#we accidentally isolated ourselves from the people we cared about most?

[pebbledrat]

Genuinely no one understands how much Paul Shapera's The Mayor is a cTubbo song

#you don't cry for mercy! you don't cry for help! #you don't cry 'cause in this world you got. you gotta get it done yourself #the mayor is just ctubbo coded in general tho. she's my everything #like what if we dedicated ourselves to preserving our city from war and inside threats and in doing so #we accidentally isolated ourselves from the people we cared about most? #AND there's a nukes subplot #like you can't make this stuff up #and don't get me started on #''Shaking hands making pacts/ with knives held round our backs/ We all smile as we push in the blade'' #okay I'll be done now but like. the madness is definitely consuming me #everyone go listen to fairypunk 3 right now #pebble speaks

[cl0ckworkqueerness]

trans people, by our very nature, are "sexual".

there is nothing we do that is not claimed to be for sexual gratification. we cannot seek pleasure, or happiness, or relief, even of a sexual variety, without being claimed as a predator, or perverted.

we cannot exist without being accused of existing for a fetish. and that fetish is being ourselves.

trans people, by our very nature, are "violent".

we are sick, cruel people, and we are always doing and saying terrible things to the poor cis people who accidentally happened to wander into the wrong conversation topic, or who were just trying to defend themselves.

we are always the persecutors. we are always the executioners. every word we say could be spun as a threat, and even when they can't, our poor little victims can still blindfold themselves and pretend like we're acting out in violence, in a case completely uniquely horrible to them.

these are the areas in which transmisogyny thrives.

it's not exclusive to transmisogyny, of course, but that is what it feeds the most. transmisogyny is fear. fear of danger that isn't really there. fear and disgust.

to my fellow fighters for trans men, with whom i always stand, i ask you please to stand by the trans women on this site as well, especially now but always. transphobia is always present, and is especially present in tumblr staff, and what's going on right now is undeniably transmisogynistic.

i have also seen posts about how "transandrophobia truthers" are adding to this sitewide transmisogyny. this is not true, at least not in a broad, all-encompassing sense. anyone who truly cares about all trans people, as i do in my fight to bring transandrophobia to light, should care about this right now. if they don't, they never cared about us to begin with, either.

focus on the sick fucks who decided it was okay to hide deep transmisogyny behind both a corporate veil and a thin mask of innocent victimhood.

tell everyone affected that you're there for them. do not let tumblr staff get away with sweeping this under the rug, as they'll eventually try to do. be angry. to all the trans women, trans men, all trans people, all cis people, all people who care about the liberation from gendered discrimination, sex discrimination, gender roles, and anti-trans hostility of all kinds: we need to fight this, now. together.

how can we explicitly fight it? i don't know. but at the very least, if nothing else, then please offer your hand in solidarity, in support. being targeted by a site's staff can make one feel very alone, very isolated; if that's what the perpetrators want, we can't let them have it.

#transgender #transmisogyny #transphobia #tumblr staff #trans #gender

[leophnyx]

Nostalgia

Soul: It's getting colder, and with the changing seasons comes new feelings.

Last night we were up late. Accidentally, but we were listening to songs and talking. One of them was from Ena, Anemoia.

The word anemoia refers to a form of nostalgia for a place you've never been to. That's what I've been feeling lately... except not quite.

A long time ago, after awakening as a young teen, we found ourselves isolated and alone. We had friends but they weren't "close" friends, we couldn't talk to them about any of this and so we couldn't really connect to them... so we were alone.

We have friends now, we have communities we engage with and loved ones... but I miss the freedom of being forgotten and ignored, as funny as that sounds. When nobody really cared about us, when they neglected us, we were able to do so much. We could do whatever we wanted, we could get ourselves in and out of trouble if we wanted, we were free to come and go as we pleased.

It feels like being a wild animal, almost - when you're alone you're on your own, and most wild animals lead a similar lifestyle. They do have others of their species that might care for them, but as an animal you're largely on your own, free to go wherever you'd like.

I'm still not used to having people care about me, or loving me. It feels oppressive, compared to the freedom of being an isolated animal. But it is healthier, and I'm trying to adapt.

#person: soul #horders personal #awakening

[that-is-just-so-typically-me]

I think every instinct we have to seek intimate connections with other humans where we give generously and unselfconsciously presupposes that people unfailingly reciprocate such acts. I also don’t think that instinct is in any way misguided or inappropriate. It’s just about the keystone of group cooperation - the impulse of individuals to “sacrifice” themselves to a degree and help other people has increased our personal survival odds/quality of life enough to become the survival strategy that persevered down our genetic lines, like any other social species. The problems arise when everyone is so damn traumatized from betrayal and abandonment of the people we gave the most to and were the most vulnerable with that we end up swinging to the other end of the pendulum (the anxious-attachment style to avoidant-attachment style pipeline is REAL, baby) that we still crave this intimacy but can’t seem to allow ourselves to be generous and sit back and wait for the love to be returned in kind any more. Usually this happens in some early childhood configuration with our first caregivers but ultimately it happens again and again as we form new attachments which then fracture and break, refreshing the trauma anew and further strengthening the connective tissue between giving/loving and pain/death (because our brains are at this point in evolution designed to understand social abandonment as deadly physical danger). But what happens is that this avoidance actually just guarantees our decline and lowers the odds of our survival as we literally did not evolve the survival strategies to be solitary creatures like spiders or angler fish or some other organism that comes together with other members of its kind only to briefly copulate. We don’t do this alone. We can’t do this alone. We can do a LOT “independently”, so to speak, but almost like a hand moves “independently” of a torso or head or tongue or eyebrow, capable of autonomy to a finite extent with the health and mobility of those we’re connected to directly informing our own health and mobility, our capacity to achieve our fullest potential realized only when the entire system provides enough support and stability to arise from. like a circle of life that moves us all, or something. We guarantee to hurt ourselves when we isolate, when we withhold from others and do not “invest” in each other.

That doesn’t mean that every person we “invest” in will give back, and there is never a perfect, mirrored reciprocation like we can balance a ledger with formulaic precision. It’s an imperfect ebb and flow and sometimes it really is that we just do it for the hygiene of it all and it is sort of like “there goes another chunk of my time and energy into the black hole of good deeds” but not in a negative way? But we MUST apply wisdom and judgment and understand when we are simply being mistreated, used, and stuck in a dead-end interpersonal relationship that will drain us and hurt us more than if we just severed that tie and tried with other people instead. But that brings me back to my original point that this instinct grew because it had the chance to do so in an environment of a shared awareness of our interdependence, an environment that I don’t know exists in the USA anymore. It’s become more and more of a rare thing to find people who do understand and won’t begrudge that interdependence, because we constantly flee at the first sign that we aren’t going to be taken care of 100% by the others in our lives 100% of the time, that they will be boring and are guaranteed to accidentally hurt us or not be there when we could use the help. So we hop from person to person riding a continual honeymoon phase where the illusion of a perfect friend/partner/loved one is still unshattered, and perfect love with them seems attainable to us through them, until it doesn’t - then we wash, rinse, and repeat.

Mostly cis straight men are notorious for this because I truly believe there is not a group more traumatized and deeply afraid and incapable of fulfilling their own needs even a small part of the time (which again speaks to the broken nature of our social webs because the ability to meet our own needs DEVELOPS from the unconscious knowledge that when we are in true danger, someone will help us. But we force almost total independence onto boys to the extent that we refuse them any emotion other than anger and do not soothe them in childhood when their brains and bodies are literally incapable of meeting their own needs yet because they are literal c h i l d r e n). So we have created this deadly whirlpool sucking everyone down because no one trusts anyone anymore, and there is no other way to pump the brakes on this and turn things around except some people taking a brave leap of faith into giving and loving like they’ve never been hurt, and the people they give to and love being brave and strong enough to catch them when they leap, even though no one involved will ever be perfect. Both kinds of people are in short supply.

I’ll be clear though that we MUST apply our judgment to situations where the relationship is just parasitic and abusive and then the bid of faith will heal absolutely nothing, and the person being used must leave or be annihilated (and the person annihilating them will not be healed through this act even if they believe they will be). There are epidemics of systemic power imbalances predicated on this whole sick dynamic (like cis straight men may be the most wounded psychologically but they also monopolize the power to do anything about this. “This leash demeans us both” and everything, but only the person holding the leash can free either of them).

The kind of thoughts I wish I could just dump on here and lay down and get a kiss on the forehead about but instead I just get to smoke by my window because it’s the only way I can sleep these days without PTSD nightmares

#if I can’t get a forehead kiss I will settle for being slapped in the face until I can’t feel anything!

[tomatograter]

What would you say is the very core of dirkjake? I struggle to put it into words beyond dirk being afraid jake will get tired of him

Ok this is a fun one hang on, strap in,

Much like vrisrezi, and in fact a reoccurring theme throughout HS as a work in full -represented in varying levels of relevance to its cast of core characters- dirkjake is about the masks we willingly fashion ourselves after to starve off insecurity. Everything else is a permutation of that.

But also akin to vrisrezi, their interpersonal relationships and character arcs are heavily about how said performances can be turned into destructive weapons that hinder the development of one's growth and personal identity, rippling through friend groups and plot events. That's a lot of words. So let's break it down like this: 

Vriska's Mindfang performance is a defense mechanism created to strengthen her resolve when dealing with isolation and an abysmal monster as a mother, and serves to advance the plot, but is highly harmful to vriska and those around her. (Of note - Vriska doesn't see herself as a villain, it is incredibly important that she's a HERO, just a highly polarizing and problematic one.)

Terezi's Legislacerator ((space cop)) performance is an elaborate persona created to make sense of an antagonistic and temperamental environment, and seemingly dole out punishments that would ensure things continue to function as they should, even to terezi's personal detriment. Vriska is far from the first troll or human terezi has killed, but it's the one that breaks the scale, because terezi knows she's just another victim of the system.

Neither of the above make up the entirety of vriska OR terezi as characters, simply the masks they've chosen to slot themselves into a narrative that will not stop for them, or anybody else for that matter, to have time to 'figure themselves out' before steamrolling them. Vriska and terezi's relationship relies in the bond they formed through the cracks on their masks, to a point in which hopefully they can help eachother to get rid of them.

When talking about dirkjake, instead of focusing on the alternian or human society we have the introduction of dystopic hyper isolated homescenarios that will define their viewpoints as Characters in this story. If vrisrezi is cops-and-robbers, dirkjake is princesses and dragons. Oh yeah, they're both simplistic morality plays.

It is precisely how set apart they are from everyone else but immediate danger (may it be rogue lusii naturae or imperial drones) that molds them into people who crave connection but are too cocooned inside their own walls to let anybody through, even those they care for. Taking the brunt of responsibility for a Legacy and attaining a greater future plays a key role for most of the alphas, but in dirk and jake's case this is demonstrated through the necessity for brash, masculine heroism and the suppression of fragility or sentimentality. Before the story has a chance to admonish them for stepping out of line, they'll do it to themselves out of habit.

The situation gets a little worse when the roles they've picked to enact (invariably, The Hero!) don't match with the roles the story wants them to play.

Jake is the archetypal swooning and good for nothing princess who's there to look pretty and provide motivation To others, modernized into the cool action girl trope we've known to find and despise in every other movie, those who often say 4 lines about how cool and smart they are or how they were raised by their older brothers with big guns and then spend the rest of their screentime in varying states of distress, undress, or concerning unconsciousness. Sometimes all three!!!!! 

It is because of this lack of agency that jake stresses his role as a charming gallivanting and STUPID action hero, thereby providing a excuse for his lack of control over his own life, and makes stumbling into situations ass-first look charming. He wants his friends to be impressed with him, and he'll lie to achieve that effect, because he wants to be liked and to be taken seriously. The problem is that he's all too aware of how he's been set up, and he vehemently rejects it.

Dirk is the dragon. Yup. Function? To be slayed. Duty? To make your life a nightmare in just about every possible way, giving the eventual story payoff a grander climax. Inadvertently, accidentally, well-intentionally, and yet sometimes on purpose, dirk strider ends up in the antagonist role. His awareness of the fact and penance for its weight is such he'll preemptively take the blame for things that aren't even his fault, like a loser. While jake eventually has to deal with how he ends up breaking things on accident to provide a backdrop motivation for others, dirk is stuck in a self-fulfilling loop of having mostly negative input in everyone's lives, including (if not specially) his own.

Dirk's hyper-investment in playing the Knight, like his brother before him, and ensuring his input on everyone's stories remains constructive and ever-helpful even if he doesn't know what the FUCK he's talking about or what is happening 99,9% of the time is a byproduct of multiple timelines spent in less glorious ways.

The core of dirkjake, then, is how they're simultaneously the one person who's the closest to seeing the other for what they truly are, but ashamed of their own shortcomings, they do their best to advance the fantasy version instead. To know and value a loved one is to become aware of your own lies, and to acknowledge the performance panic that comes with it. Ye olde jingle of "Self-recognition through the eyes of the other" and "the pants-soiling fear that actually you're still a faker and you will never be enough", weaved up and remixed. Their problem is that Princesses don't marry Dragons, and in a realistic setting neither do Princes and Knights for that matter, they're too busy with- doing the other stuff!!!!! The stuff that should be done! Even if they wanted to! 

Which actually goes right back to my claim that dirkjake is exactly like Shrek, The Movie, And This Is Why.

#meta #vrisrezi #dirkjake #dirk strider #jake english #shrek #again.

[handonshipper]

If I Knew Then What I Know Now: Chapter Three

Hope headed downstairs after putting her father to sleep. The voices in her head caused by the Hollow were getting to her. It was getting harder and harder to manage. The most relief she had gotten since she took in the Hollow's magic again was when she was spending time with the waiter from the Mystic Grill, Landon Kirby, yesterday. Something about being around him was different. A little distracting at least. But she was dangerous to be around right now, and she knew it. Which was why she did not consider going to find him.

The tribrid wondered what exactly the waiter was doing in New Orleans, her home town. Was it merely a coincidence or something more? She felt drawn to trust Landon and felt comfortable around him, but she had also recently been betrayed by Roman, her ex boyfriend, which resulted in her mother's death. At the thought of this, the voices grew, and she struggled to ignore them. She breathed out slowly and entered Rousseau's bar. "Declan, hey, I need a favor from the bar." Suddenly her body froze as she spotted a familiar face, her anger flaring up again. Elijah Mikaelson. Her uncle. "What are you doing here? Killing my mom wasn't enough? Now you've come for Declan?"

"That's not what I'm here for." Elijah disagreed, but Hope didn't care. She just wanted to be angry at him. To not let her own guilt sink in. It was painful enough the brief moment it had while she was with Landon. It was easier for her to be angry with Elijah instead of facing all of it. And the voices in her head certainly weren't helping.

"He killed her" Declan said, stunned.

"That's not what happened." Elijah defended

"No, but if you weren't there, she'd still be alive." Hope said, and her rage fueled the voices, causing then only to get louder and louder. She clutched her head. "Stop! God, stop!"

"What's going on with you?" Declan asked, confused and concerned at what was happening to her. He moved to go towards her but stopped as Elijah grabbed his arm.

"Stop! Shut up! Shut up!" Hope shouted. Their voices certainly weren't helping the situation.

"What did you do?" Declan interrogated Elijah. Elijah grabbed him by the neck and pinned him up against the bar.

"Hey, don't hurt him!" Hope said, moving closer, momentarily distracted from the voices by the scene before her.

"I won't. We can't do this in front of him."

"Okay, fine." She waved her hand and put Declan to sleep. The human then fell to the floor. "Now it's just the two of us."

"My memory was gone. I didn't know who she was."

Considering everything the tribrid was feeling at the moment, that wasn't a good enough excuse. "Well, now you do. How does it feel?"

"Like the worst pain I've ever experienced."

The whispers got more intense in her head, and she put her hands on her head and looked around a little, trying to force away the voices. She lowered her hands and looked at her uncle. "I hate you."

"I hate me, too." Elijah said, self loathing obvious in his eyes.

Hope knew she shouldn't blame him, but right now she needed to be angry with someone, and it was easy to be angry with him. "You let her die." In a flash of rage, consumed by emotions and the hollow's magic, Hope waved a hand, cutting him magically repeatedly as though she was clawing into him until he collapsed

"Hope" spoke a familiar voice, but the tribrid didn't give herself a chance to process who the voice belonged to. In a flash of rage, she waved her hand back and caused a deep gash across the person that entered. "Hope" the voice repeated, though now it had a groan, and the tribrid suddenly realized who the voice belonged to.

Landon Kirby.

Landon was walking down the street as he thought about everything that happened. He wanted to make sure Hope was alright. He hadn't seen her since the day before. But he also did not want to interact with her, no matter how much he wanted to. He knew that he was no longer the same Landon Kirby he had been before he melted into a pile of goo. Before he had been sent to Malivore and lived what felt like years in complete isolation, Before he had to fight monsters in the prison world to survive.

He knew he was darker, fought with both brawn and brain. He attacked first and didn't let himself worry about the consequences. He just needed to fight and kill. That had been his mindset for the past several weeks since he got out of Malivore. And now he was here, surrounded by people.... It was a lot, and he wasn't sure that he could manage it well enough not to end up being a burden on Hope or anyone else.

Suddenly, he heard Hope's voice from inside Rousseau's as he neared it. "Stop! Shut up! Shut up! Hey, don't hurt him!" There was a little bit of a pause "You let her die!"

A concerned Landon Kirby stepped into Rousseau's and called out her name to get her attention. "Hope" Suddenly, without really paying attention to who it was, Hope waved a hand back. Suddenly, a large gash cut across Landon's chest magically, and he stumbled back a bit, leaning against the wall as blood started soaking his shirt. "Hope" he repeated, groaning a little in pain. This wasn't a wound he could exactly stitch up.

"Landon?" Hope questioned,   her eyes widening in horror at what she had done. "Oh god" she said as Landon slowly slid to the ground, putting pressure to his own wound. She grabbed something sharp from nearby and cut her palm. "Here, drink this", she said, putting it near his mouth but not on it.

Landon shook his head, not wanting to risk being sent back to Malivore. He wasnt sure what exactly happened. But he also didn't want to take any chances.

"It can heal you. Drink" Hope said, looking at him, her eyes wide in concern.

Landon shook his head again. "Not you" he said, forcing back a groan of pain

A hurt expression flickered across her face, and she moved her hand away. He could see her wound closing up. Her uncle, Elijah, was healing from his own wounds at the moment.

"Hope. What happened?" Klaus questioned, walking inside the bar.

"I uh. I attacked Elijah, and Landon came in. And I accidentally hurt him too" Hope said. "And he's refusing to drink my blood. I don't know why. I told him it would help"

Klaus walked over and bit his own wrist before feeding it to Landon forcefully. Landon drank some of the hybrid's blood. He coughed some of it up, anxious about how vampire blood would affect him.  But the blood already started to heal him. His eyes drifted shut and Landon lost consciousness.

Hope was pacing downstairs in the Mikaelson home, trying to keep herself calm and have as much control over the whispers as she could. It had died down after she hurt Elijah. The pain wasn't as bad as it had been before. But she knew it was only temporary. She looked up as her father came downstairs after putting Landon.

"How is he?" She asked immediately.

"He's alright, just sleeping. He's getting a bit feverish, but it's mild." Klaus said, looking at his daughter. "Who is he?"

"His name is Landon, and he's human. He, uh, he used to serve me milkshakes at the Mystic Grill. He took a trip here. I'm not sure how long he is staying. He says it depends on if he has reasons to stay."

"What was that? You won't take my help, you reject the bracelet, you're throwing Elijah around" Klaus said, looking at his daughter with worry.

"It stopped the voices." the tribrid admitted, trying not to sound as vulnerable as she felt.. She had all of this power and she knew it was killing her. And the voices were so intense, part of her wanted to scream and take out all of New Orleans to feel better.. But she didn't want to hurt people. She never wanted that. It was why she worked hard to control her magic so she never used too much. Never used more than necessary for a given occasion. Though she hadn't exactly been following her own rules lately.

Her father looked at her, stunned "What?"

"Ever since I took the power back, the whispers... I can't think, I can't sleep, I can't even breathe. But right now, it's silent. Is this the rest of my life? A rage that can only be quieted by violence?"

"Hope, if violence is what you need to feel better, then you have the perfect father. We'll handle this. In the meantime, you should probably keep your distance from your friend. Landon"

"I was thinking the same thing." Hope said, looking at him. "Thank you for bringing him here and making sure he was alright."

"You're welcome" Klaus said.

"I saw Landon yesterday" she said, trying to talk to him before the voices grew too loud again. "We talked for a bit, and I showed him around New Orleans"

"You could manage it? The voices?"

"It was... I don't know, easier around him. I can't explain it. It was still there and bothersome but it wasn't as bad. I have no idea why" Hope said as she followed her father upstairs to her room. "I thought I could handle it. I really did."

"You're handling it as best you can, and I'm gonna be here with you every step of the way." Klaus promised as he looked at his daughter.

"Will you stay with me awhile?"

"Of course I will. So do you like this boy?"

Hope was silent for a moment, but she was grateful for the focus on Landon instead of the voices constantly in her head. "Even if I did, it doesn't matter"

"What makes you say that?" Klaus questioned curiously.

"My last love interest betrayed me. I dont think I am exactly the right person to be dating"

"The first person I was truly involved with is currently under a sleeping spell in this very building." Klaus pointed out with a slight smile. "Do you like this boy"

"Yes. But I can't think about a relationship" Hope said. She never would be able to. She could feel herself dying. It wasnt fair to him. It wouldn't be fair to get involved with anyone while she was dying. Though she couldnt exactly say that to her father. "He's human. Our family gets ourselves involved in a lot of dangerous situations. And mom just-" She shook her head

"Your mother would want you to be happy"

"I know she would." the tribrid said simply but she had already made up her mind. She wanted Landon to be safe. Not be killed like Camille, Hayley, Jackson, and many others had been while close to their family. If he was genuinely as nice of a guy as he seemed, then she definitely didn't want to ruin his life, which is probably exactly what she would do if her family got involved with him. Invaded his life. He already got hurt because of her. Hope wasn't sure she could avoid that happening again if he didn't leave.

Hope was confused on why he was pushing her to be in a relationship, especially after how he reacted whenever anyone else got in a relationship. However, after looking at him for a moment, she recognized the reasoning from his expression. He wanted her to have hope. To find something to live for and to look forward to. Something to fight for besides family.

#legacies #cw legacies #legacies cw #hope mikaelson #landon kirby #klaus mikaelson #legacies fanfic #legacies fanfiction #fanfic #fanfiction #handon #hope x landon #landon x hope #If I Knew Then #if i knew then what i know now #if i knew then chapter three #if i knew then what i know now chapter three

[hellreads]

what are some of the most filthiest fics you've ever read?

this is the HARDEST ASK I have received so far, I spaced out after seeing this ask trying to recall every single filthy fic I ever read because there’s a lot but I will only be adding three fics per member for this ask, now, what I consider filthy may not be your cup of tea or may seem vanilla to y’all but to each their own, btw filthy to me includes threesomes to gangbangs because we’re weak for double penetration in this house, a lot of cum play and sloppy seconds, dirty talk, degradation, and more ~ by more I mean feelings, I need to feel something before drowning me in good explicit smut but I like pwps too lol, anyway, enough of my ramblings let’s get to the list! | 🍒

NOTE: please check all tags and warnings before reading a fic, read any of these at your own risk!

TOP PICKS

❥ The Hills by @minflix➴ Ski-Trip/Vacation!AU | Yoongi x Reader x Hoseok | Series➴ A ski trip with old friends sounds like a fun time, right?when your ex-boyfriend (who you hate but somehow always end up in bed with) and your stepbrother (who you are harboring not-so-secret feelings for) tag along at the last minute, you have a feeling it won’t be an uneventful weekend.but fun? debatable. that remains to be seen.

❥ Pour Up by jungxkook (deactivated/story no longer here on tumblr)➴ Fuckboy/Fratboy!AU | Taehyung x Reader x Jungkook | One-Shot➴ You like to pretend you hate Jungkook and Taehyung but sleeping with both of them doesn’t sound so terrible especially when you’re drunk and faded.

❥ Extreme Obsession by saylilirose➴ Psychological/Yandere!AU | OT7 x Reader | Series➴ In life, you meet one person that you live and grow old with. 

You? You meet seven. 

But your love? Non-existent. 

But theirs? Real…and obsessive.

Which turns deadly and dangerous. 

Without hesitation.➴ NOTE: this story contains heavy/dark/taboo themes and this isn’t for everyone, make sure you read all tags and warnings before starting this fic, you’ve been warned.

Kim Namjoon

❥ Miss Communication by @dovechim➴ Poly!AU | Namjoon x Reader x Jungkook | One-Shot➴ Poly relationships can be complicated. especially one where there’s an established hierarchy, and someone decides to break the rules. in a series of miscommunications between your boyfriends, you find yourself being the conveyor of peace and something else that isn’t quite what you expected. 

❥ Tigerboy by @joonbird➴ Hybrid!AU | Namjoon x Reader | One-Shot➴ “You, a docile rabbit hybrid, have been waiting a long time to meet the mysterious tiger hybrid, Kim Namjoon.”

❥ Criminal by @teawithkpop➴ Criminal/Police!AU | Namjoon x Reader x Yoongi x Jungkook | One-Shot➴ Namjoon is a wanted criminal, and he decides he wants you to be his ‘last meal’ before he’s booked.

Kim Seokjin

❥ The Devil Wears Armani by @floralseokjin➴ Devil!AU | Seokjin x Reader | Series➴ You never imagined accidentally attempting to sell your soul to the devil would lead to this…

❥ Off-Limits by @floralseokjin➴ Brother’s Bestfriend!AU | Seokjin x Reader | Series➴ You’ve been lusting after your brother’s best friend for a while now, ever since you met him at a house party, flirting it up a storm as you failed to realise who the other was. That was months ago now and things are still awkward, but you can’t ignore the sexual tension that’s simmers between the two of you…and it keeps getting worse…

❥ In The Bleak Midwinter by @pcyheartgirlx➴ Idol/Escort!AU | Seokjin x Reader x Chanyeol | Series➴ We’re all whores, we just sell different parts of ourselves.

You own a multi-billion dollar company, servicing the biggest names in kpop, in more ways than one. Under the name “Starlight Catering”, you, your best friends, Damon and Maya, and your hundreds of workers provide stress relief for idols.

You have partially retired, not because you didn’t want to, but because Chanyeol was your muse. He was all that you had time for and all you needed. Until Jin came along.

So what happens when you mix fire and ice?

You get smoke and all the lines are blurred.

Min Yoongi (hardest list to make, I have a lot of good Yoongi filth T_T)

❥ Zelus by bumblexfox➴ Sugar Daddy/Lovers!AU | Yoongi x Reader | One-Shot➴ Yoongi becomes jealous when your close friend Jungkook puts his hands all over you right infront of his face. So, Yoongi decides to make sure you know who you really belong to.

❥ Dead Leaves by wrienne➴ Detective!AU | Yoongi x Reader x Jimin | Series➴ In which you (reader) are a homicide detective about to face the biggest hurdle both of your career and life.

Married to probably the kindest but most boring man you’ve ever met and living in a town where nothing ever seems to happen means life for you is dull. Dull enough to drive you crazy with boredom and dissatisfaction. However, life changes abruptly when your old boss retires and a new man takes his place - a man you used to love (and sleep very regularly with) more than a decade ago. Especially when your husband comes home smelling of perfume, you’re unable to resist your more carnal urges and dead women start showing up across the city with unnerving frequency.

❥ Hyung, Open the Door by @gotmetalkinginmysleep➴ Idol!AU | Yoongi x Reader x Taehyung x Jungkook | One-Shot➴ You’ve been keeping the boys awake with your moaning for months thanks to Yoongi. Tae and Jungkook want to find out why.

Jung Hoseok 

❥ Flight 18 by @noona-la-la-la➴ Idol!AU | Hoseok x Reader | One-Shot➴ Korean Air Flight 18 leaves daily from Los Angeles traveling to Seoul. You’ve taken this flight before, but this time you’ve got an irritating passenger in the neighboring seat. Little did you know that he would end up giving you the ride of your life.

❥ See Both Sides Like Chanel by @minflix➴ Rich Kids/FWB!AU | Namjoon x Reader x Hoseok | One-Shot➴ You, Namjoon, and Hoseok are inseparable. Three best friends that grew up together since you were all in diapers.

But lately, Namjoon has been drifting away…

So on his birthday, you and Hoseok remind him just how inseparable the three of you really are.

⤷ or alternatively: a little less twenty-one candles, a little more “touch me”

❥ Langour by @littlemisskookie➴ Step-Siblings!AU | Hoseok x Reader | One-Shot➴ Hoseok’s got a lust-driven thirst for his step sister.

Park Jimin

❥ Sharing is Caring by @littlemisskookie➴ Prostitution!AU | Seokjin x Reader x Jimin | One-Shot➴ Jin graciously decides to loan you to handsome Park Jimin for the night.

❥ Power Play by @dovechim➴ Pornstar!AU | Jimin x Reader | One-Shot➴ You know him as the A-lister of all porn stars; a man who sits pretty in his place at the top of the food chain. But you also know him as the Park Jimin who single-handedly humiliated you and ruined your own career as a rookie just starting out, the epitome of the biggest dick in the entire industry… and you’re not talking about his assets. But when Park Jimin comes to you, saying he’s in a slump that only you can get him out of and begs you to sign an exclusive contract with him; things get messy… in more ways than one.

❥ Neighbors by @jkeuphoriadreamland➴ Neighbors!AU | Jimin x Reader | Series➴ Finally achieving your successes in life you never expected the distraction that came with your new hot neighbor. He, however, had been trying to get your attention for a much different reason.

Kim Taehyung & Jeon Jungkook (because majority of my fave filth includes these two ~ I am breaking the 3 fics list for them because I can dsjkhfkjasdhf)

❥ Clandestine by @ditzymax➴ Assassin!AU | Taehyung x Named OC x Jungkook | Series➴  As a professional assassin, Kim Kinsoo has many shrouded secrets in her life. Some of them she shares openly with her loving boyfriend, but there are other things he must never know.

❥ Shameless by @imaginethisbts➴ Voyeurism/Exhibitionism!AU | Taehyung x Reader x Jungkook | One-Shot➴ Taehyung’s the new guy in town, just trying to make some friends. And when Jungkook invites him to a party, he thinks he’s finally gotten a good opportunity to meet some new people. But what he doesn’t expect is witnessing his new friend Jungkook and his girlfriend, you, getting it on in front of him, and all of the other guys, at this so-called party. 

❥ When You Least Expect It by @johobi➴ F2L/Lovers!AU | Taehyung x Reader x Jungkook | Series➴ You’re in love with your childhood friend, Taehyung. The problem is, you treasure your friendship with him far too much to ever risk losing it. Oh, and he’s quite the Casanova. At your wits’ end with feelings you can no longer hide as diligently as you once did, you ask him to set you up with someone, anyone, in a last-ditch attempt to avoid a heartbreaking conversation.

❥ Stealing the Bite by @wildernessuntothemselves➴ Supernatural!AU | Taehyung x Reader x Jungkook | Series➴ In a world populated by the supernatural, witches were the most despised and mistrusted of creatures. Everyone desired to make use of their powers but no one was willing to be seen openly conferring with them. And so there came to pass a heinous practice: Small covens of witches were isolated and kept under wraps in every kingdom, to be utilized when needed, and kept under close watch to prevent them from rebelling. 

Growing up in a kingdom ruled by werewolves, abuse and scorn were a fact of life, but you were determined to put an end to it. You devised a devious plan to gain power, and it involved a certain prince.

❥ The Doms Next Door by @tatertotthethot➴ Poly/Tattoo!AU | Taehyung x Reader x Jungkook | Series➴ In which you unknowingly accept the offer to become a tattoo model for the two, sexually-crazed men next door.

❥ Maid for You by @forgottenpasta➴ Idol!AU | Taehyung x Reader x Jungkook | One-Shot➴ As Bangtan’s dorm maid you’re expected to be professional, your identity anonymous. Until Jeongguk finds you on your knees beside his bed, with his rolex in your hand.

❥ Into Temptation by coconutty➴ Demon!AU | Taehyung x Reader x Jungkook | Series➴ It was just a dare…

❥ Lust and Errors by @imaginethisbts➴ Step-Siblings!AU | Jungkook x Reader | Series➴ Stepbrother, fuck buddy… They were one and the same now. But what started out as some mindless fucking game, quickly turns into something much more difficult and complex.

❥ What’s Mine is Mine by @avveh➴ Idol!AU | Jungkook x Reader | One-Shot ➴ You caught his eye from day one. As far as Jungkook was concerned, you were always meant to be his.

❥ This Isn’t Love Darling by @junqkook➴ Mafia/Escort!AU | Jungkook x Reader | One-Shot➴ He tasted of an empty night and an eclipsing moon, with blood on his hands and fire in his eyes when he put his mouth on yours.

❥ Illicit Photography by @jkeuphoriadreamland➴ University/Photography!AU | Jungkook x Reader | Series➴ You’re a well respected university professor who assigns a portfolio project to your photography students, but your best student, Jungkook, doesn’t follow the rules very well.

❥ My Way by @ellieljade➴ Fuckbuddy!AU | Jungkook x Reader | Series➴ Jungkook doesn’t appreciate your boyfriend’s insistence that he stop sleeping with you and he knows just how to prove that you like it his way.

OT7

❥ Moth to Flame by @bang-to-the-tan➴ Vampire!AU | OT7 x Reader | Series➴ Robbed of your memories and intended as a birthday present for a deadly creature of the night, you unwittingly become the center of a territorial dispute between two covens of vampires. Tensions are rising and the brothers are getting hungry.

❥ Void by @btssavedmylifeblr➴ Space!AU | OT7 x Reader | Series➴ You are the only female crew member on a 12-year space mission with seven handsome men. The sexual tension is real, y’all.

❥ Temptation Series by @yminie➴ Idol!AU | OT7 x Reader | Series➴ Sleeping Temptation : Yoongi and Jimin come home to find you asleep on the couch. To say they were happy they beat the other members back would be an understatement.

➴ Waking Temptation : Hoseok, Taehyung and Namjoon are home, and you’re not asleep anymore.

➴ Sweeter Temptation : After an eventful evening, it’s the morning after and Jin’s there to take care of you.

➴ Breaking Temptation : Jungkook ditches movie night for other activities, and you’re not impressed.

❥ Seven Deadly Sins by @mintedmango➴ Demon!AU | OT7 x Reader | Series➴ You stood suddenly, chair being pushed away by the backs of your legs, the rest of the sins standing with you as you looked around in panic. All except Sloth who was out cold in the corner.“Oh, little pet, indeed, I am still hungry.”

❥ Physcom by @teawithkpop➴ Idol!AU | OT7 x Reader | Series➴ AU where live-in Physical Companions are provided to k-pop groups so the members can relieve their sexual related stress and tension - around their busy schedules, of course. You are one such “PhysCom”. However, complications arise when the BTS members start harboring romantic feelings for you. Feelings you’re not sure you can reject with any believable amount of conviction. Such a scandal could result in getting both you and them fired and exposed, ruining any future career options for all parties involved… it turns out the “com” in PhysCom might as well stand for complications.

❥ Cum by @honeymoonjin➴ Idol!AU | OT7 x Reader | Two-Shot➴ An episode of Run! BTS in which the seven members compete to see who can make you cum first.

❥ The Gentlemen’s Club by @brookelegend➴ Club!AU | OT7 x Reader (Hobi-Centric) | Series➴ You’ve been in a dating drought, more specifically, a sex drought. Your best friend has the perfect remedy for your problem: The Gentlemen’s Club.

#answered #tete-a-tete #anon #recs from hell #rfh:ot7 #rfh:knj #rfh:ksj #rfh:myg #rfh:jhs #rfh:pjm #rfh:kth #rfh:jjk #I have more mature/explicit/filthy fics just check my ficshelf for easy filtering #I was supposed to share my thoughts as to why I think these stories are filthy but decided not to because i don't wanna spoil the smut parts

[just-jammin]

Relighting

Word Count: 2024

Summary: The obscure yet infamous game of Sburb has probably caused some trauma & all-around bad times within the Chaos Family.

Their resident Protector can tell you all about it, and about how this predicament can be solved...

So. It’s been a while.

Not in the sense that I haven’t spoken to anyone in a while, just that I haven’t written a journal since... yeah, it wasn’t that long since I did that, but my point still stands.

Look, this whole Sburb thing is crazy ever since I first knew about it, but this is just outright ludicrous. The world-ending meteor shower, trying to process the abstract concepts & lore within the game, witnessing death itself... it’s not my cup of tea when it comes to first-hand experiences.

All of this reminds me of... something. It reminds me of a story that I’ve heard once while participating Mass, in a Homily. I can’t help it but think that it’s so much similar to our situation as of now.

How? I’ll tell it here.

>> —^— <<

In a dark, quiet room, there were four Candles.

Peace, Faith, Love, & Hope.

These four elements are very important to the story, as it is related to the people’s thoughts & actions. The Peace within the group, the Faith of triumph & joy, the unconditional Love for each other, and the Hope fueling our will to go on & go forth.

It’s all present in this session, as the Chaos Family. Even though we never formally met each other until the game started, and somehow one of us was accidentally sucked into it, we still have some camaraderie with each other.

And that’s when things started falling apart.

>> —^— <<

While talking to each other, the Candles noticed that Peace was melting.

You see, we never had proper Peace. We’re all about Chaos, right? But this is our kind of Peace; knowing that everyone is having fun & laughing along to our antics is our kind of Peace. It means that every single member is getting to know each other more.

Yet somehow, when we entered the Medium, things got serious. When I thought setting up a Zoom call tutorial thing for the extremely confused members was a mess, I didn’t expect our problems to be worse when we got our own Planets.

Don’t get me wrong, all of our Sprites did say that our Planets’ purpose was to strengthen ourselves. But all I could feel was insecurity. Scared of moving forward. And I bet the others felt that too.

Basically, our first impressions of our planets are outright Hell.

I think this is why fights started breaking out whenever we talked to each other. Whether it was a memo in Pesterchum (which we had to download), or just meeting up in one of the Planets, arguments are thrown here & there. Unfortunately, it escalated to rowdy fistfights that we had to have a hard time to let them struggle & break it up.

To be fair, sometimes I was in those fights. It was... rough.

Needless to say, this was a different kind of Chaos. It wasn’t the one we’re used to, nor the one that brings people together. It was the kind of Chaos that tears relationships apart and basically destroys everyone, inside & out.

When Peace had been standing in its final moments, it cried out, “Oh, what’s the use of me being here?! Everybody has been making a fool of themselves by causing nonsensical conflict!

“That’s it! I’m done here!”

There’s no Peace in there. Not anymore.

Its light flickers out.

>> —^— <<

There were three left.

And it had been for days.

Until one time, while the Candles were talking, they noticed that Faith was melting.

Faith. It’s hard to say when it was there in the first place.

I mean, to be fair, a lot of things are difficult to see in this Family, or the rest of Tumblr, actually. (Heh... I miss Tumblr...) But Faith comes in small things, like the friendships of others. And even full-on relationships. Little things like that can let us keep on believing that we can do better for ourselves.

That was... unfortunate.

Although entering the Medium was a win for all of us, there were also some losses for a handful of us.

It included our friends outside the Chaos Family. And even some of them in the Family.

Almost everyone not participating in our session is dead.

Dead. Gone forever.

It was a hard one to take in. Some of our real-life family relatives in our houses are still alive, but our Tumblr friends impacted some of us the most. People were crying. Like real tears.

And for some reason, I didn’t.

Almost all of my friends are here, my brother is here, and honestly, I didn’t have much back on Earth. Sure, my parents and relatives are gone, so that’s... depressing. But I can cope with them here. They’re the reason why I’m thriving.

The others? Not so much.

Faith had shouted while getting weakened, “Look, my own Faith is dwindling too, y’know?! They’re moping around in their own disbelief!

“I’m out!”

I guess I’m the only one who had more of it. But only by a smidge.

Its smoke wafts away in the dark.

>> —^— <<

And then there were two.

Unfortunately, Love was next to melt.

Ah, Love. This one is somewhat different from the story I’m telling than the source material.

You see, our Family’s Love never dwindled. We all still care for each other, no matter what happens to any of us. Through thick & thin, we helped each other to get ourselves up & going.

Heck, some of them got together romantically. Not that I’m too envious of them, but to be honest, they’re really cute with each other. A handful of them loved those outside of the Family, but you know what happened...

It’s just that we talked to each other less over time, either because of the missions we were given or because we just didn’t feel like talking to each other. It’s ok, I do respect their reasons, whether good or bad.

However, it just made me more concerned. I bet the others feel the same about that, but I think it’s been taking over my brain recently. I even tried talking about it to the closest people I know in the Family. No responses were made.

It doesn’t help that I have to literally build my way up, going through a complicated labyrinth of temperature-changing caverns filled with walking & talking thorny devils that hate me so much they shoot blood from their eyes at me.

Not to mention that I only have my annoying older brother with me, who only set my issue aside when I tried telling him. It sucks.

So no, our Love never dwindled.

It just became more isolated.

And yet, Love sobbed out, “Come on! Why am I not strong enough for them?! I thought I can keep all of them together!

“I can’t take this anymore!”

It just... feels like before. Numb all over.

Hehe, shit. I’m too familiar with that...

Love’s warmth faded away soon.

>> —^— <<

Only one was left standing.

The Candle of Hope.

Hope...

Well, that’s the only one that’s actually relevant to our session, huh?

It’s one of the main Aspects of Sburb, so of course it’s relevant! According to my Sprite, Hope is the embodiment of all positive emotions & beliefs, including Hope itself. It’s a pretty nice Aspect, in my opinion.

Anyway, Hope’s the one that got us through all our shit. Yes, even the very bad times. It’s basically a lifesaver for the Chaos Family and the rest of Tumblr. It can be distributed in many ways, from simple things like compliments, to posts like those ‘One Note a Day’ ones and a bunch of others like that.

But this, this is what I thought we were lacking the most at the time.

By that time, a little girl came running inside the dark room.

She noticed the other three Candles, melted & burnt out.

“Peace? Faith? Love?” she tried to call out.

I... didn’t think it was there when we started the session, nor when the fights started to break out. Not even when... when my friends started struggling with themselves.

Heck, some of them wanted to let their lives go to get to God Tier... or for worse intentions...

Shit, everything sucked.

The girl started tearing up, calling the other Candles repeatedly.

“Why?!” she finally sobbed. “Why aren’t you still burning?! You’re supposed to stay till the end, right?!”

At least, that’s what I thought... before, uh, that happened.

You see, it was one day while I was struggling to find my way through the Land of Rumors and Elements when someone stood in a distance away from me. When I tried to process who it was, they somehow got to me in quick speeds & punched my glasses off of me.

I was at a disadvantage by then. I tried to use my two knives (alchemized ones; they looked cool & they were more fit for fighting) to get them, but my eyesight is pretty crap. I missed my slashes so many times.

Then I felt them getting one of the knives, and it turned into what was basically a very inconvenient sword-fight. It went on for a long time, trying to injure free spots before getting parried repeatedly.

I then noticed a sharp pain on my right side.

When I turned my head towards the feeling, my right arm was on the ground.

Bleeding. Aching. Hurting.

Fading.

I faced the person one last time, and I only see a silhouette. On their head is a mint-colored circle with three wisp-like appendages... a symbol...

The next thing I knew, I was lying on stone. I was... weak. And tired.

On my side was my Sprite, a golden retriever with water buffalo horns & a fedora. She had a mournful look on her face.

I closed my own eyes & took a deep breath when I realized.

I was dying.

“RIGHT?!?!”

She cried out before falling to the ground, practically drowning in her own tears.

Then I felt as numb as I could ever be.

>> —^— <<

Then she heard a voice.

It said, “Worry not, child. I’m still here.”

She looked up to see the remaining Candle in the room.

“Why should I not worry, then?” the girl questioned.

It replied, “I can relight the others if you truly acknowledge my presence.”

She perked up at the response she was given. Crawling closer towards the Candle, she followed up with, “And why is that?”

A soft chuckle came out from it.

“Well... isn’t my name Hope?”

>> —^— <<

I didn’t expect to feel a burst of cool air from where my arm was cut off. At least, I didn’t expect it to be the first thing I felt since I died.

Then I felt something on my back, pushing me up & up until I recognized it as floating in the air. Little by little, my senses came back to normal. The numbness had subsided, replaced with what I think was... power.

My lungs breathed air again; I can make sounds; I can see, smell, hear, feel...

I’m human again. Alive. Awake.

Unfortunately, living again came with having to deal with pain. Remnants of the aching on my right arm arrived, so naturally, I let my left hand clench where it hurt. There was a scar on where I was touching, but I can unusually feel the rest of my arm...

Yep, I got my arm back. Nice, I guess. Let’s set that aside for now.

One other detail I noticed was that I was wearing a mostly yellow outfit: a sleeveless shirt, some leggings, and dark green boots, along with long fingerless gloves. I then took a look at a puddle to see that my reflection has a superhero-like mask on my face.

I did not know how the fuck they got on me.

Yet one thing’s for sure: I’ve ascended and went to God Tier.

And my role?

I relight our Family’s bond & trust with the help of Hope.

With shining eyes, the girl picked the Candle up and lighted the other three.

Peace, Faith, & Love.

All together, alight again, in the dark room.

>> —^— <<

I am the Rogue of Hope, the one who distributes Hope to others.

#hOOOOOOLY FUCK THIS MIGHT BE MY WORLD RECORD- #I STARTED WRITING THIS YESTERDAY #OH MY FUCKING GOD I AM SO HAPPY & PROUD RN #homestuck #sburb #sburb au #sburb session #fan session #[Homestuck AU] #chaos family! #just writing some bullshit #(yes that’s a tag now) #chaos &amp; conflict

[marlinspirkhall]

Tomorrow Never Comes, Chapter 05: “Resolution”

CW: Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Chapter Word Count: 2,298 words

[Chapter 4] [Chapter 5] [Chapter 6]

 “Tell me everything you learned when my memory kept getting wiped,” Jim says.

 “There is not much to tell. Leland and I attempted everything you and I have-” seeing Jim’s face, he pauses. “It was not a waste of time. Failure on the first attempt does not preclude the possibility of success on the second”

 The news that he was murdered multiple times hasn’t sparked any grand realisation as of yet. Mostly, it’s just made him angry, but he tries not to show it. Despite the recent realisation that their dilithium crystals have begun to drain, noticeably- confirming that they will run out, eventually- they sit side by side in a tense silence as the shuttle whizzes through space. Jim taps his fingers on his side of the dashboard, and turns to Spock.

 “Stop here; I want to try something.”

They land on the same planet as their first outing; but on a different beach, with actual sand.

 “For variety’s sake,” Jim says, with a slight smile.

“Variety,” Spock says, dryly, as they approach the shoreline. “I must admit; I thought you brought me here to kill me.”

“You- what?!” Jim wheels on him. “And you just- got in the shuttle?”

Spock tilts his head. “At the time, the reaction did not seem disproportionate.”

“Right.” Jim sits down on the sand, and looks up at him. “And now that you’re about to be- ah- executed?” He squints as he leans back, temporarily blinded by the iridescent sand.

Spock says nothing, and sits on the sand, a short distance from him. A strong breeze picks at strands of his hair, and Jim sighs.

After a moment, the sun begins to descend, and Jim looks up. “This is what I like about space travel. Even the sunset isn’t a fixed phenomenon. Theoretically- if you wanted to- you could manipulate it. Park your spaceship in a different position on the planet’s surface, so you could view it as many times as you liked. It’s not always spontaneous. But, if you’re really lucky, you get to experience this, with someone you-” he stops.

 “What?” Spock asks, quietly.

“Care about,” Jim finishes, softly. He clears his throat. “I mean, how many other people do you think have got to witness this exact view?”

Spock considers for a moment. “The Klingons,” he says, firmly.

 Jim laughs. “Spock, I-”

 A twinkle catches his eye.

The purple sunset dissolves into the vast tapestry of night, and, as the sand twinkles out, the sky itself becomes a glittering canvas. At the last moment, Jim turns to him, as the last embers of sunlight illuminate his hair.

“So, what do you want to do?” Jim whispers. “Do you want to chase the sunset? Have another go?”

Spock rests his head against his shoulder, and almost smiles.

As the days pass- or, don’t pass- they continue their attempts to escape. Sometimes, it looks like they might be getting somewhere- as far as they can while still avoiding Klingon space- but, at some point every morning, no matter how far they go, the clock resets. Heirin pulls them backwards like an elastic band, and they wake up back on the planet.

 “How far did we make it this time?”

 “Five point nine light years further than our last attempt.”

 Jim grits his teeth. “Then we should try going in that direction. Maybe we’re onto something.”

*

For the most part, the Iclixi have remained neutral in the Klingon-Romulan-Federation conflict, and, as a result, not much is known about them. Still, one thing is clear: they don’t like visitors.

“So, that’s why Leland asked me about base ten,” Jim says, breathless, as an asteroid explodes behind them. Escaping death has lost its excitement in some ways, but fleeing missiles- that’s fairly new.

Spock nods stiffly, his eyes locked on the controls, and Jim begins to use his own console to hack into the Iclixian database.

“Base six,” Jim murmurs, as he surveys the structure of the numbers on his console. “If it’s true that that these guys have four arms, then they must only have two digits on each hand.”

Spock runs a hand through his hair. “Jim-”

“I know.” Jim begins entering numbers frantically, and looks up. “What happened the first time you were here-?” The shuttle veers to the left.

Spock’s eyes dart to him, then back to the viewscreen.

“- Right.” Jim types faster. “Well, if I’m right, this should make us blind to their sensors.” And, if he’s wrong, they’ll find themselves back on Heirin.

With no memory of this.

He slams a button down at the same moment Spock pulls the shuttle into a nosedive. Outside the back window, the two missiles continue on a straight path, directly ahead. Jim waits with baited breath, but no more missiles are deployed.

He collapses back in his chair with an exhausted whoop.

They make their way through the rest of the Iclixi system without further disturbance, and Jim’s eyelids begin to droop.

 “How long have we been awake?” He yawns.

 “Twenty seven hours and… thirteen minutes,” Spock replies.

 Jim pats him on the shoulder. “Are you sure you don’t want to sleep first?”

“Negative. Vulcans-”

“Require less sleep than humans, I know.” Jim rises, and curls up at the back of the shuttle, with a tired smile. This time, he thinks, as he drifts off, we might actually make it.

 Jim rolls over, and snuggles into something soft. He feels well-rested.

 Which only means one thing.

 His eyes snap open, and he sits bolt upright. “Spock.”

He rushes to the main bedroom, and throws the door open. The room is much more orderly than it was before. Spock opens his eyes, and sits up suddenly,

“Jim?” He reaches for him, frowning. “I did not fall asleep-”

“I know,” Jim murmurs, “But what happened? What’s the last thing you remember?” He takes hold of Spock’s hands, and kneels on the edge of the bed, checking him over- although, of course; there isn’t a scratch on him.

“I… blinked,” Spock realises.

Jim slumps.

 They can’t take shifts blinking.

*

As they begin to search for alternate routes through Klingon space, Jim finds something which he’d previously overlooked.

 Boreth.

‘There’s a planet in the Klingon empire called ‘Boreth’ which is the only place in the known universe to contain a mineral known as ‘poH qut’. Translated to Standard, it means ‘time crystal’.’ Jim had never heard of them before, but the more he reads, the more familiar it sounds. For the most part, research on them is scarce, but there are isolated reports- mostly anecdotal- of users becoming trapped in time loops, triggered either intentionally or accidentally. In both instances, though, the loop is triggered by the spilling of innocent blood.

Jim cross-references it with any references to poH qut in the Klingon databases, only to come up short: the Klingons abandoned all experiments with time crystals centuries ago, and the ones which remain on Boreth are closely guarded by an order of monks. There is something, though. Rumours that one of the experiments resulted in a time crystal being hidden at the very core of a planet, before

“...But, even if there is a time crystal at the heart of this planet, that doesn’t help us,” Jim muses. “We don’t have the equipment to locate it or dig it up.”

Spock raises an eyebrow, and says nothing.

 Jim claps him on the shoulder. “We’ll find a way out.”

*

 Jim’s desperation only increases as things begin to break around the stronghold. For the moment, it’s mostly small, minor electrical errors- a wire needs reattaching on an upper wall, one of the consoles in the server room stops working, but there are plenty of backups- for now.

 They run into problems whenever something needs replacing. They salvage a couple of items from the basement, but the only replacement bulb they can find for the downstairs bathroom emits a bright, irradiated green. Spock begins to exclusively use the upstairs bathroom, explaining that such unrelenting green is every bit as unpalatable to Vulcan retinas as red would be to humans.

 Seeing as the shuttle has never been blown up before, the possibility limits the risks they can take, and the experiment is understandably one which they are reluctant to proceed with. If the shuttle doesn’t regenerate, they’ll be even more stuck than before, without a means of escape. Just as Lewis McAllister should have been. The report implies that McAllister simply omitted the miraculous tale of how his dead crew and ship were resurrected each morning before his miraculous escape… But, given the state that the shuttle and the stronghold are currently in, he doubts that was the case. He sighs, and goes over the information that they have once again, from day one to now.

 “I suspect,” Spock says, quietly, “The only reason Leland would have needed to learn the hacking procedure himself was if he was planning to kill me.”

 Jim holds his hand out, and, tentatively, Spock takes it.

*

 “Alright, new plan,” Jim says, as he steps out of the forest, his shirt spattered with blood. “We do what we came here to do.”

 Spock blinks at him, possibly confused by the blood stains.

 “I mean: I take the outpost down, then we travel out to meet whoever Section-31 is sending. I mean, what have we got to lose? If we get it wrong, won’t we just wake back up here again?”

 “With no memory of this,” Spock points out.

 Jim sighs. “I’ve thought of that. And- has it ever occurred to you that we

 Spock shakes his head. “The first day I remember, the stronghold was as it was the day before. And, we can tell

 “If we can work out some sort of back-up-plan, a way to send a message to ourselves in case our memories get erased again…” Jim glances at the shuttle, and heads towards the server room.

*

 As they fly through space, Jim turns to Spock with a nervous smile.

 “So. Who’s coming to meet us?”

 A shadow flickers across Spock’s face. “Agent Georgiou.”

 “Georgiou?” Jim frowns. “Phillipa Georgiou? Wasn’t she a Starfleet Captain? I thought she was killed in the battle at the binary stars?”

 Spock’s eyes flash. “She is not who she appears to be,” he says. “Whatever you think; you cannot trust her.” As usual, his expression is unreadable.

 The shuttle bleeps, as an unseen ship hails them. It pulls into view up ahead

 There’s a strange, unfamiliar weapon on the top of the ship, jutting out at the font. It’s twice as long as the hull of the shuttle, and looks as if it’s been compacted down. The front of it is coiled, like some sort of drill-bit. Before Jim can question it further, Spock answers the hail- audio only.

 “Agent Georgiou,” he murmurs.

 “Spock. I almost shot you out of the sky,” the voice purrs. “You’re early. A day early.”

 Spock straightens. “And yet, our mission is complete.”

 “Hm.” There’s a bleep as she, presumably, verifies that claim. “You work fast.”

 Spock exchanges a look with Jim. “Indeed.”

 There’s a pause.

 “Where’s Leland?” Her voice acquires a dangerous edge.

 “He is- on board.”

 “Hm. Unconscious, presumably; otherwise he would have answered me himself.”

 “We had a- trying day,” Spock says, haltingly.

 Jim’s heart hammers in his chest, and he squeezes Spock’s shoulder.

 “Scan us,” Spock says.

 “Oh, I did. There are two life-signs on your ship. One human, one half-Vulcan. I have no guarantee that Leland is one of them.”

 There’s a pause.

 “Unless you turn on your vidscreen, of course.”

 “It was damaged in our escape with The Klingons.”

 “How convenient. I assume Leland was injured, as well?”

 “Yes.”

 There’s a beat.

 “How do I know that the boy isn’t on board with you?”

 “Because we stuck to the plan,” Spock says.

 Jim breathes shallowly, and twists his hands together in his lap.

 Georgiou’s laugh is distorted. “Plans change. Still, I do not intend to deviate from mine. I was only instructed to meet you and Leland.”

 “You were never fond of Leland.”

 “That’s true. In many ways, you’ve done me a favour.”

 “Spock-” Jim whispers, as the computer readout flashes up red.

 “You can do me another favour.”

 “She’s locked on weapons-”

 The proximity alert bleeps. Spock’s hands find the controls the same time Jim’s do, and they slam the ship into a wild dive. A second later, something glances off the side of the ship, and they’re thrown sideways. Spock cries out. Jim crashes head first into the wall, and his vision goes double.

“Spock…” Jim says, as his eyes flutter shut.

*

 The hum of an engine. Jim’s head throbs.

 He sits up with a groan. The shuttle is adrift, and Spock is slouched over the controls, clutching his side and breathing heavily.

“Spock-”

 He crawls over to him, and pulls himself into the seat next to him. He touches Spock’s shoulder, and his eyelids flutter. He groans.

 “Come on, Spock.” He pulls Spock’s hand away, and it’s green with blood. Cursing, he pulls his jacket off, and winds it round his torso, but it soaks through quickly. Jim’s eyes widen.

 If he remembers correctly, Vulcan hearts are further down than humans’.

 Heart pounding, he runs to the back of the shuttle, and tears the medkit open. Though the bandages and the dermal regenerator have long since been depleted, he knows that he’s seen-

 A hypospray. He grabs it. With one last glance back at Spock, he fills it with a cartridge of anaesthetic. Enough to knock himself out, he hopes. He takes a deep breath. He sits down heavily, places it against his neck, and discharges it with a hiss.

[Chapter 4] [Chapter 5] [Chapter 6]

#tomorrow never comes #star trek fic #star trek discovery fic #star trek aos fic #spirk fic

[starryeyedastro]

Forecast ~ Week of September 20th 2020

🚀 This is a general forecast of the current planetary transits. To see how they will affect you personally, check your natal chart to see which houses (areas of your life) they fall in, or if they’re aspecting your angles or natal planets.

Remember that these are just quick run-downs/summaries of the energies present and not necessarily things that will happen to you.

What’s going on?

Mercury Square Pluto Rx - September 19th - 23rd

Sun Enters Libra - September 22nd

Mercury Square Saturn Rx - September 22nd - 25th

Mercury Opposite Mars Rx - September 22nd - 26th

⚔️ Mercury Square Pluto Rx - September 19th - 23rd

This aspect peaks on the 24th. There can be a clash between two extremes here, caused by established systems/government in power. Exerting control can cause a split and arguments will be the result. People with extreme points of view will want to press their agenda and their ideas on others. This transit will exert influence until around the 24th, but anything that is put into motion now will have far reaching effects.

The best way to deal with this transit is to smile and nod, but still do what you were going to do anyway. There’s no point in arguing with other people right now, because most people are unwilling to listen to other points of view.

You can try to take the high road and consider another point of view, but it will be hard because other points of view can just be too extreme or harmful. All you can do is speak your truth and adhere to your own morals/code of ethics.

Watch out for becoming overly defensive of your point of view. The more extreme your reactions to others, the more resistance you’ll get. Don’t let yourself get backed into a corner, and stay calm. Don’t let them see you get angry. We can learn a lot about improving our communication skills, the art of persuasion and debate, and looking at things from the opposition point of view.

We’re being forced to face our shadow as a society (Pluto in Capricorn) and with a Mercury square, we have to acknowledge it and sort it out. But this transit is also good for investigating, finding the truth in the core of the issues that will eventually blow the cover on the unfortunate reality. This is something that has to happen in order for us to change things for the better.

☯ Sun Enters Libra - September 22nd

Under the Libran sun, we can feel most fulfilled while working with a partner, being in a relationship, or just by socializing and making good connections. Libra is the sign of justice and universal balance, order contained within chaos, and vice versa. A mature, fully enlightened Libra will be adept at finding the beauty and meaning in life’s paradoxes. 

Libra sun encourages us to seek harmony, but also justice when we encounter unfairness. You can stick up for yourself and others, without going on the offense, which will cause more resistance and further upset the balance. It’s about taking the high road to get your point across. 

This is a great time for networking and making new friends. If there is someone in your life who is your equal but who is also a rival of sorts, this person can help you find your inner balance and help you grow. Thank your ‘haters’ or critics for giving you the motivation to become better.

During Libra season of 2020, our sense of balance and justice will be tested. Many people have their own sense of justice and fairness, and some have lost sight of the true meanings of these things. One of Libra’s paradoxes is the shadow side -- the parts of ourselves that we don’t want to acknowledge, but it's a part that exists and needs validation. We may need to look at our own darkness/chaos and come to terms with it to better handle the chaos around us.

🤐 Mercury Square Saturn Rx - September 22nd - 25th

This aspect peaks on the 23rd. The planet of communication has moved on to square up with the planet of rules and limitations. This signals a barrier when it comes to clear communication, a barrier when it comes to transportation or technology. With Saturn currently retrograde, these barriers are less likely to be from outside influences, and more likely stem from our own thoughts and actions.

You might have a hard time getting your point across because of how you fit in (or how you perceive your role) in society. There’s a potential for feeling as though you’re just not being heard, and it could actually be the case. Under this influence, you can find new ways to make sure your voice is being heard.

You could feel more distant or lonely, but try not to dwell on negativity. While you might feel isolated or like you’re having a hard time getting your words out, this transit is good for mental work done on your own, like studying. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.

Pay close attention to detail and fact check. Think before you speak, because the wrong word is more likely to cause misunderstandings. Treat this likely a mini mercury retrograde, since the lines of communication can be clogged. If someone is making promises that involve money or property, be sure to get it in writing.

🗯️ Mercury Opposite Mars Rx - September 22nd - 26th

This aspect peaks on September 24th. Beware of projecting your anger. We can end up internalizing our anger more than usual or being passive aggressive towards people we’re close to. Others, especially people close to you, can pick up on your aggression and anger easier and reflect it back to you. We might also end up accusing others of exhibiting aggressive thoughts or behaviors that we ourselves are guilty of.

Avoid making bold statements. Our words when used against another right now will carry more weight. We can accidentally offend someone if we’re not careful, or cause more problems by being too forward or blunt. Arguments started right now are more likely to get out of control and last for a while.

Release excess mental and physical energy in healthy ways. Engaging in a debate can be beneficial during this transit, as long as everyone stays respectful. Trivia games or board games like chess or checkers, or hobbies/sports that engage your mind and body are good ways to work through this energy.

There’s a potential for impatience to cause problems. Be extra careful and patient when driving or using dangerous tools. More accidents can happen during this transit if we’re not paying close attention.

Thanks for reading! I’ll be back next week with more. If you like my forecasts, feel free to tip me via ko-fi. Any and all support, moral or monetary is appreciated. 🖤

#planetary aspects #current planets #planetary transits #planetary forecast #weekly astrology #weekly forecast #astrology of the week #astrological transits #free astrology reading #astrological forecast #astrology #witchblr #astrologers of tumblr #astrology witch #zodiac

[cesabutterflywrites]

Prince in the Storm: Chapter Five

Summary: Contrary to popular belief, Virgil was sensitive. Most people saw him as some “spooky, broody dude”, when in reality he was just a private person. Teachers tried to open his mind up with a figurative crowbar. Everyone tried to get him to open up. Well, everyone except his best friend Talyn. They were the only one who understood his personality and inner workings just enough to be his friend. However, they haven’t seen his Marking. No one other than his parents have.

Contrary to popular belief, Roman was sensitive. Most people saw him as a fanciful, dreamy, somewhat egotistical thespian who wanted nothing but to be the best of the best. Everyone cheered him on in his performances. Everyone praised his original works. Anything he made others enjoyed. People would whisper about his Marking, wondering where it was and when he would reveal it. He had a whole circle of friends, yet no one except his best friend Joan understood him. Joan was the only one who saw Roman’s insecurities.

As students of Kingston High School, with zany principals and try-hard superintendents, it is up to Virgil and Roman to stay alive enough to fulfill their destiny. Ao3

Word Count:   1824

Chapter Warnings: cursing, mean remarks, arguing tell me if I need to add more

Prologue, Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six, Chapter Seven, Chapter Eight, Chapter Nine, Chapter Ten, Chapter Eleven, Chapter Twelve, Chapter Thirteen, Chapter Fourteen, Chapter Fifteen

Bonuses: Immune to Change

Chapter Five

Virgil had survived the first two weeks of school. Mostly. Two weeks in, the principal had decided to change their mascot and school colors. No one knew why. There were rumors, of course, but Virgil didn’t care that much. They were probably going to be changed more often. Principal Duke had been known to be very indecisive and impulsive. He seemed to put all of his attention into the more frivolous parts of the school. Colors, spirit weeks, events, mascots. 

Meanwhile, the important things were left in the dust. Teachers were always scowling, supplies were never ordered on time, and one time in Virgil’s sophomore year they missed one of the state standardized tests. He honestly found it kinda funny, even if it meant his education was a waste.

He had overslept Monday morning after a long weekend of staying up late mindlessly scrolling through tumblr, snacking on chips, and texting Talyn. He forgot to set his alarm for school, so his dad had to come in and wake him up. Meaning he had to skip breakfast in order for them to leave on time. 

He walked sluggishly into his Chemistry class. He wasn’t feeling like trying in a class he already sucked in. He sat at his desk right as the late bell rang. Yay. right on time, he thought to himself sarcastically, Wasn’t worth skipping breakfast though.

He leaned his head on his desk as his Chemistry teacher, Mr. Charles, started their warm up. He didn’t bother to listen, he was too tired. All he could think about was his warm bed that he was practically pulled out of. All those thoughts of sleep must have been very convincing, because next thing he knew he heard a stern voice next to him snipe, “Mr. Sanders!” 

“Pancakes!” Virgil shouted with a start. The class laughed at him, causing him to blush hard. 

Mr. Charles just raised an eyebrow at him, “I take it you skipped breakfast this morning?” 

Virgil asked, “Yeah, how did you know?” confused. It took him a few seconds to realize that he did shout out a breakfast food. 

Mr. Charles just walked back to the front of the classroom. “How many of you skipped breakfast this morning?” He addressed the class. 

More than half the class raised their hands. The teacher pointed to someone raising their hand, “Why did you miss breakfast?” 

The girl shrugged. “Nothing? No reason at all?” he asked. Seeing her blush and turn her head down, he motioned to Virgil. “Why did you miss breakfast?” 

Virgil squirmed in his chair, not liking that many eyes on him. He muttered, “Slept in too late.” 

Evidently his teacher had good hearing, because he started, “Alright class, today we’re going to take a break from negative and positive charges to talk about setting a better lifestyle for ourselves. You can not expect to do well in my class when you ignore basic self care. So to start we will talk about the importance of breakfast.”

Virgil rolled his eyes. He quietly pulled his phone out to sit on his lap so he could look at it when Mr. Charles wasn’t paying attention to him. He didn’t need to care about a ‘better lifestyle’. Even if he tried it out, he’d probably back out within the first two weeks. Plus his dad’s cooking was healthy enough. 

He shifted uncomfortably in his chair at the thought that him dozing off in class led to his teacher changing subjects for the day. Everyone must have hated him more. 

When the bell rang, he was very quick to pack up his bag. He nearly made it to the door before he heard the dreaded, “Virgil, hang back for a second.” 

He closed his eyes and sighed in frustration. Of course he had to get called back. He turned around quickly and leaned against one of the desks. Act tough, get respect. 

Mr. Charles was sitting behind his desk resting his chin on folded hands. “How are you feeling?” 

He scoffed in response. “Fantastic, Mr. Charles,” responding sarcastically.

The teacher cleared his throat. “Actually, when class is not in session, it would be easier to call me by my first name; Logan.” 

Virgil barked out a hollow laugh in mocked astonishment. “Wow, teach, sorry- Logan. Who knew you were capable of being one of the cool ones? I thought from the way you acted you had a stick up your-” 

“That’s enough Mr. Sanders.” Logan cut him off sternly. “If you finish that statement, I will have no choice to put you in detention.” 

That was it. Virgil had lost his patience for the day. “Whatever, go ahead then. What’s more time in a shitty desk to me?” He didn’t bother to wait for a response before storming out and slamming the door behind him. He pushed out imagined thoughts of his father’s disappointed face when he got the news of detention. 

Once again, he was in too much of a rush to pay attention to where he was going. Once again, he ran into someone. Once again, that person had to be Roman freaking King. 

They were learning how to not fall when running into each other it seemed, because they only brushed shoulders a bit too harshly. Virgil couldn’t take it. He was tired, he was pissed, and he was done. 

“Oh my God, what is your deal, Emo Nightmare?” Roman cried incredulously. “One would think you had a bit of a crush, considering how many times you’ve ‘accidentally’”, he air quoted, “ran into me.” 

“Oh my God, King, how many times do I have to point out that it’s your giant ego blocking your vision? Why don’t you go sing some show tunes in an assembly or something.” Virgil snapped. Students passing by sent curious glances their way. 

Roman sputtered, making offended noises. “I don’t know what’s up your butt, but leave me alone because clearly you’re not meant to be around us normal people. You know, kids who actually care about what we want to learn!”

That stung Virgil, but he didn’t dare show it. Instead he did what he did whenever someone insulted him. He got into Roman’s face, their height being close but he straightened his back enough to tower over the boy just enough for his eyes to widen in fear. 

“I’d watch how you speak to me, King, otherwise you’ll find yourself in very. Dangerous. Territory.” he threatened. Roman’s nod was all he needed for a response. 

He turned on his heel and slouched. The whispers from the other students, including Roman, calling him a creep stabbed him like a baptism in sewing needles. He tried not to care, he got everyone’s guard up enough that they’d give him the isolation he wanted for the day.

~~~~

Roman hadn’t felt like himself after the run in with Virgil, so he decided to skip lunch with his friends. He texted Joan to let them know that he had to be alone for a bit. He didn’t need to check for a response. He always had a closer friendship with Joan than any of his other friends. Perhaps it was the way they would be able to work together to create amazing pieces of art. 

When he needed to be alone to think, he’d go outside to the courtyard in the center of the school. Not many students hung out there during lunch, and the ones who did usually kept to themselves. This afternoon, he was pleasantly surprised to see he was the only student there. He was free to sit quietly and think. Usually he went to try to get inspiration for a new creative project, or write some poetry. That afternoon, it was just to re-center himself. 

He pulled out his notebook, thinking that maybe a poem wasn’t too bad of an idea. He fiddled around with his pencil while he looked around the courtyard. He wasn’t necessarily taking in any detail, just looking for something to catch his attention. Boy, was his attention caught. 

He saw an older man in a suit storm into the courtyard, followed by none other than Virgil. He quickly shifted to look like he wasn’t listening, and so Virgil couldn’t see his face. The last thing he needed was to be accused of  caring about what was going on. 

“I can’t believe this, your second week back, and you already got detention?” The man asked incredulously. 

He could almost hear Virgil crossing his arms. 

“Yeah, so? Why do you care? You’re not my dad.” Virgil accused. Roman had to put a fist in his mouth to keep himself from giggling at the childish retort. 

“Oh, Virge, I don’t mean it like that,” the other said in a softer tone, “I just want to look out for you. That’s why I’m here. I need to help Principal Duke clean up this school so you can have a chance to succeed. This is your senior year for heaven's sake. It’s time to get serious about your future” 

Virgil huffed, “Sure, you’re doing it for me. Not because it’s your job or anything.” 

There was quiet in the courtyard. Roman kept himself completely still. He thought if he moved it would ruin the mood of the conflict behind him. He felt like an outsider, well, he was outside. Technically they were the intruders, so maybe he shouldn’t have felt guilty for eavesdropping. 

The older man behind him sighed, “I wish you could see that it’s for both reasons.” Without another word (that Roman could tell, anyway), the man left. 

Roman stayed frozen, hoping to himself that he had succeeded in being unnoticed. That is, until he heard, “Alright, King, you can breathe now.”

He hesitantly turned to see Virgil standing closer, basically right behind him. He gulped because it was the second time the dark boy stood over him that day. “Uh, hi.” Really, Roman?, he internally chastised.

Virgil lifted an eyebrow. “What, no nickname this time?” Did Roman imagine the teasing lilt in the question?

Roman made himself stand up, not liking the feeling of being small. “I think I should save them for the times we literally run into each other, I can only make up so many,” he tried to smile, though he felt like he wasn’t succeeding. 

“Sure,” Virgil drew out the word, “Whatever you say, King.” 

Roman blushed, not knowing how he felt about being called by his last name. He chuckled, trying to brush it off. He was pleasantly shocked to hear Virgil chuckle as well. 

“Well, Mr. Popularity,” Virgil said, “See you in the theater.” Virgil lightly punched Roman’s arm in an almost friendly gesture. 

Roman didn’t know why, but he felt tingles spread through his torso. He smiled to himself, hopeful that he had made some headway. Then he quickly shook the idea from his head as he headed to class. Doesn’t make us friends yet.

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[awed-frog]

When you say romance should be 18 and over do you mean the brand of romance we know today (aka toxic) or romance as a whole? If we wrote healthy romance aimed at younger crowds or presented unhealthy behaviour as unhealthy behaviour in regular romance (for older crowds) would that be a good solution?

Well - I see three questions here, all of them incredibly complex and beyond interesting: should art be political and is censorship ever a good idea and also is the romance genre okay? The answer to all of them, in my opinion, is ‘no but’.

1) Should art be political?

The stupid thing is, art is inherently political, whether you want it to or not, but art that’s deliberately political tends to be awful, and that’s a universal truth both for left-wing stuff and for right-wing stuff. When you willingly create political stuff, what you’re crafting is propaganda, and proganda is generally sad and bad. I guess there is propaganda that’s also good art - Victor Hugo’s The Man Who Laughs comes to mind - but the problem is, not all of us are Victor Hugo. 

That said, since whatever we create is political (because man is a social animal) and will have some kind of moral message, yes - ideally we want more art with an ethically ‘good’ moral message than we want garbage, because art (and here I include everything: books, movies and so on) is perhaps the most effective and impactful mind-shaper ever. That’s why Disney is doing its very best to be a monopoly, after all. But: I don’t have a good solution for how to ensure art is nice. I think art is nice when artists are nice, and artists are nice when they grow up in good, healthy societies. So the more a society rots from the inside out, the more likely it is you’ll find art that’s also rotten. I mean, while romance as a genre was always a bit dodgy (see below), what that article was talking about - the rise of the possessive, violent boyfriend and domestic abuse as the great love story - is sort of a recent phenomenon, and goes hand in hand with the deterioration of women’s rights in (Western) society. 

(As an aside, I’m not sure I agree (young) women are necessarily misogynistic for reading crap like Fiftfy Shades: I think (young) women are exhausted. Fifty Shades is, more than anything, an ode to undeserved capitalism - the only kind that seems open as an option today. After all, we know trickle-down capitalism doesn’t work and most of us will toil and toil for very little; Christian Grey is the antidote to that, the guy who shows up, basically kidnaps you, and smothers you in a life of riches for which the only thing you must do in return is give up. Having someone else decide on your job, your car, your possessions and clothes, where you’ll live, what you’ll eat and when, whether you’ll take birth control (lol: obviously not), when you’ll see your friends and family plus when and how you’ll orgasm - what women tried to escape for generations is suddenly the dream for many of us - not because of any new political ideology, but because we’re beyond tired. Women, like men, are now crushed in a neverending cycle of bs, underpaid jobs, and are apparently fed up enough in taking responsibility for anything that not only romance and ‘superhuman’ characters are booming, but a very specific kind of subset of that: essentially, slave fics. 

Just give up your agency, and you’ll be taken care of and cherished - forever.

I understand a kink is not the same as your actual political opinion, but still - I’m not enthusiastic about this trend, and I’m even less enthusiastic when it gobbles up young women who haven’t had time to experience real life relationships.)

No, I think that in the end, the answer is - if you reverse the rotting of society, automatically - statistically - you’ll get healthier artists and a healthier audience. So, really, the fight is always the same: better paid jobs, better (and free) schools, more opportunities for continued education of any kind, more democracy and transparency, more green spaces and better living conditions.

2) Is censorship ever a good idea?

Sadly, no. You’d think the logical conclusion of what I just said would be, ‘In the meantime, let’s ban the most dangerous stuff’ or something, and while part of me is tempted to support that, censorship has a way of ending very badly no matter how good and noble your intentions are.

(Self-censorship should be more of a thing, though: not everything that goes through our minds deserves to be seen and shared.)

What sucks at the moment is that on the one hand, capitalism is operating its own censorship; and on the other, its desperate search for new markets has led to a disastrous disintegration of actual human interactions.

So, problem one is that we only publish and market what makes a lot of money, and while that’s normal, to an extent, the result today is that everything is ‘almost the same’ as the previous thing (think sequels, prequels, remakes, obnoxious book covers for books that are basically all the same). So if ‘asshole boyfriend who beats you up’ suddenly makes money, it becomes very hard to escape the trope, because what will be offered to you everywhere is exactly that. This was less of a thing back when our main sources of entertainment were shared (movie theaters, the one family TV, school libraries and so on); now, it’s an epidemic, and as we see with Youtube algorithms, a dangerous one, because this obsession with watching and rewatching ‘almost the same’ inevitably leads to more and more extreme stuff.

Meanwhile, problem two is that the more tailor-made our entertainment is, the less we connect to real people. I know I sound about 90 here, but when all family members are glued to a different screen - mom watching the 50th remake of Eat, Pray, Love, dad down the rabbithole of lizard conspiracy theories, big brother now exploring some milk&peanut butter weirdness on Youporn and younger sister 30 fics deep into Stucky high school AUs - what do they have in common? What do they talk about? What can they even learn from each other? Until recently, and for aeons, fiction was shared, and its primary goal was to form a connection between group members. Now, that’s gone. We destroyed it, without even realizing what we were doing, in the space of twenty years. And yeah - I know you can create new communities, but a) these communities are virtual (which means, for the most part: not real) and b) they tend to connect like with like, which is comforting, perhaps, but not very useful. The whole point here is that we need to learn how to feel empathy and trust for those who’re different, and build a community with them - instead, what the internet is doing is isolating us inside our little bubbles, so much so that any minor disagreement is now seen as good reason to break off contact.

Censorship, however, doesn’t solve any of this. For starters, we need more regulation on how big corporations can get, what social media companies can and can’t do and who can access what kind of material. And it’d be great if we could all unplug a little, but uh - fat chance of that.

3) Is the romance genre okay?

Again, just my opinion, but personally, I mistrust it. There are no romance books for men? Instead, books for men feature a Main Character doing stuff and improving himself while accidentally meeting a Sexy Lamp he can go home to at the end of the story. And, well, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but isn’t this a healthier way to look at life? While good relationships are very meaningful (or even the most meaningful) part of any human life, if your goal is to get them, they won’t grow right. You shouldn’t be hyperfocused on finding love; I think it’s much better to be like Main Character: you work on your drawing skills, try a new sport, read poetry, defeat evil Russians, thus developing inner happiness and self-confidence, thus leading you towards towards a partner who’ll fall in love with who you are - not a partner who was looking for some empty shell to fill with their own expectations and preferences.

And I know - romance books and movies are full of exciting non-romantic events and stuff - but still, the fact they’re classified and intended as romance does imply that finding a romantic partner is the ultimate goal. Which, I don’t know, I don’t think it’s healthy, and is a particularly inappropriate message for young women. After all, why is it okay that young men are encouraged to go on ghost hunts, study dinosaurs and save the world while young women are taught to wait around for a broken (possibly violent, but it’s not his fault) bad boy only they can fix? It’s messed up, is what it is, and I may be extreme here, but even the tamest, sweetest romance revolves around the same message: that you’re not complete on your own, and that you should focus on relationships as a way to become a better, happier human being. 

Now, as much as I love this quote -

“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.” — Oscar Wilde

- obviously there’s no direct cause-and-effect here - you don’t read one book and become a mindless Stepford wife - so I’m not saying, ‘no one should read romance ever’. It’s just - as I said in that other post, we should all enjoy diverse stuff. Read your romance novels, but also read the classics, read some philosophy, a random poem, a badly-written thriller - read Stephen King, read how the OED was written, or a Wikipedia article on the French resistance - anything and everything. Because of capitalism, because of this push towards personalized entertainment, we’re being forced and pigeonholing ourselves in smaller and smaller cages, and the worst thing is - we’re comfortable inside them, because this is the awful truth: cages are comfortable, and that’s why we need to get out before we forget what cages are for.

[As a final point: you say ‘if we wrote’, does it mean you’re an aspiring writer? If so, you shouldn’t worry about any of this. You write what you want, you write the stories you want to read. Just remember to get out of your cage as well - experience, discover, grow, read, dare - and then put all that into your books. I’m sure they’ll be great, whatever your favourite genre.]

#ask #books #romance #entertainment #capitalism #ya #fifty shades of grey #narrative tropes #old woman yells at cloud #the end is nigh #i miss the 90s #potentially unpopular opinion

[theseadagiodays]

May 4, 2020

This is Not a Performance

Irving H Bolano’s incredible repurposed newspaper fashion for the Met Gala Challenge on Twitter #HFMetGala2020

May the Fourth be With You as you reach the next chapter of this current sci-fi drama we seem to be living through.   As the saying goes, reality can be stranger than fiction.   But it just happens to be a many red-eyed virus rather than an evil, black-masked father that we’re fighting as we all walk around like Storm Troopers.  

There are so many aspects of our lives, during Covid, which make it feel like we are actors in a make-believe story.   First of all, we’ve all become movie stars, with our faces, homes, and even pets showcased on our own silver screens.  As isolated as we are, our private lives now play out in the public sphere more than ever - no paparazzi required.    For some, this invasion of privacy is unwelcomed. But for many people, it satisfies a secret longing to share themselves with a wider audience.  After all, deep down, everyone wants to be seen and heard (I guess, me included, since I have this blog, after all).  It’s why TikTok and YouTube and Facebook have become multi-billion dollar companies so quickly.  And now, while this pandemic is a harsh daily reminder of the impermanence of all things, it makes sense that these digital missives are an attempt to seek immortality, in some strange way.

As someone whose work responds to human’s need to have a voice, I truly get why this is the case.  And I love that this time has turned housewives into opera stars, and health care workers into hip hop dancers, and housepets into circus performers. But, at the same time, I have become very aware of the masks that we wear, even inside our homes, to portray a certain self to the world that may stray quite far from our authentic selves.  The expression “dance like no one is watching” acknowledges the fact that we all tend to perform when we have an audience, and perhaps we’re only truly ourselves when we don’t.   I understand that the way we “perform” ourselves online gives each of us a chance to reinvent the fictions we want our stories to have.   So, while I surely take some guilty pleasure from intimate glimpses into strangers’ lives, I also do so with a certain skepticism about the veracity of what I’m seeing.  

This became particularly true for me when I received a recent link from my friend and amazing singer/songwriter, Dominique Fricot. Capitalizing on this current trend of oversharing, he cleverly asked his fans to film their morning routines for the music video of his new song, Wake Up, by his duo, Flora Falls.  Dom’s warm tenor voice blended with his partner’s breathy tones feel just like a lazy morning in bed.  But I’ll leave it up to you to decide just how accurate these portrayals of people’s idyllic daytime rituals actually are.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EbsqXou5FeY

May 5, 2020

Homeschool Heroes

About twenty years ago,  I was invited to adjudicate a youth music competition in the Yukon.  Travelling to one of the northernmost inhabited spots on earth, I imagined that my greatest surprise might have been a polar bear or Northern Lights sighting.  But it turned out to be something entirely different.  Among the 25,000 residents of the thriving metropolis of Whitehorse exists a treasure trove of talent.  I could not believe the incredibly honed skills and nuanced expression with which these 11-18 year-olds played.   Wondering why, I developed a theory that I now call SLoW: Sheltered Living Wonder.  When long, dark days, cold climates or pandemics force people indoors, they tend to spend inordinate amounts of time on creative endeavors and skill development.  In other words, they slow down and take time for wonder.

This theory has surely applied during these past few months of sheltering in place.   One of the most remarkable examples has been the inventiveness that many of my friends have brought to their first attempts with homeschooling.   So, I wanted to give a few shout outs to some of these Homeschool Heroes and the highly imaginative projects they’ve done with their kids.

Stunning Easter Eggs made from natural materials and dye, by my friend Jane Cox and her kids  (Botany lesson)

Candy Covid virus, made by Amelia, my friend Jen Sanke’s daughter, as she learned about the virus’ proteins (Biology lesson)

But perhaps the prize for most complex homeschool project has to go to my architect friend, Bryn Davidson, who upon returning from Australia, in late March, had to fully quarantine for 2-weeks.  So, with his 5-year old son Bei as helper, this Physics lesson allowed him to enjoy home delivery beer while in isolation.  Just brilliant!

https://youtu.be/FF9-2dWoUtc

May 6, 2020

Living in livestream

So today, 5 million British Columbian’s awaited our “sentence” with baited breath, as word spread that our provincial prime minister would deliver the Re-Open BC plan at 3 pm.   I have to admit, it felt a bit like when you were “grounded” as an adolescent and then your parents returned certain privileges to you.  Of course, I’m well aware that our province has already been far more licentious than many places around the globe.  We’ve been fortunate to maintain reasonably low numbers of infection (just over 2,000), with counts as low as 8 new cases per day, at this point. So, while our provincial parks closed, our beaches never did.  While we were encouraged, within a reasonable range of home, to be active outdoors, we were not restricted to walks only within the 100 metre radius of our house, as my Israeli friends were.  And while we could still shop at gardening and furniture stores, to make sheltering at home more enjoyable, New Zealanders had nothing but grocery stores and pharmacies open, for two months.  

I have sensed the gratitude my fellow Vancouverites have felt about these privileges.  But that does not mean that we aren’t still anxious to return to other aspects of living which we’ve missed.  When lockdown began, ominously on the Ides of March (the 15th), I’d harboured a secret hope that certain restrictions might be lifted on my birthday (exactly two months later).  And it turns out that Phase Two of the BC ReOpen plan will commence on May 19th, just 4 days later than I’d hoped.  What I most look forward to experiencing again are small gatherings with friends, (we’ll soon be allowed to socialize in public with up to 10 people); meals inside certain restaurants and pubs (those that are able to function within WorkPlace BC’s safety regulations); visits to registered massage therapists; and hugs with select people, (”using one’s own ‘risk assessment’.”)

But in the long-range plan, the harsh reality for artists has been laid out, as Phase Four (which includes resuming large-venue concerts, conventions, and international travel) can not occur until either a vaccine has been developed, an effective treatment plan is widely available, or herd immunity is achieved.  And this is not estimated to occur until mid-2021 or later.  So, the prospects are still bleak for symphony orchestras, opera and dance companies, artists who perform in crowded bars, or musicians who travel for arena shows and festivals.  This likely means that in order to satisfy audiences’ need to access live performance, and for artists to continue to share their creativity,  livestream formats will still have to persist for some time.  Therefore, I thought I’d share a few regular weekly livestream arts events here, both from Vancouver, LA & NY.

Canadian National Live Art Champion, Dmitri Sirenko, who we featured at our non-profit’s annual benefit on February 20th, 2020

Every Monday Night at 7 pm PST (Vancouver) Poetry Slam: https://www.facebook.com/Vancouverpoetryslam/

Every Thursday at 5 pm PST (LA): LIVE Art Battles - Watch painters do their magic in just 20 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWJoWGVwzGtk99nTOCib9vg

Every Thursday at 8 pm EST (NY): Spotlight on Plays - famous actors perform readings of theatre pieces, online: https://www.broadwaysbestshows.com/post/the-best-of-series/

May 7, 2020

Collateral Blessings

So many thoughtful writers are adding to the discourse, as we all strive to make meaning from what can feel like a senseliess time.  I have so appreciated the abundance with which people are sharing these missives, right now.  Every day, bursts of inspiration or flickers of insight come my way, thru texts, emails and Facebook.  Like adventurers, traveling together thru the dark of night, we shine light on guideposts, anywhere we can find them, as we collectively quench each other’s thirst for wisdom.  

One of the most profound writings I‘ve recently discovered came from a stranger’s blog.  In The Examined Family, Courtney Martin, without ever diminishing the gravity of the havoc that this virus has wreaked, writes about some of the assets that have also come out of this time.  New friendships with neighbors.  A long-neglected puzzle completed with her kids.   The time to draw and truly notice an artichoke in her back garden. My good friend Juan calls these collateral blessings.  This reference to the accidental gifts that this cruel virus has given us, is a beautiful twist on “collateral damage”, a term coined to explain accidental friendly-fire deaths during the Gulf War.  Commenting on the anticipatory nostalgia that she projects she will feel about certain things, once this time has passed, Courtney writes:

“I instantly feel overwhelmed at the prospect of schedules and stuff. I don’t want to go back to our former accumulation or frenetic pace. I don’t want to stop texting (my neighbor) my little triumphs. I don’t want to forget about the artichokes in the garden. I don’t ever want to forget this happened--the grief and the beauty of it. I’m not even sure that will be possible, but if it were, I wouldn’t want it. I don’t want to vote like it didn’t happen. I don’t want to eat like it didn’t happen. I don’t want to consume like it didn’t happen. I don’t want to schedule like it didn’t happen. I don’t want to mother or daughter or befriend or neighbor like it didn’t happen. I don’t want to sit inside this little life, noticing and appreciating and breathing, like it didn’t happen. There is unnecessary suffering all around me, and inside of me, too, but there is also necessary meaning. May we hold on to that.”      

You can read her full entry here: https://courtney.substack.com/p/unnecessary-suffering-and-necessary?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo3OTg0NDcyLCJwb3N0X2lkIjozNzU1NDMsIl8iOiJCTnk2VyIsImlhdCI6MTU4NzA1MjgyMCwiZXhwIjoxNTg3MDU2NDIwLCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMjA5MjIiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.puI9NMne-783ypInpvTkJ96T237WcrTo2ItDhqlkMiY

May 8, 2020

Nostalgia

I’m rarely one prone to nostalgia.  My childhood photo albums are in storage.  I have no family heirlooms displayed in my home.  My tendency is to revel in the present or dream about the future.  But this pandemic has strangely turned me into a sentimental fool.  Perhaps this return to simpler times, where we seldom shop, where we wander mostly by foot, or where we get to know our neighbors better, makes us long for the past in certain ways.  

For me, I’ve honored this by resurrecting my daily teenage Twizzler habit - a candy I’ve rarely eaten since then, but that now feels so satisfying during my Netflix & Chill evenings (while watching films almost as old like Groundhog Day & Anchorman).  

I’m also listening a lot to Old School Hip Hop, where the explative-free rhymes of the 90’s feel so strangely innocent.  It’s refreshing to listen to these musicians spit verses that merely celebrate the joys of dance and rap, rather than ranting about gun violence and other societal ills.  Run DMC It’s Tricky (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-O5IHVhWj0) and Beastie Boys Body Movin’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvRBUw_Ls2o) happen to be personal favorites.  

Last month, I was tickled by an old memory while planting a lilac bush in my backyard.  I suddenly remembered a story about my college boyfriend, whom I hadn’t thought of in 30 years.  Our relationship started a bit secretively, so as not to hurt his ex’s feelings.  So, one May afternoon, we snuck away to a distant park that was hosting a Lilac Festival.  Unfortunately, our ruse was quickly spoiled when a candid photo of our picnic under the purple blooms was plastered all over the front page of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle the next morning.  

Another sweet memory returned in culinary form. Every Tuesday, for 7 years, my mother selflessly drove me an hour from home and back, for my flute lesson.  And to break up the long drive, we regularly stopped at Bickford’s Pancake House for my favorite adolescent treat: breakfast for dinner. Their specialty was the Dutch Baby Apple.  And I finally made my first homemade attempt at this deceptively easy delicacy, last Tuesday.  

This has also been a time to return to bedtime stories (some I’ve read to friends’ kids, and others for adults to hear.)  The Great Realisation by British performance artist, Tom Foolery, has been making the social media rounds. But in case you missed this touching tale that looks back on this time as if the tale is being told in a not-so-distant future, it’s a wistful story about some aspects of modern life that we may never long for in the future:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw5KQMXDiM4

[dear-trashpanda]

Slightly longer incoherent post instead of five separate shorter incoherent posts

So like I wanted to point out a couple things.

1, I was in an earlier post talking about how my parents used to tell me to pull it together when I was younger. And I realise that from that post without context it might seem like they have been emotionally abusive towards me or something. And I just wanted to point out that this is not at all the case.

Basically my dad is a poster boy for undiagnosed Asperger's syndrome, he was abused and neglected as a child and he has lost 3 out of his 4 children, and my mum is a half-orphan who grew up with no mum of her own and a dad who never got over having lost the love of his life and so he couldn't really be there for my mum when she needed him most. Looking at them through this lense, yes they are two incredibly damaged people with their own respective plethora of psychological issues, but they have honest to god tried their best to raise me in as loving and caring of an environment as possible. What caused most of the troubles is that I was a special needs child and they were most likely not equipped with the skills required to fulfill those needs. Basically, no matter how hard they tried, what they could offer in terms of caregiving was not aligned with my needs as a child. Probably, someone of a different temperament would have turned out perfectly fine, and it is an unlucky coincidence that in my case, this turned out to be severely traumatising. I do have some repressed memories, so I can't speak for this with a 100% certainty, but as I remember it, our trauma didn't come from direct abuse, but from a series of way more subtle, but nonetheless traumatising events, that involved being physically sickly, having been in painful accidents in early childhood that required long periods of hospitalisation and frequent isolation, having difficulties setting and understanding my own boundaries, social isolation, cultural context (e.g. no availability of child psychiatry, obtaining a diagnosis, mental hygiene professionals etc.), the misalignment of my and my parents' love language and like a ton of other shit that one by one seems like small crap but in total it managed to fuck me up for life.

2, I keep thinking about system roles. Like, the thing is, for the past 5 years I locked myself away from all information on OSDD/DID and on other systems' experiences, because I know how suggestible I am and I didn't want to accidently make things worse for myself by adding a layer of maladaptive daydreaming and pseudo-symptoms to my preexisting condition. But by now we're relatively stable as a system, so I thought, what the heck, let's see what the literature and the people of the internet say. And while I'm still trying to figure out the popular terminology and stuff, what I've learnt so far has provided me with enough context so I could start overthinking analysing my own situation and thinking about ourselves in a whole new, systemic approach. (See what I did there? What I DID there? Holy fuck Brain, go to sleep.)

So yeah, different roles. And like, what the fuck is even going on with our other alters because ACTUALLY while we're trying to pretend that it's a very small and neat system of two people, that's very much not true and in general, we're like a fucking mess. So I guess quick system rundown follows:

The Actives

Fox - Host/primary. Xe's what we call a fighter/survivor. Fox is the product of some extreme stress and xe represents the part of us that fought xyr way through all the life-or-death crap we've gone through and that's what xe thrives on. Xe has a hard time these days because life is lovely and stable and it's kinda giving xem a full identity crisis... So I guess in a way xe could be considered a protector?

Bunny - our very own little, and an absolute cinnamon bun. She is a soother, and while she never fronts alone, she's the only one of us who can co-con and she mostly comes out when I'm in distress and she just hugs me until the world is all better.

The Dormants (these guys don't have animal aliases so I'll just use their real names)

The Demon/The Bitch - she's a terrorist, or what people call a persecutor, if I understand it correctly. She used to be able to co-con and apparently had all of our memories, and her sole role was to torture and threaten us, sometimes actually breaking into front and making a very bad job of pretending to be one of us to confuse/manipulate our loved ones, but she couldn't resist making a mock version of us, so it wasn't super effective. She's been very active for a while, but mostly dormant for the past years. Maybe we just realised she was just a scared little girl and hugged her to death...

Emily - she used to be some weird form of a protector. Like, the kind that threatens you with the coconut she wields as a weapon because that was the first object she could grab and she shuffles into the bathroom to barricade herself in just so she can call it job done and go away again. She was kinda problematic and one-dimensional, and while she has been fully dormant for the past 3 or so years, I definitely "inherited" her jumpiness and way of getting startled by literally anything and everything, so I guess we kinda fused together accidentally or something...? Like, did I eat her? Ugh...

Dylan - she was a short-lived one, and mainly a reaction to a certain life situation, where we lived in deep poverty, starvation and extreme daily stress, so her singular goal was to have fun. We basically denied her a chance to front because... Well, because that was what seemed to be the right thing to do at that moment.

Alice(?) - I actually don't know anything about her, I'm not even sure she ever really existed, I just found some clues in a journal (that's where the name is from) and some stuff none of us claimed afterwards, so I suspect someone was there at a point but I'm absolutely unclear on any of the details.

The Confusing Shit

Brain - I was recently told that not everybody's brain is talking to them and that Brain might actually be some sort of system-related stuff, but basically it's just there to entertain me with horrifying, but kinda endearing and/or absolutely hilarious shit. And to torment me with anxiety voices but you know...

The Chorus - just a bunch of jumbled internal noise that keeps screaming static at me every time I'm too stressed.

The Hollow - it describes itself as a sort of autopilot, or rather, "whatever remains when you strip all personality from the body. It's a collection of physical functions and its goal is to keep us going when noone's fronting. It keeps us fed, hydrated, safe, and periodically puts the body to sleep so maybe one of us can re-enter front.

TP (myself) - so yeah, as far as roles go, I'm like... What, part protector-part persecutor-part trauma holder-part little-part host like wtf am I even?! I know that everybody has a blind spot for themselves, but like does any alter ever know what the fuck their function is supposed to be?! I'm just so fucking confused pls someone explain my system to me?!

3, about the excessive posting today. I dunno. I really just cannot stop, but I'm also more out of it than I have been any time in the past like ever, and occasionally I'm not even sure it's me or who am I so I'm deeply sorry for the verbal diarrhea. I guess I'm partly doing this because I'm sure I won't remember any of this later, like I keep "waking up" and it's been like 50 years and it's still the SAME MOTHERFUCKING DAY AND IT'S BEEN LIKE 5 SECONDS since the last post I've written the day before yesterday, so I guess it's also like my sense of time is absolutely fucked, but seriously I've just lived a lifetime of incoherent torment this day, like, did I just die and go to hell and this is what hell is? Seems plausible.

#long rant #did life #did questions #actually did

[ruminativerabbi]

As the Holidays Approach

Elul, the month that leads directly into the High Holiday season, should be ideally devoted to the thoughtful, principled introspection that can serve as the foundation upon which the spiritual work of the whole holiday season should then come to rest. And that only makes sense: to come before Judge God and successfully to negotiate the experience requires, at the very least, knowing yourself well enough to speak honestly and authoritatively on your own behalf and in your own defense. And that level of self-awareness comes to most of us, possibly even to all of us, solely as the result of the kind of wholly honest self-scrutiny that yields the unvarnished truth about ourselves and our lives.

The problem is that most of us find any sort of serious self-analysis off-putting, unnerving, and, to say the very least, deeply anxiety-provoking. And yet, that is precisely what otherwise halcyon Elul offers: week after week of days unburdened by any other holidays or special observances that may therefore be given over to thinking carefully about ourselves and our lives and our deeds…and, painful though the process may be, also in identifying our own moral shortcomings, errors of judgment, ethical missteps, and unnecessarily missed opportunities to do good in the world. It is a pleasant experience for almost none, but it can be a productive one.

To assist in making the whole Elul experience as positive as possible, it has been my custom in recent years to recommend to my readers a single book that might prove helpful in framing otherwise amorphous thoughts and regrets in a productive way, in confronting the larger paintings of which the details of our personal lives are the brushstrokes, in setting our personal stories into the larger saga of humankind and its foibles and flaws, and, generally speaking, in coming to terms with the lives we have constructed and owning up to the various ways in which those lives have been characterized more often than not by decisions that, for all they seemed reasonable at the time, feel flawed and inconsistent with the values we claim to hold dear when viewed in the rearview mirror.

Last year, I recommended a remarkable novel that I had just read, Marcos Aguinis’s book Against the Inquisition, which I found both moving, intelligent, and stimulating. (To revisit my thoughts from last Elul, click here.) This year, however, I would like to recommend a book that I first read decades ago, and which wasn’t that new a work even then: Clark Moustakas’s book, Loneliness.

Moustakas’s renown has faded in the years following his death in 2012 at age eighty-nine, but in his day he was one of America’s foremost psychologist/authors and was widely acclaimed specifically as an expert in humanistic and clinical psychology. He published prodigiously throughout his career, but the book I wish to recommend was one of his earlier works that first appeared in 1961. (I read it when I was a student at JTS more than a decade after it first came out.) I would like to introduce it to you in this week’s letter and suggest why I feel it would make an excellent choice for Elul reading.

The book isn’t long at all, a mere 107 pages in the first print edition. Yet the author manages in those few pages to speak almost amazingly deeply and provocatively about the human condition…and in a way that is somehow both reassuring and challenging. I just finished re-reading the book and, even after all these years was struck again by its remarkable profundity. If there is one book you can find the time to read this Elul, Loneliness is the one I recommend you consider. (Nor is this a pricey investment: you can find used copies online for $2 a book.)

I was prompted to re-read the book by an article I noticed the other day on the website of YouGov, the U.K.-based data analysis firm, that determined—not anecdotally, but by using actual data collected this last summer and subsequently analyzed by themselves—that the millennials among us can reasonably be characterized as the loneliest generation ever. (Click here to read the article for yourself.) This came as a huge surprise to me—you would think that people raised in a world in which people are practically defined by social media that offer the possibility of maintaining not dozens or scores but hundreds or even thousands of “friendships” concurrently, you would think such people would constitute the world’s least lonely people ever. And yet, the report seemed unequivocal: 30% of millennials polled reported feeling “always or often” lonely (as opposed to half that many baby boomers such as myself) and more than one in five—22%—of millennials reported that they do not have any friends at all. A different slice of the millennial pie—27% of the total—reported having some friends but no “close” ones. Together, that’s one percentage point short of half of all Americans between the ages of twenty-two and thirty-seven reporting that they either had no friends at all…or at least no close ones. When asked why they find it difficult to make friends with others, a startling 53% responded that the fault was in their own stars—that they personally were too shy to go out there and find people to be friends with. All of this came as a huge surprise to me.

There’s more thought-provoking data on the YouGov site to consider as well, but what interested me most of all was the basic assumption of the essay’s author, Jamie Ballard, that loneliness was a bad thing that healthy people would naturally avoid (and thus a situation in which most would only find themselves accidentally or tragically). Nor was I amazed that she took that approach, which I think is probably what most people actually do think. The phenomenal success of the television series Friends, which ran for ten years starting a quarter-century ago, was probably rooted in that concept as well: the show was a little about romance and a little about life, but it was mostly about friendship—its name basically said as much—and its great success lay in the portrait it offered viewers of young urban types, the sustaining feature of whose lives was precisely the degree to which their friends watched out for them, cared for them, and, yes, loved them even when they were being otherwise disagreeable or snarly.

I think most of us subscribe to the notion that loneliness is a bad thing. And yet Moustakas’s book goes off in the precisely opposite direction, describing self-growth—and specifically the kind that leads to self-awareness and self-confidence—as an edifice almost of necessity built on a foundation of the kind of aloneness that moderns inevitably denigrate as unwanted, unworthy loneliness.

He writes anecdotally, telling us the stories of several of his patients and also telling his own story in a few intensely personal, sustained episodes. But he also writes about famous people and describes the source of their inventiveness, their creativity, their artistry, and their success in life as having been rooted in the deep sense of personal autonomy that begins with the acknowledgement that we are all alone in our lives and then goes on to create the impetus to seek the kind of companionship that, rather than denying or masking that sense of aloneness, celebrates and enhances it to the degree that we find in love the experience of being fully autonomous—and thus fully alone—in the company of a similarly autonomous individual. Among the people about whom he writes, some will be familiar to all—the sections on Abraham Lincoln, Emily Dickinson, and Admiral Richard Byrd are particularly moving—and others, like the French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry or the German adventurer and explorer Hermann Buhl will be less well known. But, taken all together, the portraits he paints are all of individuals who found in loneliness the foundation upon which to build a social, meaningful, intensely productive life guided by principles forged by those individuals themselves in the crucible of their own autonomous selves.

Perhaps I should let the author speak for himself. In the introduction to these portraits I just mentioned, he sets forth his argument in these terms:

Every man is alone. Ultimately, each person exists in isolation. He faces himself in silence, wending his way in individual pathways, seeking companionship, reaching out to others. Forever, man moves forward stretching to the skies, searching the realization of his own capacities. In loneliness, man seeks the fulfillment of his inner nature. He maps new meanings, and perceives new patterns for old ways and habits.  Alone, the life of man passes before him. His philosophy, the meanings he attaches to his work and his relations, each significant aspect of his being comes into view as new values are formed, as man resolves to bring human significance, to bring life to each new day, to each piece of work, to each creation. In loneliness, every experience is alive and vivid and full of meaning. When one has been greatly isolated and restricted in movement, one deeply feels the value of openness, of freedom and expansiveness. Life takes on an exquisite meaning, an exhilarating richness. When one has lived in total darkness, one piercingly appreciates the sunlight, the fireside, the beacon, the beginning dawn. When one is cut off from human companionship, one discovers a deep reverence for friendship, for the one who stands by in the hour of need and shame. In the days of pain and defeat, loneliness takes on a human depth.  When one is sequestered from life, when one is purely alone and dying, when one is lost in a world of dreary emptiness, then color becomes exquisite, rich, desirable, fulfilling. When one has been sharply isolated and lonely, every moment is pure, every sound is delightful, every aspect of the universe takes on a value and meaning, an exquisite beauty. The isolated tree stretches out to meet its new neighbor; the lonely star twinkles and turns to face its emerging companions in the night; the lost child runs to loved ones with open arms.

 A mere excerpt or two won’t do justice to the book, which is remarkable both in terms of its brevity and its profundity. I recommend it wholeheartedly to all—both broadly as a very interesting, challenging way to consider the human condition and more narrowly as an Elul book that has in its handful of chapters the capacity to frame the whole experience of entering the Days of Awe almost upon us not as a burden or a test, but as an exercise in deep, sustaining self-awareness and self-knowledge.

#Clark Moustakas #Loneliness #Elul

[onisionhurtspeople]

The Spiral of Narcissistic Abuse: Onision Edition

I originally wrote this post in April 2017, but in the year and a half since it’s been published, there have been literally dozens of new victims targeted by Greg (Onision) and his wife Lainey (Laineybot) that I felt were severe enough to warrant inclusion; and so here I am to re-write this post to include this new information. 

1. “Love Bombing”: Display of excessive attention and professions of deep love. “Soul mate.”

Love bombing is the practice of overwhelming a person in a new relationship with signs of adoration and attraction in the form of gifts, compliments, meaningful gestures, discussions revolving around long-term future plans (marriage, children, vacations, etc), and professions of true love. The difference between love bombing and genuine love is that real love is earned over time through intimacy, trust, and consistency, whereas love bombing creates artificial feelings of intimacy that have not yet been earned. 

Greg routinely engages in love-bombing when it comes to either a) trying to lure in new victims, or b) making attempts to reel in previous victims (such as exes), or current victims who are becoming disillusioned with him and beginning to pull away. In 2015, after Greg had convinced his wife Lainey to “explore her bisexuality” by getting a girlfriend, she had settled on an 18-year-old YouTube personality and makeup guru named Billie, and flew her down to their house for a visit. What Greg neglected to tell Lainey was that he had ulterior motives for pushing her to get a girlfriend, and this was because he wanted to convince Lainey and whoever her girlfriend was to enter a three-way, polyamorous triad with him. While Billie was there, in an attempt to draw her in, Greg showered her with gifts, compliments, and an excessive amount of attention and admiration; according to him, he paid her $1800 a month to manage his social media accounts, spent thousands of dollars buying her gifts of makeup and clothing, and his videos were full of glowing compliments towards Billie. 

He tweeted this at Billie after she managed to “fix” a broken camera lens by throwing it on the ground. He screams at his own children just for losing at Mario Kart, could you imagine Onision having this reaction to anybody else treating his expensive equipment that way?

Every time he and Lainey broke up with Billie (usually because she refused to go along with their bizarrely strict and controlling expectations for her behavioral conduct, such as having to ask their permission before smoking weed - and yes, you read that correctly; the problem was not that she was smoking weed because it was illegal (as Greg and Lainey had originally claimed), the problem was that she didn’t ask their permission before doing it), Greg would begin to reel Lainey back in by trying to love bomb her again. This comment was made just two days after he’d cheated on Lainey with Billie, while she was pregnant with their second child:

…and every time they get back together, he begins love bombing Billie again, and ignoring Lainey. He is careful not to do this overtly on Twitter or Instagram like he does with Lainey, but during this time, he expends much more effort into communicating with Billie over Twitter and in videos than he does with Lainey. He is also very clearly more physically affectionate towards Billie in videos where the three of them appear together than he is with his own wife.

(And maybe this is just my unprofessional opinion, but the manner in which he compliments Lainey rings much more hollow and inauthentic to me than the compliments he used to give to Billie. It comes off as very rote and robotic, not genuine or sincere.) 

2.  Over-protection and isolation in the name of love. “We only need each other.”

One of the most common tactics that abusers use to control their victims is by isolating them from friends and family. They do this so that it’s harder for them to escape or see the truth of what’s happening to them. This behavior is manifested in ways such as convincing the victim to stay at home and not have a job, by controlling all of the money that flows through the household (including the victim’s money, if they DO have a job), and by slowly convincing the victim to stop talking to their friends and family members, because the narcissist “doesn’t think they’re good for [them]”. Without a sense of perspective or anybody from whom to gain a third-party point of view, it’s extremely difficult for the victim to objectively analyze the severity of the situation. 

Throughout the history of his relationships, Greg follows this pattern with all of his partners to the tee. He makes repeated attempts to convince Billie to stop flying home to spend time with her friends and family members, who she is extremely close with.

Unbelievably, he attempts to manipulate her by bragging about how he’d already managed to successfully convince Lainey to not visit her own family more than once a year. In a livestream, Lainey once admitted that earlier this month (October 2018) was the first time she’s attended a family funeral in over five years, because Greg wouldn’t give her permission to go to any of the other ones. He also frequently attacks Lainey’s family on social media, as well as diminishing them in Lainey’s eyes by making his disapproval of them quite clear:

This is what he said about Lainey’s sister:

He especially does this to Lainey’s father, who saw through Greg from the very beginning, and desperately tried to stop his 17-year-old daughter from marrying him:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sAjnkASwOo

He also did this with Skye while they were still married, restricting her from seeing anybody but members of his own family, and members of her family that he approved of (which was basically just her younger sister, a 15-year-old girl who Greg admitted to fantasizing about having sex with, including (more than once) accidentally moaning her name while being intimate with Skye). A quote from his website at the time:

January 24th, 2007

Alright, so it has been a few days since Skye and I hung out with another couple… judging from the fact that these people were the only ones we knew that had a lifestyle that wasn’t drugged out, beered out (also known as drugged out), smoked out, ethically lacking, rude etc. and we can’t even enjoy ourselves around them as much as we do each other… I just really don’t see myself and Skye spending time with anyone in the future other than family…

It seems that everyone who isn’t blood related has something extremely wrong with them… it may not be apparent at first, like a used car, but when you get on the road with them, and get to know them, the clanks and pings begin to show, maybe not after the first few miles, but definitely after the second or third ride.

(Source)

This isolation of Skye got so bad that eventually, two of their friends actually tried to convince her to leave Greg:

January 27th, 2007

I was going to post something extremely long about how upset I am with two people I know, within my personal life - who are continuously trying to break my wife and I apart psychically and vocally… but I’m not going to as I believe it can only cause a greater level of drama, which is exactly what they feed on.

In fact, they probably know I’m talking about them right now, and are dialing my number just to tell me/others how wrong I am for my wife, and somehow by saying I love her every hour of the day, feeding her full of yummy food, trying to make her happy emotionally/other ways, putting a roof over her head, that in result of that I’m a bad husband.

(Source)

A former classmate of Greg, who had gone to high school with both he and Skye, also gave an interview with someguy827, in which he detailed his observations of Greg slowly but surely isolating Skye from all of her friends and family members:

You can read the interview here. (Source)

And read the comment that he made on lolcow here. (Source)

3. Power gained by social isolation and artificially inflated self-esteem. “I feel like a better person with I am with them.”

Greg has claimed this about every single one of his exes. I can’t track down photographic examples of him claiming this about all of them never mind, I managed to find examples of him saying this to at least three different women. Here’s an example of when he said it to ex-girlfriend Adrienne:

Keep in mind that they had been dating for a grand total of two weeks when he made the claim to her that she had helped him grow into a better person in the short amount of time they’d been together. 

He made the same claim about a high school girlfriend, Tanya, whom - again - he had known for only a couple of weeks; and they were not even officially dating when he said this to her:

Here is another example of him saying this about his first wife, Skye - again, only weeks into their relationship. The journal entry this screenshot was lifted from is much longer and I was having trouble pasting it into the body of this text in a way that was readable, so here’s a very short, cropped version of what he said. You can find the source for this quote here. (Source)

At the end of his relationship with Adrienne - while they were in the process of breaking up - he called her repeatedly while she was at work, leaving her over a dozen voicemails in less than a day. During this time, Adrienne managed to get in touch with Shiloh, another of Greg’s exes, to compare notes about the similarities in their relationship. When Shiloh listened to the voicemails that Greg had sent to Adrienne, she posted this comment on Facebook:

He had been telling the two women, only hours apart from each other, about how special and meaningful they were to him. The saddest thing about this is that at the same time, he was also calling Skye; and this exchange between himself, Shiloh, and Adrienne occurred only days before he started talking to Lainey. 

4. Creation of a feeling of dependency; induction of fear of the loss of relationship.

One of the ways that Greg likes to induce feelings of psychological dependence on him is through a tactic called “manipulation break-ups”. The phenomenon is explained here by dwayners13:

One of the most common tactics used by manipulative & emotionally abusive individuals is the ‘manipulation breakup’. This is simply when a person repeatedly breaks up with their partner, not because they truly want to end their relationship, but rather to gain power & control over their partner & the relationship in general. There are a variety of issues & events that can cause a manipulation breakup (far too many to list here), but it can range from their partner doing something they don’t like/approve of to the emotionally abusive person being confronted on their abusive/manipulative behavior (by their partner &/or their partner’s family/friends). [...]  Instead of taking the time to discuss or even arguing about the issue in an attempt to resolve it, the person will just break up with them, knowing that their partner doesn’t want to break up. They will then refuse to speak with them about the issue (& the relationship in general), essentially shunning or ignoring their attempts. This can include ignoring phone calls, text messages, VMs etc.., If the couple live together, they will simply refuse to speak with their partner (aka the silent treatment). Their intention is to make it seem like the relationship is over, so that the person will practically beg & plead with their partner & be willing to agree to anything in order to get back together.

(Source)

Greg and Lainey both admitted to him doing this multiple times throughout their relationship; and still, to this day, they admit that he attempts to break up with her every single time they argue, even though they’re married and have been for over seven years. It is extremely abnormal for a 34-year-old father of two who has been married for seven years to threaten to “break up” with his wife every time they get into an argument. These attempts at manipulation on Greg’s part terrify Lainey so much that she readily complies with whatever he wants in order to convince him not to leave her. This pattern could not be more apparent than how this manipulation tactic played out in their relationship with Billie. 

During the time when Greg and Lainey were in a polyamorous relationship with Billie, Lainey expressed repeated discomfort about Greg and Billie spending so much time together while she was excluded by having to spend so much time cooking, cleaning, looking after their their son (she was pregnant with their daughter at the time), and managing their household (which we now know, thanks to Maya, that Greg does not help out with at all, meaning that Lainey spent the vast majority of her day doing these things while Greg and Billie were in another room playing games, making videos, and hanging out). She felt that Billie was only there for Greg, and was not comfortable with them being sexually intimate together, even when it was all three of them together. After a while of this - despite Lainey’s continued discomfort, disapproval, and lack of consent (which is vital for any healthy, functioning polyamorous triad) - Greg told Lainey that there would be more more boundaries, no more jealousy, and that he and Billie were going to do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted; and that if Lainey didn’t like it, then he was going to divorce her. 

Naturally, terrified of losing her husband, her family, her home, her source of income, and the only lifestyle that she’d ever known - with a three-year-old in tow, and pregnant with their second child - Lainey felt forced to remain in the three-way relationship that she didn’t even want to begin with. 

A quote from his video, “Onision’s Break Up Story”:

“I told my wife that there would be no more rules in the relationship. That there would be no more boundaries, no more jealousy, and that I would do what I want.”

(Source)

After this quote, Greg goes on to explain that he reassured his wife that he had no intention of leaving her; however, how could Lainey believe this, when just a few months before he had attempted to leave her for Billie, which only didn’t end up happening because Billie told him that she didn’t feel right about it? When he had threatened to leave her so many times before over much smaller and less significant things? He goes on to say this:

“Regardless, it is important to note that Billie did tell me that she thought Lainey might be upset if she and I slept together, but every time she indicated she was worried, I would remind her of the conversation I had with Lainey where I repeatedly told her there would be no more boundaries, we would all have balanced relationships, and that there would be no jealousy.” 

This is an ultimatum. The reason why Lainey went to Billie to ask her not to sleep with Greg is because she already knew that he would shut her down if she tried. Ask yourself this question: for what reason would a woman feel more comfortable asking other women not to sleep with her husband, instead of just going straight to the source and simply asking her husband not to sleep with other women instead? The answer is that it’s because she already knew that he would say no and try to divorce her if she kept bringing it up. It is not unreasonable for Lainey to believe Greg capable of doing this, considering that he has admitted in the past to leaving one woman for another (when he left Skye for Shiloh in 2011):

Greg doesn’t just do this to Lainey, however; he has done this, to my knowledge, with every other woman he’s ever dated. The following is a screenshot of a portion of the letter written by Adrienne - the 26-year-old that Greg dated for three weeks just before he met Lainey - describing how Greg attempted to manipulate her through making her fear the loss of the relationship:

Later on in the same letter:

The entirety of the letter written by Adrienne can be read here. If you’re interested in understanding how Greg’s mind works, I highly recommend reading it - it is extremely insightful, analytical, and well-written. 

5. Restrictive control of resources and activities enforced by induction of guilt, or fear of anger.

It’s no secret that Greg attempts to restrict the activities that his girlfriends are allowed to participate in. This ranges from the aforementioned control over how often they’re allowed to visit their families, to whether or not they’re allowed to have a job (a tactic reported by several of his exes and by Greg himself), to how often they’re allowed to go out with their friends, and even to what they are and are not allowed to eat.

In the following screenshot, a blog post by Shiloh months after they’d broken up, she details how he not only manipulated her into cutting off contact with her friends and family back home, but also convinced her to put her music career on hold so that they could be together all the time:

(You can read the full post here.)

He also talked Skye into quitting her job once he began making enough money off YouTube, with the reasoning that couples should be spending at least 50% of their time together. (I’m having trouble finding the screenshot for this, but it’s out there somewhere - I’ve seen it before.) Here is a similar screenshot, however:

He would also become extremely angry with Adrienne when she wanted to go out with her friends…

...and tried to manipulate her into quitting her job, moving in with him, and depending entirely on him as her source of income, all within three weeks of meeting her. 

6. Gaslighting causes victim to doubt what they see or hear. Inability to trust own thoughts and reasoning.

When Lainey first broke up with Greg and was considering divorce after he cheated on her with Billie, she admitted that she had never even wanted a girlfriend to begin with, and that it had been Greg who was pressuring her into it…

…but later, when Lainey recounted her side of the story in a response video to the one that Billie released, she adamantly maintained that it was she who had wanted to experiment with her bisexuality - evidence that Greg had been gaslighting her into believing that he was not at fault, yet again, and that it was Lainey who had desired to keep bringing back Billie over and over again. The tweet posted in first part of this screenshot was taken only six months after the tweet in the second part:

In addition - despite having told Lainey that it was his decision to sleep with Billie, and despite having literally admitted in a video that he published on YouTube to Billie having repeatedly brought up her discomfort with going behind Lainey’s back in order to be intimate with Greg - he still managed to convince Lainey to doubt her own perceptions enough to the point where she now, to this day - over two years later - still considers Billie to be the homewrecker, and that it was Billie who cheated on her with Greg, not Greg who cheated on her with Billie. That is how manipulative he is. 

During one of the periods in time when Greg and Lainey had broken up with Billie yet again, Lainey began talking to a new girl named Hailey (known online as Luxymoo). At first, Hailey believed that her relationship with Lainey would be exclusive; but after Greg informed her that the relationship would actually be an open polyamorous one, she realized that she was uncomfortable with the arrangement and decided to pull out. Despite the fact that she had every right to choose not to go through with it, Greg then attempted to gaslight her and invalidate her feelings:

After that I started doing research on what it meant to be in a three way relationship, I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t for me. Which killed me, because all I wanted to do was be with Lainey. I wanted to try for them, but at the end of the day, I had to consider my personal feelings on the matter. I knew I couldn’t be what they wanted, because I wanted Lainey.

I told Lainey as soon as I came to that conclusion. I wanted to be honest. I didn’t want to drag it out. Lainey didn’t respond to me.. but Greg did. He said that if he were in my position, he would do whatever it takes to be with Lainey. He said that I didn’t really care about Lainey, that all I was looking for was friendship. He said that he thought my mind was broken. He said he thought I may be sexually dormant. He then would say that he thinks i’m a good person and that i’m the safer alternative. He called me a good distraction.

He wanted me to still come up. But that was a fleeting thought. He said friendship would be hard, and that I was doing everything I could to avoid a relationship with Lainey. Then he pitched the idea of me being with Lainey exclusively, while he’s with Lainey exclusively. Like we wouldn’t be doing sexual things together. I still declined because 1. he had spent so much time invalidating MY feelings on the matter, attacking my personality, pressuring me, etc. and 2. I also knew that that wasn’t what they wanted, and I told him that we would still hit that road block of me wanting exclusiveness. He had said in a previous conversation that it was like him and Lainey were on an island and I had a boat, but I wouldn’t throw them a life line because I wasn’t the right boat.

(The full conversation and screenshot can be seen here.)

He also tried to use this tactic on Maya - a girl who dated Lainey very briefly in late 2017 - in an attempt to preemptively gaslight her and discredit her, should she choose to come forward with her story about what he did to her:

Which he did, in fact, try to do later on, by attempting to accuse Maya of being a “homewrecker” for “wiggling while she was sitting on his lap” (despite not mentioning that he was the one who had placed her there, which she did not consent to, and only went along with because she felt so uncomfortable). The posts detailing her full account can be found here and here. 

7. Increased emotional and psychological dependence of victim on abuser.

Greg has already succeeded in doing this with Lainey and many other girlfriends in the past, and has attempted to do this to several more. When married to Skye, Greg insisted that she not have a job outside of the home because he believes that a couple should spend most of their time together (despite later claiming that spouses who do not have a job outside the home, or at least have children, are useless). After meeting Shiloh, despite the fact that she was a celebrity in Canada at the time they met, he forced her to quit her singing career and move in with him to work for and with him full-time; to this day, over seven years later, her singing career still has not recovered. Upon breaking up with Shiloh, he dated a woman named Adrienne, who he attempted to manipulate into moving in with him within three weeks of the start of their relationship - and she almost did. And likewise, when he began dating Lainey, within a month of meeting her, he had proposed to her, rented a house in the state where she lived so that she could finish high school, and then married and impregnated her within the year, so that he could groom her and keep tabs on her until she was old enough to marry. 

Lainey does not have a job, and is completely financially and psychologically dependent upon Greg for not just survival, but her very sense of identity and self-worth as a person. In fact, she is so dependent on Greg as a source of ego regulation that I wrote an entire post breaking down and analyzing my impression of Lainey’s personality matrix because I was so baffled by the extent of her psychological dependency on him. You can read it here, if you’re curious (and have a lot of spare time). 

8. Punishment through anger, verbal abuse, forced isolation, character assassination, etc.

When angry with ex-girlfriend Shiloh, he pushed her into a door frame, causing her to miscarry (although some people do not believe that she was pregnant, since she and Greg had once faked a pregnancy and stillbirth):

He also forced her to shave her head bald, calling her a “whore”, “his property”, and “a good bitch”:

When Billie lied to him about smoking weed, he attempted to punish her by forcing her to dye her eyebrows green, shave off her hair (the third time he has attempted to, or succeeded in, manipulating a girlfriend to shave her hair off), get an ugly tan, be chained to his basement wall for a week wearing a sign saying “I’m sorry for lying Lainey” around her neck, and tattoo “I’m a liar” in the small of her back:

When he breaks up with exes, he also slanders and demeans their character on social media. He even does this with friends, other YouTubers, and sometimes just with people - usually women - that he doesn’t like. Including myself, by the way:

Proud moment. :’)

He made a video criticizing his ex (Adrienne) for the number of sexual partners she’s had, as well as implying that her vaginal hygiene was poor, and even made a series of videos in which he went and got himself tested for various STDs in order to imply that she was so promiscuous that she could have given him one (a video which later got deleted off YouTube when he realized how many downvotes it was getting); however, you can see her reference the video in her letter here:

When he and Skye divorced, he slandered her by calling her a thief and a liar, and continued to milk sympathy from his fans by implying that he was unfairly being forced to pay alimony, even though he agreed to the amount in the settlement, and she was rightly owed that money for her part in producing his early Onision videos.

When he broke up with Billie, he said and did several things to demean her character, including calling her a drug addict, imply that she’s “less than” for being a high school dropout who lives with her parents still, and also revealed to his entire fan base that she has an eating disorder, accused her family of being drugs addicts, and that she had been sexually assaulted and had an abortion, a secret which she had previously revealed to only a handful of close friends and family:

After Blaire White called him out for his actions, he made a video calling her so many different vile names, with such vitriolic hatred in his voice, that I actually have trouble watching it all the way through. You can really see his narcissistic rage coming out in this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEVHT6No5Xc

He has exhibited this cycle over and over again with YouTuber Cyr, who he has been friends with off and on for years:

Most recently - meaning since I first wrote this post (about a year and a half ago) - he has continued in this pattern of slandering ex-girlfriends and ex-friends a further three or four times at least; and so this is the part of this sub-heading that will provide new information that was not included in my old post.

After Jaclyn Glenn began dating Richie of SocialRepose, Greg flew off the handle, making a series of insulting comments about Jaclyn’s physical appearance on Twitter and YouTube, including remarking that tall women are gross, and that had she been dating him, he never would have allowed her to get breast implants, because they’re disgusting (and she’s disgusting for having them):

Since she has broken up with Richie, Greg has now reverted to his attempts at love-bombing Jaclyn (and her friend Jessie Paege) on Twitter, hoping to reignite their friendship (and the possibility of bringing her into a new trinity with Lainey, or at least hoping that she’ll be able to give a boost to his YouTube career). 

A few months ago, a close friend of both Greg and Lainey - model, actress, and member of the BDSM community Madison DeCambra - made a video with Greg about the DDlg (Daddy Dom/little girl) kink, which was received very poorly by the DDlg community. Feeling responsible for having hurt and contributed to the misrepresentation of the community that she loves so much, Madison posted a video on YouTube apologizing for any pain that her involvement in Greg’s video may have caused. Greg reacted to this by terminating their six-year-long friendship, as well as - predictably - going on a tirade of character assassinations against her on Twitter, including bringing her two-year-old daughter into it despite having previously accused anyone willing to bring a person’s children up during an argument of being trash. 

These were the texts he sent to Madison, which he then posted publicly on Twitter in order to discard and defame her:

(Source)

Here is a screenshot of Madison arguing with TomatoBisquette (another former friend of Greg’s whom he has discarded, in his case for being friendly towards MrRepzion, a YouTuber who Greg hates for having called him out in the past), who had tried to make light of how upset she was when Greg posted on Twitter telling her that he was disgusted by her and never considered her a friend:

He also used the opportunity to take another pot-shot at Beck - a former fan of Greg and Lainey before she, too, was ousted from their lives - for defending Madi:

However, the worst part of this interaction is that he chose to bring Madison’s two-year-old daughter into the argument, just because he was angry with her mother. Here was Madison’s (understandably angry and hurt) response:

A recent addition to the roster of the Avaroe’s stable of ex-friends, Maya - a 19-year-old bartender who briefly dated Lainey, and who visited them for about a week over the Christmas holidays in 2017 - described Greg’s behavior towards her as being bizarrely, uncomfortably interested in probing her about her past. She felt that he was pressing her for information to use against her in the future, and described the odd, inappropriate expression of pleasure that would come across his face while he was listening to a person describe some misfortune that had befallen them:

It would take me ages to compile a list of all of the exes, friends, YouTubers, and other randoms that he’s demeaned on social media or in his videos, so instead I’m just going to provide a (probably incomplete, and still-growing) list of people whose characters he has assassinated on Twitter or YouTube:

Exes: Skye, Shiloh, Adrienne, Billie 

Friends: Cyr, Andy Biersack (and his father), TomatoBisquette, Maya, Madison DeCambra, Beck, Jaclyn Glenn

YouTubers: Social Repose, Blaire White, Eugenia Cooney, Dan Howell, Keemstar, LeafyIsHere

Other: Ayallah (best friend of Billie, ex-girlfriend of Social Repose), Lainey’s family (father and sister), his own father, Luxymoo (Hailey)

9. Scouting new supply.

Before he had even divorced Skye, he moved on to Shiloh. When Shiloh left him and went back to Canada, he met Adrienne. When he broke up with Adrienne and she refused to take him back, he was texting Shiloh and Skye within 24 hours. When Skye, Shiloh, and Adrienne all refused to take him back, he then moved on to Lainey, who he had met and proposed marriage to within just a few short weeks of meeting. When he got bored of the ultimate power that he exerted over Lainey, he used her as queerbait to pull in Billie. When he and Lainey broke up with Billie - still bored with Lainey - he began auditioning new girls for a spot in his harem (Hailey/Luxymoo, Eryn, Maya, Sam, Beck). Here is a timeline of Greg’s known romantic relationships over the past fifteen years:

If Greg’s high school classmate is to be believed, however, then there are many, many women that Greg has been with that did not make this list.

And finally, here’s a funny, tongue-in-cheek chart chronicling the pattern of what happens when Greg and Lainey bring a new girl into the house: 

Lainey doesn’t know it yet, but this entire cycle is going to begin repeating itself sooner or later. It’s just a matter of time. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were lowkey auditioning girls as I write this.

10. Acting as though nothing happened.

Need I say more?

#onision #laineybot #narcissism #npd #abuse #anti onision #anti o