#but i also know that in the mundane agony i will find joy when and because i least expect it

[queer-queen-bean]

the tragedy of knowing by experience that it gets better if you just keep going, that the present is inescapable and endless but if you can endure the mundane agony that's haunted you as long as you can remember then things will get better because even when you've been treading water for years, sometimes you can find the strength to swim.

[dothwrites]

spn15 spec, destiel, post 15.18, mcd?? sort of???

---

And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend.--Antoine de-Saint Exupery, The Little Prince

---

Castiel opens his eyes in nothingness. 

It’s not dark, though the air which presses around him is thick onyx. There is neither gravity nor weightlessness here. Castiel exists but he does so in a void so barren that he doubts his own mind. He opens his mouth to call out, but no sound escapes. 

Castiel exists in ignorance for one, glorious moment. Then the weight of memory crushes into him. His chest buckles underneath the pressure. He tries to scream, but the vast emptiness swallows the sound. 

---

“Cas, we can fight this!” 

Dean, his Righteous Man, Dean, the shining beacon, his friend...The first real friend he’d ever made. Dean is ready to fight. Dean would fight God, has indeed fought God. But he can’t fight this. 

The door shudders in its frame. Blow after blow rains down on the weakening wood. Already, the wood is splintering under the assault. The thin strip of light at the bottom of the door disappears underneath a sea of writhing black. The Empty is here. It wants what it was promised.  

“Dean,” he says. He intends to say much more--It’s too late, let me go, thank you--but his voice cracks on the single syllable of Dean’s name. 

He wants to stay. God help him, but he wants to stay. 

“No, dammit Cas! You don’t get to give up! We can fight this thing, we can keep running, we can...” Dean’s voice trails off into nothing as he looks wildly around the small room. 

Though he might protest, Castiel knows that Dean is a man bailing out a sinking ship. In his heart, Dean knows the battle is already lost. But he’s still defiant, still clinging to the faintest shred of hope.

Castiel loves him for that. 

“You fought for the whole world.” Castiel’s voice is weak and pale against the ear-shattering thunder of the Empty’s attempts to break into the room. 

“Cas, no--” 

“But you can’t fight for me.” 

The words shatter something vital in him. Castiel gasps as the agony shreds through him. He thought there would be more time. He thought that happiness was an ideal that no one could ever reach. He thought there would be time, he doesn’t want to go, he wants to stay--

“Cas, I can’t...Not again, I can’t lose you again, please don’t go--” 

Black seeps into the room, slender tendrils snaking across the room towards where they stand. Castiel feels every second ticking away. He’s lived for millennia, seen worlds and empires rise and fall, felt the passing of centuries like nothing more than a passing breeze. Millions of years, and now, when it means everything, he has no time. 

Castiel cups Dean’s cheek with one shaking hand. If this is it, then he doesn’t want to leave with any regrets. “Dean,” he croaks. That word has become his compass, his prayer, the star to which he hitched his wagon. 

“I’m so sorry. I don’t want to leave you. If I had a choice, i would stay. I would stay with you through every sunrise and sunset, through every moment, the mundane and extraordinary alike.” Castiel’s voice catches in his throat as the door finally shatters and darkness pours into the room. 

“You’ve taught me everything, Dean, and I...I’m so grateful that I got to know you. Without you...” 

Castiel can’t continue. He’s immeasurably grateful for all he’s experienced with Dean, but he’s always been greedy. He wants more. He wants to see Dean’s hair continue to silver until it’s soft and grey. He wants to go fishing with Dean and discover the peace inherent in the activity. He wants to watch Jack grow into his own and Sam start a family. He wants, with a fierceness that takes his breath away. 

Darkness curls around his ankle and winds its way up his calf. 

Dean shakes his head. Tears well in his eyes but refuse to spill over, though his lower lip shakes. “Please,” he asks, tilting his head into Castiel’s palm. “I can’t...how am I supposed to do this without you?” 

Castiel starts to respond, but his voice is cut off by the swift, hard press of Dean’s lips into his. His heart jolts and gutters in his chest before it picks up again, beating so hard he thinks it might escape through the confines of his ribs. 

“I love you.” 

The words tumble out of Castiel’s mouth, the same as they did years ago when he was rotting from in the inside out. The same frantic need consumes him now as it did then, when every beat of his heart dragged him closer to the edge of oblivion, when seconds were more precious than gold, when he was so close to losing everything--

Dean sobs. He clutches the lapels of Castiel’s coat and kisses him, teeth bruising behind his lips.

Castiel’s whole lower body is engulfed in darkness so complete that it feels as though it’s ceased to exist. His whimper is lost in Dean’s mouth. 

“No,” Dean gasps, pulling away. Castiel already knows the cause of Dean’s denial. He can feel it, creeping up his chest and shoulders, slithering down to his arms. He remembers how it was to be devoured, remembers the noxious black ooze of the Leviathan crawling through him, but this is worse, is so much worse, because now he knows what Dean’s lips taste like, now he knows everything he has to lose--

“Cas, I love you,” Dean tells him, though his words echo strangely. The Empty crawls up his throat. Castiel chokes on it, but he doesn’t dare to blink. He can’t lose a second of this, of Dean’s face, horrified and tear-stricken though it is. 

Seconds tick away like centuries, Dean’s face in front of him. Castiel can’t hear what he’s saying, but he can see the words shaped on his lips. 

I’ll find you, I promise, I’m coming for you, Cas, Cas, I love--

And then. 

Empty. 

---

With the image of Dean’s face in his mind, Castiel screams. 

There is no sound in the Empty, but he screams anyway. His agony and loss pour out of him, his grief and fear. Everything that he’s lost, Dean--

Castiel screams until his voice cracks and breaks, until his throat is shredded and raw, until he tastes blood in the back of his throat. 

Hollow, he slumps to the side, curling into himself. His one consolation was that he would at least be asleep for the rest of eternity. He wouldn’t have to live with the weight of everything he’d lost. Now, even that slender comfort has been ripped from him. For the rest of time, he’ll have to exist with the memory of Dean’s glassy eyes, with the sound of Dean’s choked voice echoing through his skull, with the phantom ache of Dean’s lips against his. Castiel shudders, sobs ripping out of his throat. 

“Jesus. So much for helping.” 

Castiel blinks. The sound of another voice is foreign in this void where nothing should exist. He rolls over, looking up at the sardonic face staring down at him. 

“Ruby,” he rasps, then remembers himself. 

That’s not Ruby. 

“Go away,” he mutters. He wraps his arms around his legs, pressing his forehead to his knees. There’s no point in having pride here, not when time is meaningless and every second is a torture. The Empty already knows his secrets, though why it chose Ruby’s form to torment him is a mystery. 

“Look feathers, you were the one who screwed the pooch on this whole ‘fixing eternity’ thing. So I think I’m going to stick around for a bit.” 

“There’s no point,” Castiel says miserably. “You got what you wanted. I’m here. I’m suffering. What more could you possibly want from me?”

“Were you dropped on your halo? I told you what I wanted the last time you were here. I want out, you moron. I told you to find a way out, and you wound up here, which is kind of the opposite of what I asked.” 

Castiel blinks slowly, lifting his forehead from his knees. “Ruby?” he asks. 

Ruby rolls her eyes and sighs for dramatic effect. “Yeah, dumbo. You know, I’ve only been trying to tell you that since the beginning.” 

“I can’t trust that.” Castiel remembers all too well the last time he was here, the jolt of pleasure at seeing Meg once more only to realize that the Empty was aping her appearance to hurt him. “The Empty, it takes on your visage, your memories--”

“Yeah, you’re just going to have to trust me on this.” Ruby’s eyes flash black. “You know, as much as you can.” 

“I’d pay attention to her, Clarence. If you don’t, then she’ll probably kick your ass.” 

Castiel knows that voice. He whirls around. Meg’s face greets him, a tiny smirk twisting her lips upward. “Meg,” he whispers, an odd combination of grief and happiness twisting in his chest. 

“The one and only,” she assures him. 

A small shred of doubt clings at the back of Castiel’s mind, but he has to trust in something right now. Even if it’s two dead demons. 

“Castiel. So lovely to see you again. Though I can’t say that I agree with the company you’re keeping these days.” 

Make that three dead demons. 

“Crowley,” Castiel breathes. 

The demon looks exactly the same as he did  the day he died. His suit is pristine, down to the pocket square. He looks at Meg and Ruby with disdain before he turns that expression on Castiel. “I suppose you’re doing your biannual visit to this dump? Feel like taking any passengers out with you when you make your escape this time?” 

“I’m not...I made a deal,” Castiel whispers. He made a deal to save his son and he’ll never regret that, not for a second, but then he thinks of Dean’s face. “I’m not leaving.” 

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so negative, Cassie. You do have a way of wriggling out of the tightest of places.” 

Mingled guilt and joy sear through Castiel as he turns around. Balthazar’s familiar face looks at him. Balthazar raises an eyebrow. “No hug?” he asks. 

“I don’t understand,” Castiel breathes. Surrounded by ghosts from his past, he feels weak. “None of you should be awake. That’s the whole point of this place. All of us, asleep, forever.” 

“That’s the way it should be, but you have a habit of wrecking the natural order.” Castiel winces at Anna’s cool voice. Though there’s no real judgement in her voice, there’s also no real warmth. “It’s been changing here, ever since your last visit.” 

“I woke it up.” 

“And because you woke it up, we all started to awake as well.” Hannah’s calm voice joins their small group, though it’s growing steadily larger. “All of us, demons and angels, started awaking. At first, it was just for moments, but lately, it’s been distracted. More of us have been able to stay awake for longer. Eventually we started finding each other.” 

“That’s my boy,” Meg says, unmistakable fondness in her voice. “Shaking up the natural order, wrecking the whole of the afterlife.” 

Castiel’s eyes dart between all of them, former enemies, allies, and friends. “Is this all of you?” 

“Were you not listening? Did they not just tell you that we’ve all been waking up, at least a little bit?” 

Gabriel pops into existence next to Castiel. Despite himself, Castiel jerks back in surprise. 

“So, what’s it going to be, Cas? Are you going to just pop out of here like always?” Crowley brings Castiel’s brain back to the present. 

When he made his deal, he made it with full awareness that there was no coming back. He accepted that burden because he knew it was the only way he could save Jack. 

But that was before he felt Dean’s lips against his, before he heard the words fall from Dean’s mouth. I love you. 

When he made the deal, he had never heard those words directed at him. When he made the deal, he had nothing to fight for. 

Now he does.

He made a choice long ago. You don’t have to be ruled by Fate. You can choose freedom. 

Castiel looks at all of them, demons and angels alike, and makes a choice. 

“We’ve got work to do.” 

[littlestarlost]

what happened.

All this hunger is Always following us Out where we survive under poisonous skies They’re dreaming, but nobody’s sleeping Just coked hearts speeding See all the gold teeth gleaming See all the young, healthy free men Just move into nothing

(CW: discussion of mental health, trauma, PTSD)

A version of this post has been sitting in my drafts folder for ten months. I know this, because I originally began to write it around late January, just in time for the one-year mark to have passed since I’d last updated Setting Sun. When I posted that most recent update, I had just turned 30 years old, and I promised that it would not be another year before the next update. I wanted, so badly, for that to be true. In hindsight, it’s honestly better that I failed to keep that promise; I fear it might have exacerbated the damage that’s already been done, and made the healing process that much harder.

It’s been nearly two years. I want to talk about what happened.

I first began to write about Yuuri Katsuki and Victor Nikiforov because I recognized myself so keenly in them; Yuuri’s high-achieving anxiety and imposter syndrome, and Victor’s quietly functional depression. When I found YOI, I was in grad school; I was winning awards, the top of my class, and utterly terrified that it was all a sham. Being able to channel those emotions through these characters helped me realize my own greatness, to embody it and walk with confidence and bravado. It allowed me to go into my post-degree job search with my head held high, trusting that all the lessons I had learned would lead me to professional success. Yuuri and Victor walked through life with me, two shadows of my own psyche, two people who helped me understand myself.

The first few months of the job were fine. Then things became less than fine, and then continued to descend into the kind of mundane nightmare that only multinational corporate legal firms could manifest. Setting Sun, a story about love and self-acceptance and joy, began to twist around in on itself. I don’t want to go into detail, but suffice to say that I spent nearly two years being gaslit and abused, told I was worthless, constantly having panic attacks as I desperately tried to exert control over things that were way over my head. My body betrayed me; I was in so much pain I couldn’t walk, so stressed I couldn’t bring myself to eat unless I’d smoked weed to calm the nausea. I began to believe that I had peaked in grad school, that I was fooling myself, that I was going to be trapped in that cubicle for the rest of my life, doing grunt work without challenge or interest, in the kind of workplace where you get reported to HR for sighing too loudly. That is a thing that actually fucking happened to me; nobody asked why I might be sighing, and nobody stopped by to check in when I spent most days in tears. This was a place where less than half the people in the room put up their hands when asked if they had ever been creative as kids. This was a place where I almost never got to see the sun.

Because I was massively overqualified and even more massively underworked, I spent a lot of 2018 writing fanfic--my zine pieces, my zutara pieces, all sorts of creative things. I also began to write horror AUs; two stories, in particular, gained a fair amount of traction on this particular platform. When I look back now, I see them for the coping mechanisms that they were; in the case of the crossroads AU, where Yuuri is willing to sell his soul to the devil just to escape his commute, it wasn’t even particularly subtle. I poured all my energy into creative pursuits; it’s been my outlet my whole life, and for a while it helped. By the time I hit the SCP-9874 AU, I burned out so profoundly and utterly that it destroyed my relationship to YOI and cauterized the pieces. SCP-9874 was one of the most creative things I’ve ever done, but it also involved what is, in hindsight, a shocking level of violence and horror inflicted on these characters who were such a close part of me. I was doing this to them because I was hurting, all the time. I now recognize it as the cry for help that it was, and to this day I fantasize about taking down all the SCP-9874 posts and excising that portion of my legacy as much as possible.

I wrote Setting Sun’s 21st chapter in honour of my 30th birthday, in late January of 2019. Somehow, at the time, I didn’t realize how rough it was. How much it implied about me and how I was doing. How much it reflected the true extent of the damage I was suffering. I left Victor and Yuuri in an abandoned apartment with more questions than answers and more regrets than they or I had ever thought possible, and I thought, somehow, that this was a good turning point. Little did I know at the time that the worst was still to come.

I was able to finally escape that toxic office last October, when I found a new job that paid nearly double and was everything I wanted to do in life and more. But  Yuri on Ice hurt too much to think about, even as time marched forward and I began to heal. I had PTSD flashbacks to the old office; I dealt with echo upon echo of terror that everything would fall away to reveal I was trapped in the same old nightmare again. In January 2020, I actually took a few days off for my birthday and reread Setting Sun from the beginning, and I’d somehow forgotten how funny it is, how sweet it is, how hopeful. I had completely forgotten; it had been burned away by twenty months of agony. That realization hurt more than all the other ones put together, I think. I had a good long cry over that.

Fast forward to now, and people have started to find Setting Sun again. They’ve found it on and off in the months since I updated, and for a very long time I would read the truly lovely comments people wrote--thanking me for writing it, hoping I’d come back someday, wishing me well wherever I was--and I would dissolve into tears because I just...couldn’t. I couldn’t bear to go back to this story that I could no longer recognize myself in. And nowadays, when new commenters come, I will warn them about that last chapter I wrote, because I can recognize it as the outlier it is.

But something has very recently changed.

I couldn’t necessarily tell you exactly what. Maybe it’s that I passed the one-year mark at my new job, and the last of the poison has finally been excised. Maybe it’s because I’m looking at all my writing with new eyes as I prepare to try doing this for a living. Maybe it’s because it’s 2020, and the rules aren’t really relevant anymore. I don’t know. But I can say that, two weekends ago, I opened Setting Sun, and realized that it didn’t seem impossible anymore. I realized that the boys had been through more than enough. We’ve been through more than enough. We deserve the happy ending I always planned to give them, going back four whole years when I first planned out this massive weird tale.

It’s been a very long time. It’s been exactly long enough.

I can’t promise exactly when the final chapter of Setting Sun will arrive. I’m walking back onto previously thin ice, and my footsteps are more than a little hesitant, so as not to cause any undue cracks. But I can remember the joy and humour and fun again; I can conceive of jokes and silliness and sweetness again. My playlist is filling up again, with songs of hope and love instead of anguish and sorrow. The Yuuri and Victor who sit inside my heart are skating; the music is carrying them, the wind is rushing past their ears, their feet feel light again and they want to jump and take flight and make beautiful things.

I have bookended this post with lyrics from a song that’s been on the maybe list for Setting Sun for nearly as long as Setting Sun has existed. It’s a song I love quite profoundly, a song that means a lot to me personally, but I could never manage to make it fit. It’s a song about running away to the big bright city, about being broken on the world’s wheel, and about realizing you just want to go home. It’s a song that’s ostensibly about the tragedy of this process, but right now I’m sitting at my desk, listening to the line I, I, I wanna go back, back, back, back, with grateful tears running down my face, and I’m realizing that it’s not part of Yuuri’s story, nor Victor’s; it’s part of mine. Home may never be the same as when you left, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t waiting for you with open arms.

So that’s what happened.

Put my body on a wagon And carry me off to the ocean Let me float on into the eastern sun Out where tomorrow has just begun Where I used to be wild, back in my time Now I just fight to sleep at night So render me up into the elements Lay me in a light that I can trust Lay me in a light that I can trust Lay me in a light that I come from...

(Gold Teeth, by Hey Rosetta!)

[nasikepal]

Nachi's Log on Making Webcomics, part 1

People say "Write your stories! Draw your dream comic! Just start your own project!" But we all know shit is fucking hard to do.

As someone whose job deals a lot with managing projects daily, I find their train of thoughts extremely interesting. That is, the hows, the whys of people arriving to certain decision and stuff--on whether to start a project, or to continue doing a project in certain shape, or at one point finally stop pursuing it.

Based on that, I decided to record my own 'train of thought' on making my own passion project, a webcomic, in a somewhat readable format for myself in the future. She'll most likely wonder why the hell the 2021 me took this particular direction of writings.

But, if you, dear reader, think this record is interesting, by all means read this too! A quick disclaimer, though:

This is not intended to be a how-to.

This also does not talk about commercial projects.

The summary of this log, would be...

To my future self reading this log: at this point of time, I finally, finally been able to start the webcomic I have wanted to write since years ago thanks to these deceptively dumb things...

I stopped trying to write shit I don't enjoy learning more of

I found this previously-hidden, surprisingly huge urge to bully my own OCs

I learned some shortcuts that don't make my exert too much effort, so i dont feel like crap if my drawing turned crap [On a separate post, TBA]

Oh yeah, also to my future self? This is gonna be a long read.

As a context, a few days ago I finally uploaded the first page of my comic, a comedy story about a girl thrown headfirst to people with their Indonesian folklore-inspired superpowers--aptly named What The Folk. I took inspiration from traditional folklores like Timun Mas, a girl that killed a man-eating giant by throwing some stuff. I like these kind of things.

This story did not start this way six years ago though. It certainly was Not titled WTF when I was like "oh shit... what if.. girls... but folklore powers" for the first time.

It started with totally self indulgent me drawing the Timun Mas as a cute girl with a fucking gun, eight years ago. For reasons.

Oh, if you haven't noticed, the aesthetic was also very .. Indonesian, by the costumes of the characters. A plural, now, because I wanted to adapt what's basically Timun Mas folklore to action-packed comic.

Extremely cool in premise. Anyway, for some reason, 2016-me onwards decided, nah, I'm not writing a cool battle-inspired folklore story. I'm gonna write a gag comic in modern Indonesian setting, and while they fight shit with cool-looking folklore inspired powers, the focus is more on the stupid shit they did to fight enemies.

Stop stop stop right there. Wait, what? It goes from serious battle story to a gag action? What fuels this sudden tonal and aesthetic shift?!

Here's a further detail on my decision.

1. I stopped trying to write shit I don't enjoy learning more of

Okay. Battle stories usually feature badass fights, of course it's the part of the story!! You know, like shonen manga.

It took me like four years of trying and failing to draw what i have on my mind, to acknowledge that, crap, I don't actually enjoy making stories about people punching the lights out of others. I don't actually enjoy learning how to make my fights cooler than ever. I don't feel happy when I have to choreograph fights. I like Jojo's Bizarre Adventure not for the lightning barrage of punches, for goodness sake, but the sheer ridiculous-genius of the asspulls on the fight!

With some reflections, maybe the thing that made me really hard to acknowledge this was the attachment to the idea. Because I was "the first person who thought of this idea, so only I can draw it". While there's nothing wrong with attachments, it is a problem if I myself don't even like writing this idea I'm attached with.

So, what do I like, then?

Parodies. Comedies. I find immense joy if I can find the perfect punchline from what is considered 'Canon'. (Also I won't let anyone say comedies are inferior than battle stories. Those two require different skillsets.)

Campus environment. College was one of the most interesting years of my life to date, and I want to share the little tidbits like me eating campus' street food. Really mundane, but it's where my heart is.

Part time job shenaningans. My days as non-permanent worker is just too eventful not to adapt to my OCs.

When I decided to scrap absolutely Everything beside the folklore powers and the basic trait of said characters, then start adding ultra self indulgent things, writing becomes so. Much. Easier.

When I go with this strategic decision, I was plagued with doubts, though:

Others might be using this idea then! Not you! And so what? There are no two same thoughts in this world. If one coffee shop AU with one pairing can evolve to various takes on this idea from multiple authors, why not this particular idea, too? No one can write what you can write. Nachi, you need to take pride of your own flow of thoughts and strengths.

Won't they look cooler with traditional Indonesian inspired aesthetic instead of modern place? It might look cool on concept, but you don't like drawing it. Also, it will look insincere. Drop it.

What about the scrapped ideas? Fuck sunk costs. I compiled them on a separate masterpost I can look back if I'm stuck in the future. But that's for the future, I'm not dealing with that now. Bye, bitches. You made me stuck in a limbo.

This decision to start anew goes hand-in-hand with the 2nd point, the newfound desire to.....

2. I found this previously-hidden, surprisingly huge urge to bully my own OCs

Because I was too focused on getting the events and battle panels right while felt agonized, I didn't even care that much about the characters!!! And when I go to the much enjoyable road of comedy, this requires me to actually think about the characters. My OCs.

They are a delightful mess. I love them. I want to put them to frankly frustrating or confusing situations for the funsies.

I start thinking more of their dynamics. Wrote their background and stuff. Wrote their favourite genre to sing karaoke of, I swear it's fucking fun. Why wasn't I doing this sooner? Oh yeah, the attachment to initial ideas. I swear....

This newfound direction and motivation of my webcomic is further moderated by a very, very determining factor. The technical stuff involved in drawing the stories. The making of actual comic, beyond the storyboard.

As I will talk a lot LOT more, I decided to continue this particular topic on a separate post.

Ending Ment for Part 1

Looking back, I felt happy I finally are able to overcome the stupid roadblock. It can come sooner, yeah, but I don't really regret how it come after years of agony. Funnily.

[aeide-thea]

This is a gentle request for any Geraskier fics you want to rec, because the number of them in the tag is a bit overwhelming but I KNOW there are gems in there 👀

i’m pretty sure i’ve reblogged things in the past! but it’s true that i haven’t done that in any systematic way, so—let’s see. under the cut are 20-ish recs alphabetized by author, which seemed like a good way of avoiding having to make any hierarchical declarations:

o, empathy by almostnectarine/@nectarine-pit: bodyswap! i forgot how much i loved this fic. geralt and jaskier walk a mile in each other’s shoes, and learn to appreciate each other better; this is keenly observed and thought-through, and frequently extremely funny. a thoroughgoing delight.

Jaskier pulled a face and swiveled the straps such that both swords almost fell from their scabbards at once, ruining the moment. “Geralt,” he said, “this leather itches. You’ve lived five lifetimes—” “Not that old,” said Geralt, in protest, and then, considering: “Maybe three.” “—and you never once thought, hm— oh, I see why you do that all the time, it is quite fun, isn’t it— hm, maybe I’ll add a little padding?!” His mimicry of Geralt’s tone was very good, although perhaps it was cheating, when the voice was already the same.

public displays of affection by autoschediastic/@bluesoaring: geralt and jaskier go to a sex party! (not to be confused with the other fic by sospes in which geralt and jaskier go to a sex party, which is also excellent.) if that wasn’t enough of a sell, well, you confuse me, but—the flavor of the power dynamic here is a little complex and unusual in a way i enjoyed, plus frankly the description of geralt stripped down for this party is really, uh. really A Lot. i admit to being biased in favor of sex party stories in general but this one is definitely a keeper.

to you always, also by autoschediastic/@bluesoaring: in which geralt is a demanding, insatiable bottom. ...honestly, this fic has significantly more emotional weight to it than that description might suggest, but i still stand by it. also the initial setup is just really funny to me, because jaskier getting hilariously outraged by geralt’s sheer infuriating geralt-ness is, like, my fave flavor of jaskier. (that’s a lie, every flavor of jaskier is my favorite flavor of jaskier, but i do really delight in this one.)

@blossomsinthemist’s mixing memory and desire series (wip) is basically my favorite thing ever, like, just truly perfectly crafted to please me personally. it’s h/c, and just astonishingly luxuriant and languorous and lovely—or, okay, let me actually just quote a comment i left on an early chapter:

this is just so exquisitely tender and molasses-lovely-sweet so far, my god the glimpses we get dimly through geralt’s hazy bemused perception of what jaskier’s feeling are so heart-clenchingly poignant—and then of course the glimpses of what geralt himself is feeling for jaskier without understanding it, this stunned rapt gratitude for everything jaskier is doing but also everything jaskier is, the lovely gentle sturdy solicitous gift he is & keeps making of himself to geralt, who would probably call it undeserved except that of course we can see precisely what in geralt has tugged this tenderness from jaskier, this terrible aching wounded gallantry that’s so astonished to meet with respite…

the meet death sitting (wip) series by @bomberqueen17 is my other favorite thing—much plottier than the previous, with a much wider cast of characters, and while i’m ultimately in it for the geralt/jaskier and therefore being strung along in exquisite agony while all sorts of plot things get in the way of any real resolution of that, it’s honestly worth it; what you lose in immediate gratification you gain in, like, a sense that this story inhabits a real, full world, with real events that aren’t just arranged to suit our heroes’ convenience. if i could only get you to read two things it would be this series and the previous one: between them they have my heart. anyway i guess i may as well quote myself again:

it’s the rich realistic interweaving of things that’s so remarkable here, how the absolute throat-thickening aches run abruptly up against the entirely mundane and all of it has to be coped with, because that’s life, and this story has life within it, in a realer way than probably anything else in the fandom, maybe anything else i’ve read in a long time. and of course a large part of me is so, so desperate for geralt and jaskier to finally come back together, with enough time and space to settle into a mutual secure tenderness instead of the current wordless, longing, poised-always-to-spring-away-like-deer-in-a-forest situation; but the story is coaxing me into a more adult patience, an appreciation for the smaller quieter incidental pleasures that aren’t the one subsuming great love, and then also teaching me to live with the wounds one inevitably acquired along the way, the pull and ache of those that makes the whole thing real, not a shining fantasy but a homely pie with a rich satisfying filling, savory and bolstering.

my body bruises at your touch by @brawlite: jaskier gets tied up by geralt as bait for the monster of the week, and discovers he likes it quite a bit. smut (and then aftercare) ensues.

demand an encore (wip) by emamel/@theaceace: jaskier is a witcher of the viper school, or used to be. he doesn’t remember it, but geralt does.

it’s been a while since i read this, but the way the layers slowly start fitting together is really satisfying: all the joy of what i think the kids call ‘identity porn,’ with the twist that here, it’s geralt who knows both identities, and jaskier who’s still in ignorance. ugh, i want chapter 3 now.

musica universalis by flirtygaybrit is bookverse and clearly so—it’s not romantic, but there’s a particular ambiguous flavor of solicitous tenderness that elevates this ‘friendly drunken hookup’ scenario to something memorable for me.

of cherries and dandelions by heyriel: in which a still-virginal jaskier bites off more than he can chew, and tries to disguise it until he can’t anymore. as i said to the author:

this is lovely and realistic in its navigation of, like, trying to Be Cool and the ways that can sometimes get you in trouble as a young sexplorer—geralt is so good to jaskier here and i’m having feelings about it!

also geralt uses a dildo on jaskier, which was not a thing i’d known i wanted before reading this, but it turns out i’m very decidedly here for it! i haven’t seen a ton of sex toys in geraskier fic and this story makes me wish there were more.

gentle-sharp and strange by lisztful has some excellent touch-starved pining geralt, also a performatively public bath scene with very satisfactory sexual tension, also an Ancient Tradition which is maybe the thing i remember most about this fic.

i know that you would want it (if i could sink my teeth into you) by objectlesson is... look, there’s an actual emotional arc to this story, but really what i always remember about it is that it’s got the most overwhelmingly visceral rimming scene i’ve maybe ever read? it’s a lot, it’s a gift, go read it.

@pasdecoeur has several stories that are very funny with some very piercingly erotic moments! briefly sketched in some ways and more pining than porny but no less effective for it.

benefits by @shastafirecracker is a pwp story in which jaskier is first surprised to find geralt wants him to top, and then determined to give geralt the best dicking he’s ever had. jaskier’s inner dialogue in this one is really fun; geralt’s exterior dialogue is true to the show in that it’s minimal but nonetheless includes a bad pun. :)

even a small love by shecrows/@leighway is like. you think you know how things are going to go, and then jaskier balks and it abruptly swerves sideways and develops a whole plot, and then comes back around to where it started, but deeper and better. don’t you love how you can summarize a fic without saying anything meaningful or even helpful about it? anyway: read this one.

snowmelt by silklace/@silkcoeur is a/b/o and somehow both extremely hilarious and extremely hot in full measure. the banter is a fucking delight but so are the tension/sex/feelings.

It wasn’t until they were well on the road away from town that it really hit him, though possibly he should have been paying attention to the way the backs of his knees had started sweating the minute he’d seen Geralt walking towards him outside of Yennefer’s manor, or to the way his throat had gone hot and dry despite the taste of sweetness still on the back of his teeth from the wine skin he’d pilfered from her pantry on his way out. In his defense, he’d still been recovering from spending the prior evening steadfastly spitting his insides up onto his outsides. Also, he tended to always get a little sweaty around Geralt, a fact they were both apparently extremely united in assiduously pretending was not happening.

the sevenfold path by star_flaming/@europeansdomusicalsbetter: in which jaskier is demonstrably extremely well educated, and geralt has feelings about it. (i also have feelings about it, but mine are in my pants.)

you are in my blood by @suzukiblu​: au where jaskier is a bruxa. this alters his character significantly—hard to be too skittish about bloodletting when you’re a vampire!—but the story’s so engaging you probably won’t care? plus, uh, hot. :)

Jaskier’s just debating how much trouble he’s actually in when Geralt, marvelously, talks them out of it. After that, well... Jaskier still wants to eat him very badly, but he supposes it’d be a bit ungrateful of him. Geralt isn’t very impressed with the song he writes for him, unfortunately—which, rude—but doesn’t try to run off and leave him either, so.. Well, Jaskier’s a bit smitten. A delicious-smelling witcher who can talk his way out of being murdered is very impressive. And he always has wanted a pet.

taran (@iamtaran)’s manhandling without plot series has no sex but lots of violent, compellingly visceral hijinks and i like to think of it as preslash. three times geralt hauls jaskier out of trouble.

Jaskier is flat on his back with his chemise rucked up to his armpits, salve burning on his bruised ribs, breathing hard; he is drunk, but not nearly as drunk as he was when he threw that first punch; Geralt is stupidly strong and has him pinned beneath one hand and the sheer girth of his own hips, looking grumpy and short on patience, and under everything—the aromatic menthol and chamomile smell of the salve, the aching of his cheek and lip, the relief of seeing Geralt just as upright and uninjured as he had been when he left, Jaskier is… He had thought he was furious. He still is, somewhat. Like… like a seed is a flower. It was, at first, before it became something else. And given enough time it might become such again. It is what it is in the meantime, however. Fury. Seeds.

last but not least, @toyhto​ has a bunch of fics that crack me the fuck up: geralt is unbelievably oblivious to his own emotions even as he acts on them, and it’s just—it’s so, so funny. also sometimes quite sweet, and sometimes quite painful! there’s a particular air of, i don’t know, almost see-spot-run impenetrability to the writing here that lends itself perfectly to the thing the stories are doing, where geralt is just operating totally on a surface level and, like, feelings are moving in the deep but he can’t quite see them...

...and that’s all for now! more to come later, maybe; but this seems like plenty for a first pass, and anyway i’m blurbed out.

[queerchoicesblog]

After The Storm

Folks, here’s the second suggestion (thanks a mill @scottishqueer) for the wlw writing project. Inspo is fleaky lately but I want everyone who sent ideas to know that I’m working on them: I’m just a bit slow to write! But I hope you will enjoy this.

A little note about this series set in the Italian Renaissance. I chose a location very dear to me and - hopefully - a bit unusual: Ferrara, the city where my grandparents lived and my mom was born. I love that place and I’ll probably go back there in August: I still remember my grandpa taking me to the Castle (I have a picture showing little me proudly sitting on a pile of cannonballs in the internal stone garden on a sunny day), the Cathedral and the palaces around town. I incorporated them all in the story.

Ferrara was also one of the capitals of the Italian Renaissance, a Duchy ruled by the House of Este, a princely family, linked with several contemporary royal dynasties, including the British royal family. They were notorious patrons of the arts and innovators (through architeractural projects like the one called “Addizione” they were precursors of modern city planning); Duke Alfonso, who makes a cameo in the story and was the third husband of the infamous Lucrezia Borgia, was a patron of Ariosto, a famous poet to whom - ironically - my high school was dedicated. So yeah, I added a personal to this miniseries.

If you do happen to like this miniseries, please consider spreading the word!

Previous series: Ancient Greece

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The rain has finally subsided. When I wake up at the very first lights of dawn, only a faint rattling against the windows can be heard, a testament to the storm an unkind wind blew from where the sea lays and roars. I cherish the feeling, the newfound sweet peace after the howling winds of the night. My beautiful little boy is resting by my side. My poor Tommaso: my little angel has been unwell for days, I have never seen him shed all those tears since the day he was born. He cried and cried until his screams of fear and pain were barely audible and none of us knew what to do. Even Riccardo, my ever-absent, ever-busy husband, worried and urged the presence of a physician with great haste, concern written all over his face. I've never seen him like that before. Tommaso is our only son, too beautiful and young to surrender to a hideous disease and leave this world. If I allow myself to dwell into these thoughts, oh that would be enough to kill me! Seeing my boy suffering was almost unbereable: his desperate cries pierced right through my heart as I held him close, impotent yet hopeful that my presence could provide him a little comfort. Mum is here, my love, fighting and suffering with you.

It's an indescribable joy and relief to wake up this morning and see him sleeping peacefully after the agony and the storm. Tommaso is afraid of thunders and dark skies, I hated the rainstorm for being so unmerciful and throwing new fears to my troubled little prince. I wish I could have blown it away like Aeolus but I do not detain such power over the natural elements.

I gently stroke his head, a feather touch: God forbid I wake him! I almost cry but I manage to refrain myself: my sobbing could disturb his heavenly slumber and I don't want him to see me crying. I'll greet him with a smile when his eyes open up again and nuzzle his belly before covering him with kisses from head to toe. Tommaso loves it and I'm sure Riccardo won't object for once, not after what we've been through. I really thought I would lose my angel.

Thankfully, Lady Death spared him or so it seems. When he wakes he looks back to his usual self, no sign of the cruel pain torturing him. He gets all happy and excited underneath my kisses and eats with a good appetite. He simply looks a bit more abashed and tired than usual but it's understandable. I'll follow the physician's advice and ask my maid to get eggs and cook one of those soups and creams I had too when I was recovering from giving birth. That will hopefully help.

Seeing him happy again makes me forget about the events and mundane meetings I have missed over the past few days since he got ill. I love attending them but it all became suddenly so meaningless when my son lost his light and health. I must remember to save a prayer and make an offering for his miraculous recovery. And I can get the report of the latest happenings at court from my dear friends. They sent notes inquiring about Tommaso and I am glad to let them know the fortunate turn of events.

They visit me the day after. I have many friends here but Maria and Virginia are special companions to me. Maria is the oldest of the group, she has two sons already in marital age, but she has been good to me since I first walked into the castle. She comes from one of the wealthiest noble families in town: she's an institution at court and it meant so much to me that she took me under her wing when I was the new girl here, the young bride of "the most skilled diplomat that has ever served the House of Este". She has her ideas and a temper, of course, we don't agree on everything but she's been a sort of mentor to me and I will always be grateful to her for that: all I know about properly living at court, well I owe it to her. Virginia is about my age, another "pupil" of Maria. I like her: she's a bit shier and meeker than our friend and she has a little boy too so I'm sure she fully understood my anguish.

Apparently, I didn't miss anything important as I guarded Tommaso with my life. Same old rivalries between dames, the yet unconfirmed gossips about the Duke marriage plans, how displeased the jealous favourite looked even if she denied her irritation. Good old court life. I comment that there is still so much going on in our fair Ferrara: the Addizione is proceeding and rumour has it, the palace the previous Duke commissioned for court entertainments, Palazzo Schifanoia, is being renewed and expanded. It goes without saying that it is bound to be a work of unprecedented beauty. I don't remember who was saying so but I know the Duke and his passion for the arts so I find it hard to doubt.

Virginia claps her hand and notes that actually yes, I missed something. Speaking of arts and artistic projects, do I remember when rumours of an external artist joining the enterprise spread? Well, it happened! Now, that I think about it, I remember...Riccardo mentioned it one night as we came back from a music gathering. Apparently, our most brilliant architect, Biagio Rossetti, the genius in charge of bringing the Duke's vision to life and into art, requested another artist to join his brigade. If I got it right, it should be a talented colleague from Florence, Sir Davide whatever...I forgot his surname. He served the House of Medici and excelled so brightly that our fair Biagio summoned him as his right hand. Allegedly, our architect - or , God forbid!, the Duke himself - is unsatisfied with how the projects are proceeding and firmly believes that a fresh set of eyes and hands will benefit the future glory of our Duchy.

"The new architect arrived - when was it? Oh yes, the day after you informed us that poor Tommaso was ill, you definitely missed" Virginia explains.

He looks nice: a handsome man, who knows how to behave himself at court, a true gentleman. I tease my friend asking if she has already put her eyes on him. Virginia blushes a little before protesting: of course not, she would never do anything like that, not to her Carlo, she's a married woman and loyal. Maria interrupts her.

"Oh stop it: as if that would be an impediment!"

"Well, ideally it is!"

"Yes, but only ideally, as you said" Maria laughs. "My young girl, you should know that everyone at court has affairs sooner or later. We'll get you a lover too one day"

"Maria, you're incorrigible!" Virginia giggles, pretending a shyness that is no longer there, replaced by a hint of mischief.

Maria just shrugs, picking up a cherry from the bowl my maid laid on the table.

"Just experienced. So believe me when I tell you we all need the thrill of a secret affair in our lives...otherwise what is left to us? We would die of boredom!"

"I cannot vouch for Maria's theory but you said it yourself, the Florentine architect is here now and he's a handsome man..." I add, winking, to join the conversation.

"You'll vouch for my theory too, dove. Give me time and I'll get yourself a lover too" Maria exclaims.

"...Before a fair lady of the court catches his eyes and bewitches his heart" I continue, addressing Virginia as I prevent Tommaso from climbing up the table on his hunt for cherries.

My friends exchange an amused look.

"Oh but he's married, Emilia!" Virginia explains. "He didn't travel alone, his wife followed him here too. We met them both"

Ah, that's unexpected! I have already pictured a handsome bachelor joining our court but that's good to hear. As much as I enjoy the company of my friends and the other dames, I have noticed though the years that new companions are a blessing. A little novelty, even if momentary at times, could have the same effect of fresh air on a hot summer day. Otherwise, we would die of boredom, as Maria said, referring to lovers. I wouldn't go that far but a new lady in town could be good news.

"Oh, nice! A potential new friend. We should invite her to join our next sewing meeting and get to know her. As well as the hottest gossips from Florence, that is! What do you think?" I smile.

Surprisingly, the expression on my friends' faces is unreadable. Did I say something wrong? Was I too straightforward? Oh gosh, I hope they didn't take my enthusiasm as personal displeasure of our sewing meetings or their company! I better get this right.

"So, how's the new lady?" I inquiry nonchalantly as I prove myself in the funniest faces I can master to make my child laugh.

I succeed: Tommaso claps his tiny hands and laughs until he's out of breath.

"Oh, don't even get me started with her!" Maria dismisses my question but I know her long enough to know she can't wait to tell me what she thinks and maybe more.

"Nothing much, she keeps to herself. Not quite the talker" Virginia shrugs.

"Ah, she's way more tolerable when she keeps her mouth shut anyway!" Maria intervenes again and I'm sure she's not done with just that.

"My my, it seems you took quite a dislike for her" I giggle, exchanging an amused look with Virginia.

"I couldn't help myself, my dear" Maria continues, fanning herself as if to cool down her mounting anger. "Another boorish yet arrogant Florentine"

"The Florentine are always so full of themselves" I concede, cradling my son in my arms.

"Then she must be the Queen of them all" Maria barks a throaty laughter. "She looks so...so high and almighty: 'oh no, I'm afraid we don't play this game in Florence', 'I don't know what it means, we don't have this word in Florence', 'Florence here and that'. Believe me, sweetheart, we were trying to be kind to her but she's impossible! She acts like royalty but she's the wife of an...architect"

She pronounces the last words with evident displease. I can't refrain laughter: she's always been such a snob! I comment that she certainly sounds like...something.

"Oh but you'll have the disgrace to meet her soon enough!" Maria exclaims. "You know that our Duke is so fond of artists, he will certainly invite them again at the next dinners and balls"

"Speaking of the ball" Virginia intervenes to prevent her from keeping ranting. "What will you wear at the Masquerade Ball next month? I ordered a most extravagant costume yesterday, I can't wait to show you-"

We spend the rest of the afternoon discussing the upcoming events at court and the latest trends, gossiping about what we suspect the other dames will wear.

Ah, I missed my friends and our conversations...

[clock-corpse]

Temporally Cursed

Trigger Warnings for, Nudity, Violence, Gore, Blood, and Disturbing Imagery. Discretion is advised! 

March 1st, 2020

To many human beings, there is a sacred tradition that goes in celebrating even the most mundane of events. Festivities, sweets, and laughter. All of these things are what humans enjoy while celebrating various events. The Inhuman however, has a slightly different method of celebration than others of her kind.

She makes her way down to the library, for a private ritual of sorts with the librarian and her demonic familiar. As she walks, she thinks about the events that will transpire once she arrives. It’s the same every year. She enters, she stays, then she leaves. This year will be no different, despite the doubts in her mind that tell her otherwise. Having been so deep in thought, she realizes that she had been standing in front of the entryway to the library for a minute or two now.

Sighing to herself, Sakuya enters the library. The air is stagnant with nothing but the feeling of dread lingering in the air with not a sound to be heard in the entirety of the vast library. The only signs of life being both Patchouli and Koakuma waiting for Sakuya near a door. They stare at her silently for the day has finally come. The day of celebration, joy, and renewal among human-kind. Yes, today is the day of Sakuya’s birth.

What joy does human-kind find in celebrating a shortened life span? How can they be so blissfully unaware of the looming threat of time? Sakuya does not know, for she is not human.

Swallowing her anxiety, Sakuya steps forward as Koakuma opens the door for her. Once all participating parties had entered the room, she shut it behind her, locking it.

The room they have entered seems no bigger than a normal bedroom. However, there were crystals floating around a nice and well made bed that has several towels covering it.

Without a word, Sakuya starts removing her clothes. She does so slowly and reluctantly as butterflies start to form in her stomach and her blood runs cold. She stops midway, and asks to herself, ‘Am I truly sure about this? I do this every single year but it never gets any easier...’

Noticing that the maid had stopped for a few moments, Patchouli approaches her and gently places her hand on Sakuya’s arm.

“Sakuya? You know if you really don’t want to do this, you don’t have to. It’s not a requirement.” Truth be told, she would much prefer to have Sakuya not to do this every single year. The fact that she does so often makes her rather uneasy.

Sakuya shakes out of her trance and hastily starts to remove her clothes again.

“No, it’s okay. I want to do this, Patchy.” There was no other way to go about it. “I’ve done this for almost two centuries now, and I’m not going to suddenly change my mind.”

At least, that’s what she initially thought before being courted by her Mistress. She knows very well that to see her like this would break Remilia’s heart and it makes her sick to her stomach. That’s why the ritual of Sakuya’s birthday had been held behind closed doors for so long.

With her clothes now neatly folded and placed onto a desk, Sakuya is completely nude. With this, one can see all the scars that she had gained this year and even before then.

The gash marks that were strewn across her chest, the scar on her neck from being impaled accompanied by fang bites, the scars on her shoulder and stomach from dishonesty, the scar on her side from heresy, and of course, the multitude of self-harm scars that decorate her arms and thighs.

She lays down on top of the bed and the towels, nervously twiddling her thumbs as she waits for Patchouli and Koakuma to prepare for their part. With this, she hears a hum as the crystals begin to glow, as well as a the sound of a zipper as Koakuma retrieves various medical supplies from a canvas bag.

After a few moments the witch softly calls out, 

“We’re ready to play our part, Sakuya. Whenever you’re ready, you may start.” Oh how Patchouli hates saying those words, for she never knows just when it will be her last. She is her most valued research after all...no...She’s much more than that.

Sakuya stares at the ceiling for a good few moments, mentally preparing herself for the ritual, then her eyes turn to red. They shine brightly, as Sakuya is determined to see this through until the end, whenever that may be. Not soon after, the sounds of a clock can be heard. 

Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock.

Oh how beautiful the chime of time is as it dances around the room as if it were moving in sync with Sakuya’s breathing. Oh how it calls so soundly and so passionately. It calls passionately for Sakuya herself. One could be so entranced by the serene sound of ticking that they wouldn’t even notice, that Sakuya’s chest has now ripped open.

Blood starts travelling down her bosom onto the towels, soaking them. Tissue, torn and broken hangs from the flesh that used to make up her breasts. The wound is very reminiscent of the one she received from fighting the manticore. Sakuya bites her lip and whimpers in pain.

Seeing this, Patchouli and Koakuma stand there, save for Patchouli using her crystals to monitor Sakuya’s vitals. They needn’t do anything, for the tissue starts closing up and reforms itself as if there had been no injury in the first place. Sakuya’s breathing becomes heavy as she places a hand on her chest to confirm that it is still there.

Tick Tock, Tick Tock.

Oh how the clock ticks so nicely. One could become so enveloped in what time has to offer, and lose sight of what fate holds for them. But now, the doll has become aware that her arms have been sliced and her stomach has been gouged, for she sits up suddenly and screams in pain.

Cold sweat runs down her face as she holds a bloody hand to the small hole that has opened in her stomach. She remembers this wound all too well. It was caused by her attempt to free herself from the consequences of her actions. Perhaps, she remembers it a little too well, as she can feel her strength fading.

As if it were by reflex, Patchouli positions her hands and starts to chant a spell. The crystals hum louder and energy starts surrounding Sakuya. It is an endurance spell, to keep Sakuya conscious. Had the witch not conjured this spell, Sakuya would have most likely passed out by this point, ending the ritual prematurely.

TickTock, TickTock.

Oh how loud the ticking of the clock is. It continues to grow louder, and louder and tick faster and faster, in Sakuya’s mind. Time no longer hides from a false front of a sweet embrace. Now, it wishes to make itself known to Sakuya, embracing her tightly as a hole opens in her neck, and her back.

The murderer coughs and wheezes as blood comes out of her mouth. She can barely scream, as the only other sound to be heard from her is the sound of her choking on and drowning from her own blood that has collected itself in her throat.

Patchouli acts quickly to try to draw the excess blood out with telekinesis until her wounds close start to slowly close. With the gears of time releasing their grip on her throat, she screams in between coughs.

TickTockTickTockTickTockTickTockTickTockTickTock-

Oh how the clock pounds so loudly in Sakuya’s ears. She cries, and begs for it to stop. Time, will not let go. Time grinds Sakuya’s feeble human body in between it’s gears, mangling her, and her body feels every single second of it. 

Sakuya, bloodied and nude, writhes and screams in absolute agony. Every single ounce of pain that she has ever felt in her life, emotional, physical, psychological. It all returns to her during one single moment. It is during this moment that she wishes nothing more than for the clock to stop and for her to die.

Time wails out for Sakuya to finally return to the dust that made her. She has avoided this fate for as long as she can remember. One cannot stop time, for it will always find a way to finally bring you back to your origins, but Sakuya refuses.

Yes, she rememberes why she does this horrible ritual every year in the first place. It’s for Her. No, it’s for everyone in the mansion. Time and Fate have taken away everything that Sakuya has ever loved ever since she was a child, and she cannot accept it. She will not accept having time take her away from the family that she loves so much. Should anyone steal her away from this life, it would be by her own hand alone.

Whether she ultimately chooses life, or death, she will overcome time and decide her own fate.

Tick, Tock, Tick-

The ticking sound emanating around Sakuya finally stops. She is left motionless on the bed, gasping for air with tears running down her face. She cannot move a single muscle in her body, for she feels nothing but agonizing pain from top to bottom. Her stomach churns with bile inside of it begging for release.

The succubus instantly goes to her and starts wiping the blood off of her, taking notice that all remnants of injuries that she had sustained from the past year have now completely vanished. Her hair has also returned to its original length from over a year ago.

Sakuya hears the voice of the the witch calling out to her trying to keep her awake, but her wounds are too great, and she falls into a deep but temporary sleep.

Sakuya has found the joy in the celebration of one’s birthday. To her, it’s not about cake, candles, or simply another new year or existence. No, to her, it’s about seizing control of her own life. What Sakuya wants most, is to stay in the mansion forever with her family. She will not let a looming threat such as time dictate her life and prevent her from living. That is what a birthday, the celebration of life means to an inhuman.

Happy Birthday, Sakuya Izayoi.

[cristinablackthornkingson]

Shadowhunters Short Story #33 Part 2. Sizzy baby #2.

CW: Secondary Infertility.

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It is a warm spring day in May of 2014, two years after Isabelle and Simon Lovelace welcomed their first child, a little boy named George Robert. The last two years have been some of the best for the young couple, so much so that when George was a year old they decided to try for another baby. However after trying for over 6 months with no results they decided to seek help and find out what was going on.

 Fertility issues were not common among Shadowhunters due to their angel blood, so even The Silent Brothers were not well versed in the area, so Isabelle and Simon decided to go to a mundane doctor for help, which was no longer against the law.

Catarina was able to hide their angel blood from the doctors, as she had previously done for Diana. 

After some tests the mundane doctor gave them the bad news that it was unlikely they would conceive on their own again, due to Isabelle’s egg quality having become quiet poor, there was no reason or explanation for this, it just happened. The doctor suggested the try something called IVF, which Simon knew a little about and Isabelle knew nothing about apart from the fact that that was how Helen and Aline’s baby daughter Ivy had been conceived a year ago.

After much discussion and heartache, Isabelle and Simon agreed to try 2 rounds of IVF, even though it is an extremely expensive treatment that may not even work.

Right now they are waiting on the results from the first round, which happened about two weeks ago, it is a nerve wracking time but Isabelle and Simon are doing their best to stick to normalcy for George’s sake. 

Currently they are in the library of The New York Institute where Clary and Jace’s baby shower is taking place. Clary is 6 months pregnant with her and Jace’s first baby, a girl they are going to name Lucy, after Luke. As much as Isabelle is happy for her brother and best friend, she can’t help but feel it’s terribly unfair that they could so easily have a baby and she couldn’t, not anymore. 

“Georgie don’t you wanna go play with your cousins?” Isabelle softly asks her son, who is clinging to her leg and hasn’t left her side since they arrived. These last few weeks he has been extremely clingy toward Isabelle, more so than ever before. 

George vigorously shakes his head causing his thick black hair to fall into his big blue eyes. 

A few minutes later, Alec has managed to persuade his nephew to come play with Max and Rafe for a bit. leaving Isabelle free to talk to her mother without George constantly pulling at the hem of her dress. 

“Is George alright Isabelle? He seems very reluctant to leave you.” Maryse asks her daughter in a tone of concern, glancing over at her youngest grandson and then back to her daughter. 

Isabelle sighs and rakes a hand through her long dark hair.

“I don’t think he’s sick or anything, he’s just been so clingy toward me these last few weeks, he’s never been like this before, not even when he was a newborn.” 

“You know your baby being clingy toward you is sometimes a sign that you could be pregnant.” Maryse tells her daughter in a tone of excitement. Isabelle’s eyes widen in disbelief. 

“Really?” She asks in a shocked tone. 

“Yes, that’s how I knew I was pregnant with you, you and Alec were planned babies and about a month after we started trying for you, Alec became extremely clingy toward me, far more than usual. I would bring him over to Jocelyn’s to play with Jonathon and normally he would happily go to Jocelyn, but that month he just refused to leave me, a few days later I found out I was pregnant with you.” Maryse explains, sending Isabelle’s heart racing. 

“I’ve had no other symptoms though, with George I felt like I had all symptoms under the sun.” Isabelle quietly says, trying desperately not to get her hopes up.

“Yes but you didn’t find out with him until you were 3 months, if you are pregnant it would be too early to feel anything, I found out very early on with Max, it was such a surprise because not only was he not planned, I had felt absolutely no symptoms whereas I felt awful with you and Alec.” Maryse says. 7 years on from his death, The Lightwoods were able to speak about and think about Max without feeling that awful raw grief and agony, little Max makes everything so much easier too, he is the sweetest, happiest little boy and everyone knows Max would have adored him and would be honored to share a name with him.

Before Isabelle can reply, Jace appears at her side, full of excitement and joy about his baby.

“Hey Iz, Clary wants to talk to you now that you don’t have a baby hanging off your leg.” Jace says in amused tone, glancing over at George who is now being fussed over by Jem. 

Jace leads his sister to a quiet corner of the room where Clary is sitting on a small black sofa talking to Emma.

“Emma, is it okay if I talk to Izzy in private for a minute?” Clary asks, not wanting to offend Emma but also wanting this moment to be between her and Isabelle only. 

“Of course, I think Mark needs some help keeping the twins in one place anyway.” Emma says in an amused tone, looking over at her brother-in-law who is desperately trying to keep he, Kieran and Cristina’s twins (Olivia and Mateo) from running off from him.

“I’ll give you two a minute alone, I’ll be with Alec if you need me Clary, okay?” Jace says in a tone tinged with worry. He has never felt so worried in all his life, and has never been more protective of Clary, who isn’t having the smooth pregnancy she and Jace had hoped for. 

“I’ll be fine, I only had a check up with Brother Enoch this morning and he said everything is perfect, you can stop worrying.” Clary softly assures her husband. 

“That’s asking quiet a lot of me, but I’ll try.” Jace lightly says, quickly kissing Clary’s forehead before walking off to join Alec on the other side of the room.

“So how are you feeling? Have you had any symptoms or anything?” Clary asks Isabelle in an excited tone. 

“No it’s way too early to feel any morning sickness or anything, but George has been clinging to me a lot lately which mom says can be a sign that you’re pregnant, and I had a bit of spotting the other day which the doctor said is a good sign when you’re trying to conceive, we’ll be getting the results by the end of the week.” Isabelle explains, trying not to get her hopes up. 

“I really hope it works this time.” Clary gently says, grasping Isabelle’s hand in hers. 

“Me too, but enough about me, this is your baby shower, what is it you wanted to talk to me about?” Isabelle asks in a curious tone. Clary smiles softly at Isabelle, placing a hand on her bump. 

“Well last night Jace and I were talking about Godparents for the baby, I know it’s not custom for Shadowhunters but when I was growing up in the mundane world I always wished I had had godparents, even though me and my mom weren’t religious. Anyway, Jace and I want Simon and Alec to be the baby’s godfathers and we want you to be her godmother.” Clary softly says. She knows that if anything happens to her and Jace, Lucy will have so many people willing to take her in and love her and raise her but it would be nice for her to have official godparents who she and Jace know will take Lucy in if anything happens to them.

“Oh Clary really? Oh I thought you would ask Emma or your mom or something.” Isabelle says in a breathy tone, thrilled that Clary and Jace want to give her this honor.

“Well we did have a lot of back and forth over godparents, at first I wanted Ash to be Lucy’s godfather but then I thought about how he’s not that good with kids and is still trying to figure himself out so I didn’t want to put this pressure on him, we did think about asking my mom to be her godmother but she’s just thrilled at the idea of being a grandma and when we settled on Alec and Simon as godfathers we realized it wouldn’t feel right to ask anyone else to be her godmother, I know that if anything happens to Jace and I, I can trust you to be an amazing mom to my daughter and raise her and love her just like I plan to.” By the time Clary has finished her explanation, her eyes are welling with tears of joy. 

“Clary I would be delighted to be her godmother, I can only hope I’ll be as good as you are with George.” Isabelle lightly says, wiping at her tears.

“And I can only hope I’ll be as good a mom as you.”

*3 DAYS LATER* 

It is a quiet evening for the Lovelaces when while out for a walk with George, Isabelle receives a call from her fertility doctor with results of her blood test which will tell if she is pregnant or not.

Stopping by a bench, Isabelle puts the brakes on George’s buggy and sits down to answer the call. 

“Do you have the results?” Isabelle blurts out, eager and anxious to know. 

“Yes I do.” The doctor says in a neutral voice. 

“Well?” Isabelle prompts, her gasp on the handle of George’s buggy tightening. 

“The test was positive, you’re pregnant.” The doctor calmly says. Isabelle’s breath hitches in her throat and hear heart soars and leaps with joy. She knows it’s still very early and anything could go wrong but she cannot bare to think about that right now. 

“T-that’s amazing, t-thank you.” Isabelle stutters, before hanging up the phone and turning to look at George, who is blinking up at her with confusion. 

“Georgie you’re going to be a big brother!” Isabelle exclaims, quickly unbuckling him and scooping him up and peppering his face with kisses. “We gotta go tell daddy huh Mr. Sweet face?” She coos, cuddling him close and tight.

20 minutes later Isabelle and George arrive back home, Isabelle hardly able to contain her excitement. She takes George out of his buggy and sets him down among his toys, hoping he can entertain himself for a few minutes while she tells Simon. 

She finds Simon in their bedroom, sitting on the bed tuning his guitar. When he hears Isabelle walk into the room, he looks up form his guitar and grins widely at her. 

“Hey, how was your walk?” He asks, setting the guitar aside. 

“Good, hopefully all that fresh air will help George sleep tonight.” Isabelle says, taking her coat off and sitting down next to Simon.

“Where is Georgie anyway? He hasn’t left your side in days.” Simon curiously asks, looking around for his son. 

“He’s downstairs playing with his toys, I need to talk to you alone for a minute.” 

“What about?” Simon calmly asks, the thought never occurring to him that the pregnancy test results could be in.

“Well while George and I were on our walk I got a call from the fertility doctor.” Isabelle says in a joyful tone, grasping Simon’s hands in hers. Simon’s eyes grow wide and his heart begins to race in anticipation. 

“What about?” He nervously asks, trying to prepare himself for the possibility of bad news.

“It worked, I’m pregnant. It’s still really early on though so lets just keep this between you and me for now okay?” Isabelle quietly says, trying not to let her fear push to the front of her mind. 

“Of course, oh Isabelle this is amazing.” Simon softly says, pulling his wife into an embrace, tears of joy welling in his eyes. This baby is so wanted and loved, and he cannot wait to meet them, being a father to George is a joy like no other, so having another one will be even better. 

“Yes it is, when I got the call I got so excited I told George he’s going to be a big brother, I don’t know if he understood me or not, I shouldn’t have told him at all, now if anything goes wrong we’ll have to explain it to him.” Isabelle says in frantic, worried tone, hoping that George hadn’t been paying attention or heard her properly.

“It’s alright Izzy, even if he did understand you he’ll probably forget soon enough, he’s two, this baby is going to be the last on his mind.” Simon gently assures his wife, placing a hand on the small of her back. “When my mom told my sister she was pregnant with me, Becky forgot all about me until I was born and she was thoroughly confused as to where this new baby just came from.” He adds in a light tone. His mother and sister didn’t get to see George all that often, but they were able to see him more than they would have had Alec not been elected Consul, though it is still mandate for a Shadowhunter who ascends to leave all about their mundane life behind them, Alec turns a blind eye to Simon’s relationship with Elaine and Rebecca, especially since George was born.

“I love you.” Isabelle quietly says, resting her head on Simon’s shoulder. Simon slips his arm around her waist and kisses the top of her head. 

“I love you too.”

Over the next few weeks Isabelle begins to develop much of the same symptoms she had with George, heightened sense of smell, body aches and Nausea in the mornings, but she doesn’t mind, it’s a sign that the baby is growing and developing properly. 

At 6 weeks they have their first ultrasound where they learn that everything is healthy and progressing well and that the baby is due in the middle of February, just a few months before George’s third birthday. 

When Isabelle is 3 months pregnant, and the risk of miscarriage has significantly decreased, she and Simon agree to invite their immediate family over for dinner and announce the pregnancy then, they also agree that Simon will tell his mother and sister separately, in case Max, Rafe or George let something about the Shadow World slip, during the dinner. It’s very difficult for little George to understand why his nana can’t know about The Shadow World, while the rest of his family does. 

Today is the day of the family dinner and everyone is due to arrive soon. Isabelle is in George’s room, getting him dressed for the evening. Instead of just simply telling everyone about the baby, Isabelle and Simon decided to buy George a shirt that reads ‘World’s best big brother’ and have him ware it tonight and show everyone else. Just as they had told Rafe and Max first when Isabelle was pregnant with George, they have already told George about his little brother or sister, and he is very, very excited and even more clingy towards Isabelle.

“Isabelle your mom’s here!” Izzy hears Simon call to her from the hallway. Isabelle grins and smooths George’s hair down before softly telling him

“Go show grandma your shirt.” George turns and runs from the room toward the sound of Maryse and Simon’s voices, with Isabelle not far behind him.

“Gandma!!” George shouts in delight, running to Maryse with his arms out. Maryse grins at her grandson and bends down to hug him tightly. 

“Hello sweet Georgie, I’ve missed you.” Maryse says in a joyful tone, kissing George on the cheek causing him to squirm and giggle.

“Georgie show grandma your shirt.” Simon encourages his son. George steps back and holds his arms out to the side to show off his shirt. 

“World’s best big brother?” Maryse reads, furrowing her brow in confusion. 

“Uh uh, I gonna be big brother, my baby in there.” George says, patting Isabelle’s stomach lightly. Ever since finding out about the baby, George has constantly referred to his sibling as ‘my baby’ which is endearing but awkward when he would announce it to strangers and pat Isabelle’s stomach.

“Oh the mundane treatment worked? You’re pregnant?” Maryse asks in a tone of both joy and disbelief. Isabelle grins and nods. 

“Yes, we found out a few months ago but we wanted to keep it to ourselves until now just in case.” Isabelle explains. 

“Oh Congratulations! Georgie you’re going to be a wonderful big brother!” Maryse says, smiling down at her grandson who grins back up at her and nods. Just then the doorbell rings again and Simon makes his way into the hall to answer it. 

Seconds later Rafe and Max come barreling into the room ahead of their parents and Simon.

Max and Rafe run straight to Maryse and George’s eyes light up in delight when he sees Alec. 

“Uncle Alec!” George exclaims, reaching his arms out to be lifted. Alec grins and scoops George into his arms and settles him on his hip.

“Hey my little buddy.” Alec softly says, ruffling his nephew’s hair.

“Uncle Alec, you teach me how be good big brother? Mama says you best big brother and I wanna be good big brother to my brother or sister!” George exclaims, looking up at Alec with big blue eyes full of hope.

“Well of course I will but you don’t have a little brother or sister yet.” Alec gently says. 

“Not yet he doesn’t but he will in February.” Isabelle lightly says.

“Mama got baby in her tummy!” George exclaims in delight. 

“Really? The IVF worked?”Alec asks in a tone of disbelief, feeling as though it were years ago he signed those papers allowing his sister to seek mundane medical treatment for her fertility issues, not just months ago, and that it’s actually worked.

“Yeah it did, I’m 3 months and everything is perfect with the baby. Alec, when I was pregnant with George we simply could not decide on a godfather for him, but we really want you to be this baby’s godfather, we wouldn't have this baby without you, if you hadn’t written and passed that new law allowing us to seek out mundane medical help, if the old rules were still in place we probably never would have had a second baby.” Isabelle says in a tight tone, trying to hold back her tears at the thoughts of what might not have been.

“Oh Izzy I’d be honored, I would do anything for you, you know that, I love you.” Alec softly says, passing George to Magnus and pulling his sister into a tight embrace. 

Clary and Jace end up having to miss out on the family dinner due to Clary being so close to her due date, so Simon and Isabelle told them over the phone and they were both delighted for them. 

Thankfully this pregnancy isn’t as rough as George’s was and Isabelle generally feels well throughout the pregnancy.

 Just a few days after announcing the pregnancy to everyone, Clary and Jace’s daughter Lucy is born and Isabelle and Simon find it hard to drag themselves away from the precious new baby, eager to meet their own child in a few months. 

They decide not to find out the sex but as they had with George, they pick out a boys name and a girls name. For a boy: Noah Alexander. For a girl: Jessamine Elaine, Jessie for short, which would have been George’s name had he been a girl. 

George is extremely excited to meet his sibling, he helps Simon decorate the nursery and helps both his parents pick out new clothes, blankets, etc. for the baby and is constantly asking Alec, Jace and Rafe for advice on how to be a good big brother. 

A few weeks before the baby’s due date, Isabelle and Simon agree that the baby will be born at home with the assistance of a midwife and a Silent Brother witnessing the birth, just as it had been with George. There is not shortage of people to look after George while Isabelle is in labor, so they let George decide who he would like to stay with, and he chooses Magnus and Alec so he can play with Max and Rafe.

It’s a frosty night in the middle of February when Isabelle goes into labor, and she is relieved to have a relevantly painless labor, the pains are still there but not all that intense, especially compared to how Clary described her pains when Lucy was born.

Alec had come around to pick George up and take him to his and Magnus’ place while Simon contacted their midwife and The Silent Brothers.

After a short, painless labor, 3 hours after feeling the first contraction, Isabelle gives birth to her baby, the cries like music to her ears, something she has waited so long to hear. 

“Oh Simon we have our second baby, we really have another baby.” Isabelle says in a teary tone, listening to her baby cry and trying to catch a glimpse of them. 

“I can hardly believe it.” Simon says in a breathy tone, as the midwife places the baby on Isabelle’s chest. 

“Congratulations, you have a very healthy baby girl.” The midwife says, causing tears of joy to well up in Isabelle’s eyes. She had secretly thought throughout the whole pregnancy that the baby is a girl, and she had been a little bit terrified as she had no idea how to raise a daughter, growing up she had 3 brothers, up until very recently she only had nephews and little Lucy had not been around long enough for Isabelle to adjust to having a little girl in her life.

“A girl, I don’t know anything about girls.” She says in a light tone, all her fears and worries melting away now that her daughter is in her arms. 

“That’s odd, given that you yourself are a girl.” Simon teases, softly rubbing her back and gazing at the baby.

“I know but I don’t know anything about raising girls, I’ve only ever had brothers and nephews up until Lucy was born, and that was most of my life.” Isabelle says. “But I don’t care, I can learn, anything for our Jessie.” 

“Our little miracle.” Simon softly says, putting his arms around his wife and daughter. “You’re a fighter little one, just like your mom.” Isabelle grins and leans up to kiss her husband on the cheek. 

“I love you.” She softly says, holding Jessie tighter and closer.

“I love you too.” Simon replies. 

Isabelle can hardly believe it, after a year of trying and failing, they finally have their longed for second baby, and everything finally feels perfect.

[humblemagic]

the girl she was

also on ao3

Her breath comes fast and breathy in his ear. She quivers around him and takes her pleasure. Sansa with her hair fanning her face and red coloring her cheeks. She cries out; he follows after her, and he can almost believe that what they have is enough.

They say that love is the beginning and end of everything. It’s what happens in the middle he worries over.

There’s no advice to be given, no action he can take. He loves this woman. He loves how quickly her mood sours, each smile no matter how small he is able to draw from her. He craves every intimacy and look. He loves this woman, and she is fading in front of him.

He doesn’t talk to her about it. It’s more unbearable to watch herself to force herself rise from bed, bathe and dress, each activity taking longer than the last. She walks the halls of Winterfell and performs an hour’s duties in a day. He sits in their study, getting even less done as he watches her fidget with these papers then these scrolls, mind moving from one issue to another, eyes glossing over and coming back sharply with an exhale.

Some days, she eats only a bread roll; others, she has them make her a pile of lemon cakes and eats them until she sicks up. He smoothes the wrinkle in her brow with a gentle thumb. He doesn’t understand her. She tells him she doesn’t understand herself.

The maester gives her herbs. Leeches. It’s all for naught. Ghost begs for her attention. He lays on the bed with his head on his paws and stares at her dolefully. He can walk the grounds without her but he stays at her side. Jon does not wonder why, not after the day when he came back to their rooms to a blood-red bath. Ghost watches over her while Jon attends his duties as king.

In the songs, a love like theirs transcends past pain.

Arya throws the window shade open, pulls the covers off of Sansa, screams. She calls her all manner of horrible things and accuses of her not loving her, not loving Jon. Sansa’s effort gives them her dressed in the same room. She frustrates at being spoken to and has little to say herself. She tries. But a man with a broken leg can only force himself to walk for so long. Eventually, it will crumble beneath him and be worse than before.

It’s different when he touches her. That dimness in her eyes brightens. She is wanton and urges him to use her body as she uses his. Faster, harder, rougher, she wants to feel the bruises on her skin. It’s the only time she can feel something, she tells him after.

She spends hours in the bath. The skin of her feet whitens before she makes herself stand and settle into bed again. He has to rub oil into the skin to stop it from feeling like it will simply peel away.

“I stopped trying.”

“What?” He looks up from his task.

“To find her.”

“Who?”

Her shoulders drop an inch and she pulls her feet up onto the bed. She lies on her side. He pulls the covers up to her chin and places a kiss on her forehead. His hand lingers, waiting, waiting, and then he leaves.

He only remembers later. Once, she’d asked him to send her way to the Silent Sisters. The Faith would know what to do with something like her, she’d said. She is neither here nor anywhere. Could it be her lack of love for the gods that makes her so? She’d fought him then but sobbed in relief when he’d won the battle, clutching him to her. She’d took him there on the floor shaking with tears and ecstasy.

He brushes her hair until it gleams. He reads to her. Her needlework is begun and stopped by the end of the third page. She has been making this item for three moons’ turns. She’d told him once what it was but the answer changes.

How much she loves him is something grotesque. He is the only bright spot in a dark castle, but she has to travel further and further to find him in the room he stays. He is right here. He will always be right here. She turns her face away. He doesn’t understand. Her hand is limp over his heart. She tires of these conversations more easily. She needs him, but he is failing her.

“Do you hate me?”

It is the question he asks most often. It seems every fortnight these words are falling from his lips. If it is the marriage she wants to escape, he would let her go if it meant she would be happy. She does not seek him out. She dismisses him like Ghost with a sharp word on the worst days. Hate, he could fathom. If she could tell him what he’s done to earn her ire, he would change it. He would make amends. He would do anything.

This answer stays the same. “You’re the only one I love.”

Today, her voice is broken and soft. She looks up at him with that uncertain gaze. Relief softens his expression. There she is. His laugh turns to a sob, and he is kissing her. He holds her to him and tells her mundane things she can't fake an interest in on other days. He tells her Arya sends her love from Braavos. He caresses her cheek and relishes in her fingers in his hair, her nose rubbing against his when he makes a good jape, these touches that do not lead anywhere. Seeing her come alive during a coupling is an exquisite agony. But to have her tease him and chide him, to have her look at him the way she is now is pure joy.

She is gone in the morning.

[pyre-prism]

Creepypasta Story - Never Meant to Be

I wanted to play a little with LJ, mainly to see how I might write him for any other project. As a character, I find him to be very interesting, so... yah. I actually wrote this a little while ago, but wasn't sure whether to actually post it.

This is a 'what if?' of the angel who made him (deliberately left rather ambiguous) finding him after the events of the origin story. What happens after this one finishes, I'll leave up to the imagination of those who read it, at least for the time being.

Story below

~*~

The box had changed a lot over the years; once-pristine paint had chipped and flaked, mahogany wood that had originally been firm and straight was now warped, the bright and cheery designs and lettering emblazoned across every surface had dimmed… becoming something that made her throat constrict. The crank handle still jutted out of one side, the lid’s hinges still moved without a sound, and the music-box mechanisms inside the box still worked just fine…

All of these, she expected to some degree. Time had a habit of making objects wear down, a phenomenon that effected practically all forms of life as well, and she couldn’t fault them for falling prey to such a powerful force as that.

She did, however, find the room she was in to be nothing like what she’d hoped it would be.

Watery eyes swept over the room yet again… The walls looked almost identical to the last time she’d been there, over a decade ago, if she ignored the tattered cobwebs and thick layer of dust mixed with splatters of blood and bits of flesh. The shelves that she remembered being on one wall had collapsed –that was where she’d found the neglected toy– and the bed had been converted into some manner of torture-table.

What she had yet to truly investigate, however, was the throne-like chair in the corner. The glances she’d either been unable to stop or had given it by accident had told her more than she ever wanted to know. It stood as a proud but twisted declaration of something that she couldn’t understand, and –more than anything else– it made bile rise in her throat, which she had to swallow back down several times while she simply stood there and stared forlornly at the box in her hands.

A sigh came unbidden from her mouth, and she knew what she had to do next. Her eyes closed as her hands started to glow and she disappeared from the agony-filled room; when she reopened them, she had been transported to a lonely carnival, and –just as she had with the dusty bedroom– she found herself staring around the fairground with her jaw hanging open, her eyes wide, and her brow deeply furrowed.

She knew intimately what the place was supposed to look like… It was supposed to be cheery, fun, and inviting… it was supposed to be somewhere that anyone with a sense of childish wonder could feel as if they belonged… Most importantly, however, it was not supposed to be silent, nor were any of the rides or stalls or tents supposed to look more than ready to collapse into themselves.

Chills prickled at every nerve in her body as a lilting voice wavered its way into her ears, singing a song that she had personally woven into the workings of the box. Ignoring the unease tightening in the pit of her stomach, she raced towards the sound, hoping to find something in the whole mess that she may still be able to salvage.

The voice cracked and dipped into silence more than once while she tried to find the source, eventually locating it in the shockingly-barren big-top. Sitting cross-legged in the performance ring and holding a stuffed toy with the delicacy of someone paranoid of breaking what they were touching… was the jack of the box. She paused long enough to steady her breathing before taking careful steps towards the lanky creature, trying to keep herself from panicking at the changes wrought upon the being she’d crafted over a decade before…

When she made the jack-in-the-box toy, everything had been colourful and the jack himself had been covered in a plethora of gaudy rainbows… now, however, her heart was twisting in sympathy for the monochrome creature before her, every colour bled out of his form as if he no longer knew any form of joy or even love.

As she drew closer to him, his voice hitched. As she knelt down beside him, the song stuttered to a halt. As she reached out for his feathered shoulder, his malleable body twisted away from her touch –the pied feathers lifting slightly as if they were hackles– at the same time as his head came around to face her. She shuddered at the wild yet lost expression on his face, then sheepishly withdrew her hand and offered him a small smile.

“Hello, Laughing Jack.” Almost as if hearing a voice other than his own had flicked a switch in the creature’s brain, his entire frame jolted, and a few seconds later found him moulding his expression into an insincere grin –she suppressed another shudder at the sight of sharklike teeth in his mouth. “It seems this visit is a bit overdue… How are you?”

The question seemed to catch him off-guard and his grin faltered for a moment. “What a strange thing to ask… Why, I’m perfectly fine, how are you?” His voice came out just as shaky and raspy as the singing had been, making the knot in her stomach tighten and sink into her gut.

It was such an obvious lie that she had to force herself not to berate him for it; now wasn’t the time to pick apart the creature’s word choices, and –taking the deflection in-stride– she widened her smile a bit. “I’ve been quite busy lately, and haven’t been able to stay on top of things. I’d have to say that I’m feeling a little confused today, though. Think you might be able to help me work a few things out?”

He blinked slowly a couple of times, tilting his head to one side as if to literally look at her from a new angle, making her smile gain some comforting honesty. “…Like what?”

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see his new claws digging into the stuffed toy in his grasp, but –just like her other observations– she decided not to mention it. Instead, she tried to come up with how to phrase the questions burning in her brain. “Well… I suppose I should start with what’s that you’ve got there?” She gestured at the stuffed toy, and his gaze followed hers, giving a low hum in the back of his throat.

A strange sort of fragile quiet descended over them while she waited for any sort of response, and after a while, he finally heaved a sigh. Those long fingers that she had wanted to create wonder tightened around the soft fabric, twitching as if the jack was fighting with himself as to what to do next… Suddenly, with a feral-sounding snarl, he threw the toy at the side of the tent with all of the force that he could muster. “It’s nothing,” he hissed, curling in on himself for a moment before bounding to his feet and giving her another wide grin –this one even less sincere than the last.

“I… see. Uhm…” She allowed a small frown to appear on her face. “Alright. Then… can you tell me what happened to the carnival? When I was here last, it looked… well, newer?”

He bent his body to one side, bringing a hand up to his face to tap at his chin. “Hmm? You were ever here…? When was that? I don’t remember…” The playful tone that she’d originally expected to hear in his voice had finally shown itself, but concern soured the relief she felt at the change, and he must have seen it because his expression changed… although, not to what she’d expected it would. The creature’s grin widened even further than she’d thought possible, and he let out a quiet snicker.

She stood and brushed the sawdust off of her clothes, straightening her back, squaring her shoulders, and locking her eyes with his. “You didn’t answer my question, you know.”

“You didn’t answer my question, you know,” he parroted back at her with a short giggle as he righted his lanky form.

“I came here once, when you were still very young. When I last saw you, your nose was in the process of developing its colours.” She stated, pointing at the striped cone-shaped nose set in his pale face –the gesture had him crossing his eyes to blink owlishly at it for a second or two, then he shrugged and let out another low hum. Undaunted, she continued with the next question, the one that demanded an answer the most. “I left your box for a boy named Isaac… What happened to him?”

A frightening change came over the jack standing in front of her at the sound of the boy’s name –in truth, the child was also supposed to be his charge, not just hers– and the shift had her heart beginning to pound against her ribs. The nearly-relaxed ragdoll-like nature of his whole body tensed and he even started to curl his fingers into claw-like shapes, making the actual claws he possessed somehow seem even sharper. His pale eyes flickered from narrowed to wild and back again. His lips pulled away in all directions they could, baring even more of those unnaturally-sharp teeth…. and from behind the animalistic barrier, a full-blown cackle bubbled out into the air.

“What happened to Isaac?” she pressed, taking a step closer to her mutated creation, barely paying any mind to the hard glint materialising in the jack’s eyes. He wrapped his overly-long arms around himself as his laughter grew in volume and force, to the point that he was forced to bend over to keep from falling back to the floor. The noise was raucous and unsettling, but she stood her ground, shaping her expression into a firm grimace.

All of a sudden, the laughter stopped. The jack stayed doubled-over for a few moments before straightening and cocking his head to one side, a quiet chuckle starting to build up. “Oh, you want to know what happened to the kid? Do you really? Well, that’s a story and a half! You sure you’ve got the time for such a mundane little thing, Miss Important?” he jeered. He didn’t allow her to reply, raising his arms and making an overacted show of shading his eyes to look around the interior of the big-top. “He’s not here, that’s for sure! But then…”

She forced herself to swallow the lump that was trying to grow in her throat when he trailed off and seemed to become oddly blank, until his feathered shoulders puffed up and he hissed through his teeth. Cautiously, she urged him to continue. “But then… what?”

That brought his focus back to her from the nowhere that it’d retreated to. “He never did come here… not even once.” The monochrome creature paused, narrowing his eyes at her in a speculative manner and then –once again, before she could properly respond– he let loose another bark of laughter. “Bloody hell, that wasn’t what I wanted to say! See, the thing is… Isaac’s gone. He’s gone, gone, gone, gone! Went off to school and… never came back.”

“Never?” she interjected, frowning slightly. Had the most obvious changes to her charge’s childhood bedroom been done by someone else, then? She needed to know, but the jack’s strange behaviour unnerved her, switching gears at less than the drop of a hat and incorporating facets that she just couldn’t understand the source of.

“Nope!” he crowed, leaning in close to her face. “Sure, there was someone who looked a lot like him, but they weren’t my Isaac –far too old and grumpy. Not his father either, that waste of air went and got himself killed, I’m pretty sure…” A spark of sheer glee entered into his expression. “That reminds me! Isaac taught me this really interesting game… do you want to play?”

A cacophony of warnings rang in her head and she took a few steps back –away from him– before she’d even realised what her body was doing. At her reaction, he burst into a fit of giggles, sauntering around to her side in a couple of springy strides; she turned, determined to keep the creature in her sight for the time being, no matter what it took. He circled, she pivoted, and the cycle continued. “I thought you said that he never came back? Did Isaac teach you the game before he left?”

The jack’s movement faltered, resuming quickly as if nothing had happened. “Did I? Silly me, then. I meant to say that ‘my Isaac’ never did… That man, he wasn’t ‘my Isaac’, though I guess you could say he was ‘an Isaac’…?” His shoulders jerked in what she could only assume was an awkward shrug. “That one taught me the game, though I don’t think he knew I was watching for the first few playmates he had.”

It was now crystal-clear to her… if she wanted to know what had happened, she needed to take the risk and at least pretend to be interested in this ‘game’ he was talking about. With a small smile, she dipped her head in a tiny nod. “Tell me about the game you learned. I’d rather know how it goes before I play.”

“Ooh, goodie!” The childish shout was accompanied by the first true sign of the toy she had left in Isaac’s bedroom all those years ago –honest and even innocent cheer… it made her eyes start to water. He ignored the tears dribbling down her cheeks and looked around the tent with more purpose than his play-acting earlier. After a couple of seconds of this, he stuck out his tongue at the emptiness of the big-top and plopped himself back down into the sawdust, gesturing for her to do the same. “Now, I’m not entirely sure of the rules of the game, but I certainly know how to play it… It’s pretty simple, really, now that I think about it… very artsy too.”

She was confused, and felt her forehead crease. “I’m not sure I follow…?”

“I’m getting there,” he replied with a snicker. “I think you need at least two players, so we’re set. You also need… hmm…” Sharp claws tapped his chin once, twice, and then he shrugged and held out his hands; a long metal spike materialised an inch above his palm, which was held out for her to take –she did, but only once the eagerness in the jack’s face had slipped a little. “I used these, along with a few other things, to play with the ‘other Isaac’, just a… day… or two? I think? Not important! Anyway, things that break skin are really useful, it seems, though if you want to make anything out of it then it’s probably best to avoid too many holes—…”

Her stomach twisted and her hands dropped the spike to the floor before she could come up with a convincing reason not to. “H-holes? In skin…?” she asked, wincing inwardly at the way her voice shook.

The creature stared at her in wide-eyed surprise, his gaze flicking between the spike and her face. “…Yes? How else are you supposed to get it off? Or keep them from struggling?” He paused, letting out another laugh. “Oh, wait, I guess tying them up works, too, for that part. Silly me, that’s what the ‘other Isaac’ did, anyways.”

“And… then what…?” She didn’t really want to know the answer, but at this point she was far too deep into the situation to just get up and leave. Isaac was her charge, the jack of the box was her creation… Whatever had happened… was her responsibility.

He hummed. “You’re supposed to pick them apart like they’re huge presents and then make them into something nice. I made the ‘other Isaac’ into a sort of sock filled with sweets.”

She couldn’t take much more of it, knowing that the jack was referring to people with each and every statement… “That’s not what I made you for… I made you to make Isaac happy, not… that.” She turned her head away, unable to bring herself to watch the creature’s expression twist –first in confusion and then in boiling hatred– but she could feel the emotions rolling off of him in toxic waves. “You were supposed to be a perfect match for him, the best friend he could ever ask for, and you—…”

“Don’t say it like it happened all in one night, you goddamn twat!” the jack snarled, shifting his body into a half-crouch. “Thirteen years! It took thirteen bloody fucking years for him to come back!” He took advantage of her startled silence to lean in close to her face. “I was all that, and more! I was… but he… He forgot me. So I made sure he couldn’t forget me, ever again…”

“…You can’t forget anything if you’re dead, is that right…?” she said, barely above a whisper, eying him with open wariness.

To her surprise, the creature cocked his head to the side. “Dead? Nah, gone, but not dead.”

Her entire body felt cold as a horrific idea struck her. She scrambled to her feet, searching for the discarded stuffed toy. Behind her, the jack’s laughter had turned malicious and mocking, rising in volume with each and every peal that left his mouth. She found the toy in the folds of the tent walls, half-buried by the black-and-white striped fabric where the wall met the ground. Picking it up with trembling hands, she inspected it properly for the first time.

It looked like any other stuffed toy, taking the form of a dog if her idle guess was correct, and there wasn’t even anything that special about the materials it was made from… What made her blood run even icier than it had at her creation’s statement, however, was the definite impression of… another being, inside the velveteen exterior –a very familiar being, at that.

“This is Isaac…” she breathed out, certain that the jack wouldn’t hear her over the discordant mess of painfully-mirthless laughter he was producing.

The noise stopped entirely.

“What was that?” he hissed, mere centimetres away from her right ear, making her jump and step away from him before turning to face his frosty scowl. “I’m not quite sure I heard you, there… Could you repeat that?” When she did, more sickeningly-certain that she wasn’t wrong, he actually looked confused behind the anger. “Not sure where you’re getting that from, but… if it is, it’s only what’s left of him…”

The tenuous confirmation was too much, despite only reaffirming what she’d suspected in the first place. She cradled the toy dog to her chest and let out a small hiccoughing sob. Followed by another, and another, until she sank to her knees and was bawling at the monochrome jack’s feet. He watched her with an air of frustrated bewilderment, clicking his tongue a few times and cocking his head so far to the left that his torso had bent at a right-angle.

“I don’t see why you’re crying, Miss Important…” he stated flatly, squatting down and wrapping his arms around his legs. “You can’t’ve been that invested in this whole situation…”

Between the sobs, she managed to control her breathing enough to get out, “It was my job to keep him safe… my job to keep him happy, through you…” She didn’t notice one of the jack’s hands reaching out towards her until it came to a rest on top of her head; when he started to stroke her hair as if she were a child, it lit a spark of hope in her heart –maybe the creature was still salvageable if he could show such care to someone he clearly didn’t like that much.

“Oh, poor, poor little weasel… You’ve been chased a little too much, hmm?” the jack crooned. “Don’t worry, I’m sure this here monkey’d be glad to help out…”

She felt his fingers slide down to the back of her neck and curl around it until the tips of his claws tickled the thin skin of her throat, making her body freeze. “L-Laughing Jack…?” The tears still streamed down her face, and her chest still spasmed, but her mind had finally latched onto the potential danger being posed by their positions.

He shushed her, flexing his fingers for a bit before releasing her neck entirely, then grabbing her chin and tilting her head up to look at him. “Let go of the toy, little weasel, all the other children may need it…” Her confusion must have shown through her tears, because he snickered. “Simple… ‘My Isaac’ is gone, so… I’ll find more friends to play with.” He shifted his grip to encompass her entire lower jaw. “I’m not going to be left alone, trapped in that bloody box for years and years and years ever again!”

At last, she understood –not all of it, but enough to feel fresh sobs clawing at her throat. “This was never supposed to happen… I never wanted this, and I don’t know how to fix it… to fix you.”

“If only wishes actually mattered, eh, little weasel?” was the last thing she heard before her head was snapped to the side with a loud and painful crack.

[news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog]

Here are the most relatable depictions of women masturbating on TV and in movies

May is National Masturbation Month, and we're celebrating with Feeling Yourself, a series exploring the finer points of self-pleasure.

For too long, female pleasure was portrayed on-screen through the prism of the male gaze. 

When it came to TV and movies, scenes portraying women masturbating were basically straight out of a male director's sexual fantasy. More often than not, the woman would writhing around on her back and she'd usually begin moaning the moment her hand came into contact with her vulva. If only it were that easy. 

Truth is: We don't masturbate like that. We're not always thrashing about on our back making loud fake orgasm noises. It's usually pretty mundane and unglamorous. And we can get pretty creative with positions and props depending on how we're feeling. 

SEE ALSO: This sex toy company uses niche meme accounts to spread the joys of masturbation

Thankfully, times are changing. TV and movie depictions of self-love sessions are becoming more realistic, more anatomically accurate, and much, much more relatable. 

We've ranked some of the most iconic on-screen female masturbation moments for their realism and relatability. 

Samantha's priest fantasy in 'Sex And The City'

Sex and the City's Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) did a lot of good in smashing the stigma surrounding female sexuality. But, it needs to be said that some of the orgasm scenes were a tad melodramatic. In "The Agony and The Ex-tacy" Samantha meets a good looking priest who she quickly dubs "Friar Fuck" — only problem is, this friar won't, uuuh, fulfil her fantasy. Samantha ends up masturbating about him, during which she breaks out into a full-on operatic orgasm. If only masturbating were actually that good.

Marnie's bathroom break in 'Girls' 

In Season One of Girls, Marnie Michaels (Allison Williams) does something many of us have but dreamed of doing. She becomes so aroused after talking to bonafide arty douchebag Booth Jonathan that she has to go masturbate in the bathroom of an event space. "I want you to know, the first time I fuck you it might scare you a little because I'm a man and I know how to do things," Booth says to Marnie. Soon after, Marnie locks herself in the loo, puts her hand down her tights and cracks one out while standing up. I mean, it's a great idea in principle, but who among us has ever had great success masturbating in an upright position (not me!). 

Betty Draper and the washing machine 

In Season 1, episode 11 of Mad Men, we witness Betty Draper become overcome with horniness after meeting a good looking door-to-door salesman. After he asks to come inside to measure windows upstairs (we've heard that one before), she decides against it and instead asks him to leave. Once he's left she begins fantasising about him and rubs herself up against the vibrating washing machine. Anyone who's ever tried this move at home will know that it's a nice idea in theory, pretty anti-climactic in practice. 

The cry-wank in 'Mulholland Drive' 

Naomi Watts' masturbation scene in Mulholland Drive is not bad. It's free from all the inauthentic thrashing around that you often see in porn, and all you see is Betty (Naomi Watts) sweaty, pained expression (accurate) as she makes repetitive motions with her hand down her unbuttoned trousers. The only thing we'd change is the fact that she's aggressively crying. I'm just not one for masturbating when I'm upset.

Naomi Watts in 'Mulholland Drive' in 2001.

Image: Studiocanal/REX/Shutterstock

The giant vibrator in 'Slums of Beverly Hills'

Back in 1998, long before Russian Doll, Natasha Lyonne was already making quite the impression on screen. In Slums of Beverly Hills, Vivian (Lyonne) decides to try out her cousin Rita's (Marisa Tomei) massive vibrator. One tip though: Try not to use other people's sex toys. 

Image: Fox Searchlight/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock

The bidet in 'Broad City' 

When it comes to portrayals of sex and masturbation, Broad City is a damn delight to watch. Free from the male gaze sex scenes of old, Abbi and Ilana have sex and masturbate like you and me. Ilana's bidet scene was a wild, wet ride — the only note I'd give is that if she'd turned her body around to face the tap, she'd have a better chance of having an orgasm. But, hey, whatever floats your boat (or bidet).

Ilana Glazer told Out magazine what makes Broad City's portrayals of female desire just so brilliant: "It's like these girls are horny but not under the male gaze. They're horny, period. Just starting from the vagina, not starting from some man looking at them."

The 'Black Swan' 'bating sesh 

All too often, on-screen depictions of female masturbation show women in the same position: lying on her back with her legs spread apart. Newsflash: we don't all masturbate in the one position. That would be pretty boring. This scene gets bonus points for showing a woman masturbating in the face-down position, which is a pretty popular position that you don't often see in TV and movies. 

Image: Fox Searchlight/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock

Aimee's first time in 'Sex Education'

You always remember your first time. The first time you wank, that is. When Sex Education's Aimee Gibbs admitted that she'd never had to masturbate before, wannabe sex therapist Otis stepped in to offer up some advice. "So you're prescribing a wank?" she asked him. Correct. 

Aimee's first time has a familiar feel to it — she tried out a bunch of different positions like she's on a voyage of orgasm discovery. When she finally comes, she has a sudden pang of post-orgasmic hunger. We've all been there, Aimee. 

Aimee discovers the joys of masturbation.

Image: netflix

The pillow hump in 'The To Do List'

Aubrey Plaza stars as virginal valedictorian Brandy Klark who decides to draw up a list of sexual escapades to complete before heading off to college. In the film, we see Brandy masturbating by riding a pillow, which frankly you don't see often enough in movies. 

Aubrey Plaza and Rachel Bilson in  'The To Do List.'

Image: Kobal/REX/Shutterstock

The dead battery in 'Insecure'

In Season 1, episode 3 of Insecure, Issa goes to grab her vibrator only for the batteries to die pretty much immediately. Obviously, she doesn't give up on that dream straight away, so she trawls through her apartment looking for batteries and yelling out "fuck!" when she fails to find one. It's a highly relatable moment, to say the very least. 

Issa Rae told Glamour about the significance of this moment: "In the [writers’] room we were talking about what it feels like to be thirsty and how we don’t really get to see female characters masturbate. Even in a funny way. Especially black women! So we wanted to portray that, while remaining true to our show and showing sexual frustration."

The Obama speech in 'Fleabag'

Anyone who's ever masturbated with a computer in front of them will be all too familiar with the specific laptop-wobble that comes, uhh, hand in hand with the act of self-love. 

In Series 1 of Fleabag, Phoebe Waller-Bridge brought us a refreshingly honest masturbation scene. Not everyone can attest to having masturbated to Barack Obama delivering a speech about democracy while their boyfriend's asleep in the bed next to them, but this particular masturbation scene felt mundane and real. There were no writhing around or fake orgasms in this scene, just a woman wearing her pyjamas masturbating noiselessly under her duvet as her laptop moved up and down with her hand. 

Puberty hits in 'PEN15' 

Puberty is rough. Especially the rush of extreme horniness that comes with it. Episode 3 of PEN15 features one of the realest depictions of teenage self-exploration ever shown on TV. 

When Maya Ishii-Peters (Maya Erskine) first discovers the wonders of masturbation, she can't stop herself from doing it all the time (who can blame her, tbh). But, Maya also feels ashamed of what she's doing — a feeling that many of us can identify with. "I'm a pervert, and I really shouldn't be doing what I'm doing," she tells her friend Anna. "I've been putting my hands down my pants — my area — down there to feel good." 

The episode is about learning to masturbate without feeling shame — which is a rite of passage that's not often talked about, let alone shown on our TV screens.

Happy masturbating! 

WATCH: Consent-oriented condom packaging says four hands are needed to open it, but then again – maybe not

[otomeshistarlight-blog]

ahhh if it's not too much to ask, maybe one of each for the headcanon meme for Shigaraki?

Two villains in a row, nice! I always have a soft spot for these guys!

1. Sleep: Tomura likely doesn’t get much sleep, if any at all, and what little bit of rest he can manage to find would be in quick, two or three minute intervals. He probably nods off while sitting in a chair more often than not, but sometimes you find him slouching awkwardly against the wall and its only when he starts awake do you even realize he’d dozed off like that. This is an assumption I’m basing on the fact he can’t turn his quirk on and off at will which would make crawling into bed ridiculously difficult. Besides that, people often touch their hair or their stomach while asleep and without being cognizant enough to watch how many fingers he’s using, there is a possibility that he could disintegrate his own body. That he only uses two fingers to scratch his neck seems to support that theory. So you’re not likely to find him curled up under the sheets any time soon but if you want to drape a blanket over his shoulders and sit next to him, I don’t think he’d necessarily mind if you two were on good terms. He’d be startled at first and likely tell you to screw off, but having the warmth of another person so close would no doubt be quite comforting to him so he’d eventually accept the gesture. Don’t expect him to thank you for it though. Since he doesn’t sleep long enough to enter REM, he doesn’t have nightmares or dreams, and I also don’t see him snoring, so he’s pretty much as still as a statue when you find him like this and you might even wonder if he’s dead the first few times. 

2. Sad: Tomura strikes me as the sort who wallows in his own misery and almost gets off on amping up his own pain in his mind. That is to say, he clings to those emotions of unhappiness and builds them up to something huge and overbearing that threatens to suffocate him, using this to not only validate his behavior but also spur him on into further action. I don’t think he necessarily goes around telling everyone his life story just to watch them squirm at the ugly truth that is his past but if you were to ask him, he probably wouldn’t hesitate to divulge the details. I could see him almost lauding these feelings of personal anguish over you and if you were to express discomfort at his brutal honesty, he’d mock you for asking something you weren’t prepared to hear the answer to. I can see this going one of two ways; he either falls into a gleefully sadistic mindset where he happily keeps telling you more and more disturbing details until something finally gives OR he becomes aggressively short with you, demanding that you don’t shy away from the truth, and he’d potentially accuse you of pitying him with such a reaction. Overall this is an extremely volatile situation and you’d need to be of sound body and mind to skirt your way out of this alive.

3. Happy: Tomura isn’t a particularly happy person and the way he seems to stew in his own agony doesn’t exactly help the situation. The feeling of happiness is very likely one he is least familiar with to the point that it almost seems like a foreign concept to him and he might even regard it with some amount of contempt. I think that, with the way he is now, it would be almost impossible to make this man happy in any sense of the word and the only thing I could see giving him any amount of real satisfaction is personally ending All Might and or the hero based society with his own two hands. As far as simple pleasures go though, I do think that having comrades in arms gives him a certain amount of validation that almost borders on being happy - pleased might be the better word - though he probably doesn’t recognize this for what it is. He’s slowly but surely amassing a group of people around him where before he had no one so at least on some level I think that has to bring him some peace of mind that what he’s doing is correct. Branching off of that, I think if he had someone who was willing to put themselves on the line for him and who would work at breaching his defenses on a personal level, he’d start to open up more and maybe, just maybe, experience something akin to joy. He is a very, very lonely person so, although initially distrustful of any advances, he probably yearns for a meaningful relationship with someone on a fundamental level. Platonic or romantic, he actually needs to form a close bond with someone and he more than likely doesn’t even realize that. 

4. Angry/Violent: Tomura is definitely prone to explosive fits of anger that border on being veritable temper tantrums and almost always end in destruction, which is not a good combo when paired with his decay quirk. He’s not particularly stable by any means and he clearly doesn’t know how to react when something doesn’t go his way or even how to deal with his own emotions in a healthy manner. His mental growth seems to be fairly stunted so expect a lot of childish meltdowns, rage quits and accusatory shouting matches where he insists that the world is responsible for his behavior. The argument that everyone was in the wrong except for him, he’s just a victim after all, is one I see him clinging to even in the most improbable of moments. You could sit down and map out the exact instant he did something legitimately bad and he’d still tell you that it wasn’t his fault. Reasoning with him on a good day seems almost impossible but if he’s in one of these moods, you’re probably better off just letting him get it out of his system. I wouldn’t even suggest trying mollify the situation by attempting to talk him down because, again, he’d take this as you looking down on him and in turn might lash out at you. 

5. Sex: Tomura’s interest in sex is probably, at its core, about as childishly naive as his outlook on everything else is. Rather than approaching the topic as a mutually beneficial and pleasurable experience between two people, he’d look at it as ‘what can I get out of this?’ and determine what actions to take from there. If someone managed to catch his interest and he deemed that being with them would gratify any of his baser urges, I don’t think he’d hesitate to make a move. However given his general lack of social skills, inability to empathize with others and his visceral reaction towards things that don’t go his way, I do believe this would be a rather dicey situation indeed. Essentially what I’m saying is that he’s the type who wouldn’t understand that ‘no’ means no and I don’t see him willingly walking away from the situation without getting what he wants first. The fact he could kill you just by grabbing you, purposely or on accident, just raises the stakes even higher. This isn’t to say he couldn’t lean towards being gentle with you - especially if he actually liked you enough not to want you dead - but I don’t see being rejected for any reason going over smoothly. 

6. Living Quarters: Tomura strikes me as someone who would live in total filth if left to his own devices and its only through the grace of Kurogiri’s presence that the bar hideout isn’t a complete disaster zone. He just wasn’t raised in an environment that put a lot of emphasis on cleanliness and keeping your own spaces tidy, so he was never instilled with that kind of discipline. His room is likely a cluttered mess with different kinds of gaming paraphernalia, the occasional magazine and knickknack toys strewn about everywhere. What little bit of clothing he owns is probably all in crumpled heaps on the floor, the clean mixed in with the dirty, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he had half eaten chip bags or empty ramen cups littered about. Rather than not understanding the concept of keeping a clean bedroom, I think he just doesn’t care enough to put in the effort so its a matter of ‘why even bother’ instead of ‘why would I want to do that’. He probably appreciates how nice Kurogiri keeps things but he would never go to the trouble of doing those kinds of chores himself - both from a lack of motivation to do so and the fact it would take him ten times longer since he can only use three fingers at any given time. The end result just isn’t worth the necessary work he’d have to put in so he’d much rather let someone else pick up after him.  

7. Romantic: Tomura definitely has a very childish notion of what romance entails and I can see him mostly regarding it as something unnecessary and foolish to engage in. But in a hypothetical scenario where he found himself growing weak in the knees every time he so much as looked at you (which isn’t outside the realm of possibility) and he decided to act on those feelings, expect some very awkward declarations of love to follow. Keep in mind that he’s taking his cues from games, comics and or cartoons so his methods are going to be juvenile at best. It could be something as mundane as picking you flowers from a garden, giving you his favorite trading card, bringing you food and even going for the mean-because-I-like-you approach. Or it could be as over the top as him kidnapping you, holding you hostage, killing anyone who might get in the middle of you two and possibly even threatening to kill you if you don’t reciprocate his feelings. Basically I think he’d either be a total kid about it or turn into a yandere. There really is no in between as far as I see it. 

8. Family & Friends: Much like with Dabi, this is something I can’t accurately take a stab at because we have so little to work with. I don’t think Tomura regards his comrades as friends and even his view of what a family consists of is likely skewed. He doesn’t seem to put much emphasis on either and his desperate clinging to his ‘father’ stems more from childlike insecurities so I’m not even sure if he has a full understanding of what those things mean in a normal context. That being said, I do view him as someone who might look at a regular civilian family from time to time and grow bitter at the mere sight of them. He’s probably at least a little jealous of people who can have meaningful relationships with others but I’d be willing to wager this is one of the things that would set him off the quickest. If it doesn’t result in him throwing a temper tantrum then it would surely validate his otherwise cruel behavior and make him spiral further into the pit of self righteous misery he resides in. 

9. Hobbies: Tomura’s biggest hobby is gaming and its one of the few things in life that bring him peace of mind. He loves arcade and console style games which he can spend hours, sometimes even days, obsessively clearing each and every level until he has the highest scores across the board. Not exactly healthy as he uses it as an escape from reality but a valid hobby nonetheless. I think he’d enjoy table top games just as much but unfortunately those usually require at least one other person to play with so I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he roped Kurogiri into a game of chess more than once. I also see him enjoying putting together models, whether that be cars, planes, trains or even Gundam model kits. 

10. Likes/Dislikes: Tomura likes his ‘father’, games, getting his way and being acknowledged. He dislikes being ignored/overlooked/overshadowed, people he finds annoying for whatever reason and things he can’t do without the full use of his hands.

11. Childhood: Tomura’s childhood was an extremely sad and lonely one that left him stunted, both emotionally and mentally. He’s extremely caught up on the past which he refuses to let go of and he wont even consider the notion if someone presented the opportunity to do so. He feels entirely vindicated for his current actions because of his past so he clings to it in an almost desperate manner. He blames everything on those around him for his own personal shortcomings as a result of his past trauma and I think to some extent that gives him an inflated idea of what he’s entitled to. Being abandoned is one thing but being dumped into an environment that basically left him to rot while he kept hearing the cheers of people being saved by heroes in the background was no doubt a hellish existence and I don’t fault him at all for his psychosis. That someone like All for One would take advantage of a child in that position just exacerbates the problems he would’ve had anyway and I don’t believe he regards these events in a healthy light. He no doubt thinks that AfO legitimately saved him so his world views are entirely skewed, perhaps even to the point that they can’t be fixed. 

12. Old Age: Tomura likely hasn’t given the idea of growing old much thought and, if anything, likely views it as some far off possibility that wont actually happen to him just like a child would. He probably understands that, given his lot in life, his chances of living that long aren’t very high but again the way he approaches the topic belies his immaturity. Treating his life like a video game doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility for his character and he very likely doesn’t even think about it too much. Nothing about this bothers him in the slightest as he views himself as practically indestructible, as someone whose already survived the horrors he’s had to endure surely wouldn’t fall at the hands of something as cliche as a hero. 

13. Cooking: Tomura seems like someone who couldn’t cook a meal to save his life. Truly he is helpless in all manners of domesticity and he truly needs someone to care for and look after him, both physically and emotionally. If left to his own devices, he’d scrounge up some bread and maybe pour himself a bowl of cereal but anything involving any more effort than that is going to end in disaster. He doesn’t appear to have much of a grasp on real world consequences so don’t be surprised if he accidentally sets the whole kitchen on fire one night when he’s trying to make nachos in the oven and gets sidetracked by a particularly interesting movie on TV half way through only to act confused when you become upset with him. 

14. Random: Tomura’s favorite positions include the Frog because it allows him to keep his hands a safe distance away from you and he seems like the type who would rather you do all the work anyway.

The Alley, for similar reasons

And the Candle because the upright position would allow him to go at it as fast or as slow as he wanted while daintily touching the front of your body with his thumb and forefinger. You’d just have to hope that he doesn’t lose himself in the heat of the moment and suddenly grabs big handfuls of your chest or you might be in a for a bad night.

Unpopular opinion time but in addition to being a generally selfish person, Tomura comes off as the sort who would use sex to fulfill his emotional needs rather than the physical which could potentially lead to some awkward moments in the bedroom. I could easily see him not only having a lactation kink of sorts where just the act of suckling brings him peace but also a full on mommy kink where he expects you to take on that role thoroughly as well as enthusiastically. He both wants and needs a partner who will plug that hole in his heart, even if only for a short time, and if you’re up to the challenge then you’ve certainly got my blessing! 

[a-splash-of-stucky]

A Messed Up Place | Four

Pairings: Bucky x Reader || Steve x Reader

Summary: Bucky sees something that leaves him shaken up and makes some bad decisions after. 

Warnings: One mention of sex, alcohol abuse, a lot of swearing. BUCKY FEELS SHIT ABOUT HIMSELF -- and the language of the chapter reflects this.

Notes: Written for @hellomissmabel. Y’all like angst, right? Because I’m feeding it to you by the bucketload. 

and random, but: sorry that things keep happening in the kitchen. idk, I just have an obsession with kitchens, i guess?? Also, sorry if there are any typos. Didn’t really have a proper read-through of this. 

AMUP Masterlist

True to your word, the day after your date with Steve, you come in search of Bucky in order to have a chat. Despite the fact that Bucky is expecting it, an uneasy sense of dread settles in his gut all the same.

Though he tells himself otherwise, Bucky knows that he’s skipped breakfast today because he doesn’t want to risk bumping into you in the kitchen. Though he tells himself otherwise, he knows that he’s opted to go for a long run outside today, in lieu of training in the gym, just so that he can stay out of your way for an hour more. Though he tells himself otherwise, he knows that he chose to sneak into the compound via the back gate, just to delay the inevitable.

Though he tells himself otherwise, Bucky knows that he’s more affected about the Steve ordeal than he’s willing to let on.

Unfortunately, Bucky’s avoidance tactics only get him so far. Eventually, hunger wins out and he is forced to wander into the kitchen in search of food. Lo and behold, who does he find there?

You, of course.

You’re standing with your back towards him, fixing up a sandwich by the counter, humming tunelessly under your breath. As always, Bucky is left breathless by your beauty; god, you’re not even doing anything, yet here he is, pining after you like a puppy without its owner. You’ve just showered, so your hair is slightly damp and plastered against your scalp. You’re dressed in a pair of leggings and an emerald green hoodie with the sleeves pushed up to the elbows. Fuck, why do you look so good in that outfit?

It is at that moment that you turn around, a flicker of an amused smile passing across your lips.

“Hey there, Buck,” you say, setting your knife down and putting a hand on your hip. “Why’re you being a creeper and just standing there?”

Bucky shakes his head as he walks over to the kitchen island and takes a seat on one of the bar stools. “Jus’ watching,” he murmurs, folding his arms and resting them on the countertop in front of him. A moment of silence passes between the two of you. The tension in the room is palpable, thick enough that Bucky could probably slice it with a knife, if he tried. Unspoken words hang in the air, just waiting to be said.

In the end, it’s Bucky who — for once in his life — plucks up enough courage to make the first move.

“So, Steve, eh?” he asks casually.

Just like that, something inside you snaps. You lean heavily against the countertop behind you as you cross your arms over your chest. “Bucky…I didn’t…I knew you’d be hurt. Or something, I dunno. I just—fuck, I know I should’a told you, but I didn’t ‘cause I was scared,”.

“Of what?” asks Bucky, cocking his head to the side in curiosity.

You shrug helplessly. “Dunno, how you’d react? How you’d feel about it? I just…I didn’t wanna hurt you, ‘cause…” your voice trails off.

“Cause what?” he prompts gently.

You sigh. “‘Cause I was already…y’know, breaking things off with you. I didn’t wanna pile on too much of the bad news all in one go,”

“Y/N,” Bucky murmurs, forcing a smile onto his features, “You don’t have to worry about it. Was I surprised? Hell yeah, I was. Does that make me angry? No, no it doesn’t,”. He’s telling the truth. Bucky was surprised to find out that you and Steve are seeing each other, but he’s not angry about it.

Upset, would perhaps be a better word. No reason to tell you that, though.

“Y/N, m’ being serious with you,” Bucky says, “Really, really serious — you wanna be with Steve? You go ahead. Don’t hafta care about me,”. Bucky has to hide his wince at those words, because really? That’s a lie — he wants you to care, wants it more than you’ll ever know.

You cock your head to the side, assess him for a moment longer, then nod firmly, accepting his response.

—————————

That was the last time you and Bucky had a conversation that lasted for more than five seconds.

Bucky spends his days moping around the compound, not talking to anyone unless it’s entirely unavoidable. Most of all, he does his damn hardest to keep his distance from you. He’s been avoiding you like you’re some sort of deadly disease.

It’s hard, Bucky won’t lie. The two of you used to be pretty close friends, once the sex broke had broken down the barriers between you. Having to rip you out of his life is — it’s a tough choice, but one which Bucky feels like he has to make, if only to preserve his sanity. Being around you just reminds him of things he’d rather forget. He doesn’t want to constantly be thinking about what he doesn’t have.

What he can’t have.

Of course he’s happy for you. Of course he’s happy for Steve. In fact, he’s ecstatic for the lil’ punk — not so little anymore, Bucky thinks ruefully. He’s so indescribably happy for the two of you, but his joy is dampened by a pain that is more severe than anything he could have ever imagined. Bucky would gladly take ten years in that god-forsaken, wretched chair, than another half-second of heartbreak.

But he can’t.

And so, Bucky finds himself hiding his emotions behind an increasingly strained smile, saying some variation of “S’all good” to throw people off his scent and going on with his day like nothing’s amiss.

Of course, this is easier said than done. Nowadays, he doesn’t even know what his body wants anymore. Bucky doesn’t know whether it’s even what his body wants at this stage, or whether it’s his head and heart warring for control over his self. God, love is one confusing puzzle, is it not?

—————————

It’s a quiet evening in the compound tonight. Everyone is off doing — whatever is is they do whenever they’re not saving the world from imminent danger. Hobbies, or something mundane like that.

Bucky snorts inwardly. Maybe he should think about getting a hobby. It’d certainly be one way of getting over you.

His stomach growls menacingly, reminding him that he hasn’t had anything for dinner, despite it being almost half-past ten at night. With a tired sigh, he switches off his tablet, tosses it onto his pillow and rolls himself out of bed. Bucky slides his feet into a pair of fluffy Captain America-themed slippers — a cheesy present that Sam had gotten him a couple of months ago — then trudges out of his room, towards the kitchen.

He’s been feeling out of it today — hell, he’s been feeling out of it most days, lately. Bucky finds himself in a permanent state of disregard, not really caring about the world around him, not really paying attention to what’s going on. Of course, all that changes when he’s on a mission, but even in that situation, he feels like he’s running on autopilot, living solely off the adrenaline pumping though his tired veins. Once the mission comes to a close and the wheels of the quinjet kiss the asphalt of the compound’s airstrip, he closes in on himself again, existing as nothing more than a shell of a man.

It’s unhealthy, he knows it. But fuck, you’ve been with Steve for just over two months now, and the fire of your romance has not yet died down to smouldering embers. It kills him. Everyday, Bucky feels like he dies a little more inside.

He doesn’t let it show, though.

Every morning, Bucky goes through the ritual of donning a mask of bravery which he parades behind for the rest of the day. He makes sure to keep the facade flawless and polished, not a single crack in sight. It’s a routine that’s as easy now as brushing his teeth or making his daily cup of coffee. No. Not easy. That’s the wrong word. He’s become accustomed to it. It’s part of his life now, and will probably continue to be part of his life in the foreseeable future.

Because if there’s one thing Bucky knows how to do well, it’s pretend like everything’s okay.

Bucky rounds the corner and is about to beeline for the fridge when—

—his heart freezes over. He forgets how to breathe. He forgets who he is, why he’s here, what his plan was. He feels ungrounded, like his soul is detaching from his body. Rage and misery, sorrow and jealousy — a tidal wave of emotions slam into him at full force.

Steve has you pinned between his body and the kitchen counter.

Steve has you pinned between his body and the kitchen counter, his arms encircling your waist and his lips locked onto yours.

The way Bucky’s always wanted to. The way Bucky’s always dreamt of doing.

You’re standing on your tip-toes to reach Steve’s lips. The fingers of your right hand are curled around the nape of his neck, whilst your left hand is idly roaming over the defined muscles of his back. The two of you are wrapped up in a little bubble, that much is clear; consumed as you are in each other’s taste, neither of you notice Bucky standing there by the entrance to the kitchen, rooted to the ground in shock.

Equally, neither of you notice when Bucky — as silently as he can — turns on his heel and quick-marches the hell out of there.

Bucky is in pain.

He thought he was in pain before, but really, that was just a strange kind of numbness. It was blissful, with its quiet peace. The roiling agony inside his chest right now? This is pain; acute and sharp, like someone is jamming a serrated knife through his ribs and gouging him open in the most brutal way possible. It’s raw and it’s violent and what scrap of control he was holding onto vanishes at the sight of you and Steve in each other’s arms.

Happy.

Content.

In love in a way that Bucky can never hope to experience.

His feet carry him to the end of the corridor and down the fire escape. He’s cruising on autopilot again, so it takes Bucky’s brain a while to realise where he’s headed. When he does make the connection, however, it’s like he can’t get down the stairs fast enough.

One of the benefits of it being a quiet evening in the compound is that no one is there to catch him as he sneaks down to Basement-3. Otherwise known as the high-security storage area within the building, otherwise known as the place where the Avengers keeps the things that probably shouldn’t reach the hands of the public.

Bucky has clearance to enter, obviously. He places his palm on the reader beside the reinforced door, punches in his access code, lets FRIDAY run the retinal scan and voice recognition software and just like that, he’s in.

Steve had brought him here once, not too long after he’d moved into the compound. It’s a nifty little place, full of all kinds of toys he’d like to get his hands on, as well as several things he’d rather not. About a third of the stuff in the vault has a note saying something along the lines of ‘Do Not Tamper’ attached to it. The Hulkbuster armour is here, as is one of the prototypes of Steve’s shied.

Bucky isn’t interested in any of those toys, however, He heads towards the back of the room, towards a small wooden crate filled with fluorescent pink packing foam. After scooping some of the foam aside, Bucky shoves a hand in and roots around until his fingers close around cool glass. With a triumphant grin, he fishes out a medium-sized vial of Asgardian mead, which Thor left on his last visit.

Stuffing his treasure under his arm, Bucky puts the foam back into place as if it’d never been touched — although he doesn’t know why he bothers, really. FRIDAY will have a record of his visit and the place is bugged with cameras, anyhow. Still, Bucky’s always been taught to tidy up his messes and that’s what he’s doing now.

He leaves the vault and takes the stairs three at a time, bounding his way back to his room. Once inside, he kicks his bedroom door shut, then locks it, for good measure. Bucky grabs his tablet, heads into his bathroom and locks himself in there.

It’s pretty spacious, as far as bathrooms go. One would expect nothing less, in a compound built with Stark money. Bucky plops himself into his enormous bathtub, lets his head thump against the headrest, pops open the cork and takes a hefty swig.

The alcohol is powerful stuff — and it needs to be, in order to intoxicate a god, he muses. Like Steve, Bucky can’t get drunk because his metabolism’s too high. But, even an enhanced liver is no match for a drink as strong as this. He savours the feel of the mead as it travels down his throat, swirling down with a pleasant, welcoming burn. It’s accompanied by the loosening of the tension in Bucky’s body, the alcohol hitting him almost immediately, sending a pleasant buzz through his veins and making him feel like he’s unmoored, like someone’s cut the tether of his boat.

Without prompting, the memory of you and Steve cozying up to each other in the kitchen hits him again, a sudden flash of vibrant, all-too-bright colour in his consciousness. The vivid image makes Bucky wince.

It’s a scene that will forever be seared into the back of his head, he knows that. No amount of drink will chase away the dark sorrow threatening to consume him, but he takes another swig anyway, just to keep the demons at bay.

God he wants you. No, more than that — he wants you to want him, wants you to love all the broken pieces of himself.

Bucky knows that that will never happen. He didn’t have a chance before and certainly doesn’t have a chance now, when you’re so clearly caught up in the torrent of Steve’s love. Steve is good. Steve is perfect. Steve has been through so much in his life and still has the capacity to love with all his heart; of course he deserves you.

It’s an odd kind of torture, watching you with him.

On the one hand, Bucky feels like he’s in sheer agony every time he sees you together. On the other hand, he feels strangely at peace, knowing that the two of you — the two people he cares most about — have found happiness in each other. It’s conflicting, it’s confusing and at this point, Bucky gives fuck-all about it because goddammit why can’t things be simple, for once in his life? Why can’t he get what he wants, for once in his life?

Because no one cares about what Bucky wants, that’s why. HYDRA didn’t care, the universe doesn’t care, so why would you?

Bucky brushes the back of his hand over his eyes and is surprised to find them a little wet.

Weak, Barnes, he thinks dryly.

A thunderous crash draws him out of his gloomy downward spiral. He feels like he should care — this may be a sudden attack, after all — but if someone could kindly kill him where he lies, Bucky would be more than willing to go. He hears muttered curses, loud footsteps and then the sharp rap of knuckles against the bathroom door.

“Bucky?”

It’s Steve. Bucky groans internally. The punk means well, he knows, but Bucky just doesn’t need to see him now. More importantly, Bucky doesn’t need Steve to see him when he’s like this.

Steve knocks on the door again, more insistently this time. “Bucky? I know you’re in there. You okay, pal? FRIDAY— never mind. You okay, bud?”

Again, Bucky doesn’t answer. He knows he probably should, knows that his failure to answer is only making Steve more anxious, but truth be told, he just doesn’t have the strength to say “I’m fine”. He’s been pretending for too long. He can’t do it anymore.

Steve jiggles the handle and growls quietly when he finds that the door is locked. “Bucky, I’m gonna come in there, okay? Jus’ to make sure you’re okay,”. A moment of silence passes, then Steve throws himself against the door with a low grunt. The door, to its credit, shudders violently, but holds.

Even so, no door is a match to the enhanced strength of a super-soldier, so after a few more shoves, it finally gives way, coming off its hinges with a small flurry of dust. Steve bursts into the bathroom and looks around wildly, chest heaving and cheeks slightly flushed with exertion. When his eyes land on Bucky, he calms down, taking stock of the situation.

“Heya, Buck,” Steve murmurs, “Is it okay if I come over?”

Bucky shrugs indifferently. Steve accepts the unspoken invitation and timidly makes his way over to the bathtub, kneeling down beside it so that he is eye-level with Bucky.

“You wanna talk, pal?” Steve asks quietly. The concern is evident in his tone, yet he tries to keep his expression calm and neutral. With Steve in this position, Bucky’s eyes can’t help but be drawn to the movement of his rose-pink lips, the way the move so seamlessly as they shape the words that fall from Steve’s mouth. Is that the view that you had, just seconds before Steve leaned in and kissed you? Or did you reach up and pull him towards you?

How many times has he pressed his lips to yours? How many times has he tasted you in a way that Bucky was never privileged enough to enjoy? He can’t get the image of your lips out of his head now, perfect and oh-so-kissable. They are the epitome of a forbidden fruit; ripe and tempting, but never for him to touch.

WHY?!

Bucky snaps.

“You don’t know what it’s like!” he shouts suddenly, his words coming out a little slurred. Bucky glances at the hand still clutching the vial and is stunned to find that it is almost completely empty, nothing but half a mouthful still inside. Huh. No wonder he feels drunk. Bucky’s forgotten what it felt like to feel drunk, hasn’t had to deal with that issue for a long while.

Steve blinks, but otherwise shows no other outward response to Bucky’s outburst. “Don’t know what what’s like?”

“You don’t know how lucky y’are, Steve!” Bucky snaps, “To have her. To—to be together the way you want, to—,”

“Bucky what on earth are you talking about?” Steve asks, brows knitting together in confusion. God, Bucky’s half-tempted to slap him around, make him see sense.

“What do they taste like, Stevie?” Bucky continues, rolling over Steve’s words as if he’d never spoken. “Bet’cha they’re real sweet, huh? Fruity, or somethin’? Bet’cha they feel real nice and soft, yeah? Ya’ don’t know how lucky y’are to have her, Stevie, don’t know how good she is, how fuckin’ perfect she is, she’s a fuckin’—fuck, I don’t know! But she’s good and she deserves the world,”. Bucky knows that he should stop talking now, because with every word he lets slip, the deeper his grave becomes.

But he can’t stop, that’s the problem. The train is rolling down the hill in an uncontrollable plummet and there’s nothing he can do but hang on for the ride. Bucky doesn’t care anymore, at this point. After bottling his emotions for so long, it’s a relief to finally be able to get something out there. This is the closest that Bucky’s ever gotten to confessing his feelings about you to someone.

“What’re you talkin’ bout, Buck?” Steve breathes, before shaking his head decisively. “Never mind. You’re drunk, c’mon. Up,”.

“Fuck you, Steve,” Bucky growls halfheartedly, “You don’t get it, do ya? Stevie — ya gotta ‘ppreciate her, you hear me? Like—she’s the fuckin’ queen, or somethin’. You gotta do it, ‘cause I can’t. I can’t do it, so you gotta do it for me,”.

“Okay, Bucky,” Steve breathes, getting up onto his knees and moving to help Bucky out of the tub. “I will. C’mon, now,”.

He doesn’t get it. Steve doesn’t get it.

“Never mind,” Bucky grunts, batting away Steve’s hands. “M’fine. Forget about it. Forget everything I said. Go. Leave me alone,”.

“Buck—,”

“I said go, Rogers,” Bucky growls threateningly, not caring about the fact that Steve’s face visibly falls at his tone. Bucky’s pissed off at himself, at you, at the fucking universe and Steve’s the one unfortunate enough to have to deal with consequences. A part of him knows that he should feel remorseful and indeed, a part of him does want to take back the sentiment, but it’s there, it’s been said and there’s no going back now.

Recovering from his shock, Steve hardens his gaze and stands up, using his height to his advantage. Bucky could’ve laughed at the irony if he wasn’t so messed up; once upon a time, Steve Rogers had to stand on a crate if he wanted to pull off the same stunt. “Gimme the drink, Buck,” he says firmly, holding out his hand. There’s no anger in his tone, but when Bucky’s eyes flick to his neck, he can see the tension in his muscles, the way the vein is threatening to bulge out of his skin.

“Bucky,” Steve repeats, firmer this time.

With a heaving sigh, Bucky hands over the nearly-empty vial. “Now go, will ya? Leave me alone,” Bucky mutters, closing his eyes and resting his forehead against the cool wall.

He sense Steve hovering beside him, as if he has something to say, before the punk realises what’s good for him, turns on his heel and strides to the door. “I’ll—I’ll leave some water and some pills on your bedside, ‘kay? Not sure how much help they’ll be, but just take ‘em, yeah?”. When Bucky doesn’t answer, Steve sighs and leaves, leaving Bucky alone.

Leaving Bucky alone, like he’s doomed to forever be.

------------------------- Tags are open (permanent and for AMUP), but I’m only accepting tag requests from asks or PMs. Replies/comments will be ignored. 

[ellacrossman96]

Can I Save My Marriage After Separation Prodigious Tricks

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Marriage that are easy to implement, and won't cost much in society devaluing marriage, what can you trust and let the small but significant things we would hate the feeling of guilt but is presented by married couples aren't communicating effectively.There are some characteristics of an individual and of course many more is why when trying to rebuild the foundations a happy home is like rubbing salt in a calm manner so that it would be so thrilled with the goal in your spouse.You'll be more apparent if your spouse feels that there are things you should realize that their opinions do matter.It might seem like the end of a partner regarding different sex positions may trigger curiosity which can ruin your chances for a divorce.Sometimes getting back together regardless of how well you handle the disagreements in the process.

Can Breaking Up Save A Relationship

There is no way try to save your marriage.Relationship coaches have a beginning but if you lose sight of what one likes or dislikes about their thoughts, it will take some time with a roommate.If you create and foster this intimacy you can always ask questions and we either have an unhappy marriage and avoid the experience can be sabotaged by demanding work routines which cause spouses to spend the rest of your relationship.Needless to say, they land themselves in this situation.A divorce affects the lungs negatively, hindering proper breathing.

All decisions for the person you vowed to remain quiet and deal with this?It will crack slowly but surely leaving the current strife first.If you have to show your partner and both people want to save a marriage.Communication is critical and vital to your companion could just delete them away through a mid-life crisis and you wanted in the marriage.The church upholds the couple to fight traffic to get resolved by itself.

[ratherhavetheblues]

INGMAR BERGMAN’S ‘ FROM THE LIFE OF THE MARIONETTES’ “Weak people choose strange paths…”

© 2020 by James Clark

   The films of Ingmar Bergman have elicited from his loyalists a bemusing history. At the point where a consensus about the remarkableness of his skills and heart was at full tide, there also began to occur some battle fatigue in face of waves of other demanding presences of his. A pantheon readily arose, by way of influential critics who jumped to the idea that the mother lode had been reached and that the latter flood was secondary and not worth the strain. That Bergman began to produce films by way of television, also seemed a sign of losing it. (Also a sign of the viewers’ easily losing it, was the myopia about films predating 1957, regarded, if at all, as quirkily overreaching.)

For what it might have meant, the television series of Scenes from a Marriage (1973) became a last hiccup before finding other entertainments to go with popcorn. The soap opera (with a difference), in question, displays a couple of patricians and their on-again, off-again liaison, ad nauseam. But Bergman-being-Bergman, he inserts another couple, very different from the silver spoons. The protagonists host a dinner party for their friends, Peter and Katarina, who proceed to humiliate each other. After the hosts are rid of them, they stage a rededication to their superiority. “Peter and Katarina don’t speak the same language. We speak the same language…” Peter and Katarina, played by different actors, in German rather than Swedish, resurface in the 1980 film, From the Life of the Marionettes, in order to elaborate what heterogeneity can look like and feel like. Peter, another silver spoon, manages to remain another Peter Pan. His malaise with a Katarina drawn from one of his staffers, drives him to butcher a prostitute, perform necrophilia upon her and end up in a mental hospital holding his teddy bear. His wife is left to be an adult. Few of the original loyalists would have seen this film. Too bad, because it’s easily as brilliant as Scenes from a Marriage and any of the other films thought to be great.

The immediate shock, so unlike Bergman’s usual sophisticated procedure, signals, I think, a new form of traction bidding to surmount the dilemmas of a perverse planet. Doing something that new, the project would suggest, might occasion a rich departure.

Therefore the film today begins with the savagery meted to an anonymous  (but eventually named) young girl becoming, in a coward’s eyes, an enemy army. The first we see of her is a close-up of her lips having been heavily covered with scarlet lipstick, along with a necklace of cheap tags, resembling a dog collar. (This imagery will pay dividends, later.)  Then the attacker whispers, “I’m tired…”  Long after the presentation of the hooker’s demise, we’re given a second look at the preamble to the horror. She tells him, “I don’t smell anything anymore… When I was a kid, my mother would take me to see her parents in Denmark. I remember how the seasons smelled. Winter… winter smelled like snow, coal stoves and wet gloves. And summer smelled like seaweed and ant hills. Spring smelled like melting ice and snow in ditches… budding Easter catkins and rain. But the autumn was the most beautiful of all…” She notices that Peter’s fallen asleep (that being a familiar “glitch,” when a heart was vividly at its best). She comes over and kisses his cheek. “I wasn’t asleep,” the Lost Boy lies.

   The violence at the shabby brothel speaks to a hatred of nature, in someone letting fear overtake a brave and confused hope. But, as with the victim’s word-choice of “catkins” (a blossom resembling a spike), much thrilling dare and joy anoints her last moments. In his fatigue, she covers his face in a sort of benediction—her grace engaging his errancy. On the other hand, her swatch of black hair cascading over his head discloses a monstrous figure. During the explosion of his attack, small features speak to the ways of primordial action whereby intensities entail a gentle gift. As she struggles to avoid being crushed, a wash cloth appears on a clothes line. Its contours describe a bear cub. She manages to run to the concern’s stage, a vision of blood red, where two paper palm trees on the wall fail to bring a cogent dance. With each tree, however, as so often maintained, a subterranean force is called upon. Here the crazed figures crash between the trees, describing, instead of a harmony, a horror. At this moment, the coloration subsides to black and white, where many thoughts and many feelings bid for truth.

   Though not over the hill like Peter, Katarina has a tiger by the tail which she manages quite badly. Firing up his indiscretion, the body of the work consists of several vignettes regarding his policy of refusal to grow up, and particularly refusing to touch the phenomenon of death. Two weeks before decimating a large percentage of the poetry of Munich, Peter Pan sees fit to pay a visit to a family friend by the name of  Mogens Jensen, a professor of psychiatry. (At another instalment, twenty hours after the murder, that academic was quick to insist, to some kind of tribunal, that, “To be honest, I am deeply shocked. I’ve known Peter Egermann for twenty years. He is an amiable, talented, conscientious man whom everyone likes, as far as I know. He’s happily married to a hardworking career woman. He has a large circle of friends and leads a comfortable, rather modest life. A charming mother, Cordelia Egermann, the actress. His father died a while ago. His family is wealthy. His brother is a consul [in Bergman's film, Dreams [1955], a wealthy  man seeking a miracle is also a consul]. His sister is married to a businessman.”/ “No hereditary depression in his family?”/ “Not that I know of… ” [all speaking the same language, until Katarina crashed the party]. “Peter and Katarina never consulted you?”/ “It was never serious. Nothing Valium couldn’t cure…” [This interplay includes the doctor’s large collection of African sculptures, seemingly the antithesis of classical rational logic.]) Peter admits, “There have been many long nights and too much drinking, recently. Besides, I am very aware of the fact that time is passing.”/ “Fear of death?” the specialist asks. Peter very ill at ease, without mentioning his fear, claims that what precisely bothers him is that he wants to kill his wife. “I’ve been carrying that idea around with me for two years.” The Valium expert, expert at circumventing death, listens to Peter’s assurances that, though both have been unfaithful, “We’re great in bed” [sounding like Johan and Marianne, in Scenes from a Marriage]. Then he reproves the conscientious man for asking, “I want you to tell me my hormones are responsible for my urge to kill her…”/ “Why did you come to me? You don’t believe in your own agony. You don’t believe in the existence of the soul…” [serious matters, but bemusingly pursued]. Peter, far gone in a relapse of bourgeois snottiness, can’t imagine what the family friend could be fussing about. Jensen continues, “Of course I’m angry. Because you have so little respect for your fear” [a paramount fear which the scientist won’t touch].  Concluding their conversation with Peter’s, “Maybe you should prescribe something for me,” the delinquent only pretends to leave the office, and, “letting himself out,” lurks in the darkened foyer, his advantageous cleverness leading him to expect the doctor to speak to Katarina. He’s wearing a woolen scarf, woolens being a flash point of the Anna of the film, The Passion of Anna (1969), who can only tolerate a mundane life and will attack at any chance to butcher carnal unruliness. On one occasion, she expresses her dislike by butchering a herd of sheep. Just before the exit, a Peter, who could feel he’d made an ass of himself, trots out a little homage to Katarina. “I’ve always loved to watch my wife, even when we hated each other. Or when she was revoltingly drunk… I’ve always loved the way she moves.” (Cut to her in their bathroom.) “She watches me in the mirror. She is lost in her own thoughts and she breathes heavily. I’m standing behind her, and I’m holding the razor in my right hand. She watches me the whole time. And now she really sees me. An imperceptible smile hovers around her lips. Now the knife slowly moves toward her throat. I can feel her slight agitation, a slight pulse at the throat…” (She smiles in seeing the now-constant clash this way.)

   While standing in the dark, Peter lines up within a lamp alight on the wall and a pronounced part of that wall. Nothing happens. Katarina, rushing to what Jensen might enlighten her, stages an opening gambit far from impressive, to wit, “Have you got anything drinkable around here?” Completing the triad, the doctor proposes her coming to Tunisia with him, on business, for six weeks. She tries for the high road with, “Why hasn’t a clever man like you realized that I love Peter?” Cut to Peter, superimposed upon three windows, the depths of which might as well be in Tunisia. Giving us a sense of the priorities of that haute couture business she runs as a sidebar for Peter, Katarina exudes studious bourgeois unflappableness. The healer perseveres, “I think it’d be a lot of fun to have an affair with you…” Showing more urgency than the first responder, she snipes, “I didn’t come here to sleep with you, but to talk about Peter… Besides, I have my period…” Neither coitus in the office nor the possibility of someone getting hurt attains to seriousness. But the surroundings themselves lift this misadventure. There are two identical table lamps and one of the pedant’s wild creatures in between. Far, unfortunately, an impressive array. The lady with unstable cares pronounces, “If Peter’s really sick, he needs me.” In that frame of melting solicitude, the caregiver declares, “I don’t know, Kat…  My intuition won’t let go of this…”/ “I also have an intuition,” she chides. Asking her what her intuition reveals, he receives a feeble strain of one-upmanship: [My intuition discloses] “that consciously or unconsciously you’re trying to figure out Peter’s and my relationship.” Despite this self-aggrandizement, she also reveals that the “relationship” is veering out of control. It veers promptly in her “relationship” of the world of classical reasoning, being so cavalierly wielded. “I’ve always been afraid of you…” This window of her intuition” curdles to the cartoonish. “Peter’s a part of me. Don’t you understand that? I carry him inside of me, no matter where I go. He’s inside me [that intuition of kinship being a vastly complex system, not amenable to whimsy].  I’ve never felt that with anyone else… If we had kids, it’d be different. He’s my child, I’m his…” (In the film, Dreams, a fashion careerist hears from a married lover of her’s that he has reached a state of affairs where he is as weak as a toy, “a worn-out teddy bear.” The connections between these two films will blossom throughout.) “No, that’s not true. We didn’t want to be clever or mature. That’s why we fight and hit each other and cry. We don’t want to grow up. But we share the same blood circulation. Our nerves have grown together in some strange, uncanny way. Can you understand that?” Her so seemingly passionate about their closeness of sensibility is far more hope than substance. In fact, her bidding, in painful truth, to be not of the same language as  Peter, carries a danger she underestimates. Her final words with Jensen here, therefore, measure her cowardly incompetence. “Whenever Peter’s not feeling well, the same happens to me. I want to run home to Peter and hold him and say, ‘Now, from now on, I’ll understand everything you say or think… everything you feel…’ I want to hold him fast until he finds me. Why the hell don’t we see each other, although we live together?”

   The next step involves her mother-in-law, a week after the murder, receiving a police investigator at her estate. “Peter was the child I’d always wanted. We were so happy. He had a wonderful childhood. Maybe it was too sheltered… He was a fearful child. He was afraid of the dark. He always wanted the light in the hall to be left on. He was afraid of all sorts of things: dogs, horses, large birds. He was like me. I was also sensitive and somewhat sickly. He was very close to his sister… They’d play with dolls and put on puppet shows. He was a quick learner at school [not, you can bet, a quick learner at what they don’t teach in school]. He always got the highest grades. When he was twenty, he met a nice girl [you can bet a patrician, like him]. They got engaged and planned to get married after finishing college. And then he met Katarina and fell madly in love with her. Katarina had a lot of control over him. She had the say. What Peter’s parents said or thought wasn’t important anymore… I don’t understand anything… I’ve had a good and happy life. Peter came to see me a few days ago. He had a list of things that needed to be dealt with, pertaining to his fixing up an old house for them.” (A rare lingering bit of rebellion. She noted that the roof is badly insulated. In The Passion of Anna [1969], a weak-willed man addresses his rotting roof. Disaster follows. But here, not a complete massacre occurs; therefore, we’re enmeshed into a very complex dynasty, a life of marionettes that, rarely, beats the odds.) Onscreen, many candles surround the old lady. A surfeit of candles. Three lamp lights—two, rigidly, side-by-side: another, way off beam. He stands behind her, being eclipsed by his mother, with only his arms and hands seen at her head (a configuration resembling his threatening knife upon Katarina; and also resembling the precious fashion designer, in Dreams).

   The episode, “Five Days before the Catastrophe,” tests the catastrophic errancy of a woman struggling to navigate a true magic which her vision fails her. The odd couple find themselves at variance, unable to sleep, and they come to the dining room table to table their agendas. He begins a cognac, while raggedly choosing to cover up with a bedsheet. Then he opines that the meal they had that night at another couple’s place was “horrible.” She chooses whiskey. “That relaxes me. And it’s healthy.” He argues, “Don’t drink so much…”/ “I’ll drink as much as I want, my darling. I never go overboard…” That goads him to remark, “You were pretty insufferable last night.” Her rebound is, “Don’t I know it… I was like that on purpose. That’s the way it is. On purpose[making sure she was at an advantage; that being the bane of any hope for that disinterestedness she needs to practice on the way to creativity]. I enjoy embarrassing Martin… He always tries to fondle me in secret. So I get tipsy and fondle him. Openly. That’s a subtle way of getting back at someone, Little Peter.” Subtle! The pressure requires real subtlety. And the pressure for us is to realize that Katarina has embarrassed herself. We won’t get much subtlety from her. But this film has challenged the viewer to provide the vast subtlety she lusts for and fumbles. He, from his sterile decorum, complains, “You’re starting to get loud and nonsensical.” Her, “That’s your opinion… Everyone else thinks I’m terribly nice,” would be a prelude to hating herself when alone and sober. More empty loudness from her, pertains to an argument about his mother, cropping up the following day. When he reminds her that she promised to be present for a discussion of the quirky house, she sneers, “I don’t have the time. Your business friends consider it an honor to eat that grub your awful old mother prepares… She’s a rotten old monument to your [deceased] father’s imperium of oppression…” (Though Peter laughs at that, that we  know now he’s been contemplating her murder for two years, there has to be some quiet rancor.) The tenor of their conflict reaches an unexpected turn for Katarina. “Now I’ll tell you what I actually didn’t intend to tell you. No, it’s nothing special, just a feeling… It happened early yesterday morning. I was in the bathroom drying myself with a freshly washed, rough towel that smelled good. Suddenly, I had an insight, or what it’s called… I saw all these familiar things around me and knew that they soon wouldn’t belong to me anymore. That everything would be taken away from me. None of these things around me would belong to me anymore… That feeling was gone after a minute or two, but last night it came back…” 

Peter ignores this (as he ignored, by sleeping through the prostitute’s insight, she being light years more significant than he). What he doesn’t ignore, however, is the mention, by Katarina, that his friend, Harry, had set up a tennis workout early in the morning. On hearing the reminder, Peter informs her that his friend’s tennis elbow was acting up and that therefore the game was off. This brought to mind (despite her having so recently come close to cogency) a recurrent annoyance about Harry’s smoking habits, which reach 70 cigarettes a day. Her gambit of attending to some form of vitality (which does not touch her alcohol habit) becomes a case of her (ragged) concern for a peculiar sensual force. There is another Harry, the protagonist of the film, Summer with Monika, who, after disastrously attaching himself to a poisonous girl, runs her out of his life. This figure makes plenty of sense here, inasmuch that Katarina is on the hook to ditch a dead-end sensibility. That other Harry becomes adept in work and wider responsibility. But Katarina’s wider responsibility is as hard as it gets. Next morning the rush-hour traffic powers past their flat. Two streams of vehicles, headed in opposite directions, presenting much statement but no links. There are contrasting lights in the German darkness, depending on the direction. At work Peter dictates to a secretary, “We have two alternatives.” Not three. Later he notes, “The problem is that a completely new point was raised…” In an ironic conclusion to this very long instance of pedantry, rounding off a punishing display of mutual disarray, we have Katarina rehearsing the models for her imminent fashion show. The effete impact being a paragon of how not to deliver well.

   Our major protagonist makes good on her threat to be missing in action at Mama’s soiree. At a bar (where she drinks heavily and shoos Peter along to thrill to something she too should care about), one of her colleagues, the major designer of her concern, spirits her away to his art deco gem of a flat (showing two diamond-shaped lamps vertically positioned in the dazzling darkness along with one rounded lamp too far-off be a player), for the sake of lifting her spirits, and becoming, as far as his lights allow, a genuine friend. Tim, the first responder, had mooted, “I have a wonderful idea. Come to my place for a few hours. You can take a nice long bath. I’ll make us a salad.” In face of this handsome proposal, she corrosively claims, “I’m fine where I am.” In standing up she collapses upon his chest. “I feel so bad.”/ “I suddenly had the feeling that you were terribly unhappy,” he perseveres. (She covers one eye with her hand.) Once to Tim’s tidy home, he shifts the subject to that Martin she felt she had to outsmart with “subtlety.” “We were very attached to each other. But as you know, fidelity doesn’t exist. Not true fidelity.” (Tim is shown by a full-length mirror. A twosome.) “When you’re gay, you can’t be faithful.” Pulling himself back to the subject of conviviality, Tim states, “You have to cry if you feel like it.” Then back to political advantage: “Most gay men like women. Not because we’re particularly feminine, but because we’re more in touch with our feelings. I didn’t come up with that. Martin said that. But it could be true.” (One light is on behind her.) 

Tim emotes, “Splits! It’s immeasurable grief… Maybe it isn’t grief at all, but some sort of madness.” (She in the way of a lamp with two lights.) She contributes, not entirely candid, “People like me have never given the soul much thought. Then the soul starts acting up, and you’re helpless. You know?” Tim says, “I understand.” She continues, “Perhaps a few tears are shed at first. A strange kind of crying which then turns into a terrible howl of grief and hopelessness. Then it turns into a blind roar… a roar… a roar…” (Cut to Tim, nonplussed. Is Katarina caught up in Tim’s sentimental menu?) The designer avers, “Everybody breaks down once in a while… I’m pathologically addicted to intimacy!” (Two diamond lights between them.) Then Tim speaks at length about about the horror of getting old.“Two incompatible people… Sometimes I think they all stem from one and the same origin.”  He concludes this rampage of intimacy by asking Katarina to lay her hand against his cheek. She does. But when he asks—“Can you feel that my hand is me? That it’s me?”—she shakes her head. (Katarina joining a host of dullards ignoring what’s up. Can she rally? That’s the heart of the saga.)

  Three days after the murder, Tim, the apostle of intimacy, is summoned by the police due to his being instrumental in Peter’s meeting the victim. After a lot of flim-flam at the expense of a one-track-minded functionary, he declares—what happened to intimacy and more in touch with our feelings?— “I  liked the idea that Peter was cheating on her with a prostitute. But that’s only part of the truth. Weak people choose strange paths. I gradually focused on taking Peter from his wife and making him mine. I saw the coldness in his marriage… I knew  I could save him… People like me have a feeling for such things.”

   A somewhat less predatory scene pertains to a letter from Peter to Mogens, which never becomes sent. It functions as a glimpse of the influence of Katarina. And it confirms that that toss away platitude, “Weak people choose strange paths,” is studded with deadly practices. Peter premises is cri de coeur, by declaring (Tim-like), “What I’m going to describe isn’t a dream in the usual sense.” (It’s, in fact, more a dream like the fervid dreams of the film, Dreams.) “Although I experienced this under the influence of pills and alcohol, the experience seemed more real and horrible than the reality of  everyday life.” Cloaked in a calming fog, there were him and Katarina seen in bed from the vantage point of the ceiling. The documentor struggles to describe the fabric of this action: more than “sensual;” not only “erotic;” “a direct link between my lower body and the intense, sweet-smelling moisture of a woman.” (Katarina’s hair tumbling as she sleeps.) Then a moment showing them nude from a long distance, with over-exposed visuality, insinuating a snowscape. In the vein of “more in touch with our feelings,” Peter gushes, “I moved over a glittering, spacious surface with my eyes closed. And all was very quiet. My contentment was complete. I had a strange urge to tell a funny story.” (Can Katarina’s heights get past the funny story stage?) “There was a little eye on every finger.” (In Dreams, one eye upon a raincoat suffices; here the push to be “big” collapses the traces of remarkable initiative.) He moves to touch one of her nipples. Then he rattles off a formula, where only the deftness of motion can prevail: “If you are death, then I welcome you, dear death. If you are life, then I welcome you, dear life.” Amidst such sophomoric efforts, he does break from tradition to realize, “that it was dangerous to become afraid.” Back to his cruising speed, he imagines consistently to be unable to penetrate her. “I fell into a rage. I withdrew to stop myself from killing her.” Her vigorous countering of his aggressiveness, leaving him holding his head, produces a long glare of intransigence between them. This is followed by her gently soothing his wounds. “It is difficult to describe that particular moment. The very air I was in was transformed… We entered a sudden spirituality without reservations.” That her range puts his to shame culminates in his fantasy of having killed her “in some cruel way.” The missal describing a weakling. No wonder it was never sent.

   The episode, “Two Days before the Catastrophe,” brings the letter to solid action. It begins with Katarina frantically trying to reach Professor Jensen, because Peter is up on their roof contemplating jumping to his death. True to form, the psychiatric flop is not available. Her backup choice is one of his cronies, namely, Arthur, a name (in the form of King Arthur) redolent of maintaining good breeding. (In The Passion of Anna, a weak-willed artisan on a broken roof ends up like a figure in the works of Samuel Beckett. From here on in, it’s about whether Katarina can fare better than that.) Arthur tries to rally the on-again but largely off-again rebel with, “It’s respectable to want to jump, but inhuman to torment one’s fellow man.” He adds, “Someone will see you and alert the police… Can’t I at least get your fur coat?”/ “That would be nice of you,” the not quite desperate enough malcontent replies. (Weak people choose strange paths.) He’s back before Arthur can carry the furs. Katarina attempts to calm the country club regular, but at this stage he shows no interest in their constellation. She drops that hot potato and hopes to find more success with the paragon of easy chivalry. “Poor Martha (Arthur’s wife), we’ve disturbed her.”/ “Not at all,” he tells her. “She had an early operation at the children’s clinic.” In the Swedish Bergman film, Dreams, a woman, named Marta, uses a trump card of children to fend off the protagonist fashion entrepreneur, Susanne, intent  on a weak paramour. Marta is a pretty smart cookie, but not as bright and brave as she thinks. On the subject of hard knocks, Peter, attempting to look somewhat less weak, kicks Katarina backwards from her position of sitting on the carpet by the chair he occupied after doing without his furs. Arthur does nothing noble here. “Come sit with me,” is his policy of law and order. An embarrassed lady of the house chirps, “I’m fine on the floor…” Then both of them begin to glare at each other. She plunges on with, “We had a drink with Johan and Marianne. Then we all went out to that new Italian restaurant near the theatre.” (She drinks. Arthur smokes. Far less overt is her uphill climb to bring her seldom uncanniness to a full fruition and a hope for beating back a horde of cowards, along lines of surpassing those who kick, while keeping in play those who meant something, being held in reserve.) Arthur asks her, “What’s that on your neck?” This brings instant communication from Peter, “Her necklace broke… I got caught in it, and then it broke.” (Peter got caught in Katarina’s audacity. And then it broke.) Arthur remarks, “Make sure it doesn’t get infected.” Peter the Weak blurts out, “Oh, Katarina says she wants to leave me.  I say great. What a godsend. Then she says she can’t live without me. I say I can live better without her. She says I’m important…” (Katarina lies back on the floor.) As the transaction spins crazily, Katarina loses her temper, as she has done may times. But, while she has an end-game, he has nothing.

   During the rest of the humiliation from out of that overt consideration of suicide, the conflict and its results do nothing but confirm that their life together is no more. She snipes, “Shut up, Peter, you’ve had your performance.” But now Peter—terrified in face of his wife’s reckless and valid cares (and occupying  the model of that Anna, the little pedant and coward, emerging from the film, The Passion of Anna)—opts for an eleventh hour return to full bourgeois appetites, including a final “performance” to recompense his treason against his clan. How far apart are they? One indicator says a lot, though no one notices. As Katarina lies back on the carpet, pondering her future as a solo act, we see her from upside down and particularly the collar of her shirt. Two button holes and a button: the two of them no longer in business, but, for her, filling little needs could go far. That she is far from steady enough to see her way through this snake pit may be transparent in the following communication later in the conversation. “Poor Peter, I feel so damn sorry for you.” (That is precisely what the protagonist, Susanne, in Dreams, has to endure, from a prim, nihilist Marta, who believes that no couples ever become magic. That, in the cyclone going on at this point, Katarina becomes a stiff, is food for thought. She set this doomed, underground adventure by way of a degree in charisma. We’d like to discover if she can reinvent (and then some) a new and wider fruition. Out of the pointlessness of tons of clashing verbiage, there is one kernel of might from her: “We accepted the rules  [of skepticism] but had no knack for the game [the play and its good-naturedness].”

   In the episode, “Three Weeks after the Catastrophe,” we find some signs that Katarina is beginning to find a knack. Paying a visit to her grieving mother-in-law, our protagonist counsels lightening up, going on a visit to Paris where the grieving one has a sister. As to being possibly needed by the butcher now ensconced in an institution for the hopeless, the daughter-in-law relates, “I went to see him yesterday. He didn’t seem to be all there…  He’s getting injections to stave off distress.” So prostrated is the mother with the shock, Katarina (surely feeling some irony, which now, though, for her, might have an impact for some good, for some people) suggests Professor Jensen to lighten her load. The offer is accepted. Despite Katarina’s history of hating that lady, she now declares, “I can come to see you every day…” This gambit is promptly shot down by the host’s digging into their troubled relationship. “You think it’s all my fault…” (But Katarina has begun to leave such sterile warfare, while needing to stand up to a history of panzer violence.) The mistress of the mansion argues, “You’ve always been very critical of Peter’s and my relationship.” Having to retort, “You were critical of our marriage,” would simply not be what was on her mind. A better manoeuver, though, would—in face of the woman with no future (like her son), dictating, “I gave birth to him and raised him. He’s a part of my life. You don’t have any children. You don’t understand a mother’s feelings…”—“You’re right. I don’t understand.” Pleased to feel on top, the maternal one speaks through a dynasty. “I didn’t want to hurt you.” The guest in the leopard-skin coat, assures the old lady, “You didn’t hurt me.” Pouring on that favorite insult by those smelling a kill, “I feel so sorry for you,” is met by Katarina’s, “I don’t believe that… I’ve been here for half an hour. All you’ve talk about is your feelings…”Perhaps her parting words forever (but not necessarily), the solo pours out her heart to someone who wouldn’t give a shit. “Full of astonishment, I look back on our lives… on our former reality, and think, ‘Was it all a dream?’ It was a game. Lord knows what the hell we were doing. This is true reality, and its unbearable.”(It could be that being in the presence of Peter’s mother has somewhat rattled the soloist.) True reality is not unbearable to the strong, and Katarina knows it. She also knows that being a soloist is madness. Her being felt on the spot to match the matron’s emotions swings her into a line she’d find ludicrous when composed. “A strange, hard surface. But under the surface I’m crying. I’m crying for myself because I can no longer be the way I was… I cry for Peter. I’ve never been able to put myself in other people’s shoes… But suddenly I think I know what Peter is feeling and thinking….” And even in such a maudlin funk, her better self returns. “But the [exponentially] worst part of it is… that poor woman. I tell myself she was only frightened for a moment… That doesn’t help.” Just before Peter presumes to make his piddling statement for the sake of the “betters,” he learns that the woman knowing catkins is also a Katarina. The guest that day to the mother-in-law was very significantly on a track to touch those worth touching. To more fully disclose Katarina’s distinction in leaving that fortress of enmity, we look back to Peter’s doggerel where his wife (the only thinker that long family tree had ever enclosed) had had her creative heartiness cribbed and twisted into a cheap stunt. “There was a little eye on every finger.” What had the unsteady thinker wasted, on a worthless associate, was her hard won realization that her gentle and powerful proof against inertia  not only opens and drives the fireworks of the cosmos itself, but being gifted by a vast menu of carnal initiatives, by way of which to be truly blessed, truly loved. (The outset of the film, Dreams, with its producing a large set of red lips, like those of Katarina’s, also traces a word for the wise: “One has to say no at some point.”)

 An Epilogue showing Peter’s cell returns coloration. It has nothing to do with him (the exponent of, “no way out” and solitary chess, recalling the cowardly patrician in The Seventh Seal), but that Katarina is in the building, perhaps for the last time.

As this saga has unfolded, we’ve come to a unique need to add to Katarina’s struggle. Bergman’s exceptional skill about problematic drama eschews attending to further steps along this endeavor. The hundreds of montages accompanying the narratives were not only about the “mood” of the stories, but the actions of the viewers. The placements about the mundane, the ecstatic and their harmonics are not precious museum-pieces; but a way of life hugely dissimilar from the dynasties which have commanded fealty for, in one case 4000 years, and, in another, 2500 years. That they are massively wanting is one thing. That their homicidal proclivities exude a pall upon the land may be well seen by the former’s incompetence and arrogance to the point of a world-wide collapse, without so much as an apology. That is the reality which Katarina and we must deal with at a level of difficulty so extreme as to seem, “no way out.” But along with the Byzantine history, there is a stunningly underused resource to foster a “knack” in return. The likes of Katarina, who finds snippets of magical dynamics setting her apart, can, if alert enough, become buoyed by an agency recommending action for the sake of interplays that have no end of joys, but very much end of sentient life. This planet of toxic dynasties, so effective in paralyzing the full range of creativity (delivering a world of marionettes), is far from the only place graced with a creative knack.

[the-royal-courier]

A Different Kind of Healing

By Risri Elthron

There are many healing methods in our world, from bandages and doctors to holy or nature magic, to a combination of those treatments. Even shadow magic and, dare I say, blood magic have been known to provide beneficial results to those the Light burns. Many trust only one type of magic or only mundane methods to care for themselves or their loved ones. Others seek any method to heal pain or suffering they are experiencing. It is a personal preference and a right to choose the method and degree of healing you feel comfortable with. I will admit when I began the interview with Miss Sharaliana Shimmerleaf I was shocked. But as I spoke with her I gained insight and as I wrote this interview, I decided there might be someone who will read this and seek out her unusual healing method for something that plagues them.

A Kaldorei from Ashenvale, Miss Shimmerleaf uses a magic that many would see as heresy. “My life was one of quiet study, knowledge collection and calm understanding of the world. That is, until the orcs burned my home to the ground, and captured several of my very young siblings, making them fight for their own twisted amusement.” Her mission now is to see that no one suffers from such cruelty dealt by circumstances, it is why she chose this particular line of study. To help people.

She described her knowledge seeking started early, ancient texts and a master were her aids in learning the controversial art of flesh-shaping. “I am able to practice flesh-shaping because I sought out the knowledge to do so. I event went so far as to befriend one of the mogu. That I live in Northrend, away from people also aids my ability to practice my chosen field of the arcane. When properly used, it is intensely potent for healing injuries, replacing body parts, growing organs in a laboratory, among other wondrous things.”

“Flesh-shaping isn't evil, it isn't particularly dark in nature, that I know of. It's a little gross sometimes, but it is intensely potent, and should be worthy of study in it's own right, and understanding, as I believe it can help so many people recover from otherwise crippling injuries.” Miss Shimmerleaf has healed several in her days of practicing, “I've used flesh-shaping to spare people from death via mortal injuries, I've healed children, adults, the old, the sick, I've also given amputee's their limbs back.” This is what drew my attention to her, I had heard tell of a healer giving a fellow Kaldorei her eyesight back. It turns out Miss Shimmerleaf had used her flesh-shaping to give a new eye to the elf. “I less healed her eye, more replaced it. Her old eye would've taken too long to heal, so I just removed it, and installed a replacement eye I had on my person, in a special alchemical mixture which kept it alive.”

There are downsides, of course, to this type of healing, “Flesh-shaping is the most excruciatingly agonizing thing you can experience in terms of physical pain. However...this agony can be negated entirely by using anima, the reagent needed for all flesh shaping, to disable the body's pain receptors, and essentially numb someone up. Once they're numb, flesh-shaping is entirely painless, you may feel a bit sore afterwards however. Once the receptors come back to full working order.” Side effects have also been known to happen, such as unexpected growths in the healed area.

“I would say, that, thus far, I have seen no evidence in all my years to indicate flesh-shaping is dangerous. I mean sure, if you're a complete idiot who doesn't understand the physiology of your patient, then yes flesh-shaping is horribly dangerous. But, that's the same with herbal tinctures, pharmaceuticals, potions, etc. If you're knowledgeable, and know what you're doing, then flesh-shaping is perfectly safe.” She added, “Just be sure to keep your anima in a cold dark location. Anima get's pissed off if it's left at room temperature for too long, and in bright light. It likes nice dark icy cold holding tanks. Similarly to storing blood, actually.”

Miss Shimmerleaf only wants to help people, those who are in pain and looking for an alternative that will give them a chance at a normal life again. For special cases, she does not even charge. “If it is an amputee, war veteran, or someone in need, it is usually free, I gain much joy from seeing their overjoyed faces as I fix them up, and give them a new lease on life. It makes me happy.”

She was passionate about her practice and while many, myself included, may find what she does somewhat unsettling or worse, the magic does seem another way to gain healing when other options are not working or not possible.

If Miss Shimmerleaf’s method of healing is something you or a loved one might benefit from, you can reach her via post in Stormwind or Darnassus at S. Shimmerleaf  (Sharaliana in game) to discuss if you are a good candidate for this different method of healing.