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ptergwen · 4 years

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sensation

w/c: 4.6k

warnings: some swearing, suggestive tings, and a pretty bad ending

summary: it’s the last night of your world tour, and tom has the perfect way to celebrate

a/n: i know y’all have been waiting for this one! everyone really loved when worlds collide but i ran out of ideas for it lol sorry... anyways my solution was to turn it into a oneshot :D based off the au!! i’m honestly nervous about posting this cuz a lot of you asked for it and i don’t wanna disappoint but i tried my absolute hardest to make it special <3 please enjoy

“thank you so much! we love you!” you shout to the audience, laughing breathlessly when they shout back. one of your dancers pulls you into a side hug, you throwing your arm around his neck. “we’re so fucking lucky you chose us, that you came all the way here. i’ve seen some of you back at night one. wow.” your voice gets wobbly, thinking about how loyal your fans are.

the tour started in new york, and they’ve followed you here to london.

tonight is an emotional night for everyone. you’re about to wrap your last show before you continue again in the summer. touring the u.k. has been a dream, and you’re just as thrilled to travel the rest of the world after your break. it’s bittersweet because you’re going to miss the hell out of your crew and the millions of lovely faces you’ve sang to each week. but, you do get to spend your time off with a special someone.

he’s watching you from the sound booth, sending fond smiles and loud cheers your way. thanks to you, tom has been at every show you’ve played in england. he brought harry along this time because he’s also a fan and wanted to see you. well, tom is more than a fan at this point. you’d say he’s more of a boyfriend. you haven’t discussed labels just yet.

your dates have mainly been over facetime, since you live on opposite sides of the world with insane schedules. a heartthrob actor and international popstar is quite the combination. you’ve only seen each other in person a couple of times, the first being pretty recently.

zendaya brought tom along to hang out with you in los angeles. he happened to be there recording some lines for a movie. she saw your concert earlier that night and invited him to crash the dinner plans you’d made, resulting in the best surprise and most fun you’ve ever had. the other time you enjoyed each other’s company was one weekend in paris. that was... something.

besides those two miracles, everything between you and tom happens through a screen. you’ll down bottles of champagne or keep warm under blankets while talking about your days. it’s nice, having someone on the other end who listens and actually hears you. tom gets it. you both do.

finishing your tour in london is convenient because not only will you have tom to comfort you, but you get to stick around for a while. he’s invited you to stay at his place. you can’t wait to meet the other holland’s, his friends, and obviously tessa.

“fuck, i’m gonna cry. i’m already crying,” you announce to the crowd, though they can tell from the tears streaming down your face. more dancers huddle around you and turn your single hug into a group one. you’re laughing and sobbing and holding on tight to everyone. fans bawl their own eyes out, the fact that this is it starting to settle in. the onstage crew even gets choked up, seeing you like this.

tom pouts from where he’s watching. he wishes he could run up there and squeeze you tight, but he’ll have to save that for when you’re done.

“i love you all so much, literally every single one of you in this room,” you tell everyone for the nth time tonight, swiping a perfectly manicured finger under your eyes. “my lighting crew, sound crew, my band, my fearless fucking dancers-“ a hiccup cuts you off. people burst into fits of giggles, which is a much needed tension breaker. you adjust your headset so the mic doesn’t pick up any other bodily noises.

grinning, you rest your arm on a shorter dancer’s shoulder, then go on. “sorry, sorry. i just wanna say, like, three more thank you’s before i get out of here.” there’s a chorus of no’s and encouraging whistles at the mention of you leaving. you blink back more tears to delay the breakdown you’re going to have. “thank you to my friends who always show up for me.”

with a knowing smile, you glance over at tom. “and, thank you to my more than a friend.” he smiles back, both hands held over his heart. harry elbows him in congratulations. more screaming erupts from the crowd as they realize where you’re looking and who you’re looking at. this will be sure to spark some headlines. whatever, you’re used to trending on every possible social media platform by now.

“this is the big one,” you preface, taking in a breath while everyone quiets down again. “thank you to you guys. for trusting me, for caring about what i have to say in any way. i feel your love. i really do, and i hope you feel mine.” your fans yell that they love you back, dancers gently swaying you side to side, emotions on high. there’s one last song, and it’s over.

“this has been the sensation tour, and i’ve been your host. was i good?” you try to lighten the mood, earning a bunch of what sound like positive shrieks. the earpiece you have in makes it hard to tell. “y’all were even better.” exchanging looks with your dancers, you pull out of the hug so you can get to your mark for the finale. they follow your lead. music comes through the speakers.

“i’ll see you again soon, okay? i promise. here’s sensation,” you introduce the song, immediately bursting into more tears. it’s torture to say goodbye. thankfully, you have the most incredible fans on earth, so they sing along with you at the top of their lungs. that includes tom and harry, your ultimate stans.

when the show is over, you run right off stage and over to tom. he’s waiting on the side with actual heart eyes for you. you practically leap into his arms, a hand cradling the back of his head, both his arms draped low and tight around your body.

“you were so amazing up there! absolutely smashed it, darling,” tom breathes out. his face is smushed between your neck and mostly bare chest. “thanks, tom. seriously, thanks for being here tonight and every other.” you smile a tired smile and wind your other arm around his neck. he presses some light you’re welcome kisses to your skin. “mm, thanks for having me. how’s it feel to be done?”

you sigh, fingers running through his curls. “like the biggest relief, and also really sad.” you’re such a mess that you could cry again on the spot. tom senses it and lifts his head up to see if you’re alright. “super depressing,” you surprisingly reiterate without the waterworks. “i know the feeling. you’ll be back soon, though. you said it,” he murmurs, a grin on his lips as they brush against the corner of yours.

you’re about to kiss him properly, then one of your dancers comes up to you. you’d forgotten that there are still stage managers and security everywhere, too. you get completely lost in tom whenever you’re together.

“you killed, babe,” coco greets you, linking your arm in hers. tom takes the hint and lets go of you. he watches on with a smirk. “nah, you murdered,” you send the compliment back and bite your lower lip. “i dunno, i feel like someone murdered me!” there’s coco with her dramatics. she’s genuinely hilarious, your shared sense of humor playing a huge part in your friendship.

she brings your free hand to her heart. you gasp at how fast it’s going. “that shit is really beating, coco. are you, like, okay?” “probably not. it was the freestyle that got me.” coco went a lot harder than usual tonight, since it was her last big dance break for a while. she puffs air from her cheeks and nods to tom. “this your man?”

“yeah, you could say that. i’m tom,” he answers, holding out a hand for her. “coco.” she pulls it like you would in a handshake. you beam at them, one of your best friends and unofficial boyfriend finally meeting. “sounds promising. i approve,” coco mutters to you. bumping your hip into hers playfully, you take one of tom’s hands in both of yours.

“aw, we have your blessing or something? your permission?” you coo and get a push at your shoulder from coco in return. tom chuckles, his thumb running over the back of your hand. “no! i was gonna say you should bring him out back,” coco clarifies, like it was obvious. you’re not sure what she’s on about. “uh, what’s out back?” you question. “an axe?” tom teases.

coco gestures to the nearest exit. “we’re having a little goodbye party in the parking lot. fire pit, snacks. remember?” nope, you’d completely forgotten. the idea first sounded like the perfect way to end your night, so you agreed to go. that was before you were dripping sweat and mentally exhausted. now, all you want to do is unwind with tom and tom only.

the superstar life is one you’re happy to lead, just not at this exact moment.

“i do now.” you muster up your most apologetic smile for coco, tugging on tom’s hand. “i’m sorry, co. i think we’re gonna pass.” her jaw drops. you’re never one to skip these things. “aw, for real? it’s our last night!” tom threads his fingers through yours while you talk. “bro, we’ve been together for almost a whole year,” you laugh out, nuzzling your cheek into tom’s chest. “get sick of me.”

“never,” coco deadpans. she catches you gazing up at tom, relaxing as his arms hug your middle. she’s known you long enough to tell what’s a fling and what’s real love for you. this is something special, and she can’t get in the way of it. she’ll let you navigate this yourself. “ok, just for tonight. you’ll text me?” coco gives you a real smile, raising an eyebrow at tom. he gathers that’s a good thing. he’s in.

“mhm. maybe we can hang out tomorrow,” you agree and let your eyes flutter shut. all that’s keeping you up are tom’s strong arms. “tell everyone i love them.” “i think they know.” coco shakes her head lightheartedly. tom laughs at her. “be good,” she tells him and means it, rubbing your back on her way to the lot. that leaves you and tom alone at last.

custodians are cleaning up the arena, fans are piling out, and you’re clinging to tom while his steady heartbeat grounds you. this is the only after party you need.

“harry’s got the car when you’re ready,” tom mumbles, tucking a piece of damp hair behind your ear. you loop your arms around his torso with a hum. “i was kinda wondering where he went.” “yeah?” he gives you a small smile. “gotta ask what he thought... of the show.” yawns are creeping past your lips, tonight’s events catching up to you.

“i like feedback from the fans, or stans,” you elaborate in your sleepy state. tom uses his fingertips to tap your temple. “what about me? i’m your biggest.” “i’ll, um, follow up with you later.” your words are slurring. “right now, home.” warmth spreads throughout tom’s entire body, his house becoming yours for a bit. “your chariot awaits,” he affirms before helping you to your dressing room.

after collecting your things, you follow tom out to the car. harry is in the driver’s seat, and you two slip into the back. he exchanges a look with his brother through the mirror while you settle on his shoulder. you’re hugging his bicep, his lips pressing to the side of your head.

“thank you for driving,” you speak softly to harry. he starts to pull out of the spot with a nod. “no problem. get to say i was y/n y/l/n’s chauffeur.” tom clicks his tongue even though harry is joking. you snicker at his remark, joking back. “you want the job? better be a five star ride, then.” your banter brings yet another smile to tom’s face. his family is everything to him, so seeing you get along so well means the most.

“right, right. did you have a good time?” harry wonders, twisting to see behind him while he turns around. he also peeks at you snuggled up to tom before facing forward. “great, actually. did you?” you check, the grin clear in your voice. harry goes into full stan mode. “no shit! you were brilliant, y/n. god, every note was just like how you did it the studio.” he’s raving, which is much appreciated by you.

“good answer.” tom shoots his brother a wink. “‘s that what you wanted to hear?” he asks in reference to your conversation earlier. your response is a kiss to his shoulder. “yay. i’m happy you liked it, harry.” he buzzes with excitement, having his favorite artist care what he thinks.

not much is said for the rest of the drive. tom and harry make some hushed conversation about golfing this weekend while you struggle to stay awake. they’re obsessed with that damn sport. it’s honestly nice to see, that tom has something he likes to do when he isn’t shooting hollywood’s biggest movies. your free time will finally give you the chance to discover other hobbies.

you stumble out of the car upon arriving to the boys’ place, a backpack on your shoulders and tom’s hand held tight in yours. you’ve got only a few essentials with you for tonight. the rest is on the tour bus, so you’ll gather it after your hangout with coco. besides, everything you need at the moment is right here.

“home sweet home,” tom announces as harry unlocks the front door. his words bring a tired smile to your face. “finally,” you exhale, keeping your fingers laced with tom’s and following the two of them inside. “i could show you around a bit, give you the grand tour. or-“ tom stops talking, feeling your weight on him. harry huffs at how oblivious his brother is.

“mate, she’s falling over. save it,” he suggests and kicks the door shut lazily. you’re done in. you’ve been having to lean on tom since the show ended. “another time, then,” tom mumbles, securing his arm around your waist. “there is one thing i wanna see.” your voice is low, body curled into tom’s side. he raises an eyebrow. “and that is?” “your room.”

tom takes that in a suggestive way, like he does most things. “we’re getting right to it, are we?” he questions, harry gagging and you nudging his arm with your head. “not like that, dummy. ‘cuz i’m sleepy.” there’s a beat of silence. “ask me again in-“ “wow, look at the time!” harry interrupts so he doesn’t have to hear the details. he’s sure he’ll witness enough after it happens. “off to bed i go! goodnight.”

he rushes to get to his room, yelling out, “great show, y/n!” on the way. “thank you! night!” you call back, tom letting out a sigh. “div of the century,” he says under his breath. “must run in the family,” you playfully retort. that gets you a firm poke at your side. “where’s everyone else?” you glance up at him. there should be two other idiots and a lovely, furry lady running around.

“tuwaine’s gone to the pub, harrison’s filming late, and tess is at mum and dad’s,” tom fills you in, grabbing your arm and draping it around his middle. doing him one better, you hug him with both. you squint in confusion about the last part. “they watch her when i’m out,” tom answers your unspoken question. “ah,” you nod, then deflate ever so slightly. “i wanted to meet her, though. the other boys, too.”

tom smooths the pad of his thumb over your cheek. “you will, darling. it’s only for tonight.” he kisses the same spot reassuringly. “we’ve got loads of time.” “yeah, we do,” you agree, instantly cheering up and letting your head fall onto his chest. “now, where’s your room?” “just upstairs. you need some help getting in?” he’s only playing around, but you accept, tightening your arms around his neck.

“show me the way,” you beam at him. “happy to.” tom wiggles his eyebrows, you jumping up. your legs wrap around his waist, his arms holding you against him. with a satisfied hum, you squish your face into his insanely soft shirt. “what a diva,” tom sarcastically complains while taking you to the staircase. “doesn’t even say please. no manners from this one.”

“you try dancing in six inch heels for two hours,” you shoot back, patting the side of his neck. he moves one hand down to your thigh for a better grip. you’re nearing the top of the stairs. “think i’ll leave that to you,” he decides and squeezes your thigh. “look at me, carrying the whole music industry.” your face easily gets hot and your words turn to murmurs. “shut up. you should listen to other songs.”

you’re on the second floor now, tom going for the first door. he frowns at his rejected compliment. “no, i like yours. they’re my favorite.” “really?” your muffled laugh sounds from his chest. “what was the first thing i ever said to you?” he asks, a toothy grin on him even though you can’t see it. you recall the faithful night he slid into your dms while he carries you into his room.

he’d tripped over his words somehow, the fangirling fool. before that, he tweeted to the whole world that he wanted to see you in concert. it was a huge thing, and people were freaking out about it, even more so when your online interactions became routine. that’s nothing compared to where you are now.

you’re currently living with him and basically dating. possibly, in love. the base of it all really is your music.

“that you love me.” you pause for the ellipses. the corners of your lips turn up. “but, you really meant to say my work.” “both apply.” tom passes that off like it’s a side comment, carefully laying you down on his bed. you look up at him with a curious glint in your eyes. “what does that mean?” his cheeks flush, and he bites back the smile that’s growing. this was supposed to go... differently.

you sit up, breathing out a laugh at tom’s boyish behavior. he’s precious, truly. “you do love me?” those three words will change everything if he says yes. he takes both your hands in his and holds them between you two. you meet his doe eyes. “yeah, y/n/n. i do.” so, you were right. “i love you... and, that wasn’t how i planned on saying it.” signaling for him to elaborate, you tilt your head to the side.

tom sits down next to and faces you before continuing. “it was supposed to be romantic, right?” he rolls his eyes up to the ceiling, annoyed he ruined this. “candlelit dinner, flowers, that sort of thing. seems more fitting for the occasion.” you shift closer to him until your knees are touching. your face is lit up, voice dropped to almost a whisper.

“since when do we do things the way we’re supposed to?” you point out and set your hands on his shoulders. “we’ve gone straight from online dating to me moving in. that’s usually not how it works.” tom chuckles lowly. his own hands find their place on your hips. you’re so good with words. then again, you are a singer. “guess you could say we’re, um, spontaneous,” he agrees, fingers drawing circles on you.

you and tom have explored some of each other’s most intimate places, yet you’ve never shared a moment quite like this. it’s like meeting him for the first time again. he’s too tongue tied to spit out what he wants. you somehow know, anyway. what you cherish most about your relationship is that you two completely and totally understand one another, on every level.

“tom?” you speak quietly, butterflies filling up your body. “hm?” he hums back. this is one of those moments where it all just clicks. “i love you. i really, really love you.” you giggle out of the pure happiness that consumes you, tom joining in your laughter. “i love you, too.” he sounds like he’s said it a million times and he’ll say it a million more. he leans over so his forehead rests on yours. “really, really love you.”

your warm breath hits his face, eyes darting from his own to his lips. “i want you to be more than...” you trail off, unsure of how to phrase it. “more than... more than a friend?” tom pokes fun at what you said during the show. there’s less and less space between you with every second. “you mean, like, a boyfriend?”

“exactly. be my boyfriend,” you all but demand. you’re half asleep and desperate to be able to call him yours already. “bossy, bossy, bossy,” tom chastises, swiping his thumb across your bottom lip. how he goes from being shy and giddy to the cockiest person alive in minutes, you’ll never know. “please?” you throw in to sway him. your hand locks with his, slowly moving it off your face.

you run your tongue over your teeth. “at least kiss me.” “you don’t have to ask,” tom breathes, lips now ghosting over yours. “i was going to.” true to his words, he closes the microscopic gap between you, you pushing forward against him as you kiss back. your first kiss in love. his lips taste like the chapstick he always uses, and he moves them softly.

he places a hand on your knee, you opening your mouth so he can have access to it. instead, a yawn exits. tom pulls back with a breathy laugh. “you must be exhausted, yeah? let’s get you to bed.” he pecks your lips once more. “my girl needs her beauty rest.” that confirms your relationship. you scrunch your nose and grin wide. “and, she’s gonna get some with her boy.”

you’re reminded of how sweaty you are when you catch a whiff. “oof, wait. do you think i can take a shower first?” you grimace, fanning at the air for emphasis. tom uses the tip of his nose to nudge yours. “absolutely. need help in there, too?” he’s not asking in that way, only so nothing happens. the hospital wouldn’t be the most pleasant place to spend your break. plus, he doesn’t want to be without you too long.

“you know what? yeah.”

that’s how you end up intertwined under the hot water, letting it cascade down your back as tom hugs you close to him. you sigh in content and tangle your fingers in his fluffed over curls. you’ve learned that he’s super into having his hair played with. it’s endearing, how he instinctively leans into your touch, eyes closing as you tug on the roots.

he drops his head down to kiss your shoulder, dragging his lips to your collarbone in a way that tickles. they land on one of your breasts next. there isn’t anything sexual about it, only loving. just in case he gets too excited because it’s not uncommon he does, you gently put a finger to his lips. tom takes the hint and lets up. you continue combing through his wet hair while you step out of the water.

“do you ever sing in the shower?” he questions, drawing your naked body in closer to his. “sometimes, yeah. i honestly feel like i sound better there,” you admit and slide your hand down to the nape of his neck. tom’s tongue darts out to lick his lips. “not true. you sound beautiful everywhere, and don’t fight me on this one.” he smirks in satisfaction, you groaning at your loss.

“i really enjoy hearing your voice when it blares through an arena, though,” tom keeps buttering you up. you shake your head and settle both arms around his neck. “man, i just love you so much.” “i love you, sweetheart,” he murmurs back, you switching places so he can give his hair a final rinse. you watch him and his glowing body, admiring the sight.

“what a sensation you are,” you say mostly to yourself, which doesn’t stop him from hearing. “i see what you did there.” he eyes you while you do the same to him. your arms still around his neck pull him back to you. “tommy? do you sing in the shower?” you meant to ask him before, then he started throwing all those compliments at you.

tom scoffs, walking you back so you’re against the wall. “i don’t sing anywhere.” “what?” you gasp and put a hand on his chest. “you’re lying, you have to be. wasn’t billy elliot a musical?” he narrows his eyes at you as he tries to gage where you’re going with this. “that i did a decade ago, and way before puberty. couldn’t sing a word without cracking after that.”

your mouth is left hanging open in shock and disappointment. you bet he has a nice voice, and he’s downplaying it. “y/n,” tom begins, cupping your jaw with his palm. “since we’re living together now, there’s a lot you’re going the learn about me. good things, weird things.” he shrugs casually. “this is one of the weird things.”

“only because you make it weird! come on, let me hear you,” you request and wrap a leg around his waist. you’re giving him a hopeful smile. “god, no. you’ll hate it,” he almost laughs, a hand on your thigh. “i’m literally a singer. how could i hate something i love?” you refute, batting your lashes at him. “especially when someone i love is doing it.” “i love you, too. but, i’m not.” he’s quick to shut you down.

“drop a bar!” you try to coax him, which he already has a comeback for. “you first.” “i can’t. my throat is all scratchy from earlier,” you lie. tom presses his lips into a line, feigning pity. “aw, you know what’ll make you feel better? tea. i’ll go get you some.” he turns to shut the water off, so you grab his shoulders. “no, the steam is working. you can stay.”

“love,” tom addresses you in a warning tone that you can’t take seriously. he can’t either, a giggle escaping him. “my voice is shit. ask anyone, and they’ll tell you.” “i won’t believe them,” you hum, pushing back curls sticking to his forehead. “sounds like you just have stage fright. we can work on that, though.” “how?” he tightens his arm around your middle.

“i’ll bring you on for my next show. we’ll do a little duet.” you’re joking, though that would definitely be interesting to see unfold. “uh, never. what happened to you being tired?” tom cleverly deflects and digs his fingers into your side. you look down in defeat. “i forgot about that.” “yeah, yeah. no, seriously. we should really get to sleep, y/n/n.” he’s back to his sweet, attentive self. “‘s been a long night.”

giving in with a nod, you capture his lips in yet another kiss. tom never gets tired of them, and neither do you. you break it after a few seconds, lips lingering on his as they detach. “carry me?” you ask again, not caring how whiny you sound. tom presses a quick kiss to your forehead. “oh, you’re adorable. of course.”

well, you’ve found something to keep you occupied until the next leg of tour. you’re going to discover the many layers your intriguingly unusual boyfriend has.

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considermewhelmed · 4 years

Text

Achilles Come Down by Gang of Youths- Tim Drake

TW: attempted su*c*de/su*c*dal thoughts, anxiety, depression.

a/n: hey remember in the Master when I said these would be short fics? Ha. Yeah. Me too. Good times.

Tag list: @river9noble

Master

“Achilles, Achilles, Achilles come down/Won’t you get up off, get up off the roof?/You’re scaring us and all of us/Some of us love you/Achilles it’s not much but there’s proof.”

“You may feel no purpose/Nor a point for existing/It’s all just conjecture and gloom/And there may not be meaning/So find one and seize it/Do not waste yourself on this roof/Hear those bells ring deep in the soul/Chiming away for a moment/Feel your breath course frankly below/And see life as a worthy opponent.”

Tim stood on the edge of the building, overlooking the city. His cape billowed lightly in the cool air, and he took a deep breath.

‘Red Robin, report.’ Barbra’s voice asked in his ear.

Tim remained silent, his eyes scanning the streets, but his mind far away.

‘Red Robin, report.’ She repeated.

‘Red Robin, are you okay?’

A new voice broke onto the comms.

Dick.

He had been thinking a lot. About Dick. And Damian. Bruce. Steph. Babs. Duke. Luke. Cass. Kate even. There were just… so many of them. So many. One less surely wouldn’t matter?

He imagined he wouldn’t get a huge memorial like the one for Jason in the batcave- he was choosing this, he did it himself, there was no honour in that. He didn’t mind though, he wasn’t sure he even cared to be remembered.

They barely remembered him alive, why would death help?

He wondered how long it would take them to forget him. The voice is the first thing you forget about a person, when was the last time he talked to them all?

‘Red Robin, where are you?’ Dick.

‘Is his comm offline?’ Steph.

‘No, it’s online. It should be working. Receiver and all.’ Barbra.

‘Red Robin?’ Dick.

He looked down. He’d survived some pretty unlikely things, but this was too much. Too high. There was no way his heart could take his fall, let alone the pavement below waiting for his body. It called his name, whispering the promises of sweet relief with every breeze, the streetlight spotlight marking his entrance to his final bow.

‘Can you get his tracker online?’ Dick.

‘Red Robin, come in.’ Bruce.

‘No. He’s bypassed the security.’ Barbra.

‘Really Drake?’ Damian. ‘Sneaking off during patrol?’

‘Red Robin, report.’ Bruce- and Tim imagined he sounded worried in the way only Batman could be.

‘Where was his route?’ Dick.

Tim tuned them out, but couldn’t bring himself to turn the comms off completely. He didn’t have the heart to be alone- he was selfish and desperate.

He shrugged off the cape, letting it fall to the rooftop, and quietly unclipped his utility belt. He wished he felt scared, or sad, or anything, but instead he just felt numb. Human instinct should be trying to get him back safely to the solid roof behind him, but instead he just swayed in the wind, as if even his own body was impartial to the decision.

He closed his eyes and sighed quietly, rolling his shoulders back, resigning to his fate. There was no use in fighting anymore.

That was it. He felt something. Tired.

Not just tired. Exhausted. Bone deep exhaustion, the kind of exhaustion that made even sleeping a chore. Tears gathered in his eyes, and with each drop his mask got looser and looser. He thought of something to say- some sort of goodbye. Not for them, but for him, for closure. His own eulogy. Last words, maybe?

Did he deserve last words when the villain he lost to was his own mind? Internal, eternal, and inevitable? It was a dance he’d been a part of for far too long and he was just tired.

“Hey Replacement.”

Tim expected his whole body to go rigid, for his instinct to take over, for any kind of fight to bubble up inside him, itching to get out. He and Jason reconciled, sure, but sometimes when he caught him off guard, Tim still had the same knee-jerk reaction.

Instead, his body just stood there, open and unarmed. It solidified his resolve- even his instincts knew it was over. The idea that Jason could easily shoot him, or push him off the roof didn’t scare him.

Why would it?

He could hear Jason’s quiet, heavy steps as the older boy approached.

‘Red Hood, status, have you found him?’

Dick’s voice came over the comms.

Tim didn’t look at Jason. There was a soft click.

“No, not yet. I’ll keep looking. Just cover my area Dickhead.” Jason said before the soft click happened again.

The two boys were quiet for a minute.

Behind him, Tim could hear the familiar whirring of the mechanics- mechanics he helped design -that indicated the removal of Jason’s Red Hood helmet. A thump after indicated Jason had opted to ditch it on the roof.

Normally, Tim would yell at him for being so careless with his equipment, especially since Tim worked hard on the last updates, but he couldn’t even find his voice.

He heard the clatter of weapons hitting the ground, and Jason stepped closer.

“Come on Timmy,” Jason said softly, and Tim’s chest tightened at the nickname. “You’re shaking. You gotta be freezing.”

It wasn’t until Jason said something that Tim realized he was vibrating. Even the air was unforgiving in Gotham, and somewhere between his decision to step on the ledge and the loss of his cape, it turned into an icy grip that cut through the thin material of his suit.

The wind stung his face where the tears had started to slip beneath his mask. His knees buckled and he sucked in a sharp breath of air.

“I can’t.” He choked out, his hand gripping at his chest. “I- I can’t move.”

‘Red Robin?’ Dick’s voice cut through the comms. ‘Come on buddy, where are you, I’ll come get you.’

Tim couldn’t hear him over the roar of his own blood in his ears, and took his comm out of his ear, throwing it off to the side.

It was then he caught sight of Jason, and was shocked by the lack of not only helmet, but mask as well. Jason’s eyes had a green shine to them- a side effect of the pit -and they were trained on Tim.

Jason held out his hand to Tim. “Take my hand baby bird.” He murmured.

“No,” Tim cried. “I want- I should- I have to- I’m going to fall Jason-”

“No.” Jason said sternly. “No you won’t.”

Tim inched closer to the ledge. “It doesn’t matter-”

“Of course it matters dipshit, you matter. I wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.”

Tim’s lip trembled and a sob tore from his throat as his knees gave out from under him and for a split second he was falling-

And the next he was wrapped in a tight hug.

Tim reached out instinctually and grabbed onto whatever he could hold, staying as close as possible to the smell of leather, gun polish and sweat, a surprisingly comforting combination.

Maybe it was just because it meant safety.

“I’ve got you baby bird,” Jason mumbled, and he could feel Jason bury his nose in Tim’s hair. “I’ve got you.”

“I’m sorry,” He sputtered through his tears. “I’m sorry, Jay, I’m sorry,” A whole new breakdown washed over him, and he couldn’t get a grip on his emotions.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Jason scolded him lightly, and rubbed little circles on his back. “I’ve got you.”

“I was going to do it,” Tim cried.

“I know.” Jason whispered.

“They hate me. They’re going to hate me more!” Tim whimpered. “I can’t- I don’t want-”

“I know.” Jason repeated. “But no one hates you, Tim,” He promised. “Hell, even Barbra threatened to get out here to find you.”

Tim buried his face in Jason’s chest and just stayed there. “I’m nothing more than a placeholder,” He mumbled. “I’m a pretender. A replacement.” He sniffled. “I didn’t- I didn’t even want to be Robin. God. I wanted Dick to be Robin. Batman needs Robin.” He was close to hysterics, and god Jason still didn’t know what to do.

“Maybe,” Jason agreed. “But Bruce Wayne needs Tim Drake.” Jason said quietly. “I’m pretty sure the old man would be lost without you Timmy.”

Tim shook his head and Jason snorted. “You set up the system in the batcave, make sure the Wayne business is intact and running smoothly, you’ve updated all the security, you always make sure there’s coffee in the manor, and no one makes him smile with bad jokes like you do.”

Tim stayed quiet, and Jason alternated between rubbing his back and running his hand through Tim’s hair. The boys stood there for as long as Tim needed to and Jason realized how small Tim was because Jesus Christ this was just a kid in a costume and he just wanted to be loved.

“Can we go back to the Manor?” Jason murmured. “My bike’s not far.”

Tim didn’t move.

“We can watch a movie?” He suggested. “I’ll let you pick.”

“Why are you being so nice?” Tim mumbled.

“Well… I could punch you instead if you’d like. Not sure that’ll make you feel better though.” He offered, and was rewarded by the smallest, quietest laugh. “C’mon, we can raid the kitchen.”

“You aren’t going to make me talk?” Tim asked.

Jason shook his head, tightening his grip on him. “I’m not going to make you talk about anything you don’t want to baby bird.” He said softly. “But if you want to do that, I’m here for that too.”

Tim tightened his own grip and kept close- Jason was keeping him grounded and that’s all that mattered. “What was it like?” He whispered.

Jason was quiet for a long moment, and Tim regretted asking almost immediately.

“Long.” Jason decided. “Dark. Quiet.”

“Good quiet?”

“No.” Jason said softly. “Too quiet.”

“I’m sorry.” Tim whispered.

“Me too,” Jason mumbled. “You’re not alone Timbo. I’m right here, alright?”

Tim nodded and pulled away after a moment when he felt like he could stand on his own. Jason collected their things and handed Tim his mask, cape and belt, putting his own mask and helmet back on, clipping his holsters on.

The ride back was quiet- Tim’s comm must have busted when it hit the roof, and if Jason heard anything he wasn’t giving it away. Jason came up with some half-assed lie about what happened to Barbra and the other Bats over the comms, and immediately claimed the living room for him and Tim, heading upstairs.

Tim was asleep by the end of the opening credits, tucked safely into the side of his big brother.

Maybe Tim couldn’t fight the villain in his head on his own, but having someone like Jason Todd on your side certainly made it easier.

#thebatfamplaylist #tim drake #red robin #jason todd #red hood #batman #bruce wayne #dc #dc comics #dick grayson #nightwing #damian wayne #Robin #barbra gordon #oracle #sorry this is so sad

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formyfilmclass · 3 years

Text

Funeral Parade of Roses

This movie was insane to watch. I loved the cuts and the jumpy nature of it, and the content itself was so unexpected but so interesting. (Also, I will refer to Eddie and the other “Gay Boys” with he/him pronouns, as it seems they didn’t consider themselves women and I don’t remember if other pronouns were used in the film.)

The aspect of this film that stood out to me the most was how time was used. Critics have often talked about how Japanese directors manipulate time, applying essentialist ideas to the films they make. I personally never took a lot of notice of it, because often every director has to manipulate time to fit events that continue over stretches of time into just a few hours. However in this film, the sequence of events and the time in which these events took were crazy. We start out with a scene that actually takes place in the third quarter of the film, and at some point we go back in time to the mask museum and then Japanese Che Guevara’s apartment… I don’t know how to really describe it because I don’t think I was able to follow it very well. Although, I think the effects of this kind of time manipulation add to the chaos and emphasize the non-linear experience of the protagonist Eddie. There was also a lot of juxtaposition between fast flashes of memories or events and very drawn-out ones, like the scene where all the friends get high, play stripping games, and dance.

Also, the use of frequent and shaky shots cut together during sex scenes—especially during the latter half of the film—were really powerful. It is clear that Eddie’s past haunts him to this day, and during sex that trauma is represented through the flashing memories of anti-war protests and chaotic, drug-induced states of euphoria he has with his friends. I thought it was a good way to metaphorically represent high levels of stress.

The other aspect of this film that really stood out to me was the blending of reality and movie. By the end, I came to the conclusion that there are three films within one: a) the movie about Eddie and his experience, b) a pornographic movie made by Eddie, his boss, and patrons of the bar, and c) a documentary about Gay Boys and dealing in underground or taboo circles in Japan. I am not certain about this, but I thought it was a really cool combination of the real world and a representation of the real world. Not only does it have a very artsy effect on an audience, but it also stresses that the things it shows are not made up and instead based on real people.

I think one of the funniest realizations I had was during Peter’s interview. He had said that he really sympathizes with his character, except for the incest part. I had thought he was referring to the assault Eddie experienced when he was a child… I didn’t realize the owner of the bar (?) he worked at was his father until I saw the father discover the burnt picture. I’m not sure if I was supposed to have realized that before then, but I felt like I possibly should have.

Before this realization, I mainly noticed how societal norms still applied to a “taboo” relationship: there was a feminine person and a masculine person, the masculine person has more power than the feminine person (in strength and financial aspects), and beauty is something attributed only to the young. Also—slightly unrelated—costumes were used to represent what kind of roles everyone played. Namely, modern clothing was worn by the young and “still beautiful,” whereas traditional kimono and hairdressings were used by the old and “faded” characters.

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mimzy-writing-online · 4 years

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What did the moment you realized/affirmed that losing your sight didn't mean losing all the things you've used to reading (ie social media/movies/books)? If you had to deal with it, that is, I've only recently followed you and might have missed something. I'm rather near sighted and my great grandmother (who raised my mom) was blind due to glaucoma not being treatable at the time. I got glasses at 9 thought I've been terribly near sighted since forever. So as a kid I used to think about maybe going blind a lot and I try to be conscious about blindness as much as I can. Reading and writing is such a major part of my life, I know I won't lose it should I lose my sight, but it's still made me hyper aware of accessibility in regards to sight.

So, I was usually okay with my vision loss as it happened. I certainly had bad days and breakdowns, but for the most part I was emotionally okay. I think a huge part of that was that I had exposure to blindness in media that wasn’t all bad rep, starting from when I was a kid:

1. My 4th grade language arts textbook had a short non-fiction story about a high school girl who was blind and what kind of changes she made, like having a cane and putting braille labels on everything. She still went to high school, had friends. There was a photo that was edited to be blurry in what I hope was a way similar to what she experienced. There was something incredible about it because to me she was just a normal person who saw differently, but her life was normal. Whoever wrote that short story did a good job if that was my takeaway at nine years old.

2. There were a few books I read around that age with disabled characters, including Of Sound Mind ( M C is hearing but his whole family is Deaf) and Things Unseen ( M C wakes up one morning invisible. While trying to solve the how and why of that he visits the library and physically runs into a blind girl. They start talking, he thinks she’s cute, it’s a romance. Cute story. I can’t remember if the girl was homeschooled or did special education, but part of her education was listening to audio books at the public library in pre-audible times. She also had a cane. I don’t remember much beyond that on accuracy)

Having books available to me as a kid with prominent disabled characters or stories about real blind people did normalize it for me

Don’t get me wrong, there was a lot of bad rep I found too, but it was easier to look at it and say, “I don’t think that’s quite right” because I had some good rep in there too.

3. At the school I attended from 7-9th grade, there was a girl a year or two older than me who was blind and I would see her every day between classes. I remember she had a cane one year, and then a black lab guide dog the next year. She also had a teachers aide going to classes with her. I remember she was in one of the advanced choir groups, but how I knew that was because in 6th grade my school took a field trip to that school to prepare us for middle school and we saw a choir performance which involved the girls singing and dancing, and after the performance my friend told me that one of the girls was blind and had a cane. (I was very nearsighted as a kid, I could not have seen that from where I was sitting)

I remember my thought process at that point, and it wasn’t “oh, so blind people can dance too.” It was, “oh, she must have worked hard to get the dancing right.”

4. There was a boy in my 9th grade English class who was blind, also had a cane and a teachers aide. I was too shy to talk to anyone, but I remember thinking he had chill vibes and that he was funny. He was one of the easier kids in that class to talk to.

That’s all the exposure I think I had before my vision loss symptoms began, which was when I was 17, though I had no way of knowing how serious those symptoms were going to become until I was in my twenties.

A big thing for comfortably transitioning (emotionally) with my vision loss was Molly Burke, who began her YouTube channel in 2015. I think I found her channel in the summer or fall of 2016, right as my symptoms began to evolve from “inconvenient” to painful, concerning, and difficult to deal with. She’s only a year older than me and while she came across more closed off and introverted in the early part of her YouTube career, she was incredibly personal and relatable. She had a career, she had lived alone in a big city, she traveled for work, and was incredibly independent.

But more importantly, she was independent because of the blindness life skills she had spent her life learning. O&M, Braille, using screen readers on her laptop and phone, shopping and picking her own outfits with a combination of touch and communicating with a sighted loved one. Having a set routine for everything, including makeup. She had her shit down because she’d practiced at it. So, reasonably, I could get my shit together if I took the time to learn how too.

Individual moments are harder to come by, but here is a distinct one:

-My first time using a cane was life changing because I wasn’t scared of my next two steps anymore and I could walk on my own again. The first moment of walking independently without anxiety was its own high, because I had taken a small part of my life and independence back.

For an essay, I would write: Through the internet, I found the disability community and blind role models who were living independent, happy lives because of the adapted life skills they learned.

I found my blind role models through the internet and studied what skills and changes they’d made to their lives and incorporated them into mine.

(kind of a spin off on that, but it gave me the following sentences)

This meant reaching out to schools for the blind, and

(which isn’t the prettiest sentence, but you’re looking at the first draft and my thought process. I pick the best bits and move forward with that. This whole process is me getting all my thoughts out and finding the most important details and translating them into something concise and simple)

#college applications #mimzy things #Anonymous

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bigskydreaming · 4 years

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A good description. For my part, I don't like talking about it because of my own experiences. I can, however, see Batman, a story where nearly every memorable villain and even the protagonist himself is a Svengali, could attract a disproportionate number of rape apologists, though fandom is full of them. (Oh, hey, that's the other thing with Jason. Talia.)

Ugh I’m so sorry to hear you can relate, and I totally understand not wanting to talk about it. I have no idea what your particular situation is, obviously, but I also want to reiterate since its been awhile since I’ve mentioned this part.....I don’t feel any like....basically, my choice to talk about this stuff is simply put, MY choice, made for my own reasons, that aren’t a reflection on any other survivor. There are a million and one reasons NOT to come forward, or to struggle with it or not to be open about what happened to us, and none of them are a reflection on any of us, but rather the position it puts us in.

Again, I don’t know your situation or what gender you might be or anything else, and this isn’t at all because your ask made me feel defensive or anything like that. This is just something I’ve wanted to put into words for awhile now seems relevant today, and here’s as good a place as any to put it down:

For myself, being a male survivor....like, there’s never really been any getting around the existence of that kinda, idk, caveat that not many male survivors come forward. Sure, we all see the posts and tweets reminding “remember, men can be raped too!” But that’s not the same thing as men sharing their stories and experiences the way far more women have come forward. And that’s why I ultimately began talking about my own experiences in order to express how I felt about my own positioning in society and how as a survivor I interact and am interacted with by others. Because frankly, there wasn’t anywhere else I could really look to in order to see others talking or sharing about similar things and see myself reflected in what they were saying or the experiences they were describing. So, if I couldn’t find what I felt I needed or could have benefited from, I figured at least I could put it out there in case anyone else who could relate could benefit from mine.

Except, ultimately I’ve come to feel that I honestly don’t believe its that men just flat out don’t come forward with their stories or experiences, its that even when we do, we’re rarely signal boosted - as you can kinda see from the fact that I can post the most inane shit and get it to a thousand notes, but in the five plus years I’ve been making posts about this subject, I’m lucky if I can get a single post on the topic to double digits as far as notes go.

People just flat out are a combination of uncomfortable with the novelty of actual discussions about and around male survivors as well as being not really sure how to talk about it because we’ve never really developed the tools for it.

And to be 100% clear, this has NOTHING to do with female survivors, as a point of comparison or ANYTHING else. It drives me up a fucking WALL when people try and compare and contrast even just how much men being raped is talked about vs women being raped, no matter WHAT their reasons are, because I promise people, I PROMISE - NO survivor, of any gender, has EVER benefitted from being pitted against other survivors to ANY degree. Its not a zero sum game and it doesn’t help male survivors to pull shit like “well at least female survivors are acknowledged” because a) eww, and b) nobody asked anyone to say that on our behalf, and c) hyper-visibility isn’t a privilege (or whatever the best parallel to that might be, I’m not trying to appropriate an anti-blackness specific term so much as its the closest comparison I have at the moment for something that isn’t even a matter of marginalized identities but rather marginalized experiences) and d) its COMPLETELY beside the point and actually misses the point by a WIDE margin.

Because what I’ve come to realize over the years, from my own experiences and talking and sharing with survivors of all genders and demographics and walks of life, is that first off....nobody really needs the reminder that hey, men can be raped too. We see it happen all throughout entertainment and other aspects of society, its not an experience that’s hidden away from the light, its just not ever really CALLED what it is, or followed up on, and talked about.

Like Dick Grayson isn’t a statistical outlier in media. Take Horrible Bosses, a summer blockbuster comedy a few years back with a cast of fairly big name comedians, and whose running B plot throughout the whole movie was Jennifer Aniston’s character wanting to rape her employee, Charlie Day’s character. Not only was this not objectionable to audiences in any sizable way, not only did this never really get called out as wtf by critics and reviews, the movie was successful enough to warrant a sequel with even BIGGER names in its cast, like Christopher Pine, and the continuation of the Aniston’s character trying to rape Charlie Day’s subplot. With zero awareness. And its not like that’s the only movie. There’s plenty more I could name.

Or then you’ve got television, where like, take Riverdale, a well-promoted, well known CW show....whose first few episodes featured the lead character Archie in a sexual relationship with his much older female teacher. Except not really a relationship, because that’s textbook, no debate, literal statutory rape.....that ended with Archie’s character being condemned for it as though he were on equal footing with the teacher, who ultimately left town, and it never really acknowledged that he was literally a victim of statutory rape, that any teacher who does that is not an equal partner but a predator. I stopped watching the show for a lot of reasons by like the fourth episode, but I see enough gifs on tumblr to know that several seasons later, this left little enough impact that some kind of Archie-goes-to-jail plotline has resulted in more memes and jokes about prison rape than I can count, and zero awareness that people are compounding jokes about a character who is literally already an unacknowledged survivor.

That’s one. Or you can take Once Upon A Time, a popular ABC show of multiple seasons, and the running subplot where Robin Hood’s character is raped by the Wicked Witch literally the same way Dick was by Mirage in the comics. She shapeshifts into Maid Marian, who ends up dead, and has ‘sex’ with Robin Hood (no, she rapes him) and ends up pregnant. Not only is this never really called what it is, later on, other characters LITERALLY CHEW HIM OUT for objecting to this baby being left in the care of her mother, aka his rapist, and for ‘not being willing to give her the benefit of the doubt/let her change’ as though him not wanting to co-parent with his rapist is no different from any of the show’s other dubious redemption storylines....except for the fact that this particular part of her redemption arc isn’t ever really one she actually needs redeeming for, because nobody ever fucking points out that she literally raped him and he was her victim. Fast forward to the end of the series, Robin Hood’s been dead for seasons, the Wicked Witch is happily redeemed and has a loving wholesome relationship with her daughter, named after Robin Hood like they were some kind of loving, happy family instead of a rapist, her victim, and the child that was born of it.

Or you can take Grimm, a fairly successful NBC show of multiple seasons WHICH LITERALLY DID THE EXACT SAME THING. The main character Nick was raped in season two by the antagonist of the time, who shape shifted into his wife and had ‘sex’ with him, with him not realizing the truth until later on, by which point she’s pregnant with his child. Fast forward to the end of the show, not only was this never really called what it was, his wife’s character was killed off seasons earlier and he is now, get this, ‘happily’ in a romantic and sexual longterm relationship with his rapist (who he by now knows exactly what she did do and what happened between them and just.....got over it without ever actually like, reacting to it)....and oh yeah, not only are they raising the child born of it together, they’ve had a second child since then.

Anyone ever hear much outcry about the male rapes in these shows? And again, like Horrible Bosses, tip of the iceberg. There’s a LOT more shows I could name, just like there are movies.

Or take comics. Its not even just Dick Grayson that’s a survivor. Or Bruce. Or Jason as you pointed out, which......I know a lot of people ignore both Morrison AND Winick’s take on Talia in order to not write her as the rapist she is in their stories, which I can totally understand as she was a well-established character of color for long before either of them got their hands on her and its perfectly valid for people not to want to have to write her as being tarnished as a rapist because two different writers wrote her that way....without.....either of them ever really acknowledging that was literally how they were writing her. I myself write her as a character of complicated and often dubious morality, but never a rapist, for that reason and many others, but its definitely there. And even in a fandom that has never lacked for acknowledgment of Dick being a survivor whose rapists were women.....a LOT of people still romanticize Jason’s ‘relationship’ with Talia as being something other than a grown woman taking advantage of a minor in an extremely vulnerable and compromised state.....with a TON of other takes out there about the two of them, in posts and fics alike, where its somehow danced around or outright called something other than “that time Talia raped Jason in the comics.”

But its not just the Batbooks. Its like how I’ve mentioned in the past, Garth Ennis wrote into one of his storylines that Kyle Rayner was raped when he went to Gotham one time.....not to make it a plot point, but to use it as a JOKE. Or take Marvel comics, Bobby Drake, one of my other all-time favorite characters....who is also a rape survivor of multiple occasions, without it ever acknowledged as such. Like, he was briefly in a relationship with Mystique, who turned out to have entered the relationship under false pretenses, shocking, and who used having sex with him to depower him and take him out of the upcoming fight between the X-Men and the Marauders, which...we don’t have time to unpack all that right now. But fast forward about a year later, and Bobby has since gotten back together with his ex-girlfriend Opal Tanaka.....who, it turns out, is actually just Mystique in disguise, having sex with him again without it ever being called rape since he was consenting to sex with Opal, not the woman who slept with him that one time just to make sure he was helpless to stop a whole lot of people from getting killed. But hey, forget about Mystique! How about that time Chuck Austen wrote him ‘having sex’ with an empath who was EXPLICITLY noted in the narrative as using her powers to manipulate his emotions to even WANT to have sex with her in the first place, and when an issue later it comes out she’s married and her husband starts beating up Bobby for ‘sleeping with his wife’ all the other characters present, all of them friends and teammates of his, condemn Bobby for this without it ever being acknowledged that he was literally manipulated into it by a superpower and he was the victim.

Again. Tip. Of. The. Iceberg.

But you see what I mean? Male rape isn’t an outlier and it isn’t an unknown....its everywhere! Its just.....never called that, really, and never really talked about, even by people who normally would, except for the fact that I don’t think we as a society have ever really forced ourselves to FIND a way to talk about it, because of the fact that like.....the very notion of it threatens and undermines the essence of the patriarchal beliefs that are hammered into us all from day one. Even when we know the patriarchy is crap, we still have so much ingrained in us from early childhood that stuff like this, which is a blatant symptom of it even if not one aimed primarily at disadvantaging women.....like, it slips under the radar because its never fully called out or spotlighted in loud enough or widely enough ways to keep us from overlooking how much its impacted our POVs.

Blatantly put, the patriarchy and sexism RELIES on the idea that men are somehow more powerful/stronger/whatthefuckever than women. And male victims - of abuse as well as rape, though definitely rape.....like, even just a widespread awareness of our existence is enough to kinda destabilize that belief that is so foundational to the patriarchy its DEPENDENT on it being upheld as unassailable truth.

Because if forced to acknowledge that men are just as vulnerable to even something like rape as anyone else in the ‘right’ situations or dynamics, it forces confrontation with the reality that no matter what the patriarchy has claimed for as long as its existed.....men aren’t inherently any more powerful, or stronger, or resistant to harm/humiliation/VICTIMIZATION as anyone else.

And the patriarchy flat out can’t afford that confrontation, so it can’t afford to acknowledge male survivors.

Again, just want to be beyond clear - nowhere here am I okay with making this about a compare and contrast between the experiences and interactions society has with male survivors and around male rape, and the same with female survivors and rape. Because I mean, we all should be more than aware that society as a whole sucks at the acknowledgment, addressing and handling of rape in any context, in any of the ways it comes up as a topic, in terms of any survivor who comes forward no matter who or when or how.....like. We suck at this topic, and at any and all discussions about this topic. Period. Flat out. So when I say the patriarchy can’t afford to acknowledge male survivors, I am in no way aiming to diminish the reality that it does just as fucking an abyssmal job at acknowledging and responding to female survivors....the point here is not the poor reception any and all survivors receive to disclosing their experiences in our society, but rather the specific why of this when it comes to male survivors just as the particular subject of focus here.

And again, like, my only credentials here are just like. My life experiences, lol. I’m not trying to claim anything more or other than that, make no mistake. I’m a literal college drop out, this is not the result of comprehensive studies or vetted by the scientific method. This is literally just “like, my opinion, man” and makes no pretenses at being other than that. Its just the conclusions I’ve formed over the years and why, completely anecdotal and not aiming to be any kind of authoritative or expert viewpoint with my personal take here. Largely because I haven’t really found anywhere that I feel the conversation has proceeded enough in earnest that its even at a point that would ALLOW for that yet. So this is all more just.....my feel of things, and why, as just kinda idk, hopefully a starting point for further ACTUAL exploration of all this. My attempts at starting the kind of conversation I feel we need to be having in order to be at all productive instead of just constantly spinning around in circles, which is what it so often feels like.

So when I say I think the patriarchy can’t honestly AFFORD to acknowledge male survivors specifically, I’m not positing some grand conspiracy or active cover-up.

Because nothing like that is even necessary.

Its built into the framework of the system itself. Its not that I believe anyone goes out of their way to “hide” male survivors from anyone, I’m saying there’s no need. Because its been so ingrained into us from such a young age and in so many ways, most of us never even think to question whether anything is even being hidden, or if its just as simple as, well men don’t really come forward, because their pride and self-esteem is so impacted by what happened to them, due to the expectations heaped on men by the patriarchy.

Its kinda stunning, actually. Even while ACKNOWLEDGING that the patriarchy does impact male survivors in ways as well, we’re kinda....led away from the ACTUAL ways and ACTUAL reasons why....because despite literally calling the patriarchy out as the bad guy in this way, it still manages to weasel itself out of this confrontation by virtue of the fact that you can’t ever really effectively address a problem when you’re being misdirected to a tangent that’s not really the REAL problem that needs addressing.

So personally, I’m of the belief that its not that men just don’t ever really come forward. Its that even when some do, like myself, we can scream our heads off for years and it just echoes into the void, because its not being heard in the ways we need to be heard in order to effectively....signalboost our stories and experiences and needs. Much like I just mentioned above, its misdirection......everybody’s too focused on addressing an issue that doesn’t actually NEED solving (ie, reminding everyone/promoting awareness that men too, CAN be raped), and thus at least feeling productive, feeling like they’re contributing to tackling the problem.....that meanwhile, the ACTUAL problem (men CAN be raped too, and are, and here are men talking about it only for the signal to get lost and fizzle out rather than get boosted)....it flies right under the radar.

Because in line with what I said earlier about how it does no good to compare our experiences, both in terms of assault and our lives in the aftermath, with women survivors - its because its apples and oranges.

Rape isn’t a gendered issue, because it can happen to anyone of any gender, at any time....its situational. Dependent on context. Rape culture, however, IS a gendered issue.

Because rape culture, how our society INTERACTS with the very idea of abuse and rape and its victims and perpetrators....spills out entirely from that core foundation of the patriarchy and sexism, and thus much like those things themselves, how it affects women survivors is always going to be totally different from how it affects men who are survivors. Our experiences are not interchangeable - that has nothing to do with being better or worse, more publicized or less, etc, etc. They just....manifest different ways. The cause of our trauma-related problems might be the same thing, but the problems it creates for us are not, and none of us can ever really benefit from it being treated as a one size fits all kinda deal, nor is it to our benefit to treat it like there’s only so much conversation about the topic available to go around.

What I mean here is, like I said, the patriarchy at the foundation of our society can’t afford for it to be widely acknowledged that men can be victimized too.

But it can’t actually stop this from happening, given that its basis for saying it never happens is an inherent uneven-ness that only exists because it made it exist, not because like....we’re innately born uneven.

So....it had to come up with a narrative, a response, for when men DID step forward and say hey, I too was abused. I was raped. Etc.

And it did.

As a result, a lot of women don’t come forward because they fear not being believed, with reason. And this is true for a lot of men as well, just as the following is true for a lot of women too....

Which is that IMO the bigger reason/more immediate reason a lot of men don’t come forward, is that our concern isn’t so much that we won’t be believed....

Its that we will be believed, but rather than this getting us the help we need or the justice we ask for, it only ever really creates more problems for us, due to the patriarchy’s go-to fix-it job for this situation:

Paint the male victim as being not so much a victim as a victimizer-in-training.

See, the lie that men are innately more powerful, stronger, more ‘deserving’ of being in charge can’t afford the admittance than men are also vulnerable, can be victimized, taken advantage of.....

But it CAN afford the idea that men can be abused/raped/etc with this going on to eventually result in us becoming abusers/rapists/victimizers ourselves in the future, as long as THIS is kept the clear focus and emphasis of the narrative.

Because after all, there’s nothing in the idea that we all inevitably take out our pain (whatever it may come from) on others that contradicts the idea that we’re stronger, more powerful, etc.

And its not like the patriarchy and its supporters give a shit if this throws even other men under the bus, because the only thing institutions and systems of power actually care about is POWER.

They’re not our friend, even if in a different life, we could have ended up wielding more of that power than we do in this one. Even if we do in other aspects of our lives gain social and other forms of power more easily/with less obstacles than other people.

They only care what we can do for them, to spread that power, perpetuate it, preserve it....so just like white supremacy will happily screw over poor white people and America doesn’t give a shit about its prison population and the LGBTQ+ community so often ignores the issues of its members of color and so on.....the patriarchy is more than willing to make male survivors from any and all groups and communities take the hit it has no intention of taking by letting it be confirmed its built on sand and bullshit.

So just as much as we’re ingrained from early childhood with the idea that men can’t be victimized the way others can, the linked lesson we’re taught is that men who have been hurt badly or in certain ways will almost certainly end up hurting others.....

With the implicit acknowledgment that there was just an admittance that we can be hurt badly/in certain ways ending up just swiftly glossed over. As the focus is instead kept on the harm done to our hypothetical future victims.

Because the easiest way to keep someone from being sympathetic, is to give people someone else to sympathize with MORE. To give people reason to feel a person doesn’t even deserve your sympathy in the first place.

And so now think about not how often we see men victimized by abuse and rape in media, or how often we see men portrayed as survivors and yes, victims of these things.....

Think instead of how often in media we see men who victimize others, who are the antagonists, the villains, the serial killer/rapist/abuser of the week.......and with it offhandedly being dropped into a scene and then never really focused on again, that these men were almost always said to have been abused or raped or victimized in the past....and this is the REASON for why they all ended up doing what they did.

Suddenly, the numbers go up, don’t they? The second you think about it from THAT angle?

Its just....the reason that angle literally exists to the extent it does in society and the messages we’re fed, the entertainment we’re given.....is because that’s the POINT.

Because its natural for us not to think of any of those men as victims when by the time we find that part out, we’ve already internalized our view of them as victimizers, and solidly put our sympathies with their victims in the present. Because what was done to them in the past doesn’t excuse what they do to others in the present. Being hurt doesn’t give you carte blanche to hurt others. We all know this. Hence....WHY IT WORKS.

Except, this isn’t actually a reflection of reality. The myth of the perpetual cycle of abuse is just that, a myth. Oh, it happens, certainly. With men, with women, quite probably more often with men than women, not much doubt about that....

But its not that it happens, we’re told. That’s not the issue here.

Its that we’re pretty much told it ALWAYS happens. Its always GOING to happen. That there’s no real point in sympathizing with a male victim who is most likely going to end up victimizing someone else in the future and thus he’s not really gonna deserve your sympathy at that point, will he? Which makes him not really worth wasting it on him in the first place. Makes it easy to come up with something to focus on more instead of his story or experiences, something just as deserving of your focus or sympathy, but that you’re less likely to end up regretting in the future like you would if a male survivor you sympathized with now ends up in the news five years down the line for having hurt someone else.

Because over centuries and generations the idea of male survivors at all has been cultivated into having this almost mythic quality, there’s just enough subtle feeling of wrongness around the very idea of it, like, that it just doesn’t quite make sense...that it ends up being almost a relief to give our minds a reason, an explanation for why they don’t have to come up with a way to adjust the paradigm there, to make room for that idea, realign a worldview into one where there’s a specific spot for male survivors much like any other subject that needs focusing on or evaluating for whatever reason.

And this point, this conclusion that no matter how tragic what happened to make a male survivor was, it will only ever ultimately end up in the same spot, with him later on passing along the harm, a warped kind of paying it forward....this is hammered home over and over. We see it everywhere, without even often realizing what it is we’re seeing and internalizing, like with the examples I cited of all the times men are raped in entertainment without it being called that. Its the flip side of that....the times that men are raped in entertainment with it being called that, but swiftly moved past that to introduce the reason not to care that that’s what it was we just saw.

And thus throughout several seasons of Law & Order: SVU we’ve had male survivors, usually teens, who at first seemed eminently sympathetic for what had been done to them.....but who by the end of the episodes, ended up becoming school shooters exacting revenge on their bullies. Or ended up killing the coach who raped them in high school and then went on to rape a dozen others. Or in the last scene of the episode is found kneeling over their abusive father’s corpse with blood on their hands and the detectives standing over them in sadness that now they had to take the boy they thought was the victim away to jail as the victimizer he didn’t have to end up becoming.

Except.....he only becomes that because they make the choice to write him becoming it! Every single time!

Like in 13 Reasons Why, where another male survivor ends up....another school shooter. Or in Criminal Minds, where pretty much every single killer throughout the series ended up with a backstory of abuse and rape and victimization as a child, making it ‘all the more tragic’ and with the protagonists often literally using the phrase “almost like the guy never had a chance.”

Well no, they didn’t. Not when it was written to BE that way.

And then we see the idea root and take hold in audiences. And spread and perpetuated. Validated.

Its why I hate the woobification thing in fandoms, where fans of (white) villain characters fill in their backstory for themselves with all the REASONS they are the way they are, and with the reasons never being that they’re just a sadistic entitled asshole, but because they were hurt. They were abused as a child, they were raped offscreen, the heroes said mean things about them in the burn book once and that’s why they just had to kill the hero’s whole family, see.

And everything comes full circle.....not only is it that all male victims are destined to end up victimizers....its equally true that all male victimizers must have once been male victims. Even if we didn’t see it onscreen or on the page.

Except, and why I loathe that fandom tendency.....

THAT NARRATIVE IS NOT AN INEVITABILITY AND NEVER WAS! The end point and point of origin presented there are NOT innately set in stone!

And all that does is just validate and accept as truth the LIE that patriarchal society puts forth in order to play smoke and mirrors with this one specific facet of human experiences that innately possesses the potential to destabilize the lie at the very rock bottom foundation of everything the patriarchy’s ever built at everyone else’s expense. The reason it offers up for why its not only allowable, its for the best that we look elsewhere from any male victims that actually step forward and say hey, can you all listen to me for a second, I want to tell you what happened to me.

And the fun irony of THIS aspect of things is if you think this woobification fandom thing benefits male survivors as a whole in some way or another, like the tendency of fans to find even villainous victimizers sympathetic means that they can and do sympathize just as much with actual male victims.....I’m fairly certain it doesn’t.

See, because with villains in fandom......this retroactive sympathy for imagined past traumas happens to only the characters that fandom has already decided they liked DESPITE the awful things they’ve done. Its made up to be used as an excuse instead of an explanation....

And like we all know damn well, even if we don’t always admit it or like to acknowledge it....

Explanations are not actually excuses. The harm you do can not be wiped away by the harm done to you.

So, because that’s still inside of us, our awareness of that, even if its ignored on the surface while defending hot white villains or whatever.....it doesn’t actually give anyone reason to ignore the narrative our society constructs around actual male survivors who it encourages people to condemn or ignore on the basis of purely hypothetical FUTURE abuses or wrongdoings.

And after all, you can’t actually decide you can look past the harms a person enacts and still view them as sympathetic if....you don’t actually know yet what those harms are going to end up being and thus whether you can make your peace with them, can you?

You just know that harms WILL be done, so....might as well err on the side of caution and assume they won’t be forgivable when deciding here and now to be thrifty with sympathies and spread any actionable effort taken on behalf of survivors in areas where those sympathies are more likely to be put to better use.

And yeah, all of this plays into why I focus so much on certain aspects of Dick’s narratives, and they usually AREN’T the rapes themselves.

Because for me, for many other male survivors I know......

Acknowledging those happened, examining how he felt when those happened....its not the biggest issue. Just like in our own lives, having it acknowledged or known what was done to us, having to face how it made us feel....that’s not really our primary concern.

Its what happens AFTER that.

How people view us and treat us AFTER their initial sympathies, whatever they are, dry up - which, we’re given reason to believe, they always inevitably will.

Because it isn’t all that different from what I frequently complain of happening with Dick in fandom, and hell, its WHY it bothers me so much, because its literally been a recurrent theme throughout my life:

The most widely acknowledged male survivor in comics, just also happens to coincidentally be....

The character most often spun as having a wicked temper, being almost irrationally angry at times, with his temper being likened to things like an eruption, an earthquake, a NATURAL DISASTER....something to be avoided at all costs, something the other characters fear, with good reason, but also impossible to avoid, because its too intrinsic to his nature. Its an inevitability. Dick Grayson WILL erupt or explode again at some point, and its going to be ugly. Like he’s a time bomb.

Even though....as I frequently go in depth on.....Dick’s never actually been shown as having particularly poor self-control either on just its own merits or specifically in comparison to others. He doesn’t really actually HAVE a track record of taking out his own hurts on others. On giving people REASON to be afraid of his temper even while they continue to take no responsibility for giving him reasons to be angry at all.

Its why I so often emphasize the discrepancy between the fact that whatever someone’s own personal character preferences, the FACT remains that Dick Grayson is the character in this family that most often bears the BRUNT of everyone ELSE’S anger.......just as the fact equally remains that Dick Grayson is still ultimately the character most often singled out in posts and headcanons and fanfics as unleashing his temper on others in unjustifable ways and usually without actual provocation.

None of this is a coincidence to me.

Its how we see over and over again that its okay for Dick Grayson to be angry FOR others, ON others’ behalf....its just when he’s angry FOR HIMSELF, for being taken advantage of, ignored, walked all over or mistreated....that’s when his anger is unjustified. Irrational.

Dangerous.

Or you guys know that one fanon about how Dick forces his hugs on his siblings, and his displays of physical affection are often unwanted, and thus violations?

Yeah, that one hits me right in the Issues too, because again, that’s not remotely supported by anything in canon....there has NEVER been an instance of Dick’s family asking him to cut it our or feeling like......IMPOSED upon because he likes to hug his family.

Its not to say people can’t feel that way about even well-meaning displays of physical affection that aren’t cleared with them first....

Its that this is something that people had to DECIDE to make a thing with Dick and his family. To actually craft the narrative that the many-times victim of unwanted touching was effectively violating his family’s wishes and boundaries every time he hugs them without being asked or invited to.

With that number being however many times a writer wants to write him doing when highlighting it as a violation.

And is this a thing we really see with any other character? Is my question there. How often do you see literally any other character being chewed out or resented for....hugging?

Just the one character most known for giving physical affection freely with his FAMILY and close friends.....

Who just so happens to also be the one character most often the guy who has his bodily autonomy violated.

The canon rape survivor has literally had HUGS weaponzed against him.

With the end result being.....every time he does it, every time this pings on a reader’s radar as Bad and Unwelcome....the linked takeaway is its one more reason for that reader to then ask themselves....well if he doesn’t care whether other people want him touching them, why should I care when he doesn’t want people touching him either?

Which ultimately just winds up another form of: why should I feel bad if bad things happened to someone who isn’t really that great of a person?

See what I mean?

Its all connected. Its not me getting frustrated with a bunch of different random things, its all the same thing at the end of the day, all so often traceable back to the same places.

I couldn’t untangle myself from so much of this and how it impacts me and my view of things even if I wanted to, to such an extent that in the end, want really has very little to do with it.

(And uh, you think those bug the shit out of me, let me tell you about just the very SIGHT of all those fics where Dick the widely acknowledged, perhaps best known male rape victim in comics.....is a rapist himself. Because yeah....even if people like to keep their incest light and fluffy or sweet instead of predatory, to someone who is y’know, personally familiar with all of this, Dick and ANY of his younger brothers is never going to appear as anything BUT predatory. As yet one more time where the linear journey of a male survivor all the way to the final evolution into male predator is born out and treated as so matter-of-fact, so inevitable, it hardly warrants noting as anything especially obscene or gross to write about a character famous for his survivor status. And its not like Dick is actually the only character in the franchise I like, so its not like its any better when its Jason painted as the aggressor in a fic, for instance....and while I will always be hugely critical of how Bruce is written as abusive in canon, that’s a wildly different thing from sexually preying on his sons so again, seeing him as his own sons’ rapists is yet again more upsetting than most people would think without connecting Bruce’s own status as a canon rape survivor, whether we like that story or not.....and plugging it into again, this pre-programmed route traveling from survivor to predator, over and over again. Victim to victimizer. Like clockwork.)

Anyway, my point is not to harp on this but rather to just lay it out there in this way. And how it plays into so much of my own personal approach to dealing with all of this when it comes up.......because the simple fact is I have to, there is no opt-out lol, and it comes up a lot, in large part because its so easy t reframe as being something else that most people who don’t have direct experience being directly impacted by all of this in its various myriad expressions are understandably not going to see it pinging on their radar and getting logged into their awareness the way it always does in mine.

*Shrugs* It is what it is. Its there. Avoiding it has never done me any favors, so.......as I so often demonstrate in a variety of degrees of Hmm Probably Coulda Done That Better, lol, I try and deal with things head-on and adjust as needed.

Easier said than done, not always pulled off, never any guarantee that I’m going about things the right way, just that like.....

There’s problems that need addressing that stem from all of this, and I know where mine lie and put a lot, a LOT of effort into addressing them and keeping an eye on them and not letting them get the better of me.

But the flipside of paying that close attention and that much means I’m also keenly aware of when and where I couldn’t take responsibility even if I wanted to, because the responsibility literally just isn’t mine to take....because yeah, I live in a society but guess what, so does everyone else, and its the same damn society, so at the end of the day, no matter HOW well or not I go about handling the matter of my rapes and their overall impact and shaping of my life.....that’s just me handling the rape part of things.

The rape culture? And how THAT affects and informs every survivor’s life in whatever way it does going forward?

That’s kinda.....only ever going to be improved upon or not, on like....a cultural scale. That’s a society thing. Not a survivor thing.

Because we are all shaped by our cultures, every aspect of our cultures, and this one is unfortunately no different. But, its shaped by us too.

But to actually shape it INTO something, or more accurately, to shape it into LESS of what it is, blunt some of its edges, lessen some of its ability to do harm to survivors, to compound the harm already done.....

Something like THAT requires intent. Conscious effort.

And intent requires like....first being able to SEE what problems need addressing.

And that’s kiiiiinda the whole point of survivors coming forward when so rarely, so MINUTELY does it EVER result in actionable justice for that individual survivor.

And I don’t for a second believe a single one ever believes or assumes otherwise.

Cuz its super not fun. It never like......I don’t fucking know how it looks to other people, tbh, because I’ve literally been a survivor since before I even really knew that I was being abused or molested, that there was something I was surviving....but trust me, I’ve thought about it, I’ve wondered, and I don’t know if like, people think a survivor ‘telling their story’ is somehow an equivalent of like, getting a book deal or something, there’s the attention it brings after all, and isn’t there that saying that no publicity is bad publicity.....

LOL. Yeah. Umm. Just saying, if you don’t have personal experience as a survivor having come forward or shared openly about your experiences, let me refer you to another saying as counterpoint: Don’t believe everything you hear.

Cuz that’s definitely not one anyone else ever forgets when ‘listening’ to any of us.

Anyway, wrapping this up by bringing it back to like.....my extremely evident mood and irration of this past week.....this is ALL connected, this is ALL part and parcel of every single time this comes up as an issue for me and its never less of one at one time than it is at another, its never a little easier this time because this reason or that....its always the same damn frustration every single time. Stuff like this doesn’t get doled out in manageable portions, its all or nothing. Its either a problem right this current second or its not, and if its not, that’s only until the next time its a problem again, likely sooner rather than later.

And that’s the part that makes me talk about this as much as I do, and get as frustrated as I do when people just do not seem to get.....

I don’t have an off switch on this matter because there IS no off switch for me. The times I get frustrated and vent about this stuff are actually only at MOST a TENTH of how often it rears its head for me to deal with.....the times my reactions or responses boil over into public view, into something you guys see, or ‘have to deal with’ are literally just the times where there is no keeping a lid on it because the pot was already full to start with.

And so it really. Epically. Beyoooooond doesn’t help matters, when despite being the only male survivor I’m aware of being consistently vocal on the matter in the only fandom I know of where a prominant male character is almost universally acknowledged as a survivor....

I usually only ever hear the response:

“Mmmmmm, I’m not really sure what makes you think there’s a problem here and that it has anything to do with us, when see, I don’t agree, and I don’t really see why you think your opinion on the matter of how this particular character is written about and viewed and depicted interacting with others and how fandom interacts with him, is like.....of any kind of real relevance? This is just like....your opinion, man.”

Me: ........have I ever claimed for a second it wasn’t? Didn’t I use those exact words at least once in all of this already?

fahsklhfaklhflakfhalffha

Cuz for the record, ultimately, that’s what this all boils down to. I’ve wanted to post about this stuff for awhile now, but make no mistake:

It literally is all just my opinion? Formed of my own personal experiences and the conclusions I’ve taken away from them. Laid out as fully and extensively as I can manage, specifically SO people can take all of that into context when deciding for themselves how much weight or not to GIVE my opinion......

In which case, y’know, the experiences I have with this matter and how they correlate to these opinions, like, have contextual relevance and seem necessary to include.

Its NOT because I’m trying to use them to browbeat everyone into agreeing with me because I think I’m the only one whose opinion matters here, lol.

No. Just that like....it DOES matter? And its kinda exhausting when people act like all of this is arbitrary and abstract to me, that its some kind of superiority complex or me moralizing from a pulpit or some shit when I’m literally saying none of it is abstract or arbitrary to me, and the louder I say that, the more people THEN say “oh so basically your opinion is the only one that matters here unless we disclose the same kind of experiences or background huh?”

*headdesk*

I just.....it seems my stance is either born of self-righteousness and nothing personal whatsoever....unless I make enough of a fuss about how that’s NOT true, in which case my stance is that apparently I think I’m the only one who is allowed to have an opinion here because I’ve made such a point about it being personal.

But its definitely not that people are just determined to invalidate anything I have to say on this subject one way or another, right?

Anyway.

So all of that’s like...whatever that was. Make of it what you guys will, but I do hope that at least for some people whom it might be a new perspective or new information to, you’ll consider asking why is it that in a fandom that prominently features a canon male survivor whose survivorhood is so frequently denoted as a key and critical part of his character....someone like me, who is frequently cited as a resource on many, many other kinds of meta about Dick Grayson......seems to have more people interested in discouraging me from ever expounding on my own experiences in this matter and any correlations I see between those and Dick’s experiences and narratives, than there are people interested in like......utilizing me as the freaking resource on male survivor experiences and viewpoints that I’ve literally been out here offering to be from day one....specifically BECAUSE of how rarely men are viewed as coming forward and being open about our shit here.

*Shrugs*

Just food for thought.

#rape cw

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ladytemeraire · 7 years

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A (Non-Exhaustive) List of Things I Love

In no particular order, inspired by @ofgeography

The scratch of fountain pen nibs on good stationary

Finding that perfect pen and ink combination

Handknits of every variety

Stranded colorwork sweaters and scarves

Sweaters that are a tapestry of Celtic knotwork cables

Lace so delicate it takes your breath away

Tiny perfect sweaters and booties on babies

Miniature knits at ridiculous scales

That little head tilt dogs do when they are trying to listen Very Intently

The cheer-cheer-cheer song of cardinals

The skreee-onk of red-winged blackbirds

Hearing frogs sing like crazy in the little pond across the parking lot during the warmer months

Piano covers of pop songs

Hot soup on a cold day

Sourdough bread, especially lightly toasted with real butter

Looking up at night when I’m out in the middle of nowhere and seeing the stars and Milky Way flung across the sky and feeling both small and inconsequential and as vast as the universe itself

DRAGONS

Making a truly excellent pun

Making a truly terrible pun

Those first few weeks when the weather turns in the fall and the mornings have that delicious crispness to them

Griping with other ladies about bras and all the bullshit that goes along with them

Reading something that someone else wrote that’s so good I’m honestly a little mad I didn’t think of it myself

Catching snowflakes on my tongue

Those times in church when we sing the Lord’s Prayer instead of speaking it

Hymns in general, especially with organ accompaniment

Old churches and cathedrals and stained glass windows

Pablo Neruda’s poetry

When you write something you’re really proud of and your friend messages you just to say “first of all how dare you” and it just makes you more proud

Children, and all the silliness that comes with them

The way my mom calls me sometimes just to tell me what the dog is doing or to read me funny parts of whatever book she’s reading

When someone tells a joke and watching people’s reactions winds up being infinitely funnier than the joke itself

Laughing so hard your stomach hurts and there’s tears running down your face and you can barely breathe

That show/book/song/movie/etc that you love to bits and pieces and return to like comfort food and it never gets old

When some bullshit happens in a group setting and you look at your best friend like they’re the camera on The Office and they’re already doing the same thing back to you

The ways in which religion and science answer completely different questions, and the ways they intertwine

Pocket friends (aka friends that live in my phone in my pocket)

Making online friendships that last for years and years and not being able to remember why we even became friends in the first place

Staying up stupidly late to chat with someone in a different time zone

Finally getting to meet my pocket friends for the first time

A capella renditions of songs

Sunrises and sunsets

Lady knights and ladies in armor

M U S I C

Music that reaches out and cracks open a part of my soul

Music that makes me feel a thousand feet tall and full of fire

Music that makes me want to dance and whirl and spill open full of joy

Coming up with the perfect gift for someone and counting down the days until you can give it to them and see the look on their face (bonus points if it’s something handmade)

Finding that one outfit that you absolutely love and you know looks amazing on you

Dancing around my living space for no reason in particular

Sleepovers with best friends

Boots that make you feel like you can conquer the world when you wear them

The smell of honeysuckle and the taste of it on the tip of my tongue

The way my dog smooshes his forehead into me when I come home like he just wants to get as close as possible

Those little sea cucumbers that look like tiny sheep

Unusual definitions that speak to the truth at the core of a word, like hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up and kindness is love with its work boots on and praise is defiance

Humanity, God I love humanity so much, we’re such reckless absurd creatures but I love us, I love the way we sing in giant groups and the way our languages evolve and intersect and all the ways we’re different and all the ways we’ve never changed over thousands of years of history

That I am here, that I share this timeline and this lifetime with all of you, that I have made it to my twenty-seventh birthday, that I intend and desire to keep going, that I have all this to be grateful for and more, so much more than I could ever hope to list.

#life with ladytemeraire #a tag of important things #things that bring me joy #finishing this up on my birthday seems like a good idea #I am slightly tipsy and so very in love with life and humanity right now

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ispyamoose · 5 years

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Last year, I let go of one of my best friends of 18 years.

This requires some backstory. So, here’s the tl;dr: this friend had lied to me on multiple occasions, betrayed my trust by revealing secrets I confided in private to others, lied about me to her family, used me unfairly as her therapist, treated me like I was her mother, (to a very, very unhealthy degree) and used her depression and anxiety as a front to be a terrible person to others. This wasn’t all at once, but rather over the course of our 18 years.

To clarify before I jump in: I have a combination of c-PTSD and “regular” PTSD, OCPD, anxiety, and depression myself. This goes beyond her having bad days. This is literally her treating people like shit 24/7. Again, this was an 18-year friendship.

We met in middle school, in 6th grade. For those who don’t know, I grew up developmentally delayed, and was in Special Education from Pre-K through the end of 4th grade. I went through testing to be de-classified, as the school challenged my father’s reasoning for wanting me pulled from the system. My father declined the transitional year I could have had, and I was in a completely different school district in 5th grade. My delays were blatantly noticeable to anyone who wasn’t me. I still had issues I needed help with. Most of them were socially. This didn’t really abate until college, though it lessened a bit in my 2nd half of high school. This information is relevant because my friend, we’ll call her J, and I originally didn’t like each other. I thought she was uptight and rude, and she thought I was childish and poking fun at her, because I’d occasionally prod her backpack and talk to her when she wanted to be left alone.

I don’t really know what changed, but in the 2nd half of the year, we struck up a real conversation one morning. We were hanging outside the school, before we were able to go inside and get to homeroom. Turns out we had a fair amount in common, and we became friends. We both had obscure home lives, although her parents were still married and mine were divorced. We both had varying degrees of childhood trauma, and neither of us judged the other for their idiosyncrasies. At least, not back then.

The bulk of our arguments in middle school were petty and dumb. We lacked girl code, and boys that we “dated” for like 2 weeks or a month, or boys that we liked, were considered free game once you were done with them, or if they were unclaimed. I never really dated anyone that girls in my friend circle dated first, but they always seemed to “date” boys that I had been with and I was supposed to be okay with it. (By date, I mean calling each other on the phone, talking on AIM, occasional group outings to movies and school dances. It was not much of anything, if I’m thinking about it.) This lack of girl code led to many a disagreement. The rest of them were for what we thought was backstabbing or flatleaving. Basically, being ditched for other friends, and petty rumors being spread among our circle.

My mom came out to me in between 8th and 9th grade. J didn’t hide anything from her family, and told them. At the time, they were quite homophobic. They still let her hang out with me, but always had some stupid judgments to make about my mom, without ever really meeting her and knowing her. This put a bit of a strain on J and me, because I was privy to the crap they were saying behind my back, or in voices low enough they thought I couldn’t hear. If I’m being honest, I think I took out some of this frustration on J, because she never spoke up to them about it. But, at 14/15 years old, I understand why she didn’t.

J moved to a different area of our state in sophomore year of high school, right before Christmas. I was also going through my goth phase. J and her family were Roman Catholic, and went to church every Sunday. (at least, until they moved) Because of this, J was concerned about my goth phase. She thought I was changing in a negative way, and made fun of me for how I dressed and some of the music I was listening to. (Fallen by Evanescence and Hybrid Theory by Linkin Park were two of my favorite albums at that time.) When J moved, we still talked on AIM all the time, and we visited each other every month or so.

At her 17th birthday that April, our other mutual best friend, M, and I both went to her house for a sleepover. The next day, her party was outside, and it was warm out. She had 2 of her new friends over, we’ll call them J2 and N, and her new boyfriend, A. J, M, J2, N, A, and I were all getting along. J had the idea to fill up water balloons as anchors for the blanket we were sitting on outside. She also wanted to throw one at her bf A, because it was hot out and he apparently volunteered at a fire station. (I don’t remember the tagline here, she just thought it would be funny to catch him off guard.) Her mom said not to throw any, but we were still allowed to use them as anchors.

When A came, J decided she still wanted to throw a couple at him. She had M throw the first one. She missed completely and it hit the grass. J threw the second one, and it hit A square on his shirt. It wasn’t a big one. It was maybe the size of a baseball. A laughed hysterically, and said it cooled him down on this unusually hot day. We laughed and continued to listen to music. On our way back home, I noticed her parents were a bit curt, but they were often like that, so I thought nothing of it. A week went by, and I hadn’t heard from J.

Then, I got an email from her, saying that she was no longer allowed to be friends with me after what I did at her party, and that I was a bad influence. Mind you, I hadn’t even DONE anything! So I sent one back reminding her of that, but she said my lies weren’t going to work this time, and that was it. About 2 weeks later, in the middle of May, she sent a message to me on AIM, apologizing and saying that her parents frequently read her email, that she had to say that, and that she wanted to be secret friends until she could sweet-talk her parents into letting her be friends with me again.

I was a pushover for a long time. I disagreed with this, because I hadn’t done anything. I said this, but when she persisted, I let it go, because secret friends was better than nothing imo. This continued for about 4 months. I would ask every couple weeks if she’d talked to her parents yet, and she kept saying it wasn’t the right time. Finally, in the beginning of October, I’d decided I’d had enough. I went through a lot of trauma in the past 2 years by that point (sexual assault(s)) and was cutting as a cry for help. Nobody noticed, and anybody who did, didn’t question it. But I confided the truth in her, and she called me disgusting, asking how I could ever do that to myself, that I was gross and should be ashamed of myself, that I was warped. So I told her to fuck off, that I was done being her “secret” friend. She wasn’t a friend at all. She’d just become a holier-than-thou bitch, is what I thought at 16. So we didn’t talk for about 6 months, maybe closer to a year.

After all those months went by, I went on my LiveJournal, (yep, really dating myself here, lol) and noticed I still had her as a friend on there. I was curious and looked at her journal. I saw posts about her grandmother passing away, and her cat. I commented and told her I was sorry for her losses. She messaged me on AIM, and somehow we became friends again. I told her I couldn’t be secret, that she had to talk to her parents. I also found out during this time, that the reason they thought I ruined her party was because she lied and told them I threw the balloon. She had never told them the truth. I told her a stipulation was that she had to come clean. She said she would. Her parents must’ve let her be friends with me again, because we were talking, and during the spring in our senior year, she came to visit me. She never invited me to any parties or anything, but we talked regularly again. I figured things were fine.

When we first became friends back in 6th grade, she revealed to me that she had depression, and was on medication for it. She probably told me that because she didn’t want me to think she was weird. I didn’t. In 8th grade, she told me she had panic and anxiety disorder. She would occasionally have panic attacks, and took medication for them to calm her down. Everyone has their problems, so I never judged. This will become relevant later.

During the summer between graduating high school and starting college, I lost my virginity, and stupidly had a pregnancy scare. Nothing came of it, it was just that I was being too careless with the guy I was with, and my periods were always irregular, so I had to check up on it. I confided that in her, and said I didn’t know for sure, and that it was probably negative, but had to wait to test. I told her she couldn’t tell a SOUL. She was also the ONLY person I told. A week later, I hung out with a friend of mine that she had also been friendly with. We’ll call her A2. I was driving us around, on our way to the mall or movies or something, and out of nowhere, A2 said, “Hey, I don’t want to sound insensitive or anything, but I heard you were pregnant?” And I asked her where she heard that. “Oh, K told me J told her.” (K is another mutual friend. We hadn’t talked a ton in senior year, but apparently J and K still kept in touch after J moved.) I was LIVID. #1, there was only a possibility, and #2, I SWORE HER TO SECRECY! By this point, my testing had been negative, so I was able to add that it turned out negative, I was just ruling it out. So not only did J break my trust, but she instead told people I was pregnant, rather than I was taking a test to be sure.

I went on AIM and laid into her. I was FURIOUS. She swore she didn’t tell anyone, but I knew she was lying because she was the ONLY person I’d told. I said that to her. And also that K had said she got the information STRAIGHT from J. I told her I had the proof, explained my proof, and told her to quit while she was behind. I told her how hurt I was that she LIED behind my back, and completely broke my trust. She begged me not to cut her out. I said fine, because by that point, we’d been friends 6 years, and how could I just cut out someone I knew for 6 years? (lol, whoops) I told her she’d need to earn my trust back, but that I’d still be friends with her. This is when I stopped considering her my best friend. My trust was shattered, and no matter how much she earned it back, that was a very hurtful betrayal I didn’t think I could come fully back from.

I still drove to visit her every few months, we would hang out for the day, and continued to be friends. In 2008 or 2009, I found out she was having a birthday party after several years of not doing anything, and was excited. I really wanted to redeem myself. I’d done a LOT of growing up, and most of my social issues were at bay. I was a completely different person. I thought her mom was finally starting to warm up to me, but wondered about her dad. I always wondered why they still didn’t seem to really like me, but never really asked about it. Then J told me the party was canceled because not enough people were able to come. I was disappointed, but told her I’d see her the week after and we’d go to the movies.

I forget how the next conversation came about, but we were talking on AIM. I think I caught her in a lie about her party. She’d told me it was canceled, but she mentioned something about her party. I’d asked, and she said, “Well, I wanted to invite you but my dad gave a hard no, after how you ruined my last party and he didn’t want you to start trouble” I got my confirmation that he still didn’t like me. That was enough right there. But then I thought, wait, what the hell does she mean I ruined her party? I made her swear to tell them the truth! So I called her out on it. I said, “Wait...I thought you told them the truth. You promised me you did, swore up and down you did. YOU KNOW I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING!” She got really quiet. So I asked her, “Do you mean to tell me that not ONLY did you lie to me about the party being canceled, you never told your parents the truth about the party? Is that why they still hate me? All this time I thought they didn’t like me because my mom was gay!” She said, “Well, up until recently they weren’t a fan of that, but...no. I never told them. I chickened out. I didn’t want them to be disappointed in me!” I was so angry, and asked her how I could be friends with someone who never told me the truth, and made me out to be this terrible person when I’m not. I thought it was completely unfair that her parents were refusing to get to know me as a person for things I never did.

I forget why I didn’t cut her out right then and there, but yet again, all I thought of was that I couldn’t cut loose a strong friendship of 8-9 years, and kept her as a friend. The next year, though, she asked me to sleep over. She said she’d gotten approval from her parents. I was coming to see her about monthly, and her parents had finally warmed up to me a bit, it seemed. I was getting closer to her mom, who saw how I was being treated at home by my dad and stepmom. The sleepover went without a hitch, as we were watching movies all night and playing with makeup. 2010 went by without much incident in our friendship. The most that happened was that she would occasionally come to visit me for sleepovers, but would get panic attacks and have to drive back home. I was being treated worse and worse at home, so I was confiding in her and her family more. 2011, I was given the boot by my dad, and moved to PA, in with my mom. J was excited because I was about 30 minutes closer to her than I was in NJ. I had more sleepovers at her place. I invited her to stay with me, but every time she would come, she would have a panic attack after we ate somewhere and would either leave to go back home, or ask me to bring her home if I drove.

I never questioned her anytime she had to leave. It inconvenienced me, but I didn’t know what it was like to live inside her head, so I didn’t judge. At the end of 2011, I noticed J had gotten really, really skinny. She was always thin, (it was just her build) but she looked sick. She always had a lot of food allergies, but this was even worse. She confided that a lot of her current anxieties stemmed from food, because she struggled with really bad digestive issues, and anytime she would have a bad episode, it would give her panic attacks. She didn’t know what was next that she couldn’t digest. I told her I was concerned about her weight. She told me she was seeing a therapist, that it was fine. But, she kept coming to me with more and more issues that I felt she should see a therapist for. I somehow knew her inner workings really, really well, (I’m an empath and have always had a knack for this) and could pinpoint her emotions even if I didn’t have the same struggles. It came to a point where I felt she was relying on me for professional help I thought she should get. She told me she’d seen her doctor, who diagnosed her as anorexic, and she couldn’t believe it. She said there was no way she was anorexic, because she wasn’t trying to lose weight. Yet, she wasn’t eating. She barely ate because of the anxiety of what would set her body off. She sometimes went days without eating. Despite the reasons being different, it’s still anorexia. I told her this, and she wasn’t happy with that, she thought I was ganging up on her.

I tried explaining, (delicately, based on her condition) that there’s a chance that because she barely ate, that by the time she ate again, she was possibly eating too much in one meal, and that the body is going to go through hurdles when it gets used to food again. She just had to make it through the hump of her body getting used to eating again, and then the issues would probably get better, at the very least. But she couldn’t see past that and kept going. In 2012, this was still a constant issue, and it was affecting her mental health even worse. Her panic meds weren’t working as effectively, and neither were her depression meds. Anytime I tried suggesting bringing it up with her doctor and having them reevaluate her, she said she would but never did. I suspect there’s some closet OCD or OCPD that led to panic at the thought of anything disrupting the routine she’d come to know, even if she derailed from that routine due to the mental illness.

One day, we were talking, and I mentioned something about how I wished her parents liked me, because I was such a different person. She said they did, and that they really appreciated how good a friend I was to J, and how responsible I was. I said that was a total 180 from just a couple years ago, and J said she finally came clean to them about her party from all those years ago, in 2004. She finally admitted to them I didn’t do anything, that she did it all and that it was her idea. Her parents were pretty angry that J let them have a skewed opinion of me for so many years. (though really, over water balloons? That’s the hill you were gonna die on? Seriously?) I was pleasantly surprised, because FINALLY I was vindicated!

J’s mom’s health was rapidly declining. She had COPD from years of smoking 3 packs a day, even though she’d quit several years before all the issues hit. She was using her rescue inhaler multiple times a day, using a daily breathing medication, giving herself 4-5 breathing treatments with her nebulizer a day, AND was on oxygen. She could walk but wasn’t terribly mobile out of the house, because she’d immediately become winded. J’s weight was still an uncontrolled issue. She would get a new PCP, go to an appointment, didn’t like when they wanted to reevaluate her to see if she needed new medication, didn’t like when they mentioned her anorexia and suggested treatment options, would fire them, and get a new one. I was still her therapist, though it weighed heavily on me because I was not a professional, (though I wanted to be one, still do) and didn’t want to steer her wrong. I made suggestions that I knew would cause no harm if they didn’t work for her. But then she’d blame me when they didn’t work. In fact, anytime she was in a foul mood, she would fly off the handle on me. I was her punching bag. I mean it when I say there would be no reason. She’d ask me for help cheering her up, or help bringing her out of a panic attack, and I tried my best. If I didn’t help, she’d get really, really mad at me. I excused it for years, saying she had mental illness issues, and I shouldn’t judge.

We watched a lot of YouTube, and mutually watched a particular vlog and LP channel. We saw that they went to PAX East and what was then PAX Prime, (Now called PAX West) via the vlogs, and wanted to go ourselves. J snagged us badges for 2013. I drove us to Boston, and we had a great time for a weekend. J had gotten herself on a pretty healthy routine before we traveled, and didn’t have an issue with anywhere we ate. It was a ton of fun. Later in the year, her uncle decided he was moving back into the house they were renting from him, and they had to move. They moved to PA, about 30 minutes closer to me. I helped them clean up their house, (Which they hadn’t cleaned in at LEAST 5 years by that point. It smelled awful, had inches thick layers of dust on their carpeting, and had animal excrement in areas. Bathrooms weren’t cleaned, stuff was packed with animal hair and dirt caked on them, but they somehow didn’t notice) and helped move into their new one.

2014 came, and my best friend passed away. J knew her, and felt awful. I tried helping J through her continuing deteriorating mental health, while going through the worst grief of my entire life. I didn’t visit J as much because I didn’t have money, and had no motivation to go anywhere. I was descending further into my own issues with mental illness, and had no motivation to help myself. J kept telling me to snap out of it, that she wasn’t coming back and I needed to move on. It was hurtful. She was my best friend. You don’t just get over that.

2015 came, and we went back to PAX. But things were different. J barely ate again. In fact, she barely let ME stop to get food, and I am a reactive hypoglycemic, which she knew. I was prone to passing out, and needed to stay fueled. I only needed 3 meals, and a couple snacks on me, but she only let me eat once, after taking public transpo to the convention center, and walking all around the convention center. She had me pay for BOTH of our badges for the whole weekend, and gas to drive from PA to Boston. She didn’t have the money but still wanted to go. I’d had a boyfriend for a little over a year at this point. After one day in Boston, she woke me up early the next morning and said she was having a panic attack and that I had to take her home. She’d done this often when we hung out, if we went to a restaurant that was new to her, or somewhere she thought she couldn’t vet the food. She would need me to bring her home, because I was the frequent driver. But, Boston was a 5 hour drive from where she lived. I still had plans for the weekend. I didn’t want to leave, especially when I’d shelled out all the money for us to go!

Not even an hour after she sprung that on me, my boyfriend called me, surprising me and telling me he was also at PAX. This was a big deal, because he was away at culinary school and we were in a long-distance relationship. I hadn’t seen him in a month. J was livid. She screamed at my boyfriend, we’ll call him M2. She said that if she knew he was going, she would have never gone in the first place. All this AFTER she demanded I pay for everything, and STILL demanded we leave. She agreed to let us go to the panel we wanted to attend, and then we left. She didn’t understand why I was upset. She said that I was being an asshole because I just “didn’t get her anxiety” and wasn’t being considerate of her. I felt I’d been considerate of her illness for YEARS, walking on eggshells even, bending over backwards to help her out when I could, but thought I was rightfully upset. I wasn’t upset that her illness got in the way. I was upset by how it was handled. She was unwilling to have an emergency call with her therapist, she was unwilling to call her mom for creature comforts, or to try ANY of the coping mechanisms (that worked) that she learned in therapy. She said she thought she was going to have bathroom issues and that she needed to be home for it. (Even though we were staying at her aunt’s house.) I understand the creature comforts of home, but she was demanding I drive several states, at no notice, to take her home, and just be okay with it. I didn’t think that was fair.

We didn’t talk for a couple months after that. We needed to cool off. I visited her occasionally, but not much. I couldn’t bring myself to spend the night anytime I’d visit, because I didn’t want to be stuck, and her place was honestly too dirty for my health at that time. Through the rest of 2015, and leading into 2016, she really only talked to me if she needed something. No questions of how I was, didn’t really care what was going on at my end. She would need me to talk her down from something, help her resolve her anger, help her with her eating disorder, her panic attacks, her bathroom habits. Stuff her mom was doing.

Then, in the beginning of 2016, in the span of a month, I was in a terrible car accident, and then her mom died. I’d debated cutting her off before this, because of how one-sided I thought the friendship felt. I’d occasionally try to broach the subject, but she would always accuse me of not being sensitive to her needs, and just being selfish. So I’d drop it. After her mom died, things changed even worse for J. I felt awful for her and her family, and was there for them as much as I could be. I had months-long recovery from my accident, so there wasn’t a ton I could do for awhile. We would talk online, and it was all the same, except now I was being asked to resolve her grief for her too. On top of it, she started treating me like her mother. She started asking me questions if she suspected something off about her health, that she really should’ve asked a doctor. So not only was I expected to keep her a functioning person, she also treated me like her mother, and our friendship became even more unhealthy. I found reasons not to talk to her, because I just couldn’t handle the responsibilities she saddled me with. Anytime I mentioned it again, she would say the same things. She would talk about how depressed she was, that she had no other friends, and I felt sorry for her, so I would continue to talk to her. But I didn’t like her anymore. She treated me and everyone else in her life like shit. I couldn’t take it.

In 2017, I found out I was pregnant. After that, things took a turn. I couldn’t really pinpoint what exactly was weirding me out about her actions, until my boyfriend and best friend said that they felt J was trying to live vicariously through me. I was hitting milestones in my life that she wanted to hit. She was crossing lines while I was pregnant, that made me really uncomfortable. She would ask me multiple times a day about the pregnancy, which would be fine but it felt like she was up my uterus with the intimate questions she was asking. And she kept referring to my pregnancy as “our” pregnancy. I turned into “we”.

On top of being up my uterus, J was still expecting me to act like her mom. I still was asked to coach her through being in the bathroom, that she would normally have her mom come in the bathroom with her to help her with. On top of having a very complicated pregnancy already, (I was high risk) having these responsibilities that I didn’t ask for was just getting to be really stressful. After I delivered in June 2018, she wanted to come visit right away and babysit, which was nice, but I tried explaining I needed to bond with the baby and recover from childbirth, and she was really butthurt.

Mind you, she knew nothing about babies. I would’ve had to teach her everything, while I’m trying to learn how to be a parent too. I don’t mind showing her the ropes, but I’m not going to leave her alone with my baby when she hasn’t even learned how to hold one yet, is my point. She and her dad came to visit me when my son was a few weeks old. J appointed her dad “grandpa” without even talking to me about it first. Mind you, my dad and I had patched up a bunch of our issues by this point, and he was involved, as well as my boyfriend’s father. My son already had his two biological grandfathers heavily involved. I had a good rapport with J’s family by this point, but I by no means considered her father like my own. I never really got over the decade of harsh judgments he made against me without really knowing me. This made things incredibly awkward for me, because then she grew to expect me to schlep my son to her place, (which wasn’t clean, and I don’t mean messy, but legit dirty) to see “his grandpa”, while he was a newborn.

I tried talking to her less and less. I had finally reached my breaking point. I’d tried multiple times to talk to her over the years about the way she treated me, but it seemed to fall on deaf ears. All she would ever say was that I didn’t understand mental illness, and was being unfair, and too judgmental. Imo, I think I took a lot from her over the years. Now that I had a child, I didn’t want him to think these behaviors were okay. I tried talking to her about it again. Nothing further got through to her. So, after talking to my mom, my two stepmothers, my boyfriend, and best friend about the guilt I felt from wanting to cut her off, I finally did. I explained that I couldn’t handle being her mother anymore. I couldn’t handle being her therapist. I didn’t like the person she became. I told her I tried for years to wait out changes that never came. I told her I harbored no ill will, but I just couldn’t be friends with her anymore. It’s unfair to someone to remain friends with them because you know they don’t really have many other friends IRL. I was no longer comfortable associating with her. She insisted we could work on it, but I told her I tried for years and I was out of straws. All she saw was that I was throwing away 18 years. She blocked me on all social media after she got confirmation that I didn’t want to be her friend at all anymore. This was November 2018.

For about a month, I cried all the time, because I felt so guilty. I didn’t want her to do anything rash. I was afraid for her, I felt guilty that I let go of 18 years. But, in the end, there wasn’t much left for me to hold onto. I’ve told very few people about this situation. Half thought I should’ve given another chance, and half thought I did the right thing. It gets dicey when mental illness is involved. But, more than a year later, I don’t regret it. My own mental health, while still on shaky ground, is immensely improved since making that decision. I struggle with co-dependent tendencies that I’m working on, and her friendship only perpetuated it. I was a pushover and allowed behaviors that I would normally never tolerate. I want to be a better example for my son, who’s now almost 18 months old.

To clarify: I’m not saying I’m perfect here. I had my own mental illness. I’m sure there were times I fell short as a friend. Maybe I was unfairly upset about the PAX issue, who knows. I’m not going to put myself up on a pedestal. All I know is, I couldn’t work to better myself with her still in my life. It wasn’t working. I was spiraling farther and farther down. She was bringing me down with her, and I couldn’t continue to do it.

#best friends #friendship #mental illness #codependency #childhood #trauma #ex-best friends #toxic #toxic friends

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lv-ha · 7 years

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Surprising Confessions

Young!Remus Lupin x Reader

Summary: you and Remus haven’t seen each other since leaving Hogwarts for the summer holidays and when you finally get to spend some time alone, he confesses a surprise to you.

Words: 2012

A/N: Okay so this is the first thing I’ve written in a while and is the first imagine I’ve written on here, so please forgive me. This was originally supposed to be a blurb from a prompt given to me by a friend for a first kiss between the reader and Remus but I was watching friends while I started brainstorming what to write and I ended up using a prompt from the show.(in the episode where it’s Thanksgiving and Chandler gets mad at Monica and to make up for it, she puts a turkey on her head and dances around to cheer him up.) Anyway if you haven't seen the episode I highly recommend it, it's hilarious. Anyway, I hope you like it :)

Remus and yourself had been friends for as long as you could remember. You knew about his lycanthropy and had for some time now. You were one of the only people that Remus was fully comfortable around, other than his three trouble making, partners in crime. Before you both came to Hogwarts, you often kept in touch and visited during holidays, but after you were both sorted into Gryffindor you became almost inseparable. The bond you had was growing and over the years developed into a beautiful relationship. It wasn’t until 5th year that the marauders convinced Remus to ask you on a date, on which you spent the day sitting by the lake with a picnic full of food that James and Sirius nicked from the kitchens.

He was so shy while asking you and this was a side of Remus you rarely saw anymore. He had always kept to himself and was closed off from others but you had allowed him to open up. This combined with the confidence he gained from his closest friends meant that you hardly ever saw the quiet and timid part of him anymore. This persona caused new feelings to spark inside of you. You always loved Remus as a friend but new emotions were growing inside of you that were completely foreign.

You became official about halfway through 5th year and you spent every waking minute attached at the hip. Some of your free time was spent lounging in the common room or about the grounds together and although most of your time was spent preparing for your O.W.L.s, neither of you cared as long as you could do it together. After the stress of examinations, you could not wait to just relax and not have to think about studies for a whole summer holiday. However, the thought of not getting to spend your free time with Remus made you a little sad. Not that you cared about being apart, but you had become accustomed to having him around whenever you needed him or wanted to hang out. You also knew that a full moon was nearing and although James promised to watch out for him, you hated not being there to comfort Remus afterwards. This would be the first full moon without you in almost a year and Remus dreaded the fact that you wouldn’t be there to help him recover afterwards. He loved having you near him, even if it was just a simple touch on his hand to reassure him that you were still there and not going anywhere. You were slowly falling for him and him for you.

After the full moon, you hadn’t heard from him, nor any of the other boys, in a few days and this started to worry you. Had it been a bad transformation? Had something gone wrong? Why hadn’t anyone written to tell you what had happened? All of these thoughts clouded your head as you grabbed a piece of parchment and quill from your desk.

Hi Rem,

I know its only been a few weeks, but I miss you so much and I hate that I can’t be there to help you right now. It’s making me nervous that I haven’t heard from you or any of the others in a while and James promised me that he’d make sure you were okay. He told me that he would write the minute everything was back to normal. Please tell me that everything is okay? If it is you can tell him he better watch out the next time I see him because I’m going to hex him into oblivion for not keeping me updated. I hate not being there with you guys and I miss all of you. Mum misses you too and she suggested that, if you all want to, you can come and stay at mine for a few weeks. I personally do not think that mum knows what she is getting herself into, inviting James and Sirius together is going to be an explosion waiting to happen. But if you want, you could stay a little longer so we can have some time together. I miss just hanging out with you. Anyway, write back soon, hoping you are well and the reason James never wrote back is that he broke both hands. Miss you. Xx

Y/N

You prayed everything was still alright as you ran down to the kitchen window to send off your letter with your family owl. She gave you an affectionate nibble as you stroked her feathers before tying the letter to her leg. As you gave her a treat, she flew out the window and hopefully would get to Remus soon. You hated not living close to each other anymore, but you understood why his family constantly had to move around and you were glad that he was near James, Sirius and Peter now.

Not long after you received a note from James, apologizing for not writing sooner and begging for you not to hex him, as he knew how good you were at some particular hexes. It was probably the quickest response you ever got from him and you laughed, imagining what happened when they received Remus’s letter from you. He said that everything was okay now and even if Moony said he was fine, it was a hard full moon and he missed you terribly. James was ecstatic that he and the others would be coming to visit and could not wait to visit your mum. James promised to be on his best behaviour and could not wait to come in a few weeks. For the next little while, you helped your mum prepared the spare rooms and went to Diagon Alley with your parents to pick up a few things for the boys stay. It was so great to see some of your friends again and you wished that they could have spent more time with you. Your parents loved all of the boys and could not wait to go and visit James’ parents later in the summer. You spent the time you had outside and relaxing mostly, it was nice to have friends around after a few weeks of boredom. However, it was even nicer to have your boyfriend around again. You never wanted to let him out of your sight and he never wanted to let go of you. After all the boys had gone to sleep, you and Remus would sneak out to the garden and watch the stars, while he told you about what had been happening since school let out. You could tell that he was still down from not seeing you as often as he liked and it was obvious that the last full moon had taken so much out of him. He was exhausted all the time and had a sad aura surrounding him.

After a long goodbye with the other three Marauders, you were excited to finally have some alone time with Remus. It wasn’t that you didn’t get to spend time with him while they were there, but you didn’t want to flaunt your relationship around in their faces. It was nice to have time to yourselves every now and then and it was one of the things you missed most about Hogwarts. You watched muggle movies and snacked away on cookies your mum had made, snuggled close while Remus read his favourite book and even went into Diagon Alley on a date, stopping to get ice cream at Florean Fortescue’s and Remus wanted to stop into the second-hand bookstore to see what he could find. Even after all of this, you could tell that he was still down and thinking about the upcoming full moon. When you came home from Diagon Alley you both went up to your room, just wanting to spend the time you did have left, together.

“Mum?” you called as you climbed the stairs to your room. “Dad?” you called again. “I guess they aren’t home,” you said turning to Remus as he climbed the stairs behind you. The smile on his face was so pure and you could hardly notice the faded scars upon his face. They were something you hardly noticed anymore and as your relationship grew, so did your want to make sure he was happy. Remus plopped down onto your bed and you heard him groan as he stretched out across it, his lanky figure taking up most of the space. You sauntered over to your record player on your desk and turned on a new muggle band that Sirius had told you about, he always had such good taste in music and you enjoyed pretty much everything he gave you. You were quite musical yourself and loved to dance, so new music always made you smile. You knew that when you were happy Remus would be happy and if your plan worked out the way you wanted he would be smiling in no time.

You started to sway around your bedroom as the record spun around on the turntable and giggled when Remus looked at you funny. “What are you doing Y/N?” he laughed light-heartedly.

“Come dance with me, Rem, pleaseeeee” you whined as you shimmied your way to the edge of your bed. You knew that your ridiculous dance moves would make him laugh and hopefully dance along with you.

“Can’t we just cuddle for a bit, I’m so tired and I just want to relax.” He sighed and sat up as you placed your elbows onto the bed giving him your best pouty face. When he didn’t seem to respond to your antics, your dance moves grew more obnoxious and ridiculous, Y/H/C hair flying in all directions. “…I’ll take that as a no then” Remus laughed, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed in hopes to catch you in his arms.

“You’re so lame Lupin,” you teased as you danced a little closer to him, grabbing his arms and pulling him to his feet. The both of you laughing uncontrollably as you started moving his arms in exaggerated movements to match your own. The smile that lit up his face was enough to warm even the coldest of nights and your heart was the happiest it had been in weeks. His laugh rang out and was like music to your ears after the weeks of hurt he had been through.

In the middle of all the laughter, you almost missed his heartwarming confession to you, “You are amazing Y/N,” you giggled as he tucked a piece of hair behind your ear, “I love you.”

You froze and your erratic dancing ceased. The only noise in the room was the music coming from your record player. “What?” you said in a surprised tone. He had never told you that he loved you before. Even though you had been together for a few months now, you both were taking things slow. You had no doubt in your mind that you both cared deeply for each other, but you had no idea that he loved you.

“I said you are amazing, and then I just stopped talking, nothing else…” he said a blush spreading across his face and your face lighting up as he got embarrassed.

“You said I love you,” you laughed, smiling as you flung your arms around his neck and jumped into his arms, causing the two of you to fall back onto your bed. Laughing, you looked into each others’ eyes and smiled. “I love you too by the way” you grinned as Remus pulled you into his chest and planted his lips onto yours, the two of you melting into each other.

“I’m so glad you said it back…” he mumbled as you parted and both of you burst into laughter again. A happy smile making its way onto his face.

“I’m so glad to see you genuinely happy again” you smiled, ruffling his already messy hair and rolling off of him to flip over the paused record.

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fifthnerve6-blog · 5 years

Text

mom’s zucchini bread

Happy September, friends! First, can we even believe it’s September?? I cannot. Call me a cliche, but I’m firmly in the this-summer-flew-by camp. I feel like I still need a few good days of dipping myself in the lake, eating drippy ice cream cones and toasting marshmallows for s’mores over a bonfire before I can say bon voyage to this sunny season.

That being said, I also do love me some autumn. Chunky sweaters, cozy scarves, colored leaves, pumpkin spice lattes, crisp air… oh man, it’s so good. But I can wait at least another month or so before fully embracing that situation.

That’s partially why I’m bringing to you today my Mom’s zucchini bread — because to me, this bread is the perfect bridge between summer and fall. It utilizes one of summer’s most prolific crops, but it’s baked into a soft, moist, dense, spice-laden loaf that goes perfectly well with cooler temperatures and warm drinks. It’s one of the most quintessential recipes of my childhood, and I’m amazed it’s taken me this long to bring it to your face.

We’ve spent the last week at my parents’ house in southern Wisconsin — well, the girls and I have. My husband, dad and brothers are on their annual fishing trip to northern Wisconsin, so my mom and I have been tasked to hold down the fort while they’re gone. It’s been great, actually — despite the fact that it’s rained almost every day, we swam in the lake behind their house, took a nature hike, made a treasure hunt, watched movies, danced and baked up a bunch of goodies, including this yummy zucchini bread. It’s been a good week, and I doubt any of this bread will be left by the time the men come home. Sorry not sorry!

The basics of this quick bread are simple: Flour + oil + eggs + sugar + spices + shredded fresh zucchini = a double-batch of one seriously delicious loaf. But beyond that, this recipe is one of those recipes that has endured and will continue to do so in our family for years to come. I remember walking into my house as a kid and immediately recognizing the smell of fresh-baked zucchini bread when my mom decided to make it, and it was the best thing ever. To this day, I wish I could bottle up that smell or turn it into a candle. Until then, I’ll just have to bake Mom’s zucchini bread all. the. time (which is no problem at all).

So if you’re like me and, a) aren’t ready for summer to be over, but also excited for fall times, b) love zucchini bread and c) also love to eat tasty foods, then I highly recommend making this recipe as soon as possible. It could even become a traditional recipe in your own family! Which would make me the happiest. Also, invite me over when you make it, even if only for the smells.

P.S. Also check out my Mom’s Egg Salad, Mom’s Baked Bean Casserole and Mom’s Classic Heirloom Tomato Spaghetti Sauce. Because mom recipes are the best.

Mom's Zucchini Bread

Author: Girl Versus Dough

Prep time: 30 mins

Cook time: 1 hour

Total time: 1 hour 30 mins

Yields: 2 loaves

2 cups granulated sugar

1 cup vegetable oil

3 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons cinnamon

½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon nutmeg

2 cups shredded zucchini (about 2 small zucchini)

Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease two 9x5-inch loaf pans with cooking spray.

In a large bowl, whisk sugar, oil, eggs and vanilla until smooth. In a medium bowl, whisk flour, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda and nutmeg until well blended. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients; stir until just combined. Stir in zucchini.

Divide batter evenly between loaf pans. Bake 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Cool in pan 15 minutes; remove from pan. Cool completely on cooling rack before slicing.

3.2.2802

Source: http://www.girlversusdough.com/2018/09/04/moms-zucchini-bread/

#read more #see more #check it out #interesting #learn more

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whiskeymindsandwildflowerhearts · 7 years

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Do 'em all ^.^

For you? Anything. (JK. Thanks for appeasing me). 😘Pearl: If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go and why?I would really love to go to Thailand, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Haiti or someplace that is similarly impoverished and do volunteer work. It is my dream to spend some time helping out in an orphanage!Sails: Describe your perfect partner.I don't believe in "perfect" partners, but my ideal partner is someone who is committed to bettering themselves, has the spirit for adventure, and doesn't take life too seriously! Someone who loves with their whole heart, has things that they are passionate about, and isn't too wrapped up in their own pride. Someone who is affectionate, can make me laugh, will dance in the kitchen with me, sing in the car with me, and have meaningful conversations at 2am with me. But more than anything, someone who will understand that I am flawed and love me anyways (because that's what I will do for them).Lighthouse: How much makeup do you wear?Most days, not at all. But when I do wear it...a ton. Shells: Would you prefer to be a vampire or a werewolf?I would rather be a werewolf, because I don't want to live forever. Mermaid: Most embarrassing moment?My whole life, honestly.Turquoise: Weirdest dream you’ve ever had?I honestly have some pretty wacked dreams, so I don't think I could choose one! But one I will never forget that scarred me for life is weird because looking back on it it wasn't scary at all, but at the time it was absolutely terrifying! I was 8 years old and an astronaut from NASA had come to our school that day and given us a talk. During it, he told us that they use scrap metal from cars and stuff. That night,I had a dream that astronauts stole my moms car and used the metal to make a spaceship, and then a bunch of weird stuff was happening and I don't remember much because it was 17 years ago, but I remember like walking the streets at night looking for a bank, but they were all closed and like pieces of the ground were falling out from beneath us? I don't even know. Waves: Favorite season and why?I could never choose. They all bring wonderful things. I love spring for it's brilliant thunderstorms and gorgeous flowers. I love winter for snowboarding and all things Christmas (music, Hallmark movies, family time, cocoa, cuddling by the fire, slippers and flannel, puzzles and books, etc). I love summer for beach days, road trips, fireworks, bonfires, and barbecues. And I love fall for the crisp smell of dying leaves, fairs, fair food, fall clothes, and pumpkin everything. Breakers: Would you ever consider getting married?It's not something I need to consider. I've been planning my wedding since I was four. Seafoam: Describe your ideal summer vacation.Lots of beach days, long drives with the windows down/iced coffee in hand/music blasting, bonfires and camping, country concerts, and tons of time spent with friends and family!Rain: If it were possible, what exotic animal would you keep as a pet?An elephant. I love elephants. Sunlight: Least favourite song?"Leaving on a Jet Plane" by John Denver. When I was little, it always made me so sad - sometimes it even made me cry! I have no idea why, but for whatever reason it still breaks my heart. Marine: Would you ever consider plastic surgery?Truthfully, if I could afford it, I would absolutely get a few things done. Sea Glass: What do you consider to be your best physical feature?I like my smile, and I have good feet!Storm: Do you like piercings and tattoos? Why or why not?I love both! For tattoos, the more the merrier - I think they're so sexy! And a handful of piercings are sexy as well. Too many/certain ones I find unattractive, though. Boardwalk: Who is your favourite fictional couple?Hmm, I'm not sure! I'll have to think about this one and get back to you. Coral: If you had to describe your personality as a food, what would you be and why?Tacos. Because they come in every variety you can think of! And I can be sweet, but I can also be spicy. I can be exactly what you expect, but sometimes I'm surprising. And I like to think I do a good job of making people happy!Nymph: Old-fashioned or modern decor? Simple and vintage, all the way!Seawater: Scariest movie you’ve ever watched?The Texas Chainsaw Massacre f u c k e d me u p for some reason. I couldn't even finish it the first time I watched it! Siren: In a fantasy setting, would you be a warrior, rogue or mage?I have no idea what this means, to be honest. But I like the idea of being a warrior!Tempest: Your favorite Pokemon?I barely remember Pokémon, but I do remember thinking Charmander was too cute. So I guess Charmander.Tropic: What is your least favourite thing about your appearance?My face and my body. Aquamarine: Describe your dream date.I'm not picky, but I like to actually DO something. Some of my favorites are drive-in movies, road trips, going to the beach, concerts, and mini-golfing. Brine: Gold or silver?I have an unwarranted hatred for gold, so silver (but I do love rose gold!).Tidal: What is a colour that best describes your personality?Yellow! Azure: What is something that you do that makes you happy?Travel, take long drives, and spend time with my family!Fog: Describe where you think you’ll be in five years.I honestly have no idea, and I know better than to have any expectations. I just hope that I'm happy and living my life in a way that makes me feel fulfilled! Coastline: What is your favourite flower?Any and every wildflower. Shallows: What is your typical Starbucks order? An iced coffee from Dunkin'. Voyage: What are your favourite names?Like baby names? I have way too many. Way. Shipwreck: Do you have an OC? If so, describe them.I don't know what this means...Cerulean: Do you believe in true love?Absolutely. Shoreline: If you could become fluent in another language, which would you pick and why?I would love to become completely fluent in German. It's such a fun and interesting language! Tsunami: Describe a dream outfit of yours.I'm so not the right girl for this. Jeans, t-shirts, and cute sneakers all the way for me.Riptide: Are you introverted or extroverted? Are you happy with this?I am the strangest combination of the two. When I'm out in public, I'm usually super social and will talk to anyone (I've literally chatted with strangers in other cars at stoplights on multiple occasions), but I LOVE being by myself and I also hate people. Don't worry - it confuses me too. Hurricane: Describe a strange habit of yours.Every time I fill my gas tank, when I take the nozzle out, I shake the remaining gasoline on my hand before I put it back so I can smell it on my hand for a few minutes.

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mirika · 7 years

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Now it's my turn mwehehehe: Laslow, Niles, Camilla, Sakura and Leo?

The only downside to some of these is that you had already told me so much about them, that I could not create a true first impression.

This took ages.

First impression:

Laslow: I did not notice his existence at all in Birthright to be fair. I might have even killed him off while he is one of the four deaths that you can spare (sometimes this haunts me). When I started playing Conquest, I had the words of my former classmate in my head (”you’re going to like Laslow probably” and me thinking “you don’t know my taste in men!” and well here we are), so my first impression got blended in with a feeling of “well I do seem to be rather fond of this one” but it was merely attachment at that point.

Niles: I already knew he was a pervert cause of you, and honestly that was something that just ended up being confirmed. I couldn’t shape my own first impression.

Camilla: I’m going to have to dig in my memory, but I had not much of an opinion of her other than “okay she is behaving a little creepy towards Corrin” and it doesn’t help I played male Corrin most of the time.

Sakura: I was annoyed with her stuttering because I thought Fire Emblem pulled a “shy girl that stutters” anime trope. I know better now, but that was my first impression.

Leo: Of him too I could not form a true first impression, sadly.

Impression now:

Laslow: In the end my former classmate was right and I ended up liking the guy. Uh. A little too much, perhaps. I will always wonder how my former classmate knew as he is nothing like the other fictional character he knows I’m into. Xander may give him a lot of shit for flirting, but knowing his background as to why he flirts so much with other women, and especially with his attitude of “you never know when you see someone for the last time,” he’s simply a precious human being trying to get to know his fellow people. Over a cup of tea, if possible.

Niles: He’s still a perv, but he’s also hilarious. Not an Odin-kind of hilarious, but hilarious nonetheless. Also, he does the random meow thing like me, so I send love to this guy. Not too much love though, don’t want to give him wrong ideas.

Camilla: Strong fierce woman, do not mess with her! I still find her a bit creepy when you play male Corrin though. I don’t feel like they translated that very well. I am rather fond of her though.

Sakura: Protect her! PROTECT HER! I became rather fond of Sakura. She’s adorable.

Leo: Well… he’s… he’s a grumpy book nerd, what can I say? I did not name him Ugh Boy for nothing. I actually don’t have a strong impression of Leo, I feel like he fell a bit into the background for me.

Favourite moment:

Laslow: Gee. A favourite moment. It’s a bit rough with non-royals as light isn’t shone upon them as much (is shone proper English?). I mean, obviously I like any interaction of his with Corrin, especially when he gets serious for a moment, but uh… I cannot think of any moment other than specific supports, like the support between Laslow and Mozu.

Niles: Remember when Niles said meow? Good times. No, I actually really enjoyed the Felicia and Niles support (mostly C and B when Niles is messing around). I just love Felicia’s obliviousness towards Niles’ innuendos.

Camilla: Her fight over Corrin with Jakob, whenever Camilla threatens others showing that you can’t mess with her, her support with Elise where she tells Elise need not be like her.

Sakura: I can currently only think of her support with Kaden and Elise.

Leo: Honestly his cut scene is pretty darn cool.

Idea for a story:

Laslow: Honestly, I’m going to fall back on a headcanon post I once made. Laslow being drunk allowing Odin to mess with him as payback from the times Laslow has been reading Odin’s book as I believe Laslow would be the kind of guy to spill the beans on whatever when he’s drunk.

Niles: Niles and his daughter Nina being thieving outlaws, but for the greater good like Robin Hood, helping the poor and all that.

Camilla: I would love to see a story in which Camilla would have to be in a more realistic medieval situation where she has to be ladylike in a clean and virtuous way, especially as a royal, even though we all know that’s not who she is. Of course this story would lead to her desire to protect her family as a warrior of sorts.

Sakura: A story in (short) movie format of Elise and her having a tea party with stuffed animals would be adorable even though they are likely to be too old for that. Let the princesses be their younger selves.

Leo: Can we have a story in which Leo falls hopelessly in love with a book character? A quest to somehow turn this fictional character into something real. I’m sure Odin’s got some supportive ideas.

Unpopular opinion:

Laslow: Oh boy. Well, I hate Xanlow and I dislike Peri and Laslow as well, but these appear to be two of the biggest ships. I actually like Elise and Laslow, I feel that this isn’t very popular, but maybe that’s because of Elise’s age; I headcanon their relationship as innocent and pure so I guess it’s just the point of view I have. Also, I hate the very idea of Laslow in female dancer clothes because I hate how Laslow is always turned into ‘the feminine one’ in whatever gay ship they like to imagine as if gay relationships consist of ‘the masculine one’ and ‘the feminine one’, just let the characters be who they are without ‘straightening’ gay relationships. Sorry, we hit the pet peeve area as that is something that bothers me in general.

Niles: I do not think there are any unpopular opinions to be created about Niles. I think everyone loves Niles. I do am pooped he’s the only character you can have a gay relationship with, but I think everyone agrees with that.

Camilla: I don’t mind her oversexualized clothing like you said in your answer too, especially because her gear is still convincing of that it is heavy armour that is capable of protecting her. Besides, boobs are a weapon too. Do not underestimate medieval times and the ability to distract men with boobs in combat. Do not underestimate boobs. In all honesty though, I really do not mind armour showing skin so long it still looks like the armour is protecting them. That’s character design for ya. Of course it’s a typical anime trope and therefore many dislike it, but it works for Camilla.

Sakura: I do not know the opinions about Sakura cause the only person I follow reblogs Nohrians and not so much Birthright (looking at you evangeline). I cannot imagine anything I could disagree with.

Leo: The Leo and Takumi ship is something I don’t really understand, but then again, I am not far enough into Revelations yet.

Favourite relationship:

Laslow: Corrin, but only my Corrin. This one’s rough. I paired him with with Elise and Azura as I liked these combinations when I play the male avatar, but I haven’t tried all things out yet (but reading into Laslow and Effie I like that Effie allows him to still chat up with women so that gets my stamp of approval as well).

Niles: I have a sincere adoration towards Niles and Felicia, I can’t help it.

Camilla: I like that putting her and Jakob together is basically a contest as to who loves Corrin more.

Sakura: Kaden!!! Sakura and Kaden are terribly adorable together! They take naps together and stuff.

Leo: I like to pair up Leo with Azura, because you forget that Leo’s a grumpy kid as he seems to enjoy Azura’s singing so much.

I just wanted to add that I am not too much of a shipper to be that invested in this section of the ask, and I simply don’t feel that strong about every character and I do not know many supports by heart.

Favourite headcanon:

Laslow: After the war, Laslow found that it is time to put down his sword and invests his time into what he truly loves: dancing and making people smile. He would still low-key keep himself fit for combat by implementing his skill with the sword in some of his dancing rituals in case any new war would break out or if his partner were to come to danger, but the last thing he would want for is his partner to worry for his life as he would do the same for them if they were to be sent into battle.

Niles: Despite the sadist that he is, he reveals to have a weak spot to those who seem ever so oblivious to his behaviour. He feels the need to protect these people at all costs while continuing to behave the way he is with others. No one knows this softer side of him, however, until they get close to him.

Camilla: For some reason I like to think that Camilla ends up as a cat lady, always surrounded by furry friends. And uh, don’t mess with her cats either.

Sakura: She becomes best friends with Elise. Together they would always visit peasants and offer them food and flowers whilst keeping the children entertained with toys. They are to be known the kindest princesses of their current age as they are absolutely selfless in all they do. Even whilst growing into adulthood and marrying off other men, their friendship never lost its strength.

Leo: I like to think Leo is aromantic. His love for knowledge and magic is greater than for other humans, other than the platonic love he carries for his friends and family. This is why he remains an unmarried prince and this has always worked out as Xander’s son Siegbert is to take over the throne when Xander passes. If for some reason he must marry, he would find political reasons for this much more than to marry for love.

These headcanons are not necessarily favourites, I was already happy I could come up with some whilst avoiding any headcanons that involve specific ships. Some characters already have such a strong canon that I find it hard to headcanon around it as well.

#AskMiri #evangeline noir #I FINALLY ANSWERED IT!

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vertigocrime · 8 years

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1 to 117. I dare you.

I’m going to fight who ever did this lmao

1: Let’s start with a tricky one; what is the real reason you are confused right now? Idk if he likes me back as much as I like him back

2: Do you ever get “good morning” texts from anyone?Hah no, kind of wished I did

3: If your significant other smoked pot, would you care?Yes I would care. It’s not like i’m against it as the thing itself, I just cannot stand the smell at all.

4: Do you find it easy to trust others?Sometimes. I wouldn’t say I trust anyone. I’ve never really trusted anyone, so I guess that’s why i’m so mysterious at school lmao

5: What were you doing at 11PM last night?Talking to the guy I like and emailing a college to talk about my application.

6: You’re drunk and lost walking down the road; who is with you?Probably @stink-burritos

7: What would you do if you found out you had been cheated on?Dump the loser, and if he tries to comeback I’ll make him hurt really bad. Mentally and physically. Nobody hurts me like that without hurting themselves.

8: Are you close with your dad? Eh kind of. He’s an asshole.

9: I bet you kissed someone last night, right?Hah you wish, nah I didn’t.

10: What are you listening to?My parents watching Bleach downstairs

11: You can only drink ONE liquid for the rest of your life - what is it?Thai tea

12: Do you like hickeys?Maybe, haven’t gotten one yet, just not in a visible area I guess.

13: What time do you go to bed? It differs. Sometimes it’s 12:00am, 1:00am, or 3:00am

14: Is there someone who continuously lets you down? I don’t really depend on anyone so no

15: Can you text as quickly with one hand as you do both? Nah, I’m fast with one hand but two hands is faster when texting

16: Do you always answer your texts?Yes unless it’s a conversation ending text

17: Do you hate the person you fell the hardest for?No I don’t, it was hard to forgive him, but he’s a good guy

18: When was the last time you talked to one of your best friends? like 6 hours ago

19: Is there someone that makes you happy every time you see them?My crush~~~ I like seeing his name when he texts me back

20: What was your last thought before you went to bed last night?I might see my crush on Wednesday

21: Is anyone else in the room with you? My cat, does he count? lol

22: Do you believe what goes around comes around? Yeah

23: Were you happier four months ago than you are now?Debatable. Loads of shit is happening right now and i’m not sure if i’m happy or if i’m sad.

24: Is there someone you wish you could fix things with? Not right now

25: In the past week, have you cried?

Yes

26: What colour is the shirt you are wearing?Not wearing a shirt rn, just in my sports bra

27: Do people ever call you by your last name?No, wouldn’t mind though

28: Is anyone ignoring you right now?Probably my crush, but tbh he’s super busy doing homework so that I can go over to his place tomorrow

29: Do you have a best friend? Kind of?

30: Would it be hard seeing someone else kiss the last person you kissed?Yes, but we aren’t dating so it’s fine.

31: Who was your last call/text message from? My friend Jack

32: Are you mad at anyone?I’m mad at P

33: Have you ever kissed someone older than you?Pfft yes. My crush is almost 3 years older than me

34: How old will the last person you kissed be on his/her next birthday? 21

35: How many more days until your birthday?201 days

36: Do you have any summer plans yet?Road trip with @stink-burritos to the beach~

37: Do you have any good friends of the opposite sex? Almost all of my friends are guys

38: Are you keeping anything from your best friend(s) now? No not really

39: Do you have a secret that you’ve never told anyone?Nothing comes to mind lol

40: Have you ever regretted kissing someone? No

41: Do you think age matters in relationships? tbh, no. When I was 15 I was fooling around with a 20 year old, and when I was 17 I was fooling around with a 25 year old. I genuinely liked these two guys, nobody made me like them and they didn’t manipulate me.

42: Are you available?Single? Yes, but my mind is taken over by my crush;;

43: How many people have you had real, strong feelings for since high school ended? high school hasn’t ended for me yet

44: If you had to get a piercing (not ears), what would you get?Probably my lip

45: Do you believe exes can be friends?Yeah, i’m good friends with some of my exes. See now, it’s the could-have-been’s that you can’t be friends with

46: Do you regret anything? Playing in P’s confession and saying that I liked him even though I actually didn’t

47: Honestly, what’s on your mind right now? Nothing

48: Did you ever lose a best friend?Yes, twice. Still friends with both of them, but we don’t share everything with each other anymore

49: Was your last kiss a mistake?Nope!

50: Why aren’t you pursuing the person you like?I am pursuing them

51: Has the last person you kissed ever seen you cry?No not yet

52: Do you still talk with the person you LAST kissed?Yep!

53: What was the last thing you ate?Something like Chicken Alfredo

54: Did you get any compliments today?Maybe??? Idk I don’t remember lol

55: Where are you going on your next vacation?Disney World in April-May

56: Do you own anything from other countries?I have a few Italian souvenirs I picked up when I went there, a Vietnam shirt my parents bought me, some Chinese money, a paper bead necklace from orphans in Africa. But if I take the question literally then I own something from almost every country since stuff gets traded and imported c:

57: Are most of your friend guys or girls?Almost all guys

58: Where have you lived most of your life?Texas

59: When was the last time you took a long drive?Last semester when driving to class lol

60: Have you ever played Spin the Bottle?Yes

61: Have you ever TPd someone’s house?Nope

62: Who do you text the most?This past 2 weeks have been my crush~~~

63: What was the last movie you saw?Madoka Magika movie the beginning

64: What’s preventing your current boyfriend/girlfriend from going back to their ex?I don’t have a boyfriend.girlfriend

65: How many boyfriends/girlfriends did you have in 2011? Two

66: Is the last person you kissed younger than you? Yes, but he was only younger by a month

67: Do you curse around your parents? I did once (Nothing happened btw lol)

68: Are you happy with where you live?Yes kind of. Wouldn’t mind getting away

69: Picture of yourself?

A post shared by Elora Hale (@vertigo_crime) on Feb 27, 2017 at 6:49am PST

70: Are you a monogamous person or do you believe in open-ended relationships?Monogamous

71: Have you ever been dumped?Once

72: What do you most like about making out?Taking a peak at the other person’s face in between kisses when your breath is combined

73: Have you ever casually made out with someone who you weren’t seriously involved with?

Hmm no

74: When you kiss someone for the first time, is it usually you who initiates it or the other? Usually the other, i’m too shy

75: What part of a person’s body do you find most attractive?Their face is first

76: Who was the last person you talked to last night before you went to bed?My crush~~

77: Had sex with someone you knew less than an hour?I’ve never had sex

78: Had sex with someone you didn’t know their name?I’ve never had sex

79: What makes your heart flutter and brings a big cheesy smile to your face?My crush, I can’t stop thinking about him staring at me while I watched Pokémon and the dumb face he made when I gave him a side glance, such a cute smile ebewkjberwkgk

80: Would you get involved with someone if they had a child already?Maybe, most likely if i’m older though, can’t handle children right now

81: Has someone who had a crush on you ever confessed to you?Yes

82: Do you tell a lot of people when you have a crush? No not really, I’ve only recently grown some balls when confessing my feelings lol

83: Do you miss your last sweetie?Uh, nah?? I don’t miss my last boyfriend.

84: Last time you slow danced with someone?Forever ago so idk

85: Have you ever ‘dated’ someone you’ve never met?No I haven’t

86: How can I win your heart?Idk lol, just be you

87: What is your astrological sign?Virgo

88: What were you doing last night at 12 AM?Being asleep lol

89: Do you cook?Yep!

90: Have you ever gotten back in touch with an old flame after a time of more than 3 months of no communication? Yes, but I usually fight for a friendship

91: If you’re single right now, do you wish you were in a relationship?Yes, with my crush~

92: Do you prefer to date various people or do you pretty much fall into monogamous relationships quickly? monogamous relationships

93: What physical traits do you look for in a potential interest?If their eyes are beautiful, that’s the first thing. If I can stare into your eyes then hell yes. Then it’s the smile. If the smile is genuinely cute or true, then hell yes. Body type is next. I usually go for thinner guys, fit or not.

94: Name four things that you wish you had!- My crush (oooooooo)- Choi Seungcheol- tickets to a BTS fan meet- tickets to a Seventeen fan meet

95: Are you a player?I am without even knowing, why tf do so many people like me???

96: Have you ever kissed 2 people in one day?No

97: Are you a tease?Yes, 100%

98: Ever meet anyone you met on Tumblr? Nope!

99: Have you ever been deeply in love with someone? Yes

100: Anybody on Tumblr that you’d go on a date with?Hmm, none that I can think of

101: Hugs or Kisses?Kisses

102: Are you too shy to ask someone out? Pfft yes

103: The first thing you notice about the opposite sex?Their face

104: Is it cute when a boy/girl calls you babe? nrivdjkbvwbkb yes

105: If a sexy person was pursuing you, but you knew he/she was in relationship, would you go for it?

No, i’d tell them to break it off if they want to do anything. If they’re willing to cheat then fuck no. In my opinion it’s better to leave someone for someone else than to cheat on that someone with someone else.

106: Do you flirt a lot?Unconsciously yes

107: Your last kiss?Last Wednesday 2/22/2017

108: Have you kissed more than 5 people since the start of 2012? LOL, nah.

109: Have you kissed anyone in the past month? Yes my crush~~

110: If you could kiss anyone who would it be?My crush~~

111: Do you know who you’ll kiss next?My crush

112: Does someone like you currently?Too many people

113: Do you currently have feelings for anyone? My crusshshhhhh

114: Do you like to be in serious relationships or just flings?I want a serious relationship, but i’m so terrible at maintaining them

115: Ever made out with just a friend?Nope

116: Are you happier single or in a relationship?A bit of both. I’m lonely when single, but I kind of feeling caged when in a relationship

117: Who are you to challenge me to answer all 117 of these???

#Verti talks #anon #answered #this took awhile lmao #bet you thought I couldn't do it lol

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