#I have to relearn how to be a person because no adult who had control over my life was kind to me

[nappingpaperclip]

taking every parent by the shoulders and shaking them aggressively

Yelling at/threatening/hitting your child does nothing but make them scared of you

Yelling at your child won’t make them stop crying

Yelling at your child won’t stop their bad behavior

Stop being mean to your fucking kids

Stop trying to make your kids be who you wanted to be, they are their own person and your job is to cultivate that person

Stop emotionally checking out after your kids hit puberty!

Your kids did not ask to be born, you may not have either but you chose to keep them

I don’t care how tired, broke or, down you are, if you take it out on your child you are a piece of shit and your kid is going to grow up to resent you for it

If you feel the need to hit your kids for having emotions or acting badly you did not “turn out fine” being scared of your parents is not normal!

BE THE PARENT YOU WISH YOUR PARENTS WERE

And if you find yourself struggling to keep calm: GET HELP FOR IT! Your kids should not have to bear the brunt of your unresolved issues!

[choicesmc]

the promised sawtooth mini essay <3

The absolute worst part of turning was the out of control emotions. Specifically that the entire period thrusts him right back to being a grade schooler, barely six maybe seven years old, and being completely unable to control any of his actions. 

I don’t think anyone in the pack knows Sawtooth has ODD and, for the most part, it’s pretty easy to hide. By the time they were entering college, Sawtooth has years of therapy behind them, their parents have been receiving parenting lessons for years, and he has a boatload of coping mechanisms to make certain their oppositional defiant disorder doesn’t get upgraded to full on anti-social disorder. It’s doable to get through a day, then a week, then a month, without major incidents and the things that do occur –say vindictive episodes– they’re easily brushed off as typical college craziness. 

Plus, Sawtooth doesn’t go out of his way to tell others. It’s not like a fun fact they can’t wait to whip out so as long as no one asks, no one knows. 

Then they become a werewolf and can’t fucking control anything anymore. It’s ridiculous. Every strategy, every coping method, every fucking tool he’s kept in his disposal just vanishes. Even worse? It’s not like anyone in the pack has been studying up on how to keep consistent, reasonable discipline that focuses on reinforcing positive behavior instead of punishing unwanted ones. 

And even if someone, by miracle, had it wouldn’t have helped. If anything, it’d reinforce Sawtooth’s feeling of helplessness. They already feel like a child. They don’t need someone to take up the role of their parent. Someone their own age and graduating class having to discipline him like a naughty child who needs to learn better does not help actually. 

Sawtooth knows this. But knowing something doesn’t help when he finds himself lashing out at the most asinine questions, when he’s cursing out a packmate over a basic slight, when they’re plotting actual fucking revenge over a snoring neighbor. 

Adding into the mix, Sawtooth doesn’t have a therapist right now. When he transferred to Woosley, they made the difficult decision to stop holding sessions with their therapist. Both of them agreed that Sawtooth could hold his own at this point and Sawtooth themself was eager to be “independent” (<- that’s how 18 year old them saw it). Sure, they know they can start their sessions again with a couple texts but… they can’t explain why they need to relearn years of stuff, why he’s practically at ground zero, and (most importantly)... it feeds their irritation. 

A second axle on this nightmare period relates directly to his gender. Sawtooth is demiboy. Very much emphasis on the boy part. He doesn’t see himself in manhood, they seem themselves in boyhood. Mischief, innocence, naive responsibility –these are the things that have been denied to Sawtooth from childhood. They spent most of their time being seen as an adult. Oppositional defiant disorder only became his prognosis because given children personality disorders is Not A Good Thing so most medical professionals don’t see their ODD as just that. They see it as lurking antisocial personality disorder and retroactively pin adult intentions to his childish actions. 

And now Sawtooth is back to that stage except this time they are an adult. 

And it fucking sucks.  

[tacthescribbler]

Wanted to give my two cents on this. I’m prone to bouts of hopelessness when I hear disheartening news, and it’s really hard to pull myself out of that mire sometimes. To make it worse, I am a writer who doesn’t write, and an artist who doesn’t draw. Not because of AI or anything like that. Just because I struggle to find the motivation most days. I work my 8 hours, I come home, and I try to decompress despite home circumstances that don’t really allow it (that’s a pity party for another time). By the time I feel ready to create, it’s bed time. But I also need let my little ray of hopeless optimism shine here. I’m working on my financial situation so I can get my own place and move out of this apartment, away from my roommate, who also happens to be my adult-aged sibling. I prefer living alone and I know it will help me decompress more effectively in the evenings, which will give me a better chance at writing and drawing. Furthermore, my roommate tossed the last straw on the camel’s back this past week with behaviors that have honestly pissed me off. There are things we’ve talked about that change for a few weeks, or maybe a couple of months, and then go right back to “normal.” But when they hit me with that last straw, I had several minutes of “so pissed off and frustrated I was on the verge of tears,” but then I had a realization. Despite the fact that the past four years of unreliable contribution to rent, and despite the erratic laundry schedule, and despite the not taking care of my cookware or cleaning up after themself, and despite the constant presence of another person in my space because they won’t fucking leave the apartment except for their tiny amount of work they do at their job... I am still here. I am enough. I’ve paid the rent every month. I’ve kept my sanity (barely, but still). I’ve cleaned up when needed. I’ve walked the dog and showered and gotten myself dressed and fed myself. I’m still here. But the point is this: I know shit’s fucked. But the stories living in my head can’t be told my anyone else, and they won’t leave me alone until I at least try. And if I want to do that, I need to keep trudging. And I will. Sorry if this doesn’t all make sense, but what I’m trying to say is that the joy of something can be motivation enough. I’ve wanted to relearn how to draw for years and my perfectionism has been a major obstacle, right next to feeling like I don’t have the time or energy to practice. But you know, I bookmarked a tweet that @xannador posted on their Twitter. It was a set of 3 silhouettes, presumably of characters from a comic that they’d made previously. I had read that comic and I knew I needed to start drawing again. But all it took was those 3 silhouettes to make me realize that the only things stopping me is me. I determined I would kick my gods-be-damned perfectionism in the teeth. And I would practice. And I will do so. I will relearn to draw. I will get back into writing. There are a lot of people who will undoubtedly take the easy way out (like my roommate) by doing the barest of the bare minimum, maybe even less than that. Those are the people who will take the cheap, easy, AI solution. And we can’t control those people. But we can control ourselves. I could go on and on, but we all have something inside us that makes us tick. For my bestie, it’s drawing. She’s an amazing artist, and if everything else in the world turned to dust, she’d still be drawing. I’d still be thinking up stories. If there’s something you’re meant to do, do it. The rest of the world will either catch on or miss out. But you can’t stop being you for that. You are enough, even when it doesn’t feel like it. You are enough, even when the world tells you that you’re not. You. Are. Enough.

Heya, recently AI art as a whole has gotten me very discouraged and down about being an artist, and I was wondering how you battle the encroaching dread this all causes? I hate how disrespected artist have been these past few years, with NFTs and now this, but it feels like an insurmountable ocean to wade through alone

I really wish I had some secret formula that could help and motivate you and make everything easier... But I don't.

I'm really just a spiteful asshole, who loves drawing and doesn't know when to quit. That's it.

And I keep going, because I refuse to even just imagine a world without the joy of creating. Ironically, I found out that it is exactly this spiteful approach, that seems to inspire a lot of people. <3 Wouldn't have guessed that THIS side of me would ever be useful. <3

[synesindri]

dvd commentary:

He turns twenty-one.

They go to a bar to celebrate. Adam orders a sex on the beach because when he was seventeen he decided that would be a funny drink to buy as an adult of legal drinking age.

Nick orders a shirley temple. Adam laughs.

Then he asks the bartender to give his cocktail to somebody who looks like they’d appreciate it, and orders himself a shirley temple too.

from losing my religion?

oh yay! thank you 💕(losing my religion is here, for anyone interested!)

so, this is one of those moments that got shoved in between heavier/more immediately relevant sections in this story for the sake of breaking it up a bit, but that ended up contributing to my feelings about this series as a whole tbh. i did not intend for this series to have much at all to do with age, but it has ended up being a lot about the weird process of understanding that life stages exist while simultaneously having experiences that don't fit within a normal human life narrative at all. this is one of the moments where that is at the forefront imo.

so here, adam remembers being 17 and having a pretty standard 17yo opinion that 'sex on the beach' is a hilarious name for a drink (which, i mean, he's not wrong lol), while having little to no experience with either alcohol or sex. and he's now 21, which is a meaningful birthday in normal american life, and he recognizes that, but because he has had the VERY atypical experiences of dying and being resurrected and being possessed by an archangel etc etc, he is leaning heavily on his teenage opinions about what turning 21 means, rather than having updated views about it. he has been drinking like an adult for about a year by this point — probably daily, not really for fun, not in excess because he has to be in control of himself and able to intervene if nick needs him to, just as a way to take the edge off of how weird literally everything about his life is — there isn't a lot of mystery left for him about alcohol. he's at this bar, ordering a drink with a funny name not with a group of college students like how he imagined it when he was younger, but with his equally archangel-fried middle aged ?? buddy ?? who likely remembers the dumb-drinks rite of passage but is not going to giggle about it like somebody who is fresh to this kind of scene would. nick has done that life era, and the dinner-party-wine-drinking era adam might or might not ever experience, and the drinking-to-take-the-edge-off era adam has been going through since stull happened, and the 'could you do me a favor there satan and remind me to quit drinking before i go to bed' era that is relatable to literally nobody at all, and is now in his 'forget booze, i'm gonna have a soda and mind my business' era lol.

and that would be disappointing, if adam at 21 was the way adam at 17 expected he would be. that version of 21yo adam would think it was silly if one of the friends taking him out for his birthday ordered a little kid drink like a shirley temple (not even a coke or a virgin margarita or something more standard for a non-drinking adult; a shirley temple), so he laughs because he's still using that outdated social script. but like, actually, he is not the 21yo person his 17yo self imagined he would be, and he gets why nick doesn't drink anymore. and he maybe kind of gets that ordering a shirley temple is pretty on par with ordering a sex on the beach as far as getting funny drinks goes (i often leave nick's pov somewhat opaque in these stories but since this is director's commentary, i will divulge that nick's shirley temple choice was a dumb little on-purpose joke for himself whether or not adam got it). and they both might even get it that part of the work they're both doing is relearning to be people very much from the bottom up, and that part of that is treating themselves like little kids sometimes. maturity has kind of lost its meaning for them, but the most ~mature choice at this point is not necessarily the "yay i'm 21" young adult drink, or the "whiskey and soda before bed" more jaded adult drink, or the sensible grown-up cocktail alternative, but is actually the thing that is most like babying themselves.

[iconfusionwastaken]

🎭 Technoblade reborn as Billiam AU 🎭

This AU is part of the DSMP Reborn as the “villain” AU multiverse, the link shows the masterpost which explains the AUs & has the index for more AUs that I posted.

If an AU has no link attached, it's coming soon.

If I need to add any CWs please tell me.

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

For whatever reason, Billiam, no, Technoblade remembers his past life at a young age & does not want to get possessd by an evil egg & be 1 of many heartless captalist nobles thank you very much.

(Well it's ambiguous in the novel(s) if Billiam was ever posessed by the Egg/did everything of his own free will or a mixture of the 2, it's also ambiguous if the Egg had anything to do w/ Billiam being evil or not but his point still stands).

His 1st action is to is to treat everyone he comes across well & earn the approval of those around him since he doesn't want to get executed for being an evil capitalist cultist. 

He also has to arm himself to defend against evil capitalists nobles that could take advantage of him.

Yeah Techno's gonna have to relearn how to fight since Billiam's body probably doesn't have the same muscle memory as his old 1 did.

Training Arc pog!

Since Techno's very young when he gains his memories it make things a bit easier for him gaining a good reputation, but he's also got disagreeing parents to deal w/ very early on.

(If Technoblade happens to get his uncaring parents killed after deeming himself ready to take over what they control, why would anybody snitch?)

Fast foward to the future, Technoblade changed his name to Technoblade since he isn't calling himself Billiam anytime soon, & is well liked for how well he treats everyone (who isn't an evil capitalist) regardless of how below his social standing they are. The people under him have it well compared to other places & people come to his land for a better life.

Techno also listens to the people's struggles which adds onto his already great reputation.

Hubert is Technoblade's personal servant, well, best rival & friend w/ a paycheck is more accurate to their relationship. They often duel eachother & train together.

The karaoke kid Billiam canonically abducts is instead legally adopted by Hubert & the kid's name is Moon. Technoblade is his cool uncle who also makes sure they know how to fight just in case. (He/they Moon is my headcanon).

Anybody who tries to assassinate them will get curbstompted.

Moon isn't a servant, they're literally a minor & Hubert's gonna be the 1 inheriting Technoblade's stuff.

They've prepared a cover story for Hubert taking Techno's stuff if the time comes, they're ready to dye his hair, use magic to change his eye color, & trained Hubert in how to do nobility.

Magic will also be used to make it look like Hubert & his persona 'Dream' are certaintly different people.

Technoblade at some point orders a search for the Egg, he's vauge enough that he doesn't sound suspicious & plays it off as research & things he's heard making him cautious & concerned for his people.

He's quick to get soul fire to burn down the Egg when it's finally discovered. He also makes sure people will always know about the danger of it & how to defend against it since it's literally real.

Also, Technoblade his whole life since gaining his memories at least has been fighting tooth & nail to rise up the ranks of nobility so as to someday gain the favor of the sovereign & their heir(s) due to how invaluable that'd be.

What Technoblade controls may legally & based on appearance alone be similar to everywhere else under the other nobles' rule, the place & people are just more willing to help the community out & keep others out of poverty, but if you look closer, over time the power of people in Techno's land has been more equally spread amongst the adults.

At some point in time 1 may think that Technoblade's nobility is just a title & he only has power because of how well liked by the people he is.

If they try to make a fuss, Techno will just bring up that legally he has power over the people who love him & plenty of money so it isn't much of a problem (despite it not being a matter of legallity & instead folkway now).

Techno has a lot of money, but so does everyone legally under him, his place is thriving. (Not that you need money in his land, if you plan to go somewhere capitalist, there's plenty of money for you to grab to make it easier for you).

He's also subtly been making everyone aware of an alternative life that isn't under capitalism, he's been subtly spreading books & such across the land that teaches about the cons of capitalism, the way the government works & it's flaws, & an alternative way to live, anarchy.

Techno doesn't want this to get traced back to his people since he doesn't want anybody hurt for the cause of dismantling a flawed system that exploits people. It'd also hurt his attempts to gain the sovereign & heir(s) favor

Not everyone in nobility is his enemy, Lyaria, Oliver, & Sebastian are nobles he knocked some sense & they are now following his footsteps in making their land like his. Drew P. is a commoner who's also Sebastian's fiance.

Karl is somebody who appeared 1 day according to everybody & was glad to join Technoblade cause. He has unknown but useful connections.

They all work togeather to gain the sovereign & their heir's/s' favor.

More uncles & an aunt for Moon! :D He loves them.

It's clear as day that Karl, Sebastian & Drew wanna marry eachother but for some reason when bringing it up Karl always convinces the 2 they shouldn't date due to reasons.

IDK who the sovereign & their heir(s) would be, I just know that when Technoblade & co. becomes well aquainted w/ them, he'll slowly convince them that anarchy is the way to go.

Maybe he won't be able to fully convince them during his life time, but he's gonna get the ball rolling & make sure it stays rolling.

While this AU has it's serious moments I think this story in Technoblade fashion would focus more on comedy & how amazing & chaotic Techno is.

[spookypetrine]

Bewitching the Elements: Water

This chapter was a rough one bring so many emotions up for me. I only seems to express my feeling with crying if I am in water. The shower and the pool. I constantly want to float in water in emotional states and it does facilitate a lot of breakdowns for me. I don't show my emotions well or share them with others at all in a verbal way. When my fiancé passed away in 2018 I barely cried after his death. I didn't finally cry until my family took me on vacation to the beach a few months later. I went down to the beach alone to swim and I cried at the beauty of the ocean and the pain in my hear that he had never seen the ocean while he was alive. It was devastating and painful to think about as he was gone never to return and I was still here. I am still here and that healing was painful and still not done. This brought all of that back.

I have rambled long enough lets get into these questions.

What does the element of water represent to me?

To me it represents peace and sadness. It's soft and calming, but also have a secret rage. This is the ocean deep and dark with unexplored crevices that hold secrets of the divine feminine inside each person. The feeling of unabashed rage and a delicate side showing the perfect balance of the womxn. It is a glorious element to behold honestly.

What's my truest emotional nature feel like?

For me as I expressed before my emotional nature is a secret. I locked box that very few get to be privy to because when I was a child those emotions were belittled and pushed aside. As an adult I never learned to process them or control them just hide them. Shrink my feelings and shove them away from others. This also involved a lot of learning to cry quietly and learning how to function when paralyzed with depression. My depression took full effect in high school I was stuck in a cycle of having to function when every part of me wanted to hide from the world. Is this healthy or helpful? No. Does it cause immense problems in my personal life? Yes. Will it cause me to change? I am trying with self-therapy and meditation I am trying so that's something I guess.

What is my soul saying to me right now?

I need to meditate and once I finish this journaling I will probably spend the next few hours doing that and reflecting. I also need to pull some cards for some much needed clarity.

What does my shadow self feel like? Express itself as?

My shadow self is the scared little girl hiding in the closet every time someone knocks on the door. When I was about 2 my mother left my abusive father and we moved into an apartment in town to hide from him. Anytime someone knocked on the apartment door I would scream that it was daddy and try to drag my mother into the closet to hide from him. To this day my mother tells that story fondly as a cute anecdote about my childhood. It's a traumatic story about me trying to hide from my abusive scary father, but yes tell that at family reunions.

My shadow self is that little girl that never gets to be a little girl. That small child that had all of her carefree times stripped from her and was placed in a survival mood so young. My shadow self is her and as I write this I can see her in her Barbie footie pajamas hiding with her teddy bear. That is who she is the hurt child begging her mother to get in the closet to save her. She expresses herself every time I get a new stuffie to sit on my bed with me. Every time I do my make-up in a silly way or paint a picture. These are the moments when she comes out and slowly I am healing us both.

What does it feel like living in the world when I'm connected to my heart?

I know my worth in every scenario even in romantic ones. I don't let people use me as much and I stand my ground when needed. I don't let others abuse my heart and I don't do it either. She needs me to be strong and I am. If that strength ends in us being alone then so be it at least no one can take advantage of me any longer.

What practices can I turn to when I'm feeling overwhelmed, emotional, and like I need help?

Well, I write on here and on my google docs. I meditate or exercise. Watch something that makes me happy or read. Sometimes I watch ASMR videos online and enjoy the happy sounds and sights. These are things that help me destress when I need to.

What are the parts of myself I am still learning to accept and love?

I am a bigger woman and have spent most of my life being too big and too much. I am learning to use that and embrace all that I am and my physical body is. Instead of hating her and the person looking back at me in the mirror, I have to learn to love her and heal her as she needs. She is me and I need to make sure she is taken care of. Right now I am just going through the motions, but eventually, it will become and kneejerk reaction to love myself and build myself up. As needed I will be my own advocate because no one is going to do it for me or see my value if I don't see it for myself.

What are ways I can nurture myself through this?

This is a very new radical path I am on and I have to go it pretty much alone. In this time I just need to remind myself to be conscious that I am trying and be patient as I relearn to love my body and myself. To find beauty in my flaws and hope in my soul I will evolve to love myself despite the world telling me I shouldn't. I will.

[twilight-town-zombies]

For the ship thing. Axel and Isa. Somebodies and Hot Topic where it would differ

How do much do I ship it?: Never heard of it/ Notp / Dislike / used to ship / maybe / ship it / aww / otp / IS IT CANON YET?

2. What non sexual activities do they like to do together?

Somebodies: 

When they were kiddos, Lea and Isa spent a lot of time outside of academy hours roaming around the city and trying to sneak into places they weren’t supposed to (Their loftiest goals being the clock tower and castle). They considered this more their ‘job’ than anything, though. 

For fun, they played a lot of frisbee and tag with the other local hooligans or just with each other, which Isa preferred. They would read books and comics together late at night when Lea would sneak over to Isa’s house and often reenacted these and the stories their fathers told them on the beach or in the town square. 

Sometimes Isa’s father would take them both out in his fishing boat. Isa would help, and Lea would also ‘help,’ which often involved fumbling bait and fish over the side. Other days, one of the bartenders, cooks, or servers at the Lea’s parent’s pub would take them under their wing for an evening and let them help add spices to dishes or collect bottle caps off the floor or wash tables, which would last until one of the customer’s complained or Lea’s parents caught sight of them and kicked them out. 

In Somebodies, as young twenty-somethings, they spend most of their free time focusing on academy training and school, especially with Isa trying to steer Lea away from his delinquent friends and tendencies. Isa’s much more studious than Lea and helps him relearn material that he was too distracted to learn in class, and convinces him to take time to sit and focus on completing homework and readings. 

They love to spar and work out together on a regular basis and often give each other advice or teach each other new techniques. They’re both competitive and have some unchecked aggression, so sparring is a good outlet, and it teaches them to give their all, while maintaining self-control, because they don’t want to hurt each other much, although a few bangs and bruises have always been forgivable, and they give each other a fair amount of medical care as well.  

In their free time, Lea and Isa enjoy taking their dog Neptune on walks in the park or along the beach, going sailing, and playing frisbee for old time’s sake. 

Some nights Lea helps Isa babysit his sisters and entertains them with wild anecdotes. They both appreciate how gentle each other can be with kids and animals. Other nights, Isa visits Lea while he’s bartending, and when Lea has time, they tell each other stories about their day, reminiscence and try to make each other laugh.  

Hot Topic: 

Axel and Saix have embraced island life in a big way. Whenever they can get away from work, they spend their free time on the beach, going on long walks or jogs, or surfing and playing frisbee or soccer with Xigbar and Demyx. (They played soccer together in high school for a while.) They enjoy being active and getting fresh air, and it’s been helpful for Saix’s mental health. They often go to the gym together, spot each other and give each other advice and encouragement. 

When they need a night in, they enjoy cooking together and then Netflix and cuddle. Sometimes they watch terrible shows just to amuse each other making snide comments. They’re also very good at spending down time together, with Saix reading and Axel sketching tattoo designs, either on paper or on Saix’s skin. 

When they want to go out, sometimes the pair of them will go to a club to dance and hang out exclusively with themselves (because if Saix loses sight of Axel for two seconds he will jump to conclusions and freak the fuck out). Though they don’t have a lot of time for it, they enjoy shopping for clothes together and have been known to spend literal hours in the fitting room, making each other try on a hundred different things.

(God, this is long. I will try to be shorter)   

3. Who does chores around the house?

I would say in both stories, they try to split chore responsibilities evenly, because Isa doesn’t let Lea slack. Having a clean and organized house is incredibly important to Isa/Saix because it gives him a sense of security and control over his life. Lea/Axel is not a naturally neat person, and doesn’t entirely understand, but he recognizes how important it is to his boyfriend and tries to take his responsibilities seriously. HT Saix is a little more extreme with his organization than Isa is, (I think I mentioned an alphabetical spice rack?) so Axel has a harder time of it. Every now and then, Lea/Axel will get tired and forget to do something or leave his things lying around. Isa is more likely to shake his head and do it for Lea, while Saix is more likely to give Axel a lecture about his laziness.

4. Who’s the better cook?

Somebodies: Lea. He grew up watching cooks in his dad’s bar, he works in a pub, and he’s had to make a lot of his own food because his parents are pretty negligent. Also, he enjoys cooking and loves to try exotic foods, probably because there wasn’t always enough to go around and he occasionally had to accept food from whoever would give it to him. Isa’s mother does a lot of the cooking in his family and keeps recipes pretty simple. His father’s a fisherman so there’s a lot of seafood and bread, which are pretty much the only thing Isa feels comfortable making well. He tends to prioritize school over learning to cook and sometimes forgets to eat if Lea doesn’t remind him. 

Hot Topic: Saix. Under the advice of his therapist, Saix tries to embrace the healthy body, healthy mind lifestyle and spends a lot of time learning to make healthy and delicious foods. He’s thinking about going vegan. He approaches cooking like something to be studied and perfected. Axel can cook fairly well too, and sometimes they cook together, though Saix can be bossy in the kitchen. Axel can’t entirely blame him though. Axel is more about tastiness than healthiness and tends to burn things or make them too salty or spicy.   

5. Who’s the funniest drunk?

The funniest would probably be Lea/Axel when he’s a little buzzed, but mostly just up to his normal antics. 

When Isa/Saix is drunk and in a good mood, he gets very affectionate and clingy with Lea/Axel and forgets to care how much he dislikes/is cautious of PDA, which their friends find both funny and a little sad. If he’s tired or stressed he tends to get broody and quiet, Isa more likely to get depressed or opinionated, Saix more likely to be jealous or hostile. 

While Lea/Axel is funnier in general, and he’s more likely to make people laugh with his sense of humor, getting drunk actually tends to make him less funny, because he’s more likely to make jokes that are a little crueler, more personal, less tasteful, which he otherwise would have kept to himself, and Isa/Saix is less likely to keep him in check and more likely to get pissed about it.

6. Do they have kids?

Somebodies: No, just a dog that they are very devoted to. Lea and Isa would have liked to have adopted a kid or two in the future. 

Hot Topic: No. They’ve been on and off again enough that the topic of having kids is kind of a vague and distant concept in their minds at this point in time. Saix especially wants to focus on getting himself into a better place before he even considers the idea. Axel prefers to hang out with other people’s kids so he can give them back after. He sometimes baby-sits his friend David’s niece, Lilo. He’s a little afraid he’d mess his own kids up.  

7. Do they have any traditions?

Somebodies: They used to meet at the fountain in the local square to walk to school together every day. Even after their fake public break up, they still get together on special occasions, like birthdays, holidays, and graduations, and spend the whole day together, and they usually meet up in that same spot. 

Hot Topic: Both Axel and Saix did not have great home lives growing up, so rather than going home for the holidays, they spend them together making their own traditions, inviting their friends over, or if they’re really just not in the mood, making them as low key as possible. They only decorate for Halloween. They are an order take-out on Christmas kind of couple. Although they would probably go surfing before-hand. Attempts to break from these into a more traditional holiday tends to cause discord. 

8. What do they fight about?

Somebodies: Mainly, Lea’s bad habits, smoking, stealing that sort of deal. He has some friends like Elrena that poverty has pushed toward the criminal side, of life and Isa wants him to be successful.  Every so often, they’ll fight about the uncertainty of their future. Lea wants to be on the Castle Guard, and Isa’s also considering it, but guards aren’t supposed to be in relationships, and they don’t actually have a plan to deal with that, nor are they able to sit down and talk about it without emotions running high. 

Hot Topic: Commitment. Lea’s a bit of a flirt, and Isa’s childhood abuse has left him with an extreme sense of insecurity that manifests in his jealousy. So, Isa’s constantly questioning Lea’s commitment to him and relationships with other men and keeping tabs on him, and Lea’s questioning why the other areas of Isa’s life seem to be improving, but not Isa’s ability to let Lea be himself, spend time by himself, and make new friends.    

9. What would they do if they found their pairing tag on tumblr? (If they have one)

Somebodies: Isa and Lea would be incredibly concerned with the extreme personality changes and murder they see in their futures. (And how the hell does that lead to domestic life with two teenagers? Or are they adults? Or are they preschoolers? Isa and Lea are barely not teenagers themselves, and are not feeling ready for this.) 

Hot Topic: Saix is Concerned. Axel loves the murder and intrigue, he’s definitely going to spend hours clicking through fanart and fics and showing Saix highlights. 

10. Who cried at the end of Marley and me?

(I’ve never seen Marley & Me, I’m just going to assume a very cute dog dies)

Somebodies: Isa’s reading Marley & Me out loud to Lea, who’s lounging on the floor in front of the fireplace, hugging Neptune. Lea’s eyes start getting misty and Isa’s voice breaks. Lea brings Neptune over to Isa, who is not full on crying, but maybe about to be. Group hug and they decide to take a break from the book and take Neptune outside to play for a while. 

Hot Topic: Axel starts bitching about the ending as soon as he realizes what’s happening, but he gets quieter and quieter as the story plays out. Saix is holding him and rubbing his back and Axel thinks he’s doing okay and then abruptly Saix starts straight up sobbing into Axel’s shoulder, and Axel hushes and quiets him, and they make plans to go adopt a puppy the next day. 

11. Who always wins at Mario kart?

Both: Axel is much more into video games than Saix is but Saix somehow always comes up from behind at the last minute and beats him in Mario Kart, no matter how many times they play. 

12. One thing I like about this ship?

I love their history. They grew up together and know each other inside and out and have stood by each other through whatever life’s thrown at them. I like their personalities. I see them as two people with wildly different personalities who, nonetheless both understand and value the other person for and in spite of those differences. I like that they are both strong, loyal, and dedicated to what they believe in and care about to the point where they stand by each other when they lose their hearts and straight up commit murder because they want to be able to feel love for each other again. That’s fucking hard core. Oh that was like five things. Whoops. 

13. One thing I don’t like about the ship?

Controversial take, I know, but I’m a huge Axel/Roxas fan, so I kind of prefer to see Lea/Isa and Axel/Saix as past tense, a couple that broke up because life threw too much at them and they betrayed each other, but have happily moved on and still mean the world to each other, just in a different way.  

Sea Salt Fam: I don’t like that they’ve somehow become the Dads of the group? I always imagined them in their early twenties--at most--just a few years older than the rest of the group, so seeing them put in these parent roles, for Roxas and Xion, who tend to get treated like young children, (Daddy, braid my hair and read me a story is, like, not something any teenager has ever said), kind of weirds me out.   

14. The song I would say fits them?

Somebodies: Mars (Sleeping at Last)

Hot Topic: Kills You Slowly (The Chainsmokers)

15. Another headcanon about the pairing? (Free space)

Somebodies: Isa and Lea have never officially told anyone in their families that they’re romantically involved, because they’re not supposed to be, but they are all perfectly well aware, and do not believe for a second that they broke up. 

Hot Topic: Saix is hugely in love with Axel’s voice and guitar-playing, and even though seeing him at the front of a band makes him incredibly uncomfortable and Demyx drives Saix crazy, he’s trying really hard to be supportive of the whole endeavor and listens to the band’s EP on a regular basis.   

[takaraphoenix]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 6

1. Favorite character of this season?

I absolutely love how they dedicated this season to Buffy's issues. She died. And was ripped out of heaven. She lost her mom and was suddenly forced into being the adult in the house. It's so much and she gets to break about it. Yes, she hurts the people around her, but honestly... it kind of figures? How is one supposed to adjust to what she is trying to adjust to? But over the season, the wake-up calls she gets – the asylum episode, Dawn's stealing, Willow's addiction and then the grand finale that makes her realize she wants to be in this world – it's so great, because it goes... slowly.

My biggest issue with most modern TV is that it's basically torture porn. The main character is put through impossibly traumatizing ordeals but is never even given the chance to cope, to try and deal with it. The issues are never addressed, only glossed over because actually dealing with them would require care and good writing and take time away from all the other drama going on! So characters are only traumatized for shock-value and then are immediately over it, even though it's unrealistic.

This season is a season of trauma. A season of bad coping mechanism, of pushing people away but still seeking someone where she can feel safe – Spike. She slowly has to relearn to open up and let them in, she has to learn to want to live again. And it's hard. And the show doesn't shy away from it, it doesn't shy away from her making the wrong choices, because... there is no one right choice that is obvious when dealing with the trauma she has faced.

2. Outstanding minor character (positive or negative)?

Negative. Jonathan. I just... I really truly hate that Jonathan is in the trio. Of all people, Jonathan. The one who gave Buffy her class-protector award with that heart-warming speech. Buffy was the one person who saved him, personally, when he wanted to commit suicide. Even after the Jonathan Superstar episode, Buffy was gentle and understanding with him. It just... for him, to turn supervillain like that was incredibly disappointing for me.

3. Favorite character dynamic?

I genuinely love the Tara-Dawn dynamic. Tara and Willow raised her for months while Buffy was dead. But the Giles-Anya dynamic is also so great – I'm very soft for the way Anya points out her hair is blonde in the finale like “Buffy is getting hugs for short hair. I too would like a hug”.

4. Favorite canon romantic ship?

Buffy and Spike... in the first half of the season. The way she found him to open up to, he was the only one she voluntarily told about having been in heaven. She finds a connection to him. The way he loves her – that he stayed, for months, even though she was dead, because he had promised her to take care of Dawn and he didn't just do that, he helped the Scoobies protect Sunnydale. He had no reason to and it still... it bothers me so much that everyone continuously belittles Spike's love for Buffy like it's not there. If he was only lusting after her, he would have ditched town after her death, he wouldn't have helped defend Sunnydale and take care of Dawn.

5. Least favorite canon romantic ship?

I'm having flashbacks here but it's a tie and it's because of shit decisions Xander and Willow made.

It's strange, I want to love Willow and – as a friend – she is a great character, but she's just... a shitty partner? She cheated on Oz for weeks or months with Xander and now she used magic to play with Tara's mind. That is so... violating and disturbing and that, after Tara found out and confronted her about it and pointed out how incredibly wrong that was, even more so with Tara's past, Willow just went and immediately did it again. And this isn't something you can blame the addiction for; this was just “I don't want my girlfriend mad at me so I'll erase her memories”. It's... just so bad.

The other being Xander and Anya, even though I love Xander and Anya together, but... the entire season was a steady build-up to “Xander REALLY doesn't wanna get married”, literally from the first episode on. He tried to hide the engagement as long as possible. Then he just... makes these disturbed faces every time someone brings up the married life. They had a whole sing and dance number about their doubts. It's just so very evidently clear that he doesn't want to get married, but he takes until the wedding itself to realize and just... leaves Anya at the altar and then thinks he can get her back? Genuinely thinks they could just go back to being in a relationship? But after leaving her at the altar acting like she owes him something – when he watches her and Spike have sex?

Sometimes, it feels like Xander and Willow really live to sabotage their own happiness.

6. Favorite episode?

Once More With Feeling – it's just one of the most outstanding episodes, really! The songs are so brilliant, the emotional arcs this episode for everyone – from the Spuffy to the per-marital issues between Anya and Xander to Tara and Giles' doubts. It's really brilliant. Many shows after have tried to make a musical episode happen and, with luck, they're fun or comic-relief, but... none have lived up to the standard set by this one.

7. Least favorite episode?

Oh, that's an easy one. 6x19 Seeing Red, where they made... Spike, at this point honestly, completely OoC by having him try to rape Buffy. That will never come off as anything but OoC, not after all that has happened between them. Yes, they are violent with each other – but that's a mutual thing, they hurt each other. This was... terrifying to watch as a teen and it hasn't stopped being upsetting and disturbing. And then they top the episode off with Tara being fridged.

I know fridging is technically the act of killing a female character for the sake of a male character's suffering, but... it's gay fridging? It's not even entirely a Bury Your Gay; Tara dies specifically for the pain and suffering of her lover. After everything Tara's been through in life and after everything Willow has put her through this season, they barely just rekindled... and she gets killed off.

8. Favorite Monster Of The Week?

Aesthetically and what he brought to the show? Sweet from Once More, With Feeling.

But I think that Stewart from Hell's Bells also really stood out. The fact that Anya's past came back to haunt her – because she was a demon for a century and she tortured people for a living. She doesn't even remember this guy whose life she ruined and he comes in to ruin her wedding. And in the end... he wasn't even the one to ruin it, the viewer gets one last moment of hope when it's revealed this was a fake-out, that he was not “Xander from the future” but a vengeful demon... but even without Stewart, the wedding didn't happen.

9. Least favorite Monster Of The Week?

Not too many monsters of the week going on, really. Probably Wig Lady from 6x12 Doublemeat Palace, because all the implications of cannibalism in that episode were really very disturbing.

10. Rate the overarching villain!

Brilliant. 10/10. Holds up so well.

Seriously, there is this... frustrating part where Xander's character just does not hold up at all because of the casual sexism and gross over-sexualization of his female friends. Which figures, because that's how a Nice Nerdy Guy was defined in the 90s (and, if you look at modern TV aimed at nerdy guys like The Big Bang Theory, still is). It's just a trope from TV and movies that for some reason really worked back then but nowadays when we look at sexism and the behavior of men toward women with different eyes, it is really appalling and upsetting.

In the case of the nerd trio, this worked out really well for the show, because it only makes them even more effective villains. They are ridiculous losers, total nerds who think they are owed womens' attention. Their schemes are literally straight out of comics but for the dumbest purposes – they make an invisibility ray so they can go into a women's only spa to spy on naked ladies. They create mind-control devices but for the purpose of enslaving women into their sex-puppets.

It is so gross, so ridiculous and inexplicably still somehow funny, because it's straight out of comics. Freeze-rays? Invisibility-rays? Self-destructing lairs? Jet-packs? It is not out of this world, this isn't how Buffy the Vampire Slayer operates, this is a show about monsters and demons and they're turning it into a whacky scifi show and it works.

Then there's the fact that they're just... three dumb losers? I mean, last season, Buffy literally slayed a god. Shows like to escalate. The Big Bads become bigger and badder each season, but... where do you go after you killed a god? Instead of trying to immediately one-up the villain factor, they did something incredibly brilliant. They took all the steps back.

The villains aren't the focus of this season. The focus of this season is what I answered in the first part of this post. Buffy's mental health and readjustment. You can't only focus on that though, you do need a villain and for that, an overarching villain of some loser nerd bois who fail the majority of time are perfect. They're nuisances that make Buffy's life marginally harder at times, but they're not an overall, serious, actual threat that may end the world.

And still they... got Tara killed. In such a... human manner. An angry man-child who hates women comes in with a gun and shoots her. And there's nothing the demon-slaying good guys can do about it. The bullet hits – not the target it was intended for – and takes an innocent life. Just like that, Warren manages what the hellish bad guys from previous seasons hadn't managed; he kills a Scoobie. Angelus killed Jenny, Drusilla killed Kendra, those were the only major deaths at the hands of villains that we had on this show so far and both were minor characters.

Bonus: Other thoughts?

Dawn was so draining this season; she got better in the last quarter of the season but the majority of it... The stealing, the behavior, the blaming Buffy for absolutely everything – Willow got addicted to magic, it's Buffy's fault, they have no money and Buffy has to go and work to earn money and it's Buffy's fault that she's not home, Buffy died to save Dawn and somehow it's Buffy's fault too because she left Dawn. Just... how can you possibly be this self-centered...? It's so exhausting, even more so in the season that has Buffy suffering the most and instead of being a supportive, helpful sister, Dawn acts like she's the victim of everything...

And I understand, Dawn has been through a lot too – losing her mother, losing Buffy, learning she isn't human but just a mass of energy – but there is a difference between suffering yourself and placing all the blame on other people and pretending that the world is against you, instead of tackling your own issues and problems yourself? And stealing from your friends, at that.

And no, being fifteen isn't an excuse for not seeing beyond yourself. Fifteen year olds are sure old enough to be self-aware... This “fifteen year olds only see themselves and only care about their own suffering and everybody else is to be blamed for how shit their life is” is just... another cringey Teen Girl Trope. Seriously, why did they just cram every single bad trope into this character...

[immawritethat]

Falling Back for the Craft

Hello friends. Over the past year or so, my relationship with writing has become…complex. Back in November 2018, I finished the second draft of my novel, which was essentially a complete re-write aside from the last few chapters. I’ve been working diligently on this piece since January 2015, save from a month or two gap at the beginning of the process and a six month break between drafts.

Towards the end of the draft, I found myself writing more than I ever had and I was thriving and living off it. Most of my thoughts were consumed with my novel and finishing it before Camp NaNoWriMo (planning a partner project with a friend, so as to trap myself into a committed deadline) and although I failed it did push me faster. Upon finishing, I forced myself to take a break, despite wanting to remain on my writing high.

I ended up taking too long of a break. From writing everything. I began struggling to do much writing at all. And I really started to just miss it. I’ve been relearning how to fall in love with writing and with words and the whole of the craft. I’ve been working on this post on-and-off over the past few months to document my experience, just in case anyone else might be going through the same thing, and I think I’m finally getting back to the place where I can publish this earnestly.

Consume fresh content.

Without fail, enjoying something new sparks a creative drive in me. This can be anything from a book to television show to video game and more. Fresh is the keyword here; re-reading books is great, and reading your usual genres and authors is always great, but I’ve found that taking a chance on something different has helped a lot. For me, that’s happened to be a historical fiction and books that are new adult rather than young adult, because I’ve read pretty much just YA fantasy and scifi for quite some time. (I’ve also been consuming a lot of historical costuming/vintage fashion videos, and playing non-Nintendo video games)

This can also be as simple as following new writblrs and appreciating their ideas and content, as well! Passion tends to feed off passion!

Make time for your writing.

I know it sounds simple and obvious and cliched, but this is the one I've actually struggled with the most. Once you’ve broken the habit, it’s very difficult to build back up. I recommend small, simple goals. Something as minor as “write a paragraph before opening up Tumblr” or “turn off your phone for ten minutes and try to write during that time” can become surprisingly effective. It doesn’t feel like much, but it’ll add up, and it’ll help get you back into the headspace of not only wanting to write, but actually writing.

I know some people who even ritualize the act! Make yourself a cup of tea or coffee, sit down at a desk, table, the floor, whatever, and make a moment of it if that helps! If you happen to have a consistent time off (a free hour between breakfast and getting ready for work, after school before anyone else gets home, after dinner is cleaned up and before bed, etc.) that would be a good time to make this a regular or semi-regular habit!

Get yourself in order.

I tell myself time has been the leading factor in writing rut, but I know that if I’m honest with myself, it’s directly related to my mental health. (Now whether lack of time directly correlates to my mental health is a complicated issue that I won’t address here) Keep an eye on yourself, your signs, and your surroundings; do you not have the same energy and spark about most things? Is your typical workspace cluttered and unappealing? Are your creative ideas and impulses at a standstill?

If this is the case, I can’t give you some perfect answer; mental health and motivation is something incredibly personal and impossible for me to tell you, but some things I found helpful were:

Getting to bed at on a consistent schedule (I found sleeping from 10:30 to 7:30 the best for me personally! Going to sleep after midnight is rough for me)

Limiting time spent online

Making small changes (adding a decoration here or there, rearranging things, wearing a different color of lipstick, anything small to add variety and a sense of control!)

Making time to go outside (Vitamin D is important!)

Making lists

Talking to trusted loved ones

Be kind to yourself, while holding yourself accountable.

I’m still trying to figure things out again. I’m putting up this post because I’ve had it sitting in drafts for so long and I just want it over with. It’s an uphill battle, that’s for sure. I tend to get my shit together for a few days at a time, and then things get busy and suddenly I haven’t written for a week...or two...again.

You might have to (and probably should) to readjust expectations. I used to write anywhere from 250-600 words a day, nearly every day. Now I might get that much a week, if I’m lucky. Admittedly a lot has also changed; for a few months I was working five days a week and attending school four, which makes a huge difference in available time/energy, and plenty of free time is dedicated to maintaining relationships and attending to chores and other needs. The reason I think I’ll be able to get back on track is because school is only going to be two days this semester, if I’m honest. Time is an essential part of productivity, and if you don’t have time and can’t allot more time, then that’s just how it is. Don’t beat yourself up over circumstances you can’t control, and don’t belittle yourself for not getting more done when you do have the time.

It’s not going to make you any more productive, it’s going to affect your self-image, and there’s simply no need to be cruel.

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

That’s all I can think of for now! Happy writing, and here’s to our passions lighting once again.

[24hourdinerandotherhorrorstories]

The Letter Forever Remembered

Dear (name is smudged out),

My story is an odd one. Most would even consider me the bad guy along with my family in my story. However, at the end of the day I'm so happy with my family and with the love of my many lives. Yes, you read that right, I have lived many lives with the same memories and the same needs as the one before. Always hopping into some sad little child corpse and taking it over. Never quite mentally growing, always flipping between childlike and forcing myself to be an adult without understanding what it really meant to be an adult. It never got easier and it's not something you can just get used to especially when your mind is mostly feral from isolation. My mind was broken after so many jumps between bodies and people rarely take in children that are damaged. Sometimes my adopted parents were human and feared me to a certain extent but many times after they were not and didn't fear me enough. However, they found me, the dark followers, they saw what I was and gave me a proper caregiver. I called her Mother, for she was the only one I ever considered true family.

Most humans around her couldn't understand why she would adopt and foster damaged children when she could have her own. But she always looked at us with happiness and pride. She told them we were children of her soul and called to her like no other, how could she deny that call? People would go quiet after that, mostly at how intense she was about us. She was patient with her broken children and we saw her as a divine being finally delivering us the peace we so desperately craved. We as her children could never quite figure out if she was human or something more, much like the dark followers that visited our home while we grew up. Growing up in such a dark home had it's terrifying moments. Even for one such as I, who had seen so much, was scare of some of the things I saw. I do not know how to begin this part of my story but I will try.

The one moment, the one special thing that always pushed me to live through all these horrible lives was her. I met her in my third...or was it fifth life and she was my everything. She was my soulmate, my twin flame, my sanity and the sweet love of my lives. Every life I met her, I would able to breath again. It was both a blessing so grand it brought me to tears but a curse so foul that physical torture would be better than the pain of seeing her die. She always dies before me in some horrific fashion. I would see the life leave her eyes as she told me she would find me again. She always did, no matter how much I hid, she would instantly grab me in a hug and happily say "where have you been hiding" before kissing me like she couldn't get enough of me. She never blamed me for her deaths, I sometimes wished she did. We both know our relationship was cursed to fall before her 30th year. Someone or something would tempt a friend or sibling into a jealous rage and they would kill her. It was just how it was, no matter how much we protected ourselves, she always died as blood would cover the ground while I wailed into an unseeing void. So it was a painful surprise when mom came in one day, with my love gripping her hand tightly. She looked so small then in her child body but her eyes shown with dark humor at her situation before she tackled me to the floor. Only words leaving her as we hugged were "going through puberty again and remembering, is going to suck".

Things were great at first. We did everything together and slowly relearned our love for each other from friendship to a romantic relationship. We got into a lot of mischief which led us into many punishments and awkward situations. Mother grin at every moment of it and was happy for us. I couldn't have loved my mother more in those moments. But something started hovering over us when we turn 21. Mother started getting more protective of us and my siblings. Mother's eldest children were always seen coming and going rapidly through the week. Some of her eldest children seemed to grow more and more vicious as they stole money from the house. The dark followers would yank them away from us when we would work outside in the garden, speaking in harsh voices as they went into the house. Mother's face was constantly forced into a frown as her eyes showed deep sadness and disappointment. It was odd to my slightly fractured mind how mother could raise such horrid people. But my soulmate always told me "you can't blame everything on the parent for how their child turns out, sometimes things are just outside of the parents control."

When we turned 30, my soulmate was brutally tortured and murder by some of Mother's eldest children. The pain of feeling her life slip away all over again was excruciating because she thought this was going to finally be our happy ending. She strokes my cheek as she choked on her blood, her body was carved up in symbols. The carvings were so deep that I could spot her bones underneath, not that she had much weight on her in that moment. Something in me broke completely at seeing her that way. I'm not proud of what I did but damn did i enjoy it. The dark followers and Mother brought them to me, passed out and threw them at my feet. I looked up in surprise mostly because these were her children. Mother gave me a dark look full of hatred as she said they weren't her children but they are your blessings. I didn't understand completely what she meant but I also didn't care.... I enjoyed smashing their heads under my foot, I enjoyed ripping each and every bone from their screaming bodies before looking into their eyes as they breath their last breath. I painted the walls in there blood as Mother watched with a sad smile. I destroyed them through the night as I couldn't be bother to shift back to my human form. At this point I was just a feral beast mourning their soulmate. I passed out as the sun greeted the day, in a pile of bodies and broken furniture.

I didn't talk for years after that day. I hid away with Mother, only working around the house but remaining unseen. I couldn't look my siblings in the eyes after everything even if they understood. They gave me the space I needed but always left me gifts or snack with little notes attached about how they were doing and how much they loved me. I cried so much those years, I couldn't even pull my self out of my isolation to greet my nieces and nephews. Everyday it took longer and longer to change into my human form and even harder to hold together. This time it felt like I lost far more than I ever imagined.

When I was 40, Mother said it was time to finally get my blessings. I still didn't know what she meant so I just shook my head and curls up in my bed and wrapped my wings around me. Mother wouldn't take no for an answer and lifted me out of my bed. I panicked because Mother was never forceful with me even after everything. I couldn't stop the panic attack that invade my mind and didn't hear my mother trying her hardest to calm me while I screamed then everything went black. I awoke in a soft bed with silk sheets, clothes set out to be worn and robes hanging behind the door. Mother was sitting in the chair near the bed I was in, her eyes were closed but she was not resting. I whimpered because I thought I was finally being punished for everything that happened but Mother just pulled me to my feet, told me to get cleaned up and dressed. I obediently did as I was told and even made sure to groom my damaged wings. Wings that I had to grow back after in a moment of weakness and too many bottles of the strongest alcohol I could find.

She put a blindfold over my eyes and held my furred hand as she led me around. I had no clue where I was or who was there, the scents were so new that it felt like the place popped up overnight. When we came to a stop, I tensed at the one familiar scent. I started crying, sobbing at what mother was doing to me. I couldn't understand why she was punishing me this way before gently hands removed my blindfold. I gave a shaky gasp at the sight before me. It was a my beautiful ethereal soulmate, the love of my many lives, right there in the flesh, with tears of happiness in her eyes. Her eyes are what threw me off, they were a misty green color which was a contrast to her deep brown almost black eyes of before. I flinched at the voice that spoke to everyone in the room. My soulmate held me close as the being spoke. The being was named by the dark followers as The Guardian. I thought it was a myth of some crazed but loving cult. I was terrifyingly wrong, this creature was all consume like the void given form. They spoke about my pain and how my family step in to bring me peace. They told me the woman at my side was my soulmate brought back from death through a union of souls. The union was so deep that no matter the situation neither will pass on until they chose to and that they will never feel the pain of heartbreak ever again. I though I would pass out at the amount of information being thrown at me by the being holding my future. I shakily asked what the catch was and they grinned back along with the woman and teen at their side. The smiles should have been horrifying but all I could do was calm down and give a small smile back.

After the events of that day and getting my love back, things have been great. I still have a lot of setbacks but The Guardian and Mother found me a great therapist who also happened to be the same breed of creature I am! I'm still growing as a person in many ways even if I feel older than the trees in my front yard. The pain still comes back from time to time but my family takes care of me well and I'm really and genuinely happy for once in a long time. I guess this is my first and last letter to you but I just wanted to thank you for stepping in when you did and bringing me to Mother so many decades ago. I know you paid a price to force me into this life as a way to give me happiness. I hope to one day see you again my very first father and I love you even if I do not know you.

Sincerely your beloved daughter,

Akasha Dawnshard

[pcndemoniums]

Skins inspired series: Our Youth (1999 - 2002) / Our Wasted Youth (2020)

This is a loooong request so bare with me. Be aware that these guys have known each other since the age of 16. They’ve had their ups and downs through the years but in the end they have managed to stay friends. 

[ tw: mentions of underage  drinking, sex, mental illness, eating disorder, substance abuse, suicide, overdose, bullying and death ] 

The Shows

Our Youth was an American teen comedy-drama television series that followed the lives of a group of teenagers in the fictional small town of Madison, California. Its controversial story-lines  explored issues like dysfunctional families, mental illness (such as depression, eating disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder and bipolar disorder), adolescent sexuality, gender, substance abuse, autism spectrum disorder, death, and bullying. In a time where most TV shows about teenagers were unrealistic affairs propped up by a cast of actors at least 10 years older than their fictional age, Our Youth changed all that by depicting realistic portrayals of teen characters who slept with each other, went to parties, drank a lot, smoked weed, and talked like the kids they were. Much of the controversy around its early episodes criticized its portrayal of sex, bad language, and explicit drug use but it was always careful to temper the hedonism with consequences, the comedy with tragedy. The show premiered on 25 January 1999 and went on to be a critical success. However, real life drama became too much for show runners to handle and the show was cancelled after three seasons. It ended on a shocking cliffhanger that left most viewers outraged and heart broken. 

After the show ended the cast went their separate ways, trying different things to maintain their success but the bad reputation that came from the show seemed to follow them around. Some of them went on to star in low budget films and others completely fell off the radar. For years there have been talks and rumors about a possible fourth season of the series but it was not until early this year that it was announced that the show was going to be getting a second life. Netflix acquired the rights to the show in 2018 and finally announced that they were starting production at the end of 2020 with the original cast in tow. The fourth season of Our Youth has been renamed Our Wasted Youth and will take place 20 years after the events of the third season finale and will chronicle how the teens, now adults, are dealing with the ghosts of their past. 

Behind The Scenes

So this show was a big deal back in the day. As far as aesthetics go then think of the show Skins, the UK version. It was mostly based on a group of kids who lived in the same neighborhood, went to the same high school and were involved in a lot of shenanigans. They partied a lot, got in trouble, sometimes they learned a lesson or two - most times they didn’t. Some critics loved it because of its realism, but others found it too controversial for television. It did not help that the cast, all between the ages of 14 and 16 at the time, were pretty much left unattended to do whatever they wanted and they didn’t choose to sit and study. There was a lot of bad behavior behind the scenes, scandals, fights, drama, etc. Life imitating fiction if you will. To the point where the show was cancelled after three seasons. They decided to end the show in dramatic fashion with the hits involved in a horrible car accident. The last shot of the show was that of the car wreck and the fate of the teens was left to the imagination. Yeah, people were pissed, demanding a resolution. Honestly at this point there was so much hostility that the actors were just glad that it all ended. I mean these guys were all hormonal teenagers, getting fame and money, so you can imagine what went on behind the scenes.

The show still had a huge fan base, even if the actors were not particularly famous anymore. They all had a hard time getting decent work because they had this very bad reputation of being disruptive. In 2010, Kurt Davidson, who portrayed Gus Chandler, was found dead in his home from apparent drug overdose. The actor had been fighting a long battle with addiction and it was during this time that the actors got together and had a little reunion with fans. They resolved their issues and started to become really good friends. There was a media outcry surrounding Kurt’s death though and an article was published on various news sources about the dangers of exposing actors to the drug culture at such a young age. Any hope that the show would come back was lost after the death of Kurt Davidson. But then in 2018 it was confirmed that the show was coming back to Netflix and was scheduled to start shooting in 2019. However, things got a little sidetracked and people started to think that the show was already doomed even before they started shooting. Thankfully things started to brighten up and the show started shooting in January of 2020. This new season will deal with the repercussions of the accident and how the characters are dealing with adulthood. It will have 10 episodes and they are currently shooting episode seven. Because of the tight schedule, these guys have been spending a lot of time together and who knows, maybe there’s the chance for a lot of new drama. 

Now because I’m crazy, here are the characters of the show and their little arcs, just so you can get an idea of who you’d like your character to play.

Main Cast

Lukas Larsen ( 35 - 36 yo - character name - open face claim ): Lukas Larsen is an attractive, intelligent and popular boy. His manipulative ways often go unnoticed by many, and are a catalyst for the majority of the events in the series. At first he appears to have complete control over his friends, exudes confidence and has an answer for everything. He enjoys being the driver of drama and prides himself on being some type of puppet master. In the effort to keep his life perfect and interesting he does things that even the most self serving person would never do. He plays with people’s emotions. He plays games because he can. Furthermore he does not feel bad about those things until he loses control. As the series progresses we see Lukas lose control of himself, his friends and of the situation due to a distorted sense of self and an exaggerated sense of importance. We end the series with Lukas behind the wheel of the car and driving everyone into a ditch. NEW SERIES: In the new season Lukas is a lawyer, married and with kids. However, he is incredibly unhappy, cheating on his wife with Evie Nixon and getting involved in scams. We learn that the accident left him in a coma for seven months and that he had to relearn to do everything. Even though it looks like he has not learned anything on the surface we see that Lukas is carrying a lot of guilt for what happened and is seeing a therapist in order to cope. 

Evie Nixon ( 34 yo - tbd - Kat Graham ): Evie is  the youngest of the group as she skipped 9th grade. She is initially described as being "the sweetest girl you will ever meet". However, it is shown that underneath her sweet exterior, she will resort to anything in order to keep the power in her grasps, even at the expense of others. She starts the series off dating the head jock boy of Madison High. However it’s quickly revealed that she’s dating him more for status than for romance. When we meet the couple, they’ve yet to have sex and t is revealed that Evie is actually a virgin and is scared to ‘give it away.  She faces a lot of criticism throughout the series, having to deal with her parents divorcing, an abusive older boyfriend and an addiction to antidepressants. However, she eventually learns that her manipulative ways are damaging to others and by the end of the series she becomes a much better person. NEW SERIES: The accident changed Evie. She became angry and distant. Evie is divorced and has a seven year old boy. She has two jobs and no apparent social life which makes her a little bitter. She is having an affair with Lukas Larsen but hates every second of it. 

Gus Chandler ( 35 yo - Kurt Davidson - NPC ): Gus is Luka's best friend, but has an entirely opposite personality. He lacks confidence, is socially uneasy and struggles with school work. He often suffers from panic attacks that he learns to control over the course of the series. He tends to put himself down a lot, especially when it comes to his relationship with girls. He loves comic books, loves science, is very friendly and playful and treats everyone with respect. Gus learns to be more self confident and to stand up for himself which earns a lot of respect from his friends. By the end of the series Gus is engaged to Nancy Buckley. NEW SERIES: We learn that Gus died in the car accident. Some people believe the decision to kill off his character is a bit polemical since the actor died in real life. However, the series creators have stated that having another actor play the part of Gus felt wrong and that they needed the accident to have a serious consequence. “Kurt Davidson is still a huge part of the show and his character’s death  is the driving force of the new season.” In some way that is true since a lot of the show revolves around the 20th anniversary of Gus’ death. 

Nancy Buckley ( 35 - 36 yo - character name - open face claim ): Luka's girlfriend. A girl who can never stay angry at his mischievous behavior for long. Outwardly, Nancy appears shallow, vain and conceited but she works hard and is emotionally mature. She is seen by most as a beautiful and confident girl but she suffers from the same insecurities as everyone else. At the beginning of the series she is dating Lukas and is always trying to make him happy. Eventually she realizes that the relationship is really toxic and distances herself from him. She and Gus start to get closer which causes a lot of complications and arguments between him and Lukas. By the end of the series Nancy learns to value herself more and she and Gus form a beautiful and healthy relationship. NEW SERIES: Nancy suffered a lot after the accident and the death of her fiance and that includes reconstructive surgery on her face which has made her feel really self conscious. She hasn't been able to keep a serious relationship and is emotionally closed off. Currently she works in real estate and seems to be leading a successful life. She has decided to be a surrogate for Ivy and her wife's baby. 

Ben Morrow ( 36 yo - Dean Montgomery - Paul Wesley ): Ben is the party animal of the group. He has a difficult home life; he lost his brother to illness at a young age, and is an emancipated minor due to his ambivalent father and absent mother. When we first meet Ben he is presented as a fun loving pill popper who is always encouraging his friends to have fun. As the series progresses we learn that this attitude is just a front and that Ben’s life is actually filled with pain and rejection from his parents. His father is a crook and his mother has done porn her entire life, which has been a constant embarrassment for Ben. Ben is very volatile and unpredictable and unlike Lukas he very easily loses control of the situation. It is hinted that he is bisexual but it was never fully confirmed. By the end of the series they are rushing him to the hospital as he is overdosing inside the car. When we see the car crash we are left to assume that he definitely died. NEW SERIES: Shockingly Ben survived the accident but it left him with a lot of emotional scars. Unable to find a job he has turned into a life of crime that includes petty theft and drug dealing. The first time we see him again he is getting out of prison after spending six months behind bars for robbing a liquor store. We learn that Lukas helped put him away and that Teddy posted his bail. He also has a lover named Sean who also provides him drugs.

Cara James ( 35 yo - character name - open face claim ): A friend of Emily, an odd girl who suffers from an eating disorder. Cara attempts to hide her own struggles with mental health while her flamboyant parents ignore her in favor of their new baby. We first meet her as she returns to Madison High after spending months in a rehabilitation center. Cara is very observant, aloof and incredibly understanding. To her everything is magical. Her positive attitude gives the show a sense of hope when things get really bad. She and Ben Morrow have a very close relationship that was a constant will they/won't they throughout the series.  By the end of the series she manages to overcome her disorder, and makes plans to leave Madison and travel to Europe. NEW SERIES: Cara made it to Europe after surviving the accident and became a famous model which caused her eating disorder to resurface. After a few scandals and the fact that she is not as young as she used to be, Cara returns to Madison and tries to reconnect with her friends. She finds out that this is easier said than done. 

Teddy Vargas ( 35 - 36 yo - character name - open face claim - latinx ): is an easy-going skater who likes to smoke weed, and as the more sensible and responsible friend, he is often put out by Luka’s behavior. Teddy is forced to act as the leader of the group whenever Gus has a panic attack or when Lukas takes things too far; he is by far the most reliable in a crisis. We learned that his mom took her own life after battling depression and he has always resented his father for not getting her help. He has a very ambitious sister who always looks for the spotlight and manages to get all the attention from his dad. Teddy is always looking to save people and wants what is best for everyone. He is very compassionate and selfless but at the same time he knows when to put his foot down and always stands up for himself. NEW SERIES: Teddy suffered a leg injury and therefore he has to wear a brace. It was hard for him since he was always into sports, especially skating. He became a teacher and is currently the new high school principal at Madison. He tries to guide his students and keep them from doing the same mistakes he did as a kid but he is finding that to be challenging. He and Ben are good friends and we learn that he posted bail for Ben’s early release. Teddy is engaged to Molly Larsen.

Ivy Porter ( 35 - 36 yo - character name - open face claim ): Ivy is coming to terms with her identity as a lesbian. She is used to being the shadow of her sister, and is sulky but perceptive. As the show progresses, she begins to come out of her shell and strives for individuality. Much of this is due to her becoming okay with her sexuality and her feelings for Poppy Drake. She’s a kind and idealistic person but at the same time she can be selfish and passive aggressive. Her relationship with Poppy has its ups and downs but by the end of the series they had decided to stay together and make things work. Ivy was the only one who was not involved in the car crash because she and Poppy were spending the night together. NEW SERIES: Even though she was not involved in the accident Ivy was still affected by it since she was very close to Gus. We learn that she and Poppy broke things off and decided to stay friends. We also learn that Ivy married a woman named Susana and that they have asked Nancy to be their surrogate. Ivy struggles with the idea of starting a family but doesn't know how to talk to Susan about it.

Supporting Cast

Molly Larsen ( 33 - 34 yo - character name - open face claim ): is Luka's younger sister, and shares many of the same qualities as him. She is mysterious and manipulative, but almost mute. We see more of her in season 3 where she is involved in a love triangle and gets involved with a teacher. NEW SERIES: In the new series we learn that she managed to get her life together and is soon to be married to Teddy Vargas. 

Poppy Bird ( 35 - 36 yo - character name - open face claim ): Poppy was Ivy’s on and off girlfriend during the first three seasons of the show. She is very carefree and open minded but at the same time very guarded. She had a difficult time coming to terms with her sexuality which was the cause of a lot of drama between her and Ivy. Eventually she accepted who she was and declared her love for Ivy. NEW SERIES: We learn that she has moved away from Madison and is currently living in Arizona. However she comes back for two episodes to tell Ivy that she has a terminal illness. 

Susana Santoro ( 35 - 36 yo - character name - open face claim - POC ): Ivy’s wife. She works as a veterinarian and has three younger sisters. She is very cheerful, caring and incredibly perceptive. She wants to start a family and knows that Ivy has her doubts about it. 

Tommy Mills ( 35 - 36 yo - character name - open face claim ): Evie’s ex husband who works as a bouncer at the local strip club. He comes off as being extremely rude and seems to have a violent streak. We learn that Evie left him because of his constant drinking and cheating, which is ironic considering she is having an affair with a married man.

Sean Michaels ( 35 - 36 yo - character name - open face claim ): Ben’s lover and drug dealer. Definitely a terrible influence in Ben’s life but at the same time he seems to actually care about him. We learn that he has a sick daughter and that he started to deal drugs in order to pay for her treatment.

Other Cast  

There are other characters on the show that have minor roles like Luka’s wife, some friends, enemies, whatever. Let me know if you’re interested in playing a minor role. 

Crew

Executive producer ( s ):

Director (s):

Writer (s):

Casting Director:

Costume Designer (s):

Make up artist (s): Margot Montgomery, Ashley Benson, 29

[splintersfeelings]

A Story about my Father - first draft, 3/11/2020

I smiled a smile of relief, a relief born of a year of work and growth.

“I made it. I graduated. I’m going to be teacher.”

I want to remember the path I took here. Remember, remember, remembering…backwards, because the cause is always before, buried in the clues that had no meaning except in hindsight.

 Like all stories, we start at the beginning. Away from this bright summer sun.

 A little boy was born in a hospital into a loving family, followed by his two younger brothers. He was an energetic, playful kid, a bit of a prankster. The nuns never liked him in school, and he was always getting in trouble for his practical jokes. He learned his sense of humor from his own father. The nuns called him Felix, because in this place, it wasn’t enough for the colonizers to take money and lives – they also had to take people’s names.

 I sat in bed, reading webcomics off my phone, basking in the artificial glow. A long day teaching, a short night to rest. How did I get here? What was I doing? Thinking back to all those mistakes, all those missed opportunities. Things that could have gone better, things that could have gone worse. Getting ready for another long day, I leaned over and shut out the light.

 As I dreamed, I wondered if this was the right path for me. Sneezing, I popped a pill to manage my spring allergies. Ready to leave. Ready for another day.

 A student cries during math. They’re afraid and unsure. They think they can’t do it.

 But they can. The work is hard, I tell them, because we have high expectations in this room. We work on adding and subtracting decimals.

 At the end, the student smiles.

 He was happy growing up. Or was he? It was hard to remember. When his father died, it tore his family apart. The three brothers slowly grew apart over the years, pushed by a grieving mother. She wanted him to be the head of the family. But it was a weight that no one, especially not one so young, should have to bear.

 The first day of student teaching.

 He didn’t want to let it consume him.

 The snow fell outside. I sat at home sick, waiting down the hours until it was time for my next dose of antibiotics. But all I really wanted was to be back out there, in that classroom, starting winter quarter, growing and learning and teaching. Giving back some of those opportunities that someone else gave to me.

  He didn’t feel safe at home, where he knew there was abuse waiting for him. But there was no safety at school either. Not from bitter and jealous classmates. Not from the unsympathetic nuns. On a bad day, maybe the cold, hard slap of a ruler’s edge along his bruised knuckles.

 What is a good teacher? The leaves were red, dropping from the trees onto the damp, Seattle pavement. I want to become a teacher that empowers students. I want students to learn to learn, to teach themselves. That’s a bit of an irony. A teacher’s goal is to make themselves obsolete. To put themselves out of a job. Build a world where everyone has access to learning, where everyone can learn from themselves and each other.

 Fortunately (or unfortunately), making yourself obsolete as a teacher is a tough job. So – we work, we scaffold, we learn to speak oceans in 2 short sentences, we ask questions that are simple. So simple. And yet, they must carry the weight of the world.

 He kept getting told that he was stupid. That he was lazy. Why didn’t he study? Why couldn’t he memorize? He was almost ready to believe them. Maybe he was stupid. But he didn’t believe them. Not even after they made him repeat a grade.

 It wouldn’t be the last time.

 STR? What is STR? I flipped through the website application. It would be good to move back to Seattle. My leave of absence had made me bitter. I was feeling sick of feeling stuck in grad school, of finding no passion in the research that had once excited me as an undergrad. What was the point of studying race, of studying injustice, of studying power, only to write papers that only 10 people would read?

 I attached my resume and hit submit.

  It wasn’t as if he wasn’t trying. But he just couldn’t sit down and read. When he looked at the words, they began to swim and blur together, and he’d simply doze off.

 But his creative energy wasn’t put to waste. He developed progressively innovative strategies to cheat on his exams, writing scraps of paper and tucking them into shirt sleeves, books.

 He only got caught some of the time.

 When I got accepted to UW Early Entrance, I cried. It was a big oppurtunity, a chance to escape from the terror of high school. A chance to prove myself. I knew I had to go, because if I didn’t try, I would regret for the rest of my life. I was hungry to learn, to read, to solve, to grow. I just needed to place and the people to help me do it.

 It was a big adjustment, moving to Canada. A strange place, with even stranger people. Hong Kong’s humid, tropical climate was a whole different world than the icy snow in Edmonton. He met the woman who would become his wife there, two diasporic roots. Interestingly, they would probably never have met back home – they lived in different worlds, one in Kowloon and one on the Island.

 Many nights, he went to sleep hungry.

 He repeated two more grades.

 It was hard to practice English. But he’d already gotten used to being called stupid, and lazy. He didn’t need anyone else to tell him he mattered, because he knew it already in his heart.

 But it would have been nice to hear it from someone else. Just once.

 The thing I remember most about getting kicked out of school was the shame of telling my dad. I was worried about what he’d think about me. If he’d think less of me for finally failing to live up to his high expectations. But he surprised me by giving me a hug. He told me that he was proud of me, and that if I did what I thought was right I should have no regrets. This was the turning point when our relationship started to improve, and I learned to see him as a human being. Someone with their own, silent story. Someone with their own ghosts, their own demons, their own long forgotten battlegrounds.

 His TOEFL scores were too low to get into University of Alberta, where his then-girlfriend was attending school. He ended up at the University of North Dakota. He had always loved tinkering, putting machines apart and putting them back together. He ended up studying computer science.

 When I was in 3rd grade, I stopped writing. I didn’t do my homework beyond short, terse, one-word responses. My mom was distraught because she knew I was able to say so much more verbally than I could show in writing. She spoke to my teacher, who had noticed a similar pattern. What was holding me back from writing, when I was reading more than a year above grade level?

 I didn’t know how to express it at the time, but writing was physically painful for me because of how hard I had learned to grip a pencil.

 I relearned how to write cursive. My teacher let me type up homework assignments instead of handwriting them.

 I had people who believed in me.

 He graduated from UND in 3 fast years, cramming in coursework to make up for lost time. His student visa expiring soon. He advanced 400 dollars on credit, took a train to Seattle, and declared he would work for Bill Gates.

 A week later he got hired at Microsoft, just before his student visa was expiring. He would stay there for decades.

 In 1st grade, I was behind in reading. I loved my phonics group with all the other Asian kids, working on sounds and letters while the other students read easy texts. When I was graduated into the grade level reading group, I was upset at not being with my friends. But I grew quickly.

 Even though I didn’t enjoy reading, I loved being read to. I had adults at home who read to me all the time. And I spent all that time listening, thinking, learning.

 When he got married and his wife moved to Seattle with him, they knew they knew they eventually wanted to have a family. He wanted to raise a child who was loved, who was believed in, who was surrounded by adults who would help him reach his full potential.

 The bright light shined in my eyes. First breath. Faces. He looked at this child. Who was this beautiful boy? Who would he become? There was so much going on. So much change. Would the boy become like him? Would he struggle the same struggle? Would he repeat as many grades? It’s scary, to have so little control over your body, to be exposed to so much beyond comprehension. A blur, a smell, a sound. Small, pudgy hands waving. You don’t need to cry. You don’t need to worry. You’ll learn so much here. I was passed to warm, waiting arms. Your path might be hard. But I’ll make sure it will be just a little bit easier than mine was. Because I’ll always have at least one person who always believes.

[ghinanotlinetti]

Things My Parents Did and Didn’t Teach Me

Hi! For this post I thought I'd do an exercise from one of my favourite podacats, On Purpose with Jay Shetty, from the episode titled: 6 Reasons Why We Need to Develop the Emotional Skills Our Parents Never Had. For this episode, Jay recommended listeners to create two lists: things we learnt from our parents, and things we taught ourselves. This exercise is helpful in our self-reflection and character development; it makes us realise that we shouldn’t take the valuable lessons that we passed on to us from our parents for granted, and it’s not the duty of our parents to provide us with the utmost perfect childhood and equip us with ever life hack, life lesson, emotional skills, because this is difficult to learn on our own, let alone teach a child. I’ve been living on my own for over four years now, it’s been a crazy wild journey, so I’ve been taking as much time as I need to process and figure out myself for myself and the people that I love. Here is my list and my take on the exercise:

Things my parents taught me

So just to be straight forward, I grew up with relatively strict, conservative Muslim, Asian parents. I’ve been through the typical stereotype aspects of this upbringing, I can’t say my experiences came under the extreme cases nor are they the polar opposite, but with that being said, there’s a lot more to it than the stereotype you see online, it’s never black and white. For those who may be unfamiliar with this childhood, let me briefly explain. Strict Asian parents are not the most gentle and affectionate parents, they have a weird way of showing that they love you and care for you. So their children would tend to chase success in greatest form success can come because they feel like only then will they be able to receive affection. Asian parents also have a tendency to have an obsession with controlling their children’s lives. In conservative Muslim households, some parents might use religious duty to manipulate their children. It isn’t uncommon for people with this upbringing to recall their parents pushing them that they had to do a certain thing because if they didn’t not only would they go to hell but their parents will also go to hell in the afterlife. There’s definitely a great level of pressure to fulfill great expectations, which is unfortunate because not everyone is blessed with opportunities and privileges in this life to exceed societal expectations. Sometimes I feel like it’s not the fault of the parents or the kids; there’s some parents who tell their kids “no, I don’t want you doing x” and the kid doesn’t even think of arguing back because the thought can’t even cross their mind, and in retrospect you never really know maybe the parent is willing to change their viewpoint had they made a sound argument in support of doing x because let’s be completely honest, parents don’t fully know what’s best for their kids and aren’t always right. 

My parents taught me the basics of how to be responsible, hard-working, and have respect for others and one’s self. Growing up I always knew being kind, genuine, authentic, spiritual, and patient was the key to living a peaceful life. As a child I was disciplined to the point where I felt shame and humiliation a bit too much, I would say it got unhealthy at a point so I could never discipline my own children, should I have them in the future, in the same way that my parents did to me. I couldn’t learn how to trust them as a kid. As said in the podcast a great many of children don’t learn trust from their parents, which is a shame but it also doesn’t mean that we’re doomed because it’s never to late to start again. If I have children, I wouldn’t use fear and manipulation as the first and ultimate tool for getting my children to listen, I want them to respect me but I also want them to trust me to the point where they know in their hearts they can come to me at any given situation and time and I will be there for them. 

I thank my parents every day for teaching me how to have a night routine; this has always kept me focused and I never actually appreciated it at the time. I have struggled with sleep as an adult but I would think back to what my parents taught me and get my ass back on the line by working on routine. I also have to thank my parents so much for giving me a love of reading and observation, because this has always kept my mind sharp and steady. I loved quiet time as kid and continue to now, it goes hand-in-hand with self-care so although self-care wasn’t explicitly taught it was indirectly taught to me by my parents. I dread to think of where I would be if my parents didn’t teach me how to love God. Teaching me to be a dedicated worshipper of God was one of the greatest gifts my parents gave to me because it’s always given me hope and lightness in my life. I learnt about my Indonesian-Acehnese culture and tradition from my parents. They taught me about my family lineage, how to be proud of where and what we came from because life is a journey about finding your way back, back to home, back to beginnings, back to God. My ethnic features as a kid used to be an insecurity of mine. This lesson was one that I took for granted and had to relearn from looking back at how my parents raised me. It since has become my source of strength. I used to hate my big ethnic nose, now I love my ethnic features for what they are because they represent my Arab lineage and what I came from. I’m even thankful for the important lesson of how to cook rice the proper way taught by my parents so I don’t have to learn the BuzzFeed way, which is horrendous. Now that I’m pondering, I think I got my sense of humour from my parents. My parents just know how to tell funny stories, always had a knack for storytelling. My mum does the best imitations of people that are just spot on. I always love talking to my parents when I’m not home. So that’s some of the valuable lessons my parents taught me. Moving on to what I taught myself...

Things I taught myself

I knew the basics of good work ethic, responsibility, and independence from my parents but I would say that I mastered those things for myself in my young adult years. This was done by trial and error, and also observing my close peers who I admire and look up to. How to live alone is also taught through trial and error experiences, it can't truly be taught from mere theory. I expanded my love of reading and read in all areas I could, although I still need to work on my reading habits. I love reading but sometimes I’d rather waste my time watching YouTube videos, I know, I really shouldn’t but I can’t help it sometimes! I knew the importance of loving God but my parents taught me strictly by the book from the Islamic teachings. Nothing wrong with that but I decided I could do more so I dived in much deeper in faith and spirituality and grew to love meditation because it kept me calm and helped me check in with my intentions. Self-love is a difficult concept to grasp because of all the unlearning which needs to be done, and personally I think the best way to approach self-love is in the self-discovery journey, so I don’t think my parents would be able to teach me this. As I’ve mentioned before trust is difficult to learn, it needs the relationship to be balanced and balance comes from seeing the other as an equal. I’m still learning to be good with money but so are my parents, and I’m glad we get to learn together. Stress and anger management is another thing I struggle with, but so do my parents and other people around me. Perhaps I could’ve benefited if I was introduced to meditation and breathing technique at an earlier age because this would be helpful for me as a child to manage stress and social anxiety. They say that social anxiety is inherited and I can see that in my parents and me. We’re all getting better at it, Alhamdullilah, but I shouldn’t have overthought my friendships and have as much social anxiety as I did back then. I was too anxious to let myself enjoy life's moments at times, and today I still feel like I'm doing this. I was never taught Indonesian history as a kid from my parents. I barely knew anything about my country being an expat. Nothing wrong with this but it was something I had to learn later on, glad it happened that way if I’m being honest because it meant that I was able to critically analyse whilst also taking in information. I knew I was fairly familiar with indifferent cultures and traditions because I grew up in a multicultural/multinational community, but I was tested to the limit in my learning of acceptance when I travelled in my uni days. This doesn’t just apply to people’s cultures but also people’s mindset. I've met so many different types of people through travelling and boy did I mert some crazy people over the years, but thank god for the crazy good people I've met along the way!

I’m not in any way resentful of my parents for not teaching me these things. Maybe with some of these things I as frustrated at the beginning and I may have lashed out at my parents out of stress because I didn’t know what to do with what I felt. But I’ve learn to let my emotions pass because they are afterall temporary. By doing this exercise, I know that I need to love my parents not for what they are, but for who they are. I hope to make my parents proud of me, not for my accolades but for who I’m capable of becoming. If you’re interest in doing this exercise, I hope you get to do so and share with as many people who might benefit from this too! Also before you do so I recommend to heck out On Purpose with Jay Shetty on podcast streaming platforms, go to the episode titled 6 Reasons Why We Need to Develop the Emotional Skills Our Parents Never Had and have a listen. Whilst you’re at check all other episodes too because they’re really good for self-reflection!

[sesshatetsuko]

Rurouni Kenshin Fanfiction : See you in life Beyond -Chapter 4-

Summary : For as long as he remembers, life had never been easy for him. So when carefully-buried memories are brutally awakened, the worst can happen... * A canon post-Jinchuu story, depicting how Kenshin tries to survive his inner demons, and how he and Kaoru finally became a family...* (rated M)

To find previous chapters, just search for #fanfiction on this blog!

Sitting in seiza at the end of the training room so as not to disturb the endless flow of shinai, the wanderer was watching attentively the activity under his eyes. Kaoru was training students of Maekawa dojo in addition to her own. As a result Yahiko was redoubling of effort, proud of his master's teachings and eager to show his technical superiority against the opposing school. Sweat, quick gestures and kiai cries filled the air.

Giving lessons for another dojo allowed the young kendoka to support as much as possible the needs of the house, helped in this task by her only disciple, who although unable to pay for his lessons participated in living together by bringing a little money from his work at the Akabeko. Sanosuke, on his side, sometimes helped as a docker at Yokohama Port, his imposing physique allowing him to carry heavy loads. Thanks to this livelihood he was able to finance things like his nocturnal escapades. Above that, he had recently developed a strange fascination for ships coming back from abroad, and all the stories of unknown countries swimming with them...

Only Kenshin, unemployed, was out of step compared to his young companions.

Having always experienced poverty as a child and then wandered for more than 10 years as a penniless and homeless wanderer did not do anything to help things. He had lived so long without thinking about the next day, indifferent to the fact that his own death could happen from one moment to another, that changing his way of life now that he had settled at Kamiya dojo was very difficult. In fact, he had to relearn everything, having absolutely no personal reference of standard family life. Thus, if surviving had become one of his specialties, money remained a mysterious data for him, since absent during most of his existence. As a result, he had trouble caring for it, associating it personally neither with need nor with happiness.

Kaoru seemed to understand this, since she never pushed him in that direction, and for this he was secretly grateful to her. He had tried to look into it, but ... what could he do? His level of writing and reading was barely passable and he had only learned the art of the katana, developed more particularly that of murder, a perfectly useless competence in this new Meiji era he had sweated blood and tears to build. He did not want to transmit the Hiten Mitsurugi (his own youthful failure regarding the values that his teacher wanted to teach him was damaging enough), and the professions of policeman or bodyguard had proven to be a formidable stimulant for his innate assassin reflexes that he desperately tried to bury. Not to mention the fact that he did not like to go away of the dojo for a long time after the traumatic incident of Enishi, and that sometime, his body began to make him pay for all of his swordsmanship years...

Finally, this one might not be suitable for this new era ...

He focused his gaze again on the young students before him, and on the life that emerged from them. Basically it did not matter to him to be obsolete, if these people could know the happiness of a peaceful life. That was the reason he had fought for and would fight again.

Kaoru was in the center of the room, and she was performing a series of kata demonstrations for her students. She was lifting her shinai at full speed, hitting her arms and hips in different directions, her feet resting each time in very particular points on the ground. These were traditionally rigorously codified exercises where each gesture mattered.

Although he had initially come to see her out of sheer curiosity when he arrived at the dojo, Kenshin's eyes had become much less innocent since he had begun to develop feelings for her. Because if the young woman was just emerging from adolescence, his own adult life was already well under way, and his body was often painfully reminding him of that... which had earned him to this day many cold water buckets, meditation sessions and other nocturnal baths. Worse, since he had started courting her without allowing himself to touch her, training sessions had literally turned to torture. To see her waving fiercely in this low necked man's outfit, sometimes revealing her tightly bandaged chest, was enough to bring his blood on fire. Moreover, her incredible agility made him wonder what kind of acrobatic positions they could u... -Kenshin took a deep, long breath.

This one will definitely have to go back to the river ...

Chasing these ideas did put his self-control yet strong at severe test. Himura was also careful not to stare at the young kendoka too intensely, for fear of frightening her with the ardor of his thoughts. Concealment was after all a specialty among assassins. Kaoru was executing the movements with precision, causing her slim yet robust body to be covered with a thin layer of sweat, which slid down her neck and lower.

The river, the cold river ...

While Kenshin was struggling internally, all the students seemed captivated by the current demonstration. The master of Kamiya Kasshin performed kendo with a grace and tenacity inherited from her father. All except a boy who was standing aside, a pout on his face, apparently bored by all fo this.

She seemed to have noticed it since it was to him that she spoke first.

"Gyôsei, come to reproduce the exercise, I will mime your partner"

" Why me?" He replied, exaggerating his grimace.

He doesn't seem to want to work this morning, his master noted irritably.

"You're lucky she's the one taking care of you," Yahiko replied, waving his shinai. If you don't want to do any more katas, I'll be happy to be your opponent and kick your ass, idiot! "

If slackers were people of the worst kind for the brave first Kamiya Kasshin disciple, men who were not interested in martial arts were just downright aliens.

"Stop arguing, boys!" Kaoru continued without losing her concentration. "Come on Gyôsei, put yourself in position. "

The young man reluctantly complied. He began to realize his series of movement awkwardly, the assistant master reproducing them identically in front of him, then quickly lost patience. Kaoru countered every shot, but Gyôsei became more and more abrupt and rough in his gestures. After a while, clearly angry at having been put to work and ridiculing himself in front of his classmates, he aimed a shoot that was not intended in the choreography directly at his teacher's ribs. The young woman, although surprised, saw his attempt and narrowly dodged him, but the aggressive gesture did not go unnoticed by the redhead sitting in the back of the room, who had suddenly raised his head.

"Well," Kaoru noted, "you still lack coordination ..."

"Pfff ... what's the use of learning these choreographies? It's not even a real fight! "

"It's you who are the real moron! argued Yahiko who was regretting not having previously kicked the damn boy's ass "If you cannot even master that you'll never be able to fight! These are the basics, the ba-si-cs! "

The two boys stared at each other fiercely. Meanwhile, the wanderer had risen from the corner of the room, unbeknownst to everyone.

"Gyôsei, right?" He said with a smile. "You do not seem to have really grasped the concept of kata. "

" ...What do you mean? "

Why does it matter to him? If even the housekeeper of the dojo comes to annoy me now! Gyôsei already had no desire to come to class, only obeying the order of his parents, but if in addition everyone fell on him ...

"That stroke at the ribs was not in the demonstration. "

The boy clenched his teeth, displeased that his little hanky-panky was noticed.

"So what... ? "

"This one will be your partner. "

Without waiting for his answer, the samurai grabbed a training sword hanging from the wall. Gyôsei looked at him with a hint of apprehension. He had never noticed how callused his hands were, nor that his usually high-pitched, even feminine voice could become so low. Not to mention, did he not have a sword hung on his hip? The impulsive boy was suddenly intimidated by this scarred man with tawny hair, who had suddenly decided to take part in their training...He had been coming at the Kamiya dojo for some time now and from memory this guy was only satisfied to observe them without speaking, occasionally smiling in a honeyed or even silly way. If only he had been told that this man could do something other than cooking or washing laundry...

"Are you sure, Kenshin?" The young kendoka wondered. "It's really not worth it ..."

This is the first time he ever gets involved in one of my classes! He has never accepted to train with me, or even to give advice to Yahiko before...

"This one insists. "

He put himself in position immediately, to everyone's surprise. The students had spontaneously formed a small circular group around them, curious to see the abilities of the redhead who lived with their master. As for Kaoru, she was as shocked as her students.

"Hajime! "

His voice was definitely not honeyed, and Gyosei felt for a moment the dark authority of a powerful ki. He resumed his kata, this time reproducing it very carefully. The wanderer dodged all his blows without any difficulty, not bothering to lift his shinai or even change the position of his body. Then, half-way through the exercise, at the exact moment when he had previously tried to hit the kendoka at her ribs, the samurai vigorously pressed his foot between the boy's and mowed his leg with a dry gesture. Gyôsei crashed face down at full speed.

"Kenshin!" Kaoru immediately glared daggers at him.

The boy got up with difficulty, surprised at his sudden fall, having seen absolutely nothing. He would probably be rewarded later by a good bump on the head.

"Hey, that -that was not planned!" He groaned, rubbing his chin where a small hematoma was already forming.

"You deserved it!" Replied Yahiko, openly laughing. He, too, had not missed the gesture tempted against his master just now.

"A kenjutsuka must be ready for any eventuality. "The redhead calmly replied, hanging up the shinai on the wall. "That's why it is helpful to be focused on any exercise, as basic as it appears. "

The former Master of the Kamiya Kasshin gave him a complicit but accusing look.

He did it on purpose ...

She came near the samurai, partly amused by his possessive reaction and partly annoyed by his hint of authority and the punitive gesture that followed against her disciple.

"Kenshin," she murmured, "I'm able to correct my own students by myself. "

"This one knows, that he does. "

"Don't try to play the innocent with me..."

"Oro? Please forgive me, Kaoru-dono. This one will resume cleaning." He said, scratching his head, adopting a resilient posture. Challenging a kendo teacher in her own school was never a good idea.

"You'd better! "

The class then resumed to a normal rhythm, and the pupils of the Maekawa dojo as much as the one of the Kamiya dojo, redoubled their ardor in the execution of their katas. Definitively, Gyôsei would be wary of housekeepers.

Despite the recent building of a railroad between the two cities, the Tôkaidô road, more than 500 kilometers long, linking Kyoto to Tokyo in more than 50 relays - without forgetting Osaka and Kobe - was still very popular, mostly because modest people did not have enough money to buy a train ticket. It was dotted with thriving inns and abandoned checkpoints since the end of the Meiji era and the reunification of modern Japan. Its creation a long time ago had allowed the trade to prosper all along the coastal path, this axis having remained several centuries during the most traveled of Japan.

About two weeks of travel were needed to cross this road on foot without horse or palanquin, ridiculous and useless attributes in the eyes of the thirteenth master of the Hiten Mitsurugi, but by rushing only ten days would be necessary for the man to complete the journey. To have large legs and a developed musculature, fruits of a rigorous training for decades, had proved useful in many situations.

And the faster I will go, the faster I will get rid of this crowd ...

But while Hiko was only barely getting close to Kusatsu, second stop of the above-mentioned route, his sharp hearing suddenly detected the cry of a young boy, as if smothered by ...

...Leaves?

He moved instinctively towards a tree-lined massif at the entrance to the village. Above a Scots pine, half masked by thorny branches at almost 15 meters high, a small body was leaning dangerously towards the void.

"Help!"

"... what's your name, kid?" Hiko shouted from the bottom of the tree, very curious to know the name of the one who'd had the imbecility to climb higher than he knew how to get off.

"Toshiro, but ... HELP ME FINALLY! I'M GONNA FALL!"

The boy was desperately clinging at a medium-sized branch, which was already emitting dangerous crackling sounds. He was covered with green goads. Hiko found the scene in front of his eyes rather funny.

"Patience, kid, you don't have to be afraid when I'm right below you."

"Huh?"

With that, the master jumped several meters high, lifting the dust at his feet to land on a branch halfway from the child. He quickly made his way towards him, clutching the trunk with dexterity. Then came a moment when it was too thin to support his weight, and Hiko stopped his progress.

"Let yourself fall."

"No, I can't ..."

"Let yourself go, fool, I told you I was right below!"

"HUWAAAAAH"

The young boy did not have to execute the said move because the branch that supported him suddenly yielded, obliging the master to throw himself immediately in the emptiness to catch him. They landed on the ground with a crash but no damage, since Seijuro held the boy in his arms with a perfect squatting position. You don't become thirteenth master of Hiten Mitsurugi for nothing, see.

He laid the child on the ground and dusted his coat disdainfully.

"So, Toshiro... what kind of stupid reason did cross your mind to have you climbing on a tree ten times higher than you?"

Not that I really care about it...

Toshiro waited a few moments to regain his breath and his balance, then devoured with an indescribable intense gaze the imposing brown man in a white cape that had so spectacularly restrained his fall.

"It's my dog, Mochi... He ran away several weeks ago, and since then we've been staying at the hostel in order to find him ..."

The boy's face darkened sadly. From Hiko's point of view, he was only going to babycry.

They must have money to afford themselves to be stuck here for so long, just for an animal ... I guess these are the benefits of this carefree Meiji era.

"..You know, everyone loves him at home, he's part of our family. I thought climbing up this tree would give me a better view of the valley ..."

"It was a silly idea."

"He was scared by that damn raven!" continued the boy, as if to defend himself. "Mochi goes crazy every time he sees one ; you see, a bird attacked him when he was a puppy, and since then he has always been afraid of it!"

Stupid master, stupid dog ...

"I did not ask you for so much information ..." Hiko pointed out, his annoyance growing.

Toshiro suddenly looked up at his savior.

"Oh, I'm so rude ... You helped me, and I don't even know your name?"

"Niitsu Kakunoshin ... I'm a potter."

Even to a child, Seijuro Hiko did not reveal his true identity. Never. Precaution of thirteenth Hiten Mitsurugi's master, a school that had survived for several centuries with only one disciple and one name.

"Po ... potter?"

Toshiro could not believe his ears. This man was so muscular and agile ... Potters suddenly rose high in his esteem.

"Please come to the inn with me. My parents and my little sister are there and my father is an art dealer, he will surely give you money to thank you."

"That's nice, kid, but I'm in a hurry."

Hiko had no desire to hang out in this rotten shed, let alone meet other people.

"Just be careful next time."

"Yes sir!"

Toshiro greeted the great ceramist very low, who went on his way as quickly as possible, silently muttering against reckless kids climbing the trees and wasting his time. One stupid apprentice was enough.

Saito was fuming. They had a lot of trouble collecting data on this case, and he still had no tangible track. During these last weeks the agents deployed to the field had returned once again with shreds of information without concrete link to each other. Children were disappearing, mainly in remote villages and poor areas of Japan. In most cases they were orphans, making it hard to identify and even account for them. Nobody claimed their bodies, and few people cared about them.

The number of disappearances is probably wildly underestimated ...

He took a puff from his cigarette. A dirty habit inherited from Westerners.

They may simply have died of starvation and their corpses would have been left aside in the absence of a loved one to bury them.

Unfortunately, some disappearances were oddly localized. And Saito did not believe in coincidences.

What use would a group of kids without connection be?

This case did not make any sense. He was turning that same question again and again in his mind, spinning impatiently around his desk. Outside his window, afar in his visual field a little girl was holding a puppy on a leash. An Akita, probably, judging by its already imposing size despite its young age. It was then that he was wandering on this innocuous reflection that an unhealthy idea began to germinate in his mind...

...A human trafficking?

They were roaming into the streets of former Edo, still noisy despite the late hour. One of the pleasant changes of this new era, in comparison with the desperately empty alleys of Kyoto as soon as the day was off during Bakumatsu, noted the wanderer. Night had fallen and the red glow of Izakaya's lanterns alternated with the fleeting flashes of candles entrenched inside the intimate houses of wood and clay. Their path consisted of wide, animated passages as much as of narrow lanes, where the single shadow of the crescent moon gave the high stone walls an almost threatening look. The brawler had his hands in his pockets and was chatting about futile things on the way : this cuttie here had pretty eyes, the fish dealer there yet open rather looked like he was selling junk... He was smiling while walking, obviously relaxed, stretching his long legs covered with badly trimmed trousers to the front. The other man, smaller and older, remained silent most of the time, but was following him at a good pace. With his face somewhat lowered, only the slight wind that sometimes played among its red strands could discover his deep azure eyes.

It had become one of their rituals. Strange, how a friendship can be forged between two persons of a different generation, bound by a visceral fighting instinct and the trials that life had put in their path. Going out in such a regular basis was granting them with privileged moments between friends, far from the sometimes suffocating female agitation of the dojo where the samurai lived.

"... Hey, are ya even listenin' to me when I speak?"

He raised his head, suddenly thrown out of his thoughts.

"Gomenasai Sanosuke..."

The samurai let his words linger in the fresh air of spring. His eyes were still dark.

Kenshin doesn't seem like himself tonight... my job to cheer him up!

Sanosuke Sagara logically decided to take his mind off the brooding by using the best way he knew, a method that he believed had been proven in any age and any individual.

"Well, whaddya think about givin' a good hit into a woman tonight?"

"ORO?"

The wanderer gave him a meaningful, almost comical glare.

"This one does not value violence against women." he said seriously.

"Oh my, you're so straight, Kenshin! Relax a little!" He gave him a big pat on the back. "I only meant to have sex with a woman, if ya see what I'm talkin' about!"

"Oro? This one still does not see the interest, that he does." The samurai blushed discreetly, but seemed however to consider the proposition for brief a moment. "Besides, Kaoru-dono would be furious ..."

"Kami-sama, how can ya be so austere... Okay, let's have a drink instead!"

They were approaching a place with warmer vibes. Sanosuke went on with an exaggerated cheering tone :

"This spot will be perfect!"

He lowered his head and lifted the entrance's curtain of the small building which seemed almost out of time. The atmosphere was more hectic inside than outside - not to mention noisy. As soon as they had taken their seats near a window, the two buddies were knocking back fermented rice beverage shots together, one of the rare local alcohol on this isolated island of the Far East.

"Ya don't speak much tonight." He corrected himself. "I mean, ya're chattin' even less than usual."

The redhead sighed, annoyed by this display of hidden questions, before swallowing his saké.

"Sano... This one is just a bit tired, that's all."

With an absent gesture he handed the cup to his friend anew.

"I'm already used to do most of the talkin'," he continued, serving him, "but now that's a one-way dialogue."

Without paying more attention to his remarks, Kenshin emptied this new cup in one gulp, his cerulean gaze still lost on the outside agitation. Sanosuke stared at him, dumbfounded.

"And ya have a hellish thirst tonight, nothin' to compare with that fuckin' restrained behavior ya have with Jou-chan or the others."

"Ah, sorry..." He scratched the back of his head and forced a smile as he turned back to his friend.

"Give up the excuses, these drink're on me for once;" he smiled, elbowing the red-haired, "Want another?"

"Huh, I guess..."

He hesitated, then handed his glass again. It was like any other promptly emptied, but his attention never truly returned to the current conversation.

Sanosuke was peering at him silently. He knew that if the wanderer did not want to talk he would get absolutely nothing from him. This man could have a head harder than steel and was naturally not eager to confide. Although it was annoying him strongly (he was officially impatient), he had learned over years to get the best of it : it was better to spend a good time together and leave those problems until later on when he would feel ready to speak - if such a moment ever existed in this life. That's why he maintained the conversation on his own, Kenshin just nodding now and again.

The smell of saké was surrounding the small building enclosed between two other inns. Its wooden tables, worn but friendly, were covered with sticky and odorous traces resulting from the strong passage of individuals throughout the day. The evening continued until numerous bottles were emptied. Nothing unusual for the fighter accustomed to this kind of trip, but much more unnatural for his companion who appreciated so much self-control. He had swallowed the majority of the drinks served without really paying attention, under the half-amused eye of his friend.

Yep, definitely, somethin's wrong.

"... ya better stop here, don't ya think?"

It did not sound like the brawler at all to restrain others' consumption, but something didn't seem right in the samurai's behavior tonight, and he did not like it.

"Hmm." Kenshin put his glass down, awkwardly dropping his elbow on the table. "Let's go."

He got up with the help of his left arm and crossed the door, head bowed.

Sanosuke was following him closely. The samurai had a slightly feverish and unsteady walk. For an innocent eye his balance would seem perfectly normal, but for the trained eye of someone who knew the precise and agile moves of the fighter like the back of his hand, there was no doubt about it : he was dead drunk.

Sanosuke took place at his side while discreetly positioning himself in the background to be able to catch him in case of fall.

"I never saw ya drink this much..."

"Gomenasai" he mumbled

"Stop apologizing all the time, it's becomin' really annoyin' t-"

The wanderer suddenly lost his balance, stumbling on a misplaced pebble. Sanosuke narrowly caught him by placing his arm under his belly.

"Baka, I'll take you back to the dojo."

"... Arigato, S-Sano"

The fighter put his arms around his friend's shoulders, and while supporting most of his weight, walked on the pavement carefully. The wind that had gotten colder by now was playing melody against the surrounding silence, between the leaves of trees barely lit by the nocturnal star. They stopped several times on the way so that the redhead could empty the contents of his stomach, implicitly helped by his friend to stabilize him. As he watched the samurai folded in half, his hair stuck to his face, Sanosuke was thoughtful.

No more words were exchanged that night between the two men. Only the sound of occasional regurgitation and settas hitting the ground punctuated their march.

Next chapter : Enemy of my enemy

[ughthatimagineblog]

sins of the earth

lucifer morningstar x reader | i

warnings; mentions of murder, death?, drinking, lots of drinking, weird past stuff, nothing too bad, if you’re able to watch the show without any triggers then you should be good

word count; 1735

prompt; your entire life you believed in the paranormal, you grew up christian but something pulled inside of you to believe there was more and for so long you wanted to find it. but when life hits you hard and you lose faith, you come to the conclusion that reality is as everyone said it was, boring and most things are a lie. and you believe this new ‘truth’ until a man claiming hes the devil comes into your life and threatens to make you relearn everything you thought you knew. again.

a/n; this is gonna be a series since i started watching lucifer and im not even into the second season and i already want tom ellis to impregnate me (if he happens to ever read that; i am sorry) anyways i literally shit this out on the first night of 2019. i just had a sentence in mind and then i ran with that and made a prompt out of it. that was my inspiration. a real life problem plus a sentence i thought i might say one day made this fic. anyways, i hope this is pretty good. it will get better. honestly im lowkey proud of this one tho. unedited but i think this has been some of my best writing. to those who have requested stuff i haven’t made: im sorry im depressed. 

Your fist slammed onto the bar harder than you were expecting, or wanting, it to. You mumbled your request for whatever number of drink this was for the night and immediately began to rub the soreness of your ulnar border away while the bartender went to work in making your drink.

      The club was pounding with noise and shaking with bodies and it was humorous to think it matched the pounding of your head. You knew you should stop. But it was your birthday and you were spending it alone, miles from home, and freshly heartbroken. You didn’t care you had a headache and the drinking would make it worse. In fact, you came to this nightclub in hopes that you would drink so much it would make it better.

     Drink until you couldn’t feel anything at all. You already made arrangements for a cab to pick you up at one a.m and instructed a female bartender to remind you, even tipping her generously to go as far as walk you out when it arrived.

     Her name started with an M. Or was it an N? You weren’t entirely sure and you groaned, beginning to stand up as the man behind the bar passed you your drink. In doing so, you felt the rush of your previous drinks all at once. The room was dizzy and you felt light and unstable but also very tired.

     Remembering the time when alcohol made you bubbly and carefree and happy made you horribly sad now. In actuality you were sad. Your entire life had been working towards a half assed dream you thought would make you happy. When you got the job of that half assed dream you packed your things and left everything you’d once known behind, including family. They don’t visit because they don’t have the money too. And thinking of family, you didn’t even pick a career you would have been fantastic in because you wanted a family yourself. You let children ruin your life before you even had any. Children or a life. The person you thought you’d marry turned out to be a complete asshole and you’d had enough. Dreams and spirit crushed, you, at this moment accepted your fate. Die alone. Be bitter.

     But that wasn’t it. There was a war going on inside you that told you to give up but another didn’t. A side that told you you weren’t strong enough but another that reminded you of how strong your mother was. A side that told you your past self would frown and cry at the sight of you now, but the other; that your past self would tell you it’s okay to get up and make the best of things.

     The thoughts that rushed your mind spilled onto your cheeks and you gulped down the drink you just ordered, hearing your grandmother’s voice in the back of your mind. “Remember to sip. Don’t gulp.” She would tell you when she was teaching you to ‘properly drink’. You scoffed out loud, giving the bartender enough money to last the night. He passed you the bottle. “Yeah well you’re not here, are you, grandma?” You muttered to yourself before taking a long swig.

     “I feel like if she would be, she’d have a heart attack in this bloody place.” A suave voice cut through the music and chatter. Surprised, you coughed, spilling a bit on your shirt. “Jesus Christ.” You managed to get out. “Quite the opposite actually,” You turned to find a man who embodied the phrase ‘tall, dark, and handsome’. His raven eyes raked you and your body shamelessly. “Lucifer Morningstar.”

     You openly rolled your eyes. It was a gut reaction but since you couldn’t feel your nose if you tried to itch it at this point in the night, you couldn't quite control your reactions at the moment. “You couldn’t have chosen a better name than that?” You asked, your face plastered with a look of disdain and disgust. Lucifer looked taken aback but nonetheless, didn’t drop the haughty facade.

      “I didn’t choose the name.” He stated, you laughed a little. “Oh yeah? Then who did? Nameberry dot com?” You took another swig of the bottle. “My father actually, though I would like to meet this Nameberry person.” He smiled and you peered up at him through narrowed eyes. You gave him a once over. A twice over. Then finally, “It’s a website, but no, really, who are you?” You asked. “I’m the devil. Lucifer Morningstar. If you don’t believe me I have ways of proving it.” You rolled your eyes at this.

     “Not my religion.”

“You’re not a believer?” He inquired. Understanding he meant the Christian kind, you shook your head. “Not anymore.”

     “So you don’t believe in hell?” He asked and it earned him an odd look. Such odd questions from a weirdly unique stranger.

     “If I did, that would juxtapose what I just said, wouldn’t it? I used to. Now I don’t really care where I go.” You were growing bored of this man. It was clear that he had an ego the size of Russia and based on the look of him that was because he hadn’t ever had a girl say ‘no’ to him before. This ‘Lucifer Morningstar’ was in for a rude awakening.

     Meanwhile, he was growing more and more interested in you. “Ah, no desire to end up anywhere in the afterlife? I’m sure you have some desires here, don’t you?” He asked, voice getting smoother, tone dropped just enough to ring some red alarms in your head. This time, you were able to hid the grin.

     You put on a dazed look, nonchalantly setting your bottle aside as you stepped closer to Lucifer. You ran a hand over his chest and watched as his damning smile grew in amusement. “Actually, my strongest desire. . .” You trailed off and gave him a once over once more. Lucifer could barely contain his excitement. “Is for you to stop asking me these weird fucking questions and leave me alone.” Your voice transitioned from sultry to bored so smoothly you thought your tongue was made of silk. Lucifer didn’t even realize what had happened until the fake smile dropped from your lips and you stepped away.

     “Wait, what?”

“You heard me, Lucifer Morningstar.” You mocked his name, turning from him fully and you began to walk away, grabbing your bottle on the way out. The conversation with him was both sobering and a great way to intensify your headache.

      Lucifer felt frozen where he stood as he watched you walk away. You had been playing him. His, well, charm didn’t work on you. It was all jarring and exciting and concerning and exhilarating for him. Finally, he snapped out of his daze as you mocked his name.

    “Wait!” He called after you, reaching for your arm and turning you around. You yanked free of his touch. “Don’t touch me, creep.” You spat back at him. That flicker of annoyance. If he were mortal, he realized, that would have hurt. This confused him more.

     “I’m not a creep, i’m the devil!” He exclaimed back at you. “Would you quit with that?” You nearly were yelling now. “You’re human! Just like that guy and just like me. If you’re so convinced you’re not, you need to see a shrink. There is no such thing as fairy tales.” You shoved a business card you had been digging around for into his chest.

    Lucifer scoffed as he felt the small weight of your hands against your chest again, if only for a moment. “But I’m not-“ He started but you glared at him.

     “I did not come here for this. It’s one in the morning, my taxi is here.” You noticed the girl you tipped earlier already on her way to come get you from across the room. “You wore off my drunk. I’ll be chugging this in the rest of the car, wishing I had went to a different bar for my birthday. Oh, and I won’t be coming back. Not if you’re here.” You huffed out right as the girl who’s name you forgot approached you and she began to lead you out as promised.

     You shocked yourself just then. You had promised yourself to be more honest and that was the first time you really had. You had spent most of your life, even adult life, thinking demons and fairies and ghosts and ghouls and goblins were real. But you got the help you needed and now you didn’t so when that guy began to talk about being Lucifer and Satan and the devil, it scared you. But you meant what you said. That guy was insane and if he went to that club, you weren’t coming back. You supposed some of his questions were casual, but something about him felt, off.

    Your birthday. Whoever you were. Lucifer was still clutching the business card in his hands, still hovering above where his heart would be as he watched you leave. You were different. You didn’t believe him. You didn’t care to. You thought he was clinically insane, like a murderer who thought he was God, or well, the devil. You didn’t say it but he saw it in your eyes. Not that you were afraid of him, but you knew he was different and you couldn’t tell what.

   But that’s the thing, if he thought about it, is that you knew what he was. And you weren’t afraid but instead your automatic response was to get him help. Not that you knew what he really was, but a part of you recognized it even without your conscious knowing. Your consciousness just didn’t want to know.

    It felt like hours before he pulled his hands from his chest and gazed down at the numbers on the paper. Tonight was a night, well morning, was a morning of firsts apparently, because for the first time, Lucifer called later that day and made an appointment with the shrink you recommended. You promised you wouldn’t come back to that club, but he wasn’t ready to let go of you just yet.

     He chuckled to himself at his plan. Yes, it did sound as though was was a murderer. Insane and obsessive. But he was in fact the devil, and there are no consequences for the sins of the Earth.

[storiesofwildfire]

Random Headcanon ask spam because I love Loki

{ @incrediblewithin } || random asks – status; always accepting

This is actually a headcanon I’ve been meaning to write for a long time and since Heimdall has popped up on my blog quite a few times this evening, I thought I’d take this random headcanon prompt as an excuse to finally crack down on write this.

By now, it’s not a shock to anyone that I 100% ship Loki and Heimdall. I support them, they’re doing their best while screaming gayly at the top of their lungs, and in modern threads where Loki and Heimdall’s relationship has developed into a romantic one, it’s easy for some to forget that Heimdall has literally been in Loki’s life since Loki was a newborn brought against their will to Asgard.

Which raises the questions, what was their relationship like in earlier years? How did Loki view Heimdall throughout the course of their lifetime? And why did their relationship go through so many changes?

Well, we’ll start with when Loki was young. Based on your headcanon ( @bifrostgold ), Heimdall was ordered to look away from Jotunheim when Odin took Loki. Running with that because, to me, it makes the most logical sense that Heimdall would be aware that Loki was not actually Aesir or Odin’s child, but unaware of the details of the second prince’s true origins, and also being forced by Odin to never speak of the matter, it would make so much sense that Heimdall would feel a certain… bond with Loki and a desire to look after Loki where Odin would no doubt fail.

Heimdall, after all, is not of Asgard, and he, too, is forced to be there by Odin’s control. While Loki’s situation was never the same as Heimdall’s, the similarities speak for themselves and the truth is, Odin uses and controls them for different purposes and by different means, but does so all the same.

So I’ve always felt like Heimdall had a strong presence in Loki’s younger years, especially when Loki’s magic began to flare up so violently and at such a young age. While yes, Loki had Frigga and a few other people to turn to who were well versed in magic (like Asmund, Loki’s healer, and Sigurd, Odin’s advisor who favored him from an early age), Loki’s abilities and reach quickly outgrew them, which left the youngest prince with fewer and fewer options and outlets to turn to. 

Heimdall, however, was always a strong presence with such inherently powerful magic that Loki often felt safe going to him, and safer still to show their fear, pain, and aggression. Heimdall, in Loki’s youngest years, was something of a caregiver. Not a parent, per se, but an influence in Loki’s life that helped bring some of Loki’s more positive traits to the surface.

Because Heimdall stood as a symbol to all of Asgard of someone who was always watching and always wanted to keep them safe, Loki sort of fell into a bit of a trap of idolizing him too. Heimdall was someone to look up to for his strength, his optimism, his kindness, and his impressive range on ancient magic that would make even the most powerful sorcerer tremble at the idea of. So much power and yet, Heimdall never sought to harm others with it, never seemed to think himself better than those around him, and always treated everyone with some level of respect or kindness. 

Loki didn’t necessarily want to be just like Heimdall, but the little prince always hoped some of Heimdall’s better qualities might rub off on them.

Heimdall’s gentle guidance and support at such an early age really did help keep Loki grounded. It helped Loki keep a solid grasp on the ever-growing power they possessed and it helped Loki from growing angry or resentful or so frustrated they might completely give up on learning to properly wield their magic. 

As Loki grew older and their perception of the world shifted more and more violently, Heimdall seemed like the one weight that would never change and Loki took comfort in the Watcher’s presence, in his teachings, and even in those moments when Loki found themselves sitting at the end of the Bifrost, talking to Heimdall because they felt as if they had no one else to talk to. 

To say Loki formed a very strong attachment to Heimdall would be an understatement and the older Loki got, the more fascinated with Heimdall they became.

Loki did, however, drift away from Heimdall eventually. As Loki’s rebellious tendencies picked up, often bringing Odin’s anger in their wake, Loki came to a heartbreaking realization that Heimdall would always be a link to Odin. No matter how much they loved the Watcher and no matter how much that love was reciprocated, Heimdall’s loyalty remained with Odin. It seemed almost impossible for the elder God to disobey the All-father and for many, many years, Loki believed it was genuine loyalty. 

They did, however, begin to question that, as the way Heimdall interacted with Loki one-on-one often suggested his views and desires did not align with that of the throne. Loki always questioned why Heimdall would be so loyal to someone he did not seem to believe in. Heimdall would never give Loki those answers, quite possibly because he was not allowed to, but Loki grew frustrated in their attempts to balance their own need to pull out from Odin’s thumb and Heimdall’s sight being the one thing that would always allow Odin to know where the mischief-maker had gone. 

It broke the storyteller’s heart to have to put any distance between themselves and a person they loved and admired so much, but Heimdall’s sight and Odin’s control over him would always act as a direct line to them and as Odin’s treatment of Loki grew more and more severe, Loki didn’t have much of a choice but to pull away.

Developing a method to successfully hide from Heimdall hadn’t been an easy feat and, as far as Loki was aware, they were the only one to ever successfully accomplish it. Something to be proud of, they supposed, but it felt almost like a betrayal to have to resort to such things. As much as they genuinely loved Heimdall, though, they realized that Odin’s control over him would always mean being close to the Watcher would be dangerous.

Loki only prayed that one day it would not be necessary and that Heimdall would understand the precaution, whenever his loyalty to Odin was brought to an end.

In truth, the divide did put a strain on their relationship. They went from close, from Heimdall acting as a sort of guardian and a mentor to the young prince to only interacting when Loki believed it was safe or when their individual duties forced them to. This portion of their relationship often reflected in scenes like the one in the original Thor film, when Thor, Loki, and their friends were attempting to go to Jotunheim. Loki and Heimdall had a rather uncomfortable exchange, one that didn’t seem particularly friendly, but one that also didn’t seem vindictive. It also, if anyone took notice, left Loki looking rather depressed, almost looking and Heimdall for a moment with longing in their eyes.

It was not a separation Loki wanted and, in fact, had a rather negative impact on the prince because of how much they missed Heimdall, but it was something Loki believed necessary to keep themselves safe from their growingly controlling and abusive father. 

Loki still regarded Heimdall as one of the few people they could turn to in a huge pinch, however (as demonstrated by the thread where Loki goes to Heimdall for help after Odin’s kidnapped their children and forced them into various forms of exile and/or prison).

As much as that rift hurt, though, I do believe it was a sort of necessary split for Heimdall and Loki to mature into anything other than the almost familial bond that they had in Loki’s youth, though. The rift allowed Loki and Heimdall to meet again for the first time, in a sense. Not exactly a completely fresh start, but one that allowed Loki to come back to Heimdall on their own terms as a matured adult and a person Heimdall was not 100% familiar with.

They were allowed to relearn one another, develop a new friendship and a new dynamic, and Loki was finally able to not only get the answers they wanted from Heimdall for so long but help Heimdall break the chains that kept him tethered to his captor. 

In Loki’s youth, Loki always saw Heimdall as someone to aspire to be like, to idolize in a way, and turn to when they needed help. In their reunion, Loki came to Heimdall as an equal, someone who no longer looked up to Heimdall, but someone who looked at Heimdall with love, respect, and mutual understanding.

That transition is what I think allowed them to form such a strong, romantic bond, in the end, because their remeeting changed everything for both of them.

At the end of the day, Heimdall has always been someone extremely special to Loki, someone Loki loves endlessly, and someone Loki could never truly think or speak negatively of, but Loki has gone through a lot of shifts over the course of their lives. A kid learning from Heimdall. A “teenager” turning to Heimdall in times of crisis and questioning why Heimdall did so much he didn’t want to do. A young adult who broke their own heart to break off from someone they loved and attached themselves to so heavily. 

When Loki finally came back to Heimdall, a fear definitely existed that Heimdall would be resentful, that he’d be unwilling to let Loki back in, and that he wouldn’t listen to how sorry Loki was, not only for their own actions but for the pain Odin had caused Heimdall for thousands of years. Loki felt a certain pressing weight of guilt for not realizing sooner that Heimdall was, quite literally, Odin’s prisoner, forced to do as he was told.

Heimdall’s understanding of Loki’s position and why they’d done what they’d done came as a surprise but Loki knew it shouldn’t have. That was just Heimdall being Heimdall, but the biggest shock to Loki’s system?

The fact that Heimdall, despite knowing some of the worst things Loki had done, had never given up on them, had never believed them evil or inherently wrong, and still believed them to be a good person capable of great things. 

Loki almost convinced themselves that Heimdall could never think of them in such a manner purely to make their split easier and, really, it was an easy thing to believe given the fact that so many others thought so poor of the mischief-maker. But Heimdall’s resilient belief in Loki and the love the Watcher always seemed to have for his prince? Was likely why Loki so quickly fell for him in turn and why their relationship made a drastic change in such a short amount of time after them reuniting. 

Heimdall was the one to always treat Loki with kindness. Even in their years of not really communicating, Heimdall was always in Loki’s court. We even see examples of this in MCU all the damn time. He never condemns Loki, never speaks poorly of Loki, and even in moments when he’s supposed to stand against Loki, he almost always lets Loki best him in some way so he doesn’t have to fight Loki (like when Loki literally froze him in Thor, for example, or how about the time Heimdall–the man who can see literally everything–lied to Thor about Loki being the only one who knew the passageways that led out of Asgard so Thor would be forced to break Loki out of prison in The Dark World?). 

He even welcomes Loki home in the most cheeky fashion ever when Loki arrived back on Asgard in Ragnarök and the fact that Loki let Heimdall see them coming proves that Loki trusted Heimdall just as much as Heimdall trusted Loki.

Obviously, Loki and Heimdall aren’t in a romantic relationship in every single verse, but I do believe, with the transition they’ve gone through over the course of literally more than a thousand (Asgardian) years, the potential is almost always there and even if romance doesn’t happen? The bond Loki and Heimdall share is one of the strongest and purest that Loki’s ever had the pleasure of experiencing.