#but unfortunately. this is very much the media we are attaching ourselves to

[crimeronan]

unfortunately i don't think my toh blogging is going to stop anytime soon given that i am experiencing extreme advanced autism about the blorbos and have been for several weeks. i am of course still a gansey ronan hennessy ot6 disasterwomen blogger at my core but probably with a lot more typing posts about characters u guys know nothing about as if u are all intimately familiar already like "when hunter and luz are the skrunkly 🫣 the scrimbo scrongo blorgon horbin themes in their lurgle scenes oughh aaaaaa" this is where the autism is taking me. this is the journey i'm being dragged on. my brain is a highly energetic 200 pound dog running across a field dragging me behind him thru the mud clinging to the leash for dear life all while i'm yelling "YOU COULD HAVE AT LEAST PICKED A DIFFERENT FIIIEEELDDDD" u all get to join me on this journey. to see where the energetic barking mud dog takes us. (almost definitely into a lot more mud.)

feel free to update ur blacklists accordingly

[museofthepyre]

do you know what everyones problem with elijah is? Im new to to fandom and im so genuinly confused as to why people seem to like think elijah is the worst (as in evil) character in the series. like i dont think people find him poorly written, they just, dont like him? which is fine yknow like who you like, but then people act like jedediah is a flawed but good character? which confused me a lot since I actually dislike jedediah more, as he just hurts in a more personal way it feels like. Elijah was sweeping Sydney in with promises of love that he hadnt gotten from jedediah, sydney only accepted that because of the way jedediah had been shunning him for years. It really bothers me that people forgive jedediah for his bad behavior, but then crucify elijah for behavior that while yes was very bad, had been hurting syndey way less for way shorter, and the only reason sydney was that vulnerable was because of jedidiah. Im asking because i am genuinly confused and I cant find anyone talking about the why of disliking elijah, i dont know if im missing something because of personal bias (jedidiahs mistakes that hurt sydney hit much closer to home than elijahs) sorry if this is a bit rambly, Im just very disenheartened to see so many people say they hate elijah when I just dont understand why, you dont need to answer this ask btw its mainly just curiousity

I think you kind of touched on the answer a bit already- imo it definitely comes down to what hits closer to home for any given listener. We all have unconscious biases. We all consume media through the lens of our own life experiences, and… ok ramble incoming

Elijah and Jedidiah both think/ behave in ways that are profoundly human, they represent very real concepts (see my whole Jedidiah= unhealthily distant, withdrawn and cold attachment style, and Elijah= unhealthily obsessive, suffocating and intense attachment style rant). These aren’t your typical innately evil villains, they’re just unhealthy people with warped ideas of love. That is an all too common thing to see irl. I think because of that… many of us can relate one or both of them to people we‘ve known in our own lives… alternatively, we can relate them to ourselves. I’ve heard some people say that Elijah’s actions hit a nerve because of past traumas with toxic relationships… aaand I’ve heard people say the exact same thing about Jedidiah! I think Elijah receives more scrutiny because his actions were… well they were actions. Visible, overt, right in front of you. You can point at them, pick a line from the transcript and say “that right there is bad”. Jedidiah’s wrongs often came in the form of neglect and abandonment, an absence of action, that’s so much harder to pinpoint. Maybe he’s slipping under people’s radars? Maybe more people see themselves in him and have a sense of understanding (which is valid, he embodies some very relatable neurodivergent struggles). Maybe it’s because he steps up and works on himself by the end and we don’t see that from Elijah (yet). Maybe people find Elijah “worse” because he reminds them of a more common negative experience, I’m not sure. One could speculate.

I’ll speak personally as an example of what I mean: I am wayyyyyyy more upset by Jedidiah’s actions. And that’s because of… you guessed it… my own personal experiences and how they influence my perception 🎉🎉🎉 I’ve got BPD, and I have an all consuming fear of abandonment. The idea of loving somebody and then having them suddenly withdraw, avoid you, and treat you coldly all the while providing NO EXPLAINATION WHATSOEVER… just leaving you to spiral and pick apart your own behaviours under a microscope, thinking you must be the problem— it’s a major trigger of mine. I’ve lived it!!! I grew up with it!!!!! It hits a huge sore spot for me and I admittedly struggle to overlook that sometimes when I see him.

Conversely, Elijah… I unfortunately connect with in a much deeper way. My own default attachment style is obsessive, intense, and often leaves me tunnel-visioned and unstable (…BPD), and he speaks a language I understand? If that makes sense. I see so much untreated, pre-awareness me in him. I know what it is to be involuntarily engulfed by an all-consuming obsession/ delusion. He doesn’t scare me, because I know what he’s made of- I see what’s beneath it all when I look in the mirror. Or at least that’s the lens through which I interpret him, I’m sure many disagree and yk what? Absolutely valid!!!!

There’s no one correct way to consume media, yada yada you get the idea, CHNT is unique because no character is intentionally malicious or evil (not counting Adam maybe… Lucille you’re on thin ice) and it’s fascinating how there’s such a dichotomy between the love and hate for these two. I may have swayed a bit off topic I just have many thoughts. I might come back with more later.

Ok rant over 🪱

[lunaprincipessa]

ENTRY SEVENTEEN

This entry is gonna be about what brought me to Tumblr. I only joined recently, this year (2023). I ended up creating a profile after watching Crime Scene: The Vanishing at Cecil Hotel.

I never knew about it before, but ended up learning a lot about the hotel itself, its history, and all of the tragic events that took place behind closed doors.

It's hauntingly intriguing, this docuseries, especially when it told the unfortunate story of Elisa Lam.

As you watch the episodes, it starts Elisa's segment with a post she made on here. She talked about how people can be themselves on Tumblr. She talked about writing candidly. Both of these things immediately caught my attention. She also talked about people hearing your random thoughts and how satisfying it felt to click "publish." Her blog apparently explored an array of topics giving me the impression that she, amongst many others, felt comfortable with raw expression here.

Truth is, this little blog of mine could've started and ended with those positive remarks about the website, but anyone who has watched this show knows there's so much more to it than that - and it all left quite an impression on me.

The viewers end up finding out that there isn't a happy ending for the young Elisa. There's no denying the misfortune that crossed her path, or the fact that the sting of it still lingers today. For anyone that may be unaware, an innocent traveler went missing for quite some time before she was found deceased.

For those who have watched it though, we can all agree episodes filled to the brim with information about the Cecil Hotel, Skid Row, Elisa Lam's tragedy, and the events surrounding all of the visitors and residents over the years makes for quite an experience as a viewer, especially when you see it with your own eyes.

As the show explores Elisa's story, the possible contributing factors to her unfortunate death initially mentioned are:

-the hotel itself having a dark energy

-paranormal activity

-illegal drug usage

-neglecting medications that eventually led to psychosis

-government conspiracy

-assault and murder

-employee wrongdoing accompanied by a cover-up

-plain and simple tragic accident

To this day, people still read and respond to her blog. People still theorize what might have taken place during those final hours of her life. It was almost surreal watching all of this. Lots to go through, lots to uncover.

I couldn't help but notice how the general public and social media influencers flocked to Elisa. No judgment of course, I was one of them. I just wanted to explore that a little more out of curiosity. It was obviously captivating to all of us, but why? What makes us get so involved in these stories that we attach ourselves to complete strangers like loved ones? I'm not saying it's wrong. Just wanting to dissect it a bit to see how it works.

So why do we spend so much time and effort getting emotionally and mentally invested? NEEDING to know the outcome, NEEDING to find the solution for someone we've never met. Again, no judgment but perhaps proof that we are social creatures indeed. Moving forward, I have questions.

1.) Do we want more out of life with an independent investigation giving us that very element?

2.) Do we get a sense of purpose and accomplishment from the participation?

3.) Do we want to see justice prevail because we can sympathize or empathize?

4.) Do we feel connected to the subject after being led to a social media account with multiple, honest and relatable posts?

5.) Do we simply just get drawn in by the mystery of it all?

6.) Maybe any combination of all that's listed above?

The possibilities are endless but I am curious about stuff like this because as scary and as jarring as these types of stories are, we eat them up. I just randomly felt like exploring because the way the human mind works fascinates me sometimes.

While the human mind can fascinate me, the human state can break my heart. Seeing all the suffering on Skid Row was hard. I heard about it, but I admit I really didn't know until I saw it. After becoming a mother, I don't see people in the same light. Everyone is someone's son, someone's daughter. Not that they weren't before, hard to explain. It was also heartbreaking to see tourists happy to visit America, and then having rotten experiences if they even survive the visit. Our country has so much more and so much better to offer...

Parallels, synchronicities, theories, conspiracies, mysteries, and... accusations. I felt sorry for the musician who was accused of hurting Elisa because of the ways in which he expressed himself. Sure, it was dark, but are we all killers for enjoying dark books, movies, music, and/or clothing? He had his life disrupted but I hope he finds strength and comfort in each day that's further away from this particular time period in his life. Hope he has moved on the best he can.

What an emotional roller coaster it was! Circling back to Miss Elisa, if the outcome is accepted or not, it was a bittersweet event. Bitter because she's no longer with us but sweet because her writings have reached hundreds, if not thousands of people, helping them to feel heard and understood, simply by sharing her thoughts. What a gift to leave behind for people to discover. Still, I think we can all agree the preferred outcome was her returning home safely from a fun trip, inspiring her to continue to write.

Leaving us all to ponder and reflect in its wake, we finish the docuseries with yet another wonderful post from Elisa Lam.

"Tumblr, I am so grateful I found you. You remind me the world is big and I have a place in it somewhere."

It does feel nice to have a place to express ourselves, doesn't it? It feels nice to be heard and to have a safe space in general. However, we should also strive to provide this to one another in real life. The internet is always great for going global, but we shouldn't neglect the life in front of us, nor the lives in front of us, including our own.

Elisa also said, "We can be empathetic here. Remind people you are human. If you just listen, you will understand more." I conclude with that.

More thoughts later.

[lightup0nlight]

🌟 ❛Verily, We have sent down the Book to you in truth. So worship Allah [Alone] by doing religious deeds sincerely for Allah’s sake only.❜ [Surah az-Zumar 39:2]

Ikhlaas in worship is to love concealing our good deeds as much as possible, except those that cannot be done in secret, such as the 5 daily salaah. Unfortunately today, especially with the advent of technology and social media, it’s easy for us to do things in public, but difficult in secret.

Scholars said that the true worshipper of Allah is the one that hopes for his good deeds to remain hidden, and that he hates for anyone to find out those good deeds. Someone who strives for ikhlaas so much that he wants only Allah to know about it. Many of the companions radi Allahu 'anhum, despite them being well-known and highly respected khalifahs like Abu Bakar and 'Umar ibn al-Khattab, still tried their best to do secret deeds known only to Allah. Had Allah not exposed them, no one would ever know the excellence and extraordinary good deeds they did.

Another companion, Tameem ibn Aws al-Daari, was asked: ❛How do you pray at night?❜ To this, he got very angry and said:

🌿 ❛By Allah, one raka’ah that I pray in secret in the small hours of the night is more beloved to me than praying the whole night long and then telling people about it.❜

A good way to keep us in check before we publicise a good deed is to ask ourselves: “Am I doing this sincerely for Allah?” Because if our private affairs are not better than our public affairs, then we have a spiritual problem. But whoever fixes his private affairs, then Allah will fix his public affairs, in shaa Allah.

Sheikh Ibn Taymiyyah rahimahullah said that the greatness of something is known by what we attach it to. So know that if we attach our deeds to the dunya, then our deeds will only last as long as the dunya lasts. But if we attach our deeds to the One who is Eternal, then they will never go to waste.

Your sister in Deen, Aida Msr ©

[lovehealgrow]

Are Loneliness and Trauma Linked?

We’ve all been lonely at some point in our lives. Maybe a friend moved away or took a long vacation over the summer. Maybe you moved to a new school and haven’t made any new friends yet. Maybe a relationship you’ve been in for years ended, and you’re living on your own now.

Whatever the situation, we’ve all been there.

What’s the Link Between Loneliness and Trauma?

But is there something deeper when determining who is more likely to experience loneliness? As mentioned before, we’ve all been lonely at some point. But how many of us experience chronic loneliness? How often do we feel alone — even when we are in a relationship or out with friends?

The truth is, the number of Americans who consider themselves lonely is much larger than you may think. According to current statistics, over half of US adults claim feelings of loneliness, and almost 80% of people between the ages of 18 and 24 state that they feel lonely. This is a huge number of people who feel lonely.

But, more interesting is the connection between childhood trauma and loneliness. When we are young, we do not have many relationships. Of course, we have our caregivers and any siblings and family members that may be around. But, suppose we experience neglect, abuse, or other trauma in those developing years. In that case, we are likely to develop attachment or relational trauma, which can affect how we make relationships.

In other words, individuals who experience trauma in their childhoods are more likely to create situations and relationships that result in feelings of loneliness because that’s all they know. We are creatures of habit, and if all we have ever known is detachment and loneliness, then that is likely all we will be able to create for ourselves.

The Cycle of Loneliness

There are some feelings and emotions that can create a constant cycle that spirals you further and further into a negative space. Unfortunately, loneliness is one of these feelings. Often, feelings of loneliness come with feelings of shame, inadequacy, and unworthiness.

These feelings can lead to a very unpleasant cocktail of chronic loneliness and toxicity. Many people who experience chronic loneliness can become depressed and fall into bad behavior habits — such as excessive video gaming, self-medicating, or engaging in superficial relationships. This is even more so the case for individuals who may be feeling lonely due to past trauma. This is because we may feel that we have been ostracized from a group, or we only feel valuable when we can help others with their problems — which leaves our own problems completely unresolved.

Truthfully, it can often be easier (and more convenient) to simply interact with others via social media or other virtual methods. But, people who fall into the habit of distancing themselves physically from others can create a situation in which they regularly enforce their loneliness by only connecting with others online.

How to Overcome Loneliness

Just like any other feeling, loneliness is a completely natural and valid feeling to have. Loneliness reminds us that we are social creatures who value the shared time and companionship of others. This said, no one wants to experience this feeling all of the time — it gets, well, lonely.

We want to build lasting and meaningful connections with our friends, family, and other loved ones and feel loved and valued. So, how can we overcome this cycle of loneliness? There are several ways to break the cycle, and here we’ll dive into a few tips you can use to cope with feelings of loneliness.

Recognize Your Feelings

The first step in overcoming any feeling is recognizing what you are experiencing. Unless you take the time to really recognize and validate the feelings you are experiencing, you’ll never be able to overcome them.

So, take some time to just check in with yourself. What are you feeling? What makes you feel this way? What makes you feel better when you are feeling lonely?

Work on Self-Love

Make yourself your best friend. This may sound strange at first, but it makes perfect sense when you give it some thought. After all, how can we truly love someone else if we don’t know how to practice self-love?

Relationships with other people are crucial to our happiness as social creatures, but there is only one person who will be with you throughout your entire life — and that is yourself.

When you love yourself as unconditionally as you would someone else you can begin to recognize that what you may have experienced in the past and what you are experiencing now isn’t your fault. You are not to blame for your trauma or loneliness, and you deserve those meaningful relationships you are looking for.

Take it One Step at a Time

It might seem intimidating to jump right into meeting new people or getting together with old friends. That is okay. Just take it one small step at a time, and eventually, you will feel comfortable enough hanging out with social crowds that you’ll be able to work on doing so more regularly.

The key is to take small steps. Maybe start off with a text asking how someone is doing or meeting a friend for a cup of coffee. Another great place to start is joining a club for one of your hobbies or a support group for a shared trauma. These can also be safe places where you can meet and connect with others in a meaningful way.

Change Your Mindset

In 2006, psychologist Carol Dweck published a book called Mindset. This book explored the importance of one’s mindset in how they approach and process their life. Dweck brought about the idea of the “growth mindset.” In contrast to a “fixed mindset, “where one believes that their traits and abilities are fixed, a growth mindset focuses on the belief that their performance — in anything — can always be improved.

If you get stuck in the belief that nothing you do can change your feelings of loneliness, you will likely get stuck in your loneliness. If instead, you believe that you can make meaningful connections with others, you will learn to find those connections and overcome your loneliness.

Remember, Quality Over Quantity

You don’t need 50 friends to not feel lonely. All you need is a few solid and meaningful relationships where you feel valued and accepted. This could mean having a partner, family member, or friend that you know you can always turn to for support or a lighthearted conversation.

Whatever quality relationships mean for you is what you should be focusing on. When it comes to combating feelings of loneliness, high-quality relationships will always win over a higher quantity of relationships.

Talk to a Therapist

The final tip is to seek out professional support when you need it. A therapist can be a great resource for anyone who is looking to make change in their life. For example, maybe you want to work on a system that will slowly get you out in the world and making the meaningful connections you are looking for. Maybe you need someone to talk to about what happened in your childhood. Maybe you simply want some additional guidance on the best path to help you overcome your loneliness.

Whatever the reason, a therapist can help you work through any issues and progress towards a happier and healthier life. So, if you are ready to take that next step, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at Love Heal Grow.

[auramindedd]

I Like You - SMAU*

Part 10

CorpseHusband x FemReader - Y/N

warnings: cussing

notes: uhhh,, idk where to take this series, but ima just go w the flow igs 😭 also,, i completely give up on adding the small details like the likes, comments, replies, and the times on tweets so i’m super sorry if it bothers you lmao

it’s also pretty long,, mostly writing rather than the smau, butttt i really like this one 🥺

——————————————————————————

“When’s Rae gonna be home?” Corpse asks, playing with his hands.

“She’ll be home tonight, I just don’t know at what time. Why?”

“Uh... I- I just... I don’t know? I’m kind of nervous?”

“Corpse, Rae is your friend. But if you don’t feel comfortable, I can get a hotel room for you not too far away from here?” You suggest, 100% willing to pay for a hotel room for him if he wouldn’t feel comfortable being here with Rae here.

“I wanna stay here- with you... If that’s okay with you, of course.” There’s a slight blush on his face, it makes you smile a bit.

“Yes, I want you to stay here, too. You can take my bed, I’ll sleep on the couch.” You grab his plate, stacking his on top of yours, taking them to the sink.

“No, no. I can be on the couch tonight, I don’t sleep anyway.”

“Corpse, I’m not gonna have you sleep on that uncomfortable ass couch. Come on, we’ll figure something out. Wanna watch a movie?” He nods his head. You grab his hand, or more so his fingers, leading him to your room.

You turn the lights off, turning your fairy lights on instead. You tell Corpse to get comfortable, fluffing pillows for him, letting him lay back.

You know Corpse would be a bit anxious and nervous, not something you’d ever blame him for. You’re surprised you’re not being awkward or nervous. You’ve been trying your best to keep Corpse comfortable here, making sure he isn’t getting too nervous.

“Can we watch High School Musical? I have the stupid ass songs stuck in my head, childish me is coming...” You ask, not wanting to torture him with such a movie. Well, it’s not a bad movie, but you’d understand if anyone’d want to shoot themselves in the head while watching.

“Of course, baby.” You can’t help the butterflies that erupt in your stomach from the nickname. You sit closer to the TV, wanting Corpse to be comfortable rather than you.

Suddenly, you feel a hand around your waist. Corpse pulls you to him, letting you lay next to him. He looks at you, smiling. You smile back.

“Corpse, can I ask you a question?” He hums, indicating for you to go on. “That one time, you didn’t answer me for two days... You told me it had been because I was too ‘pretty.’ I didn’t believe you, and I still don’t. Why didn’t you answer me, like for real?” You don’t ask this in a bad way either, you’re just genuinely curious.

“I- uh... I’m going to be 100% honest, Y/N, but I don’t wanna scare you away.” He says cautiously, hesitating to go on.

“Corpse, you could never. I’m too attached already.” He chuckles, letting out a sigh.

“I like you. Like, like like you... I liked you before even seeing your face, but after, wow.” Silence. Deafening silence. But honestly, you can hear your fucking smile. You don’t think you’ve ever smiled so hard in your life. “Y/N, baby, say something, please.”

“Corpse,” You look up at him, probably scaring him with your smile. “I like you, too. Like, like like you.” He chuckles, but it’s more of a chuckle of relief. If that’s a thing?

He pulls you close to him, letting your head rest on his chest. You listen to his heartbeat, his breathing, trying to match yours with his. You slowly drift off, your eyelids getting too heavy to keep open.

———

You wake up in Corpse’s arms. He’s gently stroking your side, looking down at you with a small smile.

“Good morning,” His voice is raspier and deeper than it already is. You didn’t know that was possible.

“Good morning,” You say, yawning softly. You bury your face deeper into his chest, snuggling closer to him.

“So fucking cute.” He mumbles, softly chuckling.

After a while of just laying there in Corpse’s arms, you decide to check social media and your messages. Already, Twitter is going crazy, assuming quickly that you and Corpse are dating. It’s not anything you didn’t expect, but it’d be nice if people didn’t jump to conclusions.

You decide to tweet a good morning, feeling good about today. And sadly, very unfortunately, you decide to text back the group chat - something you’ve been dreading to do.

Corpse is there, reading the messages, but you don’t mind.

You kind of, accidentally, and very stupidly put yourself out, but it’s all good, nobody said anything besides Brooke. You all have a drunk Among Us lobby to get to.

After getting ready, Corpse getting his laptop and mic ready in another room, you join the Discord call. Corpse joins quickly after. Surprisingly, nobody says anything about you two being in the same apartment while greeting each other. You don’t doubt that someone will say something soon.

“Let’s all take a drink - to Corpse and Y/N holding hands!” Alex exclaims, clinking his glass on his mic. The rest cheer, pretending to clink their glasses as well. You sigh and laugh a bit, but nonetheless, you’re gulping down a glass of champagne.

“Alex,” You say, catching his attention.

“Yeah?”

“Fuck you!”

“Hey, hey, hey. No fucking.” Karl says, and you can hear him slap his hand to his mouth after realizing what he just said. The lobby bursts into fits of laughter, but the one you’re trying to listen for, Corpse’s. It’s silent on his end.

“Karl, how much have you had to drink?” Dream asks, slurring his words. Didn’t this game just start?

“I had like 3 beers?”

“You fucking lightweight.” You tease. “Dream, you’ve been drinking too...”

“Yeah, we might’ve pregamed an Among Us game.” He admits shamefully.

“Didn’t expect less from you two,” Rae says, adding a disappointing tone to her voice for effect. She starts the game, despite the sad protests from Karl and Dream.

Crewmate.

You pout, wanting so badly to be Imposter. You’re a good liar to say the least, and people easily fall for your sweet, innocent voice. It’s funny, pathetic even, which is why you want at least one good Imposter round.

“Whaddup, baby,” Corpse greets you in Nav. Dream follows behind him, Karl coming in shortly after.

“Hey, my beautiful alcoholics!” You greet cheerfully, earning groans from them both. Oh, how fun it’s going to be teasing them.

“At least she called us beautiful.” Karl says, walking out of Nav with Dream, leaving you and Corpse alone again. You get back to doing your task, connecting the ship with the dotted lines and whatnot.

“Am I beautiful?” You can hear the pout in his voice, it’s cute.

“Gorgeous, stunning even.” You say before walking out of Nav, smiling to yourself.

This round is pretty uneventful, along with the next few. But after about five rounds, you’re all incredibly drunk after playing some drinking games.

“No balls,” Rae dares. You’re Imposter this round, and Rae’s made you her personal hitman. She’s telling you to kill Karl, but he’s innocently doing his tasks.

“I have three actually.” You defend yourself, not making any sense at all.

“Three what?” Sykkuno comes in.

“Three balls,” Rae answers.

“Okayyy then...” Sykkuno drawls, leaving you two alone. Corpse comes along, the second Imposter. Oh, how convenient.

“Hey, Corpseee,” You greet, making it so fucking obvious.

“Oh my God!” Rae exclaims. You sigh, facepalming yourself. “Corpse kill Karl, Y/N kill Sykkuno.”

“Woah, since when did we become your hitmen?” Corpse backs his astronaut up.

“I’m not killing Syk!” You whisper-yell.

“Okay, then you kill Karl and Corpse can kill Sykkuno.” You can hear her shrugging as if it’s no big deal, but literally, Karl and Sykkuno are the sweetest people to you.

“No, I’m not doing it, Rae...” Corpse still hasn’t said anything. He’s watching you and Rae go back and forth, whisper-yelling even though anyone would be able to hear you.

“I’ll call you two out.”

“You’d never,”

“The emergency meeting button is looking real sexy right now.” Ugh, fuck the stupid smirk you can just hear in her voice.

“Fine, we’ll do it.” Corpse says. He goes and kills Sykkuno. You hesitate killing Karl, but he already watched Corpse kill Sykkuno so, unfortunately, you have to.

You and Corpse run away, leaving Rae to report the bodies.

After you and Corpse vouching for each other the whole round, nobody putting sus on you two because well, you sound so innocent and sweet even while being shitface drunk, you two win, earning groans from everyone in the lobby except from Rae.

“To be fucking fair, Rae had me and Corpse be her hitmen sooo, you can blame her if you died.” The lobby starts yelling playfully at Rae.

———

After finally finishing streaming, Corpse comes into your room, plopping down onto your bed.

“Gosh, I’m gonna have the worst fucking hangover tomorrow.” He murmurs into your pillow, hugging it close to him. You jump onto the bed, sitting next to him, playing with his hair. He doesn’t mind, or you don’t think he does.

“It was fun,” You say, smiling to yourself. You love spending time with your friends. You can’t imagine how much fun it’d be if all of you got together in real life.

“It was,” Corpse yawns, looking up at you, smiling as you keep playing with his hair. He gets up, settling himself into your bed again, pulling you into him, letting you rest your head on his chest. You wrap an arm around him, snuggling yourself closer to him.

“We should probably eat something... And get ourselves some water.” You say, knowing that tomorrow’s hangover is going to be a bitch.

“I don’t wanna let go of you.” Corpse whines. You try getting up, but he almost throws a fucking tantrum. Quickly, you get out of his arms, running out of your room, giggling like a fucking maniac.

“Y/N! Please!” He shouts softly, trying not to wake Rae. He runs after you, following you into the kitchen. You run to the other side of the counter. He goes left, you go right - vice versa.

“Corpse, we need food and water.” You say, trying to grab pans out of the cupboards while he’s trying to get you. You can’t help yourself from giggling. Rae will kill you if you two wake her up.

“I wanna hold you,” Corpse pouts. Gosh, he’s going to be the death of you.

“In a sec, I can make us something real quick.” Drunk Corpse obviously equals Clingy Corpse.

“Fine,” He sighs dramatically, sitting on a stool. You grab pans from underneath the cupboards, pulling out some bread and cheese. Grilled cheese is easiest and it’ll take the least amount of time.

As you’re plopping bread into the toaster, Corpse snakes his arms around your waist, snuggling his face into your neck. There’s the slightest stubble, making you giggle.

“Corpse, I can’t cook with you on me.”

“Yes you can, I’ll help.” So stubborn...

You take the bread out of the toaster before it gets too toasted, putting it on the buttered pan.

It was a mission to finish the food to say the least. Corpse demands you eat in your room that way he can hold you. You put on The Promised Neverland, watching the TV as Corpse watches you. But honestly, you don’t mind.

You two fall asleep in each other’s arms again. And you don’t think you’d ever be able to fall asleep without being in his arms again.

——————————————————————————

Taglist - comment or message me to be added.

Sorry for not updating, I have to go through a bunch of posts. I’ll update in the next post.

* if you’re name is in bold, i couldn’t tag you. *

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Tags - ignore::

[peeterparkr]

perennial;tom holland|four.

chapter four: yellow carnation

↳ flower meaning: disappointment

chapter summary: the one with the denial. 

pairing: tom holland x y/n

warnings: angsty, mentions of sex, swearing,  lol cherry 

word count: 8k

SOCIAL MEDIA BEFORE THE CHAPTER:

masterlist & profiles   three: in which y/n and Emma thought it would be a good day.

previous chapter next chapter   perennial masterlist.

perfidy  ( series masterlist)

wanna be tagged?

“So you saw Emma?” Harry asked, for the third time.

Harry and Tom were both certain they had both fucked up. Different context, same type of concept of idiocy. 

Tom was an idiot. 

Harry was an idiot. 

But Harry was more aware that Tom was even more of an idiot than he was. 

Tom thought so, too. 

That was the only thing he was certain of at the moment. He had screwed up so many times before but he really didn’t want to this time. Not that he had meant to the last times but this time he was going to make sure he wouldn’t fuck it up. 

Though, he was confused. Very, very confused. As to why he’d gotten the reaction he’d gotten. It seems ironic, even. But he had missed her. So, so, so much. 

He hadn’t realized how much he had missed her perfume. Something so simple, but so powerful. A scent he’d never be able to ever forget. 

He had imagined it differently, honestly, their encounter. He thought it would’ve been nicer or prettier. Instead, it was chaotic. Not poetic.

Tom had fucked up, he knew that. Not this one time. Well, maybe this one time. Maybe this other time, too. Had they run out of chances? Because Tom had fucked up the first time, she had fucked up the second time. 

But they’d been building up this one relationship that was so chaotic, that was so different. Maybe that’s why it had been so hard. 

Tom had been through breakups before but none of them had felt like this one, not even when he’d given her the third yellow flowers. It was so confusing, to think you’d give out your heart completely when they were just there to hurt you. He’d been hurt before but not like this. Not this breathtaking, piercing pain. Pain that didn’t go away.

Now Tom knew how it felt, how it felt to be told that your body is physically healthy but your heart is so broken that your body is bringing you down.

But he missed her too much to even think about that. He had forgiven her, in some kind of way. He knew that she’d be the medicine.

He’d forgiven her, in a way. In the way that he needed to be with her to work it out.

Though he was still nervous about it. Especially because of Tim. 

That bothered him the most. She’d run away from him. Leaving it all behind. But he had heard her. He probably didn’t have to worry, right? 

He had brought the letter. 

He had probably memorized every line by now. Probably to use it as some kind of weapon-No, they had to stop thinking of it as a weapon. But it was his backup, using her own words to get to her. 

He had read the script now. That was the only proof he needed. He thought. Because there was that constant thought in his head, Timmy. 

Tom hated Tim for many reasons, but the main one was that Tim had taken the chance TOm had let go off after that club night. He couldn’t hate him for making y/n so happy but he hated him because Tom knew that was supposed to be him. Now he hated him more because if he had proposed it meant he wanted to keep y/n forever. 

He remembered how y/n was when Tim had been around, back when they were dating. As if y/n was in some sort of charm. One single look and he’d made y/n blush, and smile. 

Tom and Harry were pitying themselves on a bar, a beer in their hands.

“Yes, I saw Emma,” Tom said.  

“Did she ask about me?”

“No.” 

Harry sighed. 

“Y/N didn’t want to talk to me, but she was--” Tom gulped. “Kind of swooning over me before she saw I arrived.” 

Harry rolled his eyes. “I told you not to go.” 

“Why not? You were going to look out for Emma!” 

“But I didn’t! Because it was stupid! It was clear they weren’t happy we were there!” Harry rolled his eyes. 

“But why not?” 

“She bloody fainted!” Harry pointed out. 

Tom chuckled, but Harry glared at him.

“I’m sorry, but it’s cause, I just… Fuck I had missed her and she looked so pretty and-” 

“Tom.” 

“I thought she’d be happy to see me!” Tom said cockily. 

Harry was getting tired of his brother. 

“I mean she technically was happy right?” Tom asked.

“No,” Harry rolled his eyes. 

“but… Why didn’t she… I thought she’d be happy we’d be directing it,” Tom pointed out. “She says we’ll end up ruining it.” 

Harry sighed heavily.. “Honestly we didn’t think this through.” 

“But it was the only way to see them,” Tom snapped. 

Harry rolled his eyes, “No it wasn’t.” 

“And fuck, okay, Emma didn’t tell me anything about Tim.” 

“Why do you care so much about him?” Harry asked.

Because he was jealous. So, so jealous. Always been jealous. Because Timmy managed to get the girl before he did. 

“He looks like some stupid Victorian boy and he’s not even hot and yet he had y/n drooling over him, and this is the fucking second time that when things are screwed with y/n he takes the chance to make her happy.” 

Harry watched him. “Huh, so you’re jealous.” 

“Yes,” Tom hissed.

“Why are you even jealous--?” 

“Because I can be, first thing she did was run back to her ex, that’s so fucking stupid,”Tom pointed out. 

“As far as I know he was the only one to reach out for her to see if she’s okay,” He said. 

Tom clenched his jaw. Well, was he supposed to reach out? But Tom hadn’t run to any of his exes, because that’s not what he was supposed to do. 

“And honestly, I think it’s coincidental, even James said it,” Harry pushed. “She didn’t run to him, Tim offered her to run away with him, she didn’t, she ran after her dream.  He’s just her roommate.” 

Tom wasn’t happy about this statement. Yes, of course he knew that but Tim was still … He didn’t want to see it. No. 

 “I—I am just angry that y/n wasn’t happy because I’ve been—dying to see her okay? It’s so stupid.” 

“You are stupid, may I remind you about Cherry?” Harry asked. 

Tom hadn’t been making the best decisions, either. The heart often fucks up especially when it's hurt. The heart tends to be louder than the mind, and it’s irrational. He hadn’t been reasoning. He regretted many decisions he had made. That last decision was haunting him, that one particular decision. 

The heart is stupid. The heart is very stupid. Tom was even more stupid. When one's heart feels lonely it tends to search for something that feels like love in places where it seems easy. Some go for drinks in a late night pub, others shut themselves from the dark. Others try to soothe the pain by trying to ignore it. Some listen to music, others ignore. We all deal with heartbreak differently, with your head under water, we all try to find our own way of trying to get out, though we truly don’t. 

Tom had reached out for love when someone had offered a trial for love, without feeling anything. A free pass, if you may. Someone who didn’t ask for anything in return because they wouldn’t give anything either. 

It’s not love, though. It’s not love. It’s not love, but it’s good enough to make the heart feel like it’s complete, to cease the crying or to change the feeling . Trying to find their faces in places where it’s less likely to see it. Something remotely close to warm the heart, something that can make us feel like we’re fooling our heart, trick ourselves into believing we’re happy. Trying to get some sort of happiness, even if it’s only a hoax for just a few hours. To make our bodies warm, and trick one’s mind into thinking it’s pleasure. He hadn’t meant it, but he really needed a reason to keep his mind off y/n, and the closest thing had presented itself. With no strings attached offered, with only that offer of blowing his mind enough to forget about his sorrow. But one must be careful with one’s lies and one must be careful because you really can’t fool the heart. 

You can’t try to mend it with something that looks like love, it’s like trying to glue it back with barely anything that can make it stick, like trying to glue something with dirt, it only makes it hurt more. When one is broken, we don’t see it, but what Tom had done with his heart had only made it worse, hurting it even more. When one is brokenhearted the heart tends to try and make it good, but this had only made it bad. 

Tom had slept with Cherry. Yes, that was the truth. It had been a mistake of a series of unfortunate decisions. 

Cherry. 

“It was stupid,” Tom said. “I… I feel so bad about it.” 

And he did. But it had been so… easy. It was so simple, so so simple. Cherry was well aware that she had been a ‘rebound’ of sorts. Honestly, she was looking for a rebound of her own. It had been their agreement, hanging out. But it seemed like one shouldn’t play with fire, playing with two broken hearts is very very risky. But you know when one is lonely and confused and angry and then the dark comes and the way that her body moved and the way that she wouldn’t hurt him, they’d come up that far. He never knew it would lead there. 

Tom had slept with Cherry. Yes, that was the truth. Tom had fucked it up the most, that was no surprise. But his mistake had only made both of them realize that it had been a clear dumb mistake. 

Tom had slept with Cherry. Yes, that was the truth. Only once, though. But there were a lot of things to consider. A friendship of two broken hearts, of two hearts that still remembered someone they loved. 

It was easy for Cherry, and it was different. 

It had been very immature and stupid. But Tom had missed y/n’s lips, y/n’s delicate fingers walking down his body, or the way that she’d smile against her neck, and the way she’d place her forehead against his.  The way he’d get butterflies when they were going after the thousandth kiss. 

Maybe that had been the closest thing he could get to.  

Tom didn’t know why he had slept with Cherry, though he hadn’t… It had been pathetic, honestly. He didn’t know why he let himself do that. Sure, at the beginning it felt fine. As a new adventure, a new person that didn’t know anything about it. But he ignored it, at first. Her flirting. He had said it was only a friend. And then they kept hanging out, more and more. And suddenly he was taking off her shirt and kissing his way down her body. 

But he hadn't stopped thinking about y/n, that had been the problem. 

All the damned time, and it gave him a lot of time to think about them, the whole idea of ‘Tom and y/n’. Y/N was crazy, Tom was an asshole. And time after time, their pride and their immaturity won, over and over. Maybe love or something quite similar to love had sentenced them to fall. 

But he missed her, and not even cold showers could make her memory go. Tom thought about it, maybe it was too stupid to even think about it. Tom and y/n. 

But her memory haunted him each night, and even if it didn’t make any sense, even if they were meant to fall, y/n was his best mistake. 

It felt like a different time, and Cherry had pointed it out. “You’re always expecting a call.” 

He did. And it didn’t make any sense, if he was trying to get over y/n, then why was y/n always in his mind? Why was he always expecting to listen to her voice? It was so pathetic, if he was starting out something new… If he was faking his happiness, why didn’t he feel happy? Why did he still miss her so much? 

And he had wanted to call, but he was too proud to do it. What would he even say? Because he never got to say goodbye, because he never got to say he was sorry. Because he never really got to say that it didn’t matter. 

But maybe ‘y/n and Tom’ wasn’t logical. 

Harry frowned. “Yeah.” 

“I’m just… She can’t know about it,” Tom said. “I’ll find a way to tell her.” 

Harry watched him, “maybe it wasn’t the best idea to direct her script.” 

“I just—I wanted to find a way back to her.” 

“If you had just listened to me,” Harry rolled his eyes. “I know y/n, she probably wanted you to show up in the rain with a thousand roses—“

“Yellow flowers.”

“Yellow flowers whatever, but she probably wanted you to stand there shaking in the rain—“

“It’s not raining—“Tom interrupted again. 

Harry took a deep breathe. “She probably only wanted you to run after her and love her and have some big romantic movie gesture, a film like moment, like the ones in her script where William runs over to her and they dance under the rain—“

“But she told me not to come here.” 

“She didn’t fucking mean it, or not… Yes, she wanted to heal but then you should’ve reached out to her!” 

“I just wanted to be a big part of her dream you know?” Tom looked away. 

Harry was so stressed about it. “I told you that if you bloody wanted to do something with her script just to audition for it.” 

“She’s not only angry about the script,” Tom said. “I know her.” 

“You know her now?” Harry scoffed 

“If I’ve learned something about her is to know what she’s pissed for and she’s not only pissed about me directing,” Tom snapped. “There’s something else bothering her.” 

Harry scoffed. 

“What?” Tom frowned. 

“You’re going to get away with it, again,” Harry pushed. 

“What?” 

“Please, Tom you’re not the one in trouble,” Harry frowned. “Can you stop talking about y/n for five minutes please?” 

“What do you mean I’m not the one in trouble?” Tom frowned. 

“Because it’s you and her,” Harry stated, as if the statement alone explained everything. 

“What?” 

Harry sighed heavily as he ran a hand through his face. He downed the beer in front of him and then turned to his older brother. “Please Tom, I’ve seen this story before it’ll only take you to make her laugh once and she’ll run back to you and she will be swooning over you that’s how you work, you fight, you bully each other,  you fucking get into a big argument, she gets angry you get cocky, you smile at her one and she’ll be on her bed listening to a song that reminds her of you and then you’ll be okay! She’ll be back in love with you into that endless cycle.” 

Tom listened and frowned. “That’s not true.” 

“Yes it’s true, she’s so deeply in love with you that it won’t matter whatever happens she’ll end up running back to you, especially now that she knows you love her,” Harrys said. “I just.. now my problem is that my ex fiancé doesn’t even want to talk to me and I fucked up with her so badly and I’m an idiot because I let the best thing that’s ever happened to me for… someone who-” 

“You have it easier.” 

“No, I don’t,” Harry snapped. “I love Emma, and I’m an idiot and… And I’m I don’t even know if y/n told her I kissed her which would only make things worse because I-” 

“Why… why did she give the ring back?” Tom asked, interrupting his brother again. 

Harry looked away. Tom had seen that Harry had avoided that question over and over. 

“Because I’m an idiot,” Harry snapped. His eyes were glazed now as he avoided his brother’s glance. “I’m an idiot because when she asked me about it… About how I felt about y/n… and I said I didn’t know.” 

Tom stayed quiet. 

“And she asked if I would’ve married her instead, and I stayed quiet,” Harry recalled, looking down. “I should’ve kissed her right there and then.” 

Tom kept quiet.

 “And—I don’t even remember how the conversation went. I just know I broke her heart because I was too confused for my own sake,” Harry admitted. 

“I dunno what to tell you, man,” Tom said. “I'm not exactly the best at—“

“And I still have to get used to this, you know? You and y/n.” 

“There’s not even anything going on,” Tom recalled. “But you and Emma have more hope.” 

“No, because unlike y/n, Emma did run away,” Harry reminded him. “Unlike y/n, Emma didn’t have a reason to leave and she searched for it, Emma did give up on me.” 

“You think it’s lost?” Tom asked. “Because I don’t.” 

“Dunno,” Harry said. “I want to test the waters and try to fix the fixable.” 

“Which is?” 

“My friendship with y/n, and I know that if I manage to win her back as a friend she’ll help me out with Emma.”

Tom sighed. “But what about--?” 

“Look, I’ll see what she says, just don’t try to ruin it, okay? If she doesn’t want to talk to you right now, don’t push it,” Harry warned. “We will see it tomorrow, how she reacts this time.” 

“How do you think she’s doing?” Tom asked. 

Girls wanna have fun. You know? Yet, y/n and Emma didn’t want any fun that night. How could they? The day had been utter bullshit. Y/N and Emma had stayed with her aunt. Y/N had left some clothes with her aunt so she could stay some nights there. And she had decided that that night was the perfect night to stay there, she didn’t need to do this to her heart. Seeing Timothée would only bring Y/N’s heart more sore. She didn’t need that. 

Her mind kept going back to Cherry, she hadn’t really addressed it, what she knew that her aunt knew the answer to. Her aunt hadn’t said anything about before, really.

But it didn’t matter that night. 

“Girls I won’t let you pity yourselves all night crying over men, alright?” Eliza said. 

Emma, laying down on the couch upside down, nibbling on the popcorn y/n had in her hands looked up and laughed. 

Y/N was on the floor, right beside Emma, too emotionally drained from the past 24 hours. She didn’t want to even look up. 

“You see,” Emma said. “I’m not crying, I’m in denial,” Emma explained. “And I can’t believe they’d show up.” 

“I can’t believe I’m still swooning over him,” Y/N said. “I don’t understand it, like… He showed up and I just wanted to kiss his entire face.” 

Eliza sat down in front of them and chuckled to herself. “Girls, you can’t be like this.” 

“It’s cause he… He dared to do this, and I’m angry because I’ve cried over him so many times in my life, and I thought I had made up my mind already that I wouldn’t… That I’d be over him, And just look at me! I’m still so...smittened, like I can’t believe that I just… I just feel this way and literally if I see him tomorrow and he fucking dares to smile at me like that again I’ll run to his arms and…I just wish I had never let him go, I  feel like an idiot for leaving, but then again, I had a reason right? I was angry and I was sad and he was too,” She rubbed her face. “But then but but… Here’s the thing,” y/n stood up. 

“Oh, god, she’s gonna monologue,” Emma sat up to lay down on the couch. Eliza gave Emma a knowing look and chuckled. 

“Emma!” Y/N chuckled. “ I don’t understand this, I can’t… I can't. Why don’t I have any self control? Like literally when he touched my face I was about to-” 

“Yes I saw, you were about to open your legs right there and let him do anything to you,” Emma pointed out. 

Eliza laughed. 

“That’s not-”Y/N blushed, letting out a shy snicker. “Emma!” 

“Please, y/n, you have no self control I know that tomorrow you’ll end up making out with him,” Emma said. “And I can't blame you because I saw him and I just wanted to forget everything and I actually imagined my life beside him and—“

“Girls—“Eliza tried to interrupt again. 

“And now I have—Flowers. Flowers?” Y/n sighed. “Pink and yellow peonies, he had to choose peonies? And now what the hell am I supposed to tell Tim?” 

Emma chuckled. “Listening to your misery y/n is making me feel better, I thought I was fucked but at least my problem is a one thing problem,” Emma laughed. 

“I hate you,” y/n rolled her eyes. “Are you still in denial or do you want to talk about it?” 

“Still in denial,” she winked at y/n. “do you have ice cream El? Never had ice cream and wine before, is there any ice cream?” Emma asked as she walked to the kitchen opening the fridge, welcomed by all kinds of organic food. But she found an ice cream, or a sort of ice cream. 

Y/N laughed. “What the hell am I going to do?” 

“Well,” Eliza sighed as she walked over and sat beside y/n, as now Emma plopped herself on the single couch as she took a big spoonful of the ice cream pint. “What does your heart tell you?” 

“Give up and go to Greece,” y/n laughed. 

Eliza chuckled, as she hugged her legs, watching her niece. Expecting her to elaborate. 

“I don’t know, you know they say time heals but I’m still hurting so much, but--” Y/N sighed. “It’s strange.” 

“Love is strange,” Eliza acknowledged. “Think of it as a-” 

“Flower?” Emma asked. 

“No,” Eliza sighed. “Think of it as if someone is weaving in your heart, and sometimes the heart is senseless, and irrational, and they keep weaving, or knitting , they knit their way to imprint in your life. That’s why they stay there.” 

“Tom didn’t knit or weave he used a bloody industrial sewing machine and then stapled himself and then industrial glued himself  and then with cement and—“

“We get the point y/n,” Emma smirked. “Tom basically owns your heart.” 

“Yeah.” 

“What I see in both of you is that both of your hearts have a surplus of love,” Eliza said. 

Y/N looked up. 

“You girls were ready to love more for more time , your hearts were prepared to stay in love for a longer time and to give them both so much love and even though the time spent with both of them left your hearts weaved so kindly...now they ripped it apart so, it’s understandable, to feel that way. Like a ripped old unused cardigan.” 

Emma sighed. “Yes, but being angry and in love?” 

“Being angry doesn’t cancel love, dear,”Eliza explained. “Whenever we get into a fights it doesn’t mean we stop loving them, you’re both angry because you still love them and want to fix this but they’re men and, though we love them, we shall always remember that they’re rather stupid.” 

Emma and y/n chuckled. “Yes.” 

“But I fucked up,” y/n said. “I should be the one apologizing to him.” 

“Yes dear, you did something wrong, and yes, you should apologize, but the first person you should apologize to is yourself. You’ve been too harsh on yourself because you made one mistake, and yet you’ve forgiven all of his.” 

Y/N looked, down thinking to herself. Maybe she had been right. 

“And you Emma,” Eliza turned to her. “You should at least let yourself feel,” she said. Emma nodded as she made her way to sit beside Eliza. “We all need a hug from time to time.” 

Both girls leaned against each of Eliza’s shoulders. 

“You know,” Emma said. “Before Harry,” she started. “I didn’t really… know love, you know?” She explained. 

Both y/n and Eliza turned to see her. Emma never really spoke Harry’s name. Y/N had probably heard Emma refer to Harry as ‘him’. Never speaking his name out loud. She never really talked about it. Y/N had probably only heard Emma say his name that same day, maybe once in a while sporadically. But never talk about the subject, never addressing it. Just ignoring it. Always going: My life after him. 

‘Him’. 

So different from how y/n always referred to Tom, and how she tried to speak Tom’s name as many times as she could 

“Before Harry,” Emma continued. “I thought love was very substantial, you know? Very… Not Splendid, just written by the book, that kind of stupid teenage love that involves kissing and wearing matching bracelets, and baking each other cookies from time to time,” Emma continued. “The kind of love that is all: oh they didn’t text back, or hey, we need to see each other every Friday. Very… not love like.”

“Before Harry,” Emma said. “I’ve never… cared about stuff, you know, I was kind of a goody two shoes with my parents, and then Harry came along and there I was telling little white lies to my parents, my friends, to Tim so I could sneak out to see him at ungodly hours, keeping secrets, and… You know my past relationships were merely… Physical, and then it was Harry, and it was just staring into his eyes and feeling the whole world was stopping, and I was swooning over him, talking about nonsense. And then hours felt like seconds, but he showed me how to stop time just so I could make him smile once more. Him and his stupid camera that he carries around everywhere.”

Y/N and Eliza watched her. Her voice had cracked as she was speaking, as if each word was taking away her life. Emma was… sad. And Emma was never one to be sad. 

“And then when I thought everything was okay, when I thought I finally could… Love and be loved by someone. And I thought, this is stupid, why do I feel like this, you know?” Emma laughed. 

“I dated way too many guys before Harry, and then I was changed, daydreaming, smiling to myself, sighing romantically. I had changed, for good. And I thought, hey, he’s just a man, you know?” Emma bit her lip. “He’s just a man,” Emma repeated. “Yet, I was… I wanted to do all the cute things, and I just initially didn’t want to give in to him, but I just simply and unequivocally fell in love with Harry, so easily, and I didn’t understand why, but I didn’t have to understand.” 

Y/N had always doubted Emma because of her first impression. Because Emma initially wasn’t the type of girl Harry would date. She was too different. Y/N was wrong.

“It was…” Emma gulped. “Perfect, and then…” She paused to look down. “They snatched it away from me, and then the man who I thought loved me for who I was apparently didn’t, and he loved someone else, someone pretty, someone smart, someone who… Someone who my own best friend said was perfect, and then I thought I wasn’t… worth it, you know? Then I felt used and I saw the girl and she just… She was perfect, and then he said it, he confirmed it, how he had indeed been in love with that girl who was seamlessly perfect. With that girl who had known him his whole life, with that girl he had always cared for…And it was that question, is there something wrong with me? Why can’t I be her? Why does she get to… have him? But it wasn’t on her,” Emma continued. 

Y/N felt bad, she hadn’t really stopped to see it. How Emma’s heart had been broken because of her. How y/n had apologized, and how she’d taken Emma’s friendship for granted. That Emma had grown from the problem because they both needed a friend. 

“And I thought I could work it all out,” Emma sighed. “Him,” Emma chuckled to herself. “He said it, how confused he was, how he didn’t know where his heart was,  how he said he needed to try it, try to get that thought out of his head, that he needed to know why he’d lost the chance with her. How he thought…” Emma took a deep breath as a single tear was streaming down her face. “How he thought that I was his endgame but if he never knew what it would feel like to be loved by his first love he’d never be happy,” Emma ran out of breath by then, she looked down, her eyes still glazed. “He’d never be happy with me. And I asked him if he would marry her instead if he had the chance, and he didn’t answer.” 

Y/N reached out of her hand, as Eliza hugged them both. 

They didn’t really say much after that, what could they really say? And the night washed away their thoughts. Eventually Eliza had gone to sleep leaving the two girls to their own despair. Both laying down on different sides of the room, hugging pillows, confused. 

“I’m sorry,” Y/N said softly. “For Harry.” 

Emma gulped and shrugged. “Yeah, no, it’s not your fault.” 

“But it is,” y/n said, sitting up. “I did write about it.” 

Emma stayed quiet. “Yes, and I… I understand it, that feeling I guess,” Emma chuckled. “I felt that way with Tim at some point, too.” 

Y/N didn’t want to look up. 

“The whole… If this is the person I’m supposed to love and if this person is good enough for me, why can’t… I?” Emma pushed. 

Y/N eventually looked up. “Did you and Tim ever tried it?” 

“Yeah,” Emma laughed. “And it just confirmed to both of us that we were supposed to be friends. I mean we only went on one date and when we tried to kiss it felt… Like ugh, no,” Emma chuckled. 

That was something that she didn’t know. 

“Maybe that was what Harry needed, you know,” Emma said. “Make sure he didn’t…” 

But Harry had tried again. He had reached out, and he had asked y/n, if it could ever be him. Maybe y/n had ignored that thought in her head, probably because she didn’t want to even get deep in that thought. 

“And I’ve seen you, you’re in too deep for Tom,” Emma said. “Poor Tim.” 

Y/N frowned. “I’m not trying to hurt him.” 

“No, I know,” Emma said. “You can’t help it, but… I always knew it, and I never.. When Tim told me about you and Tom I was… Firstly relieved because that was the confirmation I needed because somehow I always knew you were in love with Tom, I didn’t know about him, he was very good at hiding it, but you just… I don’t know.” 

Y/N had a secret, one which she didn’t know if she had to share with Emma or not. 

“Harry texted me,” y/n said it, as simply as she could. 

Emma gulped. “What?” 

“Yeah, he said he was going to reach out for you but he knew it was a stupid idea, and he.. Wants to talk to me.” 

“Yeah, you should talk,” Emma nodded. “Save your friendship.” 

Was there really any friendship to be saved?  Y/N didn’t know if she even wanted to sort it out. She didn’t even want to see them the next day. 

She hadn’t slept, at all. Her mind kept roaming between Tom, Tim and Harry. The different problems she’d had to face with each. 

Emma didn’t go with her the next day to the studio. And there she was, all alone walking to them. Tom hadn’t looked up to see her this time. Alessandra, Josh, other people were there as Tom and Harry were awaiting for y/n. 

“Good morning,” were the only words y/n had spoken towards them. The meeting started, Tom had avoided any possible type of eye contact towards y/n. Harry hadn’t. He’d done most of the talking, about the project, the ideas, the production. The inspiration. 

“I just…” Tom said, eventually. “As I read the script,” he continued with poison. “I think we deserve to know more about William’s side of the story.” 

Y/N looked up, deciding whether that bothered her or not. She decided it didn’t, because she knew his side of the story was a mystery to her, too. 

 “I couldn’t help but wonder if there could be a scene with William’s heartbreak,” Tom continued. 

“Yes, of course, the ending, is something we’ve been working on,” Alessandra said. “I think that would add a bit more. Maybe even reflecting her first heartbreak, the one with the montage” 

“Reflecting Valerie’s heartbreak, yes,” William said. “Almost mirroring it.” 

“Well, I mean, mirroring it could work in a matter of film like symbolism, but I think William’s heartbreak is not the same as hers, I think-” 

“No you’re right, his heartbreak comes from what he thought was a relationship,” Tom said. “I think we should work on something like that. His heartbreak is real.” 

“I’m not saying it’s not real, I’m saying it shouldn’t mirror it,” y/n said. “I’m saying all heartbreaks are different.” 

“Maybe you’re right. I think his heartbreak deserves its own spotlight.” 

Y/N nodded. “Yeah.” 

“But it’s not the same,” Alesandra. “After all William hurt Valerie more times, I think--” 

“THat’s why we deserve to know his side of the story, otherwise he’s just an asshole and it wouldn’t make any sense as to why she loves him,” Tom said. 

And yet she does, y/n thought. 

The meeting went too decent. Y/N guessed Tom had understood that she really didn’t want to talk to him. Y/N was ready to leave, she didn’t want to see them. She didn’t want to see him. 

She didn’t want to see Harry because how could she make things better? 

But Harry had rushed over to her as soon as the meeting ended. Tom walked past them, scrolling in his phone. Y/N only watched him stand by close. 

“Hey,” Harry said. 

Y/N wasn’t aware why she was so damn selfish or why she couldn’t make up her mind, and she didn't know why it had bothered her so much that he hadn’t talked to her. That he was avoiding her. After all, that’s what she’d asked him to. 

She wanted to run to him, honestly. Kiss him, even. But then again the first thing he did was try to change the story. 

Y/N kept staring at Tom, but then turned to Harry. “Hi.” 

“Did…” Harry gulped. “Did Emma come today?” 

“No,” y/n said. 

“I… uh,” Harry continued. Tom looked up, but then proceeded to keep walking as his brother glared at him. “I was going to ask if you wanted to go out for lunch or something… So we can uh.” 

“Yeah,” Y/N said watching Tom. “Only us?” 

Harry looked up at Tom, who didn’t even flinch before walking away. 

It made y/n sad but she knew that she had been the one to ask for it, besides she needed to talk to Harry alone. 

They ended up at a diner, one of y/n’s favorite places. She had discovered it with Emma and Timmy, a 24/7 diner that had welcomed the three of them after a night out in the city. Best burgers and waffles they’d ever had. Maybe they weren’t that good, but when you’re drunk and it’s late anything serves. 

It was 50’s themed, like most diners are. Black and white tiled floors, blue booths and pink walls. 

Harry smiled to himself as he looked around. “Why am I not surprised you like this place?” He chuckled. 

“Food is good,” she said. 

Harry watched her. “Tom wanted to come.” 

Y/N sighed. “Of course he did,” she pointed out hiding behind the menu. 

“Coffee?” The waitress offered. They both accepted it. Neither of them had slept the night before. 

“He is very stupidly annoyingly in love with you,” Harry shot it. He knew he had to start with that. 

Y/N let down the menu to face him. “And I was annoyingly and stupidly in love with him,” she said. “I am… Am, not was,” she corrected herself. “But I need to get over him soon because I had assumed he moved on,” she sighed and then bit her lip. “But you say he’s still in love so I am very confused by your statement,” she admitted. “But right now I don’t want to see his pretty face around because he is the biggest idiot to walk into this planet and I really am angry he’s directing and probably here to ruin the biggest chance in my life so I’m going to ignore you just said he is in love with me because he is an idiot and I probably am too but right now he is more of an idiot because directing my script—” 

“So you’re angry,” Harry said as he sipped from the hot coffee they had served him. 

“Not at you,” she lifted the menu again. “I am actually not angry at you directing, you’re talented, and I trust you, I would’ve even called you,” she confessed. “But well—yeah, but I’d trust you with my eyes closed even if we… if that thing happened.” 

Harry cleared his throat. “Yeah.” 

“And I assume we are going to talk about that,” she let down the menu again. 

“Yeah.” 

The waitress interrupted them again as she took their orders. Y/N didn’t order pancakes. Waffles. She hadn’t really eaten any pancakes for a while, though it was her favorite food. 

They just stared at each other, not sure where they were standing. How were they supposed to act? 

“I’m sorry,” they both said at the same time. They both chuckled. 

“No,  you go first,” Harry said. 

“No,I’m sorry Harry I just—I feel like it’s on me, I ruined your engagement,” she started. 

“No, I ruined my engagement-” Harry interrupted. 

“No, but it’s on me, with that script--” 

“No, yeah but that’s on Tom not wanting to talk about it,” Harry said. 

“No, it’s not.” 

“No, I know.” 

“I’m sorry,” y/n said again. 

Harry knew it, they were both in denial, neither of them wanted to address the actual situation. 

“I’m sorry,” Harry said. 

But neither of them were sure where to start their apologies. They’d said ‘no’ seven times. For sure, they were in denial. 

“Yeah.” 

“I’ve got to…” She took a deep breath. “I… When I wrote it, I guess, I wanted to understand it, you know?” She admitted. “As if I was trying to…” 

“But,” Harry said. “I don’t think it--” 

“Makes sense, no, it doesn’t,” y/n finished his sentence. “And look I… was confused and I just, when I wrote it I just… Went through with scenes in my life but...But-Harry-” 

“It’s Tom, I know,” Harry said it. “And… It’s Emma, and I can’t believe I… I can’t believe I wasted on some stupid...Sorry, sorry-”Harry chuckled as y/n faked to be offended. “Not what I meant.” 

“No, I know,” she laughed. “And before--” 

“I know I asked you for an answer but,” Harry sighed. “I… I don’t know, I was confused, very confused, because it didn’t make any sense and I guess I was just too overwhelmed with the situation, I mean I had been in love with you my whole life and,” he sighed. “It’s difficult, being in love with someone and then realizing they could’ve loved you or that they loved you at some point is just…” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I guess anyone would do anything for a chance but I guess we have to accept that… Sometimes the heart is wrong, right?” 

Y/N sighed. “Yeah, the heart is stubborn.” 

Harry watched her, curiously. “I just need… I just guess I do need an answer.” 

Y/N didn’t know what to say, whatever answer she gave him it would hurt him. She remembered it, the last time she’d seen him. How he was confused and broken and barely saying anything, and just throwing words in the air with little hope, begging for an explanation. And what explanation could a brokenhearted y/n give him? How could she ever give him an answer when her mind and heart was too stubborn and too attached to Tom. 

She decided she’d rather stay quiet. 

“Is it silly to think about it?” Harry asked. 

“I guess not,” y/n sighed. “It’s the whole... “ Y/N sighed. “But I am too stubborn to keep you in my life Harry, if something like that had ever happened, it would’ve ended up in disaster, and I’m not sure if I could handle another disaster.” 

He nodded. “Love shouldn’t hurt,” he said. “And God knows how much I’ve hurt from loving you.” 

“It’s Tom,” y/n said with all her pain in her heart. “That’s your answer,” she said. “And I can’t help but think how terrified I am that it was the last chance we ever had and I was the one to fuck it up, and I can’t help but think about the places we’ve cursed and how I’ll never be able to ever go to New York again, and how I’ll never be able to look at you and know I hurt you so many times and I couldn’t… I couldn’t ever love you the way you wanted me to.” 

Harry stayed quiet. 

“But there is someone,” y/n said. “There was someone who loved you the way you are supposed to be loved, and who is exactly the person I think—“

“Yeah, leave it to me to fuck it all up,” Harry sighed. “I—she won’t love me anymore right?” 

“If she’s as stupid as I am, then she might,” y/n chuckled 

Harry sighed. “I can’t believe I made her feel like she wasn’t the one most important person in my life, I—“

Y/n watched him, “you know it won’t be easy, right?” 

Harry looked up. “WhAt?” 

“She’s been having a real rough time,” Y/n said, “but—“

“That one sounds hopeful.” 

“It might be,” she nodded. “I just want you to be happy and I want her to be happy.” 

Hardy nodded. “Should I give a hopeful but to Tom, too?” 

Y/n didn’t answer. She wanted to say yes. But instead the question she wanted to ask came out instead. “What’s up with Tom and Cherry?”

Harry paled as if he’d seen a ghost. “What?”

That was the only confirmation she needed. She needed to ask no further questions because Harry had answered it, there was something going on between them. 

“There it is,” y/n clicked her tongue.

“What? No,  how do you—?what do you—what? No, no, no, no, no, no, no!” 

“If you’re asking those questions it means there is something going on,” y/n commented. 

“I—no,” Harry 

The waitress arrived and gave them their food. Harry tried to ignore the conversation by giving a big bite to his burger. 

“Harry,” y/n pushed. 

“There’s nothing going on,” Harry stated. 

“Did something happen?” She asked again. 

Harry started to sweat, as he finally stared at her. “Why are you asking this?”

Y/N didn’t know why she was asking this. She was barely reacting to it. She didn’t feel the heartbreak, she didn’t feel the pain throughout her chest. 

“So it did,” y/n nodded.

“Why—“

“Lets call it a sixth sense,” she hissed. 

“I am not the one who’s supposed to tell you this,” Harry said. 

“Something did happen huh,” she bit her lip. Maybe that’s when it hit her. That feeling of someone hitting her with a truck.

“N—Y/N, I’m not—“

“Did they sleep together?” Y/N pushed. 

Harry wasn’t giving her an answer yet she knew they had. His palms were sweating, he was blushing, and he was cracking his hands..

“Y/n—“

“You know you can’t lie to me,” y/n stated again.

“I cant lie to you, you’re right,” Harry admitted as he sighed heavily. 

“Then?”

“I’m not saying anything,” Harry said. “It’s not my issue and—“

Y/N knew she couldn’t cry in front of Harry. How different things were.

“I didn’t tell Cherry about Tom,” she said after a while of staring at the sweaty and nervous Harry.

Y/n couldn’t get angry, she knew that. It wasn’t cheating. It did hurt, though. But not as much as she thought it would, probably because she had known it already. Or maybe she was avoiding it right now because she needed to act tough with Harry. 

But it did hurt. The thoughts invaded her head. How prettier Cherry was, how perfect Cherry was. And then the image went to her head, to Cherry’s slim fingers walking through Tom’s chest, and him liking her touch more than y/n’s. How her lips had probably kissed that sweet spot Tom had right under his chin. How probably their sweaty bodies had collided and how Tom probably hadn’t thought about her. Not at all. 

And how easy y/n was to get over. That’s what she thought. How he had moved on because he could. And how stupid she felt. 

Harry stayed quiet. 

“I didn’t want to. It was too painful to talk about it, too complicated, too,” y/n continued. “and I assume he didn’t tell her about me either.” 

“No…” Harry admitted. 

Y/N was sure her eyes were filling up with tears but she wanted to inform them as she stared at her food. How stupid it seemed, a breakfast food. She pushed the plate away, she definitely wasn’t hungry now.

“Yeah,” her voice was dry, so she only sipped from her water. “and I know that as long as it concerns Cherry, I was dating you.”

“What?” But even if that question carried a sense of confusion it also carried some understanding as if suddenly it had made sense. As if something out of the blue had popped into his head and clicked the story together. 

“I don’t know where she got that from but I just didn’t want to explain anything to her, didn’t think I had to,” y/n continued.

“What?” Harry asked again. 

“She assumed it was you who I was dating and who I had an ugly breakup with,” y/n continued.

“Why did you let her—“

“Because I didn’t want to give out my story with Tom,” y/n said. “Though I thought she’d get it from the flowers, guess she didn’t,” y/n bit her lip. “I don’t understand anything about it, so—guess she just saw a pretty boy and—“

“I—“

“Did they sleep together?” Y/n asked again looking into Harry’s eyes.

No answer..

“Harry did Tom and Cherry fuck?” And she’d used that word because she wanted to believe that it was only that.

“I—y/n—“

“You’re not denying it.” 

“Because it’s not my place to deny those statements,” Harry said. 

“That means they did,” y/n bit her bottom lip. “It’s fine. I mean. I’m as guilty, I guess.” 

“What?”

“I slept with Tim.”

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[tawakkull]

ISLAM 101: Spirituality in Islam: Part 78

Chaos and the mystical world of faith

Today, everyone breathes resentment, swallows hatred, curses all that is deemed to be an enemy with a fixed and determined passion, as if programmed for fury. The ink that flows on the pages of newspapers, the pictures that are broadcasted over the television, the electromagnetic waves that resonate on the radio scratch our ears like illomened screams emitting from a variety of places—in the mountains or on the water, in the valleys or up in the hills; they strike our eyes like photographs that make us shudder and they open wounds in our hearts. These epics of hate that we hear of day and night and that startle us, all these illomened screams, make us sick at heart, and yet the people who seek a cure for these ills are few indeed. Their thoughts go in different directions, but they always seem to arrive at the same point: money, financial prosperity, and success.

… emotions base, desire consuming The meaning that flows over from the gaze is full of contempt for the subject of God. Akif

Very few are exempt from such a turbulent point of view; no difference remains between what is collective and what is not, between capitalism and communism and no difference remains between these and liberalism. The distance in nature—between those who attach their lives to the considerations of eating and drinking, resting, and earning money, having a good time in general, and, other beings who are obliged due to the unchanging character of their nature—becomes smaller day by day. The basic differences between the two sides vanish into thin air one by one, and humanity seeks new directions, despite its own nature.

Religion, piety, morals, free thought, our own perceptions of art are thought little of; power has become so ulcerated as to be unrecognizable, fantasy has taken on the image of ideas and these disagreeable ideas are being forced upon others. Indeed, I have to say that I have a hard time understanding the inner drama of such a terrible fanaticism. Nowadays, when enlightenment has become widespread, when intellectualism is at its apex, the fact that science and ignorance should meet at the same spot, contrary to the distance that one would expect to exist between them, suggests a dark complicity and makes the existence of a serious problem obvious. Such a contradiction gives us the impression that the emotional will of some people is miles ahead of their intellectual and logical will.

I believe that in such a dark period, when opposites have become intertwined, when in different sections of society chaos is heaped upon chaos, when dark acts of different origins have darkened the face of the Earth, when what is underground reigns over what is above, when polemics and dialectics have become so popular with so many, when hearsay, especially through the use of media, is welcomed as acceptable merchandise, when the lives of others has begun to be the sustenance of our existence, when the soul of unity has been shaken and different groups are scattered everywhere, when hopes are shattered and wills are paralyzed, when souls give up the fight against desire, there is a burning need to turn toward our own spiritual sphere and listen to our own inner world, to tear ourselves from the dark atmosphere of the bodily realm and sail into the magical atmosphere of a hearty and spiritual life. Those who do not fall into lethargy and return to themselves as soon as possible will feel the magic and charm of their own inner world; the unfortunate who fail to return and remain in between, or who remain on the other side, continue to resent, hate, slander, lie, and feel contempt, they continue in the dissolution and obstinate disagreement which they have practiced until this day, and even in climates where the sun continues to shine they will dream of dark things, they will mutter dark thoughts, always seeking dark places in which to hide and dark corners in which to live.

One hopes that they would be able to feel the joy of the blessed days and nights that we experience, when showers of light reach everywhere. One hopes they too would abandon the heresy, atheism, dissension, and sedition in their hearts and that they would be able to respect the chosen understanding and stance of every single soul! Maybe one day these wishes will be fulfilled, but the selfproclaimed enemies of God, the prophets, religion and piety—once having breathed nothing but materialism, having gone into a frenzy denying divinity, and having plunged into the quicksand of anarchy and nihilism—will never be able to breathe this reviving air. Oh dear Lord, had you only made yourself known to them and released the chains from their hearts!

In every community and society there are people who are inclined to abandon their faith and there have been many times when such people have spun out of control; other communities and societies do not have such powerful places to seek refuge when faced by these abysses and weaknesses as we have. Indeed, they have thoughts which soothe, beliefs which reconcile, days and nights which tremble with joy, festivals and carnivals; but, these days, these nights, these festivals, these carnivals are devoid of any holiness. They are like fireworks, shining for a moment and then are gone, giving only instantaneous pleasure; they are ephemeral and physical, not promising anything in the way of spiritual joy. Indeed, in their worlds you cannot feel the greatness of faith to God, nor can you feel that souls are free from the boundaries of time and space; everything starts with a false and transitory happiness, and takes place in a delirium of flesh. All is then transformed into painful memories, regrettable dreams, and disappointed hopes, and finally everything simply disappears.

In this spiritual atmosphere where we are closely bound to God, every sound, every word, every action is felt like a nursery rhyme and listened to like a melody. These shower down upon us like the rain; we soak up the bounties of these showers. The moon changes its form every night, as if signaling particular times and happy hours, the sun moves to a new spot on the horizon at every dawn, awakening our feelings and thoughts in a new period of time, causing our dreams to follow it, presenting memories to us that resemble the river Kawthar, promised to us in Heaven. The past becomes like a veil of many colors draped before our eyes, the happy future is the apex of our dreams, waiting for us with open arms and we, who have been freed from the narrow confines of time, live the multiplicity of yesterdaytodaytomorrow simultaneously and, like the angels, feel all the joys of surpassing time. It is impossible for those who are not fed from the same source as we, those who do not share the same feelings and thoughts as us, to feel and understand the holy depths in which we lose ourselves or the happiness and joy that we sip like the rivers of Paradise.

Our faith, our horizons of thought, and our manner—characteristics of the fortunate, but at the same time belonging to a littlewronged nation of this part of the world—have become, through being formed and reformed in the mold of the collective personality, greatly refined and adorned with universal values; this is a situation that exists in no other community; this is so much so that those who spend time with us need not stay long to be aware of this difference. The truth is that in these differences, the holy sadness of our hearts and the enthusiasm of our souls, like water running between the rocks, is felt and heard. Indeed, those who listen to what we have to say always hear the melodies of the pain of separation voiced along with hope; they hear the notes of reunion, of the sweet and eternal search for home in our intonation and manner. Indeed, while on the one hand we murmur “Oh, cup bearer, I have burnt in the flames of love, give me a cup of water,” on the other we say “I have dipped my finger in and tasted the honey of love, give me a cup of water,” and thus we are able to turn our grief into smiles. Our tongues speak sometimes of love and sometimes of weariness; though love and weariness cause pain to others, in them we always hear, like Rumi, the poem of longing for the realm that we have left to come here. Love and weariness to us are like a plea from the tongue of the soul, stemming from a sorrowful desire for eternity. Since our beliefs and feelings take us to the magical worlds of beyond, we almost always feel sadness and joy intertwined; we hear the sounds of crying and laughing as different notes of the same melody. We respond to the troubled heaving of our breasts with smiles on our faces, as our eyes overflow with tears, our conscience takes upon a red hue with the roses of the Iram[1] gardens.

Even though it may not be easy for every individual, our connection to God is the most natural attitude that we can adopt; our relation with Him is like a spell that transforms all the moments of our life into enthusiasm and joy. Our hearts that beat with feelings toward Him fill and refill with the dream of this gaze; we are able to live through the bitterest autumns in our hearts because we have the joy of spring. Our souls adopt the most enviable attitudes with instincts of particular feelings and joy that are the result of our connection with the AllGlorious One; thus transformed, they make us feel a refreshed enthusiasm, a new opening and revelation, even at moments when we are filled with sadness and grief. Pleasure or sadness, revelation or sorrow, all these emotions undergo metamorphoses in our hearts that beat with faith and speak to us of the most natural pleasures and the most realistic expectations. It is a fact that we, too, experience interconnected moments of ease and hardship, sweet weeks and bitter days, light and darkness which come and pass, like day and night. However, we sip the unsurpassable benevolence and joys from the hands of all these tribulations, because we have our beliefs, our connection to the Just One and our hopes! Those who do not recognize the trials and pleasures to be the product of the same will writhe in neverending agony, while in our own atmosphere we see clearly that everything will be transformed into deep compassion. Taste a whole life, with its bitter and sweet facets like Kawthar, in everything that we eat and drink, at every place that we inhabit, with all the beautifully divine discoveries of our own inner world, with all of their different wavelengths, feel our sorrows shrink in the face of happiness, feel our pain melt away in pleasure and feel how our lives flow into glazed cisterns in a spectrum of colors. Our mortality is transformed into eternity; we exude smiles even when we cry.

In our world, the beliefs and the expectations that emerge from the heart of those beliefs are so intertwined with our lives that each chapter of our lives lends us the wings of the station of prayer and takes us to the gate of the Hereafter. It takes us there and lets our hearts drink of the beauties of heaven. In this way, we feel as if we are inhaling the scents of heaven. Even if we should let ourselves be swept along by our daily lives, the calls for prayer, songs that exalt God, the various sounds of prayer, the recitation of the names of God, those who give Him thanks, calling out His Uniqueness, letting this spill from the windows of the mosques, all draw us to their climate; they paint our souls with their hues, they give a tambourlike voice to our hearts, they make them sigh like a flute and excite them with the happiness of music. These sounds excite our souls and we are charmed by the mysteries pertaining to God, the charm of these mysteries which comes galloping from the depths of our inner world and which spreads to all our senses, this charm which tints the gardens of heaven in our thoughts and which flows past our lips like cascades of inspiration. Thus charmed, we stand awestruck.

This charm, this recognition of the mysteries pertaining to God, reaches a higher level on the blessed days and nights when limitless abundance and bounty are showered upon us. This is true to such an extent that everything around us ascends in a state of joy, every corner takes on a spiritual hue and the excitement of our souls, aiming at metaphysical destinations, reaches its apex, or in Sufi terms, our souls reach the highest heaven of maturity. To the degree that we can hear and listen to what is all around us, we too, rejoice like children who feel as if they are in the fair grounds of joy; thus we experience the happiness and joy of a feast day.

In such a world, the dawn flows into our houses from the doors and windows like an awaited guest; the evening comes into our private chambers like a lover and sits by us; the night clings to us with its associations of reunion with the Confidant; and in every valley hands are raised up toward Him in prayer, ready to receive the gifts that will come from Him, assuming a state of metaphysical tension with the power of the soul, sighing, saying “Hold my hand dear Confidant, hold it, for I cannot do without You.”

In such a world, the prayer roars like the booming voices of Gulbang hymns[2] and echo like the voice and breath of the divine depths; the warm solitude of the night envelopes our souls like silk; our pulses beat with the excitement of one who has received good tidings. Perhaps some of us keep singing His praises, come rain or shine, like the nightingale that breaks its heart in an effort to express the ideal rhythm for its emotions with the most touching of sounds. In a word, everyone is humming a melody with neverending agony and joy, neverfading love and excitement, listening to the shivering of their souls and letting others hear it too. Everyone sighs with the fever of love and makes other people feel it too. Yes, as they reflect on the excitement in their souls and the inspiration of their hearts, expressing themselves one last time, they become the mouthpiece for the feelings shared by all and they are able to speak of the hidden meanings that they want to speak of but fail to verbalize.

The horizon of living yesterdaytodaytomorrow at the same time with such a degree of faith and hope, of love and recognition of the mysteries that pertain to God gives such a depth to life that each heart in the orbit of the hereafter finds itself wrapped up in the melodious harmony of emotions and ideas and is freed from the limiting, stifling effects of matter. I believe that the strongest basis of all human relations, the purest source of all pleasures, and the fountain of all love, longing, attraction, and gravity is this faith and hope. Every disciple of the heart who attains this faith and hope can experience and feel the state of being outside of time, with the ability to sense all of its depths.

Indeed, to the extent that one can attain this view, one can feel existence in a different manner, evaluate things in a different way and melt in on oneself with the color, taste, aroma and accent of manifestations from the Eternal; these attributes pervade everything and people can reach a second existence with a new “birth after death.”[3] During such joyful hours, when the internal gaze is focused on that which is behind the visual scene of existence, one feels all the joys of being. One feels as if one has taken a shower in wisdom, as if one is freed from the weight of all things that are alien to one. The distant heavens shower blessings down upon these hearts, hearts thirsty for love and galloping with longing and affection; all hearts that live in fear of drying up are quenched. Celestial flowers flourish in these showers adorned with dreams!

Some of us may not be able to comprehend the state—a state which becomes a succession of struggle (to come over the darkness with its all connotation) and dawn—of these people of faith and horizon; but all these are phenomena of the heart, soul and emotions. Living through the countless revelations of life, no one but the active heroes of the dawn and of the great strife can understand this love, enthusiasm, poetry, and music poured into our souls by the Eternal One. Those who do not understand this will not be able to understand us, either. Those who remain distant to this fine and delicate life live in the darkness of this distance, while the comprehension of those who have found a position from where they can view the truth in such a way that it appears as obvious as it really is always feel this gift in all its wavelengths, sip it like the rivers of Paradise and live their earthly lives as if in Heaven.

Who knows how many more times we will speak of this neverending pleasure and joy, in the delight of a festival, of a feast day! How ever many more times we may speak of it—the faults of the speaker’s mode of expression aside—we will still listen with pleasure and try to share it with others.

[1] A place mentioned in the Qur’an (al Fajr 89:7-8), “… the city of Iram, with lofty pillars; the like of which were not produced in all the land.” [2] Hymns sung in the mosque in unison by the congregation. [3] The change communicated along these lines is not to be related to reincarnational notions.

[workingforitallthetime]

i went to a hockey game!

and sometimes it felt exactly like going to a harry styles show, so i am writing a little show recap like we used to do after harry shows.

we had really amazing seats and they were right across from the tunnel! nozlee caught a glimpse of someone filming in there and realized we were witnessing the generation of tunnel social media content, so we scootched ourselves down the row until we could see straight in and watch the little handshakes and hugs and intricate rituals, which went on for a very long time! this is the point where we started to lightly vibrate and say “there is COOTS! there is TK! there is KEVIN!”

AND THEN the lights went down and ALL OF THEM SKATED OUT and it was exactly like that moment when the screen would rise up to reveal harry styles in his suit of the night and i squealed and clutched at nozlee and experienced that sublime burst of fandom endorphins that have been missing from my life since Harry Styles One Night Only Live At The Forum. the thing is that at a harry show you are part of a shared moment of transcendence that 20,000 people are experiencing right along with you. whereas in this context i was being witnessed by distant clusters of sports fans for whom this was probably an extremely average hockey game. but I DID NOT CARE, because THERE THEY WERE, there were ALL MY GOOD BOYS IN PERSON, ZOOMING AROUND AND PERFORMING INTRICATE RITUALS A MATTER OF YARDS FROM ME, and i squealed and jumped up and down and positively bathed in the good fandom brain chemicals.

another complicating factor vis a vis hockey vs. harry is that there is only one harry styles and you can just attach your eyeballs to him for 75 minutes straight. but during warmups there is SO MUCH HAPPENING, there are SO MANY OF THEM ALL AT ONCE, and it’s very hard to focus. there is jake voracek’s majestic mane! there is phil meyers who looks so large in person! there is cam york jauntily pointing across the ice at jack hughes! there is lindy pinning beezer against the wall! THERE IS NOLAN PATRICK who OH MY FUCKING GOD is EXTREMELY GOOD-LOOKING in person.

warmups were probably the very best part. i would buy a ticket for warmups only. however, the boys were kind enough to go on to play three actual periods of hockey for me too. it is going to take some time to get used to watching hockey in person. i am not good at knowing what is going on without an announcer telling me. it’s hard to tell when a goal happens, even. but i was absolutely riveted all the same, they are so fast and close together! they are doing such complicated things with their feet! the puck makes a very loud sound when a tape-to-tape pass connects! it is very fun to watch!

i ended up focusing on a few people, some unintentionally. it is impossible not to watch wade allison when he’s on the ice, he has more energy than anybody else and he just draws the eye. i watched patty a lot because he draws the eye too, and not just because of his stupidly pretty face. he has a lot of lateral movement when he skates, and it really does have the effect of making him look like an apex predator loping across the savanna. it compels me. i also ended up watching hardest tryer beezer because he was doing a very good job. and i  watched cam york, who was easy to pick out because he’s just a little bit smaller and slighter than most everybody else, but he seemed very sure of himself and he looked to me like he had a pretty good game. also he shaved that dumb mustache. thank you bb, i will buy your shirsey as soon as the flyers are willing to sell it to me, which unfortunately they were not tonight.

there was a moment at about 16:05 left in the third period when patty and nico got into it and patty pinned nico against the wall, what a gift for all of us. unfortunately the NHL apparently knows i am in philly and is refusing to let me rewatch the game so i’m gonna have to try to find that one later, which is why i’m noting in here so i do not forget.

in conclusion, i would absolutely recommend hockey games. 10/10, would squeal again. i also definitely recommend open skate at Skate Zone but that’s a different post.

[tired-college-student-writing]

#WaynesAngel

The Maribat AU by @ozmav and @maribat-archive is all I can think about atm, so enjoy more of this

Summary- After Grayson posts a video on the wrong twitter, Damian feels like he should lose his social media privileges, and possibly his hand.

Part 1

Part 4

Part 5 (HERE)

This was a impusle write as I was trapped in a car for over 50 hours in three days. Please do not ask for another chapter. 

_________________________________________

Wayne’s Angel @FashionInGotham

Why is it weird that I’ve never met a Bat before? It’s not like Damian or the Waynes have ever seen Ladybug or Chat Noir or the Miraculous Team in Paris, and they’ve been in Paris a lot more than I’ve been in Gotham #confusion #AMERICAEXPLAIN

Jason Todd Lives @BestTodd

@FashionInGotham Whomst the Fuck is Ladybug and Chat Noir?? Also, Miraculous Team Sounds like some magical girl anime Cass watches

Call me Cass @CainYouBelieve

@FashionInGotham @BestTodd 🖕🏼

Wayne’s Angel @FashionInGotham

@FashionInGotham @BestTodd @CainYouBelieve They’re the Paris superheroes, they showed up almost five years ago to fight the little bitch of a villain, Hawkmoth and his stupid peacock assistant, Mayra.

Dick Grayson @AFlyingGrayson

@FashionInGotham @BestTodd @CainYouBelieve @ FashionInGotham WHAT?! Paris has heroes??

Wayne’s Angel @FasionInGotham

@FashionInGotham @BestTodd @CainYouBelieve @ FashionInGotham @AFlyingGrayson Oh yeah, I forgot that the mayor was trying to keep it a secret from the rest of the world #MyB But yeah Ladybug and Chat Noir have been there the longest but there’s also Abeille, Viperion, Ryuko, Pegasus, King Monkey, Bunnyx, and Badulf

Chloe raised an eyebrow at her friend as she saw the tweet thread that was quickly going viral, “You realize my dad is going to flip about this.”

“He deserves it,” Adrian pipped up from where he was painstakingly painting Kagami’s nails a deep burgundy.

The other teen heroes hummed in agreement as Chloe huffed.

“Well Yeah, but I was hoping to do it with a little extra flair than a twitter thread.”

Alix snorted as she finished up Kim’s banana yellow toes, drawing a crude smiley face on his big toe with bright blue, “She’s dating the youngest kid of the most influential family in the world and has like 100 million followers. Plus she called Hawkmoth a little bitch and it already has 90k likes. I call that flair.”

It was a surprise when Nathanial had had his freak out during his second battle,  against a Crimson Peacock event no less, and had called her Lady Marinette in front of the other temporary heroes, but had lead to many nights like the one they were having now. Onesies of each other’s heroes’ identities donned as they lounged around Chloe’s room, simply enjoying each other’s company after a long patrol. Chloe and Adrian had demanded they have a spa night, which is why everyone was either giving or receiving mani-pedis while they waited for their face masks to finish. It was nice, to have so much support outside of the masks, especially as they entered their final year in Lychee.  

Marinette rolled her eyes, “It’s only 98 million, Alix, and plus I figured four months after I made this account was long enough to make the slip up seem genuine. We need to catch Hawkmoth soon, or else this entire mess will get a lot more complex.”

They all frowned as they realized the truth behind her words. They were all facing hard decisions if they couldn’t pin the man down, not like they hadn’t already sacrificed so much to continue the battle. Max had already turned down graduating early and a full ride to MIT, citing his desire to graduate with his friends before moving across the globe. Luka had been invited to tour with Jagged, only to politely decline, telling the pouting rockstar that he wanted to do some soul finding first. Kim had given up a summer training camp with the French Olympic team. Alix had given up going on an expedition with her dad and brother, missing out on the chance to explore the dunes of Egypt. Marinette had turned down three internships at this point, one from Audrey Bourgeois, One from Raven Baxter, and lastly and most devastatingly, one from Edna Mode.

They needed to end this, before the overwhelming feeling of their futures slipping right between their fingers got them akumatized.

Tim Drake Offical @TJDrake

Seeing the demon spawn panic when he realized @FasionInGotham isn’t any safer from maniacs in Paris then she is in Gotham is strangely endearing and vaguely terrifying #whyismyfamilylikethis

Duke of Hazard @DoneWithTheRich

@TJDrake Like you and Barb aren’t frantically searching for anything you can find on the Miraculous Team and these weird-ass butterfly dude.

Call me Cass @CainYouBelieve

@TJDrake @DoneWithTheRich Bugout.com, It’s in French but informative.

Tim Drake Offical @TJDrake

@TJDrake @DoneWithTheRich @CainYouBelieve How did you find this before Barbs and me????

Call me Cass @CainYouBelieve

@TJDrake @DoneWithTheRich @CainYouBelieve @TJDrake Alfred.

The news swept up the story in an instant and suddenly the whole world was demanding to know what the Parisian Mayor had been thinking and why the Justice League hadn’t been involved.

It wasn’t long until the entire Miraculous Team was seated in front of the Louvre. Countless new agencies from around the world were present, eager to hear the story of the sickeningly young-looking heroes, but the one video that received the most views was the shaky camera videos that were uploaded to Marinette’s Twitter, as they shortened the two-hour-long Press conference into manageable clips that highlighted the most important points.

Wayne’s Angel @FasionInGotham

Full Lineup, Damn. Haven’t seen that since the last time we had a Scarlet Moth incident. For those who need context, this is like seeing the entire founding Justice League together to us Parisians.

The clip attached showed A panning shot as they introduced all of the heroes. Ladybug and Chat Noir sat in the center of the long table flanked by Vipirion, plucking his lyre absentmindedly, Abeille, glaring down her nose at the reporters, a beaming King Monkey waving excitedly, and an eerie serious Bunnyx sitting as still as a statue to their right, on their left was fierce-looking Ryuko looking ready to slice anyone who got too close, the calculating Pegasus, mumbling under his breath, and lastly the timid Badulf, struggling to keep his red bangs out of his eyes.

Wayne’s Angel @FasionInGotham

LMAO RYUKO #DRAGONQUEENSLAY

Don’t question Paris’ Heroes like that, they’re feisty.

The clip showed a British reporter demanding to know why the heroes hadn’t contacted the Justice League previously to gain their assistance in taking down the dangerous threat that was Hawkmoth.

You could Ladybug’s eye twitch at the condescending question, but before she could answer Ryuko leaned forward to the mic situated in front of her with a glint in her eyes.

“I apologize for my English,” She started, “I am not as versed in the language as some of my teammates. To answer your question on why we haven’t had the League’s help is because Green Lantern is a fuck.”

Silence filled the gathering before Chat, King Money and Bunnyx burst into giggles, the rest of the heroes struggling to keep a straight face. The media was staring at them dumbfounded until Ladybug finally leaned forward.

“I’m sorry for the outburst,” She started, lips still trying to twitch upwards, “But as Ryuko said we did ask for help. About five months into our heroship Chat and I received an answer from the League after trying for three months to contact them. The ‘help’ came in the form of Green Lantern coming and assessing the situation. Unfortunately for us, Hawkmoth is smart and when the neon green monstrosity of a hero flew in he laid low instead of attacking when a Leaguer was present. Without an attack and no physical damage present as one of my powers allows me to restore all damage done to Paris or its citizens, He decided we were powered children that were trying to get in the spotlight.”

“Getting lectured on wasting the League’s time and resources before he flew off really put a damper on us asking again,” Chat added in, toxic green eyes narrowed and laser-focused on the reporter, “So we handled it ourselves, gaining our own allies as we needed them. But please continue telling us how the League could have helped sooner if only we had asked for help.”

Clip after clip, ten of them total were uploaded into the thread. Explaining the worst battle the heroes had ever faced, the strength of their enemy, what the villain and his assistance could and would do, the worst attacks, the easiest wins, the ways that Ladybug and Chat chose their allies, but the last two clips seemed to get the largest reaction out of the audience, both at the press conference and the internet.

Wayne’s Angel @FashionInGotham

Not gonna lie, seeing my tormentors get put on blast by all of the Heroes is very vindictive #IsthatMean? #MaybeSo

“You’ve seemed to have shifted your support away from one local blog, to another over any official news agency,” One of the nicer reporters at the events said, “Is there a particular reason? And why the sudden shift two years ago?”

Chat’s face was strangely pinched, “Oh you mean why we switched from giving exclusives to the LadyBlog to BugOut? It’s quite simple. We go to the news sources we trust to take the information we are willing to give without worrying about ratings as their top priority. We tried going to Nadja Chamack at first, the local news anchor that we all hold a great deal of respect for, but the producers threatened her to get a ‘highly-rated’ interview. It led to her asking questions Ladybug and I thought were counterproductive to the reason we were invited to the interview and was trying to turn us into celebrities instead of allowing us to do the jobs we needed to. It was a similar reason we stopped going to Alya Cesaire, the Ladyblog editor.”

Ladybug took over here, “Miss Cesaire has the ability to be a very good journalist, but as her blog grew in popularity, so did her need for highly viewed content, this caused her to not only start posting more rumors and speculation than anything we’ve ever said but also to stop fact-checking with us things she heard. Even after talking to her about removing the content that was blatantly untrue and was told no due to the high ratings it had received we realized that we simply couldn’t work with her anymore.”

Abeille piped up in a low regal voice that was dripping with venom, “It really didn’t help that when we started interviewing with Aurora Beaureal from BugOut, shortly after my introduction, Miss Cesaire began a smear campaign against her, claiming she was faking her sources and videos publicly on her blog. Luckily we were able to shut that down quickly enough but it didn’t stop Miss. Cesaire from running into battle to distract us, and frankly, harass us for answers even after we told her no. It’s lead to more than one incident where she, other civilians, and even ourselves have been hurt.”

“Either way,” Chat took over again, “We want to support local news sources but only when they are willing to listen to our boundaries and work with us instead of trying to push issues.”

“Does that mean that info we found on the Ladyblog is not to be believed?” Another reporter called out.

“I would take anything after the first post about Lila Rossi with a grain of salt,” Ladybug said, only for King Monkey to snort and lean towards the mic.

“Yeah and if Lila Rossi is mentioned at all in the post just assume everything in that post is fake. Miss. Rossi is a known liar and problem for us.”

“Can you give us an example?”

Ladybug sighed before explaining, “The first time I heard of Miss. Rossi was an interview on the Ladyblog of her claiming to be my best friend. Now I very much value the secrecy I and my team have created for ourselves because it protects our friends and families, but even a lie about knowing me in such a public setting is dangerous because Hawkmoth and Mayra have proven that they aren’t above underhanded tactics to try and get the upper hand in our fights. I went looking for the girl to explain why she can’t say such things for her own safety, only to find her telling a boy that she possessed the Fox Miraculous in a public park. I will admit I called her out in a way that wasn’t very nice but either claim was enough to put her in danger, but both were painting a target on her back and it scared me that someone would do something to impress a boy. After that, she was akumatized for the first time and since then it has gotten even worse despite me apologizing the second I cured the Akuma. Some of her lies are enough to count as Slander if any of the celebrities she lied about knowing saw the posts, but no amount of persuasion seems to get her to stop.”  

Wayne’s Angel @FasioninGotham

Watching their powers without the looming threat of an Akuma/Amok is a blessing. They look so cool! #Love #Miraculous

The clip started with the heroes standing in front of the table, grouped differently than before. Off to one side King Monkey, Viperion and Bunnyx stood, Viperion holding a microphone.

“While we would love to an demonstrate our powers as requested,” He explained, “Our powers are not really good for demonstrations. Mine is known as Second Chance.”

He raised his hand and pulled the slider across his bracelet as he named it, a flash of pale teal light admitting from it, “When activated like I just did, it allows me to return to the point of activation at any time before I detransform in fifteen minutes as many times as I wish with only myself remembering the previous changes I have made.”

Without even acknowledging the startled whispers from the crowd, he handed the microphone to King Monkey, who offered a cheeky smile.

“So my power is called Uproar. It allows me to create a toy-like object that when it comes into contact with someone causes all of their abilities to malfunction.”

He goes to pull his staff from where it was strapped to his back only for Vipirion to stop him. A silent exchange passed between the pair before the taller hero nodded and handed the microphone off to Bunnyx.

“Viperion and I have a similar reason for our powers being hard to show off, only his is a little more versatile,” She started in a voice devoid of any emotion, swinging her pocket watch slightly, “I have the power Burrow. It allows me, and anyone I chose to take with me, access to a pocket dimension where I can travel to any point in time or space that I chose, past, present, or future. While you might see me fight during any battle I can make it to, my power is a last-ditch effort, as I would have to travel back in time to change the past if I do this assume the future is unsavable.”

The hush that falls over the crowd was quickly broken by Ryuko tapping her group’s microphone to draw attention to the opposite side of the stage where she stood with Abeille, Badulf, Pegasus, Chat, and Ladybug.

“I believe it’s best to not dwell on any one of our powers,” She told them, “Our powers are scary and knowing that they can be taken from us at any time and used for nefarious purposes keep all of us up at night, but we ask you to trust us to use them only for good.”

She waited a moment for the crowd o calm down before giving her own explanation, “My ability is known as the Three Dragons, the Water Dragon, the Wind Dragon, and the Lightning Dragon.”

She handed off the microphone to Pegasus, before calling forth the Wind Dragon and bursting into a group of clouds that swiftly blew around the stage before traveling over to the Louvre Pyramid and watching as the heroine reformed at the top, offering a small wave before the call for Water Dragon could be heard and a large dome of water formed over the entire courtyard.

Before she could call for her last form the snake hero grabbed the microphone, “Lightning Dragon is a bad idea, Ryuko.”

The heroine didn’t even question him, instead, vaulting off of the pyramid, the crowed gasped only for her to effortlessly land next to Bunnyx in a crouch, brushing herself off as she rose and turned her gaze to the horse miraculous user, who quickly explained his power before calling forth Voyage.

His cry caused blue light to circle his arm and he sent it towards the top of the still-present water dome, with a controlled flick of his arm.

The heroes didn’t even blink as the crowd filled with cries as the Eiffel Tower fell through the portal, Ladybug’s yoyo whipping out to direct it’s decent, the entire courtyard shaking as the 10k ton structure landed.  

“I’m up next!” Chat called out with a large grin, while the reporters didn’t seem to know if they should pay attention to the moved monument or the hero. His explanation was short since they were many videos of him using it but that didn’t stop the international reporters from screaming as Cataclysm swirled around his hand eating away at the Eiffel Tower, leaving a pile of rust in the crater

“Is-Is this much property damage necessary?”

Abeille shrugged, “No, but once we get to Ladybug, it’ll make more sense. Either way my turn.”

An unpleasant chill went up the world’s spine as she demonstrated how she could freeze all voluntary movement of her target on Chat Noir, who was still as a statue the second her stinger touched him.

Ladybug quickly took the mic and began explaining her powers. The world watched in amazement at her pulling a red and black spotted camera from thin air before she launched it into the air with a cheer of “Miraculous Ladybug!”

Suddenly a glowing swarm of ladybugs formed and tore through the air, covering Chat Noir, releasing from Venom, before healing the crater and rust from nearby, dissolving the water dome in the same instance.

If there hadn’t been so many people present the world wouldn’t have believed that so much damage was just repaired in the span of ten seconds, but staring at the unimpressed Parisians around them the world finally seemed to grasp the reality of the situation.

These children were past what one would even expect from metas, from aliens and superhumans like they had seen around the world already. These were heroes that were harnessing the very forces that made up the universe and fighting them at the same time. Bunnyx wasn’t exaggerating when she mentioned that sometimes there would be apocalyptic endings to their fights.

Instead of letting the knowledge stew Badulf step forwarded, twisting the microphone as he explained his power of illusions for the reporters.

With a short tune on his flute suddenly the group of heroes was gone, All that remained was a Sign thanking them all for coming.  Even after the illusion faded the heroes were nowhere to be found, having used the final demonstration as the perfect cover to sneak away so that no one could follow them.  

Wayne’s Angel @FasionInGotham

I must say I was not expecting such an outpour of love for all of Our heroes but damn am I pleased by it. Ladybug is our big name but the others are honestly way underloved in Paris, especially Chat who’s been there since the beginning. #MiraculousTeam

Quick Poll Who’s your favorite, everyone? Mine’s Chat Noir

Ryuko (19%)

Abeille (12%)

Ladybug (14%)

Bunnyx (8%)

Viperion (12%)

Chat Noir (15%)

Pegasus (5%)

King Monkey (5%)

Badulf (10%)

Call me Cass @CainYouBelieve

@FashionInGotham I like Badulf, he’s the newest correct?

Wayne’s Angel @FashionInGotham

@FashionInGotham @CainYouBelieve Yup! He’s only been around for four months, but he’s a pretty great fox!

Tim Drake Official @TJDrake

Fun Fact: I just heard Alfred swear for the first time while watching the press conference and it was to call Hawkmoth and Mayra an arsehole FLOB and his fucking Slag.

Never been more terrified,

Based on the faces around me neither has any of the other Waynes #AlfredisTerrifying

Wayne’s Angel @FashionInGotham

Why am I the go to person for everything Mircualous Team? BugOut.com is a great source if you want more info.

Still Queen Bee @BuzzBuzz

@FashionInGotham Probably cause you're most famous Parsian? Or cause you were a miraculous user once?

Jason Todd Lives@BestTodd

@FashionInGotham @BuzzBuzz IM SORRY?? DID YOU JUST SAY MARIGOLD HAD ONE OF THOSE MAGIC FUCKING GEMS???

Wayne's Angel @FasionInGotham

@FashionInGotham @BuzzBuzz @BestTodd That didn't come up in the conference did it? A few of the old users of miraculous got outed as heros so LB doesn't call on them anymore, but keeps tabs on them since HM and Mayra will try and emotionally malipulate them into getting akumatized. A few of us bonded over it.

Still Queen Bee @BuzzBuzz

@FashionInGotham @BuzzBuzz @BestTodd @FashionInGotham Its common knowledge in Paris, Mari, me and our other friend @NotaModel all had miraculous at one point, but HawkBitch found out so we can't ever use a miraculous again sadly. I had the Bee, Mari had the Mouse and Ari had the Snake

Dick Grayson @AFlyingGrayson

Why is Damian staring at a wall and not responding? What broke him? #Help???

Dick Grayson @AFlyingGrayson

@AFlyingGrayson Nevermind #HecouldnthaveanormalGF? #HolyShitMari

Wayne's Angel @FasionInGotham

So I can no longer say I've never seen a Bat before, just saw Signal and Red Robin, I think???

Gonna be real tho, I was expecting to see them in Gotham, NOT PARIS #wtf #Whyaretheyhere????

Marinette had barely sent the tweet before her phone was ringing.

"Are you being serious?" Adrian asked, in lieu of a greeting, "At least two of the Batfam is here?"

"Yeah," She whispered a bit numbly, eyes still focused on the roof she had watched them disappear from mere moments ago. It was far enough away that if she had been a normal human she wouldn't have heard them, but she wasn't a normal human, "Hey Adrian, Don't tell the team what I'm about to say, okay?"

"Are you okay, bugaboo?"  

"Questionable," She didn't even bother rebuking the nickname, "I think I might be dating a Bat."

______________________________________

Taglist: @kceedraws @northernbluetongue @starry-bi-sky @mysteriouslyswimmingfan-blo-blog @lexysama @vincentvangoose @theatreandcomicfreak @vinerlover @calvin1394 @interobanginyourmom @imanerddealwith @aarushi-03 @rikku052 @fantasticfourintraining @clumsy-owl-4178 @two-faced-biatch @celestiacq @vgirl-10123 @peculiarlylostdreamer @tinybrie @treebrosha @sam-spectra @zalladane @teresarosiadeviluke2112 @7-sage-7 @blue-peach14 @nataladriana9 @worlds-tiniest-spook-pastry @xxmadamjinxx @unabashedlyswimmingtimemachine @i-identify-as-a-mango @chloe-bourgeois-is-big-gay @vixen-uchiha @face-of-lazyness @lunar-wolf-warrior @derpingrainbow @drama-queen-supreme @vivilakitty @mystery-5-5 @synnesstra @ijustwannabecanadian @sharksharkbb @lysslovsanime @zazzlejazzle @corabeth11 @ur-average-reader @virgil-is-a-cutie @paradoxal-occurance @dur55 @this-is-vander @cowardlygaydinosaur @phantomneow12 @numbuh-7-knd @slytherinhquinn @celerystick045 @silvergold-swirl @dzcile @lordsmeldingtonthethird @asabella1224 @miraculous-simmer7 @god-is-dead-and-so-am-i @kuhakuanon @st0rmy-w1th1n @littleredrobinhoodlum @todaylillypads @screechingflapbiscuitpeach @a-complete-fool @urbanpineapplefarmer @woodland-queer @miraculousl4dybug @teresarosiadeviluke2112 @imanerddealwith @seraphichana @literalfantrash @zebrabaker @captainmac6 

[pixelgrotto]

Night City, I barely remember ya

I beat Cyberpunk 2077 last month, and honestly, I haven’t thought about Cyberpunk 2077 that much since.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. CD Projekt Red’s follow-up to The Witcher 3 was meant to be the sort of game that would stick in your mind after completion. It was promoted over eight years of hype stemming from its initial 2013 reveal as a example of CD Projekt’s infamous “vodka and Slavic magic” - a behemoth destined to change open world RPGs forever. But in the roughly 12 weeks since its release, the stuff that’s happened to Cyberpunk 2077, including its delisting from the Playstation store for being chock full of bugs and the theft of its source code by hackers, has been more cyberpunk than the actual game.

I was one of those people super hyped for this game when it was first announced. I mean, the Witcher franchise left an indelible impression on me; how could I not be psyched to see its devs tackle one of my favorite sci-fi genres? But my hype deflated over the years, largely due to tales of terrible crunch emerging from CD Projekt’s studios and social media marketing that was ill-advised at best and transphobic at worst. Everything seemed to slowly hint that the game’s vision of “cyberpunk” - a genre that can tell incredible futuristic tales of social upheaval and marginalized peoples - would be mostly style with not so much substance.

Despite me keeping my fingers crossed, the end product is pretty much what I feared - and I guess I should’ve known, since the official sourcebook for Cyberpunk 2020, the tabletop RPG that CD Projekt Red used as inspiration, actually lists “style over substance” as one of its rules.

Cyberpunk 2077’s main story revolves around a merc who dreams of big time heists in Night City named V. After a heist goes south, V ends up absorbing a biochip made by big bad corporation Arasaka that features the captured personality of rockstar-turned-terrorist Johnny Silverhand, played by Keanu Reeves - who, to be fair, does a good job with the material he’s given. Cue a bunch of quests that revolve around V and Johnny coming to terms with each other, taking down Arasaka and figuring out how to separate the chip from V’s brain.

In theory, this sounds like a cool way to explore the very cyberpunk themes of identity and what it means to have a corrupt company preserve a human soul beyond its organic shell. In reality, though, the story’s a surface level examination of these concepts, and Johnny Silverhand remains a massive dick throughout most of the game, only becoming relatable if players give him the benefit of the doubt - which they’re expected to do because he’s played by Keanu Reeves.

Johnny’s animosity towards Arasaka is also never completely outlined. He - and most other characters in Night City - keep telling V that corporations are awful because they disregard human rights and destroy the environment, but we never get many chances to see for ourselves how Arasaka and similar companies, like Militech or Kang Tao, actually do this. Arasaka does kidnap Johnny’s ex-girlfriend and is behind the tech that transfers his soul to a biochip, yes, but Johnny also threatens to destroy them at all of his shows and eventually sets off a bomb in their headquarters. Not that I’m siding with the corporation, but for much of the game we’re expected to treat them as the number one enemy simply because other characters say so, which is very much a “show, don’t tell” missed opportunity. If anything, Arasaka’s portrayal feels more like a vestige of the cyberpunk genre’s unfortunate maturation during the 1980s, where the fear of Japanese conglomerates taking over the world was common and a future where Asian companies were all-powerful instead of Western ones seemed like a dystopia.

Cyberpunk 2077 is very much caught in that yesteryear mold, featuring elements that might have been progressive in the 1980s but seem passé now. For a game that relied on questionable representation of trans people in its marketing, there were no notable trans NPCs that I came across, and even though there’s a robust character creation system where you actually can make a trans person, the game makes the troubling decision to only offer binary pronouns tied to V’s voice. Despite the fact that many of the best modern cyperbunk works deal with body augmentation and the line between man and machine, most of the physical modifications you can pay for at Night City’s “ripperdoc” facilities are niche features that only offer minimal stat boosts, with only two major ones that I know of - the mantis blades and gorilla arms - actually causing extensive changes to V’s looks. And finally, while there are tons of characters of color in the game, ranging from the Haitian Voodoo Boys gang to V’s “friendly ethnic friend™” Jackie Welles, most of them are varying degrees of stereotypical. For instance, Goro Takemura, an ex-Arasaka employee, sends you text messages reminiscent of haiku at one point because he’s Japanese and has to talk like a formal, honorable samurai or something.

If you’re able to look past these issues - along with the myriad of bugs that Cyberpunk 2077 shipped with - there’s still the niggling feeling that this game could have been so much more. The signs of a troubled development process are numerous, and there are Reddit threads packed with still-visible remnants - like useless combat skill perks and an entire metro system - that were part of gameplay elements gutted at some point in order for those overworked CD Projekt Red programmers to make a long-delayed release date. Even mainstay stuff in the open world genre - like the police chases common in the Grand Theft Autos - are absent, and Cyberpunk 2077’s 2018 demo, chock full of promised features that never made it into the final product, has to be one of the most notorious bits of smoke ‘n mirrors “gameplay” in recent memory.

Perhaps most bothersome is the feeling that a lot of your choices don’t seem to matter all that much in Cyberpunk 2077, which once touted itself as “a full-fledged RPG, not a shooter with RPG elements,” but ends up feeling more like the latter than the former. The game’s three different lifepaths - nomad, streetkid and corpo - only amount to about thirty minutes of unique playtime at the start and a few different dialogue options. The vehicle combat sequences that punctuate key missions are largely scripted, looking cool but offering little consequences depending on what V aims at. The side quests I encountered had minimal branching paths, and the only time the main story opened up to offer some real choice was in the game’s final chapter. Considering that CD Projekt once developed The Witcher 2 - a 2011 game that branches dramatically at its halfway mark to the point where a lot of folks insist that you need to play it twice in order to feel satisfied - Cyberpunk 2077 feels like a step back.

And yet, despite all of these criticisms, I still put nearly 80 hours into the game over the course of December, January and February. You don’t do that for something that’s patently unfun, so let me be clear - there is an entertaining experience buried beneath an avalanche of unfulfilled potential here. Driving on my Akira-esque bike through Night City’s slums as the game’s best song bumped on the radio, taking out legions of baddies with my mantis blades and relishing in the game’s extensive photo mode (as you can probably tell by my screenshots above) was a good time. In spite of his assholery, I did feel something akin to attachment for that bastard Johnny Silverhand by the finale, and there were a few key moments - like when I was scuba diving in the ocean with my girlfriend Judy, looking at the remains of a town destroyed by the land seizing machinations of corporations - that felt like this game had something to say beyond “bang bang gunplay and neon aesthetic.”

But at the end of the day, while I do feel moderately interested in someday checking out Cyberpunk Red (the newest iteration of this franchise’s tabletop RPG), CD Projekt’s seven-year-hyped-up behemoth has largely faded from my brain one month after beating it. On Twitter, I’ve seen Cyberpunk 2077 described as something akin to a flashy Netflix series with lots of fanfare and flair but not much else - and I can’t really argue with that statement.

Night City was supposed to be the stuff of a long-term relationship. Instead, it feels more like a fling.

[panharmonium]

Hey, do you ship merthur? I have conflicted feelings about it because Merlin does love Arthur but also their relationship is kinda shitty.

short answer: i do not

longer answer: i might not be the right person to ask about this, because i don’t really “ship” anything?  it’s not how i engage with fandom.  (disclaimer: this is not a value judgment of folks who do engage with fandom that way.  just an explanation of how my own brain works.)

extra long answer: under the cut, because i suppose it was only a matter of time before someone asked me about merlin/arthur, and i might as well put my entire response in one place so that next time, i can just link to it.

questions like this are a little tough for me to answer, because i am completely uninterested in romance as a premise.  if it’s not there, i don’t care.  if it is there, i often wish it weren’t, because it’s almost never developed in a way that lives up to my standards.  i don’t always mind if something contains romantic relationships (provided they’re written well), but i don’t want them to be the point of a story.  i honestly cannot think of anything less interesting to me than a story that has as its main plotline “x character falls in love with y character.”  for me, in my brain, it’s like, “okay...that’s it?  do you have anything else to say?”  there is literally nothing about that that i care about.

this can be a little difficult to navigate in fandom, because one of the oft-heard commendations of “fandom” is ‘gosh, fandom is so wonderful, we can watch the same two characters fall in love again and again and again in a million different scenarios!’  which is true, for the people who care about that sort of thing, but that’s not actually ‘fandom.’  that’s shipping.  and there’s nothing wrong with shipping, but shipping and fandom are not the same thing, and they’ve become so conflated that it can be very difficult to engage in the latter without being absolutely swamped by the former.

many times, for me, fandom can feel synonymous with shipping.  there was a post i reblogged recently whose tags described shipping as often feeling like a prerequisite to engaging with fandom, and that is often what it feels like to me, particularly in fandoms where one ship is so ubiquitous that any and all other material is utterly dwarfed by it in scale.  (for me, my last two major fandoms have been merlin and teen wolf, so - i’m sure you see my dilemma, heh.)

all of that said, in terms of arthur and merlin specifically...

disclaimer: everything i say here is relevant to me only.  these are my own feelings.  i am making this post on my own blog, in my own space, in response to a question about my own thoughts.  i do not want, expect, or need anyone else to share these thoughts.  any commentary i make about fandom trends is not equivalent to condemnations of individual people’s opinions or shipping habits.  i do not mind or take issue with folks who ship these two characters.  i am glad you are having fun.  please do not @ me about something you disagree with.  i promise you it is not necessary.

okay.  with that out of the way.  

part of me is reluctant to expound further on this question, because my personal philosophy is that merlin and arthur as a ship have had more than enough time and space devoted to them in this fandom (way more than their share, frankly) and i generally prefer to focus on merlin and the other people in his life, as a deliberate counter to that.  but, since you asked, and because i have been experiencing the “i’m tired of romance” bug more strongly lately, here is the long-form version.

the number one reason why i don’t ship arthur and merlin is what i already outlined above: i don’t really “ship” anything.  i have never looked at two characters who were not already together/on an obvious potential path to being together and said “i want them to fall in love.”  that has just never happened to me.  (again - it’s not a BAD thing to have this happen, it’s just not something that’s ever happened to me.  i can’t relate to the experience.)

therefore, when i do appreciate a romantic relationship, it’s pretty much always because canon has shown me something romantic (or clearly pre-romantic) that i find to be well-written and compelling.  (it’s rare - as i outlined before, i would usually rather not deal with romance at all - but it happens.)  

arthur and merlin, then, never had that effect on me, because arthur and merlin, as depicted in the canon, are not in love.

[to anybody reading this who just snatched up their keyboard and started furiously typing, i beg you - please go back and re-read my disclaimer.]

they’re not in love.  the truth about these two is that if i had watched this show without having grown up in fandom as a culture (and without knowing exactly what kind of ships fandom immediately sees EVERYWHERE) the idea of anybody shipping these two together would never have even entered my mind.

(and like.  because i DID grow up in fandom, and i DO know exactly what kind of ships fandom sees everywhere, i knew before i even started this show that arthur/merlin was going to be an inescapable thing.  but that would not have been the case, if i had watched the series in a world where i didn’t know what fandom was.)

arthur and merlin, in canon, are not in love.  the show never does anything to give me an inkling that either of them are harboring romantic feelings for each other.  that is never what is happening onscreen.  literally the last thing on merlin’s agenda is romantic attachment, ever, and arthur is never, ever shown to be in love with anyone who isn’t gwen.  the show, onscreen, never tricks me, teases me, or leads me on.  i was never under the impression that merlin and arthur were in love with each other, because they weren’t.

but that DOES NOT MEAN their relationship matters less.  just because they aren’t IN love with each other doesn’t mean they don’t love each other, and one of those things is not bigger or better or more powerful than the other.

i struggle a lot in fandom (all fandom, not just merlin) with the persistent idea that romantic attachment is the peak, the natural endpoint on a scale of “how deep is your love?”  i am constantly running up against posts where the commonly accepted structure is to cite a moment of devotion or caring or some instance of basic connection between two characters, and then add a caption or tag saying ‘because they are JUST FRIENDS, right?’ or ‘^^totally platonic interaction between characters who are not at all in love, sure jan.’  

and honestly?  i hate that.  that is one of my least favorite things about fandom.  it makes me so tired.  

i am completely disconnected from this idea that there are like...things you can do that are too caring to count as friendship.  like - that there is too much devotion you can show, and if you go over the limit, then it’s laughable that you would do those things for “just” a friend.  that’s so unpleasant to me.

(and i do think [when it comes to non-canon queer ships, anyway - straight ships unfortunately have no excuse, sorry y’all] that part of this probably has its roots in pushback at the tendency of people who try to “gal pal” actual queer ships (or literal real life relationships), so this, at least, is something i can understand.  i’m queer myself; i get that.  and that is why i will never like - attach myself to someone’s post and start complaining.  people can vent however they want.)

it doesn’t change my own feelings, though.  i hate seeing every meaningful friendship i’ve ever been invested in talked about like it’s just a romance in disguise.

other things: i am uninterested in romance as a motivator.  

truly, from the bottom of my heart, i don’t care.

we are, at least in my corner of the world, oversaturated with romance, to the point where any piece of media that doesn’t include it in some fashion is shockingly bizarre.  it is EVERYWHERE.  it is in EVERYTHING.  i cannot pick up a book without running into a romantic plotline.  i cannot watch a movie or a tv show without being forced into multiple romances that i don’t care about.  (rare exceptions apply, as always, but i’m speaking generally.)

this oversaturation, for me, means that romance as a storyline no longer holds any meaning for me.  i see it EVERYWHERE.  it is in literally EVERYTHING.  making merlin into a “love story,” for me, makes the show so much less interesting, because there are billions of love stories out there.  love stories are practically the only kind of story our media remembers how to tell!  why would i take a story that is so unique in its exploration of deep friendship (that isn’t even quite friendship, because it’s not real, but merlin wants it to be real, but making it real would also destroy it) and loyalty (that isn’t necessarily deserved, but is still offered, but is damaging to the person offering it) and love (that exists in spite of arthur’s position as the oppressor, but still cannot erase merlin’s oppression, and is patently not a magical fix for the very real problems merlin is facing), and then want to water it down to “and then they fell in love”???

merlin bbc has so much to say about the transformative, redemptive power of love (not just romance), and the bonds we form with each other despite the fact that we don’t always deserve each other, and what we can do to make ourselves better, and how do we make amends for the ways in which we hurt the people we care about, and it is so complicated and there is so much beauty there and i adore it specifically because it is one of the rare pieces of media out there that doesn’t prop up romantic love as the most important and powerful force in the universe.  romantic love is not what moves the story.  merlin’s love for the people around him is based on compassion.  it’s bigger than the familiar and overused ‘i am desperately in love with this one individual person and that’s what drives my actions,” which is a premise all of us know has been done to death.  merlin’s love is not about romantic attachment.  it’s a deep, abiding love for humanity.  it’s based on hope, and faith, and the inherent belief that everybody matters, even in their worst moments.

condensing that kind of story into “and then they fell in love” erases its meaning for me.  it makes it trite.  uninteresting.  i have seen “and then they fell in love” fully sixty thousand times.  “and then they fell in love” has been done so often that it is utterly devoid of power for me.  boring.   i literally do not care.

other people might feel differently, and find a romantic love story compelling.  i don’t.  

i’m guessing the message that prompted this essay is asking me to evaluate how i feel about the “goodness” of the merlin/arthur ship, aka whether it’s worthwhile to ship it or not based on how healthy/unhealthy it is, which i definitely can’t answer, because i don’t think whether it’s “good” or not really matters.  i am definitely too old to be riding the newer wave of, uh...idk, purity culture type stuff that is so oft-debated on here, lately.

but you’re absolutely right, anon - merlin and arthur’s relationship IS kinda shitty!  it 100% is.  it doesn’t mean you can’t ship them, though, if you want; otherwise i wouldn’t be invested in any aspect of their friendship, either.  

the fact that merlin and arthur’s relationship is kinda shitty is an essential element of the show; it’s the microcosmic representation of the macrocosmic problem merlin is trying to solve, and even with that being the case, we can see clearly that this also doesn’t preclude them from having real moments of connection and care and love.  this is the contradiction i have to keep in mind whenever i engage with them in the friendship sense - merlin has been wronged by arthur in so many ways, and yet he still loves him and believes arthur can do better, and yet his dedication to arthur really does destroy his life piece by piece, and you really have to walk a line between those extremes and be thinking: in what ways was this a noble, honorable path for merlin to take and in what ways was this damaging, and was it all worth it in the end?

we probably wouldn’t still be watching this show if we didn’t ultimately think the answer to that last question was yes.  but there are also equally valid ways in which the answer is, truthfully, no, and i think really the only important thing when dealing with merlin and arthur’s relationship (in whatever capacity you prefer) is to keep that dissonance in mind.

so, to more directly address your question, when it comes to my interaction with the source material, i don’t ship merlin and arthur romantically because i don’t see romance when they interact in canon, and i don’t think their relationship could be improved or made more interesting/more meaningful by adding extra-canonical romance into the mix.  that’s really it.

but the other side of things is this: even if i were granted someone else’s ship-goggles to somehow see romance between these two (eg, once, in the distant past i read a harry potter fic that was so well-constructed it sold me on a relationship i didn’t [and still don’t] actually see in canon), i still wouldn’t choose to ship merlin and arthur, and it’s not because they’re a “bad” ship (no such thing, folks - tag your stuff and let people live their lives, thank you), it’s because this fandom has already been swallowed by them and i cannot bring myself to make that imbalance worse.

trying to be in the merlin fandom without shipping merlin and arthur is just...a little bit difficult sometimes.  i think probably even people who do ship merlin/arthur are aware of that.  sometimes it can feel like merlin/arthur is a given in this fandom, not one of many options - as if you’re not in the merlin fandom, but rather the merthur fandom, and you know you really, really do not belong there.

and it’s not even a canonical ship!  it’s not even real.  and yet if you like this show, and you want to engage in the fandom, your experience is, without exception, going to be chock full of merlin/arthur content by default.

essentially, my struggle with the merlin/arthur dynamic in fandom is two-fold:

1) the strikingly imbalanced content distribution

the merlin fandom, in terms of content distribution, is a pretty accurate mirror of merlin’s own existence, to be honest, in that pretty much every aspect of it is eventually taken over by arthur pendragon, and in that there’s a reasonable debate to be had about whether or not that’s a good thing.

(spoiler alert: it’s not.)

even so, it is what it is, and as i said before, me commenting on fandom trends is not meant as a condemnation of individual preferences.  people like what they like!  that’s just how things are.  shipping arthur and merlin isn’t a Bad thing to do, by any means, and the fact that so many people do is just, you know, bad luck for me, lol.  but at the same time, the wildly unbalanced distribution of content does make it more difficult for folks who don’t ship merlin/arthur to engage in fandom with quite the same level of ease, and even though it’s nobody’s fault, it is still perfectly reasonable for people who don’t ship merlin/arthur to be frustrated about that.

fanfic is a pretty good case study for how this plays out.  i saw a post a while back that was titled something like ‘merlin bbc gothic,’ and the first bullet point was “canon ships are rarepairs,” and HOO BOY, that is true.  stats-wise, merlin/arthur makes up ⅔ of the merlin fic on AO3.  ~25,000 fics.  the next most popular tag after merlin/arthur is arthur/gwen, but arthur/gwen have ~2,900 fics in their tag.  and when you remember to exclude any instance of merlin/arthur from the arthur/gwen tag, that number drops by another thousand, to ~1,940.

that’s buckwild.  come on.  merlin/arthur has twenty-three THOUSAND more fics than the next most popular (and CANONICAL, i might add) ship?  and every other ship’s numbers are even lower than that?*

and if you don’t want to read shippy stuff in the first place, like me - the merlin “gen” tag has less than 8000 fics in it, by comparison, and then you STILL have to filter merlin/arthur out of the gen fics, leaving you with about 6300 - which number has to be filtered down further to remove OTHER ships that still make it past the gen filter.

in comparison to 25,000.

like.  i’ve been in fandom long enough that i’m not surprised - mean, i came into merlin directly off a teen wolf phase, and boy, that’s a whole other bowl of noodles right there, with added squick factors that are irrelevant here - but i’m still just...man. 

it still makes my head spin.  and it is still frustrating, every time.

*(there is a lot more to be said about how gwen fits into all of this, and i know it has been discussed more thoroughly in other places, but yes, another reason i am leery of arthur/merlin as a thing is that i’m just...not super comfortable with what that implies for gwen and her position in the story.  even if i personally am slightly more compelled by gwen/lancelot, technically - i still don’t quite feel comfortable taking gwen out of her canonical place.  she belongs at the top.  she deserves to be the love interest and she deserves to be the queen.  and like - people can say that her relationship with arthur isn’t “developed” or “convincing” enough to warrant retaining in fic, and i get it, the show really did fail gwen in S5 - but i still don’t buy that argument.  people literally INVENTED a romantic relationship for themselves and put 25,000 fics worth of effort into building it up; there is no reason why an “underdeveloped” canon romance couldn’t have gotten the same treatment.  except, of course, for the fact that one [Black, female] character was being shoved aside to make way for yet another two white dudes.)

(and i’m not saying that everyone is doing this deliberately or maliciously.  but we all know this is a cross-fandom trend.  there is literally no reason for the gap in content to be THAT wide.  a canon relationship with twenty-three thousand fewer fics than an invented ship?  just...that is a stat that bears thinking about.  it doesn’t mean that merlin/arthur is a “bad” ship, or that you can’t prefer lancelot/gwen, but it IS still important to recognize these patterns where they occur, across fandoms, and to really think about what they mean.)

2) the arthur-goggles

my second struggle with merlin/arthur in fandom is the ubiquitousness of the arthur-goggles, aka: the tendency in fandom, as in canon, to make everything in merlin’s life about arthur, and everything in the show about merthur.

this one specifically really gets to me.  i am very committed to the idea that merlin is a complete individual, whether arthur is there or not.  i write a LOT of meta about merlin being a whole person, specifically pushing back on the idea that merlin was “born” for arthur’s benefit - my motto is basically that “merlin’s life does not revolve around arthur pendragon,” and the way his life begins to revolve around arthur pendragon in later seasons is not in fact touching or romantic or beautiful; it’s a tragedy.  merlin does not exist only in the context of his relationship with arthur; he possesses worth outside of his mission to save the prince of camelot, and he was already a complete person before he ever met the prince of camelot, and one of the many issues we have to think about when dealing with arthur and merlin in any capacity is how merlin is told from the get-go that he is supposed to devote his whole life to arthur, but arthur is never given any such reciprocal responsibility.  

merlin and arthur’s relationship, just like the distribution of content in this fandom, is wildly imbalanced.  merlin spends all of his spare time thinking about arthur’s life; he ties himself in knots trying to help arthur develop as a person.  he is constantly working to keep arthur safe and happy.  but arthur, at the end of a long day, doesn’t spend his nights agonizing over how he can improve merlin’s life.  he just goes home and goes to bed.  he never once thinks, ‘my purpose on this earth is to serve and support my friend merlin.’  he is never told his life isn’t his own, that he is supposed to be one half of some two-sided coin.  only merlin is told that his entire existence is earmarked for someone else, that his life’s purpose is to be someone else’s better half.  only merlin is expected to devote his entire being to someone else’s betterment.  only merlin is expected to say demeaning, self-abnegating things like “i was born to serve you.”  

arthur, by contrast, is allowed to have a life of his own.  he is allowed to exist on his own terms.  he is never told that his worth is dependent on how well he can prop someone else up.  and while fic might like to imagine merlin being the most important thing in arthur’s life, in canon that is just not the case.  

merlin exists on his own merits, and the idea that he does everything he does just because “he’s in love with arthur” will never sit right with me, because it’s simply not true.  merlin and arthur’s relationship is important to both of them, yes, and of course it is undergirded by deep love and care, but it is also way more complicated than that.  merlin’s investment in arthur’s life - and his grief at arthur’s death - are NOT solely driven by his love for arthur as an individual; they are inextricably bound up with a sense of obligation and duty and self-worth and, eventually, failure, because he’s been told that protecting arthur is a) the only thing that matters about his own life and b) the only way to free his people and save an entire kingdom.  and i think ignoring this very real complexity in favor of “merlin does what he does and feels what he feels because he’s in love with arthur” cheapens the depth of the story and flattens merlin’s character.

arthur-goggles automatically make everything about merlin/arthur, though.  so the difficulty, for me, with merlin/arthur as a ship, is that it can be hard to make/find things about merlin that people don’t instantly, always try to link back to arthur in some way.  merlin is not allowed to have things that are just his, and he can’t exist in a state where arthur doesn’t somehow factor in - no matter how unrelated to arthur something is, or how non-shippy it’s meant to be - there’s someone out there who’s going to loop it back to merthur in some way.

just like - scattered examples of things I’ve encountered:

all of merlin’s non-arthur love interests on AO3 having massive chunks of their ship tags actually being merthur fics, with the non-arthur ship serving solely as a stepping stone on the way to getting merlin and arthur together

readers, on fics that are specifically designated as focusing on merlin+someone else and in which arthur does not appear, leaving comments asking “so how long until arthur shows up,” “can’t wait to see arthur,” etc

meta about how ‘merlin’s time in camelot was actually really bad for him as a person’ being reblogged and modified by someone else with an addition like “but merlin doesn’t regret a second of it because he wouldn’t have known arthur if he were anywhere else,” and the OP having to reblog their own post and explain that this is literally the exact problem they were trying to critique

in fic, merlin’s friends being utilized only as vessels with whom he can have discussions about his developing relationship with arthur

etc etc

it’s not always huge egregious things, but wearing arthur-goggles means EVERYTHING comes back to merthur in some way, which for me is just...really insulting to other characters, and really limiting in terms of story analysis.  

so, for example - this is a VERY specific example that few will relate to, because i am probably the only person on here who has ever tried to search the tag for merlin’s friend will from ealdor (a niche fave of mine) - but with him, especially, it is very hard to avoid bumping into a lot of people wearing arthur-goggles, because everybody seems to imagine him as merlin’s ex, who is only upset about what’s going on in 1.10 because he’s jealous about arthur appearing alongside merlin, never mind that will and merlin have known each other since birth and have a relationship that LITERALLY predates arthur by two decades.

so with him, as an example - the other day, i saw some post in the tag that was like “will gets teary when arthur makes his inspirational speech in ealdor because he finally understands what merlin sees in arthur and he can’t be mad anymore”

and that is just patently untrue.  it is not even remotely close to a legitimate interpretation of what is happening in that scene.  will hasn’t come around to arthur’s way of thinking yet; he literally still packs his things and leaves after this happens, and he is - i mean, first of all, he’s not crying, lol, and he stalks out of that scene weary, angry, and fed up, because he thinks the village is delusional and all of his neighbors are going to get killed in the morning.  his arc - his dissatisfaction with what is going on, his anger at the ignorance arthur wields as a nobleman with all of that wealth and privilege, his resistance to the big “let’s fight kanen’s men with sticks” plan - that is about him and his history and who he is.  it is not about an (imaginary) merlin/arthur love story.  

but when the arthur-goggles are on, all roads lead to merthur.  even when the other characters in question (*coughWILLIAMcough*) would be beyond mortified to have merthur, of all things, assigned as their motivation.

SO.  now that i’ve gone over both the canon and fandom aspects of my reasoning, the succinct summary in response to your question is just that no, i don’t personally ship merlin/arthur.  because:

a) i don’t see it b) the fandom is already trying to drown me with it and i choose to center other characters out of spite c) i just think merlin deserves better lol

however, as i said in my disclaimer - that doesn’t mean other people shouldn’t ship and enjoy it!   merlin/arthur is very much not my cup of tea, but that’s no reason why other folks can’t have fun with it.  i think the best portrayals of it, probably, will be those that keep in mind exactly what you said - that merlin and arthur’s relationship is “kinda shitty” - but this is fandom, so if what folks really want to write is just lots of happy AU’s with no issues, then they should go for it!  the point of fandom is to have fun connecting with people over a shared love of something, so i am happy to let others have fun doing their thing, and i will just be over here doing mine. 🙂

[seasaltmemories]

Puella Magi Madoka Magica Review/Analysis

So in 2020, if you know anything about magical girl shows, Puella Magi Madoka Magica is a juggernaut of a franchise, casting a long shadow over the genre for nearly a decade now.  While it was beloved when it first came out, over the last few years I’ve noticed growing backlash surrounding it, claiming that it was never really as revolutionary as people claimed to be.  Since despite watching it soon after it came out but not really having strong feelings about it, I decided a rewatch was needed, so this review will function more as a retrospective, spoilers abound

Madoka Kaname and Sayaka Miki are regular middle school girls with regular lives, but all that changes when they encounter Kyuubey, a cat-like magical familiar, and Homura Akemi, the new transfer student. Kyuubey offers them a proposition: he will grant any one of their wishes and in exchange, they will each become a magical girl, gaining enough power to fulfill their dreams. However, Homura Akemi, a magical girl herself, urges them not to accept the offer, stating that everything is not what it seems. A story of hope, despair, and friendship, Mahou Shoujo Madoka★Magica deals with the difficulties of being a magical girl and the price one has to pay to make a dream come true.

I included the summary because at this point it’s tradition, but it almost feels silly to do so for this show when practically everyone knows it is the “dark, grim magical girl show” still the fact I rewatched this with my roommate who I warned that it did get dark but knew none of the details about, I think it gave me a new appreciation for the show, spoiler alert, I think it holds up pretty well

PMMM is all about taking the familiar iconography of the magical girl genre and twisting it into something darker.  And it’s very good about explaining its world and divvying out new information at a easy to understand pace to accomplish it.  Everything from Walpurgis Night, Homura’s true nature, and even Madoka eventual ascent into godhood is foreshadowed and set up several episodes in advance.  And while in hindsight some revelations can look silly like “Soul gems are actually the girl’s soul,” watching it with a blind viewer, most every one of them hit effectively (even when she just randomly guessed the big magical girls = witches off-hand)

It is very obvious why it got big so fast as a complex story told in about as digestible way as possible, to me it feels like PMMM always wanted to be mainstream, and while I think that is a value neutral trait, I also believe that influences some of the culture or surrounding fanbase, PMMM very much got the reputation of being an “actually good” magical girl show by dudebros just want to put down traditionally feminine media, and of course many series since then have also tried to tap into PMMM’s market by copying it, but I don’t think the show itself should be held culpable.

For one, a show has no control over its reception.  But second of all like the ultimate ending of the show makes it hard for me to believe the claims that “actually this show is all about showing how stupid it is for girls to believe this fantasy,” because Madoka stands up for wishes and dreams, rewriting the laws of reality and even saving herself from damnation.  I think to call the show itself feminist would be a bit too generous, but feminist readings are not impossible to make.  While she can’t change every aspect of the system, the world of PMMM post-Madoka is much closer to more traditional magical girl shows with only a bit of an edge.  If you want pure torture porn just look at Uta~Kata

I guess people more emotionally attached to the iconography of magical girl shows would still be offended by the systematic tearing down of the imagery, but tbh frank I’m a bit of a fake magical fan in that most of my favorite entries tend to distance themselves from the exact formula.  Even aside from my personal preference though, like let’s not kid ourselves that elements of the genre only exist for later toy merchandising opportunities.  I love me a good toy commercial from time to time, but that doesn’t make it too sacred to be fiddled with later on.

However while I think this is a well-made show, my feelings about it overall still remain pretty neutral.  The narrative is very plot driven and focused on its systems first and foremost.  The characters aren’t entirely ignored, but most of their stories are little bite-sized fables at their core as opposed to fleshed out story-lines.  Also while there is justification for some of the writing choices, like Madoka’s lack of agency up until the end or how no real friendship or support systems exist, those factors still impacted my overall enjoyment from episode to episode.  Also the dark elements aren’t quite as revolutionary as its reputation would suggest.  Again its a PG-13 sort of horror, character death, creepy imagery, and unfortunate implications, but nothing about the series itself is very transgressive or boundary-pushing.

This is all just personal taste though.  I don’t think most of these are genuine flaws, but after a decade of that reputation of being to only good or only dark magical girl show, I can see these criticism starting to grow more and more overblown to match the exaggerated reputation it got as this singular exception.  I hope as more time continues to past that we can get rid of the dichotomy others have put on it and rather than treat it like the ultimate good or evil, acknowledge the history that created it and appreciate its unique little niche it has rightly earned for itself.

[c0ry-c0nvoluted]

READ THIS.

First off, everyone who isn’t too lazy to use their brains for something other than doing what they’re told should watch the video attached. But the only way you’ll get any benefit from it is if you’re stable enough to be objective. Remove yourself from yourself and just absorb and consider.

This video is 2 hours long. And you’ll find him (#DavidIcke) repeating his point throughout which can get trying, but it IS a valid point. That point being:

THIS IS WHAT THEY WANT.

They want us afraid and panicking and ready and willing to accept whatever aggressive measures are needed to alleviate our fear. In fact, they’ll have us pleading for these aggressive measure to be taken (that will continue well after the crisis) and then vilifying anyone who calls for our rights to freedom. “Oh, you don’t want to stay indoors? That means you don’t care about my grandma and you should be locked up.” And, “Oh, you don’t accept a mandatory vaccination because you don’t know what’s actually in it? Then you’re the monster who’s putting my children at risk and my family in danger and should be locked up.” We will all line up to shackle ourselves and everyone else around us if we’re panicked and afraid.

At the end of it all he suggests alleviating our fear of death in order to not allow ourselves to be manipulated. This is brilliant. But how do you do that? By changing your perspective on consciousness and realizing that human consciousness is not the only experience. That after we leave our bodies we move onto an entirely new form of infinite existence and consciousness, and that death is nothing but a change in perspective (and likely a fantastic one.) My opinion on this? I’ve always thought that our minds aren’t quite evolved enough to maintain consciousness as a form of energy without a body. But I meant that in the aspect of “I don’t think I will STILL BE ME.” But, considering this further, and seeing the benefits of adjusting my perspective, I realize now that, sure, I might not be me, but how is that a bad thing? I mean, even if there’s no consciousness at all, that’s STILL not a bad thing. And if there IS consciousness, it will be so much more vast and connected to the universe than it is right now trapped inside these fleshy mishaps of evolution, that the next existence may as well be called Heaven, regardless of the fact that I don’t believe in the Christian afterlife or their creation theory (or their God). And yes, it occurs to me that it’s not death we fear so much as the pain of dying. But most of that pain comes from the fear. I’d say that if you were NOT afraid to die, then you’d easily ease your suffering (while dying) by 50%, if not a whole hell of a lot more.

His ending note/concept is a bit difficult to wrap your brain around, and impossible for most (unfortunately), but for those who can grasp it, it’s fucking gold, man. It really helped ease my mind and is worth sticking around the entire interview for.

(This next part of these “Cliff Notes” is gonna get back into the “conspiracy” of it all.)

How often have you been repeatedly told to get your flu shot over the past 10 years? It’s everywhere, right? That repetition is a form of psychological manipulation. It’s gearing you up to get a vaccination that’s mandated. And that’s gearing you up for what will lead to voluntarily being ushered into a world where there are no more jobs so you’re dependent on “government” cheese, which is barely enough to survive so keeps you powerless, and you’re behavior is monitored and your “government credits” are at risk if you “behave improperly”. 

THEY ARE ALREADY DOING THIS IN CHINA TODAY USING FACIAL RECOGNITION A.I. TO MONITOR BEHAVIOR AND ADD OR SUBTRACT CREDITS ( which he discusses)

WE WILL BE NEXT.

And it’s all under the guise of “your government wants to help feed you in these terrible times but, for your safety, you will be monitored, and any negative behavior will result in penalties.” And what becomes “negative behavior”? Speaking out against the World Government. This has been written about for decades, if not longer, and has become such a scifi troupe that most believe that it’s just fantasy. But it started as a practical concept recognized by deep thinkers, seeing the inevitable outcome of a monetary society, and then was developed into stories told for entertainment. But ALSO for awareness.

  He may go a little too far for rational people when he acknowledges the possibility that #COVID19 might actually have been released purposely, but that’s not relevant because A PANDEMIC WAS INEVITABLE (because of how connected our global society is). And being inevitable, it is very easy to plan for that pandemic and manipulate our reactions to it so to push us all towards EXACTLY what they want:

TOTALITARIANISM

And if this pandemic isn’t bad enough to get us where they want us, the next one will be.

This is probably the point where, if you’ve made it this far, you’re gonna pull the Bullshit card and dismiss the whole rant. But here’s the thing:

The “conspiracy” of it all is IRRELEVANT. The fact remains that when you stand back and look at where we are headed you’ll clearly see (if you can think that far ahead, which, granted, 80% of our society is not intelligent enough to do, which is what makes this possible in the first place) that what he describes and how he describes it is in fact exactly what is happening. So whether it’s all a conspiracy or not doesn’t matter because the end result is the same. No, I’m not saying COVID-19 is a conspiracy. I believe it was just an inevitability, as mentioned above. But our reactions to it and what will happen now because of those reactions is (coincidentally?) pushing us toward the death of democracy AND THE DEATH OF OUR FREEDOM.

He goes on to point out that because this concept is so unfathomably evil we can’t possibly accept it to be true because, as far as we know, no such evil on such a grand scale can actually be real. It baffles the mind. IT MUST BE PARANOIA.

It isn’t. It’s, again, all part the inevitable outcome of a monetary based economy. How many times do we have to say this? The only outcome of a monetary based society is that eventually only one corporation will survive (even if they’re more than one at the end, they’re all working together as a conglomerate). And, in a monetary society, whoever controls all the money CONTROLS EVERYTHING.

David Icke doesn’t even touch on the money thing, which I was surprised by. He simply just puts the spotlight on "The Cult" that’s secretly manipulating our entire civilization toward the One World Government they need in order to control it all. He brings up the point of why are we locking everyone down if only the elderly and people with underlying health concerns are in danger? We should be locking THEM down (humanely) for their protection and letting everyone else go about their lives and get sick and then get over it like we always do and will. Admittedly, I’m not entirely sure about the end fatality rate, because we’re not there yet, but it makes sense that most of us, even if and when we contract it, will be absolutely fine. Granted, Americans are unhealthy as shit, so the mortality rate can end up being a bit rough, but it’s THE FEAR of that rate that allows them to sit back and let us hand over our freedom to them. THE FEAR is what will give #TheCult ultimate control over the world, and we will fucking hand it to them with praises while saying “thank you for saving us from these terrible times.”

As I was watching this, just after he mentioned that the goal is to get everyone on a government “credit-based behavioral-dependent income,” I got a news notification saying the motion was just passed to send out $1000 checks to American citizens.

Holy. Fucking. Shit. 

IT’S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW.

What the The Cult want is for all other companies to crash leaving them the only few left that have money/power, which makes it so none of us can challenge them because anytime anyone speaks out they’ll have their "government cheese" reduced and no one else will have enough of their own to lend them. THIS IS WHY MONEY NEEDS TO BE ABOLISHED ENTIRELY. I won’t get into the details of that here but, believe me, it CAN work and WILL make EVERYTHING INSURMOUNTABLY BETTER. But just to touch on HOW it would work:

TECHNOLOGY. Society will need to be automated so people will not HAVE to work for a living. But in order for that to happen all the world's governments would have to work together to create this automated society. This is the only POSITIVE outcome of what The Cult may be pursuing. If we're lucky, when whoever wins it all has decimated the entire world's economy, they may decide to create a new and better one that does in fact abolish money and automates society. But this would be a fucking miracle beyond fathoming because it would mean that the sociopaths who killed the world were actually doing it to save it.(But this discussion goes a little too deep into "not fucking likely, bro.".)

WHAT WE CAN DO NOW TO STOP THIS IS NOT LET FEAR ALLOW THEM TO CONTROL US, ULTIMATELY CAUSING US TO HAND OVER OUR FREEDOMS TO THEM.

And no, this is not the American government’s plan. It’s not the communist party’s plan. It’s not Trump or anyone else you see in the media. They are all pawns, puppets, unknowing means to ends and have no idea what’s really happening (or are possibly part of it, yes. But that’s not likely. It’s more likely they’re just be manipulated like the rest of us.)

Watch the interview attached.

Keep an open mind.

Do not be afraid.

Death is just a change in perspective.

OUR PERCEPTIONS ARE OUR REALITY. 

-cm

[things2mustdo]

In order for a nation to survive, two critical emotions must be controlled. Contrary to popular belief, these emotions are not fear and greed—although these are very important to control, as well. Rather, it’s masculine aggression and feminine vanity that must be controlled…and we are doing a terrible job at this.

Unfortunately, over the past 70 years, we’ve seen sex roles and gender dynamics completely turned on their heads. Rather than men and women working together to create better relationships, more functional families, and more powerful countries, we’ve been pit against one another by toxic ideologies and ruthless demagogues.

It is not enough to simply know what is happening, however—we must know precisely how it’s happening, step by step, and more importantly, WHY it’s happening. In this article, I will explore why our society has gone so downhill so fast, and potential solutions we can integrate to remedy it (if we can save it, at all).

The Two Forces

As I said previously, there are two very delicate forces which must constantly be counter-balancing one another, and anytime they grow unbalanced, there will be chaos. These two forces are, of course, masculine aggression and feminine vanity. Too much masculine aggression, and a country becomes war-torn, unable to run itself or stay stable long enough to produce any sort of civilization (think the Middle East).

Too much feminine vanity, however, and the opposite occurs. Men become reclusive, because women become far too difficult to deal with. This is why we’ve seen the rise of the sigma male over the past 20 years—men who refuse to attach themselves to any sort of social hierarchy. They’re not alpha, beta, or omega. They just do as they do, without adhering to any sort of social group or workplace hierarchy.

As feminine vanity grows excessive, female hypergamy is given reign to run loose. Rather than men and women developing healthy relationships with one another, women become so conceited that they refuse to “settle” for anyone less than an alpha male Chad Thundercock, and thus we have a surplus of angry, bitter women who hit the wall at 30 and end up childless and alone.

It’s so obvious that it should go without saying, that we are currently in a serious imbalance. For far too long, masculine aggression has been hampered and stomped down by our effeminate school system, our brainwashing devices (aka TV’s), and our mass media control system. All the while, these things have encouraged women to do as they please, without any consequences or thought of their actions on a larger, societal scale.

Restoring the Balance

Balance will be restored, one way or another. There are only two ways for this imbalance to possibly be restored, and most men here will acknowledge, at least implicitly, that this is the case:

Men in OTHER COUNTRIES restore the balance (by coming here en masse)

Men in THIS COUNTRY restore the balance (by not being pussies)

Those are the only two options. There is no third option, where women somehow magically stop giving men 500,000 shit tests a day and step down to become good, faithful girlfriends, wives, and mothers. This will not happen. When a society reaches this critical imbalance, only one of two things can happen.

Of course, we all know what the elites (oy vey!) are pushing for. They want to bring millions of aggressive, young, fighting-age men to this country, to supposedly help combat “population decline.” We all know that this is complete horse shit, and that their true motive is to destroy America.

Even so, with the full force of the elites raining down upon us, there is hope. Over the past two years, we’ve seen more masculine energy emerge and come to the front of our socio-political battlegrounds than arguably any other time in history. For the first time in the past 70 years, men are reclaiming their manhood.

Let me reiterate that this is the only option. There is no magical world where everything just works out great, where we have millions of violent, aggressive 20-something-year-old men come into this country, and we retain our values as an Anglo-Saxon country. No. This will not happen. We either get our acts together, collectively, as men, or we watch our nation burn.

The Path Forward (2018-2020)

The next two years are of critical importance. We have collectively, successfully memed the most brutally alpha and pro-American president into office arguably since Ronald Reagan. This is not an opportunity that we can afford to squander—we must all begin proactively restoring the balance of masculinity in this country, from the top down, otherwise our nation will perish to globalists and their dumb, but useful allies.

There will be resistance, as there is whenever masculinity tries to assert itself. Pay no attention to this resistance. Simply follow the advice which the manosphere advocates for:

Create an income independent of a massive, bureaucratic, globalist corporation

Increase your testosterone levels (start by avoiding foods that kill testosterone)

Lift weights, and become physically able to stand up for yourself

Proactively participate in the upcoming midterms, and the Presidential Election of 2020

Do everything you can to red pill those who are ready (emphasis on them being ready)

If we, collectively, as a group of thousands of like-minded men all across the nation can successfully pull this off, we will see a resurgence of economic, political, and social growth which will have been unprecedented.

If we do not pull it off however, and our nation succumbs to the manipulations of the elite, a far more grim and sinister future will play out.

The Alternative

If we do not successfully reclaim the balance of masculine aggression and feminine vanity in this country, all will be lost, and we will be forced to either live through hell, or leave our homelands. Here’s what to expect over the next decade or so, if a social justice warrior is elected President in 2020, and we lose the culture wars:

Increasing surveillance over the internet

More thought crime policies instituted into law

The figurative castration of men all across the country

Eventual race wars, or religious wars, spurred on primarily by Islamic migrants

This is non-negotiable. If we lose the culture wars to SJW’s over the next several years, we will begin to see lobbying to shut down any and all manosphere websites dedicated to spreading the truth. We have already seen PayPal, YouTube, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, and Google begin to censor people like Roosh, Alex Jones, Donald Trump, and other conservative/red pilled speakers. We cannot afford to stand this any longer.

If we lose these mediums to the globalists, they will easily gain the support of the public to institute thought crime policies into our legal system. You have a book by Bronze Age Pervert, that Amazon can track from your order history? NAZI SCUM! You’re going to prison. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t actually hurt anyone in any way shape or form, because you had an opinion that the globalists dislike.

As this begins to happen, men will self-imprison all over the nation. Some will fight, of course, and maybe win (if we’re lucky). Others will leave and attempt to gain citizenship in more male-friendly countries such as Denmark, Austria, and Poland. The rest will be forced to hang their heads in perpetual shame.

Eventually, as the population of third world migrants explodes, and tribalism is exacerbated by the polarizing media, we will begin to see rampant terrorist attacks, which are already happening in Germany, The UK, and other nations around the cucked European Union. Inevitably, this will end in a civil war.

It’s Our Choice

I have presented to you the only two choices that we have, and to me, the decision is quite simple. We can either sit around passively, and squabble amongst ourselves over stupid theories and philosophies, or we can take action to better ourselves and improve the stance of our nation.

The choice is clear to me. We either succumb to globalist propaganda, see the death of masculinity in the West, and see freedom of speech die as it is destined to do, or we fight back and create a better future. Some may say this is melodramatic. I would say that a mere cursory glance at history will prove otherwise.

Read Next: Cultural Collapse Theory: The 7 Steps That Lead To A Complete Culture Decline

It was Joe’s first date with Mary. He asked her what she wanted in life and she replied, “I want to establish my career. That’s the most important thing to me right now.” Undeterred that she had no need for a man in her life, Joe entertained her with enough funny stories and cocky statements that she soon allowed him to lightly pet her forearm.

At the end of the date, he locked arms with her on the walk to the subway station, when two Middle Eastern men on scooter patrol accosted them and said they were forbidden to touch. “This is Sharia zone,” they said in heavily accented English, in front of a Halal butcher shop. Joe and Mary felt bad that they offended the two men, because they were trained in school to respect all religions but that of their ancestors. One of the first things they learned was that their white skin gave them extra privilege in life which must be consciously restrained at all times. Even if they happened to disagree with the two men, they could not verbally object because of anti-hate laws that would put them in jail for religious discrimination. They unlocked arms and maintained a distance of three feet from each other.

Unfortunately for Joe, Mary did not want to go out with him again, but seven years later he did receive a message from her on Facebook saying hello. She became vice president of a company, but could not find a man equal to her station since women now made 25% more than men on average. Joe had long left the country and moved to Thailand, where he married a young Thai girl and had three children. He had no plans on returning to his country, America.

If cultural collapse occurs in the way I will now describe, the above scenario will be the rule within a few decades. The Western world is being colonized in reverse, not by weapons or hard power, but through a combination of progressivism and low reproductive rates. These two factors will lead to a complete cultural collapse of many Western nations within the next 200 years. This theory will show the most likely mechanism that it will proceed in America, Canada, UK, Scandinavia, and Western Europe.

What Is A Cultural Collapse?

Cultural collapse is the decline, decay, or disappearance of a native population’s rituals, habits, interpersonal communication, relationships, art, and language. It coincides with a relative decline of population compared to outside groups. National identity and group identification will be lost while revisionist history will be applied to demonize or find fault with the native population. Cultural collapse is not to be confused with economic or state collapse. A nation that suffers from a cultural collapse can still be economically productive and have a working government.

First I will share a brief summary of the cultural collapse progression before explaining them in more detail. Then I will discuss where I see many countries along its path.

The Cultural Collapse Progression

1. Removal of religious narrative from people’s lives, replaced by a treadmill of scientific and technological “progress.”

2. Elimination of traditional sex roles through feminism, gender equality, political correctness, cultural Marxism, and socialism.

3. Delay or abstainment of family formation by women to pursue careerist lifestyles while men wait in confused limbo.

4. Decreasing birth rate among native population.

5. Government enactment of open immigration policies to prevent economic collapse.

6. Immigrant refusal to fully acclimate, forcing host culture to adopt external rituals and beliefs while being out-reproduced.

7. Natives becoming marginalized in their own country.

1. Removal of religious narrative

Religion has been a powerful restraint for millennia in preventing humans from pursuing their base desires and narcissistic tendencies so that they satisfy a god. Family formation is the central unit of most religions, possibly because children increase membership at zero marginal cost to the church (i.e. they don’t need to be recruited).

Religion may promote scientific ignorance, but it facilitates reproduction by giving people a narrative that places family near the center of their existence.[1] [2] [3] After the Enlightenment, the rapid advance of science and its logical but nihilistic explanations into the universe have removed the religious narrative and replaced it with an empty narrative of scientific progress, knowledge, and technology, which act as a restraint and hindrance to family formation, allowing people to pursue individual goals of wealth accumulation or hedonistic pleasure seeking.[4] As of now, there has not been a single non-religious population that has been able to reproduce above the death rate.[5]

Even though many people today claim to believe in god, they may not step inside a church but once or twice a year for special holidays. Religion went from being a lifestyle, a manual for living, to something that is thought about in passing.

2. Elimination of traditional sex roles

Once religion no longer plays a role in people’s lives, the stage is set to fracture male-female bonding. It is collectively attacked by several ideologies stemming from the beliefs of Cultural Marxist theory, which serve to accomplish one common end: destruction of the family unit so that citizens are dependent on the state. They achieve this goal through the marginalization of men and their role in society under the banner of “equality.”[6] With feminism pushed to the forefront of this umbrella movement, the drive for equality ends up being a power grab by women.[7] This attack is performed on a range of fronts:

medicating boys from a young age with ADHD drugs to eradicate displays of masculinity[8]

shaming of men for having direct sexual interest in attractive and fertile women

criminalization of normal male behavior by redefining some instances of consensual sex as rape[9]

imprisonment of unemployed fathers for non-payment of child support, rendering them destitute and unable to be a part of their children’s lives[10]

taxation of men at higher rates for redistribution to women[11] [12]

promotion of single mother and homosexual lifestyles over that of the nuclear family[13] [14]

The end result is that men, confused about their identify and averse to state punishment from sexual harassment, “date rape,” and divorce proceedings, make a rational decision to wait on the sidelines.[15] Women, still not happy with the increased power given to them, continue their assault on men by instructing them to “man up” into what has become an unfair deal—marriage. The elevation of women above men is allowed by corporations, which adopt “girl power” marketing to expand their consumer base and increase profits.[16] [17] Governments also allow it because it increases their tax revenue. Because there is money to be made with women working and becoming consumers, there is no effort by the elite to halt this development.

3. Women begin to place career above family

At the same time men are emasculated as mere “sperm donors,” women are encouraged to adopt the career goals, mannerisms, and competitive lifestyles of men, inevitably causing them to delay marriage, often into an age where they can no longer find suitable husbands who have more resources than themselves. [18] [19] [20] [21] The average woman will find it exceedingly difficult to balance career and family, and since she has no concern of getting “fired” from her family, who she may see as a hindrance to her career goals, she will devote an increasing proportion of time into her job.

Female income, in aggregate, will soon match or exceed that of men.[22] [23] [24] A key reason that women historically got married was to be economically provided for, but this reason will no longer persist and women will feel less pressure or motivation to marry. The burgeoning spinster population will simply be a money-making opportunity for corporations to market to an increasing population of lonely women. Cat and small dog sales will rise.

Women succumb to their primal sexual and materialistic urges to live the “Sex and the City” lifestyle full of fine dining, casual sex, technological bliss, and general gluttony without learning traditional household skills or feminine qualities that would make them attractive wives.[25] [26] Men adapt to careerist women in a rational way by doing the following:

to sate their natural sexual desires, men allow their income to lower since economic stability no longer provides a draw to women in their prime[27]

they mimic “alpha male” social behavior to get laid with women who, without having an urgent need for a man’s monetary resources to survive, can choose men based on confidence, aesthetics, and general entertainment value[28]

they withdraw into a world of video games and the internet, satisfying their own base desires for play and simulated hunting[29] [30]

Careerist women who decide to marry will do so in a hurried rush around 30 because they fear growing old alone, but since they are well past their fertility peak[31], they may find it difficult to reproduce. In the event of successful reproduction at such a later age, fewer children can be born before biological infertility, limiting family size compared to the historical past.

4. Birth rates decrease among native population

The stage is now set for the death rate to outstrip the birth rate. This creates a demographic cliff where there is a growing population of non-working elderly relative to able-bodied younger workers. Two problems result:

Not enough tax revenue is supplied by the working population in order to provide for the elderly’s medical and social retirement needs.[32] Borrowing can only temporarily maintain these entitlements.

Decrease of economic activity since more people are dying than buying.[33]

No modern nation has figured out how to substantially raise birth rates among native populations. The most successful effort has been done in France, but that has still kept the birth rate among French-born women just under the replacement rate (2.08 vs 2.1).[34] The easiest and fastest way to solve this double-edged problem is to promote mass immigration of non-elderly individuals who will work, spend, and procreate at rates greater than natives.[35]

A replenishing supply of births are necessary to create taxpayers, workers, entrepreneurs, and consumers in order to maintain the nation’s economic development.[36] While many claim that the planet is suffering from “overpopulation,” an economic collapse is inevitable for those countries who do not increase their population at steady rates.

5. Large influx of immigration

An aging population without youthful refilling will cause a scarcity of labor, increasing that labor’s price. Corporate elites will now lobby governments for immigration reform to relieve this upward pressure on wages.[37] [38] At the same time, the modern mantra of sustained GDP growth puts pressure on politicians for dissemination of favorable economic growth data to aid in their re-elections. The simplest way to increase GDP without innovation or development of industry is to expand the population. Both corporate and political elites now have their goals in alignment where the easiest solution becomes immigration.[39] [40]

While politicians hem and haw about designing permanent immigration policies, immigrants continue to settle within the nation.[41] The national birth rate problem is essentially solved overnight, as it’s much easier to drain third-world nations of its starry-eyed population with enticements of living in the first-world than it is to encourage the native women to reproduce. (Lateral immigration from one first-world nation to another is so relatively insignificant that the niche term ‘expatriation’ has been developed to describe it). Native women will show a stubborn resistance at any suggestion they should create families, much preferring a relatively responsibility-free lifestyle of sexual variety, casual internet dating via mobile apps, consumer excess, and comfortable high-paying jobs in air conditioned offices.[42] [43]

Immigrants will almost always come from societies that are more religious and, in the case of Islam with regard to European immigration, far more scientifically primitive and rigid in its customs.[44]

6. Sanitization of host culture coincides with increase in immigrant power

While many adult immigrants will feel gracious at the opportunity to live in a more prosperous nation, others will soon feel resentment that they are forced to work menial jobs in a country that is far more expensive than their own.[45] [46] [47] [48] [49] The majority of them remain in lower economic classes, living in poor “immigrant communities” where they can speak their own language, find their own homeland foods, and follow their own customs or religion.

Instead of breaking out of their foreigner communities, immigrants seek to expand it by organizing. They form local groups and civic organizations to teach natives better ways to understand and serve immigrant populations. They will be eager to publicize cases where immigrants have been insulted by insensitive natives or treated unfairly by police authorities in the case of petty crime.[50] [51] [52] [53] [54] [55] School curriculums may be changed to promote diversity or multiculturalism, at great expense to the native culture.[56] Concessions will be made not to offend immigrants.[57] A continual stream of outrages will be found and this will feed the power of the organizations and create a state within a state where native elites become fearful of applying laws to immigrants.[58]

7. Destruction of native culture

This step has not yet happened in any first-world nation, so I will predict it based on logically extending known events I have already described.

Local elites will give lip service to immigrant groups for votes but will be slow to give them real state or economic power. Citizenship rules may even be tightened to prevent immigrants from being elected. The elites will be mostly insulated from the cultural crises in their isolated communities, private schools, and social clubs, where they can continue to incubate their own sub-culture without outside influence. At the same time, they will make speeches and enact polices to force native citizens to accept multiculturalism and blind immigration. Anti-hate and anti-discrimination laws will be more vigorously enforced than other more serious crimes. Police will monitor social networking to identify those who make statements against protected classes.

Cultural decline begins in earnest when the natives feel shame or guilt for who they are, their history, their way of life, and where their ancestors came from. They will let immigrant groups criticize their customs without protest, or they simply embrace immigrant customs instead with religious conversion and interethnic marriages. Nationalistic pride will be condemned as a “far-right” phenomenon and popular nationalistic politicians will be compared to Hitler. Natives learn the art of self-censorship, limiting the range of their speech and expressions, and soon only the elderly can speak the truths of the cultural decline while a younger multiculturalist within earshot attributes such frankness to senility or racist nostalgia.

With the already entrenched environment of political correctness (see stage 2), the local culture becomes a sort of “world” culture that can be declared tolerant and progressive as long as there is a lack of criticism against immigrants, multiculturalism, and their combined influence. All cultural identity will eventually be lost, and to be “American” or “British,” for example, will no longer have modern meaning from a sociological perspective. Native traditions will be eradicated and a cultural mixing will take place where citizens from one world nation will be nearly identical in behavior, thought, and consumer tastes to citizens of another. Once a collapse occurs, it cannot be reversed. The nation’s cultural heritage will be forever lost.

I want to now take a brief look at six different countries and see where they are along the cultural collapse progression…

Russia

This is an interesting case because, up to recently, we saw very low birth rates not due to progressive ideals but from a rough transition to capitalism in the 1990’s and a high male mortality from alcoholism.[59] [60] To help sustain its population, Russia is readily accepting immigrants from Central Asian regions, treating them like second-class citizens and refusing to make any accommodations away from the ethnic Russian way of life. Even police authorities turn a blind eye when local skinhead groups attack immigrants.[61] In addition, Russia has also shown no tolerance to homosexual or progressive groups,[62] stunting their negative effects upon the culture. The birth rate has risen in recent years to levels seen in Western Europe but it’s still not above the death rate. Russia will see a population collapse before a cultural one.

Likelihood of 50-year cultural collapse: Very low

Brazil

We’re seeing rapid movement through stages 2 and 3, where progressive ideology based on the American model is becoming adopted and a large poor population ensure progressive politicians will continue to remain in power with promises of economic redistribution.[63] [64] [65] Within 15 years we should see a sharp drop in birth rates and a relaxation of immigration laws.

Likelihood of 50-year cultural collapse: Moderate

America

Some could argue that America is currently experiencing a cultural collapse. It always had a fragile culture because of its immigrant foundings, but immigrants of the past (including my own parents) rapidly acclimated into the host culture to create a sense of national pride around an ethic of hard work and shared democratic values. This is being eroded as a fem-centric culture rises in its place, with its focus on trends, celebrities, homosexuality, multiculturalism, and male-bashing. Natives have become pleasure seekers with little inclination to reproduction during their years of peak fertility.[66]

Likelihood of 50-year cultural collapse: Very high

England

While America always had high amounts of immigration, and therefore a system of integration, England is newer to the game. In the past 20 years, they have massively ramped up their immigration efforts.[67] A visit to London will confirm that the native British are slowly becoming minorities, with their iconic red telephone booths left undisturbed purely for tourist photo opportunities. Approximately 5% of the English population is now Muslim.[68] Instead of acclimatizing, they are achieving early success in creating zones with Sharia law.[69] The English elite, in response, is jailing natives under stringent anti-race laws.[70] England had a highly successful immigration story with Polish immigrants who eagerly acclimated to English culture, but have opened the doors to other peoples who don’t want to integrate.[71]

Likelihood of 50-year cultural collapse: Very high

Sweden

Sweden is experiencing a similar immigration situation to England, but they possess a higher amount of self-shame and white guilt. Instead of allowing immigrants who could work in the Swedish economy, they are encouraging migration of asylum seekers who have been made destitute by war. These immigrants enter Sweden and immediately receive social benefits. In effect, Sweden is welcoming the least economically productive people in the world.[72] The immigrants will produce little or no economic benefit, and may even worsen Sweden’s economy. Immigrants are turning some parts of Sweden, such as the Rosengard area of Malmo, into a ghetto.[73]

Likelihood of 50-year cultural collapse: Very high

Poland

From my one and half years of living in Poland, I have seen a moderate level of progressive ideological creep, careerism among women, hedonism, and idolation of Western values, particularly out of England, where a large percentage of the Polish population have emigrated for work. Younger Poles may not act much different from their Western counterparts in their party lifestyle behavior, but there nonetheless remains a tenuous maintenance of traditional sex roles. Women of fertile age are pursuing relationships over one-night stands, but careerism is causing them to stall family formation. This puts a downward pressure on birth rates, which stems from significant numbers of fertile young women emigrating to countries like the UK and USA, along with continued economic uncertainties faced from transitioning to capitalism[74]. As Europe’s “least multicultural” nation, Poland has long been hesitant to accept immigrants, but this has recently changed and they are encouraging migrants.[75]  To its credit, it is seeking first-world entrepreneurs instead of low skilled laborers or asylum seekers. Its cultural fate will be an interesting development in the years to come, but the prognosis will be more negative as long as its young people are eager to leave the homeland.

Likelihood of 50-year cultural collapse: Possible

Poland and Russia show the limitations of Cultural Collapse Theory in that it best applies to first-world nations with highly developed economies. They have low birth rates but not through the mechanism I described, though if they adopt a more Western ideological track like Brazil, I expect to see the same outcome that is befalling England or Sweden.

There can be many paths to cultural destruction, and those nations with the most similarities will gravitate towards the same path, just like how Eastern European nations are suffering low birth rates because of mass emigration due to being introduced into the European Union.

How To Stop Cultural Collapse

Maintaining native birth rates while preventing the elite from allowing immigrant labor is the most effective means at preventing cultural collapse. Since multiculturalism is an experiment with no proven efficacy, a culture can only be maintained by a relatively homogenous group who identify with each other. When that homogeneity breaks down and one citizen looks to the next and does not see a person with the same values as himself, the culture falls in dis-repair as native citizens begin to lose a shared means of communication and identity. Once the percentage of the immigrant population crosses a certain threshold (perhaps 15%), the decline will pick up in pace and cultural breakdown will be readily apparent to all observers.

Current policies to solve low birth rates through immigration is a short-term fix with dire long-term consequences. In effect, it’s a Trojan-horse prescription of irreversible cultural destruction. A state must prevent itself from entering the position where mass immigration is considered a solution by blocking progressive ideologies from taking hold. One way this can be done is through the promotion of a state-sponsored religion which encourages the nuclear family instead of single motherhood and homosexuality. However, introducing religion as a mainstay of citizen life in the post-enlightenment era may be impossible.

We must consider that the scientific era is an evolutionary maladaptive feature of humanity that natural selection will accordingly punish (i.e. those who are anti-religious and pro-science will simply breed less). It must also be considered that with religion in permanent decline, cultural collapse may be a certainty that eventually occurs in all developed nations. Religion, it may turn out, was evolutionary beneficial to the human race.

Another possible solution is to foster a patriarchal society where men serve as strong providers. If you encourage the development of successful men who possess indispensable skills and therefore resources that are lacked by females, there will be women below their station who want to marry and procreate with them, but if strong women are produced instead, marriage and procreation is unlikely to take place at levels above the death rate.

A gap between the sexes should always exist in the favor of men if procreation is to occur at high rates, or else you’ll have something similar to the situation in America where urban professional women cannot find “good men” to begin a family with (i.e., men who are significantly more financially successful than them). They instead remain single and barren, only used occasionally by cads for exciting casual sex.

One issue that I purposefully ignored is the effect of technology and consumerism on lowering birth rates. How much influence does video games, internet, and smartphones contribute to a birth decline? How much of an effect does Western-style consumerism have in delaying marriage? I suspect they have more of an amplification effect than being an outright cause. If a country is proceeding through the cultural collapse model, technology will simply hurry the collapse, but giving internet access to a traditionally religious group of people may not cause them to flip overnight. Research will have to be done in these areas to say for sure.

Conclusion

The first iteration of any theory is sure to create as many questions as answers, but I hope that by proposing this model, it becomes more clear why some cultures seem so quick to degrade while others display a sort of immunity. Some countries may be too far down the wrong path to be saved, but I hope the information presented gives concerned readers ideas on protecting their own culture by allowing them to connect how progressive ideologies that may seem innocent or benign on the surface can eventually lead to an outright collapse of their nation’s culture.

[letterstotheone-whomilovemost]

12/31/2020 (14 months after the event)

Happy New Years!

It has been a rather weird year, hasn’t it? While some days from this year feel like they were only yesterday, others feel like half a decade ago. To be quite frank, the same applies to the last time I saw you. I’m sure if you saw this you would go “blah blah, you say the same thing every time you write.” While this is true, I can’t help it. I started taking new medication, as of 14 days ago. My psychiatrist, I have one of those now-- along with a therapist haha, recommended me getting put on escitalopram for my severe anxiety. It’s always been pretty bad, but over the course of the past 14 months, it has skyrocketed pretty high. Isn’t it strange how our minds develop as we get older? Survival of the fittest? Or is it just adaptation? The human body is pretty neat, let alone our brain. 

I was going through my photos the other day, and got the sudden urge to delete all of them. Of course, I’m not as crazy as just upright deleting them-- so I uploaded all of them onto a drive, and then deleted them from my phone. All of them. Decided it was time for a fresh start, why not start with the one thing I open every day, right? I decided earlier today, about a week after I deleted all of my photos, that I would go into my drive to try and find a photo from September that I downloaded from a manga I was reading. Of course I got sidetracked, I scrolled to 2014 and was going through all of my old photos with my brother and my family, and then suddenly I got to 2017 and there it was. The black and white photo of you and I at the parking deck, both of us laughing as hard as we possibly could. I smiled softly of course, as the beautiful memory came rushing over me. But then something hit me. For some reason, this isn’t how I remember you. My brain forgot what you looked like, or at least started trying to. It’s been about a year since I last saw a photo of you. While the brain is so incredibly amazing, it has a bad habit of memories starting to fade, especially when it’s a person attached to bad memories as well. It works in some cases, where people are trying to forget-- but even still it does the opposite and leaves the person going “Why can’t I forget you!?”. Strange, right? The human mind is so beautiful. I can still hear you talking to me sometimes, if I try hard enough. Lately, I haven’t been so hard on myself. I’m trying to figure myself out still, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it is okay that I still love you. I know I more than likely always will. That’s what love is, right? Being able to love and never losing that love, no matter what happens. 

All of this being said, I figured I would kind of recap everything that has happened in the wonderful year of 2020. It has been one hell of a ride.

January, the month of my brother’s 15th birthday. He was so happy and we all celebrated his birthday with him the following weekend. We also went hiking the same month, while it was cold; my mother, brother, and I had a blast. This month was mostly just working and being lazy on my off days. I had a fall out with my best friend.

February, I had a love hate relationship with this month. I tried dating someone new, I saw that you had gotten in a relationship two months prior and figured it was time for me to try and move on as well. Needless to say, dude was a douchebag and was a very violent individual. I left him within 3 weeks. My birth father, his newlywed wife, my cousin from my favorite uncle, whom I had never met until then, and I all went to Ruby Falls. It was quite a beautiful journey. Whilst I fought with my father, it turned out to be an okay experience. Later in the month, I ended up getting into a fight with my landlord, who was demanding that I pay extra, even though I was not behind on any payments. I ended up cooperating with them, so that I didn’t lose my home. I celebrated my little sister’s fifth birthday.

March, I lost my job. Millions and millions of other people did as well. Covid-19 struck the world. I took it lightly and just assumed that yet again, the media was blowing things out of proportion. My landlord wasn’t understanding of the fact I was put out of work, along with millions of others. They ended up being generous for the month after I showed them statistics. I ended up being lazy, doing nothing but watching Netflix and Disney plus for the entire month.

April, Corona Virus was boring at this point. We had all been told, “Oh! We’ll all be open for business again in the next two weeks!”. That was the first week of March, and it was now April. The government didn’t give us any kind of help until the last week, so that kind of fucked me. I spent most days laying in bed on TikTok. I also got super into streaming in the beginning of this month, and my platform was finally starting to take off.

May, unemployed for two months. I debated taking a job at a warehouse. Unfortunately, the media deterred me from doing so. There was a spike of cases in my state; it was terrifying. I didn’t leave my house much. I got my dog, for the first time in 4 years. It was beautiful, I cried. He was so happy to be back home. I started a routine of watching anime every morning at 7 am and then going for a walk. I wanted to get back into a daily routine, regardless if I had a job or not. I was falling behind on bills, and I really needed to distract myself. I started getting into digital art, rather than traditional, for the first time ever. I stopped making my music.

June, I reconnected with a lot of old online friends from 2013. It was strange and I didn’t really know how to feel about it. It was nostalgic in a way, spending late nights on discord calls. I didn’t really enjoy it all too much, I felt like it all needed to stay in the past. I started anti-depressants, again. This time it was Prozac. It made me feel extremely drowsy, and made me feel out of body most of the time. I tried to date, again. An old friend that I had from 2013, we reconnected and even though they were out of state, I decided-- “Hey, maybe this will be good for me. I don’t have to worry about them getting aggressive with me, we can take things slow, and we can pace ourselves.” Oh man, if only I knew. He flew down to my state, met the family, was extremely respectful and even stayed in a hotel the first trip. Everything seemed to be going okay.

July, my 21st birthday. Did I drink? No. Sounds crazy, right? I had about half a drink, and decided I just didn’t want any. I had stopped taking my antidepressants, the new boyfriend had said that I wasn’t acting right. It fed into my suspicion, that the meds weren’t doing a whole lot for me. They were just making me really sleepy and on edge all the time. The new boyfriend had come down again for my birthday and mother’s birthday, since we share the same birth week. Celebrated with my mom, her best friend, and I. July was pretty hectic, since I had decided I would be moving to West Virginia on August 5, 2020.

August, I moved to West Virginia. I packed up all of my belongings, uprooted everything I had ever known, hugged my family goodbye, and got into the back of a truck with a u-haul attached to it. I rode in the back of the vehicle for 14 hours, fell asleep in Kentucky, woke up in Ohio. It was daylight by the time we approached West Virginia. It was so beautiful, all of the mountains. I was moving into the house in which he lived in, which his sister was next door on one side, and his parents on the other side. We had the nice river breeze, since Ohio river was within eyesight. I lived in the Tri-state area so it was Pennsylvania on one side, Ohio on the other, and us-- five minutes to each state. It was a good first couple of days. Then we got into our first fight. I was unable to work, since I left my car behind. Luckily, I had saved up a bunch of money for me to be able to buy one. He hit me with really low blows, saying I didn’t need to work-- since women weren’t good for that kind of thing. It hurt, to be honest. I had never seen him like this before, in the eight years I had known of his existence. He had been with me in my hometown for three weeks and not once acted like this. I walked on eggshells, bought a car with my hard earned money, then got a management job at the Domino’s that was ten minutes from my town I was living in. Towards the end of the month, he got aggressive with me. He stopped working the same week I had moved in, he had no car. He had no ambition, he decided to just give up. Maybe that’s what I tried to see, maybe-- just maybe I could help him find some ambition. I wanted to save him, in a way? We got into a severe fight, I couldn’t take it anymore-- I fought back, and he ended up swinging on me.

September, I packed all of my belongings that I could into my tiny little Toyota, and left in the middle of the night. I had one thing on my mind, and that was to go to my mom’s house. My mother had known how bad he had gotten, since he acted such a way with my mother on the phone, unknowingly. I drove for 15 hours, well 13 but with rest stops to nap for a bit since I was running off of no sleep, but I finally ended up back home. I ended up staying with my mom for a bit. Later had to relocate, so I moved in with an old friend. Started streaming again.

October, Worked. Literally worked the entire month, my entire existence fell into dread. I became overly aware of how much time had passed. I felt like I had been doing nothing. I dreaded the last day of the month, every day just gave me more and more sadness.  I didn’t want the day to come. I started dreaming of you more and more and more. Halloween came, I decided to look at it differently, I started to thank you-- rather than try to hate you. I came to the conclusion that I would never hate you.

November, Thanksgiving! I started to become grateful, moved back into my mom’s house. It was a bumpy ride, but I managed to get back into the habit of doing healthy things. Started going to the gym again, drinking more water. I told my father he was dead to me, haven’t spoken to him since. I got to spend Thanksgiving with my real family, my mother and her best friend’s family. They watched me grow up since the day I was born. It was so much better than any other holiday I had ever had up to this date.

December, I started a new form of medicine. This time it was for anxiety, since that’s the main factor of my illness-- or so we think so far. I am on escitalopram, and I started it the week before Christmas. I got to see my real family again. It was nice, but this time I got to reunite with my childhood best friend for the first time in fifteen years. It was so lovely. I have become almost bedridden again, but it won’t last long-- since it’s just a side effect of my medicine. I also got to see some friends from high school, but then I realized-- they’re the exact same way they’ve been since the beginning. They wanted nothing but to talk about drama. It just isn’t my thing, I don’t like dealing with people much anymore, because of the constant drama. I’ve learned a lot about people changing, and the lack thereof.

I think this year has been a year full of lessons for me, and it has been tough. As they say, there’s no pleasure without pain, no pain no gain, right? This year has taught me a lot about myself and the people around me, and I am extremely grateful for the things I have experienced. I’ve learned so much about who I am as a person. I’ve grown a lot, while this year has kicked my ass. I have high hopes for the next year. For the first time, since 2016, I finally see a future in myself, by myself. 

To New Beginnings, Lovebug.

I love you, always.

22:27