#stars why am i narcissistic enough to see everyone as worse than me but not enough to not notice my flaws

[blueflyingturtleontheway]

Don't you think it's a bit sad how socially if you're bad at something or something doesn't go your way you can talk about it freely and everyone is sympathetic and when something finally goes right everyone cheers

But if things usually go well for you you're supposed to shut up about it lest it sounds like you're bragging or trying to make others feel miserable and when something finally goes wrong everyone calls that "karma", is happy about your misfortune or tells you to suck it up because "everything else goes great for you why do you care"

I don't know I suppose I'm just a privileged whiny child that is upset that something isn't as good as she wanted it to be

[celticcrossanon]

I’m so sorry for the rant. I just needed to clear my head and got compelled to do it in your inbox. 🙇🏾‍♀️

Not a question just some thoughts. Sorry I’m spamming you so much. I just read your latest reading about the wanna be“tour” and all I can do is SMH. I think to some extent we saw this coming but they are dialing it up and expanding. Conscious humans would’ve called it quits by now. The Remembrance Day pap walk, Going to elementary schools, “donations”, writing letters like they are world leaders, etc. On one hand I can’t see this becoming much of a “thing”. I don’t think MM and Jarry will go on doing this for long unless they can get some Hollywood to pay attention and acknowledge them. I think another reason with the more public European Royals work so well in their media is because their countries are relatively small, like California and Texas are on the large side in comparison, am I right? So much can happen on one side of the country that I only hear of thanks to friends back in California. I can’t see these two visiting any farm in Montana as “royals” if ever. They got a Clinton and Perhaps more big names and “engagement” is to come (oh god 🤦🏾‍♀️) I’m sure they and the sugars are just loving it but it all looks, sounds and feels so incrediblly STUPID & ABSOLUTELY VAPID AND INSULTING. etc etc. I cannot stand entitled people and the fact that these two cut off, trashed, and demand from their own families for a fleeting moment in the spotlight is unfathomable. That’s a testimony to how strong narcissistic delusions can be. It must be the best high I could ever ask for. 🖤Im new to “Royal Watching” if you can call what I do ‘that’, so I don’t really care about all the other indiscretions. I don’t trust the media and I think it’s just the BRF turn in the hot sun to catch hell. See Andrew, see the Clintons and all the others. Whatever drama is going on with Charles, see the rest of big business. I’m a narcissistic abuse survivor and I still study on the disorder. Now here I am watching these two who make my skin craw, this train needs to SPEED UP . I think I’m just looking for a bit of JUSTICE in the world right now. Between this administration, COVID, my job and all my other drama (I’m sure we all have some, if not BLESS YOU and pass it on 🥺) I’m flabbergasted and a little sick in my stomach at watching yet another set of people be able to walk through life seemingly so unbothered. It’s like the world is closing in and I’m suffocating. 🖤Like, your telling me that just because he was born a Prince and she married him and found a way to have children they get to get away with all of this?. The entitlement, the lies, the forced Wokery, using heavy and important subjects like mental health and racism for a PR boost all just to get a⭐️ on the Hollywood walk of Fame? For a couple of royals they sure know how to dump cold water on ya, they are the epitome of LIFE ISNT FAIR. And I’m sure that all depends on perspective, for example; their sugars who must be going diabetic RN. THEY think they have suffered as well. Look at the Cambridge’s who have not put a foot out of place yet have to deal with these tantrums from all over their family. All families have drama and I can see how the Harkles and the rest could be a payback of the Firm and family as a whole. The Queen covered so much and never really saw that Henry and Andrew and god knows who else were set straight. Look what having so much privilege can do. But is there a limit, anywhere?🖤

🖤Anyways, another thought I had was, this could be the end for any thought of reunion. This Narcissist has worked her magic and this clueless tone deaf fool has really gone and done it. I was driving and I thought of Prince William and the entire remaining Windsors & Mountbatten Windsor’s and the whole Aristocracy cutting the Harkles off entirely because the BRF called a wrap (or had to) and the UK became a Republic after Her Majesty. MM get the privlage in her narcissistic head that she’s the last ever to become a Duchess, Cathrine wouldn’t become the Princess of Wales and it all came down in part because of her and Henry’s actions. Yes Andrew and whoever else aren’t helping but these two made it exceptionally difficult. I think they would take pride in that especially publicly but only when they are praised for it. I think the Cambridge’s would have an easier time with moving on with their family, free to live as they please with no pressure to serve the public. Cathrine can be “lazy”, sleep in, & raise her kids and Wills is free to🖕 the paps who would surely still follow them. A La “where are they now”. The two that would have it the worse are the Harkles as they last bit of what they had to separate them from the rest of Hollywood is gone, no more Royal sheen but they don’t have much now. It would be stupid to use the titles after an abolished monarchy but they’d do it and expose themselves further.🖤 If you made it this far, one last thing. I got cut off while driving. That’s not unusual in this Miami traffic and usually i ignore it but with my mental state I couldn’t help but to compare. it was a packed road and I just really wanted to know where the heck the fire was. Why did this person need to rush so much on a busy road that no one else mattered even though we all have somewhere to go? That’s how I feel about the Harkles. What’s the point, where are they going? They went to New England for Christ sake to play faux royalty, in more trashy outfits might I add. 🤦🏾‍♀️

I guess I do have a question, DOES THE WORLD REALLY BELONG TO THOSE WHO JUST Get UP AND TAKE IT?

Thanks for humoring me and providing this space. ✌🏾

Note: My apologies for this very long post, everyone. I can't put a page break in and the writer needs to let it all out. I am sure a lot of you will be feeling somewhat similar to them.

Reply under the cut, so this is not any longer

Hi april14vc,

You are welcome to rant here.

It sounds like you have a lot going on at the moment and it is all becoming a bit much to handle, as there is no relief anywhere. Is there something fun and relaxing that you can do for you sometime today, just to have a break from it all? I feel like you need to tune out for a bit and do something that is just for you.

I am so sorry that you suffered from narcissistic abuse, and so glad that you survived this. I think the Harkle shenanigans must hurt you in a more personal way than those of us who have never suffered under a narcissist. It is very hard to watch the Harkles seemingly get away with all their entitled abuse without any form of justice coming for them.

I think the Harkles are suffering. They usually are unable to get any sort of attention from the media unless they pay for it, and even then they don't trend - it is a 'blink and you miss it' situation. Look at what happened with Meghan's 40 for 40 program - it was dead in the water before the day was over, and she spent a fortune on PR for that. Compare that to the natural (not paid for) hype that surrounds anything that the BRF does, especially the Cambridges or HMTQ. That hype and attention is what Meghan wants, and she is not getting it.

What the Harkles are getting, and what they hate, is mockery. Look at the response to their Times 100 cover. Look at the comments on this pseudo-royal tour. They are a walking joke, and no narcissist would like that. They tried to cull all negative press while they were members of the BRF, were unsuccessful in stemming all of it, and now have no clout at all to stop any negative media attention. The Harkles may live in a delusion of success, but to the vast majority of people they are no more than very risible z-list celebrities.

The Harkles also have serious money troubles. They may be ignoring them, but those debts will have to be paid, one way or another.

What we are seeing now is the slow slide of the Harkles into obscurity, and their desperate attempts to reverse the process, which never work. They are no more popular and wanted now than they were at the time of Megxit, and in fact their popularity has declined since those days. They may look like they are winning, but it is all an illusion, caused by the amounts of money they are prepared to pay to give the illusion of wealth and star-quality celebrity. The paid for events happen, and then nothing. The paid for PR happens, and then nothing. Their slide downwards continues, and nothing that they do is reversing it.

Yes, at the moment they are on a high and beaming put of every report on their activities. Wait a week and then see where they are. This is like the Oprah interview all over again.

My next reading is going to be on the consequences of this pseudo-royal tour for the Harkles, so maybe there will be some justice for you there.

Edited to add: As for taking down the monarchy, I can't see that happening. For starters, the British government would have to put the matter to the people for a vote, and even if they are insane enough to do that, I can't see the British public voting to remove a beloved Queen because of the antics of two people who are despised that that country. The logistics of replacing the monarchy are also staggering - you have to rework the entire government of not just Great Britain, but of all the commonwealth realms who have HMTQ as Head of State, and that is not an easy task or a light undertaking. In addition, those Commonwealth Realms can keep HM as their head of state even if she is ejected by the British people (which would never happen, but I am stretching the bounds of probability here). After HMTQ comes Charles, who will have a short reign simply because of his age and health, and then William will be king, and he is also loved by the British public. I just can not see all that thrown away for the Harkles, who are rightly hated by the British public.

[dynamics-of-an-asteroid]

Dont suppose you have a copy of the interview you could share?

For you, dear anon~

His Dark Materials: Andrew Scott on life after Fleabag and Sherlock

We’ve loved him as both Fleabag’s Hot Priest and Sherlock’s menacing Moriarty. Now, he’s back on our screens in the new series of His Dark Materials. Polly Vernon talks to our TV crush

Andrew Scott is mortified. The actor – formerly Moriarty to Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock, then the Hot Priest of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag, imminently Colonel John Parry in the BBC’s adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials – arrives at the photographic studio, bang on the appointed hour, in a fawn cashmere cardigan with a fine gold chain around his neck, bemoaning “this terrible, terrible eye infection, which is making me so self-conscious. I’m so sorry. It isn’t that you’ve massively upset me before we’ve even started. It’s so annoying. But anyway…”

Scott, 44, is small, vivid, wiry and garrulously Irish, with a face that is not handsome so much as mesmerising, intense, sharply boned, symmetrical, startlingly expressive. Sequences of emotions so subtle and complicated that I can’t begin to identify or keep up with them ruffle his brow from moment to moment. And, yup, the whole thing is rather disrupted by his left eye. This is no light kiss of conjunctivitis. It’s a swollen, red, perma-weeping situation that engulfs the whole socket. Scott turns his face two thirds on to me, so the infection is largely hidden, which would probably help if we weren’t sitting in a brightly lit hair and make-up room with a massive, inescapable mirror fixed to one wall. “Oh God,” Scott says every time he catches sight of his reflection.

Stress?

“Let’s be honest,” he says. “Let’s not skirt around the issue. It’s being overworked and…” Scott’s eye begins weeping. “Oh my goodness. I am so sorry. Really, really very sorry.”

Wanna wear my sunglasses, I ask, holding them out to him.

“That would be a bit more weird, wouldn’t it? I actually did think about that in the taxi, but I thought that would be some sort of weird and screwed Invisible Man-type thing. I mean, it couldn’t be worse. And then we have to go and get our photograph taken. It’ll be one of those pictures where, you know, those creepy pictures… Of people crying?”

That’s what Photoshop’s for, I say.

“Anyway. Let’s just ignore it.”

I wonder if it’s particularly hard to walk around with an eye infection at a point in time where you’re not merely famous, as Scott is – a star of stage, screen and Bond film, winner of multiple awards, including, as of barely two weeks ago, a Best Actor Olivier for Present Laughter at the Old Vic – but specifically famous for being sexy.

In 2019, Andrew Scott became synonymous with, well, sex. While playing a character technically known as the Priest, whom the general public instantly renamed the Hot Priest, the spiritual support turned transgressive love interest of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s supremely popular Fleabag, Scott became a cypher for the nation’s more exotic desires. A deliciously contentious pin-up. Ground zero on an earnest social media debate about whether the Priest’s relationship with Fleabag should be considered abusive, power imbalanced, “problematic”. And that was just for starters.

The Priest’s sexual iconography extended far beyond the limits of the show, becoming the subject of internet memes and real-life merchandise (visit online retailer Etsy for your £12 Hot Priest mug emblazoned with an illustration of Scott in priest’s robes, alongside the word “kneel”, a reference to a pivotal moment between the show’s lead characters, which takes place in a confession box, the climax of which, assuming you haven’t already seen it, you could probably take a stab at). There was an unprecedented upsurge in young worshippers, and women started bombarding social media “influencer” the Rev Chris Lee of west London with nude photographs. There was much foetid fan fiction.

To be publicly defined by so much sex, as Scott still is, a year and a half after Fleabag concluded, and then to be encumbered by something as visibly unsexy as an eye infection, I can see how that might make a chap self-conscious.

Scott isn’t here to rake up all that old Hot Priest stuff, mind. He’s here to talk about the second series of His Dark Materials, a lush, expensive fantasy drama based on the Philip Pullman books, jewel in the crown of the BBC’s autumn schedule. The series was filmed through 2019 and the beginning of 2020 and had all but wrapped before lockdown. Good timing, as it turned out, because the extensive post-production processes, unlike shooting, could be completed in isolation.

Scott’s Colonel John Parry is an explorer, the missing father of the central character, 14-year-old Will Parry. He’s a man who slipped into a parallel universe some years earlier, acquired a “daemon” – an exterior animal-formed expression of his soul, a female osprey called Sayan Kötör, voiced with public-pleasing symmetry by Phoebe Waller-Bridge – and never found a way back to “our” world and his son. I speak as a fan of the books, which you might describe as a darker, existential response to Harry Potter, although honestly? They’re better than that. The show is great, a deft, rewarding interpretation, and Scott is an exciting prospect as Parry.

Did he jump at the part?

“I did, actually. It was definitely something I was into. We were doing a play and it seemed like a fun thing to do.” Scott is one of those who slips into the third person when speaking about himself in a professional capacity.

Had he read the books?

“Yeah,” he says. “I think they’re extraordinary. The truth, but told on a slant. I love the way Pullman tells children about spirituality or religion in such an extraordinary, intelligent way. He doesn’t speak down to them. He talks to children’s souls.”

Given that Pullman effectively kills off God through the course of the books and Scott’s a lapsed Irish Catholic who has suffered his share of shame on account of the church’s grip on his homeland (more on which shortly), I’d imagine Pullman’s books talked to Scott’s adult soul too.

Presumably, he didn’t have to audition. Presumably, he never has to. Too famous for auditions?

“No,” he says. “Although I’ve always thought auditioning is a pretty good thing to do.”

Why?

“Because you’re able to understand, ‘Oh, this is the vibe here.’ You think, when you’re an actor, you don’t have much choice, but I’ve always felt like auditioning is a good opportunity for you to go, ‘Oh well, I don’t much like you either. I think you’re dreadful!’ ”

I don’t care that you didn’t give me that part?

“Yeah.” Scott becomes playfully, theatrically defiant. “I don’t care!” He flicks aside an imaginary rejection with a churlish hand.

Will John Parry and His Dark Materials be enough to eliminate all residual overtones of Hot Priest sexiness from Scott? Maybe. He is a fine actor, no question, entirely transformed from role to role. I saw him play Paul, a narcissistic, fame-addled touring rock star, at the Royal Court in 2014 in Simon Stephens’ Birdland, back when his deeply sinister Moriarty weighed almost as heavily on Scott’s reputation as the Hot Priest does now. I’d watched him become someone else entirely on stage. “Oh, you saw that?” Scott says, pleased.

I quote, “Am I cancer?” at him, his defining line from the play, as evidence.

“Oh Jesus. Oh f***ing hell. Oh my. I’d forgotten that line. ‘Am I cancer?’ ”

The Hot Priest association hasn’t left him yet, which is why I find myself asking what it’s like to be the very definition of sexiness.

“You get invited to more parties.”

Better parties?

“Yeah.”

Better than during his Moriarty phase?

“Definitely.”

It must be fun to find yourself le dernier cri in sexy, according to the whole nation.

“Yeah, that’s fun,” he says. “I didn’t really like being associated with scary. It’s not what I’m interested in being, in life, being intimidating to people. It’s not part of my nature, whereas being sexy to people…”

That is part of his nature?

“Well, they’re very different things.”

They’re both about having power over people.

“I suppose they are, yes.”

So did Scott, bored of scaring people, say to Phoebe Waller-Bridge, writer and star of Fleabag and a long-term friend (they met in 2009 while starring in Roaring Trade at the Soho Theatre), “Write a role for me that will make everyone think I’m just really, really sexy now”?

“That’s such a good belt. Are they two ‘Gs’?”

“Exactly.”

——————————

Andrew Scott is not the easiest interview. He’s utterly charming. Really, just a delight. In between prostrating himself for the offence of his eye and apologising for not turning up the first time we were scheduled to meet (ten days earlier; a delayed Covid test result meant he couldn’t make it), he ensures I have a good time in his company. He is playful. He makes me laugh. His every utterance is delivered as a grand performance. (“Shhhh! Just… Shhhh!” he implores, placing a finger against his lips while expressing frustrations over the mindless jabber of social media, and he does it so powerfully, he compels me to be quiet, breathlessly to await delivery of his next line.) He finds elegant ways to flatter me. He laughs at my jokes and is terribly taken with my belt.

Yeah. For Gucci.

“Oh. Ha ha! I thought it was the Golden Globes. I love the Golden Globes. Ha ha!”

And of course, he’s Irish. Clichédly, melodiously Irish, which makes everything sound softer and jollier than it might otherwise.

As for the actual business of being interviewed, of answering straight questions with straight answers, finishing off sentences, offering more than a slip-slide of vagaries punctuated by vigorous hand gestures, none of which translates into print? He’d rather not.

He tells me, as he’s told other journalists before, this is because he’s interested in navigating the line between “privacy and secrecy”, then says he’s aware he’s sometimes “got away with secrecy under the guise and respectability of privacy”, as if signalling potential incoming slipperiness, which means I prepare to throw every trick in the book at him.

First up: amateur psychology.

Might Andrew Scott’s gayness be at the heart of his reluctance to speak more freely? Perhaps. This is no scoop. He’s been out for almost as long as he’s been famous. “I mean, as a civilian, I was quite young [when I came out], you know? But then, as a celebrity…”

He tails off, allows me to fill in the blanks. This is another of his evasion tactics. I can’t very well quote Scott on the presumptions I make about things he never quite says.

He had to have another coming out?

“Yes. And I have another one coming up.”

He has another coming out coming up?

“Yeah.”

So that will be, what? Tier 3 gayness?

“Tier 3, yeah.”

Scott grew up in Ireland at a time when it wasn’t legal to be gay, which could certainly seed an enduring reluctance towards carefree openness in a person. He invokes the concept of shame more regularly than the average interviewee. He was born in Dublin in 1976 to Nora, an art teacher, and Jim, who worked at an employment agency. He has one older sister, Sarah, and a younger one, Hannah.

He was shy, so started attending a children’s drama course.

Did that help?

“Yeah. Acting to me is not pretending to be someone else. It’s more like, this is who I actually am. The lie that tells the truth,” he says. I am none the wiser. He was clearly talented. He went from adverts to his first starring role in a film aged 17 (Korea, directed by Cathal Black), won a bursary to art school but took a place at Trinity College Dublin to study drama instead, and ditched that six months in to join Dublin’s Abbey Theatre. He’s been gainfully employed in the field ever since.

How Catholic was his upbringing?

“Well, there were Catholic priests in my life,” he says. “None of whom I wanted to have sex with.”

Does it amuse Scott to know he inspired a mass fetishising of priestly ranks? That in 2019, the Hot Priest would make, “Can you have sex with a Catholic priest?” one of the most googled terms of the year?

“Absolutely f***ing mental,” he says.

Homosexuality wasn’t legalised in Ireland until 1993, when Scott was 16.

“I always think, if I’d had a boyfriend then, which I definitely did not…”

No?

“No.”

He knew he was gay, though?

“No. No, no, no, no!”

Was he suppressing it or not thinking about it?

“I would say suppressing. Definitely suppressing. I don’t believe people just don’t think about it.”

An upbeat, cheesy jazz remix of something or other starts playing outside the room.

“Oooh, this is the soundtrack for this bit of the interview,” says Scott. He wiggles his shoulders to the music.

I switch to strict dominatrix interviewer mode. Focus, I say. You were about to tell me something good.

“Oh, shit, was I? OK. I think what’s really insidious is that people don’t ask you about sex or… People wouldn’t say, ‘Are you gay or are you [straight]?’ And the lack of directness is very damaging. They just didn’t go there.”

Does he think his family, friends, the people closest to him knew then that he was gay?

“No,” he says. “I don’t think they did know. Or maybe they have a suspicion, but they think, I want to be respectful, so I’m not going to ask about that. Then [when you do come out], people say, ‘Oh, I’m glad.’ You know? If you do talk about it. So I suppose what I feel now is, talking about sex or sexuality is important. Really important.”

Having said that, “There’s still getting rid of the shame. In a situation like this, 10 or 15 years ago, I would have been…” He fakes shock, horror. “Oh no! Polly’s just asked me about [he switches to a whisper] that.”

Scott will talk about his sex life only notionally. No specifics. For 15 years, between 2001 and 2016, he was in a relationship with the actor turned screenwriter Stephen Beresford (Scott starred in Beresford’s 2014 film Pride). Ever since, he’s refused to answer questions about his romantic life.

And he’s not going to talk about it now, I presume.

“No.”

What if we talk about it opaquely?

“OK.”

Where does he see himself, domestically, in an ideal world? Married with kids whom he’ll, I dunno, adopt or have via surrogacy?

“I like it. It’s bold. Am I going to adopt or…?”

Get a surrogate?

“I definitely think that’s something I would be open to.”

Great, I say, with blatant sarcasm. Thanks. How specific.

“Ha! I’m sorry. OK. Have I got any children at the moment? No. How can I… [explain]? OK. I was with a friend of mine in Dublin…”

His partner?

“No, no, no. Not my partner. Ah ha. I see what you were…”

Teasing. Yes.

“Ha! Yes. So, I was with a friend in Dublin and we were walking around and he was looking at apartments and I was like, ‘What about this place here?’ You know? And he said, ‘No,’ and I said, ‘Why not?’ and he said, ‘I don’t live a heteronormative life, so I don’t want a heteronormative house.’ ”

What’s a heteronormative house?

“Two up, two down thing. He goes, ‘I can live in a loft or a weird space. I don’t need those things.’ He was so proud of it. He really owned it. I think where a lot of one’s pain comes from is when you go, ‘I should want that.’ And so, to answer your question opaquely, I have kids I adore. I love children, genuinely, and I had a very happy childhood. But I also feel, if I don’t have kids, that’s all right. I think I would’ve attached a lot of shame beforehand, with not living a particularly heteronormative life… Even with being gay, there’s a sort of way of being gay that’s acceptable. And I don’t feel that any more.”

He feels you can be unacceptably gay?

“Exactly. Exactly!”

I ask when shame shifted for him and Scott says it was when Ireland voted overwhelmingly in favour of same-sex marriage in the 2015 referendum, which felt, he says, “like acceptance, genuinely. And I remember going out to this gay bar in Dublin and this girl came up to me, this cool Dublin girl, and she said, ‘What are you doing here? You need to go down to, I don’t know, blah, blah, this bar in some park.’ She was saying, ‘This isn’t the right gay bar for you. This is some shit gig,’ when the fact I’m in a gay bar in Ireland [at all] is a miracle to me, and then some person with a half-shaved head is telling me, ‘No, you need to go somewhere cooler.’ ”

His left eye starts weeping again.

“I’m so happy about that,” he says. “Even though I’m crying.”

I ask Scott if he has a game plan when picking roles, if he plots his course from Sherlock villain to Bond quasi-villain (he played Max Denbigh in Spectre) to sex icon, and, if so, what next? “No. Jesus, no,” he says.

We talk about the totalitarianism of social media, which he isn’t on, and share a mutual despair over it. “I thought it was something one would associate with the right, but actually, now it’s [the left] that is very ‘you’re this’ or ‘you’re that’. I find that quite frightening. It actually makes me feel ferocious.”

Is he not worried about being cancelled, of somehow saying the “wrong” thing, according to Twitter sensitivities, then having a thousand voices mobilised against him, demanding his firing, in the style of JK Rowling?

“I’m not,” he says. “I refuse to be. A very intelligent person I was talking to recently was writing a book and he said, ‘I’m going to get a sensitivity expert to have a look. I don’t want to get cancelled.’ I found that frightening.”

Is he rich? “Rich is the absence of worry about money,” he says. He can’t remember the last time he worried about money.

That must be nice.

“Of course it f***ing is. I think it’s a miracle. I really do. I was working in a French theatre in London for nothing – none of us was working for anything – and I remember the artistic director of the theatre talking about the fact we weren’t earning any money as some sort of virtue. I remember feeling really annoyed about that, like this isn’t good.”

This leads to an inevitable conversation about how the arts are suffering with Covid, including a segue down the Fatima route, the much shared government advert that depicted a young ballerina and suggested she retrain in something called cyber. “Her name’s not even Fatima,” Scott rails. “I think she’s called Desire’e. From New York.”

I mean to ask him about his experience of filming The Pursuit of Love with Lily James and Dominic West, stars of their own recent off-screen micro-scandal in Rome, just in case he lets any scurrilous insight slip, but our time’s up and it’s not as if Scott has much form on offering up scurrilous insight anyway.

Still, I feel grateful to him for meeting me halfway on the other stuff. And so I say goodbye to Andrew Scott, the UK’s foremost gay heterosexual lapsed Catholic faux-priest lust icon with a troublesome eye infection.

[americanredragger]

A Letter to My Mother (That I am too scared to send)

Okay. We’re having this talk now. I have been putting it off because there’s never been a way for me to keep my cool long enough to say it straight. I’ve been nice, I’ve been polite. I’ve walked away from conversations rather than address this directly because I don’t want to lose my mom.

Yesterday was unlike anything in American history. There is no both-sides-ism to be taken here. There is no even vaguely similar violence unleashed by the Left. This isn’t to say that NO violence has ever been unleashed by the left, it can and does happen. But nothing like this. This is unprecedented in both it's scope and audacity.

Unless you can point to an instance in which a Democrat president (or Senator, or Governor) whipped up a riot and unleashed those rioters on the Seat of Government of the United States of America, causing it to be breached and overrun by a hostile force for the first time in 207 years, the things don’t equate at all.

Unless you can point to a riot held by alt-right wingers in which the police cracked down on them HARD to the level of being condemned by the International Criminal Court as bordering on war crimes, the things don’t equate at all.

This was a direct assault on our government by a crowd whipped up by a sitting president. This has never happened before.

The Capitol Police removed the barricades and guided the insurrectionists in.

They chatted and took selfies with them. Exchanged fist bumps with them.

The seditionists were allowed to leave with few arrests, just… gently guided out once the barbarian hordes had their fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaPTjQZBLhQ

And yes, Trump (eventually) told them to go home, but refused to condemn what they'd done and finished his speech with "We love you. You're very special." and continued to refer to his political opponents as "evil".

This is quite literally unprecedented in American history. As in, nothing comes close. That's what "unprecedented" means.

If this had been BLM, the response would have been entirely different. DC would be on lockdown. The police would be bringing WAR to the streets. There would be helicopters, APCs, and beat cops dressed like the US Army rolling into Baghdad in 2003. The DC area hospitals would be overwhelmed with rioters suffering from horrific head and spine injuries from trigger-happy use of rubber bullets and night-sticks. Hell, Trump tear-gassed ACTUAL peaceful protesters last summer just so he could stage an awkward photo op in front of a church, which even the Clergy called him out on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzBhYhu7NYI

Don't you DARE equate the two.

I'm tired of the whataboutisms. I'm tired of ignoring the evidence right in front of you. Donald Trump is the single most corrupt, evil man America has ever elected to the presidency. He has worked hard to transform the Republican party into something that actual Holocaust survivors and experts have called "Neofascist" and even less flattering terms.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/10/5/17940610/trump-hitler-history-historian

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/07/16/its-not-wrong-to-compare-trumps-america-to-the-holocaust-heres-why/

https://www.delawareonline.com/story/opinion/2020/10/25/holocaust-survivor-fears-rising-tide-ugliness-blames-trump-opinion/3740781001/

https://forward.com/scribe/455507/100-year-old-holocaust-survivor-compares-trump-to-hitler/

https://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/article223718330.html

Historians and victims of fascism the world over point to what Trump and his transformed Republican party have been doing as president when asked how the Weimar Republic fell and the Nazi regime rose.

The overwhelming amount of terrorist attacks in the last five years have been Trump supporters (Well over half stemming from that singular cause, with the rest divvied among a MASSIVE swathe of motives), but none more so overwhelmingly so than yesterday's.

There is no left wing equivalent for this in America until you go all the way back to the Weather Underground bombings, and even they were not goaded on by the incumbent politicians of a party.

Your party has been STOLEN from you. The Party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, and Reagan is no more. And now it’s stealing you from your children as we have watched you and dad drift further and further into the Hannity-Limbaugh-Carlson echo chamber.

88 years ago next month, right wing extremists set fire to the Reichstag in the Weimar Republic. Over the next few days, they seeded reports that it was actually the communists, maybe socialists, no, it was definitely anarchists… or was it trade unionists? Either way, it HAD to have been The Left who burned down the Reichstag.

This was used to expand and hold onto the power of the Chancellor, a man who need not be named. The next few years proved to be sorrowful for everyone.

That same blame-shifting is already happening again, but it's not in some far away country, it's happening here, where we all thought it couldn't.

This sort of event is unprecedented in the United States, or it was until yesterday. It is not so unprecedented elsewhere.

The only difference is that this attempt failed.

The attempt was made because Trump’s own administration found that this was the most secure election in American history, and Trump’s lawsuits to the contrary were laughed out of court by Trump-appointed judges, including his Supreme Court justices, and his exceedingly incompetent and well-documented attempts to get state officials to overturn a legitimate election all failed.

I still believe you and dad are good, honest people. Patriots who want America to do well in the world.

You can not-like Nancy Pelosi, or Obama, or Biden, or Hilary Clinton. That’s your prerogative, and we’ll agree on plenty in that regard. You’re well within your rights to believe that my preferred economics don’t work. We’ll disagree heartily, but that’s normal for families, especially between parents and their kids.

But your party has been hijacked by neofascists, malignant narcissists, and white supremacists.

I am on my knees BEGGING you to see what so many experts and victims have been warning you about for years.

The Left did not do this.

Trump did.

You have been led astray by an vain, selfish, greedy demagogue, a well documented honorless grifter who embodies everything Christ opposed, and uses people until they have nothing more to give him and discards them. He has cloaked this latest grift in the American flag and set a cross upon it, the only way Fascism ever COULD take root in America, as we saw with Joe McCarthy in the Second Red Scare.

It’s changing you. You can’t see it because it’s happening to you, but those around you can, and it’s scaring us.

Please, finally, truly see this. I want my parents back. You’re going down a path I can’t follow and it’s breaking my heart.

In 2016, I broke from the Republican Party because I saw calamity coming in the nomination of Donald Trump. Only 4 years later, and history has soberingly showed me that I was more right than I could have ever guessed, and my world view has never been the same since. I have looked back at the political opinions I wrote and posted then, and they were so selfish and hateful that it was physically painful for me to put myself through that review. I was a puppet. I couldn’t have seen it at the time because I was at the center of it, and I still live in dread of the monster I would have become if I’d kept to that path. I see that same kind of speech coming from you now - the jingoism, the recycled talking points, the Orwellian denials, and the near-unquestioning loyalty to the stars of the Republican Party and their mouthpieces at Fox, OAN, Newsmax, and the AM Radio circuit. I see the most selfish parts of who I used to be, and I know that deep down, you are not that person because I still see you constantly striving to be a good mother, a good Christian, and a model human being.

I’m imploring you to finally look at the evidence, the boundless clear and present evidence, and see what men like Gingrich, McConnell, and Trump have turned your party into. What they are turning you into, the same as they tried with me.

I know you wouldn’t be happy as a Democrat - I myself am only begrudgingly a Democrat because the system doesn’t allow for a viable alternative (and that’s a whole different issue that deserves it’s own library of articles). I’m not trying to convert you. I just need to know that you can look at the evidence with your own eyes like I did and see that you’ve been played for a sucker by men who cry wolf and distract you by having you chase shadows while they line their pockets with money and power. Please stop listening to these monsters, stop swallowing their poison. I know how easy it is to be in that world because I myself have lived in it for most of my life. I fully understand the appeal: there are easy answers for everything, you always know who the enemy is and who your supposed allies and benefactors are. But I also left that behind, and yes, it hurts. It hurts a lot, and frequently. But despite the pain, I know I am better off for having done it.

Yes, I have to question the people who claim to represent me more. I have to question EVERYTHING more because I now know that nothing is as clear cut as I thought it was - once removed from Plato’s Cave, I no longer had the luxury of a simple world. And yet I am still happier because I am so much more my own person now. Yes I falter, and worse still, some days I fall back into the old ways of thinking, but now I recognize that for what it is and it is easier to deal with.

You’ll always be a Conservative, Mom, but I see you on the path that I was on, a path that nearly robbed me of my critical thinking and objectivity, and one which would have weaponized my sense of patriotism to benefit people who are not me. You have kept that course far longer than I. Please put aside the whataboutisms, the both-sides-isms, and finally see the evil, ravenous monster that killed your party from the inside and now wears its skin to deceive you into feeding it further.

I don’t ask that you agree with my politics or economics. I AM begging you though to split from this political machine which is changing you into something I no longer recognize. I want the parents I used to have, the ones who could look at things objectively and form their own opinions instead of repeating talk show buzz lines.

Please, recognize the shadows on the wall of the cave that wicked men are showing you are NOT reality. Please, join me in the truth of the world outside.

[abcd-adventures]

Would you rather travel to the past or travel to the future? Why? Who do you admire? Why? Who do you want to meet? What kind of student were you in the past? What are your favorite things to do while camping? Do you ever go camping with your family? Would you rather have a chance to travel everywhere you wanted in the United States or outside of the United States? Why? Where would you travel if money and time weren't factors? Do you like zoos, safari parks, or farms? Why or why not?

More awesome questions! I LOVE seeing these in my inbox--sorry that I’m slow to answer sometimes! Ahh, life with a toddler, but I promise I will get to all of them, and I’m so grateful for the thoughtful asks! <3

In theory, time travel is SO COOL. I think I mentioned that we’re currently watching DARK as a family--it’s intense, but it’s good. However, when I really put any thought into time travel (assuming it was definitely a thing and something I would ever have the chance to do), I wouldn’t want to do it. There were definitely times in my past that were difficult, but looking back I can clearly see how they shaped the person that I am and it was for the better, so I wouldn’t want to do anything to jeopardize that growth. I mean, I have my issues, but I genuinely like who I am. And, I wouldn’t want to go to the future because I’m ok not knowing what is to come. In fact, I prefer it. I put a decent amount of thought into my decisions in life, and I wouldn’t want to suddenly start second-guessing them or over-analyzing them a crazy amount either trying to ensure or change the future I saw. Now, if I could just travel back in a little bubble and witness certain major historical events to learn what they were really like but without actually seeing any of my own past or influencing anything--I would totally be down for that!

Hmmm, there are some people I interact with on this site that I would love to have the chance to actually meet in person! But, like famous people or historical figures or whatever. . .meh? Like, it would be cool, but I don’t have any kind of real interest in meeting them. *shrug* I guess because I always envision it in some kind of formal way, like, “OK, here’s your chance to meet this person--annnnd go interview them/have a photo op/etc.” If I met some awesome people in a totally organic, normal-person encounter and we were just two regular people talking, then I’m up for meeting lots of people. Does that make sense? I did meet Obama at a restaurant a few years ago; that was fun! But, sorry Obama, I would have been even MORE interested in meeting Michelle! Lol

In elementary, I was a super-involved student--curious, top of my class, friends with everyone. In middle school, because I lived in the country and the districting lines were weird for me, I went to a totally different middle school than everyone I knew and it was HARD. Puberty sucks anyway, but puberty when you went through as bad of an awkward stage as I did, with a bunch of strangers. . .it sucks even worse! My grades were not great; I ate my lunches alone in the bathroom, and I didn’t have any friends (except my best friends I’ve always had but they went to different schools, too). Before high school, I made some changes to my “look,” so all of a sudden people weren’t such dicks to me, so that aspect was easier. I loved certain classes and certain teachers, so I was an excellent student in some classes, but in others I just looked at the syllabus and did exactly as much as I had to in order to pass. I skipped a lot of school (often with my now husband). In college, I was in it for me. I wanted to be there; I loved what I was studying--ALL of it, even college algebra--and I maintained a 4.0 even while working and taking care of a toddler/preschooler. I imagine that grad school will be the same (minus the working part--until I get into my internship). I’m not obsessed with grades, but I am committed to working very hard on my assignments because I want to be the best social worker that I can be, and not to be a narcissist, but I’m not terrible at it (school or social work).  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

My favorite things to do while camping are hiking, cooking over the campfire, reading under the stars with a little camping light, and just enjoying the feeling of life slowing down. With my family growing up, we did tent camping. My husband does not sleep great in the best of circumstances, so he is not down for sleeping in a tent. Lol So, the “camping” that we do these days is in a cabin!

Hmmmmm, that’s a tough one! There’s plenty of places I’d love to see within the US, but I’d rather have unlimited access to other countries because I LOVE learning about other cultures and the worldviews and daily lives of people in places so different from where I come from. Our top travel destinations on our family “bucket list” are Scotland, Northern Ireland, Iceland, New Zealand, and Thailand. But, that’s a VERY short list (and mostly determined by my husband and C because they know I’ll go anywhere and they’re more picky). I would honestly go anywhere if time, money, AND the awfulness of airports and the actual traveling part of the experience weren’t a factor.

Depending on the care given to the animals and their conditions, yes. Our Austin Zoo is a “rescue zoo,” so in theory that should be a great thing! But, then, I read an article recently about some of the zookeepers’ experiences there and some of the treatment of the animals, and I was really upset. I won’t go into all of my feelings about nature and how humans have treated our world, etc. I live in a house in a city. I drive a car. I mean, I try to do my part to compost and buy responsibly raised food, limit my use of plastics, etc., but I contribute to the damage to our world like ALL of us do to some degree. That’s a whole long conversation with not enough answers that isn’t even an answer to the question you asked, so. . .yeah!

[hothian-snow]

OC Music Meme

List one or more songs that relate to the following tagged by @a-muirehen​ tagging @sith-nb @elvhenyoung @rainofaugustsith @jacemalcom

OC: Yennevyr Dosal aka Lord Soteira

Reminds you of them most:

Moonsea by Phildel Don't share the past, if you won't share your heart All that we share is the view of these stars There are diamonds on the floor you can't take back There's an eyelash on the board, does she wear black? All the violence that I swore you could have back There's red varnish on the door, I don't wear that I called it, I called it, I called it the moon scene

The song depicts how she views the relationships in her life, from her very first lover to her current master. It speaks of the surface glam, the glittering mystique, the toxicity she sometimes fall into (most of the time originating from her), and the conflicting feelings of vulnerability. The tone of the song represents her perfectly.

Teen Idle by MARINA I want blood, guts, and angel cake I'm gonna puke it anyway I wish I'd been a teen idle Wish I'd been a prom queen, fighting for the title Instead of being sixteen and burning up a bible Feeling super, super, super suicidal

It's almost narcissistic how much Yen hates herself. She had battled with mental health issues which she hides away for the majority of her childhood and teenage years. Her father was oblivious to how bad she was suffering, and Gisele saw glimpses but not enough for her to directly intervene. Yen's obsession with creating an image for herself, of wanting to be unattainable just so she could be wanted, is depicted tragically well in this song. Also, the teen angst is lovely.

No Children by The Mountain Goats

And I hope I never get sober And I hope when you think of me years down the line You can't find one good thing to say [...] I am drowning There is no sign of land You are coming down with me Hand in unlovable hand And I hope you die I hope we both die

Yen’s depression song. Her self-destructiveness coupled with her spite makes a horrible combination that encapsulates her dysfunctional state.

Blinding by Florence + The Machine No more dreaming of the dead as if death itself was undone No more calling like a crow for a boy, for a body in the garden No more dreaming like a girl so in love, so in love

Yen has always been an escapist at heart- escaping the world, escaping from herself. It's about time she stops running, and wake up from that dream world. The death of her father and the supposed death of her childhood lover haunts her. It's time that she moved on.

Reminds another character of them:

Sober II by Lorde You asked if I was feeling it, I'm psycho high Know you won't remember in the morning when I speak my mind Lights are on and they've gone home, but who am I? Oh, how fast the evening passes Cleaning up the champagne glasses

Anyone who knew Yen on Celanon (or on her late night outs on Dromund Kaas) knows that she is a woman who wears 'glamour and trauma' like they are designer clothes. She loves to drink just so she can feel good, to flirt just so she can feel attractive, to party just so she can forget. An unhealthy coping mechanism to deal with what was initially just an unfulfilling familial relationship, and later to deal with her various emotional baggage.

Watching Ruth by Alexandre Desplat

A musical ost from The Shape of Water, one of my favorite films. The music reminds Darth Kharopos so much of Yen, even if Yen would never see herself in this song. A low, dramatic, slightly foreboding tune that turns into something out of a romantic bed-time story. He senses the pain and anguish in her, but in the end, he sees her in the best light possible. It is in their initial meeting that he sees her doing something out of the goodness of her heart- hence, he knows she isn't who she pretends to be, that she is better than she thinks she is. He sees the girl who, deep down, wishes that life would play out like a fairy tale.

Reminds you of a relationship of theirs

Gisele and Yen

Whisper by Birdeatsbaby Pulling through the distant nightmare A pain I’m hungry to share You’re my dirty secret But I won’t keep it Simmering and spilling over Calling every, every quarter I’ll be fire, earth and water Now you’re shouting I can hear ya Bang bang lover we’re running undercover From the guns of tyranny 

Gisele was her bodyguard and Yen was the crime princess. It was a fairy tale romance, only with guns and blood. Of course, Gisele realizes that the explosiveness and drama of their relationship was partially performative too- something Yen won’t admit.

Tyrkos Rosokor aka Darth Kharopos and Yen

Sylvia by The Antlers Sylvia, get your head out of the oven Go back to screaming and cursing Remind me again how everyone betrayed you Sylvia, get your head out of the covers Let me take your temperature You can throw the thermometer right back at me If that's what you want to do, okay?

Sometimes, Yen spirals. Their relationship becomes heavily toxic. At first, Darth Kharopos thought he’d helped her through her issues but mental health maintenance is a lifelong process, one that cannot be fixed with a few months of therapy. Especially, not when it is a childhood issue that is worsened by constant trauma. It gets worse when Yen reaches the point where she is powerful enough to lash out at the world, to potentially kill her master if she wishes it so.

Falling by Florence + The Machine

I've fallen out of favor and I've fallen from grace Fallen out of trees and I've fallen on my face Fallen out of taxis, out of windows too Fell in your opinion when I fell in love with you [...] I'm not scared to jump, I'm not scared to fall If there was nowhere to land I wouldn't be scared at all

Yen knew the dark side has become a part of her, no matter how much Darth Kharopos preaches about balance, about the light. Then, Yen realizes eventually that her master means something to her. She loves him- and that truly scares her. Stars, why did she ever catch feelings?

Love Run by The Amazing Devil

Love run, love run For all the things we wished we’d done Run from all you know that’s coming Run to show that love’s worth running to

Their bond has grown into something beyond that of master and apprentice. Love is a double-edged blade.

Darth Tiophis and Yen

Seven Devils by Florence + the Machine Seven devils all around you Seven devils in your house See, I was dead when I woke up this morning I'll be dead before the day is done

The ghost of Darth Tiphios has bored her way through Yen's spirit, and turned Yen into something else, something Other, one foot in this world and another elsewhere. Yen is ready to be a vessel for retribution.

The Horror and the Wild by The Amazing Devil

You're the daughter of sightless watching stones You watch the stars hurl all their fundaments In wonderment, at you and yours, forever asking more [...] We're drunk but drinking, sunk but sinking They thought us blind, we were just blinking [...] Give me back my heart you wingless thing

Darth Tiophis to Yen is like the Devil to a witch, like Hekate to Medea. This song is the song of Yen, the woman who bleed stars and learn from ghosts, a Sith powerful enough to go toe-to-toe with the likes of Darth Malgus. She is the legacy of Darth Tiophis, ancestor of Darth Lokess who is the infamous sorceress that attempted to overthrow the Sith Emperor and paid for it with her life.

[intothestarkerverse]

Paper Hearts

The Starker-Office AU the world needs.

Tony Stark is a paper salesman who hates his job but is secretly in love with the beautiful receptionist. A glimpse into their unorthodox courtship and happily ever after.

Tony Stark hated his job.

Selling paper was one of the most boring professions he could think of, and it had a very obvious expiration date that drew ever closer the more digitized the world became.  At best, he thought, he had another few years before he had to hit the unemployment line and look for another job he despised.  Nothing left to do but collect his paychecks until then, really.

His boss was an idiot.  

Scott Lang was no where near as funny as he thought he was.  His jokes caused Tony actual, physical pain.  The way the guy was a lapdog for Hope from corporate, that was even worse.  Didn’t help that for some reason Scott thought he and Tony were best friends.  The indignities he put up with for this job were not worth the pay check he took home.  Not.  At.  All.

The guy across from his desk was a killjoy.  You’d think Steve Rogers had some amazingly important job with how dedicated he was to it.  First one to arrive.  Last one to leave.  He was a puny little, sanctimonious nerd that Tony loved to play practical jokes on…which was really only one of two things that made the job bearable.  The second?  The second was Peter.

Peter fucking Parker.  

The receptionist.  

Light of his life.  

His reason for waking up in the morning.

The only damn reason he hadn’t left this fucking job in pursuit of something that didn’t make him contemplate using his letter opener to carve a giant hole into the middle of his chest.

Peter was young and beautiful and sweet and he sat directly in Tony’s line of view.  He caught himself staring at the kid way more often than he should.  He would day dream about running his fingers through those fluffy chestnut curls, tugging on the strands in the throes of passion.  He pictured what Peter’s lips would look like wrapped around more than just the straw of his water bottle.  He committed every centimeter of Peter’s face to his memory, knew every piece of clothing in the kid’s wardrobe…enough that he recognized when Peter had treated himself to a new sweater or pair of skinny jeans.  Tony stared because it was all he was allowed to do, and it was the only thing that got him through the day.  Peter caught him, too, but either the kid didn’t realize that Tony was head over heels in love with him…or he didn’t care.  

Tony really hoped it was the former, but it didn’t matter really because Peter had a fiance, Quentin Beck, some handsome asshole from the warehouse who had been promising Peter a ‘happily ever after’ that the kid had yet to realize was really a ‘never gonna happen’.  Quentin wasn’t ready to grow up, settle down, be a fucking man, and Tony had caught him flirting with people who weren’t Peter enough times to know he was a piece of shit.  Quentin Beck didn’t know what he had, but Tony did.  He hated that fucking guy, and the feeling was clearly mutual.

Someday.  Someday, Tony was going to sweep Peter off his feet, steal him away from the asshat and show the kid what a happily ever after should look like.

Someday.

If he ever worked up the nerve.

Until then…

***

Tony leaned against the reception desk, drumming his fingers on the Formica counter and waiting for Peter to finish his call.  Peter glanced up at him through a curtain of eyelashes, biting back a grin and holding a finger to his lips as he quickly scrawled a message on a notepad for Scott.

“Mhm, yeah, no, I’ll totally have him call you back…Yeah…Soon, for sure…Uh huh…Yep, I have here that it’s important so he’ll definitely get back to you…Yep…Cool, okay.  Bye.”  He placed the phone back in it’s cradle carefully and turned his attention to Tony, resting his head in one hand and blushing intensely under the other man’s gaze.  “That was corporate.  You could have gotten me into trouble.”

“I’d never get you into trouble, Pete.  I’d sooner die.”

“This job’s not worth dying over, Mr. Stark.”

“You might be…”

Peter choked out an embarrassed giggle.  “Stop it!  You’re the worst.  Did you just come over here to tease me or did you need help with the copier again?  For someone with half a degree in computers, you really suck with copiers, you know that?”

Tony shrugged, so what if that was one of his many excuses to spend a little time with Peter during the day.  He could hardly be faulted for that.  “Got you a present.  Wanted to make sure you got to enjoy it properly.”

“Oh yeah, what did you get me?”  Peter looked more than a little skeptical, and in all honesty, he probably had a right to be.

“Wait until Rogers gets back from his coffee break and then enjoy the show, Kid.”

“Oh my god, what did you do?”

Tony chuckled, stealing a piece of candy from the bowl Peter filled every week.  “I may have hacked his computer last night…sent him a very official looking email from the US Army inquiring about a very special kind of paper needed for a top secret mission and included a referral from one of his best clients.”

“You didn’t!”

“He’s always acting like his job is a matter of life and death, let’s give the geek a thrill, huh?”

“Mr. Stark, that’s so mean…”

“I could abort the mission if you really think…”

“I mean it would be a shame to waste all that hard work…”

***

“No.”

“Seriously, Steve, I haven’t even gotten to ask…”

“I know, but whatever it is you want, Tony, it can’t be good.  So, no.  My answer is no.”

Tony frowned, hanging his head in frustration for several seconds.  “I know you got Peter in the office Secret Santa thing…”

“How do you know that?  Did you just conveniently skip over the ‘secret’ part?”

Tony was trying really hard to be nice here.  Steve wasn’t making it easy.  “I asked everyone else.  Paid them.  Did them favors.  Tracked down the lucky bastard who was gifting Peter…and Fate hates me, so here we are.  Look, Rogers, I know we’re not friends…”

“Whose fault is that?”

“Mine.  Mine.  It’s clearly mine.  I accept the blame.  I do.  It’s just…I have something planned for Pete and I need to be his Secret Santa.  I will do literally anything.  Name your price.”

“I can’t be bought, Tony.  Peter has a fiance, or did you forget that?  Whatever you want from him, it can’t be good.”

Tony groaned, hitting his forehead against the top of his desk.  “I know Peter has a fiance, Rogers.  Believe me, no one is more aware of Quentin’s existence than I am.  The guy’s a jerk…a bigger jerk than me, and that’s really saying something.  You know it’s true.  He’s a piece of shit and Peter deserves better.  The guy is going to give him some generic piece of crap for Christmas, no thought at all.  You know it.  Peter’s a good kid.  He deserves…he deserves a lot more than that shithole.  Let me give him something nice.  I’m not going to break up his relationship.  I’m not going to lead him down the path of temptation.  I just want to give him something nice and make him smile without him feeling like he needs to do something for me, okay?  Rogers…I’m begging you.”

Steve stared at him for several long minutes before he sighed and nodded.  “Fine.  Yeah.  Okay.”

“Bless you, Steve Rogers.  Consider this our armistice.  War over.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it.”

***

Tony had never wanted to hug anyone as badly as he wanted to hug Peter in that moment.

The kid looked defeated.

He was seated at a little card table towards the back of the comic book shop with several stacks of his own self-published comic in little piles all around him.  

No one was stopping to look at them.  To talk to him.  To acknowledge his existence at all.

His eyes were glassy.  The kid was literally minutes away from crying and he just couldn’t let that happen.

“Just your luck that you’d have your debut on a rainy day, Parker.”

Peter jumped, scrubbing a hand over his cheeks and putting on a brave face as he looked up at Tony with a paradoxical mixture of relief and fear.  “Tony!  You…you came.”

“Course I came.  Wouldn’t miss this for the world.  But seriously, you know rainy days are terrible for business, right?  It’s a proven fact.  Why…I’ve never seen so few people in here before.  Gotta be the weather.”

“Yeah…no, yeah, I’m sure you’re right.”  Peter looked like he didn’t quite believe Tony, but he was also apparently eager for an excuse to explain his lackluster turn out.  Had anyone else from the office even come?  Ass holes.  All of them.  And where the fuck was Quentin?

“So, let’s see…”  Tony reached out for one of the books, carefully flipping through the pages and perusing the content with a little humming noise.  “Hey, now, do you take inspiration from people you know?”

Peter was blushing.  “Maybe…”

“No maybe about it, Peter, you cannot tell me this handsome bastard isn’t based off me.”  He flipped the book around, tapping at an image of a roguishly handsome superhero in crimson and gold armor.  “You know I’m a raging narcissist, right?  I was going to buy a book anyway, but now I have to buy the whole series cause I’m one of the stars.  You in here, too?”

Peter nodded slowly, his blush darkening.  “Yeah…but I won’t tell you who.  You’ll have to figure that out…”

“I do love a challenge.”  Tony closed the book and reached out to add one from every pile to the one in his hands.  “So, how much?”

“Um…they’re ten a piece but…”

“But obviously that’s much too low so I’ll give you a hundred for the set of five.”

“Tony, no…”

“Fine.  A hundred and fifty it is.  You’re a tough negotiator, Pete.”

“Tony!”  The smile on Peter’s face was worth every fucking penny.  And who needed to eat, anyway?

***

“Mr. Stark!  You promised that the goatee was not because of my comics.”

Peter was standing at his desk with both hands over his mouth.  His face was as brilliantly red as the home made Halloween costume Tony had donned for work that day…the costume he had based entirely off of Peter’s comic and the character he just knew was based on him.  Had to be.  And dammit, if he was right…if he was right, than Peter had even made himself Tony’s fucking love interest…and wasn’t that just the most interesting thing he’d ever read in his whole damn life?

“So, I lied.  It’s not my fault. You’re such a damn good artist that I took one look at my comic book self with that awesome facial hair and said, ‘Fuck, Tony, why did you never realize that you’d be even more devastatingly attractive if you just had an impeccably groomed goatee?’  The world has you to thank for it, Pete, and I’m definitely keeping it because it’s been a hit.”

Peter’s hands dropped from his face to his sides.  He was chewing on his bottom lip, looking pensive.  “Who…I didn’t know you were dating anybody Mr. Stark.  I’m glad…they like it.  I guess…”

Tony didn’t bother to correct him.  Not yet.  A little jealousy might do the kid some good, let him know how much Tony wanted to choke the fucking life out of Quentin every time that piece of shit showed his face.

***

Peter was wearing a new soft blue sweater over a button down shirt and Tony was trying very hard not to swoon over how fucking adorable he looked.  He was playing with his gum, winding it around his finger before popping it into his mouth to begin again.  He had his phone concealed in his lap so no one could see him playing on social media while he was supposed to be working.  That was probably why he didn’t hear Tony approach until the man was standing directly in front of him, leaning against the reception desk and looking at Peter with what Tony recognized was something very close to the heart-eye emoji.  God, this kid.  

He really couldn’t take it anymore.

He had to make a move.

Be brave.

Be bold.

Be the fucking hero in that kid’s comic.

“What are you doing tonight, Pete?”

Peter jumped a little, looking up at Tony with a little flush of surprise.  “Tonight?  I don’t know.  Quentin’s got poker at Drax’s, so probably just going to lay in bed and catch up on Netflix.  Why?”

Tony smirked, dropping something on the desk in front of him.

“Oh my god, how did you get this?  It’s not even supposed to be released for another two weeks…”  Peter’s excitement was quelled by the sudden realization, “Is this a bootleg?”

Tony nodded.  He was never going to admit to how much he’d spent for a bootleg copy of something he cared absolutely nothing about because in the end…it was going to be completely worth it.  “Come over to my place tonight.  We can break the law together.”

“You think if the FBI raids your place while we’re in the middle of it that we could at least be cellmates, Mr. Stark?”

“Don’t worry, Pete, I’ll protect you in the prison yard.  No one would dare put a hand on you.”

“I’ve always thought you’d make a great prison husband.”  The witty banter ground to a halt with Peter’s last quip, his light brown eyes flaring wide.  His mouth had runaway without his better judgment, but Tony wasn’t quite ready to let it go yet.

“Oh, I’d make a great husband, prison or not.”  Tony held Peter’s gaze for a second longer than was probably comfortable for both of them, the kid’s face was red as a cherry tomato when they were interrupted by the sound of an exasperated sigh from behind them.

“Tony…could you just grow up already?  Some of us are actually trying to work…”

Peter giggled into his hand, leaning to the side to look around Tony at Steve Rogers’ desk.  “I thought you and Mr. Rogers had finally ended the Civil War, what did you do this time?”  He was careful to keep his tone soft enough that it didn’t carry.

“Hm?”  Tony was still distracted by thoughts of Peter as his prison wife, but managed to pull himself out of it to look back over his shoulder and shrug.  “I super glued everything to his desk last night.”

“Everything?”

“Everything.”

Peter was under his desk now, hugging his sides and laughing himself breathless.  

***

It was far from the first time he and Peter had spent time together outside of work.  They were friendly, in fact.  Quentin didn’t share any of Peter’s interests, and that left plenty of things for Tony to exploit.  Movies Quentin wouldn’t be caught dead seeing.  Video game releases.  Comic conventions.  Hell, Tony had even gone to a few games of D&D with Peter because he would take literally any excuse to spend time with that kid.

Now, they were cuddled up on Tony’s couch in his apartment with enough snack food to weather the apocalypse and a bootleg that Peter was dying to see.  Though, for something Peter was dying to see, he didn’t seem as enthusiastic about watching it as he had earlier that day.

“Pete?  You okay?  Something happen after work?”  He’d been fine when they’d said their goodbyes that day.

Peter ran a hand through his curls and let out a long, shaky breath.  “I think Quentin might be cheating on me.  I don’t have proof but…Drax didn’t know anything about a poker game tonight and it’s just, it’s little things, you know?  I found this little church I really liked for the wedding and I mentioned it to him, that we could maybe set a date…but he brushed me off.  MJ…you know from customer service?  She says I’m an idiot, that he’s never going to marry me and now I’m afraid she’s right…do think she’s right, Tony?”

Tony reached out, drawing the younger man close and inhaling the scent of his shampoo as he tucked Peter against his chest.  “You’re not an idiot, Peter.  You’re way better than that piece of shit in the warehouse deserves.  You’re beautiful and smart and funny and talented, and if you were mine…we’d have fucking eloped the second you said you’d marry me.”

Peter pulled back with a watery smile, “Yeah?”

“Mhm.  They increased the limit on my credit card last month.  Enough for two tickets to Vegas, a week long stay in a crappy casino and a quickie wedding chapel.  I’d lock that shit down before you had a second to realize that you could do better than me, too.”

“Better than you?”  Peter sounded as if that idea was more insane than eloping to Vegas minutes after a marriage proposal.  “Tony, there isn’t anyone better than you.”

“If you believed that, you wouldn’t be with that piece of shit, Quentin Beck.”

Now, Peter just looked confused.  “In what universe did I ever have a choice between you and Quentin?”

“This one.”

Peter’s head slowly canted to one side, brow furrowing and eyes narrowing.  “No…”

“Oh yes, Pete.”  Never in his wildest dreams had ever thought that Peter thought Tony was out of his league.  Was the kid blind?  Did he not own a mirror?  Did he not know how brilliant and funny and talented…  “Oh yes..”  Those last two words were repeated a hair’s breadth from Peter’s lips as Tony leaned forward to bridge the distance between them.

It was everything Tony had ever thought it would be and so much more.  Peter’s lips were soft, his whimpers were music to Tony’s ears.  Tony let himself bury his fingers in those chestnut curls and inhale the scent of him, revel in the taste of him, live in that moment as if it was the only one he was ever going to get.

The kiss went on until neither one of them could breath, until they were forced to pull back with heaving chests and swollen lips.  Peter stared at Tony for several seconds before he threw off the blanket and walked out of the room.

What.

What the fuck.

Tony was dumbfounded.  Was Peter not into it?  Had he just been shot down?  Was Peter not even going to talk to him…

No.

No.

Peter was back.

With his laptop?

Tony frowned, watching as Peter dropped the computer in his lap followed by something small and golden.  Glancing up, Tony caught sight of Peter’s now empty ring finger.

“Put your money where your mouth is, Stark.”

Tony stared. “What…”

“Two tickets.  Vegas.  ASAP.”

“Wait…”  He couldn’t be serious.

“No, you said you wouldn’t make me wait.  I already Snapped Quentin.  We’re broken up.  I’m single…but I don’t want to be.  So buy me those tickets to Vegas and a ring…when we get there.”

Tony slowly opened the laptop, stealing glances at Peter ever few seconds as he booted it and pulled up a travel site.  “You’re not…this isn’t a joke, right?”

“Not a joke.  You’re not the only one who’s been pining, Tony Stark.  Why do you think Quentin hated you so much?  He knew I was super into you…hell, Tony, I made you my lover in my comics…You’ve been my unattainable crush since I started my job.  You’re the nicest guy I’ve ever met. Most supportive.  We have fun together.  We have a lot in common.  We just…”

“Yeah.”  Tony was smiling now, not even second guessing himself as he typed in his credit card numbers.  “I don’t know if we can get a week off work…”

“Four day weekend is good enough for now.  I’ll call Mr. Lang and let him know we won’t be in.  I’ll have to tell him why…”

“God help us.”

***

Four days later when Tony and Peter returned to work in the same car, they arrived to find an impromptu wedding shower waiting for them.  Quentin had quit.  Left all of Peter’s stuff in the warehouse in a pile in the middle of one of the docking bays. But whatever, the less they had to see of that prick the better.  Scott seemed happier about their elopement than they were, and he’d gone to great lengths to print up t-shirts proclaiming that everyone in the office ‘shipped Starker’.  Even Rogers was wearing one.

Tony pretended to hate it.

Really he fucking loved it.  

Maybe his job wasn’t the absolute worst after all…

[superfluouswit]

A Stranded Star - Chapter 1

Rating: M Timeline: AU season 4 Category: Angst, Drama, Mulder/Scully, Scully/Pendrell, Cancer arc, Canon Divergence, More Angst, Work in Progress, MSR but It’s Complicated, Even More Angst, Pining, Rift, Romance, Scully POV, Pendrell Gets His Chance, And Angst Summary: As Agent Pendrell recovers from the injury that almost cost him his life, Scully finds a new way to confront her mortality. (Post Tempus Fugit/Max)

***

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me) it's always ourselves we find in the sea --e.e. cummings

***

I.

Scully stood in front of the apartment building almost twenty minutes before deciding to go inside. She wasn’t sure why she felt so indecisive. It wasn’t like her. But she’d been debating the visit for the better part of a week, pretty much ever since Pendrell’s doctors announced he should be well enough for discharge by then.

She’d driven past the place twice—a sort of practice run that she told herself wasn’t as crazy as it seemed by virtue of the fact it was on her way home. She never realized that before, that they were practically neighbors. He lived just a few blocks away, in a pretty brick front two doors down from a Shakespeare theatre. Scully had gotten his apartment number from Skinner, who didn’t seemed at all surprised when she asked for it.

“Are you planning to see him home?” was all he said. Some of the other agents apparently were. But Scully never considered joining him on his first evening home from the hospital. The gaggle of friends and family that surrounded him in ICU had made her uncomfortable, although she wasn’t sure just why. But she could only assume they would be eager to celebrate his homecoming, and she didn’t want to interfere with that. It felt too private, too exclusive. An event for the people who knew him best. Who was she to intrude?

She wondered, as she entered the lobby, if merely visiting him counted as an intrusion. After all, she didn’t know him that well; she certainly hadn’t been invited to his home before. Or now.

She only visited him in the hospital three times. She was ashamed of that, even now. Three times in three weeks was a pretty poor ratio by anyone’s standards, and he’d been ventilated and unconscious during the first two visits. The third time, she brought Mulder, which was arguably even worse given how he’d dominated the conversation. Not that he meant anything by it; she knew that. In fact, his boasting and teasing had gone a long way in making the usually taciturn Pendrell smile. But it was the principle of the matter. Mulder had kept the discussion moving—he’d kept it light—but he had also kept it focused squarely on himself. And Scully hadn’t wanted to talk about him, damn it. She wanted to talk to Pendrell. She wanted to tell him—

Well—

What would she have said to Pendrell if given the chance? Scully wasn’t sure she even knew, which might account for her current state of indecision. But she knew that she had to say something. She owed him that. You had to acknowledge when a man saved your life, even if he did so as a drunken accident.

As she stepped in the elevator, Scully couldn’t help wondering what had led Pendrell to the Headless Woman Pub in the first place. She had seen him there before, of course. Its proximity to FBI Headquarters made it a popular meeting spot for agents, so she had seen pretty much everyone there at some point or another. But Pendrell had always been part of a group. It seemed out of place for him to be there alone, and so obviously drunk. Had he been waiting for her to show up that night? Had he been throwing back shots to bolster his courage before asking to buy her a drink? It felt almost narcissistic to believe that, but Scully couldn’t help but wonder. He flagged her down so quickly that night—almost the minute she walked in the door. Surely that meant he had been looking for her.

And if he had been looking for her that made it doubly her fault, didn’t it? Because not only had she led the gunman to the pub in the first place, if it hadn’t been for her, Pendrell wouldn’t have been there at all.

She owed him something, then. Some type of apology.

The elevator doors creaked open and Scully exited into the fourth floor hallway. His apartment was all the way at the end. It wasn’t difficult to spot: a dry-erase board hung on the door with WELCOME HOME printed on it in brightly colored block letters. Scrawled around this message were the signatures of people who had stopped by. Some of the names Scully recognized; most she did not. It reminded her of the crowd of people standing around the ICU waiting room at the hospital, and she felt ashamed of herself all over again for being surprised that Pendrell had so many friends.

Careful not to disturb the Welcome Home sign, Scully rapped on the door. It opened at the second knock, which startled her so much it left her momentarily speechless. But it wasn’t Pendrell who greeted her. Instead, a woman stood there, blinking tiredly into the dim light of the hall. She was small and squat and she had eyes like Pendrell’s. Scully recognized her from the hospital. She was his older sister. He had a big family, she remembered, all with those eyes and varying degrees of red hair.

Scully forced herself to smile at the woman, who seemed to be looking at her a little warily.

“I hope it’s all right to show up without calling first,” she said politely. “I’m here to see Agent Pendrell.”

The woman’s expression soured. “He isn’t well enough to think about work yet,” she began. And immediately Scully realized her mistake.

“It isn’t about work,” she said quickly. “Although we do work together. But I’m here because—because—I wanted to see him. I wanted to tell him—”

The woman’s eyebrows lifted slightly as Scully faltered. Her look became appraising.

“You were there that night.” It wasn’t a question. “You’re the agent—the doctor—who helped him.”

“Until the paramedics arrived,” Scully agreed. “But I’m afraid that I’m also the reason he was shot. The intended target was a man in my custody, and I wanted to tell Agent Pendrell…Well, I wanted him to know how sorry I am that it happened.”

Pendrell’s sister didn’t look at all surprised to hear this, which led Scully to believe that he must have explained to her what happened that night. Yet, she didn’t look angry, either. If anything, Scully’s admission seemed to soften a little of the anxiety in her expression. She glanced over her shoulder into the apartment.

“Sean, there’s someone here to see you. Are you up to it?”

There was an indistinct answer to her call, which his sister appeared to catch even if Scully did not. She nodded at Scully and opened the door a little wider.

“Come in. He’s in the bedroom...at the back there.” She indicated the door with a jut of her chin.

Pendrell’s apartment was a little smaller than Scully’s own, and it was painfully neat. She looked around at the inexpensive furniture, the shelves lined with books. It amused her to see that he had a framed copy of a phrenology chart on one wall and a print of Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man on another. A Todd MacFarlane statue of Spiderman sat in the middle of his coffee table.

Smiling a little to herself, Scully started across the tiny living room, but Pendrell’s sister spoke up and stopped her before she reached the halfway mark.

“Will you be here long?” she asked.

Scully paused, trying to weigh the meaning behind the words. The phrasing sounded almost accusatory, but the woman’s eyes looked nothing but tired.

“I hadn’t thought.” It seemed like the safest reply.

The woman shifted. “It’s just that...I have to run to the drugstore. He needs a prescription. I thought...since you’re here…”

So that’s what it was: sisterly concern instead of suspicion. Well, Scully couldn’t blame her for that. The bullet that invaded Pendrell’s chest had collapsed his right lung, and his heart stopped twice during the thoracotomy performed to repair it. There was a time—days, even—when the doctors seemed certain he would die. The thought of leaving him alone must be horrifying to his family.

“I can stay with him until you get back,” she offered.

Pendrell’s sister smiled with obvious relief. “Well, if you’re sure,” she said, as she pulled on her jacket. “But don’t tell him I asked you to do it,” she added. “He’s the baby of the family, and we’ve been driving him a little crazy with our coddling.”

She went out, leaving Scully to cross the last few steps to the bedroom alone.

The door was partially ajar. Through it, she could see a sliver of his bed, as well as a glimpse of bare feet. Television jabber and canned music drifted from inside the room, but Scully barely noticed that. Her attention was caught, suddenly, by the sound of his breathing: a labored sort of rasping that told her he wasn’t as far into his recuperation as she might have hoped.

She tried to prepare herself for that before pushing the door wider and stepping into the room. She prepared herself for his sickroom pallor and the dark smudges that ringed his blue eyes.

But she had not prepared herself for how sunken those eyes would be, nor for his lost weight. When she saw him in ICU, tubes and wires had masked the thinness. It hadn’t been terribly noticeable. But this….

Scully stood in the doorway a moment, unsure of how to proceed. Because he didn’t even look like Pendrell. All the boyish roundness was gone from his face, and his frame looked lost in the loose t-shirt and pajama pants he wore.

He saw her, though, and a familiar smile lit up his face.

“Agent Scully!” His voice was a hoarse whisper—a result of the long stint with the bronchial tube—but she detected genuine pleasure in it.

She heard surprise, too, and that made her own throat ache with a renewed rush of guilt. Did he really believe she thought so little of him, she wondered. Had she really shown him so little regard in the past that he would be surprised to see her now?

“Is Mulder with you?” His gaze moved to the hallway behind her, but Scully knew only politeness made him ask. More than ever, she was glad she had not asked Mulder to come with her. She was gladder still that she hadn’t told Mulder that she was coming.

“No, it’s only me this time. And it’s Dana,” she reminded him. “We talked about that at the hospital...remember?”

“Oh.” His sheepish expression told her he didn’t, but Scully didn’t mind. Given the amount of opiates he was on at the time, it was a wonder he remembered seeing her at all.

“So, unless we’re at work, you’re welcome to call me Dana.” It came out awkwardly, like a badly read bit of script, but Pendrell didn’t seem to notice. He looked pleased.

“And I’m Sean?” He said it like a question, so she answered it as one.

“Unless you would rather remain Agent Pendrell.”

It was a joke, of course. She knew he wouldn’t want that. But Pendrell wasn’t familiar with her sense of humor the way Mulder was; he took the dryness of her tone at face value.

“I like Sean, myself,” she added, noticing his crestfallen expression. “It suits you.”

That smile again. As sweet as ever, although something about it made her suddenly want to cry. Because he looked so young lying there in his pajamas. Somehow, she hadn’t expected that. He was always so competent at his work she had forgotten how young he was. How—well, it seemed odd to call a grown man, an FBI special agent, innocent, but there you were. She had no other word for it. What else would you call a man who smiled like that? Who blushed when he invited you to sit down on the edge of his neatly made bed?

He blushed deeper when she actually did it. As if, despite everything that had happened to him, he couldn’t quite help reverting to type.

Of course, neither could she. She hadn’t sat there ten seconds before she asked him if she could take a look at his stitches.

Pendrell seemed a little shocked by this, but he nodded a yes. And he leaned forward to make it easier for her to pull the tail of his t-shirt up to his shoulder.

“It looks really good,” she murmured. And in a way, it did. The thoracotomy incision was on his side just below the armpit, an angry-looking red divot zigzagged with black thread. It stood out rather appallingly against the backdrop of his otherwise smooth skin, but it was healing well. Scully forced herself to focus on the positive.

She moved her hands a little higher to his right pectoral. She wanted to examine him there, too. But it would mean unwinding his dressing and pulling the gauze not just from the bullet wound on his chest, but also the exit wound at his back, which would be, at the very least, uncomfortable for him. So she didn’t ask. But she probed gently, feeling for signs of heat or swelling in the area surrounding it.

“Are you having any pain?” she asked.

Pendrell shook his head and gulped. No pain at all.

An obvious lie, but not necessarily a deliberate one, Scully thought with amusement. Because whatever pain he might be feeling clearly came second to the novelty of her hands on his torso. Yet, it warmed her, a little, to see how much of a gentleman he remained in spite of it, and how valiantly he tried to hang on to his reserve. There were no innuendoes, no jokes, no attempts to take advantage of the situation—the last time she’d seen a man hold himself so still for an examination, it was a corpse.

Pendrell has a crush on you.

Mulder often teased her about it, but Scully had never given the matter much consideration before now. Pendrell was just…well, Pendrell. The lab guy. She never thought of him as a man, not in that way. If she were being honest with herself, not in any way at all.

But now, as her fingertips trailed over the rise of a too-prominent ribcage, she found herself startled by the depth of her own concern for him.

“You’ve lost a lot of weight, Sean.”

He shrugged as if unconcerned. “Well, I had a little pneumonia.”

The way he said it made Scully want to laugh in spite of herself. As if anyone could have a “little” pneumonia. Still, the answer worried her. Hospital-acquired pneumonia could be a killer, particularly if his doctors made the mistake of discharging him too soon. She wished she knew what his chest x-rays looked like. She wished she had thought to bring her stethoscope.

She smoothed his shirt back down and looked at the jumble of medical supplies on his night table. Sure enough, a pulse oximeter lay amongst them.

Pendrell gave a crooked smile when he saw her reaching for it.

“It’s all right,” he said. “Really. I’m keeping an eye on it. I have a chart and everything.”

Nevertheless, he held out his finger so she could clip it on. She liked that about him. The easy, obliging way he had, which was so unlike anyone else in her life. Especially herself.

“Your oxygen saturation is a little low.”

He tilted his head and peered down at the monitor. “Ninety-three percent. It’s hanging in there.”

“That’s usual for you since you got home?”

He nodded, and Scully persisted. “Is your doctor aware of that?”

“She’s aware. She’s a good doctor,” he added. “I mean…government insurance, best in the world, am I right?”

He was smiling again, trying to draw a smile out of her. But Scully refused to be drawn.

“I need to tell you something, Sean. I came here to tell you something.”

He widened his eyes a little at her leaden tone. “You say it like that, and I’m not sure I want to hear it.”

“No, it isn’t anything terrible. I just…want to apologize to you.”

“For what?”

He seemed so genuinely puzzled it made her angry. Stop being so damn nice, she wanted to tell him. Stop letting people trample all over your good will before it gets you killed.

Except, of course, that niceness was the very thing she liked most about him. And Pendrell's current state of injury was her fault, not his.

“Has Skinner talked to you about that night?”

He nodded. “A little. They took a statement at the hospital after I woke up.”

“Then you know that the man I was with that night was a federal witness awaiting transfer. He was in my custody and I…I made a mistake.”

Pendrell frowned. “What kind of mistake?” he asked.

“I brought him to a public place. I left him alone when I went to the bar. I let you get involved with it all. Actually, thinking about it, I made a lot of mistakes. And you got hurt as a result.”

“Oh, well…” He shrugged.

“You saved my life that night, Sean.”

At that, he finally met her gaze. But he didn’t seemed pleased. He was shaking his head.

“Don’t say that. I didn’t do anything. I was drunk—it was stupid—”

“It was stupid. And a waste. It was…” She shook her head, overcome by the enormity of what it had been. “I just want you to know how sorry I am about it.”

“You don’t have to be sorry,” he said. “I might be a lab rat, but I’m still an FBI agent. Getting shot isn’t outside the parameters of the job description. You know?”

Maybe not, but that didn’t do much to alleviate her guilt in the matter. It occurred to her to tell him that things hadn’t ended too well for Frish, either; but she didn’t want to burden him with that. Instead, she reached down and plucked the pulse oximeter from his finger.

“I hope you don’t mind me doing that,” she said, nodding to the instrument. “I guess I can’t help myself. Medicine…”

“I get it. My sister is a dental hygienist. She’s always asking to look at my teeth.”

Scully surprised herself by laughing.

“Is that your sister I just met?” she asked.

“No, that’s Finola; she’s an attorney. Cara is the one who works in teeth.”

“How many sisters do you have?”

“Four. And two brothers.”  He smiled at the look on her face. “My mother is Irish, in case it wasn’t already obvious by the hair.”

“Your father isn’t?”

“He’s English. I mean, originally. He was born in Boston.”

“You’re from Boston?”

He shrugged. “I’m from everywhere. Army brat.”

That surprised her. He seemed too well adjusted to be an Army brat.

“I was a Navy brat.”

“I know. You told me before.” He saw her curious expression and added, “In the lab. We were waiting for reports to print…remember?”

She didn’t, and it amazed her that he did. Had she asked him about himself during the same conversation? If so, why didn’t she remember any of his answers?

“Your sister seems like a good nurse.” It was all she could think of to say.

“She’s great, isn’t she? They’ve all been taking turns with me since I got home. It’s Finola’s turn tonight. Everyone else is staying at a hotel. If I had the room, I guess they’d all be here.”

Scully thought so, too. Everything about him screamed big, happy, loving family. It scared her a little to realize how close she had come to shattering that for them. Sean, the baby of the group, dying in a puddle of beer after a gunfight.

“I should probably go.” She spoke without thinking, but she knew the impulse was right. She should go now that she’d apologized. She should leave him to the safety of his family and his normal life. She had no right to poison him with her presence. Or, rather, with her proximity to the X-Files, which poisoned everything in their orbit.

Pendrell was staring at the television set as if he hadn’t heard, although she knew he had. She watched the knot of his Adam’s apple move up and down as he gathered his courage to say, “You shouldn’t have come just because you feel guilty.”

She felt her face heat at his words. “I didn’t.”

“You don’t have any reason to feel guilty. You’re not obligated to do anything.”

The earnestness in his tone unraveled her in the strangest way. If he’d sounded the least bit angry—or even hurt—she knew she could have left with her resolve intact. But he didn’t. If anything, he seemed determined—if a little unwilling—to absolve her of responsibility. She could walk out today and never look back, and she knew he wouldn’t think less of her for it.

Which was exactly why she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

Her eyes traveled the line of his gaze to the television. Two men in white coats striding down the hall of what appeared to be a hospital.

“Is that Dick Van Dyke?”

She felt, rather than saw, Pendrell’s eyes turn toward her.

“Diagnosis Murder,” he said. “You ever watch it?”

She shook her head.

“It’s pretty good. See, Dick Van Dyke is a doctor who solves crimes in his spare time. His son is a police detective.”

“Sounds interesting.” It didn’t, really, but that didn’t matter. It was something to talk about, something on which to focus her attention so she didn’t have to go.

When the show broke for commercial Pendrell nodded at the ad—Red Lobster—and asked her, “Have you eaten dinner?”

“Not yet.” She knew what he was gearing up to do. And while she wouldn’t exactly encourage him, she couldn’t bring herself to impede his efforts, either. She stared at the flicking television screen and waited.

And sure enough.

“There’s a really great Chinese place down the block if you like Sichuan.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And they deliver.”

Scully turned her head a little to hide her smile. “That must be convenient for you,” she said innocently. “Especially now.”

“I was thinking…if you’d like to stay…”

She liked the tone he used—low and just a little tentative, as if he were coaxing a cat out of hiding. If he’d been Mulder, he would have just ordered the food and expected her to enjoy it.

She looked over at him.

“Are you asking me to have dinner with you, Sean?”

His face reddened, although he met her eyes bravely when he said, “Well, I still owe you a birthday drink.”

“Yes.”

“Only I’m not allowed to drink with the medication I’m on. So I thought I’d treat you to a meal instead.”

She couldn’t look into those blue eyes anymore. They were too eager, too without guile. She shifted her gaze to his hands, now fiddling nervously with the remote. For a small man, he had surprisingly long fingers, like a piano player. His left hand had an ugly bruise on the dorsal side, as if the nurse had been too rough removing his IV catheter.

Scully reached out and touched the bruise lightly with her fingertips, surprising them both. She could feel Pendrell watching her, the question written all over his face. But she didn’t look up to see it. Not even as she said, “I would love to have dinner with you, Sean. Thank you for asking me.”

To be continued...

[fusonzai]

Salvation through writing #1

I was fourteen when I first realised I had a body.

As with most things in my life, it was a girl I liked who brought me to this realisation. Her name was Kirby (yes, like the Nintendo character) and I was on my very first date. I thought she was cute, she thought I was chubby and had no reservations in telling me. I’ll never forget that moment. I was suddenly aware that I was being perceived. By both the at the time kind view of myself, but the less positive view of those around me.

It didn’t feel nice.

I had been taught that fat was bad, fat was unattractive, fat was unhealthy. Other people didn’t treat fat people very nicely. In fact, calling someone fat was a sure fire way to win a primary school argument (probably even high school ones). I had an obese family member but I never really registered an opinion on him. Some people were fat; he was one of them. I didn’t really care, not because it wasn’t my own body, but because I hadn’t learnt that social cue yet.

Did you guess that things didn’t go too well with that first date? You guessed right.

However once Kirby told me what she thought, the concept of fat and skinny had begun to cement itself. It’d take me on a rollercoaster throughout the next 14 years. A rollercoaster I’m not sure I’ve gotten off yet. After the date, I was left with this new sense of self identity. I didn’t really know I was viewed by other people as chubby until then. The thoughts stung, so I pushed them aside as best I could. It was summer holidays and I had online friends to play games with. Then puberty hit.

During that summer break I shot up some 10 centimetres. There was no change in my lifestyle or diet, I just got taller. I also got very skinny as that 50kg frame was now stretched out.

Walking down the stairs of my best friend’s house, his very frank older sister exclaimed something like “Elliot you’ve gotten so skinny!”. I had forgotten Kirby’s comments from about 6 months earlier and asked, “Wait I was fat?”

Of course, as soon as I said those words, the thought from six months ago had sprouted into a full fledged complex about being perceived as fat. I went back to school and received more of the same. Teachers, friends and even family exclaimed at the change.

A constant thought ran through my head. I was skinny now, I wasn’t before but I am now. Judging by people’s reactions, skinny was cool. People liked skinny Elliot more. Alright. That’s me now, that’s me, skinny Elliot.

I formed an identity around this, I was happy to be called skinny. I had just recovered from being fat apparently, and fat was bad. So, the opposite of fat must be good?

(17 years old, whatta time)

A newfound interest in alternative rock and everything that inhabited that genre didn’t help. The Front men of these bands were skinny, the girls around me liked these men, so shouldn’t that be what I need to look like? I didn’t know who I was yet. I didn’t have a sense of self identity. I needed to imitate what was around me to get by.

It started off fine enough, a high metabolism meant I didn’t need to actively do anything to be skinny. It got significantly worse for a period though. In an effort to mimic those Front men, I’d buy these progressively tighter jeans until I was shopping in the women’s section. Something about fitting into these skinny jeans messed me up. I was weighing myself in the morning and at night, feeling disgusted when I weighed more in the evening and then relieved to see it all disappear in the morning. I relished in getting sick once. Losing my appetite meant I was sub 50 kg if only for a few days. For context, nowadays even if I’m at my leanest I’m still at least 70 kg.

The skinny phase came and went fortunately, I found self worth in other things and I wasn’t as obsessed with what my body looked like. At least for a time.

High school ended and after what felt like forever, university began. Everyone was trying their hardest to look cool. What was cool? Apparently it wasn’t skinny anymore, I needed some meat on my shoulders.

I was starting to wonder then what constituted a masculine body. My relationships weren’t going well, I didn’t click with many of my peers and the girls I liked never felt the same. I misconstrued personality flaws, miscommunications and just general incompatibility with physical attraction. My body and my body was to blame. I needed to not be so skinny and I also needed to be so ripped my abs were showing. This physical remedy could solve the spiritual ailment.

It’s easy to see now that I wasn’t wondering about the constitution of masculinity at all, I was just trying to adapt to what was around me once more . I was still unsure of my own place and trying to fill in the blanks with whatever seemed right.

And so, like many a gym rat, the disgust with my own body led me into the gym 7 days a week. Motivation was never a problem, I never had to force myself and still don’t. The reasoning for going may have initially been less than ideal but the enjoyment was real.

At the beginning, it was all positive, I was eating a lot better, I had found this new confidence in myself and found something I could do for myself, by myself. I didn’t tell anyone about going to the gym for the first year or so. I wanted it to be mine but more narcissistically, I wanted everyone to notice.

Results came and gradually everyone did notice, however this once positive direction turned into something more warped. Intense feelings of resentment and shame sprung up. Movie stars and friends of friends looked better than me, why? What were they doing that I wasn’t? Why wasn’t I there yet? How could I fuck this up? Why can’t I do this one thing right? Why can’t I have this one thing I’m good at?

I had these thoughts on the verge of social media (like Instagram) blowing up, so I wasn’t bombarded everyday with comparisons. I worked through it and I’m grateful to this day for that. I wouldn’t have survived the media assault on my insecurities if it had all happened now.

(Friends and birthday crepes helped me through it all)

I’m writing this as a way to both understand and reconcile the actions I’ve taken in the past. Instead of thinking of them as mistakes, treating them as learning curves.

Firstly, this initial obsession with being thin stemmed from my aversion to being labelled fat and the identity I thought I gained from not being so. I found a place in a group, I felt I belonged because I looked the right way. Not because we had similar interests, upbringings and personalities, no it was because we looked so similar. Whilst I was never scared of being rejected by the group, I was afraid of losing my place. It seems ridiculous now, even if it meant the world back then.

The rebound to the opposite end of the body image spectrum was a private one, yet still stemmed from this lack of identity. Being twenty years old trying to piece together what I wanted to show to the world, wanting to alter how I was perceived. I thought that people would like me more if I looked better. Changing my physical appearance for the perceived approval of those around me just felt like a loop of my teenage years. Like all experiences, you glean what you can and discard the rest.

I mentioned how this was a rollercoaster that wasn’t over. I don’t think I’m done figuring out how I want to be perceived because it’s both something uncontrollable and something ever changing. That image can flourish or it can deteriorate, which direction it goes in is about the only thing you can control.

(A lot of time later)

[marlmckitten]

(She Had) Just Enough Time ~ Chapter Four: Fruitless Quarrels

A/N: Just as the name implies, this is more or less pointless and just carrying them though until I have more plot to write about when they are fifteen. ;) Essentially, I’m sorry but I wanted to post something because I’m loosing momentum pretty fast. But coming up next chapter: Marlene joins the Quidditch Team and surprisingly bonds with one James Potter.

In their forth year things got tougher. Their classes seemed harder and their homework loads were heavier. And the impeding dread of knowing that it was only going to get worst when their fifth year rolled around and OWLs popped up seemed to keep morale low. Marlene had fallen behind in a few classes and was annoyed when still Sirius flew by without even trying. He was frequently showing up to class late or sometimes not at all. She didn’t understand and refused to attribute it to anything to do with his blood status. But he had long forgotten about that. When they bickered it was about their hair, or looks, or wardrobe, never about blood status or family nobility. Marlene noticed the shift easily but she never mentioned it. It did make him a little more tolerable though. Because he was still an ass, but his arrogance was wavering. She had overheard him on occasion asking his friends about various traditions and facts his family had misinformed him of, and wondering just how offence some of them were. Those moments almost made Marlene smile, but he quickly became just as intolerable when girls from every house started to swooning around him. Sure, he had been growing up fairly attractively. And as time progressed he became more of a ‘bad boy’ with his muggle leather jacket, his parties, his cigarettes and everything else that came with it. But still, he wasn’t impressive enough for girls to be drooling over him in Marlene’s opinion. So the blonde would still verbally attack him in the halls whenever he did something stupid, almost as frequently as he would pester her whenever an opportunity arrised. One day in Herbology they were forced into partners, which resulted in both parties ending up in the hospital wing.

“I didn’t say you should STICK YOUR FINGER IN ITS TEETH!” Marlene yelled on their way to Madam Pomphrey.

“You told me that I wouldn’t do it, and I proved you wrong.”

“Yeah, then it got angry, nearly bit off your finger and proceeded to throw some venemous seeds into my face, you complete prat.”

“Your’e the one who thought it would be a funny prank.”

“I WAS BEING SARCASTIC YOU DUMB TWAT!”

The argument went on until they got to the matron, who promptly separated the two on opposite sides of the hospital wings and curtains were drawn up around their beds.

Lily came in to visit and scowled over at Sirius all the while, until James walked in to see Sirius and stopped along the way to pay attention to the red head, “What are you doing here Evans, not thinking of cheating on me with my best mate are you?”

Lily rolled her eyes, “It’s kind of hard to cheat on someone you’re not actually dating Potter, get out of my face.”

“Suppose you’re right, so does that mean we have a date so you can officially cheat on me?” He attempted.

“I’d rather not, you should go tend to your boyfriend before Madam Pomphrey has a third student to take care of,” she threatened, and James gave up, scampering away to Sirius.

From across the room, Marlene could hear Black telling Potter that he was being an idiot and to stop constantly hitting on a girl so far out of his league. James insisted that his persistence would eventually pay off, but then Marlene turned her attention to Lily who was clearly trying to pretend she couldn’t hear the whole exchange.

“I bet you’re disappointed it wasn’t Potter who was stuck in here instead?” She smirked to her best friend.

Lily snorted, “I am always wishing for that.”

Mary entered shortly after and sat with Marlene and Lily. “Too bad there’s not a different wing for them to be in,” she chirped in, never having much of a problem with the boys herself, but knowing that it was most likely what the other two were talking about.

“More special privileges for Potter and his gang? I don’t think that’s necessary,” Lily almost spat in reply, which shut up both girls from the topic of Potter in general and awkwardly brought up the Herbology lesson again. They compared notes and discussed whether or not it would show up on their exams until it was time for them to leave the Wing.

Lily left first, leaving just Mary and Marlene. They looked over absent-mindedly at James who starred as Lily left the room. “How does he think he has a chance with her?” Mary asked in disbelief.

“I can hear you, you know!” Potter yelled back.

But Mary just remained looking at him, “Okay, then answer my question.”

But he didn’t have an answer so both girls laughed before Marlene replied, “I think you’d have a better chance with literally anyone else in the school, Potter!”

“Fine, either of you two ladies free later?” He inquired cheekily.

Neither girls needed to reply though, they knew he wasn’t serious and they would never humour it anyway. First of all, they would never do such a thing to Lily and inflict his presence on her any more than it already had to be. And secondly, they were not actually interested in dating the boy at all. Talking quieter so they wouldn’t eavesdrop ay longer, Marlene asked, “Do you think that if you went out with him, Black would just tag along too?”

“Oh Merlin, probably, and I don’t know which would be worse!”

Marlene wrinkled her nose, “I’d rather not think about either.”

The two girls stayed up gossiping for some time, until Madam Pomphrey ushered everyone away, including Sirius who would apparently be fine and it was only Marlene who needed overnight attention. She cursed Black as he left, a smug smile on his face.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~*

The night Marlene had to spend in the infirmary only intensified their name calling. If they so much as passed one another in the hallway, Marlene would mutter the first insult that came to her head and he always returned it. A few times, she would raise her wand if she was in a bad enough mood, but always resisted actually hexing him.

“Shut it, you narcissistic cow,” Marlene snapped towards Black one afternoon when they were waiting for their class to start and Sirius was talking too loudly to his friends about the girl who had her lips around his ‘little Sirius’ the previous night.

“You’ve got to work on your insults, Kinnon!”

“I have to do no such thing,” she replied, leaning against a wall. They were all waiting for The Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher to show up, but he had been late for every class all year and rumours were that he would be sacked by the time the year ended.

“You still call me ‘Poodle Head’.”

“Because you have a stupid Poodle Head, you plonker.”

“A little better, but try some creativity.”

“I don’t need any, you insensitive tit-fuck.”

“Did you just make that up?” Dorcas asked her, interrupting their pointless argument.

“Whether she did or not, that is detention for you, Miss McKinnon,” their Professor finally showed up and Marlene groaned loudly, using another few choice curse words which also lost her some points from Gryffindor.

Sirius had managed to stay out of detention for the rest of the day and was on his best behaviour. Marlene wondered why until the evening came and he hung out over her, watching her clean some of the trophies by hand, clearly having kept his night clear for this reason alone. “Get out of here dickface,” she groaned but Sirius only tutted her.

“Words like that may loose us more points, don’t you think McKitten. Now behave like a good little kitty and-“

His words, combined with the angle of his stance and Marlene being on her hands and knees got them both into further detention. However once Marlene explained what happened, Professor McGonagall, reversed it and made Sirius finish her duties while letting her go early. Marlene was sure it was the best memory she had made at Hogwarts so far. She skipped away, briefly looking back at Sirius who’s eyes were starring daggers at her, probably already trying to plot his revenge.

* ~ *~ *~ *~ *~ *~ *

It was half way through their forth year, and Sirius suddenly had a reputation with the ladies. He had slept with enough of them now everyone was dying for their fifteen seconds of fame with Sirius Black. Marlene was disgusted by the whole thing. Not that her own reputation was much better at this point. Everyone started calling her easy because she went from boyfriend to boyfriend, each one lasting somewhere around two months. But she shrugged off the comments and rumours easily. Other people making assumptions about her sex life didn’t bother her, but the double standard was not missed on her or on Lily. While Sirius was being praised and everyone was falling in love with them, Marlene was being called all sorts of things for the same sort of habits. And yet again it only added to the dynamic of how much the two disliked each other.

“Careful Black, that one is falling for you. Maybe spend at least two nights with her.” Marlene said dryly when she watched a girl practically drooling over him

“I’d rather a good two nights than a mediocre two months,” He replied with a passive aggressive wink, causing some of the people around them dropping their own conversations to listen to see if it would be Marlene and Sirius’ next big fight.

“I wouldn’t talk about things you don’t actually know, Black. A bunch of older girls each only lasting one night could just as easily mean that you don’t know what you’re doing down there.”

“If  that were the case, then I don’t think any other girls would want my attention.” He reported simply.

Marlene rolled her eyes, arms crossing against her chest, “There are plenty of dumb girls at this school. Maybe they’re just after the Black fortune.”

Sirius laughed, “Well I hope not, because my mom is giving that to my brother for sure!”

And it went on. Every day. Until the end of the year. Even Lily had grown tired of it and as they went home for the summer she said what she was most looking forward to was not having to listen to Marlene complain about Sirius for two whole months.

[buddaimond]

Rob’s Interview with Howard Stern. Highlights’ (my notes):

Howard Stern: I like it (Good Time) …you were fucking edgy!

HS: When you were doing Twilight, were you kind of worried that you will get stereotyped like, you will never get this kind of role? Like Good Time, I mean in Good Time you played this fucked up criminal

Rob: I never felt necessarily typecast in Twilight, it was pretty different from who I was as a person anyway. I was like, it was not my default...

HS: There are so many fucking jerk offs in Hollywood. They grew up, did a franchise, made millions etc…

Co-host : Did you walk away from it or did you lock in?  

Rob: You probably would have been sued (to walk away)

…. I enjoyed the whole process. So few people get an opportunity like that, for 5 or 6 years, it was crazy.

… not at the first one, not at all (regarding the craze and mania).

… I thought it (first Twilight) was going to be a little cool movie.

HS: It took 37 million to produce the 1st Twilight. You were 21 years old when you auditioned.

Rob:  I came in right at the last minute.

“If you could teach yourself to gag”  - the trick to get yourself to cry when acting. He said he was unsure about his own acting skills.

He had to take half a valium to reduce anxiety before Twilight audition

Before Rob was born, his mom worked as a broker for a modelling agency.

He started modelling at 12. Signed on at 13 when that was the start of the androgynous trend, when he has “pretty girl’s breast”.

At 15, his dad motivated him to join a drama club after speaking to some girls at a restaurant with him.

He got expelled from a private “arty” school for stealing porn in school uniform, and selling them to his classmates.  " I got so cocky” and tried to take the whole rack of magazines and stuffed them in his backpack without zipping.

He tried to make up a lie, and was given a choice to either call the cops or his parents. “Every one of his friend snitched on me”.  He sold them for 20 pounds each. “I liked stealing things and lying”.

https://youtu.be/Snk6mGGKH4M to watch a short cilp about this porn enterprise. or at the end of this post.

He stopped stealing after that. “Went to a school that was way worse than me.”

He recalled the first thing he stole: Snapping candy bracelets.

Also liked stealing security tags in alarm clocks, “get high on it (stealing)”.

His big role before Twilight was Harry Porter, after which he got into a play but was fired 5 days before opening, without knowing the reason.

Rob said he looked like a mess at the 5th Harry Potter premiere red carpet, because he was eating In and Out all the time in LA.

He was looking sweaty and chubby, and was probably the reason why people wrote in to protest when he got the role of Edward based on those red carpet photos.

For playing Salvador Dali, he had to wax his whole body. For masturbation scenes, he wanted to really do it only if it came as a surprise to people (not at their suggestion).

Twilight series are teenage films, he felt that teenage romance should be serious, not smiley and happy.

Producer highlighted the smiles, he highlighted the frowns on the script. They felt that he has gone too miserable.

https://youtu.be/NrB28374Ggo to watch how he almost got kicked out for that.

On Twilight craze and Fame:

Rob:

Goes in waves, not being able to walk down the street is “pretty nuts”

No one is looking at you, and if they are looking, they are not seeing the same thing. 

HS: Is it fun or is it a headache?

Rob: “Both. It is definitely a ride, but I wouldn’t change a thing.”

“... I wasn’t ready for that kind of evaluation (the intensity while also dating your co-star).”

HS: Do you think it is inevitable, is it advisable to fall in love with you co-star? Good thing or a bad thing?

"On the first Twilight, it was very different. Later on, people noticed the difference, you upset many people, you suddenly have the power and you don’t know what it is.“

Rob did therapy years later *when the movies ended*, had to know that the previous life doesn’t exist anymore.

At 26. He was feeling secure up until the last one. “Impossible to think you will repeat yourself.”

He had a massive freak out at the first Twilight premiere. He was embarrassed by he interview he did, promoting it like an indie. He left and ran out and left the country. “I’m done” and stayed 6 months away.

He renegotiated after that.

About Good Time and filming in New York

“If you made yourself grimy enough, you can escape being noticed”

He would love to get caught doing that (sell porn) now

He is very, very happy about good reviews on Good Time

It is going to take him 10 years after the Twilight series, to come up with other movies. Meantime, he tried all different angles (of movies and acting).

About Superhero movies    

To do one, you have to sign up for 8 movies. He cannot do it, after 5 movies with Twilight.

Because it is a commitment to work with a huge machine.

About acting method, and learning accent.

Multi-impression. Everyone is from Queens. Very specific dialect. He picked it up by immersing himself with his co stars who are all from NYC.

Connie is, ”He’s just a narcissistic psychopath” instead everyone commented that “he loves his brother so much.”

About Fifty Shades of Grey

He hasn’t seen it.

“I know the writer of the book. Met her a Chateau Marmont, just as “a lady from England”. I was forcing her to tell me every one of her fantasies.”*laughs*

That role  “just needs to work out too much”

HS : Do you go to gym? “One week on, 3 months off”.

About dick, fights and endorsements

“Very hard to confront a guy who is trying to take a picture of your dick.”

Rob’s last major fight was when he was 18,19.

Rob was looking like a punk with a half-shaved head in Toronto at a bar. Met a guy who is half a foot taller, taking pic of him. *He smacked that guy*.

Turned down a multimillion dollar deal to be the face of Burberry. “How did you find that? That is crazy…” he asked HS

HS :Why accept endorsement deal with Dior?

Rob: “... I always tried to avoid from being put in a box. Burberry being kind of British, always known to not wanting to be known as British (keep it vague). Dior was less vague as British.”

About audition, music and relationships. ·        

He goes in audition as a character with an American accent

HS : Do you play music?  He could “fool people for about a minute and a half,” learned guitar from listening to Van Morrison. playing basic F, C, G, E chords, kind of have 8 little run..

HS: Song writer? “2 years to write a song.” 

HS: Well your fiancé is…

HS: “Well you’re engaged, right?”,

Rob: “Kind of…”*laughs*

HS: WHAT? You the “Secretive with relationship guy…protective”? …I never get that, I think part of the fun being with a woman is march around with her.

HS: The woman...you are with, FAQ?....“Yeah, she is amazing yeah...FKA Twigs...she is like super talented...Totally different one”.

HS: Do you call her like FKA?…”Call her…yeah Twigs basically. That was her nickname”

HS: “I wonder if you’ll get married.” ...*LAUGH*

HS: “It is hard decision for a guy like you. You can have anyone.”

Rob: “I don’t know about that…Not really.”

“...Being an actor, it ACTUALLY kind of narrows things down…  you get kind of paranoid. Most people may think they want a relationship with you. Then they realised, this is not what I want AT ALL. There is a big imbalance in the relationship.”

About trolls (online)

“They are professional trolls. Addicted to wanting to cause hurt and pain. Most difficult thing. They are faceless enemy. Nuts, random names. Different countries somewhere. Fake to them, real in your life.”

“Like you know there is one room in your house, where people talk nasty things about you. When you are down, you start listening to the whispers.”

(If you attack) you are feeding it. You feel less powerful, like attacking your reflection in the water. You’ll look crazy. 

About working with the Safdie Brothers and Academy award

~ See Josh’s instagram vidoe below. I couldn’t transcibe properly“ LOL

Rob : “Just do what I did…bla bla bla bla. *quick hand movements*

“I am just so happy that people liked it (Good Time).”

“ I just knew something was going on.”

“That is how I always try to get jobs basically. No one is going to know your taste better than you.”

Rob said “I will forgive you (the trolls)”, if they watch Good Time over and over again.

>>>The full interview was 1 hour. Talking about his “relationship” 5 minutes. The bulk of it was Twilight, auditioning, Good Time etc.

A post shared by JOSH SAFDIE (@booger_nose) on Jul 25, 2017 at 7:57am PDT

[ricorper-tow-blog]

perchance.

When the world keeps me awake at night, I can feel his arms around me and know safety is near.

            I don’t know how I got this way. Well; I do—if I sit, and breathe deeply, and break it down logistically. I know why my head is the way it is. I know why…I am the way I am.

            Broken and splintering.

            In my heart of hearts and other clichés, I am aware that I am very much a product of my own misgivings and mistakes. An upright family, a proper upbringing. Snobbery and deception; sneaking around with a married man while pretending to be well-to-do and unproblematic. Closeted and for some reason unsure of ever telling anyone. Pursuing a degree in language that fascinated me—wanting to be able to communicate with everyone about everything. What a narcissist I was, expecting anybody at all would want to speak to me. About anything. At all.

            And when I wake up with a racing heart and the moon is nearly full, I can feel myself slipping back to the dark places I was months before I met him—in the street, in the middle of nowhere. Some rainy alcove in which the world turned differently. How friendly he seemed; with a generous face and a knowing smile. Knowing eyes; too, for ones that didn’t see. And God, was I thankful they couldn’t see me.

It was barely eight months after the bite—working odd jobs and trying to keep my head above water. For what reason, I still don’t know. A new town every couple of weeks, filling in the blanks and keeping my head down. Making sure nobody noticed the big-eared, long-limbed, skulking figure sweeping the floors of cafes or the orderly picking up trays to take to patients who were that much safer after he left.

            Everyone was always safer after I left.

            Those nights, though—these nights, rather, because it was one of those nights now, just before the full moon—where I woke drenched in sweat, clothes sticking like fresh blood to my skin, pulse racing and jaw cracking with the force I applied to it to grind my teeth—I didn’t want to leave.

            Fear propelled me. It always had, in a way—fear to pretend, to be normal. Fear pressured me into unhappy places; bullied me into corners I could not get out of. It kept my adrenaline spiked, wore my nerves down. It made me jumpy, when people touched me unexpectedly. I had night terrors [still do] ages after…him, I had…nausea and migraines and dizziness and shortness of breath; all the things inside of me shredded by paralyzing anxiety. It made me make even worse decisions than before. It told me not to tell him what I was; who I was, what I’d done. A murderer; a—a psychopath; maybe, a monster, I don’t know…! The only one I knew for certain was the last, that I put others at risk by becoming—the thing that made me…what I am.

            The cycle continues, and…all that.

            Fear propelled me into lurching awake; gasping for breath, grasping for nothing. I’d wrap my hands around the air’s throat and squeeze, trying desperately to bring oxygen to myself. Sheets were discarded; kicked off in a frenzied flail. Spit flew; wood creaked protest. Sometimes I’d scream. Sometimes the scream sounded more like a howl. I clung to the nothing in the dark and tried to come back from the edge I’d nearly fallen from. It was the constant sensation of missing a step on the stairs, prevailing gravity pulling me down headlong.

            But he’d be there.

            He’s here now, with me, strong arms secure around my heaving middle. His face, half-buried in my back, is alert, but not overly-concerned. His pulse is quick, but does not match mine. Mine falls to match his as I lean back against him, inhaling his scent. He gives me space, gives me air when I need it. But what I need most right now is to be held, and he knows it. Instinctively, he knows it, and he keeps me in his arms—arms that despite everything, endure and show no fault in strength. Stripped of any protection I had over myself; whatever quirky, self-deprecating joke I could come up with, however I could make my mouth move to deflect suspicion, I huddle to the shelter he provides in skin and whispers, feeling the barely-there touch of his fingers stroking my arms. I try to remember to breathe regularly. He tucks his nose against the crook of my shoulder as he shifts upright and, moving with caution, rocks us both from side to side.

            “I’m here,” he says. Zachariah is firm and steady to my shaken and stirred. He smells like pine sap and good black coffee. I close my eyes and inhale. “I’m right here,” he reiterates, concern creeping into his hoarse words, voice still muzzy with sleep – but once a soldier, always a soldier, and I think he was a soldier, somehow, some way. I still don’t know everything about this man; this man I’ve fallen for, but that tracks with all my choices. Better not to know, probably. Best to not ask.

But because he was a soldier, he wakes at the drop of the hat to endure my nonsense. Almost every other night. When I’m frantically tearing at the bedclothes, feeling like I’m being choked or changing in my sleep; shifting shape to become something massive, grotesque, and lethal. He reminds me to the beast, there is a human side. Even if that human side stays racked with guilt that in endangering him, I became a self-fulfilling prophecy – I did this to him, made him stay. A bite worked better than a collar. The leash of love was tenuous at best. Clearly I had to ruin something to keep it, just as anyone who’s been with me before knows that’s what it takes. I had to be broken before I could hold still, and now I’m frozen with fear. Forever.

            Frozen, but he warms me. He warms me with his gentle sighs against my ear. Zachariah wraps the blankets back around us. His arms close around mine, not a cage, but a reminder that I have something to lean on. He wavers between sleep and awareness now, pressing a kiss against the side of my face from where he can reach. I curl back against him, hiding in the blankets, hiding in his arms. I watch the moon outside peek in through the window, a laughing, rounded face full of possibilities. Pale and mad, says the tarot. I don’t know why I think of it, it just—comes to me. The tarot of the Moon; indicating doggedness, madness, obsession, losses…to my Moon, Zachariah is the Star, the shining example of perseverance, creative problem-solving, and steadfastness. A star in the North, because the moment I saw him on that rainy street, I imagined I saw a way home.

            With home in him came home with Brooke, my head in her hands as she tried to sing the pain and sorrow away. Her diligent, yet trembling hands preparing meals fit for kings, not the likes of me. I found home in the way she’d tease me. How she didn’t think I was crazy, or unsettling, or violent. Dangerous. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that those same, loving, careful hands could sweetly drown any who came close enough; threatened enough, to merit submerging them. Maybe it was in the way her lullabies left me wandering through sleep so deep and dark it felt like a forest of closed fingers. Squeezing the life out of me, or the worry. More likely it was because she was the most dangerous person I had ever met–yet oh, how she made me feel so safe.

            Home was in Tristan. In the arrogant toss of his hair or the cocky, hollow places of his put-on smile. It was in the way he tried to show no concern whatsoever. How his jaw would set and his eyes would drift when he thought no one was looking. It was in that ridiculous accent he had—put on as well, I reckoned, as linguistics did happen to be my meagre background. But beyond all appearances of masks, Tristan was steadfast and warm as fire. The threat of a burn was still there, but he stayed seething in his embers, only offering light and the strangest form of comfort. Dangerous, in his own way.

            And Zachariah had his dangers hidden like knives on an assassin; lock-picks on a thief. They crept guerilla through the trenches I perused looking for answers while at war with myself. I came face to face with a few of them, in the way he’d sometimes freeze mid-motion; a practiced gesture of defense or something similar. There was power in him long before I meandered into his life—power that kept him coiled and ready to spring before he even had haunches or hide to change to better do so. He was steely-sinewed in make, built on a foundation of concrete. Unshakable. Lovable. Safe.

            “I love you,” I say to him. He answers with a squeeze. His lashes bat my skin—a soft reminder that he’s still there. Zachariah, for all lean muscle and calloused hands, is always soft reminders. He exhales, and I remember to do the same, finally.

            “I love you too,” he says, after a long moment’s silence in the semidarkness. Somewhere outside, a creature chirps. Leaves rustle. He catches it all before I do, turning slightly toward the window before I even have a chance to register the noises. His arms around me tighten just a fraction before he relents, pulling away enough to draw the blankets around us just a little bit more. I tuck my head down against his arms and scrunch into a ball against him. Hiding. Always hiding. He does his best to accommodate, never once complaining. He says it’s fine. I say it’s not. Round and round we go; but it’s silent, this time, as opposed to the variations wherein I drop the sugar dish and assume he’ll hate me forever. It’s different than when I think I’ve lost him when all he’s done is ducked out for a jug of milk. It’s not my full-blown panic leading up to the full moons wherein I check the locks three times and trace, re-trace, re-re-trace a course through the woods with a piece of chicken on a string to keep my…other self distracted.

            “It’s alright.” It’s like he knows. Zachariah’s mouth tugs at the corner, and before I can protest, he’s kissed my head, returned to stroking my arms. I feel my heart slow a little more; closer to his, now—just a couple beats away. The branches outside bow and sway, nodding absently on an unfelt wind. Ghosts lapse in the moonlight; timeless and tranquil, mist unfurling tendrils of pre-morning dreams across silver-frosted tall grass. I shut my eyes, shut it all out, and let Zachariah guide me as he always does.

            “Just breathe with me, alright?” I nod a little, just enough to let him know I’m listening. He heaves in. Holds. I mirror. He releases, I follow. We match rhythms for a while, and eventually, he hums—a low note, meditative and serene. I try to match, but mine wavers. I open my eyes and Zachariah grins–I swallow, wondering if he’s annoyed or I’m not following correctly and—

            “Howling,” he says distantly.

            “What?” I ask, confused.

            “S’like howling,” he says, one hand drifting up to rub my neck. The sensation is just enough to be felt, not too much to feel held down. I lean into it. “I make a sound, you make a sound…it’s nice,” Zachariah adds. “I can always find you that way. And you can find your way back to me.”

            He wants to find me. But is it because of what I did? Did I trap him? Why did I do this to him? He could’ve had anyone nice; anyone normal. He could’ve been meeting friends of Brooke’s who didn’t feel like drowning or devouring him [maybe?], or perhaps even he and Tristan could’ve been a “Thing”, as it were, before I stumbled in and all but fell into his arms like a complete and utter arsehole.

            “Find your way back to me, George,” says Zachariah, more slowly and with more focused purpose. I snap out of the thoughts by the sound of his gravelly voice and nod again. “In?” He breathes. I breathe. “Out.” We both release.

            This keeps up till the windows are pale with the threat of dawn, and I’m not sure which comes first—the light of day or the peace of sleep without further fears.

            Fears that felt like dreams which felt like memories.

            I much preferred the ones I had awake, but the next best thing to that was falling asleep at his side, knowing I’d wake again to something better, brighter, and mine—

            No matter how much I insisted to myself he could do better.

            Maybe we could be safer with one another. Maybe cycles could be broken. Maybe I was not a complete monster—

            Yes, those were the dreams.

[asryakino]

I want to work. 

I like working. I have a decent job working with kids that’s fullfilling mentally and is worlds better than the soul crushing retail and food service (and the dreaded retail/service job of handing out demos) jobs I had before. 

I like my job. I like my work. I even like my coworkers and that I get to make kiddos happy by being ‘the cool adult’ who knows things like video games and social media. 

Which is why I’m so fucking gutted that I’m goddamn terrified to drive my truck in its current condition because I have NO brakes. At all. None. I can hear the grinding, stopping is almost non existent and the tires were already pretty shite to begin with but it’s a reliable truck otherwise. 

But I haven’t been able to afford maintenance. Because I can’t even afford basic bills. I’m constantly behind, trying to scrape enough by to cover gas and food. I’m trying to care for mom, and dad. Which is harder when one of them lives out in the middle of bumfucked NOWHERE literally a place that is nothing but farms and barren hills 

I drive out there on weekends so he doesn’t have to live on his own, I take care of her when I’m not at work. I drive her to doctor appointments, out shopping, all over town. I take her anywhere she wants if it gets her out of the house. 

I have a full time job in trying to take care of mom. A weekend job of trying to keep my dad sane and from ending up BACK in the hospital. But just... 

my job isn’t in one place. I get sent AAAAAALL over the city to go where I’m needed. And it’s not a tiny town. It’s a fairly big city (fifth largest in the state and quickly beginning to dwarf out the fourth)

I need my job. It’s how I keep MY sanity. I’m only allowed to get out of the house to work. Because if I go out for self-fullfillment and social reasons I get guilted for a week. Because I have friends and a social life sometimes. When the stars align and the planets power up and the moon is blue and black all at once. I get to have a social night out. 

But only if I remember to bring mom a thithe for having a night out that didn’t include her. Because otherwise it’s a week of using silence as a weapon and refusing to tell me -anything- and then getting MORE angry because I don’t read minds and can’t tell what she wants, when she wants it and how she wants it all done. 

But... fuck it. This is a rant. I was going to apologize but it’s under a readmore already. 

I just spent an hour and a half bawling my fucking eyes out because I need money. I don’t WANT money, I literally NEED it. Because if I don’t get the fucking truck fixed. I can’t go to work. If I can’t go to work, I can’t earn money to continue doing things like - eat... and go to work. I Two things on the top of my list that I would like to do. Continue eating and continue going to work. 

Work is a sanity replenishing place. Even when it’s frustrating. I need to be able to go to work. Because it means I’m not a fucking failure to the small handful of people who matter. It means I’m not everything most of my family already believes I am and going to work means they can’t just write me off as being a lazy, entitled, shitlord. 

Like the exact lazy, sleeps-until-noon, selfish, entitled, uninformed,filthy, ignorant fucknugget my mother presents me as to literally everyone else in the family.   “Well she’s a horrible maid.” - said about the house being a mess, she’s a fucking hoarder and was buying 400$ worth of shit every fucking month for a YEAR until I quit working at the store she was constantly buying from. And she goes into panic attacks and anxiety attacks if I try to clean anything, move it or throw it away. “SHE has seven cats.” - About the cats we’ve rescued BECAUSE SHE INSISTED WE TAKE THEM IN AND NOT ADOPT THEM OUT BECAUSE “No one will love them right.” The very same cats that I said ‘let’s just get this one TNR’ed and set up a shelter, he doesn’t need to come inside we have too many cats.’ and she insisted that it was too cold for them, they needed to come in. I end up with the blame for the house being ruined by cats she insisted we take on. “She locks me in my room at night.” - Said in ‘jest’ whenever anyone asks what she does. She tells this to random strangers. She tells this exact words to absolute strangers. In reality she refuses to leave her room 90% of the time. She outright wastes my whole damn day on a regular basis by saying she wants to go out, refusing to get ready to go out, then languishes in her room and claims that everyone hates her, she doesn’t want to go out because the world hates disabled people and that she’s worthless and unnecessary and I don’t need her to go do (whatever) because I only need her money. All in a tone that implies that I don’t care about her or anything that I’m only after her money.  She’s racist, rude, disabled, and narcissistic. There is a massive list of words I’m not allowed to say in her presence but I’m not allowed to know them until after I’ve made the mistake of saying them and utterly ruining her day. (One of which is ‘hoarder’ because mentioning the term around her immediately shuts her down. I am also not allowed to mention her weight, age, or looks. But I am subject to being called ‘porker’ ‘fatback’ ‘full moon’ and other phrases connected to my weight and what I look like in my preferred clothes.) I’m not allowed to be in her prescence while displaying ANY emotion except pure joy and happiness. No matter WHAT she says, does, or how my life is going. Because to do so means that I am personally attacking her, and that I hate her, wish her ill, and want her dead. So no matter what she says about ANYTHING (and she has plenty to say about everything) I am to smile, nod, and agree. And she will read off graphic, disgusting articles from dubious police reports about rape, murder, physical violence and animal abuse. And expects me at all times to never interrupt her, to simply listen, and wants me to be angry at absolutely no one with her because SHE has made herself angry and “Has a good strong angry going” and doesn’t want me to “ruin it”. All this despite my begging, pleading, and eventually yelling at her that I didn’t want to hear about shit like that. That I am fully and wholly aware of how much SHIT is in the world and how the world is utter garbage, but that I am trying very, VERY hard to remain positive, to create the change I want to see in it and to be happy, DESPITE all the bullshit.  This break only came after she had been snappy with me for daring to visit my best friend after work, TELLING her, well in advance I was going to. And when I got back home she IMMEDIATELY decided to read to me an article about SOME nameless college girl who’s roommate (also nameless) microwaved her kitten because she was angry at her. There was no solution, no justice at the end of the piece. She was reading it, in graphic detail with plenty of imagry just because it made HER angry and she wanted ME to be angry, but not to show it. I finally snapped and screamed at her for an hour about how I didn’t want to hear anything like that, that I was trying to claw my way out of depression and shit...

She has since gone back to reading that kind of fucked up bullshit to me no matter what and it has, predictably, not helped me at all. 

ON TOP OF ALL THAT FUCKED UP SHIT

I am the only child. My parents are fucked up. And I have the social expectations to take care of them.  She’s going through early onset dementia/althemiers. Not that anyone in the medical field believes me because she’s cognitive enough on tests to lie about how she feels and is doing. And they don’t live with her 24/7 to observe the shit I see on a daily basis. She has cancer, it’s making things worse. She has diabetes, and THAT isn’t helping. And it’s all through the VA, and between that, HER depression (which counts because it’s her’s and I obviously have NOTHING to be depressed about) she can’t talk on phones for appointments. She’s mostly deaf because of the tinnitus. 

I am her companion, appointment scheduler, valet, cook, support system, personal assistant, and overall caregiver. 

I don’t get paid for it.

And on top of ALL that... On top of everything else I have to handle.  I just want to go to work.

But the brakes are out on the truck. And I didn’t get paid.

Not one fucking cent becuase I work on a school schedule. We had fall break, and I got sick the week following and couln’t speak, so I couldn’t work. And THIS paycheque period was for THAT EXACT TIME so.. no cheque. At all.

No money.

I have a quarter tank of gas in a truck that has NO brakes, the oil needs changing, the battery doesn’t actually start the car every time I turn the key, and the tires are so bald they are nearly slicks for racing. I am currently TERRIFIED to drive. At all. Because if I don’t skid off the road due to the brakes suddenly giving out, I may get to my destination and the truck just.... NOT START because the battery has decided to be a fucking dick about it being one degree colder than it feels like providing power in. 

Every time I get in the truck I run the risk of not leaving for work, or not coming home. And when I’m on the road I run the risk of ‘if the car ahead of me slams on his brakes, will I actually be able to physically stop. Can I pull hard to the side if I can’t?’. 

I pray for some company vehicle to hit me, to crush the vehicle so I can get the repairs done that I need to be able to just drive... because I can’t afford them. I don’t get paid enough to survive and pay what small amount of bills I have. I can’t get a loan... my student debt has utterly and completely ensured that the most money I will EVER qualify for is 200 bucks. 

I need brakes. And I know for a fucking fact that they won’t replace my brakes without tie-rods, calipers, and bearings. Because they NEVER replace my brakes without refusing to do so unless I get tie-rods, calipers, and bearings. Because fuck me, that’s why. Becuase I’m a GIRL I don’t know about cars. 

And if they write off that my car’s not safe because I didn’t get the tie-rods, calipers, and bearings replaced. I CAN GET ARRESTED FOR DRIVING AN UNSAFE AND NON ROADWORTHY VEHICLE

Brakes are 87 a piece, but tie=rods, calipers, and bearings? Well that’s 500 at LEAST.... and that’s just the tie-rods and bearings, calipers and brakes will be another 700... 

I don’t know where to go. I don’t know what to do.

I just want to work. I want to be able to make a positive change in the world and work... and prove to the people around me that I’m not what they think I am... 

I want to be able to stop crying when I get home...

I want to feel safe on the road and be secure that if I hit the brakes, the car will stop. 

And it seems like it’s all too much to ask.

[katie-learning-lessons]

Rewind

Dear Matt,

I’m writing this letter because it’s been 3 years since you left and I’ve taken the time before to recognize my own faults. However, I’ve realized that my faults are minor when compared to yours.

You were never a good person, You’re a narcissist: you always made me feel bad about myself when I never did anything wrong. You always blamed others for your bad choices and wrong doings like when you said it was Youth pastors fault for sleeping with prostitutes on Craigslist.

Every time I had an insecurity big or small, you never comforted me, held me or told me it was going to be okay. You told me I was stupid, based everything on emotions and talking out of my ass. You were a bad husband and worse best friend.

You are terrible with money. All the stupid, fucking hobbies that never amounted to anything: gold coins, guns, rock climbing, cameras, dirt bikes, eagle talons and all the other stupid, shitty cars that we never profited from. You lost money, accrued loans and never had a savings account for our future. And don’t forget Heald college? Remember that? $10k in the hole because you couldn’t finish anything. Well, fuck you. I started college when I was 18 and finished at 25 with flying colors and a degree to call my own. The one you told me would never get me anywhere.

You told me dreams and choices were a waste of time and money like when you told me College was a waste of time if I didn’t make at $50k a year after graduation. That’s so unrealistic! Call me when you start an entry level job in this economy after years in college.

You’re so insecure. You made me sit on the middle couch cushion while watching Netflix. All the fights and arguments because I had to have a fucking assigned seating in our own house!

You’re such an asshole. When you decided to drop me like a bad habit, I didn’t fight for anything in the divorce. I didn’t understand your decision but I respected it. I didn’t fight you for anything; like the $7k on the American Express that we used for your never ending hobbies. You told me I could keep the bulldog and the truck. But no. You had a change of heart; you needed the truck. You told me to stop being a bitch because that was your truck because YOU paid the bill for it even though we were married. You already had a car but you NEEDED the truck because “you deserved it and I didn’t” your words not mine. I was forced to move out of our home, pay the credit card bills and take care of Bubba by myself. But you still took my truck away from me, you wouldn’t take no for an answer. From the only woman who ever loved you, stood by your side for almost 10 years and defended your honor against anyone who opposed you even when you were cashing your grandpas social security checks, even when you skipping out on school and talked shit about everyone you knew. But that doesn’t matter when you’re a narcissist; it’s all about you, nothing was never your fault and no one could be like you. You moved on to the next person; a home wrecker and the unit sex toy (like literally, she slept with all your coworkers) She’s now your wife. So you know what? You got what you deserved. Your foundation is unstable, cracked and based on lies.

You’re a pervert. A pervert for keeping all my nudes in a special for your wife to find even years after our divorce then proceeding to text me about it. A pervert for sleeping with prostitutes when we were on a break. A pervert for fucking another mans wife overseas even after all those other guys. I didn’t know you were a guy to love sloppy seconds (wait, is that what you call it? I know it was for sure 4 other dudes so would you call it quadruple seconds?). You’re a pervert for texting me months after everything happened telling me you love my body and miss it so much. All while you’re with someone else. You’re a piece of shit.

On top of that, you made me feel sexually inadequate; you made me dislike sex. You wouldn’t fuck me if I was too wet, too dry or tried to dress up for you because “you didn’t fuck whores”. It was my fault for wanting to try new things, I didn’t give you enough warning and it made me look bad as a Christian woman. But it was okay to fuck me like an animal as hard and fast as YOU needed, over and over again. You shamed ME if I wanted otherwise. You’re a fucking asshole with some deep rooted shit that I still can’t wrap my head around.

It’s been three years ago that I’ve seen you in person; our last hug and kiss. One of the worst days of my life but the beginning of pain and self doubt. The biggest red flag in our marriage. Now, I see it as a blessing in disguise. The day I said goodbye to you for your second deployment. You didn’t want to be near me, touch me or embrace me. You told me to stay in the truck, you didn’t want me to come in with you and hold your hand and tell you how much I loved you and was going to miss you for an hour. I was to stay in the truck or go away. You wanted our goodbye to short and to the point. You didn’t want to be seen with me, you made me feel stupid and retarded for wanting to come inside and support you for the last hour together before you left for 9 grueling months. I came in anyway because I loved you and you told me to go. Like a dog, you told me to get; go home girl, I don’t want you.

The Sunday you called to let me know that you no longer loved me or liked me. The Sunday you called to tell me that you couldn’t imagine a life with me. The Sunday you called to tell me that I was too driven, too independent, that you didn’t like tiramisu cake, that I was going no where with my degree/career, that it’s my fault I wasn’t ready for kids. You left me because I wasn’t good enough for you. That’s the Sunday that I should’ve realized I was too good for you. For almost 10 years, I stood beside you, loved you unconditionally and followed you anywhere. But no, that’s the day YOU convinced me that I wasn’t good enough, that it’s MY fault for this, and that you weren’t willing to save the marriage because I would just screw it up more than I had already. Why did I allow that?

Because you know what? I am better than you. I’m better at accepting faults. I’m better at achieving goals. I’m better at making life decisions. I’m better at everything.

And most importantly, I’m better off without you.

But you, are better at abandoning people especially the ones who loved you most; me, my family and your family. A trait I thought only your mom was good at. I guess it runs in the family...how sweet.

You’re literally the worse person. You’re a narcissist, a liar, a coward, a thief, an asshole, a piece of shit, a little lion man (you should listen to that song).

You know what? You probably realized how much of a star I was; shining bright day and night with constant, humble power that couldn’t be contained. And maybe you did contain me..for a short time in my lifespan. You wanted me all to yourself, within your reach and lighting up your life. The truth is that you’re not good enough and you don’t deserve a star. Stars don’t belong to selfish people: they belong with the other stars in this great universe. Now that I’m out of your reach, you’ll never be able to see on my level, you have to look up. There where you can still see me shine with all my might and spectacular momentum. And when I die, it won’t be the end; I’ll become a supernova. I’ll be remembered for all my colors, sparkle and glory. It’ll be so bright it’ll fucking blind you. What will you be remembered for?

Moral of the story is you fucked up...not me. You gave up the only good thing in your life, for what? That, I will never know or understand. But what I do know is this: it was you, not me. Even though you somehow made me think it was me and you have probably told whoever would listen to you that it was me and that I was this and I was that. That doesn’t matter. What matters is you know the truth and I know the truth.

Your loss and my gain.

Sincerely,

🌟