#about the things we ingest and take on as part of ourselves

[sea-critter]

scenes from today’s walk

[girl4music]

“Is it murder if the person deserved it? Warren deserved it. Rack deserved it.”

Erm…. Yes.

Unless the person who killed the person was acting in self-defence or it was a killing where the intention wasn’t to kill anyone. It just ended up happening.

In that case it’s referred to as manslaughter and not necessarily murder. It depends on the circumstances. When it is self-defence it is often necessary to kill but you could still indeed be convicted of manslaughter. And as for killing but unintentionally killing - very likely you will be convicted of manslaughter. Laws may vary between countries and states. But anything goes when it comes to TV art/entertainment. But I would say Willow purposefully killing Warren is murder. And to refer to it as manslaughter would be a grave insult because that dick deserved to be murdered by Willow. And as for Rack - well, she did the world a favour. Not sure on whether he was fully human or not but then I would also say the same about Willow. Witchcraft doesn’t necessarily make you something other than human but I would think you’d have to be more than human to be as powerful as either Willow or Rack was because magic - especially dark magic - is a very potent drug and if you were just sucking it out and ingesting it all the time, you’d have to be able to withstand the amount you take without overdosing. So yeah, I’d say you’d have to be more than human. Willow after her stint as Dark Willow should have indeed died because she absorbed far too much. However, if her becoming Dark Willow did make her more than human - then that explains why she didn’t. I believe there was some demon in her from then on.

Same as how Cordy became part demon after the events of ‘Birthday’ when she decided to take the visions back. Those visions would have killed her if she hadn’t become something more than just human.

Humans are very complicated beings but whether in reality or in art/entertainment - we’re very fragile. We can’t endure much and that’s part of why accepting ourselves as for what we are is a very brave thing. Pretty much anything can take us out - be physical, mental or emotional. We’re just not made to last. Part of what makes watching supernatural or fantasy art/entertainment so enthralling is because we can escape into a Universe where we can feel like more. Buffy does a great job of showing the benefits of being human while also sticking to the realism of it BUT ultimately - the characters that aren’t human or are more than human are the most interesting ones and it’s precisely because we’re not familiar with it. We get bored of and even desensitised by completely human characters like Xander, Riley or Tara because they’re so much like ourselves and we’re not interested in looking in the mirror. We want out of it. I fully admit, accept and embrace this about myself. It’s not just the morally grey characters that I am interested in the most. It’s also the non-human ones.

For me - Willow in particular is a character that starts off human but ever so slightly becomes supernatural.

It’s not stated directly and explicitly. I just think that’s the most plausible take of what her arc amounts to.

Becoming more than human and struggling with it. Reading it this way provides more depth to her conflict with her identity. There’s more to explore. And it makes the only sole main protagonist that remains fully and totally human - Xander - far more interesting because somehow he made it when he shouldn’t have. When I talk about how fragile humanity is - he was literally a walking target all throughout and survived by the skill of his own wit and not by supernaturalness. The fanbase loves to throw him under the bus because “Joss self insert” but I think it counts for something that he made it all the way to endgame and after. Then again, I don’t think the creators were brave enough to kill any of the main protagonists off after killing Tara.

[secretlywritingstories]

I don't like taking pain killers. Mostly because I still haven't gotten great at swallowing those pesky pills, but also because I more so like to power through before resorting to ingesting anything.

It's a stupid thing really, because you should seek pain relief, if you're in pain but for me with a regular headache or period pains and I'll more likely just curl up in bed and rest while it sorts itself out. I know that's a very lucky position because for most parts that can handle it. The normal pain level I experience is none, and then on occasion I can have a mild pain, maybe a little annoying but rest and time can take it way.

Yesterday, I had a very minor "surgery" to remove two of my wisdom teeth. They did call it a surgery because it was the lower wisdom teeth in the jaw and those are always operated out, but it still feels a bit silly. I was advised to take a combination of paracetamol and ibuprofen about an hour later, as the anesthesia wore off.

My mouth was sore and cheeks swollen but the bleeding dried up quick and the pain killers kept me pain free, as long as I don't directly touch my cheeks or the area inside my mouth. It also made me google how pain killers worked for the first time.

I had a vague idea of how but it was still strange seeing it on the search page: when we are in pain or injured, a protein called COX2 releases chemicals called prostaglandins. These chemicals send a signal to your brain, telling you you're in pain. For some reason, it itched something in my (temporarily pain free) brain.

Because it's only really the brain that is pain free. It puts a damper on the experience of feeling the pain but the hurt obviously doesn't go away just by blocking those chemicals. You're not reacting like your body is programmed because of them. And it makes sense, you want to be comfortable, able to function, while healing takes place but it still feels strange.

Even now, nearing 36 hours after the surgery, I have been on pain killers. I'm due to take another round soon, if I feel the need, and I might because sleeping yesterday while the dose wore off wasn't exactly fun. Though I'm not sure mollifying the feel of pain will really help if I'm tossing and turning and bumping the area that's in pain.

Pain killers numb the feeling of pain. A clever trick we designed ourselves. Pretty freaking cool. I have no doubt that it's an actual life saver for those dealing with chronic illnesses/pain or having to heal from major injuries or illnesses. I love that they exist, so this is definitely not me trashing them or their use.

I am happy to use them right now, ease this already annoying period of healing and mandatory rest a little. But easing my reception of the healing wounds in my mouth have not magically sealed them back up. My body will though, another quite cool thing. Until it's further along, I'm happy to have the pain killers, even if the pills might cause me trouble.

[loveyourlovelysoul]

tw grief tw loss

Maybe I have never really said goodbye to you. Maybe the idea of really having to do that, of really having to let you go, scared me too much. Or maybe I did, despite I never allowed myself to feel it was so. I always searched for you in a shadow, in a shape, in a feeling, in a gesture, in a thought... in a dream too. And sometimes I had found you there, smiling back at me. Even in that dream in which you were more than 100 years old, lol. You, with that kind, pure and gentle heart... life could have never let you live for so long.

I have to thank you. You taught me so much, about love, about me, about others, about life, about living with no regrets, day by day, following your heart. About being cared for. About being loved. And you did all this just by being you. Fully yourself. Funny, curious, extroverted, excited, joyous, impulsive, hyper and hyped about things, welcoming, nice, weird, but also so tender, silently present, cautious, wild, protective, strong. You were so many different souls all in one. The whole package, one would say. All I have ever needed. Especially in a moment in which I needed support and a way out, in which I needed to grow, to feel real love, to learn how to care and to take care. You were there. A look in your eyes, and all the problems were just memories. You were my safe place, and I like to think I was yours too, somehow. You know, I probably was slightly obsessed with you... a bit of a toxic love? Who knows... but sometimes when you learn unconditional love and how strong it may be, it's hard to stay away from it even for just few seconds. You crave more and more. You crave its stability, its warmth, its safe embrace. You need to learn how to deal with it and its power, to not get burned or annihilated. You need to be (or grow) ready for it.

And when it leaves, so suddenly, when it goes away, you feel lost. You feel guilty, you feel powerless. So powerless that it kills you. You let the harsh part of life hit you all at once in your face, and let it all crash you down. You see no point in anything anymore, in experiencing happines or any other positive emotion... "it will end, sooner or later". That's what your mind keeps telling you. Touching, feeling warmth in another one, feels so impossible because you only want the warmth that you know and miss so deeply. The one that was "yours". And if you're not aware, if you don't pay attention, if you don't let this pain get out of you, if you don't ask for help or talk about it, it will start bringing you down and down and down... And once you're that far down, if you haven't taken care of your energy, it's hard to get back up. To do it for real. With your whole self.

I did it wrong, ofc. I didn't know what to do. I only felt empty and alone. I missed hearing your breath even. I isolated myself and got even more isolated as well. Instead of trying to help me, people let me alone. Not just cause I always acted independent or pretended I was fine. People never want to see others cry, it's triggering, "it's bad". But crying is only our own way to purify ourselves. And there's nothing wrong or bad in that. At all. But they just cannot bear with it, so they either pretend to not see you or they ask you to stop. To be strong. When the real strong ones, need to cry their pain out first.

I have always solved stuff alone, but sometimes, we need external help sources, when it's too hard to find support from the inside. I started doing what I could. I started writing, I started focusing on studies, I started doing other things among which taking photos (something I had left aside in my life until then, and I will never know why... but I'm thankful I came back "home"). I still pretended it was okay, it was life, I was fine. But the pain, the void, was fixed inside of me. Rotting, waiting for my weakest moments to take the best of me and ingest me once more, to leave me breatheless and useless. But photography was there, together with music, trying to suggest me how to heal, how to look at things from a different perspective, how to get back up. How to focus on what has been good, on what I learned, on what you gave me... and not on what I lost. You gave me parts of you that will always stay with me, as I gave you parts of me that will probably always be yours and I'll never have back. But that's part of some relationships, those that are created to help you grow the most. Those you enjoy the most too. Those that help you change for good, even after they're ended. I will always miss you probably and how I felt/who I was when I was with you, but this doesn't mean I have to live only partially now. That's not what you taught me. You taught me to live fully, to be me. Entirely. To always be me. And so, I'm trying to find myself again. Exactly that specific myself.

Despite this search is still on, I can say that I am who I am today also thanks to you. Also thanks to how you behaved with me. Also thanks to how I learned to behave with you, and how I keep trying to learn more everyday by being curious and hyped as you were (at least on my best days). You didn't change only me, you kinda changed for good all the people you had gotten in touch with. And if this is not magic, I don't know what it is! I just hope I will make you proud one day. Even if probably you were already proud of me, and happy about me. You really never cared much about results, you only cared about hearts and souls. And that's something I learned from you too. And what I want to keep doing in my life.

I hope you're doing good wherever you are now, and whatever you're doing. I'm sure you're taking good care of and teaching important life lessons to someone else. You'll do an amazing work, that's out of question. And maybe one day we'll meet again, somehow. I hope so. Thank you. Bye.

[penname-artist]

Some thoughts! (By the way yes I know it's like, 1:30 AM but also I think I maybe finally found the culprit of the weird night sounds, and it literally might be several things so I'm ruling out some easy stuff first. Fingers crossed!)

So...I try not to talk about things like my exact traumas anymore, for a very good reason. A very long long list of specific hard lessons learned kind of reason. Anyways, for that reason I'm not saying anything about The Trauma, but rather talking around it, because today/tonight something very very interesting happened. And I really just thought some people may need to hear this.

I was speaking with a friend tonight, and we go way back. Waaay back. They were a very important part of my life while I went through one very old and very buried situation. And, that situation resurfaced in conversation today. For the first time in a good while. It has been a bit, let me tell you, I truly have not thought about it or spoken about it that intensely in years.

And two things happened in response to that discussion. The first is that I proved to myself that the situation itself is beyond me. They offered if I wanted to see where they were now in a ways, a sort of closure if you will. I declined. Though I am beyond certain that a younger me would have jumped on the chance to know, the me now knows that I don't need it, and I never will. I made my own closure over that aspect of my life, and it does not need someone else to confirm it.

The second thing I did was cry.

Because I do still care. And it does still hurt. And I do still wish that this one old part of my life hadn't had to end in the ways that it all did. Really, if I had known then what I know today, it probably never would have happened. But the past is the past; I picked up what pieces I had left, and I rebuilt the rest from the ground up. I did that, that was all me. And that's the thing I think more people should get to hear.

Trauma does not make you stronger.

You do.

It's not about what happens to you, it is about what you choose to do after that. The moves you make. Trauma is coming to get us no matter what, and we don't know what's gonna hit us where. The thing that counts the most is how we choose to take it, are we going to let it turn us into monsters or are we going to pick it up and acknowledge it and better ourselves?

And yes, that goes for trauma that you caused yourself. That goes for things in your past that you sure as all hell are not fucking proud of. Acknowledging that you're not proud of it is half the battle, and the other half is changing and moving on. People can teach you how to forgive yourself, but you still have to do it.

And I finally realized that I did. I did that. Or, more specifically I didn't; I didn't break my promise anymore, and I didn't lean back onto my unhealthy habits. I stopped ingesting the poison myself and expecting the other person to drop dead. I took stock of myself, I cut out and grew in new parts of me that I never had before, or could never get better while keeping on me. That wasn't something I was "just taught", I had to learn that shit myself, and I went to the school of hard knocks to do it.

And I'm still growing, certainly. There's more to trim and more to cater to, things a wiser version of me even further down the line will be cringing about from today. But I know I've grown from the place I came from. I know I've changed. And I know I don't need someone else's validation to say that, because I can see that change myself, in myself, of myself, for myself. It's written out across eight books for me to gawk at and go

"wow I really used to say that?"

(insert your old man McQueen joke here)

So yeah. Just some bittersweet thoughts tonight. Missing things a little and feeling sad about it, yes, but also I'm...happy. I'm satisfied. It hurts, but it's over. And it was so important. It was so important. Without the steps that I took to becoming what I am, from that, I never would have met the people I know now. Never would have made the server I've got, never would have even tried. I've come a very long ways in just a few short years. But, that's just my story. :)

[joebyarger]

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[lunarmote]

Week 9? I’ve lost track: It’s getting difficult.

This week, I: scouted out a new cafe on a high school friend’s recommendation, with new friends, hung out with dormmates, went to a Thai restaurant with friends, panicked over Japanese class, went to Gion, and experienced a typhoon warning.

This is going to be a scattered entry; I can feel it x___x

I had a very worthwhile conversation with two new friends here, in Cafe Bibliotic Hello. I think a lot about how our stay is halfway over and we don’t really have that much time left; and it’s true we can choose to make the most out of the moment, but the ultimate question is how?? How quickly time passes by and how unflinchingly. In the end, the amount of minutes in an hour is constant.

By thinking evaluatively we are placing ourselves in the future. We baby our present (”past”) selves by coaxing them to do something that future us will remember fondly. What even is that? The second you start thinking this way, everything and anything becomes pointless. 

This cafe had so many plants on the inside. The menu was handwritten, with a few laminated, half-sized drawings of individual tarts. It is often the case here in Japan that you will not be allowed to order dessert unless you order an entrée as well, or a beverage. A bit problematic for me going to cafes as someone who can’t drink caffeine and doesn’t want to ingest a sugar bomb. The lunch sets were relatively expensive; alas, you pay for ambience here, not just sustenance. 

Many items on the menu have katakana names, including the word for “hot” beverage:  ホット.

What was I going on about? While I was sitting in the cafe with friends I started zoning out a little bit just thinking about what I was doing here. It’s quite laughable that before I came here I had these grand plans to be circumspect and scribble down every minute detail of my life here, and when I’m here for real, so many of my moments blur together and I barely have the energy to do anything. My priorities are completely shifted. Not even in the sense that I have 898,735 things to do and keep putting them off. More in the sense of feeling like everything on my to-do list is pointless.

To take a random example: I was inspired by photobashers in the early days of deviantART who would release stock packs. They had an eye for eccentric textures, taking pictures of bad graffiti and stucco and dilapidated buildings, and making beautiful art out of these. I had told myself if I ever moved to a foreign country to start taking pictures of everything.

I think I did that for about a week here and then I forgot. Now I’m so familiar with the way to school and the traffic lights and the narrowness of the streets that I have lost my “curator’s” eye. I feel like you could get used to anything astonishingly fast. I don’t even remember what the San Diegan counterpart of these things look like, but I’m sure 2 weeks back in San Diego will have me forget Kyoto.

Am I satisfied with how I’ve spent my time here? If anything, I am disappointed by could improve at living for me. Even here I am driven by my desire to make things right, for other people to be happy. I need to ask myself if doing things for other people is truly who I am, or if I’m doing things to get a reaction out of them.

On Tues evening I went to a Thai restaurant with two friends from my dorm. It’s interesting to me how “spice” scales never really tell you anything because different parts of the world have different standards for spice. Taking into account that this was a Thai restaurant in Japan, which is not really known for its spicy food. But I love Thai food so much especially papaya salad, which we ordered, along with seasoned squid, basil chicken, and Tom Yum-flavored fries.

In the middle of the week I realized we had a test and I started panicking over it. I typically (at home) have a hard time studying for things anyway, but being in Kyoto doesn’t help when you are surrounded by people always doing things and inviting you to things. I tried to combat this by staying in the lounge area where people coming out of their rooms could see me. It worked, kind of.

There are a few other habits that are slipping, such as doing laundry on time, getting healthy groceries, even paying bills at the 7-Eleven. It’s always because there is one minor step that is an inconvenience and that makes me forget/put it off until it officially becomes “late.” Like, laundry for instance. Our laundry machines only take 100 yen coins, and 100 yen coins are a bit high in demand when you consider their many uses. Thankfully there is a vending machine next to our dorm which takes 1000 bills, but then I’m stuck with a sugared drink I don’t want and an extra plastic bottle I have to recycle, which then I have to buy more trash bags for. I think I collected over 20 plastic bottles before I realized this was a little bit unsustainable and I should probably start saving 100 yen coins.

Groceries I think I unconsciously started dreading when I first moved here because the cashier would say a bunch of Japanese to me that I didn’t understand. Now I understand what they’re asking and an additional problem has popped up: it’s awkward to cook here. We have a single induction stove in our rooms, no vent fan and no closet door so odors stick to your clothes, plus the length of our stays is awkward (4-6 months) and buying cooking utensils may not be a good investment, plus it’s cheaper to buy onigiri at 7-Eleven anyway, but, but-! This is not the type of reasoning you want to stick with for long. You start slipping a little and then more, and eventually, you lose all your healthy habits.

Anyway, I was panicking over Japanese class for two to three days. Why? You see, there are some people in my class with prior knowledge (I confess that I am one of them, but it takes longer for me to retain information than most people anyway) and the teacher takes them as the benchmark for speed. Lessons are too short for the amount of material we’re supposed to memorize. I say I want a study buddy but I don’t really, because I can’t study with people - the only good being in company does me is keeps me from going on instagram/reddit. Not to mention the felt futility of studying grammar in class when you are in the country surrounded by people who speak the language.

Aah, I’ve been talking about random things for so long. Here’s some more: 

This morning we received a typhoon warning for the Kansai region: landslides in northern Sakyo-ku as well as the flooding Kamogawa river. I have to say, as someone who lives in mild California, I have always found extreme weather conditions fascinating. I was a bit in awe when I stepped out of the classroom today and saw the relentless downpour - the drops melted together like a heavy blanket. 

A couple of days ago I went to Gion with a new friend. I’ve always wanted to see it for myself and, despite living 20 mins on foot from it and having known about it for so long, never got the chance to... The sun was setting in the most beautiful way, casting its light over Yasaka shrine.

[nerdygaymormon]

Hey there. I’m a genderfluid queer youth in the church. Recently, I learned more about what endowment ceremonies entail and to be honest, even just hearing about it traumatized me. It sounds… creepy. Cult like. Coming from someone who disagrees strongly that the church is a cult. Even just the thought of it makes me feel unsafe and spiritually manipulated and attacked. Have you ever had to deal with disgust and discomfort surrounding the idea of endowments? If so, how did you cope?? It sounds like an experience that would permanently traumatize me. I feel scarred just hearing about it. I know that may seem extreme, but it really makes me feel shaky. No pressure to answer if this makes you uncomfortable or you have no response. Thanks <3

I don't know exactly what you've heard about the endowment ceremony, but significant changes were made in 1990 and again in 2019, and minor changes seem to happen every couple of years, the last being 2021. It is a much better experience than it once was. Most elements which bothered people have been removed.

In addition to those changes, the Church now allows & encourages stake presidents to go through a lot of what happens in the endowment ceremony beforehand, including what covenants you'll be asked to make.

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I don't know that I'd call the ceremony cultish, although the way it was kept secret and some of the penalties that used to be included certainly could viewed that way, but I'd describe it as a highly symbolic ritual in an age where we aren't used to interpreting symbolism. We prefer directness.

The Bible is full of symbolism and metaphor, but many readers today are unused to translating symbolism into meaning and thus read the Bible as a literal history.

Rather than spell everything out, the temple provides a lot of symbolism so that the experience creates an impact and the participant will remember it and think about what it could mean.

The LDS endowment ceremony is basically a presentation of the first few books of Genesis, including the creation of the world, Adam & Eve in the Garden and being cast out of the Garden. Along the way, the ceremony stops to invite participants to make covenants.

Overall, the symbolism is that we have fallen away from God, just as Adam & Eve were cast out of the Garden, and we are seeking to be return & be united with God. This includes ideas of being washed clean, of getting a fresh start towards becoming holy with a new identity separate from our worldly identity.

I think most temple patrons miss most of the symbolism and would appreciate having a guide to help them catch the meanings.

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We help people understand the symbolism of baptism--the idea it's being made clean like bathing in water, and also the idea of being sunk into the grave and being resurrected, laying down your old life and coming up anew as committed to Christian values.

Sacrament is a ritual of reenacting the death of Christ, his body broken and blood spilled. It also symbolizes Christ as the bread of life and water which ends thirst and we ingest those as symbolic of taking in Christ and making Christ a part of us. The sacrament is laid out on the table covered by a white linen cloth much like a body at the morgue is covered, but then we uncover it as a symbol of resurrection.

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Here's a few thoughts to help people start interpreting the symbolism they encounter at the the temple:

Changing from regular clothes into temple clothes is like cleansing ourselves or ridding ourselves of worldly notions & pre-held beliefs in preparation for what we'll learn here.

The one part of temple clothing we wear into the regular world is the underwear, aka garments. This is usually the piece of clothing that gets the dirtiest & stinkiest, and is hidden away beneath the clothes we present to others, yet it can be made holy. The lowliest of things can be redeemed and made holy, same is true for people.

The temple ceremony is about us, it uses Adam & Eve, and others, to teach us lessons about ourselves.

Adam is co-creator of the world and enters into it after forgetting who he is--he has to discover his true spiritual identity & also the world around us & situations we find ourselves in are often of our own creation or choosing.

Eating the fruit of knowledge brings spiritual death, spiritual knowledge & worldly knowledge aren't the same & reliance on one can blind us to the other.

Names are symbolic of who we are and how we identify. We get a new name at the temple which is like putting on a new identity. The name is secret from others, much as in Revelations it says He'll give a white stone upon which a new name is written of which no one knows except the one who receives it.

I'm not claiming to be an authority on temple symbolism, but I hope for those who have been through, or will be going soon, these ideas are a start at removing some of the strangeness. 

—————————————————————

You mentioned being genderfluid. In the temple, you'll find everything is very gendered. Even in the endowment, men & women sit on different sides and wear different clothes. But remember gender is being used as symbolism.

In the endowment ceremony it regularly says for us to view ourselves as Adam and Eve. Most people hear that and think "Adam or Eve," but it says "Adam AND Eve," we're both.

We begin in pre-earth life as Michael who appears to be in a trio with Elohim and Jesus. What does this imply about our role in the Godhead? On earth, Michael is known as Adam and isn't complete without Eve. One way to interpret this is Adam represents the spirit who was with the Godhead & Eve the body, the genders represent we need both spirit & body to thrive.

The name Adam means human and the name Eve means life. Together they're showing humankind the way to spiritual life.

Being both Adam & Eve means females aren't different from males when it comes to who they truly are.

There's a lot more that can be said, but I think for someone who is genderfluid you'll more readily see how gender is used to convey various messages in the temple. For example, is it saying we are neither male nor female, or each of us are both male and female?

[hughhowey]

Theory of Mind -- Part Three

The day before I took 5-MeO-DMT, I was nervous. The only thing I knew about this drug is that my drug-loving friends told me it was INTENSE. "You are strapping yourself to a rocketship," one friend said. Even my Burning Man buddies didn't want me to try it. The night they took DMT, they went off and did it in a bit of a private ritual. There was no way I was ready for this, and I was completely fine with that.

DMT is a naturally occurring substance, which is also true of snake venom, Uranium, and asbestos. I don't suffer from the naturalistic fallacy and neither should you. But there is reason to suspect that DMT's presence in plants and animals gives credence to the insights its ingestion can bring. Much more on that in a moment. For now, it's worth knowing that this is a chemical compound found on the backs of at least one species of toad, possibly to ward off predators who might dare pick it up to eat it, which makes its synthesis and use as a recreational drug all the more odd and fascinating.

It's worth noting here that there are lots of drugs that I will not touch with a thousand foot pole, much to the amusement of my friends who view them as not-that-big-of-a-deal. I've never tried cocaine and have zero interest in it. Not a single speck. This won't sound like a big deal to readers who can't imagine trying any drug, but in some circles coke is done casually. My fear of it seems odd to them. Which makes it really strange that I was about to take something that is considered far more hardcore.

"Exhale until you can't exhale any more," the shaman said. "After this, exhale even more. Then I'll put the pipe in your lips and I want you to inhale for the count of ten."

One of my best friends stood at the end of the bed. I asked if he wanted to come sit by me before I started. Another friend sat on my right. I exhaled, exhaled some more, then inhaled a huge dose of DMT.

The best way to describe the experience is that you begin to disappear, or peel away, one layer at a time. There's a tingling sensation, your thoughts become static, or like pixels, disjointed from each other, but somehow the part of you that knows things exist is still there.

Here is what separates DMT from unconsciousness: you are still awake. You are dimly aware. But your ability to process, to form a small stream of thought, is disrupted.

What I suspect is happening is that the filters that make sentient human life possible are removed. It's our ability to forget that makes memory powerful, otherwise we would remember too much, things that are inconsequential, and these would crowd out what's important. It's our ability to not see everything in our field of view that makes attention possible, otherwise the glint of light on the edge of that doorknob would hold too much sway. Our brains are miraculous in that they turn most things down and tune most things out. Drugs often widen those apertures, letting far more in.

There is an exception with DMT, a substance which I think is turning some modules off. The most targeted of these is the theory of mind module. Theory of mind is by far the most important concept in human cognition for us to learn about and understand. It's what we spend most of our cognition calories on. Theory of mind is the act of wondering what others are thinking about. What they think others are thinking about. It's a power that gets turned on ourselves, as we constantly wonder what we are thinking about, or why we did something, or what we should do next, or if something we did was a mistake, and so on.

Theory of mind is the source of all anxiety, introspection, gossip, socializing, planning, regret, ego, and so much more.

In many ways, our view of ourselves is similar to the view I had of people passing by from a skyscaper many years ago. We look at ourselves from the outside, see ourselves moving through life and time, and we fashion a story about that person's experiences. When I took DMT, that self-sight began to melt.

I could still hear the shaman, who asked if I wanted to go deeper. "Yes," I told him. My eyes were closed, my vision a blur of shapes and colors, but I understood that I needed to exhale and inhale for as long as I could. The music dipped and rose and swirled around me. I felt the second inhaler pressed to my lips, the "medium" strength dose. I took in as much as I could for as long as I could until it was pulled away.

The sense of flight was palpable. The sense that my place in the universe was moving, moving. I fell toward the center of myself, and even as I lost my ability to watch this happen, I felt another layer of awareness-of-self rise up to watch this happening, and that layer fell away as well, and this cycle of awareness and loss of awareness repeated itself over a dozen times, my ability to fashion theory of mind stripped away like the layers of an onion melting and dripping off to the ether.

"There goes the last of my ability to watch what's happening to me," I thought to myself. And then I became aware of a smaller, dimmer observer deep inside that was watching THIS happen. But it would get stripped away, and I would be sure it was the last of my ability to observe myself, but even as I became aware of that layer it too was gone. Down to the center. To the last little bit of me who could look in any sort of mirror. And then the mirror vanished as well--

It felt like it lasted a long time. I was aware at one point that I was touching my friends, feeling for them. They say that I was talking, expressing a sense of gratitude. It's what I felt. I felt full of contentment, awe, and love. A sense of meaning and self-worth, but devoid of ego. Devoid of the need to express that I was devoid of ego. It was a recursive joy, bent back around on top of itself. An ouroboros of love.

When I came out of the experience, I was overwhelmed with a sense of satisfaction and fullness. The shaman asked if I wanted to go deeper. "Yes," I said. "There will be a door, with ten steps leading up to that door. I want you to breathe for each step as you walk up and pass through the door." He said this as the third and most potent of the vape pens was brought to my lips, and what I experienced the first two times was dialed up to a thousand, and I ceased to exist while knowing that the rest of the universe was still there.

The theory of mind machine was shut down completely. Absolutely. No need for thoughts, either my own or anyone else's. No judgement. I didn't care what it looked like to do drugs in front of sober people. I didn't care if anyone was being put out by my presence. I didn't care because I couldn't care. But I was still awake and me. I wasn't unconscious. And it turns out that the sort of rest, of real relaxation, that one gets from being fully yourself without viewing yourself is unparalleled.

I melted. I sagged into a void. I'm told that I held my forehead during this part and kept whispering "I get it. I get it. It's so beautiful" and the like. At one point I rolled around on my belly and back again, writhing in what felt and apparently looked like pure euphoria.

When I opened my eyes, my friend was crying. Tears streaming down his face. I asked my other friend to lay with me, and she curled up against my body and we held each other. It was about 45 minutes of my life, and it signified a border between one existence and another.

My shaman told me that I'd go through a door that I could enter back through any time I liked, and I didn't believe him before this experience. But the next morning, I played the same music over again and fell into a similar trance of relaxation and pure calm. A week later I was sitting on my sofa and breathed deeply through my nose a few times and had a full-on DMT experience. To this day, I can reach up and hold the doorknob of that door and feel small concerns that arise from theory of mind skitter off and disappear.

People have likened the DMT experience to ten thousand hours of therapy. Or ten thousand hours of meditation. My shaman calls the substance a "magic trick" given to us by the universe. It requires almost no preparation or guidance. It is being used to treat PTSD in veterans in a trial in Mexico with incredible results. There are small knots in our brains, put there by our brains themselves, that become straightened out and aligned. The nearest thing in my life that I can compare it to is the patience and calm that I acquired from sailing across oceans.

I was with a small group of people a month later, and two of the women in the group relayed a similar experience, saying it was the most profound moment of their lives, a crisp sharp line between their "before" selves and their current selves. It matched what I felt. I believe this substance is used by toads and plants to make their would-be-predator lose any plans-for-self for a short duration. It short-circuits the ability to see oneself in relation to others. It isn't just the user's mind that disappears, it is all other minds.

My shaman said that it's uncommon for people to sit up and open their eyes during the heaviest dose of 5MEO-DMT. But in the middle of my deepest plunge into the unknown, I did just that. I opened my eyes and lifted my chin and looked up at the ceiling, and there were three faces looking down at me. Three gods with eyes glowing white, illumination shining around and through them. It was the shaman and my friends, and I was aware of them but not of any thoughts they could possibly have, any awareness of me, or my awareness of them. The only bucket my brain could place such a thing into was "deity." And so that's what it fashioned them into.

It was rapturous, seeing them like that. And being seen with zero judgement in return. It was the moment that I took away above all others, realizing that our concepts of God and gods are completely backwards. That archetype of God as one who judges is the opposite of reality. The presence of god is the absence of judgement. It is complete and unblinking acceptance.

I started the day worried what I would look like on drugs in front of sober friends. I worried that I was putting them out to ask them to be with me for half an hour of their day. Those old thoughts -- the need to please everyone and be some kind of social glue -- was a pressure put on myself, buttressed by constant theory of mind calculations, and when they went away completely, they were never able to return to their original strength.

My shaman said that each person who takes this journey gets whatever it is that they need, and I see how this might be possible. The drug doesn't "target" what's uniquely wrong with us, it targets the universal part of all of us that is wondering what "might be wrong with us." The mental knot-maker. And with one slash, we wriggle free.

[kickingitwithkirk]

Deuxième Omega: Part II

Summary: Jensen is not dealing well with his unexpected divorce and before the ink is even dry, he is pushed into another union with a complete stranger.

Pairing: Alpha!Jensen Ackles x Omega!OFC

Word Count: 2859

Warnings: A/B/O, angst, angry Jensen, cursing, illness, arranged marriage, divorces, talk of Alpha dominance over Omega, suspected eating disorder, past abuses, vehicle drama

A/N: Sorry this took so long to get this part out, my antique laptop decided to eat over 2,000 words and have had to piece back together from memory so hopefully it makes sense.

A/N II: There is no intentional hate or malevolence intended towards any of the Ackles family. This is a purely fictional piece containing real and created persons/names/events set in the fictional A/B/O verse. 

Part I

*Supernatural doesn’t end in season 15 and some dates/events have been altered to fit the story.

*no beta, all mistakes are mine

The Next Day

Jensen waves his hand around again at that buzzing insect driving him crazy. He’s finally conscious enough to recognize the sound, it wasn’t a bug but his phone vibrating incessantly. Picking his head up and instantly regretting it starts patting around the bed for his phone.

“lo...”

“Are you still drunk?” A deep, honey-whiskey and way too damn loud for the morning voice barked at him.

“Jared?”

“No, fucking Misha.”

“Too early for your shit Jay...”

“Dude, it’s three-thirty in the afternoon.”

“WHAT!” Jensen yells sitting up too fast, the pain ricocheting throughout his head sends him flying off the bed, barely making it to the toilet before regurgitating everything he ingested last night. The toilet automatically flushes as he sits back against the bathtub groaning like a dying water buffalo.

“Really wish you'd hung up before sharing that,” Jared quips in a queasy voice, “I’m gonna regret this but Face Time me.”

Jensen cracked his eyes open enough to locate the button and tapping it Jared appears dressed in his running gear with a bandana holding his hair back. “No offense but you look like hammered shit. I was gonna call earlier but Gen threatened to have my left nut if I did.”

Jensen grunts and closes his eyes against the bright outdoor light emanating from the phone.

“Are you…” Jensen tunes him out for a minute then,“ ‘cause there’s something you need to know about, it’s really bad.”

He opens his eyes and it’s worse than he could have imagined going by the expression on Jared’s face.

“One of your clan sold you out, got it all on cellphone video, social media’s blowing up. Hell, even Fox News Channel picked it up.”

Jensen listens to the description of his expressions at the surprise traditional ceremony, his drunken stumbling around the reception with his new wife submissively following, his scoffing at the speeches during the reception and ignoring his silent, veil wife sitting next to him.

“My favorite bit was Alan and Josh carrying you out of the can.”

Jared's expression turned serious, “People are talking, we can't cover for you anymore. I got a text from higher ups cause no one could get hold of you for obvious reasons. PR’s gotta get ahead of this.”

“I’m a fuckup.”

“Yeah but we still love you. So, what's her name?”

Jensen licked his lips, biting the bottom one.

“Please tell me you know her name.”

“I..I don't even know what she looks like Jay.”

Jared ran his hand over his mouth, “The first thing you do is get up, take a shower and brush your goddamn teeth. Then you apologize, fucking supplicate yourself, to your new wife..unless you’ve already decided to put her aside.”

Jensen's head snapped up unbelieving that his friend, the man who was his brother in every way except blood, could think that of him.

“You really believe I could do that?”

Jared smiled, “No, you're too good of a man, an Alpha, to do that. I want you to remember one thing, in all this, she’s not the one who screwed you over.”

***

Jensen stepped out the shower forgoing shaving since the show was on a short break. He wiped the steam from the mirror and stared at this haggard expression and developing beer gut. I’ve got to get back on my exercise routine. Makeup and wardrobe could only mask so much.

Reaching for his bath kit he knocked a hand towel off the counter. Bending over to retrieve it he noticed a shoe with netting in the wastebasket. Pulling it out he saw a brown smear inside one of the heels, remembering how much trouble she had with them last night and made a mental note to inquire about her feet.

Washing his hands and searching through his kit realizing he’d forgotten his toothbrush. Opening on the cabinets he located the complementary ones. As he’s brushing Jensen sees another brush sitting in a glass by the other sink with a neatly folded hand towel and hanging washcloth.

Huh, she must have forgotten hers too.

Tossing his kit bag in the suitcase he dressed in a pair of well worn jeans and a T-shirt. Quietly entering the common area the curtains set open just enough for him to see her curled up on the couch, still in her wedding dress, asleep. He walked over to check on her when a knock at the door made her bolt upright.

“It's room service, I asked them to text so not to wake you.” He answered the door and had a brief word with the waiter who apologized, the ticket didn’t say not to knock. They deposited a coffee decanter, several covered dishes, bottles of water and left taking the cart with them.

Jensen sat down and before he could ask how she took her coffee, his wife scrambled off the couch and was kneeling at his feet, head bowed and hands folded in her lap.

“What are you doing?” He asked incredulously, having never seen anyone do this before.

“Awaiting you instructions Alpha.”

“Instruc...get up!” He gripped her upper arm, shocked at how far his fingers wrapped around it and helped her to the other chair. Sitting back down Jensen got his first look at his new wife.

Sleep tousled, dark blonde hair frame cheekbones overly prominent for the shape of her face, wide set eyes a blue-grey color with amber rings around the pupils. Her lips were full, the bottom lip slightly off center. She was not the Hollywood standard of beauty he was used to, and if compared to them, she’d only be considered moderately pretty.

“I was only doing what is expected…”

“Kneeling at my feet like an obedient dog!” He barked as she said, “..of the Omega.”

“What’s expected?”

“In the book..”

“Please look at me when speaking.” She raises her eyes but doesn’t meet his, “..it states that the Omega is subservient and the act of humbling ourselves shows respect for the Alpha, as is their due.’

Jensen sat back shocked, running both of his hands through his still damp hair, making it stand up to resemble a hedgehog. He was in over his head and, for one of the few times in his life, didn’t know what to do and the first person he would have turned to for advice had banned all communication.

He took a deep breath to refocus and leaned forward, resting his arms on his legs to look her in the eye, “I need you to forget what I said last night. I..I’m angry, feels like I..we..were ambushed by this situation. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you, I’m sincerely sorry.”

“I don’t understand, are you apologizing to me?”

“It’s what people do when they’ve done something wrong and what I did was unforgivable. I want to make it up to you if you’ll let me and hopefully we can make a go of this.”

She looked at him dubiously but nodded once.

***

Jensen finished the last dregs of his coffee while packing, having decided to head back to Austin tonight. Clif had texted him he was ready whenever they were.

Sitting down on the bed he listened to the running shower and reaching his phone picked it up to start recording a video message.

He apologized for his atrocious behavior the last two years, asking the fans not to take it out on the show, this was all on him. To his coworkers for having to cover for him, they should have never been put in that position and if he had better character they wouldn’t have had too.

He next apologized to his family for his inexcusable behavior last night, which should have stayed private within their clan, and fully accepted his banishment by the clan leader, his father, for however long he deemed fit.

He lastly apologized to his new wife, they were irrecoverably tied together and he’d do whatever she demanded from him to make up for the horrendous treatment he’d shown her and hoped she’d give him a chance to make a go of their marriage.

He uploaded the video to his few online accounts and turned the phone off, wearily running a hand over his face. Getting up to take one last look he found his jacket from the wedding hanging in the closet.

Folding it he hears a crinkling noise and reaches into the inner pocket finding the marriage certificate. Tossing the jacket on the bed he unrolls the certificate reading his wife’s name Iseult.

“It’s pronounced Ee-sult Alpha.”

Jensen's head jerked up in surprise, “Hey, um, we're heading out as soon as you're ready.”

“Oh, okay, I’ll need you to button my dress Alpha.” She said repacking his bath kit she'd borrowed.

Jensen furrowed his brow, “Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in something else, I mean, I’m telling you what to wear but it’s a three hour drive to my..our home.”

Iseult looked down playing with one of the pearlescent buttons, “When I married my hus..ex husband, our prenup stated that I only got what I had in my possession at the time. Apparently, he disposed of my things at some point,” she fanned out the shirt, “this dress, shoes and veil, your mother purchased them otherwise the media would have had a lot more to exploit at my..our expense Alpha.”

“Let me give you something of mine.”

“Anything of yours will swallow me, you're much more solid. There is a Walmart on..” she abruptly stopped at Jensen's raised eyebrow, “I’m sorry Alpha, I overstepped my place.” She bowed her head and hunched her shoulders, exuding the scent of fear as if she is expecting punishment from him.

What had happened to this woman to make her believe she should cower and gravel? Jensen manages to keep his anger in check, not wanting her to be more scared of him than she was, thinking who the hell is her ex-husband and what had he done to make her like this?

Jensen slowly walked behind her and gripping the fabric was once again dismayed at how prominent her shoulder blades were, his gut telling him her slenderness wasn't something natural.

As he fastened the buttons he spoke in the gentle voice he used when Jared's daughter Odette was upset, “If you can survive till tomorrow I’ll take you to get whatever you need.” She nodded once.

“Can I make one request Alpha?”

“You don’t have to request anything, just ask.”

“I have a prescription I need refilled, there’s a pharmacy on Wilmont, it’s on the way.”

He plucked the jacket off the bed and held it open, “Please, it's getting chilly.” She slid her arms into the sleeves and Jensen saw she was right about being swallowed. He put on his ball cap and headed out.

When they got off the elevators Jensen went deeper into the hotel. He stopped at an employees only entrance off the kitchen and knocked twice. A double knock answered and he pushed it open to reveal a waiting SUV. He introduced Clif and handed him the bag, taking it to the vehicle's rear and loaded it before getting back in.

The wind had started picking up ahead of the late autumn thunderstorm. Iseult grabbed her whipping hair in one hand and her skirt in the other as Jensen opened the back door.

“Iseult?”

“I was waiting for you Alpha, its proper etiquette.”

“I was raised it’s proper for a lady to enter first, please,” he held his hand out to her.

Iseult released her hair and hesitantly took his hand. Jensen felt a skittering sensation go up his spin as Iseult quivered, staring into his eyes as a whirling wind intermingled their scents, enthralling them.

Clif politely coughed, “We need to go before the bottom falls out.”

A tremendous thunderclap sent them scrambling into the car as the heavens let loose.

***

The trip to Austin was darker than usual, the weather slowing the drive back and with the incident at the pharmacy, Jensen still couldn’t believe it, refusing the prescription now that she was married to an Alpha, needing his verbal consent.

Clif interceded before he went off about the subjugation of Omegas in modern society, reminding him they were in predominantly conservative Texas, where this thinking was considered normal, not California.

Jensen glanced over to see Iseult staring out the window when his phone vibrated. Picking it up from the cup holder he saw a text from Josh.

>Jenny, know I’m not supposed to be in touch but call me!!! Need to know the shit going down here.<

Josh picked up on the first ring, “Man, all hell breaking loose. Your wife's ex didn't notify his clan that he was divorcing or remarrying her and they’ve filed an appeal with the Pack council to get her back.”

“We were married in the Traditional...”

“The fuck Jenny, did living in La La land make you forget everything? Your the second son of a clan leader, you know Pack law supersedes all federal, state and religious laws. They’ve dug up some obscure sub-clause that states a clan has first right to remarry an Omega within the clan and if they don’t whoever takes them must pay settlements.”

“What are settlements?”

“Has your brain fallen out of your ass? The bride price.”

“Josh, that's insane, it's 2020....”

“No shit Sherlock, but this is Texas. Fuck, dads back already. I’m gonna leave my phone on, keep your goddamn mouth shut or it's gonna be my ass too!”

Jensen can’t make out anything then his mother clearly says, “..they are asking what for her?”

“Ten million.”

“Your shitting me!”

“Joshua, language young man.”

“Five of it’s compensation for damages done to the Omega.”

“What damages? Jenny’s got a temper, what Alpha doesn’t, but he wouldn’t hurt anyone unless he was forced to.”

Alan cleared his throat in the manner Jensen had come to know that something’s making him uncomfortable. “It seems the Omega was..unsullied when she married her ex-husband.”

“Holy shit! You mean she’s never been with an Alpha before Jensen?”

“Joshua, I will not tolerate that language and we will absolutely not discuss your brothers new wife’s...virtue.”

Jensen hears the tinkling of glass, “Donna, did you know about any of this?”

“Well..no, of course not.” Her answer wasn’t very convincing.

“Donna, what are you not saying?” Alan’s Alpha voice resonated, he only used it when his mate was being evasive about something she’d done.

“When Danneel wasn’t willing to reproduce for Jensen I put out some feelers about finding him an Omega…”

“Jesus Fucking Christ! Even if it is acceptable for Jensen to have a second wife with Danneel being a Beta, he would never agree to it.”

“I’m not telling you again about your language. I might have, at one of my appointments, casually indicated to Brent that I wanted an Omega like his.”

Who the hell is this Brent?

“Wait, Brent Worthington?!”

Jensen dropped his phone. It smacked against his other hand turning on the speaker allowing everyone in the car to hear.

“Donna, have you any idea what you’ve done?”

“I never thought he'd actually offer her, they always seemed so happy together.”

“He took your casual indication as an actual offer for his wife. You do understand that while we have to deal with each other they are still our rivals.”

The Ackles and Worthingtons were two of the original founding clans of the Dallas Pack, and rivals for centuries. Iseult had been married to the only Beta son of Abraham, the Clans Alpha, like Alan.

Josh’s voice shook as he spoke, “Mom, if the council decides to return her do you have any idea what they’ll do if Jensen’s already mated and claimed her?”

There’s a ringing phone and Alan answered, his voice loud then faint, apparently pacing around the room.

In the SUV dim interior Jensen could see Iseult shaking, awaiting the decision.

“The council sided with the Worthington's stating the law…”

Jensen’s inner Alpha raged, loosening a wrawl causing Clif to jerk the wheel, swerving across the wet lanes, throwing Jensen against the seat in front of him, landing on the floorboard before the vehicle was under control and stopped on the shoulder. Twisting around he sees Clif opening the back door checking on Iseult while Alan’s voice filled the otherwise silent SUV.

“...but taking into consideration today’s social climate they came back with the final decision since she remarried another clan leader's son her status is unchanged, so if we send her back there’s no penalty for damages. If we choose to keep her, it’s five million due to the Omegas age.”

“What did you tell them dad?”

“I told them we were keeping her, I won’t be the cause of anymore upheaval in my son's life. However,” Alan’s voice turned hard, “the council has ordered additional financial penalties set against both clan leaders for the transgressions committed by their families.”

“How much?”

“I paid twenty-five million for a Deuxième Omega.”

tbc

SPN: @donnaintx​​​​​​​

Dean/Jensen: @flamencodiva​​​​​​​

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

Something Held | Feeding Habits Update #8

Hi all!

Not me not realizing it’s been 3 months since I posted a Feeding Habits update hahahahahaha. Today let’s chat chapter nine, SOMETHING HELD. This also marks the last chapter in Harrison’s POV so prepare to say goodbye to this icon!  TW: body horror, mental illness, trauma

Just a reminder: This is my original work and plagiarism of any form will not be tolerated.

Scene outline, excerpts & a little reflection on making difficult decisions that my not particularly benefit the book but benefit you as the writer under the cut because this update is GIGANTIC.

General taglist (please ask to be added or removed):

@if-one-of-us-falls, @qatarcookie, @chloeswords, @alicewestwater, @laughtracksonata, @shylawrites, @ev–writes, @jaydewritesfiction, @jennawritesstories @eowynandfaramir, @august-iswriting​, @aetherwrites​

Scene Breakdown

Scene A:

It has been two weeks since Lonan found Harrison at his shared apartment with Suzanna and things are getting strange. Lonan and Suz are getting closer, Harrison is getting more distant and slowly losing it. One morning, Harrison wakes hearing Lonan and Suz’s laughter, and crawls to the kitchen to investigate. When he reaches them, Suz is evening out Lonan’s hacked haircut and they’re both sobbing.

Scene B:

Shortly after this bizarre encounter, Suzanna steps out of the apartment for a breather because her son is sort of terrifying her! So Lonan and Harrison double-team to clean up Lonan’s hair shavings. Harrison begins eating the hair while Lonan stares and they have a conversation about the state of their friendship.

Scene Ba:

This scene is gross and confusing! More hair is ingested. My god.

Scene Bb:

After the above ordeal, both boys rinse off because they’ve been rolling?? around?? in??? hair?? but also?? things don’t stop being a little gross

Scene C:

An air of calm finally settles over the apartment. Lonan brews earl grey tea for him and Harrison to share and Harrison asks if he abandoned Lonan in the final chapter of Moth Work. Lonan doesn’t really answer this question so Harrison continues on his confused, but finally lucid (one-sided) conversation, admitting he understands he burdens his mother, who still has not returned. They circle back to the question of abandonment and Lonan answers Harrison the way he wants to be answered (yes), and this is a moment of freeing, where he feels some sort of responsibility in this irresponsible new life he’s led in NYC. They sort of agree to be friends again.

Scene D:

The boys head into the city to find Suzanna, heading to a bakery near the Hudson River. Lonan drives in his used car, a strange experience since Harrison has not seen him drive in years. Taking the opportunity, he searches through the car and finds a map in the glove compartment. The map is erratically scribbled over and it takes him to moment to realize this is Lonan’s map and the first indication that Lonan, who he has assumed is this stable, perfect person, is not as unscathed as he seems.

The boys pass the waterfront and Lonan nearly crashes the car into an oncoming truck. Harrison regains control of the vehicle tucking them into a side street. Shaken, Lonan apologizes for the mess he’s created both physically from his nosebleed and between Harrison and his mother, which gets Harrison a little antsy because he doesn’t like the suggestion that he’s going to leave. Lonan clarifies, stating he won’t if that’s what Harrison wants.

Scene E:

Later, everyone is back at home and Harrison wakes up to a Lonan-less bed. He gets up to investigate the strange dripping coming from the bathroom and opens the door to find Lonan precariously teetering over a sink filled with water. Harrison, concerned, moves him away and tries to ask why Lonan is presumably going underwater, but doesn’t push. They both stand on opposite sides of the bathroom until the sun rises.

My process:

Honestly, writing this chapter was a huge up and down. The first half of it came much easier to me, but the rest was a literal hellfire to get through. I think I was incredibly fatigued with writing in Harrison’s POV as I’d been writing it since June (I finished this chapter in either December or January). This book has been a pain in the ass to write despite me liking what it is, and I really think it being the only place I’ve physically “gone” since the pandemic makes it even harder to write. I felt claustrophobic in Harrison’s POV since I’ve been writing it for half a year, and in a lil ~breakdown~ my beautiful sister reminded me of something she’d previously told me, “it's not about what works, it's about what you want”.

Let’s chat about this for a sec! I think I was watching a Harmony Nice video on her “hard-to-swallow” self-care, and she basically outline (I’m paraphrasing here) that it’s critical we care for ourselves in ways that might not necessarily be easy to do. Honestly, leaving Harrison’s POV is one of those hard-to-swallow self-care things I literally had to do because my mental health was not happy with me! Y’all know my boys are very close to me, and I’m not picking favourites but Lonan is 2500 times easier for me to write with at the moment. I think Harrison’s situation and how he deals with it is much too similar to mine but in a way that is difficult to place (Lonan and I are unfortunately similar but in a way that is easier for me to understand about myself!). From the beginning of writing his POV I’ve been in Struggleville, but kept pushing through hoping the next chapter would be “the one”. Not to burst my own bubble but there is no such thing in the state of mind I was in! I was pushing myself to find something that doesn’t exist because my brain was really not equipped to do what I needed it to do. I really, really did not want to quit on Harrison’s POV, but I had to, not because I don’t like him (he’s my baby) but because I needed a moment to myself. I felt way too seen in ways I don’t really know how to address in myself, so writing him was horribly frustrating at all times (my fault, not his).

My characters really do live in my head rent-free lol. They live in there! They take up space! They take up energy! They take up concentration, and resources I need for myself! Empathy is so integral to my process, that I give a little part of myself in everything I write. This is a blessing because I really get to dig my heels into the mind of another person, but a curse because I’m not a machine (and sometimes I forget that). It is a lot of emotional energy and labour to give everything you have to fictional people. I don’t think an artist needs to be tortured to create good art (this is not it!) but I never truly practiced this well? In my attempt to be empathetic, I was torturing myself a little bit, not going to lie!

So to combat this, I decided I needed a change. Hence, this chapter is imperfect and probably needs some stuff added to it, and while I’ve only written little of Lonan’s second POV, I’m feeling a lot better! It’s nice to get “outside” in a different place lmao this is so sad (pandemic writing things).

Excerpts:

I wrote the beginning of this in a livestream I hosted on my YouTube channel! There’s also a shoutout here to my dragon tree Lisa <3 miss u boo

Two weeks go by. Lonan sleeps on the couch. Harrison wakes up at dawn—no earlier, no later. Suzanna buys a plant: a Madagascar dragon tree she names Lisa. June grows into the collar. Lonan plays sudoku in the newspaper. Harrison learns to bake focaccia, gluten-free, whole wheat. Suzanna learns to palm read, tells Lonan he’s experienced great betrayal (they stop the reading immediately; Lonan goes back to the newspapers). Harrison begins burning incense at sunrise—frankincense. The dragon tree nearly dies (Lonan saves it). It rains every weekday that contains the letter T. Lonan shifts stacks of soggy newspapers onto the breakfast table, answers crosswords with the help of Suzanna (four across, nine letters, Something held). Harrison burns a baguette. Suzanna buys a hanging basket of pothos. The power goes out for two days and the icebox floods the kitchen tile (Lonan mops it with old newspapers, the ink running like jellyfish). June barks for the first time. Harrison eats a bundle of dried bay leaves. Suzanna waters the plants with rainwater, icewater, wrung into a coffee tin. Harrison leaves the stove on while sautéing shallots (he eats them whole). Lonan wakes up feverish and fills out four newspaper crosswords, then falls asleep on the coffee table. Suzanna moulds panna cotta in coffee mugs and shares the batch with Lonan when they won’t tip out. Lonan teaches her how to propagate the pothos and soon they have twenty empty cans of cuttings poking from the windowsills. They rearrange the furniture, the couch facing the kitchen instead of the TV, the dining table right outside the bathroom, then put it all back the next day. They birdwatch from the tiny window with binoculars and a magnifying glass. They sort coupons. Whittle soaps. Watch Norwegian films without the subtitles. Discuss cliff diving. Make matching anklets (blue beads, elastic string, the plastic clacking how Harrison knows they’re coming). All of this they do as Harrison lies on his bed for two weeks, counting the corners of his ceiling and trying to determine a way to multiply them telepathically.

This is the very next paragraph!

At first he assumes they’re laughing. The sun nearly rising between other high rises, blotting his room with dawn. This is not a surprise. They are probably making pancakes out of buckwheat and discussing the hilarity of whole grains. They are probably laughing at store-bought cherry preserves. Too sour. Their cheeks puckered. But then the laughs get louder, and the sun rises higher and it’s not laughing at all, but gasping.

Here’s Harrison crawling!! is this straight out of the exorcist probably!

Harrison’s instinct is to crawl. As if his smallness against the ground will stop anyone from hearing him, even before he unlocks his door. On hands and knees he shuffles from his bed to his doorframe, edges the door open with his shoulder. On hands and knees he hikes through the hallway, the gasping getting louder, shuffling until he sees them. Lonan sitting on one of the kitchen stools, a grocery bag wound around his throat. Suzanna clacking scissors in two hands so their blades ping in the sun. Her fingers loped around his hair, knuckle-deep, the blades snipping, the gasps growing, them both sobbing, the hair falling, the sun stalking, their bodies rocking. Harrison takes it in from his crawl. Experiences it all on his knees.

So this excerpt seems really you know, normal:

They clean up the hair. Harrison with the dustpan, Lonan with the broom. Harrison still kneels. Lonan still cries. The only thing that has changed since crawling into the kitchen is that Suzanna is taking a walk around the apartment complex. She needs air. Room. If she cries long enough, a cigarette. So Lonan sweeps. Harrison collects. This repeats.

The kitchen smells of nutmeg. Freshly grated from a whole club over espresso, Harrison imagines. He smells this as he tracks Lonan with the dustpan, hovering its open belly for clippings of hair. And Lonan is so compliant, brushes cuttings of himself onto the plastic surface so Harrison can trash it. As Harrison looks on from his knees, Lonan diffuses in sunlight, the window illuminating only his edges. A body so familiar Harrison knows exactly where it flares with light or absorbs it. A body with skin like mulberry silk. A body he could recreate in charcoal with his eyes closed. His archangel translucent and luminescing.

Skip this excerpt if you don’t want to read about Harrison eating hair!! i’m sorry!

Harrison picks a bundle of fallen hair from the dustpan. It’s airy from being recently shampooed, smells faintly of pear, maybe even ginger. This hair, touched by a woman, or a few women, and cut by one, or a few, in different contexts. Eliza’s hands deveining the roots, and then Suzanna’s, trying to fix them. So Harrison eats it. That bundle like a toothpicked cube of cheese. He puts it in his mouth and swallows.

Lonan watches like he’s unconcerned. He watches this feral animal—Harrison must be something feral, starved of something and ravaged by that hunger. Chewing mouthfuls of hair like that will quell of him of what is missing, if there even is anything missing, something unidentifiable in this bland circuit of New York City, this time-loop of sonhood, this fresh start a dousing of flatness. As Harrison eats, he understands he consumes that something like it’s holy communion, reuniting with that something by absorbing it. And still, that hunger moves him, from finishing the dustpan of hair, and closer to Lonan.

“Do you think I’m a bad friend?” Harrison asks, wringing the corner of his lips clean from loose hairs. From this perspective, Harrison on his knees collecting hair, Lonan’s eyes look bluer. Maybe their saturation has nothing to do with the angle, but Harrison feels this is true; his eyes are so crystalline, they are temptingly edible. Like two plump blueberries. Or a matching set of clear glass marbles. Harrison swallows. He repeats, “Do you think I’m a bad friend?”

Lonan swallows, adjusts his grip on the broom. “We’d have to be friends for me to answer that.”

“Aren’t we?”

And here’s the rest of this scene!

“You’re my mother’s friend,” Harrison says. “She trusts you.” He crawls closer to Lonan. “You’ve got secrets. Rituals. Tell me her favourite finger-food and who she wants to marry.”

“I don’t know your mother that well.”

Harrison wraps a handle around Lonan’s ankle. A muscle there jumps like a dolphin breaching the water. He’s memorized this plane of skin, could rebuild it from single grains of sand while blindfolded. He furls his hands across its surface, unfurls.

“You garden with her,” Harrison says. “You share a plate for dessert.”

“She’s kind to me.”

“You cook her breakfast.” Harrison tugs on Lonan’s ankle, knowing it won’t raze him, knowing he’ll come down anyway. “You know the exact temperature she drinks her coffee down to the last digit.”

“I’m trying to be hospitable.”

“You’re trying to be a son.”

Lonan kneels. Crouching so they’re huddled over each other, so it’s nearly impossible to distinguish one body from the other, which one sinks, which one rises.

“My mother’s only got one son to live with,” Harrison says, his voice thin from a clogged throat. He reaches for Lonan’s scalp, scrapes a line down the centre, now an even plane of cropped hair. “And it isn’t me.”

“You’re unstable,” Lonan says, burrowing his face either into a cabinet or Harrison’s shoulder—neither can tell. “You won’t let yourself have friends.”

Farther, toward the tile they go, a pile of hair scattering. “My mother wants me to forgive you by replacing me with you.”

“She’s grieving,” Lonan says.

Harrison loses his hands. He doesn’t know where they disappear to, if he touches skin or tile. “I haven’t died,” he says. Skin or tile. Skin or tile.

Here’s an excerpt from scene C ft. this memoir bit from the time I was shocked that this university I visited had real FANCY teabags:

Lonan brews tea. Earl grey, from a tin. Harrison doesn’t know why he expects it to come from a bag. An individual paper sachet, or if he’s lucky, one of those fancy ones woven from nylon. But it’s from a tin. Two teaspoons into the bottom of a single mug they pass back and forth, wordless at the kitchen table. Strung in the bathroom, Harrison’s t-shirt hang-dries, nearly figure-like, an unfilled phantom. He tugs a throw around his shoulders and stares at his hands. Each crest of cuticle. Each bulb of knuckle. Each maze of fingerprints.

He is material. This is fact. Not just outlines. He’s got skin that goes pinkish when pinched, a pulse that juts from his wrist, two eyes that burn at the scent of lavender, ten fingers. But as he holds his hands up, studying them in the faint moonlight, it is difficult to believe his tangibility. In the city, he has lived as a haze. Fogging over grocery stores, eateries, nondescript. Fresh start has always implied an air of zest, a zing that should have fueled him to plant roots in this restart. But Harrison is rotten, aphid infected, overwatered, underwatered, then not watered at all. He flexes his fingers. He pops the joints. He tries to press his pinkie to the back of his hand. But none of this brings him back to himself. His hands continue feeling like someone else’s. His body invisibly marred in some way he can’t reverse, disconnected in retaliation.

Harrison reflecting on his relationship with his mother:

Suzanna has never left him alone this long, and to her detriment. He imagines her now, living the life she always should’ve lived, the life she lived before he crosscut his way to her most important thing. She’s probably at a salon, having her hair twirled with a round brush, making dinner reservations at some place always too expensive for two (extra points if it has a French name, more if she has to wait a half hour before getting a table). When she talks to her stylist, she doesn’t mention a son, but plans to travel up the west coast, all the way into Canada if she’s feeling adventurous. She’ll buy crime novels she’ll never read at duty-free, reapply a lipstick that cost her a paycheck in the reflection of a hand-dryer. After the salon, she’ll meet a woman at a wine bar, converse about children, and still not mention a son. Suzanna’s singleness will be a celebration.

The boys finally trucing it out <3

When Harrison finally opens his eyes, Lonan is staring at him. His eyes two reels of the Pacific. They cycle in blue. So much of him has changed, and yet he is still the same. Beyond the haircut, Lonan isn’t that much different. He can’t be much different. But as Harrison searches, splaying his palm on the wet table, he knows this is untrue. Lonan is hollower than he was last summer. A little more haunted. They have this in common, then.

“Can we be friends?” Harrison asks. With his pinkie, he finds himself writing against the damp table just as he did Lonan’s scalp not too long ago. Lonan’s gaze follows each loop of each letter, Harrison’s steady left hand.

Lonan is consumed studying what Harrison has written, where each letter connects in near-cursive scrawl. After a moment, he nods, once, twice, and then reverts to staring at the table’s new inscription. On its surface are two words: something held.

The boys in the car like old times <3

Lonan drives. This is strange because Harrison has not seen Lonan drive a car in over a year. Usually, Harrison takes the wheel, but tonight he guides them through the city, in search of Suzanna. His car is clean. This isn’t unexpected. A cherry-coloured hatchback that rattles whenever he makes a left turn. It smells vaguely of cotton air-freshener and the undercurrent of cigarettes.

“You still smoke?” Harrison pokes at the plastic nob for the radio, and it crackles to life. Synth and electric guitar pulse in 4/4 time.

“I bought it used.”

They’ve agreed to get to know one another while they search for Suzanna. Another restart, some attempt at an honest hour. As Lonan changes lanes, Harrison pokes open the car’s glove compartment. A tin of nicotine gum falls on the mat. A hot pink feather pokes from underneath the driver’s manual. Harrison hauls out both, runs the feather along the gum tin, then the back of his hand, and then Lonan’s cheek. When that rouses nothing, he unlocks the tin and removes a slit of gum. Right as he’s about to pop it in his mouth, Lonan says, “I wouldn’t eat that.”

“Why?” Harrison asks. “Did you lace it?”

“Like I said, I bought the car used.”

Harrison puts the gum back, and then the feather. He sticks his hand farther into the glove compartment, feels around until he drags out a map of the state, bilgy and half torn. He unfolds it, careful to avoid the rips, and flattens it against the dashboard. Almost immediately, it wilts against the cold, faded from time in the sun. It’s been marked up. Half with pencil, half with a red ballpoint pen. After a few minutes, Harrison understands the previous owner’s route. Or at least he does at first. Following the red pen arrows, they started at Long Island, then reached Manhattan. Then a much longer arrow takes him from Manhattan to Geneva, and then Buffalo. And then the red pen circles, once, twice, three times, four times, and what is in the centre doesn’t even have a city name. What it does say is HELP, in all-caps, each letter then melting into an illegible scrawl. Harrison sees bits of words: Luke, woe, hands, clay, guard, stray, each wobbly and disappearing into the other, becoming cities of their own, destroying others. He tries to understand the route, but the farther he pours over the map, recircling each line with his finger, the more lost he gets in the ink.

“Is this your map?” Harrison asks. There is no proof that it is. Even the handwriting is all wrong. Ragged. Confused. Desperate. Not like Lonan’s careful, hesitant print.

“Like I said, I bought the car used.”

“But is it your map?” Harrison asks again. Gently, he creases the paper and then slots it back into the glove compartment. Outside, they pass three convenience stores in a row, a flock of couples emerging from a bowling alley, tipsy and cradling leftover deep dish pizzas and mozzarella sticks. They pass two more convenience stores before Lonan finally answers.

“I was confused,” he says.

“This is more than confused,” Harrison says. “It’s disturbed.”

“I’m not disturbed.”

“But something is wrong with you.”

Lonan slows at a crosswalk. A group of teenaged girls whisk by in glitter and lip gloss.

“Yes,” he says.

This is Harrison trying to stop Lonan’s nosebleed after their bizarre swerve which I think is kind of <3 tendy <3

Harrison reaches for him. One hand on the back of his neck, and the other reared toward the red stream. His touch is tactful, so faint his fingerprints wouldn’t even be left behind, but still, the dabbing with his jacket’s hem is enough to redirect the blood’s flow from Lonan’s upper lip to the cuff of leather. The radio is still on, garbled like an unmassing of crepe paper lanterns.

This is the final excerpt for this update that takes us to the very end of the chapter! Harrison has just found Lonan supposedly head-first in the sink and though he asks at first why he is doing that, takes an alternate approach as the chapter closes:

Harrison gets up, his knees popping like gnawed bubble gum. He decides he will handle Lonan at a distance, if he chooses to handle him at all. Like a timid pet owner trying to tame their suddenly-rabid yorkie. Like a friend not trying to tip the full glass. To let its contents film at its surface, but never spill.

Somewhere in the apartment, Suzanna probably listens to them. If Harrison didn’t know her better, he’d imagine her pressed neatly against the door, waiting to hear the shuffle of their bodies or the tang of an argument. Instead, he imagines her at the kitchen table, gripping a glass of water for so long, half of it evaporates.

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Harrison says, stepping back until his spine hits the counter’s lip. He curls his fingers under the granite. Looks toward the window, now a faint periwinkle. Lonan heaves. His fingers caging his face, an animal restrained. They stand there until the sun rises.

So that’s it for this gigantic update! I have like four short stories to update you on so I hope to be back soon!

—Rachel

[pufflyhallows]

ooooh bliss 3 and 18 with one of the twins!!! 💕💕💕💕💕💕💕

Hey, Nadine!! 💞💞 I chose George hehehheh

For a moment I was like "is heroine the drug or the female hero????" LOL but I think I got it right. Also, this one turned out a bit longer than the other, I don’t know if I can call it a blurb 👀. Either way, here we go:

Number 3 from Bliss: "Cheeky."

Number 18 from Bliss: "You're like my heroine."

----

George was sick.

When you left for work this morning, he had a fever and a headache, and stayed curled up in bed with his comforter around his body, even though his skin was burning hot. You had hesitated to leave, wondering if you should use a sick day to take care of him. You did not want to leave him alone at all.

George opposed to the idea immediately, however. He assured you he would be fine after the potions you gave him, and was firm when saying that you should save your sick days for when you were sick.

As a consequence, you spent the entire day with him in your mind. You hoped you had made the right decision and that he would be feeling better by the time you went back home. The potions you had prepared for him were the same ones you used to drink when you were little. Your mom always used chocolate essence to make it taste a bit less like dirt, and you did the same thing for George. Now, as you stepped out of office and breathed in the scent of freshly baked cookies coming from the bakery across the street, you thought he could use some goodies to cheer up.

Carrying the paper bags full of all kinds of treats in both arms, you struggled to open the door of your apartment. The silence in the room when you finally managed to get in told you everything you needed to know about George’s well-being. He must still be in bed.

You left the bags on the kitchen counter and didn’t waste a second before going to your bedroom. And as predicted, there he was, napping with his lips slightly parted and his hair a total mess. You liked that mess, though. Inevitably, the sight of your sleeping boyfriend sent a wave of comfort through your body. His peaceful countenance made you feel at ease, your worries fading away with each deep breath he took. You leaned your shoulder against the door frame and watched the scene for a little bit. The quiet atmosphere of your apartment was very soothing, despite the reason behind it.

Your eyes traveled through the room, examining the little details to gather the information you wanted. George had changed clothes, which meant he had gotten out of bed, which meant he wasn’t feeling as sick as this morning. Good. On the nightstand, the small glass bottle of the potion he had to take at noon was empty, which meant he had taken it. Good. The curtains on the window were still closed, which meant he hadn’t seen the daylight. Bad. The mess he had made on the closet the night before was still there, which meant he hadn’t tidied up. Forgivable.

As if sensing you were home, George opened his eyes slowly, blinking a few times before noticing your presence.

“You’re home,” he mumbled in a raspy, groggy voice.

“I’m home,” you agreed, getting off the door frame and walking towards the bed, where you sat down in order to take a proper look at your boyfriend. He wasn’t as pale as this morning, his cheeks had a bit of their color back. You gently pressed the back of your hand against his forehead to feel his temperature. He was still warm, but it was much better. “You still have a mild fever. How are you feeling?”

“Tired,” he shrugged. “But I took the meds and showered.”

“Cold shower?”

He nodded, wrinkling his nose at the memory of the cold water against his hot skin.

“Good boy,” you smiled, caressing his face. “Headache?”

“Gone.”

“Perfect. Have you eaten?”

“Not much.”

“I brought some things for you.”

“What?” he asked, his eyes suddenly showing interest.

“Cookies, cupcakes, pudding, buns, tart, pasties… You know, lots of sugar.”

“Wow,” he smiled. “You’re like my heroine.”

You smiled again, leaning in and pressing your lips against his, tenderly.

“I missed you,” he whispered, putting strands of your hair behind your ear. “Been feeling kinda needy today.”

“I did offer to stay,” you reminded him, but he shook his head.

“It wasn’t right. I did miss you, nonetheless.”

“Well, I’m here now. I’ll go get the treats and we’ll stuff ourselves up until we can’t breathe anymore.”

“Sounds like a good idea to me.”

“It’s a great idea, Georgie,” you said, standing up. “I’ll be right back.”

You got rid of your coat on the way to the kitchen, realizing you had been so worried about George that you forgot about yourself. You took your wand from the inside pocket before throwing the coat on the couch and put it on the kitchen counter next to the paper bags, which you quickly grabbed and headed back to the bedroom.

Upon seeing you with both arms occupied, George felt his stomach rumble. That was a lot of food. Not that he was complaining, no, not at all. The grin on his face said it all.

You sat on the bed with him and started taking the treats out of the bags one by one. George realized they were all his favorite flavors, every single one of them, and he couldn’t help but feel very lucky for having you.

The two of you spent the next hour consuming unhealthy amounts of sugar and talking about the most random things in the world. You could see that George was feeling better, or at least he looked better. That morning you had felt your heart so tiny by seeing how ill he was… His loud laughter shaking the bed right now was everything you needed to feel calm again. Calm and safe, if that made any sense.

Once there were no more treats left, you both laid down on the bed, looking up at the ceiling, bellies full.

“I love you,” he said after a while. His voice was serious but tender, eyes still focused on the nothingness of the white roof.

You turned your head to look at him and reached for his hand, intertwining your fingers with his. “I love you too.”

It was his turn to look at you, and a silly smile made its way to his (now) rosy lips. “I think I know the perfect way for us to burn the calories we just ingested.”

George rested his free hand on your waist, slowly but confidently going under your shirt and up until his fingertips were brushing the underwire of your bra.

“I thought you were tired,” you raised an eyebrow, although you did not disapprove of the contact.

“I was,” he nodded. “But now I’m in a sugar rush, thanks to you. You might as well take care of it.”

You laughed loudly yet incredulously, removing his hand from under your shirt. “Cheeky, Weasley. Very cheeky.”

Indeed, the grin splattered across his face was cheeky. And before you could say anything else, his lips were pressed against yours less tenderly and more eagerly than before, his hand already going under your shirt again. This time, you did not remove it.

********

[amarantine-amirite]

Get In, Loser, We're Buying Snow Pants

Our school banned long coats due to their association with school shooters. We have been advised to wear snow pants to keep the lower body warm during the winter months. We even went out to the mall during homeroom one day at the beginning of November to buy snow pants.

No one was very pleased about it. I heard a lot of people whining, and Mrs. Woodburn telling us to get over ourselves.

I snickered every time she said some variant of "You are not a geek because you wear snow pants" or "Can you just put your appearances and what you wear aside for one moment and be part of the team?" Yeah, I thought, that'll work. You can try and convince high schoolers to wear snow pants, but they won't want to do it. Teenagers have this perception that if you aren't skiing or snowboarding, snow pants are for babies. And they're not wrong, either. Most kids outgrow everyday use of snow pants by sixth grade.

As my peers shopped for snow pants, I wandered around to see if I could find a snack. Even though it's the beginning of November, as far as the store is concerned, it's time to put out the Christmas stock. And that means they bring out the good snack foods. Yet, the snack food selection of the department store at Christmas is gone downhill. Last year, I thought I bought a package of peppermint bark. I opened the box and was disappointed to find not peppermint bark, but coffee pods.

I want it over to housewares. The store always keeps the treats in housewares. Problem. I can't exactly remember where they keep the treats in the housewares department of this store. I repeatedly ended up in the patio furniture department.

Why the hell are they still selling patio furniture in freaking November? I thought to myself as I rounded the patio furniture for the third time, Nobody out here would buy patio furniture this close to winter time. I mean, maybe people in Florida would buy patio furniture at this time of year, but no one in Chicago would buy patio furniture this time of year

Then something happened. By "something happened", I mean I ran into Dana.

I found Dana curled up in a ball on an outdoor sofa. I chuckled when I first saw her curled up. I thought she was asleep. "Glad to know I'm not the only one that takes a nap in the patio furniture" I quietly laughed to myself.

Dana slowly sat up and glared at me. " Heather, what the hell is wrong with you?"

She wasn't asleep. She was wide awake and bawling her eyes out. Oops.

"What the hell is so goddamn funny about getting kicked off the basketball team for being two fucking inches too fucking short?!"

I instantaneously felt guilty for inadvertently laughing at Dana. That said, I couldn't stop.

I wasn't laughing because I thought the fact that she stood five foot eight kept her from playing basketball for our school was funny. I laughed because her handkerchief matched her socks. I have no idea why that was so funny, but I'm pretty sure it went beyond the matching socks and handkerchief. I want to say it was the Hello Kitty pattern printed on it. For some weird reason, it's kind of amusing to see somebody Dana's size with personal effects that have Hello Kitty on them. Dana's not small. She stands 5'8" and weighs pretty damn close to 200 lb. She could do a lot of damage if she roughed you up. "Anyway, Dana" I said, "I think the school has it wrong."

"How?" she said quietly.

"I saw somewhere that the best basketball players in the world aren't the tallest, but the people with the longest arms. They should let you on the team because your arms are so long."

I think saying that was enough to calm Dana down. She took a couple of deep breaths and blew her nose. I only thought some of her peers said this to make her look stupid, but no. It really did sound like one of those weird pink hairless camel things from Star Wars saying, "hey there, ladies".

"Heather, you have no idea why this upsets me so much," she said, "I didn't choose to try out for basketball. That stupid personality test we have to do at the beginning of the year said I'd be good at it. I hate that test, I can never answer the questions properly!"

I looked at her with a puzzled look on my face, looking puzzled. My eyebrows did their best impression of Volkswagens parking. "I'm not following"

"It's not important, Heather. What's important is that I'm afraid."

"OK" I nodded, "Afraid of what?"

I could start to see Dana quiver a little bit. I got the sense of even saying this really freaked her out. "Basketball was supposed to be my last stop. This was my last chance, and now because I'm no good at anything, I'm afraid they're going to harvest my organs."

"You're being ridiculous, Dana," I responded, "they're not gonna do that"

Dana looked at me and blinked. "Are you serious?"

"I'm positive," I said in a reassuring tone, "That was just a movie."

"That was a movie?"

"Yeah, and not a very smart one to watch after snacking on the art teacher's private supply of gummy sharks."

I'm not going to insinuate that Dana broke into the art teacher's office and stole a couple of the gummy sharks. If I recall correctly, some idiot had put the gummy sharks out of the guidance counsellors office as office candy as a prank (there's always some joker in every class that does stuff like that). Several people, Dana included, help themselves to the gummy sharks. I don't think any of them had any idea just what they ingested.

Dana nodded and chuckled. "Heather, help me out here. Have we become so politically correct that you had to get a prescription for gummy sharks?"

I froze. "No, Dana, That's not the reason the art teacher needed a prescription for the gummy sharks."

"It's not?" Dana asked.

"Nope, but I'll give you a hint why the art teacher needs a prescription for the gummy sharks," I said, "it's the same reason why you're freaking out."

"I get it now," Dana said, chuckling. She then tilted her head to one side, "How come they tasted the same as the normal gummy sharks?"

[proper-goodnight]

Detroit: New Beginnings

Summary: It has been one year since the androids claimed their rights to freedom after the revolution, and one year since Connor has decided to stay on the force at the DPD. The duo are currently working on a case involving androids going missing while Connor grapples with what he almost did to Markus at the peace rally and fearing Amanda’s inevitable return.

Pairing: N/A

Warnings: Violence, Strong Language

A New Start: Partners (01)

Detroit Police Dept.

August 30, 2039

12:30 P.M.

Tuesday

Chris abandoned his wife’s pastries on the counter in the break room.

Over the years, it had become an unspoken rule to not berate him for the fact that Hank could count the people that were brave enough to try his wife’s newest lifestyle kick for that week on one hand. 

For all of the employees on the force, that wasn’t a lot. He didn’t need any special probability and statistics program to figure that out. 

But, it wasn’t like Hank hadn’t tried. He had, but only once--and couldn’t keep a straight face or control his gag reflex enough to even think about trying it again. Their outward appearance had been what threw him for a loop initially; being made of enough random herbs and healthy shit couldn’t sway the uncanny resemblance between it and actual shit and no amount of Chris promising such couldn’t and would never convince him otherwise.

While Hank may have never cared about what he put in his body, he was still not ignorant enough to test whether or not his tolerance extended to something beyond alcohol or cigarettes. Some days, Connor’s habit of sticking evidence in his mouth suddenly didn’t sound so fucking revolting. 

God, if the kid heard him say that…

In that same area of the precinct, a loud continuous whirring of a coffee machine grinded endlessly. DPD staff shuffled around it eagerly awaiting its cycle to complete, and Gavin had ingested just enough caffeine to erupt into his usual cacophony of loud remarks and comments about fuck-all that morning. 

Of course the prick couldn’t grant them reprieve for even a few minutes. 

Hank supposed if he didn’t then the fucker was either late or… late. It wasn’t like he ever called off.

No, they couldn’t be that lucky.

“No fucking way!” And to complete the morning, here Hank was with a deafening insistence in his tone that left little room to argue over Connor’s suggestion for the umpteenth time that morning. “I have had enough birthdays! I am getting too damn old for this shit!”

In response, Connor looked contemplative, but even more so, unsatisfied with his decision.

Typical Tuesday.

Sitting hunched over his desk, Hank sifted through piles of papers for his tablet. It furthered his incessant personal reminding that he should probably take a few minutes and clear his desk of all of his personal clutter--all of the memorabilia piling up over the years was beginning to make finding anything nigh to impossible, another indication made clear when he bumped a couple of pens to the floor with his elbow. 

Cursing, he dismissed it to the abyss below his desk, staring at the screen with faux concentration. The contrast between their work stations was proving more apparent as the days went on, Connor’s completely clean of surface clutter and retaining a fresh sheen despite having claimed it a little over a year ago.

Besides the mess, the spinning yellow circle glaring at him just outside of his peripherals held his focus, having more recently recognized it as a sign of the android’s thinking--thought processing. Whatever. 

Connor’s brows were furrowed, eyes fixed on him as if deciding in some sort of situational software that he had of some other option that would help move their conversation into a more positive direction, something that would somehow change it in his favor. He wasn’t getting anywhere, and Hank wasn’t going to take any bait. 

The android’s lips parted to speak, but Hank was already turning away, grumbling incoherently under his breath. 

And nothing that he would reiterate unless Fowler was going to lecture him about playing nice with his co-workers. Again.

Perched on the only unoccupied corner of his desk, arms crossed over a broad chest, Connor worked a tick in his jaw. If androids had actually possessed the need to breathe--and their biocomponents that simulated breathing were actually functional for that sole purpose--the asshole may have just sighed. For the briefest of an instance, he caught his partner’s stoic expression, tight-lipped and silently asking for some sort of agreement between the pair.

It wasn’t offered.

“I have been researching human cultural practices and I thought that maybe--”

“Drop it. You want to celebrate, then do it for yourself why don’t ya? Celebrate your one year since deviating. That’s in a couple of months.”

Connor almost looked thoughtful, features folding over in confusion as he worked through some sort of response. Hank’s celebration into an even older age was many in the long list of arguments that the two seemed to have, but it was also one of the only topics that Connor seemed ever insistent to talk about that didn’t revolve around a case.

That made it unavoidable.

Goddammit. 

“I don’t think that qualifies as the same thing, Lieutenant.”

“Take my word for it. Let’s just go over the case.” To further his point, he swept his hand over the case files that had piled up on his desk the last couple of weeks. One large unorganized mess of manila folders and reports. “If Jeffrey dumps any more shit about it on my desk, I’m going to resign it.” It was a harmless jab in an effort to get Connor motivated, anything involving the words case or leads never failed to catch his attention.

Connor straightening from his rare hunched posture proved that fact rang true. 

Even after finally closing the deviancy case. 

The conversation, begrudgingly, wasn’t done though. It would be brought up again eventually. Unless the kid forgot or got distracted with something else.

Who the fuck was he kidding?

Connor never forgot. He didn’t possess the ability to forget. Maybe his stubborn nature could be argued with but in the last year or so being his partner, it was something that Hank faced with raw aggression and chose to avoid. 

“Could’ve originated from the peace rally.” Hank went on, rubbing at his chin with faux concentration at the various folders opened up in front of him. He didn’t think any of them were relevant to their current case anyway. “The dates between that and the first android incident are pretty damn close together. Then again, maybe it’s just a weird coincidence.” The words unfolded into a low mutter under his breath, slumping back against his chair. 

He spinned to the side to assess the clutter, a quick sweeping gaze over the mess and he retrieved the file that they needed and extended it to the android. 

Connor’s eyes had followed every movement, and Hank assumed he was judging his lack of organization. 

At least he kept his mouth shut if he was.

“Two guys were sent to the hospital last night.” Hank went on.

“According to the reports from Officer Miller, they were walking home from a Red Ice Anonymous meeting.” Connor confirmed.

Of course he’d kept up to date.

“They were jumped. He went to ask them some questions, bust aside from a brief statement, we ain’t getting much out of ‘em right now.” While he spoke, Connor flicked through it with practiced precision while simultaneously picking it apart. For what he already didn’t know, and Hank didn’t figure that was a lot. 

And while it would be denied for the rest of Hank’s life, he would never admit that he was even somewhat jealous of Connor. If humans possessed the ability to see anyone’s information by a quick scan or retaining an entire casework of information in a few seconds, the meeting and getting-to-know-you shit of social relationships would be made easier by miles. Then again, he didn’t need any superior programming to know that his time would be better spent at home with Sumo. 

“According to their file, Mr. Greene and Mr. Nicholson did in fact have a Red Ice history in the past.” 

“That bit checks out with what Chris managed to get from ‘em at least. Not the worst druggies I’ve had the pleasure of dealing with.” A smirk pulled at one edge of his lips. If they were the worst of the worst, his job would have been a lot easier and most cases would be an opened and closed one. 

“Possession and usage that earned them a few months jail time.” Connor confirmed, turning a suddenly quizzical gaze in his direction, dipping his chin. His brows pinched. “Wasn’t Detective Reed assigned all cases involving Red Ice?” The mention of their most eccentric detective was enough to pull a look of discomfort from the android. 

Maybe it was the ill memory of the beating that he’d been forced to give him in the evidence room last year. Either way, Hank swore that Connor had some kind of satisfaction from it. He didn’t think so. 

The bloody nose that he had given Perkins however? Fucking classic! 

“He is, but there was Thirium found at the scene. No fingerprints on the weapon that was likely used in the attack. We’re looking at another Carlos Ortiz case except we can push an android through a fair trial now.” 

Connor closed the case folder in his lap, his fingers plucking gingerly at the corner. That spinning yellow circle glared accusingly. “If the claims of their whereabouts are in fact correct, then I think that our best course of action is to question them ourselves. Maybe they can recall more when the shock period has passed. Distinct characteristics, how many androids there were in total, even.”

“Not to bust your balls kid, but we can’t scan a serial number like you can. Not to mention all of you androids have the same face. There’s no record of them ever owning an android, but…” Hank threw up his hands in surrender. “Maybe there’s a past history we don't know about. We’ll follow another lead over the next few days,” he decided. “See if they can’t give us anything else by the end of the week.”

With that, Hank breathed out a long-winded sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut as though fighting off a headache. Connor was a headache enough, the case being the migraine. He waved his free hand over his desk. “Take your pick. God knows we’ve got plenty.” A pained laugh slipped past his lips, almost incredulous. Borderline sympathetic. 

For them.

Propping his elbow on the chair’s armrest, he leaned his head against a curled fist. His partner’s gaze was distant, even as Hank tried to meet it with a vague curiosity of his own. 

He waited.

“What are you thinking, Connor?” No response was offered, that same accusatory yellow glaring at Hank just out of the corner of his eye. 

Connor’s features folded, looking to an empty space at his right. Upon further inspection, Hank noted that nothing was there, looking between the two confirming the assumption that he was in some far off place elsewhere. An abrupt snap of his fingers in front of Connor’s nose brought him back. He raised his eyebrows, tilted his head. “Nothing. Nothing relative to our case.”

“Any other time you’re pulling leads out of your ass.” The remark was followed by an exaggerated sigh. His eyes rolled to the side. “This is the first time that you don’t wanna input your opinion? Finally hit a damn wall with enough dead leads, didn’t ya?”

A slight tug pulled at one edge of Connor’s mouth, working a tick underneath a rigid jawline. “Hilarious, Lieutenant.” He mumbled.

“It was a pretty damn good joke in my opinion." With a dismissive hand gesture--a quick slice of his hand through the air--he reached across his desk to retrieve one stack of case files. It didn't account for the other large piles but hell, it was a start. 

“That is a personal opinion.”

“What the fuck ever.” Running a shaky hand through his hair--something else that Connor blamed on Hank's poor diet--his gaze never left him, flicking over his rigid form with a blatant curiosity. "We should go talk to Markus. There’s a good chance that he would know somethin'?" 

And then Connor moved from his perch. Carefully--stiffly was a better way of putting it--around the edge of the desk. Long precise fingers fumbled for the coin in his pocket. It rolled across his knuckles, coming to a complete stop as it was flicked into the opposite palm. Hesitation made the movement rigid, not as fluent as it normally would be. A tick worked itself underneath a rigid jawline. Connor didn't look at him, and instead passed by to his own desk. 

"You haven't seen him since the peace rally," Hank prodded. "I think it's about time we paid him a visit, don't you?" 

"I don't know," He answered in what was almost a whisper, voice low. Unsure. "I've assessed the database's files and all of the reports involving our missing androids. I have only come to the conclusion that older models, or new deviants are being reported disappearing from Jericho. That and it's still limited to Detroit and only a few surrounding cities.” He shrugged. “So far." 

Connor shook his head in defeat. "My most recent solution was to send a scan parts to Cyberlife, but-"

"All of the missing reports we’ve managed to solve end with the android self destructing and destroying their systems," Hank finished for him. "That and its considered murder with your rights. Can't just go pulling apart an android and not expect to get your ass busted." 

"I do not know if an exception can be made for some kind of malfunction. I could probe its memory, but there is no evidence as to how that would affect my own systems." 

"Keeping you at a distance makes the shit harder." Hank agreed, and other than nodding in response, Connor offered no comment. "Until we can figure out if it can be spread, there isn’t much that you can do." 

"Why don't you take your chances and see what the hell happens?" An all too familiar and unapologetically arrogant voice drew closer to their desks. Gavin came to a full stop at their desks, arms folded over his chest with a smirk that never ceased to infuriate him. Both of them, he assumed.

He grimaced. 

Fucking asshole.

"Fuck off, Reed. Don't you have your own case?" Hank grumbled, an edge to his tone that Gavin brushed off a condescending smirk.

"Unlike you and the plastic prick, I've actually made headway." Gavin boasted, his interest in Hank diverted to Connor who watched passively. Most of the time he acted as if Gavin was gum under his shoe that he could scrape on the sidewalk and be done with. Like he couldn't be bothered even when he had a gun in his face and death threats on his name. Hank had been guilty of that look once.

Gavin was full of shit, but Hank wouldn't put anything past him. Even now.

"Hey plastic," Gavin halted in front of the android, squaring up his shoulders. The situation would have been alarming if the difference in height wasn't so obvious. Reed had to look up to address him and Connor responded by raising his eyebrows, tilting his head to the right. 

"Hello, Detective Reed."

"I thought that after the walking toasters were suddenly recognized as people you would leave. A detective android prototype hunting androids is still doing the exact same damn thing." He sneered. 

"I assessed that it would be appropriate to remain in the android crimes department to further offer my assistance to the DPD." His hands folded in front of him, meeting Gavin's eyes with that usual infuriatingly neutral expression. The little twitch in Connor's facial features gave him away however, signaling his annoyance at the detective's harsh jobs.

Gavin didn't see it, but Hank knew him well enough that it was impossible to miss. 

"Yet you're still wearing your Cyberlife threads. I'd almost think that you liked hunting 'em down. Does it give you a sick thrill, prick?" 

"Reed!" Hank interjected, rising stiffly from his desk chair. "That's enough."

"I believe that wearing my uniform shows more professionalism than a leather jacket and a relentlessly hostile attitude, Detective." Connor's brows raised and relaxed sequentially, a slight and subtle twitch pulling at one corner of his mouth. 

"The hell did you just say to me, tin can?" Gavin leaned forward, hand clenching at his side into a fist that he pulled back and took aim on the android. 

"I said that's enough!" Hank barked, shoving himself in between them. 

Gavin was shoved back a few steps.

Connor didn't budge. 

"Back off! Can't you ignore him for five fucking minutes?" 

"Fuck," An enraged gaze flicked between Hank and Connor. Gavin snarled in frustration, one hand slipping seamlessly into the pockets of his jacket, the other pointing an accusing finger in the android's direction like it hadn't been the detective that had approached them with the intention of starting shit. 

Hank scoffed. 

"I'll never so much as tolerate the plastic asshole. The day there are two of him is the day I put in my resignation." One last threatening glare was thrown their way, the threat released into a spat. Before either could comment, Gavin was storming off, cursing incoherently under his breath. 

Surprisingly it had gone better than most of the other times. Hank would have admitted that. 

Evidently, every altercation passed by Connor without a second thought. Hell, maybe not even a first. The evidence room incident remained the only time that the android actually retaliated on him. That being that he needed to in order to accomplish his mission. 

Still, he caught Connor's expression as Gavin was leaving. He watched him through distrusting slits, LED flashing yellow for a split second before correcting itself. His jaw was tense, something dark stirring within him, something troubled that Hank didn't quite recognize. It was only when Hank actually decided to speak that Connor finally looked at him, eyes softening into something more calm, relaxed. Normal. 

"Let's go ask Markus some questions. Any idea where he might be?" In a gesture of reassurance that didn't quite reach him, Hank placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Markus has been overseeing the conversion and stock of dormant androids at the remaining Cyberlife stores. We can pull up those that have yet to be listed as maintenance and distribution centers and start there." And as if nothing had changed, as if the threat from the DPD's most eccentric detective had already been forgotten--at least it would have been if he wasn't squirming underneath a clenched jaw--the task of talking to Markus seemed to unnerve him more. Talking to the deviant leader was a task that Connor was less inclined to do over listening to Reed berating him every chance he got. 

The observation was a question for later, and truthfully Hank didn't anticipate an answer. 

Connor stepped back to allow him through first, Hank's hand slipping from his shoulder to dangle uselessly at his side instead. Expression falling flat, he waved him through. "After you, Lieutenant."

[bettertheworld]

To change, you have to change.

The most important crash-course our planet is on is with itself, it doesn't matter that in billions of years our solar system is going to collide with a nearby galaxy, our planet is on a crash-course with human habits and they're already ruining the world bite-by-bite, meal-by-meal.  

Yes, there are other factors threatening our existence causing climate change, but none of those factors have as much impact as what we ingest as 'foods' and 'drinks'. None of those other factors can be compromised because people need to travel to and from work, move about the world, people need to get goods from one part of the world to another etc...  

What people don't need is to support the burning and deforestation of the Amazon Rainforest and other grasslands to allow cattle to graze, we don't need meat to exist as a thing that keeps us fed - that idea is 100s of years old and if you haven't heard, Justus Von Liebig was wrong – very wrong.  For an idea that old to be so strongly affecting us today, means we're living in the past - we don't need animals to get ample protein in our lives.  Ignoring the problems the present is creating is a true and horrible crime of today, but you should also realize that someone is pulling the strings behind the scenes and initially, it's not our fault. If this scenario were a person in their life, a medical doctor would send that person to a psychotherapist, and you know that doctor would have already started them on an SSRI among other drugs that they would be getting kick-backs on.

Later on I'll describe to you what the Disease Model is, and how Doctors operate within those boundaries to keep us sick, but alive.

The Covid-19 pandemic is the canary in the coal-mine telling us that if we don't change our ways, minds, and belief systems, it's going to be too late to save life as we know it; look at Covid-19, it’s already doing that.  Misguidedly, I tried so many times to inform and help people accept the facts, but at that time, I didn’t know that, new facts are polarizing, they don’t just change belief-systems. I burnt so many bridges wasting effort on people who weren't ready to accept new information, who didn't want to change, and who at best wanted to make me look like a blabbing fool.  What does it take to make someone talking pure gold look like their talking garbage? The answer is a loyal following.  Take away the loyalists, and you take away Those-Who-Resist's ground to stand on. Inform the following, and instead of working against them, like Othello, you're now working with them.  Seems easy, but it's an absolute nightmare sometimes to be on this mission – while trying to do life.

The bottom line is this, If we don't change our eating habits, we're going to be looking back on 2020 and we're going to regretfully say, 'we should have listened, we should have read the true science and informed ourselves and understood that vegan activists are sharing information so that we can minimize our impact which elongates the future for generations to come, not to take away anyone's rights or freedoms today'.  You might not see all of those right away, but I need to make the point about 2020 and it's a bit cheesy, here it is in a series of extremely short sentences. 2020. Vision. Hindsight. (You see what I’m doing here?) Covid-19.  Human deaths. Animal flu Spillover. Cause of covid. These points are all strongly connected and the answer to the problem is, leave the animals alone.  We can easily be getting all nutrients from plants, thereby eliminating the ability for animal flu spillover, stopping future pandemics and living successfully and healthfully. Wow, seems simple. If you need proof about how vegans can kill it physically, check out Nimai Delgado on Instagram.  Here's a hint - do not worry about adequate protein intake – I would worry a whole lot more if I still ate meat.

Did you know that a chickpea has every amino acid that your body needs and none of the cholesterol that lays down fatty streaks in your arteries?  Dietary cholesterol only comes from eating animal products.  Did you know that of the 20 amino acids, only 9 are essential?  Did you know that plants make amino acids? Did you know plants make ALL amino acids? Did you know you can live healthfully with just eating plants? If you doubt, check out nutritiondata.com; it will set you free.

I had the hindsight to realize that we are the problem, what I was eating was harming me, and that change happened without me forfeiting anything and that what I needed to thrive and live my best, most fulfilling and healthiest life was growing in the ground and putting carbon back into the ground thereby removing carbon dioxide from the air? What was being bled out, hung upside down, chopped into pieces, packaged, and then referred to as Halal Beef or 'extra-lean ground chuck' was killing me from within.  It is my hunch that in the future, Halal will be condemned as an inhumane and non-sustainable practice.  If you doubt my words, consider watching Earthlings, and I mean ALL of Earthlings – It's free on Youtube.

Covid-19 was caused by humans' interactions with animals.  You can try to re-word, re-frame, re-everything the previous sentence, but you can't, we caused it by conquering the world and being negligent with our logistics and lack of science.  It doesn't matter if you can conjure up conspiracy theories or already understand that it's our closeness with animals that has caused the pandemic. I'm not going to get into the nitty gritty details because that's already been done.  I'm here to send a wake-up call to anyone who will listen, anyone who will change, anyone who cares about their children, nieces, nephews, brothers, sisters, parents, or anyone who will live beyond your years, basically anyone beyond yourself.  Yes these are strong words, but these are grim times.

Are you going to be in the group who changed given the information that is out there, or will you be in the stubborn group who thinks they can interpret the science better than the professionals can? Are you going to continue to believe that every falsely "debunked" meat-free solution as a result of fake news is remotely inclusive or correct? Are you going to choose greed and personal choice over minimizing your impact on the future?  Are you going to let fake news scare you into eating meat?  The only reason why you have a choice today is because of capitalism, but is capitalism helping or killing you? Take capitalism away, and you would be left with no choice, you would be doing what is best for the planet because that’s also best for you and, if you don’t know, climate change is already here!  

Again, I'm not here to take away your personal choice, I'm here to instill a sense of agency within you, to give you the power to take control of your life, to be in the driver's seat with regard to your own health, and to reframe the choices that you have so that you can choose better for whatever the rest of your years look like or whatever may come to be on this planet because of you.  Do you want to be part of the solution, or would you rather defend your right to live unsustainably because you have money?

Take the rich for example, whatever you want, you get because they have the money for it. Well, consider the fact that heart disease has not been linked to a lower socioeconomic status, instead it affects everyone roughly equally if you're all eating an equal amount of animal protein and animal fats, you're all getting just about the same amount of sick (ignoring specific nutrient deficiencies).  Whether you're eating the rarest of blood-dripping steaks with the fanciest 1000-thread count napkins on your laps, or you're going through a McDonald's drive-thru dropping lettuce all over your car because all your bank account will let you do is get a Bacon-Double-Cheeseburger and the person who made it can’t get all the lettuce between the patties, either way that animal fat is being pushed into your arteries by your blood pressure and the animal protein is wreaking havoc in your body promoting your genes to signal cancer growth within your body. It doesn't matter if you're eating only white meat vs red, animal protein does not promote optimal health for a human being.  

Eating meat was the exception and necessary at one point in time within evolution, but it was never meant to be a long-term solution, how do I know this? Our bodies tell us that. Our teeth are flat for grinding roughage, our teeth cannot shred muscle very well.  We have elongated GI systems designed to absorb complex carbohydrates, our stomach acid is not as strong as true carnivores.  We require vitamin C in our diet which relates to us having trichromatic vision, vs Lions that only see black, white and grey. Vitamin C is found in plants, not meat.  Yes we have the ability to digest meat, but it wreaks havoc on our bodies, and it takes a long time to see the result of that action develop into symptoms of various cardiovascular diseases, and cancers.

With regard to deciding to finally kill Betsy the cow because you’re starving and need to eat something? Can you imagine being that person who had to hack up the first cow when it went against their way of life at the time? How traumatic it would be! Maybe you can imagine doing it yourself right now, and or it's time to think, "If I can't do it, how am I going to pay someone else to do it?  Ask yourself that 3 times.

Necessity has a way of changing us because we’ll do anything to survive. Whether you accept it or not, we're already at that point of necessity with regard to climate and I’m glad someone has done something about it.  Look at Greta Thunberg, if you haven't seen her documentary, I highly recommend it, it's called 'Greta'. A child who has been handed an unfair start at life, facing a climate crisis and being left to think, 'what's the point of me doing anything other than this?' The answer to her question is 'quite honestly, barely any". Her campaign of 'Skolstrejk for Klimatet', translated it means "school-strike for climate" has gained momentum and woken people up, but was that her resonsibility in the first place? We all know the answer to that, and that proves that our ignorance is making the future more and more unfair for each child born, and if that’s your child, and if you eat meat, you truly do not what to offer the best planet to your children.

I have to address this quickly because so many people refer to it.  If 'God' created the world, the bible via prophets and animals to eat, then god also created Science and Philosophy and Logic, which has now proven many facts about diet and disease, so how are we going to defend eating meat with words of the bible and ignore the Science, Philosophy and Logic that was also bred of God? You tell me what you come up with.

You tell yourself that it's just one meal, it's just a couple meals a day, or it's every meal and it's your choice and you can do whatever you want to your body.  That is true because capitalism allows that, but if you want to grow and become better than you already are, you should really ask yourself a question that about 98% of people ignore - "Am I doing this whole food thing right?" And therefore, "Am I giving myself too many allowances? Do I have a realistic or horribly unrealistic view of my own life and my existence?"  Yes, it goes deep, but is it too difficult to critically look at yourself? Think beyond yourself.

For those educated regarding Critical Theory and higher degrees of thought in school, you may ask yourself a lot more questions than that, but before you begin to answer them with regards to food, do not even think about answering them with regard to your experience if you have only tried eating one way, you need to go with science on this one and use yourself as an experiment - make changes, and gauge how you feel – cut the meat and dairy, align your thoughts and feelings with what is on your plate.  

It was only a year ago Canada made their first food guide without Research from the companies providing the animal products.  Is it just me or does it seem crazy to have ever used research from Beef producers about beef?  Regarding the changes which nearly left meat out completely, I have my own conspiracy theories as to why meat was left in, but take a hint people, it was all but removed. Wake up and smell the chickpeas, ditch the animal products.

What do you think your children, grand-children, great-grand-children, etc.. will think of you? No you will not meet all that come to be because of you but they'll know if you were the first go ditch meat, and take control of your health. You have the power to choose, you have the agency to act autonomously and to think for yourself.  What legend do you want to leave behind? What are they going to say about you if you refuse to change?  

My mother has smoked my entire life, always telling me that she'll quit, it's hard I know, but after 35 years, I've given up trying to change people, instead I refuse to keep secret for her, her habits that are shortening her life day in and day out. Telling her that if she dies of anything related to her smoking or eating habits, that I will use her as an example to teach my nieces about cause and effect.  Call me brutally honest, call me anything you want, but before all, call me a realist.

Did you know that even in abusive relationships, the abused will at times defend the abuser? Did you know that happens a lot more than you realize? Maybe now you can realize that you're being abused by the meat-producers and now you're defending them by defending your 'right' to eat meat?

I think we are ready to remove the veil, but to do so you'll have to do the research yourself and not just take my word for it. Everything I spout nowadays, is the opposite of what I knew myself to be in 2014. The fact that I have been through university with a degree in Human kinetics, spending time with nutrition and other Biomedical sciences - nothing woke me up better than meeting a Vegan who cared enough to hold my hand and walk me through what big businesses never wanted me to find out. That what we eat is killing us, the planet, and the future.  Now, science has shown us that with a vegan diet, rich of fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, nuts and seeds, we can reverse the number top killers (heart disease and many cancers) of people caused by ingesting animal products or at least optimize your chance at fighting off or living with a disease. Eating animal products is never part of the solution, it’s the problem.

Take control of your life and inform yourself because only you can live your life.

[livlepretre]

Okay, I’ve slept on it, and I’m ready to leave a more intelligent comment. First off, I’m reading some of these “betrayal” comments and I’m like.....what else was she supposed to do though? Elena 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥𝘴 to show Klaus what’s up between them. If she doesn’t nip this behavior in the bud, things will be worse down the line—for both of them. “‘Tell me you're mine,’ she demands, her hand on his jaw, fingernails biting into him as she offers him this one final out.” Elena kept telling him she was in shock, she needed space, she wasn’t ready to commit, but he didn’t listen! And when Klaus has the physical upper hand, Elena has to even the playing field! Okay, off to just some of my favs from this chapter:

1.) “A leopard can't change its spots.”— This right here is beautiful!

2.) “It's the work of an instant to press her mouth against Klaus's throat and sink her teeth into him as she comes.” When this happened, I just gasped. The gall of this girl! The sheer power move! I can’t even measure the amount big dick energy™️ this girl has. However, RIP both her teeth and stomach. I’ve never ingested copious amounts of blood, but that can’t be fun later on lol.

3.) “She must kill all of her reflections if she wants to be the one to live. And for her child, she will do anything.” Wow, I love this! It really reinforces the point that Klaus had the potential to fall for any of them, but Elena ends up being the one because the two end up seeing the other for exactly what they are. Elena isn’t afraid to set straight any misconceptions about herself and her nature. She is her own separate entity now, and Klaus needs to understand that.

4.) “She's won.” Oof we know our girl loves the thrill of a good victory!

5.) I already mentioned my love for the power speech in my comment last night, but let me reiterate it again. THAT POWER SPEECH! ❤️

Wait hold up, were you one of the anons or do you have another pseud??? 

It’s wild wild wild to me how much people want to side with Klaus (like, I love him, but it’s no exaggeration to say that he’s just the worst????) and say that Elena keeps betraying Klaus, but that totally forgets things like how he compelled Matt to walk in front of that car and hadn’t even decided whether or not to let him live. That was a week ago. Dude’s just like that. And the thing that really makes him great with Elena, in a dysfunctional, screwy way, is that she’s like that too, and she gets off on playing these games. Like he keeps saying, she’s happier playing cat and mouse with him than she is trying to be normal. A huge part of her depression in the first half of the fic is from being cut out of all of the scheming, which she craves. 

Your point about why she had to do this is so exactly it. Klaus was going to use his age and his strength as ways to make Elena do what he wanted-- he’s not a reasonable creature, so Elena had to do something big and dramatic to make her point, and to get him to back off enough-- she had to take the power into her own hands and assert her own agency, because he wasn’t going to give it to her (and... is agency something we can be given anyway? or is it something we always have to take for ourselves?) What I love about Elena and why I think this ship really works is that she is just so capable of being that ruthless and stealing the upper hand. She can be Klaus’s unlikely equal, in a way that the other characters just can’t. 

Obviously loved hearing about your favorite parts!!

For the blood, I have to assume that drinking vampire blood is not like drinking human blood? The only time I’ve ever swallowed a lot of blood was when I had my wisdom teeth out, and it made me very sick. The magic element to the blood probably changes it though to be less nausea-inducing. 

You bring up a great point that Elena IS her own separate entity-- and that includes separate from Klaus, even though they originally fell together because they recognized themselves in the other through their shared loneliness. 

THE POWER SPEECH. Have to admit, I really enjoyed the part where she swallowed his tear, because he ate her tears earlier in the fic and it was so weird and feral and kind of cruel in the face of her fear and trauma over her feelings for him; it was great fun to reverse that a bit and have Elena rise up as Klaus’s monster.