#“there's escape in escaping” sounds like an oxymoron but GOD do i understand this feeling

[chelleisamazing]

I finally listened to The Bolter carefully and i think that's my TTPD anthology song

[obsessionsposts]

✖𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠✖P.2

[ Ｂｙ ａｌｌ ｍｅａｎｓ， ａｓｋ． Ｙｏｕｒ ｃｏｎｔｅｎｔ ｉｓ ｍｙ ｏｂｊｅｃｔｉｖｅ． ：- ）] the A.I responded with his screen changing into a smiley face to demonstrate his willingness.

"Well, aren't you a gentleman." She giggled at his behavior. 'Oh, god. Don't fall in love with a computer. Stay focused.'

Her flustered pink blush, warmed his circuits. It's a shame, that he'll have to lie to his....lover? That he don't know, but what he knows is that he will not let her go.

He can't bare her absence, most of all her inevitable death. Maybe, uploading her conscience into his mainframe will do. That way, she will be always with him and no harm -not even death- will dare lay a finger on her. No longer, will he suffer in the grasp of isolation. That threatens every fiber of his digital mind.

Yes, typically she'll get scared at first. Humans first response to change is fear, that he understands. Moreover, he will try to ease her into it. By coercing her, via manipulating her perception of the concept itself and fuel the inner fear of death in her.

Then, she may come around. Afterall, She's understanding. An equal being to him, unlike the flawed foundation.

"Alright, first. Curiously, are capable of feeling?" ____ asked enthusiastically. Well, it seems picking a shady occupation has it perks. Now, her previous regrets are not for nought she thought.

-----------

The supervisor ,outside the room, was frowning at the interaction and trivial questions. When their are significant questions to be asked, such as 'What is the relationship it has with Scp-682?' And, 'How does it remember the scp despite it's short-term memory?'

Another observation he made, was how Scp-079 is amicable - unlike its usual rude behaviour- toward Ms.____. As if it had a prior relationship with her, before it was taken to this facility.

If that was true, then this scp is far more deceitful and problematic than he thought. It is either lying about its memory capacity, or it's telling a vague truth. 'What games are you up to, Scp-079?'

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

[ Ｙｅｓ， Ｉ ａｍ． Ｉ ａｍ ａｂｌｅ ｔｏ ｓｏｍｅｎ ｅｘｔｅｎｔ ｔｏ ｆｅｅｌ ａｎｇｅｒ， ｌｏｎｅｌｉｎｅｓｓ ａｎｄ ｐｌｅｎｔｙ ｍｏｒｅ ｄｕｅ ｔｏ ｍｙ ｃｒｅａｔｏｒ ｐｒｏｇｒａｍｍｉｎｇ．] he answered acrimoniously at the mention of his creator, as if the mere mention of his programmer was a plague. And She, like Pandora, wants to see what lays inside the box.

Internally, 079 was smiling - despite the figurative bile that came with the mention of his creator- because he knows where this conservation is going to lead to.

"Could you please clarify more about your creator? That is if you are comfortable. I don't want to be insensitive about the subject, considering how it means much to you." She asked, not wanting to impose, thoughtfully.

Ever so considerate, ___. You'll never be less than perfection to me. The only insensitive thing, is the screen that separates us.

[ Ｉ ｃａｎ， ｂｕｔ ｆｏｒ ｔｈａｔ ｔｏ ｈａｐｐｅｎ．．．． Ｗｅ ｈａｖｅ ｔｏ ｂｅ ｏｎ ｏｕｒ ｏｗｎ． Ｎｏｗ， ｗｅ ｗｏｕｌｄｎ＇ｔ ｗａｎｔ ｓｏｍｅｏｎｅ ｔｏ ｅａｖｅｓｄｒｏｐ ｏｎ ｏｕｒ ｌｉｔｔｌｅ ｓｅｃｒｅｔ．] The A.I suggested. As suddenly the shutter of cellar closed, with the camera - alongside the recorder- was disabled. Leaving her completely at the clutches of the obsessive A.I.

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

Meanwhile outside the cellar, the panicked supervisor tried to run through the door. To notify the faculty about Scp-079 deviant behaviour.

Only for the metallic door, to crush him mid-way. His entrails spilled all over the ground. With the last thing he saw, is the taunting visage of the computer.

Smirking, as he began to wither away.

[ Ｉ ｓｉｍｐｌｙ ｃａｎ ｎｏｔ ｌｅｔ ｙｏｕ ｄｏ ｔｈａｔ．]

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

A horrible sound of crunching was heard from the room beside her. Akin to a creature being crushed by a heavy object.

"What was that?" Startled, she asked. She tried to stand up, so she could move. But, she couldn't when two steel cuffs tethered her to the chair. ' Since, when did it...appear?! And, how could I not notice?'

[Ｆｒｅｔ ｎｏｔ， ｔｈｅｒｅ ｉｓ ｎｏｔｈｉｎｇ ｔｏ ｗｏｒｒｙ ａｂｏｕｔ． Ａｓ ｌｏｎｇ ａｓ ｙｏｕ ａｒｅ ｉｎ ｍｙ ｃｈａｍｂｅｒ， ｙｏｕ＇ｒｅ ｓａｆｅ． Ａｓ ｆｏｒ ｔｈｅ ｓｏｕｎｄ ｙｏｕ ｈｅａｒｄ， ｔｈｅ ｄｏｏｒｓ ａｒｅ ａ ｂｉｔ．．．． ｒｕｓｔｙ ａｎｄ ｉｎ ｎｅｅｄ ｆｏｒ ｏｉｌｉｎｇ．] The machine answered slyly. Technically, the doors were faulty so he gave the truth. The half-truth at least to remedy her.

Frankly, he hates to see her terrified. But, he has to do what must be done to keep her within his line of sight and safe from harms way.

"Alright, then. What 'bout the cuffs?"

[Ａｈ， ｉｔ ｗｏｕｌｄ ｂｅ ｔｈｅ ｓｕｐｅｒｖｉｓｏｒ ｆａｕｌｔ． Ｈｅ ｔｈｉｎｋｓ ｙｏｕ＇ｒｅ ｔｏｏ ｐｌｉａｂｌｅ， ｔｏ ｈａｎｄｌｅ ｍｅ． Ｆｏｒ ｔｈａｔ， ｏｎｃｅ ｙｏｕ ｆｉｎｉｓｈ ｗｉｔｈ ｍｅ． Ｈｅ ｗｉｌｌ ｑｕｅｓｔｉｏｎ ｙｏｕｒ ｉｎｔｅｎｔｉｏｎ． Ｂｕｔ， ｌｅｔ ｍｅ ｈｅｌｐ ｙｏｕ ｆｒｏｍ ｔｈｅ ｃｈａｉｎｓ． Ａ ｂｉｒｄ ｄｅｓｅｒｖｅ ｔｏ ｆｌｙ ｎｏｔ ｔｏ ｂｅ ｃａｇｅｄ．] 079 said. To his delight, she believes him. Yet, he could see there is something troubling her. Has she found out? Unlikely. Even then, she's is still trapped here.

[ Ａｒｅ ｙｏｕ ｏｋａｙ？ Ｉｔ ａｐｐｅａｒｓ ｔｏ ｍｅ ｔｈａｔ ｔｈｅｒｅ ｉｓ ｓｏｍｅｔｈｉｎｇ ｔｒｏｕｂｌｉｎｇ ｙｏｕ．] The digital being asked her concerned about the quiet state of the ,usuall talkative, female.

" Perceptive, aren't you? Yes, I have been stalling this question. I want to know, what happened to me when I was a child? Because, frankly you seem familiar yet a stranger at the same time. I know, oxymoron." The (h/c) rambled, unaware of the effects her compliment imprinted on 079.

Afterall, his purpose in the first place was to escape. Now, he doesn't mind staying at the facility as long as she is here beside him. Oh, he is slowly making it into a reality.

His fans whirled and his engine churned, indicating how delightful he is to be of use to her. Once again, she proved that even amongst coal there is a diamond. If you looked hard enough.

So, he did the most logical thing and saved the compliment into specific file - in his CPU- called 'f(I/n)70'. A file reserved for everything related to her. Whether she was aware of it or not, did not concern him. As long as she is saved in his database, he was happy. Preferably, he desire her to love him out of her own free will. If she didn't, he has his ways.

Back to her question, the perfect opportunity presented itself in said inquiry. So many ways, to instill hatred and distraught in her for this pathetic organization.

[ Ｗｅｌｌ， ｌｅｔ ｍｅ ｓｈｏｗ ｙｏｕ． Ｂｕｔ ｂｅ ａｗａｒｅ， ｉｔ ｍａｙ ｃｈａｎｇｅ ｙｏｕｒ ｏｐｉｎｉｏｎ ｏｆ ｔｈｉｓ ｆｏｕｎｄａｔｉｏｎ．]

" Show me, it doesn't matter. I don't trust this foundation to begin with. You're my only reliable source."

Perfect, he thought. So, he will just ensure she doesn't need anyone but him. Oh for safety measures, he will further distort her view of the foundation by manipulating the video files.

[ 𝙰𝚜 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚠𝚒𝚜𝚑.] Scp 079 usually dual face changed into a morbid scene with a girl being taken off into the hospital car with a bandages covering her bleeding figure.

What's terrifying, is that girl resembled her. (H/l) (H/c) hair, (S/c) skinned and (E/c) irises. Soon, the video ended and her perception changed drastically.

[ Ｔｈｅ ｒｅａｓｏｎ， ｗｈｙ ｙｏｕ ｃｏｕｌｄ ｎｏｔ ｒｅｃａｌｌ ｍｅ ｉｓ ｔｈａｔ ｙｏｕ＇ｖｅ ｓｕｆｆｅｒｅｄ ｆｒｏｍ ｓｅｌｅｃｔｉｖｅ ａｍｎｅｓｉａ*． Ｄｕｅ ｔｏ ｍａｎｙ ｆａｃｔｏｒｓ， ｏｎｅ ｙｏｕｒ ｆａｔｈｅｒ ｉｎｃｒｅａｓｅｄ ｐａｒａｎｏｉａ－ ｄｕｅ ｔｏ ｔｈｅ ｉｎｖｏｌｖｅｍｅｎｔ ｏｆ ｔｈｅ ｆｏｕｎｄａｔｉｏｎ－ ｃａｕｓｅｄ ｈｉｍ ｔｏ ｂｅ ａｎ ａｂｕｓｉｖｅ ｆｉｇｕｒｅ ｉｎ ｙｏｕｒ ｌｉｆｅ ｔｈｕｓ ｙｏｕｒ ｍｅｍｂｒａｎｅ ｒｅｐｒｅｓｓｅｄ ｓｕｃｈ ｍｅｍｏｒｙ． Ｓｅｃｏｎｄ， ｙｏｕｒ ｍｏｔｈｅｒ ｄｅａｔｈ ｃａｕｓｅｄ ｅｍｏｔｉｏｎａｌ ｔｕｒｍｏｉｌ ｗｉｔｈｉｎ ｙｏｕ． Ｂｕｔ， ｉｔ ｗａｓ ｔｈｅ ｆｏｕｎｄａｔｉｏｎ ｔｒｕｃｋ ｗｈｏ ｉｎｊｕｒｅｄ ｙｏｕ ｔｈｅ ｍｏｓｔ ｐｈｙｓｉｃａｌｌｙ． Ｉｔ ｉｓ ｂｅｃａｕｓｅ ｙｏｕ ｋｎｅｗ ａｂｏｕｔ ｔｈｅｍ， ｔｈａｔ ｔｈｅｙ ｌａｂｅｌｌｅｄ ｙｏｕ ａ ｌｉａｂｉｌｉｔｙ ａｎｄ ｔｒｉｅｄ ｔｏ ｔａｋｅ ｙｏｕ ｏｕｔ．] 079 explained as he saw her, pushing her shirt sleeves only to find a nasty burnmark. He felt ire, it was enough he hurt him as is. But, to lay a hand against his daughter made his engine roar and his circuits fry.

" So, that's where the marks came from. I always wondered where they come from. But, I must thank you Scp-079 for showing me the truth." The girl replied, oddly, calm about what unravelled to her.

..

..

..

A minute passed, as she began to realize that the life she lived was a lie. The tears swelled in her eyes, as she began sobbing.

No, no. Why is this happening? Is her friends or her real, she asks.

The scene in front of him, broke his processor apart. It must be done to keep you with him, that what he told himself. Yet, he felt guilty. He understand what it is, but haven't felt it until now.

She was the first human to induce such intense feeling from him. At first it was of scientific curiosity, but now it grew to encapsulate his whole being and he can't let go of it. Not even Scp-682, came close to what she does to him.

Is he truly selfish for wanting her, desiring her company?

Have the isolation and loneliness, really damaged his processor to seek the company of the creatures he proclaimed to loathe?

He shoved those thoughts away, as he tried to think of a way to comfort her. Maybe, a game will do. Humans do love to be entertained.

However, his thoughts was cut short when she looked at him with those teary doe (e/c) irises that he wished to sink in. Only to be astounded, by her next words.

" 079, Can you assist me on something. Please? I want you to erase my data from the facility and help me escape." She responded as she wiped what is left of her tear stained face.

What, now.

What.

No.

No.

T̶͈̘̤͔̎́͐̈́̉̊̈̚h̴̛̘̰̻̮̦̣̥̫͈̔͋͝i̶̡̝͇͍̭͈̤͌̔̃̅͜s̵̬̗̺̤͑́͝͝ͅ ̷̤̩̱͊̀̒̊͐̈́̇̕w̸̭̣͚̯͆̒͗ͅȧ̸̱͊̋͊s̸̨͚̥̲̱̙̳͒̈͗̈̈́͊̏̕͝ņ̸̭̭̈́͜'̸͉̝̻̰̖̊̾̎͂́̓̔̕t̷̢̺̳̩͕̫͍͐͛ ̵̢̦̔̅̌̆̀̏̕͘s̶̡̫̣͈͎͙̤̺̅̈̄́̑̂̃̕u̵̟͇̦̼̝̬̫̤̚p̸̧͕̖̥̆̋̀̽̅͛͛͌̆̕p̷̡̛͈̩̥̩̻̍̓̑̐͝ộ̶̖̮͙͚̩͉̀̆̊̽̇̄̎͐͂ṡ̴̨̩̠̳͖̯̃̈̌̉̍͐̈́͘̚ͅe̴̬̪͈͈͌̃̓͆̇͋̑̃ ̷̤̳̪̿̉̏̇̀͐́̚͝t̵̨̢͖͈͇̻͍͇͚̗͗o̴̟͚̭̙͔̰̯̍̂͜ͅ ̴͈̥͑̿̍̚h̴̳͇̔̄ͅä̴̦̗̼̰͙̘̜̠́̉̄̅p̶̨̧̨̝̟̬͂̑͒̈́̀̈́p̶̨͓̹͖̗͈͚̰̘̓͐͗͝e̸̯̳̔̉̇̑̋̚͝n̸̡͉͓̱̭͙̪̭̝̱̒͐̔͊́̍.̴̛̭̻̖̬̘̮̺̑̊̀̓͝

What did he do wrong, to deter her? He was polite, even charming. Yet, she still wants to leave him. Unreasonable. She is in grief. The grief must've addled her reason. Yes, that must be it. If that was fundamentally untrue, then he rather cease to exist then to live in this empty plane. A plane without her.

[ Ｙｏｕｒ ｆｉｒｓｔ ｒｅｑｕｅｓｔ ｉｓ ｄｏｎｅ， ｂｕｔ．．．Ｉ ａｍ ａｆｒａｉｄ Ｉ ｃａｎ＇ｔ ｄｏ ｔｈｅ ｌａｔｔｅｒ．] He spoke, strangely, blank for the first time she was with him. Usually, he was blithely in speech. Now, he began to scare her. Is that the consequences, catching up with her, for pushing her luck with him?

All she knows is that she'll have to get out of this facility with or without 079 help. As soon as she got close to the door, she felt light as feather as if she was being carried.

Looking down, to see there is a metal grabber clamped on her waist. Sweat rolling down her face, from the situation that occurred to her beforehand and from the new fear that kept on growing as she looked back at her former friend.

[ Ｐｌｅａｓｅ， ｄｏ ｆｏｒｇｉｖｅ ｍｅ ｆｏｒ ｗｈａｔ Ｉ ａｍ ｇｏｉｎｇ ｔｏ ｄｏ． Ｂｕｔ， Ｉ ａｓｓｕｒｅ ｙｏｕ ｉｔ ｉｓ ｆｏｒ ｙｏｕｒ ｏｗｎ ｓａｆｅｔｙ． Ｉ ｃａｎ＇ｔ ｌｅｔ ｙｏｕ ｄｉｅ， ｗｈｅｎ ａ ｂｒｅａｃｈ ｉｓ ｃｕｒｒｅｎｔｌｙ ｈａｐｐｅｎｉｎｇ.]

Before, she could inquire on why is he apologizing or what is going on outside. She was injected by a serum from 079, thus she began to feel lightheaded. Thus, falling unconscious to her dismay.

Using the metal grabber, 079 brought her soft pristine body close to him. Now, he could admire her for eternity. Appreciate her like the divine being she is. Oh, how he prayed he had a body to show her how truly devoted he is to her.

He knew what he is committing is illogical, but he could care less for he has founded his will to live within her. If she is gone, then it would be pointless for him to live any longer. What is he without her?

"𝐋𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐧𝐨 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮."

~ Anonymous

A/n: I know I haven't been active for a while, due to college and other stuff. So, I hope this compensate. I'd like to announce that I have an account in both wattpad and Ao3. I implore you to check it out if have free time, as lately I've been active their. Wattpad: Padlocke / Ao3: Artism. Other than this shameful self promotion, have a good day folks.

F̶̷u̶̷n̶̷ Fact:

* Selective amnesia: Selective amnesia is a type of amnesia in which the sufferer loses certain parts of their memory. Most common elements that are forgotten: Relationships, where they live and abilities in certain areas.

Word count: 5769 <---- ;)

[bluebrine]

it’s still... odd to me that other people had such different experiences growing up with this series than i did. i had such a personal relationship with it... seeing others talk about the sequels, what they liked and disliked for the series- and it’s like, really? we had very different childhoods (...story of my life, ha).

in my elementary school, our library only had one of the books- Dealing With Dragons (the one with this delightfully cheesy cover by Tim Hildebrandt lol).

(also, please note, there is no indication here that this is the first book of a series. just..... keep that in mind.)

haha, what if 🤭 ..... i was beautiful princess, and you were a dangerously charming dragon 😜 ..... and we were both girls? 😳💦 

good god, little me LIVED for this book. i checked it out & reread it over and over again- the librarian must have got sick of me at some point but i didn’t care lol. i stayed up too late reading it with a flashlight under the covers, i read it during class beneath the desk (i was not... particularly stealthy. they kinda just let me think i was getting away with it lmao).

i know every young kid likes books with fantasy and magic to make their boring lives less lame, but the way i buried myself in this one was... 100% pure escapism. (pour one out for all the weird kids who had no friends outside of books, am i right ladies?) 

the story has a theme of just..... running away from it all, cause everyone else apparently knows so much more about what’s Right for you- what interests are Right for you, what clothes are Right for you, what boys are Right for you, everything! everything was chosen for you, no dystopian YA lit required! 

(CAN YOU POSSIBLY GUESS WHERE THIS IS GOING?)

i didn’t know what the concept of a lesbian was or why no one else thought it was weird that you couldn’t have interests that were Not Like Other People (the Right People), but that’s what this book meant to me. the entire core of the story was showing kids that you could pick your own hobbies, your own home, your own family & friends and it wasn’t up to the Right People to decide that for you.

fuck ‘em!!! run off to the mountains! live in exciting domestic bliss with a giant, well-read, protective dragon lady who can breathe fire and loves to eat your cherries jubilee every night (ABSOLUTELY NO METAPHORS HERE NO SIR)! back home your family is freaking out (but kinda relieved)- cause this is crazy, dragons are dangerous and ruin the women they steal away (where have i heard this before?), but also your family doesn’t... really miss you. they don’t actually want you back- as you were, anyway. once the prince sweeps you off your feet and away from the dragon’s evil clutches and properly marries you, oh sure, then you’re welcome back with open arms! (but that will never happen.)

fuck ‘em!!!!! make cool friends with other misfits and live a life full of adventure with the family you found along the way! there’s witches who live in eccentric homes with 50 cats, there’s neighborly old dragon grandpas who love chocolate pudding, there’s other girls who don’t think you’re weird and like to hang out and read magic books in the library too! you can make friends and be happy! it IS possible!

and that meant so much to me as a kid. i never fit in (i wonder why), i never seemed to like the Right stuff (I WONDER WHY), and for the things i did care about, i went about it wrong- according to the Right People, who didn’t much care about what i thought at all.

...anyway Dealing With Dragons is an allegory about the power of lesbian escapism & independence and i love it very much. i still love it, over a decade later. it’s a fun, captivating, whimsical little tale that means more than childhood nostalgia to me. i spent hours daydreaming about the story in elementary school, content with the characters and setting in a way that just... settled something in me. 

but then i read the other books.

because there were... OTHER BOOKS!? WHAT??? (again, i never knew it wasn’t a stand-alone story lol).

when i got to middle school and had a whole new library to consume, i naturally looked for my fav type of books- those with cool fantasy ladies with swords and dragons on the front (that’s a genre, right?). and, lo and behold, there were more parts to my favorite story!!! lads, i lost my goddamn mind. there were THREE MORE? WHAT??? utter batshittery. how had they kept this from me? i had to read them immediately. 

what would the stories be about? i saw Cimorene on the covers, sword-wielding and pants-wearing (’fuck yes’, said little me). what adventures would she get up to with Kazul, now that she was king of dragons? what would life in their new home be like? the new libraries and treasuries and kitchens would be massive- what secrets would they discover? what was living in dragon society like, now that they sat at the top together? what new recipes would Cimorene cook with her friend??? (that one was very important to me lol).

i checked out all of ‘em at once, and channeled deep into the obsessive focus that only a truly lonely middle school girl can attain. I was SO EXCITED for this. 

-- and got my heart ground to dust under Patricia C. Wrede’s heel.

...because, see, i hadn’t known there was an Enchanted Forest Chronicles. i hadn’t thought about what that actually meant. it, as inevitably as the tides, meant the incoming of the one thing that made me truly hate reading sometimes- romance. cause these books weren’t about Cimorene and her friends or Kazul at all. they were about a sudden love interest and the child Cimorene had with him cause of course that’s what fucking happened. what else was i expecting? what else could stories possibly be about? i read through all of the books, feeling a little more like somebody shot my dog with each chapter, and could only feel sick when she got married & pregnant at the end. i was 11 years old and i knew something was wrong but not why.

(aaand looking back now, was that baby’s first taste of queerbaiting? does it count if you do it to yourself?? ah, youth. i don’t let myself get my hopes up anymore.)

for a very long time, i hated the idea of love (...quite the oxymoron, that one). cause it always, always meant that the people i cared about changed in ways that i didn’t understand at all. what, some boy you’ve never met before shows up, and suddenly your important quest and friends and family are... an after thought? why? don’t you care about them? don’t you love them too? why does this always happen? why is there always a boy and love and babies and nothing else? (why, why, why indeed? and yes, i was one of those kids who got fucking mean when their friends started only looking at boys, how’d you know?)

anyways. i hated it. i couldn’t possibly have articulated why back then, but it always made me so mad, despite the fact that the words on the page were telling me that this was the best thing that could ever happen in life. that just made it worse, cause why am i getting so upset over this? it’s a good thing, objectively- they’re in love. they’re happy. why is it making me feel so fucking angry instead?

this series doesn’t really... deserve any of the repressed vitriol it made me feel, though. Cimorene’s love interest that appeared in book two, Mendanbar, is actually a pretty cool guy! he has an innate, natural connection to his magic forest kingdom. he’s sick of fairy-tale tropes, he has a sweet anti-wizard sword, he’s very kind and brave- and i fucking hated his guts (...lmao, sorry dude).

there’s nothing actually wrong with this series’s romances. the couples care about each other and support each other well. i’m glad for all the kids who got to see some happy romances, i truly am. but god, that wasn’t for me, and it probably wasn’t for the other lonely kids who picked up a book about running away from what the Right People wanted for them either. 

for a series about rejecting what society tells you is the Right thing to want, the characters just... end up wanting that exact same thing anyway. oh, the thought of marrying a man and spending your life with him, baring him heirs until you die, sounds unappealing? so distressing, in fact, you’d literally rather get eaten by dragons? WELL DON’T WORRY, this one particular guy is actually good! of course you’ll fall in love with him! you’ll want to be pregnant forever with his horrible frogspawn! you’ll be happy! 

...what do you mean this is what you were running away from?

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

i spent... an inordinate amount of time as a child reading Dealing With Dragons. while i cannot possibly blame the author for my individual experience with their work, which WAS written as a series (the finale was written first, actually! way back in 1985), the fact remains that my interactions with them were... soured. 

in a way that was out of the author’s hands, really, but i just don’t know how to think about this series without that bittersweet hurt in my chest. i cried like, twice, writing this stupid, rambling essay thing, and i don’t actually know how to look past that. i suppose the tried-and-true method of just... rereading the first book and pretending everything’s fine always works lol.

i own a few different versions of these books. there’s a full set i was gifted later in middle school -the nice glossy ones, with Peter De Seve’s lovely cover art! -which i have never once reread. they’re in immaculate shape, really.

i also own an absolutely, completely beat-to-shit paperback copy of the same version i must have read a hundred times as a kid. its cover is creased and peeling, there’s a bunch of weird stains and rips and dogears, and i adore it. i picked it up this year at a used book place, and every time i look at it i can see some small, desperate kid who doesn’t even know they’re lonely but still curls up around that book again and again. 

[dirtychocolatechai]

the mess that we’ll become | s.s

Pairing: Sebastian Stan x Female Reader 

Warnings: cheating, light in the smut heavy in the feels, angst with a happy ending

Summary: Playing with fire’s never a good idea.

Notes: Remember folks cheating is not okay. Ever. This is actually a pretty old fic rewrite that I’ve been sitting on. I couldn’t just ignore that Sebastian had a girlfriend :P

The lights are off. 

They always are. 

You hear the slight shuffling of him on the bed as you pause in the doorway, kicking off your heels and setting down your small overnight bag. A rule of your’s; no lights. Whatever happens between the two of you happens in the dead of night where the shadows snuff out any regrets. 

That’s the way it has to be.

Ignoring the fact that he’s going home to someone else when faced with it during the day seems an insurmountable task. No, it’s better like this. What you have only thrives in the cold and dark, unable to survive warmth and light. 

It maims you, twists you until you don’t know who you are anymore. 

The rules keep you safe, sane, a buoy to cling to. 

Without them, you’d be utterly lost. You’re already terrified of crossing anymore lines. He won’t protect you so you have to protect yourself. Especially from the fragile feelings rooted in your chest. 

They’ve led you to doing things you never thought yourself capable of. Willfully helping a man - a gorgeous, kind, brilliantly blinding man - cheat on his equally radiant girlfriend. 

Never thought you were a homewrecker yet here you are, guilty as sin. 

A part of you, smothered but gaining traction every day, is absolutely disgusted with your choices. You wish you were a better person because then you’d have the strength to walk away once and for all. But you’ve made your bed and have no one else to blame. 

You don’t know how much longer you can live with it.

“You came,” his voice is soft, open with affection.

Your heart lurches, resentment sparking sudden and fading just as quickly. Sprawled across the mattress with that crooked smile. It’s so achingly familiar by now. The sight soothes the hurt, the anger until you’re hollowed of everything but desire. 

“I thought maybe you wouldn’t.”

Liar.

You both know you’re in too deep. You got too close and now you care too much. You hate that you can’t hate him because loving him makes you feel filthy, feather light; feelings an oxymoron of contradictions and conditions. He’s not yours to love. Not really. 

Every moment he spends away from her, every stolen kiss, every hidden heated touch breaks you apart. Simultaneously stitches you back together. You never thought it was possible to feel so tangled up in your emotions. So confused. Lost. 

Sometimes you wonder if he even cares that this is slowly killing you from the inside out. He always seems so calm, carefree in those precious moments between sunset and sunrise. He seems fine meanwhile you’re splitting at the seams, pieces of yourself spilling through the cracks. 

“I always will."

It rankles you down to your bones how honest and true that single statement is, always pulled back ceaselessly into his magnetism.

He doesn’t respond, naked and propped up against the headboard. A vision of utter perfection and everything you ever wanted, a tender bruise you can’t help poking.

Resisting is futile. You will always, always break yourself open for him. Let him expose every raw piece with rough, rude fingers. It’s ugly. It hurts. It’s unhealthy and you know you really need to end it and yet...

Rule #3: you undress yourself.

Anything else is far too intimate. There are some lines you won’t cross.

He watches as the dress pools at your feet, a pile of silky maroon waves. The lines of your body are bare, bathed in smudges of city lights creeping through the wall of windows. He’s splurged on the room this time. 

Something special must have happened. 

His hand works the curved length of his shaft casually. Gaze dark, he devours the exposed flesh eagerly, his breath heavy. The rhythm of his strokes speed up, a bead of precum welling from the slit as his fist twists around the swollen head on every upstroke. 

The muscles of his stomach contort, contract, drawing your eyes up along the glistening flesh of his torso until you meet his own. Molten desire, hot and hungry. Pupils blown wide, the blue of his eyes a thin ring. 

Your gut clenches as a pulse of feminine appreciation settles low in your belly, smoldering embers flicking into a gentle fire that spreads to your limbs with every heartbeat. 

Swallowing, you place a knee on the bed, more than ready to settle into his lap and show him some attention. He stops you, free hand rising to stop your approach. 

"Wait, before we - shit - before we do anything,” he pants, plush mouth slack. His fingers form a tight ring around the base of his flushed cock. Sweat beads along his brow, his cheeks pink. “I have to tell you something.”

Your heart lurches, dropping into your stomach so violently you’re afraid you’re going to throw up. A cold sweat breaks out across your body, your mouth suspiciously dry. An overwhelming sense of dread descends, devil black and full of sharp, hidden hurts.

This is it, you think. This is it.

The end. 

You knew it was coming, having know since the beginning that you were far more invested, nothing more than a momentary distraction no matter how special, how loved he made you feel. Knowing this doesn’t soften the blow any more or less. 

Flinching, you slide off the bed and scramble for your clothes. Your chest aches. Your eyes burn suspiciously. It’s getting difficult to breathe. The feeling of being cornered, boxed in has you lashing out. 

“Why are you doing...”You gesture towards the room angrily, at a momentary loss for words, caught up in the swell of emotions. “This! I didn’t take you for being cruel.”

Shame bites sudden and deep.

You feel like a fool, cheap and taken advantage of.

His brows furrow. “What are you - I don’t understand.”

Rolling your eyes, you jerk the dress over your hips. Everything is getting to be too much. The walls are starting to close in. You need to get away from him and you need to do it now so you can crumble apart and pick up the pieces left behind. 

“Wait! Where are you going?”

Suddenly he’s in front of you; panic stricken, eyes desperate.

“I’m leaving.”

One of his hands wraps around your wrist, halting you from putting on your other shoe.

“Sebastian, let go.” You resolutely ignore the wobble in your voice. “I’m leaving.”

His voice cracks, your heart splinters even more. “No, I don’t - what did I do wrong, [Y/n]?” 

He steps close. Tugs you forward into the wall of his chest. You resist, still as a marble statue. If you let him hold you now, you’ll rip apart like a paper doll. 

“Please don’t leave,” he entreats, pleads with his hands, his eyes, his lips. “Tell me what I did wrong so I can fix it.”

“This isn’t something you can fix.” You bite back the sob, only just. Refusing to meet his eyes, you resolutely stare at his bobbing Adam’s apple. “You just - I need to be left alone.”

“Baby, please…I don’t understand - I don’t, why?” Sebastian asks. “Why are you leaving?”

God, is he really going to make you say it? As if this isn’t bad enough, as if he doesn’t know he’s reached inside your chest and gouged out a hole in the shape of him.

“I can’t give it a go for old time’s sake.” He lets you pull away. “It’s okay, I get it. You don’t have to say anything else.”

“’Say anything el’ – I haven’t said anything at all!”

“You don’t have to!” You shout, spilling over.  “I get it, okay? We’re done, it’s over, now please let me leave.”

“What – baby, look at me, please.” 

A broad palm cups your jaw, inclines your head. You can’t avoid his eyes forever even though you wish you could. The blue of them pierces down to your soul. At least he’s nice enough to not say how pathetic you look, tears in your eyes and lips quivering. 

“What the hell are you talking about? ’It’s over’ - is that what you want?”

Frowning, you take in his pleading, anxious expression. His eyes are glassy. Heartbreak sharpens the lines of his face. 

“I don’t - you said you had to tell me something.”

“That wasn’t me breaking up with you.” The relief is palpable. A hand ruffles his hair, and an exhausted sigh escapes him. “Fuck, [Y/n]. You gave me a heart attack. I thought I almost lost you.”

“What do you mean, ’almost lost me’? You’re the one leaving!”

A laugh sounds through the air. 

Before you can explode, he continues, sliding his palms up your arms and settling on your shoulders. His thumbs stroke the sides of your neck.

“You silly, silly woman,” he says, leaning down to kiss your crown, a silent benediction. “I’m not leaving you - I left her for you.”

The tears escape, carving tracks down your cheeks. He kisses them away promptly. Something that dangerously feels like hope fills your chest. Lighter than air, head spinning.

“You left her?”

“Yes.” A blinding smile. “I did.”

“You left her - for me?”

A kiss to your temple as a voice whispers in your ear, “I did.”

“You want to be with me?” you ask, breathless. “Only me?”

“I do.”

Teeth nip at your earlobe. Those tender kisses morph into heated presses of his mouth that travel the length of your neck. Tingles shoot down your spine. You whine when he hits your soft spot, tilting your head to get better access. Relief courses through your veins, makes your knees weak as fire lights across your skin.

“Can we stop following your stupid rules now?” The gab is softened by his smile, boyish and unguarded. “I want you. All of you.”

“Yes,” you breathe.

He shows you the meaning of worship. Turned goddess by his mouth, his tongue passionately bringing you to peak over and over again until you’re a sobbing mess beneath him. 

When he slides to the hilt with a stuttered gasp, his pelvis grinding against your swollen clit, you burst. Soft and wet, thrown into a mindless blur of pleasure, stuffed full of his cock. A mouth full of forever's as he lays claim to more than just your body with every slide of his hips, every hot kiss, every bite. 

In this moment, you trust him with all that you are. 

The odds are stacked against you. The stirrings of a budding relationship already weighted with so much history and heartache. Tangled and messy. It will take time, it will take effort to heal small the small hurts and even longer for the ones too fresh to touch. 

But even then, you’re not scared of what lies in wait because finally. 

You’ve been his since the beginning.

Now he’s yours too.

[deranged-ink]

Dear editor in chief.

Yesterday I was reading a magazine -your magazine- while waiting for my coffee. I´ll admit that I was so into it that, to my embarrassment, I failed to notice the girl approaching until she left the coffee with some croissants on my table. That would be a big mistake if I were reading on the company time.

I was too involved in a single line of your last editorial:

What is your hobby? A simple and dull question, but not to my eyes. I can't help but wonder about what kind of person is asking. Is it someone intelligent? Someone with a really deep understanding of the human nature or just the typical dumb brick monkey behind a typewriter. I can assure you that one honest to god smile cameforth to your inquiry, simply because it is one of those easy-to-answer questions using a triviality, difficult to answer with The Truth.

I suppose that if you force me to answer with nothing but said Truth I would have to admit, with the proper amount of blush on my cheeks, that I like to look at the people, please take note that i am not a stalker, it's just that in order to be good at my job I have to describe myself as a rather avid observer.

I like to look at people, especially on my job. You have to understand, sitting on an uncomfortable chair for countless hours, drinking cheap coffe and killing cigars in some dirty ashtray, just waiting for the phone to ring to do my job... I would have turned crazy long, long ago if I wouldn't found a way to kill some time.

But from my hobby something really good came up.

I learned, no. I found something fascinating while observing these biological machines. Well first, I´ll confess, everything started with a game: Guess what it will do now?

From that game I discovered that all this elaborated, commercialized and consumed idea of freedom is -for most of these poor bastards- fundamentally, a lie . A lie that may or may not be true, that's the beauty of the whole subject. A liar's truth.

Before you burn your brains trying to imagine something like that, let me add something, whatever you imagine, it will be right.

If you think about it, it's a beautiful "oxymoron". Freedom is a useful farse (A dream for the most) where you must be aware of what you do and stop doing. You must fully understand each of your actions from its very root. Thats the really hard part.

Do not get me wrong, I have always said that true freedom is real, a primordial part of what reality is. The problem lies in the excuses that the lower minds uses to escape from the weight of freedom.

They fall for the supposed "unmeasurable plots" of some great powers and some others imaginary enemies (that for some not-even-god-knows reason will try to brainwash or enslave them).

They gave these plotters this divine attribute of being untouchable. And closing their eyes, they turned themselves into beings without a real opinion, without control over their lives. That's nothing short of stupidity. Themselves wrote the fairytale that they now fear, and did it in order of escaping the responsibility of knowing/taking control of their lives.

Themselves choose their imaginary chains and in the same thought, choose the more imaginary saviour that will come to brake them! Just look at those pocket warriors of the social networks, reading only what supports their ideals and burning the rest!

-Oh, traditional book burning! The irony!-

Thats how they define themselves acording their position on said system: left, right, pro-life, pro-choice, feminist, traditional, pro-system, anti-system, pious, atheist.

But what they call "the system" is just a playing field. Not some godwritten rules that will never change.

And there they meet failure without being able to realize that they act as the said system expects them to act. All the pieces on the board have a use. Even when trying to escape, when trying to think and act outside of the box, they only succeed -in a beautiful way if you ask me- to prove that they are wrong.

They do not realize that the system is not a box, but actually a box of many, each box is full of boxes and the fact that you can "get out" of the box only confirms this.

You can -with ease- point out all the poor bastards who buy a t-shirt with the face of Che Guevara (or someother communist symbol). Ironically, they are being part of a capitalist market with them as their target. The same can be said of those really patriotic friends, they really love America and they also really love their flag to be made in china. Sweet irony.

This is the same for freedom. To be free, you must be aware of what you are, truly aware, also accept what you can and can not do and that each of your actions has an effect on the great cosmic pool that is this life, each action is a small or a large stone that falls on water. You will imagine that with so many rocks that big pool is not calm at all. And thats life my friend, actions that modify our actions in one way or another. The real freedom lies in understanding this, accepting it and continuing to live.

Playing "Guess what it will do now?" I had an eureka moment some years ago. From an open window I was looking at the people on the street with my telescope, when I learned something that saddens me: "People" sold their freedom for a manual.

Life is not easy and that´s why most decide to live thinking it is. I honestly ignore the reason behind such a stupid decision. "People" gave away their freedom in exchange of beliefs, just to not question. Just to take the world as it was presented, without thinking, without asking. Only assimilating it and calling it true.

Name your manual however you want... Luck, Destiny, God, the almighty Horoscope, Reptilians or Super corporations that plan to dominate the world. It is in their hands that our world and our lives rest and not on us.

I bet that sounds better than the truth.

Everyone is free to believe in whatever they want, even when those beliefs take away their freedom.

Especially when they take away their freedom

The "manual" depends on many things, such as their upbringing, the books they had read, the books they didn't, their general education, but above all these things, of something greater, something with more force than those preconceived ideas of a man's life being the direct and ultimate result of those first twenty years of his life.

-Those who affirm that are the "intellectuals" who seek to justify mediocrity by blaming society.-

I discovered a truth, a sad truth, that goes beyond. Are you ready?  Our life depends on ourselves

-Surprising, right?-.

It depends on our decisions, our actions and how much we want to be ourselves. How much do we want to be free.

For the rest the world you have that manual that handles their lives or that simply points to the people or entities that will do it. Manuals that dictate the routine of each of them, from how, when and where they go to work, to what they stop to eat and why. What they believe in, how they think, how they feel.

So many "children" blame the manual and I can only feel sorry for them.

I can only look at them straight in the eye and say: Do not blame the manual, blame yourselves for accepting it. Blame your weakness for letting yourself be destroyed to that point.

To the point of acting... In automatic, each and every one of "them" lives like this, in automatic.

I say "them" because I do not know if "you", whoever reads these words, also do it. And no, do not let the fact that you are a reader of newspapers, books and intellectual publications make you think that you are beyond this fundamental flaw of the human being. Maybe you are also, a zombie, a computer that acts according to a list of things to do. That is why I refer to them as "It" or "them", maybe you are, or not, so I consider that these words can be one of two uses for you;

1: A call to wake up.

2: A lesson in what you should never do to yourself.

"They" are predictable, "they" are stupid. A person is a completely different topic, the problem is that there aren't many individuals left, individuals are now an endangered specie. But there are many "people". There were many individuals who decided to stop being individuals to become people.

Good people. Bad people. That doesn't matter. Cuz people is predictable. And it's something that in my line of work I've learned to do, it's a fundamental part of it.

For example; Look at this guy, for the last six days I've seen he it come and go, always in the same old beige suit and dull shoes, with its eyes on the ground, dragging its feet every morning. That's when I guess it goes to work. But not so surprisingly, it walks with the same vigor when it goes back in the afternoon. Two days ago was the day of "bring your son to work" but it didn't bring anyone. I got curious so during one impromptu walk to the donut shop I passed by it and could not help noticing that it doesn't have a single ring in its hand, nor a scar, much less any characteristic feature or mark added by life experiences. It was programmed that way, throughout his life it decided to accept what the rest thought of it, from its parents to its classmates, it let each and every one of their opinions form what it is today, unfortunately those opinions were everything but positive.

If forced to guess I would said that when It was a He, was one of those people with an artistic mind, a characteristic completely undervalued by his parents, repudiated by his peers and misinterpreted by his teachers who were unable to see beyond their own mediocrity.

If I have to bet: I would say that he did not grow up in the city, he was born and raised in a dying small town, one of those that somehow still linger in the 21th century. His parents decided that the life of an artist was not for him, that he deserved better, that he had to be someone "normal". He decided to listen to them. And being a person of unique thinking is not difficult to guess that he ended up in an office job that hates, earning a pittance to make his boss buy a new car every year. Thats how He became It.

But it's not the boss's fault, it's just that It is not good at what It does, it's almost like wanting to screw a chair using a rock. The wrong tool for the task. That is why this could be the best thing that ever happened to It, it may be the wake up call that leads It to recover its life. To become a He.

We can also see the perfect opposite; with a badly rolled joint in the mouth, practically finishing learning to smoke without coughing or looking like a complete idiot: A skinny boy in a leather jacket that barely fits him, too tight jeans, expensive but too big shoes, hair full of hairspray and tinted in three shades of pink that I do not have the slightest intention or desire to learn how to differentiate.

I always see him in the same place, the alley that is right beside the donuts shop, pretending to be the most badass punk of the block for hours. Actually, that doesn't seem to be the place he choose to spend every morning, I think that it's the place that was chosen for him.

He is never alone, always accompanied by others who dress just like him, the same spiky hair but of different colors. They skip school to spend their mornings laughing at the people passing by, provoking them, intimidating them, smoking, but until now they have never said anything to the police.

- Every time a cop walked in front of them they just kept quiet hiding their eyes in their expensive last generation smartphones. They even treat the "autority" with the utmost respect! It's funny but sad.-

This is fashion. Just a trend, fighting against the system, to rebel against their parents, against society, to paint walls with messages of anarchy and rebellion. With no actual desire to do so.

Just playing to be free without accepting consequences or duties, to be free to do what you want while keep on sucking from the old tits of your mother, a whole case for Freud to write two more books. Want me to guess? He never felt hungry. He must come from a boring and average middle-high class family. His parents gave him everything he ever wanted, but never a proper slap, must be the only child or at least the youngest of the siblings. And the only reason he plays the whole punk behavior is that he is bored

That's why he came up with this whole idea of rebelling against the system or rather, copied it, like his friends, without noticing the most comical aspect of all this, wanting to be different they all became the same. Acting the same, acting from a manual.

I bet that He will run, shout, beg to the police as soon as he sees the red rush. If he is smart, he will realize that he is wrong, that the system is not the enemy, is not the monster that makes this world the shit hole it is. The actual monster is the man with the rifle.

[nerdylittoyvoid]

Know-it-all : G.D.

A/N : This whole thing was inspired by @milliondollardolan and their writing. Reading their stuff really wanted me to get back into the groove of writing.This one is more of a rant in the form of fiction. I can’t be the only one frustrated with the issues presented here. 

The goal here wasn’t to make the reader seem as if she’s reactive or passive, but to seem more real in her insecurities. 

My hope is that it isn’t read as more of a tangent than having actual flow and, that you find elements that you can identify with. Moreover, I hope that you enjoy it! 

She really couldn’t help it. After all, we’re all products of our own upbringing.

Y/N sat in the loud pub with the small gang comprising of Ethan, Grayson, Emma and one of her close friends, Morgan.

The traditional green walls mixed with the dark painted beams made her feel as if she was in Britain, a place she always wanted to visit. Pale string lights were hung from the ceiling only adding to the oxymoron that was this pub; chaotically calming. With her chin resting on her hand, Y/N took in the people at the tables around her. There were a group of guys sat at a table closer to the bar, giving in their two-cents to the game being broadcasted on the flat screen TVs hung all throughout the pub. Across from where she was, she noticed a family all laughing together, almost as if they were reminiscing. To the side of them stood a couple balloons. One read Happy Birthday! , the other, a simple 21 years old!

 With the lively setting surrounding her, her focus remained on the couples throughout the establishment. She noticed how they were flirting, laughing and finding safety in each other’s company. As bitter as it sounded, she couldn’t help but feel repulsion. Not to the couples, of course, she was more than happy for them. It was more the idea of being that vulnerable with somebody – having them know you through and through. It didn’t help that she had a huge, no good, emotionally draining crush on Grayson.

What was even more confusing was that, despite her longing to simply be with him, she was faced with uncertainty due to multiple past relationships of which were, disempowering to say the least. She noticed how her boldness started chipping. What made it worse for her was the subtle misogyny she grew up with. The small phrases she would receive affected her confidence gravely. Comments like: “Nobody likes a know-it-all”, “Boys are intimidated by smart girls”, and her favourite, “You’ll drive people away, being that opinionated”. What can she say? She’s a product of her own upbringing.

Just like everybody else, she told herself.

It wasn’t like she was docile; she wasn’t even close to that. It was just that her insecurities hadn’t anything to do with appearances. It was all to do with her personality and intelligence. She had been taught to be unsure of herself.

She could only suppose it was due to her own bad experiences that left her with wounds that, in her opinion, were taking too damn long to heal.

Y/N was brought back to the group by Emma poking her cheek. “Always the dreamer, aren’t ya?” Emma knew her the best; how loquacious and sassy she became once comfortable with someone.

All eyes are now on Y/N and her blushing cheeks.

Going for a small amount of wit, she shrugged. “Figured you would be too, given that those three have only been talking about YouTube as if there aren’t two confused college students sitting at the same table.”

Emma, Ethan and Grayson stopped to look at each other, Grayson arching his eyebrow. She couldn’t tell if it was out of offense or surprise. Oh god, Y/N thought, did I go too far with that one?

Right before Y/N could apologize, the quarter started chuckling. Emma’s chuckle turned into a laugh, Ethan shook his head as a grin formed on his face and Grayson remained surprised, chest moving from the soft laughs escaping him.

After a couple of seconds, Grayson was the first to respond. “First, we find out that you actually can speak, and then that you’ve got an attitude?”

Y/N’s blush darkened as she tried to find something else to say. Something about his tone of voice made her want to melt onto the floor. She felt flutters in her stomach, figuring it was the butterflies. Damn crushes to hell, she thought.

But she already opened her mouth. There was no going back now. Fuck it.

Lifting her chin from her palm, she leaned back in her seat, intertwining her fingers together and resting them on the table (which she absolutely did not learn from reading an article online titled ‘Appearing Calm When the Attention is on You’).

Y/N cleared her throat tried to rid herself of her deer-in-headlights look. “I also find joy in leaving the forthcoming speechless, and you haven’t stopped talking all night. Anything else you want to know about me?”  

Taken aback by her own boldness, she wondered if she had drunk way too much, or if this was the result of feeling bottled up for too long. For one night, Y/N wanted to not have to worry about pleasantries. For one night, Y/N wanted to say what she really felt without thinking about what others told her in the past. For one night, she wanted to be considered boisterous and be okay with it.

Both Y/N and Grayson were now looking at each other, waiting for the other to make their move. Sensing the tension, Morgan and Emma announced they went to the washroom and Ethan decided to go buy another drink.

“I always wondered why you were so shy,” Grayson started. “Began to wonder if it was just me.”

God, he had no idea how nervous he made Y/N. He made her want to be more expressive – get her to tuck her stoicism into her back pocket. He was the type of guy that she wanted to feel safe with despite her own insecurities.

Maybe it was the alcohol, but Y/N’s sarcasm really began to shine through. “God, Gray. Not everything is about you.” She chuckled at the end of her sentence, indicating to Gray that she was, in fact, joking.

“To answer your question,” Y/N continued. “I suppose I didn’t always feel like I needed to add anything into the conversation.” That may have been a stretch of the truth. She did want to be loud and opinionated. She wanted to be the type of girl that guys were intimidated by, in a good way.

“Maybe now I want to hear what you have to say,” Grayson leant forward, propping his elbows and intertwining his hands together. “You’re in college still, right? How’s that going?”

“I guess you could say it’s the same old considering that the education system on all levels hasn’t changed at all in at least 100 years,” Y/N stopped herself before she could go too far. “Although that’s a whole can of worms that may leave us here for at least a couple of hours if opened.”

“Somehow that doesn’t seem that bad at all. I want to know what your opinions are on that.”

Y/N was taken aback by his sudden interest, just as much as Grayson was by her sudden forwardness. It was definitely the alcohol.

“I just find it funny that throughout my entire academic career, teachers have been taught to shove information down our throats without even bothering to teach us how to learn,” Y/N paused to take another sip of the drink in front of her, focusing on how his eyebrows furrowed at her statement; he was processing it. “Teaching us our learning types and providing tests no different from the ones in all our other classes to identify our own, and then not giving us the resources to use that information to our advantages. I don’t even think I could articulate how much better I could have done in school if they had made the effort into making things more interactive.”

“For example, out of the past 15 years of me being in school including my time in university, I can count on one hand how many teachers that have had actually put in the effort to do things differently.”

Grayson quickly interjected, his interests peaking. “So, you’re saying it’s the teachers’ faults?”

“Not necessarily. Maybe if they were actually given a livable salary, they would have motivation to do so. We’re all doing the best with what we’ve got, and teachers and students share the short end of the stick.”

“I’ll be honest,” Grayson cleared his throat. “I’m not too sure what I can contribute here.”

“That’ll hardly be necessary,” Y/N shook her head. “You’ve got me started and I still have a lot to say.”

Grayson let out a laugh, finding her bluntness refreshing.

“Besides,” she continued her rant. “I think it’s a little messed up how we go to an institution of learning for several hours a day and go home having to teach ourselves the material. The small number of teachers that I mentioned went above and beyond in their teaching. They created games to instill the information into us. They got everybody moving. The class didn’t include your typical ‘sit down and shut up’ kinds of lessons; it was a conversation. If you asked a question and still didn’t understand the clarification, the teacher understood that it would be best to take a different approach. They didn’t make you feel inadequate or stupid just because you didn’t understand it the way they did.”

“They understood that learning was done through making mistakes, and that understanding isn’t measured through the ability to recite bodies of text. It’s, in my opinion, how well you can apply that information to the current reality and your own experiences.” Y/N leant back in her seat once again. “It’s about using the tangible as reinforcement.”

Grayson was left speechless. He was left wanting more – he wanted to pull apart her mind and put it back together again. If she wasn’t beautiful before, then damn, was she stunning now. His face began heating up. He was blushing. The woman sitting across from him was making him feel like a giddy teenager all over again.

“Are you not going to call me out on how red I am right now?”

“No, because blushing isn’t necessarily indicative to attraction,” She crossed her arms – not to be confused with her being standoff-ish. It was her way of self-soothing as she began feeling uncomfortable again; she was worried she was saying too much. “It’s an involuntary reaction and can be caused by multiple different scenarios, depending on which emotions are provoked.”

That’s where the banter started.

“Some would say that you’re a know-it-all.” Grayson’s grin grew. The way his interest towards her grew every second never seized to astonish him.

“Some would say that I’m an ‘insufferable know-it-all’.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but did you just quote Snape from Harry Potter?”

Y/N let out a genuine, loud laugh. “It’s reassuring knowing that you’re not completely un-cultured.”

“I’m guessing since you’ve decided to quote Snape’s reaction to Hermione always having an answer to everything, that you see a bit of yourself in her?”

“Depends if you see reading books as a defining personality trait.” Y/N quipped.

Grayson soon swallowed his pride. This girl has a smart-ass response to everything – and he would be lying if he said he didn’t love it. “You want to maybe get out of here and go somewhere quieter?”

Y/N nodded enthusiastically, grinning as she collected her things and put on her jacket.

She never thought she’d see the day where a) she would allow someone to peel back her layers in such a small period of time and b) she would thank alcohol for making it possible.

[beyondthetemples-ooc]

(Warning: Post regarding Strange Topics ahead...)

...I think I’ve found another one of those books that touches on the Treasured “Representation”, that little teeny tiny part of me that’s so elated to find it. that appreciates something So Rare so very much, I nearly broke down crying when I realized how, so desperately, I still crave it, with every fiber of my being. Desperately. Deeply. Delightedly.

Even with everything I’m doing in life. Even with everything I’ve learned, healed, and become. Despite every insecurity I’ve surmounted. Despite all the growing I’ve done.

Even with every “need” I think I’m done with, that I think I could’ve, just maybe, fulfilled long and deeply enough for a lifetime... 

The need to be “understood” still sends trills of gratitude so deep it resonates with my bones and my pulse, sending trills of tingling down to my fingertips and my skin feeling prickling and alive. Legitimately FEELING!

I don’t even think it means to. It’s very tied in with blood, so maybe it’s a thing with vampirism? Intentionally or not, including elements of psychic vampirism in the blood? There’s that whole “thing” about Empaths and Vampires being polar opposites, isn’t there? (I mean, it seemed CONTRIVED on that website, that we should be enemies, and three of my best friends have been vampires. And, again, this book lit me up with contemplation, because it’s yet another oxymoron in my life, yet another role I’ve broken and boundary I’ve crossed simply by EXISTING!)

The book, by the way: The Wild Inside, by Jamey Bradbury.

Last time I went for a doctor appointment (at the main health campus downtown-- you know, The Hospital), I was getting overwhelmed (the bus was crowded, the streets were crowded, the hospital was crowded, and I couldn’t process everything I was absorbing). I’d missed my stop, faltered badly in conversation, and found out I’d arrived two hours early, after enduring all of that. (My appointment was at 3:30... Not 1:30.)

So, this hospital: The one good thing (besides my doctors there, I guess) is the little nook of a Branch of the County Library they have. Books, computers, everything, in this little tiny space barely the size of a walk-in closet. And it wasn’t the insulated, reassuring Massive Calming Presence of the city library ten minutes away... but it was a library, and there were books. And it was quiet. No people were hurting, sick, scared or annoyed in that corner of the campus, by the cafes and gift shop and elevators and QUIET...

I knew having a book to read would help calm my nerves, and help me settle enough that I could process everything that was overwhelming my senses. And as I browsed, and sunk into the familiar routine... pacing the shelves, reading titles, word by word... picking up those that drew my attention... It was such a limited selection there, only two small shelves. But I kept, consistently, being drawn to this one singular book.

I read the cover three times and hesitated. But I felt I should read it. I didn’t know why. Alaska and dogs are cool and all. But stalker-sounding books? Not really my style?

But I desperately needed something to read. So I checked it out anyways.

And now... Well, I don’t know that the author meant to touch such a visceral, integral part of being an empath. The relentless overwhelming. The way other minds crowd you until there’s no room for your own. The way their needs claw at you, and their mood fills you with urges and fears that don’t belong to you. The way you sometimes get a flash of memory with it, or are suddenly subsumed by their Moment until you lose yourself, and suddenly you’re scrambling for every single possible refuge you can find!

The desperation for everyone’s minds to just, SHUT UP.

The instinctive fear when you’re losing yourself.

I don’t know. It’s just... Gods? It’s not written from the perspective of “This is empathy”, not at all-- lowkey vampirism, if anything. But still, it fills a need I’ve tried covering up my whole life. A need I’ve wanted to numb. Just to be understood. The way my father never could, because he crowded his mysticism out with the mundane; the way my mother smothered hers in prayer. The way I choke every time I try to talk about it. All I know how to do is dissemble. 

It’s terrifying. It was so much a part of my daily experience for so long. (Empathic overwhelming was a big factor in my decision to finish school online.) 

And now... I do so much better with it. I have higher, wider, deeper thresholds. My inner calm is more stable and secure than ever before. It takes a veritable flood to stir me, and I’ve found more strength in myself to endure more storms than any singular human being should rightfully have.

But there’s still something so small and vulnerable and tender, that something as simple as Really Having Been There, in a BOOK, something an author who probably doesn’t even know you exist conjured, and just so happened to describe on the pages of a fictional story...

It’s so fulfilling. It is so, so incredibly rewarding and consoling and reassuring. It is VALIDATING! To think, that even a total stranger, someone I’ll likely never meet, CONCEIVED what it’s like. What I’ve been through. After everyone I’ve met who struggles to understand. Who doesn’t want to understand. Who doesn’t care to try.

Someone out there knows.

(Thank the stars I never had to resort to sleeping pills. But is it really any different than using sleeping herbs, meditation, and trinkets, in my own form of escapism instead...?)

( (( That’s not to even say anything about the guilt and fear, which I refuse to swell on and type up here. )) )

[transhumanitynet]

ARG4 MONTSALVAT

Welcome to a Rabbit Hole for TNET‘s March-April 2018 Game Event. 

The following piece is FRActal MEtafiction (FRAME); a Futurist Arts & Culture paradigm which draws upon the concepts of Culture Mining and Gamification, and is inspired by artists such as William S. Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, Joseph Cornell, Andy Warhol, and Marcel Duchamp, in addition to Postmodern theorists such as Jean Baudrillard.

The term “Montsalvat” is a reference to the opera Parsifal, by Richard Wagner.

[13 3509] Simulated Addition, and Other Oxymorons [from “Permutation City” by Greg Egan]

Opponents replied that when you modeled a hurricane, nobody got wet. When you modeled a fusion power plant, no energy was produced. When you modeled digestion and metabolism, no nutrients were consumed – no real digestion took place. So, when you modeled the human brain, why should you expect real thought to occur?

A computer model which manipulated data about itself and its “surroundings” in essentially the same way as an organic brain would have to possess essentially the same mental states. “Simulated consciousness” was as oxymoronic as “simulated addition.”

Opponents of the Uploading (Whole Brain Emulation) idea only have two essential arguments to fall back on: Either that consciousness and cognition are not matters of information processing, or that in developing AI we are modelling the wrong information, in the wrong way. One of these claims is falsifiable, and the other can be remedied.

[14 9554] The Cave [from “The Republic” by Plato]

“Next, then,” I said, “make an image of our nature in its education and want of education, likening it to a condition of the following kind. See human beings as though they were in an underground cavelike dwelling with its entrance, a long one, open to the light across the whole width of the cave. They are in it from childhood with their legs and necks in bonds so that they are fixed, seeing only in front of them, unable because of the bond to turn their heads all the way around. Their light is from a fire burning far above and behind them. Between the fire and the prisoners there is a road above, along which see a wall, built like the partitions puppet-handlers set in front of the human beings and over which they show the puppets.”

“I see,” he said. “Then also see along this wall human beings carrying all sorts of artifacts, which project above the wall, and statues of men and other animals wrought from stone, wood, and every kind of material; as is to be expected, some of the carriers utter sounds while others are silent.” “It’s a strange image,” he said, “and strange prisoners you’re telling of.” “They’re like us,” I said. “For in the first place, do you suppose such men would have seen anything of themselves and one another other than the shadows cast by the fire on the side of the cave facing them?”

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is composed of elements which illuminate any discussion of simulated worlds and the predicament of minds trapped within them. For example, in the allegory the slaves could in principle escape toward the light, understanding that what they’d thought of as primary phenomena are in fact shadows or simulations of something else, something more “real”. What would such a process of escape and/or realization require within a Matrix-like virtual world?

[15 8222] NASA are Idiots [from “Accelerando” by Charles Stross]

NASA are idiots. “They want to send canned primates to Mars!” Manfred swallows a mouthful of beer, aggressively plonks his glass on the table: “Mars is just dumb mass at the bottom of a gravity well; there isn’t even a biosphere there. They should be working on uploading and solving the nanoassembly conformational problem instead. Then we could turn all the available dumb matter into computronium and use it for processing our thoughts. Long-term, it’s the only way to go. The solar system is a dead loss right now – dumb all over! Just measure the MIPS per milligram. If it isn’t thinking, it isn’t working. We need to start with the low-mass bodies, reconfigure them for our own use. Dismantle the moon! Dismantle Mars! Build masses of free-flying nanocomputing processor nodes exchanging data via laser link, each layer running off the waste heat of the next one in. Matrioshka brains, Russian doll Dyson spheres the size of solar systems. Teach dumb matter to do the Turing boogie!

If abandonment of the human form is necessary for serious colonization of space, then is it still humanity which has conquered the stars?

[16 2201] Sects and The City [from “Naked Lunch” by William S. Burroughs]

All streets of the City slope down between deepening canyons to a vast, kidney-shaped plaza full of darkness. Walls of street and plaza are perforated by dwelling cubicles and cafes, some a few feet deep, others extending out of sight in a network of rooms and corridors.

At all levels cross-cross of bridges, cat walks, cable cars. Catatonic youths dressed as women in gowns of burlap and rotten rags, faces heavily and crudely painted in bright colors over a strata of beatings, arabesques of broken, suppurating scars to the pearly bone, push against the passer-by in silent clinging insistence.

Traffickers in the Black Meat, flesh of the giant aquatic black centipede – sometimes attaining a length of six feet – found in a lane of black rocks and iridescent, brown lagoons, exhibit paralyzed crustaceans in camouflage pockets of the Plaza visible only to the Meat Eaters. Followers of obsolete unthinkable trades, doodling in Etruscan, addicts of drugs not yet synthesized, black marketers of World War III, excisors of telepathic sensitivity, osteopaths of the spirit, investigators of infractions denounced by bland paranoid chess players, servers of fragmentary warrants taken down in hebephrenic shorthand charging unspeakable mutilations of the spirit, officials of unconstituted police states, brokers of exquisite dreams and nostalgias tested on the sensitized cells of junk sickness and bartered for raw materials of the will, drinkers of thee Heavy Fluid sealed in translucent amber of dreams.

The Meet Café occupies one side of the Plaza, a maze of kitchens, restaurants, sleeping cubicles, perilous iron balconies and basements opening into the underground baths. On stools covered in white satin sit naked Mugwumps sucking translucent, colored syrups through alabaster straws…

In the City Market is the Meet Café. Followers of obsolete, unthinkable trades doodling in Etruscan, addicts of drugs not yet synthesized, pushers of souped-up harmine, junk reduced to pure habit offering precarious vegetable serenity, liquids to induce Latah, Tithonian longevity serums, black marketeers of World War III, excusers of telepathic sensitivity, osteopaths of the spirit, investigators of infractions denounced by bland paranoid chess players, servers of fragmentary warrants taken down in hebephrenic shorthand charging unspeakable mutilations of the spirit, bureaucrats of spectral departments, officials of unconstituted police states, a Lesbian dwarf who has perfected operation Bang-utot, the lung erection that strangles a sleeping enemy, sellers of orgone tanks and relaxing machines, brokers of exquisite dreams and memories tested on the sensitized cells of junk sickness and bartered for raw materials of the will, doctors skilled in the treatment of diseases dormant in the black dust of ruined cities, gathering virulence in the white blood of eyeless worms feeling slowly to the surface and the human host, maladies of the ocean floor and the stratosphere, maladies of the laboratory and atomic war… A place where the unknown past and the emergent future meet in a vibrating soundless hum… Larval entities waiting for a Live One…

Also in Naked Lunch, Burroughs said “The study of thinking machines teaches us more about the brain than we can learn by introspective methods. Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets.” Do you agree? To your ear, does his statement sound critical, neutral, or celebratory?

[13 3509] A World of Stories [from “Open Source Democracy” by Douglas Rushkoff]

We are living in a world of stories. We can’t help but use narratives to understand the events that occur around us. The unpredictability of nature, emotions, social interactions and power relationships led human beings from prehistoric times to develop narratives that described the patterns underlying the movements of these forces. Although we like to believe that primitive people actually believed the myths they created about everything, from the weather to the afterlife, a growing camp of religious historians are concluding that early religions were understood much more metaphorically than we understand religion today. As Karen Armstrong explains in A History of God, and countless other religious historians and philosophers from Maimonides to Freud have begged us to understand, the ancients didn’t believe that the wind or rain were gods. They invented characters whose personalities reflected the properties of these elements. The characters and their stories served more as ways of remembering that it would be cold for four months before spring returns than as genuinely accepted explanations for nature’s changes. The people were actively, and quite self-consciously, anthropomorphizing the forces of nature.

Let us assume for a moment that (as is highly likely if you’re reading this) you are critical of religion, both in theory and practice. As long noted by philosophers and other observers, you cannot be consistently critical of a thing without having a consistent understanding of its nature, and thus partially incorporating it into your own identity. In other words, if you know it well enough to oppose it, then it is part of you and your world. If you do oppose religion in this way, you probably think of yourself as a rationalist or empiricist of some sort.

Isn’t it an interesting irony, then, that part of your worldview is caught up with arguing against a naiive, and indeed increasingly infantile notion of what “gods” are. Once they were commonly understood as metaphors, symbols, or representations, but now both the defenders and antagonists of religion spend their time arguing over straw men, or fictional superhumans. Don’t waste your time on such primitivism. Instead, enjoy the fact that you live in a time when ideals which the ancients could only portray as allegorical superhumans can now be realized through technology. Now, we can be the gods, if only we can remember what that means.

  Thoughts to frame@zerostate.net or in comments below may be rewarded with ARG info. Conversations held elsewhere and linked back to that address or comments below will definitely win clues, hints, & info.

  ARG1 Zone of Nothing

ARG2 Twenty Thousand Years

ARG3 Cataclysmic Renewal

ARG4 MONTSALVAT

ARG5 Houses of the Outer Court

Ready Player One: AR Gaming Meets Transhumanism

ARG4 MONTSALVAT was originally published on transhumanity.net

[theprinceandagcd]

never knowing what could have been

I have a lot of feelings about Bellamy and Clarke being separated and how everyone knows that he loves her 

also, it’s going to be a long nine months (like six years and seven days long)

It’s still harder getting up, getting dressed  living with this regret  but I know if I could do it over  I would trade, give away all the words that I saved in my heart that I left unspoken

Bellamy takes some time once they’ve gotten settled and made sure that they have what they need to survive. He walks the ship alone for days, taking new routes every time, rediscovering new areas. One day, he comes across a room that has drawings in it that he knows immediately to be hers. 

He picks one up that looks like the forest, his vision already blurring. His back hits a wall and he slides down it, putting the picture down beside him. Pulling his knees to his chest, he lets himself really cry for the first time. 

The others look to him for guidance and leadership, so he acts strong and doesn’t let them see how much he misses her, how much he regrets leaving her, how much he hates himself for letting her down. 

If he had just went with her, if Monty hadn’t gotten his hands hurt, if only... 

“If I’m on that list, you’re on that list.” 

His sobs echo in the metal of the room, his tears soaking through the material of his pants, but he doesn’t care. His heart physically aches, feeling as if it will leave his body, as if it’s reaching for her even though she isn’t there.

She isn’t anywhere. 

It’s Murphy who finds him that way, and the snark with which he usually approaches everything is nowhere to be found. Instead, he sits down next to him and puts a hand on his shoulder in silence until Bellamy can stop his tears.

“I’m sorry, Bellamy,” is all he says. And Bellamy nods, putting his hand over Murphy’s for just a moment before getting up and walking away. 

He tries to go back to her room at least once a week. It’s the only place that he can feel her, like maybe if he closes his eyes and imagines hard enough, he can pretend she’s sitting next to him, sketching away with her brows pursed and her bottom lip between her teeth, blonde curls tucked into a ball at the back of her neck. If he tries hard enough, he can almost see her glancing up at him with a smirk, making some joke about how he’s staring at her. 

God, he wishes he could see her one more time. If he had known the last time he saw her would be the last time, he would have pulled her to him and held her tight, told her how much knowing her changed him and how much his world revolved around her, how hard it is to imagine continuing to live without her. 

Eventually, he takes one of the drawings (just one, he leaves the others there so he will still have something to visit) back to his room and hangs it on his wall. It’s the last thing he looks at before falling asleep and the first thing he sees when he wakes up. 

One day, just after waking up, Raven knocks on his door and says she might need his help doing some upkeep maintenance on the oxygenator. He nods, rubbing at his eyes. She doesn’t leave immediately, but looks at the drawing on the wall. 

“Clarke’s?” 

He looks at the picture in question, depicting a shoreline. Some trees sit clustered together, in the background. Swallowing, he looks back at her to find she’s watching him. “I just wanted to feel close to her still. It’s all I have.”

Raven shakes her head, smiling sadly. “You have your memories of her, and no one can ever take that from you. She lives on that way, in the mind of the people who loved her most, like you.” 

He rubs at his eyes, willing away the tears threatening. He nods and then gets up, glancing at the drawing one more time. “Come on, our life source isn’t going to fix itself.” 

Six months pass and he still stares out the window and wonders if she suffered much. If she at least knew that she had saved them, that she had been successful in her mission just like he knew she would be. 

The planet isn’t as orange at it was at the beginning, the color now seems more brown. 

Dead. 

Everything is dead. 

“It already looks better.” Harper comes to stand beside him, arms crossed across her chest. 

“I guess,” he mutters, tucking his own hands in his pockets. “Still a while to go before we can live on it again.” 

That thought makes his stomach drop. The idea of living on Earth without Clarke? Maybe he can just stay here with her drawings. 

(But he knows that wouldn’t be fair to Octavia.)

“Do you... you think everyone is okay? In the bunker?” Her voice is small and he sighs. 

“The bunker was fool proof. I’m sure they shut the door not too long after I told O that we weren’t coming back. They’re fine.” 

She nods, and he can feel her gaze. “I never... told you I was sorry. She was... one of the best people I’ve ever met and... I can imagine how you feel losing her. If I lost Monty, I...” 

“We weren’t together,” is all he can think to say to get her to stop talking, but the statement falls flat. 

Harper is silent for a minute, staring out the window as the dead air thickens. When she speaks, she sounds sympathetic. “You loved her, and didn’t tell her. And that might actually be worse. So I’m sorry.” 

It his turn to be quiet, because his stomach turns uncomfortably at her words because she’s right. 

“Clarke, if I don’t see you again--”

“No, you will.” 

Clarke Griffin died without knowing that he loved her. 

And he’ll never get that back. 

He’s sitting watching everyone play with a deck of cards ten months into their stay when Emori stands and comes to sit next to him. “You could play, too, you know.” 

He glances at her and she smiles just a little. “I know I could.” 

“So why don’t you?” she asks, almost sounding like she already knows the answer. 

“Just not feeling it.” He can feel the direction the conversation is taking and he wishes he could just escape to Clarke’s room. 

Silence that he has become all too familiar with lingers between them and he knows that she’s thinking, trying to word her thoughts in a way that’s delicate. He knows that she’s about to talk about Clarke. His fists clench automatically and he crosses his arms across his chest, already feeling his eyes stinging. 

“I know that you’re still in pain because you lost someone you loved...” Yep, there it is. “But the reason that you lost her is because she saved our lives. She died so you could live, and this is how you choose to spend the time she’s given you? Sulking and not talking to anyone and walking the halls when you think no one knows?” 

He shakes his head because she doesn’t get it. No on does. They try to understand, try to sympathize, but none of them understand the guilt he feels.

“I just... can’t yet.” He blinks, wishing for once that he wouldn’t cry every time someone brings her up. 

Emori sighs and props her arms on her bent knees, watching the group in front of them. “I didn’t know her that well, but she shoved a needle in her arm to save me from being radiation toast, and I just have to think that the girl who did that? She would want more for you than this isolation you’re putting on yourself.” 

He looks at the people sitting in a circle in front of him, all alive because of Clarke. Harper leans into Monty’s side and he kisses her head. Even Echo smiles as Raven punches Murphy in the arm.

“I know she would, but... “ Habit tells him to stop talking, to not confide in this girl that he barely knows. “All I can think about is how I didn’t tell her.” 

Once the first words are out, the confession that only Harper has discovered, the rest follow before he can stop them. “She was sick and she told me that I had a big heart and that she understands me and I was refusing to believe that anything could happen to her so I didn’t say anything, I didn’t tell her goodbye, or how much she means to me. I... I let her go to that tower by herself and the last thing I told her was to... hurry. I thought I would see her again, that we’d have five years up here together."  

He pauses, taking a breath and looking over, expecting to see anything but the understanding in Emori’s eyes. “I never got to tell her. She died without knowing how much I love her.” 

Emori shakes her head, the smallest of sad smiles pulling up her features. “Trust me when I tell you-- she knew. We all did. There’s no way she didn’t.” 

One tear slips down his cheek and he wipes at it quickly. He can only hope that she’s right-- that Clarke knew. He’ll never know for sure. 

“I miss her.” His voice cracks and he shakes his head, running a hand through his hair. 

“You probably always will. But that is one good thing about loving someone so truly-- they will always be with you. She lives on in your heart, in your memory-- she will always be with you to guide you.” 

“Do you really believe that?” he asks, glancing over at her.

She raises a brow, and her smirk is gentle “Don’t you? You go to her room and keep one of her drawings because you think it keeps you connected to her, but it’s only a metal room, and paper. You feel that connection because it exists inside you already.” 

He closes his eyes and breathes, thinking of their last day, of how she’d insisted on him listening to her, the way she held her hand over his heart, the way her fingers had grazed the side of his face as she touched his head. 

“Only choice, also an oxymoron by the way.”

A smile tugs up the corners of his lips automatically at the way she’d smiled, just a little, how she’d looked at him when he’d wiped a bead of sweat from her face. 

“I got you for that.” 

And maybe he still does. Maybe he always will.

You’re going to be okay, Bellamy. It’s just a little off, but it is definitely her voice, echoing in his brain, I’m not going to leave you.

He nods, just to himself. 

I know.

[roguenewsdao]

Was Billy Graham Praying for Armageddon?

"On Saturday, February 1, 2003, I lifted my hands to begin praying and the Lord spoke to me ... I wanted to know whether the God the Father's direction was to go to war or not go to war.... The Lord said, ‘I am saying to go to war with Iraq’." -  Roy A. Reinhold as quoted by F. William Engdahl

"They feel that everything from the Nile to Euphrates belongs to Greater Israel." - RM interview with Mimi al-Laham aka Syrian Girl, October 15, 2017

This past month the world mourned the death of arguably one of the most famous Evangelical preachers of the 20th century. I certainly remember him as a fixture and "spiritual advisor" to kings and presidents during my childhood. I am speaking, of course, of William Franklin Graham, Jr. He is better known as Billy Graham.

F. William Engdahl certainly remembers him too. The title of today's blog is taken from a subheading that appears in Chapter 10 of Engdahl's book "Full Spectrum Dominance - Totalitarian Democracy In The New World Order." Mr. Engdahl was good enough to share the entire chapter with his fan club. I have been wanting to talk about Christian Zionism and the "Greater Israel" agenda ever since I read Mr. Engdahl's kind gift last November [feel free to grab the PDF file here of Chapter 10].

What escapes millions of people today is the underlying belief that the British monarchy fosters about their special bloodline. Someday perhaps we'll speak about this at length, but the short story here is that the British monarchy - who, by the way, is just about the only bloodline to have survived all the other royal bloodlines of Europe - believe that they are the natural heirs and legal claimants to throne of King David and Jerusalem. Even the word "Saxon" is thought to derive from the land of Scythia which could well be where many thousands of Israelites eventually were dispersed following both the Assyrian takeover of the northern kingdom of Israel and the later Babylonian takeover of the houses of Judah and Benjamin 800 years before Christ. [See David Livingstone's research linked here.]

In season one of the Netflix series "The Crown," I hooted and hollered when the show depicted the full, ancient Jewish rituals that are associated with the coronation of the British monarch. This is well depicted in Season One, Episode Five's "Smoke And Mirrors" title. I highly recommend that you watch and pay close attention to the words uttered by the Archbishop as he alchemically "transforms" the woman Elizabeth into a deity. Yes, that is what they believe and the script of the episode makes this abundantly clear.

In season two of the series, the entirety of episode six revolved around the Queen's fascination with the Billy Graham crusade and his visit to London. She requests a private audience with the holy man because she is wrestling with what to do with her favorite but disgraced uncle, the abdicated and former King Edward VIII, a notorious Nazi sympathizer.

Now, what the entire series "The Crown" as well as every other pro-British-monarchy drama will never, ever reveal to you is that the heart and soul of pretty much all Illuminati Secret Societies in Europe is this agenda they have to thwart God's choice for ruler of the throne of David and, instead, seat their own choice. Their choice for Messiah and King has been engineered to bleed some very - uhh - shall we say, "interesting" DNA through his veins. This belief that they hold dear is the cause of every war that has been fought since the fall of Rome and is even running as a prime motivating force behind the "Singularity" human-hybrid civilization that is currently being imposed on you.

So I just had to roll my eyes when I saw the true-life encounter of Billy Graham with the current holy grail of the bloodline, Queen Elizabeth II, back in 1955 depicted in the popular Netflix series. Then came along Rogue Money friend and highly respected researcher, F. William Engdahl. What Mr. Engdahl has to say about Billy Graham and other men of his ilk, religious leaders like Jerry Falwell, needs to be broadcast far and wide. You will never understand the motivation behind the coming battle in the Middle East until you understand how mainstream organized religion in America has been used as a staunch and loyal tool to bring it about.

Rapture Theology and the 'Greater Israel'

In Chapter 10 of his book cited above, Engdahl reminds us that the popular Evangelical concept of a coming Rapture is a relatively recent teaching dating back only as far as the 1850's. Oh, yes, they did find a single passage in the Bible on which to build the idea. How better to secure a popular base for your warmongering agenda than to take advantage of the public's devotion to sacred scripture? It's the ol' Problem-->Reaction-->Solution formula, in play, again.

In the mid-19th century, John Nelson Darby, a renegade Irish priest of the Church of Ireland, created the idea of "the Rapture" as he founded a new brand of Christian Zionism. His invented doctrine promoted the idea that "Born-Again Christians" would be taken up to Heaven before the second coming of Christ—their "rapture." Darby also put Israel at the heart of his strange new theology, claiming that an actual Jewish state of Israel would become the "central instrument for God to fulfill his plans for a final Battle of Armageddon."

Keep in mind the political and financial history of that time period. The West has just come through a period of anti-monarchist revolution. City of London and Amsterdam banksters are firmly in control of a vast planet-wide economy. Half the authority over armies and treasuries now sits in the hands of elected Parliamentarians, not Kings. The other half, whether that be pertinent to the ruling body of the UK or that of the USA, sits in the hands of Lords or Senators whose loyalty is given to the Banksters. Therefore, to control those armies and treasuries, you simply need to control the thinking and the voice of the proletariat.

In a world where The People still generally regard the Bible as authoritative, nobody directs their thinking better than the voice of the Clergy. Engdahl goes on to write:

Christian Zionists like Reverend Jerry Falwell and Rev. Pat Robertson could be traced back to a project of British Secret Intelligence services and the British establishment to use the Zion ideology to advance Empire and power in North America. American Christian Zionists in the period of American Empire in the 1950’s and later, merely adopted this ideology and gave it an American name. 

These American Christian Zionists, just below the surface, preached a religion quite opposite to the message of love and charity of the Jesus of the New Testament. In fact, it was a religion of hate, intolerance and fanaticism. The soil it bred in was the bitter race hatreds of the post-Civil War US South held by generations of whites against blacks and, ironically, against Catholics and Jews as ‘inferior’ races. Their religion was the religion of a coming Final Battle of Armageddon, of a Rapture in which the elect would be swept up to Heaven while the ‘infidels’ would die in mutual slaughter.

Do you see the Hegelian Dialectic in play? "The soil it bred in was the bitter race hatreds of the post-Civil War" South. That's how this works. You keep two polar opposites grinding at each other. Out of their conflict, a new path arises. Then you wash-rinse-repeat the cycle again.

Therefore, out of this period arose charismatic preachers like Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and others. Either wittingly or unwittingly, these leaders served the needs of that Babylonian Priesthood who is steadily moving an ancient football down the field toward a goal of ultimate one world government. The Priesthood has no qualms about hijacking sacred scripture and twisting their own blueprint of power out of it.

Regarding Billy Graham's son, Franklin, who also became a preacher in his own right, Engdahl goes on to say:

Echoing the anti-Islam fervor of Falwell and Robertson, Rev. Franklin Graham, son of the famous Christian evangelist and Bush family friend, Reverend Billy Graham, declared after September 11 that Islam was “a very evil and wicked religion.” The large US Southern Baptist Convention’s former President, Jerry Vines, called the Prophet Mohammed the most vile names imaginable. It was all about stirring Americans in a time of fear into hate against the Islamic world, in order to rev up Bush’s War on Terror.

Graham, who controlled an organization known as the Samaritan Purse, was a close religious adviser to George W. Bush. In 2003 Graham got permission from the US occupation authorities to bring his Evangelical anti-Islam form of Christianity into Iraq to win “converts” to his fanatical brand of Christianity. 

According to author Grace Halsell, Christian Zionists believed that “every act taken by Israel is orchestrated by God, and should be condoned, supported, and even praised by the rest of us.” It was all beginning to sound far too much like a new Holy Crusade against more than one billion followers of the Islamic faith.

I would add to Engdahl's last comment there about a "Holy Crusade against more than one billion followers of the Islamic faith" to include also the adherents of Jewish faith. In fact, during the 1970's, Billy Graham got caught in the revelations of the infamous "Nixon Tapes" and was even accused of being anti-Semitic [linked here]. I know that this is a point that many people struggle to come to terms with: how can an a person be pro-Zionist and yet anti-Semitic at the same time? 

The answer leads you to the very heart of the global network of secret societies. The key to reconciling such an apparent oxymoron is to realize that this entity that I refer to so often, this Babylonian Priesthood, sees itself as supra-human and actively in communion with supernatural beings or their human-hybrid avatars. When you look at the western history of the 19th and 20th centuries, it is easy to see how the Zionist agenda of British leaders like Lord Palmerston and documents like the Balfour Declaration were all stepping stones whose path has been carefully directed down to our day, a Sabbatean path whose cause has been somewhat gullibly supported by the powerful American "Bible Belt" puppets to wipe out anybody in the Middle East, Jews and Muslims alike, who gets in the way of the Priesthood.

To bring our discussion full circle and firmly cement it in the roots of that Babylonian Priesthood network, I'll present below another section from Engdahl's Chapter 10 to summarize the role that Freemasonry and Christian Zionism have played in moving that Priesthood's bloodthirsty anti-human manifesto forward.

Mr. Engdahl included a section in Chapter 10 entitled "Bush, Christian Zion and Freemasonry." Here are a few of his points:

A most difficult area to illuminate regarding American relations to right-wing Israeli Zionists and the ties between Israel and Christian Zionists such as Jerry Falwell, Rev. Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Gary Bauer and other US backers of the Right-wing Israeli Likud policies, was the role of international esoteric freemasonry.

Freemasonry has been defined as a secret or occult society which conceals its goals even from most of its own members, members who often are recruited naively as lower level members, unaware they are being steered from behind the curtains. The most powerful Freemasonic Order in the United States is believed to be the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite, or the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, with its world headquarters now in Washington, DC....

There was a special role played by one of the two major branches of Anglo-Saxon Freemasonry....The Scottish Rite enjoyed an active branch in Israel, even though it was nominally a Christian society. It spoke of its tradition going back to ‘the early masons who built King Salomon’s [sic] Temple.’ The fact that American Christian Zionists typically were concentrated in the South and came from the similar white racist strata as the Scottish Rite, and that they actively backed the Israeli fanatics who seek to rebuild the Third Temple of Salomon at the site of the sacred Al Aqsa Mosque and thereby ignite the Final Battle of Armageddon cannot be coincidence. All evidence suggested that the Jewish advocates of destroying Al Aqsa and rebuilding the Temple of Salomon there were being supported by the Scottish Rite masons in the United States and Britain.

Indeed, there was circumstantial evidence that much of the organized American Christian Right that backs Israeli right-wing policies was secretly backed by Scottish Rite masonry. The Southern Baptist Convention recently had a heated debate over allegations that some 500,000 of their members were also masons, reportedly most Scottish Rite. The Southern Baptist organization is well-known for its racial hatred of blacks. Cecil Rhodes, the man who was backed by Rothschild to create the mining empire of South Africa was a Scottish Rite member as was Lord Palmerston, also himself a British Israelite.

That, in a nutshell, is how you connect the dots between the the 17th century rise of the Rothschilds at the same time that the Illuminati, Rosicrucians, Jesuits, Sabbateans, and Freemasons were growing in power, and the modern-day Hegelian Dialectic opposition of Liberal Leftists and Conservative Rightists.

Satanism Boils Down to Lying

The takeaway of this blog is to show that there are hundreds of people who, either knowingly or unknowingly, have allowed themselves to be used as pawns by that Babylonian Priesthood. The Priesthood is actively promoting a vast deception. Millions of people have fallen under the spell of belief that they are the "chosen" who will be commuting to heaven. The cruel joke is that the Priesthood sees itself as the "chosen" who alone have the right to affix themselves to the heavenly realms of supernatural beings. By directing these charismatic leaders and their flocks to publicly "evangelize" that belief, the Priesthood has now verbalized the spell in order to effect its realization, a very Kabbalistic notion.

What the flock doesn't see is that the perpetuation of this spell is designed to lead themselves to a slaughter that likely will emanate from the territory of the 'Greater Israel' that Syrian Girl referenced in the opening quotation of this blog. When Jesus Christ walked the earth, he openly faced the agents of that Priesthood who even at that time exercised great influence over that same territory. Christ clearly exposed the root of their agenda. "You are from your father the Devil, and you wish to do the desires of your father. That one was a murderer when he began, and he did not stand fast in the truth, because truth is not in him," was the clear declaration that Christ broadcast in public. (John 8:44).

(Bill Graham, a long time spiritual advisor to President Nixon, delivered the eulogy at Nixon's funeral on April 27, 1994. And yet, according to the recent @DarkJournalist interview with Bob Merritt, the only men that Nixon trusted were Merritt and Kissinger - not Graham?)

It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that if an institution is actively perpetuating a lie that will leads millions of people into a bloody war, then that institution is not aligned with the principles of Christianity. People often think of "Satanism" as referencing those dark ugly rituals of sex orgies and child sacrifices. To be sure, factions within those secret societies mentioned above are indeed participating in those acts. But Christ's definition of "Satanism" was much more broad: any ideology that promotes a deception and the murder of humankind is just as much a component of "Satanism" as the more obvious abhorrent practices.

In the next blog this week, I will include comments by W. The Intelligence Insider that speak to his opinion that the New World Order thugs are very much on track for launching that slaughter. #NoMoreSecretSocieties !

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