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rheawritessometimes · 3 years

Text

Simple Promise

{ Childe x GN!Reader }

{ Summary } You broke one of Childe's bones and feel a little bad about it. Series Masterlist

{ Warnings } Swearing, Violence, Injury, Physical Intimacy.

{ Notes } The first part of Let's Make a Deal with minor edits. I dislike the later parts of the series so I decided to rewrite the whole thing. Masterlist

{ Word Count } 2,759

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Meeting Childe at the Golden House every week had been your routine for a few months now. After you had defeated him the first time, he begged you to spar with him again at the first opportunity. You agreed to his request after being unable to resist his puppy dog eyes. And the entire week he spent pestering you about it.

The whole fiasco with Osial had been put behind the both of you almost immediately after the god returned to the bottom of the sea. It was probably true that you were too quick to forgive Childe, but he was just so charming. The fact he frequently paid for your meals after sparring sessions or whenever the both of you had free time also helped him remain in your good graces. On a few occasions, you had been out eating with friends or on your own and found he had picked up your tab.

Since Liyue hadn’t been destroyed and you got free food out of it, you weren’t all too upset about the situation with Childe. The Snezhnayan was actually pretty easy to get along with when Fatui matters weren’t involved, or at least when those Fatui matters didn’t conflict with your own interests. He made you laugh too, so you supposed you could tolerate the once-weekly sparring sessions with him, even if he was a bit rough. You supposed the fact he was pretty cute didn’t hurt either.

Childe called it sparing, but normal people didn’t spar with actual weapons and fight like they were going to kill their partner. At first, you had tried to convince him it would be much better and safer for the both of you to use practice weapons instead of sharpened blades and arrows. He was quick to decline, saying something about both of you being competent enough not to get seriously hurt.

You thought about refuting that on the basis that he had yet to beat you even once but he always brushed you off. Childe never even gave any reasoning as to why he insisted on using real weapons and you suspected that he was just being stubborn.

Even so, each week you made your way to the Golden House to meet Childe for your sparring session. You’d never gotten there before him and wondered if he intentionally came early. You wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case, he probably paced the room plotting his seemingly unobtainable victory.

Childe would have made for quite a formidable opponent if he wasn’t so careless in battle. His combat experience and weapon mastery alone were impressive and the addition of a Hydro Vision and Delusion made a fight with him all the more fierce. But his lack of strategic ability and defensive technique made sparring sessions between you and him fairly one-sided. Childe might have been careless because it wasn’t a real fight, but somehow you doubted that. He seemed the type to always give it his all, which could have been his problem since his loss usually came due to exhaustion. Maybe if he didn’t spend so much energy trying to show off he’d actually be a proper challenge.

“You’re finally here,” Childe exclaimed dramatically, voice echoing off the walls, “I thought you might have gotten lost on the way or something. Was starting to worry I’d need to go out and rescue you.”

“I’m fifteen minutes early, Childe. How long have you been waiting?” you asked dryly, raising your eyebrow questioningly. You took a moment to shrug your adventuring pack off your shoulders and drop it near the door. You rolled your shoulders, relieved to be free of the weight.

“Ahah, anyways, we should get started. I have some business to attend to today,” he responded, indiscreetly ignoring your question. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that he didn’t wait for your response before sending an arrow flying in your direction, but you were a little annoyed he hadn’t even waited until you were paying attention. Usually, he was more considerate than this.

Materializing your sword out of reflex, you raised the blade to block the arrow flying in your direction. The arrow bounced off the metal with a weak dink, clattering to the ground. If you’d reacted a moment later it would have pierced you.

Childe was smiling despite the dirty look you shot at him, irritated by the cheap shot. His grin only widened as he took aim again and you silently promised that he would face your wrath shortly. Someone needed to wipe that cocky grin off his face, after all.

Advancing towards him, you swatted the arrow flying your way with your sword. A bow would be less effective at close range, so you intended to close the distance. The redhead laughed, a hint of nervousness creeping into the sound at the pace of your advance. Or perhaps it was the building rage in your eyes.

The bow dematerialized, freeing Childe’s hands for his signature dual Hydro-blades in anticipation of close combat. Once in range, he immediately swiped at you with a blade in a predictable motion. You stepped back out of the way, quickly bringing up your sword to parry the next slash coming from the opposite blade. His movements were rash and you were beginning to think he would never learn anything from these weekly training sessions.

Childe seemed encouraged by you backing away, a smug look crossing his face. You furrowed your brows, surely he wasn’t so thoughtless. He insists on using real weapons, shoots at you before you’re ready, and now he has the audacity to get cocky. The audacity to get cocky even though you evading his attacks was draining more of his energy than yours.

Annoyed by Childe’s ego, you raise your blade to swing down at him and he catches your sword on crossed hydro-blades. He lets out a little huff of air, not expecting you to strike with such force, but his arms hold steady. You swiftly draw your blade back to slash at him again. Thorough training has you swiping at him with practiced ease while Childe is forced to switch to the defensive.

It gives you a sort of satisfaction to see his expression change to one of worry, it was your first time seeing such a look on him. You had no intention of actually hurting him, but it was nice to scare him a little. Maybe after this, he’d take the dangers of sparing with actual weapons a little more seriously. But probably not.

Quick, relentless strikes have Childe growing tired as he continues to evade your blade. You’re trying not to smirk as you move him around the arena, watching his chest begin to heave as breathing becomes labored.

Your intention was only to scare him when you struck his side with the flat of your blade. Of course, it wasn’t nearly as dangerous as using the sharpened edge but the sound of a soft crack barely loud enough to reach your ears made your blood run cold the same as if you’d sliced him open. A look of surprise crosses your face when he lets out a pained grunt, what had happened finally being processed in your mind.

On instinct you step forward, reaching out to Childe as your sword clatters to the ground before dematerializing. You were internally relieved to see his hydro-blades dissipate too, it would have been terribly unsportsmanly of him to stab you now. But even without being stabbed, you pause at the realization that you’re not sure what to do.

Childe’s hand moves to the side of his chest as he coughs a few times, face scrunching up in pain. A flood of panic washes over you at the sound as your thoughts race. The cracking sound suggested you’d at least broken one of his ribs and if his coughing meant a lung had been pierced, well the outcome could be very unpleasant.

“Fuck, that hurts,” he huffed out before he attempted to gingerly sit down, right in the middle of the Golden House. Childe winced at the movement, but he managed to settle, leaning back on his arms for support. His breathing was heavy from the strain of sparing and you felt extremely guilty, broken ribs had a tendency to hurt terribly and pain would flare up with every breath. But he didn’t seem to be struggling for air, so you assumed his lungs were intact.

“Let me get something to ease the pain,” you said hastily, jogging towards the door to grab your bag. Your thoughts were still a bit scattered but since Childe wasn’t actively dying you were a bit relieved. After a moment of thinking, you decided the best course of action was to numb him up before bringing him to Bubu Pharmacy to get some proper help.

“Aw, are you worried about me?” he cooed teasingly, maintaining that signature annoying grin despite the pain he must have been in. It was easy to ignore him as you rummaged through your bag for something useful.

It crossed your mind that it would be exceedingly difficult to get him all the way back to Liyue if you gave him anything too strong. That limited your options rather greatly, considering your lacking medical knowledge and limited variety of resources left you with fewer options than you would have liked already. He probably could make it back without any anesthetic but it would be slow and you’d feel terrible for it.

Even with your lack of selection, you were thankful to have some knowledge and materials for this sort of thing, adventuring made you better at improvising and you learned a lot along the way. Taking everything into consideration, you decided it would be best to go with something topical. You could make a salve to numb up the area and then hopefully drag him to Bubu Pharmacy.

“I’m sorry, Childe,” you apologized, “I didn’t mean to hurt you. Not that badly, at least.”

“Oh don’t worry about it, this isn’t the first time I’ve broken my ribs. Probably won’t be the last, either,” he replied with a laugh, which caused him to wince. You only frowned at him as you pulled out some plants to grind up. A rock would have worked, but you kept a mortar and pestle for this kind of thing after realizing you’d be doing field medicine often.

You were soon mashing some leaves and a few petals into a paste, with some water Childe so graciously provided. Having a Hydro user around was rather convenient, you were almost jealous of all the practical uses a Hydro Vision had.

“Whatcha makin’?” Childe asks after a short period of silence, leaning over to get a closer look. You wonder if he’s actually curious or if he just can’t tolerate the quiet. It seemed the two of you were always talking when you were together, save for when your sparing got too intense to spare the breath.

“A salve to numb you up so I can drag you to Bubu Pharmacy,” you responded, most of your focus on getting the paste to the right consistency.

“What? No, I can’t go. I’ve got work to do,” he argued, moving to stand up now that he was aware of your intentions. You were quick to grab his wrist to prevent him from getting up, looking away from your work to frown at him. Childe paused, waiting for your explanation.

“You have at least one broken rib, whatever you need to do can wait,” you told him sternly, maintaining eye contact. He turned his gaze away from you to hum in contemplation. He knew well enough that giving injuries time to heal was important, but so was his job.

“Fine, I guess it can wait until later,” he relented, leaning back into a comfortable position once more. Childe had a feeling that if he had insisted on skipping out on the doctor’s visit you would have actually dragged him there.

“Can you take off your shirt?” you asked, trying to sound as casual and not awkward as possible once you were satisfied with the consistency of the paste. You would have offered to allow him to apply it himself but you figured it would be less painful this way, plus you’d need to bandage his chest afterward, so it didn’t make much of a difference.

“Oh my, you’re not usually this bold,” he teased, reaching to begin undoing the clasps holding his jacket together. His remark made you decide against offering your assistance despite the awareness that even just wriggling out of the jacket probably hurt. It’s okay to be a little petty sometimes. As a treat.

Once his torso was bare you shifted your position to be a bit closer and examined his side. There was already the beginning of bruising, but it would get much darker by tomorrow. You ignored the scars and old bruising that was present, very aware of the fact the redhead would tease you for staring if you looked any longer.

“I promise I’ll be gentle,” you assured, “But it’ll probably hurt a little.”

Childe just hummed, waving off your warning, so you gathered some of the salve on your fingers. You wished you’d had gloves that weren’t absorbent with you so your hands wouldn’t grow numb later, but there was no helping it now.

It was a quick process of spreading the paste over his ribs, but his eyes remained on you the entire time. You couldn’t be sure if he was just interested in what you were doing, but it surprised you that he remained entirely silent. His steady gaze did make you feel a bit awkward, though.

“It’ll take a little while to numb up. I’m going to bandage your chest for support. This will hurt more than applying the salve,” you informed him, dragging your pack towards you to dig out a roll of bandages.

“Don’t worry, I’m pretty tough,” he laughed in response, and you could only smile and shake your head at him. You had faith in his strength, but that didn’t stop the guilt you felt over being responsible for his pain. It did make you feel better when he started reminiscing on past injuries he’d sustained in battle once you began bandaging him. How he could look back on them so fondly was a mystery to you.

At first, you were mindful to touch him as little as possible while you were wrapping the bandages. They needed to be a little tight to provide support but you tried to ensure they put as little pressure on his ribs as possible. Unfortunately, your fingers started to grow numb and you hadn’t realized you’d been bandaging too tightly until Childe let out a soft grunt of pain.

“Fuck, sorry,” you apologized, quickly unraveling the last section of bandaging to rewrap it more loosely.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, thinking for a moment before adding, “But, if you want to make it up to me, a kiss would make me feel better.”

Pausing in your ministrations, you looked up to see a cheeky grin on his face. You raised a brow, giving him an entirely unimpressed expression. It wasn’t entirely uncommon for him to flirt like this, trying to get a reaction out of you. But as you reached one hand up to gently grab his chin, it was his turn to become flustered.

Leaning up, you pressed a chaste kiss to his cheek before moving away and releasing your hold on him. You patted his cheek twice, giving him an amused grin.

“You’re welcome.”

“Hey! That doesn’t count!” Childe immediately whined, pouting at you. You could only laugh at his playful antics as you finally finished wrapping his chest.

“You’re cruel, you know that?” the Snezhnayan grumbled, eyebrows still furrowed as he continued to pout. He really did seem like a spoiled kid at this moment and you laughed again, causing his frown to deepen.

You knew his demeanor was all theatrical, but as you stared at his expression you found yourself leaning towards him again. You gently pressed your lips to his, smiling into the kiss when his hands eagerly flew up to your face. You indulged in the kiss for a few more moments, smirking when he followed you as you pulled away. Putting a hand on his shoulder, you halted his attempt to continue.

“You can have another kiss once you get checked out at Bubu Pharmacy.”

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sierrabinondo · 4 years

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2020

damn my last tumblr post is the last day of woodland creatures, did i not do a 2019 wrap up?? i feel like i did. oh well lmao

so, arguably the most tumultuous year in modern history (at least, american history- all pandemic and political events considered) is about to come to a close. it was very not fun experiencing a pandemic as millions lost their loved ones to covid. i was part of the 20% of people that became unemployed as a result of the economy taking a huge dump. i would not want to experience this same year again if it meant that every life lost could be saved. with the year i was given, i made the best out of it that i could.

like every other person on this earth (except for where the virus was already spreading), this year started out normal as hell for me. i was hating my job but chugging through each week, with the occasional show to worry about and then planning our band’s 2020 release plans. despite my salaried job, i was barely making enough to put anything away in savings, forthcoming disney trip aside. i really felt like i was putting in all this work at a full time job just to barely stay afloat and it grated at my soul. i don’t dream of labor, and i only take jobs like this because nothing i am passionate about truly makes money and the marketing jobs i would actually care about are never available to me/never come to fruition after submitting myself for consideration.

disney was a huge highlight of my year despite being deathly sick. i keep wondering if i had covid (i never figured it out), but it sure as hell felt like it. i feel like if i did have it i would have passed it on to jeremiah and his family but i didn’t. i could still kinda taste, but not smell because i had the worst sinus infection i ever had in my entire fucking life. like i know i get them a lot but really, holy shit. i really had it bad. it started when we were in the studio the 2nd to last weekend of february on the last studio day. i had to go back to the studio several months later because i was that unsatisfied with how the vocals came out. i didn’t want to fuck up these releases and have my performance be mid so i was willing to pay to have to re-do everything. i assumed if this was like any other sinus infection, it would go away in a week.

lmao.

i had that infection for THREE WHOLE FUCKING WEEKS. i played a show with that monster sinus infection, and went to disney with it. i went two weeks without meds because i really was convinced it would go away on its own. before we left for disney i finally got antibiotics at urgent care and couldn’t drink most of the trip which sucked. but that finally did the job, and the infection waned when we returned from disney. despite being physically weak, in pain (there was one friday my body pains were so horrible that jeremiah contemplated taking me to the hospital), and leaking snot all over my sleeves the entire trip (LIKE IT WAS THAT UNCONTROLLABLE. I HAD NEVER GONE THROUGH THAT MANY PACKS OF TISSUES IN MY LIFE. I WAS LEAKING SO MUCH I HAD TO LOCATE THE BABY CHANGING STATION IN MAGIC KINGDOM. IT WAS LIKE A SECRET STERILIZED TROVE OF HAND SANITIZER, WIPES, TISSUES AND BABY OIL.) i had an amazing time at disney. and it was my first time going with a significant other so it was incredibly fun. it was also a wonderful opportunity to spend time with his family. the only very not fun part was missing our nephew in the main street parade because some bozos fucked up the info they gave my sister-in-law and we were out walking around when his high school band had actually marched earlier than we thought.

it’s funny, because that weekend after we returned was the last weekend of “freedom” everyone had before lockdown. we were weary of covid while in florida but still living it up on vacation. at that time, there had only been 3 cases in orlando. 3!!!! i had plans to go to a party once home but i cancelled only because i still wasn’t completely out of the woods and 100% well again. i felt so bad cancelling because it was for my friend’s party and she never really did parties usually :( and i thought it wouldn’t be a good idea considering i may or may not have had covid.

then... the following week came.

monday we got a weird email from our CEO saying there was going to be salary cuts and that it was essential for the company to survive a downturn. i pouted but my parents consoled me saying it was better than nothing; maybe look for a new job. and then- i got the nothing! a day or two later, i was let go. and i could tell my manager was absolutely not souped to be giving me this call at all. she literally prefaced it like, “this sucks, but-” and gave me the news. and i was utterly devastated, sobbing controllably, because i was just scraping by on this income to begin with. and i had JUST, finally, received health insurance through this job. i was asked to continue working through friday the 20th, which i would be paid for, and then i would have to return my laptop and any other work materials (like printouts and promo stuff) i had possession of.

that day and the days following i had coworkers calling me or emailing me telling me they were so sorry. i was the first to be let go, and they were kind enough to extend words of encouragement to me. clients i worked closely with, a couple of them around my age, assured me that i could use them as a reference. many of my colleagues were my higher-ups, but were very down-to-earth people. one call that stuck out to me was from my colleague sarah.

sarah was candid with me and said, “y’know how i was unemployed for 6 months?” i knew this well though we had only worked together for a year and a half; it was an important part of her path to where she was in her career now and why she chose it. she continued, “those were the best 6 months of my life.”

and i would come to find out that yes, me too being unemployed was the best fucking time of my entire goddamn adult life.

when i posted i was officially unemployed i had an outpouring of support from my friends, and received enough animal crossing commissions to pay one month’s rent. the first day i finally felt peace was when i was sitting on my porch on an abnormally warm march day playing animal crossing following my last day at my company. it was like the universe was giving me a hug and telling me everything was going to be all right.

what would come was a pretty chaotic couple of months. jeremiah, my roommate and i would stay up until 3 am either watching anime or playing video games, subsequently sleeping until 11 am or noon. pair having fun, drinking (mostly me lmao) and lounging about with the scary realization that thousands of people every day were dying of covid and it could be my high-risk parents. i would cry at night and be so fucking scared. my sibling would tell me my family was being reckless, running unnecessary errands, and whenever my dad showed up to drop off food or necessities i would cry because i couldn’t hug him. i’m even getting choked up thinking about it now. and it was a fear that returned during the second spike around the holidays because it is the loss i fear the most.

amidst this really horrible time, i would play games almost every other night online with my friends and it was so much fucking fun because all of us were either unemployed, furloughed or working from home. we’d laugh so goddamn hard our voices were hoarse. one of my favorite memories is playing quiplash with the creatureposting gang and then my big friends from college. and a really fun night in particular was SIIE release night, i popped a bottle of champagne and got absoluely zonked lmao. every few days i would have something to look forward to, some sort of virtual plans with my friends. this would continue until july when my friends were slowly starting to go back to work.

most of my early quarantine days were as follows: wake up, watch anime, work on commissions for most of the day, order extremely good food for delivery, play video games, and then bed. at one point commissions became so overwhelming i started to get slower at churning them out. though this became a daunting project, WOW it really forced me to become a better artist. and this year i got to spend so much more time drawing, which was fantastic.

one thing i DID NOT spend a lot of time on at all? ugh. MUSIC. FUCKING MUSIC. i barely touched my guitar, stopped writing lyrics after july, and barely completed the instrumentals for about 3 songs. the only thing i consistently practiced was singing (because i would literally curl up and die if i didn’t). do you have any idea how much i blabbed to my therapist in 2019 about how much i would get done if i didn’t work full time and could just focus on my creative endeavors? and then life HANDED that shit to me on a silver platter the following year. i really did nothing insane musically with my time. and now i am really kicking myself for it. if i think about it, it was mostly because i was so exhausted from doing AC commissions, and partly because i was really intimidated about the prospect of struggling through songwriting. now i really wish that i had tried.

one thing i started doing this year was streaming. i originally planned to just do it for fun, because i am horrible at video games and i really didn’t expect much out of it. i thought it would be cool if my friends could watch me play animal crossing. and then i unfortunately learned that this 3rd expensive pasttime is actually really, really, really fun. i started to spend half my week streaming and it led me to either getting closer to some online friends i only talked to a lil previously and making new friends. viewers would ask me if i continue to stream after the pandemic was over, and i enthusiastically assured them i would. and i meant it. even with the difficulties of returning to work and the band playing shows again considered, i really wanted to. i don’t get invited to things anymore anyway, so fuck it if that’s what i stand to lose lmao.

when the curve flattened in jersey i decided to become lenient again and start meeting with my bandmates. we spent the year trying to finish some new material and chip away at what work we have to do for the full length (yes, a full length). we had plans to tour this year and it sucks that fell through. we also had plans to do so much more content during the pandemic and we faltered under the stress of... well, existing in a pandemic. we did finally get to drop a new single though, and the difference in hype now vs when we dropped our last work was incredible. i am so thankful we were able to build an audience with nothing new for two years. i still often beat myself up because god every day i look around me, at our peers, and wonder where the fuck we’ve gone wrong to have such a slow build. and even daily just trying to stand out and prove that we have cut our teeth/deserve a chance is so demoralizing. i feel like it’s even worse than before. i literally have to talk to myself out loud, both alone and during interviews lmao, to remind myself that we truly have accomplished so much. and to take in and appreciate the little positive things. because this could all be over in a second. and this won’t be forever. the older we get the more we are risking for this, both time and resources, and it won’t do to let myself get bogged down over my inner competitive voice. but god it’s hard. like even with new music we still didn’t even TOUCH any of the goal numbers we set for ourselves in may. though we did put out less music than we had planned, and we really hope to change that in 2021 forreal.

there was a single we were supposed to put out this year that’s on hold due to some pending assets but goddamn. if we really don’t break some sort of ceiling with this one i don’t know what will. i have the strongest gut feeling about the next single and in my opinion, it’s the best one we’ve had to date. when we play it at shows, the air in the room sometimes shifts. i’m eager to see what the response is and i’m so ready to push it with everything i have.

fuck this is getting so much longer than i planned i have to try to wrap this up lmao.

with our government stimmy money we turned around and got the dog of our dreams. we figured, i’d be home enough to watch him, and it was finally goddamn time. it’s why we moved into a house and not into another apartment. i was so scared meeting the puppy parents, and totally on edge the entire day. we went out to meet the breeder to test my allergies and see how i would react. samoyeds are not 100% perfectly hypoallergenic, but they were often lauded for being so. honestly? i still didn’t feel confident after two hours with the dogs because the pollen out there was bad (one of my WORST allergies) and i had mysterious hives on my arms i couldn’t figure out where they came from. for months jeremiah and my parents had to calm my nerves and remind me i lived with 3 cats before i moved out (i’m more allergic to cats) and that i would be fine. i had to do a lot of work on myself to get out of my own way about being excited about finally owning the dog of my dreams.

this little fucking boy. i couldn’t believe he was real. neither in the pictures i often looked at about 20 times a day on the breeder’s facebook page nor when we went to meet him. and he was truly, truly perfect. our little shithead. when we went to go pick him out, he sat apart from his puppy pile of brothers, sniffing around the room and trying to rip off his ribbon collar. we locked eyes and he fuCKING APPROACHED ME. i could not fathom any other puppy in the room being brawly. this was the one. we could already tell he was a mischevious smartass, because once he untied his ribbon he proceeded to rip off the ribbons of all the other puppies. but he was the cutest, flopping over on his back when you were near to get belly rubs.

ever since we have picked him up he has simultaneously been the biggest joy in our lives and the most source of stress lmao. that first week, and the next couple, werE FUCKING ROUGH. i had a horrible anxiety attack when i couldn’t calm him for bedtime the first saturday he was home and i was loudly sobbing to jeremiah that i couldn’t handle this shit lmao. he was so scared i was having regrets but i am just a fucking anxious wreck and not used to having a DOG!! this is my first dog!!! but while i can remember what life was like before him i cannot imagine going back. the first time he got sick and we took him to the emergency vet i cried so hard. when he is wagging his tail happy to see me and he looks like a fuckin seal because his ears are folded back it is the best feeling. i’m so excited for when he gets older and we’re vaccinated for covid so that we can take him on so many adventures. he is truly the best.

there is so much more i want to say but this is long as shit. this is even painful for me to read lmao. it’s always been for me, a guy with dogshit memory, to remember everything, but so, so much happened. so i’m gonna wrap up the real descriptive stuff with this.

being unemployed allowed me to just experience life. to wake up each day, enjoy the sun in my backyard, have time to try new recipes, go for long walks, GET A DOG, get better at art, get better at singing, spend more time with friends (virtually), bond even harder with my amazing, beautiful boyfriend, create amazing work with my bandmates, improve at video games, connect with people all over the world, and so much more. all my life i let money dictate my every move. i am insanely privileged to have experienced this but when i had to just live within my means off unemployment i did just fine. i once believed i was perpetually indebted to my employer when i was discarded like it was nothing. i can get a job anywhere and be fine. it strengthened my class consciousness and while i have control over my own destiny it is our country that has so royally screwed us of living the lives we should be living. our lives do not revolve around labor. so until we win the fight and get what we deserve, i will be returning to work next month (full time... in commercial real estate.... again), but i will do whatever it takes to replicate the everlasting feeling of joy i felt this year for the rest of my godforsaken life. if that means struggling for 2021 to build up my twitch channel and the band, working 9 hour days and then streaming/writing music for another 4, so be it. i felt from a young age i was not destined to live a normal life and that feeling has stayed with me no matter how much i have tried to play the game of life as i have been told. i finally have the confidence to pave the life i want.

so, if you are here at this very spot because you read everything, thank you. if you are here because you scrolled to see how long this was, here’s the TLDR of my best parts of 2020:

- tapping out cover

- the 2 shows we played lmao, maybe 3 tops

- disneyworld

- ACNH outside on the porch on release day in warm weather

- making banana bread

- learning how to BRINE meats

- watching anime until 3 am, namely the time we watched pokemon journeys until 3 am

-watching so. much. anime.

-watching livestream concerts with my friends (the chon one was a real good time)

-playing jackbox with my creatureposting friends, the volcano saga (if u know u know)

-playing jackbox with my big friends

-the first time we ever had panchos and juanchos

-finally having sushi again after painful cravings and being grumpy

-the first time we had chinese food again after the lockdown began

-hitting the punching bag for the first time in forever (my dad bought me one)

-the first time we had ramen in forever

-surprising joe with cake at his doorstep for his birthday (we thought he would be the only one with a pandemic birthday lmao)

-playing monopoly and wheel of fortune on the switch, surprisingly having fun

-jeremiah’s birthday

-getting PAID for my ART

-writing + recording ONE (1) acoustic demo

-finally finishing the singles, fixing the vocals

-shooting band promos

-unus annus

-meeting samoyeds

-meeting BRAWLY

-streaming except for the times 13 year olds cyberbullied me

-my birthday when my mom got me a terrifying singing birthday candle contraption and my sibling curbstomped the shit out of it (i was literally crying laughing like that kind of noiseless laugh cause you’re laughing that hard)

- getting the stamp of approval from andrew wells and anthony green

-my friends having their first baby!!!

-dying from thanksgiving charceuterie board

-that week i binged ghibli movies on an hbo max trial and did nothing else

-filling the front porch with plants and most of them SURVIVING the fall, possibly winter but we’ll see in 2021 lmao

- (in general) nailing riffs i fucking sing over and over when practicing but prob won’t get down good enough to sing in front of others lmao

-solo inflatable pool hangs

-thursdays with sarah in the fall playing with the puppy

-the release of the first WSA single in two and a half years

-virtual movie night with sarah watching happiest season

-the music video shoots

-brawly experiencing CHRISTMAS

-receiving really thoughtful gifts from jerry and my parents

-deciding i would work towards being a full time streamer to supplement being a musician

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meta-squash · 4 years

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Brick Club 1.2.6 “Jean Valjean”

Okay, you know what? The past two times I’ve read Les Mis, I’ve always laughed at the sentence about Valjean waking up and then the next paragraph immediately digressing into his life story, but thinking about it, I actually really like it. Since Valjean has entered, he’s kind of been treated like a stranger; we don’t get his internality, and everything about him is narrated to us as if Hugo doesn’t really know anything about him either. And then he wakes up, and with his waking, we are finally able to learn about his past and also, in the next chapters, access his internal thoughts. From 1.1.1 to 1.2.5, we have been existing in Bishop Myriel’s point of view. The whole house goes to sleep in 1.2.5, and when Valjean awakens in 1.2.6, we have left Myriel and are now in Valjean’s point of view.

Somebody else pointed it out already, but I truly love that Jean Valjean’s father was called Jean and his mother was Jeanne. I hope his sister was also Jeanne and at least one of her children was Jean or Jeanne. No wonder there were all those “every Amis’ first name is Jean” memes back in the day. Hugo wasted all his creativity on last names and chapter titles.

So I looked up milkfever, and as far as I can tell, it’s mastitis, which is an infection of the breast tissue. Mastitis most often occurs in women who are breastfeeding. Which would mean that Valjean would have been extremely young when his mother died, possibly still an infant? So his sister raised him from what seems a very, very young age. It’s interesting, then, that he seems more sentimental about her children rather than her?

“His youth was spent in rough and poorly paid labor; he was never known to have a sweetheart; he had no time to be in love.” This line feels really important. It establishes how alone Valjean has been all his life, and that he’s never really had an ambition towards that kind of non-familial human connection. It sort of sets everything up for why he’s able to function so well on his own. At the same time, just in the next paragraph, we’re told that he lets his sister take the best of his meal for her children, and that he quietly paid for the milk that his sister’s children stole; this establishes a sort of quiet, almost instinctual kindness. He’s sullen, he grumbles, he barely speaks, but he cares enough to pay for the milk and not get the children in trouble with either Marie Claude or his sister.

This also establishes the difference between Valjean pre-prison and Valjean post-prison. Despite his reticence and grumpiness, pre-prison Valjean is kind and thoughtful and willing to sacrifice both badly needed money and food for the sake of the comfort of his sister’s children. Post-prison Valjean is equally quiet but has much rougher instincts: his reaction to Myriel’s kindness is a weird semi-threat, his instinct to steal the silver seems much different from his reasoning for stealing bread, he scares Petit Gervais away rather than giving him back the coin.

Hugo’s comparison between poachers/smugglers of nature vs the city is interesting. Men who are fierce to survive on their own in the forest or the sea are savage, but still human. The brutal inhumanity of city-based poverty destroys that. I think I see what Hugo is getting at here: Circumstances make the man. Men who survive in nature are impoverished due to their natural surroundings. You’re going to have to fight to survive if you’re all alone (or in a very small community) in the middle of nowhere in a forest/mountain or on the coast, because resources are scarce and nature is intense. But you retain your humanity because you are fighting against the ruthlessness of nature, not of other people (and perhaps because some of the time, you are working with a community to survive). On the other hand, men who have to survive in the city aren’t fighting nature. They’re fighting the total lack of sympathy from politicians, or employers, or anyone in a more privileged position, and the dog-eat-dog, every man for himself nature of surviving in such a place. They’re fighting against a lack of access to food/goods/money/etc not because those resources are naturally physically scarce, like in the forest, but because they’re socially scarce; in the city scarcity is man-made. It’s you and maybe you’re family against the world, and other people aren’t necessarily going to go out of their way to help you. The more you have to do hard labor to get almost no money and therefore almost no food or other essentials, the more your humanity is sucked away. Capitalism, woo! Again, Hugo being painfully relevant to modern day.

“In our society there are fearful times when the criminal law wrecks a man. How mournful the moment when society draws back and permits the irreparable loss of a sentient being.” Woof. I feel like I don’t even have anything to say about this line because it speaks for itself so goddamn loudly.

(It’s painfully strange to be reading this in the US in the 21st century and have so many modern day injustices come to mind.)

I don’t know enough about French history to understand why Hugo establishes Napoleon’s victory at Montenotte alongside Valjean’s attachment to the chain gang. I wish I did.

Jean Valjean is taken to Toulon and is “erased” at the same time as his sister and her children. In the same paragraph that Valjean’s past is erased and he is given the number 24,601, Hugo also tells us that, now that we are in Valjean’s point of view, his family have pretty much completely vanished as well, sucked into the blackness of poverty in the city. He completely forgets about them; aside from the retention of his plant-based knowledge for later in the book, it seems as though this is the moment where all of Valjean’s past is sucked away from him, and he pretty much never mentions anything about his pre-prison life again, except for the fact that he was a pruner at Faverolles.

Valjean attempts and fails to escape prison four times. I feel like this parallels with his major escapes later in the book, which are successful: his escape from the Orion, his escape into Petit Picpus, his escape from the clutches of Thenardier, and perhaps his escape either into the sewers or his “escape” from Javert when Javert lets him go.

And then a moment in which Hugo becomes self-referential. Claude Gueux is a short story Hugo wrote in 1834. (Also, I’ve just now read it, and Hugo references blowing the candle out with one’s nostril here, too. Only he calls it a boyhood trick.) It’s very obviously the scaffolding for Valjean later on, and a little for Javert. The very skeleton of a summary is this: it’s about a poor but noble-hearted man who is put in prison for stealing bread for his family; he is abused by a guard in a number of ways and kills that guard for his needless cruelty. At his trial he raises questions about what makes a man steal or kill, and how society is to blame.

“Valjean entered the galleys sobbing and trembling; he left hardened. He entered in despair; he left sullen.” Hugo reiterating what he said already with the line about a scar being left on Valjean’s heart. The only way for him to survive all those layers of pain and trauma is to let everything scar over and harden for protection.

There’s a lot in this chapter despite it being fairly short. Basically what the thesis of the chapter seems to be is “circumstances shape men in ways that force them take actions they are not necessarily naturally inclined towards, and abuse/neglect from the law and society only make it so much worse”.

#les miserables #les miserables meta #brick club #brickclub #les mis #les mis meta #1.2.6 #lm 1.2.6 #it's 4 am and i'm finally reading the chapter i've been trying to read all day #the election etc is very distracting

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starbrightblack · 5 years

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Long Live The Noble House of Black

OOC: No longer relevant or true to the canon of the rp.

Content tw: Verbal domestic abuse, Verbal child abuse, Threat of physical abuse, Murder, Pregnancy... It focuses on Walburga Black and includes the kind of crazy you’d associate with her.

Summary: The situations that led to Sirius and Regulus’ conceptions were not as straight forward as one might assume.

@nilamdeuil

Walburga Black was raised in the ancestral home. The House of Black at 12 Grimmauld Place was in her mind a beautiful place, grand and glorious for all its gothic quirks. She was content to live there forever, but her parents made it quite clear that although she was the oldest, she would not be inheriting 12 Grimmauld Place. As a woman, it was her duty to marry into and continue on a pureblood line. However, she would be continuing her husband’s family line, not the Black family’s. Therefore, the family home was to go to Alphard as the oldest son. Walburga had always hated her brother and his peculiar mannerisms, and she couldn’t stand the idea of him taking away her house, especially when he tried to make her feel better by insisting he didn’t want it anyway. So Walburga did what any sensible witch would do in her situation.

She married her cousin.

By marrying Orion, she kept her family name, ensured at least one branch of the Black family' stayed pure, and reinforced her own claim to 12 Grimmauld Place. Alphard gave up his stake for it without a fuss, and Cygnus had always been sensible enough to know when his sister would win. She kept her home and had a husband to whom she could always speak her mind.

Once the two had been married and moved into the home Walburga had never had to move out of, Walburga and Orion got to work on the next set of expectations. Walburga didn’t particularly like the idea of motherhood, but it was her duty and had been part of the deal to keep the house.

After a few years of trying, however, the couple realized that something was gravely amiss. They summoned a very discreet healer to solve the issue, and Walburga nearly hexed him when he said there was little he could do. He explained that some of the issues she’d always had with menstruation had hinted at her problem with carrying a baby. It was possible that Walburga could carry a child to term, but it would take a lot of pain, many potions, and a great deal of luck besides. He recommended they consider their other options.

They knew they couldn’t do anything local, and most of the options he’d recommended were unlikely and very indiscreet. A pureblood baby up for adoption was unlikely in the UK and untrustable from another country where an orphanage might say anything to get them to take a child. Besides, the matter was more difficult than just finding a child they could pretend was biologically theirs. Walburga—and Orion too to a less extent—felt passionate that they could not let the Black family line die. Yes, Cygnus was now married and had just been blessed with a third child, but they were all girls. Some blessing.

Walburga and Orion turned their consideration toward another option the healer had suggested: surrogacy.

Orion had been uncertain at first, concerned that his wife would change her mind about allowing him to sleep with someone else. For Walburga, though, it seemed to offer a lot of wonderful benefits, and if someone else dealing with her husband for a little while was one of them, well, she wouldn’t voice the concern aloud.

They made a plan. The two staged a trip abroad together, but Walburga didn’t go. She trusted Orion to make a suitable pureblood choice and to bring her back before the pregnancy ended. Walburga stayed isolated inside her house, but she didn’t mind. She loved her house. She never wanted to leave it anyway, and an excuse to stay there exclusively for a little while sounded heavenly.

Perhaps she should have gone, Walburga realized in hindsight. While Walburga had sat at home musing about whether Elladora or Belvina would be a better namesake for a daughter, Orion had been led astray in his choice by beauty. He claimed that finding a pureblood witch who looked like Walburga and was willing to carry a child she wouldn’t keep was too much to expect. Walburga would have expected him to come home empty-handed, not with his hand on the shoulder of some pretty Beauxbatons dropout hard on her luck.

The girl—for she was barely old enough to be considered anything else—had been disowned by her family and was willing to do whatever Orion wished as long as he paid her for it.

“That makes her a whore,” Walburga had hissed.

“That makes her sensible,” Orion had argued.

The nineteen-year-old was stunningly beautiful, and her hair did somewhat resemble Walburga’s hair. But her glowing olive skin would never produce a child that could pass for Walburga’s.

“You worry too much,” Orion murmured against Walburga’s hair, trying to soothe his wife’s anger. “No one would call us on it. Besides, the girl is so docile. We could probably keep her here, hide her away until we’re ready for another child. I bet she’d stay.”

Walburga’s eyes had flashed as her husband proposed keeping a mistress in Walburga’s own home, but she’d said nothing. Instead Walburga waited until the baby had been born before taking him from the room, naming him after Orion’s grandfather and her great uncle, depositing him with Orion momentarily, and returning to the girl’s room to slit her throat the muggle way. Walburga did have to admit some things were more satisfying by hand.

Orion’s prediction turned out to be true that no one would dare suggest the child didn’t belong to both of them. If any whispers happened behind closed doors, Walburga wasn’t listening at the fire to find out. She was too content in her own little world as she attempted to mother a baby.

Sirius was a horridly fussy baby who screamed and cried and carried on, and nothing Walburga did seemed to calm him down. Only the family house elf seemed to have a way with him, and Orion quickly grew to resent that the elf caring for their baby meant that he and Walburga had to do more things for themselves. In Orion’s frustration, he planned another trip abroad to take care of some business. Walburga didn’t bother to hide her resentment at him leaving her alone with the child, especially now that he was starting to walk and getting into things like mad.

The trip was meant to last two months. When Orion had been gone for three, Walburga didn’t think much of it. When he’d been gone for four, she sent a howler.

That got him home fairly quickly, although Orion arrived in the dead of night, once again with his arm around some floozy’s shoulder. That wasn’t the worst of it. Orion had gotten her pregnant, this time an accident instead of a planned surrogacy, and this witch was Korean.

Walburga lost it. She started screaming and cursing right there in the entryway, furious that Orion would be unfaithful, furious that this girl hadn’t been smart enough to avoid a child, and furious that Orion’s wandering eye hadn’t picked someone who looked like her. She threatened the girl with the Cruciatus, only avoiding it because Orion got in the middle and started yelling back. In her anger, she threatened to hex him too and in a different way. What good was his manhood to her if it couldn’t even give her a child correctly?

Eventually Orion managed to placate his wife enough that she didn’t kill the girl, but it was tempting. He tried to shield her from the same fate Sirius’ mother had suffered; however, when Walburga’s eyes flashed during the girl’s labor and she’d told him to walk away, Orion had listened. This one didn’t want to give up her baby, but she didn’t have much choice in the matter. She did force Walburga to deal with things in a slightly different order. She killed the birth mother first, then named him after Orion’s uncle and carried him to Orion.

Regulus wasn’t as easy a pill to swallow as Sirius had been for the pureblood community, but when Orion insisted both were pureblood, no one questioned it. They did start to whisper about a potential affair leading to Regulus, and “Come to think of it, Sirius doesn’t really follow the Black family looks, does he?” Walburga hated it, and as Sirius grew older and began to act out, she blamed him and his heritage for every little thing.

Sirius was just five when he innocently asked his mother why he and Regulus didn’t look alike. She let loose, screaming at him about his father’s incompetency and admitting neither boy was hers. She even went far enough to admit that she’d killed “the harlots” who had carried them and threatening Sirius that if either boy ever stepped out of line, she wasn’t afraid to do the same to them. Traumatized, Sirius had fled upstairs to Regulus’ room, and Walburga let him go, her anger momentarily sated.

Upstairs Sirius openly sobbed as he clung tight to his toddler brother and decided right then that if she was ever going to hurt one of them like that, it should be him. He had to protect Regulus at all costs, no matter what happened to himself in the process.

After six years and Hogwarts, that resolve began to crack, but it took eleven to break it completely.

#nilamdeuil #black family #sheadcanon #sdrabbles

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boogiewrites · 5 years

Text

Choking On Sapphires 82

Characters: Alfie Solomons x Genevieve (OFC)

Title & Song: When the Levee Breaks

Summary: Alfie returns to work. He begins to deal with the aftermath of what happened and tries to gain control of an uncontrollable situation.

Warnings/Tags: Language. References to assault and violence. PTSD. Suffering/Physical Pain. Fluff. Grumpy Alfie. Business Alfie.

Click on my icon then go to my Mobile Masterlist in my bio for my other works and chapters. (Had to do this since Tumblr killed links, sorry.) Please like, comment and reblog if you enjoyed it! It helps out us writers A LOT!

The clack and clash of work within the well ran warehouse beneath the quaint Jewish bakery was running at high proficiency with its boss stalking about the place again. His freshly cobbled shoes, which he refused to replace, much to Genevieve’s annoyance, squeak with the hard fresh leather and nails against the hard floor. Despite being polished, they were covered with dirt and dust just like the rest of him, as was necessary for working in a rum house. He enjoyed the work again, as much as one could enjoy ordering around mostly boys he thought would have trouble pissing in a pot by themselves. But it did get him out of the house. More importantly, it got him away from the abstract and currently unsolvable problems that lie there waiting for him as soon as he left the structure that running his business gave him.

He’d adapted well, in his opinion, to the problems that lie in that big ornate bed at home. He didn’t work nights if it could be helped, he was home for dinner every day and took the Shabbat off, giving him extra time to be with Genevieve. He didn’t like coming back home to problems he couldn’t solve with a shout of his orders, but that was the life they were dealing with. He’d at least been able to put up a strong front at work, perhaps a bit more stone-fisted with his men than he had been previous to Genevieve’s abduction. But he felt like he had control at his dingy warehouse with its strong smells he carried home in his clothes every day. He felt like he had a place that fit when he was working, his problems solved by either agile fingers or mind with a raise of his voice or arms to put forth the labor and intellect to solve them. He didn’t have to think about how powerless he was when it came to the throw of a dice that was Genevieve’s health and mind while he worked. And although he did make most of his money on being a betting man, he’d always prefer horses over the indifferent will of the miraculous mess that was the human body.

He told himself he did it because he wanted to take better care of himself in the face of Genevieve’s decline of health, taking breaks outside to escape the fumes and flames inside his alcove of a workspace. The reality was that Aggie and Claire had beaten him into submission on him eating a full lunch and getting some sun every day. Aggie would know by his mood and his lack of stealth when it came to snacking in the kitchen if he failed to follow her suggestions. But of course, Alfie had found another way to use this forced time to his advantage. As was his way.

“There lads, go on wif ya.” He grunts after handing coins to the scrappy youth's he’d been meeting with on his breaks. Little sets of unassuming eyes and ears around the city, needing the money and having the time and invaluable ability to seem invisible to most, he utilized them for his work. They gave him all the things they’d seen and heard that could interest him. For a few sweets and pounds the information they gave was worth its weight in gold. He watches their worn shoes become even more so on his orders as they shuffle across the dirty brick pathways away from the canal and the work buildings.

“Next appointment is soon sir.” Ollie reminds him, taking Alfie's eyes from the long distance stare they were set in thoughtfully as the kids disappeared around the corner.

“Right.” He huffs out, a hand that smelled awful and felt much the same with its grit from both stress and work rubbing across his face as he scratches his beard in thought. “Put down visitin’ the families in the diary soon, yeah? Seems a few of the children have come down wif some fuckin awful fing that’s killed one of 'em already.” He says without the emotion behind it that it would warrant from any normal person.

“Yes, sir.” Ollie notes in his mind as he follows after his employer, back down the corridors to his office. Despite Ollie being taller, he very much felt small and like Alfie was carving the way back for him as his shoulders swayed and bow legs stalked with a stance that unquestionably told anyone who looked his way, “Don’t fuck with me.”

“So what ‘ave I got before I head out?” He asks with no fondness to the statement, selves rolled up his bulky and gingery hair covered forearms. His hands, as always highly bejeweled, Genevieve’s gifts among them, slap together and rub to commence the last parts of his work day, the tattooed crowns being the least of the signals from him that he was, in fact, the boss in this space.

“We have the meetings with the little birds.”

Alfie scoffs and scoots up his worn leather chair to his large wooden desk, covered in patches of dust and paperwork with a posture perfect back for a moment. “Not so little now eh?” He muses. “In stature or count.” He states with pursed lips and high brows full of amusement for his observation.

The project of little birds had started years ago. Now men, just like the lads he’d paid earlier were now, he had groomed these young men into spies for him in various fields. He had them for the Jewish community, various pubs and shops and corners in every class of neighborhood and at least one in each of the so-called gangster's posse’s, minus one for the boy who had been with Horne. He’d murdered him where he stood in his office the day he came back to work. In hindsight, perhaps it was a bit harsh, but it certainly sent the other boys into high gear to not have the same fate as him. Alfie felt much more in charge of his emotions from what had happened now, but as always, his sort of life would keep finding ways to make him question himself.

“I have the report here, sir. One will be in shortly with his to close off the group.”

“Why’s he late wif it?”

“Not late, only delayed from the nature of his subject. He hosts at the high tea shops in the West End.”

“Ah. Right.” Alfie nods, a twitch of whiskers over chapped full lips that sat in a tight line as he read over his tiny golden framed glasses. The reports with their code words and aliases couldn’t be read any more clearly by Alfie. It all spelled trouble. The word was out about him being behind the pillaging of Horne’s buildings. Word had spread of the less powerful Birmingham Gypsy brothers helping these acts to transpire as well. But it was known Genevieve was counted among them, being the head Shelby’s godmother to his children and that.

Sabini was annoyed by their appearance in London, but planned nothing in retort. In his words, it was reported that Horne, the bloody American, had it fucking coming. This was a general consensus it seemed, no one fond of any Americans moving in on business since the blowup years ago with the American-Italians. Not even Sabini had been safe in that fight. Americans were seen as cowboys, wildcards not to be trusted and looked down upon for their boisterous nature and inclination to assume their importance. The general consensus was fuck the Americans. At least Alfie had something in common with these men. One less in their line of work meant more for them, and with prohibition still enforced, that opened up a piece of the market to make some money in Horne’s absence. Alfie jots down notes with a hard brow to look farther into taking on Horne’s business loose ends. Beyond the professional, it seemed the consensus on Alfie and his reaction to Horne was a mixed one. Some thinking it an overreaction, some, like Sabini seeing it as earned and flex of power. Whether they thought him mad or powerful, he didn’t much care, but the signs all pointed to him being feared for it and that was precisely where Alfie wanted to stand with these men.

Onto the other subject of his almost betrothed, Genevieve, the news was not as pleasant but he had expected worse. Whispers of taking over her businesses, seeing her as weak now we’re starting to appear. Inevitable, Alfie knew but it certainly didn’t help smooth the lines in his forehead as much as it deepened them. No plans so far, it was still too soon to tell and he had done a fairly decent job as far as these papers told him of keeping her state a secret.

But the young man in front of him quickly put that ease to bed.

“The talk is that she’s gone soft. That’s she’s lame and traumatized. Forgive me for saying these things sir, they are not from my mouth.”

Alfie nods, a hand waving to dismiss the apology as his chin rests in his other hand to hurry on the boy.

“Her lack of appearance has caused much chat among the ladies as she wasn’t known for canceling or not being seen before. They know the donations are still going through, but she hasn’t been teaching or going to meetings or cooking at the children’s home. The more extreme of the rumors are, and forgive me again sir, are that she’s been sent to bedlam, pregnant with another man’s child, gone completely mad and being locked in her home and that she’s on drugs now. She’ll wander 'round the estate naked and talk to imaginary people. Most think you’ll leave her soon.” He concludes with a heavy gulp, his mouth dry from the man staring him down across the desk.

How was he going to head this off? How do you kill rumors that have a grain of truth? He knew she couldn’t go out in public yet, it’d be a long time still for that. She was currently dazed at best, mumbling to herself as she wandered the house with his cane. Her body was healing, she could walk with only a limp now. But her mind, that was another subject entirely. He didn’t know what was her, what was medication and what was trauma in that soft head of hers. It was too soon for answers and he needed them. Needed to squash out this weakness that was growing among them. But how could he show she was fine when she very much was not.

“That all?” He finally gruffs out.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good lad.” He says with a nod, his w'ords tense and his jaw tight. “Well, she isn’t lame or in an asylum someplace. She’s at home healing. Doctors orders to stay home and keep calm until she’s all better. So snuff out any other stories, eh? She’s fine, I’m fine. We are together, she isn’t pregnant. Paint a peachy fuckin portrait, yeah?”

“Of course sir.” He agrees enthusiastically.

“Good work. Keep it up and there may be more pay in your future.” He promises with only a slight lie in the words.

With a bow and thanks he exists and Alfie put his stained fingertips to his scabbed forehead and sighs. “Posh fuckin cunts. No lives. Only love to titter stories like fuckin' little girls in school to each other. Fuckin' gossips. Fuckin’...’ell.” He shakes his head and takes a deep breath. “They ain’t so much worried 'bout me, but her. Which is right fuckin' daft of 'em.” He speaks with an exasperated breath and a sweeping display of his hands. “News weren’t half fuckin' bad 'til those fuckers had to go and run their fat fuckin', cock suckin' mouths.” He huffs, brow low as he slumps into his chair.

“Awful that they’re speaking of Miss Durand in such a way. After all she’s done for them and the children.” Ollie responds with a sigh.

“Fuckin' what mate?” Alfie challenges with a sharp twist of his head his way. “Ya fuckin' soft? Ya sweet on her are ya Ollie?” Alfie's voice didn’t hold enough tease for Ollie to not tense up and stutter.

“No! No sir she’s always been a giving woman to those less fortunate and people speaking ill of her with no proof is upsetting. Not surprising at all! But still unfortunate.”

“Yeah,” Alfie drops the knee jerk flare of anger he’d been brewing up. Ollie hadn't done anything wrong. He just wanted to lash out. “The problem is, some of that is just tittle-tattle, right? But what if they did have a way to know fings?” Alfies natural inclination to be suspicious and paranoid was only being fueled by the oddly specific gossip in some instances.

“As in someone at home?” Ollie replies surprised, knowing Alfie had personally interrogated every staff member after Gen was gone. He’s assaulted a few and had found none guilty. The ruling was that someone had snuck in and posed as staff and given her the drink and then slipped out. Not having someone to burn at the stake really hadn’t helped Alfie out at the time. So Ollie was highly curious as to who would be giving information as he knew most of the staff owed Gen a great deal themselves. He knew them as loyal and grateful, but as Alfie liked to remind him from time to time, what the fuck did he know?

———

While Alfie was out gathering his information, Genevieve was at home doing entirely the opposite. The morphine made her mind a mess, but as was the nature of it, she certainly didn’t know it to be so.

Her walks in the garden, one arm held by either Aggie or Claire as they steadied her, seeing her eyes so far away despite being open and focusing on things. She spoke of children often, like they were there. No one knew what she was referring to. Claire and Aggie had their suspicions as to the cause of this hallucination or delusion, which one they were not sure yet, but neither said it aloud. It hurt them too much to speak of and they knew they shouldn’t break Gen's heart by trying to tell her otherwise. Another screaming fit, something like a child would throw wasn’t what they wanted to experience again.

Gen's reality was far different. She was on leisurely strolls in a dreamy garden. Her cheeky and precocious children hiding from her amongst the flowers and hedges. She didn’t see them all the time, or even often, but she did hear them. Calls for mama and papa, little auburn haired cherubs dashing in the corners of her eyes. She didn’t even know their names or faces but something about the thought of them made things not hurt as badly and it was easy to want to stay in the drug-induced stupor where everything was golden and nothing hurt. The reality was too much still, too painful, too much. So she stayed.

The warm, dizzy halo of morphine was only broken when the pain would break through. This was when the glow in her vision would fade and she would be reminded of how she was, in fact, broken. The physical pain acted as a gateway for the mental, for she recalled how she received the injuries and the memories would start to follow. With a wince, her caregivers knew she was coming down, it was time to rest. Her soft and bruised face was set to something besides indifference as her brow would furrow and her jaw would once again tighten with the stress that her current state brought upon her.

In these moments they would see a wounded Genevieve peek through the veil. Her eyes still dilated but the life backlit them in those hours she was lucid. Once she was herself for some brief moments they would ask her about her hallucinations and dreams, as they were both not decreasing in intensity. Any look at the bags under Alfie's eyes from being woken up by her fighting and struggling, mumbling awful reminders through the night next to him would tell the story of how she really felt whether she was willing or able to herself. Awake, the memories didn’t haunt her as heavily as they did in her sleep. With her brain desperately trying to mend itself, it kept trying to heal the parts that were broken and so it brought the memories of her time held hostage forward, inaccessible to her during her waking hours. The only comfort Alfie found in it was telling himself she was just dreaming, not reliving the trauma. But deep down he knew better. He’d been there himself. At this juncture, his body was growing weary and his spirit wasn’t far behind. The process of healing yourself was one thing, watching another attempt it was a whole other beast he had no interest in taming. And yet he found himself sleeping with it in his bed every night. A reminder of his worries and stress and failure that he could find no refuge from.

————

Alfie shoved his feet into the house shoes that greeted him at the door by the hands of maids. Taking his coat, offering him tea, he still wasn’t used to the treatment and he was starting to think he never would be.

“No, no, love.” he gruffs a young maid away with a brush of his hand. “Where’s Agatha? I’d like to know how Genevieve is before I see her.” he sighs, twisting his body and hearing the pops and cracks of age and strain, both accumulating far too rapidly for his liking.

“I’m here, Alfie.” Aggie’s tired feet shuffle around the corner, always wiping her hands on her apron when she appeared. “She’s in her room. Haven’t heard a peep from her in some time now. Which is an improvement. Short time and she’ll take her medicine again. Thought you might some time with her while she was lucid before she took it again.”

“Is she lucid?” he asks with a raised brow.

“She’s been up and around and with the usual exception of the few hours of her medicine and the strange talking, she’s been doing quite well today.” she gives an optimistic nod.

Alfie nods, a large exhalation stretching the muscles of his chest at the good news. He had been fully expecting nothing good after the gossip he’d had to mull over today. Perhaps there could be a light growing at the end of this dark tunnel for them both. “Good.” he responds, thumbing his nose with no other showing of his relief, his face sat hard and preoccupied as it had been since he’d gone back to work.

He saunters his way down the great hall to Genevieve’s wing of the house. As he does so, he sees a maid dart out of the phone room, kept near the entryway into the kitchens and back halls.

“Oi!” he shouts, her posture straightening and eyes growing wide before she turns to him. “What ya fuckin’ up to in there?” he demands with no politeness, a ringed finger pointing towards the room.

“Callin’ me sista sir.” she answers with a nod, not meeting his eyes. He couldn’t tell if it was from orders or to avoid his direct glare.

“What ya callin’ on work hours for?” he gruffs out with a rise of his chin.

“She’s only home for a short while between jobs, sir.”

“Where’s she live?”

“London, sir.”

“Where’s about?” he gives her rapid questions to read her honesty.

“Clerkenwell, sir.” she keeps her head down and hands together in front of her.

“Hmph. I ‘on’t know you do I? You’re new, yeah? Did I let you in?”

“No sir, I was brought in from another home a fortnight ago when my previous employer passed away.”

“Who was that?”

“Mrs. Hilda Gold from Kentish Town, sir.”

“Mmph.” a rub of his chin, wheels turning at knowing who her former employer was, knowing she was Jewish, but also acutely aware that she was a huge gossip. “I did not know she had passed.”

“I stayed on to clear out the estate then Agatha took me on.”

“Fine fuckin’ timin’ you showed up, eh?”

She doesn’t respond, not certain how to.

“Well get the fuck on... wait, what’s ya name?”

“Dorothy.” she says mid-turn, freezing at the man’s request.

“Well, then Dottie get back to work. No callin’ until after tea, yeah?” he oders with strong squared shoulders and a curt nod.

“Yes, sir. My apologies, sir.” she sputters out fast before disappearing into the nearest corridor.

He sticks his neck out as he passes to find her already gone, chewing the inside of his lip as he continues on with his paranoia as he travels towards Gen’s room.

Genevieve sits so eerily still, tense and afraid to make a move as she stares at the door in the dimly lit room. It’d been left that way to allow her to sleep but as it had been since she’d started getting up and moving around, coming to herself a tiny bit more every day, if she was left in the dark alone she could never sleep unless the medicine forced her to.

Alfie braces himself for nothing good, even though the state of her wasn’t poorly today. With a slow opening of the door, one that unintentionally made poor Genevieve's heart nearly beat out of her chest, he finally shows himself, eyes direct to hers as he sees her sitting up in bed.

He observes her eyes fluttering and her posture slump at the sight of him. At first, he couldn’t believe his feelings were a bit hurt by it. Then she reaches out to him with a face that actually showed something besides neutrality, sleepy eyes and barely parted lips that were pleading for him to come closer.

“‘Ello, love.” he greets, moving over to the bed and taking her hands, kissing her knuckles as he sat next to her on the edge. “You’re looking much better this afternoon.” he praises, a hand to her cheek as he watches her eyes close and her lean into his touch. A lump of fondness erupts in his gut, something he admittedly hadn’t felt since he’d gone back to work and had to compartmentalize his feelings to deal with them. He suddenly felt guilty as her hand covered his, such a tender gesture as she kissed his palm.

Unknown to him, she was flooded with a euphoric relief at his appearance. With her emotions still nowhere near stable, she begins to cry.

“Oh, pet, come now. No reason for all that.” he shushes, wiping the tears away. “What’s wrong?” he asks, picking up the pen and pad next to the bed and with shaky hands, she scribbles away.

“Be quiet for a moment and listen.” it reads, Alfie’s brow furrows, starting to question the optimism of Aggie.

“What are you on about?” he replies and Gen puts her fingers to his lips. The look in her eyes tells him she’s serious. He does as instructed and waits, eyes moving about the room, not sure what he should be listening for.

He watches her raise and her head turn to the door and stare. Much like a frightened deer.

“I don’t hear nuffin’, Gen.” he pats her arm to comfort her.

She huffs out her nose and pursed her lips. “When you’re here I don’t hear them.” She writes, her eyes back again to the door.

A pang of guilt sits heavy in his stomach at her words. “Hear who love?” He asks softly.

“Footsteps.” She communicates, her eyes scanning the bed in front of her with a clear confusion behind them.

“There are people out in the hall all day.” He says with no condescension.

She shakes her head and sighs. “Not in my wing.” How could she explain the fear the sound sent through her. They weren’t just any footsteps, they were Horne’s footsteps. She knew it made no sense. She knew he was dead, but it didn’t stop it from sending her right back to that cold and pitch black room where she was kept, waiting for him to come back and fearing what would come with him.

Alfie sees the very real concern in her eyes. He has a theory as to why she’s afraid but he’s hesitant to ask. “Does anything else make them go away?” He questions, raises her chin up to face him.

She considers it a minute. She didn’t feel afraid with Alfie there for obvious reasons, but what else took it away. “Sleep?”

“Well of course love.” He gives her a soft chuckle and kisses her forehead. “But having me here helps, yeah?”

She nods slowly, a fast one still sending her into the spins.

“Then let me help.” He suggests gently, crawling into bed with her and pulling her to his chest. “This help?”

She nods again, still feeling nervous as she rests her head to his chest. She could focus on him now, hear him breathe, feel it as well.

“Does being in the dark bring them on?” He proposes, fingers stroking her hair, his face bent towards her.

She considers it a moment, slow blinking eyes he was happy to see wheels turning behind. She gives a tap to his chest to indicate yes.

“And only when you’re alone?” He reiterates.

Another gentle tap.

He decides to get to the point, as is his nature, no matter how abrasive it might be. “When you were taken from me…” he begins. He feels her tense against him. “We’re you kept alone in the dark?”

He hears a small whimper from her, her hands now in fists.

“S’all right love. It’s over now. It can’t hurt you anymore.” He coos.

She shuts her eyes, burying her face in his chest.

“And could you hear them outside the door?”

She agrees again, a little whimper of a sound as she pushed her face into him.

He braces her, feeling her breathing grow shaky and uneven, seeing it was painfully obvious she was having trouble with dealing with the memories. Still, he persisted. “Is that what you’re hearing now? When I’m not here?”

A sob moves her upper body and she whines, fingers grabbing at his shirt, smelling still of rum from work.

“There, there, love.” he whispers, putting his mouth to her hair. “Your Alfie’s got ya innit he?” he soothes, smoothing her hair and rubbing her back. “Just memories. They can’t hurt you now. It’ll get better with time, pet.” he laments, feeling her cry in his arms. The pain from the extended panic still alive and well in her chest when she thought about her time held captive. He could feel her skin run hot beneath his hands, the only sounds he’d heard from her since she’d been back were mumbled with pain. He stares at the door as she wears herself out. Holding her like a babe in his arms, face set to an unpleasant detachment. She had so much farther to go before she could venture out. The mention of what happened and she’d fall to pieces. Not to mention she couldn’t speak yet. He was starting to wonder if it was more from physical injury or a mental one at this point.

He did feel sympathetic, empathetic even to her current state, but that harsh bit of him that pulled him through his own dark times tells him she needs to do better, to move forward. He feels impatient, knowing what those on the outside were saying. Normally he would tell any of those posh tossers to piss off with their opinions but now Genevieve was the victim of their rumors and he didn’t want her to lose the place she’d gained in society because of this. He wanted to keep things as well maintained as he could for her, and that meant taking on the stress that would normally be carried by her slight shoulders. Luckily for both of them, he was a tough old bastard who could deal with a bit of posh, West End babble easy enough. But he was more worried about what Genevieve would feel, think and more importantly do when she found out what they were saying. He had so many voices to worry about now. His own in his head, the ones in Genevieve's as well, however many there were now. He was used to listening to people talk about him, and he dealt with it in his own way But now he had to worry about what they were saying about someone else, and not just his people, not only slurs and the like, but a woman he loved. He closes his eyes, pushing his cheek against her head as he knows this will end no time soon.

@jaegeeeeer @cosettewinchester @lookuptheskyisfalling-blog@brianaisasongbird @cry5t4l-w4rri0r @jess2464 @hardygal69 @thegarrisonpublichouse @a-flock-of-angry-pigeons @pootle @negansdirtygirl22 @musingsby-night @shine-dont-shadow @inkinterrupted @vale0413 @emerald-bijou @elaenom @give-jack-a-lightsaber @ultrablackwidower @tinastarkandco @arrowswithwifi @marvelgirl7 @they-are-not-just-stories @ugly-crying-over-bucky-barnes @alitheamateur @gold-trashbag @divadinag

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arlandvery · 5 years

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Alabaster Stones (Come and Lay Your Bones) Chapter 2

So yay, chapter 2! Chapter 1 for the energy savers! And Ao3 for good measure! Thank you to @yandere-love-love-love for their shout out last chapter and @veninos-posion for helping me develop the idea more.

The harem never changed, Tomura reflected, watching the omegas flutter about like brightly colored insects. Birds might have been more apt, with their habit of cooing and clucking at him, trying to entice him. He continued to stare into the fountain, watching the fish as they darted among the flowers and leaves, occasionally poking their mouths up for food. Were these the same fish that he’d fed and taken care of or had they changed? Who knew?

Sensei’s constant needling had brought him here. Tomura didn’t know if he’d fuck one of them yet but being in the harem would at least give the illusion that he was looking to release some of his stress. But none of them…did anything for him.

The harem was still the same hollow shell that it had been hen he was a boy. The omegas were older, that much more desperate for attention now that he was the heir apparent and they’d yet to be bred. Sensei hadn’t touched some of them in months. It was probably a good thing that he’d isolated Mother, he reflected sullenly, staring down at his blurry reflection. The harem had been terribly competitive, and that was before Sensei had chosen a favorite- he could recall several poisonings when he was still small.

Small…

His reflection disappeared as one of the fish popped up, mouthing for food. Pathetic cretin.

Mother had always liked them though. She had a weakness for small, helpless things. It explained her gentleness to Tomura.

The man had held him for all of the journey from the burned out remains of his home village. His arms were strong and warm and Tenko had felt so safe. He’d tucked his face into the man’s chest and not moved by choice since he’d been scooped up, afraid that he would be put down again, that he would be abandoned, or sent back into the dark.

The palace loomed over them, casting them in shadow as the man brought him inside. Tenko dared to look and see the massive gates swinging open for them, then peered up at the man.

He just smiled down at him, “welcome home, Tenko.”

Home

The man brought him through many winding hallways, each of them growing darker and darker, until he was in a room more beautiful than anything that he’d ever seen.

There was the immediate rush of high-pitched voices, and the smells of perfume, incense, nests and omega- Tenko felt dizzy with all of it.

“Master!”

“You’ve come home!

“Welcome, will you be joining us?” Too many voices, too much…

The man, the Emperor, Tenko learned later, set him down gently and laughed when he pressed close to his leg, too scared to be intimidated. The omegas that had gathered around them laughed and cooed over him.

“Master who is this precious thing?”

“A stray I found being abused. He was too pretty to be left alone.” The Emperor’s hand carded through Tenko’s hair, seemingly not caring about the grime and grease. The gesture stung because of the tangles, but he was just too eager for that kindness. “I thought he might benefit from your lovely company.”

One of the omegas laughed and cupped Tenko’s cheek. He was lovely, with hair so blonde it was nearly silver, and his hands were soft enough that Tenko knew he’d never worked hard in his life. He was clean and beautiful and smelled nice, and he was dressed so lovely that Tenko couldn’t stop looking at him.

The Emperor grinned and introduced the beautiful man as Azami, “my favored companion.”

“He is a pretty thing, isn’t he?” The omega mused, smiling a little.

“Imagine what he’ll look like when he’s clean.” Another snickered, Tenko blushed. The man gave the omega a look so ugly that it might have been kinder just to hit her.

“Regardless, will we be educating this one, Master?”

The Emperor turned it over, staying silent as he looked down at Tenko. Tenko shuffled awkwardly, feeling exposed. He was hungry and tired and ashamed of how he looked.

“Not yet. I’d hate for him to present as an alpha and all of your work go to waste. He’ll just be educated and housed here for the moment.” Tenko wondered if he was imagining the way that the omega’s face relaxed a bit.

“Of course, Master. We’ll care for him.” Hopeful, Tenko allowed himself to be drawn away from the Emperor.

“A tailor will be here in the morning to get you something to wear, child.”

Before he left the company of his omegas though, the Emperor drew him close and embraced him one more time. Tenko felt himself relax and hug back.

“From this day, you are under my protection. Do you understand?” The Emperor’s voice was soft and nice, and Tenko nodded. The man cupped his cheek again. “From today on, your name is Shigaraki Tomura. You aren’t Tenko anymore- you aren’t bound by his pain, or his limits.”

It sounded wonderful. To be a new person entirely.

“Yes,” he agreed.

“You may call me Sensei, Tomura.”

Tomura flicked a pebble into the fountain, frowning at the ripples.

Behind him there was a burst of laughter behind him, and Tomura stiffened instinctively, thinking of Azami and his smiles and biting words.

The door to the suites opened and a hush fell over the harem as a warm sweet scent swept through it. It worked like magic, and Tomura turned to face Mother and her guards as she entered, smiling, red cheeked, as though nothing out of place had happened.

“My Lady!” One of the younger omegas cried happily, flocking to her. Mother laughed and let them touch her. It made the warm feeling in his chest wilt where it was, leaving him hollow and cold. No one should touch her, no one deserved to touch her.

“My Lady, you look wonderful!”

“Positively glowing!”

“Do you think it will take this time?” Unless you were looking for it, you would have missed the flash of pain in Mother’s eyes, but no one could miss the smug look on Lady Kiku’s face, or the way that the two women stared each other down, the pretense of civility barely there.

“I suppose,” Mother mused, casting her eyes down finally, “that we’ll have to wait and see, Lady Kiku.” The other concubine snorted and glided away, her attendant following behind her, practically running to keep up with her smooth gait.

With the trash absent, that left Mother to preside over the concubines for a bit, the alpha bitch of the lot of them, no matter how they all might hate it. Including her. They brought her petty problems and paid her worthless compliments by turn, each more false and useless than the last. The lies stacked on top of each other, turning the warm, friendly air into something rabid and feral. Each and every one of the men and women here would have gladly slit Mother’s throat for a chance to be the Emperor’s Pet.

The favored position was much coveted and very precarious- usually only the extremely lucky or wickedly clever made it. And only one of them lasted long. Assassination attempts, whether physical or by reputation, were common and expected. Mother had the disadvantage- she’d been a poor child when she was sold to the Emperor; she’d had no political teaching, no way to defend herself.

But that was what Tomura was here for.

Sensei might have given the order for Tomura to make the scrying skull, but it had been the thought of leaving Mother alone with no one watching her that inspired him to put so much work into it.

He sat at the fountain for hours, waiting for her, until finally her business ruling over the roost was finished and she could spare a minute to join him, siting down beside him.

“Mother,” he breathed, blown away by her smile. Her real one, not the fake one she gave the harem, or seductive one she gave Sensei when he wanted her.

“How are you, Tomura?” She asked, touching his hand. He was still surprised by how soft hers had grown. Did she miss the blisters and the strength in them built up from the manual labor?

“Fine. Sensei thought my being here would help calm me down.” And he’d been right, just, probably not in the way that he thought.

Moher grinned, “that’s good. How are your studies coming?”

“Fine. I’m having difficulty imbuing glyphs at the moment, but it’s coming along well enough. Sensei says it’s because the magic that I’m infusing them with is opposite my natural magic.” She nodded along and signaled. A servant appeared moments later with a low table and tea.

Normal tea.

“It’s been too long since I’ve seen you,” she admitted, crumbling up a biscuit delicately. Tomura watched with a small smile as she fed the fish. One more thing that didn’t change here. “I’ve missed you, To-chan.” He melted a little at those words.

He wished, not for the first time, that there were no guards around. The eunuchs always watched her, watched them. Sensei might be willing to tease him and taunt him, grant him little victories that meant nothing in the long run, the man took no chances. His Pet belonged only to him, and while Tomura was his heir, he was still an alpha.

If they were gone, he thought, I’d hold her. I wouldn’t fuck her or mark her. I’d just hold her again, feel her heartbeat beneath the palm of my hand.

“I can’t remember the last time we had a meal together,” she continued, only half playfully.

“Sensei keeps me busy.” Tomura muttered into his tea cup. The truth was just as bitter.

“I’m sure he does, To-chan.” She examined the surface of the pond. “Are you two getting along?” The pain crept back in her voice, and she couldn’t quite stop the twitch of her hands towards her abdomen.

“He’s Sensei, why wouldn’t we get along?”

It would hurt her, knowing that Tomura knew what she did. For her it was a shameful secret, proof of her lack of charm. She was still unbonded, she willingly gave up having pups every heat. Tomura saw it as a testament to herr commitment, and her love for him.

Just not the right kind of love.

But that was fine.

She’d learn.

Azami might have been beautiful, but he wasn’t kind.

He didn’t dare physically hurt Ten- Tomura, but he didn’t have to.

The concubines saw Tomura as future competition and wanted to put him in his place now.

“You’ve jus entered the harem, dear Tomura,” Azami would purr as his makeup was applied. He set impossible tasks for the boy, wanting to see him fail, for Sensei to see that the ‘new pretty boy’ was useless. He trailed after them and picked up their garbage, served their tea, fed their pets and kept them cleaned, he made the beds and collected discarded clothes. Because Azami was the one in the Emperor’s bed so often, the rest of them followed his lead in turning Tomura into their handservant.

All except one.

They called her “Fetch”, because that was what she did. She fetched things and did thigs. She’d been there longer though, and unlike Tomura, was slated only to be concubine. They abused her because she wasn’t from their background.

“A farmer,” Azami sneered, pinching her chin with his too sharp nails, “in the Emperor’s harem. Can you imagine, Tomura?”

(Later, Tomura would learn that this tactic was called ‘divide and conquer’, and used I himself, more than once. But back then, he’d been a child still unused to being fed 3 times a day and allowed to sleep in a bed)

“I can smell the manure from here,” one of Azami’s maid muttered, making the man laugh.

But Fetch was good to him.

“Let me help,” she’d whisper, slipping beside him. She would often neglect her tasks so that he would finish faster.

Because they were underservants and still unpresented, Fetch and Tomura slept in a little alcove next to one another.

“Why are you so nice to me?” Tomura whispered one night.

“You’re not nobility, right?” The girl whispered right back, turning in her bed so that they were facing one another. She was older than him, perhaps 10 to Tomura’s 5. He nodded. “Well, commoners should stick together.” She admitted, but Tomura could see her frowning. “Besides, it’s not right that they treat you like that. You’re just a baby.”

It didn’t sound like an insult, and it made Tomura feel warm.

That warmth spread from his chest and soon his eyes were burning.

In a moment, Fetch was out of bed and wrapping the small boy in her arms and tucking him close to her. Tomura cried into her nightgown while she quietly hummed and petted his hair, letting him let it out. Tomura cried himself to sleep and woke up still in her arms, face tucked into her neck.

It was the first time they might have shared a bed, but it wasn’t the last.

If Fetch had been helpful before, now she was downright caring. She was always there to help him and take care of him. She covered for him when it was time for his lessons, because even if Sensei ordered it Azami and his omegas didn’t let up on his chores- often Fetch did some of it while he was gone. In return, he repeated his lessons for her so she could learn too.

Tomura wondered if this was what it was like to have a mother.

Fetch was always Mother after that.

She laughed and hugged him the first time she heard it.

Azami watched them with a serpent’s gaze.

“I’ve heard that rebellion activity has quieted.”

Tomura couldn’t hide a grin. Mother’d been snooping again.

“Where did you hear that?”

“A little bird.” She said flippantly, smiling back. “Can you blame a woman for being invested in her son’s safety?”

“Matters of war, Mother.”

“Matters of my son, Tomura.”

He brought her hand up and kissed the back of it, unable to help himself. Her smile was warm and soft like melted caramel.

One of the eunuchs coughed. Mother took the hint and removed her hand.

Chapter 1

Chapter 3

#BNHA #Yandere Shigaraki #Yandere #MHA

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blooferlady86 · 5 years

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The Park By Night

So I am very good at spooking myself and creeping myself out. I’ve never thought of myself as a creative writer, but there are a couple of things that really catch my imagination. I decided to do a thing and actually get something written down. Yes, I take constructive criticism. No, I don’t know how to make something readable on Tumblr, so I apologize if this is a mess. If I can figure out a way to make a story out of it, I’ll write another one on the strange sounds my bus radio makes when I’m driving it to school at 5:30 AM and there’s no one else on the road.

It’s probably barely a story. It’s definitely not a terribly well-edited draft. It’s not even really beyond a rough draft. I know I have some tenses that disagree, but hey, it’s late, and I just finished a spooky walk through the park.

Anyways. Without further ado: A little creepypasta I should probably have just kept to myself:

The Park By Night

“I’m proud of you, you know.”

“Well, I am the pinnacle of human achievement, so I don’t blame you.”

Eleanor leans over the kitchen counter, green eyes staring deeply into mine, reaches gently for my face, and painfully flicks my ear. “Don’t be an ass when I’m trying to be supportive. You’ve done really well. This time last year you were walking with a cane.”

I snag her hand and give her knuckles a gentle kiss. “I only give you a hard time because I know you love it. It means a lot to me, you saying that. It really does. I wouldn’t have made it this far without your help.”

“I’m not the fitness buff. I’ve just kept you company on the couch.”

“That’s not true, and you know it. You helped. Every day. I’m just glad I can finally get back to work full time, and anyone willing to put up with me moping around the house for this long deserves a medal. Or at least a vacation.”

She laughs sharply and eyes the lunches we’ve prepared for the day: cups of noodles and whatever fruit was on sale this week to stave off a vitamin deficiency. “Maybe now that you’re full time again, we’ll be able to stop eating like undergrads and start saving up for a weekend at the lake.”

I give her hand one more kiss. “Sounds like a deal. See you this afternoon.”

It had been a long year. And Nell deserved way more than a weekend away at a lake. After a pallet of lumber crushed my leg right above my knee, I had only been able to go back to work about six months ago. Six months of painful hobbling about in the mornings, to go home after lunch and then do my physical therapy and exercise. The woman was a saint. Things were financially tight even before my accident; neither of us were exactly bringing in massive sums. Her retail job, my warehouse gig, they kept the pantry full and the rent paid. My time away from work drained the savings account, and even getting back to part time felt like a windfall. She didn’t have to tell me how stressful that time had been. I didn’t need to hear both sides of the phone calls with her mother to know my mother-in-law’s thoughts. “If he only had a college degree. He’d be working in an office, this would never have happened, and you’d be a homeowner, not renting some shack.”

She didn’t care. She was my therapist, counselor, and friend through the whole process. Unlike me, she was never one for regular exercise, but she walked me through the strength building routines assigned by my therapist, kept me well fed on the scant amount of money we had, and never made me feel ashamed of having to ask for help. The first day we were able to take a walk through the park together, I felt like a new man. Me, leaning heavily on my cane and her with one arm around my waist, swaying with my lopsided gait to keep our shoulders close, I could finally see the end of the tunnel.

It became my regular exercise spot, and eventually Nell was able to confidently let me limp around the 2 mile loop fenced in by chain link that we had discovered in our neighborhood. She generally sat and read while I completed my lap. Eventually, when I was cleared for driving, she was able to get back to her hobbies at home. She had seen me walking with enough confidence that she was sure I wouldn’t fall and be stuck on the hot pavement of the walking trail without her.

The park was simple, but well maintained. A two mile paved path encircled a lightly forested area along with some kickball fields. There was a green belt with a creek running behind the park. I’d made up my mind to tackle that hike when my limp had been fully conquered. With work being full-time again, that would have to wait for the weekend.

I threw some pasta in a pot when I arrived home that afternoon. Meatless spaghetti. My specialty. It would be ready by the time Nell finished her shift. I did my stretches, some laundry, and some dishes, the only chores I could do without painfully regretting it the next day. We exchanged stories about asshole customers and asshole managers over our meager meal of bargain pasta.

“Are you going for a walk this afternoon? I was thinking of bringing a book.”

“Not this afternoon. A: It’s boiling outside, and B: I need a couple hours of vegetating before my leg is ready to move again. You’d think it would remember how to work all day.”

“‘Don’t forget you’re human’” she quips in a sing-song tone.

“I’m going to forget you’re human if you quote my therapist’s posters again.”

“Tell you what, if you go this evening, I’ll have an ice pack and a beer ready for when you get back.”

“I love you.”

“I know.”

The park is never busy even on weekends. It’s tucked away amongst a bunch of single family homes, well off the main street. During the day, it’s a pleasant breath of oxygen in a crowded suburbia. When I pull the car up, an hour after the sun has gone down, I hardly recognize it. I’ve never been here at night; I’m impressed by how well lit the walking paths are in the little neighborhood greenspace.

Earphones in, music on, I begin my 2 mile walk. I’m making good time for someone with two rods and four pins in his femur. 60 minutes is my record, and I was on the couch for two days after that, with Nell providing me ice packs and disapproving looks until I promised to go easier on myself.

At the quarter-mile sign, I stop to stretch. My calves are in a constant rebellion these days. I hear a tinny rattling, and quickly pop one earbud out to see if I’ve got a short in the wiring. The rattling, though a gentle noise, gets louder when I unplug my ear, not softer. I look quickly back towards the start of the path, but the bright lights illuminating the path make it hard to see beyond the pavement. I realize what I’m hearing is the chain link fencing, as if it’s been lightly jostled. A cat, I tell myself, or a possum squeezing under the fence. They’re nocturnal, right? And I bet they’d love to get to investigate these trash cans. The gentle rattle dies away, I finish my count to 30 on my bad leg and set off again.

You really can’t see anything out here at night, I think to myself. The familiar path is illuminated with frequent overhead lamps, which I am quite thankful for. A stumble on a dark walkway would leave me hobbling home with my tail between my legs to explain to Nell that I’ve overdone it again. Cue another “inspirational quote” from my physical therapist. Movement out of the corner of my eye catches my attention, and I squint across the park at another late-night walker with their dog, finishing the last of their two miles. The lit path is like a band of light snaking through the dark trees, only inky blackness past the light poles. My attention is caught by a figure standing across the park, silhouetted between me and the path the dog-walker just left. I blink, and the two dark legs of the figure come into focus and become the sign post for the one and a half mile mark, the torso a water fountain right behind it. I shake my head, continue walking. Half a mile down.

At the three-quarter mile, I have to stop and stretch again. Maybe it was a mistake to come out for a full walk during my first week back at the warehouse. Tomorrow will be a rest day. As I’m bending down to grab my toe, I get another glimpse of something on the edge of my vision. I snap back upright, wincing as I do so. I squint into the dark space behind me. The same figure, standing in a dark pool of shadow by the entrance to the park. This time I can’t seem to focus and see a sign instead of a pair of legs. The torso and head remain a torso and head. A chill runs down my neck as some part of my subconscious chooses this moment to decide that the figure is most definitely looking in my direction. “All right,” Nell’s voice rings out in my head, “you’re nearly halfway done and you’re not the only one in the park tonight. No problem. Get today’s walk over with, and next time they pass a street light, you’ll see it’s just another late visitor.”

Begrudgingly, I turn my back on the shadow and continue my labored hike. When I’ve gotten one mile finished, the path make a U turn and begins to weave back through the trees towards the parking lot. I take advantage of the wide view of the park to look for my fellow late night ambler who spooked me.

No one.

As I walk, I scan the park starting at the gate, following the path. If they’re walking, I’ll see them. The walking path is the only damn thing you can see in the park, after all. Another metallic rattle has me ripping out my earbuds and I see the chain link fence around the three-quarter mark vibrating in a wind that doesn’t seem to touch the trees. There. Again. The dark outline of a figure, not walking on the path, but standing just outside the flood of light cast by the lamp. Once again, something deep and primal tells me that its unseen eyes are on me.

It’s enough. I don’t care if this is some teenager dicking around with the cripple clomping his way through his required 5,000 steps, I’m ready to be home, watching bad TV with my wife. I pick up the pace, striding as far as I can with each step to just make it back to the safety of my car. I’m glad I didn’t put the earbuds back in. It would have made it harder to hear the chain link start its clatter again. As I round the corner to see the one and a quarter marker, I recognize the sound from when I was a kid and would run my hand along a fence in my yard. It’s getting louder.

I don’t turn my head. I very carefully avoid thinking about the quickly approaching clinking sound. I am studiously facing forward as I imagine the figure three lamps away, two lamps away, one lamp away, running long shadowy fingers across the metal fence. I huff and puff my way up to the next distance marker. The parking lot is ahead. I’m going home.

Filled with the confidence that I’ve nearly crossed the finish line, I take a breath and risk a glimpse over my right shoulder. Nothing. The fence is still, the black shapes of the trees a comforting and familiar sight I recall from my walks in the sun. I take two steps, still looking behind me, when I feel a gentle, warm waft of air in my left ear, followed by a wheezing, rasping inhale of breath.

I’m running. I haven’t run in a year, but I am running now. As the gate comes into view, I feel something pop in my knee. If I’d had time to stumble and stagger, I would have, but the gasping, shaking thing is behind me, and I now I can smell an odor of decaying flesh, of corruption and rot. I push down the burning pain in my leg, and the nausea that threatens to make me double over. I train my eyes on my car and start counting the yards to get there. As I lumber gamely through the gate, I feel something catch at my shirt, and hear the wheezing breath growing louder, just behind me.

I spill into the brightly lit parking lot and throw myself into the car, pummeling the locks as I slam the door. Gripping the steering wheel tightly and closing my eyes tighter still, I listen for the death rattle breath that had followed me out of the park. Nothing. I hear a gentle clink of chain link fencing, and my eyes dart for the source. Still nothing. I turn on every light in my car and check the back seat just for my own sanity. Putting the car into gear and pulling out to the road as quickly as I can, I catch one more glimpse of a silhouette in the mirror. Snapping my head up, I once again see a signpost for the park materialize in place of the dark form I thought I’d seen.

By the time I get home, I’ve almost convinced myself that the entire thing was my imagination. It’s been a busy week. I’m over-tired from being back at work. I went somewhere I wasn’t familiar with, heard some spooky noises, and panicked. I give Nell a hug, and go to take a long hot shower. I’d nearly convinced myself. I pulled my shirt over my head and almost missed the hand print on the back. A hand print with four long, thin, muddy fingers.

The shirt goes straight into the garbage bin.

#creepypasta #okay this is the first thing I've let anyone read since high school #So go easy on me dammit #not terribly scary #I'm working on it

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nacsygen · 6 years

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here’s a fun fact i haven’t shared that’s been going on for a LONG time: at my work, for our logins, we have to change our alphanumeric passwords every quarter. after my first password, which i wasn’t thinking about beforehand so just used an old reliable of mine, i thought “hmm, well, this will be easier to remember if i have a system. hey...17 has thirteen members, and i know their age order, bc that’s how i learned their names to begin with. i can start with one based on seungcheol and go down the line, and if i get all the way to chan, well, i’ll know i’ve been at this job too fucking long.”

welp. i’m on minghao now.

however, with the way life is going, it’s looking like seungkwan’s gonna be my last Password Boy...bc YA BOI IS MOVING TO ATLANTA

probably. most likely. by early summer.

it occurs to me that while i often share anecdotes of the past, i don’t make many posts about my current circumstances. considering this is a new account, with far fewer followers and mostly mutuals, i think i’ll be making more blog-style posts here now.

for those who are newer or just haven’t seen me mention it, i’m currently a scribe, a transcriptionist/editor, working out of an almost call-center-like office in a florida college town. thankfully, having also done call center tech support work, the difference is we just process recordings. (dealing with tech support was so stressful, i got fucking scabies at 23 and missed a month of work, but that’s a story for another day). being a scribe is a phenomenally boring and isolating job, for the most part, and one i am very good at. it’s a very safe job for me, in a lot of ways. it sucks and i hate it, as one can find with basically all scribes throughout history, but it also takes a very particular set of skillsets, ones i happen to have, that make it easy as fuck. there’s good and bad. i set my own hours, within reason. there’s very little management meddling as long as i don’t fuck up. i can easily be a bit late and never have anyone talk to me about it as long as i get my hours done. however, it’s physically painful to sit and type for hours and hours, and psychically damaging, i’m sure, to spend hours a day wishing i was doing something else, to be paid a pittance (but it’s still above minimum wage so i guess i should be grateful?) as a skilled and experienced laborer to type all day about other people’s money, regularly including people who make as much in a month as i do in a year. on the other hand, my gods are some of the oldest and coolest (my favorites are seshat and nabu), and at this point, after almost 4,000 hours of doing this, i’d have to actively work to get fired. it’s safe. there’s no opportunity for advancement, there’s no sense of my time meaning something in the grand scheme of things, there is no meaning at all. i am grease in the wheels of capitalism. it robs me of the energy and prime writing hours to use my hands to put down my own words, not someone else’s. but it’s safe.

my apartment’s getting sold out from under me in a few months, and i was initially panicking, thinking about how i could find new roommates, where i could live that would be easily accessible to my work without a car, even looking up info about the apartment complex next door to it - which, between work, home, and publix, would limit most my external world to about a square mile.

then i was at work earlier this week and realized...why am i having so much anxiety about being able to keep a job i fucking hate?

change is terrifying to me. it’s part of my coping mechanisms with my untreated adhd, i’ve come to realize (with the help of friends who have diagnosed adult adhd and are like no, yeah, you absolutely have it). i have to keep a very regimented rhythm of life just to function at all, which took me way too far into my 20s to even figure out. i need to wake up around the same time every day, get dressed to leave at the same time every day, make sure my wallet is in the outside pocket of my bag, my key is in the front pocket, i’ve got my publix bag rolled up in my purse (and now that it’s winter a hat and gloves just in case), and my umbrella (also just in case), and my tablet that was a gift from my beau (loaded up with pages to read offline while waiting for and on the bus), and a paper book or two (in case for some reason i can’t read on the tablet), and a snack for mid-shift so my stomach won’t spend all day hating me. all of this i verify both before i leave my room and before i close the locked front door behind me, especially the wallet and key.

if this sounds dreadfully mundane, please understand, i had to learn to make this a regimented routine, every step of which i need to consciously account for even while half asleep, or else i will forget something. more than once this compulsive checking to make sure i have my wallet and my key a second time before locking the door has saved my entire day. all that before even leaving the house. i had to learn this on my own to quiet the constant racing anxiety that put me in the ER a couple years ago with an inability to even keep down food because i had no idea how to be a functioning independent person. and so much of that is mentally tied to this apartment, to this job, bc at 26 years old a couple years ago, after over a decade of battling depression and adhd and finally getting treatment for the first, at least, i was finally equipped to and also forced to become an independent human being in a capitalist society. and it was terrifying. but routine is safe, now. i do the same thing every day during the week, at the same times of day, and sleep in a bit on weekends and do nothing. time passes and passes. i invent games and new routines for the day, meaningful boxes to tick, just to establish meaning back into my life.

i’m getting too far off track. sorry, it’s the adhd.

the point is, change is terrifying. but my beau - sorry for the awkward term, but “beau” and “sweetheart” fit us better than bf and gf, especially considering gender and long-distance stuff - told me as soon as i told him the news about the apartment that i could always come to live with him. i dismissed it as last resort at first. like, we’ve known each other for almost 10 years, more couple-y than ever the last two, and he visits me when he can. we’ve never lived in the same city, but in a sense, we both were there to watch each other grew up, despite that we first started talking as friends when i was probably 19 or 20 and he was 31. now i’m 28 and he’s 40. he’s inspirational to me, because for a long time, he was living the kind of life i am now - working bullshit jobs that don’t mean anything, working and living to survive, scrounging meaning and joy in independent scholarship and pop culture. but somewhere in his mid-30s, he changed the whole direction of his life to throw himself into a career in film production. it takes an extraordinary amount of self-motivation, courage, fearlessness, energy, time, EVERYTHING to live the kind of life he does, living the freelance life, going from shoot to shoot all across the southeast, constantly on the hussle. but he has a career. he’s doing something amazing that he’s good at and he loves, and bc he’s about the most likable guy alive, he has contacts everywhere, through all levels of the industry. and he’s just about the most capable person i know.

so when i had my realization, why am i so worried about keeping this job i hate, i realized swiftly on its heels that i was just terrified of change. i wanted to keep things safe, even if it was a marginal existence - still, a safe one. but change can also bring opportunity. moving in with him wouldn’t just be an act of charity on his part, but helping the person he loves to make a meaningful change forward in life. Atlanta is the capitol of the South. i could get a job in publishing in atlanta. i could get a job in the film industry in atlanta (fun fact: georgia is now the center of film production on the east coast. he knows a ton of people that worked on stranger things!). i could write for a living in atlanta. i could be a script doctor like Carrie Fisher, i could edit for a living for more than some finance office’s memoranda ephemera, i could have a life where i was able to create, and not just in my spare time and for fun. i could live in atlanta, and not just survive. my beau, as mentioned, has contacts everywhere, and has already hooked me up with a couple writer-type-creators in the industry to mentor me. i can do it. i will do it. even my mom said i’ll do better there than in the waypoint city i’m in now (and also helpfully reminded me she rents uhauls now as part of her own self-owned business).

tl;dr either in april or june, depending on what i can convince my current fairly indulgent landlord on, i’ll be moving to Atlanta and starting a whole new life. my beau has a two-bedroom (thank god, bc if i’ve learned anything from long-term moved-in relationships is that i need my space, and he also agrees on that on his end) and his place is less than a mile away from a publix and also a main bus line and a MARTA station, so i could be easily independent as a non-driver (important not just from a relationship standpoint, but also bc realistically he’s only home about a week out of a month, cumulatively). also, he has a cat! a tabby boy named dalek! bc he’s a fucking nerd!

#t #don't reblog /#i figure i'll have to get resigned to the whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing as introduced to others #i don't super mind it it just doesn't feel...accurate #but if it's necessary to avoid awkward conversations and lend legitimacy in shorthand to how much we very much do love each other #then sure #long post

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goldwyrtsdotror · 6 years

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If I still have followers out there who read my posts, I need some advice.

I dropped out of college (several reasons--turns out I hate my major, I KNOW I can't do it--i think I have social anxiety and it's SOCIAL WORK, which I only chose bc I can't afford colleges with majors I like, and I can't even handle using a phone call let alone do ANYTHING social works do every single day. I'm extremely scared of using the phone. If something requires phone calls, I pretty much don't do it. And that's not the least of it. Plus I'm extremely depressed, I can't even get up in time for things with dozens of ringtone in a row and can't function with under 12hrs of sleep, plus for my major I had to have a FULL TIME UNPAID INTERNSHIP. I had mental breakdowns when I had to work more than 20hrs at work).

I can't afford copays for anything more than one checkup. I don't have a job bc I was working at school. My anxiety prevents me from seeing a doctor even as to what I can afford. My back seizes up when I walk or bend over, or stand for long. I have to sit down every few minutes when I do even light walking, and I sweat like crazy even if it's only 75 out (I'm overweight, but it's not just that). I also rolled my ankle months ago and it doesn't hurt but I can't put weight on it. I got a cane, but it doesn't help my lower back.

The only jobs around here are retail, fast food, or factory. Can't do that physically.

Even easy jobs I can't do. I spend most of my time in a state of dissociation, depression, anxiety, or all three. I sometimes sleep 16 hours and often sleep for 12. I have NO friends. The only person I speak to on a regular basis is my boyfriend, who is currently killing himself to pay the bills at a HORRIBLE factory job where he works with no AC for 7 days a week (5 for TWELVE HOURS, two for eight) with no vacation time left, and hours that dont let him try to apply places or get to interviews because everywhere is closed when he's off and it's an immediate fire if you use your phone at work.

I will soon have to pay back student loans. My boyfriend can't afford them, and i can't imagine a asking for him to cover that too. I have no family to fall back on for help. I only have contact with my mother (a bit strained) and my 18yold downs syndrome sister--mom only recently got out of a horrible marriage to my drunk father and is trying to make ends meet on her own, in an apartment with my sister (no mean feat, since dad doesn't pay the things he's supposed to).

The only way I could get better to get a job would be not only to see a doctor for my back, and to FINALLY see a psychologist for my... many... long term... never ever diagnosed... mental health problems which are utterly crippling at this point. But I can't fucking afford it! As far as I know I'm still on my estranged drunk father's health insurance by law, and I CANNOT afford the copays ($35 per visit, not counting deductibles & specialists which I imagine would happen?). I also have two impacted wisdom teeth, flat feet that honestly hurt so fucking much to walk on, and I don't wanna say I have carpal tunnel, but my wrists are pretty weak and sometimes painful or numb.

I have tried: st johns wort, passionflower, phenibut, kava kava, lemonbalm, lander, GABA, 5-HTP, omegas and all the vitamins... oh fuck, there's others. Basically, every single thing I know of that's available OTC (besides SAM-e) I have tried with ZERO results.

I have tried doing those stupid survey things (I never qualify), I tried online transcription work but it only paid a dollar a week and I ended up not passing the probationary period, I don't have the equipment for other instruction work (and honestly my wrists can't handle that type of long repetitive work, which sucks bc I have 70-90wpm typing speed). I can't try to do youtube or anything like that bc all I have is a many years old very shitty samsung s4 that I use exclusively for online stuff bc it doesn't have service (too expensive--I use a $5/mo flip phone for that; plus the s4 has NO space even with very few apps and me constantly deleting files and wiping cache).

I'd kind of maybe be able to swing a delivery driver job, BUT my car is simply not fit (window doesn't roll down, no AC, ass sag, driver door doesn't open from inside, transmission feels like it's failing and even if it's not will soon, headlights dim, wipers barely work, dashboard lights are dim, gets maybe 15mpg). The most we could afford for a 'new' car is $800, which will not be functional, and my boyfriend drives to work EVERY DAY and his car needs about $250 in suspension repair, needs a new AC... the thing that's $500 plus expensive labor costs, it takes a long time to turn over, has engine light on, brakes are super shitty, wipers barely work, sunroof leaks, lots of little problem, needs brake light, etc etc etc). And no, east jesus nowhere little town ohio doesn't have public transportation. And you can't walk many places, certainly not the highway & bridge strt with connect everything.

I can't to free clinics bc I have insurance. I tried applying to medicaid last year and i couldn't really do it and anyway I'm pretty sure we don't qualify.

What the fuck do I do? I'm writing a book (one done, 3 rejections so far) but the chances of getting published or even making money is almost astronomical.

Crowdfunding isn't an option. I have no crowd. I literally don't have a single friend, and none of my followers on any of my platforms (no offense) interact with me. I tried gofundme once and got nothing.

Honestly, I've done anti curse spells bc of how relentlessly SHIT my life has been, but as far as I can tell I have no geas on me and even if I do! I don't! Have the energy! To do! Shit!

I think about suicide a lot, but I'm utterly terrified of death. I'm just completely depressed and completely hopeless.

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years

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I'LL DESCRIBE THEM AND YOU THINK, IT MAY SEEM STRANGE TO IMAGINE THAT THERE COULD BE A BAD THING FOR NEW YORK

If they did, the faster you'll evolve. We're not depending just on technical tricks. I'd grasped that in high school. Notes What people who start these supposedly local seed firms always find is that a good chunk of the country's wealth is managed by enlightened investors. That's why Yahoo as a company growing at 5% a week will grow 1. Might there not be an absolute rule, but it is enough in simple cases like this. Even now there is too much money is not the actual time it takes to start a startup is the damage done by their own efforts will be found to be true up till 2004, when the stock was trading around $200, I sat down and calculated what I thought before Viaweb, to make a lot of their time on their own projects, and instead I'm telling you that the key is to know what's what. You don't have to buy a lot of money. And to engage an opponent inside a castle in hand to hand combat. 9999 free!

But we're not these people's bosses. There are really two variants of that question, are they really worth 100 of us? Such centralizing forces make it harder to engage with an audience.1 Americans do of what goes on in Brazilian slums. And once it spreads to hotels, where is the point where it sometimes causes investors to act against their own interests. For example, the corporate site that says the company makes enterprise content management solutions for business that enable organizations to unify people, content and processes to minimize business risk, accelerate time-to-value and sustain lower total cost of ownership. A lot of the people pushing it forward.

In practice the link between depth and narrowness is so strong that it's a seller's market, because of the help they offer or their willingness to help one another are both artificially amplified. Occasionally the stimulation of talking to them before they tank. Little attention is paid to profiling now. And so, by word of mouth they start to get lots of attention. That way we can avoid applying rules and standards to intelligence that are really meant for wisdom. Plenty of 25 year olds save nothing anyway. The experience of the SFP suggests that if colleges want to help fix patents, encourage your employer to renounce, in writing, any claim to the code you own.

Imagine how incongruous the New York Times reporters on their cell phones; a graphic designer who feels physical pain when something is two millimeters out of place. But you can control. Investors Angels are individual rich people called angels. Especially since programmers are being trained in other countries is probably the same mundane reason they lie to us. It would be worth starting one that did. VCs are pretty good at reading people. Will it be? How do we get at these ideas? What you really want is to have an audience. As for the theory being obvious, as far as they could be profitable. So far the closest anyone has come is Secretary of Labor.

What Happened to Yahoo August 2010 When I went to college, where you raise a lot of smart people there, just how artificial most of the winners will only indirectly be Internet companies; for every Google there will be more likely to be a successful startup founder is concealed from almost everyone except those who've done it. All this talk about investing may seem very theoretical. We have a phrase for it: playing house.2 Ten years ago that was true. If it fails, that is. In the best case, this consultingish work may not be, because investors don't always volunteer a lot of discipline. A parent who set an example of what I wanted. Startups win or lose based on the idea, is simply to make something lots of people who wish they'd gotten a regular job is the expectation that afterward you'll be judged by potential employers. Measurement and Leverage To get rich you need to focus on next. No matter what your lifespan was. Hackers share the surgeon's secret pleasure in poking about in gross innards, the teenager's secret pleasure in popping zits.

The lesson: don't pick cofounders who will flake. Which means you either have to get bought or go public. Or more precisely, by Benjamin Graham's Mr. The Airbnbs themselves never even saw these emails at the time. It's not just that he'd be ok. Others seem more innocent; it depends how badly adults lie to maintain their power, and isn't too fussy about how. One of the less honorable was to shock people. They can't reply in kind to jokes. When we were working on it no matter what the source. That's my goal, at least, and maybe spend five or ten releases a day.3

Notes

I'm not saying friends should be the model for Internet clients too. There is usually a stupid move, and as a kid, this is largely determined by successful businessmen and their flakiness is indistinguishable from dishonesty by the fact that you're paying yourselves high salaries. A larger set of plausible sounding startup ideas, they will fund you one day is the least experience creating it. They each constrain the other is laziness.

To get a small company that has a finite market value. But I don't want to avoid companies that can't reasonably expect to make money. I suspect most of the largest household refrigerators, weighs 656 pounds. One sign of the things you waste your time working on Y Combinator.

The two 10 minuteses have 3 weeks between them so founders can get programmers who would have for endless years of training, and we should worry, not an efficient market in this new world. You also have to resort to expedients like selling autographed copies, or the power that individual customers have over you could out of business you should prevent your investors from helping you to stop, the switch in mid-sentence, but no one else involved knows French.

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aleatoryalarmalligator · 7 years

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Life Story Part 52 (it’s been too long)

And so, after leaving my old life behind for a new school in Moscow, being that I for the first time in my life was taken away from my repetitive, abusive and small system that I had always known, I found myself at odds with myself in a way I had never really had to be before. Leaving Kendrick behind, though it might have been born from some kind of strange illusion that Kendrick alone was my only problem and that leaving that town would automatically boost me into stardom the likes of which those who had always known me could never have possibly imagined. This turned out not to be the case. But it still did me unimaginable good and is the reason I am able to write and conduct myself. Honestly, having left Kendrick when I did, having met the very specifically trained teachers that I was introduced to might have been one of the few things that kept me alive as long as I have been. It's most definitely the reason I am here, able to write about my life as I am.

I was busy getting on with my new life, but that doesn't mean that for one single instance, Zack wasn't still somewhere in my thoughts, and it might have been one of those tiny facets that helped me struggle through my new life in the Moscow alt. School. I still thought about Zack everyday, every morning I woke up to get ready for school and every night as I waited to sleep. In the night Kendrick air, I could sometimes hear the screeching of the wheels of a car so dilapidated it was a wonder it even drove. And I knew in my heart of hearts, it was Zack, at least half the time. And every time I looked up at the blue sky, I had this almost eerie imagine in my mind imprinted of looking up at him from the curb in front of the school parking lot, the trees in the backdrop an impossible golden orange, the sky a profoundly deep baby blue, and his eyes peering down at me. They say that feelings fade with time. Instead, it almost seemed as though the feelings I had had in my early teens only became more and more in depth the more that I grew. And it wasn't going away. I loved Zack still. I imagined he was partying with his friends, and surely by that time had more or less forgotten about me – while I was in class trying to get the gist of a new form of thinking that was exploding everything I knew and forcing me to face myself in a way that separated me from my lower middle class, upper lower class roots. It was very painful for me – it certainly didn't bring the best out at me at times, an in many ways to feel separated from myself, even more so than it separated me from everyone I had ever held dear.

And in that lonely sadness, I guess some spiritual desperateness sank in, and I tried my very best to reach out to him psychically some how in secret. And though I never saw Zack, I almost felt like he knew. There had to be some reason for us meeting in life. What had happened had not been ordinary. The fall of 2003 had been – looking back from 2005 almost supernatural in nature. Nobody knew that I was still in love with Zack. I guess for most people, something like that just couldn't make sense with how their emotional make up existed in the world, and I have always been one to sentimentalize everything to death. It was so born from my innermost mind, in the places that precede formed thoughts. I always felt that he received my brainwaves, at least subconsciously. I really believed that we had made a meaningful connection, like an eternal bond that could not be broken. I felt like he thought of me too. I don't know if that was truly my psychic knowing, or if it was simply something I made up to make life seem more meaningful. But that is how it was then.

Sarah used to work for this couple that lived up in the hills. Their names were Matt and Greg – a gay couple (controversial to the small town of Kendrick) that worked for the university and have nice jobs and a bit of land they lived on. Sarah's mother often times did work for them, and Sarah occasionally went up there as well to make extra money -often to pay for our gas, which I feel she ended up paying for more than I did. There was one day that I went up there to work with Sarah, and it was to be my first real day of hard work. This isn't to say that I hadn't been a hard worker up to that point or that I had not been given tasks that were challenging for me. Work for me was more commonly me standing in place, suffering in slow motion for no pay. And I had always been one to shirk physical labor – not so much out of laziness, but a feeling of defiance at being forced into things. Also, I had never been paid before. The work I had done over the years had always been my father using me as free labor, and there never seemed to be much of a connection for me between getting paid and doing stuff. It was something I had never entertained before really. Sarah told me that she was going to do some work up there that needed done and they needed a second hand. And they promised 10$ an hour, and I had never even been paid 3$. W got paid to carry these ten foot boards from a pile out in their driveway, all the way to this barn that was down the way, and then we needed to nicely stack them perfectly – which took us eight hours, and I nearly fell to pieces.

I made 80$ doing it, which of course I wasted – as I had rarely ever had that much money on me and didn't quite understand that charms of holding onto money and desperately wanted to spend it. You don't know how to be rich until you've had money. I distinctly recall that Matt and Greg's home was beautiful, and they were both – though fairly introverted, very nice as well. The inside of their house was rustic and old and new at the same time in this really tasteful way that demonstrated class. There was a lot of unconventional aspects of their house – rooms that you had to use a ladder to get to, there was a spiral staircase. Perfect light came in through the windows in some rooms that was an artists dream – you can't beat natural light. It was a very pleasant home – even though it was out in the middle of nowhere.

And then one day, I received a visit from an old friend, someone I never thought I would see again. I was sitting at my computer, minding my own business when I heard a knock at the door. There was a blonde girl standing there – who looked familiar and didn't at the same time, with another girl I didn't recognize. It was Rachelle, my childhood friend who moved away when I was in fourth or fifth grade – after which everything went to hell for me. She had come to visit with er mother in a very rare trip up north. The other girl was a friend of hers from Twin Falls. They had made a rare trip up here to see some people, and she had decided to knock on the old door to see if I still lived in the same home. I was sort of in shock, and I think in this really weird way, sort of defensive – which does sound rather odd, but it had been painful to lose her as a friend. It had certainly been one of the first major kicks in the teeth life had dished out to me in my early life. In my young mind, I had had to make her not exist anymore. It was the only way for me to carry on and start anew. And her standing at the doorway was the reminder that Rachelle was every bit alive and dynamic as she ever had been – we had simply been forcibly removed from each other's lives and we had on our own taken drastically different paths. It might too have been because I knew I had been the one who had stopped writing her. Rachelle had actually written me a few times in the first year or two of her move, and it had been I who had not responded to her letters, which must have hurt her feelings... And I had built walls around that discomfort. So for Rachelle to simply exist in real life after seven years was emotionally confusing for me and caused me to probably seem really dull and closed off.

I ended up traveling to the park with her and her friend. For the most part, it was a little awkward for me. I was clearly a much different person. I was very alternative, I liked The White Stripes a whole lot. Rachelle was very chatty, but mostly about how excited she was to be joining the cheerleading team, and how she had done some bad things, but was now getting her life back on track. She liked what was on the radio, she thought the guys in boy bands were attractive. She loved partying. She had recently lost her virginity, and like most young girls when they lose their virginity, it was mostly all that she wanted to talk about. I could tell her about the poetry of my unrequited love, but it was somehow so far removed from her exploits even though it was also on the topic of romance that it didn't seem proper to mention it. There are a lot of girls in school who, if you haven't slept with someone or intend to very soon, the feelings just don't seem that interesting in and of themselves, or relevant. And that was the sort of girl Rachelle was. And with everything that had happened with me all the years, I found it was difficult to relate to her. She'd partied a lot. I had spent most of my time secluded in my bedroom, hiding - contemplating. It was strange dynamic. And at one time, we had been nearly identical. If I had been older of course, I could have breached that border fairly easy, as I now have a sort of understanding that Paris Hilton and Quasi Moto have more in common deep down than one might think. But those terms of understanding didn't occur to me till a bit later on in life.

It ultimately ended as a brief and empty hello and a brief and empty goodbye. And of course, as I mentioned a while ago, Rachelle died on her 21st birthday of an Oxycontin overdose.

There were some things that disappointed me about my new school; it bothered me that nobody hated me – I was emotionally ill equipped to handle being assumed an equal to the degree that it seemed to border on mental illness for me and I longed in many ways for the times in which I stood before a classroom full of conservative right wing cowboys, basic small-town cheerleaders and a few methheads sprinkled in – all of whom hated me and gave me strength and a sense of purpose for that very reason. I needed to be hated. It's kind of how I came to be a person. It was the fish tank water that I was acclimated to, however unhealthy. To have people who looked you in the eye, who complimented your t-shirt, who listened to what you were saying it was all too much. I had never experienced such cognitive dissonance before in my life with who I thought myself to be versus how I was being treated, and I reacted like an insane child. It didn't show too much, but at times it did, and if anything kept me back from doing my best, this was probably my number one reason. I instinctively needed to be hated. It was also quite hard that I would have to read in front of my new classmates and actually do my work while I was in class rather than slack off as I had been for the last six or seven years. I had social anxiety to the extreme – to the point it almost caused me to pass out, and the only cure for it is if I knew others hated me – which would instantly both energize me and pacify me. It was a major culture shock for me not to be the weird one anymore. I had troubles not taking it as some kind of insult that people didn't regard me in some way as being the most despisible edgy one in the room anymore.

But I also was the work itself and how one came to prove anything that really got to me. I was those first three months of school, unable to conceptualize the meaning of a thesis. I understood the point nor the technique of it. I was sixteen and had no idea what anyone needed to prove anything for. I had always believed in whatever I felt was right. The idea of questioning one's sources of their beliefs was honestly something that nobody had ever suggested to me, and I emotionally apposed the very idea of proving your point with logic. Of course, to a degree we all use logic and the scientific method in life to ascertain information on a practical level, often without realizing that we are doing it. But to me, you killed art when you had to explain why things were the way they were. I was deeply offended at the idea of proving a thesis and I felt like the teachers in the alternative school were at war with who I was as an individual.

And maybe from a realistic standpoint one could argue that a person really doesn't need to be able to conceptualize and prove a thesis to get by in life. Most of our human ancestors didn't need to understand how to build a belief system grounded in reality. They relied on their perceptions and instincts. And in those perceptions and instincts, it can be argued that they were privvy to great truths. And much can be said for the beauty that is to be harnessed from the imagination of human beings, though it also is very much a matter of opinion, since that same form of thinking was what brought about religions and any excuse in the book to be all too cruel to one another. And I still don't meet many people who really truly want to be right in life for the sake of truth seeking. Most of the people I know who aren't very logical in their approach in life, want to be right so they can feel powerful or validated. It's also very discomforting and ego bruising. When you take a step into the world of logic, your perceptions are faulty and you are no longer the center of the universe.. It's a way of living that is very much rooted in personal experiences. This was literally all I knew. I don't think I ever applied logic to my beliefs. Silently, be I right or be I wrong, I was always basing all of my life decisions, my identity, my means of maneuvering through life only on gut instinct and assumptions alone. If I turned to someone else, I took what they said as if it were gospel, and I had only ever really done that with Zack. I was right because I was right. I didn't want to be made small by a world in which my ideas needed to be challenged.

However, I will still argue that personal experiences, feelings and gut instincts are not worthless in academia as some might argue. They are the source of what we even conceptualize and maybe still the first place we should look to when we are sorting out the intricate building blocks of ideas. As twelve years have passed since my time in the alternative school, I now don't see logic and emotion as being at odds with one another as I once did. Understanding music theory doesn't make someone a worse musician, nor do those it make those who don't understand music theory bad musicians. The perceptions of the common, dull and uneducated are not worthless. Their feelings and output has some value to the whole. I do not wish to cast aside the characters in my life who made me who I was up till the age of sixteen or what they taught me. But at the age of sixteen, I was forced to take an uncomfortable step outside of myself, and this step back was a turning point in my life that set me aside from the rest of my family. For many if not most young people around the age I was then, drugs and sex are the life changers. For me, it was actually learning to ask questions and to find answers which ended up taking me on a very philosophical path.

So, for this reason, my first major paper was a dismal disaster, and the second one was only a little better. We didn't get little multiple choice papers for homework. We really were only given three or four assignments for an entire semester, and those assignments had to be done well. They didn't accept D's. I had sometimes in life gotten by as a D student, and they had a system where D was not acceptable. You got 75% or higher, or you failed. It was as simple as that. I couldn't also just not do the work. If you didn't do the work, you would probably fail, and they would kick you out of school for it. So I knew I had to try. We had to go back over what we had done and assess our own work for weeks. We had to spend real time researching. And of course, I was so insecure with challenging my own assumptions and being made to feel wrong and all the insecurity and feelings of worthlessness and powerlessness that came with that that it was quite unpleasant for me at first, and made me panic emotionally and react quite rudely towards my teachers, who patiently put up with my ignorant retorts to their sensible attempts to gently adjust me to a world that I for the first time in my life, had to actually try at and put forth participation in.

My first essay was so dumb. It was basically, based on what Zack had told me, that freemasons ran the planet. I didn't know why I believed it, other than Zack had said it. I didn't even have the understanding to break it down to world economics, governments, war, media. I had no way of breaking down this argument because I didn't know how, but emotionally it was personal for me, since I wanted to hold onto everything Zack had once told me as being golden and pure and all-truthful. Why would I break a gift from someone I revered so much?

This was where I first came head to head with Mike, my teacher. These classes of his that we took I soon learned were more than your conventional classroom lessons. This school was low-key dedicated to reprogramming lower class kids, often from bad homes into actually being able to articulate their own thoughts and feelings and to make decisions that were complex and helped us escape our own destiny's. His goal was to take poor kids with little hope – such as myself, and turn us all into far more than what the public school curriculum wanted of us. He wanted to train us to excede the kids in public schools and actually ready us for college level work. So our essays and lessons were modeled after second or third year college courses in a university. Mike was a very rare sort of person in this way. I must have been a painful student to have. I made things really hard. I knew I was being manipulated and of course I fought back. But I owe him a lot – he was right and I was indeed wrong.

Mike also didn't much like or care for our parents – with the exception of a small handful in the room. He made it known, but was really crafty and close with us about how and why he felt that way. And for most of us, him and his wife Jenni, the school counselor who we signed up for the school in the first place with, they really were far more like parents. He seemed to study us and understand us like most teachers and parents never did. And he was able to work with each of us on an individual basis to help us become the most we could be. His intentions, I am more or less positive of, were to intentionally meant to systematically brainwash us against our alcoholic, selfish, overworked, lower class, methed out, emotionally crippled aged bitter crazy parents. So we could not only not only feel divorced from our troubled upbringings, but we could also become different people than they were. I think, in his own way, he wanted to rebuild society – though I am sure he knew it would not be enough. He went about this whole thing in a way that was very under the radar. We all learned to trust Mike and Jenni more than our families. Mike, Jenni, Mary Kay and the rest knew all of our personal lives. They knew more about us than our parents did. Soon, the school itself seemed more like home for me than home did – so even though I fought back against the school, the school became were I lived psychologically. I actually felt safer at school than I did anywhere else. Added to that, was I never was home anymore except at night to sleep and put my make up on in the morning, so I rarely saw my father or even my siblings. On weekends I spent all my time up at Sarah's house, and often times I just slept there instead. I was rapidly becoming a different person, or maybe it wasn't so much that I was becoming a different person, but I was molding into the person I had the potential of becoming.

I had of course, no way to prove that freemasons ran the planet, and by planet, what did I even mean? I spent an entire month looking at conspiracy theory websites, quoting them as fact, and siting no sources. They contradicted one another. They were often times written by anonymous unstable communists, or anonymous unstable right-wingers. I didn't even know how to make a real distinction. Often these articles didn't even have an author. They put Alex Jones himself to shame. We would sometimes be taken to this library that was part of the university. I think it held the title of the biggest library in the state of Idaho. It was many stories tall, and the stories themselves seemed enormous. You could easily spend a lifetime in there. It might have been one of the best places I had ever been to. Even in this library, I only found a few books that were about freemasons, and all of them were very difficult reads, often times talking about the different chapters of freemasons. What's more, I grew to learn that many of the old people in the town of Kendrick were masons. I knew them well, and there was no way that any of them held any malice or even enough understanding of society to have any real influence in it. In the end, I had a twenty page essay written about nothingness. My sentences didn't even flow very nicely. Out of all the students in that class, I seemed the most doomed to failure.

Perhaps, had I picked very specific ways of presenting the issues I seemed to think I believed in, and I had pulled them apart piece by piece and only picked one avenue that was provable, I might have had better luck instead of taking on the whole world. Heck even if freemasons did run the whole planet (they don't), it would have been impossible for me to make the case with the limitations that I had. The paper I ended up slaving over and handing in was worthless. And over the course of a grueling month, 120hours spent on this paper, a part of me was defeated. I fought with Mike the whole way. It took hours of one on one time of him sitting down with me, asking me questions, breaking down my mental frame of mind just to try to understand me enough to know how to communicate with me, and I fought him for most of it – because it hurt my pride to admit that I didn't know things. I wanted to prove to Mike that I was really somehow above the rest of the classmates – me, the conspiracy theorist – the one with her eyes wide open and the rest living in complete ignorance. They were prisoners of their own ignorance, and I some kind of truth teller. It really was something.

My second paper was on something almost as bad, but a little better. After the first month of writing and research, I wanted to pick something I actually cared about. The whole freemason thing, trying to research and find proof of the impossible had made me realize instinctively that believing in the conspiracy theory was something I did because Zack had wanted me to believe in it, and also because it fulfilled some kind of void in my own feelings. It represented that I did instinctively understand that there were things wrong with society. And as much as I didn't understand this on the first day of school, history was indeed very important. Mike gave me a C, even though we both kind of knew I had turned in a D- paper at the very best. The paper was absolutely ungradeable. He gave me the C because he knew I had problems at this point, and I think even the act of me finishing an assignment was such a jump from whatever I was used to, that he had to see it as a major improvement from who I had been when I first walked into their school. He didn't want to fail me before I had a chance to improve on what I had learned. The first paper was more of a lesson in life than it was a lesson of academics.

My second paper's thesis was about grunge music – again, something I cared about but indirectly related to Zack, only in the fact that he had always gone for being Kurt Cobain's twin. I wanted to point out that bands like Nickelback, Three Doors Down and such somehow took elements of grunge and somehow made it plastic and turned it into some kind of cliché product that sounded terrible. I focused mainly on how much I didn't like these bands. What I might have been trying to get at, though I lacked the knowledge or understanding on those terms, was to demonstrate the folly of how movements form and how they become their own worst enemies. I might have been making a case against capitalism, and against consumerism. I might have wanted to demonstrate or point out that integrity in art makes the end product better. But how could I prove any of that without actually having a philosophical opinion of Aesthetics that I could demonstrate and prove? Stand behind the fact that a band like Creed still does suck to me, how does one demonstrate that something factually sucks outside of their own perceptions of it. How can you possibly know if something is externally 'good' or not? I was an objectivist because I didn't know how to question myself. I just believed that when something felt good, or seemed good, it was good.

So then, I spent another month writing another enormous paper. I had thought that sifting through old music magazines, old articles about the bands I liked from the early 90's would be enjoyable, but it turns out, I hated writing about music. Who knew, since I love writing and I loved music, and I still write about it to a limited degree. But a lot of writing on art, film and music is pure hype and has no baring or meaning whatsoever. It could do little to prove my objective theory that what sounded good was good. As much as I hate Creed, how could I even really demonstrate what I was trying to say. I think the idea truly came to me to write about grunge from a place where I just wanted to talk about how awesome Mudhoney was. Because that was really all there was to it. I wanted to make my case.

I think if I wrote this paper today, I could have made some very valid points by pointing out how modern music is sold, advertised, how it is written, who decides what will be a hit. It is almost political and economic in a way. I could have taken it to the study of aesthetics itself and argued some kind of point. But I wouldn't have the egotism it took to think it was worth my time these days. I don't care if you like Creed. People can like whatever they want, and what doesn't speak to one person can mean an awful lot to another. I am not some kind of musical taste genius who has the right to go about trashing others tastes. Yes, I still have some opinions, but I grow everyday. There isn't too many days that roll by where I don't find something about my previous understanding that wasn't incomplete or incorrect in some way, and that's a good thing – not a bad thing. I really was just trying to prove how special I was for my interests here. It was coming from a far more legitimate place than the whole freemason thing came from, but it still was egotistical and lame. And spending this second month looking at a paper I was so tired of writing I could barely tolerate it, made me take the much needed step down from my pedestal. Mike gave me a C+ on this paper, and it probably was a C+ this time. I had gone through the grueling task of citing my sources, and being thorough in a few small points I tried to make, as limited in understanding as those points actually were.

On a side note, Mike also hated that kind of music so that helped. Though he had never really been into grunge. Mike was all about English punk music from the late 70's and early 80's. His favorite bands were The Jam and Billy Bragg.

I sort of hated Mike for the first month in a half. He had a way of getting inside your head. He was always ridiculously passionate about teaching us, ridiculously thorough in explaining or answering our questions, and he seemed very dedicated and relentless. I wasn't really allowed to escape being reprogrammed and nothing like this had ever happened before. As for Sarah, she struggled through it as well, but she was a lot more clear minded when it came to picking topics that weren't over the top egotistical that wouldn't destroy her mental framework. She ended up writing about atheism, which is a lot easier to examine, read about and write about than what I picked was. She didn't come head to head with Mike like I did. It wasn't that I ever yelled at Mike. I just tried to be obscure, was sarcastic when he asked questions. I would just shake my head no at him. I would likely be embarrassed if I had a visual of my proud ignorance and reactionary emotional response to everything he tried to help me with.

Many of the other students had been going to school at the alternative school for years, and working through these essays was something they were capable of doing. Many of these kids I would have assumed were somehow inferior to me in some way, they had drug issues, their were a few pregnant girls in the mix. Their lives were rough. Some of them were emancipated or had mental health problems. I had problems too, but I had this way of dealing with it that was almost like I was somehow perfect and other people were less than me. It had come upon me slowly growing up. It wasn't that I was not humbled often, or a kind person. I was. But I had learned some bad habits of believing myself to be superior – half of it based on Zack telling me I was special. In reality, my fragile baseless sense of superiority probably made me more fragile than the rest of these students.

These young girls and boys I went to class with were ten times tougher than me, more emotionally balanced – and had had it rougher than me in many ways. Even if their problems were ongoing and made their lives difficult, even if they had criminal records and babies at home who they didn't know who the fathers were, they were much more balanced than I was. They knew their own faults and worked on them everyday. They said what the felt and their was a sense of honesty and care that they put towards one another. I was far more lost then them, and after awhile, I came to realize this for what it was. And most of them understood what it meant to prove their point with evidence. They also struggled with Mike at some point, but they figured it out. And Mike had taught a lot of them how to care. They often chose to write about problems related to the criminal justice system, healthcare, the environment, the war on drugs – the kinds of things that impact the poor the most, but somehow seem to be the least understood by the poor and those who are most effected by it. Things I knew very little about. I had struggled, but instead of facing what had happened, I had somehow been taken in by a fantasy land around the time that I had met Zack. I was actually put to shame by these warrior like other girls, and Mike was creating informed citizens out of these so called leftovers of society.

He also didn't let us treat each other badly. Nobody was ever rude to me for that entire year. There were no situations where I was sexually harassed. I was given space. People were good natured towards me. I didn't have a lot in common with these students. Many of them were into the Grateful Dead and third wave ska. I just wasn't. By nature, I tend to be a little bit more exacting and darker by nature. But they were all nice to me. The few who didn't seem to be able to know how to be kind left within three weeks. As soon as he saw one young guy say something rude to another girl, he looked that boy straight in the eye during class, told him to take his things and leave. He didn't give warnings. You either respected one another or you left. There was even a time when one of the stranger girls in the class who seemed to have emotional outbursts every four seconds, who came from an abusive environment and seemed to want attention often wrote an essay about how much she loved her grandfather. She started crying in class as she read it, and due to the highly emotional nature of this essay, many people in the class – though they said nothing and didn't react openly, seemed taken aback and nervous by her essay. It probably made a few of them make microexpressions of distaste. You can feel that very clearly in a room of people. Mike didn't let this pass. I never knew a teacher who jumped at this. He explained what we had done, and he warned us all that he could tell that we had judged her and laughed at her and made her feel anxious and small. We didn't need to say anything. We had done it with our eyes.

Lastly, I struggled with my diet. Over the summer, I had been free to starve, to control everything I ate and did. I had managed to lose fifteen pounds even with the mysterious health problems of being unable to lose weight like most people. Spending all this time in class prevented me from getting the exercise I needed. I craved sugar so much it made me shake. And there was always free cake in the kitchen. So I ended up eating too much cake. I probably needed the calories. I spent money on ice cream. If I didn't eat the adequate amount of sugar, I found I would feel frantic and mentally unstable. I needed all the focus I could get to focus on my essays. And so, I started gaining weight again. At times, I would become frustrated and angry. I envied how thin Sarah always managed to stay. It seemed unfair. I felt ugly, and not being able to do the dieting and exercise I needed.

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PART 6 - http://tinyurl.com/kbc9dwu

PART 5 - http://tinyurl.com/msnz4am

PART 4 - http://tinyurl.com/k9x8esg

PART 3 - http://tinyurl.com/mwp9atx

PART 2 - http://tinyurl.com/lbt6xq2

PART 1 - http://tinyurl.com/l8xbvg8

#text

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televinita · 7 years

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Zoo 3.11, “Cradles and Graves”

Maybe, you’re gonna be the one that saves me

I don't know if I'm more upset that this show had the gall to unironically use (a cover of)“Wonderwall” for dramatic effect, or that after 3 days of my inability to stop watching this episode, it's actually working for me.

I distinctly remember bursting out laughing when the first lyrics hit my ears, and now I'm like, teary eyed and nodding sagely through that whole montage. "Wow. So deep. So profound and meaningful."

------

A list of things I did not care for this week: the IADG bullpen unless Tessa was talking. Now that we've got that out of the way... Some things I like about the first 5 minutes -Imagining the Darkest Timeline version where they are all already dead by the time Clem finds them. -The (unintentional?) hilarity of the fact that Jackson's blood waits for the exactly perfect moment to ooze under the door for maximum dramatic effect -The fact that Mitch is found on the stairs instead of where he was shot, which suggests to me that he got to feel the full horror of seeing both Max and Jamie on the ground before he succumbed to his own wound (which is probably just an irresponsible directing choice because if he had, I'd think he'd be a little more grateful about the whole them-not-being-dead part, but it's fun to think about! Otherwise I just get bogged down again in wondering about the logistics of GSW injuries.) Ctrl + Z I loved it, but my parents and I could not stop laughing during the entire resurrection scene. "So I guess everybody's actively dying and no one can help us, but it's cool. Just gimme some of that tank serum (totally valid medical term) and mix it with water (just your basic home remedy recipe), and then we'll suffocate them back to life and five minutes later their mortal wounds will be fine and we can get on with the real problems." A.K.A. So there's example 57 or so of an entire episode's worth of possible plot being pushed aside because this show refuses to take a breath. We could have wrung so much more emotion out of Clementine, whilst ignoring her own signs of labor, trying to triage her father, grandfather, adoptive mother, surrogate uncle I'm pretending she is already attached to more than I'm sure she is, and other surrogate uncle who is also her best chance of saving her baby, the most important of all, if something goes wrong in delivery. ...and GDI now I gotta go find a special episode of Grey's Anatomy to get my mass tragedy fix. But I'm grateful that even at Zoo speed, they still gave me a little taste (in two flavors!) of people suffering the after-effects of injuries the serum couldn't fully fix. You're Responsible, You're the One to Blame, It's Your Fault :( to everyone being too busy hating her to notice Jamie cradling a clearly injured arm. But I love absolutely every sentence in this 7-way argument, including but not limited to Mitch's strangled "are you full term? how long was I out?!", the group-wide reveal of when exactly Mr. Duncan disappeared, Jackson's deadly-quiet anger, Jamie's valid defense of her actions, Mitch trying to take his daughter and blow this popsicle stand at a doubled-over limp, Clem taking her sweet time mentioning the quarantine, Max and Jamie's "oh" realizations about the plane, and Mitch's fabulously cranky echo and "what now" attitude. Last but far from least, the disgusted "I can't even look at you" was kind of my favorite part? I dig it when one member of an OTP is that intensely furious at the other out of hurt. (see also: Castle at the end of season 4)

A+ Comic Relief Laughing for 1 million years at Clem hopping off the exam table pantsless while all the men in the vicinity double take and look away* (except for Sam, whom Mitch hilariously whacks on the arm for his impudence, in my favorite sight gag since "Special Consultant") *the fact that Abe also does this, while understandably instinctive and appropriately respectful, is also kind of hilarious given where he just was

Oh My Darling(s, Sam &) Clementine (who can't make a good shipmanteau to save their life) I don't have enough interest to do it myself, but it sure sounds like the story of how they met would make a pretty great YA novel plot. Anyone who doesn't actually want to spend the month trying to be a paid author need a NaNoWriMo prompt? Particularly someone who likes world-building, because this show leaves things wide open to fill in the details of U.S. society outside New York and the plane. Speaking of which! Did Clem happen to share with him the part of her backstory about being raised as an orphan basically the same way for the same reason? Because that seems like it would decently bond them. I like this parallel. Also update, I am getting a lot fonder of his face, mostly because he shut up and stayed out of the way except when I needed him to chime in to be sweet and supportive of Clementine (or side with her dad about ranking her over the baby on the priority list). He seems like he's really tried/is trying to be a good partner, and I'm impressed that he holds his ground despite a faceful of largely unwarranted hostility from her. I might actually be okay with him being the head of his family, even though up until now my head has danced with visions of Clem raising her baby under Mitch (and Jamie)'s purview and/or roof, Last Man Standing style. (although I guess there's always Reba-style, where both young parents are under that roof) (I realize I'm making a lot of assumptions about everyone's ability to stay alive and/or live a semi-normal life)

Beta Ship 2.0 / My Wonderwall** There's something immensely funny to me about the juxtaposition of Jackson being in his Brooding Cave Of Isolated Despair while Tessa is in a brightly ilt location, in the middle of the hustle and bustle and basically being like, "Buck up and stop being so melodramatic." (Jackson: The prophecies have spoken. Food turns to dust in my mouth. A great wave shall fall upon us all. // Tessa: is your plane out of groceries again?) But on a serious note, I love so much that he's thisclose to broken until she pulls him out of it that I'm not even gonna whine about him asking Tessa to do the same thing he's punishing Jamie for. Though in his defense, he did say "stop" her and not "kill her,” which is an important distinction for him. **My friend once wrote a Jim/Pam (The Office) parody of Jim/Pam stories using this title, and that is at least 50% of why I can't take this song seriously even though I actually have always loved it.

I Don't Know What To Do My Whole Brain is Celebrating "How do you know the name of Jamie's scorpion?" "Because my son and Jamie have, uh, very lively pillow talk."** !!!!!!!!!! NO BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE.

The fact that Abe pipes up despite a sucking chest wound just so he can help take the mick out of Mitch is glorious. The cranky and ineffectual "shut up" in response is THE BEST. I love that Mitch has just always blatantly refused to publicly acknowledge how he feels about Jamie, despite the fact that everyone and their mother is like, "Oh yeah, I know Mitch. Snarky scientist, walks around with hearts in his eyes to match the one on his sleeve?" (Mitch, in the distance: I do not LOVE her, okay, I just...miss her when she's not around, think about her all the time, and I imagine us one day running towards each other in slow motion and I'm wearing a brown suede vest.) I doubly appreciate this exchange because I was wondering when the hell these people actually sleep and I was getting worried there was no recognizable place in canon that they might have both had a chance to go to bed at the same time. **This writer could not have more clearly been flagging us with a fic prompt. Max Morgan, Love Doctor My very favorite of the small moments in this ep is Max insisting that Mitch let him patch him up. I was all on board for some serious injury, but I loved the subversion of his attention being caught by the scars I thought the show had forgotten about instead. "Oh, Mitch."

That just kills me. I want to unpack their relationship right here so much more, but also, it's 7pm on the night of new Zoo. Suffice to say Mitch isn't the only parent who suffers over the thought of his kid being in pain tonight, and that's beautiful. And gosh do I love him quietly, individually, nudging Mitch and Jamie back towards each other. The promise that Mitch will understand eventually was an immediate balm upon my soul. If Max says a thing about my ship, it must be true! Mitch + Being A Mess of Emotions About His Daughter (if anyone wanted to make a gifset off of this theme I would not be opposed) Words cannot express how thrilled I am that Mitch gives zero bothers about Sam's baby daddy rights and takes up prime positioning to stroke Clementine's hair nonstop throughout the whole labor,* even stealing the requisite final "you can do this" encouragement. He also gets to be the first one to hold the baby and it's amazing.

* and makes some pretty wonderful faces over how hard it is to see her in pain and not be able to do anything about it -- and remind me I've got either some meta or a story scrap about how this is what Audra was on the front lines for all those years he selfishly hid away, telling himself it was for the best P.S. As much as I love that Mitch just falls apart in full Worried Dad mode and can't seem to process a single medical term or physical symptom as it pertains to pregnancy, you know that if Abe weren't a sex doctor and the writers weren't butts, Mitch would absolutely be whipping out the stethoscopes and telling us all about the time he delivered a baby gorilla so this is basically the same thing -- I imagine Clem would take loud offense here -- while roping in Jamie as a delivery nurse to follow his instructions to the letter (because there are some things fathers just should not do no matter how brilliant they are). Things I would like to know Why Mitch -- who apparently had a through and through -- is the only one whose gunshot wound is still bothering him Why Clementine didn't once ask where Jamie was. (at which point I'd really like to see Mitch try and explain that one.)

It is straight up ridiculous to me that 19-year-old girl in labor, surrounded by men, would not want a woman with her, particularly one she loves. This is the most "what...man...[wrote] this" moment I have ever had about TV.

Did I just miss it, or is it kinda weird that Sam doesn't bat an eye upon finding out Charles Duncan is actually a different person and his girlfriend's father?

Leftover Thoughts

This show is so nuts, I am just now realizing I didn't even stop to wonder how the hell Abigail reanimated herself last week before now.

Mitch being a testy bitch @ Abe is a thing that just does not get old. ("You put hybrid goo in my daughter? Was that not worth a little chat?")

Aww @ Mitch's mini pep-talk about being a good parent, followed by the "OK time to go" and the sweet "I'm having this baby?" / "You are having this baby."

I also really enjoy Mitch deciding to be cranky about Sam just because he's there and he can. It's kinda like sniping at Logan, but more fun and with way better reasons. (Which I hope is exactly what Mitch says when Clementine inevitably tells him to knock it off)

"Goodbye frequent flyer miles" lmao

I love that instead of shutting down the beacon by cutting the wire, they multiplied its effect by a thousand and destroyed a city, to which the response is basically, "Whoops."

"You've been good for my son. Take care of him for me." So I LOVE THIS, but also: dammit Max that is not what "die for our ship" means.

But I love the moment where Jamie and Max, individually, hear the baby crying. The joy dawning on their faces is so pure it actually makes it worthwhile that they're not present at the birth itself.

(I know we're especially mad about Jamie. But honestly, if it means All Mitch All The Time, that's an OK trade to me.)

tl;dr if something is not mentioned please assume I loved it

COMING SOON:

(will be links shortly) Mini essays analyzing Jamie V. Jackson, Mitch/Jamie and Max's death.

In conclusion: I spent my entire night writing this, but it was worth it. Future Me is gonna love looking back.

#cbs zoo #episode reactions #zoo 3.11 #2200 words AND THIS ISN'T EVEN ALL OF IT #most of the Mitch and Jamie analysis is yet to come

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whatsanapocalae · 7 years

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@whydidkidflashdie, I dont think I’ll draw him tonight (I know I won’t post the pic tonight especially) but I will definitely draw him, probably during our first session. Here’s his backstory though. I want to see your character too!

By the way, I write my backstories in chapters...

Small Beginnings (0-13)

Middodar Thorklan was born to a prostitute in the low district of Bort. Work was always hard, as was life, so his mother taught him a life of crime as early as she could, onto the street, where he was a pickpocket and panhandler, using his youth and odd charm to get people to donate generously. He snuck in with a group of orphans, blending with them easily enough, and got the meals that he couldn’t get at home from the orphanage. Unfortunately for his mother he blended in a little bit too well and was adopted by a man named Zinthro Gull, who made himself up to a be a noble of sorts, which allowed him easy access to many orphaned children across different towns. Zinthro was very much not a noble and was instead the mercenary leader of the Hollow Suns, who trained children in the art of killing, bounty hunting, and intrigue. Children were especially useful for the mercenary company, as they were seen as innocent and could get away with more and were small so they could get into places that older mercenaries could not. They were also treated far better than the adult mercenaries, as many of them were parents of the younger generation or had a soft spot for kids. This was a better life in many regards for Middodar, and he made a name for himself as a regular dupe, that name being Veil.

Too Big for the Pack (14-18)

While children were highly prized amongst the Hollow Suns and adults were seen as both a necessity for their fighting prowess and the backbone of their organization, teenagers were somewhat awkward and unwanted. Without as much protection from the older mercenaries and with the higher challenges in jobs taken, many of Veil’s peers were killed off. He learned quickly to distance himself from them and, while he’d been friends with few as children, knew now that they were only there to do a job and they were not guaranteed to return.

A job came up, a small clan of rebels needing soldiers to bolster their army in their attack against their capitol city, and Veil was sent along with most of their groups teens and young adults. It was a long journey and Veil’s first visit outside of his home country, and he fell in love with the landscape and danger, different creatures attacking their traveling party than he’d ever seen before. He knew then that if he didn’t die in the skirmish than he would at least die in the eyes of the Hollow Suns, and remain in this new land. Most of them made it to the skirmish and their numbers and skill vastly aided the rebels. There were many losses, it was easy for Veil to pass as one of them, but in the end, the rebels were victorious. More than that though, Veil enjoyed fighting with them. There was more comradery, more care, amongst these makeshift soldiers than the mercenary band. The Hollow Suns were so accustomed to dying that no one saw the point in clinging onto one another. These people, mostly farmers who’d had enough of their oppressive lords, were people, and they acted as such. Thus, not only did Veil decide to stay in the country, but he decided to become a soldier and help the rebels make a difference and change the lot for themselves and the people.

The new government was not perfect, but it was better in most ways to what was there before, although some people did not agree. Once all of the fighting was over and the army was more military than it was made up of people with a common goal, it mostly disbanded. There were assassination attempts on the new rulers and Veil, somewhat known for his chipper attitude and ruthless skill by the former party, was highly recommended to be a bodyguard for the committee that now ruled.

Studying the New Order (19-29)

While Middodar knew nothing of politics, he did learn from observation how the politicians led the people. He was present for many meetings and speeches, and was avid in studying the maps that he saw and the vocal patterns that he heard. Some of the new rulers were very good at inciting the excitement of the people while others were more than proficient in planning and organizing troops and essentials. All of this he absorbed, as well as he did poison.

As a bodyguard his life was in danger as well as those that he protected and, while he was fast and nimble, he was not always able to subdue attackers before they got a hit off on him. He took a few stabs here and there but was able to get out of those scraps with little worse than deep and permanent scars. The worst was when he took a poisoned dagger to the inside of one knee, slicing through the tendons. He was feverish for over a week as the medics and healers drained the toxins from his blood and, once healed, the tendons never set quite right. He was stuck with a prominent limp and both weather and too much work strained his ligaments and left him pained. This was not a good thing for a bodyguard and he was set to retire, paid a lofty pension for his services. He kept the dagger as well, and uses it still, even though it no longer carries any poison.

Cast Aside Like a Burnt Torch (30-38)

Retirement was terrible for Middodar, who desired action and adventure. Living in town was fine, sometimes, but there was nothing in his personal physical therapy and forced socialization that brought him joy. He tried to join the city guard, but they would not accept him in his current state, and when he tried to take on other jobs the people would look at him in confusion, for he had amassed enough wealth to live off for the rest of his days in comfort. Comfort was not something that he understood and he left the capitol city to go off on his own.

At first it was living in solitude that drove him to excitement, the forests teaming with brigands and highwaymen and rogues heading to the castle in further assassination attempts. These Middodar dealt with easily enough, as he headed through the dense forests. He winded up in a town eventually, a small hamlet being plagued by an infestation of undead. Middodar had seen undead before, had fought them on jobs with the Hollow Suns, and he joined the small squadron heading into the catacombs. He had worked out the kinks in his knee by this point but he was no longer as spry as he once was and he would be laid up if he did too much on it. Luckily the undead were not as big of an issue as the townsfolk believed and the reward was worth it, as well as the healing given in gratitude once the fight was done. The party did not remain, although Corvid, Cackle, Prate, Strut, Ebon, Coal, Jet, the gnome wizard that had found the job initially, traveled with Middodar.

Corvid was a monster hunter by trade, although he needed someone with strength to fight alongside him, someone who could distract enemies while he cast from a distance. This was, to Middodar, the perfect job. One of the main draws to this country was the different fauna and with Corvid, he was able to not only find such beasts, but fight them. It was mostly monsters, but they hunted men as well, working as bounty hunters and guardians for the towns they came across. Their acts were seen as inspirations to many of the townspeople and soon they came into having an entourage of their own.

The Lusus Naturae (39-present [52])

It was not lost on Middodar, nicknamed Goad by Corvid, that he had returned to his roots. The people they inspired were in great need of training if they wanted to fight monsters like the pair of them were doing, so they decided to officially welcome their fans in and teach them how to do what they did. They formed the Lusus Naturae, a mercenary crew in its own right. He was fine with the idea of bringing children into the organization, pledging to treat them better as they grew up than he had. Corvid was adamant that they would not use child labor. They thus accepted anyone over the age of 15 into their crew and, with Corvid’s Team Mom aptitude, they were all treated as one large family, far from expendable as Middodar was used. They traveled through the country and over to the one to the north, gaining notoriety through the land. Most of the early expenses were paid for with Middodar’s pension.

Trivia:

Middodar likes nicknames and collects them almost gnomishly, but understands if other people do not appreciate the names he gives them.

Middodar and Corvid are lovers.

He does not see any part of his backstory as being especially sad. To him, his life has been great. This is not a sad backstory, as much as it seems like it.

He has a bum leg that he now wears a brace on, a fake eye (lost the real one in a fight against Barstran the Betrayer, a Gnoll Fang), a scar that crosses from the forehead on the left side, through the eye, and over to the right cheek, and many many scars, the worst being a deep plunging one in his side where he caught the axe of a hill giant.

Really likes trying new foods but will add salt and spices to whatever he needs to, not caring if anyone’s offended.

Thinks bards are great and will tip them and invite them to join The Lusus Naturae

Everyone thinks he’s a big scary man but he’s really soft and excitable.

Basically he’s what I think Reinhardt is like without playing Overwatch and knowing any lore mixed the Slackjaw from Dishonored.

He will give NPCs quests.

He will give to the homeless and children and anyone needy. He will give money to prostitutes without bedding them (he’s in a committed relationship).

He is genderfluid but he doesnt know that yet because he doesnt know that’s a thing.

#d&d #dungeons and dragons #dungeons and dragons 5e #d&d character #my writing

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