#I HAVE RISEN FROM THE DEPTHS OF ART BLOCK | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

hollandsfavbabe · 6 months ago

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Wet & Wild II

pairing: art donaldson x reader

synopsis: in which you, a swimmer, and art, a tennis champ, change each other's lives for the better when you challenge his match-like stance on life

warnings: SMUT, porn with a plot, sexually explicit language, cursing, oral sex (f receiving), p in v sex, nipple play, locker room sex, swimmer lingo

word count: 5.5k

part 1

tags💜: @midnightwrriting @no1runawaymilkdad @ihave-aboringlife @blahhucantmakeme @laniirackssss @blood-bloss @lmaoyani @geminiflanagansblog @ruyaas-world @hrlzy @povobsessed @stephstephstephsteph @chakin @10ava01 @lem0ns77 @velvrei @hdhdhdndhdndk

masterlist

a/n: sorry if the tags aren’t working, I tried to include everyone that wanted it. lmk if you have questions on anything. hope you enjoy!!

A week has passed since the last time you’d seen Art and you try to rid any thoughts of him from your mind as you enter the women’s locker room, the day so early that the sun has only just risen. You’d only spent a few hours with him, but he feels more important to you than a mere acquaintance, especially considering you’d let him have more of you than most people would ever get to. You try to tell yourself it won’t matter if he shows or not, but deep down you know that it will. Regardless, overthinking won’t help you in the water so you shove it down as you steadily pull on your tech suit, careful not to rip the delicate fabric. Your headphones are currently blaring your hype playlist in your ear, but you slide them off once you notice movement to your left as Chloe opens her own locker.

“You ready?” she asks you, pulling out her own racing suit from the depths of her swim bag.

“Not really,” you admit, giving up on stretching your tight suit to your full body frame for the time being as you opt for a tie-back bikini top instead. Your shoulders are ever so grateful. “I’m so nervous.”

“Why? Because of your race or your little tennis boyfriend?” she teases, lips quirking into a classic Chloe smirk. As your best friend, she was the first and only person you told about your interaction with Art at the party and, of course, she had been teasing you about it since. While during practice it was amusing, you are not in the mood for jokes right before a race, especially one of such importance.

You furrow a brow, shaking your head to signal that it’s not the time for such jests concerning the blonde. As the good friend that she is, Chloe immediately understands as she moves to help tie your suit straps, a simple task that you are unexpectedly failing at due to the pressure of the meet ahead of you.

“You’re going to do great,” Chloe comforts, placing an assuring hand on your shoulder once she’s finished with your straps. “I’m sure of it.”

“What if I don’t break the record?”

“Who cares? You can try again next time. If that’s the worst that can happen, you don’t have anything to be nervous about,” she smiles in assurance. “Besides that record is as good as yours -” she makes a gesture to your tech suit that has the most magical of time bending abilities if wielded by the right swimmer. “You’ve worked so hard for this. Nothing can stop you now.”

“Thanks Clo.” you grin at her appreciatively, and though your nerves don’t settle in the slightest, you feel more comfortable living in cohabitation with them now. They’re so much easier to manage when you’re not alone.

It’s only minutes before the rest of your team has arrived and you have hours before your event is scheduled to take place, yet it only feels like seconds before you’re being seated in the waiting room amongst your competitors, tech suit finally fully on. Rousing music plays through your headphones though you are sure to skip any songs that seem even the slightest bit romantic. You try to slip into the right headspace, the line between confident and cocky that has always aided you in not panicking just before you step up to the blocks in the past. You try to find it, using any method at your fingertips, but it’s no use. You can’t seem to find it no matter how hard you try and suddenly it feels as if the weight of the world is crashing down on you when the door opens and your event is called. You stand with the other women and together you line up behind the blocks.

The sun shines much higher up in the sky than it had been when you dove in during warm ups, blaring down to reflect off the red of your cap that bears the Stanford logo in white along with your last name. You take your rightful place behind the starting block of the middle lane, and though you already wrote your heat and lane in black sharpie on your forearm just to be sure, you can’t help but worry that you’ve already missed your race.

It’s only when the head announcer calls your event on the loudspeaker that you stop dwelling on it, her voice echoing through the stands that seem so much taller now that you're in the center with so much pressure resting solely on you. You rake though the rafters to your left, hoping to be comforted by the sight of Chloe or one of your other teammates until you realize that they are more than likely preparing for their own events in the warm up pool.

It's then, just when the swirling hurricane of emotions is hurtling toward you, that you see him. He’s seated in the first row, blonde curls circling his head like a golden crown and a wide smile lighting up his face when he sees that you’ve finally spotted him, one that you can’t help returning as he mouths sweet wishes of luck to you.

Art came. He actually came!

The storm subsides and all of a sudden you’ve lost all your inhibitions. Instead of buzzing anxiety, you are filled with a new light and the confidence of a record breaker. It’s all so clear with Art in the stands and as his presence wafts away your storm of worries, you come to the realization that you can do it. You know you can.

The whistle of an official blares through the speaker and on cue you slide on your goggles and mount the block. You’re really starting to feel the compression of your suit as you bend into your diving position, waiting for the magic words. The signal that it’s time to race and leave everything you have in the pool as you go.

“Swimmers, take your marks…”

You take one last breath before the sound blares and you dive off the block. It all comes naturally to you and with the help of your suit, you find yourself breaking out farther than ever before.

You only have a few strokes until you’re at the end of the pool when out of nowhere, the girl in the lane beside you starts to catch up to you until the two of you are neck and neck and it doesn’t escape your attention when she flips a split second before you’re able to.

You know it’s not about winning, you told Art that, but it’s as if a fire has been lit behind you and you’re suddenly determined to go for the gold. You push yourself harder than you ever have before and though you're not sure where the energy has come from, you know it’s exactly what you need. You’ve failed if you’re able to get out of the pool without stumbling.

Before long you catch up to the swimmer beside you, taking your first and only breath as you summon the last of your power, pushing through the water like a jet-ski. At once you’re behind the flags and unlike before, there’s no one beating you to the touch pad resting on the side of the ending wall as you slam your hand down and come up for air.

The crowd erupts with applause once you finish and at first you’re under the impression that it’s because of your win until your eyes glaze over at the scoreboard and nearly burst from your skull at the sight of the result.

You had accomplished your goal. There it was, a time faster than the Stanford record glowing right beside your name. But you didn’t just pass it by a few flimsy hundredths. Your new record was more than a second faster.

You can hardly believe it and you know if the proof weren’t right in front of you, there’d only be disbelief instead of this crashing wave of accomplishment and pride. Though you’re in severe oxygen debt from the race, you find yourself screaming in excitement at your gigantic accomplishment.

“We have a new record!” an official announces through the loudspeaker once the other girls have returned to the starting wall, followed by your name and new time. You search for Art again once you’re out of the water, all but failing to suppress your grin as you find him clapping in the stands and smiling down at you as if you were the most precious stone in the world.

Your teammates are filled with the same immense pride when you join them in the locker room once the meet is over. You’ve since changed from your tech suit, switching out the tight fabric for your cozy hoodie, tie-back bikini top, and a towel tied around your waist. The suit in question now hangs in your locker with the rest of your clothes that you had been in the middle of putting on before the congradulations began.

“I fucking told you!” Chloe shouts, clapping you on the back like you had just won the lottery. You imagine such a feat couldn’t match the pride you feel now.

You almost say that you can’t believe it, but the words stall on your lips. You actually can believe it, this is something you’ve been working tirelessly for. And now, after a long hard race, the record title is finally yours.

“Did I see a certain blonde in the audience?” Chloe smirks, nudging you as you wave goodbye to one of your other parting teammates.

“Maybe,” you drawl, trying your best to hide your growing grin, but the thought of the man makes you feel like flying through the air as year worth of buried emotions bubble up to the surface. You haven’t felt anything like this for a very long time.

“You know what that means…” Chloe whispers to you after you pull away from a hug with one of the other girls who like everyone else, is on her way out. The night’s party is being hosted at a house that’s a longer commute than usual in honor of the women’s tenth annual win and unlike your teammates, you aren’t in any hurry to get there knowing the a portion of the celebration will surround you.

“Drinks on you?” you guess, pretending you are clueless as to what she’s getting at. You hope it’s enough to deter her from whatever inevitably grotesque she’s about to say, but you know it’s to no avail as she laughs and shakes her head.

“Nice try,” she smiles, nudging you with her elbow. “I meant that he’s definetly going to fuck the shit out of you next time you see him.”

You cringe bashfully at her words, hitting her on the shoulder as she backs away from your shrunken form.

“Chloe!” you chide, though you both know no real anger lies within your tone. She’s been like this since the day you’d first met her: always the same old loving, indecorous Chloe.

“Just saying.” she shrugs before turning to say her goodbyes to the last lingering one of your other teammates.

You turn to open your locker, finally ready to change out of your damp towel until you’re startled by the clacking footsteps of unfamiliar tennis shoes heading in your direction. You assume it’s another random spectator who had bypassed the many signs clearly stating that the locker room is for athlete occupance only, but at once you find you’re very wrong when you turn to see who it is.

Art stands before you and though it was his decision to invade the women’s locker room, he looks as surprised as you.

“Hey,” he says, almost breathlessly. You’re thankful when you notice that Chloe is fully dressed to your left, just pulling on her knit cardigan.

She smirks smuggly at the sight of him, swinging her bag over her shoulders before sending you a wink and a swiftly muttered, “Told ya.” Without another word she exits, leaving you and Art utterly and completely alone.

“You realize this is the women’s restroom, right?” you jab as you hear Chloe shut the door behind her, though it’s all in good fun. As far as you know, no one is coming anywhere near the locker room for the next several hours.

“I was waiting outside for you,” he states, gradually lifting his hands from their tense place in the front of his jean pockets. “I thought everyone else had already come out, but I guess I was wrong.”

“That’s just Chloe,” you laugh, gesturing in the direction of the exit path your best friend had just taken. “Don’t worry, she won’t tattle.”

He chuckles, amused by your jest before he takes a slow step closer to you. Like a sparkler to your stomach, you become acutely aware of the tension between the two of you, growing like the blush colored blossoms of a cherry tree in spring. “I’ve thought about what you said.”

This makes you smile.

“And?”

“You were right.”

You’re heart flutters, so light that if it weren’t encaged within your chest you’re sure it would’ve floated away. He pauses to take another tense step in your direction, now only a foot away.

“Do you know how Tashi and I met?”

“I don’t, actually,” you say, words laced with a twinge of sarcasm.

“Right,” he laughs, realizing the folly behind his question. It was more rhetorical than anything, but he begins the story like a spider spindiling its web. “Well it was only about a year ago. We met at the US open. Patrick and I both went after her and you know what she told us?”

You wait for the answer.

“She said she’d give her number to whoever won our match. That was the first time I ever lost and it was to my best friend.”

“That’s who was at your match, wasn’t it?” you ask.

Art nods solumnly, though the pain that had been etched on his face from your last meeting has vanished, as if the thorn in his side has been replced by a budding rose.

“I didn’t know Art, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he urges. “It’s all okay now. I’ve realized that none of it matters anymore and it’s all because of you. If I’m being honest, I thought maybe if I won my match, then Tashi would leave him. But it’s not what I want anymore. I don’t want to be the winner she’s running to. I don’t want to have to earn her love.”

“What do you want?”

There’s a pause, a distinct moment where the glint in his blue eyes from the bright lights above conveys a clever message to you than any words could. Then he speaks.

“I think you know what I want.”

It’s all the confirmation you need to know that he’s finally playing the same game as you. He’s unbearably close now as his head reaches up to gently rake through your stringy wet hair. You welcome his touch, breath catching in your throat at the feeling of his fingers as his lips hover just above yours. If you’re being completely honest, you haven’t stopped fantasizing about it since the night of the party. Since the moment he had kissed you.

“You were right,” he whispers as his hot breath tickles the tips of your top lips with every placid word. “I don’t care about winning anymore. The only point I want to score is you.”

“That’s a really bad joke.” you remark, pointing out the obvious from his corny declaration. But Art doesn’t share your smirk, his face settling in an expression that’s much more sensual.

“I’m not kidding.”

You feel the immediate shift in energy as your smirk fades to parted lips and Art’s longing gaze moves downward from your eyes. What little space left between you is squashed as you allow him to pull you even closer, noses prodigy one another as Art’s fingers drift from the tips of your hair to cup the back of your head. It’s almost salivating the way he looks at you and you’re suddenly eager to remember what he tastes like.

“Can I kiss you?” he asks through a whisper, so quietly that if you hadn’t been right in front of him, you surely wouldn’t have heard it. It’s milliseconds before you’re nodding exuberantly with more urgency than a speeding ambulance (something you might need if your heart decided to beat any faster).

“Pleas-” you start, but Art’s on you before you can even get the word out, covering your lips with his until all you can taste, smell, and feel is him. Everything is him.

He’s gentle with you at first, testing the waters as his lips pass smoothly over yours. You lift up your hands to invite him in, squeezing the toned flesh of his arms before you drag them slowly up to the nape of his neck. You toy with some of the curls that rest there, twirling them between your fingers while sinking into the sounds he makes in return. He lets out a soft moan into your mouth, and at once his tongue melds with yours. You match the new intensity, swallowing each low groan.

Unlike your last encounter, it’s Art who pulls away this time, forcing you to scowl at him in confusion, eyes squinting and lips puffy. He twists his head to the left, glazing at the wide space behind him as he slowly moves the both of you backwards to the nearest flat-board bench until one of its edges grazes the top of his shin.

“What are you doing?” you ask through a whisper, leaning forward so that your lips titillate the tip of his ear which sends inadvertent shivers through his whole body. Art turns back to you, smirking as he leans in for another sloppy kiss, earning a salacious sound from you before his lips shift from yours and trailing from the corner of your mouth to the line of your open jaw where his teeth scrape against your skin. You can feel him grinning as he makes you emit the softest of moans.

“I want to make up for the other night. I said some things - I’m not proud of.”

You give a giddy chuckle as you cup his cheek, amused by the fact that he thinks his past behavior was inexcusable until Art’s head dips to suck on the tender skin of your neck and you can’t help but whine. You’re glad you have the lung capacity of a swimmer otherwise you might’ve fainted from the near constant lack of oxygen.

“Art, honestly-” a sudden gasp is ripped from you as you feel him nipping at your sweet spot, crumbling like a tin can under pressure. “-it’s fine.” you barely manage to finish your sentence.

He places a few more steady kisses to the column of your neck, working his way down to your clavicle. You tip your head back, an unintentional effect from the sensation of his lips as he lays the last just near the edge of your collarbone before raising his head to look at you and it’s almost as if he can see right through you.

“Does that mean you don’t want what I’m offering?” he questions, glancing down at the steady movement of your chest as it rises and falls beneath your hoodie. You don’t recall when in the last few minutes he managed to move his hands down to your waist, but you can feel them now as clear as ever. He grips the sides of your hoodie, nimble fingers sliding under the thick gray fabric until they find the skin beneath and his touch feels like fire, sparking flames along your hips with every small caress. It’s so hot that you aren’t sure how Tashi could pick anyone over him. You aren’t sure how anyone could deny him for that matter.

“No…” you admit and at once his hands start to travel higher and higher until they reach the bottom band of your bikini, inflaming the whole of your torso as he meets the straps still tied neatly together in the middle of your spine forming a perfect bow. His fingers follow the provided path, meeting at the center of your back as he starts to twirl one of the tails of the knot around his pointer finger.

“May I?” he asks, his tone so deceivingly politely as he gently tugs on the string. He waits patiently for your consent as his eyes pan up from your chest to your expression. You can’t get the words out, already too overwhelmed from the sizzling sensation of his touch, but you make sure to nod with the utmost enthusiasm. Who were you to tell Art Donaldson no when he was so eager to touch you? And you, in turn, were so eager to feel him.

He smiled at your agreeance and instantly unfastened the tie of your suit, pulling on the strand until the entire bow came undone. He lips pressed against yours once more before he settled down on the bench and raised the hem of your hoodie just enough to expose your stomach, peppering kisses to every inch of you.

You released your hold on him to assist in pulling the hoodie over your head, tossing it behind you where it lands in a crumple pile near the metal door of your locker. Without any tension left to hold it up, the triangle cutlets of your bikini slump to reveal two perfect pebbled nipples, leaving the towel looped around your waist as your only source of coverage.

Usually you’d feel insecure being so bare for a man that’s practically a stranger, but from the dazed look Art gives you as he takes in the sight of your figure, you find that you don’t mind it in the slightest.

“Fuck, you’re so pretty,” Art mutters almost involuntarily, sending shock waves down straight to your core. The words came bursting out before he could find the strength to hold them back, his brain too busy processing your beauty to have any control over any sort of filter. You return your hands to his head of blonde curls just as he presses one last kiss to the center of your abdomen, exactly below your rib cage.

The movement is so sudden that you can't count the seconds that pass before he grabs at your breasts, each hand perfectly cupping the mounted flesh. His mouth is slower, trailing kisses up the valley of your chest.

His thumb works the sensitive skin encircling your nipple, running over the hardened peak in an unperceivable pattern that forces another well earned moan from your lips. It’s encouragement for his other hand that immediately drifts upwards to mirror the actions of the other. Every pinch and slight movement is like gasoline to your fire, all pouring in a downward stream to the part of you that grows more needy with every passing second. You could cry from the sensation of it all, the intensity only growing when you feel him pass his tongue over your left nipple. You try to suppress any sounds this time, teeth biting down on your lip as you curve your head back, but it forces its way out despite your efforts. You grip the hair fixed to his crown and pressure him forwards so that he remains in place.

“Shit, that feels - really good.” you praise, your phrase strung together like an old beaded bracelet as changes in pace break apart each word. When Art does part from your breasts, it’s to press wet kisses down the line of your abdomen as flickering thumbs replace his mouth. He pauses as he reaches the softest portion of your stomach, stopping just above the knot that is covering your very bare lower half, and though you don’t recall informing him about your lack of undergarments, you are sure that he already knows.

“I need to taste you,” he whispers against your skin.

He doesn’t ask you for permission anymore, but instead glances up at you from his spot on the bench and it’s everything you need to understand what he wants from you. And of course you want it. You’re sure if he wastes a second longer to tend to your throbbing center, you might just pass out in his sturdy arms.

“Please, Art, I need you,” you’re able to get out, though it’s breathy and delicate from the way that he’s rendered you.

He’s quick to oblige as he takes the top of your towel cover in between his perfect white teeth and yanks the fabric hard enough for it to fall to your feet. He’s on you in an instant, one of his hands moving to support your shaky frame as he slides a knee between yours to spread you open.

He coaxes every cry out of you with his tongue, wet and skilled as he traces it along each fold, his nose bobbing against your swollen clit not dissimilar from his left hand that still lies atop your breast. You press him closer to you as he swirls his tongue around you, over and over and never in the same way more than twice in a row. It’s overstimulation at its best, overwhelming you until you're trembling in his grasp and before you know it, you’re riding the edge of the wave to pure pleasure.

“Fuck, Art! I’m- I’m-“ you can’t even finish your sentence, he feels so good. He hums against you in amusement, the vibrations of his voice meeting your core in a melting sensation that you find yourself grinding into uncontrollably.

“On my tongue,” he promotes against you before licking a steady stripe along your center. It’s then that you know you’re done for. Your cry is almost inhuman as you leap off the edge, diving into the heart of the wave as Art finally relinquishes his hold on your breast and uses the newly unoccupied hand to pierce into your arousal, calloused fingers curling into you as he helps you down from your high. Even after you cum you know you still have more in you. And you can tell from the growing bulge in his pants that Art isn’t done with you either.

He stands to kiss you with dampened lips as the taste of your own arousal invades your senses, but you withdraw from the embrace after only a few seconds to ask him your burning question, desire already regrowing like a flooding river of need.

“Art, I need you,” you start, pulling at the canvas material of his button up. “Please, please fuck me.”

“Oh fuck,” he mumbles before pressing his mouth towards yours and back you up to the wall of lockers that are neatly arranged behind you.

Granted by his permission, you unfasten each button of his shirt until it’s enough to pull it off him which he happily helps you accomplish. You can’t tell who’s more desperate for you to feel the dense muscle of his chest as he places your palms face down on his pecs, granting you the assurance you needed to explore his body.

You take your time, squeezing and prodding just as he had done to you until one of your hands is low enough on his stomach to palm him through his light wash jeans. The soft whimper he returns is nearly enough to send you over again. He pulls back as he lets you undo his belt, eyelids fluttering after you’ve unbuttoned and unzipped the only thing keeping you from him. You’re quick to pull him out, not at all shocked by how hard he is and it’s a major ego boost knowing it’s all because of you.

“See what you do to me?” he whispers against your lips as if you needed more proof of his longing for you. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Please,” you beg. “I need to feel you.”

Art is quick to oblige as his calloused fingers grip the soft skin of your hips, so rough that you can feel every callus from his racket as he pushes you against the lockers, thrusting up into you. While he’s dying to continue, he hesitates so that you can acclimate to his size. It takes no longer than a second as you release a guttural groan and wrap a leg around his waist, aiding him in hitting even deeper within you.

“Fuck!” you cry, throwing your head back against the cold metal as Art nips at your neckline again. You’re drowning beneath the blissful rocky wave and from the sounds that he’s making, almost re-enacting one of his matches just for you, you can tell that Art is too.

It happens so quickly that your mind struggles to understand it, spinning wildly as the wave pulls you under once more along with Art who finishes in a similar amount of time. You lean into his chest, breathing heavily as you take in the heavenly scent of his undoubtedly expensive cologne and slightly wincing as he pulls out of you slowly. He ducks to pick up your fallen towel as he starts to clean you up.

The realization that it’s over doesn't quite hit you until Art helps you get dressed, buckling his belt back up only once you’re decent and in return you hand him a spare shirt so he doesn’t have to redo every button on the one you’d nearly torn off him.

“Thanks,” he smiles gratefully, pulling on your shirt which fits tighter around him than it would around you, though it’s nothing to complain about as every miniscule ripple of muscle is on display.

You’re both thinking the exact same thing as you exit the locker room, hand in hand with the same guilty expression on your face as you pass an incoming janitor who is too busy scowling to ask Art what he was doing in the women’s locker room. It’s obvious from the encounter that it won’t be your last and as Art drives you to the planned frat party, you’re even sure that it’s not the last of the night.

Time proves you right as you’re seated next to Art a few weeks later, curled into his side as you share a large plate of the appetizer combo at a local Applebees. It was the only thing open after a long day of matches and meets and steamy rendezvous in between. The two of you were going on steadier than the trunks of ancient trees as you continue to support each other, you attending all of Art’s matches ( even if it meant skipping a practice or two) and Art cheering for you at all of your meets. You’re not sure if it’s the consistent attendance, but the both of you were only getting better at your respective hobbies by the day, particularly Art who hadn’t lost a match since meeting you.

You’re both jokingly arguing over who gets the last quesadilla when a familiar woman stops near your table, joined by a man you’d never seen before, though you recognize him from several of Art's detailed stories. He straightens beside you, gathering himself to greet the new company.

“Hey guys, long time no see!”

“Art,” Patrick nods to his friend before smiling to you and offering his hand, one that you take without a second thought. “I’m Patrick.”

“I know,” you admit. “I’ve heard a lot about you. You must be Tashi.” you turn to the girl and you can’t help, but analyze the peculiarities of her expression. It’s clear she is content with her own man of choice, but something about the way she looks at you tells you that she’s still involved in the tennis philosophy you managed to screw out of Art. She looks at you like you’re a player she’s lost to. And from what Art’s told you, you're certain it’s the first time Tashi has lost.

“It’s nice to meet you.” she fakes a smile before pulling Patrick to the door, careful not to stay long enough for the conversation to lead anywhere important. It’s awkward and strange, but you know it’s for the best. You’re not particularly interested in anything she has to say anyways.

“Did you see that?” you ask, pointing in the direction of the doorway that the couple had used for an easy escape.

“What?” Art wonders, looking towards you in anticipation.

“I think she’s looking for a new winner.”

Art leans in to peck the apple of your cheek, assurance that no matter the circumstance, he’ll never be available to the likes of Tashi Duncan again.

“Must be because I’ve won,” he reasons, “-because I have you and there’s nothing she can do to separate us.”

You smile at his sweet words, praying that he never ceases to use his talent for affectionate poetry as you lean in to kiss him. Whether he wins or loses or even never plays again, you couldn’t care less about the outcome of his career. As long as Art’s happy, you’re prepared to take on any challenge you’re put up to, whether on the court or in the pool.

#art donaldson smut #art donaldson fanfic #stanford art!!!#art donaldson x female reader #art donaldson x you #art donaldson #art donaldson x reader #art donaldson fic #tashi duncan #patrick zweig #challengers 2024 #challengers movie #challengers #challengers fanfic #swimmer life #swimming #smut #mike faist

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activelyweird · 23 days ago

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have risen from the depths (writer's block) with a small offering to the tgcf fandom after being in it for many years (a pokemon fusion! who knew i had it in me? not me)

huge huge huge shoutout to @emberchii, their amazing tgcf pokemon au art was what spurred this entire fic into motion

#tgcf #tgcf fanfiction

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luxekook · 5 years ago

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chapter three.

⇥ pairing: ot7 x reader (insert gif of elmo with flames behind him here)

⇥ genre: college au with fluff, smut & angst

⇥ summary: a series in which the reader meets (and falls for) seven members of the Beta Tau Sigma (BTS) fraternity

⇥ word count: 2.3k

⇥ warnings: 18+, cursing, dirty talk, jimin propositions the reader accidentally, taehyung is a menace, noona kink jumps out A LOT, chaotic ot7, talk of poly relationships, overall kinda smut free (the next chapter should quench fuel your thirst)

Chapter Three

“It means that we’re going to date the shit out of you.”

We’re going to date the shit out of you.

We’re. Going. To. Date. The. Shit. Out. Of. You.

Those words play on a constant loop in my head for the rest of the week. After Namjoon had dropped that bombshell on me, I’d kind of freaked the fuck out, faked an immediate illness, and ran at full speed.

When I had told Luna about it later that night, she had been just as shook as me. Surprisingly enough, she had also given her full support of whatever I decided to do but “would have her banana slicer on standby and would order six more if need be”.

It appears that she had drunk-ordered a banana slicer off Amazon when the last boy she talked to pissed her off. I had apparently drunk-approved the decision. Rad.

Jenni’s reaction had been even better. We’d been in the library on Monday and her screech of “he said what!?” had led to multiple events:

An abundance of shushes from every student within a 50-yard radius

Her continued rant: “Your own personal harem! Can you say goals? Maybe I should infiltrate EXO and collect my own...”

Us getting kicked out by our ancient librarian

For the rest of the week, I had Luna and Jenni both giving me shit about the BTS boys. It had helped that I hadn’t run into them at all on campus between classes. But I had known it wouldn’t be long before my luck would run out...

Quinn Library – 2:31pm

Typically, I don’t spend my Friday afternoons deep within the stacks of the library’s quiet floor. Yet, here I sit typing frantically due to my incapability to stop procrastinating. My fingers fly over the keys of my aging MacBook in hopes that whatever spur of productivity I had going on is captured in its fullest.

General education classes could burn in the pits of hell as far as I'm concerned. If I wanted to be a psychiatrist, why did I have to take – and pay for – an art elective that I would likely never utilize in the workforce? Plus, the only class within the category that fit my schedule ended up being “Writing About Dance”.

Yeah, I’m still a tad bitter, but in all honesty the class isn’t that bad so far. It mainly consists of watching different dance performances and learning how to write about them in different styles.

Today’s assignment is to write critical commentary on videos of the university’s dance team that the professor provided for us. Sighing, I finish my review of the second to last dance video provided by the professor, take a quick second to stretch, and then open the link to the last video on the assignment page.

“Park Jimin – Final Performance Solo, Spring 2019”

Slack-jawed, I fall into wonder as Jimin moves through his routine flawlessly. He dances like it’s easier than walking to him. His movements are somehow precise and fluid all at once. I barely realize a few tears have run down my cheeks until the video cuts off, signaling the end of Jimin’s performance.

Jesus, (y/n), get it together. I laugh lightly as I dig in my backpack for a tissue. How could I possibly capture the ethereal beauty that Jimin exuded into words? Am I even worthy of commenting on such exquisiteness?

Definitely fucking not. And before I can second guess myself, I type: “Park Jimin is art in its purest form. Watching him dance is like watching the sun rise over the ocean – raw beauty accompanied by the hopes brought with a new day. His performance left me wanting for nothing except an encore.”

Boom. Submit Assignment.

As my email pings with the confirmation that my assignment is turned in, my eyes widen in realization. Park Jimin of BTS is a dance god, and he – allegedly – wants to date me? That is just ridiculously unfathomable.

Namjoon must be off his rocker.

Closing my laptop, my phone suddenly vibrates with an incoming notification from snapchat...

President_RM has added you!

Before I can even comprehend the absurdity of Namjoon adding me, my phone bursts into a series of buzzes. Cursing, I switch my phone to silent and check my screen.

minsuga93 has added you!

jhopeworld_ has added you!

handsomeJIN has added you!

JKookie97 has added you!

vantae_BTS has added you!

95jiminie has added you!

Are they serious? How did they even get my SnapChat username?

vantae_BTS has added you to a chat!

Curiosity wins out over aggravation as I swipe to open the chat.

Heart pounding, I fight the urge to chuck my phone into the depths of the bookcases winding around the room. What did those idiots want with me?

(y/n) & Luna’s Apartment – 9:45pm

“What do those idiots want with me?” the decibel my voice has risen to is shocking even to my ears.

Luna cringes, accordingly, “I can’t tell if that’s a rhetorical question...”

I steamroll onwards, “And don’t even get me started on how they could have even gotten my snapchat. It’s a complete invasion of privacy!”

“You could just ask them,” Jenni’s voice cuts through my rambling tirade.

I pause, “No, I couldn’t—”

...Or could I?

Turning on my heel, I rush into my room and head straight for my closet. Grabbing the nearest sweatshirt and pair of leggings, I tug them on and then grab my keys from my nightstand.

Whirling back into the living room, I storm past a dumbfounded Luna and Jenni, “Be right back.”

Opening the apartment door, Luna shouts, “Wait! Where are you going? You’re not even wearing shoes!”

Whoops. I glance at my feet and note that she is, in fact, correct.

Jenni bounds over to me holding my Doc Martens, “Here, babe. You’re going to the BTS house, aren’t you?”

I nod grimly and salute my two best friends as if I'm going into battle. “I won’t be long. I just have a small errand to run.”

“Well, you’re not going alone,” Luna declares, pulling on her sneakers.

Jenni snorts and shoves her feet into her beat-up Converse, “No way am I missing out on this action.”

As we head out the door, I link arms with Luna and Jenni, “Have I mentioned I love you both recently?”

“Right back at you, bitch,” Luna laughs.

Greek Row – 10:17pm

Ten minutes later, we reach Greek Row. Fraternity and sorority houses dot the street on both sides. Personally, I think of this street as home to the chaotic rich, and I tend to avoid it at all costs – except tonight.

The line to get into BTS is so long it wraps around the block. Students dressed in the latest fashions converse as they wait, huddling together in their groups. I glance down at my outfit of a worn university hoodie and leggings.

“Well, shit. We’re underdressed, huh,” Jenni deadpans, causing all three of us to burst into laughter, “Do you think they put you on the list, (y/n)?”

Pondering that thought, I shrug, “Maybe,” and begin marching past the line of waiting students towards the front door of BTS, “But I sure as fuck am not waiting in that line.”

“Hey, there’s a line here!”

“Yo, bitches! What are you doing?”

“What the fuck?”

Paying the hecklers no mind, I saunter right up to the BTS pledges guarding the door, “Hi, I need to talk to Kim Namjoon.”

The pledge on the right rakes his gaze over me incredulously and then makes the same assessment of Luna and Jenni, “You know this is a party, right?”

I don’t deem that comment worthy of a response and instead cross my arms over my chest. He shrinks under the collective glare of me, Luna and Jenni.

The pledge on the left awkwardly clears his throat, “Names, please?”

My answer barely escapes my lips before the pledges visibly straighten, looking at me with new eyes, “You’re (y/n)? Why didn’t you just say so?”

And before I can answer, the front door swings open for us.

People are everywhere. A haze of smoke looms in the air, and rap music blares from the speakers. The bass is turned up so loud that the beat seems to take over the rhythm of my pulse. That cannot be healthy.

Turning to my friends, I do my best to communicate, shouting, “I’m going to find them! Are you going to be here?”

Luna and Jenni exchange a look and nod. Jenni shouts back, “We’re going to get some drinks. Might as well capitalize on free booze! Text us when you’re ready to go.”

And with that, we part ways.

Maneuvering around the sea of gyrating bodies in the main living room area, I scan around for any signs of my seven menaces.

“Do my eyes deceive me? Or is that my future wife?” The deep voice booms from behind me.

I sigh, recognizing the voice, and turn around.

Kim Taehyung is striding towards me with his arms outstretched, smiling like the damned fool he is and looking like he just stepped off the runway for Gucci. “Come to daddy.”

An idea forms. I smile sweetly and walk to meet Taehyung halfway. His boxy grin widens and just as he thinks I'm going to let him wrap his arms around me, I grab him by the ear.

“Ouch!” He cries, “Devil-woman!”

Ignoring him, I drag him behind me towards the stairs.

“If you wanted to get me alone, you could have just asked—OW!”

My hold on his ear tightens as we arrive on the second-floor landing, “Where are your brothers?”

“I don’t know, n-noona!” Somehow the honorific coming from Tae sounds divine, but I file that thought away for another time.

Removing my hold, I corner him against the wall of the hallway, “Okay, Kim, here’s what is going to happen. You’re going to point me in the direction of your room, go find your six idiot brothers, and then report back here so I can finally understand what the fuck is going on. Got it?”

My chest heaves as my directions conclude and I realize how close together we are. Taehyung stares at me with an indecipherable expression before breaking into a slow smile, “Noona is bossy.”

“Noona is going to shove her foot up your ass if you don’t get moving,” I growl.

“Kinky,” he laughs, backing away from me and my brewing anger, “Last door on the left is my room. I’ll be back with the six idiots.”

As he thumps back down the steps, I close my eyes and count to ten, trying to steel my nerves and rein in my anger. When I open them, my eyes are met with the amused gaze of Min Yoongi.

Slapping a hand to my heart, I wait for my pulse to settle from being scared out of my wits, “Motherfuck—how did you even move that silently?”

“It’s a skill,” Yoongi drawls, nodding towards to end of the hall, “So, group meeting in Tae’s room?”

Shooting him the best side-eye I can muster, I stalk past him, steadfastly ignoring the chuckles and light footfalls that follow behind me.

Throwing open the door which Taehyung indicated was to his room, I pause, taking in the horde of photos and art taped to the four walls. The light blue wallpaper barely peeks through the absolute massive amount of artwork.

“It’s overwhelming at first, isn’t it?” An angelic voice shyly breaks through my reverie, “Tae likes to collect pictures and things he finds beautiful.”

“Ah, so that’s why we’re friends.” The joke is followed by a laugh that can only be compared to the sound of a windshield wiper squeakily moving back and forth.

I shift my eyes from Taehyung’s walls and onto the two newcomers – Park Jimin and Kim Seokjin.

Meeting Seokjin’s gaze first, I cannot help but agree that he is a very, very beautiful man. With pushed back dark hair, mischievous brown eyes and impossibly broad shoulders, Seokjin can easily be mistaken for an idol. And, oh fuck, I’m still staring.

Shooting my eyes back up to his, I crinkle my nose at his shit-eating grin. Before he can even comment, I turn and lock eyes with Jimin.

“Your dancing is gorgeous,” I blurt out and immediately want to crawl under a rock and live out the rest of my life as Patrick Star.

Yoongi and Seokjin are cackling as Jimin’s face lights up at my embarrassing compliment, “You really think so?”

“There's no shutting him up now,” Yoongi is in tears, “Watch out, (y/n). Jimin loves his fans.”

“Shut up, Yoongi-hyung!”

Jimin looks ready to swing, but luckily Taehyung chooses the right moment to return, “What have we missed? Why is Jiminie about to fight Yoongi? I’ll put $10 on hyung.”

Gasping in betrayal, Jimin sits on the edge of Tae’s bed and pouts.

The rest of the boys file in behind Taehyung as he flops down onto his bed and reclines like he doesn’t have a care in the world.

“Hi, (y/n). Good to see you again. I’m glad you’re here,” Namjoon greets me with a slight bow, a crooked smile and wicked eyes.

He’s followed closely by Jung Hoseok, the only BTS boy I hadn’t met thus far, “(y/n)! It’s so nice to meet you in person! Wow, you look so pretty tonight!”

“Noona always looks pretty,” Jungkook cuts in, throwing an arm around Hoseok’s shoulder, “She’s bae.”

A collective groan arises from the rest of the boys. “Sit your ass down, JK,” Yoongi grumbles, “(y/n)’s going to break up with us before we even start dating.”

“Dating—!” I break off that train of thought. Other matters need to be attended to first, “No, I didn’t come here tonight to say ‘hi’ or to be your ‘bae’. I came here to get answers.”

I take my time making eye contact with each boy.

Taehyung is still spread out on his bed and Jimin has now joined him. Seokjin, Hoseok and Jungkook are sprawled out on the floor at the foot of the bed, while Namjoon and Yoongi slouch against the opposite wall of the bedroom facing me.

“Alright,” Namjoon lifts his chin, meeting my stare head on, “What do you want to know?”

a/n: sorry for the cliffhanger, hehe. i wanted to get something up for y’all! hopefully next chapter won’t take too long to finish/edit :)

taglist:

@hazeljrz @sessi03 @catsandstrawberries @h5naaa @meowmeowyoongles@leftflowerprunedonut @rjsmochii @athletes-of-god @karissassirak @weallhavesecretsinthebestway @cvbachacbitch @bewitch3dforivar @honeyspillings @xxonyxpearlxx @fivesecondsofsarang @oii-f-eli-x2 @joonsroses @theevilyouknow @jooniescupcakes @expensive-grl @i-dont-even-know-fck @doingmybestalltheftime @elraeee @fangirling-all-the-way-tbh @laced-brds @aokay1010 @breeeeh17 @lpayne612 @peachyharmoney @rilakoya @chulchuchi @tabula-rasa0 @guccishookv @nomimits7 @i-like-puppy-mg @s-noir @anna-sorel @valiantcollectorofsandwiches @cage7241

blogs that wouldn’t let me tag them for some reason:

@awkwardhumambean

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lov3nerdstuff · 5 years ago

Text

Beautiful Imperfection

*Loki x reader*

Part: Oneshot (or possible part 2 of Beautiful Stranger)

Words: 5.3k

Warnings: none, only fluff and domestic Loki

Summary: Inspired by your artworks, Loki decides to try his own luck with drawing and painting… Yet, things don’t remotely go as planned and he ends up needing your help to learn how to surrender.

A.N.: Who could resist Loki making a mess and covering himself in paint? 😁 This is fun and fluffy and might or might not include Loki using you as a canvas 😉💗 enjoy! @daddys-littlewhitegirl

______________________________

“Loki, have you seen my pencil sharpener?” You called through the whole apartment in such a desperate voice that Loki had to bite his lip to keep from smirking as he lay on the couch with his legs crossed at the ankles, reading peacefully.

“Would you like me to help you find it?” He called back in his best attempt to keep the humor out of his voice. It wasn’t working too well.

“No, it’s all good, I found it! Thanks!”

“Too bad…” Loki sighed to himself, smiling as he flicked to the next page.

“What was that?” You asked lightly as you came walking into the room with bouncy steps that made Loki want to grin even more. Ever since he had met you, he hadn’t been able to stop wondering how he deserved such an enchanting creature… how he got to call you his, how he was granted to spend every single day with you.

“Oh, nothing, dear…” He mused with a smirk, looking at you for a second and then back to his book. That probably was one of the things he adored most… your incredible curiosity. And teasing you, that as well.

“C'mon Loki!” You laughed, standing in front of the couch and staring down at him for a moment before simply sitting down on his stomach. Since the whole couch was blocked by his long frame, you didn’t have any other choice… and you didn’t want one either. Loki was comfortable and warm and you knew that he secretly enjoyed it when you claimed him like that.

He pretended to groan under your weight for a second, then couldn’t help but chuckle. God, you really weighed nothing… to him at least, and honestly that’s all he cared about really. You, a lot, and himself, a little. Yet, he also had discovered a tendency within himself to care about the things you cared about… which could extend from paying the bills to saving the rainforest. It depended on the day, really.

“I said ‘too bad’, if you must know.” He finally answered honestly, enjoying your intense gaze as you looked down at him with an amused frown.

“Too bad… that what? That I found my pencil sharpener and can continue to colour the drawing?” You chuckled, rising an eyebrow at the absolutely insufferable man beneath you, who you just happened to love so very dearly.

“Indeed.” He smiled, humored. “All you did today was drawing… When am I going to get some attention?”

“Well, all YOU did today was reading, so I could ask you the very same thing!” You laughed, shaking your head to yourself.

“If you wanted my attention you just could’ve asked, darling…” He said with a small smirk, looking at you in the utmost adoration while you playfully smacked him in the chest. You really were absolutely incredible, perfectly imperfect. Loki didn’t like perfection. Perfection was boring, and you were VERY far from boring and so was your life with him. Loki would gladly give you everything you asked for and yet so much more.

“I’m almost done with the drawing…” You sighed, then grinned at him. “After that we can give each other some very much necessary attention, alright?”

“Sounds lovely. What are you drawing anyway?” He asked, sitting up once you had risen to your feet to collect your sketchpad from the desk on the other side of the room.

The apartment Loki and you shared was small, but Loki loved it nonetheless. He would gladly forgo every palace in existence for this little kingdom that was your home. You were his queen, and Loki your humble servant. As long as you were together, Loki was content. Happy, even, more than he was able to properly express.

“You.” You shrugged, chuckling as you made your way back to the couch to sit down next to him.

Loki snatched the sketchpad out of your hand before you could protest, looking at the partially coloured drawing in awe. “This… this is absolutely beautiful. I still have no idea how you can draw emotions and feelings like this. In every new piece you showcase a small piece of my soul.”

“Well, it’s not hard to draw something beautiful when the beauty is sitting right in front of you, reading all day.” You smirked, shoving him a little in the side as you took your work back and got comfortable in one corner of the couch.

“How many drawings of me do you have by now?” He asked with a smile as he handed you a blanket that was draped over the backrest of the couch on his end and watched you wrap it around yourself in amusement.

“Countless. Really, I have lost count and even lost the ABILITY to count them all.” You snorted, picking up your box with pens from the coffee table.

“If you want to draw true beauty, why don’t you ever draw a self portrait?” Loki rose an eyebrow at you as he sat down in the opposite corner of the couch more comfortably.

“Ha ha very funny.” You rolled your eyes, looking back to your drawing instead of him.

Loki pick up his book once more, flipping to the current page. He tried reading a part, and another… Yet, his mind wouldn’t take in on any of the words as it was too busy with his own thoughts, the letters on the page faded as he kept thinking of your drawing.

It had been a while now… a long while of you creating those stunning and breathtakingly expressive drawings of him. Sure, you did draw other things too, occasionally, but knowing that you did draw him oh so often and with such a joy made Loki both proud and desperate. Proud, because you knew and understood him so incredibly well and still chose to love him, and desperate because he felt so many things for you, knew and understood you too… and yet failed (in his eyes) to show it.

The urge within him to give you something back grew with every new piece you showed him, with every emotion caught on point and every perfect piece of his imperfection.

“Can I try?” He asked straight out, without giving himself the change to back out now. Drawing wasn’t something he had done all too often, but some basic sketching had been part of his education nonetheless. Yet, that had been decades ago and he wondered if he could still do it at all. But he wanted to try to express his emotions in a drawing, just like you did.

“What?” You asked in utter irritation, finally lifting your eyes to meet his.

“Can I try to draw you?” He asked with a sigh, unsure of what he’s just gotten himself into. “Since you refuse to draw yourself, I would like to try.”

Your lips parted in surprise as you started at Loki for a moment. Then you nodded strongly. “Uh, yeah… I mean yes, of course you can! Feel free to use whatever you need.”

“Thank you.” With another soft sigh Loki got up from the couch, placed his book on the coffee table and picked up an empty sketchpad and some pencils from the desk.

You watched him selecting his tools with care, smiling at the sight. Loki loved art, you had known that from the very first day, but he had never made an attempt to actually create something himself. Usually he would talk to you about your works, or fill in with some knowledge about art history while you were going to the museum. This new ambition was both intriguing and amusing. You watched him out of the corner of your eye as he sat down on the ground instead of the couch, crossing his legs beneath himself and placing the papers on his thighs. An inevitable smile came to your lips… Loki just looked effortlessly gorgeous in absolutely every situation (which was kinda unfair, really). Even sitting on the ground in tracksuit bottoms and t-shirt, a deep frown on his face as he marked the page with some reluctant lines. The way the sharp edges of his face stood out even more when he concentrated on something was enough inspiration for you to let the colouring be for now and do some portrait sketches instead. Maybe Loki would one day believe you when you told him that he was amazing indeed. However many sketches and drawings that might take.

For quite some time the two of you stayed like that, listening to quiet music flowing around the apartment while drawing each other with the utmost care and attention to detail. Until finally, Loki decided that he was done. He didn’t like the outcome of his work at all, and after he had separated the drawn page from the rest, he looked at it for two more seconds, then at you… and ripped the page apart into tiny pieces.

“Loki!” You protested, dropping your own drawing supplies on the couch and moving to sit in front of him on the floor. “Why on earth did you rip it!?”

“I didn’t like it.” He said quietly, with a sharp edge to his voice, looking down at the small shreds of paper between you and him.

“But I wanted to see it nonetheless…” You said quietly, taking his hands in yours and gently caressing his knuckles. “I’m sure it wasn’t half as bad as you think it was.”

“It didn’t do you justice at all.” He stated in pure disappointment with himself. “You would’ve hated it.”

“I promise you I wouldn’t have.” You sighed, letting go of his hands to place your arms around his neck. With a low hum coming from the depth of his chest, Loki wrapped his arms around your waist and pulled you closer until you were sitting in between his legs, comfortably wrapped around him.

“You’re too hard on yourself.” You whispered against his neck, playing with a few strands of his raven hair. “I love everything you do, and I love YOU very very much. You know that, right?”

“I know, darling. I really do… Do you really want to see the drawing?” He asked in an equally quiet voice and you nodded, brushing your lips against his soft skin in the process.

Loki leaned back a short moment later, unwrapping his arms from you, and thus allowing you to place your legs over his and around his hips to sit more comfortably, closer.

“Good for you that I can fix stuff with magic.” He mused with the tiniest smile as he held the good-as-new piece of paper out to you, his eyes locked with yours in the most serious expression.

Gently you took the drawing out of his hand and when you looked at it, your lips parted yet again.

“Are you trying to tease me?!” You finally managed to say as the corners of your mouth curled into a soft smile.

“Usually, yes. Right now, no.” He replied calmly and the expression on his face told you that he was being serious indeed.

“But… wow.” You were at a loss for words, staring down at the drawing in your hands incredulously. “Did you really draw this in the last thirty minutes? Without magic?”

“Yes.” He replied shortly, looking surprisingly flustered. “Sorry.”

“Why in any world would you apologize? This is absolutely gorgeous! It looks like a photo, seriously Loki, it’s absolutely perfect!” You rambled, staring down at what really looked like a photograph of yourself. How could he seriously think this was bad?!

“I don’t want perfect.” He sighed, resting his hands on the small of your back once again. “Perfect is boring. It’s vain, and cold and distant…”

“So is your problem that the drawing is perfect or that I am not?”

“You’re perfect for me, don’t ever doubt that! Yet you’re not universally perfect, which I am honestly very glad about. That would be awful… I’m a flawed being and you are too and that makes us our own kind of perfect.” He argued eloquently, making you smile at him fondly.

“And what bothers you so much about the drawing?” You inquire as you placed it on the coffee table before resting both your hands on his shoulders once more.

“It’s absolutely nothing like yours.” He shrugged.

“Well, it shouldn’t be. It’s your drawing, so it should be like you.”

“That’s not what I meant… See, your drawings speak to the viewer. They express emotions and soul… while mine is just a photograph. Perfect in technique but blind in emotions.” Loki sighed, suppressing the urge to yet again rip the drawing into pieces. He knew you’d be mad at him if he did, so he let it rest on the coffee table in one piece for now.

“Don’t be so upset about it, please. I’m absolutely amazed by your drawing and even more that you drew something at all! Just for me…” You whispered to him with a soft smile, placing a gentle kiss to his lips.

He hummed quietly against your lips in return, pulling your body closer to his as he deepened the kiss. If he failed to express his emotions in art and drawing, he might just have to show you the depth of his love, the core of his soul in another way. For now.

_______________

However as Loki lay in bed that night, your small frame curled around his and your head on his shoulder, he found himself thinking back to his 'failed’ attempt at drawing. He had come to accept the fact that he didn’t need to show you his emotions through art, as you had solemnly sworn that you knew indeed how much he loved you…

But Loki wouldn’t be Loki if he’d let the things go that he hadn’t been able to accomplish to his fullest contentment. And just because he didn’t NEED to express his emotions this way didn’t remotely mean that he didn’t WANT to indeed. It had become a challenge the moment he had tried and yet failed, and Loki wouldn’t ever back down from a good challenge.

So once you had gone to work on Monday morning, kissing him goodbye like you always did, Loki got out a piece of paper and a pencil and started sketching random objects around the apartment.

It started out small, with a bouquet of dried flowers… A glass bowl with your favorite candy… A bottle of Loki’s prefered wine. The graphite stood out against the white paper in a way that made the objects jump straight out of the page, realistic as ever, almost a grey scale photograph. Loki frowned to himself. This, again, is not remotely what he wanted, not remotely what he meant to draw.

So he switched out the medium. Until now, he had only tried graphite on white paper, which (as proven multiple times) led to him drawing a perfectly realistic photograph. He was quick to decide on using another pen, first of all. Surprisingly quickly, he did one drawing in black ink, which he soon realized he did not like at all, even less than the pencil. Sighing, he tried to get rid of the ink stains on his hands by rubbing his palms against his tracksuit bottoms. Didn’t work.

Thus, with a doubtful eye, reluctantly circling your drawing supplies like a wounded predator on the hunt, he scanned what other mediums were available to him. He really would need to get braver, bolder, to go bigger.

First, he tried charcoal. Needless to say, he ended up creating a huge, black and smudged mess on the livingroom floor and also on himself. But he actually, finally, ended up with something that looked less like a photograph and more like an actual drawing, which in this case was a step into the right direction. Yet, it still wasn’t what he was trying to get to, so the paper landed somewhere below the couch as he pushed it away angrily. How was it possible that he was so BAD at this?! Loki wasn’t used to being bad at something. At least not at something he was actually trying to be good at. And oh, he didn’t like it at all.

As he rose to his feet, pushing the long sleeves of his green t-shirt back over his elbows, he made his way through the mess of papers lying everywhere, back to the arsenal of materials.

Next, he settled for oil pastels. At least those were a little less messy than the charcoal… Loki wasn’t too fond of messy things, and even less of willingly creating a mess. But he HAD to get good at art, and he would go great lengths to get what he wanted. So he moved back to the only empty space on the floor in the middle of the livingroom, his bare feet leaving black footprints on the warm wood. Maybe he shouldn’t have stepped onto the charcoal drawings…

Surprisingly, Loki did like the oil pastels a lot. It was nice getting to blend colours a little, to work them together and get both crisp edges and soft blurs… yet, after filling pages upon pages with whatever motives he could think of or see around himself, he found that it wasn’t ideal either. It was getting better, yes, but it still wasn’t imperfect enough to be beautiful. He groaned to himself, running a hand through his hair and leaving small smudges of colour on his forehead.

By now the livingroom was an absolute mess and so was Loki. He was angry with himself, frustrated and just desperate enough to continue on nonetheless. So he pushed the enormous amount of paper around him further away, off to the side, wherever… Then he took the oil pastels back to your stash, restoring them to their original state with a subtle green light. He didn’t want to use up all your supplies, so he made sure to replace whatever he took. And while in the knowledge that he could very well clean up the living room in an instant, he just couldn’t bring himself to care at the moment. His mind was occupied with so many mixed emotions and somehow, the mess in the livingroom represented that fairly well. Also… he was getting closer. Closer to creating something imperfect enough to be ENOUGH at all.

He went for acrylic paints next, a step further, a step bigger… But he went with a random piece of cardboard that he tore off a box, instead of a canvas. In his mind, a canvas was for art. Not for whatever it was he was doing here.

So he slumped back down in his small circle in the middle of the room, frowning. What was he supposed to draw next, what could he try to give meaning to? With a single thought and a swoosh of green, he arranged all his previous drawings in multiple rows of circles around himself. There really was nothing he hadn’t tried to draw… nothing he hadn’t tried to wrap into emotions (and failed to express anything at all).

With a sigh, he decided to draw his old bedroom in the asgardian palace out of his memory, for once. It was the one place where he had spent the most time throughout his entire childhood and he could see it in front of him in every detail. It was a lot of gold, just like the rest of the palace, but also some green and beige tones… He spent quite a while painting, getting used to the acrylic paint and the brushes… creating even more of a mess of himself and his surroundings.

Maybe it was the painting, or the focus, the memory of a lost home or the general frustration of not getting it right anyway, no matter how hard he tried… but after he had covered the entire piece of cardboard in paint, he felt even more desperate than before. It was yet again closer to what he wanted his art to be, but still not quite right. With an angry frown he tossed the cardboard into any direction and lay down in his small empty circle, staring at the ceiling. Maybe his art was doomed to mirror himself in being a failure indeed.

_______________

When you returned home that afternoon, unlocking the door with a long sigh, you dropped your bag and jacket in the hallway and moved to find Loki. Usually he would either pick you up from work, or be waiting here for you with a decent enough excuse for why he didn’t come to pick you up in return.

Yet today, as you walked around a corner and your eyes fell upon the mess that was your livingroom, your lips parted and you gasped at the sight in front of you. Colour absolutely everywhere, drawings and paintings scattered all across the floor and the furniture, and right in the middle there was Loki. Even though he was lying on his back, you could tell that he was covered in all kinds of paint, his clothes, his hands and face… And a slow smirk spread on your lips that soon turned into a huge grin.

“Hey Loki.” You chuckled, standing in the doorframe and watching the artistic massacre in front of you. It really did look like Loki had fought a war with your art supplies and the thought alone almost made you snort.

“Hello darling.” He replied quietly, not once averting his eyes from the ceiling.

“Uhm… What exactly happened to the livingroom?” You asked, suppressing a laugh rather badly as your eyes scanned the absolutely incredible drawings strewn around.

“I’m a failure, Y/n…” He sighed deeply instead of answering your question. “I tried to art, and I failed.”

You tried really hard not to laugh at his overly dramatic demeanor as you took off your shoes and socks and tiptoed through the pagers on the ground, making your way towards Loki. The closer you got, the more you realized that he was seriously upset and not joking at all and that made your heart fall immediately.

Careful not to wrinkle any of the papers, you sat down next to Loki in the middle of the drawings and looked down at his paint smeared face with a soft smile. “C'mon, sit up and let me hug you. Please?”

Sighing, he did as you asked and you wrapped him into a tight hug, to which he responded by pulling you into his lap indeed.

“Hey…” You whispered, looking into his eyes with an encouraging expression.

“Hey.” He replied in a breath. “I apologize for creating a mess.”

“You’re pretty adorable when you’re covered in paint.” You chuckled, brushing through his tangled hair with your fingers.

“I am not adorable! I’m a god, I’m imposing and powerful and…”

“Covered in paint.” You chuckled again, causing Loki to roll his eyes. “May I look at your drawings?”

“If you have to… I’m not hindering you. But be aware of the fact that I despise every single thing in this room but you right now.” He sighed and you picked up the drawings you could reach without having to get up. They really were absolutely stunning, each one better than the previous, and you marveled at the detail and the colour choices and just everything really… It was impeccable.

“I know you won’t believe me when I say this, but these are absolutely gorgeous, Loki…” You sighed with a smile, looking at his deep frown.

“You’re right, I don’t believe you.” He replied with a chuckle, hugging you tighter to himself and pressing a kiss to your neck.

“You’re smudging paint all over me!” You laughed, trying to shove him away, but he wouldn’t let you and continued to shower your neck with tickling kisses until you were breathless from laughter.

“Am I really covered in paint all that much?” He asked after a while, pulling back to look at your face and to allow you to look at his.

“You most definitely are. But that’s no surprise when you paint and draw obsessively like you did today.” You smiled at him, brushing a strand of hair out of his face and thereby causing him to sigh a little. “What happened that made you create all this?”

“Yesterday I tried drawing emotions like you do, and I failed. Thus I had to try again today.”

“And why all the different mediums?”

“I was hoping that I simply needed to find the right tools to create something that would be beautiful. I assume I got a little better with the oil pastels and the acrylic paint, but it still does not express emotions, nor does it have soul.” He sighed, moving some papers over, towards you, so that you could see the minimal progress he’d made. It wasn’t like Loki would ever admit to anyone else that he had failed at something, or that he wasn’t good enough… but he had learned to trust you more than himself, and thus he had grown to share every thought with you in utmost honesty.

“So you have created all these amazing pieces of art in an attempt to create something that YOU can consider art?”

“Precisely.”

“Alright.” You sighed, sitting up a little straighter and placing the drawings back on the ground after you’d inspected them closely. “I DO consider all these pieces works of art, brilliant works of art even. But I understand that you are aiming for something else and I’ll help you get there. BUT…”

“But?” Loki asked suspiciously, both excited and embarrassed at the prospect of having your help in this. Yet, the embarrassment passed after a short moment, for even though Loki was a rather proud person, he was also smart. And that meant he knew when to accept help from a superior. You definitely were his superior, a higher being in every way and he loved it beyond measure.

“But! I’ll only help you if you allow me to keep everything you created today, intact and just like you drew it.” You grinned smugly, causing Loki to roll his eyes. “And I want you to stop trashtalking yourself and your art. What you do is beautiful and I need you to stop saying it’s not. If you can do that, I’ll help you create something you are trying for.”

“Alright.” He sighed. “You can keep everything and I will refrain from saying a bad word about it. Now, how exactly are you going to help me?”

“First, we need a little more space.” You smiled and a moment later the papers started moving around to create a neat pile in a corner of the room, leaving the livingroom floor visible once more. “Gosh, I love magic. Can’t you teach me that?”

“I can try, darling…” Loki chuckled deeply. “But right now we are teaching me how to art.”

You laughed, shaking your head to yourself. “I love how you say that… 'how to art’…”

Loki didn’t say anything and only looked at you expectantly, while you moved off his lap to sit in front of him with the box paints and brushes in between you.

“Now, you want to draw with emotions and soul, right?” You asked calmly.

“Yes.”

“Well, first of all you need to actually FEEL something in order to draw it. You need to allow yourself to feel things, and you need to allow your emotions to surface through the channel of art.” You looked at him intently, in the knowledge that honesty of feelings and Loki didn’t necessarily go together well.

He was quiet for a moment, looking at you as if he was contemplating existence. “I don’t want to draw my own emotions. You can draw mine perfectly well, or anyone else's… can’t I start with that?”

“See, that’s the first problem right there. I need to feel what someone else feels in order to draw it. It’s called empathy, Loki, I’m sure you’ve heard of it.” You chuckled, looking at him kindly. “But that’s another thing, so let’s focus on your own emotions first. That’s easier.”

“I don’t think I can do that, Y/n.” He replied quietly, looking down to the many colours spread out in between you.

“You can, and you will. I know you don’t like it when people see what’s going on in your mind, and…”

“I don’t mind when you see.” He interrupted you, eyes locked back with yours in all honesty. “I never minded that you know every part of me.”

Your smile widened at that. “I know. But I think I know a way to make it easier for you nonetheless.” With that you unzipped your hoodie, tossing it off to the side. Then you lifted your shirt over your head and Loki rose an eyebrow at you in amusement and suspicion.

“I am nowhere near complaining, but what are you doing, dear?” He asked, trying not to laugh.

“Giving you the right canvas. You’re gonna draw on my back.” You stated calmly, with such a certainty that Loki found himself obliging. With a smile you laid down on your stomach in front of him, resting your head on your arms, smiling. “This way you won’t have to worry about anyone ever seeing what you choose to create now. We can take a shower afterwards, and you can wash it off and all that will be left is you knowing that you completed your mission.”

Loki felt his heart swell with adoration as he looked down at your bare back, smiling to himself in the knowledge that you knew and loved him indeed, with a depth and intensity that no one ever had.

“Any more tips you can give me?” He asked. “About what I should draw? Or how to have better control over it?”

“See, Loki, the things is… You shouldn’t control your art, nor your motive. You need to let go, and allow the emotions to control you indeed. Surrender to the art, to the act of creating. Otherwise you will always end up with another photograph.” You mused, and Loki frowned.

“I’m not good at letting go of control.”

“I know!” You laughed, as goosebumps covered your body upon his cool touch on your skin. “But didn’t you say yourself that your drawings got better towards the end of your trying? That’s not because you practiced, but because, and I’m making an educated guess here, you grew frustrated and angry with yourself more and more and that anger took control over you. And that’s what I see in your latest drawings. Desperation and anger. And if you can let those emotions control you involuntarily, you can let positive ones lead you to a greater art.”

Your words echoed in Loki’s mind like a sharp and clear note sung in a cathedral and his lips parted slightly at the realization that you were right. He could do this, and he could let himself be vulnerable for once in this safe haven that was your love.

“Fine. I will paint something beautifully imperfect, and you will tell me about your day.” He smiled, picking up a colour at random and chuckling as you flinched upon the contact of the chilled brush and the wet paint on your back. “Alright, darling?”

“Sounds like a plan.” You smiled widely, enjoying the innocent intimacy of the moment.

And just like this, Loki finally created a true piece of art, one he was content with. A piece of beautiful imperfection.

________________________________

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littleeyesofpallas · 4 years ago

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The other day i had a kinda drunken rant I went on with a friend that I had wished I could’ve written down. But today I read an article about the shift in hollywood marketing from star power to IP and character driven power instead: the idea being that an original movie used be able to draw crowds with the basic idea of “your favorite star as <insert role>” but we’ve moved more towards the appeal of familiar franchise names like “from the creator of XYZ.” But I think this is an interesting place to draw the line because it does go back to that drunken rant. So, here I go again... this is gonna be lo~ng and boring (and this is the shortest possible version) and without pictures, but god knows i have no idea what i would put to accompany this super tangent-filled tirade, so I guess just buckle up...

(I apologize now for all the weird side subjects that I’m going to name drop but just not take the time here to go in depth with.)

I don’t even remember where my drunken rant with my friend the other night started so my first obstacle is finding a place to even begin with this because it has so many entry points and none of them are any closer to where this all ends than any other so like.... whatever... Shakespeare.

It’s a super complicated thing but in the first era of professional english theatre that Shakespeare ushered in (from the mid-late 1500s to early-mid 1600s) there were strong strong associations with theatre and prostitution. Maybe it was exactly what it sounded like, maybe it was elitist slander against the revolutionary accessibility of the arts to the poor as self debasing, maybe it was the church being really angry about literally everything all the time, maybe it was a little of all of that... But either way the persisting notion was that a theatre, established or travelling, was a place one could ostensibly go to pay for sex with the troupe’s actors. of course at the time women weren’t a part of that profession, and while they may have been as much a part of the theater going demographic as anyone else it’s hard to pinpoint how much of the already vaguely defined theatre sex trade they patronized --Point being when we talk about theatres prostituting their actors we’re talking about male theatre goers paying to have sex with male actors, and predominantly those young boys playing female roles. In most classic academic circles this is either wholly ignored, brushed aside/glossed over, or sloppily chalked up to “homosexuality.” But there’s a lot more nuance to that... which is part of the big mess of stuff I’m just not getting into here...

But this is where I draw my line of connection to Kabuki theatre. Kabuki somewhat infamously had similar practices as all-male theatre and as duel industry for theatre and prostitution. And as a parallel development it seems to make sense... In England and Japan alike, you have a group of people who by nature of their jobs charm people and constantly move from town to town. Even if a community or government thinks what they’re doing is wrong, by the time they can take notice or do anything to stop them: they charm, they fuck, they leave. But unlike Shakespearean theatre, kabuki has a slightly more convoluted history of development.

See, Kabuki started with Izumi-no-Okumo, a shinto shrine maid (ironically also in the 1500-1600s cusp, same as shakespeare) and although a lot of her personal history is lost to time you can imagine the basic development here: a shrine maid tells the myths, she tells the myths dramatically and with with character voice, then all that but with props, and costume, and then dividing roles into separate actors, and collecting donations for the shrine as regular practice anyway but hey look people donate more when they’ve come for a story they enjoy... and then oops you’ve invented theatre. Also on account of this being started with shinto shrine maids, the form naturally took an all female slant.

Whether it started with Okumo herself or not, as theatre became an established form, and a lucrative one at that, non shinto affiliated women quickly seized the chance to make a living outside the bounds of common peasantry, and with the growth of travelling theatre as an industry that same side venture of prostitution developed. But here’s where it gets interesting...

Due to things that, again I won’t dive into here, the untaxed revenues of prostitution painted a target on the backs of kabuki actresses, and women were eventually outlawed from theatre. The art form was of course immensely popular however so to keep the gravy train rolling the theatre form continued but now with all young-male casts, to retain the feminine aesthetics of female kabuki. This did absolutely nothing to stop the rate of prostitution however, so they outlawed it again and replaced the young boys with grown men. This still didn’t stop the prostitution but there was other stuff going on in Japan at that point and legislative attentions were pulled elsewhere.

And here’s my weird little take away from this... it’s not like Kabuki theatre suddenly went from being popular with horny straight men to horny gay men in a seemless and perfectly balanced transition. (and granted japan at the time was a lot more open about their grasp of sexuality compared to now and to the west in general) so presumably a lot of these thirsty theatre goers were just overwhelmingly indiscriminate in their tastes in fucking actors... But stick a pin in that, we’ve got a tangent to go on!

So around this same time Japan was having kind of a second rennaissance: japan’s high arts culture had first really risen to prominence in the heian period right before the long long descent into the civilwar we all know and lover for all its flashy samurai drama. When that 400-ish year civil war finally ended and then stabilized under the Tokugawa shogunate in the Edo period, the art scene finally had some room to breathe again, and among many other things ukiyo-e wood block prints saw a huge explosion in popularity. And part of this tied into Kabuki theatre, as an extremely popular genre of prints were actor portraits and theatre scenes. Actor portraits in particular are kind of culturally fascinating, because they weren’t simply prints of character illustration, they were frequently labeled with both the character played, the story they featured in, and the name of the actor playing them. moreover, despite the reverence of classical art historians now, these weren’t fine art at the time; they were mass produced, affordable and disposable. In major cities, everyone went to see theatre, and everyone bought, kept, and even collected actor portraits. As theatre seasons and troupes came and went actor portraits came to occupy and kind of cultural value space a lot like American baseball cards in how prestige, rarity, and trading became an entire subculture in and of itself within the sports/theatre community.

Now we see how Japan had created this thriving popular/mass culture, and celebrity culture for itself. And while the notion of a “parasocial relationship” wouldn’t be formulated and explored until the 1950s-60s in the wake of things like Elvis fever and Beetles mania, that brand of one-sided relationship where you as an audience member form a “relationship” with a celebrity that involves collecting information about their heavily curated persona is exactly what japan stumbled into some 300 years earlier. And in fact Japanese pop culture would maintain a lineage of parasocial relationships during the intervening years (in a way the deification and worship of the emperor as a god-king was a kind of parasocial relationship in the way a secular monarch doesn’t quite achieve) So it’s no surprise that when Takarazuka Revue opened in the 1910s as a new modern all-female theatre form, it attracted a familiar old brand of horny theatre audience --one that maintained a very nebulous relationship with the now much more stringent notions of gender and its relation to sexuality.

taking this tangent a little further, Japanese pop culture has always shown this interesting, self-aware approach to the parasocial relationship dynamic that western cultures seems to lack. I remember that when the 1990s put boy bands briefly into the spotlight, the thing that sunk them in the American eye seemed to be this weird sense of betrayal that the boys werent some garage band rags to riches story, and they didnt write their own music, or make their own dance moves, or even sing live at their own concerts. America seemed to be repulsed by this notion of a manufactured pop hit. Japan however (and Korea soon to follow) seemed to thrive in this instead; there was no pretense that J-pop idols weren’t manufactured, and in fact they took pride in the rigors of having been hand picked and raised to stardom --of course they were scouted and trained, because the idol could’ve been any of millions but it was them who got picked, it was them who sang the best, performed the best, climbed the charts, and fought to stay there. Stardom wasn’t an art form, it was a contest, and they were WINNING.

And the manufactured nature of that J-pop idol business model is what gave rise to Hatsune Miku (in fact there were multiple attempts in the 1980s to design and market a wholly fictional pop idol, but if anything they were too ahead of their time and lacked the technology to really sell the idea in its best form) because when your entire product is about making and curating your performers’ public persona, to the extreme level at which them having their own lives actually starts to contradict their stage persona and hurt their marketability... why bother projecting the persona onto a real person? Why not just cut the human component out all together and just market the persona for what it is? And for Japan I think that kind of relationship was one that they were culturally always just a few steps away from being ready to accept anyway, so it just took a little persistence.

Then came the anime waifu thing... Dating sims, and body pillow marriages, etc... and I think the pretty unanimous impulse to turn this into a enormous joke (and lets be real who could blame anyone for that) overlooks what actually happened here: paraosocial relationships in the purest form, with the fleshy middleman removed and with it the lie, not less false but somehow now false yet honest. A bizarre paradox to be sure...

But now lets back this up... Kabuki theatre. Prostitution. The change from women to young boys to men, and the almost hilarious unflappably bisexual audience who embraced it. I don’t think it was a component of sexuality as any historians who have looked at that time period bothered to conceive of it. Because even in an early japanese mass culture scene, the relationship was between the audience and the persona, and not the audience and the actors; The audience was always in love with the characters in their collectible trading prints, with their 15th century waifus, and they paid to have sex with those personas regardless of the bodies or real people involved.

...

okay, so, I typed all that out weeks ago and then just left it in my drafts, not even really intending to come back to it. And now that I’m here, I don’t know that I had a point to this when i went on my drunk rant. But i guess if there was any kind of a take away from this, it’s that I find that people have a lot of trouble separating personal identity from gender, from performance, from social dynamics... and in western culture, especially within recent history/memory, that’s kind of understandably hard to untangle. But historically people’s sexuality and sense of attraction have basically always been based implicitly on attraction to an idea made manifest in a persona first, and a body to match it only secondarily to that;

Society’s abiding dedication to forcing you into a gendered box, and to box gender into a narrow range of performance, is equitable to screeching fans being “in love” with celebrities they’ve never met and convinced that the steady feed of curated marketed personality traits constitute “knowing” those celebrity strangers. The idea that the person and the persona are the same is a lie told to sell product. Gender is just the brand. You’re the rockstar. Fuck marketing.

#long ass rant #who is this even aimed at #what do i even tag this with

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arcanalogue · 5 years ago

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The Tower + The Force of Impact

This week is a sort of special anniversary for me. Exactly five years ago, I fell through the fire escape outside a friend’s apartment and broke three ribs. It was a serious injury, the bones were “grossly displaced” (I was morbidly delighted to learn this term), and the healing was very slow. And friends, as some of you may remember, the timing absolutely could not have been worse.

You see, just a month beforehand I’d moved out of the apartment I’d shared with my partner of over a decade. Not sure of my next steps, I packed everything into a storage unit, like so:

The unit was located in this fascinating old historical building, an old glue factory which had been converted into public storage. I’d ridden my bike past it so many times, I took a perverse pleasure in finally having an excuse to go inside, rent a tiny piece of it:

From there I embarked on a month of traveling across the country, mainly to get a leg up financially by not having to pay rent. It didn’t work! And when I returned to the city, I kept everything in storage while I took shelter in a temporary room I could scarcely afford. I decided to keep it monastically empty, like so:

Not even a bed to sleep in, because beds are FURNITURE, and furniture is not only EXPENSIVE, but signifies a symbolic COMMITMENT to the way things are going to be for a while.

I was determined to avoid defining my new reality that haphazardly, This, I imagined, was my one big chance to find the path forward, into THE FUTURE. I wanted to remain staggeringly open-minded, which would require the utmost clarity and simplicity. Starting anew with only the basics, I would hone my sensitivities and let them guide me to what was truly important.

And thus, the only piece of luggage I brought to the temporary room was the suitcase containing all of my ritual equipment, like so:

But then, within a week of setting up in the new space, came the fall. And with the injury came the kind of pain and fear that you simply can’t retreat from. I couldn’t rest, couldn’t think. I could barely commute to my storage space, let alone haul anything back from it. I didn’t have any goddamned money. Overnight, that spartan living space appeared quite different to me: it was devoid of comfort, and of possibilities. I was just a person with nothing, trapped in the borderlands, and my surroundings reflected that.

You almost had to laugh. Except I couldn’t, it hurt my bones.

I’ll spare you the gory details, but that winter ended up drop-kicking me into the deepest depression since my early twenties. There’s a special component of failure that age imparts to illness: fifteen years of growth, of important milestones and observations, but suddenly none of that is useful, or even accessible. Poof, gone.

And that carefully-packed suitcase full of ceremonial tchotchkes? It might as well have been filled with sand.

I made a lot of terrible decisions that winter, but can’t bring myself to regret them. I also made a lot of okay-ish decisions, and even some pretty good ones, all considered. A drowning person will grab onto anything that floats. At one point I spent about $200 of the money I didn’t have on new clothes: red socks, red pants, red sweaters, red everything. My gothic black-and-gray wardrobe suddenly felt like it was killing me, pulling me down. I needed to draw power from an external source, and color seemed to help.

That was the winter I began using the Salvador Dali tarot deck – I’d actually purchased it just hours before falling from that fire escape.

One of the few joys during those long months was discovering that these cards finally made sense to me, seemed to come alive in my hands. When I’d first explored them fifteen years earlier, Dali’s abstract impressions of the arcana had been too advanced for me; now the deck had practical use.

The colors in these cards inspired me to start painting again, and when I couldn’t think of anything to practice on, I’d just copy illustrations from the deck. It didn’t feel like I was making art, just crudely using water to push the paint around, constraining my focus to subjects that brought the kind of comfort and illumination that expired opioids barely scratched at.

The winter passed, and then the spring, and I managed to pull it all together just in time to lose it again, in the fall. Another heartbreak, concurrent with another physical injury, and many of the same conditions: another temporary room with no bed, my best things in storage, nothing in particular on the horizon suggesting that significant change was possible. Again. Again.

One of the ugliest parts of all this was knowing how much worse it could get, how many people have it much harder every single day. Some end up living their entire lives that way. Having risen out of such conditions earlier in life, I’d always been sympathetic to those who were still trapped; now, even sliding backward into hell, it felt uncharitable to complain too noisily.

However... and this is a pretty big however... I hate the idea of failure so passionately. It’s offensive to me on a profound level. Having climbed out of the depths of complete isolation and a shitty, abusive childhood, having catapulted myself across the country and gradually proved (to me, if no one else) how frightfully attainable so many dreams can be...

All that effort, and for what? To just implode and lay there dying in a nest of red socks?

From the first day I put my things in storage inside the historic Miller building, I wanted to climb it. Not the outside, silly. I wanted to find out how high one could actually ascend into that great big noggin perched on top. Considering how much of NYC building stewardship seems to resolve around making things LESS INTERESTING, I assumed it would be completely inaccessible.

I was wrong, friends. There was a staircase in the middle of the building that went up, up, all the way up! Due to a fair amount of recent construction on that wide plane of roof halfway up, they hadn’t bothered to block anything off. And from that midpoint, the stairs just kept going up. How far?

Finding out would be tricky, because I couldn’t afford to get caught and risk having my rental agreement canceled. And then once I broke my ribs, urban exploration was off the agenda for quite some time.

But at some point in 2015, I actually went back and climbed it several times, went all the way up.

On the plus side, there seemed to be no security cameras in the stairwell... but also, above the roof level there was no electricity, and the wooden stairs from that point upward hadn’t been inspected in... gosh, maybe fifty years?

Don’t worry, I was as “careful” as one could possibly be, even if there seemed to be nothing left to lose.

In that middle section of the building, three stories worth of crumbling wooden staircases climbed in total darkness brought one to the final threshold: a ladder leading to that uppermost chamber, the steps thin enough to bounce slightly underfoot.

It seems ungrateful to describe what I found up there “anticlimactic.” What did I expect, skulls hanging by the eye-sockets from chains? It was simply musty and derelict and mostly undisturbed. A bit of light came in from cracks between the boards, reminding me that I was at least a hundred feet above street level.

I had wanted to find some kind of ultimate truth up there in the darkness, even if it scared me all the way to death. So, the excitement of setting foot in a space that had remained unoccupied for so many years seemed like a mere consolation prize. I’d been bracing myself to be shattered, torn all the way apart.

Why was it almost a disappointment to survive, to ease myself back down the rickety ladder, descend those crumbling staircases through the guts of the Miller building, and scamper out onto the sidewalk no worse for wear, no one the wiser, completely unwarned and unscathed? To face the daylight again, no end to this journey in sight?

That’s how I feel sometimes about all the wonders that have come into my life since then, five years onward. The residual gloom isn’t dark enough to be horrifying, and the illumination is never quite bright enough to dispel the shadows.

I prayed to find this kind of equilibrium, and worked my way toward it so painstakingly; it’s such tedious work, if only because the extremes can be so attractive. The motion of flying back and forth between them is so exhilarating, the impact of a high-speed collision so marvelously unambiguous.

But if it’s truth you seek, the tedious work is literally all there is. Here’s a quote cadged from the last chapter of that book I’ve been studying again lately, Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism:

“He who aspires to authentic spiritual experiences never confounds the intensity of the experience undergone with the truth that is revealed — or is not revealed — through it, i.e. does not regard the force of impact of an inner experience as a criterion of its authenticity and truth. For an illusion stemming from the sphere of mirages can bowl you over, whilst a true revelation from above can take place in the guise of a scarcely perceptible inner whispering.”

Ah, but some of us have to learn everything the hard way.

Five years onward, I’m still the same person, would probably make all these decisions the same way. The only difference is that I can finally hear the whispering, a steady stream of it, and doubt I’ll ever again confuse the intensity of an experience with its “authenticity,” whatever that is. And the more urgently I’m tempted to do so, the more I have to question what it is I really hope to find out there, in the vastness of the future.

There’s a notorious phenomenon described as “failing up,” wherein some people manage to succeed in spite of their obvious shortcomings, spared certain consequences due to certain privileges such as wealth, gender, racial identity, etc.

But I want you to know, friends, that despite certain inescapable factors, there’s hope for any of us. Down can become up quite suddenly, and up can let you down. You can get flattened by a feather, or trip over a shoelace and end up on the roof.

You just have to stay alive long enough to see what happens next. And then for five minutes after that.

And then, gradually, five minutes at a time, this becomes five years. That’s about all I can really say about it from experience.

Wait, that’s not true: thank you, all of you, for helping me span those years and find my footing up and down the ladder.

Here’s hoping that we’re still brushing past each other in the dark in another five years, on our way to... somewhere, anywhere, but slowly, and according to scarcely perceptible whispers.

#triumphs #the tower #major arcana #tarot cards #depression

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fidelcastrato · 6 years ago

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Saturday Night Dead

A dull roar floods a small, derelict house and about a block of surrounding land all of a sudden, followed shortly by a piercing screech which acts as the conditioned stimulus to roughly 30-40 people between the ages of probably around 15 at the youngest, up to pushing-40, causing a mass salivation in response to the promise of real, proletariat, bullshit-free Punk Fucking Rawk™. Brando Murely himself sits on a cinder block outside the door, just enough out of the way of the crowd distractedly making its way inside, everyone in the middle of a conversation, turning around every few seconds to give their latest opinion on the eternal IHOP v. Waffle House crisis, shouting-match phone calls, drunken wobbling, stoned hobbling, and oh-that-sweet-cocaine's-a-calling. From Brando's arm dangles eazily-breezily a small bucket, perhaps formerly housing some domesticated plant, with the word "DONATIONS" written in sharpie on the side. He is only a few brainwaves away from REM sleep, that sultry temptress.

Avey and Fyo take their sweet time. The openers are about to play, now sound-checking, if you can really call it that (not to be rude, but the opening acts of these kinda shows were more often than not either local upstarts or local failures, and lacked some level of expertise in regards to acoustics, dynamics, levels and such), but they have both just lit a new cigarette. No worries, though; they've been around enough that they know the path straight to the front, if it should turn out that The Ushi Onis were worth front row listening.

Towards the back of the house stood in solidarity the introverts so in love with music, but so out of touch with people, the old farts who didn't really care anymore but still attended out of habit, the few (if extant) devout fans of another band on the line-up who just wanted to get it over with already, and the stray college kid; not any art or philosophy major, no, just some regular Joe (and hilariously enough, one independent study in "Crime and Punkishment", a locally famous zine, reported that 73.7% of these people were actually named Joe) who happened upon this utterly obscene proceeding via a stack of coincidence and misfortune--maybe they were there with some punk ladyfriend from class.

In the middle, by far the largest section, you could find pretty much anybody from anywhere. Regulars who still hear the heartbeat of the scene, newcomers enthusiastic but not enthusiastic enough to put themselves out for judgement if they happened to accidentally nod their heads a bit with the music (mortified.....), and that strange demographic that seemed to place itself starkly in the middle of all the aforementioned alignments; middle-of-the-roaders through and through, to the point where they have risen above the road, and the ideal of the road, and smugly glance at one another and then down to you as if to imply a transcendence which those of us who have ever experienced anything in extreme can never know of.

Front and center, ears blasted to bits and facial muscles entering anaerobic respiration due to excessive smiling, the All-Stars of the scene danced alongside strangers, either naïve or drunk. The frontmen of the most famous local bands, the influencers, both silent and megaphonic, the photographers, the beauties, the hype-builders, the next band, the people who arranged this show in the first place, all of them stood in almost equal amounts of admiration as the performing act themselves. The rich and famous of the DIY; the proletariat bourgeoisie; the broke stock brokers; the soothsayers and the fortune tellers; basically, the people you want to know.

"Hey, let's make a film tomorrow" says Fyo.

"About what?" from Avey.

"Who cares? Let's climb that billboard at the top of the hill. Let's hop on a train and record the city from like, some weird dutch angle, or something. Let's see how many cats can fit in one box."

"We could never find enough cats for that. All of our friends have like two cats at least, including me, and that still wouldn't be close to enough."

"Let's give the camera some 4-aco-dmt and see what happens."

"Easy on the Adderall, bub."

Fyo had a pretty publicly-known problem with stimulants, which he was recently combatting with a burgeoning benzodiazepine habit. Avey's personal dog hair was Kratom. Both of them partook in casual use of just about every recreational substance at this point, always especially eager to try something new. They still more or less had a handle on their sanity, but not without their eccentricities. Both had a deep love for consumption and creation of art, primarily music; between them they owned a veritable arsenal of digital and analog synthesizers, samplers, ancient MIDI keyboards, melodicas, and various novelty instruments collected over the years. Each had their own individual recording endeavors, as well as a joint operation making full use of their combined setup. They had played shows, Fyo more than Avey on account of having played in front of various kinds of audiences since the age of 15, from dull high school jazz band performances to the exact kind of venue they found themselves at tonight--in fact he'd played at this house several times already in the past year. “Holy House”, one of the few legit punk houses remaining in the city after a long string of misfortunes over the past two years lead to some places being shut down, others burning down, some simply forgotten about, living on only in the ink of flyers taped to the walls of just about every DIY art kid in the area--it was kind of like collecting baseball cards. Avey had played a couple of the more fleeting art spots once or twice, but was generally overcome with anxiety at the last minute.

Now three cigarettes in a row have been smoked, throughout yet more overly-anxious stim-fueled artistic brainstorming, both Avey and Fyo silently assuming that tomorrow would in reality consist of the same events as every other Saturday; recovering from the debauchery of the previous night, maybe with a half-hour or so of absent-minded musical improvisation.

The Ushi Onis had completed their set, and from what they heard from outside, it was agreed that their nonsense conversations were about on equal footing with the music, as far as time-wasting went. Not that they were bad, it's just.....it seemed as though they'd heard this same band hundreds of times, despite the fact this was their debut show. It seemed to Fyo, who had been in attendance for, shit, a decade now, that every show more-or-less went the same these days. You could even predict non-music related events. There was the guy who got way too drunk and was basically floating around the crowd, eyes only half-open, flailing around off-rhythm in a disconcertingly unhuman way during particularly intense performances--Fyo himself had been this guy on more occasions than he'd like to admit, as well as more occasions than he could literally remember. There was the creep getting kicked out for being creepy; that was a very strict rule for this scene, "NO CREEPS". You'd see it on basically any given flyer. House shows did tend to attract these creeps, what with the combination of pretty, young, and drug-addicted attributes of many of the female frequenters. Thankfully, Fyo had never been that guy. There was the kind of slapstick situation that occurred immediately after every band played, where the members of the other bands playing that night would come up and say "Hey, great set, what pedals do you use?" and then annoy the shit out of the poor guys just trying to fucking get their drums in the van, only for the same thing to happen to the original complimentary artists. Nobody ever learned their lesson. Nobody ever learned their lesson, forever and ever. This pretty much sums up the stagnation that Fyo has recently come to observe within the scene.

"Hey, I'm done here, if you are. Head back to my place?"

"Right you are."

The four-minute drive back to Fyo's apartment left just enough time to blair at obnoxious volume Avey's favorite song by The Mountain Goats (at least, his favorite song that day--the song changed frequently, but The Goats always remained Mountainous). On the way upstairs, Avey got a text from Tomie: "Beck pulled through. Pool party?"

So Avey said to Fyo; "Beck pulled through. Pool party?"

"Fuckin duh."

Tomie was a close friend as well as ex-girlfriend to both Avey and Fyo. Beck was their communal coke dealer. Fyo was the only person in The Crew whose apartment had a pool, and it was the deep depths of summer, so late night swimming was a common occurrence. Tonight, Tomie had brought Beck along (who surely had more coke, and anyone can see that hanging out with a coke dealer, who definitely had plenty of coke to spare, would certainly turn out to be a fun time--Fyo knew this from experience, as an old friend, Jericho, also happened to be a coke dealer before moving off to.....fuck-knows-where; Fyo wasn't sure WHY they hung out so much exactly, or why Jericho had given him so much free coke in those days; Jericho was gay, but Fyo didn't really feel like he could possibly be desirable enough to warrant such favor, especially with his [back then, at least] very socially awkward mannerisms, even after several lines of really honestly pretty great coke--although, Fyo [himself being hetero, this only now in the narrative needing to be made clear] usually thought the same thing about ladies he spent time with, and surprisingly often was proven wrong) as well as invited Fitch, who invited Les, who invited Beck, who invited Lil, who invited Vick, who invited.....

.....

Noujeff.

"Wait you say WHO the fuck is coming to my apartment???" Fyo demands answers.

"Shit, I'm sorry Fyo. I didn't know Vick was friends with him, don't know why he still is. We'll tell him to fuck off once he gets here, waste some gas at least. But hey.....The Crew here ain't gettin' any younger, so let's fuckin' get to it. Pick a record already."

The Crew was, in no particular order:

Avey, reserved but strong-willed and resilient, and disarmingly cunning; he once got Fyo, his on-and-off-again girlfriend Elise, and himself a free pass to this really exclusive music festival in what can only be described as an "experimental city"--FORM Arcosanti was the name of the festival (the town being just "Arcosanti"), located smack dab in the middle of the deserts of Arizona, where Fyo first glimpsed that now-out-of-reach image, occasionally dreamt or half-remembered, of a lone mountain, in the middle of one of the least forgiving deserts in an entire superpower-nation's worth of land, one of the hottest and driest places around, soaring so high into The Places We Cannot Reach, the great heights, the domain of myth and fiction more than anything, of a mountain seen from the road of a lonely desert which had a peak covered, even here in the frenzied peaks of July, the radioactive horror show burning of July, a peak covered in SNOW. Beautiful, nostalgic (and always nostalgic, for there was no "winter" in Arizona), almost, no yes certainly CLEANSING snow. The rest of the trip only got better. That is all we'll say of it, for now;

Fyo, the one whose thoughts we gain direct access to (to hell with a fourth wall; give me 50, 500, 5,000,000 more walls, and I will break them all), generally responsible, has a dependable job as a pharmacy technician, "almost" a real job, and two major flaws; here we move into

1.) Intense Manic Episodes On a Yearly, Predictable Basis

-----

Every year, in the period of time spanning between around March and June-Mid-July, Fyo would suffer an intense clinical episode of mania; he would become obsessive over ideas so obscure and opaque that he only sounded like a lunatic when describing them, and indulged in drug abuse as if suicidal, and more than once now had indeed proven to be so. Fyo would and did argue, however, that during these periods of admittedly (even by him) questionable ties to reality, his artistic output became noticeably higher in both quantity and quality than what was usually found in his "seasonal depression" (so-called) episodes during the months of October-February. No psychiatrist has yet explained this adequately.

2.) An Unhealthy Obsession With All Forms of Art, As Well As the Definition of Art Itself

-----

From a very young age, Fyo had shown great interest in art, and strangely enough but of course conspicuously naturally, surrealist art in particular. At 12, on a family vacation to Florida for the purposes of the (back then affordable even by the lower-middle-class family, with some planning) relaxation of the beach and the primal thrill of the Great Twin Amusement Parks, he devoted a day to visiting the Salvador Dali museum in St. Petersburg, Florida; a couple years later, the very first band he was in (at 15 years old) was named after Dali's "The Burning Giraffe". Then he gradually caught on to the growing web of obscurities, myths, exaggerations, half-truths, genuine enigmas, and philosophical contradictions that were accepted by some as truth, and saw the art embedded in life; and in the mirror, he saw the reflection of such, and in that he saw things that moved him in ways he was naïve to previously. That's how he got older. That's how he saw that the waking life was just as absurd as the dream. All that mattered was which space he occupied at a given time;

Tomie, as mentioned previously was both a close friend and ex-girlfriend to both Avey and Fyo. Each relationship was separated by such distance (spatially and temporally) that it really didn't matter, everyone had moved on cross-country and it was just nice to have people just fuckin' caring about each other, you know? Tomie was not afraid to bite into you in a very personal way, as long as she knew it would help you. She was a great ally to have in the world, if sometimes blunt; but this bluntness was out of a genuine kindness and invariably proved effective somehow. If you trusted anyone's advice, it was Tomie's;

Fitch, constantly in-and-out of jail for something or other, after so many years the circumstances blurred out a bit. Being eternally and self-admittedly impermanent, he always seemed almost as if acting in repentance to the best of his abilities; but around people like this, hope for repentance was laughable;

Lil, probably the most adult of the group, an ex-girlfriend of Fyo from back in the day, had worked her way to a very well-paying analytics gig. She still found herself hanging around with these wannabe artists and revolutionaries, for whatever reason; she was certainly always welcome, and that gave her a warm, content feeling.....

"Pick a goddamn record" says Lil.

Every time The Crew got together for some midnight coke-fueled swimming, someone got to ceremoniously choose a record from Fyo's collection, off of which the cover of the cocaine would be inhaled. It was Fyo's night. He was having trouble deciding. The record that was chosen would also be played on the record player while the lines were being drawn and erased; the lines themselves were on the sleeve, the small but not ignorable visual component of the LP. He looked through his stack; Joyce Manor (played a show with them before they became big--frontman was kind of an asshole. No.), The Antlers (far too sad for shamelessly inhaled thrills), Talking Heads (no, we'll just end up putting "Once In a Lifetime" on repeat), no, no, no, no.....LCD Soundsystem? Hm. Yeah, this one. Sound of Silver, talk to me.

"Fuckin' finally. Okay let's get this train wreck a-rollin'."

Greed filled the eyes of everyone in the room. Along with record-choosing duties came the first line of the night. Fyo lays down one FAT fucking line, finely crushed almost down to the individual molecule it seemed, grabs the closest straw, leans over and looks down at the snowy mountain range here in the middle of the silver desert, and unflatteringly snorts with all his might, and feels each crystal immediately begin its own personal attack on his neurotransmitters, leans back to make sure everything falls into the mucous membrane, nothing wasted, except for Fyo himself, and steps back to fall comically onto the couch, a smile of contentment and even relief overtaking his facial expression as Nancy Whang chants "You can normalize. Don't it make you feel alive?"

This. This is the life.

#fiction #short story #drugs #punk #punk rock #diy #metamodern #metaphysical #arkansas #little rock #lcd soundsystem #surrealism #salvador dali #addiction

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pope-francis-quotes · 6 years ago

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5th May >> (@ZenitEnglish) #PopeFrancis #Pope Francis #PopeinBulgaria Holy Father’s Homily at Mass in Knyaz Alexandar I Square, Sofia (Full Text) #zenitisontheground

Holy Father’s Homily at Mass in Knyaz Alexandar I Square, Sofia (Full Text)

‘It is wonderful to see how with these words Christians in your country greet one another in the joy of the Risen Lord during the Easter season.’

Pope Francis celebrated Mass in Knyaz Alexandar I Square, Sofia, Bulgaria, on May 5, 2019. It was a major event in his apostolic journey to Bulgaria and North Macedonia, May 5-7.

Following is the Vatican-provided text of the Holy Father’s homily at Mass

Dear Brothers and Sisters, Christ is risen!

It is wonderful to see how with these words Christians in your country greet one another in the joy of the Risen Lord during the Easter season.

The entire episode we have just heard, drawn from the final pages of the Gospels, helps us immerse ourselves in this joy that the Lord asks us to spread. It does so by reminding us of three amazing things that are part of our lives as disciples: God calls, God surprises, God loves.

God calls. Everything takes place on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus first called Peter. He had called him to leave behind his trade as a fisher in order to become a fisher of men (cf. Lk 5:4-11). Now, after all, that had happened to him, after the experience of seeing the Master die and hearing news of his resurrection, Peter goes back to his former life. He tells the others disciples, “I am going fishing”. And they follow suit: “We will go with you” (Jn 21:3). They seem to take a step backward; Peter takes up the nets he had left behind for Jesus. The weight of suffering, disappointment, and of betrayal had become like a stone blocking the hearts of the disciples. They were still burdened with pain and guilt, and the good news of the resurrection had not taken root in their hearts.

The Lord knows what a strong temptation it is for us to return to the way things were before. In the Bible, Peter’s nets, like the fleshpots of Egypt, are a symbol of a tempting nostalgia for the past, of wanting to take back what we had decided to leave behind. In the face of failure, hurt, or even the fact that at times things do not go the way we want, there always comes a subtle and dangerous temptation to become disheartened and to give up. This is the tomb psychology that tinges everything with dejection and leads us to indulge in a soothing sense of self-pity that, like a moth, eats away at all our hope. Then the worst thing that can happen to any community begins to appear – the grim pragmatism of a life in which everything appears to proceed normally, while in reality faith is wearing down and degenerating into small-mindedness (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 83).

But it was at the very moment of Peter’s failure that Jesus appears, starts over, patiently comes to him and calls him “Simon” (v. 15) – the name Peter received when he was first called. The Lord does not wait for perfect situations or frames of mind: he creates them. He does not expect to encounter people without problems, disappointments, sins or limitations. He himself confronted sin and disappointment in order to encourage all men and women to persevere. Brothers and sisters, the Lord never tires of calling us. His is the power of a Love that overturns every expectation and is always ready to start anew. In Jesus, God always offers us another chance. He calls us day by day to deepen our love for him and to be revived by his eternal newness. Every morning, he comes to find us where we are. He summons us “to rise at his word, to look up and to realize that we were made for heaven, not for earth, for the heights of life and not for the depths of death”, and to stop seeking “the living among the dead” (Homily at the Easter Vigil, 20 April 2019). When we welcome him, we rise higher and are able to embrace a brighter future, not as a possibility but as a reality. When Jesus’s call directs our lives, our hearts grow young.

God surprises. He is the Lord of surprises. He invites us not only to be surprised but also to do surprising things. The Lord calls the disciples and, seeing them with empty nets, he tells them to do something odd: to fish by day, something quite out of the ordinary on that lake. He revives their trust by urging them once more to take a risk, not to give up on anyone or anything. He is the Lord of surprises, who breaks down paralyzing barriers by filling us with the courage needed to overcome the suspicion, mistrust, and fear that so often lurk behind the mindset that says, “We have always done things this way”. God surprises us whenever he calls and asks us to put out into the sea of history not only with our nets but with our very selves. To look at our lives and those of others as he does, for “in sin, he sees sons and daughters to be restored; in death, brothers and sisters to be reborn; in desolation, hearts to be revived. Do not fear, then: the Lord loves your life, even when you are afraid to look at it and take it in hand” (ibid.).

We can now turn to the third amazing thing: God calls and God surprises because God loves. Love is his language. That is why he asks Peter, and us, to learn that language. He asks Peter: “Do you love me?” And Peter says yes; after spending so much time with Jesus, he now understands that to love means to stop putting himself at the center. He now makes Jesus, and not himself, the starting point: “You know everything” (Jn 21:18), he says. Peter recognizes his weakness; he realizes that he cannot make progress on his own. And he takes his stand on the Lord and on the strength of his love, to the very end. The Lord loves us: this is the source of our strength and we are asked to reaffirm it each day. Being a Christian is a summons to realize that God’s love is greater than all our shortcomings and sins. One of our great disappointments and difficulties today comes not from knowing that God is love, but that our way of proclaiming and bearing witness to him is such that, for many people, this is not his name. God is love that loves, that bestows itself, that calls and surprises.

Here we see the miracle of God, who makes of our lives works of art if only we let ourselves to be led by his love. Many of the witnesses of Easter in this blessed land created magnificent masterpieces, inspired by simple faith and great love. Offering their lives, they became living signs of the Lord, overcoming apathy with courage and offering a Christian response to the concerns that they encountered (cf. Christus Vivit, 174). Today we are called to lift up our eyes and acknowledge what the Lord has done in the past, and to walk with him towards the future, knowing that, whether we succeed or fail, he will always be there to keep telling us to cast our nets. Here I would like to repeat what I said to young people in my recent Exhortation. A young Church, young not in terms of age but in the grace of the Spirit, is inviting us to testify to the love of Christ, a love that inspires and directs us to strive for the common good. This love enables us to serve the poor and to become protagonists of the revolution of charity and service, capable of resisting the pathologies of consumerism and superficial individualism. Brimming with the love of Christ, be living witnesses of the Gospel in every corner of this city (cf. Christus Vivit, 174-175). Do not be afraid of becoming the saints that this land greatly needs. Do not be afraid of holiness. It will take away none of your energy, vitality or joy. On the contrary, you and all the sons and daughters of this land will become what the Father had in mind when he created you (cf. Gaudete et Exsultate, 32).

Called, surprised and sent for love! [00743-EN.01] [Original text: Italian]

5th MAY 2019 16:07PAPAL TRIPS

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mainsminds · 2 years ago

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Astalon tears of the earth secrets

ASTALON TEARS OF THE EARTH SECRETS UPGRADE

Strengthen your party and change their fate by embracing death. Slay terrible monsters, discover powerful artifacts, and solve fiendish puzzles, reaching new heights in the tower with the aid of a dark titan. Use the unique skills and weapons of Arias the warrior, Kyuli the archer, and Algus the wizard, to surmount the mysterious tower and find the answers to their survival. But what fate lies in store for the heroes and their village?Īstalon: Tears Of The Earth is an action-platformer set in a dying world where life is cruel, but death can be a stepping stone to victory. In order to ensure their victory, one of them has made a secret pact with the lord Epithemeus, allowing them to reincarnate until they have accomplished their mission. They soon find a dark, twisted tower that has risen from the depths of the planet and seemingly holds the key to their survival. Use campfires to save your progress, change characters, and discover details about the heroes’ pasts.Three heroic explorers wander the post-apocalyptic desert on a mission to save their village’s resources from despair. Collect a variety of incredible artifacts such as the “Sword of Mirrors” that will bestow your characters with new abilities and open new possibilities.

ASTALON TEARS OF THE EARTH SECRETS UPGRADE

Upgrade your characters’ abilities and change the course of destiny by making deals with Epimetheus - the Titan of Death. Battle against a large assortment of different enemies, giant monsters, and epic bosses! Choose the right hero to find the weaknesses of the creatures that stand in your way! Cleared all flashing points on the map (except 2 unreachable red HP and another. I seems to me I'm missing a hero because I got a morning star item usable only by Bran, supposedly to break orange hollow blocks. Switch between your heroes and utilize the unique abilities of a warrior, archer and wizard to progress through the game. A double locked door in deep subteranean is nlocking me, both white and blue but I can't find the last white key. Play at your own pace - explore thoroughly and build your characters strengths, or use risky methods to slice your way up the tower furiously! Original character design by Ryusuke Mita, creator of world-famous manga Dragon Half! Relive the glory days of 8-bit action-adventure through beautifully detailed, authentic pixel art set in a dark, fantastic world! Astalon features the progressive exploration of an interconnected world with the swiftness and quick rhythm of a room-by-room action platformer. Discover the countless secrets of the Tower of Serpents! Follow a story about friendship and sacrifice, building up the courage to take down giants to protect the weak and powerless. Slay terrible monsters, discover powerful artifacts, and solve fiendish puzzles, reaching new heights in the tower with the aid of a Titan. But what fate lies in store for the heroes and their village?Īstalon: Tears Of The Earth is an action-platformer set in a dying world where life is cruel, but death can be a stepping stone to victory! Use the unique skills and weapons of Arias the fighter, Kyuli the rogue, and Algus the wizard, to surmount the mysterious tower and find the answers to their survival. In order to ensure their victory, one of them has made a secret pact with the Titan of Death, Epimetheus, allowing them to reincarnate until they have accomplished their mission. Three heroic explorers wander the post-apocalyptic desert on a mission to save their village from despair. Uphold your pact with the Titan of Death, Epimetheus! Fight, climb and solve your way through a twisted tower as three unique adventurers, on a mission to save their village from impending doom!

#Astalon tears of the earth secrets

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othercat2 · 6 years ago

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Fic: Build a Life From Scratch 6/?

Exercises in Attempting to Keep Two Idiots from Killing Each Other

Highblood wants no part of your ashen wiles. “Could break you in half, with a snap of my fingers,” he says when you bring it up during arts and crafts hour. He’s knapping flint and you’re sanding the wood pieces of the macuahuitl that Demoness had shaped.

“I’m not exactly thrilled either, but apparently someone needs to cock block the pitch thing,” you say.

“You know fuck all about pitch,” Highblood says looking up at you from his work. His eyes are weird, bright and sharp, looking right into you and seeing who the fuck knows what. He goes back to shaping his current flint. “It’s not pitch I’m feeling for a blaspheming dirt blood heretic and it’s not ashen I’m feeling for a pasty little legume like you.”

“Well, why don’t you school me?” you ask. Yeah, you’re not going to address the little bean comment. Highblood is fucking huge; you’re shy of six feet. Not getting into a pissing contest about you’re comparative heights.

“Demoness set you on me ashen, and you don’t even know pitch?” Highblood asks.

“Blah blah rivalry, blah blah hate sex,” you say, making mouth movements with one hand. “Catskin does apparently hate you like that and doesn’t want to. You apparently don’t hate her like that.” You point a thumb at your chest. “Therefore me, from my understanding of the ashen thing.”

“Like fuck you,” Highblood says. “How do you know she’s pitch for me?”

“I talked to her, remember? It didn’t translate well, but I’m pretty sure that’s what she was saying. You being the first troll she saw after however long fucked her up.”

Highblood doesn’t say anything for a while. He finishes off the point and sets it aside with the others. “It’s a powerful thing, being alone and lost for a time, and then seeing another face,” he says. “I thought my ticket had been torn when I awoke in the wilderness, and was mad with the grief and rage of it. I saw the Demoness and blamed her for it, and we spent a season fighting over it. She can bowl me over like I’m a wiggler, and her mind knows no mortal fear. You are not equal to that in the ashen quadrant.”

“Fuck you, I chopped a huge as fuck goddamn meteor in half,” you say. “While it was falling. I could take you.”

Highblood snorts, and glances up at you with a lazy sort of amusement. You feel the sweep of his personal terror field and struggle not to shiver at the weight of it. “How big was that meteor?”

You give a one shoulder shrug. “Bigger than your ugly ass,” you say, trying for a casual tone.

The fear is a sharp anxiety, a hyper focus on how dangerous the huge ass troll is on the other end of the table. Sharp teeth, gleaming eyes, a goddamn monster that can pull you apart, break you like a doll. He was so much bigger than you, so much stronger than you, he could do whatever he wanted, and you wouldn’t be able to stop him. He could reduce you to pulp; make you beg for death for days before actually killing you.

The hobbit hole seems to fade out; all that exists are Highblood’s burning eyes, and the awareness of how terrified you are of him. The fear soaks right in, fills you up and spills over. It freezes you in place, and you can’t breathe. You stare at Highblood--

--At Kurloz Makara who teetered between faith and the loss of that faith. Who had despaired and was only just now starting to live. Who had received the terrible knowledge of his false faith with a Rage that had not yet risen from the depths of his subconscious mind. Who was held by his devotion for his brothers in faith, by his devotion for the very few he pitied. Who--

--You throw a handful of sand into his eyes and abscond like the Devil was on your tail, in a flat out run straight for the goddamn woods. You hear a roar and swearing behind you. You don’t look back because that would take away valuable absconding seconds. You run and dodge between trees, stumble through a tiny little stream, and almost fall into a not so tiny ravine.

It takes some time to realize he’s not coming after you. You collapse on an incline full of flowers, greenery, grass and saplings, hoping like hell the greenery you’re lying on doesn’t turn out to be poison ivy or some shit. You’re surrounded by trees, and it’s pretty quiet, probably because of the racket you made absconding.

You breathe and watch the flowers and grass move in the breeze. There’s bugs too; butterflies and grasshoppers and the occasional bee. There’s a lot to watch; little glowing sparks of life that are not actually glowing, it just seems like they are. It would be easy to reach out and touch a spark and know it the way you’d known Highblood.

This feels like a weird thought to have; weird and way too intense to handle, suddenly, now that you’re not running. It’s too bright, too much. You curl up and think about how long the deeply rooted grass has been coming up, year after year. It dies off but keeps coming back, determined as the year before despite being cropped down, drowned, and frozen. Seeds germinated and sprouted, and what was deeply rooted grew back. This is as much as can be handled right now; grass and flowers and other greenery. The glow was there, you could still sense what was going on with it, but there wasn’t a lot going on; just the same cycle, over and over again. It was nice, comforting.

Footsteps are less comforting. You look up, and it’s too much again. Catskin, her grief and love fills her. The memories of her loved ones surround her. There’s a deepness to her, a strength and faith and continues on despite grief and defeat. There’s anger, a determination to survive and pass her faith and determination on to others. “Close your eyes,” she says.

For whatever reason, you do that thing.

“What were you focused on, before?” she asks. She sounds like she knows what the fuck is going on, and the part of you that went along the first order shudders in relief. The rest of you tries to find a way to tell her to fuck off, you’re fine.

“The grass.” Saying it feels like a struggle.

“Yeah, that’s always good. Do that now. Just the grass.” Her voice is quiet. “Tell me about the grass.”

So you tell her how there was a forest fire a few decades back, during a dry summer followed by a bunch of lightning storms. What came back was a few struggling weeds, followed by the grass. You talk about the grass, its roots and seeds and the way it spreads. You talk about seasons and changes in the weather and changes in the soil. You talk about saplings and moles and earthworms tunneling through the dirt. The glow doesn’t fade, but it gets easier to deal with, somehow.

You look up, and it’s not so bright anymore. Catskin is sitting a few feet away, watching you. “Hey.” Just catching some rays, absolutely no freaking out here. Catskin [Disciple, Meulin Leijon] is still this intense, layered presence, but it’s toned down.

“How do you feel?” she asks.

“Like my head’s been turned inside out,” you tell her. You sit up, moving slow and cautious.

Catskin makes this humming sound. “I think that maybe, you’re like me,” she says.

“And what are you like, Sheena?” you ask.

“I can see things being alive,” she says. “Makes tracking prey so much easier.” She smiles with all of her teeth at that. They are all very, very sharp, and her jaw looks really strong. You know without knowing how, and not wanting to know at all that she’s ripped out throats with her jaws and teeth.

“I was probably not hard to track at all, princess,” you say. “Probably left a trail a blind Girl Scout could follow.”

Catskin laughs at you. “I wasn’t threatening you by implication,” she says. “Did it sound like that?” You stare at her, and hums, sounding pleased with herself. “Not on purrpose,” she says. “I saw--flares? From the hive, one almost matched my color, and one was the same color as the highblood, and you came rushing out of the hive, so I followed you.”

“Your color?”

Catskin cups her palms together briefly, and for a moment you see a bright pink flame in her hands. “That color!” she says. She tilts her head a bit. “You’re still pretty meowch that color.”

You look down at yourself instinctively, but you don’t seem to be bright fuchsia. Then you hear what she said. “Did you just…cat pun at me?”

She gives you a big Cheshire Cat grin. “Yes?”

You shake your head like, okay, whatever. “Flares?” you ask.

“It felt like something happened,” she says. “I wasn’t sure what, but it felt like what it must have felt from the outside when it first happened to me.”

You work your way through that. “And what, you wanted to help?”

She shrugs. “I’m not, not going to help because I’m angry. It was frightening and confusing for me when it started happening to me, and if I can help, I should.”

“Even though I’m roomies with Satan and his girlfriend?” you ask, a little skeptically. Okay, she had helped, but she had also been lurking out in the woods, greatly limiting your ability to get your roam on.

“Should I judge you for doing what felt safest?” she asks.

You don’t like the way she says that. You really, really don’t like the way she says that. She says it like you didn’t have a choice or something. (Like she thinks you’re some kind of victim.) It also occurs to you that if you’re seeing her, she’s seeing you; and you like that even less. (What the hell is she seeing?) “Okay so, my options were camping, which I’ve never done because I’m a city boy, and maybe dying from bad water or berries that turned out to be bird edible but not person edible or taking up Demoness on her invitation. Is there something wrong with that?”

“Of course not,” she says. “But I notice that you ran in terror from one of your ‘roommates.’”

“He didn’t take my offer of being his ‘middle leaf’ too well,” you say. “Then I could see his soul, so I threw sand in his face and ran like hell.”

“Middle leaf?” Catskin asks with extreme puzzlement.

“Is ashen not actually a thing?” you ask. If so it was one hell of a practical joke.

“Oh, it’s a thing, but it’s obvious you and he couldn’t be ashen for each other!” Catskin says, sounding pretty surprised at the idea. “Not the way you spar.”

“…There’s a way people who are ashen spar?” you ask.

“If you’re the middle leaf, he should be intimidated by you, just a little!” Catskin says. “At the same time, he should be challenging your authority as the middle leaf, just enough that he can be reassured your feelings remain conciliatory. Of course it’s harder to tell with Highbloods, but still! He isn’t the tiniest bit ashen, from his body language.”

“Yeah well, there’s no one else to do it,” you tell her. “Demoness doesn’t want to ‘flip ashen.’”

“And the Grand Highblood doesn’t find a dirtblood worthy,” Catskin says with an ugly sneer and an undertone that sends a shiver down your spine.

“You don’t exactly find him worthy either,” you point out.

The undertone becomes a growl. “No. I have no respect for him.”

“But he’s apparently a sexy beast,” you say. “I can kind of see it actually. You’d have to have one hell of a humiliation and size kink though.”

“Wouldn’t be properly pitch, that needs respect even if you’re mocking your kismesis. Wouldn’t be properly red, he’d mean it, so it wouldn’t be pity,” Catskin says. “How could he be pale?”

“I don’t know anything about quadrants,” you say. “Demoness wants to fix him, which according to her, is what ‘moirallegiance’ is about. He seems like that she isn’t scared of him and apparently likes being dominated by her.”

Catskin snickers. “You have no idea what a perversion that should be, in his mind,” she says.

“From what I’ve overheard it apparently doesn’t count if the ‘dirtblood’ is actually a terrifying demigoddess who can hold you down and snuggle you to death.”

“They’ve piled in front of you?” Catskin asks with a little bubble of laughter.

“Not as such,” you tell her. “I’m guessing that’s pretty scandalous?”

“Oh yes,” Catskin says. “Mother would blush so hard when we cuddled together, and tell us that the visiting block wasn’t the proper place for such shenanigans. Then Psii would drag her into the pile and she’d pretend to be grumpy about it for the first fifteen minutes before she started purring, and braiding my hair.” She’s smiling, but it’s kind of sad at the same time, you’re pretty sure.

“So, you know they’re probably alive now, right?” you ask her. This is a question you don’t know how to ask politely. You sure as hell can’t do gentle.

“Are they?” she asks, longing in a way that makes you feel pretty damn uncomfortable. “I’ve only found…him.” She makes a face. “And I suppose the Handmaiden of Death.”

“Demoness,” Demoness’ voice says from above you. You startle a bit, and look up. You just as quickly look away. She went even deeper than [Meulin] or [Kurloz] and there were things you didn’t want to see. “I am Demoness,” she repeats, angrily. “Not Handmaid. Never Handmaid again.”

“The ‘H’ word has kind of worn out,” you explain to Catskin, who looks somewhere between startled and angry.

“I am not afraid of you, Demoness.” Catskin growls and jumps to her feet. “If my family is alive, where are they?”

“I don’t know,” Demoness says. “The world is big, we’ll find them eventually.”

“We?” Catskin asks. “There is no ‘we’ here.”

“There was a ‘we’,” Demoness says. “You don’t remember. It wasn’t a good ‘we’, and we fucked everything up and did it over again, and that was worse. Kankri remembers some of it.”

“How do you know that name?” Catskin asks, outraged.

Demoness smiles and it’s a pretty terrifying expression. “I saw all of it, every twist and manipulation of the Demon’s fucked up game, and I had to fucking follow every step. And now we live again and are free of the game, though there is one more thing we must do before this universe is complete.”

Catskin looks confused and wondering, staring up at Demoness. You’re pretty sure she’s seeing some of the same things you saw. Catskin flickers fuchsia all over, a heartbeat pulse. “Oh,” she says quietly.

“Don’t want your pity,” Demoness says, baring her teeth at Catskin.

“It continues to exist,” Catskin says. “I am still angry at what you’ve done. But I will also be angry at what was done to you.

“Fuck. You.”

“Pity is nothing to fear, it’s part of the social structure that binds us into communities and civilization. It does this far more kindly than the caste system which divides us and causes resentment and conflict. You saw it and you had to destroy it. Did you see the possibilities of a society based in love of all kinds? Were you envious of what was beaten out of you?” From the dreamy look in Catskin’s eyes, you are pretty sure she doesn’t really know what she’s saying. She also obviously can’t hear Demoness’ rising growl or the whining pitch of the wands you know are in the Demoness’ hands.

You bounce to your feet and get in Catskin’s grill. “Hey, Meulin, could you fucking not?!” You shout. She startles back from you, striking out mostly blind. You catch her arm. “Can you not see you’re pissing her off?”

Catskin blinks at you in confusion. “I--?”

“Yes you,” you say. You are hyper aware you are too close to someone Demoness is very, very pissed at. You are also pretty sure she won’t shoot Catskin if you’re this close to her. “Demoness?” You get a growl in response. “Okay so Catskin has some kind of dealie where she can apparently see into your soul--”

“Heart. Meulin was Mage of Heart,” Demoness says. “I was Witch of Time.”

“That’s great, really great,” you say. “Anyway, she wasn’t trying to piss you off; she just saw too much and started babbling.”

“Babbling?” Catskin asks, sounding insulted. You don’t care.

“So maybe don’t kill her,” you continue. “It wasn’t her fault, and really, you wanted to get everyone together so the gods can come through or whatever and you might need her later.”

“So she is planning something,” Catskin says.

“Gods. Coming through. One of them is my little brother,” you tell her. “Kind of important he and his friends come through and claim the prize.”

“I don’t understand anything,” Catskin says. “Let me go.”

You let her go, and you hear Demoness land behind you.

“There is a Game,” Demoness says. “A Game that creates universes. Our Game was interfered with by a Demon that infiltrates and destroys them.” She starts explaining the Game and the five or so universe pile up your conjoined sessions consist of.

You stay between them for the whole story, until you’re pretty sure they’ve both calmed down. Catskin is skeptical of “gods” especially gods that were actually little kids when they entered the session. She asks questions and argues a little, but politely. Demoness argues less politely. You’re kind of stuck in the middle wondering how the hell this happened.

At the end of it, when they’ve gotten their argue out, Demoness asks you, “Are you coming back to the hive?”

“That depends, is your boyfriend going to tear me in half?”

Demoness snorts. “No. Worried he pushed too hard, the way you ran off.

“Eleven foot troll, a number of kinks too weird even for me, no concept of personal space or safewords, kind of homicidal, I wonder why I ran off when he tried to scare the shit out of me?” A beat. “Oh sweet Jesus, why do I know his fucking kinks?”

Catskin makes a kind of choking noise at that. Demoness cackles.

Back

#homestuck #build a life #fan fic #bro strider #godstuck

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bettersex4u · 6 years ago

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TO BE TOUCHED BY HER IS TO BEGIN THE JOURNEY HOME

By Sophie Bashford 💛

There is a band of women present on this earth who are carrying flaming torches for the evolution of humanity.

These women are rare, unique, highly-crafted jewels of the ancient feminine spirit.

These women possess more courage, resilience and perseverance than is fathomable.

These women have silently walked through thousands upon thousands of years to find themselves back here on earth, charged with the task of re-awakening the deep feminine soul to humanity and earth.

Emerging one by one from the etheric temples of Shakti in all Her forms, the Awakened Women plant their naked feet on the barren soil of earth. Glistening with the radiant dew of communion with Divine Love, bodies supple and fluid with free-flowing Kundalini, Third Eyes wide open and streaming cosmic codes of truth, hair flaming and blazing with wild, unashamed passion, hands moving spontaneously to touch the wounds of Gaia's Soul and love Her back to Life.

The Awakened Women do not announce themselves as the Saviours of our Time. They mostly get on with their immense workload with devotion, discipline and immeasurable commitment to mission. All of these women will go through deep dives into their own accumulated emotional suffering arising from the suppression of the Goddess-Consciousness. This karmic load of the feminine wound will inevitably reach a crisis point at some point during this lifetime, pulling them into profound self-healing and self-awakening.

When these women heal themselves, they ignite a domino-effect of healing and transformation for generations of females both past and future. Not only that, the innate spiritual power of these women, who have spent eons devoting their entire Selves to serving the High Feminine, is so catalytic, so immensely creative and illuminating, so alchemizing - when these women pour sacred intention into bringing themselves into Wholeness, the entire Universe receives a body-full of oxygenated divine-blood.

If you have been pulled into the vibrating web of an Awakened Woman's energy field, you will experience a spiritual change.

Firstly, no matter what you think, your Soul chose to connect with her. This woman carries deep and significant mystic information for you; sacred intuitive-based codes that are vital for the evolution of your Being.

These women all carry pre-arranged agreements that bring them into contact with specific people at specific times. Often, it is a carefully organised date that correlates with certain moon phases and transits of the planets. This triggers wave upon wave of awakening shifts within the energy bodies of the people who connect with them.

The Divine Feminine High Council will guide this band of women consistently for the implementation of their mission. These women are never 'randomly' placed. There is always a deep purpose to the connections and places that these women bring their energy to.

It is not always an easy task to carry the sacred Torches for the feminine awakening. The earth has been plagued, restricted and weighed down by over-reliance and investment in patriarchal ideology and creed for so long. The vibration of fear that stems from over-guarding and blocking the Heart, losing connection with the intuitive voice, brandishing emotional energy as purposeless, futile and crazy, total disconnection with the wisdom of the body, and abandoning the practice of being regularly in silence - this vibration of fear has caused human consciousness to contract, run away, shut down and stop listening.

When human consciousness loses touch with it's Heart, it acts from fear. Actions from fear are always violent and intend to cause harm - physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.

We cannot remain paralysed in the stuck vibration of fear and disconnection from the feminine soul.

YOU cannot remain paralysed in fear and disconnection from the feminine soul.

The only chance for opening to truth, to presence, to radiance, to depth, to healing, to unconditional acceptance, to trust, to being heard and seen for who you are at your core, to spiritual transformation - the only chance comes from listening to what the Voice of the Goddess is saying to you.

The voice of the goddess most likely is coming from one of the women I am speaking of. In her own way, through divine timing and synchronicity - through miracles woven through her sparkling robe of Light - She is speaking to you.

One of these women is speaking to you, affecting your energy field, working on your Heart with vast quotients of Love, flooding your weary bones and aching flesh with sacred waters from her overflowing chalice.

You know her. You could not have missed her. She will not be the flashiest, loudest, attention-grabbing woman. She will not manipulate, beg, or guilt-trip you into being around her. She does not work at the level of the ego. She works at the level of the spirit.

Spirit does not need to announce Itself because It is never not full, omnipresent, whole, complete. This completeness is compelling to you because it represents something that your heart recognises: universal truth.

This woman announces herself into your life not with noise, but with Silence. With Openness. With Radiance. With Light. With Gentle Healing. With Unending Acceptance. With Sensual Gifts from the Womb of Shakti. With a Hand that wants to Lead you into a New World.

A world lit by the torchlight of all the paths she has walked to reach you.

All the paths she has created just to get to you, to find you now, to stand in front of you, to offer herself to you as the Gift.

You may fall down on your knees in broken-down, worn-out, world-hardened exhaustion when you take her hand. You may say that you can't hold onto it for long, that the Light will crush or destroy you. You may want to run far, far, far away from all the deeply-buried pain that she unearths within you when her hand touches yours.

This is natural. This is the process. She has seen it all before. There's nothing you can do to stop her Love from reaching you. This woman is the universe in embodied form. You have no idea the trials, the punishments, the soul-wrenching deaths, the torture and the oppression that she has endured in order to reincarnate her physical form.

She has transcended the realm of the lower world for the purpose of being here to Love you back into consciousness.

She has wrestled with demons of darkness that want her banished, imprisoned, silenced, maimed, chained to thoughts of shame and humiliation. She has risen up from the embers of a fire that has always burned within her, but was once quenched by the fears of weak, anaesthetised men who did not understand the life-giving and sustaining power they were dealing with.

Because She is the universe in embodied form, she can hold anything that you bring up to try and defend against the Love that She is. She can see it, witness it, watch it play itself out. Your fears, defences and attacks won't touch her truth. They won't make a dent in her spirit. They will burn up in the fires of her sun, be illuminated as false by the luminescence of her moon.

All you'll be left with, after making love with her Soul - be you a man, a woman, a friend, a lover, a client or an acquaintance - is a searing, penetrating, brightly-lit awareness of your own Divinity.

You'll be left face-to-face with your Self. You'll suddenly feel your Deep Heart again. The feelings will course through your emotional body like sacred blood.

You'll be alive.

You'll feel the stirrings of the Love that is you.

You'll see the world through new eyes, beginning to treasure the gifts that you see flowing to you in each precious moment.

You'll want more, but not more things. You'll want more depth, more truth, more vital words, more silence, more flow, more stillness, more nature caressing your skin, more laughter deep in your belly, more touch that ignites your soul, more total immersion in radiance that makes you roar with crazed, primal ecstasy.

When you take her hand, if only for a minute, a day, a week or a lifetime, you'll merge with a Temple of Truths that she has only chosen to unlock for you. She is destined to unlock them for you, so that you can re-experience yourself as the Master of Destiny that you are.

She will be your holy template of Life, your talisman for remembering your Soul, and your moment to moment reminder of how you are so profoundly, mesmerisingly loved by the Goddess. You are being continually breathed by this universe into the highest emanation of spiritual truth. When you breathe with this woman, you will take this knowing into the centre of your heart and it will feed you for the rest of your earthly life.

The band of women who have come to resurrect the Holy Feminine here walk with precision, power and grace; with open, soft, vulnerable and mountain-strong hearts.

Let them touch you where your soul most needs their touch. From this point of fiery ignition, you will be given the blueprint for your deepest purpose and happiness to unfold.

These women know what they are doing even when they don't know a thing. This is intuitive wisdom at it's most magnificent and sovereign.

Be grateful. Be humble. Be prepared to have your life turned upside down, your senses aroused like never before and your chakras shaken awake. Above all, be ready for wild, exhilarating adventures that send you soaring through the stars and blasting through galaxies, yet return you over and over again to the supreme resting place, the eternal home, the arms of the Beloved, the nourishing, sweet, soothing breath, and the divine source of your own Being.

www.sophiebashford.com

Art " INANNA , Star Of Heaven And Earth"

by Jo Jayson Artist

www.jojayson.com

#bcummingme #love yourself #loveislove #biseuxal #asheville #be your best self #be your own person #self confidence #hendersonville #self love #divine #divine female

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bdminternational · 3 years ago

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A look at your special education offerings

Improving special education is a difficult task. Although many top cbse schools in kolkata strive to eliminate the achievement gap and enhance outcomes for students with special needs and those who struggle, school and district strategies are not always aligned to achieve this goal.

However, there is reason to be optimistic. There are best practises that can assist English medium school in kolkata of all sizes and types achieve remarkable increases in achievement and inclusion, as well as extend services for kids who study in cbse board school in south kolkata, when executed successfully with a systems-thinking approach. Based on significant study by the What Works Clearinghouse, the National Reading Panel, John Hattie's Visible Learning, other major research studies, and our own hands-on experience with hundreds of school districts, BDMI has developed a few best practises for enhancing special education.

Surprisingly, the cost of this strategy is comparable to, if not cheaper than, present efforts. One thing to keep in mind: these recommended practises are appropriate for most students who have mild to moderate disabilities or none at all. Others will require a different strategy.

1. Specialise in student outcomes, not inputs:

In too many top cbse schools in kolkata, if last year’s efforts didn’t work also as desired, the response is to feature more staff, more professionals, more co-teaching, and more hours of service. These changes seldom help students and always cost more. Over the past decade, English medium school in kolkata constantly increased the number of special educators and professionals, and yet achievement levels have barely budged.

If the present approach isn’t achieving great outcomes, current practices must be reviewed and modified. The cbse board school in south kolkata that have successfully raised achievement for college kids with special needs and other students who struggle are the districts that keep the main target on results.

2. Effective general education instruction is vital

Higher performance of general education students correlates to higher performance of scholars with abilities, students who struggle spend most of their day within the general education classroom; therefore, core instruction provided by the classroom teacher must meet most of their needs. In some top cbse schools in kolkata, a culture has emerged where education staff take the lead in serving students who lack in abilities. In many faculties, grade school children who struggle to read are pulled out of the core reading block to be taught by an education teacher or professionals.

3. Ensure all students can read

In many English medium school in kolkata, up to half the referrals to education are, at their root, thanks to reading difficulties. Referral rates jump in third through sixth grades when reading problems make it difficult to find out math, science, and social studies. An awesome majority of scholars who haven't mastered reading by the top of third grade will still struggle throughout highschool and beyond. These students tend to possess increased rates of behavioral problems in later grades and are less likely to graduate from highschool or to enroll in college.

In order to boost achievement for all students who struggle, schools have to faithfully implement best practices for teaching and make sure that students with mild to moderate abilities are taking advantage of these best practices.

4. Provide extra instructional time a day for college kids who struggle

Students who have difficulty achieving grade-level standards often need longer for instruction so as to catch up and continue with their peers. At both the elementary and secondary levels, this extra time is often wont to pre-teach materials, reteach the day’s lesson, address missing foundational skills, and proper misunderstandings.

Struggling learners may receive additional support from a teaching assistant, education teacher, co-teacher, etc. while staying within the same classroom as their peers for an equivalent duration. Struggling students, for instance, could also be assigned to a “replacement” class, a lower-level general education class that covers less content with less rigor. Extra “help time” shouldn't be confused with extra instructional time. It's common for college kids with special needs to have a resource room period or a support period where an education teacher provides unplanned help or test prep across multiple subjects, grades, and courses. This is often not an equivalent as a daily dedicated extra period focused explicitly on math skills, for instance.

As standards have risen and therefore the complexity of the content has increased, staff having a deep understanding and mastery of what they teach becomes even more important. An educator who has engaged in an extensive study and training during a particular subject is more likely to possess a wider repertoire of the way to show the fabric. However, in most districts, extra instruction is provided either by professionals, or by education teachers, who have expertise in but often are generalists without specialized expertise in teaching subjects like math, English, and reading.

6. Allow special educators to play to their strengths

cbse board school in south kolkata that have made strides in improving services for struggling students have focused on ensuring that teachers are ready to play to their strengths. For instance, some education teachers may have expertise in specific content areas, while others could also be very efficient and skilled in assessing and managing the study process.

Some education teachers are particularly efficient and effective in managing the study process. These teachers should specialise in case management responsibilities and thereby allow other education teachers longer to serve students.

Making these shifts in roles enables teachers to specialise in applying their particular strengths to profit students. Specialization of roles also simplifies professional development for education teachers; teachers can develop deeper skills in one area instead of having to master many various skills and specialties.

7. Expand the reach and impact of social, emotional, and behavioral supports

Addressing students’ social, emotional, and behavioral needs is critical, and lots of schools have developed a growing need for these services by adding counselors, social workers, but still feel more is required . The key's to expand the reach and impact of existing staff, expand staffing by shifting resources, and partner with others to supply free or low-cost services.

Some schools have managed to double the quantity of student services delivered by existing staff by streamlining meetings and paperwork. But albeit all non-student work were streamlined, many Schools still would be understaffed. Fortunately, many schools can improve and expand social, emotional, and behavioral support within their existing budget by shifting to having fewer lower-skilled professionals but more staff with the highly specialized skills required, like certified behaviorists.

8. Provide high-quality in-district programs for college kids with more severe needs

In the past, many mid-sized and smaller districts decided against providing in-house education programs; these districts felt they lacked sufficient numbers of scholars at any given grade level to justify the value of such services. This needn’t be the case. If a neighborhood has a minimum of three students with similar needs within an equivalent age range, it's going to be less expensive to determine an in-house program than to put the scholars in an out-of-district program. Of course, the savings resulting from decreased tuition payments and transportation costs must be invested in providing enhanced in-district services.

The key to providing effective and cost-effective programs is to rent staff with the proper skills and training, to regulate staffing levels throughout the year as enrollment shifts, and to supply dedicated leadership for these programs.

9. Skills staff spend their time and supply guidance on the effective use of your time

To implement best practices at-scale and during a cost-effective manner, districts must have an in-depth understanding of how staff, including special educators, related services providers, and RTI staff, are currently serving students. Then, the district must work collaboratively to determine expectations regarding the service delivery model and to line guidelines on the quantity of your time to be spent with students.

Given the vast range of tasks that staff perform, it's challenging for Schools to develop an in-depth understanding of how staff spend their time. When schools utilize schedule-sharing technology to realize a deep understanding of current practices, both staff and administrators are often surprised at what proportion time is spent in meetings. Finally, school staff must assist principals and other education staff to create thoughtful schedules in accordance with best practices. Too often, the master building schedule forces teachers to tug students from core instruction in reading or math, prevents grouping of scholars with like needs, or demands attendance at too many meetings.

Scheduling is both an art and a science, and effective scheduling is vital to making sure that student needs are best met. There's no reason to believe every teacher or principal is an expert scheduler; albeit they're , their schedule is impacted by dozens of other people’s schedules, so efficient and effective schedules can't be inbuilt a vacuum. Coordinated scheduling is important to make sure that point is getting used most effectively.

Implementing these best practices isn't easy or quick, but it's well worth the effort. While implementing these best practices can have a big positive impact, to mention that implementation is straightforward would be misleading. It takes time and diligence to effect large-scale shifts in commission delivery, staffing, scheduling, and roles and responsibilities. It takes time, much communication, and attentiveness to foster buy-in and ensure fidelity of implementation. It requires participation from leaders across all functions of the district also as dialogue with key stakeholders like parents. Clear goals, careful planning, and much communication can help to pave the way.

Taking an in depth check out current practices and taking a systems-thinking approach to implementing best practices can make a big difference in student outcomes. It's diligence, and a time-consuming process, but well worth the effort to enhance the lives of scholars with special needs and students who struggle.

For more details, visit our school www.bdmi.org

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bookwyrmling · 7 years ago

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Those Time Forgot

As part of @wipweek Day 1: Oldest WIP, here is the next chapter of TTF.

Fandom: Prince of Tennis Characters: Echizen Ryoma, Fuji Yumiko Notes: Gen, Fantasy AU

Previous Chapters

Chapter 7

The temperature decreased rapidly once the prince escaped the boundaries of the fire’s effect, but he still had not expected the hallways to leave him shuddering as he rubbed at his goosefleshed arms.The size of the Great Hall took up much of the Keep’s first floor. At Ryoma’s estimation, there would be little of interest to him to be found in ground floor rooms, so when he stumbled across the stairs leading up, he took them, his hand pressed hard against the rough, cold stone wall as he climbed. There was little light here cast on the staircase with naught but a torch at each curve, spaced just close enough to not drop any part of the flight into total darkness.

But as old as they were, the stairs remained solid and even and, upon reaching the next level, the prince grabbed the torch and continued on. A quick study of the second floor proved it to be the guard’s quarter and garderobe. There were weapons kept here, but Ryoma trusted his own sword far greater than anything he would find here. He knew its balance and its build, its length an extension of his own arm, giving him an awareness to the very tip as if he were noting his fingers, instead.

It was the third floor that proved to be the solar, surprisingly, rather than the top. Ryoma found the king’s sleeping quarters easily, but the room seemed even more abandoned than most of the other locations, dust covering everything in an opaque layer of grey and time having eaten through even the rich brocade of the bedcovers now a mess on the floor from whenever the wood frame had finally eroded and the mattress’s filling decomposed.

Looking through the sleeping and living chambers, the torch placed in a bracket on a wall that lit the main room, Ryoma found little of interest save a portrait of what must have been the king, an elderly but refined gentleman with judgmental eyes. Ryoma stared at the image, surprised at its vivid liveliness considering how far art had come even in the last century. It felt almost as if the king was in the painting, staring him down, and Ryoma turned it back around to face the wall as it had once been.

There were two other smaller portraits he found after, one of a family: the king surrounded by what was likely his ilk: a young couple and two small boys, the older of which looked very familiar and the prince’s eyes narrowed and mouth tightened; the other of a young man, not much older than Ryoma was now, but with familiar brilliant blue eyes and dressed in royal garb. A new king? An heir? If anything, it seemed the youngest of the portraits, though only because the colors were a little more vibrant, so it could not be a picture of the old king when younger—especially since the old king’s eyes had been brown. Ryoma stared at the portrait for a long while before recognizing some small similarities between this young man and the younger child in the family portrait. But for the younger child to have received the title rather than the elder? Ryoma’s eyebrows knit together, but footsteps pattered on the floor behind him, tearing him from his thoughts.

Ryoma spun, hands on his sword. That he heard footsteps told him, at the very least, it was not another ghost that he could not hit—or whatever form of apparition Kunimitsu had taken on while traveling with him in the forest since he was here in the castle in the flesh—but that also meant it was a creature of the physical realm that could attack him, as well.

It was a woman.

More likely, it was the woman. The one he was looking for.

She was certainly what his father would consider a beauty. With pale skin and white dress and dun hair waving past her shoulders, she appeared light itself in the darkness of the castle. In the torchlight and flickering shadows, her body shone, ethereal and insubstantial as a moonbeam and yet she was still clearly physically present.

She was closer than he had thought, her light body and bare feet apparently helping her to move with less noise than most, and Ryoma frowned at her smile and the way it hid her eyes. Something about her presence made him believe they would hold that same glowing, jewelled quality his now did.

They remained shuttered behind demure eyelids, however, and, instead, she spoke: “I’m glad to see you safely here, good Prince.” Ryoma decided he should probably say something in reply, but all he could think of was that he was disappointed she was not a pile of bleached bones as he had originally thought to find—if he had indeed found anything—when he was first sent on this quest.

A disappointment, but that did not mean he would not do what he had to.

Her eyes opened to blue the depth of a clear spring and aquamarine and the prince suddenly remembered where he had seen this form bathed in light before. “The nixe,” he mentioned and the princess’s laughter swelled like bells though she silenced herself just as quickly.

“You remember me,” she cooed, “Good. It was for such a short time...Though, as I told you then: I’m not a nixe. I hope you believe me now.” The smile was back once more—the one that hid her eyes and seemed far too relaxed given the situation, but Ryoma sighed and released his sword as it appeared the woman had no interest in attacking. He had seen her eyes and knew the truth of what they spoke of now, after all, and faie and faie-touched, as Ryoma now knew, could at least be trusted not to lie. She was not a nixe.

But that did beg the question: “If you had told me who you were before, we could have run then.” So why had she not?

“I wasn’t physically there,” she chuckled, “It would have made it a little hard for me.”

It was a simple answer, but one the prince could not understand. “You filled my canteen,” he argued, brows knit together in confusion as he realized Momo must have been the one to move his boots from the fire that night. That had been done in his sleep, but only earlier that day he had taken his canteen from her directly—and nearly dropped it when she had pulled her hand away faster than he had realized she would. But logic stated that, as they had physically interacted, she should have been physically there, unlike Kunimitsu who must have been using similar magic yet appeared a ghost.

“I have a strong connection to that pond which, along with its highly magical source gives me greater control and power in its vicinity,” the woman explained as she walked past the prince and to the portrait of the heir he had let slam back into place leaning against the wall. Her fingers brushed against it picking up smears of the heavy dust coating its surface and she frowned in annoyance before brushing it away and turning back to send a wry smile at the prince’s disbelieving expression.

“Is it so impossible to believe,” she continued, drawing near, “that I wanted to meet the one who had come to save me?” A cold, thin hand, promising delicacy that would break on contact but with long, manicured nails hinting danger to those who earned its wrath, caressed the prince’s cheek as fathomless blue eyes stared into his, leaving a smear of ash on ivory in its wake. “To see what he was like?” Fingernails brushed against his jaw and a bucket of ice ran down his spine, numbing his fingers and making it hard to breathe. “I was very happy with what I saw and I am glad beyond words that it is you who has come to rescue me.”

Ryoma took a step back and the woman’s hand fell back to her side once more.

“It shouldn’t be so much of a surprise,” she explained, returning to the earlier topic of her physical presence at the pond, “the dragon did the same during your travels, did he not?”

“My sword went right through him when we first met,” the prince deadpanned, pointing out the major differences in his experiences between the two, “and I could see through him.”

It was not the bell laugh, but a deeper, throatier chuckle that the woman released this time. Ryoma stared at its sound, finding it to be one of true amusement, especially in comparison to her earlier peals. “That must have been quite the sight to see,” she said from behind her hand, risen to cover her mouth, but he could see the wry grin in her eyes all the same. Just as he saw it fade into remnants when she dropped her hand and the polite smile was back in place, “but it would be expected from him—a dragon whose strength lies elsewhere.”

His eyebrows furrowed at what she said. “Is he truly a dragon, then?” Ryoma asked, having heard her use the term twice now. While Kunimitsu had confirmed there was a woman confined by a creature of great power, and even admitted to being the dragon of lore himself, Ryoma had simply believed him to be a sorcerer and the story had simply flagrated over time—or, quite possibly, the title was simply due to the snake he had barely defeated guarding the door. “With his form, I thought—”

“That is not a question I can answer.”

The air felt heavier with those words and that tone and there was no smile—polite or otherwise—to be found on the woman’s lips or in her eyes. Instead, each edge of her face seemed set to cut and her gaze was as sharp as his blade’s. “A dragon in human form or a human in dragon form...I don’t think even he knows which is true anymore,” she explained in a slow staccato. Her eyes glowed and the prince found it hard to breathe. “He likely considers himself both and neither and I do not doubt he questions the very truth of his existence,” her eyes dropped and her hair fell over her shoulder to block her face. Ryoma’s eyes fell, then, too. He could finally breathe again: a rattled inhale and steadying exhale.

“You know him well, then?”

“I do,” the woman’s polite smile returned and her bell-laughter that spoke of women at court and spiders spinning silken webs. “How long do you think I have been locked away here with him?” she queried, “I had to have someone to talk to in order to pass the time.”

But he was the one holding her captive. “You get along with him?” the prince asked.

“Well, he is a bit dull, and far too serious, but there is a lot of history between us,” she admitted with a shake of her head, “That doesn’t mean I don’t want to leave. We have both been stuck here for too long and, until he is killed, this farce will only continue.”

“But you can end this,” she continued, reaching into a bag at her side, “You can release us and this land from our curse.” The woman brandished a wooden box carved with ancient glyphs and mistletoe and sealed with red string she quickly loosed and let fall away. “That sword of yours, it won’t do any good against him,” she said pointedly before removing the lead and holding out the box, “Use this.”

Within the box lay a piece of leather and, once unwrapped, within the leather lay a dagger. A full tang blade sat housed in a whitethorn handle with blackthorn crossguards and inlay. In the torchlight, the white wood shone a dull and grainy ivory like bone while the black reminded the prince of rotted flesh clinging to an abandoned kill—strips even the carrion would no longer eat—and it turned his stomach. Ryoma threw the leather covering back over and looked away.

“It’s too small,” he refused, feeling something crawling under his skin at the thought of touching the blade, “There’s no way a dagger is going to help when a sword won’t.”

“It’s cold iron,” the woman responded, replacing the lid and holding it out, “All you have to do is aim it at his heart.”

Ryoma again refused the offer and while the lid’s replacement took away the feel of ice in his veins and needles pricking at his skin, the trepidation of the weapon’s use remained. “Why can’t we just leave now?” he pressed. They could sneak away while the dragon, Kunimitsu, was elsewhere and be gone from the castle grounds and into the forest within minutes. He was only a ghost there and if he did follow it could only be by foot in those woods. He would not catch up.

“Because I cannot,” the woman declared as she pressed the box into his hands, “In his watch’s vigilance, he has used his very life as a seal on these lands. So long as he lives, I cannot leave.”

When she released her hold, Ryoma nearly dropped the box, his grip tightening and pressing the item against his body as it began to fall. It was in reflex, though, and the shock on the prince’s face was due not to his possession of the dagger he had been refusing, but due to the woman’s words themselves. “Why would a dragon tie his own life to a seal?”

“To keep me inside, of course.”

“But why?” Dragons were notably selfish creatures with an insatiable appetite for treasure. Their hordes were told to grow large enough to feed an entire kingdom for ten years and they were jealous of that which they held, prepared to defend it against any intruders. And yet, Ryoma had heard of very few dragons that put their own lives down for their hordes. Treasure could be replaced and hordes could be replenished; life could not. And yet this dragon gave warning to Ryoma who had encroached on his territory and even now offered him safe passage out. He did not seem to hide any treasure, either, from the prince’s quick survey of the castle so far, and, by this woman’s claim, she and she alone was what he was hoarding.

Why?

“He loved me too much.”

It was a straightforward answer and the mark of the faie the woman held within her eyes told him this, too, could not be a lie, and yet the prince bit at the inside of his cheek as his brows furrowed.

“Do you doubt dragons have the capability to love?”

The prince did not doubt that dragons had the ability to covet or desire, but love? Could such a selfish creature exhibit such a selfless emotion? Or, if a dragon could exhibit it, was love as selfless an ideal as it was made out to be? His father’s actions and the existence of his half-brother, a bastard with no right to the throne despite his greater number of years, would suggest as much and yet love was something Ryoma had given little thought to outside of that for his horse or that which his mother showed him. The woman smiled at his confusion. “If anything,” she explained, “dragons love too fiercely and too loyally.”

It fit, the prince decided as he thought on the dragon they now spoke of. Kunimitsu had displayed patience, forethought and mercy and yet his protectiveness of his territory and, more importantly, this woman, drove him to fight and to kill for its sanctity. “But I will be trapped here forever with him if you do not slay him,” the woman continued, pressing her hands against his and shoving the corner of the box into his gut as a reminder of its presence. Ryoma looked down at it and frowned, still unwilling to take it, but the flash of a hand against his lips and a secretive smile on pink lips silenced him.

“I leave this to you, strong prince.”

She backed away, out of the torch’s light and into shadows, her moonlight skin and white dress glowing in the intermittent flicker and Ryoma remembered the most important question he had yet to ask.

“Your name?”

The woman paused, half-turned away from him, before smiling back at him. As if she had been waiting for the question all along, she laughed that bells and spider laugh and replied, “Call me Yumiko.”

Even though he had been staring right at her, the prince would not be able to say just when the shadows had swallowed her whole. With her departure, the room suddenly felt warmer, however, save for the box he now held in his hands.

#tenipuri #fanfic #those time forgot #linnea writes stuff #wipweek #echizen ryoma #A NAME FOR THE MYSTERIOUS CHARACTER #and i don't even know if this gives more questions or more answers lol #i promise stuff will start making sense soon #there's only a small handful of chapters left

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dtacademy-blog · 5 years ago

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hannahkeith1993 · 4 years ago

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How To Grow Grapes From Seeds In A Pot Cheap And Easy Ideas

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Transplant Grape Plant

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Grape Seed Cultivation

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