#he will always be some flavor of anguished at the end of the day <3

[doodlboy]

I love characters doomed by the narrative over and over again

Like- go off bestie give us nothing because we both know that no matter what you do, you're destined to fail 👏✨️

[iguessigotta]

Eddie gluskin with a pregnant darling maybe

you know what's funny about Eddie Gluskin being one of my faves? i am terrified of pregnancy just headcanons for now - this ended up being more an exploration of the inherent horror of this situation than anything shippy, whoops. also kind of an au where Waylon does not survive his encounter with Eddie 18+ just in case CW: injuries, noncon, hostage, pregnancy, suicide mention cannibalism(?) probably more i missed. (no r*** - it is alluded to tho) i mean it's Eddie. the man is a walking billboard for "dead dove do not eat" ok lmao

being Eddie’s darling wife was a living nightmare

you’d been one of the few employees allowed near Eddie, and he’d developed a….thing…for you. well, not you, really, more the idea of you

and when the Mount Massive asylum fell into chaos, you were one of the unlucky people trapped inside

when Eddie found you he was quick to make his image of you your new reality

whether you wanted it or not

you’d initially fought him at every turn. unfortunately, Eddie had a temper, and was prone to snapping with no warning

you’d learned that lesson the hard way - your forearm was still in a makeshift splint, a dull ache where he’d fractured the bone in a fit of anger. or had he broken it? you weren’t sure. all you knew is it hurt like hell and made it nearly impossible for you to fight back

after that incident, you thought keeping your head down and quietly obeying him was the smart choice. that you’d be safe enough to ride out this mess until someone arrived to help

you had to believe that someone was coming. you told yourself you’d be rescued within the week, that there was no way a facility as large as Mount Massive could go down in flames like this without someone noticing

days turned into weeks, weeks into months (how many had it been? 3? 4?)

every night you sat, ankles bound to your chair at the end of some wobbly, bloodstained table, Eddie at the opposite end, a makeshift dinner spread between the two of you

occasionally there would be some sort of meat among the sawdust-flavored rations - Eddie was always vague when you asked him what kind of meat it was 

you resisted for the first month, but your resolve broke a week into the second, the hunger pains driving you to tears and forcing you to make a choice

so you ate. and you tried not to think about where he got it from

it was like the two of you playing some sick game of house

Eddie kept a close eye on you when he was around, restraining you when he wasn’t

you’d be tied to a chair. strapped down on your back atop some bloodstained hospital mattress. arms bound behind you, tied to a support beam and forced to sit on the cold concrete floor

all of it was miserable

Eddie said it was for your safety, but you knew better. especially after he’d found you with a knife you’d managed to get your hands on. he’d stopped you from trying to slash your own throat, spewing some bullshit about his darling preferring death over a blissful life as the proud mother of his many, many children 

 he wasn’t going to let you leave him in any way

some part of you thought about pleading with Eddie to “think of the baby” and untie you - but that only reminded you that you were, in fact, pregnant

and it was starting to show

whatever mental energy you could spare went to trying (and failing) to block that fact out of your mind

you felt like you were trapped in two horror stories simultaneously - one, enduring whatever Eddie decided to do to you on a daily basis, and two, the unwanted life growing inside you against your will

not to mention the mental anguish of what to do after the…birth. would you even survive that? would you want to? 

should  you try to raise and protect it? or would it be more merciful if you…

it was a horrifying decision to make, one that you flinched away from whenever you found yourself thinking about it

every day you wondered if it would be better to piss him off, have him kill you in a fit of rage. it wouldn't be hard to do, but for some reason the knowledge that you were pregnant stopped you

well, you told yourself, at least you got to skip Eddie’s “operation table”. all the men who came before you weren’t so lucky, if the video on that camera you found was to be believed….

[pesewla]

Thank you for the request, @bout-to-snap <3 

“This is why I don’t trust him!” Mu Qing fumed. “He’s literally the Lord of the Ghost Realm, Your Highness…”

Xie Lian allowed a small, relaxed smile to grace his lips. He was mediating a fight between Mu Qing, Feng Xin, and Hua Cheng for what seemed like the thousandth time. Though newly renovated, Puqi Shrine was still too small for these massive quarrels, and Xie Lian dreaded the property damage that would ensue if their swords were drawn.

Given all that had happened – the destruction of the heavens and defeat of Jun Wu – why were these three still at each other’s throats?

“I thought we were past this,” Xie Lian sighed. “We don’t get to see each other all the time, so can we please not fight?”

“Exactly, we don’t see get to see each other all the time, so can’t we talk to you in private?” Feng Xin said, fidgeting a little.

Xie Lian looked confused. “About what?”

“You expect me to walk away when you’ve just called me the scum of the earth?” Hua Cheng said coolly, examining his nails. “Gege, these servants are no good.”

“We’re not his servants!” Mu Qing exclaimed. Xie Lian thought it sounded like he was about to say “anymore” at the end, but cut off his speech abruptly, making the outburst awkward and clunky.

“Are you sure?” Hua Cheng asked skeptically. “Because when you’re with him, it’s like 800 years never happened, you can be his ever-most-loyal-servants again. The roleplaying is disgusting, and doesn’t absolve you from guilt.”

Xie Lian sensed the atmosphere in the shrine shift. He stepped forward again and raised his hands placatingly. “San Lang – “

“And what would you know?” Feng Xin demanded. “You can’t possibly understand what we’ve been through, at the time you were merely a mortal child.”

“I understand that you abandoned Dianxia when he was most vuln –“

“San Lang,” Xie Lian said. Hua Cheng’s lips instantly froze at the warning in Xie Lian’s tone; it was a lilt and a dangerous flavor that Xie Lian hardly used on anyone, and never on Hua Cheng.

“…”

“Why can’t they know, gege?” Hua Cheng asked softly. “Don’t you think they deserve to know? Frankly, their ignorance offends me.”

Feng Xin and Mu Qing had fallen silent, too, their faces both a few shades lighter. The word abandon seemed to always have that effect on them. Then Feng Xin regained his voice. “Ignor – know what? Taizi Dianxia, just what…”

Xie Lian had folded his arms, his mouth drawn into a line. “It’s old history,” he sighed. “There’s no need to bring things like this up. Do not shame me.”

“Shame you? When that came to visit you, he dismissed your fears as insan –“

Hua Cheng’s voice cut off for a moment, and the temperature in Puqi Shrine seemed to drop. Because, at that moment, an expression entirely foreign to Xie Lian flitted across his face: rage. Neither Mu Qing nor Feng Xin had seen him make that expression since his third ascension, and it didn’t suit him well.

It was gone as soon as it arrived, and Xie Lian’s characteristically peaceful smile returned in its stead. However, the faces of his two ex-subordinates were already white as sheets. Hua Cheng stepped toward, placing a hand on Xie Lian’s shoulder as if to hold him up.

“Dianxia, are you mad… at us?” Feng Xin whispered.

Xie Lian looked at him strangely, as if he had asked a very bizarre question indeed. “No… Not you.”

Hua Cheng snorted, as if he was thinking, too bad. Xie Lian’s face was soft. “In any case, I’m quite tired, so I think I will retire for the night. Please make yourselves at home.”

“Wh – you can’t – after –“ Mu Qing sputtered.

Feng Xin’s eyes were round. “Dianxia, does that mean… That time with White No-Face, when we were on the run… Was it really…?”

Xie Lian had started towards his chambers, but after being addressed, his shoulders tightened infinitesimally. Then, he turned back to the trio, his face still serene. “Yes.”

As if he’d been punched in the gut, Feng Xin slouched over. Mu Qing looked baffled.

“I didn’t tell you this because I knew you’d blame yourself. Yet, in the end, the only one who sinned was me. So, please, do not inquire further into this matter.”

With a nod and another smile, Xie Lian vanished into the back room, anxious to escape the conversation.

Feng Xin and Mu Qing were bursting with indescribable emotion. Some small part of Feng Xin fumed at Xie Lian for leaving them without explaining, but the rest of him just wallowed in a torrent of guilt, doubt, and self-questioning.

If the Taizi Dianxia wouldn’t tell them the truth, who would? Xie Lian had been abandoned with only his parents, who were long dead, so who besides him even knew what happened? The only people must be Jun Wu himself, and –

“Don’t look at me,” Hua Cheng rolled his eyes, leaning lazily against a chair. “I’m not going behind gege’s back for some backstabbing servants.”

“You’re the one who said we deserve to know,” Mu Qing argued.

“So? It’s gege’s story to tell, and he said no, so no.”

“How do you even know?”

Hua Cheng shrugged. “I was just ghost fire at the time. I had to watch.”

The corners of his eyes tightened, and a murderous look crossed his face. Unlike Xie Lian, his malice wasn’t bottled away, but instead broadcast for all to see.

“Watch what?” Feng Xin cried in anguish. “Why must you torture us?”

Hua Cheng snickered. “If only you knew your own irony.”

With that, he straightened and glided in Xie Lian’s direction, back towards the sleeping chambers.

“We – we’ll be back tomorrow!” Feng Xin and Mu Qing shouted at his receding back. Hua Cheng shrugged again.

//

That night, Hua Cheng was holding Xie Lian in his arms, and casually said, “Gege, this is what you did with Lang Qianqiu, too.” It wasn’t an accusation – it was never an accusation, just a comment.

Xie Lian exhaled. “I know.”

Hua Cheng’s voice grew husky. “Isn’t it enough that you suffered alone then, why must you be alone now, too? Why must you save everyone secretly, then endure their collective ridicule?” Then, “Is keeping it a secret truly doing anyone good?”

Xie Lian was silent. “Maybe I don’t have a good reason,” he finally said. “I don’t like thinking about it, really. I’m weak.”

“…”

“Although, looking back on it, I can’t believe that cute little ghost fire was you,” Xie Lian laughed. “You’d barely popped up and you already had a little cult following, so adorable!”

Hua Cheng grinned, but it was pained, like he couldn’t remember that period of his existence without discomfort. He said nothing, but his grip around Xie Lian tightened, like he was afraid of letting go.

Xie Lian noticed, and, after a beat of silence, shut his eyes. “I’ll think about it, okay?”

//

Feng Xin and Mu Qing would not give up. Day after day, they visited Xie Lian, demanding answers, so after months of heckling, Xie Lian finally agreed to explain what had happened all those years ago. When Xie Lian, Hua Cheng, Feng Xin, and Mu Qing sat down in Paradise Manor, Hua Cheng started talking first, trying to alleviate Xie Lian’s burden.

“…He’d wailed and screamed and cried and begged for mercy, but the people, having deemed him a sinner, continued without hesitation. Of course, his sinfulness was merely an excuse to save their own skin…”

“…After one hundred fatal strikes, Dianxia laid on his own altar, disfigured beyond recognition. Nothing more than a pile of flesh.”

Feng Xin was not the type to cry. So, when his eyes grew wet and then started streaming, Xie Lian hurriedly waved off Hua Cheng’s stone-faced words.

“Feng Xin, this was hundreds of years ago,” Xie Lian assured him, patting his shoulder. “It’s not sad anymore. Also, I’ve endured worse since then.”

This aggravated Feng Xin even further, and he looked like he wanted to cry some more. “I just can’t… when I imagine it, I can’t help it…”

“Trust me, whatever you’re imagining, it was five million times worse in real time,” Hua Cheng muttered darkly. He stared at Xie Lian with an odd expression, before languidly pulling him into his embrace.

Feng Xin looked like he wanted to rebuke, but in the end, could not. Thus, he motioned for the story to continue.

Xie Lian skimmed over his recovery period, the reformation of his flesh, and Feng Xin’s departure, but before he was in the clear, he was interrupted.

“So that’s why you asked me to leave?” Feng Xin said incredulously.

“There was no need to pull you down with me,” Xie Lian murmured.

“I thought you’d gone insane,” Feng Xin mumbled, nauseated. “I told your mother and father… I left you…”

Describing what happened to his parents was even harder, and when he finally got to saying how he’d put his own head in the noose, eyes filling with blood and collarbone cracking, Mu Qing jumped up.

“DAMN IT,” he roared, picking up a glass and shattering it against the nearest wall. “Damn it, damn it, damn it, Dianxia! What the actual fuck?”

Xie Lian peered at him. “Please don’t break San Lang’s things,” he tried.

“WHAT DO I FUCKING CARE? FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, TAIZI DIANXIA, HOW COULD YOU KEEP SOMETHING LIKE THIS FROM US?” Mu Qing was panting, and Feng Xin was staring off into space, eyes empty. “WE COULD’VE HELPED! IF I’D HAVE KNOWN, I’D HAVE –“

“Come back?” Xie Lian questioned lightly. “Followed me until the end?”

There was a deafening silence.

“No… I wanted you both to break free,” Xie Lian said. “You had a future.”

“SO DID YOU!” Feng Xin cried, broken from his trance. “Why… why did all this… why must it happen to you?”

“For that, I have no answer,” Xie Lian said. “But, if it had to happen to anyone, I’m glad it happened to me.”

Feng Xin and Mu Qing looked like they’d been shattered into a million pieces. Xie Lian said ruefully, “This is why I didn’t want to tell you.”

Mu Qing rushed forward. “GODDAMN IT, THE FACT THAT I DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT IT IS EVEN WORSE! WHY DIDN’T YOU ASK FOR HELP? YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO USE US, RELY ON US, THAT WAS OUR FUCKING JOB AND WE…”

“At the time, you were ganging up with Middle Court lackeys to chase him out of spiritual lands,” Hua Cheng remarked icily, pulling Xie Lian closer to him.

Mu Qing appeared stupefied, like Hua Cheng had just slapped him. “San Lang!” Xie Lian admonished. Mu Qing sat back down.

Both Feng Xin and Mu Qing both looked like they wanted to protest more, but Xie Lian continued with the story before they could. When he described donning the white mask and preparing to unleash the Human Face Disease, both of them seemed to hold their breath. Hua Cheng described his rebirth as a ghost soldier, following Xie Lian’s commands but never believing that he would truly commit the atrocity.

Feng Xin was regarding him with something that almost looked like newfound respect, but Mu Qing turned his head.

The rest was all downhill from there. He described laying on the pavement for days on end, and the one farmer who’d salvaged his faith in human goodness.

“To anyone else, thousands of onlookers ignoring your pain and suffering before one did anything shouldn’t reinforce your faith in anything…�� Mu Qing muttered.

Xie Lian pressed forward, practically sprinting through the unleashed Human Face Disease, taking the brunt of the curses, and then Hua Cheng dying for him for the second time. He talked about ascending into heaven, and asking Jun Wu to punish him for his wrongdoings using banishment and cursed shckles.

“…DIANXIA?!?” Feng Xin gasped. “IT WASN’T A MURDEROUS RAMPAGE?”

“Nope!” Xie Lian said cheerily, relief crossing his face as if he was pleased to be done talking.

Mu Qing’s face darkened, and he started swearing again. “I WAS FUCKING WONDERING HOW SOMEONE AS TALENTED AS YOU SPENDS 800 YEARS TRYING TO ASCEND, IT WAS ON FUCKING PURPOSE? FUCKING FUCK, I WANT TO STRANGLE SOMETHING! SOMEONE GIVE ME SOMETHING TO BREAK!” He clomped off in a random direction.

Feng Xin’s face looked shadowed over, too. “Here I was wondering how you suddenly had such bad luck. As Crown Prince, you’d never had something so egregious. Now, learning that you asked for it… it all makes sense.” His hands were clenched into tight fists, and his words turned into cries. “Why… why… why… for 800 years, we felt… we waited, we were waiting, for something, and we thought maybe you’d died, or gone crazy, or vanished… We…”

Xie Lian had approached him, and put both hands on his shoulders. It was an old, but familiar gesture, and Feng Xin’s heart immediately squeezed with pain and regret. He was at a loss for words, and everything seemed wretched.

“Feng Xin, I understand your anguish,” Xie Lian said softly. “But I became very close to becoming that thing which I swore to destroy. And, to be honest, at that point I didn’t care much for godhood. I lost everything because of godhood. What I couldn’t stand to lose was myself, not to that monster, not to anyone. So, please understand. I’m sorry I hurt you, but it was necessary.”

“WHY DO YOU HAVE TO BE SO FUCKING GOOD?” Mu Qing roared, coming to stand next to Feng Xin. “WHY CAN’T YOU EVER BE SELFISH?”

Xie Lian chuckled, and Mu Qing covered his mouth, as if the words had escaped by their own volition. “…I wasn’t being good, I was scared.”

Mu Qing swore more. Feng Xin, on the other hand, fell to his knees, his shoulders trembling. So, Xie Lian acted on impulse, pulling Mu Qing down to the ground, too. Xie Lian then wrapped one arm around Feng Xin, and the other around Mu Qing, enveloping the both of them in a hug.

“I’m sorry,” Xie Lian murmured again, trying to control their trembling. He couldn’t tell, at this point, if it was only Feng Xin, or if it was Mu Qing too.

“We failed. I failed,” Feng Xin said, and his voice was raw with agony. “Why are you apologizing?”

“It wasn’t fair to either of you… but I loved you very much, and it was like you were shackled to a man descending to the bottom of a lagoon. If I didn’t remove your chains, you would’ve drowned too.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, holy shit, I’m so sorry,” Feng Xin said, almost gasping through the words. He looked as though someone had drawn a sword across his Adam’s apple, and he was choking through the blood. “Taizi Dianxia, I’m sorry. I failed.”

“Don’t be so damn self-sacrificing, Your Highness.” It was Mu Qing, this time, and he wasn’t struggling against the embrace. “Every single fucking time. Disgusting. How can we even stop you? Something like this. Damnit.”

“I’m a bit tougher than I look,” Xie Lian assured him. “Drowning is no big deal. Pain will subside. Embarrassment will fade. And look, I’m very happy now.”

From somewhere far away, Hua Cheng laughed slightly. However, even Mu Qing and Feng Xin, who weren’t well acquainted with him, could hear that it was laced with pain, too.

“I’m sorry. I wanted to stay with you,” Feng Xin said. “I wanted to stay, I trusted you unequivocally, you’re my world. But it scared me…”

Xie Lian smiled. “I know. You didn’t have to say anything. Ever since you came to help me at Yu Jun Mountain, I’ve known. And I’m grateful.”

“Stop being so damn forgiving.” Mu Qing’s voice was muffled by Xie Lian’s robes.

“Why? I forgive you.” Mu Qing and Feng Xin seemed to collapse in on themselves. So Xie Lian repeated, “I forgive you.”

No one moved for a long time. The trembling intensified. “You’re so damn forgiving,” Mu Qing mumbled. “It doesn’t mean a thing…”

And yet, they were not willing to break away.

Even after 800 years, Mu Qing and Feng Xin didn’t think that they would ever get used to being dazzled by the Crown Prince.

[shuturxface]

Quarantine has, completely out of no where, compelled me to re-read The Life and Times. I finished three days ago and yes I’m still crying. BUT! to get my emotions out I wrote something of a��“review”. It’s really just my thoughts about everything. No one asked but I’m posting it anyway. 

Please enjoy, it’s below. Be warned, there are *spoilers*: 

Thoughts and Musings:

I don’t particularly know why I’ve been so affected by The Life and Times this go around. I’ve always loved it, but I don’t think I’ve ever cried when Alice Griffiths (now Longbottom) tells Lily that she’s spontaneously marrying Frank Longbottom. And I also don’t think that I’ve ever felt more than fondness towards Marlene Price and Adam Mckinnon. And, I’ve always disliked Carlotta Meloni (especially during the summer and 7thyear), but I never actually hated her character. All until now. The first time I read The Life and Times, I really, really enjoyed it and appreciated the characters and the plot and the realism– like, come on, of course they’re not going to make out in the middle of an escape! However, I was, admittedly, disappointed with the lack of James/Lily action. Not that it was scarce, there certainly was a lot! But this time around, I finally realized why Jewels wrote it in that way. Lily disliked James – possibly resented him – for five years, and more strongly much more recently (I expect her unsavory opinions of him were most prominent during 5thyear, what with his excessive exclamations of “go on a date with me, Evans”). Of course, it’s going to take more than a few weeks to erase that! And it’s not like it could take less time, because, realistically, why would Lily want to spend that much more time with James if she wasn’t fond of him, and if they kept fighting. Honestly, their development as friends is much more interesting, and it shows an in-depth thought processes of fleshing out the characters. I am thoroughly moved by the fact that it doesn’t happen over-night or within a few days.

I’ve also read complaints about how James Potter is acting disinterested in Lily. To them I say: did you even read the goddamnstory?! Did you pass over the parts where he watches her when she’s not looking, and the parts where he is upset with himself for how strongly he feels about her?! If James Potter is anything, he is not an idiot (however idiotic he may act sometimes). From what the (actual HP) books show, James was interested in Lily and kept asking her out in their 5thyear. If I recall correctly, it was implied that he may have done so years prior. It is also stated, by Sirius Black, that they got together in 7thyear. Once again, that transformation from enemies to lovers is not going to happen overnight, and is definitely not going to happen if James Potter kept overtly obsessing over her in 6thyear. Also (!) there is a perfectly reasonable explanation Jewels gives us for why he acted this way: he wanted to get over her. Not only does this prove that he liked her deeply, not just superficially, but also that he got the message. He would have been truly, very thick had he not.

But back to the matter at hand. For some reason, this time around (I don’t remember, possibly third), I’ve been thoroughly engrossed and cried at different intervals of the story more so than before. I sobbed at the end of chapter 30, “The Worst Day Ever” in which it followed each character (Carlotta, Marlene, Donna, Mary, and Lily) on September 1st. I cried terribly during the last two chapters with the attack on the M.F.P. conference – the tension and the unknowing, and worst of all, the death of Sam Dearborn. Quickly, a word about Sam. Somehow, through so few chapters, Jewels created such a lovable character (limited in “screen time”) that his death (and Lily and James’ reaction to it) caused me to cry on multiple occasions. Jewels was able to capture the anguish of her characters so well, that for a moment I forgot it was a story at all and felt it myself. I cried when Sirius Black told Lily Evans that she “fit” with the Marauders, after she asked him why he was so sure she and James belonged together. I have absolutely no idea how she managed to utterly take me apart in the span of 3 days and 36 chapters, but no fanfiction has been able to do that.

I am fully in awe of what Jewels has created – The Life and Times is a work of art, capturing the 1970s in the Wizarding World perfectly. Would I like to see how each James and Lily, how Adam and Marlene, Mary and Reginald get together? No, I would love it. Am I still curious of how on earth all those 87 wizards and witches were murdered at the Magic For Peace convention, leaving no survivors? No, I’m haunted by it. And while there are parts that are frustrating to read (some sexist and misogynistic parts, especially from a few Ravenclaws are particularly uncomfortable), I also think she delivers an accurate representation of the 70s, which were much less politically correct that the world is today. She is not even encouraging this behavior because it’s all made by unlikeable “villainous” characters – not particularly evil, but definitely malicious.

Because Jewels created this story so magnificently, only she knew where it was headed and how it would play out. She wrote it so uniquely, using quick dialogue that made me feel that I was actually there. Phrasing her syntax in such a way that her descriptions were musical and poetic and completely relatable. Her chapter structures kept me on my toes, each one with its own unique flavor, yet all of them unified, flowing from one to the other perfectly.

Not only that, she created characters with strong, redeeming qualities as well as true, trying weaknesses. Lily Evans: she created Lily to be a kind individual that always sought to see the good in others, as J.K. Rowling told us she was. But she also made Lily imaginative and contemplative and romantic and strong, and, yes, sorrowful, fearful, angry, and (most importantly, if you ask me) not willing to discuss her real feelings with anyone, thus slightly hypocritical. James Potter: Jewels created James to be loyal, clever, more-than-slightly arrogant, humorous, brave, and even compassionate. But she also made him brooding, impulsive, hot headed, and many times, a prick. I could go on, but the main point is this: Jewels created complex characters. She didn’t make a wondrous, unfailingly kind Lily (if she were, why did she and James butt heads so viciously?), or a comical, lovesick James, a cheeky, brazen Sirius, a quiet, sentimental Remus, a quivering Pettigrew, or a moody, jealous Snape (yes, even he had more to him than this – drive and hunger to prove himself). Jewels created characters with depth! Characters that made mistakes and don’t just immediately learn from them. Hell, she made teenage characters in a fanfiction that didn’t ultimately think with their primary sex organ – characters that were able to see that there were more important things happening besides who’s shagging who. Of course, there were characters that were interested in this, but they’re not the type of people that would go to a protest at the Ministry of Magic (and, obviously, this just strengthens the certainty that James and Lily truly belong together). Essentially, Jewels created characters that are sometimes hard to like. She showed us real emotions and feelings and struggles like a proper novel. She went further than an exploration of two people’s love life and gave contextual reasons to their coming together, and why their relationship was so important in the greater scheme of Harry Potter. She created multiple storylines, intricately woven together, incorporating briefly mentioned characters in the Harry Potter series and giving them backstory and personalities. Jewels created a world within J.K. Rowling’s universe with complex political turmoil.

I fully and strongly admire the work and dedication that Jewels put into The Life and Times. I feel that it’s wishful thinking that she might return to this story after all these years (has it really been seven already?!), but I can’t help but wish all the same. I do understand because life does have a habit of getting in the way and people move on. I’m truly grateful for Jewels and what she gave to the world. No other fanfiction will ever evoke the feelings that The Life and Times does. No matter the emotional strife this story gives me, I will always be grateful, and it will always be my favorite. Thank you, Jewels.

[vinatintasupernovita]

5 situations for Famine?

Im pretty sure I did Famine before but like I can’t remember what they were so let’s go again! Famines kind of a quieter, more somber type of guy, so the anguish is like a bitter nip in winter than like heart wrenching

1. anytime in Pre-Modern Day when there was like really successful crop seasons. Not really anguishing but extremely stressful

2. Losing a lover is always anguishing so like... a past love that really stuck with him (or god forbid Frannie) dying or even worse watching them die of his influence

3. Pestilence’s retirement definitely drove a wedge between him and his family and like Famine was the one who just kind of tried to act like nothing had really painful happened, it was just business as usual. As if that would stop the hurt. It didn’t.

4. Having to comfort War after losing certain friends and girlfriends that really effected her, that hurt him because that’s his sibling and there’s things they just can’t fix. People they couldn’t spare, even if they tried.

5. A general soul sucking fear of a Post-Apocalypse world. Before the ride, he at least found comfort in the idea that if it was their end, they went out doing something they were made to do. Now the horsepeople had no destiny, no clear path, no nothing. It scared him. You could feel it in every word he wrote at his business, every CHOW meal turning slightly sour in flavor for some time. It’s mortifying.

Send me a character and i’ll write 5 emotionally anguishing situations for them

[yeoldontknow]

Time Runner: 5

Author’s Note: welcome back! thank you all for being so patient! once again, im making it clear that there will be historical inaccuracies and that this is a fictionalized account of the events of the inquistion, and i am not claiming that everything that is happening is something that would have happened. thank <3  Pairing: Chanyeol x Reader (oc; female) Genre: time travel!au; suspense; thriller; drama; romance; angst; sci-fi Rating (this chapter): R Warnings: graphic violence; graphic depictions of blood; swearing; dark themes; themes of abandonment; themes of war; explicit language Word count: 4,526

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Unknown, 1484-85 Turuel, Kingdom of Aragon, Spain

How strange, you thought, for the air to lose its static, a vacuum biting against your skin with claws; hard enough to make your existence hurt.

How strange, you thought, for the world to taste bitter. To taste bitter and to becoming little more than a mausoleum of memory, colours rusting and dimming with only your joyless eyes to touch them.

How strange to be burning alone in the world, waiting and waiting and waiting.

It seemed as though, with Chanyeol’s fading form, your breath had left with him, dissolving into little more than a phantasm of life and living. With no oxygen to propel you into motion, your feet faltered, unsteady and unbalanced against foreign terrain without a hand to lead them true.

Echoing everywhere and nowhere at once, perhaps thriving only in the marrow of your bones, his named died on your lips. Against your lips, the syllables were hot to the touch and left a residue on your tongue, thick and scratching at the roof of your mouth like ash. In the brief moment of stillness, you felt the flux of solitude press against your arms, the molecules in the air disrupted by a thing that was once there and suddenly was no longer.

There was a gentleness and a cruelty to the glimmers of possibility that faded around you - a soft brush against your skin, feeling not unlike whim or fantasy, before the weight of knowledge sought the innocent openness of your pores. Once inside, it moved deeper and deeper still until it found your throat, found the trust that you offered freely alongside every word you had ever said, and choked it. Of you, it wanted everything, until there was no end to where your turmoil began.

Behind you, the members of the Ministry vanished with little pomp or circumstance, their interest in you evidenced by how quickly they left you behind. With you on your knees, they had you exactly as they wanted you: vulnerable, broken, tongue pressed behind your teeth and silenced. Your turmoil had been their victory, a thing they had never witnessed in the long line of history, a new treasure to behold. And, once they had seen it, it became clear that your grief was neither special nor unlike any other throughout the whole of time, it merely tasted sweeter because it belonged to them.

Perhaps it should have alarmed you how one swift motion of abandonment could render you obsolete, leaving you for dead or simply just leaving you, letting history claim you as its own to fade namelessly into oblivion. Confronted at last with the speed at which life both begins and ends, ugly at both ends of the spectrum. Of you, they had created an offering, a gift offered to the slowness of time and the madness of men.

It was not, you thought, that you wanted to be found, that you wanted them to care, that you wanted be found as guilty as you felt. Simply, you thought you wanted to matter. To someone.

They never came back for you, neither for questioning nor for an execution.

Instead they left you for dead at the hands of an army so skilled in psychological and physical torture, you took to breaking yourself, cutting at the dead pieces of your spirit, before they could do it themselves. At least this, you thought, you were good at. Staying mobile, moving, running, accepting the darkness and letting eat the tips of your fingers. The length of your life had become blurred with Chanyeol by your side, the chronology unordered and disorganized, but you know you had spent years learning how to move without eyes keenly following; of learning to make yourself small and make yourself invisible, running with enough speed to be forgotten and enough force to slowly stop wanting to be seen at all.

This time, your footprints left marks in dirt roads, tracks you learned to cover with leaves or mud. This time, you did not have days or weeks to catch your breath. Sometimes minutes, most often seconds. This time, it was not to explore or see or learn or help or love.

This time, it was to survive.

And this time, it was for yourself.

You ran from town to town, palms sweating and chest burning with each thrust of your feet to soil. Every burning city you entered held a brief promise of security: empty houses containing discarded scraps of food, piss soaked beds to sleep in, the torn, mangled clothing of men hauled off to jail cells below the earth. Some homes contained weapons, discarded daggers and knives you strapped to your belt with leather laces you found in old, worn boots.

With a knife, you learned to pull apart the shoes and yield scraps of leather. With butchers needles and tools, you learned to strap the leather together, binding your breasts tightly beneath a soiled tunic you found discarded behind a farm, no trace of the man who had worn it. It took practice to cut your hair without clipping part of your ears in the process. You wore scars on the side of your head, self-inflicted and only half healed.

Three weeks was all it took before you killed a man. You told yourself it was survival, that he would have killed you first, that this was your life now. You had walked into a war between God and men, and if men could command time and temporality then there was no longer a difference between the two. God, man, woman, beast - in your eyes there was no difference, decided that in the mouth of hell, we were all equal. His life left his eyes before your dagger left his side, the blood hot and thick on your fingers as if to burn straight through your bones.

It seared against your fingerprints, as though his blood contained all the memories of his life, as though, in death, he demanded you remember him.

You held him close while he struggled, spasming violently until he stilled, collapsing against your chest like a spent lover. In your arms, you held him, cradled him, while you cried through grit teeth, realizing that it was easy, easier than you thought it would be. Killing a man was easy and this would not be the first time you held mortality between your unwilling hands.

In a daze, you walked along a river until sundown, unseeing and unseen. The trees lined the bank, leaves rustling in the wind as though whispering about you, sharing your secrets, speaking the names of the dead as though you were meant to respect them. For hours, you did not want to clean your hands, stared at your open palms and remembered Chanyeol’s palm against yours, wondered how his skin would feel with blood pressed between you. For hours, you wore him, until the stain of his blood on your skin became a tattoo.

And even when you did, when you finally used the blunt edge of a rock to wash him away, replacing his blood with yours, your skin was slick with the memory of him for days.

Patience was never one of your virtues, your past life so filled with endless noise begging for your attention that stillness always seemed irrational in the modern world. With Chanyeol, time had become tangible, something you had run through, and between, something you could touch, and kiss. With Chanyeol, there time became something that moved with your will, and you thought, surely, that kind of unrestrained living could never be replaced.

After six months of running towards nothingness, towards a mapless terrain and without any promise of safety, the slowness of living, the slowness of expecting death and counting the hours of night, you forgot what it mean to live quickly at all.

Somewhere along the way, you had grown accustomed to fear, to anguish, to the impossible length of a minute, the unbearable torment of a second. Somewhere along the way, the cold and the fear of longing had given way to a survival instinct that filled your lungs with heat; expectation of the warm arms of a man became a dream of an oncoming pleasure, inconsistent, irrational, and intangible, and, when it was over, you were always filled with disappointment.

After six months, you stopped telling yourself he would come back, ceased a morning ritual of bathing and whispering today is the day. Eventually the memory of him splintered altogether, becoming little more than just footprints on the wind and a phantom limb in a cold bed.

Yours had become a tempered reality, one  filled with false heroism and the saving of tyrannical children from a sacrilegious death. The violence of this new life suited you fine, and you wore the blood and the armor with a chest puffed full of regret. Unfazed by corpses and carcasses, your nose no longer seared from the stench of burning flesh, eyes unblinking and the bones piled high or the homes reduced to ash. Steps slowing as you passed, you saw these things, you felt them, you mourned them, but, eventually, you did not fear them.

You’d seen towns fall and women bleed; you tasted war on the air and swallowed it whole, studying the nuances of the flavor and finding retribution in the way it made your teeth ache. The sight of a sword ripping through a man no longer made you ache with recoil, only made your knuckles tense with disdain. The hatred of men had become commonplace and, until he came back, until you were pulled back and taught how to run without the clanking of metal behind you, the act of loving was nothing but a distant, surreal dream.

When winter came you skinned rabbits and learned to properly sew, stitching their uncleaned fur into the lining of your shirt, binder, and boots. You walked through ice and snow, from town to town, taking a drink in each but never staying long enough to share a name, to share a bed, to be remembered at all. You had become a wanted man, hoarding secrets beneath the costume you’d turned into a shield; a heretic for believing in nothing except that time was continuous, that this genocide would happen again, and that if Chanyeol could touch time then somehow he was touching you, until even this too was brought down like so many of the gods before him.

When the trees of the forest of Aragon began to emerge from their slumber, the shade of their bark taking a ruddy complexion rather than the pale brown of death, you saw him standing not too far down the path you walked on. Like a pine shaking loose its nettles, you shivered at the sight of him and paused, breath stilling in your lungs at the sight.

He was beautiful, still so impossibly beautiful, you recognized him the moment his frame appeared on the hill up ahead. The sunlight, frigid and unsoothing in its glow, yet learning how to bloom once again, splayed behind him, making halos against his limbs where none should exist. You could have sighed, you would have sighed, shut your eyes from the relief and the hope and the bliss, but instead visage on the hill made you feel slightly sick. As though this should convince you he were yours for touching, as though this, his emergence like Virgil before Dante, should act as reassurance at all.

You’d imagined his presence countless times and, while you were fully aware he was no premonition, that your mind had long since given up imagining his visage once it had been almost completely forgotten, you felt little excitement behind the knowledge that he had proven you wrong, expecting this to make up for all the days in which you were right.

He ran to you, face unchanged and golden, the brightness of his smile combating the sun for dominance and tugging at his cheeks as it demanded access to your heart. Around him the air shifted, just like it always did, making space for him and igniting with an electricity bordering on cosmic, your skin starting to prick just like it used to simply because he was near and he was magic. Already, you could see the coil of tension in his elbows and hands, desperate to hold you and pull you to him, as if you were still his to touch. His hair in the wind moved back and turned his expression of delight and relief into something boyish.

Long ago, you would have swooned at the sight of, would have held his cheeks between your palms with a desperation that dripped down to your soul, and kissed and kissed and kissed him, until all the breath in your lungs was his. Instead, you felt yourself begin to seethe, the scars along your neck searing with blood for the first time in months, burning with contempt and derision. At him. At time. Mostly, at yourself.

Still you wanted him, still you yearned for him, limbs twitching with the unfulfilled effort of reaching towards his arms, his hands, his cheeks, his skin. The urgency to touch him betrayed the year of everything you had learned without him, pulled towards him as always as a moth to a flame, but you kept still. Gritting your teeth and lips pressed in a thin, neutral line, you kept your feet rooted to the earth, reminding yourself you were no longer the woman he left behind, body pressed into shapes you could no longer call human. He was running towards the past, a version of you he had idealized and held close, or maybe never held at all, and you remained motionless, accepting that time neither begins nor ends, it simply is.

‘I found you.’ He said the words to himself as he approached, proud and pleased and pink with gladness at your reunion, celebrating in solitude with himself. As he reached you, he slowed, paused, fumbling awkwardly over his feet as he finally, truly saw you.

‘What’s happened to you?’ The lowness of his tone wandered over your skin, reintroducing itself to your veins, your pores, and seeking permission against a guard that did not previously exist.

Time had pulled you apart, Chanyeol had pulled you apart, and still his voice could make you quake, make you thirst for the flush taste of his sweat on your lips, the needle that promised to mend you back together. But even then, you did not know exactly what you desired of him, or how you were meant to be sewn, for you were not a thing worth softness, or the gentleness, hope. The ghost of you had burned to ash beneath your bones so long ago, the desire you felt was little more than echoes, little more than memories of a love born from childish fantasy.

Now, you simply needed his eyes on your scars, his eyes on yours, demanded he feast on the mess and trauma of you. You hoped he would drink his fill, that he would see what he had made of you, that you had become this for him.

In stoic silence, you watched the way his gaze traveled down your body, tracing the scars and the scabs, the distinct lack of the swell of your breasts, the steadiness of your grip. Wherever his eyes went, the hairs on your body stood to attention, forced awake after a hibernation that felt like prison, the magnetic touch of his gaze bringing your molecules back to life. Slowly, his expression became mangled with a shock not unlike horror, jaw twitching in an expression you could not read. You were glad for this, glad that you had unlearned enough of him to make new opinions about the length and power of his bones.

And only after he returned his eyes to yours, only after you finally saw his nostrils flare in confusion and hurt did you take your turn to speak.

‘What the fuck took you so long?’ You were a venomous thing, and you wondered if he would ever learn to love a snake.

He loved you when you were young, naive, begging to be brave and uncertain how. He loved you when you followed, when you asked questions that felt like philosophies and not war strategies. He loved you when you were asking to matter. Now, he would have to relearn you. Now, he would have to love you as his judge, his jury, and his executioner.

Without hesitation his brow furrowed, eyes wide in bewilderment and abjection, cheeks blanching. Chanyeol fell over his words, eager and rushing his speech like a child. ‘Took me - it’s been two hours!’

‘Two hours?’ you shouted, unconcerned with giving away your position. Let them find me, you thought. Let them find me so I could watch him run once more. Blood left you, left your head, your cheeks, your fingers, numbing you. Anger, a red thing, blanched you completely, mouth turning dry as it kissed your tongue. ‘It’s been over a year!’

Behind his eyes, you counted infinity, an endless stream of thoughts that raced behind his dilated pupils, the only place his fragile guard had never reached. You expected tears or rage, regret, every emotion he had ever offered or received or taught you to feel. Instead, he blinked. He blinked and he nodded, brows furrowed as he released a trembling sigh.

‘So this is what happened to you...’ he began, slowly, chewing at the inside of his cheek before glancing away from you, conflicted.

‘What the fuck did you expect?’ you sneered, tone cold and demanding. The loss of his gaze made you feel scorned, betrayed - you wanted all of his sadness, all of his distress; wanted to see if it could ever match your own.

Meeting your eyes once more, he regarded you as though you were the key he had stolen, as though you were his answer, his benediction, his greatest fear. The change, you felt, was staggering.

‘When I met you,’ he said, voice small and struggling to remain even, ‘you were raw and hard. Something about youth didn’t sit right on you, I could never imagine you as a child - you just were as I had met you, forever. Not at all the person I met in the library. I see now this was the year that turned you.’

The voices of the crows echoed in the sky as though echoing his words, and you felt yourself rear back, frowning. No longer merely a thief, he had become a liar.

About you.

About the order of your life.

About everything that involved him, which weighed so much more than the memories you had of just yourself and your past.

It was as though he had peeled back pieces of your skin, his skin, revealing an ugliness that tainted every memory you had shared with him - the ugliness of expectation and disappointment. You were not as he had wanted to find you in the library, and, now that you were, you were unsure you wanted to be found at all.

‘Remember,’ you said, tone thick and words heavy, ‘that you did this. You made us this.’

Chanyeol did not crumble or break in the wake of your words, neither begged for forgiveness nor defended his actions, simply remained still and relearned how to breathe. Lines formed on his cheeks, creases giving away his sadness and his anguish, the guilt eating away at him just as life had eaten you.

For a while you said nothing, simply watched the way his fatigues moved in the breeze and the way he flushed when your tongue moved along your lips, wetting the flesh. The tension in his throat was palpable, full of words that lived and died before ever reaching his lips, strained from the effort of remaining strong, hardened, when for you he was always, eternally soft.

Between your bodies, longing lingered, a heaviness that begged to be felt - unfinished kisses, unwhispered sentiments, vows of love and life and death cluttering the space your bodies did not touch. These things looked nice, sounded nice. You wanted them, almost as badly as you wanted him, but there were too many questions, too many bodies, and too many knife wounds were your affections used to lie.

You wanted him, oh how deeply you wanted him, but not like this.

Chanyeol broke the silence with whimper comprised of sorrow and regret, fists clenched at his sides from the effort of not reaching and touching you.

‘There’s blood under your fingernails,’ he offered weakly, eyes focused on your left hand which remained weaponless.

He studied your knuckles, the scars and the marks, the bloodstains and the dirt, likely remembering how he used to cherish your hands. Pressing his lips to your fingers, he would kiss each pad before moving your hand to his cheek, feeling your skin against his and sighing with an affection that made your chest ache. He would bind your fingers together, blocking out the sun, the air, atoms unable to fit between your hands until you felt as one. It must have hurt, you thought, for him to wonder what you had held without him.

‘There’s more than blood under my nails,’ you said, keeping your voice level and emotionless, remembering how you used to touch him, too. How even after war and death and grief he was still so incredibly, impossibly soft. For you. Only for you. ‘You don’t send a person to the Inquistion and expect a child to come back.’

'It's killing me not to touch you -'

'I went a year without you.' You cut him off, voice strained and tight, the thickness in your throat beginning to throb. 'Surely, you can wait a little longer.'

‘You were always a soldier. I wondered what made you this way, all these years. You would never tell me.’

‘The details are in history books, where they belong,’ you countered. ‘My version is too stained with blood and vomit to be legible.’

‘What’s -’

You cut him off, blinded by questions and anger. You wanted to scream, to hold his throat beneath your palm and remind him you had earned the right, the right was yours to be the Inquisitor. My feelings are valid, you wanted to shout. This right is mine because I felt it. It was mine because I lived it.

‘Run me somewhere safe,’ you said, instead. ‘Run me somewhere that feels like home.’

31 December, 2012 New York, New York

The world built itself around and against you in a haze of black and white, malformed objects that surrounded you as deities, the hiss of exterior modern sounds consuming your senses in disorienting cacophony. When the colours started to seep in, the noise of the Earth became vibrant and loud. Everything felt distantly familiar, things that once belonged to you but had been traded away for a promise of delight, a promise of excitement. They no longer belonged to you, and you did not miss them, though, briefly, you missed the sense of simplicity they brought.

Modernity, you remembered, was an uncomplicated mess. Disastrous, if only because the effort and the knowledge of to survive had been almost eradicated.

The concrete beneath your feet was a comfort, the terrain unchanging with weather and weight. For the first time in over a year, you felt stable, powerful in the posture that rooted itself in your spine. Almost instantly, your eyes began to burn, the smog in the air making them sting and the lights of modernity altogether too bright after spending so long in the bleak dimness of the past. Covering your mouth, you coughed several times, lungs having grown used to an uncontaminated atmosphere.

Chanyeol watched you with eager eyes, glancing between your face and the panel on his arm, with a wary gaze.

‘When are we?’ you asked once you were able to speak, taking in the high rise buildings. Their height made you anxious, feel swallowed by the metals and manufactured glory of men.

‘New Years Eve, 2012,’ he said softly. He came to stand next to you, facing out to the street as he watched cars pass.

In the closeness, he let his fingers graze against yours, seeking the feel of your skin if only for a moment. Electricity coursed through your joints, the shock of contact making you glance down at his hand, though neither of you moved away. Perhaps, you thought, he was afraid you would run from him, breaking away and abandoning him once your feet had touched the ground.

It would not have been the first time he misjudged you. It seemed as though you were born to make the hard choices, born to make the things that hurt most into something magnificent.

‘Where?’ Your voice was flat, exhausted.

‘New York.’

‘I need clothes.’ You moved your hand away from his, ignoring the small whine of protest that spilled over from his lips. He kept his eyes on the street as you pulled the thick tunic away from your chest, nervous to look at you and the actions of a life you learned without him. It reeked of dirt, blood and vomit. In the oncoming breeze, you could smell the odor of your skin and clothes, and you scowled, nose hairs burning with the stench. Water had began to leak into your boots, the snow melting through to numb your toes. ‘What time is it?’

‘Just half six.’ Chanyeol turned to you, body and soul battling the hope for reconnection that threatened to turn him into a dying star. He was waiting for the fallout - your fallout.

‘Shops should still be open,’ you hummed, though truly it did not matter. A small smile played at your lips, smirking at how naturally willing you were to follow the rules of your own time. You turned from him then, beginning a brisk walking down the street towards bright lights and a crowd of people, suddenly bold in the anonymity his presence offered you.

In just a few strides, he caught up, walking at your pace as though he were born to follow you, as though he were used to existing at your side and not asking for much more.

One year for you but two hours for him. You played this over in your mind as you walked, wondering what happened in his two hours that would have made him so compliant, so willing to let you walk freely without question. Idly, you recalled the last thing you had said to him, the last proper request you had made.

‘When we get out of here, you teach me how to lead.’

It took effort not to snort at the irony, that it was not he who taught you how to lead, but yourself.

You taught yourself to lead. You taught yourself to stay safe.

You were safe.

You were safe.

[finsterhund]

Childhood Emotional Abuse and the Resulting Unhealthy Fears Involving Comfort Items

For those unfamiliar with the concept of comfort items/comfort objects the idea is simple. People, children especially, become emotionally attached and find comfort in an inanimate object. The most famous example being Linus’ blanket from the Peanuts comic.

Studies have been done that show comfort items being more common among children living in suburban communities and in cultures where parents are expected to work full time and spend long periods away from their young children. Rural communities where parents stay closer to home and work in jobs that can be done on one’s own property see comfort objects in children less.

It used to be believed that a comfort item was evidence that a child did not have a healthy strong bond to their maternal figure, but more recently it’s suggested that developing a bond with a comfort item can also be the first steps to independence from a parent as a child explores their personal identity being separate from their provider. It being the first thing that is theirs that they have responsibility over.

Comfort items are also fairly common in children with developmental disorders, and adults on the autism spectrum can often have them as well. They serve as a means of grounding one’s self and finding familiarity, security, and safety in an unfamiliar or perceived unsafe environment.

And with that understanding it should come at no surprise that people with trauma disorders will have comfort items as well.

Recently I’ve been trying to rationalize why I have such an unhealthy view on the physical health of, and personal responsibility for the natural wear on my comfort items. I’ve seen many others who don’t seem emotionally devastated by comfort items fading, greying, losing their softness, becoming threadbare and such. There’s more an interest in protecting the textile feel of the worn stuffed toy than there is in making them bright and soft again. But for me it’s a source of emotional anguish.

To me the physical wear on any of my stuffed animals (my comfort items are almost exclusively stuffed dogs these days) is the source of significant mental duress. To the point that I will suffer not bringing them places because I fear for their safety. At the cost of my own comfort.

I have figured out what I think is the reason for this.

I have severe abandonment, attachment, and loss issues and these have been directed at my comfort items due to the sheer amount of times in my early childhood that mine were stolen, harmed, and destroyed by my birth parents. Often times as a punishment or as an attempt to forcibly “cure” me of my mental illnesses.

Warning: the following few paragraphs will be discussing this. In explicit detail. I want to get it out of my head. I want my experiences out. I want them heard. But they are tough to hear.

My earliest memory of a comfort item being stolen were the most common way my birth mother punished me for anything and everything up to about age 7. My birth father physically abused me which many people will rightfully say is worse, but the things my birth mother did were severely emotionally abusive. Bear in mind, the reasons for this “punishment” weren’t always bad things that I had done. Off the top of my head some of these reasons for being punished were:

Not paying close enough attention when something pertaining to her religion was being done or said

Complaining about something to do with her religion in any way was immediately and severely punished. Was pretty much the only time she herself physically abused me.

Stuttering when reciting passages from the bible (bear in mind this was age 3-6 and I had a significant speech impediment)

Being selectively mute

Speaking out of turn

Crying. For pretty much ANY reason. Including fear, hunger, and pain

Accidentally hurting myself

Not eating properly (holding cutlery right, chewing properly, being a picky eater)

Showing visible fear or apprehension in public

Not wanting to be held, hugged, touched, or picked up

Showing resistance towards intrusive, uncomfortable, or unpleasant medical procedures

If it was severe enough (it angered her enough to resort to violence) she would “safely” beat me with her hand or a wooden spoon, but most of the time it was a psychological punishment that took advantage of my Achilles's heel: stuffed animals.

Now even though I definitely was not ready, she forced me to sleep alone starting around the age of 2. I was one of those kids who was TERRIFIED of sleeping. (not of the dark yet, but that’s coming, oh don’t you worry) I did not feel at all safe in the house when it was day time, and was constantly afraid and looking over my shoulder and alert of impending dangers. My ears constantly pricked for the tiniest of sounds. This is common for CPTSD sufferers. It’s hyper-vigilance. Anyways, this was worse at night. It was too quiet, and my birth mom was often at work. That was when she worked. Night shifts. So naturally being without her (despite her shortcomings I trusted her and relied on her back then) it was scary. This was also the same time frame that the Spot incident happened which messed with my brain severely. I remained a bedwetter up until around 10 due to this and further complications because of how I was emotionally abused.

The point I’m haphazardly getting at and providing context towards, is that I would usually be punished by having my stuffed animals taken away at bedtime. Knowing, full well, that they were the only things that helped me feel safe. She made a big deal about this too. Mentally degrading me for it. Sometimes she’d take them away one by one to further incite fear. She made sure to know each of their names and made it seem like they were going to be emotionally harmed by being taken away as well. I remember one distinct instance where I didn’t want to recite whatever bullshit she was trying to record me saying on camcorder (I was also scared of cameras) and I whined and tried to run away. She pinned me down in place and said that for every mistake she’d take away one of my stuffed animals. I couldn’t talk. Evidently we got down to all of them (about five) at which point I began sobbing and pleading with her to have even a sliver of empathy. She did not.

This punishment sits comfortable in the timeline coincidentally around the same time that my nyctophobia first started to present itself/develop. It also aligns with when I was locked in my bedroom with the light bulb removed for hours at a time as a punishment. I could not in any way verbally react to being forced to sleep in the dark with no stuffed animals because my birth father would just beat me. Even crying relatively quietly. At that point I was unrelenting and “the only punishment that worked” was physical violence. Everything else had been taken from me. I’d pass the hours by holding as still as possible and breathing shallowly. I was given a nightlight by a relative eventually but this was also frequently stolen from my room for bedtime as a punishment. My memories of this blend together with being forced to sleep in the dark later into my childhood. It was all the same: The completely cover yourself with a blanket, not move or make any sounds, and hope you mercifully fall asleep even though it feels like you’re suffocating under there thing.

My birth mother rarely relented with the bedtime punishments. Even though I would spend the rest of the day begging her to. She could pretty much force me to do things just by threatening them. I tried to be as good as possible but it really felt like she could do it at any time, no matter what. Like she was deliberately looking for things that would justify it.

She showed a lot of resentment towards me and did psychologically abusive things like this frequently back then. She did let up with time. Early in my life she harbored a lot of resentment because my conception had ruined her life, career, and tied her into an abusive marriage and she did, no question, take it out on me. I think a big reason why it stopped is because in order to get me ready for kindergarten I had to see a speech therapist and they immediately told her that she was being fucking batshit and making me worse.

I don’t 100% blame her for this. I know full well extremists in her religion promote this as “proper child training” and she was extremely gullible, believing pretty much anything that was spoonfed to her with the trappings and flavoring of her faith, and that a lot of the time my birth father would make her punish me or else he’d physically assault me. But still, it’s obviously something that destroyed the way my brain works. I was something she didn’t want. That she didn’t value. She learned to love me (or at least the concept of having children. She doesn’t value ME per say, as an individual or for who I am) later, but the early childhood developmental damage was done. We can dance around the issue of who’s responsible, who’s guilty, who’s at fault all we want but in the end it happened and I suffered for it.

Going back to what I mentioned earlier where if it involved her religion she’d go feral, at one point when I was a very very very hyper 5 year old stuck inside for Sunday school instead of getting to play outside on a bright warm summer afternoon like a regular boy I had brought a dog with me named Swirly. A golden retriever with slightly curly fur fabric and a soft fake rubber nose. He had been bought at a Rexall drugstore. Anyways, I was bored out of my fucking mind because I was 5 and was forced to sit in a stuffy dusty room and listen to big complicated grown up words from a six thousand year old “translated into extremely dated English” book and started stimming with Swirly by moving his ears up and down and similar small, non-obstructing things. Once Sunday school (hour and a half) was over it was pretty much time for the regular church service (hour and a half to two hours) so for those wondering that means a 5 year old boy who is very hyper having to sit still and do nothing and “pay attention” in extremely uncomfortable clothes his birth mother forced him to wear for a total of around 3-3.5 hours. So, knowing that the five or so minutes between the end of Sunday school and the beginning of the regular service would be the only chance I got, I began running around in the church basement and tossing Swirly up in the air and catching him. A fun activity to get some of my pent up energy out with and stretch my legs right? Wrong. My Sunday school teacher who was an asshole and an absolute lying manipulative scab got all snappy and hostile towards me and tried to force me to hand over Swirly. She had never hit me, she had no power over bedtime, so of course I wouldn’t obey. Fuck you. So I refused to hand over Swirly and easily avoided her by running the fuck away and hiding in the storage closet. She then snitched to my birth mom, claiming that I was a “serious disruption” and being “disrespectful” and “not paying attention.” My birth mom then took me outside to scream at me, took Swirly, locked him in the car, and then when the ordeal was finally over she took me home and beat the absolute shit out of me and then wouldn’t let me sit down after because I’d get blood everywhere so I was forced to stand but I ended up just lying down face first on the floor because my legs got too tired. Swirly was kept on a high shelf in the cupboard for a month as further punishment. Part of me thinks I still have him... somewhere... I renamed him to a character in a book I liked. But yeah. In case it wasn’t obvious I hated going to church. Sure the windows were cool and it taught me the valuable skill of staring off into space and daydreaming about cool space battles and shit, but it was so much a waste of time that I will never get back. I also wasn’t allowed to bring toys with me after that. Made me hate it even more. Congratulations.

I was immune compromised and that factored into stuffed animal theft a lot. She would frequently take my stuffed animals and force them through the washer and dryer. On hot cycles. Sometimes used bleach. This destroyed many of them and caused further distress. I started actively fighting against attempts at washing my stuffed animals with tooth and nail; hiding them, attacking with violence, and the classic begging and pleading and hysterical sobbing. It was at this time she introduced me to a book called The Velveteen Rabbit. This book actually has extremely positive messages about the wear and tear of children who love their toys making them “real” which likely would have helped me with this if not for how I was introduced to the book but it ended up being completely ruined for me because instead it was used as a cautionary tale of “let me wash your stuffed animals or I will BURN THEM” because of the boy in the story having his possessions burned due to scarlet fever. I really don’t know what it is about Christians and burning things. Specifically stuff that’s made for kids. To this day if you burn something meant for kids I will laugh at your funeral. You are a detriment to society.

So anyways, I was threatened with fiery stuffed toy execution if I didn’t let them get matted and torn with chipped and shattered safety eyes in the washer and dryer. At one point I did get a stuffed toy burned. By my birth father. I don’t remember why but I do remember him tormenting me about it, degrading me, and being physically restrained as he threw the penguin who’s name has long since been repressed in a far recess of my brain never to come out again into the woodburning stove. I remember the event like an out of body experience where I was only loosely connected to the physical plane. Like I’m not in control of my own body. Most of my traumatic memories are like this. It’s like I try to forget that that was me and that I’m watching a movie instead. My brain humanely doesn’t show the actual burning. Only the toss.

I’ve had other things burned. Books, VHS tapes, computer games, drawings I’ve made, etc. They’ve all been extremely traumatic and my brain blocks out most of them. I remember I had a Dragonball computer game or something (all I remember was it was a disc) and my birth mother burned it because she was under the impression that Japanese cartoon styles looked “evil, hateful, and demonic.” This happened sometimes too. I wasn’t even being punished. She was just a religious lunatic who thought kid-friendly media that didn’t promote her religion was dangerous and needed to be destroyed. She frequently got parenting self-help books that promoted beating your kids and burning secular toys to show your kids that they were evil. She eventually eased up on this with time though and I went from being screamed at for wanting to watch Pokemon at 4 to getting to own Pokemon cards and Harry Potter books (bot not letting my birth father find out) at 12. 

Things being burned happened a little bit later into my life, around 5-10. The stuffed animal theft (with them being returned eventually most of the time) was from earlier. Theft of personal possessions that held significant emotional value to me was continued to be used but it stopped being used as a punishment and started being an attempt to “cure” me of being mentally ill. “Weak” as my birth father called it, but as I’ve come to suspect “easily identifiable as being abused in the home” as being the true motivator. They were under the impression that I needed to be forcibly made to stop having comfort items altogether.

I had trouble with sensory feelings. I could only wear specific fabrics, clothes that fit a certain way, and would become severely distressed if forced to wear an unsuitable fabric or something too tight. As a result I would become attached to articles of clothing for feeling just right. I had a pair of bright green shorts and they were my favorite shorts. Even though the only damage that ever befell these shorts was easily fixed, my birth mother decided that I was relying “too much” on these shorts and tried to hide them. I found them. She then destroyed them in my presence to “teach me a lesson.”

Things like this happened frequently throughout my life. Another instance I remember vividly, when I was 8 or 9 was when me and my brother got happy meals from McDonald’s. They came with a little stuffed toy. My brain can’t piece together what it was, repression and all that. But I remember it being red. My birth mother had taken us out to McDonald's for some positive reason. Because we had good report cards or something. Anyways, so we had McDonald’s and went back home but she forgot something at the restaurant so she went back to get it. Leaving me and my brother alone with my birth father who decided for whatever reason that we hadn’t deserved McDonald's so he came into our rooms to beat us and take away the toys. My brother submitted quicker than I did and I heard him hit the wall and not cry after before my birth father went to me. I had a death grip and absolutely did not want to let go. I put up more of a fight and he physically assaulted me, squeezing around my throat with one hand and tearing the toy out of my hands with the other. It ripped. I tried to take it back and he repeatedly slammed my head into the metal bars of my bed frame, causing bruising and broken skin on my right temple.

My birth father frequently did shit like that. Just decide out of the blue that we didn’t deserve something or needed to be taught a lesson. My birth mother when she was around would come between us in these circumstances so he often waited until she was gone. He didn’t like us being “spoiled” with praise, nurturing, rewards, and food so he’d often treat us this way after something positive happened like we went with my birth mom to see a movie or to the swimming pool. Getting a new stuffed animal was usually grounds for harassment.

Honestly the fact that this was so common it’s a wonder that I’ve managed to keep the most important stuffed animal from my early years with me. Battered, worn, falling apart, missing his face, with skin grafts and a loose eye Ope is worse for wear, that’s putting it lightly. But I still have him. My guess is that it’s because he was given to me by my grandparents and they died when I was five. My birth mother had and still has a lot of remorse for leaving them, for not listening to them about my birth father, etc. His connection to them probably saved him from destruction or being thrown away. I’m not complaining. He matters so much to me. Despite how badly he’s fallen apart all these years he’s the only stuffed animal who’s degradation doesn’t cause me as much emotional stress. It still makes me sad when I think about it, but that’s just Ope. I still chew on his nose. Some things are eternal.

The last time I had to deal with parental stuffed animal theft was later. Within the couple years or so before my friend rescued me and took me in and we shared that fateful first apartment. At that point my birth father was gone and the locks were changed. He wasn’t living there. Because of my high school’s disability program I had got a part time job. Yes me. With a job. It was possible at one point. Anyways, while I was out, being the SOLE BREADWINNER of the house at the time, my birth mother for some fucking reason decided to take a bunch of my stuffed animals to the thrift store. In her infinite wisdom she didn’t think far enough ahead to consider that:

Going to thrift stores is one of my only recreational activities. 

That I did so very frequently. 

And that exact thrift store was my favorite one to go to. 

Never mind the fact that eventually I would have noticed when I got out my stuffed animals to brush them for stress relief. She really did think I was that stupid. It went about as well as you’re thinking it went. I went to the thrift store, went to the stuffed animal section. “Oh. I have one of these! I have one of these too. Wait... the dent in his safety eye is the exact same one that I--” And then I was in HYSTERICS as I had to buy back as many of my stuffed animals that hadn’t been sold yet as I could. My brain repressed pretty much everything after discovering that they were mine. Can’t remember bringing them up to the front or coming back home. I was absolutely DESTROYED. Why the fuck would she have ever thought that this was an okay thing to do? I don’t know. 

When I went back there to clear the old house out several years later she had the nerve to get mad at me for wanting to donate things I didn’t want (but she wanted me to want), as if she hadn’t snuck behind my back and done it to things I actually held value in, taking advantage of me being at work to do so.

Looking back on just how much my comfort items were exploited to abuse me and torture me for the crime of existing it really isn’t a matter of WHY I get so manic about and attached to the ones I have now. You should be able to see the clear path of progression that lead to me being so terrified of bad stuff happening to my things. I also have to wonder if this didn’t also contribute to my unhealthy addictive and obsessive personality. I was misdiagnosed as being on the autism spectrum and I wonder if my hypersensitivity, special interests, and the like are the result of being punished for enjoying things and having boundaries. Maybe my new psychiatrist will be able to tell me that. But for now I just wanted to write out a bit of a memoir about these sorts of things. It feels good to acknowledge and expel them onto the internet.

Where I am now I am constantly buying stuffed dogs, each with their own name, each being cared for and valued. Some are more important than others: 

Tiny, bought for me by one of my best friends Rob/Fishytales who is my immediate go-to when I’m having mental problems to just hold close. Afraid to let anything happen to him he mostly gives comfort by just being there. A reminder of what a great friend Fishy is. 

Whisky, who goes with me to conventions as part of my cosplay, who I hold in my arms when I sleep and who’s deteriorating softness has been the subject of many a late night vent post or cry. 

Wheezy, who I bought at a flea market where I eventually got robbed and lost everything else I bought except him because I held onto him. A meme parody of the original Whisky who ended up being the one I brought around in public when we were searching for a new place to live and I didn’t feel safe where we were crashed for the time being. 

The beanie baby dog army, toys used to be kept as an “investment” now selling for a dollar a piece and easy to buy in perfect condition. A reminder of my early years and great high quality stim toys who look cute and are satisfying to hold. My four favourites being the one I had as a toddler, the one I always wanted to have but was never able to, the one that’s named after my first childhood dog, and the one who was also a dalmatian like the first aforementioned one. (Dalmatians used to be my favourite breed) 

The customized beanie baby dogs with wings, just like my dream stuffed animal I’ve always wanted to have, and just like my imaginary friend who became my voice when I had none. 

There’s the Vicious plush and the Andy plush, characters from my favourite video game who brighten up my room and make it feel safe.

I have a little red pillow that is technically a comfort object. I’ll always hold onto it.

And my Andy hat helps too doesn’t it? It’s like armor for when I go outside. Being Andy is my first line of defense for fears and trauma woes.

Last of all is Ope. Who despite looking like a rotting corpse has kept me moving forward and feeling brave. Who comforts me with his textile feel, smell, and just by being there.

And you know what? So many people, even now, have at one point felt the need to berate me about my “stuffed animal problem” as if my 1 dollar each beanie babies are as much of a crisis as your super expensive but socially more “acceptable” adult grown up hobbies, or in any way comparable to having thousand-dollar-limit credit cards or car payments or whatever.

Like no offense, but it couldn’t be more obvious that these mean so much to me because of severe trauma and child abuse. Your lack of compassion or failure to acknowledge another person’s life experiences is demeaning and degrading. Wow. How dare I buy stuffed dogs at thrift stores and occasionally on ebay and want to get collars for them and bring them around with me everywhere. It might not be that way for every child with a comfort object, but mine WERE because I didn’t have a bond with a maternal figure. And I still don’t. I don’t know what it’s like to have parental guardians. I don’t know how to feel safe. I have violent nightmares almost every night and wake up with bruises all over my legs. Apparently I’m not loud during these nightmares so they’re easy to ignore. I get that. Fine.

But listen. We are mortal, only here for a little while. We shouldn’t have to suffer just to appear normal to appease some industrialist dehumanizing status quo. We should do things because it makes us happy, because it makes us feel safe, because it gives us comfort, peace, and enjoyment. We should care about comfort, health, safety. That means having a home, medicine, food to eat, and of course, things that bring emotional well-being. Like my dogs do for me.

And when you ridicule me and make fun of me for doing what I can to feel safe in this big scary world, you are serving as echos of the same violence that refused to let me bring them to school, that took them from me to try and force me to be “normal,” that stole them from me to punish me for things that children just do, because their children. You echo the way they were stolen to “cure” me of things of which there isn’t a cure. Which DOESN’T WORK. It only causes further mental damage. So all you’re doing is being the ghost of that damage. making so that I can’t escape it, recover, or heal.

I don’t know if I’ll ever not feel guilt for my stuffed animals showing their age, getting dirty, and little accidents that sometimes just happen. Maybe with time I’ll stop projecting blame onto myself, the victim of what happened, and realize that I was just a regular kid in an irregular situation. But until then I DO know that YOU shouldn’t be projecting shame onto me for something that harms no one.

I wish I could go back to when I was five and knew how to stand up to people. To tell adults that invade my personal boundaries “No.” Because telling me how to live my life is the definition of invading my personal boundaries. And you need to stop.

I’m proud of my stuffed animals. I care about them. In spite of how I was raised to perpetuate violent and fear I want to treat them with love, respect, and dignity. They’re not just worthless, disposable, things. I love them.

And my first step to standing up for myself and not taking blame for things that aren’t my fault will be bringing them with me. Keeping them with me. I will not be ashamed of them. I have not only suffered but survived horrors few children in the western world go through and my stuffed animal entourage is my reparations. I have the right to have them. Especially after my past. 

They give me independence. And that there’s something I have control over in this world.

[dayseternal-blog]

A NaruHina Folktale/Gods & Goddesses AU

Summary: The folktale of the Japanese summer festival Tanabata, the story of Orihime’s and Hikoboshi’s love.

Read Chapter 1 here.

Read Chapter 2 here.

Chapter 3 - On this day every year

It was the workers of the Tenkyusha from the Mansion of Kabe Yado who noticed first.

The cattle wandered, lost, not returning to their proper houses.

Orders placed were forgotten.  Celebrations came and passed, lacking her auspicious blessings.

Tentei visited her workshop in concern, shocked to find the room cold, the sing of her loom silent, spools of gossamer collecting dust.  Worry clouded his mind, and he rushed to their residence.

Only to find the two, sitting in intimate conversation on the engawa.  Blissful smiles directed at each other, longing in their eyes, blushes dusting their cheeks, though they were many weeks past newlywed.

He addressed the lord of the household, demanding answers.  “Hikoboshi.”

The cowherd turned, his dreamlike expression faded, awareness shifting over his features.  His daughter’s own eyes widening, her brows raising in surprise.

They had no excuses.  Shirking their heavenly duties was a terrible offense, their responsibilities were necessary for the order of the celestial realm and the mortal world far below.

Hinata could not beg her father for mercy, she could not go against his directives.

They were separated.

A love too wonderful to be true, too splendid to last, ended swiftly.  

She cried the first time she sat herself over her loom, the cloths familiar to her, yet lacking in inspiration.  Her threads paled in comparison to the vibrancy of her lost husband. The clack of her machines a tune she could not understand when she longed for the hushed tones of his timbre.  

She longed to see him, she wished to go and meet him, to feel his embrace, to be in his comforting arms, to know what he was doing, how he was faring, whether he was safe.  

She laid in her bed, the loneliness of the late hours swallowing her up until she was just a being of habit.  She went through the motions of weaving, completing the tasks asked of her, returning to her dutiful ways.

Everything his gaze fell on, he saw her.  Her midnight hair glimmered in the night sky, her sparkling eyes twinkled in the constellations.  Her whisper that swirled through the pastures.  Everything he could see but couldn’t grasp with his own hands.  It filled him with regret.  A burning anguish that darkened his outlook, dimmed his dedication to the job that once gave him purpose and pride.

It was the same, every night.  The dangers were expected.  The stubborn cattle frustrated him, unlike before.  Boring and bothering, the nights passed slowly, and he desperately missed holding her close, finding comfort and release in her arms.

When his journeys took him beside the vast Amanogawa, he gazed across the tumbling waters, imagining her graceful figure beyond the rising mists of the river.  Those moments were the hardest.  To know he was so close, but so far from her, was the worst sort of punishment.

She was sick.

She had never been sick like this before, hardly able to delight in the flavors of the court, hardly able to stand the company of her needier customers.  Her skin felt too tight, as if she was trapped in more than just the confines of her shop.  She was forgetful, finding mistakes on incorrectly written orders and misplaced silks and needles.

She thought it was a sickness of the heart, one she might have to live with until she disappeared from the heavenly realms of existence, like her mother.

But then she felt the weight in her stomach as she laid in rest.  And took a close, curious look at the changes of her body before the mirror.

She expected to look weak, to look heartbroken with an unhealthy pallor, to find a dull sheen in her eyes.

But instead she appeared healthy, skin glowing, hair lustrously shining, and belly, slightly protruding lower than should be expected.

Overcome with equal, overwhelming amounts of elation and anguish, she cried.

She came to him, three months since he punished them, with her request.  She revealed to him that she was pregnant with Hikoboshi’s child, that her husband should know and have the chance to be a father.

Clearly she had been crying, her eyes taking on that telltale shade of pink that inadvertently made her expression appear sullen, her beauty somewhat malevolent.  

He considered her request as rationally as he could, though he was hardly inclined to grant her pardon.  

He hadn’t seen her in all this time.  She refused to see him.  And he had been too angry to insist on her presence.  

Even now, the mess the couple had caused wreaked havoc on the mortal world.  Without Hikoboshi’s proper guidance, his cattle had signaled accidental wars, births and deaths of kings, and had led astray ships in their oceans.  

Without her auspicious weaving, gods and goddesses alike lacked motivation, drama unfurled in the courts, and all of it together contributed to a chaos never seen before during his orderly reign.  

Rightfully, he regretted bringing the two of them together.

More importantly, he didn’t know if he could trust them anymore.

He stared at his daughter, looking for deception.  “How far along is your pregnancy?”

“Near three or four months,” she responded, quietly, sadly.  

It was easy to be moved by his daughter, but his first consideration should always be the welfare of the realms.  “If you work hard and complete your responsibilities, I will allow you to see him on the seventh day of the seventh month.”  By then, her supposed child would be born.  By then, hopefully she would be more understanding of his decisions.

She earnestly threw herself back into her work, looking forward to her reunion with her husband.  She dreamed of his reaction to seeing her and their child, she dreamed of his smile and laughter.

Her child would be strong, she could tell as her body changed dramatically.  Teasing customers told her it would be a boy, that it had to be a boy if her draping kimono could not even hide her rapidly changing figure.

She wondered if her child would be a boy, one strong and courageous like his father.  The hopes she held for her child soothed the aches and sharp discomfort that came with her swelling belly.

But some days it felt like too much.  She was susceptible to bouts of depression, especially when she thought of raising him on her own, somehow attending to the needs of an excitable boy while completing her duties at her loom.  

If only he could grow up with his father.  If only he could know the excitement of the outside world across the Amanogawa, far from the stuffiness of the palace.  

And when she thought that, she formulated her plan, pushing her own, selfish wants on the side for the welfare of her unborn child.

She had twins.  

A boy and a girl, both heartbreakingly beautiful and strong.

Her father loved them.  He doted on them and came to see them often.

And when it was the seventh day of the seventh month, he granted her permission to see Hikoboshi on that day every year.

“Go.  You have worked hard, and your family deserves this day.  Hikoboshi will be waiting for you.”

She told her father then.  It was only fair that he know.  “I will leave my children with him.  They can live a happier childhood there than with me.”  She had considered separating her children, keeping the girl with her and the boy with Naruto, but her children didn’t deserve that.  She understood that they should grow up together.

She didn’t expect her father’s reaction, the darkening of his expression.  He turned away and bid her leave to go see her husband, while muttering that she would certainly miss them.  

She came to the Amanogawa, holding her two children in her arms.

The Amanogawa surged restlessly, and she could see no way across.  

Her gaze searched the far bank, and she saw him.  Hikoboshi stood there, a lone, small figure, waiting for her as her father had told her.  The sight of him filled her with greater happiness than she had ever known, more than on the day of her children’s birth, because now they could be together.  As a true family.

“Look across the river, my children.  Your father awaits us!” she murmured excitedly.

They smiled at her lighthearted tone, squirming in her arms to turn and see the object of their mother’s great happiness.

She waited for the power of the Heavenly Sky King to stall the rapids of the Amanogawa.

But when nothing happened, when several long minutes passed, she realized then that her father, the only one who had the ability to split the river, had no intention of letting her across.  

He promised her.  

He had promised her, and yet.

He was keeping her here trapped, so close, so excruciatingly close to her one joy, never to reach it, punishing her for even thinking of taking away his grandchildren.

Tears, hot and painful, slipped down her cheeks before she was even aware she wanted to cry.  

The betrayal of her father, that he would twist his words so ruthlessly, shocked her.

She found she couldn’t breathe.  

She squeezed her eyes shut and clutched her children close, trying to calm herself, trying to figure something out.

She had worked hard.  

Through the pain of pregnancy and the fatigue of new motherhood, she had continued working, believing that it would all be worth it in the end.  

She had attentively tended to the needs of her babies, hoping that they would grow to be healthy and strong enough to be without her.

And now here she was with them, all of them ready and hopeful, only for her dreams to be crushed.

She felt the anger of her father, his truly unforgiving nature clear to her now, and she mourned.  Mourned for her broken family, her lost relationship with her father, her hard work all for nought, and the certainly awful future that awaited her and her children in Raira.  

Each piece of agony brought new tears to her eyes and muted cries from her throat.  

Her children’s questions of “What’s wrong?” couldn’t be answered.  Everything was wrong.  

She couldn’t calm herself, and she fell to her knees, defeated.  Her sobs shook her entire form, and she wasn’t sure which was louder--the breaking of her heart or the thundering river separating her family.

“Okaa-sama,” her son softly whispered in her ear.  “Birds!”

“Lots and lots of birds!” her daughter said.

She didn’t look up right away, but their insistence made her turn her blurred vision to the rushing river.  

It eventually became clear that what sounded to her like the river was rising, was actually the sound of numerous magpies.  They amassed over the river, a cloud of white and grey, their flock almost disturbing in its powerful show of numbers.  The azure-winged birds coalesced into one form, moving together and stretching above the river.

She cleared away her tears as best she could when one magpie swooped down to her.  “Orihime of Raira, we have heard your cries.  Please, allow us to assist you in your passage over the Amanogawa.”  

For a moment, she was at a loss for words, then was moved again to tears by their kindness.  “Thank you,” she breathed out, voice shaking with emotion.  “Thank you so much.”

[inukag-week]

Wedding Night Blues

The Little cabin was already glowing with the golden light of the fire when the newlyweds arrived. Sango and Rin had been kind enough to get everything ready for them, they had put flowers around the house, especially the bedroom, and set the fire on the hearth so they would find it warm and cozy when Kagome and InuInuyasha a arrived. They had also carried all the present the couple had received from the party, as most of it was edible, they would be glad to have it stocked up for later.

The feast had dragged on for too long for InuInuyasha´s  liking. He had wanted to leave early but to his surprise, some of the villagers had wanted to congratulate them and many had given them small gifts, like vegetables, fruits, buckets, baskets, bowls and even pieces of cloth.

He had not expected these people to be so welcoming of a hanyo, much less accepting his wedding to their future miko. It was a pleasant surprise, especially for his bride.

Kagome   had been radiant with joy throughout the ceremony and the celebrations that took place afterwards. He, on the other hand, had been too nervous to fully enjoy their special day. He had been dreading it for a while, imagining that some of their neighbors would oppose to their union, or that they might even try to sabotage it, or worse, that he and Kagome would be chased out of the village. It turned out he needn´t have worried about any of these happening, probably thanks to his lovely wife. She had tended and cared for many of these people thus earning their trust and love.

It was true, everybody loved Kagome, and she had chosen him over any other man here and in her own time. How could he ever return such devotion? He wasn´t sure, but he had vowed to make her happy and so far, he thought he had succeeded. He had gotten everything she had mentioned she wanted in a wedding: the dress, the ring, the feast. And now after all had ended and they were standing at their front door, he stopped her before she could open it. He wanted to carry her bridal style, as he had seen once on T.V. while he was at her time, apparently, it was a tradition in modern day weddings.

Inuyasha grabbed her elbow and turned her to face him. Kagome looked at him with big eyes, confusion written in her face. She had been floating on a cloud during the last couple of hours and now that she finally was alone with her husband he was stalling her right in their front door. She had noticed he had been nervous in the temple, but felt him relax later, so why didn´t he want to enter the house now? Was he having second thoughts? Or he would still insist on sleeping outside?

No, she wouldn´t let him. He said he had wanted to save her honor by marrying her, now there was no reason to leave her during their wedding night, was it? She would not allow him to walk out on her. Not with all they had been through, after overcoming time itself. They were married now, for Kami´s sake, she would put her foot down, no more separations.

She was so deep in her musing that she didn´t notice when her husband’s arms slid around her shoulders and knees until she was literally swept off her feet. She was still frowning when she looked into the intense golden glare of his eyes, their lips only inches away as Inuyasha very slowly closed the distance between them. She sighed into his mouth when their lips made contact, her hands clutching at his strong shoulders.

Kagome surrendered to the kiss opening her mouth to grant his tongue access while one of her hands cupped the back of his head and the other gently rubbed one of his furry ears. The taste of sake still lingered in his mouth and Kagome found the flavor even more intoxicating than the liquor itself. She felt his fangs grazing her lips and his tongue leaving her mouth before she felt the cool air if the night against her heated face.

“Slide the door” Inuyasha spoke in a husky low voice, very close to her ear.

Kagome   looked at him trying to make sense of his words.

“What?” Her voice shaky and insecure.

“I have my hands full right now, I can´t open the door”

“Oh” She couldn´t form a complete sentence, still subdued by the spell of their kiss.

She turned her head towards the door and use one hand to slide it open.

The soft fragrance of flowers floated around them when Inuyasha crossed the threshold of their home with his bride in his arms. He had asked Sango to set the flowers around the house. He had picked them with special care so that he wouldn´t spend the night sneezing due to some strong smell. Kagome seemed to be delighted by the way she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply to take in the sweet fragrance.

He turned them around so she could close the door, but he didn´t let her down after that. He started trailing small kisses on her face and neck as he made his way to the bedroom. Kagome giggled happily and returned his kisses one by one.

“One more time” Inuyasha whispered as he stopped in front of the shoji door to their bedroom.

Kagome gladly obliged and they crossed one more threshold.

He finally set her on her feet by their bed, but he still didn´t let her go. His hands sliding over the softness of her silk kimono until they found their way to her waist.

Now that they were finally alone in the privacy of their bedroom, Kagome started to feel a little nervous. She wasn´t scared, she knew what to expect; in fact, she couldn´t wait to get there. But that didn´t mean she was an expert and that was the source of her anxiety.

Inuyasha felt her small frame tremble slightly against his body and decided to take things slowly.

“Are you happy?” he asked her and placed a soft kiss on her temple.

“Of course I am. Why?” She asked innocently

“It´s just that I looked at you during the ceremony and you looked like you were about to cry.” He stopped to think what to say next, afraid she was already regretting their union. “You didn´t like it?” he asked in an almost inaudible voice.

“I did! Kaede oba-chan did an excellent job, the ceremony was perfect, very touching… It´s just that…” she sighed and looked down for a few seconds as if looking for a way to tell him something before looking up again into her husband´s pleading eyes.

“I missed my family today” She felt Inuyasha hands rubbing gentle circles in her back encouraging her to go on.

The hurt in Inuyasha eyes was plain for Kagome to see. He knew how much she had left behind just to be with him and it made him feel miserable about the bargain, he had so little to give her and she deserved far more than he could ever offer.

“So, you wanna go back?” He didn’t even try to hide the anguish in his voice, all his former pride was gone. He was standing in front of her wearing his heart on his sleeve, the bright future he had dreamed for them suddenly turning to ashes as he waited for her answer.

“No, baka” she answered playfully trying to lighten the mood. “My life is here, with you. I just wished my family could have taken part in our joy.”

She felt his arms tighten around her waist as he crushed her to his chest while releasing a loud sigh.

“So, not everything you ever dreamed of?” he teased her, feeling his muscles relax after her candid statement.

“Almost everything.” She lifted her face from his chest to look him in the eyes. “You were there, and that was my dream, so that part was perfect.”

She looked down again feeling lightheaded and at a loss for words. Being so close to him always made her dizzy.

“There´s one more thing” she said looking up again. “Inuyasha, would you dance with me?”

Inuyasha looked puzzled. His handsome features telling her he didn´t have a clue of what she was talking about.

“Dance? As in Kagura´s Dance of the blades?”

Kagome couldn´t help but laugh when the image of them trying to dance to the rhythm of Kagura´s fan was conjured in her mind´s eye.

“No, it´s nothing like that.” She said smiling brightly at him. “It´s a tradition in modern day weddings, the bride and groom share their first dance as a married couple in front of their families and friends. I know we are all alone now, but still, would you like to dance with me?”

He felt his cheeks warm as a dark shade of pink stole across them.

“I don´t know how to dance.” He managed to speak even as embarrassed as he felt.

“I´ll show you, it´s not that difficult”

Kagome´s voice sounded hopeful and joyous. He knew how couldn´t deny her anything, but he tried anyway.

“I´ll feel awkward, I don´t like it” He looked away from her, avoiding the warmth of her eyes.

“Oh please, will you do it just for me?” she begged him. “Nobody can see us. Please??”

He looked her in the eyes again, scowl back in place before answering.

“Keh, just don´t complain if I step on you”

“Yey!!! Ok, now come to the center of the room. You need to put your left hand in front of you and the other hold it like these” She lift her own hand to show him what to do.

Inuyasha sighed, feeling very silly at the moment but happy to indulge his wife´s wishes, he did as he was told.

“Like this?” He asked her.

“Yes, that´s right, Now, look at me and try to do what I do”

Kagome turned around and copied his posture.

“Now, put your left foot forward a few inches and move your right foot to meet the left. Then you take your right foot back a few inches and the left foot follows. Got it?”

“Doesn´t sound difficult” He said.

After the deeds she had witnessed him doing it would be ridiculous to see the mighty hanyo defeated by the waltz.

She turned around again, smile spreading across her face.

“Now all we need is music.”

“Uh?” He frowned in confusion.

He was still trying to decipher her words when he felt her small hand grabbing his left one and position it in her lower back while the other took his right one and held to it.

“Ready?” She asked him still smiling

“Keh” Was all he answered, trying to hide his pleasure. Holding her close to him and making her smile had this effect on him.

“Now, let´s try it together. When I start counting you try to do what we just did. And 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3”

He tried to repeat the movements he did before, focusing in not crushing her dainty toes with his much bigger ones. Eyes looking down, ears trained on her counting, Inuyasha moved his feet to follow the pattern his wife traced on the floor.

“Yes!!! You´re doing great. Now it´s time for the music.”

He frowned again, thinking how she would produce music when he heard her humming a sweet melody.

Kagome kept on humming while she smiled and closed her eyes, enjoying the feeling of swaying in her husband´s arms. He wasn´t a bad dancer at all, a little stiff at the beginning, but he loosened up after a little while.   

Suddenly she opened her eyes and the stopped on her tracks. Inuyasha looked at her startled.

“What?” He said looking down to check her feet for injuries.

Kagome took a step back and let go of his hands to cover her mouth in an attempt to suppress the giggles escaping her lips.

“I told you I couldn´t dance wench, now you wanna make fun of me?”

“Oh, no. It´s not that. Actually, you did a pretty decent job.” She said with a huge grin plastered on her face.

“Then why do you look like you´re about to burst laughing?”

Kagome considered telling him, even though she was sure he wouldn´t find it funny.

“It´s the music I was humming” She started and hesitated again. “It´s from one of my favorites movies.” Should she go on and risk letting his bad mood ruin their wedding night?

She stepped forward and got both his hands in hers, placing one in her waist and the other in her shoulder for a closer embrace.

In that moment, surrounded by his strong arms and feeling his heart beating at the same rhythm as hers, she decided to keep it from him, it will be her little secret. After all, this was her happy ending and she would make everything in her power to have the best wedding night ever.

With that resolution in mind, she shuffled her feet and resumed the dance, this time singing:

“Tale as old as time…”

[apostleofsilence]

Vaguely Rhymes with Dance Bincard.

Well, actually, this one was a bit of a stretch, but I figured that not only would this be more fitting, it also further obscures his identity by referring to him only in vague rhymes of one of his older aliases. Anyway.

So yeah, my buddy, we'll just call him "Rhymes-with-pants", or just "pants" for short. I dunno why, but the wordplay helps with this. Easier to talk about if I can jest about it, and bonus points, the narcissists into constantly googling themselves can't just find this by accident. If they arrive here, they have earned their way into my stream of consciousness. Unless one of them has discovered me by cheating!!! and browsing my phone without my permission. In which case, good job, I guess. You found the warpzone to the final level or something. Whatever. I'm procrasrinating, because unlike all that came before, this story hurts the most to tell.

Not because he is more important to me than everyone else I have lost for any period of time, but because this one is the one that will never, dearest reader, have a "good ending" so to speak.

Pants was my best friend for the all-important and influential second to fifth grade. We did fucking everything together. He was like the brother that I would tailor make at Build-a-Brother workshop. Of course, rational folk like you (and me, some twenty-something years late to the party) know that such an arrangement can only breed destruction.

Take that how you will.

The nature of my seclusion was nigh absolute growing up, with few exceptions. But blessedly, there was school. And at school, I had at least one person I could call a friend. And, at the time, the cynical circus show of school still held the occasional pat on head, and the dopamine rush that came along with it. I was a smart student. But always quiet.

Pants could bring out something else. A desire to play games with friends. Interact with others. This led me to Magic: the Gathering. I loved playing against friends. It was a great way for me to make friends with others who liked to play. It was invariably led me to meet many people in middle school. My cards always got confiscated by Celery, the Spoiled Hippie Produce (but we will shorten it to just Celery, because it amuses me). She was concerned that Satan was trying to get in my head and sent me to a whackadoo shrinky-dink who could somehow charge $100 a session for years to finally say that I really just needed Jesus. Ugh. Anyway, this is a huge digression, but it's important. To **me**. You see, the Tragedy of the Schitzotypical Pants is a tale of many compounding, intertwining tales that build to an ironic creschendo, dear reader, one that I promise has a payoff. If my writing style hasn't completely repulsed you by now, I urge you on.

So off to the Pentecostal hellhole I was sent. I was made to stay away from the people I fit in with. I replaced them with people I more worried about than identified with. The Pastor's daughter was blonde and doe-eyed. Her token Asian best friend looked like she patented Resting Bitch Face^tm at birth. The rest of my creepy Hellhole Fan Club were males, and not the well adjusted type. I guess Youth Pastor Crow was pretty alright. Well, until the night he wouldn't let me leave the Wednesday night group until I quote, 'let Jesus in'. Which, in every day parlaince meant that they wanted me to "speak in tongues". I did all the things I was told. But this poison "gift" would not come to me. So by God, I did the only thing that seemed rational.

I fucking pretended.

If there had ever been a possibility that I could just be a good little Christian ever again, it ended with my face in my hands, on my knees, begging for the touch to speak through me..and nothing. The veil was lifted. The magician has shown his hand, the illusion crushed. These people were no better than any other, why was *their* flavor of God the only way? Hell, the ginger boy Steak would get his ass beat so bad at home he wouldn't be able to come to church. People would ask questions.

They already did, dear reader.

So, while I was forbidden from having normal friends that I had shared common interests with (and I'm still sore that my dad lost track of my cards...prolly thousands of dollars worth of Legends, Arabian Nights, and Revised Magic cards), I was instead hosted a front row seat to this shitshow. So when I turned sixteen, I told everyone I'd had enough. Went and stayed weekends with Pants, playing d&d (another verböten activity under the tyrannical reign of Celery), and why not experiment with some grass while we're at it? Sure. Pants had the keys to escaping reality. And when it came to escaping reality, Pants was like Houdini. I didn't mind, it gave me a chance to decompress. Up until now, I had existed to participate in a series of show dog style obstacle courses, told how high I was expected to jump, and roundly ignored when I regularly jumped higher and higher to show someone that I was dying inside.

Those stiffs at the Pentecostal Hellhole didn't understand me. Nobody did. Thankfully, there was one person out there for me with the patience and generosity to help build me into the relatively better adjusted man writing here. She's the best!

So with my newfound liberty to come and go as I please, I got into plenty of trouble with my compatriots. I won't issue a confession to anything here, nice try NSA. But goddamnit if I didn't feel alive. And all this while, I wrestled with feelings I had no words to express until well into my twenties. And in tiny pisswater towns the nation over, if you wanted to suck cock, you were a faggot, and that made you a bad person. Why? No reason. But that couldn't be me, because I am a connoisseur of the feminine form. I love them all. Every bit of it. Nay, the mere idea that I could be bisexual didn't hit me until twenty five, and didn't feel official until the year after. So I guess I've been openly bi/pan for like...eight years? So, yeah. I had a crush on Pants. He was very rough around the edges. Stank most of the time. But I was attracted to the person I saw in him, and not the person he let everyone view. But when you don't have the words for "I like both shut up don't judge" for another ten years, you just get more confused, more infatuated with what amounts to an idea.

Part two to come. Maybe I'll just edit part two in here to make this whole thought superfluous. Sweet sleep please take me.

<3 Rev.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Hookay. Part two. More lucid tonight. Maybe I can fix that before too much longer. But not yet.

I was a bit latchkey off and on, here and there. The best part about my main job back then was the ability to ask to be taken off the schedule indefinitely, and show up six months later to be put back on. I lived there for awhile. I don't know if Pants felt the same way about me, but we never talked about it.

Eventually we drifted apart for awhile, and reconnected in the education program we both enrolled in. And once he was out, I helped him find a place to crash for a couple weeks. Weeks became a couple months. Nobody wanted him around anymore. It strained my relationship with my partner, and her mom to boot. I really tried to help that sonofabitch. But I wasn't gonna look the other way while he continued to treat people I care about like shit. We drifted apart again.

I would sometimes see him at mutual friends places, and we'd be mostly cordial, but no longer familiar. What I didn't realize was that he was in the middle of a psychological break. Lots of magical thinking and psionic orgasms. Or something like that. And finally, the bombshell.

So his friend, whom we will here refer to as dickhead (an allusion to his nickname that like six people will get), had given him a bible in all this mental anguish. And he latched onto the Book of Revelation. So, imagine my shock when one day he looks me right in the eyes and tells me that I am his great desteoyer, and that I will bring him ruin. Total fucking insanity.

So yeah. There is much more I could add here, but I would rather not have this get out, and end up sued over things I can no longer prove. Until next time, Space Kittens. Watch this space, I think next time I will discuss Celery the Horrible. You ready to strap in? This is where reality's thin veneer starts to peel ominously, places where I believe my madness was hand picked for, whether intentional or no.

I think, with this next tale, we wend inexorably onward toward the heart of the matter. Care to come along?

[junker-town]

NFL Dad, Week 3: Protests, naps, and guacamole

One father of two young children attempts to watch the RedZone channel while parenting. Along the way: reflections on serving your country and the reliable success of guacamole.

Parents often talk about “seeing the world through a child’s eyes,” a cliché that should come with a $500 fine or a punch in the nose from someone without kids. What they mean, in plainer terms, is that they noticed something they had previously taken for granted because their dumb kids saw it for the first time.

Seasons changing is a great example of this. If you’re an adult with no kids, the shift to fall is automatic: you slide into your football-watching habits, dig your hoodies out of storage, maybe post some foliage on your Instagram. This ain’t your first rodeo.

My daughter is almost 3, and her preschool’s ENTIRE CURRICULUM is season-based: apples in the fall, snowflakes in the winter, seeds in the spring. She’s obsessed with books about autumn and Halloween. Instead of going to bed when it’s light out, her bedtime now happens at sunset; we look out the window and try to spot leaves that have started to change color. The farmer’s market we walk through on Saturdays now has pumpkins and squash, and when I take the kids to Trader Joe’s on Sunday morning, 70 percent of the items are pumpkin-flavored. I swear to God there’s pumpkin-flavored almond milk and a sign that says “All pumpkin everything!” It is 87 degrees outside.

But the equinox doesn’t lie: it’s officially fall. At least there’s football.

EARLY GAMES, FIRST HALF

— The dominant story line before the games, and even throughout them, is how players and teams react to President Trump excoriating the “sons of bitches” who kneel during the national anthem, tough words indeed from a patriot who loves America so much he wouldn’t leave her soil during the Vietnam war.

Maybe you voted for Donald Trump, and maybe you didn’t, but there’s no way around those five draft deferments. And, speaking as someone who’s actually been to war, avoiding war is genuinely a very good idea! It’s just a shame that the president abandoned that stance when it wasn’t his jiggling ass on the line.

Anyway, I wrestled with most of this a year ago when Colin Kaepernick first started his protest, and the video I made then still captures my feelings now:

Long story short: My father went to the Air Force Academy and served 22 years as a pilot. I served as a Marine tank commander in Iraq. Because of my time in the Corps, I have some friends who still wear the uniform, some who now work as FBI agents, and some who are underground, God rest their souls. The flag means a LOT to me. I love the anthem. But that doesn’t mean the anthem protests are ABOUT me, or what I feel.

A protest during the national anthem may be offensive to you. Your feelings are valid. But placing them ahead racial injustice in this country — or even a person’s peaceful execution of his First Amendment rights — demonstrates a woeful lack of empathy, or at least a willful ignorance of racism in America. If this isn’t self-evident already, I’ll just point out that the president responded to a white supremacist march that killed a woman by saying that SOME WHITE SUPREMACISTS ARE VERY FINE PEOPLE. I’m so tired of being gaslit about this shit. It’s exhausting.

— I don’t see most of the anthem stuff because I’m putting son down for a nap. When I come back, Rob Gronkowski scores a touchdown on third-and-goal. Save me, Gronk. Save me from the stupidity. Whisk me away to an island of frosty light beers and laughing at “69” jokes. I yearn for the intellectual upgrade.

— The Saints sack Cam Newton on third-and-three inside the 10. A goal-line stand? From the Saints? Something is amiss.

— Weird NFL continues: after the Steelers muff a punt, the Bears go up 7-0 with a Jordan Howard TD. Not long after, Ben Roethlisberger gets sacked and fumbles, with the Bears recovering. I took the Steelers -7 today, and I’m already sick with regret.

— AHAHAHAHAHA, I just saw Joe Flacco’s numbers against Jacksonville on the ticker: 8-18 for 28 yards with 2 interceptions. Holy shit, 1.6 yards per attempt! I hope they quarantined the stadium before Flacco could spread the plague any further. London suffered enough in the 17th century.

— At 1:34 p.m., everyone but me is napping: my daughter in her bedroom, my son in ours (the kids sleep in the same room at night but nap separately), and my wife on the couch as I watch RedZone. The shades are drawn and the TV is muted. Could I nap? Nothing about this column prevents me from napping. The Eagles convert a fourth-and-inches near midfield. The Jets punt.

— On third-and-goal in Indy, Jacoby Brissett fakes a pass and takes it on a designed keeper. Nice play design. Am I tired enough to nap? I had a cold brew a little before the games began; I don’t want to miss out on football for a failed nap.

— DeShaun Watson hits Bruce Ellington with a beautiful throw over the middle for a score, and the Texans have a surprising 10-7 lead over the Pats. I managed to get a nap in yesterday afternoon. After my son’s swim lesson, my wife took the kids so I could stay at the pool and swim laps. I came home with that all-over muscle fatigue you only get from swimming, made a grilled ham and cheese sandwich for lunch, and crashed on the couch while the kids slept.

— Duke Johnson leaps into the end zone for a 19-yard touchdown to tie the game at 7.

CBS broadcast

See, this is why I’m hesitant to nap. Because even though the Browns-Colts game is the LAST game I’d want to watch this week, it has already produced two touchdowns I thought merited inclusion in this collection of notable plays.

— So much for the Texans’ lead: after a Watson INT sets the Pats up in the red zone, Tom Brady finds Chris Hogan wide open in the end zone for a TD. In Indy, Jacoby Brissett scores another TD on the ground, while the Saints and Falcons -- both on the road — build commanding early leads. If I napped now, I’d probably be awake by the third quarter of the early games. I’d miss nothing of note. I should just do it.

— On second-and-goal, Ben Roethlisberger goes to Antonio Brown 1-on-1 on a quick screen, and that’s a TD every time. It ties the game at 7-7, and while rooting for the Steelers feels gross, I have gambling interests to protect. Or maybe I’m just too tired to think straight? I should nap.

— It is 2:05, 31 minutes after I first started contemplating a nap. My heart is beating a little fast from the cold brew, but the exhaustion of parenting is resolute. I lie down next to my wife and throw my arm over my eyes to shade them from the flicker of the television.

EARLY GAMES, SECOND HALF

— At 2:38, I open my eyes, and Drew Brees is hitting Tedd Ginn over the top for a 40-yard touchdown. The safety help arrived too late.

— I scroll back through Twitter just a few minutes to see if I’ve missed anything big, and BOY HOWDY are people tweeting about the Bears.

Wow. #PITvsCHI http://pic.twitter.com/gG6Ry6Uylr

— NFL (@NFL) September 24, 2017

In the Twitter era, this is the perfect thing to experience AFTER it’s happened. I don’t have to wade through dumb exclamations or the confusion of the moment, and I don’t have to wait for the Bears’ false start on their untimed play. I just wake up to a brief, handy explainer. Naps are the best. Always nap.

— Stefon Diggs is going OFF. A long touchdown, his second for the game, makes it 28-3 in favor of the Vikings early in 3rd quarter. I picked the Bucs to win because Case Keenum is sun-bleached highway trash, but apparently Diggs, the Vikings’ defense, and home turf are more than enough to handle Tampa Bay.

— A flurry of touchdowns as my wife makes chorizo bean dip: Tom Brady to Brandin Cooks on a deep crossing route puts the Pats up 28-20; Golden Tate’s first TD of the season cuts the Falcons’ lead to 23-20; and Zach Ertz scores on a short pass for the Eagles. The Giants now trail by five* scores, 14-0 (*adjusted for Giants’ offense).

— My daughter is awake, but we’re not getting her out of bed yet. My wife is putting the finishing touches on the chorizo dip, and I’m making guacamole.

This is all I'm eating the rest of the day (thank u @celebrityhottub for the chorizo dip recipe)

A post shared by Matt Ufford (@mattufford) on Sep 24, 2017 at 1:06pm PDT

Guacamole take: guacamole has a huge range of success. My ideal guac has salt, lime, garlic, cilantro, red onion, and tomato, but I still enjoy it with fewer or more ingredients. Whatever you like is fine.

— Down two touchdowns, the Giants fail on fourth down in red zone, but the resulting Manningface minimized by RedZone’s double-box. I NEED FULLSCREEN ANGUISH, YOU HEATHENS. I realize only now that I’ve seen both of Manning’s interceptions today, but none of his reactions to them.

— DeShaun Watson still makes rookie mistakes, but his ceiling looks an awful lot like Russell Wilson at his best:

DeShaun Watson out here stealing Patrick Mahomes plays. http://pic.twitter.com/0e2VXqNOKS

— Clay Wendler (@ClayWendler) September 24, 2017

Watson caps that drive with a TD to his tight end, cutting the Texans’s deficit to 28-27. A few minutes later, they’ll kick a field goal to go up 30-27.

— Jameis Winston hits DeSean Jackson down the sideline for a TD as the third quarter ends; the Bucs now trail 31-17. Can Dirk Koetter wear his glasses any further down his nose? He’s like a disapproving librarian in a children’s movie.

— The Dolphins are losing to Jets 20-0. Living in the New York broadcast area guarantees me the Jets and Giants every damn week, but a small part of me wishes I were watching this game on local TV so I could see Cutler’s face.

— In a shocking turn of events, the Giants score an offensive touchdown! Less shocking, it’s Odell Beckham who scores it. For his celebration, he crawls on all fours and lifts his leg like a dog pissing, earning a flag for unsportsmanlike conduct.

And whatever, that’s part of the cost of doing business with a physical genius, but when Beckham scores again a few minutes later on an incredible one-handed catch, he raises a solitary fist in protest. And y’all, I don’t want to be Grumpy Old Columnist, but Beckham’s messaging priority is perhaps less than ideal here. “Okay, pretend to be a dog taking a piss — check. Up next: racial equality!”

The only explanation that makes any sense is that the first celebration was a reference to Trump’s “son of a bitch” comment. Regardless, the world was so much better when he was making out with a kicking net.

— Deshaun Watson does it again:

Deshaun Watson is just insane, man. @battleredblog http://pic.twitter.com/Po9IPRdBgf

— Clay Wendler (@ClayWendler) September 24, 2017

The Texans are running the ball with the lead in Pats territory with only 2:30 remaining in the game. Could the Pats lose this? The telecast cuts to Bob Kraft up in his suite, his mouth agape and forehead scrunched, like a billionaire trying to understand what starving people could be mad about.

But no, the Texans are stoned on third-and-one, and kick a field to go up 33-28. They are 100 percent about to lose this game.

— With 55 seconds remaining, the Bears punt on fourth-and-two just short of midfield with the score tied at 17. On the one hand, I respect the decision to remove the responsibility for victory from Mike Glennon’s hands. On the other: COWARDS.

A WILD FLURRY TO END THE GAMES

— The Patriots get the ball back with about 2:30 to play. Tom Brady converts the following into first downs: second-and-20, third-and-12, third-and-18. On the next play after the third-and-18 conversion, Brady finds Brandin Cooks for a toe-tap touchdown with 23 seconds remaining.

— Trailing by four, the Lions have entered the red zone, then exited it on penalties. Matt Stafford is incomplete on 1st and 30, but defensive holding on second-and-30 gives the Lions a first down and new life. Pass interference a few plays later gives them first-and-goal on the 1. Golden Tate scores a touchdown with 8 seconds left! The Lions are gonna win!

— In overtime, Tarik Cohen scores on a long run to seal the game for the Bears. Both my kids are up now, and my daughter is going around the apartment yelling, “DING-DONG! TRICK OR TREAT!” A few minutes later, Jordan Howard scores from 19 yards out to re-seal the game for the Bears, and whatever context there was for Cohen NOT scoring a touchdown is lost. Could I look up the box score to see what happened? Sure, but it’s more fun to have it LOST TO HISTORY.

— The Texans’ final prayer goes unanswered, as Watson’s Hail Mary is intercepted in the end zone.

— Wait, what?!? The Lions LOST? Tate’s TD is overturned, and the game is over. Just a BRUTAL blow for my fantasy team, and also the Lions.

Kevin Seifert of ESPN explained why it was the right call, but to me it doesn’t look like there was enough evidence to overturn the call. As swings of luck go, this should even things out for Tate, who caught the Fail Mary for the Seahawks ... wait a second ... FIVE YEARS AGO TO THE DAY. SpoOOOoOoOooOOookyyyyyy!

Sorry, I’ve been reading lots of Halloween books to my daughter.

— Eagles attempt a 61-yarder in a vain attempt to avoid overtime. Odell Beckham is back to catch a potential miss and … IT’S GOOD! HOLY MAMULA! MANNINGFACE FOR EVERYONE.

LATE GAMES, FIRST HALF

— After the hypodermic of adrenaline that ended the early games, the late slate has a whopping three contests: Chiefs-Chargers, Seahawks-Titans, and Bengals-Packers. If the NFL can push Seahawks-Titans to a late start, why not do it with two other games that start in the Central Time Zone? Push Bucs-Vikings and Browns-Colts to the second slate of games, and they won’t get lost in the early shuffle. “America’s Game of the Week” notwithstanding, I will never understand why the NFL doesn’t try to balance this more. It’s bad and I hate it.

— Kids change SO FAST when they’re young. Physical and linguistic milestones whiz past seemingly every week; go a month without seeing someone’s toddler, and you’re bound to meet an entirely new kid.

That said, this was my son’s favorite game in June, when he was just over a year old:

Fatherhood: ��️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A post shared by Matt Ufford (@mattufford) on Jun 18, 2017 at 5:38pm PDT

It is more than three months later, and he’s STILL doing this. Just smashing his face into the couch or any soft chair like it’s the best thing in the world. (*slowly crosses off “engineer” on list titled FUTURE CAREERS*)

— Tyreke Hill has already scored a TD, on a great pass by Alex Smith. It’s still super-weird to see Smith throw deep with confidence, or at all.

— Davante Adams fumbles just short of the end zone, and Aaron Rodgers does a nice job of preventing a Bengals touchdown on the return. After review, though, Adams is ruled down and the Packers have first-and-goal inside the 1. Lance Kendricks gets wide open on play-action and catches the touchdown, tying the game at 7 in Green Bay.

— Our neighbors have come over because we made too much dip and guacamole, and there are now four kids under three years old in my two-bedroom apartment. The math sounds bad, but it’s not: their kids are younger than ours — a 2-year-old daughter and a newborn — and anyway, they’re a delight. In 13 years of living in New York City (in six different apartments), I’ve never had good neighbors before. When we eventually move, I’m bringing them with us.

— On a Titans third-and-10, Marcus Mariota sails a pass that gets picked off by Kam Chancellor. Richard Sherman, though, gets flagged for pass interference (ticky-tack in my opinion, but I’m not an objective viewer). He also gets flagged for holding on the return (also ticky-tack), then tears off his helmet to argue with the refs, earning a misconduct foul (definitely warranted). The penalties cost the Seahawks possession and 30-40 yards of field position. After several more penalties, Tennessee kicks a field goal to go up 3-0.

This is fine. Everything’s fine. This column will not be me yelling about the Seahawks every week. (*jaws clench so hard my head vibrates*)

— Y’all, we need to talk about the most nonchalant human being on the planet:

To make matters worse for the #lions. The food is on fire at Ford Field by the locker room. http://pic.twitter.com/aLFNDj4kc3

— Evan Jankens (@KINGoftheKC) September 24, 2017

That lady has straight-up ICE WATER in her veins. “Oh, a fire as tall as I am? (yawn) Not really much I can do here. Let’s just close the— yep, open this other door to get that closed. Anyway, let me know if it’s still there after my break.” She’s the Daenerys Targaryen of concession workers.

— Philip Rivers has thrown his THIRD interception, and it’s barely the second quarter. Every time I look at him, I just think, “Eight kids, man. EIGHT. KIDS.” That HAS to define his entire life. Like, when was the last time he took his family to a restaurant? Never, right? I have two kids that are relatively well-behaved; my wife and I have taken them to restaurants three times this year: brunch twice (one disaster, one white-knuckle balancing act), and dinner once (only a success because the pizza place had just opened and there was no one else there). We have no desire to take them out again. Maybe in another year or so.

I guarantee you the youngest Rivers children are being raised by their siblings. Nobody parents that well past three kids.

— The Bengals have dominated offensively so far. They’re up 14-7 on Gio Bernard’s short catch for a TD ... No, make that 21-7. Rodgers throws a pick-six — only the second of his career — to William Jackson.

That’s mind-blowing. This is Rodgers’ TENTH season as a starter, and that’s only his second career pick-six? Matt Schaub once doubled that in a month.

— Richard Sherman, who has apparently lost his damn mind, earns a flag for a late-ish hit on Mariota.

FWIW here is when Sherman hit Mariota http://pic.twitter.com/WTeBy9IrHC

— Ben Baldwin (@guga31bb) September 24, 2017

Taylor Lewan immediately gets up in Sherman’s face, and I think he gets flagged too, but my daughter has come up to me saying, “I want to be an animal. I want to see a jellyfish.” Is Richard Sherman ejected? What’s happening? “I want to see a jellyfish.”

Goddammit. Okay, sweetie. Let’s watch some f**king jellyfish.

“What’s that?” she says, pointing at my laptop screen.

“It’s a jellyfish, sweetie. These are all jellyfish.” Richard Sherman is still in the game. The Titans kick a field goal, 6-0.

— My son’s other obsession tonight — besides smashing his face into the couch — is the hokey-pokey. He’s no good at putting his hand in and shaking it all about, but he DOMINATES at turning around. He spins around in circles until he careens left and crashes into the credenza. He thinks it’s hilarious. He is correct.

— Stop me if you’ve heard this one: the Seahawks have a third-and-long, leading to a Russell Wilson sack. With the Seahawks missing their top two special teamers, Adoree’ Jackson takes the ensuing punt back for a score ... but it gets called back on a block in the back, yet another ticky-tack call. LET ‘EM PLAY, REFS.

After doing little on offense for 28 minutes, the Seahawks and Titans come alive inside the two-minute drill, with the Seahawks engineering a quick touchdown drive before the Titans kick another field goal to go into the locker room up 9-7.

— Rodgers is sacked again near the end of the half, and the Bengals call timeout to force the Packers to punt ... but the punt is muffed! The Packers recover, but the clock runs out during the scramble for the ball. Y’know, looking back on this play, I probably didn’t need to write this paragraph.

LATE GAMES, SECOND HALF

— On Sundays, the kids are supposed to take a bath together, but they’ve got their own ideas about that; my son refuses to sit down, and my daughter screams “I’m not ready yet!” any time we pick her up. So, separate baths.

At one point, as both kids cry, I see the referees signal TDs for Seahawks and Packers, but not the touchdowns themselves.

— The Seahawks defense looks tired. The tackling on Rishard Matthews’ 55-yard TD is pitiful (and, ahem, aided by the tight end tackling Kam Chancellor from behind, I REGRET ASKING FOR LESS OFFICIATING), and they’re similarly flat-footed on Jonnu Smith’s 24-yard score that puts the Titans up 23-14.

— Following a sack on third-and-seven, the Bengals miss a field goal. They still lead 21-14, but now it looks tenuous.

— The Seahawks never look close to completing a third-and-11; they are now 2/10 on third downs. Before they punt, RedZone clicks back to Bengals-Packers.

I see it on Twitter first: DeMarco Murray has scored on a 75-yard run. It’s a little after 6:30; my kids will be going to bed in the next half-hour. I pause the TV. “Actually,” I say to my wife, then turn the TV and cable box off completely as a way of finishing the sentence. “But can you still pick up where you paused?” my wife asks. “Nope,” I say, and that’s the point, because I’m a dumb baby who hates watching his stupid football team.

— My daughter, who refused to eat dinner at the prescribed hour, is finally eating her spaghetti as long as I’m reading the same four godforsaken Halloween books I’ve been reading to her for the last two days. My wife got those books out of the closet when she was in there to get something else and she “just happened to see them.” There are five weeks until Halloween. In a month, this column might be about divorce.

— I put the kids to bed at 7:00, and turn the TV back on. The Seahawks have the ball and trail 33-20 with about 8:30 left, which means this will be just stupid enough to keep me watching as the Seahawks lose by one score. Almost immediately, Seattle’s dangerous-looking drive gets blown up by intentional grounding, setting up third-and-29, then fourth-and-22.

They go for it. It’s a ... Hail Mary into the end zone?

Seahawks just whiffed on a three-man rush on 4th and 22. Wilson had about .7 seconds to throw. Embarrassing.

— Robert Klemko (@RobertKlemko) September 24, 2017

The half-moon of regret that is the Seahawks offensive line. Couldn't protect for four seconds against a three-man rush on fourth-and-22. http://pic.twitter.com/kSVeZGLUjh

— Bill Barnwell (@billbarnwell) September 24, 2017

That Barnwell tweet is all I need this season. Finally, a nickname for an utterly unworthy unit. The Half-Moon of Regret. Might not be as catchy as Legion of Boom, but I’m determined to make it stick.

— TV back on, Seahawks have the ball and trail 33-20 with 8:30 left. With just under 8:00 remaining, RW intentional grounding, 3rd and 29.

— KC still up 17-10. What the shit? Have they just been playing backgammon for the second half?

— Some good endings brewing: the Packers are in the two-minute drill down seven; Chargers down seven with the ball and four minutes remaining. The Seahawks have just scored to cut the lead to six, but need an onside kick for any realistic hope.

— Rivers sacked on third-and-10 by Justin Houston, and Kansas City easily recovers the onside kick. But hey! We still have excitement in Green Bay: first-and-goal for the Packers with 30 seconds.

— Jordy Nelson scores his second touchdown of the game. Big ups to Jordy for being questionable all week after last week’s zero-catch scratch. That way he could produce zero points for my fantasy team last week and make me gun-shy enough to bench him this week. THANKS FOR TWO KINDS OF NOTHING.

Green Bay kicks the PAT to go to overtime, even though Mike McCarthy ALWAYS loses the toss, then watches as the game ends without Aaron Rodgers ever touching the ball in OT. It’s so good to see a coach refuse to adapt or take chances or learn from his mistakes in any way. I think it’s great that he’s singe-handedly prevented the best quarterback of all time from winning more than one championship. Give him a lifetime contract, I say, so he can be mediocre forever.

Whatever, I’m all for Cincinnati-Green Bay going to overtime, because I always want more of any game called by Tony Romo. No one this new to a job should be THIS good at it.

Tony Romo is so good, I'm glad CBS finally gave Jim Nantz a broadcast partner who wasn't a talking block of marzipan

— BUM CHILLIPS (@edsbs) September 24, 2017

— The Packers, after losing the coin toss (of course) miraculously force the Bengals to punt. Facing third-and-10 from his own 22, Rodgers hits Geronimo Allison deep on a free play, because that’s what Aaron Rodgers does: murder you on free plays. Allison winds his way inside the Bengals 10-yard-line, and this one’s over.