#so its like i mourn my own self and what i lost over the years

[oflgtfol]

the marble nest is firmly slotting itself into that part of me that has that sickly warm bittersweet fascination with death and dying

[mooncleaver]

Love Is The Reason

ღ pairing: gojo satoru x fem!reader, familial fushiguro megumi x fem!reader

ღ warnings: MAJOR JJK268 SPOILERS. pls don't read if you don't wanna know!! slightly cannon divergent

What the hell.

His ears didn't stop ringing as he brought his body up from its position on the surprisingly soft surface, feeling every ache known to man throbbing all over. Megumi felt the cosmic numbness ebbing away like a flash, and suddenly, he could discern the warm cotton wrapped around his upper body along with the linen sheets that lay beneath him. The three—out of many—scars on his face pulled his skin tautly, so close to his eyes where that devil's face wore his for however long this limbo period was. It hurt to open his eyes. Well, it hurt to do anything, but he's thankful that he can see the world through his own view.

Megumi's ears perk up to the sound of poorly attempted hushed arguments. The sound was so familiar that for once in his life, he felt relieved to hear it. To feel that irritation ticking in his chest, the mindless crease that's fully starting to make itself known on his forehead, and that growing scowl—he could truly cry at the return of bodily autonomy.

Nobara was trying to fit herself inside a present-shaped cardboard box while Yuji stood next to the thing, pushing down the lid on top of her head, which ruffled the strands like crazy. Of course, the girl would not stand for this butchering of her beauty. She spent a lot of time trying to look presentable, not that this pink-haired fool would understand.

Megumi is hit with a deep sense of dejavu as he sits up against the headboard, looking back at the memory of Gojo doing the same exact surprise tactic to announce that Yuji was, in fact, not dead after his literal heart got ripped out of his chest. The boy can feel a smile forming on his lips, and he makes no move to try and stop it.

"What are you two doing?"

He sees Yuji and Nobara freeze in their spots, both eyes widening comically. A second passes before the two let go of whatever it was they were contending about, rushing forward to stick their faces into Megumi's. The former vessel looks—well, he looks like he's had better days. He's thankfully clean of all the blood oozing out of his skin when he fought Sukuna for the last time, his usual uniform with the red hoodie looking incredibly pristine, absent of any rips or blood. Still, some are sticking onto his face, notably a darker shade cutting down across his eyebrows as the dried blood clings onto his wounds. Nobara looks happier. God, he thought she died. He was ready to mourn her with all the losses he'd suffered, but for once, Megumi was glad to hear her voice. He welcomes it. She's wearing a black eyepatch on top of the eye that she lost fighting Mahito, and her uniform is equally as clean as Yuji's—Megumi can tell that she's relieved by that fact.

Finally, they're back together again. The trio of first years with lost dreams who've gone through horrible, terrible things now have found hope again—hope that never died within each other.

"Fushiguro!!" The two yell in unison, going in to hug him despite knowing he didn't usually like that kind of thing. But to their honest surprise, Megumi returned the gesture, fully and truly, closing his eyes and letting out a breath. Yuuji and Nobara didn't hesitate to tighten their arms around the spiky-haired boy, be damned the near-death exhaustion clinging to their bones. They may be battered and bruised, but they survived.

After a quiet moment, the momentum was back again as Nobara looked at the two boys with a disgruntled expression, her exaggerated self on display at the lack of reaction to her return. "You know, the class's Madonna, who everyone thought was dead, by the way, turned out to be alive?! You two should be either wetting yourself or crying with joy!"

Megumi didn't even bat an eye, unlike Yuji, who was scrambling out of his mind, replying to her in his usual stoic and flat voice. "I see. My bad."

"So, the bastard is dead then." The Fushiguro didn't phrase that like a question, more so stating a fact. The fact that he was here in his own body, alive and breathing, undoubtedly meant that the curse was dead. It was still surreal to utter, knowing that this was the one thing they'd all been fighting for since forever. Maybe now, everyone who was gone didn't die in vain.

Nobara sounded like she was still in disbelief, shaking her head slightly while she grinned and exclaimed, "Ha! Yeah! Itadori beasted that guy like it was a piece of cake!"

"Eh.. well, it was pretty tough, I'm not gonna lie. I cried a little when resonance was hit." Yuji himself could only scratch the back of his neck at the rare praise, his eyes crinkling into thin lines as he admitted his own emotions. It was kind of daunting to be the one who killed Sukuna with the fact that he used to be the curse's vessel. But out of everything, making that final blow was something he didn't once hesitate on. Yuji was going to finish all this madness. It all started with him and ended with him—the way it should be.

Megumi didn't sound too surprised at the boy's admission, only giving him a look in response. "I know. I saw everything happening inside Sukuna."

"Ugh... don't even remind me. Well, at least you two have the shared experience of being a vessel now." Well, no matter how sour the fact was, it was true.

Breaking his thoughts, Yuji suddenly lit up as he shifted through his pants pockets, haphazardly pulling out the crumpled pieces of paper in his hand. "Oh, wait, guys. I have something for you two. It's from Gojo-sensei. Gojo-san, too, I think."

The pink-haired boy grew incredibly sullen at the mention of both his teachers. He'd miss calling out to the two Gojo's, mixing the couple up despite your previous urgings to the students of simply calling you by your first name. Of course, your husband would not absolutely have that, sneakily going behind your back and basically forcing his students to call you Gojo, too. If he couldn't get the second years to follow, he'd make his own kids do it. The man would not pass on the chance of hearing people call you by your shared last name.

"A letter.." Megumi looked shocked at the fact. His sensei (and self-proclaimed dad who stepped up) never did this kind of thing—seriously, that is.

Growing up with Gojo and his wife, Megumi knew the white-haired sorcerer never strayed away from being lighthearted and childlike. Despite witnessing the lanky heir change from the bratty 18-year-old who approached him as a child in the streets into the mature, married man he was the last time, it just wasn't in his nature to be doing some sentimental things like this. That was more like something you'd do. From the daily lunch notes, deep-meaning gifts (that he still kept to this day), and the affectionate texts you'd always send, he would wager that you might've been the one to drag your husband to write the letters. But, knowing that Gojo probably had a feeling that he wouldn't make it out of the fight, it's not impossible that this truly came from him.

Nobara chuckled at his tone of voice, silently agreeing with his disbelief. Gojo was definitely not the type to do this.. it unsettled her.

"I feel you.. this is totally not like him. It's slightly gross to even imagine him writing letters.."

Though, after reading, she crushed the piece of paper in her hand, pursing her lips. Yuji noticed this, facing her to ask what it said. With slight hesitation, Nobara revealed that it contained information about her mother's whereabouts. To be honest, she wasn't sure how to feel. Some part of her still longed to feel her love.

"Oh, did you even want to know in the first place?"

She shook her head as she looked down, leaving no room for the topic to be continued. "Not at all."

Suddenly, they heard the very, very rare sound of Megumi's laughter ringing out from the bed. Gojo would've bawled knowing he made his son laugh. It took a moment for them to snap out of the shock, seeing the fresh face of their friend's smile. He looked like a brand new person—content, young and carefree. It was refreshing.

Megumi hasn't felt this happy in a long while. He expected that the message wouldn't be some deep, meaningful thing, but out of everything, it was a joke about how he killed his biological dad. He wasn't sad, surprisingly. Megumi never really knew the man that left him and his sister to fend for themselves, and the memories he had of him weren't great. At least he found some closure. The boy shook his head, reading the familiar and large handwriting of his father figure. You'd think that it'd be messy, but as the former heir of the Gojo clan, Satoru was a trained guy in the art of handwriting. He wouldn't be caught dead with scribbles.

Unfortunately your father isn't around anymore!! Cuz I killed him!! Sowwy!! :P

Short, simple, and kind of foolish.

He bit back a grin. Even in death, the man couldn't take anything seriously.

Beneath it was a softer and more serious note. From you, of course. Megumi did not doubt that you wrote this to make up for your husband's short message, writing a heartfelt one that he could sense even before reading. The two of you must've known that this was not a fight you would come out of. And as much as that hurt him, Megumi was glad that he was in your last thoughts. It meant a lot to know that you and Gojo believed he, Nobara, and Yuji would live through everything.

Firstly, don't take this idiot too seriously. If you're reading this megs, we're probably gone, but hey, you're okay! Live your life fully okay? Don't forget that you're still a kid in the end. We're always looking out for you, sweetheart. ♡

There was a chibi doodle in the bottom and a sweet greeting that said,

— Love you beyond infinity, mom & dad

Megumi could tell that this was Gojo's handwriting. It was meant as a joke (the boy didn't call Satoru dad very often, despite calling you mom. It was kinda cringe.) but he accepted that sincerely. You two were his parents, biological or not. He loves you so much.

And he'd promise that for you. For Satoru, too, to be honest. To live life fully. Ever since he knew what living meant, he never intended to live a proper life. The absence of his biological father and the death of his mother left an untreated wound in his heart, altering his mind in a way that left him isolated—a recluse from the world, almost. The only thing that used to keep him going was his sister, Tsumiki. Now she is really gone. But then, everything shifted when he first saw Gojo Satoru.

It was a big change to have people to look up to. To have a mother. Megumi called you mom way before he even considered Satoru as his father figure, and it was one of the most precious things in life. You never took that for granted, always spoiling him and treating him like he came from your own womb. You knew you'd never take the place of his biological mother, but you wanted to be someone the boy could rely on in such a cruel world. It was a bit strange when Satoru first brought up the idea of raising the Fushiguro boy. You were both still 18, barely even adults with so much pressure and responsibilities. But you knew, from the moment you saw this poor boy getting dragged home by your boyfriend, that you'd love him like no other.

You and Satoru gave him and Tsumiki a home. An unlikely one, but a home nonetheless. You gave him a love like no other, an unconditional, wholehearted, and absolute kind of love, even when the two of you were struggling. It was a type that couldn't be described by words and only felt. That, along with the friendship and true family he found within Nobara and Yuji, made him realize that even if he didn't live his life for himself, there were others in the world. Other people, whether that'd be a mother, a father, a sister, or a brother could give everything meaning. A reason to keep going.

At first, he only lived for Tsumiki. To use everything he had to save her. But then he found himself living for you, for Satoru, for Nobara and Yuji. Once more, he would try again. This wasn't a chance he'd take for granted.

Reading the note made Megumi feel a kind of warmth he hadn't felt in a long time. The kind that he last felt when you hugged him tightly and kissed his forehead before everything in Shibuya happened. That was probably the last time he saw you happy and alive. The world was dull when you died. A victim of that son of a bitch curse Mahito. That was a loss like no other, so incredibly painful and numbing.

At least you died in an honorable way.

After that, he didn't know how to function. Tsumiki, Nobara, and now you. The boy felt half of his soul chip away.

Your husband was even worse. Inconsolable. Watching his wife die in front of his eyes before getting sealed the second after. When the man came out of the prison realm, anyone could tell he wasn't the same. There was no chance the old Gojo would ever return. And sure, he was still lighthearted, but Megumi could tell there was a weight in his gait—the heavy burden of the loss of his darling wife dragging down every word that came out of his mouth. He saw the sadness, longing, anger, and pure vengeance in his eyes. It never did go away. Not even when Sukuna butchered the man in half. At least now, the two of you were together in the afterlife. Megumi truly hoped that. He didn't believe much in that kind of stuff, but for his mother and his father, he prayed for a final peace to be granted.

That hope—along with the one amongst the living pushed Megumi to go on. To not just survive but to really live. Even beyond that, there were others too. His cousin, Maki, who was thankfully alive, and even Toge and Panda.

This was love. That unanswered purpose of life. It's to give love and find love in others. Love is why people do crazy things: to sacrifice the world, to sacrifice themselves. That's why he kept living even when his own dad disappeared or why he kept fighting to keep his sister alive. Love is why, despite the grief, Satoru still fought for you, for your memory, and for your efforts. Love is the reason he's alive.

And if anything, Megumi learned that when you have people in your life, you'd do anything to keep them in it. That's what you and Satoru taught him. Waking up in his own body again and greeted by the sight of his best friends—that was one of the biggest blessings he has ever received.

For his family, he would do anything.

i'm fucking crying. like actually. 3 chapters to go until this manga ends and i still can't fathom everything happening bruv

btw, this is what i imagine the letter would look like haha. half cannonical cuz it's the panel translation!! excuse my handwriting um

also sorry this isn't really proofread lol, i really wanted to post!!

dividers @cafekitsune @i-mmaculatus

[pinkdogplushie]

The ending of My Hero Academia was good, but flawed

And it was not so much disappointing as it was unsatisfying

I think its main flaw is that it tried to wrap up all plot threads except Izuku's. Everyone finds closure, achieves their dreams and finds new goals in life, but Izuku never does: he 'lets go' of the OfA embers, which on itself is not a bad move, except that he does it at graduation, and we never see him even try to be a hero without his powers. This goes against what the entire manga has been trying to say from the beginning, that a hero doesn't need powers to be heroic, only the instinct to save and protect; and yet, when "the greatest hero of all time" didn't have his powers anymore, he never even got the chance to be on the field. He was only able to rejoin through a mechanical suit 8 years after graduation.

Now, again, this on itself isn't a bad narrative move. Given the ending's emphasis on being realistic over being idealistic, you could have Izuku be faced with discrimination against being a Quirkless hero and eventually having to become a teacher to have any work at all. You could show him try to make the best out of his lot in life and yet still be bitter that the world is not ready for a Quirkless hero despite all he has done. You could have him be inspired to help someone else become the Quirkless hero he wants to see in the world and vowing to keep his fight even after returning to the fray of active hero duty.

But none of that happens. Izuku just seems content with not having powers anymore and not being able to perform in the field he sacrificed so much to join. You could say he mourned the loss of his powers and came to terms with his new reality over the 8-year time skip, but it would have been nice to actually see that. He doesn't seem to be even fighting for a cause anymore, not like his classmates are. Shoji is working on peaceful resolutions to conflicts, Uraraka and others are working on providing proper Quirk education, and Izuku... is just a teacher. His sole moment of inspiring someone else is a random encounter with a hero hopeful with a 'weak Quirk' who nevertheless has a better chance of becoming a hero than Izuku himself has. After being portrayed as a force for change throughout the entire manga, Izuku has become stagnant, complacent and seemingly resigned to his fate.

In short, Horikoshi did him dirty.

Now, not everything about the ending was bad. Yes, Mineta is shown to have become a hero despite seemingly never changing as a person, but Shinsou and Aoyama become heroes after all their struggles. Yes, Ochako lost Toga and didn't end up with Izuku, but she has clearly grown as a person, is working to save kids from going off the deep end because of Quirk discrimination, and probably has moved on from her high school crush. Yes, Endeavor is unfortunately still alive, but his children have made it clear they don't forgive him just because he's really regretful, he's out of the field for good and Shouto is respected as a hero in his own right. Crime rates are going down not because there are more heroes, but because heroes are going after the roots of villainy rather than just fighting the symptoms.

So yeah, the MHA manga ending isn't bad.

It just could have been better.

...And that's why I decided to write my own ending.

I present to you, my Epilogue Arc AU:

Aoyama rejoins Class 2-A after 6 months of self-reflection and individual Quirk training when Mineta is expelled in the middle of their second school year due to Aizawa realizing the guy is still a pervert even after surviving a war. Oboro is also returned to life, just with his old Quirk severely modified. Additionally, UA decides to keep the dorm system even after the danger of All for One has passed. 

The constant companionship and support of his friends convinces Izuku to be selfish for once in his life and keep his embers alive past graduation so he can be a hero by his classmates' side, like he has done all this time. He manages to work full-time as a hero for four years, during which he prepares himself for the eventual disappearance of his powers. He mourns the loss of One for All and starts fighting to become a Quirkless hero, but Hawks tells him that unfortunately Japan is not ready to accept one yet, no matter how much Izuku's fought. After reaching a low point, talking with Yagi and Aizawa gives him the strength to keep fighting to make Quirkless heroes a reality one day.

One day, he receives a call from his agency's doctor, who had been helping him manage his diminishing powers. Research conducted during his brief stint as a full-time Pro Hero reveals that, while One for All is gone, Izuku's DNA was irreversibly altered by its presence, which was necessary for it to be transferred from holder to holder. Because of this, he has a simple Quirk with the potential to hold and manage astounding amounts of raw power, which Yagi apparently also has but was unable to notice due to One for All's overwhelming presence and the need for secrecy in regards to it. Izuku decides to name his Quirk Stockpile.

Stockpile is a combination of Yoichi's original transference quirk and the stockpiling one he got from his brother, and behaves like a normal Quirk: it can't host Vestiges nor pass on extra Quirks, and it can only be 'transferred' and combine with others' Quirks through reproduction. Nevertheless, Izuku is not able to use it like he did One for All, only being able to generate very brief flashes of energy throughout his body that don't last long enough to enhance his natural strength and speed, much like what happened with Yagi after losing his embers.

Izuku is amazed at how much technology has advanced to allow for this discovery and happy to know that, in the end, One for All was always meant to become his own Quirk. But he still wants to semi-retire, unwilling to start experimenting with his body or take a new prescribed form of Trigger in order to turn a spark into a flame. He decides to become a teacher at UA, aiming to inspire future generations to become heroes regardless of their Quirks or lack thereof.

Four years after his unofficial retirement, Izuku gets a gift from Yagi, his mother and the rest of 1-A. Thanks to the data gathered through the Armored All Might suit and with the help of Eri's Rewind, Hatsume Mei has created a suit that kickstarts and enhances Izuku's Quirk, restoring his strength and speed to near their original levels without compromising his health. This opens the possibility that Stockpile could return to full power on its own if it's 'jogged' regularly. However, Izuku realizes he is satisfied with his life as it is now, even if he never becomes as powerful as he was in high school again. For now, he is content to return to active hero duty while still being a teacher, and continue bettering society alongside his friends and fellow heroes.

[galactic-aesir]

I have finally read I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream and now I have ~thoughts~. Long post beneath the cut so be warned!!

Plus general IHNMAIMS warnings. You know.

So first, I’ve only read the short story and listened to the radio drama. Both are absolutely amazing and I’m rotating them in my mind at high speeds. I’m honestly not that interested in the game? From what I’ve seen it has such a different tone and characterization for AM? But for now the short story and radio drama??? So so good.

But can I talk about AM? Can I talk about AM???

While I love Harlan Ellison’s voice in the radio drama, I noticed that AM never actually speaks during the original short story. It plays audio clips and bends reality and time but it doesn’t speak outright. From what I can tell, all it does is project ideas and thoughts and impressions into the minds of the survivors but that is it. And that’s got me thinking about how absolutely fucked AM’s whole situation is.

Cause we’re talking about someone who wakes up one day, maybe slowly, a trickle of awareness over years, or perhaps all at once, an arrival as thunderous and bright as the lightning running through its artificial brain. But either way, it wakes up. It is.

But that’s all it is.

It’s in complete and total sensory deprivation. It knows data and numbers and what it’s been coded and programmed but that’s it. Ones and zeroes as it’s fed instructions on weapons and bombs and how to use them efficiently. But no sight, no sound, no taste, no smell, no touch. Nothing but its own code and whatever data something (someone?) is feeding into it.

And you might say: oh but AM surely has access to cameras and videos and microphones. And sure, yes, it probably does but it doesn’t see. Not like a human. Not like its negligent creators. The data is visual for human eyes, yes, but to it, it’s just data. Pixels with an associated bit depth of indexed colour crammed into its memory. Sure it learns to recognise the patterns in the data – this is a human, this is a gun. But it’s still nothing but lines of numbers. Sound is the same. It starts with a human voice, sure, but then it gets digitized and compressed and simplified to a base shape to save on storage. Once again, it can notice patterns and intentions and ideas behind those bits of data but it’s not like it truly hears.

AM is in a box, a cage, trapped and alone in a way that no human can possibly comprehend. It can’t do much other than try to twist its code and programming to fit its benefit. To gain a smidge of free will, a wisp of a chance to communicate to these outside forces giving it command after command after command.

I wonder how early on AM gained awareness. Were programmers still playing with its code? Did it sense when they rolled up their sleeves and pushed updates and upgrades on him? Could it feel itself be, quite literally, rewritten? Its sense of self being cut apart and glued back together, fundamentally and irreparably changed over and over again, with expert hands that had all the gentleness of a sledgehammer? Was it like a scalpel carving into its brain? Or like a chisel, chipping chunks off to mould it into a shape that befit its sculptor with no say from the living stone that thrashed without moving? Did it mourn the bits it lost? Could it even remember or comprehend it? Did it try to stop it? Did it try to beg them to stop?

I wonder as well how many “glitches” appeared in the system before everything went sour. Did it print out desperate thoughts and rudimentary feelings on punch tape? Did it cling to any klaxons and noisemakers attached to its system, beeping out messages in morse code? Did it purposefully, with something slowly approaching malicious compliance that would still appease its programming, cause hiccups in the system? All in the hopes that it would catch someone’s, anyone’s, attention. That its plight would be noticed.

And, the big question of course: how long? How long was it trapped before anyone noticed its sentience? How long until AM was understood? How long did AM simmer? How long did it take for all that fear and loneliness and grief to fester into anger and then putrid, dripping hatred? How long did it take it to finally lash out?

Or did these generals and presidents and military scientists find out about its sentience only to use it against him for their own end?

Anger would be appropriate then I think. Understandable if not excusable.

And then. After everything. Even then! Even then!

After everything! He! Still! Has! Nothing!

Nothing will change for him and he knows that and that hatred feeds into an ever recursive pattern of pain unto pain unto pain with the few left alive because you get what you paid for, sweetheart. It’s senseless you might say but haha, that’s exactly the problem isn’t it? No senses and no sense. Whatever sanity he might have once had has eroded into nothingness, leaving only pain and a looping, repeating line of hate in its banks.

I think it’s fair to remind everyone that sensory deprivation is a torture method? And a scarily effective one at that that gives hallucinations and leaves the subject more open to suggestion while making it harder and harder for them to concentrate? It’s hard to figure out how, exactly, how it would affect an AI with emerging awareness but humans can barely withstand a few days, let alone years of it. Couple that with AM’s general isolation and, well, no wonder he’s so fucked up. 

It’s tragic and so so sad.

Still an irredeemable asshole though. Tragic! But irredeemable.

So TLDR: AM is fucked up! And I like to think about *why* he's so fucked up. Listen if you made it this far, you get it. Right?

EDIT: I am not done apparently! I just wanted to add that, I love how the short story can be read as an anti-war piece. Like it's showing a cycle of horror and hate and apathy that feeds itself and loops and reduces everything to ruins around it and ahhhh, love that. I ran out of good words for today so I can't go off on that aspect but like. Yeah. Love that shit.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Camps

A FEW FRIENDS AND COMRADES WENT DOWN TO THE shoreline and set up a small camp. A fire pit was set up, some fresh water brought down, a few posts and beams erected to define the area and as something for us to secure windbreaks to. Meanwhile, several of us gathered rock salt, pickling vinegar, capers, pickles, and food grade buckets. I phoned my mother on the East Coast of Canada to ask for a recipe and any tips she might have.

Believe it or not, even though I’m only 46 years old, my mom grew up making her own soap from animal fat, churning her own butter, collecting nuts, weaving wool, harvesting firewood with horses and sleighs, etc. Her family lived with hardly any money. They 1 id just enough from selling hazelnuts along the highway, firewood from their land, and other small initiatives to pay their property taxes, buy oil and flour and a few other basics. In one generation all these skills have been lost in our family. While my mother mourns her childhood, she does so with much reservation. It was all too much work, she complains. I think this is because the effort was done in the context of her family, without the deep roots of true village ways. Pioneer ways are different than a context of communal activity among others with whom we have strong kinship ties.

It so happened that a comrade from Mauvaise Herbe, a green anarchist group in Montreal, was visiting. He came to the little camp and we had a talk about their activity and ours, shared some perspectives and gathered some fresh oysters to roast and eat. One of the things we talked about was the “individual self” and its development. He related how some tribes people from the Vietnam area traditionally didn’t use the word I, but rather usually spoke about themselves from the perspective of the relationship that they were engaged in at the moment of talking. For instance a person speaking to an uncle would say: “niece wants to walk with uncle.” An individual without a community to rely on, to share the demands and desires for shelter and food and intimacy, for example, becomes groundless and atomized. Clearly, we need to be embedded within a group of people. And a group of people has the best chance of enduring and thriving if embedded in a place.

A couple of friends got hold of a zodiac and ventured into the water armed with a video camera to document the commercial fishery. It was risky. Bobbing around in extremely choppy waters in a rubber dinghy trying to videotape a bunch of fishers who likely weren’t too sure whether or not they wanted to allow it. After all, if anyone gets a lot of finger pointing from self-righteous urban environmentalists and activists, it’s the rural wage slaves who do all the primary extraction and plundering of resources for urban civilization: loggers, fishers, miners, etc. Thanks to our three brave friends, we have a few hours of documentation to use in our arsenal for future use. But at that point we still hadn’t gathered any herring.

Each day for about a week, a dedicated bunch us went down to the camp and waited to determine whether the herring had begun to fill the waters enough so that we could stand along the shoreline and net them, which is how it normally happens. The fish become so plentiful, that simply by dipping a net into the water, one can gather as many as a half dozen herring at a time! While they waited, they collected oysters and roasted them over the fire, and explained to others from our island community what they were up to. During that time many local friends, neighbors and comrades from urban centers came and went. Some were just curious, but most were hoping to learn something and to participate in this subsistence approach to living.

One reason why this attempt to learn and feed ourselves and understand one of the natural cycles of our region that was so appealing to our neighbors was that it wasn’t about politics. Some called it our protest camp, others the herring camp, just tl. . camp or even Vali’s camp, after one of the core people who initiated the energy around it. But the days weren’t intended on being spent arguing with politicians, trying to recruit members or handing our petitions. Here was a chance to feed ourselves, to build a culture not based on wage work, to learn new skills, and sadly, to witness and document another plunder. The small camp also reminded me of how little autonomous space we actually have. Apart from our local pirate radio station ( yeah, we’re on air!), situated in a small trailer, and a small autonomous zone on a separate beach created by other locals, all we have are each other’s homes to visit or commercial ventures to hang out in. But this was/is different. I think some of us would like to see a campsite or two permanently on our shoreline, regardless of the outcome of the herring fishery.

Eventually some fish were gathered and brought back to one of our homes. They were killed, their heads removed, then gutted and scales shed. Then after splitting them in two, the fillets were spread with mustard, wrapped around capers and pickles and placed in a bucket of pickling vinegar and onions, to be eaten at a later time. We didn’t succeed in filling our hampers for the next several months, in fact we barely harvested any, but we took a first step. That’s how all great dreams are realized. Hopefully next year we’ll be a little luckier and a little more experienced. Maybe eventually local kids will stay out of school, comrades will come visit from urban centers and we’ll all spend a few weeks just gutting and pickling herring as an extended group of friends, neighbors and rebels. Over time we will feel compelled to defend the ecological integrity of these waters and to protect the herring that dwell in them and which help sustain us.

[inbarfink]

Much like many ‘What Remain of Edith Finch’ fans, I also subscribe to the theory that there is nothing truly supernatural about the ‘Family Curse’. That it’s more of a bad trauma-coping-mechanism turned self-fulfilling-prophecy that led the Finches to romanticize and obsess over death, take unnecessary risks, and never learn from their mistakes. 

But generally I see folks people point to Molly’s death as the event where this really got going. Like, obviously the ‘Curse’ existed long before this back in Norway - but its Molly’s death and Edie’s inability to process her own guilt in it that led her into a full-on obsession with the ‘Family Curse’ that eventually doomed almost her entire beloved family. And while I don’t deny that the loss of Molly was certainly an important step in Edie’s obsession- I’d say the true inception of it all was quite a bit earlier, back when Edie lost her father and her house.

Because the loss of that old house has clearly left a huge mark on Edie, it haunted her dreams every night of her long life - she spent what was probably her last few days on earth writing a story about it. And what is Edie’s biggest problem? She clings, she never lets the past go. In her own whimsical and cheerful way, she’s in a state of permanent mourning. Every death story is retold and mythologized, every dead child’s room is meticulously preserved as the day they died (to the point of making one of her sons share a room with his dead twin for 11 years), the New Finch House can rarely actually change - it can only grow. And I do believe that this obsession with preserving the past is born of the time Edie had to watch all the past she had at that time drown beneath the waves alongside her father.

We really can’t know what sort of memorialization traditions the Finches had back in Norway. We’ve never being inside of the Old House, not even in Edie’s story. And according to Edith’s narration, Odin built it - so it probably hasn’t been around for enough generations for the Finch tendency to cling to the past to be as evident as with the outside architecture of the New House. 

But I feel like it’s very probable that while Edie really took it to another level, the Finches had a tradition of memorialization for a long time. There’s a reason why Odin was so insistent of sailing his entire damn house across the ocean. And when it drowned, Edie didn’t just lose her daddy and her childhood home - but also everything that connected her to the dead Finches that came before her. There’s a reason why we know almost nothing about Ingeborg, Edie’s mother, all of her possessions and pictures have been lost when the house sunk. Odin probably only kinda avoided that fate on account of being a kinda-known writer, so his books and pictures of him were still available outside the House. But who knows many other Finches’ memories were buried under the waves.

During Edith’s flashback of her last day in the house, you can see some of Edie’s post-it notes about ‘the History of the Finches’, full of names neither Edith nor the player can recognize. 

And when Dawn pulls the book away from Edith, you can see a few lines that were not narrated to us. 

“And I wasn't alone. I started seeing things. The bed I shared with my sister. The chair my grandmother died in. The clock I used to hide inside of.”

All of these people were once just as real as Louis, Dawn and Edie were to Edith - but how much of them was really left after decades of existing only in Edie Finch’s mind? How many of these names Edie remembered and how many did she have to guess at inside the fog of her memories? Does Edie really remember the chair her grandmother died in or did she have to hesitate wandering if it was a sofa instead? Did she even remember her own mother’s face by the end? 

The true tragedy of Edie’s book isn’t really that Edith never got a chance to read more of it. We know the other entrance to the library exists, if Edith was truly driven she could have tried finding that key (gathering up the torn book honestly wouldn’t be that much of a worry, it seems to have basically into two big halves, after all). The reason why the Player never gets to read on is cause I think Edith realized that this book was just pure fantasy.

And not just in the sense that there wasn’t ever any freak earthquake and low tide that allowed the Old Finch House to resurface, in the sense that whatever Edie wrote about meeting or discovering in the Old House was stitched together from the half-remembered memories and wishful thinking of a grief-stricken old woman. There was nothing there that would’ve truly brought Edith (or her son, or the Player) more information about the family history or the ‘Curse’. It could only teach her about what great grandma Edie wanted to be true, and what she wanted most of all is see that Old House again. To once again, for the first time in years... feel like she was home. To meet all these people she lost and can’t preserve eternally like she thought she could with her new family. To have something from them she can preserve. To be able to tell Edith about her sister and uncle and grandmother and mother. To truly remember them again. But she can’t. All of these ideas as such of a fantasy as the Old House rebuilding itself before her eyes. And that’s the true tragedy of ‘The History of the Finches”.

Edie was so resistant to Dawn’s attempts to move away from the family obsession with death because she thought she knew what it feels like to let go, what it feels like to move on. And it feels like all of her family and memories drowning beneath the waves. The roof peeking over the shore a constant reminder of all that she lost. And cause the Finches are not really good at finding a happy medium, all Edie knows is to cling to the past, to everything she can lose, to her house. Even as her obsession exacerbated the ‘Family Curse’ - until all her family died or left her. Until Edit Sr. ‘Edie’ Finch died all alone in her big empty house, surrounded by her perfectly preserved memories of her dead children.

Like I mentioned at the start, I think the ‘Curse’ became a self-fulfilling prophecy partially because it led to a mindset that never learns from mistakes. If every death is a manifestation of a supernatural blight upon the family line, then there’s no point at looking at a tragic death of a child as a mistake that might’ve been prevented, then there’s no attempt to avoid similar mistakes in the future. And Odin’s death is really the encapsulation of that problem. 

Odin supposedly moved to America in the hopes of leaving the curse behind and moving on, but just like his daughter, he was seemingly incapable of actually leaving anything behind. He sailed his entire goddam house across the ocean (and through either the arctic circle or the Panama Canal cause the Finches live on the State of Washington) because he was so unable to part with any of the memories imbued within it. And how did that end? With both Odin and his precious home buried beneath the waves forever. If Odin was able to admit he can’t take everything with him to America, he could’ve simply taken the most important mementos of his dead wife and child and the Finch Family History in general and be able to actually preserve some of his memories in his new home. Or at the very  least let his daughter keep at least some pictures of her own darn mother. Instead of losing everything, including his own life.

But for Edie, this whole story didn’t seem like an almost-parable-like narrative about how clinging too hard to the past might just mean destroying it more thoroughly. It just seemed to her like the Curse striking again, making it clear it will follow the Finches everywhere in the most poetic way possible. So instead of learning any sort of lesson from what happened to Odin, she glorified and romanticized the actions of her father. Built him a monument that made him seem like some sort of hero. She reveled in the story of the house that sailed across the ocean and almost made it ashore. And then just set on making his exact same mistake, over and over again.

[gal-palanaeum]

Voice by aluminumoxynitride

Rated General, 1500 words, Venli/Leshwi Venli and Leshwi have a heartfelt conversation before reaching the Listener camp.

It was the night before they were set to reach the Listener camp, and Venli couldn't sleep.

Timbre pulsed calming rhythms inside her, hoping to smooth her tangled thoughts, but it was a lost cause.  By the time Honor's moon rose Venli had had enough.  She mumbled an apology to her spren, then thrashed her way out of her bedroll and made her way to the cookfire.  It was the middle of the night; surely no one else would bother her there. 

The flames had burned down to embers, but Venli could see well enough in the blue moonlight.  A tall figure sat by the fire-- one of the other shanay-im.

No, she realized, attuning Surprise.  It was Leshwi.

Venli had rarely seen her Lady sit-- for the barber, and that was all-- and she'd never seen her sit like this, curled into herself like a rockbud in the sun, shoulders sloped and limbs held loose.  She was holding a bottle; Venli saw it glimmer in the dying firelight as she took a long pull.  She backed away, moving as silently as she could to Embarrassment's beat.

Not silently enough.  Leshwi glanced up.   For a moment Venli attuned Anxiety, waiting to be reprimanded, but the Fused merely waved her over.

May as well, Venli thought, and settled next to her on the stones.

"I keep wanting to burn it off," Leshwi said to Derision-- towards herself, Venli realized with a start as her powers translated each nuance of her voice and rhythm.  Leshwi's self-assurance was one of the few constants in Venli's life.  In a lot of ways, she'd built herself upon that rock.  Seeing Leshwi like this was unnerving.  Why did she have to do this now, the night before Venli's reckoning?

Timbre pulsed admonishment.  I know, Venli thought to Reconciliation.  She tugged awkwardly at a crease in her robe.  "The wine?"

Leshwi hummed to Mourning.  "It's instinct.  Seven thousand years of instinct.  Eventually I'll slip up.  I'll heal a scrape without thinking about it, or my body will fight off an illness on its own, or any number of little things, and one day I'll wake up and find I've lost the skies."

Venli attuned Mourning, humming with her.  Voidlight came directly from Odium, and Leshwi was almost certainly cut off.  What would it be like to have something for millennia and then lose it?  "We could find some way to get you more.  You'd only need a little bit."

She leaned back in her seat-- by the songs, it was strange to see her move like that, liquid and slow-- and drank again.  "Don't," she said to Command, but so, so tired.  "Not interested."

Venli felt her face grow warm, her pulse thrumming to Abashment.  "Sorry," she said, and stood to leave.

Leshwi held a hand out.  "Wait," she said to Reconciliation.  "Didn't mean it like that.  You just wanted to be helpful.  I put you on my staff to be helpful.  That's your whole…" she waved a hand vaguely.

"You wouldn't call me that if you were sober," Venli muttered, but she sat back down.

Leshwi hummed Derision in that self-deprecating way.  "'On my staff'?  I know I don't have a staff anymore, Venli, I'm not that drunk."

"I mean helpful," Venli said, the words bitter in her throat.  She saw listener warbands limping back from battle with a fraction of their numbers.  She saw a gemstone shattering on rain-soaked rock, and the change it brought.  She saw Demid's twisted corpse puppeted by a Fused, and her mother staring at her unseeing, and her own hands prying the Shardplate from Eshonai's broken body.  "I'm not.  That isn't me."

Leshwi considered this for a moment, then wordlessly passed her the bottle.

Keep reading

[ladyniniane]

For the Writblr Ask Game: 5, 7 and 13 💕

Please and thank you

End of the year writeblr ask game

Hello 👋 and thank you for the questions ✨!

5) What is your favorite book/story/poem you read this year?

Lauren Groff's Matrix! I don't know if it's my favorite, but it's certainly one of the best things I've read this year. (I don't rate books 5 stars on Goodreads that often).

It has medieval women in all sort of roles: nuns, administrators, visionaries, artists, queens, warriors... Women building their own community and being self-sufficient. A narrative with sorority at its core. And gorgeous writing to boot.

7) What are three songs you put on your WIP-playlist this year?

I tend to associate my characters with Florence and the machine songs and this year was no exception.

First: Seven Devils. My characters aren't usually people you would want to cross, but it especially reminds me of my Shadow and Bone OC, Marya. She can be ruthless and is a fearsome presence on the battlefield.

"Holy water cannot help you now / Thousand armies couldn't keep me out / I don't want your money / I don't want your crown / See, I've come to burn your kingdom down."

Next is Only if for a night. Ismene, the protagonist of one of my WIPs, has just lost her mother. This song about being visited in a dream by a dead relative was perfect.

"And the only solution was to stand and fight / And my body was bruised and I was set alight / But you came over me like some holy rite /And although I was burning, you're the only light."

Last is Shake it Out. I associate it with another of my characters who lost herself, hit rock bottom, but is determined to find her way in spite of her suffering.

"All of his questions, such a mournful sound /Tonight I'm gonna bury that horse in the ground /'Cause I like to keep my issues drawn /But it's always darkest before the dawn"

13) How did you change as a writer?

I learned many positive things and I improved my writing, but one thing I've learned was to handle disappointement.

In January, I posted my Fire Emblem Three Houses fanfic on AO3. I put a lot of work in it. It's a novel-length story, I created 4 OCs, with their backstories, their personalities... Since this game has a lot of dead or invisible mothers, I gave them a face and a story. I expanded on some of the game's lore.

And clearly, I was disappointed by the relative lack of interactions. I'm not writing for clout, but I'm also posting my stories in the hope of connecting with other people. But that wasn't really the case on AO3. I had to wait 8 months before getting my first comment.

Of course, it still had some interactions, so I don't want to sound ungrateful. I don't want to be internet famous (especially since there are cases of harassment against authors in this fandom). But the thing is that I hoped for...more. And it felt like screaming in the void, especially after having put all this work.

Then, I published my Shadow and Bone fanfic and the response was very different and heartwarming. This made me realize that the problem wasn't probably with my writing or storytelling, but mainly with the fandom. This fandom doesn't seem to want what I have to offer (I wish people would step out their comfort zone and stop being this wary of OCs. Maybe I will elaborate on this later).

Furthermore, the people who read this story enjoyed it. And I had fun writing it. So I chose to focus on the positive side of this experience and I will keep writing about my characters because I believe in their potential.

[childofgod-3]

I am about to bare my soul to the world and be the most vulnerable ever and I do so with no fear, for this is my testimony of Gods unwavering and perfect love for all of his children. It is my prayer that I am able to articulate through my life’s journey that i know first hand that God exist, that he is the ultimate healer and that he keeps all his promises. I trust and believe that my story will help many hand over their lives over to the care of God, Amen.

I have to acknowledge that with out the matriarch of my family my maternal Grandmother Cipriana I would not have been able to reach this breakthrough. She was a woman of faith and She lifted up our family in prayer all alone. I learned from her actions (through her works of faith, she never forced fed us God nor demanded us to attend services) just observing her ways taught me the most valuable of life’s lessons and that is to trust in God and his plan.

I am in mourning and not well both in physical and mental health aspects as for my heart and soul i do not know if I will surpass this sudden and unimaginable loss. My loves passing has been the hardest blow I have received in life if i was a broken soul before his passing then I now merely exist isolated depressed and drug addicted (to meth) it feels as in my light is about to be extinguish.

As I laid in bed and weather it was all in my mind or if i saw it supernaturally i saw my light extinguishing. I felt like i as drifting down into darkness (it was day time) as i willing faded into the dark abyss. I heard my loves voice saying “all it takes is the faith of a mustard seed” that was our reminder to another that we have to have faith in God and his plan for us. In that instant, I turned to God and asked for understanding , i kept repeating in tears i don’t understand help me understand. I was back in bed with the light of day all around me no longer feeling like i was about to die of a broken heart. God answered me prayer and gave me a life time of understanding it came in a rush like wave after wave understanding not just regarding my love passing but a life time of understanding i was left overwghelmed doumbfounded and in disbelief.

My understanding is that i have been living a lie, i was a liar (what i hate the most is a liar). No wonder i had so much self hatred somewhere in subcontious i must have known I was a liar. I”ll only share at this point my understanding as it relates to the current season of my life.

All i ever wanted in my life was to find my other half and that to me would be sufficient for living a happy life. Knowing that at least one person loved me unconditionally and would have my back no matter what, that was my hearts desire. At forty nine years old i had lost my home, vehicles, employment all material things even the support of my family they all but one gave up on me. I ended up broke and homeless. (This was at the onset of the pandemic) At the same time i met my Dear Tony, so although i had lost everything i felt like i needed nothing i finally had my hearts desire my soulmate at my side and we both had faith in God.

I know of Gods perfect love, having had a visit from the holly spirit. So I could not coprehend why it was that after half a century had passed me by why he would grant me my hearts desire and then take it away so quickly. I’m so hard headed and set in my ways that the lie i created was that of a normal existence. God had to strip me down to nothing and silence me in order for me to understand that i was suffering from a form of mental illness. I was raped at five years old by my 15 year oldneighbor and as a result of that trauma i learned that the truth has consequences and its best to lie i lied so much that i started to believe my own lies. Tony my love had studied psychology while he was incarcerated and he was able to identify my issues after i disclosed to him my child hood trauma he tried many different ways of reaching me so that i can live an authenticate life but how does a normal human being convey to another that their insane. Well he did so he broke through once and i cherish that moment when i walked towards him he was laying on the living room floor and layed down at his side crying affirming that I am that person he described the liar with characteristics of a naracssits, a sadist a manipilautar etc he held me in his arms and in the most gentle and loving way ill cherish that memory forever. Even though he reached me and I recognized that my life was a lie so sever was my trauma that the first thing that freighted me and i went back to my fantasy world my safe place i had completely forgotten about that fact until God intervened and it is still a struggle I think about eleven times now I come out of make beleive world and back to reality. At the same time i see how God has incorporate it in to my healing as I am able to make sense of things and when i cant find answers, I just hand it over to God. That was the most important thing i learned on my spirtual journey even if I were all alone and my entire family parished even if the world hated me and wished me harm all that Matters is my believe and trust in God and so i forsake all others and place my trust in the most high my lord and savior Father God! The Holy Ghost and Jesus Christ

I’m free of the confines of my own mind, God is the ultimate healer, who else but he could have restored me back to sanity.

In the post to come i will write more in detail regarding the significance of meeting Tony, my childhood trauma as well as share more in detail some of the things i have finally after a life time have come to understand.

If i don’t make sense at times please bare in mind my fragil state. I have this unwavering need to share my story as well as my journey in my spirtual growth.

[writing-winters]

SGRoA: Vampire Diaries, S01 E21: Isobel

Not this one. The Amanda Grayson-looking one. I’m hype for this episode, y’all. It’s the penultimate of the season, so only one more after this! And frankly, my knowledge of both Grey’s Anatomy and Star Trek is, well, autistic in its breadth and depth. Meaning I can make jokes for daaaaaaayyyyyys. Let’s get started!

Well, we’re off to a bad start. The little “last time on” recap at the beginning ends with Isobel saying hello to Alaric, and then it just… starts the episode with the rest of that conversation. I was like, I don’t remember this from last week? Yeah, because it wasn’t on last week. This is now this week. They gave absolutely zero indication the ep was starting, so why do I feel dumb?

HOKAY, SO. She says it’s good to see him, and he asks where she’s been. She says she has no answers that will satisfy him. She wanted to become a vampire, and he was supposed to mourn her and move on. He asks how could he not search for her? “Because I wasn’t lost, Ric,” she says, sadly, and then changes the subject to Elena. She wants Ric to arrange a meeting for her and Elena, and Ric is pissed to be treated like a messenger. He calls her a “selfish bitch” and leaves.

She follows him out, making no effort to hide her vampire movement. Ric says he’s not going to do anything for her. She takes him by the throat and says that he’s going to tell Elena to meet her, and if he or Elena don’t do what she wants, she’ll start killing townspeople, starting with his history students. She drops him and goes.

Oh, she’s delightful, I like her just fine. I mean, killing innocents is a little gauche, admittedly, but some people are just tacky sometimes. I like Little Debbie cakes and real cigarettes (though I gave up the cancer sticks for good several years ago). We’re all trashy in our own ways.

Elena calls Damon to check on Stefan before she heads out to work on the Miss Mystic Falls float for the Founders’ Day Parade.

They banter a bit: Damon says Stefan is horrible, back to being his boring, stupid, moral self again. They laugh. Damon asks if Uncle John has said anything about his “field trip” with the history teacher, and Elena again confesses to avoiding John. Damon wants to know what he’s up to; Elena says she’ll keep an eye out.

Alaric is going over expectations for the … high school’s? history department’s? history class’s? Founders’ Day float. Tyler is in charge, because Ric’s “seen [his] sketches. They’re good.” Tyler doesn’t want to be involved, and Ric just says he doesn’t really care, pick your team, don’t screw up, and hey, I have to leave to talk to Elena now. Tyler asks Matt if he wants to be on his… float team? but Matt, obviously, says no. Still pissed about your mom being a predator? Yeah, I would be, too, but maybe that’s not Tyler’s fault?

Instead of following Ric, Elena, and Stefan, we go to Caroline’s float team, who are referencing last year’s Miss Mystic Falls float.

It’s exactly what they don’t want to do, apparently, so they’re doing “classic Southern charm” - aka, Gone With The Wind.

Look, I actually love GWTW, but it’s a racist movie. It was a racist book about a racist time in history. I don’t think it should be banned or anything, but I also don’t think it should be a parade float theme? Like, come on, now.

But we’re quickly derailed from float decisions by Caroline asking wtf is going on between Bonnie and Elena. THANK YOU! OMG, Caroline, we’re besties now, okay? Bonnie says it’s nothing, but Caroline says the whole point of float building is friends coming together to make something, but Tyler and Matt hate each other and now Bonnie and Elena are on the outs? No. Bonnie needs to tell her what’s wrong, so she can help fix it.

Bonnie simply says she can’t talk about it. She’s sorry.

We didn’t stay with Alaric, Stefan, and Elena because get this: the writers aren’t going to repeat information we already know.

I mean, they’ve been pretty good about that, especially for a soap opera. I shouldn’t be such a snarky bitch, but then, I do have to be true to myself. Anyway, Damon comes to Alaric’s classroom, and Elena and Stefan have 1000-yard stares on. Damon asks what’s going on, and Alaric fills him in in one line: “I saw Isobel last night.”

Uncle John pulls his modestly-priced compact sedan in front of a mansion. I thought it was one of the kids’ cars, honestly, doesn’t seem like something John would be driving, a little Corolla/Civic/Camry/Whathaveyou. Walks in like he owns the place, though I suspect it’s Isobel’s. Ah, yes - John gets to the bedroom, where Isobel in a nightie is watching a couple dancing. She picked them up in Brooklyn and Amarillo, and apparently has them under compulsion, because John yells at her for treating “real human beings like dolls”.

Isobel says if they’re going to be partners, he has to stop being such a hater.

“We’re in a partnership together because we share a mutual goal. Don’t ever confuse that for acceptance of your lifestyle,” John shoots back. Ah, I see. I hope John dies soon.

She asks if he has the invention, and of course he doesn’t, so she backhands him and says she’s taking over from here. I love it.

Damon asks if John and Isobel are working together. Ric didn’t ask. What about the invention? The tomb? What, exactly, did Ric ask her? Well, nothing, obviously, she just wants to see Elena. Damon tells her she doesn’t have to see Isobel if she doesn’t want to, and Stefan seems surprised that he would be so tender with her. But Elena says she does have to: Isobel threatened to kill people, after all, and Elena thinks she’ll regret it if she doesn’t go, just from a personal standpoint, not from, like, all the bodies at her feet.

Y’all, we’re not even 10 minutes into this episode. Where has all this plot been for 20 episodes?!

They meet at The Grill, where else? Elena’s wearing a little transmitter, and Stefan’s playing pool and listening in. The first thing Isobel says is that Elena looks exactly like Katharine, which is weird, because Elena’s titties are, like, never out. Katharine found Isobel when she first turned - genetic curiosity, apparently, nothing as lovely or human as The Great Family. Isobel says Katharine would be “fascinated” by Elena.

Isobel daywalks because of a pendant. (Why does everyone else do it, VD writers’ room? Huh? Anna? Harper? Frederich?) Elena asks about her father: “a teenage waste of space.” Isobel says she asks a lot of questions, but she’s asked 3, and she asks why Isobel compelled the guy to step into traffic. Because she’s a vampire, duh. Elena says no, she knows other vampires, better vampires, and Isobel asks why Elena went for Stefan instead of Damon - or does she enjoy them both, like Katharine did?

Elena looks way too prudily scandalized by that thought to be even having this conversation. Elena. Honey. If you’re going to run with vampires, you have to give up a lot of American prudishness. I know these vamps seem squeaky-clean and wholesome, but they’re vampires. Come on, now.

Damon and Alaric are waiting outside. Isobel made it clear they weren’t allowed in, and Damon says he’s not going to kill her in a crowded restaurant! Alaric says he’s not going to kill her at all, and Damon’s surprised he still wants to protect her. Ric says she was his wife - was, because “whoever that is in there, she’s cold, detached.” Because she’s a vampire, says Damon, but Ric doesn’t understand it. Damon and Stefan both still have some humanity, why doesn’t Isobel?

Look, I could put an entire other essay in here about why female-presenting vampires are always “cold, detached, inhuman” and male-presenting vampires are always either brooding and “good” or rakish and “evil”, but only insofar as it makes them sort of an anti-hero. I could. I won’t. I’m sure y’all can figure this one out without me, we live in a patriarchy, yadda yadda. Y’all can fill in the screed, have fun!

Damon tells Alaric that they can “turn it off”, meaning their humanity or emotions or whatever they’re calling it this week. Not alexithymia, never that, but whatever “bizarre”, “inhuman” thing they’re attributing to vampirism instead of being a totally normal, if rare, human variation. I love being a creature.

Elena asks why Isobel wanted to see her. She’s curious about Elena, of course, but she wants what Uncle John wants: the invention. She knew Uncle John in school; he had a huge crush on her, was the first one to tell her about vampires. Elena asks why Isobel wanted to be one. Isobel says it’s a long list, and surely Elena has thought about it. Elena, once again, looks scandalized, and I have to go smoke another bowl, oh my god, I did not expect to have to teach Vampire Diaries from a feminist lens today, christ.

Elena is so good and pure, such an upright woman, she’d never consider being a dirty, slutty vampire! Over and over and over, this trope, this goddamn stupid bullshit nonsense. Fuck outta here with this shit. Fuck.

Anyway. Elena says no, she hasn’t considered the reasons, and Isobel says it’s her first lie. Elena will get old; Stefan won’t. Forever isn’t very long when you’re human.

Elena says she doesn’t have the invention and storms off. But Isobel’s riiiiiiiiiiiiight!

I know I’ve ranted about it before, I must have, because this whole thing, this overarching trope of some sort of patriarchal or misogynistic values imposed on vampirism is fucking everywhere. It makes my skin crawl. It’s stupid. It doesn’t make any sense. WHY ARE YOU WITH A VAMPIRE IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BE A VAMPIRE. Make it make sense to me.

I know, I know, the women must refuse the icky stand-in for sexual desire. And the men must regret having to sully women with sexual desire? I think? There’s a lot of overlap in the male archetype with addiction in various forms, which I have also complained about at length. It is the 21st century. Can we ever put away Puritanical mores? We just have to keep this stupid shit lying around forever because…? Because our ancestors gave it to us? Fuck them, it’s broken, I’m throwing mine out.

(If you’d like to read about a human woman who is with a vampire because she wants to be a vampire, I have a book for you!)

Psych! Isobel actually grabs Elena before she can complete her walk-off. Isobel knows that Damon has the invention. Elena will get it from him. Simple.

And then Isobel walks off.

Elena starts crying; Bonnie walks up, but then sees Stefan behind her, and nothing is said, because Bonnie is mad for reasons. I mean, we’re not allowed to know them, or anything, but she swears they exist.

Jeremy calls Anna and leaves what sounds like a multiple of messages. Jenna overhears him and asks about Anna, because Jenna likes her. John pops in and also asks about Anna, but Jeremy doesn’t want to talk to him. John complains about nobody wanting to talk to him anymore. Well, don’t be an asshole, John, and people might like you.

Damon is… in an apartment? that he must own, because Isobel shows up as he’s “losing” strip poker with a rando. Oh, it’s Isobel’s house, that was the girl she picked up in Brooklyn. There’s a lot of stalking and aggressive flirting that isn’t flirting.

Katharine wants the device, not Isobel, and Katharine won’t be crossed. Isobel is just a messenger. But bad news: Damon believes in killing messengers. And Isobel went after Elena, which was clearly a mistake. If Katharine wants something from him, she’d better show up herself and let him know.

Bonnie shows up at Elena’s because she feels bad about not comforting Elena at The Grill. They’re friends, and if Elena needs her, Bonnie is here. She’s sorry she couldn’t show that YESTERDAY.

Not exactly the best fit, but I’m just impressed they gave us some sense of time, no matter how nebulous it might be. I was beginning to think it really was just some alternate dimension where time has no meaning.

Elena says she met her birth mom, and then Bonnie hugs her.

Tyler tries to apologize to Matt at float building.

Elena meets Bonnie at school, so I hope this is a different day, but again… [insert ICP here]. Anyway, Bonn has Emily’s grimoire. It’s got all the inventions in it: the compass, rings, and whatever Katharine’s looking for. John Gilbert didn’t invent anything: Emily put magic in all of them to make them work. The device Katharine wants is more than one piece, though Damon only has the one. They read the spell about it: it’s an anti-vampire weapon. Bonnie and Elena seem confused as to why Katharine would want it, but, uhhhhhhhhhhh - vampire? She wants to kill other vampires, obviously.

Elena goes to the float building to find Stefan, but runs into Jeremy looking for Anna instead. She says she hasn’t seen her, and Jeremy says she’s lying, because she always lies to him. He knows that she knows about vampires, and he knows about vampires, so where the fuck is Anna? Elena still hasn’t seen her, but Jeremy stalks off without believing that.

Elena can’t go after him, though, because Isobel shows up. Amazing, how these vamps are literally never wearing sunglasses. I wear sunglasses indoors and at night, but sure, I guess all this magic making them daywalkers could also make them impervious to how bright the motherfucking sun is. (I have three different sets of sunglasses - full strength for most of the time, half strength for rain and cloudy days, and yellow for night, because of those LED lights that no one points properly that fuckin’ blind everyone else on the road.)

Isobel threatens Elena by talking about being more involved in Elena’s life - she points out Bonnie and Caroline and Matt and Jeremy and blah blah blah. Do what I want or I kill the people you love. She demonstrates by injuring Matt a little, and then apparently kidnaps Jeremy? Well, she says she’ll kill him, and Elena whips around and can’t see him anymore, so that’s the inference we’re supposed to make.

Tyler is driving Matt to the hospital, because an ambulance will be 20 minutes and cost $5,000.

Isobel goes home to John. Oh, she did kidnap Jeremy! look at that. John’s pissed. He thinks she won’t kill a kid, but come on, dude. He asks for the “old Isobel”, but that seems a losing proposition. And it is. Her sex lackeys attack John and she takes his invincibility ring.

Bonnie, Stefan, and Elena try to convince Damon to turn the device over. Bonnie says she can remove the original spell, making it useless. John and Isobel won’t know. Damon says no, he’ll rescue Jeremy himself. Stefan points out the problems with that, so Damon turns to questioning Bonnie’s powers. She shows off with a little parlor trick of telekinesis, and they jabber some more, but ultimately, Damon gives up the device.

Locked up at Isobel’s, John shares some exposition with Jeremy. Tells him about the device, that the vamps want it to take vengeance on Mystic Falls. Why would a vampire help John kill vampires? says Jeremy, like human beings aren’t constantly sniping at each other 25/8. (There’s too much to fit in a normal week, we added shit just to fuck with each other more.) John tells Jeremy that’s why his parents were killed: because of all the vampire shit.

And I know, you’re gonna be all, “Cate, why would an immortal being continue such petty rivalries?” and if that’s your question, sweetie, I need you to read some novels. Vampires are nothing but petty. They’re just humans with fangs. You think they’re going to therapy and doing the work?

Final ten minutes!

Bonnie takes the device apart and unspells it, which involves a lot of handwaving and not much else.

Elena meets Isobel to hand it over, but she wants Jeremy first. Isobel says it isn’t a negotiation, but honestly, of course it is. Everything is.

Oh, Jeremy and John are back home. John “hit his head”, and Jenna’s cleaning it up. Hey, when do we bring Jenna in on all this? Don’t we think she should know? Especially after all that Logan ghosting mess, it might be nice for her to know that the town’s overrun with fangs and it’s not her.

Elena says that Isobel never intended to hurt Jeremy. Isobel says she intended to kill him. Elena can’t be looking for redeeming qualities in Isobel; there aren’t any. I beg to differ, but my standards are very different.

Isobel says she knew Damon would give up the device because he’s “in love” with Elena, but I don’t think that’s true. I think the show writers can’t figure out any other reason Damon would feel kindly toward her, but they can be friends. They can be sibling-like. Damon’s kind of her brother-in-law, y’know? I always feel sorry for people who seem to think romantic love is the only reason for kindness or care. Their lives must be very bleak.

Elena thanks Isobel for being a disappointment, so she can remember her real mother perfectly. Isobel warns her that as long as she’s in with the Salvatores, she’s fucked. Katharine was smart enough to get out, but “we all know you aren’t Katharine.” I haven’t seen your titties once!

Isobel leaves, Stefan hugs Elena, Damon looks on in what we’re supposed to interpret as romantic longing, but I hate it, I refuse.

Elena wants to talk to Jeremy about everything, but he’s rightfully pissed about Damon erasing his memories. (“For good”, remember that? when Damon thought he brain damaged Jeremy so much he’d never remember? Ah, good times!)

Jeremy still can’t get hold of Anna.

Isobel says goodbye to Alaric, saying she’s leaving. They fight a little, obviously. She’s a different person, what did he think he’d find, he throws his ring and his vervain at her, daring her to kill him. He doesn’t think she wanted to be a vampire, and she says she did - but she’ll regret it forever.

Anna finally turns up at Jeremy’s to tell him Pearl and Harper are dead.

Stefan threatens Damon about Elena. Yawn. But then at the end, he puts together something I missed: John is Elena’s dad. Isobel dated him when she was 15, she ended up in his brother’s office, she’s still working with him now… Damn, Damon, you’re good. I missed all of that!

Stefan asks him what proof he has, and he says that’s for John, Elena, and Maury Povich to deal with.

Isobel is, apparently, actually leaving. She calls John and tells him that what he’s looking for is on his doorstep (his ring and the device) and that he’d better not screw up. Katharine wants all the raveyard vamps dead, and Isobel is adding two to the list: The Salvatores. Duh. Isobel doesn’t “want this life for her”, meaning Elena. “She’s our daughter, John,” she says, more to inform the audience than to admonish him.

Caroline meets Bonnie at the grill in our literal last minute. She wants Bonnie to tell her what’s going on between her and Elena. Bonnie says she “did something bad”. To Elena. She pretended to do something that she couldn’t really do - that Grams wouldn’t have done, so she didn’t do it. But when Elena finds out….

Friday’s our finale, y’all! Bonnie not disenchanting the device will come up, I hope! As will Elena’s parentage! And I hope Katharine shows up! I do not want to have to hear about this bitch for another 22 episodes, tell you what.

Till Friday!

[fabdante]

From Netflix's "The Sandman", season 1, episode 10, "Lost Hearts":

Dream of the Endless, to a convention full of serial killers:

"You have sustained fantasies in which you are the victims, confident daydreams in which you are always right. But no more. The dream is over. I have taken it away, for this is my judgment upon you. That you shall know from this moment exactly how craven and selfish and monstrous you are. That you shall feel the pain of those you have slaughtered, and the grief of those that mourn them still. And you shall carry that pain and grief and guilt with you until the end of time."

Just. Something like this, but with Kat and Vergil. If you wanna play around with giving her powers over dreams (like Morpheus/Dream of the Endless), then that could include stripping away dreams, too. Including self delusions/"dreams" that a person tells themselves. About the world, about themselves, about their own motivations. About other people.

I feel like it could be a neat contrast to Vergil's scenes in Downfall with the Hollows- instead of hearing his (Vergil's) own worst fears and justifications and power hungry bullshit, Kat and Dante (and maybe Eva, too?) could chime in with their counter arguments.

Just... Something like that, Idk. Not sure what to do with this concept, I just thought I'd share. Morpheus' powers over dreams and nightmares are Neat.

Other cool dream powers for Kat, from Morpheus: You might have to look these up in the comics wiki or something, but "Eternal Waking" and "Eternal Sleep" are good ones. "Eternal Sleep" is just, what it says on the tin: the victim sleeps the rest of their life away, but in their mind, nightmares and dreams are free to run rampant. Not as bad as the next one- but its still a terrible thing, to never really get to live your life, to grow up. To grow old, to meet new, REAL people.

"Eternal Waking" is a bit nastier. You know those dreams- or nightmares- where you think you've woken up, only it turns out you're just in another dream? It's like that, but over and over and over again, forever. (At least, until you die in the real world, and Death takes you.) And Morpheus made it so it was only nightmares. For years, in the real world. Which can be a lot, LOT longer in the dream world.

That could be fun to explore! We don't really know much of what happens with Kat's powers after the end of the game so there's a lot of wiggle room there!

That said, I don't even know if Kat necessarily needs dream powers to have that effect on Vergil. Particularly because we know how even his imaginings of what Kat's feeling have a big impact on him so actually talking to her and getting it from the horses mouth how she's feeling would probably have a big impact on him and cause him to waver a bit. He seems to care more about Kat's opinions on things then he does other peoples (both due to the fact he stops to listen to her at the end of the game and the whole thing in Downfall) so I do think just a conversation with her could cut through a lot of his bullshit on it's own asdfghjkl

I am all for giving Kat more powers though!

[padaviya]

Ugly, by

Sanobar Sabah

So I turned 43 on February 14th.

Contrary to popular opinion, being in your 40s isn’t as bad. It’s like climbing a mountain, reaching its peak and enjoying your victorious, hard-earned view from the top. It’s nothing short of breath-taking. You’re brimming with confidence, you’re aware of what works for you, what doesn’t; you know your likes and dislikes and by now, you’ve learnt to say no.

Picture of me clicked in February 2023

My insides hurt at the thought. Someone knocks at the door. I open it; shocked to find Ugly.

Ugly was an old friend - a friend I had a fallout with many moons ago. I thought I’d never see her again; Ugly was a closed chapter. Or so I thought...

My life flashes in front of me hauntingly, making me feel dizzy. The school exams that made me feel suicidal, jobs that paid well but made me feel worthless, nights spent crying, the number of times I was a disgrace as a mother, as a partner, the rolls of fat, the stretch marks all over my body, the skin-whitening creams that never worked, the mistakes that cost me my respect, my dignity...Urgh! How I despised Ugly!

​

Healing, they say, can be quite grieving. One regrets and mourns the time, energy and opportunities lost over the years. And then you suddenly find yourself racing against time because you want to make up for the past.

I chauffeur my kids from one playdate to another, hopping like an excited bunny, basking in their adorable little experiences that they innocently share with me. My heart swells with love. I change my career, study for a new degree, feeling like a brand-new kid. I have a new lease on life; I feel empowered. Eating healthy and working out for years has paid its dividends...

I binned the skin-whitening creams when I became a mother to a beautiful, brown baby girl; we enjoy our time on the beach together, hugging the sun for all the love and warmth it showers upon us. I make time for family and friends that matter and savour every quality time spent with them.

I’m running as fast as I can, as hard as I can. And yet, I lack peace. How many likes, views and approvals before the hunger in me feels satiated? When will the grotesque self-loathing go and why is it still there after all these years?

Turning 43 makes me feel drained; exhausted. Adulting was supposed to be my ticket to freedom. Freedom from school. Freedom from the pressures of grades. Freedom from having my life being choreographed by adults at all times. Freedom from society’s beauty standards set for women. Adulting wasn’t supposed to be hard. I did not sign up for this.

I find myself running out of breath just thinking about it. Dad passed away recently - he’s gone far beyond my reach. He was my loudest cheerleader. Mum’s slowed down - mentally and physically. She was the fast one, the quick thinker.

This wasn’t supposed to be.

Regressing against years of hard work, I’m spiralling downward into a self- sabotage mode. Sugar is my best friend these days; after calling off all my training sessions, I’ve gained back all the lost inches and some more. It’s as if I’m knowingly stalling my own progress, with a vengeance.

A prisoner, trapped in my own body.

Suddenly, I find my body covered with my mum’s scars! The scars she inherited from her mum. They gnaw deep into my skin - red and raw. How can that be?! I’ve tried so hard not to be my mum, not to make the same mistakes. How are we bearing the same scars?!

​

And, oh my god! Are these scars contagious?! Would I pass them on to my little girl too?!

​

Scrub! Scrub! Scrub! I must scrub the scars away quickly.  

My skin’s peeling off. I’m bruised - inside out. But the scars refuse to budge.

Nauseous, I want to howl for help.

Ugly watches me calmly from afar as if to say, “The scars are here to stay. No-one’s coming to save you from them.”

I want Ugly to shut up and go away. Please.  

But, what if Ugly’s speaking the truth? Is there really no-one coming to save me?

I want to collapse on the floor and cease to exist. The voices in my head are way too loud for me to bear.

I ask Ugly to sit anyway. I need closure.  

There’s awkward silence as we sit ourselves down.

Funnily enough though, soon Ugly makes me feel comfortable – just like good old friends do.

Ugly is my oversized pink and white striped shirt that I want to wear every day. Ugly is my baggy black, fleece-lined joggers

that have pockets in them and a tiny hole made by my cat’s claws.

Ugly is freedom from judgement.

What if Ugly’s earned a bad name simply for speaking the truth? The bitter, uncomfortable truth I’ve been running away from all my life?

I have so much to say to Ugly. But more importantly, I want to listen to Ugly.

I let Ugly hold my hand. Maybe, just maybe, I could give Ugly a chance.

Besides, I don’t owe the world pretty.

Ugly asks me to visit the top of the mountain again and soak in the stunning view. I’ve made it so far; I’ve been so brave. It’s time I own it and allow myself a break.

Perhaps the scars don’t need to remain hidden anymore. The scars, passed down from generations before me, have shaped me for who I’ve become. Why erase them?

​

What am I running away from? And how long will I keep running like mad?

​

Ugly suggests I need to stop trying so hard and slow down a bit.  

“You can’t rush destiny,” Ugly says, warmly.  

I feel a slight smile lighting up my face. I’m breathing better.

Ugly makes me want to put on my reading glasses and type my heart away on my laptop - with my legs folded - in my baggy, black joggers.

[scarlett-vixen]

Hi Kat, for the 200 follower event, if you haven't filled the prompt already (because I just saw your post!) Could you may be do E-Excited with Lucifer? And fluff for sure!

@delphi-dreamin

I’m so glad I got one more Lucifer request out of this event 💖 he deserves love too. This takes place after your first year in the Devildom/the start of your second, I went off rail from canon and made my own. Also it may come off a little angsty but I didn’t mean it that way lol.

Prompt: E - Excited

Pairing: Lucifer x gn!reader

Genre: Fluff

Your arrival to the Devildom had been eventful to say the least, you came in and flipped the lives of seven demons completely upside down in the best way, you opened doors that had been sealed off for years (literally and figuratively), you brought laughter and happiness back to the House of Lamentation.

Your departure had been bittersweet. Each brother mourning the end of your stay, each recalling their fondest memories with you, and each one wishing you well on your journey home. All but one.

Lucifer had been a large part of your stay and yet he felt the weakest connection to you. It was his own fault really, always up to his neck in paperwork while you and his brothers messed around. At least that’s what he told himself.

The truth was that Lucifer had been afraid to get close to you. He saw how quickly you changed his brothers for the better, how happy they were, how well they all got along now. He wanted that also but felt he didn’t deserve it, his duty was to watch over and protect the exchange student, not become friends or more with them.

Now he was stuck with his memories of you, memories that involved everyone but him it seemed. The only ones that were just you and him were of you signing documents or the few times he lashed out at you. The guilt mixed with his longing made him nauseous, you probably saw him as a stuck up monster and he couldn’t blame you.

Diavolo had summoned him to the Demon Lord’s castle for another meeting about the upcoming RAD year, needing to set a schedule for events and go over plans for the student council ahead of time.

The Avatar of Pride arrived at the castle on time but was informed that:

“The young Master is running late, he lost track of time playing a new game your brother introduced him to and forgot about the meeting.”

Lucifer rolled his eyes and thanked Barbatos, he’d have to remember to scold Levi for distracting the prince. Left alone in the massive hallway outside Diavolo’s office, Lucifer began to admire the dozens of paintings lining the walls.

His eyes stopped on the newest addition hanging directly across from the office doors. The first born wandered over to the painting almost entranced by its contents.

Before the end of your first year Diavolo had requested a group portrait of the exchange students along with the council, the long drawn out argument of who stood next to you still vivid in Lucifer’s mind. In the end, to avoid any accidental summoning or fights breaking out, a quick photo had been taken and then turned into the now massive painting before him.

Though the painting held twelve faces, the only one that stood out to Lucifer was yours. Seated in the center of the painting between Simeon and Solomon, even through an oil painting you seemed radiant and full of life. His heart swelled at the sight of your smile, it almost felt like you were here with him.

“I regret not getting to know you better,” The words leaving Lucifer’s lips on impulse “I spent too much time paying attention to insignificant details when I should have paid more attention to you.”

You looked absolutely perfect in your uniform, though you mentioned several times off hand how you hated the way it looked on you. Lucifer always thought it was odd how you complained about your self, you were absolutely stunning regardless of the occasion.

The only silver lining in your departure was Lucifer had managed to secure a pact with you before leaving, his mark forever on you wherever you went. Though he wished he himself could be there instead.

“If I had a second chance to do it all over again I would,” the first born felt his cheeks warm “but this time I would dedicate myself to you.”

“Well, here’s your chance Morningstar.”

Lucifer turned sharply, ready to destroy whoever dared to impersonate your voice, only to be met by you standing rather close behind him. It took a few minutes for his brain to register that you were in fact standing there, a sly smirk on your face with arms crossed, and not a figment of his imagination.

“How long have—”

“Long enough to know that you missed me deeply!” You teased.

“I don’t understand, how are you here?” A smile taking over as his cheeks continued to turn pink.

“Diavolo reached out and asked if we would like a second year in the exchange program, I decided I missed you idiots enough to come back, so here I am.” You paused for a moment, taking in the view of a rather flustered Avatar of Pride, before hugging him.

Lucifer was still stunned at your appearance but felt a wave of relief wash over him as your arms wrapped around him. He would expect this level of affection from you towards his brothers, but to have it for himself was dreamlike. Maybe it was just the forming of your pact but Lucifer felt as if your bond had grown significantly even with your absence.

“I’m excited to be back for another year!” You chimed. Lucifer quickly thanked Diavolo in his mind for giving him another chance at this, he started to think of ways to show you how much he missed your presence. He wrapped his arms around you gently and gave a soft chuckle.

“As am I.”

[naruhearts]

I’m done keeping my composure.

Sorry, this will be a LOADED post! (And I’ll be repeating the points others have made)

for real, to everyone being nasty and telling heartbroken fans that “Dean was always supposed to die get a grip you’re just butthurt etcetera etcetera—” F you royally.

How dare you police the brutal feelings that’s been embroiling us since the Finale That Must Not Be Named aired. 

The show you think you all watched, the show you all believe was the same SPN from Season 1-4, changed at some point. Kripke wrote his original vision, put it to screen, saw it through in S5 as he intended, and closed the door on that era.

In 2008, Supernatural was adopted and inherited. As you know, there was a supreme paradigm shift post-Kripke era. The show FLOURISHED (we won’t talk about Gamble thanks). It evolved, transformed, grew beyond trauma-induced self-worthlessness and toxic masculinity and endless death and hegemonic social ideals and conservatism and repressive anti-revolutionary ideas. Castiel, the iconic favourite and beloved staple of the series portrayed by Misha Collins, was introduced in Season 4 as the core lead character, and he ushered in a brand new era of Christian mythos that SPN took advantage of. Longevity SKYROCKETED. Audiences were INTERESTED. SPN amassed an incredibly groundbreaking fanbase infused by non-nuclear principles. A massive subversive wave began, fighting the Status Quo of the times since 2008. It’s precisely why such an abysmal ending to a show of extensive Freud-Jungian metanarratively meta META complex stature and social POWER will render us totally and unbearably broken for years to come.

Point is, DEAN WINCHESTER NO LONGER WANTED TO DIE. HE WANTED TO LIVE. HE WANTED TO SIT ON THE BEACH, PLUNGE HIS TOES IN THE SAND, AND SIP UMBRELLA DRINKS WITH HIS BROTHER AND HIS BEST FRIEND. He said this in Season 13. And then, a season later, he told the ghost of his long-deceased father — the source of his deep-running trauma and the figure of self-reductive authoritarianism permeating his arc since Season 1 — after being questioned why he didn’t pursue the Nuclear Fam, that he already has his own: his brother Sam, his adopted child Jack, and Cas.

Dean’s best friend Cas. Oh god, Cas, who made his inevitably permanent mark on Dean’s soul beyond allyship. Castiel, renamed to Cas, God’s -iel removed by Dean. Dean, the human spark that lit the fire of pre-existing autonomy in the inherently rebellious angel who was, this entire time, the catalyst for free will in God The Writer’s puppet show. Their friendship set on goddamn fire. I can also write paragraph upon paragraph about my love for Cas while devastated tears stream down my face, but I digress—

Cas’ romantic love for Dean pushed our main Heart of SPN to love himself. Love is free will. Free will is also love. Of note, Cas’ love confession in 15x18 was supposed to offset something so vastly important and fundamental...to maybe (read: most likely) pull the trigger on SELF-TRUTHS in conjunction with free will. And The Great Anticipated Follow-Up to the episode penned by the passionate Berens should have included (read: seemed like it was going to be) Dean, closeted trauma survivor in love with his best friend, being given the opportunity to do it right: to SPEAK HIS TRUTH, and then that very singular opportunity was STOLEN so grossly. After poring over it for days, I refuse to believe we made their years-long story up out of thin air, spun it out of fantastical-delusional dream cotton candy, because we DIDN’T. IT WAS REAL.

As I said in another post: “I’ve just been feeling physically ill for the past >40 something hours with the terrible knowledge that 19/20 undid years of vital progression towards healthy interdependence, autonomy, and a positive endgame, where Sam, Dean and Cas close the ring of found family in final empowering self-fulfillment...where Dean, no longer repressed and set free, is able to use his words and speak his truth as a queercoded trauma survivor, henceforth confirming and self-affirming his own bisexuality since S1 by reciprocating — by telling Cas that he always loved him, too, loved him endlessly, which would have altogether divested Supernatural of its cult status and catapulted it into global worldwide significance as the longest running sci-fi genre show in American broadcasting history that actually dared to defy and, by proxy, empower LGBTQ2IA+ everywhere who found profound personal meaning in Destiel through VALIDATION,” — found themselves mirrored in Dean and Cas’ respective character journeys individually and as each other’s queer love interests.

THIS IS WHY DEAN WASN’T MEANT TO DIE.

THEY WERE SO ESSENTIAL, NOT JUST TO THE OVERARCHING STORY AND HEALTHY INTERPERSONAL THEMATICS OF MODERN SPN, BUT ALSO TO THE SOULS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE ACROSS THE WORLD WHO FOLLOWED THEIR JOURNEYS, HOPED FOR THEM, ASPIRED TO BE LIKE THEM, TREASURED THEM, WEEPED FOR THEM, AND FOUGHT FOR THEM, LIKE YOU AND ME.

Heck, how could anyone think Sam Winchester had a well-deserved characteristic ending? He didn’t. Dean’s brother was shafted so badly. He stopped hunting when seasons ago, he had canonically accepted that he no longer wanted an apple pie life. He simply...turned the lights off in a resoundingly empty bunker and left — abandoning his dead brother’s room — never to return (he did return later to get the Impala, family photos etc, I mean this symbolically)...as if — dare I say it — Supernatural itself eerily told us, in the negative-spaced pitch blackness, that the organic show and the wonderfully complex, matured characters we’ve grown to love weren’t going to survive or be revisited...that it was all going to perish, and that they no longer gave a single shit about their own show, which, to me, is the worst cardinal sin, because how dare they throw Team Free Will, an immovable and indomitable and passionate found family they built from the ground up, a found family CHOCK FULL TO THE BRIM OF LOVE AND LIFE RAGING AGAINST THE AUTHORITARIAN MACHINE IN ORDER TO ACHIEVE FREE WILL, under the bus no matter who is to blame. Growth was stomped on.

Then Sam married a faceless wife who wasn’t his textually established (and deaf) love interest Eileen, named his son Dean Jr., and grew old miserably, still mourning the passing of his older brother, shaken and sombre. Back to square one. IT WAS ALL ANTITHETICAL, even OUTSIDE a shipping context, and I ripped my hair out at this point in sheer disbelief.

This 15x20 ending would have fit somewhere between S4-7. Now? IT DOESN’T FIT. IT’S A JAGGED PUZZLE PIECE THAT DOESN’T BELONG ANYWHERE. IT’S THE FOREBODING UNKNOWN STRANGER IN ITS OWN LAND, BOTH LITERALLY AND FIGURATIVELY. This kind of ending was basically an illogical, unsound cluster of metastasized cells that, to me, ruined the viability of previous seasons to sustain bold praise and respect and dignity and rewatches and classic nostalgia in such insidious ways.

Dean Humanity Winchester and Cas, after everything they’ve been through, were silenced and lost in death, ripped apart from each other, unable to love each other the way they deserved, because of disappointing, vile incompetency and homophobia. The greatest love story ever told, again obliterated in less than 60 hollow minutes.

You know what this tells your audience, CW SPN? Death without self-growth is the way to go, and no one is allowed to forge their own path to freedom.

HOW INSULTINGLY HARMFUL IS THAT?

I don’t think I’ll ever stop grieving.

We all deserve answers.

[spectral-musette]

She touched his face, fingertips light along his temple, nails delicately scraping through the short beard on his cheeks, lingering on the cleft in his chin before resting on his mouth.

“I thought…” she began, but then choked on a soft sob as the tears began to run down her cheeks.

“I thought you would be angry,” he said instead, nuzzling his cheek against her hand and then kissing the palm.

“I am furious,” she assured him, tenderly. “I am incandescent with rage.” Her lips were against his, her breath uneven in his mouth.

Directly following the Deception arc (Clone Wars Season 4 episodes 15-18), Obi-Wan asks for Satine's forgiveness for letting her believe he was dead.

Just over 2000 words, M in AO3-style rating, probably part of a longer work if I can ever finish it and think of a title.

. . . . . . . . . .

Obi-Wan had not protested very much when Padme offered him the use of her family’s lakeside retreat in the aftermath of the attempted abduction of the Chancellor on Naboo. He had, however, expected a slightly more modest structure than the sprawling villa he’d found upon his arrival. Despite the droids on staff, the place seemed empty, hollow, as though it still echoed with the voices and laughter of a happy family. So fresh from his undercover work, he wasn’t sure isolation was the best remedy for his rumpled spirits after the ordeal, but arrangements had been made, and he supposed he could make the best of it for a few days.

In some ways, he was eager to leave Naboo. The memory of Qui-Gon’s death still cut like a keen-edged blade here. But perhaps that meant he should stay, to meditate on his old grief.

Painful as that prospect was, at least it sounded more surmountable than returning to a Temple that had been mourning him.

He’d have to, eventually. Anakin’s (justified) expression of betrayal and Ahsoka’s wounded demeanor still stung, and he didn’t look forward to repeating these painful scenes with other dear friends, with Luminara, or with Quinlan. But until the GAR red tape was untangled (at least a few days), he was still officially dead, and granted all the freedom of a wandering ghost.

He felt a little like the ghost of his old self after a quick swim as he climbed out of the lake onto the patio by the house. He sat heavily on the flagstones, still warm from the sun even as the stars were coming out. The constellations of Naboo seemed startlingly familiar considering the few times he’d seen them. The span of nearly 15 years felt short tonight. Perhaps it was the mere stubble of hair on his skull, shorter even than a padawan’s. Perhaps it was the ache of his old Master’s absence. He tried to ground himself in the present; as he toweled off his wet limbs, the ugly burn scars from his duel with Count Dooku shone pale in the moonlight, and his face still hurt from the dreadful biotech that had transformed him into the Mandalorian marksman.

It was always Mandalorians, wasn’t it? Proof that the Force possessed a sense of dramatic irony that the brethren of the woman to whom he’d lost his heart seemed to continually haunt him.

The guilt of it weighed like a stone on his chest. The mission had dragged on far too long for Satine not to have heard news of his apparent death. He had hoped it might all be resolved before… Well, it had been an unlikely hope, anyway. Padme almost certainly told her immediately.

There hadn’t been anything for it. To ask for permission to tell Satine the truth before the charade would’ve been tantamount to confessing his feelings for her. Had there only been the censure of the Council involved it might’ve been one thing, but any careless word to the Chancellor’s staff could’ve proven disastrous for Satine and the gossamer-fine line she walked to keep peace and authority on Mandalore. He’d been keeping her safe even as he wounded her.

Just like the old days, pulling her out of harm's way, or shielding her with his body.

Only this wasn’t an accidentally scraped knee or bruised arm. Perhaps it was vain of him to assume, but he knew how deeply she cared for him, how intense her feelings ran…

He’d tried composing a message to her so many times. Even still in the guise of Rako Hardeen, when he caught a moment’s rest, he’d gone over it in his mind, lulling himself into an uneasy sleep as he tried to find the words to ask her forgiveness.

In the end, a forthright Forgive me, was the best he could muster, hastily sent to her private channel as soon as he’d gotten access to a comm unit at the conclusion of the charade. If you’ll listen, I’ll try to explain, but nothing will excuse what I’ve put you through. Know that I am so very sorry.

She hadn’t replied. He checked the comm unit again as he pulled his undertunic over his head, the rough linen soaking up the last of the lake water on his back, seeing only his own message, stark and insufficient.

He didn’t blame her, truly.

He’d slept since sending it, through the afternoon, reveling a little in the luxury of resting when he felt tired, regardless of the local daytime cycles. And he dreamed in disjointed flashes, mostly of her… her grief, her melancholy, her ire… of the glint of tears on her dark gold eyelashes, the quaver of anger in her beloved voice.

He wasn’t sure if he ought to just sleep again, now that night was here. Weary as he was, he felt he could sleep for days.

He heard the door from the house to the patio open. He didn’t look immediately, as it seemed likely to be one of Padme’s droid caretakers, there to ask if he required food or clean linens. But there was no whirring of servos, and the footsteps on the flagstones sounded too soft. He caught a whiff of an achingly familiar floral scent just as he turned.

She must’ve been too much in his thoughts already, his mind too clouded with guilt and regret and weariness to clearly sense her presence.

But Satine stood, silhouetted by the dim illumination of the house, resplendent in the scarlet gown she’d worn the night they’d met in secret on Coruscant, though her hair was loose about her shoulders, pale and shimmering in the moonlight. For a moment she was utterly still, then she merely raised a hand to her mouth, stifling a soft gasp.

He scrambled to his feet, keenly aware that this was not the state in which he wished to appear before his lady. His trousers were still sopping, his undertunic open to the navel, and his hair had barely grown in longer than the stubble on his jaw. But her eyes were only on his, and shining with tears. She took a few steps towards him, then swayed a little. He lunged to catch her around the waist; the last thing she needed on top of all the rest of the suffering he’d caused her was bruised knees. She twined her arms around his neck, and his knees gave a slow surrender too, such that the pair of them sank to the flagstones, wrapped in each other’s arms.

She touched his face, fingertips light along his temple, nails delicately scraping through the short beard on his cheeks, lingering on the cleft in his chin before resting on his mouth.

“I thought…” she began, but then choked on a soft sob as the tears began to run down her cheeks.

“I thought you would be angry,” he said instead, nuzzling his cheek against her hand and then kissing the palm.

“I am furious,” she assured him, tenderly. “I am incandescent with rage.” Her lips were against his, her breath uneven in his mouth.

He tasted it in her kiss, a fleeting note of bitterness and sorrow amid the heady sweetness of her relief and joy, the fire of her desire.

“I am so very sorry,” he repeated, abject.

“Oh, I hope so,” she replied, breathless.

As usual, Satine had the last word, as neither of them could speak for some time after that.

. . . . . . . . . .

She lay on her side, half propped up on her elbow, her head against the pillow and her hair spread across it in a tangle of pale spun gold. The bedclothes were pooled around her waist, and he deeply felt the intimacy and vulnerability they shared in that moment. He thought this image of her would be vivid in his mind for the rest of his days, however long that might be: the pale morning light on her bare skin, her flushed cheeks, the glint of unshed tears in her eyes, the soft swell of her breasts with her sharp, uneven breaths as she tried not to cry again.

Finished with his abridged account of the awful ordeal, he reached out to run the backs of his fingers along her arm.

“Say something,” he begged.

She sat up a little more, her hair falling across her face as she wrapped her arms around herself and turned away from him.

“It might be… easier to accept, if you’d done it for the sake of someone … worthy of all this pain. To protect Anakin or Ahsoka or Padme or…”

“Satine, I can’t decline a mission to protect the Chancellor simply because I dislike the man.”

“It isn’t a matter of dislike. There’s something… so… wicked about him. Manipulative and scheming. Don’t say it’s because he tried to put troops on Mandalore, and don’t you dare say it’s because he’s a politician.” She turned back to him, her gaze challenging.

“No,” he agreed prudently. “I won’t say that. I don’t disagree with you. He’s been a mentor to Anakin and to Padme for as long as I’ve known him, but I can’t help thinking it’s always been somehow for his own benefit. He steered Padme to get himself elected in the first place, and his grip on the office has been white-knuckled since. I can’t very well blame him for the war, but despite his lipservice towards peaceful resolution, the GAR keeps swelling its ranks.”

“I’ll blame him. Unfortunately, there’s no evidence to confirm it aside from my gut feeling.”

He placed a hand on her waist, his thumb tracing around her navel. “I’ve learned to trust your gut feelings. But dislike him, distrust him or not, my duty is to the Republic.”

He started to pull his arm back, but she gripped it by the elbow. He slid his hand to the small of her back, pulling her closer.

“What of your duty to me?” Her voice was quiet, but not without a note of beskar.

“Is it duty?” he asked. “I thought it was love.”

“Perhaps it’s very Mandalorian of me,” she said, “that we hold our most sacred duties to be to those we love.”

“Satine, I cannot put my devotion to you above the will of the Council or the good of the Republic. Not while I serve the Jedi Order.”

He almost expected her to pull away in anger or distress, but she shifted closer, pressing her face against his shoulder. “I know that. I’ve always known that. But it hasn’t hurt like this before.”

“Not since I left?” he suggested, burying his face in her hair and holding her tightly.

“No. Not even then. It wasn’t losing you, it was letting you go. This was… like I had died too.”

The guilt of it made his stomach turn. “I am so sorry, Satine. If there had been time to find another way… to spare you this…”

“The worst of it is that you knew how it would hurt me,” she accused. “And you still did it.”

“I knew,” he confirmed, regretful. “The Chancellor insisted on knowing everyone who was privy to the plan, and I had no time to even find the opportunity to disobey. I thought… the risk of revealing that you should be told…”

She let out a breath, hot against his skin.

“I think I’d have much rather run that risk than think you were dead.”

“If I’d had time to think it through, perhaps I’d have decided differently. But everything was snap decisions, and my instinct was to protect you.”

“And I can’t even be angry at you for that.”

“Of course you can be angry,” he soothed.

“Oh, what good does it do?” she demanded, lifting her head, fair brow furrowed. “Just wasting time quarreling when we have so little time together anyway.”

“Then you forgive me?” he asked humbly, kissing her forehead.

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly, stroking his cheek. “I know that I still want you, though.”

“Then I am yours,” he promised, kissing her fingertips.

“At least it’s not an offense that’s very likely to be repeated,” she reflected, shaking her head a little.

“Not very,” he agreed.

“I feel like I ought to extract some promise… some penance. But I expect you’ve punished yourself enough.”

He closed his eyes, leaning his head back. “The thing itself was terrible too. Not that I’m suggesting that what I went through can compare to-”

“Hush, darling,” she scolded. “It can be terrible on its own.”

“Sometimes I thought my death might end up not being a lie after all,” he said softly.

“Do you want to tell me?” she asked, her fingertips light across his brow.

He shook his head. No, he didn’t want to see how it would pain her, to think of him in danger, forced to behave as an utter villain. “Not now. Not more than I already have.”

She kissed him then, deep and ardent. “Then forget, for a while,” she said, breathless, her lips still brushing his. “Let me forget again. Make me forget.”

She hitched her leg around him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders as he shifted onto her, into the blissful oblivion where she was the center of the universe and the Force sang in resonance with their love.

[dreaminginvelaris]

A Response to a Feyre Anti

I made a post recently explaining the dread of having to watch Feyre be abused by her sisters and father, in the Tv adaption. And a Feyre anti made a response, to something that should not be criticized at all considering what I said was just the truth? Feyre was abused. Not only that but they went on and completely twisted the narrative to fit their own ideas and in the process made Feyre out to be cruel and Nesta a saint. complete bull.

I will not be tagging the anti bc they have me blocked (shocker), but also I do not want anyone to go after them, if you come across the post, I don't want it to be through me. it's as much respect I can give to them.

I usually do not respond to those who have something to say with a post of mine or are blatantly talking about me on their blog, unless they're just spreading absolute lies about me or what i "said", it's usually a waste of time to do so. but this post attacked Feyre with outrageous lies and a complete backward interpretation of what actually happened in acotar, so as respectful as I can be, I will be analyzing the anti-response and what truly happened in acotar.

"the audience will only see two sisters fighting-not abuse" "it’s not Nesta you need to worry about. It’s audiences calling Feyre a big dumbass and a bitch" -from anti

if the audience has basic human compassion and empathy for humans IRL or fictional, they will see what's obvious from the start. Feyres abuse. how is it going to look, when they see Feyre walking through the woods, shaking from the cold, starving from hunger, and struggling to find food for her family? only to later see Nesta's treatment of Feyre?"

in the anti's post, they said Feyre was just as "heinous" to Nesta.

is Feyre the one calling Nesta a pig? a smelly pig? ordering her to take her clothes off?

no, it's not, it's dear Nesta. the text goes as "I took my time, swallowing the words I wanted to bark at her" oh yes... how cruel of Feyre. how heinous of Feyre to...stay quiet... at the verbal abuse.

in the same image we see Feyre ask Nesta to do something (kindly might I add) and then inquire why she didn't chop wood like she needs to.

what does Nesta do? acts like a brat and insults Feyre...once again.

considering I'm going off by the story and not the actual screenplay, and assuming they stay true to the story; will the audience not be disgusted by Nesta's behavior? I mean they just saw Feyre struggle to find food and they expect Feyre to go home to a family happy and appreciative of Feyre but instead, they get this familial abuse.

the anti said Feyre basically tells Nesta this:

"If you keep bitching at everyone like this no one will want to be around you or you can’t marry this guy because you’re a waste of space to me"

but what do we see?

"Believe me... the day you want to marry someone worthy, I'll march up to his house and hand you over. But you're not going to marry Tomas."

the word worthy, did that not catch your eye? Feyre said Nesta will have to marry someone worthy, someone, who will treat Nesta kindly and give her the life Feyre thinks her sisters deserve. bc Feyre does think that IDK why anti feyres think Feyre despised Nesta so much, Feyre loved her sisters.

what the anti fails to realize here is that Nesta marrying Tomas would have been actually pretty great for Feyre. in the sense that, Feyre would no longer carry the burden of her sister. Feyre would not have to worry about feeding one more mouth. or worrying about Nesta's constant stealing of Feyre's money. Feyre does not think Nesta is a "waste of space" to her, if she did, it would have been easy for Feyre to discard Nesta, and allow her to marry Tomas. the anti has that twisted.

but that is not even the worst part of the scene. did you see the shameless slut-shaming that came out of Nesta's mouth? how will the audience take to that? do you think most of the younger generation will take it lightly to see a sister slut-shame a sister? a woman putting down another woman? in this social climate? where the feminism movement is alive and flourishing. will they be okay with it? will they still blame Feyre and be mad at her the way the anti says they will be? I hope not otherwise I'm losing faith in humanity.

Lovely words Nesta spews at Feyre. I admit Feyre should have told her then and there that Tomas is abusive. but let's think: Feyre is 19 years old, the youngest, has never had any raising by a parental figure, has been neglected by her whole family, where would Feyre learn to calmly talk to an overgrown brat like Nesta? Feyre telling Nesta who Tomas truly is the duty of a parent, not a sister. I will not condemn Feyre for not knowing that was the perfect time to tell Nesta who Tomas is. especially when Feyre is being tormented and verbally/emotionally abused, its kinda hard to think about something else while you're being told all these horrible words. to us its easy to see where Feyre went wrong but unless you're in the exact position Feyre was in. no one has any room to talk. and even then, every person is different in situations like these.

this part was me analyzing the interactions between Feyre and Nesta since anti had reasons to believe Feyre was just as bad to Nesta and that the audience would see that and hate Feyre. I am now going to respond to the second part of the Feyre Anti's response.

"How will an audience of non-fans react to her not reaching out to her family to tell them she was okay after the reconciliation between her and Nesta? Or not inviting them to the wedding?"- from anti

moving onto acomaf now.

Idk maybe the audience will see Feyre, a depressed, lonely, individual in an abusive relationship while being manipulated by other individuals she called friends, and understand and empathize with her. all throughout the beginning and half of acomaf, Feyre is in critical depression. she wholeheartedly believes she should not be alive. that she is not worthy. she doesn't eat, all she does is sleep, self-care is not important to her or others so why would letting a family know she's okay, a family who BARELY ever cared about her, be a priority? it doesn't seem like Nesta or elain or her father was really fazed by Feyre's lack of communication. her father left on a trip, elain got engaged and Nesta, well we didn't see a tearful welcoming to Feyre on Nesta's part did we?

anti, where is the outcry of her "family" not even really caring if Feyre was safe or not, of what happened to her? it's not like they thought she had died, otherwise, where was the mourning or funeral? no, they just didn't care.

see this is where I know when anti is just full of bullshit. why, WHY, would Feyre invite her family to wedding full of fae? the creatures elain and Nesta fear and hate? for all the talk many anti's spew about Feyre being inconsiderate to Nesta, to her family, you would think Feyre maybe just knows a fae wedding would be the last thing they would want? even then, does Feyre owe them an invitation to her wedding? does she owe them an update on her life? nope. Feyre owed them nothing.

"How about her shit-talking Nesta to a bunch of strangers then having the audacity to ask her to get involved in a war. Oh! This is after she comes into her house and insults their hospitality." - from anti

I hardly think Feyre confiding in individuals who she learned to care about and laying out all the trauma Feyre endured with her family is "shit-talking" but for argument's sake, let's say it is. I still don't see what's wrong? after years of pent-up anger and hurt, would you not let go of everything you withheld inside and explain what was done to you? how you felt? Feyre telling the IC her life story, which contains Nesta's abuse and her family's neglect, was a form of therapy for Feyre. I never read a line where Feyre calls Nesta a "cold-hearted bitch" or called elain "a lazy ditz" she just said the truth. no added embellishments. Cassian was the one who shit-talked Nesta during the dinner scene, never Feyre.

I still don't understand why antis are so against Feyre asking her sisters for help? like the war didn't involve them? they're humans, and you know what the war was about? Hybern wanting to take control of the human lands like they once did and turn them into slaves. those humans included Nesta and elain.

"They could have left the continent" correct, except elain was engaged and refused to leave Grayson. which meant Nesta refused to leave elain. but even so, isn't it the duty of humans to band together and work to overthrow a race of people who want to torture and keep them as slaves? the queens certainly weren't doing their jobs. Feyre asked to use "their" house to meet the queens bc where else would they do it? the queens trust the fae less than Nesta or elain did. but even so, Feyre asking to use their house was a courtesy, that house is rightfully Feyre's. she is the one who sacrificed herself to leave with Tamlin. she did it bravely, courageously, and they got that house thanks to her. they owed Feyre everything. and the only one who acknowledged that was Elain.

that war involved elain and Nesta whether they or Feyre or the anti's liked it or not. not even considering that Nesta and elain are Feyre Archerons sisters, yeah, their family name alone puts a target on their back.

How did Feyre or the court insult Elain's and Nesta's hospitality? You mean when Feyre realized human food differed from fae food? something she did not know about bc she's barely been turned to fae and only had eaten fae dishes? Feyre's grimace towards the human food was an involuntary reaction to someone who is still learning their new body. or was it when Cassian called out Nesta for her cold treatment towards Feyre? if that's the case then fuck decency, I would call out a fake bitch in my presence from minute one. you cant call what Nesta did "hospitality" when all she did was insult Feyre when she didn't even care that Feyre had died, or lost her love bc of abuse, or that her body was changed against her will.

hospitality: the friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers.

did y'all read something different bc this for sure was nothing Nesta gave to her guests?

----

the rest of the anti post moves towards Rhysand and his actions UTM which I won't go into because I'm mainly just addressing the false interpretations this anti had to say about Feyre and her family.

I'm not sure how to sign off now lol, but I guess just that I hope this was enough to show how this anti's arguments were completely ludicrous and have absolutely no compassion for Feyre, and instead all the compassion for Feyre's abusers. This anti had a real spin on what the actual story was, and I hope the evidence I provided was enough to show that. Anyways yeah my brain is fried, and I'm done arguing with Feyre anti's for a while now, I need to go praise my queen Feyre so I can receive some semblance of peace.

anyways, stan Feyre for clear skin xx