#that's where it's been living on my shelf in the meantime)

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2024: NEVER WHISTLE AT NIGHT: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, ed. by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.

This has a bunch of authors I already love in it (Stephen Graham Jones, Darcie Little Badger, Waubgeshig Rice, and Rebecca Roanhorse!!), and several authors I've been meaning to try (like Tommy Orange, Nick Medina, and Kelli Jo Ford, to name a few), so I'm really hyped for them all to be together in one volume! Plus dark fiction is very much my jam (especially when it comes in a bright and colorful package).

[frankenstein-ate-my-left-shoe]

here's something short and goofy for you guys bc this song has been stuck in my head all morning.

“So, Eddie?” Steve asks while he, Robin, and Eddie are lounging around Family Video on a slow Tuesday afternoon.

“Yes, Stevie dear?” “Where did the ‘Big Boy’ thing come from?”

Steve watches as every bit of Eddie freezes under his gaze. 

“Uh..”

“Yeah, I’d like to know too, what’s up with that Munson?” Robin says, leaning forward on the counter beside Steve, pushing all of her right side into Steve’s left.

Poor Eddie.

“Oh, uh, well…” Eddie’s brow furrows for a moment before something seemingly comes to him in a moment. “You know how loud the rumor mill can be, Steve-o.”

“Whattya mean?” He knows what he means, he just wants to see what Eddie will say. He also knows It’s gotta be a tortuous question for the metalhead, especially one who’s crush is the one asking him. 

That was the other thing; after Eddie’s accidental pain-med induced schmoozing of Steve and the prompt forgettening of ever saying anything, Steve (and Robin) had come to the conclusion that he’s super into Eddie too.

Now it’s just a matter of getting Eddie to admit it, and having fun flirting and making him squirm a little in the meantime.

“Well, the phrase itself is from a song, but you do know your lovely conquests would talk, right?” The blush on his cheeks just makes him look cuter.

“And you believed them?” Robin states more than asks.

“Well there’s no way I’d ever know one way or the other!” Eddie laughs, his cheeks darkening.

Ignoring the myriad of things he could say to that, Steve instead asks “What song?”

“Huh? Oh, uhm, it’s from this random tape that Wayne picked up on the road a couple years ago. Has this weird art on the cover of some guy and like, skeletons and stuff? Dan something? It’s all yellow-y orange and blue..”

“That sounds so familiar…” Robin mumbles when Steve asks, “How does it go?”

“What?”

“The song.”

“Uh…” Eddie zones off into the distance and starts mumbling to himself.

Robin is still mumbling to herself too, “That sounds so familiar, what the hell?”

Eddie presumably finds the lyrics then, because he starts singing. “Big Boy, real cool, you can tell he’s no one’s fool, And he tries so hard to come off like a star.” Eddie starts dancing around in front of the counter, “You can tell by the way he combs his hair, by the cocky grin and that moody stare. By the way he leans and juts out his hip...” He sings, pointing at how Steve is doing exactly that.

Steve laughs, waving him off, “Okay, okay, I get it! You can st—”

“Elfman!” Robin calls out suddenly.

Steve and Eddie share a look. “Who’s an elf?”

“The Dan guy from your song, Elfman? Was his last name Elfman?”

Eddie snaps his fingers at her, “That’s it! Danny Elfman!” “The guy from Oingo Boingo!”

There are a few beats of silence.

“Don’t look at me like that, he’s the singer in Oingo Boingo! My parents love their stuff, and they did that song in Weird Science!”

“Which song?”

“..Weird Science.” she says as if that was obvious.

Something clicks in Steve’s head at the name, too. “Wait, I know I've seen that name somewhere else...” He rounds the counter and toward the shelf he knows the tape he's thinking of lives; it’s a goofy movie, he’s watched it before on some of his long solo shifts and it’s honestly kind of grown on him.

He grabs up the first copy he sees, one of the Family Video plastic clamshells, and brings it back to the counter, popping the tape into their tape player.

The opening credits start up, and at the title card: “Oh hey, Pee-Wee's Big Adventure! I love Pee Wee!” Eddie says, excitedly jumping up to sit on the counter in front of the TV (and Steve).

“Yeah you do..” Robin mumbles.

“Shut up,” Steve grumbles, elbowing her a bit harder than necessary, “Look.” he points up to the text on the screen. 

“Damn, this guy’s everywhere!”

“‘Music composed by Danny Elfman’. Holy shit! Good memory, Dingus!”

“Thanks! Now what is this about Eddie loving Pee Wee?”

[storiesofsvu]

Solace in Solitude Ch 14

Emily Prentiss x reader warnings: language, minor mention of injury, smut, comfort. Welp. Here we are! we finally did it! A 14 chapter story never should have taken me seven months to write, but tackling it while also tackling so much extra shit at work delayed it. Thank you SO much to all of you patient angel babies who stuck along and I hope you've enjoyed it. As I said on another post, I will be starting to write 2 new series shortly, but will not be posting them until they are at least halfway done. In the meantime, expect more frequent one shots! (here's hoping lol).

Cutting through the ER wasn’t something you’d normally do, but it was a shortcut on the way back from the cafeteria, your usual route overcrowded with patient overflow. It was by chance that you were there, or as some might have called it, fate.

Because that was when you saw her, elbows on her knees while her eyes were on her phone, texting away while she waited.

“Emily?” Your brow furrowed as you stalled in your tracks and the other woman looked up from her phone, her eyes widening when she saw you. “What’re you doing here?” You asked while you approached, greeting her with a hug when she stood, “wait are you hurt?” You suddenly pulled back with a worried expression on your face and she laughed softly.

“No, one of my team. Nothing bad, just a dislocated shoulder.”

“What brings the BAU all the way to London?”

“Oh,” she caught herself laughing awkwardly again, an unsure fluttering had started in her stomach, slowly working its way into her chest, “I’m not with them anymore. I got a job offer to run my own team with Interpol.”

She smiled softly at you and you felt your entire body relax, “so… you live here now?”

“Yeah…” she stuttered, biting on her lip, “I was gonna call, I swear! I just wanted to wait til things settled down. I mean, my apartment’s still all in boxes, my office is a disaster and to be completely honest… I can’t even remember the last name of the person I’m here with.”

You barked a laugh at that, your hand swatting at her arm and Emily practically melted at the sparkle in your eye, heat lingering where you’d touched her.

“Sounds like you need to chill and it just so happens that I’ve become very skilled at unboxing and figuring out how to decorate. If you’d like a hand?”

Emily glanced briefly down to her phone when it buzzed, then looked back up to your smiling face and knew there was no way that she wanted to say no to the offer. She hadn’t even originally been the one to escort her agent to the hospital, she was supposed to continue overseeing the training exercise but she’d figured it would look good as a new leader to make sure an injury was properly taken care of. It was complete luck she had been sitting in the emergency room of your hospital.

“Honestly that sounds amazing, I could really use the help.”

“Perfect.” You grinned, “text me your address and a time. I’ll bring dinner?”

“I’ve got the perfect wine to go along with it.”

*

Take out containers lay on the coffee table, now mainly empty, only a few bites left in each with half full wine glasses beside them. The kitchen was organized, the television finally hooked up, now softly playing music from one of Emily’s favourite stations, you’d just finished assembling a book shelf, now filling its shelves with books and nick naks, fawning over the amount of awards Emily had to show off. Out of sheer habit you were focused on alphabetizing a row of books, swapping a few of them around while she dug through one of the boxes, pulling out a framed photo of Garcia and Sergio to place on the shelf as a final touch right as you slid the last book into place.

“That about does it.” You said, turning to look around the apartment before your eyes landed on Emily, “unless you’re still sleeping on the couch.”

“No.” She laughed, feeling her cheeks heat, “bedroom’s good. I’m either sleeping or at work, it was just everything else that slipped through the cracks.”

“Like picking up the phone?” You asked with a smirk and she scoffed.

“Hey, c’mon I said I was gonna—”

“It’s okay.” You laughed, “c’mere.”

“What?” She asked, stepping toward you as she wiped at her face, concerned there was a speck of sauce somewhere she couldn’t feel.

“There’s just something I wanted to do since I saw you this afternoon.”

“Huh?” Emily felt like her heart was about to beat out of her chest, feeling the spark shoot through her body when you grabbed her hand and pulled her to you.

A second later that hand was cupping her cheek and her lips were met with yours, gracefully moving against each other in a not so forgotten dance, rather one that you both had been aching for. One that you hadn’t even realized you missed as much as you did until you saw each other again. Her arms easily wound around you, the tension leaving her body as she melted into the embrace, sighing into the kiss when she felt you completely relax too. Her tongue slid across your lower lip and it only took a second for you to part your lips to grant her access, the corners of your lips curving up into a happy grin. It was different than any other kiss the two of you had shared, it was one of true emotion, tender, intimate, where both of you felt completely at peace and totally safe.

Oxygen was the only reason to be seen to break the kiss, foreheads resting against each other while you caught your breath, little laughs leaving your lips to battle the potential awkwardness of the situation. Your thumb stroked the side of her neck while her hands tickled at your sides,

“I missed you.” You were the first to admit it through a whisper and Emily smiled, stealing a tender kiss.

“Believe me, I missed you more.” Her hands slipped under the hem of your shirt, tracing patterns into your skin, “and I’ll prove it.”

Your giggle was quickly silenced by another kiss, Emily’s hands nudging you toward the bedroom while your hands began to tangle into her hair. By the time the backs of your knees hit her bed she had your shirt tugged over your head, tossing it to the floor behind her so she could rid you of your bra. Your fingers ghosted under the hem of her shirt, trailing up and across her skin, though they froze when her breath caught in her throat.

“Sorry.” You murmured against her lips and she shook her head slightly.

“It’s okay.”

You glanced up at her and she gave you a soft nod, trust and vulnerability filling her eyes as her hands went to the hem of her shirt, pulling it over her head before pulling you back into a kiss. While her tongue slipped into your mouth again you were able to undo her bra, letting it fall to the ground as you both began the work of getting completely naked. At the last minute you managed to spin her around, letting her topple onto the mattress with a gentle laugh as you crawled over top of her.

“God you’re beautiful.” You murmured, eyes sweeping up her body and she felt her cheeks tinge pink.

When your lips met once again your hands ghosted up her sides, finger tips tracing patterns on her skin before gently groping at her chest. She let out a soft moan into the kiss, hands grabbing your ass and pulling you closer to her, shifting you slightly so you were straddling her thigh.

Emily broke the kiss with a gasp when you pinched at her nipples, her head thrown back into the pillows, giving you the ample opportunity to kiss down the column of her neck, teeth nipping into her sensitive skin. A hand sunk between your bodies and she instinctively spread her legs to give you easier access. Her hips rocked up off the bed when your fingertips slipped through her folds, rubbing gently at her clit while your mouth made a home in the crook of her neck.

“Fuck…” she groaned when two fingers slipped into her pussy, pumping steadily. Her hands gripped onto your hips, urging you to grind down onto her body, riding her thigh and she felt you moan into her neck.

Your fingers began to pump faster, curling to find that sensitive spot and Emily was sure to keep her hands on your hips, guiding you in the same rhythm, a moan leaving her throat at the feeling of your wetness spreading across her thigh. She flexed the muscle, pulling a gasp from you as your clit dragged right across it and your teeth sunk into her skin.

“Oh god…”

“Don’t stop.” She murmured, nipping at your earlobe before nudging at your chin, urging your lips back to hers for another kiss, eager to taste you again.

The kiss was breathless, airy moans leaving one set of lips only to be swallowed by the other, gasps breaking free as pleasure soared through both of your bodies. Your skin slick with sweat as you moved together, working higher and higher, Emily’s pussy pulsing around your fingers while your juices coated her skin. It had been too long, you’d both been unknowingly waiting for this moment for what felt like forever and you were both hitting your peaks before you even expected, cries of pleasure bouncing off the bedroom walls as your bodies shook against each other.

Panting, you slipped off Emily’s leg, rolling onto your back as your arm snuck around her, pulling her to you and she eagerly curled into your side, resting her head on your chest. You let out a soft sigh, pressing a kiss to the top of her head and she returned one to your collarbone, her fingers drawing circles on your skin before lacing together with yours. Your free hand trailed up her side, slowing when it hit the fading white marks, tracing them with a featherlight touch. Emily surprised herself when she didn’t flinch, rather relaxed deeper into your embrace, feeling the warmth from your touch rushing through her and it was the first time she hadn’t felt pain radiating from that same spot. She squeezed at your other hand and you hummed softly, leaving another kiss on the side of her head. You shivered lightly as your body temperature began to drop, reaching out and pulling the blankets up over the both of you.

“I don’t want this to be a one time thing.” Emily murmured, her lips brushing against your skin when she spoke.

“It doesn’t have to be.” You replied, your hand settling in her hair for a moment before she shifted onto her side, propping herself up on her elbow.

“I want it to be more than what we had in Paris.” She chewed on her lip, glancing down for a moment as she felt the heat creep into her cheeks again, “I’ll admit, I wanted to take the Interpol job before I knew where it was, being in London, that was just a very happy accident. But I think deep down I knew that I had to come here, DC wasn’t where I was meant to be. Nothing felt right, I didn’t understand anything again. I felt lost in a place that had felt like home for years. Then I realized the only thing familiar, the only thing that was constant when I was at my darkest, the thing that got me through each day… was you.”

“Oh Em…” you reached out, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear, “you worked pretty damn hard yourself too.” Your hand trailed down her cheek, thumb soothing across her skin, turning her frown into a small smile.

“I don’t want to do it alone anymore.”

You grinned across at her, leaning in to press a tender kiss to her lips, “well then it’s pretty lucky that you don’t have to. Because I’m not going anywhere.”

Emily’s lips burst into a smile, a huff of an excited laugh escaping as she pulled you to her for another kiss, this one that you both laughed into as you fell back into the pillows. The road to find each other certainly hadn’t been the most conventional, nor was it the easiest, but you’d found your place and all that mattered now was that you had each other.

__________________

@momlifebehard @daddy-heather-dunbar @maybe-a-humanbean @rustyzebra @leftoverenvy @kades95 @dextur @supercriminalbean @daffodil-heart @its-soph-xx @just-a-torn-up-masterpiece @hopelesslyfallenninlove @peanutbutterprincess @emilyprentisssluvr @lex13cm @zizzlekwum @emobabeyy @riveramorylunar @scorpsik @happenstnces @sapphicprentiss @geekyandgay98 @onmykneesformarvel @inlovewithemilyprentiss @desperate-gay @amypoehlfey @overtrred28 @regalmilfs4me @ara-a-bird @five-bi-five-mind @niyizh @inlovewithmiddleagewomen @hotchs-bitch @ollysmulti @kmc1989 @irishavengersassemble @romanoffsho @ratsnestinmyhair @assgardangod @hopedoesntknow @dj-bynum3718 @venromanova @waitaminuteashh @imlike-so-gaydude @wittygutsy @cx-emerald-cx @lesbodietcoke @momily @nilaues @borinxnovak

[bi-bard]

Maybe There's No Answer Here, At Least One We're Ready to Hear - Jay Halstead Imagine [Chicago PD]

Title: Maybe There's No Answer Here, At Least One We're Ready to Hear

Pairing: Jay Halstead X Reader

Based On: In the Meantime

Word Count: 913 words

Warning(s): mentions of separation

Summary: Jay and (Y/n) planned for forever. However, no one can plan for everything. Now, Jay begs for one night of normalcy before everything falls apart.

Author's Note: This is super short, but I think it gets the job done.

Part One of "April" [Release Date: 5/3/2023]

Part Two of "April" [Release Date: 5/5/2023]

YEARBOOK - SLEEPING AT LAST WRITING CHALLENGE MASTERLIST

------------------

Endings were always hard to accept.

Good or bad, there was always a small sense of denial that something was finally coming to a close.

I wish that my ending was good.

I had let myself believe that it was going to be.

I got comfortable. I got comfortable calling Jay's place home. I got comfortable waking up next to him, cooking with him, doing chores with him. I got comfortable being loved by him.

And now, I was forced to watch whatever future I imagined with Jay crumble in front of me. All of the broken pieces now sat in cardboard boxes and various bags. And suddenly, the ending was far more real than it had ever been before.

I heard the floor creak behind me. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

Jay and I had been largely silent while I packed. It was rare for our place to be so quiet. No talking, no music, no TV show playing in the background. Nothing to distract us from the inevitable.

"Kim's coming by tomorrow morning to help me get everything out," I muttered.

I didn't want to spend another night there. It was simply my only option at this point. I had been planning to sleep on the couch for the night. I had been for a while at that point. Jay complained about it, but I didn't care. Not at that point.

"Do you want some dinner," Jay asked.

"I'll eat later," I replied.

"(Y/n)-"

"You don't need to take care of me, Jay," I stopped him, turning to face him properly. "I can feed myself. I don't need your supervision-"

"It's not for you," he snapped. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "It's for me."

I had to bite back the urge to say something along the lines of "at least you can finally admit that."

"Tomorrow... everything's going to be... different," he explained. "I just... I want one more normal night before that. I don't want to try to fix everything or convince you to stay or anything. I just want to have one more night where I don't have to think about living without you around."

He had spent a long time in denial. So had I.

Does anyone ever easily accept that a relationship is ending? Or that it ever needs to?

"Fine," I mumbled. "What did you have in mind?"

His shoulders dropped a bit before he replied, "I can order something."

"You know what I get from our usual places," I said. "I'm fine with anything."

He just nodded and walked off.

I sat down on the couch as he called whatever place he chose. I took a moment to look around the room.

It was strange. It was still the same place, but it looked completely foreign to me. There were empty spots on the wall where my stuff had been hanging up. There were movies missing from the shelf. There were throw blankets that were now tucked away in one of my boxes, mainly guarding my mugs.

It all felt so... wrong. Like seeing your face flipped in a photo. Still the same but not how you were used to seeing it.

Jay came out to sit with me a few minutes later.

He looked different too.

He looked tired. Weighed down. I wanted to believe that after this, he would go back to the way he had been before. The same man that had left that cup of coffee on my desk. Our relationship had become a weight on both of us. Too heavy to hold onto without hurting ourselves. No matter how much we both wanted it.

"Wanna watch a movie," Jay asked, snapping me out of my thoughts.

"Sure," I nodded.

I don't remember what movie we picked that night.

I don't remember paying attention.

We stayed up pretty late that night. We didn't talk much. Mostly small comments about what we were watching.

We watched a few movies.

We ate dinner side-by-side on that couch.

When that was done, Jay grabbed some ice cream from the freezer for us to share.

It was so strange.

We hadn't experienced such a calm night like that in a long time. It felt like it had been months since we had a night end with no argument or snarky comments.

I'd like to believe that we both pushed any negative thoughts away for the time being. We were mourning the loss of whatever we had; there was no reason to disturb that by yelling at each other.

After Jay went to bed, I spent ages staring up at the ceiling of the apartment.

I felt my eyes fill with tears.

I knew that I couldn't stay.

Not right now. Nothing would change if I stayed.

We were at different points in our lives. We had different needs than what the other person could provide.

And avoiding that was going to hurt both of us in the long run.

But I could handle the avoidance for a night.

Maybe Jay and I spent that night trying to ignore the reality of the situation. Maybe neither one of us wanted to think about all of the reasons that our relationship fell apart the way it did.

But maybe we didn't need to.

Maybe we had been through enough fighting and yelling and talking.

Maybe it wasn't a state of denial. It was just the first step towards acceptance.

------------------

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[itsyveinthesky]

How much blame does Russian society bear for Putin's war crimes?

Many Russians have recently left their country. SPIEGEL reporter Timofey Neshitov, born and raised in Saint Petersburg, visited his compatriots in exile. A personal journey to the origin of evil.

(Long article, imho well worth your time, translated with Deepl)

The morning the first bombs fell on Kiev, I bought white cabbage in a village shop in Siberia.

I didn't need cabbage, I was travelling chain-smoking through a country about to start a war of aggression in Europe, trying to capture the mood. At the counter next to me was a woman with a wrinkled face. She looked at the cabbage on the shelf and asked the shop assistant to weigh the smallest head. As she spoke, I saw that she had no teeth. She counted the coins in her hand. Her money was not enough, I paid for her.

On the street, I asked her what she thought of this war. We were standing in front of a man-sized pile of snow, four thousand kilometres east of Moscow, she with her net bag in her hand, me with my iPhone. She said her father had been killed in the war.

Then she asked me, "Or which war do you mean, son, not the one against the fascists in Kiev?"

24 February was a sunny day. I watched her as she walked.

To this day, when I see footage of missile strikes in Ukraine, I see that woman's bent back, I hear the snow creaking under her galoshes.

That day I thought something irretrievably cursed had happened in Russia, the country where I was born and raised. The people here are not only destitute. They have stopped thinking, I thought. They have stopped feeling.

The people. That was this woman with no teeth for me. That was my own great uncle. He lives in the countryside not far from Saint Petersburg.

A few years ago he started watching TV regularly, in his garage, he escaped there from his wife. My great aunt imagined with age that her husband was cheating every time he left the house. My great-uncle is over 80, she shouted at him: Go to your whores!

My great uncle was born in western Ukraine and married into St Petersburg. Today he believes everything that is on Russian state television. He has lived in Russia for 60 years, he was a private in the army, but never in action. He thinks Putin is ridding Ukraine of fascists.

I have lived in Germany for 18 years. My great uncle used to ask me to bring German razor blades and pumpkin seeds, now he doesn't want "the Nazi stuff" anymore. My great-aunt has died in the meantime, he watches TV alone in the living room. When I call, he no longer answers.

I used to think there were people like him and people like me, who grew up after the fall of communism, who were cosmopolitan, multilingual and connected. I never trusted Putin. I already left Russia in 2004 after my studies and his first term in office, I was 22 at the time.

I became a journalist in Germany, wrote about gold mines in Congo, theatre in China, the IS in Berlin. Occasionally about Putin, like when he annexed Crimea, but I didn't warn about Putin like you warn about cancer. He was more like a foot splinter, he was annoying.

Many Russians have emigrated over the years. They preferred to do research somewhere else, to start their companies somewhere else, to raise their children somewhere else.

Since 24 February, I have been asking myself: should I have stayed in Russia?

My brother, who is one and a half years older, told me at the time: One of us has to stay, what will become of us if everyone leaves?

He stayed.

In Russia today, there are not the deluded old people with the cabbage and the smart young people with the iPhone. There is a society that has failed. As it stands, in 2022 we Russians are responsible for the biggest rogue state on earth. A country that fires missiles at hospitals and puts war opponents in prison camps.

The Western view of Russians has never been particularly relaxed. The Russian is coming. Now he is actually coming. And the West is sorting its Russians into two pigeonholes in 2022: The bad Russian murders in his neighbouring country, the good one burns his passport in European marketplaces.

Millions of Russians seem to have fallen silent since the war began. Others have fled. To Tbilisi, Riga, Istanbul, Yerevan, Belgrade, Limassol, Tel Aviv, Berlin. Hundreds of thousands are estimated to have gone into exile. It is a historic exodus, comparable to the wave of migration after the coup d'état of October 1917.

Many of my compatriots whom I have visited in exile on this trip have done in recent years what I have not done. They have stayed in Russia, they have warned against Putin, they have complained against him, they have tried to stop Putin.

I wanted to know from them: How could Butcha and Mariupol happen? Who is to blame? How should it continue?

-----

In June, I met young colleagues from "Novaya Gazeta" in Friedrichshain. Their editor-in-chief, Dmitry Muratov, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last December. He auctioned off his Nobel medal and donated the proceeds, 103.5 million US dollars, to Ukrainian children. The newspaper had to close in Russia, Muratov stayed in Moscow. His editorial staff has been making an online newspaper, "Novaya Gazeta Europe", in exile since April.

In Berlin, they were sitting outside on wooden benches drinking craft beer when I joined them. One of them tried to speak German, he said: "Putin is a cocksucker", another corrected: "Schwanzlutscher".

The bar belonged to an antifa collective from Moscow, they said, and part of the money they drank here went to the Ukrainian army.

Many at "Novaya" write anonymously in exile; they have families in Russia.

Alina Danilina had just arrived in Berlin that day. In the evening, she rolled one cigarette after another and put the stash on the table next to her mobile phone. She said I could quote her, she wasn't afraid. She is 25.

She was a toddler when Putin came to power. When she reached voting age in 2015, she no longer had a choice, at least not a choice between Putin and not Putin. Putin could no longer be voted out, he was already like the weather, a given.

Alina's father died of a heroin overdose when she was ten. Her mother, a primary school teacher, votes for Putin.

I asked her why she had become so different from her parents. She looked at me as if I were a turtle. I sat there, hunched over at attention, nodding in cigarette smoke, coming along too slowly.

She had first taken to the streets then because of Alexei Navalny, she said, reading his posts about corruption, about state contracts flowing to Putin's childhood friends from the KGB and the judo club, to Putin's dacha neighbours.

"We could have swept Putin away," she says today, "if only more people had come then." After the rigged parliamentary election in 2011, she joined the "March of Millions", as did many other teenagers. The protest was crushed. She was in ninth grade at the time.

"That was the last chance. We failed."

For me, Nawalny only became a political figure later, I had only marginally followed the protest movement of 2011, 2012, I was busy with the Arab Spring. Today I admire Nawalny for his courage. I like his humour, I think he has refreshingly little self-pity for a politician who has never held office. But it's not particularly hard to think that Navalny is great, he's the most famous political prisoner in the world.

Danilina looks differently at the man who once awakened her political consciousness. Her gaze is colder, more sober than mine. She says that Nawalny is a charismatic, but that is precisely what is dangerous in Russia. "Navalny's followers are ready to follow him blindly. That usually doesn't end well. Russia doesn't need followers anymore. We need citizens."

There have been many generations in Russia who believed in figures of light and raved about a bright future, first communist, then democratic. Danilina has a dissecting view of herself and others, she reminds me of the hero from Lermontov's "A Hero of Our Time", a romantic figure from the early 19th century, disappointed by life, no idols, no illusions, no hope.

Alina Danilina left Russia with her cat Gera at the end of April 2022. She flew to Riga, then to Berlin. She left because she works for a newspaper that calls war war, which carries up to 15 years in prison in Russia.

That evening in Friedrichshain, she spoke less and less. She read the news. Five Russian missiles fired at Kiev. Wales beats Ukraine in World Cup qualifier.

She put down her mobile phone and began to cry.

-----

The worst images of war are the ones that don't make us cry.

I remember how a whole city was wiped out before my eyes. I could turn on our TV every day in Saint Petersburg and watch Russian planes and artillery raze homes, clinics, schools to the ground in a faraway country. I saw corpses, old people with suitcases, dogs gone mad.

I watched the heaviest bombardment of a city since the Second World War. December 1994. I was twelve. The Russian army, then under the supreme command of President Boris Yeltsin, attacked Grozny, the capital of Chechnya.

Chechnya, I knew then, was in the Caucasus, an Islamic country with mountains and oil reserves, the Tsars had colonised it, now the Chechens wanted their freedom back. Moscow said no.

But I followed the war only on the sidelines. I did crossword puzzles on the couch and waited for "Terminator 2". I quickly forgot about the war. I was in love.

In April 2022, the images came up again.

I saw the ruins of Mariupol and asked myself: why didn't I feel this pain back then, 28 years ago, this stinging shame, this snake in my stomach? Was I too young for it? Why were there no mass demonstrations in Russia against this war?

What was wrong with us, five years before there was even a President Putin?

In the summer of 2022, on my trip through Russia in exile, I talked about this with Viktor Zhenderovich, a satirist who, before Putin came to power, was a TV star. He has been living in Warsaw since January. For decades he has been putting everyday Russian life into aphorisms, into sentences like: "The wheel of time is not suitable for our streets." Or: "When sons of dogs come to power, a dog's life begins for everyone."

When I was at school, Zhenderovich wrote scripts for "The Puppets", the most popular satirical show in the country. Every weekend they appeared in our living room, the familiar silicone faces: the crumpled President Yeltsin, his chubby-cheeked prime ministers, the young political star Boris Nemtsov. For politicians, it was an honour to be a doll with Zhenderovich.

When we met now in Warsaw, he was recovering from a knee operation. He was walking with a cane, but he kept forgetting that he was walking with a cane, he stopped in pain and laughed at himself. He is 63.

I asked him how it could be that a democratic country wages a war of aggression a few years after the fall of communism and no one protests?

In Russia there were independent courts in 1994, Zhenderovich was allowed to make fun of the head of state on the highest-rated private channel, the same channel showed the war atrocities every day. Shenderovich replied, "No society is free just because it has freedoms."

The Russians were not free in 1994. They had, after only three years of freedom, become nostalgic, longing for the Soviet past.

I remember yellowish bread cards in the early nineties, queues of milk and sugar for hours. Our neighbours, 6th floor, kept chickens on the balcony. I remember a fight at my school that started with someone saying: I'll privatise your chewing gum. Gigantic state enterprises were privatised at that time, in a way that a few Russians became very rich overnight. President Yeltsin surrounded himself with oligarchs and drank. Hypnotists appeared on state television, and hat players squatted in front of metro entrances. In retrospect, the early nineties feel like one big shell game.

In primary school we read a fable about an old monkey with poor eyesight who comes into possession of several pairs of glasses. The monkey doesn't know where to put them, he presses one pair of glasses against his forehead, puts another pair on his tail, then throws them on the floor.

"We Russians are like this monkey," said Zhenderovich. "What the monkey does with the glasses, we did with our freedom."

The Empire of Evil, as Ronald Reagan had called the Soviet Union, suddenly didn't seem so evil to Russians then. Nor was it as dead as it seemed. There had been no conclusion in Russia after seven decades of dictatorship, no trials of executioners and propagandists, no dismissal of officials. Zhenderovich says it is hardly surprising that Homo sovieticus came back. That he had nothing against a war of aggression.

And later nothing against Putin.

Zhenderovich compares the Soviet mentality to that of serfs in Tsarist Russia. Their owner whips them, impregnates their daughters, but they are proud of him because he owns more land than other landowners. "This has been going on for centuries. The Soviet Union was just a red coat, underneath was the old, hairy, smelly body."

Zhenderovich blames himself that he should not have relaxed in 1991, that he should have shouted against it in the media. "That was our biggest mistake," he says, "we thought after the collapse of the Soviet Union it was over. It was just the beginning."

I never wanted to go back to the USSR. I don't want an empire. But when bombs fell on Grozny, I didn't cry either. I lived in a prefabricated building 2500 kilometres away. I had never been there, from books and films I knew an exotic Caucasus. Daggers, ravens, honour, shashlik.

The Chechens were strangers.

-----

These cursed days we have counted since 24 February 2022. The first day of the war, the fifth day of the war, the 122nd day of the war, now we are counting months. Looking back, it is actually years.

Another could also have become a Putin. For Putin is not an orator, not a moral authority, he was not even a superior KGB agent, otherwise they would have sent him to Bonn in the Cold War, not to Dresden. Seen in this light, his rule appears as a historical inevitability, all attempts to stop him as footnotes.

This fatalism is part of coming to terms with guilt in Viktor Zhenderovich's generation. Otherwise it would be too bitter. They warned about Putin, they voted against him, they were in the streets, in prison. The world has changed, Saddam is gone, Schröder is gone, glaciers have melted, Putin is there.

An early warning is in my eyes at least as important, if not more important, than later courage. Zhenderovich was one of the first to warn. On 30 January 2000, an episode of his "Puppets" was shown on television, which I found oppressive at the time and prophetic only a few years later. It was called "Little Zaches", like the fairy tale by E. T. A. Hoffmann.

In Hoffmann's tale, a fairy meets a wayward farmer's son and takes pity on him. The dwarf can neither walk nor talk, he growls, meows and eats too much. The fairy combs his shaggy hair, she enchants him in such a way that everyone finds him only beautiful and clever. The secret power of his charm lies in three fiery red hairs.

In Shenderovich's case, the dwarf looked like Putin. Putin was interim president at the time, only in office for a month, he talked about democracy and civil rights and wore suits that wrinkled at the shoulders. His puppet had the dimensions of a child and a broad, used-up face. The Russian Zache went on a rampage at the dining table, he said he wanted to "kill everyone in the toilet", he squawked an alley hit - the other puppets imagined he was singing "E lucevan le stelle" by Puccini.

Until someone tore his three magic hairs from his skull.

Russia's history can also be seen in this way: as the fairy tale of an evil dwarf that many recognise as such too late. Some only woke up on 24 February 2022. Others still haven't.

The question of guilt then becomes one of eyesight. How could Russians not see what Putin has always understood by democracy?

In 2003 he sent the entrepreneur Khodorkovsky to prison for ten years. In 2006, the journalist Politkovskaya was shot on Putin's birthday. In 2008 Putin waged war against Georgia, in 2014 he annexed Crimea, the MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine, politician Nemtsov was murdered near the Kremlin in 2015, Russian bombs fell on Syria, and in 2020 Nawalny narrowly survived a poison attack.

Shortly after "Little Zaches" was broadcast, someone broke into the Zhenderovich family's home in Moscow and left a boot print on the window sill. The police saw no reason to investigate. In April 2001, police officers occupied the station's editorial offices.

I was studying journalism in St Petersburg at the time and once a week I took part in compulsory military lessons, my speciality was called psychological warfare. Weapon training consisted of shooting at tins from AK-47 rifles on a rainy afternoon. I became a lieutenant in the reserves.

Many of Shenderovich's colleagues moved to Kremlin stations at that time. The money was right. Yeltsin advisors became Putin advisors overnight, in Russia they call that "slipping into new shoes". Even the director of the Hermitage, the world-famous museum in my home town, slipped into new shoes, a shawl-wearer with fine manners, keeper of Leonardo and Matisse, in an interview this June he said: "War is blood and murder on the one hand, on the other hand this is how people and nations assert themselves."

Zhenderovich remained in Russia all these years. He turned down offers from state media, instead made broadcasts on "Ekho Moskvy", one of the few radio stations that still criticised Putin, wrote books, went on readers' tours. What he did was damage control, and ever louder warnings.

In February 2014, during the Sochi Olympics, he compared Putin's Games to Hitler's 1936 Games. A few weeks later, Putin declared the annexation of Crimea. Shenderovich was declared a "traitor to the people" in his former station, Putin fans sued and threatened him several times, he celebrated New Year's Eve 2021 with his family in Budapest. Zhenderovich's lawyer warned that this time he would go to prison; the latest criminal case was brought personally by one of Putin's confidants. Zhenderovich did not return to Russia.

-----

Those who have left the Putin system in recent years now like to talk about the early, democratic Putin and the late, evil one.

Those, however, whom one would most like to listen to, remain silent. People who prepared Putin's entry into the Kremlin and later served him as advisors. For example, Anatoly Chubais, Putin's special representative for relations with international organisations. This man left Russia at the end of March and was photographed at an ATM in Istanbul, and later in shorts in a supermarket in Cyprus.

On 31 July, he was taken to a hospital in Sardinia in critical condition, with symptoms of a rare neurological disease; according to his wife, he could not feel his legs and arms. The room where Chubais had suddenly felt bad was reportedly examined by specialists in chemical protective clothing.

Putin's spokesman wished Chubais a speedy recovery.

In Germany, I read a lot about the mistakes of the Schröder and Merkel governments. The question of guilt here is about pipes and cubic metres, about the gas bill for the citizens. Winter is approaching.

I'm not ready yet. I wonder why no one in political Berlin listened to the warnings. Schenderowitsch was not alone. During this research, I read a Human Rights Watch report on the Second Chechen War, Putin's first war. The report was published in June 2000.

„On 5 February 2000, Russian forces killed at least 60 civilians in Aldy and Chernoretshye on the outskirts of Grozny ... They went from house to house looking for rebels and shot their victims in cold blood with submachine guns at close range. The youngest victim was a one-year-old baby, the oldest an 82-year-old woman. Among them: five members of the Estamirov family, Toita Estamirova eight months pregnant ... Sina Abdulmeshidova, 60, and her brother Husseyin Abdulmeshidov, 47; he had asked his sister for money to buy his freedom from his killers ... Witnesses reported that soldiers pulled out gold teeth from the victims and stole jewellery from the corpses. ... In one case of gang rape, they apparently took advantage of four women and strangled three of them.“

I thought of Butscha when I read that. At that time, the Russian Ministry of Defence reacted, similarly to today, with the following statement: "These allegations are fictitious and are not supported by facts or evidence. ... They must be seen as a provocation aimed at discrediting the operation of Russian forces against terrorists in Chechnya."

Shortly afterwards, in September 2001, Putin flew to Berlin and appeared in the Bundestag. He spoke German, Gerhard Schröder, Johannes Rau, Angela Merkel, Friedrich Merz, Guido Westerwelle sat before him. "The main goal of Russia's domestic policy," Putin said, "is above all to guarantee democratic rights and freedom, to improve the people's standard of living and security."

They listened to him as if he were singing an aria by Puccini. They bid him farewell with standing ovations.

I find this applause worse than Germany's dependence on Russian gas. No Spanish head of government who bombed the Basque country would have been received with applause in the Bundestag. The UN declared Grozny the most destroyed city on the planet at the time.

In my darkest hours I ask myself: Is the Russian really primitive? Despite Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky? Otherwise, in the 21st century, would he be applauded for being content with a war in the Caucasus and not squinting towards the West?

After the Holocaust, when people tried to understand how the Germans, the nation of Schiller and Goethe, had allowed Hitler to happen, they spoke of a German breach of civilisation.

I think we Russians are experiencing our own breach of civilisation.

There are more than 143 million Russian citizens. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, are now admitting their guilt, talking about missed opportunities in Berlin or Prague. In Russia, however, many millions remain in the Stockholm syndrome, they are offended and think the man who robbed them of their future is great.

Is anyone still resisting Putin?

-----

I travelled to Vilnius to meet a man who knows about the Russian resistance.

I don't like travelling to former Soviet republics. In the Baltic States, in the Caucasus, in Central Asia, I feel like a guest who actually deserves to be banned. The Lithuanians were the first to proclaim their independence. Gorbachev sent tanks back then, today a street in the capital Vilnius bears the name of Loreta Asanavičiūtė, she was a seamstress, 23 years old, she was run over by a Soviet tank. One of 14 dead.

In recent years Lithuania has taken in several waves of Russian opponents of the regime. I met Sergei Smirnov here, the editor-in-chief of Mediazona, an online newspaper that reports on torture in Putin's prisons, electrocution, heating coils in the anus, show trials, and earlier also on demos when there were still some. Zona also means prison in Russian.

Mediazona has an audience of millions. Smirnov fled Moscow in April because he was afraid of ending up in the prisons he has been reporting on for years.

I met him in a bar in the Old City, he was late, he is 47 and recently became a father. In his youth, Smirnov was a hooligan, travelling around the former Soviet republics and fighting with local football fans. He wanted the empire back. It was Putin, of all people, he said, who cured him of this. "When Putin started his war in Chechnya, I suspected he was only in it for himself, it was sobering."

Millions of Russians, however, got stuck in nationalism at a time when they could afford better cars, better food, they did not see what Smirnov saw: that the sudden prosperity was not Putin's doing. It was due to rising oil and gas prices.

In the spring of 2014, when Putin reached for Crimea, Smirnov had long since been purified; he wrote for a liberal newspaper. In the same year, two young women founded Mediazona in Moscow. They were world famous. They had organised a punk prayer in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, within walking distance of the Kremlin.

"Mother of God, you virgin, expel Putin!"

Putin had sent the women of "Pussy Riot" to prison camp. After almost two years they were released and told of 16-hour working days, of a young woman who tried to cut open her stomach with a saw in desperation.

Smirnov has turned Mediazona into a leading medium in recent years, financed largely by reader donations. More and more Russians want to know: What can I go to prison for? And what will happen to me there?

Today, in Russia, you can go to prison for everything and for nothing. For the phrase "No to war" that you post or repost on a social network, for a blank piece of paper that you hold up in the air on the street, for putting inverted commas around the term "special military operation" that Putin uses instead of "war".

That is the reason, Smirnov told me, why there are no anti-war demonstrations. Why the few opposition politicians who have remained in Russia are either in prison, in pre-trial detention, or face arrest every day. We drank Lithuanian beer and did not toast that evening. Smirnov said that the terrible thing was that people stopped talking about political prisoners as soon as they went to prison. "You are one of many today, you are on a very long list. The most that is talked about is Nawalny."

The real Russian resistance, Smirnov said, he sees elsewhere today. Not on the streets, not on YouTube, not in prisons. "More and more Russians are radicalising underground," he said. It's hard to say how connected they are, what it will all lead to, but this level of desperation is new, he said.

In March, two young men from Omsk in Siberia were arrested in Pushkin Square in Moscow, carrying Molotov cocktails. On the way to the police station they tried to commit suicide. They had packed methadone as a precaution.

In May, a man in a suit and tie set fire to a prison van in front of the Bolshoi Theatre. The man has a degree in philosophy and three children.

Nationwide, Russians have set fire to nearly 30 official military buildings since the war began.

"A cold civil war has begun in Russia," Smirnov told us in our interview. One day, Russian partisans might start killing, like the Ukrainians in their occupied cities. Smirnov has something childishly soft in his face, we sat under a dim pub lamp, I didn't understand whether he was horrified or delighted at the prospect of a partisan war.

I was tired when I left Lithuania, tired of this journey to myself. I slept less and less, wanting to finally wake up in a world where Russian missiles no longer kill Ukrainian children, Russian policemen no longer beat demonstrators, Russian prison guards no longer torture anyone. I didn't want to be disappointed in life like Alina Danilina. I didn't want to look in the mirror and see the hairy monster, the eternal serf that Viktor Zhenderovich spoke of. I sat in the taxi to the airport, thinking of my family in Saint Petersburg and refusing to believe in a civil war.

I flew to the Caucasus.

-----

In Georgia, I wanted to meet a man whose basic attitude I admire: sustained confidence. The man's name is Ivan Pavlov, he is Russia's best-known lawyer. For more than 20 years, he has defended people accused of treason by the state, officers, researchers, journalists, in a country where acquittal is almost impossible, the probability is less than one percent.

Even as a budding lawyer, he had to watch how Putin made the judiciary compliant, how lawyers increasingly became court inventory. Last year, Pavlov tried to defend the anti-corruption foundation of Alexei Navalny. According to Pavlov, the search warrant for Pavlov's flat was signed by the intelligence chief himself. Afterwards, the Clooney couple interceded on Pavlov's behalf. He left the country, wanting to remain useful.

In exile, Pavlov celebrated his 51st birthday. I wanted to know from him why he had not stopped believing in the law all these years.

I visited him in a bright, empty flat in Tbilisi, he was setting it up as an office and showed me the shady garden he is allowed to share, an achievement in the heat. We sat on two freshly unpacked office chairs, Pavlov opened a high window, it was raining softly and smelled of parquet flooring, I could have fallen asleep.

He told me about his first victory against the FSB secret service. Back then, in the late nineties, he defended a naval captain who had made public how the Russian Northern Fleet was polluting the seas with its nuclear waste. The FSB wanted to send the captain to prison for 20 years for treason, the trial lasted years, three men took turns at the top of the FSB. The lawyer Pavlov was shadowed, threatened, once, he says, unknown persons stopped him at his front door, threw his lawyer's card on the floor, said: Stay away from him.

One of the FSB chiefs at that time was called Vladimir Putin.

The court acquitted the navy captain on 29 December 1999. "It was the last time," Pavlov told me, "that a Russian court listened to arguments and not to the FSB." Three days after that verdict, Putin moved into the Kremlin. Putin has a law degree. With him began what Pavlov calls "the great purge of judges". Judges who did not listen to instructions from above lost their posts. "By 2006 at the latest, it was over," Pavlov said.

Ivan Pavlov was also the name of a Russian physician, Nobel Prize winner in 1904. The Pavlov of those days described how to condition a dog so that even a sound would cause it to salivate.

The Pavlov of today has a Telegram channel called "The Pavlovian Dog", where he posts news about arrests and sentences, about judges who have learned over the years to react to subtle signals. "Nobody in the Kremlin calls judges today," Pavlov said, "they know themselves what is expected of them."

Russian judges are expected to send a district deputy in Moscow who opens a session with a minute's silence for Ukraine to prison camp for seven years.

That they issue an arrest warrant for a terminally ill physicist in Novosibirsk whom the FSB accuses of high treason for giving a lecture in China four years ago. That they would have him flown out to Moscow. The physicist died two days later.

They are expected to sentence a bread seller in Sochi to seven years in prison because she sees out of the bus window a column of Russian military vehicles rolling towards Georgia and writes two text messages about it.

This last trial was seven years ago, Pavlov defended the bread seller then. Thanks to him, the woman was released after two years. She was pardoned by Putin.

"There was a time," Pavlov said in his flat in Tbilisi, "when you knew you had no chance in court, but the cases are so absurd, maybe you'll achieve something if you make them public, so even Putin will say: guys, this is too ridiculous."

Pavlov wrestled three pardons from Putin.

That had long been his prescription, he said. Fight in court with legal means, then go public and always keep the humour. "Today there is no more publicity. The humour doesn't work either."

What remains is the law. Parliament has passed unconstitutional laws recently, but the constitution still applies, you have to know it, Pavlov said, comparing Russian courtrooms to operating theatres. "We lawyers are like surgeons who have had their scalpels taken away. We provide palliative care. Sometimes just holding someone's hand helps."

Last year, Pavlov lost his licence to practise law. Now he advises lawyers in Russia from afar, and he is no longer allowed to defend anyone. I had hoped a visit to him would do me good, but I didn't feel any better afterwards, more like a patient in a very big hospital.

The Russian patient.

-----

In Tbilisi, I got into a shared taxi and drove over serpentine roads to Armenia. Of seven passengers in the car, three were Russians, four with me; the trio was on holiday in the Caucasus. They talked about mountains, lamb kebabs, PCR tests, not a word about the war. I hated their tanned thighs.

I was most irritated by the fact that the trio and I were a we. I thought about our guilt, about whether Ukrainians could ever forgive us Russians, me, the Trio, the satirist in Warsaw. I have friends in Ukraine, for them I am not an enemy, for millions of Ukrainians I am. How will we Russians ever atone for our collective guilt, I thought in that car, when three out of four Russians here are not aware of any guilt?

I was paralysed by this feeling of guilt. In Yerevan I met a woman who has made something better out of her guilt.

Marijka Semenenko, 35 years old, ran a trendy bar in Moscow before the war, popular with opposition figures. Nawalny came by, and so did the police time and again. Semenenko is half Russian, half Ukrainian, but that didn't matter for a long time. She was born and raised in Moscow. On 24 February, she woke up still in the dark.

She couldn't breathe when she read the first news, she told me in Yerevan. "First came the cigarettes, the fear. Then the shame and the guilt."

We ordered grilled sulguni at a restaurant with a spray terrace, she let it get cold and drank black coffee. "There's a difference between paying taxes and your state raping only you," she said, "and your state killing children in a neighbouring country."

She felt Ukrainian after the war broke out, suffering with the people in her father's country of origin, the Russian in her not knowing how to face this Ukrainian. She felt the same way I feel to this day.

She brought this useless feeling of guilt with her to Yerevan in March. She looked for a boxing club for women, found none, read Hannah Arendt. "Then I understood," she told me, "there is a difference between guilt and responsibility."

Hannah Arendt wrote after the Holocaust that there was no such thing as collective guilt or collective innocence. The concept of guilt only makes sense when applied to individuals.

What Marijka Semenenko feels now is collective responsibility. She says her Ukrainian father knows the foreign minister in Kiev, she could get a Ukrainian passport, but she doesn't want it now of all times when it brings advantages. She doesn't want to steal away. She is not done with the Russians yet.

That is the difference to Hannah Arendt's times. The crimes Arendt wrote about were years ago. The crimes of the Russians continue. Arendt spoke of an "unresolved past". We live in an unresolved present, it just feels like a horrible parody, you have the Führer cult in Moscow today, the stupid Z-sign, half a swastika.

Marijka Semenenko's Ukrainian grandfather was a soldier in the Red Army. The Germans captured him near Kharkiv in 1942, he died in Auschwitz. His son, Marijka's father, was chairman of the Ukrainian Community of Russia until a few years ago. He lives on the outskirts of Moscow, some of his neighbours now call him "Nazi". He stays in Russia, he is 82.

His daughter remembers how he taught her Ukrainian. One day, he sat her on a high cupboard in their Moscow flat and said, "You're not coming down here until you tell me what this is.

He showed her a handkerchief. Handkerchief is called hustochka in Ukrainian. In Russian it's platochek.

"I said platochek. I wanted to be normal, like my kita friends. He turned around and left. I shouted after him: platochek, platochek, platochek!"

Today she is glad that she knows Ukrainian.

She has rented a warehouse in Yerevan for clothes and medicine, and the donations go to Ukraine. She keeps in touch with Ukrainian families in the occupied territories, helps them to leave for Western Europe. She helps Ukrainians who have been deported to Russia to leave Russia again.

Every Wednesday she goes to the botanical garden in Yerevan. She says she has a guilty conscience because Russia also colonised Armenia. She hauls soil, trims bushes, plants sage, lavender, mint.

That is her way out of the guilt trap.

-----

After that trip, I stopped hoping to wake up and it was all a nightmare. What is happening is reality. A reality that Viktor Zhenderovich warned about. The reality that Alina Danilina describes in her newspaper. From which Ivan Pavlov still tries to protect those few people in Russia who call this reality by its name: War.

No one knows how many Russians support this war; there are no reliable polls in dictatorships. But I fear that many Russians want the total military special operation.

On 24 February, I still hoped that this war would lead to Putin's end. I thought: No one can go that far. Yes, Putin can, he has prepared the Russians for it for over two decades. Propaganda works. In Germany, six years were enough.

The West was not prepared. The Russians I met on this trip draw two conclusions from this. First, the West must supply weapons. Not just any weapons, but weapons of this kind and until Putin can no longer wage war.

Secondly, the West will have to send money to Russia. Billions of euros and US dollars. We need a kind of Marshall Plan for the time after Putin, so that my compatriots from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok realise that life is better without Putin. So that after Putin there will be no more revanchists. As Sergei Smirnov told me in Vilnius: "This is a war of pensioners and poor country boys."

It sounds like a cassiber from the trenches of the enemy, but we Russians can't do it alone any more.

The longer the war lasts, the more another certainty fades from my mind: that it is a war between Kiev and Moscow, a conflict on the edge of Europe, a geostrategic legacy that Nato and the EU now have to deal with. I thought we were witnessing a belated disintegration of the Soviet Union, the last convulsions, especially in the mind of one man.

One man in the Kremlin, I thought, stuck in the 20th century, maybe the 18th century, was a misunderstanding. Now I think Putin, in his own way, fits the times prefectly. Like Donald Trump, like Xi Jinping fit the time.

No, Ukraine is not about geostrategy. It is about definitions. Will we live in a world where black can mean white?

I don't know when I will be able to travel to Russia again, which country I will arrive in, with which feelings. I know that I miss a home. I have never missed it more than now.

[authoralexharvey]

INTERVIEW WITH A WRITEBLR — @e-klair

Who You Are:

E.K. || They/them

I'm from Germany and I study English and French translation - I plan on being able to make a living of translating books one day. I've been writing since I was 10 years old, and even though I love all other kinds of creative work too (I sometimes draw and am the singer of a rock band) it's the one thing in life I just NEED in order to be happy.

What You Write:

What genres do you write in? What age ranges do you write for?

Adventure, comedy, fanfic, fantasy, mystery, paranormal, romance, and sci-fi. Young and new adult.

What genre would you write in for the rest of your life, if you could? What about that genre appeals to you?

Fantasy! Exploring new worlds and concepts, and at the same time being able to transfer the lessons learned there to real life is just… Idk, it really makes me emotional :')

What genre/s will you not write unless you HAVE to? What about that genre turns you off?

Crime fiction. It's just a really specific genre following really specific rules, and I don't think I'd be able to follow all of them and have fun at the same time.

Who is your target audience? Do you think anyone outside of that would get anything out of your works?

Honestly, at the moment it's just me, and sometimes my friends. I feel like my stories are very close to my experiences in life, so I wouldn't expect anyone to get or like them.

What kind of themes do you tend to focus on? What kinds of tropes? What about them appeals to you?

One specific thing I always come back to is a conflict between two groups that need to overcome their prejudice. In one of my stories it's a straight up war, in the other one it's a family feud. In general, acceptance of the other (in whichever form) is a really strong theme in all of my works.

What themes or tropes can you not stand? What about them turn you off?

Are toxic relationships a trope? I don't think they're a healthy thing to romantisize, especially in YA fiction. They can be written well if not romantisized, though, and that's cool!

What are you currently working on? How long have you been working on it?

I'm currently working on a fantasy duology called "Dawn". I've been working on it for 10 years now, but with a major break in between taking 8 years (!).

Why do you write? What keeps you writing?

Mostly a mix of A) internal and external struggles and the need to put them on paper in as many metaphors as possible B) the sheer joy of having written something that wasn't there before. Creating something out of thin air is just wild!!

How long have you been writing? What do you think first drew you to it?

14 years now. I first started writing down my dreams as a kid, and over time those dreams developed into really long stories until I one day decided to finally write a "proper book".

Where do you get your inspiration from? Is that how you got your inspiration for your current project? If not, where did the inspiration come from?

Music! Everything I write is in some way inspired by the music I listen to, especially my current project - some characters or scenes only developed the way they did because of a certain song or album. (It also goes both ways cause my stories sometimes find their way into my own songs, help)

What work of yours are you most proud of? Why?

My current project, Dawn! It's just amazing to be able to return to writing something I loved so much as a teenager, and on top of that add everything I learned about writing in the meantime. I never would have thought that I could find so much potential in something I wrote when I was 13 and use it to make something even better.

Have you published anything? Do you want to?

Not yet. I would love to publish a book one day, but I don't want to rush it.

What part of the publishing process most appeals to you? What part least appeals to you?

The best thing is to just be able to have a copy of it on your shelf and give it to your friends. I think I would be a bit scared of offering it to a publisher and having other people make decisions about it that differ greatly from my own ideas.

What part of the writing process most appeals to you? What part is least appealing?

HAVING WRITTEN and being happy about it is so good! Not having written? Or worse: Having written and being unhappy about it? Hell.

Do you have a writing process? Do you have an ideal setup? Do you write in pure chaos? Talk about your process a bit.

I usually do some soft plotting beforehand, but once I dive into writing I tend to follow my instincts. I work with Scrivener, which really helps me to keep an eye on the bigger picture. Otherwise I would easily lose track of where I'm headed or where I left off. I am also very motivated by word counts - keeping a goal is essential if I want to finish a project. Also: I really love writing on the train. It's amazing.

Your Thoughts on Writeblr:

How long have you been a writeblr? What inspired you to join the community?

All of my active years combined: About 2. I think the writerblr community is a very positive, interesting one and I just love keeping in touch with other people and their amazing ideas. Every one has their own style and flavour, it's like a candystore full of stories and nice people.

Shout out some of your favorite writeblrs. How did you find them and what made you want to follow them?

@concerningwolves is an amazing author and their work is full of rich worldbuilding and fascinating characters. When Dealing With Wolves is definitely worth a read. @siarven is not only an amazingly nice and energetic person but also a fantastic artist! I love their drawings so much.

What is your favorite part about writeblr?

The positivity! There's also a lot of information available with so many people sharing their experiences. It's great.

What do you think writeblr could improve on? How do you think we can go about doing so?

Ummm. I actually don't know. It's sometimes hard getting in touch with people or finding blogs to follow. It's also really hard to talk about and share work that's written in another language than English, but that's how it is on most platforms.

How do you contribute to the writeblr community? Do you think you could be doing more?

Insert "idk i just got here" meme :D Honestly, I think a lot has changed since I first joined in 2018. I'm just trying to get back into the groove and then we'll see.

What kinds of posts do you most like to interact with?

Same answer as above. :)

What kind of posts do you most like to make?

God I love tag games. They're so much fun!

Finally, anywhere else online we may be able to find you?

On instagram

Questions For Fun:

If your main character(s) was a flower, which flower would they be? Why?

Funnily, the full name of the MC of Dawn is Khorin'do, which means 'glowing leaf'. Glowing leaf is a tree of which the leaves turn almost see-through before autumn, which makes them look a bit like bug wings. Hence, this tree is not only how Khorin got her name, but in fact all of her kind - they are fairy-like creatures called Khorwes. So as you can imagine, her name is pretty much as common there as Steve or Mary are here.

If your writing were a color, what color would it be and why?

A friend of mine once described my writing as rainbow-coloured because it can get very intense, chaotic, and naive. Honestly, I think that's pretty accurate.

Is there a song that has had the most impact on your work? An album? A music artist? Why do you think they had such an influence on you?

For Dawn specifically, there have been many, many musical influences. In its early stages (around 2012), the themes of war and injustice were inspired by bands like Rise Against or Thirty Seconds to Mars (especially their album This is War, which umm… turns out to glorify war a lot? This is actually the opposite of what I wanted). Nowadays I tend to draw inspiration from instrumental vibes more than the lyrics. If it sounds epic, melancholic and slightly futuristic, it works. This is the case with Arcane Roots' album Melancholia Hymns. It helped me come up with a lot of internal conflicts for the characters and even inspired the new main antagonist as a whole. I think music has a big influence on me because it stimulates the visual part of my brain that loves daydreaming and indulging in fantastic scenarios, which is mostly what writing really is for me.

[danpuff-ao3]

Sooo...

Fic-Binding.

Is a thing I'm going to learn this year! (This feels really awkward but I can't think of a smooth introduction, so here we are.)

Here on Tumblr was my first introduction to binding fics. It never occurred to me before that people would. I began following many amazing binders here on Tumblr and over on Instagram. My sweet friend Nina bound a short story collection of some of my fics for my birthday last year. And Lila gave me a copy of one of her fics. There is something so very special about seeing fics in physical form! It gives me all the warm and fuzzies!

...only it seems that if a gal wants her favorite fics on her shelf, she's going to have to bind them herself.

Now, I was tempted to share some progress pictures along the way, but I fear that would hinder my progress. My anxiety and perfectionism are strong. I do not like to be observed making mistakes. Even really minor ones. Even worse if people point them out to me, however well-meaning. I live with a deep and abiding terror of failure and judgment. Which...is it healthy? No. Am I working on it? Yeah. But my therapist and I agree that throwing myself into the deep end is not the right method for me, so alas...baby steps!

(Seriously, my partner and I have been together nearly 7 years and only this past year have I begun to try and test new things where he could see me do it. And there is no person on planet earth more supportive or less judgmental than my Eddie.) (But to be fair, when one is taught to hate themselves and see their only worth as their usefulness and productivity, well...The terror is quite real, and deeply ingrained, I'm afraid.)

I will try to take progress photos along the way and share them all in a photo dump when I'm feeling more comfortable and confident. Which is a long ways away as I've not even bound a book yet. Showing my errors should be easier when I can say "look but I fixed it!" By necessity I've become pretty good at teaching myself things, so with luck (and YouTube videos) I can do this!

And in the meantime I can at least write about my efforts!

Eddie, my partner, has been very enthusiastic since I first broached the subject of bookbinding and when my plans to gather supplies seemed to fall through, he agreed to help me get what I needed. He had me put supplies on an Amazon wishlist so we can purchase items when we can. The first purchase I made was the most necessary one, which was a printer. I got a little table to put it on, built the table!!!! (I am not very handy, okay. When I build anything, however simple, it's a huge accomplishment!) I set up the printer. Aaaand was resigned to wait however long until I could start.

...

...and then it occurred to me. "Hey, dumb-dumb, maybe you can start practicing parts of it now?"

Oh yeah! There are several parts to putting a book together. And so, I began! I chose a small fic, Orange Blossoms, to get a feel for how it would look printed out. I followed some online instructions. And it wasn't perfect, but it was in booklet form and I could fold the paper and everything was where it needed to be. Small success!

Then I adjusted the font size and reprinted, because the previous font size was teensy in Scrivener and GIANT in Adobe and on paper.

Next, I wanted to test printing multiple signatures. That one took a bit more work for reasons I can't properly explain. Even now I don't know why the original version was printing out the way it was, with a blank last page. In theory, it shouldn't have done that??

Anyway, I chose In My Veins (In My Blood) for this. Orange Blossom is 3k and fit into one signature. In My Veins (In My Blood) is 7k and I figured I could get 2 out of it. I figured starting small would be better so I don't waste paper and ink while trying to sort things out. Or you know...waste as little as I can.

I fiddled with some settings and such until the first signature printed right. Then I had to mess around to figure out where I needed to insert blank pages, and I changed my mind about where to put my mock copyright and title pages. Once I was happy, I then printed the second signature and then proudly waved them in Eddie's face!

Then, I found a gift card from Christmas and decided: hey, why don't I get some more stuff? Today my order came in and I got: an awl, needles, and waxed thread. Time to stitch those suckers together! I stumbled across a bookbinding video some months ago that I saved, so I pulled that up and went step by step. Measuring and marking where to put the holes. (Nightmare, btw, my brain hates numbers.) (Brain sees numbers and runs off scared; needs soothing and cajoling to come back out and get to work.) (The solution was obvious and didn't require actual math like the YouTuber told me but anyway that's not the point, the point is:) Then I threaded my needle and go to work!

Signature 1 was easy enough. But threading the 2 signatures together was not. First YouTube moved too fast and didn't explain things very clearly. Like...not verbally addressing each step in detail, but also with too many jump cuts for me to really tell what she was doing. But she referenced a Sea Lemon video which I found and was much more helpful!

And now I have 2 signatures threaded together! It's very rough and sloppy, but you know what...it's a first attempt, so whatever. (Look, even admitting that my first attempt is pretty "eh" hurts my soul, but here we are.) (At least you can't see it!)

So that's where I am for now! Eddie's going to peruse my list this weekend to see what he can get, and once I have the supplies needed for the next step, onto the next step I'll go! I do want to bind The White Road as my first actual bound fic, so I can work on fiddling with the typesetting a bit while I wait!

ALSO I ate dinner so late because I was so caught up in learning how to stitch those signatures!! I was like "okay this shouldn't take that long." Hey, self, this is a new skill you're learning. Maybe don't make assumptions. And at least double any time you think something should take. I sure scarfed down my food after that!

Anyway, I know it seems very silly that I'm too scared to show pictures, but even talking about it is a big step. It's like...well if this doesn't work out I'm going to look really dumb, huh? Better keep things all to myself so if it doesn't work out no one is disappointed or judging me or whatever. Much better to come out the gate with something to show, right?

But talking about stuff and sharing stuff is really important to me. It's this like deep inner need I've trampled down for so long, out of fear of seeming childish or silly at best, or at worst boring or burdening people. But maybe this is something some people are interested in. And I'll be generous with cuts and tags for easy skimming for those who aren't interested, and those who are, well...You're welcome to bits and pieces of my journey with me!

Speaking of tags, I've been trying to come up with a name for my "bindery." I thought of "Busy Bee Bindery" because I love bees and am quite busy, actually. But maybe it needs my name in it?? Idk I'm still brainstorming that one. Maybe by my next update I'll have one I can use for tagging! And you know...to slap on my bindings! 😄

[popchoc]

Lauren & Leyla, #91 please 😊

Lauren Bloom & Leyla Shinwari, New Amsterdam

91: "Don't go on that date." "Why?" "You know why." "Say it."

------------------------------------------------------------

"Can you reach it?" Holding her breath, Leyla watches closely as Lauren climbs a chair to get her old hiking boots from the top shelf.

Lauren stretches her body as far as she can. "Almost," she pants, "I just, I might need to..." Standing on her toes she can feel one of the laces against the tip of her finger, though just for a second. She moves forward, just an inch... yet an inch too much. 

She goes down with a scream, but Leyla saves her from hurting herself. The moment she catches her, Lauren feels the familiar electricity she's only ever felt with Leyla. After all this weeks, months even, it's still there.

"You okay?" Leyla's voice is warm with concern.

"Y- Yeah, I'm fine," Lauren answers, highly aware that Leyla is still holding her. Clearing her throat, she takes a step back. "Forget about it, I just buy some new ones. Sorry I bothered you."

Leyla smiles at her. "Don't be weird. This is still your apartment."

"Yeah," Lauren mumbles once again, though more to herself this time. She looks around her. Everything is the same, Leyla didn't change anything since she left. "So uh, where's... what's her name again?"

"Don't know," Leyla shrugs, "At home, I guess."

As Lauren narrows her eyes, a frown creases her forehead. "She doesn't live here?!"

Her question as well as her genuine confusion draws a laugh from Leyla, amused or maybe even endeared by Lauren's premature conclusion. 

"Of course not," she chuckles, closing the distance between them with a small step forward. When she lightly rests her hand on Lauren's upper arm, just long enough to make her look at her, she goes on without laughter, "I would never let anyone live here. It's not my place. Besides, Bix and I just met. We've been on three dates. Number four starting in..." She checks her watch. "...two hours."

Lauren barely hears her. She can still feel Leyla's touch, even though she let go of her already - something she only knows for sure by actually checking. And when she looks up to meet her eyes again she instantly finds herself drowning in the calm of them, like so often before. 

"Don't go," she hears herself say. "Don't go on that date." 

Leyla tilts her head, her easy smile suddenly no longer there. "Why?" 

"You know why." 

Shaking her head, Leyla crosses her arms. "Say it."

Lauren opens her mouth, but no words come out. And when she catches the tremble in her bottom lip, she quickly closes it again.

"Lauren, you walked away from this. From me!" Leyla reminds her - as if she really needs to.

"Because I'm an idiot!" Lauren blurts out, embarrassed but glad that she at least found her voice back. "Don't you know that by know? Don't you know that I'm the biggest screw-up out there? I am! I— I'm a clueless mess."

"No," Leyla cuts off her rant, slowly shaking her head again, "When you ended this, you broke my heart. But you weren't clueless. You were wise, and you were right."

"Then why does it feel wrong?"

Leyla takes in a deep breath, before taking Lauren's hand into her own. "Because this, this feeling right here, it's not just in your head. And it's not just in mine." She swallows. "It's real. And maybe one day it will be enough, enough to forget everything else."

Fighting the urge to avert her eyes, Lauren blinks a tear away, then squares her shoulders trying to collect herself. 

"And in the meantime we go on dates... with people called Bix?!"

"In the meantime we live. We stay happy, and healthy. And then, when we meet again, we don't have to save each other." Leyla forces herself to smile. "We can just be."

------------------------------------------------------------

150 random writing prompts (closed)

[ohmytamara]

Continuing: before the punishment itself.

That was somewhere within first/second month I think. Can't be really sure since I worked to forget most. That was first time I got really bratty and got put back in submissive space. For sure, there was some miscommunication, some of my frustration with the "everyday" and with unclear instructions.

Some routine was implemented by then. By that time I lost my work but been paid for additional 2 months still. I was looking for another job but circumstances being in my favor, there was no need to rush. In meantime I embraced position of domestic slave. Back then I had lots of comfort. My own room! With a bed! Although this was small room with entrance only into Mistress' bedroom and I was locked inside when she went to sleep (to not disturb her). I had a glass jar next to my bed in case I needed to go, a bit of water and a cookie in case I woke before her (I usually did). I actually did have a "me time" thanks to that and owned a laptop to play if I wanted to sacrifice some of the sleep time. It was forbidden for me to close the bathroom door when I used the toilet or washed myself. Chastity cage was introduced - but that's other story. My room was unlocked when Master and Mistress got up. I was to make coffee for both while Mistress prepared oatmeal with fruits for both of us (rarely it was plain oatmeal for me, if she decided I need a lesson). During the day I assisted Mistress with whatever she planned. It would be her social networks (my English is better than hers), translations for Master's business plans (he speaks Italian and barely any English, with plans in Poland and Slovakia back then). Daily I did thorough cleaning of whole apartament in appropriately slutty outfit. Sometimes there was some filming and photooshoots, but not as much as later on. Sometimes Mistress received submissive clients - that was main source of income while Master's investment was expected to earn us good living in the future. That super plan is different story as well. Evenings was me at her feet. Daily spankings to keep bottom properly bruised. Sometimes some wax play. That looked especially awesome on my locked girlcock. Giving her pedicure and foot massages. Writing my first tumblr account - mostly for her gain, about how awesome my submission to her was. During the day I also did some shopping on her behalf.

By then she owned my debit card, had access to my internet banking account, my email. She was kind enough to leave my facebook page alone, but otherwise all my means belonged to her. While I had the job I redirected the earnings to her account. I've given away most of my clothing to charity (while in the apartament I wore only clothes she gave me anyway), my book collection was divided between my friends and family. All I had could fit in 2 bags and still was practically hers.

So one day I was especially cranky. She also had a bad day and our moods reflected on each other kind of worsening. All the ironing, dusting and mopping was harder for me than usually. Already in bad mood, I was commanded to go shopping for one specific kind of pasta from one specific brand. I went there but absolutely could not find it. With her constantly on the phone, sending me more and more impatient messages, me feeling more and more foolish strolling around the supermarket and photographing each and another shelf without what she wants. I knew it's not there. She knew that it is there and that she wants it. Finally I got impatient and brusque on the phone. Her tone changed. She sounded calm and cold know. I found closest substitute for what she expected, paid for it and returned home, expecting something bad, but not caring much.

The punishment itself.

Once I returned, I was told to get to my room and strip. Ropes where already there. I took off my clothes with little care, keeping my eyes to the floor. Was ordered to lie on my stomach. She put a blindfold and ball gag on me. Blinded and silent, I only felt her tying my thighs, calfs and ankles together, then continuing with seperate rope to tie my hands behind. Then she turned me on my back. Took off my ballgag and ordered to open wide. I did not see her but felt her close presence. I knew what to expect. Warm piss fell onto my face. This time she did not care to aim and in my little mutiny I did not care to catch. I swallowed a little, but most drenched my blindfold, poured down my face and neck, created a puddle on the floor below me. After she was done, she moved away and next thing I felt were 2 nipple clamps tightening and from the sound of it, connected by small chain. She moved me on my side. Connected both ends pf the rope, creating rigid, but not impossible hog tie. Then I was left alone.

Passage of time kind of became fluid afterwards. Without sight, hugged tightly by embracing bondage, lying in pool of pee that quickly got cold, well, the effect was meditation-like. There was nothing to do but lie and breathe. My situation was inescapable. At first I kept thinking about what happened, how and why and who was wrong, but thoughts subsided. I was slowly drifting into subspace.

Until I heard a commotion from general direction of the apartament entrance, some dialogues in Italian I could not understand, and finally 2 people's steps, doors opening and closing. Then silence. Master and Mistress left. I realised I've been left alone.

I worked not to panic. Blinded, tied, alone, I did my best to breathe steadily and to keep myself safe. At least to feel safe. I became very, very aware of my surroundings. Suddenly my clamped nipples, until then completely forgotten, started to ache from being squeezed who-knows-how-long. Wet floor became very cold. I struggled to move in my hogtie, in what must have hilarious worm like writhing. I was looking for some additional support. Physical or emotional - it became one. Finally my face hit wooden leg of table, or a chair. It must have been a chair there was no table there. I spent rest of the alone time hugging that leg lightly with my cheek.

After a time I heard doors opening, steps, voices, rustling of some plastic bags. So they returned from shopping. By that time I was sore all over. Hoping I would become numb to ease some of the discomfort. My nipples hurt like hell. And by that time I got non verbal. I heard her come closer, she lifted my blindfold and I could just stare. I tried to stare all my gained submissiveness, my wish to do better and my plea to please set me free. I could not remember how she stared back. There must have been some matter of factly checking on my state, right? I don't remember any smirk at least. My eyes needed time to adjust so I did not notice what she held in her hand. She leaned over my crotch, tight in between my tied legs. Held my dick. Reached, unfolded the foreskin and graciously rubned something wet on my tip.

In few seconds I felt the burning.

It was that tabasco again. That fucking tabasco.

That burning eclipsed any other feeling. Still beyond talking, I moaned. Writhing, somehow I got myself on the back, partially lying on tied hands, gyrating wildly, unreachable burning point flailing uselessly. Moans turned into groans, helplessness turning them hoarse, woth some pre-language begging included in them. Nothing helped. I became my one burning point, like every nervous ending in my body connected to it.

Somewhere there I seem to remember the smirk.

In time the burbing pain subsidied, hard pain in my squeezed nipples taking its place. Totally forgotten, now they returned to my awarness with a vengance. Crushed by metal-plastic clamps god-knows-how-long they demanded immediate attention. They shouted angrily at me for immediate release. Totally helpless, with my hands tied behind, I could just witness how my sauce-coated boyclit disappeared, hurtong nipples taking whole of my mind. I moaned uncontrollably. I tried to move, to maybe throw them off, but ot jest increased the pain to unbearable size. I froze, full of pain and misery, unable to help myself. And though ungagged long time ago, still unable to call for help.

She did react though. She returned to look at me, some concern visible through totally amused face. I stared with hope, soo ready to receive abolition from pain. And she returned to kitchen, brought a cup of water and rubbed some of it on my tip to neutralise effect of tabasco.

I panicked. I was in hands of Mistress, miserably in more pain than I could not bear, unable to communicate, and she did not know what's wrong. I only kept moaning, bordering shout, eyes somewhere between top of the ceiling and back in my skull. Hopelessly unable to speak without order. Tied. Completely losing hope. I dkn't know how much longer it took before she finally asked what's wrong. Only then I shouted loudly that it's my nipples.

She laughed.

She called Master in Italian, tone like she was telling a joke. Then she removed the clamps, accompanied by final shout, when blood started to return to my numb delicate parts.

There was little aftercare. I was untied, given time to shower as long as I wanted, then ordered to clean the pissy mess on the floor.

Let's just say I spoke very timidly for long time after that.

[team-frightfur]

Time to do my least favourite activity: changing A03 fics into tumblr fics. The italics always go weird man. Anyway.

Day 18: D/D/D - Different Dimension Day

Well, I say that but I misread the prompt. This definitely fits a different prompt better. You’ll see. (I’m so good at this /sarcasm)

Title: Lunarvenom F/O

Summary: Yuri & Serena, Angst with a bittersweet ending.

Word Count: 3322

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/47807560

@arcvmonth

CW: Attempted Suicide.

For as long as Serena could remember, she’d been a prisoner in Academia. One whose whole world was a single brick tower and the ocean out the window. Whose only concept of humanity were The Professor, herself, and the books lining her shelves.

It was because of those books, each a gift from her captor, that Serena knew things could have been worse. Usually, prisoners didn’t get windows, so the awe-inspiring sights of the ocean and skies were beyond them. They didn’t get bookshelves, either, or a duel disk to surf the internet on, a deck of cards to duel themselves with, or enough toys to line an entire shelf.

Finally, while prisoners did get food, water and beds, their beds were hard, their food was foul, and their water tasted of iron. Serena dealt with none of that. Clearly, unlike other prisoners, she wasn’t meant to go mad from boredom or die of neglect. She was just supposed to stay here. Alone. Forever.

Serena couldn’t stand it. Somehow, although she’d never known anything more, she knew in her heart that this wasn’t enough. More than anything, she wanted to meet someone! To talk with someone! To duel someone! She was sure she would love it, she could just tell!

But in a world with only two people, one a prisoner and the other her warden, that was impossible. Yes, at times, Serena did consider duelling him, but only to make his visits less uncomfortable. Currently, whenever The Professor visited, there was a 50% chance he’d just sit there and…stare. It made her feel disgusting.

Just another thing I can’t stand, but can’t change, anyway.

She was so done with it.

“Serena, please come down from there!”

The Professor’s voice was dripping with fear. Together with the wind whipping through her clothes and hair, it made Serena feel invigorated.

“Why should I!?” she snapped back, “what’s the point of living like this!?”

“I don’t want to see you be hurt!”

“What, will it not make a pretty picture!? Treat me like a person already!” her eyes burned, tears stinging down her cheeks. “I can’t live like this!”

If her only option was to stay in this tower, then Serena would rather sink into the sea. Maybe that way, her soul would fly into the clouds and reincarnate into a normal girl. Then, her world would be wide, she’d meet hundreds of people, and she could duel her heart out every day.

All she’d have to do was tip backwards and she’d never be imprisoned again.

Unfortunately, The Professor had chosen that moment to visit, making the job much more difficult than expected.

“I know that I’ve mistreated you,” he begged. “I’m sorry. Will you come down now?”

“Only if you let me out of here!”

“I’ll take you for a walk right now! I promise!”

Serena’s heart ached. Even now, I’m just some pet to you.  

Someone that callous wasn’t worth her final words so, silently, Serena escaped her tower.

For just a moment, she was weightless. Soon, her heart would begin to race and the wind would claw at her hair. For now, though, she was satisfied.

-Then, just as quickly, she jerked to a stop, back slamming into the tower’s brick wall. Gasping, Serena looked dizzily at her leg, where the Professor’s hand was wrapped around her ankle.

She’d failed.

 ***

Afterwards, Serena was forced into bed. Apparently, there was a chance she’d suffered a concussion, so she’d need an hour’s rest.

As expected, The Professor kept close watch. Unexpectedly, however, he also kept his word. Should Serena prove healthy, they would go for a walk and, in the meantime, one more person would join her enclosed world.

“This is Yuri Akaba, my son.”

Serena blinked. Frankly, it was hard to believe someone this morally bankrupt could raise a child. Curious, she gave this ‘Yuri’ a look.

It took everything she had to hide her surprise. From the top of his spiked purple hair to the bottom of his black and grey boots, Yuri looked nothing like the professor. Even his smug, punchable face, while aggravating, was aggravating in a different way!

“He’s adopted,” The Professor explained, “but I consider him family.”       “More importantly,” Yuri added. “I’ll be taking you to my garden. Just as a warning-” his eyes turned sharp “-I won’t forgive any damage to the flowers.”

In response, The Professor did something Serena’d thought beyond him. Something too casual, too normal, too human to be possible.

He sighed. “Relax, Yuri. I’m sure Serena will find them as beautiful as I do.”

Like a charm, Yuri preened, his face lighting up with a brilliant smile. Serena would have gagged, but her attention was focused on The Professor.

His eyes had never once left her face.

 ***

Once the walk was on, Yuri wasted no time. Grabbing Serena by the arm, he dragged her through Academia.

By the time they arrived, her hand felt ready to fall off. Still, as she looked over the expansive gardens before her, she knew the ache was worth it.  

It was as though Academia’s brick floor had been painted over, replaced by a scene from a fairytale. Layers of green grass carpeted the ground, while small bushes, trees, and leafy vines clustered around quaint wooden fencing. Countless flowers, both lonely and in clumps, were nestled among the green. Whenever the wind blew, small, shier flora would show their faces. Altogether, trying to spot the flowers felt almost like a treasure hunt.

But while Serena may have been prepared for the appearance of the flowers, no amount of fairytales could prepare her for the smell. After all, while she could see colours in her room, she’d never once smelled a rose.

Right now, the air swirled with an endless mix of fragrances. At times, their perfume was so wonderful she could taste it! But, at others, they combined into something irritating or bitter.

Nose wrinkling, Serena dived in. Would they smell better on their own or worse? She needed to know the answer.

In the end, she was so absorbed in it that, even when The Professor started staring again, she couldn’t bring herself to care.

I can’t believe that a place like this was just five minutes away. 

Compared to her prison, it was like an entirely different world! She wanted to explore every inch!

Sadly, once the sky went dark, Serena was forced to give up. With how overwhelming Yuri’s garden was, she’d need multiple days to enjoy it!

It made him feel just slightly more respectable.

“Seriously?” she repeated. “You take care of all of them?”

Yuri nodded proudly.

“Do you think that if I asked, The Professor would let me grow one in my room?”

“I doubt it,” he hummed. “Flowers need sunlight.”

“I have a window.”

In response, Yuri just smiled.

Seeing it, Serena’s blood ran cold, but she didn’t understand why. Not until she’d returned to her prison.

A series of tight, heavy grates had been screwed over her window, blocking out the sun and hiding away the moon. Horrified, Serena stumbled into her newly darkened tower, trying to pry the grates off, but all she managed to do was cut up her fingers.

Once more, she was powerless.

“Why!?”

“To ensure you couldn’t jump,” The Professor answered.

-and just like that, Serena knew she was doomed. From here until the end of time, she’d never reincarnate into a bird, never see a flower, and never meet another person.

“What did I do to deserve this?”

 ***

For as long as Yuri could remember, his father had never looked him in the eyes.

Surprisingly, that was an improvement. When they’d first met, Father’s face had twisted with such a visceral, sickening disgust that it’d burned itself into his memory.

To this day, he doesn’t know why, despite that disgust, Father still adopted a nameless, homeless orphan like him. Just that, no matter how cold his voice was, his hand on Yuri’s shoulder was always warm. No matter how absent his gaze was, those who wronged Yuri were never forgiven.

For Yuri, this is ‘love’.

But since he doesn’t know what drives that ‘love’, to him, it’s always hanging by a thread.

He’s fortunate, then, to live at Academia. In the halls of Academia, strength is all that matters and Yuri is very strong.

 ***

After that single, dreamlike day in Yuri’s garden, Serena’s life became a grimy, orange hell of artificial light. Hidden from the sun and moon, day and night bled into one. How long had it been since her last meal? How many hours had she spent in bed? Now, with every moment blurring together, she couldn’t answer.

Honestly, just the thought of living the rest of her life like this made Serena want to bite her tongue off. Even if she tried, though, she knew The Professor would save her. There was no hope of escaping. Not anymore.

At least, that’s what she’d thought. Everything changed when, on another boring orange day, the door to Serena’s tower burst open. Startling, she activated her duel disk as, along with the frigid night wind, two girls wearing Obelisk Blue invaded her prison.

Rather than attack, though, the girl with long brown hair squeaked. “I told you she was real, Asuka!”

‘Asuka’s’ eyes widened. “I can’t believe it,” she breathed. “How could Academia keep a prisoner in such conditions!?”

Her voice was strained with secondhand horror. A possible ally or another lure like Yuri? After some consideration, Serena chose to sidestep the question. Right now, the door was wide open. If Serena could just get past them-

“You won’t make it on your own.”

Hearing Asuka’s gentle warning, Serena stiffened, then groaned. “Was I really that obvious?”

“Who wouldn’t be?” Asuka laughed. “No one would want to stay here.”

“It’s inhumane,” her friend huffed.

“Exactly,” Asuka repeated. “So inhumane that, when Junko told me the rumours, I didn’t believe them! Having seen you with my own eyes, though, I’m glad to have checked!” her eyes blazed. “Junko and I  are escaping Academia! I insist you come with us!”

Holding out her hand, Asuka waited for Serena to take hold.

This time, Serena didn’t hesitate. Even if these girls did turn out to be traitors, making it outside was good enough. Once Serena’d run into that starry night, all the betrayals in the world couldn’t keep her tied down. She’d escape, whether by boat or by throwing herself from the cliffs.

To Serena’s shock, though, her anxieties were unfounded. Despite her keeping watch for the slightest sign of betrayal, from her tower to the docks, Asuka and Junko were nothing but helpful. Even when Serena smelled flowers on the wind and, against her better judgement, turned towards them, their warnings and refusals were kind.

“You’ll be able to see hundreds of flowers once you’re free,” Asuka assured her.

“Besides,” Junko added. “If you lay a finger on Yuri’s things, he’ll hunt you till the ends of the earth.”

Nodding, Serena climbed into their motorboat, eyes fixed on the slowly swirling waves. While she’d seen the sea reflect the night before, ever since her window’d been blocked, she’d had only her memories to rely on. To not only see it again but physically sail through it was beyond imagining. It truly felt like she was travelling through space, ringed on all sides by melting stars.

Serena was so enchanted that, when they finally reached Port City, she was almost sorry to disembark. Still, it was only ‘almost’. The freedom she’d longed for, so close that she could almost taste it, was all she could think of.

Heart soaring, she leapt off the boat and onto the pier, sprinting at full speed towards the city. Behind her, Junko and Asuka followed, overjoyed to the point of laughter.

But when a strange purple light blazed out, their laughter turned into cries of horror. Serena slowed, turning to ask what was wrong, but before she could get a word out, Junko rushed up and shoved her to the side, taking Serena’s place in the light.

For a moment, all Serena could see was her silhouette.

Then her shadow just… dissolved. In the end, only a card was left behind.

What just…happened?    

Serena couldn’t comprehend it, but Asuka clearly did. Sobbing, she staggered forwards, picking a card off the ground and collapsing to her knees.

Asuka’s trembling form, just one flash of light away from disappearing, broke Serena’s shocked haze. Activating her duel disk, she switched it to duel mode, then ran ahead, peering into the darkness. Whoever their attacker was, she wouldn’t let them get away with it!

She hadn’t expected those cruel, pink eyes.

It can’t be-  

“Serena?”

…No, I could never forget that voice.  

It had haunted her during every painful second. Even now, just thinking those words - ’flowers need sun’ - always set her blood on fire.

That day, in his garden, she’d been happy for the first and last time. She’d never forgive Yuri for his part in that!

“Why are you here!?” she demanded. “Why do you have to ruin everything!?”

 Yuri sighed. “You know, people always ask me that. Frankly, I’m getting tired of explaining. Then again,” he added, eyes lighting up with mockery, “I hear you’ve had a difficult year, so I suppose that, just this once, I’ll explain myself!” grinning, he threw his hand out with a flourish. “See, in Academia, the more Heartlanders, Resistance members, deserters, and traitors you card, the better your room! Heartlanders are worth 10 points, Resistance is worth 50 points, deserters are worth 80, and traitors are worth 100!” he hummed, “say, how much do you think a runaway prisoner is worth? My flowers haven’t been getting enough sun, so I’ve been wanting to upgrade!”

Serena couldn’t believe it. “You don’t even have a reason?!”

Not love, not loyalty, he wasn’t being deceived or strung along.

He was free and he used that freedom to hurt people!

Why?!  

Anger, disgust, despair, betrayal, envy -a thousand sickening feelings were swirling in her gut.     

Why me?!  

 ***

One day, an eternity ago, a girl had been barred from the sun.  

“What did I do to deserve this?” she’d asked.  

“You have the face of someone dear to me, but the soul of a monster,” he’d answered.  

 ***

“I’m not a monster!” Serena cried, heart pounding in her ears.

How could she be!? Her entire life, she’d been trapped inside that tower! There was nothing monstrous to do!

Even so, The Professor had punished her. He’d stolen her childhood, stolen her world, and stolen the friends she could’ve made. The one real kindness he’d shown her - a single afternoon of flowers - had been a trap!

If Serena wasn’t a monster, he was just punishing her for being born!

But being born isn’t wrong!  

Killing people and smiling was wrong! Mocking people and laughing was wrong! So how, after everything he’d done, could The Professor let Yuri walk free!?

“The only monster here is you!” activating her duel disk, she slammed her deck in place. “I won’t let you get away with it!”

Yuri stared, then broke out laughing. “Have you ever even used that for real!?”

“No,” she admitted, teeth gritted, “but I’m strong, I know it! Starving Venom and I will prove it!”

“I suppose you can try, but Dragostapelia might disagree.”

 ***

For years, Yuri pushed himself to the limit, broke, then pushed himself again. Misery builds character, or so they say, so whether it was studying till his eyes stung, duelling till his fingers bled, or training till his whole body ached, Yuri never stopped.  

After half a decade, his efforts were rewarded. Rank 1 in grades, rank 1 in duelling, and rank 1 in service -by achieving all three, he’d established himself as the peak of Academia.  

It was a truly monumental occasion. In Academia, the strong had the right to do anything, even question The Professor.  

So “hey,” he’d started, forcing the words through his blocked-up throat, “why do you only look at my pendulum, never my face?”  

The Professor startled, but his eyes never left Yuri’s moon-encrusted pendulum. “You have the face of a monster, but the soul of someone dear to me.”  

“Then…do you still love me?” he’d asked.  

“Always,” they’d answered.  

And satisfied, Yuri had nodded. After all, before The Professor, he’d had nothing. No family, no money, no food, no clothes, no home, just this pendulum around his neck. How could he be anything but grateful for The Professor’s touch? How could he want anything more than his encouragement, his protection, his shelter? How could he be so greedy?  

For Yuri, this is ‘love’!  

Even so, he couldn’t deny it. When he’d seen how much The Professor adored Serena’s face, he’d wanted to rip it off and take it for himself.  

 ***

“Starving Venom Fusion Dragon, attack Yuri directly!”

Roaring, Starving Venom tore through Yuri’s field, destroying Dragostapelia and blowing him into the ocean. At the same time, his LP hit 0, ending the duel in Serena’s favour.

As for said duel, the only way she could describe it was ‘exhilarating’. Just as she’d suspected, despite her lack of experience, she was strong. Strong enough to beat Academia’s best!

Of course, she couldn’t have done it without Starving Venom and, needless to say, fighting alongside them was unforgettable. All her life, they’d been a card in a deck, but, deep down, she’d always known they were more.

Having finally summoned them with Real Solid Vision, Serena was glad to be right. There was a pure, true, and wonderful connection between them. Not even flowers couldn’t compare.

Unfortunately, with the duel over, her time with Starving Venom also concluded. Watching them flake away, horns, teeth, and claws all shattering into shards of light, dug a hole in Serena’s chest.

“From now on, we’ll duel again and again,” she promised, “It’ll be wonderful.”

Starving Venom rumbled low, a sign of trust, excitement, and relief. As they finally, fully faded away, it comforted her.

“You -you beat him!”

Eyes widening, Serena spun to face Asuka. She’d been so caught up in the duel that she’d forgotten the situation!

She raced over. “I meant it when I said I wouldn’t let him get away with it. I just- I’m sorry for not being fast enough.”

“Don’t be,” Asuka replied. “H-he didn’t let Junko duel. It was cowardly.”

“-And I’ve made him pay for it! But do you…need time to rest?”

She shook her head. “I’ve rested enough. If we take too long, the detention officers-”

“Wait!”

Serena’s stomach dropped. Scrambling up, she activated her duel disk. She didn’t know how Yuri’d recovered so quickly, but if he wanted round two, he’d get it!

But when she did catch sight of him, he didn’t look close to ready.

Yuri was soaked to the bone, clothes and hair sticking to his skin. Water dripped off like rain, making small puddles around his feet. More than anything else, though, what struck Serena most were his eyes. Wide, red, and shining with broken desperation, they reminded her of a cornered animal.

“Please don’t go,” he begged, “The Professor will be upset!”

His voice was so -so broken that she couldn’t even be angry, anymore.

“Let him be. I don’t owe him anything.”

“But he’ll -he’ll be disappointed with me! If I’m not the strongest-”

“-He’s always been disappointed with you,” she interrupted. “That’s why he never looks you in the eyes. Maybe, at the start, you didn’t deserve that, but by now, you get what’s coming to you.”

Grabbing Asuka, she stalked off. Yuri tried to follow but, in the end, his injuries were too much. Before long, he’d collapsed with a wet thud, sobbing pathetically.

Still, Serena refused to turn back. After all, only monsters mocked the weak and only prisoners shared space with those they hated.

As of today, Serena was neither. Unlike Yuri, she was free. 

______

Can you imagine my horror when people started posting roleswaps on Day 5 and I realised my fic was, in fact, a roleswap? Anyway. Welcome to Lunarvenom Face/Off. A Roleswap where the central premise is that nothing changes! Fun! Basically, the Yu-boys retain Zarc's face and Zarc is still the villain, but they get Ray's soul and magic jewelry (in this case, matching pendulums). The girls, meanwhile, get Zarcs soul and dragons but retain Ray's face. Ray is still the hero of the original dimension, too. In other words, think of it as Ray and Zarc stealing each other's faces. Taking each other's faces...off, if you would. As a result, Leo has an intense but superficial affection for Serena (he'll never put her in harm's way, but he doesn't think she deserves rights), and a distant but genuine affection for Yuri (he can't look at him, but he thinks he deserves rights). Since he can't see past their faces, he can't fully love or hate either of them.

[bloodsadx]

You should draw more comics. your comics are my favorite ones.

i love making comics but

they dont make money

they dont get you clouted

the more effort i put into making them good the less money and clout i get from them (and the reverse is true the less time i spend on them the more money and clout i get from them but i dont want to live my life like that)

i want to have money and clout so that i can do things with my friends like publish comics for real because most comics publishers big and small only publish comics called "tomato boy" about a little boy that is sad he can't be a tomato written by a person who has like 9 cactuses on their very well lit white wall apartment window sill and they watch nothing but cooking videos and brian david gilbert videos or like an extremely derivative hero/shounen comic thing where everybody looks like a plastic piece of shit like gwenpool and both versions of that sit on bookstore shelves infinitely and dont get bought by anybody but suckers and nobody remembers them 8 months after they get made and i dont want to make either of those and i want to be able to establish an environment for myself and my friends who make stuff other than that where we can get money from doing it without killing ourselves

most of the comics ive made have been like intense labors of love and are full of my blood and im still just some nobody with like 4000 followers (and only that many on twitter which might explode) and thats not sustainable and im going to die if i keep trying to climb the hill that i want to climb by making stuff i believe in entirely in the comics lane and exhaust all of my comics ideas and passion for doing it for nothing but street cred

the more time and money i invest in making clothes so that i can get an audience and money so that i can make comics the less time i am able to spend making comics

the average clothing thing ive done has given me like a 10 to 1 return on investment and also people actually wear the shit and rep it in a meaningful way that extends beyond like my book that i care abt sitting on their shelf mostly forgottten

ultimately i think that it will make me better at making comics though because there is way too much of a glut of guys who just make comics anyway and being outside and seeing shit and having opinions abt shit other than comics makes me smarter and have more stuff to say in my comics when i do make them

i have in the past year gotten better at drawing in specific ways that im proud of bc of doing stuff other than making myself sit in front of a photoshop screen for 8 hours a day to doodle stuff im only loosely passionate about and giving myself time to air my shit out

i know how to do things like how to contact manufacturers and custom design shit now that i didnt know how to do before and i wouldnt have known how to do before if i didnt take time to do stuff other than try to make comics in photoshop. im so much better at printing now. idk. im gonna make more comics if i dont get hit by a bus first. but in the meantime im balling

[amisplaceddwelf]

Breadsticks

I've never gone hungry.

'They must have little money where you come from'

He says it in a humurous tone. With that beautiful grin filled to the brim with deceiving purity. He doesn't really want to hurt me. Maybe only get a rise out of me (as always) so I give him the satisfaction of an indignant huff, and tug the breadsticks I have just snatched from the restaurant table securely under my jacket. Later, at home, I add them to the pile of snacks accumulating in my shelf like books, and wonder what could I have answeed to such an impertinent statement.

'You're mistaken. I've never gone hungry.'

That part is true enough. 'You're privileged.' reminds me my father, when I am a little child 'You'll never know what true cold or hunger is. I'll make sure of it'. An edge of bitterness to his voice, but kid me pays it no mind, and instead nods reverentially. I'll never know, repeated like a mantra. I'll never know.

And I don't, but I develop a habit. I snatch food where I can, specially in the school cafeteria, hide it in the folds of my clothes and accumulate it later in my living quarters. As a child, it comes as naturally as a reflex. They'll throw it in the trashcan anyways, I convince myself. Why not take those crumbs. That piece of a cookie. That bit of rice. When the adults see me walk away from the table emptyhanded, they don't suspect a thing. If they looked more throughly, they would find my jacket full of springrolls. Hard candy carefully distributed in my socks. A full slice of pizza under my shirt.

Thankfully, the inspection never happens.

I grow up and I've never been hungry. That much is true. My father tells me tales of his childhood: barely short of a dozen of siblings, just one providing adult, a pile of clothes composed of hand-me-downs from the older brothers. One day I outgrow all of my T-shirts, but father insists they fit me fine. He pushes my head to make it fit through the neck hole. It hurts. I want to laugh.

I'm a teen, and my 'smuggling' act has become sensation. A game of sorts. Now, bring me a whole panecook, says a kid. To me, a piece of sushi. Done, done. I have a way of knowing how to distribute weight, how to move and walk without making noises and without items poking out. A friend informs me people think it's gross, and just ask me to play the part like they'd ask a pet to do pretty tricks. The pet bit doesn't bother me too much, but I think it best to keep that part to myself. 'Why do you keep doing it?', asks the friend, and I stop to stare at her with wide eyes. No one had ever asked. I hadn't even asked myself. 'I won't die of hunger' I spit defensively, and realize the absurdity of the statement as soon as my friend brow curves in confusion and then concern. 'Of course you won't' she says softly, revoltingly gently 'What makes you think that?'.

A figure that loves me with a fierce misdirection. That protects me with the same bared teeth he sometimes tears my skin with. That vanishes progressively as the years go by, and one day completely, as he discovers the child he'd been shielding from hunger will never sprout into a proper parent themselves. Will never give him the grandchildren and monogamic nuclear family in law of his dreams.

I think of him as I pile breadsticks now. Why do I keep doing it, indeed, if there's no immediate threat in the horizon. There never was, not really. And yet his shadow looms over me. It covers me like a mantle. It caresses my cheeks. It poisons the air I breathe.

'Just in case' I say to my friend back then, as if that explains anything. Just in case, I repeat now, three words that slit the insides of my throat like pulverized glass. In case of what. How long until I realize I'm safe enough to drop the blanket. How long until I stop desperately hugging all comforts that come my way as a child that's afraid they'll magically vanish into thin air.

One day, I promise myself as I look upon my treasures. In the meantime, I've never gone hungry.

[backpackingrealness]

Dusting the blog off

10 years ago, something-realness seemed fresh. Probably not to the queers who had been using for years before the explosion of RuPaul’s Drag Race, but one of the delights of culture is the false sense of hope that you were the first to discover the hot new turn of phrase – and the humbling moment of realising nothing is new, and everything has been done before.

This blog has gathered Internet dust for nearly a decade, and I’m choosing to blow some of that off entirely for my own gratification. I last wrote a misty-eyed travel diary when I was 24, and I just turned 33. That’s not to say I haven’t holidayed in the meantime, but I certainly hadn’t been back to the heady smells, sights, and sounds of South East Asia.

There’s also something deeply satisfying to someone who has lived over half their existence online to find that I can access an account untouched for 10 years, and pick it up where I left it. Where did those years go? On Tumblr, nothing has changed. Well some things have changed.

On my original big backpacking moment, the story I tell myself now is that there was a choice between 3 weeks in Vietnam, or a week in Japan. We simply did not have the money to do both, and no regrets, for Japan revealed itself to be my favourite country in the world to visit to this very day, and indeed I shall return in the not-too-distant future for more sushi trains, whiskey highballs, and Tokyo DisneySea.

That decision created a mysterious and magical ‘the one that got away’ allure to Vietnam. Living in Australia for the decade since, I am blessed to be exposed to top-shelf, five-star Vietnamese cuisine and coffee whenever I so desire, but how would a bowl of steaming phở taste in the country it hailed whence from, on a rainy Hanoi morning, ideally on the street (but under shelter)?

I first booked a holiday to Vietnam in December 2019, for the following April 2020. I had found some reasonable flights with Cathay Pacific, and my boyfriend’s family were in the middle of three enormous bushfire fronts blazing through the Snowy Mountains. I had a feeling that the coming months would be quite challenging, and a holiday in April would be well-timed. I think I was also eager to plan an escape route.

That trip didn’t go ahead for reasons clear to anyone with a sense of consciousness, and the following years passed.

Cheap flights presented themselves in June 2023. There was some debate on whether we could afford to go after a fabulous summer in the UK, but in the spirit of ‘life is for living’, flights were purchased. The spreadsheet from 2019 was (also) dusted off, and it was a delight to find that a few extra cities could be squeezed in with the extra time we had.

In September, Tom had a stroke. Standing over his bedside next to his sister in the days following, I hissed at his sister how I had been thwarted yet again. Dark humour to hold back the sobbing, but there also truth in jest! In an absolutely thrilling turn of events, and partially due to his youth, Tom’s recovery was lightspeed. Within two weeks, we were home recuperating, with the advice from doctors ringing in our ears – within three months of the accident, the chances of being able to travel overseas would be very positive.

Honestly, say less!

Fast forward to late November, and an apprehensive but giddy self and stroke-victim-spouse are in an Uber to Sydney Airport, with a driver asking if we are heading to Vietnam for all the beautiful ladies.

Next up, Ho Chi Minh City.

[benonirosehouse]

Kitchen Closet Part Two: Big Plans for a Little Space

(If you haven't read Part One, start here) Remember how terrifying the under-the-stairs-closet aka Kitchen Cave was looking in our last installment? It's looking much less horrifying. But it's not ready yet, because just when I am about to kinda half-ass something, J abandons her sensible nature and decides we need a beautiful closet, not just a functional one.

It's also not ready yet because we both work full time and have lives. Our mistake!

But in between working and living and beginning to totally restore the upstairs bathroom, we have had time to get somewhere with the closet. The exposed stairs had been half painted white and were stained, grimy, and very gross. We've primed them with Kilz and caulked them, and also primed the plywood floor as well. (You may be wondering why the floor is plywood. I looked in the cellar to see if the original floor was there, and it's not. It looks like there was a staircase down to the cellar at one point that was removed. That also seems to have something to do with the "temporary" support columns down there. We'll add it to the "ask a structural engineer" list.) Enjoy a little Before & After of our progress!

The door frame was (is) in horrible shape, and had been painted white over cream around the fridge, so some of it was... still cream. Thankfully, I have some white trim paint hanging around just because. I never thought I'd be so excited to hit something in my own home with the landlord special, but that's what the door frame got! The impact that white paint has had cannot possibly be overstated. Someday we'll actually fix the door frame, but that day is not today.

There was a shelf above the fridge when it was in the closet, and that shelf is made of the same plywood the floor is. There's a bit of space at the back of the closet that needs covering to even it all out for some laminate, and thankfully we have a free plywood scrap that fits the bill! Yeah, I said laminate. It's awful, I know. But it's a closet! And it's plywood! And we have so many visible parts of the house to spend money on beautifying. It just didn't seem worth even another dollar per square foot to use bamboo. I hopped on FB marketplace and found someone's insanely cheap (and low quality, but whatever) leftover stick-on vinyl planks in a decent color, and we're going to slap that straight on the plywood. J grimaced about it but agreed. There's a lot of shit to fix in this house, we may as well save where we can. Of course the plaster is cracked and in some places crumbling. I ordered a "homeowners" Plaster Magic kit and that's the next step in this journey. These walls were only ever hit with one light lime wash, so no paint stripping required to fix and then lime paint the walls. I thought we were going to paint the walls some version of white, put a cheap light in there, and call it a closet. However, after what felt like an hour of deliberation in the lighting section at Home Depot, we decided to go online instead and buy an attractive light fixture instead of a more utilitarian option. J, it turns out, wants a pretty closet, given that we'll be looking inside it every day. I was surprised, but happy to oblige. While we were shopping on the internet, we ordered rod brackets so we can hang our coats, and a tension rod. Someday we'll have closet door to match the other (seven!) doors in the space, but in the meantime, a curtain's going to have to serve.

Since we decided to make the space a bit nicer, we picked a cute blush color for the walls, Native from Color Atelier.

Looking forward to learning about plaster repair! Will post about it next time :)

[vvildflowerrr]

•°༻Temporary Altar Set-up: Abundance and Prosperity༺°•

(cw // mentions su*cide ideation and pregnancy/child loss as concepts briefly in the "Stones & Crystals" and "Miscellaneous" sections respectively)

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-•ᛉ ⛤ ᚠ•-

Fáilte!

This post will be detailing how I set up my personal (temporary) altar in the place I'm currently staying. Life has been difficult as of late for me personally, and I've been leaning heavy on my spirituality and religion to get through. In doing so, as I'm currently without a solid place to live and am staying in a mattress on the floor of my friends' apartment, I've graciously been allowed to utilize an empty shelf to create this space to welcome abundance and prosperity to all friends and frith who walk through our door.

The altar is tailored to me personally, but feel free to take any inspiration from the things I've chosen to use for it! I initially just grabbed my things and placed stones and items up there on intuition, the following information is notes from my Grimoire I took in researching my choices.

As you read this post, there will be some tiny numbered annotations in some places. There will be a clarification section at the bottom where I'll explain these notes further!

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Gifts & Jars

I first placed an abundance jar on the shelf that I made 2-3 years ago. I built the altar around this, but first cleaned the gunk off of it with olive oil and then soap, it looks brand new! I made sure to smoke cleanse it and shake it well with refreshed intentions. On top of this jar, I placed a seashell given to me by a dear friend and fellow practitioner - of whose the home I'm staying in belongs to. I did this with the gifted shell with the intention of it being a conduit to share any blessings of abundance I receive with them, as some small repayment for all they've done for me.

I then placed two crystal trees with copper trunks given to me by another dear friend. One's leaves are portrayed with green aventurine, while the other is rose quartz. I will get deeper into the meanings for all the aventurine I put up there in the "stones" section below. But in the meantime, these trees were gifted to me with the intentions of the aventurine bringing me luck, fortune, and abundance. While the rose quartz was intended to attract love all encompassing, love for myself, for the people around me, and my romantic prospects.

There are also two green candle holders on the lower shelf, gifted to me by my dearest friend and Druidic mentor on my birthday this year! I placed a large green aventurine on the West¹ candle holder, and a similar sized desert rose on the East¹ candle holder.

There is also a much smaller spell jar gifted to me by aforementioned Druidic mentor's sister, who noticed I was going through a hard time recently. She explained the spell as follows:

"The jar is for spiritual awakening, protection, and helping to connect to your lunar³ side."

Ingredients: Red roses, lemon peels, pink Himalayan salt, and blessed rainwater. It is sealed with white and pink wax. I set a smoky quartz on top of this jar.

I also have another abundance/prosperity jar gifted to me by an old acquaintance set up there too, but only after it was smoke cleansed! I have a small mahogany obsidian sitting on top of this one.

And lastly, with a mushroom-shaped bloodstone sitting atop it, I included a small jar containing my fortune collection - yes the ones from the cookies. Simply for good fortune, even in the smallest things, like tiny strips of paper!

-•ᛉ ⛤ ᚠ•-

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Stones & Crystals

(Note: Organic minerals and compounds are not a replacement for professional medical/psychiatric care.)

Aventurine - Practical enthusiasm, prosperity, diffusing negative emotion, reinforcing leadership, promoting compassion, and encouraging perseverence.

This stone is represented a few times on this altar. It is sitting on the West candle holder. The West is Water, and where the sun sets. A steady flow of all these properties will wash over me by the end of each day.

In the mid-center of the bottom shelf, I have a tile of it with a gold engraving of my sun sign, Taurus, to represent myself and attract the grounded, Venusian energy of it.

Desert Rose - Protection, prosperity, purification, enhanced psychic abilities, enhanced dreams and past life recall. Raise vibrations, experience white light, open and cleanse the upper chakras, restoring lost balance.

Sitting on the East candle holder. The East is earth, and where the sun rises. I will start my days grounded, buried happily in this stone's properties.

Clear Quartz - Amplification of the entire altar. Neutralizes negative energy, promotes balance and revitalization for the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual planes. A deep soul cleanser, aiding in concentration and unlocking memory. Balance, harmony, and alignment. The "Master Healer."

Located in the back-center of the bottom shelf.

Citrine - Increases optimism, sunny cheerfulness, alignment, aura cleansing, mental clarity, wealth, prosperity, and success. Reduces anxiety, fear, and depression. Improves motivation and self-expression, establishes inner peace, promotes joy and good luck!

In the center, in front of the clear quartz and Taurus aventurine tile.

Sunstone - Connection to the solar³, and leadership. Encourages openness and benevolence. Willingness to give and bless others.² A stone of joy, to inspire good nature and enjoyment of life.

East of the aventurine Taurus tile.

Moonstone - Inner clarity, cyclical change, connection to the lunar³. Encourages embracing new beginnings, femininity, fertility, balance, softness, and intuition.

West of the aventurine Taurus tile.

Satin Spar/Selenite - Clears low and stagnant energy, invites high and bright vibrations. Raises vibration, fosters mental clarity, repairs holes in the auric field. Reconnects to past lives, and boosts inner power. Dissolves lingering negative energy from long periods of darkness.

I have three sticks of this stone set on the shelves. Two lining the front of the top shelf, and one lining the back of the bottom shelf.

Bloodstone - Carries the purity of blood, inherently speaks of life, birth, vitality, strength, passion, and courage. Protective and nurturing, a talisman for good health and a long life. A gem of noble sacrifice, promotes and rewards altruistic character. (This is also the stone I use when connecting with An Mórrígan!)

This is the aforementioned mushroom-shaped stone sitting atop my fortune jar!

Smoky Quartz - Grounding and detoxifying on all levels. Gently neutralizes negative vibrations. Disperses fear, lifts depression and negativity. Brings emotional calmness, relieving stress and anxiety. Promotes positive thoughts and action. Alleviates suicidal tendencies, dispels nightmares, but manifests your dreams. Aids in concentration and promotes healthy communication.

This is sitting atop the spiritual awakening jar discussed in the above "Gifts & Jars" section.

Mahogany Obsidian - Sacral and root chakras. Protection and grounding, eliminates blockages. A stone of reflection, it helps to show us what needs our attention in this moment, while aiding with self-acceptance and self-confidence. Often used in decision making processes.

Sitting atop my gifted abundance jar from an old acquaintance. I chose this stone specifically because a friend recommended I start healing at my root chakra before working myself up!

-• ᛉ ⛤ ᚠ •-

-•ᛉ ⛤ ᚠ•-

Miscellaneous

(Random other things on/attached to my altar.)

I hung my small, angel aura quartz necklace off the West side of the shelf. I lost a pregnancy/child in 2019 and bought this necklace as my connection to them. I keep making jokes that I "put my son on the altar." Very funny to me, my friends don't know how to react when I say it LOL

My first cat's kitten collar. It's rainbow, which gives the full spectrum of colour to the altar. I have it hanging off of the upmost center of the shelf. This was specifically to include my fur babies in my abundance, as we're in a difficult housing situation and they are not staying with me currently. This is an energetic promise to do better by them, and to spoil them with love and abundance as soon as we find stability.

And lastly! As I walk around and/or clean the house I take every bit of loose change I find and fit it onto the lower shelf. This is to promote an anti-lack mindset. If I let go of the little things I do have instead of hoarding them in white knuckles, the universe will return it to me a million times over!

-•ᛉ ⛤ ᚠ•-

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Fin.

Thank you so much for reading this long-ass post about the ways I'm shifting the energy in my life using my altar. I appreciate you lending your eyes to my ramblings!

I hope this gave you some insight on me and my practice, as well as gave you some inspiration for your own.

Have a wonderful day/afternoon/night/whenever you happen to be reading this!

With all love from the Universe,

Willow Crow Luxx⛤

-•ᛉ ⛤ ᚠ•-

-•ᛉ ⛤ ᚠ•-

Clarification Notes

1 - For the intents and purposes of this post, Left will be referred to as "West" and Right will be referred to as "East."

2 - I personally struggle with people pleasing and giving more than I have to offer. I will not let this part of me go completely, but will only give from excess in love and energy going forward, outside of extranormal circumstances.

3 - Doing away with gendered language in my personal practice as a fluid individual, I refer to 'the feminine' as "lunar" energy and 'the masculine' as "solar" energy.

-•ᛉ ⛤ ᚠ•-

Image of Altar:

Anmórheljave.

[rainfall-istrue-3130]

wip: new journalism style work

plot: a journalist investigates a city where people throw themselves off of buildings.

tw: expect substance abuse, death, violence, depersonalization and other things.

this may be chapter one or i may never finish it. who knows lmao

The Reason Why A City Falls

"It was a dark and stormy night" is what I would say if I was one of those pretentious pricks thinking their shitty manuscripts will make them the next George R. R. Martin. I sit in my chair, a Le Corbusier one acquired from some dead millionaire's estate a few years back (2008? 2009? I forget), under the haze of the sunset. So many people all going out, to their bars or restaurants or malls or whatever else you can think of. Strip clubs? Probably strip clubs. A glass of Louis XIII cognac at my desk (I'm not one of those cheap fucks with the bottom shelf shit) and an e-mail at my computer. Al's been starving for things to cover in a while, and I figured I'd give the two of us something to do in the meantime. Some guy named Derek told me about some city where rich fuckers were throwing themselves off of high-rises repeatedly.

Jesus fuck. I couldn't care less since it was rich people dying but it was a hell of a set-up.

I had to sift through the spam mail telling me about penis enlargement pills- if I even felt the slightest bit conscious about that, I'd have clicked on it faster than Al can snort a full line on a bad Saturday afternoon with a cam girl's stream somewhere in the living room -and bank account details being stolen- I don't have a bank account, too many people spying on my purchasing habits -before landing on this one. The email read as follows, and as I read it, I was convinced Derek was another one of the mindless robot army sent to infiltrate my home and tap on my phone signal:

Saint, I have a story for you.

People are dying in my city, and no one cares.

I live in a high-rise condo in a rich part of Macau. Every day, I wake up and get to work, and in the afternoons I head to the casinos. I usually head off at 2 or 3 in the ass-crack of the night.

Every time when I wake up, there's a new three or four or five dead bodies around my car. Rich types. Socialites on Instagram, or entrepreneurial folks who I've made business deals with two or three nights before. They always look like they've jumped off the building. I know that it sounds crazy, but I know that normally, you'd only get no or one crazy motherfucker who jumps off to escape their own goddamn nightmare.

I know I'm not the only one since my neighbor Carrie has also seen it happen. I've called the police, the media, no one seems to care. I feel like I'm having a collective psychotic break from reality. If this doesn't get solved quick, I might just follow them myself. Like lemmings off a cliff. I saw one of them and stared them in the eye as they fell.

Fucking HELP ME HERE.

Derek

This shit sounds too good to be true. Just outlandish enough that I'd call it bullshit, but then there's always the littlest crumb of what the charred corpse of truth is to make me doubt it.

When I woke up, I was at the boarding gate in LaGuardia with a $12 soda, a Whopper, and nasty withdrawal symptoms. Al told me that after waking up from a 5-hour nap, I took enough Xanax to knock out a train station full of managerial pieces of shit. Hated those people- I was one of them for a while until my coworker stabbed me in the back and got me fired. She's dead now, that poor bastard couldn't lay off the acid until it fried her brain. Didn't last much longer than that.

The wait for the plane was torture. Couldn't bring the ketamine tablets I ordered 6 months ago on the plane. Someone to the side of me told me to stop shaking my legs. He looked like a man who would come home to beat his wife and children before drinking himself to death like his family tree would. I got up and left, or at least tried to before stumbling and collapsing on the airport floor. Some lady came to assist. She looked like that one girl from all the Verizon ads. I told her I'd be fine and crawled to a chair. Al had been following me this entire time too. Good man, but he's got his vices. Husband of 5 years left him after something happened that he refuses to explain. Pretty sure it was ordering male hookers from some sketchy site and having his credit card info stolen. I haven't seen him smile once in my decade of working with him.

I got on the plane a few hours later. After having seen "Snakes On A Plane" at the request of my cousin Damien while baked off of all the marijuana in a six-mile radius at a dying AMC theatre in a bucket hat I purchased from some street vendor in Indonesia, I now see every single flight attendant as Julianna Marguiles. Either her, or Britney Spears. The plane was full somehow, maybe because of all the offers for jackpots and hot women serving you at the poker tables. Attracts the scum of the earth. I got the aisle seat next to some business lady who had no business being there, I could tell you that much. Visually, she recalled the looks of a post-rehab Lindsay Lohan if Lindsay Lohan relapsed and started smoking crack instead of heroin. I was heading to a pilgrimage of avarice and hedonism, and this ride to Macau would be the first step in turning me into a believer in the holy church of the roulette wheel. After this was over, would it be so unbelievable to tell you that half of these pieces of shit riding this plane with me would end up dead on the ground? Normally if I wanted to satisfy the addict within me, I'd either turn to the mountain of snow from a Colombian kingpin who I'm 67% sure is dead now, or take a 4-hour plane ride to Las Vegas, get lost in the lights and sounds, lose half a million at the blackjack tables, and wake up in a county jail in Reno with charges of disorderly conduct, driving while intoxicated, and vehicular manslaughter up to my chest. Fuck you, Travis, you passed this shit on to me when you had to leave.

Cathay Pacific is the best airline. It's the only one where I don't feel like I'm being sold the next few weeks ahead of me like Qatar Airways or Emirates do. Those airlines are drowning in advertising and fake luxury to try and upsell me on a trip to Riyadh or Abu Dhabi or Doha. Hate those places, never felt welcome among the pious Muslims and the "righteous" diplomats who I'm sure have a van of dead children to kick and cum into. Not me, I've been to a few of those parties, and it always ends with half of the country knowing your name as you're led into a labor camp in the name of Allah. And so deceptive about it too. I've never seen a place so committed to presenting itself as the technological nexus of the world while at the same time being so culturally backwards that the Middle East became a literal minefield. Half of the country is foreigners who don't give a fuck about morality and are in it for the money, the other half are residents who care enough about Islam they are willing to die for it. All under a regime that proclaims itself the next generation of leaders, when really it's planting a face of technological advancement on top of the same backwards bullshit over and over again. And everyone falls for it every time. Always. A modern-day parody of the hyperreality we live in now in the 21st century. If Baudrillard could see what the world's become, he'd be rolling in his grave faster than Al after overdosing on some new drug he found in a dingy alley behind a sketchy recording studio in Atlanta.

I would much rather stick to Hong Kong and China in general, at least here I have a few friends in the mafia. Deep cover, some of them, others are actual mobsters. I've seen enough guns to massacre a stadium of football fans on a given night during the World Cup, but I at least have people to make sure I'm not the one getting shot this time. Oh, and also the service is good, and the ride is smooth and comfy, but I don't give a fuck about that.

I'm in Hong Kong now. It'll be a few hours' taxi ride to get to Macau, and even from here I see the corpses of people who seem to have given up. Birds colliding with windows, it looks like, but replace the birds with people in tax brackets unfathomable to the average layman and windows with the concrete pavement. The city's hot at nights like this, and maybe this is the molly talking, but it's beautiful in a tragic- no, mysterious- no, haunting sort of way. For tonight, I'm willing to endure the cold sweats and hot flashes without Special K here to be my twisted muse.

Sleep doesn't come easy anymore. Not after the- when was it, 7? No, too long, 5? No, let’s go with 6 -incident six years ago. The bar was full of the kinds of meth addicts, domestic abusers and mob fixers that raise neck hairs, extend foreskins and draw sweat from pores. Any of these men and women had all the reason to see me as a headline in a local newspaper by some slimy tabloid whose articles and writers spit on the face and name of journalism, those disgusting pricks. Their stares dug into the back of my skull, their grips on their handshakes reminded me of vices in a mechanic's shop in Chihuahua, and their friendly voices reminded me of my editor Griffin, who would put on a similar tone of voice whenever he sent me a copy of my manuscript to publish in TMZ, sanitized of all that could be seen as "deplorable."

Maybe it's the residual gunshot wound in my abdomen that brought me to near death, or the cracked vertebrae in my chest, the kind that makes breathing a harder chore than cleaning the room of a rapist covered in semen and vomit, or the nightmares of that mascara-infested whore who thought I had slipped something in her drink before giving me glass shards of a Long Island Iced Tea, vomiting nightmarish wails and euphoric moans, before consuming a balding Bill Clinton in front of me as I wake up in a cold sweat, my erection slowly rising and my confidence slowly inching away from my mescaline-infused eyeballs as I come to the realization that I will never escape this hell I've made for myself, but I rarely go to bars like I used to. Those seedy establishments that charge 500% markup on middle of the road whisky and charge extra for a gin martini. The sad Italian testis in the glass surrounded by salt, as if to ward off a demon from entering my body, bathed in what can only be described as two peasant beverages that have been mixed with a toothpick, and I had already drank two before my contact arrived in Hong Kong, wearing what is generously called a "mob boss" outfit, his black and lilac fedora and black tie outlining his look. He had an air of uncertainty around him, as if even he didn't know whether what he was doing was strange or unusual. His mouth was firmly in a straight line, yet his eyes bore the look of terror. Sauntering over to me like a 50 year old father saunters over to his barely adult daughter after hearing about her getting arrested for drunk driving, he sat on the stool next to mine. As the scarred bartender continued cleaning the glasses that would inevitably be stained with grenadine, blood and lipstick the next day, this man Derek would tell me something I- if I ever had children after forgetting to perform a vasectomy on myself -would retell to them in 30 years.