#again that is utterly incomprehensible to me bc like....

[pikslasrce]

i grew up in america and yea actually in a lot of areas, the major chains priced out the local businesses until they all shut down. there might be a local small business alternative to walmart for some things, for example a hardware supply store, but it’ll cost more and some people can’t afford to spend more even if they want to.

there are places called food deserts where there aren’t even grocery stores in a reasonable radius, but there is maybe a dollar general and it might have a very limited selection of unhealthy foods, and very rarely maybe even actual produce.

thats genuinely sad but i meant like .. starbucks/subway/fast food alternatives like.. yall dont have those?? again the question is rhetorical ik that your economy is built on franchise monocultures 😭

[daisychainsandbowties]

avatrice & books

// turning this into a whole post bc it got LONG. ty anon who asked these questions

who prefers audio and/or digital books over physical?

out of necessity they have a LOT of digital books. Cam actually dumps her whole contraband collection in Bea’s inbox while she & Ava are still en-route to Switzerland, so that Bea’s new phone lights up on the seat beside her & it’s the first thing that relaunches her brain like a crashed excel document, because Ava’s drooling onto the leg of her pants with her body curled up across two seats. all the lights in the train are down low, & she gets an email from Cam (on the OCS extranet) with the subject line “don’t tell Mom :)))”.

headcanon is that Cam has been selling literary contraband in cat’s cradle for years (in true Camila style with a barter system where she gives people pages she printed off on the admin office’s old printer & they give her things like ‘interestingly-shaped bullet fragments’ and ‘bags of Haribo starmix with a preferential ratio of love hearts and cola bottles to bears & rings’)

so yeah, Cam has a little online archive hidden away on the OCS servers, & Bea spends the journey to Switzerland reading a digitally dog-eared file of miscellaneous philosophy papers, which Cam has been grabbing for her because it’s like Beatrice catnip. and it becomes a little habit for Cam to walk into Bea’s room at cat’s cradle to find her doing crunches with the lights off. Cam doing the sibling thing where she flicks the light switch on and off five times until Beatrice stops and just lies on the floor with arms akimbo, scowling:

‘leave me alone Camila.’

‘okay, broody bones, guess you don’t want this paper i found called ‘do holes exist?’

cue Bea coming down to breakfast the next morning STILL furious, squinting angrily at the straw in Mary’s smoothie until Mary asks if she needs to put it into protective custody.

she reads it again on the train because she wants to be angry over something stupid. she reads the essay that made Cam spend a week hiding in the apse and saying ‘i’m batman’ whenever Beatrice went inside - Nagel’s ‘what is it like to be a bat?’ and she reads a bit of Beckett because she really does find ‘Waiting for Godot’ funny, & then she reads her old favourites which she has printed and folded in her drawer in cat’s cradle

she LOVES Kepler’s astronomica nova because he has all these asides in it, and Bea chuckles aloud in the train carriage as she always does when she remembers reading first about Kepler writing “ah, what a foolish bird i have been!” & when her head hurts from reading the original Latin she switches to Carl Sagan’s cosmos, reading about Kepler again, feeling it in her chest:

“Kepler was a brilliant thinker and a lucid writer, but he was a disaster as a classroom teacher. He mumbled. He digressed. He was at times utterly incomprehensible… He was distracted by an incessant interior clamor of associations and speculations vying for his attention.”

beatrice & kepler &

“Geometry provided God with a model for the Creation… Geometry is God Himself.”

when Ava wakes up, Bea is reading the Lewis & Lewis holes article for the third time, & Ava jolts a bit because she looks real mad, and kind of devastated, but then Bea smiles at her & Ava says:

“what’s wrong?”

“nothing, nothing.” a pause, “i just… holes are full of the substance they create an absence in.”

“i think i need a croissant before you explain that to me”

Bea prefers physical books. she likes the smell of them, and the feeling of holding the words in her hands, and how you can leave a bookmark inside of a book and feel suddenly and profoundly like you are alive, putting an ellipses straight into the world ‘…. to be continued’.

it’s why she likes Cam’s dumb print-offs even if Camila has long-since convinced the ink cartridge that it is not, in fact empty but it definitely is getting there. even though sometimes the words are shaved off and she has to infer the full shape of sentences - and if she does, well, it’s kind of like sudoku & it’s a bit like learning song lyrics off the radio where, very occasionally, the words you mishear are better than the real ones.

but she does appreciate the search functions on the digital books & papers & the fact that she can screen reader things when her eyes are tired but her brain is not, (& Cam is very good at making sure that the PDFs she sends are screen reader accessible)

she doesn’t like audiobooks because she wants to put the emphasis where her brain thinks it should go, and even with the speed turned up there’s just a difference between her reading speed and the narration. & yeah, the auditory processing sometimes is not cooperating, never mind that her ears ring sometimes from hearing too many gunshots. there’s a reason the OCS has a deal with a hearing specialist bc if you retire, you’re going to have damage to your eardrums. a ringing aftershock of violence.

they both love dog-earing books and leaving little notes in the margins of, underlining things with intention so that the pen breaks through the paper; with mass-market paperbacks there’s no reason not to, though it takes a while for it to happen.

Ava is at first very tender with every object they own. she bawls her eyes out when she drops a glass in the kitchen one night because her fingers are tired and sore from doing finger strikes all day. Bea finds her there sort of curled up on her haunches, and quietly sweeps up the glass from around her, gently leads her around it because she’s in bare feet.

later, on the sofa, Ava tells her through tears that she has never had stuff that she picked out herself, and the glasses with the little bumblebees on them were hers, and now there are three of them instead of four. & Bea is a bit overcome by how sacredly Ava holds everything, for all that she doesn’t believe in any god.

Ava i think really likes audiobooks because you can do other things while you listen to them! so like, i imagine in the Switzerland era Ava is doing a thing where she’s trying to figure out what stuff she likes doing. so she gets painting supplies & some sheets of A3 paper & she puts on audiobooks while she experiments with colours.

she listens to books at night because Beatrice goes to sleep kind of early & she’s always like ‘oh no, you can leave the light on’ but actually she needs the light off and Ava knows it so instead she lies in the dark with one earphone in listening, on the one hand, to Beatrice mumbling in her sleep and also to whatever book she has & sometimes she takes out the fold-up ruler that she found in a charity shop & folds it and unfolds it and folds it again just to keep her hands busy.

but she also likes physical books because (once Beatrice assures her that it’s okay to write in them & damage them because they’re things and they’re hers and they’re meant to be loved in the way that feels best) she likes writing silly little notes in the margins, or things she wants to look up even though her phone is right there because if she google searches she’ll spend an hour not reading her book.

it makes her feel present & good to leave marks on the books even if it’s ‘ava silva was here’ because she thought she would leave only the smallest impression on the world for so long but now she has her own dirty plates to clean up and she has to pick her clothes off the floor and they have a small stack of very carefully-chosen paperbacks with dog ears and yellow highlighter marks and blue pen in the margins.

what do you think their weird book opinions & peeves would be?

Beatrice will go on a ten-minute tirade about how long it takes for mass-market paperbacks to come out these days. she HATES the fact that all books seem to get released in 25 euro hardcovers, because she spent her teenage years getting books from the second-hand store when the students were allowed to visit the nearby village & she kept an ever-expanding stack of old yellowing paperbacks on top of her chest of drawers, and she adores the feeling of the wafer-thin pages, the smell of them, even gross stuff like spots of blood on the pages from where people accidentally pressed an open cut down over a sentence.

the too-white pages of many modern books, and their thick, almost laminate feeling drives her up the wall. she loves second-hand bookstores and the way the books are stacked all haphazardly, to the ceiling, and they are 1 or 2 euros so you can get a stupid stack of them & pay with a crumply note and take them home and feel full for days.

Ava gets impatient with fiction that doesn’t feel real to her. overly-constructed stuff & characters who could never be real people. she likes messy narratives and non-linearity and she wants to know about the characters more than anything, because people fascinate her.

she likes books with plenty of dialogue, but also really appreciates introspective narratives & beautiful language & writers who can make her really feel like she’s there, and communicate alien experiences.

what are genres and/or tropes they absolutely will not read and/or are very picky about? what are genres & tropes they love?

well, obviously Beatrice loves non-fiction. she reads textbooks, she reads academic papers, she reads very old foundational texts in science & biology & philosophy because Beatrice really really likes understanding things.

one of the first books Cam sends her, which gets dumped right into the “broody bones’ library <3” subsection of the server, which Bea has a login for and everything, is Biology of Spiders by Foelix Rainer, & another file that just has about 3000 images of different spiders pulled from an internet search, so that Beatrice can swipe through them at her leisure (she can name-drop a terrifying number of them just by looking at the pic)

she adores Carl Sagan’s Cosmos (& even gets Ava to watch the TV series, which is not hard because Ava gets fully 0 _ 0 when Bea goes on sleepy rants about space). & ofc she has A Brief History of Time, but she gravitates too towards modern books on astronomy, and likes especially The Disordered Cosmos by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein because it is doing a lot of things & it makes her cry a few times. she reads a lot of very old astronomy papers too. again drawn to that line from Monsignor Lemaître:

“the believer has perhaps the advantage of knowing that the enigma has a solution, that the underlying writing is, when all is said and done, the work of an intelligent being, therefore that the problem raised by nature has been raised in order to be solved.”

she likes that. the world as a puzzle god put in her hands, though before it felt more like He had put a shovel there & told her to dig a grave (but not who the grave might be for).

with Ava, reading under the awning of the bar on her break, she feels like the puzzle has come back again and it is intricate; that maybe something as simple as a body might unlock it.

on that note, Beatrice also loves loves loves science-fiction. she grew up reading second-hand stuff. very weird, but very thoughtful. Dune and  Solaris and Flowers for Algernon and The Dispossessed. when Cam sends her the more modern stuff she devours things like The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin and Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer and also the Murderbot Diaries.

many others, but as a genre she’s drawn to it because it is often very profoundly human. & she still remembers reading the Star Wars Jedi Apprentice books in her room at boarding school, & how fun they were, and how even in the strangest places with the premise that everything is so, so different, there is a humanity that reasserts itself.

it suits the gentle texture of the faith that Beatrice actually has, which is not the faith of hard church benches and prayers before bed and holding her hand too close overtop of a votive candle. her faith is very soft, and it is about marvelling at the world, worrying about it, being tender towards it.

sci-fi does that for her. it says much in the way of ‘even if everything were different, the best and worst parts of us would remain the same. there will never be a point in history where we do not have to deal with what we are.’

i think she also likes poetry, and just weird good books that make you feel things. i think at some point in those two months she reads Autobiography of Red, remembering herself on the train and staring staring staring at the line “sometimes a journey makes itself necessary.”  

looking back and thinking that sometimes a girl makes a journey necessary, thinking of being shipped off to boarding school because of a girl and now shipped off to Switzerland again but with a girl. thinking of necessity, and the small ways in which she has managed to alter the meaning of that word.

other lines that strike her

“This would be hard

for you if you were weak

but you’re not weak”

“Well Goodnight Then they said and drove him up/ Those hemorrhaging stairs…Don’t want to go want to stay Downstairs and read.”

she likes Anne Sexton, too

reading “Sylvia’s Death” & knowing that it’s about something else but also thinking about her sisters. about lilith, especially.

“Thief —

how did you crawl into,

crawl down alone

into the death I wanted so badly and for so long”

the only genre she’s not going to read ever probably is crime/ thrillers, because not only does she just constantly have a little voice in her head going

wrong, wrong, wrong.

no it doesn’t work like that.

wrong.

you just broke both your legs.

that is not how you fire a gun

some of it just sits too close to the bone for her & it’s bad enough that she has her own memories of real-world bad things happening without reading about it. possessed people ripping each other to pieces, bodies in the streets.

the OCS visited enough murder scenes on the trail of demons to make Beatrice capable of smelling, all over again, what happens to a room after a person has been dead in it for several hours.

so she just doesn’t want to read any crime or really most mystery novels (she’s too smart for them, sees things choreographed or else dislikes when things aren’t choreographed at all). she has attended too many autopsies to want to read about them either.

i think Ava reads VERY widely. she loves reading plays & acting them out in the apartment. she has her own little library on the OCS extranet too, & she downloads all of Shakespeare’s stuff & puzzles through it and googles stuff but the pentameter makes sense to her & she loves sometimes how initially inaccessible it is to her because it feels good to unearth the meaning.

her favourite plays are Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and sadly Beatrice does persuade her to read Waiting for Godot and she does kind of think it’s good.

Ava is the one who likes reading fantasy books. she adores The Hobbit & this somehow leads to her finding the ‘legless lego legolas’ post & she spends a whole afternoon laughing randomly until Beatrice finally gives in to her curiosity and she is just ‘…. oh, Ava’ when she reads the crappy screenshot version of it that Ava shows her.

my girl Ava obviously loses it a bit over the Frodo/Sam dynamic in lotr (she likes to perform the travelling songs ofc. Ava is like repressed theatre kid energy fr) & Beatrice (happily) listens to her talk about Frodo and Sam for a whole half hour one evening while she chops vegetables.

Ava just really likes adventure stories & stories where characters are thrown together on a quest and become friends.

she’s obviously embarrassingly a sucker for the friends-to-lovers trope in fiction, but she also just enjoys stories about friendship because she’s had so few experiences of that in her life. she has  Beatrice and she kind of has Cam & everyone else doesn’t feel like a friend, exactly. Ava reads the Red Sister trilogy by Mark Lawrence and vibes so much with Nona Grey because of her wild and speechless loyalty to her friends (& yeah, the Sister Apple & Sister Kettle romance and the start of book 2 made her extremely giggly).

she also loves The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin bc the thing at the start of the book that goes “for all those who have to fight for the respect that everyone else is given without question” - Ava FELT that. & just the parallels for her in that book were very powerful. plus plate tectonics magic slaps.

& yeah, Ava is really interested in magic systems. she likes what they reveal about the worlds they exist in, and how they shape the narrative, and also just the rlly cool ones & the weird cheeky thrill of being like ‘….welp, i can do that too actually.’

Ava also really loves fiction with interesting characters and great dialogue and she loves description and colour and everything that pours life into art.

i’d say there isn’t much that Ava doesn’t like, but she isn’t huge into non-fiction because she MUCH prefers to just pester Beatrice about it, & have her voice explain things, and add her own little corrections and opinions with her cute smart smirk. and Ava thinks it is good for Beatrice to express her opinions on things.

she likes how Bea looks when she is Thinking and Processing, and also the excitement in her hands when she explains astrophysics or shows Ava a picture of a spider or tells her about obscure bits of architectural history, the banking system in Florence under the Medici, and all the knowledge she has been muffling with prayer.

Ava thinks that it is H O T but also important and Beatrice looks so free to her, and so good, when she is speaking on some subject with her eyes drifting freely around the room, always coming back to Ava, to her eyes, making sure she is still interested because Beatrice has been ignored so often, and stifled so often, but when she looks back Ava is always watching, and always listening.

so yeah! the girlies like to read & are very smart & i love them every day.

[darkpoisonouslove]

I posted 4,288 times in 2022

588 posts created (14%)

3,700 posts reblogged (86%)

I tagged 4,276 of my posts in 2022

#winx club - 776 posts

#once upon a time - 346 posts

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#fanart - 337 posts

#ask - 244 posts

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#quote - 206 posts

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#scooby doo - 201 posts

#writing - 174 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#“you should go to that place that you don't even want to think about and i'll come with you bc you have to do everything to find your girl”

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Daphne and Domino's Revival

I am so tired of all the complaining about Daphne being brought back to life that is going on in this fandom. Some of the takes I have seen are just fucking outrageous in how utterly wrong they are. And no, I don't like what they did with Daphne's resurrection but to complain that it was a wrong choice or one devoid of potential is incomprehensible to me. The fault lies elsewhere but I'll get to that, too.

60 notes - Posted March 2, 2022

#4

Griffin: Why do I keep you around?

Faragonda: Because the alternative would be developing a conscience of your own.

67 notes - Posted January 29, 2022

#3

Icy going "if your skirt shrinks any more, you'd be in trouble" @ Bloom in 3x05 sure sounds like she's mad because Bloom's short skirt is distracting her. Just saying.

80 notes - Posted April 22, 2022

#2

Someone had to pick out dragon eggs for Alicent's children and we know that Viserys doesn't care about them. He seemed excited about Aegon at first but even for the son he was expecting from Aemma he didn't pick a dragon egg himself. He left it to Rhaenyra. I can see him asking Alicent and Rhaenyra to pick one together in hopes that it will make Rhaenyra excited about having a sibling but she clearly wasn't thrilled at the prospect so in the end Alicent probably had to pick the dragon eggs for all of her children on her own, with help only from the dragon tamers. So Alicent, who's been scared of dragons all along, would have done her best to learn about dragons so that she can pick the perfect egg for each of her children. I am ✨emotion✨.

80 notes - Posted October 26, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

I was watching The Scene in 1x07 again because I'm obsessed and it's so obvious that Viserys has no idea how to parent. The only way he can think of making his kids, his family, do what he wants is to throw around his title as king. He does it when he questions Aemond and he later does it when he's "appealing" to - actually ordering - everyone to get along. He's constantly trying to use his political power in a family matter because he's just so powerless in this situation otherwise. No one is listening to him.

117 notes - Posted October 26, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[problemeule]

das übernatürlich fandom hat irreparable schäden in meinem kopf verursacht

[harrysdimples]

it just makes me angry to see such hateful shit being spewed at someone all because of a projected view of a celebrity that the vast majority of people who are fans will never actually physically come into contact with just because they feel a sense of ownership and entitlement to that said celebrity. get a grip man.

[murderthegods]

It seems like too big a project to be feasible, at least for me, but I've always thought it would be fun to make a fiction setting intended from the start to be something that just keeps having shit added to it as an experiment to see how self referential it can get, and how efficient it can get at communicating new ideas in ways that are utterly incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't been following the setting for a decade. Creating a similar vibe to how it feels to try to get into scp or big two comics, but with a huge amount of effort expended to keep everything consistent, and definitely no reboots to serve as convenient jumping on points.

Like, the idea of being able to rely on your readers having expended years, even decades, of brainpower into trying to understand every piece of this story, so that you can just throw out a name of a character in passing and have fifteen full novels pass instantly through their mind and have it all actually add to their understanding of the situation where the character was mentioned! This is one of the most appealing things about scp and the big two to me, even though it also makes them intimidating enough I'll probably never pick them up seriously again. Like maybe if I did I'd find that they actually are close enough to what I'm looking for here to satisfy me, but I feel like what they're missing is that they're not obtuse enough.

Every internal contradiction and every reboot reduces the amount of information you can actually use in new entries, since some part of your foundation is obsolete now. This makes it easier to get into for new people and also runs exactly counter to what I want. Maximum efficiency of communication within the ingroup, minimum comprehensibility to anyone outside it! Practically a conlang built entirely out of fantasy novels, not necessarily inventing any new words, but just always referring to a concept that almost everyone is unfamiliar with, or wouldn't be able to describe succinctly. Just creating such a huge quantity of information that even without it actually being an efficient way to encode anything, (in terms of the amount of information you need to memorize in order to do it,) anyone who knows all of it can easily express almost anything they'd need to more efficiently to someone else who knows it, as long as they can remember the relevant story!

Unfortunately I don't think I have the patience to actually learn an existing setting that well, so I probably don't have the patience (or skill) to make it either. I'd have to either write a shit ton of material personally (trusting myself to remember the details of what I wrote before) or I'd have to like be super rigorous and careful with the other writers collaborating on the project. And I probably couldn't do the second one bc there's no money to be made from fiction that intentionally refuses to pick up any new readers. It's kinda just daydreaming along the lines of "what if I made something that took a lot of work, but was like, really cool? Like how these other things are cool but like, I'd make it cooler." And like. The answer is that it would take a lot of work and it would be really cool and only a few people in the world would appreciate it. So it goes.

The SCP foundation, along with most webcomics, regular comics, youtube-reviewer "universes", and even some long-running cartoons, demonstrates that any fictional universe allowed to grow unchecked eventually turns into some sprawling metaphysical epic about the nature of reality itself. Whether this is the evolving-a-perfect-being kind of unchecked growth or the cancer kind depends on the reader.

There's more than 8000 of the things it can easily be both at once

[voiceless-terror]

would you consider writing me some precanon jongeorgie angst. bc i imagine they probably bonded over their interest in the supernatural but never. you know. actually talked about their personal experiences/trauma. just give me a little of both of them handling that trauma very badly while never admitting their closest brush with the supernatural. or something. idk.

Hello anon! I haven’t written Jon/Georgie yet, but this prompt was too good to pass up. Hope you like!

Being with Georgie was easy. It shouldn’t have been, not for him.

But it was.

She carried herself with the utmost surety: of her opinions, of her feelings, of her place in the world. It wasn’t arrogance, more like confidence and something else Jon couldn’t quite put his finger on. There was a blankness in her eyes sometimes. Not an absence of feeling but an absence of...understanding, maybe. Of empathy. Georgie saw the world in black and white; she knew exactly what was right and what was wrong. She was blunt. She bulldozed over others in conversations, pointed out flaws that polite society knew to overlook and not name. Jon admired it, as much as it made him cringe.

But it was complemented by her fierce capacity for loving, her clever, teasing words, the way her fingers ran through his hair when he was stressed. That black and white view could quiet his mind like no other- ‘yes, Jon’, ‘no, Jon.’  She listened to his incessant rambling, nodding in the right places and adding her own commentary. She filled out the crosswords in the morning, her brow furrowed in concentration, colorful nails tapping at the table. She never wanted help, stubborn to a fault. Her dark skin ethereal in the morning light, the way her voice was low and croaky before her coffee. The ease with which she said ‘I love you.’ 

He remembered the day she first approached him, all ripped-tights and smudged, smoky eyeshadow. Just leaned against the wall on that chilly fall night and snatched the cigarette right from his hand, an eyebrow flicked upward as she took a drag. He couldn’t get a word out, just silently took her phone when she offered it and typed in a number with shaking hands. A year later and she was still that same girl, though he’d seen her stash of manga and her weird cat memorabilia. She was whole, real. It was comfortable.

“I’m not really sure if I should go.” They’re curled up on the couch, Jon leaning into the warm bulk of her. “All of the others are going, though.”

“It’s not like you’re close, right?” Jon’s petting the Admiral, the new addition to the household fitting in seamlessly. “I’m sure she won’t take it as an insult. You can always say you’re busy. Who was it, again? Her father?”

“Yeah.” Georgie’s shifting against him, clearly uncomfortable with the topic. It’s odd- she’s not usually so awkward about these things. If there’s something she doesn’t want to talk about, she shuts it down right away. This seems...different. “And no, not close. But everyone else is going- they want to show their support, I guess. It would be awkward if I didn’t.”

Perhaps Georgie didn’t like funerals. You’re not supposed to, of course. Maybe it was a phobia, a perfectly valid one. Plenty of people don’t like to see the reminder of death laid out before them. Jon’s been to a few in his lifetime- for his Gran’s friend, for a distant cousin.

For his parents.

He doesn’t remember his father’s, he might not have even gone. He was only two at the time. He distantly remembers his mother’s; it wasn’t well attended, he sat in the front row with his Gran. He doesn’t even remember crying, if he even realized the thing in the box was his mother, dead and gone.

Needless to say, he understands Georgie’s sentiments. “You don’t have to go, not if...not if you don’t like it. Plenty of people are uncomfortable with death-” This was the wrong thing to say, for Georgie tensed instantly, leaning away from him.

“That’s not it at all,” she says, snatching her legs out from where Jon’s leaning comfortable against them. “It’s- it’s the performance of it all. All those people standing around a body, sniffling and moaning-”

Jon tried for levity, bristling at her tone. “People grieve, they need closure-”

Georgie snorted, this time shoving him away on the couch, the Admiral jumping from Jon’s lap at the movement. Her words became impassioned, as if Jon needed to know, needed to understand. “Cremate them, then! Say a few words, scatter the ashes, whatever. But having the body on display like that?” She gets up, starts to pace. Jon’s never seen her like this. “Paint the corpse, dress it up, pretend it’s a person still but it’s not, and everyone’s just standing there around it, praying over it and watching it like it’s not just rotting meat you put lipstick on-”

“Georgie!”

“I can’t stand it.” She stops in front of him, chest heaving and eyes aflame. “What’s so monumental about it? We live, we die- and her father was old, it was bound to happen sometime. No need to make such a to-do. It’s- it’s just disgusting, is what it is.” She didn’t continue, and an awkward silence permeated the room. 

Georgie got worked up about things on occasion. But the wild look in her eye, the total sense of incomprehension was...disconcerting. He agreed with her on certain points, of course, but the vehemence behind them- something wasn’t right. But it didn’t feel right to pry, either, and Georgie surely wouldn’t appreciate it.

“You could just say you’re busy, you don’t have to go,” he tries tentatively. She seems to deflate where she stands, looking uncharacteristically vulnerable. So he stands up, taking her hand in his. She lets him, but doesn’t meet his eyes. “But if you do, I can come with you. If you’d like.”

They stand in the very back row of the church after awkwardly greeting her grieving coworker. Georgie’s nails dig painfully into his arm, but he says nothing. They leave after ten minutes and stop at an Indian buffet on the way home. He silently watches her dig into a curry, his own untouched.

___________

When she first met Jon, she thought he was utterly out of her league.

It was her first semester back at school, she was an absolute fucking mess- drinking at all hours, barely present in her classes. She was out at the bar with a few new friends, most of whom she’d already forgotten the names of, and saw him standing there under a single flickering lamp, a cigarette dangling from long, slender fingers, raven hair back in a messy bun. Not many people could pull that off but he looked almost effortlessly cool (a thing she’d later find laughable for ever thinking) in his dingy leather jacket, his eyes far away and shadowed. She wondered what made him lose sleep. He had an odd, crooked little smile on his face and she was filled with liquid courage. The look he gave her when she took that cigarette out of his hand made her knees weak, and he took the proffered phone like he was only a little impressed. She sent a text to his phone and left, so embarrassed she went straight home.

He never did text her. To be fair, she never expected him to.

But she found him not two days later, hunched over a table in the campus library. She did a double take- surely this couldn’t be him, her impossibly handsome, silent figure who she surely dreamed up. But there was no mistaking that hair, those eyes. He was smaller, somehow diminished in his baggy jumper and wire-rimmed glasses, tapping a pencil against his textbook in irritation. Before she knew it she found herself picking up her phone, sending a text to the number with no name. And sure enough, his phone buzzed.

They went out on their first date a day later.

Jon was a ball of nerves, awkward and not at all like the man she thought she met that night. Somehow, the real Jon was better. She liked the way he blushed and stammered, the way a touch of her hand left him flustered and unable to speak. The way he could talk for hours about nothing at all, making even the most dull of subjects seem interesting with that voice of his- a voice surely meant for radio or T.V., something Jon himself endlessly scoffed at whenever she brought it up. They would sit in front of the telly for hours, marathoning ridiculous ghost hunting shows and pointing out the obvious fakes. Jon had a weakness for ghost stories, just like she did. “Most of them are absolute drivel, of course,” he said.

Most of them. 

They found comfort in each other, their small island of two, had no need for other company. Georgie had never been able to relate to someone so well, not since Alex, and Jon was never fond of crowds. Three months in he tried to break up with her, saying he could never give her what ‘she needed’ but she stopped that in its tracks- Georgie would be the one who decided what she did and didn’t need, thank you very much. She liked the way he leaned into her on movie nights, like her touch was the only thing that mattered. The sincerity in his eyes whenever he complimented her in that earnest, awkward way of his. He challenged her when he thought she was wrong, sometimes their fights lasted days. But they always came back to one another, each knowing they had no one else who understood them. Was it healthy? Georgie couldn’t answer that, she didn’t know herself. Jon probably didn’t either. But she loved him, in her way. 

That night they have a few glasses of wine, and Jon’s regaling her with some ridiculous story from his youth- apparently he was somewhat of a delinquent, wandering about at all hours. She laughs in delight, imagining a small, serious Jon climbing fences and evading the law. But suddenly Jon stops, his eyes going wide and his face growing ashen as he stares unblinking at the table.

It’s a spider- a tiny thing, really. Georgie’s been seeing a lot of them lately, and she really should be better about dusting the place. But Jon- Jon looks absolutely terrified, like the thing’s bound to leap out and kill him. She opens her mouth to tease, an instinctive reaction, but is instead startled by the loud smack of a hand against the table. Jon had smashed it certainly, but he lifts his hand and stares at it in wide-eyed horror, as if whatever he sees is nine times worse than the original thing.

“Jon-”

The chair hits the ground as he stumbles to her bathroom with heavy, labored breathing. She gets up slowly, approaching as quietly as possible to find him hyperventilating against the sink, the faucet on full blast as he washes his hand- scratches it, really. He’s mumbling frantically under his breath.

“...so many legs, get off, get off-”

She makes her presence known as not to startle him, approaching from the side and gently wrapping a hand around his arm once she sees him drawing blood. He starts anyway, his movements jerky and frenzied as he rips his arm away like her touch burns.

“It’s just a spider Jon,” she says softly, lifting her hands to show she means no harm. “It’s okay, you got it, it’s dead now-”

“But what if it isn’t!” He spits, slamming his hands on the marble rim of the sink and leaving bloody prints in his wake. He’s breathing so fast she thinks he might pass out. “What if it isn’t?”

She has no answer to that.

It takes about two hours, a hot shower and a stiff drink for him to calm down. They lay on the couch, watching something stupid, mind-numbing. She runs her fingers through his hair. He always liked that. She doesn’t say a word, he’s exhausted, and she knows from experience that pushing him will just lead to another fit like before. The next day, he brings her Hungarian by way of apology. They eat in a more comfortable silence, Jon gradually warming up as the evening goes on. Still, she doesn’t ask.

She spends the weekend cleaning her flat, standing on a chair and vacuuming at the cobwebs.

ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28440474

[dastardlydandelion]

i’ve seen quite a bit of meta floating around abt sam’s situation vs tory’s and how that enhances their rivalry but i’ve seen v little abt how how fighting itself means different things to them and how i personally think that rly shows itself in the school brawl so i’m going to babble on abt that for a min.

so to recap what most ppl already pinned down: tory and sam’s beef isn’t just about miguel. far from. tbvh i’d ever argue it’s mostly *not* about miguel but he factors into the situation so strongly bc miguel is the *one* thing tory had that (at the time) sam didn’t. it isn’t just abt him, it’s abt what he represents. it’s abt sam seemingly (re)staking her claim to one of the only good things in tory’s life. from tory’s perspective she has very little in contrast to sam. sam lives in wealthy encino, has her own car, a membership at a country club, and participates in karate bc she’s a legacy child and to do so is at her leisure. her dad has his own personal dojo she can practice in whenever she wants and oh yeah, her lessons are free bc her dad is her sensei. sam who could easily afford karate lessons doesn’t even have to, her dad actually jumps at the chance to give them to her.

tory has to work for everything that’s hers and then some, supporting a mother with frail health and taking care of her bby brother. tory’s life is more precarious and vulnerable than sam’s bc of her financial and living situation, and frankly, she needs self-defense skills more than sam does. remember when she’s at the store with aisha and describes to her how some perv tried to grab her, a move she then blocked? how she stabbed him in the face with her duster/bracelet??

i feel like the gravity of that is lost on most ppl bc in context, tory’s almost bragging abt it and showing off a lil bit. and why wouldn’t she?? she thinks aisha is a badass, she saw her breaking boards blindfolded!!! she thinks aisha is cool and she wants aisha to think she’s cool too, so she’s telling her smth abt herself that she correctly feels aisha would admire. but context aside, it’s v scary and sad that tory was in a situation where she had to do that.

tory had kickboxing training even before she joined cobra kai. going off some of her dialogue to miguel, abt how some ppl in this world have to fight for everything they have, i’m going to assume her safety applies here. given that her financial situation is so precarious, i don’t think tory would’ve taken kickboxing classes unless she felt like she had to. like— don’t get me wrong, tory clearly enjoys fighting. it’s prolly a good way to relieve all the stress she’s under, having head of household responsibilities at 16/17. but we see in s3 when her mom can’t rly work anymore and therefore she has to work even more herself, tory leaves the dojo specifically bc she can’t afford lessons. so that leads me to believe that even if tory enjoys fighting, she wouldn’t spend money on it unless doing so was of necessity to her.

tory does not live in a world of stability. her mother’s health is precarious and unstable. her financial situation is precarious and unstable. even working two jobs she didn’t have enough to cover rent. it was so, so heartbreaking but u could see it in her eyes that she was considering the landlord’s offer. she was considering sleeping with some gross ass adult man who berated and belittled her just to have the stability of a home. imho she would’ve done it if kreese didn’t handle the situation (and he definitely didn’t do so for selfless reasons, but that’s another matter entirely so i’m not gonna go into that).

sam, on the other hand, doesn’t just have stability, she has luxury. again, the big house, her own car, wealthy, supportive, healthy parents who have the time and the means to be there for her and provide her with whatever she wants, let alone needs. fighting is v different for sam. from sam’s perspective, karate is meditation. karate is a way to find balance, to center yourself and spiritually connect with your body. karate is recreation and sport, tournaments where rules ensure everyone’s safety at the end of the day and fighting with honor scores u points while fighting with dishonor gets u disqualified. where fighting with honor is “fair” and fighting without honor is “dirty.” 

now, i know sam *theoretically* understands karate from the self-defense perspective too. bc she’s heard daniel’s stories. bc she used it against kyler when he made her uncomfortable. bc she and robby got into it at the mall to come to demetri’s defense, thereby actively protecting another person. but sam does not have daniel’s lived experiences of struggling with poverty or being put into harm’s way as gravely as daniel was in his youth (at least not until the school brawl, i’m getting there). sam never had to stab a pervert in the face bc he predated upon her and grabbed her. sam did face bullying, yes, but as hurtful as being slut-shamed on the internet is, her safety was not threatened in that situation the way tory’s safety has been threatened, nor the way her father’s safety was threatened in his youth.

i definitely think the context of their situations influences how each thinks of fighting. tory intimately understands fighting for survival in a way sam does not, in a way sam simply cannot relate to. tory doesn’t adhere to the rules the way sam does bc rules have never done shit for her. actually, the rules themselves keep her down, her mother got fired from her job at the restaurant precisely bc she was bringing home leftovers to feed her hungry children. tory has no reason to distinguish between dishonorable fighting and honorable fighting bc at the end of the day, fighting is a necessity for tory in a way that it is not a necessity for sam. tory doesn’t fight to win points or to meditate, or to spiritually connect with her body. tory fights for self-preservation.

from sam’s perspective, tory fights “dirty.” from tory’s perspective, sam lives in a fantasy world where there’s some kind of manufactured distinction between fighting “fair” and “dirty” only for those who have the security and luxury to made that very distinction. to tory, fighting is fighting and that’s that. to sam, fighting is a discipline, an art, a tradition, and is meant to be practiced with a level of etiquette shown to your opponent. bc that’s what tory is to sam, an opponent. but sam isn’t an opponent to tory— she’s an enemy. these are not the same things.

i think the way tory and sam understand fighting really rears its head in the school brawl. tory’s had it with sam, she’s had beef with her since the moment sam accused her of stealing and it reaches its tipping point during the party bc first, sam beats her in the drinking competition, embarrassing her in front of everyone, and then she goes and kisses miguel. who isn’t just tory’s bf, but one of the only good things in her life at that moment.

on top of that, like, okay, tory is v aware miguel used to date sam. so when she’s dating miguel herself, i think she does take a kind of satisfaction in that, in knowing she’s “taken” miguel from the pretty, privileged princess who has everything else, pretty privileged princess who once accused her of stealing and would then go on to mock and ridicule her. i think it increases the sting for tory when sam follows up beating her in the contest with kissing miguel not just bc she’s hurt, but bc it’s an added slap in the face that sam “reclaimed” this one good thing tory thought she’d managed to “take” from her.

come the school brawl and sam is aware tory’s angry. tory announces on the damn loud speaker she’s coming for her, prolly to embarrass her in front of everyone the way sam embarrassed her the night before. fight ensues and they’re matching each other p well, i’d say tory mostly retains the upper hand bc she had the element of offense on her side while sam’s blows were primarily defensive…it’s slightly in tory’s favor but rly could go either way until the point where tory breaks out the spiked knuckle duster/bracelet.

if u look at sam’s face after tory puts it on, like…she’s shocked. she’s frightened. she was not anticipating that at all. tory on the other hand, has a mocking expression and from her tone, i kind of think she’s reveling in sam’s reaction. bc tory knows full well sam has never had to fight the way she has. sam’s never actually had her safety compromised so it’s like. utterly incomprehensible to her the moment it happens. 

tory is the first person who has ever actually threatened sam’s safety and tory knows that, and she relishes it. from tory’s perspective, sam is just as foolish as she is pampered, and she gets to be the one to snatch sam’s sense of security away from her the moment she introduces a weapon to the situation and shows sam; ‘no, this isn’t just a karate match. i actually want to hurt you, and i am going to use whatever i have to do that.’

and…i think she was just trying to hurt sam, personally. ik a lot of the ck fandom thinks tory wanted to kill sam. and i actually think sam herself thinks tory wanted to kill her bc of the visceral reaction she has to tory afterwards. sam has ptsd after the school brawl and it’s not just bc of tory, it’s clearly also bc of what happened to miguel. what robby did to miguel out of anger, anger not created by— but definitely inflamed by —the fact miguel and sam shared a smooch. but sam also has nightmares of tory trying to kill her and it’s tory’s voice that makes her freeze up during the fight at the laser tag place.

i think sam also inevitably associates tory with what happened to miguel, bc while robby, not tory kicked him over the railing, it was tory who started the brawl. and miguel went upstairs specifically bc he was trying to get tory off of sam. he followed them up there bc he was tryna calm tory down. so i think that’s also why sam is so shook by tory after, that inevitable association with miguel’s fall/coma. but i defo think bc tory was the first person who ever actually threatened sam’s safety for real, sam felt like tory was going to kill her. and to be fair, when tory gets sam on the floor and yanks her hair back, it appears that she’s doing so specifically to expose her face/throat area as she pulls her opposite arm back to stab.

sooo with that i 100% understand why so much of the ck fandom and sam herself would think tory was tryna kill her, but i personally don’t think that. i think she was trying to scar her face. i think tory might have specifically been aiming for the mouth bc she wanted to punish sam for the kiss. stabbing/slicing her mouth would be targeting a place on sam specifically associated with the incident that pushed tory’s anger over the edge.

i also think it’s entirely probable tory was just unleashing all of her built up stress on sam during that fight. tory was more aggressive not just bc she’s the one more pissed off but bc her nerves are fucking fried. she throws all of her negative emotions in the brawl and she has infinitely more of those than sam, created by her precarious and fraught living situation wherein she’s had to endure much more hardship than sam and she’s constantly on her guard, fully aware of how fragile any semblance of stability she manages to carve out for herself/her family is. while sam, on the other hand, gets to live in what must appear to tory as this soft, fuzzy fantasy world where mom and dad take care of all the important stuff and sam doesn’t have to worry abt a thing.

i maintain that i don’t believe tory was tryna kill sam, but i do believe she rly wanted to hurt her. and she did…sam is hospitalized after the fight. tory goes back to cobra kai to train for the next one. bc that’s what tory’s life is, one fight after the next. she doesn’t have the luxury of treating karate as a means for meditation or recreation like sam does. and i truly think that impacts that dynamic more than often given credit for.

[damienthepious]

owo november is over babesssss back 2 your regularly scheduled full-size lizard content

Made A Garden (Chapter 3)

[ch 1] [ch 2] [ao3]

Fandom: The Penumbra Podcast

Relationship: Lord Arum/Rilla

Characters: Rilla, Lord Arum, Rilla’s Parents, The Keep

Additional Tags: Second Citadel, Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, (categorized as ‘other’ bc arum is nonbinary when i write him bye), Lizard Kissin’ Tuesday, POV Alternating, canon typical Arum ignoring feelings, edited to feature my Rilla's Two Dads theory

Fic Summary: Rilla’s parents take her out when they do field work. She’s a smart kid, and she knows how not to get in trouble when they’re caught up with their experiments and research. This time, they’ve taken her to an enormous, beautiful swamp, and their theory is that the monstrous presence in this place should be entirely dormant- which is why Rilla is so surprised, when she meets a monster for herself.

Chapter Summary: Lord Arum tries to prove a point. Rilla gets excited!

Notes: no, i absolutely did not mean to take this long between chapters. i promise that i NEVER do. i'm just an easily distractible mess, is the thing. welcome to december here are the summery vibes again!!! loveyou

~

The Keep murmurs a question, a song that whispers in Arum's mind, awash with affection and concern. Are you not going to walk your swamp today, little Lord?

Arum scowls, pacing in a narrow figure eight as he reads through one of his predecessors’ journals. Again. “I do not need to do the same thing every day, Keep,” he grumbles. “And don't call me that.”

It hums an assent, clearly unconvinced. It pauses for a long moment, allowing him to continue his reading, but he isn't surprised when it chimes again, a light offer of assistance, a nudge towards what the Keep may do, to protect the both of them, if Arum wishes to have his swamp to himself again-

“Don’t-”

The book tumbles from his hands, thwumping to the floor as Arum winces.

It sings another nudge, pushing further in that direction, encouraging and warm.

“I simply do not feel like gallivanting around today!” he snarls. “It has nothing to do with her.”

There is another pause, and then the Keep trills in a vague, bemused sort of way.

Arum snatches the book back up from the floor with his tail, then clutches it to his chest. “I am not afraid of the humans,” he deflects, sticking his snout in the air. “They are utterly nonthreatening. They aren’t warriors or knights- they are some sort of- explorers,” he says derisively. “Scholars or researchers or some such. No threat, none at all.”

The Keep hums, even softer, how that will make it all the easier, to chase them out-

“No!” Arum stuffs the book back onto the shelves, his tail lashing behind him and his frill high. “It- it isn’t worth your effort, Keep. If they come close enough to be troublesome we can- can push them back away, but as it stands they hardly bear mentioning. It is highly obnoxious that we have spent even this much time discussing them.”

The Keep hums, clearly unconvinced, but Arum turns his snout up. He has ended the conversation. The conversation is over, and the humans need not be mentioned again. Obviously.

However. Arum has now put away his book, and he does not, in fact, know what he wishes to do next. He intended to spend his morning decoding and researching, but now- well, thanks to his meddling plant, he is far too agitated for that sort of focus-driven task, and he refuses to waste time trying to plug away at old Vetch ’s journals when his mind is not at its keenest. It would be pointless.

The Keep warbles again, and Arum bristles at the teasing edge in its tone.

“Fine,” Arum snaps after a moment, his frill fluttering at his neck. “Fine. If you should like me to prove my words, then I shall. You are in my mind, you ridiculous creature, but if that is not evidence enough for you, I will deign to assuage your pointless worries. I am not afraid of them,” he says, the hint of a snarl in his controlled tone. “I am not, and I will prove it. I shall go, and I shall walk my swamp, and no humans nor ridiculous ancient structures will deny me what I wish.”

The Keep hums one more question, its concern not quite assuaged.

“I know what I am doing!” Arum snarls, and he tries very hard not to wince when his voice creaks in the middle. “I will not be patronized! Am I Lord Arum, Keep, or am I some whelp for you to coddle and dismiss?”

It sings, patient, that he is Lord of the Swamp, and then after a moment it acquiesces, pulling a doorway open for him, out into his wilderness. It adds, gentle, that its duty is to protect Arum, just as Arum’s duty is to protect it in turn, and Arum stuffs down the little lance of guilt that stabs through him at that. He sticks his snout in the air, instead.

"And so I shall, if you simply allow me to do as I please."

The Keep pauses, and then it gives an indulgent hum as he steps out into the humid warmth of the afternoon.

Arum waits with his arms tangled across his chest until the Keep closes the way behind him, and then he-

He manages perhaps a half an hour inspecting his swamp before the curiosity worms through his scales. His tools and traps seem to be growing well, and those left by his predecessor are, he begrudgingly admits, even more promising. The fauna of the swamp seem perfectly content as well, with no management required from his part (excepting a particularly unlucky mongoose with a paw trapped between some tangled roots, but that hardly takes more than a moment to rectify).

He can't simply return home, though. Not this soon. That would hardly prove his point, would it? It would make the Keep insufferably smug, especially considering the wide berth he's given the humans and their little encampment.

Well. He can fix that part, at the very least, can't he?

It will play into the Keep's vines just as much to seek the humans out, he thinks irritably, but if he is going to lose regardless he may as well lose in the way he wishes to. He is not afraid of them, and if he wishes to make certain that they are not causing trouble, if he wishes to prove to the Keep that they are nonthreatening in no uncertain terms, then by the Universe itself he will.

They are embarrassingly easy to find. It is as if they have no desire to obscure their presence at all. Amaryllis mentioned, he supposes, that they had not been expecting to find much of an active monstrous presence here, but certainly since Amaryllis knows better now-

Has she not… told her parents? Or are they simply unworried over Arum himself, despite every reason they should have to be concerned? Clearly their hypotheses were wrong, so they should reassess their methods, should they not?

Her parents are doing something incomprehensible with glass vials full of swamp water. They perch carefully in a narrow canoe, each counterbalancing for the other as they gather their… samples, perhaps. Arum watches, suspicious, long enough to note that they are rather careful not to disturb the trees they are paddling between, that they avoid the floating flora. He watches long enough to observe as one of them accidentally ducks his hand too deeply into the water, his nose wrinkling as he pulls it back, and then he-

Grins, and his grin is the precise image of the one that Amaryllis wears, and then he flicks the water across the back of his companion, laughing as he squawks and smacks him in the leg.

They both laugh, then, and Arum is unsettled enough that he slips away.

Amaryllis herself it not difficult to find, after that. Still within earshot of the laughter as it subsides, unfortunately, but- the laughter does subside, and Amaryllis is smiling as she sketches away in that little journal of hers.

He watches her for quite some time as well, and he settles against the bark as he does, and he is comforted by the fact that he was, of course, correct.

These humans are entirely without teeth. He is certain that if he desired, he could frighten them away even without the Keep's help. He has no cause whatsoever to worry about them. No reason to fear, no reason to even keep an eye on them.

He remains in the tree for a good long while, however, watching Amaryllis summon with ink the detailed veins of leaves, the segmented bodies of insects, meticulously reconstructed pieces of his swamp.

~~~

Rilla yawns, suddenly, nearly startled by her own body's derailment and only barely managing not to ruin her latest sketch with an errant line. She grumbles to herself, shaking her head, and then she narrows her eyes at the page again, scrutinizing the roots she's drawn for this floating plant uncertainly. She's seen the roots when pulled out of the water, but that's not really representative of how they'd look underwater. She's tried to get a better look with her own head submerged, too, but- well, her eyes aren't really meant for that, and the water here isn't the most clear, either. She holds her breath for a moment, puffing out her cheeks, and then she huffs out the breath, tapping a finger on the page impatiently.

"They spread a bit wider than that," Arum says from above her, and Rilla startles. "And they curve slightly when there's a current, though I suppose most of the ones you've seen here would likely be in more calm waters than that."

Rilla tilts her head up, squinting against the sun until she spots the vivid violet of his eyes gazing back, narrowed and hesitant now that she's looking at him.

"…oh," she says, a little hesitant herself. "Uh-" she just barely stops herself from thanking him, considering how grumpy he got about it the last time. "Neat?"

"Hm," he grumbles, glancing off into the canopy rather than continue to look at her, and she bites her lip in consideration for a long moment.

"Would you- do you wanna show me what you mean?" she asks, lifting the book in her hands just slightly, and Arum's eyes dart to her again. "I think I know what you mean, but…"

He grumbles something, either wordless or just too quiet for her to understand, and then he slips further behind the leaves for a moment. She can still hear the scritch of his claws against the bark, though, which seems like a good sign. When he disappears, he seems to be able to do it without making any sound at all. She hears him growling low as he descends, and then his head peeks out from behind the trunk of a nearby tree, his eyes narrowed again in suspicion.

"Or…" Rilla angles her body a little, leaning sideways to see just a little bit more of the monster before he leans the opposite way in response. "I mean, you don't have to, if you don't-"

"Of course I don't have to," he snaps, "I don't have to do anything. I am ruler here. If I wish to ensure that your catalogue of my home is not full of incorrect information that is my business."

He steps out slightly, two clawed hands still curled around the trunk of the tree beside him, and Rilla realizes with a widening of the eyes that he has two other hands, as well, because the monster apparently has four arms, in addition to his long, twiggy legs and his dexterous tail. She hadn't been expecting that, hadn't realized that in between his first appearance mostly under the water and his second up among the branches, this is the first truly good look she's gotten of him so far. She knows that it's rude to stare, of course, but- but does that really count for scientifically significant and anomalous anatomies?

"Well?" Arum says, apparently wary of her scrutiny. "Do you want me to show you how it grows or don't you?"

"Which hand do you write with?" Rilla blurts, entirely unable to help herself, and Arum blinks.

"Whichever I wish to?" he answers, his scaly brow raising in confusion, and then he comes a little closer, watching her carefully as he reaches a hand out for Rilla to pass the journal to him. She doesn't hesitate, practically shoving it into his hands, extra plural implied. "Does it matter?"

"I mean-" Rilla watches him, noting the way he holds the book in his two lower hands, sketching with his upper left. "Yeah? Can you write with all of them equally well?"

"I'm a monster, not an idiot," he mutters, "of course I can write with all of them. It would hardly be convenient otherwise."

"But-" Rilla wants to bounce, instead she just steps a little closer, watching as Arum switches hands and continues to sketch with equal skill, his own style less detailed and more impressionistic than her own. "I mean, that's not how it is with humans, you know? Most people have a dominant arm that they can more easily perform tasks with, and usually they get so used to using the one arm for specific detailed tasks that the other one falls out of practice and isn't useful for the task anymore! There's a strange prevalence, too, a trend towards- the right hand side is more likely to be dominant than the left, and no one really seems to be sure why, just yet, though I bet we could figure it out if we just did a little bit more research. Though! There are people who can use both arms equally well, or- I mean, I guess some folks probably just train themselves to do so, and maybe it's not entirely an ingrained trait? I'm not sure about that one. Those people are called ambidextrous, which I guess would be okay to call you for a similar trait? Though, it means both sides, so I think a more accurate word would be omnidextrous, as in, all of your hands, though I don't know how many monsters have your limb configuration so it's hard to say how useful a word like that might-"

Arum narrows his eyes, his frill pressing tight against his neck as she talks, but she doesn’t recognize his annoyance for what it is until he interrupts her in a stammering hiss.

“S-slow- will you stop- will you stop yammering on so quickly that only your own shadow can follow? It is infuriating.”

Rilla snaps her mouth shut. She's convinced that her cheeks are flushing dark with the combined anger and embarrassment that smacks through her. This is even worse than when the shopkeep in market square told her to just shut her squawking little mouth already when her father sent her to fetch supplies by herself for the first time. Worse, because she never actually liked that shopkeep very much, but Arum-

“S-sorry,” she says, and her voice comes out quiet and blank and clipped. "I- sorry."

Arum huffs, wrinkling his snout and looking away, and then after a moment he flicks his eyes back towards her. She swallows, her shoulders hunching, and after another odd little pause his brow furrows.

"Well?"

She blinks. "W-well?"

He looks away again. "I did not think you were… finished with your explanation, little human."

"I- I wasn't, but-" she pauses, and Arum hazards another glance towards her, his expression wary. "I thought you- I thought you wanted me to shut up."

Arum pulls his head back. "What? No, I simply-" his frill flutters at his neck, and then it rises to frame his face as the monster winces. "I- I could not- understand, while you spoke so- so quickly. I do not converse in this way very often."

Rilla feels the sense of shame slowly, slowly bleed away, replaced by curiosity. "How do you… usually converse?" she asks, and Arum scowls.

"Monstrously," he says with a sneer, but when she only purses her lips at him he sighs. "I and my- my parent, as you would call it, do not need spoken words to communicate. They are merely … one layer of how we converse. It sings, and I sing, or speak, and we feel each other's intent," he explains, sticking his snout in the air. "It is far more efficient and accurate than a simple verbal exchange."

"Huh," Rilla says, furrowing her brow. "Huh, that's- I mean, Saints, yeah, that… that sounds like it would be nice." She pauses, frowning at her hands. "It'd be… It'd be nice if there was someone who always knew exactly what I meant."

After a moment, Rilla raises her eyes again. She expected Arum to have some sort of response to that, honestly. Seems like the sort of thing he'd leap at the chance to boast about, but- well, he looks distracted now, deep in thought. He seems to feel her attention, though, and he shakes his head.

"It is… nice, I suppose," he agrees, his tone a little begrudging. "It is difficult… difficult to imagine not having such. I suppose it must make it harder for you and yours to understand each other," he muses, "though, I suppose that you do still sing together."

Rilla blinks. "How… do you know that?"

Arum's eyes widen, and then he looks to the side, shrugging. "You were singing when I first found you," he says quickly, unconvincingly. "I simply- assumed."

"You've… you've been watching me?" she says, her tone rising, and Arum winces. "You've been watching my family?" She isn't even sure- she can't say if that idea bothers her, exactly, though it probably should-

"I- of course n-" Arum's eyes flick anxiously among the trees, and then his frill presses flat against his neck and his expression curls into a scowl as he looks her dead in the eyes again. "You are on my lands," he says, more sharply. "You are trespassers, not guests, so you may hardly complain when you are observed by those who are actually meant to be here. To live here."

Rilla opens her mouth, closes it, opens it again. "Well- yeah, I guess that makes- sense. I just- I was surprised, I guess."

Arum blinks, and then his scowl goes even more furious. "Don't pretend to be- to be magnanimous about it, little creature, I saw the look in your eyes, I saw what you were thinking."

"I was surprised," Rilla says again. "And- and I didn't think you'd want to hear me sing. Most of the other kids don't."

Arum snaps his teeth together, a thin hiss slipping between them, and then he looks away again. "I- I didn't say that," he grumbles. "And- and I am not some other kid. I am a monster."

The word kid sounds- strange in his inhuman voice. Almost silly. She buries a laugh, mostly because she thinks that would probably make him even more grumpy. "I-" she starts, and then she cuts herself off as a thought occurs. "Huh. I had just been assuming … you are a young monster, though, aren't you? You're not just- small?"

Arum's eyes flash, and Rilla- Rilla can see for a moment that he's considering- something. Lying, maybe? And then he glances away again.

"I am the… new Lord of the Swamp," he mutters, begrudgingly. "But I am not a child. And I am not a hatchling anymore, either."

Rilla bites her tongue to stifle her curiosity at the distinction, but when she opens her mouth to respond, Arum interrupts.

"And I am not small," he snaps, a raspy growl in his throat. "I am precisely the size I am meant to be at the moment, and it is hardly my fault if other creatures feel the need to be so unnecessarily large."

Rilla can't help the laugh, this time, and it seems to derail Arum from his ranting. He stares at her as she presses a hand over her lips, and then he ducks his head, looking at her sulkily.

"You… do that rather a lot, don't you?"

"What," she asks through her fingers, "laugh?"

"Indeed. Do you find everything quite so amusing, then?"

Rilla tries not to feel- that stab of mortification again. She bites her lip, and the monster shakes his head.

"Don't-" he stumbles, winces, and then tries again. "I'm not demanding you stop. It was simply an observation and a question. Nothing more than that."

It's unexpected, honestly, that he would catch her reaction that quickly, and she nods more out of surprise than anything. "I just- laugh when I'm happy? Or- when I'm surprised sometimes."

He tilts his head. "Hm."

"You… you don't seem to laugh that much," she says, hoping that it just sounds like an observation in kind and not like a judgment.

"Hm," Arum says again, and then he looks down at the journal still in his hands, at the wavering lines of his sketches beside her own neater, less accurate ones. "No, I suppose I don't."

[charlesemersonwinchesteriii]

fucked up dream last night lads 

(long post that reads exactly like someone describing a dream to you; click readmore at your own discretion) 

ok so 86% of my dreams are utterly incomprehensible but the ones that are can be very useful in rare instances where I can use them to discover how I would actually act in hypothetical situations because they’re very real to me in the moment despite everything being fuzzy and confusing and I rarely do things in them that don’t make sense to me afterwards. i’m very present in my own subconscious lmfao

long story short I was sitting at a bar (like a real grown up alcohol bar) with the vague notion that I was hungry cause my family was having dinner at a restaurant full of food I couldn’t stand to eat (typical scenario irl) but I ended up at this bar full of alcohol which I can’t consume either so ugh but then the guy behind the bar comes and offers me a bowl of vanilla ice cream! and I was sitting there like ???!!! cause I hadn’t said a single thing. 

I get down about it quick tho bc I think about how much it’s going to cost and I imagine it’s a lot (it’s a tiny ass bowl of ice cream but I’m always afraid of spending money. score one for realism as I said up there) but when I ask the guy says sth like “it’s free but it’d be great if you’d go out with me this weekend as a tip” and I burst into hysterical laughter because the concept of being asked out on a date is so foreign to me

like I legitimately didn’t realize how absurd and foreign it really was to me til tonight. like it’s unfathomable.

but then I’m suddenly remembering that this place is some faraway city that my family is on vacation in and we are leaving soon so I explain this and the guy frowns and leaves 

smash cut to me frantically trying to find him in a crowd of ppl in this bar scene because I don’t know anything about him and he looked different every time I looked at him but he ASKED ME OUT ON A DATE, you know, like in movies? like in tv shows? it’s like I was told I won a new car and I told them I can’t drive. who cares that I can’t drive. you have to take a free new car. you have to. 

and suddenly he��s found me again in the middle of the crowd (he’s changed from having black hair and a beard to being a clean shaven blond and gone through several steps in between; I’ve never once looked him in the eyes) and he’s saying, like in the worst script for anything you’ve ever read, “I love you” over and over again, and then very distinctly, “I don’t know why but I do” which in retrospect is making me want to cry. my subconscious straight up said yeah, no, there’s absolutely no reason for anyone to ever have feelings for you.

like we know, but hey. 

and I’m standing there completely overwhelmed by this trying to stutter out stuff like “it’s ok it’s ok I’ll come back I’ll come back” and I remember thinking clearly that this is when in the movies you’re supposed to just stay with them and not get on the plane but I was scared of this bar and this city and I didn’t want to be left alone there with him 

so I convinced him to write down his like, contact info on a napkin, and in the funniest part of this or any dream I’ve ever had, I see he has a livejournal account and am like, oh he can’t be that bad then, he’s on livejournal!

not even tumblr. my subconscious said livejournal is where it’s fucking AT 

so anyways I have to leave at that point and he frowns again and I think hysterically of how I can repay this person for the debt of being taken a romantic interest in and I knew kissing had to be involved so I look at his mouth

and have the distinct gutwrenching thought that I don’t WANT my first kiss to be with a boy, which is true on a gut level but my subconscious didn’t have to make me face up to it like that bc what even does that mean re: who I am as a person

so I kiss him on the hand and cheek and forehead and then smash cut to me walking back to my family and even tho it was only kissing my three layers of shirts I always wear are all messed up and unbuttoned and such for no apparent reason 

and then I woke up and remembered it all and how fucked up several parts of it were and how insanely absurdly thrilled I was the whole time that someone liked me romantically 

and how comparatively awful I felt now that I was awake and the illusion was over

and also how much I was scared and how desperate I was to do anything I had to for some stranger just because they said I love you and how much I, apparently, when it came down to it, really didn’t want to kiss a man. what if it was a lady? or just Not A Man? doubt I’ll get a chance to perform an equal opportunity experiment on that one so I guess we’ll never know. 

was gonna make a joke about my funny comphet dream or sth but I’m just sad and confused now. not worried abt being bi or not bc I might as well be anyways, clearly. where’s that profile of Newt from pacrim and it says Sexuality: Anyone who will take him. like yeah me too. I would have done whatever that guy said and I didn’t even like him. 

also in retrospect the ice cream he gave me was half melted already. use your electroshock therapy and/or tarot cards on THAT symbolism.

[szyf]

So I never got a chance to see a Bonnie and Clyde musical, but how would it fit with rosebird?

oh. oh god. ok i wasnt expecting to get asks but

i call it the musical version because the musical has a condensed and easier to understand timeline. also the music is just really good and is REALLY fun to imagine as rosebird.

for some background before i shove everything under the cut:

raven = clyde

summer = bonnie

qrow = buck (clyde’s brother)

tai = blanche (buck’s lover)

ozpin = ted (a sheriff that has it Out for clyde. in the musical, ted and bonnie have some weird romantic thing going on in the beginning. we’re ignoring that in this au)

anyways, this is not fleshed out AT ALL bc i wrote this all out at around 2 am last night and i’m just really used to having all my rosebird aus (there are. so many in my head) to myself, so trying to write this one out was oddly difficult. if you want to know more, listen to the musical! or ask me more about specific events if you want. the complete plot isn’t down here because God there’s so much and i only wrote out about 3/5ths of it. ENJOy my incomprehensible rambles!

raven and qrow are two delinquents in the texas town of mistral during the great depression who are known for robbing small stores and stealing cars. one faithful day, the twins get arrested for automobile theft– but break out soon after.

they each go their separate ways, qrow heading home to see his husband tai, and raven decides on going to vale, a larger city in texas. as she roams the streets, she soon meets summer rose, a waitress with a broken down car! 

the two have an instant connection, and raven agrees to fix summer’s car in exchange for a lift to vale. soon becoming star-crossed lovers, the two decide to stay in mistral for a few days before leaving for vale. raven’s aloof exterior did nothing to stop summer from being drawn in, though. she tells raven everything– her dreams of becoming an actress, her fondness of poem writing, and her wish to leave mistral and start anew. raven takes interest in this, and falls hard and fast. raven promises summer a life of fame and prosperity, and just like that, summer agreed to leave her life in mistral behind and decided to join raven in her journey to vale.

let’s check in on tai and qrow!!! qrow made it safely back to tai’s house, yet tai wasn’t very accepting of the fact he broke out. tai convinces qrow to turn himself in, and qrow agrees as long as he gets to stay for a few days. in the meanwhile, raven wants to recruit qrow and tai to join her and summer in vale. raven makes her way to qrow, and is ecstatic to see her brother again. they talk about going to vale, until qrow reveals he’s turning himself in.

raven is NOT happy.

she calls him a coward, she calls him weak, and storms off angrily with summer by her side. though, her anger is short lived, seeing as ozpin (a well renowned sheriff) manages to catch raven, and sends her back to jail.

raven is sent to a higher maximum security prison while qrow is given a reduced sentence for turning himself in.

summer is utterly heartbroken, and just wants her raven back. summer was always a good girl– kind, talented, and a bit of a dreamer. not to mention she was beautiful. so when summer resolves to breaking raven out…… yeah, shit hits the fan.

smuggling raven out was a fucking MESS, considering how stubborn raven is. she keeps insisting she can do it herself, but she’s honestly in no condition to do so. she isn’t exactly the Top Dog in mistral’s maximum security prison. so, summer takes things into her own hands and is like “fuck it ill break my dumbass gf out myself”.

it goes a little like this: summer smuggles one of raven’s guns into the prison, shoots the warden that guards raven’s cell, and the entire time raven is just kinda. In Big Love. though shooting the warden was a bit of a panic move, and summer is so apologetic and guilty afterwards. imma b real, it causes an entire crisis within summer.

the point is: raven is out of prison! buuuuut, now they have to leave mistral WAY sooner than planned. soon enough, they’re speeding to vale in summer’s car, stopping at any convenience store along the way and robbing it. promptly, they become the infamous duo who… oddly haven’t killed anyone in these heists yet!

SIKE

during a grocery store robbery gone wrong, raven accidentally murders a cop trying to “play hero” and summer is FRENZIED. filled with shame and guilt over what she did while trying to break raven out, she snaps. summer is Not happy with raven, and finally makes the choice to leave. raven begs her to stay, telling her it’s too late to turn back now, and summer realizes raven is right. she loves raven too much to leave her.

im honestly too tired to continue this, plus the rest of it isn’t as fleshed out as i’d like it to be, but look up the bonnie and clyde musical! it’s really good.

[bellarnyblakc]

heal the love and the love will stay

bellamy and clarke have a conversation before going into cryosleep. 5x13 slight au. 1.3k. also b*cho is broken up already somehow bc idgaf

He’d been chasing hope his whole life. Dreamed about it as a kid, trembling alone in the dark, too nervous to sleep in case Octavia awoke under the floor and started crying loud enough to wake the neighbours. He’d wondered, after his mother was floated and Octavia in prison, if there would ever come a time in which he wouldn’t feel like he was on a tightrope, ready to plunge into the abyss at the slightest misstep.

There had never been a day where he’d had the time to just breathe with absolutely nothing fighting for his attention in the back of his mind. The closest he’d ever had was on the Ring. Six years of pause. But it had always been a glitch, they were suspended in time and space, onlookers to the world where time passed and the world of brimstone and fire burned less brightly each day. All of them just waiting. He’d missed her so much it had felt like a stone lodged behind his ribs.

He watched her while the flurry of activity around them slowed as more and more people entered their cryosleep pods. She was lost in thought, staring at Madi’s frost covered pod and he yearned more than anything to smooth a thumb over the crease between her brows, and then trace the path his thumb had made with his lips. 

He was still angry. Hurt and utterly heartbroken that she’d left him to die without even a second’s hesitation, but he would forgive her in time, just as he had when she’d pointed that gun at him, and the time before when she’d chosen Lexa over her people, over him.

His anger could wait. 

She turned to him, met his eyes and smiled soft and tentative, hesitation dulling the shine she usually had in her eyes when she looked at him.

In the back of his mind, he knew the ten years would be over before he knew it. He knew he would wake up and not have felt the decade pass; that his wounds, emotional and physical, would still be as raw and sore as they were today, but in the almost seven years since landing on the ground, he’d learned not to take anything for granted. He had to tell her, had to let her know how much she meant to him before something else went wrong and he never got the chance.

The distance between them is suddenly too much, for all the six years they’ve been separated and the short time since that they’ve been together, he still doesn’t feel like he’s had enough time with her to fully believe she’s here; for his mind and heart to adjust to the fact that she’s now within reach instead of aching for her and mourning her. He takes several strides until he’s standing a hairs breadth from her. His skin prickles the way it always does, as if anticipating the feel of her body and, like always, he makes a conscious effort not to take her in his arms.

“You know,” he begins, and has to clear his throat before the storm starting in his heart begins to pour out in his voice, “I spent six years thinking about what I’d say, what I’d do if we’d had even just a few more minutes.” He lets the sentence hang, examining her face for any hint of hesitation, for any sign that her feelings have changed in their separation. Six years is a lifetime when they’d known each other so briefly beforehand, and he marvels at the incomprehensibility that she’d somehow managed to build a home in his blood and bones and heart in that short time.

“I talked to you every day,” she confesses and the pure emotion in her voice makes his heart clench. He nods.

“Madi told me,” and huffs a laugh when indignation flits across her features.

“I’m sorry –“ she begins, solemnity turning her features into marble once again and he cups her elbow to stop her.

“We both made mistakes. We just have to make sure we don’t make them again.” His fingers drop the length of her forearm, feather light, but she catches his fingers before his hand can drop

“How do we do better?” her question is earnest, both asking what she can do to earn his forgiveness and a promise that she will try harder to fix them.

“We talk.” He says simply and she lets the truth of it settle on her shoulders. They’ve always been better when they work together, make decisions together. She tries not to think too hard about how it would have gone if they’d just had a chance to talk, to understand what was going on and come up with a plan together. If they’d just been given the time and space and opportunity to understand each other’s point of view.

“I shouldn’t have left you to die.” she insists after a few contemplative minutes and he brushes a thumb over her skin, gentle and accepting.

“I guess we’re even now.” He jokes, and the attempt at levity about one of the biggest regrets of his life tastes only a little bittersweet on his tongue. It elicits a watery smile, just as he hoped it would; the same smile she gave him for all his other half jokes and their exchange settles the rioting inside his heart. This is them. This is their language, a mixture of spoken and unspoken, woven together with soft glances and purposeful touches all coming together to create something that only the two of them could ever understand and share. 

“We are good when we’re together.” She murmurs, seeking reassurance and confirmation from him and he doesn’t miss the subtle meaning underneath her words. They are good when they’re together, they make the right decisions when they have each other for advice and as sounding boards; but they’re good together in this way too, just the two of them and this fragile, inevitable thing between them that had been rising and falling like the tide. Before this, there had never been a good time to jump in and let the waves carry them where they’re supposed to go; always something or someone ready to interrupt them. 

The moment grows charged and electric, but it’s not uncomfortable, it just tastes like possibility and to Clarke it feels so much like the moments in Becca’s lab or by the rover. Both those times, one of them had shied away from this, too scared and uncertain to face it head on. She holds his gaze.

“What would you have said?” she asks in a whisper and he understands what she’s asking immediately, like she knew he would. He squeezes her hand as he brings it up to his mouth and presses his lips to her knuckles.

“I love you, Clarke.” He whispers against her skin and she lets his words wash over her, sink into her pores and etch themselves into her skin. She’d known, of course she’d known. Just as she’d always known that a little piece of her has been in love with him for as long as she can remember, but to have him say it to her after everything they’d gone through, that he could still love her after everything, was like a blazing fire in the chilly evening, warming her to her very core. He bends his head to rest against her forehead, eyes closed as if in prayer, her hands encased in his, clasped to his chest.

“I love you. I’m so glad you came back to me.” She breathes, and closes the distance between their lips. It’s just a soft press of mouths, a greeting, a goodbye, a love confession, possibility and a homecoming all in one. Bellamy kisses her back just as softly and she can’t tell how long they stand there, breathing in each other’s air, soaking in the warmth of each others skin, gaining strength and recharging from each other’s proximity.

They don’t speak again, but she holds his gaze as he puts her to sleep. And if she does dream, no doubt he will be there to greet her in her sleep too.

[writtenonthesubwaywalls]

It All Changed For Him That Day

[[possible trigger warning??? I don't know, so just read at your own discretion I guess]] He stood outside of the entrance to the library, books in hand, staring, fixated, at the teen standing in the doorway to the chemistry lab across the yard. The man across the way had immediately captured his attention, and his heart. The stunning beauty, the pale complexity, the fluffy, almost white hair. It was in this moment that he knew his life had changed forever. This was going to be the first boy he'd ever killed. ---------- Alfred walked home, side-by-side with his twin brother. He gazed up at the sky, not hardly listening to anything his brother was saying. "Alfred, are you even listening?" Matthew asked, kicking his foot out to the side and almost tripping the other. "What's got you all moony-eyed, bro?" Alfred sighed wistfully. "Oh, dear brother of mine, I've fallen for someone." Matthew looked at him in shock. "Y-you don't mean..." he stumbled, disbelieving. "I do, Mattie. I think I've found the one!" he squeaked, looking to the other with his blue eyes practically shining in pent-up excitement. "Well, come on then! We've got to get home! There's so many things you need to tell me! So much to do, so much to do!" Matthew took his brother's sleeve in his fist, dragging him behind as they ran the last block to their shared apartment, books bouncing around in their bags. Matthew closed the door behind them and slung his book bag into the bedroom next to the door. He did the same to Alfred's, then ushered him into the small living area. "Come on, tell me about them," he pressed, curling up on one of the two cushiony nest chairs, practically pulling his brother down into the other one. "Well," Alfred started nervously, a dusting of red beginning to paint his cheeks, "It was a guy. He was tall, fairly well-built while still remaining slender enough to be almost feminine," he paused, "Kind of like a soccer player. But he had the palest skin, and the palest hair, like French royalty in the Elizabethan era, and he was leaving the chem lab which means he must be smart, too." Alfred swooned dramatically, almost tipping the chair over, then broke into laughter with Matthew. "Sounds like quite the dream," he commented once he calmed down a little, "But are you sure we'll be able to take him? He'll be our first actual person." Alfred waved his hand dismissively, "We've killed hookers before, this'll be no different." "Alfred, those girls were half starved, drugged off their asses, and thought they were goin' on a fuckin' vacation.  That hardly counts. This guy sounds to be in top condition. What if he overpowers us?" Matthew voiced his only concern, looking his brother over to make sure he knew what he was getting them both into. "Alright, alright," he compromised, putting his hands up, "What if we took out someone a little less drugged and starved than those girls, and a little less in-shape than him first. Then, in that time, I could maybe get to know this person a little better. Make it more personal." Matthew smiled, dark and sadistic. "Sounds like a plan to me." ------[cut about two weeks]----- "D'ya think we're ready yet, Mattie?" Alfred asked while working on his Russian finals essay. The weather was getting warmer, but there was still copious amounts of rain, which was what it was doing now. Silence, save for the constant patter of raindrops on the window, met his words. Finally, Matthew responded, drawing out his words carefully. "I think, that given the fact that the year will be ending soon, that yes, we should start preparing to pick this flower*. So, yeah, we're ready." "Then, we do it, finish this last year of school, then leave, right?" Alfred confirmed excitedly, rolling over on the floor so he could face his brother. "Right." "So, how're we gonna do it? Quickly, then toy with his corpse? Or play before he dies?" "It's your query; I will do whatever you see fit." Matthew smirked. "And, if I remember correctly, it was you who fell head-over-heels for him, am I right?" "And? At least I wasn't the one who almost drove us off of a bridge ogling at that French hitchhiker," he shot back teasingly. "Hey! He was great, and attractive, and funny, and almost killed us and dumped our bodies on the side of the highway! That's soul mate material right there, bro," Matthew defended himself and his current choice of a lover, "And he's good at fucking, unlike some people  I know." Alfred looked mockingly offended, putting his hand over his chest and gasping loudly. "How dare you insult my sexing abilities! I'll have you know that I am one-hundred-percent a good lay, through and through!" The two dissolved into loud, obnoxious laughter, letting it fall to fits of giggles before Alfred began speaking again. "So," he paused to giggle one last time, "if you are still sleeping with French-guy-who-ended-up-being-a-crazy-murderer, what if this guy ends up being some kind of crazy murderer too?" "You know, you're awfully imaginative, Al." ----------- Alfred checked through the black backpack for the sixth time since they'd gotten into the car, making sure that they didn't forget anything. "Alfred, we have everything. Quit being so jittery," Matthew chastised, then, softening his tone, "It'll be fine, Al." "I know, I know. I'm just so nervous! Excited, but god the butterflies are really getting to me," he whispered rapidly. Alfred fixed his shirt into place again, unable to sit still. The plan for the night was simple: Alfred and the flower, Ivan was his name, were to meet at one of the gay bars near campus. They were to talk, act like it was just any old date, and Alfred was going to drug the other's drink, offering his a ride. Just like any kind of date-rape, but with less rape and more homicide. The usual, really; nothing super out of place or unusual. They pulled up tp the club, the sidewalk in front of it bathed in the neon pink and green lights. Alfred scanned the few people outside, eyes quickly catching on the fair-skinned man he had completely and utterly fallen for. "Alright Mattie, here I go! Wish me luck!" he said, hopping out of the car and balancing on the edge of the curb. "Don't forget: midnight is your deadline. If you're not here I'm automatically assuming you've been caught and I'm tracking your phone. Keep it on you. Got it?" Matthew reaffirmed, waiting for the nod from his brother before driving off to pass the next couple hours. "Hey!" Alfred called, bouncing up to the other, "Ready?" -------- "Come on, we're goin' to my house, okay?" he almost whispered to the drugged man who he wwas supporting on his shoulder. The other mumbled something incomprehensible, then blacked out completely. "Ah, finally." "Come on, Al! I've got things to do, people to see!" Matthew beckoned, opening the passenger side door to their dark colored Chevy. Alfred stuck his tongue out, earning one in return, before settling the target into the backseat and jumping up to his spot in the front. "So, how'd it go?" his brother asked once they pulled out of the neon-lit parking lot. "Not as bad as I had thought it might, although I did have to fight off the urge to just fuck him there more than once." "Well, I'm glad you didn't," Matthew glanced into the back seat, "Because I agree that he's quite attractive. I think I might just join you in your play~" They laughed, and the car dissapeared into the darkness along the deserted highway. //Local Man's Body Found In The Woods! Local man Nikoli Braginski, 23, was filed as missing a month ago, and his mutilated body was found yesterday in the woods near Champaign exit of I-74. Authorities have discovered no leads as to what happened, although they suspect foul play. There have been traces of drugs and acidic materials recovered from the victim and the crime scene. Further details will be available as the story develops. ~*~*~*~ *'pick this flower'- their code for killing, since you cant just go around randomly talking about who youre gonna kill and expect to still get away with killing them (nikoli is the cameo son of ivan, fyi) *Also did you know that pure, fresh pinapple juice will dissolve meat? but it has to be fresh; canned wont have the same affect *also also that a rat/mouse 's body wont survive in mt dew long enough for it to make it to the consumer bc it will liquify? mt dew themselves used this (along with an experiment proving it) to prove that a lady was a liar when she sued them for finding a rat in her drink. fun, right? tbh this was way too much fun to write

[erandir]

stitchcasual replied to your post “so I was thinking today at midnight while i drove in to work bc the...”

*cries* tell me moooore I love pain

suffer with me, friend!

I’m functioning on like 4 hours of sleep followed by an almost 9 hour shift so bear with me if my rambling is a little incomprehensible

Say Dorian actually returned Idhren’s advances that night at the lyrium den and convinced him not to leave Tevinter just yet. He’d already talked about approaching Alexius about taking on Idhren as another apprentice last time they saw each other, so he does that, and Alexius agrees. 

So Idhren leaves Canidius’ and moves in with Dorian and the whole Alexius family and everything is really great. He can do real research and his abilities are appreciated and nurtured for the first time, he’s got Dorian and they can be open about their relationship in Alexius’ household (though not in public). It’s everything that Idhren’s ever wanted!

For like a year.

Then Felix and Livia are attacked by darkspawn and we all know how that ends. Over the next few months Alexius goes a little crazy and eventually he and Dorian have their falling out. Dorian and Idhren leave, find somewhere to live and try to go on having a life. It lasts only as long as it takes Dorian’s father to learn that his son and heir is shacked up living in sin with some male Liberati elf. The scandal! Unacceptable.

He sends assassins. To kill Idhren and drag Dorian back home by force if need be. Idhren and Dorian kill the assassins, of course, but learn they were sent by Dorian’s father. Somehow, Dorian convinces Idhren to gtfo the country. “Remember when you said you were going to leave Tevinter and find the Dalish? Now seems like a good time to do that.” But it means they’ll probably never see each other again.

Idhren goes south, he tries to find some elves. Remember the slaver attack from chapter whateverthefuck? He stumbles on those assholes with the one elf they’d managed to capture and destroys them utterly. The rescued elf leads Idhren back to their clan and that’s how Idhren joins clan Lavellan.

He doesn’t get together with Tainan. He never really feels like a part of the clan. By the time of the Conclave only a couple years (?) later he volunteers to go. Alone. No vallaslin, not considering himself Dalish, no real ties to the clan.

All the usual shit goes down until Redcliffe. Obviously this time Alexius does recognize him. The meeting is not civil, and it’s only Felix’s fainting act that keeps it from coming to blows. But Dorian’s there! That’s good! Except Alexius had become a father figure for both of them and now he’s helping cultists destroy the world and enslaving mages and trying to kill Idhren. And Idhren and Dorian have to kill future!Alexius and he very nearly kills present!Alexius also. And that whole quest just has a whole lot more feelings.

When they meet Dorian’s father later in Redcliffe Idhren probably straight up tries to murder him.

Everything after is mostly the same THE END

[least-among-hamiltons]

“Don’t Bite Me” [ i am an ABSOLUTE SUCKER for vampire nonsense DONT look at me. james is either human OR a selkie bc selkie myths just FIT him ]

thomas is not used to noticing humans. it’s not a thing he does anymore, especially since living through the plague when almost every human he encountered was dying or dead. humans are either food or annoyances, either easily avoided or painstakingly redirected. james mcgraw shouldn’t be any different.

it’s his voice that first catches thomas’s ear. it sounds like a voice he’s heard before, not anyone he can recall the name of, but enough of a tight-wound line that he stagger-steps briefly in the middle of a street and seeks out the face from which it came. it’s a nice face, and the thing in thomas not quite fully undead warms at the look of him, the dark red of his hair, the turn of his nose, the lines of his form beneath uniform. it’s not difficult to pretend some difficulty with something in his eye, becoming all at once nearly invisible as people flow around him, but the man, mcgraw by the voicing of his companion, looks around as his companion departs, and thomas hears the rush of his heart jump as his gaze sweeps over thomas. it’s a moment of indiscretion, but he meets mcgraw’s eyes in the moment after that, lets them lock, lets the moment linger. not unearthly, never, but a moment of uncanny stillness that, incoherent without an understanding of what thomas is, flares with heat in its absence. thomas’s fangs twitch high up on his gums, and he presses a downturned, almost demure smile as he turns away. mcgraw’s pulse is racing differently, an uncertain fear so human in its incomprehension following thomas for the blocks until even his ears lose it among the noise. for all that thomas denigrates the plague, the city was quieter then. he thinks little on it, aside from when ruthlessly jerking himself through the physicalities his body demands of him. it leaves a smugness under his tongue. he feels quite modern, to be lusting after a modern naval soldier. quite colonial, in its own way. miranda agrees, suggests he track down this navy man, “swallow him down in one way or another,” but something in thomas is almost nervous. he doesn’t like thinking about humans any more than he has to, and even having had one catch his eye enough that he mention it to miranda is discomfiting to him. he thinks very little of it until miranda brings mcgraw home.

miranda has lovers often, and as much as the two of them scan as husband and wife when it suits them, thomas generally knows very little about miranda’s lovers. he knows she eats some of them, but as to the percentage or whether or not that’s a mark of displeasure or approval, he has no idea. so when he encounter mcgraw, standing alone in their foyer, he has the abrupt surreal sensation, as a man who has not slept in centuries, of thinking that he’s dreaming. the taste of mcgraw breaking into a cold sweat at the sight of him, however, very quickly disabuses him of that notion. thomas introduces himself, ends up stumbling into insulting the man’s intelligence, station, and competence, and then miranda steals him away before thomas fully has a chance to realize that he’s been absolutely enraptured by the noncompliance and refutation of their respective difference in station. mcgraw is lightning caught in amber, but it’s easy to write their meeting off as the last time he’ll be seen. it is the last time he sees james with miranda, but when he encounters mcgraw (lieutenant mcgraw, as he was informed during their exhange of passes) in the street hardly a month hence he’s startled enough that mcgraw seems amused by his surprise at being seen again.

“you’d think you had been expecting your wife to eat me alive,” mcgraw says, and in a moment of unbalanced candor thomas responds, “yes, she has a tendency to do that.” there’s not even a chance for the rebuttal to sour on his tongue before mcgraw is grinning and thomas finds himself quite unable to regret his indiscretion. they talk for a handful of minutes until thomas’s other business (hunting, quite ironically) becomes quite pressing and he has to insist that the lieutenant feel quite comfortable calling on thomas within the week, which, as he should have expected, mcgraw declines, citing propriety. thomas catches his wrist briefly, then, hardly more than a suggestion, and feels the electricity lance through them both with more force on his end that he had honestly been expecting. if his voice is more speculative than he’d expected as he begs, as a closing courtesy, that mcgraw keep his offering in mind, then he hopes that mcgraw will be willing enough to dismiss it as his oddity that is the reason for the lapse. later, without the edge of hunger driving him on, he balks at his own forwardness, but miranda lauds it, only regretting its publicity. she laughs at thomas’s accidental hint as to her nature to james, but there’s a tenseness to it that reminds thomas to mind himself better next time. miranda doesn’t often speak of her own safety, but thomas does care for her, and is not inclined to give his laxity any room at all to expand.

james calls on him on the last day within the week. he looks half-wild, furious with indecision, but when thomas meets him with gentle rebuke and mcgraw responds with outright scorn, he abruptly realizes the absurdity of the whole situation, and seems to decide to resign himself to it. he touches what little he touches of thomas and miranda’s house with gentleness and tension, and thomas’s almost-too-chill skin flushes with heat at the suggestion of it. he dismisses the servants, citing business, and within three minutes his mouth is at james’s neck, pressing him into his chair as he pulls at his cravat, james’s blunt fingers dragging under thomas’s chin to drag his mouth back to james’s own, the want between them hot and hungry and far too lifelike for thomas to feel at ease with how genuinely he wants james. james, who he is now permitted to call james, who tastes like flesh but groans like music incarnate. james, who thomas wants in his bed so deeply his fangs itch with it, but whose will, matched and expressed, says it is not to be so, not for now. thomas yields. for the first time in nearly half a century, there is something he wants that is not a continuation of undeath. james is warm under his mouth, his tongue, and thomas could die for the electricity james carves through him as thomas’s wig is set to the wayside and james fits a hand to the curve of thomas’s jaw.

they’re interrupted by miranda, and if thomas’s pupils are slits at the way james startles under his hands as she walks in, only miranda sees that before he tucks that vampyr’s rage away, to be shed, discarded later. miranda speaks wrily to james , who had nearly tossed thomas from his lap upon miranda’s entrance, for several minutes, the words utterly lost to thomas, who watches james speak, utterly distracted by the heat of him under his hands. they speak for some time, until thomas, distracted and half-intoxicated by james’s presence alone, leans down to bite, flat-teeth only, gently at the juncture of james’s neck. james’s voice is undeteady, unsure for a moment, and thomas withdraws as miranda and james seem to reach an agreement about something. james’s hands at his hips swipe suddenly, and he meets james’s questioning gaze with utter incomprehension.

“he wasn’t listening.” miranda assumes he still isn’t, and james’s mouth quirks. it’s only thomas’s annoyance at miranda that keeps him from leaning down to kiss james’s mouth. as it is their gaze holds, james’s wry, and his voice is gentle.

“she wants to accompany me home--”

“--a chaperone--”

“--to avoid suspicion.” here james leans up, and thomas does kiss him, sweetly, “so that we might continue our indiscretion at another time.” thomas nods briefly. he sees the wisdom of this. he and miranda met when he was thrown into the fire at her witch-burning. he knows the importance of keeping themselves safe. he kisses james once more.

“i trust you will call on me?” it’s the most open-ended question he’s asked in a very long time, but james’s lack of open hesitation in responding “of course” cheered him greatly.

“although i’m happy to extend an invitation for you to call on me if needs must.” thomas and miranda’s eyes lock briefly, and thomas’s careful languor betrays nothing. “of course,” thomas responds. he untangles himself from james and the chair, and james stands, cracking kinks in his back subtly in a way that reminds thomas to pantomime the same. the taste of james os on his tongue, and with his mouth carefully closed he lets his itching fangs snap down, taint his mouth gently with the acridity of his venom. james, after smartly retying his cravat, moves away to take miranda’s arm and be escorted away, and miranda’s eyes are sharp on him as she escorts james away. them gone, thomas sinks down into the vacated chair, sighs, letting the rattle of air over his expressed fangs drag through him.

“fuck,” he says softly to himself. “fuck.”

[viralhottopics]

Can I forgive the man who raped me?

Thordis Elva was raped aged 16. Years later, she emailed Tom Stranger, the man who raped her, beginning a raw, painful healing process documented in their book South of Forgiveness. In this extract, they meet to find a way forward

Thordis Elvais from Iceland and known to Icelandersas a writer, playwright, journalist and public speaker. She was voted Woman of the Year 2015 by the Federation of Icelandic Womens Societies in Reykjavik for her work on gender equality, and has written a celebrated book on gender-based violence, 2009s mannamli (The Plain Truth). She currently resides in Stockholm, Sweden with her partner Vidir and their son.

Tom Stranger is Australian. He met Elva when he was 18 and on a student exchange programme in Iceland, and the pair had a relationship. Since then, he has worked in various sectors (community services, youth, outdoor recreation, charity, construction, and hospitality). For now, he is working as a landscape gardener and lives in Sydney with his wife, Cat.

From: tomsstranger@hotmail.com Sent: Saturday 21 May 2005, 5.38am To: thordiselva@hotmail.com Subject: Words for you Thordis, I dont know where to start. When I saw your name in my inbox, my spine went cold. My memories are still as clear as day. Please believe me when I say I have not forgotten what I did, and how wary I have to be of myself. I dont know how to reply. I want to call myself sick (but I know I am not), I want to say that you are so strong, so strong to be able to write to me and recall the events and my actions. I want to thank you for not hating me, although Id like you to. It would make it easier for me. Without looking for a scratch of sympathy, I want to tell you that the events and emotions I was party to in Iceland have replayed in my head many times, usually when I am by myself for any length of time. They flash past me, vividly accurate, and then, shortly after the denial and positive character reinforcement, comes the question: Who am I? It is a dark part of my memory. Ive tried to suppress it. But this is not about me. Whatever I can do or offer you, I am more than willing. The question is where to go from here. You tell me. Tom.

*****

After eight years of analysing the violent past and its consequences in a written correspondence, Thordis and Tom decide to meet up in the middle, between their home countries of Iceland and Australia, looking to face their past once and for all.

Day one, 27 March 2013

The taxi picks me up at a quarter to five and takes me to the bus station, where Im booked on the fly-bus. The grizzled taxi driver, hoisting my suitcase into the trunk with a smooth manoeuvre, asks me where Im going.

To South Africa.

Oh, really? To Johannesburg?

No, to Cape Town, I reply, still in disbelief at my own words despite the time Ive had to adjust to the idea. It would be an understatement to say that the proposed meeting has been on my mind. Its reverberated in every step when Ive gone out for a run; its been in every breath of cold winter air that scraped the insides of my lungs; its soaked the wet washcloth I used to clean my sons sticky fingers. And Ive tried my best to push it out of my mind when making love to my fiance, enjoying his warm skin against mine.

After all, that would be a highly inappropriate time to be thinking about it.

From the moment the destination was set, I adapted to a new calendar before or after Cape Town. The last time I bought deodorant I automatically deduced that I wouldnt have to buy another one until after Cape Town. Yesterday, when snuggling down with my three-year-old son to do some painting together, spending quality time with him BC momentarily appeased my guilt for leaving him for 10 days to travel halfway across the globe to face a man from the past without any guarantee of the outcome.

Something tells me that parents of young children are not meant to take such foolhardy decisions. Thats the reason I gave up my dreams of parachuting when I fell pregnant with my son. Then again, throwing myself out of an aeroplane at 7,000 feet carries less emotional risk than taking a trip down memory lane with the man who turned my existence upside down. Because it wasnt an unknown lunatic who tore my life apart all those years ago. Who turned down the offer of medical help for me, even though I was barely conscious and vomiting convulsively. Who decided instead to rape me for two endless hours.

It was my first love.

My mothers eyes flew wide open when I told her that I was travelling alone to South Africa to meet up with the man who raped me when I was 16. She strung together a series of hair-raising worst-case scenarios before letting out a sigh, looking at me with loving reluctance, and adding: But I know its pointless to try to talk you out of things youve set your mind to, dear. Shortly thereafter, my dad interrupted my packing when he dropped by for a coffee. Despite my attempt to break the news to him in the gentlest manner possible, it didnt prevent him from freaking out. He lectured me in a thundering voice about how I was jeopardising my life for an utterly ridiculous idea.

But I have to finish this chapter of my life, I said softly. My cheeks were on fire.

Finish this chapter? he repeated, appalled, and jumped out of his chair. You dont need to travel across the globe to finish anything! This whole idea is a big pretentious drama, thats what it is!

His words hit me right where it hurts.

Youll have no control over anything. Nothing but your thoughts! Nothing else!

What do you mean? I asked, confused. Ill obviously control my actions and whereabouts.

No you wont, dear, he hissed. You cant always. If you could, then that wouldnt have happened.

We both knew what he meant by that, even though weve never talked about the incident that changed everything. In recent years, Ive spoken widely and publicly about my status as a rape survivor (though, until now, never identified the man who raped me) yet my father and I have never discussed that fateful night. He has never asked and Ive always assumed he doesnt want to know.

I sat up straight, aware of my glowing cheeks. If you reduce me to victim and him to perpetrator, I can see how this seems incomprehensible to you. But were much more than that, Dad.

He scoffed loudly before storming out of the kitchen.

I leant against the wall and let the air out of my lungs slowly. Goddamn it. I knew this would be hard, but bloody hell.

My father appeared again in the doorway, pacing up and down with frustration I knew was fuelled by fatherly love. How can you be sure youll finish anything with this nonsense? This may just as easily be the start of something else entirely! The distress in his voice made it sound like a threat.

I sat alone in the silence my father left behind and watched the dust settle. In a way, I think were both right. This trip will surely mark an end to a certain chapter of my life. What sets me apart from my father is my belief that in the next chapter, I wont be the victim any more.

Day two, 28 March 2013

The screen in the seatback in front of me shows a blinking plane over a map. According to the timer, Cape Town is just 29 minutes away. The butterflies in my stomach nose-dive, as the time seems way too limited considering how many questions are left unanswered.

Goddamn it, what if I cant forgive him? Am I ready to let go?

Frustrated, I scroll through the folder on my laptop, searching for something to calm my nerves. I was level-headed enough when I suggested this trip, wasnt I? In an attempt to recover my faith in this risky undertaking, I read through my own proposal:

You may need a lifetime to forgive yourself for what you did to me. That is up to you and you take however long you need, independent of anyone else. I, however, am climbing a different mountain. And I am getting very close to the top. I propose that in six months time, we meet up with the intention of reaching forgiveness, once and for all. In person. It is the only proper way for me to do it, I feel. No letter can ever compare with face-to-face communication. And after all weve been through, I think it is the most dignified and honest way to finish this chapter of our story.

I sound so calm, so fucking reasonable. How is it possible that this was written by the same person now hyperventilating in a plane 30,000ft over South Africa, full of nerve-racking doubt?

Reading through his reply, Im somewhat comforted that he, too, felt conflicted:

Ill admit that I was floored by your request to meet up. Fearful, anxious, cautious, paranoid. You name it, it all came swarming in. But youve asked, and you sound like you are making vital ground towards something very special for yourself. So of course Ill agree to see you. After much thought I do think it will be beneficial, and an opportunity for myself to air face-to-face some long held words and for us both to look to close some doors. I want it for you, Thordis, as you seem strong, open and ready to see me and move forward. I want it for me because Im so very sick of being sick and seeing myself as unlovable, and believe I can move on if I could just look you in the face, own up to it and say Im sorry.

Forgiveness is the only way, I tell myself, because whether or not he deserves my forgiveness, I deserve peace. Because Im doing this for me. My forgiveness is white-hot from the whetstone, and its purpose is to sever the ties, because if I can let this go, once and for all, Im certain that my overall wellbeing will benefit greatly. Self-preservation at its best.

Day four, 30 March 2013

Its seven oclock when we buy ourselves a drink at the hotel bar and sit down by a table facing the garden, readying ourselves for the hard talk. The windowpane clatters loudly, and an endless stream of staff crossing the room distracts me to the point where I give up. What do you say about us finishing this conversation in my room?

He looks at me, shocked. Are you sure? Youre comfortable with that?

Im sure that itll be easier to have this talk if we get proper privacy. Its tough enough as it is.

Tom radiates ever-increasing anxiety as the elevator climbs closer to the 12th floor. Unlike him, my emotions have calmed down.

Almost serene, I step out of the elevator. Theres no turning back now.

He buries his hands in his pockets as I fish my key out of my bag in front of my hotel room. Putting my hand on the doorknob, it morphs into the white plastic door-handle with the keyhole that haunts my dreams. Within me, everything falls silent. Ready? I ask myself.

Without hesitation, I turn the key.

Tom follows me inside my room, takes a look around and smiles nervously. Not bad.

Sit wherever you like. Im going to make some tea.

Thordiss student ID from around the time she met Tom. Photograph: Courtesy of Thordis Elva

He sits down on the edge of the bed while I busy myself with the kettle. From the corner of my eye, I notice him closing his eyes and straightening his back, as if hes steeling himself. When the boiling water hits the teabag at the bottom of the cup, Tom begins the story in a hoarse voice. I wore my golden shirt that evening. I didnt know it was customary to get dressed up for a dance in Iceland, and I didnt have anything fancy. The son of my host family took me to an exclusive store and helped me choose the shirt. I thought it was the peak of cool, at the time. The striped trousers were a present from my host sister.

He accepts the steaming teacup from my hand and stares into it for a moment before continuing. I remember how excited I was when I bought the ticket. I remember that I was with my friends Carlos and Ben when we met you outside the dance. You were pretty drunk when you arrived.

It was the first time Id ever tasted rum, I tell him. I didnt know how to drink alcohol. Nor did I know how to smoke, even though I took a drag from the rolled cigarette you handed me. I just wanted to impress you. And after the ensuing wild cough, I wondered if perhaps that wasnt a cigarette, I remind myself.

I lost you the minute we stepped inside, Tom continues. Carlos and I went straight to the dancefloor. I remember feeling happy and carefree in that sweaty pile of people. Then someone told me you werent well, you were in the ladies.

My mind replays the awful scene from the bathroom stall. The stains on my new dress. My hair wet from hugging the toilet. My fear and wonder as one spasm after the other wrung my body out like a dishrag. The repeated promises that Id neither drink nor smoke again if I were only allowed to survive this night. And finally, the desperate wish for my mom to come save me. I fucked up, Mom. Im sorry.

Tom frowns. I felt it was my duty to go and check on you. So I went in and climbed over the partition, into your cubicle. I held your hair back while you vomited, and I thought I was going to be sick as well. Then you flopped to the ground and lay there, motionless. I remember carrying you out.

He pauses and looks away. Before I have a chance to tell him how grateful I was when he appeared like my mother incarnate to save me from an untimely death on the bathroom floor, he grimaces bitterly. Then I couldnt be bothered to look after you, Thordis. I dumped you on Ben and left you with him. You were slumped on the chairs outside the bathrooms and he stood there, stooped over you, as I went back to the dancefloor.

I look at him in surprise. I thought youd taken me straight home.

He clenches his jaw. My only thought was that this was the only Christmas dance I was going to experience in Iceland. I was selfish and didnt have any concern for you. In the end, I felt guilty that some other guy was looking after my girlfriend. So I scooped you up in my arms and carried you up the stairs, in a foul mood because I had to leave the party.

And the security guards stopped you on the way out because they wanted to call an ambulance for me as I was dangling from your arms, foaming at the mouth. They thought I had alcohol poisoning.

Id forgotten that moment but I dont doubt it, he says in a low voice.

Tom Stranger in 1996, the year he went to Iceland. Photograph: Courtesy of Tom Stranger

I remember that part vividly because for a second there, I thought youd take their advice, I respond, looking down into my cup. That Mom and Dad would get a call from the hospital saying that their 16-year-old daughter was lying there with alcohol poisoning. I imagined being grounded for life.

Id known for three years by then what it is to drink to excess, and Id seen many of my friends at various stages of drunkenness. I just thought you were wasted. I didnt think you were in real danger, he says.

Whatever it was, it had me paralysed and unable to speak. But I heard you loud and clear as you refused the offer of an ambulance, telling the security guards that you knew me and would see me safely home.

He nods, his complexion strangely pale. The taxi was white, I recall. I told the driver your address I remember letting us into your house. But what I dont remember is what I did with you while I struggled to unlock the door.

You draped me across your shoulder while you rummaged round in my bag for the keys.

He raises his eyebrows. Really? Like a sack of potatoes?

I nod.

He swears at himself quietly. And I remember your entrance hall, the shoes on the floor. From memory, past the coat hooks there were some stairs on the left, leading up to the kitchen and your parents area. Your room was through on the right. He stops and swallows.

I remember taking your clothes off.

I remember it too. My gratitude when he removed my vomit-stained dress. My relief at having my feet freed from the high heels. My frustration for not being able to utter a word of thanks. My lack of understanding when he continued to remove my underwear. Why my panties? Why?

My stomach muscles reflexively tighten as I prepare for the blow.

He stands up, moving restlessly, and walks over to the wall opposite the bed. I undressed you completely… He falls silent and hangs his head. The wind howls pitifully outside the window.

Tom begins to cry.

I wish I could tell you why I did it, Thordis.

Did what?

Raped you, he says, quietly.

This is an edited extract from South of Forgiveness by Thordis Elva and Tom Stranger (Scribe Publications, 12.99). To order a copy for 11.04 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Thordis Elva and Tom Stranger will be speaking at the Royal Festival Hall as part of the Women of the World festival on 11 March, and at the Bristol Festival of Ideas on 13 March

People were quick to judge I wasnt angry enough: what came next for Thordis and Tom

Standing in stark stage lights, with five cameras directed at me, I recently found myself on a stage, telling an audience of 1,200 how Id been raped when I was 16 years old. Next to me on stage was Tom, who raped me after a dance at our high school. Together, we gave a TED talk that summarised a 20-year long process, whereby Tom shouldered responsibility for his actions and the way they impacted our lives. It was viewed nearly 2m times in the first week and the overwhelming reaction was positive and supportive.

In the talk, I described the violence Tom subjected me to, how I spent years wanting nothing more than to hurt him back, how I found a way to part with the anger that nearly cost me my life, as well as rid myself of blame that I like so many other survivors wrongfully shouldered.

Tom described how he felt deserving of my body that night, without any concern for me, and consequently convinced himself that what he did was sex and not rape. The following nine years were marked by denial, in which he did his best to outrun the past, until I confronted him in a pivotal email that changed our lives for ever.

Ive been asked why I didnt press charges immediately, and the simple answer to that question is that I was a 16-year-old girl with naive notions about rape. Rapes were committed by armed lunatics, the kind of sensationalised monsters you saw on TV and read about in the papers. The fact that Tom wasnt a monster, but a person who made an awful decision, made it harder for me to see his crime for what it was. That way, the demonisation of perpetrators in mainstream media got in the way of my recovery. By the time I was able to identify what had happened to me as rape, Tom had moved to the other side of the planet, far from the jurisdiction of the Icelandic police. At the time, 70% of rape cases in Iceland were dismissed, even when the perpetrator could be interrogated and the survivor had documented injuries, neither of which were the case for me. Therefore, pressing charges would not have been a fruitful process, and the only option I felt I had left was to bottle up my pain and anger. Studies show that very few survivors have a clean-cut story in which they went straight to the authorities after being assaulted, put the blame squarely on the perpetrators shoulders, healed their wounds and moved on. For most of us, life after violence is a messy ordeal. We dont go to the police because were too confused, scared or doubtful that well get help. We blame ourselves and obsess about things we couldve done differently. We numb ourselves with alcohol/drugs/sex/food/work, or we turn to self-harm to relieve the emotional pain. We continue to see our abusers and pretend that nothing happened, because facing the truth is overwhelming. We develop PTSD and mental illness. We stay silent about what happened out of fear that well not be believed, or worse, blamed for it because we did something wrong. No wonder, really. In reality, the only people capable of preventing rapes are those who commit them, and yet were told from an early age that we can avoid being raped by dressing and behaving in a certain way. This culture of victim-blaming also fosters the idea that there is a right way to react to violence. Had the survivor only worn something else, not smiled so widely, not gotten drunk, fought back (more), screamed (louder), gone straight to the police, not feared their attackers retaliation if theyd only done that, everything wouldve worked out differently. Victim-blaming deepens the shame that many survivors feel and lessens the likelihood that they speak up about their experiences.

Watch Thordis Elva and Tom Strangers TED talk.

The reality is that there is no right reaction to having your life ripped apart by violence. I knew that my collaboration with Tom would be controversial, and the reactions of internet trolls didnt surprise me. But I am concerned with how quick some people were to judge the wrong way in which I worked through my experience. I wasnt angry enough, I shouldve pressed charges, I was setting a dangerous precedent, I should be ashamed. Although I made it clear that my forgiveness wasnt for my perpetrator but for myself and that without it, I wouldnt be alive, I was still told that I should not have forgiven.

This worries me. I worry about my fellow survivors who are at risk of internalising the misconception that there is a standard reaction to sexual violence, with the conclusion that they didnt react in the right way. To you, I want to say that you did nothing wrong. The way in which you carried on with your life may not have been clean-cut, it may have been messy and incomprehensible to those who dont share your experience, but it was your way to survive a trauma. Nobody has the right to tell you how to handle your deepest pain.

And as the title of our story South of Forgiveness suggests, forgiveness played a pivotal role in allowing me to let go of the self-blame I shouldered, largely due to the victim-blaming culture I grew up in. And yet, forgiveness is not the core of our story, in my mind. The core issue is responsibility.

I understand those who feel discomfort and even outrage when hearing and seeing Tom on stage, knowing that hes perpetrated sexual violence. At the same time, given how prevalent this type of abuse is and how under-reported a crime it is, were in all likelihood seeing and hearing from perpetrators on a daily basis the main difference being that we dont know theyre perpetrators. They could be the people we went to school with, who greet us at the grocery store, who direct the films we watch, get elected to public office, run entire countries and live right next door. Given the low reporting and conviction rate, most of them will never have to take responsibility for their actions in an institutional sense. This does not lessen the gravity of their deeds.

By the time Tom had confessed to his crime, he couldnt have done time for it even if he wanted to, as the statute of limitations had passed. As a result, our case fell through the cracks of the legal system, like so many others, but it didnt lessen our need to analyse our past and place the responsibility with the person to whom it belonged: Tom. We also did our best to answer questions that are rarely posed in the public discourse about rape, where more focus seems to be on the survivors attire, behaviour, whereabouts and sexual history than the perpetrators culpability. And as frustrating as it is, I understand it to a certain extent. Because in the public discourse, the only people speaking about the violence theyve been party to are the survivors, usually. Which is why we only have their stories to dissect, their details to scrutinise. Did she say shed been drinking that night? This tradition of one-sided scrutiny blindsides us from looking at the behaviour of the person responsible, the perpetrator, to whom the focus needs to shift.

I am not sharing the story of how I processed the abuse I endured as a set of recommendations for others.

My story is a unique account shared in the hope that it can aid a public discussion about sexual violence.

As a society, it is our duty to fight against violence. And as individuals, we have a right to heal from it.

Read more: http://bit.ly/2lUbi8H

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