#and that our circumstances allow us to own the home that we have while still being able to budget for indulgences like this

[katboykirby]

all your merch !!! how long have you been collecting? do you have a favorite item?

asdfghjksks I am so sorry it always takes me forever to answer Asks 😭 I have no idea why but Tumblr literally never gives me any notifications when I get them and I don't even know they're there in my inbox 💀

But anyway, thank you so much 🙏

I guess, technically, I've been collecting (in general) since I was really young - the earliest that I can still remember is being around 8 or 9 years old and obsessively hoarding every single piece of Pokémon merch that I could get my tiny little hands on. I do not know why my parents enabled this, but hey.

I still collect Pokémon stuff, since I still adore the franchise just as much as I did back then. But nowadays I usually stick to the merch that you can find at the real Pokémon Centers. I do have this fat Pikachu from like 1996 though, and he's completely unrecognisable

To be loved is to be changed

Obviously, my biggest collection and "main" collecting target is Obey Me! and OM: Nightbringer merch. At this point, my Satan & Solomon collection has consumed my entire house.

Here's a video tour of my collection

And that's not even the complete collection in full - I still have merch that I've yet to unpack and display, and I still have merch that I bought/ordered online and am waiting to receive when it's delivered in the mail 🥲

Thank you so much for your kind words! Whenever people tell me how much they love my SoloTan Shrine, it makes my entire day ☆

I hope that these silly little guys that I like to fill my house with can continue to make people smile 💚

[northgazaupdates]

14 April 2024

Concerning reports coming out of north Gaza this morning

Resistance News Network claims on Telegram that the occupation supposedly allowed some women and children under the age of 14 to return to their homes in north Gaza via Rashid Street.

However, journalist Hossam Shabat says that the IOF has denounced this as completely false, advising people not to approach the area or try to return to the north, as it is still an active war zone. RNN provides photographic and video evidence, while Hossam directly cites the words of the occupation.

Journalist Anas Al-Sharif reports this on his Telegram channel as well, citing the same evidence.

Meanwhile journalist Saed Al-Zaneen reports on Telegram that some people are trying to return to their homes in the north of their own initiative. Some occupation squads *may* be allowing this in certain areas, but it is not sanctioned by IOF leadership and could change at any time. He warns that the troops may suddenly attack the people trying to return, and that the occupation is not to be trusted.

We will continue monitoring the situation, but advise our followers not to spread word of any return of displaced people to the north right now, at least until circumstances are much more clear

UPDATE AT TIME OF PUBLISHING: Hossam Shabat reports occupation vehicles are now advancing on Al-Rashid Street in Gaza City. Saed Al-Zaneen reports this as well. He now also reports one martyr and one wounded person have arrived at Al-Awda Hospital in north Gaza after they tried to return to the north via Al-Rashid Street. He reports they are being attacked from helicopters and provides documentation. Resistance News Network reports this as well. Journalist Momin Abu Owda also documents this Journalist Ismail Al-Ghoul is at Al-Nabulsi Roundabout on Al-Rashid Street and reports no sign of people being able to return.

The situation is obviously in flux. I need to go to bed, but I will review the situation when I wake up. Please follow the cited sources and use a translation software as needed.

[golvio]

I think the metanarrative reason for the Princess being put into an antagonistic role in the “intended story structure” instead of being the protagonist is a big hint to her true nature.

While the protagonist gets to have the POV and make the major decisions that determine the story’s resolution, the antagonist is the one who actually makes things happen. Even when she’s not an antagonist and you’re working together, she’s still making things happen solely by being the only visible character present. Her mere presence changes things.

It’s very, very difficult to have a story without some external force or another character acting upon your protagonist and pressuring them to make a move. Even stories told primarily in flashbacks have the main character interacting with something, even if only in the past tense. A story where the main character just sat there, never interacting with anyone or anything, never having any experiences to learn from, would be incredibly boring. Simply having someone else there to talk to and play off of is enough to get things to move again.

Contrast this with The Narrator’s ideal story, which is a Wholesome™️ story where the main character does what they’re told and then never has anything bad happen to them ever because, as the only character left in the story, they’re safe from conflict, change, or heartbreak. Sure, it might not be a controversial story that would upset someone, but it’s also incredibly dull and unfulfilling. The credits roll and that’s it? That’s all we get?

It’s absolutely hilarious to me that, while The Narrator inserted his echo into the Construct under the conceit of being the literary device that’s the vehicle delivering the story to the reader, he really sucks at storytelling. He can’t build rapport with his audience (us) because he doesn’t understand what we want or how to persuade us beyond vague moral arguments with no emotional hooks whatsoever. He’s so inflexible and refuses to allow alternate interpretations that he can’t handle when things go off script, and can’t get the story back on track when we start going off the rails short of pulling a deus ex machina (which only works when the audience still has enough faith in him to take him seriously as storyteller instead of doing their own thing). Things only get interesting when the Princess gets involved. Things only move forward when she forces the issue, particularly in the Nightmare route, where you refuse to commit to a choice out of fear of potential consequences.

A friend of mine who recently did their first playthrough commented on how the underlying quest to collect perspectives for the Shifting Mound was basically an improv session. I think they’re right on the money. Each chapter is like a game of “Yes, And” between you and the Princess that continues until neither of you can think of anything else. The developers mentioned in an interview that Shifty M. only arrives to take the vessel home when the story “ends.” That is, when there’s nothing left to do. Improv is one of the genres of performance that best encapsulates Change in its demand for adapting to circumstances and new information, so of course The Narrator would be against it, preferring simple, linear narratives.

People tend to become fascinated with antagonists because they’re the ones who make things happen. Adding an antagonist who’s also a person is one of the easiest ways to start building a story. By making the Shifting Mound and her fragments our enemy and requiring us to get within talking distance in order to slay her, The Narrator shot himself in the foot by making Her the most compelling and interesting character by default.

[alpaca-clouds]

Worldbuild Differently: Unthink Religion

This week I want to talk a bit about one thing I see in both fantasy and scifi worldbuilding: Certain things about our world that we live in right now are assumed to be natural, and hence just adapted in the fantasy world. With just one tiny problem: They are not natural, and there were more than enough societies historically that avoided those pitfalls.

Tell me, if you have heard this one before: You have this fantasy world with so many differnet gods that are venerated. So what do you do to venerate those gods? Easy! You go into those big temple structures with the stained glass in their windows, that for some reason also use incense in their rituals. DUH!

Or: Please, writers, please just think one moment on why the fuck you always just want to write Christianity. Because literally no other religion than Christianity has buildings like that! And that has to do a lot with medieval and early post-medieval culture. I am not even asking you to look into very distant cultures. Just... Look of mosques and synagogues differ from churches. And then maybe look at Roman and Greek temples. That is all I am asking.

Let's make one thing clear: No matter what kind of world you are building, there is gonna be religion. It does not matter if you are writing medieval fantasy, stoneage fantasy, or some sort of science fiction. I know that a lot of atheists hate the idea that a scifi world has religion, but... Look, human brains are wired to believe in the paranormal. That is simply how we are. And even those atheists, that believe themselves super rational, do believe in some weird stuff that is about as scientific as any religions. (Evolutionary Psychology would be such an example.)

What the people will believe in will differ from their circumstance and the world they life in, but there is gonna be religion of some sort. Because we do need some higher power to blame, we need the rituals of it, and we need the community aspect of it.

Ironically I personally am still very much convinced that IRL even in a world like the Forgotten Realms, people would still make up new gods they would pray to, even with a whole pantheon of very, very real gods that exist. (Which is really sad, that this gets so rarely explored.)

However, how this worship looks like is very different. Yes, the Abrahamitic religions in general do at least have in common that they semi-regularily meet in some sort of big building to pray to their god together. Though how much the people are expected to go into that temple to pray is actually quite different between those religions and the subgroups of those religions.

Other religions do not have this though. Some do not have those really big buildings, and often enough only a select few are even allowed into the big buildings - or those might only be accessible during some holidays.

Instead a lot of polytheistic religions make a big deal of having smaller shrines dedicated to some of the gods. Often folks will have their own little shrine at home where they will pray daily. Alternatively there are some religions where there might be a tiny shrine outside that people will go to to pray to.

Funnily enough that is also something I have realized Americans often don't quite get: Yeah, this was a thing in Christianity, too. In Europe you will still find those tiny shrines to certain saints (because technically speaking Christianity still works as a polytheistic religion, only that we have only one god, but a lot of saints that take over the portfolios of the polytheistic gods). I am disabled, and even in the area I can reach on foot I know of two hidden shrines. One of them is to Mary, and one... I am honestly not sure, as the masonry is too withered to say who was venerated there. Usually those shrines are bieng kept in a somewhat okay condition by old people, but yeah...

Of course, while with historically inspired fantasy settings make this easy (even though people still hate their research), things get a bit harder with science fiction.

Again, the atheist idea is often: "When we develop further scientifically, we will no longer need religion!" But I am sorry, folks. This is not how the human brain works. We see weird coincidences and will go: "What paranormal power was responsible for it?" We can now talk about why the human brain has developed this way. We are evolved to find patterns, and we are evolved (because social animal and such) to try and understand the will others have - so far that we will read will in nature. It is simply how our brains work.

So, what will scifi cultures believe in? I don't know. Depends on your worldbuilding. Maybe they believe in the ghost in the machine, maybe there si some other religions there. You can actually go very wild with it. But you need to unthink the normativity of Christianity to do that. And that is... what I see too little off.

[archoniluthradanar]

After the Confrontation

After the Confrontation : a Volturi one-shot

What happened when the Volturi returned home after meeting with the Cullens and their witnesses in America. Not everyone was happy with Aro's decision to refuse to fight, but then they did not see what Aro had seen. Does he dare tell them?

oooooooooooooooooooo

The Volturi had returned to Volterra and the sanctuary that was their castle, after their confrontation with the Cullens. Everyone had retired to their individual rooms to change from their battle dress and back into their everyday clothing.

Aro's thoughts were still on the meeting out there on the field of snow. Seeing his old friend Carlisle after so many decades felt good despite the circumstances. But Aro had no idea what Carlisle's true intentions were. Perhaps he had none. Edward's memories showed the ancient vampire the conception and birth of his and Bella's hybrid child. Vampires had existed under the assumption they could not breed as humans did. They could only create new vampires through transmission of their venom.

Aro had been allowed to share Renesmee's memories, as well as those of her father Edward. For the briefest of moments, he considered the benefit of having hybrid children in the coven, and decided the risks were too great. He was still disturbed by all he had seen and experienced. Even though it had not happened in reality, it felt as if it had.

Aro had barely finished dressing, when Caius stormed into his chambers.

"Brother, what was that all about? You refused to fight the Cullens despite their guilt."

Aro exhaled an unnecessary sigh. "Guilt? What were they guilty of, Caius?"

Caius opened his mouth to speak, then shut it. He fumed in silence, realizing Aro was right. The werewolves were not werewolves. but rather they were shapeshifters, born to destroy vampires in wolf form. That alone pissed him off, but they had not committed any crime. Not one he could see.

Aro had seen though. His vision showed him the destruction rained down on his people by the shapeshifting wolves. His most difficult loss was Jane, her child-like body mauled, her head removed by the sharp teeth of a large black wolf. Her brother Alec had already been destroyed, by the strong dark-haired Cullen son. No, this was not true. His coven was undamaged, whole, everyone still alive. He released a sharp exhalation.

Caius looked at Aro when he heard the sound. "Brother, what is wrong?"

Aro's thoughts were back in America. He turned and placed a hand on Caius' shoulder. "The field of snow. You have no idea what I saw, brother."

Caius stared at Aro as if the ancient vampire were demented. "I'll get Marcus."

"Yes, Caius, fetch Marcus. I want to speak with you both." Once Caius had left, Aro paced the floor. What was he going to tell them? He had heard the disgruntled whispers from his Guard. They had been gnashing their teeth, eager for a fight against the Olympic coven, and now wondered if their leader was a coward. Or had he put the interests of his former friend above those of their own coven.

It wasn't long before Caius had returned, followed by Marcus. "What is it you need to discuss with us, Aro?" the taller vampire asked.

"Please sit down, both of you. There's something you should know, before you accuse me of cowardice or favouritism toward Carlisle." Marcus sat on the sofa, while Caius took a seat on the chair by the fireplace. Aro paced on the tapestry that lay on his marble-tiled floor, muffling his footsteps.

"It happened when Alice appeared. I took her hand and began reading her memories. She had found someone who could explain the Cullen hybrid's existence and reasons why she would pose no threat to our kind. Truthfully, I didn't want to know more. My mind had been made up. Alice must have read that in me."

Aro was still shaken by the vision she had shared with him. He paced some more, before stopping in front of Marcus and Caius. "I was shown her vision of the future if we initiated combat with the Cullens and their witnesses. Our future, brothers. I saw no reason to proceed any further. And when her own witnesses appeared, and the truth was known, I decided going home was the better way, the only way to save us all."

"So that was your silent request for my approval," Marcus asked.

Aro merely nodded.

Caius was listening to Aro's words, but when he indicated it was to save them, he interrupted his brother's explanation. "What do you mean by that, Aro?"

"In Alice's vision, our coven was nearly wiped out," Aro replied. He looked down at both Caius and Marcus, his long ago co-founders of the Volturi. Together they sought out the best recruits, those with gifts that would build and strengthen the coven.

His expression took on a look of melancholy Marcus was familiar with. "What is it, Aro?" he asked.

"We...the coven members...were destroyed one by one. The first to go was Alec." Aro's eyes dropped to the floor. "Many others followed. Demetri was then destroyed by Edward. And Jane...that was the hardest to watch. I am Jane's sire, her father for all intents." He went silent, the scene still fresh in his mind. The shock of seeing Jane decapitated caused him actual pain. "Caius, you were next, destroyed by Irinas' sisters."

"Impossible!" Caius couldn't believe that any conflict would have him end as a loser.

"Marcus, the Romanians Stefan and Vladimir destroyed you. You did not seem to mind however."

Marcus thought a moment. More than likely, he would not mind. His days of loneliness would finally come to an end. "Is that so, brother?"

"And I was the last of us to go, at the hands of Edward and Bella."

"You should have killed them before, when you had the chance, Aro!"

"Caius, it was but a vision of our future, and why we could not do as you suggested and continue down the same path to that end. I decided I would rather look like a coward than lose any of you or the guards." His feelings felt sincere as he looked from Caius to Marcus.

"You are no coward, Aro," Marcus intoned. "You did what was best for the coven. We let them go home in peace, as we have returned home, and with no loss to either side."

"I don't think Tanya or Kate would agree. We still enforced the law." Aro knew he would have an enemy in the Denali sisters.

Caius went to stand at Aro's side. "Marcus is right. There was no gain in fighting the Cullens." It was difficult for the blonde vampire to articulate his desire to punish someone for the attack on him by the Children of the Moon. Fighting the shapeshifters would be like blaming an ant for something a spider did to him. "Should we tell the Guard the truth? If we let their beliefs fester, the leadership may be at risk."

Aro smiled, nodding his head. "We should. Not just to restore any lost faith, but because they deserve to know the truth." The three Volturi left Aro's rooms and headed for the audience hall. "Caius, gather the entire coven. I have an announcement to make."

[thepaintedlady00]

Burden

Chapter 14 |

Chapter 15: Forget Me Not

TW: some awkwardness, confusing visions, Daniel makes an appearance, mentions of major character death and spoilers for the comics, a bit of Dark!Munin, The Fates, some intense memories and mentions of violence, pain, and allusions to assault, a bit of trickster god energy (I'm not super familiar with Puck and Loki from the comics, so please don't crucify me if they're not great!), threats, some cryptic shit from Destiny, a pretty big revelation, and finally, some soft fluffy goodness to give our story a happy end before the rewrite.

I really struggled with this last chapter! 😅 I think because I already know I'm going to rewrite it the words just didn't wanna cooperate with me and I'm overall not super thrilled with how it came out. I do really hope y'all still enjoy it and are looking forward to getting the rewrite whenever I have the time to get that going. Thank you all so much for your love, support and patience with this series!

Awkward felt like an inadequate word to describe the stiff silence that now consumed Hector's home. You quietly took a sip of your drink, eyes darting back and forth between the two men as they stared one another down across the living room. You’d quietly hoped that the two would use this time to let go of the strenuous circumstances they’d previously met under.

Hector finally leaned back and spoke, “Make any pregnant women cry today?”

Or not…

Dream’s face tensed slightly, but his voice was steady as he replied, “No.”

“You could’ve given us a minute to say a proper goodbye, you know,” Hector insisted with a sneer. “She had to go through so much all alone… we didn’t even get a chance to talk about baby names. I don’t… I don’t even know how they’re doing.”

This made Morpheus soften, and for a moment, you wondered if he was thinking about his own son, that had been long lost to him. “Daniel. Your son's name is Daniel, and he is doing well. I’ve had my raven check in with them on occasion.”

Your friend smiled and looked out toward the trees. “Daniel. What about Lyta?”

“She’s been more…” Morpheus chose his word carefully. “Restless as of late. A just reaction, I suppose, after learning all she has.”

“Couldn’t you help her with that?” Hector asked. “Isn’t that your job or something?”

“I could, but she does not wish for my help.”

“Sounds like her,” his smile was soft and sad but filled with a restfulness you’d not seen in him for a long while. “Lyta was always the stubborn one between us.”

Morpheus glanced at you, an invisible smirk plain to your eyes. “A struggle I understand too well, spirit.”

Your eyes narrowed. “Are you calling me stubborn?”

“I said no such thing,” he insisted with a wicked gleam in his eyes that answered the question for him.

Turning your head away, you smiled at Hector. “Apologies for bringing up such painful memories. It was not my intent, my friend.”

He shook his head and waved your concern away. “It wasn’t so bad.”

Morpheus allowed the man to show him the home he’d built, taking in details he’d missed the first time in his haste, and, you thought, the two seemed less at odds with one another by the time you departed. Your beloved remained as long as he could, spending time with you to tell the children stories while you held Sirius and got lost in the sound of his silken voice. A loud screech and a string of curses echoed from the wood, bringing you and the Dream Lord to your feet, shielding as many ears as you could reach from the vile things being shouted.

The Corinthian stumbled out of the woods with Kat hot on his heels, talons bared and clawing at him with every swoop. Her feathers were ruffled, and the noises she made were ones you’d never heard before. “Kat!”

She heeded your voice, halting her attack on the nightmare to settle on a branch beside you. The Corinthian shook his clothes off, looking at the deep tear in his suit. “Your beast owes me a new suit!”

Kat’s eyes burned. “The only thing I owe you is a slow and painful death, nightmare.”

“What is the meaning of this?” You demanded as Morpheus distracted the children.

“Is this not the nightmare that betrayed you, my lady?”

“It is,” you answered honestly. “But he has been remade now. He will not hurt me again.”

“Once is more than enough,” She bit back. “This was something you knew once.”

Your eyes narrowed, and you tilted your head at her words. “What do you mean by this?”

Kat shook out her feathers. “Nothing, my lady. If you say the nightmare means no harm, then I shall trust you.”

“Thank you, Kat,” you answered, her words still rattling around your mind, but the golden owl took to the skies before you could question her further. 

The Corinthian bared his teeth at the shredded suit jacket. “Daunty, love the new realm and all, but you gotta get a tighter handle on your greeters.”

Rolling your eyes, you shook your head at him. “Relax. I’m sure your maker would happily repair your suit if you asked nicely.”

He scoffed. “I’d rather live with the tears.”

“Stubborn.”

“Always,” he replied with a grin. “So, you gonna give me the tour, or are you too busy for little nightmares now?”

Linking your arm with his, you smiled at Morpheus, who continued telling the children stories beside the fountain. “I always have time for you, dear Corinthian.”

*

It had been a few days since you’d spoken with Hector, but the sad look in his eyes when he’d mentioned not being able to see his son had stuck with you. You approached the young tree with a gentle touch and kind gaze upon the face carved into the trunk. Hector's son was still quite young, and his tree of memory reflected such. It was smaller than his mother's that stood beside it, but the roots were strong and ran far deeper than any mortal. Daniel, you quickly realized, was special. Different. Like you.

The face seemed to stare back at you, white leaves peeking out from beneath the lush green canopy. You approached slower, urging the roots to lift and open the young one's mind to you. His memories would be few, but there was no doubt much you could learn within them. Veins of white stood out in the darkness. Some roots, the ones that borrowed deeper, were pale and sung with power and immortality. The song of The Endless. But, the tune wasn't Dreams, or Deaths, or Desires. It was its own song, still unfinished.

You walked through the light, lush still forming along the walls of his memory, focusing on the memories he found joyful. You intended to share them with Hector, a gift to show your gratitude for his hard work and kindness. That, however, was not where the tree led you.

Stumbling into the blinking light, you found yourself kneeling in deep sand. Sand scratched your palms, sticking to you like sap, just as it had the first time. Except now that sand, once a deep void of black, was white. It sparked like tiny perfect crystals in your palms as you stood and looked out at the miles of glistening sand and bright cerulean waves.

You knew this beach better than any save its creator. You knew the placement of each stone and the feeling of the sand as it molded to your steps. This place felt different… All at once, the beach you knew and not. It was old and new and entirely confusing.

The fragile ground beneath your feet seemed to remember you as you walked toward where the Gates of Horn and Ivory should have been. The sand didn't swallow your feet or try to slow your steps. It felt as though you were walking on nothing at all. Before your eyes, the entrance stood, an entrance that was not the gates you knew at all.

Glossy white marble caught the light and cast an ethereal glow all around you. An aura of both light and color, beautiful and bright. The gates stood open, revealing a sight you'd grown to know well. "The Dreaming."

As you passed through, you admired the fine craftsmanship of the carvings in the marble gates. A story familiar and also not… Something that had not yet been told. Familiar things were more abundant here as you walked through the town and admired the dreamers. Dreams and Nightmares, old and new, greeted you like a friend and wished you good fortune as you made your way to the palace.

The regal and beautiful palace of The Dream Lord was quite similar to the one you’d known. Only some small changes in the stone and the statues caught your eyes, but as the doors opened to the throne room, a wave of unfamiliarity washed over you at the sight. The white marble of Dream’s palace was pristine in every sense of the word, reflecting the array of light and color that swirled around the room, drawing your gaze to the tiny crystals that hung in the air like drops of frozen rain. It was beautiful, marvelous, but not what you knew to be.

The stairway leading to the throne was wrong as well, far more winding and long, a path of almost transparent crystal. The stained glass windows above the throne shifted to reflect you, a perfect vision of white mist and black dogs and golden leaves. It was as if The Dreaming was trying to welcome you… trying to lull you into a feeling of peace or comfort at all that was not as it should be. And there, in the place of the throne, you knew Morpheus to have was something entirely not his. It looked far more organic, like a split geode holding an uncontainable cosmos of stars and cosmic clouds inside it. And sitting on that throne was a being that was not Dream of The Endless. Not your Dream.

The pale being lifted his head, and not a single strand of his cloudy white hair strayed. His black eyes consumed you entirely, two small slivers of starlight shining brighter as they looked upon you. The robes he wore were white, adorned with golden designs, and there, sitting proudly upon his chest, was a glowing emerald dreamstone.

“It is a great honor to meet you at last, Munin of the Emerald Wood.” His voice was silken and light, Dream’s but not his. 

“You are not my Dream… are you?” You asked with tears building in your eyes.

With a soft sigh, he rose from his throne slowly, almost as if he thought doing so any faster would scare you. “No, I suppose I am not.”

You didn’t dare look away from him as you asked, “Then who are you?”

“The name you would likely know me by is Daniel. Daniel Hall.”

Lies. “Daniel Hall is little more than a child. You could not possibly be him.”

“Not as you know him to be,” he said, slowly descending the winding staircase. “But, as you’ve already noticed, none of this is as it was. A future carved in stone, written in Destiny’s book of things, a future only you can stop.”

“Future?” You questioned, looking around at The Dreaming. “You mean to tell me I’ve stumbled into the future?”

“No,” Daniel replied with a light chuckle. “More of a vision.”

You watched him carefully as he stood before you, hands clasped and a soft, childlike smile on his lips. “So this is what is to come then? You mean to steal this realm from Morpheus?”

His brows furrowed. “I’ve stolen nothing. The Dreaming and the title Dream of the Endless was given to me by he who came before.”

“Morpheus would never just give his realm or his title away,” you insisted. “Unless…”

“He did all he could to stop it, but The Kindly Ones were relentless in their attack. His sacrifice saved The Dreaming and those that remained.” Daniel could see the pain in you, and with a sigh, he added. “He did not suffer. Death greeted him and showed him the way. He was at peace in the end.”

You shook your head, tears rolling down your cheeks. “And what of me? I did nothing while he perished?”

“There were… things complicating your involvement.” He shook his head. “It matters not. You are here now.”

“You’ve been expecting me?”

He smiled, chuckling softly. “No, more… hoping you would find a way here so we could speak.”

“Speak of what?”

"If the love you bare him is even a fraction of the love that lingers in me still…" he lifted a hand to your cheek. "Love he bore for you. Then you'll save him. You’ll ensure this future never has to be.”

With narrow eyes, you asked, “You would give up his power… his title, and his kingdom?”

Daniel nodded. “All I ever wished for was a normal life with my mother. Plots larger than me… Larger than him made that impossible. But you, you could change it.”

“How?”

“Seek out Loki and Puck. The end of your Dream Lord began with their plot and… my mother’s misguided actions.”

Loki and Puck - two tricksters that you’d only met in passing. Gods that were notoriously difficult to track down. “And how do you suggest I find them? They’re not known for making such easy.”

“Visit my mother,” he urged. “And myself, I suppose…” he chuckled again. “The two should be close by.”

You paused, listening to the faint sounds of The Forest calling you home. “What happens if I fail?”

Daniel only smiled, reaching out to lift your hand to his lips. “Then I hope this is not the last time we meet, Lady Munin. And that the next is under better circumstances.”

*

Lyta Hall lived in a modest apartment in a bustling city. Though you’d ventured into the mortal world before, it looked vastly different from what little you could remember. She was surrounded by those she loved, Rose Walker and Ged, and many familiar faces - faces you knew from memories alone. And while the apartment wasn’t large or lavish, she appeared to be happy aside from the large bags that hung beneath her eyes, telling you she’d not found any peace in her dreams.

For a while, you simply watched them, searching for some sigh of Loki and Puck’s coming mischief, but the longer you looked in, the more you felt compelled to venture closer. You wanted to speak with her, to reassure her that her husband was safe and loved. And so you found yourself in her apartment, standing in the kitchen and admiring the little notes, photographs, and memories each held. Lost in your own examining, you barely heard the sharp gasp and the sound of wood scraping against the floor as Lyta hurriedly rose from the table at the sight of you.

Suddenly you were reminded that it was not normal for people to appear in mortal homes simply, and you bashfully bowed your head to her. “Apologies. I did not mean to startle you.”

“Who are you?” She demanded, forcing her voice to sound firm and dangerous.

“We have met before,” you answered softly. “In a dream.”

Her face softened slightly. “You… you’re the one that took Hector.”

Nodding, you answered the question she had not asked. “He is safe. He misses you,” your eyes drifted to the small child in his high chair. “Both of you.”

“What do you want?” She demanded, wiping her eyes. 

“I simply wanted to apologize for my coldness that day. I was… I was not myself.” You sighed. “Were it within my power, I would have let him remain with you.”

“But it isn’t,” she answered bitterly. “It’s his power, isn’t it?”

You realized Morpheus was the he that she spoke so sourly of. “It was out of his power as well. The Dream Lord means you no harm, Lyta. This is why you’ve not slept, isn’t it?”

Lyta looked at Daniel and shook her head. “I don’t want him to come for my son… not while I’m under some spell and can’t defend him.”

“Dream of the Endless would not steal your son,” you said gently. “He means neither of you harm.”

“You don’t know that,” she replied bitterly.

“I do,” you assured her. As you watched her move to the child's side, you felt an odd power humming around her. The song of the Endless echoed from the boy, swirling around her, but beneath his song was power. A power that you knew. Lyta and Daniel froze, time halting as mist rolled in from unseen places, and their power engulfed the apartment.

"You are meddling in dangerous things, lost one." Their combined voices sent a chill up your spine, but not one of fear or anger… A feeling of familiarity.

The Mother tutted softly as she moved around the frozen figure of Lyta Hall. "Fate is not something easily changed, dear sun."

The Crone lifted her head, glaring at the babe in Lyta's arms. "And this fate is one you should not even attempt to alter."

"I won't let you do it," your voice was cold as mist rushed beneath your feet. The Forest bled into this illusion they thrust you in, dark, twisted trees casting long shadows over the three. Black engulfed your fingertips, and you could feel the darkness, the daunting power of it bending to your will. "Morpheus is mine. And none shall have him while I draw breath."

The Maiden tilted her head, eyes shining back at you in admiration. "You always were so determined."

"So headstrong and unafraid," The Mother continued, her eyes bearing a deep sorrow that surprised you.

"It is what led you to your doom the first time." Though The Crone's eyes were stiff, guarded, and unwilling to bend beneath your steady gaze, her voice trembled, lips quivering as she uttered a single word. "Mneme."

All at once the darkness vanished. You felt your power stripped away, leaving you trembling and bare before The Fates. Breathlessly you fell to your knees. Sparks of golden light and a searing, unbearable pain engulfed you until all you could do was scream.

Not a word. Flashes filled your vision, swarming like molten gold in water. A name. Fire blazed, and a burst of sickening laughter echoed in your mind. Your name.

Their hands offered you some comfort, albeit temporary. The Mother smoothed your hair back. "Do not fight it."

The Maiden stroked your cheeks. "Let it come."

The Crone looked down at you with tears in her eyes. Her palm pressed to your forehead. "Remember."

*

The first thing you saw once the blinking light faded from your vision was the orange hues of the sun setting over the ocean. You sat upon the edge of the cliffside, wind combing through your golden locks of hair, and a peaceful feeling settled in your chest. You were home.

"Mneme!" The Fates’ voices called out as one. 

Turning your head, you smiled at them. "Not too close to the edge, I know!"

The Maiden offered you a smile back. "The fall would be terrible indeed, even for one such as you."

The Mother waved, gesturing to you to come to them. "Come down from there, sweet child!"

The Crone rolled her ancient eyes and scoffed. "She won't fall! Our Mneme is far too surefooted to do something as foolish as that."

"Accidents still happen, sister self." The Mother reminded.

You squeezed her hand. "I'll be more careful."

"More careful!" The Crone laughed. "She's been careful since the day she was born, I doubt she's capable or more."

The Maiden lovingly braided a strand of your hair. "There's no harm in having fun every now and then."

The sky above had begun to shift to the deep star-filled night, your favorite. "I have to go."

"Back to that tree of yours?" The Crone asked.

"Back to the humans?" The Mother's question was far more bitter.

You kissed all their cheeks. "I'll be home before the sun rises!"

More light flashed, more voices echoed in your mind as your body felt like it would burst apart. You saw it through the slightly golden haze. The Great Tree standing tall amidst a bustling village. Its trunk was a rich reddish brown with golden leaves glistening in the low light of the fires the humans had lit to illuminate their festivities.

In the blink of an eye, you were in the tall branches, looking down at the bodies that moved below, watching the humans with wonder. You and the tree had been linked from the moment of your birth. A tree with roots that spanned across realms and lifetimes and a little spirit born of fate and memory. 

A rather simple pair when compared to the billions of other supernatural and immortal beings and creatures that existed. But, you were fine with simple. You enjoyed your time spent on Mount Helicon and watching the humans, quietly gifting them with long memories and thus making their marvelous stories last forever.

It had been centuries since you'd heard the lovely tune for the first time. The first song ever made. A simple and beautiful thing that planted a seed deep inside you. A longing for something real… Tangible… Something wholly yours. You had no idea what it would be, this thing, but some nights you could hear The Fates whispering. They must've known. There was little they did not see. So, you waited, hoping that it was something marvelous.

The memories raced by, quicker and more painful than before. You could feel the raw ache in your throat, a result of your screaming, but you could only hear the voices. It was all still fragmented, flashes of a happy life with The Fates that all shifted… The sour smell of decay stung your nose. These flashes were darker, the fragments blurry and hazed. 

You felt fire cracking under your skin, nails clawing at the wrong flesh that caged you. A laugh… A wide and villainous grin letting down at you. Unfamiliar hands touching you… Defiling you… The human's bright beauty slowly diminishing before your very eyes. You could taste the salt of your tears and feel the ache in your knees as you bent to the floor and begged. "Harken to me!" Your voice sounded so broken… Desperate. "Please, I beg of you! Deliver me from this place!"

The gentle hands that touched your head bore a somber tinge that answered the question you did not even ask. "Enough, dear one."

"You should rest," The Maiden said.

"You will need it for what is to come," The Crone finished.

"Help me," you begged them, lifting your drowning eyes. "There must be something you can do… Someone to intercede on my behalf."

The Crone's eyes turned cold as she sighed. "Foolish child. You are awfully bound. There are none that can deliver you from this place."

The Mother's eyes were filled with tears. "Not now, at least…"

The Maiden braided a strand of your dull hair. "Not when so much of you has been spent."

"I am so sorry, dear one…" The Mother pressed a kiss to your head. "Your prayers were wasted."

"No!" You cried out, rising to reach for them, but they were already gone. The chain binding you to this place scratched against the stone floor. "Do not leave me…"

The pieces fragmented further. Shattering like glass when you tried to hold onto them. All you could truly recall was a knife, blood, screaming, and fire. Darkness that felt warm and safer than what you'd known for so long and then breathlessness. You could see a rippling surface, bubbles floating away from you as the air abandoned you. 

As you sank deeper into an unknown abyss, you could see the golden strands of your hair fade to white, and a voice echoed in your mind as all else began to fade away. "You will never be rid of me!"

*

"Mneme," The Maiden's voice called out to you.

"Stop," you begged, voice raw and hardly understandable. This wasn't true… This was a trick. All of it. Their hands, cradling your head, felt too heavy. "Don't call me that."

“Mneme…” The Mother cooed softly as you shook their hands off you.

“Do not call me that! I… I cannot deal with this now. I… There’s…” You wanted nothing more than to sob, to let the information you’d just regained swallow you whole. 

Morpheus needed you. The events Daniel spoke of could still be years away, but you’d not risk it. Especially not now. Forcing your body upright, you looked into the eyes of The Fates. “I am going to change what is written. Morpheus will not perish, least of all at the hands of you.”

The Maiden’s tears were like diamonds upon her cheeks. “We take no pleasure in this.”

Your sound of disbelief caused The Mother to sigh, “Not much pleasure in it.”

“You cannot change this,” The Crone said, cold as ice once again. “Try as you might, what is will be and what will be is.”

“The only one you shall harm is yourself,” The Maiden replied.

"You will spend your power," The Mother warmed. "Spread yourself thin until all you are withers."

"Lost again to Lethe," The Crone finished.

“If anything happens to him… anything at all, it is you that I shall harm. Consequences be damned.”

You didn’t give them the chance to speak again, vanishing from the apartment and from their presence with a mere thought. The world felt both heavier and lighter, and with it, you felt both more powerful and less. Forcing the memories… the past from your mind, you put your plan into motion. It was just as you’d told The Fates. None would have Morpheus.

The meadow was quiet. From what you’d seen of the human world, there were few places like this that remained. Calm and untouched, reeking of old fairy magic and buzzing with godly power. Two tricksters lurking in the shadows. The combination of their power was dizzying and stunk of mischief. A warning to any that drew too near to turn back and hope you’d not caught their eye. You, however, would not be so easily deterred.

“What have we here?” An old and giggly voice purred from the shadows.

“A little witch?” Another chimed in, smug and prideful and filled with echoing laughter.

You showed no emotion as you addressed them. “I am Munin, Queen of realms of memory.”

A figure appeared a greenish beast with scales and fur and long pointed ears. Sharp teeth gleamed back at you as the deep red eyes of the spirit Puck glowed. “Queeny, Queeny, Queeny… why are you so far from your castle?”

Bright hair and an angular face examined you closely from a safe distance away as Loki grinned back. “Come to play with the old tricksters, have you?”

“More like come to talk sense into you,” you replied calmly, urging the wood around you to slowly shift.

The two laughed loudly, clutching their guts as they looked at each other. “Sense? Oh, we’ve not had sense in ages!”

“So I’ve been told. But, kidnapping a dream-touched child is a new sort of stupidity I thought even you two would be above.”

“Careful now,” Puck growled. “I’d surely hate to have to get blood all over that pretty white dress, Queeny.”

“It would be quite the shame,” you agreed. “Though the dress could be a trophy of sorts stained with your blood.”

Puck giggled, deranged and gleeful. “I like you!”

“Focus,” Loki insisted as he languidly stalked forward to circle you. “What’s this about a kidnapping?”

You followed him for a moment but chose to keep your eyes on Puck; he was the one you’d have to be most mindful of. “Your little plan to kidnap the boy… Daniel Hall.”

“How would you know about that?” Puck questioned.

“I have my ways.” That was the only answer you offered them. “The how is hardly the point. I’m far more interested in skipping it all together so we can focus on the bit where you both use your brains and forget about this half-baked scheme.”

Mist slowly began to seep between the trees, a low groan echoing in the air that signaled your plan had worked. Loki shook his head. “We aren’t exactly known for listening to threats from little girls.”

You smiled. “I’ve not even threatened you yet, Odinson.”

“Do not call me that!” He hissed, pointing a long elegant finger at you.

“I’ll call you whatever name you see fit after you’ve agreed to leave Daniel and his mother alone.”

Puck tutted, clawed nails digging into the branch he leaned on. “Greedy, greedy. You’re getting boring, Queeny! Perhaps we should just be done with you… After all, you look so tasty!”

Sirius dove out of the mist and snapped at the spirit. “Mind your tongue, beast. Though I shall gladly rid you of it should you insist.”

Loki pulled two daggers from their sheathes as The Corinthian appeared somewhere off to the side of you, calm and collected as he casually leaned against a tree. “Naughty puppy!”

Rolling your eyes, you lifted a finger, calling forth the tree roots to bind them. “Enough of this.” The trees wound around their limbs, squeezing hard enough that were they not immortal beings, their limbs would have snapped. Loki sneered while Puck laughed. “It’d be in your best interests to leave the child alone.”

“Best interests,” Puck laughed harder. “I care little for interests.”

“You may not care,” you began, eyes turning to the god. “But he does.”

Loki shook his head, chuckling at the notion that he cared about anything at all. “You think you know me, little wood witch?”

You shook your head and walked along the tree roots. “I do not care to know you, trickster. But, I see more than just your eyes…” Memories swirled inside them, good and bad, joyful and not. “We may not have met more than in passing, but make no mistake, Loki, I know you.”

Puck was the wildcard, the mischievous being that none could reason with or bribe unless he so sought, but Loki was a god. He was shrouded in golden pride and a deep-rooted desire to make Odin love him. Loki was the one you needed to convince. Puck would follow, or he would die, a choice you’d not have to spell out for him, especially with Sirius’ watchful eye and menacing teeth gnashing in the sprite's face.

“Why do you care so much for this runt?” Loki pondered with a wide grin. “Have a soft spot for dream-touched mortals?”

“Why does not concern you.” You sat down on a high-up branch and stared the god down. “No more questions, Loki. Will you leave Lyta and her son alone, or will you die here in my little woods?”

He attempted to shrug against the branches that held him. “It’s not me you need to worry about.”

Puck rolled his eyes. “She doesn’t need to fear me! This game has gotten boooorrrriiinnggg! One little mortal, dream-touched or not, isn’t worth this kind of fuss.”

Loki glared at the sprite, clearly displeased by his so-called partner in crime's words. “Fine then. We’ll leave the kid alone. Happy now?”

“Swear it.”

“I swear it,” he sneered back. “Now let me go.”

You waved your hand, and the roots released. Puck was gone in a blink, no promises made or extra words exchanged. Here then gone, just like you’d expected from the trickster. Loki remained, anger and some ugly, wounded pride shining in his eyes as he glared at you. Sirius growled. “Leave this place, trickster. And pray you never return.”

Suddenly all emotion drained from the god's face, and he laughed. “You know, I don’t much like being humiliated, especially not by insignificant little girls. Do you think you're suddenly untouchable just because you have some new realm and a bit of power? Well, you aren’t.”

Lunging for you, Loki found himself face to face with The Corinthian, who smiled as he brandished his blade. “I believe my lady released you. That means you leave.”

“I’m not scared of you, nightmare!” The god shouted.

“You should be. Hold him down for me, pup.” Sirius surprisingly heeded the nightmares command and pulled the god down while The Corinthian worked with his blade. The screams were drowned out by the trees cheering and laughing at the now mutilated god. You stood high above it all as The Corinthian finished his work and turned, presenting you with the eyes he’d plucked from Loki’s skull. Bowing his head, he chuckled. “Any other body parts I should take, my lady?”

You accepted the eyes and shook your head. “No. Kat has already sent word to Odin. Someone will be here to collect him shortly.”

The Corinthian glanced at you. “You alright, Daunty?”

Your mind was plagued with the past that you’d still not fully regained, a thing you now had broken and confusing fragments of. “Yes. There’s just something I need to do now.”

“Need a nightmare?”

Smiling at him, you shook your head and placed a loving hand on his cheek. “Not this time, dear Corinthian.”

*

Upon Mount Helicon, a secluded cabin stood overlooking the sea. The cabin was not what you’d pictured when you thought of The Fates. You’d imagined they’d live in some large palace or a winding maze, like Destiny, but there the three stood, looking out at the sea as you quietly approached. “Such a lovely sunset.”

The Mother smiled at you. “It used to be your favorite part of the day.”

The Maiden laughed softly. “You’d sit here until the yellow faded from the sky entirely.”

“One sun,” The Crone said. “Watching another.”

"Whatever the reason for this… Fondness, you bear me…" you stopped yourself, pain that you could not yet confront boiling within you like the fires in your vision. Shaking your head, you met their gaze again. "I urge you to cease these schemes against the Dream Lord."

The Maiden nodded, "Painful as this may be, you cannot run from the truth forever."

The Mother took a step closer with a sad smile. "Oh, dear one… Is this truly your wish?"

"It is."

The Crone stood before you, cold eyes slightly less so as she wiped your tears. "Very well. If it is your wish, we shall honor it. So long as Dream of The Endless does not bring harm upon you, then we shall not harm him or his Dreaming."

“Thank you… my mothers.”

The Three smiled sadly and watched you go. The Forest greeted you as it always had, offering you soft handing leaves to dry your eyes and a melodic rumbling to ease the ache in your heart. You did not know when you would be able to accept what you now knew fully, nor did you know if you’d ever be strong enough to remember the full brunt of the pain your past life had lived through, but you did know that The Fates had spoken at least one truth. You would not be able to run from it.

A dark figure emerged from the trees, breathing a sigh of relief at the sight of you. “There you are.”

“Morpheus,” you breathed, the pain easing as air filled your lungs.

His eyes narrowed as he took a step toward you. “Where have you been?” His arms wound around you, pulling you into the embrace you’d fought so hard to preserve. You buried your face into his chest and breathed in his scent. “I’ve been worried.”

With a soft noise, you smiled. “Forgive me, I did not mean to worry you. There were some things I needed to take care of.”

“Is all well?” His breath hitched at the mere thought of something being wrong. 

You smoothed your hands down his chest and smiled. “All is well. I… I learned many things these past few days and have many questions that need answering.”

Morpheus nodded, soft hands caressing you. “I trust you will tell me your meaning when you are ready to?”

“Of course,” you answered. “It would be rather cruel of me to keep you in such suspense.”

“Cruel is not a word I’d use to describe you, my love.”

You wanted nothing more than to tell him of all you’d learned and everything that had happened in your time apart, but instead, you simply smiled. “Would you walk with me?”

He seemed to understand the gentle gleam of tears in your eyes and quietly offered you his arm and a kiss upon your head. “Always, my love.”

The two of you walked through the misty forest until you found the cave of crystals and the lake that you’d once danced upon. Without needing to speak any words, he stepped out onto the water and swept you away into a starlit dance. With your head laid against his chest, listening… feeling the steady beating of his heart, you finally spoke, “Do you think we will remain together in whatever existence comes after this?”

“I should think so,” he answered with a soft laugh. “We’ve found one another against impossible odds thus far.”

"Well, if it should come to an end, this immortal coil we find ourselves in..." You pulled away from his chest and gently held his face in your hands. "I should like it to end by your side, that we might turn to stardust together or be bound in the roots of the earth as one. I shall not pass to whatever existence awaits us in The Sunless Lands without you, my dearest Morpheus."

With the software of smiles, he pulled a small thing from his cloak and held it between you. A ring. The stone in the center was an ethereal array of thinking stars with a branch-like band of roots twining around it. He lifted your hand to slide the ring on your finger, kissing it and whispering a soft oath, "I vow that no matter what comes, nothing shall ever part us again. I am yours, Lady of The Forest, Distress, Discourage, Daunt… Munin. In every existence, every realm and lifetime, I am yours."

"Just as I am yours, Prince of Stories. Always."

Beneath the starry skies and amidst the groaning echoes of your realm, you and the Dream Lord shared a kiss, soft and bright and beautiful. For that one moment, the past didn’t matter. Not Daunt or Mneme… you were Munin, and you were here. You were loved. And as you stared into the eyes of your lover, you knew you always would be.

[thehotelier]

On Housebroken

“Every true novelist listens for a suprapersonal wisdom, which explains why great novels are always a little more intelligent than their authors. Novelists who are more intelligent than their books should go into a different line of work.” -Milan Kundera

The subtext of this short quote that my friend posted the other day provided a pretty neat angle for thinking about the job that artists do for society. While some of us are working, making dinner, following up with people, or addressing every little aspect of our lives that are slowly degrading, artists are creating the conditions for profound truths of the world to speak through their bodies for a brief moment and then document it. These moments of oneness with profound truths are not unique to artists or writers, but a good artist is one who can capture that moment and communicate it through their medium, in a way that allows us viewers to access by interacting with their work.

It explains a thought that I’ve had quite regularly about my own work. People say “hey I like this music you’ve made” and my first inclination is to respond with “yeah isn’t it great?!”. If I were to say this aloud, it would probably either confuse or upset the person who would expect an either humble or self-debasing acknowledgement. But my excitement about my work, and part of the reason I had listened to some of my own tracks non-stop, was because I didn’t feel like it was something I had created. I didn’t feel responsible for it existing insomuch as I feel responsible for regurgitating historical trivia or making box mac and cheese. It’s never felt like trying very hard, making music. Not that I’m an expert or anything (I’m a clunky writer and not particularly skilled with any instruments) it’s just that my process has never been about working hard, and has mostly been about creating a concoction of circumstance to allow magic to happen or god to speak through me. And when that happens I’m sort of like “lol cool.”

So to me, a non-god, my “work” is almost certainly smarter than I was when I wrote it. Once I had witnessed this process fruiting many tracks that made me look smart, I tried not to shortcut that process moving forward. However, I figured this out maybe midway through writing Home, Like Noplace Is There and there has always been one track that stood out as blocky because of this, and that’s Housebroken. Housebroken was the first track I wrote for that record and it got a fair bit of play time in the many acoustic sets I had played prior to releasing that record. It was well received then, but I had sort of always felt an inclination to have to tease out the conversation around it.

The song material attempts to unveil the cycle of abuse, trauma, and conditioning. It was inspired by the trap of entering into the public forum to discuss justification for accountability processes, a model that was ahead of its time and kind of still is. Too often call outs of terrible behavior would evoke normies to object with some version of “this person did something fucked up because fucked up things were done upon them.” It was a trap to engage with this logic but us punks and anarchists did anyway because we knew we were on the right path and truth would prevail. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough back-pocket rebuttals handy to truly win those arguments for our apolitical tumblr bystanders.

Housebroken, through an allegory of a naive utopian speaking to a domesticated dog, went on to say that empathy alone is not strong enough to dam the river of harm in which we swim. At least that’s my interpretation. My interpretation, however, has the privilege of being granted the benefit of the doubt by its intent. Some other interpretations were not as generous.

I remember stumbling across a podcast (a flock of men) who were in the business of bad faith critiques of scene music. Their interpretation of Housebroken likened domestication to abuse in the home and abuse in the home to abuse of women by men. Through this lens, the use of the dog as a literary device was describing women as dogs, which is of course not cool, boo-boo.

The common interpretation by those who enjoy the song is actually not even that far off from the one above. The slight deviations come in the form of domestication not necessarily abuse in the home, or abuse in the home not necessarily being abuse of women by men. But even within these more favorable framings, there was still a path to an unfavorable interpretation which some had found in the moment where the narrator kills the dog. For me, this was actually a lazy way of saying “we can’t divert the flow, we can only break the cycle.” But it’s over dramatic, inconsistent, and a cop out. The dog probably should have eaten the naive utopian narrator, but then who sings the ending??

This was where my analysis ended when Hotelier decided to stop playing this song. I couldn’t really reconcile which interpretation should be given the most priority, mine or the fans. We had a couple of odd interactions with legitimate die-hards about this song at the time. I figured it would be a good faith gesture to let them be in the driver seat a bit for this one and we gave out some benefit of the doubt. To some, this might have seemed like an odd choice to give a few fans this much say over our artistic decisions. But I was 22, and truly trying to figure out the best way to navigate these fan artist relationships where the principles of consent do not map so cleanly. Looking back, I still think it was fairly wise to avoid intentionally grinding up against the edges of our fans who were so willingly giving us their vulnerability. And that’s how Housebroken got nixed.

Now admittedly, this is one of the Hotelier songs I felt like I had a hand in writing, that is to say that I wasn’t simply a conduit for messages containing more wisdom than I possessed. I remembered being inspired by an idea, but only having the distance from Akron to our recording session in Chicago to get down. We drove overnight in a short school bus with 7 people drunk asleep, and strewn about on the seats and carpet. I was on the couch in the back forcing that ditty out. Once it was recorded that acoustic version, we just built the album version around it and stuck it in the most likely place.

Every other song on that album was given time, was meditated on, was never written but allowed to write itself. The lyrics were many words I have never said before in any real order. Writing the rest of that record genuinely felt like many therapy sessions. I remember sensations in my body that I haven’t felt since, like being a moment from sleep and being suddenly massively awake and strangely cold, suddenly crying at phrases from a stream of consciousness, and what felt like a rattling marble at the top of my spinal cord. Writing Home was like simultaneously realizing trauma held in my body for the first time and quickly unknotting it. It was pretty absurd. I could have been possessed but it would have been by something pretty nice. I understand why people could believe in angels. Through your own actions, you induce some state of consciousness in which everything makes sense, and everything is okay, and its wise and kind and all of these things that might feel so unlike you. How can someone have experience and be expected to believe that that is just them. In a period of time when we still don’t understand consciousness. Could be angels, babe.

It Never Goes Out was an album that shouted “As long as we have each other, the world stands no chance.” Turns out, the real weight of that statement rests on “as long as”. It’s really amazing the amount of absurd scenarios a bunch of suburban beatnik cosplayers in early adulthood can find themselves in. One of us got kicked out of our home by our parents. I showed up in my underwear to lighten the mood not expecting her dad to come out and try to bust through my car window. I remember us trying to figure out how we were getting home from the mall because the only friend who could drive was having a personal moment in the back seat and not talking to us. Lots of “you don’t get me”. Lots of “I’m going to kms.” I’ll skip a lot of details that I can’t or don’t want to remember, but it was clear we were too big of a mess to change much.

And here we circle back to trauma not as a thing done to us by bad people, but now by people we love with every ounce of our being, people we wouldn’t throw out in front of a moving car. Many people will have their own interpretation of what that means to them, and I’ll let them have it. I’m just the messenger.

[juliasdowntonstuff]

Chapter 54

Chapter 54 is a bit of a more emotional chapter once again, and also quite a long one. Anyway, it is out now posted on ff and ao3 and I do hope you like Cobert in what seems to be their favourite place on earth — their bedroom.

A little taste of this chapter is under the cut as usual, plus two pictures of our fav Edwardian couple that represent this chapter's mood quite well I'd say.

Robert's brow was furrowed as he entered, his mind somewhere miles and miles away. Cora watched him as he untied the sash of his robe agonisingly slowly, taking it off and then proceeding to fold it neatly over the back of his chair before sitting down there with a low grunt.

"A penny for your thoughts?" Cora smiled shyly as she looked at him.

His eyes were still unfocused, staring into nothingness ahead of him, as he began to take off his house shoes. Before slipping out of them, though, he stopped and reclined in his chair, his arms coming to rest on the armrests on either side of him. "I'm afraid that would not quite cover it," he retorted absent-mindedly.

Right when Cora saw that he was slipping deeper into whatever hidden depth in his mind that was occupied with whatever was troubling him, she spoke again. "Come to bed, Robert. It's been a long day."

Maybe it was her soft tone. Maybe it was the truth behind her statement. Maybe it was her thinly veiled concern. Whatever it was, it finally snapped him out of his daze and he quickly sat back up, put his shoes away and slipped into their bed beside her. Turning out the nightlight, he came to lie on his back next to her, his arm raised to prop up his head some more. It had always been his way of inviting her in to cuddle up to him and she did so without hesitation. The crook of his neck had always been the perfect fit for her to rest her head in, and her hand found its way to his chest more subconsciously than not, just the way it always had.

"What is it, my dear? What is troubling you?"

She felt his chest rise and fall beneath her hand with each of the deep breaths he took. Whether that was a good or a bad sign would have to remain to be seen for her. Either it meant that he would share his concerns with her and needed to muster up the courage, or it meant that he was racking his brain for an excuse that would allow him to keep silent on the matter weighing so heavily on his mind. Cora hoped it was not the latter, but she had no way of being sure with her husband.

"I just can't believe that she kept this from us. From everyone. All these years, she carried the weight of this all on her own. To lose Papa and Marmaduke within a few years was such a great test for all of us already, but to lose a child then as well? While her husband was fighting on some distant shore, only to never return home to her, either?" His voice was quiet, but full of desperation as he finally spoke. "Do you think we should have paid more attention earlier?"

"Darling, if she had wanted us to know, she would have told us."

"But it is not right that Mary knew and we did not! I am her older brother, I should have been there for her. I should have protected her. I-"

"Robert, you can't be there for everyone all the time. You could not have helped her, and you could have prevented it even less. You had just become the Earl — so many years before you should have. You suddenly had all these responsibilities to shoulder while grieving for your father. You were thrust into this new life years before you should have. We all were. You heard Rosamund, not even your mother knew for quite a while. And you could not have helped her, you know how you are with anything medical."

He knew that she was right. He was aware of the circumstances; Rosamund had explained them in all detail that afternoon, not without tears. It had been uncomfortable for all of them, but such conversations were almost always bound to be. Robert thought back to the tearful hug he had shared with his sister. He remembered how small and vulnerable this usually strong and independent woman had seemed as he simply held her in his arms. Involuntarily, he had to think of the two young boys that could have been part of their lives had fate not decided differently many years ago, and he could feel his eyes beginning to sting and water.

[angelique-fireheart]

In Touch Bible Study Notes "More Than Pausing" 06/19/2024

"Have you ever wondered how to wait? How do we actually accomplish this, waiting patiently on the Lord? We need to be active while we wait, not just twiddle our thumbs until we recognize God's work. And how can we best emulate the "man after God's own heart"? It may seem counterintuitive, but waiting often involves action. The pause sometimes feels quite long, especially if you're waiting for an answer before moving forward. But there are things both we and the Lord can actively accomplish in the interim. For our part, we should talk to God through prayer about our concerns, dreams, and desires. In the stillness and tension of waiting, we must also read His Word diligently to learn more about His character and love. While we seek the answers, care, and encouragement we need from Him, we develop patience and grow as our faith is strengthened and stretched. During this time of actively waiting, we begin to see what God does. Like David, we will be lifted from a pit, given a firm place to stand, and receive a new song to sing. Waiting is so much more than merely pausing-it allows us to experience God in a deeper and more personal way."

My thoughts on this study are as follows:

~When we are waiting on God to answer our prayers, He doesn't expect us to be dormant and still. We should still be striving to move forward, taking action to support our prayers. We shouldn't just be waiting around for Him to fix everything. We have free will, don't we? We can make good decisions, and even endure our circumstances, but that never means we stop actively living, and we especially don't stop believing in God and His plan for our lives. He loves us, and knows us each by name. He knows our heart, and wants us to be in a relationship with Him. God knew we'd need a Savior, to save us from our sin. He designed a perfect plan, for Jesus to come to this Earth, to be born as a child, to grow into a man, and to die a sinless death, and to be resurrected from that death, as our risen Savior. That's something we could never do on our own. We are covered by the blood of the Lamb. One day, He's coming back, to take His people home to Heaven. Which side will you be on when that day comes?~

Verses read:

“My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.”

‭‭James‬ ‭1‬:‭2‬-‭4‬ ‭KJV‬‬

“But now thy kingdom shall not continue: the LORD hath sought him a man after his own heart, and the LORD hath commanded him to be captain over his people, because thou hast not kept that which the LORD commanded thee.”

‭‭1 Samuel‬ ‭13‬:‭14‬ ‭KJV‬‬

“He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, And set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: Many shall see it, and fear, And shall trust in the LORD.”

‭‭Psalm‬ ‭40‬:‭2‬-‭3‬ ‭KJV‬‬

[taraljc]

The thing that pisses me off about people opposing universal basic income is that late stage capitalism and Western civilisation require that people uphold the lie that people deserve the circumstances they are born into--whether that is poverty or generational wealth.

It's impossible for so many to confront the reality that the wealth that allows generations of people to live in comfort and ease was bought at the cost of taking comfort and ease from other people.

That the richest nations on earth subscribe to the idea that there is such a concept as the 'deserving poor'. That poverty is a moral judgment and not the most telling symptom of a sick and decaying society.

Every single time I've tried to talk about how awesome it would be to have $2,000 a month to cover all of my bills so that I can pour all of my energy into actually living my life instead of scrambling to come up with $2,000 each month to pay all of my bills, I hit the brick wall of 'no-one deserves to get something for nothing. everyone should have to work hard for what they get'. from people who are perfectly comfortable with the idea of the 1% getting everything for nothing and not having to work at all for what they get.

In America especially it's like we left a constitutional monarchy for a reason. We rejected the divine right of kings for a reason. We came to another country to have the freedoms to practice our own religion without persecution or genocide. and then we turned around and oppressed the fuck out of everybody else the exact same way we had been oppressed, and the idea that our way was smoothed by the colour of our skin or the Anglo-Saxoness of our names or the acceptance that comes with evangelical Christianity's us-vs-them mentality offends us so deeply that it is rejected out of hand over and over again.

Because it's impossible to recognise the universal unavoidable truth that people do not deserve the circumstances they were born into. There is no moral judgment from God that says anyone deserves to be rich or poor.

However the basic tenants of almost all religions do teach that it is the moral obligation of those with more to give to and protect and raise up those who have less. To literally share the wealth, look after not just our neighbours, but strangers and foreigners and even the people who do not share any of our ideals--and provide shelter, food, and clothing for those in desperate need.

And you have all of these supposed Christians ignoring everything they loudly and frequently profess to believe in, while constantly trying to shove everybody who doesn't meet their arbitrary criteria out of the lifeboats to drown.

And it all comes down to this idea that people are worthy or unworthy not based on their actions or inactions, but simply by existing.

That is so fucked up. How is it the 21st century and we are still acting like bronze age barbarians, raiding our neighbours' villages, raping and killing, trafficking in slave labour, and burning their libraries and places of worship to the ground?

It is all such fucking bullshit.

These thoughts brought to you by the facts that I need a root canal and a crown that cost $2,000 I don't have. I need to bring in at least $2,000 a month to keep the lights on. I need $6,000 to drop out of the sky to wipe out credit card debt. I need to never leave my home state for extended periods of time because I can't get the medications that help me manage my physical and mental health because my Medicaid coverage is limited to the state of Illinois.

[chaosnoirjpg]

Feeling Guilty about not being Grateful

In this entry I am typing about feeling guilty¹ about not being grateful “enough”. This topic is inspired by a lifelong friend of mine’s series of texts messages. This entry has been adapted from our conversations.

The last I remember feeling guilty about not being grateful enough was in a Black Woman spiritual circle I discovered on Facebook. I didn’t feel so much as guilty as I was more triggered by the whole thing. I remember growing up and being told to ‘count your blessings’ when an unfavorable situation occurred as if I was messing up and missing out on how truly worse the matter could have been. As if I had any control or responsibility over the random ill fated life-events that choose me.

As I explored my trigger, I concluded that I was disappointed and shocked that I found myself in yet another assumed safe space. I thought I had found a home within this online sisterhood. I let my guard down and misjudged. I understood that I could no longer trust to discuss other emotions outside of feeling grateful for everything in my life, including undesired situations.

Recently, my little family and I experienced a theft. One of my family member’s car was stolen out of a parking lot. The culprit was later apprehended, the car received severe damages from the pursuit and capture. While we awaited word from the police, the family was going back and forth between choosing to be grateful and feeling other emotions. 

My mother, being the God-fearing Southern Baptist she is, chose to be grateful and made sure to spread her good will to us. She was grateful that none of her children were outside to greet the thief and got harmed. She was grateful that it wasn’t an even worse event, like a home burglary. She experienced that at her first apartment as a married young woman. To this day she remembers how violating it was to return home and see it’s been decimated by unwanted criminals. She gave her perspective to help us see our circumstance in a more positive light, to ease our pain and suffering, to make us more resilient somehow. Yes, I will agree that we were lucky that we were safely elsewhere while the car was being absconded. As well-meaning as mom is, there was still an air of blindness, denial and minimalization there, albeit unaware. 

My sibling, the one with the missing car, felt differently. She felt many, many things. Being grateful was far from her repertoire of emotions. She was going through the seven stages of grief on a loop. One moment she was angry she was targeted and desired vengeance, the next she tried to cheer herself up by looking forwarding to shopping for a new car.

I caught myself feeling envy² and annoyance about how she felt so naturally open to express her anger and disaster-mindset whenever a surprise event happened because she felt safe. I usually chill in my car and take time to cry or scream away from everyone for fear that they’d give me advice on how to see the silver lining³. I don’t want to see the silver lining I desire to mourn and mourn deeply before I even think about the next move. I’d like some time to process how shitty this is right now.

If my grandma was still alive and well, I highly doubt she would worry about any of this. She understood something about life. Her mystery of her knowingness was something I always admired. She had a level of unwavering emotional security. Nothing and no one could get my grandma down.

I can hear her now, “They ain’t stopping nothin’”.

I often thought that it was because she experienced great loss with burying her two sons, a grandson and many more of her loved ones that allowed her the capacity to endure the hardships of life’s randomness. She was never bothered by people gossiping about her or plotting against her. She had an understanding that those people aren’t satisfied with life and she was busy being happy with her own. As a child, when she told me these things they didn’t make much sense. She’d tell me ‘to keep on livin’, you’ll get it one day.’

Why do we run to being grateful when life hurls lemons at us…or…let’s be real, at any minor inconvenience? I have some answers. Please keep in mind that there are many truths, contradictory truths can exist and have existed all at once. We live in a multidimensional reality, my good people. What a time to be alive.

As far as being thankful in all things, I understand the need to be grateful and feeling guilty about being ungrateful because it could always be worse. I was told to be grateful often. Hearing that didn’t break the curse of feeling cheated, like I am missing out on better and greater things. Instead, it felt like my feelings about the present situation and circumstance didn’t meaning anything. As though my feelings held no weight in making things easier, more productive and moving things along. That might be true. But would you rather be right or experience the fullness of your capacity to feel?

I remember seeing on tv family sitcoms where the family sit at dinner, the child isn’t inspired enough to clean their plate, the parent says the offensive idiom, “There are starving children in Africa Alkebulan⁴.” Well, I didn’t get that speech. I got the, “Remember who you are and Who’s you are. Remember where you come from” talk. This mindset of gratitude wasn’t reserved for the home, but this type of be-grateful reactionary thinking was based on the mental and spiritual survival of repressed peoples. I often had the talk about how my family were forced into slavery.

They want you to be sad. Don’t fall into the trap and give them your energy.

There wasn’t a lot to be grateful for if you were a slave or sharecropper or just Black and existing in the USA or anywhere. Understanding yields compassion. However, I cannot ignore other emotions for fear of being haunted by them in the foreseeable future.

With my rudimentary way of thinking as a youngin’, I conceptualized that I was fighting against this vague thing, for lack of a better term, the mindset that desired me to be sad. As an individual, experiencing my own life, I also think about how my ancestors found joy where they could. I imagine them finding community in spite of their terrible surroundings. I think about women holding hope for a better future and if they could ever imagine a distant relative like myself reading and writing freely, being able to drive my own car or having my own bank account and being educated. Then I think, I have time to slow down and honor myself by acknolwgding my emotions. I’m not in survival mode like my foremothers. I have time. I am allowed to feel ungrateful, sad, mad, abandoned, happy, and content all at once, be present with the ebbing and flowing waves of emotions. I’m allowed to feel the full spectrum of emotions. I’m allowed to process my guilt and shame⁵ about feeling guilty and shameful. Feeling is the most human thing I can do because so many may not get the chance to or even know how. I am allowed to be grateful and feel other feelings too. No emotion is better or worse than the other. I am worthy of feeling it all.

I still struggle as life is not without its difficulties. I’m allowed to be sad and grateful about being sad. I’m allowed to say there is no bright side to this and still be like,

I’mma survive this as I’ve done all my worst moments in my life.

I may not feel grateful now or ever. However, I know I will survive this and it will not last. I don’t have to be grateful just have faith that it’ll work out and I will be ready or as ready as I can be.

In conclusion, when others try to reframe your perspective by advising you to be grateful, as well-meaning as that advise is I don’t think they’ve ponder what they are actually saying. The end goal, if there must be one, is to be able to allow yourself the space and time to process the present moment at hand. When we react by searching for ways to be grateful, we rob ourselves of being present with ourselves. We silence, censor an lie to ourselves which keeps us from our own emotional journey for fear of being perceived as ungrateful and therefore worthy of even worse happenings. Forced happiness creates humans who aren’t in-touch with what they are feelings, what they truly desire, and eventually leads to feeling lost because they cannot distinguish what they like, love and dislike. When we shed the “Us v Them” mentality, the dualist way of thinking of emotions being good and/or bad then we are able to perceive the vastness of our human experience. We begin to understand ourselves, we form a deep intimacy within ourselves. Eventually, we will be able to see ourselves clearer and clearer and know that we can handle whatever life brings. It all starts with giving ourselves permission to exist just as we are, moment to moment. Release yourself from the limiting thinking of being grateful is the only solution to being enough, feeling fulfilled and contented.

You are enough, just as you are, right here, right now. There are many truths out there. Believe the truths that empower you.

--

Guilt, Guilty: i.e. I did something wrong.

2. Envy: Someone has what you desire or do not have

3. Silver Lining: seeing the good in a bad situation

4. Alkebunal: Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop: History of Afrika, ALKEBULAN | THE ORIGINAL NAME FOR AFRICA. link: https://www.awaytoafrica.com/know-african-roots/

5. Shame, Shameful: i.e. I am wrong.

[random-mailbox]

Random-Mailbox's Favorite Sailor Moon Fics - Week 10 - Non-Senshi AU

Thank you @beej88 for allowing me to use her absolutely amazing art for this post 😘

Non-Senshi AU is one of my favourite tropes in @floraone 's matrix, HOWEVER, I had to balance adding stories to this post as well as keeping some in my back pocket to be used for the upcoming weeks. So if you are not seeing a story that you absolutely love, do not worry - you will most likely see it somewhere in these series. This theme was chosen by @areptiledysfunction1107.

As always, my apologies in advance for spoiling some of these for you (Fic Titles are linked to either FFN or AO3 entries).

Pass the Syrup, Please - @wishwars

Mamoru runs into a grown-up Usagi at the hotel he is staying at while interviewing for a new position. His plan is to try and comeback to Tokyo, having spent many years away due both school and work. This leads to a long weekend-worth of reconnecting with old friends, crossing paths, hurt feelings, and realizations for both.

just an instant gut reaction - Hariboo

A fun Dance themed AU where Mamoru is desperate to find a new partner for his showcase after Ami ends up on crutches. Minako is too busy with her own performance, Rei is a singing major, so who could they be talking about that could help him?

The Heatwave - @reiokiscorner

Usagi has just finished high school and is trying to make the best of her last days of freedom with her best friends before she starts in the photography faculty at the university. Except she is filled with self-doubt, it is crazy hot, and Mamoru is (shockingly) not being very helpful with his snide comments. I really hope that we get that Epilogue someday that @reiokiscorner talked about in her chapter notes. (Side note: this story has actually inspired me to take a photography class with how amazing the technical side of it was written out! I am starting to making progress, right @areptiledysfunction1107​?)

Hikari 27 - @uglygreenjacket

Usagi meets a handsome stranger on a train back home after visiting Makoto to help her set up her new bakery in Osaka. Making a snap decision, she decides that she needs to try and see him again and with Ami’s help finds where he is giving his lecture. This kicks off a tale about train stations, brief visits, and miscommunication that may lead to heartbreak unless Mamoru figures out how to open up.

A (Blind) Date with Destiny! - @daikon1

Minako (a friend Usagi met in university) sets her up on a blind date with Mamoru, without realizing that the two knew each other years ago. Both decide that this is the perfect opportunity to try and make new first impressions on the one person they still can't stop thinking about years later, as they proceed to pretend that they do not actually know each other. It is one of my favourite stories to re-read when I need something light-hearted with a happy ending.

took a faithful leap / i carry you in my heart - tosca1390

These stories are parts 1 and 2 of a Political AU with Usagi running for office on an anti-corruption platform and Mamoru meeting her at the hospital he works at with Ami, and getting pulled into her orbit. We get to watch as our favourite duo figures out a precarious balance of being together in spite of their circumstances.

Next week I am going to cover a few of the currently in progress multi-chapters that have been updated in the last 12 months that I keep hoping to see new entries posted up for, which is technically part 2 to my Unfinished Stories post from September.

Sex Positivity

Established Relationships

Groundhog Day

Darker Stories

Potions 🧪

Reveals

👻Halloween🎃

Wrong Perceptions

[sapphos-darlings]

Hey there, m’ladies! /tips fedora

It’s Sade here! I’m writing to you now because there is, for whatever reason, a huge uptick in hate targeting detransitioning women online at this time, and that sucks. It made me think if I’ve ever been upfront here about the changes in my identity over the course of these past few years, so if I have not, I will be so now, because it is important that there is visibility for us.

When we started this blog several years ago, I was a trans man, 100%, plain and simple. I don’t remember if I had at this stage stopped taking testosterone, which I did for health reasons, as my body never agreed with hormone replacement therapy - but if I hadn’t, it would come soon after. At the time I stopped taking T, nothing about it was due to changes in my identity. HRT was making me very sick, and at this point, I’d already quit it once for the same reason, only to pick it up again after two years as I’d recovered, thinking it was a coincidence. Two years back on T and I’d learned it was not a coincidence; HRT was contributing to my ill health. I knew I would not be prescribed HRT again after stopping the treatment twice: no sane health care professional is going to look at that and go “okay, nothing to see here, go ahead and pick it up again”, so I had to make the final choice on whether I’d continue despite my ailing health, or quit it for good.

I chose to quit.

This didn’t affect how I viewed myself. I’ve experienced cross-gender identification, as they clinically call it, and dysphoria from early childhood onwards. My first instance of telling my parents that I did not want to be bought “girl toys” because I was “boyish” was around 5 or 6 years old. I’ve consistently presented in a masculine manner since childhood, and preferred the activities and expression associated with boys rather than girls, and this was not due to enforcement of gender roles in my family or immediate circumstances growing up. I’ve always been allowed to do what I wanted, within reason; for example, I was prohibited from opening manhole covers to go looking for frogs in the sewers, but climbing trees and swordfighting and carrying a bow everywhere I went, which was usually in the middle of the forest or a ditch, was fine. (I did continue to open manhole covers to go looking for frogs in the sewers despite it being forbidden, but that is besides the point.) My mum wanted a princess to doll up, but gave up on that within the first couple years of my life due to my predictable counteraction of undressing myself if I was put in a dress, or alternatively rolling in mud to ruin the outfit, or tearing it up doing unladylike things while inappropriately dressed for the occasion. I made a mess of our bathroom trying to pee like a boy, and by 10 years old, I was crying myself to sleep because I’d realised I was going to grow up into a woman, and felt like my life was therefore already over. I wanted to be a boy, and I wanted to grow up to be a man.

This dysphoria did not let up when I entered my teens, but I’m not going to write about that period of time in more detail solely because it is a very painful subject that I’m not in the mental place to revisit. To put it shortly - this was the latter half of the first decade of the 2000s, transgender experiences were not widely known or recognised, and there was no mainstream promotion of resources or information about gender dysphoria. And still I ran into one example after another: people who had gone through horrific pain, but who I immediately recognised my own experience from. During these years, I realised that I was transsexual, as it was called then, and that I had to hide it and suppress it, because if I didn’t, I would die.

It was only with the help of the other mod of this blog that I finally at 18, after moving out of my childhood home to live on my own, began to feel safe exploring my gender and my expression. With her help, I embraced my male identity, and she’s told me countless times how it was for her to witness that angry, self-destructive girl blossom into a much calmer, much more stable young man. I spent a year on my self-exploration, making absolutely certain by journaling and endlessly seeking information, that transition was the right choice for me. I asked myself all the questions, I looked up all the consequences, I wanted to know everything about transition and trans futures and trans presents and trans pasts, and I even looked into detransition to make sure I wasn’t transitioning for any of the reasons that people who regretted their choices later had.

And then, at 19 going 20, I sought out a referral to the gender clinic of my area, beginning the six months long evaluation process for a diagnosis. The criteria at that time was strict: not only did you need the two year long “real life” experience of living in your chosen gender role, but you had to pass all sorts of psychiatric and physical evaluations to qualify for it. I was recognised as traumatised, anxious and depressed, but of sound mind and with a consistent, typical history of transgender identification from childhood onwards, by all of their criteria that needed to be crossed for them to diagnose me. And I was diagnosed, and prescribed topical testosterone to start at this point.

I loved being on testosterone. I loved all the changes it was giving me, even if those were very few in reality. I felt amazing in my body, and I felt amazing as a human being, and I was genuinely enjoying myself at this time. But it started digging into my body very fast in all the wrong ways, beginning with my brain; it was exacerbating and transforming my existing mental health conditions in ways that I didn’t know how to cope with. My depression turned angry instead of sad, and my self-harm habit grew worse and more frequent with suicidal breakdowns being a fairly common occurrence. My anxiety turned into all-consuming paranoia that eventually exploded into psychotic symptoms. And my physical health was imploding - at a point, I was visiting urgent care every week with terrifying problems like the inability to swallow anything more solid than soup, I was literally choking even on ramen, and could not eat meat at all. My body was hurting, I had dizzy spells that made me unable to get out of bed, I had a recurrent UTI that came back for about seven times in the span of six months and I was living on cranberry juice and antibiotics all the way until the doctors couldn’t even find an infection anymore, my body was just so wrecked from them that I was starting to experience chronic pain when urinating.

It was my mental health that made me drop T for the first time, rather than the physical ailments. I just thought I was dying, and had no idea this was related to T at all. I’d never heard of anything like this in context of HRT at the time, so I hardly connected it, aside from guesswork regarding my bodily pains being a result of muscle growth with no proper exercise, benign things like this. I was planning my funeral, and while all of this was going on, I couldn’t keep up the routine of applying topical T every day, and I eventually realised it’d probably be healthier for me to not be on HRT at all than it would be to take it infrequently and potentially destabilising my body’s hormonal balance.

I don’t remember what happened between that point and going back on T well, only that I recovered to a degree where I was now attending a rehab program three times a week, and my life was looking up. I chose to start Sustanon injections instead of topical to avoid the previous issue with routines, should my mental health get worse again, and I am not kidding when I say that the injection was the highlight of my biweekly existence. I felt on the top of the world every day my nurse stuck that needle in my arm, and I loved living.

Two years in, my mental health was down the shitter again to the point where I could not leave the house, and my body was breaking down on me. I developed tachycardia during this time, not clinically significant enough to diagnose but significant enough to have me on what’s now looking like lifelong treatment of beta blockers. And then I started losing my hair, and it was the last straw that made me turn from clearly mentally ill to batshit crazy - I could not shower if there was light in the room, and I wore gloves to touch my body. I covered all the mirrors in the house, and never turned the lights on.

And as I said before, this was the point where I had to make a permanent choice: I either accept that this is my life, or I quit T to recover. (And save my hair.) I didn’t have long to make that choice and it tortured me for months. I did not want to stop T. I’d been on for four years combined, and I’d gotten very few changes; my voice is amazing, and I have a faint trail of belly hair, but that is just about the extent of what had happened. I had no significant bottom growth, I’d never left the typical female range on the clit/cock spectrum. To date, the best I can say for my facial hair is that I have tiny tufts of greyish, soft whiskers above my lip, and some curly pubes under my chin, around the top of my neck. Nothing on my face. And I realised - nothing that I’d gotten from T was going to go away if I stopped HRT, and staying on T was giving me nothing more, while taking away so much.

So I quit, but I did not detransition, nor did I have any intentions of doing so. I could not bear being referred to with a female name, and female pronouns made me panic at best and want to skin myself at worst. But I wanted to get better, so I started to work on that, little by little. I didn’t want to suffer, especially looking at a future where I might feminise in appearance, and besides, I did not feel safe or welcome with cisgender men, nor was I interested in hanging out with them (at all.) I’d always been a female and always felt kinship with other females, women and other; I understood them, and they understood me, and I felt safe with them which I did not feel at all with men, due to my difficult childhood and overall history. So I started to build on that - joined all sorts of sisterhoods, began to appreciate my female body for being pretty fucking amazing. (Female bodies are pretty fucking amazing. We’re made to endure and survive. Our bodies may not be strong by design, but we are hardy as fuck, and always the last woman standing when it comes to disasters like famines and long winters, and while an average woman may not be able to win a wrestling match with the average man, we will most definitely outlast him when injured or ill or starved - the odds are in our favour when it comes to persevering in this world. We were built to make it here.)

I grew up surrounded by SSA girls. I don’t exactly know how this happened, but from late preteen onwards, I was hanging out with mostly gay people, particularly gay and bisexual women. This was my community, where I truly felt I belonged. So I started digging my way back in. This is part of the reason this blog exists: we needed a place where we could uplift people like us, women like us, and individuals like myself who are on the female side of something else.

Through all of this, reconditioning myself to let go of my fear and hatred of everything feminine, and embracing my body as a beautiful thing that is working for me, not against me, I started to become more comfortable with myself. And through doing so, I started feeling more confident letting go of the male mask I’d been clinging to despite the whole of my biology being against me on it: it had taken all of my mental power to make sure I passed, every day, and every instance of not passing was crushing both in the mental sense that it reminded me of what I lacked and what hurt me all of the time, but also in the sense that it made me so incredibly afraid for my safety, and it was just not working out for me. I started dressing up the way I wanted to, chose my clothes on the basis of what was comfortable to wear and what was fun to wear, rather than whether it was hiding my form or making me appear more angular or mannish. And I felt... delivered. Freed. Amazing. People around me didn’t actually immediately attack me on sight when I didn’t pass as a man. They didn’t care. I was the only one who actually had cared if I passed or not. I started experimenting with my style, and it turned out that what was comfortable and fun for me to wear was usually female-cut shirts, fabrics used for women’s clothes, trousers that fit the female form. No longer were my shirts crawling up my throat and too stiff to ever feel unconstricted by, and no longer were my jeans biting into my hips and twenty miles too long underneath my feet. And I regained the ability to wear patterns and prints, which are forbidden in the male world. The cutest design you are allowed to wear as a man is the logo of a university you’ve never been to. Women’s clothes are fucking amazing when it comes to diversity of style, colour and design. 

I did not go full feminine. I have never been feminine and I will never be. I kept my hair cropped short both because I was still paranoid about it and because I frankly do not fucking know what to do with long hair, I don’t understand hair care or hair styling and I always end up looking like a depressed mop when I let it grow out. Shaved hair is great, it looks great, and I feel great in it. (And so it’s ironic that I’m growing it out right now, for reasons wholly unrelated to femininity, and more to a deep-seated desire for a manbun which returns periodically to me every few years or so.) My clothes are at best androgynous, and I love being as butch as my bisexual ass will carry me.

Over the course of all of this happening, I also received a mental health diagnosis that changed my treatment entirely. Through trauma/dissociation focused talk therapy, I started to actually work on the problems that had been recognised this whole time, but neglected and ignored and shoved aside despite my lifelong history of being a patient in the mental health care system.

The combination of these two factors, of me easing myself back into a more natural expression and acceptance of the reality of my body alongside with proper therapy that targeted the damage underlying all of my mental health symptoms, is what ultimately led to me realising that I feel fine as a woman.

I’m not dysphoric anymore. I don’t feel all-consuming grief at the thought of growing old as a woman. I love the idea of becoming this silver-haired kickass granny one day. I am proud of being a same-sex attracted female. I prefer she/her pronouns now, because I don’t have to panic every time I’m being referred to - I don’t have to defend myself, or worry that I’ll be thrown out of the closet and into the midst of lions. I feel confident and great in my skin and my health is actually a thousand times better than it’s ever been, though it looks like I’m finally developing a long overdue case of fibromyalgia, but hey, maybe it’s Maybelline or maybe she’s got long COVID, we just don’t know (yet).

I don’t hate any of the changes I got on T and I would have loved to get more, but on certain parts, I’m glad I didn’t. I already mentioned I wouldn’t know what to do with my hair if my life depended on it, just imagine what it’d be like if I was growing a beard. I was also very much right on the count of “nothing that I got will go away”, because I’m still a hairy beast with whiskers and a deliciously dark voice, but I’ve got a ton of range on that now and I’m so happy with the sex characteristics I’ve got going for me. I don’t feel ashamed of my body, and somehow in the same vein I’ve been released from the confines of conventional beauty standards, because I am very much the epitome of ugly if you ask the mainstream media, and I fucking love it, and want to be even more so. I am hairy, I am fat, I am masculine, I’m opinionated and annoying and I’m not going to apologise for any of that again.

And now, if you’ve made it this far - great, first off, but also why - I just want to add my grievances to the bottom line. Everywhere I go, detransition is assumed to equal transphobia. I give no two fucks about what anybody else in this world does with their bodies, actually. I’ve made these choices for my own mental and physical wellbeing, to express myself as I am, and I wouldn’t unmake any of them if I was given a do-over of the whole deal. I am incredibly fucking tired however of being asked, repeatedly, if I hate all trans people, or if I really think all trans people are deluded. I have never voiced such an opinion in my life. If you believe in the slightest that detransitioning equals this ideology, then you are a victim of us-vs-them propaganda, and have fallen for a smear campaign. 

We are not a hivemind of transphobes out to ruin everyone’s access to HRT and surgery. I am an individual. I am partnered with a nonbinary person, and I will never be anything but ambiguous and gender non-conforming myself. I am so left on the political spectrum that the questionnaires that come with the Finnish elections each time around keep recommending the communist party for me to vote for. I would strangle Donald Trump with his own guts and shove Putin’s underwear down his shitty little windpipe and not think twice about it, and if you need an abortion, my house may be quite far away but it does have a spare bed open for you. 

I am not your terf sockpuppet. Detransitioners are not your right wing smear campaign, hellbent on criminalising the LGBT. We are you. None of us was more or less trans than any of the currently transitioning people are. We all have our own stories. We all come from our own circumstances. We all have our own circumstances. We all feel our own, unique ways about our transition journeys, as well as our detransition ones.

Please do not ostracise and abuse us because our stories seem scary to you. We are not your enemy.

[gleefullypolin]

Dating Lady Whistledown by GleefullyPolin

Read on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/57046732/chapters/145081255

Summary: Eloise always thought that her idiot brother was merely a distraction for their shared friend Penelope, always in her ear and never allowing her a moment to venture out on her own. But when Penelope begins online dating and finally meets a man who starts to slowly win her heart, was fate truly at play all along?

Chapter 4: Jealousy

“Jealousy is a disease. Love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often confuses one for the other or assumes the greater the love, the greater the jealousy. In fact, they are almost incompatible; both at once produce unbearable turmoil.” Robert A Heinlein

“Did he say why he was ending his tour early? Pen, did you hear me?” Pen looked up from her drink and caught Eloise staring at her.

“Sorry, what?”

“Colin, I thought he still had 3 months on his tour?”

“Oh yeah, he just said he wanted to come home for a bit.” She shrugged, not really sure why Colin was coming home honestly. They had spoken less frequently over the last three months honestly. Phone calls that used to be nightly had suddenly become once or twice a week due to scheduling conflicts or unexpected circumstances that he never really explained. It wasn’t that Pen was complaining, it gave her more time to spend with Lonely Traveler but if she was really being honest, she missed Colin.

Not that she didn’t enjoy her interactions online. She had learned so much about her…friend? Boyfriend? What was the title for someone you were seeing online? She had never asked him really, it seemed so nonsensical. Her phone pinged and she looked at it quickly to see that she had gotten a Discord notification, she found it so much easier now that she carried him on her phone.

LonelyTraveler: I promise I’ll talk to you tonight; I have some things to do today, but know you are always on my mind.

She grinned widely and she heard her friend sigh happily beside her. “You always do that when he messages you, when are you two going to actually meet each other.”

Her eyes grew wide. “What? In person. No.”

“Oh, come on Pen, it has to happen eventually.” She said as if it was the most natural response.

“No, I couldn’t.” She said defensively.

“What if he’s totally amazing, just an awesome guy like…”

“Colin…”

“My brother?” She asked in surprise.

“No, Colin.” She pointed as Colin walked into the pub and she rushed toward him, falling naturally into his open arms as he wrapped her into his enveloping arms.

“Pen! It’s so good to see you, it’s been far too long.” His voice had her shivering as it reverberated against her cheek, and it was if she forgot completely about where they were, and she just got lost in his embrace.

“What am I, chopped liver?” Eloise murmured behind them, and they broke the hug as Eloise cut in between them.

~*~

Colin broke the embrace with his sister and followed her and his best friend back to their table at the pub. “Alright dear brother, we were just discussing, what brings you back to our little part of this boring world?” his sister asked as soon as they sat down.

“Oh, sister, can a guy not miss his family?” He shrugged. “It’s been over a year since I’ve been home. Mom’s been bugging me to visit, and I got tired of coming up with excuses.” He wasn’t lying exactly. His mother had been driving him insane about not being home in a while, however that wasn’t the real reason he had cut his tour short. He braved a glance at his best friend seated on the stool next to him, typing away on her phone with a smirk on her face.

Pen had been avoiding him lately, frustratingly so. He wasn’t sure how else to describe it. Even when they were talking to each other she was distracted, always distant, as if she was somewhere else. And then when she wasn’t it was like she wanted to say something to him but was holding back. And all of that was compounded by the fact that he wanted to talk to her about Lady Whistledown but he wasn’t sure how to approach it with her.

How did one tell their best friend that they had someone they were seeing online that. Someone that they didn’t know their real name or what they even looked like, but they jerked off nightly to? Did that even make sense? He knew it was ridiculous. He spent so much time talking to this woman, learning about her hopes and dreams and yet there was something about her that he couldn’t explain, just something so familiar about her that drew him to her.

Yet, there was something holding him back with Lady Whistledown. Something that kept him from asking her the one thing he wanted to. Can we meet? Where is this going?

Did he want that?

The worst part was that he still felt guilty talking to her, because at the end of the day it was taking away time from the one person he missed talking to the most.

Pen.

He frowned as he excused himself to the restroom, and Pen didn’t even look up from her phone. Was it possible she didn’t miss him at all? He was sure the idea that his being away for too long actually causing a rift between him and his best friend would literally be his undoing.

Stepping out of the restroom, he ran straight into his sister who was glaring at him. “What did I do now? I’ve only just gotten back.”

“I know what you are doing, and I want you to stop.” She shoved her finger in his chest and pushed him backwards. He put his hands in the air as a sign of defeat.

“I’m afraid I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“Pen! I don’t want you distracting her. She’s happy and you have a tendency of ruining that.”

He furrowed his brow and stepped toward her. “Hey, I don’t know what you are talking about, I want Pen to be happy too.” He paused. The thought mentally draining him. “I don’t make her unhappy, do I?” He was suddenly confused as hell.

“No, but you’re distracting.” She shook her head as if she was letting him in on something she was not supposed to be telling him. “She’s met someone, and I don’t want you to ruin that.”

Pen met someone? She hadn’t told him about meeting anyone.

“Oh.” He opened his mouth and shut it quickly. He should be happy she met someone, right? I mean, Pen was always lonely. Now that he thought about it, he supposed that was why she was so busy lately. Besides, it shouldn’t bother him at all that she was dating. It didn’t bother him, right? He was seeing someone, why would he be upset over Pen seeing someone. And why was his sister still glaring at him as if somehow, he could have any ability to ruin Pen’s relationship? Pen was his best friend.

Friend. They were just friends.

“Good for her. I met someone too.” He almost shouted, causing El to step back, dumbfounded.

“You have?”

“Is that so shocking?”

“Well, no, just Pen didn’t mention it.”

“We don’t tell each other everything.” He paused, “Obviously” he spat, feeling offended once again that Pen had not mentioned this man taking her away from him.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Seems highly suspicious that you’ve suddenly met someone, now that I’ve announced that Pen is dating.”

He snorted. “I can assure you I did not just invent a woman for your amusement.”

“I’m not saying you did; I’m just saying it’s convenient.” She said as she rolled her eyes in that Eloise way that used to annoy him when they were children. He immediately noticed that it still annoyed him now.

He jabbed his hand into his pocket and yanked his phone out, pulling up his chat and shoving it into her face. “Here, there you go. Satisfied now! That’s my girlfriend.”

Eloise peered at his phone and then made a sound not akin to a loud shriek. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

He turned the screen to face him to ensure he had not accidentally just shared one of their more intimate conversations and then looked back at his sister. “What?”

“You’re dating Lady Whistledown?” She almost shouted in his face before grabbing him by his jacket collar.

“Well, I mean, we don’t do real names. We haven’t gotten to that yet. I mean, it’s a rule.” He shook his head trying not to sound stupid.

“Lady Whistledown.” She said again, a whisper this time said through gritted teeth. “Oh, dear God I think I’m going to be sick.” She muttered under her breath as her eyes widened in some sort of unseen horror.

“That’s what I said, why are you being like this?” He questioned her as she held her hand over her mouth and looked as if she might vomit suddenly.

“Why is this my life? Why must I know of horrors I may never see sleep from again?” She laughed in a mocking tone, throwing her hands in the air before turning back to look into the pub. “You know brother, it is nothing, I’m remember something entirely different. Nothing to do with your wonderful news. It’s nothing. It’s absolutely nothing.” She turned back to face him with a pained smile on her face. “When do you plan to tell Pen?”

“I don’t know. You think I should, I mean she hasn’t told me about this bloke she’s seeing.” Eloise laughed even louder this time and Colin stared at her as if she might be having a mental breakdown. “Are you alright, Eloise?”

“Quite.” She nodded as she pinched the bridge of her nose. “But I think I require a very large pint and a smoke, definitely a smoke.”

“Ben told me you quit.”

“I’ve decided to start again, right now, actually.” She turned and walked back toward their table and Colin followed her with a look of utter confusion.

~*~

“So how are you really, Pen. I’ve missed you.” Colin was sitting on the couch with Pen perched next to him and for the first time since he had returned home, he finally had her full attention without that blasted phone in her hand.

“You know I’ve been really good. I’ve been…um.” She paused and reached over to touch his arm and Colin felt a shock of electricity. “Oops, sorry, that was…” She bent her head down and her cheeks turned pink as her hand pulled away.

“Look at that, even after all this time, we are still an electrifying force, you and me.” He teased, reaching out to run the pad of his finger along her arm, noticing the goosebumps that formed there. This is what he missed between them, this physical connection they had always shared.

She stuttered for a moment and then looked back at him. “I met someone.” The moment shattered. He felt the pain first in his heart. He had been waiting for her to tell him, but he had not expected it to hurt like this.

“That’s…” awful, terrible… “amazing, Pen. I’m happy for you. It’s really great.” He managed to say. What was wrong with him?

“It’s still new, It’s been a few months, but he’s really nice.”

Nice. Sounds ugly. Probably an idiot. Definitely an idiot.

“That’s great. Really great.” God, could he say something other than great?

“And what about you? How have you been?” She asked him earnestly.

“I’ve been well, Pen, I’ve met someone too.” He blurted out. He knows he didn’t imagine the way her eyes dimmed for a moment; he knows he did not. “It’s new as well, I did not mean to keep the news from you. We’ve just been…talking.” Why was he prattling along like an idiot explaining things away like this? Why was he acting like a guilty man who had been cheating with a lover?

“Oh Colin, that’s wonderful news.” She reached for his hand and smiled brightly at him, and he hated it. He didn’t want her to be happy for him. He wanted her to be angry. He wanted her to yell at him for…for what?

He looked up quickly. “Is it?”

“It is.” She smiled softly. “I’m happy for you.” They both sat and stared at each other in silence. Why did this feel so awkward?

“And what are we talking about in here?” Eloise broke the silence as she came fluttering into the room in an almost glee, a glass of wine in her hand.

“Colin has met someone.” Pen announced, removing her hand from his.

“Oh, has he told you about that.” Eloise smirked. “Isn’t that such interesting news. Has he told you all about her? She seems most interesting indeed.”

Colin coughed. “I don’t think details are necessary at this time, however, we were also discussing this mystery nice man that Pen has met.” He said through gritted teeth.

“Oh joy, that is most exciting, yes he is very nice.” Eloise sang almost at a volume unnecessary for the hour and the closed space they currently shared. “Such an interesting man. Very, very interesting, wouldn’t you say, Pen.”

Pen and Colin exchanged looks of confusion and Colin made a gesture that suggested that Eloise may be well into her cups for the night. “So, Eloise, how is Phil?”

“Oh, Phil is well, let’s not discuss my boring dating life, I want to hear more about you.” She laughed. “That is more interesting, don’t you think, catching up on my dear, dear brother.” She leaned over and punched him on the shoulder with each dear she stated.

“Um ok. What do you want to know?” His brow rose.

“This girl, tell us, what is she like?”

Colin blanched. He really didn’t want to talk about her in front of Pen. “Um she’s very sweet, fun to talk to, but honestly, I’d rather hear about Pen’s guy. She’s barely told me anything about him. What does he do for a living?”

Pen swallowed. “Oh well, he’s a writer. He travels.” Colin felt himself stir in his seat. Well fucking of course this guy would steal his occupation. Could nothing about him be special enough for Pen now?

“Welp, guess we don’t need you anymore Colin, seems Pen has gone and replaced you entirely.” Eloise said loudly and Colin shot her a nasty glare.

“El, that’s rude. Of course, we still need Colin.” Pen defended him and he sat up straighter. Eloise was simply staring a hole into the two of them. “El are you quite alright?”

“I am not, I think I need to go to bed, because this is just not fun anymore and I have an appointment to burn the insides of my eyeballs in the morning, I’m afraid I have read things that I simply cannot unsee and I fear I will never be right again.” She shook her head and tumbled forward.

They both stared at her and El laughed. “Sorry, life of an editor.” She snorted and kissed her brother on the forehead. “Good night you two.” She patted Pen on the shoulder and headed to bed.

“She sure was a kick tonight.” He laughed uncomfortably.

“I’ve never seen her like that before. I have no idea what’s gotten into her.” She paused and then looked over at him. “Well, I need to get to bed too. I’m glad you’re here though. You were truly missed, Colin.” She stood up and bent over to press her lips to his cheek and Colin’s world stopped for a moment. He used to read about how a woman could make your throat go dry simply by her proximity, but until this moment he had never experienced the inability to swallow. His lids had fallen closed the moment her lips touched his skin and when he opened them, his vision bounced across the milky white skin of her chest, the gap of her pajama top lined up just enough with his sight to expose enough of her breast that his heart stopped.

He squeezed his eyes closed again before looking up and opening them. “Uh, goodnight, Pen.” He managed to squeak out, falling back onto the couch and cursing himself the moment he felt the stir in his pants. He ran his palm over the bulge that was now forming.

What the fuck was that?

Reaching over to the table he picked up his phone.

LadyWhistledown: You never leave my mind. I hope when you go to bed tonight, I am the last thought on your mind.

Dammit! He didn’t know how to respond to that. He wanted to say something witty and funny, he wanted to tell her he had been thinking about her all day. But with Pen so near to him, hell with her breasts just in his face, it would be a lie right now. He couldn’t tell her, I thought of you on and off, but I just had my best friend’s breasts in my face, and I’ll probably be jerking off to them before I go to bed.

Maybe coming home was a terrible idea!

~*~

Pen stared at her phone and sighed. It had been three days since Lonely Traveler had messaged her and she was starting to worry.

LadyWhistledown: Hoping you are alright. It’s been a couple of days. I hope nothing bad has happened or that you haven’t suddenly decided that I’ve done something wrong or I’m somehow wrong? Please let me know either way!

Pen got dressed and headed to the kitchen with a foul look on her face as she slammed the milk back into the refrigerator.

“Woah, what did the milk do to you?” She heard Colin tease behind her.

“Sorry, nothing I’m just not in a good mood.”

“I can see that.” He paused. “Anything I can do?” She breathed in deeply and then breathed out through her nose and shook her head. “Pen, I’m your best friend remember, you can tell me anything.” He gave her those puppy dog eyes, and she frowned. How was he always able to do that?

“Ugh, why are men always so much like…men.” She groaned.

“Woah, that’s offensive.” He laughed and leaned against the counter, and she cursed the fact that her eyes immediately traced a line down his body to examine the way his t-shirt clung to his abs. When did Colin get abs? She didn’t remember him looking so…fit… the last time he was in town. She bit her lip and tried to focus again. What was she talking about…oh yes, why she was angry. Because yes, she was angry. Focus on the right emotion right now, Pen!

“It’s just, my guy. He’s, being…” She thought about telling him he wasn’t talking to her, but that made her sound pathetic. She didn’t want to tell Colin she was so pathetic her online boyfriend was ghosting her. “He’s just being annoying.”

“Well sometimes we can be annoying.” He shrugged. “What can I do to not be an annoying guy?” He paused and then smirked, “Wait, I know just the thing.” He grabbed her hand and spun her around and pulled her against his chest, just like they used to do as children. She looked up at him, his blue eyes staring down into hers before he was twirling her away from him into a circle and pulling her back against him. “Let’s go to the boardwalk, like old times, just you and me.”

“Really?” She smiled brightly; her heart pounding so hard in her chest she was sure he could feel it against his own. How could he not! It’s not like this T-shirt didn’t cling to his chest like a second skin. Could he possibly be wearing anything tighter?

“Yup. We can play games and I’ll even win you one of those silly stuffed animals you always wanted.”

She giggled and wrapped her arms around his waist. “You act like you didn’t win those things just to prove you could!” She giggled, slapping playfully against his chest. “But thank you, Col, you’re my favorite person.” She felt him pull her closer, his head resting against her shoulder as he bent down against her.

“You’re mine.” He whispered and a shiver ran down her back before he pulled away and the moment was broken.

~*~

Colin watched Pen smiling the rest of the evening, happy to know that he was the one responsible for it being on her lips, but his mood was starting to sour because the happier he was making Pen, the harder it was making it to solve the issue of his still not knowing what to say to Lady Whistledown. It had been four days since he had said anything to her, and he knew he was going to need to talk to her tonight. He would need to explain to her his confusion about coming home. But more importantly, his confusion about Penelope!

He had feelings for the Lady Whistledown of course, they shared an emotional attachment that he couldn’t just write away. Yet, when he was here with Pen, there was something more. Something beyond what he was sharing of himself online. And damn the way he felt when Pen looked at him. He had always known that he was attached to his best friend, but being away from her for so long, and then suddenly not having her to talk to anymore, something was just….

Missing.

After just a few weeks of Pen ignoring him, he knew he had to come home when their conversations had ceased. He didn’t know why it had bothered him so much, but he knew he couldn’t figure it out on the phone. And then once he saw her it was as if the world around him had burned to the ground, and everything ceased to exist but her.

He couldn’t forget about Lady Whistledown, but he had known Pen longer, his whole life. It had to mean something. But then there was this idiot boyfriend of hers. He didn’t know what to do with him. And now he was making her sad. He had half a mind to find out who he was and beat the shit out of him.

“Hello in there!” He looked over at Pen and smiled. “Where are you? You were quiet the whole drive home.”

“Sorry, just lost in thought.” He watched her put the key in the door and he sighed.

“Missing your girlfriend?” She asked innocently and he cursed himself when he nodded absentmindedly and she frowned, he cursed himself for making her sad. “I didn’t mean to monopolize all your time today.”

“Don’t apologize, Pen. I wanted to spend time with you today. You’re my best friend, I’d do anything for you.” She smiled brightly beside him, and everything was right with the world again.

“Well, you made me forget for just a minute that I was sad tonight, so that meant a lot to me. Thank you, Colin.” She stood up on her tip toes and pressed her lips to his cheek and he had a burning desire to turn his head slightly and kiss her lips. Just once to know what it would feel like. It made his heart ache. He swallowed as he wrapped his arm around her waist.

“You’re welcome, Pen. You’re special to me. Don’t forget that. Make sure to tell that bloke of yours too. Because I’m not afraid to go to jail.” She pulled back and smacked him on the shoulder.

“Colin!” She exclaimed and he pretended to be wounded. “I love you.” She said seriously and his heart stopped.

“I love you too, Pen.” His eyes softened and the corner of his mouth turned upward. “Night.” He tried to ignore the way his heart broke as she walked away. Everything in him wanted to stop her, pull her back and…and do what? He signed. He had no idea what he was supposed to do. He couldn’t do anything until he figured out what he was doing with Lady Whistledown. But he just couldn’t ignore Pen anymore. Because she would always be there.

And that was the problem. He loved her. He would always love her. And not Pen his best friend that he loved. No. He loved Penelope Featherington. And dammit if that wasn’t the answer right there. Because whatever he was doing online with Lady Whistledown would have to stop because he could never give her what she needed. He could never give her all of him because his heart would always belong to Pen.

“You really are the biggest idiot I’ve ever known, and you are one of four brothers.” He jumped at the sound of his sister entering the room.

“Geez El, give a guy a heart attack.” He grabbed his chest. “What have I done now?”

“I just always thought you were a distraction, but maybe I was wrong.” She shook her head as she stared up at him. “Anyway, I got you a present.” She patted him on the chest.

“For me?”

“Yeah, it’s on the couch, hot off the press. It’s a copy of Pen’s new novel. Don’t say I never did anything for you.” She smiled and walked back to her bedroom.

Colin put his glass in the sink and turned off the light, walking into the living room toward the couch. He looked at his phone and stared at the messages waiting for him. He reckoned he would deal with those in the morning when he figured out what he would do with them. He wasn’t sure he had it in him tonight.

He saw the book sitting on his pillow wrapped in brown paper with a note attached. He had no idea why El was gifting him Pen’s book, Pen had mentioned she planned to give him a copy as soon as she had it.

Colin,

Funny how sometimes what you are looking for has been in front of you all along!

Please don’t screw this up! Idiot!

Eloise

Colin scoffed and tore the paper from the book and stared at the cover, He was sure he still understood English but the words on the cover suddenly made no sense to him yet there they were written in plain font and screaming directly at him.

What the fuck!

Dating Lady Whistledown by Penelope Featherington

[hindahoney]

Hey, I go to a combined Liberal and Reform shul and wanted to debunk some of those misconceptions on your post.

Being Reform/Liberal is not at all, even slightly, about level of observance. We have many, many men in kippot and tzitzit with payot who come to our synagogue to pray every single week. We wear kippot out and about in town, we wear Magen David proudly. We sing our prayers with all of the life and vigour of any Jews. Many of the people who pray with us also attend classes with the rabbi twice per week, in their own free time. I personally study Talmud and biblical Hebrew with my Reform rabbi every week. We have people who keep kosher extremely strictly, more than people who don't. Jewish history is hugely important to us and we honour our ancestors every single day.

Reform Judaism is just about having slightly different values to Orthodox. In shul, we are taught that the difference between us and Orthodox Jews is that Reform Judaism adapts expectations of Jewish people to be reasonable for living in the modern world, whereas Orthodox values tradition and keeping things the exact same way they have been for thousands of years. The rules about electricity use on Shabbat are loosened to allow people with hearing aids to be spoken to, to allow powered wheelchair users to leave their homes, to make sure every Jew has the opportunity to get in touch with their emergency contacts. There is no "better" or "worse" denomination, only ones that fit each individual Jew best, if any.

We still abide by kosher and the teachings of Torah, but we do not place pressure on other Jews to do the same. We do not shun or scold others for not abiding by these laws, and are open-minded to the possibility that they have very good reasons for not doing so.

We adapt some traditional ceremonies, such as holding a B'nei Mitzvah for non-binary children, and adapting conversion ceremonies for trans and non-binary adults. Jewish law is much more de-gendered in a Reform setting, with the same expectations and freedoms afforded to both men and women. Many of us choose to keep to traditional gendered roles and expressions, but queer Jews are celebrated even though they are different.

We are absolutely not Jewish "in name alone". A Jew is a Jew is a Jew. Some of us are very very religious and frum, others are not, but every Jew is always welcome at our shul, because this is a community space that does not ask any Jew to 'prove' they are Jewish enough to join in with our customs, and pray with us during service.

I am disabled and queer, and due to my circumstances I must choose how to live my life Jewishly in a way that suits me. I would not be able to do nearly as many mitzvot if I tried to meet Orthodox standards -- because my needs for care and assistance would break the laws of shabbat, and I could not live up to gendered Orthodox standards very easily as a non-binary person. This is why I choose to pray at a Reform/Liberal synagogue instead of an Orthodox one -- I am more able to do mitzvot in a Reform/Liberal context. While I know there are many Orthodox synagogues that would accept me anyway, it's always a case of trying to work out which congregations I can feasibly become part of, whereas with Reform Judaism I know that I will almost never find any difficulty or judgement.

Being Reform is just another way of practicing Judaism. It isn't lesser, and it isn't less serious, or less religious, or less frum. Really, we are just like you. I think the world would be better with less segregation between denominations. Anti-Orthodox sentiment makes me sad, but I very rarely encounter Orthodox Jews who respect Reform Judaism for what it is. A lot of us don't feel safe in Orthodox synagogues because we are shunned there.

I understand feeling more comfortable in a reform shul because of their gender or sexual identity. Though it has changed pretty drastically in the past few decades and there are many more groups to help gender non conforming and queer people feel more comfortable in orthodox spaces, there are still many who hold strongly to gendered traditions.

However, I need to point out that orthodox Jews do still wear hearing aids and use motorized wheelchairs and pacemakers. If it is a medical necessity it is permitted. In any case, I do not forsee anyone judging someone else for using a medical device on Shabbat.

Thank you for sharing. I do feel like this cleared things up for me!

[star-wanderer]

The end of the Universe.

Not a book review, more an essay on what the books brought to me. Warning for longposting.

So recently I finished a book by one of my favourite authors, Becky Chambers. "The galaxy, and the ground within" was the final book in her Wayfarers series, more a set of loosely connected stories told in one collective universe than the typical linked series of books detailing one main story. Compared to some of the other stories in the series that I read years earlier, I cannot say that this felt as impactful or momentous when I finished it, but that isn’t to say it lacked meaning to me either.

Chambers writes stories that, in my opinion, grasp beautifully the intricacy of living in a society and being alive. To a greater extent, I would argue that her writing is about what it means to be human. The first book of hers that I read was actually not the first in the series. I will come back to "the galaxy and the ground within" later, but I want to talk about one of her earlier books first, the one that really hit home for me and changed the way I saw the world. I first picked up “A closed and common orbit”, a story about an AI designed to assist with living on a ship being transplanted into a human-shaped body. She isn’t recognised by most as a real person with rights or her own autonomy, and she doesn’t identify with, or feel comfortable with the body she now inhabits. She has no legal papers that can easily apply to her or her body, limited capacity to travel because of a lack of documents, and generally no systemic support from the government. And underlying all that, she feels adrift in life now that she is no longer able to fulfil the task she was originally programmed for and is trying to seek meaning in her existence.

To me, the trans metaphor was very clear from both the language used in the book, and the shape of the concept it was presented in. I thought it was both a beautiful way of shedding light on the issue, while also changing the perspective just enough to possibly circumvent the cognitive dissonance that comes with our pre-established notions with modern language involving the trans community and transgender people. Something that most people aren’t consciously aware of is how much phrasing, word choice, and packaging can affect or sway judgement based on established ideals. By simply changing how an idea is presented or phrased, two completely different reactions can be obtained from the same people. I felt that this was cleverly used in the series to present the issue and the struggle of just trying to fit into life like everyone else in a relatable and understandable fashion. I don't think that it should be a struggle that needs to be explained, but there it is.

We follow Lovelace, the AI, in choosing a new name for herself, through her struggles in trying to figure out her place in the world without simply taking orders from others, and her struggles with feeling comfortable with her body. Lovelace, or Sidra, as she renames herself, repeatedly expresses a disconnect from the body she inhabits and her mind. The language used would be very familiar to people with similar struggles, but still coherent and easily parseable to a reader without that knowledge. The wording highlighted the clear disconnect between Sidra, the identity we were following, and the body she lived in to mimic a human. She didn’t feel comfortable or at home in the body she used, and made adjustments where she could to her environment instead to help her feel more comfortable. She couldn’t change the circumstances of her creation, but she could learn to unwire her old programming and form new habits of her choice, accepting as well the consequences of those choices. At one point in the story, it takes giving up control of the body to return to controlling a ship, Sidra’s original purpose and a goal she strives towards for most of the book before Sidra comes to appreciate what having a physical human body allows her to do. It is the first moment in the book that Sidra identifies the body she had been using as her own, and not just a form made for her, signifying an shift in thinking. Additionally, as a mass produced AI on the market, Lovelace, now Sidra, was being exposed to things and experiences beyond the imagining of a shipboard computer. Through the text, I sensed a certain connection as well to people who at some point in their lives are made to step out of their small corner of the world and are shown a whole new life that they never imagined possible and now have to readjust their way of thinking about the world. Our world has certain trends, cultures, and expectations of us for whatever roles we were born into. Almost everything is set up for us to slide into these roles and not change, but not everyone can fit in neatly into the boxes society has laid out for us. Sometimes by choice, sometimes by circumstance.

The book doesn’t just tell Sidra’s story of learning about herself beyond her core programming, but there are other quieter stories in the background. But they all weave together to become one tapestry of lives and experiences that constitutes living on a society with other people and making the space around them more comfortable and better for people. Pepper goes to great lengths to help Sidra adjust to being human, and Sidra makes a friend named Tak who introduces her to tattooing, to parties, and helps her discover herself. Pepper’s fix-it job doesn’t work strictly by money, she also trades in simple favours such as food discounts and medical checkups in return for helping them out. There’s a general air in the stories of how although there are always people with less pleasant intentions or with less common sense than is good for them, most people are kind and making their way through life by making the space around them better, and helping others in the process.

Which brings me back to "the galaxy, and the ground within". In this book, Chambers writes us a simple story on the surface about a group of weary travelers who get stuck at what was meant to be a pitstop on their travels when a tech failure shuts down all planetary travel. Three travelers and their two hosts are stuck together in what is basically a small hotel with nothing to do other than twiddle their thumbs and wait for the authorities to do their thing.

That brings me to the diversity in the series. Chambers uses the canvas of a galaxy-wide community to introduce diversity of cultures and race/species to us, but even within species there is diversity based on their origins, their parents, and their personal life choices. There is a great deal of emphasis throughout the series placed on the importance and impact of the choices one person makes about how they want to live their life. I wouldn't say it is more emphasised in this story than others, but I think you cannot talk about a Chambers book in her Wayfarers universe without praising the racial and cultural diversity.

When we talk about diversity and representation in our current media, it is still a frustrating conversation with people at times about why they should see different faces and identities there. But something that I've heard across a range of ages and generations from people about science fiction is "Where are all the aliens?" or "Why aren't there more aliens?" The cognitive dissonance I mentioned earlier really comes to bear here, and Chambers makes full use of it with her cast. Even for culturally savvy and well-travelled people as our main cast in this story, we still see that the world they live in is so big that they still don't fully and completely understand everything. These are people who are well travelled, well informed, and people who even make a point to go out of their way to know more about other places, cultures, and people, and they still acknowledge the massive gap in their knowledge of each other's races when they meet.

Some characters lean heavier into their culture of birth, some mix fluidly wherever they go without a particular distinct culture that they call their own, some pick up things from all the places they travel, some change their minds as they grow and see new things and decide to leave some things of their past behind them. But ultimately people decide how they want to live and who they want to be, and others make the choice to respect that. People understand, in this universe, that you cannot live without encountering people very different from yourself and that accommodations must be made for them. Some amount of thoughtfulness is expressed by everyone to at least take into consideration that different people need different things, and that even within a race, no two people are the same. Not everyone is going to agree or like some differences, but ultimately a conflict also isn’t going to resolve anything and non-confrontational methods are just preferable, so people make spaces for different things or make spaces as accommodating as possible. It’s a philosophy I firmly believe we could do well to adopt and remember today.

One last thing that I came to realise after some thought is perhaps a final click of why I like reading Chamber’s books so much. In her works, her characters communicate with each other in a way I feel we should all do. Sometimes there are gaps intentionally written in the conversation where the wrong things are said, or not said, sometimes things still don’t work out even after all the words have been said with careful thought, or sometimes people still don’t agree at the end, but her characters still talk to each other when they have a problem and do their best to clearly communicate things and clear up differences and clarify to reduce misunderstandings. Even if they are of different opinions, the characters understand that at least effort was put in to consider the thoughts of the others. In a universe as diverse and far ranging as theirs, they need to do their best to be clear and precise in what they mean, while accounting for differences in language and culture and levels of understanding; not to simply expect or demand everyone else rise up to their level of comprehension, but to raise others up together with them. They vocalise their problems, because acknowledging an issue openly is the first step to getting the problem resolved between them. They ask for clarification and ask for forgiveness when there is a mistake, because mistakes happen and that is understandable and easily forgivable. But to commit a misdeed intentionally when it could have been cleared up or done with more thoughtfulness is a much harsher mark against you. As someone who spends so much time listening to others, this is something I wish we did more often. Kindness and thoughtfulness aren’t a high expectation, and they shouldn’t be in a society so diverse. We shouldn't need to touch the stars and populate the galaxy to realise that we need to be kind to ourselves and our fellow neighbours, whoever they may be and wherever they may come from.

If I've omitted mentioning stuff from the books or avoided specifics, please understand that this has been largely just a rambling loose connection of thoughts from me that I spent a few minutes making graphics for because I love the colour purple and the graphics make me happy. I had a lot of thoughts rattling around after finishing the final book in a universe I loved existing in so much. I feel happier for having written this all our and put it out there, so yeah.