before you know about women, you hear that you do not need to love the man, just that you need to love him through his manhood. which is to say you have seen the future painted in lamb's blood over your eyes - how your mother shoots you a look about your father's inability to cook right. how your aunt holds her wineglass and says i'm gonna kill em. men, right! how your best friend bickers with her boyfriend, how she says i can't help it. i come back to him.
you learn: men are gonna cheat. men aren't going to listen when you're talking, because you're nagging. men think emotions are stupid. they think your life is vapid and your hobbies are embarrassing. men will slam things, but that's because men are allowed to be angry. if you get loud, you're hysterical. if a man gets loud - well, men are animals, men are dogs, men can't control their hands or their eyes or their bodies. they're going to make a snide comment about you in the locker room, about your body, about how you're so fucking annoying. you're going to give him kids, and he will give you the money for the kids, and you're going to be running the house 24/7 - but he gets to relax after a long day, because his job is stressful. the man is on stage, and is a comedian, and says "women!"
and you are supposed to love that. you are supposed to love men through how horrible they are to you - because that's what women do. that's what good women do. wife material. your father even told you once - it'll make sense when you're older. it was like staring down a very lonely tunnel.
it feels like something's caught in your throat, but it's all you know, so. it's okay that you see sex as a necessary tool, a sort of okay-enough ritual to keep him happy, even though he doesn't seem to care about happiness as-applied-to you. it is relationship upkeep. it is kissing him and smiling even though he didn't brush his teeth. it is getting on your knees and looking up and holding back a sigh because he barely holds you as you panic through the night. it's not like the sex is bad and you do like feeling wanted. and besides! he's a man! like... they're another species. you'll never be able to actually communicate, right. he isn't listening.
you just don't get it. you don't feel that sense of i'm gonna climb him like a tree. mostly it just feels fucking exhausting. you play the part perfectly. you smile and nod and are "effortlessly" charming. and it's fine! it's alright! you even love him, if you're looking. you could have good life, and a good family, and perfectly happy.
in the late night you google: am i broken. you google i'm not attracted to my husband. you google i get turned on by books but not by him. you google how to get better in bed.
the first time he yells at you, it almost feels like blankness. like - of course this is happening. this is always how it was going to end up. men get angry, and they yell, and you sit there in silence.
you mention it to your friend - just the once - while you're drunk. she shrugs and says it's like that with me too, i just try to forget and move on. men are always gonna hear what they want to. pick your battles and say sorry even though he's in the wrong. you play solitaire online for a month. you go to your therapist appointment and preach about how you're both so in love.
after all, you have a future to want. nobody lied about it - how many instagram posts say marriage is hard. say real love takes work. say we fight like cats and dogs but the best part is that we always make up. how many of your friends say happy anniversary to the best and worst thing to ever happen to me. if you really loved him - loved yourself too - you'd accept that men are just different from you.
the first time she kisses you, it's on a dare at a party. something large and terrifying whips through your body. you wake up sweating from dreams where her mouth is encrusted with pearls and you pick them off one by one with your teeth. fuck. you sit at the computer and your almost-finished game of sim city. you think about your potential perfect life and your potential future family. you google am i gay quiz with your little hands shaking.
you delete each letter slowly. you don't need to love him. you just need to keep going.
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it just hit me that my early 20s put down, i suppose, of "why would anyone bother dating me when im the least interesting person ever???? because i have no social life and no friends to invite me out to be interesting and funny????" really fucked me up.
like yeah, dgmw, it does absolutely suck that i didn't get invited out to parties and bar nights and concerts etc by friends/acquaintances basically at all in my early 20s, and one of the very few times that i was, it fell through and i never got invited out again..... but that didn't mean that someone else wouldn't have found me interesting and worth inviting out somewhere. it didn't mean that every single person ever would find me so painstakingly boring, mundane, lame and i guess unmanageable and unworthy of their time; that it just wasn't worth even trying.
obviously most of the "i have to be interesting for someone to date" bs probably came from my obsession in high school with himym, most particularly with my intense fixation on none other than barney stinson and his playbook shenanigans (i actually bought the playbook in 2010 and havent looked at it since lmao), and his bro-code bullshit for the show. and i guess to some extent it's also something to do with ted as well. i guess it also again comes from sex and the city as well. moreover, the funny date stories that i read in cosmo mag also made me feel like i had to be interesting. finally, it's probably attached to me watching far too many stand-up comedians (mainly women, but also some men), who always have bits about shitty dating app convos and shitty date experiences or behaviours in relationships that are hilarious.
i guess it was also part of my "im not other girls" bullshit i was on throughout high school.... and also in my early 20s- although i was slowly growing out of this stance by then, in the hope that i'd eventually make friends at uni if i was a little less judgemental and pretentious.
just anyway. idek where im going with this. i suppose it's a warning to my younger followers, if i have any, that for the love of god. you don't have to be interesting- whatever the fuck that actually means- for someone to date you. just date. get out there. bc if you focus so entirely on being "interesting", you'll get to your late 20s and realise that you've blocked out so many experiences and situations, all because you were so fucking concerned about "will this person find me interesting??? god i hope they will, so that im not boring and lame." I missed so many opportunities for growth all because I was paranoid about being interesting and trying to spin everything to be witty and engaging, instead of leaning into being just a bit ordinary and boring.
because if someone is nice enough, they obviously will be genuinely interested in you and your life. no matter how boring/normal/mundane etc you think you may be, someone will notice your other qualities and match your so-called mundaneness, but they'll make you feel special in midst of it all. fuck being interesting and mysterious and whatever other bullshit i thought i had to be in order to date anyone at all.
embrace your ordinariness, to an extent. because being so absorbed in trying to be interesting is, very ironically, incredibly tiresome and uneventful. it will make you feel rather empty and dulled inside: instead of being filled with tangible life experiences that you can share with someone and also learn from. all because you got to be seen and heard by someone despite how plain and unremarkable you may have felt. bc that's what i missed out on while being so attached to being interesting and entertaining in my early 20s.
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Nasty Burger explosion happens, leaving Danny homeless and friendless, he gets adopted by Vlad but Vlad, in all of his ambition to get Danny as his son and even telling said boy such thing multiple times.
Genuinely doesn't know what to do.
He never, well, thought this far, and certainly never in the circumstances that made this possible.
He tries a few parenting techniques (that he's read from multiple books to get the perfect child) and nothing sticks both because of Danny's stubbornness and pettiness.
So, Vlad tries from a... different angle.
He doesn't need a perfect son, he realized, he just wanted one, and now that he's gotten one, he realizes that Danny would be the one to succeed Vladco in the off-chance (which is low as hell already) that Vlad someone gets taken out of commission.
So what does he do?
He shows Danny how fun the business world can be when you're on top of it. One of the giants, an Emperor among kings.
Slowly sinking your fangs into an enemy, backing them into a corner bit by bit, until before they realized it, they can do nothing but be a defenseless little grub. Watching them crumble to bits in their own panic, and by their own hand making their situation worse and worse until, with one final blow, nothing is left of them.
Either by their own hand, or yours.
Danny took to it like a fish to water and, dare Vlad say, they even drew closer throughout it. Not quite father and son, yet not enemies either.
He thinks the term would be... frenemies?
Yes, on the best of days allies and on every other day frenemies.
===
Danny doesn't... hate, Vlad. Yet he doesn't love him either, he thinks he likes Vlad at the very least. When the man backed off from trying to get him to be his son and replace his father.
Which was still a dick move considering his father had just died, but he's since managed to get over it. (The replacing his dad move, not his dad's death.)
Then Vlad started treating his less as a son and more of a... roommate, that he teaches business too. He will admit, he liked the change, gave him more room to grieve the loss of his family, and then, a while after that, Vlad showed him what made the business world... 'fun.'
And he was right, it is fun.
It was a great distraction from the pain of losing his family, and the fear that he would become like his dark future that he managed to avoid. He's not destroying the world, he's just destroying rival companies.
Way better in his opinion.
Of course, there are other 'Emperor among kings' out there, would be weird if there weren't honestly. To name a few, being Lex Luthor and Bruce Wayne.
In other words, a guy who hates an overpowered alien superhero and a himbo playboy.
Honestly, he doesn't really care about Lex Luthor, he's more of Vlad's chess mate rather than his. Who he does care for, however, is on Timothy Drake-Wayne.
Two years older than him, that is true, yet a fun chess mate all the same. Does he care for the boy's father and siblings? No, not really, not at all actually.
He's tried to corner the boy before (Most of which he planned out with his own chess set that Vlad got him, Vlad has one as well in fact), mostly on a whim really. To test the waters, so to speak. But, Timothy Drake succeeded his expectations and, well, more.
He tries more than once, gaining an inch, Timothy finds a way to gain two more. Corner him, and Drake finds a way out and even reserving the tides.
He's never able to completely corner Timothy Drake-Wayne, and Timothy Drake-Wayne has never been able to completely corner him, which is honestly what makes this so fun.
Vlad was right, the business world can be fun.
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