#MUST WE DAMN OURSELVES TO FIX THE WORLD

[rubixpsyche]

[with gritted teeth] people are different, we need to be different, noone else grows up like anyone else, our experiences are not universal, we cannot wrangle them into understanding, we must be understanding of them

[actual-changeling]

i think it's hard to understand the level of betrayal crowley must have felt, which leads to a lot of assumptions around him easily forgiving aziraphale or not being angry; so let's put ourselves into his position.

imagine: your partner, your best friend, the one person in the world that you love more than anyone else, asks you to change how you look, how you talk, who you are—so you can follow them back to an abusive household that threw you out and told you to never come back.

and they tell you that happy and excited and it's not even a question, it's a "by the way, we're doing that, isn't that great?"

you try to tell them no, it's not, i don't want to go back there, i like who i am now. they hurt me and scarred me for life, and they will do it again.

the person you loves, the person you thought loves you, looks at you and says "but you're bad. don't you want to be good? they can make you good."

come with me, you say. that house doesn't want us, we can have our own, we can build our own home. just the two of us, we don't need them, we're fine the way we are.

"i can change them" they say, as if you didn't try. as if you didn't try to change them first. as if that wasn't the reason they threw you to the wolves.

fuck it, you say. you confess your love anyway because they must know, right? they need to know. "don't leave me" you beg, plead, pray.

"oh," they respond, smiling. "nothing lasts forever."

you try to walk away, they stop you, they make it worse, make it clear they don't understand you like you thought. do they love you or the version of you they created in their head? you can't tell anymore.

"we could have been us," you say. we could have been happy.

you kiss them because you have to, because you will be damned twice over if you lose them without kissing them, because your patience snaps and you think you might die if you don't kiss them right now.

it doesn't change anything. "i forgive you"—for being me? for loving you? for refusing to tear myself apart? for kissing you? it's not like it matters. they're gone. you watch them leave.

would you immediately forgive them if they showed up on your doorstep? or would you be heartbroken and angry? you miss them, you still love them, but FUCK YOU. fuck you for demanding that of me. fuck you for everything you said. FUCK YOU FOR LEAVING.

six thousand years. six thousand years.

it would already be hard to forgive a person you have loved for two years or ten, and it gets worse the longer you know them. six thousand fucking years and aziraphale did that. we know why he did. we know how their story will end, but crowley doesn't.

all crowley has is aziraphale's speech and his face disappearing behind elevator doors. all crowley has is you're the bad guys and come with me and nothing lasts forever and i need you and i forgive you.

love alone does not and cannot fix that. aziraphale took six thousand years of trust and set them on fire with a smile on his face, and i understand the urge to try and find an explanation where he doesn't do that. where everything is secretly fine.

but there isn't.

aziraphale needs to rebuild that trust, he needs to earn it again. and mot importantly, he needs to understand why his words and actions broke it in the first place. but even then—even if crowley is the kindest possible version of himself and aziraphale does everything right—even then crowley would have every single right to say i don't forgive you. i love you and i understand you, we can be together, but i cannot forgive you for that and we both have to live with that now.

they will get their happy ending, i do truly believe that, but it might not be the fairy tale happily ever after you imagine and that's okay. it still counts. it's still good.

let crowley be angry and let them find their way back to each other, even if that path does not include forgiveness.

[aromantic-diaries]

In regards to this stupid aromantic cishet men discourse. Why does it matter that they're straight? Like, when people want to demonize especially straight men, do they think gay men can't be manipulative and abusive? Or trans men? Are they the pureness in person and can never harm anyone? And why does gender matter. Do they think women can't be sex obsessed or use people? I don't understand why they're all treated differently. Why are aromantic allosexual people sorted into categories. Why do people think aro cishet men are evil but I never even heard of aro cishet women being treated like this. I hate this.

Also not saying that cishet aro men are bad and everything, just used the stereotypes and bigotry that's used against them. Cishet aro men are awesome.

I think it's very simple. It has to do with the idea that cishet men are the enemy and therefore have nothing in common with queer people and any cishet man who even comes near us will only do so with ill intent. Combine that with the debate around whether or not aromantic people belong in the community and we have ourselves a new boogeyman. A lot of people, queer or not, really like to disregard the struggles of aromantic people and maintain the idea that sexual attraction without romance is always immoral and malicious so when it comes to cishet aromantic men, it leads to the assumption that they must be predatory misogynistic creeps.

Then again I think that regardless of whether or not we think cishet aro men are queer, we should not be excluding anybody. You really can't split society into Queer and Cishet because that inevitably leads to people who are stuck outside of these categories. Not just aromantics and asexuals who are otherwise straight, but also people who are closeted because it's simply not safe for them to come out, people who are still questioning, and anyone who is 100% cisgender, straight and allo but still doesn't fit the heteronormative standards for whatever reason. Not to mention the fact that viewing cishets as the enemy that we have nothing in common with doesn't get us anywhere. Labels aside we are all people and putting eachother into boxes does not fix a damn thing. In an ideal world there would be no need for categorizing people as either queer or cishet cause we would all just be seen as people who may have a plethora of differences but are people regardless.

And yeah, your point about how any type of person regardless of gender or sexuality can be abusive or manipulative is absolutely correct. We need to remember that queerness is in no way a moral high ground, how good of a person you are is defined by your actions and not your labels

[batsysquared]

The controversy going on with the Olympics right now is completely and utterly horrific. It is a bubbling cauldron of intersexism, transphobia, racism, and misogyny. And it's not new! This is a story that has played out before - not just in the Olympics, but in various situations even outside the realm of sporting, all across the world. When it comes to intersex people, the utter social dissection and public humiliation for not being Proper is a story that marks our very births, the one that begins from the day we're born, and every time it comes up it is deeply entwined with all of these other prejudices. But this time, there's one thing that different. The (alleged! completely alleged!) medical proof that's landed in their hands has enabled them to show plain and bare that they never cared about anything but their hatred of The Undefinable Enemy, and anyone who is sufficiently marginalized can be placed in that box when narratively convenient. To me, a person who ticks every box on display here, this was obvious - and I'll be putting aside the racism and plain misogyny for now since those are already well covered. But as far as interphobia goes - we've never fit in the category of "cis", whether we consider ourselves to be men or women, and frankly people have a hard time wrapping their heads around us being trans, excepting people who just hate trans people for existing. It's because of this that many intersex people just want to be seen as normal - and, wouldn't you know it? That's a talking point that TERFs and other various transphobes use to pretend they just care oh so much! "Oh, don't bring up those poor people! They just want to be normal boys and girls just like us, they're just rare, unique, disgusting victims of a birth defect! Not perverted and ill freaks like you!" So now, nobody has an excuse for missing what they really think when they say this: the second they can find alleged proof that a woman isn't correctly a woman - the people who manage to acknowledge that intersex and trans aren't the same thing go ahead and talk about how she's a failed man and ought to be treated as such. "It's unfortunate that she has this horrific genetic affliction," they say, "but, well...a man is a man." So much for being treated normal, right? But less obvious before this incident was that every time, every time, they missed what any intersex person ever meant by "wanting to be normal". And of course, it's because they never cared. Our struggles are only brought up solely to shoot down the arguments trans people and allies make that involve us, never to actually consider us or acknowledge the intersexist systems that the occasional trans person or ally will accidentally support. No, again, that'd involve caring. If they did, they'd understand that the plea to be treated normally is a plea to simply be considered as the thing the intersex individual wants to be considered as, without any scrutiny or "buts" or "you poor freak, we need to fix you", regardless of whether they choose to be a man or a woman or both or neither.

Yet even when they're afforded the grace of male or female, it is never without scrutiny. Every day we're questioned, even for those of us not aware of what we are. The societal push against our normality is so stark in every conversation we have about masculinity or femininity and its expectations that these pressures are often the only reason intersex people even learn they're intersex! The circumstances of their birth are hidden from them, a footnote in a surgical record, and they later have some other "problem" that must be fixed. Sometimes this problem that really affects them in some tangible life-altering medical sense, and sometimes it only does so as a result of society saying "hey, are you sure you're the thing you know you are and that we said you are? because damn you're hairy/tall/short/strong/chiseled/soft/tragically micropenised/possessed of breasts of an unusually small or large size for what you Ought To Be!". And of course, either way, once they're adults it's their prerogative to correct whatever they want! But that doesn't excuse the way that society treats this as an expectation of us, and no amount of societally enforced self-loathing changes the fact that it is an expectation, even when this false sympathy is expressed for our plight. (And, you know, if they cared about what intersex people want or the plights we go through, they'd spend less time crying about the nonexistent problem of children being "mutilated" by the trans menace and more about the very real and constant tragedy that is coercive surgical sexual assignment of literal newborns, but lol. lmao.)

My solace here is that now these incidents can be pointed at as evidence that the cry of "don't use intersex people as a shield!" is hollow concern trolling - and also that it makes clear how important liberation from both gender and sex as rigid categories are for, well, everyone, but for intersex people in particular. I'd also hope to see less "oh so transphobia only matters when it affects a cis person" pop up when intersex people get smeared into bloody streaks across the ground, as if women who do wish to fit in the category of "cis" but fail to be considered as such by society due to the circumstances of their birth don't also feel the constant daily sting of transmisogyny - or as if transphobia simply misses people for whom the terms "afab" and "amab" are most relevant. Being both trans and intersex, my experience has been that the discriminatory line here is about as thin as it gets.

But, well, one of these revelations is more important than the other, so I'll settle for not being a toy to be played with by fascists over being slapped by casual intersexism from people that at least recognize we should be working together. Sometimes that's the most one can ask, yeah?

[curator-on-ao3]

Again, cool response to the last question, so I'll let you pick from these options:

And there are things I have fan-fixed in my head to the point that I have to remind myself that the fix-it isn’t part of the actual canon: favourite one of these?

Or

Your/a favourite part of actual canon. Like, maybe something little but it's just so lovely and fitting to you and you're just happy that it exists?

I’ve been a little down on Trek lately, so I’m going to type as fast as I can to brain-dump, in show order, the first things that pop into my mind that I absolutely love in Trek canon:

Kirk calling Nomad his son, the doctor

Christine Chapel’s snark to Roger Korby about schtupping the androids

Mark Leonard’s performance in Balance of Terror

the Horta (a great mama)

“Edith Keeler must die.”

Captain John Christopher, United States Air Force. Serial number 4857932.

Tribbles

the lesson of The Cloud Minders that we must have empathy and listen to others when they tell us about their lived experience in an environment unlike our own

the cheap-ass animation of TAS

Q

Bynars and Minuet

Beverly Crusher’s frustration in Arsenal of Freedom (and the episode’s Good Ship Lollipop joke)

Picard shooting the other version of himself in Time Squared (to clarify: out of respect for those times when we have to stop ourselves from getting caught in loops/doing stupid stuff and we summon up the courage to break a bad cycle and move forward)

K'Ehleyr

Picard out-lawyering the Sheliak

Rachel Garrett; Yar and Castillo

Lal (but I can’t watch the end anymore, it hurts too much)

the Shakespeare and “Set a course for Betazed. Warp 9.” comedy in Ménage a Troi

Best of Both Worlds, I and II (Shelby inclusive)

every conference table discussion in all of TNG

Beverly’s jump in Remember Me (such a damn good episode)

the reveal in Future Imperfect (which one? all of them)

The Dancing Doctor tap dancing with Data

Darmok. And Jalad. At Tenagra.

Ro Laren

Troi saying, “You could have easily been right” to Ro in Disaster

Hugh, Third of Five

the fact that The Next Phase has so many plotholes and they’re forgivable because the episode is so fun and great

Scotty on the holodeck version of the TOS bridge and Picard joining him

Rascals!

Deanna’s “Ancient West” outfit

the Jefferies tube music and make out session in Lessons

Attached. Oh, my heart.

the Enterprise with three nacelles … and that absolutely perfect last shot of the series

“You exist here.”

Sisko’s casual, everyday affection for Jake

“Old Man”

Rejoined. Lenara Khan. The love. That kiss. The emotional stakes. All of it.

the three Ferengi hitting their own heads to try to fix their universal translators so the 20th century Earth military people mimic the movement to try to communicate

every second of Trials and Tribble-ations including Sisko working overtime to stop fuckmaster Dax, tossing the tribbles, Sisko meeting Kirk, “We do not discuss it with outsiders,” and so much more

Kira blaming Bashir for putting the baby inside her when … you know … behind the scenes

The Sons of Mogh helping with the harvest in Children of Time

Far Beyond the Stars — some of the best if not the best science fiction I have ever seen

the monster fakeout (and kindness) in The Sound of Her Voice, even though the end makes me cry

“Computer, erase that entire personal log.”

Solok

Sisko and Kassidy discussing their comfort levels about a simulation in which the reality was segregation

Janeway waterfalling off the sofa to be closer to Mark on the screen

“Warp particles!”

the lizard babies

the two Janeways in Deadlock

Remember (a painfully good Holocaust episode that doesn’t get enough credit and, yes, I know the path the script took and I’m glad it ended up as a B’Elanna episode)

“I don't know what I'm seeking.” “Then I believe you are ready to begin.”

“The child you spoke of, the girl. Her favorite color was red.” Also, Tuvok’s meditation lamp in the window for Kes.

hot damn, Counterpoint, yaaas

everything in Relativity

“The Yankees, in six games.”

Janeway going after Seven in The Voyager Conspiracy

“This is Lieutenant Reginald Barclay at Starfleet Command.” “It's good to hear your voice, Lieutenant. We've been waiting a long time for this moment.” “The feeling is mutual. Unfortunately, the micro-wormhole is collapsing. We have only a few moments.” “Understood. We are transmitting our ship's logs, crew reports, and navigational records to you now.” “Acknowledged. And we're sending you data on some new hyper-subspace technology. We're hoping eventually to use it to keep in regular contact, and we're including some recommended modifications for your comm system.” “We'll implement them as soon as possible.” “There's someone else here who would also like to say something.” “This is Admiral Paris.” “Hello, sir.” “How are your people holding up?” “Very well. They're an exemplary crew, your son included.” “Tell him, tell him I miss him. And I'm proud of him.” “He heard you, Admiral.” “The wormhole is collapsing.” “I want you all to know we're doing everything we can to bring you home.” “We appreciate it, sir. Keep a docking bay open for us.”

“Nice hair.” (Live Fast and Prosper)

Janeway and Jaffen in Workforce

the spot-on legal concerns of Author, Author

“Set a course. For home.”

(Nothing from Enterprise or Prodigy only because I haven’t watched enough of Enterprise or any of Prodigy)

Burnham and Georgiou forming the delta with their footsteps

the CGI on only the shields protecting Burnham from space

“Are we in session? Because I didn't know you were practicing again. Because if I have your undivided attention for fifty minutes, I can think of a whole bunch of other things we could be doing.”

“That's as depressing a trait as I've ever heard.” “I don't give a damn … I still don't give a damn.”

Cornwell beaming in, phaser aimed, taking command of Discovery

Cornwell phasering the fortune cookies

Cornwell’s voice breaking: “So my Gabriel is dead.”

Detmer’s little bounce when Emperor-as-Captain Georgiou takes command

Pike beaming aboard and instantly being all like MOJAVE to prove to the audience he’s the guy from The Cage

New Eden. Everything. Oh my God (pun intended). The visuals. Owo’s backstory. Pollard patching Pike up after he’s shot. The light at the end. Oh my God, yes. That episode. Yes.

Number freaking One beaming aboard and having her lunch briefing with Pike (Chris and Una’s decades-long friendship wasn’t canon yet, but it shows here so beautifully)

Gabrielle Burnham

“In case the shit hit the fan.”

Michael Burnham on truth serum

Book

Laira Rillak, everyone!

Q&A

season 1 Raffi Musiker

Fleet Admiral and Commander-in-Chief Kirsten Clancy

“You owe me a ship, Picard.”

“You need a feather in your hat.”

Riker greeting Picard

Hugh greeting Picard

the separate trio of Raffi, Clancy, and Deanna all telling Picard he’s shit

Rios singing in Spanish

President Annika Hansen

everybody finding each other in the Confederation Universe

Liam Shaw — a character with incredible highs and lows

Majel Barrett as the computer voice when the crew gets to the Enterprise D

“Somehow I figured you might.”

everything in Ghosts of Illyria

Spock and La’an’s mind meld

Spock and T’Pring in Spock Amok

“You cannot resign. The loss to Enterprise would be unimaginable. To me.”

“If you’re going to steal a starship, do it correctly.”

Neera Ketoul

La’an normalizing needing to eat all the time as a teenager (especially important for girls to hear)

Pike and Una visually checking in with each other so often that it’s in their cartoon versions (that whole episode, actually, including, “Riker!”)

That’s scrolling through episode titles and jotting down stuff I love off the top of my head, fam.✨

Thank you so much for this ask, anon! ❤️ I needed this positive energy in my life.

[luckyspade-8]

The Wonderful Dreaming of Double Hearts

A Twiddler Valentines exchange fic.

Prompts: Meet cute, First Date

Word count: roughly 600

Synopsis: One intelligent man makes a double mined person swoo with confusing words right into a date.

Tw: None, just a jokey NSFW joke at the end. So still, Minor DNI. Go eat those Valentines candies instead.

Notes: Happy Valentines Day @tr4sh-pl4nt !!

"We just had to fall for that e- eg- egg mat- Fuck! Whats that word again?"

"Enigmatic, Harv."

"Yeah, that damn smooth talker. He talked us right into that date."

"Yeah. He did do that, didn't he.." Harvey sighed looking into the cracked mirror, trying to smooth out the shirt with one hand. Oh, how he can clearly remember meeting him.

"Why hello there, my good sirs. My my, what a wonderful day isn't it?"

Taking a moment to think, or really let the coin make a choice, Harv is the first to respond by whipping his head around.

"What the hell do you want?"

"Why, such a spitfire you are. I'm going say you must be Harv. And that makes the other.."

The ginger in a vibrant green ensemble gestures to the other side of the suit.

"Harvey Dent. And I'm sorry, but I don't think we met?"

"Oh but we have, Mr. Dent. We certainly have."

"I don't remember that shit happening, pal."

"Well, let me spin you the glorious tale of how I remember it."

Taking the open seat across, the oddball of a man sits down, still with no name.

"You both were sat in this restaurant, and I happened to walk in, wanting some good food. Then, I saw you.

The duality of beauty and honesty. How perfection should be. How justice can be so pretty when it looks scared. Just so, amazing and handsome. " He said with a sly grin.

Hearing this, Harvey's side started to flush easily. And he could have sworn Harv's started to warm.

"So, I had to introduce myself as Edward Nymga, as that is my name. And then, we had this marvelous conversation. Of how much we are just so, similar. How we refuse to let anything stop us. Of how we just couldnt stand the state of the world and how we want to fix it ourselves. And then.."

Reaching out to the other's hand on the table slowly, Edward started to lean in.

"Right as I was about to ask to meet again, even if I had to beg or barter.."

The puzzling man leaned closer into their face, lowered his voice to listen to the hitches in their breath.

Suddenly falling back into his seat, Edward sighs sadly with a pout.

"..I woke up. Shame isn't?"

"What?"

".. You mean that shit was-"

"All a fantastic dream. But of course, some dream do come true, don't they Mr. Dent? So..."

Suddenly pulling a card from his sleeve and sliding it across the table, Edward continues.

"I'll be meeting you back here, 7:30 on Friday, right?"

Barely even comprehending what just happened, they lazily flipped the coin in a daze and looks at the side it landed on.

"I suppose."

"I- huh. Wha-?"

"Great! I'll cover dinner then."

Suddenly getting up, Edward starts to walk out.

"Oh, and please wear that red and black suit I've seen you wear before, I find it so lovely. It really brings out your eyes. Ciao Ciao Bello!~"

Snapping back to reality, Harv huffs.

"Can't believe you fucking fell for Harvey."

"Say the one who didn't even understand what the last thing he said was and just went 'you too'."

"Shut the fuck up, school boy, how was I supposed to know he call us handsome in fucking Italian?!"

"Oh, I guess you blasting Bella Ciao a lot more than you should into our ears didn't teach you anything?"

"Just shut the fuck up and help me with the fucking buttons on this thing! It aint exactly easy buttoning this satin suit with one hand asshole. Let alone tie that fucking rose knot you so desperately want to do to impress this guy."

"Hey, that was your idea. You said it, not me."

"I will fucking pull out the coin over this shit again, we already fought over what lacey shit to wear under this."

[united-under-skyfall]

idk about yall but personally i am Ready to hear the eye latching on to one of the remaining survivors (...which means probably basira lol) now that its special little boy™ is gone and them having to deal w it on top of everything else now bc the eyepocalypse is over but what it did to them isnt, and even if the whole world is given a reversal so not everyone remembers, a lot more people are going to know somehow, right?? and the guilty resentment towards each other and jmart are both growing, because they couldn't even sacrifice themselves to un-end the world right, the entities are still fucking here. but they did their best. they've always just been doing their best (and no matter how much it feels like they deserve it, it's so hard to be upset with them for that). and they came pretty damn close to fixing things, theoretically, or at least closer than any of the rest of them have, and they'd been something like friends, in the end, they don't want to go back to being angry at either of them, but they are. and worse, now they're getting angry at the other people who are still around, because they're still around, and because they're getting angry at jmart for the same reasons and i know i'm upset but i also know i shouldn't be and it's making me even more upset just like it is to hear you're upset over the same thing and also giving our sort-of friends shit when they can't defend themselves or fix things bc of it even though i'm doing the same thing, and i should be missing them more, and i shouldn't be missing them at all, and haven't we given enough of ourselves to these things, and but of course, nothing would ever be enough for them, not even ending the world, and maybe they should be grateful bc if the entities are still here that must mean no other universes are going to have to deal w them, and that's a good thing, right? but how can they be grateful or feel anything for these hypothetical other universes when the entities are still here?

[titanicfreija]

No comfort

"Do you want to stop fighting?"

Sunny needed to pick a different spot in the barracks to 'hide', Freija found it a million years ago. The guardian in her civvies didn't look natural, and Sunny hated that sense, too.

The ghost couldn't tell if she wanted to say no for her own sake or for Freija's. She heard in the guardian's voice that she didn't want to make the offer and following through would make her miserable. Sunny herself didn't want to stop either, but that felt wrong, too.

"We have to fight," Sunny creaked.

"We have to defend ourselves and our loved ones, but no, we don't actually have to leave the Tower to pick fights for the sake of it. I don't have to take jobs. I don't have to go into the crucible. I don't have to bounty hunt. I don't even have to wander the worlds, or play the horse's game show."

The Awoken woman watched Sunny from across the room and the pair stared at each other silently.

"This doesn't sound good to me," Sunny admitted. "I want it to. I want to want peace more than I really do want peace."

"Sounds boring as fuck," Freija agreed. "Get a day job cooking or something, maybe, but yeah, doesn't sound great."

Sunny dropped several feet. "I don't know what to do! I feel horrible! Resisting it feels futile but giving in feels wrong! And no matter how I think about it, I can't reconcile bringing you into it!"

"Do you want to leave me down for a while?"

Sunny screamed and Freija shrank away, covering her ears.

"I'm sorry," they said together. Sunny moved away and Freija moved toward at the same time.

"Come here," Freija offered, holding her hand out.

"I feel horrible!"

"I know. It's my turn to be the one that holds the line. You're okay." The guardian picked the ghost in her Winter Lotus shell into her hands to cradle.

The noise Sunny made in response must have been the ghost version of hiccups or sobbing, but neither she nor Freija recognized the strange electronic burble. She couldn't stop making it, and speaking got hard to push through.

"You always use combat metaphors," Sunny whirred.

Freija couldn't answer.

"I keep saying I like flowers but I can't name any without opening a database. I spent hundreds of years dreaming about a person that I woke up for torture, knowing that's what I was going to do. I claim to love her, but I woke her up and told her she needed to grab a gun and commit atrocities lest they be committed against her."

"Yeah, well, the Taken would. Commit atrocities against me, I mean."

Sunny's burble grew. "Not if I didn't wake you up."

"Are you regretting my entire existence?"

"I don't know!"

"Sorry," Freija mumbled, knowing she wasn't doing a great job of handling this either. "Is there anyone you do think you can talk to about this?"

"I don't want to!"

"Maybe Caiatl?"

"She's part of what's upsetting me!"

"I mean, that's no reason not to talk to her about it. She did stage a coup that backfired, I'm pretty sure she'll understand reluctant warrior doubts."

"I'm not a warrior. You are."

"You keep going back and forth on that."

"Caiatl did that, too. She pointed out that I taught you everything."

Freija snorted. "Only so I wouldn't have to learn the hard way. And I still don't take cover worth a damn."

Sunny dropped her shell and hovered to her shelf, pulling the Hareball shell on and fixing her ears. "Stay in the Tower. Please. Do something you like doing that isn't fighting. Not even bar or gym fights."

Freija frowned and looked to one side, which Sunny knew to be doubts-- the guardian hardly knew what she liked doing.

"Maybe Thomas can show you around and let you try new things," she suggested softly. "Maybe there's some art you can learn. I bet you'd like sculpting. I'll be back before tonight."

"'kay. Love you," Freija said.

"I love you, too. I promise I'm okay, I'm just having a hard time."

"Been there, done that, had you at my side the whole time. I'm here for you. I know I'm no good for talking to, but I promise I can hold and cuddle and do nothing for a while and maybe even be quiet for a little bit."

Sunny didn't find her usual amusement in imagining harm on her guardian.

She scanned radio signals as far out as she could, found the last ones off Neptune, and traced them back to the Empress's command ship.

War Drums

Lost

No comfort <-

Real Purpose

Slipped Truth

Still Sulking

Stubborn Recovery

Freija's Waltz

[writerisbloque]

The Harpy: A Conversation

The following is dialogue that was very early into the harpy's creation. The idea of her being a character added to the Inquisition's inmer circle. Party Banter that was not added to the fix itself.

“Solas, I must speak with you.”

“Of course, what is it, falon?”

“I have an idea. To help the Inquisition. My people.”

“This sounds important. Have you put much thought into it.”

“Yes, friend. I trust you, and seek your advice and support.”

“Very well then. Shall we speak in a more private place, I believe we can go out for some air.”

“Ah, yes, thank you.”

“Now, from what you have told me your people are isolationists.”

“Yes, but I feel it is time for change. For eons we have lived in the shadows watching as the world has been fought for by others. The Elvhen, the Qunari, the dwarves, and the humans. We have let the world gone by without us. The Grand Elder says it’s for security and safety. We see what exposure has done. Enslavement, discrimination, hate; for those who don’t look like you, think like you, and live like you. The Grand Elder may be right, but Thedas is our home too. What is the point of safety and security if there is no world. The breach, the blights...Solas. The world is ending, I feel that my people have a duty to our Giver. We have been in this world far longer than most. It is time we step out of the shadows.”

“...I see that you have given this much deliberation.”

“Yes, friend.”

“Do you not think that if this world is saved the others won’t try to rule your people?”

“Why would they?”

“You are a threat. A race of eons living beings that have knowledge and power beyond their ken.”

“We will present ourselves peacefully.”

“Falon, I’m afraid you do not understand. The human race will try to subject you to their views and needs. They will do everything in their power conquer you before you do them. They are afraid of things they do not understand, such as mages and their magic!”

“But diplomacy can prevail. We will have agreements, we come to help and return to our solitude once the breach and all threats are gone!”

“Perhaps, you had not comprehended all those lessons and history books we went over.”

“On the contrary, Solas, I learned quite a lot, enough to avoid the mistakes your People made.”

“What do you know of my People?”

“They are at their lost because of one’s damned mistake.”

“And what would you know about that, you were to paranoid and afraid to even venture out of your safe little domain. Too afraid to explore the world around you! Too scared to change! You’re people are weak, ignorante and uncivilized! You’re lucky enough to be even considered cultured before us today! You know nothing of the Elvhen! Nothing! So do not try to educate me of my mistake!”

“Perhaps...I was wrong to trust a narrow minded, prideful, creature like you. I apologize for wasting your time, Ser Solas. I bid you good day.”

[Break in scene: Dorian to Solas]

“Solas, have you seen the harpy girl? I have a few questions to ask her.”

“If you do not mind I am in the middle of reading, Ser Dorian. I do not wish to be bothered.”

“Ah, temper temper. What’s with the face, trouble in paradise?”

“Pardon?”

“Well, you and the harpy seem quite close.”

“I was teaching her of Thedas, nothing more.”

“Ah, then perhaps those physical inspections were just purely for study?”

“If you are implying that my relationship with that beast is more than simply professional you are sorely mistaken. I would never touch a creature like that otherwise.”

“My. Strong words from the very creature that begged for her to be saved.”

“For knowledge. This is an undiscovered species, who would pass up the knowledge?”

“Yes, but then you discovered she was intelligent, capable of communication and emotion. She was self-aware…undiscovered race”

“May I please return to my work?”

“Very well then, I’ll find her myself. Perhaps she's snuggled up with the Iron Bull, you know like beasts stick together.”

[Break in scene: Varric to the Harpy]

“What's wrong, birdie, why are you up there for?”

“Salking...I think is what the word is. I am upset.”

“Sulking. And what’s got you upset, a pretty bird like you should be flying around singing, no?”

“Caged birds don’t sing.”

“Ah, well, I don’t see a cage.”

“It’s a big cage and my wings…”

“Hm, well you see it as a cage, I see this a safe place. A fort? Home?”

“Home is where my people are. There it is safe.”

“Do you not feel safe here?”

“I-”

“You do know you have people that like you here, right birdie?”

“That’s-”

“Some would even go so far to protect you from danger.”

“Alright...this is a safe cage...fort. But I am still sulking.”

“That’s just alright, everyone sulks every once in while. You know, the inquisitor gets sulky too when he’s tired.”

“The Inquisitor has reason...he has a great responsibility, not many can help him completely, but I want to help.”

“Careful there, birdie, you are sounding like Cole. Now, is that what all this sulking is about, because you can’t help?”

“I tired asking, my friend for advice, but instead of advising me he shut me down. My feelings are hurt, my impression of him has changed. He can be mean spirited sometimes.”

“Aaah, so Chuckles. Well what did he say, maybe I can talk to him.”

“That will not be necessary, it is a conflict between him and I. I would like to fix it in time on my own...but he called my weak...ignorant...uncivilized beast.”

“Shit, something must have really upset him. What did you say?”

“I had the idea of having my people help in the Inquisition. He disagreed.”

“Aren’t your people isolationist?”

“Yes, but what is the point of protect ourselves from the world if there is no world to be protected from?”

“A good point. Hm, it’s ultimately up to you and your people, Birdie. Chuckles may have just be scared what your people will go through if you come out.”

“Enslaved.”

“Unfortunately.”

“It still does not give him the right to call me an uncivilized beast. Just because our cultures our different, my people are self aware and civilized, we are no more beasts than those that kill for necessity.”

“Also a good point. Try talking to him, when you feel ready, of course. In the meantime, why don’t you look around your ‘cage’ a bit. You’re always held up in the rotunda, I’m surprised you haven’t gotten cabin fever.”

“Thank you, ser varric. I really do appreciate your companionship.”

“Not a problem, Birdie, just keep chirping happily, we need you like that.”

[Break in scene: The Iron Bull to The Harpy]

“You said your people are strict, right?”

“Similar to yours, more introverted.”

“Hm, you know, the Qun has heard rumors of winged people for ages now.”

“Perhaps, we have scattered tribes.”

“Anyone up in Par Vollen?”

“Yes, very small tribe, they have delicious fruit harvests.”

“The fruits? Do you trade amongst your people?”

“Occasionally, a few of my people are Curriors, they are the ones that can manage such long flights across the lands and waters to meet the other tribes, keep communication and trade.”

“So each Pulumin is different?”

“We have adapted for eons. Breeding and mating are two different things among my people. We breed to advance and adapt ourselves, we mate to be with our loved once, anyone can mate with anyone. Breeding will be determined by a Muur. They can assign breeds to give birth to a hybrid of both types.”

“Example?”

“A naturally talented Pulumin can have the ability to see better at night than most. Another may have the ability to fly long distance such as a Currior. The Muur would assign these two to breed. The offspring would be able to travel long distances at night. A feat that is helpful for urgent communications and to keep out of site of the world.”

“That is impressive. Your people are quite advanced.”

“Not as much as yours, but thank you.”

“So, did you ever breed or mate with anyone?”

“I have bred a few times, but I have not found my mate yet.”

“Oh, is mating a one time thing.”

“No, one may have mated once, perhaps their mate passed or they fell out of affection, a mated couple can simply break the bond. However, the intimacy of mating is something so very intricate that it is best to find the perfect mate, so that such a bond would last long and happily for the time that we live.”

“So you still wait for your mate?”

“Yes...but in all honesty, I feel I will never mate before I pass.”

“Why do you believe so?”

“The world is ending is it not?”

[Break in scene: Inquistor to Solas. This is the beginning of The Harpy's 'loyalty quest of sorts in game']

“What do you mean It is gone?”

“W-We’ve looked everywhere for the creature, your worship, no sign of it anywhere.”

“We had the wings clipped, it couldn’t have gotten far, have a search party ready, around the perimeter. Go.”

“Right away, your worship.”

“Have Solas come to me. He was the one to tame that thing. He might have something to do with it.”

“Gone?”

“Yes, do you have anything to do with it?”

“No, Inquisitor, I have been working here in the rotunda for the past few days. Research on the Astrarium, just as you ordered.”

“When was the last time you saw the animal?”

“I saw her three days ago. We discuss-”

“Ah, right you say it speaks intelligently.”

“She does. She is capable of speech, Inquisitor.”

“Yet it acts like a beast, incapable of being civilized, now when did you last see it?”

“Inquisitor, I have not seen her in three days, now pardon me while i return to my work.”

“You are in thin ice, Solas. You better not have let that thing free. To our luck it might have died trying to escape.”

-This is continued elsewhere-

[ajourneyintothepages]

Love Warrior by Glennon Doyle

“We are all turning into something else. We are becoming new. It’s a becoming day.” 

“I’ve been trying to become who I’m supposed to be.” 

“If love could prevent pain, I’d never have suffered.” 

“Every girl must decide whether to be true to herself or true to the world. Every girl must decide whether to settle for adoration or fight for love.” 

“She is a queen who reigns with kindness.” 

“They look because she’s lovely, but they stare because she’s love.” 

“They wanted to adore me, but I complicated things by inserting myself into their experience of me.” 

“Without beauty, what do I have to warm people with?” 

“They play together, but playing requires a loss of self-consciousness and togetherness requires a sense of belonging.” 

“You would be able to tell by her footprints that she stood for years, wondering why I was too afraid to keep walking. Wondering why one day we were together and the next we were each alone.” 

“I wonder which voice is me-the one feeling the feelings or the one scoffing at my own feelings?”

“Life is not only eerie and hopeless but also entirely too long.” 

“That afternoon I am driven to a place for people with broken minds.” 

“No woman on Earth doesn’t give a fuck - no woman is that cool - she’s just hidden her fire. Likely, it’s burning her up.” 

“They drink to take the edge off; I drink to disappear.” 

“It is scary and strange to be a pawn in no one’s hand.” 

“This idea feels equal parts ridiculous and true to me.” 

“Music is an invitation to feel, but the quiet is an invitation to think.” 

“Who is going to keep trying to fix me then?” 

“We have given up looking for a solution and now we will settle for an explanation.” 

“Life and love simply ask too much of me.” 

“We can’t continue to be destroyed by you.” 

“I have run out of places to go, so I drive toward God.” 

“My whole life is an apology, and that hasn’t made a damn thing better.” 

“God deals only with truth and the truth will set you free, but it will hurt so badly first.” 

“She never asked for an explanation or apology. She just said, I’m here.” 

“That’s the first time I’ve said this is what I want, so this is what I’m going to do instead of What do you want? What do you want me to do?”

“I am claustrophobic in my own skin.” 

“I have accepted another one of life’s dangerous invitations: the invitation to feel.” 

“There is no time for my hand to be in no one else’s hand.” 

“There is no starting over, there is only continuing on.” 

“This is the weirdest, scariest, coolest day of my life.” 

“His forgetfulness feels like carelessness, and his carelessness feels like rejection.” 

“Instead of making peace, we are keeping the peace.” 

“Now I don’t just feel used up, I feel used.” 

“I’m ashamed and afraid because I feel incapable of offering or accepting love.” 

“I love you, but I can’t go back into the woods for you. I am on a path now and I have to keep walking forward.” 

“Considering these impossibilities burns and hurts, so I recoil quickly.” 

“It all pours out fast and furious, like the real me is gasping for air.” 

“We’ve never brought to each other the heavy things we were meant to help each other carry.” 

“After I write, I feel calmer, healthier, and stronger.” 

“It’s not right to expect your every need to be met by one person.” 

“The flaw in this thinking is the fact that wherever you go, there you are.” 

“My body and my heart are now mine to protect.” 

“I know how we try to save others in order to keep saving ourselves.” 

“I look at Craig and feel ice for him. Sharp ice. Icicles.” 

“During the past few minutes I’ve gone from not knowing to knowing, and so far knowing is much, much worse than not knowing. I am not certain that this knowing is even survivable.” 

“He’s just been hiding his tremendous capacity to inflict pain.” 

“The initial numbness and denial is shock and it is a gift. Shock is a grace period. It gives a woman time to gather what she needs around her, before the exhaustion and panic set in like a heavy snow.” 

“Soon I will have to tell them things that will send their hearts on journeys I can’t travel with them.” 

“When they learn that mommy and daddy might not stay married, I will lose them a little bit.” 

“I just read that the word disaster comes from astro: stars, and dis: without. This will only be a disaster if I lose all awareness of light.” 

“Self-betrayal is allowing fear to overrule the still, small voice of truth.” 

“Knowledge is not a fortress that keeps out pain.” 

“I do not answer to this place, I answer to God.” 

“None of us wants me to try to pass off cowardice for strength, willful ignorance for loyalty, codependence for love.” 

“This precise thing is always incredibly personal and often makes no sense to anyone else. God speaks to folks directly and one at a time, so I just listen and follow directions.” 

“Sometimes it’s not love that brings a woman back - it’s exhaustion.” 

“The invitation in this pain is the possibility of discovering who I really am.” 

“I wonder if the one making the sky so achingly beautiful might also be working to make my life beautiful, too.” 

“Hello, soul. I am learning what you love. I will get more of this for us. I promise.” 

“She is having a hard time accepting that inside her perfectly decorated walls hide problems dangerous enough to destroy her whole house.”

“Then it occurs to me that I’m too tired to be the author of my life anymore. I just want to be the reporter.” 

“Books are how I learned to disappear, to live in a world other than the uncomfortable physical one.” 

“But dogs and small children are one thing. It’s easy to let myself fall in love with them because they can’t hurt me. Grown ups are another thing entirely. Grown ups are dangerous. And yet. I want to fall in grown-up love. I want risky, true, scary love. I want to learn how to let my body bring me to love with an equal partner. I want that.” 

“I’ve been trying to find balance by eliminating pressure from my life. The demands of work, friendship, and family all felt so heavy. But what if all of this pressure isn’t what’s throwing me off, but what’s keeping me steady? What if pressure is just love and love is keeping me anchored?” 

“I try to remember that their intentions are not my intentions, their straws are not my straws, their paths are not my path.” 

“I realize that I have allowed myself to see it all and feel it all and I have survived.” 

“The Journey of the Warrior. This phrase rings a bell in my soul, but why?” 

“So we consume and consume, but it never works, because you can never get enough of what you don’t need.” 

“Our pain is not the poison; our lies about the pain are.” 

“You are not supposed to be happy all the time. Life hurts and it’s hard. Not because you’re doing it wrong, but because it hurts for everybody. Don’t avoid the pain. You need it. It’s meant for you. Be still with it, let it come, let it go, let it leave you with the fuel you’ll burn to get your work done on this Earth.” 

“We either allow ourselves to feel the burn of our pain or someone we love gets burned by it.” 

“I see your pain. It’s real. I feel it too. We can handle it, baby. We can do hard things. Because we are warriors.” 

“We think our job as humans is to avoid pain, and our job as friends is to fix each other’s pain. Maybe that’s why we all feel like failures so often - because we all have the wrong job description for love.” 

“What we need are patient, loving witnesses. People to sit quietly and hold space for us. People to stand in helpless vigil to our pain.” 

“Grief is love’s souvenir. It’s our proof that we once loved. Grief is the receipt we wave in the air that says to the world: Look! Love was once mine. I loved well. Here is my proof that I paid the price.” 

“The journey is learning that pain, like love, is simply something to surrender to. It’s a holy space that we can enter with people only if we promise not to tidy up. So I will sit with my pain letting my own heart break. I will love others in pain by volunteering to let my heart break with theirs.” 

“Trust your body to guide you. Treat yourself like someone you love, Glennon. Listen to what you want and need and give it to yourself. Be your own friend.” 

“They are lovers of each other, and that identity is truer than was her beauty or his status. They are left with the truth and the truth is love.” 

“Is this space we’re in right now love? Are we in love right now? Can you only be in love with someone as often as you are fully present? How did we get here? Is it safe for me here?” 

“The next step on my path lights up in front of me.” 

“You can call God whatever you want....can you really? This is not what I’ve been taught. I’ve been taught that I must call God by a certain name or He will burn me forever.” 

“What happens next lasts for one moment and forever. I begin to feel myself float up and out of the room, into a night sky filled with stars. As I rise, my chest opens and expands until I lose all my boundaries and I can no longer tell where I end and the sky begins.”

“I am at peace and I understand that I am in the middle of a reunion with God. This is a returning of my soul to its source. My soul’s source is God, and God is love.” 

“Fear and God will never make sense to me again. I am loved and have always been loved and will always, always be loved. I have never been separated from this love,  I have only convinced myself I was.” 

“We are ashamed of the design of the one we claim to worship. So we sweep our mess and hide our doubts, contradictions, anger, and fear before showing ourselves to God, which is like putting on a fancy dress and makeup to prepare for an X-ray. I think about how the people who seem closest to God are often not dressed up and sitting in pews, but dressed down and sitting in folding chairs in recovery meetings. They have refused to cover themselves up any longer. They are the ones who are no longer pretending.” 

“The truth is grace and grace makes no exceptions. I am not what I’ve done.” 

“We are individual pieces of a scattered puzzle and we are just a little lost down here. We are all desperate for reunion and we are trying to find it in all the wrong places.” 

“I know how to find my way back to truth, to love, to peace, to God again. All I have to do is be still and breathe and wait for the clouds and fear to pass.” 

“Don’t jump through hoops. Walk past the middle men and straight towards the source.” 

[vent-writings-little-ortist]

The Careless Kindess and the Fearful Melancholy

Okay.

Okay?

No, nothing was “okay”.

In fact, everything felt wrong. She wasn’t supposed to feel this way, and yet she still felt that damn emptiness. It made her angry. She was angry at her own feelings so he didn’t have to be. What could she do to let out her anger? She’s not breaking any promises, and she sure as hell wasn’t taking it out on someone else. No, she felt that same feeling of loneliness and abandonment that she’d always felt. Things were supposed to change. She fixed everything, so why wasn’t she happy? She was so angry at herself, so angry because no matter what she did she couldn’t fix herself. She remembered people saying that she needed to make an improvement on her life instead of moping around. Well, here she was. Improvements were made. Now what? Was there supposed to be some sort of awakening?

Wait, no that wasn’t the problem, she realized. It was abandonment. People ignored her daily. At school and even online. Maybe something was wrong with her that made people expel away from her, that made her unlikable and awkward.

“It’s probably just nothing,” she thought. But nothing doesn’t cause a physical ache in your chest, or cause a sinkhole inside of you to form and damage your spirit. Mastering the art of not caring causes that pain to those who believe in you, who trust you to be there for them to talk to, to make them feel better. If they come to you, it should be a sign that they need you. However, there are some people in this world who are selfish in a way. They don’t see the signs and they get angered when someone’s being too upfront about them. Those people are in the wrong kind of happy medium. The kind of person who, even their closest family and best friends, can’t trust to speak to. Even when they’re the only option, we must keep to ourselves. In this world, you are either the careless kindness or the fearful melancholy.

[arc-misadventures]

To make rwby feel even worse, can we get the interation between them and ren and nora right after their talk with jaune. And these two telling them about yang's insult and that he knew about pyrrha's feeling , that they didn't care about HIS feelings, only pyrrha's and that they were pyrrha's friends and he was only pyrrha's partner/friend to them.

Friends VI

Ruby: Hey guys…

Nora: Hi…

Yang: You guys seem pretty down; I take it your talk with Jaune yesterday failed?

Ren: We did, we failed from the moment we started…

Weiss: What do you mean?

Nora: He knew that you didn’t like him. And, that Pyrrha loved him. He knew all this and more, and yet, we all believed he was a dense idiot who couldn’t pick up on a damn thing…

Yang: He… he knew?!

Ren: Not until the dance. After that, he became aware of everyone’s feelings.

Ruby: If he knew then why didn’t he do anything! Pyrrha was waiting so long! If he told her, then maybe…!

Nora: Because he didn’t know how he felt about her! Dammit! Jaune was right!

Weiss: Right about what?

Nora: Pyrrha, Pyrrha, Pyrrha! We all saw this from Pyrrha’s view, that not once did we think about Jaune’s view on this! He’s never had someone sincerely fall in love with him! He had no idea what to do, how to do it, and how he felt about anything! And the worse part is, we’re still doing it! All of use are looking at things from Pyrrha’s view! And not, Jaune’s! This about two people in love, not just the one of them!

Ren: Nora, please calm down… I understand why you’re upset. But… it’s too late to fix anything about it.

Weiss: Jaune’s right… We always saw things from Pyrrha’s perspective… Why didn’t, Jaune see how wonderful Pyrrha was. Why couldn’t, Pyrrha just tell, Jaune how she felt… Did we ever see it from his point of you?

Yang: I remember the combat classes back at Beacon; I always thought, ‘Man, how could, Pyrrha be partnered with such a weak guy.” How could Pyrrha… Never, why is Jaune so weak? Always from Pyrrha’s view…

Ruby: T-That’s not true! I saw things from, Jaune’s perspective!

Blake: Is that how you remember it, or is that how you want to remember it?

Ruby: I-I…

Weiss: The more we hear about this, the more we learn that we were never his friends… Always thinking about others or ourselves, but never about Jaune…

Ren: We made him feel alone within a crowded room.

Blake: I can’t imagine what that does to a persons mind; So many people within arms reach, so many people who can see you, so many ears capable of hearing you whisper. And yet, he could grab us by our arms and shake our bodies like a rag doll, bloke the world so he was all that we could see, scream into our ears with a deafening voice. And yet, we were blind and deaf to it all…

Weiss: I’m afraid we must accept the fact that we were never, Jaune’s friends, and that we never will be…

Ruby: That’s… That’s not true! We are, Jaune’s friends, we’ve always been his friends! We’re…! We’re… we’re…

Nora: Nothing… We’re nothing to him now…

Ren: I guess there’s nothing we can do now, is there…?

Weiss: No, there is one thing we can do for, Jaune…

Ruby: What?! What is it?! Tell me, tell me!

Weiss: We find, Cinder, and kill her.

[d3nt4l-d4m4g3]

people say "things are so much better now."

I think I was raised with this notion that violence towards women is nothing like it was 100 or 2000 years ago. That rape was down. That we have gotten more heard than was ever possible before. That we are safe.

But recently I have been forced to seriously ask: What policies have been put in place to correct this violence, rape, erasure what new ideologies have allowed women to benefit more now than in the past?"

the conclusion I come to is almost always "none." I look up rape statistics in the US: from 2014 to 2018, the instance of rape has shown a 20 percent increase. according to Rainn, one American is sexually assaulted every 68 seconds. 1 in 6 women have been raped and 1 in 33 men have been raped. (Interestingly, there was no statistic for how many men and women are rapists.) Instances of child-on-child rape in schools are increasing. That's just in the U.S. that isn't counting the millions of child marriages and millions of sex trafficking victims across the world.

Another lie I think is always accepted before we think more critically: "women are getting paid fairly for their work now."

While this isn't even true in practice, it is evident that working women with male partners and children now effectively must work a double shift, taking on the entirety of the housework, childcare, cooking, and emotional labor while still being paid less on average than her husband. The near-full responsibility of the children and the statistically meager earnings of these women means they may have no way to escape from male partners if they become abusive. The social mobility and freedom that "equal pay" promises for women are not often a reality.

It is not that our world is better, but that the crime is hidden more effectively. Hidden, in conservative circles, or, in the case of the liberal, broadcasted so totally (and liberals own the media) that it becomes accepted. Porn culture erodes our understanding of consent and intimacy, so even the nonrapists are neutralized to coercive sex/sexual domination. "It's not bad anymore," they say. "Where sexual domination was once humiliating, it is now liberating." the "reclamation" is not in fact a powerful statement but a Stockholmed concession to a rampant epidemic of rape. Rape is possibly the most horrific assault anyone can go through, and it is normalized. As for the "women work/equal pay" scam, the amount of money from work women are making is measured against men, which gives a skewed but hopeful statistic: 77% of the man's dollar? Well, it's not great, but it's something that can be improved on with patience.

In this statistic, in no case is the emotional labor, childcare labor, sustenance labor (grocery-shopping/cooking, which we cannot discount as minor) of men measured against the emotional, childcare, sustenance labor of women; nor has there ever been a price on this labor because it has always been women's labor. The backbreaking, 24/7 work assumed to be free and mineable, in reality, provides the most necessary products imaginable to men and children: physical sustenance, by preparing meals; emotional sustenance, by being the only friend and confidante their emotionally constipated husbands have, and by being the most powerful, wisest, most dependable figure in their children's lives. Not to mention, because she does all or most of the housework, she is the lone fighter in the war against entropy that her husband, children and time flings at her. litters the house with. She alone restacks the charred and crumbling bricks—that, until she breaks down herself and is declared mentally ill, borderline, antisocial, sent to reprogramming institutions to be fixed.

Women are as if not more exploited than ever before. I think I saw a statistic that says women do over 60 percent of the world's labor, but I can't find it so don't quote me. Even if women did, say, 40% of the manual labor, they without a doubt do damn near 100 percent of the emotional and household labor that literally allows every one of us to survive. Women and girls are still being trafficked in the millions across the world, are raised with rape as the silent or celebrated normality. In The US, women's male partners are literally the number one person most likely to kill them.

Let's not delude ourselves. The people before us thought they were modern and civilized too. That their men would never do those things, having been "raised right", and that they were raised smarter than to fall to abuse. But we are smack dab in the middle of history, not at the top or end of it. We are living the same history that, pointing at our textbooks, we call a nightmare.

[inkmemes]

ryan  ross  lyric sentence  starters ↪  taken  from  various  songs  he’s  written,  lyrics  he’s  sung,  &  poetry  he’s  penned.  trigger  warnings  for  mentions  of  sex,  cheating,  drugs.  alter  as  you  see  fit  ♡

“so close …”

“i am composing a burlesque.”

“i'm all alone in an afterglow.”

“but we haven’t even met yet.”

“this war ain't gonna fix itself.”

“you can’t be lonely.”

“you're gonna have to dig your way out.”

“she was nowhere to be seen.”

“some people never change.”

“i know i broke your heart. mine is broken too.”

“i'm carving pumpkins.”

“i'm afraid that i may have faked it.”

“though you tried to cut me down it wasn’t deep enough.”

“this may call for a proper introduction.”

“i know it’s mad.”

“all the lights are on, but no one's home.”

“a year ago, i was dreaming of where i am now.”

“charm your way out.”

“we're all too small to talk to god.”

“you’re invited.”

“it's not so pleasant.”

“if you're going, then go.”

“i was suspicious and naive.”

“we're still so young, desperate for attention.”

“things have changed for me, and that's okay.”

“that's the spirit.”

“watch your mouth.”

“it started with a simple kiss.”

“don't you move.”

“what a wonderful caricature of intimacy.”

“we'll never go hungry.”

“praying for love in a lap dance and paying in naivety.”

“i lie in silence and feel like a fool.”

“grab your hat and fetch a camera.”

“your eyes are the size of the moon.”

“it's time for us to take a chance.”

“you should take this heart of mine.”

“how did i get here in the right from wrong?”

“i know it just doesn't feel like a night out.”

“it just made her more interesting.”

“she didn't even see me.”

“do you know what i mean?”

“i'm wrecking this evening already, and loving every minute of it.”

“i sure do make an easy target.”

“someone i love loves someone else.”

“don't bother waiting up.”

“don’t you go down.”

“you vanished when you'd gotten what you came here for.”

“would it be alright if we just sat and talked for a little while?”

"when did he get all confident?"

“you know it will always just be me.”

“i feel the same.”

“all my forgotten poems are a joke.”

“she'd wanna kiss you all the time.”

“i want a big celebration.”

“i'll ignore my heart and lie to the truth.”

“film the world before it happens.”

“that's just ridiculously odd.”

“it grows like fancy flowers.”

“he tried to save the calendar business.”

“i wonder if this was physical or if it could have been in my head.”

“i wouldn't be caught dead in this place.”

“you're pulling the trigger all wrong.”

“i saw you, i met you, i loved you.”

“so let me set you free.”

“i'm aware that you're scared of my heart, but it's here.”

“northern downpour sends its love.”

“you better put that pen to paper.”

“if you're gonna preach, for god sakes, preach with conviction.”

“haven't you heard that i'm the new cancer?”

“i know i broke your heart.”

“i am something velveteen.”

“we're locked inside.”

“just don't put your teeth on me.”

“when i’m good, i’m the baddest.”

“i’m up, looking for you now.”

“you can call me tonight.”

“it sure as hell ain't normal.”

“haven't you people ever heard of closing the goddamn door?!”

“we sure are in for a show tonight.”

“can't take the kid from the fight.”

“she's got me twisted in love.”

“i could've waited for the train to come.”

“you could love me if i knew how to lie.”

“if it were me, i'd write another song.”

“i fell from the heavens as a fetish.”

“i am renewed.”

“i hope that i've still got your help.”

“take a look at what you got me into.”

“we should feed our jewelry to the sea.”

“who could ask for any more?”

“i'm pouring out my heart for paper.”

“i need to leave you but i never will.”

“i forgot how to call you.”

“just stay where i can see you.”

“it's the greatest thing that's yet to have happened.”

“i’m doing my best.”

“she didn't choose this role.”

“life is not a fairytale.”

“our loneliness will keep us warm.”

“i don't mind taking a photograph.”

“you're gonna bend until it breaks.”

“maybe something in my blood could lift my spirits up.”

“i am out of my mind.”

“imagine knowing me.”

“i hope it's where i belong.”

“is it still me that makes you sweat?”

“your speech is slurred enough that you just might swallow your tongue.”

“i must be lucky to have you be the one who loves me.”

“but who could love me?”

“you clicked your heels and wished for me.”

“give me your attention.”

“you set the house on fire.”

"man, it feels good to feel this way."

“i've got more wit, a better kiss, a hotter touch, a better fuck then any boy you'll ever meet.”

“if the clouds were singing a song, i'd sing along. wouldn't you, too?”

“i know i've been wrong.”

“kissed a girl in the lobby ‘cause she asked so politely.”

“i can't get out by myself.”

“true love like ours is worth so much more than a diamond ring.”

“it never made her happy, 'cause she couldn't ever have me.”

“i do drunk dialing minus the alcohol.”

“i hope to god he was worth it.”

“he looked like he was barely hanging on.”

“why do i find myself outside at your window in the night?”

“i'd put a statue of myself upon the shelf.”

“they spill unfound from a pretty mouth.”

“ i'm going to need you to keep time.”

“you better back your shit up.”

“i think i owe it to you to try to be every hallucination you see in me.”

“you do this all the time."

“you're not what he's thinking of when he's with the other girl.”

things have changed for me.”

“this was no accident.”

“it's much better to face these kinds of things with a sense of poise and rationality.”

“just sit back and relax.”

“i, for one, won't stand for this.”

“we play by donner party rules at all times.”

“the glitter is gone.”

“boys will be boys.”

“you're all that's left for me.”

“my mind is all mixed up.”

“who knew that love was a dangerous drug?”

“'she couldn't ever have me.”

“isn't this exactly where you'd like me?”

“we can play normal for a few days.”

“i ground my teeth and you bite your tongue.”

“in case i lost my train of thought where was it that we last left off?”

“it seems i’m someone i've never met.”

“i think i made you up.”

“it never gave a damn about me.”

“perhaps, i was born with curiosity, the likes of those of old crows.”

“i'm cold, i'm hungry, but i'm bored.”

“i don't want no gifts.”

“the monster mash is playing.”

“do you really even live here?”

“this kind of thing always happens.”

“you were right. i was wrong, like i always am.”

“i missed your skin when you were east.”

“i feel as if i’m a figurine.”

“every night is the same.”

“ i'm sure i didn't ruin her.”

“i could have sworn we danced slow before.”

“i'm seated and sweating to a dance song on the club's pa.”

“it's nice to think that you are always wanted.”

“am i who you think about in bed?”

“you'll never know until you're there.”

“come on, this is screaming ‘photo op’.”

“you and i will always be ‘the dream’.”

“any practiced catholic would cross themselves upon entering.”

“it was a scream when we were young and dumb.”

“i know i should've never left.”

“who can i believe?”

“she always had her fangs at my jugular vein.”

“and a few more of your least favorite things.”

“in matters of opinion, love has gone insane.”

“if i go to hell will you come with me or just leave?”

“in the house of mirrors, ain't nothing keep you safe.”

“you know that you feel it too.”

“now we're making some progress.”

“god damn, i’d hate to see what i’d do under the influence.”

“i’m only reflecting your perfections.”

“just a first kiss to face the new year.”

“we’ll sit in silence.”

“you're a regular decorated emergency.”

“euphoria is a risk on the floor.”

“she could never win me.”

“love is all i'm really after.”

“have some composure,.”

“this was a therapeutic chain of events.”

“on the hotel floor, drinking warm champagne.”

“we need to talk.”

“every word gets you a step closer to hell.”

“let me help you please.”

“i never said i missed her when everybody kissed her.”

“now i know it's just a matter of time until i make her come.”

“if the world were ending, would you kiss me or just leave me?”

“forgive me if i’m not quite ready to give them to you.”

“i want to know what everyone knows.”

“you told me not to fear the dark.”

“the weather is impeccable.”

“i don't love you, i'm just passing the time.”

“i can't help but to hear an exchanging of words.”

“love is established philosophy.”

“but it might’ve been the calm that comes before the storm.”

“let's sing it like you mean it.”

“there's a devil in the corner.”

“there’s never anything good on tv.”

“everything goes according to plan.”

“i ran from love like it was laced.”

“i guess we're back to us.”

“we can't help ourselves.”

“i remember fuckin' in the falling rain.”

“i wasn't born to be a skeleton.”

“i couldn't quit her.”

“everything's gone missing.”

“we must reinvent love.”

“i know it's sad that i never gave a damn about the weather.”

“what do i know?”

"the best part about you was me."

“check the pocket of my leather jacket.”

“i am truly made of one million glowing constellations.”

“i mean, technically our marriage is saved.”

“she's a dangerous place.”

“even the truth is wrong sometimes.”

“was it god who chokes in these situations?”

“i feel like something on strings.”

“she couldn't ever catch me.”

“i try not to think about it and you.”

“i know it's just a matter of time.”

“i can't prove this makes any sense, but i sure hope that it does.”

“you know you should take it a day at a time.”

“i never said i’d leave the city.”

“it's the greatest thing you'd ever imagine.”

“i might have lost control.”

“i'm in a rut but still adored.”

“i'll keep my distance.”

“i need to take a vacation.”

“it's almost halloween.”

“is it a fairy tale?”

“well, this calls for a toast, so pour the champagne.”

“you can't stand it.”

“i'm exactly where you'd like me, you know.”

“we were always thick as thieves, you and me.”

“maybe i will, maybe i won’t.”

“all i want to do is dig a hole with you.”

“stop stalling.”

“it truly is enough to be alive and be in love.”

“i can't believe my eyes.”

“if i were to die tonight, would you cry, or deny my place in your life?”

“you are at the top of my lungs.”

“things do like to build up and fall apart at the same time for me.”

“why can't we just be friends?"

“i never know where the evening goes.”

“i want to go where everyone feels the same.”

“i fell in love again.”

“all i do is lie.”

“they asked for it.”

“was it all a dream?”

“all your wishes, they will sink like stones.”

“i wandered through the sunshine.”

“living even one minute without you is a moment i'd rather not have to live to see.”

“i want to go where everyone goes.”

“i think that i have had enough.”

“asked to be her husband; she already had one in prison.”

“true love is scarce.”

“somehow it still came undone.”

“things are shaping up to be pretty odd.”

“is ‘young’ a word for ‘dumb’; a word for ‘fun’?”

“said i'd let you keep it forever.”

“i never said i’d leave this town.”

“guess i'm going to a party.”

“damn, this is rough.”

“someone should have told her that pretty ain't a job.”

“something changed along the way.”

“i can't convince myself that you were good for more than cheap thrills.”

“now i’m the only one to blame.”

“let's not get selfish.”

“i hardly knew a thing about you.”

“give your feet a chance, they'll do all the thinking.”

“make a name for yourself.”

“it's useless searching in the cupboards.”

“i won't cut my beard and i won't change my hair.”

“it’s just the end of the world.”

“back to the room where it all began.”

“what was it that you put into my guts?”

“what a shame.”

“we'll leave the past out to pasture.”

“i know the world’s a broken bone, but melt your headaches, call it home.”

“everybody knows it but you.”

“it looks like the end of history as we know.”

[thesunshinebunny]

When the world falls apart, the only thing we can hold onto is ourselves (Part IV)

Series Master list

pairing: canon Eren Jaeger x reader

content: Angst, unstable relationship, breakup, smut/nswf+18, major character death, violence, blood (obviously), war (pretty obvious)

summary: War and hate. It’s what defined the world at this exact moment. You failed your comrades, and by failing them, you failed yourself. Your relationship is hanging by a thread and your enemies will not only be found on the other side of the sea, but also in the mind of the person you love the most. How will you take the reins in the face of so much destruction?

Chapter Summary: Talk doesn´t seem to be like a good attack plan and now reader has to run for their life and avoid being caught by the Jaegerists.

Words Count: 6.1k

Silence reigned in the room. Only our breaths could be heard, some agitated, others calm, as well as footsteps fading at the end of the corridor. I could feel my heart pounding hard on my chest, inwardly wishing that no one could hear it. From the distance that each one was, I doubted it was physically possible; But let's face it, in a world full of humans turned into Titans, whose possessors can regenerate their body parts, listening to the beat of a heart shouldn’t be a difficult task.

"I wanted to speak with you"

Eren's lifeless eyes weren't focused on anyone in particular, I could notice his face even darker than it had been in recent days and a look much duller. My hand on the table was very close to his, threatened with blood staining from the crimson pool that was forming on the beautiful white tablecloth.

On my left side, the little girl was shaking up and down, not looking at anyone or anything at all. She also had her hands on the table, as did everyone. I directed my gaze towards the other companions at the table, the three were reversed in a conversation that I had no intention of being part of. The only thing that interested me was to give a little security to this poor girl.

I made a little movement with my elbow and shoulder toward her, trying to get her attention, but it didn't make her turn around. I tried again, this time launching a breathless and very low 'hey', taking advantage of the voices at medium volume to lighten mine. That did work. The girl had turned her eyes to me, she was still extremely scared and it showed in her eyes and all over her face. I was very sorry to see her like this.

I gave her a slight smile, curling the tip of my lip upward, and nodded. Her gaze locked with mine for a few seconds and I could see how she was calming down, even a little, but it was there. It was a stressful situation for everyone, I didn't even want to imagine what she must feel, and if my possibilities were within bringing her some calm, I would. I made a little "s'ok" with my lips without speaking, not even whispering.

"Are you paying attention?" My gaze turned to the source of the problem again. Eren had his eyes fixed hard on my face. I thought I might have gone unnoticed, but I was wrong.

I adjusted my posture on the chair, now staring forward, but with my eyes fixed on those intense but haggard gray-green eyes. I took my gaze away from his for a second to see the girl next to me, who was again trembling with fear, and I reached my hand towards hers, returning my gaze to it’s previous position. Eren  clenched his fist at this movement and furrowed his brow even more, sending me a silent and mental warning. I ignored his threat and grabbed the girl's hand, at no point taking my eyes off his and accentuating my head up high.

"Keep your hands on the table Mikasa"

His gaze now turned to his childhood friends, standing myself alone at the side of the table, failing incredibly to calm a twelve-year-old girl. And as if there was nothing that could make the situation worse and make the moment much more stressful, they had to touch on sensitive issues, issues that were like putting a finger on the sore.

"Armin, you keep going to see Annie, do you really do it of your own free will?" Was it really necessary? There was nothing, or so it seemed, that could give any indication that Annie was about to wake up, and the fact that Armin wanted to go see her didn’t seem bad at all, or at least that’s what I thought; Indeed, it clearly showed Armin's sentimental attraction to her.

Yes, Annie was an important key to the investigation of the titans, but that was four years ago, now we were just sitting back in the chair and hoping that, by some miracle, the glass that surrounded Annie and left her in a reverie state will unfreeze. That Armin came to see her didn’t change anything in the plans of the militancy, much less the legion.

"Since you inherited the memories, a part of you is now Berthold"

Ah, that’s where the shots came from. It was difficult to understand the powers and responsibilities that came with being a titan shifter. We weren’t only talking about the short life that the owners unfortunately had to endure, but also the memories of their predecessors, memories that could haunt their current owner.

Likewise, blaming Armin for Berthold's memories wasn't going to fix things. Armin was still Armin, the sweet and calm boy, willing to fight if necessary, but always opting for the least violent solution, the most civilized one. He tried it on Annie and he tried it on Berthold, failing both times.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair to blame Armin for having the memories of one of our enemies in his mind, memories that I never wish to obtain or see. As far as I knew, Grisha's memories, while they had been an impact towards the general knowledge of the world, hadn’t shaped Eren ... had they?

Nor was it fair to see how the same boy who had so supported his childhood friend in the years as a recruit, was internally unbalanced by the stubbornness of that friend. See how fear invaded his gaze and he was petrified to such putrid revelations.

"Eren ..." I tried to stop him, God, I swear I tried to stop him.

I tried to use the word my comrades wanted to use so badly, the words Armin wanted to use, but they weren't enough. In a thousandth of seconds, horrific ideas flashed through my mind, wishing none of them would come true. If the conversation went this way, it could end not just a friendship of years, but the sanity of all of us. I wasn't important in this trio, I was an add-on, and I couldn't allow Eren to continue destroying relationships and people wherever he stepped.

But I wasn't quick enough to stop him with words. When he finished defenestrating Armin, he turned his attention to Mikasa. Of all the people, the one who I was most afraid was her, the person who would collapse the most if he detached himself from her half-brother.

"You too Mikasa"

My eyes went wide as I heard the truths of the Ackerman clan. Created and genetically engineered to protect and follow orders, without conscience, without free will. Mikasa was devastated and I could see in her eyes how images of her childhood passed through her mind, images and memories that now seemed like a lie, a sham.

"In short ... a clan created to protect others who have no conscience of their own"

"Eren, stop" Armin was just as scared as I was, praying to any God who had been watching us that so much evil stop at once, that those words would stop coming out of that damn viperine tongue. Eren was vomiting word after word, without measuring the consequences, without measuring the damage it could cause to Mikasa's mind.

"In other words, slaves"

The situation was getting out of hand. Nothing we could say or do right now was going to help. The conversation that Armin wanted with all his might to take place was going overboard. If the others could be present with us, they would see clearly like me how the faith in his friend was dissipating with the seconds in the blond's gaze.

"At last I understand why I hated to see a slave who carried out all orders without question"

His eyes were filled with hatred, resentment, anger, contempt, and a thousand other degenerative feelings. His intention was very clear the moment he entered the room: to hurt; and he was succeeding.

He’d done me a lot of damage in the last year, such damage that it reached the darkest and inner corridors of my mind and it was impossible for me to move forward on a gray and dubious course, and now he was willing to continue doing more damage, this time to his closest friends, those people that I never thought, that never crossed my mind, he could destroy internally. He was annihilating their willpower and their desire to fight, and he’s doing so by colossal steps.

"Eren that's enough!" Armin and I shouted in unison. We didn’t necessary have to say a word or look at each other to know that the next words were going to be disastrous.

"Mikasa, I have always hated you"

That was the breaking point. Mikasa's eyes filled with tears and they didn't last for a second on her lids, they were already being spilled onto her cheeks. She was completely devastated and I couldn't blame her. The person who had given her a home after the brutal murder of her parents, the person to whom she was so devoted and would give her life, was turning his back on her, as well as killing sentimentally.

"You damn bastard!"

Armin jumped on the table with the intention of reaching the dark-haired man, but he didn’t get very far, being pulled from the chest to the hard wood of the furniture by Mikasa herself. And that only made the situation worse and agreed with Eren. It was as if fate was laughing at us for trying to pull the strings of our paths, strings that handled us like puppets and over which we had no control.

Mikasa let go of Armin's hand when she realized the act she just did, horrified with herself, and he now had the opportunity to pounce on Eren, throwing a punch in the middle of his face and throwing him to the floor. With that, the table flew backwards and in a reflex action, I also threw myself back, letting the chair fall to one side and avoiding any blow that the table could give me.

Unconsciously I lunged towards the girl next to me, preventing at all times that the table hit her or that some of the two men who were fighting each other to ended up bumping into her. I pushed her away from any crossing point and hid her behind my back, using my body as a shield against any impact that could shoot towards our position. Mikasa had also run to the left side of the wine cabinet, contemplating the scene before hers with complete sadness.

Eren's fist slammed into Armin's face, throwing him straight into the cabinet, knocking a few wines against his back and knocking a couple of ceramic plates to the floor. My instincts screamed I needed to help Armin, even knowing that he could regenerate in a matter of seconds, that the cuts and bruises weren't going to last long, but that wasn't why I wanted to help him.

It wasn’t the pain and physical blows that worried me, but the psychological anger and damage that this was entailing.

"Jaeger-san!"

Two followers slammed into the room, pointing their rifles directly at Armin and Mikasa's heads. They were unaware of my presence, paying more attention to the boy beaten from head to toe and the girl crying like a river.

I took a step forward and reaffirmed my theory, my presence wasn’t being recognized. I took another step, and another, and another, until I was right next to the fallen table and turned around, making sure the girl was still where I left her, that she was safe and sound. I gestured with my finger to my lips for her to be quiet and to stay still and turned to the scene in front of me. Eren kept beating poor Armin, who was unable to defend himself properly. He was right, in a hand-to-hand fight, Armin would be the worst off, even myself, but that didn't mean I couldn't manage to come out victorious.

Next to me, the chair Eren was sitting at a few seconds ago was still in the same place where he felt. With great care and tranquility, I bent down to grasp the back legs of it, without taking my eyes off Eren or the pseudo-guards who still had with their rifles at a shooting position, raised it to the height of my head and then smashed it against the two armed men in the stomach area. I hurriedly kicked each of them to the face, preventing them from having a chance to get up quickly, just as I slung the rifles from their shoulders with the same leg and pushed them away under a window. Without wasting time, I turned around to find Eren realizing the events that were happening next to him, and I wedged a blow in the middle of his face, in the same way Armin had done.

The blow hadn't been quite strong since he didn't fall to the ground, but it was enough to throw him off balance and make him leave Armin alone. The blonde fell to the floor, exhausted and sore from the multiple punchs to the face he had suffered, and I continued to give a new blow to the stomach height to the brunette in front of me. One of his knees fell to the ground, giving me the opportunity to grab his arm and twist him from behind, immobilizing him. I put my other arm over his armpit, preventing him from moving his arms and his upper body.

“That’s enought you fucking bastard. Mikasa..."

My face was on the crook of Eren's neck, preventing me from seeing clearly ahead, but my partial gaze sought out those tear-filled gray eyes to signal her to help me. My voice was already a signal for help even if I wasn't yelling. I could see how those eyes were full of conflicts, a battle was being fought inside her mind and she seemed to not be able to reason what she saw.

"MIKASA!"

This time I did yell, asking with all my will Mikasa could come to her senses, that she could help me with the lost cause Eren was now. I wasn’t going to be able to control him for much longer, I didn’t have the necessary strength and that was why I was trying to reach her. But the fear in my eyes was reflected when I saw that she wasn’t moving, that she was simply watching with tears in her eyes, eyes that would surely be cloudy and couldn’t see clearly. My fear was reflected when I saw that no one was going to be able to help me.

Eren hit his head against mine, right on the septum of my nose. My head jerked back involuntarily and my arms lost support on his. He grabbed my left hand, holding it high, much higher than my head, uncovering my stomach and his knee hitting it’s pit, not just once, but twice. His leg hit my knee, yanking it back and knocking me off what little balance I had left.

His grip on my hand released and I fell hard on my knees and hands onto the wooden floor. My stomach was spasming and I regurgitated bile, struggling to take in some air that I was deprived of in a matter of milliseconds. I coughed all I could until my stomach settled back, but I was unable to get back to my feet. I felt two pairs of hands grab my arms and I stood up abruptly, grabbing my hair even and looking up as the turquoise eyes set at my point of view.

"Why do you always have to be in the middle? Why can you never stay quiet in a corner without sticking your nose in someone else's butt? " Without my noticing, his fist slammed into my nose, hitting the septum back and most likely breaking it. My head cocked to the side and I could see drops of blood falling to the ground and a stream spreading from under my nostrils to my chin. "It was frustrating to see how in all the missions you were there, being a useless without importance"

Useless? I was the one who treated his wounds in training, tying his head when he hit the stone floor in his practice with the movement equipment. I was the one who put cold water on his ankle when he bent it while running through the lush forest on a rainy day. I was the one who pushed him to the side when he was going to hit a stone face down for not looking where he was going. I was one of those who saved him when he was captured by Reiner and Berthold. I was the one who pulled him out of the middle of an onslaught of titans when he first activated the coordinate, even with a wounded and bleeding shoulder.

I was the one who slapped him to make him stop crying inside the cave when Rod Reiss was transforming, claiming this wasn’t the time for his tantrums and that if he wanted to make a change in this whole twisted story, he better put down the crocodile tears for when he was in the quiet of his bed.

It was me who warned him of dozens of Marleyan soldiers when he shed from his titan back at Libero.

“And yet you continued to stick to me like a lap dog to the leg of it’s owner. Yet another slave. Makes me gag just looking at your face"

I turned my face to him, fixing my eyes on his, conveying all the hatred and contempt he was making me feel. I felt my heart shrink at such crude words, but my duel had started several weeks ago and they didn’t achieve the same effect as with Mikasa. What he did was get me to give him a contemptuous half smile and laugh in his face. His eyes darkened when he saw my reaction. Whether he expected it or not was no longer important to me. He gave a slight nod to the men behind me and I noticed how my arms were gathered around my back and tightened so that I couldn't move. One of them walked away from me and went straight towards Mikasa and Armin, pointing his rifle at their heads.

"Take them, the brat who killed Sasha too"

I wasn’t going to allow it.

My two comrades were pushed into the corridor outside while I glared at them waiting for my turn to go out with the man behind me. The girl was completely scared and she had walked to the door of her own will, perhaps avoiding being further hurt. The moment Eren was about to leave, I slapped my head against the man's face repeatedly until his grip weakened and I was able to move freely again. I turned to him, kneeing him in the face and stomach. When I managed to reduce him to the ground, making him roll into a ball and couldn't move without causing him pain when he breathed, I wanted to turn towards the door with the sole intention of getting the poor girl out of the conflict. My hand was halfway searching for her when Eren grabbed it and yanked me back violently, slamming me against the table.

I lost my balance for a second and as an involuntary act I grabbed the tablecloth, but that didn’t do much, making me fall to the floor in the same way. Eren lunged at me, his body falling completely on top of mine and pinning me to the ground. His legs were positioned at each place of my torso and his fist hit my face not once, not twice, but three times, noticing how the cheek bone began to burn. I lifted my knee to the side of his ribs, my nails finding the skin of his face, and pushed him toward the table, hitting his back against the hard wood and tangling with the tablecloth.

I got up to run, but his leg hit my ankle causing me to fall on my face and hands. When I wanted to turn around again I felt his weight against mine, his legs now better placed on my knees and both hands holding my neck. He squeezed, I felt like the air was beginning to thin, my vision was turning white and I could feel my face redden. I tried to hit him in the face, but I wasn't strong enough to make him stop. I reached the same hand towards my side visualizing one of the chairs thrown by the fight with Armin but Eren was faster and his knee was now pressing against my inner arm.

I was running out of air and at any moment I was going to lose consciousness. In a desperate attempt I turned my eyes around me as best I could and found a bottle of wine broken in half lying a few inches from us, though too far away for me to just reach out. My fingers couldn't even touch the surface of the glass and on my last attempt before I fainted, I pushed myself towards the bottle, grabbed it by the spout, and pulled it towards Eren's face, driving the broken surface onto his cheek and eye. 

Eren grunted in pain and released his hands from my neck, giving me a chance to push him back with both legs and barely get up to run. With cloudy vision and an incredible urge to cough thanks to the pressure on my cervicals and thyroids, I could not make out the whereabouts of the Marleyan girl and ran out the door to the corridor. As I passed the threshold slamming the door wide, rifle bullets were aimed at me, miraculously failing to hit my body. I shrunk my body as much as I could without stopping my feet and looked towards the end of the corridor, finding the second man who was with Armin and Mikasa shooting at me from behind them.

I was about to fall to the ground when Mikasa slammed her shoulder against his, causing him to stagger backward and she struggled to get the rifle out of his hands. In those few seconds of advantage, Armin stepped between the line of fire and me in case any bullets were fired and yelled from his position.

"Go!" I don’t know if it was due to lack of air that I couldn’t react at all quickly and when seeing my indecision to run to where the two of them were or go through the back window, Armin again shouted angrier and more determined "Just go!"

Behind me was a window with broken glass, I assumed due to the bullet holes of the rifle, with a simple blow with my elbow I could break a large part of the glass and jump to the side of the street, but not before giving one last look at Armin and Mikasa, who were still battling the man and Eren coming out of the room half healed and with smoke coming from his wounds.

I fell onto the cobbled street and started running towards the main avenue. My legs were on fire and my lungs were about to collapse, every step I took was a stronger pain in my throat. I wanted to stop and cough to regain normality in my breathing, but I heard behind me the footsteps of people running and yelling to stop me. They were chasing me and if I kept on foot I wasn't going to get very far. I put my fingers to my mouth and whistled as best I could, calling out to Phillip from afar. I had left my horse right at the front door of the restaurant, on the other side of the avenue, so I ran in that direction in order to find him early.

The so-called Jaegerists kept firing behind me, a bullet struck my leg and hit the stone on the ground and ricocheted to the left side against a house. Multiple bullets continued to brush my body, some passing very close to my face and others aimed directly at my legs. In the distance I could see Phillip riding towards me, getting closer and closer. When he came to my side, without stopping, I grabbed his leash and jumped on his back, leaving half my body hanging from lack of strength. I grabbed his neck and motioned for him to turn around and head straight for the avenue.

Phillip was always a fast horse, I thanked the universe for entrusting me to this horse from the first recon mission. He was always there for me, a loyal, strong and very audacious horse, banking me on every expedition and whatever madness crossed my mind to save my companions or myself. I always thanked him for his swiftness and now more than ever I was thanking him in a shaking voice as he continued galloping through the crowd, heading toward the wall’s gate.

Having left the Jaegerists at a considerable distance, I positioned myself correctly on his back, grabbing onto the leash and leaning forward to stroke his head for his great work. I gave myself the freedom to cough and clear my throat of any discomfort, but multiple blows and a firm rumbling behind us made me realize that nothing was over yet, as they were still chasing me, now with their own horses. There weren't many, maybe five or six people and a coach from what I could make out from the hollow of my shoulder, but they were armed and that was what made them dangerous.

I told Phillip to keep riding, to go even faster, to get to the gate as soon as possible. With the riding, the saddle hit my legs and crotch, annoying and hurting me at the same time, but I had to hold it and keep going; we had to get to the gate and fast, very fast. We were a few blocks away when I saw the gate in the distance, wide open and with their respective guards on either side of the threshold.

"Close the door!" I screamed as loudly as I could, feeling my vocal cords tear in the attempt and made my throat hurt even more. The guards turned their heads towards my figure, but none deigned to do what I asked them, they just stared at me stupidly.

"CLOSE THE FUCKING DOOR!" I coughed as I let out such a scream hoping it was clear enough in the message. Seeing me continue to gallop towards the gate and now hearing the bullets being fired, the guards ran towards the internal mechanism and began to close it, giving me enough time to pass through it without being crushed.

The gate ended up closing when Phillip had already traveled about ten meters outside the wall, leaving the Jaegerists on the other side.

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I dipped my head into the clear water of the river. The cold of the current massaged my battered muscles and cleaned the still bleeding wounds. It was already the third time that I’d put my head in the water and I could notice how little by little the pain was dissipating, but knew that the next day I would have a remotely swollen face and a septum to treat.

We had gotten quite far from the wall, maybe forty minutes or an hour galloping, and we had stayed by the river so as not to get lost. Phillip took the time to drink plenty of water and eat some of the dry grass that surrounded the river; I owed my partner a big one and if it was necessary to spend the little savings I had on a better chair and care for him, I would give it all… but when things were calmer and we could go home.

I lay on my back on the grass into a star-shaped possition and gazed up at the clear sky except for a few fluffy clouds. If it din’t for the recurring events in the last month, I would have taken the liberty of enjoying this beautiful day and the days before that surely there were, but I was too blind and busy to notice them.

The grass felt soft except for a few small stones scattered unevenly and the small field insects that landed on my arms and face and then flew off. It was relaxing, too relaxing. The heat of the sun's rays hit my skin and gave me a comforting sensation that soaked down to my bones, generating a pleasant interior warmth and tingling; I wanted to sleep, I wanted to rest, my body was forcing me to take a break, and this place, this moment, seemed like the perfect one. I closed my eyes, wishing sleep and tranquility would come as quickly as possible, but a vibration in the floor and Phillip's screaming snapped me out of my trance.

I raised my head, surveying my surroundings, the vibrations getting stronger as if they were getting closer. I looked at Phillip and followed his line of sight, far over the horizon, there was a litter of horses galloping over the stone paths that had been built a couple of years ago between each wall. Green overcoats could be distinguished over the horizon of the clear blue sky.

"Fuck, I was hoping to be calm for a couple more hours, come on Phillip"

I got on the back of my horse for the third time that day and directed it to the opposite side of where the other horses were riding. Being in the middle of an open field, there weren’t many houses where to take refuge, even though they had built a lot of houses between both walls. A little in the distance was a lush forest of tall trees, but not as tall as those of the Forest of Giant Trees, that enormous nature of fifty and eighty meters.

We stopped right at the entrance, hoping we had distanced ourselves from the litter of horses, but when I got off Phillip to rest my legs, I saw the path we had come from, and in the distance the same horses that he had seen on the stone path were approaching. There was no longer any doubt that they were the Jaegerists.

I turned my head towards the forest, from what I could see from the entrance the trees weren’t at a considerable distance from each other and the small dirt roads were too narrow. I didn’t know this forest at all and the mere fact of entering without knowing the terrain through the narrow corridors didn’t give me much confidence. But going around it wasn’t a good option either and I would end up being visualized in a matter of seconds. We were in a dead end, in a maze, and I had to play the few cards I had cleverly. I unbuttoned the coat which was already very badly placed on my shoulders and tied it on the strap.

"Phillip I need you to keep running, go as fast as you can and as far as your legs can reach" I pulled the saddle off his back, dropping it to the ground and tried to hide it inside a nearby bush with my foot. I brought his head closer to mine, resting my forehead on his muzzle and stroking his side one last time before saying goodbye.

"Go!" I smacked him on the back and Phillip ran down the narrow forest paths. As for me, I tried to dispel the footprints the horse had left behind before sending me to run down another path and go as far as I could into the heart of the forest.

I ran, ran and ran, my legs were on the edge, branches and thorns were digging into my skin making it burn every time other scratches were created in the same place. At this fact, I was resigned to the fact my clothes were bleeding and torn, as well as the matted hair and bruises on my body. My foot made contact with a tree root and I fell between the others, right in a hole, hitting my head and shoulder in the fall. I scraped my arm too, and my shirt was now full of dirt and dry leaves; surely my hair was the same. I heard heavy footsteps near me and I rolled into a ball in the hole, hiding behind the tree and seeking its protection.

"Find them, we can't let them escape"

Six people broke up and each one ran in a different direction in search of me. For an instant, my heart skipped a beat and my breath hitched when I saw one of them pass by the side of the tree where I was. At no point did he turn towards my location so I was able to breathe again. Minutes passed until I stopped hearing nearby footsteps, I got up leaning against the bark and kept walking inward, finding myself up a steep hill down.

I let gravity guide me and my feet unconsciously ran downward, avoiding rocks and bushes along the way. As I reached the low surface of the hill I tripped over my feet, losing my balance and colliding with a small tree that was right in the middle of where I was walking. As I stood up and turned it around, I came face to face with a Jaegerist, hooded, rifle in hand.

"Hey! You- "

My reflexes acted on instinct, my leg went straight to his ribs, hitting him squarely in the side of his stomach. I grabbed the rifle with both hands and hit it with the butt on both sides of the face and discarded it to the side when blood began to come out of his mouth. My hand went straight to his head, slamming it against the tree over and over again without stopping until his body fell unconscious on the grass. The interaction lasted no more than fifteen seconds, but it felt like I was about to explode. So many blows received and produced were leaving collateral effects on my body; at any moment I would pass out.

During the three years of training I have gotten used to physical confrontation and body training that lasted more than five hours, not to mention the months we spent annihilating each Titan within the walls. Those missions that lasted all day, if not more, were nothing compared to what my body was going through right now.

I sat next to the body, trying to catch my breath and rest my eyes. I rested my head on the tree and when I opened my eyes I saw a black figure in the middle of a grove a few meters away. He didn’t carry a rifle and seemed to have no intention of running to any specific place, he simply deigned to look around him, at the ground and towards the treetops. I froze to see Eren staring down at the body.

I shrank as much as I could to the left, hiding in the middle of the bushes, body to the ground, without taking my eyes off that figure that was now heading towards the unconscious body of one of his followers. I crawled back until I found a tree wide enough to hide.

"I know you are here"

It was the only thing I heard him say. My blood ran cold and a cold sweat began to form on my forehead. I was scared, very scared, I wasn’t going to deny it, but this wasn’t the time to sit and watch how they corner me little by little until they capture me. If this was the moment, I was going to give everything to get out of here. I stood up resolutely, taking a deep breath, and showed my face to my perpetrator.

"Do you want to pick up where we left off?"

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[soclonely]

The Clones as Body Positive Quotes

Because honestly I am just struggling right now

Rex-“The most powerful thing anyone can say to us is what we say to ourselves.”

Echo-“People often say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I say that the most liberating thing about beauty is realizing that you are the beholder.”

Fives-“Life is so much more beautiful and complex than a number on a scale.”

Jesse-“And I said to my body softly, ‘I want to be your friend.’ It took a long breath and replied, ‘I have been waiting my whole life for this.’”

Kix-“I say I love myself, and they’re like, ‘oh my gosh’, she’s so brave. She’s so political. For what? All I said is ‘I love myself, bitch!’”

Tup-“To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.”

Dogma-“So the question is, which boulder are you going to choose to roll? The ‘must lose weight’ boulder or the ‘ you I will boldly, defiantly accept the body I’ve got and LIVE IN IT’ boulder?”

Hardcase-“Take your time and your talent and figure out what you have to contribute to this world, and get over what the hell your butt looks like in those jeans!”

Coric-“Just because we have acne, tummy rolls, and chaffing thighs doesn’t mean we need fixed. Period.”

Bly-“This body had carried me through a hard life. It looked exactly the way it was supposed to.”

99-“As a child, I never heard one woman say to me, ‘I love my body’. Not my mother, my elder sister, my best friend. No one woman has ever said, ‘I am so proud of my body.’ So I make sure to say it to my daughter because a positive physical outlook has to start at an early age.”

Cody-"I am allowed to look sexy, feel sexy, and be in love. I am worthy of all of those things. And so are you."

Waxer/Boil-“Your self-esteem won’t come from body parts. You need to step away from the mirror every once in a while, and look for another reflection, like the one in the eyes of the people who love you and admire you.”

Wolffe-“Your body is your home, your vessel in life. It needs to be respected and loved.”

Boost/Sinker-“You're a human being. You live once and life is wonderful, so eat the damn red velvet cupcake.”

Hunter-“I’ve made peace with the fact that the things that I thought were weaknesses or flaws were just me. I like them.”

Wrecker-“You have to stand up and say, ‘There’s nothing wrong with me or my shape or who I am, you’re the one with the problem!'”

Tech-“Everybody has a part of her body that she doesn’t like, but I’ve stopped complaining about mine because I don’t want to critique nature’s handiwork … My job is simply to allow the light to shine out of the masterpiece.”

Crosshair-“In order to find real happiness, you must learn to love yourself for the totality of who you are and not just what you look like.”

Omega-“Since I don’t look like every other girl, it takes a while to be okay with that. To be different. But different is good.”

Howzer-“Your words have so much power. Every day, if you tell yourself ‘I love you,’ if you give yourself one word of validation, it will change your mind.”

Fox-“You define beauty yourself, society doesn’t define your beauty.”

Gregor-“Stop trying to fix your body. It was never broken.”