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#not that bad I hope
teejaystumbles · 2 years
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it’s still Halloween so have some more gory dreamling :P
For 24 long hours, when John Dee held Dream’s ruby, the world sank into madness, sleeplessness and nightmares.
Listen.
Hob Gadling dreams. He is in a dark stone basement. Moonlight through a skylight far above illuminates a broken glass sphere, large enough to hold a man.
There is a creature inside it, crouching between shards of glass. Hob steps closer, fascinated. The creature looks like a man, yet is not. Its limbs are impossibly long, its skin is white as marble and stretched tightly over visible bones. Its face is a face Hob has beheld only a handful of times but would know how to draw with his eyes closed, if he had any talent for such things. It looks like his stranger but its body is so strangely-shaped that he struggles to believe they could be one and the same. Its eyes are pools of black tar with red embers glowing in their depths. Hair that shimmers like raven’s feathers and black spider’s silk sits on its head like a crown, unruly and wild. Hob has fantasized about the feel of that hair. Despite himself he takes another step, still unsure. Can this really be…?
It watches him as he steps closer. Then it opens its mouth and releases a low and trembling moan that shakes the basement’s foundation and makes the hair on Hob’s arms stand on end. Needle-sharp teeth glint in a beam of moonlight and in a second the creature is upon him.
Hob falls to the floor on his back with a grunt, long white bony claws clutch at his chest and tear at his shirt. He stares up into the bottomless eyes and pleads:
“It is you, isn’t it? Let me help. I can help, I can…”
The creature snarls and rips straight through his shirt and tears bloody gashes into his chest. Hob hisses in pain and grapples with the creature’s – his stranger’s, he’s sure, it has to be – claws and shoulders to hold him off.
“Please, wait, what can I do-”
Needle-sharp teeth bury in his shoulder and he howls. Claws are ripping him open, digging deeper inside his chest and Hob sucks in desperate breath after breath, gasping in pain. The teeth release him and his stranger’s handsome face stares down at him with blood dripping from his lips and chin.
Give me Give me more so cold cold COLD
It shivers against him and Hob fights against the pain and lifts his arms to embrace the skeletal monstrous form of his stranger, draws painful breath to say:
“I’ve got you, I’ll hold you, I’ll warm you, please, I’m here-”
Stay stay STAY get me OUT of here give me more I NEED MORE hungry hungry cold cold HUNGRY
Sharp clawed fingers pull his ribs apart and soft lips and nose bury in his neck and pant against him as he screams. Hob is dimly aware that this must be a dream, it has to be. He has never held consciousness for so long under such physical strain and having his rib-cage opened is a first but he’s pretty sure he would have blacked out a while ago. His stranger is pushing at him as if he’s trying to crawl inside him and Hob can only shake and gasp for breath and pull him closer.
Closer Please closer more deeper deeper you you you HOB please
“Anything...anything, for you…” he whispers into unbelievably soft black hair, chokes on his own blood and coughs, pushes trembling fingers into bony shoulders to hold his stranger as he shakes and buries his face in Hob’s open chest to feast, to wear him like a mantle-
Hob HOB HOB
“Yes…”
“Hob…”
The stranger’s voice is suddenly different, no longer a rush of sound into his brain but a voice his ears register. Hob fights through the pain to open his eyes. His stranger looks at him, his face full of Hob’s blood, but his eyes are wide and glinting with now white stars in their midst and there is sanity and recognition in them.
“Ah… hello old stranger...” Hob wheezes and smiles. With a glance at them both the stranger releases Hob, a frown marring his beautiful features. He waves his right hand and suddenly the pain is gone. Hob looks down at himself and sees no blood, no torn open chest. His stranger stares down at him, now clad in a black shirt and trousers. He still has Hob’s blood on his face and Hob shivers.
He lifts his hand and brushes it over his stranger’s chin.
“You still got…”
His hand comes away bloody and his stranger’s eyes widen, he sucks in a breath and then the blood is gone.
“I am sorry, Hob. I did not wish for you to experience any of this.” he says in a voice full of sadness. “A madman held control over the dreaming for several hours. This was...a very personal nightmare that latched onto you. I apologize.”
Hob tries to think. “Oh...so this was your nightmare?”
His stranger cocks his head and then lowers his eyes. “Yes.”
“Why...why would it latch...onto me then?” Hob asks and waits with baited breath. Part of him is thrilled. His stranger is here, and even if it’s a dream, he knows it is real.
Lips like rose petals part and tremble for a second before giving him an answer.
“Because this is my nightmare. You, here...and me, like that.”
His stranger sighs softly and steps back.
“I was...imprisoned. For a very long time. When I escaped I left this part of me here… I could not control it. And you stumbled upon it. Of all the nightmares that exist, you had to find this one.”
He shakes his head angrily and turns to leave.
“There will be no more bad dreams tonight, Hob Gadling, I promise. Sleep well.”
“Wait!”
Hob desperately reaches for him, grabs at his shoulder and pulls him back. His stranger frowns at him but waits. Hob releases a nervous breath.
“It wasn’t a nightmare. Not to me. I would…” he swallows heavily. “I would give you all you need. Anytime. Anything. I mean it.”
The stranger stares at him, lips parted, looking taken aback, if Hob where to guess. Hob feels himself blushing, feels his heart tripping and beating loudly and gives a helpless smile. He releases the other’s shoulder and looks at his feet.
“Sorry. I, I just wanted to tell you. I...hope to see you again. Soon?”
He lifts his eyes to his stranger’s face again with so much hope it’s choking him. Twin stars glitter in eyes like black tidal pools and a tiny smile plays at the edges of the stranger’s lips. A voice like dark velvet is the last thing Hob registers before he is sinking into soft dreamless depths.
“Very soon, Hob.”
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badolmen · 5 months
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WARNING 18+
19
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hansoeii · 10 months
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look at you, you're gorgeous!
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vita-divata · 3 months
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Getting ready for bed~
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broh3m3 · 4 months
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"I-It's a matter of life or death!"
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montanabohemian · 11 months
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if i see a single one of you pissed that your faves canceled an event or a con appearance because they're striking for fair wages then imma come for you in your sleep 🔪🔪🔪
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(direct that fury where it belongs: AMPTP and the execs)
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kuchipachi · 4 months
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loversneverdie.com
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angsty-art-ist · 2 months
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certified coolkid moment: finding the rotting corpse of your classmate in the woods
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millacm · 1 month
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mini bad kids ! I'm making this into a sticker to hand out to folks at D20 live in Glasgow !!
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andthebeanstalk · 1 year
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Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".
Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"
And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".
Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.
At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.
So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!
Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!
Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!
Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.
#hlep#original#mental health#my sympathies and empathies to anyone who has to rely on this kind of hlep to get what they need.#the people in my life who most need to see this post are my family but even if they did I sincerely doubt they would internalize it#i've tried to break thru to them so many times it makes my head hurt. so i am focusing on boundaries and on finding other forms of support#and this thing i learned today helps me validate those boundaries. the example with the milk was from my therapist.#the example with the towing company was a real thing that happened with my parents a few months ago while I was age 28. 28!#a full adult age! it is so infantilizing as a disabled adult to seek assistance and support from ableist parents.#they were real mad i was mad tho. and the spoons i spent trying to explain it were only the latest in a long line of#huge family-related spoon expenditures. distance and the ability to enforce boundaries helps. haven't talked to sisters for literally the#longest period of my whole life. people really believe that if they love you and try to help you they can do no wrong.#and those people are NOT great allies to the chronically sick folks in their lives.#you can adore someone and still fuck up and hurt them so bad. will your pride refuse to accept what you've done and lash out instead?#or will you have courage and be kind? will you learn and grow? all of us have prejudices and practices we are not yet aware of.#no one is pure. but will you be kind? will you be a good friend? will you grow? i hope i grow. i hope i always make the choice to grow.#i hope with every year i age i get better and better at making people feel the opposite of how my family's ableism has made me feel#i will see them seen and hear them heard and smile at their smiles. make them feel smart and held and strong.#just like i do now but even better! i am always learning better ways to be kind so i don't see why i would stop
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lieu-rey · 2 months
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first meeting
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obey-me-but-bad · 1 month
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3 : Home Sweet Home
<- Previous ---- Next ->
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hexedwithluck · 2 months
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old sedusas :3
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acertainmoshke · 8 months
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I've been having a tough time lately, and when I don't have the energy for everything keeping up with social media is one of the first things I slip on. But I still care about all my writing buddies, so:
Reblog if you're not offended when people take a long time to answer asks, forget to reply to your replies, lag behind in tag games, or skip several weekly ask games.
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lady-harrowhark · 4 months
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love when people say the locked tomb books are confusing. correct. that's what we're here for. tamsyn muir dumped us in the middle of the story and said "cope." we're lucky if we even know who our main character is.
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