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#this is brought to you by my miserable experience as a 3 year old when i went up there with my dad for the first time
fragileizywriting · 3 months
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"it's going to be cold up there!" little emma cries, hiding her face in adrien's neck.
"no, no, you'll be okay," he tells her. she's equipped with a marshmallow coat, thick pants, little boots and the world's tiniest little beanie that has two triangles at the top shaped like little cat ears. black hair just like her mother fans out at her chin in the suggestion of wavy hair; the more she grows, the more texture similar to adrien's hair appears, but when she frowns— brows pinched in the middle and lip starting to wobble— adrien can't help but see luka's sad expression on her face. "it's going to be okay! barely windy, i promise."
"you promise?" she asks him, cuddling close.
"i promise, princess. as soon as the elevator doors open, everything will be fine and you're going to love the view from up there." after all, what kid doesn't like walking on the eiffel tower's glass floors and looking down at how far the earth is?
--
it is exceptionally windy, and miserable, and cold, and the first thing that emma does when the elevator doors open and they're blasted by wind is put her mitten hands on adrien's jaw, turn him to face her in his arms, and says: "i told you, papa!" while frowning at him really, really hard.
adrien spends the rest of the day apologizing profusely.
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My baby, my baby…
Summary: Leon is a man pushing 40 and you’re a girl in her early 20s. You confessed your feelings but things went south.
Warning: age gap. literally any older version of Leon. reader is young. female reader. haha guess what? it’s sad again.
a/n: I love mitski <3 still mad I didn’t go to her concert. Guys I love writing, I feel like I’m god waiting for shit to happen. TEEHEE.🤭 also, should I make a part two with smut?
(pt.1) (pt.2)
“You're my baby, say it to me” - Mitski, I Bet On Losing Dogs
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You hated him. Well not really. You just hated the way he made you feel when you two were in the same room. Your heart beat faster and you felt your face grow hot. You had butterflies in your stomach every time he did something. And you felt stupid because he’s a man twice your age.
You did what you always think is best, avoid him. To which you failed miserably. You both worked on the same team on the DSO, of course you were bound to be next to him. It was as if the universe was mocking you. You couldn’t help but feel guilty. This man, poor innocent man, probably doesn’t know that he has someone so much younger after him. He must be worried about missions and not dying, while you were here crushing over him.
It didn’t help the way he would talk to you, distant but polite. He didn’t hate you, he just thought you were too young to experience such a miserable life the DSO puts on its agents. He wants you to live life. To be a normal girl in her early 20s. He wanted you to have the life he wished he had. He wished you would live your 21st year way differently than when he was 21.
But those thoughts remained unspoken. Neither of you actually spoke about anything besides work and missions. You tried to find excuses to talk to him but he would just stare at you in silence as you talked. He wasn’t mad, he just stood there. (Like this lol🧍‍♂️)
Professional and polite conversations turned into jokes. One time, during a meeting, you were sitting next to Leon and the poor man looked like he didn’t get an ounce of sleep. Chris was talking about some mission in Antarctica and Leon couldn’t help but grumble a stupid joke about all the penguin shit roaming around. It was such a stupid joke but you laughed. When Leon heard you laugh, he turned his head your direction and stared at you with a raised brow. He smirked to himself and laughed a little bit. It was funny to both of you.
From that moment, he became more warm towards you. When he saw you, he would nod at him. And you being you, a delusional lover, gushed about how much he is in love with you.
You managed to break the ice exterior he had because he would look at you with soft eyes every time you got near him.
-
But things changed when you confessed your feelings to him. The softness in his eyes disappeared and he looked at you with the same distant look he had. “I’m too old for you, y/n…” He spoke with a quiet but firm tone. The two of you were currently alone in some room inside the DSO building. You thought this was the perfect time to let your feelings out.
He took a step towards you and stood in front of you, “You should focus on someone your age, sweetheart,” He mumbled as he brought his hand to your face and brushed some strands of hair behind your ear. He then ran his hand down your cheek with a gentle touch. You couldn’t help but lean into it. His thumb gently grazes against your bottom lip as he ran his fingers around your side of your face.
You were upset, you wanted him despite the age gap. “Please… I only want you,” you whispered and leaned into the palm of his hand.
Leon stared at you and then sighed as he brought his hand down your chin to lift it up more. He wanted to see those beautiful eyes of yours, even if they began to show how sad you were. “It’s wrong for me to have you,” he whispered gently as he examines your face.
You felt your eyes become full of emotion, “It’s not fair…” your voice came out strained and barely audible, it was a miracle Leon still understood you.
"I know." Leon sighed, unable to keep himself from looking you with a soft look. You were his soft spot after all, "Trust me; nothing would please me more than to be with you..."
“Then let me have this one chance…please?” You begged with pleading eyes. "I shouldn't," he breathed, eyes traveling down to your lips before returning to scan your face, "It wouldn't be right for me to take advantage of you..."
“I want you to take advantage of me, to use me… I just want to be yours,” you whispered as your eyes shifted down to his lips and then back to his eyes.
"You're sure about this?" His breathing quickened as his eyelids drew heavy, his gaze locked onto the soft curve of your lips. You nodded, “I wouldn’t be asking you if I wasn’t sure,” you whispered as your hand intertwined with his.
He squeezed your hand, and with a slight shrug of his shoulders, he leaned down until your faces were just mere inches apart.
He breathed slowly, eyes scanning your gaze, "Promise me one thing..."
You stared at his eyes and nodded, “yeah?”
"Promise me..." He breathed out slowly, allowing himself to lean in closer to you until his breathing was near whisper. "...That you will not regret this.”
“I won’t,” you whispered as you closed your eyes and felt Leon's lips finally make contact with yours, kissing for the very first time. It was a gentle, tender caress that made your cheeks flush with color, his broad hands gently resting on your hips while the tips of his fingers grazed the skin of your waist. You brought your hands to his broad shoulders and rested them there. You felt your knees grow weak from the gentleness of the kiss. His lips felt so soft against yours, he tasted the flavor of your chapstick and he couldn’t help but love it even more.
He sighed against your lips as the gentleness of the kiss began to build into something more passionate. His lips pressed against yours firmly, a hand cupping your chin to keep your face closer. His lips parted slowly, urging your lips to part as well. When you felt his lips part and his tongue press on your bottom lip, you gasped and he dived his tongue right into your mouth. His tongue finally danced against your tongue, inviting a response back from you. Your grip on his shoulders increased ever so slightly as you moaned in the kiss, sending the vibrations to his tongue as both your tongues danced passionately.
He moaned softly in response, his hands sliding around to your back once more holding you as close to him as he could. His tongue continued to swirl around your mouth, gently sucking at your bottom lip. His hold on you was strong and firm, a silent command to stay pressed against him. His hold on you only grew stronger as he kept you pressed up against his body. A hand ran through your hair, keeping your head held in place. His tongue and lips continued the dance of teasing and pleasing, your own lips responding in kind. The passion built within his embrace, his breath growing labored and his heart beating rapidly against his chest. It felt so surreal.
You moved your hands down to his chest and gently pulled back to catch your breath. You panted as you tried to breathe and remain focused. Your brain felt mushy from how good the kiss was. You finally got the chance to taste his lips.
His lips parted from yours, and he breathed out slowly, his breathing rapid and throat parched. His hand slid to your lower back as he kept you pressed close to him. He brushed a few stray strands of hair from your face, then gently tucked it back behind your ear. "Are you ok?" He whispered, voice still strained, but his body relaxing slightly.
You nodded and breathed out a small “yes,”
Leon let his grip on you loosen slightly, allowing a small distance to form between the two of you. He brushed the side of your face, and his hand moved to grasp yours.
"Good," He whispered slowly, his gaze falling to your lips, "So very good..." he sighed and let his hand slid back down your back before letting go, "Forgive me if I got a little carried away..." He took in a deep breath, his voice now returning to a normal tone, "I've wanted to do that for a very long time..."
You eyes nestled bulged out of their sockets after he said that, “You did?” You asked softly in disbelief.
He nodded slowly, his gaze flicking between yours, “Yes. Ever since the moment we first met, I was attracted to you, even though I knew it was wrong. I wanted you, wanted to hold you close, kiss you, and make you mine…” his eyes growing distant, "I've wanted you..." He took a deep breath, then gently caressed your chin with a hand, his lips gently grazing your forehead.
You closed your eyes and felt the softness of his lips plant a kiss on your forehead. A gesture so gentle and soft it could bring anyone to their knees.
He breathed out slowly, closing his eyes for a second before opening them to peek at you through his lids. He raised a brow and sighed, adjusting the hold on your chin to gently tip your head up.
"But as I said, I'm too old for you," he brushed his fingers across your jawline, "And I fear that our relationship would be met with judgment and ridicule..." he looked at you with saddened eyes. He wished he could kiss you anytime, to be with you in public and not have to worry about the judgment. In his eyes, you were the most beautiful woman to ever step foot on earth. It was sad, really. How much love he had for you but he hid it for your sake. He loves you so much he didn’t want you to get hurt.
You furrowed your brows together and looked at him with those sad eyes of yours. But his heart ached the most with the strain of your voice, “I don’t care what anyone says…”
"But you should," he replied softly, "You're still young... You should find someone closer to your age,” he caressed your cheek once again as he looked into your eyes "What about your family?" He sighed, "What if your parents disagree with us? They'd say that I'm taking advantage of you and manipulating you because you're young..."
“Leon, please, I’m an adult. I can make my own choices…” you whispered with a sad tone, “I don’t care if you’re 20 years older than me. I want you… dare I say I love you…”
Leon fell silent as your words sank into him. He froze in place, for a few moments, he was speechless, his facial expressions shifting through multiple emotions.
"Love me?" He whispered, leaning down towards you, "Y/n… you don’t love me. You love the idea of me you have in your head.” He whispered softly as he caressed your cheek once again. His voice so soft and tender and full of sadness.
Your throat was caught up into a knot. Did you screw things over already? Or were they already screwed up before this began?
You bit your bottom lip to contain the threatening tears that were about to spill. He saw this and gently brought his thumb over to the corner of your eyes and wiped them for you.
“I love you…” you nodded and felt your eyes get glossy, “I love you, Leon…” you whispered, “This feeling I have… it’s controlling me. I can’t breathe when I’m not with you. I need you…”
“Don’t cry, angel,” he whispered as he kissed your forehead again and gave you a sad smile. “How do you know this is not just infatuation?”
You stared into his blue eyes deeply, “Because I’ve never felt this way towards anyone before..”
His eyes were locked onto yours, a million thoughts running through his head. As much as he wanted to be with you, this was never meant to happen. You’re way too young. You needed someone else, someone better than him. He sighed and looked out the window. What was once a sunny day became a rainy one. He looked back down at you.
"Go home, y/n…" he whispered.
He let go of your face and took a step back. You watched him go with sad eyes, you wanted to chase after him so badly but you felt frozen in place. It was bittersweet. You got the kiss you wanted but at the cost of him leaving you.
You sniffled and cried silently as you walked out of the building and to the bus stop. You put on your headphones and began to listen to some music while you watched the raindrops race down the window.
Leon watched you from the second floor window. He felt a pang of guilt in his heart. He knew you’d cry but he couldn’t let you get too attached to someone like him. He was broken, never meant to be fixed again. While you were everything. In another universe, maybe the two of you could’ve been together.
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kragehund-est · 7 months
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when i was 18 my uncle's 30yo best friend asked me out and i said i was a bit weirded out by that. i got berated by my brother for not giving the guy a chance.
when i was 20 a 31yo guy kept asking me to date him and i said that he was too old. he brought it into our office and kept telling our coworkers that i led him on.
there were dozens of times like this with men a decade older than me. i was just entering adulthood while they were established adults. entering relationships with these men would've left me disadvantaged and susceptible to manipulation and abuse.
i have friends that are in relationships like that now. they've dropped out of college, quit their jobs, gotten married, had 3 kids, and spend every moment waiting on their husband hand and foot. they're miserable but can't leave because he controls all the money and they have no life experience outside of their relationship.
so excuse me if i don't give a flying fuck when you tell me your grandmother and grandfather had a 20 year age gap and a "happy" 45 year marriage. especially when you tell me she was a stay at home mom with 5 kids and no ability to leave.
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disillusioneddanny · 2 months
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Red Hood Tim Ask
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@thegayonthemoon
hello! i'm so sorry, tumblr ate your ask :((( I saw it in my email but didn't se it in my ask box.
To answer your question, it's turning into a very long fic lol. I also got two different asks about my red hood tim fic so I'm going to share the backstory details in this one and in the other one I'll share some of my favorite parts I have planned :3
Basically it's a reverse Robin's au where Damian is the eldest and he becomes Shadow. but Tim? Tim becomes Robin.
TW for torture, Joker Jr. and Tim's inevitable death.
This fic is also all @castrian-amore's fault because he has an amazing Red Hood Tim cosplay and I got inspired. i may have sent them the tim drake art first but still shhhh
At twelve years old he's running the streets taking pictures of his favorite duo, Batman and Shadow when he gets snatched up by Joker who in a bid to get Harley Quinn to take him back, tortures him for two months in an attempt to turn him into Joker Junior.
He kidnaps Harley and shows him his newest creation and she's horrified. But she has no clue how she can save this poor kid from the maniac. So she plots a way to save Tim and agrees to stay with Joker.
While they're together, Harley tries to help Tim as much as she can and she tells him stories to distract him from everything that's happening. She tells him about the little bird, Robin and how it's associated with life changing experiences and that it teaches you that even in the harshest of winters, the light of spring will appear.
Finally, Harley gets Tim out of the Joker's clutches and to Batman who takes on look at Tim and is like adoption bait. He learns that the Drakes didn't even know that their son was missing for two months and gets custody of Tim. But the problem is that it's not the only reason Bruce wants Tim. Bruce wants him because Tim managed to endure two months of torture with Joker and knows Bruce's secret identity and never once gave it away, not only that but he's concerned that Tim still might turn into Joker Jr and it's better if he just keeps Tim with him so he can keep an eye on him.
He encourages Tim to become a vigilante in an effort to make sure that the kid doesn't become a villain. Not that Tim really plans to? He's getting to live with his hero and be a vigilante and that's all that matters to him. So he takes on the name Robin as a symbol of his own rebirth after everything that has happened to him. And Batman raises him to be a soldier because that's the only way Bruce can convince himself that Tim won't become Joker Junior.
Anyway, years go by and it's miserable for Tim because he's taught to be a soldier and Bruce continually treats him like he's a threat. And he makes friends with this little kid in Crime Alley named Jason who thinks Robin is a hero.
Then the fight with Darkseid happens and Bruce is thrown into the timestream and Tim is desperate to save him. Because Bruce is all Tim knows and he doesn't know what to do without getting orders because that's all he's used to and Damian treats him like total shit.
So Tim goes on his Brucequest and dies against the Widower. Ra's sends back the information that Tim found about Bruce along with his Robin suit and tells Damian that he's dead. Only, Ra's has brought Tim back to life and has decided to make the kid his own personal soldier.
This is all the backstory for the story.
The fic itself takes place with Jason as Robin and wanting to know more about the Robin who used to come visit him in Crime Alley and bought him chili dogs. Especially because the plaque hanging in front of Tim's Robin suit doesn't say "a good soldier." no you see, it says "a precious son" something that Tim never saw himself as because Bruce never treated him that way.
Jason eventually meets the new Gotham crime lord named Red Hood who is a little too angry at Batman and Nightwing (Damian)
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As a teacher, what has been your fave shakespere play to teach your students? What interesting themes do the kids these days pick up on or connect with? Has there been any interesting insights your students have brought that have surprised you?
Thanks for the question! So I haven't taught English since before the pandemic, because I finally found a school that doesn't reserve the history classes for the coaches (this kept happening to me when I moved back to the States, I'm dual certified, so I'd get hired for history and they'd move me to English when they hired a coach. This happened like 3 times), which is great for me, I vastly prefer teaching history. But did teach a lot of English previously and I'd say the answer really depends on the group of kids, their reading level, how much they'd been exposed to previously.
There's a reason high schools usually start off with Romeo and Juliet in the 9th grade. The story is not difficult to follow, most teenagers are familiar with the concept of forbidden romance, and the themes are age appropriate. I've taught King Lear, which is one of my personal favorites, to a group of very advanced and very keen 12th graders (so 17-18 years old), and I think even they were too young and lacking the life experience to really get it (it's kind of unfortunate that by the time King Lear hits hardest, which imo is once your own parents start aging, most of us are not reading Shakespeare anymore. Very few people read it outside of a school setting, nerds on tumblr notwithstanding). So it can be objectively more rewarding to teach a relatively basic play like Romeo and Juliet, than to teach a more advanced play like King Lear, even though I like King Lear better, simply because it's more suited to the age group.
But probably my favorite play to teach is Hamlet, which I've taught in both 11th and 12th grade. Hamlet is a broody young man, he's home from university and his life sucks, his asshole uncle has married his mom, he's pretty sure his dad was murdered, his girlfriend literally kills herself, there's a ghost, and no one is listening to him. It strikes a good balance in that it has some great soliloquys, including the famous "to be or not to be," that you can really dig into, but which don't get too far into the weeds and don't require a whole history lesson to understand. There are allusions, but they're mostly mythology based (like Niobe, all tears, Hyperion to a satyr) which makes them easy for the kids to look up. Importantly, it asks age appropriate existential questions about life and death (what's the point in living when you're miserable, is suffering noble, what if death is not better), stuff that teenagers grapple with. Macbeth is also good to teach because it's quite exciting with all of the murder, betrayal, and of course the witches.
It's been four years since I last taught English so it's hard for me to remember any specific insights from the kids at the moment but I will say that in general, one of my favorite lessons to teach each year in the Shakespeare unit was on the use of language. The kids fucking loved learning iambic pentameter. One of my favorite things to do was write a couple of lines on the board (I usually used two lines from Julius Caesar which were the same lines my own English teacher used to teach us when I was in school Poor man! I know he would not be a wolf/But that he sees the Romans are but sheep) and get them to beat out the meter on their desks. They thought it was so cool that iambic meter has the same rhythm as the human heart, and that it is more or less the natural rhythm of our speech. When we'd read the plays, I'd catch them tapping out the meter to themselves to test it out.
In general, I enjoyed teaching Shakespeare, but it was also a struggle. It's very hard to get kids who, for the most part, do not read for pleasure to read a whole play in early modern English. Mostly their reading consists of short passages as part of standardized testing, and they're very resistant to the very idea of Shakespeare, which they write off as old and boring. As a teacher I had to work very hard to make the text engaging enough to push past that wall and while there are always kids who are just not going to get there, every year I taught Shakespeare I was always pleasantly surprised by how many kids would get fully invested. I guess it's just fun when the kids are actually into the story. The themes are great and all, but Shakespeare wrote these plays to be entertaining and it makes me really happy when the kids are entertained by them.
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jvstheworld · 6 months
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My Ted Lasso Re-watch: S2E1 (part 3)
Goodbye Earl
Ted's wiping of the nail polish and his butt still hurts. So I thought about this, and they would have had to get the shot of Dani kicking the ball at Ted a few times. Obviously it would be a prop ball so it didn't hurt as much, but still after a few takes of trying to get it right, it you would start to ache. And who's to say it hit his butt every take. He might missed a few times.
Nate's harshness is really coming through now.
Ted said Beard's name and we all kissed it because we thought it was another reference. And yes it is definitely believable that Beard is only referred to as Beard. It's not just a TV show thing where people are just called by their last names. I've had friends who I have done that to. Two of them had the same first name, so calling them by their last names just made things less confusing.
So, Dani has the yips. Ted and Beard's reactions to it being said out loud are hilarious, as is the fact that the players and Will in the locker room all react to the door being slammed.
I don't know Ted's sports references. I'm as lost as Nate and Higgins.
Well, Ted you are living in a foreign country. One that would describe American Football as rugby but with a shit load of padding.
Ted is apprehensive about therapy because of his own time in therapy (You suck, Dr Jacob) . He agrees to it while shaking his head.
Roy is suffering. I would be too if I had to listen to that story. We like Martin Short in this house. He's definitely going to need more drinks to survive.
Roy sees through John's bullshit. And just how boring he really is.
Does anyone else get the slight impression that John looked down on Roy for saying that he coaches kids football? Even though Roy enjoys it, and is a good coach, and has experience from being a 9 year old who got scouted by Sunderland. The man is happy enough and trying to figure out what he's doing next with his life, don't judge.
Keeley was being sneaky and underhanded by bringing up the pundit stuff. Though, it does help him realise where he belongs, so it does eventually become a good thing that he did it.
I still want to see Roy's retirement speech.
To Earl. He was a good boy. I'm going to keep saying it every time it gets brought up.
Michelle had been seeing Dr Jacob as her personal therapist for a while before couples counselling. So Dr Jacob would already know a bunch of stuff about Ted, from Michelle's perspective, which made him form his own opinion about Ted before their first session. They should have seen a separate therapist for couples counselling. Dr Jacob should have stayed as Michelle's personal therapist and referred them to someone else who could have helped them. If not, then he should have done private sessions with Ted to understand his side of things before bringing them both in. Ted was being set up for failure because before he even spoke in their first session he was seen as the problem. Because instead of helping them both with their issues, they just told Ted that he was doing everything wrong and making Michelle miserable. Which is shitty therapy. And made worse by the fact that later on Dr Jacob and Michelle are dating. He might not be her therapist anymore, but he still had intimate knowledge of her relationship and personal life. The problem is, did these feelings occur during the time when he was treating Michelle or when he stopped being her therapist and they hadn't seen each other for a while? Because if it's during his time as her therapist then it adds another layer of why he's such an ass, because he could have been trying to get rid of Ted. Any way you shape this, Dr Jacob does not come out of it like a Prince.
I don't know why, but every time Beard talks about never dating another dancer, the lyrics to George Michael's Careless Whisper come into my head.
'All people are different people.' That is a good line. I might have to steal that for myself at some point. Just because he had one bad experience with one therapist, doesn't mean the next is going to be the same. And Dr Sharon is so much better than Dr Jacob. She actually helps Ted, which Dr Jacob never did!
I need the full story of Beard's life. All of it.
I fucking love Roy's little rant to Rebecca. Yeah, John is fine, and that's nice. But where's the actual spark of attraction? She's playing safe because she got so hurt by Rupert, I get that. But she deserves so much more than just safe and fine. Don't settle for less because you want to play it safe to avoid being hurt again. Find someone who makes you feel safe because they love you and makes you feel like you've been struck by lightning and wants to be with you.
The greatest thing about Roy Kent, he won't bullshit you.
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rawbbpreferred · 1 year
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Okay. Going to just get it all out there now. I was brought up in a town where the only biracial couple was scorned. Tweaked out for years, still do, got caught up with the white supremacist crowd...as a 'fuck you' my Uncle used to say "go suck a dat n****r dick" to a lot of people we knew. This account is dedicated to all of the immoral, delinquent, sometimes illegal, but always pleasurable (to someone) things. No limits. Any questions answered. I'm into:
Creampies
Breeding
Black Men (I am your cum bucket - Perris, CA DM)
Incest
Anonymous Sexual Encounters
Impregnation
Cheating
Cuckold
Raceplay
Humiliation for (being a faggot, loving n* cock, cheating with men)
Gangbangs
Gloryholes
Darkest:
Open Family
Young
Rape/forced
Stealth (breeding, impregnation, pozzing)
Pozzing, gift (giving/rec)
And my current thought:
I am having the biggest crush on this thin, smart, 19 year old black...he's a kid, he said I was hot (I had to clarify 😀 for sure!). He is about the same age as my oldest daughter and has some incredible vocabulary and extensively intimate posts. He's the opposite of the stereotype I tend to sexualize, and has a stance that I don't disagree with - racism is wrong. I don't ever want to make someone uncomfortable, but in my mind I am bbc owned, we are a BBC owned couple, and I told my special friend I wouldn't cease breeding her until successful.
I am so spazzed he's gonna lose interest, he's "learning to please women" and makes me feel like a horny little school girl...I fucking love it. The last time I felt this way and a guy showed interest it failed miserably when my then 19-year-old fuck buddy knocked on the front door and made my then fiancee uncomfortable with my needs as a total bottom who cross-dresses and chased attention from guys. I cheated with this guy and got caught, it was the one occasion she meant calling me fag(got) in anger. I love submitting and hearing terrible raunchy shit while playing sometimes...that one is a favorite; I felt so small at that moment.
Seriously, this guy is hung. He (allegedly) cums a lot, Jamie forgot to take her pill until day 3 after getting bred with a 3 week load, I got a hard on when she told me in a panic. I'm ok with this guy. I *really* like him rn. I want to befriend him and experiment extensively, without fear of judgement or ridicule. I don't know that he fits the role, but he's cute, black, and willing to cum inside me and Jamie.
I don't 'see him as a bbc' or anything racist at all. I get off on it because I was always told being a faggot was bad, n****rs are the worst people on earth...and God forbid a relationship with them...and you know what, dude...this guy's probably smart asf and potent to boot. I don't want to offend him, make anything exclusive (necessarily). His skin tone, large cock, geeky (omfg I've never been so sprung), he's got Hella sex drive...and he said I was hot! Dude I was shot out. She was burned out. If he wants us like that I have been looking for exactly that - ugh! I don't want to fuck anything up.
My want? Jamie to be taken care of, experiences and sexual boundaries expanded and eliminated for all of us. I want to be intimate with a guy. Jamie will get jealous and things could all come to a halt. She's down to do anything and so am I, but she's scared of me leaving. I want to experience this completely and am willing to definitely sneak around with a friend who would come over often and even overnight. Someone who found some attraction to us. I want her happy, satisfied, and full of cum; oh. And to work out this lust. I want to feel that desire.
RawBbPreffered
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pbandjesse · 2 years
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I am back to the museum! And it is again very warm in here!! But I don't feel as miserable. I am tired. But it's not as bad as it was.
And last night ended up being pretty lovely. I had a couple great conversations. Also a few weird ones. An older, clearly very rich couple, were doing that WASPy thing where they were clearly having an argument but we're all smiles. And then once he walked away the wife, who was thin and beautiful, was like. Never get married. And I was like. Oh! I am! And she said she hoped it worked better for me! Wild. 26 years together and hate each other.
I got home and me and James played video games together for a bit. And laid in bed for a long time. Sweetp was being a big needy baby and slept basically on top of my head all night. But that was fine. I still slept pretty well.
When I woke up I was in an alright mood. I stayed in bed until 9 just playing on my phone. I got washed up and dressed but my hair was crazy and I wasn't a huge fan of the weird ways it dried. But whatever. I tried to braid it but it is still a little short for that. Like I can do it but they flip at the end and look silly.
My plan for the day was to go get cat food from target, lotion from Ulta, and some camp stuff at five below.
It was a mixed results trip. I got out there fairly quick. Stopped by some squeegee boys. Gave them $3.
Five below and Ulta apparently don't open until 11 on Sunday. So I went to Target first. Got my cat food. S few other little things. And just wandered around.
I would make it to give below to early though. So I waited outside for 5 minutes. A weird couple came and stood next to me, stupid close for how much sidewalk there was. And just talked shit about how much they hate Baltimore. So that was fun to have to be a part of.
I got some of the stuff I had wanted. I got bug bands. But they didn't have the soap I wanted. I would find that I had an opened pack from last year so that was fine but I was a little frustrated.
And then at Ulta while I found my lotion right away my coupon was expired. But I still got the lotion because I just wanted to be done with having to be on this side of the city.
I did stop for lunch at five guys but I didn't enjoy it. It just felt to heavy. But I ate it. And went home.
When I got back here I brought everything inside and put things away. Tidied up a little. And put on a soft shirt. I played video games for a few minutes. I did two days of knitting for my temperature blanket. And tried to take a nap.
This did not work. I could not turn my brain off. I just watched videos and laid there until after 3 when it was clear this wasn't working.
I played video games until James came home.
They would help me fish in the game and catch me a few things. Mostly we just chilled on the couch until it was time for me to go again.
I had a nice drive over here. And stopped at 711 where the old man at the counter was like 'hi!!! How have you been?? It's been forever since you've been here!!' except I don't think I have ever met this man in my life. But he was so nice I just pretended and yes anded the conversation.
Now I am at the museum. A little overheated. But it will be a good night. This wedding has sushi which makes me laugh. I have more and more loved the production of the weddings. The rules and ways things go. I don't know why but it feels nice that I'm going to be a part of that, both here and at my own. It's like a shared experience that is just nice.
I hope you have a good day tomorrow and a lovely night tonight. Me and James might go see some nature but also it's memorial day so that might be a terrible plan. We will see! Goodnight everyone!
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spirituallyme2 · 11 months
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TF Journey... Not a positive post because that's just not where I've been lately. I've been falling apart since I met my the person who happens to be my twin soul. I remember looking up all of my symptoms and being shocked after a reading confirmed this. I wanted a soulmate in my life. Not this heart wrenching dynamic where I'm alone and can't get someone I don't talk to out of my head. I literally don't want to be a part of this.
The "supernatural" phenomenons that come with this journey means that you can't even tell a regular therapist about this. They'd look at you like you're crazy. You can't even really be treated for limerance because that's not what this is. This is against my will. Why is this persons name, date of birth, car and everything else suddenly me everyday. My toddlers literally say this persons name several times a day and points out their birthday even though they weren't taught this information. How is this possible?
I see plenty of videos of people trying to manifest a twin flame and I wonder if they know what they're asking for... how miserable and agonizing the journey can be. There's no guarantee for union because this journey isn't a romantic one. It's about you. Most of the stories I hear are people who grow old with this pain and never have another fulfilling relationship in their lives. Their twin flame haunts them.
I'm literally fighting for my life right now and want to give up every single day. I wanted a soulmate but God said, you get no one. You can work on all your traumas while you're struggling as a single parent. Your brain will obsess over someone you barely know against your will. You weren't ever loved and experienced gut wrenching traumas all your life? Here's some more pain because what I have you wasn't enough.
I don't even have childcare, my children aren't school aged and they're not sleeping through the night. I don't get to sleep and I don't have any help so I'm tired. It's literally just me 24/7
If I didn't have kids... I wouldn't voluntarily sit through this journey. This feels like the straw that broke the camel's back. I would've definitely tapped out. It feels like a cruel joke from the universe.
Their father raped me for years and he still abuses us. I was severely abused the first 18 years of my life by my mom and her husband and a good part of that was in a 3rd world country where I really suffered. After I had my first baby, I couldn't take him home from the hospital for 5 months. I watched him die and be brought back.. my heart couldn't handle all this. I started dissociating. Two emergency c-sections, two NICU stays and enduring their father's abuse.
The military almost broke me. I don't even need to expand on that.
I'm late diagnosed autistic so I didn't know why I was different all my life. I didn't learn to make friends so I've been alive for 3 decades without friends. Life is so lonely sometimes. My traumas have also led me to live a life of solitude. I have no personal relationships other than my children.
I have treatment resistant depression with suicidal thoughts. There's nothing doctors can do for me. They tried treating me for years with so many different therapies. My baseline is literally not wanting to be alive every single day.
My mother's last text to me was her saying she didn't care...
I just wanted to experience love in my life. Connection with another human being. I feel like with children, they have no choice but to love you. They're programmed to do that and it's transactional when they're young. I'm the person that meets all their needs.
I wonder if I'll get to experience love or happiness before I die. I wonder if I'll get to feel what it's like to not be passively suicidal everyday. I wonder if my life will ever have been worth it because it's definitely not right now.
I finally made up my mind to live in solitude and try to love myself as is and then I met the person who my brain would obsess over and there's nothing I can do about it. This just threw me all the way off. I want off of this ride.
Am I making up for being a horrible person in a past life? Is this a punishment? Is earth a prison for me and living is my own personal hell? I believe it because I don't see anything else that proves otherwise
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chubbology · 3 years
Text
Overindulged
prompt: feeder boyfriend quits his job and balloons as fat as his feedee/feeder girlfriend
He drove his sleek BMW up his driveway and into the middle garage just as dusk settled into night. He’d stayed overtime at work again, and to make it up to his girlfriend, three dozen fresh assorted donuts sat in the passenger seat.
Sure enough, immediately upon opening the back door with his stack of boxes, he heard her voice: “Late.”
“It’s the end of the month,” he said. “What do you expect? Brought you something though, so don’t be mad. Come in here.”
He set the boxes down on the granite island, then waited, sucking in a breath. His pupils dilated as his favorite person in the world waddled through the wide archway leading into the kitchen. After giving him a pout, she pulled the boxes toward her with arms that hung, at their heaviest, over half a foot with fat.
She was a beautiful, enormous woman. He had met her on a plane three years ago on a business trip to Paris. She’d pulled him into conversation like a warm whirlpool, and he’d listened in awe to her life story: miserable wife of a banker to a happily divorced entrepreneur, flying first class on her own dime.
With a smug, knowing smile, she talked about how she used to be skinny for her ex’s sake and now was free. He couldn’t help but let his gaze roam over her blatantly overweight body. Thighs pressing firm on either armrest of the wide seat, bust prominent and heavy, belly button deep and visible through her dress.
Bad news is, she’d concluded, I just settled a messy lawsuit that lost me my career and nearly bankrupted me. But she shrugged, as if such was life. I’m taking my last-hurrah vacation until I have no choice but to eat tiny, unsatisfying meals again.
He decided that couldn’t come to pass, so he spent as much time with her outside his business obligations as he could, taking her to meal after meal, falling in love as she ate to her heart’s content and shamelessly talked about how she’d rather fallen in love with gaining weight. It titillated and empowered her. By the end of their two week stay in Paris, she was twelve pounds bigger and he had invited her to live with him for a while as she looked for a new career path. She accepted.
Three years later, she’d found her calling without having to leave his luxurious, spacious home. Doing what she loved.
She was almost four hundred and fifty pounds now, last he was updated. She always wore leggings that clung to every lump and bulge of cellulite, and she liked to tease him by wearing crop tops, letting her massive belly and side rolls hang out and wobble as they pleased.
He watched with soft eyes as she stuffed herself with four jelly-filled doughnuts. Between bites she said, “These long hours at your soulless job are no good. My fans want to see more of you.” More eating. “The last time you fed me on camera was weeks ago!”
She gave him an imploring look as she ate a fifth doughnut. Boston creme. Her face, once conventionally pretty, now had a sexy overindulged look. She’d lost her jawline to additional chins and neck fat, and her round, fatty cheeks quivered as she chewed. Even before she finished the fifth doughnut, she picked up a sixth. “And don’t think they haven’t noticed that little tummy you have now.”
“What?” He looked down at himself, blushing at how his tie sat out a bit on slightly stretched white buttons.
Before he could say anything, she pushed a chocolate doughnut in his hand. “I know people willing to pay a pretty petty to see you chunk out.” She smirked. “Pop a couple of those buttons.”
He laughed dismissively, but as he ate the doughnut, he contemplated the press of his new chub against his shirt. His pants felt a little tight in the ass, too, now that he thought about it. What if? he thought.
Suddenly, he found himself admitting: “I’ve been thinking of quitting.”
Her eyebrows rose.
“I want to spend more time with you,” he explained. He hadn’t meant to talk about it now, but here he was. Out of nervousness, he pulled one of the boxes toward himself and picked another doughnut, this one caving in under its sprinkles. He took a heavenly bite. “I have plenty of money saved and invested to take care of both of us for a long time. I just don’t see why I…”
She waddled over to his side of the island and took his free hand. “You know I’d support you.” Then she pulled him closer, into a smiling kiss. “I’ll support you real good.”
*
Before his two week notice even ended, he was eight pounds heavier, and he relished how his coworkers’ eyes lingered on his burgeoning waistline. Soon, his tummy was pushing over his pants. His chest felt thicker. He felt his ass spread wider when he sat down. He ate desserts all the time, and his girlfriend lavished him with attention (food) at every opportunity when he was home, encouraging him to eat in amounts he’d never let himself eat before. She started filming - with his consent, as always - the development of his chubbing up. Her fans loved him even more than they already did, compliments coming in faster than he could read them.
One month into being an unemployed man, she stuffed him on camera until one of his shirt buttons popped off. The experience was more of a revelation for him than even becoming officially overweight; that night, after she went to sleep, he got out of bed, squeezed into an old pair of slacks that barely fit him, then gorged himself in the kitchen until he gasped at the relief of his ass seam tearing open, unable to accommodate his butt, which everyone online said was growing gorgeously fat. His heart fluttered just thinking about it, and he hoped his ass kept growing.
It did.
“I admit, I never thought you’d be this much of a pear,” his girlfriend told him, six months into his steady ballooning. They were admiring his progress in the large bathroom mirror. He may have looked small relative to his partner’s morbid obesity, but somehow, they were both more fascinated with his growth at the moment. She outlined his bottom heavy figure with her hands. Fat had indeed stored most eagerly in his ass, thighs, and hips. His belly drooped soft and wide.
“I love it,” she said. “Love everything about you.” But then something else came into her expression. “Except how you’ve stopped picking up after yourself.”
He swallowed, and said honestly, “Sorry. I know I’m getting lazier.”
“We’ll have to hire a maid.” She grinned wickedly. “Or do two pigs deserve to roll in their sty?”
*
A year into living on his passive income and her subscribers, the couple had not yet hired any cleaning services, and his country club house was...well. Not trashed, but messy and disorganized. She blamed the five pounds she’d lost over the past month on having to constantly throw his trash away. She punished him by making him stand while drinking a whole liter of full-sugar soda. Since he’d developed a strong distaste for any physical effort as he sunk deeper into obesity, he grumbled the whole time. When he finally fell back on the couch, she sat too. Together, they took up most of it. But while she looked perfectly composed, he was panting raggedly, slightly sweaty, a food stain on his pants.
“Look.” She reached out and held his chubby wrist. “I can tell that the fatter you get, the more your natural inclination is to be a pig.” She spoke with total matter-of-factness. As if the emergence of his inner pig was unsurprising and inevitable. “It’s not uncommon in men - that urge to oink and eat as a way of life. But we share this space. I help pay off this house. Please throw away your take out containers.”
Then she added, at his long-suffering sigh, “I’ll reward you.”
He met her gaze. “Tonight?”
“Tonight.”
*
This time, there were no cameras. There was just her, sitting on one side of their king bed and him on the other, breathing heavy, taking her reward one bite at a time.
Everywhere in their bed were containers and packages and napkins and soda bottles. He had eaten mexican and noodles and burgers and fries. He’d eaten candy bars and sundaes and milkshakes and chunky cookies. He was so full he could feel the skin of his belly stretching. He could practically feel the skin of his thighs stretching, as if they were filling up heavier with fat right then, as he was determinedly overfed. He swallowed another bite of greasy cheeseburger.
“Keep going. I can tell you're slowing down, but I’ll have none of that yet. I want to see progress from you.”
“I don’t know…”
“Do you want to feel the ecstasy of squeezing through a doorframe or are you going to plateau at being just fat?”
He let out a breathy moan as he ate another bite of the cheeseburger. His girlfriend knew him too well. She knew he liked the new challenges being big was causing him. She knew it turned him on that he sat so much fatter in his own car, belly pressing against everything, ass barely fitting at all. She knew his hands had begun cupping his hips as a half-unconscious habit, admiring his own width.
He liked how his thighs had to push past each other, jiggling every time. He even liked when he accidentally bumped into things, because it was a hot reminder that he wasn’t the same. He was like her now. He was fat. He was a pig. He wanted to eat and get so big he could barely even waddle. He wanted to squeeze through doorways. He wanted to get stuck.
“I want everything,” he said. And she smiled, temporarily pleased.
*
Thank you to the reader who commissioned this work!
I'd love to write more. Check me out <3 etsy.com/shop/Chubbology
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utilitycaster · 3 years
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Wizard Breakdown Tracker, #135
Each week I think “man it would have been cool if I had thought of this idea, in which I make jokes about how stressed out the wizard NPCs are, during, you know, the Vergesson heist or something when we were interacting with more than one wizard NPC instead of during a dungeon crawl with only one wizard NPC, emphasis on crawl” but you know what, I persevere, because where else am I going to put song parodies about the death of Vess Derogna that are literally only funny to me? Twitter?
Anyway while I am personally team Jester, in that the faster Lucien is simultaneously disintegrated, run through in the chest with both a vestige and a holy avenger, shot through the heart (and Veth’s to blame), beheaded with a hand axe, banished, punched in the face, and sent into a black hole the better, the party has other plans. Thanks to the long rest though it has been about 12 hours, plus the 4-ish from last week, so I guess we’ll check in with a few of our other wizard friends as well.
As a reminder Caleb Widogast is a PC and thus excluded from this list.
Currently sidelined
Presumably having a good day: Pumat Sol (blissfully unaware of all of this); Allura Vyesoren (saint-like patience and a wealth of experience with disaster adventuring parties; at least this one has a cleric at more than 0.33 FTE, a wizard, and some lesbians), Ludinus Da’leth (this miserable pile of power plays wakes up every morning and is like Isn’t it Grand to be head of the evil wizard council and no one realizes I probably destroyed the first non-drow elven civilization on the continent to arise after the calamity! Fetch me more pastries!).
No idea but here’s hoping he found the cat portion of ScryTube: Oremid Hass
Lady DeRogna, taken off the scene, sorry that your murder happened while off-screen.
Trent Ikithon: I’ve established that I think the only real things that can damage Trent emotionally are Caleb paying too much attention to him so as to destroy his standing within the empire, or else Caleb ignoring him. Honestly if Trent would not continue to torture students and spread propaganda if left unchecked I think he could be slowly murdered solely through Caleb expressing apathy. So despite the amulets of nondetection I like to imagine that somehow, somewhere, Trent felt Caleb reaffirm to Essek that his top priority is still stopping the city from returning, not Trent, and it necrotized just a little bit more of his liver.
Conclusion: 7/10. I went to the OG evil mageocracy and no one knew who you were.
Essek Thelyss: Well on the one hand he’s still flirting but on the other imagine spending a literal century being like “what if we’re wrong about how we approach the fundamental basis for our society” and he just got proved right. I have to imagine he’s got that kind of stress where suddenly everything becomes dead calm and also this explains why he unnecessarily cast a 3rd level spell, which he knows could in theory cause him to lose all his hair, to impress a boy. I didn’t even get into the conversations he had with Caleb, the bad dreams and eyeballs, Fjord teasing him, Yasha being like “ALRIGHT ALREADY”, the horrible Aeorian creatures, the fact that robots might be back(?) or his ongoing terror that the Assembly is after him!
Conclusion: 8/10 but he’s like, kind of having a good time. Essek is in all ways but physical in a Hawaiian shirt right now drinking a Mai Tai and going Nothing Matters; I presume he will have a full breakdown following the boss battle and honestly he deserves it.
Astrid Beck: Others have already established the parallels between Essek and Astrid but honestly I want to highlight it because really, on the one hand we have Essek, whose world is crashing around him because he was right all along and is in terrible immediate danger but surrounded by friends, and on the other we have Astrid, whose world is crashing around her because she was wrong all along and she’s probably not in immediate danger but Eadwulf is the only person she can trust and we don’t know all the details about that either.
Conclusion: 8/10 but in the bad way, not Essek’s kind of fun way.
Wulfpupy:
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Conclusion: 3/10. You know that tiktok with the blonde woman with glasses who has a lot of highlighter on her nose who talks about how sometimes if you have guy friends they will say something deeply fucked up and you’ll be like “oh my god do we unpack this right now” and then you look over at them and the only thing in their mind are the lyrics to Kokomo? That’s Wulf. He will activate the second Caleb comes back in town or Astrid actually falls apart but until then he is on Island Time.
Yussa Errenis: I wonder if there’s a small part of Yussa that is part of the city’s awareness and, moreover, can see what Beau and Caleb at least are doing, and he’s like “I’m so simultaneously proud and impatient, also we live in a world that does not have IV fluids so like, hopefully my body still exists in some kind of functioning state when I am rescued” (note: did I google “how were coma patients kept alive in olden times” for this? Perhaps.) Anyway if he is aware he’s also just like, watching all this like “I WILL GET YOU SO MUCH PAPER OH MY GOD CAN YOU JUST KISS THE OTHER WIZARD SAVE ME FROM THE EVIL HIVEMIND CITY.”
Conclusion: I mean still infinity/10, he is still trapped in the city of madness and also if he does have a small part of his mind that is sane and able to observe the material plane he also is aware that Trent and the Volstruckers broke into his tower.
Known Gem Wizard Hotsauce Lutefisk: I know, I know, weird that I brought him up. However consider: Yussa’s wizard tower now contains two wizards in suspended animation, their consciousnesses trapped in eldritch astral sea-related spaces. This is incredibly funny to me. We’re in a real Old Lady who swallowed a fly scenario except it’s centuries-old wizards getting sucked into traps because of their own hubris. The reason why mageocracies no longer exist isn’t the lack of magical knowledge or even because power corrupts absolutely, it’s because literally just put some lightly fried forbidden knowledge under a box with a stick propping it up, add your parody of Long-Term Nuclear Waste Warnings above it, and a wizard will be like “that sign won’t stop me because I CAN read and what’s more I’m better at reading than you are!” And then they get trapped in a box.
Conclusion: what is a breakdown tracker to a man whose mind has been stuck in a gem for, from his perspective, at minimum about 35 years?
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writingwithcolor · 4 years
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Hey! I’m currently writing a Jewish character and was wondering if this would be offensive: my character has a family where her mother is Jewish but her father celebrates Christmas, so they fuse their holiday celebrations to bring their two families together for any holidays that fall in line with eachother. Would this be a problem? I’m basing her off of irl friends who’s family does this, but I want to make sure it doesn’t seem like I’m erasing her Jewish heritage and pride. Thanks so much!
Celebrating Hanukkah & Christmas in interfaith family
No problems from me other than to note that I hope you meant to say that they're both celebrated, not that they're literally "combined." Because putting Christian ritual into a Jewish holiday would bug me, as a reader, but someone watching Mom light the menorah before going out caroling with Dad would not--for example. Does that make sense? There are plenty of interfaith families out there that do both, but keeping the actual practices separate is the best way to keep the Jewish ones Jewish. (And in my example I was picturing both parents there for each activity, so it's not like I'm calling for that much separation -- just, not bringing up "the meaning of Christmas" while you're literally telling the Chanukah story.
You may also want to decide if the character themselves is drawn in one direction or the other, or neither yet. (You said "Jewish heritage and pride" so from this I gather that's how she believes? In that case, is Christmas totally just a fun secular thing for her or is it something she regards as an outsider, religiously speaking?)
--Shira
I'm going to start by saying that interfaith families exist, and have a variety of ways of expressing their combination of cultures. I'm absolutely not here to argue with that, be negative about that very real way of life, or invalidate those experiences in the slightest. 
With that being said... people outside our community really, really love to show us celebrating Christmas, and Easter, and eating bacon, or doing anything else that might code us as assimilated (regardless of our internal identities). These are things that some Jewish people do, and I think it's absolutely good to show the breadth of the community, and the varied ways we express ourselves, but I do not, at all, trust someone outside the community to do that mindfully. 
In wider media, whether books, television, movies etc. Jewish characters are so often shown to be either assimilated, or from an interfaith family. Interfaith does not necessarily mean assimilated of course! But the fact of their interfaith relationship is often used as a convenient way to get the Jewish character into situations that are intended to show how "not really" Jewish they are. There is an obsession with showing us as assimilated, a delight that is taken in trying to prove that we either are exactly the same as the broader culture, or that our differences can be erased and eroded until we are. 
A Jewish person remains Jewish, whether they go to a Christmas party or not, whether they have shrimp at dinner or not, whether they marry a non-Jewish person or not, but the intent behind constantly showing Jewish characters doing this is suspect to me. This asker may not have this ill-intent, but frankly, it's hard to come by a character, written by a non-Jewish person, that says "I'm Jewish" in the beginning of a work, and then "oh, no thank you, I don't celebrate Christmas" in the middle, let alone even continuing to say "I'm Jewish" by the end.
When I read a work about interfaith families, and their specific traditions by a person inside the community, or coming from an interfaith background themselves, I'm interested, happy to learn about the characters, and their lives. When I read a work like that by someone outside the community it leaves me with a bitter taste in my mouth, and the feeling that even fictional versions of us are being gleefully, voyeuristically, intentionally assimilated.
-- Dierdra
1) If your character is invested in their Jewish heritage, celebrating Chanukah is not enough to show this. Please please please research our other holidays and traditions, talk to Jewish people who feel the same level of connection to their Jewish roots, consume #OwnVoices materials.
2) Agree with Dierdra that interfaith families exist and deserve representation, but that writing an assimilated character requires a lot of research and sensitivity; any blatant disregard of halacha should probably be avoided in case it is consumed in that voyeuristic way by the reader.
3) And with Christmas in particular, you can be close to touching a nerve because not all Jewish people have fond memories of Christmas, to say the least. To people of minority faiths, it can be the time when our othering is the most blatant and impactful (we’ve included some personal stories below). 
It would be best to listen to many Jewish experiences of December shenanigans, from people who celebrate Christmas partially or fully, to those who are indifferent, to those who have mainly negative associations and memories.
-- Shoshi
Our personal experiences with Christmas (Jewish Mods)
Also, as a note from all of us, discussing this question brought up so many stories about our own experiences with Christmas, and the culture surrounding it.  A selection of them are below, just to give an idea of what it can be like:
- Just not having lights up was enough to get our neighbor asking our then roommate if we were "you know... sorta..." When our roommate confirmed that we are indeed Jewish, he reassured him that it was "fine." It didn't feel fine to be told that though. I also had a neighbor ask what we were doing for Christmas once, and I said "oh, we do Chanukah in this house" just to keep it casual. She excitedly yelled back "JEWS!!" Even without Covid I was getting to the point where December was just a month where I tried to stay in, and avoid getting grumpy at people who are just enjoying their holiday (they just happen to be enjoying it everywhere, all the time. And sometimes kind of aggressively). God forbid you correct someone when they wish you a Merry Christmas. 
- Me too, it's the marketing, it's so aggressive. Last year I got so fed up with Christmas music being on in the office that I decided to bring a dreidel and spin it casually on my desk throughout the day, just so that my own space could feel like it was somewhat reserved for my own identity, you know? On day two of this, a colleague I didn't know that well came up to me and said, "Please could you stop doing that? It's really loud." I wanted to yell "NOT AS LOUD AS YOUR MUSIC!", but I didn't, I just stopped spinning it because I'm a darn pushover at times. I had to sit through my first hand-wringing 'how will we do Christmas with Covid?' conversation in about September, even though Pesach and Eid were both during the height of lockdown in this country and no one said a thing until after the fact. 
- I've had people scoff, and sniff, and make snide comments to my face in my old workplace when I politely reminded them that I don't celebrate Christmas. It can get so uncomfortable, just existing in the world, and Christmas can end up a really miserable time. 
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king-paimon · 3 years
Text
HnK Chapter 95 Thoughts: The cruelest chapter of all times
AKA: The chapter everyone hated
AKA: No happy ending in sight
AKA: Haruko Ichikawa is a monster
AKA: I called it again (and I wish I was wrong)
AKA: Talk about kicking someone while they’re down
Ms. Haruko Ichikawa. You’ve truly done it. You truly are a cruel, sadistic, trolling monster. You leave us with this chapter? This chapter that truly shows us that despite every hardship they faced, Phos gets nothing. This chapter shows that Phos was destined to be in constant misery, and to rub that in with literally everyone else is free and happy? And to add more salt to the wound, you’re leaving us on an hiatus for who knows how long??
This is without a doubt the cruelest chapter to leave us on and this is probably one of the cruelest things a mangaka can ever do for a series as intense as this. I wish the previous chapter was the last one for the end of this year because at least with that one, it would have given us some sense of something.
Man. I’m both horrified and amazed by you, Ms. Ichikawa. I’m not even being sarcastic, I’m truly in awe.
Ugh.
As you can see, I have several things I have to say about this and... Just wow. This chapter. In these posts, I try my best to try and write my thoughts with the most rational mindset but... I don’t know how well I’ll be able to do that with this chapter. What a way to end this horrible year. 
But with this chapter’s ending and the implication for what is yet to come... this marks as the story’s descend to it’s bitter end, and I now wish I didn’t make that prediction last month.
I know I said in another post that I was going to write this in a few days, but I changed my mind. I’m getting this out now while my thoughts are still fresh in my mind. Please don’t mind the writing errors, I’m very tired, I’m writing this at 3 in the morning and I need to sleep. I promise I will come back to this and tidy it up later.
Anyways, here we go:
Haruko Ichikawa: Manipulator of emotions
Ms. Ichikawa really toyed with us with this chapter. So many things happened in such a short amount of time and I’m trying to process it. Also, doesn’t feel like too much happened in this chapter? Especially in comparison to the previous chapters, where everything was stretched out, to then have this chapter have so many things happen all at once. This chapter, in many ways, feels very rushed... and this style of story telling has me very worried about what’ll happen from here on out. I’ll talk more about what I mean by this later, but for now, let’s focus on the story of this chapter:
So... Antarctictite is back now. Adamant is back, too. So are most of destroyed gems, both the ones we knew and the ones we never got meet. And they are all now Lunarians... Hm.
I don’t like this or anything in this chapter for many reasons. In fact, I’ll go as far to say that I don’t like where the whole story is headed for these same reasons: 
The first reason: The emotional turmoil from the previous chapters
For the past 10 or so chapters, I’d been anticipating the destruction of the gems and Adamant. I was one of the people who didn’t like the idea of it happening, though I knew they kind of deserve it. And I remember how sad I was seeing Adamant turn to nothing but dust and seeing how everything was affecting Phos after the bloodlust ceased.
But it all led up to...this. In the very next chapter, after watching those heart wrenching scenes of the gems being broken down and Adamant’s last moments with Phos...we see him and the other gems being brought back like it was nothing.  And on top of that, they are totally happy Lunarians now. Yeah. Okay.
So it feels like the emotional tole that I felt for these characters I didn’t want to see get destroyed...meant nothing. Not going to lie: I kind of wish you all stayed destroyed.
And you know what? It’s kind of funny. In my Chapter 94 post, I said I was sad that we didn’t get to see Adamant and Aechmea interact and I didn’t think there would be a way now that Adamant is dust. Well. I was wrong. It happened. I got the interaction that wanted. Wasn’t worth it. 
So to sum up this first reason: The emotional turmoil that I personally experienced watching the characters I like get destroyed... meant nothing in the end.
Now I don’t know how to feel about these characters. It sucks. I even had a post that I was starting write about on a certain controversial character that I couldn’t bring myself to hate, despite everything, but I’m now debating whether or not I should still write it. I think I will, but there will be a lot of edits.
The second reason: Negation of personal growth
One of the things that has been brought up many times by fans is about how the gems dealt with problems. Instead of trying to address the problem and talk to try to fix it, they chose to ignore it and sweep it under the rug, no matter how upsetting it is to the characters involved. All of the gems, both Earth and Moon, constantly choose to not confront the issue and stay blissfully ignorant.
And now that they’re accepting to be Lunarians, it feels like they’re just running away again. Instead of confronting the Lunarians or having the gems properly talking with each other about how things got to the point where they had to once fight each other, they are like: Oh, we can be Lunarians so we don’t have to fight with them anymore? Awesome. Let’s do it.
Everyone is once again going with the flow, just sweeping the glaring issues that they all carried for so long, and are just accepting the new reality that they are in with no problems whatsoever. No addressing of anything means no character growth for all of them. No one grew from this experience. No one learned that ignoring the problems doesn’t solve them. They aren’t solving their previous issues, they are masking it under the belief that becoming Lunarian automatically solves all of their problems. 
No talking between Diamond or Bort. No talking with Yellow about their traumas or any of the other gems in the same boat. And no talking about how everything that happened lead to Phos doing what they did. It’s even more disappointing how Antarcticite was the only one who showed any concern about Phos or even thought to bring them up in the first place.
Edit: Also to add, the other problem here is how the are conscious choosing to remove your identity. They are not only choosing to loose their identity as gems, but they are fine loosing their memories as well. Not to mention how Cairngorm is once again being given a new identity to go by, from Aechmea, and is totally fine with it. That scene was small but once again, the fact that they are fine pretty much erasing what made them who they are is...unnerving. 
So pretty much to sum up this: Once again, everything meant nothing in the end. 
Speaking of Phos...
The third reason: Phos’s miserable fate
Phos, once again, got the short end of the stick. After everything that they’ve done, from trying to save everyone but themselves, to doing what was once seen as cruel for the sake of everyone to finally do something for themselves to go back to wanting to save the others after the bloodlust was gone... to get this ending for themselves.
But wow, what a cruel twist: Phos’s old goal was fulfilled. Thanks to them, the gems don’t have to live in fear of being destroyed or taken or anything. Thanks to Phos, everyone is free. Everyone now is going to be happy for the rest of their existance...at the cost of Phos’s expense.  
Phos lost everything. 
Their body. 
Their sanity. 
Their identity. 
Everything.
What do they get in return?
10,000 years of nothing but their own miserable existence and dark, depressing thoughts.
In the end, everything that Phos experienced not only sent them crashing down to rock bottom: it sent him to the chore of the earth, back out the other side, then back into the earth, in an endless cycle of just constant misery. 
That’s a theme in buddhism, if that’s what I’m recalling right from @rinboz​‘s posts: a cycle of continuous misery. That is clearly embodied here through Phos and Phos will continue to suffer the pain of existing while everyone else got what they wanted in the end, especially Aechmea. 
Speaking of which, I also genuinely want to know if there’s still fans out there who view Aechmea as a good guy for ‘liberating’ Phos, because as far as I see, thanks to him, Phos is now stuck in an even more miserable form of existence. At least before everything, everyone was miserable together with Phos. Sort of. Still better than what we got with this chapter, in my opinion. (Please do share your thoughts, if you do. I promise, this is not an attack. I’m just interested to hear your thoughts, if you’re willing to share)
But now, there’s no there for Phos. And unlike those other instances where Phos was in a situation and someone somewhat saves them like Adamant and Padparadscha once did before, there’s no one there. So unless there’s some Admirabilis hiding around there or if the Gem/lunarians decide to come to them, which I doubt will happen, there’s no one for Phos. No one is coming to help/save them.
Phos will have to suffer all alone. For 10,000 years. Phos is the last existing gem being now...even though technically, they aren’t really a gem anymore. 
Once again, to sum up why I don’t like this chapter nor how the story has progressed: Phos’s suffering meant nothing to them in the end. That’s the other theme I’m trying to hammer in in this post: Everything meant nothing in the end.
I’ve already seen a few fans react to the chapter and I saw one state that if the Lunarians, including the gems, were to come to Phos to pray for them, the poster hopes Phos tells them to “F* off” And you know what, I hope so too. But this revelation has me fearing for what’s going to happen the series, or more specifically, how and when it’ll officially end.
No true happy ending in sight and not exactly for the reasons you think
As always, it’s hard to predict how Ms. Ichikawa is going to end this series. Us fans made many predictions and a good number of them came true, but it’s the ending that eludes us. Some hope for a happy ending for Phos, while many, including myself, predict that it’ll be anything but happy. And now, with this chapter...I think it’s set in stone now.
Last month, in response to someone asking me how I think the series might end, I made a few small predictions. Some for a good ending, a bittersweet ending, and a bad ending.... 
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...and it looks like that first sad ending is where the series is heading after all:
Everyone is gone/moved on and Phos stays behind as a lonely, immortal being.
Even though this small prediction was correct, how it’s all playing out was not exactly how I’d envisioned. It’s worse. And what’s making me even more worried is that based off of where the story is headed, my gut feelings are saying that the series ending is near. And it won’t be to anyone’s satisfaction.
Whenever I get invested in a series, other than worrying about how the creators will handle their characters and story, one of my biggest worries is about how the creators handle their ending. I’m truly afraid about what Ms. Ichikawa is planning for this series because I can’t help but fear it’s not going to end well. It’s not the worry that the series will have a sad/bittersweet ending, even though that concern is still there though I’ve accepted the likelihood, but rather I’m worried that the next chapter or so will be the abrupt end to this series. This concern is because of how rushed this chapter felt and I can’t help but worry that Ms. Ichikawa is now rushing to the end of the story. And to be honest, the addition fact that Ms. Ichikawa is going on hiatus is not helping these uneasy feelings. 
I hate being the pessimistic one but what if this happens? What if Ms. Ichikawa decides to end the series here or in the next chapter? What if the next chapter is literally another time skip, with all of the characters that I once cared about just NOT progressing, and Phos continuously being stuck in this immortal and we’re expected to accept this as the ending. Because other than Phos, everyone’s story, from what it looks like, is at their end now. I really hope that doesn’t happen. I’ve seen great series end so terribly too often and I’ve loved this story for so long that I hope that doesn’t happen with this series too. I love this series a lot and it’s characters, even the ones who I don’t think I like as much as I did after this chapter. I hope the series will end nicely... but I don’t think it will.
Back to predictions on how the story will progress: I made a post a few days ago about how I hope the forgotten plot elements will come into play and the fact that Aechmea isn’t omnipresent. More than ever, part of me hopes those elements will come back and have a positive impact for Phos’s story, especially the omnipresent part. But again, I don’t think I’ll hope too much for it because looking at Ms. Ichikawa’s past works... I don’t think they will, at least not in the way I’m hoping for.
Maybe I’m too used to Western (American/European) stories, where the protagonist somehow beats the odds and wins in the end. This isn’t always the case for Eastern stories, especially stories from Japan. They usually end bittersweet and I don’t think Houseki no Kuni will be the exception. I know I’ve said this saying many times before and with each passing chapter, these words become more and more true:
Phos’s suffering is never going to end. 
And unless someone does something to change the course of the story, which I don’t think will ever happen now, Phos is never going to have a happy ending. 
If I could wish for anything, it’d be that this story ends on a satisfying note. I know, I know. It’s foolish to still hope for that it’ll happen, given everything I’ve seen from Ms. Ichikawa before...But still. I don’t want to lose all of the hope that I have left for this series. Even though that hope is nearly diminished, it’s still there.
So please, Ms. Ichikawa. Please give us a satisfying ending for Phos. Please let them go.  If anyone deserves a dignifying conclusion to their story, it’s them.  Let them rest. End their suffering. Please give them the ending they deserve after everything they went through.
You’ll likely won’t though.  
Because this is Phos.
And to be Phos is to constantly suffer.
Well, regardless, I truly hope you’re hiatus goes well, Ms. Ichikawa. Even though you are a cruel troll, your work is still amazing and I applaud you for your story telling and your love to mess with us. I hope you enjoy your time away and when you return, I hope that you’ll continue to give us amazing content and eventually give Phos the ending they deserve. Please. That’s all I want.
I hope you all a nice holiday season, too, or at least try to.
Happy Holidays. 
Can’t wait for 2020 to end.
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robininthelabyrinth · 3 years
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Fire and Light (ao3) - on tumblr: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4
- Chapter 5 -
“Wen Chao is missing again,” Wen Ning said, and reached a hand up so that he could bite his nails.  
Nie Mingjue caught his hand and brought it back down again. “Missing again? What do you mean?”
“He’s been going missing,” Wen Ning explained. “Right before classes, or training, or – or dinner. We make excuses or find him before it becomes a problem, but he’s getting better at hiding. And eventually…”
Eventually, one of the teachers would tell Wen Ruohan.
Or worse, Wen Chao would miss a dinner, and it would be one of the dinners Wen Ruohan attended. The consequences of that would be unthinkable.
“Has he explained the reason?” Nie Mingjue asked, frowning when Wen Ning shook his head. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
Wen Ning gave him a look that suggested that the broken bones might have something to do with it. Even though there was only one that actually broke.
“I’ll go talk to him.”
“We don’t even know where he is.”
Nie Mingjue did not let that stop him. He was mostly able to walk by now, anyway, and it didn’t take long for him to track Wen Chao down to one of his favorite places to go hide – one of the unused rooms in the family quarters, so long abandoned that there was dust over every surface. There were women’s things scattered all over the place, and Nie Mingjue suspected that the room had once belonged to Wen Chao’s mother.
“A-Chao?” he called, his voice low.
There was a strangled sob, and Wen Chao appeared from behind the bed, his eyes red. “You shouldn’t be out of bed,” he scolded. “What are you doing here? Go back, go back.”
“A-Chao, why have you been hiding away?” Nie Mingjue asked, sitting down on the bed instead. “You haven’t even come to visit me.”
Wen Chao’s lower lip trembled. He was only a little boy, in the end – only ten years old. “I don’t want you to get hurt anymore.”
“What’s me getting hurt have to do with you?” Nie Mingjue said, puzzled as always. How did these Qishan Wen people think, with loops and layers and circles turning in on themselves? “You didn’t do it.”
“I’m stupid,” Wen Chao said. His voice was small and pained. “If I’d been smart enough to play along, pretend you were talking about someone else, the way Huaisang-xiong and A-Qing did…”
“The only one to blame for me saying stupid things is myself,” NIe Mingjue said firmly. “And the only person to blame for hurting me for saying them is Sect Leader Wen. And I wouldn’t have thought to come up with a cover story, either – are you saying I’m stupid?”
Wen Chao sniffed. “Maybe a little.”
“You’re probably right,” Nie Mingjue acknowledged, and patted the bed next to him. Wen Chao flung himself forward, curling up into Nie Mingjue’s arms as if he’d been missing them – he probably had been, too, the little fool. “But neither of us are going to get less stupid if we keep missing classes. So let’s try not to, okay?”
“Okay,” Wen Chao said, and rubbed his head against Nie Mingjue’s chest. “Nie-ge?”
“Mm?”
“I wish you were my big brother instead of Huaisang-xiong’s.”
Nie Mingjue fought a smile. “I appreciate that,” he said. “Have you considered the possibility of me being a big brother to both of you? It’s not necessarily one or the other.”
Wen Chao’s arms tightened around him. “Maybe I want you to myself.”
“Maybe you need to learn to share.”
Wen Chao snickered. A little wetly, but still.
-
Wen Xu and Wen Chao had the misfortune of being born relatively close together in the year. That meant that there was always a single party, nominally held in their honor, that invariably turned into a political event, with all the subsidiary sects flocking to the Nightless City to pay their respects to Wen Ruohan. The sect leaders brought their children along, particularly if they had one around Wen Chao’s age, but that was just a cover; their presence was a homage to the dominant power to which they paid allegiance, the party in no way about either of the two heirs, and that was just as Wen Ruohan liked it.  
The other Great Sects usually sent gifts but did not attend – Nie Mingjue certainly had never gone – but this year the Lan sect broke custom and sent a delegation, with the stated purpose of presenting Wen Chao with an invitation to go take classes at the Cloud Recesses in view of his exceptional performance at the discussion conference.
“Exceptional performance,” Nie Mingjue mouthed at Wen Chao, who turned bright red.
The invitation was in fact issued, but it was probably more accurate to surmise that what the Lan sect really wanted was to get another look at the two Nie heirs and assure themselves of their continued health. Still, Nie Mingjue thought he had a good enough read on Lan Qiren’s personality to conclude that his old teacher wouldn’t affirmatively invite someone he didn’t think had potential, not even for ulterior motives. His reputation as a teacher of any type of student was famous throughout the cultivation world, and being invited to his lectures – as opposed to sending your children there on the basis of a political arrangement, as many sects did – was considered to be a great honor. Even Nie Mingjue had attended on the strength of his family, not himself.
As a result, the invitation was a compliment, and Wen Ruohan liked compliments. The Lan sect delegates were of course invited to stay at the party, and the visiting child – Lan Wangji, who at a year older than Nie Huaisang was a year younger than Wen Chao and thereby a more reasonable a guest to send than Lan Xichen would have been – was sent to mill around with them.
He looked miserable.
Nie Mingjue couldn’t really blame him, especially given how Lan Xichen had once spoken to him at length about how little Lan Wangji liked parties like this. Unable to watch his suffering, he asked Nie Huaisang in an undertone to go distract him a little, maybe find him a quiet place to stay.
After a while, Nie Huaisang returned to his side, Lan Wangji now in tow, and Nie Mingjue frowned at them. He hadn’t meant for Nie Huaisang to bring Lan Wangji here, since Nie Mingjue was supposed to be keeping his head down and avoiding people – Wen Ruohan hadn’t said anything explicit on the subject, but they all knew better than to risk embarrassing him in front of his guests – but he supposed there was nothing for it now.
“Lan Wangji,” he greeted, forgoing the usual intimacy of addressing him only by his courtesy name – he had done so when he was Lan Xichen’s friend, which he thought he still was, but just because Lan Xichen would overlook his current situation did not mean that others would, and Lan Wangji loved rules more than most. “You look well.”
It was a bit of a lie. Lan Wangji was ashen-faced, his fingers trembling a little even as he hid them in his sleeves. It seemed like a bit of an overreaction to the party, unless he suffered from a more severe form of social anxiety than Nie Mingjue had anticipated based on Lan Xichen’s descriptions.
“And you look terrible, da-ge,” Nie Huaisang said, his voice a little sharp, more poisonous than his normal cheerfulness. “You’re more colorful than a rainbow.”
Nie Mingjue’s bruises were indeed at that unfortunate stage, and there were enough on his face and hands that it was difficult to conceal them for very long, even with powder. There was a reason he’d gone out only briefly to greet people – acting as proof of life – before retiring to the back of the room.
“Yes, well,” he said, shaking his head and giving Nie Huaisang a stern look. He didn’t want to air out their business in front of guests. “How is your brother, Lan Wangji?”
“Well,” Lan Wangji said. His jaw was working, and Nie Mingjue wondered briefly if what he had thought was social anxiety was in fact barely suppressed rage. “Would you come to the Cloud Recesses as well, if we invited you?”
Nie Mingjue blinked at him, surprised out of his gloomy thoughts. “I’ve already attended one round of lectures, Wangji. You remember, surely? It was two summers back – was it three? – when I was thirteen, at any rate.”
“There are always new things to learn,” he said vaguely in return, and it was such a Lan Wangji thing to say – such a Lan thing to say – that Nie Mingjue barely managed to keep himself from cooing and calling him a good little cabbage. “Would you be allowed to come?”
“Probably not,” Nie Mingjue said regretfully. “But if you could take Huaisang when he’s old enough, it would be a good experience for him.”
Possibly not for Lan Qiren, given Nie Huaisang’s issues with memorization, but certainly good for Nie Huaisang.
“He doesn’t have many friends here,” he added. “It’s just A-Chao, A-Qing, and A-Ning…have you met the latter two? Huaisang, if you haven’t, you should introduce them.”
“I will,” Nie Huaisang said. “Da-ge, are you sure you can’t find a way to go?”
Nie Mingjue realized that his brother was trying to get him out of the Nightless City, likely in his own efforts to deal with what had happened to him. He sighed, reaching out to touch Nie Huaisang’s hair lightly. “I’m the heir of Qinghe Nie, Huaisang. He’s not going to let me go until he feels confident in controlling me.”
And that would not be soon, he didn’t say, but anyone looking at the marks on his face or the careful way he held himself could put that together easily enough.
Lan Wangji’s lips were pressed tightly together, but Nie Huaisang sighed, yielding to logic, and took him away again. Nie Mingjue returned to his corner, hoping that the shadows would help conceal his bruises, and sank into meditation, trying to not to fantasize about the world in which he could take that offer of help, well-meant as it was. A world where he could take Nie Huaisang and all the Wens – even Wen Xu, who was a nervous wreck underneath his apparent arrogance – away to the tranquil peace of the Cloud Recesses and never come back.
It wouldn’t help to think of that world. It wasn’t this one.
-
Wen Ruohan held court from his throne in the main hall and from a simple chair in the dining room, but he was equally terrifying in any location. His questions had only gotten harder as time passed, and everyone kept their heads down and answered to his satisfaction, even Nie Huaisang.
His questions were easier than everyone else’s, and after dinner ended Wen Ruohan touched Nie Huaisang’s hair and told him with a smile that he was a pretty but useless bird, a lovely ornament to their house, and that they couldn’t possibly do without him. The eyes of all the Wens slid straight to Nie Mingjue, each one filled with terror at his reaction, but Nie Mingjue for once held his tongue.
He hadn’t really expected Nie Huaisang to be able to leave, not this year. Perhaps next year this little interaction would be forgotten and they could try again.
(He wanted to break every one of Wen Ruohan’s fingers so that they never touched his brother ever again. He wanted to make it so that Wen Chao didn’t look wistfully envious even as he shivered in terror at the thought of his father’s attention, make it so that Wen Xu didn’t look dull and resigned in anticipation of endless pain, make it so that Wen Qing and Wen Ning didn’t look so close to tears. 
He wanted to be home in the Unclean Realm again before he forgot what it was like.)
Wen Ruohan smiled at him, probably reading his thoughts from his face. “Walk with me, Mingjue,” he said. It was not a request. “I would hear about how you are adjusting to life in Qishan.”
Nie Mingjue left frightened faces behind him, and held firm to the thought that it would be politically inconvenient for Wen Ruohan to kill him.
(The fact that he didn’t think he’d done anything to deserve it - this time, anyway - was irrelevant.)
Nie Huaisang found him later that night, sitting on the stone floor next to his bed unmoving, skin cold and clammy with shock, and there was a small and quiet but extremely frantic whirl of activity that resulted in everyone crowding into Wen Xu’s bedroom, it being the biggest, trying to warm him back up.
It was more or less one big swirl of noise and movement, and Nie Mingjue only briefly surfaced to catch a few snatches of conversation –
“– did he do to him? He was only gone a shichen or two –”
“– physically seems fine, but I don’t like what his vitals are doing. Maybe we should call the sect doctors –”
“– if we do that, he’ll find out we did that –”
“– better brother than you ever were!”
That last one sounded like Wen Chao, making trouble again, even though it really wasn’t Wen Xu’s fault that he’d fallen for Wen Ruohan’s divide-and-conquer tricks when he was even younger than Wen Chao was now. It was how he’d been raised, Qishan Wen style, and anyway he’d been doing so much better lately, actually paying attention and joining hands with the rest of them to resist and distract and care about each other.
Nie Mingjue wanted to say something like that, knew that he had to speak, that it was his responsibility, a duty voluntarily assumed in having taken the role of older sibling for all that he wasn’t actually the eldest, but all that came out of his mouth was a low whine, pathetic, and he remembered that right now he really just wanted to die.
“Don’t you dare say that! Don’t you dare –”
“– need to get his body temperature up. His golden core is exacerbating the effects of the shock –”
“– did you hear what he said –”
“– tear that motherfucker’s heart out –”
“– leave my grandmother out of this –”
“– not a real doctor! I’m just an apprentice, and I’m trying –”
“– how could you possibly say that?! Of course I care! Before him, nobody – nobody ever – listen, if I wasn’t nearly five years older than him, I’d be calling him da-ge right alongside the rest of you, okay? Shit, I have half a mind to do it anyway, and fuck anyone who thinks it strange –”
Nie Mingjue closed his eyes and sobbed.
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petri808 · 3 years
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Inukag AU
As Inuyasha and Kagome cut through a park on their way back to the Higurashi home, they chatted casually, just winding down after a hearty lunch at a nearby cafe. The couple stayed to the pathways traversing the manicured park. It would be shorter to cut through the grass, but why the rush? It was a beautiful location, with a several different kinds of trees dotting the landscape to provide shade and lots of open space for all kinds of activities. Some picnicked, flew kites or played frisbee, they’d even passed a group doing Tai Chi. There were young families to older citizens enjoying the scenery. The couples conjoined hands and twined fingers swayed lazily back and forth between them. Despite the summer heat starting to rise in Tokyo, with blue skies and a gentle breeze brought in from the Pacific Ocean, it was a perfect day for a stroll.
While this journey towards normalcy hasn’t always been an easy one, the past couple of months have been the happiest so far. Ever since leaving the hospital Kagome’s felt better and better. There were even moments she’d made peace with the idea she may not regain her memories. Was it saddening yes, because she wouldn’t remember her job, friends, and other precious moments. But at the same time, she could always make new ones. Sango’s twins were still young. She could relearn her job, and best of all she had Inuyasha who’d she’d become attached to. Their steadily growing relationship was a budding romance regardless of their past history. Think about? Kagome had a chance to re-experience everything in a new way, through a new lens. Well… that’s what she told herself to justify the idea, and so far, it was working.
But there were strange moments starting to occur. Sometimes they were dreams of scenes Kagome didn’t recognize. That in of itself weren’t unusual because how often do dreams ever make complete sense? No, it was in the emotions that came with them. On several occasions Kagome would wake up with the distinct feeling these were not merely dreams but memories trying to break through. At other times, she couldn’t remember the dream, only the emotions she’d felt during them. Sometimes they were so intense, she’d wake up in tears or completely happy for no other reason. According to her neurologist, this was normal during the healing process, but unfortunately there was no true way to tell the difference between reality and fantasy.
“Did I tell you I reached out to Ms. Tanaka the other day?” Kagome asked Inuyasha.
“Mmm, I don’t think so.”
“I called the office and spoke to her briefly about maybe getting lunch one day so she could tell me how things have been there. I may not know exactly what she’s talking about, but maybe it’ll jog my memories.”
Inuyasha lifted their conjoined hands and kissed the back of hers. “I think that’s a really good idea. You guys will have fun talking.”
“I think so too, she seemed very nic—…” Kagome’s voice trailed away as stopped dead in her tracks and her eyes shifted towards one of the parks trees. “Um, c-could we check out that tree?”
“Sure, whatever you want.” Inuyasha smiled knowingly.
It was like her feet gained a mind of their own as they carried her towards a large Sakura tree in the middle of a field. Just from looking at, there wasn’t anything special about the tree. Spring had long since passed and the blooms were no more. But Kagome felt a pull towards this one in particular as if she remembered something about it. What that was she had no idea. She let go of Inuyasha’s hand and reached out, touching the bark of the tree, and staring up at its massive girth. It looked old. Maybe there long before the park existed… maybe older than even the Edo period, who knew? It was just another green leafed tree, yet why was it stirring up a rush of emotions? Happy ones with butterflies dancing in her soul.
Slowly, she moved around the base of the tree like a surveyor mapping it out or searching for secrets only it could provide. And that’s when she saw it. Kagome’s breathing hitched as her eyes fell upon a carving in the wood, approximately five feet above the ground. There, a bit worn nonetheless was a heart encircling two names. “Kagome…” She read aloud, “& Inuyasha—
Oh, my Kami!” She gasped, both hands flying up to cover her mouth in shock. “H-How? When?”
At that moment, Inuyasha walked over, gazing at the words and running his hand over the carving while he spoke. “We carved this about two years ago.” He smiled, eyes crinkling, and growing moist as if reminiscing. “It was a late Saturday afternoon and after eating an early dinner at Genki Sukiyaki, we cut through this park to get to your house. But it started to rain, not very heavy, so we took shelter under this tree.” Inuyasha chuckled lightly. “I remember you being upset about your hair getting wet.” He finally looked to Kagome, placing a hand on her cheek. “You looked so beautiful and even though the weather was miserable, there was just something magical about it all. That’s when you asked me to carve this into the tree.”
“But how did I know to look for it?” Kagome was so confused. “I don’t remember any of that.”
“I have no idea how. But part of you must. Maybe, it’s a sign your memories are fighting to come through.”
The tears gathering in Kagome’s eyes, trickle down her cheeks as a blend of happiness and sadness. She wanted to be happy for such a beautiful memory but devastated that she couldn’t remember it. She wanted to be excited that maybe, just maybe it could be true that her memories were returning, yet she didn’t want to take the chance of a let-down. Inuyasha pulled her into a tight hug as she let go of the angsty emotions. “It’s not fair that I can’t remember! I want to remember!”
“Shhh,” Inuyasha who’s own tears begun to spill, did his best to soothe her with softened tones. “I want that too. It’s gonna get better baby. I think this really is your memories returning, we just have to believe.”
“It’s hard to do that sometimes…”
Inuyasha lifted her chin and swept his thumbs over her cheeks to dry them. “And if you don’t, we’re creating a whole new memory of this tree right now, an even more special one.”
Kagome sniffled. “You think so?”
He nodded his head and placed a gentle kiss on her whetted lips. “What do you think?” Inuyasha questioned with a soft smile. “How can we add to this memory?”
Kagome paused for a moment in thought. “We could add something beneath our names… like… mmm, forever in time?”
“Is that what you want?” She nodded yes. “Okay,” Inuyasha obliged.
He kissed her again then used his claw to slowly, meticulously carve the new words into the bark. It took a few minutes because he wanted to make sure it was easy to read and would last a long time. “I think this is definitely will better than the original memory.”
“Mmhmm, it’s a good one,” Kagome agreed. She felt a lot better now. “Thank you, Inuyasha for being so patient with me. It must be so frustrating.”
Inuyasha shook his head. “Not anymore. I’m not glad about the accident, but I’m cherishing all this time I’m spending with you. Kagome, I truly mean it when I say, this moment right here,” he took her hand. “It’s now one of the happiest moments you’ve ever given me. No matter what,” he smiled, “I’ll always love you, forever in time.”
She giggled. “Forever… I like the sound of that…”
After the incident at the park, Kagome brought it up with the neuropsychologist assigned to her case. The woman patiently sat in her chair as Kagome told her every little detail. What she felt, the emotions, her thoughts, and reactions. She also brought up the dreams she’d been having as well as small incidents that caused her to feel like it might be memories trying to come through.
“Like, just the other day,” Kagome explained. “Sango accompanied me to the hospital for my last physical check-up, but as we passed by the nursery, we decided to stop to look at the cute babies. Then out of nowhere I started to feel emotional, nothing bad, just happy as she talked about the birth of her twins. I mean, yeah it makes sense to feel happy at the time because we were having a good time, but it just felt different. I almost felt like crying. Why is that??”
The woman finished jotting down her notes before speaking. “It’s been about 5 months, correct, since you lost your memories?” Kagome nodded yes. “And according to your latest evaluations, your brain has healed quite nicely. It’s not uncommon at this point for triggers to manifest themselves.”
“I don’t understand…”
“The way long term memory retention works, our brains must process information and create new neurocircuitry, storage if you will once the information has been deemed necessary to keep in the long term. If not, our short term memories are discarded quickly. Of course, this is just a basic explanation and there’s more to it, but what studies have found is memories attached to an emotional event have a higher likelihood of being retained and will evoke a stronger response from us. Think of it like, these emotional memories are much more deeply attached to our psyches.”
“Oh— I think I understand.”
“Mmm,” the doctor hummed. “The park incident was attached to a very emotional moment in your life. So even though you couldn’t remember the event itself, the part of you that remembered the emotions surrounding it did and pushed you towards the tree. Also, the hospital, you mentioned being with your friend Sango and looking at babies. This is just a guess, but perhaps you were feeling the emotions you felt from the time she gave birth.”
As the doctors words were processed, moisture began to pool in Kagome’s eyes. Could it really be true?! Should she really allow herself to hope?! When Kagome finally responded, her voice cracked as it held back the tears. “D-Does this mean… I’m starting to get my memories back?”
“I would say, yes. Again, I cannot say one hundred percent certain, but what you are experiencing is a common one. Those that suffered from acute memory loss, don’t just wake up one day and suddenly they’ve all returned. It’s a gradual process, but once it begins it typically continues at a steady pace.”
“I-I don’t know what to say!” A few happy tears joined the smile on Kagome’s face.
“I suggest that you start writing down the times you feel something or think you’re remembering something and check them with your family and friends. If they confirm it, talk about it. That could help as well to bring more information and memories to the forefront— give your brain a little help to jog itself.”
“Thank you so much, doctor! I’ll definitely do that!”
The woman smiled, reaching over to pat Kagome’s hand before giving it a small squeeze. “You’re very welcome. I wish you all the luck in the world!”
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