#And who at the complex is going to complain?

[crguang]

violinist kafka x her pianist accompaniment reader, courtesy of my 🎹 anon and @shalomniscient’s beautiful brain <3 we’ve been going crazy over this AU since i received the ask today.

R and kafka are childhood best friends who have been playing together since their respective instructors discovered their potential and made them work together on a piece, very much young prodigies in the making who do nothing but hone their skills with the dream of becoming the best in their field. one day, when they’re around 16 years old, R moves away. this bus ride is the last memory kafka holds of them together and she remembers it viscerally whenever she brings an especially complex composition to life, which eventually becomes the source of her recognition and success. this is a goodbye she only understands once she’s lost them.

607. i miss you.

//

You held her hand that early evening on the way to the bus stop on the corner street four minutes from the music academy; your pinky finger loosely looped with hers and in the chill of February, she could feel the rough material of your knitted glove against her own, the one gifted to you by an aunt she doesn’t remember the name of. Fingertips linked like an implicit promise, she spared you a questioning glance at the unusual gesture and you avoided her gaze, making a show of scrolling through a playlist on your MP3 player with your free hand. She thinks of it as holding hands now, because despite your palms not touching at the time, your bodies were connected through that fragile bridge between your fingers and your hands swayed in the air with your unhurried steps. Each of her exhales were made visible by the cold while you kept yours within the confines of the scarf around your neck, you always despised the drop in temperature. Even with the bottom half of your head hidden by the soft fabric, she could read the reservation on the lines of your face. You were keeping something in and it was obvious to her who had known you since that Wednesday you sat in her every-day rehearsal room, patiently waiting with her violin instructor and a faraway look in your eyes. Back then, it had been eight years. Perhaps that isn’t accurate, she has known you a total of eight years up to the present day. That is the only constant between you, whoever you are today she does not know.

Kafka chuckles lowly to herself, a self-deprecating sound. After all this time, she still needs this moment of reminiscence before she dares put the bow to her violin’s sacred strings. If this is what puts her in the state of mind necessary to perform this composition flawlessly, so be it. She inhales long and slow, then exhales quietly through her mouth. She raises her right hand and in one controlled motion, slides the bow over the first note of her instrument. 

The 607 bus was half empty when you stepped on it first. You paid the bus fare and she followed you to the back after doing the same. You took the seat next to a window tainted with water streaks and silently took the violin case from her hands to lay part of it on your thigh, the other half rested on her leg the entire ride home, its small weight shared like the rest of your burdens. She took the earphone you handed her and pressed a little closer to you to see what you were showing her on your MP3. The bus started moving a second later. 

“I don’t want something too loud this time,” you said, scrolling down the music app where you’d created playlists for each other a year prior. 

“Lame.”

“You chose the playlist yesterday, you don’t get to complain. This one is nice.”

You pressed play on a slow song and lifted your head to meet her eyes expectantly as the first melodies reached her ear. She conceded with a nonchalant shrug of her shoulders. You smiled, a soft edge to it, and didn’t tear your gaze from hers for a moment that Kafka now wonders if it lasted seconds or minutes. You looked into her eyes, searching for something she didn’t have the guts to confess, and she looked back at you with the words on her lips. They were often there, sitting just past her lips like they’d fly out of her mouth the instant she opened it, but she found that they were anchored to her tongue and had no plan to leave the warmth of their comfort zone. Her eyebrows twitched in question for the second time that hour, an unsure smile on her face in response to your stare.

“What?”

Her attempt to glimpse into your mind broke the suspended moment. You shook your head somewhat ruefully.

“Nothing.”

You lowered your MP3 and followed the movement with your eyes, avoiding hers once again. She could see something brewing inside of you since that morning, guilt you couldn’t admit to her, maybe, but she didn’t push thinking you would speak up eventually. Instead, she playfully nudged your side with an elbow.

“Practice used up your last brain cells or what?”

“Ha, ha. Like you weren’t the one struggling to keep up with the tempo.”

“Try again, maybe the next lie will be more convincing.”

“Oh, sorry, I forgot Kafka The Prodigy could never make a mistake, ever. I’m only the accompaniment, what would I know?”

“That’s more like it.”

You lifted your eyes to the sky, but the smile that replaced the weird one you were previously giving her was much more brilliant. You glanced at her, then turned your head to the window. An older couple were quietly chatting to themselves a few rows to the left in front of you, their heads leaning against each other, and she spent a minute looking at them while the next song played in your earphones. With the music, it was impossible to catch what one was saying to the other, but that didn’t matter. Their bodies were pressed together like yours with hers, as if huddling for warmth, and the woman was talking with her hands the way you would when you were passionate about a new album you just discovered. She didn’t notice it then, that she was looking for you in others even as you sat next to her. Her world was so small; you and music, music and you, and those hours where the two were one and the same. 

To this day, you are the music she plays. Your harmonious smiles and dulcet voice, they are all within the melodies she borrows from other composers and in a sense, you are always on stage next to her during a performance. In the practice room, Kafka furrows her brows. She feels it mounting in her, that feeling that makes her great, akin to a pulsing heart ascending to her throat until it lodges itself between her vocal chords and she lets the violin speak for her. The climax approaches steadily, she knows that part like the back of her hand. 

She lost interest in the talking couple. You were still looking outside the window at the swaying tree branches and passing cars, and she wondered what was so interesting out there that you couldn’t look at her. She watched your eyelids droop, though you stayed awake and kept staring at the world beyond the two of you. The song in her ear had a bass that followed her heartbeat. It wasn't sad, but you were. Streetlights had come on to balance out the rapidly vanishing sunlight and each one illuminated your features in fleeting rays of yellow, your eyes were hazy and your lips no longer smiling for her, and strands of hair brushed your temple whenever you adjusted your head on the glass. She followed the smooth lines of your brows down to the bridge of your nose, then to the curve of your upper lip. On her lap, her fingers twitched and curled into a loose fist. Her gaze went unnoticed, you were entirely enticed by the world beyond her reach and she was enthralled by the sadness on your face that added years to your current age of merely sixteen. You knew something she didn’t, she was sure of it, but no sound came out of her mouth after she parted her lips to ask. You swallowed, and her eyes flitted to the lump in your throat before settling back on your fluttering lashes. She suddenly perceived a distance between you that made her deeply uncomfortable and that feeling sat on her chest until your bus stop approached and you finally straightened up to look back at her. You smiled weakly, and Kafka spent years regretting not saying anything as you hesitantly patted her closed fist and placed the violin case on her thighs so you could prepare to stand, ringing the bell to announce your stop. She searched your eyes and found nothing but apologies. 

“Playing with you makes me so happy,” you said out of the blue, holding up her stare intently. “You’re really great.”

“I know,” she replied lamely, half-jokingly, “but I like hearing you say it.”

You let out a quiet laugh, the sound weak and breathless. It made her smile nonetheless. 

“You’re gonna be so great, and I’m gonna be great, and we’re gonna be great together. We’ll perform on stage just like we talked about, and in ten years, we’ll be the best in our field.”

“It’ll take me less than ten years. But I’ll wait for you to catch up.”

You gazed at her for the half minute it took for the bus to pull over, searing her playful cockiness into your mind, then you stood and she moved her legs out of the way for you to reach the aisle. 

“Bye, Kafka.”

“See you M…” Her goodbye was interrupted by the soft press of your lips on her cheek, a quick gesture before you rapidly turned away from her and walked out of the bus. “...Monday,” she muttered in confusion. 

She turned to the window as the bus started up again and you waved at her with enthusiasm that felt out of place. Still, she made a disgusted face that made you smile wider, opening her mouth and sticking out her tongue like she was going to puke from the uncharacteristic display of affection. Your figure got smaller and smaller, and she lifted a hand to her cheek to wipe the skin where your lips had been.

The piece is coming to an end. The hardest part has passed and all that is left is a clean finish that Kafka executes perfectly. The final note rings out in the empty room. Her head hangs low for a moment, eyes shut and exhaling slowly through her mouth. She is great and she’ll perform on stage in two weeks. She is not the best, not yet, she’s missing the soothing notes of piano keys to accompany her violin. Kafka chuckles to herself, the irony of this thought is laughable. She smiles, raises her head, and starts the piece from the top. 

[oculusxcaro]

Khare had not experienced fear like this since her time in the underground facility almost a year ago, her heart damn near stopping in terror at the sound of her door getting kicked in. She'd just gotten home from work not even an hour ago, getting ready to soak in the bath for a few hour's sleep when a pair of black-clad thugs with mean faces and even meaner eyes suddenly forced their way into her apartment, immediately grabbing and trashing every object within the vicinity. "Get out! Go on, all of you get out of here! Go!" Loud voices could be heard echoing throughout the complex amidst shouts, cries and yells as other tenants found themselves experiencing the same situation as Khare, looking on in horror as they were forcibly turfed out of the only place they could call home. Khare blinked slowly, struggling to comprehend exactly what was happening when one of the two men in her apartment growled, grabbing her by her good arm and dragging her out into the corridor. She thrashed, mind suddenly suddenly catching up to the very real awful situation she had suddenly found herself in but before she could bite the guy manhandling her, he had already gotten her to the stairs, pushing her down them without so much as a word. A 3DS soon followed after, her 3DS clattering wildly down the steps along with other objects and items of clothing, leaving Khare unable to do anything but whimper as she tried to grab what she could amidst the confusion. Other people's possessions soon joined the growing heap at the bottom of the stairs, tenants grabbing anything and everything they could even if it wasn't theirs, too afraid to stay even a minute longer as the thugs began screaming at them to get the fuck out now, or else bullets would start flying if any of them were so much as seen near the building. With shaking hands, Khare managed to grab her work uniform (still dirty from last night's shift), her broken 3DS, some odds and ends that weren't hers and a bag to put it all in. It was a miracle she'd even managed to grab that much, scrambling amidst a surge of grabbing hands fighting to grab whatever they could carry upon their impromptu eviction. "Now get the fuck out! This place is under new management and you lot ain't welcome!" One of the thugs sneered, kicking an old threadbare teddy down to the group. Khare recognized the bear - it was often carried around by the girl of the family living down from her, probably having already been kicked out. She went to pick it up, only just managing to grab it before a heavy boot stomped on where it had been just second agos. Narrowly dodging that same boot aiming a kick at her head, Khare quickly joined the throng, once again falling down the steps outside and getting tripped over a few times by other people. What the hell had just happened? Khare found she could breathe again, if somewhat raggedly from the stress of everything that had just happened and getting trod on once or twice. Shaken, battered and bruises, she scrambled to her feet, holding both bag and bear close while avoiding the glances of people at their windows watching the eviction go down. Khare couldn't see the nice family with the little girl anywhere, glancing back and forth at people, the people she'd once lived amongst until just yesterday hurrying to leave, now having to find somewhere else to live...

"Oh God..." Khare mumbled, feeling like she was about to pass out. Her initial fear had been that they'd found her, had come back to drag her back to the facility again but in another way this was almost worse, for she had found herself out on the streets once again with nowhere to go. Where was she going to go now?

[cartoonchaos]

“gee i wonder why there’s still so much more fanfiction about male characters” “we need more morally complex female characters” “i love relationships that are doomed by the narrative” “more stories need to treat mentally ill characters with compassion and respect” “all his problems could’ve been fixed if he only went to therapy” you fuckers can’t even handle the ending of fionna and cake

[fierceawakening]

Violent crime IS the exception. But the thing about it is? It tends to affect people much more profoundly than nonviolent crime, which is mostly an irritating nuisance.

Also, humans live around a century ish. The odds that at some point any given one of us is going to experience the exception are not that low. I’ve experienced it, as I’ve pointed out before. I spent… I want to say a month? But I might be misremembering. In an apartment complex I don’t live in because a guy kept breaking my bedroom windows and I needed not to be asleep and unprotected when THE PLACE WHERE I SLEEP got showered with glass shards.

Was this livable? Yeah. But it was deeply disruptive, and it really wasn’t fair given that I was the victim, not the perpetrator.

Now did that guy end up in prison?

I actually think he didn’t.

I’m pretty sure he ended up institutionalized.

But here’s the thing.

If prison is bad because i5 sequesters and separates people, as Kabe says… so is institutionalization. So that wasn’t actually a better solution to the problem.

But it did make me safer. I am back in what I consider my home.

You’re saying that anything institutionalizing is too cruel. I don’t disagree actually!

Followers of this very tumblr will remember me hesitating for days about calling the cops before it escalated to physically dangerous to me personally. The guy was a mentally ill man of color. I was terrified I’d get him harmed, perhaps killed. I wanted to be left alone. Not t9 hurt him.

Ultimately, my friends convinced me. I feared escalation and felt those fears were logical, not just emotion driven. And the escalation happened. He got more violent and targeted me, or at least my dwelling. (I still don’t know if he knew I’d complained and wanted revenge or if I was just physically close enough to mess with.)

So how could that have happened differently? Our county was trying for weeks to encourage him to get treatment or at least to talk. But he had a right not to consent, which even now I still believe remains a right.

If abolitionists can’t tell me, what I hear is that those of us who experience violence are on our own. That abolitionists live on campuses or behind community gates, and don’t have any reason to not just fear but expect something to happen eventually.

Why on earth should I listen to them? I have new windows.

Said this in a longer convo and thought it got at a point I’ve been struggling to make about “punishment should not be a part of morality” type claims I see on here:

Basically, I look at statements like, “if we were truly good we’d evolve past the desire to punish those who harm us and our loved ones” and think “every once in a while the left reinvents original sin and gives it a new name.”

[hauntingblue]

Oden's prophecy of young pirates coming to save wano becoming yamato's hope for his freedom.... and him becoming oden because of it.... it's just so good... on the other side luffy taking ace's spot for liberating yamato... I think I hauve covid

[juniperhillpatient]

sometimes you just gotta stop reading the blocks of text on here & say like. I don’t care about or understand or believe in whatever the fuck you’re talking about & move on. & sometimes you gotta vague post about it to feel better

[kavehater]

AAAH I have a mutual who’s 18 and he sorta kinda is flirting with this one guy who is a minor as a joke of course ( to which a concerned anon said that it’s weird ) but I can’t help but flashback to er*s

[andragoras-in-vanity]

im convinced that people who actually want to live in cities and dont see the environmental and emotional trauma their inflicting on themselves by enabling those places to continue to grow have just the most severe brain damage

[aeide-thea]

like, someone posted an article recently that was like 'i didn't like these books because the main characters were women who slept with women but weren't sufficiently enlightened about it for me as a queer woman to feel Represented,' and i just felt like. i bet i wouldn't enjoy those books either, judging from the reviewer's description! but faced with a review that's like 'these characters had attitudes i found unpleasant'—iirc a tendency to ironic detachment and internalized fatphobia respectively, which, to be clear, i expect i would also find unpleasant! but those are attitudes that plenty of real young women do have; are we arguing it's only acceptable to tell stories about the sort of people we'd personally want to befriend?—'so i didn't find their stories nourishing,' it's hard for me not to think, okay, fair enough, but—should 'nourishing' really be the definitive metric for art? should 'savory'? an author's job is, after all, to make art, not food…

[tautozhone]

idk how to start this so this post is ab individual action, trying to motivate positive change in the world, etc etc

a lot of growing up in the US for me makes things feel more scary than they are. like it’s actually not that difficult to go out of your way to get a bottle of water or iced cup of water from some random drive through if you think you should do it. either fast food conglomerate or local actually, it’ll usually be cheaper than 5 dollars to get drinkable water. i try to have 5-10 dollars i can justify spending on water, and asking for change, because sometimes when i’m out driving i need to go grab water.

i do not do this for me as much as i try to do it specifically when i see someone who’s most likely homeless on a street corner. i’m sure one day i might do this and they might not be there when i come back, but what have i lost really? a bit of time and a bit of money that would’ve meant more to them, that i can hold onto until i see them next.

the pressure that a lot of people feel when they think “what can i do” comes from this grand narrative that the average citizen can singlehandedly fix the housing crisis. rich people? maybe. nonprofits? not in a day, not all one person still. what can i do is a question i ask a lot. what can i do, not just because it feels bad to move along like nothings wrong with the world, but what can i do that will do anything. what can i do that makes even the smallest change.

i feel like it took me too long to figure out a personal method to what i consider individual action. it’s taking time to get to my own financial stability to be able to do more. but for now it’s as simple as water and cash. not water and food, but water and cash.

individual action means a lot in small steps, go get a bottle of water bare minimum and the price of a meal if you can and then just give it to them. if it wasn’t such a miserably hot place where i live i would keep a pack of water in my car, which i still want to do for the sake of having immediate access to water to give someone who might need it- hot or cold sometimes won’t matter. but when it’s hot out, get cold water, if it’s cold out, a warm tea will hydrate more than coffee will as long as it’s not super caffeinated.

[khal-eventing]

Netflix ATLA has been renewed for season two and season three and I cannot be more excited! The way they're retelling the story is absolutely brilliant, and there's so much love being poured into the story.

Ofc it's also very satisfying seeing this happen despite all the hate from people- if you want to watch the original go fricken watch it. No one is forcing you to go watch the live action just so you can write a lengthy post about how it pales in comparison (when I honestly liked it better but comparing the two is like comparing apples and oranges, they're both spectacular in their own way).

Anyway thank god it got renewed and I am so excited to be in this world again and see how it's developed for a new generation.

[leatherbookmark]

a thing i have JUST realized, isn't the human brain amazing lol -- is that we talk about izzy's thoughts and feelings on ed, on blackbeard, about how he serves one but not the other, etc, etc, and how it means he never loved or even respected the True Man Underneath It All but rather the bloodthirsty legend of a pirate--

e x c e p t izzy is not the first person who makes the distinction between edward and blackbeard. it's ed himself, when he says "actually, i want to be called edward from now on".

before, when he was with stede, it didn't bother him at all that the crew called him blackbeard. that was his name! he was blackbeard, what else would they call him. only stede and izzy got to "ed" or "edward" him, because they were closer -- stede was his first close friend, izzy was his friend and first mate for decades. (note that fang was with ed the longest, but he doesn't call him by his name! you gotta deserve it.)

izzy doesn't do anything inappropriate or out of proportion when he snaps at the crew to call him blackbeard or captain -- that's who ed is, is supposed to be, to them. they're not friends! they even call stede captain, and have you seen that guy?

it's ed that makes the connection between his current state: draped in fuchsia robes, singing sad songs about how sad he is, showing his vulnerable and emotional state in front of people who are supposed to respect and trust his authority. and by that he splendidly loses that authority, to the point that wee john calls him ed, and when izzy snaps at him for disrespecting his captain, ed goes no, actually, yknow what, do call me edward! and then he goes on to encourage the crew to sing as well and hey, actually, why are we being pirates! we should do a talent show!

the distinction is clear here. before all that, in izzy's eyes, his boss was blackbeard, captain, ed/edward -- different names for different occasions, but one and the same guy. but now? this guy singing songs in a pink bathrobe doesn't want to be called blackbeard, he's edward! ed time now! we're going to eat marmalade and express our feelings in front of everyone! and hold talent shows! Ya Hoo !

yeah, it's no wonder izzy doesn't want that. he wants his competent captain back, and this current dude, edward? he's not him. so, uh,

[local-magpie]

staring at a post upset about comparing literacy rates to people online being unable to distinguish fiction/reality or analyze media at all like. do. do you know how literacy works and is measured. it is not an on/off switch. gee i wonder what people who are limited in the complexity of works theyre able to read may also struggle with and have missed out on being taught in school. surely there is no connection between these two things.

[orcelito]

I'm in fuckin bitch mode today I guess

[marshmellowtea]

i could be misremembering this so forgive me if i am but i feel like i vaguely remember a period of time where mark was desperately trying to stop people from viewing dark as a sad boy romantic figure and see him for the manipulator he is or whatever and the thing is, respectfully, if that really was the plan, he went about it in the absolute dumbest way possible that only made it easier for people to sand down his more manipulative edges and view him as a misunderstood hero. what he really should've done was have dark do something so genuinely vile and universally heinous that only the most strong stomached, "i love fucked up bastards who do horrible shit" crowds would be able to still love him but he didn't and now look where we are

[yaikat]

yes yes we get it you're tired from seeing heav//ymedic everywhere yes. do you want a cookie or something