#in the sense of feeling plagued by problems even tho they aren't yours

[notetaeker]

Eldest daughter energy is feeling 100% confident you can solve everyone's problems and also feeling like everyone's problems are your responsibility to solve 💀

[6okuto]

Please for the love of god don’t answer this while ur still in midterms because I am still in midterms and it’s hell and I sympathize w you heavy 🤝🤝

Anyway uno reverse, my mc at least does NOT want to go back to earth. Thinking lots about Felix kind of bringing up getting them back to earth even tho he doesn’t want that but thinks mc does. and mc going “please don’t make me go back there, this is the happiest I’ve ever been, I always wished that I could escape to another universe. please let me stay”

— felix when mc doesn't want to return to earth

note: omg...real. good luck on ur midterms if ur still doing them </3 i believe in u :100: if u aren't then i hope ur marks are fast and Good. we will survive fr #STUDENTLIFE #ACADEMIA also i made sure to use ur dialogue aheehoo

that choice where you respond to the idea of staying in astraea. mc says yes and a sense of relief/joy washes over felix, but there's still a little voice in the back of his mind that's scared

he wouldn't hold it against them for taking it back. always prepare for the worse, right?

but...they don't

even after fighting monsters, watching him die, dying themself, they haven't brought up the idea of going home. and it seems a little too good to be true, felix thinks. (ok self sabotage)

what if they said that just to protect him? what if they changed their mind at some point and just don't want to hurt him? the guilt and anxiety start to eat at him so he decides he should bring it up himself

"mc, can i ask you something?" "hm? yeah, of course you can." "about...you returning to earth, don't you think it's time we begin discussing how to go about it?"

he struggles to make eye contact while asking. but when all he's met with is silence, his eyes shoot up and there's an unreadable expression on their face. "...what?'

"well, everything has been dealt with, i believe. and you've been gone for so long, i'm afraid of the consequences that might come with staying longer," he says. but mc only starts fidgeting and staring at the floor, and now he's afraid that he's said something wrong.

"mc?" "felix, please, i—" they cut themself off and frown. “please don’t make me go back there. this is the happiest i’ve ever been."

felix is Genuinely confused. i mean, a part of him is bursting with affection, but there's so many reasons for mc to feel differently. and then he's hit with concern because why would their home be worse than fighting the lord of shadows? from all the stories they've shared, earth had its problems but it also had so much more that astraea—that he couldn't offer.

"mc...you have a life back on earth, a home, things i've never heard of. your favourite shows, foods, music...would you really be willing to give it all up?"

they both look at each other for a while until mc breaks eye contact. felix can feel his heart twist while he watches them try to form words. he didn't want them to deal with this. if he could make it easier for both of them he would, but he can't. it was up to them, and even though he loved the idea of them staying, he couldn't get rid of the fear that they'd be unhappy.

"i always wished that i could escape to another universe, you know?" they finally say, biting their lip. "that i could start somewhere new in a fantasy world from a story...be someone else. and then it happened"—they look up at him—"even if it was an accident, i'm here. i know i'm leaving behind a lot, and i know it's dangerous and that i probably seem stupid, but i've thought about it almost every day and..." they trail off. they close their eyes, and their voice is quieter and wavers, "please let me stay.”

in that moment, felix realizes that even when he was too scared to bring it up, mc was thinking about it more often than he could imagine. they were resolute in their decision a long, long time ago. he almost wants to hit himself for thinking they weren't plagued with the idea the same way he was. but he wasn't the priority here so instead he smiles, "mc, i'd love if you stayed."

he watches the tension release from their shoulders and eyes light up, "...really?" "there's no one else i'd want to spend my days with more."

mc grins (and maybe almost cries) and wraps their arms around his neck, saying a muffled "thank you" against his skin

"but if you...if you ever change your mind, i'm sure we can still find a way." "are you trying to get rid of me?" "what? no—no, no, i—" felix panics until mc smiles a little at his reaction and he huffs.

"don't do that to me." they laugh but kiss his nose, "i'm sorry." smiling softly, they say "thank you for letting me stay."

felix's own gaze softens as he reaches for their hand, planting a kiss on their forehead, "thank you for wanting to stay."

[sapphireorison]

Musing today, because of a couple of critiques of cottagecore rolling across my dash. Something about the critiques of the idea of fleeing to the woods to live in simplicity and leaving behind the stuff we fucked up is...well, I mean. The critiques aren't wrong. You don't actually leave your shit behind. It goes with you. And then, if you expect the life there to conform to you without even learning the rules of the space you're invading? That's a problem of entitlement and ignorance and it makes me so tired. (I...have a tangent about power and responsibility, but I'm gonna put a pin in that.)

Simultaneously, tho. Fleeing to hills is also still appealing as all fuck and maybe my Ideal Cottage is on top of a mountain only accessible during the summer like the hermit I am, but I also think that...mm. The same impulse driving the desire to shed (your skin, your life, your trauma, whatever), is part of what's driving my lifeblood of the city project. Because I can feel that 'Not This' impulse whenever I engage with any cottagecore stuff or cottagecore critiques that's very similar to the unrooted feeling at the base of wanting to know the place I am in like I knew the place I use to live.

And it's not an opposite reaction, I think, to want to dig in more to connect more with my surroundings, not exactly. Not when the problem is that the ground was yanked out from beneath my feet. A wistful 'ah, I want my soles to touch earth again' applies both for my desire to ditch everything and learn how to churn butter and for my desire to sink my fingers into the here-and-now to give myself a grounding in both time and space again.

It's a little...alarming to me that I had that feeling pre-plague, but really the plague just sort of smeared it everywhere in my life and made it very apparent. And also made me realize I've been in this particular growth phase for over a year which is alarming and humbling but also I feel like I've had a pretty good reason for it to not have gotten very far yet. (Ha.)

And because this is a moment of musing and a bit of a ramble, all of these thoughts sparked off of two things:

The first of which is a quote from His Dark Materials (and reinforced by another bit of fiction I read, but mostly just...) that I read when it was. Very formative. But (from the Amber Spyglass): "We shouldn't live as if [other worlds] mattered more than this life in this world, because where we are is always the most important place."

Which maybe sounds funny, but I have always been very practical in the sense that...this is where I am. And this quote in particular is succinct enough that I remember it down through the years. (Though I've struggled with being present like this off and on, it's never not been a touchstone for me. Relearning how it applies to my life now is a (is this) ongoing project. And that I lost sight of that is to my detriment.) But.

But. Substitute in for 'other worlds' the memory of the world that we no longer have, or that never existed, or that we only pretend is out there at the expense of others? That's also a lesson. When the other world of this idealized veneer of the ~wild or the ~witchy or the ~pastoral or all the rest.

Just. That fond dream is nice but it's also something to enjoy while you do things that actually impact your current reality.

And the second spark: ah...if you read fic and you like Good Omens and want to fuck yourself up for a little bit re: trauma and therapy and healing and religion, I highly recommend Demonology and the Tri-Phasic Model of Trauma: An Integrative Approach by Nnm.

But the relevant passage is this (that I read at the height of the first slam of the plague, for context of how hard it hit me):

"This last task had been revised, because you cannot actually design the world anew. You cannot actually create a new life for oneself, as if from whole cloth, as if the loss had never occurred. You are stuck with the world you have, the world in which bad things happen, the world in which trauma occurs and the reality of the loss never fully leaves you. And so, in the revised version of the four tasks of grieving, the final task is put like this: the task is to develop an enduring connection to what has been lost while also accepting the possibilities for a new life moving forward. It is the task of finding meaning in the loss itself, and having that meaning help guide one through the challenging task of living well.

Trauma survivors often find themselves stuck in an in-between space, an uncomfortable gap between what was and what now is. Trauma survivors want to return to the old world, to the world they had lived in before the trauma. They want to return to that feeling of innocence and safety, that feeling of naivete, before they learned just how cruel and senseless this world could be. Trauma survivors, often, also want to shed that old world like dead skin, to reject it and move on from it, to create for themselves some brand new life, some thoroughly new world completely divorced from the one they previously knew.

They can’t. They can’t do either. You can’t return to the world that was, but you also can’t create the world anew. You can’t ignore the reality of what happened, of what you lost, of how much you care about what was lost. You can’t. This final task of grieving, this fourth task of locating a meaningful path forward, requires that path to stay within that in-between space, that space in which memories of what was can be wedded to hopes and dreams for the future. It requires learning how to be comfortable with both what was and what can be, rejecting neither but accepting both. It is only in that in-between space, between the world that was lost and the dream of a world created wholly anew, that trauma survivors can come to accept their feelings of grief."

This is.

This is me six years ago when I flung myself to a new place and bled from the loss of everything I'd cut out of myself in the act. This is me two years ago understanding that time is an intrinsic part of place and that I need to exist in the present. This is me grappling with the first flickers of that understanding suddenly unable to do...anything. This is me reading about cottagecore and relating in my bones to the feeling of the structure upon which I used to depend being gone. This is me trying to speak to a city foreign to the rhythms of my life, and to speak to it in a way that I can understand and be at peace with. This is finding the 'where you are' and making it important, because important things are worth taking care of, are worth doing, are worth the meaning you ascribe to them.

It's a work in progress.