#anyway :) just my take on it. idk if it assuages any fears

[arlathen]

personally i'm trying not to be a hater and definitely not trying to dunk on others opinions of the game so far, but I'm just having a really hard time looking forward to anything bioware is putting out rpg wise because it already feels so hollow of what the other dragon age games did in terms of story/characters/companions as well as the personalization of the story our characters are in. I wish I was better with words because it's not that I'm not excited, I just love these games and the world of dragon age so much and im tired of that not being reflected by those actually making the game, it's like they just ignore giant parts of it. I'm not sure if nostalgia for the first three games is just keeping me from being excited about veilguard, but idk I just wanted to get my thoughts out sorry for the word block

aw that's okay! everyone is entitled to feel a certain way. my relationship with dragon age is a little different than a lot of peoples' because i played them all at once right in a row -- so it all feels like a natural evolution. origins mechanics evolve into 2's mechanics evolve into inquisition's mechanics. and personally, i DO feel like veilguard's mechanics look like an evolution of inquisition's mechanics.

so. way back in my day (2012-2014) i was a somewhat popular gifmaker in the sherlock fandom and i *joined* that fandom right after the second season aired. the sherlock fandom was in its heyday during the gap between the second and third season and were notorious for being wacky and zany and writing a lot of in-depth meta about how the cliffhanger from the end of season 2 would be resolved. and when it was resolved, it sucked. they did it way worse than fans had imagined.

so i also have that instinct. all these very smart fans of the game have spent ten years imagining how they're going to resolve this. i've imagined hours of what my perfect resolution would look like. veilguard is inherently going to be less tailored to my tastes than what i imagined, and so i might perceive it as worse than what i was promised and feel let down. i have a strong opinion that this is what happened to cyberpunk 2077 on release -- it was so hyped for so long that everyone imagined their perfect game, and when it wasn't exactly what they imagined, that made it worse in comparison.

but then there are parts of it that are cooler than i imagined, too. even from just what we've seen.

the two games bioware has put out since inquisition are mass effect andromeda and anthem. and both of these games are, imo, special cases for different reasons. andromeda was primarily made by bioware montreal, not bioware edmonton -- different, inexperienced team. and anthem was.... i mean, it was anthem -- bioware is good at story driven single player action rpgs. anthem was a destiny clone. from what i've heard (i did not play it) the mechanics of it were fun-ish (like, flying the actual mech suits) and i've seen that the game looked beautiful. it was just tedious and repetitive and was designed to fuel microtransactions.

so the key failings in the games that have come since -- multiplayer game not in their wheelhouse and not being built by the main bioware team -- are both being averted in veilguard. it's an entirely offline experience made by the devs we know. many of the most hated parts of inquisition, in fact, they have said they cut out (big empty open worlds where you need to collect 100 silverite). i've said before and i'll say again that it really, really feels like bioware have looked at the criticism they have received and tried to course correct as best they could.

and that does inspire confidence and optimism in me, personally. it isn't going to be exactly like how you're imagining -- for good or for bad. i'm tempering my expectations in line with that, myself. i know that no matter what we're going to meet new cool companions and get to kiss 'em (this is important to me). we're gonna get a whole bunch of new lore (this is also important to me). and we're gonna put an end to my egg boyfriend's misery one way or another (this is most important to me).

[rin-and-jade]

Hi there! I just told my therapist last week I think we are a system, TLDR at end for ppl who will see this :3

So I (host) know that we are a system. I’ve talked with my headmates, syscovery took us many months and I did allot of research before coming to the conclusion. The problem is our amnesia is very low, and we aren’t very disordered. So- yeah we are VERY covert.

I told our therapist about it saying “I think” Only because I’m used to doctors not taking things well when it say things like “I know” and I’m not a professional anyway.

She said she didn’t see anything in us that would point to did/osdd, but she doesn’t think we’re making it up either (thank goodness). I told her I would come up with a list of things that made me come to this conclusion,

But here’s where my problem is- I have a headmate who doesn’t want me to. i know it’s out of protection, but it’s a therapist, and we’re going to her for help so I need to be honest with her. But anyway, this headmate is working very hard to prevent me from going forward with it and my mind is fuzzy whenever I try,

Do you have any tips on what things I should be recording? Maybe a checklist? It might help me to work through the fuzziness and compile a solid list of experiences/symptoms before my next session.

TLDR; trying to come up with a list of experiences/symptoms of my system for my therapist in hopes that we’ll be able to get recognized as a system but idk where to start.

It seems like it is a better idea to address why your specific part isn't letting you to progress further. Is there any way you could contact or have a conversation with it? If so, it's adviced to go slow and be patient.

This needs to be addressed first in my opinion, why? Because there might be potential problems in the future about constant fuzziness that relates back to the initial issue. Find ways to accommodate and assuage their fears, let them know your plan, reason, and future goals for them to cooperate better. This often stems from paranoia/doubt/mistrust or fear, which isn't a simple problem.

If you need help on this part, im available! Feel free to DM me and refer this link to start right away. And if not, then i hope you still can achieve the same outcome without my extra help.

- chrono

[sneezefiction]

of night owls & early birds

Kuroo x Reader

desc: Kuroo, your roommate and longtime best friend, likes you but he really dislikes your sleep schedule. alternatively, your crush gets up way too early and you “suffer the consequences.”

a/n: the irony of working on this fic at 5 am doesn’t escape me… but it also hasn’t assuaged my awful sleep patterns. i hope you enjoy!!

warnings: school/general anxiety, crass/offbeat humor (jokes about planning your own funeral), idk if you’re scared of love don’t read this - it’s very fluffy.

wc: 3.6k

--- You’re screwed, you think, as a light flickers on just outside of your room. It illuminates the carpet underneath your doorway with a warm orange tint.

And though it shouldn’t make your heart jump into your throat, it does.

You’d promised, swore to Kuroo, that you’d be asleep by 2 am - and to him, even that was a stretch. But he should count himself lucky that you’d even agreed to his demands at all. 

After all, he is well-versed in the world of night owls.

Kenma, though maybe not your kindred spirit, shares at least a couple of qualities with you. Kuroo likes refer to these “qualities” as crimes.

One of these crimes (and quite possibly Kuroo’s least favorite) is your god-awful sleep schedule. And you’re a repeated offender.

There was only so much nagging and bickering you could take before you’d cracked and told exactly him what he wanted to hear. In a flurry of words, you’d agreed to turn off your laptop, close up your textbooks and actually put your head to a pillow.

You also may have been bribed.

To sweeten this deal, Kuroo had promised to buy you pizza this upcoming Friday, given that you actually did get some rest.

But as you reluctantly lift your phone, the glass screen glowing a little too brightly, you realize that it’s already 5:30 am.

You grimace.

It’s Tuesday morning. Meaning that the repetitive beeping across the hall is Kuroo’s alarm.

Your lips press into a firm line. Most birds don’t even get up at such a godless hour.

You can’t help but wonder what it’s like to have a functional morning routine. Or a morning routine at all.

Leaning back in your plastic desk chair, you squeeze your eyes shut. 

It stings.

You probably got so caught up staring at the blob-like words on your computer screen that, somewhere in the process, your body had forgotten how to blink.

And while the tension in your neck and shoulders is painful, it’s nothing in comparison to the festering guilt of not listening to your longtime best friend and now roommate (a suspiciously well-intentioned college boy who had somehow managed to win your heart over the course of this fall semester.)

Thinking back, working on your final English assignment at midnight wasn’t the brightest of ideas. It wasn’t even due for another week. But as due dates loomed, the impending fear of a bad grade had begun to burrow deeply within you.

If you could just pump the brakes on deadline anxiety, you wouldn’t feel so pressured to type incoherent sentences at odd and empty hours of the night.

And maybe Kuroo wouldn’t feel the need to coerce you into a firmer sleep schedule. Though you do find this caring habit of his to be inexplicably endearing. 

Thus, the prickling feeling continues to infiltrate your restless mind and the brewing concoction of anxiety and guilt in your tummy makes you feel uneasy.

But before you can sneak into bed and tuck yourself inconspicuously under the covers, you hear a floorboard creak. 

As if on instinct, you hold in a breath.

Kuroo isn’t one to forget about little promises. Of course, he’d want to know if you’d made good on your side of the deal. 

Gently, you close your laptop and swivel your chair to face the door. You still your movements, keeping your body taut against the back of your chair.

More soft steps fall just outside of your room.

Your eyes can’t pick a place to land, so they choose to wander. And with a quick scan of your room, it doesn’t take you long to realize that your bedside lamp had been left on - an instant giveaway.

You begin planning for your funeral. 

However, if it were up to you, you wouldn’t go out this way. You prepare yourself for death by interrogation or shame-induced coma.

Regrettably, neither options seem very interesting to you. If you ask politely, maybe your friends will engrave a portion of an epic poem into your gravestone just to make your passing seem more sophisticated. Yeah, that sounds nice and pretentious.

Okay, you might be overdramatizing things - Kuroo would never send you to your grave. But that doesn’t change the fact that your psyche likes to play tricks on you in the wee hours of the morning and that the eerie quality of the atmosphere somehow reminds you of a cemetery.

As you sort through who-gets-what on your will, there’s a not so sudden knock on your door. The soft tap makes your heart skip for two reasons:

The first being that you still haven’t gotten used to the fluttering in your chest from him being present all the time. Developing a crush on him (and suspecting feeling on his side) had made you a little jumpier over the past few months.

And the second had to do with the fact that you were actually going to have to talk to him about this. To apologize for being a bold-faced liar. It wasn’t clear to you whether you’d be teased or reprimanded. And honestly? You’re not sure which option would feel worse.

So you take a breath and steel yourself.

“Y/n?” A gravelly voice sounds from outside your room.

It’s tainted with sleep. You shiver.

There’s a preemptive sigh, “C’mon y/n, your light is on. I know you’re awake.”

You’ve been caught, so there’s no point in prolonging it.

“...You can come in.” You reply meekly, clenching and unclenching your fists.

The door cracks open.

That soft orange hall light floods into your room and directly into your eyes. With a squint, you try to fully visualize Kuroo. He’s positioned himself so that he’s leaning in your doorway with his arms crossed.

Before coming to grips with the situation, you scan the boy up and down. Amusingly, you realize that he has to duck his head just to fit underneath the door header - he really is tall. You have to wonder if he’ll ever stop growing.

Aside from his intensified bedhead (which doesn’t shock you) and the sleepiness in his eyes, he looks normal. But you must look positively spooked, because the moment he sees you, there’s a flicker of humor in his golden eyes… and an almost invisible smirk.

At least he isn’t angry. That fact alone allows you to let out the breath you’ve been holding in. Anger isn’t really a trait you’d ascribe to him anyway.

“It’s funny…” He wonders aloud, “I thought we’d agreed to something yesterday.” Kuroo brings a mocking hand to his chin in a thinking motion.

Your body naturally begins to shrink into your seat. You want to sigh, protest, explain yourself… anything to keep him from lecturing you. But, technically, you deserve this. 

“I’m pretty sure you promised me you’d be in bed, asleep,” He emphasizes “by 2 am…”

“And” he adds, motioning evenly to your set up, “I highly doubt you’re up early just to get work done.”

You bite your lip while gripping and releasing the fabric of your sweatpants.

Kuroo isn’t a mind reader by any extent, but the body has a language of its own. Right now, your actions are murmuring signs of discomfort. And exhaustion, according to your dark circles.

Kuroo heaves out something between a sigh and a yawn before he takes another couple of steps into your room. 

The sound of mattress springs and rustled bed sheets gets you to turn your head toward him, though you hesitate to meet his gaze.

He makes himself comfortable.

This is a familiar scene, Kuroo invading your space. Well, it’s less of an invasion and more of an unspoken agreement that the both of you can ‘come and go as you please’ in regards to bedrooms, granted that the “invader” knocks first.

Essentially, if Kuroo wanted company, he would find his way to you and plop himself on the edge of your bed. You would do likewise. The interaction could last 5 minutes or 3 hours depending on your mental stamina that day.

In a way, it mimicked your childhood - going over to Kenma’s and knocking relentlessly on his bedroom door until he finally let you and Kuroo tumble through the doorway together. The only difference now is in the way that you spend time together. Conversations become deeper a lot faster. Belly-laughs after a miserable day of classes are considered sacred. Study sessions are done shoulder to shoulder and with a myriad of disgusted faces when frustrated with a particularly tricky problem.

But this is different from your usual conversations. It’s sickeningly early, you haven’t slept a wink, and a tidal wave of stress from this entire semester is finally crashing into you.

“I’m sorry,” You start softly, fiddling with your fingers, “I just… I couldn’t stop thinking about this expository essay I’ve been working on and my mind is totally numb. I’m so stressed out by all of these-”

“-Classes.” He finishes for you.

You swallow, bobbing your head softly in confirmation.

 “I get it.”

And just by looking at him, you know he understands. For someone so laid back and put together, Kuroo’s eyes could speak a novel’s worth of emotion and information at any given moment.

“But you’ve already spent more than enough time on it.”

Have I really? Have I actually done enough? Because it feels like I’m failing. Like I can’t seem to finish what I’ve started. I can’t even complete this paper.

But at least Kuroo sounds resolute. 

He’s stating a fact, not an opinion.

And he’s not trying to be unempathetic. He does get it, he really does.

But Kuroo also sees how hard you work already. And he knows all too well that there’s only so much work you can get done in one night. You’ve got enough on your plate even without your classes, so having the extra academic pressure is just the cherry on top.

“Mm,” you hum, “yeah, I guess you of all people would know.” You hunch over and rest your elbows on your thighs, using your hands to prop your head up.

He’d been there at your most and least productive moments. On days when you were cranking out a few thousand words and nights when you could only jot down a few sentences. Hell, Kuroo had even volunteered to help you edit and format it when the time came. What kind of person offers to do that before they’ve even been asked to?

It’s just another feature of his charm, you suppose.

But you still feel stuck. Like you’re a boat stranded in the middle of the ocean and you just can’t seem the muster up the strength to pull up the anchor. The anxiety lingers.

“...It just doesn’t feel like it’s ever enough, y’know?” You breathe out.

There it is. Finally out in the open.

And Kuroo hums thoughtfully to himself.

He’s been there.

Not knowing if the effort he put into his work was having any actual effect. Being unsure as to when he should stop taking responsibility for something. Putting work, classes, and people before himself.

It’s draining; a swirling spin-cycle of exhaustion.

But he’s also been learning that “enough” is subjective. So he decides to say just that.

“Enough is a pretty vague word, don’t you think?”

You blink. 

Yeah, you suppose it is. 

Hopefully this isn’t another one of his bizarre epiphanies - the kind that makes you think your brain is going to implode. Sometimes Kuroo could be a little too philosophical for his and your own good. But you humor him anyway.

Shifting in your seat, you give him a stiff nod.

Satisfied with your understanding, he proceeds with his thought.

“What I mean is that we probably have totally different definitions of enough...” he drawls on, “... and different standards too.”

“Okay...”

“What I mean is that-” He sighs, running a hand through his hair, “-what’s ‘enough’ to you may not be ‘enough’ to me. And vice versa.”

Kuroo tilts his head back, brows furrowing in thought. He’s grasping for the right way to put it.

“Y/n, I think you’ve done enough. You’ve worked hard,” he points out, “and I don’t think I know anyone who deserves a break more than you do.”

That makes you pause. You lift your head up to catch his gaze - his eyes are already studying your expression. Something inside of you stops functioning because never have you seen such raw sincerity. Or maybe you have, but you’re only just now noticing it.

He gives you a gentle smile. It makes your chest ache.

“You mean it?” You half-whisper.

“I wouldn’t lie to you.”

You’ve known this for years now, but Kuroo truly has a way with words. They had the ability to pierce like a harpoon or stick sweetly to you like warm honey. Even with a few (thousand) shitty jokes littered throughout your conversations, it’s only natural to be awestruck by him. By his ability to make even the most awkward of situations a little more bearable. How he subliminally knows how to soothe and temper you. You think he would make a really great businessman - he’s quite persuasive; a real salesperson.

One part of you wants to apologize to him again. Another part wants to jump up and kiss him. To tear up and cry in his arms with relief. You chalk these potential reactions up to exhaustion and hormones… but you don’t write them off entirely.

Because suddenly being 3 feet apart feels like miles. And your bed is looking terribly comfortable.

“Mind if I join you?” You ask, but you’re already moving from your seat.

He gives you an indifferent shrug - though he feels anything but.

“It’s your bed.” 

Oh, you’re well aware of that fact. You can already feel heat rising to your face.

You stand up slowly, raising your arms to the ceiling in one final attempt to stretch. Then softly, you place a knee to the mattress and wedge yourself on the rest of the way until you’re sitting crisscrossed in front of him. He shifts his torso so that it’s facing you.

And now that you’re finally eye to eye, you can breathe.

He may be your crush, but you feel strangely comfortable in his presence. You always have. It’s part of what makes Kuroo... well, Kuroo. He embodies security while still pushing you out of your comfort zone. And for that, you’re grateful.

You break the silence.

“I really am sorry,” you echo your earlier apology.

You undoubtedly are. And you’re not sure why it feels like such a heavy thing to say over something as menial as a good night’s sleep.

“Hey, hey,” He soothes, reaching a hand over to ruffle your hair, “it’s no big deal, alright?”

You send him a half-hearted glare but it immediately breaks into a soft smile. His hand lingers for a moment longer than it should before he draws it away. You miss the teasing touch.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to maintain eye-contact, but even as you look away, you note that his eyes remain concentrated on you. You can’t tell if it’s you who has moved closer or if he has. Either way, those few inches of distance have narrowed by a decent margin.

“I honestly just wanted you to get some rest. You’ve had it rough and by the looks of it-” He scans your face like he’s trying to diagnose you with something.

“Hey, watch it-” You warn, narrowing your eyes.

You already know you look tired. Kuroo loves reminding you of that in his own little way.

He smirks playfully, continuing anyway.

“-You could really use the sleep.” Kuroo’s raspy voice trails off.

“But apparently even pizza isn’t a convincing enough strategy.” He gives you a lopsided grin.

You shake your head, “Oh no, no, the pizza was very convincing.”

He scoffs, “Was it, now?” Raising his eyebrows in mock surprise, “Because you seem very awake to me.”

“Can’t we just blame this on the paper, please?” You sigh.

He furrows his brows in contemplation, “Hmm, no. I don’t think so. This is partially your fault.” A rather underwhelming response.

“A small part.”

“I’d say it's fifty-fifty.” He reasons with a raised eyebrow.

Rolling your eyes, you respond, “Okay, you can quit whatever-” You gesture to his expression, “this is.” He always managed to pull the strangest faces and you didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of making you laugh.

He snorts, “Oh? I thought you liked-” Kuroo gestures to his own face, “whatever this is.”

His voice has a curious edge to it. Some might even call it flirtatious.

And you go quiet. 

You can’t help but stare at him. His messy hair, his barely parted lips. The fact that Kuroo just woken up and somehow still looks this attractive to you is so annoying. So frustrating.

And words are failing you.

It was an innocent comment. He’s just messing with you like he usually does. Maybe this has all gone a little bit too far. You should probably just say good night (or good morning) and rest your eyes.

Yet you can’t shake the feeling that this could be the perfect segway into addressing your relationship.

At literally any other time of day, you might be more rational. You could reason with yourself that this is quite literally the weirdest time to bring up your feelings for him. But something in you needs to close the literal and figurative gap between you two. And, for some indecipherable reason, it has to happen right now.

Whatever the outcome, you trust that Kuroo will always be your safe place.

So you throw caution to the wind.

“Actually, Kuroo…” You begin, staring at your hands which are placed neatly on your lap. “I really do.”

His eyes snap to yours.

This time it’s Kuroo’s turn to go silent in contemplation. Taking in a steady breath becomes an act of labor.

“You… really do what?” He asks slowly, grasping for your intended meaning.

Your heart pounds.

“I really like you.” You clarify.

It isn’t at all eloquent, but it’s sincere. You’d once heard that honesty came easier late at night, but you had no idea that it applied to early mornings as well.

But you finally make sense of the words that just escaped your lips. Panic arises. In an attempt to hide, you bury your face in your hands. You wish you could put the words right back into your mouth.

“I-” You take a deep breath, “I think I spoke without thinking.” Is all you allow yourself to mumble.

You no longer trust yourself with words. 

Your face, your whole body really, feels like it’s on fire. Humiliation begins to wash over you in red hot waves… but you startle when a pair of hands meet your wrists.

You lift your head.

His fingertips are warm and worn. Still decorated with calluses from his years of volleyball back in high school. You want to question why the world has withheld this touch from you for so long.

He lures your hands away from your face, grasping both of them gently. For a sensation so new, it was somehow strikingly familiar. A thumb is meditatively tracing small, slow circles in the middle of your palm.

You gawk in disbelief… and as you scan his face, you catch a hint of pink on his cheeks. You can’t say anything though - your own face feels like it’s just become 1000 degrees warmer.

“I kinda figured you might,” Kuroo breaks the tension rather… bluntly.

Of course he did, wait what?

“But the thing is…”

Is this some sort of rejection? Is he just letting you down gently? Is that why he’s holding your hands like they’re as fragile as fine china? Then why is he looking at you so sweetly, so tenderly-

“I wanted to be the one to say it first.”

You start planning your own funeral again. 

However, this time, emotional whiplash will be your stated cause of death. At least it’s a more unconventional way to go out.

“I- uh,” you swallow, “w- what did you just say?” It comes out as a stammer. 

You’re squeezing his hands a little too tightly. When you recognize your modest death grip around his fingers you loosen your hold.

Kuroo smiles, his eyes crinkling slightly.

It’s nothing like that cunning smirk that you find annoying, yet so adorable. It’s also not one of his full-scale grins. It’s far too simple and reassuring. You almost don’t trust it.

“Well, in short, I like you too,” He re-explains, searching your face for a reaction, “but... I’d hoped to tell you that over pizza on Friday.” Kuroo looks away.

If you weren’t already gaping over his personal confession, you would probably be laughing at this new side of Kuroo. He looks unmistakably bashful.

It takes you a second to recover, but you finally open your mouth to respond...

But you’re cut off by Kuroo, once again. His softened expression is long gone. And, much to your dismay, he’s suddenly shifting himself off of your bed.

“It’s just too bad you didn’t keep up your end of the bargain. I guess that means there’ll be no pizza… no movie… no me.” He slowly releases your hands, knitting his brows together to feign sorrow - it looks hilariously forced, but you’re too worried about the warmth leaving your fingertips to care.

He’s teasing you like you’re his best friend.

And that’s because you are.

So then why does it feel like something’s changed? Like he’s daring you to make the next move?

Before he can pull away and leave, you tug at his hand which draws his whole body toward you.

Your heartrate spikes through the roof. When’s the last time you’ve been this close to someone? To a guy? A guy who’s shown actual living, breathing interest in you.

And he’s in your face.

Close enough that his scent, his cologne, is drowning your senses. Close enough that his breath is fanning faintly against your cheek. Close enough that you know there’s only one thing left for you to do.

Before you can think to hesitate, your lips are brushing up against his.

Intuitively, he brings his hands to your face, closing any extra distance. 

Kuroo’s thumb feathers over your cheekbone, stroking it tenderly. His lips apply very little pressure and it’s unbearably delicate, but it fills you with an indescribable warmth. His lips linger just long enough for you to detect the mint from his toothpaste - he can probably taste the cinnamon tea you’ve been sipping on over the past hour. As far as kisses go, it’s reserved, but perfect for this distinct moment.

Plus, you figure, this is just the first of many longer, more eager kisses - though you can’t imagine being more breathless than you already are right now.

But you can hardly get another taste of him before those warm hands on your cheeks are prying you away. He stares. You stare back. His eyes are brimming with something warm and full. You immediately choose to label it, “affection.”

And in a much lower voice, Kuroo murmurs, “Let’s save this for later.” 

You scan his face, wondering if he’s actually serious. He gradually makes his way off of the bed and onto his feet and before you can protest, Kuroo is speaking again.

“You-” 

He leans down and gingerly lifts your chin with his fingers. The gentleness of his touch almost makes you flinch, but you somehow manage to hold it in the road. Though now you’re really at a loss for words.

“-need to get some good rest.”

He places a chaste kiss on your forehead.

You still feel it after he pulls away. After he closes the door. After you’ve laid you head down on your pillow in shock.

How does he expect you to fall asleep after all of that?

---

extra: this is dedicated to Izzy - our sleep schedules may be jacked up, but i’m pretty sure it’s a blessing in disguise if we’re taking our time zones into consideration. thanks for making me laugh & for not stealing my quarter of the braincell.

and to my precious friends and followers - thank you for being patient with me. it’s hard to post or even write at the moment, but i’m steadily pushing myself toward a better mindset. i appreciate your comments, likes, and the fact that y'all even bother to check out my works in the first place. i’m working on it.

also happy birthday, Tetsu. you’re a real star.

[ooc-but-stylish]

freezedive:

I think I said it in one of your other beautiful posts, but I thought I’d mention it again. All of the ridiculous cutscenes did give us a golden nugget of information on Luna that most of us who are brutally critical of her (like you and me), suspected all along: Luna openly admits to Gentiana that she doesn’t think she has anything to offer Noctis outside of being an oracle. And Gentiana makes it worse by speaking in fancy words by saying some bullshit about her being the oracle is her being human or something and that she is fulfilling her true calling and that is what Noctis needs? Idk but it reeked of emotional manipulation. 

I hold little to no regard for Ravus because there’s evidence Luna was being brutally beaten right under his own nose while he was busy being the Emperor’s lapdog thinking it could maybe give him the power to save his sister? The man should have opened his eyes and defended her against the men that kept them jailed

I happened on this reply to roxainn’s post while trying to recapitulate all my other FFXV critical posts and reblogs on the way to making new ones. 

Crawling back to find anything about this point, I find that it was posted 3 years ago. But at least I reblogged the reply to it.... and missed that it was literally @ ME. Goddamn did I slack.

But here’s my reply, 3 years late, which should elaborate on where I stand on this.

Yes, the flashback that gets triggered by a random creepy little girl in Tenebrae is about Luna and Gentiana. Somehow the little girl knew about that conversation even though she wasn’t there to witness it first-hand? Or maybe Noctis was imagining what the conversation would be like between Gentiana and Luna off of the vague suggestion from the girl, and it’s just him telling on himself that his imagination of Luna says all that? Otherwise the not-altogether-tinfoil-hat theory says it’s Gentiana in the form of a little girl, telling Noctis something that IMO should piss him off but just makes him sad and guilty because Luna loved him so much, don’t you see. She loved him so much that after wrapping her entire life around him, she’d just want to keep that going for the rest of their lives!

Gentiana opens the conversation with, “At first, the father had mourned the fate of his chosen son. Yet in Tenebrae, the two found solace. It was not the Oracle who assuaged their fears. But the girl…she holds…the true power.”

Then Luna replies, “I have little to offer a king, other than the voice afforded the Oracle. Nevertheless…” She turns to look at the wedding dress. “And—I’m afraid he might find this foolish… But…to be together with Noctis again, even if only for a short while… It…would mean the world to me. I do not seek to guide him, merely to stand beside him.”

The exchange is all types of fucky.

First off, she was twelve. What comfort could she have offered Regis and Noctis? What comfort was she capable of when Sylva was right there, an adult with experience of an Oracle and a personality thanks to a presumable full life not hampered by grooming of the gods? 

Second, every other scene of Luna as a child is of her telling Noctis his duty, and that it was her duty to see it through. Did that assuage his fears-- the fears he didn’t have at the time since he never knew the entire meaning of his fate and was being told a saccharine, embellished version of it by Luna right there? Did that comfort Regis, knowing a little girl would also die to protect his son if the gods wanted it, but that she wouldn’t have the will to avert their fates whatsoever? 

Third, even she thinks Noctis would think her desire to be with him is foolish. So... was she expecting that Noctis himself didn’t have feelings for her or want to spend time with her of his own volition for reasons outside of her job? She was looking forward to a marriage with no emotional security, where her desires are one-sided and unreciprocated, and the man she cares for think she’s worthless outside of her powers? She would’ve been willing to put herself through that, given a choice?

We know what we know and think what we think, but the fact that this was placed right in the vanilla game and no one thought that was wrong, and instead they doubled down on it in patches, is pathetic on their part.

Moreover, what does The Girl have, that was separate from The Princess and The Oracle? Every facet of her being wrapped around Noctis since age 4. She was nothing but her duty by the time Noctis met her; they had no scenes where they acted as children would. Even supplemental/promotional art for other XV media and related locales cement that. Little Luna serves Little Noctis pastries, she’s not seen eating with him. Luna teaches Noctis how to play piano, she’s not playing with him. Dawn of the Future came out with its own art, and Noctis is afforded the liberty to sit in a chair, and his son(?) sits on his lap, while Luna and her spitting image child(?) are both on their knees, looking up at the dudes. 

In most of their art together, Luna and Noctis are either not meeting each other's gazes, she's bending or kneeling to him, or he's supposed to be holding her close but he hover-hands her, or there’s that one time where they took a selfie and the picture was of their Pocket Edition versions. They’re still not looking at each other in that one. And it’s not canon.

Anyway yeah, any conversation Gentiana has with Luna about Noctis is emotional manipulation on Gentiana’s part, but the writers manage just enough to make everyone involved seem creepy and reprehensible in their own way. 

In DOTF, Luna has a death soliloquy that confirms she sunk into the water at the end of the game’s Chapter 9, but the soliloquy is about how she was prepared to die even at the age of 12, and she put on a smile and resolved to be strong for Noctis’s sake, so that he wouldn’t remember her having a look of despair. There’s a line there about how she would cry herself to sleep but Gentiana would wipe her tears. Gentiana does nothing else except allow her to cry and wipe her tears afterward, and makes no effort to save her from her fate or at least take her out of terrible situations so that she would cry fewer tears. But there is cut dialogue from the game, and used in the novel, where Gentiana revealed herself as Shiva when Luna was <16 (probably still 12 at the time), when she thought she was being held back from forming the covenants, so there’s that. And Luna still somehow ignored that this meant Shiva allowed Sylva to die, and thanked this useless goddess for her nonexistent generosity. 

For whatever reason they had to add a passage where Luna superimposes the image of an eight-year-old Noctis onto the adult version-- quote, "the image of him as a child, burned into my eyelids, overlaps with his now-grown face"-- even though Noctis has canonically sent her photos of him as a teenager (15-16, around the time he met Prompto in high school, see: Brotherhood). Granted, that's a translation from Luna's voice actress reading an excerpt as if it were first person POV. The English version says she sees the child image first, then the adult version is superimposed. Then not much after that there's a passage where Noctis smiles as his child self and it was "that smile she loved that had been in her heart all these years, giving her strength, always and forever".

So she was groomed and turned into a shell since age 4, believes she has no value outside of her job and turned her grooming on a similarly vulnerable child, and her strongest image of him, the one she fell in love with and kept in her heart, is of the helpless boy that promised her the world without knowing the cost. The smile of the carefree boy that didn't know his journey would end with his soul annihilated. It couldn’t have been that hard to have her see an image of him as the 30 year old True King of Light that he would become. At least she'd sound a little less like a weirdo who continually places herself (and is placed by the narrative) as below him, unworthy of him, etc. but also has strong feelings and memories toward a goddamn child.

Re: Ravus: you already got a reply to that, but for real? Ravus was also shafted by the plot and beaten down by terrible, amateur writing. The narrative shits on him as if it’s written by a high schooler or otherwise emotionally arrested adult trying to push a Mary Sue Protagonist. The modus operandi for those stories is that everyone who disagrees with the protagonist in any way has to suffer tremendous humiliation including but not limited to death, because the Protagonist Is Just So Good And Perfect And Always Right. 

Nothing Ravus does justifies his treatment in-game or in-fandom like he’s a one-note out-and-out villain who wanted nothing but to kill Noctis and disrespect his sister, to the point where his corpse is defiled multiple times in Chapter 13 and he’s twisted into a perversion of himself that begs to die.

Chapter 13 has Noctis land next to Ravus’s corpse and all his letters to Luna, and Noctis has piss all to say about it, either out loud or to anyone. He looks at the Sword of the Father, glances at Ravus, and without a word takes the Royal Arm and lets the Magitek arm-- still dripping, still gross-- fall onto Ravus’s body and doesn’t even move it.  

He had no way of knowing beforehand that Ignis and Gladio knew of Ravus being killed. WE didn't even know they saw security footage until Ch13V2 was added in. Noctis happening on his late fiancée's dead bro sounds, I don’t fucking know, like something you’d want to tell everyone else about later. Along with the letters he wrote evidencing that he intended to return the Sword of the Father to Noctis!

An aside: The Letters from Ravus are just weird to behold; it isn't 100% clear whether Luna ever received all of those letters. She had to have received the first one, at least. But the idea that Ardyn intercepted even one other letter so that Luna never heard from her brother between Tenebrae and Altissia is farfetched. He shouldn’t be able to intercept those messages as if they were delivered conventionally. Luna has a pair of magic space-bending Shiba Inu that send letters instantly across continents. If she’s sparing their use to send Noctis one-liners and stickers but can’t afford that for Ravus to send her discrete updates on Noctis’s status, she’s a piece of shit. 

They do meet in Tenebrae as Ravus wanted her to, and they have the conversation where he gets on her case about her “throwing [her] life away” for Noctis. So chances are higher that Ardyn only got a hold of all three letters after Luna received them and no sooner, but then he shouldn’t be tossing letters from Ravus at the dude’s body when it makes more sense for him to toss down letters to Ravus, since the writers wanted to make a point of Ardyn having a vicious streak. It makes way more sense for Ardyn to deprive Ravus of Luna’s writing, then insult him with them post-mortem, unless Ravus’s notes were really all he could acquire, meaning Luna never once wrote back to her brother. 

The Doylist explanation is that the writing team sucks and couldn't be assed to think of anything for Luna to say because they didn't think of her at all. The Watsonian explanation is that Luna’s a piece of shit and that tracks with her in Kingsglaive watching her brother burn alive in response to the Ring, but ignoring him and running to Regis’s aid instead, but then the rest of the plot presents her as morally pure through her white clothing and “unconditional, self-abnegating love” for Noctis.

Back to the topic: I don’t know, maybe I’m being old fashioned, but Noctis should’ve given more of a shit that his dropping the Magitek Arm on Ravus’s body was probably what turned him into a mutated abomination begging to die, and he thought so little of Ravus that the dude isn’t even in the glimpse of "people who helped me get this far" in the Beyond. Ravus doesn’t even get a spot to wish Noctis and Luna well on their afterlife wedding, not that it makes any sense for any of them to have words to say since Noctis is already dead, no one was there with them, and none of the bros expressed any sign that they knew that Noctis was bound to get married after his sacrifice (he sure doesn’t mention it in the final campfire scene and that’d be a better place than any). But anyway, Regis is in the Beyond at Noctis’s side even though he never told Noctis a damn thing and still never spoke to him from within the Ring, but Ravus? Nah, he’s the real asshole somehow and doesn’t deserve any recognition whatsoever.

The only other characters I know of that have a remotely similar dynamic to Noctis, Luna, and Ravus (lovers, but the girl has a straight-edge protective brother working for the bad guys) is Nero, Kyrie, and Credo (see: Devil May Cry), but as much as I think the writing in that series is hokey as fuck, at least the writer(s) for DMCs 4 and 5 had enough sense to make the love story simple and based it from a line from Amagasaki City-- “I love you, so I love the city that you love.”-- and opted against portraying Credo as an outright villain because if Nero killed him, Kyrie would resent him for it even though she knew Credo was working for the same Order that threatened her life. 

Shouldn’t Noctis care about the shit Luna cares about even if he has no personal investment in it or it’s inconvenient to him? Shouldn’t he care about Tenebrae and its prosperity? or about Ravus? Nah, it’s okay, Noctis doesn’t have to respect Luna’s love for her brother or her kingdom because for all intents and purposes, she doesn’t care for Ravus or for Tenebrae as much as she loves Noctis. Her love for Noctis and her looking forward to the wedding is what matters here.

The yaaaas queen vicious clapback from Kingsglaive!Luna about how Ravus is the Empire’s dog is especially rich coming from her when she’s fellating the gods all through the game even though Eos’s equivalent of The Holy Bible says the Hexatheon’s Revelations destroy cities and that undoubtedly means people are killed by the gods, and their summoner is complicit, because there’s no such thing as a perfect evacuation. See: "Revelations left great devastation in their wake, with entire cities being laid to ruin," noted in the Cosmogony long before the True King even exists. 

Luna herself didn’t see a problem with this and helped in the effort, with no regard to the collateral damage she would cause with the summoning: bonus points for the part where Leviathan is hostile to humanity and threatens to eat every living being if Noctis fails! She had even less regard to the damage Niflheim would cause in their attempt to kill the gods even though she was first-hand witness to them sacking Insomnia. Waking and defeating Titan deprived Lestallum of the meteor they derived power from. Waking Leviathan destroyed Altissia. Luna’s refusal to leave Insomnia when told to by Regis led to her being used as bait and taking the whole of the Kingsglaive out of Insomnia in time for their Face Heel Turn and Insomnia being destroyed. Everything else leads to the eventual World of Ruin where people also die. 

All because she killed herself prematurely from the covenants and didn’t hold back the longer nights as she promised to the public’s face and on her honor as Oracle she would do. Her dying words in Chapter 9 were her being completely satisfied with her fate because “[her] prayers were answered, [her] calling fulfilled”, even though the calling requires that she dies and she should’ve known better than anyone that her death, even if it was for Noctis’s ascension, would endanger the rest of the world for 10 years and helped the Starscourge spread. But instead of fighting for her own life to stem the plague for as long as possible, she let herself die under the belief that "Noct can handle this" to give him the chance to be the revered King of Light. She also didn’t make a single appearance on the world of the living in her spirit form during those ten years until Noctis needed help with a piddly imitation of the Magic Wall, only then does she come down in her ghost form with seemingly all of her power intact, and summons five of The Six as if Noctis can’t easily do it himself.

But Ravus is the lapdog? Luna’s the one with her “ends justify the means” behavior and what looks like general neglect for actual human beings.

Anyway, Ravus stabs Caligo in the back and kills him, and that move only makes sense in light of the idea that Caligo was manhandling Luna as seen in the Dawn trailer. Ravus was 16 when Tenebrae was overrun, and there’s no reason to believe he was magically immune to institutional abuse, so there’s a high chance that he was abused by the Empire too, held resentment of that, and waited for the time he’d be able to retaliate with no repercussions. Gentiana as a goddess is 1000000% more on the hook about letting Luna be beaten than Ravus is, since he saw his mother die in front of him while Regis ran away. Regis had the power of the Ring and could have used elemancy to put out that fire, or void magic to banish Glauca and his MT army, didn’t do that, but he totally spares enough magic during the treaty signing to toss around Thunder spells straight from his hand, cast barriers, and summon some Royal Arms straight at Iedolas, and that’s bad enough. Gentiana who’s been the Fleuret family attendant since Luna was born and also is Shiva who can freeze people with her fingertip had even less excuse to let that fire rage, to let Sylva die protecting her son, and to stand by and allow her ward(s) to get thrown around by some random Imperial soldier.

[bthump]

I know this is very nitpicky, but what do you think is the level of awareness Griffith has during the stairwell scene? For a very calculated and rational guy like him, it's hard to imagine that he hasn't even tried to decipher where these strong reckless reactions come from. I mean... even king of denial Guts has reflected a bit on it. Enough to ask Griffith about it. I know yoy mentioned in a recent answer to an ask, that you don't headcanon Griffith as pining, so would you say that you (cont)

Would you say that you imagine that he compartimentalizes his thougts and represses to the point that he doesn't aknowledge at least to a certain extent, that his feeling for Guts are more passionate, than what he feels for other comerades. The fact that he fully realises the depth of those feelings once Guts leaves is clear. But Idk the stairwell scene makes me think that he is at least aware, that he has a bit of a crush, but choses to not give it much importance. Curious about your thoughts 

hmmm. okay first off I just want to say that I can see multiple possibilities, from full on repression and denial, to recognizing his attraction but not acting on it, to knowing he cares for Guts and wants him as a True Friend(TM) but often downplaying that because he believes Guts sees him mainly as a superior officer. But yeah I do prefer the denial and compartmentalization explanation and I want to go into why, because I think it’s fun to talk about lol.

So the big reason I read Griffith as refusing to acknowledge his feelings to himself is because that’s how he deals with all his other inconvenient feelings, like his guilt and fear and the fact that he cares about the Hawks. Like eg when he tells Gennon that he doesn’t feel a single emotion about him whatsoever, or when he tells Casca that he doesn’t feel guilty over the deaths of the Hawks, I don’t think he’s just lying to them, I think he’s convincing himself too, to the point where he really believes it.

It’s sort of hard to explain how I see this working in Griffith’s head bc it feels v intuitive to me but I know that’s not the case for everyone. So yk it’s not that I think he like, eg makes himself forget that he nearly had a breakdown in a river, but I think he doesn’t ask himself why he nearly had a breakdown beyond maybe a shallow ‘sex with gennon was unpleasant and made me uncomfortable for a couple hours but i’m completely fine now’ and doesn’t think about it afterwards if he can help it.

And when he tells Charlotte he doesn’t have any friends and tells Guts he belongs to him during the second duel, I think he’s telling himself lies/rationalizations he genuinely believes there too. In fact, I think his denial of his own feelings is straight up meant to be his tragic flaw, which is why he’s only able to finally acknowledge them in the torture chamber, after it’s caused his downfall.

In the torture chamber we see him remember the face-off with Zodd and acknowledge that it was an irrational thing to do and wonder why Guts is so important to him, and I think part of the reason the monologue works so well is because it’s the first time we see that kind of self-reflection sans lofty rationalization from him, because before he ended up trapped in his own brain for a year with nothing to distract himself in between bouts of torture he didn’t really ask himself these kinds of questions. If he had, things probably would’ve gone better for everyone.

And like, I don’t think this makes Griffith less intelligent, or negates his rationality in other areas of life. I don’t see a contradiction in someone being able to analyze a battlefield or read other people well but avoiding genuine soul searching whenever possible and lying to himself a lot. I think it’s actually pretty realistic - I don’t think very many people fully understand themselves or their feelings, even really self-reflective people, and it’s very easy to rationalize away inconvenient cognitive dissonance. and I include myself in that lol.

Griffith’s life is kind of a contradiction that would really fuck him up to untangle (he sends people to their deaths to achieve a dream for the sake of assuaging his guilt for sending people to their deaths to achieve a dream), so he doesn’t try to untangle it, he avoids the question and hides behind a philosophical ideal. And his feelings for Guts add to that cognitive dissonance because if he values Guts over the dream, that kind of proves his entire defensive life philosophy is bullshit and his whole life plan is built on a precarious house of cards, so it makes sense to me that he’d avoid examining those feelings closely too.

And you can look at Guts too, who does navelgaze a lot and tries to analyze his own feelings and motivations - when he’s faced with a contradiction (I want to become independent of Griffith and do my own thing solely to gain Griffith’s approval) he actually notices it and briefly questions himself... and then he still puts it out of his mind and continues pursuing his contradictory goal anyway, and manages to stay in denial for 3 days even after learning that Griffith ended up in a torture chamber because he left.

Along those same lines, Guts eg realizes that he kills things because it makes him feel better but he doesn’t make the connection between his irrational urge to fight powerful enemies and his childhood trauma the way the readers can, the King didn’t acknowledge his incesty feelings til Griffith shoved them in his face, Count Slug kept denying having human feelings til Puck went on a tirade against him and he couldn’t sacrifice his daughter, Casca lies to herself about her feelings for Griffith for a long time before finally acknowledging she’s in love and then doubles down on her Griffith feelings when her newer feelings for Guts threaten them until she has a breakdown and admits some things to herself (I mean I find that last one disappointing lol, but it’s also a really straightforward example of someone living in denial of romantic feelings and therefore a good comparison point to show that Miura does this on purpose), etc. So I think this interpretation of Griffith is also consistent with how Miura just like, tends to write people.

Like imo Griffith has moments where he comes close to self awareness and could’ve started potentially reflecting on his feelings and coming to better, more accurate conclusions, and those moments definitely include the Zodd conversation (as well as the river scene with Casca, and “do you think I’m cruel?”) but none of those scenes lead to useful self-reflection because they all go wrong. Casca tries but fails to reassure him bc she’s out of her depth, Guts reminds him of his dream, the King interrupts their conversation and Charlotte reorients Griffith towards his goal so he can move on from that moment of irrationality and refrain from thinking about it further for a while. Even after the duel Griffith tries to avoid self-reflection by fucking Charlotte imo (”take all the sad and frightening things and cast them into the fire” ie hey girl wanna repress some shit w/ me?), and imo his previous ability to do that makes it all the more impactful when it doesn’t work this time and he breaks down.

BUT YEAH all that said I don’t think this is the only reasonable reading of Griffith’s awareness of his feelings lol, it’s just the one I like best and consider the most satisfying and interesting and fun to think about. And honestly that’s partly because I love dramatic irony and have a real thing for characters who lie to themselves, so I’m biased in favour of it too. Nothing about Griffith being good at denial contradicts the idea that he could still be aware of an attraction to Guts (in that case he’d probably just write it off as irrelevant and deny the associated internalized-homophobia-related self-loathing lol until it all pours out while he’s projecting at the King), and he could eg be aware that he irrationally cares about Guts above and beyond anyone else and just doesn’t even try to reconcile that with his dream, ie compartmentalization in another way.

But I think the idea that he only fully admits it to himself in the torture chamber is just very narratively satisfying.

[rigelmejo]

Observations when I study multiple languages at the same time:

Hello so good morning all. 早上好大家，我就着急啊哈哈....

I awoke today and my brain SPUN because I can read some Chinese, but I forgot how to say I woke up and got out of bed in chinese. I also just?? I suppose my brain worried and was like? “Do you even remember how to read french? do you even know any Chinese? Or is the new Japanese just overwriting old stuff?!”

I rationally know japanese probably won’t overwrite the rest because like - the first 5 months I studied chinese it just blocked out my French active recall unless I purposely used French a bit. But I didn’t lose any French as far as reading ability, and I got my French active recall back once I used French for a few hours/days. So it would be quite normal if my Japanese is recalled easier than my chinese for a few months. But my brain is like “we worked So hard to get to read what we Can read and say what we Can say we will be SAD if we lose it!!”

反正早上好我床上来了。我已经醒了。我不忘记很多的词。我着急为了没有的意思。我就找到一个翻译词典为了检查对的词。我猜不错。幸��！还我就可以阅读在法语，很好啊。今天我早阅读法语书一下，很容易。我没事。

My chinese may be a mess grammatically I know.

Anyway. I am. Thrilled I didn’t forget that many actual words. Universe help me if Japanese grammar starts fucking up my Chinese grammar tho. I mean I hope not because French never got fucked up; but to be fair to French I DID forget a ton of the conjugations when actually speaking/listening ToT I can barely recall French conjugations anymore unless I actively look at some textbooks or Le Français Par Le Method Nature to refresh myself. Likewise, I studied Japanese probably over 1.5 years ago now and since then, I’ve forgotten nearly all the verb conjugation endings I used to know with the exception of: ます、ません、じゃない、です／だ、じゃありません、ありまう、います、i know te form exists still though I completely forget what it’s for? Giving orders/suggestions? I forgot how adjectives conjugate but I remember they do? And I certainly forgot how words change when connected to their verb endings - I think there’s i and ru verbs? And they conjugate slightly different? And maybe nakatta is past tense negative, and katta is past tense positive (though I can’t remember if it’s katta or something else tta)?

Basically I forgot a HUGE portion of Japanese grammar. I also forgot Word order, I nearly forgot particles (I still have vague recognition of は、が、を、に、の、か). And I remember でも means but because it’s one of the few words I hear constantly and still catch. Also daijoubu (I may be spelling it wrong) for ok (I remember hearing it in YouTube and shows way more than any learning material I had, and I remember I’ve heard a similar word in thai dramas). 大丈夫／だいじょうぶ - using imiwa dictionary app I’m fairly sure that’s the word I’m remembering. Anyway I forgot... so much of my Japanese it’s like I just am relearning from almost scratch but with a vague impression it’s all familiar. I relearned these words/phrases lately which all sound extremely familiar now that I’ve heard them again: そうです、ここ、そこ、あそこ、駅／えき、子園／こえん, お電気／おでんき、今／いま、今日/きょう、あおい／青い、人/じん、話します／はなします、分かります/わかります、どこ、じゃまた.

Among the good things, I do remember most kana upon seeing them again, I think it’s just a few katakana i don’t remember unless I’m reading katakana then I recognize the word and remember the sound - like my name ミジョ/みじょ MeJo “mi-jo.” I always forget specifically ミ、シ、lol. I also forgot the way to extend vowels in katakana versus hiragana until I saw it again. And I still don’t quite remember why cake isカアク, but something else might be ice cream with a - like アーカイブ?

Anyway. Like I mentioned, this morning I read some French to assuage my fear and remind myself i can Actually still read French. I have not actually forgotten, even though my active recall is shot to hell unless I practice. And I did read, and aside from a few words I distinctly remember always confusing me and never looking up, I read fine. I’m fairly sure I read that novel easier than I’d ever read it before, even, catching more details this time than any time previously. So clearly my French reading skills are still fine, have been maintained, and if anything then over the years they’ve still marginally improved a bit.

I suppose my biggest concern with chinese is just... that I want to absolutely ensure my reading skill hits that vague “specific tipping point” that my French reading skill did. The point at which, once reached, your reading skill does not slip below “capable of grasping the overall gist of main ideas” and if you read every few days or weeks then also may continue improve over time. I remember in French, BEFORE I hit that “specific tipping point,” if I stopped reading for a while, then when I came back to reading things were harder to comprehend again and it took a bit of extra work to re-establish the foundations. But after a certain tipping point was reached, even if I didn’t read French for a few weeks or months, when I came back I had a basis of understanding that never fell below “at least able to follow gist of main idea” and often picked up any forgotten words within a few hours, then picked up new words to learn. And so I could continue “picking up where I left off” with learning instead of fighting with my reading skills sliding backwards. They no longer slid backwards, they only got “rusty” and then once polished up in a few hours, would resume improving. It’s the stage I want my chinese reading to reach, because once it reaches that point I will no longer worry I’ll forget the foundational skills - it’s decently doable to re-familiarize yourself with specialized words as needed (we even do it in English if say we read a psychology book for a class 4 years ago then pickup a new psychology class, etc). But it’s difficult to build the original foundation skills everything leans on. In Japanese, I never finished building it - I think I was finally starting to at 2.5 years in, then I gave up. As a result, I lost a significant portion of that foundation I had not finished building. At first I retained some of it, but from years of no review AND no continuing to finish building it, that foundation crumbled. So now I remember pieces of Japanese, but not enough to rely on. Whereas my French had enough time devoted to finishing the foundation, that now even if I take a few months or a year away from it, if I go back to speaking/reading/listening to French then the foundation is remembered quickly and I can start learning mostly where I left off and just jump to improving again (instead of needing months to relearn). While I can relearn/strengthen the basic things in French, I can also jump into books or listening or convos and know enough to just learn from doing, and still remember enough that I’m Capable of interacting with those things and comprehending enough To do them.

I think of it like drawing - idk when it happens with a skill like drawing, I drew since I was able to hold things so I don’t know. But basically whether you draw everyday, or stop for a few months or a year then return to drawing, within a few hours of drawing again all your previous skill comes back to you. If you forgot something you’d learned, usually a few minutes or hours re-learning is enough to drag your skills up to where they were before. So you can quickly return to your former skill level last time you drew, and quickly start improving further. So each time you draw, you’ve retained your skill from before (mostly) and improve your skill, then that skill improvement carries over to the next time you draw. It’s great. In some ways, my French skill is like that - I quickly can get to the comprehension level I was at last time I engaged with French, can improve from there, and then the next time I engage with French I can pick up from the level to which I’d improved to. I may forget some specifics I didn’t use much or learn as well - specialized words, or ways to express myself I rarely use (so rarely reinforce), but if I re-study them it takes a few hours to get those back (instead of the months it took to learn the first time). I am so grateful my French is past that “specific tipping point” because it makes French way easier to retain a useful level in, and easier to pick it back up when i have time and improve it as needed in the areas needed and retain the improvements I make for the most part. In Japanese, I never reached that “specific tipping point” of having established enough of a foundation. So I lost a lot of what I knew.

With Chinese, I really want to ensure I’ve reached past that “specific tipping point” of enough of a foundation, before I give it less dedicated time. I don’t want to lose the chinese I’ve learned, since it’s a significant amount. And... even more than that, my chinese speaking and listening ability is in many ways BETTER than my French, because I worked on it, and I don’t want to lose those abilities either to the degree I’ve developed them. In French, i know I have very low levels of speaking/listening in comparison to my reading and they lag behind as a result - even once they reached the “specific tipping point” a year later than reading in French, they still lag a ton behind my reading (think A1-2 French speaking/listening skills, versus French B1-B2 reading skills). Meanwhile, I’ve been trying to make it so my listening/speaking skills only lag behind my chinese reading skills a little bit. And I’d like all of those skills to reach the “specific tipping point” where I am able to retain the majority of those skill levels, before I work on chinese less frequently.

I know myself. With Japanese, at 2.5 years in I was Just starting to hit the beginning of making that foundation I could retain later - I was just starting to read and comprehend the gist of the main plots in manga, to watch YouTube or play games and grasp the bare gist of what the main ideas was. In French, those skills started at about 5 months in, and I don’t think they hit “specific tipping point” of me being able to rely on keeping those skills perpetually, until 1.5 years in. With Japanese, as I said, i hit the beginning of building them around 2.5 years in, and just never solidified them enough to hit the “specific tipping point” unfortunately. With Chinese, at least in reading (since I’m only discussing reading skill in all 3 languages), I probably hit the beginning of building these skills at month 10-11. That was when I could start reading manhua without a dictionary, novels without a dictionary (and grasp the main ideas gist at minimum), and watch shows and do the same. Which again, is higher than Japanese even was at its beginning-foundation, as I couldn’t even Read novels or listen to Japanese audio on its own and follow the main idea. So I suppose, to compare the absolute beginnings of each foundation being built: in French it was month 3 (when I could start brute forcing through news/Wikipedia and comprehend some gist of main ideas), Japanese year 2.3ish (when I started brute forcing through manga and comprehending very roughly some main ideas), month 6-8 in chinese (when I started brute forcing shows and novels and comprehended honestly more than I can believe I managed to in retrospect, considering how much easier those still-challenging tasks feel now). Anyway... Chinese has seemed to take 2x as much time to improve compared to my French. I do suspect chinese normally takes native English speakers roughly the FSI recommended 4x as much time. I suspect my French learning plan was just not very optimal for my learning style, so it wasn’t as efficient. Likewise... I suspect Japanese should normally take roughly 4x to 5x longer to improve then French. I suspect mine took SO long last time particularly, because I did not even have a good study plan for myself until year 2 of Japanese study.

So... based on all that. I imagine my chinese will be very firmly where i want it’s minimum skill to reliably maintain the foundation of what I know, to be at.. year 2-3. Year 2, if I keep improving as well as I’ve been doing (and assuming if my French had been more consistent it would’ve been at the “specific tipping point” by year 1). And year 3 if I don’t always study as much, or it simply takes longer (so twice the 1.5 years French took). Which honestly... 3 years is still intensely fast as I see it. And, if I’m improving the way I think I have been, I can’t even imagine how ill be in year 3. Anyway... based on all of that... I think it would be a bad idea to pick up Japanese heavily until my chinese is past at least year 2. With my 1 year+ of French, at that point I was also studying Japanese, and they seemed to work fine as I studied both - the only thing was it slowed down my French progress. So I do think waiting to do anything heavy with japanese, until my chinese is a good play I’m ok to let it simply maintain for the most part, is probably a safer plan.

—-

Realistically... no reason I can’t lightly re-study Japanese though and Just like rebuild the beginnings of the foundation I had though, it was probably N4 starting into N3 when I gave up. So I could probably re-learn some old stuff without taking too much time from chinese. And then if my chinese is year 2 by then, that sure would be convenient. Lol this is all... me contemplating. When we all know the truth is, I’m going to do whatever I want to do in the moment, and see what happens o3o

I am gonna tentatively say though, I think as long as I don’t abandon Chinese for any length of time until at least 2-3 years in, it should probably be maintained at least though at where it’s at/gradually improve. I didn’t lose any French during the times I kept using it, even when studying Japanese and russian, the “specific tipping point” didn’t really matter until I stopped using French for months at a time. I am sure I will notice if another language study is slowing down my chinese study though, in which case I’ll pause the other language if I have a Chinese goal that needs more time for attention.

At the moment, my Chinese goals are going about as expected. I wish I could carve some more time for them, but I’m giving them as much time as they were getting throughout the fall - so it’s not like they’re getting any less time than usual. (I am just inpatient, and wish I was the kind of person with the time and focus to give them 4-6 hours a day lol).

[thisdreamplace]

Hi. My erratic moods, and loss of control over my words and actions, my inability to be calm and collected, and worse, to keep the unhelpful intrusive thoughts IN my head are causing me trouble. (eg just recently someone in my family was going to the hospital for a possibly serious checkup and they joked, as I saw them at the door, "If I die then forgive me". And like, ik it's a joke. But a deep primal part of me, in front of everyone, lost it and as they turned away I heard myself screaming: "If I die, then YOU CAN BE HAPPY" and I just couldn't control it. I did find the pause in between the words and my reaction (Eckhart Tolle), yet I failed to at least restrain myself, from lashing out. Ik it's the 'demons' who think they'll be happy if I die etc. Worse was, my grandma (who doesn't know the extent of my issues) witnessed this. It sucks. I want to cry. Why did I react that way?)

What really is up with me? This has nothing to do with what was said (and I even know that the joke was a self defense mechanism coz my family mmbr was worried themselves about the check up). But the way I shouted that... It was serious. I think I did mean it. It's lame hahah, especially coz I was thinking I was starting to be able to control myself? To assuage the 'darkness' within, and I even believe things are definitely less hopeless thanks to the loa and me influencing reality

Maybe it was just a random thing. Ofc it's impossible to heal overnight, yet I do feel... Ashamed of my reaction (like hello, why couldn't I have stopped myself from saying that out loud at least? I could've just laughed it off and said "yeah okay me too" or smth less intense. They already mock me for my 'tantrums'. Welp, such is life and I've been doing my best to stay alive and normal for many years now)

Any way you can suggest using loa to make myself less... reactive and emotionally nuclear bomb-ish? The funniest thing is I was normal the whole day then this stupid outburst screaming 'woe ie me boohoo' happens. Gah I wanna curse lol

I did start conscious healing some months ago. Maybe I have pent up rage or emotion and I gotta idk journal or smth? I do affirm, I do try to fix my thought patterns (as opposed to never even realising I had a choice before). I'm not saying I'm doing enough. I'm not saying I'm consistent. But I am better than before. Then this happens?! Wdyt?

And another thing, the more I get into loa/beliefs/assumptions etc, and try to restructure my life, I feel wayyy more exposed and vulnerable

You are one of my faves in the loa spectrum btw

Hi!

Honestly, nothing is wrong with you. I think that you're being a little harsh on yourself, that's all. I mean, I get being put off by your outbursts. But weirdly, it's not actually something you need to analyze, although you may want to. I mean, that's how we worked in the past right? We always wanted to analyze the 3D and our behavior. But there's actually nothing to analyze anymore. There's nothing wrong with you, even like this.

I think that when we get into the law especially, and we start making progress, we're completely ashamed of ourselves when it seems like we are suddenly regressing. But actually, like I was saying, we don't have to take it that seriously. It actually doesn't have to mean anything is wrong with us. We can still totally be on the right path. Thing is, things that are living within us will find a way out. And that's all you experienced. Practice letting it pass and returning within yourself, to your inner world where you have been making great strides. It's not always for us to figure out why something happened. Instead, it's up to us to decide what we want to focus on moving forward.

If you feel the need to journal and let it all out, don't stop yourself! Write it out, allow yourself that space to say what you need to say and maybe you will figure something out in the process. Do not be afraid to release what you're feeling, allow it.

On the flip side of that, you can approach these outbursts with more compassion for yourself. I mean, the law really calls for us to come back to unconditional love for ourselves at all times. It's a constant practice. You don't have to feel ashamed anymore. Like I have said before, anything that we do was done perfectly. We think we have all these controls over our actions, because we forget we are ourselves pushed out. Even our freewill ends passed our minds. We only have freewill within. Every action we take in the 3D falls in line with the state we are in. This why we cannot do anything wrong! So don't fall for the 3D illusion, even in regard to yourself. It may be hard and weird to grasp, but allow yourself that space to at least move into some sort of acceptance. It will all click the more you choose to focus on your inner world, and what you can do within. Do not worry about what you can do in the outer world. Because really, you can do nothing.

So how do you tackle this? Well, like usual, get an idea of who you want to be. Don't think about how to get there, really. It's not your job. All you need to know is your end goal. And if you don't know it clearly, intend to for clarity. But after that, all you need to do is choose to embody that version of you everyday. You do this in your mind. You don't need to "act as if" unless you like to. Some days may be easier or harder than others. It doesn't matter if you trip up or totally are out of the state some days. The point is you keep persisting, you keep doing your best to go back to that version of you within in your mind. Without knowing how, that effort truly does add up and gets you exactly where you want to be.

To your final comment, I totally feel this. I have never been more vulnerable than I am now. I mean, the more I learn about the law, it's like the more I wear my heart on my sleeve. There's emotions I could run from before, that I can't run from now. I feel more exposed than ever. Because our fears, despite being our prison, often work as a shield. And the more you come into the law and have to dismantle the illusion of your fears, the more exposed you feel. And it's okay. I just try to remind myself that behind any uncomfortable feelings, I am making my way towards absolute love and freedom. Behind these illusions I built for myself, the more love and freedom can make it's way into my life. And it's comforting to see it that way and it allows me to keep going even when I feel too scared to. I know I am on the right path. Hopefully this helps you feel that way too.

Anyway, thank you for your nice compliment! I hope you are doing well! 💖

[soldieronbarnes]

Malec prompt - My homophobic parents are coming to visit will you pretend to date me as an extra “fuck you”?

Uhhh this…..completely got away from me? It’s a lot longer and a lot angstier than it was supposed to be….sorry? Not sorry? idk.

___

“Okay, what is wrong withyou?”

The question - and particularly the accusingtone of it - shakes Alec out of his stupor. It’s a testament to how out of ithe is that the only response he manages is an intelligent “huh?” 

He blinks, shaking his head to clear his head,but in the end, Magnus Bane is still standing in front of him, a stack of bookshugged to his chest and eyebrows raised and it’s - well, it’s a lot. It’s alwaysa lot, to be the focus of his attention, to be faced with his….everything:his incandescent beauty, his razor sharp wit and brilliant mind, his smoothcharm or his biting contempt. 

Alec flounders. Magnus Bane is the secret starof all his late-night fantasies, his verbal sparring partner in their shared Introduction to Clave Law class andall-around thorn in Alec’s side. 

They snipe at each other a lot.

What they don’t do is talkoutside of class.

Alec quickly runs through a mental inventory ofthings he might have done to offend Magnus so horrendously that he’s corneringhim in the corridor, eyes blazing, and comes up empty. Unless his mouthdeveloped a mind of its own in the last sixty minutes, there’s nothing he couldhave possibly said. And if there’s one thing that Alec knows how to do is makesure nothing unintended ever slips out of his mouth, to keep his closelyguarded secrets.

“I didn’t do anything,” Alec defendshimself. 

“Exactly,” Magnus says irritably. 

“I don’t follow,” Alec admits. 

“You didn’t participate once this session.What, do you want to tell me the professor can drone on and on about thelegitimacy of Downworlder discrimination and you don’t have an opinion on that?No raising your hand to offer your…..valuable insights?”

“What, are you my professor now?” Alec says,snippy. “I don’t need lectures from you on how active participation is abig part of the final grade.”

“That’s not why I’m asking.”

The last thing he needs right now is picking afight with Magnus, but he can’t help it. “Why are you asking?I’m sure you enjoy class less when you don’t have a convenient punching bag foryour arguments, but newsflash: I don’t owe you an explanation on why I don’twanna engage in that. It’s not like it’s any of your business.” 

“Well, I’m sorry for stepping on your toes byexpressing my concern for your general well-being,” Magnus snaps. “GuessI’ll remove my lowly Downworlder self from your presence before I leave a stainon your perfect reputation or something.”

For the third time in their brief conversation,Alec is completely thrown. “I - that’s not - what?” 

Now that he sees actual fury on Magnus’handsome face, covering up a brief flash of something that looked almost likegenuine hurt, he realises that the expression Magnus wore before was lessfurious and more….furiously concerned. 

He doesn’t think he’s ever been this confusedin his life.

“Magnus, wait!” He struggles to catch up withMagnus’ quick strides – he has a head start, and he’s surprisingly tall, but inthe end, as they’re hurrying down the deserted corridor that leads to the notoriouslyill-tempered professor Fell’s office, Alec’s freakishly long legs win out. “Magnus,will you just –“

He grabs him by the biceps, and Magnus whirlsaround faster than lightning. To his credit, he doesn’t punch Alec in the face.Maia, he knows, would have had a much more violent reaction to being seizedlike this. Most Downworlders would – recent attempts to smooth things overbetween the different factions in the Shadow World haven’t done much to assuagerational fears and suspicions based on several centuries of near constantoppression and maltreatment.

“Sorry, I – sorry,” he blurts out, quicklywithdrawing his hand. “I shouldn’t have grabbed you like that.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not contagious, despite whatyour precious Clave might tell you,” Magnus sneers.

“Can you just stop for a second?” Alec snaps. “Don’tput words in my mouth!”

“Why would I?”

“I’m trying to apologise here!”

That seems to take Magnus aback. “For what?”

Alec takes a deep breath. “I – don’t reallyknow what’s going on here,” he admits, waving his hand around in what he hopesis a sufficiently all-encompassing gesture. “I mean, we don’t really….talk, andI guess I was confused and had my hackles up, because I was having a shit dayanyways but – none of that is your fault, and I shouldn’t have taken it out onyou. So I’m sorry.”

Magnus cocks his head. “I appreciate thethought, but as you so astutely pointed out, you don’t owe me an explanation.”

“I did owe you the apology, though.”

Magnus hums contemplatively, and, against allodds, lingers. Alec knows a challenge when he sees one, or maybe it’s aninvitation – he’s misjudged Magnus’ intentions before. He doesn’t really wantto talk about it but – well, if he’s honest, it does grate on him to not havehis siblings around, constantly needling him until he talks about what’sbothering him, and he doesn’t really have friends here to confide in.

He’s been told that friendships often formbetween roommates just by virtue of being stuck with one person in closequarters for a long time, but his roommate Raj is a grade-a asshole, and otherthan that, his options are limited; there aren’t many Shadowhunters here, andthose that do attend generally think he’s insane for being the only one Nephilimvoluntarily choosing to go to thefirst integrated college when he was good enough to attend theShadowhunter-only and highly acclaimed Idris Academy. The Downworlders, on theother hand, who make up a majority of the student body, are all understandablywary and tend to avoid him when they can. He’s cordial enough with a lot ofpeople, but there’s no one he would say he’s actually close to. He’s gettingthere with Maia, he thinks, who’s brazen enough to yell at him and so fargrudgingly impressed by the lack of times he’s given her an actual incentive tostart a fistfight.

So maybe it’s a need for connection, or maybeit’s the fact that Magnus is everything Alec isn’t while simultaneouslyprobably one of the few people who might understand, that causes Alec to talk.

“Campus tours are next week.”

“I’m aware,” Magnus replies, raising hiseyebrows at the sort of non-sequitur.

“My siblings are thinking about going here aswell and – that means the whole family is coming. Including my parents.”

“I take it that will not be a joyous reunion?”

“Uh, no. They’re still angry with me for not goingto Idris like they wanted and –“ Alec hesitates briefly, and then decides tonot give a fuck. The truth is going to be out there soon one way or another. “Andeven angrier with my ruining the marriage they had arranged for me.”

The first, he had been able to mostly explainaway with logical arguments about Shadowhunter politics – if he was supposed tolead an Institute one day and work with Downworlders, he’d need to get a betterunderstanding of them, especially in the changing political climate. The latter– not so much.

Magnus looks almost at a loss for words. “It ismy understanding that arranged marriages are so traditional for Shadowhuntersthat they are virtually unavoidable,” he says cautiously.

“Basically.”

“Another way for you to rebel, then?” Magnussuggests. “Fighting for more freedom of choice?”

Alec shakes his head. “It’s not the arrangementpart that I couldn’t handle. I know my duties, my responsibilities, that’s not –that wasn’t the problem. Many of the couples end up kind of happy, anyway.”

“What part disagreed with you that much, then?”Magnus asks softly. He can probably see where this is going, judging by the wayhe’s now clearly careful of his words and by the way his entire demeanour seemsto soften.

He takes a deep breath, and steels himself. Hishands are trembling, which is stupid – everyone on campus knows that MagnusBane will judge you for pretty much everything, but not for this.  There’s no one else around – everyone knows tomake a wide berth around professor Fell’s office at all times. “The part whereI was supposed to marry a woman.”

Magnus goes to say something, but Alec barrels on.He’s not sure he could stand to hear some supposedly affirming and supportiveplatitudes right now. “They’ll forgive me for the choice of college eventually,I guess, but – not that. Don’t – please don’t say you’re sorry or whatever.Just – it’s just the way it is. I’ll deal with it.”

Magnus accepts that with a nod, and remainsquiet for a long moment. “So what’s the plan?” is what he eventually asks.

It’s not the question Alec was expecting. “Sorry?”

“For the upcoming visit of hell,” Magnusclarifies.

Alec shakes his head. “There is no plan. Getthrough it, I guess. Izzy and Jace will try to intervene when things get out ofhand or take some of the family heat if possible, but there isn’t much thatwill stop them.” He shrugs a little helplessly.

“So what, you’re just going to keep your head downand take it?”

“You got a problem with that?”

“No,” Magnus says quietly. “It just doesn’tseem like your style. You don’t generally strike me as the type of person to letsomething like this slide without a fight.”

“How would you know?” Alec asks, and oh, he’sgetting defensive again now.

Magnus doesn’t take the bait this time. “Alexander,”he says, “as much as we disagree on howthings should change, or how quickly steps must be taken, I haven’t ever seenyou defend a bigoted law or damaging stereotypes. Why are you willing to defendpeople like me from people like your parents, but not yourself?”

Oh, but he had forgotten how scarily perceptiveMagnus can be. “It probably won’t even be that bad,” Alec says, desperatelytrying to deflect. “I’m sure they’ll just use the fact that I’m single to arguethat I’m just confused and will change my mind and it’ll be fine once theyconvince themselves of that.”

For a brief moment, Magnus looks angry. He doesn’tthink anyone but his siblings has ever been angry on his behalf. It’s a strangeexperience. “Sounds like you need a boyfriend to show off to them to stop thatludicrous line of thinking once and for all.”

“Well, I don’t have a boyfriend, so –“

“You could have a boyfriend,” Magnus sayseasily.

Alec snorts. “Yeah, right. Magnus, half thepeople at school won’t even look at me, and I’m not really good at this kind ofthing anyway. Plus, even if I didfind someone to go out with me – who’d want to meet my parents after a week?”

“It wouldn’t need to be real.”

“What, like, hire someone? No one would go forthat, and if I have to pay someone to date me – well, I’d rather spare myselfthat particular humiliation.”

Magnus bites his lip, almost nervously. “Iwould do it,” he offers hesitantly.

Alec stares.

“For free, even,” Magnus adds. “I’m always infavour of sticking it to homophobic and racist bigots.”

“Uh,” Alec says dumbly. “You do know who myparents are, right?”

“The Lightwoods are rather famous, yes,” Magnus says drily.

“Then you know how they’d react to –“ Wordsfail him. He can only weakly gesture between the two of them.

Magnus smiles bitterly. “They are rather famousfor that as well, so yes.”

“Why would you –“ Alec falters. “Why would youwillingly subject yourself to that? Why would anyone – I mean, they’re my family, it’s not like I have a choice – but you shouldn’t have tosuffer through that. Not ever and – you get enough crap from Shadowhunterswithout painting a huge, deliberate target on your back for me.”

In front of him, Magnus’ eyes hold an infinitesadness that threatens to choke Alec. “You know,” he muses, “when I first heardthat the Lightwood heir was going to go the same school as me, I was expecting –well, I was expecting many things, none of them pleasant. But you – I don’tthink I could have predicted a single thing about you. At every turn, youcontinue to surprise me. Look – “ he continues, “if you don’t want to go for itbecause it’s – too much for you, I get it. But if you’re only turning me downto protect me, don’t bother. I don’t need anyone to protect me. There’s nothingthey could say to me that I haven’t heard a thousand times before.”

“That doesn’t make it better,” Alec argues hotly.“You shouldn’t have to hear it at all.”

“And neither should you,” Magnus points out. “ButI can assure you, in my experience, if it can’t be avoided, then it’s easier ifyou have someone there to help you through it, to have your back. You don’thave to do everything alone, Alec.”

It’s – it’s too much. The magnitude of Magnus’offer sends him reeling. Even worse is the heady feeling of being judged byMagnus Bane and being found worthy when that notion of getting his approval isutterly ludicrous to him. Magnus shouldn’t choose him. Not like this, not ever,maybe. When Alec had run after him he’d at best expected a chance to extend an olivebranch that would help them get back to the way things were. A part of himthink he shouldn’t even be contemplating it, but –

It would be so good to not be alone in this,for once.

He draws in a shaky breath. “It’d be ugly,” hewarns.

Magnus’ smile is small and lopsided, but it’s there.“Fighting for something important usually is.”

“Right.”

“Do you have class now?”

Alec blinks at the sudden change of topic. “Notuntil five.”

“Then how about we get some coffee and just –talk, figure things out?”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure, that sounds good.”

Magnus’s smile widens, soft and sweet andgenuine. It’s the first full smile he’s ever directed and Alec, and Alec thinks– if he just keeps smiling at him like that, then Alec can do anything, getthrough everything the world and his parents throw at him.

His heart is fluttering in his chest, and itfeels a lot like hope.

[canaryatlaw]

So today was pretty good overall. My abs definitely hurt less, more just a general ache when I cough or laugh. I'm debating if I should skip my gym time on Wednesday so I don't aggravate them, and I do have work I could get done in that time, but I don't want to get in the habit of blowing it off, and I could always just skip any ab workouts and stick to the other stuff. The other issue is I might have to skip my Friday one, because I have a somewhat fancy event that night and wouldn't get a chance to like, shower or anything, so that may or may not happen. We'll see on both fronts. But yeah, today. I had my alarm set for 10 because my instacart delivery was supposed to come between 10 and 11, and I woke up at 9:55 to a phone call from the delivery guy asking what door to meet him at, so I grabbed my groceries (I felt bad because he had been messaging me questions on the app that I obviously didn't see because I was sleeping but it all ended up working out fine. I put them away quickly and then was like well fuck waking up I'm going back to bed until I need to be up at 10:50, so I did. Idk if I actually fell back asleep, but it was nice to rest my eyes a little more at least. Got back up at 10:50 and got ready, then took the bus to the train to get to the domestic violence courthouse (I just started typing juvenile out of habit and had to correct it). The sherif at the security check was like "hey I haven't seen you in a while, where you been?" so I told her semester changing and finals and all that good stuff, it's always nice to see I'm remembered though, and the lady at the front desk when I walked into the clinic waved to me too. Our normal supervisor was out filming some thing that wanted to do a segment on the clinic, so we instead had the lady who works with him sometimes and she's cool. Waited just a few minutes before getting paired with the 1L I've been working with (because she's still learning the ropes and such) and getting assigned to a case. It was an interesting one. We had initially been told she was filing against her roommate which made me cringe a little because experience tells me those kind of cases can get a little off the wall and not go well in court, but she then explained they had dated and he was just living with her still, so that was "better" I guess. It was a fairly typical case and I won't get into details, but there wasn't really any physical abuse outside of one incident in December, but he had threatened to kill her and doing all sorts of other emotionally abusive behavior. There had been an incident yesterday after which she had kicked him out which prompted her coming here today, because when the omniscient Chicago police showed up at the scene they said they wouldn't give her a police report because she had "enough already" (she had 3) and that she has to come here and get an order and then they can put a warrant out on him, which is just like complete and utter crap???? Like none of that is even remotely true, lol. The advice I hear police give to DV victims is truly frightening. But anyway, we did the paperwork and the woman was definitely being very hard on herself about it, saying she had "dug her own grave" and just thinking it was her fault for not kicking him out, so I made a point out of stopping my work whenever she said something like that and just talk to her for a few minutes about how domestic violence works and the cycle of power and control that can happen to anyone, and it is so not her fault for getting sucked into it because it really can happen to anyone (a sobering thought, but nonetheless true) and there was nobody to blame except the abuser, that she was taking such an important step forward today by coming here today and breaking that cycle, that that took an enormous amount of strength and she was making the right decision to keep herself safe. I've found that this job is kind of half lawyer and half counselor, lol. As always though, I know my words are simplistic at best and she would really need a real therapist to deal with all of these feelings she was having, and I told her as much and she agreed saying she would do so, so I hope she does. The other thing that was kind of interesting was the other specific questions she was asking about what if he comes to her house after this and basically tries to kill her, what should she do then, what if he kills her before the police arrive, because she was very much scared of that happening. It's a hard question of course, and I told her that beyond posting a cop at her door, the best she can do is to be very alert and call the police at the very first sign something is wrong or he may be coming around, and to go to the police station and tell them she has an order of protection and she's scared he will try to break it, so if she has to call they'll know the circumstances which can rapidly increase their response time. She was also asking me about like, using pepper spray or anything else to defend herself if needed, and I was basically like you know, you do what you gotta do to keep yourself safe, and if by some insane circumstance she ended up killing him in self-defense the trail of domestic abuse would very strongly way in her favor and hopefully result in her not getting charged with anything- but of course all of that to be a last last resort, haha which she knew. I definitely crossed the line into "legal advice" quite a few times there, but I honestly don't care because it was information she needed to know to keep herself safe and I don't have a problem breaking a rule to make that happen. But anyway, we filed our paperwork and had to wait for like 25 minutes or so, during which I gave my courtroom prep talk, and just generally tried to joke around and lighten the mood because she as getting nervous about going up to court, and of course I tried to assuage her fears there. I told her I really didn't know if the emergency order was gonna get granted or not, when there's not any recent physical abuse it tends to just be a toss up between the other circumstances of the case and which judge you get, and what mood the judge is in for that matter. But we got our paperwork and headed up, just a handful of cases before us. It was a judge I had had cases with before, and there was at least one I was angry he didn't grant but other than that instance I knew he was a good judge. He was flying through the hearings very quickly, just reading the affidavit and if it qualified as abuse by the statute he'd grant it, which is nice. Ours went quite fast in that manner as well, he barely asked her any questions beyond the normal introductory ones and I think one question about her address, and then it was granted so that made me quite happy. It took the clerks freaking forever to get the paperwork done, but when they did we left the courtroom and they were ready to go. She of course expressed appreciation for helping her, which always makes this job so rewarding for me, in addition to knowing I really am helping people, so that's always nice. By the time we were done it was only 3:45, so we headed out early down to school. Across the street from the school there was a homeless woman on the corner so I gave her an energy bar (and she told me she liked my superman hat) and then when I crossed the street so I was parallel to the school I discovered my old friend Dan back in his normal spot. I hadn't seen him for almost a year now, I think with just one random occurrence in that time, so I spent a solid 15 minutes talking to him as he was catching me up on his life. Apparently he had found another good spot to panhandle at an intersection, but another homeless person had gotten hit by a car and killed there, so the cops wouldn't let them go there anymore and threatened to throw them in jail if they did (ugh). So now he was back up here. He told me his wife died in July, which was of course a very sad story to hear, she got sepsis from an untreated infection, something that can definitely be linked to being homeless. He had had a really difficult time dealing with the grief and had been abusing drugs for some time but he had been 3 months clean now, though he had just gotten out of the hospital for overdosing on Xanax, but he said he was going to quit that too. He's in a methadone treatment program, so that's a great step forward. He told me his mom and sister live in Florida and they said if he got his stuff together he could come live with them, so I of course encouraged him to keep going strong and make that a possibility, that I knew he was strong for getting through all he has, and that this is something he can definitely do. He told me he had been thinking about me the other day and wondering if he would see me up here or if I had graduated or something, and that he was really really glad he got to see me, which of course just made my heart melt. I mean, I didn't do much, I've just exhibited what I think to be a basic level of kindness extended to all humans, but it was apparently a big deal to him, which also makes me sad about how others have treated him. I was a little troubled by the news that he had been doing drugs, just because I so hate people assuming all homeless people are on drugs and using that as an excuse not to give them money, so I of course don't want to be supporting that. I thought about it though, and I decided I need to believe the best of people, to fulfill my side of my calling by God as to how to treat my neighbor, and what they do with that is up to them- I'm not gonna just stop giving them money based on the possibility that they could be on drugs. Anyway. Went to school and chilled in the pad office until class, during which I got a full breakdown of the happenings of the mock trial competition this weekend. I figured the fact that I hadn't heard anything about the results meant they didn't advance, which turned out to be correct. The competition seems tons very based on school politics rather than who actually does better, and they got screwed over on that, which is basically what happened to them last year too, so that sucks. Oh well. Class was ok, he had a panel of 3 executive directors of legal based nonprofits and asked them a series of questions and then let us ask questions. It was better than him lecturing I suppose, but still not all that thrilling. Went home after class, found my roommate watching black mirror, which I watched for a little while before being annoyed by all the ways their actions violated the 8th amendment and just couldn't deal with it, lol. Not really my cup of tea. But yeah, that's about it. Work tomorrow which I'm looking forward to, because I actually *gasp* like my job, even when I'm a lowly law clerk doing grunt work and not getting paid. It just makes me happy, and I can't ask for anything else. Okay, eyes really want to close now so I'm going to bed. Goodnight dudes. Hope your Monday didn't suck.