personal level, a spiritual death. Again, following that path Hydaelyn gave as well as the paths expected by the people of Hydaelyn who see WoL as a hero. That little voice at the back of their head going “maybe we should not” gets ignored.

Necessity is an inventive mother

Promising sanctum that

She cannot provide

She is the hand that rocks the cradle

The wind that breaks the bough and leaves you to die

WoL might not want to perform these tasks anymore but believes it is needed to survive and for the world to survive. In the end though, the idea that trying to fill that need will lead to salvation, to safety and certainty, is not accurate. In the end, no one and nothing will be there to save the WoL themself and they will be destroyed in this pursuit along with everything/everyone they sought to protect. It’s a fool’s errand.

And there She leaves you to die (And there She leaves you to die)

You'll find slumber when the world comes tumbling down

Sweet dreams, baby. Sleep tight!

Only in failure will the WoL find rest, finally free to forget obligations as everything collapses around them.

Retreat where lesser men lead

Flee from what you do not see

Heed the dark within your being

Turn away

Disobey

The WoL might be the most powerful person in the world, but they can still choose not to fight and be selfish. Leave the painful work to “lesser men”. Avoid threats that are not immediately relevant to you and take care of yourself alone, stop following the orders of others.

I'm the end and the beginning

The faith that feeds the unbelieving

A tightening knot to staunch the bleeding

Say my name

Sephirot

Id is present from birth until death, from the beginning of the world until its end. It is self-preservation when trying to do too much gets you hurt, and while it won’t heal the wound itself it will stop you from bleeding out further.

The seventh hell's become your seventh heaven

Rose of redemption but a thorn in your pride

Waste no more time fighting your demons

Lay down your arms and let the evil inside

The world might go to shit but WoL at least would be personally okay. The idea of going back to heroism would become utterly distasteful because of all the pain it promises. It’s time to stop feeling guilty about these things and just embrace it.

And then you let it inside (And then you let it inside)

You let it eat you till there's nothing left at all

So you can feel that you are truly alive

A WoL who becomes wholly selfish 1) ceases to be WoL 2) sacrifices empathy, morality, everything they’ve ever believed in or cared about at the altar of the self. And in return they can be a hedonist and protect themself from being hurt by others.

Better to serve in a waking nightmare

Than rule in their paradise

What is gold, always glitters

But it still comes with an unpayable price

It would be better to give up everything else, all thought of a better world and protection for all, and do the best you can by yourself even if reality sucks. The alternative is enormous responsibility in a world that is good, a paradise, that is understood to be fragile. Of course paradise is tempting but the personal cost of getting there is too high.

Treading out upon the stagnant waters

Our savior waiting for a turn in the tide

You are the night at the end of the tunnel

The empty void where the serpent lies

Stagnant waters = the world, the situation, will always be like this. WoL is waiting for things to change. But even after all work and travel, it will ultimately lead to nothing. The WoL will eventually break and give up and become what the eikon Sephirot foretells.

Where the serpent lies (Where the serpent lies)

The angels graze in the meadows of excess

They must needs go that the devils drive

The good people of Hydaelyn will become soft and vulnerable in paradise and inevitably, more “devils” or wicked people will have them at their mercy.

Retreat where lesser men lead

Flee from what you do not see

Concede your mind unto the fiend

Turn away

Debts are paid

Concede your mind unto the fiend = you know I’m right. Turn away, debts are paid = You’ve done enough, stop.

I'm the end and the beginning

The drug that gives the wretched meaning

The answer every soul is seeking

Say my name

Sephirot

The drug that gives the wretched meaning = when everything else has broken you, you will have only yourself and you will have no choice but to say your self is enough. The answer every soul is seeking = everyone wants to know on some level that they are enough, that they have personal value, that they are worth saving and protecting, that they have a right to pleasure and happiness of their own. That they can pursue their id as nature has always been driven and not feel ashamed.

Tbh I do think Beauty’s Wicked Wiles/Lakshmi’s theme has similar motifs woven in and could possibly be read as a continuation of the WoL’s desperation to escape. But that would be another post.

#Sephirot the Fiend #final fantasy 14 #final fantasy xiv #ffxiv #warring triad #hardcore analysis under the cut

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hoshiomo · 5 years

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Trash Bin

The hour grew late. The sun had even begun to crawl over the horizon, coloring the sea in a rosy hue. Tired eyes poured over Hoshi's writing, scanning every last word and analyzing them to a point where they became little more than blurs of ink upon the page. A silent snarl curled in the Raen's lips, and with a mounting frustration, he crumpled the pristine letterhead into a ball, tossing it over his shoulder.

A metal tower filled with failed words and incomplete sentiments couldn't fit a single thought more than the novel made of torn and crumpled pages that it already contained. The most recent attempt was then forced to bounce off the top, tumbling down to join several of its siblings on the floor surrounding the trash bin.

With the sun finally cresting the sea's horizon, Hoshiomo was, upon glancing up from his little writing corner, blinded by its gleaming brilliance through the window before him. Rubbing at his eyes with one hand, the au ra reached with his other to tug at the drapes, blocking out the morning light from his dimly lit desk. Minutes of still silence passed, and Hoshi stirred only long enough to wipe clean the lenses of his glasses with his shirt's collar.

Looking to his pile of unmarked letterhead, the Raen sighed and condeded... This was it. This time he would get it just right.

It started as all the others did, inked into creation via practiced calligraphy in the native tongue of Doma;

"Rae,

I swore to never burden you with my company again, and that is an oath I mean to keep. This will be, if you wish it, my final correspondence with you.

I am young still, and far from perfect. I was raised to know perfection as a falsehood, in fact, and that what is better than fruitless goals of perfection is truth. When last we spoke, I chose my words carefully, knowing that no matter how sweet or kind I might have been, your mind was already made up about me.

I will never be the man you love. Or at least, that is what I assumed based on how you spoke of the one you did. I chose, in that moment, to leave an impact in your life. The opposite of love is not hate. Hate and love are, to my knowledge, rather closely related in the hearts of men. That is why I chose to spark your ire, because if you could not love me, it would be better to make you hate me, while at the same time trying to show you truths I felt you would forever deprive yourself of.

That was wrong. I was wrong. Truths are not for others to shove down your throat. What makes them significant is discovering them, and truly believing them, on one's own. In that moment, I was in pain. A pain that, until it struck me that very day, I thought you were as of yet incapable of inflicting upon me. I think a part of me, some deep, subconscious part of me, felt something natural... primal... instinctual toward you and I. It fit.

I see now that I was misguided to assume you felt similarly. And I see that I was so blunt and harsh as a defensive response to the realization that I meant much less.

I do not expect forgiveness, let alone the chance to be friends. I just wished to let you know that I am sorry. I said it that night, and I did mean it; I am not trying to hurt you. But that doesn't matter. I wasn't trying to hurt you, but I most certainly did. That is the opposite of what I wanted to be for you. I hope you take care of yourself. You said you wished you were dead. I wish for you to be happy you are alive.

- Hoshiomo"

Hoshi finished writing, having had to use both sides of the paper to fit every word that came to his sleep deprived mind. Rubbing the exhaustion and dryness into his eyes, the Raen nodded and carefully folded the letter after blowing dry the ink, slipping it into an envelope. A quick trip next door and a tuck under the door to the Yosai infirmary, and Rae would be given his final, carefully considered words. The idea paralyzed the shinobi the moment the wax seal was set, having captured his heart in folded paper. Sitting there for nearly an hour in silence, Hoshi stared at the envelope in his hands, and the single word written on its cover, "Rae".

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couchcushings · 7 years

Text

a mini update of my Trash Fic (tm) for @justastormie for putting up with me screaming about how Absolutely Adorable pete is in this interview

Van Helsing shivered in the bitter cold of the Hoia Forest. His long, red dressing gown was clearly not meant for a climate harsher than your average castle bedroom. He glanced at Rosie. She sat on a nearby log, wearing nothing but a thin cotton shift.

Her eyes were fixed on the horizon, searching for any sign of the moon. "Nervous," she asked, not bothering to look up.

"Could this still kill me?"

Her eyes flickered in his direction. "It could. So could the cold. So could your ex-girlfriend. The night is rife with unpleasant possibilities."

He pulled at his bandage. "I thought the whole purpose of our little training session in the upstairs sitting room was to ensure that the change wouldn't kill me."

She smiled. "I thought you already knew I just wanted to see your ass."

His eyes narrowed.

"No, no, you're right. It was mostly to prepare you for what you're about to go through. Earlier you had control, but now the moon does. And you don't change back until the moon says so." She stood. "It's almost time." She shrugged out of her cotton shift. Her skin took on an unnatural blue tinge in the growing light of the moon. Rosie grinned, barring quickly lengthening teeth. Her eyes grew golden. "Are you ready for your first full moon, husband," she snarled, her mouth no longer suited to human speech.

Van Helsing felt something in his spine. He bent, wracked with a sudden pain. He could feel his body changing as the moon rose over the trees. He met her eyes. "No."

"Good," she threw back her head and let loose a howl that chilled his blood. He blinked and she was gone. In her place stood the familiar red wolf.

He could feel his bones contracting and expanding again. He threw off the dressing gown and screamed at the night sky. His screams turned to howls, echoing off the trees and mountains. Mist clouded his mind and he sought to push past the primal desires running through his veins. Van Helsing rose shakily to his paws, trying to remember Rosie's lessons. He set one paw in front of the other.

Rosie let out a little bark and ran off into the trees.

/Follow her,/ the moon whispered through the mist. /Follow her to the ends of the earth./

With those words, he was running after her. He dodged trees and rocks with the ease of someone who had been born with four legs and a tail. He skidded to a halt. Rosie was examining the base of a nearby rock. She snorted.

He trotted up behind her. /What have you found?/ The question ran unbidden through his mind. It was something he would have said during the daylight hours. He was surprised to receive an answer.

Rosie's reply wasn't so much words as a vague impression that she had found something relating to the missing child. She stepped to the side and let him nose at the base of the rock. His nose was filled with the scent of living things. He could detect no fewer than ten individual forest creatures (they were, respectively, six deer, a mouse, two hedgehogs, a rabbit, and a fox), three of the villagers (/Herr/ Schweitzer and his two sons, most likely out looking for Josephine), and something else. He pressed his nose to the rock, trying to capture the elusive scent. It was familiar; almost like he had smelled it in the distant past-- he jumped back, his two extra legs tripping him up.

He let out a surprised yelp. /It's her!/ he fairly screamed, his mind racing. /Ana has been here, this is her perfume! She's been wearing the same scent since university./

Rosie let out a subtle doggish noise that sounded a lot like a laugh. /Of course you remember that./ she chided, cocking her head to one side. A question drifted through their connection. /Can you follow the scent?/

He flattened his ears against his head. Of course he could. He subscribed to the /Lupus Dei/ school of thought: God had put werewolves on His Earth for a divine purpose, namely to hunt down evil and eradicate it. Rosie's quick dispatch of the drone had only cemented his beliefs. /To the ends of the earth,/ he snarled at her, rising from his prone position and snapping at her.

She growled and flattened herself to the ground. /This is no time for hurt feelings. We have to find them before they do something to Josephine!/

Van Helsing didn't grace her with a response. He aimed one last snap at her ear and loped off between the trees with his nose pressed to the ground.

The sky spread out in all directions, glowing a lightening shade of purest blue. Tree branches cracked its edges as they swayed back and forth. Van Helsing blinked at the sight. He held his hands -- and they were truly hands now -- in front of his face, checking for he knew not what. He settled for fingers. A cursory count revealed that he still had all ten.

He sighed and tried to sit up, only to be stopped by an unexpected weight. A slight breeze tickled his stomach.

"Can't you ever sleep past sunrise?" Rosie asked from her spot between his legs. "I'd think this morning, of all mornings, you'd want to sleep in a little. It's not every night that you have your body shredded into a million pieces. Only a few times a month."

"Where did we end up?" He propped himself up with one arm. "Are we anywhere near my dressing gown?"

"Tsk, tsk, husband," she looked up at him, her green eyes twinkling. "Always concerned with the immaterial. What you should really be asking is: 'What did we find last night?'"

"Well? What did we find?"

"Lesson three: remembering last night," she sat up and ran her fingers through her hair. "It's the most important lesson after learning how to be comfortable in your skivvies. Speaking of which, your face might be lying but other parts of you aren't. Would you like some help with that?"

He flushed.

"I'll take that as a no." She crossed her arms, obscuring her breasts from view. "I remember what happened last night. How far do your memories go?"

Van Helsing tried to rearrange his legs, but, as Rosie was still sitting between them, he didn't have much luck.

"This is where the aforementioned 'being comfortable in your skivvies' comes in real handy. Sorry, poor choice of words. Look, you shouldn't be bashful. It's not like this is the first time I've seen you naked. Remember that farmer just outside of Dublin who shot you in the ass?"

"How could I forget?" he reached for the spot, feeling for the scar.

"Well then y'all will remember that I had to sew you back up."

"Yes, but that was before this whole marriage business," he could feel the color rising in his face again. "Things were slightly less complicated then."

"Only slightly," she shrugged. "C'mon, doc, we got off topic. What do you remember from last night?"

"I remember finding Ana's scent and following it through the woods but--" he cut off, frowning. "My memories stop just after we found her castle."

"There's a good reason for that." Rosie pointed to the north.

He turned and there, sitting on the horizon, was a crumbling pile of stones.

"It only looks like that from the outside, I'm sure. It's probably got lots of tunnels and dungeons and torture chambers just below the surface. Don't y' think?"

"Why didn't you tell me we were this close?"

She shrugged. "I wanted to see if you remembered."

"So, instead of telling me that I am, in fact, sitting less than a mile from Ana's stronghold wearing nothing but what God graced me with, you decided to test my memory," he grabbed her shoulders. "Why?"

"It's all part of the werewolf experience."

He groaned and fell back to the ground. "I'm entirely sure I like the 'werewolf experience.'"

"Oh, I don't know, you look like you're taking to it marvelously."

His eyes snapped open and he craned his neck only to see Ana standing over him, her upside down face showing clear amusement. "Good morning, Abraham."

He swallowed. "Good morning, Ana."

"Don't I get a greeting?"

Ana surveyed Rosie the same way a cat might look at a mouse. "Good morning, Miss Winchester. That is quite the collection of scars."

Rosie stood, grinning in her enemy's face. "I've been through the meat grinder a few times. And, you know, it sounds like you'd like to put me through it again."

"I just might do that. I've come to invite Abraham to my castle. I suppose, however, that you can come along as well."

"Ain't that sweet, doc? She thought of little old me," she barred her teeth at Ana. "Are we goin' /au natural/ or do you have something in that little bag that'll return /my husband/ and I to respectability?"

Ana reached into her bag and withdrew two plain black robes. She fairly threw one at Rosie. "Put this on." She was much kinder to Van Helsing; Ana bent slightly at the waist and handed him his robe. "If you like, Abraham. You know I always did admire your body."

A little finger of ice ran up and down Van Helsing's spine. The context was all wrong. He pulled the robe over his head. "I think I will. How are we to get to the castle?"

Ana clapped. A sturdily build dog cart pulled by two skeletal horses emerged from the trees. "My personal carriage will take us." She stepped away, not waiting for them to follow.

Rosie snorted. "Now that's just tacky."

Van Helsing touched her arm. "Methinks a little tact would go a long way," he laced his arm through hers. "Considering who we're dealing with."

"True enough, husband. By the way, when we get out of this particular pickle you're going to tell me just how many admirers your body has. I'd like to scope out the competition."

He smiled, kissing her hand as they climbed into the dog cart. "There is no competition."

#writing tag #trash fic #justastormie

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networkingdefinition · 4 years

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Elephants Quotes

Official Website: Elephants Quotes

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• A camel makes an elephant feel like a jet plane. – Jackie Kennedy • A closed mouth gathers no foot. A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking. A fool-proof method for sculpting an elephant: first, get a huge block of marble; then you chip away everything that doesn’t look like an elephant. – David Gries • A fool-proof method for sculpting an elephant: first, get a huge block of marble; then you chip away everything that doesn’t look like an elephant. – George Bernard Shaw • A lot of my dreams have to do with animals I think because I’m such a huge animal lover. I have so many pets. I always have crazy dreams where I’m like riding an elephant through the jungle or hanging out with a bunch of monkeys. – Paris Hilton • A true philosopher is like an elephant; he never puts the second foot down until the first one is solidly in place. – Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle • Abrams’s Advice: When eating an elephant, take one bite at a time. – Paul Dickson • All the religions are true, they just see a different part of the elephant. – George Lucas • Always drawn to the theatric, Bowie also performed in stage productions of “The Elephant Man” and just recently collaborated on “Lazarus,” an off-Broadway musical that’s a sequel to his 1976 role in the film “The Man Who Fell To Earth.” – David Bowie • Americans should never underestimate the constant pressure on Canada which the mere presence of the United States has produced. We’re different people from you and we’re different people because of you. Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is effected by every twitch and grunt. It should not therefore be expected that this kind of nation, this Canada, should project itself as a mirror image of the United States. – Pierre Trudeau • Amid attempts to protect elephants from ivory poachers and dolphins from tuna nets, the rights of children go remarkably unremarked. – Anna Quindlen • And the elephant sings deep in the forest-maze About a star of deathless and painless peace But no astronomer can find where it is. – Ted Hughes • Animals are indeed more ancient, more complex and in many ways more sophisticated than us. They are more perfect because they remain within Nature’s fearful symmetry just as Nature intended. They should be respected and revered, but perhaps none more so than the elephant, the world’s most emotionally human land mammal. – Daphne Sheldrick • As big as an elephant is, a whale is still larger. Everything’s relative. Even gods have their spot on the food chain. – Jim Starlin • Awake. Be the witness of your thoughts. The elephant hauls himself from the mud. In the same way drag yourself out of your sloth. – Gautama Buddha

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Elephant', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_elephant').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_elephant img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Band of Skulls is joining Cage the Elephant as my new musical caffeine. – Michael Koryta • Be humble as the blade of grass that is being trodden underneath the feet. The little ant tastes joyously the sweetness of honey and sugar. The mighty elephant trembles in pain under the agony of sharp goad – Sivananda • Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficult, elephants and poodles find many things obscure. – Georg C. Lichtenberg • But as the work proceeded I was continually reminded of the fable about the elephant and the tortoise. Having constructed an elephant upon which the mathematical world could rest, I found the elephant tottering, and proceeded to construct a tortoise to keep the elephant from falling. But the tortoise was not more secure than the elephant, and after some twenty years of very arduous toil, I came to the conclusion that there was nothing more that I could do in the way of making mathematical knowledge indubitable. – Bertrand Russell • But if you do not find an intelligent companion, a wise and well-behaved person going the same way as yourself, then go on your way alone, like a king abandoning a conquered kingdom, or like a great elephant in the deep forest. – Gautama Buddha • But my mother loved The Elephant Man, and my father gave David Lynch a scholarship to study in Rome. – Isabella Rossellini • But perhaps the most important lesson I learned is that there are no walls between humans and the elephants except those that we put up ourselves, and that until we allow not only elephants, but all living creatures their place in the sun, we can never be whole ourselves. – Lawrence Anthony • But what humans forget, cells remember. The body, that elephant – Jeffrey Eugenides • China cares about its reputation and doesn’t want to be known as the nation whose preferences drove the extinction of elephants. – Wayne Pacelle • Consider the biggest animals on the planet: elephants, and buffaloes, and giraffes. These are vegetarian animals. They grow to thousands of pounds of muscle and bone without ever eating cheeseburgers and pepperoni pizzas. – Michael Klaper • Currently poaching threatens the very existence of the African Elephant, and my worry is that if we do not act NOW, we could be looking at a future in which this iconic species is wiped out. – Yaya Toure • Dealing with the State Department is like watching an elephant become pregnant. – Franklin D. Roosevelt • Dear God. Not only am I unemployed and homeless, but I also have a pregnant woman, bereaved dog, elephant, and eleven horses to take care of. – Sara Gruen • Different persons growing up in the same language are like different bushes trimmed and trained to take the shape of identical elephants. The anatomical details of twigs and branches will fulfill the elephantine form differently from bush to bush, but the overall outward results are alike. – Willard Van Orman Quine • Diplomacy is much like the “lovemaking of elephants”, which is accompanied with a lot of bellowing and other sound effects, but no one can be sure of the consequences for at least the next two years – Shashi Tharoor • Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants. – Peter Senge • Do not be thoughtless, always be mindful, watch your thoughts! Draw yourself out of the path of evil, like an elephant sunk in mud. – Gautama Buddha • Eat like a bird, poop like an elephant. – Guy Kawasaki • Education isn’t everything, for a start it isn’t an elephant – Spike Milligan • Elephant Man [movie] was much more difficult physically. This had a couple of days. It was quite tricky. I had my leg strapped up behind me and I am a little older now. It was all marvelous, though. He [Bong Joon-ho] is one of the most fabulous directors in the world. – John Hurt • Elephants and grandchildren never forget. – Andy Rooney • Elephants are contagious. – Paul Eluard • Elephants are highly emotional. Whatever they are feeling, they let it out immediately, and the histrionics are over and forgotten in a moment, lasting no longer than the cloud formations that are constantly coming apart and re-forming overhead. There is no guile in pachyderms. – Alex Shoumatoff • Elephants are living treasures. Nature’s gardeners. Nature’s great teachers. Tragically some people don’t give a damn. They prefer the dead treasure to the living one. The ivory. We must challenge this so-called ‘trade’ with all our might and shame on those who would condone it. – Virginia McKenna • Elephants are my favourite creatures and have been since I was a boy and my mother read Kipling’s The Elephant’s Child to me. It was loving elephants so much that made we want to write my own story with an elephant at the centre and its bond with a child. – Michael Morpurgo • Elephants are so wise and so funny and so endangered and so intelligent. I just think there is a lot to learn from them. – Gloria Steinem • Elephants have a hard time adapting. Cockroaches outlive everything. – Peter Drucker • Elephants have the largest brains of any mammal on the face of the Earth. They are creative, altruistic and kind. – Ingrid Newkirk • Elephants suffer from too much patience. Their exhibitions of it may seem superb,-such power and such restraint, combined, are noble,-but a quality carried to excess defeats itself. – Clarence Day • Employers ganging up against workers is like raising an army of elephants against ants. – Mahatma Gandhi • Even animals have a conscience. Those in the jungle KILL only to eat, not live to kill. This is why we often see packs of predators focusing on just one kill, instead of targeting many. Even animals exercise reason. I have seen a mother lion taking care of a baby antelope, and a mother elephant taking care of a baby lion. The primal need to eat is unavoidable, yet even under severe hunger stretches, the desire to love can sometimes overcome the desire to eat. – Suzy Kassem • Even the elephant carries but a small trunk on his journeys. The perfection of traveling is to travel without baggage. – Henry David Thoreau • Even though the topic [of slavery] itself is the big, screaming elephant in the room, we still get a chance to have fun and enjoy what is on the screen, and we have moments where we’re actually happy. – Aldis Hodge • Every culture from the Egyptians to the Mayans to the American Indians to the Bedouins created bestiaries that enabled them to express their relationship with nature. Ashes and Snow is a 21st-century bestiary filled with species from around the world. Nature’s orchestra includes not just Homo sapiens but elephants, whales, manatees, eagles, cheetahs, orangutans, and many others. – Gregory Colbert • Every Man being conscious to himself, That he thinks, and that which his Mind is employ’d about whilst thinking, being the Ideas, that are there, ’tis past doubt, that Men have in their Minds several Ideas, such as are those expressed by the words, Whiteness, Hardness, Sweetness, Thinking, Motion, Man, Elephant, Army, Drunkenness, and others: It is in the first place then to be inquired, How he comes by them? I know it is a received Doctrine, That Men have native Ideas, and original Characters stamped upon their Minds, in their very first Being. – John Locke • Every theory in philosophy, which is built on pure conjecture, is an elephant; and every theory that is supported partly by fact, and partly by conjecture, is like Nebuchadnezzar’s image, whose feet were partly of iron, and partly of clay. – Thomas Reid • Everything that I love is behind those gates. We have elephants, and giraffes, and crocodiles, and every kind of tigers and lions. And – and we have bus loads of kids, who don’t get to see those things. They come up sick children, and enjoy it. – Michael Jackson • For me to put a look together, if it’s going to be a boy look or a girl look or whatever, is quite a tricky thing to do. I’m not doing drag because drag is seen in a certain way and my comedy has got zero to do with what I’m wearing. I could wear an elephant suit and say the same thing. – Eddie Izzard • General, your tank is a powerful vehicle It smashes down forests and crushes a hundred men. But it has one defect: It needs a driver. General, your bomber is powerful. It flies faster than a storm and carries more than an elephant. But it has one defect: It needs a mechanic. General, man is very useful. He can fly and he can kill. But he has one defect: He can think. – Bertolt Brecht • God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things. – Pablo Picasso • Have you ever been bitten by an elephant? How about a mosquito? It’s the little things in life that will bite you. For most of us, it’s the frequent, small and seemingly inconsequential choices that are of grave concern. – Darren Hardy • ‘Helping industry’ is the elephant pit of socialism, a deep hole with sharp spikes at the bottom, covered over with twigs and fresh grass. – Enoch Powell • How hard can it be to find a girl and an elephant for Christ’s sake? – Sara Gruen • I am persuaded that if the brutes even–if the dog, the horse, the ox, the elephant, the bird, could speak, they would confess, that, at the bottom of their nature, their instincts, their sensations, their obtuse intelligence, assisted by organs less perfect than ours, there is a clouded, secret sentiment of this existence of a superior and primordial Being, from whom all emanates, and to whom all returns. – Alphonse de Lamartine • I am she who lifts the mountains When she goes to hunt, Who wears mamba for a headband And a lion for a belt. Beware! I swallow elephants whole And pick my teeth with rhinoceros horns, I drink up rivers to get at the hippos. Let them hear my words! Nhamo is coming And her hunger is great. I am she who tosses trees Instead of spears. The ostrich is my pillow And the elephant is my footstool! I am Nhamo Who makes the river my highway And sends crocodiles scurrying into the reeds! – Nancy Farmer • I believe that the souls of women flatten and anchor themselves in times of adversity, lay in for the stay. I’ve heard that when elephants are attacked they often run, not away, but toward each other. Perhaps it is because they are a matriarchal society. – Elizabeth Berg • I can watch elephants (and elephants alone) for hours at a time, for sooner or later the elephant will do something very strange… There is mystery behind that masked gray visage, and ancient life force, delicate and mighty, awesome and enchanted, commanding the silence ordinarily reserved for mountain peaks, great fires, and the sea. – Peter Matthiessen • I cannot tell by what logic we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant ugly; they being created in those outward shapes and figures which best express the actions of their inward forms. – Thomas Browne • I couldn’t hit an elephant’s ass with a bull fiddle. – Babe Didrikson Zaharias • I do believe that the party has a bunch of elephants running around in donkey clothes. – Al Sharpton • I do not mean to call an elephant a vulgar animal, but if you think about him carefully, you will find that his nonvulgarity consists in such gentleness as is possible to elephantine nature-not in his insensitive hide, nor in his clumsy foot, but in the way he will lift his foot if a child lies in his way; and in his sensitive trunk, and still more sensitive mind, and capability of pique on points of honor. – John Ruskin • I do not now so much as wish to have the Strength of Youth again that I wish’d in Youth for the Strength of an Ox or Elephant. For it is our Business only to make the best Use we can of the Powers granted us by Nature. – Marcus Tullius Cicero • I don’t do impersonations. I can do a wounded elephant! I can do a really good cow! And because of the amount of time I spent in North Yorkshire, I do a variety of sheep. All of which I will be happy to roll out for you! – Patrick Stewart • I don’t know where I learned elephants like their tongues slapped. Whatever turns you on. – Betty White • I feel certain that the largest part of all photographs ever taken or being taken or ever to be taken, is and will continue to be, portraits. This is not only true, it is also necessary. We are not solitary mammals, like the elephant, the whale and the ape. What is most profoundly felt between us, even if hidden, will reappear in our portraits of one another. – Ben Maddow • I feel so guilty when I see orcas performing their stupid tricks in their little swimming pools, and when I see circuses or elephant abuse. I don’t want to be in the same industry with these people. – Sam Simon • I get an urge, like a pregnant elephant, to go away and give birth to a book. – Stephen Fry • I had seen a herd of Elephant travelling through dense native forest … pacing along as if they had an appointment at the end of the world. – Isak Dinesen • I have a face like the behind of an elephant. – Charles Laughton • I have a memory like an elephant. I remember every elephant I’ve ever met. – Herb Caen • I have a memory like an elephant. In fact, elephants often consult me. – Noel Coward • I have been called a Rogue Elephant, a Cannibal Shark, and a crocodile. I am none the worse. I remain a caged, and rather sardonic, lion, in a particularly contemptible and ill-run zoo. – Wyndham Lewis • I have family in Tanzania. I can’t even explain the joy of riding through the Tanzania national park and seeing giraffes run across the road and elephants over in a pond and baboons running. – Emanuel Cleaver • I have little space from the suffering of elephants right now. I wake up with it and go to sleep with it. The plight of animals in shelters, of kids used for labor for the metals in our electronics and endless other things, the fate of our water supply to dye our blue jeans and water our lawns, the sad painful life of conventionally raised meat…For me, I am working to not contribute to this. I really don’t want to hurt others for my benefit. – Kristin Bauer van Straten • I imagine the film [“300″] as if I was a Spartan and I had never seen an immortal or a Persian, or an elephant or a rhino for that matter. – Zack Snyder • I look after those who look after me.” He smacks his lips, stares at me, and adds, “I also look after those who don’t.” – Sara Gruen (Water for Elephants) – Sara Gruen • I often say, with something like ‘The Elephant Man,’ had it been an American series for television, where you have to sign your life away for seven years…well, maybe I would never have made ‘Sailcloth.’ – John Hurt • I once saw a photograph of a large herd of wild elephants in Central Africa Seeing an airplane for the first time, and all in a state of wild collective terror… As, however, there were no journalists among them, the terror died down when the airplane was out of sight. • I really wanted to work with David Lynch. I was a big fan of The Elephant Man and Eraserhead. – Sting • I saw a dead elephant in one of Kenya’s natural reserves. Around her were footprints of her baby elephant. This was just so sad, as three days before, perhaps the mother was still taking the baby around to play and to drink water. In her mind, she probably was thinking they had a life of decades to be together. However, the poaching happened so fast and everything collapsed. Without the protection of the mother, the baby elephant is likely to die too. That moment changed me. – Li Bingbing • I think the lion, besides the elephant, was the one animal that I just started thinking about so much. – Jillian Hervey • I want to go to Africa and find a really great hotel with good food right above a water hole where I can sit, have breakfast, and just watch the elephants play in the water. – David Crosby • I wanted to work with an elephant. – Robert Pattinson • I was born in love with all elephants. Not for a reason that I know. Not because of any of their individual qualities — wisdom, kindness, power, grace, patience, loyalty — but for what they are altogether. For their entire elephantness. – Pat Derby • I was driving pretty much the way everyone drives in LA, like elephants dancing on each others’ backs at a circus. – Gary Reilly • I was pretty shocked to learn that as many as 30,000 elephants are being killed every year to fuel the ivory trade, despite an international ban since 1989, and that 60% of forest elephants have already been wiped out. At this rate, experts say populations will become extinct in the next decade. No one needs ivory. – Ian Somerhalder • I will be doing a film called Whispers, for Disney. It’s about elephants, and doesn’t have any people in it. It will be a live action film – I don’t know how much I can say about it, since I still don’t know too much about it. – Trevor Rabin • I wore bell bottoms in elementary school. Never wore elephant bells. Remember, this was middle Oklahoma in the ’70s. – Garth Brooks • I worked next to an elephant. And considering that she could step on your toes, it’s a good idea to keep a certain distance. It’s also a good idea to befriend the trainer. – Christoph Waltz • If a playwright tried to see eye to eye with everybody, he would get the worst case of strabismus since Hannibal lost an eye trying to count his nineteen elephants during a snowstorm while crossing the Alps. – James Thurber • If anyone wants to know what elephants are like, they are like people only more so. – Pierre Corneille • If he be so resolved, I can o’ersway him; for he loves to hear That unicorns may be betrayed with trees And bears with glasses, elephants with holes, Lions with toils, and men with flatterers – William Shakespeare • If thou art of elephant-strength or of lion-claw, still peace is, in my opinion, better than strife. – Saadi • If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality. – Desmond Tutu • If you cannot find a good companion to walk with, walk alone, like an elephant roaming the jungle. It is better to be alone than to be with those who will hinder your progress. – Gautama Buddha • If you have appreciation for life, whether it is a planet or any wild species, if it’s a human or an elephant, death is really bad for all of us to adjust to. We are all going to die. When it happens in such a drastic, inhuman way, which we’ve been seeing in Africa, this is crime on its highest level. – Veronika Varekova • If you want to shoot rare, fast-moving elephants, you should always carry a loaded gun. – Warren Buffett • If you’ve got a great crew it’s intense, but its quite short. ‘The Elephant Man’ was longer than most, for an independent film. That was a 14 week film. But it was because of the intrinsic difficulties. We had to invent a different way of filming, because the makeup was so long. A working day for me with a full makeup on was nineteen hours. So obviously you couldn’t do that twice running. – John Hurt • If you’ve never seen an elephant ski, then you’ve never been on acid. – Eddie Izzard • I’ll do anything to keep everyone laughing. Things get too intense on film sets. I remember on The Elephant Man, I used to imitate a cat without moving my lips. David Lynch would say, “Cut! Sorry, we’ve got a noise somewhere on set.” Everyone would be looking around for this cat. – Anthony Hopkins • I’m like an elephant, ok? If I walk into a room, it’s like, OK, he’s in there. – Aziz Ansari • I’m moved by us, our quirks and mistakes. I find inspiration in everything from a piece of art to the hem of a dress. I’m one of those people who sees Frank Zappa in a cup of coffee, or elephants wrestling in clouds. But also, conscious creation of all kinds moves me. And a divinely expressed performance in any genre sets me completely on fire. – Idara Victor • I’m one of those people who sees Frank Zappa in a cup of coffee, or elephants wrestling in clouds. But also, conscious creation of all kinds moves me. – Idara Victor • I’m really into moderation. Too much of anything will harm you in the end. Too much sugar. Too much pasta. I’m into drugs as a teaching tool, which is why I only take hallucinogenics. I mean, it’s not like I’ve never done cocaine, but, on the whole, if I can’t see dancing elephants then I’m not interested. – Tori Amos • In a manner which matches the fortuity, if not the consequence, of Archimedes’ bath and Newton’s apple, the [3.6 million year old] fossil footprints were eventually noticed one evening in September 1976 by the paleontologist Andrew Hill, who fell while avoiding a ball of elephant dung hurled at him by the ecologist David Western. – John Reader • In America you have the mouse now trying to sit down on the elephant, thinking that he’s going somewhere. And it’s – and it’s absurd. – Malcolm X • In Haydn’s oratorios, the notes present to the imagination not only motions, as, of the snake, the stag, and the elephant, but colors also; as the green grass. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • In terms of economical aspects, reinforcing those national parks with sophisticated anti-poaching patrols – these poachers are beefed up like the army. In the case of Cameroon, that’s a perfect example of the lack of finance. The government could not provide the national park with more guards. Therefore, they lost the majority of the elephant population. I don’t want to see that anywhere else. – Veronika Varekova • In the divine Scriptures, there are shallows and there are deeps; shallows where the lamb may wade, and deeps where the elephant may swim. – John Owen • In the sallies of badinage a polite fool shines; but in gravity he is as awkward as an elephant disporting. – Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann • Isimangaliso must be the only place on the globe where the oldest land mammal (rhinoceros) and the world biggest terrestrial mammal (elephant) share an ecosystem with the world’s oldest fish (coelacanth) and the world’s biggest marine mammal (whale) – Nelson Mandela • It happened while I was filming “Water for Elephants in which my partner is Reese Witherspoon. We had a scene with elephants but there were so many paparazzi around that it was scaring the animals and it was impossible to film. Out of the blue, fans, that were waiting for autographs, had enough and circled around the paparazzi. Teens made big guys run away. It was unreal! I was pleased. – Robert Pattinson • It is curious how there seems to be an instinctive disgust in Man for his nearest ancestors and relations. If only Darwin could conscientiously have traced man back to the Elephant or the Lion or the Antelope, how much ridicule and prejudice would have been spared to the doctrine of Evolution. – Havelock Ellis • It is the little bits of things that fret and worry us; we can dodge a elephant, but we can’t dodge a fly. – Josh Billings • It may surprise people to learn that one elephant is killed every 15 minutes for its ivory. – Li Bingbing • It wasn’t that I hated being asked a bunch of questions. I had nothing against questions. I just didn’t like listening to them, because some questions take forever to make sense. Sometimes waiting for a question to finish is like watching someone draw an elephant starting with the tail first. As soon as you see the tail your mind wanders all over the place and you think of a million other animals that also have tails until you don’t care about the elephant because it’s only one thing when you’ve been thinking about a million others. – Jack Gantos • It’s amazing how quickly human beings adapt, isn’t it? It was such a great crew, and David [Lynch] was wonderful to work with [on ‘The Elephant Man’]. It was a very thrilling time, actually. – John Hurt • It’s estimated that across Africa 100 elephants are killed for their tusks every day. It takes nothing more than simple math to get to what that adds up to in a year, and it’s a distressing figure. – Graydon Carter • It’s hard for the donkeys to win the race if they’re going to carry the elephants on their backs. – Jim Hightower • It’s very difficult to move yourself up bit by bit. It’s like trying to eat an elephant for God’s sake. I can do it. It’s just I have to have it bite by bite, you know. It’s possible. You can eat an elephant, but you have to do it bite by bite. You can’t do it all in one go. – Colin Montgomerie • Jackie had a keen eye for talent, and like an elephant never forgot. And, he was always right on the mark. – Audrey Meadows • Knowing what you need doesn’t always mean you know how to get it, though. I’d spent a long time hiding in my cave. No matter how much I might want to come out into the light, I knew it would hurt my eyes. I was a fool. A fool, but nevertheless too smart not to know I was the architect of my own demise, that it was time to put my past behind me. It was time to stop allowing the white elephants to stand unspoken of in my living room. – Megan Hart • Learning to play with a big amplifier is like trying to control an elephant. – Ritchie Blackmore • Leo couldn’t help smiling. “That could be fun.” “Fun” she said unhappily. “Blue elephants.” “Blue elephants.” “Kiss me you fool.” “You fool. – Rick Riordan • Letter 1 To the princess of the elephants, I disappeared exactly one year ago. On that day I received a letter. It called me back to the place where my life with the elephants began Please forgive me, for the silence between us has been unbroken for one year. I will never be more of myself than in these letters. They are my maps of the bird path, and they are all that I know to be true. – Gregory Colbert • Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt. – Pierre Trudeau • Love will draw an elephant through a key-hole. – Samuel Richardson • Lured by the wilderness, and by the chance of spotting rare desert elephants, a few intrepid tourists make their way to the Skeleton Coast each year. It’s just about as remote as any tourist destination on earth, but one that pays fabulous dividends. – Tahir Shah • May an elephant caress you with his toes – ‘Little’ Jimmy Dickens • Media people should have long noses like an elephant to smell out politicians, mayors, prime ministers and businessmen. We need to know the reality, the good and the bad, not just the appearance. – Dalai Lama • Mother elephants in the circus cannot help their babies, but we can. – Edie Falco • Mumbling priests swinging stick cans on their chains and even witch doctors conjuring up curses with a well-buried elephant tooth have a better sense of their places in the world. They know this universe is brimming with magic, with life and riddles and ironies. They know that the world might eat them, and no encyclopedia could stop it. – N.D. Wilson • My biggest concern and main engagement with UNEP is focused on endangered species and illegal wildlife trade – mostly elephants, rhinos, etc. – Yaya Toure • My biggest influence growing up was Mad magazine, which is a very text-heavy form of visual satire. I didn’t grow up wanting to draw donkeys and elephants with the names of politicians written across them. – Tom Tomorrow • My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. – Antoine de Saint-Exupery • My roommate got a pet elephant. Then it got lost. It’s in the apartment somewhere. – Steven Wright • My stepfather used to be a clown in The Shrine Circus. He took me backstage when I was 23. I saw three elephants chained to the cement floor in the warehouse of the Michigan State Fairgrounds. Sadness, hopelessness and fear were emanating from their eyes, from their bodies. They were swaying neurotically from side to side. A monkey was screaming in his cage, grabbing the bars of his prison. Two tigers were pacing feverishly in their tiny cages. Cruelty was staring me in the face. I knew something was wrong. If you pay attention to energy, you can tell when a fellow being is in peril. – Gary Yourofsky • Nature’s great masterpiece, an elephant; the only harmless great thing. – John Donne • Nothing appeases an enraged elephant so much as the sight of a little lamb. – Saint Francis de Sales • Now the freaks are on television, the freaks are in the movies. And it’s no longer the sideshow, it’s the whole show. The colorful circus and the clowns and the elephants, for all intents and purposes, are gone, and we’re dealing only with the freaks. – Jonathan Winters • Once there was an elephant Who tried to use the telephant. No! no! I mean an elephone Who tried to use the telephone. Dear me, I am not certain quite That even now I’ve got it right. – Laura E. Richards • One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I’ll never know. – Groucho Marx • One researcher just determined that African and Indian elephants make each other sick. When a new animal or plant is introduced to a habitat bad things happen. The biggest danger to native wildlife is foreign wildlife. – Robert T. Bakker • Our elders say that an elephant does not find its own trunk heavy. – Zakes Mda • Our problem with limited resources is not primarily overpopulation; it is greed. Our problem with pollution is not the invention of fluorocarbons or mass transport; it is irresponsibility. The loss of an acre of forest every second, the mass slaughter of elephants for their ivory, the extinction of entire species of plants, insects and animals all over the world is not something that “just happens” because there are more of us human beings. It happens because the race of ruling beings put in charge has almost wholly lost its sense of stewardship. We have turned away from God. – Winkie Pratney • Over-population is the ’cause of drive-by shootings’ and other social ills, but the root of the problem is Christianity, which posits that people are more important than sea otters and elephants. – Ted Turner • People of conscience in our leadership in Washington have been scared off by the right and the fossil fuel lobbies. They won’t even use the term “sustainability” or “climate change” in an energy bill, which is ludicrous on its face. It completely ignores the elephant in the room that we’re all dealing with. The average American doesn’t even believe climate change is real, they think it’s all a hoax. – James Cameron • Plastic surgery is like a big elephant sitting in the Hollywood living room. – Patricia Heaton • Pointless. . . . Like giving caviar to an elephant. – William Faulkner • PROBOSCIS, n. The rudimentary organ of an elephant which serves him in place of the knife-and-fork that Evolution has as yet denied him. For purposes of humor it is popularly called a trunk. – Ambrose Bierce • Psychoanalysts and elephants, they never forget. – Arthur Laurents • Recently I stood in the desert, far out side of L. A., and watched the sun set on a circus tent from 1930. Every where stood animals: elephants, tigers that should be loaded into a steam train. 300 extras in costumes raced around, the modern world had disappeared totally. Although that was totally fake, it still happened directly before my eyes! That was my perfect day. I would be gladly experience that every day. It happens continually to me: It calls itself work. That is wonderful and more than enough. – Robert Pattinson • Seized ivory stocks around Africa are recycled back into illegal trade due to corruption. Ivory stocks should be burnt together with the hopes of traffickers for any “legal” way to allow them to slaughter our elephants. – Ofir Drori • Shallows where a lamb could wade and depths where an elephant would drown. – Matthew Henry • So I went home and I told my mom that I wanted to quit and be an actress and she said, “Huh, that sounds fascinating. It’s wonderful!” And I told my father and he literally said, “I don’t care if you want to be an elephant trainer if it makes you happy.” – Gena Rowlands • So oft in theologic wars, The disputants, I ween, Rail on in utter ignorance Of what each other mean, And prate about an Elephant Not one of them has seen! – John Godfrey Saxe • So slowly the hot elephant hearts grow full of desire, and the great beasts mate in secret at last, hiding their fire. – D. H. Lawrence • Soft fantasy worlds have a much looser cause-and-effect relationship. Alchemists can turn lead into gold and nobody wonders about how it will impact the currency system. Someone waves a wand and turns an elephant into a mouse and nobody worries about conservation of mass. – Patrick Rothfuss • Some women are like elephants. I don’t mean size, I mean they never forget. – Laura Schlessinger • Sybil’s female forebears had valiantly backed up their husbands as distant embassies were besieged, had given birth on a camel or in the shade of a stricken elephant, had handed around the little gold chocolates while trolls were trying to break into the compound, or had merely stayed at home and nursed such bits of husbands and sons as made it back from endless little wars. The result was a species of woman who, when duty called, turned into solid steel. – Terry Pratchett • The ability to double our biomass – not by waiting several million years and growing to be the size of an elephant – but waiting a few hundred thousand years for neurons to sprout into our brains – ones capable of having us create emotional relationships with other members of our species. We thereby double our biomass not by getting bigger, but by creating an ally. – John Medina • The Arab awakening was like watching elephants fly: something you didn’t expect, something you haven’t seen before, “Wow, elephants fly.” – Thomas Friedman • The Bible is a stream of running water, where alike the elephant may swim, and the lamb walk without losing its feet. – Pope Gregory I • The Buddhists have a story about blind men trying to describe an elephant by feeling it’s various parts, and each describes the elephant according to the part he touched. That is the way we can hope to know God. – Kent Nerburn • The circus a place where horses, ponies and elephants are permitted to see men, women and children acting the fool. – Ambrose Bierce • The elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy; his legs are legs for necessity, not for flexure. – William Shakespeare • The elephant in the room time and time again when it comes to work and promotions is maternity leave. We need to work with businesses so they work with women and make it easy and supportive for them to come back into the workplace. – Mary Portas • The Elephant Man claimed his head was big because, it’s so full of dreams. Actually, it’s because his skull was shaped like a turkey. – Dana Gould • ‘The Elephant Man’ was hugely enjoyable to do. I thought the one stage, when Chris Tucker did the first makeup and it took 12 hours, I thought they’d actually found a way for me not to enjoy filming. – John Hurt • The Elephant Man would never have gotten up and gone, ‘Oh, God. Look at me hair today.’ – Karl Pilkington • The elephant, not only the largest but the most intelligent of animals, provides us with an excellent example. It is faithful and tenderly loving to the female of its choice, mating only every third year and then for no more than five days, and so secretly as never to be seen, until, on the sixth day, it appears and goes at once to wash its whole body in the river, unwilling to return to the herd until thus purified. Such good and modest habits are an example to husband and wife. – Saint Francis de Sales • The elephant, the huge old beast, is slow to mate – D. H. Lawrence • The elephants were being slaughtered in masses. Some were even killed in the vicinity of big tourist hotels. – Richard Leakey • The fact that the infrastructure is falling apart is not necessarily because it’s built poorly. The New York City subways were built in 1903. The fact that they’re still running at all is an enormous success. The fact that New York City’s bridges have held up as long as they have is extraordinary, and the engineers didn’t have computers to tell them about tolerance. They overbuilt these things – traffic on them is like an ant on an elephant. – Alan Weisman • The illegal wildlife trade threatens not only the survival of entire species, such as elephants and rhinos, but also the livelihoods and, often, the very lives of millions of people across Africa who depend on tourism for a living. – Yaya Toure • The Internet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhoea – massive, difficult to re-direct, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it. – Gene Spafford • The largest land animal is the elephant, and it is the nearest to man in intelligence: it understands the language of its country and obeys orders, remembers duties that it has been taught, is pleased by affection and by marks of honour, nay more it possesses virtues rare even in man, honesty, wisdom, justice, also respect for the stars and reverence for the sun and moon. – Pliny the Elder • The law of nature gives a man the right to defend himself when he’s attacked. And God’s law itself gives a man the right to defend himself when he’s attacked.so, peaceful suffering and passive resistance and all of that stuff is all right maybe in India somewhere, where the people in India outnumber the whites – about a million to one.But here in America, when you tell that’s like an elephant sitting down on a – on a mouse in India with [Mahatma] Gandhi. – Malcolm X • The mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider’s job is to serve the elephant. The rider is our conscious reasoning-the stream of words and images of which we are fully aware. The elephant is the other 99 percent of mental processes-the ones that occur outside of awareness but that actually govern most of our behavior. – Jonathan Haidt • The problem is that during the 1980s, a decade of heavy poaching, the elephants retreated to safer areas. And now people have moved into the corridors once used by the elephants. – Richard Leakey • The question is, are we happy to suppose that our grandchildren may never be able to see an elephant except in a picture book? – David Attenborough • The reason I know about ‘Tomb Raider’ is from when I was researching ‘Elephant.’ It was 1999, and I was trying to research the Columbine-massacre kids, and they had played video games, and I, at the time, had never really seen one. It was a world I didn’t know. – Gus Van Sant • The sad thing about destroying the environment is that we’re going to take the rest of life with us. The bluebirds will be gone, and the elephants will be gone, and the tigers will be gone, and the pandas will be gone. – Ted Turner • The strongest animals on earth are plant eaters. Every creature we’ve enlisted to do the work we couldn’t handle – the horse, donkey, elephant, camel, water buffalo, ox, yak – is an herbivore… whose huge muscles were built from plant protein, and whose strong bones got that way, and stayed that way, from grazing on grass and eating other vegetables. – Victoria Moran • The thing about movie musicals is that there have been some brilliant ones, but when they’re bad, they’re really bad – big white elephants. – Rob Marshall • The United States should not jump around like an elephant frightened by a mouse. – George F. Kennan • The whole idea of being in captivity in such limited space, especially in a zoo, causes elephants to suffer. They develop all kinds of foot diseases. They die. They get cysts. Not only is it painful, it eventually kills them. – Lily Tomlin • The whole new Democratic Party is the old Republican Party. We have a whole bunch of elephants running around in donkey’s clothes. – Robert Novak • The world is hollow. It’s a lot to take in. Like cracking an egg and finding nothing inside. Or a full grown elephant. – Geraldine McCaughrean • The world is not a burden; we make it a burden by our desires. When the desires are removed, the world is as light as a feather on an elephant’s back. – Baba Hari Dass • The world’s strongest animals are plant eaters. Gorillas, Buffaloes, Elephants and me. – Patrik Baboumian • There are some people the gestation period is like an elephant’s and it’s just years and years before they’re ready. – John Amaechi • There are, broadly speaking, two types of drinkers. There is the man whom we all know, stupid, unimaginative, whose brain is bitten numbly by numb maggots; who walks generously with wide-spread, tentative legs, falls frequently in the gutter, and who sees, in the extremity of his ecstasy, blue mice and pink elephants…. The other type of drinker has imagination, vision. Even when most pleasantly jingled he walks straight and naturally, never staggers nor falls, and knows just where he is and what he is doing. It is not his body but his brain that is drunken. – Jack London • There is no creature among all the Beasts of the world which hath so great and ample demonstration of the power and wisdom of almighty God as the Elephant. – Edward Topsell • There’s a place in Botswana where there are 100,000 elephants living in a single population. Think of the amount of space they need. Remember, the United States would fit in Africa three times over and there would still be space. That’s how big Africa is. – Patrick Bergin • There’s enough sedative in these darts to bring down a werewolf, which is exactly what we’re hunting. Why would we want to bring down an elephant if we’re not hunting elephants? – Derek Landy • These magnificent species of Africa – elephants, rhino, lions, leopards, cheetah, the great apes (Africa has four of the world’s five great apes) – this is a treasure for all humanity, and they are not for sale. They are not for trade. They need to be valued and preserved by humanity. We all need a global commitment to that. – Patrick Bergin • They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist… – John Sedgwick • They say that vegetable food is not sufficiently nutritious. But chemistry proves the contrary. So does physiology. So does experience….And again: the largest and strongest animals in the world are those which eat no flesh-food of any kind – the elephant and the rhinoceros. – R. Trall • Time magazine put Chris Christie on the cover with the caption, ‘The Elephant in the Room.’ And People magazine named him ‘Sexiest Garbage Truck in a Suit.’ – Bill Maher • To achieve this density of a neutron star at home, just cram a herd of 50 million elephants into the volume of a thimble. – Neil deGrasse Tyson • To be a baby elephant must be wonderful. Surrounded by a loving family 24 hours a day. Touched by the family, cuddled and comforted. A tremendous love and compassion exuded by every family member. I think it must be how it ought to be, in a perfect world. – Daphne Sheldrick • To keep a man a slave you do much the same as the cruel circus masters did to the elephant around the turn of last century. Clamp heavy chains around their legs and stake them to the ground. Then beat and terrorize them. After a while you no longer even have to stake the chain; the elephant gives up and just the mere rattle of the chain convinces the elephant there is no hope, so they give up and do whatever it is the circus requires. – Glenn Beck • Use a sweet tongue, courtesy, and gentleness, and thou mayest manage to guide an elephant by a hair. – Saadi • We admire elephants in part because they demonstrate what we consider the finest human traits: empathy, self-awareness, and social intelligence. But the way we treat them puts on display the very worst of human behavior. – Graydon Carter • We already live a very long time for mammals, getting three times as many heartbeats as a mouse or elephant. It never seems enough though, does it? – David Brin • We are having to pull money into site-level protection for elephants just to keep them alive. But there isn’t enough money to go around. The people involved in protecting those elephants, like rangers on the ground, are so under-resourced. They have very few vehicles, they have very poor weapons (if any weapons at all), and they are treated as the bottom of the tree when it comes to law enforcement priority. – Allen Crawford • We are not the only animal that mourns; apes do, and elephants, and dogs. Yet we are the only one that tortures. – Geraldine Brooks • We are the bird’s eggs. Bird’s eggs, flowers, butterflies, rabbits, cows, sheep, we are caterpillars; we are leaves of ivy and springs of wildflower. We are women. We rise from the wave. We are gazelle and doe, elephant and whale, lilies and roses and peach, we are air, we are flame, we are oyster and pearl, we are girls. We are woman and nature. And he says he cannot hear us speak. But we hear. – Susan Griffin • We call a thing big or little with reference to what it is wont to be, as we speak of a small elephant or a big rat. – D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson • We can’t have these great corporations crowding competition off the sidewalks. It’s like an elephant saying, “Everyone for himself,” as he dances among the chickens. – Emanuel Celler • We did a campaign here with New York Times. We had a great ad: “Today in America, someone will kill an elephant for a bracelet.” We became sensitized in our society. Now there are four or five billion people in Asia who need to get this message. We need to use social media, print magazines, celebrities – anything we can to share this message. It’s not cool, it’s not okay. You are destroying beautiful animals. You are robbing a continent of its wealth. And you are hurting a lot of innocent people. – Patrick Bergin • We have all seen these circus elephants complete with tusks, ivory in their head and thick skins, who move around the circus ring and grab the tail of the elephant ahead of them. – John F. Kennedy • We have to be aggressive when those we stick up for have no voice. I don’t consider it radical to say cruelty is wrong and that animals should be respected. I consider it radical to eat corpses, put electrodes in animals’ heads, make elephants live in chains in the circus, and poison animals we consider a nuisance. – Ingrid Newkirk • We shall not attempt to give the reader an idea of that tetrahedron nose-that horse-shoe mouth-that small left eye over-shadowed by a red bushy brow, while the right eye disappeared entirely under an enormous wart-of those straggling teeth with breaches here and there like the battlements of a fortress-of that horny lip, over which one of those teeth projected like the tusk of an elephant-of that forked chin-and, above all, of the expression diffused over the whole-that mixture of malice, astonishment, and melancholy. Let the reader, if he can, figure to himself this combination. – Victor Hugo • We’ll be back to our nature documentary, ‘Baggy the Anorexic Elephant’ in just a second. – Colin Mochrie • Well, the big elephant in the whole system is the baby boomer generation that marches through like a herd of elephants. And we begin to retire in 2008. – Lindsey Graham • Whales, like elephants, are so social and intelligent. This hurts me to think of them being transported, put in noisy airplanes, and brought to a horrible concrete pen when they’re supposed to be out in the sea. – Jane Goodall • What ever happened to freak shows? Back in the twenties when elephant man was born at least he had a job waiting for him. – Doug Stanhope • What is bigger than an elephant? But this also is become man’s plaything, and a spectacle at public solemnities; and it learns to skip, dance, and kneel – Plutarch • What is the elephant in all our rooms? It is the global triumph of capitalism. Democracy is fiercely disputed. Freedom is under threat even in old-established democracies such as Britain. Western supremacy is on the skids. But everyone does capitalism. Americans and Europeans do it. Indians do it. Russian oligarchs and Saudi princes do it. Even Chinese communists do it… Karl Marx would be turning in his grave. Or perhaps not, since some of his writings eerily foreshadowed our era of globalised capitalism. His prescription failed but his description was prescient. – Timothy Garton Ash • What is true for E. coli is also true for the elephant. – Jacques Monod • What? Men dodging this way for single bullets? What will you do when they open fire along the whole line? I am ashamed of you. They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance. – John Sedgwick • When children see animals in a circus, they learn that animals exist for our amusement. Quite apart from the cruelty involved in training and confining these animals, the whole idea that we should enjoy the humiliating spectacle of an elephant or lion made to perform circus tricks shows a lack of respect for the animals as individuals. – Peter Singer • When eating an elephant take one bite at a time. – Creighton W. Abrams, Jr. • When millions of tons of angry elephant come spinning through the sky, and there was no one there to hear it, does it – philosopically speaking – make a noise – Terry Pratchett • When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it’s best to let him run. – Abraham Lincoln • Where do they go when they die? We hear of the elephant graveyards, where the elephants go to die, but how much more curious it is that birds are not falling out of the sky all the time, on our heads, at our feet, dying and falling and flopping to the ground. I rarely see a dead bird on the ground. – Sophy Burnham • Whereas all humans have approximately the same life expectancy the life expectancy of stars varies as much as from that of a butterfly to that of an elephant. – George Gamow • Whereas an elephant that was scared to death that diesel powered equipment, equipment that ran on a gas engine, was just fine. Because somebody had attacked it with construction equipment. But if it had a diesel engine, it was bad. – Temple Grandin • While I had often said that I wanted to die in bed, what I really meant was that in my old age I wanted to be stepped on by an elephant while making love. – Roger Zelazny • Women and elephants never forget an injury. – Hector Hugh Munro • Women and elephants never forget. – Dorothy Parker • Women are like elephants to me. I like to look at them, but I wouldn’t want to own one. – W. C. Fields • Words are cheap. The biggest thing you can say is “elephant”. – Charlie Chaplin • Yeah, Kubrick’s a big influence. In something like ‘A Clockwork Orange,’ he is trying to use the practical light – I mean, at least he says that in his interviews, like they’re not using traditionally Hollywood lights. In ‘Elephant’ we basically used no lights; we never really adjusted. – Gus Van Sant • You can eat an elephant if you do it one bite at a time. – Robert Christopher Riley • You know, that stuff about pink elephants, that’s the bunk. It’s little animals. Little tiny turkeys in straw hats. Midget monkeys coming through the keyholes. – Billy Wilder • You know…they say an elephant never forgets. What they don’t tell you is, you never forget an elephant. – Bill Murray • You see, in a world where elephants are pursued by flying men, people are just naturally going to want to get high. – Judith Rascoe • You’ve got to shake your fists at lightning now, you’ve got to roar like forest fire You’ve got to spread your light like blazes all across the sky They’re going to aim the hoses on you, show ’em you won’t expire Not till you burn up every passion, not even when you die Come on now, you’ve got to try, if you’re feeling contempt, well then you tell it If you’re tired of the silent night, Jesus, well then you yell it Condemned to wires and hammers, strike every chord that you feel That broken trees and elephant ivories conceal – Joni Mitchell

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equitiesstocks · 4 years

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Elephants Quotes

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