#real masters of deflection and denial here

[orbital-inclination]

“WHAT I NEVER TOLD YOU” 

Part 1, part 2 (you are here).

Summary: Dream wakes up in a strange place. His host seems kind enough, but there's something about her home that feels… off. He will need to leave if he wants to reunite with his brother. Later, Dream and Nightmare have a conversation to finish. Notes: Moltendreams!AU. Set some time after the brothers left Dreamtale during a time when they were still unfamiliar with the multiverse. General warnings for: dreamtale typical angst/drama, mild non-graphic injury, more references to past emotional manipulation and bullying, and parental neglect Wordcount: 6178

Something was wrong.

Dream stirred. He felt sluggish and weighed down. Pulled closer to the earth by the gentle press of the something that was draped over him. There was a soft surface underneath his cheek, it didn’t itch like grass, and it didn’t crackle like dry leaves when he moved. It took an embarrassing amount of time for his mind to make sense of that, trying and failing to justify why the ground he lay on didn’t feel right. He lifted his skull slowly, rubbing his cheek against the soft surface until the texture slotted a memory into place. This felt like... a stuffed quilt? He pulled an arm free from where it had been tucked close to his body and felt along the surface he lay on. The tip of a claw caught on something. Yep. Definitely a quilt. He could feel the cotton sandwiched between layers of fabric and the stitch between squares. That didn’t immediately alarm him, because his first assumption was that Night’ must’ve found a way to cross the river and found a place for them to stay. 

But... that explanation didn’t feel right. He couldn’t sense his brother nearby. The atmosphere was too... stifled. Syrupy, and thick. He almost felt loopy from it. Something wasn’t right.

Tentatively prodding around the quilt, and the surface he lay on, he discovered something else weird. 

He was laying underneath... a table? 

Reluctantly, Dream pushed himself upright— only to swallow back a strangled hiss as a pulse of pain and stiffness shot down his spine. Usually, the film that coated his bones took care of most things that caused him pain fairly quickly. He remembered slamming into the boulder, but he would have expected the injury to be gone by now. But, obviously, it wasn’t. Not good.

After waiting a moment, he tentatively propped himself upright again. This time, he moved slowly.

He had just enough room to rest on his elbows, slightly hunched over to avoid smacking the back of his skull on the surface above him. He mapped the space through touch and concluded that no. It was not a table. He was underneath someone’s bed. And it was a fairly large bed at that.

He was boxed in. The bed was shoved into the corner, which cut off two potential exits.  One end was blocked off by what he thought might be a chest. And whoever had set him up underneath the bed, had sealed the last opening with- oh. Oh, that was a teddy bear. They had sealed the last opening with plushies and cardboard boxes. Dream pulled the bear closer and gave it a squeeze, thinking. If the person who’d brought him here wanted to keep him trapped, they weren’t trying too hard. But... why put him under the bed? He didn’t feel like much of a guest, hidden away like this.

The hinges of a door creaked. Dream stilled. He hunched down, the tendrils on his back arching defensively. A hollow, tapping sound. A box was shifted, dragged across the floor slowly, and- “Oh! You’re awake!”

The voice belonged to someone who sounded roughly his age, maybe a little bit younger. Dream’s first impression of her was that she felt very bright. Or rather very warm, and it was a testament to how saturated this place was that he could only sense her clearly when she was this close. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Uh, I’m Noelle. I’m sure this must be confusing for you but you’re in my room right now. I found you by the river bank. You were unconsciously so…”

She did something, moved a certain way, but he couldn’t tell what she was doing. 

He hesitated for too long. Disappointed chipped at her warmth, cooling it. But the difference was slight. “I… um-“

“Why am I under your bed?”

Embarrassment. “Oh! W-well… my mom doesn’t like to have guests over unexpectedly but it seemed like you really needed help. I couldn’t leave you on the river bank like that! That area floods a lot.”

Dream canted his skull to the side. “So you’re hiding me from your mother?” 

The embarrassment worsened. Made bitter-sour by shame and nervousness. “I know it sounds really, really silly but… if you knew my mother, it would make sense.”

Well, it didn’t make sense to Dream now. Weren’t mothers supposed to be loving or something? The closest thing he had to a mother was Nim, but he hadn’t had a relationship with her. Not really. She had been a presence. A thing that was just sort of there, but didn’t do much. She said things, sometimes. But it was like an echo of a memory with no mind behind it.

“Are you a human or a monster?” He asked because sometimes that made a difference in these things. Surprise, confusion, and the sharp tang of incredulity. “Um. I’m obviously not a human? I’m a reindeer monster??” He gave her a moment. “Oh,” she said. “Oh. I... I didn’t realize. You can’t see me, can you?” Dream shook his head. “Where is my brother?” “Your... brother?” He tensed, and a pang of uneasiness shot through his chest and squeezed. “We were separated crossing the river. He was supposed to find me. How long have I been unconscious?”

“I... I don’t know. You were alone and unconscious when I found you. That was hours ago.“ Dream didn’t like that. Had something happened to Nightmare? The tendrils on his back lashed. “I need to get back to the river. He could be there right now.” “No! You can’t!”

He flinched away from her, soul beating fast.

Noelle swallowed. “I… I mean. It’s dark out now. Mom doesn’t allow me to leave the house after dark.”

Right. Because that was a thing mothers did. Nim had also given him and Nightmare rules to follow. Just two. And they had disobeyed both. “That’s okay. You don’t have to come with me. Just let me out and I’ll find my way.”

Noelle was quiet for a long moment. “I can’t.”

“Why not?” He shifted, trying to show her that she had his full attention. And she did, but he was getting anxious now. He needed to reunite with his brother. He needed to apologize and know that he was okay and that nothing bad had happened to him. Something about this place didn’t feel right. Something was just off enough that he didn’t feel comfortable staying here longer than he had to be.

She didn’t reply. At that moment, a new sound interrupted the silence. A sharp rhythmic clicking. It grew steadily louder. Footsteps.

Noelle squeaked. “That’s my mother. I have to go. Don’t make any noise, okay?” The box was pushed back into place and the bed creaked above him. 

Dream lowered himself flat to the ground. He held his tentacles still, coiled close to his body. Was this normal? When Nim had been alive, had everyone been this nervous around her?

Seconds later, the footsteps stopped short. A creak, quiet at first. A whine. The hinges of the door protesting. And then, silence. Absolute silence.

Above him, Noelle’s nerves jumped and startled like rabbits. She seemed to be holding herself still as carefully as he was. Breath held. Waiting.

As the silence stretched, a chill crept down his spine. 

He shivered. Trying to make sense of the new taste to the magic pouring into the room. The stifling syrup-like nature of it hadn’t changed. If positivity was sweet like honey, then it was as though someone had dumped a box of salt into the jar. Something spoiled here. Something had been left to sit for too long. 

All the warmth had gone. The weight of it settled in slowly. It was blunt. And cold, not unlike fear. But many emotions could be cold, could turn cold, if given the right incentive. If Nightmare were here, he could tell Dream what it was. And how fear could feel so... hollowed out.  

...oh.

Apathy, Dream realized as another shiver worked its way through his bones. This was apathy. Not the absence of emotion, but the rejection of it. He pulled his limbs closer to his body. As though to hide the warmth there, like cupping his hands around the wick of a candle to shelter it from a draft. 

Nightmare hid his feelings behind apathy sometimes. And it was frightening, to witness his twin severe himself from his own feelings. It made something in his chest squeeze painfully. But the cold he felt from his brother was familiar and comforting in a way. This was not.

This magic… the person it belonged to… he could not imagine magic so oppressive would belong to a monster who felt freely able to express themselves. The weight of this magic did not belong to a tolerant person. It belonged to someone who felt they needed to be in control of everything, or the twisted thing deep within their heart would snap. 

Without warning the door creaked again and shut with a final click. 

Noelle waited a while to speak, listening for the sound of her mother’s footsteps to fade. When she did, she whispered. “That was a close one. We have to be careful to be quiet from now on.”

“Is she always like that?”

“… my mother doesn’t like to be disturbed,” Noelle answered. “I like to collect scary things. VHS tapes, books, cassettes. Everything. But if I’m too loud, if I’m too excited or too scared she’ll force me to turn it off or take it away from me... and I just… I just wanted this one thing for myself, y’know?” 

Dream felt something in his ribcage hitch. 

She slid off the bed, onto the floor, and moved next to him. 

“Does she know you’re unhappy here?” Noelle froze. Stuttered a noise of denial as something within her heart squirmed. Dream had his answer. “You don’t want her to know.” “Hahaha... I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why would I be unhappy? I mean... I have to hide things sometimes but... I live in a nice place. I... I like my town! I have my own room, my mom, my dad... why would I be unhappy?” “I don’t know,” Dream whispered. “I gave my village everything they ever wanted. Did everything they asked of me... but in the end, I don’t think anyone was truly happy.” Least of all himself, but to give that thought a voice felt selfish. What right did he have to complain, when his brother had gone through so much worse?

The shame and guilt were unbearable, suddenly. A sickly cold sank into the pit of his soul. He swallowed thickly, mana clotted in his throat, because how had he not seen the full extent his brother had been suffering? How had he not known? How had he not seen it?

He thought back to every bad day he could remember. Every question he asked that was brushed off. His brother’s stubborn silence. How tightly Nightmare would square his shoulders and turn away. And all those times Dream knew his brother was upset but felt he shouldn’t pry or chose not to. Prying would aggravate his brother and it was his purpose to spread positivity, wasn’t it? What good would it do to make Nightmare even more upset? 

He wished… he wished he had tried anyway. Instead of waiting and fruitlessly holding on to the belief that Nightmare would eventually tell him on his own. When he was ready. If Dream was patient enough and did as he was told.

How naive he’d been. If hiding pain under a facade of irritability was a skill then Nightmare had surely mastered it. Dream learned not to talk about certain things and especially not to express those feelings that were cold or black and didn’t belong on his side of the tree. 

He learned that quickly because it seemed to him whenever he expressed frustration or sadness or gave even the slightest hint that he was feeling anxious or stressed, someone would turn around and find a reason to blame the black apples for it. “Taint,” they’d warn, “you must stay pure of heart. It is in your brother’s nature to be cold, just as it’s yours to be kind and warm. You mustn’t allow him to influence you.”

“I think...” Dream began slowly, forcing his claws to unclench, buried so deeply into the quilt he lay on, he felt the wood underneath splitter. He forced himself to relax. Noelle needed his help right now. “I think you and your mother are not communicating something important. You are both scared. And because of that fear, you hide things from each other.” “It’s not that! She just overreacts, sometimes... when she thinks I’ve been hurt.” Her heart and mood quivered. She was sad and lonely and trying so hard to hide it. “She just wants to protect me.”

“But it hurts, doesn’t it? Her protectiveness is smothering. It threatens the things you care about.” Noelle swallowed. He heard it, underneath something that sounded like a strained laugh. “T-that’s silly! She’s my mother, I can trust her with anything.”

“Anything but the monster you’re keeping under your bed.” “I...” a flicker, and the strange denseness to the magic surrounding them rippled. Shame was the stone thrown into the murky pool. “If you truly felt that way, you wouldn’t have kept me here. You would have asked her for help but you didn’t,” Dream pressed, voice gentle but firm. “In your loneliness, you wanted to carve out a piece of happiness for yourself. But Noelle… you can’t keep me. I don’t belong here. I can’t make you happy.”

Noelle made a soft sound. Her voice cracked. “I wanted to make a decision on my own for once! I know she means well, and I... I’m too nervous to confront her. I feel powerless. But then I saw you on the river bank, it was different. I felt inspired? It was weird I...” 

A pause and a strange dizziness overcame her. He shifted in concern, debating whether or not he needed to move closer in case she toppled over. 

“I felt special. I knew I wanted to be your friend. No... I knew I had to be because… I couldn’t shake the feeling that I already knew who you were.”

“Friends don’t force each other to stay where they don’t want to be.”

The slight bite to his tone snapped Noelle out of her daze. He felt the snap, the sharp lick of regret, and could not tell who it belonged to. “I… I know. I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. It… it felt right at the time,” Noelle struggled for a moment. “I can’t… remember? There was something else but I don’t…”

Uneasiness swept through him. The tendrils he'd looped close to the quilt reared up warily, twisting over themselves in heed of his discomfort but unable to find the source.

“… what do you mean ‘it felt right’ ?”

“I can’t explain it. It just did, y’know? It was like one of those moments in a book when the world seems to pivot and the heroine realizes what she was meant to do.”

A shiver crawled down his spine. “Did you feel compelled to help me?”

“T-that’s a strange question. It’s what anyone would have done, isn’t it?”

He had nothing to say to that. Maybe. One would hope. But the situation still felt odd. She wanted to help him but didn’t want him to leave until he confronted her about it. It left a strange taste in his mouth.

“Will you let me up now?” He asked instead.

“Yes!” Noelle scrambled back and shoved boxes and plushies aside. One rolled over a tentacle so Dream grabbed it and set it next to the teddy bear he’d held earlier. There was a thump, as something that sounded like a book fell, and suddenly, it was just a little bit less stuffy underneath the bed. Dream felt along the edge of the bed frame above him and carefully crawled out. A sharp pain shot his spine as he stood, but he swallowed the hiss of pain in his throat and it faded, after a moment. 

The floorboards creaked underfoot. Noelle shifted her weight, a dim but growing cold spot of nervousness. “What happened? Between you and your village, I mean.” His soul skipped a beat. “I don’t know,” He didn’t want to talk about it, and he especially didn't want to talk about himself. “We left.” “Oh.” A pause and she said quietly. “Dess talked about moving to the city. She wanted to take me with her to explore the city together. Leaving without her doesn’t feel right, I don’t think I’m ready yet but, maybe someday.” And Dream thought about the tree and his brother. He vividly remembered climbing the hill, running, and the dry grass lashing at his hands and clothes. The voices shouting to be heard over the rumble of approaching thunder. His brother, cornered against the trunk—

“You... you’re not going to encourage me to talk to her?”

“You know your mother better than I,” he said, and distantly wished he could blink away the memory. Over and over again, it looped. “I never went to my brother with my problems because I didn’t want him to think less of me... I regret that now.” Nightmare thought poorly of him anyway. So it hadn’t mattered. “But I was never afraid of my brother. Not in the same way you seem to be of her.”

“I’m not... afraid of my mother,” Noelle said somewhat hesitantly. “It’s just hard to talk to her. She doesn’t like to be interrupted and... the town is more important.” “Is it?”  Bitterness dripped from his teeth. Hot in his mouth. Sometimes, it was easy to doubt himself. When he stole anger like a thief, he could only assume the villager elders had been right. He should have been more careful around the tree. But the branches sprouted from the same trunk. Black or gold, the apples came from the place, so there must have been something rotten in his soul from the start. 

Noelle startled. A skipped beat. And Dream took a breath. “You are part of the town too, aren’t you? Why are you excluded from the same care?”

“I…” she swallowed, overwhelmed by too many emotions to name at once. Most of them leaned close to sadness. “I never thought of it that way… you-you’re right. I’m part of this town too and… I don’t know if she’ll hear me out, but I’ll try. At the very least I have to look after myself better.”

Dream nodded, and the bitter, writhing thing in his chest settled. He wished he had looked after his twin better. “Don’t smother your loneliness.” 

“I won’t,” And then added somewhat hesitantly. “Do you still want to leave?”

She felt sad. Sadness was heavy and sank deep throughout one’s heart. It had the flavor of ice, without the bite of cold and he felt it as deeply as if it were his own. But, it didn’t make sense for the feeling to be this strong. Why did she want to be his friend so badly?

… he didn’t want to stay for much longer. 

“I can’t stay. I have to find my brother. I’m sure he’s worried, and I’m worried about him too.”

To his relief, she understood. “We’ll have to be quiet. I’m… actually surprised mom wasn’t woken up by all that.”

Noelle meekly suggested he take her hand so he wouldn't get lost. The cabin was huge, apparently. Dream offered a compromise and held on to the corner of her sleeve instead.

She led him to the door and into the hall beyond it. They walked, stopped to listen, took a turn, and then another. Dream kept one tendril on the wall to keep himself oriented, making note of the changing texture and the stray accent table that came out of nowhere. Someone ought to put bells on those things. 

Eventually, the wall ended. The sound of their footsteps changed and every breath and rustle of fabric echoed cavernously.

He only knew when Noelle took him behind a sofa because he bumped his knee into it. She directed him to a wall (it was made of skinned logs fitted together like the pieces of a puzzle with something that felt like coarse hardened clay holding it all together. Dream withdrew his hand quickly when he felt a cobweb. Spiders worked so hard on their nests.) and then to a windowsill. “All the doors and windows squeak but this one— it's a bay window. It swings open on your right— it’s the quietest. The sill is meant for sitting... um, do you need help climbing up?” He shook his head and easily pulled himself up onto the windowsill. He’d climbed trees all his life. This was nothing.

“Okay. On the count to three. One. Two. Three.” The window whined, loudly. Dream flinched and next to him, he felt Noelle jump. Her soul lurching in a half second of fright. They waited a long moment, breath held, but aside from the muffled sound of a nearby tree scratching the roof, the cabin was still.

“You better go now. Mom could’ve heard that,” Noelle said, the focus of her attention elsewhere. Dream tried to follow it, but he couldn’t figure out what she was focusing on. “I never asked for your name, did I..? That… that doesn't make sense. I really did just.. bring a stranger into my house like that.”

Dream nodded. “You could have picked a worse person to sneak into your house. My name is Dream, by the way. Thank you for your hospitality.”

“Y-you're welcome?” Sometimes, it was possible to hear someone growing pale. By the sound of her voice, he imagined her face had lost all its color. “I’m sorry for involving you in this and basically kidnapping you? Oh-my-stars. I kidnapped you!”

“Hardly. I was unconscious and too close to the river bank. But you did try to keep me here,” he added, but she was already very stressed and it was making him stressed, so he hastily continued. “It’s okay. I forgive you. I don’t think you were in your right mind anyway. Will you be okay with your mother?”

“Y-yes. I think so. I mean, it's just…” she sighed. “It’s complicated. But dad is here too, so. I’ll ask him for help if I think I need it.” 

Her voice was warm again, and it was slight, but for a moment, he almost couldn’t taste the sickly quality to the magic surrounding the cabin. “Thank you. I feel better now. I hope you can find your brother.”

He nodded, and murmured a thank you and goodbye because leaving someone’s home was always somewhat awkward. He turned, swung his legs over the ledge, and dropped down. 

Leaves and grit crunched under his feet. He waited a moment. Just to be sure. He canted his skull toward the window, listening, then he picked a direction that felt right, and started walking.

Gradually, the ground began to dip into a shallow slope, and though he could not hear the river yet, Dream knew he was close. The ground was damp, soaked through either from rain or because of its proximity to the river. He stepped through the underbrush carefully, mindful of the way his boots sank into cold mud.

The forest floor was a knotted mass of roots, rotting leaf litter, and moss. Twice, Dream almost tripped. So he spread his tentacles wide, two held wide and arching, level with his skull so he wouldn't walk headlong into a low-hanging branch. And two low to the ground, so he wouldn’t trip again.

A quiet crunch echoed from somewhere in the undergrowth. Dream paused, angled his skull towards the sound, and held his breath because the atmosphere felt cooler and less stifled in this direction.

“...Nightmare?”

“Dream!” The shout back was immediate. His ribcage hitched. He took three quick steps forward and broke into a run. He heard the snap of a twig underfoot and the branches of a bush part. Pure relief washed over him. Cool and warm at once. The weight of his brother’s magic was unmistakable. 

The rough bark of a tree snagged his tunic and he stumbled.

Two hands caught his shoulders. Dream redirected his balance and quickly latched onto his brother’s sleeve. Nightmare was not hurt, he could immediately tell. Worried and stressed, yes, but not hurt. Thank the heavens.

“Are you alright? What happened?” A sharp lick of concern. “You’re in pain.” Nightmare’s grip tightened for a moment. Dream felt one check, then two, as his brother looked him over.

He shot one back, just to make a point. He was too relieved to be truly bothered by the fussing. 

“That’s from the river. It’s better than it was. I’m fine.” and honesty? So much had happened in the last however-many-hours-it’d-been he hadn’t noticed the ache until Nightmare had pointed it out. “The family that found me was kind. They didn’t hurt me.” Nightmare released him and stepped back. “Stars... I should never have led you across. We should have waited for the river to level. Or for the rapids to settle or-”

Dream shook his head. “We had to cross somewhere. I could’ve just as easily warned you it was a bad idea. But I was…” too upset. Too consumed by hurt and frustration to really consider what it meant when the sound of the river had grown so violent. If he had just stopped to think. If he hadn’t lashed out...

The tight feeling returned to his chest. 

“I’m sorry.” he choked. “I shouldn’t have said what I did. I didn’t mean it. I was angry.“

“No, I…” Nightmare took a breath. “I should be the one apologizing. It was reckless to cross the river right there. I snapped at you. I hurt you. I knew better, but I didn’t care. I’m sorry.”

Nightmare didn’t... apologize often. He meant it sincerely when he did, but it was just the sort of thing his brother struggled with. Dream forced his jaw to unlock, he wasn’t angry. He was as tense as a spring, but he wasn’t angry. Not with his brother. He didn’t need to feel Nightmare’s remorse to know how much he meant it.

“But you were right… I wasn’t… I wasn’t there when you needed me. I prioritized the needs of the village over you. I saw how sad and lonely you were and still I... the why of it doesn’t matter now.”

“How could you not?” His magic was cool, a shallow pool of shade. His actions seemed logical to his brother. And that made it worse. Dream ducked his skull, feeling wretched. “They gave us clothes and attention. A purpose when Nim felt more like a ghost than the Goddess they later insisted she was. How were we supposed to interpret her will when her voice had been gutted and theirs spoke louder?”

He nodded, once and didn’t raise his head. ‘-it is in your brother���s nature to be cold.’ and Nim’s voice had always felt like the echo of a memory to him, not really there at all. He wondered, idly if they had ever really heard her. 

“We never heard contradictory ideas, did we? You were the only one who questioned anything.”

“I only questioned them because of the way they treated me.” Nightmare said bitterly. “We have books to thank for that. I knew what I was experiencing was unjust, but I couldn’t articulate why until I began reading. That village was full of hypocrites.”

Dream nodded again, heart pinched tight by a dark emotion he couldn’t name but was altogether painful. “They were scared of you.” 

His brother was quiet for a moment, not quite seething but close. “They resented me more than they feared me. I think I would have preferred fear. If they had been scared enough, they would have left me alone.” “Don’t say that,” Dream whispered. “Fear would have led to resentment anyway. They would’ve done worse.” “Worse,” Nightmare echoed, frigid and biting. “Do you know why I reached for the apple, Dream?” ‘Don’t...’ Dream wanted to say. ‘I already know why, please don’t say it.’ Words were stones and bile behind his teeth, he swallowed them down. 

“I was convinced I was going to die.” the simmering anger that had gradually been building behind his brother’s heart suddenly evaporated, released in a deep breath. “If... if you hadn’t arrived when you did...” His voice tapered off. Neither of them wanted to hear the end of that sentence. 

Guilt soured the silence. The pit of it gutted his brother. Dream looked up. The dark cold made his brother seem frail. It reminded him of the worst days. And the bitter rage he had felt when his brother had dismissed him now seemed like a pathetic response. 

“I’m sorry. What I said to you was cruel.” “It was,” Nightmare said, voice quiet. Dream flinched despite knowing the truth of it. He had hurt his brother. And he had said what he did knowing that it would. “You were right. I did reach for the apple first. I didn’t have a choice, in the moment, I truly believe that. But I... I regret what happened afterward. Dream, it’s because of me that you…”

His brother didn’t finish.

“That I… what?” He hasn’t meant it… as a warning. His voice sounded hollow even to his own mind. He wasn’t even sure what he was warning his brother not to say. But something was balanced, precariously on a knife’s edge. And it was tittering.

Dream felt his brother’s rapid pulse of guilt-anxiety thrum and Nightmare said, softly and carefully. Words chosen at length. “You were despondent for three days. I don’t think you realized we had left the village by then. You wouldn’t sit unless I told you to. You barely moved. And for a time, I worried that the dust might have stuck to your clothes or that somehow I’d missed it on mine and that was why—“

Oh. For a moment he thought Nightmare was going to bring up something else. (It wouldn’t surprise if his brother had wisely decided to change what he wanted to say at the last second.) He didn’t remember that. Something in his own chest sped up. Pounding hard. “Why would there be dust on our clothes?”

Nightmare went very still. “... why would there be— you don’t...”

Was he talking about the axe? “It only struck me once,” Dream said, and hoped that might be reassuring to remember. 

He didn’t understand the emotion he felt in his brother’s stare. “Right…the woodsman’s axe,” Nightmare said, slowly, muttering to himself afterward in words Dream couldn’t catch. 

The sound of a woodsman chopping wood on the edge of town had been the other reason why they’d left it so quickly. It did something to his soul that Dream didn’t have a word for. The sound made his chest hurt even though it’d been a long time since that wound had healed. It put Nightmare on edge too. Maybe thats why they’d been so short with each other.

Nightmare shook himself. “The river didn’t reopen something, did it?”

Dream snorted. His brother was such a mother hen sometimes. “It’s been years, Night’, I think we’re long past the risk of that.”

His brother clicked his teeth. “Do not overestimate the strength of newly healed bones.”

“The wound is hardly new now,” and then Dream frowned, and said quietly. “I don’t blame you, Night’. It wasn’t your fault. I said that because I was upset... but didn’t mean it.” But he could tell his brother didn’t believe him. Nightmare said nothing for a beat, and Dream tried and failed to think of something to say to prove to his brother that he meant it.

“It's not like you to lose your temper. Before we crossed the river, you were trying to tell me something but I interrupted you. What were you going to say?”

Oh. Maybe the conversation should have ended there. Dream shifted, uncomfortable. “It’s nothing.” “No,” Nightmare said, voice firm. And Dream could vividly imagine the frown on his face. “It’s not nothing. You are a difficult person to anger to that extent, Dream. I know I... said somethings that I shouldn’t have, just before... what were you going to say?” A part of him bristled. It was a small part, and he did his best to bury it. He knew though, as he felt Nightmare’s scrutiny intensify, that the attempt was pointless. He supposed it was a bit like trying to hide lightning. “... Earlier you told me I left you alone with the people who hated you. And you were right. I knew they distrusted you, I didn’t understand how deep it ran but even if I had, I... don't think any other outcome was possible for us.” He crossed his arms over his chest to hide the slight tremble in his hands and vainly hoped his brother didn’t notice that either. “I only did what I was told to, ‘Night. I thought I could make everyone happy. I thought I was being selfless by putting their needs—the needs of everyone above ours. But in the end, it never felt like a choice. I... I think I only succeeded in spreading selfishness.”

“I should have known,” Nightmare’s voice was hoarse and brittle. “I should have known... they used you too.” 

The crunch of leaves. A step taken closer while Dream struggled to wrangle the writhing thing in his heart. His ribcage hitched. Used? He would’ve never called it that. He didn’t want to call it that. He couldn’t think of it that way because then he would have to acknowledge that the people he’d loved had not only lied but used him too and— he found himself wrapped up in a tight hug.

“I'm sorry. We didn’t look after each other very well, did we?”

It felt like there was a dam behind his sockets. Burning, burning. But the tears wouldn’t come. He hiccuped and buried his face in the collar of his brother’s shirt. The arms wrapped around him squeezed. There was no judgment, no mocking sneers or scoffs. No teasing. Just marrow-deep sympathy and a shared raw pain he didn’t think would ever truly go away.

“It’s okay, Dream. We’re going to be okay,” Nightmare whispered and Dream wanted to cry all over again but couldn’t. It didn’t feel okay. When has anything his brother gone through been okay? It seemed like nothing had been okay for a long time. He didn’t like feeling like this. But he allowed himself to be held and rocked until the thoughts of a place he could never return to slowly faded, and the shaking subsided.

When Dream felt... not quite calm, but tired and spent, he stepped back. Nightmare let his arms fall. “I think I can take us out of here now. Something changed just before I found you. I felt a shift... Did something happen with the family that found you?” Instead of answering, Dream nodded in, at least he hoped, the direction he came from. He was too tired to explain the strange magic he’d felt in Noelle’s house.

His brother was thoughtful for a pressing second, then said, gently. “Whatever you did, it helped. Let’s leave it at that and get out of here before anything else happens.” Dream agreed wholeheartedly. He hoped whenever they went next didn’t have a woodsman. “Do you think there is a world out there without a forest?”

The question startled a chuckle from his brother. “You want to go somewhere without trees?” He felt a palm press to his forehead. “Are you ill, brother? Do you have a fever, perhaps?”

Dream swatted his hand away. He was too tired to fight the small smile that pulled at the corners of his mouth. “Where there are no trees, there is no axe.” “I’ve read of places where there is sand instead of dirt, for as far as the eye can see, and grass refuses to grow there.” Now, he could believe that first part. After all, some river banks and dry creek beds were like that, but where grass will not grow? There was no way. “You’re lying. You’re making that up!”  

Nightmare laughed and easily dodged his second attempt at smacking him. Cheater. “I don’t know when we’ll find such a place, but I promise one day I’ll take you there.”

“You read too much,” Dream commented, dryly. And if Nightmare wasn’t smiling, he was wearing an expression close to it. He reached for his brother’s hand, without hesitation this time. Nightmare took it, and in a blink, they left the forest and the AU behind.

[traumatizedjaguar]

MASTER-POST: Psychological Abuse Terminology

Parentification: A form of role reversal, in which a child is inappropriately given the role of meeting the emotional or physical needs of the parent or of the family’s other children. There is emotional parentification and instrumental parentification.

Intrude and Interrupt or Enmeshment: The manipulator has no respect for another person's boundaries, they will say and do whatever they please in front of, behind the back of, or towards their victims, regardless of objections or morals. If done covertly the victim will have no idea what damage has been done until it’s too late. The goal is to cut the victim off from speaking up, gaining support, or making positive changes, either for themselves or the people around them.

Infantilize: The manipulator does not acknowledge their victims maturity either emotionally or psychologically. The victim is treated as if they have no knowledge of life or experience dealing with life's challenges. The goal is to reduce a person to that of an infant or child, lowering their status in the social order, and stripping them of the ability to make choices, both in the victim's mind and the manipulator's. Abusers who successfully infantalized you and kept you behind your peers in life will then use your trauma symptoms as an excuse to say, “see you are childish and can’t do this in your own, here let me do it for you” thus continuing to treat you younger than you are and keeping you in this cycle. This keeps you in a childish state against your will, sometimes living under a rock, or not knowing things people your age should know - but this goes for all complex trauma survivors as well.

Dog whistling or Double Entendres: It can be used to set the victim up to look hysterical, it is a coded and suggestive language that only the victim will understand the true meaning of. Used to abuse the victim in a covert manner. It is a statement your abuser uses with double meaning to be able to abuse you in front of others or just play mind games with you to make you lose your mind. Abusers tend to use “double entendres” to secretly cover abusive language. (Google the definition of double entendres).

For example: with the dog whistle tactic my abuser used on me, that my abuser would tell me and other people, “I fucked a girl so hard she had an asthma attack!” My abuser gloated to everyone she knew about how she hooked up with some chick and fucked her so hard that the girl ended up having an asthma attack my abuser thought this was cool to gloat about - this didn’t actually happen; The true hidden meaning behind that statement was that she and her friends gang raped me and I woke up (from being drugged) having a panic attack and hyperventilating that someone handed me an asthma inhaler and it worked and stopped the panic attack. My abuser told me in private she was telling everyone she knew and gloating about raping me with that double entendre.

DARVO: Deny abuse allegations, Attack the victim, Reverse Victim and Offender role. The abuser pretends to be the victim of abuse while vilifying the real victim, and making them out to be the abuser.

Projection, Deflection, Denial: Projection is when the abuser accuses the victim of what they’re actually doing, this is chronically used as a part of the personality pattern of psychological abusers. If the abuser is cheating, they will accuse the victim of cheating. Deflection is when the abuser brings up things the victim “did wrong” when the victim rightfully confronts the abuser about their abusive actions or brings up something the victim supposedly did to take the blame or eyes off the abuser. Denial speaks for itself, when the abuser denies things when the victim confronts them, even when the victim has irrefutable proof.

Insinuating Comments: The manipulator knows the victim's weaknesses and buttons. They purposely push and pull on these to get a reaction. Often they will speak with double entendres or innuendos to confuse and hurt the victim simultaneously while maintaining plausible deniability of any hurtful intention. The goal is to drain the victim emotionally, wear them down, and to feed the manipulator’s ego or sense of power/control.

Feigning Innocence or Confusion: The manipulator tries to suggest that any harm done was unintentional or that they did not do something that they were accused of. The manipulator may put on a look of surprise or indignation. The manipulator may also try to play dumb by pretending he or she doesn't know what the victim is talking about or is confused about an important issue brought to their attention. The abuser may pretend to not know certain people they’re using to help abuse their victim, this is why the abuser has public friends and private contacts. The goal is to make the victim question his or her own judgment and possibly their own sanity. When others are deceived by a manipulator this way the victim feels powerless.

Triangulation

There are 4 main types of triangulation recognized. It is a situation in which one family member or friend will not communicate with the victim, or will be friendly with the victim, while turning other family members or friends against them. This can take many forms and usually incorporates gaslighting. There is always a covert element which leads to pitting the victim against others without the victim being fully aware of what is taking place. The goal is to isolate (divide), and conquer the victim while controlling their support system.

Killing Two Birds With One Stone:

To obtain control, attention or adulation, abusers will often inform their partner about a third-party such as a mutual friend or co-worker, etc., who has been flirtatious with them. This third-party person is brought into the relationship to kill two birds with one stone! First, it stirs up feelings of jealousy and insecurity in their partner and subtlety warns the partner that they’re replaceable. Instinctively the partner tries harder to please the abuser so as to not be replaced. Second, it creates an illusion of desirability and encourages rivalry, both of which fill the abuser with abuser-supply, adulation and control. So not only does the abuser get their dose of supply, they also increase the amount of power they have over their partner. Psychological abusers are obsessed with jealousy and envy to feed their insecurities and lift their self-esteem. Power is the way they go instead of looking for healthier alternatives to make themselves feel better; it’s just how they are wired. They’re wired for drama, power, control, and chaos.

Recruiting Reinforcements:

One of the ways abusers use triangulation to manipulate their partners into siding with their point of view or acquiesce to their wants and needs is by using third-party reinforcements to substantiate their opinions. This is a form of recruiting allies when taken to the extreme is a form of bullying. The abuser tries to manipulate anyone who may hold a different opinion or belief by using the help of a usually innocent third party, which of course, has only heard the abuser’s rendition of the truth.

The third-party is usually oblivious to the abuser’s ploy and believes they’re only trying to help the abuser. Usually, their party is a relative or one of the members of the abuser’s supporters that the abuser uses as a tool to help settle differences and coerce their partner or anyone else into accepting their viewpoint through the use of persuasion, embarrassment, majority rules or guilt.

Splitting:

This method of triangulation involves pitting two people against each other. The abuser does this by smearing the character of one or both of the people behind their backs. This enables the abuser to preserve their false image and ensures they’re viewed positively among the triangle. In many instances, the abuser will portray themselves as the victim, especially if they feel their partner is growing tired or aware of their manipulation, hypocrisy, and abuse. The abuser will react by planning their partner’s discard by starting a full-fledged smear campaign behind their back. So by the time they dump their partner, the abuser already has a circle of blind supporters.

The abuser will usually seek supporters that he/she knows will always agree with them no matter what. This is how they set up their partner to look like the abuser in the relationship long before the relationship is over. For this to work, the abuser must keep the supporter(s) and partner from sharing information, so the abuser will usually share mean comments each has said about the other.

The abuser uses this triangulation tactic to control the information shared between the parties providing the abuser with the power of being the primary contact person and transferer of information. Since everyone is communicating through the abuser and not with each other, the abuser can further their agenda by relaying their spin on the information between the parties.

The Pre-Discard and Dump:

When the abuser is about to break up the relationship they will confide in people who they know will agree with them and believe their rendition of the truth. Sometimes they will confide in people who hardly even know their partner, if at all. The abuser will make sure to let their partner know that they have been confiding in other people, and every single one of them agrees with the abuser. Most likely, one of the abuser’s confidants will assume the role of the replacement partner.

After the break-up, the abuser will openly brag about how happy they are with their new partner or make social media posts about it. And if their ex-partner acts jealous or tries to beg them back, the abuser will enjoy the new bonus love-triangle of their own creation. Abuser’s do this to always look good, happy, or like they’re doing their best while trying to tear you down.

Enticing the victim back or Hoovering: Is trying to use any means to get the victim to come back to the relationship. Threats, intimidation, guilt-tripping, love-bombing, enticing, making false promises of change, anything.

Blame-shifting: The victim is held responsible for the harm they suffered. The victim brought it all upon themselves and the manipulator is in no way responsible for their actions. The victim made all the choices which brought them trouble or pain regardless of how much they were manipulated into doing so. The goal is to put the victim on the defense which makes them look and feel guilty while simultaneously masking the manipulator's malicious intentions.

An abuser will blame-shift everything, even the littlest mistakes they’ve made, making themselves out to be perfect beings with no faults or flaws - obviously this disrupts the relationship and causes fights when there’s no accountability on the abusers end whatsoever.

Abuse by Proxy (or Flying Monkeys): This is when the abuser will enlist their friends or people to come after the victim and attack the victim, abuse the victim, or intimidate the victim. Abusers befriend abusers, abusers support abusers. This stage is usually after the break-up when the abuser is trying to get their “revenge” on you.

Love Bombing: Is an attempt by the manipulator to influence a person by lavish demonstrations of attention and affection. The manipulator appeals to the target’s vanity and insecurity. Their interest in the victim will be extreme once they have found their target and their “love” for the victim will be incredibly intense. Its purpose is to override the target’s critical thinking skills so that the abuser can control and manipulate. Essentially they will gain control over their victim by making their emotional state dependent on the manipulator. The abuser will act closer to you than they are given they only just met you, bomb you with loving gestures and affection which gets you easily attached (not real love).

Devaluing: This is the part of the cycle where the abuser does the complete opposite of love-bombing, they may rage, put down the victim or use any means to make the victim feel unloved. Relationships with psychological abusers are very black and white, it goes from love to hate in an instant and back again. Mental whiplash some people call it.

Gaslighting

Is a form of mental abuse in which information is twisted or spun, selectively omitted to favor the abuser, or false information is presented with the intent of making victims doubt their own memory, perception, and sanity. Typically this undermines the victims support group carried out by a combination of other tactics synthesized into a large scale attack on said victim. Making the victim deny the reality they know to be true. Often the abuser is sure of themselves and the victim since the beginning of the relationship has been in a constant state of confusion and questioning themselves. There are many types of gaslighting and ways to gaslight.

Physical Gaslighting. You see this in the 1944 movie Gaslight. The gaslighter will physically, and ever so slightly, distort your surroundings repeatedly and deny repeatedly that anything has changed. In the movie the man is slightly turning down the gas-light in their bedroom a bit dimmer and when his wife asks if the lighting has changed, he denies it and calls her crazy. He does this constantly to get the outcome he wants from his victim.

Emotional Gaslighting. This obviously uses non-physical means to gaslight the victim. Ofen making the victim believe things about themselves that aren't true, like making them out to be the abuser for example. Denying events from the past (days, weeks, years) happened a certain way that the victim remembers it happening and calling the victim crazy, delusional, mentally ill, or telling the victim they are dreaming, manipulative and making stuff up. The abuser then asserts their rendition of the truth and a lot of the time adding details that never happened and asserting that they happened.

Minimization: This is denial coupled with gaslighting. The manipulator asserts that their behavior isn't really as harmful or irresponsible as someone else may be claiming. Often times down playing the behavior by comparing it to others, "He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone," or such logic may be present. The goal is to make a molehill out of a mountain, thus letting the manipulator continue the abusive behavior, or at least escape much of the guilt. They act like they don’t see the impact their actions have on others, sometimes they really don’t see it because they’re not reflecting on things they don’t care about.

Amplification: The manipulator will shout out your failures and whisper your successes. Any limelight the victim deserves will be diminished. Their accomplishments will go unnoticed and their shortcomings will be broadcast far and wide. The goal is to drain the victim of the energy to be successful, to make them doubt themselves, so that the manipulator can be the center of attention at all times while belittling the victim.

Emotional Blackmail: Knowing that someone close to them wants love, approval or confirmation of identity, and self-esteem, manipulators will threaten to withhold the emotional support the victim desires or needs, or even take it away altogether, making the person feel that he or she must meet the demands of the manipulator. The goal is to ensure that the victim feels afraid to cross them, obligated to give them their way, or guilty if they resist.

I’ve also seen this in terms of witchcraft/black magick in which the abuser will insist demons or gods have been used to help get revenge on the victim as a kind of deluded “divine retribution” against the victim. I’ve surprisingly heard a lot of stories of people’s abusers using black magic as a threat to their victims. This is blackmailing. All in all, wanting to do vengeful or abusive things using magic to make oneself feel more powerful is a huge red flag.

Monitor and Stalk: The manipulator is always present, lurking behind the victim's back, or from a good safe distance, keeping an eye on him or her. It is common for them to monitor the victim's computer or phone, and even use surveillance equipment in order to follow the person's every move. The goal here is simple: maintain knowledge of everything the victim says and does, their coming and going, and who they know. Check your vehicles for tracking devices, they can be under the car, behind a license plate, in the engine blending in, in the wheel well, or behind one of the tires, in the trunk, or even inside the car under the seats or under the dashboard area.

Personality Traits/Patterns

Vindictiveness: This is a disturbed personality trait that all psychological abusers possess. They are extremely revenge-prone, incredibly abusive with their revenge, and often entitled and self-righteous with their revenge. They believe they have a right to abuse the victim that they perceive as deserving of abuse. Often perceiving things in a cognitively distorted manner (research terms: cognitive distortions, distorted object relations).

Deceitfulness:

Public and Private Personas: Psychological abusers are notoriously known for having a public personality that they may show around school, their unaware friends and family, and a private personality that they unleash who they really are around other abusers or victims of theirs. Victims and other abusers are the only ones that see their private personas.

Tracfones and aliases: An alias is a fake name and identity they go by to get away with their abusive behaviors. Tracfones are also known to be used to get away with crime.

Charm: Charming behavior is used obviously to charm people and get people to like the abuser. Abusers are typically good at charming anybody they come across because it also helps hide their abusive personality.

Cognitive Distortions. A cognitive distortion is an exaggerated or irrational thought pattern. Cognitive distortions are thoughts that cause individuals to perceive reality inaccurately. Abusers rely on cognitive distortions to justify bad or aggressive behavior. One example of how they distort reality is mislabeling a person as stupid or useless because they don’t know what the abuser knows; this is a pathetic attempt for the abuser to lift their self-esteem by feeling superior to others. Another example of a cognitive distortion is mislabeling a person's identity we see this with:

Distorted Object Relations. The abuser tends to relate to others primarily as objects to satisfy their own needs and desires, rather than seeing them as unique individuals with their own feelings and perspectives.

Victim Complex. The abuser is a perpetual victim and sees themselves as victimized when they often are not being victimized. They enjoy taking on a masochistic role where they perceive themselves as being attacked or offended where there is no offense in reality, giving them ample opportunity to perceive the real victim as the bad guy so they can cause chaos and drama to fuel their abuser-supply. The cycle of abuse is called the cycle of abuse for a reason; they cannot get out of the victim role.

Pompous, Pretentious, Posers and Fake. They cannot be anything but arrogant, liars, exaggerators, making up almost everything about their character to portray themselves as a certain person, or with a certain job or degree or having certain relationships or status that they don’t actually have. We see this in a lot of famous DV cases such as “Dirty John” on Netflix which is a true story of a woman and her daughter’s DV case. We also see this with murderer, Brian Blackwell, who tried to keep his facade of a character he wasn’t up to the point where he snapped and murdered his parents, all over the fact that he was fake and needed to upkeep his perfect image to his girlfriend. Lies are a red flag. Slight exaggerations are a red flag.

Foreshadowing. This is when the abuser plays mind games or drops hints that they’re abusive (it is also a way to shift blame onto you for accepting the abuse and to gaslight you or intimidate you because they “warned you about how they are” when the relationship started.)

Crisis situations. If they have an addiction for example, which is the common one I always hear about, they’ll constantly use it to keep you smothered in their presence, there for them, ect. they will “accidentally” leave pills or a needle where they know you’ll find them so you freak out/stress and so you can be there for them. This is also a part of smothering/enmeshment. Abusers don’t know the difference between their responsibility and yours. If you’re going away on vacation, if you’re going out with friends, if you’re doing anything by yourself or with loved ones and the abuser will immediately have a crisis situation for you to come back running to them or else “you don’t care about them” because you aren’t taking care of their responsibilities.

Framing. They will frame the perfect story over the course of years or decades depending on how long you knew the abuser for. I call this simply “framing”. It’s when the abuser frames you for specific problems or for abuse from the very beginning of when the relationship first started.

Double Bind: In the manipulator's eyes the victim is damned if they do and damned if they don't. Regardless of which choice is picked the manipulator will always point out that the person should have picked the other. This may be accompanied by remarks such as "Well if you had done this I would have done something great for you, but forget about it now." The goal here is to beat the victim down psychologically and emotionally, in order to make him or her question and doubt their own intuition and judgment.

Double-Mindedness: The manipulator seeks the double advantage of being able to do wrong, of being able to have their will, of letting their passions rage, and the hypocritical advantage of seeming to be good, helpful, or supportive. In short, double-mindedness is to say one thing and do another, to do unto others what they are not willing to be done unto them. The manipulator can only accomplish said task by engaging in the self deception of doublethink.

Doublethink: To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it is needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself.

Hurt and Rescue: A drowning person will clutch at a straw, so push them in the water, then throw them a rope. Hurting the other person does not necessarily mean physical harm and it may not even mean making them feel bad, but it does mean creating a situation that they want to resolve. The goal is to get the victim to play into the manipulator's hands so they can rush to their “rescue” only to trick the victim into trusting, believing, or becoming dependent upon them. The abuser sets up a problem, the victim is hurt, then the abuser rushes to their rescue as the hero.

Covert Aggressive Abuse: Insults are disguised as teachings, helping, giving advice, and offering solutions. The manipulator makes them appear as a sincere attempt to help, especially to others. This can also be followed by put-downs, and disappointment from the manipulator and anyone else who they have convinced of the victim's inferiority. The goal is to belittle, control, and demean the victim while covering up the appearance of wrongdoing on the manipulators behalf.

Setting up to Fail: The manipulator puts their victim in such a state of stress, or stressful situation, that failure is almost certain, wherein the outcome can be used as ammunition to discredit and blame the victim. This can be done covertly as well, using sabotage or undermining an objective that may otherwise have been achievable. This type of manipulation may be the projection of the bully's own feelings of inadequacy onto the victim.

Moving the Goalpost: When the manipulator has control of the situation they will redefine the victim's goals, in reality, to intentionally devise a way so as to assure that an athlete, for example, will ultimately never be able to finally achieve the ever shifting goals. Depending on how this is done the goal may be to humiliate the victim, keep them preoccupied so as to accomplish nothing else with their time, or to simply wear them out.

Brandishing Anger: The manipulator puts on an act of furious explosive anger, verbal abuse, or physical threats. If the victim is in a trance or has previously been manipulated by the abuser, with just one incident of such behavior the victim can become conditioned and trained to avoid upsetting, confronting or contradicting the manipulator ever again. The goal is to establish dominance or superiority, and complete and unquestionable compliance, over victims through fear.

Brainwashing: Also referred to as heart washing, is the act of changing a person's mind or heart by using extreme mental or emotional pressure or abuse. This is typically done when the victim is extremely outmatched by their manipulator either mentally, physically, economically, or socially. This can be achieved a number of ways but usually the victim is in a situation they feel they can’t escape, and will involve several tactics simultaneously. The goal is to convince the victim into believing their viewpoints about life, believing their view of certain people or a specific person, or something else and that the victim needs to be realigned to the viewpoint of the manipulator.

Insinuating Comments: The manipulator knows the victim's weaknesses and buttons. They purposely push and pull on these to get a reaction. Often they will speak with double entendres or innuendos to confuse and hurt the victim simultaneously while maintaining plausible deniability of any hurtful intention. The goal is to drain the victim emotionally, wear them down, and to feed the manipulator’s ego or sense of power/control.

Silent Treatment: The manipulator refuses to communicate and uses emotional and/or physical withdrawal as punishment. This is to convey contempt and communicate that the person is not worthy of the manipulator's acknowledgement. The goal is to render the victim powerless to change the current situation and induce feelings of abandonment or rejection. If the manipulator withdraws emotionally the victim can become love starved for their affection/attention.

This is different from Gray Rock which is a technique victims in abusive relationships can use to not engage with the manipulative person in their life. You’re doing it to avoid gaslighting, fights and the feeling like you’re going off your marbles, whereas the abuser uses the silent treatment as a way to gain power and control over you, usually because they’re pissed you’re not doing what they want.

Roles in a household

Scapegoating. Manipulators subject the "whipping boy" to constant negative treatment and blame they don't deserve. Manipulators unconsciously project their own unwanted feelings and problems onto the victim. The punishment which the scapegoat has to endure is a direct projection of the manipulator's own insecurities. Scapegoating is a deliberate act of torment against another person for the cathartic pleasure of the manipulator and their cohorts. The scapegoat is often blamed for all the problems that arise, they are most likely to have DARVO used against them (they are blamed to be the abuser by one or multiple abusive family members). A lot of the times when abusive parents (or even other family members) don’t want to take accountability for their mistakes they regret or don’t want people to know about, everybody can dump their projections and insecurities onto the scapegoat.

Golden Child. This is the kid who is looked at as the perfect extension of the manipulative parent(s). They fit the role of being perfectly exploited by a parent that seeks attention, adulation, and success. This child is used for the parents' need for a perfect image. This is usually the sibling that becomes the most successful but not always. They are typically the favorite kid.

Invisible Child. Usually completely ignored. The parents (and sometimes siblings are manipulated to do the same) never speak to this kid, and may genuinely completely ignore their existence. If there are 5 members of the immediate family and it is dinner time, the parents might put down 4 plates at the table, not call them to dinner and have dinner with everybody else, just to further control and ignore the invisible child. A lot of people's situations will be different in how they experience the role. This is one example.

[magicthethinking]

A first KTK Draft report

I came back into Magic around M15 and the end of Theros block, but didn't start drafting until a Standard Chaos Draft around BFZ. So, I missed out on all the Khans block draft environments, at least until Arena brought KTK-KTK-KTK back.

Yes my first draft was a chaos draft, sometimes I do things that are harder because I can.

I wrote down my thoughts in a notebook to see my thinking to write most of this, and to see where I start to go wrong. It's a nice bit to get to do when drafting with bots, and doing it on Arena lets me get to play with my results, which is particularly valuable for me. I need more experience to be confident navigating a draft without play.

Draft Phase

Draft is linked here: 17Lands.com

Pack 1

Pick 1:

I was happy to see the three gain lands in the pack, not enough to take one first overall, but a nice bit to write in the notebook. I went with Highspire Mantis over the Deflecting Palm thinking that a 3/3 Flying Trampler is going to be more generally useful. Or at the very least a solid bit of my mid to top end.

Pick 2:

Hordeling Outburst beat out Arrow Storm, Disdainful Stroke, and Jeskai Student. Three mana, three 1/1 Goblins, I had to follow the old yell from The Magic Show. Also, going wide helps with blocking at worst, and can push more damage through. Just solid. Abzan Charm is appealing, but as much as I know that three colors is very much supported I have an aversion to having too many colors in limited. So picking that up early scared me. So would throwing an early pick out, but that is going to happen anyway. I also tend to over-commit and lock into colors way too early in draft. That probably happened here too.

Pick 3:

A large number of gains, happy to see (while writing this I can also see the Average Last Seen At numbers, and they're taken higher than I would have thought).

I took Stubborn Denial over Master the Way, Defiant Strike, Trumpet Blast, or Jeskai Windscout.

Stubborn Denial seems like a solid counter; if you can get Ferocious online or are real early in a game. I don't think this worked out too well for me. I wasn't Hell or Heckbent enough that Master the Way wouldn't have been a bad bolt. The 5 mana needed just seemed too steep. I had concerns about how many non-creatures I would have so I undervalued Prowess. Trumpet Blast I thought I could either wheel or would see more of later on, so decided to hold off, but it was the second on my radar. Defiant Strike just seemed worse than Trumpet Blast. At this point I've locked in on drafting Jeskai and have tunnel visioned.

Pick 4:

So much Red!

I went with War-Name Aspirant over Ainok Bond-Kin, Heart-Piercer Bow, Act of Treason, Temur Banner, and the Glacial Stalker.

Me at the time: "War-Name + Ainok combos well, hopefully can make it work. Hope to see another Bow in other packs"

I don't think I was wrong there, but part of me also valued the banners too highly, especially ones that were off wedge. I don't think that played out too well for me in the end, they're useful, but not something I should really want too much.

Pick 5:

Mardu Banner was the pick over Quiet Contemplation, Set Adrift, Siegecraft, Kheru Dreadmaw, or the Scoured Barrens.

A tapper that works when you cast a non-creature and tax yourself one sounded fine. I don't think it would have been after playing my matches. Three mana for no immediate text box or stats is not great.

Siegecraft sounds good for getting Ferocious online, but it's 4 mana for an odd buff, I don't think it was something I really wanted.

I think I should have taken the Scoured Barrens, but I was prioritizing mana rocks, and it can draw a card. (I would never be able to draw a card, I did not have another black source)

Some of that is probably my lack of comfort with three color mana bases in general, and more specifically in Limited. Getting afraid of color screw and losing a game to that probably hurt me here.

Pick 6:

The combination piece with War-Name Aspirant; Ainok Bond-Kin.

Goblinslide sounded good, but fell in the same bit with me and Quiet Contemplation. Three mana, does nothing until you cast a non-creature spell. This one makes Goblins though, and that is just better. I just dismissed it out of hand too quickly.

Blinding Spray sounded fine for a moment, it's an effect that gets reprinted fairly often. It also draws a card for 5 mana, but I think I'd rather have the card it would draw me than it.

Kheru Dreadmaw is back, still a no, especially not being in black and not being a reason to pivot to black.

Tranquil Cove, I'm too used to not prioritizing lands in non-Masters or non-Horizons sets. I think Bond-Kin was a good pick here, but Cove should have been a bit more of a draw.

Pick 7:

Efreet Weaponmaster was my pick. First Strike, pumping a creature when it either ETBs or flips is damn good, and almost got windmilled. If I weren't journaling it probably would have been.

Salt Road Patrol, it works well with Bond-Kin, and blocks really well, I don't think I gave it enough due.

Kheru, still no. Probably won't be mentioned again.

Snowhorn Rider. 5/5 Trampler for 6 isn't bad, and for a bit extra you can spread it across turns and maybe eat a medium creature. If I hadn't tunnel visioned on Jeskai I might have put out some feelers on Temur. But Weaponmaster was also in the pack...

Again, I wasn't prioritizing lands, but I think there's more of a reason not to in this pack to not take Tranquil Cove.

Pick 8:

Force Away was my pick. A 2 mana bounce with a potential loot. That's just good clean living.

Briber's Purse seems interesting, but I didn't know how fast the format would be, so opted to stay away. Early on I would rather be developing properly, and late game it seems a bit insubstantial.

Jeskai Student; I did not rate Prowess as highly as I should have been, so a 1/3 for 2 didn't seem great at the moment.

Glacial Stalker; a 6 mana 4/5 doesn't sound great. But a 7 mana 4/5 paid over two turns and spends some of that time as a 2/2 does sound a bit better. It can block pretty well too.

Pick 9:

Jeskai Elder was taken, the loot sounded really good, and I was questioning whether I should stay in white. That kind of beat out the new slight interest in Jeskai Student.

Rush of Battle piqued my interest too, but I was questioning white and wanted some creatures on the low end of my curve.

Pick 10:

Lens of Clarity sounds interesting, but doesn't really do anything beyond keep me from charging into a blowout. Nice, but I will find a way to do that anyway, and it doesn't do anything on board. Glacial Stalker gets the nod here.

Pick 11:

Jeskai Windscout beat out Defiant Strike, and the slightly off color gainland.

Pick 12:

I took the Temur Banner; If I had to do this pack over again, the Bloodfire Expert would be windmilled.

Pick 13:

Kheru Dreadmaw is off color, and the other card is an Elk. I will embrace the Edmonton Football team, now bring back the Elk Horn helmets.

"Pick" 14:

Naturalize was the only card there, it went to the sideboard immediately and stayed in the pool for the remainder of time.

The rest of the draft

I'm going to abbreviate some of this, because I did the exact same thing in my notebook.

P2P1: I took Suspension Field over Mythic Monastery. I thought the Monastery would wheel, and 2 mana to exile a big thing sounds good. For someone who was scared about color screw I sure did not take the land made just for me. This is a straight up whiff.

P2P2: Thought that the Salt Road Patrol would wheel, and went with the bow. I have at this point stopped looking at off color cards.

P2P3: I went with the on color gain in Swiftwater Cliffs. Monastery Flock interested me, but I need fixing... I gained wisdom over those two packs.

P2P4: Treasure Cruise is in this pack. I know it's history, but didn't think it would be worth too much in limited. I don't know if I'm wrong, but in an effective vacuum I want to play to the board.

P3P1: I looked at End Hostilities, but 3{W}{W} for a board wipe sounds like a lot. It's more achievable than I would have though, but if I'm needing it something has gone very wrong with what I've built. Another Efreet Weaponmaster was the pick.

Deckbuilding & Some Game Action

The Deck: Linked here

Building a limited deck is a weakness I have, especially in a format I don't know well. So I tend to make a bit of a mess by either not being low to the ground and aggressive or properly controlling to a solid late game. Instead building Midrange via the medium of indecisiveness. This is not helped by the quick drafts being Best of One matches that let me try going low or being more controlling.

Also having the first two games be over quite quickly.

Game 1 my opponent developed their board quickly, and swung in hard and fast, and Suspension Fielded my Highspire Mantis so there were no real chances to block. In Game 2 I kept a bad opening hand out of tilt, and the hope that a blue source would come. It did not.

Opening Hand:

Jeskai Elder 2 Plains Mardu Banner Singing Bell Strike Suspension Field Stubborn Denial

I rushed out the Banner (a Mountain was drawn at some point). They had a Mardu Skullhunter out on Turn 2 before playing a 4/2 Alpine Grizzly on 3.

Seeing danger I go to Suspension Field the big bear...

From Suspension Field's text box (via Scryfall)

When Suspension Field enters the battlefield, you may exile target creature with toughness 3 or greater until Suspension Field leaves the battlefield. (That creature returns under its owner’s control.)

Alpine Grizzly as mentioned above has Four Power and Two Toughness. Two is a smaller number than three. Suspension Field is an ETB, effect. It enters, sees no creatures that I may target with it and goes "Cool, I live here now."

I see a 4/5 drop the next turn and shame scoop after not drawing that Island.

Game 3:

There's an interesting set of decisions made in Turn 9's Declare Blockers: My opponent is swinging in with a 5/4 Ainok Bond-Kin (Outlast was used 3 times). From it's own text box it has First Strike. Sage of the Inward Eye (3/4 with Flying) is on the battlefield as an attacker. A second copy of Brave The Sands was played earlier in the turn, giving both creatures Lifelink from the Sage and two instances of Vigilance from the Brave the Sands.

I have an Alabaster Kirin (2/3 Flying, Vigilance) with a Heart-Piercer Bow, Glacial Stalker (5/4), and War-Name Aspirant (3/2 from a +1/+1 counter) blocking the 5/4 First Striking Bond-Kin. Leaving the 3-4 Sage unblocked while at 4 life, and my opponent empty handed. They are on 17 life.

There is also a face down Efreet Weaponmaster.

This is a bad blocking decision on my part.

In this position I'm trading off my potential flying blocker, and less importantly the War-Name Aspirant for the Bond-Kin. There are no fliers in my hand to block with, I can't win on the crackback both because I don't have enough power to do so when their creatures are tapped out, but also because the Sage has Vigilance (TWICE). However at that moment I think (and never double check that this is true) Efreet Weaponmaster has Flying.

I think this is a good block until I go to get high fives from others and am alerted to the misplay.

The only reason this isn't a blowout is the Glacial Stalker being set as the first creature in the blocking order and taking all the damage.

Game 4: I think I build out solidly, and attack well, but in the final turn cycle the fresh Bloodfire Expert gets a Feat of Resistance buffing it and giving it Protection from Blue in response to being targeted by Heart-Piercer Bow. It blocks profitably. I flip my Efreet Weaponmaster to take out their Monastery Flock and hit them for 7 taking them to 5. I'm on 13, they play a Swiftspear, and swing in with the team. I block their Expert with my own Flock, and they show me the last two cards in their hand. Jeskai Charm, giving the team +1/+1 and lifelink until the end of the turn (Hitting the Expert and Swiftspears prowess triggers for some extra damage). Then my Flock gets to take a Ride Down, giving the Expert Trample. Prowess. Prowess. I take 15.

After how I won Game 3 this feels appropriate.

Summing Up

I'm not sure there's much to put here to be honest. Valuing the gainlands higher is important, the banners aren't great, and I should pick a lane when building my deck. Overall, this was more an exercise in getting some of my limited rust knocked off. I've been a bit nervous over a bad draft or two taking away from the potential value the draft tokens have, or wasting gems to where I would need to buy more to draft more. Even when I'm rusty, I'm not that bad at limited. There's lots to clean up though, and I look forward to it.

Writing this is also breaking a bit of fear I have about writing. I don't know what my voice will end up being, but hopefully there's not too much yelling at me while I'm finding out. I've got a ton more rust here than with playing Magic.

[aquaquadrant]

ravenous red

Star Wars: The Clone Wars fanfic Rating: T Warnings: Graphic descriptions of violence, injury, blood, death Summary:

i heard you wanted a war funny, i wanted it more

~*~

So he says nothing, letting his gaze speak his hate as he relents, turning and walking away. It feels like disgrace, it feels like a failure, to go do her bidding- go cause some chaos, she taunts- but real victory lies in that which she does not yet know. Good at it, sure, he can admit as much, but the means to the end will be something she doesn’t expect. That’s how he’ll get her, collateral damage in this personal storm he directs.

At her request.

Lady Tano, you don’t know what you’ve just asked for.

A/N: I know I said my last oneshot was my tribute to the Clone Wars, but then I heard a song that fit Maul perfectly so I had to do a tribute to him too. It’s actually a song fic, I’ve been writing fanfic since I was 13 but this is my first song fic so hopefully I did it right. This is basically Order 66 from Maul’s POV, showing off how much of a spiteful, unhinged badass he really is. Hope you enjoy, reblogs/comments are appreciated! – Aqua

Song is Appetite for Destruction by Vo Williams

Click here to read on Archive of Our Own

Click here to support me on Ko-fi

~*~

ravenous red

It starts with a scream.

Ringing out through the force like a shot, chaos crashing in after it. Words pass in flashes, snippets he can’t quite decipher. The impressions of feelings brush against him; shock, betrayal, desperation. He feels the flicker of lightning, a bygone but familiar sensation. Someone somewhere has made a very poor choice, one that will echo for ages, one that he expected.

(He did try and warn them)

It’s not long before they come. Identical faces behind identical helmets approach without words. They are rigid, unflinching, as they move to lower the shield that protects him, ensnares him, with unspoken intent written plainly as anything else.

Any lingering sympathy he has for these beings, these clones that were raised to be tools- as was he- dissipates like mist in the sun. To think, they would kill him like this. Trapped and defenseless. A coward’s method of choice; it insults him, right to the core. Let him out, let him fight, he’ll give them a show. He’ll remove the spines they don’t deserve. They aren’t using them anyway.

The death in the air is a pulse in his brain, a constant crashing and ebb of bloody waves. It’s hard to concentrate, hard to mediate between what’s happening right in front of him and what’s happening lightyears away. The force is a furnace, thousands of bodies toppling into it to burn. It devours them gladly, wiping out light from the sky to leave nothing but smoke and ash in return.

He wants to join in, wants to destroy. Not a Sith, not quite, but he hunts like one still. The darkness beckons for him, a familiar cold, coursing through his veins. Yellow eyes glare through glass, burning with hatred and rage. He’d kill them, if only he could. He wants them to know it. He wants them to feel it.

If looks could kill, they’d already be dead.

this is the end of your days it's time we end the charades open the cage, i want to play time for the bridges to blaze

Blasters are raised- but cut down just as quickly.

His savior is a flash of blue. Unexpected but welcome (though he prefers red). Her hostility is unsurprising, her fear concealed well- but not completely. She feels the same death he does, but it frightens her, whereas it only strengthens his resolve. He will not fall as the Jedi do. He loathes the thought; there is too much unfinished business for him to perish now.

(Kenobi will survive this because Maul must be the one to kill him, no one else, he wills this with every fiber of his being- and will is a powerful thing, will allowed him to survive being cleaved in half)

Between the two of them, everything falls into place. His master’s plan, beautiful and deadly. Brilliant and artful. Cowardly and despicable. To strike them down with the men who were created to serve, to protect. They’re nothing but droids now, mindless droids coated in flesh. It doesn’t matter to him; he’d kill either way, but he knows that she won’t.

It’s good that she’s come to him, he’ll do it for her, do what must be done to get them out alive-

Except, no.

She rejects him. She wants to strike out on her own, condemn him to the same lonely fate. It’s foolish. So blinded by her lofty morals that she fails to grasp they’re both members of the same dying breed. The Padawan who might’ve joined him has retreated far beneath the surface, hiding under a cloak of denial at the vision he sees. Her attachment is strong, too strong, that she cannot accept the truth even when given freely.

How dare she? How dare she?! Dare to use him and cast him aside, as so many others before- always remember that you are nothing- this child in a warrior’s mask, thinking he’ll act as her pawn. No, not anymore.

Oh, he’ll kill her. He’ll kill her for that. So many ways to do it, weapon or no. Reach out a hand, reach for the force, strangle the breath from her lungs, crushing her throat in his grasp. In this moment, he hates so greatly he truly thinks that he could. Crush her throat, or crush her skull, he wants to, grab her head and smash it against the wall. Red dripping down lekku of blue and white, a striking image it’d make, to be sure. He always did have an eye for these things.

He wants to see it.

i'm slipping into a craze twisted images into the brain turn up the volume on the pain give me the feeling i crave

But no.

Logic and reason win out. They dictate he cannot waste time on the likes of her. She proved a difficult fight before and his chances are slim as they are. Save his energy, save his effort for the real battle to come, for the ones who march to the tempo of death and come for him next, they’ll come for him just as well as for her.

Neither of them are Jedi but he knows they will not see it as so.

In the end that’s all that matters, how they will see you, how they perceive you, all the words in the world make no difference at all. Words do nothing, only action can produce results, as he’s clearly been shown.

So he says nothing, letting his gaze speak his hate as he relents, turning and walking away. It feels like disgrace, it feels like a failure, to go do her bidding- go cause some chaos, she taunts- but real victory lies in that which she does not yet know. Good at it, sure, he can admit as much, but the means to the end will be something she doesn’t expect. That’s how he’ll get her, collateral damage in this personal storm he directs.

At her request.

Lady Tano, you don’t know what you’ve just asked for.

show me your villainous ways show me the killer's awake make me afraid that's how you bring me to life make the adrenaline race i want a taste

i feel my rage erupting feed my appetite for destruction blood rushing i love when you feed my appetite for destruction

Alone, he persists.

His path’s uncontested, legs of metal storming heavy and loud through the ship, not trying to hide. Let them come, he’ll be ready. This aggression needs somewhere to go, after all. It’s burning him up inside. He knows intimately what it’ll do to him, if he won’t let it out. The anger, the pain. It seeks to devour, a ravenous red haze flowing through him, taking control of his brain.

It guides him and he lets it. His stalk is a predator’s stalk, single-minded focus on the hunt. He’s not afraid. They’ll see they aren’t the only executioners at work today.

They find him quickly, scattered through the ship as they are, and greet him with a volley of fire. Metal bends to his will, peeling away like skin off of flesh. Weapons or no, he’s been given a task. He can be creative. The true measure of a warrior lies not in their blade. To wield power, he needs only to look within and ask.

The very walls of their ship become the instruments of their demise. He lifts without effort, advancing slowly but surely with an unbroken stride. Walls to deflect their shots, to smash them aside, to cut through armor, through flesh, and through bone. Two heads roll off with a thrust of his arm, slack faces concealed in their helms. Bodies crushed in between, crumbling limp to the floor. A sharp flick of the wrist pins one to the wall, sliced in half- the irony is not lost on him, but humor has no place here, in this tomb.

And finally, they make their retreat, aiming to seal him inside. But no, he’s not done with them yet. There’s something he needs and he’s not asking politely.

The arm comes off in the end, the vital comm-link still attached to the bracer. He slips it on, leaving the limb to bleed red on the floor, staining the armor- and he was right, what a striking image it makes. But he can’t linger long.

Chatter through the communicator gives him his next target.

Chaos… really, she should have been more specific.

i heard you wanted a war funny, i wanted it more here comes the "bang-bang" on your door it's time to back up the noise i've been ignoring the voice begging me seek and destroy it's eating my core feel like a time bomb in the eye of a storm

He makes it to the engine room without interruption.

It’s cavernous, the floor far below, a pit spanned by narrow bridges. It’s protected, as he expected, clones charge to stop him but they matter not. Their efforts are wasted. Over the edge they go; others fall to commandeered blaster fire, or to his fists. He will succeed by any means. It’s futile of them to resist.

(They can’t help it, he knows, but he doesn’t care- he wants their blood anyways)

The dark side has never flowed more strongly within him. It’s a wellspring inside his chest, filling him completely with inky black cold. Their will is one and the same; burn it all. He reaches out, power surging, fueling his rage as it takes hold. All around him, machinery falls. Sparks rain down from above as reactors are peeled off the walls.

He’ll tear them apart from within. Metal shrieks and groans as he pries it away. The ship’s hyperdrive core is his aim. Without it, they’re stranded. Him as well, but he’s not planning to stay. There must be shuttles, and nothing will get in his way.

The doors part, and another squadron advances to stop him- but they’re too late. He topples the reactors on top of them and down it all goes, crashing to the floor far below, sealing their fate.

And with that, it’s time to take his leave.

let all the chips hit the floor do everything that you want settle the score that's how you bring me to life that's when I'm feeling recharged i want it all

i feel my rage erupting feed my appetite for destruction blood rushing i love when you feed my appetite for destruction

The flight deck is a battlefield.

She’s here- but of course- attempting to hold off the rest of the forces, their volley of fire. Somehow, someway, she’s pulled one to her side. Her little captain fights bravely, but there’s too many, it won’t be enough.

He senses opportunity, another chance perhaps to make her see. Come to her aid now and she’ll have no choice but to accept. Offer survival; a joint escape from this wreckage for her and her dog (though he cares not for three). Two are better than one, even if two is the way of the Sith, which he’s not. Their chances are better together. He knows this. He feels this.

Except, no.

She already had her chance, she had three. She rejected him. She scorned him. She cast him aside. You lie, she told him. Your vision is flawed. Arrogant. Stubborn. He hates her. He hates her.

Within a second, his choice is made. He runs past, towards the ship that would be her salvation- now it’s his. She pursues, he deflects; a dangerous dance. The world’s falling around them, and still they cannot help but fight- it’s in her nature, in her nature as well as in his.

You wanted this chaos, he taunts.

Then, without mercy, he pushes her over the edge.

i feel the monster rising up inside and i can't hold it down i'm hungry for destruction pieces crumbling, fall into the ground

i feel my rage erupting feed my appetite for destruction blood rushing i love when you feed my appetite for destruction

She’s still alive when he leaves.

His ship arcs away from the crash, plowing through smoke and fire. The entire carrier is doomed, every last soul aboard sharing its fate. Escape pods destroyed, no more ships to salvage. Surely, then, this is their end- but not his.

(He did tell them they’d all burn; but while some burn in fire, others burn with it)

There’s no remorse in his escape. It’s a measure of strength; only he was enough to get out alive. He cares not for her, for how she will burn. She deserves it. In fact, he’d say out of all the beings on that ship, she’s the only one. The droids-who-were-clones cannot ‘deserve’ a fate either way. Every action is the command of somebody else, not their own.

A great victory for his master. The thought curls his lip. But he’ll count his blessings; he survived, and as the galaxy is reshaped, he knows that he has all the skills required to thrive. A tool he might be, but a sharp one. A deadly one.

His master saw to that. He should thank him. Maybe he will- before he kills him.

As for her... the possibility lingers that she might’ve survived as well. Resourceful. Determined. He sensed these traits in her. But he truly hopes that she hasn’t, that the firestorm has swallowed her whole. Not for his sake, but hers. Because if she survived, then the next time he sees her- and he will, if she has- she won’t be so lucky simply to burn.

He will kill her slowly, painfully. Unimaginable agony. Broken in body and mind. Enough to beg for death. Enough to understand what he’s felt, the culmination of all his suffering- truly, a fate to wish on no one.

Best to be taken in fire and chaos.

Lady Tano, isn’t that what you wanted?

i feel my rage erupting feed my appetite for destruction blood rushing i love when you feed my appetite for destruction

~*~

[these-are-the-first-steps]

(gifs used with permission from @thewintersolo​ - thank you!)

You know what’s interesting about this gifset?

Kylo’s eyes.

Here is our first helmetless interaction with him, and he almost looks....naive, when you look into his eyes. This is when you compare it with TLJ Kylo:

This is now a man who has Seen Some Shit. Mostly his own shit, and consequences he is 110% responsible for.

Basically I feel like that was the whole of TLJ- him grappling with and not knowing how to process these consequences he created for himself- killing his dad, alienating Rey, failing as an apprentice. His mind is all over the fucking map which is why he relents in killing his mother because he doesn’t know what he wants anymore because he literally can’t think straight.

He tries some group therapy with Rey, who has her own bag of fucked up to process through, but the session gets cut short for both of them, stunting both their results, when Luke ruins the party.

Which is why Rey makes the mistake of going to him. And why Kylo makes the mistake of assuming Rey showed up to be with him forever and ever. They didn’t get a chance to sum up the therapy session and the open-endedness created a huge ball of mass confusion for both of them. They were like two arrows about to intersect, but because the artist stepped away they only just narrowly missed where they were supposed to meet.

Which is why in the mean time, instead of coming to the conclusion that he is, in fact, responsible for these consequences he’s having to process and that regardless there is indeed still hope to fix things, his brain decides to do a quick patch-up job instead since Rey isn’t there to talk to anymore and slings all of his problems on Snoke. This is why Snoke gets killed- he’s Kylo’s mental scape-goat for all these shitty impossible-to-deal-with consequences, and you can’t be a bad apprentice if your master’s dead. It’s the perfect solution. Until Rey turns around and shoots him back down to earth (or any appropriate equivalent thereof).

Which just leaves him, and also her, a confused shattered mess again. Was he right to kill Snoke thinking it would solve all his problems? Isn’t that also what Rey wanted? Why didn’t it work? And why does he still feel like fucking shit regardless?

This is what makes me think TROS is going to be the Coming To Terms episode, for everyone. Why does Kylo suddenly seem to have his swagger back in the previews? Because he’s finally had space to process what he needed to. But to what ends? Did he just deflect himself into a black hole or was real progress made? That......that’s the question we’re going to have answered, I think. The man has his swagger back, and this time there are no clenched fists.  But what method did he choose to reach this point? The productive one? Or the one taking him even deeper into denial?

And Rey? Looks like Rey still hasn’t sat down and had an honest conversation with herself about the direction her life is going and where it’s been. Maybe that’s the difference that age plays in them. Kylo’s nine years over her might be why he seems to have it together while she just buckles, cracks, and breaks down completely as her dark side form. Will she get it together, too, in TROS? Or will Kylo have to get it together enough for the both of them- enough to pull her out of the abyss that no one was there to pull him out of when he fell into it at around the same age?

It’s a long shot, but maybe Kylo will be able to get it right with Rey where he got it wrong in his own life. He was alone when he spiraled. But he has already told her that she isn’t.

[stellatex]

Nine Questions I Need Teresa Giudice to Answer

Originally published February 9, 2016.

Today’s the day. Christmas all over again for Real Housewives of New Jersey fans. Teresa Giudice, who has mostly been laying low since her release from federal prison on December 23, is set to make the media rounds to promote her new book, starting tonight with what is undoubtedly a contractually-obligated appearance on Watch What Happens Live with Bravo’s resident trash-TV obsessed Machiavellian puppet master Andy Cohen. Tomorrow morning, she will appear on Good Morning America with actual journalist Amy Robach.

The Housewives conceit–catty women posing as wealthy, fighting over petty drama, a trope from the heady days of 80s prime time soaps that quite obviously influences Cohen’s work, and one which Gloria Steinem recently called “a minstrel show for women”–may be of waning interest now, ten years on from the premiere of the Real Housewives of Orange County. Certainly, RHONJ has taken a dark turn, first with the introduction of Teresa’s family members (without her prior knowledge), then with the failed Giudice bankruptcy and subsequent criminal investigation, trial, and conviction. It feels like the Housewives have run their course. Certainly, the newest installment, Real Housewives of Potomac, feels like a Potemkin village of a Potemkin village, complete with early 90s fiberboard kitchen cabinets.

I’ve been watching the Real Housewives of New Jersey since it premiered on May 12, 2009. I have seen every episode multiple times. I have watched every web exclusive available on Hulu and every behind-the-scenes video on the Bravo web site. I’ve watched every RHONJ cast appearance on Watch What Happens live. I’ve read all of Richard Lawson’s uhmazeing recaps on Gawker. I’ve followed Vicki Hyman’s meticulous reporting on the Giudices’ legal woes (she is truly doing God’s work covering this shitshow; reward her by giving a listen to her TV Hangover podcast). I’ve read all the forums (here’s one) and all the shady gossip blogs (but I’m not linking to them; you’re on your own). I have all of Teresa’s books, and even Melissa’s. I have corresponded privately with one of Teresa’s ghostwriters. I follow all of the RHONJ cast members, former cast members, friends of Housewives, and tangential friends and family on social media. I have a RHONJ Twitter list [now defunct, sorry]. I started and am admin for a Real Housewives Feminist Discussion Group on Facebook (invitation only, sorry).

I’m in deep.

I know as much about RHONJ as any viewer could possibly know. Sadly, I am somehow an expert on this show. The reasons I am obsessed with this show are personal and academic; cultural and escapist. That’s a whole other post. Or dissertation.

Point is, despite my better judgment, I love this show. I love it. I can’t fully explain it. I even love Teresa. I think she was the one who was “set up” in previous seasons, with producers and other cast members acting in unison to take advantage of her as a narcissistic simpleton, to amp up the drama. But that’s all for another post, too, and in the past at this point. The fact is Teresa–along with her four beautiful dorters–is and always has been the star of this show. People watched because she was good TV. She and Joe exhibited character flaws on the scale of a Greek tragedy, sure; but they were also hilarious. Hilariously inept, if caricaturishly stereotypical. Somehow strangely lovable, even though they were also criminally delusional. From the first episode, Teresa was flashing those hundred dollar bills, buying that gaudy furniture in cash, and we, the viewers, knew Something Was Up. It’s been a long, unspooling tale from then to now. In hindsight, viewers know that Joe and Teresa had already been living on fraudulently obtained money for years. Their crimes, according to court records, date back to at least 2004, five years before they appeared on America’s television screens.

To date, Teresa’s line has been that she was misled into “signing some papers” that she either didn’t read or didn’t understand (her story varies), either by Joe or by her accountants (!) or her lawyers (!). She’s played the role of innocent, “old school” Italian wife–the same role she’s played on RHONJ. Joe tried to take the fall for her in court and failed. Due to the Giudices’ decision to continue hiding assets right up until the sentencing, Judge Esther Salas rethought her original impulse of possibly giving Teresa only house arrest or probation, and instead sentenced her to 15 months in prison.

Teresa’s complicity in the crimes is not a matter of debate, though the extent of her participation is. Teresa pled guilty. She expressed remorse in court, presumably in an attempt to receive a lesser–or no–prison sentence. It is my opinion that she really believed the judge would take pity on her as a traditional mother of four beautiful dorters. The Giudices’ financial scams had been working for years, after all. She was famous. People loved her. She deserved and was well accustomed to her McMansion lifestyle. She was obviously not very financially astute. She was a good Italian wife who deferred to her husband. She was a good girl.

She thought wrong.

We can all read the indictment and draw our own conclusions. Now, Teresa is trying to make a comeback. According to Teresa [link lost], the Giudices have paid their court-ordered restitution and their mortgage is current. No mention is made of the $551,563 still owed to the IRS for unpaid taxes, nor the the creditors listed in their 2010 bankruptcy filing, totaling $13.4 million.

Based on the teaser clips already released by GMA, Teresa is continuing, in her obviously memorized, stilted, eye-blinking way, to hold on tight to her claims that she had no idea what she was doing, or signing. It has been my contention all along that this is probably what we would see from post-prison Teresa. I almost admire her dedication. The sheer hubris. The chutzpah. Too bad she hasn’t yet channeled all that white-knuckle stubbornness into anything more productive than unflinching denial of her multiple felonies, holding grudges against her own family members, and a devotion to flawless 24/7 drag queen makeup.

But I think she’s placed her bets on the wrong horse and fundamentally misunderstands her fame.

Despite everything, there are still viewers–myself included–who love watching Teresa. Who want her to come good. Who want to see some Goddamn Character Development. It seems like she’s going to keep pretending everything is okay, even though it very obviously is not, and that she will continue to deny her culpability in obtaining the millions of dollars of fraudulent loans that financed her over-the-top leopard-print lifestyle, the craven bankruptcy filing intended to wipe the slate clean, and the way she and her husband have financially ruined the many local business and small contractors whom they stiffed in the process.

So far, there has been zero accountability.

What Teresa doesn’t get here–and Teresa, as we know, doesn’t get a lot of things–is that the only remaining way to endear herself to the viewing, cookbook-buying public is through showing genuine remorse. She is being presented with yet another golden opportunity that she doesn’t really deserve in the form of this press tour for her perfectly timed, hastily-released biography. I don’t think she realizes that, without performing–convincingly–this type of epiphany for her ever-dwindling audience, her “career” as a Bravolebrity is over after this final fifteen minutes. It seems that I’m not the only one who thinks so; even her former co-writer, Heather MacLean, tried to explain this to her, to no avail.

Teresa needs chart a course that will keep her on TV and thus allow her to continue making the type of money she needs support herself and her children, especially in light of the fact that her husband is about to “go away” for at least three and a half years. Unlike others, I don’t blame her for capitalizing on her moment in the spotlight, and the prurient interest of the public, to hawk an autobiography and book a bunch of paid appearances. It’s the only legitimate way she has to earn an income, and certainly the only way to earn the type of money she needs to continue paying down those back taxes and massive debt (and I expect some lawsuits will be forthcoming from her many creditors).

But to make good, she needs to provide some real answers to some hard questions. No doubt Cohen will only lob only softball questions and make schoolboy jokes at her expense. He may ask a few tough questions tonight in the guise of “viewer Marge in Omaha on Twitter,” but his interest is in coddling his “star” and presenting a coherent narrative for RHONJ. In another timely moved that surprised no one (who was paying attention), Bravo announced yesterday that a seventh season of RHONJ will be on our screens “later this year.” Perhaps GMA’s Amy Robach will ask her some tougher questions. We’ll have to wait and see.

To my mind, there are certain things Teresa must address if she expects to return from federal prison and jump back into her role as Housewife.

So, in the spirit of Brian Moylan’s 98 Questions I Had During Last Night’s Interview With Joe and Teresa Giudice, here are the questions that I need Teresa Giudice to answer, presented in advance:

1. You said in your statement to the judge during sentencing that you “fully take responsibility” for your actions. You said, “It’s time for me to wake up… I will make this right no matter what it takes.” Why, immediately afterward, in your interview on Watch What Happens Live, did you backtrack and try to deflect blame to your husband while insisting things were just put before you to sign?

2. You claim to be “business savvy,” telling your husband on an episode of RHONJ, “Like, you know, that’s what I do now. I’m a businesswoman, so I’m thinking business.” You’ve touted your online businesses, your Fabellini drink line, your Milania hair care line, your success as a “New York Time [sic] best-selling author.” So how is it that you are also simultaneously claiming to be a clueless housewife who knows nothing of her own finances, including the assets from said businesses that you tried to hide during both your fraudulent bankruptcy and your sentencing?

3. If you are blaming your husband Joe for your ten-plus-years of financial fraud and the year you spent unjustly incarcerated in a federal prison, why are you still with him?

4. What would you say to the creditors, banks, and, most importantly, small business owners of New Jersey whom you and your husband fleeced to the tune of millions of dollars? Do you feel any obligation to repay these debts?

5. Explain this.

6. Why are you and your husband suing your bankruptcy attorney? Furthermore, do you not realize that, in doing so, you will be giving up your attorney-client privilege and opening yourselves up to a new investigation of your finances during the discovery process?

7. What are you going to do when Joe is deported?

8. You talk constantly about your love, love, love for your four beautiful dorters. Why did you put them in this position?

9. Why should viewers overlook your felonious criminal past and continue to support you by watching RHONJ or buying your books or products?

She’s taken to calling herself Teresa 2.0, and insisting that her time in the slammer transformed her into a zen-like superwoman who has her priorities straight. But we, the viewers, will be the judge and jury. Based on what we have seen to date, it appears that Teresa hasn’t learned a damn thing. I wish she would prove me wrong, but I don’t think she has it in her.

All images from the amazing T-Kyle.

[imcynfinite]

idk, but i’m scared.

The summer is ending, and I think that maybe I’m coming out of a slump I’m trying to prolong. Changes are happening around and in me, but the way the exterior is moving makes my interior feel like it needs to catch up. And I hate being rushed, even though the pressure is created by me.

I’m dating, and in a matter of four months, feelings have taken lives of their own and are pulling each other towards the other. And I never knew how scary it could be. She frightens me, and I scare her, too. We’re two very opposite people being drawn to each other time and time again, so much that it feels like it’s moving so fast with so much left to conjure. So much about each other we don’t know. I enjoy who I am with her, but I also second guess whether I can be who I’m being urged to confront and become. I second guess the chance to free myself a little more. The power always seems too great. I assume I’m not strong enough to maintain it. I question the love I have for her, whether it’s real or I’m simply overstimulating it. Or maybe that it’s real and I’m frightened of it. I’m very frightened by it.

One thing I’ve come to terms with is that I am not the vulnerable person I assessed myself to come across as. And that’s the tea, isn’t it? How I project myself. As this bubbly, dreamy person who has all the wise words and all the charm but, to be honest, a low bar of the stamina. I deflect at the opportunity to knock the mask away and come as my real self. I can crave intimacy and fear the levels of its depth. 

Sex scares me, can you believe? Giving my body to someone else and putting this idea into my head that in order to do so, I have to be in love with them... it’s too much. No one will be worthy, in this case, if I wait for the “right person” to shower me with enough affection that’ll grant me the permission to be present in such an act. It always comes down to the body. To the perfection I haven’t mastered in the act of pleasure. I’ll never feel good enough and so I wait for someone to tell and/or show me that I am. I wait. I perform. I pretend.

What scares me with her, I think, is the fact that a lot of things in which I thought about myself will be tested. This all feels so heavy, because the bullshit is boiling at the surface. My head and my heart continue to fight each other, and I still don’t do a good job in mediating their arguments. I still don’t know how to release control. I still don’t know how to just...move.

My older sister is moving to Maryland for a job opportunity. I’m very happy for her. My friends have obtained jobs to get them by. Intentions they’ve put out into the universe, being heard bit by bit. I’m happy for everyone, and I struggle really hard in not being sad for myself. I won’t get left behind...

I tell my sister she lives in denial all the time, but don’t stop to think of the ways in which I deny myself of great things because I’m scared I don’t deserve them. Where’s my truth in my denial? I look at my writing and it all looks so fake. The voice sounds so forced. I deny my ability to create from the heart because I’m trying to control the narrative instead of let it pour.

If I could just silence my head for a bit... If I could just let go and be taken by the swoop of life that picks me up... These three months... This SUMMER...

Fall is here and I’m intimidated by its strength. Its focus. Its drive. It wants to be out here and it wants me to come with it, and the denial... the fear...

Man.

[campusvibesght]

About Rock Bottom

People have a tendency to throw it in your face when you show them vulnerability. 

I write this blog as I am scared of what you will think of me, how you will see me; and some of the harsh things you may say. 

However, I also write this with the hope I may inspire someone who is facing their ‘rock bottom’.

The past couple of years have been extremely difficult for me. Life stripped me naked and had me crawling for mercy. I think it all began when I got raped around 2011.

I didn’t tell anybody. 

My best friend says that I said something in passing but then avoided the topic. I believe that is when the depression began. 

I tried to use my art and music to distract myself and pretended nothing happened. I have a memory of my older sister saying to me she thinks I am going through a depression. I got defensive despite the fact that I was crying every day and couldn’t get out of bed. 

On the surface, my twitter account was still fire (as that’s what depressed people do... deflect).  In real life, I was losing my ability to manifest. Gigs were drying up and the media was on an active smear campaign with my name. They made everybody hate me. 

You may argue that my tweets made everybody hate me. But I would hate to believe that South Africans are so dark that they are attracted to my twitter account for the evil spewed there. 

I am a poet. 

In isiXhosa I am called imbhongikazi yomthonyama - which means ‘I have a spiritual gift with words that don’t take sides’. I have words that hit the spirit and make people question themselves. A lot of the time, people are not ready to hear what I am saying and yet five years later my writings come up in trending topics on social media. 

I have never had to apologize for anything I have said because I stand by my truth relentlessly. I do apologize whenever the need arises but that is usually due to my temperamental nature with my tweeps - not because of the subjects I am raising. 

To be quite honest, I hate people who make me feel bad about my twitter account. It has created multiple unspoken mental and spiritual shifts in our society - at times globally. The power of my twitter account is not my doing. It has blessed me and it has cursed me - which is how I know that I’m on the right path.

I started to internalize all the hate. It was not only to you who the media made me unlovable towards. The media made me unlovable to myself as well. And so the depression festered inside the silence of the four walls of my bedroom. 

Life is a journey where you have to connect the dots. I was invited to perform at Poetry Afrika when I was thoroughly bleeding in 2014. No money, just sadness. The universe always brings balance. I met a lovely man at Poetry Afrika who was a great guy to date when you’re going through the most.

It was also at Poetry Afrika where I found out I could do my Masters in Writing at Rhodes University, and I was just in time to meet the deadline. Literally, just in time. I didn’t have a cent to my name when I got accepted to Rhodes University. I was banking on a scholarship I applied for. Had I not won that scholarship, I wouldn’t have that degree today. 

The universe conspired.

I sold everything I owned to save up money for my move to Grahamstown. A lot of my best relationships were in tatters. This is around the ‘Stoan incident’ on twitter. I had had enough with everything, and in the still of the night, I took the remainder of my life’s possessions and drove to the Eastern Cape. 

I put everything in my car, it was packed to full capacity I could barely see through the rear view mirror. I had decided that I was actually moving to the Eastern Cape and after Rhodes University, I would build my career from there.

A year later the Eastern Cape heartlessly kicked me out. I couldn’t find a hustle that side. I was devastated and in denial. It was with my last R400 that I had to put petrol in my car and go back home. There was an angel/stranger who stepped in for the remainder of the petrol money. 

I stayed in Dube with my grandmother in 2016; mentally exhausted, drained and depressed about a dead-end career. In hindsight, some magical things happened in that year. For starters, I grew a beautiful veggie garden whilst wondering ‘What’s wrong with my life?’ 

What I know now is that the Universe was just giving me time and space to rest. For the first time since I was 21-years-old, I was home and spoilt. There was always a dinner plate waiting for me. I didn’t have to struggle for anything. 

My grandmother expected nothing from me. Instead, in the first month, she helped me with my car installment. Imagine. My laundry was done for me. I can honestly say that even at rock bottom, there are some cushy areas.

Nonetheless, in early 2017 I was unpleasantly pushed out the nest again. However, in the midst of desperation, I found a beautiful backroom in Mofolo. I had no money and I found the private school of backrooms. It was fully furnished with a big Jacuzzi bath and a glass ceiling. The walls were bright in colour and I had a beautiful peace garden. 

My landlady, who later turned out to be my everything, was a former exile with long dreadlocks. A true lover of nature. The woman breathed new life into me. She gave me talks and loads of love. She would send me the most inappropriate WhatsApp messages; showing me crazy meme. She is very carefree.

Funny that was my rockiest bottom, living in a back room and having to wash my dishes in a ‘Ndish’. I love Soweto with all my heart but all I could hear around me was ‘uwile.’ Something I didn’t want to hear. 

Pain always makes me work harder. I put all my efforts into the album The Masterpiece and in commercial terms, it was a complete and utmost failure. In spiritual terms, however, it united women in music in the various townships I took the tour to. 

It inspired young female musicians and I see them going from strength to strength in their careers. I personally could not have been more proud of that.

So there I was with a flop of an album to contribute to my falling self-esteem.

Not to mention the ‘global citizen’ backlash. Can I admit that I didn’t think people could possibly ever hurt me like that on Twitter? People were so vicious. 

I think what hurt the most was your dedication to misunderstanding me. All I was trying to say is that it is inappropriate to show off in front of people you have excluded. It is an action that has a reaction.

“With so many people coming at me

“I just don’t know who to trust anymore

“Can you hear me out there?

“Can you hear me out there?

“I need your intervention

“I can’t take it anymore.”

The universe intervened a month later when Moja Love called me and offered me my dream job as a talk show host. They said it was because of what I was doing with my twitter account with my opinions on social issues. I was vindicated. The same platform which has caused so much hatred brought me my biggest joy. 

It is not easy working for Moja Love because TV is new to me as a day job. I have to learn to control my fire and not burn people. However, it certainly beats what I have been through to get here. I remember jogging around Mofolo in the mornings all of last year wondering why ‘ngiwile?’ 

Little did I know that my inner hot body was getting ready to show off. Have you seen my legs on that show?

I have felt so bad for so many years about the disruption I cause everywhere I go. The older I get I realize that the universe is on my side and none of the ‘drama’ is my doing. 

I want the next couple of years to be extremely happy for me.

If you have hit your rock bottom, it’s probably because you are a month away from your dream job. 

I remember crying to my niece’s guardian, Nomakhwezi, and she said

“Isinangamuva Liyabukwa.”

-Ntsiki Mazwai (TV Presenter, Musician & Poet)

[allyinthekeyofx]

The Power of words (1/1)

Season 10 Post Home Again.  My explanation for that quarter Maggie Scully was wearing the day she died.

J Edgar Hoover building.

9:07am

Scully is late. Not unusual for her at the moment and certainly, given recent events, both expected and forgivable. She tries to hide it from me but even now – especially now – I can read her like a book. Which now that I think of it, given what I’ve been trying to tell her for the past ten days, it’s an interesting choice of words.

We buried her Mom last Friday. Just three short days ago we both said goodbye to a woman who had been a guiding light in both our lives. The service was short, full of raw emotion and I watched silently as Scully fought to hold on to some vestige of composure. She stood at the front of course; alongside her closest family.

Her brother Bill - the patriarch of the Scully clan. Ramrod straight, rigid in his control of the situation. Not once did I see him extend a comforting word or touch to his remaining sister. 

I found myself musing as the service continued, as to what the reasons might be but could only come up with the fact he might be gay. I didn’t know Scully’s Father although he continues to hover over her, as controlling now as though he were still here. Scully loved him, of that I have no doubt. But I also know how much she tortures herself still, that he would be in some way disappointed in her. For what she has done in the past and also what she may do in the future. And as far as I can tell, Scully has always been a pretty dutiful daughter. To find Scully lacking in any aspect of her character is something I can’t quite comprehend, so I can only imagine how Ole Ahab would have reacted if Charlie had shown up one evening with a Robert rather than a Roberta in tow. Of course I was probably completely off beam, but my musings gave me an escape from the vice that seemed to have taken residence in my chest cavity ever since I stood and watched Margaret Scully take her last breath.

She had spoken to me, just a brief few words as she woke up for the final time.

Referencing my son. Knowing I would understand. Her final gift to me before she left.

It also, for the most part, took my mind off Scully. If things had been different, I would probably have been up there with her. Standing in silent sympathy, maybe holding her hand or at least being a supportive presence in the midst of such sibling disinterest. And truly, I wish I’d had the balls to insist that she needed me to be up there with her. But I hadn’t.

On entering the church I’d caught the look of disdain that crossed the stony, rigid features of Bill Jr as he glared at Scully with a look that plainly demanded she make some attempt to justify exactly why the fuck she had allowed me to come. The passing of time has in no way altered Bill’s opinion of me and of the chaos I brought with me to his ordered life still eats away at him. Forgiveness is not an option for this man and given how hard it has been to try to forgive myself, I can’t really blame him.

So the service went ahead and Scully did what she always does – she got through it as best she could. Stoical, serene and controlled. Other than the night in the hospital when she briefly lost herself and allowed me to comfort her, I have not seen her shed a tear for her Mother. It’s entirely possible that she hasn’t allowed herself to cry. My partner is the master of denial and can surround herself with walls of steel that are impenetrable to everyone around her. Impenetrable sometimes even to herself.

We didn’t attend the wake of course. Scully had said all she needed to say to those present and I knew without asking that I would be about as welcome as a Birthday cake at a Jehovah Witness meeting. My presence would undoubtedly have mixed in a detrimental way with the alcohol Bill Jr and his loathsome offspring would be knocking back and Scully knew that trouble would surely follow.

She didn’t want that. I didn’t want that. And most crucially, Maggie wouldn’t have wanted it either.

So we just left. Scully to her sterile apartment and me to the chaotic house that was never chaotic until she downgraded it from a home to a bachelor pad. Not that I blamed her for eventually leaving me. Hell, I practically pushed her out the door. But that doesn’t stop me from wishing she were still there. Wishing I’d done things differently.

I often wonder if, had Maggie Scully known how much we were struggling during that final heartbreaking year, whether she would have been able to somehow put our pieces back together. As our relationship disintegrated before our eyes and we lost sight of who we had become. Until there was nothing left to fight for. Neither one of us was exactly responsible. It just happened. Without us really noticing until it was finally too late. We got out before indifference turned to raw hatred.

We remained friends. Sort of.

We barely spoke for almost two years other than a weekly duty call from Scully. Because I couldn’t ever bring myself to call her although God knows I picked up the phone and brought her number up a hundred times. A thousand times. But even after everything we’d shared, I still couldn’t admit to her how much I needed her.

‘Hey it’s me…..how are you Mulder?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘You taking care of yourself?’

‘Scully I’m fine. Really’

Only I wasn’t fine. Or rather I was. Just as long as I was just drunk enough to temper the pain, but not so drunk that I ceased to function I was able to pretend everything was just peachy. And to my amazement I actually managed to fool her. I think, looking back, that she was as distracted as I was. Trying to find her place in a world where she suddenly found herself. She’d been alone before – we both had – but this was a new kind of loneliness. A loneliness we had forced upon ourselves.

And slowly, from the snippets she gave me during those precious phonecalls, it became obvious that her life was moving forwards. Mine on the other hand had ended the day she walked out of the door.

As she got stronger, I got weaker. And one drink turned to two, then three, then four. Some days I lost count. I was hanging on by a thread and still she didn’t notice. Or so I thought.

The calls continued. My denial continued. And with it, a slow, downward spiral in to the abyss.

Then one day - a particularly bad day actually where I was still drunk from the night before - an unexpected visitor arrived on my doorstep.

She took one look at me, at the stained clothes, five day beard and eyes like the proverbial piss holes and her mouth set in a determined line. The Scully women are nothing if not determined. Yet again, I had disappointed her. I saw it in the way her eyes widened then dropped to the ground. Scully’s eyes that I had gazed in to for a thousand lifetimes.

But those eyes didn’t belong to Scully. Not my Scully at any rate. That day, when I had reached just about as low as I could get, when I truly believed that I had nothing of any value to justify my sorry excuse for a life, Maggie had decided to come-a-calling.

She never did manage to explain why she had felt the need to climb in to her car and drive out in to the Virginia countryside on a cold February day. To visit a man who, at best had been a problem the whole time she had known him and at worst, the instigator of enough collective heartbreak to last several lifetimes. But she had made the decision to come out there and I was so damned grateful that I never questioned it too much. I discovered many months later that Scully had mentioned that she was worried about me. But back then I had no idea. No idea that she knew somehow that, yet again, I needed saving.

I won’t pretend it was easy. I’ve never been particularly adept at accepting help, much less even admitting that there was a need in the first place. But like her daughter, Maggie Scully is pretty hard to deflect. She swept in to my life that day and gave me something I’d never really had. Something I’d never expected to ever have. She took me under her wing and became the Mother I had always wished for. She gave me, in a very real way, a stability that had been lacking since Scully left.

She didn’t do much really, but to me, it became everything. She talked. She bullied. She cajoled. She listened. But not once did she judge.

We talked about Scully, how she was doing. Snippets of her life. I remember asking one day if she was seeing anyone. Why I asked that particular question, I will never know because I sure as hell didn’t need to hear that she was. But Maggie just smiled sadly.

‘She never will Fox. You know that.’

I’m still not sure whether those words made me happy or that my heart broke for her yet again. My Scully. Not mine anymore but seemingly unable to be with anyone else. It should have made me happy but it didn’t and that night I drank until I passed out.

In the beginning I had wondered if Maggie had come to try to reconcile us. But I very quickly nixed that idea. She was a smart woman. She knew that no one could save us from each other, but that maybe, just maybe, she could help save us from ourselves.

She made it out to Virginia once a week or so. Only the worst weather would keep her away – she was, after all, well in to her seventies at that point. But I was still selfish enough to be pissed off when she didn’t make it. Not at her of course. Just at the circumstances, because slowly, slowly I was being pulled back from the brink. But the ledge I found myself on was narrow and infinitely unstable. One misstep would be all it took to send me toppling backwards once again.

But she rang me often and actually, it was easier to talk over the phone. I shared things with her that I hadn’t even shared with her daughter and to finally talk about some of the emotion I’d been bottling up, gave me at least some vestige of peace.

Occasionally though, after she had hung up the phone, the loneliness would envelop me like an impenetrable fog and I would reach once again for the only thing I knew would dull the pain. More often than not, waking up on the floor the next morning, with a thousand trumpets blasting out a crescendo in my head. Usually followed by me puking whatever beverage of choice had been on the menu the night before.

I wasn’t cured. Nowhere near.

And then one day, a bright spring day where we sat outside on the porch and listened to the sound of the countryside waking up from its winter slumber, she started telling me about a game she had started playing online. Kind of an interactive scrabble board where you could play your opponents remotely. I wasn’t really that interested. I always hated scrabble as a kid and really, it had never, until that moment, impinged on my adult consciousness in any way, shape or form.

But I listened to her extolling the virtues of this technological miracle out of a sense of duty more than anything else. Hell, she’d listened to me enough over the previous months.

‘Imagine Fox, I can have a game with someone all the way across the world, just as though they are sat right there with me…’

And somehow, I had found myself agreeing to set up an account and share some games with her. It seemed like such a small thing to do for her.

I know now, just how shrewd she was. The same quick mind I’d always admired in Scully, the ability to connect the dots, to empathise, to see cause and effect. Oh yeah, now I knew where it had come from.

So my focus shifted. It shifted away from the bottle and towards the computerised board that gave me a daily challenge. The challenge being of course, to win the game. But Maggie was already a master. And she was a formidable opponent.

By the time I finally managed to edge ahead with the rolling point score – Ironically the word I won with was ‘Obfuscate’ – I hadn’t had a drink in almost 3 months.

I won’t say it was all roses and sunshine because it wasn’t. I had some very very dark days. I think I always will. But I managed to keep afloat. Just.

Spring turned in to summer and her visits became less. She still called often and we still engaged in our tussles over the scrabble board, but our relationship had subtly shifted. Less of a parent and more as a friend. But I owed her. I think in many ways she had saved my life.

I began to emerge, with a renewed vigour and set about restoring order to both my house and my life. Clearing and organising a room at a time. And one day I found a small stash of beer. Shoved in to a cupboard and forgotten about. I didn’t recognise the brand, couldn’t recall buying it, although back when Scully first left, most everything I did was done in a state of semi consciousness. The ten bottles had a five cent return deposit on each of them……if I returned them to New York that is.

230 miles. An 8 hour round trip if I were lucky. But as Scully could tell you, I’m nothing if not impulsive and when I get an idea….well I just have to run with it.

So I tipped the contents of the bottles down the sink, rinsed them as per the instructions on the bottle bill label, arranged the rental of a car, fed the fish double rations in case I wasn’t back as soon as I hoped, and off I went.

It was an easy drive, the first time I had driven any distance in the better part of a year. And it felt good. So good to be finally moving again. Two days later I was on my way home. Mission accomplished.

I sat on my surprise for two long weeks. Maggie was out of town – visiting Bill Jr in San Diego. We usually skirted gracefully around the Bill issue and when she told me she was going, I simply wished her a good trip. I don’t think Bill would ever expect or appreciate my fond regards.

But finally she returned home. And a couple of days later, on a balmy summer’s day, she visited me for the last time. I’d made an effort for once – pulled a recipe for Long Island iced tea off of google – the non alcoholic version of course – and whilst it wasn’t exactly perfect, it was pretty damn good to drink whilst we once again sat in the well worn chairs that still grace my porch today. Not so long before it had been the younger version of Maggie Scully who had sat with me. But I’d finally managed to reconcile myself to the fact that, for now at least, Scully and I didn’t belong together.

Maggie had smiled when I handed her the box. It was beautifully wrapped. Not by me, but by the jeweller who made the pendant setting that would hold the battered quarter in place. I held my breath as she opened it, hoping that she might guess the significance of the date I’d had engraved on the back if not the quarter itself.

05/26 – June 26th – the day I beat her at that stupid word game. The day I decided that I might just have something left to give.

When I explained the relevance of the quarter itself, her eyes shone briefly with unshed tears and she curled the pendant tightly in her hand.

Her voice, when it came, was a fierce whisper.

‘I will wear it always Fox. Thank you. I can’t tell you……’

I held up my hand. She didn’t need to say it. Because I knew already how much it meant to her. She had done this, not only for me, but for Scully. So that one day, we might be able to re-connect once more. And I loved her for it.

The visits stopped after that. An unspoken acknowledgement that I was ok. At least for the moment.

But every night at 6pm sharp, wherever I was, no matter what I was doing, I would pick up my smart phone and log on to play a few words with her. My way of affirming that I was still here. Still doing ok. Right up until the night before she died I played. I still have the active game open. But she will never make the next move. A game frozen in time, waiting patiently until eventually, it will probably miss a crucial upgrade and simply disappear.

The thought makes me sad………

‘Mulder? You ok?’

I start slightly at the sound of Scully’s voice, so engrossed in thought that I hadn’t heard her enter the office. She is holding two cardboard cups in her hands. Vanilla latte for her, strong black Columbian roast for me.

Worry is creasing her brow, her features still as fine and delicate as the day I first met her. If she’s grown older, I never see it. I smile to reassure her and reach out a hand to take the coffee from her.

‘Sit down here would you Scully? I need to tell you something’

‘Mulder?…..’

Her voice is questioning, but nonetheless she sits across from me, setting her own coffee down on the desk.

Instead of answering her, I reach in to my pocket and just for a second, let my fingers curl around the smooth, round surface of the key fob within. A key fob made up of a single battered quarter. The brother to the one she wears around her neck. Silently I remove it from my pocket, placing it on the desk and slowly slide it towards her.

*********************

Epilogue

I arrive home at just before 6pm. We both decided to escape the office early for once. It’s been a strange sort of day. Scully listened to my story of the quarter in silence and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out if she was angry or not. But eventually, after the silence between us stretched thin and taught, her hand lightly touched the pendant that nestled against the hollow of her throat and she smiled that sweet soft smile that can render a man just about unconscious.

‘I’m glad you did this Mulder’

She cried then. Finally, she cried and allowed me to kiss her tears away. I think I cried too. I can’t be sure.

I would have liked her to have come home with me. But we are finding each other again. Slowly re-connecting just as Maggie always knew we would. And even as I asked her, I knew it was too soon.

So I am here alone. But no longer lonely.

I’m contemplating what to have for dinner – I’m relatively self sufficient now and can cook a passable meal for myself – when my phone alerts me to a notification. I look at the glowing screen.

“DanaScMD has challenged you to a game of words with friends. Would you like to accept?”

End

[becauseimsensational]

Killing Eve rewatch: "I'll Deal With Him Later"

Of course, Eve remains as tangentially relatable as ever during her meeting with Carolyn: from the five seconds of awkward stuttering that seem to last five minutes because secondhand embarrassment is a REAL problem, to the point at which she explodes in her learned polite, British manner, Eve's frustration leaps off the screen and demands attention. I have to wonder how many times she's tried explaining this theory of hers to Niko, or to Bill and Elena, and how many times they'd tell her she was insane and grasping at straws. For once, someone is listening to her, believes her, and isn't calling her crazy. The line, "It's like I've stepped into my brain!" is massively important for both Eve and the audience. It shows Eve's intelligence and tenacity with these cases, but it also gives her a sense of agency and validates the extra secret work she'd put in at MI-5 that's now paying off. (Side note: God bless Phoebe Waller-Bridge for casting Fiona Shaw as Carolyn, because that line about the rat drinking from the can of Coke is so absurdly funny due to her deadpan delivery of it, and I'm not sure any other actress would've been able to do that line justice.) That whole scene is also a massive turning point, because Eve is finally allowed to investigate what she wants to, and she's got no boundaries or dickswab superiors telling her she can't.

I think one of the most endearing things about Villanelle is her sense of humor and the deadpan delivery of some of her answers. The exchange with Konstantin about the bruise on her eye is undeniably funny, but it's interesting that a hardened assassin uses humor to deflect any possible kernel of truth, even with someone she's so familiar with. The assessment scene is wickedly funny, too, in true Villanelle fashion. The line about the photo of the hanged man having "good legs" should not be funny, but somehow it is. Villanelle subverts all expectations, laughing at and making light of things that "ordinary" people should not—but don't we all know someone like that, who laughs at awfully morbid things? Who uses humor as a mask for their true feelings? (I personally use dark humor constantly to cover the trauma I experienced in the past, which may be informing my feelings toward the assessment scene, but I digress.) The appeal of using dark humor in stressful situations is a sense of control that I think most of us crave. It's a control that Villanelle certainly has—until Konstantin makes Jerome ask her about Anna and shows her the sketch of the woman. For me, there are two possibilities here: either she's lying and the woman is Anna, or she's lying and it is actually her mother.

Either would make sense, honestly. It's very easy to lie and bite out the first denial that comes to mind, even if it's just a direct reversal of what the other person said. At this point, the audience doesn't know who Anna is, but we can assume she was someone important to Villanelle, or she wouldn't have had such a hard time getting back to using humor to control the situation. I personally think Villanelle was, for once, being genuine when she said the woman was supposed to be her mother. It could make sense, given the fact that she keeps staring at older women with dark hair. It could be an unfulfilled maternal fantasy, or I could just be talking out of my ass and she was actually joking about it being her mom. Also, we don't know how long Konstantin had that sketch in his possession for, so it's unlikely the woman in the sketch is Eve. On the off-chance it is actually Eve (or Random London Hospital Woman, from Villanelle's pov), maybe Villanelle sketched it because her hair reminded her of Anna's. But who knows? That scene is still kind of ambiguous to me.

After the assessment when she hugs Konstantin, I sensed a bit of a disconnect. The hug looked inorganic, forced, and like it was a spur-of-the-moment thing she remembered that people do sometimes. This is definitely coming from beyond the constraints of just this episode, but I'd be willing to bet she's never hugged anyone without an ulterior motive. Ever. Call me crazy but Villanelle just doesn't seem like a hugger. Someone pointed out to me that Villanelle is very similar to an AI, a comparison I hate (because robots terrify me lol) but one that makes sense. She has no moral compass or ethical code, she's an efficient killing machine and, most interestingly, she mimics other people's behavior to fit in. I truly think she has no idea how to be a "normal" human, which explains the smiling battle with the little girl on the ice cream shop from episode one, the awkward way she hugs Konstantin, and then mimicking the laughter she hears on the radio when she's out with Sebastian.

Oh, Sebastian. Adorable, sweet, sensitive Sebastian. I actually was rooting for him to stay alive, but…well, we see how long that lasted. While the sex scene didn't come as a shock to me at all, the logistics of it were weirdly refreshing. For once, the woman was on top, in total control, and the man was begging for mercy. For once, the man was being used as a sexual object for the woman's gratification. I found myself audibly "aww-ing" for the fifth fucking time because I'm a sap when Sebastian assured Villanelle he'd never hurt her, while her hand was around his throat. Never one for sentimentality, Villanelle's cold, vacant eyes and flat affect tacitly told us all we needed to know: "This was fun, but I don't believe you. And I'm not going to let you get close enough to find out if you're lying."

The subtle recognition in Eve's eyes in the bathroom speaks to the nuance of Sandra Oh's acting. It's clearly just a passing remembrance, because I'm fairly certain the traumatic memory of walking into witness the carnage in that hospital room would outweigh a nurse in a bathroom, but for some reason the encounter stood out to Eve. She's almost constantly fiddling with her luxurious mane, and probably spends most of her time trying to keep it out of her face. And then a random beautiful young woman stares at her for a little too long, then tells her to "Wear it down," which may have been the first time anyone's ever told her that.

THE KILL: It might sound demented, but I think this one is my favorite. Villanelle is a master manipulator and knows exactly what to say to get Carla to smell her perfume. Not to mention all the preparation that went into that kill? Mixing that toxic perfume, having the correct outfit and wig, the "three weeks of catering training" she supposedly did, and the tampon in her pocket as an excuse to get to her target? She really thinks of everything when it comes to her job, and that's a determination I can support! (Well, mostly, I mean she is killing people…) But then there's the utter fascination in her eyes as she watches Madame De Mann die, slowly and excruciatingly. And then, of course, Villanelle makes it laugh-out-loud funny by grabbing the woman's hand and waving goodbye with it, once again using dark humor even though she's had control of the situation the whole time.

Yet again, Sebastian's the sweetest guy who didn't deserve what happened to him. He's not an idiot, of course he didn't believe that Konstantin was her brother. Not to mention he literally walked in on him choking her against the wall? His willingness to protect Villanelle (AKA "Julie") is adorable and noble, but it was his curiosity and desire to support her in her perfume business that got him in the end, poor guy. Also, Konstantin's lazy, half-assed "I'm her brother" never fails to crack me up, along with Villanelle's "Dealt with" when they find Sebastian's body. PWB's writing and Jodie Comer's delivery are the perfect match, I swear.

The final scene of both leading ladies trying to research the other has to be one of my favorites of the series. In a way, it's a little like the moment in You've Got Mail when Tom Hanks realizes the perpetual thorn in his side is the woman he's in love with—but Meg Ryan's still in the dark for the rest of the movie. The instant oh shit look on Villanelle's face is priceless. She's relaxing in bed after a glass of champagne, googling Eve's name to see what comes up, and then…it's her. She probably never thought she'd see Hospital Bathroom Woman again, but there she is! On her screen, and leading a department just for her; the cocky grin she had when Konstantin first told her is nowhere to be found. On Eve's end, she's poring over every photo of every nurse at that hospital; it's late, she should be home in bed, but she can't sleep until she finds a photo of the woman. When she doesn't, it finally connects: "I think I've met her."

Random observations:

-During the assessment, Villanelle speaks of her mother in the present tense: "I'm joking. My mother has really thin, shitty hair." To me, that line indicated that her mother's alive. (Because I've seen this show in its entirety four times already, this will definitely come up again later but for now it's just something to keep in mind)

-Frank's still a dickswab. God I can't wait until I get to watch him get murdered again

-Why national anthems? Of all the genres of music she could have thrown out, why that one? She was born in a post-Soviet Russia, so the anthem's been toned down a bit; also, Konstantin told Jerome that she doesn't speak Russian anymore, indicating a disconnect from her homeland. But the French national anthem? That makes a little more sense for Villanelle to like. It's defiant, it's triumphant, and damn it's violent. But just because you like one country's national anthem doesn't mean you like them all, and most of the rest of them are boring "I love my country" rhetoric that are sorely lacking the mentions of bloodshed that the French have. She's just a constant surprise, I guess lol

-Sebastian's got a dressform in his apartment, which I think is cool because hey, he did actually make his trousers like he said.

-Villanelle eats on screen, which is so refreshing for a female character. And they're not like important meals, it's snacking and eating junk food like real people do. (Yeah, the bar for women acting like humans on screen is that low)

-Who would I be if I didn't mention that infamous champagne cork pop?! The placement of the bottle right between Jodie's legs, and the fact that it explodes right after Villanelle says Eve's name? Iconic. There had to have been some deity that blessed that take because…wow, it was perfect. And totally unexpected and unscripted, as Jodie confirmed on twitter.

-Even in the photo Villanelle finds of her, Eve's got her hand in her hair, messing with it as usual. Maybe it's a manifestation of Eve's insecurities, either about her appearance (for which there is no reason, have you seen Sandra Oh?) or about herself generally.

-If you pause the screen while Villanelle's googling, some of the search results are hilarious!

The first one (from the not at all made up website 'powbangsmash.tv') advertises "Horrific Wrestling Accidents" featuring Polastri Pulverizer, which is just so random, even for a fake google search.

The second is about Niko who, apparently, tutors people in the world's most boring card game AND was the national champion in 1998, because of course Niko's really really good at really really mundane things.

The third mentions the origins of the Polastri family line which: "BEGAN IN THE 1880S WITH ERIC POLASTRI, WHO HAD THREE WIVES EACH NAMED JANE" which is just bizarre

The fourth one, my favorite, is a One Direction Fan Fiction called "A Hallow's Eve in the wrong direction" from the site 'fanfictionsandhomemadetales.org' which, sadly, doesn't actually exist. (Yes I did look that one up)

The last one is about a house fire and how the dad saved the family's puppy, named Eve. Pets with human names will never not be funny to me, and Eve is just so odd-sounding for an animal.

[russellthornton]

Super Self-Obsessed: 22 Secret Signs You’re Dating an Egomaniac

Think you might have an egomaniac in your love life? Here are 22 ways to tell if they’re in love with you or just themselves.

Having a big ego can be very healthy and beneficial to your self-worth and confidence at times. It propels you forward in life, and helps you make decisions that change how you react to your accomplishments. But what happens when someone’s ego gets out of control, and makes them an egomaniac who believes they’re superior to others?

This amplified craving for flattery and adoration manifests into arrogance and vanity, and eventually corrodes relationships.

Being cocky is all good in moderation, but lack of humility is not an attractive quality to possess. Egomaniasm is born out of insecurity. It indicates a deep need to feel accepted through mass amounts of attention and praise. A lot of egomaniacs have an inferiority complex. They gain their sense of self-worth through other people. Some inflated egos are fueled by genuine success, but a lot are often on the back of no real major accomplishments.

What is the difference between an egomaniac and being a narcissist?

Although possible to be both a narcissist and an egomaniac at the same time, people confuse the two. While they share many similar characteristics, they are not entirely the same thing. [Read: 23 secret signs of narcissism most people overlook until it’s too late]

One of the main differences is that narcissists show lack of remorse or guilt for their actions. Whereas egomaniacs have the ability to empathize but ultimately divert back to their default apathetic and selfish ways once they get the focus back on them.

Narcissists typically give in to sporadic impulses whereas egomaniacs don’t always and are able to hold down jobs or relationships for longer. Despite this, their egotistical nature leaks out as they become more comfortable. It’s not long before you find yourself bending over backwards to please them.

Many egomaniacs function fully in social groups, businesses, and relationships. It can be difficult to suss them out, but once you know how to spot them, the better.

Here are 22 traits that help you figure out if your significant other is an egomaniac.

#1 They’re in denial about their flaws. They hate feeling as if they have any faults at all. Whenever you confront them with something you don’t like about them, they do their best to deflect it as much as possible. In their eyes, everyone should see them and their actions as perfect.

#2 There’s no communication. Sometimes it feels like you talk to a brick wall. They refuse to listen to your points of view, they make you feel silly for voicing your concerns, and they won’t tell you when something’s bothering them. It’s easier for them to just sit back while you try to figure out how to break through their communication barrier. [Read: Emotionally detached? 15 signs they don’t really care about you]

#3 They think they know better than you in every situation. Even when it’s regarding something that’s mostly in your field of expertise, they still think they have more authority to speak about it than you. They consider themselves to be experts about all topics, and rarely take your advice on anything.

#4 They can’t handle a taste of their own medicine. They definitely dish it out, but they can’t seem to take it back. It doesn’t take much to get under their skin by calling them out. They crumble at the first sign of anyone challenging them. They are truly the worst people when handling criticism. [Read: Controlling people – 14 common traits and ways to deal with them]

#5 There’s no responsibility. An egomaniac never likes to take any responsibility for their actions. When something is their fault they try to find a way out of it, and blame someone or something else. By admitting the responsibility falls on them, they admit they have the ability to fail, which is something they avoid at all costs.

#6 They’re master manipulators. They manage to somehow sulk, kick up a fuss, or emotionally blackmail you into getting what they want. When they want something from you, they know all the right things to say and do to press your buttons. Once you react angrily they say you overreact, until you give them the reaction that suits them.

#7 You’re the main driving force behind the relationship. They put in minimal effort when it comes to your relationship and regularly expect you to do most of the work.

You spend lots of your time chasing them to ask about their day, considering their feelings before your own, and taking care of them when they’re ill. They barely ever reciprocate. [Read: Selfish people – 15 ways to spot and stop them from hurting you]

#8 They’re great at twisting situations to suit them. They somehow make you feel like you’re the problem in every situation. When you said something to stick up for yourself, suddenly you attack them. They regularly say things like, “I only got angry and shouted like that because you did something to make me feel that way.”

#9 They don’t know how to apologize. Sure, you get an apology from time to time, but they’re never genuine. They may feel bad for what they did, but they won’t let you know that. Instead they either find a way to make you apologize or give you a passive aggressive or sarcastic response.

#10 They’re a total flirt. You find them constantly flirting with other people, and often have to tell them to stop. You’ve had plenty of fights about it, but they constantly brush it off by saying “It doesn’t mean anything, that’s just what I’m like.” But your instincts tell you different.

They crave the attention of others at all times because they love to fool themselves into thinking everyone finds them unbearably desirable. [Read: Instagram flirting: How it’s secretly ruining your relationship]

#11 They spend more time getting ready than you. When you get ready for a night out together, you’re almost always ready to leave before they are. They spend hours preening themselves for visual consumption. They won’t leave the house until they’ve double checked their appearance, asked for your opinion, and changed their outfit several times.

#12 You’re treated like a trophy. You find they love to show you off to their friends and family and regularly boast in front of other people about how attractive or intelligent you are. With an egomaniac, this is less to do with their pride in you, and more to do with using you to make others jealous or make themselves feel validated.

#13 Everything revolves around their needs. Almost everything they do is for personal gain. They always try to achieve something for their own benefit, even if it means stepping all over what you want to do. If they’re being helpful or caring, chances are they only do it because they know they can get something out of it, or it benefits them in some way. [Read: Emotional manipulation and 14 tricks people use to mess with your mind]

#14 They’re very fashion conscious. You regularly see their Instagram feed filled with endless fashion pages, or style blogs bookmarked on their browser. They feel the need to always be on top of upcoming style movements, so they stay up to date with what trends are the next big thing. Most of their paycheck goes towards materialistic things.

#15 Everything’s always about them. When something terrible happens, it’s all about how sad they feel about it. If you get a promotion at work, it’s all about how it affects them. If you’re not paying enough attention to them, it’s all about how you don’t love them anymore. Eventually every situation revolves around them until your opinion barely even matters. [Read: Emotionally invested: 13 things to consider before going all in]

#16 They love the sound of their own voice. You often find them talking just for the sake of it, or starting a debate in a group of people they know already share the same opinions as them. They do this so that they get validation from people when they compliment their viewpoint. They also love to play devil’s advocate in an argument, just to make sure they never lose.

#17 They’re obsessed with their looks. Every time you go past a reflective surface, they stop and check how they look. You often catch them looking at their reflection in mirrors, or asking people if they look good. It’s almost certain no one ever looks at them as lovingly as they look at themselves.

#18 Their inadequacies come out in bed. If you ever find yourself in a situation where they can’t satisfy you in bed, they get really hurt, really easily. Even if it’s not their fault and instead because you’re too tired, it doesn’t matter. To them, your inability to climax is a direct reflection of their abilities which completely crushes their ego. They constantly feel like you think they’re the best you’ve ever had—even if it’s not true. [Read: Getting rid of sexual insecurity for a better sex life]

#19 They always have to have the upper hand. You’re never allowed to be right, because they think they know best. You always have to be one-upped in every situation. They don’t like it when you start to feel better about yourself than they do. They often use manipulative tactics to knock you down or make you feel inferior so that they feel better about themselves.

#20 They’re always wearing a mask. An egomaniac tends to hide their true feelings or thoughts, and won’t share information that potentially makes you see them in a negative light. They never truly are themselves and open up because that requires showing vulnerability, which is something they regularly try to avoid.

#21 They’re constantly fishing for compliments. Not a day goes by where they don’t crave attention, or subtly try and get you to tell them how awesome they are. You find them acting out in a self-deprecating manner because need reassurance endlessly. Their fragile egos must be validated on a regular basis, or else they feel insufficient. [Read: 16 signs of an insufferable attention whore]

#22 They’re actually pretty mean. They spend a lot of time poking fun at you or using back-handed compliments in a way to undermine you or put you down. But then when you confront them about it, they tell you that they’re just joking or that you shouldn’t take it so seriously. Don’t be fooled into thinking it’s just a joke, when it’s actually just deliberate ridicule.

[Read: How to deal with a narcissist: 13 ways you can manipulate them]

If you find yourself in a relationship with an egomaniac, either confront them or leave. It’s not worth staying in a relationship with them because before too long they suck all the positive vibes and confidence out of you.

The post Super Self-Obsessed: 22 Secret Signs You’re Dating an Egomaniac is the original content of LovePanky - Your Guide to Better Love and Relationships.