#i feel like it's been 84 years since i started drawing this

[renabe4life]

plant your feet and

stand up tall, o mighty elm

let branches sway and

do not fall, o mighty elm

my first piece for @rwbyprism 💚 leftover sales are live here and stock is limited!

[ahegato]

Hey ahegato! I hope you are well :) I've just discovered your account and I love your posts (especially the fill you up post and how they act around children which was so cute!!). I was wondering whether you could write about how the brothers and mains are like when its their first time with a female MC who had been a virgin?

I can't wait to read more of your posts!

author note: Oh my gosh, my first request, I’m so nervous and excited!! Pretty fitting that my first request is about something being the first time. I’m sooo sorry that it’s so late, I’ve been balls deep in other fandoms

SUPER IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE: so I decided to do it like this, and I might keep doing that with all requests I receive: I’ll write for the characters requested, BUT I won’t post them all at the same time, or else you guys are gonna have to wait for like 84 years to get the finished product 😭

So instead I’ll post them all individually (UNLESS the headcanons are very short and don’t include fics) and just link the other ones in it when they get finished. that way you guys still get some kind of content every now and then!

[NSFW] Obey Me - fem!MC first time with Mammon

m.list

TW: nsfw, first time sex, loss of virginity, swearing Characters: Mammoney Writer: ahegato

Context:  The MC would probably be pretty nervous since it’s the first time and stuff like that. Idk I lost my virginity when I was like 17 and now I’m really old, so I barely remember it. I just recall worrying about the pain while also knowing it was common, that’s about it lol

You/your pronouns, so basically gender neutral, bUT MC will have female bits.

Anyway, have an awesome day (that’s an order) and I hope you enjoy it!

lucifer (cumming soon) | mammon (ur here) | leviathan (cumming soon) | satan (cumming soon) | asmodeus (cumming soon) | beelzebub (cumming soon) | belphegor (cumming soon) | diavolo (cumming soon) | barbatos (cumming soon) | simeon (cumming soon) | solomon (cumming soon)

MAMMON:

turns out that “bad boy mammon” is actually super romantic

huh who knew? literally everyone in the whole devildom

if you weren’t aware of how much of a softie he is, you clearly missed him in the entire story

when he finds out you’re a virgin, he gets a little excited

he’s really going to be your first man, huh?

mammon is incredibly nervous about your first time together

but instead of freezing up and not daring to do anything *cough* levi *cough*, he instead just gets reallllllly sensitive to touch

give him a handjob or oral, he’ll tremble and moan like a pornstar

really just kiss him and he won’t know what to do with himself

he wants you to be in control of the pace to be extra safe, so he’ll ask you to be on top

also because it’s hot, but he won’t tell you that (you’ll figure it out eventually anyway)

you start with both of you sitting up and you on his lap

will at some point take one of your hands and refuse to let go

if you cry from the pain, he’ll instantly go into comfort mode

wrapping his arms around you and stroke your back, telling you that you’re doing great and to just wait for a bit longer

he gets extremely lovey dovey and emotional when he’s about to finish, it’s so obvious that he wouldn’t even have to say anything for you to notice, but he still will

even after finishing, he won’t let go of you

doesn’t matter if you’re all sticky from the sweat, you’re his and he’s yours now

might as well be glued together, because he sure is acting like that’s the case

he feels very embarrassed afterwards because he’s not used to being so vulnerable, so pls reassure him

As you finally sink down onto him, he lets out a long, breathy, high-pitched moan. His nails are pressing into your waist, not so hard to draw blood but enough to turn you on even more. The way you’re squeezing him while sitting on his lap, your hands on his shoulders to support yourself, is addictive. But despite that, what’s taking up the most space in his mind is the love he’s feeling for you, as cheesy as it sounds, and the intimate moment you’re experiencing together. He almost gets a little teary at the thought. However, he gets snapped out of it when you begin to move, lifting yourself off of him before sinking back down again, and he lets out a surprised groan. He looks down between your bodies, watching as his cock disappears into you, moaning at the sight. His hands on your waist travel down to your hips, assisting you in your movements. He never wants to let go of you, and he pulls you closer, leaning over to breathe in your scent, causing his dick to twitch inside of you. Mammon has no shame at this point, he’ll bare his neck for you to bite and suck on. If you don’t get the point he’ll literally beg for it, and if he walks out of there without even a single mark, he’ll whine like a baby. He wants physical proof that he’s yours and you’re his. If you let him mark you, he’ll moan long and high-pitched as he does it. If you mark him, he’s legit whimpering and twitching underneath you. He’s drowning in you, kissing any part of your body that he can reach, meeting your movements with his own, and sometimes just gazing at you with a look of pure love. “MC I... I love you... I love you so much...” he huffs, pulling you as close to him as possible. He looks you in the eyes, mere inches away from each other. “I...I’m about to cum...” As he finally gets pushed over the edge, he sinks you down onto his cock as far as he can, holding onto you tightly as he whimpers words of affection in your ear. Once he’s down from his high, the memories of what he said and did return to his brain, and he gets super flustered. “I-I did not just say all that, ya hear me? Don’t tell anyone!” he stutters, suddenly all worried about this so-called reputation. “Of course I won’t tell anyone! But you did say all that, and I loved it.” you reply with a smile. “Y-you did?” the demon asks, looking back at you with a surprised expression on his face. “Of course I did! I loved seeing this side of you, and I love you.” The blush on his cheeks intensifies, but the demon visibly relaxes, a smile forming on his face in return. He cuddles up to you, fully intending to hold you hostage in his bed for the rest of the night.

✦ 30/11/2023 (Im so sorry lmao) - 16/04/2024 ✦ ahegato ✦

[brunchable]

Dandelions Chapter IX - Cosmic Floop || Doctor Strange x F!Reader

Word Count: 2K Rated M: includes portrayals of elements such as violence and themes that require a mature outlook. Special Mentions: Iron Man Ant-Man A/N: It's been 84 years. . . my writer's block for this was so bad.

One day is closing into two since the moment you left Eric alone in the korean restaurant. He's left you millions of missed calls and texts but got nothing in return. He wanted to report the police that you were missing and more importantly inform your father but you made him swear not to do anything that will bring attention to you—but you’re not here and he’s extremely worried, so he decided to pay your Dad, the chief of police, a visit.

Eric stood at the front of your childhood home where your father still resides. He’s literally about to break his promises to you since he just didn’t know what else to do. Eric practised what he was going to say, until he was interrupted by Ren who spoke through the door cam.

“Usually people knock to get the home owner’s attention.”

Eric jumped and looked into the camera, “Uncle Ren! Thank goodness you’re home, please let me in.”

The screen turned black and Eric heard his uncle's heavy footsteps coming towards the door. A few moments later, Ren opened the door for Eric and stepped aside. Ren watched Eric closely as he entered and paced around the living room, clearly worried about something–the lad couldn’t stop mumbling to himself, giving Ren every reason to think whether his nephew took some illicit drugs.

“Why don’t you sit down Eric? You’re making me dizzy.” Ren told the lad and closed the door. He made his way to his armchair and took a seat, giving Eric a puzzled look, “What’s wrong?”

“It’s (Y/N)…” Eric fiddled with his fingernails, avoiding eye contact with his uncle, his leg shaking uncontrollably, “She uh…developed these powers—”

“What?!” Ren yelled out of shock, the look on his face darkening. Clearly he knows something, possibly more, “How long has she had it?”

Eric flinched when Ren raised his voice, Eric opened his mouth but nothing was coming out.

“Eric…how long has she had these powers?” Ren repeated his question with more grit.

“Since she came back from the blip—I tried very hard to convince her to tell you but she made me promise not to—I haven’t heard from her since she left me at the restaurant yesterday. I tried calling her but I failed time and time again to reach her. She’s missing.” Eric blurted out in one breath and felt relieved he finally got it out of his system.

“Did she tell you where she was going before she left?”

“No, she left in a rush—she just started feeling quite scared all of a sudden and told me that she’s getting this strong feeling in her gut that she needed to go.”

“This is bad…” Ren mumbled, “I don’t understand… Annie took her memories away.”

“W-what do you mean took her memories away—What’s bad? If you have something to say uncle, now might be the best time because I am so confused right now. Your daughter is missing! We should be reporting it.”

“The police won’t be able to help us Eric—this is beyond their pay grade.” Ren pauses with a big sigh, “The vision Annie warned me about. . .”

“Vision? What vision? You’re still speaking cryptic language—”

“It’s the infinity stones Eric—assuming the avengers travelled back in time to retrieve them, it only means they’ve been destroyed, weakening the universe’s defences to that ever comes next.”

Eric stared at his uncle like he was some kind of lunatic, “Don’t you think it would’ve been helpful to tell your daughter about her roots?!”

“You don’t understand, the more she knows, the more she draws danger to herself. I’ve been trying to protect her ever since she was a child—we need to find her.”

“I think I might know where to start,” Eric swallows the guilt in his throat for breaking his promise to you, “She brought home books after she met up with Doctor Strange.”

Ren closes his lids and exhales as if trying to keep himself calm and not snap, “Great—she’s associated herself with an Avenger. Looks like we’ll be paying his residence a visit.”

“Holy shit.” Those were the first words that came out of Tony Stark’s mouth when he saw you and Stephen for the first time, “Can I?” Tony asked as he stepped closer to you and squeezed your cheeks together, studying your face in astonishment, “Creepy.”

You stare at Tony the same way he was staring at you, “You don’t say…”

“So have you like…mastered necromancy?” Scott Lang’s eyeballs flickered from you to Stephen, making sure to keep a fair distance from you, in case you were a zombie.

“We don’t do that kind of magic.” Iron Stephen simply answered and then Scott turned to Stephen with a fascinated look. Stephen furrowed his brows at Scott, giving him a dirty look.

“Look at this clone—I’m still amazed at how you do this Doc, he looks so real.” Scott stood in front of Stephen with a broad smile and went for his arms squeezing Stephen’s biceps. Iron Strange opened his mouth to say that Stephen wasn’t a clone but it was too late, “Oh… feels real too.”

Scott moved his hands to Stephen’s face and patted his cheeks. With the most unimpressed look on his face Stephen said, “Get your hands off of my face.”

Scott took a small step back and pointed at Stephen, “He’s not a clone is he?”

“No.” Iron Strange shook his head, pressing his lips to a thin line to suppress a chuckle while Rintrah and Wong turned away with a snicker.

“Oh… Sorry.” Scott laughed sheepishly, “So if she’s not back from the dead and he’s not a clone—then where did the cosmic floop did they come from?”

“Have you not told Scott why I invited both of you here?” Iron Strange asked, sounding a bit annoyed at Tony while crossing his arms.

“Sorry, I thought you were the one who’s going to tell him?” Tony shrugged with a tight-lipped smile—he purposely didn’t tell Scott to mess with him. Iron Strange shook his head. They just wasted precious time trying to figure each other out.

“Hold on—What does he mean back from the dead?” You butted in with a worried expression on your face.

“Wait—she doesn’t know?” Tony pointed at you and Iron Strange discreetly gestured his hand over his neck to cut it out, in which Stephen noticed.

“Know what?” You look at both of them confused and concerned.

"Yeah what are you not telling us?" Stephen squinted his eyes.

“Wouldn't you like to know?" Iron Strange sarcastically replied towards Stephen first and then you, "It means exactly what it means. You’re dead in this universe.” He bluntly answered before anyone else did, he didn’t want to talk about it. Your face turned grim, “Anyway, to answer your question Scott, they’re from another universe.”

Scott cocked his head and began laughing out loud until he looked around at everyone and noticed that he was the only one laughing, “Ha…hah… He’s not kidding.”

"You're his wife in this universe!" Tony blurted out and then abruptly covered his mouth. He couldn’t help it.

"WHAT?" You and Stephen said in unison.

"Oh shit—did I just think out loud? Sssssorry." Tony drawled and shrugged nonchalantly all the while avoiding eye contact with Iron Strange. He had no business stirring the pot but their Stephen looked like he was in pain.

Iron Strange is looking away from you now in an effort to avoid eye contact. You now understand the reason he presented you with that necklace; nonetheless, you are perplexed as to the source of his anger towards Stephen. Is it possible that he is angry with himself?

Stephen’s annoying grimace disappeared only to be replaced by a sharp scowl in your direction. Me? With her? I'd rather shoot myself in the foot. Stephen thought to himself. He can’t imagine being with anyone else apart from Christine.

"What about Christine?" He glanced towards himself who only scowled back at him.

"Who’s Christine?" Iron Strange replied.

Stephen's eyes widened, and it appeared as though he was almost insulted—no he is insulted by the fact that this man does not know who Christine is.

You were about to say a few choice words to him when Tony stepped forward. Good lord, the man was still a sight to behold, "Anyways let's move on?"

Stephen agreed, “Yeah. I have a question. Can you just explain to me how Tony and Scott are supposed to help?”

“If Tony can make time travel possible, with Scott’s help, I’m sure he has the brain big enough to create a multiverse machine.” Iron Strange confidently answered Stephen.

“Wow. I never thought you thought so highly of me, don’t stop now.” Tony chuckled and earned a dirty look from Iron Strange.

“Could that even be possible?” Wong asked.

“There’s a chance it could be possible—I mean, the Quantum Realm is a mostly unknown domain, so if we can discover a method to combine magic and science into a single machine, that's one way for you to leave,” Tony explained but he had doubts in his mind, because last time he created a time machine, Thanos got through from the past, “But there’s always risks.”

“Yeah, no shit Sherlock.” Stephen agreed.

“The thing is, I have to rebuild the quantum tunnel, it was destroyed when Thanos attacked the Avengers compound years ago.”

“Maybe you can use my van?” Scott suggested.

“That ugly brown van is still in one piece?” Stephen turned to Scott.

“Doc…that van might be your ticket out of here, give it a little respect.” Scott placed his hand over his chest, slightly offended by Stephen’s comment. Scott pressed his car keys causing the van to play its infamous horn, la cucaracha, “And yes, it's still in one piece.”

“Great. Leave it to me, Scott and his ugly brown van.” Tony patted Stephen’s shoulder with a massive grin before approaching Iron Strange. They turned their backs towards the group, “I’m going to ask you one last time, are you sure they can be trusted?” Tony whispered to Stephen.

Stephen looked back and shook his head, “Well, no but if the Scarlet Witch is strong enough to send creatures here to kill them, then we have every reason to get them out of here. You wouldn’t want to bring the Scarlet Witch here would you?”

“Say this works, what if this is the reason we bring it into our universe? Look at what happened before, we brought Thanos here.” Tony argued.

“Stark, the longer they stay here the more dangerous it becomes and it will be out of our control—so you choose, at least if something comes through, we can just kick their asses goodnight.”

"Just?" Tony sighed, seeing that Stephen has got a point, “I’ll see what I can do— Alright Scott! You’re coming with me, I need data from your Quantum Research.”

“You’re doing the right thing Tony.” Iron Strange nodded.

“When am I not?” Tony smirks and pats Strange's shoulders before turning back around to face the group.

Scott lifted his hands up to imply that he wanted to say something.

"Yes? Scott?" Tony addressed him.

"Uh. I almost forgot. We need Pym Particles to enter the quantum realm and Hank ain't giving those out willy nilly." Scott chuckled sheepishly, "The Quantum Realm is a terrifying and treacherous place to be. We have no idea what might be hiding in there. It's possible that there are whole civilizations hidden in there.."

"We're going to steal it then, you're an expert at thievery, Scott. Maybe call up Luis—" Tony suggested.

"Oh god." Stephen said in the background.

"Are you serious? We can't do that, I've put that life behind me." Scott gave a little shake of the head, and when Tony moved in closer, Scott retreated a little further.

"We're stealing it." Tony reiterated what he had said earlier, but this time he did so in a more serious approach.

"Alright fine! I'll contact Luis."

TAGS: @elicheel @sherlux @stanny-uwu @frostandflamesfanfic @zdhunn @captaincarmel164 @justsomecreaturewandering @soiopathicdetectivekid @fan-of-fic @gaitwae @shit-post-things @seasonofthenerd @patbrdac @evelynrosestuff @singhfae @severuined @mischiefmanaged71 @farfromjustordinary @spideyyhoe @lovecleastrange @samisubi @dcgoddess @mochuchi @faithinhome @ohchoices @junkertown-princess @sigyncevans @giorgiblog17 @dragonqueen89 @the-royal-petals @hiddlechive @ghost-lantern @sleutherclaw @the-mouse27 @zelspktr @bobateadaydreams @lykaonimagines @valbensherstep @strangeobsessed @calsjack @romanvffa @crowleyspett @goldencherriess @jyessaminereads @fandom-lover-4 @tis-vereon

[wyntereyez]

Trivia Murder Party 3: the Reckoning

Here we go again, folks! I'm making yet another post about a (murderous) trivia game, which I admit is entirely for my own entertainment, because the VODs vanish after two months.

Anyway...

It was time for another Chaos Crew Couch Party, and once again, I went for Trivia Murder Party, since I'm not quick-witted enough for Quiplash, and the drawing games are hard on a touch pad.

We were all excited. It had been awhile. Possibly 84 years.

Okay, not that long. It just feels that way because Neil has been crazy busy this last month and hasn't had time for games.

Aw, yeah.

And then a quick pause, because the cat that Neil DEFINITELY DOES NOT OWN was about to attack the divider again. And Neil was reenacting it.

We also got a reenactment of how the cat that is TOTALLY NOT HIS greeted him when he came back from his latest trip, by pretending it didn't care, and then demanding pats.

Dude, I think you have a cat.

But anyway...

This time, I was the shark! So cute. So vicious. So...monocled? Sure, why not.

I like being last in the credits, because Neil always announces the last name.

Several of the next bits don't involve me, but I thought they were funny, so here we go.

It started off good. Excellent, even. For me.

Aw, yeah!

Unfortunately, most of these questions seem to favor Americans, and a lot of the players aren't.

Which made the Kill Floor challenge even more fun.

No Americans here.

D'oh.

(to be continued in a moment...)

[millieify5]

Figure 81.  Figure 82. Figure 83. Figure 84. Figure 85. Figure 86. Figure 87. Figure 88. Figure 89. Figure 90.

For this project I ended up working on all the scenes simultaneously as I found it much easier to keep the line art consistent when I didn’t need to keep changing brush (and the size) to work on colouring. I decided to use a brush that emulates a pencil like texture for the line art as the texturing and slight transparency gave the illustrations some more variance than they would otherwise have had, which leant itself to the slightly rough and sketchy style I ended up using. I used this more rough style in part due to the fact it increased the speed at which I could work, and in part because it matches the imperfect and handmade look of stained glass.

For many of the scenes I planned to create some movement or blurring effect in the finished PMV, and so any time I wanted some form of change to happen I had to be very careful about how I split the line art up onto different layers so that I could save each section separately and layer them up in the video editing software later. Most of the time this just meant having a background and a foreground layer, however in some circumstances - like the moving cart in fig. 90- I needed a third layer when the moving object wasn’t at the forefront of the scene.

Overall, I’ve been especially proud of many of the backgrounds I illustrated for these scenes. Before this project I tended to end up with mainly simple ‘flat’ backgrounds when I drew scenes, rather than more dynamic perspectives, however with the help of my own reference images and screenshots of google street view I feel like I’ve started to begin to understand how create more 3D feeling backgrounds, as well as how to place characters and objects within these scenes. On the other hand, I do think I could improve the proportions and expressions of the characters in many of the scenes. Before the start of this year I’d hardly had any practice drawing people, so I am proud with how far I’ve come - especially when it comes to dynamic poses that aren’t explicitly from a singular reference image - but as I had to draw so many characters and scenes within this project I know I didn’t have the time to work on each individual one to the standards I’ve managed in some of my other illustrations, and so I fell back into the traps of struggling not to make their heads too big & ending up with over-the-top or slightly off expressions.

Because of the time constraints, there were also a few areas where I reused elements from one scene in another (not including scenes that were specifically designed to mirror each other). I kept this to Dante’s cart, as the two instances were already planned to be in the same position, and the background of scenes set in a town, since all three were taking place in the same town and as such I could justify using the same street to signify that. If I had had more time though, I would have at least illustrated a unique background for each of the town scenes, as that would have been more engaging and allow for more worldbuilding to be fleshed out in the small details of the background elements.

[turnpage]

send me a ✐ for a random sentence starter from my muse (1-1500) — tw: profanity, mild nsfw, long list

generator here quotes compiled from here inspired by

feel free to change to fit your preferences as need.

❨1❩ ❛ They are dreams, but I’m too out of control, I lose myself in them, and I’ve already lost too much to let them take over. ❜
 ❨2❩ ❛ Sometimes human places create inhuman monsters. ❜ ❨3❩ ❛ I'm not gonna hurt ya. I'm just going to bash your brains in. ❜ ❨4❩ ❛ Monsters are real. Ghosts are too. They live inside of us, and sometimes, they win. ❜ ❨5❩ ❛ The world's a hard place. It doesn't care. It doesn't hate you and me, but it doesn't love us, either. ❜ ❨6❩ ❛ The tears that heal are also the tears that scald and scourge. ❜ ❨7❩ ❛ Pull your act together and just go on. ❜ ❨8❩ ❛ I had never dreamed there could be so much pain in a life when there is nothing physically wrong. I hurt all the time. ❜ ❨9❩ ❛ Tough old world, baby. If you're not bolted together tightly, you're gonna shake, rattle, and roll before you turn thirty. ❜ ❨10❩ ❛ Are you sure self-pity is a luxury you can afford? ❜ ❨11❩ ❛ Truth comes out. In the end it always comes out. ❜ ❨12❩ ❛ Living by your wits is always knowing where the wasps are. ❜ ❨13❩ ❛ No matter where you go, the same asshole gets off the plane. ❜ ❨14❩ ❛ We sometimes need to create unreal monsters and bogies to stand in for all the things we fear in our real lives. ❜ ❨15❩ ❛ That’s your job in this hard world, to keep your love alive and see that you get on, no matter what. ❜ ❨16❩ ❛ Human nature, baby. Grab it and growl. ❜ ❨17❩ ❛ God wiped snot out of his nose and that was you. ❜ ❨18❩ ❛ Run away. Quick. And remember how much I love you. ❜ ❨19❩ ❛ How many times, over how many years, have I—a grown adult—asked for the mercy of another chance? ❜ ❨20❩ ❛ I was suddenly so sick of myself, so revolted. ❜ ❨21❩ ❛ You listen to me. I’m going to talk to you about it this once and never again this same way. ❜ ❨22❩ ❛ But those pieces, they’ll never fit just the same way again. Never in this world. ❜ ❨23❩ ❛ Dying is a part of living. You have to keep tuning in to that if you expect to be a whole person. ❜ ❨24❩ ❛ Officious little prick. ❜ ❨25❩ ❛ I’ve been sleepwalking again, my dear. — The plants are moving under the rug. ❜ ❨26❩ ❛ How I wish you were fear. ❜ ❨27❩ ❛ But it was a dreadful kind of curiosity, the kind that makes you peek through your fingers during the scariest parts of a scary movie. ❜ ❨28❩ ❛ All we have is time, you know. An eternity of time. Or shall we end it? Might as well. After all, we're missing the party. ❜ ❨29❩ ❛ We all remember our pleasant dreams more clearly than the scary ones. ❜ ❨30❩ ❛ The way things should be and the way things are hardly ever get together. ❜ ❨31❩ ❛ Got to be regular if you want to be happy. ❜ ❨32❩ ❛ But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. ❜ ❨33❩ ❛ He showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend that I had none. ❜ ❨34❩ ❛ Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep. ❜ ❨35❩ ❛ It is a common saying that women are delicate creatures, flowers, eggs, anything that may be crushed in a moment's carelessness.  ❜ ❨36❩ ❛ If I had ever believed it, I no longer do. ❜ ❨37❩ ❛ I thought once that gods are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging, and can hold nothing in their hands. ❜ ❨38❩ ❛ I cannot bear this world a moment longer. ❜ ❨39❩ ❛ I have a better idea. I will do as I please. ❜ ❨40❩ ❛ All my life has been murk and depths, but I am not a part of that dark water. I am a creature within it. ❜ ❨41❩ ❛ You cannot know how frightened gods are of pain. There is nothing more foreign to them, and so nothing they ache more deeply to see. ❜ ❨42❩ ❛ When we are young, we think ourselves the first to have each feeling in the world. ❜ ❨43❩ ❛ When I was born, the word for what I was did not exist. ❜ ❨44❩ ❛ But perhaps no parent can truly see their child. When we look we see only the mirror of our own faults. ❜ ❨45❩ ❛ I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. ❜ ❨46❩ ❛ This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive. ❜ ❨47❩ ❛ You threw me to the crows, but it turns out I prefer them to you. ❜ ❨48❩ ❛ Yet because I knew nothing, nothing was beneath me. ❜ ❨49❩ ❛ If now I am wise, it is only because I have been fool enough for a hundred lifetimes. ❜ ❨50❩ ❛ You can teach a viper to eat from your hands, but you cannot take away how much it likes to bite. ❜ ❨51❩ ❛ Give me the blade. Some things are worth spilling blood for. ❜ ❨52❩ ❛ I have been old and stern for so long, carved with regrets and years like a monolith. But that is only a shape I’ve been poured into. I do not have to keep it. ❜ ❨53❩ ❛ I wake sometimes in the dark terrified by my life's precariousness, its thready breath. ❜ ❨54❩ ❛ Understanding the world is a matter of keeping very still and showing no emotions, leaving room for others to reveal themselves. ❜ ❨55❩ ❛ Beneath the smooth, familiar face of things is another that waits to tear the world in two. ❜ ❨56❩ ❛ The truth is, men make terrible pigs. ❜ ❨57❩ ❛ My father has never been able to imagine the world without himself in it. ❜ ❨58❩ ❛ This is the grief that makes our kind choose to be stones and trees rather than flesh. ❜ ❨59❩ ❛ Witches are not so delicate. ❜ ❨60❩ ❛ Those who fight against prophecy only draw it more tightly around their throats. ❜ ❨61❩ ❛ I learned that I could bend the world to my will, as a bow is bent for an arrow. I would have done that toil a thousand times to keep such power in my hands. ❜ ❨62❩ ❛ There's the story, then there's the real story, then there's the story of how the story came to be told. Then there's what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too. ❜ ❨63❩ ❛ The best way of being kind to bears is not to be very close to them. ❜ ❨64❩ ❛ Life is warped. I'm just in sync. ❜ ❨65❩ ❛ Now it's a whisper from the past. ❜ ❨66❩ ❛ But hatred and viciousness are addictive. You can get high on them. Once you've had a little, you start shaking if you don't get more. ❜ ❨67❩ ❛ Why is it always such a surprise? The moon. Even though we know it's coming. Every time we see it, it makes us pause, and hush. ❜ ❨68❩ ❛ Perfection exacts a price, but it's the imperfect who pay it. ❜ ❨69❩ ❛ What is 'belief' but a willingness to suspend the negatives?  ❜ ❨70❩ ❛ I have scars, inside me. ❜ ❨71❩ ❛ The dead are not entirely dead but are alive in a different way; a paler way admittedly, and somewhat darker. ❜ ❨72❩ ❛ However dark, a darkness with voices in it is better than a silent void. ❜ ❨73❩ ❛ Amazing how quickly the past becomes idyllic. ❜ ❨74❩ ❛ It is another way of saying tough luck. To people you aren’t going to help out. ❜ ❨75❩ ❛ I'm waiting, far off in the future. ❜ ❨76❩ ❛ The only sure camouflage is unpredictability. ❜ ❨77❩ ❛ There are so many of them, and each one of them is doing part of the killing, whether they know it or not. ❜ ❨78❩ ❛ First rule: limit bloodshed by making sure that none of your own gets spilled. ❜ ❨79❩ ❛ I long to swim in liquid moonlight. ❜ ❨80❩ ❛ That's right, I don’t like to be summoned on trivial matters. ❜ ❨81❩ ❛ The part that really made me happy was that you wanted me to be happy. ❜ ❨82❩ ❛ Cut that part out of us: the grinning, elemental malice. Begin us anew. ❜ ❨83❩ ❛ Where there are wars, there will be crows, the carrion-fanciers. And ravens too, the warbirds, the eyeball gourmands. And vultures, the holy birds of yore, old connoisseurs of rot. ❜ ❨84❩ ❛ At last. It's you. ❜ ❨85❩ ❛ No, you will not be cooked on a fire when you die. Because you are not a fish. ❜ ❨86❩ ❛ Take what the moment offers. Don’t close doors. Be thankful. ❜ ❨87❩ ❛ How many others have stood in this place? Left behind, with all gone, all swept away. ❜ ❨88❩ ❛ Is it disapproval or extreme lust? With some men it’s hard to tell the difference. ❜ ❨89❩ ❛ My hair was driving me crazy, but then … I died. ❜ ❨90❩ ❛ Seek and ye shall find, eventually. And you found. You’re right, I don’t dispute that. Sorry. ❜ ❨91❩ ❛ Everything digests, and is digested. ❜ ❨92❩ ❛ My head was once a filing cabinet. Now it’s a flurry of papers, floating on a draft. ❜ ❨93❩ ❛ You cannot keep bumping your head against reality and saying it is not there. ❜ ❨94❩ ❛ I have a feeling that inside you somewhere, there’s something nobody knows about. ❜ ❨95❩ ❛ And if I don’t want to die, I’ve got to start living. ❜ ❨96❩ ❛ The world is a beautiful place. Don’t forget that. And don’t miss it. ❜ ❨97❩ ❛ I was fighting for my life. So I must not want to die. ❜ ❨98❩ ❛ Something’s happening to me, through me, something dangerous and new. ❜ ❨99❩ ❛ It’s taken root, a poison tree; it’s grown, fanning out, vines winding round my gut, my lungs, my heart. ❜ ❨100❩ ❛ We’re interpreters. We’re translators. ❜ ❨101❩ ❛ You’ll notice I’m not asking what made you this way. ❜ ❨102❩ ❛ No family, happy or unhappy, is quite like any other. Tolstoy was chock-fullo’shit. Remember that. ❜ ❨103❩ ❛ We lived in monochrome those nights. ❜ ❨104❩ ❛ You live in a dream. You’re a sleepwalker, blind. How do you know what the world is like? ❜ ❨105❩ ❛ Do you know, if you rip off the fronts of houses, you’d find swine? ❜ ❨106❩ ❛ I stand here in the dark: cold, utterly alone, full of fear and something that feels like longing. ❜ ❨107❩ ❛ The definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results. ❜ ❨108❩ ❛ Not to warm the flesh, but solely to please the eye. ❜ ❨109❩ ❛ Selective emotional detachment. ❜ ❨110❩ ❛ Not for me, or at least not today. ❜ ❨111❩ ❛ Dead but not gone, watching life surge forward around me, powerless to intervene. ❜ ❨112❩ ❛ Do I sound like a hillbilly saying that? ❜ ❨113❩ ❛ Remember, you’ve got your secret weapon. ❜ ❨114❩ ❛ The dream drains away like water. The memory, really. I try to scoop it up in my palms, but it’s gone. ❜ ❨115❩ ❛ My shadow stretches along the carpet, as though trying to detach itself from me. ❜ ❨116❩ ❛ It curls away from me, like blood in water. ❜ ❨117❩ ❛ It’s been so long since I felt the rain. Or wind—the caress of wind. ❜ ❨118❩ ❛ But snow I never want to feel again. ❜ ❨119❩ ❛ Through adversity to the stars. ❜ ❨120❩ ❛ No hero. No sleuth. I am locked in. I am locked out. ❜ ❨121❩ ❛ Thinking hasn't gotten me anywhere so far. ❜ ❨122❩ ❛ The face you give the world tells the world how to treat you. ❜ ❨123❩ ❛ Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. ❜ ❨124❩ ❛ Women get consumed. ❜ ❨125❩ ❛ Sometimes if you let people do things to you, you're really doing it to them. ❜ ❨126❩ ❛ A child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort. ❜ ❨127❩ ❛ Safer to be feared than loved. ❜ ❨128❩ ❛ I ached once, hard, like a period typed at the end of a sentence. ❜ ❨129❩ ❛ It's impossible to compete with the dead. I wish I could stop trying. ❜ ❨130❩ ❛ I always feel sad for the girl that I was. ❜ ❨131❩ ❛ Every time people said I was pretty, I thought of everything ugly swarming beneath my clothes. ❜ ❨132❩ ❛ How do you keep safe when your whole day is as wide and empty as the sky? Anything could happen. ❜ ❨133❩ ❛ See, there I am. I told you I lived. I told you I was. ❜ ❨134❩ ❛ Sometimes I think I won't ever feel safe until I can count my last days on one hand. ❜ ❨135❩ ❛ To refuse has so many more consequences than submitting. ❜ ❨136❩ ❛ I'm here. I don't usually feel that I am. ❜ ❨137❩ ❛ I'm tired of dying. ❜ ❨138❩ ❛ What if you hurt because it feels so good? ❜ ❨139❩ ❛ How confusing to live in the shadow of a shadow. ❜ ❨140❩ ❛ Do you ever feel like bad things are going to happen, and you can’t stop them? You can’t do anything, you just have to wait? ❜ ❨141❩ ❛ Sometimes my scars have a mind of their own. ❜ ❨142❩ ❛ Everyone has their own version of a memory. ❜ ❨143❩ ❛ Isn’t a smile a girl’s best weapon? ❜ ❨144❩ ❛ My sense of weightlessness, I think, comes from the fact that I know so little about my past. ❜ ❨145❩ ❛ Do what I want; I might like you. ❜ ❨146❩ ❛ I feel sorry for Persephone because even when she’s back with the living, people are afraid of her because of where’s she’s been. ❜ ❨147❩ ❛ She has never told me she loved me, and I never assumed she did. ❜ ❨148❩ ❛ The sight of it actually does something to you, makes you less human. ❜ ❨149❩ ❛ It infects you. It ruined me. ❜ ❨150❩ ❛ Your health is not a debt you just cancel. The body collects. ❜ ❨151❩ ❛ Men love to put things inside women, don’t they? ❜ ❨152❩ ❛ We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom. ❜ ❨153❩ ❛ Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women. ❜ ❨154❩ ❛ The strongest of all warriors are these two — time and patience. ❜ ❨155❩ ❛ If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war. ❜ ❨156❩ ❛ There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth. ❜ ❨157❩ ❛ The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness. ❜ ❨158❩ ❛ Let the dead bury the dead, but while I'm alive, I must live and be happy. ❜ ❨159❩ ❛ It's not given to people to judge what's right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong. ❜ ❨160❩ ❛ You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love. ❜ ❨161❩ ❛ If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed. ❜ ❨162❩ ❛ We are asleep until we fall in love! ❜ ❨163❩ ❛ I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself. ❜ ❨164❩ ❛ Everything I know, I know because of love. ❜ ❨165❩ ❛ Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. ❜ ❨166❩ ❛ If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself. ❜ ❨167❩ ❛ Yes, love, but not the love that loves for something, to gain something, or because of something, but that love that I felt for the first time, when dying, I saw my enemy and yet loved him. ❜ ❨168❩ ❛ How can one be well...when one suffers morally? ❜ ❨169❩ ❛ Kings are the slaves of history. ❜ ❨170❩ ❛ God is the same everywhere. ❜ ❨171❩ ❛ Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy. ❜ ❨172❩ ❛ One must be cunning and wicked in this world. ❜ ❨173❩ ❛ We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done them. ❜ ❨174❩ ❛ When one's head is gone one doesn't weep over one's hair! ❜ ❨175❩ ❛ For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed? ❜ ❨176❩ ❛ He did what heroes do after their work is accomplished; he died. ❜ ❨177❩ ❛ Life is too long to say anything definitely; always say perhaps. ❜ ❨178❩ ❛ Everything ends in death, everything. Death is terrible. ❜ ❨179❩ ❛ The distant and impossible suddenly became near, possible, and inevitable. ❜ ❨180❩ ❛ How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what? ❜ ❨181❩ ❛ The wolves should be fed and the sheep kept safe. ❜ ❨182❩ ❛ When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. ❜ ❨183❩ ❛ My memory is a patchwork of occurrences, of discontinuous events roughly sewn together: the parts I remember, I remember precisely, whilst other sections seem to have vanished completely. ❜ ❨184❩ ❛ Would it be worse to love someone who is no longer there, or not to love someone who is? ❜ ❨185❩ ❛ Like mirrors stories prepare us for the day to come. They distract us from the things in darkness. ❜ ❨186❩ ❛ It is not that I was credulous, simply that I believed in all things dark and dangerous. ❜ ❨187❩ ❛ Sometimes you do things you regret, but there's nothing you can do about them. Times change. Doors close behind you. You move on. ❜ ❨188❩ ❛ Love will be an impulse that will inspire and ruin in equal measure. ❜ ❨189❩ ❛ He died alone. It don't matter a rat's ass whether there was anyone with him or not. He died alone. ❜ ❨190❩ ❛ It was love, I knew, and it tasted like champagne in my mind. ❜ ❨191❩ ❛ The end of the world is a strange concept. The world is always ending, and the end is always being averted, by love or foolishness or just plain old dumb luck. ❜ ❨192❩ ❛ She was my dream; and if you touch a dream it vanishes, like a soap bubble. ❜ ❨193❩ ❛ Daylight is always safe. ❜ ❨194❩ ❛ If not for death, they'd be content to simply exist, but with death, well, their lives will have meaning. ❜ ❨195❩ ❛ You want to know the future, love? Then wait. ❜ ❨196❩ ❛ There are things in the darkness beneath us that wish us harm. ❜ ❨197❩ ❛ Fairy tales are more than true. Not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be defeated ❜ ❨198❩ ❛ But sometimes you leave blood on your instruments. ❜ ❨199❩ ❛ I'd like to be a wolf. Not all the time. Just sometimes. In the dark. I would run through the forests. ❜ ❨200❩ ❛ You've seen them. They have mouths that twitch, and eyes that stare, and they babble and they mewl and they whimper. ❜ ❨201❩ ❛ They are not mad, or rather, the loss of their sanity is the lesser of their problems. ❜ ❨202❩ ❛ Good a reason for writing as I know: releasing demons, letting them fly. ❜ ❨203❩ ❛ That miserable state in which everything seems flat and of equal importance; when nothing matters, and in which reality seems scraped thin and threadbare. ❜ ❨204❩ ❛ Someone had scrawled graffiti in black marker on the metal: JUST DIE, it said. Like it is easy. ❜ ❨205❩ ❛ Winter started today. The sky turned grey and the snow began to fall and it did not stop falling until well after dark. ❜ ❨206❩ ❛ Memory is the great deceiver. ❜ ❨207❩ ❛ Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way. ❜ ❨208❩ ❛ I may have lost my heart, but not my self-control.  ❜ ❨209❩ ❛ If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. ❜ ❨210❩ ❛ I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other. ❜ ❨211❩ ❛ But you know what I am. You hear nothing but truth from me. ❜ ❨212❩ ❛ I have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other would have borne it. ❜ ❨213❩ ❛ There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves. ❜ ❨214❩ ❛ One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other. ❜ ❨215❩ ❛ Better be without sense than misapply it as you do. ❜ ❨216❩ ❛ You must be the best judge of your own happiness. ❜ ❨217❩ ❛ Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing ; but I have never been in love ; it is not my way, or my nature ; and I do not think I ever shall. ❜ ❨218❩ ❛ Indeed, I am very sorry to be right in this instance. I would much rather have been merry than wise. ❜ ❨219❩ ❛ If I have not spoken, it is because I am afraid I will awaken myself from this dream. ❜ ❨220❩ ❛ If a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him. ❜ ❨221❩ ❛ Faultless in spite of all her faults. ❜ ❨222❩ ❛ A heroine whom no one but myself will much like. ❜ ❨223❩ ❛ There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart. ❜ ❨224❩ ❛ Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, and waste its fragrance on the desert air. ❜ ❨225❩ ❛ I pity you. I thought you cleverer. ❜ ❨226❩ ❛ Evil to some is always good to others. ❜ ❨227❩ ❛ I certainly will not persuade myself to feel more than I do. ❜ ❨228❩ ❛ She is loveliness itself. ❜ ❨229❩ ❛ Time does not compose me. ❜ ❨230❩ ❛ A man always imagines a woman to be ready for anybody who asks her. ❜ ❨231❩ ❛ I do not find myself making any use of the word sacrifice. ❜ ❨232❩ ❛ I am quite enough in love. I should be sorry to be any more. ❜ ❨233❩ ❛ I must tell you what you will not ask, though I may wish it unsaid the next moment. ❜ ❨234❩ ❛ I examined my own heart. And there you were. Never, I fear, to be removed. ❜ ❨235❩ ❛ With all your little faults, you are an excellent creature. ❜ ❨236❩ ❛ You have another long walk before you. ❜ ❨237❩ ❛ The child's laughter is pure until he first laughs at a clown. ❜ ❨238❩ ❛ What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many? ❜ ❨239❩ ❛ Out of the frying pan into the fire! ❜ ❨240❩ ❛ We must all make do with the rags of love we find flapping on the scarecrow of humanity. ❜ ❨241❩ ❛ She sleeps. And now she wakes each day a little less. ❜ ❨242❩ ❛ And, oh, God . . . how frequently I weep! ❜ ❨243❩ ❛ From the coffin of your madness there is no escape. ❜ ❨244❩ ❛ I am feeling supernatural tonight. I want to eat diamonds. ❜ ❨245❩ ❛ All the same there is a chance that if we keep on shaking our chains, one day, some day, the clasps upon the shackles will part. ❜ ❨246❩ ❛ It was sad music fit to make you cut your throat. ❜ ❨247❩ ❛ Nothing is more boring than being forced to play. ❜ ❨248❩ ❛ Amongst the monsters, I am well hidden; who looks for a leaf in a forest? ❜ ❨249❩ ❛ Wherein does a woman’s honour reside? In her vagina or in her spirit? ❜ ❨250❩ ❛ Perhaps...I could not be content with mere contentment! ❜ ❨251❩ ❛ Have you ever stared stark failure in the face? The trick is to outstare it. ❜ ❨252❩ ❛ Sometimes it seems that the faces exist of themselves, in a disembodied somewhere, waiting for the one who will wear them, who will bring them to life. ❜ ❨253❩ ❛ I have the febrile gaiety of a being without a past, without a present, yet I exist. ❜ ❨254❩ ❛ I felt myself turning, willy-nilly, from a woman into an idea. ❜ ❨255❩ ❛ She looks wonderful, but she doesn't look right. ❜ ❨256❩ ❛ The one-eyed man will be King in the country of the blind. ❜ ❨257❩ ❛ I raised you up to fly to the heavens, not to brood over a clutch of eggs! ❜ ❨258❩ ❛ I love to hear my bones rattle. That’s how I know I’m alive. ❜ ❨259❩ ❛ I learnt, first, as the birds do, from the birds. ❜ ❨260❩ ❛ Inside and outside match exactly, but both are badly wrong. ❜ ❨261❩ ❛ During the less-than-blink of time it took the last chime to die, there came a vertiginous sensation. ❜ ❨262❩ ❛ I fear a wound not of the body but the soul, an irreconcilable division between myself and the rest of humankind. ❜ ❨263❩ ❛ I fear the proof of my own singularity. ❜ ❨264❩ ❛ Still nothing could calm the fearful storm in my erupting skin. ❜ ❨265❩ ❛ Petersburg, loveliest of all hallucinations. ❜ ❨266❩ ❛ A breathless second between black forest and the frozen sea. ❜ ❨267❩ ❛ I'm beginning to feel totally cut off from the world. ❜ ❨268❩ ❛ What does this all mean? Where are we? ❜ ❨269❩ ❛ Sometimes I bleed. ❜ ❨270❩ ❛ If you see a ghost, you say "hello". ❜ ❨271❩ ❛ The war is not over. ❜ ❨272❩ ❛ You're not going. You left us once already. ❜ ❨273❩ ❛ You can’t go! ❜ ❨274❩ ❛ I loved you, but that wasn't enough, was it? ❜ ❨275❩ ❛ If you're dead, then leave me in peace. ❜ ❨276❩ ❛ The only thing that moves here is the light, but it changes everything. ❜ ❨277❩ ❛ I won't ask for forgiveness for something I didn't do! ❜ ❨278❩ ❛ Sometimes the world of the living gets mixed up with the world of the dead. ❜ ❨279❩ ❛ Death of a loved one can lead people to do the strangest things. ❜ ❨280❩ ❛ Sooner or later, they will find you. ❜ ❨281❩ ❛ They're everywhere - they say this house is theirs. ❜ ❨282❩ ❛ You're always teasing me, and telling lies. I'm sick of it. ❜ ❨283❩ ❛ Others will come. Sometimes we'll sense them. Other times, we won't. ❜ ❨284❩ ❛ No crying now. No crying. Stop that. Here. Look what an awful face you've got when you cry. ❜ ❨285❩ ❛ You listen to me. I've seen them too. ❜ ❨286❩ ❛ You'll see. There are going to be some big surprises. There are going to be... changes. ❜ ❨287❩ ❛ Why did you go and fight that stupid war that had nothing to do with us? Why didn't you stay like the others did? ❜ ❨288❩ ❛ Your place was here with your family. ❜ ❨289❩ ❛ So you say you know this house well? ❜ ❨290❩ ❛ I wasn't expecting you so soon. ❜ ❨291❩ ❛ What's the matter? Has the cat got your tongue? ❜ ❨292❩ ❛ You mean they just vanished? Into thin air? ❜ ❨293❩ ❛ No door must be opened without the previous one being closed first. ❜ ❨294❩ ❛ Here, most of the time, you can hardly see your way. ❜ ❨295❩ ❛ Whatever you do, don't open the curtains. ❜ ❨296❩ ❛ Now, come on. Eyes closed. ❜ ❨297❩ ❛ We start off with high hopes, then we bottle it. We realise that we’re all going to die, without really finding out the big answers. ❜ ❨298❩ ❛ By definition, you have to live until you die. Better to make that life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be. ❜ ❨299❩ ❛ I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. ❜ ❨300❩ ❛ And the reasons? There are no reasons. ❜ ❨301❩ ❛ Love does not exist, it's like religion, made to control you. ❜ ❨302❩ ❛ After all, we're not fucking stupid. At least, we're not that fucking stupid. ❜ ❨303❩ ❛ You fucking knew that fucking cunt would fuck some cunt. ❜ ❨304❩ ❛ Everything in the street today seems soft focus. ❜ ❨305❩ ❛ What does that make us? The lowest of the low. ❜ ❨306❩ ❛ Take your best orgasm, multiply the feeling by twenty, and you're still fuckin’ miles off the pace. ❜ ❨307❩ ❛ It’s as if everything is a copy of what you knew before, similar, yet somehow lacking in its usual qualities, a bit like the way things are in a dream. ❜ ❨308❩ ❛ It’s all okay, it’s all beautiful; but I fear that this internal sea is going to subside soon, leaving this poisonous shite washed up, stranded up in my body. ❜ ❨309❩ ❛ It cuts me up. It confuses me. ❜ ❨310❩ ❛ It's not funny laughter. This is lynch mob laughter. ❜ ❨311❩ ❛ Protect me from those who wish to help us. ❜ ❨312❩ ❛ They mean well, and they mean well to me, but there's no way under the sun that they can appreciate what I feel, what I need. ❜ ❨313❩ ❛ The pit of melancholy is a bottomless one, and I am descending fast. ❜ ❨314❩ ❛ Living like this is a full-time business. ❜ ❨315❩ ❛ I’ll stand or fall alone. ❜ ❨316❩ ❛ We are no wiser now than at the start. ❜ ❨317❩ ❛ This is pathetic, and fucking boring. ❜ ❨318❩ ❛ Death is usually a process, rather than an event. ❜ ❨319❩ ❛ We're ruled by effete arseholes. What does that make us? ❜ ❨320❩ ❛ We are all acquaintances now. ❜ ❨321❩ ❛ The problem is that this beautiful ocean carries with it loads of poisonous flotsam and jetsam. ❜ ❨322❩ ❛ Life is beautiful. I'm going to enjoy it, and I'm going to have a long life. ❜ ❨323❩ ❛ The grim reality of impending death can be talked away by trying to invest in the present reality of life. ❜ ❨324❩ ❛ There must be more to life than this. ❜ ❨325❩ ❛ We all see what we want to see. ❜ ❨326❩ ❛ Statistically speaking, you're more likely to be killed by a member of your own family or a close friend, than by anyone else. ❜ ❨327❩ ❛ What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question. ❜ ❨328❩ ❛ Maybe that's what love is: it's being pissed off. ❜ ❨329❩ ❛ You can forget who you are if you're alone too much. ❜ ❨330❩ ❛ Any religion is a shadow of God. But the shadows of God are not God. ❜ ❨331❩ ❛ Human understanding is fallible, and we see through a glass, darkly.  ❜ ❨332❩ ❛ We must be a beacon of hope, because if you tell people there's nothing they can do, they will do worse than nothing. ❜ ❨333❩ ❛ Everyone wants to feel like a princess, and princesses are selfish and overbearing. ❜ ❨334❩ ❛ We shouldn't have been so scornful; we should have had compassion. But compassion takes work, and we were young. ❜ ❨335❩ ❛ How easy it is, treachery. You just slide into it. ❜ ❨336❩ ❛ Amazing how the heart clutches at anything familiar, whimpering: Mine! Mine! ❜ ❨337❩ ❛ All creatures know that some must die ; that all the rest may take and eat. ❜ ❨338❩ ❛ Is this the image of a god? My tooth for yours, your eye for mine? ❜ ❨339❩ ❛ Without the light, no chance; without the dark, no dance. ❜ ❨340❩ ❛ Why are we designed to see the world as supremely beautiful just as we're about to be snuffed? Do rabbits feel the same as the fox teeth bite down on their necks? Is it mercy? ❜ ❨341❩ ❛ Love is useless, it leads you into dumb exchanges in which you give too much away, and then you get bitter and mean. ❜ ❨342❩ ❛ Maybe sadness is a kind of hunger. Maybe the two go together. ❜ ❨343❩ ❛ Now I can see how that can happen. You can fall in love with anybody -- a fool, a criminal, a nothing. There are no good rules. ❜ ❨344❩ ❛ If you really want to stay the same age you are now forever and ever, try jumping off the roof: death's a sure-fire method for stopping time. ❜ ❨345❩ ❛ You couldn’t leave words lying around where our enemies might find them. ❜ ❨346❩ ❛ I'm fine, for the moment. And the moment is the only time we can be fine in. ❜ ❨347❩ ❛ Because if you can't wish, why bother? ❜ ❨348❩ ❛ It's better to hope than mope! ❜ ❨349❩ ❛ Reality has too much darkness in it. Too many crows. ❜ ❨350❩ ❛ In any case, time is not a thing that passes, it’s a sea on which you float. ❜ ❨351❩ ❛ I know I’m deceiving myself, but I prefer to deceive myself. I desperately need to believe such pure joy is still possible. ❜ ❨352❩ ❛ Too much God and you overdose. God needs to be filtered. ❜ ❨353❩ ❛ Behind my eyelids I saw an animal. It was golden colour, with gentle green eyes and canine teeth, and curly wool instead of fur. It opened its mouth, but it did not speak. Instead, it yawned. ❜ ❨354❩ ❛ ‘Why can't I believe?’ I asked the darkness. ❜ ❨355❩ ❛ Everyone’s too sad for everything. ❜ ❨356❩ ❛ If you can’t stop the waves, go sailing. ❜ ❨357❩ ❛ I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary. ❜ ❨358❩ ❛ Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them. ❜ ❨359❩ ❛ In the end, we'll all become stories. ❜ ❨360❩ ❛ I am inadequate and stupid, without worth. I might as well be dead. ❜ ❨361❩ ❛ If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you'd be doomed. You'd be ruined as God. ❜ ❨362❩ ❛ If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. ❜ ❨363❩ ❛ Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results. ❜ ❨364❩ ❛ Time in dreams is frozen. You can never get away from where you've been. ❜ ❨365❩ ❛ Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? ❜ ❨366❩ ❛ We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly. ❜ ❨367❩ ❛ If I love you, is that a fact or a weapon? ❜ ❨368❩ ❛ You fit into me like a hook into an eye. ❜ ❨369❩ ❛ Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened. ❜ ❨370❩ ❛ Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. ❜ ❨371❩ ❛ Women have curious ways of hurting someone else. ❜ ❨372❩ ❛ This is the one song everyone would like to learn: the song that is irresistible: the song that forces men to leap overboard in squadrons. ❜ ❨373❩ ❛ Get rid of death. Make it be spring. ❜ ❨374❩ ❛ You are innocent as a bathtub full of bullets. ❜ ❨375❩ ❛ I am the space you desecrate as you pass through. ❜ ❨376❩ ❛ Favour me and give me riches, destroy my enemies. Save me from death. ❜ ❨377❩ ❛ She is a raw voice loose in the rooms beneath me. ❜ ❨378❩ ❛ Isn't the moon warm enough for you, why do you need the blanket of another body? ❜ ❨379❩ ❛ This is a torch song. Touch me and you'll burn. ❜ ❨380❩ ❛ If you look long enough eventually you will see me. ❜ ❨381❩ ❛ I would like to sleep with you, to enter your sleep as its smooth dark wave slides over my head. ❜ ❨382❩ ❛ I would like to give you the silver branch, the small white flower, the one word that will protect you from the grief. ❜ ❨383❩ ❛ But some people can't tell where it hurts. They can't calm down. They can't ever stop howling. ❜ ❨384❩ ❛ How else can we live, these days, except in the midst of ruin? ❜ ❨385❩ ❛ What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question. ❜ ❨386❩ ❛ Gods always come in handy, they justify almost anything. ❜ ❨387❩ ❛ We loved with a love that was more than love. ❜ ❨388❩ ❛ Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. ❜ ❨389❩ ❛ The boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? ❜ ❨390❩ ❛ There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion. ❜ ❨391❩ ❛ Never to suffer would never to have been blessed. ❜ ❨392❩ ❛ Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear. ❜ ❨393❩ ❛ And all I loved, I loved alone. ❜ ❨394❩ ❛ Years of love have been forgot, in the hatred of a minute. ❜ ❨395❩ ❛ The best things in life make you sweaty. ❜ ❨396❩ ❛ There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. ❜ ❨397❩ ❛ Anything is better than this agony. ❜ ❨398❩ ❛ You fancy me mad. ❜ ❨399❩ ❛ I hear all things in the heaven and in the earth. ❜ ❨400❩ ❛ Who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? ❜ ❨401❩ ❛ Leave my loneliness unbroken! ❜ ❨402❩ ❛ A more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrills every fibre of my frame. ❜ ❨403❩ ❛ The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. ❜ ❨404❩ ❛ Let my heart be still a moment. ❜ ❨405❩ ❛ You call it hope —  It is but agony of desire. ❜ ❨406❩ ❛ Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or silly action for no other reason than because he knows he should not? ❜ ❨407❩ ❛ To die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths! ❜ ❨408❩ ❛ The beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage. ❜ ❨409❩ ❛ Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive. ❜ ❨410❩ ❛ I have been happy, though in a dream. ❜ ❨411❩ ❛ Nevermore. ❜ ❨412❩ ❛ The truth is, I am heartily sick of this life. ❜ ❨413❩ ❛ I am convinced that every thing is going wrong. ❜ ❨414❩ ❛ The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls. ❜ ❨415❩ ❛ And if I died, at least I will have died for you! ❜ ❨416❩ ❛ It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. ❜ ❨417❩ ❛ Hurt and humiliation — But this, I can not take. ❜ ❨418❩ ❛ The walls in there have ears. ❜ ❨419❩ ❛ This is for your ears only. ❜ ❨420❩ ❛ What is it? You have me scared. ❜ ❨421❩ ❛ Whoever isn’t for us, is against us. ❜ ❨422❩ ❛ You are just a body; to be dumped, disposed of like a carcass, left out for the birds to feed on. ❜ ❨423❩ ❛ The dead will have to forgive me. ❜ ❨424❩ ❛ From now on and no matter how your mind may I change, I will not accept your help. ❜ ❨425❩ ❛ If death comes, so be it. There will be glory in it. ❜ ❨426❩ ❛ Live, then; and live with your choice. ❜ ❨427❩ ❛ I am doing what has to be done. ❜ ❨428❩ ❛ Nothing is going to stop the ones that love you from keeping on loving you. ❜ ❨429❩ ❛ Worst is the man who has all the good advice, and then because his nerve fails, fails to act in accordance with it, as a leader should. ❜ ❨430❩ ❛ Only a loony would walk himself into this. ❜ ❨431❩ ❛ Why do you need such fences and defences? ❜ ❨432❩ ❛ Enough. Do not anger me. ❜ ❨433❩ ❛ The gods, you think, will side with the likes of him? ❜ ❨434❩ ❛ Watch it. You are over stepping. ❜ ❨435❩ ❛ I warn you. You should keep a civil tongue. ❜ ❨436❩ ❛ There is no such thing as an oath the can not be broken. ❜ ❨437❩ ❛ Every now and then, the things you’d hardly let yourself imagine, actually happen. ❜ ❨438❩ ❛ And you stand over this? This is the truth? ❜ ❨439❩ ❛ The bigger the resistance, the bigger the collapse. ❜ ❨440❩ ❛ Iron that’s forged the hardest, snaps the quickest. ❜ ❨441❩ ❛ Even the wildest horses come to heel when they are reined & bitted right. ❜ ❨442❩ ❛ That’s how guilt affects some people. They break and everything comes out. ❜ ❨443❩ ❛ Will it be enough for you? To see me executed? ❜ ❨444❩ ❛ So you know something no one else knows? ❜ ❨445❩ ❛ They know it too. They are just too afraid to say it. ❜ ❨446❩ ❛ If you die, how will I keep on living? ❜ ❨447❩ ❛ There was a star riding through clouds one night, & I said to the star, 'Consume me'. ❜ ❨448❩ ❛ How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. ❜ ❨449❩ ❛ Alone, I often fall down into nothingness. I have to bang my head against some hard door to call myself back to the body. ❜ ❨450❩ ❛ I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me. ❜ ❨451❩ ❛ For this moment, this one moment, we are together.  ❜ ❨452❩ ❛ Come, pain, feed on me. Bury your fangs in my flesh. Tear me asunder. ❜ ❨453❩ ❛ I am as neat as a cat in my habits. ❜ ❨454❩ ❛ Everything falls in a tremendous shower, dissolving me. ❜ ❨455❩ ❛ I am the foam that sweeps and fills the uttermost rims of the rocks with whiteness; I am also a girl, here in this room. ❜ ❨456❩ ❛ We are cut, we are fallen. We are become part of that unfeeling universe ❨457❩ that sleeps when we are at our quickest and burns red when we lie ❨458❩ asleep. ❜ ❨459❩ ❛ These moments of escape are not to be despised. They come too seldom. ❜ ❨460❩ ❛ Up here my eyes are green leaves, unseeing. ❜ ❨461❩ ❛ The moment is all; the moment is enough. ❜ ❨462❩ ❛ I do not want to be admired. I want to give, to be given. ❜ ❨463❩ ❛ I am not one and simple, but complex and many. ❜ ❨464❩ ❛ And if you are dead, I shall weep. ❜ ❨465❩ ❛ But beauty must be broken daily to remain beautiful. ❜ ❨466❩ ❛ But our hatred is almost indistinguishable from our love. ❜ ❨467❩ ❛ I desired always to stretch the night and fill it fuller and fuller with dreams. ❜ ❨468❩ ❛ Life is a dream surely. ❜ ❨469❩ ❛ I think sometimes I am not a woman, but the light that falls on this gate, on this ground. I am the seasons, I think sometimes, January, May, November; the mud, the mist, the dawn. ❜ ❨470❩ ❛ Oh, I am in love with life! ❜ ❨471❩ ❛ I have been knotted; I have been torn apart. ❜ ❨472❩ ❛ There was no freedom in life, and certainly there was none in death. ❜ ❨473❩ ❛ I do not know. I do not know myself sometimes, or how to measure and name and count out the grains that make me what I am. ❜ ❨474❩ ❛ I ride rough waters, and shall sink with no one to save me. ❜ ❨475❩ ❛ I am above the earth now. I am no longer upright, to be knocked against and damaged. ❜ ❨476❩ ❛ I see it all. I feel it all. ❜ ❨477❩ ❛ Death is woven in with the violets. Death and again death. ❜ ❨478❩ ❛ We have been walking for hours it seems. But where? I cannot remember. ❜ ❨479❩ ❛ If we were all on trial for our thoughts, we would all be hanged. ❜ ❨480❩ ❛ When you are in the middle of a story it isn't a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass. ❜ ❨481❩ ❛ Murderess is a strong word to have attached to you. It has a smell to it, that word; - musky and oppressive, like dead flowers in a vase.  ❜ ❨482❩ ❛ Sometimes at night I whisper it over to myself: Murderess, murderess. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt across the floor. ❜ ❨483❩ ❛ If the world treats you well, you come to believe you are deserving of it. ❜ ❨484❩ ❛ If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go. ❜ ❨485❩ ❛ It’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength. ❜ ❨486❩ ❛ There is no fool like an educated fool. ❜ ❨487❩ ❛ There are many dangerous things that may take place in a bed. ❜ ❨488❩ ❛ I am afraid of falling into hopeless despair, over my wasted life, and I am still not sure how it happened. ❜ ❨489❩ ❛ Underneath it all is another feeling, a feeling of being wide-eyed awake and watchful. ❜ ❨490❩ ❛ And underneath all that is another feeling still, a feeling like being torn open; not like a body of flesh, it is not painful as such, but like a peach; and not even torn open, but ripe and splitting open of its own accord.  ❜ ❨491❩ ❛ The small details of life often hide a great significance. ❜ ❨492❩ ❛ Guilt comes to you not from the things you've done, but from the things that others have done to you. ❜ ❨493❩ ❛ I wonder, how can I be all of these different things at once? ❜ ❨494❩ ❛ It is always a mistake to curse back openly at those who are stronger than you unless there is a fence between. ❜ ❨495❩ ❛ Some call this "Eve's curse," but I think that is stupid because the real curse of Eve was having to put up with the nonsense of Adam. ❜ ❨496❩ ❛ I don't know why they are all so eager to be remembered. What good will it do them? There are some things that should be forgotten by everyone, and never spoken of again. ❜ ❨497❩ ❛ I would never blame a human creature for feeling lonely. ❜ ❨498❩ ❛ If they want a monster so badly they ought to be provided by one. ❜ ❨499❩ ❛ It’s as if I never existed, because no trace of me remains, I have left no marks. And that way I cannot be followed. It is almost the same as being innocent. ❜ ❨500❩ ❛ Today you wear your habitual expression of strained anxiety; you smell of violets. ❜ ❨501❩ ❛ Of course you have always been an idealist, and filled with your optimistic dreams; but reality must at some time obtrude. ❜ ❨502❩ ❛ I wonder what would become of me, and comfort myself that in a hundred years I will be dead and at peace. ❜ ❨503❩ ❛ For it is not always the one that strikes the blow that is the actual murderer. ❜ ❨504❩ ❛ There is a “do this” or “do that” with God, but not any “because”. ❜ ❨505❩ ❛ If you have a need and they find it out, they will use it against you. The best way is to stop from wanting anything. ❜ ❨506❩ ❛ They say, why don’t you ever smile or laugh, we never see you smiling, and I say I suppose I have gotten out of the way of it, my face won’t bend in that direction any more. ❜ ❨507❩ ❛ I was shut up inside that doll of myself, and my true voice could not get out. ❜ ❨508❩ ❛ I see what you’re after. You are a collector. You think all you have to do is give me an apple, and then you can collect me. ❜ ❨509❩ ❛ If you want to be an asshole, it's a free country. Millions before you have made the same life choice. ❜ ❨510❩ ❛ Then there's the future. Sheer vertigo. ❜ ❨511❩ ❛ Nature is to zoos as God is to churches. ❜ ❨512❩ ❛ After everything that's happened, how can the world still be so beautiful? ❜ ❨513❩ ❛ There's something to be said for hunger: at least it lets you know you're still alive. ❜ ❨514❩ ❛ These things sneak up on me for no reason, these flashes of irrational happiness. It's probably a vitamin deficiency. ❜ ❨515❩ ❛ Toast cannot be explained by any rational means. Toast is me. I am toast. ❜ ❨516❩ ❛ You can’t buy it, but it has a price. Everything has a price. ❜ ❨517❩ ❛ As a species were doomed by hope, then? You could call it hope. That, or desperation. ❜ ❨518❩ ❛ I am not my childhood. ❜ ❨519❩ ❛ Human beings hope they can stick their souls into someone else and live on forever. ❜ ❨520❩ ❛ “I'll make you mine”, lovers said in old books. They never said, “I'll make you me.” ❜ ❨521❩ ❛ How much is too much, how far is too far? ❜ ❨522❩ ❛ Expectation isn't the same as desire. ❜ ❨523❩ ❛ Why not cut to the chase? ❜ ❨524❩ ❛ Maybe there aren't any solutions. Human society, corpses and rubble. ❜ ❨525❩ ❛ I thought you didn’t believe in God. ❜ ❨526❩ ❛ I need at least the illusion of being understood. ❜ ❨527❩ ❛ What change would have altered the course of events? In the big picture, nothing. In the small picture, so much. ❜ ❨528❩ ❛ You are only looking at the dirt under your feet. It's not good for you. ❜ ❨529❩ ❛ I like to keep only the bright side of myself turned towards you.  ❜ ❨530❩ ❛ Grief in the face of inevitable death. The wish to stop time. The human condition. ❜ ❨531❩ ❛ So many crucial events take place behind people’s backs, when they aren’t in a position to watch: birth and death, for instance. ❜ ❨532❩ ❛ Would you kill someone you loved to spare them pain? ❜ ❨533❩ ❛ When the water’s moving faster than the boat, you can’t control a thing. ❜ ❨534❩ ❛ Don't be so fucking sentimental. ❜ ❨535❩ ❛ Wrong, as usual. ❜ ❨536❩ ❛ Why do you want to talk about ugly things? ❜ ❨537❩ ❛ I understand why serial killers send helpful clues to the police. ❜ ❨538❩ ❛ Take your time, leave mine alone. ❜ ❨539❩ ❛ You will hear thunder and remember me. ❜ ❨540❩ ❛ If you were music, I would listen to you ceaselessly. ❜ ❨541❩ ❛ I seem to myself an accidental guest in this dreadful body. ❜ ❨542❩ ❛ Call me a sinner, mock me maliciously. ❜ ❨543❩ ❛ I, from the very beginning, seemed to myself like someone's dream or delirium. Or a reflection in someone else's mirror. Without flesh, without meaning, without a name. ❜ ❨544❩ ❛ I knew the list of crimes that I was destined to commit. ❜ ❨545❩ ❛ The future ripens in the past, so the past rots in the future. ❜ ❨546❩ ❛ You are untranslatable into any one tongue. ❜ ❨547❩ ❛ I was hoping my silence would fit yours. ❜ ❨548❩ ❛ See, we were never about butterflies. All about us is unearthly and radiant. ❜ ❨549❩ ❛ You do not know just what you've been forgiven. ❜ ❨550❩ ❛ I need to slaughter my memory.  ❜ ❨551❩ ❛ Forgive me that I appeared to you in waking dreams. ❜ ❨552❩ ❛ I will condemn, I will forget, I will give comfort to the enemy. ❜ ❨553❩ ❛ I know beginnings, I know endings too, and life-in-death. ❜ ❨554❩ ❛ Wild honey smells of freedom. But gold smells of nothing. ❜ ❨555❩ ❛ You are three times more beautiful than angels. ❜ ❨556❩ ❛ I will kill you without spilling your blood on the ground, not touching you with my hand, not giving you one glance. ❜ ❨557❩ ❛ You invented me. There is no such earthly being. ❜ ❨558❩ ❛ You’re late. Way too late. I’m glad to see you, nonetheless. ❜ ❨559❩ ❛ Forgive me that I felt forsaken. Forgive me that I kept mistaking too many others for you. ❜ ❨560❩ ❛ Real tenderness can’t be confused, it’s quiet and can’t be heard. ❜ ❨561❩ ❛ What else lived in that house besides us? ❜ ❨562❩ ❛ How unhappy we are together! ❜ ❨563❩ ❛ I defend not my voice, but my silence. ❜ ❨564❩ ❛ Without love, I'm more at ease, I'm sure. ❜ ❨565❩ ❛ I've got no more tears or explanations. ❜ ❨566❩ ❛ I’m not complaining. Happiness is not for me. ❜ ❨567❩ ❛ Are you not the only tie between good and evil, earthly pits and paradise? ❜ ❨568❩ ❛ In the morning we shall find out who has died in the night. ❜ ❨569❩ ❛ I was not a lovable child, and I've grown into a deeply unlovable adult. ❜ ❨570❩ ❛ The truly frightening flaw in humanity is our capacity for cruelty - we all have it. ❜ ❨571❩ ❛ I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark. ❜ ❨572❩ ❛ I am not angry or sad or happy to see you. I could not give a shit. You don't even ripple. ❜ ❨573❩ ❛ I was raised feral, and I mostly stayed that way. ❜ ❨574❩ ❛ I can feel a better version of me somewhere in there - hidden behind a liver or attached to a bit of spleen. But the meanness usually wins out. ❜ ❨575❩ ❛ I felt something loosen in me, that shouldn't have loosened. A stitch come undone. ❜ ❨576❩ ❛ Everyone who keeps a secret, itches to tell it. ❜ ❨577❩ ❛ Coffee goes great with sudden death. ❜ ❨578❩ ❛ I should just listen to my gut and then do the opposite. ❜ ❨579❩ ❛ “Smile, it can't be that bad!” Yeah, actually, it can, jackwad. ❜ ❨580❩ ❛ Everything bad in the world already did happen. ❜ ❨581❩ ❛ You’re going to find peace? Like knowing is somehow going to fix you? ❜ ❨582❩ ❛ Instead of asking yourself what happened, just accept that it happened. ❜ ❨583❩ ❛ Homesick for a place I've never been. ❜ ❨584❩ ❛ Worries find you easily enough without inviting them. ❜ ❨585❩ ❛ It is always consoling to think of suicide. It's what gets one through many a bad night. ❜ ❨586❩ ❛ Do you understand this is serious? ❜ ❨587❩ ❛ Sometimes it feels good to fuck with something. Instead of always being fucked with. ❜ ❨588❩ ❛ How could you kill something you cared enough to name? ❜ ❨589❩ ❛ Draw a picture of my soul, and it’d be a scribble with fangs. ❜ ❨590❩ ❛ We have the same chemicals in our blood: shame, anger, greed. Unjustified nostalgia. ❜ ❨591❩ ❛ I appreciate a straightforward apology the way a tone-deaf person enjoys a fine piece of music. ❜ ❨592❩ ❛ The phrase fuck you may not rest on the tip of my tongue, but it’s near. Midtongue. ❜ ❨593❩ ❛ Nothing to it but to do it. ❜ ❨594❩ ❛ There are a lot of people who deserve a lesson, deserve to really understand, that nothing comes easy, that most things are going to go sour. ❜ ❨595❩ ❛ If ifs and buts were candies and nuts we’d all have a very Merry Christmas. ❜ ❨596❩ ❛ Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. ❜ ❨597❩ ❛ What does it do to a girl who knows her mother is a murderer? ❜ ❨598❩ ❛ That mean old bitch across the street bit it. ❜ ❨599❩ ❛ Survival is a talent. ❜ ❨600❩ ❛ Crazy isn't being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It’s you or me amplified. If you ever told a lie and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a child forever. ❜ ❨601❩ ❛ Who has the courage to burn themselves? ❜ ❨602❩ ❛ Is insanity just a matter of dropping the act? ❜ ❨603❩ ❛ Have you ever confused a dream with life? Or stolen something when you have the cash? Have you ever been blue? Or thought your train moving while sitting still? ❜ ❨604❩ ❛ You need to be well fed, clothed, and housed to have time for this much self-pity. ❜ ❨605❩ ❛ When I am supposed to be awake, I am asleep; when I am supposed to speak, I am silent. When a pleasure offers itself to me, I avoid it. ❜ ❨606❩ ❛ There is thought, and then there is thinking about thoughts, and they don't feel the same. ❜ ❨607❩ ❛ In a strange way we are free. We've reached the end of the line. We have nothing more to lose. ❜ ❨608❩ ❛ The world won’t stop because we aren’t in it anymore. ❜ ❨609❩ ❛ I can't answer the real question. All I can tell you is, it's easy. ❜ ❨610❩ ❛ I am lighter, airier than I’ve been in years. ❜ ❨611❩ ❛ I am not dead, yet something in me definitely is. ❜ ❨612❩ ❛ You meant that as an insult but I am taking it as a compliment. ❜ ❨613❩ ❛ What life can recover from that? ❜ ❨614❩ ❛ It's a fairly accurate portrait of me. It's accurate but it isn't profound. ❜ ❨615❩ ❛ Pull yourself together! There's nothing wrong with you. ❜ ❨616❩ ❛ It's quiet. It's like― I don't know. It's like falling off a cliff. ❜ ❨617❩ ❛ Once you start parsing a face, it's a peculiar item: squishy, pointy, with lots of air vents and wet spots. ❜ ❨618❩ ❛ I lost him. I did it on purpose. ❜ ❨619❩ ❛ It’s a mean world. There’s nobody to take care of you out there. ❜ ❨620❩ ❛ Reality is getting too dense. ❜ ❨621❩ ❛ I'm ambivalent. In fact that's my new favourite word. ❜ ❨622❩ ❛ I can't come up with reassuring answers to the terrible questions you raise. ❜ ❨623❩ ❛ A spring day, the sort that gives people hope: all soft winds and delicate smells of warm earth. Suicide weather. ❜ ❨624❩ ❛ Twenty-five chocolate chip cookies would be the perfect dinner. ❜ ❨625❩ ❛ A thought is a hard thing to control. ❜ ❨626❩ ❛ Life demands skills I don’t have. ❜ ❨627❩ ❛ Light like this does not exist, but we wish it did. We wish the sun could make us young and beautiful. Most of all, we wish that everyone we knew could be brightened simply by our looking at them. ❜ ❨628❩ ❛ It never stops, even at night, it’s my lullaby. ❜ ❨629❩ ❛ Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. ❜ ❨630❩ ❛ This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes. ❜ ❨631❩ ❛ I have done something wrong, something so huge I can't even see it, something that's drowning me. ❜ ❨632❩ ❛ Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. ❜ ❨633❩ ❛ Hatred is easier. Hatred is clear, metallic, one-handed, unwavering; unlike love. ❜ ❨634❩ ❛ Potential has a shelf life. ❜ ❨635❩ ❛ Don’t move. Stay like that, let me have that. ❜ ❨636❩ ❛ I have come to the edge, of the land. I could get pushed over. ❜ ❨637❩ ❛ Never pray for justice, because you might get some. ❜ ❨638❩ ❛ It disturbs me to learn I have hurt someone unintentionally. I want all my hurts to be intentional. ❜ ❨639❩ ❛ We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat. That counts for something. ❜ ❨640❩ ❛ This is what I miss, not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen. ❜ ❨641❩ ❛ I am not good. I know too much to be good. I know myself. I know myself to be vengeful, greedy, secretive and sly. ❜ ❨642❩ ❛ You are amazing. Amazing and agonising and almost lethal. ❜ ❨643❩ ❛ In my dreams of this city I am always lost. ❜ ❨644❩ ❛ I don't know where these feelings have come from, I don’t know what I've done. ❜ ❨645❩ ❛ I am not the centre of your story, you are.  ❜ ❨646❩ ❛ I’m mad because you’re an asshole. ❜ ❨647❩ ❛ It's enormously pleasing to me, walking away. It's like being able to make people appear and vanish, at will. ❜ ❨648❩ ❛ There is never only one of anyone. ❜ ❨649❩ ❛ I can't do this without feeling I'm acting. ❜ ❨650❩ ❛ I am prepared for almost anything; except absence, except silence. ❜ ❨651❩ ❛ I’m losing my appetite for strangers. ❜ ❨652❩ ❛ You wear your cravings on the outside, like the suckers on a squid. You want it all. ❜ ❨653❩ ❛ Knowing too much about other people weakens you. You are forced to understand their reasons for doing things. ❜ ❨654❩ ❛ I have lost confidence: perhaps all I will ever be is what I am now. ❜ ❨655❩ ❛ Echoes of light, shining out of the midst of nothing. It's old light, and there's not much of it. But it's enough to see by. ❜ ❨656❩ ❛ Whoever cares the most will lose. ❜ ❨657❩ ❛ Young women need unfairness, it’s one of their few defences.  ❜ ❨658❩ ❛ Time has gone on without you. ❜ ❨659❩ ❛ Don't let the bastards grind you down. ❜ ❨660❩ ❛ Who can remember pain, once it’s over? Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind. ❜ ❨661❩ ❛ Better never means better for everyone. It always means worse, for some. ❜ ❨662❩ ❛ There is more than one kind of freedom. Freedom to and freedom from. ❜ ❨663❩ ❛ Remember that forgiveness too is a power. ❜ ❨664❩ ❛ I am not your justification for existence. ❜ ❨665❩ ❛ I want to be valued, in ways that I am not; I want to be more than valuable. ❜ ❨666❩ ❛ If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending. ❜ ❨667❩ ❛ All you have to do is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard. ❜ ❨668❩ ❛ Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations. ❜ ❨669❩ ❛ I want everything back, the way it was. ❜ ❨670❩ ❛ You can't help what you feel, but you can help how you behave. ❜ ❨671❩ ❛ Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you'd be boiled to death before you knew it. ❜ ❨672❩ ❛ To want is to have a weakness. ❜ ❨673❩ ❛ There isn't even an enemy you could put your finger on. ❜ ❨674❩ ❛ The past is a great darkness, filled with echoes. ❜ ❨675❩ ❛ Ordinary is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary. ❜ ❨676❩ ❛ I wish this story were different. I wish it were more civilised. I wish it showed me in a better light. ❜ ❨677❩ ❛ The night is mine, my own time, to do with it as I will, as long as I am quiet. As long as I don't move. As long as I lie still. ❜ ❨678❩ ❛ By telling you anything at all I'm at least believing in you. ❜ ❨679❩ ❛ Whatever is silenced will clamour to be heard. ❜ ❨680❩ ❛ Don't worry about forgiving me right now. There are more important things. ❜ ❨681❩ ❛ Keep the others safe. Don't let them suffer too much. If they have to die, let it be fast. ❜ ❨682❩ ❛ The body is so easily damaged, so easily disposed of, water and chemicals is all it is, hardly more to it than a jellyfish, drying on sand. ❜ ❨683❩ ❛ The world is full of weapons if you're looking for them. ❜ ❨684❩ ❛ Nobody's heart is perfect. ❜ ❨685❩ ❛ One false move and I'm dead. ❜ ❨686❩ ❛ Watch out. I've got my eye on you. ❜ ❨687❩ ❛ Fear is a powerful stimulant. ❜ ❨688❩ ❛ I couldn't afford to lose you. ❜ ❨689❩ ❛ Name one hero who was happy. ---- You can’t. ❜ ❨690❩ ❛ I feel like I could eat the world raw. ❜ ❨691❩ ❛ We are like gods at the dawning of the world. ❜ ❨692❩ ❛ I could recognise him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world. ❜ ❨693❩ ❛ There are no bargains between lion and men. I will kill you and eat you raw. ❜ ❨694❩ ❛ You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature. ❜ ❨695❩ ❛ He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget it. ❜ ❨696❩ ❛ Some men gain glory after they die, others fade. ❜ ❨697❩ ❛ I am made of memories. ❜ ❨698❩ ❛ Will you come with me? ❜ ❨699❩ ❛ I wish I had let you all die. ❜ ❨700❩ ❛ It is right to seek peace for the dead. You and I both know there is no peace for those who live after. ❜ ❨701❩ ❛ Bury us. Let us be free. ❜ ❨702❩ ❛ Go. He waits for you. ❜ ❨703❩ ❛ Nothing could eclipse the stain of this dirty, mortal mediocrity. ❜ ❨704❩ ❛ I know I have told you of this. ❜ ❨705❩ ❛ I don't know how you remember them all. I swear they look the same to me. ❜ ❨706❩ ❛ Perhaps you should get some new stories, so I don’t fucking kill myself of boredom. ❜ ❨707❩ ❛ I yearn for the darkness and silence of the underworld, where I can rest. ❜ ❨708❩ ❛ There is no honour in betraying your friends. ❜ ❨709❩ ❛ There is no answer. Whichever you choose, you are wrong. ❜ ❨710❩ ❛ Divine blood flows differently. ❜ ❨711❩ ❛ How is there glory in taking life? We die so easily. ❜ ❨712❩ ❛ This is what I will miss, I think. I will kill myself rather than miss it. ❜ ❨713❩ ❛ How long do we have? ❜ ❨714❩ ❛ Do you think we fight hopeless wars? ❜ ❨715❩ ❛ There is no law that gods must be fair. ❜ ❨716❩ ❛ I do not fear ridicule. I never have. ❜ ❨717❩ ❛ You were always better with words than I. ❜ ❨718❩ ❛ Who can be ashamed to lose to such beauty? ❜ ❨719❩ ❛ When you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. ❜ ❨720❩ ❛ That's how the madness of the world tries to colonise you: from the outside in, forcing you to live in its reality. ❜ ❨721❩ ❛ The shadows of the abyss are like the petals of a monstrous flower that shall blossom within the skull and expand the mind beyond what any man can bear. ❜ ❨722❩ ❛ Silence creates violence. ❜ ❨723❩ ❛ Some questions will ruin you if you are denied the answer long enough. ❜ ❨724❩ ❛ There are certain kinds of connections that are so deep that when broken you feel the snap of it inside you. ❜ ❨725❩ ❛ Nothing that ever lived and breathed was truly objective—even in a vacuum, even if all that possessed the brain was a self-immolating desire for the truth. ❜ ❨726❩ ❛ We all live in a kind of continuous dream. ❜ ❨727❩ ❛ You can either waste time worrying about a death that might not come or concentrate on what’s left to you. ❜ ❨728❩ ❛ What can you do when your five senses are not enough? ❜ ❨729❩ ❛ We will neither be what we had been nor what we would become once we reach our destination. ❜ ❨730❩ ❛ Perhaps my only real expertise, my only talent, is to endure beyond the endurable. ❜ ❨731❩ ❛ When you are too close to the centre of a mystery there is no way to pull back. ❜ ❨732❩ ❛ I long ago stopped believing in promises. Biological imperatives, yes. Environmental factors, yes. Promises, no. ❜ ❨733❩ ❛ I look not for shooting stars but for fixed ones, and I try to imagine what kind of life lives in those celestial tidal pools so far from us. ❜ ❨734❩ ❛ I hesitated for just a moment. Some part of me wanted to see the creature, I think. If so, it was a very small part. I ran. ❜ ❨735❩ ❛ I don’t require any of this to have a deeper meaning. ❜ ❨736❩ ❛ All of this speculation is incomplete, inexact, inaccurate, useless. ❜ ❨737❩ ❛ We don’t have real answers, because we still don’t know what questions to ask. Our instruments are useless, our methodology broken, our motivations selfish. ❜ ❨738❩ ❛ This part I will do alone. Don’t follow. ❜ ❨739❩ ❛ People my entire life have told me I am too much in control, but that has never been the case. I have never truly been in control. ❜ ❨740❩ ❛ Has there always been someone like me to bury the bodies, to have regrets, to carry on after everyone else was dead? ❜ ❨741❩ ❛ I loved them, but I didn’t need them, and I thought that was the way it was supposed to be. ❜ ❨742❩ ❛ Places can impress themselves upon me, and I can become part of them with ease. ❜ ❨743❩ ❛ There is no one with me. I am all by myself. ❜ ❨744❩ ❛ Pretending often leads to becoming a reasonable facsimile of what you mimic. ❜ ❨745❩ ❛ I think you're confusing suicide with self-destruction, and they're very different. Almost none of us commit suicide, whereas almost all of us self-destruct. ❜ ❨746❩ ❛ What did you eat? You had rations for only two weeks. You were there for nearly four months. ❜ ❨747❩ ❛ Something here is making giant waves in the gene pool. ❜ ❨748❩ ❛ I need to know what’s inside. ❜ ❨749❩ ❛ These aren't decisions. They're impulses ❜ ❨750❩ ❛ What do you think I do when you’re away? Do you think I’m out in the garden pinning, looking up at the sky? ❜ ❨751❩ ❛ If I know what’s happened I can save their life. ❜ ❨752❩ ❛ They either went crazy or something in here killed them. ❜ ❨753❩ ❛ Something is coming through the fence! ❜ ❨754❩ ❛ Nothing is written in the stars. Not these stars, nor any others. No one controls your destiny. ❜ ❨755❩ ❛ People who claim that they're evil are usually no worse than the rest of us. ❜ ❨756❩ ❛ Happy endings are still endings. ❜ ❨757❩ ❛ We believe in all sorts of things that aren't true; -- we call it history. ❜ ❨758❩ ❛ Does the devil ever struggle to be good again, or if so is he not a devil? ❜ ❨759❩ ❛ In the lives of children, pumpkins turn into coaches, mice and rats turn into men. When we grow up, we realise it is far more common for men to turn into rats. ❜ ❨760❩ ❛ Girls need cold anger. They need the cold simmer, the ceaseless grudge, the talent to avoid forgiveness, the side stepping of compromise.  ❜ ❨761❩ ❛ Love makes hunters of us all. ❜ ❨762❩ ❛ There is much to hate in this world and way too much to love. ❜ ❨763❩ ❛ You confuse not speaking with not listening. ❜ ❨764❩ ❛ As long as people are going to call you a lunatic anyway, why not get the benefit of it? It liberates you from convention. ❜ ❨765❩ ❛ The eye is always caught by light, but shadows have more to say. ❜ ❨766❩ ❛ Not everyone is born a witch or a saint. Not everyone is born talented, or crooked, or blessed; some are born definite in no particular at all. ❜ ❨767❩ ❛ We are a fountain of shimmering contradictions, most of us. ❜ ❨768❩ ❛ The wickedness of men is that their power breeds stupidity and blindness. ❜ ❨769❩ ❛ I know you don't want to hear this but someone has to say it! You are out of control! ❜ ❨770❩ ❛ Even at the very worst - there is always choice. ❜ ❨771❩ ❛ Maybe the definition of home is the place where you are never forgiven. So you may always belong there, bound by guilt. And maybe the cost of belonging is worth it. ❜ ❨772❩ ❛ Cross a man and you struggle, one of you wins, you adjust and go on -- or you lie there dead. Cross a woman and the entire universe is changed. ❜ ❨773❩ ❛ That was such a wonderful time, even in its strangeness and sadness. Life isn't the same now. It's wonderful, but it isn't the same. ❜ ❨774❩ ❛ I don't care for approval, and I don't mind doing without. ❜ ❨775❩ ❛ It's where I live. A permanent state of bereavement. This is nothing new. ❜ ❨776❩ ❛ Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Always the godfather, never the god. ❜ ❨777❩ ❛ The world unwraps itself to you, again and again as soon as you are ready to see it anew. ❜ ❨778❩ ❛ Evil is an act, not an appetite. Everyone has the appetite. If you give in to it, that act is evil. The appetite is normal. ❜ ❨779❩ ❛ How many haven't wanted to slash the throat of some boor across the dining room table?  ❜ ❨780❩ ❛ Even God used silence as a strategy. ❜ ❨781❩ ❛ I learned failure early and mastered it. ❜ ❨782❩ ❛ It isn't whether you do it well or ill, it's that you do it all. ❜ ❨783❩ ❛ This is why you shouldn't fall in love, it blinds you. Love is a very wicked distraction. ❜ ❨784❩ ❛ Wisdom is not the understanding of mystery. Wisdom is accepting that mystery is beyond understanding. That's what makes it mystery. ❜ ❨785❩ ❛ Wrong takes an awful long time to be proven, in my experience. ❜ ❨786❩ ❛ Such brightness, as you know, decays brilliantly. ❜ ❨787❩ ❛ I take responsibility only for the future, not the past. The past can't hurt you the way the future can. ❜ ❨788❩ ❛ Tell me to mind my own business, tell me to go fuck myself, to piss off, go on, say it, but don’t tell me nothing’s wrong. ❜ ❨789❩ ❛ The truth isn't a thing of fact or reason. It is simply what everyone agrees on. ❜ ❨790❩ ❛ One can't make peace with another by force. ❜ ❨791❩ ❛ I am a forgettable leaf on a tree. ❜ ❨792❩ ❛ That's all I want; --- to do no harm. ❜ ❨793❩ ❛ I only believe in the opposite of luck, whatever that is. ❜ ❨794❩ ❛ Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves. ❜ ❨795❩ ❛ You’re too young to know that the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and thanks to that we manage to endure the burden of the past. ❜ ❨796❩ ❛ Love, no matter what else it might be, is a natural talent. You are either born knowing how, or you never know. ❜ ❨797❩ ❛ Whatever you do, you will be sorry all the rest of your life. ❜ ❨798❩ ❛ There is no God worth worrying about. ❜ ❨799❩ ❛ The only regret I will have in dying is if it is not for love. ❜ ❨800❩ ❛ Wisdom comes to us when it can no longer do any good. ❜ ❨801❩ ❛ Think of love as a state of grace, not the means to anything, but the very end in itself. ❜ ❨802❩ ❛ Only God knows how much I love you. ❜ ❨803❩ ❛ There is no greater glory than to die for love. ❜ ❨804❩ ❛ Nothing resembles a person as much as the way he dies. ❜ ❨805❩ ❛ Take advantage of it now, while you are young, and suffer all you can, because these things don't last your whole life. ❜ ❨806❩ ❛ Today, when I saw you, I realised that what is between us is nothing more than an illusion. ❜ ❨807❩ ❛ I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century. ❜ ❨808❩ ❛ I want to be myself again, to recover all that I was obliged to give up. ❜ ❨809❩ ❛ The only thing worse than bad health is a bad name. ❜ ❨810❩ ❛ This soup tastes like windows. ❜ ❨811❩ ❛ Why do you insist on talking about what does not exist? ❜ ❨812❩ ❛ One has to live a long time to know a man's true nature. ❜ ❨813❩ ❛ No, not rich, I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing. ❜ ❨814❩ ❛ My heart has more rooms than a whorehouse. ❜ ❨815❩ ❛ That may be the reason he does so many things, so that he will not have to think. ❜ ❨816❩ ❛ Love if it exists, is something separate: another life. ❜ ❨817❩ ❛ Things did not go as badly for me as they would for you. ❜ ❨818❩ ❛ There are things you do only for love. ❜ ❨819❩ ❛ I’ll have plenty of time to rest when I die. ❜ ❨820❩ ❛ There is no innocence more dangerous than the innocence of age. ❜ ❨821❩ ❛ You treat me as if I were just anybody. ❜ ❨822❩ ❛ The symptoms of love are the same as those of cholera. ❜ ❨823❩ ❛ There is no law, human or divine, that you have not ignored. ❜ ❨824❩ ❛ Why is it that I feel I've known you so many years? ❜ ❨825❩ ❛ Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. ❜ ❨826❩ ❛ It doesn't matter what you do, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. ❜ ❨827❩ ❛ We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real? ❜ ❨828❩ ❛ There must be something, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing. ❜ ❨829❩ ❛ If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn. ❜ ❨830❩ ❛ If you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore. ❜ ❨831❩ ❛ You can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. ❜ ❨832❩ ❛ It was a pleasure to burn. ❜ ❨833❩ ❛ I'm antisocial, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? ❜ ❨834❩ ❛ Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? ❜ ❨835❩ ❛ Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays? ❜ ❨836❩ ❛ Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? ❜ ❨837❩ ❛ I don't talk things. I talk the meaning of things. ❜ ❨838❩ ❛ I'll hold on to the world tight some day. I've got one finger on it now; that's a beginning. ❜ ❨839❩ ❛ I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough it'll make sense. ❜ ❨840❩ ❛ That's the good part of dying; when you've nothing to lose, you run any risk you want. ❜ ❨841❩ ❛ Someday we'll build the biggest goddamn steamshovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in it and cover it up. ❜ ❨842❩ ❛ You're not like the others. I've seen a few; I know. When I talk, you look at me. ❜ ❨843❩ ❛ You're afraid of making mistakes. Don't be. Mistakes can be profited by. ❜ ❨844❩ ❛ When they give you lined paper, write the other way. ❜ ❨845❩ ❛ The sun burnt every day. It burnt time. ❜ ❨846❩ ❛ We have everything we need to be happy but we aren't happy. Something is missing. ❜ ❨847❩ ❛ I feel I'm doing what I should've done a lifetime ago. ❜ ❨848❩ ❛ I'm not afraid. Maybe it's because I'm doing the right thing at last. Maybe it's because I've done a rash thing and don't want to look the coward to you. ❜ ❨849❩ ❛ Good God, who were those men? I never saw them before in my life! ❜ ❨850❩ ❛ How do you get so empty? Who takes it out of you? ❜ ❨851❩ ❛ It must be right. It seems so right. ❜ ❨852❩ ❛ To everything there is a season. Yes. A time to break down, and a time to build up. A time to keep silence and a time to speak. ❜ ❨853❩ ❛ It's my game. And no one can help me. Not even you. ❜ ❨854❩ ❛ What makes earth feel like hell is our expectation that it should feel like heaven. Earth is earth. Dead is dead. You’ll find out for yourself soon enough. ❜ ❨855❩ ❛ Death is a long process. Your body is just the first part of you that croaks. Beyond that, your dreams have to die. Then your expectations. Your anger and memories must die. Your ego. Your pride and shame and ambition and hope. ❜ ❨856❩ ❛ Help me give up my addiction to hope. ❜ ❨857❩ ❛ Life is short, death is forever. ❜ ❨858❩ ❛ Hope is something really tough and tenacious you have to give up. It’s an addiction to break. ❜ ❨859❩ ❛ If the living are haunted by the dead, then the dead are haunted by their own mistakes. ❜ ❨860❩ ❛ We all wish to be pursued. We all long to be desired. ❜ ❨861❩ ❛ All the demons of hell formerly reigned as gods in previous cultures. No it's not fair, but one man's god is another man's devil. ❜ ❨862❩ ❛ I can become someone else, not out of pressure and desperation, but merely because a new life sounds fun or interesting or joyful. ❜ ❨863❩ ❛ It's my petty fear of personal rejection that allows so many true evils to exist. My cowardice enables atrocities. ❜ ❨864❩ ❛ You fucked up. Game over. So just relax. ❜ ❨865❩ ❛ The greatest weapon any warrior can carry into battle is absolute certainty of her eternal soul. ❜ ❨866❩ ❛ If killing you will end my existence as well, be it. Small loss. Such a life, as your puppet, is not worth living. ❜ ❨867❩ ❛ I might be a touch of a sadist and a little bit jejune but at least I'm not a victim, not any longer. I hope. ❜ ❨868❩ ❛ Dying seems like the greatest weakness, and in a world where people say you're lazy for not shaving your legs, then being dead seems like the ultimate character flaw. ❜ ❨869❩ ❛ Any concept of right versus wrong, is merely a cultural construct relative to one specific time and place. ❜ ❨870❩ ❛ To prove that I exist I must kill you. ❜ ❨871❩ ❛ I'd say that my life has been a way-too-long case history of chasing rainbows. ❜ ❨872❩ ❛ The world is a battle for attention, a war to be heard. ❜ ❨873❩ ❛ Every garden looks beautiful in May. ❜ ❨874❩ ❛ When we neglect to fear such brittle monstrosity, we render it powerless. ❜ ❨875❩ ❛ My taste for power continues to grow, as does my ability to accrue it. ❜ ❨876❩ ❛ Such language! Why don't you just take a dump in my ears? ❜ ❨877❩ ❛ You’d be foolish to count on people displaying high standards of honesty. ❜ ❨878❩ ❛ Depending on her mood, she can be more frightening than any demon or devil you might ever run across. ❜ ❨879❩ ❛ Cross your fingers! Maybe death won't happen to you. ❜ ❨880❩ ❛ Do not die while wearing cheap shoes. ❜ ❨881❩ ❛ Old habits die hard. ❜ ❨882❩ ❛ It's our attachments to a fixed identity that torture us. ❜ ❨883❩ ❛ What do I think I am? In a thousand words; I don't have a clue. ❨884❩ ❛ If I am to be saved it is because your love redeems me. ❜ ❨885❩ ❛ All I wanted was to be loved for myself. ❜ ❨886❩ ❛ I have tasted all the happiness the world can offer. ❜ ❨887❩ ❛ Shall we pity him? Shall we curse him? ❜ ❨888❩ ❛ You have a heart that can hold the entire empire of the world. ❜ ❨889❩ ❛ Look, I am not laughing now, crying, crying for you. ❜ ❨890❩ ❛ Tonight I gave you my soul, and I am dead. ❜ ❨891❩ ❛ You are afraid of me! And yet I am not really wicked. Love me and you shall see! ❜ ❨892❩ ❛ Are people so unhappy when they love? --- Yes, when they love and are not sure of being loved. ❜ ❨893❩ ❛ Your soul is a beautiful thing. No emperor received so fair a gift. The angels wept tonight. ❜ ❨894❩ ❛ Blood!...Blood!... That's a good thing! ❜ ❨895❩ ❛ Now I want to live like everybody else. I want to have a life like everybody else. ❜ ❨896❩ ❛ You will be the happiest of women. And we will sing, all by ourselves, till we swoon away with delight. ❜ ❨897❩ ❛ I should be as gentle as a lamb; and you could do anything with me that you pleased. ❜ ❨898❩ ❛ I am going to die of love, I am dying of love. That's how it is. I loved you so. I still love you so. ❜ ❨899❩ ❛ I am dying of love for her, I tell you! If only you knew how beautiful she was when she let me kiss her. ❜ ❨900❩ ❛ He fills me with horror but I do not hate him. How can I hate him? ❜ ❨901❩ ❛ Holy angel, in Heaven blessed, my spirit longs with thee to rest. ❜ ❨902❩ ❛ Nothing is colder or more dead than my heart. ❜ ❨903❩ ❛ I had loved an angel and now I despise a woman. ❜ ❨904❩ ❛ Our lives are one masked ball. ❜ ❨905❩ ❛ Why do you condemn a man whom you have never met, whom no one knows and about whom even you yourself know nothing? ❜ ❨906❩ ❛ He would commit murder for me. ❜ ❨907❩ ❛ If I don't save her from the hands of that humbug, she is lost. But I shall save her. ❜ ❨908❩ ❛ We will go from here together or die together. ❜ ❨909❩ ❛ Your fear, your terror, all of that is just love and love of the most exquisite kind, the kind which people do not admit even to themselves. The kind that gives you a thrill, when you think of it. ❜ ❨910❩ ❛ Destiny has chained you to me forever. ❜ ❨911❩ ❛ You must never ask me that. ❜ ❨912❩ ❛ Are you afraid that you will change your mind? ❜ ❨913❩ ❛ You must come and fetch me in my dressing room at midnight exactly. ❜ ❨914❩ ❛ The holes in your life are permanent. You have to grow around them, like tree roots around concrete; you mould yourself through the gaps. ❜ ❨915❩ ❛ I have never understood how people can blithely disregard the damage they do by following their hearts. ❜ ❨916❩ ❛ There’s something comforting about the sight of strangers safe at home. ❜ ❨917❩ ❛ I have lost control over everything, even the places in my head. ❜ ❨918❩ ❛ It’s possible to miss what you’ve never had, to even mourn for it. ❜ ❨919❩ ❛ There’s nothing so painful, so corrosive, as suspicion. ❜ ❨920❩ ❛ When did you become so weak? ❜ ❨921❩ ❛ I don’t know where that strength went, I don’t remember losing it. I think that over time it got chipped away, bit by bit, by life, by the living of it. ❜ ❨922❩ ❛ Let’s be honest: women are still only really valued for two things—their looks and their role as mothers. ❜ ❨923❩ ❛ Sadness gets boring after a while, for the sad person and for everyone around them. ❜ ❨924❩ ❛ I’m playing at real life instead of actually living it. ❜ ❨925❩ ❛ I’ve just got to let myself feel the pain, because if I don’t, if I keep numbing it, it’ll never really go away. ❜ ❨926❩ ❛ I am not the girl I used to be. I am no longer desirable, I’m off-putting in some way. It’s as if people can see the damage written all over me, can see it in my face, the way I hold myself, the way I move. ❜ ❨927❩ ❛ Who was it that said following your heart is a good thing? It is pure egotism, a selfishness to conquer all. ❜ ❨928❩ ❛ It’s impossible to resist the kindness of strangers. ❜ ❨929❩ ❛ Sometimes I catch myself trying to remember the last time I had meaningful physical contact with another person, just a hug or a heartfelt squeeze of my hand, and my heart twitches. ❜ ❨930❩ ❛ I have to find a way of making myself happy, I have to stop looking for happiness elsewhere. ❜ ❨931❩ ❛ How did I find myself here? I wonder where it started, my decline; I wonder at what point I could have halted it. Where did I take the wrong turn? ❜ ❨932❩ ❛ Now look -- Now look what you made me do. ❜ ❨933❩ ❛ It’s okay, whatever you did, whatever you’ve done: you suffered, you hurt, you deserve forgiveness. ❜ ❨934❩ ❛ They’re what I lost, they’re everything I want to be. ❜ ❨935❩ ❛ You broke me and I broke us. ❜ ❨936❩ ❛ I’ve been the fool. If he does it with you, he’ll do it to you. ❜ ❨937❩ ❛ I’d never realised, not until now, how shameful it is to be pitied. ❜ ❨938❩ ❛ Sometimes, I don’t want to go anywhere, I think I’ll be happy if I never have to set foot outside the house again. ❜ ❨939❩ ❛ I don’t believe in soul mates, but there’s an understanding between us that I just haven’t felt before, or at least, not for a long time. ❜ ❨940❩ ❛ There can be no greater agony, nothing can be more painful than the not knowing, which will never end. ❜ ❨941❩ ❛ Being the other woman is a huge turn-on, there’s no point in denying it: you’re the one he can’t help but betray his wife for, even though he loves her. That’s just how irresistible you are. ❜ ❨942❩ ❛ I feel a rush of gratitude so strong, it feels almost like love. ❜ ❨943❩ ❛ You don’t know how determined I can be. Once I’ve made my mind up, I’m a force to be reckoned with. ❜ ❨944❩ ❛ The more I want to be oblivious, the less I can be. Life and light will not let me be. ❜ ❨945❩ ❛ You don’t have to be afraid of being alone. It’s not the worst thing, is it? ❜ ❨946❩ ❛ I have felt this way before. On a larger scale, to a more intense degree, of course, but I remember the quality of the pain. You don’t forget it. ❜ ❨947❩ ❛ If he thinks I’m going to sit around crying, he’s got another thing coming. ❜ ❨948❩ ❛ I don’t like to lose. It’s not like me. None of this is like me. I don’t get rejected. I’m the one who walks away. ❜ ❨949❩ ❛ I don’t remember anger, raging fury. I remember fear. ❜ ❨950❩ ❛ I can’t sleep. I haven’t slept in days. I hate it, hate insomnia more than anything, just lying there, brain going round, tick, tick, tick, tick. ❜ ❨951❩ ❛ Maybe the courage I need has nothing to do with telling the truth and everything to do with walking away. ❜ ❨952❩ ❛ I’m not beautiful, and I can’t have kids, so what does that make me? Worthless. ❜ ❨953❩ ❛ Failure cloaked me like a mantle, it overwhelmed me, dragged me under and I gave up hope. ❜ ❨954❩ ❛ It’s an odd thing to say, but I think this all the time; I don’t feel bad enough. ❜ ❨955❩ ❛ Some battles aren’t worth fighting. ❜ ❨956❩ ❛ I never felt guilty. I pretended I did. I had to. ❜ ❨957❩ ❛ I never meant for any of this to happen, we fell in love, what could we do? ❜ ❨958❩ ❛ What bothers me most is that I haven’t got to the end of my story, and I can’t start over with someone else, it’s too hard. ❜ ❨959❩ ❛ A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended. ❜ ❨960❩ ❛ It isn’t only wickedness and scheming that make people unhappy, it is confusion and misunderstanding. ❜ ❨961❩ ❛ Falling in love can be achieved in a single word—a glance. ❜ ❨962❩ ❛ Though you think the world is at your feet, it can rise up and tread on you. ❜ ❨963❩ ❛ I’ve never had a moment’s doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one. My reason for life. ❜ ❨964❩ ❛ It might hurt, it is horribly inconvenient, no good might come of it, but it is what it is to be in love. ❜ ❨965❩ ❛ It was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. ❜ ❨966❩ ❛ Come back, come back to me. ❜ ❨967❩ ❛ In my thoughts I make love to you all day long. ❜ ❨968❩ ❛ The truth is I feel rather light headed and foolish in your presence and I don’t think I can blame the heat. ❜ ❨969❩ ❛ Beauty occupies a narrow band. Ugliness, on the other hand, has infinite variation. ❜ ❨970❩ ❛ Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy? ❜ ❨971❩ ❛ However, withered, I still feel myself to be exactly the same person I’ve always been. ❜ ❨972❩ ❛ Hate is a feeling as pure as love, but dispassionate and icily rational. ❜ ❨973❩ ❛ I’m going mad. Let me not be mad. ❜ ❨974❩ ❛ Is everyone really as alive as I am? ❜ ❨975❩ ❛ Every now and then, quite unintentionally, someone teaches you something about yourself. ❜ ❨976❩ ❛ Something has happened, hasn’t it? ❜ ❨977❩ ❛ I like to think that it isn’t weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness. ❜ ❨978❩ ❛ Is it possible that I am, in the modern term, in denial? ❜ ❨979❩ ❛ How could anyone presume to know the world through the eyes of an insect? ❜ ❨980❩ ❛ Not everything has a cause. Some things are simply so. ❜ ❨981❩ ❛ I’ll be quite honest with you. I’m torn between breaking your neck here and throwing you down the stairs. ❜ ❨982❩ ❛ How old do you have to be before you know the difference between right and wrong? ❜ ❨983❩ ❛ It was never meant to be read. ❜ ❨984❩ ❛ If I fell in the river, would you save me? ❜ ❨985❩ ❛ That was an incredibly bloody stupid thing to do. ❜ ❨986❩ ❛ I want to thank you for saving my life. I’ll be eternally grateful to you. ❜ ❨987❩ ❛ I’m very, very sorry for the terrible distress that I have caused. I’m very, very sorry. ❜ ❨988❩ ❛ Don’t call me that! – Please don’t call me that. ❜ ❨989❩ ❛ It may be the wrong decision, but fuck it, it’s mine. ❜ ❨990❩ ❛ Like patience, passion comes from the same Latin root: pati. It does not mean to flow with exuberance. It means to suffer. ❜ ❨991❩ ❛ No one ever really gets used to nightmares. ❜ ❨992❩ ❛ I still get nightmares. In fact, I get them so often I should be used to them by now. I’m not. ❜ ❨993❩ ❛ Sublime is something you choke on after a shot of tequila. ❜ ❨994❩ ❛ Some people reflect light, some deflect it, you by some miracle, seem to collect it. ❜ ❨995❩ ❛ Beautiful women are always drawn to men they think will keep them beautiful. ❜ ❨996❩ ❛ The ruminations are mine, let the world be yours. ❜ ❨997❩ ❛ You will fulfil a promise I made years ago but failed to keep. ❜ ❨998❩ ❛ Darkness never satisfies. Especially if it takes something away which it almost always invariably does. ❜ ❨999❩ ❛ I want something else. I’m not even sure what to call it anymore. ❜ ❨1000❩ ❛ What can I say, I’m a sucker for abandoned stuff, misplaced stuff, forgotten stuff, any old stuff. ❜ ❨1001❩ ❛ Is it possible to love something so much, you imagine it wants to destroy you only because it has denied you? ❜ ❨1002❩ ❛ It’s just silent, no sound at all. It’s like something’s waiting. ❜ ❨1003❩ ❛ I guess I’m hoping the weapons will make me feel better, grant me some kind of fucking control. ❜ ❨1004❩ ❛ Oh and something else: – Fuck you. ❜ ❨1005❩ ❛ God I’ve never been afraid like this. ❜ ❨1006❩ ❛ I miss you. I love you. There’s no second I’ve lived that you can’t call your own. ❜ ❨1007❩ ❛ I’m so tired. Sleep’s been stalking me for too long to remember. Inevitable I suppose. ❜ ❨1008❩ ❛ Not seeing the rip doesn’t mean you automatically get to keep clear of the Hey-I’m-Bleeding part. ❜ ❨1009❩ ❛ These days fantasies flourish and die like summer flies. ❜ ❨1010❩ ❛ Yeah I know, I know. This shit’s getting ridiculous. ❜ ❨1011❩ ❛ ‘Fuck’ and 'fall for’ have very different meanings. The first one you do as much as you can. The second one you never ever, ever do. ❜ ❨1012❩ ❛ It’s a nice idea but it reeks of hope. False hope. ❜ ❨1013❩ ❛ It’s, well…one thing in two words: fucked up…very fucked up. Okay three words, four words, who the hell cares…very very fucked up. ❜ ❨1014❩ ❛ Do you think I could spend the night at your place?  ❜ ❨1015❩ ❛ Any fool can pray. ❜ ❨1016❩ ❛ I feel like I haven’t slept in months. My neighbours are scared of me. ❜ ❨1017❩ ❛ I’ve lost my mind? Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe I’m just really drunk. ❜ ❨1018❩ ❛ Perhaps by cleaning out my system I’ll come to a clearing where I can ease myself into peace. ❜ ❨1019❩ ❛ I should be dead. Why am I still here? ❜ ❨1020❩ ❛ Fuck if I know. Your guess is as good as mine. ❜ ❨1021❩ ❛ You are my flesh. You are my bones. I know you too well. I read you too perfectly. ❜ ❨1022❩ ❛ Not all complex problems have easy solutions. ❜ ❨1023❩ ❛ Do you believe in God? I don’t think I ever asked you that one. ❜ ❨1024❩ ❛ We all create stories to protect ourselves. ❜ ❨1025❩ ❛ Are you kidding me? This place is scary. ❜ ❨1026❩ ❛ These days the only thing that gets me outside is when I say: Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck you. Fuck me. Fuck this. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. ❜ ❨1027❩ ❛ You like that crap because it reminds you of you. ❜ ❨1028❩ ❛ You may suddenly realise things are not how you perceived them to be at all. ❜ ❨1029❩ ❛ The two hardest tests are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter. ❜ ❨1030❩ ❛ People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves. ❜ ❨1031❩ ❛ Be crazy! But learn how to be crazy without being the center of attention. Be brave enough to live different. ❜ ❨1032❩ ❛ You are someone who is different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. And that in my view is a serious illness. ❜ ❨1033❩ ❛ God chose you to be different. ❜ ❨1034❩ ❛ Why are you disappointing God with this kind of attitude? ❜ ❨1035❩ ❛ You have two choices, to control your mind or to let your mind control you. ❜ ❨1036❩ ❛ Everyone is indeed crazy, but the craziest are the ones who don't know they're crazy; they just keep repeating what others tell them to. ❜ ❨1037❩ ❛ Haven't you learned anything, not even with the approach of death?  ❜ ❨1038❩ ❛ If people don't like it, they can complain. And if they don't have the courage to complain, that's their problem. ❜ ❨1039❩ ❛ Nothing in this world happens by chance. ❜ ❨1040❩ ❛ I want to continue living my life the way I dream it, and not the way the other people want it to be. ❜ ❨1041❩ ❛ Be like the fountain that overflows, not like the cistern that merely contains. ❜ ❨1042❩ ❛ Collective madness is called sanity. ❜ ❨1043❩ ❛ Consider each day a miracle - which indeed it is, when you consider the number of unexpected things that could happen in each second of our fragile existences. ❜ ❨1044❩ ❛ You say they create their own reality, but what is reality? ❜ ❨1045❩ ❛ Many people don't allow themselves to love because there are a lot of things at risk. A lot of future and a lot of past. ❜ ❨1046❩ ❛ Death frees from the fear of dying. ❜ ❨1047❩ ❛ The danger of an adventure is worth a thousand days of ease and comfort. ❜ ❨1048❩ ❛ The happier people can be, the unhappier they are. ❜ ❨1049❩ ❛ Life is always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act. ❜ ❨1050❩ ❛ It's best to accept life as it really is and not as you imagined it to be. ❜ ❨1051❩ ❛ You don't seem mad at all. ❜ ❨1052❩ ❛ We’re allowed to make a lot of mistakes in our lives, except the mistake that destroys us. ❜ ❨1053❩ ❛ You’re what you are, not what others make of you. ❜ ❨1054❩ ❛ Am I cured? ❜ ❨1055❩ ❛ Real love changes and grows with time and discovers new ways of expressing itself. ❜ ❨1056❩ ❛ A lot of people think something is right, and so that thing becomes right. Is that it? ❜ ❨1057❩ ❛ They think they're normal, because they all do the same thing. ❜ ❨1058❩ ❛ I didn't know that other ‘me’s existed inside me, ‘Me’s that I could love. ❜ ❨1059❩ ❛ I have no idea what's awaiting me. ❜ ❨1060❩ ❛ What will happen when this all ends? ❜ ❨1061❩ ❛ I know that you are capable of great deeds. ❜ ❨1062❩ ❛ A loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one's work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart. ❜ ❨1063❩ ❛ The truth is that everyone is bored. ❜ ❨1064❩ ❛ I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don't really appeal to me, I imagine. ❜ ❨1065❩ ❛ If there is one thing one can always yearn for, and sometimes attain, it is human love. ❜ ❨1066❩ ❛ Who would dare to assert that eternal happiness can compensate for even a single moment's suffering? ❜ ❨1067❩ ❛ It's not easy. I've been thinking it over for years. ❜ ❨1068❩ ❛ While we loved each other we didn't need words to make ourselves understood. ❜ ❨1069❩ ❛ People are more often bad than good. ❜ ❨1070❩ ❛ I don't believe in heroism; I know it's easy and I've learned that it can be murderous. ❜ ❨1071❩ ❛ What interests me is living and dying for what one loves. ❜ ❨1072❩ ❛ In fact, nobody is capable of really thinking about anyone, even in the worst calamity. ❜ ❨1073❩ ❛ Nothing in the world is worth turning one's back on what one loves. ❜ ❨1074❩ ❛ Again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. ❜ ❨1075❩ ❛ There are more things to admire in men then to despise. ❜ ❨1076❩ ❛ It is in the thick of calamity that one gets hardened to the truth - in other words, to silence. ❜ ❨1077❩ ❛ What on earth prompted you to take a hand in this? ❜ ❨1078❩ ❛ Your code of morals? What code, if I may ask? ❜ ❨1079❩ ❛ I'm fumbling in the dark, struggling to make something out. But I've long ceased finding anything. ❜ ❨1080❩ ❛ No doubt our love is still there, but quite simply it is unusable, heavy to carry, inert inside of us, sterile as crime or condemnation. ❜ ❨1081❩ ❛ I’m not happy to go, but one needn't be happy to make another start. ❜ ❨1082❩ ❛ I am incapable of suffering for a long time, or being happy for a long time. Which means that I am incapable of anything really worth while. ❜ ❨1083❩ ❛ I should have found the words to keep her with me. ❜ ❨1084❩ ❛ We can't stir a finger in this world without the risk of bringing death to somebody. ❜ ❨1085❩ ❛ The evil that is in the world comes out of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. ❜ ❨1086❩ ❛ There are always flies and itches. That’s why life is difficult to live. ❜ ❨1087❩ ❛ The best protection against anything is a good bottle of wine. ❜ ❨1088❩ ❛ There is no peace without hope. ❜ ❨1089❩ ❛ It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment. ❜ ❨1090❩ ❛ There is always something left to love. ❜ ❨1091❩ ❛ A person doesn’t die when he should but when he can. ❜ ❨1092❩ ❛ Things have a life of their own. It's simply a matter of waking up their souls. ❜ ❨1093❩ ❛ Tell me something: why are you fighting? ❜ ❨1094❩ ❛ I've come to realise only just now that I'm fighting because of pride. ❜ ❨1095❩ ❛ One minute of reconciliation is worth more than a whole life of friendship. ❜ ❨1096❩ ❛ It's better than not knowing why you're fighting. Or fighting, like you, for something that doesn't have any meaning for anyone. ❜ ❨1097❩ ❛ Holy Mother of God! ❜ ❨1098❩ ❛ A person does not belong to a place until there is someone dead under the ground. ❜ ❨1099❩ ❛ I was born a son of a bitch and I'm going to die a son of a bitch. ❜ ❨1100❩ ❛ Bad luck doesn't have any chinks in it. ❜ ❨1101❩ ❛ I plead youth as a mitigating circumstance. ❜ ❨1102❩ ❛ Get those bad thoughts out of your head. You're going to be happy. ❜ ❨1103❩ ❛ Children inherit their parents' madness. ❜ ❨1104❩ ❛ I'll turn to ashes in here but I won't give this miserable town the pleasure of seeing me weep. ❜ ❨1105❩ ❛ You would be good in a war. Where you put your eye, you put your bullet. ❜ ❨1106❩ ❛ Men demand much more than you think. ❜ ❨1107❩ ❛ Even the craziest and most persistent love is just a temporary truth. ❜ ❨1108❩ ❛ If we’re alone you can whisper in my ear any crap you can think of. ❜ ❨1109❩ ❛ You have taken this horrible game very seriously and you have done well because you are doing your duty. ❜ ❨1110❩ ❛ We have the right to pull down your pants and give you a whipping at the first sign of disrespect. ❜ ❨1111❩ ❛ What worries me is not your shooting me, because after all, for people like us it's a natural death. ❜ ❨1112❩ ❛ What worries me is that you've ended up as bad as they are. ❜ ❨1113❩ ❛ It is characteristic of men to deny hunger once their appetites are satisfied. ❜ ❨1114❩ ❛ Dying is much more difficult than one imagines. ❜ ❨1115❩ ❛ If you have to go crazy, please go crazy all by yourself! ❜ ❨1116❩ ❛ We have still not had a death. ❜ ❨1117❩ ❛ How awful, the way time passes. ❜ ❨1118❩ ❛ You may be in command of your war, but I'm in command of my house. ❜ ❨1119❩ ❛ I missed you every hour. ❜ ❨1120❩ ❛ You know what the worst part was? It caught me completely by surprise. ❜ ❨1121❩ ❛ I’ve risked my life for you. ❜ ❨1122❩ ❛ The problem with wanting is that it makes us weak. ❜ ❨1123❩ ❛ I love you, even the part of you that loved him. ❜ ❨1124❩ ❛ I’m sorry it took me so long to see you. ❜ ❨1125❩ ❛ I never really belonged anywhere. ❜ ❨1126❩ ❛ Thanks for being my best friend and making my life bearable.  ❜ ❨1127❩ ❛ Thanks for finding me. ❜ ❨1128❩ ❛ You and I are going to change the world. ❜ ❨1129❩ ❛ I’ve been waiting for you a long time. ❜ ❨1130❩ ❛ I’m not used to people trying to kill me. ❜ ❨1131❩ ❛ You’re shaking. ❜ ❨1132❩ ❛ There's nothing wrong with being a lizard. Unless you were born to be a hawk. ❜ ❨1133❩ ❛ Make me your villain. ❜ ❨1134❩ ❛ Just you and me. It’s always just you and me. ❜ ❨1135❩ ❛ Do you blame me for every mistake I made? For every dumb thing I’ve said? ❜ ❨1136❩ ❛ Well, if it gets too bad, give me a signal. ❜ ❨1137❩ ❛ Did you tell him what I showed you in the dark? ❜ ❨1138❩ ❛ Did you miss me when you were gone? ❜ ❨1139❩ ❛ What is infinite? The universe and the greed of men. ❜ ❨1140❩ ❛ You’re interfering with my plan. ❜ ❨1141❩ ❛ Too much champagne? ❜ ❨1142❩ ❛ I hope you don’t expect fairness from me. It isn’t one of my specialties. ❜ ❨1143❩ ❛ There is something more powerful than any army. Something strong enough to topple kings. Faith. ❜ ❨1144❩ ❛ All you said was that I had to kill you. You didn’t say how. ❜ ❨1145❩ ❛ What is she? She’s everything, you dumb son of a bitch. ❜ ❨1146❩ ❛ She’s an ugly little thing. No child should look like that. Pale and sour, like a glass of milk that’s turned. ❜ ❨1147❩ ❛ I wouldn’t make that mistake again. ❜ ❨1148❩ ❛ It’s a great honor, to save a life. You saved many. ❜ ❨1149❩ ❛ In this world, there are things you can only do alone. ❜ ❨1150❩ ❛ What seems like a reasonable distance to one person might feel too far to somebody else. ❜ ❨1151❩ ❛ If you really want to know something, you have to be willing to pay the price. ❜ ❨1152❩ ❛ Why should you be interested in me? ❜ ❨1153❩ ❛ I have been told I've got a darkish personality. A few times. ❜ ❨1154❩ ❛ It's not as if our lives are divided simply into light and dark. There's shadowy middle ground. ❜ ❨1155❩ ❛ I'll write to you. A super-long letter, like in an old-fashioned novel. ❜ ❨1156❩ ❛ The spotlight doesn't suit me. I'm more of a side dish. ❜ ❨1157❩ ❛ The ground we stand on looks solid enough, but if something happens it can drop right out from under you.  ❜ ❨1158❩ ❛ So once you're dead there's just nothing? ❜ ❨1159❩ ❛ If only I could fall sound asleep and wake up in my old reality. ❜ ❨1160❩ ❛ Is action merely the incidental product of thought, or is thought the consequential product of action? ❜ ❨1161❩ ❛ Nobody can shake off their own shadow. ❜ ❨1162❩ ❛ The silence is so deep it hurts. ❜ ❨1163❩ ❛ I may not look it, but I can be a very patient guy. ❜ ❨1164❩ ❛ Killing time is one of my specialities. ❜ ❨1165❩ ❛ You can't fight it. ❜ ❨1166❩ ❛ Tell me something,—do you believe in reincarnation? ❜ ❨1167❩ ❛ I can’t understand nothingness. I can’t understand it and I can’t imagine it. ❜ ❨1168❩ ❛ I can hardly breathe, and my whole body wants to shrink into a corner.  ❜ ❨1169❩ ❛ I do have a few things wrong with me, but those are strictly problems I keep inside. ❜ ❨1170❩ ❛ I can't take it any more, I can't go on any more. ❜ ❨1171❩ ❛ You don't really have it together. ❜ ❨1172❩ ❛ Is it against the law for me to know it? ❜ ❨1173❩ ❛ I keep having the same dream. ❜ ❨1174❩ ❛ Are you asking because you really want an answer? ❜ ❨1175❩ ❛ I hate this! I don't want to be changed this way! ❜ ❨1176❩ ❛ No contradictions, no irony. They do everything according to numerical formulas. ❜ ❨1177❩ ❛ Want to hear the rest? If you’re not interested, I can stop. ❜ ❨1178❩ ❛ If I didn’t have these memories inside me, I would’ve snapped a long time ago. I would’ve curled up in a ditch somewhere and died. ❜ ❨1179❩ ❛ I don’t know what you’re feeling. I won’t even pretend. ❜ ❨1180❩ ❛ What are you doing here, honey? ❜ ❨1181❩ ❛ You're not even old enough to know how bad life gets. ❜ ❨1182❩ ❛ You don't understand me. ❜ ❨1183❩ ❛ All wisdom ends in paradox. ❜ ❨1184❩ ❛ It is love that overthrows empire. Love that binds two hearts together, come hellfire & brimstone. ❜ ❨1185❩ ❛ I have lost my gift. ❜ ❨1186❩ ❛ Winter is the season of alcoholism and despair. ❜ ❨1187❩ ❛ The seeds of death get lost in the mess that God made us. ❜ ❨1188❩ ❛ They're just memories now. It’s time to forget. ❜ ❨1189❩ ❛ The time has to be right and the heart willing. ❜ ❨1190❩ ❛ The world, a tired performer, offers us another half-assed season. ❜ ❨1191❩ ❛ Capitalism has resulted in material well-being but spiritual bankruptcy. ❜ ❨1192❩ ❛ Grief is natural, overcoming it is a matter of choice. ❜ ❨1193❩ ❛ I want out of that decorating scheme. ❜ ❨1194❩ ❛ With most people suicide is like Russian roulette. Only one chamber has a bullet. ❜ ❨1195❩ ❛ You never get over it but you get where it doesn't bother you so much. ❜ ❨1196❩ ❛ Don't waste your time on life. ❜ ❨1197❩ ❛ I'm a teenager. I've got problems! ❜ ❨1198❩ ❛ Adolescents tend to seek love where they can find it. ❜ ❨1199❩ ❛ Obviously, you've never been a thirteen-year-old girl. ❜ ❨1200❩ ❛ It was a mistake. ❜ ❨1201❩ ❛ It seemed like we were supposed to feel sorry for everything that ever happened, ever. ❜ ❨1202❩ ❛ Buffeted but not broken. ❜ ❨1203❩ ❛ Shit. What have kids got to be worried about now? ❜ ❨1204❩ ❛ If they want trouble, they should go live in Bangladesh. ❜ ❨1205❩ ❛ I can't wait until I get out of here. ❜ ❨1206❩ ❛ When she jumped she probably thought she’d fly. ❜ ❨1207❩ ❛ I do not think the patient truly meant to end her life. Her act was a cry for help. ❜ ❨1208❩ ❛ You're a stone fox. ❜ ❨1209❩ ❛ It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight. ❜ ❨1210❩ ❛ Light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. ❜ ❨1211❩ ❛ He broke my heart. You merely broke my life. ❜ ❨1212❩ ❛ I'm sorry to have deceived you so much, but that's how life is. ❜ ❨1213❩ ❛ Words without experience are meaningless. ❜ ❨1214❩ ❛ I loved you. I was a monster, but I loved you. ❜ ❨1215❩ ❛ Come just as you are. ❜ ❨1216❩ ❛ If a violin string could ache, i would be that string. ❜ ❨1217❩ ❛ Perhaps, somewhere, some day, at a less miserable time, we may see each other again. ❜ ❨1218❩ ❛ What's so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own. ❜ ❨1219❩ ❛ Don't touch me; I'll die if you touch me. ❜ ❨1220❩ ❛ You took advantage of my disadvantage. ❜ ❨1221❩ ❛ I walk in a maze I cannot get out of. ❜ ❨1222❩ ❛ Life is just one small piece of light between two eternal darknesses. ❜ ❨1223❩ ❛ Imagine me; I shall not exist if you do not imagine me. ❜ ❨1224❩ ❛ There is no harm in smiling. ❜ ❨1225❩ ❛ There is no point in staying here. There is no point in staying anywhere. ❜ ❨1226❩ ❛ There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child. ❜ ❨1227❩ ❛ I am so tired of being cynical. ❜ ❨1228❩ ❛ Come to live with me, and die with me, and everything with me. ❜ ❨1229❩ ❛ This is the only immortality that you and I may share. ❜ ❨1230❩ ❛ I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else. ❜ ❨1231❩ ❛ I was despicable and brutal, and turpid, and everything, mais je t’aimais, je t’aimais! ❜ ❨1232❩ ❛ Years of secret suffering has taught me superhuman self-control. ❜ ❨1233❩ ❛ Solitude is corrupting me. I need company and care. ❜ ❨1234❩ ❛ I've missed you terribly. ❜ ❨1235❩ ❛ I've been revoltingly unfaithful to you. ❜ ❨1236❩ ❛ It doesn't matter a bit, because you've stopped caring anyway. ❜ ❨1237❩ ❛ What makes you say I've stopped caring for you? ❜ ❨1238❩ ❛ Nowadays you have to be a scientist if you want to be a killer. ❜ ❨1239❩ ❛ The sun climbs high in the sky, then starts down. People come, then go. ❜ ❨1240❩ ❛ Tell me, have you ever thought of killing me? ❜ ❨1241❩ ❛ I can not believe you are the same human being. ❜ ❨1242❩ ❛ Just how urgent is it? ❜ ❨1243❩ ❛ It is time for you to be going. ❜ ❨1244❩ ❛ How is it you know something like that? ❜ ❨1245❩ ❛ I don’t mind. Your mess is my mess. ❜ ❨1246❩ ❛ Everybody has one thing they do not want to lose. ❜ ❨1247❩ ❛ I’ll be late tonight, so don’t wait up for me. ❜ ❨1248❩ ❛ Nothing I’ve tried to do by myself has ever come off. ❜ ❨1249❩ ❛ I am not catching you in the middle of anything important, am I? ❜ ❨1250❩ ❛ Some things are forgotten, some things disappear, some things die. ❜ ❨1251❩ ❛ My biggest fault is that the faults I was born with grow bigger each year. ❜ ❨1252❩ ❛ To get irritated is to lose our way in life. ❜ ❨1253❩ ❛ A friend to kill time is a friend sublime. ❜ ❨1254❩ ❛ I don't really know if it's the right thing to do. ❜ ❨1255❩ ❛ Faster cars and more cats run over? Who needs it? ❜ ❨1256❩ ❛ Most of everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories. ❜ ❨1257❩ ❛ Your fate is and will always be the fate of a dreamer. ❜ ❨1258❩ ❛ You’re loads better than you think you are. ❜ ❨1259❩ ❛ You’re only half-living, the other half is still untapped somewhere. ❜ ❨1260❩ ❛ The song is over. But the melody lingers on. ❜ ❨1261❩ ❛ You are extraordinary. ❜ ❨1262❩ ❛ We tend to fool ourselves into thinking that time is our size, but it really goes on and on. ❜ ❨1263❩ ❛ It could be five years or ten years or one month. It's all the same. ❜ ❨1264❩ ❛ I’m forever realising things too late. ❜ ❨1265❩ ❛ I’m not complaining when I say my life is boring. ❜ ❨1266❩ ❛ Weakness is something that rots in the body. ❜ ❨1267❩ ❛ Coming from your mouth, it has the ring of truth, but I doubt anyone would believe me if I told them. ❜ ❨1268❩ ❛ You can't expect something unreal to last anyway, can you? ❜ ❨1269❩ ❛ A wise man does not step betwixt the beast and his meat. ❜ ❨1270❩ ❛ So, kill me. Tell the others I attacked you so you killed me. ❜ ❨1271❩ ❛ Should never have come here. ❜ ❨1272❩ ❛ Hard to guess my tastes. ❜ ❨1273❩ ❛ Can’t it wait until the morning? ❜ ❨1274❩ ❛ You’ll find temper tantrums won’t help you here. ❜ ❨1275❩ ❛ It must have taken courage to return. ❜ ❨1276❩ ❛ It all sounds grimly dystopian. ❜ ❨1277❩ ❛ I am not afraid of you! ❜ ❨1278❩ ❛ All this could be avoided! ❜ ❨1279❩ ❛ You consider me a murderer? ❜ ❨1280❩ ❛ Gross way to die. ❜ ❨1281❩ ❛ What sparks wars? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. ❜ ❨1282❩ ❛ My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops? ❜ ❨1283❩ ❛ Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others. ❜ ❨1284❩ ❛ I believe there is another world waiting for us. A better world. And I'll be waiting for you there. ❜ ❨1285❩ ❛ You are allowed to feel messed up and inside out. It doesn't mean you're defective - it just means you're human. ❜ ❨1286❩ ❛ Power, time, gravity, love. The forces that really kick ass are all invisible. ❜ ❨1287❩ ❛ Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty. ❜ ❨1288❩ ❛ Truth is singular. Its 'versions' are mistruths. ❜ ❨1289❩ ❛ Dreams are all I have ever truly owned. ❜ ❨1290❩ ❛ Your version of the truth is the only thing that matters. ❜ ❨1291❩ ❛ I believe death is only a door. One closes, and another opens. ❜ ❨1292❩ ❛ By each crime and every kindness, we birth our future. ❜ ❨1293❩ ❛ The healthy can't understand the emptied, the broken. ❜ ❨1294❩ ❛ Lying's wrong, but when the world spins backwards, a small wrong may be a big right. ❜ ❨1295❩ ❛ The weak are meat the strong do eat. ❜ ❨1296❩ ❛ Do whatever you can't not do. ❜ ❨1297❩ ❛ What precipitates outcomes? Vicious acts & virtuous acts. ❜ ❨1298❩ ❛ I remain thankful to God for all his mercies. ❜ ❨1299❩ ❛ You can maintain power over people, as long as you give them something. Rob a man of everything, and that man will no longer be in your power. ❜ ❨1300❩ ❛ Power. The ability to determine another man's luck. ❜ ❨1301❩ ❛ Pain is strong, aye - but friends' eyes, more strong. ❜ ❨1302❩ ❛ Perhaps those deprived of beauty perceive it most instinctively. ❜ ❨1303❩ ❛ Why ask a question whose answer would demand ten more questions? ❜ ❨1304❩ ❛ You can’t lie to your soul. ❜ ❨1305❩ ❛ Why would I want to do a thing like that? ❜ ❨1306❩ ❛ We start off with high hopes, then we bottle it. ❜ ❨1307❩ ❛ Better to make life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be. ❜ ❨1308❩ ❛ I’m not running away, I’m moving on. ❜ ❨1309❩ ❛ The reasons? There are no reasons. ❜ ❨1310❩ ❛ Some people are easier to love when you don’t have to be around them. ❜ ❨1311❩ ❛ Love does not exist. ❜ ❨1312❩ ❛ Fuck that ‘regrets’ bullshit. ❜ ❨1313❩ ❛ How does it make you feel? ❜ ❨1314❩ ❛ It’s horrible how we always die alone, but no worse than living alone. ❜ ❨1315❩ ❛ Choose us. Choose life. ❜ ❨1316❩ ❛ You fucking knew that fucking cunt would fuck some cunt. ❜ ❨1317❩ ❛ I’m more of a warrior than you’ll ever be. ❜ ❨1318❩ ❛ What does that make us? The lowest of the low, the scum of the earth. ❜ ❨1319❩ ❛ You don’t have to run away.  ❜ ❨1320❩ ❛ I tried to stop because it was only causing pain. I couldn’t. ❜ ❨1321❩ ❛ I’m not going to get crushed. ❜ ❨1322❩ ❛ I love doubt in a woman. It’s nearly as sexy as determination. ❜ ❨1323❩ ❛ Take your best orgasm, multiply the feeling by twenty. ❜ ❨1324❩ ❛ You’re a mess. ❜ ❨1325❩ ❛ I know that it’s never left you alone. ❜ ❨1326❩ ❛ Are you asking me or telling me? ❜ ❨1327❩ ❛ You just get used to all the shit. ❜ ❨1328❩ ❛ You can’t afford a conscience in this life. ❜ ❨1329❩ ❛ None of us are saints and scapegoats are always handy. ❜ ❨1330❩ ❛ Doing things doesn’t hurt you; you get hurt by avoiding them. ❜ ❨1331❩ ❛ What was that? ❜ ❨1332❩ ❛ Protect me from those who wish to help us. ❜ ❨1333❩ ❛ You can’t love yourself if you want to hurt things like that. ❜ ❨1334❩ ❛ What happens when people open their hearts? ❜ ❨1335❩ ❛ Nobody likes being alone that much. ❜ ❨1336❩ ❛ I don’t go out of my way to make friends, that’s all. It just leads to disappointment.” ❨1337❩ ❛ Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that. ❜ ❨1338❩ ❛ You need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. ❜ ❨1339❩ ❛ I want you always to remember me. ❜ ❨1340❩ ❛ Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it’s time for them to be hurt. ❜ ❨1341❩ ❛ What stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish. ❜ ❨1342❩ ❛ All I want in this world is you. ❜ ❨1343❩ ❛ I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning. ❜ ❨1344❩ ❛ No truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. ❜ ❨1345❩ ❛ What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for and to do it so unconsciously. ❜ ❨1346❩ ❛ If you’re in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark. ❜ ❨1347❩ ❛ I’ve had enough hurt already in my life. More than enough. Now I want to be happy. ❜ ❨1348❩ ❛ People leave strange little memories of themselves behind when they die. ❜ ❨1349❩ ❛ Stop eating yourself up alive. Things will go where they’re supposed to go if you just let them take their natural course. ❜ ❨1350❩ ❛ When your feelings build up and harden and die inside, then you’re in big trouble. ❜ ❨1351❩ ❛ When you fall in love, the natural thing to do is give yourself to it. ❜ ❨1352❩ ❛ If I have left a wound inside you, it is not just your wound but mine as well. ❜ ❨1353❩ ❛ Hey, what is it with you? Why are you so spaced out? You still haven’t answered me. ❜ ❨1354❩ ❛ People are strange when you’re a stranger. ❜ ❨1355❩ ❛ The dead will always be dead, but we have to go on living. ❜ ❨1356❩ ❛ You don’t get it, do you? ❜ ❨1357❩ ❛ I am a flawed human being - a far more flawed human being than you ❨1358❩ realise. ❜ ❨1359❩ ❛ At least let me know whether or not I hurt you. ❜ ❨1360❩ ❛ All of us are imperfect human beings living in an imperfect world. ❜ ❨1361❩ ❛ I’ve never once thought about how I was going to die. ❜ ❨1362❩ ❛ So I’m not crazy after all! ❜ ❨1363❩ ❛ I miss you terribly sometimes, but in general I go on living with all the energy I can muster. ❜ ❨1364❩ ❛ Will you wait for me forever? ❜ ❨1365❩ ❛ I don’t want our relationship to end like this. ❜ ❨1366❩ ❛ When am I going to be able to talk to you? I want you to tell me that much, at least. ❜ ❨1367❩ ❛ It hurts not being able to see you. ❜ ❨1368❩ ❛ I’m not totally mad at you. I’m just sad. ❜ ❨1369❩ ❛ The world is an inherently unfair place. ❜ ❨1370❩ ❛ Life frightens me sometimes. I don’t happen to take that as the premise for everything else though. ❜ ❨1371❩ ❛ I’m a real bargain, don’t you think? If you don’t take me, I’ll end up going somewhere else. ❜ ❨1372❩ ❛ We’re all kind of weird and twisted and drowning. ❜ ❨1373❩ ❛ Don’t you think it would be wonderful to get rid of everything and everybody and just go some place where you don’t know a soul? ❜ ❨1374❩ ❛ You’re not telling me anything I don’t know already. ❜ ❨1375❩ ❛ He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past. ❜ ❨1376❩ ❛ If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself. ❜ ❨1377❩ ❛ We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness. ❜ ❨1378❩ ❛ Until they become conscious they will never rebel. ❜ ❨1379❩ ❛ Power is not a means; it is an end. ❜ ❨1380❩ ❛ They are not interested in the good of others; they are interested solely in power, pure power. ❜ ❨1381❩ ❛ Now you begin to understand me. ❜ ❨1382❩ ❛ In the face of pain there are no heroes. ❜ ❨1383❩ ❛ Big Brother is watching you. ❜ ❨1384❩ ❛ Power is tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. ❜ ❨1385❩ ❛ It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. ❜ ❨1386❩ ❛ The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better. ❜ ❨1387❩ ❛ Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind. ❜ ❨1388❩ ❛ Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. ❜ ❨1389❩ ❛ We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them. ❜ ❨1390❩ ❛ How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? ❜ ❨1391❩ ❛ You must try harder. ❜ ❨1392❩ ❛ Confession is not betrayal. ❜ ❨1393❩ ❛ What you say or do doesn’t matter; only feelings matter. ❜ ❨1394❩ ❛ If they could make me stop loving you —- that would be the real betrayal. ❜ ❨1395❩ ❛ Of pain you can wish only one thing: that it should stop. ❜ ❨1396❩ ❛ To die hating them, that will be freedom. ❜ ❨1397❩ ❛ No one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. ❜ ❨1398❩ ❛ What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself? ❜ ❨1399❩ ❛ To keep them in control is not difficult. ❜ ❨1400❩ ❛ So long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed. ❜ ❨1401❩ ❛ The consequences of every act are included in the act itself. ❜ ❨1402❩ ❛ The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. ❜ ❨1403❩ ❛ Stupidity is as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult to attain. ❜ ❨1404❩ ❛ I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don’t want virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones. ❜ ❨1405❩ ❛ The past is dead, the future is unimaginable. ❜ ❨1406❩ ❛ You know the answer already. Everyone knows it. ❜ ❨1407❩ ❛ You don’t give a damn what they suffer. All you care is yourself. ❜ ❨1408❩ ❛ It is not easy to become sane. ❜ ❨1409❩ ❛ No emotion is pure anymore, because everything is mixed up with fear and hatred. ❜ ❨1410❩ ❛ They say that time heals all things —- they say you can always forget. ❜ ❨1411❩ ❛ The object of waging a war is always to be in a better position in which to wage another war. ❜ ❨1412❩ ❛ I sold you and you sold me. ❜ ❨1413❩ ❛ You do not exist. ❜ ❨1414❩ ❛ How does one man assert his power over another? By making him suffer. ❜ ❨1415❩ ❛ Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? ❜ ❨1416❩ ❛ Everything else we shall destroy – everything. ❜ ❨1417❩ ❛ Two and two makes five. ❜ ❨1418❩ ❛ Facts, at any rate, can not be kept hidden. ❜ ❨1419❩ ❛ The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. ❜ ❨1420❩ ❛ So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing. ❜ ❨1421❩ ❛ If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable—what then? ❜ ❨1422❩ ❛ The lie became the truth. ❜ ❨1423❩ ❛ It is like swimming against a current that sweeps you backwards however hard you struggle. ❜ ❨1424❩ ❛ Turn round and go with the current instead of opposing it. ❜ ❨1425❩ ❛ It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything. ❜ ❨1426❩ ❛ I don’t want to die without any scars. ❜ ❨1427❩ ❛ This is your life and it’s ending one moment at a time. ❜ ❨1428❩ ❛ You know how they say you only hurt the ones you love? Well, it works both ways. ❜ ❨1429❩ ❛ You are not your job, you’re not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. ❜ ❨1430❩ ❛ You are not special. ❜ ❨1431❩ ❛ You’re not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else. ❜ ❨1432❩ ❛ The things you used to own, now they own you. ❜ ❨1433❩ ❛ Today is the sort of day where the sun only comes up to humiliate you. ❜ ❨1434❩ ❛ Maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves. ❜ ❨1435❩ ❛ Only after disaster can we be resurrected. ❜ ❨1436❩ ❛ Everything is evolving, everything is falling apart. ❜ ❨1437❩ ❛ We’ve all been raised believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. ❜ ❨1438❩ ❛ Don’t you have other things to do? ❜ ❨1439❩ ❛ Prove you’re alive. If you don’t claim your humanity you will become a statistic. ❜ ❨1440❩ ❛ You have been warned. ❜ ❨1441❩ ❛ If you don’t know what you want, you end up with a lot you don’t. ❜ ❨1442❩ ❛ It’s not love or anything, but I think I like you, too. ❜ ❨1443❩ ❛ If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person? ❜ ❨1444❩ ❛ Why did I cause so much pain? ❜ ❨1445❩ ❛ The lower you fall, the higher you’ll fly. ❜ ❨1446❩ ❛ Maybe self-improvement isn’t the answer, maybe self-destruction is the answer. ❜ ❨1447❩ ❛ May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect. ❜ ❨1448❩ ❛ Everyone smiles with that invisible gun to their head. ❜ ❨1449❩ ❛ We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens. ❜ ❨1450❩ ❛ The girl is infectious human waste. ❜ ❨1451❩ ❛ I want to destroy everything beautiful I’ll never have. ❜ ❨1452❩ ❛ On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero. ❜ ❨1453❩ ❛ If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose? ❜ ❨1454❩ ❛ It is like you’re never really awake; but you’re never really asleep. ❜ ❨1455❩ ❛ Worker bees can leave. Even drones can fly away. The Queen is their slave. ❜ ❨1456❩ ❛ A moment is the most you could ever expect from perfection. ❜ ❨1457❩ ❛ The people you’re trying to step on, we’re everyone you depend on. ❜ ❨1458❩ ❛ You have to give up! ❜ ❨1459❩ ❛ Reject the basic assumptions of civilisation, especially the importance of material possessions. ❜ ❨1460❩ ❛ Without pain, without sacrifice we would have nothing. ❜ ❨1461❩ ❛ You have to realise that someday you will die, Until you know that, you are useless. ❜ ❨1462❩ ❛ A tiger can smile. A snake will say it loves you. ❜ ❨1463❩ ❛ Lies make us evil. ❜ ❨1464❩ ❛ If you died right now, how would you feel about your life? ❜ ❨1465❩ ❛ You always kill the one you love. ❜ ❨1466❩ ❛ Maybe we should always assume the worst. ❜ ❨1467❩ ❛ Put a gun to my head and paint the wall with my brains. ❜ ❨1468❩ ❛ Which is worse? Hell or nothing? ❜ ❨1469❩ ❛ A minute of perfection is worth the effort. ❜ ❨1470❩ ❛ You’re going to die, tonight. You might die in one second or in one hour, you decide. ❜ ❨1471❩ ❛ Lie to me. Tell me the first thing off the top of your head. Make something up. ❜ ❨1472❩ ❛ I don’t give a shit. I have a gun. ❜ ❨1473❩ ❛ I know who you are. I know where you live. ❜ ❨1474❩ ❛ Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of your life. ❜ ❨1475❩ ❛ My philosophy of life is that I can die at any moment. And the tragedy of my life is that I do not. ❜ ❨1476❩ ❛ Everything is so far away, a copy of a copy of a copy. You can’t touch anything and nothing can touch you. ❜ ❨1477❩ ❛ There are a lot of things we don’t want to know about the people we love. ❜ ❨1478❩ ❛ We just had a near-life experience. ❜ ❨1479❩ ❛ If people think you are dying, they give you their full attention. They listen instead of just waiting for their turn to speak. ❜ ❨1480❩ ❛ I am nothing, and not even that. ❜ ❨1481❩ ❛ This isn’t really death. —- We’ll be legends. We won’t grow old. ❜ ❨1482❩ ❛ Stop trying to control everything and just let go. Let go. ❜ ❨1483❩ ❛ The amazing miracle of death, when one second you’re walking and talking, and the next second you’re an object. ❜ ❨1484❩ ❛ Only if we’re caught and punished can we be saved. ❜ ❨1485❩ ❛ I never thought about how important the sky was until I didn't have one. ❜ ❨1486❩ ❛ Dreams are like that: they go in and out of memories and scenes, but they're never real. They're never real, and I hate them because they aren't. ❜ ❨1487❩ ❛ Power isn’t control at all — power is strength, and giving that strength to others. ❜ ❨1488❩ ❛ A leader isn’t someone who forces others to make him stronger. ❜ ❨1489❩ ❛ A leader is someone willing to give his strength to others that they may have the strength to stand on their own. ❜ ❨1490❩ ❛ In the end, we are alone. ❜ ❨1491❩ ❛ It is like a piece of my soul is lost, empty. ❜ ❨1492❩ ❛ If my life on Earth must end, let it end with a promise. Let it end with hope. ❜ ❨1493❩ ❛ Sorry? Sorry isn't enough. ❜ ❨1494❩ ❛ Every single thing I ever loved is beyond my reach now. Everything I ever wanted. Everything I ever was. ❜ ❨1495❩ ❛ Will you stay with me? ❜ ❨1496❩ ❛ A leader doesn't make pawns - he makes people. ❜ ❨1497❩ ❛ Do you hear that? The pulse of life from your heart, the slow in-and-out from your lungs? Even when you are silent, even when you block out all noise, your body is still a cacophony of life. Mine is not. ❜ ❨1498❩ ❛ It is the silence that drives me mad. The silence that drives the nightmares to me. ❜ ❨1499❩ ❛ There is nothing between us but rain. There is nothing between us at all. ❜ ❨1500❩ ❛ I like a little chaos. ❜

[lostcauses-noregrets]

Chapter 136: The beginning of the end?

I’ve got so many thoughts about Levi’s internal monologue in chapter 136 that I’m not even sure where to start.   The first thing to say is that it surprised me. Not because of what Levi said, he has been entirely consistent about his goal since chapter 84, but because I honestly didn’t think we’d get Levi’s pov again this late in the day.  I thought chapter 112 was the last time we would hear Levi reiterating his vow.  However this chapter really emphasized just how important that vow is to him; his promise to Erwin is the one thing that is still driving him forward.  

I really appreciate the fact that this chapter blows several misconceptions out of the water, including that Levi either doesn’t care about stopping Eren because his only goal is killing Zeke, or that he doesn’t want to kill Eren, out of a sense of affection of loyalty.  Even though there’s a “whole lot” Levi wanted to say to Eren, (I’ll bet there is), he is unequivocal that saving his life has never been their primary concern.  And to be honest, if I was Eren I’d be mighty glad that Levi is unlikely to have an opportunity to give him a piece of his mind.  

Another misconception is that Erwin would have supported the rumbling, which is such an incredibly bad take that I can’t even put it into words.  Levi makes it crystal clear that if Erwin, Hanji and their comrades gave their life for a future that involved trampling humanity into the dust, then their sacrifice would not have been worth it.  The only way to honour that sacrifice is to prevent the destruction of humanity. It doesn’t get much more unequivocal than that.

I also think it’s worth drawing a comparison between Levi and Eren’s reaction to discovering the existence of the world outside the walls.  Both of them had a naive vision of an “innocent idealized world” but their reaction to discovering the flawed reality of the world could not have been more different.  Eren has expressed his disappointment by unleashing whole scale genocide, while Levi is more determined than ever to fight to his dying breath to save humanity and prove his comrades sacrifice hadn’t been in vain.

I’ve written elsewhere that I dislike the trope of passing over the baton to the next generation so that the kids can save the world, but at the same time I can absolutely understand Levi’s perspective.  We already know that he didn’t want to drag Erwin back to the hell of the world, and we also know that he’s been fighting his entire life; he’s clearly not ready to give up the fight but I think he can be forgiven for wanting to entrust the future to the next generation.

I also think it’s interesting that Levi regards his vow as Erwin’s final order.  In actual fact it wasn’t an order, it was a mutual decision.  Erwin told him that he had a plan that would enable Levi to take down the Beast Titan, but it was Levi himself that volunteered to take on the task.  This isn’t the only time that Erwin gave Levi the opportunity to make his own decision, rather than issuing him with a direct order, which serves to emphasise the equality of their relationship, despite the power differential of their ranks.

The fact that Levi’s monologue is addressed to Erwin, highlights yet again the importance of their relationship.  In the words of the Character Guide, “To Levi, Erwin is an irreplaceable existence”.  That was true four years ago, and it’s still true today. Erwin is still Levi’s point of reference, his polestar, everything goes back to him.  That doesn’t mean that Levi doesn’t care about anyone else though, while Levi swore his vow to Erwin, he swore it on behalf of all his comrades who died fighting to save humanity, and we can see just how fondly he remembers them in his memories.

As to where Levi goes from here, well, that remains to be seen.  This heartfelt monologue feels very much like Levi’s swansong, so I strongly suspect he’s going to die within the next couple of chapters.  If he is going to kill Zeke, then he is either going to have to get into the Paths realm, which doesn’t seem like a possibility, or Armin is going to have to get Zeke out of Paths and into the mortal world, which seems more likely.  Zeke currently appears to have very little free will of his own, but I wonder if Armin is able to get him out of Paths, would he sacrifice his own life in order to stop Eren?  I think it’s certainly a possibility and it would also give Levi a chance to fulfil his vow.  However we also have Gabi sitting there beside Levi with Chekov’s loaded gun, and we already know she’s a good shot, so who knows?

What ever happens, this chapter feels like the beginning of the end for Levi.  I used to joke that I wanted Levi to go out fighting with one last vision of smiling shoujo Erwin.  We’ve pretty much had that now, so please Isayama, let him fulfil his vow, and then let him rest.

[black-coffee-and-sugar]

Supergirl 6x16 - Review/Rant

might as well start this by saying that it was not a great episode at all but, considering that the quality has been consistently declining since azie's episode, im not surprised. only bright spot for me was nia confronting maeve. but anyway:

- yo feels like it's been 84 years since we got the full intro.

- esme's little drawings of her family. kara already calling esme her niece. j'onn already calling esme his granddaughter. kelly taking esme to her hometown to meet james and others. this kid is going to be so loved. as she deserves. and im a fucking puddle on the floor

- but also no kelly while giving me unnecessary and unwanted william. when's the last time all 7 of the super friends were present and accounted for together? answer: 6x01 they were all in the tower briefly. ridiculous

- ive been bitching for weeks about the unknown status of brainy and nia so its nice to finally have some confirmation after [checks notes] 16 fucking episodes

- also brainy going full green these days. especially at home, just chilling with nia. i love this for them

- lena, j'onn and alex appear to have no life outside of the tower now that lcorp and the deo are no longer options

- they also did nothing 99% of this episode. nothing

- love how lena could have her workstation anywhere in the tower, could probably have a legit office, but chooses right in front of the balcony kara frequents so she can appreciate the view.

- can we talk about the absolutely predatory look lena gave kara? she wants that kryptonian grade beef so bad it's embarassing

- maeve is such a cunt. running away, changing your name and address. pretty much dropping off the surface of the earth. being all difficult with your so-called help. abandoning your own blood just because you didn't get something that was never guaranteed to be yours in the first place. grow the fuck up

- bitch was really finna swipe that dream totem like a teenager shoplifting

- ooooh nicole's performance was great.

- nia didn't unload enough on maeve, the enemy of progress, imho

- dream totem knows your transphobic ass ain't pure of heart

- glad that nia did not forgive her. and that she didn't let maeve's unjustified selfishness overshadow her own trauma from the situation. nia's feelings are just as valid. and frankly, begrudgingly helping nia now can't erase 2 years of heartbreaking neglect

- fucking william. are y'all telling me that he has full access to the tower so he just traipse in whenever he fancies? fuck this

- i know that kara hasn't been particularly good at her job lately but the way they continue to nerf her seasoned journalism skills just to prop william as some sage mentor irritates me. after five years as a journalist who won a pulitzer, never mind the years as cat grant's assistant, you're telling me that kara can't counter someone trying to sidestep and/or shutdown her questions? stop

- reporter kara hasn't been interesting to me since S2. and as much of a grumpy asshole as he was, snapper actually made her do her job and do it properly

- andrea had every right to sack kara. but also she gives kara the interview again after she totally screwed up the first time? where's the sass when it's actually warranted andrea?

- once again revisiting the 'i quit' bullshit from S3. once again gonna try being only supergirl cuz that went so well the last time. i mean, if it leads to a "kara is my favourite person" line from lena, i can allow it

- kara has been having these deep conversations with alex and then with lena but tonight it was with william. why?

- william asked an important question that went unanswered because it's been very unclear what kara wants. it changes like the weather. or with whatever these dumbass writers need for their dumbass plot. kara still seems as lost and unsure of her place in the world as she did in S1

- also im not liking the fact that superman can apparently have it all (journalism, wife, kids, superheroing) but time and again, this show pushes that kara can't? that something has to give? what the fuck

- that dome sliced that woman's food truck in half and probably some humans and buildings. it's impossible to think that the entire circumference of that dome just so happened to fall in some safe zone. impossible. they maimed and/or killed people today

- on another note, kara immediately asking lena for a solution. lena giving one. alex looking appropriately sceptical. kara immediately saying "do it" because lena "is right most of the time" (her canon words). kara's faith in lena is unwavering and im totally fine

- love how alex is just foregoing her costume these days. her sentinel cover lasted half a season

- sigh. whiny politicians. shoehorning william. sprinkle of andrea. idiot superheroes. cringe cgi. at least 1 super friend mia. just enough supercorp bait. inconsistencies. lena cranking out solutions like a machine. standard episode template

- brainy and lena moments. i absolutely love their friendship. would've been nice if they had an actual scene of them talking about nia while they worked, especially since brainy was so worried about her

- so so so the nightmare monster was just fucking around inside the dome? and kara didn't exactly try to stop it now did she?

- never realized how painful bad cgi can be. my eyeballs were legit throbbing

- did they just say dream energy is like nuclear energy. fucking how? the writers are so dumb

- kara clearly has serious issues that everyone is ignoring. alex said they had it handled and they totally did but she still bailed

- everything about kara's quitting scene, self sabotaging the interview, barely being a reporter these days with real effort, her conversation with william, just screams depression to me. this baby needs therapy so badly. she's hurting and sad despite having warmth in her life. she clearly needs additional support

- would also like to point out that kara spirals in the episode where she has no one on one time with lena or alex

- the lena witch storyline is dragging its feet dawg. since lena said magic is "instinct and intuition" i want to believe this will lead to some situation where kara and her friends (or ideally just kara) is in danger and something just clicks, her eyes glow, lex goes flying, nyxly says oh shit im fucked

- felt kinda robbed of a brainia kiss tonight. and supercorp domestic fluff. and dansen content. oh...i figured out why this episode was trash

- i don't care for nyxly's plot. and i will care even less now that lex is involved. she was doing quite fine solo but i guess a show about women can't thrive without a man swooping in to help

- did lex just materialize from the gauntlet like some bald genie? fucking how?

- who is bankrolling the super friends? alex, lena, brainy and now kara are unemployed. j'onn i assume has his p.i thing tho we never see him do it. lena presumably is still rich but income vs wealth is the issue here. kelly just started as a social worker. nia is probably still on a cub reporter salary. who's covering expenses? and how?

this season doesn't feel like a final season...at all. instead of wrapping shit up, more plotlines are diverging. really feels like the stories are been written to continue and not conclude and that's so aggravating to say the least. and what makes it worse is that we're at 16/20 and kara still doesn't seem to have a storyline of her own.

and what troubles me: kara is going to give up something when she should not have to. she should get to have it all. the job she loves, being a superhero and having a love of her own. she needs to find a balance. maybe take a step back as supergirl, leave certain things to the police and j'onn and alex. reduce her workload at catco. attend therapy sessions and take some time off to reconnect with herself.

i don't see how spontaneously quitting solves any of her issues. where's the passion kara had just last week? or even at the beginning of this episode where she gushed on and on about the power of journalism?

why does she never get to have it all? S1 - gives up james because she can't have love + be supergirl. S2 - gives up kara danvers (to some extent) because having mon + being supergirl is apparently enough. S3 - neglects being kara danvers again (quits job, runs to argo) + tries to have love but fails (again). S4 gets to be kara danvers + supergirl but no love due to her dishonesty with lena. S5 - pretty much had nothing going for her.

it's so unfair man. after all these seasons and everything she's been through and sacrificed. the disservice to her character is a crime and the cw can go fuck themselves

[permafusion-stevonnie]

So this idea isn’t leaving my head. While I’m not going to get it started for now, since I want to concentrate on my current Stevonnie comic, ideas are still ticking away and I just really wanted to draw this cover for the idea.

Maybe I’ll get its own page started in time. I’ll let you know if I do. But even if I did, I wouldn’t expect regular updates to it, not while I’m working on Together Forever.

I want to quickly say something that I think some people may have gotten confused about when I was talking about the Fallout Universe before:

Crystal Gems are still called Crystal Gems, but their role is similar, but not the same as the Brotherhood of Steel. In that they are isolationists, who will try to protect humanity from dangerous gem technology, and corrupted gems. they aren’t bothered with human mutants, human problems, or human technology. But I feel that, ove time, Steven will help their character growth away from this and help them, at least, start opening up to the local comminuty and helping where they can.

Homeworld Authority is still called Homeworld, or The Authority, but take on a similar role to the Enclave. They view themselves as the rightful masters of earth and they’re automatically more superior to any other lifeform by birthright.

I have been thinking over what could have occurred to create this world, how’s this for a (work in progress) backstory: (ended up a lot longer than I thought it would, so I’m space saving by putting in this break)

The Gem colonisation of earth happened later than it did in canon. A couple of thousand years, maybe. Unlike the 6000 years ago in canon, it was perhaps 5000, or maybe 4000 years ago. Enough for a bigger human civilisation to take part in the gem war for earth.

Pink still gets her colony started, still changes her mind about it, and finally chooses to become Rose Quartz to lead the rebellion. I think the human zoo will still be made, because I like the idea of that being around to give a mash-up of the human zoo and the mother ship zeta dlc from Fallout 3.

What really diverges from the timeline is when the rebellion starts fighting back with larger groups of human allies. 4000 (or 5000) years ago we are talking some good military strategies, chariots, bows and arrows, cavalries and tactics, etc. Some research will be needed to really flesh out the lore.

Homeworld, facing a bigger threat than a hundred or so rebels, puts a little more effort into research and development of newer technologies to counteract the human strategies. Nothing develops technologies quite like war.

Rose and the others start capturing some technologies from Homeworld and start studying them to not only understand them, but even attempting to reverse engineer them. They obviously won’t be able to replicate the weapons in form, but hope to do so in function.

This is where Scribes would come in for the Crystal Gems are the replacement for the Brotherhood of Steel that I’ve talked about before. Some Gems and some clever humans, would dedicate themselves to trying to understand the newer Gem technology they’re starting to see.

With inventive people like Bismuth to build their own version of it.

The actual Gem Technology will be locked away in the temple- or whatever name I may give it- but the remake versions that the Crystal Gems turn out will be spread far and wide.

I’m just thinking off the top of my head, but it’d be like- if they tried to make their own version of the gem destabiliser, it would be like a giant tuning fork hooked up to something similar to a large Baghdad Battery (google it, it’s kinda cool) that they would carry in a backpack.

The war would carry on like that, with Homeworld making new tech to combat the threat, sooner or later the rebellion captures some, they make their own version of it, and Homeworld makes new tech to combat the threat.

This drain on resources does take its toll on Homeworld though, and their war against earth is perhaps much shorter, between 300 and 800 years, I haven’t decided yet.

Things do play out similar to canon though. Homeworld decides to abandon earth as a lost cause, implant the Cluster so they’ll get something out of the deal and the three Diamonds blast the earth with their powers as a final middle finger to the rebels.

Gems are destroyed, except for the original Crystal Gems, and Bismuth! Canon Bismuth made a lot of regular weapons and armour and the rebellion was still losing. She was driven to making the Breaking Point because she didn’t think they had a chance of winning any other way. In this new canon, however, because Bismuth was working on newer and newer weapons all the time, each one she was confident would help turn the tide of the war, she never had chance to work on the ultimate weapon of the Breaking Point. She may have designed it, or may have the idea kicking around the back of her mind, but never got around to building it. 

Rose does her thing of finding somewhere isolated to live in both peace and regret for the war. This is where the Crystal Gems become isolationists

With the Gems gone, humans are left to their own devices with all this more advanced technology than they should have in this point in history. Tech continues to develop with this head start.

Fast forward to the year 1929 and people are living lives as you’d see in the Fallout universe in the 2070′s. Nuclear fulled cars, robot assistants, laser rifles and power armour and all that other stuff.

The reason I chose 1929 is two-fold. The first Fallout game was set 84 years after the nuclear war, and 84 years after 1929 is the year 2013; the year Steven Universe first aired.

The failing of the world is the same reason the Fallout universe failed. Resources started to become scarce, wars started over what remained and the whole thing was escalated by a race that may have been too young to fully understand the forces they were really dealing with, having come a long way, but still too fast, thanks to the ancient interference.

Nuclear hellfire rained down and some people took their shelter in the vaults, while everyone else had to find ways to survive outside.

Rose and the Gems stick to their isolation as humanity all but wipes itself out. Rose is heartbroken to see the beautiful world that she fought so hard for, so easily destroyed. There can be a lot to explore there. Maybe Rose will leave the group, maybe she’ll just wander off and be alone a lot but still return to the temple eventually. I haven’t decided yet.

Perhaps all the gems will have some additional guilt, knowing that their old tech is what pushed humanity so far so fast.

Fast forward 70 years and Rose meets a travelling wastelander named Greg. They fall in love. I’m not going to go into a lot of detail here mostly because I haven’t really thought too much about it, but partly because I know I want it to be explored within the story itself to show how different from canon it would be. Not just the flashback elements from “Story for Steven,” and "We Need to Talk," with a Fallout flair. I want to work out some other nice adventures to bring them together.

Rose and Greg come back to Beach City with Rose expecting their baby.

Steven is born and the Gems immediately take custody, with the logic that their secure base is a better place for Steven to grow up than the harsh wasteland. Greg is allowed to visit as often as he likes, but not stay there. Nor is Steven allowed off the base. They want to protect the legacy of their leader, Rose.

I’m going to say that Steven starts showing hints of Gem powers around 10 years old. Nothing he can control. Perhaps his Gem glows when he’s really happy, if he falls down some steps his bubble forms but immediately pops so it’s just enough to save him from injury. Little things like that.

But this serves as a point where The Gems start “encouraging” Greg to visit less and leave the raising of Steven to them, as his upbringing has now become “Gem Business”

Steven may have snuck off the base once or twice to see the world beyond the base, but after this he’ll do it a lot more often to see his dad and the Beach City settlement.

I think Bismuth suspects he sneaks off but both can’t prove it, and doesn’t want to try and prove it, Garnet knows but says nothing, both of them are letting Steven have his fun, and Pearl has no idea he does it.

Amethyst is not part of the group in the beginning, she’s out as part of a raider gang somewhere. Thank you to theyarheeguy for giving me that idea, and many others, to work with.

A total of 84 years after the bombs dropped, Steven is now 12 years old, sneaking off the base for another visit to town, when he spots a pretty young girl dressed in a strange blue jumpsuit, emerging from a hidden trapdoor that was underneath the old Beach City water-tower.

Steven is 12 because I believe that’s how old he was when the show started. Based on the timeline, the passing of the seasons and so on, he has to have a 13th birthday that we don’t see on screen, before we do see his 14th birthday.

[pumpkinpiejack]

A couple days ago I sent this ask to @lobotomycastiel and actually ended up writing it. It’s mainly about Dean, Claire, and baby Jack dealing with some of the pain of losing Cas.

You can also read it on AO3.

Three days.

Three days, Dean had been in charge of Jack. Three days since they found him smoldering the blankets on Kelly’s bed, sheets stained with blood. Three days since Dean had picked him up and refused to put him down.

Three days since Dean put Cas’s body on that pyre and watched it burn to nothing but ash and dust.

It stains everything he touches, streaks against Jack's baby pale skin, fingerprints on Sam’s clothes. The taste coating the back of his tongue. He can't escape it, can't drive fast enough to get rid of it. It lingers in the air around him and mocks him for his loss, but he still can’t seem to bring himself to wash it off.

Jack hasn't stopped crying since they lit the pyre. Dean prepared the body himself. He owed this to Cas after everything, to prepare his body right, to make sure his hands were gentle. He carried him out to the pyre too, a baby strapped to his chest, unnaturally quiet in the fading light of the sun.

Dean hadn't been able to finish it. His entire body stood curled around Jack, his face buried in the baby's soft hair as his hands shook so hard he couldn't light the match. He couldn't pour the salt, he couldn't hold the gas can.

His skin felt too tight for his body, like something was trying to escape, an animal in his chest scratching and clawing at the inside of his ribs and everything hurt.

Jack cries and he cries and he cries and Dean is thrown back into every shitty night on the road with Sam as a baby and he can't breathe. He remembers waking up at night to the same sound and curling up in a playpen that was far too small for both him and Sam. He wanted to make it better. He wanted to be able to help and make the crying stop.

But, the only time Jack stops is when Dean holds him and only when it's in a specific way. His tiny cheek needs to be pressed into Dean’s shoulder, just over Cas’s handprint and doesn't that just fucking hurt.

It aches in a whole new way, like he somehow senses Cas there.

The handprint itself has faded over the years. All the times he’s been healed and rebuilt from the inside out, and it is the only thing that remains. A discolored and slightly raised patch of skin that means more to him than any physical object on earth (besides his baby of course).

Three days. Two days to drive home and one day to prepare himself.

Sam made the call. Dean couldn't get Jack to stop crying long enough to do it himself, not without risking waking him up. Even with a day to prepare himself, it still wasn't nearly enough.

When Claire walks in it's like the floor falls out from underneath Dean’s feet. She’s a mess. Her eyes rimmed red, mascara and eyeliner streaking down her face and she looks like she drove straight through the night. Her hands shake, just like his as he hands Jack to Sam.

He holds him awkwardly, his hands too big, too unaccustomed to holding something so fragile. Dean could count the number of times Sam had held Jack on one hand. He couldn't be away from Dean for long or he would start crying, shrill shrieks that shake the very ground they stood on. Cries that cause the glass to rattle in its pane and nearly makes Dean’s ears bleed on more than one occasion.

“You look like a mess.”

“Says you.”

Touché. Dean hasn't slept either, hasn't showered, hasn't eaten. He drove 1,700 miles in two days, a crying baby strapped into his backseat the entire way. He knows he looks like shit. He still has ash smeared across his face, he can't seem to bring himself to wipe it away.

He can't bring himself to be far from Jack, can't stand him crying. He can't look at Jack, his eyes repeatedly drawn to the blue that is so familiar and so foreign all at once. He can't light a match. He can't think about his mom. He can't admit Cas is….

There's a lot he can't do right now.

Claire’s voice is quiet. It’s calm in all the ways that Dean knows that she isn't. He can see the rage boiling under the surface. The sadness, the grief all tangled into a little ball, locked away so deep inside of her that the only place it was visible was her eyes.

She tries to stay strong, but she still looks around as if she’s missing something, because the truth is, she is. She looks around the room searching for the same figure that he does every time he enters a room and they’ll never find it. Not now and never again.

He turns to tell Cas a joke, and he’s not there. He’ll see a blurry image of tan and black out of the corner of his eye and reach out with Jack, a mumbled thank god under his breath, but there’s never anyone there.

He’s just alone as she is, even with three other people in the room.

And then the dam breaks.

“How could you?” Dean keeps looking at her. He owes her that. He looks her in the eye and listens, because he owes her that. He watches as they fill with tears and, god, hers are the same as Jack’s. So similar but not quite right. Almost everything he could ever want and his chest burns.

Cas never cried, even when he was dying on the floor of that barn, black ooze streaming out of his mouth, skin rotting and flaking up the side of his neck, he didn't cry. He just looked at Dean with those blue eyes and told him he loved him, that he loved all of them.

They never got to talk about it.

“You were supposed to keep him safe!” Her voice breaks as she launches herself at him, her fists smacking against his chest, but he can't really feel it. Over and over and over she drives the side of her fist into his chest. Like a little kid throwing a tantrum. He makes no move to stop her, to grab her hands and still them. He just lets her. I owe her this, I deserve this. “You promised me you would keep him safe,” and all at once her anger is gone, washed away with her tears as she leans her head against his chest and she sobs. “How could you?”

Finally, Dean moves. He places a hand on the back of her head, careful of any indication that she didn't want to be touched, but she just leans in farther, collapses into his chest and sobs harder.

She’s so small, so young despite her fiery disposition, he could tuck her perfectly under his chin. Dean remembers feeling on top of the world at her age. Twenty years old and suddenly he could rule the world, tear it all down from the ground up and rebuild it in his own image if he wanted. But here she is, a perfect mirror of him and all he sees is a scared little kid.

He can hear Jack crying in the background, having reached his limit of being away from Dean.

Eventually, she pulls away, shoving him and turning to where Sam is holding Jack uncomfortably. Claire smears her makeup farther down her face. There is still anger in her eyes and part of it scares him. It was the same anger he had held the first time he laid eyes on Jack.

Part of him wanted to leave him there. Part of him wanted to do what he originally planned when he walked into that house gun in hand, but he knows he never would. Jack wasn't a monster. He wasn't anything more than a baby. He cried and screamed and had the tiniest hands and the bluest eyes and even just looking at him made Dean’s heart soften.

Something like that couldn't be a monster anymore than Sam could, or little Bobby John.

So, instead, he scooped Jack up, the baby's skin burning his own, a tiny handprint searing itself onto the skin of his left forearm.

“He looks like Cas.” Claire laughs, but it sounds more like a sob than anything. Jack seems to quiet as she draws closer, his blue eyes widening as he takes her in. He’s so small in Sam's arms, blinking and whimpering as his crying petered down to nothing.

“Yeah he does.” Dean’s voice is rough as he reaches out to take Jack from Sam’s arms.

Sam is looking at the two of them, his eyes flickering between them as if it was a tennis match, a furrow between his brows. He is probably just as confused as Dean is.

Jack doesn't just stop crying. He either cries so much that he passes out or Dean spends hours with him pressed against the last fading remnants of the handprint, humming and rocking him. To see him just fade off while still awake was damn near a miracle.

Claire collapses in one of the chairs around the radar and holds out her arms expectantly.

“Come on, then.” Dean lets out a huff of laughter, or something as close to it as he's gotten since everything. He moves closer with Jack in his arms and slides him into Claire’s. Jack coos and waves his hands around. It's the uncontrolled movements of a newborn, more of a muscle spasm than anything, and Claire snorts out another little laugh as he accidentally smacks her collarbone.

“He’s so calm.” Sam's voice is awed.

Dean is right there with him, Jack isn't crying, he isn't uncomfortable. For the first time, he seems almost happy. He curls closer to her and lets out the tiniest yawn, his eyes crunching closed. Claire looks mesmerized. She gives Jack her fingers and he wraps his whole hand around them.

“I'm staying.” Claire says suddenly, eyes still locked with Jack’s. She can't seem to look away and neither can he.

“Okay.” And it’s as simple as that.

-

Three days. 84 hours, with no more sleep than a cat nap here and there and yet he still couldn’t seem to fall asleep. Every time he tries, he manages to get five steps away from Jack’s bassinet before he starts to scream and he couldn't exactly sleep with the baby on him, not when he could wake up from a nightmare fighting.

So he wanders the bunker. Up and down through the levels, crisscrossing through the hallways. Jack is tucked up against his shoulder like always. The thumb of the handprint brushes against his cheek in the mockery of a caress. He’s whimpering slightly, but at the very least he hasn’t completely started crying yet.

Dean reaches the kitchen only to find it already occupied. Claire is perched on the counter, a beer in one hand and the other wiping away another round of tears. Dean debates leaving her there, but finds that he can’t.

He’s been there more than a handful of times and during each one he was constantly torn between wanting to be left the fuck alone and wanting someone to notice. He wanted someone to realize that he wasn’t doing okay, to sit there with him as he broke apart. He never wanted to talk, didn’t want to cry in front of them, but realizing that someone cared enough to notice his downward spiral always seemed to help in its own fucked up way.

So, Dean pulls the bottle from her loose fingertips and puts on a pot of coffee. Claire makes grabby-hands at him until he relents, handing over Jack who just coos and twines his hands into her leather jacket. Well, Dean’s leather jacket. The same one she had snagged from his closet not too long ago, as if he wouldn’t notice. Jack immediately falls more silent than he’s been all day, his eyes sliding shut with another yawn that is far too big for his tiny body.

She’s so good with him already, her hands gentle as they shush him.

Claire thinks her hands are made for violence, for torture, for killing, for hunting. She thinks that’s all they’ll ever really be good for. She’s a predator, a soldier, made for a war that she didn’t know existed until it ruined her life. But those hands are also for protecting, for comforting, for saving.

She is good, at her core. Gentle and loving and all of Dean and Cas and Sam and Jody and Donna’s good traits all mixed into one girl who stands before him. A better person than he’ll ever be.

She’s stolen his bad traits too, the same way she stole that jacket. Put it on as a layer of protection against the world. It’s too big for her, doesn’t fit quite right, because it’s not hers and it’s not Dean’s either. It was too big for Dean too when he first put it on 20 years ago and he doesn’t know if he ever actually grew into it, or just thinks he did.

Together, they sit, shoulder to shoulder and don't say anything and that’s enough for the both of them. They drink their coffee until they can blame their shaking hands on that and listen to Jack’s even breathing.

Dean doesn’t move, even as Claire rests her head against his shoulder, the same shoulder Jack does, and he feels the tears soak in.

Four days. 96 hours and Jack finally manages to fall asleep without crying.

-

Nine days.

Nine days and he’s barely surviving. He can’t move, he can’t breathe, he can’t exist without something tearing at him from the inside out. But, he continues on anyway.

So many things he can’t do. So many contradictions that have slowly become his life.

Claire and him have a system. They work like a machine, two parts of the same person. They don’t look at each other, they can’t. Dean sees all the ways she looks like Cas, all the ways she looks like him, and she sees all the ways he’s failed her.

But they work together, anyway, for Jack.

And that scares him too.

It’s hard to see her with him and not see himself reflected back. He was a lot younger when he first had to learn how to change a diaper or make a bottle but she’s still too young to have that responsibility thrown onto her.

Claire takes to it like she takes to everything else: a fake grin that he can spot from a mile away and a sly joke.

She pours formula into the bottle and he gets his bath ready and at night they sit together on the counter and they watch over Jack. On the nights they manage to sleep he can hear her sneak into his room and pass out in the chair closest to Jack’s bassinet. Four hours later, he guides her into the bed and takes up her spot.

It never fails to make him feel like shit when she steals Jack’s from his hands. Makes him feel like John.

Dean doesn’t tell Sam this, but he somehow knows, the same way he always does.

Sam looks at him as he looks at Claire and marches up to him with a furrow in his brow and Dean knows that he’s not going to like whatever comes out of Sam’s mouth next.

“Can we talk?”

“No.” Sam gives him a harsh look and grabs his arm, dragging him out of the room anyway, down the hall and around the corner so their voices won’t travel.

“Sam, I said no.” Dean doesn’t even have the strength to pull his arm out of Sam’s grip, he’s just so tired.

“Yeah, well, I don’t care.” Sam leans against the wall across from him, his hands open by his side, his shoulders slouched. “Look at me, Dean, you need to let Claire help you.”

“I have.”

“No you haven’t.” Sam sighs and runs a hand through his hair. Dean really wants to take a pair of clippers to it. “She helps you, but you don’t let her.”

“Well, maybe it’s because it’s not her responsibility.” Dean crosses his arms, feet squared, even as he sways slightly.

“And it’s somehow yours? Dean, we were all friends with Cas.”

Were, were, were. Past tense, always past tense because Cas is gone. He’s not coming back, he’s ash and bone on a beach 20 hours away, and Dean took a shower but he can still somehow taste it on the back of his throat. His burns sting when he moves his hands. The handprint of his forearm reminds him of the one on his shoulder and he can’t breathe.

“Yes.” Dean chokes out. “Yes. He’s my responsibility and I’m not going to push that onto someone else just because I want to drink or sleep or go on a hunt.”

Dean watches as Sam’s entire face goes blank. He shuts down for a moment before coming back to life all at once, like a computer rebooting itself after it’s been overloaded.

“Dean.” It’s Sam’s turn to choke out the word. “Dean you're not dad.” Dean bolts upright and suddenly wants to punch something. He wants to scream and yell and feel the crunch of wood and bone under his feet.

He doesn’t even have the excuse of the Mark of Cain this time. Just his own shitty emotions getting the better of him.

“I’m not talking about this.”

“Yes we are.” Sam catches Dean's sleeve and Dean nearly socks him on principle. “Dean letting people help you isn't bad, that’s what new parents do. Claire isn’t four, she can choose whether she wants to help or not and right now she wants to help. So let her.”

Dean knows. He knows for as much as Claire acts like him, she isn’t him, but it’s hard to divorce the two ideas when he looks at her everyday and sees a mirror.

She’s been getting more frustrated over the week because Dean won’t let her help. She has to push her way through him in order to do anything useful. Dean can’t stop her from staying awake but he can make sure that he gets everything done before she does so she doesn’t have to.

Dean doesn’t want Claire to feel like she needs to help just because she can calm Jack down. She deserves to have her own life. To go out and hunt and have fun if she wants to and not have to take care of a newborn that is needier than most. But no matter what he does, she’s still right there next to him, trying to help in any way she can.

Dean rips his arm out of Sam’s grip and marches back to where Claire is holding a whimpering Jack. His eyes glow gold ever so often, but she just shushes him with a kiss on the forehead.

Claire already loves that kid. Loves him enough that she would put his life before hers. And you know what? Dean can’t even bring himself to blame her when he made the same choice at four.

Dean collapses into the chair next to her and reaches out to grab him.

“Do you want to go get his bottle ready while I try to keep him settled?” The smile she sends his way is worth more than anything.

-

“So I’ve been trying to find out why you two, in particular, calm Jack down so much.” Sam’s voice echoed through the bunker, breaking the suffocating silence they’ve been in for so long. He stares at the two perched in their usual spot on the counter, a single mug of coffee teetering between them, lipstick smears on one side.

They look like shit.

In sync they give him a raised eyebrow. Claire passes Jack over to Dean, the baby snuffling in his sleep, and snatches the coffee cup from his hand. She makes sure to twist it before taking a drink, lining up with the lipstick mark already there.

“Well back when that whole thing happened like four years back, we found out that angels leave a bit of grace behind.”

No.

“And that handprint was a direct tie from soul to grace.”

No.

“I think he’s reacting to Cas’s grace that remains inside of you. He obviously bonded with Cas before he was even born you remember the park as well as I do. It must calm him down, since Cas isn’t-”

Claire bolts up and Dean sees the coffee cup tip in slow motion, spilling down to the floor with a crash. She’s angry.

She’s so fucking angry it’s like looking in a mirror.

Dean can’t even blame her when she leaves. Walks right out of the kitchen and he can hear the front door slam echoing throughout the entire bunker. He’s just as mad. He wants to rage, he wants to throw the mug against the wall, he wants to scream because Cas left.

He left them with a kid and a piece of himself embedded underneath Dean’s skin that he can never get out. And he left.

He’s gone, turned to ash and dust on the wind and never coming back. No begging and pleading and praying will help them this time. It won’t get him back, it won’t get this piece of Cas under his skin out.

All he gets is the shitty consolation prize of a piece of his best friend's soul under his skin and the grief that keeps him on the teetering edge of insanity. All he gets is his family more broken than before and apparently a connection to a twenty year old who would sooner wish him dead than help her.

All he gets is flashes of something familiar out of the corner of his eye that disappears as soon as he turns and a lingering figure standing behind him in the mirror. Dean has stopped reacting to it. He’s stopped spinning wildly at the sight only to find no one there, he finds he can’t take the disappointment, the heartbreak.

But instead, he chases Claire out the front door, because honestly he can’t take another loss. Not right now.

Jack is still in his arms, working himself up into crying as Claire gets further away.

They catch up to her halfway down the road, her shoulders shaking with the force of holding back her sobs.

“Claire, stop.” Dean calls out and she stops walking but doesn’t turn. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not.” She nearly shouts it, somehow curling in on herself farther. “It’s not okay. It’s always something new and I can’t.”

“Claire-”

“Don’t look at me.” Claire begs and Dean gets it. He does want anyone to see him cry either so he turns around and presses his lips into Jack’s hair.

“I just-” Claire starts and stops like a car sputtering to life and he can hear her growing more frustrated with every breath. “I keep-” Finally she breaks and lunges forward. Dean thinks she’s going to start hitting him again, like the first day she showed up, but she just rests her forehead between his shoulder blades.

“I keep losing everything.” Claire starts. “I lost my dad for a year and then he comes back and I lose him again and this time it’s my fault.” Dean doesn’t interrupt but he wants to tell her it’s okay. That none of this is her fault. That it was his, and Sam’s, and Cas’s but not hers. Never hers. “My dad wanted to protect me so he let Cas in again and now he’s dead and my mom couldn’t even look at me. She blamed me, I could tell. If I had just said no- but, she left too and now she’s dead. And Randy is dead and now Cas is dead too and I keep losing.” She’s sobbing now, her arms tucked up between her chest and Dean’s back. He’s tempted to turn around, but she doesn’t seem to be done.

“Every time I have Jack it’s like suddenly I’m okay, like I’m whole again. I feel like he’s not actually gone, like I’ll turn around and he’ll be there, the stupid look on his face.” She presses closer, and gently knocks her head into his back over and over again. “And now I know it’s not even because of me, I’m not getting better. It’s just this piece of grace still in me that’s making me think that way and I can’t. I just ca-”

“I know.” Dean finally spins and tucks her under his chin. Jack is squished between them, his eyes glowing gold in the fading light of the sun. They’d have to get back inside soon or he’d get cold. But for now, he just holds the two of them close. She tucks herself impossibly closer, her hands gripping the back of his shirt like a lifeline. “Trust me I know. My dad made a deal to protect me and I still haven’t forgiven him to this day, even though I’ve done the same for Sammy more times than I’d like to admit.”

“That guilt never goes away.” He admits, and presses a kiss to the crown of her head. He wishes Charlie where here. She always seemed to know what to do. “You’ll never forget the people who have sacrificed themselves for you. You’ll love them and hate them and want them back and never want to see them again and it’ll always be confusing.”

“Are you trying to make me feel better.” She laughs and it’s one of the best sounds in the world. It makes the knot in Dean’s chest unclench just a fraction so he can laugh back.

“Yeah I am, because we’ll figure it out together. You have us now and if anyone knows about survivors guilt it me and Sam.” Claire let’s out another laugh and Dean presses another kiss to her head before pulling away. “Come on we have to get back inside before it gets too cold for him.” Claire nods and wipes away the majority of her tear tracks before making the same grabby hands she always does.

Dean slides Jack into her arms and pulls her in for another hug.

“Together?” He makes a sweeping gesture back to the bunker and she snorts.

“Together.”

[henriethsmile]

I posted 205 times in 2021

173 posts created (84%)

32 posts reblogged (16%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 0.2 posts.

I added 1 350 tags in 2021

#artist - 168 posts

#art - 167 posts

#drawing - 167 posts

#my art - 164 posts

#digital drawing - 152 posts

#batman - 132 posts

#bruce wayne - 130 posts

#superman - 91 posts

#clark kent - 90 posts

#superbat - 89 posts

Longest Tag: 90 characters

#i had to draw myself hugging him because he looks like sad cute puppy that just need a hug

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

Superwonderbat Fantasy AU fanart 

Not gonna lie drawing this for @causeimanartist as a Thank you drawing was emotional for me but in a good way. I am not good at this speeches and putting out emotions so that is why I alway when I want to say thank you I drew something for the person. This art is for @causeimanartist why? When I came back to DC comics I was looking for fanarts of Batman Superman etc. and I came across her. In that time I didn´t even wanted to pick up pencil I was in horrible place but as soon as I sa her art her unique artstyle something in me broke and I was instantly motivated to draw. I could spend hours looking at her art. There is something about her art that alway no matter how bad I feel make me pick up and pencil and draw. Only thanks to her my art improve from month to month only thanks to her I step out of my comfort zone and start trying new stuff and so much more but I don´t want to speend all night writting how much I own this girl. When I am writing this is almost 1 am but I don´t mind. I needed to put it out. So by this I want to thank you so so much for creating such an amazing art that bring me back to drawing

213 notes • Posted 2021-03-04 23:50:27 GMT

#4

Magical Girls Bruce & Clark

With premission from @causeimanartist to use her Bruce this Magical duo had to be done :3 I had soooooooo much fun drawing this and I am loving this AU it´s just adorible 

228 notes • Posted 2021-03-22 00:13:16 GMT

#3

Bruce: has been sitting at the Batcomputer for 5 hours skipping his day job

Clark: gently lands behind him and softly touches his neck

Bruce: stiffens a little and tries to sound cranky but is really tired I'm fine Clark. Go back to your city.

Clark: smiling but clearly worried.l I know you're fine, but you have been here so long and haven't even eaten. Take a break. Gently rubs Bruce's neck I'll help

Bruce: tries to resist and loosing the fight as his body relaxes under Clark's massage. Waits a minute then pushes back from the computer Fine. But I'm not hungry

Clark: takes Bruce's hand and pulls him gently to the meditation room Ok. Let's lay down for a bit then.

Two hours later

Damian, freshly home from school, goes to the cave to help Bruce. Sees his chair empty. Goes back upstairs and steals the quilt Alfred gave him from his bed. Quietly walks to the meditation room, peeks into see Clark sleeping with Bruce tight against his chest, face buries in it. Walks over and gently climbs over Bruce who wakes up a little, just enough to move to give Damian room to lay between them. Damian cuddles between them, quilt wrapped around him and face buried in Bruce's neck. Alfred the cat, who followed him, curling up on Clark's feet.

Short story created by Slicey over @causeimanartist discord (Which is the best place to be)

275 notes • Posted 2021-08-15 12:58:18 GMT

#2

What if Bruce had hairstyle like this?

We had discusion on @causeimanartist about Bruce having Man bun and undercut and I just had to because let's be honest he would look hot as fuck ❤️ Also slide to see clark's and diana's reaction ❤️

334 notes • Posted 2021-05-22 15:54:01 GMT

#1

Now let the fanart begin in full ratio since we get look at Diana Bruce and Clark from both side full body 😍

603 notes • Posted 2021-10-26 09:05:01 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[encosy]

Eren Yaeger: A theory why the person devoted to freedom is in fact the least free character of all. (up to ch. 136)

Questions that lead me to this theory: Why did Eren behave so strangely? Why did he isolate himself from the rest? Why the hell did he decide to end the world? And why did he never really try to find another way?

“What about you is free?” - Chapter 134

So, despite the flood of possible theories people came up with, I couldn’t find any that provided satisfying answers for several contradicting moments. It had me reading the manga after all and musing three days and nights until I settled with a surprisingly simple approach that I haven’t yet found among the common theories. The short answer for Eren’s weird behaviour and decision for apocalypse remains the same: “Because I was born into this world”. But, in a different way of interpretation. If you don't want to read the long version, there's a summary at the end as well ;)

 So far, this quote had been mostly interpreted as justification for the freedom to live, and the freedom to fight for survival. It’s the ultimate justification for Erens decisions, no matter how despisable they are, since he's fighting for their own survival. Yet, it sounds somewhat odd from Eren Yaeger, who had always been anything but a philosopher to begin with. Why wouldn’t he justify his decision with “because they will never leave Eldia in peace”, “because it’s the only way to end the war”, “because they had taken everything from me” or simply “because we have to keep on fighting”. That would have sounded much more like him, but not such a cryptic statement.

With the latest chapters, it became apparent that Eren was indeed severely suffering under the guilt and notion of destroying the world. So why would he not think of a different way? Why don’t we see him talk to his friends and discuss alternatives? Why does he never even try to find a solution? If anyone, it would be Eren to fight against a future he didn’t want to accept, no matter how small the chance of success. But all he does is to refer to the inevitable, unchanging future. The only spark of rebellion shown is in the pathetic attempt to safe one boy, which again end in him stating that "the future doesn't change"

The idea that Eren is in fact not free to choose their future first struck me during his conversation with Rainer, where he claims they were both the same. Yes, they had both believed to do the right thing, to be a hero, but ended up with nothing but guilt, the wish to be judged upon and to finally put an end to it all. But in that moment, Eren had yet the chance to decide. It would have been so easy to accept Rainer as scapegoat for his revenge, but he only acts as if his decision was already set in stone. He never looked angry with Rainer to begin with. So it clearly wasn’t revenge he had in mind when attacking Liberio. In fact, he was simply moving forward and carrying out Zeke’s plan which would eventually lead him to his true goal: To eliminate the enemy.

Who or what exactly is the enemy/ enemies? (As far as I know, there’s no difference in Japanese language) First, it’s the titans, then the Marleyans, but now it seems to be cycle of life, death and hatred itself. Rainer, Zeke and Eren all came to this conclusion and even the last season’s opening song suggests this true motive: “Destruction, regeneration, you are the real enemy” (-My war-).

“Because I was born into this world” - reinvented

Chapter 121 underlines yet again that this phrase contains the central key to Eren’s motives. After all, it’s all it needs to thwart the great plan of Zeke – the most sharp-witted character that had been fooling everyone else throughout the whole story. Zeke’s demise came from assuming that Eren had been brainwashed by his father, hence believing it was possible to change his mind. And that’s totally legit since no normal person would be born “like this”, showing such hatred and craving for freedom from birth. In fact, the story shows no other character than Eren who despises the walls, even though he’d been living a fairly comfortable life.

Zeke probably realized in that moment: Eren was never a normal child (Carla: “He’s already great because he’s born into this world). That doesn’t only refer to his character traits and motives, but he even proves that when opposing Zeke in the other world. First, by freeing himself from his shackles, and later when he stops Ymir (Zeke: “It’s pointless, Eren. Once Ymir, the founder begins to move, nothing in this world can stop her.”). This gives two options: Either, Ymir is not the founder, or Eren is not of this world (or both). And since the idea of Eren being the true founder for whatever time-wrecking reason is far too screwed for me to grasp, I’ll stick with the latter option. It could be what Carla refers to as well, and a reason why his titan looks a lot more devilish than any other shifter before.

What does Eren really want?

When chapter 122 “From you, 2.000 years ago” responds to the very first chapter’s title, it seems very likely, that the original message was from Ymir to the present. When Eren finds her, he already knows that she had been suffering and waiting there for someone – most probably him – (“Is it you who led me here? You must have been waiting. All this time.”) and shows deep empathy by going as far as to hug her by choice (at this moment, I can’t remember him showing such affection to anyone else before, but feel free to correct me). It looks as if his intrinsic will to fight for freedom has led him to this single moment of importance, where he frees Ymir from her curse to serve the power of titans.

Interestingly enough, even though everyone knows that she gained back then, no one knows yet what the devil wanted in return. Seeing that Ymir is not at all the almighty deity, but not more than a slave, it’s likely that this was not her wish at all, but part of the bargain she now has to endure “into eternity” (as determined by the first king). Perhaps Eren symbolizes the in-time reincarnation of the devil to fulfil the bargain. But more likely, Eren was created ‘like this’ because he was the first chance in the timeline to enable her liberation (my wild guess is that Ymir herself sent him, but it could as well be the devil, the true founder, a twisted part of a past Eren or all of them at once. I don't think it doesn’t really matter who exactly started the whole ordeal.)

In chapter 122 he finally reveals he wants to “put an end to this world” to do so. He repeatedly says that he will destroy the world, but he never once said he wanted to do it, or that he wanted to kill all the people. As I see it, “putting an end” refers more to breaking the cycle than to committing omnicide.

So. What if Eren had never been in a position to make decisions, but Ymir? It looks like her motives are surprisingly simple, not more than a ‘normal person’s’. All she ever wanted is to be loved. She sacrificed everything, her life, and her humanity – even her freedom to die. But no matter what she did, she was only used for humanity’s (Fritz’s) greed. Over the course of the millennia, she gathered the hatred to destroy the world, but Eren is in no position to stop her because it goes against his destiny. In fact, Eren is quite graphically displayed as a puppet on strings. I think that’s also why Eren acted so strangely around his friends. Ever since seeing the entire future, he had been well-aware that he can’t do anything about Ymir and the apocalypse, but he hopes they are capable of ending him, and he went as far as to insult them only to make their job easier. Already back in ch. 84 when they had to decide between the life of Armin and Erwin, Eren claims to know it will be Armin to safe humanity, not him. This suggest again that Eren does not think of himself to be acting for the right cause, but rather as the (literally) spineless key for Ymir.

To summarize: Seeing just how tormented Eren was by what would happen, how he tried to subtly encourage his friends to judge and stop him, and how he didn't show any semblance of his defining will to fight a future he didn't want, I now believe that Eren has never been the one to make decisions in the first place, but a key destined from birth to only serve one purpose: To free Ymir and end the era of titans. The quote "I was born into this world" thus doesn't act as justification for his decision, but as reference to his key role for the inevitable.

Soo, feel free to prove me wrong or correct mistakes. After all, there’s only so many quotes I remember and it’s natural to see the world with a subjective filter once you have an idea in mind. There are still several details that don’t seem to quite fit, but this is the best conclusion I could draw.

Also, taking this theory further to the present plot of chapter 136 and possible endings, my suspicions are much more vague. But there's one more detail I picked up and would like to share:

Just before Ymir is about to die in her tale, someone says “You’re free”. It would fit Isayama’s sense for loops that Ymir, who had escaped death (= freedom) from being hunted down, now finally ends her prolongued life by being killed (= freed) by Eren Jäger. I think it would give more credit to his name than the usual reference to hunting (more specifically, eradicating) titans.

[bangtanger]

CONTENT CREATOR YEAR IN REVIEW

was thinking for 84 hours where should i post it but as its my creator blog i m doing it here <3 i was tagged by @taemaknae @suhdays @ynki @honsool @jjeongukie @taeyungie @dearbangtansonyeondan @lifegoesmon @everythingoes @flipthatjacketjiminie @yoongi-bts @jiminslight @hopekidoki @cowboyjinbop @yoonqiful @jcngkooks @pjmsdior @hobeah @balenciaguks​ @jinvant @hobibestboy @vjimin @yoongikook AND THANK U SO MUCH FOR INCLUDING ME T_T ik maybe its not a big deal but its a big deal to me and im touched :(((((((((((( also gimme some time to check all ur posts 👉👈 also im in a mood to say that ive collected many pokemons here djfksfhsakjddld ok nvm 

also sorry for a long post ik tmblr fvcks things up sometimes when there is keep reading so dont fight me plz <3

❀ first creation and most recent creation of 2020 

ok this is the fist one (still very pleased with colouring here T_T the stage lighting was,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, well yeah as always lmao) and this is the most recent (TBH DKJSKDSDK I WISH MY MOST RECENT POST COULD BE A DIFFERENT ONE THE ONE I WANNA MAKE FOR A MONTH NOW THE ONE ID PUT A LOT MORE EFFORTS IN SO IM A LIL FRUSTRATED i literally just missed giffing but couldnt watch anything new so took an old vid i wanted to gif once I DIDNT EVEN USE MYCOLOURING PSD IT LITERALLY HAS ONLY COUPLE OF LAYERS uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh :( but whatever,,, it just kinda doesnt show the difference -_-)

❀ a creation u r really proud of 

well 👁👄👁 there r quite few,,, and the main reason is colouring most of these r comps and i a b s o l u t e l y sucked at comps and esp at making the colouring consistent there lol so lets begin lol  1 (u have no idea how muchi love this set) 2 (i fucking mastered it i wanted to remake it for two years and i finally did!! 60 fps smooth good moments iconic performance iconic hair colour his attitude bruh and ofc the fact that i could do sth with colouring,,,,,, and chose such an unusual colour scheme that i doubted jckdckfdk and it still worked out 🥺) 3 (lol i had this idea written down since 2018 as well and this year i could finally collect all moments i needed and oh boi yeah,,, AND COLOURING I COULD ALMOST yeah almost do sth decent with it there r still couple moments id changed but im pleased) 4 (im so happy whenevr i see this CUZ IT ALL WORKED OUT it was such an impulsive comp i literally only saw couple moments for past few years as well where i could see three of them in one frame and suddenly I WAS LIKE I FUCKING MUST POST THOSE MOMENTS SOMEHOW and im so proud of colouring it looks so well T_T) 5 (the colouring ofc im still :o that i could get rid of that shitty shit dkksjkj AND THE MOMENTS ITSELF?????? AND BLACK SWAN???????? EVERY PERFORMANCE???? HAIR?????? OUTFIT???????? EVRERYHTIGNM???????? HIS FUCKING STARE? FACE??? DONT MAKE ME CONTINUE AAAAAAAAAAA also if im not wrong this set in particular made me start my before/after posts 🥺) 6 (i jujst love everything about it e v e r yt h i n g also i could made ppl believe that jin fr has purple hair here when in reality its brown djhfdhskdf one of blending modes or adjustment layers worked this way lol) 7 (i wont even comment this tried a great tutorial with great beautiful resuls for the first time ever and it worked out so well and i like it so much and the whole yoongi here,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, also love me some borders that add cinematic feels to some gifs or just make them pretty in a dif way just like i did with prev post i mentioned imo lol) OK LAST ONE 8 (I USED A VIDEO OF STARS AND ADDED IT TO THE GIF FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER I FUCKED WITHMASKING FOR 3 HOURS GRRRRRRRR THIS IS SO HUGE FOR ME!!!!! i cant even explain whew IVE NEVER DID ANYTHING LIKE THIS BEFORE SO I WAS REALLY PROUD TOO even tho i fucked masking up on some layers lmao but lets not pay too much attention to it 👀)

❀ a creation that took u forever

ohhhhhhhh i think this one cuz the moments were long i couldnt decide what do i want to include + it ts file so u kno,,, the speed,,, of processing,, + somehow decided to put them all together + fucked with colouring + had to get rid of the logo and as we know japan likes a lot of big braight text around haha and draw hair in moments where logo made it look blurry + had to adjust the order and all that stuff but getting rid of logo was the longest part 

❀ a creation from 2020 that received the most notes

whew this iconic one im still amazed tbh they looked soso incredible and im glad how everything turned out here <3 (could change some colouring on bg tho so it could look better and more hq :c)

❀ a creation u think deserved more notes 

lol this one cuz i was so hyped to make it cuz their concert in saudi arabia is one of my fav things in the world and i waited for so long to have mood and energy to go throught it to find jk moments and i couldnt choose some for this comp for so long and just,,,,,, overall,,,, the way he looks here............................................................... its a special comp to me haha ill def gif more of it i have shit ton of clips left and also there r other members and i just want to sit and enjoy yhe whole thing to so may find more stuff to gif here lol

❀  a new fandom u joined an a creation u made for it 

i didnt join anything heurheru

❀ a creation u made that breaks ur heart

OKAY LISTEN DSJAKDJHFDKJ THIS ONE IF U KNOW U KNOW AND IM SURE IT BREAKS ALMOST EVERY HEART tbh whenever i see soft smiles or soft interactions or anything like this im just :’( <3 even my serotonin boost tag does it to me cuz its too precious T_T

❀  a ‘simple’ creation that u really love

this one cuz everything about it ah and this one 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

❀ a creation that was inspired by someone else

ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm idk maybe this one ? cuz i never did anything like this before and maybe i saw someones beautiful headers and decided to try one too ? i could do a lot better there is not enough depth but oh well,,, lol

❀  a favourite creatin created by someone else

oh its gonna be hard :) dear every conten creator i hope u dont mind if i wont go though the whole 2020 gif tag but choose form the most recent ones i loved? u know how much i appreciate ur content cuz i never stop screaming about it in tags but truly there r more content makers and i want u to know that i really love ur content :(

@syubb welllllllllllll i wont even comment this is iconique.....

@jinv T_T val i miss u but there should be bday comps with that BIG ASS IMAGE THAT HAS ITS PARTS ON EVERY SINGLE GIF I CANT EVEN EXPLAIN that icant even find dfjksfskj

@jung-koook i literally couldnt choose ehdskjdjksd but i decided this one cuz its sososososososososososososososososososososo well made every single detail here is chefs kiss

@kkulmoon i truly really cant get enough of ur colouring lately T_T

@minhope !!!!!!LITERALLY EVERY PANTONE COMP OR ESPECIALLY 7 YEARS WITH BTS PANTONE ONE IM AAAAAAAAAAAAA and lmao i think this is one of the most reposted things ive ever seen on internet T_T

@jjoon hng amy u know how i feel about ur content T_T decided this one cuz f l a w l e s s 

@hopekidoki stuff like this makes my jaw lie in the floor dsjkdj

@flipthatjacketjiminie idk whats up but it makes me scream like a madman every time i see it.........

@lifegoesmon i cant even explain why i chose this one but everything here is so incredible !!!!!!!!1

@hobeah one of those good fucking bye ones.....

@taeyungie this made me feel so many things and a whole ass a w e so cool T_T

@jiminfilter i will never shut up about bts core jungkook one should also be here

@seoksjin THE COLOURS I SCREAM OH MY GOD O HMY OGD I JUST WENT TO CHECK OUT AND SAW THIS AND IMMEDIATELY DJKSJD DECIDED THIS IS CRAZY THE PASTELS THE PINNKS AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA EVERYHTGIN but also those birthday posts ahhh T_T

@jinvant i wanna YELL but also u know how much i love ur quality and blacks  T_T and gfxs too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

@yoongi-bts i love everything here with my whole heart!!!

@everythingoes SHOUWLD I EVEN EXPLAIN WHY

@hobibestboy THIS IS SO COOL AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA THE COLOUR SCHEME

@joenns  I WONT EVEN EXPLAIN IM SO HURT HES SO THIS IS SO T____________________T 

@jjeongukie idk i cant get enough of skin tone!!!!!!!!!!!!

@chaylani i really love the colouring and love these posts with highlights T_T

@eklipxe COLOURING AND EVERYTHIGN

@oncupid cant get enough of every colouring ive seen <3

@jiminslight THIS WHOLE GIF RIGHT HERE

@6dis-ease COZY AND PRECIOUS T_T

@ofkimtaehyung I LITERALLY HAVE NO WORDS ITS SO PRETTY

@taee it was really hard to choose too T_T decided to go with this cuz,, u kno

@yoonqiful CUZ THESE COLOURS DRIVE ME INSANE

OK THIS IS GETTING TOO LONG KDSFJSAKDL I WOULD ADD A LOT MORE CUZ THERE IS A LOT MORE TO ADD BUT IVE BEEN DOING THIS FOR THREE HOURS I BETTER CHILL 

❀  some of your favourite content creators from this year

ok i may forgot someone + in no order in particular + literally every creator that i follow/whose content i reblog @taeguks @tearuntold @cyphertaehyungie @love4hobi @kimnamtaejin @taejoon @jimiyoong @namkook @taeyungie @jinvant @jinv @6dis-ease @jiminrolls @daechwitas @syubb @syuga @jjeongukie @cowboyjinbop @hope-film @minhope @hopekidoki @joonie @namgination @jung-koook @faerieth @kooksv @lifegoesyoon @yoonqiful @j-sope @chaylani @jiminfilter @jjoon @everythingoes @varietae @seoksjin @dearbangtansonyeondan @ofkimtaehyung @yoongi-bts @gaypeople @seokjinyoongis @agustdfeatrm @joenns @houseofarmanto @namjoon (will miss forever) @thebtsgenre @honsool @vjimin @seokjinite @jiminswn @taee @hobeah @lifegoesmon @taemaknae @gukgi @kkulmoon @flipthatjacketjiminie @jintae @jcngkooks @ynki @yoongikook @yoongiandthebiaswreckers @jiminslight @gwkie @oncupid @eternalbulletproof and many more <3

OK SO i wanna say a special thanks to every content creator ever and also i wanna say that im really glad to be a part of this community all of u r so cool and creative and make such beautiful things and many of u made me feel EMOTIONS with ur sets or not only sets ill be forever grateful that i discovered bts and for everything they do to me without even knowing ALSO THANK U FOR STILL BEING HERE ON TUMBRLDSDFKJ yeah this year was less active there were few issues many ppl went on twt but thank u for still being here also happy new year <3333333 i think i sounded deeper and more emotional when i was commenting ppls gifs :| but its almost 2 am so i hope u will understand dkfjkfsjk im happy there is this corner on the internet that feels cozy and so welcoming <3 i love u i wish u a better year ahead <3 ok for checking notifications purpose ill tag my blog lol @eternal-bangtan

[thepiinkcryptid]

I saw this and thought it would be fun 🖤

1. Are you solitary or in a coven?

I am solitary.

2. Do you consider yourself Wiccan, Pagan, witch, or other?

I just consider myself a witch. There are aspects of Paganism I follow and enjoy but if I had to choose a title I'd say "Witch".

3. What is your zodiac sign?

Sagittarius ♐

4. Do you have a Patron God/dess?

I don't currently.

5. Do you work with a Pantheon?

I do not.

6. Do you use tarot, palmistry, or 
any other kind of divination?

I enjoy tarot, pendulums, and reading tea leafs.

7. What are some of your favorite herbs to use in your practice? (if any)

Rose petals, elderberry, hibiscus, juniper, lilac and sage are my go tos.

8. How would you define your craft?to.

Oh that's a good one. I would define in as simply witchcraft. I practice my own gifts woth the gifts the Earth and God's provide.

9. Do you curse? If not, do you accept others who do?

I strongly believe in the rule of 3 so I try not to, and if I do I make sure I am putting out good to others. If others do that is their business, I am in no place to judge how other practice.

10. How long have you been practicing?

Since I was about 14.

11. Do you currently or have you ever had any familiars?

I do not currently no.

12. Do you believe in Karma or
Reincarnation?

I believe in karma, I believe in the rule of 3, I believe reincarnation can happen, but I do not believe it is the default for most beings after death.

13. Do you have a magical name?

Nope!

14. Are you “out of the broom closet”?

In-plain-sight yes.

15. What was the last spell you performed?

A spell to rekindle love that's gone cold.

16. Would you consider yourself knowledgeable?

Yes, but always learning!

17. Do you write your own spells?

On occasion.

18. Do you have a book of shadows?
If so, how is it written and/or set up?

I do as well as a hroloir. Both are pretty free form.

19. Do you worship nature?

I wouldn't say I worship it, I am thankful for it and make sure the Earth knows that.

20. What is your favorite gemstone?

Opal.

21. Do you use feathers, claws, fur, pelt, skeletons/bones, or any other animal body part for magical work?

I don't but I wouldn't say I would be opposed to it.

22. Do you have an altar?

Not a proper one at the moment (small apartment) but I have a shelf of my oddities

23. What is your preferred element?

Fire (it's my own). I like how it embodies both beauty and uncontrollable chaos depending on how you treat it.

24. Do you consider yourself an Alchemist?

I guess I've never thought about it. No?

25. Are you any other type of magical practitioner besides a witch?

Nope!

26. What got you interested in witchcraft?

My mother is a witch, as are many of my family members

27. Have you ever performed a spell or ritual with the company of anyone who was not a witch?

I have not no.

28. Have you ever used ouija?

Nope.

29. Do you consider yourself a psychic?

Psychic? No. Aware and ability to see potential outcomes better than most? Yes.

30. Do you have a spirit guide? If so, what is it?

I do not.

31. What is something you wish someone had told you when you first started?

There is no "right way" to do it.

32. Do you celebrate the Sabbats? If so which one is your favorite?

Yes! Beltane because ya boy likes to bone 😅

33. Would you ever teach witchcraft to your children?

Of course, it's in our blood

34. Do you meditate?

Often!

35. What is your favorite season?

Autumn.

36. What is your favorite type of magick to preform?

Anything consumable.

37. How do you incorporate your spirituality into your daily life?

Devotions, prayers, using sachets and stones.

38. What is your favorite witchy movie?

Hocus Pocus (I'm a basic witch I know 🤣)

39. What is your favorite witchy book, both fiction and non-fiction. Why?

Funnily enough I haven't read that many.

40. What is the first spell you ever preformed? Successful or not.

Oh I could never choose just one!

41. What’s the craziest witchcraft-related thing that’s happened to you?

Accidentally setting something a blaze and it reacting as if it was untouched.

42. What is your favourite type of candle to use?

Taper.

43. What is your favorite witchy tool?

Wand! I love my platinum and clear quartz wand I use it daily.

44. Do you or have you ever made your own witchy tools?

I have not!

45. Have you ever worked with any magical creatures such as the fea or spirits?

Yes.

46. Do you practice color magic?

I incorporate it.

47. Do you or have you ever had a witchy teacher or mentor of any kind?

My mother and aunt.

48. What is your preferred way of shopping for witchcraft supplies?

Local shops when I can, personally owned online shops if I cat find stuff in person.

49. Do you believe in predestination or fate?

Fate, yes, predestination, no.

50. What do you do to reconnect when you are feeling out of touch with your practice?

Write in my grimoir.

51. Have you ever had any supernatural experiences?

Too many to count.

52. What is your biggest witchy pet peeve?

People who try to push their own rules, gate keep, or scare others.

53. Do you like incense? If so what’s your favorite scent?

Yes! Bergamot!

54. Do you keep a dream journal of any kind?

Nope!

55. What has been your biggest witchcraft disaster?

Using none organic roses to make rose water and poisoning myself with pesticides.

56. What has been your biggest witchcraft success?

I consider them all to be success because even if they don't go according to plan I learned something.

57. What in your practice do you do that you may feel silly or embarrassed about?

I always feel a bit silly speaking out loud 🤣

58. Do you believe that you can be an atheist, Christian, Muslim or some other faith and still be a witch too?

Of course. Gate keeping is fucking gross. You do you babe.

59. Do you ever feel insecure, unsure or even scared of spell work?baby.

Haven't we all?

60. Do you ever hold yourself to a standard in your witchcraft that you feel you may never obtain?

Nope.

61. What is something witch related that you want right now?

A unakite geode!

62. What is your rune of choice?

I don't have one.

63. What is your tarot card of choice?

Death because every good reader knows he is never literal

64. Do you use essential oils? If so what is your favorite?

Yes! I love grapefruit.

65. Have you ever taken any kind of witchcraft or pagan courses?

Nope.

66. Do you wear pagan jewelry in public?

Sometimes a pentacle or pentagram.

67. Have you ever been discriminated against because of your faith or being a witch?

Haven't we all?

68. Do you read or subscribe to any pagan magazines?

Nope.

69. Do you think it’s important to know the history of paganism and witchcraft?

Having an understanding of anything you are apart of or want to partake in is important but being a walking text book isn't helpful.

70. What are your favorite things about being a witch?

The connection with so many things normal people will never see or know.

71. What are your least favorite things about being a witch?

Being an empath can be so painful. Seeing the auras of evil people always hurt me too.

72. Do you listen to any pagan music? If so who is your favorite singer/band?

I have a Playlist, I wouldn't say I listen to any Pagab bands, more so Celtic stuff and creepy compositions.

73. Do you celebrate the Esbbats? If so, how?

Nope.

74. Do you ever work skyclad?

Yes. I prefer to meditate nude and do most things in just my underwear (hot wax/embers/sharp tools + my pens = no thanks)

75. Do you think witchcraft has improved your life? If so, how?

Of course. I have been exposed to so much most people will never enjoy.

76. Where do you draw inspiration from for your practice?

Call me basic but it's true: The Earth and Mother Nature.

77. Do you believe in ‘fantasy’ creatures? (Unicorns, fairies, elves, gnomes, ghosts, etc)

Can you call them fantasy if they're real?

78. What’s your favorite sigil/symbol?

One I created for impulse control.

79. Do you use blood magick in your practice? Why or why not?

Only my own to create magical ties.

80. Could you ever be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t support your practice?

I don't think so no.

81. In what area or subject would you most like your craft to grow?

Healing.

82. What’s your favorite candle scent? Do you use it in your practice?

Vanilla reminds me of my Nana baking in the kitchen. She's Chrustian but she inspires me to be a good person.

83. Do you have a pre-ritual ritual? (I.e. Something you do before rituals to prepare yourself for them). If so what is it?

Yes! I meditate naked, burn some blue sage and wash my hands.

84. What real life witch most inspires your practice?

My mother.

85. What is your favorite method of communicating with deity?

Offerings.

86. How do you like to organize all your witchy items and ingredients?

Alphabetically.

87. Do you have any witches in your family that you know of?

My mother, sister, aunt, grandmother, great aunt, great grandmother, and probably everyone in that line of sucession. I also have a great uncle who was gay so I assume he was too being that I am one of the few males witches in my family and I am gay.

88. How have you created your path? What is unique about it?

I always put intention into things, you can carve a path through a mountain of you acknowledge the fact that as a magical being you can do it. Our biggest hurdles are ourselves.

89. Do you feel you have any natural gifts or affinities (premonitions, hearing spirits, etc.) that led you toward the craft? If so what are they?

Seeing auras, being an exceptionally heightened empath, seeing super natural creatures, and premonitions.

90. Do you believe you can initiate yourself or do you have to be initiated by another witch or coven?

I am a solitary witch my blood you tell me.

91. When you first started out in your path what was the first thing or things you bought?

Tarot cards! I still have them almost 10 years later.

92. What is the most spiritual or magickal place you’ve been?

Hmmmm. The house I lived in when I was in Kansas. But not in a good way.

93. What’s one piece of advice you’d give someone who is searching for their matron and patron deities?

Seek out what feels right. Do not listen to anyone who tells you that you "have to" praise anyone.

94. What techniques do you use to ‘get in the zone’ for meditation?

A bit if wine, some good meditation and honestly some good sex. Not mesacriky in that order.

95. Did visualization come easily to you or did you have to practice at it?

Practice practice practice.

96. Do you prefer day or night? Why?

Evening because I like times of transition.

97. What do you think is the best time and place to do spell work?

Depends on what you're doing.

98. How did you feel when you cast your first circle? Did you stumble or did it go smoothly?

I was young and stumbled. Don't give up though.

99. Do you believe witchcraft gets easier with time and practice?

Yes and no?

100. Do you believe in many gods or one God with many faces?

I am polytheistic.

101. Do you eat meat, eggs and dairy?polytheism.

Yes.

102. What is your favorite color and why?

Baby pink because it's my aura colour.

103. What is the one question you get asked most by non-practitioners or non-pagans? How do you usually respond?

"How does it work???" and "Oh so you're evil?"

104. Which of your five senses would you say is your strongest?

Taste.

105. What is a pagan or witchcraft rule that you preach but don’t practice?

Don't drink and cast. Ya boy likes mead sorry not sorry (that being said I don't ever do anything woth chemicals or fire while drinking).

[lilypixels]

...............all of them.....?

It took me an hr to do this....🥲💀

1. coffee mugs, teacups, wine glasses, water bottles, or soda cans?

Teacupsss

2. chocolate bars or lollipops?

Lollipops

3. bubblegum or cotton candy?

Uhhh cotton candy

4. how did your elementary school teachers describe you?

Probably quiet and smart lol I did my school work and was friendly with everyone so I was a favorite and heard all the nice things 🙈

5. do you prefer to drink soda from soda cans, soda bottles, plastic cups or glass cups?

I kinda like bottles more but like the glass ones with the caps that could slice your fingers-

6. pastel, boho, tomboy, preppy, goth, grunge, formal or sportswear?

I’m for all but sports lol

7. earbuds or headphones?

Earbuds

8. movies or tv shows?

Shows cause I’m the type to watch an hr long episode vs hr long movie idk why but I’m rarely in mood for them

12. name of your favorite playlist?

Drop the beat (ie songs that are upbeat and I like most)

13. lanyard or key ring?

Hmm...I guess lanyard?

14. favorite non-chocolate candy?

Skittles or twizzlers

15. favorite book you read as a school assignment?

I had lots I had to read in school but only ever finished a handful lol my favorite I think was maybe Macbeth? I would say Odyssey but I don’t think we read the full thing cause I remember being disappointed about something like that...

16. most comfortable position to sit in?

Sitting with my legs bent up in seat with me in some way

17. most frequently worn pair of shoes?

Converse and some nice but cheap sneakers from Walmart

18. ideal weather?

Not too hot, not too cold, mild like before/after a rain (most the time), idc if it’s raining or sunny but as long as temp is comfortable I’m fine

19. sleeping position?

On my side most often

20. preferred place to write (i.e., in a note book, on your laptop, sketchpad, post-it notes, etc.)?

Phone and notebook

21. obsession from childhood?

Oh gosh uhhh I guess my like of dolls maybe? Or obsession with anything ✨unexplained✨ like ghosts, aliens, cryptids, etc

22. role model?

Kim Namjoon lol just kidding (sorta)

23. strange habits?

Ok I know I have some and my friends would be more than happy to point them all out but hm let me think...idk if these count as habits but I’ll never place a mirror facing a bed (this is more superstitious I guess than habit,,,) I can’t stand my food touching, if I have a tray like in cafeteria I have a certain spot for everything and uh my mind just went blank-

24. favorite crystal?

Moonstone, lapis lazuli, and I feel obligated to say garnet cause it’s my birthstone

25. first song you remember hearing?

Circle of Life maybe who knows xD

26. favorite activity to do in warm weather?

Walk or clean,,I’m more active and about with warm/nice weather

27. favorite activity to do in cold weather?

...stay inside where it’s warm

28. five songs to describe you?

Not this again😭 uhhh idk you tell me ajdbd

29. best way to bond with you?

Indulge me when I go off about things I like or learn 😔✊ I know I’ll talk your ear off and I’m sorry but know I don’t often talk about these things with people so once I start it’s hard to stop,,and it makes me really happy when people do listen to me about these things and send me related items every so often or even look into it themselves to learn more 🥺

30. places that you find sacred?

For some reason this feels like a trick question...um cemeteries and anything with ages of history I guess

31. what outfit do you wear to kick ass and take names?

Oof do I really have a true outfit?? I have shoes for this which are just black platform sneakers I call stomping shoes

32. top five favorite vines?

I never,,,watched these,,,

33. most used phrase in your phone?

“Yes”...?

34. advertisements you have stuck in your head?

State Farm and McDonald’s, always

35. average time you fall asleep?

10-11...usually...

36. what is the first meme you remember ever seeing?

Uhhh that one with the ginger dude (I think it was someone’s yearbook photo??) I don’t remember much else about the meme but it was on ifunny, or whatever the app was, a lot

37. suitcase or duffel bag?

Suitcase

38. lemonade or tea?

Easy, tea

39. lemon cake or lemon meringue pie?

...neither

40. weirdest thing to ever happen at your school?

Dude these questions really testing my brain power here- for senior prank someone put cereal in some bathroom sinks I think

41. last person you texted?

My mom

42. jacket pockets or pants pockets?

I’m gonna say jacket since I wear those often

43. hoodie, leather jacket, cardigan, jean jacket or bomber jacket?

Hoodie or cardigan

45. which genre: sci-fi, fantasy or superhero?

Fantasy

46. most comfortable outfit to sleep in?

Usually whatever shirt I’m wearing that day and some pj/lounge pants 🤷

47. favorite type of cheese?

Mozzarella

48. if you were a fruit, what kind would you be?

I-what kind of question is this? How does one even answer this?

49. what saying or quote do you live by?

What comes around goes around lol (yes I’m a heavy believer of karma)

50. what made you laugh the hardest you ever have?

Lol who knows, probably something dumb me and my siblings were doing or something we watched cause there’s been plenty times of that xD

51. current stresses?

Homework vs free time e-e

52. favorite font?

I like the gothic looking ones but it’s usually not practical to use so idk

53. what is the current state of your hands?

My hands...? They’re fine ??

54. what did you learn from your first job?

How to care for babies and little kids, how to put on a diaper lol

56. favorite tradition?

I can’t remember a particular one off hand but I’m trying to start few new ones like decorating cookies for Halloween uwu

57. the three biggest struggles you’ve overcome?

Uhhhhh like personally or...? Cause we’ve overcome homelessness before, um finishing assignments idk😭 oh maybe bullying?? That’s all I can think of since I still struggle with a lot,,

58. four talents you’re proud of having?

Alright let’s do thisss: creativity (mostly in writing sense), I can bake/cook, I have amazing organization skills and many work places have used that lol (bonus is I don’t mind, I actually really enjoy it, very peaceful), surprisingly good balance all things considered, I’m a quick learner

59. if you were a video game character, what would your catchphrase be?

“I’m too tired for this.”

60. if you were a character in an anime, what kind of anime would you want it to be?

Good question good question🤔 I don’t think I’d last in any of them/have a terrible side character role so 💀

61. favorite line you heard from a book/movie/tv show/etc.?

“Life’s too short to hold grudges.”

62. seven characters you relate to?

Dude this is gonna get embarrassing I can feel it🤠

Itaru, Iori, Sogo, Belle, Simeon (obey me), Nozaki (he’s clueless about romance irl and doesn’t know when someone has a crush on him yet can write romance well enough and yeah it’s me lol), and uhh Swindler/Ordinary Person in Akudama Drive (still can’t believe no one really has names in that anime but the way she gets wrapped in everything felt like something that’d happen to me lol)

63. five songs that would play in your club?

Like nightclub...? I’m skipping this ajdbd

64. favorite website from your childhood?

Probably the Barbie site, me and my sister played all the dress up games almost daily istg

65. any permanent scars?

Appendectomy scars and then looks like I have one on a toe but it’s possible it still might heal...

66. favorite flower(s)?

Nightshade, foxglove, baby’s breath, bellflowers, roses

67. good luck charms?

I don’t think I have any...

68. worst flavor of any food or drink you’ve ever tried?

Lemon

69. a fun fact that you don’t know how you learned?

Let me think...I read something once about flowers having ears(?) but like not ear ears just something about having a part that picks up sound waves

70. left or right handed?

Right

71. least favorite pattern?

Lolll animal print I think

72. worst subject?

Physics...the worst science

74. at what pain level out of ten (1 through 10) do you have to be at before you take an advil or ibuprofen?

6...?

75. when did you lose your first tooth?

I don’t remember, it probably happened when i was 6. I do remember losing one of my front teeth during my birthday one year and I was happy since the tooth had been loose for some time xD

76. what’s your favorite potato food (i.e. tater tots, baked potatoes, fries, chips, etc.)?

Chips I guess or just like fried in skillet

77. best plant to grow on a windowsill?

A succulent probably

78. coffee from a gas station or sushi from a grocery store?

Neither ew

79. which looks better, your school id photo or your driver’s license photo?

They are both about equally terrible

80. earth tones or jewel tones?

Earth

81. fireflies or lightning bugs?

Fireflies

82. pc or console?

I am on pc side now

83. writing or drawing?

Writing

84. podcasts or talk radio?

Podcasts I guess

84. barbie or polly pocket?

Barbie

85. fairy tales or mythology?

Mythology, it’s too fun and chaotic lol

86. cookies or cupcakes?

Hm...cupcakes

87. your greatest fear?

Uh,,,I don’t have many fears but I guess one would be falling from a great height? So I would get scared of crossing a bridge and it collapsing or riding a plane and it falling easily

88. your greatest wish?

World peace🥲

89. who would you put before everyone else?

My mom maybe...?

90. luckiest mistake?

I honestly don’t remember but something I do remember is I out semicolon instead of period and turned out to be correct grammar lol

91. boxes or bags?

Boxes

92. lamps, overhead lights, sunlight or fairy lights?

Sunlight or fairy lights, I don’t require much either way and prefer more natural lighting

93. nicknames?

Lassie, twinkle toes, Ash, poody butt (by 3 yr old I sometimes watch and play with lol he means it affectionately; I call him monkey butt and it’s catching on slowly instead)

94. favorite season?

Starting to be fall just a little more but I like transition times most

95. favorite app on your phone?

Let’s go with twitter

96. desktop background?

It is a moriarty and gang pic

97. how many phone numbers do you have memorized?

2: mine and my moms

98. favorite historical era?

Ooo tough one but I’ll say renaissance as some of the coolest things came from that time

[saltpepperbeard]

An Open Fandom Discussion

Hello hello! Goodness, I haven’t made one of these posts in 84 years. Even though I have not been around as long as some others, I consider myself to be quite the Fandom Veteran. I’ve been here since 2013, and with that, I have seen all walks of unrest/drama over the years. Shipping wars, character debates, story policing, you name it. Some have been lighthearted (coughs at aPPLESAUCE 2K14), and others have lead to individuals actually leaving the fandom.

And of course the year of Satan 2020 would have drama starting up ‘round these parts once more. But I’m here to say that it doesn’t have to be that way at all. It SHOULDN’T have to be that way.

I know I speak for nearly everyone when I say we’re simply here to enjoy a franchise we love. We’re here for the friendly discussions, the artwork, the gifsets, the manipulations, the meta, the fandom-wide events, and the fanfiction. We’re here to share joy and merriment and solidarity over something we can all relate to. Many of us come here to escape, to relax and enjoy all the content this fandom has to offer.

That’s not to say there may be some differing opinions. Some people may be more into the debate side, and that’s totally fine! If you’re all for calling out inconsistencies within the series, or pointing out the nuances in a character, then go for it!

But I absolutely draw the line when those opinions start shifting towards singling out others. When people begin to feel alienated, or people begin to feel ashamed for what they enjoy, that’s when it starts to get unacceptable.

Now, don’t get me wrong. People are allowed to enjoy what they enjoy, and dislike what they dislike. They are allowed to post opinions on their own blog if they so please, or rant to others privately if they find certain topics bothersome. But the reason behind my post today, is that a blog has been created that falls within some sort of grey area, and has definitely lead to unrest/hurt feelings/damage over the past few days:

@hungergamestea.

Yup, I will directly call it out. Because in talking about it passive aggressively/indirectly, it furthers the problem this very blog is presenting.

In case you’re unaware, this blog runs entirely on anonymous submissions, with people posting their opinions about a range of topics. That’s all fine and dandy, and I actually followed the blog initially, thinking it was sort of like the tea sessions I have on my own blog. Ie, talking about characters, headcanons, what people like/dislike about aspects of the movie and books, etc! But I was instead stunned to see that it was a platform for people to anonymously point fingers at individuals in this fandom, and utterly crap on certain fanfiction genres/topics.

“But Jodi! You said people are allowed to say whatever they want on their own blog!” I did. But that’s why I believe this blog falls into a dangerous grey area. Yes, people are entitled to rant. Yes, people are allowed to dislike certain subject areas. But to post about them anonymously? To callout individuals directly in their asks? To shame people for liking something they read/write? What’s the point of that? How is giving a platform for anonymous hate okay?

“Jodi, people are allowed to hate things lmao.” True, but then...isn’t it way easier for those people to...avoid what they dislike, then? Or rant about it in their own, private spaces? What good does it do to anonymously rant about it on a blog allowing such? It does nothing but hurt the others who enjoy it. If people were off anon saying those things, it could perhaps allow for discussion/debate. But the anonymous wall detracts from any sort of discussion, and simply makes it a more hateful platform. It also gives people the more cowardly route of avoiding a blog/individual in question, and posting their contempt in an even more passive aggressive way.

It’s done nothing but upset people. It’s hurt people/made them feel ashamed for what they enjoy, and it’s lead to fiery fights between individuals. Many of my friends are hurting because of this, hence me feeling inspired enough to bring forth an ESSAY TM. I cannot stand for it when I see people I care about hurting/uncomfortable.

So then. I propose that, instead of reblogging or replying to the anonymous asks being presented there, we all just carry on with what we enjoy. We all just stick to our more positive things, and continue supporting one each other instead of dragging each other down. I know, it might be slightly hypocritical of me to give this blog attention when I’m calling for inattention, but I felt it was necessary to make people aware.

I’m also not 100% sure of the intent of this blog. I’ve been told some reasons, and if it was indeed created with the intent to stir up drama/harm others, then that really saddens me. If not however, and it was indeed created as nothing more than an “everything platform,” then I believe a bit of “screening” is called for. 

To the creators of hungergamestea, I implore you to turn the blog into a place of more friendly discussion. I feel as though individuals should be allowed to discuss things they don’t like, but in a more passive, eloquent manner. And also, NOT anything that harms another. Something like, “I personally feel like Katniss is characterized this way, even though it’s a bit of an unpopular opinion,” as opposed to “LMAO SOME PEOPLE ARE SO EGOTISTICAL” kind of thing. So yes, continue to take anonymous discussions by all means, but please filter out the ones that are intended to be callouts/attacks.

I know it could be viewed as “silencing” opinions/voices. But goodness, whatever happened to the mantra, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all?” What good does empty negativity do?

If individuals are so upset by something, they should take it up with the creator in private, or start a public discussion. Not post anonymous generalizations/assumptions on a blog, which more often than not prove to be FALSE anyway. Again, the anonymous wall proves to be nothing but hateful and damaging.

And, seeing as I titled this as an open discussion, I would like to hear other thoughts! And would also like to extend my support and care to everyone here. I’m not writing this to further any fighting. Rather, the opposite. I hate to see people upset here. I hate to see people fighting with each other. This is supposed to be a happy space, and a space of artful escape. Not a space where we tear each other down.

thank you for coming to my ted talk