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celeste-clearwater-06 · 3 years

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Hello! I was wondering if you could please write something about how the Fellowship (+ Thorin?) Would help a s/o who's Disabled and Chronically ill. Like she has a lot of symptoms like chronic pain, chronic fatigue, difficulty sleeping, difficulty breathing at times, difficulty walking at times, higher sensitivity to the cold, difficulty talking at times, and anxiety, depression and executive dysfunction?

I've been really struggling with my chronic illnesses lately, namely my Autism, Anxiety, Sleep Apnea, a really bad Overbite, Raynaud's Syndrome, Asthma, etc, so I'd really appreciate an Imagine like this. I have a really weird disorder where one of my legs is longer than the other, and it's been causing me a lot of pain and difficulty walking lately, and people have been bullying me for it a lot too, so I could really use a Comfort Imagine right now. Thanks so much hun!!

It's no problem! I'm glad I can provide some comfort!! For each character, I'll use a specific struggling area, to make it a bit easier!! I hope I got these accurate enough, and of there are any mistakes, feel free to point them out!! You are strong, beautiful and so, so amazing!! Keep being you!! ❤❤

Help (The Fellowship// Thorin x Fem!Reader)

Aragorn (Autism)

Aragorn has known you for a long time, so helping with your autism is not new for him

He's particularly experienced in reading your emotions and meeting your needs, whether it's helping you out of stressful situations or calming you down, he's there 🥺

If there are large and boisterous gatherings in Rivendell, its almost guaranteed that you can become over-stimulated quickly, and Aragorn immediately senses this (spidey senses õoõ)

He's fast to find your hand and give it a gentle squeeze of reassurance

If that doesn't seem to help, he'll instantly stop what he's doing and take you out of the room

If you're someone who prefers lots of space and little physical contact, he is 100% respectful of this and asks if you'll let him touch or hug you (very much gentleman 😌)

If ever you're confronted by someone of importance, Aragorn is right by your side to ease some of the tension

Sometimes there are things you find difficult to say or get out of your system

The king seems to know exactly what it is and will help you out by saying it or asking you simple questions that you can easily answer

And he always reminds you, no matter WHAT

YOU ARE NOT STUPID 😤😡

You may struggle with some parts of your life, but every day, he's constantly telling you that you're very intelligent and kind

His patience is unending and he'll never let you think down on yourself

Overall, Aragorn is always someone and reminding you that it's all going to be okay ❤❤

Legolas (Anxiety)

Most nights, Legolas keeps watch (since elves don't require much sleep) and notices that you jolt awake out of the random

Now, most of the Fellowship notices that you're usually awake and ready to go before anyone else

But Legolas is really the one to address you first

You were a bit nervous to explain, since you didn't want to worry him or the great of the fellowship, amount the other disadvantages you have

He gently encouraged you, and finally, you explained to him your sleep apnea

Yeah, he was very concerned

I mean, his blue eyes widened with terror when you told him that you could basically die in your sleep if you weren't attentive enough 🙃

Legolas, from now on, sleeps directly next to you, or keeps extra careful watch over you at night

Because he could NEVER see his precious mortal friend become injured... Or worse 🥺🥺❤

The other members had noticed a change in his behaviors towards you as well...

Gimli teased him whenever he caught Legolas giving you some extra lembas bread or offered to carry you 👉👈

You really tried to assure Legolas that it wasn't a big deal when you were awake, since you're aware of your breathing situation

But still 😤

Legolas will always bring you comfort and take great care of you, and that will NEVER CHANGE

Because he loves you very much ❤🦋

Frodo (Anxiety)

Frodo is familiar with the feeling of great anxiety, seeing he had a stress-free life while living in the Shire and suddenly was forced to carry a piece of jewelry all the way to giant ass volcano

It's easy for you two to comfort each other and seek refuge in thoughts and feelings ❤

He's not super comfortable with the thought of you having a panic attack though...

Only because he's never had one

It starts to give him a panic attack whenever you have one around him the first time 😳-

Any time you begin to breathe heavy or hyperventilate, halfling boy is hot at your heels, rubbing your back and reminding you to breathe gently

(So many hugs, if you're up for it)

After you calm down, he's constantly checking on you, asking if you need anything etc.

Really, he just wants to know if he can help 🥺

And even with the weight and stress of carrying the ring, Frodo manages to cheer you up somehow

Samwise (Asthma)

Sam has never had to deal with asthma once in his life

He's very nervous when the subject is brought, afraid it might trigger something inside of you 🥺👉👈

But you just chuckle, assure him that it's alright, and you have ways of keeping it under control

And now, he wants to know everything about it, just to have the awareness in case something happens

Sam just wants to protect you forever, and this was a great way for him to start

He constantly reminds Aragorn that you'll need breathing breaks and will convince Gandalf to let you ride on his horse

He'll scold Pip and Merry if they are trying to drag you around and be silly, because as he says

"You'll rouse him/her/them up! We can't have Y/N gettin injured!" 🤨😠

Sam is MOM

As always, he's very kind and always makes sure your needs are met ❤🥺

Pippin and Merry (Raynaud's Syndrome)

Very confused halfings 🤔

Also extremely concerned!

You were eating one of the lesser pleasurable nights

It was cold and rainy, and a fire couldn't be started, not to mention the quiet arguments of Aragorn and Gandalf in the nearby woods

And Pip's eyes widened when he saw the tips of your petite fingers begin to pale upon hearing Aragorn mention Orcs

"What's wrong with your hands?!" He squeaked, pointing towards your now white-colored fingertips

You hadn't even noticed, nor felt, considering they were numb anyways

Merry looked over his cousin's shoulder and his eyes also widened, not with fright, but wonder

They were both fascinated with your condition, convinced that you were casting some spell Gandalf showed you

Although you reassured them it was just an extremely frustrating inconvenience that you had, among other things

So from then on, the disastrobus duo did their best to keep you out of the cold (and stressful situations!!)

As a distraction, the pair will tell you great stories of the shire, doing little dances and skits that always cheer you up 🥴

Sometimes, they can be a little rambunctious though...

Merry will pick up on this fact quickly, and nudge Pippin to get him to calm down

Even though it may not feel the best

They find your syndrome absolutely fascinating!! 🤔🤔

All in all, these two are always up for keeping your beautiful smile on your face and your spirits high!! ❤🌺

Boromir (Depression)

Throughout the journey, Boromir has always found an easy way to make you smile

After all, he himself has a fascinating way of brightening anyone's spirits

Yours included ❤

Boromir may not have great stories from The Shire, like Pip and Merry, but he sure has a lot of positive things to say

He'll often suggest sparring with the two troublemaking halflings, just so you can see him goof up and get knocked over 🥺

If the nights become cold and weary, he'll give you a warm hug or a nudge on the shoulder

And a few words of helpful encouragement along the lines of;

"Don't fret Y/N. You have more strength than you'll ever know."

"Let our spirits never dampen! We've come this far!" 😊

He's also an incredible listener

Boromir wants to hear what you have to say if you ever need to rant or get something off of your chest

And don't think for a second that he would ever judge you 😤

Son of Gondor sees past all of your insecurities and knows you for your beautiful, amazing self ❤❤

Gimli (Walking disadvantages)

As you travel across great plains and mountains, your limp doesn't go unnoticed by Gimli

It may take him a while to open up about it, since he's afraid he might offend you in some way

And once he asks you, you inform him that it's a difficulty that unfortunately cannot be changed any time soon

And where you come from, lots of people tease and bully you about it

He did NOT handle it well 😳

"wHAT BLUBBERING DULL-MINDED PIGNUTS-" 🤬

Although this Dwarf is short and a bit slow at times

He's fascinatingly strong 😳

And so, he makes it his duty to be your designated carrier 🥺

At first, your a tad skeptical...

I mean, he's only around 4 feet tall...

BUT HAVE YOU SEEN HIM THROW THAT HUGE AX AROUND?!

Gimli will happily carry you great distances when you need a break, and even longer

(Sometimes it's just to show off around the others-)

"Gimli, are you sure you don't want a break?"

"Aye lass! The strength of Dwarves is unending!" 😌

*struggling to breathe*

11/10, fantastic dwarf, will never let you down!!

Thorin (Executive Dysfunction)

Another Dwarf??

Absolutely

Thorin himself has trouble keeping composure with his time management (and sense of direction 🙄)

This means that he'll have an undying amount of patience for you and you only

There's just something about you that he fond of, and it fills in that little sassy, brooding place in his heart

Can also relate to you whenever you grow frustrated at the setback of your journey or lack of sleep

Is 100% willing to help you find your lost belongings (and once again, ONLY YOU)

Thorin will literally make the whole traveling party stop so that you can put something in your bag and make sure that you put it somewhere you'll remember

Always happy to give you extra gentle reminders of keeping your pack closed

The company is utterly SHOCKED with how he treats you

I mean, this man has always been extremely stubborn and hard headed

But when you show up, it's another person he can easily relate and share frustrations with

Also a master at organization?!? 🤔

The one thing he could do successfully was organizing the damn journey and traveling company, so ofc he's gonna be good at that 😂

Yeah, Thorin definitely has a soft spot for you

King under the mountain will never run out of patience and kindness for you 😌💙

Sorry these took so long!! I hope you like them!! ❤❤

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angryschnauzer · 4 years

Text

Waited So Long

Summary: As an actress in her mid 20′s you had been lucky enough to get the roles you pushed yourself for, but one role in particular needs a scene you have no experience with; a sex scene, and you co-star is surprised to discover you are still a virgin even though you are in your mid 20′s. But he’s willing to help with whatever you need.

Trope: Friends to Lovers, Co-stars to Lovers Pairing: Henry Cavill x Female Reader

Warnings: NSFW, 18+, loss of virginity, oral sex, fingering, vaginal sex, protection/condoms.

I no longer operate a tag list, but instead pop over and follow @angryschnauzerwrites and put that blog onto notifications. You’ll then get an alert each time i post a new story.

Masterlist got so long all the links broke, so you can now find all my previous stories on my AO3 LINK HERE

Waited So Long

Henry sat at the large table, grinning and laughing as the rest of the cast had finished reading through the latest episode’s script. Everyone was in a good mood and that was down to the fact that tomorrow’s shooting schedule required just you and Henry, meaning that everyone else got a three day weekend. But… but you were just staring at the script. You knew it had been coming, but to see the words in front of you, the stage descriptions, it was overwhelming.

The Netflix special was ten episodes of a sci-fi series, and you played an alien warrior. Henry was the plucky human astronaut that had been aboard the International Space Station when it had been sucked into a black hole and had ended up on the far side of the universe. Eight episodes into the filming schedule and the pivotal sex scene was about to be included, and that’s what was clouding every thought in your mind.

You were far from naive, you had no issue with your costume or even the nudity - you were after all painted purple with patches of ‘scales’ in strategic parts - but it was the fact you had a small secret that was making you so nervous; you hadn’t ever actually had sex.

You were already mid 20’s, you’d been through university and stage school, worked on broadway and the London west end, you’d modelled for artists and had always put your career first. Relationships had just fizzled away after the first couple of dates because of your acting schedule… and that is how you found yourself not only a virgin in her mid 20’s, but one that had never even laid in bed with a partner, been close, felt the weight of a lover on top of them… anything at all.

The producers called it a wrap for the read through, and the sounds of chairs scraping on the floor filled the room. As people shot their empty plastic bottles into the trash you felt your stomach lurch, quickly leaving the room, finding the disabled bathroom and running to the toilet, the contents of your stomach very quickly coming back up.

Finally empty, you sat on the floor and rested your head against the wall, your mind spinning. A quiet knock at the door made you open one eye, watching as the unlocked door swung open and a familiar face peered round;

“Are you ok?” Henry asked, his bulk almost filling the entire doorway; “You’re not coming down with something?”

You shook your head;

“No, just umm… nerves… haha…” you laughed rather awkwardly.

Stepping into the room, he sat against the opposite wall, leaning forwards to hand you his half finished bottle of water;

“... about tomorrow?”

Taking a sip of water you nodded;

“Bit pathetic really, isn’t it?”

“Not at all. Is this your first onscreen love scene?”

“Yeah”

He sat forwards, resting his hands on his knees as he thought pensively for a moment;

“Are you going out with the crew tonight?”

“No. Can’t really face it”

“How about I drive us back to the house and order some chinese and talk things through? This isn’t my first love scene but I remember the nerves. We’ll get everything out in the open so the air is clear ready for tomorrow, yeah?”

Nodding, you watched as he stood, holding out his hand for you and helping you to your feet.

The drive back to the shared house that most of the main cast members were staying at was fun, Henry having linked his Spotify to the stereo, firing up a playlist of old school pop with an eclectic mix of metal. By the time he rolled into the large driveway that the rental house had, you were both yelling out the words, laughing and grinning.

Once inside you excused yourselves to go shower, twenty minutes later finding Henry in the kitchen. His hair was wet and he wore a t-shirt and pair of sweatpants as he looked over the chinese menu;

“What do you fancy?” he asked and you tried not to blurt out what you were thinking, because even though you may be a virgin, your thoughts were far from pure.

Looking over the list he had already scribbled down, you pointed to a couple of dishes, watching as he added them to the list before dialling for delivery.

Pushing your plate away you stretched out and groaned. Still shovelling egg fried rice into his mouth, Henry pointed his fork at your plate;

“Roo dun?” he asked, his cheeks full like a hamster.

“Help yourself!”

He eagerly dumped the rest of your lemon chicken on top of his rice, jabbing at the pieces;

“Hey, about tomorrow… you really don’t need to worry. It’s just going to be you and me, and three other people”

Taking a sip of your beer you quietly snorted;

“That’s still three more people that would ‘usually’ be there… and four more than i’ve ever experienced”

He paused, setting his fork down and you could see his mind working through what you said;

“So uhh, it's been a while…?”

“To be honest, it's been never”

It was like something short circuited in his brain;

“Never never? Like, never?”

Putting your beer down, you fiddled with the label;

“I’m a virgin. I’ve never had sex. I’ve never even slept with anyone”

There was an awkward silence, the air tense before Henry finally spoke;

“Is it a religious thing?”

You shook your head;

“No. I just have been so wrapped up in studying or working or being on stage… I would get two dates into a relationship and some big opportunity would come up. I would get blinkered and end up ghosting guys without even realising. Ambition got in the way of a love life…”

Henry took a deep breath;

“Ok. So you know i’ll be covered up… down there i mean… and so will you… so there won’t be any slips or anything. I won’t be inside you or anything…”

Cocking an eyebrow you scoffed;

“Henry… I know you won’t be inside me. We studied sex scenes at stage school. They gave us the practical run down of what happens. It's lots of rubbing and grunting. I just need to go watch some porn again to figure out what to grunt…” you took a sip of your beer; “... and you probably wouldn’t fit inside me anyway… it’s not like anything has ever breached that hole”

Henry sat with a wide eyed look on his face, his jaw hanging slack;

“So you… you’ve never even pleasured yourself?”

“Of course i have!” you threw a prawn cracker at him; “I’ve just never…. You know… had internal stimulation…”

“Wow” he muttered quietly, shifting in his seat; “So…” he started again but then stopped, his brain seemingly unable to string a coherent sentence together.

Finally he cleared his throat;

“So there’s never been any on set stuff?”

“Nope. Usually I run through my lines for the next day, check the schedule, the set and makeup call times. I guess the one bonus about all of this is that there aren’t any lines for tomorrow”

You both knew that the scene had been set up without dialogue, mostly from Netflix’s instruction because any erotic scenes can cause havoc with sensors in some countries when it comes to subtitles.

“What did you want to do now? Do you want an early night? Watch a movie? Talk? You want me to lay on top of you?” he asked, picking his now cold plate of food up and dumping the leftovers in the waste disposal.

“Yes” you replied far too quickly.

“Which part?”

“All of it”

With the TV in the main living area out of action thanks to a rather rambunctious game of ping pong a few weeks ago, the pair of you had moved to Henry’s room. An hour into the movie and it was far from your thoughts, instead you were in the bizarre situation where Henry was literally laying on top of you as you had a conversation. The feeling of his weight pressing against you was at first a surprise, he was thick with muscles for the role, and with probably 200lbs of human pressing you against the mattress you had found you would have to shift now and again. Finally you found a position that was comfortable, and as you chatted about life you found your legs had naturally parted to allow him to lay between them, his stomach pressing to yours, his face inches from your own;

“This is literally how we’ll be spending our day tomorrow you realise” he quietly pointed out

“But there will be grunting too… plus some thrusting… it’ll probably get your ass in the gossip magazines as best ass in hollywood again” you teased him, knowing that the nudity he’d done in previous shows and movies had earned him a lot of attention thanks to his rather peachy behind.

Henry pushed up a little, poking a finger to your breasts;

“Oh yeah? Well these will earn you a whole legion of fans, you have an awesome pair of tits”

“Pfft, they’re just average”

“They’re good enough to give me a semi” he countered with a crooked grin on his face, using his finger to just tug at your neckline, exposing a tiny bit more skin.

You shifted beneath him without even realising you were doing so and that’s when you felt it, a growing hardness pressing against your abdomen. Your eyes went wide as you stared up at him, the mix of emotions showing on his face;

“I’ll get off…”

“No!” you instinctively wrapped your legs around his, leaning your head up and pressed a kiss to his lips. He let out a grunt of surprise and you felt him tense, before he softened, his lips following yours as you pulled rested your head back on the duvet beneath you.

His lips were soft and plump, and as he rocked his hips against you again this time you felt he was getting harder. Instinctively you gasped, and he took the opportunity to slip his tongue into your mouth. You may not have had sex before but you had kissed, and your tongue danced with his as hands started to explore each others bodies, fingers seeking out skin as t-shirts were tugged up to expose heated skin.

Pulling your shirt over your head he admired your naked chest, the pattern on your top having hidden the fact you were without a bra;

“Oh yeah, even purple these’ll be popular”

With a smirk on his lips and a wicked grin on his face he lowered his mouth to your naked torso, taking one peaked nipple between his lips to suck on it, his hand cupping your other breast. As he worked his magic your body responded, the wetness between your thighs soaking through your clothing, the subtle movements of your bodies rubbing together making your arousal almost uncontrollable. Winding your hands into his dark locks, the soft hair curled around your fingers as he looked at you, pressing a trail of kisses down your sternum until he reached your leggings;

“Can i continue?” he asked quietly, watching as you nodded your head;

“Yes… please…”

As he pulled your leggings off he pressed kisses to the heated skin that he revealed, never breaking eye contact;

“So here’s what i’m going to do… first i’m going to get you to cum with my tongue, i’ll slip it just a little inside you so you can get used to the feeling, then i’ll gently tease you with my fingers; find that g-spot of yours as i’ve been assured a g-spot orgasm is completely different from a clitoral orgasm…

“Fuck…”

“Yes, that’s the third thing…” he grinned at you; “Once you’re nice and ready, and really really wet i’m going to make love to you… so you can practice your moans for tomorrow…”

He shed you of the rest of your clothing before softly grasping your legs and pulling them apart, revealing your virgin core. Tender fingers parted your petals before his tongue swiped a wide stripe through them, and the sound that emerged from your throat startled even you.

“You like that?”

“Yes… oh my god, please do that again!”

“With pleasure!”

“The pleasure is all mine…”

“Henry?”

“Yes?”

“Please shut up and get on with it” you grinned at him, before he dipped his face back between your legs and went to town. His tongue was seemingly everywhere, grunts and moans as he worked you open, and when he slipped his tongue into the ring of muscle at your entrance your eyes shot open and you giggle-moaned at the unfamiliar but not unpleasant experience. When a finger found your clit you relaxed again, laying back and enjoying the pleasure he was selflessly giving you.

Gripping at the bedcovers you found your hips started to move on their own, only for Henry to press a strong arm across your stomach to hold you in place, pushing you closer and closer to your orgasm. When it finally did hit your body reacted instinctively; your legs wrapping themselves around his head, your back arching and your fingers almost tearing through the fabric of the sheets, before you finally went limp. As your mind was nothing but stars a muffled voice came through the haze of your post orgasmic bliss;

“If i could get some oxygen…”

Not realising your legs were still firmly wrapped around Henry’s head, you quickly released him, his head popping up from beneath your thighs. His cheeks were flushed red and his chin was wet, and it took you a moment to realise you were the cause for the wetness. He wiped his chin with the back of his hand before standing and grabbing a bottle of water to pass to you;

“You’re gonna need to rehydrate after that…”

You went to take the bottle from him but the bulging tent in his sweatpants distracted you, your hand pausing mid air before Henry laughed;

“Drink first, then you can play with it”

“Oh… I… “

“Drink”

Taking the bottle you sipped at the tepid liquid as he lay on the bed beside you. When you’d finished he wrapped his arms around you, pulling you to his firm chest before kissing you softly;

“Are you ready for round two?”

“Can i touch you too?”

A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth before he nodded, watching as you eased the elastic of his sweats down and his heavy cock sprang free. Your jaw fell as you took in his size, but before you could overthink it he pressed a kiss to your lips as his hands wandered between your thighs.

Reaching out you wrapped your fingers around him as his own slid between your folds, dancing over your clit before he pressed a single digit inside you, your eyes going wide and your hand squeezing him involuntarily.

“Does that feel good?”

You nodded;

“Yes, a little strange that i’m not in control, but i think that’s what makes it even more exciting”

“That’s good… now, how about another finger?”

Nodding again you bit your lip as he slid a second finger in alongside the first, your eager hole stretching around his digits. Instinctively you had started to move your hand up and down his shaft, doing little more than gentle movements, but soon the pair of you got into a rhythm, working together to leave your breaths in time with the others.

“Doing so well for me… so wet. Shall we try a third?”

Nodding you let out a quiet ‘uh-huh’ as he repositioned his hand, carefully sliding three fingers into your soaked velvet channel, and the noise that came from your throat was base and full of sin. When his thumb started to rub against your clit while he continued to work three fingers inside you the spring in your belly snapped and you were coming hard, shaking around his hand.

As you came down from your high Henry carefully withdrew his fingers, salaciously licking them clean before he got off the bed and went to the drawer in the little cabinet, pulling out a condom.

“Oh… i’m on the pill…” you blurted out; “You don’t have to… In fact i’d really like to feel you, you know… bare…”

Tearing the packet open he grinned at you;

“I get that… but you’re gonna be in makeup in less than 12 hours” he knelt on the bed as he started to roll the latex down his angry dick.

“Umm yeah?”

“Well its something you’d only know from experience, but it can take up to 24 hours for a guys cum to fully leak out of you”

“Oh…”

“And your costume and makeup gets pretty intimate, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah…”

“So you want Iris in makeup to be able to smell my cum dripping out of you when she’s painting your snatch purple tomorrow?” he said with a grin on his face, rolling the condom down fully before positioning himself between your legs

“I gotta be honest, the idea that someone realises i’ve had sex is kinda kinky” you craned your neck up to kiss him as you felt his dick notch at the entrance to your cunt; “But you’re the expert here”

“That i am… Let me show you just how much of an expert…”

With a smooth roll of his hips he pushed into you and the feeling was indescribable, in fact it was so overwhelming you screwed your eyes shut, willing the tears not to fall, but Henry simply held still, kissing each one of your tears as they fell down your cheeks until you were ready.

“Breathe babe… just breathe… it’s overwhelming i know… i understand…”

Opening your eyes you gazed up at him, smiling as he leaned down and kissed you softly.

“Are you ok?”

“Y-yeah…”

“You want me to keep going?”

“Please… oh god please”

“Gonna make you feel so good”

He carefully pulled his hips back before pushing into you again, seemingly getting deeper before pulling out again. Soon you were lost in the moment, feelings both physical and emotionally almost overwhelming you again as your body was taken to new heights of pleasure, Henry seemingly knowing exactly how to make the moment special for you.

Your body reacted in the best way, the tight spring inside you curling ever tighter, until with just the right roll of his hips he tipped you over the edge and you were coming hard, your body squeezing him so tight he knew he’d found heaven whilst you saw stars.

Whilst you were in the haze of your orgasm you heard the most beautiful moans, and felt as Henry came deep within you. As soon as he stopped shaking he wrapped his arms around you tightly, pressing his face to your neck as he cradled the back of your head with his massive hand, pressing soft kisses to your heated skin as you both basked in the aftershocks of your intense orgasms.

Finally Henry pushed himself up to bear his weight on one arm, sliding his other hand between your bodies to hold the condom in place as he carefully pulled out of you;

“I’m just gonna get rid of this… stay here”

You watched his peachy ass as he quickly mad his way to the bathroom, hearing water running before he reappeared moments later with a damp washcloth. Sitting delicately beside you he carefully cleaned you up, and when he was finished he pulled the duvet over your naked body as he quickly got rid of the cloth and joined you, wrapping his arm around your shoulder and pulling you to his chest;

“Are you ok?”

“I think so… Did i make a mess of your bed?”

“No. No blood”

“Really? I thought…”

“If you’re relaxed enough you may not bleed… or you may have simply ruptured your hymen just through every day life. A fall, tampons, strenuous exercise… didn’t you do a horseriding movie a couple of years back?”

“Y-yeah…” you cast your mind back; “Now you mention it, there was one really long day when i’d spent all day shooting a galloping scene with jumps… i just thought my period was coming early, and i had this really dull ache in my lower back… i guess that makes sense now…”

“So… you’re good? Feel ok about filming tomorrow?”

You nodded;

“Yeah, i’m good. Thank you” You looked up at him and saw he was chewing his lip nervously; “What?”

“I was wondering… you know… after we’ve finished filming tomorrow… did you want to go to dinner with me?”

“Like a date?”

“Yeah… hey i understand if you say no… that you want to concentrate on your role and acting…”

“No! I mean yes!” you took a deep breath; “I’d love to go to dinner with you”

He pressed a kiss to your cheek before you settled on his chest, his strong heartbeat beating beneath your ear as you let your eyelids drop and you fell asleep in his arms.

Iris tutted as you fidgeted;

“Will you stand still? I need to get these scales on!”

“Sorry Iris… just a little sore…”

The older woman looked up at you as she held the patch of purple scales prosthetic and grinned;

“Well its about time” she nodded to the various bottles and jars that were on the counter; “Make sure you take the coconut oil when you leave tonight, it’ll help get the adhesive off without pulling on any bruises”

You looked down at Iris and smiled;

“Thanks Iris”

“Was it worth it?”

“So worth it”

#henry cavill #henry cavill x reader #henry cavill x you #henry cavill smut #henry cavill fanfiction

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chronicbitchsyndrome · 3 years

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Not sure if this is okay to send, but I agree that the physical health vs mental health discourse happening is confusing to me. I personally hate the idea of rejecting the body/mind duality because using it for myself has protected me, but I also hear that this isn’t the case for everyone and that supporting body/mind dualism can be dangerous. I don’t entirely know what to think about this but atm I’m just trying to learn things and figure out my perspective on this, so thank you for posting things on the discourse. I know you’re not doing it for anyone specifically but it’s been helpful for me.

i... am having a hard time answering this ask, honestly.

like, i am really glad that the things i post have been helpful for you. i don't think you're a shitty person for believing in mind-body dualism, and i don't even think it's bad to believe in something that doesn't line up with consensus reality... i don't think it's helpful to reality check people even on beliefs that are immediately harmful.

i have a hard time with this topic because it's difficult for me to navigate people being helped by a belief that's just... genuinely only harmful because it's inaccurate. like, the engrained social assumption that the brain is separate from the rest of the body has held back our understanding of medicine significantly and is part of why psychiatry in particular is so abusive and unhelpful to nd people--the entire medical system is engrained with a pervasive piece of misinformation that working as if it's true actively hurts our understanding of illness, treatment, etc.

yknow, in a lot of the medical community, fibromyalgia is still considered a mental health problem and thus to not "truly" affect any organ other than the brain--because the brain can't affect any other part of your body. it's treated with CBT and mindfulness techniques.

and like... a lot of it is centered in the brain, from what little research im able to access on the topic. it's just that the brain is an organ and affects every other organ. but the idea that the brain is separate from every other organ means that, fundamentally, it should be treated separately, and so in spaces that subscribe to the idea that fibro is a mental health problem, fibro patients don't get any other treatment for any other organ.

it's like... the idea that teeth are separate from the rest of our bodies, so dentristry should be a separate school of medicine from... the rest of medicine. but that's not true, teeth are a part of the body and problems with your teeth can affect almost every other part of your body, and people die all the time because of the idea that these systems are separate. literally, people get sick and die constantly because dentists don't know how to treat cardiac symptoms stemming from tooth problems and medical doctors don't know how to treat tooth problems that are causing cardiac symptoms, and there is no communication between the fields of medicine, and their insurances are handled separately.

and it's like... i don't know how to handle validating someone's self-determination that their symptoms are localized to one single organ and have no effect on other organs, because that's just not how biology works, and while i understand it can be comforting i also don't understand how it can be a genuinely good basis to treat your symptoms from, or how you can have an accurate understanding of your symptoms while working from a fundamentally impossible basis.

and it's not disabled people's responsibilities to treat our bodies well or make good choices for them, and nobody's obligated to do the best practices to take care of themselves. i'm an addict and i do drugs i know have a chance of biting me in the ass later and i am not lesser as a disabled person because of it, and neither is anyone else.

i just... have always been a proponent of having the right knowledge to work from, and for everyone to make informed decisions about our health, regardless of if we choose to do the "healthiest" option or not. and so seeing people spread the idea that mind-body dualism is correct, or can be correct, when that's something that's objectively disprovable and kills untold numbers of people each year--thats something i don't know how to handle.

it's like when people argue that it's up to personal choice whether to believe in diet culture myths or not? when that's something that's actively killing people, there's massive social pressure to believe in, and is objectively disprovable and has tons of evidence to the contrary? and i do believe everyone has bodily autonomy and can do whatever they want with their bodies, but i still can't help but wince when someone says it's genuinely healthy to be underweight and that being overweight is more dangerous? yeah its like that.

this was certainly not the response you were looking for, and i am sorry i can't do better in response to you. i am glad that you find some of the things i post helpful, however.

#cripplepunk #idk i feel like this one goes in the tag

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0verthinking1t · 2 years

Text

How it's going

(before I get into it, a little TL;DR I wanted to make sure is visible from the top: if you're looking to apply for SSI and, like me, have no idea what you're doing and don't know where to start, look at Atticus.com . They're a legal firm/database that will screen you for eligibility and then match you with a law office/lawyer who will help you apply and get approved. There's no up front cost; the fee for legal services is 25% of your first benefit check only, IF you get approved. I know that seems like a lot, but it's because the first check usually includes backpay for application time and any amount of time you were eligible before you applied. I know it's overwhelming, and so do they; making your first steps with you and advising you the whole way is literally what these lawyers are there for, they're expecting you to feel a little lost. ❤️)

So not long ago, I found myself in one of the worst brain fog episodes I've ever had, almost in tears because I couldn't even muster enough neurotransmitters to START sitting up off my bed, let alone take the shower I needed (and I say "almost", because I couldn't muster the neurotransmitters to actually feel anything other than TV static 😭). By the next day, I had decided to make a change, dug up some tips from fellow neurodivergent folks online, and made a plan. Thus, things like the Task Menu and Random Encounter die were born. I want to take a minute to report on this process of basically relearning how to ACTUALLY function around my mental illnesses, instead of basing the structure of my whole life on the desperation of fitting in to society.

So far, things are going pretty well, everything considered. The strategies I'm developing are accomplishing what I designed them to accomplish; I've been getting up and more actively existing instead of being a rock, and for the most part, it's eased the terrible zombie feeling in my head. Some days are better than others, of course, but I went into that acknowledging that and ready to forgive myself if I need to rest or wander off course. after all, those things just happen; that is the very nature of the things physically and chemically wrong in my brain, and that's all there is to it. Things like keeping track of things I actually do during the day as well as what I expect to get done, or like adding up the number of those things and keeping track like a daily high score, help me to view this as a process of positive reaching rather than negative guilting. And honestly, I actually have been crossing a lot of real things I had piled up off the Megaboard. I feel good about this, and I'm making a very positive start on things.

Of course, there's always room for improvement, and this process has helped me identify where I need help more clearly. I've been able to identify that, even with this daily structure keeping me rolling, I don't seem to have the mental energy to do even simple errands a lot of the time, like making doctor's appointments, or doing house cleaning, or following up on problems. Even this info has been invaluable to me though; I was able to bring it up to my psychiatrist at our last visit, and to take a critical look for myself at how bad my disability REALLY is and whether or not I was actually managing as well as I thought for the last few years. Did I really benefit from the structure provided around full time work? What was motivating me to get through basic routine every day, and how was it impacting my mood? I find that in my natural state, I need gentle reminders to drift through things like hygiene and nutrition; looking back, I realize how the same routine things that make me feel better now we're actually detracting from my mood, because I had to force them to happen around work hours at times I wouldn't normally do them. I half-assed breakfast with a protein bar every day because I wasn't hungry in the morning, so food stopped making me happy and generating motivation. I would skip brushing teeth (either consciously or accidentally) in order to make a bus/train, and just do it in the bathroom at work with a little travel toothbrush five minutes before my shift. "Play" during my off hours became "doing absolutely nothing", because I was too miserable and exhausted to indulge in more stimulating hobbies. Basically what I noticed, is that I never actually had this type of mental energy in the first place— I was in a sort of debt to myself for spending spoons I didn't have.

Continuing to look at my disabilities and realistic expectations of myself, I've noticed that I honestly don't feel ready to return to work soon in any capacity, and I'm not sure if I ever will. I'd love to get back to the art business I was setting up a while ago and have some sense of purpose through that, but I just don't feel a connection to any sort of structured employment I qualify for. Having realized that, I finally took further steps toward SSI, and found a lead on legal services to help me apply. I now have a law firm filling out my app as I write and sending me paperwork to sign, and the whole thing is suddenly much more concrete and real.

That brings me to the last thing I wanted to ramble on a bit— life updates 😊 I just mentioned the lawyer I contacted about SSI, and my recent psych appointment. Things are going well, treatment-wise, and we're working on tweaking doses and refining what works. We added anti-anxiety meds now that we know how stimulants and Prozac are working out. I also feel comfortable talking to him about the SSI process, and that he's willing to support me on that as well. As for personal goals, I've been able to keep better track of things like feeding Blyth consistently, showing up to D&D on time, and getting errands done in a timely manor. Time management for games was a big one for me— over the past couple months, I've lost track and been late a lot, either because I hyperfixated on something and lost awareness of time, or because I lost awareness of days of the week, or because I had trouble taking D&D with friends out of the mental "later" category and putting it into the "now" one. I feel really good about being able to change that for my friends 😊

Today, I'm allowing myself a bit of a cheat day. There are some things I'll feel ready to do closer to evening, but for now, I'm just lazing around with Princess Mars. I spent the last couple days at a friend's place, which was fun and relaxing, but I still needed a quiet day to recharge my social battery and let my worked-out deep conversation muscle rest and unflex. I feel better so far. I'm proud of the start I've made ❤️

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davidmann95 · 4 years

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How about those JL storyboards?

In case you haven’t heard, Zack Snyder is putting on display the ‘storyboards’ - i.e. a rough plot summary accompanied by some Jim Lee sketches - for what would have been Justice League 2 and 3, or as this puts it 2 and ‘2A’. You can see them here (I imagine better-quality versions will soon be released), and read a transcript here. This is evidently a very early version: this was apparently pitched prior to the release of BvS and Justice League being rewritten in the wake of it, with numerous plot details that now don’t line up with what we know about the Snyder Cut, plus it outright mentions it builds on the originally planned versions of the Batman and Flash movies. But it’s a broad outline of what was gonna go down, and while I initially thought it was Snyder throwing in the towel, the timing - paired with the ambiguity left by the necessity for changes, including that this doesn’t factor whatever that “massive cliffhanger” at the end of the Cut is - says to me he’s hoping this’ll be a force multiplier behind efforts to will sequel/s into existence. He’s probably right.

I’ll be discussing spoilers below, but in short: with this Zack Snyder has finally lived up to Alan Moore, in that like Twilight of the Superheroes I wouldn’t believe this was real as opposed to a shockingly on-point parody if not for direct, irrefutable evidence.

Doing some rapid-fire bullet points for this baby to kick us off:

* Folks who know the subject say a lot of this is a yet further continuation of Snyder doing Arthuriana fanfic with the League reskinned over those major players, and I’ll take their word for it.

* I don’t know whether I love or hate that in Justice League 2 the Justice League are only an extant thing for the first scene, and then it’s Snyder giving everybody their own mini-movies. It’s compressing the entire MCU “loosely interconnected solo stories leading to a single big movie later” strategy into a single movie!

* Funniest line in the whole thing: "Even Lantern has heard of the Kryptonian, worried that he's under the control of Darkseid. He heard his spirit was unbreakable." Hal what fuckin' Superman movie did YOU watch? Second funniest being “IT WILL GIVE HIM POWER OVER ALL LIVING LIFE”

* 90% of the plot I have nothing to say about, it’s generic stage-setting crap. That to be clear is the ‘shocked it’s Snyder’ element, it feels so crassly commercial in a way I can’t believe is coming from the BvS guy.

* Most of what I have to say is unsurprisingly gonna be about a handful of characters but Cyborg’s happy ending being “he isn’t visibly disabled anymore!” is not great!

* The Goddess of War battle with Superman...never pays off? No clue why it’s there.

* What I’d originally heard was that the Codex in Superman’s blood was the last key to the Anti-Life Equation and that’s why Darkseid was coming to Earth. It’s not like all of this wouldn’t have already been averted by Kal-El’s pod smacking into an asteroid on the way to Earth so it’s not as if this makes it any more Superman’s fault, and it would have at least tied all this back to the beginning of the movies, but I suppose that was either fake or from a later draft.

* I have NO idea how this was reimagined without the ‘love triangle’, it’s the central character thing and the entire climax flows directly out of it!

* Darkseid’s kinda a chump in this, huh

Anonymous said: So: Does Zack Snyder hate Superman?

Look: the hilarity of this when Cuck Kent has been a go-to Snyder cult insult towards ‘inferior’ takes on Superman for years cannot be understated, yet at the same time I can almost wrap my brain around where Snyder’s coming from with that as the end for his take on the character. He talked in that Variety piece on how his interest in Superman is informed by having adopted children himself, and Deborah Snyder is the stepmother to his kids by previous relationships, so I can see where he’d be coming from, and I can even imagine how he’d see this as ‘rhyming’ in the sense of “the series begins with Kal-El being adopted by Earth, it ends with him adopting a child of Earth!” In the same way as MARTHA, I can envision how he would put these pieces together in his head thematically without registering or caring what the end result would actually look like. In this case, Superman raising the kid of the man who beat the shit out of him who Batman had with Clark’s wife, who earlier told Bruce she was staying with Clark because he ‘needed her’, suggesting if inadvertently that this really honest to god was a “she’s only staying with Superman out of pity, she really loved Batman more” thing.

But Clark is nothing in this. He’s sad and existential because of coming back from the dead I guess, then he’s corrupted, then time’s undone and he woo-rah rallies the collective armies of the world (interesting angle for the ‘anti-military/anti-establishment’ Superman he’s talked up as) as his big heroic moment in the finale, and then he stops being sad because he’s adopting a kid. So his big much-ballyhooed, extremely necessary five-movie character arc towards truly becoming Superman was:

Sad weird kid -> sad weird kid learns he’s an alien, is still weird and sad, maybe he shouldn’t save people because things could go really wrong? -> his dad is so convinced it could go wrong he lets himself die -> ????? -> Clark is saving people anyway -> learns his origin, gets an inspiring speech about being a bridge between worlds and a costume -> becomes superman (not Superman, that’s later) to save the world, albeit a very property-damagey version, rejects his heritage he just learned about and space dad’s bridge idea -> folks hate him being superman and that sucks though at least he’s got a girlfriend now -> things go so wrong he considers not being superman but his ghost dad reminds him shit always goes wrong so he should be good anyway, which sorta feels like it contradicts his previous advice -> immediate renewed goodness is out the window as he’s blackmailed into having to try and kill a dude but the dude happens to coincidentally have some things in common so they don’t kill each other after all -> big monster now but superman keeps supermaning at it because he loves his girlfriend and he dies -> he’s brought back, wears black which apparently means now he likes Krypton again? -> he has work friends now but he’s still sad because he was dead -> evil now! -> wait nevermind time travel -> rallies the troops -> his wife’s having a kid so he’s not sad anymore -> Superman! Who gives way to more Batman.

Do I think Zack Snyder is lying when he says he likes Superman? No. I think he sincerely finds much of the basic conceits and imagery engaging. But I don’t think he meaningfully gives shit about Clark as a character, just a vessel for Big Iconic Beats he wants to hit. Whereas while for instance he’s critical of Batman as an idea (at least up to a point), he’s much more passionately, directly enamored with him as a presence and personality. So while Superman may be the character whose ostensible myth cycle or arc or however it’s spun might be propelling a lot of events here, it’s a distant appreciation - of course the other guy takes over and subsumes him into his own narrative. Of course Batman is the savior, the past and the future (though if he’s supposed to be Batman’s kid raised by Superman there’s no excuse for him not to be Nightwing), the tragic martyr to our potential. Admittedly the implication here is also that Batman can apparently only REALLY with his whole heart be willing to sacrifice his life to save an innocent, for that matter apparently his great love, once said innocent is a receptacle for his Bat-brood, but he and Clark are both already irredeemable pieces of shit by the end of BvS so it’s not like this even registers by comparison.

Anonymous said: That “plan” Snyder had was utter dogshit. Picture proof that DC & WB hate Superman. Also I love how you’re like Jor-El: Every single idealistic take you had about Snyder, his fandom, and BvS was wrong. Snyder’s an edgy hack, his fanbase just wants to jerk off to their edgy self-insert Batgod as he screams FUCK while mowing people down with machine guns, and the idea that BvS said Superman was better than Bats was completely wrong. You know what comes next SuperMann: Either you die or I do.

In the final analysis, beyond that mother of god is there sure no conceivable excuse for the treatment of Lois in this? The temptation is to join that anon and say as I originally tweeted that these were “built entirely to disabuse every single redemptive reading of the previous work and any notion of these movies as nuanced, artistic, self-reflective, or meaningful”.

...

...yeah, okay, that’s mostly right. Zack Snyder’s vision really was the vision of an edgelord idiot with bad ideas who was never going to build up to anything that would reframe it all as a sensible whole. He’s a sincere edgelord genuinely trying really hard with his bad ideas who put some of them together quite cleverly! But they’re fucking bad and the endgame was never anything more than ramping up into smashing the action figures together as big as he could, the political overtones and moral sketchiness of BvS while trying to say something in that movie reverberated through the grand scheme of his pentalogy in no way beyond giving his boys a big sad pit to rise out of so when they kicked ass later it’d rule harder, and all the gods among men questions and horror and trappings were only that: trappings. Apparently he’s really pleasant and well-meaning in person, but at his core his art as embodied in a couple weeks in his 4-hour R-rated Justice League movie meant to be seen in black-and-white all comes down to that time he yelled at someone on Twitter that he couldn’t appreciate Snyder’s work because it’s for grown-ups. He made half-clever, occasionally exciting shit cape movies for a bunch of corny pseudo-intellectual douchebags, folks latching onto and justifying blockbusters that at least acknowledge how horrifying the world is right now even if the superheroes are basically useless in the face of it if not outright part of the problem until a convenient alien invasion shows up to justify them, and a handful of non-asshole smart people who vibe with it but...well. ‘Suckered’ is a harsh word, and definitely doesn’t apply to all of them re: what they’ve gotten out of it up to this point and would (somehow) get out of this. But it doesn’t apply to none of them, either.

#Justice League #Zack Snyder #Superman #Batman #DCEU #Opinion

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the-firebird69 · 1 year

Text

We have a few things wrong here they were working on it there's tons of stuff we have to do this place is a mess it has son's life is a mess and therefore our daughter she loves him a lot and he loves her and it's unstoppable and we need to do something they're doing tons of work he's under dress all the time it doesn't really help him and we need to.

The sheriff's office is almost empty of idiots if about 100 left as we said and it's going to be a rough night for lots of them

The police department still has four well five Dan is still there he feels great but he's being pestered like they were pestering our son they think it's him and they paid for that and the bikes are selling like hotcakes and their men are getting their asses handed to them and to the tune of being halved every few minutes. They are in serious trouble and Dan is getting hit too of course he said but and John Cena is getting new with these bikes they're a bunch of jerks to begin with and people see how bad it is. I can't believe what an effect it had and are in deep s*** and their true replicas and we actually return the John Cena bike to a true replica or you can buy the street performer and it has a really nice it works nice but this is what it is they're too much trouble to deal with and they're going and there are enemies in the terrorists and too much trouble to do with to him means understated big time because his cadre does a ton of work on them and if Duke Nukem Blockbuster and he's pretty much the shining star of gathering nuclear weapons and disabling them either or at first time it is an incredible job he does so we're going to start paying more attention here it's an incredible burden that they're under and they need assistance and they need it now. They do think it's too and Duke Nukem and Blockbuster personally

And he says it's a personal best and she does too and the other two do it too so taking a beating and they're not telling us he's starting to say it and John Cena turned around in their driveway and a lot of people are noticing and he is surprised and he got high beams and all sorts of things so he moved. Attempted kidnapping and we're going to bring charges and he has rope and all sorts of stuff to kidnap people.

There are other things that happened here the local government kind of fell apart halfway through the day and everybody went home and wept and felt bad and went to the mall but really they felt like s*** and it should they don't have any power they lost a lot of people today before and had a condition afternoon they lost more right now they're at 80% loss here in Winter garden and Port Charlotte and South Florida all of Florida really but really it's here in Charlotte county of government workers and this is from like 2 weeks ago before that they lost 50% of last year and before that they were at 70% of the year before they've been losing faster and faster and John Green boulevard was a Hallmark and no he costed me worse and then about 20 minutes ago we didn't announcement by bja if you're mine I want you to evacuate right now these people I leave my friend alone has been kind enough he's making this happen down there and I really you know of his assistance he helps us with several things and he listed them and it was nice they figured out something they wouldn't be doing it instead she probably get down there show your style you need this so you need these things and he went down there and he started whipping areas into shape started getting people to build stuff and it says brad the builder. And he was an odd cuz Brad did a lot of work and he don't care construction and infrastructure it was good and he started doing it he felt great. There's more stuff happening

-it's a matter of time before someone notices that hardly any warlock are here except for this town and it's the one up there and they're running around circles and there's no where to go

-a huge number of morlock left after 7:00 p.m. it starts to trickle 8 p.m. hitting the bricks hard and really the numbers are staggering that left and the Midwest is empty now I have to 70,000

It's too tired to continue this and we're calling it he's got to rest

Thor Freya

They're the very bottom the rest of it me

Hera

Olympus

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ganymedesclock · 4 years

Note

do you have any thoughts on mentor archetypes in general? i looked it up and most of the analysis was about how they invariably die...

I have a lot of thoughts on mentor archetypes, particularly considering it is arguably my job to be a mentor (I am an early childhood educator)

I really love mentoring as a character trait, but I can really hate some of the ways that it applies. There are two problems I think that tend to consume mentor characters (and I’ll add a bonus thought to make three), though they aren’t exclusive nor exhaustive:

mentorhood as a get out of jail free card

mentorhood as the only important thing old people can do

mentorhood as an isolated special incident

1. Mentorhood as a get out of jail free card

I get it. The introduction of Yoda as a character was influential to many people’s childhoods mine included. We love our hard knocks montage. But the fact of the matter is, both educationally and morally speaking, there’s like. a lot of reasons you should not be a dick to someone you’re teaching, and why if a character is being a dick to a student, in particular a student who is younger and needier than them, this should be a character flaw.

(A GREAT example of this wielded effectively as a character flaw: look at Shifu in Kung Fu Panda! Half of the first movie is examining that Shifu’s tough love schtick not only created Tai Lung as a villain by his own admission, but hurt Tigress personally, and Po who was already pretty willing to give up on himself, gave up more until Shifu had a realization and got his ass in gear; and it is made clear in the later movies that it’s because he was grappling with a lot of emotional issues)

Basically it shouldn’t be a joke that the mentor is strict, or harsh, or cruel. Especially don’t make jokes about corporal punishment, which we have better and better science pointing to that it is abusive and fails to teach.

And part of this is tricky, because a lot of the mentor tropes we’re fed are abusive or flawed mentors, and if you exclusively load the cannon with that sort of material, that’s what’s gong to come out of you unprompted. It’s important to think carefully about what’s actually being taught and being learned. And there should be, bluntly spoken, a reason why these people like their mentors, and if they don’t, that will hurt their progress. There’s no niche so precious that you just HAVE to put up with them. If a mentor is the legendary best in the land, but a terrible person to put up with, it’s not inconceivable that the protagonist is gonna pack their stuff and go talk to the second best in the land who isn’t such a pill. And if the hero stays, then, it’s become an enduring character trait that they will tolerate maltreatment in the interest of a higher goal and that’s not necessarily a good thing.

2. Mentorhood as the only important thing old people can do

This is simply an elaboration on my previous post which I presume inspired anon’s question, but your setting doesn’t simply have a handful of old masters who were young and skilled some long time ago but are now old and beyond doing anything important- or, if it does, there’s a story there. For example, in one of my personal projects, Bevy, there are very few veterans in a particular organization because the organization is fairly recent and because it had an extremely high mortality rate at first- so the few elders that are there, all know each other, and tend highly skilled and highly respected. They’re the survivors of a bleak time.

And even then, that’s going to be a mixed bag. The elderly grandmother-type who is one of the major characters contrasts against a fashionably middle-aged former knight who keeps the main bastion of the organization safe and running smoothly.

Basically, it’s important to consider that old people are simply just people who’ve been people for a long time. They are still doing everything that younger people get up to. Not every old person is weak or infirm. Not every old person who does have disabilities gained them because of age. Not every old person is entrenched in all their skills and passions because they’ve been doing them for years- people pick up new things all the time, and that’s a by-product of being alive, not of being young.

Old people are allowed to still give a shit about their own life and progress- rather than simply lying back and abdicating to the young on the idea they already have one foot in a grave. This is especially harsh in series where the mean age is low- it might seem funny to joke about how the one 25-year-old in a cast of 10-year-olds is old, but the frank and brutal reality is that if a thirty year old is acting like they’re retirement age something’s brutally wrong here.

Basically, treat elders in your stories like they’re full people. Any society or organization that’s been around will have old people! This is a thing about worldbuilding that I find highly incredulous sometimes- almost no populations will exclusively be 18-30 year olds. Anywhere people have been for a while, there’ll be old people, and anywhere people intend to stay will have at least a few kids.

And “old” is not a personality trait- the old people won’t all be limited to wise elders or lonely twilight wanderers or indulgent grandparents and even if they have those qualities they sure as hell won’t be a vacuum. Maybe the lively, playful shopkeep that the detective gets some important intel from is pushing seventy.

3. Mentorhood as an isolated special incident

Teaching should really not be a matter of training montages. The fact of the matter is, and this ties strongly into the above- in any context, at any time, people will have an uneven level of experience. We are a highly social species. We are wired to take advantage of the fact that we’re usually in groups, and even when not in groups, we can observe or understand what came before us and synthesize personal experience from secondhand experience.

To me, I feel like if there’s a big weakness with the archetypal Mentor, it’s that there’s only one, and all they do is teach. Some people do make teaching a career, and that’s important! But guess what, when I took my job, I’d never learned how to change a diaper before. I was taught, on the job, by my coworkers. I didn’t check into a monastery to practice rigorously on baby dolls before I ever approached an infant.

This is something that comes more easily once you’ve done the work- if you have a cast of characters with diverse ages, backgrounds, and levels of experience, a lot of teaching will just happen organically. Person X will go to do something, realize person Y doesn’t know how, and so person X will show person Y. X doesn’t need to be older, or A Mentor Archetype, or anything in particular.

People learn from each other, constantly, and for a lot of reasons. And learning is often more meaningful when we integrate it into our daily life.

#writing ruminations #readmore #Anonymous

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jasmehraj · 4 years

Text

Chaos in the get together

The tapping sound on the new and polished wooden floor intensified as she danced to her favourite tune.

She lifted her hand and her legs moved in a practised motion. A small laugh escaped her lips when she almost fell from the edge of her little stage, and two arms wrapped around her torso saving her from the inevitable fall.

They fell into an easy dance like they've been doing this for years.

"It's my class reunion in a few days."

"And?"

"You are going with me."

His lips turned upwards, "Your majesty, can't really deny you."

"Hmm."

The song finished and they both bowed.

"So? MDC originals?" The handsome man, her fiance made weird hand gestures as if trying to copy her. She elbowed him which caused him to mock gasp.

"You are such a jerk."

The lights were dimly lit. There were multiple people in there, most of them dressed in expensive clothing, trying to show off. There were some rare people who came in casual outfits. And Marinette and Jason happened to be one of them. (Umm I mean kinda sorta one of them? If leather jackets, jeans, combat boots, glasses or a biker look in general counts as casual.)

They both entered hand in hand.

"You know what? I'm already dying of boredom." Jason pouted and put a hand on his chest.

Marinette just chuckled, "Then I will have to go home with a ghost.-" She grabbed his collar to make him bend down to her height-," and find someone else to marry me next week."

Jason mock-gasped again, "You really know how to tame me huh?"

Marinette giggled, "That's what happens when you stay in relationship with a dork for 5 years."

Jason replied with a smirk, "Well then it's good that you have this hot and sexy dork on your side."

They both joked their way inside.

Suddenly everything went silent. Both their laughs jacked in when they noticed the sudden silence.

"If it isn't the loser." A girl in orange (AAAHH MY EYES, SO MUCH SPARKLE! FEELS LIKE I'M LOOKING AT A BOTTLE OF SPARKLE) dress came hand in hand with a green eyed blonde. "How is the biggest failure in the world doing?"

Marinette adjusted her glasses and pretended to check her nails, "I don't know how are you doing?"

This filled the orange dressed girl with rage. She went redder and redder with every second. "I'm a success, I'm dating Adrien Agreste, the face of the Agreste company from 6 years, he's mine now-"

Marinette yawned dramatically, "yada yada yada, you are saying that you are dating my ex, you know what, I ate sandwich today, want those leftovers too?"

Everyone looked at Marinette with horrified expressions on their face. Lila was standing there opening and closing her mouth looking like a fish.

"That was really mean Marinette, you shouldn't start a fight with Lila, we are here on a get-together-" Jason moved just a little and Adrien took a step back cautiously.-"And can you tell your fling to back off?"

The word fling was said with such disgust that made Marinette laugh.

"You mean my fiance? Sorry sunshine but he can't stand at one place with assholes around." Adrien made a hurt face like he was a puppy kicked by someone on the footpath.

"Fiance? Congratulations Marinette!" The whole room gave congratulations to her while Lila and Adrien stood at the side trying to gain their attention again but failing miserably.

"Let's Go Adrien." Lila huffed and made their way towards the door. Adrien followed behind closely but before they could reach the door a male voice stopped them in their tracks.

"Hey! Agreste. You dropped something." They turned to see Marinette's Fiance.

Adrien smiled, "What?"

Jason smirked, "As a matter of fact you both dropped something. Oh is that your backbone lying over there and ouch Rossi, look at your ego lying on the floor unguarded." There were collective gasps.

"How. Dare. You? I'M GOING TO RUIN YOU TWO!" Lila screamed, face red.

Jason smirked, "Don't worry we got that covered already."

Just at the perfect time, Adrien's phone ringed. "Put it on speaker sunshine." Marientte came to stand next to her fiance. "Your girlfriend wouldn't want to miss it."

Adrien put his phone on speaker. "Hello?"

"Hello Mr. Agreste jn.?"

"Yes that's me."

"You and your girlfriend are accused of helping your father with the illegal drug selling, black money and illegal properly. We are expecting you in the police station in an hour. As a caution, your passport has been disabled so you can't escape. The rest of the things will be told to you face to face."

Lila screamed, "HOW?"

The officer heard her of course and deadpanned, "The Waynes were the one who did the investigation. I'm sure Mr. Todd Wayne and his fiance are standing right next to you."

"Hell yeah I am Lucus."

Adrien cut the call. He looked at Marinette, face filled with disgust and pointed at her, "YOU! YOU DID THIS! YOU BIT**"

Marinette yawned, "I would have been a bit** if I had ruined your life, but I just sat on a chair enjoying how you do it yourself."

Adrien grabbed Lila's arm and marched out of the door.

Marinette sent a flying kiss her friends' way, "Okay bye! It was nice catching up with you but I gotta go now."

And like that the most kick-ass couple that we love went home to plan their wedding. That's it. And your lovely author closes the book and give you a sloppy salute. "See you next time folks. Thank you for joining me for our story Tuesday."

Forgot to post it but here we go. LILA BURNNNNN And take Adrien with you.

Permanent taglist: @nathleigh @jalaluvsu @togetherwekill @stackofrandomstuff @qualitypeacepainter @greatcatblaze @shewhorises-tjyj @myazael

#maribat #jasmehraj #salt #not class salt just lila and adrinen salt #mlbxdc #mlxdc #i love maribat #jasonette #because chaos #jason x marinette #marijason

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bigskydreaming · 3 years

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Fandom Stuff To-Do List (basically just stuff I want to get to this week in any order, now that I have Completion Capabilities. Not meant to be a promise of any specific things on this for sure getting done, just these are stuff on my mind to get around to when I have the chance)

- Finish meta post about the wings fic AU and how peoples’ wings are affected by massive physical or emotional trauma that changes them as a person (aka do Babs’ wings change when she becomes Oracle). Which will of course segue into a mini-rant about how our culture tends to view trauma and the acquisition of physical disabilities as something there’s no coming back from, like there’s a ceiling on how good a person’s life can ever be after certain things happen to them.

And that’s why so much of our media content is geared towards treating disabled people and survivors almost more as resources to ensure ‘the same kind of thing’ doesn’t happen to people it hasn’t happened to yet and thus ‘can still be saved/protected.’ Rather than people just fucking acknowledging that trauma is just destructive change that’s impact is relative to how many resources a person has to cope or deal with that change and incorporate it into their life. And that people don’t need to be protected from trauma or accidents as much as is hyped because its literally impossible to ever prevent anything bad from happening ever, so rather than hyping the illusion that ‘this sort of thing could never happen to you as long as you do xyz and don’t do abc’ more attention and focus should be shifted to acknowledging that its still gonna happen sometimes no matter what people do to prevent it or keep safe from it. Because these sorts of trauma ARE EXTERNALLY ORIGINATING and thus there’s literally only ever so much people can do that’s originating within the self to control/protect from being affected in certain ways by stuff originating from outside the self, aka inherently OUT of our control.

And thus IMO we’d all be better served as a society by paying less lip service to the idea that people can be guaranteed safety or protection from various things and instead have more of that focus and attention shifted over towards the acquisition and building and distributing of more resources to help people in the EVENT of certain things happening to them anyway. Which in turn helps spread the narrative that you know what, even if these things happen, even if you are disabled, even if you are traumatized, that’s not the end of the road, that’s not a dealbreaker, that’s just a CHANGE that we as a society are here to help you through. It just means that your life is different now, that you may be different now, but different doesn’t have to be bad, it doesn’t have to come with a ceiling or limitations, it just means a change in perspective.

Bad things will still happen, just like bad things still happened before your Big Change, and its important to remember not to glamorize or romanticize the Before time because that tends to gloss over the fact that nobody’s life was ever perfect before big change or trauma hit anyway. So why on earth should it be a surprise (or any different from anyone else’s life) that life isn’t perfect after big change or trauma? That doesn’t mean it can’t still be GOOD. That you won’t still have good days, good surprises, happiness, friends, joy, laughter, that maybe it takes more resources or just DIFFERENT resources to get there than it did before.....but everyone’s life is different and everyone requires different resources to achieve various desired results or experiences in the first place, so its not the end of the world to have to switch your focus and look in different places for different resources now.

There needs to be less focus on what HAPPENED to people and more focus on what EFFECT it had on them, specifically. On how it changed them and what those changes mean they require now in order to live their life fully and happily, that just might be different from what they needed before. There needs to be a shift in focus from just the trauma or accident or THING that happened that changed the course or direction of a person’s life as like....the definitive point their life changed, because that THING that happened was still just a THING. It came from the outside. It was external. It literally WASN’T ABOUT THEM, and thus focusing on IT can only ever reveal so much about the PERSON it happened to.

No, the point of focus for a person’s life changing in the wake of massive trauma or an accident isn’t WHEN that happened, its when in the aftermath of that, however long it took, when that person, that survivor, finally got up one morning and realized they had a new normal. That they weren’t the person they were before, but they aren’t aimlessly lost in a single long-lasting trauma response searching fruitlessly for personal landmarks to reorient themselves when those landmarks simply don’t exist anymore, because they don’t HAVE to find or lean on those old familiar landmarks anymore. Because they’ve found new ones, found their footing in a new landscape, a new approach to living and perceiving the world around them and how it impacts and intersects with them.

Gimme a change in focus to how recovery isn’t a thing you can ever FIND, that you can ever ACQUIRE by searching for it...and so its less vital that we hold up the idea of it as some kind of semi-mythical Holy Grail its okay to send knights eternally questing for on just the possibility of its existence because hey at least its something to shoot for, when not so deep down a lot of people shelling out advice for recovery that isn’t rooted in their own experiences or utilization of the same advice they’re selling but rather is born of ‘eh, you want something I can’t give or help with and that’s making me uncomfortable so lemme point you in a direction just vague or far away enough that I don’t have to worry about seeing you and your aura of Making Me Uncomfortable around for awhile’....

.....nah, instead how about looking to how resources might be better utilized just....supporting people until they can reach that point of recovery in their own time and their own ways. Because by its very nature, you can spend years working on recovering, on finding a new normal, a new sense of stability in your life, but you’re only ever going to ‘find it’ the day you realize that you’ve ALREADY found it. That you don’t have to go searching for it anymore because its already there, you settled and replanted yourself without even realizing it. Recovery in the wake of trauma is about searching for a way to feel better, to heal, to move past something, and the answer to that need is a feeling of no longer needing to search or find that ephemeral something, because you’re content, you’re okay with who and what you are now. And you don’t need to look anymore for something you wake up and realize you’ve already found somewhere along the way.

Being disabled, being traumatized, being hurt, being CHANGED by some kind of big ass fucking Meteor Of Suck smacking into the planet that is your life and wiping out the fucking dinosaurs of this weirdo metaphor, like....yes, it leaves a mark, makes an impact, oftentimes a BIG one. But like, without the meteor that ended the dinosaur age or whatever, none of us would even be here because the point is just life goes on, and there’s no predicting what it will look like tomorrow, so yeah it could be worse and maybe it’ll never be like it was before, but there’s absolutely zero proof it couldn’t maybe be BETTER, even if it doesn’t ever look the way it was before.

Change is just change. Its not the enemy, its just the point of life. Like we’re born and then things change every single day of our life however long it is and then we die. Birth and death are the bookends, and constant change is every single page of the book in between that. Change isn’t the villain of our story, change IS our story.

And its OUR story, so it never gets to be defined by what someone else does to us in the story, because the hero’s journey isn’t about what MADE the hero set out on their quest, its about their QUEST itself, its about their TRIUMPH, its not about what happened its about what THEY decided to do NEXT because of it. Its not about the catalysts for our changes, its about what we decided to DO, who we decided to BECOME, once those catalysts hit the page and necessitated further change.

Your trauma, your change, none of those are YOU, because YOU are the person you see when you look in the mirror and take all of that in, view it as part of you, your story, something that left a mark just like every single experience of your life has left SOME kind of impact no matter how small, and who you changed into, decided to become, how you incorporated all those marks and changes and experiences....THAT is you. The ENTIRETY of that map, not the single markers along the way, no matter how loud or dramatic or attention-grabbing they try to be.

You are the map of your experiences and you only look to a map, a map only matters to you when its about leading or finding the way to where YOU want to go, with intent. No road map gets to take the wheel of the car just because you aren’t going in the direction it said you were supposed to go originally. If you get lost, you get lost. If you end up somewhere you didn’t expect, you end up somewhere you didn’t expect. If you realize you no longer want or need to go where you were setting out to originally, if you change your mind or decide another destination is better suited to you, you get to look to your map and draw a new route accordingly, because its YOURS, it only exists because of you, not you because of it.

Your trauma or whatever else is fucking up your life may be big fucking pieces of the mosaic you are when you see yourself in the mirror metaphorically speaking cuz I want this analogy to be inclusive for blind people too and I just realized I need to spend more time thinking up alternative ways to express that sentiment that don’t rely on a singular axis of experience to convey it, because that’s kinda the point in and of itself:

We’re all born with toolboxes that give us a variety of tools to approach life with, to build things out of, to build OUR life out of. The aim of civilization, of society, of being a species that only made it this far by being communal and building things together, pooling our tools to build things none of us were equipped to build with just what we already had...is that ideally, the toolbox we’re born with gets added to by others around us. Our parents or guardians or teachers, our friends and loved ones, the random person at the store who saw someone was a dollar short at the grocery store register and offered one of their own or the way we can add to someone else’s toolbox by simply asking if they’re alright when we can see they’re not and then just like that they have the added resource of the knowledge that someone cares enough about them to want to know what’s wrong.

And none of our toolboxes are identical. None make it all the way to our deathbed with us while containing the exact same tools we started with, some are missing, some are added. Some we didn’t even realize we had. Some we never even used. Some we used the hell out of and are worn to pieces and some are shiny and new because we wore out the older version of them and needed a replacement. And sometimes big fucking meteors of suck smack into our lives right when we’re just minding our own business and enjoying our own jurassic age and everything changes forever, but millions of years later we might still be around and now we just look like chickens and alligators and sharks and all the other creatures that are basically just dinosaur descendants in a different form because we’re hardy as fuck and damn I really need to get over this metaphor it is not the analogy I’m looking for but oh well.

Point is, sometimes Change happens and the tools we’re used to leaning on when building our better, ideal lives and optimal experiences, like....maybe they just don’t work for us anymore. Maybe we can’t grip the old familiar ones the way we used to, maybe our eyes have gone to shit and we can’t wield the more precise instruments with the precision we’re used to, maybe the nails we were using to build stairs in our dream house are fucking useless cuz they’re not the right size when building the wheelchair ramp our new dream house needs instead.......and so fucking what? What does any of that actually say about US, about who we ARE, about what our life could be or how good it could get?

Absolutely nothing. Because the toolboxes we were born with were still only ever just tools. What we ARE is what we make with them, what we build out of ourselves, what we choose with intent to become. So what if our old tools aren’t up to the task of actualizing our new dreams? That’s what we need other people for. That’s what society SHOULD be for. That’s when what we need is not to be FIXED, not to be restocked with what we had originally but is now no longer of use to us or what we need or maybe even not what we want.....no, all we need is....new tools. New resources. New kinds of help.

And again, that’s what society is SUPPOSED to be for. To help us define ourselves not by the problems we face but our solutions to overcoming them. To help give each other new tools and teach each other how to use them when change necessitates hunting around for something that’s easier to grip now. And if we all come into the world starting out with different tools than everyone else anyway.....what does it MATTER if somewhere along the way we have to swap out the old familiar ones we started with and look for new ones we didn’t need originally?

A cane is just a cane to help someone walk because for whatever reasons, their legs or spine need that tool to help get them where they want to go. A cane is not proof that it will never take them to a destination where they’re every fucking bit as happy as people who made it to the same place without the use of one. A cane is not THEM. Its just a fucking cane. Same thing with glasses, with wheelchairs, with prosthetic limbs, with hearing aids. Same thing with support groups, with therapists, with trauma centers.

Like do people ever think about how fucking AMAZING it is that we have prosthetics at all? That somewhere along the line, people saw a problem, saw a need, that was not ‘oh this person (or maybe even ‘they themselves’ because let’s not go the saviorism route and forget that disabled people have had plenty the fuck to do with designing or dreaming up or building the tools disabled people use to navigate life while working with a different set of physiological tools than most people are equipped with. Like this isn’t a ‘oh look how good other people are to people in need’ point but more just a ‘people-as-in-society-overall-which-includes-both-able-bodied-and-disabled’ point).

Like the point is the response to seeing that was not just ‘oh so and so or maybe even me is damaged beyond repair,’ no instead it was just ‘this person’s legs aren’t currently equpped to do what this person needs or wants them to do.’ And people said okay the solution, the answer, the RESPONSE to seeing that problem or need was not to sit back and think about how much it sucks that this person can’t walk on their own and how limited or ‘lesser’ their life will be than other peoples’ because of that, no they said instead, hey, what if we just BUILT THEM DIFFERENT LEGS. Like, just THINK about that. We, as a people, communally, as in more than one, pooled resources to BUILD PEOPLE NEW FUCKING LEGS.

And all it ultimately took, the catalyst for THAT, for changing the lives of people who use prosthetics as tools in their day to day lives....the catalyst for that CHANGE was NOT in fact....whatever happened to make various people need prosthetics in the first place. No, the catalyst, the change that got us to the point of people having the OPTION of prosthetics at all, was the point in time where people saw a need, and came up with the solution of prosthetics to address that need. When they said not oh that’s a problem or oh sorry you have that need, but oh I have an idea, or oh here’s what we can do about that. The defining element wasn’t that something needed building. The defining element was WHAT PEOPLE CHOSE TO BUILD BECAUSE OF THAT.

Just like severe trauma is a catalyst for change in a person’s life, a meteor that no one saw coming and can dramatically reshape the landscape of their life, wipe out familiar comforts and landmarks they use to orient themselves.....but at the end of the day, that person is not the meteor itself. We don’t call them whatever we call that meteor, we call them by their fucking name because they’re still the same fucking person, just in a different place now, with different needs, with different dreams or wants or goals. Who they are isn’t how rough they have it while they’re going through the most....because how much a trauma shakes up a person’s life is directly relative to how equipped they are already to deal with that particular trauma or change.

So by its very nature the ‘worst’ or most changing traumas are the ones that we’re personally LEAST equipped to deal with at that particular time on our own, and how fucking stupid is it to try and draw conclusions about a person based just on how they react in the immediate aftermath of an event whose defining element is that it was a destructive change that was uniquely impactful because it hit them where they were least equipped to deal with it?

Like, NOBODY is equipped to handle well, like, an event that relative to THEM SPECIFICALLY, like....is something they’re not equipped to handle. LOL. Like, that’s so fucking dumb, but that’s who we ALL are when in the midst of massive trauma responses - just people hunting desperately for new normals, new landmarks, new awareness with which to recenter ourselves, reorient ourselves, redefine who and what we are in relation to our lives and society and our loved ones in the wake of a massive change that shook things up and required repositioning ourselves because the spot we used to be positioned on no longer exists.

And what the fuck can you learn, can you actually KNOW about a person based solely on the fact that ‘oh this person is having a hard time dealing with something that there’s literally NO good way to deal with?’

People talk a lot about how revealing trauma or tragedy is, that you can learn a lot by seeing how someone handles a huge trauma or tragedy being thrown at them, even in fiction. But y’know what? There’s a ceiling on how much that alone can ever reveal, especially if the lens of time through which you examine that person or character is limited just to the aftermath of the trauma, the thing that HAPPENED to them. Rather than focused on the beginning of their new journeys, once they’ve reoriented themselves, acquired new tools, picked new destinations or goals for their lives and set out to now make THOSE a reality....just like people before or without massive trauma or tragedy are similarly not defined by the LACK of what didn’t happen to them, but simply by......what destinations or goals they pick for their lives and their journeys to get there and what they do and what choices they make along the way.

Nah, if you ask me, a person’s truest essence isn’t revealed by what they do with whatever limited tools or resources they have when struggling with a massive trauma or tragedy that’s only massive specifically BECAUSE it hit them in a way or place they were ill-equipped or unprepared to deal with. Because the essence of that person, the truth revealed by examining that struggle, the answer in focus when looking through just that finite lens....can be boiled down to the exact same thing, no matter WHO you put in that place.

What they do in the wake of a massive trauma is simply ‘as much as they’re capable of given their limited resources or capabilities at THAT SPECIFIC POINT IN TIME.’ Which is inherently....not a lot. Completely subjective and relative to every individual, given the different traumas, resources and needs or injuries relative to every individual while they’re going through their fucking worst....but that’s still the point.

A person struggling with things beyond their capability to handle well at that given moment given their current state or resources.....is ultimately never going to appear as anything other than.....a person struggling with things beyond their capability to handle well at that given moment given their current state or resources. Wow. Really pegged that person huh. Got them all summed up, totally differentiated from every other person to ever go through shit, just by seeing them.....not handle it great when by its very nature of fucking course they’re not going to handle a trauma they’re not prepared for with any degree of ‘great.’

Like, is it any wonder our society has this built in presumption that experiencing certain traumas or tragedies just fucking CONDEMNS that person to from then on live a life that will never actually measure up to being as optimal as it maybe could have been if that hadn’t happened? What other conclusion are you gonna draw, about how good or not a person’s life is in the wake of massive destructive change....if you’re only ever focusing on or looking at how they react at the specific point where they’re LEAST equipped to deal with that trauma or tragedy well?

Because thing is....that’s not a person. That’s a snapshot of a person. Try and define me or sum me up by looking at a fucking Polaroid of me when I was ten or whatever. Go on. See how revealing that is. Tell me what that says about me.

People can’t be defined by negative space. By what they’re NOT. By all the ways in which they can’t be what they MIGHT have been had something happened different, or all the things they COULD be if they were born into different circumstances. You do that, you’re not describing a person, you’re describing hypotheticals that you can apply as desired to ANY person, with just a few tweaks here and there, and thus always find a way to picture them as you want to for your own personal purposes, agenda or comfort, rather than gaining any insight whatsoever about who they are as defined by the space that they DO fill up, with intent, by their choices.

We don’t look to the early history of our species and talk about all the people who DIDN’T discover fire, maybe even just because they were born in a fucking wet climate or whatever where it was inherently more difficult to happen across the realization that striking sticks or stones in certain ways can make a very useful and helpful flame. With the point being that even if we DID talk about those early humans as much as we did the ones who got actual bonfires going, the fact that they simply ‘weren’t the ones to discover fire’ actually would reveal shit about them in and of itself, because who’s to say that the reason, the ‘culprit’ for that was that they were simply too dumb or whatever to figure that out instead of just being they lived in a climate that made that discovery particularly difficult or less likely to happen by chance? Y’know?

But no, anyway, we talk about the ones who DID discover fire, because the turning point for our species which that was, like, we don’t look at it and define it by the lack of it happening sooner, at the problem that not having fire was for the people who came before that discovery. It was the triumph that mattered, it was the choices made in the wake of that discovery, it was how people put that new tool to work and not oh how revealing it is about the rest of early humanity that they didn’t put that tool to work in similar ways because it simply wasn’t even a possibility for them when it was simply a resource they didn’t have.

Nah, IMO a person’s truest essence is revealed not by their problems or their lacks, not by the hypothetical maybe me they could have been if they went through life without anything bad ever happening to them and thus who they’ll never actually be now. Its not revealed by taking a snapshot of them in the moments or days or even weeks following a trauma or tragedy that struck with an accompanying seismic shake-up of all their existing stability and support systems that ultimately limited how much or many of the resources they’d previously acquired or built could even be of use to them in dealing with things now. You don’t learn anything substantial by putting people in a room with only two exits and one of them locked and then act like its an insightful revelation that they ultimately make their way out by means of the finite options available to them when their options have been actively limited by forces outside them and their control, even if that wasn’t the ‘optimal’ answer to that predicament and you wanted them to make other more ideal choices without acknowledging they literally were limited to the most basic of fucking choices available. No, IMO the actual revelations about people come in their declaration of a new want or wish or ask or goal AFTER they’ve found their footing and are ready to live again rather than just cope.

Why define ourselves by our needs when we’re most ourselves when dreaming of our wants?

You don’t gain the most insight by watching someone flail about when they’re at their lowest and just floundering. You want insight, you look to see what tools they use to pull themselves upright, what resources they ask for or seek out in order to build something new that they can place upon their new shaken-up-and-reformed foundations and from there find some stability with which to pull themselves FORWARD. Instead of just clinging to the shattered remnants of whatever their source of stability was previously but is no longer useful for that purpose, maybe not even because they WANT to cling to just that or are afraid or unwilling to move forward, but because they simply can’t reach any fucking resources with which to do anything BUT just cling to what little they could grab, and what they actually need is just someone to offer them said resources instead of just acting like they really did something by looking at a person lacking in resources and then judging or defining them simply by all the things they AREN’T doing to better themselves or their lives, WHEN THAT’S ONLY BECAUSE THEY’RE LACKING THE FUCKING RESOURCES TO DO ANY OF THAT.

You see who a person is not by comparing them to who they MIGHT have been before, because who can say with any certainty what person they might have been the day after that massive trauma or tragedy, had said trauma or tragedy never actually occurred? Who can guarantee that person, that hypothetical maybe-me is ACTUALLY better than who they are or can become now?

Nope. You wanna know who that person is? That’s who they declare themselves to be the second they stop trying to define themselves by who they WERE and thus who they’re not anymore....but rather by who they are NOW, and who they want to be from here on out. You don’t look at the person who’s been pushed to the ground and say oh that’s that person, that’s who that person is. No, all that tells you is that person was pushed to the ground by an asshole, and surprise surprise, they fell because that’s what fucking happens when someone pushes you to the ground, lolol. That’s not the nature of a person, that’s the nature of physics. Wow. Person A is affected by gravity and the forceful aggression of assholes in their vicinity. The uncanny insight of it all.

You wanna see that person, you look at who they are AFTER they’ve pulled themselves back up. You see what they do THEN. Once they’re back in control of themselves, their life, in the driver’s seat.

You can’t define people by the lack of something. A lack of control, a lack of choice, a lack of resources. Because we are our choices, we are the journeys we take, we are what happens on the next page of our story because the next page of our story only EVER happens because each and every page we decided to MAKE something happen next.

And we can only MAKE those choices, versus have them made for us and which thus says more about the person who forced those choices on us than it does us for simply being unable to stop that, we can only TAKE those journeys, versus being forced into certain directions and paths and down certain roads by limited options that say more about how little a person can do with only finite options available to them rather than say anything substantial about what directions a person might go in if they had actual options and choices available to them beyond just being presented with two routes that both equally suck, we can only do anything substantial with any of that, anything that says anything about US rather than just descriptive of our circumstances....

We can only do anything with all of that AFTER we’ve gained or taken back or regained control over our lives. AFTER we’ve found our footing. AFTER we’ve said well guess what, this happened then, but guess what else happened today? I got out of bed and said okay so we’re just not gonna worry about that because its over and done and it doesn’t get to be the only thing that matters about us. So instead, how about what matters right now is whatever the fuck I choose to do today, because THAT is up to me, THAT says something about me, THAT is not just some random rock crashing into me from outer fucking space and saying knock knock, fuck you. THAT is ME, saying with intent, THIS is who I am now and THIS is what I’m going to do today, and THAT’S an actual story about me and my choices and my PERSONHOOD. Versus just a summation of how shitty I looked while being smacked in the face by a mountain of bullshit and me without so much as an umbrella.

THAT’S a story about a person. That other thing, that fixation on the rock that crashed into them without warning? Its ultimately never going to be anything other than the story of how a person got hit by a fucking rock.

All of which is to say, so yeah, in that wing fic AU, Babs’ wings do change after what happens with the Joker, even though her wings had already settled.

BUT, the key thing about that is....the point of CHANGE for her wings was NOT when the Joker shot her. Its not when her life, when SHE changed, ‘because of that.’ Because maybe her wings didn’t work the same way anymore after that happened, because they represented who she was before that. And before that she was and thought of herself as someone who could grapple between buildings, flip kick into bad guys, do cartwheels across rooftops, and she can’t do those things anymore so maybe her wings don’t work for her in the way they used to because they were ‘designed’ for someone who lived life in a way she was no longer capable of.

But her wings didn’t just change then and there, they still remained the same as always even if they weren’t as useful because maybe she could still fly perhaps, but not land in the ways her wings were designed to do that, due to the changed capabilities of her legs and spine which were meant to work in concert with her wings.

See, because the point is.....if the wings are the ultimate expression of the self, even acknowledging that she was in fundamental ways CHANGED at that point (not lessened, but changed, made different, needing different things and having different wants).....the point is, at just that specific time, in the immediate aftermath of that trauma, what would her wings have changed into? What would they LOOK like, simply because say, two days ago, the Joker shot her and now she’s paralyzed? If she’s no longer the old her, how could the new her POSSIBLY be defined by that little data, that little definition, that small an image or encapsulation of everything she still MIGHT yet be or become once she’s out of bed, out of tears, out of grief for the goals that are no longer viable and now ready to say okay, now let me decide what DOES come next for me now.

So yes, Babs’ wings do change after the Joker shoots her, but they remain as they were for awhile. Just not as useful to her now that her toolbox of physical capabilities was less equipped to accommodate her newly changed needs and approaches to life.

When they change, its because she’s already become Oracle. That’s who she is now, Batgirl is a part of that but more about who she was. It’s part of the foundation she built her new self atop, its never going to not be a part of her, never going to leave, it still matters....but it is not the building itself anymore, it is the bedrock that made it through the seismic upheaval of her life and thus was sturdy enough she felt safe building something new on it, something that could ride out further earthquakes thanks to having it to ground her. But as integral as it is to what she built in the wake of her big quake....it is not the house she houses her self-image in. That’s Oracle’s domain now.

And so when her wings do change, it happens overnight, while she’s asleep. Dreaming of everything she wants now, everything she wants to become. They change not in a ‘this is happening’ sense, much like we’re never fully aware of how far into our recovery process we are.....instead, they change in a ‘huh, so this happened’ sense. Just like we only realize how much we’ve recovered, how much we no longer need to define ourselves by a quest to be better, happier, more alright...once we’ve already found that happiness or contentment and realized the reason there’s no longer the same drive to pursue some abstract image of recovery is simply because we no longer need to go anywhere to get that, we’re already there and this is what that looks like.

And so when one day Babs wakes up feeling different and looks in the mirror to see her wings no longer look like they used to but rather seem much more suited to the woman she is now, the woman she envisioned in her mind as a new goal or destination of self-determination, that she chose to become with intent, that she worked to become so she could be defined by something other than what some asshole did to her, so that she could be the sum of her deeds rather than the snapshot of her tragedy.....its a sign of change. Of her change, and proof that her life is not now what it once was, and never will be again.....but its not some big momentous reveal, more just an exhale of affirmation for something she’s already known for awhile and just now has the distance and perspective to see actual proof of.

Its the marker of the fact that actually she’s okay with it, she’s okay with herself, her new self, because she doesn’t need to be who she might have been without that trauma, she doesn’t need to be a maybe when who she is? Has no more of a built in limit or ceiling or cap on happiness and success than the woman she was before her trauma had. She doesn’t love what happened to her, but its just something that happened to her. Its not who she is, THIS is who she is, this is THAT, and this she’s more than okay with, she’s proud of, she’s like damn I look good. Life threw a punch at her and she got into a wheelchair and rolled with it, and if you’re busy looking at the bruise from that punch because you’re so focused on the fact that it happened, you’re missing the real story.

And that’s the way she pulled herself out of bed every morning for a year and into her wheelchair to train with escrima sticks in whole new ways of fighting so the next time the Joker tried knocking on her door, he wouldn’t get to pull the same shit twice. Because she’s not the same woman she was then and anyone focusing on THAT instead of watching out for all the ways she can still kick ass, some old, some new, some that she invented herself because necessity is the mother of invention and Babs has always been driven to be the top of her class for reasons that have everything to do with just HER and absolutely nothing at all with what happened to put her in a class where fighting from a wheelchair was a tool she felt she needed -

Well maybe they need to get clocked across the head with a stick to drive home that they’ve missed the entire point, that if you’re there looking to see a tragedy you’ve got the wrong fucking address cuz she’s doing just fine.

And so she wakes up one day and looks in her mirror and sees her wings have changed overnight and they look nothing like she remembers but tbh, she likes these a lot better, likes the way they feel, the shape of them, they just FIT....and then she just nods her head decisively, quietly pleased but in no rush to make any big announcement, because for her, this changes nothing. Its just a sign that change has already happened.

And its like....duh, she already knew that, and she’s more than okay with it, so semantics can wait for another time. She’s Barbara Gordon, the Oracle of Gotham, and she’s got shit to do.

And okay, so clearly, I ended up just writing that post instead of writing the rest of that to-do list, so I’m gonna now go make another post with the ACTUAL to-do list, and like, yay, I can cross this off I guess? My process is so mysterious, oh unknowable ways.

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wtnrscap · 4 years

Text

Cursed Words- Longing

Pairings- Bucky Barnes x Reader

Summary- The first time it happens, Bucky doesn’t know if he’s able to control himself. The words haven’t gone yet, and by slipping one into conversation, Bucky fears you’ve woken the Winter Soldier. You don’t notice at first, but when you do, and idea hits you. It’s dangerous. But necessary.

Warnings- (18+) Mentions of blood, death, injury detail, PTSD, panic and anxiety attacks. Dirty talk. Dirty fantasies. Eventual smut.

A/N- I don’t know how dark this series is going to get at the moment. I mean, it could be okay, but at the same time, depending on where my writing leads me, it could get bad. This series will address the PTSD that I’m sure Bucky has so viewer discretion is advised.

This is my first story so the taglist is empty, just ask if you wanna be on it. Also, I’d be really grateful for feedback as this is my first story so it’s bound to be a bit crappy.

Cursed Words Masterlist

6 months. 6 long, painful months. That’s how long you and Natasha were gone. Hunting down some Hydra goon getting too big for boots. Steve had sent you to get rid of his sorry ass, but as when you’d approached the base where he’d been hiding out, you’d realised he wasn’t the problem. The 12 huge M134 miniguns perched on top of the base were the problem. Those bad boys could fire 6,000 rounds a minute without heating up and had been automatically activated. The mission changed. Leave the target, destroy the guns.

The destruction of the guns had been easy. After a quick search for information, trying to figure out why he had 12 miniguns, you and Nat were on your way home, not bothering to fill out your mission reports. Steve would kill you later, but you were exhausted and couldn’t care less. Nat set the Quinjet onto autopilot and sat next you, finger brushing her firey hair, “How you feeling? I’m sorry you didn’t get to finish the target.”

“The lives we saved are far more important, Nat.”

“Did Steve get you to say that?” snorted Nat, “You were dying for a fight, I could tell.”

You stand as FRIDAY announces that you’ll be landing soon,”It’s annoying we didn’t eliminate him, for sure, but seriously, we just saved 72,000 lives.”

“That’s providing that every bullet fired hit someone... Also, quick maths!”

The Quinjet lands with a bump and you leave quickly, just wanting a hot shower and your bed, but before you do, you turn back to Nat, “No quick maths, I just googled what 12 x 6,000 was.”

It’s not until a few days later that you get to see everyone again. Steve and Sam had their own mission while Clint, Wanda and Vision had gone to Clint’s farm. Tony and Bucky had put aside their issues to fix Bucky’s arm which had been giving him a lot of pain. It was only when Thor appeared did you call for a rare movie night. As everyone walked in, you made them swear that no one would talk about work for the duration of the movie, but that was forgotten in about 10 minutes.

“- and... and he says to me, he says ‘Can Vision get me trending?’“ Clint roars with laughter in the silent room. Only Natasha chuckles slightly, not wanting to let her best friend down. Clint’s eyes pop, “How can you not find that funny? He thought Vision could get him trending!”

You shift uncomfortably in your seat and roll your eyes, “Yeah, it was so funny I forgot to laugh. Alright, anyone else got a funny story?”

“Not a funny story, but I swear that Manchurian Candidate here has given me a permanent black eye. Everytime I touched one of those stupid metal plates, his arm would just hit me the face!” exclaims Tony with a nasty glance at Bucky. You smirk as Bucky shrugs his shoulders, “Leave him be Tony, our boy’s just a little sensitive is all.”

Bucky flushes deep red and you mentally congratulate yourself. Since he’d joined the Avengers, you’d found yourself very attracted to the Winter Soldier and finding all the ways to make him blush was fast becoming a hobby of yours. In fact, making him blush once a day was a target you’d set yourself. However, during the course of the night, you’d made him blush several times, reasoning you had 6 months of lost time to make up for.

Nat punches your shoulder with a smirk. She knew what you were doing. She probably supported you and your plan.

“So, I noticed that there were no mission reports for your six months away, Y/N. Wanna explain that?” Steve pulls you out of your thoughts and you look up at him from where your snuggled into his chest, “I was tired after disabling 12 miniguns. I saved-”

“72,000 lives, yeah we know!” interrupts Nat, “She’s just upset because we had to let the goon go.”

“Ugh! I was longing to end him!”

Everyone laughs at your obvious annoyance which distracts away from Bucky stiffening in his seat.

You just said a trigger word.

Not to hurt him, just in passing.

But his mind swayed the second you said it.

Darkness creeping in and the monster climbing out, ready to comply.

You weren’t trying to hurt him. You weren’t trying to activate him.

So much darkness. So much death.

He remembers them all.

Every single one.

Every face.

Every cry.

Every. Last. Word.

Sweating profusely, Bucky jumps and flees the room, leaning against the corridor wall. He can’t breathe and yet his chest is rising and falling so quickly. Is this what dying feels like? The hammering in his chest feeling like a heart attack, the air in his lungs feeling like poison and the memories, oh God the memories.

A door to the right of him opens and Steve’s kind face appears in front of him, “Bucky? Buck? Pal? Are you alright?”

Bucky straightens, wiping the sweat of his brow and the tears from his eyes, “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? Because-”

“I’M FINE STEVE! I’m... I’m just gonna go to bed, alright?”

Steve frowns, “Yeah... Get some rest.”

Bucky rushes to his room and stares at the ceiling. He’s become good at hiding things. And anyway, everyone’s scared of him, so the minute he snaps at someone, they just leave him alone. Which is exactly what he wants. Obviously,

The film had resumed and the relaxed atmosphere gone when Steve sits next to you, “Was it something I said?”

“I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me.”

“I wasn’t trying to hurt him.”

“I know. He’s just been through a lot and the little things can set him off. He’ll be fine tomorrow.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

You sigh and bury your head into Steve’s chest. When you’d first joined the Avengers, Steve had been a constant. With his blond hair and blue eyes, you’d fallen in love almost immediately. Nothing had ever happened between you guys and when Bucky joined, you realised you wanted something more than Steve anyway. You’d never try to hurt Bucky. You liked him too much for that. In fact, you’d go as far to say that you loved him.

But love was scary. Love was constant and at the same time, it was so unreliable. Admiting you loved Bucky, opening up and telling him the truth just wasn’t option. But you didn’t know how much longer you could hold back.

And you had no idea.

Bucky felt the same way.

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