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poptod · 4 years ago

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Hi I hope ur having a great day! I love ur writing so freaking much! This request is a little different than what I’m sure ur used to but hopefully ur comfortable enough with writing it. Could u write a one shot (or headcanons if it’s easier) where Snafu from the Pacific is crushing big time on the reader (like almost in love) and he’s always hitting on her but she never shown any interest toward him. Then a few days in when the nurses come Snafu walks in on the reader making out with one of the nurses. They see each other and he walks out all like CONFUSED and shook and the reader runs after him to swear him to secrecy. He’s still shook and admits his feelings and she comes out as a lesbian to him. He’s even more SHOOK but he’s rly understanding and accepting even tho he’s incredibly heartbroken. Sorry if it’s not what u usually write, as a bi I’m just always a sucker for “I’m dumb she’s a lesbian”

notes: anon i love you you're literally perfect WC: 1.9k

He was used to this sort of behavior when he first met girls – curt and rude, meant to pry his eyes off their figure. Eventually though, after time, he would win their affection through his shining personality (or, at least, that's what he thought happened). Usually it only took about a week or less; he was good at what he did. This was ridiculous, though – he was ranging on the sixth week of knowing you. That's one and a half months, far above his usual score.

But you're beautiful. Even if you won't share a genuine conversation with him, you 'let' him watch you, allowing yourself to become his only source of entertainment on the island. The shine in your hair – always neatly pulled back – is a fantastic distraction from the blisters on his palms and the heat of his sunburnt skin.

You're the last piece of humanity here. It makes sense he would never be able to win you.

Today you're tending to his wounds, an activity he thought he would never love as much as he does. Your fingers are still soft somehow, brushing against the exposed skin of his arms, sliding over the bandages to ensure they won't slip. The concentration evident in your sharp eyes is revealed in the way you bite your lip, gaze never leaving the bloody blisters on his hands.

"Not for nothin' babe, but," he began to speak, voice raspy and dry, "last time someone looked at me like that, I got laid."

You very slowly raise your head, reluctantly meeting his eye with a dead stare.

"Not today, Snafu," you say.

"Tomorrow then?"

You scoff, shake your head, almost laugh, but in the end you say nothing. Instead you return to your work, diligently cleaning the scabs and covering them up. He can't say he minds––whether or not you truly engaged with him, he heard your voice, and felt your touch. That would be enough. For now.

Surprisingly enough, they still get to have movie night sometimes. That doesn't mean the movies are good, but they're generally more entertaining than watching the shore birds. Every now and then, Snafu will even go and join his tent mates, ogling more at the nurses than paying attention to the actual movie. Those are always good nights, and the forest is close enough that it's not a problem if he gets too excited.

Tonight's movie is titled 'Godzilla Goes to College,' and upon hearing the name Snafu knew he would not be able to attend a full hour of it. Instead he wanders around the encampment, watching shadow silhouettes and the movement of the breeze on tent flaps. The sound of shuffling catches his ear, and when he turns, he's pleasantly surprised to find you beside him, drowning in an oversized jacket. He laughs, loud and probably impolite, but the juxtaposition of him being shirtless beside you truly tickles him.

"Evenin', doll," he says through his laughter, stopping you in the middle of the pathway. A soft groan leaves you as you turn to face him.

"And good night," you say in a too-cheery tone, your saccharine smile instantly falling into a dead stare as you go back to walking, a renewed vigor in your step.

"Hey, where y' goin' in such a hurry?" He asks, and begins to trail slowly after you. He allows a decent amount of space to grow between you before he continues with, "stay n' chat a minute, cher!"

You don't even bother to respond once you turn the corner, where Snafu loses his trail on you. He curses to himself, turns back around, and finds several of his mates coming back from the movie rather tipsy. How long have they been there?

"Reeaaaall lucky with the girls, aren't'ya, Snaf?" Burgie asks, and the four of them fall into teasing laughter.

"I'll get her, you'll see," he promises, turning back to see if he can glimpse you between all the tents. "One a' these days, she's mine."

Later that evening he sees you again, through the sheer fabric of your tent, where you've been burning a candle. It casts your shadow clearly against the wall, allowing him to see you perfectly.

Snafu likes to claim he isn't a pervert, but most who know him in any way know that's not really true. Sure, he can be a gentleman, but if no one's looking he doesn't especially care. No one but him will know, not even you. Even if he wasn't a pervert, he still wouldn't be able to tear himself away––you're undressing, peeling the clothes off your skin and he can see the whole of your body. In outline, of course, but there nonetheless.

Fucking creep, he tells himself, calls himself, but he doesn't cease his staring till you've put out your candle. At that point he can no longer see you, and he returns to his own tent with fantasies circling his head like vultures.

It's not that you're particularly rude to him. You just don't engage or indulge any of his bullshit, which is fair enough he thinks. He has a lot of bullshit coming out of his mouth 24/7. Everyone knows that. There's a theory he has, though––a theory he came up with just a little while ago, that you would treat him perfectly normal as long as he didn't come on to you in conversation. If he treated you just like he treated most others, then you might actually be nice to him. You're a good person. You're not going to be needlessly mean.

"Afternoon," he says to you, and he has to physically bite his tongue to stop himself from calling you cher. You quirk one of your brows.

"Afternoon," you repeat back. "Something ailing you?"

"Why'd ya think that?" He asks, slinking into one of the chairs in the aid tent.

"This is a medical tent," you say, and he wants to facepalm himself.

I'm just achin' with love for you, boo, he wants to say, and again, he has to bite his tongue to stop it from coming out. Damn it, he thinks, that's actually a good line.

"So why are you here then?" You ask.

"Better than tryin' ta find somethin' edible in my lunch," he grumbles out, leaning back against the chair and closing his eyes. He lets out a satisfied sigh.

You giggle, you actually laugh from something he did, and say, "understandable. You should still eat, though. Here."

You move from your spot at a nearly-fully stocked tray, instead digging through one of the numerous unlabelled boxes piled like towers in the aid tent. From there you pull out a granola bar, brand name, and throw it at Snafu's face. He nearly falls off balance, but catches it before he loses his cool.

"Thank ya kindly, ma'am," he says with a grin, tipping an imaginary hat your direction. Again you smile; there is nothing better than this, sitting across from you, and being the reason for your happiness.

Eventually he has to leave in order to make room for those who actually do require medical aid, but he leaves singing on a high note. You say good-bye to him this time, for the first time, and a smile tugs at his lips all day. Therein lies the secret to your affection––a blazingly obvious secret that all men should know––that he must treat you as an equal, not size you up to something he can win over, something he can buy with cheap words and undressing eyes.

He thinks it over all day, lets it mull over in his head how he should next approach you. Things get twisted in his mind if he doesn't speak them out loud, and by eveningtime he's convinced that he should meet you tonight, even if it's just him barging into your tent. Politely, of course. A polite barging in.

For a moment he stops, his hand poised above the handle of your tent flap. You're definitely in there––or someone is––as there's shuffling behind the material, a sound he can barely process over the rushing of his heart.

Fuck it, he finally says, and without giving himself a chance to doubt, he pulls open the flap.

You don't even notice him. To be fair, your eyes are closed. And you're a bit preoccupied. Your tongue is pretty far down that nurse's throat.

His mouth falls open as every muscle in his body freezes. It's the other nurse that actually sees him, and she taps you harshly with her wide eyes set on Snafu. You tear yourself away from her touch, turn to the marine, and all the air in the tent goes stagnant.

He leaves. Throws the flap back into place and all but sprints away, wide eyes burning in the cool night air. It's only a second or two of running before he hears the flap open and close again, followed by you yelling something, and ultimately your chasing footsteps.

You end up being surprisingly fast, and you easily catch up to him. Once you do you grab his wrist, tugging him back, and forcing him to face you. Both of your hearts are racing a hundred miles a minute, both of your eyes wide with shock.

"Merriel I am begging you, you cannot tell anyone about this, please, please, you can't, I’ll do anything," you beg him, and it's then he notices there's tears on the edge of your eyes. "Please do this for me, you can't tell anyone. Don't even think about it––just, pretend it never happened?"

He's panting, unable to formulate any response, only able to stare into your panic and sink in the fear pouring out of your desperate eyes.

"(Y/N), I'm––no, I won't," he says at last, and you practically collapse with relief, falling into him with your forehead on his shoulder. He continues in a murmur, awkwardly holding you, "I just... I'm.. I'm in love with you. I––I couldn't do that to you."

"Fuck, I know," you say in a breath, removing yourself to look him in the eye. "But I can't be with you."

You pause, and he waits a moment for you to continue, his brow quirked in curiosity.

"I'm a lesbian, Snafu."

"Oh," he says, but it doesn't process. Not for a minute, anyway. "Oh. Ohh. OHHHH."

"Yeah," you say with a vigorous nod.

"Okay, I thought – I thought I jus’ lost my touch, you're just.. a lesbian, okay," he says, sparking a laugh from you.

"You're not angry?"

"Shit cher, you can't control who you wanna get freaky with jus' as much as I can't," he says, smiling, and the tears in your eyes finally fall. They aren't sad, though––birthed from fear, yes, but falling from happiness.

"You're a lifesaver, Snaf."

As heartbroken as he truly is, none of it really shows in his face. At least now he knows it wasn't really his fault that you didn't show interest in him. Still, disappointment fills up his chest, until you tell him that he makes a good friend. It's then he realizes he can still keep you in his life, a version of modesty and stature and innocence that he can't achieve alone.

He won't ever be able to kiss you, which he does mourn––your lips are painfully soft, and every time he catches sight of them he yearns to press his own against them. Your statement on him works in reverse, though; you're a good friend, and that would be enough for Snafu. But Merriel hides within the bravado, within the suaveness of his voice and actions, and Merriel weeps childish tears that Snafu doesn't know how to wipe away and comfort. Snafu understands the reality of the world, but Merriel will always lament the unfairness of life.

You're the last piece of humanity here. It makes sense Merriel would never be able to win you.

#merriel snafu shelton #snafu x reader #rami malek #the pacific hbo

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twistedintern · 5 years ago

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(Credit to @VILSWIFE on Twitter for the questionnaire, and special thanks to @appleflowerwritings for bringing this to my attention!) Time to get back into the swing of things, and what better way to do that than by expanding upon yume ship lore? Hopefully this doesn’t come off as weird...

(Although... I am loath to admit that I’d do better to wait until the next NRC Unified Exams before taking the plunge like this. I suppose I can always revise my responses to reflect official lore later on.)

“Person A” is Kyuu. “Person B” is Trein.

Question (1) - As mentioned in Kyuu’s personal chronicle, the two met in passing when Kyuu first awoke in a empty coffin in Night Raven’s Mirror Chamber. Their encounter was so brief that it almost didn’t register in Kyuu’s mind (she was too busy being terrified by Crowley’s appearance in the dark to focus on much else). It would only be about a week later when she was assigned to work with him that she would realize that Crowley was not alone when he discovered her; on that occasion he was accompanied by a stately man and a cat. The two formally became acquainted that day over tea and snacks.

Question (2) - Crowley described the sort of person Trein was to Kyuu before she had the chance to meet him. As the headmaster is the type who’s always on the receiving end of a lecture from the professor, he exaggerated the latter’s rigidity and inability to get along with others. Kyuu had terrible first experiences with his colleagues, so she took the headmaster’s words as gospel and came to dread meeting him one-on-one.

...But when they did meet, Trein was firm in explaining to her why others perceive him as they do. Kyuu realized she misjudged him and felt horrible about it for some time afterwards. Her current impression of him is founded not on fear, but deep respect. For her, he represents propriety and discipline--a constant in a chaotic new world.

Question (3) - Trein himself did not think much of Kyuu when Lucius came across her that night she appeared in Twisted Wonderland. He initially suspected she was a runaway who stole away to the school grounds--the sort of person who would prove to be a problem for the staff of Night Raven in the short-term. But once Crowley relayed her peculiar state of affairs during a general meeting--and that she would be taken on as an “intern”--he was a bit surprised (and irritated by the headmaster’s rash executive decision). But Lucius had taken to her, and his dear companion was nothing if not a superb judge of character.

He figured her to be bumbling or inattentive or immature; younger folk are always difficult in some way or another. She proved him wrong the first time they sat down to chat. She was very much a breath of fresh air, she was respectful, humble, and took an active interest in his work despite being half his own age. He appreciates her company and values her as an individual.

(Questions (4) & (5) have been omitted because I’ve not yet thought about this.)

Question (6) - Kyuu’s feelings for Trein gradually grew so intense as to occupy her every waking thought: he was her first love; she’d never before felt like this towards another. A confession wasn’t a question of “if”, but a matter of “when”--something Kyuu intended to stay for as long as possible. Fate had other plans, naturally... Kyuu made the mistake of working late with Trein at the latter’s residence one particularly stormy night. When she became cognizant of the hour and made to leave, Trein urged her to stay the night. She conceded: any attempt to brave the storm would end in disaster. Their proximity was enough to break Kyuu’s resolve, especially when it occurred to her that he couldn’t reject her... or, that he wouldn’t leave her at the mercy of winds and rain.

Trein did not reject her... but he did not express that he reciprocated her feelings, either. He didn’t give her a response; the only indication that he heard her was that he remained still while she spoke.

A number of days would pass, with Kyuu taking pains to avoid Trein at any and all costs. Trein would be the one to approach her; all the while, he behaved as though the incident never happened in the first place. Weeks later, when the two were working at his residence, Kyuu recognized a familiar warmth: contentment. A feeling of peace; an acceptance of herself and the incident.

Then Trein broached the topic once more.

His voice was calm; he sounded neither resentful nor accusatory. Every nerve in Kyuu’s body urged her to run away--she couldn’t bear shameful weight of her foolhardy sentiments. He was about to reject her... but she stood her ground. It was her just desserts, in a way, for allowing misguided feelings to dictate her behavior.

Then he quietly took her hand and gave her a gentle, small smile:

“I hope you can accept my sincerest apologies. The fact of the matter is, I could not answer you at the time. I had a poor grasp of my own feelings when you had the courage and resolve to speak your heart. Know I’ve passed countless hours since in self-reflection. Romance, intimacy... love--these are not things to be taken lightly, after all....

“I’ve grown quite fond of you. If you’ll have me, I should like to give this--the two of us--a try.”

Question (7) - Kyuu loves Trein’s olden manner, strict sense of discipline, and passion for his work. Trein finds Kyuu’s diligence, honesty to a fault, and humility to be endearing.

Question (8) - Both enjoy looking after cats (though this extends to other animals for Kyuu), reading, and playing chess (which they rarely do together because Kyuu’s a mediocre player at best). They share love for history as well.

Question (9) - Both Kyuu and Trein look down upon truant and delinquent behavior. They believe rules exist to be followed.

Questions (10) & (11) - Between the two, Kyuu is much more likely to seek affection and company. She’s not pushy or demanding about it--in fact, she’s generally unwilling to put her desires into words, especially in public. (She finds couples who engage in gratuitous PDAs rude.) Her gestures lack the grace of Trein’s rare but deliberate actions. Trein will express his love with measured care; never failing to demonstrate the utmost formality and poise when doing so. Still, he only takes the initiative when he’s certain Kyuu requires reassurance, though both are quite confident in their bond. Oftentimes, they’re just content to be around one another.

Question (12) - Trein, though both are early birds.

Question (13) - Kyuu will talk more if something’s on her mind, but Trein can speak on his profession for hours if given the chance (Kyuu is more than happy to listen to him during those times).

Question (14) - They’re both reserved when it comes to showing affection in public. Kyuu tends to be more affectionate in private, however.

Question (15) - A lovely dinner at a fancy restaurant followed by a quiet evening reading and engaging in hushed discussion about any number of things in the company of Lucius.

Question (16) - A library.

(Questions (17) & (18) have been omitted.)

Question (19) - Trein. Kyuu’s pride keeps her from apologizing for however long she feels like she’s in the right (which isn’t long).

Question (20) - ...Yes. A son and a daughter. Both take after their father in terms of manner and diligence, but they possess their mother’s empathy and willingness to accommodate the needs of others.

Question (21) - When Trein first asks Kyuu to call him by his given name.

Question (22) - Trein a cat, Kyuu a fox.

Question (23) - Kyuu.

Question (24) - Probably Trein, but he doesn’t cook much.

Question (25) - Kyuu enjoys a bevy of different foods; Trein is more reserved in his tastes. While Trein has yet to take to any of Kyuu’s favorite dishes, Kyuu absolutely loves Trein’s favorite dish, vichyssoise: it was a comfort food of her childhood, one that she associates with feelings of security and family.

(Question (26) has been omitted.)

Question (27) - Kyuu would gift Trein books and tea blends, whereas Trein might give her antiques or small trinkets.

Question (28) - They’d just spend the day together doing small, meaningful things--nothing extravagant.

Question (29) - Trein.

Question (30) - Neither one is prone to getting sick. Whomever is well will keep close watch over the ailing partner, doing all manner of things to ensure their speedy recovery such as monitoring their temperature; and preparing foods and serving them meals in bed.

#twisted wonderland #twisted-wonderland #twst ocs #twst yume #mozus trein #twst x oc

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blindkite · 6 years ago

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While it's none of my business, may I inquire about what ails you?

I’ve actually been pretty open about my illnesses (since it affects my commissions work and anything schedule related) so I don’t mind!

Some of them need a little explaining as to what they are, and it’s kinda a long list. I have alot of health problems.

Hashimoto’s disease is my main issue, its a type of autoimmune disease that causes hypothyroidism, aka, i regularly have to get blood tests and up meds to keep up with its fast progression. Not fatal, but its a fuckin pain in the ass i tell you.

Normally it isnt such havoc to deal with, but I’ve actually had symptoms of this since childhood, so I was ALWAYS being tested for thyroid issues, but nothing came up, so it was chalked up as whiny kid just complaining and faking sick for attention.

I went an extremely long time misdiagnosed because i had a rare variant of it that required a nonstandard test to find, (It’s called Test Negative Hashimoto’s, cause it shows as negative on general tests) so by the time i was finally diagnosed and put on meds, alot of damage had already been done to my body and there was no reversing it. If it had been caught sooner, I would never of become this sick, there’s even a chance it could of been stopped entirely. All it would of taken was one doctor to think to try the alternate test, instead of just blaming it on being a whiny kid.

As you can tell, I’m extremely salty about this.

Next up,

Ehlers–Danlos syndromes (EDS), I have the hyper-mobility type, which means my joints love to lock and dislocate over literally nothing. washing dishes? not anymore, now your fingers refuse to move. walking? hope you didnt need that knee to bend. again, its more annoying than anything. I do sound like a box of rice krispies whenever i move tho (snap crackle pop)

Fibromyalgia is also in the mix, this is a recent diagnosis since it was kinda hiding behind the EDS, since they have similar all pain all the time. Tho this has the bonus of hurting a fuck ton if you poke me, and pain in random places for no reason! Also I’m young and in a state that fears opioid/pain medication abuse so, all i get is some Alleve and a prayer!!!!

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is also a newbie diagnosis, because it was hiding behind the hashimoto’s, which also causes digestive issues. Also I have the annoying version you can’t take medication for, I either strictly control my diet or i fucking suffer. I’m basically in a constant state of, the more they treat, the more they find wrong, which is not great.

Last up is Circadian rhythm disorder, aka, I was born naturally nocturnal. And no, it is not a matter of a strict schedule and some melatonin to fix. Been there, tried that. Because of the life long sleep issues (i was literally like this as a baby), i’m prone to insomnia if my natural sleep is fucked with, with the bonus of getting super vivid hallucinations! FUN!!! So yeah, I fuck with that as little as possible. It does what it wants, and I’m just along for the ride.

AND WHAT AGGRAVATES AND MAKES ALL THESE THINGS WORSE??DRUMMROLL PLEASEEEEEE~!

STRESS. STRESS IS WHAT MAKES IT WORSE.

As it is, i already have Anxiety + ADHD (or High functioning Autism, as my doctor recently realized it might actually be??) so bad its like i have boss music playin 24/7, so my very spanish soap opera like family who loves to find trouble no matter where they go, makes it very hard to NOT be stressed. Which means my health very often spins out of control. And when its out of control, they all eat into each other.

Which results in an extremely shit a immune system, pain, dangerously low amounts of sleep and fevers on a weekly basis.

None of it is fun, its very complicated and just an all around not great time.

Thanks for coming to my TED TALK

#blackmail3000 #blindask #long post #not really important but incase folks wanted to know #tldr: my health is trash #sicktalking

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poloniumicecream · 5 years ago

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i was tagged by @starryeyedagony and @hashbrownteamcobrakai for this absurdly long list of personal questions <3 no one could possibly need to know this much about me, but let’s go

 1. what is the color of your hairbrush? i just... use my hand.... i keep my hair short, it curls and does its own thing

2. name a food you never eat:  idk i’ll eat what’s offered to me?? i buy what’s easy?? i have no strong food opinions at the moment

3. are you typically too warm or too cold? i have this bird bone body like an ailing victorian child, anything under 70º and i’m freezing

4. what were you doing 45 minutes ago? was trying to be productive but instead found a good link to the blue lick horror house🙏 idk what’s so fascinating about this thing, but i can’t let it go. maybe bc i have nightmares that resemble this space?? anyway i live here now

5. what’s your favorite candy bar? reeses never lets me down

6. have you ever been to a professional sports game?  memories blocked, sports too boring to think about

7. what is the last thing you said out loud? i regret to admit i am reading this out loud as i go

8. what is your favorite ice cream? idk but the worst i ever had was peanut butter

9. what was the last thing you had to drink? some faintly bleachy tap water, delicious

10. do you like your wallet? i use a coin purse to hold cards and cash - it's a pretty recognizable bright colored mass produced one. a while back there was a popular celebrity on the periphery of my friend group (don’t ask pls) and one time at a bar or something i had my "wallet" out and from across the room they locked eyes with me and pulled the Same One out of their pocket. pretty sure it was weed tho. but imagine carrying ur weed in a normal bill-fold wallet. that would have been funnier :/

11. what is the last thing you ate?  lost in the turbine of my memory

12. did you buy any new clothes last weekend? i did not but i just got a new desk lamp, genuinely v excited for that to arrive

13. what’s the last sporting event you watched?  i don't think this question applies to my experiences

14. what is your favorite flavor of popcorn? popcorn smells are compelling but if i eat things that stick in my teeth i'll lose my entire mind. wait this is it, the answer to number 2

15. who is the last person you sent a text message to? close inner circle group chat planning our surprise private island getaway. no but we’re making (safe!) halloween plans

16. ever been camping? not as often as usual this year but yes! see above

17. do you take vitamins?  those gummy ones like fruit snacks

18. do you regularly attend a place of worship?  nah

19. do you have a tan? i'm ghostly

20. do you prefer Chinese or pizza? i'm pickier about pizza. u can't go wrong with chinese

21. do you drink your soda through a straw? no...?

22. what color socks do you usually wear? mostly dark but i have some fluffy pastel ones specifically bc the contrast in my laundry is funny to me

23. do you ever drive above the speed limit? i'm gay i don't drive

24. what terrifies you?  third date kind of question!

25. look to your left, what do you see? dying jade plants and beyond these, a cat's loving gaze

26. what chore do you hate most?  vacuuming. loud

27. what do you think of when you hear an Australian accent?  family

28. what’s your favorite soda?  dr pepper only. i don't really drink soda tho. i was raised by the kind of parents who put fruit juice in seltzer and sold me that lie. i guess it stuck

29. do you go in a fast food place or just hit the drive thru? there are so many food questions in this list pls

30. what’s your favorite number?  secret information

31. who’s the last person you talked to?  my father. probably the person i've spoken with out loud the most this year

32. favorite meat? i no longer eat meat

33. last song you listened to? it’s been a war on drugs kind of week

34. last book you read?  i can't read

35. favorite day of the week?  something cool about a thursday, i can't explain it

36. can you say the alphabet backwards?  feeling very interrogated rn

37. how do you like your coffee? however it wants to be. i for real cannot supply food or beverage opinions like this on demand PLS

38. favorite pair of shoes?  generic black leather lace up boots

39. time you normally get up? i'm drawing my shades and peering suspiciously outside through a crack rn

40. what do you prefer, sunrise or sunsets? ok when ur out somewhere with no artificial light and it makes the sky more dramatic and cool, either one is good

41. how many blankets are on your bed? not enough, season transitions are rough

42. describe your kitchen plates? ... grandma is that u?

43. describe your kitchen at the moment:  it's clean, it's fine, grandma get out of here

44. do you have a favorite alcoholic drink?  among the friends i drink with, one is a skilled bartender and we let him surprise us with whatever obscure drink he thinks each person should have that night. i would trust him with my life. conversely i just remembered my very best friend is also a bartender but him i wouldn’t let serve me anything except straight from the bottle. hm. what i’m trying to say is, the company i keep is more important to me than what's in the glass. should i also clarify i made these friends before they pursued this work and i’m not, like, frequenting bars to harass the staff? this answer is a mess lol

45. do you play cards?  i don’t have a great attention span for learning or enduring things like that

46. what color is your car?  u know what's funny is how much junk mail i get with car insurance offers. i wonder what color they think the car i've never had is

47. can you change a tire? 100% no and that would not stop me trying. it won’t be my car so i have nothing to lose and all of myself (also nothing) to give

48. your favorite state or province? idk i feel like a stranger everywhere i go except nyc

49. favorite job you’ve had? ok, mr. fbi i think that's enough

😔 i have not kept track of who’s been tagged or done this already, and the links will kill my tags anyway. do u have shit u need help procrastinating on? here, try this

#yes i am avoiding tasks #come join #tag game #...formatting text is my passion🐸

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wisdomfish · 5 years ago

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youtube

Key: There is no addiction more powerful than God’s person, God’s Spirit, and God’s Word.

(1) The words ‘those who are led astray’ in Proverbs 20:1 imply choice. You have a choice NOT to be addicted.

(2) The object of addiction is not necessarily evil.

(3) The Corinthian principle on deciding if something is the right thing to do;

a. Will it harm my body? 1 Corinthians 6:18-20

b. Will it cause someone to stumble? 1 Corinthians 8:9-13

c. Does it build up, is it edifying? 1 Corinthians 10:23

d. Will it bring glory to God? 1 Corinthians 10:31

e. Will it bring others to Jesus? 1 Corinthians 10:33

(4) Only Christ can cure addiction. Everything else is simply a band-aid.

(5) Addicts are addicts not because of an outside source/substance, but because of a situation inside; sorrow, emotional wounds, hurts, habits, hang-ups.

(6) Addiction does not cure what ails a person, addiction multiplies negative consequences.

(7) Traits of an addict, or indicators of a potential addict;

a. Impulsive behavior traits, difficulty delaying gratification, addicts want it now.

b. Poor balance in life; it’s all or nothing.

c. Low tolerance for emotional pain.

d. Family history of addiction.

(8) All addicts have scars.

The non-Christian world confesses scars:

"And in the Euston Tavern you screamed it was your shout But they wouldn't give you service so you kicked the windows out They took you out into the street and kicked you in the brains So you walked back in through a bolted door and did it all again At the sick bed of Cuchulainn we'll kneel and say a prayer And the ghosts are rattling at the door and the devil's in the chair" ~ "The Sick Bed Of Cuchulainn," The Pogues

The Word of God confesses scars:

Your eyes will see strange things And your mind will say perverse things. And you will be like one who lies down in the middle of the sea, Or like one who lies down on the top of a mast. “They struck me, but I did not become ill; They beat me, but I did not know it. When will I awake? I will seek another drink.” ~ Proverbs 23:33-35

Question: What scars are you inflicting upon yourself through addiction; physical, emotional, spiritual, or mental?

(9) Signs of addiction

a. Tolerance of a substance where increasing amounts and frequency are required for the same effect.

b. When a person suffers symptoms of withdrawal when they don’t partake in the activity or substance.

c. Indulge in substance or behavior longer than originally intended and to a greater degree than originally planned.

d. Experience persistent cravings and feelings of powerlessness.

e. Spend absorbent amounts of time and resources pursuing, obtaining, using or recovering from substance or activity.

f. Sacrifice time, social, recreational, personal activities to engage in the activity.

g. If compulsive behavior continues in spite of an on-going negative consequence.

(10) Overcoming addiction

a. A personal, saving relationship with Jesus Christ producing a radical transformation within our heart, mind, and soul.

b. A remembrance of one vital truth; Christ your Savior plans good for your life, he desires good not evil for you.

c. Ending denial; recognition, admittance, a confession of a person’s addiction.

d. The real key is not refraining from the activity or substance but replacing the addiction:

“That, in reference to your former way of life, you are to rid yourselves of the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you are to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.” ~ Ephesians 4:22-24

(11) Some people genetically speaking are pre-disposed to addictive behavior. However, pre-disposition doesn’t mean causation.

(12) No discipleship, no deliverance. A walk with Christ Jesus will see your addiction broken.

#addiction #celebrate recovery #12 steps #alcoholic anonymous #sustance abuse #treatyourself

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tabloidtoc · 5 years ago

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Globe, November 30

You can buy a copy of this issue for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: The palace lured Princess Diana into death trap

Page 2: Up Front & Personal -- Sienna Miller shooting Anatomy of a Scandal, former soap star Wanda De Jesus and longtime partner Jimmy Smits take a walk in Brentwood, Mama June Shannon gambles on plastic surgery

Page 3: Billy Dee Williams may walk with a cane but he doesn’t let that stop him from taking the wheel in West Hollywood, Joey Fatone at the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, Ariel Winter lugs around a massive roll of bubble wrap in L.A.

Page 4: Courageous Al Roker has battled health problems for years and now his new devastating prostate cancer diagnosis seals his rep as the unluckiest man on TV

* Patrick Duffy and Linda Purl are proof that love can be just as wonderful in your golden years and now pals predict their whirlwind romance will lead them to an elopement -- the former Dallas star was heartbroken after his wife of 43 years died of cancer in 2017 but Happy Days alum Linda brought joy back into his life -- the greying sweethearts plan to spend the holidays with both their families and then go house hunting for their own place

Page 5: Kanye West thinks he’s so smart and wonderful and creative he’s showering bucks on a project to make a posse of his own personal mini-mes and he sees his clones as his gift to the world claiming it’s his duty to keep himself on the planet at all costs long after he’s gone so death doesn’t have to be the end of Kanye -- Kanye’s wife Kim Kardashian has given Kanye permission to double down on himself -- he’s also fascinated by cryogenics and no one would be surprised if he arranges to have himself stored in a chamber when he dies so he can be revived years later

Page 6: Britney Spears is having another family feud because she wants her dad Jamie Spears suspended immediately from his role as co-conservator of her estate claiming he installed a new business manager to run her $60 million fortune without consulting his daughter in what she brands a blatant attempt to get full functional control of her assets and books and records in the face of Britney’s objections

* Ryan Seacrest is turning into a bloated recluse as career and personal problems have worried pals thinking about an intervention -- he’s so devastated by his breakup with Shayna Taylor and the end of cash cow Keeping Up with the Kardashians that he’s shutting himself away for days on end and ignoring calls from friends and co-workers and only responding to texts and he’s stuffing his face with junk food and sloppy takeout and pizzas and he’s come close to belching on camera a few times

Page 7: Devastated widow Paulina Porizkova who her bitter husband Ric Ocasek cut out of his will even though she took care of him in his final days suffered a shocking collapse -- she had gone to Costa Rica with her sons for a change of scenery following the death of Ric who was divorcing her -- she says she had a total nervous breakdown in the airport and they had to put her in a wheelchair to take her back to the plane

* Abby Lee Miller is learning to walking again -- the former Dance Moms star had been using a wheelchair after undergoing chemo for Burkitt lymphoma and having life-saving spinal surgery but she’s now cancer-free and recently underwent an elective operation to help regain mobility -- even though Lifetime canned her plan spinoff Abby’s Virtual Dance Off over charges she’s racist she claims to have a scripted show and two reality series in the works

Page 8: Mike Tyson says he once used a prosthetic penis loaded with his infant son’s pee to pass a drug test during his hard-hitting heyday in the ring and although he swears he never took performance-enhancing drugs he has been blunt about his history of toking weed and snorting cocaine

* Pioneer Woman Ree Drummond reveals she has a foster son named Jamar -- Ree who has four children explains she couldn’t talk about Jamar until he turned 18 and state agency restrictions no longer applied

Page 9: Beloved Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek went to his grave harboring a bitter grudge against talk star and game show rival Regis Philbin -- Alex and Regis began their feud in 2000 when Alex slammed Regis’ Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? as a game show for dummies and Regis was deeply hurt by the dig and shot back that face to face if Alex says anything about Millionaire he’d just look him in the eye and say is that your final answer, Alex?

Page 10: Inside the modern Mafia -- blogs and blunders and killer cops

Page 12: Celebrity Buzz -- Adam Brody shows off his bod in Malibu (picture), Lamar Odom was seemingly back on a marriage track to wed fitness instructor Sabrina Parr next year but Lamar’s engagement was abruptly called off amid ominous sparks of ongoing trouble for the athlete and Sabrina sad she’s no longer able to be by Lamar’s side while he seeks the help he so desperately needs, Mina Starsiak of Good Bones wants a postpartum tummy tuck pronto, things got bristlier than an old broom for Anne Hathaway groveling her way out of massive fan backlash for her appearance on The Witches remake for the insensitive way she portrayed a three-fingered witch with split hands, behind the scenes at The Tonight Show where Jimmy Fallon recently extended his lucrative contract to host the struggling late-night talk show past 2021 but his head writer Rebecca Drysdale lasted six months of butting heads with Jimmy and his cronies before getting dumped

Page 13: Katie Holmes and boyfriend Emilio Vitolo Jr. (picture), Sean Stewart in a leg cast in Beverly Hills (picture), Busy Philipps puts on lip gloss on the NYC set of Girls5Eva (picture)

Page 14: Dave Grohl got scared stiff recording an upcoming album in an eerie L.A. home reportedly rocking with paranormal activity and when he got nosy about the place’s past he apparently got answers from the landlord along with an NDA form meant to keep him from spilling secrets, RHOBH star Kyle Richards’ half-sister Kathy Hilton is joining the show; socialite Kathy cold-shouldered Kyle and her husband Mauricio Umansky when he left her husband Rick Hilton’s real estate company to launch a rival biz

* Fashion Verdict -- Jana Kramer 7/10, Michelle Dockery 4/10, Gretta Monahan 3/10, Charlize Theron 2/10

Page 16: Ailing pop star Phil Collins is being so publicly humiliated by his two-timing ex-wife Orianne Cevey who dashed his dreams of a permanent reunion by secretly marrying another guy pals now fear for his life -- Phil is currently battling Orianne in court over his $38.6 million waterside Miami mansion which she and new husband Thomas Bates have now agreed to vacate but Orianne is demanding half of the home insisting Phil promised her a 50 percent share when they moved into it in 2016 -- Orianne also claims that Phil became a hopeless addict in 2017 hooked on booze and pain pills and after two years of drug hell he was incapable of having sex and he stopped showering and brushing his teeth and had become a hermit

Page 17: Troubled Jonathan Rhys Meyers crashed his car in Malibu and failed a field sobriety test and was slapped with a misdemeanor DUI

* Teresa Giudice has found new love with business man Louie Ruelas just two months after divorcing deported jailbird Joe Giudice -- the Real Housewives of New Jersey star who has four girls with Joe hooked up with the dad of two and digital marketing whiz and both are very happy

Page 19: 10 Things You Don’t Know About David Giuntoli

* Sophia Loren says early in her career she told a director to buzz off when he suggested she surgically alter her nose -- she recalls telling the meddling moviemakers her nose is going to stay there forever and it has a lot of personality

* Parkinson’s patient Michael J. Fox admits he may be forced to say goodbye to Hollywood because his short-term memory is shot and acting is getting tougher to do

Page 20: True Crime

Page 21: Desperate to salvage his tarnished reputation and career Johnny Depp is hoping to hook up with another Hollywood outcast in former co-star Angelina Jolie -- Johnny and Angie first flirted while filming The Tourist in 2010 but at the time Johnny was with Vanessa Paradis and Angie was with Brad Pitt -- Johnny recently reached out to Angie to jumpstart their friendship and he’s been sending her poems written with her in mind and suggestions for book to read and music to listen to and they’ve exchanged a series of emails and texts and talk on the phone quite a bit so Johnny has hope to win her heart and they’re making plans to meet in L.A. very soon but the ball is in Angie’s court and she’s open to having a little fun but don’t count on anything getting too serious

* Johnny Depp’s career has taken another hit as he’s been axed from the Fantastic Beasts film franchise after a British court determined he beat ex-wife Amber Heard at least a dozen times

Page 24: Cover Story -- Princess Diana was lured to her death by a twisted dirty tricks campaign orchestrated by the palace -- acting at the direction of Queen Elizabeth’s hard-case husband Prince Philip British intelligence officers mounted a clever operation to drive Prince Charles’ emotionally fragile wife to the breaking point and they knew she was frantic and suicidal and vulnerable and played on her worst fears -- Diana’s own brother Charles Spencer has also broken a 25-year silence to expose a plot against the People’s Princess and he reveals forged documents and a whisper campaign hinting at treacherous betrayals fueled her paranoia and desperation and despair and pushed her into a decision that ultimately cost her life

Page 26: Health Report

Page 30: Rock legend Jerry Lee Lewis vowed to keep wailing ‘til the end but the 85-year-old stroke victim now spends his days listening to his old hits and staring out the window and his health has taken a tragic turn for the worse since he was clobbered by the stroke last year -- he’s hunched over and seems confused and he’s forgetful and can’t remember some of the lyrics to his oldest hits; he tries to play the piano and just can’t because his hands are so stiff and don’t move the way he wants them to

* Mel B claims she’ll go bankrupt if a judge doesn’t lower the $500,000 she’s been ordered to pay her ex-husband and if the sum isn’t modified she will in all likelihood have to file for bankruptcy -- Mel and ex Stephen Belafonte divorced three years ago and have been slugging it out in court ever since

Page 44: Straight Talk -- lifestyle queen bees Martha Stewart and Gwyneth Paltrow are at each other’s throats but their furious feud is hard to understand because they’re not really in the same business -- Martha is the ultimate homemaker peddling recipes and furnishings and decorating tips while Gwyneth’s New Age-style Goop website is a sleazy sex shop with items normally found in tacky joints along West Hollywood’s sleazy Santa Monica Boulevard

Page 45: Sinead O’Connor is taking a break to enter a one-year trauma and addiction treatment program after losing a loved one and she admits she’s been addicted to weed for 34 years but became briefly addicted to another drug following her loss

* Sean Connery’s wealthy widow Micheline Roquebrune could end up behind bars and fined a whopping $28 million if convicted of stiffing the Spanish taxman -- the tax-cheat case spans back to 1999 when Sean sold their Marbella mansion on the glitzy Costa del Sol; Connery’s lawyer and the mayor of Marbella and six other elected officials were jailed over a tax-cheat scam involving the property but in 2014 Sean was told he wouldn’t be prosecuted but now Spanish bigwigs say the case has not gone away and want to indict his widow for tax fraud

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archiveddvrpg · 5 years ago

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Congratulations, REY! You’ve been accepted for the role of LAMPRIUS. Admin Julie: when I was writing Lucien there was a part of me desperate to see how his desire to revenge could culminate in a greater way, and Rey, you nailed it to a T. Reading this application word-for-word, piece-by-piece, really showed me just how much you understand Lucien and who he is in the ways that matter. From his profession, to his general attitude towards life, to how he uses his own name as a mask and the lengths he’ll go to ensure that mask stays in place? Ugh, just, like, kill me now. It was a wonderful read, and with the plots you’ve provided, I cannot wait for you to absolutely wreak havoc with him on the dashboard. Please read over the checklist and send in your blog within 24 hours.

WELCOME TO THE MOB.

OUT OF CHARACTER IN CHARACTER

Alias | Rey

Age | 25+

Preferred Pronouns | She/Her

Activity Level | I am able to log in at least once a day! On a scale of 1 to 10, I would say 7.

Timezone | PST

How did you find the rp? | Current player referral!

Current/Past RP Accounts | https://revoluticn.tumblr.com/

IN CHARACTER

Character | Lamprius - or Lucien.

These days, you have your husband’s last name, Ivarsson but it’s hard to remember what your family name was before that. Or more like, you have willfully forgotten it. You aren’t of a bloodline or a people, but of a city - and that is Verona. Your pain created you, the streets molded you, and the Witches defined you. This city is as much you as you are it. When you think of yourself, you first think not of the name your mother gave you (Lucien) but the name you were given and have subsequently chosen: Lamprius. Everyday when you wake up , you have the opportunity to mold yourself into whatever this city needs you to be in order to keep the balance; you have the opportunity to rename yourself and recreate yourself, and every day you wake up and you choose Lamprius. The soothsayer. There’s power in the truth and you know it’s what this city needs more than anything else.

What drew you to this character? |

Revenge, a dish best served cold, also happens to be my favorite meal. Time and time again I find myself drawn to characters that are driven or motivated by revenge. Over the course of his skeleton, Lamprius’s personal journey with his revenge goes through its own metamorphosis and I’ve fallen in love with that journey.

After the unjust death of his father, it is Lamprius’ drive for revenge that causes the Witches to notice him and deem him worthy enough to recruit. But Lamprius stands out from your average vendetta-boi because he is a character that must quell the impulse to act on his personal vendettas for the sake of the greater good (which, in this case, means for the sake of the city.) Unlike other literary characters that have similar motivators, ones who will eventually transcend their need for revenge or be consumed by it, Lamprius learns to live with the dissatisfaction that he’ll never really get what he really wants… and he must learn to be okay with that. The Witches have instilled in him a greater sense of purpose, they’ve given him the resources and the tools to keep Verona in line. After the passing of his mother, the three of them even give him a family. For the longest time, Lamprius is a character who attempts to rise above their own personal need for vengeance and is instead trying to focus on giving Verona what it needs: balance. He finds acceptance in that.

And then the Witches die.

Suddenly, that taste for vegengence he’s held at arm's length for so long becomes the very way he is going to protect the Witches' legacy. Suddenly, Lamprius feels justified in his want to burn the Montagues and the Capulets from the inside out. Now, in Lamprius’ eyes, purging the city of the Montagues and Capulets is the best way to bring back that balance to the city. I think of him like Adrian Veidt from Watchmen, willing to go to absurd extremes for the sake of humanity.

Lamprius’ history with the Witches has really piqued my interest as well. His connection to them reminds me so much of Arya Stark’s “a girl has no name” arc from Game of Thrones (the tv show. I’ll admit, I could never get past GRRM’s writing to finish the books.) In many ways it doesn’t matter who Lamprius was before he was with the Witches, because a big part of his story is the erasure of his old self and the ascension into something new thanks to their tutelage. Who are the Witches then? An enigma, even in their death (perhaps more so in their death.) Lamprius’ connection to this clandestine trio feels like it is fraught with opportunity to create some really interesting lore that draws from other secret societies or underground networks of spies that have a code of morals or a higher goal.

Even in his day to day interactions, Lamprius feels like such a fun character to write. He’s cunning and quiet and he becomes a pillar of Verona’s community maybe because of his perceived kindness - or maybe because he is a very good puppeteer. His quiet and kind persona is a wonderful mask for something far more layered underneath. As seen with his connection to Loretta, he has the ability to get people to trust him, hence his unending list of contacts. It’s too easy to call Lamprius ‘good’ because of his quiet nature, peel back his skin and you will see he is one of the rare characters that is a true neutral. He has a greater loyalty to the city as a whole than any specific group of people. Lamprius has the ability to be as dark as he is light, as viscous as he is soft. I imagine him a chameleon, not necessarily one with malicious intent, simply one who can weaponize their empathy. Over the years, the Witches have taught him plenty, including how to see through the eyes of many. Lamprius is the soothsayer who doesn’t shy away from deceit; he understands one’s lies can reveal greater truths about themselves. Rarely does one get to play characters that are truly this fluid.

I’m really excited to explore where Lamprius goes from here and I’ve outlined some of my thoughts on it below:

What is a future plot idea you have in mind for the character? |

I. “SOME RISE BY SIN, AND SOME BY VIRTUE FALL.”

You are a Witch and, like all the Witches that came before you, Verona is your city to watch over. For years Hecate, Circe, and Medea placated your need for revenge by reaffirming a higher call. They gave you family when you needed it most. They not only gave you the tools for a better city, but they gave you purpose and hope as well. Verona is a city torn up by war, your life has been altered by it first hand, and in you they saw a chance to take that pain and shape it into a force for good.

And then the Witches, in all their goodness, were strung up by the very city they were trying to save.

It has set you on a single-minded path of revenge. Your teachers are dead and you are a student who, for the first time, must decide on their own. And your decision is this: the gangs of this city will rot Verona from the inside out if you don’t do something. You are a Witch and Verona is your city to watch over. For the first time, there is no one to stop you from stepping onto this single-minded path.

[ Revenge. Lamprius is actively looking to bring about the end of the Capulets and the Montagues. He plans on doing this through finding and aligning himself with people who have also been wronged by this war. It takes one to know one, and Lamprius can tell when someone has the same steady heart for vengeance as him. He intends to harness other’s need for revenge to fuel this movement. He’s already shown Harley a card from his hand and he thinks Loretta has what it takes to be a player. Armand, however, might be a mistake….but only time will tell. While his skeleton particularly calls out how he sees this in Harley, Loretta, and Armand, I imagine this could be a broader plot too as he interacts with as many citizens of Verona as he can. At the end of the day, anyone who thinks the way he thinks, who believes what he believes, is welcome to help… though Lamprius is not foolish enough to think that all alliances come without price. Not only would I love to see Lamprius rack up alliances, I would love to see him rack up promises and debts associated with those alliances.]

II. “GOD HAS GIVEN YOU ONE FACE, AND YOU MAKE YOURSELF ANOTHER.”

You were always skilled at slipping into people’s lives without putting on too much of a show. They’d blink and suddenly you’d be there, as certain and unwavering as the truth, as integral to their livelihood as the foundation of any home. You can physically only be in one place at one time, but the Witches taught you how to transcend your limitations by using the eyes and ears of others.

Trust is earned and you earn it through careful orchestration. You play coincidence like a symphony. A broken in-apartment, and you are the one there to help the scared tenant. An ailing mother, and you are the visitor whose own mother is dying in the hospital room next door. “I know where you’re coming from, believe me,” are words that have left your mouth so many times, they may as well be the air that fills your lungs.

You are a therapist as your day job; respected as a doctor, trusted as a friend. People burden you with their innermost truths and you play whatever part they need you to be in order to make them feel like you’ve fixed them. There’s never a dry eye on your office couch by the end of a session and all of these people, some who have only known you for a grand total of one hour, think of you as their closest confidante. As well as they know, they are the same to you. A small suggestion here, a gentle prod there, and suddenly they are set off on a new path of your own devices. You’re both a ghost and a shadow, simultaneously ever present and constantly shifting. Your empathy is fluid, just like the rest of you.

You find yourself setting up a chessboard, as you seek out allies in all these people that you meet. You know the importance of a long game -your patience is unparalleled- but you are not afraid to knock a piece off the board if you must. You are the Soothsayer who gets to the truth of things through lies.

[ One of my favorite implications of the skeleton is that Lamprius is a puppeteer. He creates these Rube Goldbergian schemes that utilize the natural way of the city to bring about an allyship with someone. He is the butterfly that flaps its wings and creates a tornado, and nothing is ever a coincidence. I really want to lean into this with his plots. As mentioned, his friendship with Loretta Delluci shows that he’s not beneath orchestrating an introduction. But, as also seen in the case of Loretta, it’s clear that if Lamprius sees this whole thing as a game of chess, there are some people that are pieces while there are others that are players. He’s too good to let this perspective slip past his lips uncensored, but even if it did, his job as a therapist is an easy explanation for his tendency to psychoanalyze. Are there moments when he borderline feels like Hannibal Lector from the show Hannibal? Absolutely. I’d love him to actually be the therapist for some of the other characters and I would like every new person he “meets'' to never be a coincidence. Or, when a true coincidence occurs, I want it to genuinely surprise him. One of Lamprius’ traits is that he has a lot of resources and while a lot of those are inherited from the Witches, he’s obtained plenty from the connections he forms as well.

Also: Ya boi’s a therapist. Verona really needs therapy. ]

III. “BY THE PRICKING OF MY THUMBS, SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES”

You’ve seen what it’s like to be a God to men who don’t even believe in higher powers. There are men in Verona who refuse to pray at a pew, but still think twice before speaking ill of a Witch. This is the way things should be - but it doesn't take long for men to see themselves as God-Killers.

How do they not see how they’ve damned their city! The Witches, in all their mystery, were not esoteric about their love for Verona. Yes, your time with them has instilled a great need to avenge them, but it has similarly inspired a need to see them reborn stronger than ever.

Verona needs a new set of Witches. It’s a truth that you, Lamprius the Soothsayer, cannot deny.

[ Time to form a new coven! As Lamprius goes about enacting his revenge, I also want him to seek out other truly neutral characters in the hopes of creating a new set of Witches to watch over Verona. I would love to set it up like a secret society - Verona’s very own Illuminati. A clandestine organization that has the same intentions of Watchman's Ozymandias. Lamprius would be just as vigorous as Hecate, Circe, and Medea to make sure he chose right. I am also eager to see what changes to the Witches’ creed comes with this new version.]

IV. “VENGEANCE IS IN MY HEART, DEATH IN MY HAND, BLOOD AND REVENGE ARE HAMMERING IN MY HEAD.”

Everyday you try to become something a little more than human. There’s a merciless level of selflessness that comes with avenging the Witches and each day you work hard to climb up to that pedestal.

But then there’s Ronan - he doesn’t know the name Lamprius. He calls you Lucien and when he does, you almost want it to be your only name. He grounds you with his gravity and makes you feel a warmth in your cheeks. You have been living with your pain for years, so long that you have stopped noticing it. In fact, you’ve stopped noticing your heart existed in your chest at all. Instead, you’ve learned how to empty yourself out. You invent emotion, you choose how to feel. Your heart has become a machine, through which you feed a very precise and particular code. But then he calls you Lucien and your heart gives a single, mighty beat, and it’s all flesh and blood again.

[ Reestablishing the Witches? Destroying the Montagues and the Capulets? These are lofty goals that may require nothing short of a God to accomplish - and as much as he likes to pretend otherwise, Lamprius is just a man. I don’t want his path to his goals to be easy, and for a man who loves to carefully orchestrate everything, I’m always looking for wrenches to throw in his plans. Give me people like Ronan who inspire doubt in himself, or give me people who catch on to what he’s doing and are outright trying to stop him. ]

Are you comfortable with killing off your character? | Yes!

IN DEPTH

What is your favorite place in Verona? |

(An acquaintance.)

He knows his answer, but like most things he tries to see if he can find the answer she most wants to hear. It can feel like a game at times, and for Lamprius it can be just as fun. But there’s a method to this madness. He gives her a warm look over the edge of his champagne glass and manages to elegantly swipe another for her from a passing tray. Around them, the crowd of the gala mills about like smoke.

She’s religious if he remembers overhearing her other conversation correctly. Catholic, but lapsed. Yes, that’s it. Even at this Christmas party, she’s mentioned it two too many times to be something she isn’t agonizing over and he can see the guilt of it in her eyes. His true answer is far from the one he gives her:

“The Cathedral. My mother and I used to walk through it together every Christmas morning. Before sunrise, before the crowds got there. We could hear our steps echo through the chamber. When the sunrise hit the paintings on the ceiling, I thought it was magic.”

There it is, he sees her eyes widen with recognition of herself in his story.

“I used to go there every year with my mother too.”

His warm grin widens. I know, he thinks, but he raises his glass in an informal toast. “Well how about that?”

What does your typical day look like? |

(A friend.)

Lucien is in the midst of rolling up the sleeves to his sweater, when he gets asked what his typical day looks like. He raises an eyebrow at the question posed by his friend. Maybe it’s a trick of the light, but it almost looks as if the corners of his lips are quirked up in the slightest smile.

“Don’t tell me our conversation has gotten so boring that you’re now asking about my day to day. I know I’m quiet, but I thought I was doing better than that.”

His words tease. Besides, they don’t even know what they’re asking. His day to days are simply veneer. Wake up, go to work, show face at an event. All of it clockwork. It’s his nights that show the true him, that’s when he descends into the shadows of the city and plays its people like a harp.

“Is this your way of avoiding my question about how your day went? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

What has been your biggest mistake thus far? |

(A patient.)

He sits in his office, full attention on the young man in the seat across from him. It’s his last appointment for the day, or rather, his last appointment was two hours ago, but Lamprius is holding himself to the decision that this will be the last one. He’s in his element here, and the air settles calm around him. Outside evening blankets the city. “Would you like some tea?” He asks.

To which his patient blurts out “What has been your biggest mistake thus far?” unofficially starting the session. Lamprius examines the other down the length of his nose and realizes that they’re still having the conversation they had during the last time they met.

Lamprius doesn’t think Asher would very much understand his biggest mistake thus far. Inaction. He closes his eyes and imagines the swinging bodies of those that meant so much to him; he feels the weight of that loss for the city as a whole, it sits in his chest and in his throat and on his shoulders. His body betrays him in the slightest as he pushes his pen down into the notepad. An ink bleed spreads from where he’s stabbed it with such force.

But Lamprius opens his eyes immediately, the pause is as quick as a blink, and the therapist knows what he has to say to his patient.

“I didn’t say goodbye to my mother when I had the chance.”

He didn’t, but that’s another kind of hurt entirely, from a different lifetime. Lamprius taps his pen and then leans back into his seat; allowing his eyes to wander up to the ceiling in a show of vulnerability before saying:

“All we have to do is decide what to do with the time given to us.”

He offers up a small smile, like a faintest ray of sunlight filtering through a window. His gaze turns back on his patient.

“Thanks, Gandalf, “ Asher mutters, but Lamprius clocks the way he relaxes his shoulders, the way he settles into his seat and allows himself to seem small and fragile in it. He sees this and knows he’s doing his job. Lamprius gives him a moment before softly clearing his throat.

“How about we begin with you telling me about your day, Asher. Did you visit the hospital?”

What has been the most difficult task asked of you? |

(His husband.)

He’s by the kitchen table that Saturday morning when the question is asked of him. His neck is crooked at a certain angle, as his left hand props open the pages to the Epic of Gilgamesh. His right hand is equally occupied preparing a piece of toast - though right now he’s paused mid-motion, butter knife hovering over the butter. Lamprius unintentionally does this a few times - gets close enough to butter his toast, and then stops to flip the page. His husband’s question cracks the stillness of the air; the suddenness of it spilling like yolk. It almost makes Lamprius grip the butter knife like a proper knife. He is oh so rarely met with genuine surprise but his husband’s question holds a level of intimacy the two haven’t shared in years. For a second Lamprius’ mask almost slips and it’s good he has the words of Gilgamesh to hide behind.

He feels a tug that he was almost certain was forgotten. For a moment he is truly Lucien.

Finally, like an alligator emerging from the water, he peeks up over the top of his book so only his eyes show. He contemplates his words. Measures and cuts them so that they are a perfect fit. He doesn’t ask why Ronan is asking him such things on this halcyon Saturday morning, he simply answers.

“Knowing there wasn’t anything I could do for my mother, “ His biological one, but also the three that came to raise him, “but watch the clock run out of time.”

What are your thoughts on the war between the Capulets and the Montagues? |

(A stranger.)

They must be the only two people in the city that still read a physical print newspaper. Lamprius likes the feel of the pages; likes how easily it can become a barrier between him and the rest of the world. He visits this stand often, it’s the perfect distance between where he parks his car and the front door of his office.

The man next to him, the one in the long dark coat, is a familiar face. It’s a judge, from the local courthouse. This makes sense seeing as they’re only a few blocks away from the building. Lamprius wouldn’t call him a regular of this newspaper stand. On this morning, the stranger points to the latest headline. Another fight has broken out in the city and Lamprius feels immediate abhorrence - but what he despises even more is how this judge has the audacity to ask ‘What are your thoughts on the war between the Capulets and the Montagues?’ The question sets off a blizzard in Lamprius, though he doesn’t show it. His lips threaten to curl back into a snarl. ‘How do you, a man of the law, know their names and still not know where you stand on the matter?’ Lamprius thinks coldly.

He looks at this man and decides he doesn’t deserve the conversation. Some will always be willfully blind. If he’s a judge in this city and he still doesn’t know how he feels about this war, it isn’t Lamprius’ job to impart that caring onto him. He folds his newly purchased newspaper into a neat rectangle and tucks it under his arm before looking at the man, nothing but the perfect imitation of curiosity and confusion shining in his eye:

“What war?”

Extras:

“In nature’s infinite book of secrecy, a little I can read.” - Lamprius, the Soothsayer

Pinterest board: https://pin.it/7BdECcs

#accepted #accepted: lamprius

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bear0298 · 6 years ago

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Finding love as a supervillian is hard and treacherous when I’ve known that aIl of my dates has been interrupted by some hero, Ace in particular has interrupted five of them.

Being a supervillain means being in the public eye and being watched 24/7 by heroes. Even in my civilian clothes I still get identified. If only my costume had a mask and I knew how to change my demeanor none of this would have happened. Subtlety isn’t really my strongest suit.

Ace is a vigilante, she isn’t part of any official hero organisations nor part of any official hero list and she just stalked me if that is what this entire thing could be called.

I only went out to grab brunch and crêpes. I took photos of my food from different angles and lighting. I posted it on my Instagram with the caption, “Lovely, to be here @Elements for brunch #BrunchDate”. I waited for exactly three minutes before I counted from three, two and one.

The sound of broken glass alerted everyone in the restaurant as Ace bust through the windows demanding, “WHERE IS SHE?”

She is always so loud and aggressive whenever she does these things. “What do you mean where is she?” I asked Ace. I was attempting to eat my second crêpe before I was rudely interrupted.

“Don’t play coy with me, Cypher!” She approached the table I occupied for today.

I asked her, “What do you mean by that, Ms. Christine?” As I continue to gobbled down this delicious dessert.

She ignored how I casually addressed her by her real name, she smashed the table I ate on. “The woman whom you’re supposed to be with, you despicable monster.”

I winced when she called me a despicable monster and I was horrified when she destroyed my table. “Why do you want to know? Also, to add to that I came here alone, Ace. No one is here except for me. Unless...” I smirked at her while I slowly walked away from the crime scene.

“Unless? What you coward?” Ace asked as she caught up to me and intimidated me with her tall stature.

As I smirked at her as I continued to walk, I could see her tensed up, “Unless... you’re talking about yourself?”

Taken aback by my bluntness all I saw was rage on Ace beet red face. “What do you mean by that?” She grabbed me by the collar and held me up.

I looked directly into her eyes and continued, “I mean, you’re the only woman here with me right now? Wouldn’t you call yourself that? Wouldn’t you call yourself my date?” I acted nonchalant with the situation even though I was trying not to pass out. Honestly with how things were going, I started to think she might actually kill me.

“How dare you insinuate that?”

“You don’t have to go ballistic about it,” I grumbled to myself while I tried to maintain composure. Then she dropped me hard on the ground. The pain from the fall surged through my body. I winced. ”I mean you’re always interrupting my dates and somehow you always find me. Isn’t that weird?” I asked her loudly this time. I never got the chance to even finished the second crêpe I ordered.

Ace’s sinister smile have left me scared for my life.

A wishful thought made its way through my mind: Maybe things wouldn’t be that bad and maybe- just maybe she could finally end this vicious cycle of rebirth I go through every millennia.

#short stories #mine #yay!#finally done

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qhostqizmo · 6 years ago

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Questionnaire - Essie

I got bored and filled this out

- - - - - - - - - -

1) Does your character have siblings or family members in their age group? Which one are they closest with?

No; Essätha is the eldest of four, and does not know her other siblings. The closest sibling in age range to her is in their early twenties, about a decade’s age gap. The closest sibling-like relations she has is with a Tiefling she grew up with back home, who is roughly 5(?) or more years older than her.

2) What is/was your character’s relationship with their mother like?

Hepsiba was supermom and idol to Essie. Essie adored, and still adores, her mom. Hepsiba displayed a constant generous, open-minded, warm attitude that helped to shape a lot of Essie’s values. They got along wonderfully, and even as a youngster Ess’ showed a lot of respect and willingness to listen to her mothers words of wisdom.

3) What is/was your character’s relationship with their father like?

The same as it was as a child as it is now: nonexistent. In Essätha’s heart however, there is a lot of bitterness towards a man who left her and her ailing mother behind, also leaving her to learn little to nothing about him save through stories.

4) Has your character ever witnessed something that fundamentally changed them? If so, does anyone else know?

Oh, plenty. The treatment of her and others like her (Solace, her mother, non-humans automatically defined as ‘evil’ races), the death of her mother, deaths in general (sometimes that she blames on herself), so on. I’m sure some party members have a vague understanding her distance and seclusion is branched off of bad treatment due to her race, for instance. Some folks; like Sol and Kraw, could probably identify quite a few of Essie’s ‘flaws’ and where they steam from. Amon is beginning to learn more and more about some of her ‘quirks’ too.

5) On an average day, what can be found in your character’s pockets?

Lint, spare coins not put in her coin purse, a Green Bean, maybe something sharp and pointy that could be used for lock-picking or stabbing someone’s hand lol. Spare hair ribbon probably too.

6) Does your character have recurring themes in their dreams?

👀

7) Does your character have recurring themes in their nightmares?

Huehuehue… Pre-campaign I think Ess’ had more dreams centered around the loss of her mom and people hunting her and/or attacking her, belittling her, blaming her for all the wrong in the world. Some were personal, based off people she ‘failed’, killed, or feel she killed/wronged. Now I’m sure when she has a night terror it’s probably geared more towards the Raven Lord, Alexis’ and the wolves, the assassins breaking in, seeing her party members hurt/troubled, seeing the hurt and fear in Amon’s gaze, seeing him jailed, imagining all the things that could go wrong and losing m’lord… >:3c You know. Normal Nightmare Stuff nothing to be Concerned about.

8) Has your character ever fired a gun? If so, what was their first target?

I’m going to change ‘gun’ to ‘bow’ becuz fantasy. Ess’ is trained in both a regular bow and a crossbow. Her first ever bow-related target outside of hitting a fucking tree was killing a deer, per Kraw’s orders. Lots of tears shed over the damn deer. Lots of tearshed over learning to hunt in general rip my baby.

9) Is your character’s current socioeconomic status different than it was when they were growing up?

Pretty much the same. Money is probably more readily available in Essätha’s life. Pre-campaign likely because of the occasional pick-pocketing. Now becuz she gets paid for kicking butt. Keep it up girl.

10) Does your character feel more comfortable with more clothing, or with less clothing?

Situational based. Weirdly the less you know her, the more exposed Ess’ is willing to be, because, hey, when are you going to see her again? She might be nervous or edgy in crowds but otherwise w/e man. A lil more skin sometimes gets the gurl you know what I’m sayin’…. The more acquainted she is with someone, the more she fears ridicule, staring, judgment, and the more she wants to hide herself. Give her lots of time to gain confidence, and build trust, and she’d probably be okay being naked around you… so long as you aren’t obviously oogling her. Unless you’ve ahem, earned that level of faith from her where she wants your eyes on her.

11) In what situation was your character the most afraid they’ve ever been?

I would say there’s four instances that stand out the most. One, the first night alone as a toddler after her mother passed away. Two, her first murder, in which she thought she was going to die therefore killed in self-defense. Three, learning that the Raven Lord is probably some kind of god or demi-god being seeing how they killed the Master Arcanist. And four… ‘Not him. You can’t take him.’ …Use your imagination.

12) In what situation was your character the most calm they’ve ever been?

As a babe, listening to mom sing her to sleep… and at night, in Amon’s arms, when all hope feels lost and then they snuggle up and it just… it’s okay. They can deal with it tomorrow, one step at a time.

13) Is your character bothered by the sight of blood? If so, in what way?

No. She’s a lady of course not asdjgakl -

14) Does your character remember names or faces easier?

I’m gonna say faces, she seems more ‘creative inclined’ than ‘analytic inclined’.

15) Is your character preoccupied with money or material possession? Why or why not?

Yes! But less so then she thinks. Due to a life of lacking these things, Essätha thinks owning lots of fancy, expensive things will fill a void inside her. She also believes having money and a big house will give her a sign she’s ‘made it’; that she’s secure, that she’s above what everyone says about her… At the same time, fearing it, because of the additional ridicule it may bring (“ah, a Yuan-Ti Pureblood with riches and power?? Must be after Something.”)

16) Which does your character idealize most: happiness or success?

Happiness. It’s quite literally her dream. Sadly as stated above, she grew up thinking happiness was linked to the things you own but mm… she may be learning differently…

17) What was your character’s favorite toy as a child?

Mr. Hiss!! It was a homemade stuffed snake toy; couldn’t be more than a couple inches made of spare materials her mom had, and button eyes. She played with that thing till it was limp of stuffing, soiled, and raggedy but sadly a bratty kid tossed it into the town’s river so… no more Mr. Hiss. :( She’d have kept that toy all her life otherwise because it was so precious to her.

18) Is your character more likely to admire wisdom, or ambition in others?

Ambition. Because you can be ambitious to do a lot of things; become wiser, become stronger, become kinder. Being wise is cool, but having the drive to become more is sexy.

19) What is your character’s biggest relationship flaw? Has this flaw destroyed relationships for them before?

I’d say an inability to trust or commit. In terms of romantic relationships, she’s never held a significant one; mostly one-night stands or brief flings for a while before moving on; never wanted anything more than that. In terms of making friends, oh yeah. Being unwilling to open up or fully engage herself into the relationship has made people weary of her, her motives, and in turn close off from her. If you’re too scared to meet others half-way, eventually they give up on you.

20) In what ways does your character compare themselves to others? Do they do this for the sake of self-validation, or self-criticism?

In every way; looks, intelligence, status, etc. Mostly she does this as a way to degrade herself. ‘Oh she’s beautiful, and no awkward scaly patches’. ‘I shouldn’t have bothered speaking up, they clearly knows more on this subject.’ ‘Whoop look at the poor girl in rags compared to these guys Yikes-’. When she’s feeling Snobby and Righteous she might do it for the sake of validating her stance; such as being Right and making someone look stupid so she can gloat and grin smugly at them. More often then not though, she compares herself to make herself feel Worse.

21) If something tragic or negative happens to your character, do they believe they may have caused or deserved it, or are they quick to blame others?

Essätha is the Absol pokemon. If bad things occur, it is she who brought the rain, the drought, the heartache, the doubt, the misery. She’s a magnet for bad things and bad omens. It’s somehow her fault; something she said, or did, or a past mistake came back to haunt her and she screwed up, again.

22) What does your character like in other people?

Ooof, lol, well kind, gentle souls. People who have the ability to grow. Natural nurturers. Those who can be strong for others. Those strong in general; solid, comforting, in the ways that matter. Non-prejudice. Physically she’s got varied tastes; from thick and juicy to lean and swift.

23) What does your character dislike in other people?

Cruelty, judgment, those who take advantage of others, aka ugly on the inside. Physically she’s not into unhygienic individuals, doesn’t typically go for super scrawny or so many muscles they look like they’re in a constant flex.

24) How quick is your character to trust someone else?

To put it simply, given the chance, no one in the Hand of Jubata/Noisy Bastards would have found out she’s a Yuan-Ti until a super-necessary moment; or years later, if ever. She’s always hesitant to put trust into others. But she wants to believe the best outta people so if it comes down to basic trust and not trusting someone with secrets about her, she might be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt (unless she gets a Bad Insight off them).

25) How quick is your character to suspect someone else? Does this change if they are close with that person?

Pre-campaign she was just edgy and distrustful. Now during campaign, anyone could be part of those Whispered Shadow cult, so she suspects 50% of this continent at least is out to murder them. If she’s close with the individual, she’s more likely to deny it depending on likability-level. For example, if we found out Barnabus was part of this deranged group, she’d outright be like, “this information is false that sweet man??? I do not think so. You are Wrong.”

26) How does your character behave around children?

Essie loves kids. How she acts depends on their personality; she’s always careful, and soft, and endearing but if they’re shy, she understands they might want more space. If they’re eager and active, she’s even more bubbly and willing to play with them. Mom Genes(TM).

27) How does your character normally deal with confrontation?

Time to talk her way out of this shit and either help this person learn to amend their lives or talk them down. If you’re clearly a bad person, or she can’t change you’re mind, she’s willing to whoop your ass. Rather avoid it if possible though unless you’re a truly bad person.

28) How quick or slow is your character to resort to physical violence in a confrontation?

*gestures @ the campaign* dis bitch has tried or talked the group out of so many fights so??? Pretty slow.

29) What did your character dream of being or doing as a child? Did that dream come true?

I don’t think Essie had a ‘dream job’; she probably just wanted stability, some place to call her own, happiness, simplicity, life to be ‘normal’. That dream... really has not been achieved.

30) What does your character find repulsive or disgusting?

Lack of hygiene. Certain foods probs like liver and onions. Rotted corpses obviously. Chewing with mouth open. Idk, things normally others find gross?

31) Describe a scenario in which your character feels most comfortable.

She’s laying in a large, soft bed with oversized pillows and a dense, warm comforter draped over her. There’s arms wrapped around her. The blanket smells familiar; like leather and pine and a hint of rosewater. She wiggles around in the sheets; can feel another body shift as well to get in a better spot. There’s warm breath on the back of her neck, and a solid shape to her back keeping her warm. It’s safe here. Goosebumps race up her arms. She thinks she’ll take a nap. She can feel the calluses on fingers tracing over the back of her hand, then her palm, until they find the spaces between her own. It’s amazing how beautiful and calm the world can be. Time seems to stop here. Everything will be okay.

32) Describe a scenario in which your character feels most uncomfortable.

She is herself but not herself. She can pick up more acutely the ever; the scents, the vibrations in the air, it’s more intense. She can taste the fear in the air; the hate, the disgust. Her movements are jerky; slithering, the scales on her body a different texture moving over dirt and grass. They are judging her. They are sickened. She can see the look in their eyes, and she is exposed. She is a disgusting creature. The only thing to belittle herself more is to change back; naked, small. They know. They all know. She can’t imagine the way he’s looking at her; too scared to check and see. He would never look at her the same.

33) In the face of criticism, is your character defensive, self-deprecating, or willing to improve?

I feel it really depends on what she’s being criticized for. I want to say in most cases she’s probably embarrassed and/or humiliated, but willing to listen. She may openly self-deprecate and still request they express how she can do better. I feel she mostly gets defensive around people she doesn’t respect and whose criticism then wouldn’t matter; or around topics she feels she knows more about (or definitely knows more about) and she’s offended they suggest she does not.

34) Is your character more likely to keep trying a solution/method that didn’t work the first time, or immediately move on to a different solution/method?

If there’s no ‘time crunch’, she may try the same method a second time before moving on to a different tactic. If it’s a panicked or life-risked situation, and the first method doesn’t work, immediately move on to idea two.

35) How does your character behave around people they like?

Bubbly, excitable, warm and affectionate. She can be stubborn and grumpy still, but for the most part she tends to wear her heart more openly and be more wild and teasing.

36) How does your character behave around people they dislike?

Closed up, silent-treatment, narrowed eyes, huffy, clipped phrases, crude, hissy. Typically she’s a bit bitchy and waiting for an out to get away from you.

37) Is your character more concerned with defending their honor, or protecting their status?

Considering she has little status at the moment, probably her honor.

38) Is your character more likely to remove a problem/threat, or remove themselves from a problem/threat?

Essätha removes problems/threats… even if that problem/threat is herself.

39) Has your character ever been bitten by an animal? How were they affected (or unaffected)?

This is such a were-creature questions HEH uhh, I would not doubt Essie has been bitten by an animal before. Largely she probably forgives the critter and its species. It’s probably her own fault she got bitten after all and she realizes that.

40) How does your character treat people in service jobs?

Respect! If she sees you treatin’ a service job employee like trash you’re garbage to her. Those are hard working people trying to make a living whomst the fuck are you?

41) Does your character feel that they deserve to have what they want, whether it be material or abstract, or do they feel they must earn it first?

Pardon my hyena laughter but, Essätha doesn’t feel like she deserves much of anything. She certainly hasn’t earned to have what she wants. Maybe in time she’ll grow up a bit and learn it’s okay to have things; material or abstract, without feeling guilty or burdened. I’m sure at that time she’d feel she must earn it first.

42) Has your character ever had a parental figure who was not related to them?

*stares @ Kraw, Abernathy, Barnabus, etc* She seems to pick up plenty of Those.

43) Has your character ever had a dependent figure who was not related to them?

Mmm, I’m sure she’s temporarily looked after a younger person or taught someone here or there, yeah. Not for a significant span of time (not to say she probably hasn’t left a positive impact on others that haven’t forgotten her though).

44) How easy or difficult is it for your character to say “I love you?” Can they say it without meaning it?

Oh ho ho ho~ I don’t think Ess’ has said that phrase to more than two people her whole life. It’s definitely not something she could say without meaning to. I can imagine her trying to say it to persuade someone to do something she wants but she just stands there, tongue-tied, unable to do so. It’s just three words, but it’s three very powerful words that can do a lot of good or evil. She wouldn’t want to abuse them or, make people lose faith in them (likeshehascoughs). She doesn’t want people to conceive her as a liar for misusing it before. She wants to be able to say it with heart, conviction, and certainty to someone she truly cares for… if she could ever work up the courage to do so.

45) What does your character believe will happen to them after they die? Does this belief scare them?

I’ll admit: the afterlife isn’t probably something Essie thinks of often. I’d have to say believes in a heavenly ream, and hopes it will welcome her. I do believe she’s scared though because of her race, or any blemishes in her life she’s caused, that she fears she’s already got a one way ticket to hell.

#Essatha Meduza

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news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog · 6 years ago

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'SighSwoon' merges self-care tips with hilarious memes on Instagram

Scrolling through @SighSwoon on Instagram is the equivalent of picking up a mysterious book at a thrift shop and falling into words that both enlighten and entertain.

Gabi Abrao, a 24-year-old Los Angeles native, is the mind behind one of Instagram's shiniest hidden gems. SighSwoon showcases self-reflective memes and guides on how to feel things, whether it's simple pleasures or a broken heart. It’s a treasure trove of content tailored for millennials navigating creative lives.

Sighswoon began in the summer of 2016, Abrao tells Mashable over email. Heartbreak and the desire to make some changes drove her toward the internet as a medium for creating and connecting with others, mainly through memes. With an ever-growing follower count of 62.3K, she's connected with a lot of people.

“When I share a realization online and see that thousands of people are going through the same thing, it makes me feel less alone, less hard on myself. I want people to feel this way too — understood, empowered,” Abrao explains.

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Reminder that we’re all multi-faceted human beings and inner movements and conditions are subject to change constantly. There is no fixed condition. The more you do and the more you experience, the more understanding you will gain about your many facets and when they show up for you. There is so much to you - your capabilities, your moods, your modes. Being in one mode doesn’t make you in fixed opposition to the the other. There is no forever, there is no never. Fixation is an illusion. Change and shape-shifting is nature. After you understand your modes, you may get close to managing them. The gift of this will be synchronicity and balance. ** (Reposting myself from last October because this theme keeps showing up for me time and time again. Love this truth too much. Happy shapeshifting.)

A post shared by GABI + MEMES (@sighswoon) on Apr 7, 2019 at 6:20pm PDT

The artist uses her platform to offer a plethora of self-care tips, from how to sunbathe ("a secluded location where you can get as naked as possible") to the best ways to "shapeshift," a visualization practice for when you're uncentered. Reading her is kind of like speaking to a caring physician who knows exactly what ails you and then gives you the perfect prescription, free of charge.

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Three years ago, following a mildly devastating heartbreak, I dragged my mattress and box spring to the very center of the room and said, “I am a lush, self-sustaining island“. I slept in the center of the room for three days. That weekend, I took myself to a local playhouse. A 20-seat theater, the space was tiny and intimate. I arrived alone in a long black dress and proceeded to watch a stubborn man fall in love with an alien. The play was incredible, surprising, I cried. Once home, I felt ready for the luxury of leaning on a wall and shoved my bed back up against it. . . Later, ready for guests and no longer isolating, I thought of myself as a castle in the desert. “Grand for itself, wise for itself,” I wrote in a poem. In this new form, I was rejecting the need for outside validation, especially that of romantic partners. I imagined myself made of stone that remained cool, even at the highest noon. I imagined myself as an abundant whimsical structure in an environment lacking of. Sturdy and welcoming and independent. “Grand when you arrive, grand when you leave,“ I added to the poem. . . In a meditation class in high school, our teacher told us to pick our place. My teacher, who did past life regression on dogs, said, “Pick a place to be in. Just sit there and listen. Make room for visits from animals, insects, spirits.“ I settled for a giant warm boulder in the sun, next to a free-flowing river, surrounded by woods. A buffalo visited me that day, my eyes closed in a classroom. When things are neutral, when things are good, when things are great, I am the boulder in the sun by the river. Or I am laying on it. . . The house cat reminds me to stretch my body and take time in the sun. The house cat makes me not feel guilty for napping too long or staring at the traffic outside. The house cat reminds me to give myself permission to relax and take it slow.

A post shared by GABI + MEMES (@sighswoon) on May 2, 2019 at 7:19pm PDT

With so much to do and see online today, it can be difficult to slow your scroll and ask yourself how you're feeling. Abrao's hyper-aware content offers a mirror with which followers can take a nice, long look at themselves. The focus falls on subjects like self-worth, illusions, success, and creativity. She utilizes extensive captions to explain specific ideas in depth — or even just to describe a sunset.

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me drinking the sunset on a hill overlooking the city. it’s incredible how some of the most impactful events occur in line with some of the most devastating. sometimes intensity is just intensity. i am living my dreams and aching simultaneously, and i’d be a fool to think this could ever be any other way. dual, shifting, unbelievably fair. i am so happy to still be here. when things feel gigantic, and the imagination builds tall tales to match the sensation, we can always return to water and sunshine.

A post shared by GABI + MEMES (@sighswoon) on Mar 26, 2019 at 3:50pm PDT

“As a teenager, I used to do street art wheat paste posters around the city that said ‘sigh swoon sigh’ on them," Abrao says of her page’s unusual name. "It was a mini poem I made up and attached meaning to, and sharing it like that was a reason to run around and be bad. Years later, the phrase would come back around and feel like the most fitting title for what my page has become.”

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My Higher Self just whispered this to me and I was floored. May we recognize crossfire. May we recognize deliberate, aimed fire. May we protect ourselves first before engaging in any perceived battle.

A post shared by GABI + MEMES (@sighswoon) on Mar 13, 2019 at 9:36pm PDT

The Sighswoon feed is aesthetically pleasing, everything kissed with a tint of beige. It's light and welcoming, which is exactly the way Abrao wanted it. She blames her fascination with the hue on her time spent at the beach: “I was renting a bed and a balcony in a living room for $500/month. The building’s stucco was beige, the cheap '90s carpet was beige, and the sand was beige. I think I just wanted to match everything.”

SEE ALSO: I don't know who needs to hear this, but these memes are good

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tbt to the longest but purest #vintage #meme wrote this a year ago

A post shared by GABI + MEMES (@sighswoon) on Feb 5, 2019 at 1:40am PST

“The cyborg in me recognizes the cyborg in you,” reads her bio, just above a link to her online store where she sells merch that features the saying on totes and sweatshirts. “It’s a claim to embracing the digital age,” Abrao explains, “the very human-meets-technology existence we all participate in, and are still wearily adapting to.” She admits that while it’s meant to be humorous, she also means it with her “whole heart."

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my beloved cream crewnecks are now available! i got one sample made for photos are I absolutely adore it. sizes run a little big and on the “men’s” side of sizing. sweaters are made-to-order and will ship within two weeks. link in bio 🏹🏹 p.s. totes are still available in the shop and any orders made today before midnight will ship on thursday morning along with every order placed this past week. love a cozy cyborg

A post shared by GABI + MEMES (@sighswoon) on Jan 29, 2019 at 1:41pm PST

With just about three years of memeing under her (beige) belt, Abrao has figured out the formula for making a solid one.

“A good meme is funny, relatable, insightful, and healing. In that order. You should laugh, then feel connected to the creator or others who understand it, then experience some introspect, then leave with a healed feeling from those three processes,” she muses. Her delivery method varies as she utilizes many different meme formats.

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ok fine ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

A post shared by GABI + MEMES (@sighswoon) on Feb 5, 2019 at 10:30am PST

Occasionally, Abrao will post pictures of herself wearing interesting outfits made of neutral textiles and glowy silks. These portraits provide a face to the name (as well as maintaining her color-coded image). They also fuel fan encounters at her part-time book store gig: "A few times I have rung up a book, handed it to the person across the counter, and they’re just staring at me, and they say 'You make memes right?'"

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Years ago, I read a passage by an unknown source that said - “When you have an amazing day, take note of what you were wearing, what you ate, who you were with, what you did. Do the same with bad days.” This shirt is my absolute favorite of mine, and I’ve only had good days in it.

A post shared by GABI + MEMES (@sighswoon) on Apr 17, 2019 at 5:11pm PDT

Abrao just wants to help everyone chill out. "I aim for my page to be accessible, empowering, and soothing," she says. And she wants to keep it up for as long as possible.

"I wish to continue my studies of the invisible and unseen — documenting my findings through paintings, writings, videos, memes, and other art forms," she says. Her end goal is literally out of this world: "I will operate a carousel in the desert some day, and I hope to re-spawn on another planet in my next life."

In the midst of all the noise that is Instagram in 2019, Sighswoon provides a light-filled digital oasis, a faraway page that's easy to get lost on. Be careful, though. You might just walk away feeling refreshed and renewed. And with an affinity for beige.

WATCH: Nickelodeon releases official SpongeBob meme figures

#_category:yct:001000002 #_uuid:507e85d2-e538-3381-ba4a-2b4215c5f63c #_lmsid:a0Vd000000DTrEpEAL #_author:Harry Hill #_revsp:news.mashable

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bountyofbeads · 6 years ago

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How Turkey Removed Its Intellectuals https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/magazine/the-era-of-people-like-you-is-over-how-turkey-purged-its-intellectuals.html

This is a FASCINATING and FRIGHTENING in-depth look at the purge of intellectuals within Turkish society after the attempted coup of Erdogan's government and as he becomes more authorative.

“The first thing these kinds of ideological movements target are people and institutions that produce knowledge,” Uzgel said. “They have to clear those areas in order to establish their own power. Because they represent the only dissenting forces in a society. The business class does not speak up against the government. Civil society is already weak in Turkey. Universities with strong traditions are critical because they recruit younger generations. You have to break institutions. Authoritarian regimes don’t necessarily send everyone to jail.”

But if the authoritarian regime lasts long enough, it can succeed in suppressing even relatively uncritical voices"

‘The Era of People Like You Is Over’: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

For more than a century, one school of political science dominated the education of Turkey’s governing class — until the Erdogan regime set about destroying it.

By Suzy Hansen | Published July 24, 2019 | New York Times | Posted July 28, 2019 |

Above: Former members of the Ankara University faculty of political science, also known as Mulkiye, including Canberk Gurer, Ilhan Uzgel, Elcin Aktoprak and Kerem Altiparmak. Photographs by Emin Ozmen/Magnum, for The New York Times.

Ilhan Uzgel learned he had been fired while driving his Honda Civic from the village of Ayas to Ankara, after a visit to his ailing, elderly father. A little after midnight, one of his former research assistants called his cellphone. “Ilhan hocam,” the student said, using a Turkish honorific (“my teacher”) bestowed on educators. “Your name was on the list.”

When Uzgel returned to his Ankara apartment, his 4-year-old son was sleeping, but his wife, Elcin Aktoprak, was up waiting. She hadn’t wanted to call him herself with the news while he was driving. Now she comforted her husband — and then Uzgel comforted her, because Aktoprak, also a professor, told him that she had lost her job, too. They had been professors at Ankara University, on the faculty of its storied school of political science, widely known as Mulkiye.

Uzgel attended a provincial university in his home city, Bursa, before enrolling in Mulkiye to get a master’s degree and eventually his doctorate — an accomplishment for someone of his modest origins. In Turkey, to be a part of Mulkiye was to have a special status: to be both of the country and, in a way, superior to it. The joke went that for Mulkiyeliler, or Mulkiye alumni, it was “First Mulkiye, then Turkiye.” Uzgel, one of Turkey’s leading specialists in American-Turkish relations and the author or editor of books with grand titles like “National Interest and Foreign Policy,” proudly remained at Mulkiye for 30 years until Feb. 7, 2017, when he was fired. Some 6,000 of Turkey’s 150,000 academics would ultimately share his fate.

Many Turkish academics grew up hoping that they would one day see their country become a democracy. They studied sociology or philosophy; they specialized in conflict resolution, peace building, minority rights, things like the creation of civil society. They received their Ph.D.s in political science or history, expressly to participate in liberal-minded universities that would bring forth generations even more democratic than themselves. They had faith in things like good governance practices, a fair judicial system, a free press, human rights and women’s rights. There was a goal, and an understanding that you were either part of democratization or you weren’t. In Turkey, those who engaged in the creation of a democracy as a painful, step-by-step process constituted a small, passionate group, but they shared this experience with people all across the world, from Poland to Taiwan, with those who also lived in democratizing countries, who felt that their countries were on the upswing, getting better, whatever that meant.

An authoritarian state can do many things to get rid of these democratic types — put them in jail, put them on trial — but ultimately the government must attack the institutions that produce and sustain them. Newspapers can be easy to buy. NGOs are easy to shut down. Universities are much harder to dismantle.

But this is what, through the great purge, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his allies sought to do. Thousands of academics lost their jobs, and many lost their right to travel, their passports canceled. They would not be able to work at public or private universities again. Legal proceedings would be opened against them — and drag on to this day, leaving the fired in limbo. Many who were abroad would not return. They feared being quoted in the press or even speaking to journalists. Some were sentenced to prison. At least one committed suicide. Around 90 of the purged academics came from Ankara University, and 36 came from Mulkiye alone, raising suspicions that the 160-year-old faculty of political science had become a particular target.

In October 2017, months after the firings began, Mulkiye held a conference called “The One Hundredth Anniversary of the Russian Revolution: The Soviet Union, the Cold War and the International System.” Uzgel was the keynote speaker. In order to attend the conference, he had to be brought discreetly onto campus in a friend’s car.

In his speech, Uzgel, a small, soft-spoken man in his mid-50s with wispy, longish gray hair, spoke about recent events, particularly the failed military coup against Erdogan only 15 months earlier, as well as the previous successful military coups in Turkey’s history. “In 1980, when there was a military coup, the threat was the Soviet Union, and it was academics who paid the price,” he said. “In 2016, when there was a military coup, the threat was the United States, and still it was we who paid the price. The threat changes, but those who are fired stay the same. Academics pay the price.”

Uzgel’s voice began to crack. Almost every day since his 20s, he had taken the bus or driven his car to the university’s stately campus in Ankara’s busy, wide-laned central Cebeci neighborhood; entered through the imposing concrete gates surrounded by lush foliage, then passed through the doors to the early modernist structure that served as Mulkiye’s home; walked across the inner courtyard where young men and women smoked many cigarettes and fought about politics; and climbed the floating staircase, flanked by paintings and photographs of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, to arrive at his office. His life’s work, his status in the country, had now been stolen from him.

As Uzgel pointed out in his speech, Turkey’s governments have often purged the country’s intellectuals, only for the nation to stumble slowly back toward some semblance of democracy. As the Turks proved again this past June, when they resoundingly elected an opposition candidate as mayor of Istanbul — after two decades of control by Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, known as the A.K.P. — free elections in Turkey have always defied its authoritarian state system. Yet something about this era under Erdogan has still felt different, more lasting, as if the continuing existence of the A.K.P.’s repressive policies will permanently impair otherwise resilient, historic institutions. Mulkiye, after all, was more than just an academic faculty; it was the academic faculty that provided the Turkish state with its administrators and statesman, its legal experts and political historians. Those associated with Mulkiye not only understood how the Turkish state worked; they were, to some degree, the Turkish state.

Mulkiye was established in what was then called Constantinople during the Ottoman Empire to train civil servants and diplomats. Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish republic, moved the school to the new capital city, Ankara, in the 1930s. This measure was both practical and symbolic: The decaying Ottoman Empire had given way to a rebellious new nation that required statesmen (like himself) who were dedicated to secularism, modernity and nationalism. Over time, Mulkiye would become not only a primary intellectual and political engine of the Turkish republic but also a center of dissent for Turks who wished to both uphold and transform it.

Many of the scholars engaged in creating Turkey’s early constitutions came from Mulkiye. The legislators tasked with building the young republic were able to do so in part because, even if their political backgrounds differed, they shared some of the same republican values. Foreign ministers, governors and ambassadors often came from Mulkiye, much as French politicians commonly come out of Sciences Po. Uzgel told me that it was generally known that you were less likely to attain a position at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs unless you had a degree from Mulkiye.

It was at Mulkiye, in part, that the foundations of Turkey’s foreign policy were established. In reaction to devastating wartime experiences during the 19th and early 20th centuries, the new Turkish republic’s foreign policy would be one of caution, independence and self-defense, characterized by a reluctance to meddle in foreign wars and a general orientation toward the West but without deep allegiance to a single power. As Timur Kuran, a Turkish-American professor of economics and political science at Duke University, put it to me recently, “The members of Mulkiye helped to restrain the state and helped to prevent politicians in power from using foreign policy for momentary gain.”

This entwining of the government and Mulkiye intellectuals explains why they have so often been persecuted. In 1960, students so vociferously protested the changes being made to the country by Adnan Menderes, Turkey’s leader at the time, that the university was temporarily shut down. Even as Mulkiye continued to serve its function as a feeder department to the Turkish state, university campuses like Mulkiye’s came to be seen as inspiration for greater, nationwide political opposition. Throughout the ’70s and ’80s, after two military coups, many leftist Mulkiye professors were purged and even thrown in jail. But even following these dramatic events, the very Mulkiye people who suffered would eventually go back to work for the government or return to teaching jobs. In 1971, for example, a Mulkiye dean named Mumtaz Soysal was accused of making Communist propaganda and sent to jail. “I heard he cleaned toilets in prison,” one former Mulkiye professor told me. Yet 20 years later, Soysal was Turkey’s foreign minister. Over time, several aspects of Mulkiye’s influence in the state bureaucracy were diminished, especially in the realm of local administration and finance. But even after so much trauma, Mulkiye — and particularly its prominence in foreign policy and the Turkish Foreign Ministry — survived.

In the 1980s, students like Ilhan Uzgel entered Mulkiye to work toward advanced degrees and stayed on as professors. By that time, a government-controlled institution called YOK, created to exert more centralized control over the universities, had been given purview over a suite of traditionally independent functions ranging from admissions testing to tenure decisions. The Mulkiye faculty split into right and left. The secularist-nationalists opposed some liberal reforms to the economy; they were critical of the Kurdish struggle and political Islam, and some were against joining the European Union. The leftists and liberals favored human rights (including for Kurds and Islamists), entry into the E.U. and broader democratization. In 1998, the Turkish military shut down the ruling Islamist political party and imposed further restrictions on political Islamists and other religious figures. Erdogan, then mayor of Istanbul, was sent to prison. By the 2000s, a more liberal-seeming, post-Islamist party led by Erdogan was ascendant. Many Mulkiye academics were so inclusive in their thinking as to have been sympathetic to Erdogan when he became prime minister in 2003.

Soon after, though, something began happening behind the scenes. “Mulkiye’s ties with Turkish bureaucracy began to be cut off around 2004,” Uzgel told me. “The A.K. Party just cut it off. Their own people began to dominate the bureaucracy system.”

“I grew up at Mulkiye,” Elcin Aktoprak was saying. “Inside the campus, there was a kind of freedom that didn’t exist in the rest of the country.” I met Aktoprak, Canberk Gurer and Kerem Altiparmak, all former Mulkiye academics, at their office at a European Union-funded human rights organization, which sits in a lovely central neighborhood in Ankara. They are in their 30s and 40s. Aktoprak has short, unfussy hair and the easy confidence of many female Turkish intellectuals. (She and Uzgel have divorced in the time since the purge.) She felt more comfortable at Mulkiye as a woman than in other parts of Turkey, as did many self-described feminists, gay students, Kurds and leftists.

But when those at Mulkiye talk about its freedom, they are primarily referring to the liberty to criticize — not only peers but also professors and deans, the people with authority. During Aktoprak’s tenure at Mulkiye, a certain radical spirit had been reignited there, mainly in response to the so-called Kurdish issue. During Turkey’s founding, Kurds had been victims of pogroms and categorized as “mountain Turks,” rather than ethnic Kurds, and were forced to speak Turkish; the Kurdish regions in the southeastern part of the country were neglected economically. In the 1970s, a new separatist-terrorist group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (P.K.K.), was founded by Abdullah Ocalan — himself a former student at Mulkiye — to lobby for the right to embrace Kurdishness and also to fight for separation from the Turkish state. A vicious war erupted. Turkish military forces burned down villages and tortured and killed Kurds, and the P.K.K. attacked security forces and terrorized town squares.

There was — and still is — no issue in Turkey that galvanizes Turks and Kurds more than the war with the P.K.K. For many Turks, the idea of Kurdishness invalidates the central idea of the Turkish nation, which is that Turkey is a country for the Turks. In the political rhetoric of the Turkish state, to be pro-Kurdish is almost to be a terrorist yourself.

By the 2000s, the early years of Erdogan’s rule, the government began engaging in a “peace process” with the P.K.K. At the same time, Kurdish students continued to flood the universities, and many were attracted to Ankara University’s legacy as a place of protest. In particular, they entered into certain faculties — communication, education, law and political science (Mulkiye) — located on the same campus. Leftist and Kurdish and pro-Kurdish-rights students enjoyed a kind of freedom there almost singular in Turkish life, which is predominantly conservative, among both the religious and the secular. For conservative students, the Cebeci campus might have seemed like one in which pro-Kurdish students somehow had more power than themselves.

“More than half of the students might be nationalist or conservative,” Aktoprak said, “but the atmosphere was more leftist, giving leftist students the ability to express their views more than at any other universities, without banning other voices.” In this regard, there’s some resemblance to American universities like Berkeley and Columbia in the 1960s, but it’s important to remember that university campuses are some of the only places in Turkey where a young Kurdish leftist would be able to openly declare his politics.

The rector of Ankara University and the dean of Mulkiye also saw Mulkiye’s openness as crucial to the education of its students. An episode in 2009 shows how this commitment could play out. Mulkiye’s Human Rights Center held a conference, what it called “a public civil-society dialogue,” with representatives from the European Union. Cemil Cicek, deputy prime minister of Turkey — that is, deputy to Erdogan — asked to attend.

“We didn’t invite him, but we had to accept his participation,” said Kerem Altiparmak, who was head of the Human Rights Center at the time and is one of Turkey’s leading human rights lawyers. “But the night before the event, one of my students said, ‘Professor, I guess we will be protesting your event tomorrow.’ I said, O.K. I cannot decide on behalf of them. Peaceful protest is the right of students.”

The next day, those students arranged themselves in plush blue seats throughout a large, auditorium-style Mulkiye lecture hall, all of them facing a dais flanked by Mulkiye insignia and photos of Ataturk. Among the attendees were the rector of Ankara University and a Mulkiye dean. Cicek rose to speak behind a wooden lectern.

And then the students, one by one, stood up to interrupt him.

“Can I please ask something?” one young man said, his hand raised. “In this country, people like Engin Ceber” — a human rights activist — “are taken into custody and killed by torture.” He went on: “In this kind of country, as the deputy prime minister, I don’t believe you have much to tell us.”

Everyone clapped.

“With these speeches and this applause, you have used your rights in the name of democracy,” Cicek said over the cries. “If it’s O.K. with you, I will now exercise my right —��

“Dear minister,” another young man broke in, standing up. “This democracy and human rights forum is happening with a police blockade around it. Can you explain why?”

Cicek kept talking. The young man kept talking, too. The applause grew louder.

“It’s true that I came here knowing this may happen —” Cicek said.

“Then how dare you come here!” one man yelled. “If you knew that, why did you come?”

“There is no place for Cemil Cicek in this school!” another young man yelled, and the crowd cheered. “There is no place for people like you in a university! You have no right to speak here! You’re not here to talk about human rights!”

At that point, the minister’s security guards tried to stop this man from speaking.

“Is this democracy? You have 50 men trying to take me out of here!”

Cicek decided to leave. The rector of the university and the Mulkiye dean politely escorted him as he exited the lecture hall.

But that was it. No student was punished. No investigations followed. Academic life in Turkey has long included places like Mulkiye, where teenagers and 20-somethings learned to stand up in a crowded lecture hall and directly challenge one of the most powerful politicians in the country.

Around the early 2000s, Mulkiye professors began noticing unfamiliar and suspicious developments. Government apparatchiks at state agencies started rejecting applications for research projects that would have normally been accepted. For instance, in 2009, Uzgel applied for a grant to do research in Washington on the relationship between Turkey, the United States and northern Iraq. He applied to George Washington University and to Tubitak, the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey. His application was accepted by George Washington but not by Tubitak, something that rarely happens in Turkish academic life. The attitude at these agencies, the professors said, was that because religious or conservative A.K.P. supporters had felt for decades that they had been shut out of elite academia, now it was their turn to have advantages in academia. They sometimes even said that directly to people, Uzgel heard from other academics. “It’s our turn.”

In 2012, Erkan Ibis became rector of Ankara University. Ibis projected a secular lifestyle, and the professors observed that his wife didn’t wear a head scarf. He didn’t seem like a sycophantic A.K.P. type. But by this point, Turks were beginning to grasp that to remain in powerful state positions, they would have to toe the line. Those who once drank alcohol, for example, might now make a point of drinking water. University rectors who once allowed protests on campus might make a point of banning them.

That fall, Ibis invited an unexpected luminary to speak at the school’s opening-day ceremony: Prime Minister Erdogan. While Erdogan often attended the opening-day ceremonies at universities close to his government, to do so at Ankara University was unusual. A group of professors within Mulkiye decided to conduct a separate opening-day ceremony for their faculty, at exactly the same time as Erdogan’s speech. They called their gathering “Freedom of Expression and the Universities” and invited speakers like Ismail Besikci, a writer and sociologist who had been imprisoned for 17 years on charges of advocating separatism. When the rector learned of the parallel ceremony, he asked a Mulkiye dean at the time, Yalcin Karatepe, to cancel it. Don’t do it on the same day, Ibis suggested; then: Don’t do it at the same hour. (Ibis disputes this claim.)

“But I refused to cancel,” Karatepe told me later. “This faculty has survived six sultans, 11 presidents, countless prime ministers. Erdogan was just another one, and this time will pass. This institution has a tradition of speaking out, and we who are here now must continue the tradition.” Mulkiye’s ceremony was held in the end.

The faculty’s relationship with Ankara University’s rector deteriorated, especially after the events of the following summer, in 2013. That’s when the Gezi Park protests, which began in Istanbul in reaction to the planned destruction of a park, quickly spread to Ankara and across the country, as a rejection of the A.K.P. government. It would be hard to overstate how terrifying the Gezi protests must have seemed for Erdogan. Gezi brought even the most apolitical students out into the streets. Middle-aged people joined them, too. “Normally those families would stop their kids, but they went out together; that was something quite new in Turkey,” Uzgel told me.

Eventually police officers cleared Gezi Park of the protesters. Erdogan was elected president for the first time a year later in 2014. “Erdogan began his ‘one-man-ification’ of the country after Gezi,” Gurer said. “And our rector began his ‘one-man-ification’ of the university as well.”

At the same time, the Gezi Park protests led to the popularity of a new political party, H.D.P., headed by the Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtas, who was magnetic, funny and handsome. Demirtas strove to make his party open to all Turks and more independent than its predecessor parties, which had ties to the P.K.K. He urged peace with the Turkish state. His popularity soared. Erdogan seemed to feel threatened by the emergence of a politician more charismatic than he was. Soon after, he did what countless Turkish politicians before him did to win votes: He helped reignite a war in the southeast against the P.K.K., which for its part engaged enthusiastically. Antiwar protests erupted on Mulkiye’s campus throughout 2014 and 2015.

Such demonstrations were to be expected of Mulkiye students — but now Ibis, the new rector, took a very different attitude toward them. According to a report produced by Baris Unlu and Ozlem Albayrak, former Mulkiye professors, 626 Ankara University students in 2015, 758 in 2016 and 815 in 2017 “were given disciplinary action.” The rector opened two investigations into Yalcin Karatepe — the same dean who allowed the alternate opening-day ceremony — including one for leaving his post without permission. (According to Turkish law, a civil servant must notify an employer of travel plans, but this is rarely enforced.)

In an email, Ibis said: “If a crime is committed, you have to follow the essential legal process. Otherwise you would be taking part in a crime or working with the criminal.” He also said that during this period he believed that a “group of students had not been letting those who didn’t share the same background as themselves, or hold the same political views, enter campus and thus go to classes and tests, and that some of the academic staff had supported these activities.”

Pro-government media began signaling to state authorities which political actors in Turkish life should be investigated or condemned for various infractions — a sinister trend that extended to journalists, politicians, academics and students. The newspapers Yeni Akit, Habervaktim and Vahdet hounded Mulkiye, calling the people there “enemies of Islam,” “gay lovers” and “bastards.” When Mulkiye’s Human Rights Center screened Lars von Trier’s film “Nymphomaniac” in the name of freedom of expression — the film had been banned in Turkey — critics referred to both the department and the film as sapkin, or “perverted.” This kind of invective reached a fever pitch when it came time for Mulkiye’s Inek Bayrami, or Cow Festival, a longstanding Mulkiye spring tradition in which for two days students are encouraged to criticize their professors in a public forum. (It’s essentially a roast.) One of the Cow Festival rites is the selection of an “imam” to initiate the proceedings, which include a mock opening prayer. The festival was repeatedly attacked by pro-government trolls online, and the 2017 festival was canceled by the administration. The student who played the imam in 2016 was charged with insulting religion.

“Yeni Akit always said we protected L.G.B.T. students, pro-Kurdish or so-called terrorist students,” Aktoprak said. “But we only defended their rights. We were trying to protect our students from the attacks from security forces. We experienced early what everyone in Turkey is experiencing now — that even if you just support something, they label you a terrorist.”

And once you are labeled a terrorist in Turkey — where the antiterror laws are elastic — your life is more or less over. Mulkiye professors defined this entire period, the Erkan Ibis era, as “mobbing,” or an attempt to force people out of their workplace through intimidation.

In early 2016, some academics circulated a petition supporting a peaceful resolution to the government’s war with the P.K.K. They called themselves Academics for Peace and titled their petition “We Will Not Be Party to This Crime!” In Turkish academia, such petitions were normal, even banal, and when the academics urged their colleagues to sign it, many did so reflexively, more than 2,000 in Turkey.

Professors from Mulkiye signed the petition not only out of solidarity but also because many of them were engaged in exposing the undemocratic lie at the heart of the Turkish republic — the fact that Turkey was founded as a nation of Turks only, when millions of its people were not Turks at all but Kurds.

The language of the petition would someday haunt its signers:

“As academics and researchers of this country, we will not be party to this crime! ... This deliberate and planned massacre is in serious violation of Turkey’s own laws and international treaties to which Turkey is a party. ... We demand the state to abandon its deliberate massacre and deportation of Kurdish and other peoples in the region. ... For this purpose we demand that independent national and international observers be given access to the region and that they be allowed to monitor and report on the incidents.”

Soon after it was released, Erdogan, himself a rhetorical master of sorts, homed in on the petition’s language, in part because it seemed to suggest that he was guilty of an international crime. He responded by declaring in a speech that the academics were guilty of a national one:

“The old Turkey, run by a handful of lumpen, who call themselves intellectuals and academics, doesn’t exist anymore. These lumpen circles have shown once again their true faces. With this declaration, they have shown the terror propaganda directly, which they have been conducting for years indirectly. ... Do you favor the unity and solidarity of Turkey or not? If you favor the unity of the country, why do you speak in the jargon of the terror organization, which makes our citizens’ lives miserable and attacks our security forces? This is called terror propaganda.”

Across the country, academics were vilified, threatened and even arrested. According to Unlu and Albayrak’s report, Ankara University immediately opened an investigation into the academics who signed the petition. (Ibis said this was done at the request of YOK.) Around the same time, two professors, Unlu and Gokcen Alpkaya, came under attack for questions they included in their exams. Unlu had asked about Abdullah Ocalan; Alpkaya had asked about the Academics for Peace petition. A legal case brought against Unlu accused him of inciting terror. The mobbing had intensified.

Ilhan Uzgel found the atmosphere so stressful and worrisome that he took a sabbatical at SOAS, in London. Before he left, the rector was discussing with professors the option of withdrawing their signature from the petition. “I said, No, I cannot do it,” Uzgel said. Among other reasons: “My assistant signed that petition. I couldn’t do that to him.”

While Uzgel was away in London, there was another attempted military coup in Turkey.

In response to the failed coup in 2016, Erdogan purged the state’s ministries, its police force, the military, the secondary schools, hospitals, unions, newspapers and nonprofit organizations — some 150,000 people in total. Many of the denounced were accused members of the Gulen movement, whom the government associated with the coup plot. But soon Erdogan turned on Kurds and leftists, including, of course, academics.

In September 2016, along with thousands of other Turks, 21 members of the teaching staff were fired from Ankara University, including some half dozen assistants from Mulkiye. The academics at Mulkiye, Aktoprak noted, were very agitated. “Everyone, including the lawyers, started telling us what we should do,” she said. “Like, who will be the contact person for your family if you are taken into custody? What’s in your messages? What’s at your house? We all started wondering what it could be.”

She looked at Gurer, sitting across from her. “Did you throw anything out?”

“Magazines,” he said. “I got rid of my computer, my phone. I erased all of my WhatsApp.”

The next month, in October, some of their colleagues were refused the right to leave the country.

“We realized some of these people who couldn’t go abroad didn’t have a case opened against them,” Aktoprak said. “For example, one of our university colleagues was going to go to Japan, and at the gate at the airport she learned she couldn’t go. We think that the rector had sent a list to the state security forces that said, These people could be connected to terror.” (Ibis denies giving this type of information to state security forces.)

Three months later, on Jan. 6, 2017, the purge struck Mulkiye again. The professors Faruk Alpkaya and Ozlem Albayrak were fired, along with professors from other faculties at the school.

The remaining professors checked Resmi Gazete, the government’s official online bulletin, every day. Will I be fired today? they wondered, or will I be fired tomorrow? For a month, it was all the petition signers talked about. They knew that those already purged had lost access to certain online university systems. They checked obsessively to see if they, too, had lost access, as if this would be the tell of their impending doom. “OSYM, the national testing center that organizes university entrance exams, blocked me on Twitter,” Gurer said. “This was one month before I was fired.”

“It was terrible,” Aktoprak said, laughing a little. “You would say to yourself, If a bird takes off, does it mean I’m being fired?”

For this reason, Aktoprak and Gurer were almost relieved when finally, on Feb. 7, 2017, they, along with 27 other academics, lost their jobs. It was one of the last big spates of firings, and again the campus erupted in protests. The police responded with tear gas. Soon after, fired professors who tried to enter Mulkiye were turned away. “I’m sorry, hocam,” the security guards would say. “You are one of the fired.”

Aktoprak found that experience so painful — to suddenly find yourself barred from a place you had found refuge every day for your entire adult life — that she never returned.

The Mulkiye that remained was no longer recognizable to those who once worked there. The walls, which had always been covered with leftist posters, are now sparsely adorned with Turkish flags. The Human Rights Center was closed. (The rector has since reopened it under his control.) Certain subjects are now rarely taught — Foucault, say, or queer theory. Master’s and doctoral courses have been canceled, leaving graduate students suddenly without an adviser. The film society, where students and professors used to drink wine and watch movies together, has been shut down, and the showing of films, according to academics who have been purged, has been banned entirely.

“Mulkiye always used to mean criticism,” Aktoprak said. “And it can’t mean that anymore.”

The academics left at Mulkiye were shouldering an unimaginable course load, slinging enormous sacks of papers and tests over their backs to grade at night. One of the people who remained was Kerem Altiparmak. He is currently part of a group of lawyers representing about 100 Turks at the European Court of Human Rights and Turkish criminal courts who were targeted by the post-coup purge. He was not fired from Mulkiye, but he resigned last year. He no longer felt that the conditions for conducting an academic life existed there. Altiparmak found himself investigated for holding academic discussions on Turkey’s post-coup state of emergency laws. “The university sent a letter to all academics and forced them to sign it, in which the rector warned not to cross lines in the curriculum,” Altiparmak said. “It said, We receive complaints from our students that teachers are discussing subjects irrelevant to the curriculum, and I am warning you not to do this.”

The universities had also empowered the more conservative students to submit complaints about their professors through something called the Communications Center of the Presidency, or Cimer. “They say things like, ‘You are now telling your Marxist opinions to us,’ ” Altiparmak said. “Some don’t want to hear other perspectives. This will affect all culture of Turkey because these are the people going into the state bureaucracy.”

Similar disruptions have occurred in the Foreign Ministry as well. Selim Sazak, a Turkish Ph.D. candidate at Brown University and writer on foreign affairs, has said that an A.K.P. apparatchik discouraged him from aspiring to a big career in the foreign service, saying, “The era of people like you” — non-A.K.P.-affiliated, prep-school-educated — “is over.” In fact, it’s not a stretch to suggest that the enormous transformations in Turkey’s foreign policy right now — its engagement in the wars in Syria and Iraq, its steep increases in military spending and its distancing from the West — can be connected to the sidelining of some traditional voices, including ones from Mulkiye.

“There was still an expectance of Mulkiye as a fundamental institution of the republic,” Timur Kuran of Duke University says. “Before, no one sought to eliminate it or remove the checks and balances in the political system that came from Mulkiye. In the present case, there is an effort to remove not only Mulkiye’s supervisory role but all checks and balances.”

“Mulkiye-trained people tended to be much more cautious in foreign policy,” Kuran says. “Keeping the country at peace was their fundamental goal. Right now, Erdogan is taking huge risks. All checks and balances in foreign policy are disappearing, and even to raise questions about the adventures that Turkey is now getting into is to risk persecution as a traitor.”

Not surprisingly, this atmosphere has prompted a brain drain — thousands of Turkish academics, in the social sciences as well as the sciences, have left the country. Even the government has acknowledged that the departures represent a full-blown crisis. Recently, the minister of industry and technology, Mustafa Varank, promised academics abroad a monthly salary of 24,000 lira (about $4,200) if they came to Turkey.

Many students told newspapers they would not return to a country where they felt academics were rewarded on ideological grounds or for connections rather than merit, or where they wouldn’t be able to work on any subjects that countered the official state line. As a former professor who has remained put it to me: “There is no point in carrying on as if nothing changed. If there’s no more university life, why should I be in the university anymore?”

Elcin Aktoprak and others did receive a grant from the European Union to do research and build pilot programs for online “human rights ateliers.” Many fired professors established alternative education centers in the wake of the purge, which were called “solidarity academies,” and where you could go to learn about politics in peace.

“The one silver lining to all this,” Aktoprak said, “was that maybe we can sustain an intellectual community on our own this way and return to public life in better days.”

For everyone, though, there is still the prospect of prison. According to Academics for Peace, more than 2,000 hearings have been held for the peace petitioners, and none have resulted in acquittals. In most cases decided so far, academics receive a 15-month suspended jail sentence, but some 30 of them have not been given suspension of judgment, and one professor, Fusun Ustel, is currently in jail. Another signatory, Tuna Altinel, is in prison on charges from a different case.

Ilhan Uzgel spends most of his days working on his laptop at a Starbucks in an Ankara mall. After he was fired, he looked into jobs at private universities — which are not barred from hiring fired professors, technically — but they are all too scared to hire the purged. This was a common claim among purged professors. In at least one way, Uzgel was one of the lucky ones: He was old enough to retire and receive his pension.

The loss of people like Uzgel, and as a result the loss of their analytical expertise, is an enormous loss for Turkish society. The people best able to analyze for me what was happening in Turkey in 2019 — its political scientists — were the ones being erased by what was happening in 2019. With them goes not only history itself but also nuance and complexity and fairness.

As someone who has studied Turkey’s political history, Uzgel acknowledged that his fate was not entirely unusual. The tradition of purging preceded the founding of Turkey, and it continued throughout modern Turkish history. Purging was not an anomaly but rather integral to that history.

But if the authoritarian regime lasts long enough, it can succeed in suppressing even relatively uncritical voices. Most of the Mulkiye professors did not believe that Erdogan wanted an Islamic state or a fascist one. What the A.K.P. seems to propose for Turkey’s future is a country without character — a country that can believe itself to be free as long as it does not adopt an identity that threatens the A.K.P. Institutions like Mulkiye had been one thing above all: independent in spirit and principle. Such institutions cannot exist in Erdogan’s Turkey for many, many reasons, one of which is simply that they are too distinct.

Individuals, too, can become less distinct. They become fuzzy. Their voices fade. They lose their place in society, so much so that when they discover themselves again, the sweetness of it takes them by surprise. One of the many professors I interviewed was Faruk Alpkaya. Alpkaya talked about Turkish history. He was an academic — that was his job. But after 20 years of being a professor, he, like Uzgel and thousands of others, has spent the last two and a half years as a nonentity in official Turkish life. Alpkaya spoke in bursts for 10 minutes at a time, then apologized as if he had surprised himself, using a verb tense in Turkish that can imply the discovery of something previously unknown.

“I’m sorry,” he would say. “I must miss speaking.”

Suzy Hansen is a contributing writer for the magazine and the author of “Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World,” which was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction. She has been living in Istanbul for over 10 years and previously wrote about the Turkish government’s crackdown on journalists, Kurds, leftists, dissidents, activists and academics.

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