amatonormativity: a romantic partner should be the most important person in EVERYONE'S life
NOT amatonormativity: MY romantic partner is the most important person in MY life, but i understand this is not the same for other people
allosexnormativity: EVERYONE should have sex and sex is something EVERYONE needs/wants/should want
NOT allosexnormativity: I PERSONALLY enjoy sex and love having sex because it makes ME feel good, but other people dont feel the same and that's okay
platonormativity: having friends is important for EVERYONE and EVERYONE needs/has/should have friends
NOT platonormativity: having friends is important to ME and I PERSONALLY love having friends, but there are people who dont and theres nothing wrong with that
faminormativity (is that the word?): family is important for EVERYONE and EVERYONE needs to have their family
NOT faminormativity: family is important to ME and I PERSONALLY need my family with me, but other people dont feel the same and i understand that
lovenormativity (again, not sure if this is a word): EVERYBODY feels love and there's something wrong wiith you if you dont
NOT lovenormativity: I PERSONALLY feel love and love people, but not everyone does and that's completely okay!
NOT amatonormativity: i dont have friends/have any desire to have friends, i am happy with other relationships/no relationships at all
NOT platonormativity: i dont have any desire to be in a romantic relationships, and i am happy with my platonic relationships
NOT allosexnormativity: i like hooking up with people and having one night stands or friends with benefits
NOT faminormativity: i care about my family deeply and am close with family members
NOT lovenormativity: i feel love for people i care about
it's not normative to personally enjoy something, so long as you respect that other people simply arent like you and aren't going to like the same things as you. taking down normativity is a two way street, allos and aspecs need to do it. support your local aros, aces, apls, afams and other aspecs today! remember to challange all normativities, and to not enforce other normativity by saying how bullshit other normativities are!
nothing is universal. romance is not universal. sex is not universal. friendship is not universal. family is not universal. love is not universal. nothing is universal.
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I've been doing a lot of reflection as of late, especially after this past class.
This past class was about the Torah and Tanakh in general, and the way the rabbi talked about the commandments (specifically the ten commandments) has made me really reflect on how I interpret them, specifically the fifth commandment, or honoring your mother and father.
This is a commandment I have wrestled with for a long time - in fact, it brought me away from g-d at multiple times. I was severely abused when I was incredibly young by my mother, and I used to feel insulted at the implication that I were to honor her while she got to live a better life. It was hypocritical, in my eyes.
But this rabbi surmised that this particular commandment was because parenthood is an act of creation, something that is like the g-d from which we come from. My realization is this: I don't think we're necessarily meant to take even these commandments literally.
I this particular commandment is more of a call to honor creation - creation is a gift, and like any gift, many people simply will not like it and will discard it. The person who abused me created me, but she did not honor creation. She didn't honor me, but I can still honor it.
I have started to honor creation much more. I'm too young, too unstable, not mature enough to be a father (though I fantasize about it), but I create all the time. I create relationships, I create with my hands through crochet. I create memories, I create my world. And I can honor who I am and where I came from that made me who I am. I've been learning one of the mother tongues of my family (Italian, since part of my family originates there) and it was judaism that inspired me to do this.
I don't think g-d wants me to honor my abuser. I think He wants me to remember the Holy action of creation. When I am a father, that act of creation will be Holy, and indeed, I am already joyful about the thought.
I have seen many people struggle with this particular commandment, but I think this perspective helps me personally. I don't think I ever have to forgive my abusers (plural), and I don't think I am commanded to simply because they happened to be family. I am commanded to recognize the holy, to elevate the mundane. In doing so, I will remember g-d. Through creation, I honor g-d and everything he has done for us, for me, and for our collective people.
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The Revenant Wife
Pairing: Joel Miller x Fem!Reader
Warnings: Mentions of grief and death.
Summary: Ellie knows very little of Joel and even less of the wife he had before the outbreak. When she finally meets you, its just as much as shock to her as it is to your husband.
Word count: 1.6k
Note: ficlet is based off of this previous post about Joel getting separated from his wife during the outbreak and assuming you died until you find one another years later. Reader is described to look like Sarah. Title came from the ever lovely @djarin-junk <3
Tagging those I think would enjoy: @pedrostories @thesadvampire @joel-mlller @softanon @max--phillips @captainsamwlsn @hooplahoopla @moondirti
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Ellie didn’t know that Joel had a wife.
Granted, she didn’t know much about his old life at all.
She knew he built things. That he had a brother named Tommy and a daughter named Sarah, but didn’t like to talk about the latter that much. In one fleeting conversation, full of mumbles as her eyes began to close while they rested under the night sky she heard him mention you but was far too gone to truly hear what he said. Nothing more than the vague rumble of his voice saying “my wife” before her eyes opened once more.
“You’re married?”
She asks with such incredulous shock it sounds more like “somebody married you?” but girls at her age hardly ever have filters.
“I was.”
There’s the same bristle in his throat and far off look in his eyes as when she first asked about his daughter. An open answer but one that carries enough unsaid to tell Ellie of your fate. To warn her that she should change the subject or simply shut her mouth and go to sleep before plucking his raw nerve one too many times until he snaps-
“What was she like?”
But Joel learned early on that Ellie wasn’t one to follow warnings.
“Kind.” His breath stutters. “But not a pushover- she didn’t take shit from anybody.” He stares up at the sky, feeling his chest grow tight and fingers twitch by his side until there’s a rustling, the girl next to him rolling over to face him and he turns to find Ellie peeking out from her sleeping bag with a smile.
Damn this girl.
“Not even from you?”
Joel scoffs. “Especially from me. The amount of times she gave me and Tommy and earful-” he shakes his head, Ellie watches a smile grow on his face in silence, as if worried she may frighten it away.
“Did she cook?”
Ellie thinks of the stories the older kids would tell her. The ones who remembered life before the Outbreak, who told her of freshly baked pies on weekend and fluffy pancakes in the morning.
Joel remembers the first time you tried to bake him a cake for his birthday back when he was sixteen. How he opened the door to your forlorn face and a store bought sheet cake in your hands because as your mother told him over the phone, you damn near burned the whole house down trying to bake for him as a surprise.
“From time to time.”
There was only so much she could get out of him before his voice became clipped and eyes full of an emotion she didn’t quite know the name of that he told her to get some rest. Leaving her with nothing to do but to stare at the sky and wonder about these stories in the shape of a woman who unveiled a little bit more about the mysterious man she traveled with.
Of all the silence and secrets that made up the man that protected her, she created stories to fill them. Stories of Joel Miller, husband, father, brother and badass contractor that everybody loved. Of his soldier brother, of his wife and their smiling daughter between them both.
In Ellie’s mind, you didn’t work.
But not in a ditzy lame way like some boring housewife. But just because you didn’t have to.
Joel said that everybody loved contractors so that means he probably got paid like, a ton of money to build stuff for people so you got to stay at home all day. Ellie imagined your house to be ginormous. Maybe Joel made it himself for you when you guys first got married. It was big enough that when Joel came home everyday he’d call out your name and it’d echo through the hall as you called him into the kitchen, where your daughter sat reading as you set dinner on the table. Sometimes you’d get upset if he came home late but then he’d kiss your cheek and you would roll your eyes but smile before you all sat down and ate as a family.
Ellie imagines Joel’s daughter, she wonders if Sarah looks more like her mother than her father.
Ellie wonders as the sleep takes over her body, if they could have been friends.
When it happens, months later after she’s come to think of Joel as something akin to family and he thinks of her as something he can’t say out loud just yet, she’s shocked. She’s face to face with a woman holding her at gunpoint that looks nothing like the smiling mother she dreamt of during cold nights.
You don’t match the stories Ellie made up in your head.
You’re mean.
No. Mean isn’t the right word.
Cold. Yes. you're very cold.
Ellie watches in shock as you ask where they're headed, gun focused on the center of her chest while the two boys at your side point their own at Joel, who has yet to speak.
She waits for him to answer, but he just stares at you in awe. The same man she’s seen kill and threaten to keep her safe day in and day out is rendered speechless until all he can do is utter your name and she realizes that he knows you. More than that, judging by the way he surrenders his gun to you with no fight, something she had never seen him do.
You lift your head to look at him, the brim of your hat raises just enough to clear the shadow cast over your face and Ellie can finally see your eyes and the snarl on your face.
You’re also very pretty.
“I won’t ask again.”
The two boys standing on either side of you have your eyes. Same color and intensity, narrowed into slits like guard dogs waiting for an order and Ellie sees the way Joel stares at them.
She wonders if Sarah had brothers.
“Out west.” He manages. “Takin’ her to her family.”
Your eyes move to her and she holds her hands higher in the air.
“That true?”
“What?”
“Is he telling the truth?”
The taller one, Duke, she had heard you call him, had already ripped the bag from her back and emptied its contents onto the ground, she had nothing else to hide from you.
But then she sees something in your eyes. A concern for her that she hadn’t seen since Tess or Marlene.
And she understands.
“He’s telling the truth.” Ellie forces out.
You watch her for a moment and there’s a moment of panic where she thinks you can see right through her lie.
But then you lower your gun and jerk your head over your shoulder.
“C’mon.” is all you say before you begin to walk away. The boys gawk at you for a moment before you give them a look of warning and they follow in your step, occasionally casting glances behind them at Joel and Ellie who follow suit.
She’s quick to grab onto the sleeve of Joel’s jacket and pull with a harsh whisper as the other’s march forward.
“You know this psycho?”
Joel flinches at her voice as it pitches up. If any of you heard her, which he gathered you did because Ellie didn’t have an inside voice to save her fucking life, you didn’t care enough to react.
Ellie whispers his name again. Insistent and angry for answers but he just keeps looking forward. He can’t take his eyes off of you or the boys ahead and it fills her with worry but she doesn’t know why.
“She’s my wife.”
You lead them to a cottage. Its paint is chipping and the fence is reinforced with wiring around the perimeter but it looks like a home. She can vaguely hear the soft clucking of chickens nearby and there's a flash of fur behind the fence with a pair of pointed ears that duck away just as fast as she saw them.
Ellie has seen the remnants of homes before the outbreak. The plates still stacked in the sink and the jacket still hung up on the hook. A story telling a family that once lived within its walls and is now nothing more than memories that ghosts along its foundation.
But this one is real. It’s yours.
There is a rickety wooden table in the dining room. Each chair around it seems to have been brought from a different house and is varying shades of faded brown. You kick the leg of one and nod toward it.“Sit, both of you.”
Ellie looks to Joel before sitting. He follows suit, choosing the chair closest to her.
“I’m gonna get some bandages for that leg-”
Joel shifts forward. “I don’t need-”
“I wasn’t fucking asking, Joel.”
You’re not stronger than Joel, if she had to guess. You both look the same age, but she’s seen his strength, his violence, all done for her safety and knows if it came down to it, you might not win in a fight against him.
But at your order, he sits back in his chair.
You turn and set a shoulder on your son’s shoulder.
At least. She thinks he’s your son.
Softly spoken words are exchanged while the other keeps his eyes on Joel and his hand on his holster. The boy says something back in insistence, but you tilt your head and he nods.
“If either of them try moving or taking anything.” You offer them one final look over your shoulder before slipping out of the room. “Shoot them.”
They listen to your footsteps slowly retreat until there’s nothing but the subtle creak and groan of the wood floor beneath them. Ellie leans forward to look at Joel, setting her hands firmly on the dinner table in announcement.
“Dude-” The young girl breathes out. “Your wife is a bitch.”
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