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a-tale-never-told · 1 year ago

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An Apology.

//Greetings, everyone. I completely understand what you might be thinking at this moment, upon looking at this title. You might be thinking "Is he going to repeat another self-deprecating rant about his insecurities about writing and venting on the blog?". To that commonly referred question, the answer is actually no, surprisingly.

//You see, over since yesterday night, I finally came to a realization of just how damaging my own actions were to this entire story blog, and how much of an absolutely selfish asshole I'd become within the past few weeks, and I am greatly ashamed of my behavior towards all of you and how I treated you all during this blog. That was wholeheartedly never the intention to make you all feel uncomfortable with my own mental health issues and anxiety and stress issues, while also placing the burdens of my self-deprecation on you all, especially those who are dealing with other mental health issues themselves.

//Yesterday, I came to a realization of the numerous key reasons why I end up going on these long, venting rants about my writing qualities and why multiple people have felt put off by the story, and I came to a conclusion: It wasn't just the writing quality, but my constant venting and self-deprecation over the issues of my personal life and my rather embarrassing ways on how to handle my depression, as well as several other factors that we'll get into later.

//I just want to elaborate a bit on why I acted this way in particular and why I'm absolutely terrified of my own insecurities: I fear being abandoned in life, both with my loved ones and with my friends, hence why I get constantly paranoid whenever I trust or talk to someone because you never can officially confirm if you can place your absolute trust and faith in that person, even your own closest loved ones. Throughout my entire life, I've been betrayed, manipulated, lied to, and humiliated by those that I considered close to me in my childhood, with my family being the only ones I could definitely trust.

//While I did make a few friendships back then, I certainly wouldn't call it a friendship as we often fought with one another, then we officially made up, and then we had another argument again, and the cycle repeats itself. I honestly never truly felt what it feels like to even have a friendship with another person or human being, as I've never really experienced any true bonds with others. Most of the time, I'd often get shamed, bullied, and harassed by my fellow classmates for the most ridiculous of reasons, and I, unfortunately, had to take it like it was completely normal, even when I tried to give those people the benefit of the doubt and repair our relationships.

//These types of mental behavior that I exhibit are something that I think most of you are familiar with, Social anxiety disorder. Social anxiety disorder is essentially characterized by sentiments of fear and anxiety in social situations, with blushing, trembling, and nausea, as well as having an overwhelming fear of humiliation and embarrassment. When you have that disorder, you start to feel anxious about how people might judge you or if they treat you with scrutiny whenever you interact with them, thus leading you to fear almost any social interaction, especially things like dates or talking to random strangers.

//I'm not saying this as an excuse for my self-depreciation and venting posts, because there are absolutely zero tolerable excuses for that, but it does offer a rationale or explanation as to why I become so mentally unstable to begin with because I never truly had any form of positive interaction with a human being outside of my family, and it wasn't untill this year where I try to overcome my disorder and tried to socialize more with others, though the mental and cognitive social issues still exist. It's just the fact that I get extremely afraid of other people abandoning me and leaving me alone to rot away, so that's why I become extremely paranoid whenever I see others.

//Another main issue is actually what Mod Bubbles pointed out in our conversation together on DMs: Hormonal teen angst. It's no official secret that we, as teenagers, tend to have those periods in life when we often like to complain and beat ourselves up for every single mistake we make in our lives. That's unfortunately part of the development process of becoming a teenager, and the ways I handled it were... less than splendid to say the absolute least, if the vent posts were any indication to go by.

//And speaking of the vent posts, I finally realized that I officially need to stop making these posts, as not only do they add endless filler to the entire blog, but I realized that it's starting to genuinely make all of you rather uncomfortable with how much I self-deprecate and rant about my insecurities towards a group of strangers and burden the rest of you with my own issues, which is definitely not what I wanted to do, but that might officially stem from another problem that I have.

//It's no secret that I've stated countless times that I'm insecure about my own writing, and how I've been writing this arc, while also being mostly a little jealous of the successes of The New Future and especially A Student Out Of Time, which is incredibly ironic when you consider I owe a lot of the inspiration for this blog to ASOOT and his storytelling, and these feelings of inadequacy and jealousy stem all the way back to my younger years, where I would feel jealous that no matter how much effort and hard work I put, I wouldn't become famous as my other classmates, who essentially became popular due to the growing trends of the late 2010s era. Granted, I had zero idea as to what those societal norms were, but it still infuriated me to see these lazy, selfish, bullies become so well respected, while someone like myself had to bear the brunt of their torment.

//Obviously, Bubbles and Freeze are most certainly not those kinds of people, and I respect them tremendously for being talented in their writing skills, but that feeling of jealousy from my middle school years hasn't really shaken off, and whenever I see an like on those two blogs and look at myself, I always return to those years back in middle school, and that instinct to let out my anger of years of being discarded and treated horribly often comes up.

//However, I have now come to a realization that I cannot continue living my life like this, to constantly be in this never-ending cycle of self-loathing and hatred, as this obviously benefits nobody in the end, and only serves to create more hardship for everyone in this space, and making myself look uncaring towards your feelings and acting like an entitled, narcissistic asshole, which is the complete opposite of what I want to convey.

//So I've decided on a new way to constantly improve my behavior and change for the better, and that's the fact that I will do my hardest to improve myself as a person and a human being. Throughout all of this, I have been discarding your attempts to help me with my mental issues, foolishly thinking that I had it all under control when it had become clear to every one of you that I didn't. And I realize that by continuing this downward spiral of self-hatred and frustration, I'm ending up unintentionally hurting the ones who are trying to help me get better, which was not even the intention at all, and I honestly feel tremendously guilty for doing so.

//If there's any form of advice that is relevant to this entire situation that I need to take, it's that I need to be kind towards myself and others. That means that I'll completely devote myself to giving myself time as well as others the time to reflect and cope with their own mental issues, as well as not constantly thinking poorly of anyone for small things, giving you guys space, showing compassion more frequently, and trying to show you all that I'm not some heartless weirdo that doesn't value your insightful advice on things.

//Two sayings resonate with me throughout this entire time I've been writing this post: "You have to love yourself before you can love someone else" and "Actions speak louder than words", both of which are very important to me not only for my mentality but for my own genuine belief as a person, that we should let our own actions, moral or immoral, speak for ourselves rather than just meaningless, hollow words. It goes a long way in improving relationships with other people, and I feel as if I have been constantly repeating the same phrases and promising that I'm going to better myself as a person without actually showing it. That's going to change, starting from this post onward.

//From now on, I take a personal vow to endlessly work and improve myself as a better human being and a better moderator as well, always trying to take your valuable advice at heart, trying to listen to whatever issues you might have, and constantly offer my advice and support to anyone that needs it here, being far more compassionate and understanding of any problems that you guys have, giving you the time and space whenever you need it, and the most valuable and important life lesson of all is to learn to love myself and stop burdening myself and others with my own socialization issues and mental problems.

//I just want to thank everyone who has constantly stuck around throughout this entire journey, despite my constant venting and ranting about my insecurities and childhood issues. A massive shoutout to people like @freezethunder @creepercraftguy @poisonrozen and especially @a-student-out-of-time for helping me and trying to get me out of those constant depressive stages, always being understanding of my problems, and trying to give valuable advice to heal my mental state. You all are amazing people, truly, and you don't know how much your comments and insightful ways of being compassionate towards others mean to me.

//I absolutely hold full accountability and responsibility for my actions, as I believe that my way of handling the situation was idiotic and at worst, hurting the rest of the fanbase. My sincerest apologies if this post was obviously not what you were all expecting from me today, as I originally never planned to make this today, but rather tomorrow once I finished the Kazuichi asks. But I could no longer put my own mental well-being and the well-being of others around me with my constant self-loathing and endless venting and rants about my failures as a writer. Remember that mental well-being always comes first, and for such a year that was absolutely stress-inducing and nerve-wracking on my physical and mental state in 2023, I felt as if I needed to address this issue because this type of selfish, irresponsible behavior needed to stop at some point, and it's better that I address all of this in one single post rather than let this become a gigantic issue later on.

//I hope you all can accept my most sincere and honest apology, from the bottom of my heart. But I know that these words don't mean anything if I can't show that I've changed and put hard work and effort into bettering myself, and I'm making that commitment to change, starting now!

//This is Mod Sam from A Tale Never Told, signing out. Have a wonderful rest of your afternoon, everyone!.

#mod talks #a tale never told

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thesoulspulse · 2 years ago

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My Danny Phantom AU's (Valerie Gray)

Valerie is another favorite character of mine and I’m so glad I can draw her again. Her character arc is probably the best in the show if we’re being honest since you can see how she starts off as just another rich girl bully then becomes Danny’s friend as well as a great ghost hunter.

The first two are the new versions of her I imagine in my fanfic “Turning Point” which is the sequel to “Nowhere To Run.” Valerie has been through a lot in both stories which I won’t spoil but in the end, they helped her realize that Danny Phantom was never her enemy and did a lot more for all of Amity Park than she originally thought.

Using my older AU outfit, I designed an alternate Future Valerie and I absolutely love the scar! Because let’s face it, after duking it out with Dan for 10 years she had to have collected at least a couple of battle scars even if he was “going easy” on Valerie out of boredom.

This one is just a random AU where Valerie is part of a Witch Coven.

These braids took forever to draw but were totally worth it! This is Valerie from my Unseelie Vlad AU. She’s a huntress and the daughter of the town blacksmith. Unlike Tucker though, she hunts more than just wild game to feed her family, Valerie also hunts down Fae whenever possible to protect everyone and prevent anyone else from being kidnapped by them like her mother was when she was a baby.

And last but not least we have Valerie’s genderbent version from “Lost Soul,” “Haunted Soul,” and the upcoming fanfic “Final Epitaph” named Vallen. The basic idea in all these stories is that instead of Vlad making him a ghost hunter to spy on Danielle, aka genderbent Danny, he made Vallen one to help keep the ghost population under control so the burden wasn’t entirely on his little badger’s shoulders.

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proheromidoriyashouto · 3 years ago

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i think bakugo is there because he's basically the one who broke midoriya in the first place. because of his bullying, midoriya has had lifelong issues with himself, and it isn't a secret that he's struggled to reach his full potential because of them. i think, in a way, bakugou is the thing that's holding midoriya back, and he's something that midoriya needs to overcome. i don't think he was brought there to necessarily support him and give him anything positive, but moreso that bakugou sacrificing for midoriya and/or reaching for midoriya and/or getting rejected violently by midoriya will be something that can help him heal from the abuse he's suffered. for me, with my abuser, it helped me to heal from it when they were the one who reached out to me, not necessarily because i forgave them or even wanted them in my life, but because they had carved a desperate need for their approval and validation deep into me through their actions and i carried that weight until they lifted it, which was their responsibility. i don't believe this is a positive thing for bakugou or even about his character development, i think it's about izuku's healing. however, i do hope that he rejects him. because bakugou doesn't deserve to get the glory of "bolstering" midoriya when he's the one who broke him in the first place. he showed us that in the very beginning of the manga by saying he learned all people weren't equal because of bakugou's abuse.

This is a very good point. For Izuku to heal from a lifetime of bullying, that abuse must be dealt with and not simply put aside for the greater good. Their history has been ignored largely since they left middle school because neither has seen reason to bring it up and I feel like now is the time to do so.

Izuku has been conditioned to prioritize Bakugou's ambition ahead of his own--because he doesn't want to take away Bakugou's dream, HIS dream, and because he knew that as a quirkless person he would never be believed even if he did come forward about the abuse.

I think the only way to salvage this situation in bnha 320 is if Izuku just snaps and reveals the harm Bakugou has done to him and never disclosed/acted like never happened outside of their middle school to the broader world.

Izuku is tired. We know he's neglected food, probably sleep, and even the semblance of care for his costume and support gear.

Part of that is me wanting desperately for Izuku to confront his abuser and rip him off his throne and the other part is because it'd be in theme with the current state of their world.

Something like Izuku saying “You told me to end my life without a quirk, and now that I have quirks you’re telling me how to live?” would serve to show everyone the hypocrisy of following Bakugou's lead into this.

Bakugou's 10 years of bullying and abuse is the reason why Izuku does not value his own life. It helped serve as the driving force for Izuku to succeed in spite of him, but Izuku always had a golden heart and a genuine desire to help others that would have driven him to become a hero anyway.

Izuku never learned to value himself for his own qualities. After getting OFA this became worse because the primary value he saw in himself was being a torchbearer of OFA rather than an inspiring, kind young man who All Might choose based on his actions not his potential. Izuku cannot see that he is a person in need of saving because he does not have a sense of self-worth.

When a person with no self worth is given the power to save others, they inevitably choose to self sacrifice. Self destruct.

And now, Izuku, who is conditioned to not ask for help or value himself, has been put into a position that is neither attenable or abandoned. AFO will never stop coming for him in either incarnation. OG!AFO has PUT OUT HITS ON IZUKU.

IZUKU HAS MERCENARIES COMING FOR HIM WITH MURDEROUS INTENT. Of course he will not rely on his friends, other children, for assistance with his burdens. They will come anyway though and that is fine and the kind of emotional and literal support he needs.

THE PROBLEM is that they are being led by his lifelong abuser. Their entire society is asking "how can we trust heroes who lie to us? heroes who are domestic abusers behind closed doors?" and the answer the Government or what remains of it has given them is "because there is no one else, has never been anyone else, so take cover and eat the shit we're going to feed you like we always have to nary a complaint from you."

Class A doesn't know that Bakugou is Izuku's abuser. The world doesn't know that. They think Bakugou is angry but his heart is in the right place. And fuck anyone for saying he's grown and developed. YOU CANNOT GROW IF YOU DO NOT ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR PAST. And Bakugou has not acknowledged Izuku, the trauma he's caused him, the on-going detriment his self-imposed rivalry has been doing to Izuku.

It's time for a change. Izuku is on the brink of a breakdown and frankly it's about time.

You're on the money, Anon. For Izuku to heal, he must overcome and turn away from Bakugou. To see his own self-worth he must come out from Bakugou's shadow, and I hope to god we get it in the following battle.

That said, I think it'd be fantastic if Bakugou reached for Izuku, only for Izuku to extend his hand past him and take someone else's. To finally see where real support can come from. Just saying but, Shouto is conspiciously absent from the front line so far --I know he's covering the back--and as Izuku's original intended rival, it would be incredible if he took Shouto's hand instead.

#bnha manga spoilers #anti bakugou #thanks for sharing op it must've been very hard

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iamanartichoke · 3 years ago

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Another totally unprompted ask, on the assumption that you are definitely no longer in need of them… another thing I’m trying to work out about Loki characterisation in preparation for perpetrating fic torture on him is how suicidal the poor sod is most of the time. This is another thing I’ve seen referred to a lot but only in passing. Though obviously this is a pretty triggery topic, so ignore if you want.

I am always in need of totally unprompted asks, otherwise I just assume no one wants to talk to me lmao

So, hoo boy. I have been mulling over this for, apparently, three days now bc there's just ... there's a lot to unpack here. Putting under a cut for obviously triggery content and also for length bc fml.

In my opinion, the response to "how suicidal is Loki most of the time" is "very, but whether or not he wants to do anything about it varies from moment to moment" (see what I did there? I'll see myself out). In other words, I have always had a headcanon that Loki is consistently, passively suicidal. This is a headcanon that comes straight from TDW, bc I'm certain that Loki never had any intention of surviving their mission. And that could be a whole other post, really, but the point is that even though this is a TDW-centric headcanon, I have come to adopt it as applying to Loki in general as well, not just in those specific circumstances.

When I say passively suicidal, I mean that Loki is just sort of ambivalent about the value of his own life. He feels like he doesn't deserve to be alive, and feels like there's little point in being alive. Which - I don't mean to sound all gloom and doom, like, poor uwu emo Loki (and I kinda hate that I have to pause to disclaim that, no, I don't just have a fixation on Loki being depressed for funsies/the aesthetic/whatever); I think that this mindset stems from really complicated places that I'm not sure I can articulate, but I will try.

I view Loki as someone who suffers from a severe inferiority complex, and I feel like it stems from being abandoned as an infant. Loki's life started with a traumatic event and, even if he doesn't remember the event itself, the feelings he experienced stayed in his subconscious. Feelings of loss, of fear, of despair and abandonment, of suffering - these are all feelings that burrowed into his bones and lived there for his entire life, feelings that colored how Loki viewed himself as a person as well as how he compared to the people around him.

Keep in mind that Loki didn't know he was abandoned until the events of Thor 1, obviously. We don't really know how old Loki is, in human years, but I have always assumed that he and Thor were at least adults (not teenagers), maybe the equivalent of early twenties - and the reason I bring that up is because it means Loki made it all the way to adulthood carrying the weight of a trauma that he did not remember or even knew had happened, so to him, there was no real reason for how wrong he felt. There was no explanation for the feelings of loss, of neglect, of fear. So on top of struggling with those feelings, Loki was also burdened with the alienation that comes with wondering why one can't just be like everyone else, why one can't just "snap out" of depression, why one's sense of self-worth has always been lacking.

So imagine what it's like to grow up as Loki. He was traumatized as an infant. The trauma has been with him his entire life, along with the confusion/alienation of not understanding why he feels the way that he does, and then on top of that, his basic personality lends itself toward introspection and isolation, so he likely felt even further removed from Thor and from his peers. Loki's too smart for his own good, and he's got an enormous capacity to feel and I feel like this is a combination that works against him as much as it does for him, bc it probably means he spent a lot of time examining himself and identifying all of his perceived flaws - and then berating himself for said flaws.

People with depression are probably pretty familiar with the bully that lives in your head, the one who is always there to remind you that you're stupid, or ugly, or that nobody likes you, or that you have nothing of value to contribute to anyone, etc. Loki's no different; he's got that bully in his head, too. Add onto this the fact that his brother is literally perfect, that he feels his father doesn't love him (or love him as much), that his interests in things like magic are looked down on in his culture, and that he's a prince (meaning that along with the privilege comes pressure, and being in the public eye, knowing that everyone around him is comparing him to Thor as much as he compares himself to Thor, well.) and you have a total clusterfuck of a mindset, and Loki's been existing inside of that clusterfuck for nearly all of his life.

I always go back to the quote where, when filming I think the vault scene, Kenneth Branagh directs Tom by saying, "This is the moment where the thin steel rod holding your brain together snaps." And it's such a significant moment for Loki bc this is where it all crumbles for him, learning the truth, but I also fixate on the "thin steel rod" part of the quote bc that's not how one would describe a healthy, stable person's mind. The implication, to me, has always been that Loki wasn't that stable to start with due to his general upbringing, his internal struggles, and his personality, so of course the devastation of learning he's adopted, and Jotun, would send him over the edge. One doesn't go from zero to 60; one doesn't fall over the edge unless they were balancing fairly close to it in the first place. And to me, the "thin steel rod" basically equals the aforementioned clusterfuck of a mindset.

THE POINT IS. (Holy shit, I ramble.) This is the foundation on which I'm basing my headcanon that Loki neither values his life nor feels as if he even deserves to live it - bc his default mindset is one of inferiority, of loss, of pain. And I think that going from being a general unstable person pre-canon to being passively suicidal post-canon is a thing that happened because, somewhere between the vault in Thor 1 and the dungeons in TDW, Loki just stopped caring.

Life is exhausting for everyone, but even moreso when your mental load becomes more than you can carry. Loki is exhausted. His experience is that things just keep getting worse and worse for him - he's never been valued, he's always been found wanting. He discovers that he was literally thrown away as an infant, unwanted and left to die, and things haven't gotten much better for him since then. Everything that can go wrong, does go wrong. His plans spin out of control. He's unable to prove his worth and his value and when he is, in fact, rejected, he literally tries to kill himself (only to survive and end up in an even worse situation).

It all just continually goes downhill, and Loki is fucking exhausted. He's done. He has no hope that anything is ever going to change - he will never be valued or even seen, he's unable to connect to anyone, he has no family (aside from Thor, but their relationship is so fraught with pain). As far as he's concerned, his life has been nothing but a waste since he was born and if no one else values it, why should he?

So - passively suicidal. He places no value on his life, and doesn't shy away from situations that could cost him his life. It's possible that the only reason he's not actively suicidal is bc his previous attempt not only failed but led to such a horrible situation that he's probably too afraid to intentionally seek out death again. He doesn't want to fail and end up worse off for it.

And - not that you asked this in particular, but - my biggest disappointment in the series is that none of what I've just written is addressed in a satisfying way (to me). That is, we don't get any real explicit acknowledgement of the trauma of Loki's abandonment as a baby or how that affected his mental health growing up; we don't get to explore how devastated he was to learn of his adoption; we don't ever see him reconcile his ingrained belief that jotuns are monstrous savages with the fact that he is jotun. He says "I betrayed everyone I loved, but I'm different now" and we're supposed to infer what he means without Loki actually articulating why he feels that he's the only one who should be held responsible for all these things that had happened or what "I've changed" even means to him (aside from not betraying Sylvie).

I would have liked to see these things addressed for a lot of reasons, but one of those reasons is that I would want to see how Loki comes to terms with all of his issues and his pain enough that he stops being passively suicidal. We never get to see that; after TDW, the time that passes allows for Loki to kinda chill, resulting in the Ragnarok version, but if there was any real healing or recovering going on, it was happening off-screen, with the audience expected to just go with "yeah Loki was going through it for awhile but he's kinda better now."

Furthermore, much of what I've written here is based on prime Loki's development through TDW, but doesn't account for series Loki's split from that timeline nor the theme of "Lokis survive" that's so prevalent in the series. So I don't think the "passively suicidal" headcanon is really appropriate for series Loki but, at the same time, I'd like to have seen why. I'd like to have seen Loki learning to value his life, or where the "we survive" mindset comes from, since that's not really been a thing before now. (Out of universe, I suspect it comes from the context of Loki just not dying whenever he tries to, but since TDW and IW haven't happened, and Loki didn't intend to survive his fall from the bifrost, framing Loki as an innate survivor doesn't really make sense, but to be fair, I'm just being picky.)

So, yeah. I'm not saying Loki doesn't experience growth or development in the series, I'm just saying that his arc left much unsaid and, furthermore, framing his growth as "wanting a throne to not wanting a throne" without addressing that Loki doesn't actually want the power of the throne, he wants the value and self-worth he associates with the throne, is - well, again, unsatisfying. Not bad, but it leaves viewers like me wanting bc we're cognizant of how much more could have been done.

I ... am going to end this now. This is probably nonsensical and all over the place, so I'm very sorry, and I'm sure this is why I don't get meta-starter asks lmfao bc no one's out here trying to read my dissertation submission for a Ph.D in Loki, but well, sometimes it just be like that.

Thank you for the ask and the opportunity to ramble.

#asks #charlotte replies #loki pokey artichokey #loki series #loki series criticism #loki meta #tw suicidal ideation #tw suicide attempt #tw suicide #tw mental health #tw depression #i spent two fucking hours on this yet i still feel like it's rambly nonsense #i hit stream-of-consciousness at some point and just went with it #and now i'm too lazy to revise #so i'm sorry #this'll probably only get like 10 notes anyway bc that's how it be on tumblr #put effort in and get little validation; put no effort in and everyone loses their minds

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korra-the-red-lion · 3 years ago

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TOH s2e8: an character analysis.

Omg, that episode of the Owl House. That was just outstanding, start to finish. There’s a couple of major things I want to talk about in terms of Eda, Luz, and Amity. There will be spoilers ahead, so you’ve been warned.

When we first met Amity, she was bullying Willow. Quickly after that, Luz wormed her way into the little witchling’s heart and got her to open up. Throughout season 1 and 2 so far, Amity has faced a lot of her trials as a character already. In Understanding Willow and Wing It Like Witches, Amity finally choses for herself the people she wants to hang out with. She likes Luz, and she never stopped liking Willow, but her parents forced her to end the friendships they deemed unworthy of the Blight name. In Escaping Expulsion, we see Amity finally stand up to her mother. In the episode Through the Looking Glass Ruins, Amity takes further control of her life by cutting her hair and dyeing it a different colour than the green that her mother always makes her do. Amity has become dorkier and more true to herself as the series has progressed. She’s no longer hiding behind the façade of a mean girl to protect herself from getting hurt by her parents. She’s goofy, nerdy, and kind. But there was one thing that Amity hadn’t overcome yet until this episode:

Her fear of being rejected.

You can see Knock, Knock, Knockin’ on Hooty’s Door how more heartbroken she becomes as Luz destroys all the goofy Tunnel of Love stuff, because again, Amity is a huge nerd and she actually likes these kinds of things. But it’s at the very end when Luz (understandably, more on that in a bit) just derails the entire date due to her own insecurities that we see:

Utter heartbreak, because she thinks that Luz doesn’t feel the same way after all. She ends up tearing up when she says, “Us? Dating? That is stupid, right?” Amity never wanted to face that rejection, but since Grom, Luz seemingly (obviously she was) giving signs to Amity that perhaps she felt the same way. After agonizing about it, Amity decided to be brave enough to give it a shot. She finally faced that fear that held her back at Grom and thought that it all crashed and burned, like she feared it would after giving Luz that kiss. It all turned out in the end for the better, but Amity was so scared that it wouldn’t.

Next up is Luz.

One of the consistent traits of her character has been the fear of letting those around her down. Luz agrees to go to the crappy summer camp her mom wants her to go to because she doesn’t want to let her down. She is so scared to face her mami when the Grom beast turns into her because she was afraid of letting her down. She goes to steal the Witch’s Artifact because she wants to help Eda and it ends up backfiring horribly. So, Luz had finally let someone down. It was Eda, and it was heartbreaking for her. She blamed herself for everything that happened at the Owl House after that, which is why she behaved do recklessly in Separate Tides. The fear of letting someone down stems from the fear of messing up. Because when Luz thinks she messed something up, it relates back to her letting someone down. She messed up at school because she was “too weird” and end up letting her mom down.

So, Luz wanted to ask Amity out in the perfect way that would leave no room for failure. She needed everything to go as smoothly as possible because she didn’t want to mess up and have Amity not think the world of her. Luz is harder on herself than anyone has ever been on her.

Amity says “if we could just forget about the whole thing...” and Luz instantly starts to panic because “no no no this can’t be happening I need this to go well” is probably racing through her head as she stumbles to get the proper words out. Of course, there is the disaster of the Tunnel of Love and Luz realizes afterwards that she (thinks, because again, she is her own worst critic) messed up, and she is shattered:

Because now her chances are gone. Luz probably thinks there is no hope left after this. Remember that kiss on the cheek? Luz reacted by staring at Amity before her eyes flickered to her lips, and Amity left in a hurried panic after that. Luz isn’t reading the signs wrong, but I suspect that past experiences left her burned on Earth and she is trying to be extra careful in expressing herself. But Amity likes the chaos that Luz brings. Luz thinks outside the box and is her own person, something Amity really wants for herself. So here, Luz faces her personal demons of the fear of messing up (again in her mind). But she didn’t really mess up at all, she was just so embarrassed that Hooty did this for her and reacted as she normally would, by doing everything she can to take back control of the situation.

Then we get the beautiful confession scene from the two of them and it really was beautiful to watch. I loved it, every second of it. Amity blurting out first before Luz could finish, the little hand hold at the end with Luz wondering why it felt so scary, it was so amazing. Also shout out to Sarah for voicing Luz with little voice cracks for the highly emotional moments for Luz.

Then there’s Eda.

So what is Eda’s character arc? Well, it’s a lot of things but I think the major one we see in play for the most part is the fear of her curse. But more specifically, the effect it has on Eda and her loved ones.

Eda never told Luz and King about the curse until she was forced too. King mentioned in the Intruder that he’s never seen Eda like that before. In Echoes of the Past, King was found by Eda when he was very young and she was a lot younger too. I think it’s been 8-10 years since Eda found King, so that’s a long time to hide something from someone you live with. But, Eda has always been ashamed of her curse (and the curse itself is a disability or a chronic illness, which a lot of people are ashamed to admit sometimes they have). Eda doesn’t want to burden people with that knowledge and goes to get lengths to manage it. But something that I think is important is in some way, Eda never learned to accept it herself. She tells her mom off for trying all these stupid pyramid schemes that were never going to work for her. The elixirs are the medication, but Eda knows it’s not going to stop her from hurting people if she loses control. She has hurt people she cares for, which is why she won’t tell Raine how bad it is. Eda’s curse gets worse the more she’s stressed or upset or startled.

The moment Eda realizes she hurt her dad because of the curse, she most likely made the decision to not let people get too close to her again. Raine breaks up with Eda because Eda won’t be entirely truthful with them about the curse. Raine is aware of it, but it seems like Eda never told them the extent of how bad it was. Eda blames the curse for hurting her dad, Eda blames the curse for pushing people away. But that wasn’t the curse who did those things, that was all Eda. Eda pushed people away because she was scared of what would happen to those she loved if they got too close, so it was easier for her to live her life out in solitude and away from everyone else because no one would get hurt by her. But once Eda finally realizes that she can’t only blame the curse on its own, because it is a part of her, she finally is able to accept that this is a part of her now. The curse isn’t something to be feared and ashamed of, it’s something that is a part of Eda and she must learn to live with it fully. Now that Eda has done this, she can finally start to live in a healthier way that allows to her to interact with people she cares about again. Because having a disability isn’t something you should ever been ashamed of. Using medication (like the elixir) is helping manage it, but you have to make lifestyle changes to accommodate the disability as well.

Also she looks amazing.

All three of these women have finally faced major fears that were holding them back. I never would have expected it from this episode, honestly, but that goes to show what an amazing writer and director Dana Terrance is. This episode pulled off some amazing feats and really brings home a lot of the development we’ve seen for them. I’m really looking forward to the rest of this season. It’s been pretty stellar from the start so far.

#the owl house #toh #the owl house spoilers #toh spoilers #eda clawthorne #eda the owl lady #luz noceda #amity blight #lumity #meta analysis #character analysis #korra talks #toh s2e8

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with-love-from-hell · 2 years ago

Note

you talk a lot about trauma and sexual assault and I really appreciate all of the different comfort things you've done as a former victim myself...but I guess I'm curious to know your story, if you feel comfortable sharing. I know you don't owe us any of that and im so sorry if you find this insensitive you can delete it if you're not comfortable...anyway I love your work its saved my life.

Hi anon!

First, I'm glad my works have been helpful for your own healing. I hope you're doing well and that you're in a better place now than you have been. Thanks for being a fan. 💕

Second, I have told my story so many times that it doesn't phase me anymore, so I will definitely be open to sharing. If you want to ignore this, its all below the cut. Please mind the Tw.

TW after this point for sexual assault, victim blaming/police reporting/rape kit mention, grooming, and abortion.

So I think you all have gathered by now that I dont have a great relationship with my dad lol. He was very sex-negative and misogynistic while I was growing up, despite his own borderline inappropriate sexual interests given his views on women. He also said a lot of shitty things whenever a sexual assault case would make the news about the victims. My first exposure to sex was stumbling across one of his bondage magazines, so needless to say that was pretty jarring as a 9 year old. My moms attitude toward sex was more "ignore it and it won't happen" at the time (she's much better now), and they both mostly chose to not talk with me or my sister about it at all.

My first encounter with anything sexual was when I was 12 and got my first "boyfriend" (I dont count it bc the dude was 17). It was preceeded by months of grooming. I had initially said yes after what was hours of coercion, and it was not a great experience. This individual continued to assault me repeatedly, even after I broke up with him shortly after I turned 15 because I was afraid of telling my parents or really anyone. Even through my future relationships, I kept it hidden out of fear. There were a lot of photos taken of me that circulated around my school, and I experienced a lot of bullying and harassment as a result of that.

It wasn't until I was almost 17 that I actually told a mentor of mine at my school. He was the first man that I actually trusted, and he's still in my life today, as more of a friend than a mentor. Frankly, if I didn't have him, idk where I would be at now. He saved my life. And now I look back and see how much of a burden that was for him, as I begged him not to report. And he didn't- which could have cost him his job, and resulted in negligence charges brought against him. Thankfully, that didn't happen. But I regret begging him not to say anything every day, and putting him in an awful position. I did end up reporting it to the police once, and that I do regret. They had me do a rape kit, and then never tested it. And through the entire report, they constantly blamed me and picked apart everything I said. It sucked ass, and I didnt report anything after that.

One of the guys I dated for a few months during this time (I think when I was 15?) Was not much better. He introduced me to "kink" in a coercion type way, and I engaged in a lot of stuff that I wouldn't have if I knew what it was. We dated for 3 months the first time, and I ended things because of how uncomfortable it made me. We dated again at 17 for another 5 months, but I ended things because I found out he had cheated on me with the reasoning being that I wouldn't have sex with him enough in the ways that he wanted me to.

So after going to college, things chilled out a lot. I worked through a lot, and navigated my identity. I even discovered what asexuality was and realized I had a name for my identity- even if it was a result of trauma. It was relatively peaceful to a degree until the summer before my Senior year, where I found out who I thought was a close friend (we'll call him K) had copies of the pictures of me from a mutual friend (we'll call him M). M also informed me that, on a trip we all went on, K told him he was "cockblocking" and had intended to use the trip as a way to "get with me." After learning this, I was thankful M was with, and that he took it seriously enough to never leave us alone together because he could tell I wasn't interested. Maybe it was because M was also a survivor, but I was pretty close with him for a long time until we drifted apart. I still think about him a lot and im thankful he was around to protect me.

Well, anyways. After confronting K and trying to cut ties, he also assaulted me. At the time, I was not on birth control, and he didn't use protection, so I ended up getting pregnant. This is when I had my abortion, I reported it and got a restraining order, and I suppose the rest is history.

I've also had other uncomfortable encounters with cis men besides this. I was groped at a night club during college, one of my sisters boyfriends (who was 18 when I was 14) tried touching me during a car ride while my sister was asleep on his shoulder, and I had another one of her boyfriends hold me down and force me into a hug when I told him I didn't want to once. I've also had strangers cat call me before I was 18, and have had clients in the past make sexual comments at me too. Plus all of this shit recently (though I'm unsure of the gender of the individual)The list is pretty much endless, and im sure I'm leaving something out. I'm sure a lot of you can relate to that.

Anyways, that's all ill say about it. I've done a lot of therapy (nearly 11 years) to work on this plus all of the others stuff I have/had going on. I hope that all of you who read this and can unfortunately relate to my experiences know that I support you and im so sorry for whatever you've gone through. You're not alone, and I hope you're able to get the help you need- from friends, family (if you can), and professional supports. You didn't deserve anything thats happened to you and your voice deserves to be heard.

I love you all 💕💕

#stormy speaks

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kythed · 4 years ago

Text

an age of miracles

synopsis: why do the most beautiful people always seem to get the short end of the stick?

tagged: atsumu miya x reader, mentions of illness, mentions of god.

commitment level: 3,617 words.

hospitals are liminal spaces. transitional, gateways between birth and death and the whole mess in between. (life.) they’re sites of both tragedy and miraculous recovery, and you’re not yet too old to stop praying for the latter.

his name is atsumu. you skim the documents pinned to his door — atsumu miya. age 21. cirrhosis.

cirrhosis is late stage liver scarring. nasty stuff. evidently, atsumu miya is in his third stage — portal hypertension. abdominal swelling. jaundice.

for a bedridden guy with a serious illness, he’s not as justifiably depressed as one might assume.

“hey, doc,” he says when you come in. he’s facing the window, letting the sunlight cast a saintly halo across his cheeks. blonde hair, an angular sort of face that’s been hollowed by illness. in another life, he might’ve been handsome.

you clear your throat, and he glances back, surprised. “ah. you’re not my doctor.”

“nope. nursing student.” you sit at the foot of his bed. “i’ll be monitoring you the next month or so as part of my studies.”

“monitoring,” he repeats drily. “you make it sound like i’m a lab specimen in a test tube.”

“means you’re special.”

“sure. ‘specially fucked up.” he’s younger than you are, but there’s an aged weariness in his gaze.

“aren’t we all, mr. miya?”

he cracks a grin. “touche. call me atsumu, though. mr. miya’s my dad.”

“as you wish, mr. miya,” you say, biting back a smile. (there are those who say sarcasm has no place in hospitals. you do not fall into this category.)

atsumu likes to play chess. the second day of your clinical, he’s got a travel sized chess board set up on his bedside table. “been dying from boredom the past few hours. think you could take a break from ‘monitoring’ me to play a game?”

you set your clipboard down. “i could. i’d advise against it, though. i’m a pretty good player.”

atsumu grins. “not better than me.”

he’s right. he beats you three games in a row before you finally snag a checkmate. (and you suspect this is only due to pity.)

“what’d i tell you, baby?” he crows, and you shake your head, raising your arms in surrender.

“it was an off day. if i’d been on my game i could’ve swept the floor with you.”

“prove it,” atsumu says, leaning forward. he’s pale from a lack of sunshine, but you notice a faint pink glow in his cheeks now. “come back tomorrow.”

tomorrow’s a saturday, and you don’t have clinical. “of course i will.”

you’re not one to back down from a challenge, no matter how trivial. plus, atsumu is fun. (and kind of cute.)

“hi. brought you something.” you set a tupperware of cubed fruit on atsumu’s lap before pulling up a chair next to the bed.

“did you make this?” he says, eyes wide.

“i just chopped up a few apples and stuff,” you say, plucking a blueberry from the container and popping it into your mouth.

atsumu shakes his head before biting into a chunk of pineapple. “you’d think it’d be hard to mess up fruit salad, but somehow this damn hospital can make a strawberry taste like cough medicine. everything they serve here tastes like cough medicine, actually.”

“delicious.”

“disgusting.” atsumu sets up the chess board. “so, like, thanks. for the fruit. can i keep the tupperware?”

you laugh. “why do you wanna keep the tupperware?”

��it’s a reminder of normality.” atsumu shrugs. “i only ever eat off chipped hospital dishes here.”

your chest throbs. “oh, atsumu.”

“don’t you ‘oh, atsumu’ me,” he says, rolling his eyes.

“sorry. yeah, you can keep it.”

(he wins at chess again.)

you’re only required to come in to the hospital three times a week, but you get into the habit of visiting atsumu every day. the first time you visit after class, you’re wearing a sweater and jeans. atsumu wolf whistles.

“damn. you look good when you’re not in scrubs.”

“are you saying i don’t rock scrubs?” you press a hand to your chest in mock offense.

“nobody looks good in scrubs,” atsumu says. “except for me, probably. i look good in anything.”

you laugh. “i believe it.”

“you’d better.” atsumu has a nice smile, you notice, wide and shiny.

you plop yourself down beside him on the bed. “hey, you wanna see a picture i took on the way here? i found a stray cat near the convenience store.”

“i’m a dog person,” atsumu says, but he nonetheless leans forward to get a look at your phone. “oh, cute.”

“isn’t he?” you say, zooming in on the little orange cat. “i think i’m gonna name him after you.”

“what?” atsumu huffs. “why?”

“because he’s good at chess,” you say.

atsumu furrows his brow. “you played chess with a cat?”

“no, i just have a feeling,” you hum, and atsumu rolls his eyes with a small smile.

“you’re stupid.”

you slip your phone back into your pocket. “in a cute way, though.”

“if you say so,” atsumu says, and you flick his shoulder. “ouch. way to bully a sick man.”

“you deserved it,” you laugh, and he joins in.

“yeah, i did.”

the next time you visit, atsumu’s family is there. his parents have kind, tired faces.

“nice to meet you,” his mom says, grasping your hand warmly. “i’m glad atsumu has a friend here.”

“mom,” complains atsumu. “i have friends.”

“none as cool as me, though,” you tease, and he smiles.

“you’re right,” he says, and his dad rumples his hair before turning to shake your hand.

“it’s great to meet you, mr. miya,” you say, returning the shake.

“the pleasure’s mine,” he says. he looks nearly identical to atsumu, just a little grayer. right next to him, there’s a boy who really does look exactly identical to atsumu, though his hair’s dyed dark and he’s a little more filled out. he has an air of begrudging maturity about him, the telltale sign of a young man who’s been forced to carry burdens that aren’t his.

“i’m osamu,” he says. he’s sitting on the chair near atsumu’s bed. “this little asshole’s brother.”

“i don’t know why you keep calling me little,” atsumu says, lightly punching osamu’s forearm. “i’m the older twin.”

“yeah, but you act like a baby.” osamu grins and leans out of reach when atsumu tries to swat at him. you chuckle behind a hand, leaning back against the wall as mr. and mrs. miya question you about your studies and hobbies.

on your way out of the hospital a half hour later, you run into osamu at the lobby coffee shop.

“so,” he says, sipping from a steaming cup. “you’re a nursing student?”

“mm,” you say, handing a fiver to the cashier to pay for your sandwich. “i’m in my fourth year at hyogo university. are you in college, too?”

“nah,” says osamu. “i play volleyball. professionally, i mean.”

“oh!” you notice the lettering on his sports jacket for the first time. msby black jackals. “that’s really cool.”

osamu shrugs. “sometimes it is. tsumu’s wanted to be a pro player since we were kids — but he won’t ever be able to do that now, of course. so that’s why i play. better to have one miya in the pro circuit than none at all.”

your heart sinks. “you’re a great brother, osamu.”

osamu shakes his head. “i’m really not. it should’ve been me in that hospital bed.”

“osamu…” you trail off as osamu just shakes his head, giving you a sad smile.

“it was nice meeting you,” he says before tossing his cup and heading back towards the elevators.

“no,” atsumu says staunchly, crossing his arms. “definitely not. i don’t read.”

“come on,” you wheedle, dangling the book in front of his face. “it’s one of my favorites, and i thought it might stave off some of that stifling boredom you always complain about.”

“i’m bored, but not that bored,” atsumu says, squinting at the book. “what is that about, anyways? the little prince? sounds lame.”

“it’s not lame,” you promise, bouncing slightly on the bed. atsumu sniffs. “okay, what if i read it to you? you don’t have to do anything but listen.”

“i’m not a child.”

“you’re acting like one.”

atsumu throws his hands up in defeat. “alright, fine. you win. we can read the little prince.”

“excellent.” you beam. “scoot over?”

“what?” atsumu says, but he scoots to the side of his bed as you kick your shoes off and curl up next to him. you feel his breath hitch as he lightly lets his arm curve around your waist.

you sigh, content, and flip to read the first page. “once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book…”

it takes three visits to finish the entire story. atsumu sniffles when you read the last line, rubbing his eyes furiously.

“did he die?”

you trace a light circle on atsumu’s palm, smiling slightly. “i don’t know. i think it’s up to the reader to decide. he left his body, but is that really death? or is it just… moving on?”

“i think he just moved on,” insists atsumu. “he moved on and returned to the stars. he was just a kid. he was too young to have died.”

“look at you,” you tease, and atsumu flushes. “waxing on poetic.”

“it was good,” atsumu says gruffly. “thank you.”

“you’re welcome,” you breathe, and when atsumu buries his face in your neck, you realize he’s crying.

he kisses you for the first time a week later. it’s late in the afternoon, and both your faces are tinged with gold. he slips a hand beneath your jaw, and you let him slowly guide your lips to meet his. they’re soft, hesitant, and sweet, pressing against yours with an uncharacteristic shyness.

you sigh happily when he pulls you forward to straddle his lap, slipping your hands into his thick blonde hair, letting him press light kisses down the length of your neck.

“hey, beautiful,” he breathes into your collarbone, and you laugh.

“hey, pretty boy. nice to see you today.”

atsumu’s discovered a newfound love for reading ever since you read the little prince outloud to him. you’ve been bringing him secondhand books from the thrift store near your house, and now there’s a sizeable stack of novels out on the table.

“i think i’ve read more in the past couple months than i ever read in high school,” he admits, running a finger down the spine of treasure island. “you’ve turned me into a nerd.”

“you’re welcome,” you say, straightening his collar.

“it’s kind of nice, though,” he says thoughtfully, tossing the book back on the table. “to read about all these different people, all the things they do. all the stories i’m never gonna get to experience.”

“you’re getting to experience them through reading,” you correct. “that’s the beauty of fiction.”

atsumu laughs. “you’re such a sap.”

“it’s true,” you insist. “god knows life is too short to live through everything we’d like to. that’s why he gave us imagination.”

“do you believe in god?” atsumu asks softly. his stare grows distant.

you think for a moment. “sometimes i do. do you?”

“same. sometimes.” he fiddles with the hem of his shirt. “sometimes i wonder, though… like, if there’s a god, why does he hate me?”

you chew on your cheek. “why do you feel hated?”

atsumu laughs a laugh tinged with slight bitterness. “sweetheart… i’m not going to live past twenty-five, if even that.”

you swallow the knot in your throat, letting it sink deep into your stomach where it sits like a lump of copper. “well… the little prince is less than a hundred pages. sometimes the shortest books are the best reads.”

atsumu nods silently. he’s not convinced. you’re not sure if you are, either.

atsumu sleeps a lot these days. you spend as much time with him as you can, but more often than not, he’s in a half conscious daze, curled up beneath the white hospital comforter. during these times, you just set your backpack by the door the slip into bed next to him, wrapping yourself around his back and pressing your palms to his chest just to feel his heartbeat. it’s faint, but it’s steady and rhythmic. ba-dump. ba-dump. ba-dump.

sometimes, atsumu’s his usual, lively self, cracking bad jokes and poking fun at you. his smiling face has come to be your favorite picture. on these days, you bring him a hot chocolate from the coffee shop and split it with him, kissing off the whipped cream that finds its way onto his lips. he still likes to play chess, and, though he won’t admit it, you’ve been getting better. one day, you beat him, two games to one.

there are solemn, quiet times, and there are bright, cheerful times, but you savor all of them. every moment spent with atsumu is valuable in your book. occasionally, you’ll go with him out into the hospital garden, into the warmth of the sun. every so often he’ll stop, lean on you to catch his breath, but he never complains.

“look,” he’ll say instead, pointing at a vine of jasmine, or a single daisy swaying in the breeze. “almost as pretty as you.”

one day, as you’re leaving atsumu’s room, you run into his doctor in the hall.

“keep your chin up,” she says, straightening her glasses. “it’s possible he could still recover. strong young men often do.”

you nod slowly. “is he going to need a transplant?”

“well,” says the doctor, clicking on her pen absentmindedly. “if it gets any worse, yes. but i’m going to be honest with you — it’s unlikely we’ll find a donation with both a matching blood type and in good condition.”

“ah.”

“so just hope for the best.” she slips into his room before you can say another word, leaving you to lean heavily against the wall, staring at nothing in particular. miracles happen every day, you remind yourself. there’s no reason atsumu shouldn’t be the recipient of one.

“hey,” atsumu says. he whispers your name with an unusual tenderness. “i have to talk to you.”

it’s been five months since you first met atsumu on a clinical, and it’s been three months since he began to call you his girlfriend. you lace your fingers between his, giving his hand a light squeeze. “yeah, ‘tsumu?”

he takes a deep, shuddering breath. “i don’t think i’m going to… be here much longer.”

“no,” you say, chest tightening. “don’t say that. you’re gonna be fine.”

“sweetheart,” he says, voice low. he takes your chin and firmly turns your head to look at him. “i’m sorry. you know i am. i just… i’m sick. it’s hard to think straight sometimes, so i just wanted to tell you before i can’t anymore.”

“tell me what?” you ask, voice barely above a whisper.

“tell you that i love you.”

“atsumu,” you breathe. a frustrated tear finds its way down your cheek. “i… i love you, too. but please… just hang on. they’ll find a donor. they have to.”

“they might not,” he says, and he smiles, pulling you close. you knot your hands in the front of his t-shirt, pressing your face to his chest. “don’t cry. i’m just going to go live in the stars, right? like the little prince.”

there’s so many things you want to say, like, you nerd, can’t believe you’re making literary allusions or shut up, asshole, or i’ll miss you if you do, but you say nothing, because if you open your mouth you’re sure you’ll just sob.

“don’t cry,” he says again, but he’s crying, and you lift your face to see the tears streaming. “i love you.”

your throat is too thick to say it back, but he sees it in your eyes. i love you, too.

you spend the rest of the night with him before leaving at a little past 2am, and the next morning, you get a text from osamu.

he’s gone.

you don’t cry at the funeral. it’s small, just his family, a group of close friends, and you. you don’t look in the casket, either, because you want to remember his smile, and empty bodies don’t. you sip on a paper cup of water and lean against a wall, where osamu finds you.

“hey,” he says, and you nod in return. “he left this for you.”

you take the letter from him, and after he gives your shoulder a squeeze and heads back to his parents, you tear it open.

hey, you. i’m writing this two months after you first came into my room in that god-awful set of scrubs. right now, you’re napping in the chair near my bed. you look cute. we had our first kiss last week, and i’m still walking on air. fuck, that sounds dorky. oh, well. guess i’m a dork. only for you, though.

anyways, if you’re reading this, it’s because i’ve died. whoop-dee-doo. i’ve moved on to the great beyond. i’ve fallen past the veil. whatever it is you nerds like to say. there are probably things i’m going to say to you in the next few months that are a little more… intimate, i guess? but i wanted to tell you this while it’s still fresh in my mind: you’ve honest-to-goodness saved my life. i mean, it might not go on for much longer, sure, but you really have, in a way. being sick is weird. it makes you a lot more sensitive to miracles.

you start. you don’t remember ever talking to atsumu about miracles.

someone from the outside might look at me and call me unlucky, but i feel pretty damn lucky right now. meeting you was without a doubt a miracle, and if i never got sick, it never would’ve happened. take that as you will, i guess. all i know is i’m not angry at god, even though maybe i should be. i mean, i’m still not sure he’s even out there. but there’s gotta be something, or someone, because how the fuck else could i have possibly recieved something so… great? i sure as hell never did something to deserve it. (god, i sound stupid. but it’s just hard to chalk up to coincidence.)

anyways, i love you. not sure i’ll ever get the guts to say that out loud, so i’m saying it here. i love you, and i hope you love me, too.

- atsumu

“i do,” you whisper. “i do.”

on your way home, you stop at the convenience store for a bottled water, and the little orange cat comes out and winds itself around your leg, purring.

“hey, ‘tsumu,” you say, squatting down to scratch its head. “fancy a game of chess?”

it meows back.

“yeah?” your eyes grow wet, and you wipe them on the sleeve of your sweater. “wanna come home with me?”

it meows again, and this time, you break out into full scale crying. you’re not sure if you’re imagining it, but you think you can see a tear in the cat’s eye, too.

he follows you home, and the next day, you purchase a water dish, a big bag of cat food, and a blue collar. (blue was atsumu’s favorite color.)

three years later.

“honey?”

“yeah?”

your husband comes out from the hall, buttoning up his shirt. “you almost ready to go?”

“almost, ‘samu,” you say, slipping on a bracelet. your hands are shaking, and he notices it, too. today’s the third anniversary of atsumu’s death, and it’s also the date of osamu’s first big press conference. “he’d be so proud of you, you know.”

osamu smiles. “he would. he’d be proud of you, too.”

you laugh. “what for? for marrying his little brother?”

“no, he’d probably be kind of pissed at me,” osamu jokes, before coming to stand behind you. he wraps his hands around your waist. “he’d be proud of you for finding happiness, i think.”

“i am happy,” you say, tilting your head as osamu presses a kiss to your temples. there’s a beat of silence. “but i miss him.”

“i do, too.” osamu rests his chin on your head. “he probably misses us.”

“mm,” you say. “i think he might be having too much fun for that, actually.”

“maybe,” says osamu, and he leans forward to grab the keys from the counter. “i’m gonna go heat up the car, okay?”

“sounds good,” you say, as the cat dashes into the room with a meow. a nameplate that reads ‘tsumu’ dangles from his collar. “oh, hey kitty. i forgot to feed you. i’ll be out in a minute!”

after you fill the cat’s dish and pull on a cardigan over your dress, you slip outside, shivering in the night air. the sky is clear and full of stars, and as you walk to the car, you crane your neck up to see.

“hope you’re doing well, ‘tsumu,” you whisper to the gleaming constellations.

you still have things you want to say to him, even after all these years. you want to ask him how the weather in the cosmos is, and if the fruit salad is better up there. you want to ask if he’s read any good books lately, or if he’s seen how great osamu’s serve has gotten recently. you want to laugh with him.

most of all, though, you want to let him know that he was your miracle, too.

#haikyuu!!#haikyuu #haikyuu headcanons #haikyuu fanfiction #atsumu #atsumu miya #miya atsumu #miya atsumu x reader #atsumu miya x reader

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goodlucktai · 3 years ago

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Prompt 33 just screams protective nishimura so could you write that please and thankyou 🌸

PROMPTS LIST

33. “Are you SURE I can’t punch him in the face?” “Yes.” “What if I just break his nose a little?”

i got several requests for this one, specifically with nishimura (and a few, even more specifically, with nishinatsu). you guys really know my brand 😌🌼

Kitamoto warned him, but Tanuma was still unprepared.

He's got one arm looped around Natsume's shoulders, something that happened almost entirely involuntarily, and the other is clutching Nyanko-sensei against his chest because the cat's ears are lying back and his claws are pricking through Tanuma's sleeve in an alarming way.

This leaves no hands free to corral Nishimura, and Tanuma thinks he's going to need about three more to do that anyway.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Nishimura is raging, too loud, attracting eyes from all directions. "Who the-- who do you-- who are you? The prime minister? Is this your private property? Do you own this park?"

The unfamiliar boy they bumped into is nearly a head taller than Nishimura but he seems almost cowed by him-- appropriately so, Tanuma thinks fairly, because if he were on the receiving end of this tirade, in a public space, he probably would have started crying by now. An honest assessment.

"I'm asking who you are," Nishimura all but shouts, when the boy in front of him takes more than one second to respond. "What is your name? Do you have an identity?"

"I'm-- my name is Yoshida. I know the fr-- the guy behind you. We were classmates. That's all."

"Oh, is that all," Nishimura says. It's clearly not all.

Yoshida's eyes flick past Nishimura, just for a second, but it's enough to make Natsume twitch. Tanuma doesn't miss it, since Natsume is still tucked snugly beneath his arm. Nishimura doesn't miss it either, because Nishimura is in this heightened state of pissed off that Tanuma has never witnessed before.

He snaps his fingers, says, "What's wrong with you? Don't you know it's rude not to look at someone when they're talking to you?"

It's amazing he doesn't choke on that piece of hypocrisy.

"So you used to know Natsume or whatever, and somehow, in your mind, that translates to... literally attacking him out of nowhere?"

"Nishimura," Natsume says. It's the tone of someone burdened with an impossible task, like stopping a runaway train before it crashes with nothing but his bare hands and hopeful intentions. "He didn't attack me."

Nishimura whirls around and points at him (rudely). "You be quiet! He attacked you!"

"He pushed me. I fell down. That's not an attack."

"That's literally assault! That's-- " He pats at his pockets, clearly looking for the cellphone that he shoved into Tanuma's bag two hours ago, after it died taking roughly one million pictures of the cat at the train station. "Tanuma, Google the Penal Code!"

"I'm not going to do that," Tanuma says gently.

Kitamoto did warn him. He wanted to stay home with his dad this weekend, and urged them to go visit Yuuki without him, but the second the others were distracted, he snagged Tanuma by the sleeve and drew him aside.

"I won't be there, so if something happens, it's up to you," he said. His tone was so serious and grave that for a second Tanuma thought they were talking about the yokai situation and he had absolutely no idea how to process that. And then Kitamoto added, "Nishimura tends to go off the rails a bit when someone's mean to one of his friends. I mean, you've seen it. I just really don't want my best friend getting arrested for disturbing the peace while I'm not around."

So, that was a warning. Looking back, Tanuma should have taken it to heart.

Nishimura is Tanuma's smallest friend, an inch or so shorter than Taki now, but only in stature. If he were as big as all his caring, he would tower over cities. He's right now shouting down someone much larger than he is, without an ounce of sense or self-preservation.

This is the same boy who steals out of Natsume's bento at lunch, and makes faces behind Tsuji's back when he's lecturing them about passing notes during class, and gets into heated arguments with Isamu over the TV Guide literally every time they have a sleepover at Taki's house.

And it's the same boy who taught Natsume how to swim, one sunny August day almost two years ago now, at the river because Natsume was afraid to go into the pool. The same boy who has coaxed Tanuma through more than one panic attack, his hands a familiar shape around Tanuma's own at this point.

His caring is loud, Tanuma thinks. Even when it's quiet.

A few passersby have stopped, lingering nearby like they're going to get involved, and clearly it's making Yoshida feel outnumbered. The fight went out of him about three seconds after Nishimura started yelling in the first place, so all the rest of it has maybe been a bit overkill.

"So, is he just going to keep going? Like, until he runs out of breath?" Yoshida's friend asks.

She's been standing quietly to one side this entire time. Her face had folded with disapproval when Yoshida initially pushed Natsume down, but no one had a second to get a word in edgewise before Nishimura exploded about it, and now she simply looks as though this is the best punishment for her friend that she could have hoped for.

"Um, probably," Natsume says. He's unfamiliar with her, but she smiles at him.

"I only transferred here last year," she says. "And I don't listen to gossip. And anyway, with friends like these, those rumors about you couldn't possibly be true."

Her whole demeanor is calm and self-assured. She reminds Tanuma of Tsuji, and similarly, Natsume's guard seems to relent. He smiles back at her.

This leaves Tanuma free to step away without feeling as though he's abandoning him. With Nyanko-sensei in the crook of his arm, he reaches out and draws Nishimura back by the hood of his jacket, the way he's seen Taki and Kitamoto do one hundred times a day since they were fourteen.

Nishimura squawks in outrage, and struggles against Tanuma's grip, but... well, he's little. And Tanuma has been back in karate for the past year, give or take, so his core strength is fairly solid. It only takes a small amount of effort to reel Nishimura back and tuck him under his arm.

This is better. He feels his heart start to settle. Right here, Nishimura can't fly off the handle any more than he already has, and Tanuma can keep him from getting hurt.

“Are you sure I can’t punch him in the face?” Nishimura seethes.

“Yes,” Natsume says quickly.

“What if I just break his nose a little?”

“Satchan,” Tanuma tries, and that, at least, gets Nishimura to stew quietly for a moment instead. “You’ve made your point. I’m sure Yashido is sorry.”

"He is very sorry," Yoshida's friend says peacefully. "He'll be especially sorry once I tell his mom that her only son acted like a stupid bully. Let's go, Hiroo, before you get beat up."

She bows politely, and then carts Yoshida away. Yoshida, if anything, looks relieved to have an out, and retreats without so much as a backwards glance.

"Ugh," Nishimura says. He isn't even winded. "Ugh! Just wait till I tell Kitamoto about that creep! He'll wish he'd been here!"

Kitamoto, who is basically a modern-day prophet, will definitely wish he had been here, though not for the same reasons Nishimura seems to be thinking of. Tanuma needs to reevaluate a lot of the conversations they've had in the past. How many times has Kitamoto said something like "they almost called the cops on us" totally offhand and actually meant it?

"You're insane," Natsume says the second they're alone again. There's a mark on his cheek from where he hit the ground that will be a bruise tomorrow. When their friends see that, they'll all be quick to side with Nishimura over this, so it's important that they get as much scolding in now as possible. "I don't want you picking fights like that, okay? What if it had gone differently, and he'd hit you or something?"

"Good," Nishimura says hotly. "Then our faces would match."

This remark disarms Natsume completely, and his expression turns warm and affectionate. Nyanko-sensei makes a noise that is almost a laugh. His eyes are slitted in something like approval. Kitamoto's warning of "it's up to you" rings loudly in Tanuma's ears. Okay.

He gives Nishimura a gentle shake with the arm still curled around his shoulders, and stands firm when Nishimura looks up at him.

Or, well. Almost stands firm. He does try. He'll tell Kitamoto he tried.

"Come to karate with me next week," he says. "If you're going to pick fights with people twice your size, at least be able to back it up."

Nishimura's face lights up. If he hadn’t been there to see it for himself, Tanuma never would have guessed what he'd been doing one minute ago. This is the boy who dozes off on Natsume’s shoulder during long train rides, who complains about Nyanko-sensei stealing his food but still slips him treats beneath the table anyway, who is delighted just by the idea of spending extra time with Tanuma after school.

"Definitely! No take-backs!" he announces, thrilled. "Just wait till I tell Acchan!"

Natsume gives Tanuma a sympathetic look. Tanuma decides then and there that the next time Kitamoto stays home, he's staying home, too.

#natsume yuujinchou #natsuyuu #tanuma kaname #nishimura satoru #natsume takashi #my writing #prompt #anonymous #natsuyuu fic #owl i blame you for making me obsessed with tanuma + karate #this one was fun ! bless everyone who requests nishi content from me #EDIT BECAUSE I SOMEHOW LEFT OUT THE DIALOGUE FROM THE ACTUAL PROMPT DGDJGHSDGSGJHSJ #everyone pretend that didnt happen ok thank u

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omgkatsudonplease · 4 years ago

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I watched Mignonnes so you don't have to, if you were at all discomfited by the way Netflix's marketing decided to sexualise children in a film critiquing the sexualisation of children.

SPOILERS BELOW

The film is about how both hyperliberal and hyperconservative cultures force girls to grow up too fast. Amy is a first-gen immigrant from Senegal. Her family's culture tells girls they are marriageable once they get their first period, and in anticipation of that she is expected to know how to prepare an entire wedding feast and provide for her two younger brothers.

Amy is disenchanted from this culture when she finds out her dad back in Senegal has married another woman. He will be bringing her to France with him and they will live in the same apartment. Amy's mom tries to put on a brave face and accept it, but it is obvious this move is humiliating for her. Amy's excitement for her dad turns into anger, compounded by her alienation and isolation at school.

The Mignonnes are a dance clique of 4 French girls who are clearly better adjusted to Western culture than Amy. Their ringleader lives in Amy's apartment complex and Amy is clearly enchanted with her because of the way she dances. She wants to be friends with the Mignonnes, but they bully and tease her. So in an attempt to win their approval, Amy learns the dance routine they are practicing for a local competition.

(The infamous "OMG NAKED BOOBIES ON A CHILD" shot is a blink and you'll miss it moment on a music video posted by a rival dance group. The incident is treated like a wardrobe malfunction, the girl quickly covers up, and the camera cuts away. Also, breasts aren't inherently sexual in France so a lot of the morality screaming is really American puritanism at play.)

The girls' antics are rebuffed by the older boys and men they interact with. One such moment is when the girls catfish an older teenager, but when one of them turns on the camera, the boy is visibly uncomfortable and tells them to fuck off. This leads to the girl who turned on the camera to be outcast from the group, which is Amy's avenue into the group. To secure her place, she offers to teach the other girls how to twerk.

This is where the film's dances become more notably uncomfortable. I can tell why people are upset about the sexualisation of children based on only these scenes from the film, but within the context of the film they are treated as a dangerous addiction that is destroying Amy's dignity. She acts more and more "mature" in an attempt to gain the approval of the Mignonnes. In these subsequent dance scenes the camera mimics the angles from a music video, but the child subjects make the overall scene grotesque and uncomfortable.

There is a scene where Amy is pantsed in a fight. This is when she is desperately trying to look "more mature", so the revelation that she still wears "kids' granny panties" is humiliating for her. Once again, the shot is really quick, in the context of a fight, and the Mignonnes come to her rescue quickly. This moment is the tipping point where Amy's outside activity seeps back into her home. She steals her mom's wallet so she and the Mignonnes can go on a shopping spree for more ~mature~ underwear.

Since Amy is in a lower-income first-gen immigrant family, she doesn't have her own smartphone. The girls at her school do, though, so she steals her cousin's smartphone. This is also part of her attempts to become accepted by her peers -- that phone is her first foray into hypersexualised Western online culture and part of her first major interaction with the Mignonnes. It is also part of the worst thing she does: post an inappropriate photo of herself online.

The film clearly shows her reasoning for doing so: she is deep in social media at this point and needs more and more provocative actions to score the same high. The Mignonnes were humiliated by the pantsing incident and need something to show they're "not kids" (even though they are). Amy doesn't know it's inappropriate to post that kind of photo online. She does it anyway. And she is punished by both her home culture and Western culture for doing it.

There is a scene here where her mother and auntie sprinkle her with water, presumably to purify her from her sins. Amy becomes overwhelmed with some sort of emotion and starts half-twerking in front of them. The camera circles her entire body when she does so. It really makes her look possessed, which is why her mother calls in an imam (I think?) to check her for demons. The man tells her mother there are none, and reminds her that she is free to divorce her husband if she cannot bear the stress and humiliation of this impending wedding. "God does not burden women with more than they can bear," he says, making a clear distinction between Islam as a religion, and Islam as a tool used by a patriarchal culture to force the submission of women.

Amy is also rejected from the Mignonnes (and they welcome the other girl back in). They tell her she acted like a slut and ruined their reputation, completely uncaring that they were responsible for her actions up to this point. The line is clearly: you can twerk and lick your finger and bite your lips and do all the other stuff that the women in music videos do, but you cannot post nudes. Amy doesn't know that's the line. She tries to justify her actions and is only pushed away by the other girls.

(I should also mention, the actual action of her taking the pictures does not show you anything. The camera keeps itself above the belt outside of dance scenes. You know what she's doing based on the glow of the phone screen and the tops of her knees. You never see the photo itself, either. That, to me, tells me more about the film's treatment of these kids more than the dance scenes.)

So with this further isolation from both of her cultures, Amy grows increasingly desperate. On the day of her dad's arrival and wedding, she tries to push her way back into the Mignonnes for their final dance. This feels like an act of self-harm at this point, but Amy needs that high of having friends and getting approval (since she's not getting any of it at home). The dance is horrifically provocative, and many people in the audience are uncomfortable. The fact that Netflix decided to focus on this scene in their marketing campaign subverts the entire point of the film, since anyone who only watches the trailer would not know Amy was self-harming by dancing like this at this point.

Amy receives an awakening in the middle of the dance. She realises this is also not what she wants to do -- she doesn't want to be viewed as a prospective wife OR a prospective whore. So she runs off, rejecting the Mignonnes.

(There is a scene earlier on when Amy gets her first period and the auntie tells her that she herself had been engaged at Amy's age, and after she got her first period she had only a couple more years before she was properly married. Also the second wife is heavily implied to be only a couple years older than Amy. This is not framed in the context of Islam but rather in the context of Amy's family's culture.)

In the end, however, Amy manages to find a middle ground between her two cultures, and rejects the expectation from both for girls to become women before they're ready to. She rejects both the hyperfeminine dress sent from Senegal for her dad's wedding as well as the risque dance outfit, and dresses like a kid to go jump rope with other kids in the neighborhood. When she finally gets to act like a kid, she is happy.

I could honestly say more about the film's use of that dress from Senegal as a magical realism plot point, the relationship between Amy and her mother, and how the camera is a stand-in for Amy's mental processes and perceptions. But given the current puritan fervour on the Internet about how the film is "paedobait" I felt obliged to write up the film so people can be aware of how the subject is actually handled in the film itself and make their own judgement as to whether or not to watch it. I personally thought it was more evocative of the immigrant experience; I remember making many of Amy's mistakes when I was growing up (but thankfully mostly not offline, lmao).

So: are the dance scenes disturbing? Yes. That's the point. I would be more concerned if you were NOT disturbed by the dances. Is the film sexualising the kids? I personally think this is an example of depiction =/= endorsement. Would creeps use the dance scenes for their own ends? Yes, but creeps also used to use innocent YouTube videos of kids doing gymnastics and ballet or playing at the beach, which is why all YouTube videos for kids now have comments disabled. So dogpiling a woman of colour for talking about her own experience through film, accusing her of being a paedophile, and sending her death threats is incredibly excessive.

Also, the original accusation of this film being paedobait originated from 4ch*n, a known internet cesspool of racist paedophiles, so really. Are we really going to take 4ch*n at their word. Do your research, everyone.

#cuties #mignonnes #tw: gendered slurs #reviews

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knuffled · 4 years ago

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Just Practice - Chapter 17

here’s the ao3 link

The hospital garden was nestled along the northern side of the building and overlooked a small pond. Perhaps it was too generous to call it a garden. In reality, it was only a few flower beds of orchids and lilacs stowed carefully in terracotta pots. When the weather was nice, the patients would often spend some time there on the benches to get some fresh air. It wasn’t much but it definitely beat being cooped up in a hospital room with that stale, sterilized air that always made her feel more like a laboratory specimen than a human being.

After her surgery, Annabeth was allowed to visit the garden provided she went in a wheelchair to avoid agitating her knee. The doctor’s initial diagnosis had proven to be accurate once they ran some imaging tests on her: it was, in fact, a torn ACL. Annabeth had suspected as much, and she opted to get it operated on sooner than later. The surgery had gone quite well, actually. She had been lucky enough to only suffer a partial tear, according to her doctor. If she had suffered a complete tear, it could have possibly made both surgery and her subsequent recovery much more difficult.

Nonetheless, Annabeth didn’t feel particularly lucky. Honestly, in the week that she spent at the hospital, she hardly felt anything at all. Just numb. Her physical therapy sessions were the only things she had to look forward to in order to get her mind off of things. Otherwise, she was mainly stuck confined to her bed with her leg suspended in that god awful brace. Piper had brought her some novels to occupy her time, but Annabeth couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to anything she read.

Today was the first day the weather had been clear enough to head outside, and Annabeth had jumped at the chance to get out of her stuffy hospital room as soon as she could. She sat outside staring at the pond with her brain turned off, watching ducks glide across the water’s surface and preen their feathers.

Within another day or two she would be discharged from the hospital and would have to head back home, but she really didn’t want to. Her father had dropped by the day after her injury, but his visit was practically a formality. He had stayed for all of five minutes, only making sure she wasn’t dead really, before he left. On top of every other shitty thing that had happened to her recently, his visit only served to rub salt in the wound.

Sometime mid-afternoon, one of the orderlies told her that she had a visitor. Annabeth had been expecting Piper or Jason, but she was surprised to see Reyna approach her instead.

Reyna gave her a small wave, her hand hidden in the sleeve of her purple sweatshirt. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Annabeth said, blinking. “Fancy seeing you here.”

Reyna shifted on her heels. “I’m not intruding am I?”

“Funnily enough, my schedule is quite free these days,” Annabeth said lightly.

That managed to get the corner of Reyna’s lips to tug upwards. “Glad to see your injury hasn’t done anything to change your god-awful sense of humor.”

“It’s quite bad mannered to bully the infirm, you know,” Annabeth sniffed.

Reyna rolled her eyes and sat down at the bench beside Annabeth. “How’s your leg doing?”

Annabeth sighed and said, “It’s recovering. Just got surgery done a few days ago.”

“Surgery?” Reyna frowned.

Annabeth nodded. “Turns out I tore my ACL.”

Reyna grimaced and said, “Jeez, I’m sorry to hear that.”

“The doctors said that I’m lucky it was only a partial tear,” Annabeth said, smiling weakly. “But I don’t feel particularly lucky.”

“D-Did they say anything about how long it’ll take for you to make a full recovery?” Reyna asked hesitantly.

“They were pretty wishy-washy about it,” Annabeth said, shrugging. “Guessing they don’t want to be liable for being wrong. Only estimate they gave me was that I could walk normally in about two weeks or so. After that, depends on how well I respond to physical therapy.”

Reyna was silent for a while before she said, “Meet me at the college circuit someday. I’ll be waiting there for you. And then we can finally settle things.”

Annabeth picked at the hem of her shirt with a wan smile. “What’s there to settle? I haven’t beat you a single time. There’s a clear winner here, and it sure isn’t me.”

“You of all people should know you’re only as good as your last race,” Reyna said. “People in our sport can never afford to rest on their laurels.”

When Annabeth was silent, Reyna quietly said, “You look like you’ve already given up.”

Reyna’s words stung and made Annabeth recoil. “I’m sick of giving myself false hope.”

“The way I see it, hope has nothing to do with it. The only question is if you still want to try. If you still want to compete, then you’ll keep pushing until you find a way through,” Reyna said, shrugging.

“Now, I’m not here to tell you whether you should keep going or not. That’s up to you. But don’t hide behind hope as an excuse. If you want to stop, then own it.”

Annabeth stared at her lap for a while and said, “I- I don’t know. I need more time to think about it.”

Reyna nodded and said, “I don’t blame you. It’s a big decision.”

There was another pause before Annabeth cleared her throat and said, “I never got a chance to apologize. For what happened at the meet, I mean.”

Reyna furrowed her brow. “What is there to apologize for?”

Annabeth dug her fingernails into her palms. “I cost you the race. If it weren’t for me, you would have won state and placed nationally.”

“From what I recall, a certain someone was screaming at me to let her go because I was, and I quote, ‘throwing the fucking race’,” Reyna said dryly.

“Sorry about that,” Annabeth mumbled.

Reyna gave her a smile and said, “You have nothing to blame yourself for, Annabeth. It was my choice to stay and help you.”

A lump formed in Annabeth’s throat. “But why though? Why did you help me?”

“I already told you,” Reyna said, mock-exasperatedly. “Because we’re friends.”

“And that was enough of a reason?”

“There are more important things than high school cross country races, Annabeth,” Reyna said simply.

Annabeth bit her lower lip and struggled to wrap her head around Reyna’s answer. They were friends, but not so close that it made sense for her to abandon the championship for her sake. Maybe Reyna was just like that with people she deemed friends or perhaps it was just a decision made in the heat of the moment.

“And you don’t resent me or anything for it?” Annabeth asked.

“Not one bit,” Reyna said firmly. “I would do it again if I had to. I’m sure you would have done the same for me.”

“You think too highly of me,” Annabeth said quietly. “But thank you.”

Reyna raised an eyebrow and said, “So you would have left me lying in the mud with a fucked up leg just to a win a race then?”

Annabeth paused and said, “Well, when you put it that way, I suppose not.”

“See? Told you: there are more important things,” Reyna said, smiling. “Besides, I don’t want you using your injury as an excuse for when I inevitably kick your ass.”

That got a watery laugh out of Annabeth. “I’m just glad you don’t hate me.”

Reyna rolled her eyes fondly. “Of course not.”

Annabeth hid a smile and stared up at the clear, blue sky for a while before something occurred to her. “How did you know where to find me?”

“Percy told me,” Reyna said, shrugging.

Annabeth furrowed her brow and said, “You have his number?”

“No, we just happened to run into each other somewhere, and I got a chance to ask him.”

Annabeth’s heart beat faster in her chest. “D-Did he say anything else to you?”

Reyna shook her head. “No, but he looked like a mess though. Did something happen?”

Annabeth nodded and felt a lump form in her throat. Slowly, she told Reyna about everything that had unfolded after she had left her with Percy. Reyna listened quietly and intently the entire time that Annabeth spoke, but Annabeth couldn’t tell what she was thinking.

Annabeth finished by saying, “I know I shouldn’t have cornered him like that just because I was so angry about my knee, especially the whole confession thing, but at the same time, I can’t help being frustrated that he still refused to open up, right to the very end.”

When Reyna was silent, Annabeth looked at her and said, “You once said that you thought he lied all the time about how he felt and what he wanted. Is this what you meant?”

“Not exactly,” Reyna admitted. “I thought it was something more malicious, but after seeing how he is around you, it’s obvious how much he cares for you.”

“If he does,” Annabeth said softly, “it’s not in a way that I understand.”

“You’re not alone in feeling that way, I would imagine,” Reyna said. “We all have different ideas of what it means to love and be loved, and sometimes those ideas don’t match up.”

“And there’s nothing we can do about that then?” Annabeth asked.

Reyna shook her head. “No, it just means you both need to talk to about your needs. It’s not wrong to teach someone how to love you the way you need them to.”

“I would if he bothered to listen,” Annabeth said tersely.

“Really? From what you’ve told me about him, he seems to listen to you a great deal,” Reyna said, sounding surprised.

Annabeth worried her lower lip and hesitantly said, “I mean, yeah, I guess that’s accurate. But there’s still something that gets in the way, and I don’t know what it is.”

“I said this before, but it seems like he’s holding something back,” Reyna said. “Not in the way one hides secrets, but in the way you shoulder a burden, quietly and without complaint. Maybe it’s just that over time that weight has become too much to bear.”

Reyna’s words instantly struck a chord in her, even though she hadn’t fully processed them yet.

A wry smile danced on Reyna’s lips. “Reminds me a lot of my sister. Something about how sad their eyes look.”

Annabeth blinked in surprise - she had always pegged Reyna as an only child. “Wait, you have a sister?”

Reyna nodded and said, “Yeah, seven years older than me. Her name’s Hylla.”

She looked like she had more to say, so Annabeth remained silent and watched her. Reyna buried her hands in the pockets of her sweatshirt and stared up at the sky with a sigh.

“My dad was a physically abusive piece of shit growing up, so much so that my mother left him. Unfortunately, she didn’t bother to take us with her, for whatever reason, so we had to fend for ourselves. As the older sibling, Hylla took it upon herself to protect me until she was old enough to move out and take me with her,” Reyna said.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry to hear that,” Annabeth said quietly.

“It’s whatever. We’re fine now, for the most part,” Reyna said, shrugging. “But sometimes I can tell that it still eats at Hylla. It wouldn’t be that big a deal, but she has a hard time opening up or putting herself first. Over the years, I’ve tried my best to help her through it, but it’s something she still struggles with.”

“Eventually, I realized that there was really nothing I could do,” Reyna said, pursing her lips. “So instead I swore to myself that I would be open and straight-forward about everything, in the hopes that maybe if I could show her there was another way, it might change something. And who knows, maybe it’s all for nothing, but at least I am being true to myself and honest about what I want.”

Reyna traced the lines on her palm and swallowed thickly. “But it’s really tough. People think it’s easy and assume nothing scares me but they’re wrong. I’m terrified, like all the time, but seeing how much it tears away at my sister, keeping everything locked up inside, I— I don’t ever want to live that way.”

“I think you’re amazing,” Annabeth said softly. “I can’t begin to imagine how much courage that takes.”

Reyna gave her a smile and said, “Thanks. That means a lot.”

Annabeth shook her head. “I should be the one thanking you, for sharing all of this.”

“It’s no problem. I only brought it up because your situation reminded me of my sister and I. Maybe I’m totally off base about that, I don’t know,” Reyna said.

“No, um, it was definitely helpful,” Annabeth said.

Reyna took Annabeth’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “You still look conflicted.”

Annabeth laughed breathlessly and shrugged. “I-I don’t know. I guess I’m still having a hard time accepting that we’re even in this situation. It just hurts to find out that I didn’t know him anywhere near as well as I thought I did.”

“Why does that have to hurt?” Reyna asked. “What is it that troubles you so much?”

Annabeth had to pause and really think about Reyna’s question because nothing immediately came to mind. It was only now that she realized that it was actually kind of strange that she was so distraught about this to begin with. It wasn’t like there was anything particularly awful about the situation. After all, this sort of thing was totally common, but it still seemed to profoundly unsettle her all the same. She was just having a hard time understanding why that was the case.

“It’s hard to say,” Annabeth admitted. “I think it’s because Percy’s the only person in my life that I have ever truly been able to rely on, and finding out that I don’t fully know him scares me. If I don’t know him, utterly and completely, then how can I count on him? It just makes me feel really insecure, like this is all a house of cards that could come tumbling down at any moment.”

Reyna sighed and said, “I don’t know. I just think knowing someone is a pretty impossible standard to set for yourself.”

Annabeth furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”

“Well, in my experience, a person isn’t something to be known like a fact in a book,” Reyna said. “The human heart isn’t something quite so definitive. A person is always ever in the process of unraveling, constantly revealing themselves moment by moment, piece by piece. None of us ever really knows one another, but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is the effort we make to know one another, not whether we succeed. That’s all that love is: finding someone that you make the effort to know, to discover and rediscover, over and over again. And they do the same for you.”

“But then how can we ever trust anyone?” Annabeth asked desperately.

“You take a leap of faith,” Reyna said simply. “I wish I could say there was some trick to never having your trust broken but that’s not possible. Trust, by its very nature, is a brittle thing, but that’s also what makes it worth anything. The only reason trust holds any value at all is because it is something that needs to be earned.”

Reyna’s words made Annabeth recall what Percy had told her atop Aspen Peak. She hadn’t fully understood what he had meant at the time, but now she realized that there was a power to vulnerability that she didn’t know existed. It was a paradox but only by opening herself to heartbreak could she ever find what she was looking for: something permanent.

Annabeth managed a half-smile and said, “Percy told me it was like letting someone touch your heart with their hands and praying they didn’t crush it between their fingers, but that it was something we needed to do anyways.”

“That’s a pretty good way to put it,” Reyna laughed.

Annabeth sighed and said, “Would be nice if relationships weren’t so fucking complicated.”

“Agreed,” Reyna said, yawning. “I should probably get going. It’s getting late.”

Annabeth nodded. “Thanks again for visiting me and for the advice. It was really helpful.”

“And thank you for listening,” Reyna said, smiling.

“I hope someday I’ll be able to live as strongly as you do,” Annabeth said.

“You already live that way,” Reyna said, shrugging. “You just doubt yourself too much.”

Annabeth worried her lower lip and nodded. “Yeah, maybe you’re right.”

Reyna offered one final smile and said, “Guess I’ll head out then. Keep me posted about your leg and everything. When you can walk, we should hit up the batting cages again. Take your mind off things.”

“I’d like that,” Annabeth smiled.

“See you later, Annabeth.”

“You too, Reyna.”

Annabeth watched and waited for Reyna to leave before she sighed and headed back inside the hospital herself. She felt lighter for the first time in weeks. Reyna’s advice stuck in the back of her mind, and Annabeth took some time to digest it. She had a feeling it would help her figure out her path going forward.

:::

Piper came to pick her up on the day she was discharged from the hospital. By then, Annabeth could walk with the help of a brace that helped keep most of her weight off her knee, but she could only walk for a few minutes or so at most before the strain piled up and became too much. Piper leaned against the side of her car and watched Annabeth hobble over before she rushed in and gave Annabeth a hug.

“Didn’t realize you were so happy to see me,” Annabeth joked.

“Shut up,” Piper mumbled against her skin. “I’ve been worried sick about you.”

Annabeth swallowed thickly and whispered, “Thanks, Pipes.”

Piper pulled away and offered a gentle smile. “Ready to go then?”

“Yep.”

Piper opened the passenger’s side door for Annabeth and waited for Annabeth to take a seat before she did so as well. Annabeth rolled down the windows and relished in the late April breeze when it flowed across her face. Piper started the car and turned the radio on before she pulled out of the hospital parking lot and onto the interstate.

Once they were on their way, Annabeth turned to Piper and said, “You’re still okay with me staying with you right? I complete get if that’s not an option anymore.”

“No, you’re totally fine,” Piper assured her. “It’ll be nice to have some company. Besides, my place is too fucking big for only one person.”

“Your dad’s still away on a shoot then?” Annabeth asked.

Piper shrugged. “Probably. Didn’t bother asking.”

Annabeth nodded slowly and turned back to the window, but Piper looked at her and said, “Your parents aren’t going to flip out about this right?”

“Oh, I’m sure Helen will kick up a fuss, but that’s kind of par for the course,” Annabeth said.

“I’m all for it and everything, but have you really thought this through? I mean, leaving your family is a huge decision,” Piper said.

Annabeth gave her a significant look and said, “In all the time you’ve known me, when have I ever not thought things through?”

“Alright, fair point,” Piper admitted. “I’m still worried though.”

“I was going to have to leave for college anyways. This is basically only moving up the schedule. Besides, I’m pretty sure they’ll be glad to finally see me gone,” Annabeth said.

Piper grimaced and nodded. “I wish you didn’t have to go through all this. Especially now, with your leg and all.”

“It is what it is,” Annabeth said, shrugging.

They drove along in silence for a while before Piper glanced at her again and said, “I, uh, wanted to ask you about something unrelated.”

“Fire away.”

“I’m not sure if you know anything, but Percy has been acting really strange lately,” Piper said. “I’ve tried asking him about it, but he just smiles and says that it’s nothing.”

Annabeth sighed. She had been expecting this, but it was still rough now that it was finally here. Slowly, Annabeth began to explain the whole fake dating arrangement from the start of the school year and everything that had happened since then, culminating in their confrontation after her injury. Piper didn’t say so much as word, but Annabeth noticed the way her fingers tightened around the steering wheel so hard they drained of blood.

When she was done, Annabeth watched Piper with bated breath, waiting for the worst. Piper just exhaled forcefully and said, “Christ, what a mess.”

“I know,” Annabeth said mildly.

“So this whole time, you guys weren’t actually dating then? You were just lying about it?”

Annabeth hung her head and said, “Yeah, pretty much.”

Piper was quiet for a moment before she shook her head incredulously. “I mean, I knew something was up with how jittery you were about the whole dating thing, but I never expected this.”

“I’m sorry for not telling you sooner,” Annabeth said. “I was afraid you’d be mad at me.”

“Oh, I am mad at you. Furious, actually. But I’m equally as frustrated with Percy. As bad an idea as it was on your part, he should never have accepted. He knows better,” Piper said, fuming. “A pair of idiots, the both of you. What were you both thinking?”

“I’m sorry,” Annabeth said.

“Well, what’s done is done, I guess,” Piper sighed. “Honestly, maybe this what the both of you needed. Maybe now you’ll finally sort out your relationship.”

“Or maybe this is the end of it for good,” Annabeth said wryly.

“Love the optimism, babe.”

Annabeth huffed a laugh and said, “I’ll try my best to fix this, but I don’t know if I can.”

Piper was quiet for a while before she said, “Give it another shot. Maybe things will be different now that he’s had time to think about all this on his own too.”

“Yeah, you might be right,” Annabeth said.

There was another pause before Annabeth said, “You’re not gonna rescind your offer to let me crash with you, right?”

Piper snorted and said, “I have half a mind to, but I won’t. As stupid as you are, you’re still my best friend, and I’m not going to turn my back on you.”

“I don’t appreciate the insult, but thank you,” Annabeth said, smiling.

Piper glanced at her and jabbed her with her elbow. “Don’t look so happy with yourself or I might change my mind.”

“What, I’m not allowed to be happy that you called me your best friend?” Annabeth asked innocently.

Piper rolled her eyes and said, “Don’t try and schmooze your way out of this, you know what you’ve done. Especially, after that whole spiel about how you always think things through too.”

They pulled up in front of Annabeth’s house, and the brief levity in the air dissipated immediately. Annabeth set her jaw and took a deep breath, but her heart still beat faster in her chest anyways. Piper gave her a look of concern and squeezed her forearm.

“You sure you don’t want me to come with?” Piper whispered.

Annabeth shook her head. “No, this is something I need to do alone.”

Piper nodded but she still looked worried as Annabeth steadied herself and stepped out of the car. She hobbled to the front door and stepped inside with the spare key hidden beneath the flower pot. It was quiet inside the house, but the cars were still in the driveway so her father and step-mother had to be home. Annabeth pursed her lips and made her way upstairs to her room.

There was a suitcase hidden in her closet, and she pulled it out and opened it on the floor of her bedroom. She packed as many clothes as she could inside and stuffed her laptop, charger, phone charger, and water bottle inside her backpack. Once she was satisfied that she had everything prepared, she sat on her bed with a sigh.

Annabeth took a look around the room and felt a sudden rush of nostalgia wash over her. This was probably the last time she would ever come here, she mused. It was littered with all sorts of knick knacks and photos, posters and sketches. As much as she hated living in this house, this was the only place she could call her own. Leaving it almost felt like killing a part of herself off. Her step-mother would turn it into a storage room or something once she was gone, and soon there would be no trace that she had ever lived here. Something about that hurt, even though Annabeth knew it was for the best.

She stood up, feeling more than a little melancholy, and steeled her heart. There was still one last thing she needed to do. Annabeth put her luggage in the hallway and tentatively stepped into her father’s study. Thankfully, he wasn’t there. She riffled through the drawers of his desk in search of the old brown briefcase he stashed old letters in. It was always weird to her that he just kept letters, but he said he liked to have records in case companies tried to swindle him out of money. It was hidden away in some dark corner, and she dumped the contents onto the carpet.

There were hundreds of envelopes so it took her some time to sift through them all, but a few minutes later Annabeth’s worst fears were confirmed. There was an unopened letter addressed to her from Berkeley, dated October 4th.

That wasn’t the worst of it however.

There was another letter from Stanford. Northwestern. Duke. Cornell. Dartmouth. All dated from late September to early October. All unopened.

Annabeth had always felt something off about the fact that her Berkeley letter never reached her. She had dismissed it as a fluke but during her stay at the hospital it occurred to her that there could have been a more malevolent explanation. Seeing the letters now only confirmed her worst suspicions, but the sense of betrayal still hit her harder than she had anticipated.

She snatched the letters and stormed downstairs, as quickly as she could with her brace. Her father and step-mother were in the living room watching the news.

Helen blinked in surprise and said, “Annabeth? I didn’t know you were home from the hospital.”

Annabeth ignored her and held up the envelopes, her hands trembling. “What’s the meaning of this?”

“You’re going to have to be a little more specific, dear,” Helen said mildly.

“These are college letters. Addressed to me. Why did no one tell me?” Annabeth asked.

Helen shrugged and said, “I didn’t think they were important.”

Her excuse was so bad, it actually made Annabeth’s head hurt. “How could you not think that those might be important to your step-daughter, a senior in high school?”

A gleam of irritation flashed in Helen’s eyes. “You have been getting letters since junior year, and they always just asked you to apply, so I thought these were more of the same.”

“Let’s pretend for a moment that your terrible excuse is valid - you still should have shown me these,” Annabeth said.

“You’re still a child. Talk to your parents with respect,” Helen snapped.

Annabeth crossed her arms over her chest. “You literally lost me the chance to go to fucking Stanford, so you’ll have to forgive me for not having much respect for you.”

“Annabeth,” her father warned.

The smart thing to do would have been to drop it then and there. Nothing good could have come of this. The damage was already done. Continuing this would only make things worse.

Annabeth knew all this, but at that moment, she was filled with such uncontrolled rage, rage that had been built upon years upon years of horrid treatment from Helen and her father who couldn’t be bothered to care about the fact that his new wife routinely emotionally abused his first-born daughter, that she couldn’t bring herself to stop.

“She fucking knew this was important and she hid these from me anyways,” Annabeth snapped. “She’s so insecure about that fact that I’m more intelligent than her kids that she has to sabotage me.”

“Annabeth, that’s enough,” her father said sharply.

Annabeth turned to him and balled her hands in fists. “And you! You never say anything. You just let her treat me like absolute dogshit, and you don’t even care.”

“Young lady, you are so disrespectful that it honestly blows my mind,” Helen said coldly. “How you can accuse me of treating you poorly when you never bother to interact with the family and treat us like strangers is beyond me.”

“That’s rich coming from the person who couldn’t be bothered to visit her step-daughter once in the hospital,” Annabeth snorted.

A vein bulged on Helen’s forehead, and Annabeth knew she had her. “The reason I do my best to stay out of the house isn’t rocket science. From day one, you have done absolutely everything you can to make me feel unwelcome in this family-”

“Let me tell you something that you don’t seem to understand: no one is ruining your life, dear,” Helen interrupted. “You ruin things yourself and blame everyone else for it instead. You are just an ungrateful, spiteful little girl that does nothing but cause people pain.”

Annabeth stiffened like she’d been hit in the face with a shovel. Her thoughts turned to radio static and her chest squeezed so painfully that it was hard for her to breathe.

No words came to her.

Without meaning to, she turned to her father.

“D-Dad?” Annabeth asked, her voice cracking.

Annabeth wasn’t even sure what she was asking for, just that at that moment, she felt very much like she was seven years old again, asking him to check for monsters hiding in the closet. Back then she had taken it for granted that he would help her, that he would keep her safe. Suddenly, it made sense why she kept looking to him whenever Helen tormented her, even though she knew he would never come to her aid. She thought she had abandoned that hope a long time ago, but now Annabeth realized some small part of her had still held on to it, like someone tending to a dying flame.

Still, there was nothing that could prepare her for the silence in the living room at that moment as her father simply sat there, his lips pressed in a hard line, still not looking at her.

Annabeth forced herself to take a deep breath. She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t going to let Helen win this.

No, instead, Annabeth turned to her father and offered him a strained smile. “Since it is apparent that you aren’t going to say anything on my behalf, like always, I just wanted to tell you a few things before I left. And yes, I am leaving. I’m done living in this house, which should delight the both of you. I don’t know that would even worry you, but rest assured: I’ll figure things out on my own, like I always have.”

When Helen bristled at the accusation, Annabeth offered her a smile like poisoned honey and said, “Before you open your mouth, feel free to shut the fuck up. I’m talking to my father right now.”

Helen went red, but Annabeth stared her down, begging her to say something. Helen glanced at her father, but for whatever reason, he didn’t come to her aid this time. She shook her head incredulously and left the living room, leaving Annabeth alone with her father.

When she was gone, he looked at Annabeth for the first time and said, “You went too far.”

“I honestly don’t give a shit,” Annabeth said simply.

Her father opened his mouth to chastise her, undoubtedly, but Annabeth bulldozed on through.

“Don’t bother to defend her. I’ll be gone in a few minutes anyways, and then it won’t matter since you’ll never have to see me again. But until then, you are going to shut up and listen to me,” Annabeth said.

Her father pressed his mouth in a thin line, which Annabeth took as permission to keep going.

“I don’t know when or how things went so wrong between us. I still remember how it used to be, back when mom was still around,” Annabeth started.

“She’s gone, Annabeth,” he interrupted.

“Yeah, I fucking know, but you don’t seem to realize you weren’t the only one she left behind,” Annabeth yelled.

“She left me, too, you know? And you have punished me for that, every day since she left,” Annabeth said, her voice cracking.

Annabeth steadied herself before she got too emotional and shook her head. “But I want you to know something - I am proud to be my mother’s daughter. Despite your best efforts to make me feel otherwise, I will not apologize for that, for being here, for existing. And I’m done looking to you for help or safety or even acknowledgement given you’ve long since proven to be utterly incapable of that. And I want you to know that someday I’ll find people who love and accept me, and I won’t ever have to spare a second of my life thinking about you and how you made me feel. Someday, I’ll heal and you’ll be nothing more than a bad memory.”

With that, Annabeth left to retrieve her luggage from the hallway before he could respond and left the house for good. Piper was pacing around her car and rushed over to her once she heard the door open and threw her arms around her.

“Are you okay?” Piper asked. “It sounded pretty bad in there.”

“Yeah,” Annabeth said, nodding. “I finally let go of something I should have a long time ago.”

Piper studied her for a moment before nodding to herself. “Alright, looks like that’s settled then. Let’s go get something to eat!”

Annabeth raised an eyebrow. “You’re dropping it, just like that?”

“You look like you’ve got it figured out on your own,” Piper said, shrugging. “Besides, I can tell this is something I can’t really help you with anyways.”

Annabeth smiled despite herself and shook her head. “I never thought the day would come when Piper McLean would know when to let sleeping dogs lie.”

Piper rolled her eyes and stashed her luggage in her car trunk. “Don’t make me change my mind about letting you stay.”

“That’s an empty threat if I’ve ever heard one,” Annabeth said, sliding into the passenger seat.

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right,” Piper muttered.

“But seriously though,” Annabeth said, clearing her throat. “Thank you. For everything. It means more to me than I can say.”

“You’re welcome,” Piper said softly. “I’m happy for you. Leaving that hellhole was a long time coming. You definitely made the right call.”

“What happened to all the asking me if I was sure about it and stuff?” Annabeth asked.

“I’ve always wanted you to leave. I just didn’t want to influence your decision,” Piper said.

Annabeth was quiet for a moment and said, “You’re actually a really good friend, huh?”

Piper gave her a cheeky grin and started the car. “I’m offended that it took you so long to notice.”

#knuffled fic #just practice #percabeth fic #percabeth fluff #percabeth angst #annabeth chase #percy jackson

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