#ADULT GRIEF

[arcanespillo]

but you will not grow /you will not let yourself /obliterate anything.

ADULT GRIEF by Louise Gluck

[thepeacefulgarden]

It's all part of the process.

[visenyaism]

july side quests:

- buy a peach from a stand by the side of the road. (isn’t it sweeter than anything? i love you.)

- sit in a cool creek on a hot day. let it run over and around and through you.

- grieve.

- say “it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity that’ll get you.”

- get too damn drunk off of something sticky-sweet made for 17 year-olds to swipe at the barbecue, giggling. cry.

- sit out on the porch and watch the thunderstorms as they roll through every day before dinner. (we needed the rain, didn’t we?)

- grieve. it hangs in the air with the steam rising off of the pavement. breathe it in.

- disregard what your mother told you about electricity to stand tallest in an empty field and watch the heat lightning on the horizon. (i’m sorry. i know i shouldn’t. i love you.)

- stare into the night sky until something stares back. (there’s dipper, that’s the only one i could ever find. say hello)

- teach someone you love how to pull apart honeysuckle, petal-pistil-stamen-nectar-tongue.

- grieve. catch a firefly. let it go. (there are fewer of them than there used to be, when we were kids. i love you.)

[hauntedbythenarrative]

I don't even know where you end and I begin

Woman with Dead Child, Käthe Kollwitz//Michael Cunningham//Saudade, John Freeman//Yellowjackets (2021-)

[ninadove]

Hello there.

[Slides elegantly into the tags]

Do you ever think about Emotion?

Of course you do. How could you not. But do you ever think about this exchange specifically:

“You’re not Adrien!”

Because Adrien is sweet, and forgiving, and kind. In fact, kindness is his defining quality — Marinette herself made sure of it:

“I’ll never tell another boy I love him before I know everything about him! Whether he’s kind or not, thoughtful, what he does outside of school and with who… I’ll know everything.”

But.

Do you ever think about Adrien’s development in S4 and especially S5?

Overtime, he has grown resentful of a system that exploits him relentlessly.

Of the people he gave countless chances to, only to be let down over and over again.

Of the web of lies and half-truths he constantly finds himself tangled into. A web that is only growing bigger, stickier, and trickier to escape.

And the Senticousins. Do you ever think about them?

Do you ever think about how they are each other’s reflection, identical and opposites all at once?

“When you bring a living being into this world, you have a responsibility towards them. Your duty is to protect them, love them, help them discover the true meaning of their existence. To deprive them of that… is monstruous.”

“To have a child is to help them blossom, to grow, to find themselves and to be free!”

Do you ever think about their opposite character arcs in S5 — one learning mercy and trust, the other developing a rage so strong it could destroy the world?

Do you ever think that if Felix can now have this exchange with his mum, and mean it:

“They’re all monsters!”

“Not all of them.”

Then there’s nothing stopping Adrien from saying this:

“Look closer, Marinette. They’re the monsters.”

[roach-works]

every now and then im like 'man i haven't actually made any personal posts in months, haven't i, maybe i should let tumblr know what's going on' and then i realize that i don't even know what's going on. i got a job sorting cans at a bottling company and it's actually really enjoyable. i painted a bunch of concrete for my mom's memorial the last couple weeks, putting off getting a dentist for an increasingly bad toothache. the toothache went nuclear on july 4th, my birthday, as every dentist in town treated themself to a 4 day weekend. it turns out that teeth you crown can fracture inside your jaw and i had like weird splinters all up ins, which was at least a very cool and hardcore reason to be in incredible pain for like three days straight. im very grateful that there exists at least one guy in town that does work on sundays but also he didn't let me keep the tooth ):<

i have also taken up making bottle gourds for wasteland weekend, which is fun and takes my mind off the tooth situation. i think a key component for making really good wasteland gear is doing it organically, with the tools and materials you would actually have in the waste. sitting around doing handcrafts to distract yourself from tooth problems is probably about as wasteland as it gets.

[sleepy-writes-stuff]

DP X DC PROMPT #29

(#) = Notes at the end of post

✦

The Nasty Burger Explosion still happens, and Danny is left without his friends, family, and the only teacher who ever tried to help and encourage him in school. He manages to skirt around Vlad's custody by discovering a cousin of his Dad's he'd never heard about (1). He reached out to her, crying and begging for her to take him in. To not let Vlad anywhere near him.

Needless to say, after hearing a desperate teenager call her in tears and discover that besides Danny, her cousin Jack and his family had recently died in a horrible "accident," Lois nearly upends everything to go and get Danny from a middle of nowhere town in Illinois. After talking with Clark, of course. She didn't get one word in, however, cause he heard the entire phone call from the other room, though unintentionally.

After arranging for Mama Kent to watch over a still young Jon, they drove as fast as possible to meet this boy that already had their hearts in an iron grasp. When they first lay eyes on him, they immediately want to comfort him. His black hair is a tangled mess, his eyes bloodshot and red from crying. He sits in the corner of the school secretary's office, curled up in the small seat with an overstuffed backpack clutched tightly in a trembling, white-knuckled grip. A girl with dark skin and her hair held back by a headband sits with him, but she gets up and walks over as soon as she sees them enter the office. Danny doesn't seem to notice or even look up from where he's staring at the floor tiles.

"He's been hiding here for the last few days since he called you. He hasn't gone home once except to pack the bag he has with him." The girl explains. She holds out her hand to Lois for a handshake. "Valerie. You could say I'm a... friend of his (2). I'm assuming you're the cousin?"

Lois nods solemnly. "How's he been? He wouldn't tell me why he wouldn't go with his parent's first choice of custody. I've been worried."

Valerie grimaced and looked back at Danny before looking her directly in the eyes. "I can't say much without revealing anything i shouldn't. Let's just say Vlad has an unhealthy obsession with Danny, and it's unsafe to be around him. If he trusts you, he'll be the one to tell you the rest."

Clark and Lois share a look before they both nodded.

Valerie sees their acceptance and relaxes. She'd actually been tense the entire time she'd been talking with them.

"Well, with that said, I'll be going now." She rubbed the back of her neck and looked down with a sad expression. She looked back up at Lois with a deep sigh, and only then did Lois realize that Valerie looked to have been crying recently too. Looking between both adults, she made a quiet request. "Take care of him, will you?"

This time Clark is the one who finally speaks up. "You have our word he'll be safe and cared for."

Valerie's shoulders slump with a shuttering sigh of relief. "Thank you."

Once she left, Clark and Lois slowly approached Danny and sat to either side of him. Only then did he finally look up from the tiles and see them. His eyes ghosted over Lois but immediately locked onto Clark. He stared up at him, his eyes glassy with unshed tears.

Clark shrunk his broad form down a little, concerned his build might be intimidating for the young man. "Hi there, bud." He said in a soft tone. "I'm Clark and this is Lois. We're here to pick you up."

When introductions didn't seem to get a reaction from the teen, Clark's brow furrowed further. "Something wrong?"

Danny finally blinked and quickly ducked his head back down to look at the floor. "N-No." He croaked. "Sorry. For a moment there, I thought you were-" He choked on his words and seemed to have difficulty swallowing. He was shaking, his face hidden against his knees with one of his arms braced over his head to hide even further.

When he finally managed to finish his sentence, Clark's heart shattered completely.

"I th-thought you were my dad."

Clark looked at Lois with lost, watery eyes only to see she was in the same exact predicament. She couldn't stand seeing Danny so heartbroken any longer and leaned over to wrap him in a hug, Clark soon following. After a while of shushing and murmuring words of comfort, Lois gently spoke up.

"Why don't we get your things in the car and we can get on the road."

Extracting himself from their warm hold, Danny took a deep, shuttering breath before nodding.

"Okay."

"Is there anything else we need to get from the house? You have everything?"

Gripping his bag tightly to his chest, he nodded again. (3)

"Yeah. I do."

✦

Side Note:

(1) He found out through Tucker. He'd searched through Danny's family tree for any living relatives in case Vlad ever actually managed to kill Jack or something else happened to both his parents. He just never imagined it would be for this reason specifically.

(2) Yes, she knows Danny is Phantom now. She did not know before. She found out after she tried to pin the blame for Danny's friends and family on Phantom while Danny was in earshot, and he basically blew up at her and broke down. She's horrified and feels terrible, so don't be too hard on her. The confrontation also happened on school grounds with a bunch of other kids present, so a good majority of the student body knows now, too. If not from seeing it first hand, then by word of mouth. They're keeping it hush hush so nobody with bad intentions towards ghosts comes looking for Danny. Valerie will be the main defense against any ghosts that pop up, as well as a few other kids she trained.

(3) Before he left, Danny did disable and completely dismantle the ghost portal and translated all his parent's research into a code him, Sam, and Tucker came up with before destroying the originals as well as the entire lab itself. Natural ghost portals can still pop up in Amity Park tho, since the ghost portal kinda oversaturated the town with ectoplasm. Valerie and the kids she trained are just a precaution.

Haven't come up with a title for this one yet. I'll add it later when it pops into my head though.

Funny enough, this actually isn't what I planned to write for this prompt. It did involve Danny getting adopted into the Kent family, but there was going to be something entirely different happening. Apparently, the characters had other plans. Oh well, I'll save it for the next one, I guess. It might be a second part of this, actually. We'll see!

Enjoy the angst & hurt/comfort tho!

[trans-axolotl]

content note: discussion of suicide.

this next monday will be the six year anniversary of losing one of my friends to suicide.

when he died, my high school barely mentioned his death, even though for other students who died by things like car crashes or illness, there were so many public expressions of grief. they believed that having any memorials for a student who died by suicide would encourage other people to die the same way. in their rush to erase the circumstances of his death, they erased the memory of his life.

there are so many things i am angry at that high school about in terms of how they treated mental health (mandatory reporting and collaborating with cops, their refusal to recognize the ways in which that system led to peer-to-peer crisis support, their refusal to recognize the ways that trying to keep each other alive through trial and error was scary and exhausting, carceral disciplinary policies, etc etc etc). but i think one of the things i am still angriest about is the way they enforced shame around his death. it felt like they were retroactively blaming him for the constellation of circumstances that made suicide an option in his life. it felt like they were blaming those of us who missed him and cared about him and wanted to grieve him. it made those of us still there who were actively suicidal feel even more scared about the reaction if we did reach out for help from one of those mythical safe adults.

as an adult now involved in psych abolition/mad liberation work, it makes me so fucking mad to see the ways in which he was discarded by people in authority positions. and the older i get, the more options i have found in my life for making sense of the world and finding healing and community and support which were never available to him because he died when he was 16 and the only things offered to him were a carceral psychiatric system that blamed him for his own fucking death. it feels so incredibly unfair.

i miss him and i think i always will; i can't remember his laugh or the sound of his voice or his favorite color any more and that aches. this grief is so heavy and it feels harder in a new way each year, when i become older than he will ever be. sometimes meeting new comrades or seeing new anticarceral suicide support models hurts because i wish so fucking bad that we had that back then. i remember how close we came to losing even more people that year and i know it is simple fucking luck that i'm still here when he's not.

i remember another letter (never sent) that i wrote to a friend while they were in an ICU bed after a suicide attempt when i didn't know if they would live or not. i have spent so much time in the past 10 years begging for anything to keep me and my friends alive, but even in that letter i knew that there is so much fucking violence that is hidden beneath psychiatric logics of cure and safety that promise a "solution" to suicide. I knew that institutionalization, coercion, and shame would not have helped build a life more liveable for him or **** or any of the people i've loved and lost since.

there needs to be more fucking options for care and support that aren't so incredibly cruel to suicidal people. i know so many people doing incredible work in alternatives, peer respite, a million different frameworks for healing and liberation. but it makes me so mad every day i have to live in a world where there are still people restrained, locked up in psych wards, having all autonomy and personhood taken away from them. knowing there are dozens of people every day getting blamed for their deaths the same way he was blamed for his.

i miss him. i cared so fucking much for him. and he died by suicide, and all of those things are true. he has been dead for 6 years and he lived before that and the people who loved him want to remember all of him; our celebrations of his life should not require hiding the way that he died.

Image description: [1000 origami cranes in all different colors and patterns that are tied together in strings of 25]

(these were the 1000 cranes we made to give to his parents, in memorial and recognition of how much he meant to us.)

[lets-all-calm-down-a-bit]

the two drawings i managed to screenshot before being banned for telling someone to jump off a bridge

[labrayic]

"thank you for loving me"

[flowercrowngods]

🤍🌷 @stevesbipanic and @the-winged-doe asked to see ugly unpolished unrefined words, soo—

cw & tags: past major character death, grief, attempted time-travel fix-it(s), eddie&robin besties || potential wip

Eddie takes a long drag of his cigarette, the biting hot smoke hitting the back of his throat and clawing its way into his lungs, going as deep as he allows and leaving a permanent mark that brings neither relief nor calmness tonight. His fingers shake where they’re pressed to his lips, but the rest of him is unmoving where he sits on the front porch of their new trailer. 

It’s quiet out here. It’s always quiet in Hawkins these days, the city a fucking ghosttown. 

And he knows it’s not because of the one they lost. He knows it’s not because of him. But still the emptiness is stark and the silence oppressivem more so than it ever has been. 

Everyone still looks for him, months later. Dustin still begins to speak, cutting himself off mid-sentence, and Robin still stands with enough space to either side, like she expects him to just show up and invade her space like the home he made for himself in there. 

And somewhere among all that is Eddie. With his very own history. Or, non-history, as it turns out. But history and non-history leave wounds alike, and the memories feel just as real. A small mercy, at the end of the day, for them to feel real when they’re all he has left anymore. 

He takes another drag, not quite exhaling before he obliterates the cigarette and fishes for a new one before the butt even hits the ground. 

Fumbling with the lighter in his pocket, he only gets as far as placing the butt between his lips before a hand snakes into his field of vision to snag it from his mouth. 

“Hey,” he complains halfheartedly but makes no attempt at getting it back, watching instead as Robin comes up to sit beside him, grimacing at the stink of tobacco that must be heavy around him. 

“You’re disgusting,” she says with no real heat behind her words.

Eddie shrugs, because yeah, sure. He’s been called worse things. Robin’s called him worse things. This is her being nice. Her complaininig about his incessant smoking is nothing new. What is new is what she does next, placing the cigarette between her own lips and reaching for the light he’s been holding in a loose grip since she arrived. 

She starts coughing immediately, pulling a face at the disgusting feeling of smoke in her lungs and tobacco on her tongue. But she keeps going. Eddie can only watch in surprise and mild horror. 

“These things’ll kill you,” he says then in an echo of her usual sentiment, aware that he sounds as bewildered as he feels. 

“Well,” Robin says, aiming for casual, but quickly interrupted by a wheeze and a cough that’s almost adorable. “Let them try.” 

Eddie huffs, a pale little smile lingering on his lips as he leans back against the stairs behind him, resting his weight on his forearm to watch her. There is something captivating about her. Eddie always wonders what it is, wants to study her forever. 

Maybe it’s only the lingering traces of Everything Steve Harrington that clings to her every breath, her every move, her every fucking cell, with how much he was a part of her and she of him. Maybe it’s their shared grief that has made Eddie fall a bit in love with her and with the way the moonlight catches in her hair and in the smoke wafting from her cigarette. 

But somehow he refuses to believe that all he loves about her is merely the memory of Steve. 

Robin, in turn, is kind enough to let him stare. Kind enough to let him find out what it is between them. If this friendship is more than a misguided projection of grief and mourning and trauma; more than co-dependence and the obsessive will to keep this one person in your life. This one person who understands. 

After a while of Robin just holding the cigarette between her fingers, becuase no matter how strong her will to self destruct, she never quite got it right with the smoking, Eddie snatches it back before it goes to waste completely. As if pulled in by a string attached to his hollowed out chest, Robin leans back and into him in one smooth motion. It’s too calculated, though, and Eddie can feel how much she sags once she doesn’t have to hold herself up anymore. 

He’ll hold her. It’s fine. She gets to rest if she wants to. God knows she needs it. 

The night is warm for mid-September, but still Robin shakes against him. Eddie holds her closer. 

Silence settles over them, and it’s not an easy one. Silence is never easy anymore, especially with them. He feels so deeply hollow that even the silence echoes in there, creating an ever-present, uncomfortable thrumming of apprehension and anxiety within him. A certain sense of doom, one that can’t quite decide if it’s only an echo itself. 

“I wanna stop time,” Robin says at last, the cigarette long dead between Eddie’s fingers, but he somehow can’t bring himself to flick it away. “I don’t want tomorrow.” 

I don’t ever want a new day. I don’t ever want another tomorrow. I just want Steve. 

They ring in his head still, another echo that only hollows him out further every time it reaches him — Robin, overcome with hysterical grief, screaming and crying, curled up on that hospital floor, her cries quieting down and making Eddie wish she would be loud again, because the quiet was what killed him. The quiet, the whispered words, the declarations that tomorrow could go fuck itself if it came without Steve made him wish, irrationally, desperately, that their roles were reversed. That he could have died and Steve could have lived, and Robin would never have to wish tomorrow never came. 

He’s not entirely sure if she remembers the words, too. If she even said them in this world. 

So he takes a deep breath, breathes away memories and non-histories, feels the heavy weight of his guitar pick hanging around his neck, resting on the scarred flesh of his chest, and tries not to think of the one string left on his acoustic guitar. Tries not to think of his one last attempt. One last try. 

“I know,” he tells her. “Me neither.” 

He peers over her head, lifting his left wrist to check his watch. Ten minutes until midnight. Ten minutes until Steve’s birthday. 

“It’s not tomorrow yet,” he tries lamely, and Robin huffs — the sound wet and bitter and hopeless, making Eddie’s eyes sting. 

“It’s always fucking tomorrow,” she rasps, her voice flat and wavering, and Eddie knows her well enough to know she’s about to cry. And she knows him well enough to do it. 

“I know,” he says again, and reaches for his necklace through his shirt. One more attempt. One more try. One more chance. His eyes burn. 

She turns to him after taking a moment to compose herself, peering up at him through her lashes. 

“Tell me again?” 

His heart falls, the tense apprehension vanishing from the air, bur quickly replaced by something a lot more heavy. Something that looks and smells and feels like grief. 

They both know he’ll do anything she asks. He can’t really bear saying not to her. And not about this, anyway — she’s the only one who knows. 

She’s the one who should have had the chance. 

“Which part?” he asks, holding a new cigarette out for her to light it. She does, and the both follow the flame of the lighter Robin always keeps in her pocket these days. 

She leans forward and takes a drag. Eddie lets her. 

“All of them.“

Eddie sighs, pain welling up inside him, and he closes his eyes against the night sky. “Robbie,” he pleads, but he doesn’t finish his plea. He’ll do it. He’ll do anything she asks. 

But before he starts recounting the tales of how he almost saved Steve Harrington, he finds himself saying something he never thought he’d tell her. 

“There’s one more.” The words hang in the air, and Robin doesn’t react. Has no idea what’s coming; what he’s about to tell her. The guitar pick is heavy on the necklace around his throat. “There’s one more try. One more chance. I’m… I have one more—“ 

He can’t even finish the sentence. Can’t bring himself to say it, lest it all be jinxed forever. He doesn’t want to hope. Wants to carry this weight for all eternity and never think about all those times he failed to save someone he was never meant to save at all. People like Eddie, they’re not made to save anyone. Hell, they can’t even save themselves. 

Steve was supposed to be the one doing the saving. 

And he did. God, he fucking did. But he was never supposed to— 

Cold fingers wrap around his own as Robin fits their hands together. 

“I hate you a little bit for telling me.” 

Eddie nods, trying to focus on the cold hand and the nicotine in his lungs, trying not to let panic and grief and guilt and the heavy weight of one more chance win. “I know.” 

“Hey, Eddie?” Robin says after a while, the silence stretching on, and it’s almost midnight now. “Can you— Would you do something for me?” 

He turns his head, flicking the butt of his cigarette out into the darkness beyond them. “What’s that?” 

“Don’t— Don’t try to, to save him. Don’t— Just… Just maybe, could you celebrate his birthday with him? Make sure he knows he’s… God, make sure he knows he’s loved? Last year, no one really made time on his birthday and we just moved it backwards but God, could you— It’s almost midnight, and—“ 

“Robbie,” Eddie interrupts her, his voice hoarse and wavering, his eyes burning with tears as he tugs her close and holds her to his chest. “You should go. Don’t you wanna…” 

But she’s shaking her head against him with a vehemence that can hardly be misunderstood. 

“No,” she cries, and it’s more of a sob than anything. “I think if I ever saw him again, I’d… I don’t know what I’d do. Burn the whole fucking world to the ground for him or some shit, I can’t— I’d probably just cry all the time and that wouldn’t be helpful, really.” There’s a weak, wet laugh that bubbles out of both of them, and Eddie’s wiping at Robin’s face, drying the tears and making way for new ones to fall. 

“I’d light a fire for you,” Eddie says, the same weak smile on his lips that Robin meets him with now. “Nineteen fucking fires, you hear me?” 

She laughs again, then buries her face in his neck in a way that never quite fit. In a way that Eddie always knew was supposed to be someone else’s neck. 

But he’s not here anymore. And Eddie can’t get him back. No matter how much he aches for it, no matter how much he learned over and over and over again how easy it is to love Steve Harrington and how hard, how fucking impossible it is to lose him. Over and over and over again. 

And to live without him. This one fucking time they all get. It’s not fair. 

And now Robin is asking him to go back one more time and make sure that Steve knows— That he knows. 

Somehow the thought of that feels nobler than any attempt to save him, to bring him back; to rewrite history from a lonely boy’s perspective and hope that no one else is reading along. 

It feels right, too. Fundamentally and suddenly, and with such an intensity that Eddie knows the decision has been made the second he started telling her. 

Still he hesitates. Robin’s sobs have calmed down, and Eddie’s hand finds its way into her hair. 

“Do you really mean it?” 

She nods.

He nods, too, but slower. Like he’s trying to sway himself. Which way, he doesn’t know. 

“Make him happy.” 

“Okay,” he decides after a while, feeling hollow and desperate, but feeling purpose burning underneath his skin again. “One last time.” 

He unwinds his arms from around her and heads inside to grab his acoustic guitar. The last remaining string, badly untuned because he never dared to touch it, stares back at him in both mockery and invitation. A dare. A chance. A promise. 

Outside, Robin is waiting for him, looking anxious. Eddie wants to hug her. He doesn’t, only tightens his grip around the guitar’s neck. 

“Listen, Eddie, if this is goodbye or something—“ 

“It’s a birthday party, Robsie,” he interrupts her, aiming for light, aiming for brave. “I’m coming back right here.” 

“I know,” she rushes to say, taking a step toward him and wringing her hands. It’s endearing. It’s genuine. Eddie really is a little in love with her. “But, y’know, you don’t mess with time, and I don’t know what all you already changed before and I don’t wanna know but… If this is goodbye, if something happens, I just wanna tell you that I’m gonna miss you. And that I think you’re really cool. And that Steve’s— he’s really missing out, okay. Okay?” 

Eddie breathes, taking in her words and letting them soak into his body, his every last fibre. 

“Okay,” he smiles. “Thank you. You’re… I’m kind of in love with you, Robin Buckley. So there had better be no change in the universe, ‘cause that would really suck.” 

They smile at each other, Eddie with his guitar and Robin with her lighter, and somehow this feels like a deja-vu. The antithesis to a moment forever burned into his memory.

Make him pay. 

Make him happy. 

Eddie tugs on his necklace and plays the string before he can think about it too hard; before he can decide otherwise. 

Distantly, he hears the church bells announcing midnight as the world around him fades. 

🤍 permanent tag list gang: @skiddit @inklessletter @aringofsalt @hellion-child @cryptic-cryptid @hotluncheddie @gutterflower77 @auroraplume @steddieonbigboy @n0-1-important @stevesjockstrap @puppy-steve @izzy2210 @itsall-taken @mangoinacan13 @madigoround @pukner @i-amthepizzaman @swimmingbirdrunningrock @hammity-hammer @stevesbipanic @bitchysunflower @estrellami-1 @goodolefashionedloverboi @awkwardgravity1 @devondespresso @bookworm0690 (lmk if you want on or off, for this story or permanently)

[thepeacefulgarden]

Come on, Barbie, let's go party! Ah, ah, ah later

[b0tster]

i dont think im ready for what ff7 rebirth will do to me emotionally

[thwispsings]

the idea came to me in a migraine induced dream but now im obsessed with the concept of a mu qingfang who knew the abuse bunhe was going through at the hands of og!shen qingqiu/shen jiu and did his best to treat the kid whenever he could (and bring his concerns to zhangmen shixiong, which were obviously very much ignored) and his constant worry over the situation means that when the qi deviation happens he is suspicious of shen qingqiu’s changes for all different reasons and very much protective of luo binghe -who is a sweet child and an earnest disciple who seems to always find the most incredible medicinal herbs to bring to his mu shishu as thanks for the care bestowed upon him- which means that when the whole shen qingqiu dying thing happens instead of bad mouthing luo binghe or fighting him at every chance he does his best to come over and keep an eye on things to try and help him and make sure luo binghe won’t kill himself trying to bring shen qingqiu back because he remembers that earnest kid and he’s witnessed luo binghe’s devotion to this shen qingqiu first hand and knows there is no way that the kid who cried when ning yingying found a bird with a broken wing and begged mu qingfang to fix it and the kid that would always borrow medical texts and try to find new herb combinations as if it was a game between him and qian cao disciples is actually doing anything nefarious to shen qingqiu’s corpse.

anyways in this essay i will-

[swan2swan]

Making a little gifset about grief here.

No reason. Nothing coming up this week whatsoever. Don't worry about it.

[soup-of-the-daisies]

i’m rereading ootp (to my own horror) and like. knowing what happens in that one and the next two books makes that intense, bubbling frustration of being a teenager whose worries are disregarded so much worse.

like, surprise?? the kid whose childhood you’re trying to preserve lost that innate innocence years ago. you want him to be a normal 15 yr old boy but if you keep quiet about the dangers he might not live to see his 16th birthday. and congrats on keeping him safe, i guess—you’ve accidentally ruined the last piece able to tether him to his childhood, but i’m sure those months of torture were worth the farce of normality you craved for him. i don’t think you know that your apologies are like sticking band aids on a fracture. i don’t think you’re aware of how you’re ignoring the breaks, but i’m certain you’re expecting them to heal on their own.

oh, they didn’t? and now you’re treating him like he’s a bubble made of glass, waiting to shatter? but you’re the one to have turned him into that bubble, aren’t you? you’re the one who’s holding him, and it’s not his time yet. not for another two years. and shards of glass dulled with time cannot fell a monster, can they? so please be careful. you still need him. he never asked to be a martyr but he’ll do it because you expect him to; you just need to watch your step because your hands are slicked with guilt, and he’s heavy. he’s struggling. he’ll fall as well, if you let him go now.