#but i think may also weirdly help him cope with the reality of it because it's the only one he's ever known!

[littlecornerinbrooklyn]

my brain just flooded after listening to Reputation this morning so I'm trying to get out all of my thoughts re: Seven as a song about being a celebrity in a relationship and knowing that's hard but still wanting to be in a relationship with the person and all of this is half baked but I'm working THROUGH IT

the music video is about a girl whose world keeps literally falling apart (restaurant crumbles, laundromat floods, gets caught in a monsoon)

and Jungkooks character is still showing up, bringing flowers, attempting to demonstrate that her misfortunes don't dissuade him, he still wants to be with her

she's out on the edge? well then he's swinging out on a platform to be there too!

and it's almost like he's trying to make a comforting joke to the other person about how unafraid he is? like the funeral scene in my interpretation is "would rather be dead than live a life without you, you are not a burden to my life you are a reason to keep living it" but making it humorous because it's almost funny to him that she thinks those are reasons he would be compelled to stay away

"weight of the world on your shoulders, I kiss your waist to ease your mind" -- babe it's okay let me fuck the pain away for a little while

i know your life is hard, but you are not a burden. i am actively making the decision to be here (with flowers)

and her being like "ugh fine okay you can hold my hand" at the end of the music video is her accepting that if he won't stop putting himself in dangerous proximity to her, she may as well let herself trust that it's his decision (he clearly pauses before taking her hand) and then the rain doesn't stop they just walk together into the storm

(I can't stop thinking of it as a parallel song in some ways to Taylor's Dancing With Our Hands Tied because I think it's hard for famous people to complain about the complications that fame brings without seeming ungrateful

& Taylor was very open about the fact that she didn't want to accidentally blow up a guy's life just because she wanted to date them--she knew the consequences were far-reaching. like, for all the ~conspiracy around Hiddleston, I do think it was probably surprising to her that she was somehow responsible for "costing" him James Bond. it doesn't matter if people believe it was PR, it doesn't matter if meeting his parents was a "game" to get back at Calvin, it doesn't even matter if the Bond thing is true or not, it matters that there is a public narrative that she destroys the lives of the men she dates in one way or another (and that tied into the writing songs about them thing and I know she's aware because she clearly parodied the publics idea of her in Blank Space) and that makes her worry for potential future partners)

The idea that somehow you will cause harm to the person you want to be with must be so hard to deal with.

especially when you're in a band like BTS and idol culture has the whole "no dating" contract clause thing. but this song doesn't feel like JK is apologizing to his potential partner for what they'll go through, it's almost framed as if he's reassuring someone who is worried about doing that to him.

like it is just a sexy little summer bop, i don't mean to ~read into it, but the music video was surprisingly humorous to me in a way that felt like he was trying to make light of how serious it can all feel and how it's probably better to at least have someone there.

like, he knows it can feel like you're drowning, but he wants it to hurt less. he can't stop it but he can be there through it. he can catch you when the restaurant crumbles, he can tread water, and he can look real hot running through the rain in a white t-shirt. and also he wants to fuck you all the time and take your mind off of things because he knows he can love you right if you let him!!!

[rickgression]

SEASON 2, EPISODE 5 - GET SCHWIFTY

I've been rewatching the show for my own reasons (fic research!) and S2EP5 (Get Schwifty) feels a bit different given what we learned in S5EP8 (Rickternal Friendshine of the Spotless Mort). Just some general thoughts about it, searching for evidence or overlaps.

"What's that? Who's that baby?" -- Morty

Morty seeing the baby version of himself being held by younger Rick. This implies Bird Person's Rick met (a version of) Morty as a baby, which may not be the Morty we know nor the one that Bird Person is speaking to.

This is further evidence that Rick returned to a family that was abandoned by Rick for twenty years, and that he potentially lost his original family. That was suggested by Memory Rick, who may have been younger -- but as a Memory, his knowledge would probably include a little more loose information, not an exact day or time.

Because for BP's Rick to have held Morty, he'd have to have at least had Beth and Beth would have had to have had Summer. So that sort of suggests that if Beth died, it would have been post-Morty.

"Morty, suppose you could retrieve your family from Earth but had to abandon Rick. I could give your loved ones shelter on Birdworld, even jobs, possibly as worm ranchers. How often do you think you might look up at the stars and wonder what might have been had you just put your faith in Rick?" -- Bird Person

Is this Bird Person speaking from experience? It wouldn't surprise me if he thought back on his choice to stay in his universe and fight rather than going to a world where the war with the Galactic Federation never even happened.

Unrelated to BP and Morty, there's also this conversation that I think relates to Rick and his family in general. Not directly, but as a thematic mirror to what Rick's been going through in the series.

"We've been waiting 16 years for our daughter to respect us, but the key is, it has to be our daughter, not this person she's become." -- Beth

I feel like this is a reflection of one of the show's core concepts; the fact that Rick can go between universes and everything and nothing matters, being attached to your actions and your true timeline contrasts with the infinite possibilities.

(I firmly believe that Rick has gotten to the point where his actions are his own and that he has to own his mistakes because that's what makes him who he is. If he started jumping between worlds on a whim because things got messy, he'd stop being himself and be some wish fulfilment detached from any true reality... And that's a weirdly dehumanizing thought, as we are our consequences as much as we are our actions.)

I do think this all builds up the case that the Rick we know isn't the 'original' Rick, of when we met him,. He's likely a Rick who lost his family sometime after Beth had Morty, then skirted around the universe self-soothing and coping. Then something triggered his return to his family, just in a different universe.

I think his universe goggles are part of that -- small side note, Rick asks Morty to wear a backpack when he's using the goggles, but doesn't make the others wear the backpack when they're browsing in S1E8 -- so I think the backpack helps the search by INCLUDING that person into his search, like adding additional terms in a Google search. Rick could have left that Morty in the Cronenberg universe but made sure to take him. So he could have saved himself and left Morty in that Cronenberg universe, but didn't.

(Also weird because he just... abandons Beth, Jerry and Summer without even trying to bring them along, so clue what the fuck to do with that.)

This harkens back to S1E8 where Rick gives them goggles to be able to see alternate versions of themselves -- he had to have MADE those goggles, likely to see where he'd want to move to originally, then as the backup in Rick Potion #9/the C-137 universe jump.

Rick: [walking to the cupboard] Hey, do we have any wafer cookies? [grabs cookie box. eats cookies and starts walking away] Mm! [stops and looks back at Jerry, Summer and Beth] Oh, boy. Looks like you guys have been checking out alternate lives and realizing you don't have it as good, huh? That's too bad. You know, me and Morty are having a blast, We just discovered a show called "Ball Fondlers". I mean, I don't want to rub it in or anything, but you guys clearly backed the wrong conceptual horse. [eats another cookie, walking offscreen]

Additional note, whenever we see wafer cookies are mentioned, we get Rick backstory. Or it feels that way at least. But the nod towards backing the 'wrong conceptual horse' gives me the impression that Rick has done that himself, plenty of times. There's no way he didn't check in on other versions of himself, or seek out other versions of his family just to keep tabs.

[thewatsonbeekeepers]

Chapter 13 – Out of My Dreams [TFP 3/3]

 We’re finally here. I can’t actually believe it. This meta series has exploded over lockdown but we’re finally at the close. The title of this chapter comes from a song in the musical Oklahoma! that you can find here, which has a fantastic dream ballet sequence – weirdly, during lockdown the fantastic film I’m Thinking of Ending Things was released which draws heavily on dreams in Oklahoma!, so maybe that’s my next project. Now, however, onto the end of TFP.

Before jumping into this meta, I really suggest reading this meta by @sagestreet (X) – it breaks down exactly why Redbeard represents homosexuality, and the probability that Sherlock’s repression draw’s on his father’s own repression, which is in turn a metaphor for ACD himself. This is really important in the light of the metatextuality I’ve been plugging through this series, and ties together the 1980s and 1890s themes really nicely – these are the periods of growth for Sherlock and canon!Holmes respectively and their homophobia has to be dealt with.

We left off with about 20 minutes to go, as Sherlock is sinking into the black depths of his mind – the deepest we’re ever going to get as well as the darkest in colour, chiming with the rest of the series. And then – flashes of Eurus, Redbeard and young Sherlock bleeding in through his memory. @sagestreet’s meta argues that Victor Trevor could genuinely have been Sherlock’s first love even at that age, and I don’t dispute the possibility, but I do have an alternate reading for slightly later in age, based on one image alone. Jump back in your mind to TAB, when Mycroft tells Sherlock he was there for him the last time – we get a shot of a teenager in a drug den which is never repeated again, but which has a sense of absolute past trauma attached to it.

I plump for this to be our key trauma personally, but currently I don’t think we have enough information to go on. However, regardless of which age you read Victor, the outcome is pretty much the same. So – Sherlock plunges into dark and we get memories flash before him, and it’s almost like he’s drowned in his EMP, his life has flashed before his eyes – but there is one thing stopping him from dying still. Eurus, trauma!Eurus, is ever a paradox, as repressed sexuality inherently is. On the one hand it’s constantly pushing down and on the other it’s constantly pushing up – and the sheer mania we see in Eurus is only really explicable as a set of mental contradictory impulses in this way. At the end of TFP, we spend so much time thinking that she is trying to kill Sherlock, but she’s trying to save herself and him. His gay trauma has completely regressed to a child’s fear here in the form of the little girl asking why she has been abandoned. The plane in the girl’s hands, going back to the height metaphor, is symbolic of the final struggle for life – as long as it’s in the air, Sherlock is in danger of death (see Chapter 2 ), but he is still under the impression that keeping going by crashing it, and crushing the queer side of him, is the way to go. We see him walk past images of him and Victor as children on the walls and ignoring them, after all.

It’s pretty important that these images are shown just as Sherlock connects to his heart for the first time, who is still drowning of course. The connection is closer and closer to being made! Under that water are the bones, which is symbolic of them being hidden in the recesses of his mind. We get the fantastically awful lines from John, if read superficially, that the bones are ‘small’ – others have been very good at pointing out John’s sudden inability to be a doctor as evidence for the EMP, and so it’s important for us to recognise here that John is not John, but heart!John.

There are other obvious indicators of the EMP here, most notably in the location. Even being out for a couple of hours, it is not possible that Eurus could have done this to Sherlock and John. Who aided her in getting John down the well, and how did they get out? How did they come to shore and not get stopped? How did nobody notice the construction of the giant cell in the garden of Musgrave Hall, and how does it spontaneously open after Sherlock pushes one wall? This switching from location to location – island, cell, home – is a shifting of perspective common in dreams. Moffat has used the idea of there being no time between location shifts before as a dream indicator in the Doctor Who episode Forest of the Dead, so it’s clearly something he has thought about. The pushing down of the wall is a huge symbolic moment – it couldn’t have just been a secret door! Instead, it ties in with the image of the breaking busts from TST as the idea of breaking down walls in his mind – and the drama of it suggests that we seem to have arrived at our final destination.

Everything unites rather wonderfully as trauma!Eurus threatens to drown heart!John, as though this is the culmination of ‘burning the heart’ – because ‘the heart’, both literally and metaphorically, is John! And so the destruction of Sherlock’s heart is happening inside his mind because of John’s suicidal suffering outside. We see the same kind of projection as is implied at the end of TST in the aquarium scene – this pulls in ideas of artificiality, which are important, but it’s also an important visual link. In the death of Mary, Sherlock tries to rerun his own assassination but imagines that John is devastated by the loss of Mary rather than Sherlock because he cannot cope with the queerness – it’s a way of processing John’s suicidal impulses without fully recognising them. This link of someone dying surrounded by water with the projection light shows that this is the revised (and correct) projection of what is happening to John in the real world – it is connected to Sherlock’s heart.

Sherlock, with the help of his heart, finally works out that Redbeard is not a dog. @sagestreet’s meta is useful in pointing out that Daddy being allergic to dogs doesn’t mean that Daddy didn’t want one, just that he couldn’t – and that’s a pretty good way of thinking about ACD’s inability to represent queerness as he might have wanted to, and so stamping on the character of Sherlock Holmes. The fact that he explicitly cracks one of the symbols in his mind is fantastic, because it calls back to the TLD scene suggesting that tea and coffee is some kind of code – there is a code in his brain, and he’s starting to break it down. Victor Trevor, whether child or teenager in reality, here is a child and is chosen I think to look like I imagine a child Martin Freeman would look like, but that’s bye the bye. What’s more important is that together, they played pirates. Given that Sherlock has been drowning in the repressed queerness of his brain, we’ve talked about piracy before as being symbolic of fielding that (see TST meta) and instead riding the wave, controlling it and refusing to drown. This hints at the love that Sherlock and Victor were able to enact, if only in youthful play, mastery of the high seas as opposed to adult Sherlock drowning in them. And then, gay trauma!Eurus traps Victor down a well – forces Sherlock to drown his love in that repression, and we know it’s love because it’s the same well that heart!John is in – Victor is equated with him.

“You couldn’t face it, so you told yourself a better story.” Ah yes – how convenient that it’s all tied up in ideas of fictionalising. I’m just going to leave that one there.

“Deep waters, Sherlock, in all your life, in all your dreams” – linking the Carl Powers pool, the TAB waterfall with TFP, and the light on his face reflecting TST – all of these links tying up 1890s repression (TAB) with 1980s repression (TGG, TST). And what is trauma!Eurus’s motive for destroying Sherlock’s love? ‘I had no one.’ The most striking thing about this is that before Sherlock meets John in the real world, and even during the beginning of their friendship, this is the recurring theme in how he chooses to portray himself. It’s not something that applies specifically to Eurus – it’s what we all associate with Sherlock, more than anything, pointing to this motive being about him. ‘Alone is what I have; alone protects me.’ Remember that? Trauma has forced that specific characterising of Sherlock onto him – his queer trauma necessitates solitude.

We already have a clue that Eurus is the girl on the plane by looking at the plane in her hands as a child, but it also suggests that even in her undeveloped form, the capacity to destroy him has always been there. It suggests a suicidal impulse in Sherlock that goes a long way back, specifically connected to his queerness – which ties in with the teenage addict in TAB as well as the cut scene from ASiP in which Greg implies that Sherlock has been suicidal.

Solving the code is a lovely moment – we have all of these hallowed graves of the past Holmes ancestry, which we can read as the hallowed adaptations over the years – and it’s nothing. It’s completely empty. We are disregarding the Holmeses of the past except to use them as tools to get to our trauma – which is what metatextual references have been doing throughout this series. However, there’s something else tricky that I want to throw up here.

I found this problem on an Australian site here, and haven’t seen it on tumblr although I may be wrong! The problem is the cipher. When cracked, it’s not what Sherlock says it is. It might just be a mistake, as the linked website theorises. The words missing are:

Lost Without Your Love Save

Although they appear in the song, their numbers aren’t in the cipher. It could fully be a mistake, or something cinematographical in not making the full cipher clear on the screen – it passes in a blur, after all. But I want to postulate something a tiny bit tenuous here. Sherlock’s subconscious has clearly been grappling with his repressed love for a long time, and it’s something he hasn’t been able to deal with, stemming right back to childhood. Up until now, he has never been able to crack the case, so to speak. But let’s jump back to the (slightly flippant) moment in TSoT when Sholto is dying, and John tells Sherlock that he’s a drama queen, there’s a time limit, the game is on, this is when he works best. And it’s true! We see Sherlock work under very specific time pressure a lot – look at the bomb scene in TEH and the bonfire scene, literally everything about TGG – the show is littered with these moments, and now they come to fruition. He could keep going living a half-life, in constant trauma, because it was not a matter of life and death, and it was too painful to try to confront it. But now in the real world, John is dying – as we can see by the heart down the well (note that brain!Mycroft is abandoned here, cementing the importance of the heart to this deduction sequence) and so he has no choice. And that is the missing bit of the code! ‘Lost without your love/Save’ is exactly what has propelled him to finally face his gay trauma – the fact that John Watson loves him, and will kill himself if Sherlock does not wake up. !!!

The girl on the plane is Eurus. This should not be altogether surprising for those of us who have seen HLV, because EMP theory seems to be repeating the same motifs again and again. HLV – it’s the Mind Palace. TAB? It’s also the Mind Palace. Now here. We also notice that Sherlock’s brain is reusing the plane from ASiB and the initial phone tactic used by Jim Moriarty – another link to John being in danger. But when Sherlock finally breaks in to his trauma, the most important thing is that it’s not threatening. She’s frightened. She has a constant urge towards death, represented by the plane, that ties into Sherlock’s suicidal urges. They will always be there, every time she closes her eyes – but Sherlock gets her to open them. I don’t have an answer to eye hell (yet), but my current theory is that this is the key – sightlessness is a link to suicidal urges through Eurus.

To jump past the police scene then, which we’ll get to in a minute, Sherlock’s reconciliation with Eurus rather than treating her as an enemy is perfect. Just like trauma!Eurus can never end her suicidal ideation, Sherlock can never put an end to the trauma inside him. Framing this as a battle was always wrong. He resurfaces by learning to live with her and to treat himself with kindness. Forgive me whilst I get soppy, but that’s beautiful. In that light, Eurus remaining in a kinder, friendlier version of Sherrinford is fantastic – she’s still inside him, not particularly desirable, and will never go away, but Sherlock has made peace with her and is friends with her. The violin was a symbol of desire in ASiB and again in TSoT, a way of Sherlock articulating what he could not say, and early in TFP that articulation was destroyed by Eurus’s discordance – here they have learned to play together. A difficult relationship – awkward, dangerous, unsure of boundaries – but a relationship nevertheless.

Rewinding to the police moment – despite the chains around John’s ankles, he miraculously climbs out of the well. More important in this scene, however, is that Sherlock gets Greg’s name right. This is, for me, one of the most significant sections of the entire show. Sherlock has never got Greg’s name right before – it’s a running joke on the show – and the reason Mofftiss have made such a joke of it is that it ties into ACD’s complete inability to remember names. Much like having Mrs. Turner live next door is a nod to canon inconsistency, as is the John/James parallel which, although a mistake in the initial work, they have exploited remarkably well, ACD famously never named Lestrade, only giving him the initial G. This is why Sherlock comes up with every possible G name for him. This is tied into Sherlock’s inability to move beyond the mistakes of canon – we see this weird inability to stick in modern Sherlock’s universe in other ways too, like the slightly old-fashioned nature of his costume (passed off as ‘timeless’, but clearly belonging to old as much as modern times), the deerstalker situation, thinking England has a king, not knowing the earth goes around the sun, not knowing Madonna, seeming to forget who Thatcher is – the list goes on, but Greg is the most constant one. Calling him Greg is a symbol that Sherlock has broken out of the confines of all of the past Sherlocks and has completely slipped into the modern version – which is exactly where he needs to be. Greg saying that Sherlock might be good as well as great – because the persona doesn’t matter anymore.

We should note in passing, in accordance with @sagestreet’s reading of Daddy Holmes as ACD, his disappointment and clear distress at brain!Mycroft hiding trauma!Eurus for so long because it was ‘for the best’. I’m not certain where Mummy Holmes stands in this, though I’m inclined to equate her with Daddy as ACD here, but I’m open to other suggestions for that.

And then we have the final sequence – who you really are. And I admit, I am thrown by Mary’s words – which is a terrible way to end the meta series! She says: ‘who you really are doesn’t matter’ – which is an awful thing to say, although coming from a still present comphet is inevitable. She also says that it’s all about the legend. But regardless of what comphet!Mary says, she’s not there anymore. The life that is being rebuilt is one of two men in Baker Street. Baker Street is the symbolic home of the heart within the EMP, so the rebuilding of that and the replacing of heart!John inside is lovely. Furthermore, if Daddy Holmes is ACD to Sherlock, the idea of Sherlock and John parenting Rosie feels like the start of a new, freer, queerer chapter in Sherlock Holmes history – authorship has changed, and it’s been handed over to a new generation. The final shot, however, hammers home for me the validity of the metatextual interpretation – Sherlock and John running out of Rathbone Place.

I mention the significance of this in an earlier chapter – Basil Rathbone is arguably the definitive Holmes interpretation who has defined the character for many years, and so could feasibly represent Holmes’s film/tv status as the most portrayed character of all time. They’re not running into Rathbone Place – they’re leaving it. They’re on their way up and out of all those previous adaptations, as Sherlock builds a new heart with no comphet.

He’s still got to get out to save real!John though – let’s not get too carried away – although we seem to have broken through the bulk of internalised queerphobia at the end of this series. I’ve previously explained on my blog why I don’t think there will ever be a series 5, and sad as that is, it is just life, so this behemoth of a meta series has actually just been an academic exercise more than anything else! Nevertheless, I hope if you’ve made it to the end that you’ve enjoyed it, and if you have any thoughts on tjlc that spring from this I would love to hear them!

[novantinuum]

Contact (Ch. 2/4)

Fandom: Steven Universe

Rating: T (No TW this chapter)

Words: 3.0K~

Summary: The first (and with any luck, only) time it happens, he’s almost 16.

Chapter Summary: Help arrives. Amethyst struggles to cope amidst the chaos.

So this fic is Steven and Amethyst centric, set during the 2 year time skip. It’s also kinda in conversation with An Indirect Kiss, and explores the idea of what could happen to a hybrid with a cracked gem. This chapter has no specific trigger warnings. It will be exactly 4 parts.

AO3 link and a link to the first chapter can be found in the reblogs! Support there or here (via reblogs) is very much appreciated! <3

____

Chapter 2: The Worry

A frantic phone call and a few minutes later, one of the decommissioned Roaming Eyes that’s been stationed on Earth carefully lowers through the gaps in the forest canopy. Amethyst lets out a sigh as it lands in the clearing with a solid thunk, her fiercely protective grip on Steven’s hand relaxing a little. Stars, she’s never been so relieved to see one of these clunkers in her whole life.

Those passing minutes are what really worry her, though. Transport will be quick now, but there’s still too many awful what-ifs hanging over her like an anvil to her gem. Like, what if they’ve already wasted too much of Steven’s precious time? What if he’s gonna be permanently damaged ‘coz of all this, since he’s a hybrid, so extraordinarily different from the rest of them? Or, what if there’s not enough water left in the fountain to heal him in the first place? Last she saw, its finite supply was pretty lacking. It’s why they’ve transitioned to healing the corrupted Gems at the Temple as of late, utilizing the Diamonds’ bottled essence rather than the scrap leftovers of the fountain water they anointed in person last year.

But Steven never bottled any of his. And now, with the source of his healing magic totally busted, there’s nothing they can do but visit the fountain and hope beyond all hopes there’s some of Rose’s tears still there.

Oh, if only they were closer to a warp. If they were, then Amethyst could’ve hefted him into her arms like she always used to when he was smaller, carried him there, then bam- they could be on location in an instant. No transport ship needed. Unfortunately though, the two of them hiked a good half hour before big ol’ nasty caught wind of their trail. Like it or not, the warp pad is simply too far away. And she’s not about to risk worsening his crack by jostling him as she runs on such a long trip.

So yeah, this particular Roaming Eye may be old, janky tech, but it’ll have to do.

The teen stiffens in her hold again, eyes growing bleary. “A… A-Amethyst?? I think I’m—“

The violent muscle contractions cut off his words as quickly as the slash of a whip. Knowing the drill by now she lightens her hold, allowing him just enough space to seize without hurting himself. She grimaces. It doesn’t even sound like he can catch a full breath as his body jerks and spasms against his control. The helpless, labored wheezing pouring out from him is almost physically painful to listen to, her own form glitching in sympathy for a split instant.

“Shhh,” she whispers, delicately dancing around the innate fear of the situation. “Don’t talk. Save your energy, remember? I-I... we’ve got ya’. Y’see there? They just landed!"

Blessedly, his seizures reach their end by the time the engines of the craft fully shut off. His whimpers slowly lessen, his eyelids fluttering shut in all his exhaustion.

Her fingers comb through his thick dark curls. “We’ll fix ya’ right up, buddy…”

She’s mopping the sweat off his forehead as the door slides ajar, and Pearl dashes out of the ship with Greg practically sticking to her heels. Amethyst braces herself for the inevitable chastising.

“What on Earth were you thinking,” the Pearl in her subconscious squawks, “letting him get hurt like this?!”

But the reprimanding she instinctively expects never comes.

Instead, the ivory Gem sprints to her side alongside the boy’s father, and— dropping to her knees— envelops her in what’s perhaps the tightest hug she’s ever received from her.

“Amethyst!” she cries, lithe fingers gripping at her long lavender hair. “Oh, thank goodness you’re okay! What happened?”

Clasped tight in her embrace, she allows herself a moment to catch her breath as the world ticks onwards around her. It’s but a small kindness. Admittedly, she’s still too shell-shocked about all of this to give a swift response, too distracted by the overwhelming reality of Greg’s anguished expression as he takes in the sight of his son lying prone before him, his paleness stark against the soft blue of his t-shirt.

“Steven!”

It’s hard to watch. Humans get so weirdly sensitive on the topic of injury— but then, she figures that’s because humans are so squishy and fragile, and always fixated on how short their lifespans are and how easily they can be cut short. Even if Steven’s special, even if in the end his crack will be fixed and he’ll likely be fine, (of course he’ll be fine, he has to be fine!), she supposes it’s only natural for Greg to worry. When the man collapses to his knees in front of him, he grabs Steven’s hand and babbles reassurances into his ear, words spoken too light for either Gem to pick up. Steven’s eyelids subtly twitch upon this appeal to his humanity.

Her glance flicks towards the Roaming Eye as Pearl waits for her to say something, anything.

“I…” she begins with marked hesitation. “I’ll explain everything once we’re on the ship. Gotta help Steven first, yeah?”

She nods, pulling away to stand. “Y-yes, of course. You’re right.”

Kneeling beside her, Greg’s voice quivers, ever so slightly. “You’re gonna be fine, buddy,” he whispers to the boy, his hand squeeze only barely reciprocated. “You’re gonna be just fine.”

Pearl interrupts his frantic reassurances with a nudge to his shoulder.

“We need to carry him,” she says, voice strained. It’s clear she’s only barely choking back her panic. “One mustn’t waste any time when it comes to cracked gems, after all!” Without skipping a beat, she leads the human’s quivering hands to the teen’s ankles. “Here, you can lift him by the legs like so, Amethyst, his torso, and then I’ll be at front supporting his neck and shoulders—“

Steven gives a soft whine, breath fast and shallow.

Amethyst swallows, drinking in the nuances of the scene. Steven’s jaw is clenched. Clearly, he’s holding back on expressing how much pain he’s in, bottling it up for their sake. Meanwhile, Greg— anxious single father that he is— is about one second away from breaking down entirely. She‘s almost scared what his reaction will be if Steven experiences another one of his seizing fits in his presence. And Pearl? Much as she loves her, uptight and fraying at the ends is most definitely not the sort of leader they need right now. Truth be told she’s not confident she is either, but hey, hard times call for unexpected solutions.

Gently, she stands to her feet and guides her away from Steven’s body. “Hey, Greg-o and I got this, P. No worries. Just have the ship ready for us.”

“I— are you sure?”

“Yeah, we can carry him no problem, right Greg?”

She turns to match eyes with him, every fragment of her being silently pleading for his agreement.

“Uh, I— sure,” he says, although he doesn’t sound so confident. “I think so. Let me just...” He huffs as he pushes himself off his knees, and shifts closer to his son’s head. “I’ll hold him up front, okay? I’m taller, an’ I’ve carried him before, an’—“

Amethyst’s tone softens. “Hey.” Straining to hold herself together for his sake, amidst all her doubts and fears, she moves to pat his forearm. Attempts to ground him. “Hey, you’re good. We can do this.”

She closes her eyes and inhales deeply to calm down her own unsteady form. No panic. Don’t let them see your panic. You’ve gotta be the mature one here. It’s gonna work out, Steven will be fine. You’ll all be fine.

Breathe. Just breathe.

“Pearl, start the ship for us,” she says once she’s balanced herself. Not a question, not a request, no hesitation in her tone. Not a confused, defective Quartz soldier waiting for orders, nor a naïve Gem clinging on the heels of the first living souls she ever saw, nor a loyal teammate constantly deferring to another’s judgement out of insecurity, out of the flawed belief that no one would ever take an overcooked runt like her seriously. No, no. Not today. Instead, as she rises above the shadowed, fettered memories of her past, Amethyst takes hold of the reigns of leadership as easily as grasping her whip.

Pearl offers a weak smile as she nods in confirmation, and starts to scuttle back towards the Roaming Eye’s door. “Yes, of course!”

Good, she thinks. One issue taken care of. Now, as for Steven and Greg...

The two shift in tandem around the cracked boy as they prepare to lift him. In his current state, it’s imperative that they’re careful. She clasps her hands around his ankles, feeling a twisting close to her gem as she watches him instinctively flinch at her touch.

“Shh-shh, it’s okay,” Greg whispers. “We gotcha.”

“Dad,” he croaks, the first words he’s had the strength to speak in a good while.  “Duhh- D-Dad, I... Ahm- I’m suh... sss-so sorry—“

Her hard-light form nearly spikes cold with fear as he continues to mindlessly babble. Shards, now his words are becoming slurred! He’s deteriorating. They gotta make this quick.

“Steven, we’re gonna pick you up on three, capiche?” She locks eyes with his father, her friend, seeking confirmation. “Ready?”

“One,” Greg mutters, solidifying his hold under his armpits.  

“Two...”

“Three!” they say at once, hefting the teen’s full weight up off the forest floor with a grunt.

He produces a sharp gasp in response. The sound makes her cringe. She knows they can’t avoid jostling him altogether if they want to transport him to the fountain, but... geeze, she really hopes they’re not hurting him any more than he already is. And she hopes he doesn’t seize up on them again while he’s off the ground. That could turn out disastrously.

Working together, they carry him across the grassy clearing and up the shallow incline of the ship’s ramp. Slow and steady, as careful as they can be... Greg’s breathing hard by the time they reach the entrance, but his grip holds strong. Meanwhile, Pearl sits at the cockpit, punching in coordinates for Rose’s fountain. Besides her, the ship is empty.

“No Garnet?” Amethyst asks as she leads them inside, finally seeing fit to bring up the obvious question.

She shakes her head in fervent stress. “She’s still away on her mission on the Niessea Belt worlds. I tried contacting her, but—“

Steven gives a painful, keening cry, his entire body shooting rigid in their hold. Her eyes snap open wide.

Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, not now, not now—

“Greg- Greg, hold him!” she shouts, slipping into hysterics as he begins to seize again, limbs jerking and breath coming in quick shallow gasps. She can feel the muscles of his legs spasm in staccato bursts under her hands. “Hold him, don’t drop him, you—“

Pearl jumps up from her seat upon hearing all the commotion. “What’s wrong with him??”

“I’m trying, I’m—!”

“Set him down, set him down! Quickly! We gotta get him back on the floor where it’s safe, I can’t let him get hurt again, I can’t—“

“Sh-shta...” Steven slurs, face contorting as he rides this episode out. “Puh... please, I—“

“I’m starting the ship!” the ivory Gem says, punching the last few buttons needed to close the door and launch them on their way.

The Roaming Eye shakes ever so gently as it lifts up out of the dense forest. Amethyst stumbles, legs slightly wobbling as she coordinates with Greg to deposit Steven safely on the cool metallic floor, his head resting in his father’s lap. His spasms are more intermittent now. Hopefully this means this latest round of seizing has reached its end.

For now, she can’t help but fret, swallowing with a heavy gulp as she watches Greg comb back his sweat slicked curls. Until they can fix that crack in his gem, he’s gonna get worse and worse. She knows this from experience. Simply put, being cracked long-term is a nightmare. You can’t think straight, you can’t speak straight, you lose all control of your physical form... She’d willingly poof a thousand times if it meant she could avoid janking up her gem like that again.

Which is why it absolutely shatters her to have to watch Steven suffer through this too.

She watches silently as the boy lets his eyes slide shut for now, held safe in his father’s embrace. His rest isn’t exactly restful— as evident from how his brow and nose keep scrunching inwards as he seethes from the sensation of it all— but anything is better than nothing in this state.

“So you- you said he’s cracked?” Greg asks, looking up at her with dampened eyes. His hands are shaking now. The man is clearly a hair’s breadth away from breaking down in tears. It’s genuinely a credit to his strength as a father that he’s holding it together at all.

Gently, Amethyst lifts the hem of his shirt to reveal his gemstone. The deep gouge marring the diamond at his navel says everything her words cannot. The others’ reactions are immediate, their eyes blowing wide with fear. Even Pearl, even someone who knows the power of Rose’s healing magic firsthand. Horror clutching with a vice-like grip upon her gem, she notes that the crack has expanded since she last looked.

“We were just tracking down that corrupted Gem that tripped our detectors this morning,” she explains. “But it ambushed us! I... geeze, I thought we could like, poof it no problem, but...”

“It got the jump on him instead,” Pearl says in a blunt, grim manner. She balls up her hand at her chin, expression haunted by the very thought. “Stars, I can’t even imagine how badly this hurts! It must have taken quite the hit to crack a diamond like this.”

His father rubs at the boy’s shoulder, wincing at the sight of his baseline quivering, his jaw clenched like a knife to the grindstone and his eyes twisted shut. “Is there anything we can do right now to lessen the pain for him?”

Hmm. She curls her lip, musing on this. Good ol’ Pierogi probably has human pain killers stashed away somewhere in that pearl of hers. But there’s no guarantee that such a remedy would do a single thing to help, given the nature of his injury. It’s the Gem half of him that’s hurt, not the squishy organic half. So whatever they do it’s gotta be a Gem remedy, and the only Gem remedy she can think of for an injured Gem is...

“Well,” Pearl begins cautiously, her gaze drifting between the three of them, “when Gems became cracked during the rebellion, we used to poof them until Rose could return to use her healing magic, so they wouldn’t have to deal with the trauma of glitching out so badly. But of course, Steven’s different! He’s half human. We can’t expect it’ll work in the same way!”

Although...

“Can we poof him?” she shrugs, playing devil’s advocate for a moment.

The whites of Greg’s eyes expand as he gawks at her. “W-what are you suggesting, exactly?”

“I mean, he can fuse, right?”

“Well, yes—“

“An’ same as poofing,” she cuts back in, holding up a finger for emphasis, “fusion is a sorta... shifting of our hard light forms. His organic half goes somewhere during all that, yeah? If he poofed, maybe it’d be the same.”

The man’s sunburnt face drains just about as pale as Pearl’s as he clutches onto his son all the tighter. “Uh, I don’t think now’s the right time to test a hypothesis like that. Or ever.”

“Greg’s right,” Pearl says. “There’s simply too much we can’t say with certainty about his hybrid nature.” Tears building in her eyes, she brushes her slender fingers against his cheek. “But he’s a fighter, our Steven. He’ll carry through.”

Below her, Steven lets out a soft whimper. Realization hits her with the force of a quartz’s strike that she genuinely has no way of knowing for sure how much or how little he’s aware of his surroundings right now. Her face flushes dark with shame. Held taut at her sides, she clenches her fists tight, mentally pulling away from the conversation in which clearly her stupid half-baked ideas are unwelcome and instead fixating on the quickened thrum of the hard light running in channels through every square inch of her form. A pang of anger swells up within her, all putrid and stale. What on Earth was she thinking?? He’s in agony, he’s broken, and yet she has the gall to suggest such a moronic, risky idea anyways? When his very survival hangs in the balance? Geeze. What the hell.

She’s disgusting.

She hastily stalks away from the trio to catch some fresh air, slouching against one of the windows and pressing her cheek to the glass. A small sliver of her can’t help but admire the view through the Roaming Eye’s wide windows. The ship running on autopilot, they’ve long since lifted through the clouds and into the stratosphere. It’s all white and grey swirls as far as the eye can see. The reds and pinks of sunset edging at the visible horizon greet them with warmth.

With everything else plaguing her it’s a hollow appreciation, though. No matter what thoughts she tries to distract herself with, the memory of that ill-fated fight sinks its claws into her mind more and more by the minute. Every tangible stimulus— the sights, the smells, the sounds, the pains— it all plays on repeat. It’s insufferable, obsessive. Like some self-despairing sapphire she traces each and every decision that led her here, bolds and underlines every mistake.

And no matter how many times she tries with desperation to make up for it, tries to save him, no matter how many loops through recent past she takes, it all brings her to one single, overwhelming conclusion:

All of this... all of this needless suffering...

It should’ve been her.

[meteor752]

The insecurity of Tilda of Mirkwood

When I write about Tilda, I mostly write a pretty unstable but still happy person who just generally craves more in life, sort of like a Disney character.

(Honestly, short side note, every time I hear either How far I’ll go or Go the Distance I can’t help but imagine her just standing on the worst place possible singing the song, like a cliff or the top of a tree, before just jumping down and nearly breaking her neck)

But Tilda has a bit more to her than that, that I didn’t really get to touch in her deep dive, mostly because I couldn’t figure out how to put it in there.

When it comes to the insecurities of Matilda Lucia Dragondaughter, it’s mostly centered around the comparison to others around her, and how she sees herself.

There wasn’t much of it when she was a child, just like any other kid she was pretty carefree and didn’t really mind that sometimes people would talk weirdly about her and her antics.

It begun around the time her da married the elven king and she moved from Dale to Mirkwood, and when Legolas officially became her brother.

Now Legolas is messy and wild, sure, but he’s still a scholar, soldier, athlete, and generally very good looking for an elf, who’s also a prince and next in line for the throne.

Sigrid is a musician, a writer, a scholar, an axe wielder, a future queen, a black smith, and the perfect daughter.

Bain is a sweetheart, an excellent peace keeper, a good soldier despite his disability, the captain of the royal guard and the dream son in law.

Tilda is an emotionally unstable screwup that can’t sit still for one second, is petty as hell, had no sense of self care, has no goal in life, and is just a general nightmare to be around.

That’s at least how she sees herself.

Now while reading this you may think ‘Meteor this sounds more like self loathing than Insecurity, what are you talking about’.

Well, we’re only getting started, because Tilda lives a long life with a lot of shit in it.

When Tilda joined the elven army, she noticed how the trainer was harsher on her than on literally anyone else.

At first she thought it was because she was human and not an elf, until she figured out that they were trying to make her quit, which confused her of why.

That was until her training was done, but unlike basically every other recruit she was only called onto small scouting missions that were generally safe and lame, and she was like oh my family set this up okay.

So she quit immediately, and then the dark times begun.

Tilda was straight up miserable after leaving the army, and would mostly sit in her room and sulk for two reasons.

One, to join the army was her one chance of living up to the standards her siblings had put, by becoming a great soldier and maybe even captain one day, but she had never been given the chance.

Two, her family had tried to make her quit, and then made sure she was only put on the safest and meekest missions there was, which only proved that they didn’t trust or believe in her.

Tilda had always wanted her time in the spotlight, her big chance, her moment to truly shine so to speak. She’d always been in the shadow of her siblings, and the only way to get out of it was to create a scene which made her family angry at her.

See it as sort of a Luna from mlp mixed with Cassandra from Tangled.

And despite the self loathing, she did know that it was only in her head and that her family and friends probably didn’t think that way of her.

But when they refused to let her be a proper soldier, she then they refused to let her go anywhere without a consort, when they refused to let her show what she was capable of, it just proved that what she thought of herself was how they thought of her too.

A screwup.

A mistake.

A spare.

So yeah, she became really depressed, and refused to talk to anyone except Aloe.

She spent a lot of time in Rivendell just to be away from her family, moping in the room she was given and barely ever coming out.

She started to put burn marks on her arms and hands, she started to jump from a bit too high heights, she started to “accidentally” cut herself sometimes.

She just wanted to feel something that wasn’t misery.

Her family tried to cheer her up, but they genuinely didn’t know what was happening since she wasn’t exactly the person to be open about her insecurities and issues, so all their efforts were in vain.

It was Aragorn, out of all people, who got her out of her hole of despair.

Legolas had sent a message to him after a few years of Tilda’s bad habits of barely eating, barely sleeping, and barely talking to anyone else.

Aragorn basically nearly kicked the door in, which nearly scared Tilda to death, before hugging her firmly and demanding that she will follow him on a hunt.

And because of the fact that Tilda respects Aragorn quite a bit, she just nods shortly.

To her surprise, Aragorn doesn’t try to make her talk of what’s going on like literally anyone else, but simply talks about other stuff that is going on in both of their lives.

Tilda ends up having a bit of a wake up call, realizing that she’d been moping for the last eight years, and just decided to get off her ass and do something with her life.

Legolas was quite surprised when Tilda just turned up one day in Mirkwood like if nothing had happened demanding that he’d go kill some spiders with her.

Despite the fact that she’d stopped sulking, she still didn’t make an attempt to better her well being and kept her negative thoughts to herself.

She simply didn’t want to be seen as weak and fragile, like so many thought of her because of her human biology and her constant inability to stay still for one second.

If her family would find out that she also thought of herself as weird and useless, then they would just pity her.

And Tilda honestly thought she was strong enough to handle it.

She was certainly not.

Every time Legolas had to leave for something, every time there was some diplomatic journey ahead, every time the elves were called into battle, she was left behind. She’d always wanted her moment of glory as I’ve previously mentioned, but how could that be given if she never even got the chance?

She just felt like she was in the way for everyone.

After she left her family behind, (Or more exactly literally escaped out the window), she felt free and happy for basically the first time in her life. It was just her and Aloe against the world, with no expectations, no one to feel like she let down, no judgment, just her and her best friend.

And it remained like that for a while, as she didn’t meet many people she didn’t need to compare herself to others.

It was first when she received the invitation to the wedding of Aragorn and Legolas that she was put back on earth again and reality hit her.

Especially when both Sigrid and Bain tried to convince her to come back to society, just so she wouldn’t hurt herself, because which angered her greatly.

She left the wedding early, angry tears in her eyes without turning back.

Which was the reason she took on a dragon and became a dragonslayer. To prove that she wasn’t a doll that would topple over any minute. To prove that she was just as capable and great as her siblings. To prove that she wasn’t just the younger sibling.

And if you’ve read the deep dive, you know how that turned out.

***

I love Tilda, she’s literallyy favorite Lotr character, which is why I write so much about her. But sometimes I just like to make characters suffer through trauma and insecurities.

This is heavily inspired by me listening to Waiting In The Wings and The Moon Rises for like 24/7 for the last few days, which are both awesome songs go listen to it.

Tilda’s way of coping with how she felt is really bad, (like seriously kids talk to someone take your meds) but from what I’ve written about her I knew she wouldn’t be the one to confront her more weak looking emotions. She was raised by elves, she’s prideful by nature.

The way Tilda feels is not that she’s not worthy of what she has, but more that she deserves more than what she has, which has to do again with the youngest sibling thing.

But honestly with the right power and proper snap, she probably could be like an mlp villain.

AU Masterpost

[lost-eternity]

Match Up Requests: CLOSED.

Please read the rules before requesting

Match up for: @melancholicbutbeautiful

Okie dokie! I match you with....

The 9th doctor!

I know. This isn't everyone's favourite Doctor. He isnt as cute as the 10th or as puppy-man incarnate as the 11th but hear me out. I think he needs you.

Let's start simple, shall we?

He absolutely adores your height.

Standing at an impressive 182cm (6 feet), the 9th would be all over you. He's got a good 18 cm on you. Fully expect him to be "accidentally" leaning on your head and cracking short jokes at the most inappropriate times.

You're running from Daleks (it's an occupational hazard)? He'd say something along the lines of "hahah! I'm suprised they can even see you down there!" Cue and unamused glare from you. It's like.... we're trying not to die here and NOW you are making a short joke? Seriously?

~

You both probably meet at a museum. One of those quirky wax museums. Life-like historical figures expertly sculpted in wax, their empty eyes somehow full with false life. It combines both your passion for history and art, enabling you to walk up close to these esteemed figures who shaped our society.

But you can't focus on the wax creations, nor the historical excerpts that come with them. Instead, you keep getting this unnerving feeling like your being watched. When you turn around, you catch this one guy staring at you. So you look back at him like ???. And instead of quickly looking away like a NORMAL person would he just continues to stare.

So now things are awkward and your kinda tempted to reach for your keys. You know. Just in case.

And that is when you feel someone grabbing you from behind. Weirdly cold hands wrap around your arm, constricting you in a white-knuckle grip. Spikes of numbness shoot up your arm as the blood circulation is cut off to your hand.

You whirl around to face your attacker and are like ???. Why the HELL is Bob Ross attacking you? Like. What?

That was when the fire alarm began to go off.

Before you could react much, someone full on BEHEADED Bob Ross. He immediately releases you and promptly walks himself into a wall. The now headless wax Bob Ross backs up, then moves forward again. Then hits the wall. Rinse and repeat.

The guy who was staring at you earlier, now clutching the ironically red fire axe. Guess you now know who pulled the alarm.

The expression on this guy is borderline mianical as he Cheshire grinned at you. "Hi! What's your name?"

"Uh... y/n..."

"Nice to meet you, y/n, I am the Doctor. Now. Run!"

He grabs your hand and you charge for the exit, herding everyone else out of the museum as more and more wax figures come to life.

Springing into animation, they kinda slowly amble after you. It's not exactly efficient but it is pretty damn threatening.

This moment lead you into a series of events that eventually concluded in you both accidentally almost blowing up Big Ben to stop and alien hive mind from taking over Earth.... whoops. Not that it mattered to much. Because despite the terror and confusion that seemed to now be perpetually stricken in your mind, you had the time of your life.

But despite your pestering and begging, the Doctor adamantly refused to allow you to tag along on his next adventure. He wouldn't explain why. Instead he just dropped you off at your house, swearing to wipe your memory if you spoke a word of this to anyone.

Of course, you called him out on it, asking him if you could meet the "Men in Black" later.

He wasnt amused by your jab, saying that you reminded him of someone who we couldn't afford to lose again... and then promptly vanished after that

At first you thought you would never see him again. That he was just a phantom that emerged in your life, a chance crossing that never should have been. The moment your life was touched by something bigger... greater than the mundane reality you have been so long trapped it.

It was intoxicating. Addicting.

But as fate would have it, you did meet again. Except this time you weren't saving him from a domineering alien race, or robotic tin cans that sewed a path of destruction. No. You were saving him from himself.

~

Cut off from his own kind, the 9th Doctor was a damaged man, disparagingly grieving over the intense suffering he had witnessed; the destruction he had inflicted on his people as the result of his own actions.

He tore himself up, berated himself. Told himself that he did not deserve to be alive. After all, he was a monster in human skin. Because only a monster could cause the pain he had

The doctor struggled with the idea of isolation, he was the last of the Time Lords, having left the conflict with the excruciating knowledge of his hand in its apparent grisly conclusion and he would react strongly if pushed on the matter.

And for whatever reason, he came to you. You found him delirious and beaten down on your porch step, rambling, hardly making sense of himself and... glowing a little? Wtf?

You took him in, and only did not call for emergency care at his persistence and mumbled pleading. After doing the rather peculiar things he instructed and gave him a few questionable concoctions, the glowing stopped and he checked out.

You were up all night worrying yourself sick over this man. This stranger that you hardly even knew. I guess it is just the kind of person you are.

You were there when he awoke in the morning, calling out for you. At least you think it was you because he never said your name. Instead called for a "Rose". You weren't sure if this "rose" was a person or another wacky demand on his part.

You never did find out exactly what happened to him. From what he would say, he had an encounter with an alien species that really kicked his ass. Although you thought there was something more to it than that. Some more emotional undertones and reconciliation. You also did not understand why he came to you. You hardly knew each other. There was definitely something he was not telling you.

Whenever you asked who Rose was, he merely dismissed you or cracked a joke about your height. If you continued to press the matter, he would quickly get very snappy and drop his energized, maniacal façade.

It was after this moment that the Doctor agreed to allow you on the TARDIS with him. And you officially became his traveling companion. However. It was never all sunshine and rainbows. Although it was a rare occurrence, the Doctor would occasionally slip up and call you "Rose" again. He would always act like nothing happened and deny it if you brought it up. It was clear that this Rose person had a major impact on his life so... what happened to her?

~

So. I think you would be wonderful with the 9th Doctor because of your empathy and compassion. You unconditional understanding and empathic nature would definitely be unnerving for the Doctor at first. He feels like he does not deserve a person like you in his life. You are too good and pure. He fears that he will hurt you. So he pushes you away like he always does.

And this is why he needs you. I beleive that you would not stop pursuing him. Healing him. Your compassion and life would be what slowly seals up the wounds of his past and his own self-inflicted hatred.

He will finally be able to see his own worth because of you. And that was the primary reason I had for matching the 9th doctor with you. He is the one who needs someone like you the most.

Also. While you are genuinely empathic and loving, you will not allow yourself to be walked over. As you two grow closer, the 9th doctor will greatly appreciate your quips and sarcasm as it mirrors his own. You wont always be lost and confused like most of his companions end up being. Instead, you manage to keep pace with him. It's refreshing for him, honestly. And he will enjoy the playful banter exchanged between the two of you.

Also your dreams to travel align perfectly with the Doctor's noncommittal wanderlust shared by every single one of his incarnates. Your appreciation for other cultures and ways of life is something he can deeply relate to and will have a blast showing you more subtle cultures that may have otherwise bored his previous traveling companions.

~

Actually, as you two travel the universe together, you slowly grow closer and closer. The doctor begins to develop a kind of dependency on you. Because he only ever feels worthy of this love when he is around you.

Isolation really messes with his psyche. He can't handle being alone with his own thoughts. They constantly remind him of the pain he had caused, jeering and taunting him. They tell him that he will just run away from you. Like he always does.

He probably will try.

Don't think he will get far.

As he opens up to you, he finally tells you about Rose. Who she was. What she meant to him (I'm making this an AU where Rose died somewhere along the way).

And the realization is painful.

You dont just REMIND him of Rose. He is PRETENDING that you are Rose. Because for him that is much easier than coming to terms with her death.

I mean. Can you blame him? You look so much like her. Even down to your height.

All of those height jokes were made because of the way he used to tease Rose.

Your hair, your eyes, even your personality is a painful reminder of her. Which is why is tried to abandon you the first time. It is also why he showed up at your house when he got hurt.

He was running on empty and just instinctually went to the place he knew he would be the safest. At your house. With the person he sees as Rose Tyler.

Honestly it's not psychologically healthy.

So now you have a choice.

Do you want to remain with the guy who is clearly still hung up over his ex? Going so far as to convince himself that you ARE Rose? Or do you think you can work with him. Help him. Heal him and allow him to reconcile with not only her death, but the deaths of his own kind.

I guess that decision is up to you...

Aaand, I am done! Whew. Sorry that one ended on such a downer. Haha. But most of the Doctors are psychologically traumatized and their coping mechanisms are super unhealthy. I would feel like I am betraying his character if I did not find some way to portray that. Anyways. I hope you enjoyed 😁. I had fun writing it.

[countessrivers]

do you have any headcanons for Bruce and his (many) father figures? would love to hear them if you do!!!

Canon era:

The first one, and it’s not so much a head canon as it is just canon but some people are idiots who clearly didn’t watch the show, after his parents’ death, Bruce got 2 new dads who co-parented him over the next 6-7 years. Their names are Alfred Pennyworth and Jim Gordon and they explain so much about who and what Bruce Wayne turns out to be.

They both parent/treat Bruce quite differently. Alfred very much treats Bruce like an adult. He lets Bruce take charge of his own life and make significant decisions about his health and well-being on his own (decisions that arguably 12 year olds, especially grieving 12 year olds maybe shouldn’t be making but w/e). He encourages Bruce to take responsibility for his choices, and for the consequences of his crime-fighting, and often focuses on the practicalities and limitations of what they’re doing, and in a wider sense, how Gotham and the world works. Things like trying to keep Bruce focused on preparing for Ra’s, rather than helping the city, warning him against getting other people involved and that it will be on Bruce if they’re hurt helping him, scepticism that anything good can get done within the law with all the corruption in Gotham, telling Bruce to buck up and move on after Selina lies to him/hurts him, letting Bruce reject therapy and grief counselling, etc. I think this stems at least in part from Alfred’s role as the family butler for the first 12 years of Bruce’s life. Bruce is both his ward and employer, there is a distance and a formality there, and this idea that Bruce is in charge of his own destiny as it were, and should be treated as such, with all the responsibility that goes along with that.

Jim, for all that he sees Bruce as a kind of moral true north, someone that he looks to for guidance and a purpose, views Bruce very much as a child, and treats him as such. And it’s probably because Bruce is a child, but maybe also, as the years go on too, because he’ll never get the image of 12 year old Bruce, in that alley, out of his head. Jim sees Bruce as someone who should be protected from the worst of the world. He’ll be honest with Bruce, but he’ll also try and shield him from as much as he can, like when he hesitates over him not being long for this world because Oswald is alive and Falcone/Zsasz are after him. Bruce will often ask or demand the truth, and while Jim often caves, he does what he can to protect Bruce from the harsher parts of reality. He clashes with Alfred quite regularly over this - over Bruce being exposed to the idea of killing Matches, over Alfred letting Bruce run around and put himself in danger (Jim actually tells Alfred that he’s the adult, and so he is allowed to search his son’s room and go through his stuff and read his diary if it keeps him from getting into trouble), things like that. He’ll often try to alleviate any guilt Bruce might be feeling, particularly when it involves someone getting hurt helping them, insisting that it wasn’t Bruce’s fault. I also see Jim as encouraging Bruce’s more idealistic side - he often tells him not to give up hope when they hit a wall and things look bleak, and their talks often involve the idea of the good that can be done, and how Gotham and its people can be helped, because I think that’s what drives Jim too - ideals, and a devotion to helping people, rather than practicalities. And these “parenting styles” kind of balance each other out, or at least Bruce picks up bits and pieces, and they noticeably shape him, but I actually find it hilarious that the show has multiple scenes, across multiple seasons, of Jim and Alfred arguing over how best to parent Bruce. 

Jim had a troubled youth after the accident/losing his father, and coped with it even worse than Bruce does, which is why he gets it. He looks at Bruce’s coping mechanisms, the way he’s hurting himself, his breakdowns, etc, and he gets it. He wants Bruce to stop, wants him to get help, to do better than he did, but he gets it. He knows how it feels. He did all of that, and more, and he knows you can’t just flick a switch and be better. He knows that the guilt and the anger and the pain eats away at you. He also knows that there’s a light at the end, and that’s what he tries to give Bruce from the start. Hope, and understanding that Bruce is struggling, desperate to feel or not feel, and it may be unhealthy, but Jim at least understands why.

Harvey’s not entirely sure when he started looking at Bruce as more than just that random kid whose parents died and that Jim was weirdly fond of, but at some point he did. The kid’s sweet, if a bit odd, freakishly smart, and all the worst best parts of Jim. He’s a good kid, and Harvey sometimes worries about what Gotham’s going to do to him. He worries about that goodness being ground out of Bruce, the way Harvey’s seen it ground out of so many people.

Lucius loved Thomas, and that’s not the only reason why he helps Bruce (Lucius himself is a good man, who wants to make the city better) but it’s part of it. He wants to keep Thomas’ boy safe, wants to help him grow up into a strong, beautiful, good man. Sometimes he looks as Bruce and he’ll see Thomas, sometimes he’ll see Martha, but he knows that both of them would be so proud of who Bruce becomes.

Jim and Bruce try as much as they can to get together for lunch or dinner or something, just to catch up (Jim eventually made it over to the manor for dinner at some point in S4). Alfred and Harvey meet up for drinks on the regular.

During No Man’s Land, Alfred, Harvey and Lucius took turns dragging both Jim and Bruce away from work to get them to eat and/or sleep. They’d work themselves into the ground if they could. They’d also both insist on the other getting some rest, even as they stubbornly tried to carry on themselves.

Idk who gave Bruce the sex talk, but I know that whoever it was, it would have been terrible and awkward (was it Jim and did he warn Bruce about the perils of falling for beautiful people who were also crazy and/or evil and at least a little homicidal? Not that Bruce, or Jim for that matter would ever take the advice).

When Jim tells Bruce off for risking his life or putting himself needlessly in harms way, Bruce has to try really hard not to shout “I LEARNED IT FROM WATCHING YOU DAD!”

The show kind of dropped the ball on exploring this, but there’s no way Bruce  didn’t pick up at least a few detective skills from Jim.

Bruce and his various father figures are just basically that one cartoon where two people are stretching and bending over each other to put themselves in front of a gun.

They all miss Bruce terribly when he leaves.

Bruce would have liked the moustache.

Future (Batfam) headcanons:

Babs feels like she knows Bruce long before she meets him because she’s spent the first 9 years of her life hearing Jim talk about him.

Bruce comes over to the Gordon-Thompkins for dinner not long after the finale, meets Babs properly for the first time, and immediately falls in love. Barbara Lee Gordon has Uncle Bruce wrapped around her finger (she has them all wrapped around her finger).

Jim knows Bruce is Batman, that’s established in the finale, but for a while they dance around the subject, not saying anything outright. He talks about it a bit more openly with Harvey, Lucius too maybe, but both him and Bruce avoid talking about it directly. He does thank him though, to his face, for saving Babs.

That night at the circus, Bruce tells Dick the same thing that Jim told him. He sits down next to him, tells him his name, tells him he understands, and tells him that one day, there will be light.

I can’t decide who ultimately puts the symbol on the floodlight, but Jim’s the one that starts using it to call Batman.

Bruce has stuck tracking devices in all of them, long before he starts doing it to his kids. Jim in particular is prone to kidnapping, and it’s honestly such a time saver.

Jim and Bruce both start not so secretly planning the wedding once it becomes clear that Dick and Babs like-like each other. They’re thrilled about it (if the wedding does happen, then Harvey’s officiating).

The cops, especially those that work in whatever building the Commissioner’s office is in, know the various Wayne kids about as well as they know Babs, because they’re in and out and always hanging around. Particularly Cass, who splits her time mainly between Bruce, and Babs and Jim.

There are regular dinners over at the Manor. The Waynes and the Gordons, usually, but often enough Harvey or Lucius will be there too. For any big holiday they celebrate early, given that they’ll all need to be ready and on hand because of course the Rogues are going to try and ruin Christmas by poisoning the water supply or something else over the top and ridiculous. 

So much of what Batman is stems from that original conversation with Jim. Bruce never forgets, never stops thinking about those words. The trauma of his parents’ death shaped him, but he was shaped just as much by a single cop sitting down next to him, being kind, and promising not just justice, but light and hope as well. Bruce wanting to be that, whether as Batman or Bruce Wayne. Offering it to the city, the victims he saves as Batman, his own children.

They’re family okay. They’re all just one big loving family that also happens to fight crime, sometimes while wearing a cape.

Bonus: Oswald is by no means a father figure to Bruce, but he’s undeniably fond of him, admires his good, kind heart. He sees a lot of Jim in him, which is part of it, but he also, for everything that he himself is, just appreciates that in others (it part of what has always drawn him back to Jim).

[kurtty-drabbles]

Miss you love au

N/A: Kurt, suffer. In this au, Brian never dates Meggan, for once, Courtney is a good person in this story. Meggan is a proud Lesbian and only Kurt is too dumb to not notice. Also, yes, Kitty is an adult.

Miss you love Please, listen to this song...it what inspires me to make this drabble aside of my hate for canon.

@djinmer4 @sailorstar9 @dannybagpipesarecalling @discordsworld @look-ma-no-hands336

Excalibur is facing a blistering day. In fact, the weather makes impossible for most heroes to stay in the gears, everyone but Rachel Grey, who is content in wearing her traditional red leather uniform, the rest? Is making a compromise.

Meggan is wearing something fresh for the day, sweat is blasting her blond hair and she´s drinking as much of water as possible, Brian, her good friend, is also complaining about the weather. "The air conditioner has to be broken today?!"

Brian Braddock aka Captain Britain is not wearing his usual shirt and is trying with all his might to fix the air conditioner, with no success, Meggan is waving him off using an old magazine. "Hey, gentle giant, how the fight between you and the machine?"

Brian is frowing. "I think the machines don´t like me, Meggan, is impossible to fix this" he explained and Meggan in good humour just punch the machine and suddenly the machine is working again. "Well, machines like you"

Kurt is trying to gain Meggan´s attention, who in return, is making her conversation with Brian take each minute as she can. Kurt tries to gain her attention by mention the mail, but, Meggan suddenly has the need to take Brian´s arm and go inside the house with him.

Rachel, with her red leather uniform, is busy talking on the phone. Scott is pretty serious about "no mental call, use the phone next time"

As Kurt is ignored, again. His cellphone rings a familiar tone that belongs to one person. The song is a private joke among them and it makes Kurt smiles as he knows Kitty has the same song for him on her cellphone.

"Hallo, elf, how are you in this fine night or morning?" Kitty asked and Kurt can close her eyes and feel she´s here with him. Pleasantries are exchanged as Kurt explains how the day is too hot ("No, Katzchen is not a euphemism...although I´m indeed hot" "Kurt, are you shirtless?")

"Elf, do you really meant what you said last week?" her tone is now serious and Kurt can really picture her, pouting,  twirling one of her loose locks and feeling her fluffiest hair in all the fluffy.

"Of course, I´ll love to have you here, you´re my best friend, Katzchen" His tone is soft and he can hear her breathing on the other side of the phone.

"Then...yes, I´ll join Excalibur with you, elf" and Kurt gives some additional details about her entrance and only when Kitty hang up the phone that he realized he did spend the entire conversation with closed eyes picturing Kitty Pryde with her Garfield sweater.

____________________________________

Kitty Pryde was marked to arrive on 12 of May, however, thanks to the efficiency of the Airport and good weather, Kitty Pryde arrives in England way earlier.

Rachel Grey give a hug on Kitty Pryde. "Still with the cool outfit, Grey?" "Still with Garfield, Pryde?" a joke among friends and that makes her presence in Excalibur be even more welcome.

Brian shakes hands with Kitty Pryde. The man was polite enough with Kitty and Kitty can see his the leader, yet, Kurt shows up and is between Brian and Kitty.

"Katzchen, you´re here" there´s a different tone in his voice. Kurt's palms her face gentle and Brian never saw Kurt acting in such way before. "You choose to be here"

Kitty offers a nice smile. "Of course, elf, you´re not going get rid of me"

Meggan arrives at the scene and watches as the new woman finally notices Meggan. A smile is on her cute face and Meggan´s hair turn into a lovely shade of pink.

"Hi, I´m Meggan, I´m a super hero...and I can shapeshifter," Meggan said bluntly and Brian and Rachel are amused, Kurt is not seen why those two are so amused, and Kitty is impressed.

"You´re Gloriana!" Kitty speaks in her trademark tone putting her arms on her waist "the amazing Gloriana that is the strongest member of Excalibur and in the MI-13" and to be really unfair on Meggan flashes a cute smile and now Meggan is completely pink.

"That´s Meggan, she´s Brian´s girl" Kurt speaks to Kitty and Meggan takes offence of that.

"I´m no one girls and Brian has a girlfriend, Kurt, and I´m really single," she said looking at Kitty and Kurt notice the whiplash in her tone. Brian laughs at Kurt and explained how he meet Meggan, turns out, his stupid jealousy was even stupider as Brian is dating Courtney Ross and...most importantly, a fact that Kurt was too dumb to notice before.

"I´m gay, Kurt," she said as Rachel is laughing at taking photos of this moment. Kitty is left in the dark and prefers to not know what Kurt did in the past. Meggan looks at Kitty a bit afraid and she can understand this fear very well

"Oh, well, I´m American, Woman, Jewish, mutant and Bi. I´m full of pride of what I´m" Kitty said and told about her time in her first gay pride parade. Meggan feels safer now and the two talk excitedly. "Kitty, do want help to bring your stuff in?"

Kurt is the one left out. As Meggan and Kitty, along with Rachel and Brian are helping. Kitty is not materialist so she only has a few boxes with her, nothing really heavy.

And Kurt is left out.

____________________________

Kitty is the first on the danger room and is the one to ask to train with the elf, the nickname is still used and Kurt offers to spar with Kitty. It´s their little ritual.

"How are you, elf?" she asked looking into his eyes. There´s no need to lie about anything with her.

"I´m fine...surprised that Meggan is gay, but, fine...Am I the only straight member in the group?" he asked jokingly.

"No, Brian is straight too. You two can bond over that, the sad realization of being straight, poor Kurt...will never ride a unicorn"

"Well, I´d not think me and Brian will be friends that easily"

"Oh no, Flirtzilla strikes again?"

"Yeah..."

"Wanna talk?"

___________________________________________________

It was a sacred routine. 30 minutes of talking with Kitty, sparring with her or just doing nothing, it´s sacred to him. A routine that never in his wild dreams Kurt thought it would be broken.

One day, Meggan arrives in his doorstep, trying to be neutral, but, for some reason, Kurt does rub her in the wrong way.

"Meggan" the beautiful woman is still beautiful as always but she never truly smiles with Kurt. She gives a long sigh and speaks "I´m not here to apologise, Kurt, because if you feel like an idiot than it is your own doing, not mine, to be clear, I wouldn´t have picked you even if I was straight"

"Thanks, glad to know"

"I´m here because of Kitty..." her hair does not turn pink, instead, her checks do "she is talking about a book, the age of innocence and I heard you have a copy...can you lend to me?"

Kurt could lend the book. He´s not that into that type of literature, but, Kitty gave him this book, Kitty spend her money to give this book only for him and Kurt is not immune to be spiteful.

"You´re mistaken, I don´t have this book" Kurt states. Meggan does not believe. "Besides, I thought you didn´t know how to read"

Meggan should be angry by these words, but, she´s really not angry. She´s feeling pity and this is a look Kurt does not like. "I´m Roma, yes, but that cliche of illiterate Roma is a cliche that is not universal, I´m thankful for being able to know how to read and write, and would you believe I even went to school? " she jokes and continues "when I said to Rachel ''I can´t read this book'' you must have some gallant idea to teach this illiterate woman how to read, poor dumb Meggan, but, in reality, what I mean was ''I don´t like this book, Rachel and I don´t want to read it, ''

She gives a sad smile to Kurt. "Is ok, I know your foster family was a cliche after the other, but, not all of us are like them...and if you don´t want to lend the book, is ok too...I can buy a cope"

And with that, she leaves. Kurt is weirdly possessive over a book that is not even his favourite genre. A story about a love triangle is never his thing...but...Kitty gave this book to him. Only him.

______________________________________________________________ Today, his routine is being broken as Kitty and Meggan are talking about books and Movies and before anything could be said Meggan asks Kitty out. Kurt went to train alone. No Kitty went after him.

Next day, the routine is broken again. Kitty was called to give a class to students, it was a thing of last minute, she didn´t announce to Kurt, it was to Meggan.

On the next day, Kitty and Meggan are sharing jokes and telling stories about their past.

And on the next day, Kurt is alone on the danger room, no Kitty, and he hates this.

"Missing Kitty?" Rachel declares loudly in the danger room.

"She´s dating Meggan?"

"Yes, I think so, and she´s not here with you...but, you´re the resident manslut of this house, you´d not care, there are always other women for you to be a dick about"

"you´d not think I´m cable of loving a woman?"

"No" and relentless she continues "I can read your mind as Meggan can read your emotions. You put Kitty in this pedestal and thought she was your angel...she´s human and you can say what you feel for her...I did feel the same, but, I understand we weren´t meant to be"

"I love her," Kurt said and adds "and I don´t know what to do"

"Don´t be a dick is a good thing. Kitty thinks you´re avoiding her and I´m here to talk some sense into you...I know, me? I don´t like at all, but, hey...if that makes Kitty happy" Rachel trails of "so, stop hiding here or I´ll drag you upstairs if I have to"

___________________________________________________

Kitty´s hands, as Kurt remembers, are often tiny and warm, illustrating her personality in small but crucial detail. Kurt remembers how one time they hold hands. His big and blue hand are perfect for her delicate one. He remembers every vivid detail about that moment, yet, can hardly recall the woman he did date on that time. Well, it wasn´t dating, only sex, still, Kurt can remember more of Kitty(Katzchen) then the random woman he did sleep.

Now, Kitty can´t hold hands with him anymore, her hands are often holding Meggan´s.

"Ah, they make such a cutie ship" Courtney Ross, the Captain Britain´s woman, as Kurt mentally adds, is in Excalibur to celebrate the holiday. Brian is amused at the scene.

Meggan and Kitty helping to decorate the place. Both women have different tastes and ended up discussing the choice each one makes and in the end, they made peace with each other.

Kurt is left alone. Like always.

Kitty notices Kurt, and the elf can pretend that everything is alright. The man offers a big smile at her and Kitty give a small one. "Hello, Kurt," she said, no nickname, and that makes his heart drop.

"We haven´t talked much" there´s an accusation on her tone and is visible she´s feeling a bit guilty too. "I know you must have been upset that me and Meggan are an item now. But, this situation is stupid. You´re my best friend and I´d not want to lose you"

"And you won´t...I was being stupid, I have no problems with you dating Meggan" Kitty looked at him with those does eye. "...Are you happy with her?"

"Yes, and are you going full Wolverine over Meggan? I´d not want you to rip my photo to look at Meggan" she jokes in a depreciative way that displeases Kurt very much.

"No, believe I have no feelings for Meggan, never had and never will," he said and let Kitty touches his face(oh, feeling her fingers on his face is...too good) as she examines his expression. Kitty can always tell when Kurt is lying.

"You´re not lying. Can you forgive me then? I was a fool...you´re my Best friend and I should have reached to you hard" Kitty said and Kurt, pretending very well, as he mentions how there´s nothing to forgive.

Kurt didn´t lie to Kitty. He has no feelings for Meggan. He has feelings for Kitty.

And at the end of the party. Kurt saw Meggan and Kitty kiss. A good excuse that he needs to go to the kitchen to grab more drinks didn´t raise suspicions.

Kurt cries a little. Letting tears be the manifestation of his stupidity or how life can be cruel.

"I´m living the plot of age of innocence," Kurt said bemused. And clean his eyes as taking a good and deep breath pretends this is just a play and this is a happy ending.  Sometimes, the hero does not get the girl nor he deserves the girl. And maybe, Kurt reflects for a moment, that´s enough, sometimes, the hero does not truly understand love and can´t expect a woman to fix him.

Kurt returns to the party smiling as always and pretends very well to be happy as Meggan and Kitty are being such cute couple.

Could have been me there?

[the-desolated-quill]

Luther 5x02 - Luther blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

One of the many things I and several others had a problem with in Series 4 was how the show handled Alice Morgan. Or rather the distinct lack of Alice Morgan. Ruth Wilson was off starring in The Affair and was unavailable at the time. Disappointing, but not a big problem. Luther has had Alice-less stories before. I’m sure we could have coped without her. But then Neil Cross dropped the bombshell that Alice had died in-between Series 3 and 4 off-screen.

At no point did I or anyone else for that matter believe that Alice was really dead, and yet the show was taking this completely seriously with a whole subplot about John Luther coming to terms with her death and going on a vendetta to find out who’s responsible. Not only has the whole ‘angry man avenging dead woman’ trope been done to death at this point, it’s completely undeserving for a character like Alice, whose relationship with Luther has been one of the most popular, intriguing and enduring elements of the show.

So while Alice’s return wasn’t exactly a surprise, it was still good to see her again after all this time. Ruth Wilson slips back into the shoes of this cold, mischievous sociopath with great ease and steals the spotlight from Idris Elba several times. The most memorable scene for me was when they returned to her family home where she killed her parents way back in the very first episode. This is the first time we’ve ever properly dived into her reasons behind the crime and it’s incredibly gripping. Wilson’s performance in this scene is impeccable as she describes how she often fantasised about killing her parents and how’d she cover it up, and how the reality didn’t live up to the fantasy until Luther showed up and made it much more interesting for her. If Luther is Batman, Alice is the Joker. She needs him to give her criminal lifestyle purpose. It’s a great dynamic and a rare moment of vulnerability for the character, which works extremely well.

Now, yes, let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Luther and Alice doing the dirty deed. When Luther left with Alice in Series 3, it turns out he did indeed drive his Volvo into her parking space. Now I’ve never been keen on the idea of Luther and Alice entering into a romantic relationship. While I believe Luther is indeed fascinated by Alice’s mind and thought process, and vice versa, putting it down to bog standard romance just felt trite to me. Not to mention it diminishes Alice as a character, making her more of a quirky love interest than a homicidal frenemy, which I’ve always found much more interesting. Having said that, I don’t actually have a problem with them having sex, believe it or not. As I’ve mentioned before, they both share a mutual fascination with each other and that fascination can take all sorts of forms. Like lust for instance. Plus, crucially, Luther quickly realises that a relationship with Alice would never work because they’re just too different. Luther is afflicted with a conscience and strong sense of moral justice, whereas Alice has no morals whatsoever. But what I especially love is how this is all tied into Ripley’s death. It’s easy to forget that Ripley was murdered shortly before Luther and Alice eloped at the end of Series 3. Luther must have still been broken up by it and I love that it’s Alice’s ridicule of him that causes Luther to reject her. It’s a really good character detail, suggesting that the only reason he had ever even considered a relationship with Alice wasn’t because he actually loved her, but because he was desperately trying to fill the gap Ripley had left when he died. Alice may be an amoral killer, but she’s also the only person other than Ripley that has stuck by him no matter what. So in a moment of weakness, he gives in and follows her lead only to come to his senses later on when he realises just how incompatible they are.

It’s this I’m most excited to see play out in the next two episodes. Alice has already got a vendetta against George Cornelius for betraying her, abducting and murdering his son, but now for the first time since Series 1, she’s back in the role of an antagonist. Luther said way back in the very first episode that while Alice can imitate love, she can never understand, and this applies here. Alice never loved Luther. Not really. It was all about control. Trying to tempt a mind like Luther’s to her way of thinking, and she’s not going to let him go quite so easily. And with George kidnapping Benny and threatening to kill him if Luther doesn’t hand Alice over to him, things are going to escalate quickly.

While all that’s going on, we’ve also got the most disturbing episode of Terry And June playing out simultaneously. The psycho sex killings pretty much take a backseat this time around as we take the opportunity to explore Vivian and her husband Jeremy more closely. I think what struck me about it is how normal they’re presented.

Well... comparatively speaking anyway. They’re normal compared to previous Luther baddies. Jeremy’s bedside manner leaves a lot to be desired, describing in very blunt terms what he’s going to do to one of his patients, but there’s no inherent sadism in the relationship itself. These two clearly love each other and Vivian truly wants to help her husband, albeit in her own sick way. He’s a heart surgeon and clearly gets aroused when he cuts into people, so he goes around killing people as a form of sexual release so it doesn’t interfere with his work. The relationship is extremely creepy, but also weirdly touching, and that’s largely down to the performances of Enzo Cilenti and Hermione Norris. They feel like actual people, which is part of what makes them so frightening. They’re not like the deranged lunatics Luther encountered in previous episodes. They’re more human and more believable. I suppose that’s the advantage of doing a four part story as opposed to a single episode or a two parter like previous series have done. It gives Neil Cross the opportunity to delve deeper into the villain’s psyches. It’s not just about which psychotic gimmick the killer will have this week, but also how they work it around their day to day lives.

Overall Episode 2 ratchets up the tension extremely effectively with great writing and great performances, and I’m very excited to see what happens next.

[justalittlemango]

Putting things into perspective.

So.. obviously.. this feels like the worst I’ve felt in a long time or maybe ever. Or, I’m just dissociating like crazy and things feel really wack, but maybe I’ve been through wacker things? I’m not sure. I guess that’s the point of this post to put my thoughts into perspective and compare to past experiences. And with some hope it may make me feel a little more positive about what’s going on right now..

Well, I guess the present moment. Why do I feel wack? I mean, I feel lonely. Even though I’m not, I’m friends with and speaking to quite a few people. Probably the most I’ve ever actually spoken to at any point in my life. So not lonely in terms of friendships, I guess it’s the “love” type of loneliness. Because my boyfriend has gone. I don’t know where. He’s been gone for a while. And it’s affecting me like crazy. Most of this stress and anxiety is being triggered by the thought of him. It all happened quite quickly, a couple months ago he was so clingy and sweet and I’d be the same back. A month after, that all changed completely. It was like the boy I fell in love with had gone. I do blame the meds, but I also blame his lack of accountability. And unfortunately, there were a couple of fallouts, both of us ending up getting hurt. I apologised but got nothing. Nothing at all. Just...ghosted. He came back temporarily for a day or so, but left again. It’s quite wack when someone you felt a new level of love for just disappears.

So yeah.. that’s rough. I’m constantly thinking what he could be doing, how he feels about me and all that. Constantly those thoughts dominate my mind. To the point where it’s disrupted my sleep majorly. I keep stressing in my sleep. Insomnia became a nightly occurrence until I was able to retake control of it more recently. However I’m still waking up in the middle of the night, having distressing dreams, sleep paralysis and all that.. I’m going to assume that’s due to all the stress I’m experiencing. My body doesn’t feel too great either so it’s kind of triggering my health anxiety.

This may also be a part of my seasonal depression because I fucking hate the winter and early dark nights. Feels so depressing. I feel quite isolated. So yes, all those issues in one combination isn’t too great. It doesn’t help that I don’t have a house key here so I can’t really go out early in the day. So I’m stuck inside until it’s night. Oh well, not much I can do anyway.. it is a national lockdown again.. and this lockdown has been the roughest one yet. 10x worse than the one last year. Everything seems so bleak on that front but seems like there may be light at the end of the tunnel soon... I hope.

I think there are some similarities with major negative events I’ve had in the past, such as my first love, when I went to uni in 2016 and whatnot. I mean, the predominant feeling here is loneliness, overthinking and stress. Loneliness always has made me feel ultra shitty in comparison to other things. I hate that I feel lonely since I have so many people to speak to, a lot of friends now.. but it still feels lonely.

So. What’s positive right now? Well.. positive news is that this pandemic seems to be coming to an end (at least here) in a few months. I hope. Positive is that my parents are alive and healthy. I’m currently with my parents right now and I don’t have to worry about money, I don’t have to worry about going grocery shopping or anything like that. I myself, I think, am physically healthy too. My health anxiety tells me otherwise, but I’m trying to just believe it when I feel it yknow? I have friends too that are supporting me. I have a lot of stuff that I would’ve only dreamt of as a kid.. like.. all this technology and a big TV, the only important things to me when I was younger lol.

Money is usually a big stress causer for me, but now I am financially stable and should be good for a while as long as I don’t spend like an idiot. So there’s no need to stress over that at least.

So if I compare this moment to times in the past, maybe I can start being more happy and grateful for what I got right now.

Lets rewind to when I was working as a baker. Having to take a 30 minute train and then a 15 minute bus to the supermarket I worked at. Working those horrid weekend shifts. Having to pick up other people’s pieces because they wouldn’t work as hard as I did. I didn’t like the job mostly because colleagues were lazy and the distance I worked. In all fairness, I hated living in that town. There was nothing to do. It felt trashy and grimey. I hated living there when I decided to move there. I was in a relationship that didn’t feel like it was really working out, but held on anyway. It never did get better really. So.. things in reality weren’t better. It felt nice to get a paycheck. But I remember the stress of public transport, the mixed shifts, not knowing what I’m coming into.. et cetera. So things weren’t as good back then.

Fast forward to summer 2018. I mean, I won’t bother here, summer 2018 was one of the most fun time periods I had. Even winter 2018 was fun despite getting robbed. But it was fun going to Coventry a lot, all the bars/gay clubs around there. Going to Pride. Winning free tickets to Comic Con. Integrating with the Splat community on Twitter, feeling so welcomed and happy. It was the best I had felt for a long time.

Summer 2019. Things got dull! Surprise surprise. Health anxiety was still a new concept to me, so when I did have panic attacks, I would go to A&E. I remember those experiences and how awful it felt, especially just being told it was anxiety. That was a frequent worry for me back then. Another worry was my depression. I felt stuck. Still hated living in that town. Nothing to do. Bored. Working long hours. Not too great pay. Having to cover my colleague and doing that wack warehouse job. Having to deal with annoying customers. The stress of all that would be so bad. I remember being sad because I didn’t have enough time in the day to do my hobbies. Arguing with my ex-bf over who’s doing the dishes and cooking etc. I felt like a zombie in that job. Only thing keeping my head up high was my upcoming trip to Canada, quitting my job, moving out and starting university. I didn’t even really have friends at all back then.. I had my one friend, Drop. I didn’t have anybody else necessarily... imagine that now.. though that has happened at points in 2020 too. So yeah, summer 2019 was arguably worse. Mostly with the situation I was in. Dead end job. Stressed. No time. Hated that town. Lonely.

A bit further back.. September 2016 to Early 2017. This was shit. I hated uni. I didn’t get on with my flatmates. My anxiety held me back so much. I felt like such a mess. I was drinking almost everyday to cope. I blew so much of my money. I didn’t go to any lectures. I felt like a failure because I wasn’t attending. Not making friends either. Just in my room doing jack shit. Relationship didn’t feel great either. So I dropped out a couple months later, found a rather unpleasant message said about me in a group chat, and uh yeah, that made me feel wack XD though.. I can’t blame them, I was isolating myself for legit no reason. I also received lovely news that I had a debt needing to be paid off since I dropped out, and it was one I had to pay instantly. I had no choice but to sign on at the job centre and claim jobseeking welfare. It didn’t go well. I slept over some appointments and got penalised. I then left the jobcentre and extended my overdraft to help cover time for my debts. I then went to a different jobcentre. Took me a couple months but then I got my baker job. I just need to remember how horrible that was. I felt like such a mess. A no-hoper. I was partying and going out with my welfare money and a bit of my ex’s money lol (with him of course!) so yeah. That was an extemely difficult situation to escape. It felt impossible to find a job that wanted me. I was grateful for the job I got. Until it got shitty.

And now... fast forward to 2020. The last time I was at my parents house was summer 2020. It felt really strange coming back here for Christmas with all that happened over the summer. I broke up with my ex-bf. It felt like a relief weirdly. I fell in love with a lad that I felt so heavily for. It went well until we would fall out. He and I did break up around July 2020, and then I met somebody who comforted me and made me feel good. But that didn’t last, since I didn’t “love” him and he did for me. So I ended that around Sept 2020. And then, when I started uni for a couple months, that was also one of the worst times I had. I felt lonely. Lost a lot of the friends I made this year (almost all.) My ex-bf was bringing his lad over and having fun and that made me feel weird. Dealing with being single was stressful. I was drinking to cope once again. And yeahhhh...

How I feel right now is similar to Sept 2020 feels when I started uni. Just stressed. Overthinking. Lonely. Wanting to drink a lot. But I won’t let myself abuse alcohol like that. I think I’m coping well for how shitty I feel.. I mean not all the time I feel like this.. but a lot of days I do. But.. at least I am getting on with my work. I am attempting to do my workouts and my Spanish stuff, as well as my portfolio stuff too. Also keeping up contact with a lot of friends. Pushing myself outside my comfort zone. Not being scared to VC friends anymore. I have come quite a long way.

I just need to fix my sleep. And to do that, I need to stop thinking about him. My brain is just so confused about him. One time I will love and miss him, other time I won’t care and want to meet other people. And I’m not really sure how to maintain a dominant side, if that makes sense? The side I would like to stick to is just thinking he’s a time-waster, he’s ghosting me to try and remain distant and that I should just move on... I try my hardest to keep that in my head, but despite all that, whenever I see old messages or pictures, my soft sensitive side comes out again. I really don’t know how to tackle it. THe thing is, I need to tackle it otherwise I will continue to be stressed and not be able to sleep like a normal human again (and god knows I was a normal human before... smh)

I want to retain my view that he’s no good for me, that I deserve better etc.. but it’s like, the meds messed him up.. but why wasn’t he open about it with me? Why did he get so distant from him.. why did he react so bad to my concerns.. why can’t he communicate with me? And now why is he ghosting me rather than sorting it out? Does he want it sorting? Is he wanting to move on? So many questions and unfortunately I just don’t know. Maybe I need to just put my foot down here.

Easier said than done, but if I put my foot down and keep telling myself I deserve better. Listen to what Drop says, I do deserve better and that he is not well, and that the boy I fell in love with is no longer around. He’s gone. Instead, there is a dark shadow of his former self that is ghosting me. I gotta keep reminding myself that there will be better people out there for me. People who won’t treat me like this. And that, as much as I feel bad that the meds did this to him, I can’t respect how he treated me. He’s made me feel all this shit. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care to reply to me. He made a rude remark about my anxiety in a public forum. He’s manipulative. Think about it.. he’s there, he could easily message me, it takes 5 seconds, but it’s CLEAR as ICE that he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t care to do it. And that should be enough for me to put my foot down and remember that he is no sweetheart. He’s not the Dylan I fell in love with, period.

I think if I keep telling myself this, I can do it. I just need to remind myself that I deserve better. It’s not normal to be treated like this, and that honestly it’s a good thing this all happened before him and I met. On the plus side, I could do something with that £250 I was saving to go see him.. I gotta stop being sensitive. I am way better than this. I gotta remember what my mom said too. Mom always knows better. I was a fighter with all the problems I had when I was younger. I shouldn’t let this present shit bring me down. I’m way better than this!

I’m too good for that kind of treatment. I know my worth. I know my values. And now I know his. And yet here I am losing fucking sleep and stressing over him! Imagine!! Well, I want February to be different. Jan was shit. Feb I hope to be better. I will not think about him as much. I just got to remember that he has disrespected me and treated me like trash. I am no longer going to feel bad. He needs to grow up and take some responsibility. I don’t care if this sounds harsh, this is truly coming from the heart. I know for a fact I didn’t deserve the backlash I got from him. Yeah.. maybe I’ll try that. I should try to avoid the habits I tend to do.. like checking his Discord... or his twitter.. or his Switch activity and that. Avoid looking at my twitter cover also. I wish at this point I could just remove him from my bio and cover but I don’t want to fully break.. or do I? I mean.. how can I hold a relationship with someone who acts like this? So yeah. I need to treat this like a breakup.. an official breakup. And that he and I broke up a month or so ago when he decided to ditch me. I shouldn’t feel bad.

And remember the positives: my parents are alive and healthy, I’m with them right now! And that I don’t have to worry about money. No money problems! Not having to worry about groceries either. All I gotta do is my uni work. Pace myself. And I can try find time to do my workouts and Spanish at some point soon. We gonna have a good time Kurt. 

[vaguely-concerned]

UNCHARTED 4 REACTIONS

- uuuh can I just… find out who the FUCK looked at tiny beautiful baby boy Nate and decided to leave him with a bunch of nuns who don’t get why other kids telling him his mom’s in hell because she committed suicide would upset him??????? Like I don’t know who his biological father is but I feel a strong need to divest him of his kneecaps. (C’mon Sully with your con man expertise and my vengeful nature we could figure this out between us)

- Sam reminds me a lot of one of my uncles. I’m not sure what to do with that except applaud Naughty Dog on their eye for people ha ha. I guess everyone has that slightly sleazy and self absorbed yet periodically charming and decent man in their lives. (Can I point out how amazing his costume design is, in a way you rarely see? He’s one of those dudes who look rumpled wearing pretty much anything, everything is so unflattering on him it’s a miracle. Contrast his and Sully’s outfits in the Scotland section — what they’re actually wearing isn’t that dissimilar and Sully is like twice Sam’s age but looks a) stylish, b) warm and c) Incredibly American somehow while Sam looks like a bum and it’s  h i l a r i o u s.)

- When bb Nate’s face already does the thing where he goes from genuinely upset to dissembling smile… no… ow…  

- “You only pull something like this when you’re trying to make up for something” lasjfdlsakjfslkdjfalskj my soul has left my body and I am crying hot saltwater tears

- a) Nadine is just so incredibly, vibrantly beautiful and I feel like sending a thank you note to the offices of Naughty Dog for putting her face and overarms on my screen, b) she’s already completely done with everything and we’re not even halfway through the game, c) she’s awfully uppity about Chloe’s methods for someone whose instinctual approach to archaeology is ‘dynamite’

- NATE PLAYING CRASH BANDICOOT

THE MOST PRECIOUS SHIT

I’VE EVER LAID MY EYES ON

“THIS IS TAKING VERY LONG” THIS BLESSED ADHD BOY

- OKAY NAUGHTY DOG YOU’VE GONE AND DONE IT I’M ROOTING FOR THE HETS

- the note from Chloe in the attic :( :( :( I feel bad for her even though she eventually upgraded big time on the spouse material, she does like him a lot even if they didn’t make each other very happy.

Can you imagine if Nate and Chloe had actually stayed together tho. They’d have the smartest, snarkiest, most-unprepared-to-deal-with-emotions children in history lol just as well things worked out like they did, probably

- did u guys know… that I would die for nathan drake… I mean you all probably do by now because I never shut up about it but it bears repeating… I would….  

- oh no… nate no… don’t lie to elena she not only tolerates you she loves you despite the warning signs don’t throw this away

- It’s very impressive that they’ve managed to show that Sam genuinely does love Nate a lot while also making it clear how easily he tips into being a toxic influence — it makes all the psychological sense in the world that he’s trying to emulate the relationship they had when they were at their closest and only had each other, but purposefully trying to drive Nate away from the other people who love him is just… so perfectly the worst possible thing to do to him, jeeeeesus christ. No wonder he and Sully don’t get along — Sully is wonderfully protective without being possessive

- When Sam asks Sully why he’s there and it’s like… because… he’s HIS FUCKN DAD SAM???! YOU NUMBSKULL???!!? YOU ABSOLUTE FOOL??!?!

- All my fanfic wants for these games are so lame and low-key… like ‘the first time a teenaged Nate comes back to the hotel drunk as a total emotional mess, and Sully being like ‘oh wow… oh god… help… he’s like a tiny puppy I need to protect him being a parent is terrifying’... ‘Nadine and Chloe have a nice night in and make sweet character developing love, maybe braid each other’s hair and get in a fist fight with some dude’... ‘the gang go to an amusement park, have a good time, Charlie gets cotton candy and makes fun of Nate’...

(actually what I really, really want is a fic of Sully surreptitiously picking up the pieces of Nate after Sam ‘dies’, but, y’know. The heart wants what it wants and mine wants Nate to be taken care of)

- Sully’s face when he drops them off in Scotland… goddamn it he loves that boy so much ;___;

- The only illustration of Sam’s personality that matters is that he thinks  S u l l y  of all people might screw Nate over while thinking he can work with Rafe without it all going to hell

Just… the worst judge of character ever lol how’s that projection working out for you Sammy boy

- I played some multiplayer and Elena really has just the warmest, most reassuring presence, I absolutely see what Nate sees there ha ha

Also I love what they’ve done with her clothes, all her outfits are plausible and non-sexualized and look so chill and comfortable

- Nate’s high-pitched nervous laugh is everything to me, such a deeply endearing character tic

- Sam… you dumbass… when will you learn that the real treasure… is your little brother and his happiness…

- I have to applaud Troy Baker for his work here — he matches Nolan North’s speech patterns and timbre as Nate so well, you absolutely believe they’re brothers. (Also between them they’re like… 90% of all male characters in video games, it’s a wonder the fabric of reality isn’t fraying with two giants in such close proximity)

- Shoutout to my boy Charlie for getting one (1) whole reference in this entire game! Naughty Dog may have forgotten you but the face you pulled at Nathan in the scene with the torches will stay with me forever, you big British lug <3

- I LOVE that Nate and Sam still use ‘Father Duffy’ like you would ‘Goody Two-shoes’ or the ‘dad’ in a sarcastic ‘thanks, dad’, it’s an authentic-feeling kind of in-joke

- Nate’s journal entries are SO FUNNY in this one oh my god. I’m so happy they’re acknowledging that he’s actually an excellent artist, I hope he ends up with a sideline in making illustrated children’s books. (I have since learned they were drawn by Naughty Dog artist Alexandria Neonakis. From the bottom of my heart: thank you for everything, especially Lemur Sully)

- Gideon Emery is wasted — WASTED — in the role of ‘random goon #43’ yet again,  but whatever, at least I got to hear his voice

- Sam’s supremely shitty tattoos give me life

- I realized during the Madagascar opening that in all likelihood the person who taught Nate to drive was Sully and can I just say… this reinforces my theory that Sully is the real hero of the Uncharted games because can you imagine taking on that responsibility for Nathan ‘Adrenaline Junkie Whoops Everything I Touch Explodes and Collapses’ Drake? No, because you and I don’t have what it takes to live that life but Victor Sullivan does

- It feels like they went a bit more naturalistic with the dialogue and characterization in this one? (As naturalistic as you can go with great big undiscovered cathedrals/pirate recruiting hubs under Scotland, anyway. Scotland ain’t that big, yo, pretty sure someone would have spotted it lol) I actually enjoyed it — U3 is still pretty much an Indiana Jones-esque adventure story with some purposefully discordant notes when you get to know Nate’s real backstory and stuff like that, but this feels all round a bit more grounded in reality and characters and it works

- Sully ineffectually keeping a grip on Nate’s shirt while he’s scrabbling to get back into the driver’s seat after the car goes off the cliff ascended my soul to a higher dimension. Big mood.

Also genuinely laughed for five minutes at Sam, lapsed Catholic and born opportunist, getting in as many Hail Marys as he could just in case he was about to die. I’m an atheist from a half-halfheartedly Protestant country but even I am pretty sure that’s not how it works buddy

- Nate’s continual refusal to think ahead enough to carry his own matches (and being saved by surrounding himself with smokers) is one of the most satisfying running jokes in the series

- “Lemurs, Sully!” “Rabies, Nate” fsdajfkljdaskjhasjkhfasjdk

*cries helplessly like a little baby because I love everyone in this bar*

- I must say the clock tower felt like one of Nate’s most catastrophic onsets of… Nateness. That delicate complicated piece of machinery was still functioning perfectly after four hundred years and yet… Nate’s in there for five minutes and it crumbles like paper. I guess technically sinking the entirety of a city into the sand beats it, but… I keep coming back to the image of the cracked bell and then *high pitched giddy voice* “Hi Sully” JFC Nate ha ha

- *screams as Nate sends Sully and Elena away, literally turning to the adrenaline/treasure hunting madness he used to cope with trauma before he managed to work up to emotional intimacy with people who care about him because Sam is a jackass who knew exactly what buttons to press and is weirdly possessive of his little brother*

- You know… forgiving Sam is so hard when he repeatedly doubles down on his lies, making up further details unprovoked, because he knows it keeps Nate hooked and feeling guilty? Like Nate is far enough along in his character development at this point that just waving some treasure under his nose alone wouldn’t do it, you need that illusion that he’s saving someone he loves — the first person he ever relied on, who he thought he lost once because he failed him — to make him keep going, and Sam knows this and uses it and it’s so horribly, calculatedly cruel? I think there are a few times where he kind of wants to come clean (uh already too late because what the HELL he’s already fucked up all his relationships lol) only to be interrupted by Action but in the end it’s a deliberate, long con of assholery that it’s extremely difficult to look past. Ah well I guess he’s stuck as my ‘I will mercilessly yet affectionately mock you’ character, that’s something.

- Aaagh the scene where Elena’s like ‘who are you’ is so good because it must be such a blow, knowing this man she loves and (bravely, because he is a disaster magnet) made the choice to try to make a life with for the second time still thinks he needs to lie to her, like he’s been lying to the world at large for most of his life — his name is a lie, so much of his outer identity is invented, but hey she wouldn’t have married him if she didn’t think they were past that this time and trusted each other with honesty… and then out of the blue a dead-yet-still-somehow-smoking-a-sketchy-cigarette brother???? Normally the ‘what else have you been lying about’ line makes me roll my eyes but she is ABSOLUTELY right to wonder about that and it breaks my heart

as does Nate going ‘I’m just me’ in that voice aaaaaaauuuuuugh he does try but he’s not completely at the point where he thinks he can be acceptable and loved as he is, no need to hide the broken things, still that kid learning that it’s better to not be seen or tell the truth because it just makes things worse

(I feel it’s a good balance between ‘protagonist making some DUMB SELF-DESTRUCTIVE CHOICES LIKE AN IDIOT’ and ‘makes perfect, tragic sense considering their history’, ending up at sympathetic but still in the wrong and in need of getting it the hell together in a hurry. At least he clearly realizes he’s fucked up pretty much immediately, which is something I GUESS)

TL;DR Nate, listen to Sully and go talk it out with your wife, I’m real upset now I’ll go make myself a cup of tea ;____;

- Sam was straight up going to shoot Nadine in the head, huh. I mean… wow. I wonder why she doesn’t like you very much, bro lol

- I’m a Black Sails fan so whenever Anne Bonny shows up I’m like *golden retriever face* HI FRIEND HI sorry about the... poison

- ...is it weird that I want to write fix it fic for Evelyn and Ken

All his letters are so  c u t e  and loving and I am devastated

Puzzling their story together like that was super effective too — it was so cool that if you know what to look for you could find the Tokugawa armor he mentions in the first letter before any other clues, I was going ‘Oh she totally married that beautiful nerd’ right there and then ha ha. Evelyn’s design was wonderful, you could tell the force of nature she must have been in her prime.

Bonus points for Nate looking up at her like a puppy who’s found someone really cool to aspire to. Also their father looks nominally less of a rampant unrepentant asshole if he sold Cassandra’s things specifically to her mentor. Microscopically. I’d still like to kick his ass tho.

- I guess Sam is three to five years older than Nate, then, if he remembers (vaguely) going to Windsor before Nate was even born? Bit hazy on the timeline here, because Nate’s memories of their parents — especially their mum — must be quite hazy if, like Marlowe states in U3, he was surrendered to the state at the age of five and they moved around with their dad a lot even before that.

- Nate was the most tired-looking twelve year old I have ever seen and it hurts me

The fact that Nate started off looking exhausted and a little snub-nosed and grew into a very handsome and charming young man (ssssh I’m in no way biased here just because he’s my son) while Sam was sweet and bright-eyed as a teenager and now looks like someone who is low-key dealing drugs around the local high school… this game is truly a tour de force of character design

- So apparently Shoreline was already off to a bad start when Nadine took over? That makes it doubly sad that she’s judging herself so harshly for losing it when her father had already left it to her as a mess :(

- THANK YOU ELENA AND SULLY FOR SAVING THIS WONDERFUL FOOLISH BOY YET AGAIN. “I left my life for you”  D: D: D:

Also slightly sad that Sam has… literally nothing except Nate and Avery’s treasure? On the other hand that’s entirely his own fault so. Less sad. (Makes me immensely thankful Sully and then Elena found Nate when they did)

- Nate… using his words… cautiously expressing how he actually felt… Elena mulling it over… realizing part of why she loves him is that weird restless brain of his doing its thing……. coming up with a solution where they can solve it as partners in the ending………... I am clinically ded, go on without me

- Realest GPOY moment: Sully’s flat immediate ‘no’ to Nate going off to save Sam on his own. He’s so scared!!!! And so was I!!!! My soul bond with an American con man three times my age continues to be unbreakable

- Relieved that my sister was in control for the fencing bit, because I don’t know if I could handle being responsible for Nate’s safety like that

That said, how destroyed was I that Nate didn’t really start fighting back before Rafe threatened his family? Completely, though it does force me to take the words ‘ludonarrative dissonance’ in my mouth for the first time in my life — no way does he kill as many people in the reality of the story as you do in gameplay if he’s still this hesitant to respond to someone openly trying to murder him lol. I realize this is a game and they need some kind of pretense to keep it from being a movie with the occasional QTE, but Naughty Dog you can’t just… repeatedly show that Nate has a hard time killing in cold blood and then have him take out an army in the next breath

(Naughty Dog: We did and you’re completely willing to go with it lawl. Me: Oooooh I hate that you’re right)

- Nadine stone cold leaving those bitches behind Worked for me, you do you you beautiful disaster, see you next game with your excellent character development. Another wonderful thread they continue into The Lost Legacy: Sam being forever relegated to the back seat. Yes good.  

- Sully promptly semi-adopting a second Drake brother, arguably the tougher case. A power move if ever I saw one.

- I deeply respect Naughty Dog’s decision to make an epilogue to let me know everyone is safe and happy and it all turned out okay, but I also wish they wouldn’t have ha ha. The last scene with Elena and Nate perfectly set that up for me already, specifically spelling out one happy ending among the many that could have happened actually somewhat cheapened it for me? The ‘flash forward, now they have children, get immediately invested!’ move is already suuuuch a hard one to pull off and I think it did it about as well as they possibly could, but somehow I also begrudge Cassie for her position in the narrative and that’s not how I want to feel about it, y’know? Actually it’s fine, I’ll accept it, because their dog is named Vicky and Nate writes in his journal that he’d call his pet lemur Victor and it made my entire week

- Having played three of the games I can still say that Uncharted 3 is definitely my fave, but then parts of that seem genuinely tailor made specifically for me, so that’s not really a surprise ha ha

- Thank you, Uncharted, for being the emotionally intelligent yet light hearted adventure story with lovable characters I needed in this dark cold winter and making me spill over with so many flaily happy words. 

[mirkstrolls]

What sort of pairings (romantic or platonic) are you *looking* to write? Alternatively: what would be your ideal dynamics for each of your chars in their available quadrants?

Old-ask answering, hot dang!

Okay, I’m always a sucker for anything involving emotional depth, especially since a lot of my current threads are more fun-adventure-times rather than actual major plot pieces, but hmm, let’s try to be more specific here…

For one thing: blackrom. None of my trolls have or have had a kismesis, with the exception of Widsth’s occasional flings and Taz’s weird semi-flirtation with Umetto, and none of them have a conclusively-planned black ship, I don’t think? And boy do they all need one! Plus I need to learn how to write blackrom better, since I’m not sure how to at the mo. This goes for ashenrom too; I’m interested in exploring those dynamics, which is why I’m super excited that Vide/Riccin is imminent and there may be an auspisticism for Taz on the horizon. 

I will always be in favor of more pale fluff, too! And not just piling and feelings-jamming and angsty soul-baring and the pale-honeymoon stuff, either (though I am a wreck for that, as mentioned, I will DIE), but pale couples out and about, doing plot-relevant things, while generally helping each other function better. 

But like… also. I really want Vide to have more friends who are 100% not into her romantically and never will be. Several of her past “friends” have turned out only to be interested in her due to having a crush on her, whether pale or flushed, and she feels pressured and anxious when she can’t reciprocate those feelings. It’d be really nice for her to have a circle of supportive people who don’t want anything from her but platonic friendship! Friends who can joke and gossip with her,  go shopping with her, shut her down when she gets Weirdly Pale, whatever. Just normal platonic stuff, in a variety of dynamics! 

I also want Genuine Friends for Taz, and horrible musician or historian friends for Weeds (and Genuine Quadrants for both), but they’re better set up for friendship than Vide is at the moment.

OH ALSO I would love to backplot ex-quads for Weeds, and maybe a few for Taz – she’s dated around a bit, he’s flirted-and-jilted his way through most of the music scene, the history scene, and the obscure-translations scene, both of them should have exes of varying levels of amicability out there.

Second part of the question was also interesting, answered below.

We’re going to say that “available” means “not actively dating someone right now,” even if that quad has been plotted, so Vide♥♦ and Taz♥ are currently unavailable. Also, keep in mind that these are what I think would be best, off the top of my head, not accounting for what my trolls could offer (as opposed to what they need) -- so they’re obviously allowed lots of wiggle-room

Vide: 

♣: Definitely someone who would take the quadrant pretty seriously and let her meddle at full capacity: someone who’s willing to spend a lot of time with her, since Vide gets horribly domestic with all her quads. But also someone who will meddle back and help her out with her blackrom woes! Vide’s very bad at blackrom and she could use someone to help her loosen up and release her inner bratty side. I guess I’m looking for a sort of teasing-but-affectionate, almost sibling-like relationship here?

♠: The thing about Vide is that she has some very specific blackrom issues springing from… not really knowing what it is or how it works? So ideally, she’d date someone who could go slow with her and maybe even be a bit domestic -- as I said above, Vide gets very strongly attached to all her quadrants. They’d also have to cool it on the violence aspect of the relationship, putting more emphasis on verbal arguments or passive aggression and pranks. Not that Vide wouldn’t want to physically fight them (because she would) or that she wouldn’t do well with someone who would push her to be stronger (again, she really would!), but a super-intense, hate-makeouts-with-lots-of-teeth-every-five-minutes kind of relationship would be likely to scare her off -- or scare her into flipping pale. She has to be able to win sometimes! And physical fights with people are not something she feels she can win at.

Taz: 

♦: I’d say, someone relatively calm and rational, who can get her to simmer down when she’s anxious or angry and curb her more self-destructive tendencies without alienating her for them. That might need to come later, though; at this point she’s badly in need of someone to talk to without fear of rejection, honestly.

♣: Taz is pretty good at being (bluntly, aggressively) ashen anyway, from long practice with the gang. For someone to actually get in a relationship with her, there’d have to be some reciprocity -- helping her out with her Umetto troubles, mediating tense business meetings with other gangs, maybe even setting her up on dates. I actually haven’t thought about this relationship a whole lot, because Taz just plain doesn’t hateflirt much!

♠: Not Umetto. Ha, but really, she might do better with a rival gang leader or someone on the other side of the law -- or even someone not related to the smuggling business at all: the trouble with being pitch for Umetto is that Taz is not really a domestic kismesis, and she can’t compete with him the way she wants to in a blackrom without shooting herself in the foot. So a Jets vs Sharks or Javert vs Valjean relationship could be fun with this one! However, any relationship based on work has the potential to screw up her profits, and she’s Very Not Okay with that. Honestly, I think it’d be more interesting if her kismate didn’t even know she was a smuggler: they’re competing with her in sailing, or they’re a rival coffeeshop, or something like that. Taz’s life is pretty high-stakes and this might be a fun way to lower those stakes. (Okay, so maybe I just want escalating coffeeshop wars, don’t judge)

Widsth (a.k.a DATE SOMEONE ALREADY): With nearly all of his quadrants, there really needs to be a friendship there first in order to give the romantic relationship staying power. Because his definition of “attractive” is so broad, because he’s like 25% in some kind of love with all of his friends anyway, it could pretty much be anyone! But this is about my ideal dynamics, so, hm.

♥: I kind of want him to date a lowblood! Particularly in this quadrant, since Widsth all but worships his matesprits, and I’d like him to end up with someone whose existence forces him to confront both his casteist beliefs and his weird courtly-love expectations of redrom, with its ideal of an unattainable, remote highblood beauty for a matesprit. Additionally, they’d need to have some common ground interest-wise (in music or history or adventure or storytelling) and be able to keep up with him on his travels, for his interest not to wane as it has in the past.  So: someone unpretentious but with an active interest in being involved in his life, and either someone who will travel with him, or someone who he’d be in love with enough to keep coming back for – but the latter is very unlikely. 

♦: You gotta find the fine balance between loving Widsth for the dramatic, extravagant nerd he is without trying to stifle him and not letting him jump off a cliff because he and Riccin think it’s funny. Weeds is not emotionally in distress very often, but he is very bad at coping with it when he is, and also very bad at not doing distressing things like cliff jumping or making out with a stranger in the bathroom of a bar for an hour on the off chance that they might be serendipitous. He desperately needs to be reigned in -- just not smothered.

♣: If we’re going for Mirk-Brand Meddling Auspisticism™, this might be the person to smack him upside the head when he starts flirting with inappropriate people again, or possibly make apologies to the people he flirts with. Of all his quadrants, this is the one with the most leeway for difference in interests: you don’t have to be into music/history/melodrama to get ashen with Weeds, you just have to be able to put up with him and bat him away from bad decisions once in a while, maybe be that cold splash of reality on his rosy-eyed romanticism 

♠: There has to be real competition here, so a musician would honestly probably be best? Or someone with lots of history knowledge, anyone he could have a meaningful contest of skills with. They’d have to be genuinely skilled and able to keep up with him, so that he could respect them while still wanting to beat them this time for sure!!! I don’t imagine they’d get into physical fights very often! Sometimes, yeah, but at his heart, Widsth is not a fighter, he’s a bard. Might be fun for this one to be a lowblood too, but I don’t actually care about caste or gender! 

[anothergirlrecovering]

Lynn 51

This is from yesterday...

 I got there and Lynn open the door and said she thought she had heard me but hadn't seen me so I must've been in the bathroom. I laughed and said it's a long drive so I had to Pee and she agreed. She asked if she can get me any coffee or water or flavored water or anything and I had said no initially and she said that she had sparkling water and I was like well OK. She got out the sparkling lime water and then said that she had forgotten and was going to take her pseudoephedrine. I joked and asked if it was the real stuff for the over-the-counter stuff and she said are you kidding me of course it's the real stuff. I asked her if she was sick or if she was just dealing with allergies and she said sinus stuff whatever that means. She said she would be fine though.

She asked how I'm doing and I said I'm OK and she weirdly was like well that sounds very ominous. I was like OK well what I mean is I'm OK right now but that I had a terrible weekend. She was like what happened? So I proceeded to tell her about how this terrible weekend went but I said that I wanted to start by talking about the progress that I had made. I told her that my husband is actually in Vegas but I explained that he was all right and then I was glad that he had text to me before I even saw there was a shooting. She said she was glad he was OK and I agree. Then I told her about how my husband and I put the offer in on the house and I said that we didn't get it but then I was excited because we made the decision on our own. And she said that was awesome and she laughed when I said I haven't sent my dad the address. She thought that I was going to say that I ignored the message but I said no I straight up said no and I even told her about how I told my mom that I hadn't wanted to get in a power struggle with her over how much money we were spending on a house and that my mom had claimed she just wanted to make sure was a good investment but then my mom ended up admitting that she would worry more about my brother than me because she knows that I'm good with money so I'm like OK then why would you even say all that but whatever. Which Lynn was like because they want to control you lol. Plan also laughed when I explained that I did end up telling my dad the address of the house because I wanted them to still give me the money towards closing costs and then I had sandwiched it in with information like how the basement has a great guest bedroom for him and Mom when they come visit and what not. Lynn was like that's definitely what I was going to suggest if you were going to have to tell them the address. 

So then I moved onto telling her about my crappy weekend and how I didn't cope in the greatest of ways and how I really struggled. I told her about the caveat that I was also on my period and had forgotten to take Prozac. She basically explain town it is really important that I not forget the Prozac if it helps and that she would even say to put a reminder on my phone for next month that way I am I don't forget since clearly my body needs it. She pointed out that wall those things might normally bother me, it normally isn't that explosive on a regular day. I agreed and I said yeah those things definitely would have upset me even on a day that isn't my period. She was like well but even like the thing with your grandma, on a normal day you might have just been like well that bothers me it's something I'm going to process in there beam and then put it back in the box and zone out with Netflix or something. She asked if I like Netflix and I was like honestly not really because I get too emotionally involved with characters in with what's happening in the shows and then I end up really upset. And she was like what do you mean and I was like I don't know I just get really overly involved and I feel things to deeply and like I love breaking bad but at the same time I had so many nightmares so pretty much I need to watch like the cooking shows on him something happy like parks and rec.  she laughed and was like OK well on Netflix has a ton of options for fun and happy things so you should be good or you can always read a book series or something to distract yourself. I was like yeah. Then she pointed out that A lesson she learned a long time ago is that you never go shopping when you are feeling hormonal because nothing will fit and nothing will look good and you will end up unhappy. I was like OK well lesson learned, she was like obviously with the eating disorder stuff it was a little bit more than just unhappy, but in general that's a good rule of thumb that if you are hormonal, it's not a good time to go shopping. I was like yeah I guess I would've done better to stick with just looking for the ankle boots. Then she asked if I was shopping in juniors and I was like I mean yeah and she basically went on a tangent explaining that I need to be shopping in the adult section and it's not my fault that the clothes didn't fit because in general they don't make juniors clothes for women's bodies and I have a woman's body now. Which got me more upset and I was like I don't want to woman's body and she was like yeah you want to be a thin little kid and I was like I mean if we're being honest yeah. She explained how once when you hate your upper 20s it's likely that your body changes and it has nothing to do with you being fat. She pointed out that my body is not the same as I was when I was 17 which I started to tear up and I was like but I literally weigh the same thing I'm just not as fit. She pointed out that your bone structure changes and she can see even with her to 19-year-old daughters that they don't fit into their clothes from when they were 16 and that they got upset and we're like are we getting fat and she was like no you're not fat you're different. She said the same thing applies to me then I'm not fat I'm just different than how my body used to be and that's OK and it's a part of being a woman. Lynn was like when you become a woman you're going to get hips and boobs and a butt and that's just part of it. I was like I don't want that LOL and she was like well that's part of embracing reality. She said that she can see how her daughter's bodies have changed some but how they aren't that they are still fin it's just that their body has filled out some. I was like I just don't want my body to fill out. I want to stay the same. She said I need to switch to shopping at places like and Taylor or the loft and see the difference in shopping in women's clothing. I said I guess that made sense because I was surprised that I went to loft recently and a petite small actually fit me which is really odd. She was like exactly because you're not fat you're just not a teenager anymore and that's OK. I was like you just made me mad because normally I do fit into a junior medium and she was like well maybe those particular pieces of clothing were bad bad it's also OK to realize that you aren't a junior anymore therefore it's OK of junior clothing is small. She also pointed out that seeing the happy mom and daughter who is only a very small glimpse of their relationship and it may be that they go home and they fight. I literally have no idea what their relationship is like outside of shopping. She also explained that with having twin daughters she saw how one daughter and completely loved everything that she would pick out and enjoyed shopping with her and the other daughter absolutely hated everything that she would pick out and that if the only way she like to bond with her kids by shopping, she would realize that she can't do that with her one daughter and therefore she would have to find something new to connect with her about.  She pointed out when I have a mom that I will have that same option to choose to find a different hobby with my kid if they don't like shopping with me either, and that it wasn't my fault that my mom wasn't willing to do that. She pointed out how ridiculous it sounded that I had even had to say that I felt like it was my fault you weren't close because the only thing my mom wanted to do with me was shopping and it was something that I hate it. She said it should never be where I feel like it's my fault because my mom only wanted to go shopping with me. I explained that I was your stereo typical email high school kid who were band T-shirts and my mom liked really trendy things and I did not. She said that I need to go to Ann Taylor or the loft and I would probably be ecstatic because I'll probably be a size 2 in their sizes lol.

Overall she basically said that I need to make better choices LOL and take my medicine during my period. She asked if I wanted to do some EMDR on all of this and I said sure. She asked me where I think my perfectionism begins and I was like I'm not really sure because honestly I have a hard time figuring out but the first time that I remember being obsessed about my grades was in the third grade when I cheating on the spelling bee test because I was so anxious that I wouldn't do it perfectly. I explained that I was a good speller naturally and head always studied so I'm not sure why I felt the need to cheat but I knew that I felt really bad about it because I knew it was wrong to cheat. I pointed out that I was in the third grade so my brother would've been in preschool and maybe it was the first time that I was really getting some positive attention and maybe I was afraid of losing that since they spend a lot of time with my brother since he was a baby. I don't know that's just a guess. She said she wasn't sure how much time we had left but then she opened her folder and said that we had been working on that other memory and we forgot to do the future template. She laughed and said she always forgets to do Future templates. She pointed out that it was interesting that the positive believe was and I can handle difficult things sometimes and then she ask how that went for this weekend and I was like well obviously not very good. She made a comment about how it was odd because that was what we had worked on and I admitted that it just didn't feel very true and she was like well that makes sense why that didn't exactly go so well and I was like I just don't know how to explain it it just feels like it's not true and that I can handle certain situations well but definitely not others. She also pointed out that is interesting that after we had processed all of that in the perfectionism stuff came out that I ended up self sabotaging. I agreed and she asked me to just noticed that and be curious why I would self sabotage. I and up thinking about A few different things because we didn't have a ton of time. I pointed out that I wasn't sure but part of it as bad as it sounds is because without bad coping skills, it feels like it's hard to communicate that I'm actually struggling if that made sense. She said that it did and to notice. And also to see if that feels familiar. I explained that it really didn't feel that familiar because I don't think I've done that for very long. I explained how I used to have bad coping skills as a desperate Way to get any kind of response and then I realize now that maybe I'm trying to test the waters and see if people will stay but I also noticed that there is a shelflife on how long people want to deal with your shit and obviously I don't think my parents would do anything anyway if they knew I was coming bad that if I kept bad and we're to talk to my husband about it he would obviously be really upset and disappointed so I don't know where wanting to cope poorly would really fit in with that. She asked me to float it back and I said I don't know because I feel like as a kid I unintentionally push people away by being annoying. She asked me what I was doing and I said I was being annoying and she said or were you just trying to be loved and I said well yeah I guess that. She said the notice and I explained that I could see why they pushed me away because I was really annoying and makes me think of the foster kids that my mom had and I get it. I also noticed how mad I get when I think of my stupid second grade teacher who didn't put me in her class again and that I'm like well if I was really that annoying I guess, when I think back to how I was a student and I'm like I really wasn't that bad. I told her about how I had written a story about twins and that I had gone on and on and written like 15 pages even that was supposed only be like five and I was only in the second grade so I was clearly being an overachiever it but I remember that I really wanted her to like me and for her approval. She stop me there and said we have a lot of work to do LOL and I was like grade.

She said that next week she will be away on an actual vacation and I was like where are you going this time and she said Florida but it will be a real vacation and two will be going with a bunch of high school senior boys but she will be on the top floor and they will be below. And she was like I'm sure I'll have to shush them a lot that we are renting them bikes and they can go ride all over him and explore while I relax on the beach. I was like that sounds great. We scheduled for two weeks now and I headed out.

[cannedanimals]

ASHES TO ASHES

(January 7th, 1947 - December 10th, 2016) 

It’s been a year since David Bowie died. By now the funeral’s over and people are moving on - “getting over” the death of one of the world’s greatest entertainers. I’ve missed the parade of tears by a long shot. The online post-life after party’s done, but doesn’t matter, because even in the afterglow of a pretty triumphant end (I have no doubt in my mind that Blackstar’s release was planned around what happened) David Bowie will stay relevant for longer than we can understand. As long as people have feelings, people will listen to his music.

Considering how long it took for me to feel much of anything after a very long time being divorced from my own emotions, there’s no way I can possibly thank him for everything I found in his music.

The news of his passing came to me as a familiar pain. I could’ve been bleeding out there on my bed as I read the news reports on my phone. He’s a celebrity, somebody I’ve never met, and yet when I heard that he had died I was instantly visited by a grief I hadn’t felt since my own father passed away almost a decade ago. That moment in my life is inextricably connected with my discovery of David Bowie’s music - they happened simultaneously, during a long, confusing period of time where I wasn’t sure if I’d ever feel happy again.

When my dad died I was sadder than I ever felt. Watching cancer take him slowly was only the beginning of it all for me. I had zero peace for so long. We were close, and when he died during my first month of college, everything about who I was changed irreparably. I learned a lot in that lonely place, especially how important something like music can be in the process of coping with death.

I learned that if you’re sad about something, or just in a bad moment with no visible end, you might not want to say anything about how you feel to anyone. You might not want to talk at all, and you might not even need to, and I think that’s okay. Some people talk to get their feelings out, some people write, and some people make music. All of us are going to come to terms with very awful things, a lot of us already have. Because as lonely as it all can be - and the loneliness in losing someone can drive you crazy - we live in a time where human warmth can extend through anything. We can observe the world and try to find something that brings us back to it. People have incredible ways of radiating empathy; through bytes and sound waves, through pixels and scribbles, in silent ways and ways that scream out the words “you’re not alone.”

That is what I heard when I listened to David Bowie’s music for the first time - quite literally. Rock and Roll Suicide came at the tail end of the first album I (and a lot of people my age, I feel) heard first. It wasn’t really revelatory then. I didn’t burst out in tears, as if I could. Instead I just listened to it over and over and over again, and - at the time - I really couldn’t tell you why if you were to ask.

Every kid who leaves home comes to terms with the realness of their physical separation at one point or another. If you haven’t yet, then pretty soon now you’re gonna get older. I’ve learned that some would stay away for good from their old lives if they could. For me, being away at college came with an altogether different home life as well. Half of it disappeared, forever. Where I was, I couldn’t make friends. It’s not that I wasn’t friendly, or that people weren’t friendly towards me. There was such a wall between myself and my reality that even the nicest, most engaging people were only part of a very sad looking backdrop. I hid in my headphones when I walked around campus. I was a bit of a weirdo to begin with, so my behavior didn’t help me make friends, but it was what I needed to do at the time to keep myself from going off the deep end.

There are people who can wander into that weirdly lonely spot you’re in and help you feel like you’re not alone. David Bowie is the star he is not only because of his many personas, not only for being an icon in so many ways, but for having an otherworldly empathy reflected in his music. There are lots of clever things to say about him being some sort of alien thanks to Ziggy Stardust, but in reality he was so human that it almost hurts to think about. He inspired myself and others to go on and be ourselves. When we are at our worst, or even at our best, he is one of the rare figures we can look on and find something new and fascinating in. He can make stiffs like myself dance, even if it’s alone in our dorm rooms. It is that kind of inspiration that makes him legendary. To me, he embodies the very point of making art.

A lot of people believe in the five stages of grief, which I think they’re accurate enough, but I also believe in a sixth stage. There is a kind of never-ending weariness that comes from missing somebody that you’ll never see or talk to again. I don’t think it’s depression. Where depression is quantifiably unhealthy, the longing for those we’ve lost is the sort of all-too-normal thing that shapes who we are in it’s own altogether shapeless way. I can’t find the perfect word for it. It’s a wistfulness without real form, and it never leaves. This feeling is a ‘stream of warm impermanence’ in it’s own way. You don’t forget people who die. It’s especially hard to lose sight of the ones who lead particularly colorful lives..

A lot of people might disagree with me about not talking about the feelings that kind of loss stirs up. A year ago, the world went wild with it’s mourning, but I handled David Bowie’s death the same way I did my father’s. I took my time with it, and it’s taken this long for me to come to terms with what he meant to me. This works for me, don’t be ashamed if it works for you too. I don’t mean to say you should internalize your sadness to the point where you’re lying to yourself and everyone around you, though. The state of your own well-being can be a surprisingly easy thing to hide if you do it right. If you do a bad job keeping a stiff upper lip than people will know and, unless they really care for you, they’ll see you as someone who needs their space. I think most people can smell grief on you and if you’re not too close they’ll probably avoid you. But no matter how you go about alleviating your pains, just do it at your own pace and do what you can to bring stability back to your life. In the case of my father and I, it was found in the tiny things that brought happiness back. Music, writing, drawing. It was opening up to other people’s worlds, exploring them, and letting them guide me for a little bit. It’s not giving into fantasy if you’re partaking in other’s reality. If this were unhealthy, then all art would have died as well a long time ago. 

As mentioned earlier, during my first month at university, my father passed away after a long sickness. First it was lung cancer, then it was brain cancer. It all happened while I was prepping to move on with life after high school and start doing new, exciting things away from home. I couldn’t. I was skipping classes for hospice trips. Everything was fast and slow all at once, altogether out of time. We eventually learned that David Bowie, like my father, had cancer. Cancer is it's own force of nature that is by definition awful and senselessness. It kills all of our heroes; the ones singing under shining lights, and the ones who tuck us in at night - the ones with a capital H. If you've had cancer or watched it work itself on someone, then you know what I mean. And if you haven't, good. It’s the great and terrible unifier. It makes the inhuman among us human once again.

When dealing with monumental grief, you’ll sometimes find yourself absorbed in a quietness that feels very empty and breeds bad thoughts. Maybe crying is our natural fix to this, but as thinking creatures we’ve evolved beyond basic instincts. We’ve created art to kill the danger hiding in our most quiet moments. We record our thoughts and voices for these instances of forced introspection. It’s why people listen to music and look at paintings and watch movies. It might be why you’re reading this. It might be why you listen to David Bowie. And you may not have found that empathy anywhere yet. I implore you to take your eyes off the ground and look around you, listen, read. Absorb yourself in other people’s worlds and take from them what you can to make yours better.

After a long while though, I used those tiny things I took to find happiness again.  It was through big people with ideas that reach toward the infinite that I got myself to a better place. People close to me, and people rumored to be from beyond the stars. I could no longer be who I was - and with every time I lose anyone, I’m just gonna have to be a different man. Time may change me.

But no matter what I write, I don’t know if I could ever quite convey how much David Bowie’s music means to me. Despite everything that has happened, I know I’ll be okay, and I can only hope that others find their stability through means as comfortable as my own. There are some things that can be talked about forever, but when it comes to myself I’m not that complex. I can be summed up in the confines of a four minute pop song. So, I’ll end all this with the words of a valuable friend:

I’m happy - hope you’re happy too.