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raleighcarrera · 4 years ago

Text

falling

platinum | raleigh carrera x mc (cadence dorian)

a little while ago i posted about the idea of a soulmate au where the first words raleigh & cadence say to each other are tattooed on them their whole lives, and this... is that. (for @platinumweekend ❤️)

tags: @choicesarehard ; @empressazura; @emomoustache ; @natesewell ; @zigtheeortega ; @pixeljazzy ; @brycemaloliver ; @grigori-girl ; @dulceghernandez ; @bitchloveskcbaseball ; @withbeautyandrage

~10.5k words | T

the words appear in looping script on his thirteenth birthday, right on time. they curve along the inside of his bicep, innocently punctuated. what’s your name?

“you got lucky,” one of his older cousins tells him, later, when everyone in his family comes by for cake and to ooh and aah over his new tattoo, “you’ll be able to hide that with a shirt or a jacket easily.”

but raleigh sleeps shirtless every night for the next two years, even when it’s cold, so that the words are the last thing he sees with his head pillowed on his arm before he falls asleep, dreaming of the nameless, faceless person who will one day say them, wondering what their voice might sound like when they do.

ii.

she has a more difficult go of it.

being a thirteen year old girl would be miserable enough without the added pressure of the words that practically feel broadcast across her forehead, most of the time. everyone at school teases her constantly and ruthlessly: say something funny, cadence. go on. tell us a joke!

so it’s difficult not to resent the two words scrawled lazily across her collarbone and the person attached to them, especially in the mornings before school when she’s angrily rearranging her neckline and jewelry in the mirror while the bus idles outside.

very funny. she isn’t, really. she’s plenty of things -- determined and passionate and sensitive, definitely, but... no one’s ever found her particularly funny, before.

and no one seems to understand just how much the expectation of having to be funny, one day, is weighing on her, not even her parents, when she finally works up the courage to squeak out, “but how am i supposed to know what i should say?”

her mom laughs indulgently, like she’s already said something funny. her stomach sinks further.

“oh, sweetheart,” she tells her, “don’t worry, it won’t matter. you just will.”

iii.

people ask him about it. a lot.

it gets difficult to keep it a secret as things change around him, but raleigh’s careful to avoid slip-ups and paparazzi photos and he doesn’t say a word about it in interviews, even when he’s asked directly. he’s never seen without short sleeves on, at the very least, and he doesn’t even tell blair and cameron about it.

he sort of wishes he had, though, because as his life turns upside down and he adapts to a new country with a new set of rules and an industry that makes his head spin most of the time it starts to feel more and more confusing, those three words -- what’s your name?

everywhere he goes, thousands of girls blocking the street scream it at him. so how is it possible that whoever’s waiting to meet him doesn’t already know it?

and what does that mean for how the rest of his life is going to turn out?

what if all of this -- the fame and the money and the notoriety -- is fleeting, and he’s only a few short years from being completely washed up and irrelevant? what if the day he’s meant to meet his person is so far away that he’ll be completely out of the spotlight, by then, with sunset skatepark playing reunion tours and him having spent most of his life alone?

it’s a lot of pressure, for someone who’s already working their way through such a serious adjustment, and most of the time it’s dizzying, thinking about the fact that there’s someone out there who’s supposed to be perfect for him, when everyone he meets seems determined to forget every word they know other than yes, so they can suck up to him as much as possible.

his teenage years fly by in a whirlwind of mistakes and regrets. there’s things he would’ve never dreamed would come his way, like world tours and more money than he can count and so many girls who know everything about him before they even sit down to dinner, but there’s more than that, too.

there’s all the ways the industry weakens his trust until it’s gone, all the people who try to use him for what he can do for them, all the times he stumbles until he finally learns to distance himself by cultivating a persona, by leaning into all the expectations of raleigh carrera and creating something so outlandish it doesn’t hurt as much when disaster follows him around because it’s supposed to.

he watches everything that surrounds him turn fake and plastic and puts his energy only into his music, coasting on the rest. the days are less exciting than when he first joined the band at fifteen; he’s a solo artist, now, and most of the time, he’s just trying to get through.

but chaos continues to follow him and eventually his notoriety is inescapable. his first solo album is self-titled and he somehow manages to get a trademark on the word raleigh, as if the name is now more his than anything that ever belonged to the state of north carolina, and part of him sort of expects the words stamped on his arm to change, once he hits one-hundred million followers on his social channels.

they never do, though, and when he’s alone, and the veneer he’s built up for everyone else fades away, he can’t help but to be fascinated by this person who just wants an answer to the question no one else would ever dare ask him.

iv.

college isn’t exactly the fresh start she was hoping it’d be.

she was a loser in high school and things don’t get much better for her even now that she’s with ‘her people’ at a performing arts university she can barely afford, even with two part-time jobs.

shane is across the country at a proper state school with parties and a social life and lots of friends who aren’t her, and she’s failing her improv class, proving that she isn’t actually very funny at all.

boys continue to not notice her and patrons in bars continue to turn away from her one-woman performance, her old acoustic guitar the only constant in a life that feels utterly, unbelievably pointless, most of the time.

it’s like she’s drifting through the days, putting her time in at college in the hopes that it’ll fortify her for what’s next -- her big break, the discovery that’ll get her out of that shitty small town she’s been trying to escape her entire life. she writes hundreds of songs about how lost she feels and hates every single one, dreaming of a time when things might be different and she doesn’t have to second-guess every single one of her decisions.

she doesn’t have much of a love life and tries not to think about that, either.

the person on the other side of those two words stuck on her collarbone is probably looking for someone self-confident, who knows who they are and is comfortable with that. they’re probably expecting to meet someone who has their life together, who, at the very least, has a plan.

they’re probably not expecting a talentless nobody screwup like her, someone who tries as hard as she can yet never seems to make anything work.

things don’t turn around after graduation, either. sure, she manages to find an apartment in a building that’s nice enough and uses the last of her savings on the deposit and trying to furnish it, but it’s only a few weeks of trying and failing to secure a regular paying gig performing before she’s back at smoothie star again, begging for her old job back.

and there’s nothing that makes her feel more like a failure than working the same shifts she had in high school.

as she hums along to the radio on a random tuesday afternoon when the store is dead and there’s nothing to blend, she wonders what mr.-or-mrs. very funny would think if they walked in and saw her here -- twenty-three years old and flat broke, with a dead-end job and a one-bedroom apartment all she has to show for her very expensive and very useless bachelor’s degree.

that, and a notebook full of half-finished songs about relationships she could only ever dream about and an escape from the miserable small town she lives in that feels farther away with every day that passes.

she can’t imagine they’d be very impressed.

raleigh’s life gets monotonous very quickly. the music takes a backseat to the scandals and for a while there’s a predictable pattern of cause trouble, clean up image, rinse and repeat.

there are girls in between the cycles to help him pass the time. some he likes well enough and some he despises, but for the most part his management gives their recommendations and he agrees and makes awkward conversation for an hour or two over brunch until it’s time to go trash something again.

things get particularly bad after one minor cruise ship hijacking incident.

but in his defense, no one ever told him that breaking into the harbor and joy riding was a first-degree felony, worsened by the fact that he’d just so happened to crash the boat into the pier while he was trying to dock it.

at least he’d been sober.

though a monumental fuck up like this felt sort of inevitable; everyone who knew him probably figured it was only a matter of time before he went too far. how could he not when he was always chasing the next high?

still, the image rehab tour that follows is far from what he’d call enjoyable. he has to cut off all his hair and play nice at industry parties and waste time standing around being seen at charity events he winds up just cutting checks for instead of helping out at.

on top of the miserable community service comes the pr bullshit his team so loves -- dozens of tv appearances back-to-back where he’s herded around all day like cattle, in and out of green rooms with crappy coffee and bad catering.

he has no idea that showing up to be a judge on one in a million is going to change his life. hungover and running late, he barely even makes it to the taping of the semi-finals, slinking inside the concert hall in middle-of-nowhere, usa with a headache and some choice words for whoever thought this was the best way to clean up his image.

fortunately, raleigh manages to make his way inside virtually unnoticed. his phone is buzzing angrily in his pocket -- undoubtedly his manager trying to encourage him to hair and makeup or some other absurdity -- but he ignores it in favor of ducking back behind the line near the auditorium doors, only barely catching the last few words of some catty confrontation between two contestants as he goes.

as one of the girls stomps away, he sees the other’s shoulders slump from behind. “guess i’m not making any friends,” she mutters.

it’s clearly said to no one -- not even to herself, really -- yet for some reason, he can’t stop himself from responding. “where i come from, that’s a good thing.”

the girl’s shoulders straighten, but she still doesn’t turn around. “i’m not trying to succeed at the cost of others.”

raleigh smirks, leaning back against the wall beside his guitar case. “you do realize you’re at a competition show, right?”

“of course, but...” her hair ruffles with what sounds like a huff. she’s still not facing him, staring off at where the other girl she’d been talking to had run away. “that doesn’t mean i’m not rooting for everyone here to share their music with the world.”

“what a sweet sentiment,” raleigh drawls sarcastically, almost feeling a little bad for her and her naivety. this poor girl is going to be eaten alive. “it won’t last.”

her body tenses, her shoulders tightening again. he can almost see smoke start to pour from her ears before she spins suddenly on her heel to face him.

whatever sharp retort had been on the tip of her tongue gets swallowed with a blink as soon as their eyes meet. something like electricity crackles in the space between them, strengthening the invisible pull he’d felt when he first stopped behind her. instead, she only asks, “what’s your name?”

vi.

the man in front of her snorts. “very funny.”

a smile tugs at her lips. “very funny, that’s a weird name.” this is unlike her -- the quick comeback, the flirting. usually being face-to-face with a guy as good looking as the one talking to her now made her want to wither away and die, but something about the stranger standing before her sets her instantly at ease. “so, are you gonna tell me, or not?”

now it’s his turn to blink at her. a hand lifts to rub at his jaw. “huh. you really don’t know who i am, do you?”

cadence’s eyes narrow as she assess him. there is something vaguely familiar about that crooked grin, she’s sure of it.

at the very least, it’s an excuse to stare at him, and she does, moving her eyes slowly over the tattoos poking out over his jacket collar, the line of stubble on his sharp jaw, the glint of mischief in his eyes.

her helpless gaping is interrupted by a sudden shrill scream. “oh. my. god! is that raleigh carrera?!”

everything clicks at once. as a wild group of girls corner him, she realizes where she’s seen that smile before -- on just about every tabloid cover known to man, plastered all over convenience stores and the internet with headlines about his latest bender. in fact, she’s pretty sure he was just in the news for something similar -- crashing a yacht or something else ridiculous like that, something that only someone as rich as raleigh carrera could have accomplished.

then she realizes what he’d said to her, as soon as she’d turned to look him in the eyes. very funny.

her heart stops. all she can do is stare wide-eyed at him as he dispels the girls clamoring for a selfie, snapping back to the present when he waves one large hand in front of her face.

“sorry -- what?”

“i said, what’s your name? it only seems fair, now that you know mine, and all.”

“cadence,” she answers numbly, “i’m -- um, i’m used to your hair being longer.”

“cadence,” raleigh repeats, smiling at her, “so you do know who i am.”

“what do the magazines call you again? r&b’s time bomb? puerto rico’s hottest export? you’re kind of notorious.” she blinks at him, then admits, “i’ve heard your songs.”

“seen the tabloid covers too, eh?” the expression on his face suggests he’s almost proud of them.

this is surreal.

“didn’t you crash a yacht or something?” she asks, brain whirring into overdrive as she tries to process what’s happening. he doesn’t seem to have realized it yet, which gives her a moment to gather her thoughts, something that feels impossible when she can’t push the way he’d scoffed very funny out of her mind.

“or something. insurance paid out a couple million in property damage, but...” raleigh trails off, brow suddenly furrowing. he stares at her silently for a beat too long, then slowly turns a dull red. “hey, what’d you say earlier, again?”

cadence wets her dry lips, trying not to panic. stay calm, she silently coaches herself. raleigh carrera is not your long-awaited soulmate and you are not doing this in line to audition for one in a million. “i said -- what’s your name? and then you said...”

oh god, this is happening. her teeth dig into her bottom lip as she fidgets with the neckline of her top, tugging it to the side so raleigh can see the two words on her collarbone.

“very funny,” he mutters, “oh, jesus fucking christ. you can’t be serious.”

“me?” she demands, “you’re the one who --”

“next up,” calls a voice suddenly, cutting sharply through their argument, “contestant #9,276.”

her blood runs cold as she realizes that’s the number she’s wearing pinned to her shirt. she can feel herself start to sweat; how the fuck is she supposed to perform like this? she wants to throw up. why did this have to happen to her now? this was her shot -- her one fucking chance --

“hey, easy.” there’s suddenly two strong hands on either side of her shoulders, and she startles as raleigh stares at her from up close, closer than he was just a moment ago. “relax, okay? you’re gonna be fine. you’ve got this.”

“but --” she starts, then realizes her mind is racing too quickly to even articulate what she wants to say. she settles for shaking her head, eyes wide and panicked. “i can’t just -- oh my god, i’m going to throw up.”

“here,” raleigh directs, “take my guitar. prince gave it to me as a birthday present.”

prince?! she mouths hysterically to herself, as he flips the latch on his case open and pulls out the instrument. “how is this supposed to help me?”

“just trust me,” he says, giving her a gentle nudge towards the auditorium, “now go.”

she does, stumbling forward with the most expensive piece of equipment she’s ever held in her hands in her life alongside her, drawing in a deep breath as she makes her way onto the stage.

she can do this.

everything else will have to come after.

vii.

the thing is -- she’s talented. exceptionally so.

he can tell she’s a little nervous, but maybe that’s just because he’s used to looking out for that sort of thing; he could probably recognize it more easily than the average person would. it probably has nothing to do with who they are, how he notices the nuances in her body language...

her belt is impressive. her voice is stunning, clear and uniquely melodic. his guitar looks spectacular in her hands, and cadence plays it like she’s been practicing on it her entire life.

he tries his best to look nonchalant, feet kicked up onto the seat in front of him, but when she locks eyes with him from the stage he knows he hasn’t succeeded. raleigh’s breath catches, and he stares back at her, transfixed by the way her dainty hands cradle the neck of the guitar and strum the strings, how her lips purse around the long, emotional high note at the end of the song’s chorus.

she’s really very pretty.

he’d probably be lying to himself if he said it doesn’t make him a little bit jealous and uncomfortable, watching how she and avery fawn over each other when she’s finished. he’s probably a much better suited match for her, clean cut and pristine as he is.

he wonders if she’s disappointed that it’s him -- that it’s now, when she’s clearly on the cusp of something great all on her own.

it’s a lot to think about, and so he dips out of the auditorium before she finishes up, rushing outside with his heart pounding. it’s not until he’s halfway through the crumpled pack of cigarettes in his jacket pocket that raleigh starts to relax even an iota, and of course that’s when the stage door he’d left propped swings open wide and cadence’s sneakers hit the asphalt beside his boots.

“uh, you can’t just leave me with this thing,” she says, apropos of nothing, and as he stares at her he realizes she’s talking about his guitar, which she’s holding in one hand like it’s a dead fish. “this costs more than everything in my apartment combined, i’m sure.”

he shakes his head at her, laughing as his fingers flick ash from the cigarette he’s holding. “no way -- you should keep it. you two looked perfect together.”

she hesitates, looking down at the instrument again. he can see in her eyes that she’s torn; it’s obvious she knows the right thing to do is to refuse a generous gift from a stranger, but she wants to keep it, and already his mind is racing as he considers what else he could give her that would excite her like that -- a private flight, a tour of his penthouse, a million dollars.

“are you sure?” cadence asks, without looking at him, and the hesitancy in her voice makes him realize how unsure she really is. she’s the one who’s wondering if he’s disappointed in her.

he licks his suddenly dry lips and drops what’s left of his cigarette to the ground, finding he doesn’t actually need the rest of it, anymore. “positive.”

viii.

they don’t actually get to spend a lot of time together, while she’s filming. she has to focus and it seems like she’s always busy, somehow -- not that she sees raleigh very often in the first place.

the days are spent rehearsing with avery and cramming in as much mentoring as possible, and when she can pull herself away from fiona’s lessons on image to get home at a reasonable hour she collapses into bed pretty much immediately, out like a light from the whirlwind of the day and hardly even aware enough to dream.

but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t think about him. she does, especially on the rare occasions she manages to catch a glimpse of raleigh walking around in the studio, or on one memorable evening she stays late in the auditorium to bang on the piano keys of the beautiful, enviable baby grand on set and startles to find him leaning in the doorway, watching her play.

it’s all a blur and wildly difficult to process; just when she thinks she has a grip on things she remembers the private moments she’s had with raleigh and her emotions tumble to pieces again as she lets the weight of the implications of what’s going on between them crush her completely.

one moment sticks out on her as being particularly worrisome, insofar as how it bodes for the rest of her life.

it feels like something significant from the moment raleigh offers to help her warm up; they’ve hardly had a moment alone together in days and she still has absolutely no idea how she’s supposed to talk to him or what she should say, but for some reason the conversation flows easily and she hardly has to think about the (no doubt incredibly stupid-sounding) words coming out of her mouth.

“you’re going to kill it,” raleigh says finally, once they’ve worked through all the exercises in his arsenal, “you really don’t need my help.”

never in her wildest dreams did she ever imagine someone like him would say something like that to her. “you think?”

“i know it,” he answers confidently, shrugging his shoulders like it’s that simple. “and you should, too.”

there’s a moment of silence where they just stand there staring at each other, ignoring the restless murmuring of the crowd outside that’s waiting for him to slip into his seat at the judge’s table. she’s effortlessly lost in raleigh’s eyes, so fixated on the intensity of his gaze that she doesn’t realize he’s leaning in closer until it’s too late.

“insurance policy,” he mutters, before he kisses her, hands cupping her face gently.

for a split second, she stands frozen, shocked totally still. then, her brain reboots enough to propel her into motion, and cadence gets with the program enough to wind her arms around raleigh’s waist and pull him closer and kiss him back, until her heart’s lurched up into the throat she’d just been warming up, pounding relentlessly.

they make out until the roar of the crowd is deafening -- until it’s impossible not to acknowledge it any longer.

of course raleigh’s a life-ruiningly good kisser. why wouldn’t he be? why should any of this be easy?

it’s only a few simple touches, but raleigh’s mouth leaves her dizzy and lightheaded when she’s supposed to be concentrating on performing, and, independently of the way she’s blinking at him in stupid shock, cadence already knows she’ll never be able to kiss anyone else ever again without thinking about him.

“i have to get out there,” she gasps between desperate presses of their lips against each other, grasping ineffectively at his clothes while his fingers tug her hair out of shape.

“be late,” he suggests, “it always works for me.”

but she’s not him. she’s not like him -- they have nothing in common. they come from different worlds; they’re two completely opposite people.

and yet every minute with raleigh is like coming up for air after being underwater for years, like the knots of guilt and shame and awkward embarrassment she’s carried around for her entire life without understanding why she has them are slowly starting to undo themselves, unlaced by his careful fingers.

they make it out there. eventually.

before she knows it, confetti’s raining down from the ceiling and falling all over her, and she locks eyes with raleigh from across the room to find his lips pulled into a genuinely affectionate grin -- lips that she’d just kissed for the first time a fucking hour ago and, seriously, what is her life now -- his eyes bright and excited.

things just keep getting weirder and weirder, but the way they’re beaming at each other like idiots in a room full of thousands, broadcast on national television, too, makes her think things might be pretty great, too.

ix.

it sort of takes them a long time to getting around to talking about it -- the soulmate thing.

it’s not that he doesn’t try. he does, but she’s got a lot going on, these days: a big move and a new record deal and days filled with songwriting and nights out being seen. he’s still on his image cleanup tour, while she’s at it, so his fake smile stays fixed on his face throughout another boring week of restaurant openings and charity events and talkshow appearances before he finally gets the chance to spend some time with her again.

they text here and there, but nothing pans out until the stars align and they manage to slip out of the back door of a nightclub unnoticed together after a night of dancing too close for the comfort of her publicist while avery and the others cause a commotion at the front entrance to distract the press.

she goes back to his penthouse with him. he can’t remember the last time he brought a girl back to his apartment just to talk, and especially not one who spent the better part of the evening in a sparkly minidress grinding against him.

but here they are.

“so -- how’s the city treating you?” raleigh asks, pouring them both a drink he doesn’t want from the bar cart in the corner of the room for something to do with his hands.

cadence shrugs from where she’s perched on the edge of his sofa, tugging at the hem of her dress. “good, i guess. it’s honestly all kind of overwhelming.”

“yeah,” he nods, passing her one of the glasses in his hands and taking a seat on the ottoman in front of her, close enough to see her face in perfect clarity but still maintaining a distance that he hopes is respectful. “i know what you mean. when i first came here after joining sunset skatepark everything felt so... huge.”

“totally,” cadence answers quickly, nodding in a way that’s almost aggressive. “i mean, there’s so much pressure to deliver an album right away, but i want it to be perfect, and the studio is so different from, like, writing songs in my room at home, and i... i guess i feel kind of homesick, but -- not for my hometown. i hated that place.” there’s hesitancy in her gaze when she asks, “do you know what i mean?”

“yeah,” raleigh says again stupidly, because the truth is -- he knows exactly what she means. cadence has just articulated something he could never quite put into words better than he’d even thought the sentiments to himself. “it’s like... nostalgia for something you don’t even want.”

“exactly,” she breathes emphatically, and then they’re kissing again, and she’s in his lap on the ottoman and he definitely brought her here to talk, for sure, but is it really so terrible if they get a little sidetracked on the way to their destination?

well -- they wind up making out for hours. so, there’s that.

it’s not part of the plan but it’s a hell of a side quest, memorizing the shape and feel of her with his hands while her lips pull every last bit of breath from his lungs, until he’s lightheaded and dizzy in a way no other girl has ever made him, before. it’s to the point where when he finally finds it within himself to push her away, he’s uncharacteristically nervous -- something that’s never happened to him before, not even on the night he lost his virginity.

“i really did ask you over to talk,” he says, voice hoarse.

cadence licks her lips and then beams at him, eyes sparkling. “i know.” she shuffles delicately back onto the couch, lingering in his lap for only a moment before pulling away entirely. he stuffs his hands under his thighs to stop himself from reaching out for her again. “sorry i haven’t been around more.”

“you don’t have to apologize.” raleigh shakes his head. “i should be apologizing to you, i feel like... i should be the one who’s around, to help you with all of this. or at least -- i want to be. i don’t know if i’ll be any good at it.”

he blinks, surprised by his own honesty. he hadn’t meant to say all of that, but the words came up before he was cognizant of them and now they’re out there, and there’s no taking them back -- especially with the way she’s looking at him, all soft and sweet and happy.

“well, you don’t have to be good at it,” cadence murmurs, reaching out for his wrists and tugging his hands free so she can interlock their fingers effortlessly. they fit together like puzzle pieces. “you just have to be you.”

her budding relationship with one of the biggest names in r&b doesn’t have much time to bud at all before it’s rudely plucked from the plant and stepped on.

she finds herself blinking at fiona in confusion as the words take some time to process. “you want me to do what?”

xi.

raleigh balks at his manager, shaking his head emphatically. “no,” he spits out, “absolutely not.”

xii.

“cadence, it’s not a big deal,” fiona tells her, very nearly rolling her eyes. “everyone does it. you go on a few dates, play up the relationship for some photos, social media eats it up -- boom, you’re a star.”

“i don’t know,” she answers hesitantly, mind drifting back to the photographers that have already been following her around, screaming about avery when she ducks into the car with him. things with raleigh are... new, and complicated, and do they really need to add public scrutiny into the mix as well? “i just don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“it’s a great idea,” fiona sighs, shaking her head. “all our focus groups agree. the label thinks it’s best, what with your single taking so long to put out.” she opens her mouth to protest -- it’s not like she’s dragging her feet on purpose -- but barely has a second to get a word out before fiona continues, “besides, raleigh does this all the time.”

her teeth bite at her bottom lip uncertainly. “he does?”

“of course. chantal clearwater? she was a pictagram model when they met, and now she’s opening shows at paris fashion week. it’s just business.”

it’s not, though. it could never be just anything, for reasons no one else knows about except the two of them, for reasons she’ll never tell. “well... what did raleigh say about it?”

xiii.

“i said no, frank.” he’s annoyed, now, and his manager knows it, raleigh’s arms folded across his chest and his eyes set into a glare. “n. o. no.”

“and i hear you, but is it really the end of the world? she’s exactly what we’re going for, and i know you already get along --”

“which is exactly why i don’t want to do this. so pick someone else. anyone else.” he’s not going to let his label turn her into one of the girls he has to be seen with for fake photos and mutually beneficial positive press.

for so many years, he’s watched people fake feelings and use each other -- willingly participated in the using himself, too, more times than he can count. he never cared about any of it before.

but being with cadence doesn’t feel fake, and he doesn’t ever want it to. and he knows that if he agrees to this, everything he enjoys about spending time with her will disappear in favor of the ugly, plastic decay that’s eaten away at so many of his personal and professional relationships before. organic, genuine time with her will become strolls near celebrity hotspots, angling just right to help the cameras get the perfect shot. he’ll show up to support her at shows because her publicist called him, and their time together will become some manufactured narrative meant to push their labels’ agenda, until six months down the line they don’t even recognize themselves or what might’ve been if they’d done things a different way.

“look, there isn’t anyone else. her team’s already agreed to it, and i’ve got brunch set up for sunday. all you have to do is play nice for two fucking months, raleigh. is that so impossible for you?”

yes. already he feels a deep-seated desire to go somewhere and break something, to tear through the flower beds in central park with his motorcycle and wink at the cameras when they catch up to him.

instead, he storms out of the office he’s in, and into the sunlight, tugging the hood on his jacket up and melting into the crowd on the corner so he can be as anonymous as possible when he picks up his phone and calls cadence.

“hey raleigh,” she chirps as soon as she picks up, sounding far too cheerful for someone who’s likely had an equally as miserable early morning meeting on a friday. “guessing you heard the news?”

“can’t i just call you to say hi?” he grumbles, ducking his head as he strolls through the intersection with the mob of people crowded along fifth ave, turning down the next side street so he’s alone again, with no one following, just like that.

“well, you can,” she teases, and some of the anger he’s carrying around with him fades, dissipating into nothing and evaporating like smoke. “but you’re not.”

“no, i’m not,” he agrees with a sigh, shaking his head. “you sound surprisingly cool with it, though.”

“should i not be?” cadence laughs, but he can detect a thread of nervousness in her tone. “i already want to hang out with you. we have the same friends and work in the same industry. we’re... probably going to go on dates anyway, so... how hard can this be?”

god. she has absolutely no idea. part of him thinks it’d be cruel to burst her bubble, but he should warn her, shouldn’t he?

she sounds so optimistic about it, though. it’s hard to feel anything but hopeful when her voice turns up like that at the end. in the back of his mind, there’s a voice that’s not his suggesting maybe this time, things will be different.

surely he knows better than to think something as ridiculous as that, though, right?

“well, i guess it’ll be interesting, at least,” he muses, slowing his steps by the entrance to the subway.

he’s going to lose his signal just as soon as he heads underground, and he’s not quite ready for that, yet.

xiv.

time with raleigh flies by.

it doesn’t feel like they’re fake-dating -- they do everything she hopes he’d want to do with her anyway, like go out to eat at fancy restaurants and take walks through the park and bounce melodies for songs off of each other, facetiming late at night from their apartments or on the days he visits her and micah in the studio.

he’s by her side for the release of her first single, and her first music video, and through it all, raleigh plays the role of the doting partner perfectly, holding her purse on the red carpet and feeding her paella at a strategically-placed outdoor table and fetching her coffee order when she’s too busy to stop writing for even just five minutes.

in the blink of an eye, it’s time to put out her album -- just like that.

raleigh’s perfectly charming through that process, too. he shows up on time, says all the right things, and keeps a drink in her hand all evening long, so that when she’s finally done making the rounds and can enjoy herself after the entertainment and the networking and the schmoozing she’s giggly and touchy, doing her best to steal him away from the crowd.

“what were your other relationships like?” she asks, half expecting him to brush her off, though he’s always indulged her before. they’ve never really gotten this personal. “fake or... otherwise.”

“they’ve all been fake,” he shrugs, “and i can say with confidence that you’re the best one i’ve ever had.”

“really?” cadence smiles, chin propped up on her hand as she leans over the bar. “be honest. what did you really think, when you realized it was me?”

“what?” he asks, pushing the empty rocks glass in his hands around on the bar top, “you mean this thing?” he gestures at his arm, covered in expensive, custom tom ford, and the tattoo laying innocently beneath it.

“uh huh,” she confirms, “‘cause i was totally like oh shit.”

raleigh laughs, loud and wild, the sound swallowed up by the noise of the party around them. no one nearby is paying them even an ounce of attention, and it’s fun, to be anonymous at her own party, invisible to everyone in the room except for him. “i can imagine. i wouldn’t want to be stuck with me either.”

cadence shakes her head -- that’s not what she’d meant. but before she can protest, he rolls his glass between his palms and thoughtfully continues, “i guess i was a little surprised. it felt like i’d been waiting forever to meet you, so part of me was like, fuck, we’re doing this now? and i never thought it’d be someone so...”

“boring?” she suggests, eyebrows arching when raleigh’s expression immediately twists into one of disagreement, his nose scrunching up with distaste.

“no,” he huffs, “so... good, i guess.” she stares at him as he reaches for one of the waiting tequila shots on the bar, pulling it away from the line he’d set up for the crowd he’d been with before she’d tugged him to the side to talk, leaving the drinks untouched. raleigh knocks the shot back -- no salt, no lime. he’s had twice as many drinks as she has, and she’s definitely feeling them -- she has no idea how he’s even still upright, no worse for wear other than a few slurred words here and there. “but you just are. it’s like every song i’ve ever written was about you, and i just didn’t know it yet.”

the noise of the party fades in favor of the pounding of her heart, loud like a kick drum in her ears. she bites her lip and stares at him, watching as raleigh shakes his head at himself, dazed. “you okay?” she asks quietly, leaning in a little across the bar.

raleigh’s quiet for so long she has to wonder whether or not he actually heard her. just as she clears her throat and opens her mouth to repeat herself even louder, he nods, reaching across the bar and squeezing her hand before dragging her back over to the line of tequila shots waiting for them to enjoy.

the night is a blur after that, and there’s patches of the evening that are fuzzy in her memory the next morning, but she knows she’ll never forget the gentle kiss goodnight raleigh gives her when he helps her stumble into the car back to her apartment at dawn.

xv.

things go really well, until they don’t.

they have a blissful six months together with more fun than he’s ever had with anyone. slowly, he learns every single thing about cadence and returns her openness with honesty of his own -- honesty that feels strange and unfamiliar but weirdly thrilling, in a way, made easier every time one of his stories pulls a laugh or smile from her.

it seems unnatural, having a honeymoon period that goes on for so long. in the entire time they’re dating, he doesn’t destroy a single thing -- doesn’t even want to, which is the weirdest part of it all.

there are some moments that catch him completely off guard. more than a few times, he hardly even recognizes himself, she turns him into such a different person.

he doesn’t hate it, though -- just the opposite, in fact. raleigh realizes he’s really starting to like the carefree, far from jaded person he is when he’s with her, though it only hits him for real when he’s watching her storm away from him on liberty island, eyes fixed on the angry sway of her hips.

he stews on it on the long ride back to his penthouse; the game had, admittedly, been starting to wear on him. but he’d gone along with it because it was supposed to benefit her -- he’d agreed to the stupid public breakup and following the rules and not seeing cadence in public for the foreseeable future because it was what she wanted, and -- frankly, it felt like a stupid fucking decision.

not that it lasts long. he starts texting her just as soon as he’s done washing electralite out of his hair and doesn’t make it more than twenty minutes when they first see each other again at the moda gala before he’s sneaking off with her, ducking under the velvet rope that demarcates the planetarium as ‘off limits’ with her hand tucked neatly in his.

“maybe this is better,” cadence muses between sips of her drink, her eyes on one of the stupid glass exhibits he couldn’t possibly care less about. “now we can just be together -- no pressure. our relationship is ours again.”

their relationship. is that what this is? they’ve spent a lot of time talking about who they are and what they like and don’t like, kissing and touching and holding hands. throughout it all, he’s done his best not to buy into the ‘soulmate’ bullshit too heavily, but over the last few months it’s been hard to deny that there’s a reason he was meant to meet her, that she’s been changing him from the inside out.

“what’s on your mind?” she asks, turning towards him with an open look of genuine curiosity on her face, like she really wants to know.

“it’s nothing,” raleigh answers at first, reflexively, like he has so many times before. no one has ever really wanted to know. but cadence’s eyebrows arch, and she waits, patiently silent, and then the words tumble out of him. “it’s just that -- my whole life, i’ve watched other people use each other. so many people are just interested in the concept of celebrity status. so i played the game. never trusting anyone.”

he shrugs. a hand lifts to rub his jaw, and he looks back to meet her gaze just in time to see the little smile playing at her lips, like she already knows what he’s about to say. “but it’s different, with you. you make me not want to be that person anymore. when i’m with you, it’s the only time i feel anything real.”

“raleigh,” she murmurs, her expression flickering before her face does something that cracks his chest wide open. her eyes go all shiny and sparkly and her cheeks crease with a grin, and the way she laughs is so ridiculously joyful the hand he has stuffed in his pocket curls into a fist to stop him from doing something stupid. “i feel the same way. i just... this whole thing, i know it doesn’t always -- work out, but... with you i really want it to. i’ve never felt this way before about anyone, and i think...”

there’s a pause as her lips purse thoughtfully, and then she says the words that make it impossible for him to do anything but close the distance between them and kiss her over and over again: “i think even without this tattoo it’d be you, anytime, anywhere.”

xvi.

being raleigh carrera’s (real, confirmed, 100%-authentic) girlfriend feels almost too good to be true.

raleigh is... everything she never knew she wanted in a boyfriend, wrapped up into one tall, dark and handsome package, with a loud, goofy laugh and a deep, sexy voice that sends a shiver down her spine whenever his mouth so much as lingers near her ear for too long.

it turns out that, despite their differing status in the industry and her initial assumptions that they came from two completely different worlds, they’re actually on the same page about pretty much everything. she finds that the pressure of the word she’d held in such high regard for so long -- soulmate -- disappears entirely where he’s concerned because being with raleigh is just fun.

there’s motorcycle rides and boat trips and hours up late talking about everything and nothing; facetime calls with his mom and shopping trips where the stores are kept open late for them so they can shop alone, in an empty boutique, like every teen movie she’d ever watched growing up.

there’s late nights in the studio and either of their apartments where they both noodle around on their guitars and improvise half-hearted duets, content to just work in the same orbit as each other for as long as possible.

raleigh’s texting one night on the couch in her living room when she plucks out the melody to who i’ll be on her old acoustic, sitting on the floor in front of the tv.

he looks up before the first verse is over. “what’s that one? it sounds good.”

“oh -- just a song i wrote in college,” cadence hums, already downplaying it as she lifts her shoulder in a shrug. “i got stuck, never finished it. ellis made me sell the progress for some other writer to finish.”

he frowns, pushing up onto his elbow. his phone is tossed carelessly somewhere among the couch cushions. “why?”

“because i was taking too long with the odyssey,” she sighs. “it was kind of my only option. it’s weird, though -- thinking about someone singing something that was so personal to me.”

“play me what you had so far,” he says, and so she does, hesitating for only a second before strumming the chords, singing the lines she had slowly.

when she’s done, she looks up to find that raleigh’s slid to the edge of the couch, elbows on his knees as he leans in as close as he can get with the coffee table in his way. “okay -- that was beautiful. you should finish it.”

she shakes her head, setting her guitar down. “i can’t. they already sold it. and even if i wanted to... i don’t know how it ends.”

raleigh’s legs spread in invitation and she stands to walk around to the couch, slipping into his lap and leaning back against his chest. his hands are tender as he rubs them across her shoulders, sliding up her back before one lifts to brush a lock of hair back behind her ear, his pointer finger pushing her glasses up her nose affectionately. “maybe one day you can write something else with the same theme,” he suggests, and she tries her best to smile even though it feels like a dream lost, somehow -- a ridiculous thought, given that she pretty much has everything she ever wanted, but the way she feels all the same.

“maybe,” she sighs, the kiss he drops to her forehead a bandaid on a wound that’s been doing its best to heal for what feels like her entire life.

xvii.

he’s never brought a date to the vinyls before.

there’s been plenty of after parties he’s stumbled out of with a girl on his arm, sure, but cadence is the first person to sit by his side during the ceremony, and he’s surprised by how much he likes having her next to him.

then again, he’s self aware enough to realize he’d like being pretty much anywhere, with her.

still -- the awards are a lot less boring with her around to kiss and stroke his hair and make snide commentary about the rest of the attendees with, and when she squeezes his hand goodbye to rush backstage and get ready for her performance he misses her instantly.

what happens next makes him endlessly regretful of the fact that he’s not backstage with her.

he rushes around just as soon as he can, pushing his way through security and frantically scrambling technical assistants to find her exactly where he thought he might, between ellis knight and fiona, looking lost with her head in her hands.

she seems equal parts broken and pissed in a way that tugs at his heartstrings and makes him a little bit proud. raleigh shoves through the crowd to get to her and slips an arm around her waist. he’s only caught the tail end of the conversation they’re all having, but he knows enough to know that “you can’t bench her. that’s bull.”

ultimately, though, it doesn’t matter how much they stomp their feet. she’s under contract, their hands are tied, and he walks away seething at the unfairness of it all, this shitty industry that’s turned on her when all she ever wanted to do was make music.

she cries in the car back to her apartment to pack her things. there’s no way he’s letting her go home to iowa or idaho or indiana without him, and he barks at his team over the phone until they agree to move his appearances around so he can make that happen, his free hand clasped tightly in hers until he physically has to let her go so she can unlock her front door with trembling fingers.

cadence tosses clothes haphazardly onto the bed and he silently and precisely moves to folds each piece for her, until she gives up and sinks down onto the edge of the mattress, defeated.

wide eyes filled with tears lock onto his, and he watches her bottom lip wobble before she says, “you really don’t have to do this. come with me, i mean. i know i messed up, and -- you have so much else going on. i don’t expect you to --”

“i’m coming,” he states firmly, setting the sweatpants in his hand down and stepping closer to her, sitting beside cadence on her bed. “what happened tonight was fucked up, cadence -- it shouldn’t have happened at all. i’m not going to let you go through this alone.”

“but --”

“but nothing,” he says, and before the words have even left his mouth she’s falling into his arms with a soft sound of gratitude, mashing her face into his chest as she sniffles.

“thank you,” cadence mumbles, sounding so unsure of herself it makes him wonder if she’s ever had anyone show up for her when it mattered most before, or if that’s yet another thing they unfortunately have in common.

xviii.

raleigh tries his best to cheer her up, but it’s still hard, feeling like she’s let the entire world down. her fans. herself.

there’s something embarrassing about showing raleigh her apartment back home and the person she was before she met him -- all the places she felt most uncertain and where she experienced some her worst self-doubt, the room that still has the smoothie star apron hung up in the closet.

but there’s also something exciting, about being totally off the grid with him. no one knows they’re here and there’s no paparazzi waiting to snap photos of them -- especially given the fact that they don’t leave her building for the first three days she spends moping around while raleigh orders all the takeout he can get his hands on.

it sort of reminds her of when they first met, and there was nothing to do but learn about each other, though now there’s a familiarity to him she relies on, a unique raleigh-ness that feels more like home than this shitty apartment ever did.

still, she struggles, and the weight of the world doesn’t let up until zadie shows up with her fanmail and avery does his best to make her smile with a beach trip and some fancy new toys and a day in the sun with a drink in her hand.

eventually it’s just her and raleigh again, out by the fire after everyone else has gone to bed. her stomach is full of s’mores and her cheeks hurt from smiling for the first time in weeks, and it’s a shock when she realizes she feels content, even after everything that’s happened -- almost as though things will all work out for the better no matter what happens next.

“oh my god,” she gasps suddenly, cutting off what raleigh had been saying as her eyes light up and she hastens to stand. “i’ve gotta -- i need to -- oh my god.”

just like that, she knows how her song ends.

recording it is a process, but raleigh calls in some favors and gets them studio time and agrees to be featured on the song even though she knows he’s still working through a sound change that he feels unsure about.

but it means a lot to her, having him crammed in the booth at her side, singing into the same mic. they sound almost unbelievably good together, too, raleigh’s harmonies on the words that finally resolve that lost feeling she’s been harboring her entire life making something deep within her wriggle up happily, wagging its proverbial tail.

the fact that raleigh remains by her side throughout the entire fight with her label, the long nights of despair agonizing over what her next move is going to be and even the moment where they decide to break into indio, of all places, means more to her than she can ever say. she feels markedly less nervous about the entire thing every time she turns her head to the side and sees him, right there next to her -- right where he’s been this entire time -- smiling encouragingly and squeezing her hand hard in his.

though it’s not until they’re up at the top of the ferris wheel that she realizes how precious what she has really is. it’s not until he looks her dead in the eye and says, with that same soft earnestness he’s awarded her since they first met at the one in a million auditions that feel quite literally like a hundred years ago, “cadence, everything you want is on the other side of fear. and i want you to have everything you want,” that she truly understands that’s what between them is special and rare.

not because of any tattoos, or any preconceived destiny. not because of who they are and their status and the fact that people take pictures of them when they’re out in public together.

but because of this -- all these real moments of genuine connection they’ve been fortunate enough to share since fate threw them into each other’s paths.

“raleigh, i love you.” the words are said easily, not a moment’s hesitation behind them.

just before she crosses over in the cart to kiss him until they’re both breathless, raleigh gifts her the brightest smile he has and says, “i love you, too.”

xix.

the night is a blur from the moment he first takes the stage with his old bandmates to when he finally finds himself alone with cadence in a rundown old motel a few miles out from the festival in the desert.

he can’t recall ever being so happy, so of course he doesn’t remember every agonizing detail of the evening, though he does know he doesn’t feel the need to have a single beer with cadence around, twirling barefoot in the grass and giggling when she leads him up to the room they’ve borrowed.

afterwards, when they’re sitting on the roof together in the blanket they dragged off the bed, he reflects on the wild year they’ve had with her in his arms, fingertips tracing the delicate very funny scrawled across cadence’s collarbone.

he feels... free. completely liberated. like there’s absolutely nothing and no one that can get to him, now, like he’s untouchable, like he doesn’t care about a single thing that happens after today and how perfect things have been.

“i think i’m actually freer than i’ve ever been,” he muses, where his lips are pressed into her hair, “i can take my sound in any direction i want.”

“i’m so happy for you, raleigh,” cadence returns genuinely, tilting her head back so he can see her upside-down smile.

his arms tighten around her. “i’m so excited for what you’re gonna be doing, too. i’m excited for us.”

“yeah,” she sighs, “who knows what’s next, right? now that ellis let me out of my deal...”

he can hear the thread of worry undercutting the words. he shakes his head, hands rubbing up and down her arms. “you can worry about that tomorrow. for tonight, just enjoy the comeback. what you did out there was amazing.”

“what we did,” she corrects, and he blinks up the stars as he realizes she’s right -- they’re a we now. he’s part of a we again, after being on his own for so long.

the phrases bounce around in his head, unfamiliar and foreign. me and my girlfriend, he thinks to himself, cadence and i. we’re going to be late. we’ll be away that weekend. we just started watching that show. we, we, we.

“what we did was amazing,” raleigh amends, the words slow to come out but feeling right all the same. “whatever we do next will be amazing.”

“absolutely,” cadence confirms, with conviction, like it’s something she believes wholeheartedly.

and though he has no idea what to expect or what it might be, a large part of him is inclined to agree with her -- she’s been right about everything else so far.

xx.

one year later, she’s finishing a set in berlin, the last stop on a sprawling european tour that had taken she, avery, micah and raleigh across the continent for dozens of performances to sold-out crowds of thousands screaming her lyrics back to her.

if her contract with overknight had been a dream come true, signing to wilshere records is heaven incarnate. cadence’s trip through the u.k. with her new label is proof enough, and the chance to meet new fans with new stories to share that she could connect with is one she’s taken to with enthusiasm, the experience made all the sweeter by the fact that her favorite people get to be by her side throughout it all.

berlin’s crowd is one of the best, and she fully expects to end the tour on a high note, head banging to the last few notes of ‘knockout’ before raleigh’s planned entrance for the last song of the night, so they can sing the duet that’s closed out every show they’ve had on the tour together.

when he struts out with his guitar, waving and grinning at the crowd, she can’t stop herself from smiling stupidly at him, just like she does every time she sees him join her on stage, every time she realizes that this is their life, that this is something they do every night, now.

though her grin falters when raleigh pauses in front of his microphone and asks, “berlin, do you mind if i talk a little bit before i start the song? no? cool, because i’ve got an important question to ask.”

her eyes widen. cadence’s mouth drops open and doesn’t close throughout the entire speech raleigh gives her, even though thousands of people in the crowd are filming every moment of her gaping like an idiot, snapping close-ups of her shocked face.

the arena practically vibrates with screams when he drops to his knee, popping the box in his hand open so she can see the giant diamond ring nestled inside of it.

“so?” raleigh asks, and cadence can just barely hear him in her in-ears with the way her heart is beating frantically up into her throat, as wild as the crowd’s raging around them and then some. “whaddya say, babe? will you marry me?”

as if the answer could ever be anything but yes. she nods, laughing as she launches herself into his arm for a kiss that’s too grand to be given on stage, though that’s hardly going to stop her -- not tonight, at least. tonight, she’s okay with the whole world watching their every move, just one more time.

“oh, i don’t know if it’s going to fit,” raleigh jokes as the ring slides easily onto her left hand, amping up the theatrics for the fans still watching them avidly, even up in the cheap seats.

cadence rolls her eyes playfully at him. “very funny,” she praises, and the grin he offers her in return is so loving -- so knowing, with the secret that only the two of them share and every weird piece of their history included in it -- that it takes everything she has to shove him away so they can perform instead of dragging him down to the floor to kiss him over and over again.

clumsily, she flubs a few notes of love who i’ll be on her guitar. from across the stage, between the bridge and the chorus, raleigh jeers, “someone hasn’t learned to play with the extra weight on their left hand, yet, i see,” and when she flips him off while belting out the last lines of the verse, his raucous laughter is all the harmony the final few bars of the song needs.

#platinumweekend #platinum #raleigh carrera #raleigh carrera x mc #cadence dorian #raleigh x mc #raleigh x cadence #myfic #long post #well. this sure took me a long time DFJGHDFJHGDFJKGH so i hope you guys like it !! it was kind of a new style for me 😳

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suekre · 4 years ago

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So ive followed you a VERY long time (like from the deviantart days lmao) and i only just realised that you were talking about ocd in that post. Just wanted to let you know that i have ocd as well and god it is exhausting and i know exactly how you feel! I finally start therapy for it in 2 weeks. Pls know that i love your art and you very much and appreciate everything you create and share with us. All the best!! X

Hey you, I know you! Thank you for coming to my inbox and sharing this with me, I appreciate that so much. :) I am SUPER happy for you that you are about to get the help you need, that is awesome. I wish I could have had it at the time!

(And oh boy, the good old deviantart days, haha! Always happy to have my longtime followers around! :D)

OCD is exhausting indeed. People who aren’t affected can’t imagine what a nightmare it is. I, personally, am more prone to intrusive thoughts than actual obsessive-compulsive behavior. When people hear „OCD“, they usually think of obsessive hand washing or „leaving out every black tile while walking through a kitchen“ or so, while it can manifest in other ways. I didn’t know back then. I just thought I was going completely crazy at the time. I think I mentioned my disorder at times but I never actually openly talked about my own experiences (where I come from, mental disorders are a big NO NO, because it’s all in your head, just pull yourself together, other people are ACTUALLY suffering, it’s just dumb thoughts, you just need to think positive, y’know).

I kinda feel like doing it now. Just to get it out, and also to occupy my brain and hands and hey, maybe someone else can pick this up and find themselves in my own experiences. I sure know how relieved I was when I found out I wasn’t alone with my what I thought was a ‚Very Weird, Unique and Niche Problem‘.

I gotta admit first - I’m doing much better nowadays. Even my worst days, as horrible as they may feel at the time, do in no way compare to the hell I went through in the second half of 2015. I have come a long way since my last (and so far worst... omg, oof, I hope there won’t be another) episode of intrusive thoughts. But, oh boy, was it intense. It was the absolute worst time of my life, ever. I’m not writing this to scare anyone. Anyone who is familiar with this, will know how bad it is and anyone who can’t relate at all won’t feel affected anyway and will maybe even think something along the lines of „What the fuck?!“. I get it. It DOES sound crazy.

I have always been an overthinker. I always needed more validation and reassurance than other people around me and for the longest time I had no idea why that was. It was usually subtle - always kinda there but never strong enough to actually affect my life in a negative way. I just felt off at times, and not always super good. But I was generally ok, I could always manage.

Until that one episode that changed my life forever. I know that sounds dramatic but, even though I am in a good place nowadays, it sure DID change my life. I was 31, I lived together with my then-boyfriend and I still remember the exact date. Friday, July 24th, 2015. I remember the exact moment when my entire mind collapsed. It’s so weird, it literally happened from one second to the other. I am not making this up to sound more dramatic, it was a matter of seconds.

I was on my way home after work and I felt… restless and stressed. It felt good to get off work (it was my first full time job and... it didn’t go well, to put it nicely) but I was no longer really looking forward to my week off, and our trip to our favorite Open Air the following week. I picked up some dinner on my way, I came home, and I saw my boyfriend in the middle of the living room, he was making some preparations for our upcoming trip. When I saw him, tall and handsome and smiling at me, I smiled back but inside I felt like crying. My smile was fake. Kissing him felt weird, and also fake. And all of a sudden, there it was. The life changing thought:

„I don’t love him anymore.“

A simple thought. I had weird thoughts before, like anyone does, but they never had any greater impact on me. This time, though, that one thought knocked me off my feet. Not literally, I had turned into a pillar of salt somehow. This was the Perfect Man Of My Dreams (at least that was what I thought back then). The man I wanted to spend my life with, the man who made me happy every day! How could that even be, how could I even think something like that?

I felt even more restless. I didn’t tell him, of course. When he asked how my day was, I put on my fake smile again and said it was okay. We ate our dinner (although I had instantly lost any appetite), and I kept looking at him and the thoughts... just kept coming back.

You don’t love him anymore. What if you don’t love him anymore?

On repeat. It was awful. I just couldn’t shake them off.

It’s the stress, I tried to tell myself. You’re overworked. It’ll be good, you just need some rest.

But I couldn’t relax. My heart was racing, my blood was pumping. I didn’t know what was going on. I begged him to leave his work undone and take me out for an after work drink and he agreed. All the time, the thoughts wouldn’t leave my mind. I didn’t want to think them, but they were merciless, they just kept coming back. I felt so helpless.

A few drinks later, I had calmed down a bit, at least so much that I could stand to look at my BFs face again without feeling guilty. There you go, I said to myself, not quite convinced, you’ll be good. It’s already wearing off. When we crawled into bed later, I was tired and relaxed (and tipsy) enough to sleep and convinced that this was just a little glitch, that things would be just fine in the morning.

When I woke up, I felt exhausted. My heart was racing... and the thoughts came back IMMEDIATELY.

You don’t love him anymore. You gotta leave him.

What. The. HELL!? Why are these thoughts still a thing? Why are they still there? Why do they keep coming back?

I kept trying to push them away but the more I tried, the more intense they became. As if they tried to spite me. I started losing focus on everything else around me, the world slowly started to blur. It was just Me And My Thoughts from here. I tried my best to hide my state, and I think I managed for a while, but I felt like a robot any time I talked to someone. When people would pick up on my confusion, I usually brushed their concerns off. It’s nothing, I’m good.

I mean... how do you even tell someone that you just. can’t. stop. thinking. about whether you still love your boyfriend or not? According to the world, that is something you “just feel and know” after all. Except that I didn’t. I had no clue. I couldn’t feel anything. But, according to the world, that was perfectly normal, too. “Honeymoon phase is over at some point, babe. That’s everyday life, you grow comfy, it’s no longer a flash of feelings every day, you know that. You guys have been together for a while after all, what did you expect?!” ... what I felt didn’t feel like comfy everyday life either, though. Comfy everday life shouldn’t come with high key anxiety, sleepless nights and a loss of appetite at any lived second. If that was comfy everyday life, I sure didn’t want it.

So, what do you do when you have no clue about something? Right! Google! Go and ask the world! “How do you know that you still love your partner?”, “Is the love gone?” ... I spent hours, DAYS doing that, but no answer I found was remotely statisfying (or maybe it was for a minute, but the reassurance never lasted long) and I felt that those articles didn’t actually understand what I was asking in first place. I would spend every day like that. Permanently asking myself the same questions, analyzing myself, testing if the Big Feels for the man had decided to come back... nah, not really. Maybe NOW? If I just look at him close enough?! ... maybe if I squint a little?! Fuck, still nothing! Niente! Nada! I am a horrible person, aaah!

(Our open air trip was an emotional disaster by the way, I felt horrible all the time, and the permanent rain didn’t help. -3/10, do not recommend).

If I had known at the time that I wouldn’t spend just a few days but (more or less) six months with this shit... oof. I was already exhausted after those few days.

Over the course of the next weeks I stopped eating almost entirely. I just couldn’t. This permanent tight anxiety knot in my stomach made me want to throw up at the mere thought of food. At my worst point I weighed 138 lbs (63 kg), at 6 ft 1 (1,85 m). I often joked about how I had almost reached runway model standard. I was sick, I was weak, I was scared, but I just couldn’t eat and the bits I DID force myself to eat were burned almost right away by my crippling anxiety. (I still have clothes from that time, and I sometimes beat myself up for no longer fitting into them before I remember that I should NEVER fit into them EVER again.)

Instead I smoked a pack a day. I hardly got any sleep and when I did, it wasn’t relaxing. Always in Fight and Flight mode. My body was at alert level any minute, any day. I’m still asking myself how it could be that I never actually... collapsed. I was always tired, exhausted and malnourished... I dunno, you tell me.

The thoughts never really disappeared. They kept coming back in all variations. You don’t love him anymore. You have to leave him. You may not want to, but you have to. You don’t love him. I had very few “good moments” in between but in those good moments, my mind was usually frantically looking for explanations and reasons behind all this. For ways to improve my relationship, to feel better about my boyfriend. I came up with the WEIRDEST shit. Almost every day I found something new that bothered me. One day he was a little boring. That’s it! We gotta go out more, do more stuff, that’ll change everything. ... aaah, no. Guess not. The next day, it was something else. The day after THAT, it was something entirely different again.

I was suddenly prone to making some HELLA weird impulsive decisions, too. „I gotta break off contact to that one person RIGHT now, THEN I WILL FEEL BETTER!“, “I gotta talk to my mom about THAT particular incident in my childhood right now, THEN I WILL FEEL BETTER!”, “I gotta make a trip to the mall JUST NOW, THEN I WILL FEEL BETTER!”… the decisions made total sense to me the second I made them, for about ten minutes at most, but the initial rush of relief started to fade again quickly and I frantically started looking for new solutions. Google was my best friend. I couldn’t go a day without googling exessively. Overthinking, pacing, googling. Any day, any hour awake. Over weeks. A few months even. My mind was constantly reeling. It was a bottomless pit.

I cannot put into words how exhausting that was. Sometimes the idea of throwing myself out of the next window seemed SO tempting, not because I wanted to die, but because I wanted the thoughts to stop tormenting me.

(I was out of regular therapy at the time, btw. I thought about calling my therapist about it but never did it. I felt isolated, I literally thought I had to do this all by myself.)

At some point, a few months into it, I somehow transferred to zombie mode. The thoughts became a little less intense over time. They were never gone but not quite as nagging anymore. But any time I wasn’t in alert mode, I felt just hollow instead. Sucked dry of any joy, of any emotion, of any sign of life. I just... functioned. Still tried to hide it. I dunno how well I did with that. Probably not at all well. I kept it all to myself, just because it felt that ridiculous. Tried to find excuses. “I’m just tired.”, “You know, there’s a lot going on in my head right now, but I’ll be good.” ... truth is that I don’t remember a whole lot of that time, it’s all blurry. There are just a few significant moments.

Such as that one evening, after work, when I left the building, made a few steps and stood five (or ten? fifteen??? who knows?! not me.) minutes on the spot, motionless, because I could no longer remember my way home.

I got fired from that job, by the way. I’m sure it was mostly due to low performance, I get it, but I can’t blame my poor state alone - they were also assholes.

Anyway.

I had, of course, never stopped the googling and one day, after hours of browsing any niche I hoped I hadn’t browsed yet, I somehow found a blog written by a young woman like me. The description tackled almost all of my thought patterns and I was blown. away. She asked herself the very same questions, with the very same twists, and... she even had a name for it.

ROCD. Relationship Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

I cried for what felt like hours. Out of relief. There was a person in this world who knew exactly what I was going through. And she even had tips how to overcome it. It wasn’t the first time I had heard about OCD, but as it had never affected me in any way before (I, too, associated it with compulsive hand washing and tile jumping), I wouldn’t have thought of it. After doing my own intense research on the subject, a huge part of me and my life finally started making sense to me. Not much was known about ROCD at the time, but it kinda didn’t matter anyway. What mattered was the OCD part. The subject of the thoughts is entirely interchangable. It’s the chain of thoughts itself that has to be broken. Don’t focus on the relationship. Break the chain instead.

The internet also recommended exposure therapy but as therapy wasn’t an option at the time (weird German laws... regular health insurance covers only a limited amount of therapy lessons within a certain span of time and I had used mine up and there was no way I could pay myself), I decided to try it myself, the key points being:

* No more googling, no more reassurance. Learn to live with the uncertainty, learn to live with Not Knowing.

* Let the thoughts happen. Watch them pass by. They’re just thoughts, they can’t harm you. Don’t fight them, just recognize them and let them stay, they’ll get less scary over time.

* Focus on other things, as hard as it is. Try to occupy your mind and your body. Any minute you spend doing something else but brooding is a win.

It all sounded so very abstract at the time, but I was determined to give it a try. Oh gosh, was it hard. After months of emotional torment and getting used to unhealthy ways of coping, it was SO DAMN FUCKING HARD to NOT google. To NOT think. It felt like torment all over again. How was I supposed to just let the thought sit with me!? It was scary, I didn’t want it! Just ONE little peek, only a second, come ON! I won’t do it again after that?!

Oh god, it was the worst, it really was. Trying to break the chain while I was so desperate to save my relationship was terrible. I honestly don’t remember HOW I made it... but I made it. I somehow... clawed and bit my way out of it. I went right through the pain and made it. It’s not actually a linear process but there comes this point (and I know a few people I met on online platforms who would back me up on this) when you know the worst is over. You just know it. Things weren’t exactly good by the time the thoughts were history but I had reign over my own head again, I could actually SEE the world again, and that was worth everything plus my body weight in gold.

I’ll stop right here because the following months weren’t about my OCD anymore, but about figuring out needs, figuring out myself and what I wanted from life and this particular relationship and it’s not quite relevant and another story. (I DID love my ex-BF but it turned out he wasn’t at all good for me, I had ignored all the red flags for too long, and it didn’t take long after this for us to go separate ways)

I hated this particular time in my life while it lasted but I have learned and taken so much from it. It has changed my life in so many ways. I learned that things are never set in stone, not for anyone. That there will always be uncertain times on our ways. That change is always scary. That it’s okay to be scared. That staying in crappy situations for the sake of it isn’t always the right thing to do. Sometimes, doing the right thing (aka leaving a relationship that isn’t good for you) can make you sad. Love does not equal compatibility.

Looking back, I am - in a very bizarre and twisted way - grateful for the experience. It was an incredibly important lesson for me that taught me to be kinder to myself, to look out for myself and to listen to my own needs. That I should put myself first at times. For the first time of my life, I really got in touch with myself and my own emotions. I learned to understand them, I learned where they come from. I learned to cut myself slack at times.

The list goes on and on, but you get my drift. I know myself inside and out at this point. That wasn’t always the case. Not until 2016.

It still comes back at times. Not with such full force, but it keeps creeping back in, pretty much any time I have to deal with uncertainty in my life. Bad news at work, not hearing from a friend for a while that I’m dying to hear from (inevitably thinking that they MUST be mad at me) or when I spot a few symptoms of sickness that I’m not familiar with (I practically never get sick). Not Knowing What Will Happen drives me CRAZY. I hate uncertainty, I need my life to be stable and calm to fully function.

Now, in COVID times, it’s mostly the fear of suffering from an incurable disease. AGAIN. I’m familiar with that, too. I’m not even scared of catching the virus, I just fell right back into overthinking any symptom I have, even if it’s just a short pain in the neck or whatever (you know, things that one usually brushes off). When my life was busier, I was MUCH better at handling those thoughts. Most of the time, they didn’t even come up in first place. Sitting inside and avoiding contact 99,9% of all times, and having little to no actual distraction („reading/watching movies“ doesn’t help me personally, it does’t occupy my mind enough, I usually just stare right through the pages/screen), however, leaves FAR too much time for the thoughts to unfold, once they come up.

This subtle but lingering concern for my health puts my body into a permanent state of anxiety once more. Fight and Flight mode. The pace of my heartbeat is always slightly, but perpetually, increased. It isn’t always outright panic attacks, it’s this constant state of having to be… alert. Something MIGHT happen, y’know. Be prepared. Relaxing and doing nice things becomes almost impossible. Instead, I get tired and exhausted. Depressed, even. It sucks the joy right out of me. I feel like living under a glass dome. I see what’s happening around me but I am unable to connect, emotionally. People keep living their lives and I can watch them, but I can’t be a part of it. It’s a deeply crushing feeling. I manage to somehow function but I don’t really feel alive. My abandonment issues and fear of „getting left behind“ kicked in again, too. I want to catch up and take part but can’t so I stress myself over THAT, too. This only adds to the exhaustion and makes me feel even more isolated.

Hello, vicious circle, my old friend.

I didn’t even realize that I had such huge potential to fall right back into it. It all started… I dunno, by mid/end of January?? It’s a bit blurry this time. It is directly connected to Germany’s recent lockdown, though. A massive case of Not Knowing How Things Will Turn Out. I failed to take better care of myself in the past few weeks. And now I’m here. AGAIN. Ugh.

But well, as I said, it’s not as bad and, as I said, I have at least learned some important things over the years. In this particular case of intrusive thoughts, the first rule is: NEVER GOOGLE SYMPTOMS. And never google shit like „chances to survive (whatever illness think you have at the time)“, either. The mind longs for reassurance but googling symptoms is BAD, as we all know by now. It’s not even reassuring when you do it. Because you’ll inevitably end up diving through the vast internet for HOURS, picking up an entry that some person named Kevin made on a cancer forum way back in 2004, saying that his uncle died the next day after finding out he has cancer and that is, OF COURSE, what will happen to YOU, too. There is no other way. YOU WILL DIE.

Excuse the text walls. I took an opportunity to ramble about my own experience, for the first time ever since it happened (not including the few short talks I had with the few people I met on internet forums).

To anyone who made it this far: Thank you so much for reading. It sure felt good to write this down for once, even if it’s just a short summary (yes, really, I mean, we’re talking six-ish months here), and the descriptions fall woefully short. If anyone affected by the same happens to read this - I am so, SO sorry you are suffering so much. You are NOT alone and you are NOT weird. Talk to someone. Open up. To your doctor, or you therapist, if you have one. To a person you trust. It is the worst but there are ways, there is help. I wish I had known at the time it started for me.

You know now. :)

P.S.: DON’T FUCKING GOOGLE:

#ocd #rocd #obsessive compulsive disorder #relationship obsessive compulsive disorder #mental disorder #sanne rambles

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the-busy-ghost · 4 years ago

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If you don't mind answering, what are some things that you really, really wish you'd see more of in depictions of medieval Scotland/Early Modern Scotland?

I absolutely don’t mind answering, thank you for asking!

I’m told there are some better quality novels than there are tv shows and films, so there are some aspects that have been done in good novels (though I’m not so familiar with them). There are so many things though that could be done on screen:

- Chiefly I spend a lot of my time wishing that there was more attention paid to the actual geographical make-up of Scotland and its regional variety, e.t.c beyond just splitting everything into Highland/Lowland, or just portraying everyone as being part of a Clan in the Highland sense, or just sticking everyone in Edinburgh as if that was the only place where anything happened. Orkney was very different to Galloway, and the Borders were very different to the Western Isles, and Ross was different to Aberdeenshire.

Now if this was true for the sixteenth century, it is even MORE true for the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. Between the early Middle Ages and the end of the thirteenth century, Scotland was settled by a lot of different cultures- so in the twelfth century for example, much of the country (the traditional heartland of ‘Scotia’ north of the Forth) may have spoken Gaelic but Lothian had been settled by speakers of Old English some centuries ago and their language became Scots in time, and spread north of the Forth into Fife, Angus, Aberdeenshire and elsewhere so that by the sixteenth century it was much more widely spoken and the language of government. The south-west, especially the area around the Clyde and Glasgow was a British kingdom for a long time, speaking a language not dissimilar to Old Welsh- this kingdom had (sort of) disappeared by the mid-twelfth century but the language took a while to completely disappear. Up in Orkney, Shetland, and Caithness, rather like in Iceland and the Faroes, Norse settlers had taken over and Norse culture has still left traces there today. From the fourteenth century, Scots began to take over in the Northern Isles but there was still a very clear Norse background in the sixteenth century. Meanwhile in the Western Isles, the Norse newcomers did not manage to erase Gaelic so completely as they did in the Northern Isles, but they did leave their mark on the Hebrides, to the extent that the inhabitants in the Western Isles in the in the twelfth century were descendants of both cultures- they are sometimes called Gall-Ghàidheil in Gaelic, meaning ‘foreigner Gael’. Then over the course of the twelfth century more new immigrants moved in. The ranks of the nobility were swelled by Norman, Breton, and other French settlers- unlike England, there was no ‘Norman Conquest’, and the process was more gradual, but although the French language never had the same power in Scotland as it did in thirteenth century England, these settlers left their mark on the feudal system and other aspects of Scottish society, and in turn they too were affected by the cultures they encountered in Scotland. Other smaller pockets of immigration existed- immigrants from Flanders and the Netherlands, for example, were instrumental to developing Scottish towns and improving agriculture. In the east coast burghs of Fife and Lothian you can still see some architectural elements that may have been the result of trade with the Dutch- crow-stepped gables and red pantiles for example.

Although most of these cultures have altered and changed by the sixteenth century, the fact remains that the cultural backdrop to fourteenth or fifteenth century Scotland was a real mix- Gaelic, English, French, Norse, Flemish, British- and, perhaps, whatever it was that the elusive Picts left behind beyond their wonderful stone monuments. I have perhaps oversimplified things here but the point is that mediaeval and early modern Scotland was not a cultural monolith- something which both Scottish and foreign film-makers would do well to remember.

There are also changes to these regions across the years- Orkney going from being a Norwegian/Danish territory to becoming part of the Scottish kingdom, or the borders which had some of the best farmland and richest abbeys in the country in the thirteenth century becoming a very militarised and rather lawless zone after the Wars of Independence. I think it would be really interesting to see that portrayed on screen.

- Ok so that was the fundamental thing, apologies for the rant. But to go with that, more understanding of the landscape and architecture. In all fairness most tv shows and films involving Scotland, no matter how bad they are, at least have some lovely panning shots of the Highlands but there’s more to the country than Glencoe- you could really work with views like the sun on the sea from the Carrick coast or the beautiful if ruinous religious architecture- like the abbeys of Melrose or Arbroath or somewhere like Elgin Cathedral or Rosslyn Chapel or Inchmahome Priory.

- Costuming! Again this fits into the regional thing a bit, but it’s also more general. It’s a quibble I have with almost any medieval media but especially when it comes to Scotland people get really lazy with the costuming and just slap some shortbread tin stuff together rather than putting any thought into it.

- More traditional music! A surprising number of ballads and songs that are still popular among folk singers today are thought to have their roots in early modern if not mediaeval Scotland. And again the musical heritage of Scotland is varied depending on the culture it comes from.

- More properly developed female characters. Even though half the historical films made about Scotland are about Mary Queen of Scots, there are almost no good depictions of historical Scotswomen- and that’s NOT because there aren’t any interesting women in Scottish history before the modern period! There are lots of fascinating women’s stories from mediaeval and early modern Scotland, and although we are often frustrated by a lack of sources, we know they were there. More importantly, even if every woman was not a Certified Bad-Ass, as a whole women in Scottish history are not invisible and we can often see them in the records, whether operating in domestic, business, religious, or political contexts. Oddly, in their quest to show how Uniquely Misogynistic and Evil the Scottish nobility were to Mary Queen of Scots or Margaret Tudor or whoever, film-makers often end up ignoring women’s stories and therefore perpetuating the sexist view of history they claim to hate. (Though, yes mediaeval and early modern Scotland WAS misogynistic- but show me a country that wasn’t. Also it was misogynistic in a slightly different way to some other countries). I could list off dozens of interesting Scotswomen who lived before 1603- even though we sometimes can’t tell that much about their inner lives from the surviving sources, it’s obvious they were of some importance. And again it fits back into the cultural variety thing, because that was not limited to Lowland, Scots-speaking noblewomen.

- More art and literature and architecture and education and music and EVERYTHING. Scotland lost a LOT during the Reformation and due to Anglo-Scottish warfare (that’s what happens when the main centre of your kingdom is near to a border). But we know that, though it was sometimes an out of the way place, Scotland could be just as heavily tied into European cultural trends as any other northern country. And there are some beautiful surviving cultural artefacts that hint at a more vibrant past- both produced in Scotland (in the Gaelic and Scots-speaking environments) and imported from abroad.

- Equally on that note, more focus on its connections to countries other than England. Scotland had three universities by 1500, and yet many Scottish students still went to study abroad, especially in France, but also in England, the Low Countries, Italy, and elsewhere. An Italian humanist taught at the Abbey of Kinloss away up in Moray in the sixteenth century, and Scottish thinkers were in touch with other great minds of the day. Scots also fought abroad (see mercenaries in Sweden, or James IV’s support given to his uncle the king of Denmark, or the Garde Écossaise), and traded heavily across the North Sea (there were multiple Scots merchant colonies on the continent, not least at Veere). Scotland’s relations with Norway, Denmark, the Low Countries, the Papacy, Ireland (both as part of the kingdom of England and with individual Irish families), and other countries could be almost as important as its relationships with France and England. The eternal triangle of Scotland, England, and France, was not actually always the story- there were occasions when England and France played very little role in Scotland’s foreign affairs, let alone its domestic history.

- In particular an acknowledgement of the high quality of Scots poetry in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries wouldn’t go amiss.

- This is one which applies to all mediaeval media- but a more varied and interesting depiction of mediaeval religion would be good. In Scotland, this was also linked to the way people saw their own history- any sixteenth century Scot would have known some of the native saints, and anyone half-educated might have heard the names of David I and St Margaret and Columba, and known where the great abbeys in the kingdom came from.

- Actually a basic knowledge of Scottish history and legends beyond a few famous names. For example family was important in noble society- just because the stereotypical The Clans Are Gathering model is massively inaccurate, doesn’t mean that noble families in Scotland didn’t care about ancestry and kinship. But it would be great if tv shows and movies could actually think about how to portray that- and it really shows how little some of these scriptwriters know about their characters when they’re supposedly obsessed with the honour of the clan but the only piece of their country’s history they know is the name William Wallace. If you’re portraying the Douglases- even the earls of Angus who weren’t directly descended from him- the legacy of Sir James Douglas would have been a source of some pride. For actual ‘clans’, you could be dealing with some of the clans in the west of Scotland who, like some families in Ireland, claimed descent from Niall of the Nine Hostages. Some family histories got warped along the way- the Stewarts, for example, seem to have forgotten that they were descended from a Breton named Flaald by the fifteenth century and instead latched onto a story involving a character named Fleance (the one who later appears in Macbeth). As for legends- you could have a lot of fun with the different kinds of fairy belief that existed in Scotland, from the Borders (where it inspired ballads like Tam Lin) to the Highlands, or you could bring up legendary figures that are shared with other countries like King Arthur or Fionn Mac Cumhaill or Robin Hood or Hector of Troy. Sometimes the legends even cross over into real life- Thomas the Rhymer, hero of ballads and fairytales, seems to have been based on a real person who lived in the reign of Alexander III; while stories about William Wallace and Robert Bruce often became folk tales in the tradition of other greenwood outlaws like Robin Hood.

I think it’s pretty evident that my main issues with depictions of mediaeval and early modern Scotland on tv and film are largely because it’s so utterly unlike anything I see in the historical record. I’d love to list specific details and characters I’d like to see portrayed on screen, but before we even get to that point, the whole Generic Portrait of Scotland needs to change, because it doesn’t currently feel very realistic or interesting. All I really want is for the same level of research to be done with regard to Scotland as is done for England or France or any other country- England is often portrayed inaccurately, but there’s still at least 200% more effort put in than for Scotland.

On that note though, James I’s career (or at least the early fifteenth century as a whole) has been ripe for a television adaptation for years. Also I’m personally fascinated by ordinary rural life, patterns of agriculture and landholding, e.t.c. so even just an ordinary story set in an early sixteenth century fermtoun would be cool. But I don’t really think these stories would make any sense to people if Scotland was just portrayed the way it usually is - a generic country with no culture beyond a few scraps of tartan and alcohol and Anglophobia.

Thank you for the opportunity to rant, and apologies for the screed! I couldn’t express my enthusiasm very concisely I’m afraid. I genuinely don’t mind if there’s some inaccuracies to portrayals of Scotland, but now all portrayals are exactly the same and almost wholly inaccurate so it gets frustrating.

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thewebcomicsreview · 5 years ago

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hussie said a thing abt the epilogues reddit. com/r/homestuck/comments/cuywff/the_homestuck_epilogues_bridges_and_offramps_new/

I also think many of the negative feelings the story creates isn’t just an urgent prompt for the reader to imagine different ideas, or ways to resolve the new narrative dilemmas. It’s also an opportunity for people to discuss any of the difficult content critically, and for fandom in general to continue developing the tools for processing the negative emotions art can generate. Sorting that out has to be a communal experience, and it’s an important part of the cycle between creating and criticizing art. I think not only can creators develop their skills to create better things by practicing and taking certain risks, fandom is something which can develop better skills as well. Skills like critical discussion, dealing constructively with negative feelings resulting from the media they consume, interacting with each other in more meaningful ways, and trying to understand different points of view outside of the factions within fandom that can become very hardened over time. Fandoms everywhere tend to get bad reputations for various reasons, maybe justifiably. But I don’t see why it can’t be an objective to try to improve fandom, just as creators can improve their work. And I think this can only happen if now and then fandoms are seriously challenged, by being encouraged to think about complex ideas, and made to feel difficult emotions. I believe when art creates certain kinds of negative feelings in people, it can lead to some of the most transformative experiences art has to offer. But it helps to be receptive to this idea for these experiences to have a positive net effect on your life, and your relationship with art.

Christ, he’s gone full Lennon. Imagine a good ending. I wonder if you can.

So, I’ve mentioned this a few times, but the most transformative art has ever been for me was a comic that actually started on the Homestuck forums

Prequel - Or - Making The Cat Cry: The Adventure - is a comic written by Kazared loosely based on the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. It’s about a Khajiit girl named Katia who moves to OblivionLand to make a new life for herself, and the comic spent years building Katia up to bigger and bigger heights so that every time she crashed she crashed harder than ever before. The second time she relapses into alcoholism is where a lot of readers give up on the comic for being misery porn.

There’s a point where she she’s solved all her problems and even gets to join the mages guild - her lifelong dream - only for the woman running the Kvatch mage guild to mild control her into giving up all her stuff, including the stuff important to Katia’s only friend. Katia is left naked on the streets literally digging through trash in the vain hope of trying to find a solution to at least one of her problems. And what she finds is a bottle of beer.

Twice already in this comic Katia hit a really bad patch and started drinking again. The comic has twice made us root for Katia to succeed, only to jump cut to her waking up in a stranger’s bed with no memory of what happened.

She wanders into an empty church (OBVIOUS SYMBOLISM ALERT), and alternates between trying to find some supplies and fantasizing about everything magically getting fixed, which slowly morphs into fantasizing about drinking while getting increasingly furious at barrels for not having clothes in them.

One thing. You wanted one thing and you were too much of a fucking idiot to realize it was hopeless and pointless and bound to ruin everything. Stuck on some childish idea that you could be anything, do anything, and just be some selfish bitch that’s never happy with what she has. Fuck, you don’t even know what you’re mad at anymore, you just hate yourself and everything you ever ruined for yourself and everyone and want to stop thinking about what a worthless mindless thoughtless imbecile you are. You just want to stop fucking thinking about it.

You drop onto the chapel floor and just cry. You cry and cry because you’re stupid and easy and can’t fix anything no matter how hard you try. You cry because your best is worse than everyone else’s average. You cry because your parents never loved you and you’re a disappointment to everyone, even yourself. You cry because all you wanted was to be someone and that’s never going to happen. And when that’s done, you cry a little more because you’re ashamed of being such a crybaby.

You try to get all the emotions out, try to clear your mind and maybe, just maybe feel ready to tackle the night ahead of you, feel as though this is the time you finally turn things around. But no matter how hard you try, how hard you weep and bawl and try to get it all out, you’re still just a fuckup. No matter what you try, that knowledge is still there, gripping onto your every thought and reminding you that things are never going to change.

You’re not strong. You’re not a hero. You’re not even worthy of the name Katia Managan. You’re sad and angry and nothing makes sense, but you know this is probably the clearest your head is going to get.

Someday, things are going to get better. Someday, you are going to fight and persevere and everything will feel great. You think.But for now, you know what you have to do.

And at the very least, there is no way you could possibly make yourself feel any worse.

Katia, for the first time, manages to avoid drowning drinking. She overcomes her issues. And you know what happens next?

She accidentally sets the church on fire, because this is still Prequel. She passes out from smoke inhalation, and then there’s….

this, and then she wakes up and reflects on her managing to stay on the wagon.

Honestly, you just feel… kind of numb.

You fucked up. You lost everything you earned, were discarded by the people you looked up to most, gave away the package you were supposed to be delivering to pay your friend back, completely lost control of your powers, and after passing out naked in a church have probably ruined any chance you might have had at a good reputation in Kvatch. You were a wreck last night when this was all happening, but now… you guess it just feels like you’ve run out of sad. You’re just confused.

Personally, I think this stuff is way darker than anything that happens in the Homestuck Epilogues, which is mostly just over-the-top Warhammer 40k grimderp. This shit got to me, man. And around the time this is happening in the comic, I lost my job. And as the storyline continued past this point, I kept applying for jobs and getting turned down, and it started to really wear on me, I felt I had no useful skills, since my old job was supporting software that only that company used because they made it. Much like Katia got into great positions only to fail, I walked out of interviews thinking I’d aced it only to get turned down, while Katia kept making two-steps-forward-one-step-back advances and not really getting any closer to solving any of her issues. And one day, about six weeks into joblessless and starting to get into serious depression over it, I got two “Thanks but no thanks” calls from places I was feeling good about back to back, and I was just done. 10am and I was going to go into my room and lie down on the floor all day but first Prequel updated so I guess I’ll check it real quick oh hey a flash

youtube

This puzzle took me like 20 tries, I’m no good at them. Aggy ran out of inspiring dialogue and started looping. And if you’re not in the right mindset, in the right place, this probably doesn’t seem like much. But right there, a month and a half into unemployment, doing that stupid fucking jumping jumpy peg thing while a ghost cheered me on was life-changing. I was so fucking jazzed when I got it, I was fired up! I was so fired up I tabled my “lie on the floor all day in despair” plan, and started applying for a bunch of jobs. A few of those jobs called me back. One hired me. I still work there now. I always liked webcomics but Aggy Extrapolate is the reason I make them. Because good art is powerful. Good art changes lives, maybe even saves them. And it doesn’t need to be happy to do it, Katia still hasn’t succeeded at her goals (in part because Prequel updates at a rate Dresden Codak would make fun of).

What the hell did the Homestuck Epilogues do, by comparison? What’s the positive net effect on my life, or my interaction with art? “Sometimes things you like are bad”? Shit, man, I already knew that, I’m into wrestling. How is “John recognizes Terezi’s jizz on his dad’s car” supposed to make me a better person, exactly? Do you really think the problem with fandoms is that they’re not angry enough? Are you high, Andrew Hussie?

#Homestuck #Prequel #Prequel Adventure #Also Drop Out was a million times better than the epilogues while also being a million times darker #Anonymous

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iraprince · 5 years ago

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Are there any art exercises you can recommend to help get out of a like, year long art block? I always feel like I can never finish anything and am unsure of what to do to keep up motivation and practice...

i had a two year long art block and a couple times here and there i’ve talked abt art block being scary to me bc i couldn’t figure out HOW i got out of it, it just felt like one day i could suddenly draw again and i like EXPLODED with motivation (which is terrifying bc if i ever got blocked again how would i get out? what if it lasted two years again?)

but now that ive been thinking about things a while and i have some perspective i DO know how i got unblocked, and it wasn’t forcing myself. it was 1. improving my mental health and 2. passion.

i cant at all speculate abt your situation or what you have going on but i can say for myself that when i had a really long art block it was because i was burnt out. the underlying problem was that i was exhausted by just trying to take care of myself and survive, i had a demanding physical job that ate up all my physical energy on top of that and it was all i could do to go there and back, depression was eating me alive and its hard to have any creative energy left over! most of the time a serious, extended case of art block isn’t just a nonsensical “Drawing Machine Broke!” situation, it’s bc you have shit going on! your brain and your body are tired and busy and they don’t have time for art.

during that period pretty much all i managed to draw were little head and shoulders pencil busts of my favorite evil anime characters looking left. that was it. like maybe once a week i could manage a little evil anime boy face. because i’m passionate about evil little anime fuckers! that’s what could get my hand to move. i had a TINY burst of productivity near the middleish-end of my big block bc i was in an rp group for a little while that i got really into and drawing the character interactions was fun and exciting to me so suddenly i was like ok i can do this..... and then when i REALLY broke out of it and started actually producing content regularly again, instead of painstakingly spitting out a doodle the size of a postage stamp once every 10 days, was when i got the idea for TVRN and started it, and then suddenly i just EXPLODED and got it all back and started drawing every day.

but it wasn’t just like, “i love vampire porn so much that it cured me” or whatever. this also coincided with me living with my wife for the first time, which was fantastic for my mental health, and also i had been working on taking better care of myself for the entire like year leading up to that point. i got myself into a position where i had the energy and the stability to be READY to work, then i found something i was really really excited about, and that’s what popped me out of the hole.

all that being said, “motivation” and “inspiration” are fun at parties but they’re not good friends. they aren’t going to be there when you need them and you can’t wait around for them to show up bc they really don’t care about you that much. when they’re here, that’s great, but if they’re standing you up you have to just keep going. you said you can’t finish anything? cool, but that means you’re starting things. all those half-finished drawings still add up to be progress bc you’re still trying and that’s significant. try to release yourself from like, expectations of what’s ~good enough to post online~ or ~artistically valuable~ or whatever and just try fucking around with things you really really like, being self indulgent, and maybe eventually while you’re wandering around in there you’ll find something you’re really passionate about that you can make art about to bump you out of that hole. and take care of yourself throughout all of this! prioritize YOU, not the abstract concept of Getting Unblocked

sorry this got so fucking long lol

#unjoy #and my point in talking abt my burnout isnt to imply that if u cant pinpoint a bunch of sources of exhaustion youre faking it or something #im just saying pay attention to yourself. youre probably not giving yourself enough credit for all the other stuff going on in your life #both in terms of physical demands and just emotionally #and then youre demanding creative output from yourself on top of that

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g3n3ration-h3x · 5 years ago

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TLDR: My mom is recently disabled and unable to work, because of this we couldn’t afford our rent and had to move in with my abusive, alcoholic grandfather. I also had to start working overtime while juggling my college classes to keep up with our finances, including my mom’s medical bills. But I managed to keep up with all of this until I was in a bad car wreck recently and no longer had a reliable way to get to work or school. On top of all this, last week my grandfather was drunk and when I was leaving for work he randomly blew up on me and started choking me and punched me in the face several times when I tried to fight back. I was able to get a good hit in and get away, but he told me not to come back or he’d kill me and frankly I believe him. So me and my mom, my grandma and our dog all moved out immediately, but we don’t have anywhere to go now. Some family friends let us stay with them through the weekend and we’ve been staying in a little hotel since then but we don’t have enough money for another night after tonight so if you could donate any amount at all it would be a huge help to me and my family and we would be so grateful! Thanks for your time though guys, I hope you all have a great rest of your day!! :)

Hey guys so I want to apologize in advance for this, and I also want to apologize for my slow activity here recently. I know this isn’t really akin to my normal edgy content on here and I promise once my situation improves we will return to the regularly scheduled edginess. Plus I’ve also been working on a couple songs I want to drop and share on here with you guys, but I don’t have access to any of my recording or editing equipment right now, given my current situation. They’ve got that horrorcore vibe though so I think you guys would dig it!

But really this all started last fall when my mom became unable to work because she kept falling over and/or passing out at work, she couldn’t maintain a good grip on things because her hands began to hurt and shake, her short-term memory was functioning horribly, etc. Obviously at this point she was a liability to her company and she soon left work on short-term disability because her neurologist suspected she had Parkinson’s disease, somewhere between stages 3 and 4. However this was not a clear diagnosis because the nature of my mom’s sickness is bizarre, and so the doc wanted to run some more tests before he came to a final decision with his diagnosis.

At the same time, while all of this was going on, my mom had started the process of applying for a long-term disability claim while the neurologist ran more tests, but it’s a lengthy process that could take up to a year. In the mean time, I’ve been managing to shoulder all our expenses by juggling working overtime while still going to college. I was and still am the only one working in our household, but I managed to make it work up until about a month ago when I was in a bad car accident, leaving me without reliable transportation to work or school until I can afford to fix my car.

Luckily I have some amazing friends and a lovely girlfriend that have been helping me get to where I need to go, but obviously this is just a temporary solution, I can’t expect them to keep going out of their way for me forever. But right now virtually my entire paycheck is going towards my ADHD medication, my mom’s medical bills and medications, and bare necessities like groceries and gas.

On top of all this, the situation escalated and became dire last Wednesday when my grandfather blew up on me out of nowhere and attacked me as I was leaving for work, and he choked me and punched me in the face several times when I tried to resist him. Fortunately I was able to get away after I hit him in the face and his head went back and hit the wall, but he threatened to kill me if I ever came back to the house. I’m still not quite sure what sparked the whole thing, but I can only assume that it has to do with my sexuality and my relationship with my girlfriend.

So we’re now homeless, we all moved out together and a family friend let us stay at their house through the weekend and we’ve been staying in a little motel since then, but we’re all out of money now and we aren’t sure where we are going to stay after tonight. This is serious guys, I promise I wouldn’t be asking for help like this if it wasn’t. We’re desperate and I’m at my wit’s end, so I’m gonna swallow my pride right now and ask for help. I just need some help getting back up on my feet and I’ll take it from there. Seriously guys anything helps, I just need enough to pay for first’s month rent someplace so I can focus on getting my car fixed and going back to work full time. I set up a Venmo and PayPal that you can make donations to if you’d like to help out, literally any amount at all helps, cause we don’t even have much to eat right now. Also my girlfriend is doing art commissions and selling jewelry on her instagram to raise money if you would rather help out that way, I’m gonna put all the info at the bottom. But honestly it would be a huge help even if you just reblogged this post so the word would get out to more people! I’m grateful for any help you guys can offer, you don’t know how much it means to me and my family, thank you guys so much, seriously! Of course you aren’t obligated to donate anything though, and I don’t think it makes you a bad person if you don’t, I’m just putting this out there so people know I need a little help getting back on my feet right now. And again, once my situation is more stable, I’ll be able to go back to a more consistent schedule on here and finish the couple songs I’ve been working on so I can share them on here with you guys.

Again, I’m really sorry about all of this. Thank you guys for taking the time to read this though and thank you for your time in general, I hope all of you have a great rest of your weekend, and again I want to thank you all for all your help, me and my family appreciate it so much, seriously! So thanks guys, sorry for being a bother!!

Venmo - @generationhex

PayPal - PayPal.Me/generationhex

Instagram - https://instagram.com/tiendita.angelito?igshid=1fpafnafw7flr

#emergency #paypal #donate please #donations #commisions open #venmo #help post #help #donation post #please reblog #financial crisis #family emergency

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sohmariku · 5 years ago

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i know this is a little out of the blue but i was wondering, ive never seen someone with a bachelors degree in japanese (im not very academic lol) but i was wondering if you could tell me more? is it in japanese language or culture specifically maybe? and how did you start on your journey of learning jp? sorry for the weird random question im just really curious! thank u for all the subtitles and everything you do for western tkrb community!

Hey Anon,

I'll happily tell you more about my degree and how I started my journey to learn Japanese.

Though I attended high school at a "pre-university education" level, I'm not very academic at all. And for the longest time I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. (It really drove the career advisors crazy.) So, I graduated without a plan for my future.

The only thing I had been interested in during that time was anime/manga/2.5D and this had given me the desire to learn Japanese. Unfortunately I don't have a head for learning new languages and very short attention span, so I never actually got to learning more than a few words. (Mind you, I hadn't even taught myself the basic Hiragana/Katakana character sets.) Then, as I was enjoying my well-deserved vacation I woke up one morning thinking: "Can I study Japanese in university?" One google search later I knew I could. Long story short, I just signed up without doing too much research and went for it.

The courses turned out to be 50% language and 50% culture. While classes for the 1st year were mostly set, we did get more room in the next two years to focus on a specific field.

For all three years of my bachelor's degree, language was basically split in Reading, Grammar, Conversation and Kanji classes.

Reading and Grammar wasn't that hard. It's mostly learning new vocabulary and remembering grammar structures. Considering I have no head for languages, it went pretty well actually. It wasn't quite as hard as I expected. It certainly was challenging at times, but doable. I did have a rough start though, because the expected me the know the basic character sets the day we started... which I of course didn’t. It took me a week to get a good enough grasp of Hiragana and Katakana.

Learning Kanji was a bit more challenging. In the beginning it was relatively easy, but in the second or third year they tried to teach us about 200 new combinations a week! Learning the readings wasn't that bad, but learning how to write them was Hell! I really couldn't keep up (and cheated my way through the exams). At this moment I can read and understand a lot of Kanji, but I can't actually write them from the top of my head.

Conversation was just one big disaster for me. We didn't talk quite as much during these classes as we should, so my conversation skills never actually improved much. Somehow I managed to pass my exams, but don't ask me how. (Teachers took pity on me... one did at the very least.) Even now my Japanese conversation skills are really bad. I can understand people when they talk to me (mostly), but I won't be able to give a proper reply.

YEAR 1 In my first year, culture classes included "Pre-modern History", "Modern History", "Japanimation", "Japanese Culture". I chose "Introduction to Japanese Religion" as an elective. I can’t really remember what the other choices were.

YEAR 2 In my second year the only mandatory “non-language” class was "Classical Japanese language". (Which is still sorta a language course.) Then, as my electives I chose "Anthropology", "Japanese Religion", "Youth, Family and Inter-generational Relations in Japan" and "Art & Material culture". FYI, my university also offered History, Literature or Economics/Politics focused courses.

(Art & Material culture was absolutely the best course ever! Classes were in the local museum and most of the time we just sat around a table, holding and feeling Japanese artifacts while our teacher told about them! At the end I wrote a paper about the function of snow in Japanese prints... It was awesome!)

We also had to take two courses from a different field of study, but still somewhat related, so I went with "Art and Literature of China" and "Korean Culture".

This year I also randomly followed the first year's course "Japanese stories", but never took the tests. I simply attended for fun. It wasn’t offered when I was a first year student.

YEAR 3 The third year we only had electives, I took courses called "Scientific texts" and "Gender Dynamics".

Half of the year was filled by our minor, so I actually had little Japan-related courses. The ones I did have just took up a lot of time.

----

Well, that’s all I can think of right now. Not sure how much detail you wants. If you have any other questions or would like me to elaborate on anything, just let me know. ^o^ I’ll be happy to oblige.

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cupidmarwani-archive · 5 years ago

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And Feel No Pain

Summary: No one trusts Crockett. (Little Sparrow 2/2)

WC: ~1.6k

Warnings: Overdose, implied suicidal behavior

Ethan carries Crockett into the ED. Just driving him was faster than waiting for an ambulance, and he’s heavy but peaceful. Peaceful, but dead to the world. He reeks of bourbon, probably from the empty bottle Ethan had to pry out of his hand, and he has no idea what else he took because his pulse is weak, thready, and there was a whole pharmacy in his medicine cabinet. How did no one notice this? It’s clearly not a new problem.

“Maggie,” he calls. She directs him to a room to set Crockett in, because at this moment he’s Crockett and not Dr. Marcel. And his heartbeat is so slow, so weak. His breathing shallow. Ethan wants to run a tox screen, but first he needs to find out if Crockett’s about to die. He’s dealt with so many overdoses, but they’ve never been someone he knows personally, he sees so regularly, he cares about more than he’d like to admit.

Crockett’s hooked up to the monitors, and Ethan has to think, think. Anything Crockett took, it was orally. Pills and liquor. They’re going to need to pump his stomach, get an IV into him. His breathing, Ethan needs to check on his breathing. There’s so much to do and he can’t figure out where to start. He’s overwhelmed and now he can’t breathe either because Crockett is here, out cold, sick. He overdosed.

The worst thing Ethan can think of is that this was on purpose. All day, people have been trying to get ahold of him- Ethan included- with no luck until he literally broke down his door out of this exact fear. That Crockett hurt himself.

Thank God for nurses, he decides, who put Crockett on the monitors and get a needle into his arm. Two way port, to draw or give. They’re calmer than him now. He forces himself to take a deep breath and pulls up his tablet to jot down what they’re doing.

“Run a tox screen,” he says. “I want his BAC and to find out what was in his system. He had a lot of pills in his apartment.”

“You brought him in?” Monique asks. She’s already drawing Crockett’s blood, red and thick.

Ethan nods. “He wasn’t answering his phone, I was worried. He took a lot of something.”

It’s hard to forget everything Ethan saw in that apartment. The bathroom was full of pills. Some prescribed to him from definitely not-current dates. There were two sandwich baggies of loose pills. And there was the empty bottle of liquor in the living room, the second one in Crockett’s arms. Pumping his stomach will probably help. Ethan throws in that order too, but before any real progress is made, Crockett’s eyes open slowly. Blink shut again.

“Crockett,” Ethan says, a little more desperately than he means to. He pulls out his pen light. “Crockett, can you hear me? Open your eyes if you can hear me.”

They open just a little, just enough for them to squint shut again when Ethan shines the light into them.

“C’mon, Crockett, open your eyes. Let me see you.”

This time, he doesn’t respond, and Ethan has to pull his eyes open to check for response. His pupils are dilated, but they do contract a little with the light, which is a good sign. He needs to take a deep breath.

“Is he conscious?”

Ethan taps his palm lightly against Crockett’s cheek a couple times. Nothing. “Not anymore. We just had him for a moment. Can you get me a mask for him? I don’t like the looks of his blood oxygen.”

She gives him one, and as she hooks it up to an oxygen tank, Ethan slips his hand underneath Crockett’s head and lifts it ever so gently to fix the mask properly. Crockett’s got a shadow along his jaw, sharp and prickly, that scratches Ethan’s hand. His skin is hot to the touch.

“When you get a chance, hang some saline? He’s probably dehydrated.” Ethan doesn’t know why he’s still touching Crockett’s face. “I’m going to check in on my other patients. Let me know when his labs come back.”

He checks in on his other patients, but he can’t stop thinking about Crockett, glancing back at him and the way he lays there, so still. So quiet. In life, he’s always moving. Usually talking. But now he’s empty, and Ethan’s got a sinking feeling that Crockett isn’t going to wake back up from this. Not fully. His heartbeat is stronger, his stats improving, but he hasn’t made a movement since his eyes were briefly open. Ethan watches him during his loops and, in a moment of downtime, pulls a seat up at Crockett’s bedside and just watches him. Holds the hand not burdened with an IV. Watches his chest shudder up and down. He’s not dead, but he feels dead.

“What are you doing to yourself, Marcel?” he whispers.

Crockett doesn’t so much as twitch.

Ethan reaches up to push Crockett’s hair out of his face. It’s greasy, unwashed. Crockett wasn’t taking care of himself, was hurting himself. The lights are on but no one’s home, and Ethan wonders again what this means for Crockett. He may die. He could die, and Ethan doesn’t know what to do with that information. It doesn’t sink in. He can’t process the idea of sitting here and watching Crockett’s body give up on him. If only he would just wake up.

As soon as he thinks of that, like there’s a higher power listening, Crockett’s eyes open and he starts fumbling at his oxygen mask.

“Hey, it’s okay-”

He tries to still Crockett’s hands, but Crockett doesn’t calm down. It isn’t long before Ethan figures out why. The oxygen mask still on, he throws up, and then Ethan is the one pulling it off of him so he doesn’t choke. In movies, in media, drug abuse and overdose are pretty and they’re peaceful. Drifting away without pain. Sometimes accidental, sometimes intentionally. This is not poetic art, but something nasty and twisted and painful.

“Okay, okay,” Ethan says, rubbing Crockett’s back as he coughs weekly. “You’re okay. I’ll get you some clean sheets and a new gown, you’re okay.”

He meets Crockett’s eyes and it’s heartbreaking. He’s crying, and struggling to breathe again, and covered in his own vomit. There’s so much to be said, none of which makes it out of Ethan’s mouth because this just hurts. He’s never in his life seen someone so broken down. He does the only thing he can think of, and pulls back to force himself into the role of a doctor again. It’s easier to be a doctor.

“Can you tell me what it is you took?”

His voice is so stiff. It’s barely his own, and the way Crockett looks at him makes him feel like a monster, so much so that he can’t manage eye contact. Instead, he stares down at his tablet with the account of what they’ve already done, what they already know.

“You know you could have died.”

“Yeah,” Crockett croaks, and lets his head fall back hard against the pillow. He’s in bad shape. “I’m gonna sleep a little longer.”

Ethan starts to tell him no, but it’s too late. Crockett’s asleep again, and Ethan would rub his eyes but he still has Crockett’s vomit on his hands. He steps over to the sink and washes them for longer than necessary, trying to do something useful that doesn’t make him hate himself.

Just his luck, Curry is on her way by. Cleaning up that mess is a med student’s job. Even if it wasn’t, Ethan just can’t look at Crockett anymore right now. “Grab Doris for help and clean up the patient in six. He threw up on himself and passed out.”

He can’t bring himself to tell her who’s in there. She’ll know, though, once she sees. Everyone will see that Crockett was falling apart in front of them, and not a single person noticed just how badly he was doing. It took this to see his pain.

Ethan busies himself until Crockett wakes up again, now in a clean gown and not trying to take off his oxygen mask so he can throw up. It’s a good time to check in on him again, decide if he should put up another bag of saline. He does, however, bring a cup of water with a straw because Crockett’s mouth must be so dry.

When he approaches again, the cup held out like a peace offering. Crockett takes it in a shaky hand and maneuvers the straw under his mask while he drinks it fast. It’s empty almost immediately. Ethan takes it away and he doesn’t have the words for a situation like this. No one does. There’s no way to explain how he’s feeling right now or how sorry he is for not realizing this sooner.

“When he has the chance, Dr. Charles is going to stop by,” Ethan says.

Crockett rolls his eyes. It’s a good sign, that he’s feeling alright enough to be an asshole. But it doesn’t negate what just happened, and so Ethan does a quick check-in to make sure he’s alright. Temperature is a little elevated, but nothing to be concerned about. His eyes can track movement, and his pupils are responsive to light. He can move all his fingers and toes. He doesn’t say a word to Ethan, just follows instructions, until the quick exam is over. Then, softly, he asks:

“Will you turn off the light when you go?”

Of course Ethan does, and he draws the curtains too. Out of sight, but not out of mind. For the rest of the shift, even after Dr. Charles’ evaluation and a visit from Lanik and Goodwin and Ethan forcing himself to stay away, he wonders if this was on purpose. He wonders what happens next if it was.

#charcel #crockett marcel #ethan choi #mine #fic #lsfic

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nad-zeta · 5 years ago

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People I’d Like to Know Better

Yassss! Thanx so much❤ i love playing tag games! so fun😱😆I got tagged by @masamune-archive . Let’s do this! Also side note i did this whole thing and then my computer switched off and it didn't save😱😅 so this is draft 2

Birthday: April 3 tbh i always feel so awkward when people as me this cause it take me like 10 mins to calculate my age 😅😂 so i was born 1997 so that makes me 22.

Zodiac: Aries! And yes i am probably as fiery and stubborn as the stereotype 🙈 i dont believe the horoscopes but i do think they are on to something with the birthcharts and personality aspect

Last song I listened to: Into the unknown- Panic! At the disco. I love Disney movies and well animations in general and the music is always so touching

Hobbies:

Okay, so i like to keep busy and dabble in new things sometimes😂 so my smaller hobbies are reading, hiking, gossiping (which is not cool i know but man i love hearing some spilt tea), doodling, and avoiding all responsibilities in life but here are my bigger hobbies and interests

Otome games - I want to start writing for ikesen but I'm scared so maby one day , but I’m currently playing ikesen ( desperately waiting for mitsuhide route) and ikevam (just finished Vincent's route). I played Mystic messenger, but omw that game made me so sleep deprived for days just so i could read the midnight and morning chats! :C still waiting for some of the after endings and new content tho🙈😱 its been like 2 years

Masters- writing a masters counts as writing right? Yeah this takes up all my time! My laptop is so full of research articles and writing a masters is so difficult sometimes omw!

Teaching- so i teach and mentor the culinary arts students at our university! Which is super fun🥰 and then i teach kids how to play squash aswell which honestly sometimes tests my patience to the limit (kids just have way too much energy)

Cooking and baking- so i didn't study 4 years for a degree to not be good at this.. i legit love baking cause i love eating sweets! Nothing is better than homemade confectioneries. Also i dabble in gastronomy cause lets be real that shit is cool

Wine tasting and pairing- basically a fancy way of saying i like wine😅 and i like drinking wine with fam and friends. Also its a cool party trick to have when u at some boring event with fancy people 😂

Gyming- omw i would not be able to survive without this gosh🙈 ive only been at it for 3 years now but its safe to say it has become my coping mechanism, and my main medium of procrastination when i don't feel like writing my masters ^^' also has help me keep my eating disorder in check

Last movie I watched: ummmmmm🤔 i think it was Dr dolittle or it could have been a romcom from Netflix cause i live for those movies

Dream job: TBH thats why im busy with masters cause im a confused little potato and i need to get my ducks in line 😂 I know i definitely want to help people and make a positive difference in their lives but i also want to earn enough money to live comfortably( i know that sounds bad) at the moment im thinking of doing Hotel Management or like an improvement specialist for failing business. Or maby open a cooking school and inspire young minds IDK 😅

Meaning behind URL: None. Nad is short for my name and zeta is my middle name ( i know very original) and my page is basically just reposts so i can easily search for stories i read and liked and reread them🙈^^

Tags: @marshmallowprotection , @purposedrivent , @princessriver ! Hope you guys don’t mind ^^” If you don’t like the tag game, feel free to ignore it.

#taggame #ikesen #randomshitaboutme

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comicteaparty · 5 years ago

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December 25th-December 31st, 2019 Reader Favorites Archive

The archive for the Reader Favorites chat that occurred from December 25th, 2019 to December 31st, 2019. The chat focused on the following question:

While being respectful, what’s a comic you think is objectively great but is just not to your subjective tastes?

carcarchu

the first one that comes to mind is purple hyacinth https://www.webtoons.com/en/drama/purple-hyacinth/list?title_no=1621&page=1 by all means i should love this series. i think the art and premise are great but for some intangible reason it just doesn't jive with me for some reason. i still recommend it to others and it's not like i don't read it but personally it just didn't make it feel anything

snuffysam

Honestly? Most of the comics I've read as part of #week_long_bookclub and #comment_storm fall under that umbrella. The vast majority of comics I've been introduced to through the CTP activities are really quite good (there's been exactly one in the book club that I couldn't stomach, and it was because of content/writing i personally found overly edgy & distasteful) - but for one reason or another, they're just not the type of comic I want to keep up with regularly. Too slice-of-life-y, too sad, i couldn't visually distinguish the characters that well, a super-sporadic update schedule/is on hiatus/is getting rebooted, the parts of the story I liked are clearly not things the author wants to focus on moving forward, a non-functional/poorly organized website, etc. All very good in their own right, but for one reason or another is not something I'd want to read one page at a time.

Eightfish

@snuffysam I feel similarly that most of the comics in the book club are not my cup of tea (haha). I wonder if it would be different if some of the comics there were reader suggested instead of author suggested?

keii4ii

I think CTP should remain author-submitted. Readers could suggest to the authors to submit their comic, though.

the majority of comics I encounter everywhere aren't my bag of tea, TBH. And that's probably a big part of the reason why I'm making my own. Gotta feed my inner reader's needs, one way or another

A lot of Western-written comedy, specifically, are lost on me for cultural reasons. Often they seem to be referencing something that I'm not aware of. Or they have to be read in a specific tone that's lost on me, and probably would make a bit more sense to me if voice-acted. Things like that.

Cronaj

For me it's usually art style. I'm pretty picky about art style, and I know for a fact that I'm missing out on a lot of good comics simply because the art styles are not to my tastes. Any style that's too cutesy, simplistic, or "generic" anime just doesn't call to me. There have been outliers that have managed to draw me in anyway, despite the art style, but not a lot. I also just tend to not like gag-a-day comics or slice-of-life. If there isn't a larger story, I get kind of bored. That being said, I also don't tend to enjoy most superhero/ strictly action comics, simply because I can recognize the tropes from a mile away. Not that they're bad, just... outdated? In fact, I LOVE superhero movies, but most superhero movies have adapted the tropes into a new form for the big screen. Here's an example of a comic that I've seen around, laughed at a few of the jokes, and then never felt the desire to consistently read it, just because it's not my style. Brutally Honest: (https://tapas.io/series/Brutally-Honest)

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

I find myself having the same problem with webcomics that I do with other media - I like to feel like I’m escaping reality. Stories set in our world are hard for me to sit through comfortably. That automatically makes general slice-of-life and romance stories hard for me to get into, unless there’s a strong fantasy/supernatural/sci-fi element to them. That already puts a lot of webcomics out of my range. Because there are SO MANY high school slice of life romance drama webcomics out there. Some of which I know are very highly rated and probably great. They’re just not what my brain craves

Tuyetnhi

strangely enough anything with western high fantasy elements I usually don't read as much compared to romance or slice of life comics lmao

kinda in the same spot to what keii said: a lot of western themes get lost for me and I feel like I need to put my own spin on things if that make sense

Nutty (Court of Roses)

To be fair and honest... I don't really have comics I don't enjoy, or I guess fall too far outside my tastes? Out of the ones I've read, anyways! My reasoning is that I just don't have TIME to read too many comics out there, so when I decide for myself that yes, I'm going to sit down and commit myself to this comic, I look for and find things to enjoy about it, even if it's not normally my cup of tea. The story, the art, the style, the jokes... I try to keep an open mind and enjoy whatever I have the chance to get into, because as an artist I think about the person behind the comic and what kind of story they're trying to tell. I just... really like comics ahahah I wish I had more time to read more!!!!(edited)

FeatherNotes

I agree with @LadyLazuli (Phantomarine) on the 'set in our world ' bit! I find it difficult as well to immerse myself im stories that are in our world with exceptions of an alternate reality or large enough twist that would really differ from what the setting is. Slice of life doesn't really appeal to me, mainly because many comics don't have very stand out designs/personalities for characters that i would gravitate to. To be more specific to the question however, there are certainly quite a few amazing looking comics that don't really float my boat simply bc of style or execution of story or whatnot! Ive been reading one recently that hasn't really stuck to me or left any impact character/story wise, but.....im still reading it! so there def must be something!

Octoflamingo

There are a lot of comics I like but I find myself not reading them after I get to where they last update. I just rarely check in afterwards and usually by the time I do I’ve forgot the plot. I feel that every time I go back to a comic I have to read it all over again to get back to where I was. That can be really time consuming the longer the series is. I also try not to pick up long story oriented series if they aren’t finished because I know I’ll never get to the end of them.

Bear

I say this as a person in the LGBT+ community: I’ve become very tired of comics that centre around a person coming out. Which sucks because they’re super important! But I’ve lived the struggle, everyone close to me has lived the struggle. It’s tiring. What I want is genre stories where the characters are LGBT+, but that’s not necessarily the focus. Luckily in webcomics that’s easier to find. I still have to dig through coming out stories to find them though.

Deo101

Gotta say, super agree with that one Bear.

Eightfish

Same. I like stories where characters are just casually LGBT. Even to the point where they won't even mention that they're gay or lesbian and instead just show up in a gay relationship or naturally bring up their attraction to the same sex. Steven Universe does this really well, I think.

Oh and speaking of suggesting authors to sign up their comics, I think I could have a lot to say about @LadyLazuli (Phantomarine) 's Phantomarine (: Maybe in a few months when the comic gets a little more ahead in the plot?

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

@Eightfish I may submit it after this chapter is done around the beginning of February! I do wish I were further ahead, but there will still be plenty to say after this one wraps up. Thank you for the encouragement!

RebelVampire

If I'm just speaking in general, usually comedy and slice-of-life comics will fall into this category for me even if they're fantastic. I am very, very particular about comedy and slice-of-life. Especially comedy, as I'm usually very specific about the sort of stuff that actually makes me laugh and entertains me. So honestly, a lot of comedy in comics is just not my jam. In a more specific comic sense, Kamikaze to name just one of many: https://kamikazeanimated.com/comic/ The art in the comic is fantastic, the characters really fleshed out and interesting, and even some of the comedy I like. Objectively, I think this is a fantastic comic with a ton of effort put behind it and one everyone should give a chance. That being said, for me personally, I just can't get into the pacing. It's a bit too slow for me even if I think objectively it works fine. So while it's a comic I might enjoy in bulk reads, as a page-by-page thing I just can't do it.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

To be honest, I can’t really name any comics? I tend to like just about any comic that’s really well done. Obviously I have my preferred genres, but I simply don’t seek out comics that aren’t my thing. If I do read past the first few pages of an objectively well-made comic, chances are I’m going to stick around snd keep reading.

Eightfish

Maybe my own comic? Not that I think it's objectively great, but it is of course more completely to my own taste than any other comic out there. Yet if I try to read my own comic I can't glean any enjoyment out of it over the overwhelming feeling of hearing my own recorded voice played back to me. Anyone else?

keii4ii

That's an interesting answer! I can't say I feel 100% the same, but I can relate to perhaps a facet or two of it.

I don't really read my comic either, after all, even though it's an honest reflection of what I want to read.

Eightfish

Thing is I have another short comic from about 6 years ago that I am now far removed from enough to read objectively. And I notice things I think are well done that I didn't notice before and big flaws that I haven't considered 6 years ago. So I'm worried since I can't read my current comic objectively I don't know what I need to improve on

keii4ii

That's definitely a struggle for me as well. It's what constructive critiques are for, BUT it's not easy finding someone willing, able and well suited to critique your work.

I used to actively solicit concrit on my comic. While I appreciate that every critic spent their time and effort genuinely trying to be helpful, the actual critiques weren't always helpful. You have to be a good critic (it takes skills), and you have to be the right critic for that specific story.

🌈ERROR404 🌈

I totally agree on that keii, a lot of people see concrit as the solution for every issue, but that's just bound for trouble. There are a lot more bad and mediocre critiques than well stated and usable ones

keii4ii

Yeah. There's a reason why the services of a good editor are so highly valued!

Cronaj

I think the problem is that most people who offer critiques are trying to shape the story in a way that they themselves would enjoy more, and not necessarily an objective improvement to the existing story. Offering a critique that also preserves the essence and heart of a story is extremely difficult.(edited)

Eightfish

Also when critique is contradictory- " I love how your comic gets right into the interesting part" vs. " I was really confused by the intro " But I don't know what side I would be on if I was a reader because as the author I would never be confused by my own story.(edited)

keii4ii

Yeah, and even when you get two crits on the same "side" it's possible that it's just skewed data due to small sample size. Like, maybe both of the critics are simply not your target audience. I've found that it helps a LOT if you ask specific questions, instead of just asking for a concrit. Coming up with good questions can be very difficult, though! One I've asked in the past is "did you lose interest while reading the comic? If so, at what point(s)?" and I got helpful answers from that, even from people who weren't the target audience.

Kelsey (Kurio)

I admit, I’m not the best at critiquing, like trying to bring to mind things other than “art looks nice” or “I like that joke” or whatnot

Though I guess it gets easier the more I read and mull over something

🌈ERROR404 🌈

it's sometimes hard to find something good and worthwhile to critique LOL

Kelsey (Kurio)

And of course, how does one define “objective improvement” with works of art/media? Outside of things like improving grammar, but what about in cases where it’s like that on purpose? It’s real hard to be totally objective with criticism when you think about it, even when you try to be objective

keii4ii

This might be getting off topic for the channel, but I think it's better to think of it as "effective for the goals of this work" rather than "objective." If you do X in your work on purpose, but X is not appealing to your target demographic, that's not effective. You need to either not do X, or re-define your target demographic. (Not necessarily the only options in that situation, but you get the point.)

Cronaj

I definitely think that "effective" is a better word for what I meant. It's all about intent. For example, most people generally agree that art style should be consistent in a comic, BUT in some cases (especially in comedy) switching up the art style for a scene or a panel to emphasize a point or subvert expectations (thus making the scene potentially funnier) is a very "effective" inconsistency. Basically, if something is effective for telling the story or instilling a mood, the objective view basically becomes null.

DanitheCarutor

I can get into almost anything, there are very few stories I have trouble with, even if it's a genre I wouldn't normally like. Although there are a couple that I'm really picky with, and that's gag-a-day comics or general comedy. The only ones I can think I've actively read off the top of my head are Oglaf, Perry Bible Fellowship and more recently, Woman World. Other than those few the genres never catch my interest, I'm more for story/character driven comics, with plot and stuff like that. Sometimes a comic doesn't click regardless of genre, for example: Homestuck I tried sooo hard to read this one to see what the hype was about, but the farthest I've ever gotten was maybe 50 pages after several attempts, and that's not because it's bad! The comic just didn't click, and regardless of my taste I probably would recommend it to someone who likes those types of comics.

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