#but also her sisters are... expected to be Issues. although again my cousins have apparently already offered to be body guards for her lmao | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

robininthelabyrinth · 4 years

Note

If you're still doing prompts: Nie MingJue has a kid. IDK how this affects anything else, but the kid loves A-Yuan whenever they meet while Xichen and HuiSang spoil them relentlessly.

Lan Xichen admired the world for its diversity: how different lands had different accents, different foods, different melodies, different customs, different superstitions – the differences added color to the world and made it more interesting. After all, without differences, how would anyone ever know that the sweet smoothness of Gusu’s Emperor’s Smile paired beautifully with the spicy food prepared in Yunmeng, or that the nasal intonations of Lanling were pleasantly charming when put against his favorite childhood songs?

Still, there were some cultural idiosyncrasies that, admittedly, he thought had less merit than others.

Qinghe’s notorious reluctance to share personal information, for instance.

It was one thing when it was not knowing exactly how old a person was, or what their given name was, or things like that – it was another thing to find out, well…

“Did you know about this?” Lan Xichen asked Jin Guangyao in an undertone, even though the dumbstruck expression didn’t give him much hope. “You were his deputy, once…”

“You’re his childhood friend,” Jin Guangyao pointed out. “And you didn’t know.”

“Well, yes, but that’s outside the sect, whereas you were a guest disciple…never mind. It’s not important.”

“Not important?”

“It isn’t.” Lan Xichen straightened and moved forward, waving to get Nie Mingjue’s attention from where he was yelling at Nie Huaisang, much to the evidence pleasure of the baby in his arms. “Da-ge, your child is beautiful.”

“Is she?” Nie Mingjue asked, glancing down at the infant with a frown. “How can you tell, under all those layers? All babies look the same to me.”

Lan Xichen found himself smiling in amusement. It was good to know that Nie Mingjue hadn’t changed in personality, even if – even if –

“I must admit I hadn’t known that you were expecting a child,” he blurted out. “Or that you, uh…”

“Were capable of carrying one?” Nie Huaisang asked innocently – a bit too innocently, the brat; he’d obviously known that his elder brother was, physiologically speaking, an elder sister.

It wasn’t as if Lan Xichen wasn’t aware that Qinghe had a tradition of recognizing what they called ‘misaligned reincarnations’, a male soul accidentally reincarnating in a woman’s body or a woman in a man’s or even something else altogether; it was only that he’d thought he would have noticed it.

Apparently not, given the casual way his sworn brother had been feeding the child earlier.

“Er-ge is right: she really is quite beautiful,” Jin Guangyao said, coming close with a smile. His fingers reached for her, then paused. “Take it from one that knows, da-ge; I’ve seen plenty of babies before – she has very auspicious features.”

Nie Mingjue snorted. “I’d rather she had auspicious meridians, but it’s too early to tell…why do you keep twitching like that? Do you want to hold her or something? Just take her already.”

Jin Guangyao found himself with a baby in his arms and a surprised expression, albeit one that quickly faded into a smile that seemed a bit more sincere than the previous one. Lan Xichen wished his sworn brother wouldn’t feel the need to put up a façade with everyone. “Oh! She’s very light…how old is she?”

“Old enough,” Nie Mingjue said with a shrug, and there was that Qinghe reticence again. ‘Old enough’ probably meant she’d had her first month birthday. “We’re just calling her Baobei until we think of a name.”

Of course they hadn’t thought of a name. The Nie were hopeless. Nie Mingjue in specific; Nie Huaisang probably had lists of names.

“Does she…” Jin Guangyao started to ask, then stopped. At Nie Mingjue’s irritated expression he coughed. “You’ll have to forgive my unfamiliarity with how it works under the circumstances – is she surnamed Nie? Or do you use her father’s…?”

Nie Huaisang’s face spasmed in something that vaguely resembled rage for the half-second it took for him to hide it behind a fan, which Lan Xichen didn’t understand and which made Jin Guangyao frown.

“No father,” Nie Mingjue said. “She’s surnamed Nie, nothing else.”

“Not as if we’ve left much of the other side alive,” Nie Huaisang mumbled, and – oh. That’s why he was angry.

That was a very good reason to be angry.

Jin Guangyao abruptly turned as white as a sheet, which made Nie Mingjue reach over and catch him by the shoulders with a frown, saying, “Meng Yao, if you drop my infant child, I will drop you off the walls. Do you know how much effort it takes to get one of these? Quite literally a pain in the ass.”

Lan Xichen had been about to say something – he didn’t know what, but something necessary to vent the emotions in his heart – and it was all abruptly cut off by the sudden swell of amusement; Nie Mingjue’s sense of humor had always been like that, a perfect deadpan that you only belatedly realized was deliberately making fun.

“Let me hold her,” he said instead, and accepted the small child into his arms. She mostly looked annoyed with all the jostling, the tiny little scowl already demonstrating her Nie heritage. He hoped for her sake that all her features were the same. “Da-ge, you really don’t leave any room for the rest of us to compete with you, do you? You took first place in Phoenix Mountain even though you must have already had this little one in tow.”

“Don’t think too highly of me,” Nie Mingjue said. “I hadn’t even noticed at that point, though it was late enough that I probably should have...anyway, I didn’t take first. They only said that because they didn’t want to give it to the Jiang sect.”

“You were about equal with a third each,” Jin Guangyao said. He was still too pale, still upset; Lan Xichen didn’t blame him. Especially since it had been his plan that had…still, it was evident Nie Mingjue had no interest in discussing it, and it was better to follow his lead.

“About equal is still second place. There weren’t any rules against using demonic cultivation.”

“There will be now,” Jin Guangyao said. “Although I suppose it’s unnecessary, with Wei Wuxian now holed up in Yiling.”

Nie Huaisang hummed from behind his fan. “Didn’t Lan-er-gongzi go to Yiling recently?” he asked, almost purposefully casual. “What did he think of it?”

Lan Xichen blinked. Nie Huaisang was getting at something, but he didn’t know what – the Nie sect hadn’t made any statements about what had happened with Wei Wuxian in the immediate aftermath, something rather uncharacteristic of them. He supposed, looking down at the babe in his arms and calculating time since Nie Mingjue’s capture at Yangquan, he now knew why: they had been preoccupied.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “He didn’t say much, though I think he was pleased to see that Wei-gongzi was doing well.”

“He didn’t encounter any issues?”

“Issues? No. What sort of issues?”

“Oh, I don’t know. We all know how righteous Hanguang-jun is. If there was something fishy going on, he would have felt the need to act, wouldn’t he?”

Nie Mingjue rolled his eyes, clearly understanding better than they did what Nie Huaisang was getting at. “You just want to get more baby presents.”

“Baobei deserves all the presents,” Nie Huaisang agreed peaceably. “But she also deserves peace of mind, don’t you think?”

“It’s never too early to think about the future, da-ge,” Jin Guangyao agreed. “If you leave relatives outside, you never know when they might come to make trouble.”

Lan Xichen’s heart gave a pang: Jin Guangyao had been one of those relatives from the outside once, and he knew it still pained him even though he was now safely recognized as his father’s son.

“We can go with you, assuming you want her to meet them,” he offered. He wasn’t entirely sure whether Nie Huaisang and Jin Guangyao were suggesting meeting the remaining Wen sect members or implying that Nie Mingjue should simply put the remaining Wens to death to avoid having to deal with any problems, but he figured it was better to simply pretend they meant the nicer option. “It’s bad luck not to honor relatives, if there are ones that you can tolerate. Anyway, I don’t believe even the Yiling Patriarch could stand up against all of us – or that Wei-gongzi would, if we came with a child to meet her relatives.”

“I’ll think about it,” Nie Mingjue allowed. “If they really are all old people and children, non-participants, it wouldn’t be a problem to recognize them to some extent. It’s better to have more cousins rather than less, after all.”

Lan Xichen recalled a brief reference his brother had made to a child he’d encountered at Yiling – how close it had been with Wei Wuxian, who was infamously rabid in the defense of those he considered family no matter what official pretense had to be put about between him and the Jiang sect.

“I think,” he said, “that that’s an excellent idea.”

#mdzs #nie mingjue #jin guangyao #meng yao #lan xichen #nie huaisang #trans!NMJ #tw: implied rape #my fic #my fics #padawan-lightningstarborne #baby da-ge #baby dage

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giorno-plays-piano · 4 years

Text

The Spider's Bride Part 3

Pairing: spider!Bucky x Reader

Warnings: yandere, obsession, stalking, forced marriage.

Words: 2422.

Summary: Whoever your stepmother sold you to, he wasn’t as honorable as she claimed.

Part 1

Part 2

P.S. I just remembered I haven't explain arachnids' family ties yet - even though Bucky says he has "sisters", they are actually his cousins, daughters of his aunt. Since the ones of his kind had always lived in a very big families, cousins were considered "sisters" and "brothers" because of their closeness to each other.

_________________

You spent the next two weeks in your chamber again - apparently, Bucky's spells were truly very poweful as you slept the whole day after returning home from the nursery. He even had to have a check on you, but the healer assured him you'd be alright soon. Bucky had to be more careful from now on.

However, he was rather surprised you didn't cry after your awakening and said nothing to him about your visit to the town. Judging by the way you behaved, maybe you were not as shocked as Bucky expected you to be. He was so relieved.

Arabella was visiting often. She didn't enter your rooms as a precaution - she said it was too early for that - but stayed right behind the doors, either singing or talking to you. Despite being reluctant at first, as the days passed, you talked more and more about everything you wanted to know. A part of him was jealous. In the end, he could tell you of all the things you were curious about as well, but you refused to talk to him much. Arabella asked Bucky to be patient. In the end, it was him you considered her captor, not her.

The more time you spent with her, the calmer you seemed. You started eating better, sometimes even complimenting him for the food he brought you directly from the surface; the man heard less and less of your crying. Eventually, you even started to move within the house to borrow new books from the extensive library Bucky made exclusively for you. Of course, he still kept his human form whenever you were with him.

"Bucky, we discussed a few things this morning with Arabella." You said to him when you brought back empty dishes from your room and started washing them despite Bucky protesting it. "That potion I asked you to give me the first day when you brought me."

He stiffened at your words since he knew perfectly what potion you were talking about. What on Earth Arabella was thinking?

"She told me how your spells work and how humans can get addicted to that. I understand why you don't want to cast more charms on me." You rinsed the large silver dish and put it to the side to let it dry before storing them in the cardboard. "But she said that if you added a three drops of love potion to my drink in the morning, it may ease my worries."

"Dear Lord." He grunted, taking away your cup and clenching his teeth. Maybe his sister was an expert in potions she had been preparing for decades, yet he couldn't believe she offered you something like that right after telling him to not use magic.

"Please, Bucky. She said it's safe."

"Oh, and how would she know this? I don't remember her treating any human females for long."

Controling himself was rather complicated at this point, but he knew he was overreacting. Undoubtedly, his sister would do nothing to harm you in any way. He just didn't trust the methods he knew nothing about, and risking your health was out of question.

You sighed, taking the apron you stole from your betrothed off and folding it neatly. The more you stayed here, the more acceptable your life seemed to you, and sometimes you hated it with all your heart. Your bed was nice and warm; your food was always ready for you when you became hungry; your room was reserved purely for you, and no one could enter it without your permission; you had many gorgeous dresses your stepmother could never even dream about. Although the thought of Bucky in his true form still made you feel disgusted, you couldn't wish him to die anymore. More and more you thought someone like him didn't deserve it just because he was ugly. Regardless what your instincts were telling you, he treated you better than any human did, didn't he?

You had a better life down here since the times your mother left, and thinking of that hurt.

However, you did want to wipe off the memory of Bucky chasing you the day your stepmother brought you to the cave. Sometimes you saw his eight long dark legs in your nightmares. This was what you talked to Arabella today, voicing your concerns to help you do something with it. Maybe if you could erase this, your feelings towards the man you couldn't escape would change faster.

Arabella didn't agree to wiping off that picture out of your mind as the spell that she would need to cast was unpredictable at best and could take half of your memories. As you knew little about magic, she spent some time explaining to you how the charms worked and how they affected both arachnids and humans. Indulging yourself into taking too many soothing spells sounded like a bad idea now, and you understood Bucky's reluctance to cast them.

Nonetheless, she offered you a better way to ease your worries. Love potion didn't bring the ones of your kind any particular harm, though it wasn't powerful enough to keep you in love for a long time. However, a small dose of it could keep your worries away, the woman said. If you and Bucky agreed, she would ensure the potion to be made perfectly.

But he just had to be so goddamn stubborn! You learned that despite his scary appearance and the fact that he'd been through the war from its beginning to the very end Bucky was a hopeless romantic. He probably hoped the issue would be solved somehow purely by itself. As much as you would like it to be true, your mind refused believing that marrying an arachnid wasn't frightening.

"Listen, I know you care." You rubbed your eyes with the back of your hand, turning to him. "But I need help. I know soothing spells aren't safe, so we need something else. Please, let's try this out. If you see I don't react as I should, we'll stop right away. What harm could 3 drops of potion bring, anyway?

He groaned at your persistance, but you weren't giving up just yet. You spend half an hour talking to him purely about the potion and the possibilities it could bring you until the arachnid gave up, surprised you stayed with him for so long by our own will. More than that, Bucky was content with your desire to get rid of your fears and even change the way you thought of him. Maybe it was for the better. Maybe trying giving you a few drops of a potion would help.

When he let you drink water mixed with potion, he was afraid to see the immediate changes, but nothing happened. You stayed in your room, reading the new book Arabella brought you. Your cheeks weren't heated; you gaze was focused on the text; your relaxed body wasn't shaking. It seemed perfectly okay.

Tomorrow morning he gave you three more drops as his older sister had prescribed, and nothing had happened after that, too. Bucky wasn't even sure it made sense to keep giving you the potion, but you said you were feeling a little better, so he believed you. However, the third day you spent solely in the library, not even locking yourself in your room as usual. Apparently, Arabella's advice had been way more useful he had anticipated at first.

The forth day you suddenly asked him to show you his true form. You wanted to give it a try, you said. If you got scared, he could cast a soothing or sleeping speel anyway. Since you were persistent, Bucky eventually gave in, but it didn't end well - you vomited on your own shoes at the sight of his horrifying spider form.

The morning of the fifth day Bucky had fought his desire to pour the whole bottle of potion into your drink and finally see you smiling at him.

The seventh day was better since his sisters visited, taking human form. They brought you gifts - ivory hair comb and hand mirror, pearls and laces. Although you tried refusing their presents because you felt ashamed you could give them nothing in return, they laughed it off: while human traditions required the family of a bride to pay the dowry, arachnids' custom was quite the opposite. You thought the reason was the lack of females in their society, but Bucky's sisters assured you it had nothing to do with it. Actually, they had adopted this tradition from the dark elves who had been their mates from the ancient times. Arabella also told you while the kingdom you belonged to was patriarchal, theirs wasn't much so. She said that despite having seven children - quite a normal thing for a female arachnid - she wasn't the one who would always take care of them as her husband was equally resposible for the brood. He fed them, bathed them, taught them, and brought them to bed just like she did. It sounded almost insane to you.

Then you returned to talk about their marriage traditions, and sisters were excited to tell you how their husbands courted them before they gave their woves. Apparently, all of them except Bucky had been already married.

"You know, the good thing is the courtship period isn't restricted by any laws." Dahlia, the youngest one, said. "While it lasts, a suitor and his family should pamper future bride. When my daughter will grow up, her betrothed will bring her gifts, too."

You tried your best to think of them as humans. Then the talk of their families was much less scary to you as you imagined them wearing beautiful laced silver dresses on the day of their weddings just like women of your kind did. Did arachnids wear dresses at all, despite when they took human form? You doubted it. Their large spider bodies could only be covered with two dozen meters of fabric, and moving with those on top would be too complicated.

You sighed when the doors to your chamber were finally closed as Bucky's sisters left. The deep sense of guilt had long settled in your chest. All of them were kind to you. No one had ever forced you to scrub floors or cook before the sun rises to have the breakfast ready when everyone gonna wake up. You had forgotten how the broom felt in your work-weary hands. Even though you did nothing at all, you were fed, clothed and given whatever you asked for.

Why did it have to be like this? If Bucky had been cruel to you, it would be so much easier to hate him and wish him to die. But now you couldn't. He didn't deserve to be detested only because of his form.

Wiping your tears away, you returned to bed and wrapped your warm blanket under yourself.

____________

"You shouldn't creep on her all the time, brother." Dahlia shook her head disapprovingly. "You don't give her privacy."

"She doesn't know I'm watching her while she's alone." When he protested, Arabella shot him a serious glance.

"Your obsession with her will do neither of you any good. Remember, though humans are not as conscious as us, they can still feel the emotions of others. She'll get scared."

"She's already scared!" He barked at the woman, furious, his hands clenched. "I don't change my form even when I go to sleep. I've stayed like that for the whole week! And she's still frightened. She still doesn't let me touch her. Maybe she never will. The only time I get to see her happy is when she's reading in her chamber all by herself, and you're telling me I can't do even that?"

"Do you know uncle had always been watching your mother, Bucky?" His second oldest sister intervened with her quiet and calm voice, her gentle hand brushing against his tensed shoulder.

The man stilled, his angry expression turning terrified in a matter of seconds. No, he didn't know, or rather didn't think of it much. Although his mother died shortly after giving birth to him, the dark obsession of his father with her was... dreadful. Bucky had never thought his feelings towards you could remind him of that. How could it be? Wasn't he much more gentle? Kind? Human?

"Bucky, you're a good man." He heard Arabella whispering to him softly. "You're better than him, you had always been. But if it continues like that, it will get worse. I told you, give her time. Have patience. She has suffered no less than you did, and she can't help you heal if she hadn't recover herself."

"I want nothing but love her." He said in desperation, covering his face with his huge palms.

"Then trust her. Look, she got so much better she didn't even cry when we came. I know you want her to jump into your arms, but it just doesn't happen that way."

Miria patted his head gently and nodded, agreeing to her older sister. They had slowly regained their huge and shiny spider-like forms right in front of the house Bucky lived in, strangers walking the street nearby paying them no attention as it had been a common magic ritual.

"I have to remind you my husband had spent half a year courting me." The youngest sister said, trying to cheer him up. "And he belongs to the same kind as us. Didn't stop me from believing he would be a terrible husband, though."

Bucky forced a faint smile. It was true, and he remembered how desperate the guy had been when Dahlia refused walking with him in the forests again and again. But she wasn't scared of him; she didn't hate him because he had eight nasty long legs making a terrifying sound when he walked. It was different.

He felt tears gathering in his eyes and blinked, quickly gathering himself. Bucky wasn't pathetic to the point he could goddamn cry in front of his own sisters.

"Thank you for your advice. I will do whatever I can." His voice sounded tired when Arabella dropped a kiss on his cheek and motioned others to follow her to the street.

Soon he was standing outside all by himself, watching the lamppost's flickering light. The nights were growing colder, and he shivered, turning his back to the black gates and marching straight home. He didn't know by the time he entered the hallway you had already consumed one third of the bottle with a love potion Bucky stored in the kitchen.

__________

Tags: @finleyjayne @alexakeyloveloki @helenaeisenhower @villanellevi @hurricanerin @void-hoechlin @abyssaint @navegandoaciegas @chris-evans-indian-fanfic @ladyacrasia @iheartsebastianstan @rosalynshields

#bucky barnes #dark bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #dark bucky barnes x reader #yandere

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sepublic · 4 years

Text

Understanding Willow!

Big surprise- ANOTHER great episode!

You know what, let me just try to process what happened, by going through the beginning and from there! Firstly, it’s funny that the show confirmed that Amity is only tolerating Boscha and Skara at this point (and I guess some of those other friends), and she’s making it pretty clear to them as well- At BEST, her expressions are neutral around them! Honestly, Boscha and Skara’s parents being friends with Mr. and Mrs. Blight makes sense, it’s messed up but not surprising that they’d use their kid to try to establish connections with OTHER families! I have to wonder what Boscha and Skara’s parents are like… We know Boscha’s mom is, well…

Also, I was wondering why Dana confirmed Skara’s name, and now we know- It’s because she’s slightly plot relevant in this episode! I love the details of the literal butterflies being converted into birthday invitations, that’s always neat… Apparently Skara is also considered ‘popular’, too? Anyhow, I also noticed that the one girl in the Healing Track with glasses, who was also at Amity’s Moonlight Conjuring, got the haircut we saw Matthieu Cousin draw her with! THAT was a neat little easter egg! We also see a young Bo with Boscha at some point, and this is super-pointless… But would their ship-name be BOscha? Boschabo? Bo squared?

Gus’ little B-plot was pretty funny, and I’m glad we’re getting more interactions between the cast now! I love the callback to Sense and Insensitivity, with Not-Dana/Tiny Nose being ‘missing’ ever since her deal with Piniet… I can only imagine what happened there! Honestly, there’s not much for the dude to squash into a cube, but you get the idea! Eda and King competing for Gus’ interview was also hilarious, and DANG IT KING, answer the question- WHEN were you born, I know a couple of people, myself included, who are VERY interested in this answer…! I suspected Hooty would be chosen and I was right, but also not surprised, when Gus quickly regretted his decision! But hey, at least Hooty is happy!

(Also, that Eda dance.)

Luz is such a dork as always, loudly declaring that she’ll stick her face into something random, and then just going NYOOM when Inner Willow chucks her in- I wouldn’t have her any other way, and I love that we have ANOTHER picture of her when she was younger! Season 1B just keeps giving… Although let’s be real, it’s an extension of Season 1, and THAT gave us this entire show and Luz to begin with!

Onto the meat of this episode! First off… WILLOW’S DADS ARE GAY! Honestly didn’t see that coming, but I love it and I wish we got to see more of them! I’m also interested to see which dad (assuming it’s not both) has a Magic Staff, and if it has a Palisman, but that’s another discussion for another day! I WANT MORE WILLOW AND HER LOVING PARENTS, dang it! Parents who put her in Abominations but also still mean well and have Christmas morning with her! I want to see Willow’s house and life at home, dang it! I want to MEET her parents properly, see them react to Luz!

YOUNG WILLOW AND AMITY! YOUNG WILLOW AND AMITY! That’s just adorable… I love their little memories together, and the egg-pit gag was hilarious! It’s also super-minor but I adore that we got a cameo from the librarian during their past memories as well!

Inner Willow, though… At first I thought the flame-being was just, like, the incarnation of Amity’s spell. But then Eda mentioned the Inner Willow, and was like, OHHH… Oh boy. She was out for BLOOD, too! Angry Willow is pretty terrifying, but rightfully so- I’m glad the show didn’t shy over her anger and her genuine grievances with Amity! That had to have HURT, being on fire, but at the same time you can tell that Willow also genuinely wanted to burn her memories with Amity, too… Oof. How many years of pent-up rage and grief, manifesting, before spilling over at this final straw of being burnt? Amity is thematically associated with Fire, which burns plants, and her last name literally refers to a plant disease! You can tell just how BADLY Willow has been hurting on the inside, possibly even hating herself in the process, and I...!

You know, I doubt there’s any substantial connection between Willow and Belos beyond this, but I think it’s interesting to see that they BOTH have glowing green eyes- It’s interesting that such characters are shown (or at least implied) to be powerful, and now I can’t help but imagine Willow meeting Belos, and Willow going HAM for her friends… I wonder if the glowing eyes are a sign of being emotionally repressed, until it all just comes flowing outwards? Given how Belos values control, this may also apply to himself as well… Anyhow, I adore Willow’s friendship and love of Luz though, she has NOTHING against her and I love how even after almost losing her mind she still jokes with her! Willow’s got that scary side, but she’s also sweet and I love the show acknowledging how gangly Luz can be!

Amity! Looks like her dad got to have a voice, after all! Not much to her memories (Makes sense, we’re going into Willow’s here), but we clearly had insightful character moments! I have to wonder, did Amity know about how destroying the photos would destroy the mind as well? We don’t know if she’s in Photo Class and if she knows about the Memory Tweezers, so who knows? Either way that was NOT cool…

Honestly, I like that the show doesn’t shy away or forget what Amity did to Willow! I love Amity with all my heart, but I was definitely anxious to see how these two felt about one another- I had a feeling that Amity may not have totally gotten over her issues and still felt a little harsh towards Willow, which makes sense! She’s a flawed, messed-up character with her own problems. But speaking of problems…

DANG, her parents really made Amity get rid of her friend, on her own BIRTHDAY?! Jeez, at least wait until tomorrow at least… And not a big fan of them apparently deciding Amity’s guest list for her, it’s like they’re using their kid as a means to heighten their social status! Not that I’m shocked, I’ve already suspected this, but c’mon. I wonder how Emira and Edric felt about the whole thing with Amity breaking ties with Willow- Were they concerned for Mittens? Did they know about the parents threatening Willow, or to them did their little sister just suddenly become so cold and distant? I can only imagine how harsh Mr. and Mrs. Blight could be to them, but the twins seem a lot more independent and self-assured; It helps that they have each other!

ALSO, Amity is in the Owl House for the first time! She gets to see how weird the shenanigans are, and I love how she makes the choice to enter a wanted criminal’s home to fix what she did wrong! I really have to wonder what went on in her head, when she chose to burn that photo of her and Willow… SUPER MESSED UP, of course, and I love how Eda just unapologetically gives Amity flack for it! But at the same time, I wonder if that moment was Amity’s greatest regret… It’s unlikely, but perhaps there was the tiny hope in Amity’s heart that if Willow forgot (assuming that was the intention), maybe they could be friends again? Again, not likely- What is more likely though is Amity not wanting Luz to think badly of her and ‘lose’ THAT friendship, but I digress!

Poor Willow… I can only imagine how much PAIN she was in, both beforehand and when her Inner self was on fire! It was cute seeing her young and current Inner Selves interact, but at the same time it hurts because Willow is clearly someone who is used to being quiet and not noticed, and she just bottles up her rage and wrath inside until it manifests! I wonder… Could this be related to her glowing eyes? Could this apply to Belos? I dunno.

I appreciate the detail of Willow and Amity not exactly being willing to be friends again, I half-expected it and it makes sense! Amity clearly regrets what she did, it wasn’t her choice to begin with and she partly did it to protect Willow (Seriously, Mr. and Mrs. Blight were going to abuse their power to RUIN Willow’s education, what the heck?!) but she still let Boscha and Skara bully Willow. I’m glad she apologized for it, it shows a lot of growth on her part… It’d have been easy for Amity to blame her parents for what happened (and she wouldn’t even be WRONG, either) but she still owns up to not only her mistake of burning the memories, but just in general of being apathetic to Willow’s plight!

(Unrelated but I appreciate the Azura poster in her bedroom)

Overall- A fascinating episode, as expected! I did have issues with DisneyNOW constantly cutting the episode off with its Error symbol… And recently, every time the Error thing shows up and I click back in, instead of resuming the episode as always, the website is now forcing me to watch a few ads EVERY SINGLE TIME- I had to watch, like, seven times the ads I normally would have! Near the end it got pretty bad too, although I suspect this is because a lot of people are watching the episode! And I know it only became available at 2:08 AM or so (yeah I was EARLY and checked) but let’s be real here- We’re ALL pulling all-nighters for this show!

(I mean, I didn’t, I slept and woke up at the most convenient time without meaning to, but you get the idea.)

I didn’t touch on it as much earlier, but I love Luz’s whacky antics (or should I say shenanigans?) and how Willow and Amity are just… USED to it at this point! Willow totally expects Luz to try to repair her friendship with Amity, her kindness is just so well-known at this point and she’s so unconditionally well-meaning! Luz could’ve easily relegated the task of fixing Willow’s memories to Amity, who caused the problem- But her friend was at stake! And yeah she also wanted to experience Willow’s memories too, but still.

Honestly, with how much Luz is willing to do for both of these girls, it’s no wonder they love Luz so much! And with Enchanting Grom Fright up next… Even if there is no ‘declaration’, I can see their being the beginnings of a certain crush… for Amity, Luz is an anomaly who came out of nowhere but offers her unconditional love and support and has been changing her life for the better!

#the owl house #owl house #the owl house willow #the owl house amity #amity blight #the owl house luz #luz noceda

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renjunfromthestars · 4 years

Text

slow dancing in the dark

Pairing: Jeno + Reader bestfriend!Jeno

Genre: angst, best friend!au, College!au, Best Friends to Lovers! Au

Song recs: Slow Dancing in the Dark (Joji), Don’t Wanna Fall in Love (KYLE), Best Friend (Rex Orange County), EARFQUAKE (Tyler, The Creator), Apricot Princess (Rex Orange County). CAN’T GET OVER YOU (Joji), Me and Your Mama (Childish Gambino)

Word Count: 3.1k

Summary: You and Jeno have always had a complicated relationship, but time is running out

Jeno is in love with you, but can never express it the way he needs to

Notes: this one kinda hurt me to write ngl,,,I was real sad so I wrote it in one sitting

Please let me know what you guys think!!! I’m still pretty new to writing

---

Up until yesterday, it’s been months since you and Jeno have been in contact. Even though you go to the same school, you can’t help but think that he is avoiding you. If you’re going to be completely honest with yourself, he definitely is. Classic.

When you feel the slight pang of hurt ripple through your chest, you shake your head, trying to snap out of it. You rather not think about him right now. The 15 spotify playlists you embarrassingly curated denoting the emotional anguish of your most recent Jeno-filled-altercation was enough proof you’ve already spent too much time dwelling on this boy, who by the way, you’ve never even dated.

You have other things to worry about. College decisions are coming out soon, and it's absolutely imperative that you keep your grades in good standing. No school wants to accept a student just to find out that they’re a slacker. Better to be more upfront about you really are to the end, rather than to disappoint others later on.

Jeno’s idea of school is hitting his dab pen in the bathroom, and sitting through every class high. And apparently, his idea of romance is not doing anything about your ambiguous relationship, and telling you to break up with Jaemin after only a week into dating. It was unholy unfair to Jaemin, and it's not like he's had almost three years to tell you how he feels, only to always come whining to you when you’re with someone else. It was a little different last time though. This is your last year of high school, and you both know it. It’s unlikely you’ll ever have as much time to be with (or to avoid) him at such close proximity--you’re almost definitely going to college out of state. Jeno has told you many times your ass is smart enough to pull it off.

But that was months ago, things have since died down and there is no use dwelling on the past. You’ve cried enough tears, and you’re tired of waking up with puffy eyes that look like you have been stung by an angry bee hive because of it. According to Renjun, Jeno had stopped sulking in his library during his free period and started playing computer games with him again. See? It’s a thing of the past.

But that didn't stop you from occasionally calling him late at night in your many moments of weakness. I mean, it doesn’t really matter if you’re always met with a dial tone right? If he doesn’t pick up, it’s like you never called in the first place. The end always justifies the means.

You don’t know why it took you so long to figure out that if you really missed him that much, you should have probably just shot him a text instead of randomly calling him in the middle of the night. Jeno, like with school, is never prepared for anything. Even if he picked up, he’d probably just stay silent. It happened that one time he actually did pick up, both of you silent, not knowing to say in the moment (silence could also hardly be considered a phone call).

Looking down at your most recent conversation, you sigh. Even before things became so messed up, you valued his companionship. Things are obviously still tense between you two--you don’t know why you even try. Jaemin wouldn’t be too happy about it either.

...

“It just makes me feel like shit when I hear people telling me like, ‘Oh you stole Jeno’s girl.’. You’re my girlfriend, not his.” Jaemin scoffs. His grip on the steering wheel tightens, along with his hold on your hand.

In an attempt to soothe your angry boyfriend, you rub your thumb over your interlaced fingers soothingly. “I know, I know. I can’t help it if we have history Jaemin, people like to talk.”

“I had a talk with Renjun the other day about you and Jeno, and all the shit he was saying. I thought he was my friend.”

Although he was good friends with both boys, Renjun was admittedly closer to Jeno than Jaemin and there was more to his actions than it seemed just though looking at the surface. He was your closest mutual friend to Jeno, and knew more than anyone about the complicated relationship between you two--maybe a little too well. He respected the decision you made, but it was clear that he thought things should have ended differently.

…

When you first see Jeno outside of the glimpses you see in the school hallway, he looks different. His hair is styled differently, with the wispy blonde hair of his hair framing his forehead quite nicely.

Jeno’s eyes quickly flutter to the ground when you look at him, finding a sudden interest in the rocks on the ground. For a boy who treats his shoes like they’re his babies, he’s awfully unconcerned with the scuff marks that begin to appear on his Air Force Logos when he digs a rock into the ground.

“Where do you want to eat?” you ask, walking around him to open the passenger seat of his car.

Jeno looks like he regrets ever even agreeing to meet you for lunch in the first place, with his eyebrows furrowing and as indicated with the speed in which he gets in his new BMW.

“Chick-Fil-A.” He mumbles, pressing the start button on his car.

“Unbelievable. You want to go to Chick-Fil-A? ” you scoff. “We always go to Chick-Fil-A. Don’t you ever get tired of chicken?”

Granted, it’s been months since you’ve been there together, but you at least expected some variety. There’s been a lot of buzz about the Popeyes chicken sandwiches these days.

“No, but I get tired of you whining about my food choice when you asked for my opinion in the first place.”

And just like that, like old times, you both bicker on the car ride to Chick-Fil, this time about chicken sandwiches.

When you finally get to Chick-Fil-A, you manage to order your food without any major altercations, save a blazing glare you shoot Jeno when he says “Ranch is disgusting” when you ask for it to go with your nuggets.

As you sit down and dig into your food, you attempt to make small talk about your post high school plans.

“University of Buffalo?” you say with a mouthful of fries. “I thought you wanted to stay in state.”

“Yeah I do. But I thought it would be smart to keep some options open”

“Lee Jeno, keeping his options open? Being prepared?” you tease.

His cheeks flush in embarrassment, and you can’t help but admire how pretty he looks, with sunlight shining on his frame. His lashes are long, and with the way the light is hitting his face, his brown eyes are like pools of dark honey.

Suddenly becoming hypersensitive to the boy in front of you, and you quickly change the subject.

“How’s your cousin Jinyoung? I haven’t seen him since I last visited your aunt’s restaurant. He was nice enough to me some free dishes off the menu. I told him he needs any help with his college applications he can ask me.”

Jeno stays quiet, picking at his food as you blab about his cousin. Although you’ve only met him once when he came to visit from New York City, he was a sweet boy and you guys kept in contact. Dismissing it as part of Jeno’s natural propensity towards being quiet, you chatter on for a little while longer until you ask him, “why aren’t you saying anything?”

“Jinyoung died four months ago.” He says in a low voice, lowering his gaze to his lap.

Although there were a handful of others eating their lunch in the restaurant, you can barely process the background chatter as a small noise begins to ring in your ears. “What happened?”

“He was diagnosed with cancer, but he didn’t really tell anyone, ” he said in between sips of his drink . “he was in remission for a while but it came back really bad.”

“He has a younger sister right? It must be hitting her really hard.”

Jeno stays quiet as you fall silent, fidgeting with your fingers on the wooden table. Both of you don’t have much to say as your eyes begin to water in the middle of a Chick-Fil-A.

Jeno places his hand over yours in comfort as he looks out the window. Life is short, and you can’t help but think how much time you have with him.

...

Weeks pass, and although Jaemin isn’t exactly overjoyed about the fact that you’ve been seeing Jeno regularly again, he accepts it as what he understands it is--two friends reconciling and just hanging out, which you are eternally grateful for. The issue is that being friends with Jeno is never being just friends. You two have too much history for that. Everyday, the bottled feelings left unresolved over the years are at risk of exploding at any moment--it’s only a matter of time.

You know you’ve got it bad when you find yourself checking your phone for his messages, or smiling at the thought of him. It’s everything--from the way he picks you up in minutes after an argument with your mom, to the way he drapes his heavy lined jean jacket over you during a particularly cold night. No matter how hard you tried to suppress it, or how much you thought it would work, it was already over from the start. Even earlier when you two acted like strangers and the days you never even thought onnce about him, he was still in your dreams at night. But this time, Jeno is very much real, and alive in the flesh in front of you. And you don’t know if you want to admit to yourself that these feelings for Jeno are also very much real.

You finally decide to tell him when college decisions come out, after you get into your dream University. Graduation was nearing and it meant new beginnings. No matter how deeply rooted Jeno was in your heart, you needed to let go of the things that were holding you back. At least, it's what you’re telling yourself.

“Jeno...” your voice falters, “I can’t keep doing this with you..”

There’s an unspoken understanding between you two as Jeno runs his fingers through your hair to soothe you, and tells you not to cry while you cry. It’s the middle of the night when you tell him you love him. You should be home. You should be with Jaemin.

On the car ride home, Jeno stays silent.

…

Jeno calls you when you get home to check on you. When you start to cry again he stays silent for a moment.“Don’t be sad’ he murmurs. We have a lifetime to figure things out.”

You only cry harder at his words.

When your sniffles begin to subside, and you’re sound asleep in no time (not a surprise to Jeno, considering all the emotional turmoil you’ve faced tonight) Jeno sighs. He can’t help but feel selfish. Every time you tell him you want nothing more for him to be happy, Jeno’s moral compass can’t help but tear a little at the seams. You seem unaware that to him, happiness is being with you. But Jeno can’t have you. He knows that. They say that if you really love something, you need to let it go. But this is something he isn’t ready to let go of just yet.

A few weeks ago when you two went out to eat, he notices that he always lets you choose the song on the way there, and what you want from the menu.

“You know all the things we’re ordering are yours right?”

You begin to apologize, but you’re soon distracted by the special drink menu the waiter drops on the table.

When your eyes light up at the silly lightbulb boba drink you plan to take home to your sister, Jeno just sighs and pays for the meal.

On the car ride home, your shared favorite songs play, and he doesn’t say a word to you. Jeno isn’t the best driver, and you vocalize that by nearly blowing his ear off when he brakes a little too fast at the red stop light. When you grab his hand for support, he lingers a little longer before he lets go. Like usual, he panders around your neighborhood when your house draws close, purposely taking the long way home. Jeno thinks about it some more when he waits for you to walk through the door of your house before driving off.

Jeno always tells you he loves you when it’s too late. When you get your first boyfriend, he gets a girlfriend and tries to forget about you. It’s painfully obvious how he feels when he not so jokingly tells you to dump that “skinny bean pole” for him. He hates himself for taking you for granted when you broke up with said boyfriend around the time his girlfriend dumps him, telling him “I know you just aren’t happy”. For telling Renjun “Don’t worry about it, I know she loves me.” when he tried to warn him about Jaemin’s budding romance with you, even pleaded for him to make his move. It seems that everyone knows what to do with his feelings better than himself, and all he knows how to do is reap the consequences.

He usually doesn’t have much to say. But tonight, over the phone, he tells you that he loves you. He tells you that he sees you in his future, and to him, you’re like no other. Jeno tells you that he knows you never meant to hurt him, but he’s been hurting for a while, and he can’t stand to see you with someone else.

But you’re asleep, and you can’t hear him. For the longest time, Jeno has wanted so badly to show you his whole heart. This situation you two are in isn’t what he wants and he knows you feel the same. He wants to stop being on his Mac Demarco shit, to man up and tell you clearly how he really feels, and maybe, have you be his girlfriend, you know-- instead of messing with some other guy’s girl.

Even through all of this, Jeno has learned a little secret about love. To love you was never about having you.

...

Twirling in your red dress, your arm wraps around Jaemin’s neck. It’s prom, and graduation is right around the corner. Smiling, you think to yourself that you have finally succeeded, the end is near. Laughing, gazing, looking up at a face smiling back. But for a split second, you don’t see Jaemin’s face in front of you. You see Jeno.

The memory of the first day, when his laugh over the phone meant something more to you. His voice brings about some of the happiest times you’ve ever known. Memories of the small moments--late nights--a soft smile--a teasing voice--the warm heat on your face in the midst of a teasing comment, and a boy with a subtle charm to find the way through.

Spontaneous trips and laughter, the occasional periods of silence when the both of you were fed up--people who understood you two, but only enough to get in the way.

The light nod of your head when it first found its way to your shoulder, and the dull feeling of yearning it left when it was gone.

You’re at a children’s playground, and you whine about wanting to fly a kite even though you’re nearly 18. Jeno teases you for being a kid, and for even trying when there was hardly any wind out. When you suggest that he run from behind and try to fly the kite with you, you scold him for the third time that it would only work if he ran slower than you. Jeno laughs and you feel your heart tug a little.

You’re devastated, and when Jaemin asks you if something is wrong, all you do is rest your face in the crook of his neck. You don’t want him to see you crying. You hate yourself for doing this to him. You’re not really a religious person, but sometimes at night, staring into the darkness and slightly trembling, you ask God to make it stop. It hurts. You don’t know how it feels for Jeno. You knew every decision you would make wouldn’t be fair to anyone. What do you do? How will you know? Will you ever know?

You don’t want to admit that might have known all along. You know you’ve known all along. To you, there is no one like Jeno. There is no one like him you’ve ever met that has made you feel this way, and if you weren’t with him, then you would spend your entire life searching in vain. You want to be with him so badly, that when you think about it, your heart grows impossibly heavy. But at the same time, you feel free. The timing is never right. You’re with the wrong people. You’re doing it all wrong. He’s doing it all wrong. We’re doing it all wrong.

You can’t stop thinking about him in the most difficult way. When you suppress him consciously, he shows up in your dreams, smiling, glowing. Ruffled hair, eye smile and all. You can’t help but think about him every night, and when you see something that reminds you of him. Jeno reminds you of everything sad, everything hard, and at the same time, everything easy. He makes your heart feel so heavy, but also at peace. When he told you that you two had a lifetime to figure it out, you want to believe that if it was meant to be, it would happen. But that’s the hardest part. You don’t know what will happen.

Right now, you know one thing, and you know that you love him. You love him so much it brings you to tears. It makes your hands tremble, your body tremble, your heart tremble. You have such a love for Jeno that even if it wasn’t meant to be you wouldn’t care. You want Jeno to be happy. You want him to be healthy, not do stupid shit, and you want him so badly to love you too, and it would be okay if that didn’t happen. You’ve been delaying it-- you always say to yourself and everyone else you need time. You’ll sit on it, think about it, leave it for later. But it’s been months, and years, and you’re right back at the starting point.

Everytime you tried to convince yourself you weren’t in love, it felt like a dark shadow would cast over you. Because every time you tried to convince yourself you weren’t in love, you realized every bit of you knew you were.

Jeno is your best friend, part of your happiness, and he is your first real love. It’s something you can say with a certainty you’ve never had before.

…

Jeno can feel his heart tear into shreds when he sees you and Jaemin so close. You look beautiful. So beautiful. You’re going away to your dream college and he’ll be many, many miles away from you. Jeno’s cheeks prickle with warmth as his eyes begin to dappen. His heart sinks, just to bobble back up with an expected disbelief. He thought he knew what was coming.

“There are other things to do without me.” he had told you in the car that night, but the truth is, Jeno doesn’t want to do anything without you. He’s loved you since he met you, and he’s not quite sure that will ever change.

It always hurts. but that's because love isn't perfect, Jeno thinks. He may move on days from now, maybe weeks from now, and could realize he never really loved you.

If he truly loves you, it's never going to be okay, but it will get better. It will get easier. He will be able to go on.

You might creep into his mind years from now when he finally thought he was over you.

And that's okay, that's what love is.

It's when his memories come back to him 5 years later, when he wonders how you're doing, maybe if you think about him a little too. But it won't hurt nearly as much and he will realize all that heartbreak did something to heal him.

It's always hard, he thinks, as he walks out of the Prom venue. But he promises himself that it will always get easier.

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ciceroisthefamilycat · 3 years

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My Fiery Heart reread response (my Indigo Spell one here, my first-time Fiery Heart one here from 7.5 years ago)

before I get into it, I remembered looking up the Iolanthe coven name Sydney used; that wasn’t something I looked up until after reading it the first time though, so I didn’t realize the fairy court connection to Sydney recommending Zoe do her literature assignment on Midsummer Night’s Dream... I’m very certain it was an intentional reference to that opera now (even though the purple flower meaning was enough on its own)... if they get around to adapting this one, I half want to see Amberwood Prep put on a production of MND where Jill is helping with the costumes and Zoe gets to play Titania or something; I never got around to reading Richard III (Zoe’s original pick) but it’s interesting that free will/fatalism is apparently a major theme, and that Richard contrived to have his brother Clarence sent to the Tower of London...

also, I’m not sure if I cared about “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane all those years ago, but I got a thrill seeing it referenced this go around.

we get the first namedrop for Cicero (though we had heard about his propensity for killing birds and some other mention in the earlier BL books ETA, 7/19: “My family had a cat back in Utah that I was pretty sure was more responsible than Angeline” pg 31 TGL

Anyway, gosh Sydney makes bad decisions in this one. And it’s not because she has too much to do- she has no real outside strenuous challenges to protecting Jill or her group this go around. The friend group actually had to decide “yeah let’s go hunt down a Strigoi in LA” for there to be a major action scene. I realize she’s in her late teens and the burdens put on her are unfair, but she’s a great example of someone who thrives under pressure and falls apart when she’s given too much free time.

The switch to dual narrators was unnecessary. It wasn’t bad, but it was clearly only to set up for the big cliffhanger at the end, and so feels a bit pointless in this one. Btw, Rose didn’t lose her spirit link into Lissa’s mind after Lissa went on antidepressants. Now admittedly, the chemicals in Adrian’s mood stabilizers would have probably worked differently, or maybe Richelle was trying to retroactively make things more consistent (since alcohol could affect the bond), or maybe it was “Adrian and Jill’s bond is less established, so Jill can’t break through like Rose could”... but the sudden decision mid book (with no repercussions- Adrian doesn’t even bring it up to Sydney to be like “hey, one of your main concerns about having sex is taken care of”) is so pointless and really goes to the minimal page-time of the larger ensemble. I said it the first time I read the book, the absence of Kristin and Julia, and Micah, and even more important characters like Angeline or Trey is so frustrating. I realize Richelle couldn’t write a book that was 900 pages long, but I would have gladly taken any of those characters instead of the completely unnecessary Terwilliger/Malachi romance. Especially to see Jill’s reaction to getting to be a more typical high school human, since I think she would have gotten even more attached to Amberwood than Sydney did. I also just... really, the Alchemists decided to have Sydney’s bio sister on campus... pretending to be a cousin... while she was playing sister to Jill? I get they kind of backed themselves into a corner, but weird. That being said, I was happy to have Rowena and Cassie around. (give me Adrian and Rowena being wlw besties excellence to make me really happy)

Sydney’s coven initiation taking place in chapter 2, then she meets Inez (who gives her the books on charms)... and we never see a witch other than Jackie again in this book? Honestly, why bother with writing the initiation at that rate? I still like the cloak they made Sydney though. On reread, there’s the randomest bit where Trey’s like “is Neil even really British” and I wonder if that was a dropped storyline where Neil was faking. Olive and Nina are still pleasant characters, and I liked that they had a “unique” background, but knowing how those stories end was kind of a buzzkill on reread. Olive, especially, deserved better.

This is another one where I forgot quite a few events- Adrian getting drunk and the pawnshop (I think I remembered that obliquely, but not so much on it), or the trip to Texas (which actually came before the pawnshop but oh well). I was happy to finally get some actual Christian content again, although I regret we didn’t get more from Sydney & Rose or more Sydney & Lissa. On Adrian’s mental health storyline... I am less impressed by it than I was the first time (though I didn’t remember being super-impressed, but according to my first review?). I do actually like Adrian being insistent, once he’s started taking meds, that he’s going to continue, but the diagnosis of bipolar disorder doesn’t actually feel like it fits? I will say, I find Adrian’s “chicken or egg” pondering over whether spirit causes mental illness or mental illness means a predisposition to specializing in spirit is fascinating (though it’s probably for the best Richelle never actually answered it).

The way Adrian spoke (or thought) about Zoe really pissed me off. Like, one, you’re an adult, stop antagonizing the sister of the girl you like and just be cordial (which is less suspicious than suddenly acting like you and Sydney don’t get along at all), and two... Adrian’s super protective over Sydney after realizing the emotional abuse Jared heaped on, but somehow doesn’t realize that this fifteen year old has been spending time with said father’s attention solely focused on her for ages now, and he has no sympathy for her? Instead of seeing Zoe being like “Sydney shouldn’t have to provide for you all the time” and being like “aww, that’s a nice protective sister instinct even if she needs an attitude adjustment” he taunts a 15 year old about drinking from her the way he did to 20-something actual-predator Keith. He could have engaged yet another Sage sister in talking about his awesome car on the drive over, or at least made other good faith efforts.

The dabbling stuff made me more uncomfortable this time around (I think). Especially Sydney comparing her getting Keith’s eye ripped out to Adrian’s assault of a human girl... that was some real false equivalency on Richelle’s part. But other parts of it, like “oh here comes Adrian to save the day and at least he’s changed from these guys he used to hang out with (oh, look at that convenient statement that even back in the day Adrian wasn’t on the same level of bad as them)” was really frustrating, or the fact that Adrian was very deliberately withholding information from her in his own chapters and it made me question his trustworthiness in her chapters. Or the “oh, hey, he made the concession of getting treatment for his mental illness, so all is forgiven” handwaving. Like, Richelle brought this in to be an obstacle to their relationship, but it’s addressed so quickly (with maybe a pittance effort of later being like “oh, at least Adrian didn’t take advantage when Sydney accidentally absorbed some Moroi endorphins- he learned his lessons!) that it doesn’t merit the actual consideration of so important a topic Idk. I do feel like I enjoy the Sydrian relationship more in this book than the others, but I also have some huge issues with it.

Adaptation-wise, I think genderbent Adrian would definitely mean a change to the dabbling storyline (yes, women can be sexual predators, but I don’t think this storyline would be maintained with different social expectations). Honestly, give me an Adrian who, instead of having victimized someone, doesn’t immediately fully grasp how upsetting this idea of vampires preying on her species (and risking exposure) is to Sydney... Adrian being like “it isn’t sexual, those guys would never consider sleeping with a human” but the consent even to give blood still being critical to Sydney. And you know what? Let Lissa “compelled a guy to almost hit himself over the head with a baseball bat for molesting a Feeder” Dragomir have a spirit freak out moment of rage and go off on these subjects of hers the way that was deserved (and then once she cools down, maybe she can’t punish them fully, but she uses it to leverage their royal families’ agreement to the Family Rule amendment). And just finish that law by the end of the season, so that when the Alchemists pull out Sydney and Zoe, they’re actually closing down the whole Palm Springs operation in a rage. (if I remember correctly Alicia kidnapped Jill between books 5 and 6, but that was a stupid plotline imo- let Sydney and her coven take care of Alicia in the downtime of this book instead) Let Rose figure out that Sydney and Adrian are in love- she’s smart and she would pick up on that; let her celebrate them and encourage them to be happy together. Also the “Sydney and Adrian get three days at an inn to sex it all up” was stupid... like I’m happy for them but am I really supposed to buy that they could afford all that time away from Palm Springs?

As bad as I feel for Syd, and Adrian, and Eddie, and Jill, and Jackie at the end of TFH, I do remember that I’m going to feel worst for Hopper. I’m sorry that demon dragon Calistana has my heart and I remember one scene from Silver Shadows featuring the little guy prominently...

#I'm a VA girl

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pxrxllel · 7 years

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Talking to the Moon LXII (02/12/17)

Warning: LONG post incoming. Trigger warning for abuse.

I’ve recently come to an extremely harrowing realisation that I could very well have spent my entire life as a victim of mild emotional/psychological abuse. Before I dive into the explanation and the evidence and the aftermath and all that jazz, I’d like to firstly make a disclaimer.

I’m not writing this post to garner pity or put the blame on anyone else or shift the responsibility of the things that happen in my life. I’m simply exploring this theory as a way to put a name to my experiences because doing that allows me to deal with it in the right ways. It’s like how you can’t treat a disease without knowing what it actually is, because all you do is treat the symptoms and that’s never enough. So I’m not crying woe is me my life is shit and everyone treats me badly because that isn’t the point of this at all. I’m just trying to be as honest as I can, based on my perception of reality, which I’m not sure is all that accurate if I have been in a bubble of abuse all my life.

Anyway, back to the real issue.

I’ve always found it difficult to navigate relationships in a healthy way. Every other area of my life is set: I’m not financially anxious, I do well in school, I perform at work, yada yada. The only persistent and major source of anxiety that has always been present in my life is my relationships. This has ranged from my family relationships to my friendships and to my romantic relationships. Each one of these has been a point of tension at some point in my life.

When I was younger, my sister and I were deliberately physically and verbally abusive towards each other - we stopped this behaviour as we got older. My parents have always been emotionally and psychologically abusive to me, although I’m not entirely sure that’s intentional on their part - I’m going to discuss this further down. I have been emotionally abusive to my friends and in my relationships. I have always found it difficult to make friends and connect on an emotional level, and when I got older, this translated into social anxiety. I have cycled through bouts of depression ever since I was 14. I have extremely low self-esteem, and no one believes when I say this because I’m apparently very good at keeping up the image of confidence, but I wholeheartedly see myself as a blemish on the face of the earth. I have been through five relationships in five years, and some of them have been sexually and emotionally abusive.

Those are the symptoms, if you will. Some of them are facts and some of them are claims. Like I said, the claims are only valid as far as my own perspective goes, because other people may disagree with some of them, especially when it comes to intentionality.

I’m going to provide a definition of emotional/psychological abuse: Emotional abuse is an attempt to control. The perpetrator of emotional abuse uses emotion as his/her weapon of choice. Common signs include: criticisms and unfair judgement, mean jokes, shame and guilt on the victim’s part, threats, causing self-doubt/gaslighting, refusing to acknowledge the hurt, financial abuse, undermining and dismissal. All in all, any attempt to control someone else by reducing their self-worth.

For the purposes of my explanation, I’m going to stick to two sections: my family (specifically parents) and my relationships.

Family

In my family, there is my father, mother, and my younger sister (we are nearly three years apart). I grew up mostly with my mother and my sister. My father is constantly working overseas, but he visits for about three months total out of the year. It’s been like this as long as I can remember, and I remember as a child, I used to be pretty sad when he left, so we must have had some good times together although I don’t remember much. It seems that as I got older, I began to realise that the relationship between me and my father was far from what I had wanted it to be, and this has been a source of anxiety for me for a very long time, probably around the past ten years.

Before I dive into this too deep, I should probably detail the family history that may be relevant. My father and his mother have a dysfunctional relationship; they can’t really communicate without fighting. They’re always stepping on each other’s toes. I have not seen his mother in years because my father has isolated us from his family and our cousins.

My mother and my father don’t have what I’d call an ideal relationship either. They don’t really fight, but my father is definitely controlling over her. She doesn’t have a source of income so he has a financial monopoly. He belittles her and calls her names (it makes me sick to hear) and he refuses to help her out. For example, this morning she asked him to take two minutes to wash the dishes, and he replied that he didn’t have time because he needed to be online so he could win an auction on Facebook (this is so immature of him and it happens constantly, it’s ridiculous). He expects her to be at his beck and call, when he’s away he always calls and if she’s busy in the garden or cooking he expects her to drop what she’s doing because she’s not supposed to have a life outside of him and us anyway. He criticises what she spends money on, when he never gets criticised for his frivolous purchases. I could go on, but it’s really saddening that my mother just lets herself be pushed around like this. Sometimes I lose my cool at him and my mother tries to placate me but I stand my ground, even though she says he’s got good intentions deep down and has sacrificed so much for us. I’m not sure where his intentions are at all, especially considering his dysfunctional family, so I can’t say if he’s actually bad or deliberately abusive.

Anyway, as a result of what I’ve seen and how he’s made me feel throughout my life, I try to keep this relationship as distant as possible so it’s healthy for me. That comes with its own set of challenges, but I’ll get to that later. I’m just going to go into a couple of examples that show why I believe he is emotionally abusive (or at least I have felt abused/neglected) towards me.

He likes to make my decisions for me. He criticises me when he disapproves of my choices. I remember when we were deciding what I would study at university, we were looking through the prospectus and I dog-eared quite a few majors and he flipped through and removed the bookmarks of all the ones he didn’t approve of and said I wasn’t allowed to do those. When I was deciding which school to do my exchange at, he did the same thing. He was very passive aggressive for days when I chose San Diego over Berkeley or UCLA. He’s just passive aggressive and sulky in general when things don’t go his way. I’m afraid that he’ll be this way about all my big future life decisions, like moving for jobs and going to grad school.

He objectifies me. This may be in part due to his cultural upbringing, though. My parents grew up in Asia and I grew up in a Western culture, so that conflict has been a source of tension for me at times as well. Ever since I was little, he would talk about me marrying into a good family and learning how to be a good wife. He points out when I’m wearing makeup or revealing clothing and interrogates me about who I’m trying to impress. He shows his colleagues and peers pictures of me and gloats about how ‘good-looking’ I am and basks in the compliments they give me. All of this makes me very uncomfortable. Whenever I try to say something or do something that highlights how I’m more than just a face or a body, he shuts me down and belittles me, “Oh you actually study? I thought all you do was talk to boys. You’re cooking? That’s a good quality, men will like that.” It’s disgusting. Both my parents tell me I need to lose weight and have too much acne. They’re constantly looking at my face to watch for progress in the same way that a scientist would scrutinise bacteria under a microscope. It makes me want to vomit.

He constantly tries to make me feel guilty. Filial piety and respecting your parents’ authority is a really big deal in Asian cultures. So he constantly makes a big deal when he doesn’t get any attention or if he feels like I’m not ‘respecting’ him enough. He firstly starts talking in a baby voice and whining about it like a kid before he gets to the angry stage in which he may explode and yell, or he gets passive aggressive and seethes silently. This comes up in conversations usually about our family, or about what’s going to happen in the future when my parents retire and start getting sick and old. I get the impression that he expects me to give up my goals just to look after them, just like how they (moreso my mother) did in a way. That’s not going to happen, so... Tension alert.

Something that both my parents don’t like for some reason is when I socialise or go out with my friends. They roll their eyes and say, “You’re going out again? You’re always going out. You never spend any time with us.” My father will grovel for days about me not paying them any attention, I’m pretty sure it’s an attempt to make me feel guilty.

They’re both also very oblivious to my mental health issues and are in complete denial. I have alluded to being depressed before and all I have received is judgement. “You are so lucky and you have everything you need and you are so much more privileged than we were at your age, there is nothing to be depressed about. If anything, I should be depressed... blah blah.”

That’s pretty much all I have to say about the issues in my family relationships. There are other little things, such as how my sister ignores me in public, but they don’t hold too much weight in the grand scheme.

I’m just going to quickly take a moment to talk about the effects of these family relationships on me. They’re very stressful and I feel isolated because I can’t talk to anyone about anything that troubles me. I’m expected to sit in my place and behave, basically. The concept of saving face is also paramount to Asian culture, so I’m not allowed to be myself because that’s embarrassing to them. All in all, it’s suffocating and toxic, regardless of whether they are doing it intentionally. Of course, you always hope for the best in people and I doubt they really are doing it deliberately, but either way it’s not a good environment and I’m not sure how to handle it.

Relationships

As a result of having felt alone and neglected and criticised all my life, it’s contributed to my lack of self-esteem. I know I have difficulty with self-validation, but I’m not sure if I’m necessarily more clingy and need more attention than the average girlfriend - but it wouldn’t be a stretch to say I guess. I can say beyond reasonable doubt that I’m more insecure and have lower self-esteem than average, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to begging for validation. This is also probably why I stay in relationships that aren’t good for me.

So I’m twenty years old and have had five relationships of varying lengths. The longest was nearly two years and the shortest was two months. I’ve had about a month’s break in between each of them. All of them have been good people with good intentions, but I’m not sure why some of them have been so toxic.

Looking at this through the lens of abuse, the first one to get out of the way was the sexual abuse one. I was never raped or anything like that, but he pushed my boundaries constantly and asked me to do things I didn’t want to do after I repeatedly said so. This, I can be pretty sure, constitutes sexual abuse loud and clear. I left that one pretty quickly, only to run into a different relationship that was better in all the ways, and I think that one was the healthiest (for the most part).

I’m not going to specify, but I have been insulted and have had it dismissed as me being too sensitive or not being able to take a joke - which sucks because I’d like to think I’m good-humoured. I have been made to feel bad about things I didn’t mean to do. I have been told my feelings aren’t valid and shouldn’t be taken seriously. I have been threatened emotionally: “You will make me feel bad if you do x or y”. I have been made fun of. I have been objectified. I have had past mistakes brought up later as ammunition that I thought was resolved. I have had people try to tell they know me better than I know myself. I have been left hanging.

In general, my relationships have been much more positive than negative, but for the purposes of identifying where these issues come from, it’s important for me to highlight the effects that abuse and neglect have had on me as a person and how that’s affected other contexts such as relationships. I know that I deserve better, but I don’t really know what that looks like, to be honest. I just know that if I allow myself to keep falling into these traps, it’s likely that I’ll never be happy and healthy in a relationship, so this is one of the things that I need to focus on. I know that I’m also guilty of unhealthy behaviours in my friendships and relationships, and I’m very good at being emotionally manipulative, but I think this probably stems from these underlying issues that have permeated my life for as long as I remember.

I could be completely talking out of my ass and catastrophising the situation as depression is wont to do, but this is something that if it’s true, is going to have a very deep impact on my quality of life. This is definitely something that I should probably talk about in therapy, but I’m just laying out all my thoughts here to make sense of them.

#Talking To The Moon #ramblings #personal #abuse #emotional abuse #psychological abuse #family #relationships

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rickwayneauthor · 6 years

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*A State of Immanent Corruption*

You will thus understand my surprise when, after I was rescued from the attic in Whitechapel, the police informed that I had a solicitor and that he had secured for me an exit from a lengthy prison sentence. The solicitor, a Mr. Bentley, told me he was employed by another attorney, an American named Olcott. When I asked why me, he said he didn’t know, that he was instructed merely to secure my release, which he did. I was taken under police custody to a steamer ship, which I had never before seen, and placed immediately aboard. There, I was introduced to the Countess Constance Wachtmeister, a drab woman done up to her neck in stiff Victorian dress—all black, including gloves and laced boots. She was, she told me, the personal assistant of “HPB,” which is how Madame Helena Blavatsky preferred to be called, and that by the terms of my release, I was now indentured to the Theosophical Society, who were responsible for my moral welfare. She said it with gravity, and as soon as she finished, without so much as a handshake, I was swept to a small cabin, the door was locked, the ship’s whistle blew, and we set sail for India.

We stopped in Cairo. I have never been so hot. I saw the pyramids and so much more squalor than I had presumed could exist in the world. The British seemed about as interested in their empire as a dog its fleas. But of course in that, they were hardly unique. Within the week, we set sail again from a port in the Red Sea. Meanwhile, despite numerous comings and goings, no one could tell me why I was there. I was given books to read, which I ignored. When Countess Wachtmeister appeared the next day to test my command of their contents, she was positively beside herself with fury that they had been unopened. I tried to explain to her that no one had suggested there would be a test, certainly not the wordless Arab boy who had handed them to me as if they were the plague. I was scolded like a schoolgirl by a woman less than half my age. But I took it in silence. I was a stray, just then passing the straits of the greatest desert in the world. I felt it best to do as I was told—at least until I was in a position not to. I suspect also that I was beginning to learn patience. Constance Wachtmeister was a droll woman, and in that way, her opinion of me didn’t matter in the least. I read the books she provided—even correcting the Latin grammar in one, which seemed to have been written by a four-year-old—and passed her stupid test. (The subjects included, among other things, alchemy and the sacred marriage.)

It was, I later learned, a prerequisite for joining the inner circle of the Theosophical Society, of which I was now a part—whether I wanted to be or not. But it was still several weeks before I met the infamous HPB, who was already at our destination. After landing at Bombay, a great mess of a place, the Countess and I were transferred to a locomotive that took us across the continent to Madras. Some miles outside the city—a journey of several bumpy hours by carriage—was a compound that had recently been built for Madame Blavatsky and her followers, and that is where all of us lived. By the time the Countess Wachtmeister and I arrived, retinue in train, we were exhausted and at each other’s throats. Madras was as sticky as a swamp, and as such, I removed some of the ridiculous outfit in which I had been dressed, an outfit barely fitting the dreary climate of London and certainly not the tropical subcontinent. Although I showed no cleavage, the Countess was aghast at my bare neck. I tried to explain to her that across the whole of Europe a bare neckline was considered quite proper attire for a lady less than forty years before.

It is not the case that manners and mores have gotten uniformly liberal with the centuries. They have waxed and waned unevenly. Concordant with its reputation, the Victorian mind was obsessed with all things proper, but this did not mean an absence of sex. Married couples were expected to engage in the act vigorously and often, in only to populate the Empire. But still, the infamous social repression of the age was not a myth, and it found its fullest and most fecund expression in the Countess Constance Wachtmeister. She was an Englishwoman by upbringing and half by birth. Her father was French, I believe. Her parents died when she was very young and she was raised by her aunt in Surrey. She was married to her cousin, Count Wachtmeister of Sweden, at the ripe age of 27 and moved to that country, where he was Minister of Foreign Affairs. After bearing him a son, her husband died, leaving her a widow at 33. In accordance with tradition, she wore black for the rest of her life. It seemed to infect her. She was not only entirely prudish, she was also relentlessly dour, the kind of woman for whom nothing and no one was ever good enough. When I said we were at each other’s throats, I meant it literally. On more than one occasion, I thought seriously of strangling her, if only to make it impossible for her to speak.

As we approached Ardor House, Madame Blavatsky’s manor, we both bore a long list of grudges against the other, accumulated on the long journey, that we expected the Madame to arbitrate as soon as possible. Alas, she was not home. In her stead, amid the usual, constant menagerie of hangers-on, we found scads of barefoot, dark-skinned workmen hammering up the tile floor. It was a strange sight. Ardor House was brand new, radiant even, having been recently built by the wealthy leader of a sister society in India expressly for our glorious leader, whom he greatly respected. What’s more, there seemed to be nothing wrong with the thing. The floor was a bit stark for my taste, being made of black and white marble tile. But it was perfectly flat and quite cool to the touch.

“Admirable qualities in a floor,“ I told the Countess. “Not a person.”

Apparently, HPB had had a fit at the sight of it, taking it as a great insult. She didn’t set a single foot on it, which means she had not actually entered the white-walled manor that had been built for her and made it clear she never would as long as it required treading such a travesty. Then she left to join the mendicants and gurus perambulating around the town.

The issue, I would come to understand, was doctrinal rather than material. Ardor House had been designed from flag to foundation on the principles of spiritualist magic promulgated by the Society and its cohorts. In the ceiling of the foyer, for example, was a fresco adorned in gold leaf that depicted the fundamental forces of the universe—sun and moon to the north and south, woman to the east, man to the west. In her hands was a chalice. In his, a dagger. To enter the foyer, one had to pass through seven white arches corresponding to the seven faces of the divine. The arches bisected a narrow nursery—it being the tropics, much of the building was open to the air—planted thick like a white witch’s garden. And on it went like that: the grand library was in the shape of a star, the baths were oriented to the poles, crystalline windows in the ceiling traced the path of the sun whose rays seemed to penetrate every corner. If there were shadows in Ardor House, they were faint. The floor, the very ground on which one walked, was checkered to represent the our place in the cosmos, a view that HPB expressly rejected.

Men have always understood—and HPB would’ve agreed—that we can discern the nature of the universe from the facts of our circumstance: that we spend half of each day in darkness, for example, and that correspondingly there is both suffering and joy in the world. For all pre-modern thinkers, it was impossible to conceive of the world as existing anywhere but on the border between great warring realms—stuck, as it were, in the middle. For the Norse, Earth was Midgard, the middle realm, just as in China, it is the Middle Kingdom, with heaven above and darkness below. So, too, in Christianity and Islam. Hence the stark, black-and-white tiles of the floor were the stage on which every drama of the house would take place—a reflection of the universal condition.

Madame Blavatsky asked how anyone could know this. After all, the scholars of antiquity believed that the earth was a bowl or a plate or sometimes a marble covered in a shroud of fixed stars, like a canopy through which holes had been poked so as to let the divine light peek through and remind us even here of the glory of God. Yet, once it was clear that was not the case, that each of those tiny twinkling lights in the sky was not a pinprick but its own distant sun, our ancient conception of ourselves being in the middle of things was never updated. That view was, like that old canopy, fixed in place. It was also, HPB noted, quite psychologically pleasing. Being in the middle suggested that everything was in some way about us, that we were the focus of the great conflict, that we were the star players and the earth the field of sport upon which every gaze in the universe was fixed.

Hardly, she said. The night sky was not a shroud but a seemingly infinite well of darkness—cold and barren and immeasurably vast. We didn’t seem to be in the middle of things at all. We seemed quite far flung in fact. True, our planet was tilted and turned every day between light and dark, which certainly suggested a struggle, a fact born by the common occurrences of suffering and joy. The earth seemed to be neither heaven nor hell, as the old religions assumed. But if our planet were the focus of the conflict, she said, if we were the front of the war, why could we not see the forces of light? Instead, there is only darkness. Darkness on all sides. An immeasurable quantity of it. Our planet was swimming in an ocean of darkness. What’s more, what grace there was seemed only to come by our hand. This, she said, was the problem of evil. It seemed quite direct. Evidence of malice was patent and universal, while evidence of grace was scant and indirect. If the divine were acting on earth, it was only very weakly.

But the crown jewel of her argument was what she called the state of immanent corruption, whereby life survived only by consuming other life. Anything that remained still, that took no act, as the gurus in India urged, inevitably succumbed to rot, and that this applied even to the mountains and rivers. All things not only suffered, they degraded. Where then was the influence of the light? The divine was incorruptible and unchanging. It’s power flowed from itself. Everywhere on earth there were agents of evil. One tripped over them outside the door. Yet, how rare was the saint? How rare were his qualities: knowledge, love, courage, wisdom, and compassion?

The truth, she argued, was that we were not the middle kingdom. We were not the center of everything and never were. Neither was the earth in Hell, which is specifically a house of torture. It was instead in the realm of corruption. It was in the realm of the dark lords. Adrift in some distant corner, we had cast off their shackles some thousands of years before, just as the ancient texts had taught us, but we had not been strong enough to embrace the light, which is why things stand as they do, where the earth spends half of every day in light and half in darkness. But earth is not the focus of the fighting. Earth is not on the front. It is a dismal little planet well behind enemy lines. Which means we are the resistance. And that is why, throughout our history, it has been so easy to question the existence of the divine, for the forces of light do not erupt here as they do elsewhere in existence. Being so far removed, they can do little but slip us help from time to time, as through pinpricks in a canopy.

Although HPB wouldn’t live to see it, science would eventually come to vindicate her view of the universe, at least in its significant facts. Our lady’s views on “immanent corruption” presaged the laws of thermodynamics, which were being formulated at the time but of which she had no knowledge. She also suggested that the distant dots of light in the sky were, like our sun, symbolic of acts of rebellion and that the true nature of a dark universe must be cold, bleak, and unradiant—what we now call dark matter. And in as much as our cold, dark universe had been created—forged was the word she used—by the lords of night as a font of suffering from which they could power their universal aims, that suggested it had a violent beginning, a big bang. This latter observation is especially important since it contradicted the prevailing, chauvinist view of the time that the night sky was the reflection of God: glorious, eternal, infinite, and unchanging.

Such arguments about the fundamental nature of the universe had been raging for decades both between members of the Theosophical Society as well as between the society and its peers. Some of them had gotten quite heated. By the time HPB arrived in India, there was considerable bad blood, and in typical Blavatsky fashion, she would not be bested and took no quarter. To tread that checkered floor, certainly to live on it, was a tacit admission of defeat. She simply walked away.

The Countess and I found her in a cramped apartment in the city lounging on a pillow wearing nothing but a single loose gown.

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from the opening of Bright Black, the fifth and final installment of my full-course occult mystery, FEAST OF SHADOWS

art by Chris Cold

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dudence-blog · 7 years

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Dear Dudence for 19 October 2017

It has been a month of very early mornings, but a light is at the end of the tunnel. Maybe it’s a train, maybe it isn’t, but regardless I’ll be toasting it with a Bittermilk No. 1 Old Fashioned. Because I’m classy like that! [email protected] if you’d like a recommendation on the best alcohol options for day-drinking or Facebook’s Dear Dudence page if you’d like to tell me how much I such when compared to Emily Yoffe (swoon).

My mom will be 91 next month, and until recently she has been in remarkably good mental and physical health. She lives alone by choice. About a month ago, she collapsed in the street, was taken to the hospital, and spent three weeks in ICU. Her doctors diagnosed her with dehydration. She is home now and has fallen twice, once spending the whole night on the floor. She has a Life Alert and will not wear it. She has a cellphone and will not carry it. (“Who would I call?”) She has a walker and cane and will use neither. She is signed up to get groceries delivered and will not use the service. We asked her to look at an assisted-living apartment, and she refused. We found a home health aide who could drop in a few times a week and she said no. We are at our wits’ end.

Dear Aging Parent, first off you have my deepest sympathies as you and your family tries to deal with this; it is incredibly difficult. Second off, ignore Newdie on the calling your local Adult Protective Services. They do not exist to do a wellness check or make sure she’s okay. They’re there to protect the elderly from abuse, neglect, or exploitation. When you’re needing to involve them you’ve progressed from the point where a mutual agreement can be reached, I’m not certain you’ve reached that point. Maybe you and your brothers need to take a step back and respect your mother’s wish to remain in her home. That doesn’t mean you give up on trying to get her to move to a suitable facility, but she’s clearly dug in for the time being and y’all pressing the issue isn’t going to make her change her mind. Trying to force the issue is only going to make your mother’s remaining years filled with resentment. Heck it might even get you and all your siblings in-fighting as you start choosing sides. Ultimately, as long as she is competent to make her own choices, it’s her choice to make. While she might not being living her life the way you want her to, how it might even be best for her, it is how she wants to live. So let’s consider what else y’all can do. She won’t wear a bracelet and won’t carry/use a phone, but you can set up an Amazon Echo to call you, your brothers, a police or fire non-emergency line (they can’t call 911). See if she’s willing to have a couple Echo Dots put in the house so when she does fall and needs help she can try and have it call y’all. Also, maybe look into some smart tags which can identify when a door or drawer is opened; put them on the fridge or kitchen cabinets. That way you can see if she’s getting into the fridge or getting out utensils to eat. Although I wouldn’t recommend a video camera in the living room because I think it’s a bit creepy that would also be an option. What I would recommend though would be a motion sensor so if it goes too long without getting triggered you know to check-in and make sure nothing has happened. Personally, I hope that your mother comes to agree with, at least, having the home-aide drop in.

Two months ago, I started a new position at a small company. This position was a reach for me in terms of experience, and I’m still getting familiar with what’s expected of me and what I need to do day to day. I recently had my first performance review. While there were many positives, there were also several things that I needed to improve, namely being more of a self-starter and “owning” my area of expertise. My superior was nothing but supportive and direct, but I couldn’t help but feel a little upset and embarrassed that I wasn’t doing as good a job as I thought I was.

Dear Dealing with Criticism at Work, if you have a supervisor who has provided you with some useful feedback during your initial performance review consider yourself lucky. NuPru’s suggestion to not feel bad is all well and good, but a great way for you to avoid doing more “damage�� is to take what your supervisor said and act on it. Follow-up on your review and ask what you can do to become more of a self-starter or “own” your area of expertise. For example “Hey boss, this is a project I’ve been interested in starting and I have these ideas for how to tackle it. I think this course of action is the best, but I’d like your input.” Owning your area really seems more about being confident in yourself and your expertise, which is something that experience really is the best teacher. Above all though, try not to let yourself get too wrapped around the axle when getting feedback you think it negative. In my personal opinion knowing what you’re doing wrong is significantly more useful and enlightening than being told you’re doing something right.

A few years ago, I took a job across the country where my large, wealthy extended family lives. I spoke to these people weekly and spent my summers during college in their guest rooms (at their invitation) so I considered us close. I fell for a housing scam trying to rent remotely and had nowhere to stay. Not one of my grandparents, aunts, uncle, or cousins would let me stay on their couch for even a few nights. I ended up getting arrested after sleeping in my car for a week, and was fired after missing work due to being in jail. My car was impounded, so I had to check into a homeless shelter. During this time, my family kind of ghosted me. It took me years to recover, but I’m doing great now. When I stopped being homeless my family just appeared back in my life like nothing ever happened.

Dear Family Ghosted Me, I’m going to go with “no, but” on whether it’s okay to ghost them. On the “no” two wrongs don’t make a right. You don’t need to fake your way through the holidays and you don’t need to reach out to tell each and every one of them how much they suck. Take a break from the family get togethers this year, tell those who ask why and how you felt, but you shouldn’t need to burn bridges to do this. There is a happy medium between “Everything is awesome!” and “I fucking hate you assholes; DIAF”. They weren’t there for you when you needed it, but they’d previously been very open and welcoming and, apparently, resumed that when you were no longer in crisis. I don’t advise ending relationships lightly, and while your ghosting them isn’t de facto ending the relationship (you could always change you mind later) it’s an escalation and the sort of thing which can reasonably lead to the relationship getting seriously hurt. Yes, it was a dick thing of them to do, or, well, not do, but sometimes you have to be the bigger person and let bygones be bygones; just don’t rely on them in such situations in the future. Now for the “,but”. Your letter is leaving out some pretty important information. You’re unclear on how long your duration of homelessness was; you say it took you years to recover, but the excuses your family provided (We were working on a wedding!) aren’t the sort of thing which would take years. Where was your immediate family in this; you don’t mention them so did they leave you hanging as well or did they offer some help? If your family left your homeless and struggling for years and then reconnected with you once you were no longer living in a shelter then go ahead and cut them off; let them take the steps to mend the breach.

In 2011, my younger sister “Sarah” passed away. I am notorious in my family for being one to never show feelings, and my dad is the same way. My sister was 8 years old, and although she was sick with hypo-cardiomyopathy her entire life, her death was unexpected and hit my family hard, obviously. It has been six years and through some snooping in my other younger sister’s diary, I found out my dad routinely thinks about my sister and likes to imagine she is there with him when he is struggling at work.

Dear How Do I Talk to My Dad… let’s talk about you first. I’m actually kind of surprised Newdie doesn’t recommend a therapist because helping a person deal with their grief is where a subject right in the ol’ “should I speak to a therapist?” wheelhouse. As a college student your school probably has a number of readily available people you can speak with to deal with your grief. Despite there being steps, grief is not something you go through, reach acceptance, and then never feel again. It doesn’t really go away, it just hurts less, to a point where you don’t even notice it. At least you don’t notice it until you do, and that can happen at those big moments in life. You’ve moved through several significant milestones recently: high school, learning to drive, dating, graduation, now college. The milestones which remind you that Sarah would be approaching them too had she not died. And as happy as you may be to be growing up and moving through adulthood it’s there in the back of your mind that Sarah isn’t there for this this and never will be. Now let’s talk about your father. He wants to talk about Sarah. He might not know how to, doesn’t know if you want to, or he might be worried about burdening his surviving children with his emotions and feelings over the child who died. I would also like to ask you to consider that maybe your family aren’t having problems coping with your sister’s death. Your grandparents are comfortable discussing her at an appropriate time, according to your sister your father uses her memory as a source of strength when he’s struggling, and your sister, somehow, is cognizant of your father’s actions; did they talk about Sarah? Regardless of their coping though you need to focus on yours. Avail yourself of your school’s resources and give your dad a call.

My ex and I dated for long enough to acquire a menagerie—two cats and a dog. Our split was mutual and amicable, but I am still very much in love with her, and she is aware of this. We agreed that I would keep one cat and the dog, and she would take the other cat. We split at a time when there were big questions about her visa (she is not a citizen and had to return to her country of origin while her paperwork was processed). I agreed to take care of her cat while she was out of the country.

Dear Possessive Pet Owners, your ex doesn’t want the cat. She knew she had a cat and she moved into an apartment which wouldn’t allow a cat. Is it an orange cat? I’m asking for a friend. At best she’s just hoping you’ll make the decision for her, at worst she’s using the cat as a lever to keep you in a state of emotional turmoil. No matter which though she doesn’t want the cat. Develop a course of action (rehome it, take it to the SPCA, arrange an exception to your apartment’s pet limit, put it onto a mining space ship where eventually its offspring evolve into a race of sentient bipedal felines, whatever), set a date where it will happen, tell her that if she doesn’t come get the cat by then you’re going to execute your course of action.

I was wondering if you could direct me to a good book for the partners of adults who have suffered childhood abuse (both physical and emotional). My boyfriend grew up in an idyllic, loving, supportive middle-class family. When I look back, the first thought that comes to mind is “I endured.” He does not seem to understand the level of trauma I went through and is either unwilling or unable to accept it and how it has shaped me as a person. He is an avid reader. I think a book discussing this topic might help him understand what I have been through. Is there anything you would recommend?

Dear Book for Boyfriend, let’s go with A Child Called “It”. “Go big or go home,” I always say. I’m going to be a bit more charitable towards your boyfriend than BadPru. It can be very difficult to process information like that. He might have a hard time reconciling the abuse you said you’ve gone through with what he’d expect someone to be like. I’m also a bit curious what you mean by “unable to accept”, like he refuses to believe it could be that bad, does he not think people could do that to their child, or does he think you’re making the whole thing up. I’m also going to suggest that, as someone who endured an abusive childhood you might not recognize how your boyfriend’s loving, supportive family taught him to support his loved ones. You two might just be on different levels when it comes to what you need emotionally and what he knows to provide. You know your boyfriend better than I do so if you think a book will help, it only costs you like $8 on Prime. Just be prepared to accept that it might be him and you’ll need to determine if it’s a deal-breaker or not.

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