#he's basically always trans in my head so i tend to.. forget to write it down 😅

[everybodyshusband]

you slipped into my askbox yesterday with horny thoughts and now I'm here but in need of fluff. dysphoria hit hard today, what would u say about some fluffy, maybe little hurt/lots of comfort raindrop/swissraindrop with transmasc dew drabble? pretty please, husband 👉👈

i'm sorry the dysphoria has been hitting you hard, my friend. i hope you're feeling a little better today <3

under the cut: some swissraindrop hurt/comfort for you, as requested <3

~

Dew sniffles and hugs his pillow closer to his chest in the darkness of his room. Everything just felt so wrong. He can’t even pinpoint one singular reason as to why he feels so awful—although in all honesty, it’s probably a combination of many, many things—so he can’t brainstorm a way out of his problem; all he can do is lie in his bed feeling sorry for himself, and try his best not to cry.

Before his head can let his thoughts spiral any further, a soft knock on the door jolts him out of his misery. “‘S open!” He calls out, voice cracking as he speaks for the first time all day. He feels his body sag with relief as Swiss’ easy grin appears around the doorframe.

The grin quickly slides off of his face, however, when the multi ghoul sees Dew lying curled in on himself. “Awh, baby… What’s goin’ on, Dewy?” Swiss pads quietly over to the bed, mattress dipping as he sits down.

Dew nearly sobs openly when Swiss places a gentle hand on the fire ghoul’s cheek, swiping at the tears gathering on his lashes. The gesture is sweet and tender, and it’s exactly what Dew needs. “Just feel like… shit,” he admits. “Dunno why though.” He sniffles, lifting one of his own hands up from where he had been squeezing the pillow and covering Swiss’ hand with his own. The multi ghoul’s skin is warm. Comforting. “Probably a lotta things…”

Swiss strokes his thumb over Dew’s cheek gently. The action grounds the fire ghoul more than he’d like to admit. “That’s fine too, doll. If you’re upset, then you’re upset, yeah? You don’t always have to know why.”

Dew nods, unable to find words to reply with, but still wanting Swiss to know he appreciates his reassurance.

They stay like that for a while; Swiss’ fingers dragging softly over Dew’s cheeks as he sits up on the mattress, the fire ghoul holding onto the pillow and Swiss’ fingers as if they’re lifelines while he lies under the covers, both ghouls breathing the other in.

Swiss breaks the silence first. “D’you want me to go get Rainy? I know they’re better at the comforting you stuff than I am.” There’s no jealousy in Swiss’ tone, not bitterness. Just plain, simple honesty.

Dew considers for a moment before nodding. He wants to be able to curl up against the water ghoul and soak in their cool, comforting temperature. …But he also doesn’t want Swiss to leave, and the way the multi ghoul phrased his suggestion made it sound like he’s planning on doing just that. Then again, he’s been comforted by Rain without Swiss by their side more times than he can count, and he’s been fine, so maybe it won’t matter if the multi ghoul leaves for a while. “D’you mind?”

“No, baby, not at all. I’ll go get ‘em. They’ll be here soon, ‘kay?” The second Swiss pulls his hand away and stands up, Dew can’t help but whine involuntarily, already missing the multi ghoul’s touch.

“Wait. Please,” he mumbles quietly. “Will you… Stay? With me?”

Swiss’ face breaks into a delighted smile. “‘Course I’ll stay, Dewy. Might just take a little longer for Rain to find their way to us. That okay?”

Dew sniffles, but he feels himself smile a little at Swiss’ pleased grin. “Yeah,” he nods. “Yeah, that’s okay.” He gestures for the multi ghoul to climb into the bed with him and snuggles against his chest. He’s warm, and it’s lovely, Dew thinks. Even if he’s still not feeling great, at least he’s feeling better, and once Rain gets there, hopefully he’ll start feeling a bit more like himself again.

It’s not long before there’s a second knock on Dew’s door, but this time, it’s Swiss who calls for the knocker to come in. Before the door even opens, Dew knows it’s Rain; they have a specific knock pattern that Dew memorised long ago, and he’s sure Swiss has done the same. They open the door and peek their head around with a hand covering their eyes, smirking.

“Are you both decent?” They tease, probably knowing full well that their partners are doing nothing but cuddling innocently.

“Just come and cuddle us, viridis,” Dew mumbles quietly, his voice muffled in the hollow of Swiss’ chest, impatient to feel Rain’s comforting presence now that the water ghoul is almost within arm’s reach.

There must still be something in Dew’s voice that gives him away—or maybe they just simply know him too well—because Rain’s smirk falters and they drop their hand from their eyes, looking at the fire ghoul in concern. “Sundew, are you okay, my darling?”

Swiss beckons Rain over with his free hand, lifting the covers on Dew’s side of the bed. The water ghoul easily slips under the blanket and slots themselves into their mini, impromptu ghoul pile, their cool skin proving a perfect balance to Swiss and Dew’s combined warmth, just as the fire ghoul had hoped. Once Rain has settled themselves into the pile comfortably, Dew chooses to move his head out of Swiss’ chest to the pillow above so he can face Rain properly, and both other ghouls wrap their arms around him tightly. As Dew organises himself into a comfortable position, he feels Swiss shift, leaning over him to mutter something in Rain’s ear that he can’t quite make out—presumably something in answer to the question the water ghoul posed to Dew that the fire ghoul never quite got around to answering.

Once Swiss finishes speaking, Rain wraps their arms around Dew tighter and leans forward, pressing a gentle kiss to the fire ghoul’s forehead. “I’m sorry I didn’t come and find you earlier, sundew,” they whisper softly against his ear. They pull away from his ear, but not as far as Dew was expecting, only enough to pass their eyelashes softly over his cheek, making the fire ghoul huff out a laugh of surprise at the tickle of it.

“‘S okay,” Dew murmurs back. It’s louder than he means to with Rain still fluttering their eyes across his cheek. “Swiss helped.” The multi ghoul gives a squeeze around Dew’s middle at the mention of his name. The corner of Dew’s mouth twitches up, and he leans gratefully into the multi ghoul’s hold.

Rain chases Dew’s face with their own after he leans away and ghosts their eyelashes over his lips. Dew has to resist the urge to stick his tongue out and lick them. Instead, he giggles in a way that is decidedly un-Dew-like—he resents (not really, but a ghoul’s got to keep up appearances) the implication that Swiss and Rain would probably say the opposite; that he always sounds like that when he laughs—and pulls back to ask Rain what in Hell’s name they’re doing.

“Kissing you,” they reply simply, as if that explains everything.

Even Swiss chuckles at that. “Baby…” He’s clearly very amused by this whole situation. “You kiss people with your lips. You know that.”

“These, my loves,” they start, and Dew will forever staunchly admit that the affection meant for both him and Swiss at the same time does nothing to give him the warm fuzzies, despite it absolutely doing just that, “are butterfly kisses.” Rain continues ghosting their lashes all over Dew’s face as they speak, making the fire ghoul squirm and laugh under their touch. “Mountain showed me. They’re supposed to feel like butterflies flitting across your face. Close your eyes, sundew. Can you feel it?”

Dew blinks at their words, doing his best to communicate his confusion, but closes his eyes without complaint, smiling as he indulges in his partner’s wishes. He’s surprised to find that, once his eyes are closed and he relaxes himself as well as he can, it really does feel like butterfly wings brushing up against his cheeks, lips and nose. It’s strangely calming, and almost grounding, in a way, despite the softness of the barely-there touch. Slowly, as their touch continues, Dew finds the horrible uncomfortable-ness from earlier melting away under the brush of Rain’s eyelashes and Swiss’ gentle hold.

It’s not a conscious action, but after some time passes, Dew realises he’s been purring. Swiss is massaging over Dew’s front and shoulders, tracing his fingers lightly over the faded scars adorning the fire ghoul’s chest from where his arms are wrapped around the fire ghoul, and one of Rain’s hands strokes at Dew’s cheek while the other cards through his hair. His partners’ touch is so tragically comforting that he can’t help but let his eyes slowly slip closed, allowing himself to drift in and out of consciousness, tangled in the warm-cool embrace of both his partners.

He thinks he trills out a sleepy “thank you, love you” and he thinks he hears two equally sleepy replies, but he’s so tired that he truly doesn’t know. All he knows is that, while he still doesn’t feel great, nor does he know the reason for his misery, he’s in Swiss and Rain’s arms, and for now, that means he’s safe, he’s warm, and he’s happy.

~

oh, and very quickly !

dew calls rain viridis which is a shortening of chromis viridis (blue-green damselfish), a species of fish that looks like this:

[go-go-devil]

Fanfic writer ask: 🎁🦈📚

🎁 Have a piece of a WIP you want to share?

Here's a short segment from a Pathologic fic I just started writing a few days ago!

Clara paused. She assumed it may have been a prophetic vision, much the same as the ones she’d been granted since birth. Although hers were always panic-inducing warnings that manifested her thoughts like emerging plague clouds: saying the wrong thing to someone and incurring their wrath, failing to save her bound from the sand pest, forgetting an important task after being outrun by the unholy speed of time. Yet it was the death visions that were the worst of them all. 

Without warning she could be walking the lamplit streets only for her mind to gruesomely predict men hurling knives into her head, beating her to a bloody pulp, or even scorching her flesh with flames just a little farther down the road. Another time she imagined falling limp to the ground within the rotting innards of an infected house as a black, cold haze overtook her senses, to which her body pulsed with those pains as if it could remember shutting down in death.

Some of those visions even repeated, like the premonitions of those two goons who kidnapped Rubin and accosted her in the tunnels. So many variations of them pinning her against the wet, flesh-like walls, dealing blow after blow and snapping her fragile bones like twigs. 

Even if they were illusions, the ferocity of them still reduced her to tears each night…

🦈 Which character is the toughest to write?

In my Knock-Knock fic, House With No Door, I occasionally had trouble writing for the Lodger's father since that character literally doesn't appear in the game itself. To write him I basically had to take the two sentences of dialogue that reference him and build an oc out of it, then try my best to integrate him into the plot of the game. Overall, though, I do like my interpretation of him a lot!

Also in that very patho wip I just took a segment from above, there are several characters in it that I've never written for before: Lara, Aspity, Block, and Aglaya to be precise. While I do feel I at least have Lara and Block's voices and mannerisms down, I am slightly intimidated with getting Aspity and Aglaya's characters right since both are complex characters whom I don't wanna water-down (especially Aglaya since her scene's gonna be very intense and important to the narrative)

Granted my perfectionism ramps up when writing for patho characters since I only played the game once at the moment, so I'm afraid I missed some lore tidbits here and there by forgetting to complete an optional mission here and there

📚 Is there a fanfic or fanfic writer you recommend?

Two friends of mine are excellent fic authors who I recommend people check out on AO3!

solonggaybowser has written several really nice Hylics fanfics, particularly ones revolving around Wayne/Dedusmuln (and even the only Dedusmuln/Somsnosa fic I've seen yet) that are super cute and charming! At the moment he's also been writing some cool Pokemon fics too for Gens 5 and 8 characters

undeadarchivist has a boatload of very well-written Pathologic fics that I enjoy that tend to focus on trans and neurodivergent hc's for several of the characters (particularly Daniil and Artemy). His gen fics are some of the best I've ever read, and I'm sure his more explicit fics are of a similar high quality (sorry I'm too sex-repulsed to read those lol)

[keepyourlife]

What fics do you like/read/recommend?

Difficult question, cause recommendations I can give but only very limited.

What I like? Slow Burn, Angst, Fluff, damn it I also read Smut sometimes, AUs (I mention something about that later). Basically: I want to suffer, I want to cry, but give me a happy ending. I LOVE good interpreted characters and I LOOOVE well-written relations. What I mean by that is, basically, if a sibling relationship is weirdly written, I tend to just.. not read the story at all. Does that make sense? Whatever.

While I read a lot, I rarely save what I read and more often than not I kind of.. lose half of the fics I read? There’s one I am currently obsessed with, which I found via @worstloki:

doubt truth to be a liar. absolutely amazing tbh. it’s about a younger Loki suddenly appearing in the Avengers Tower, without any memories about what happened (post Ragnarok), it’s got trans Peter & cultural differences between Asgard and Midgard I find quite interesting. Cause while I do know that comic Loki mentioned that the concept of gender and sexuality do not exist in Asgard the way they do on Midgard (I think that is what he said), I found the differences portrayed in that story very believable and also super interesting, cause I didn’t think of that? Especially interesting when you know a bit about the Viking age and its culture, which MCU Asgard clearly was set to resemble.

So, next I need to put a little disclaimer about myself: I normally do not like Reader fics, because more often than not they’re super ooc and I just find this whole.. “y/n” thing kind of offputting and it just makes me uninterested very often. However I have a friend who do likes these kind of stories. And she lets me know. And she needs someone to talk about these stories, so there’s that. And I read a handfull of them and tbh only those I actually find 1. well-written, 2. well characterised & 3. no darn use of “y/n”, cause no I never imagine myself there, I create characters in my head for each story.

A Job Million PRs Would Die For by @saiansha. Jesus fucking christ the amount of times I re-read this story. Honestly, it is, I think, the first Reader fanfic I read in my entire life, was super weary at first cause. idk. I know some people on this website (and AO3, let’s be real) that just post very weird stuff. This one has an interpretation of Loki that I can 100% believe and it is one I support. That was one of my main reasons to continue reading, but it’s also the general writing style that I like and that there’s a Reader character, who is not a helpless damsel in distress. Ultimate proof of that was the most recent chapter. (dear author knows my thoughts, I dared to dm cause I was just. very enthuasiastic about this story)

Broken Crown by @michelleleahhh​. Second one I started reading at one point cause my friend kept asking me to read it. a kind-of AU? It’s set in Asgard. That’s what you need to know. Again, a story that had me from the beginning, once I started. For the writing style and for the characterisation. The story really had me guessing sometimes, cause,, well-written! and really good dialogue!! damn you Freya!! and a decent Reader character that doesn’t have me ripping out my own intestines. (also very enthusiastic about this story, yes this phrasing as a meaning)

Foruneyti by Evaldrynn or @foruneyti (I tagged the blog for the story here, too, don’t mind me pls) Also kind of an AU, basically just Asgard. Anyway, I am so in love with the aesthetic this story gives me. It’s hard to explain, but after 85 chapters I just have this very clear picture in my head of what I think this story looks like. Now, Reader here is also good and well-written, the Original Characters are likeable and not super overpowered, neither is Reader. The canon characters are, in my humble opinion, interpreted nicely and tbh for some reason I just always imagine them in this comic style, rather than the way the films portray them.

Of Different Emotions by @wanderingworldwarrior. my. goodness. I am in love with these stories and I am just. so desperate for an update. idk if we will ever get one, but honestly, I re-read it this week and. Just stopped after the second part, cause I can’t deal with the pain of the third part one more time. First part is set pre-Thor 1, second part is set during Thor 1 and the third during The Avengers. I love the Reader character a lot and the Original Characters just. belong so much to the story. idk I just love the way this story is written, I love the characters, I just love it a lot, alright.

Onwards to anime. Bungou Stray Dogs:

where your loyalties lie by writingfromtheshadows. this!! story!! it’s so good!! it’s a Yakuza!AU and oh my gooood. It’s all just so so well put, compared to canon and I love the dynamics Dazai and Chuuya have here.

Forgettable Significance by Witheryvine. THIS STORY. took my sanity, threw it out of the window and then spat on me. It broke my heart so very often, cause it manages to make you question yourself. morals about relationships out of the window. I re-read this story like five times.

still still still by toriosaurus. I was waiting, desperately, for every single chapter. This AU gives me everything I need and more. I remember doing fanart for this story and being very proud of it, even though it did no justice to the original story. Normally I am not a fan of, idk what to call it, no power AUs because most people just do the thing wrong for me. But this one hits.

If I recommend Twist and Shout now I get thrown into Turbohell, so idk if you want a very sinful Destiel fanfic, then read

Hot Water by Chiyume. I was 16, I decided to read Destiel fanfictions and this one kind of did it for me.

Don’t @ me. I really read a lot more than this, but I suck at organising myself and I just barely ever save shit. Also it’s late, I’ve been on a video call with my friend for over three hours now and I just like to clown when I am tired. Anyway, I used to bookmark Destiel fanfics back in the day and the rest is just. Read it, kudos, comment, and then I forget to save. The multichapter fics are often still in my subscribes, but sometimes. just.. not.

[magiefish]

hhhhhhhhhh guess who drew all the batim characters in prep for the comic they’re making!

yeah so it took like 4 days to draw all these guys, and it was actually pretty fun figuring out colours and designs and stuff!

(also, update on the Reveries Twisted comic, I have a plan for the first chapter but i have like, 7 tests next week and I haven’t started drawing it yet so it’s definitely not going to be coming out anytime soon sdfgsdfsj but i am still working on it!)

anyway, i felt like writing little descriptions for every character, so feel free to read these below the ‘keep reading’ line if you feel like it! My ask box is also always open, so if u have any questions feel free to ask

Bertrum Piedmont-he/him, gay/ace

-Started working as a mechanic at about 15 and worked his way up from there -Everyone in the studio @ him: why are u british -His big ego often gets in the way of things, but at his core he's a good person (doing bad shit but ultimately having good intentions is common among these guys shdgfs) -Wlw & mlm solidarity w/ Lacie, who is his most trusted confidant and friend -Actually treats his employees well, even when they do basically nothing all day, so he does a lot of work himself most of the time Linda Stein-she/her, straight as a ruler -Parents immigrated from Spain -She's very catholic and very into 'traditional family values' and that sort of stuff -She is sweet, but her strict morals and black and white ethics often make her do unintentional harm -She is also pretty oblivious to most things Jack Fain-he/him & they/them, pan/ace, OCD -Mother immigrated from China to France, and then he moved to America, it's confusing -Can play the violin really well, but is terrible at composing his own pieces -Peak friend material -Short and round and soft with a love of a good espresso -Kind and quiet but ultimately ineffective and happy to watch from the sidelines Daniel 'Buddy' Lewek-he/him, aro/ace, autistic, jewish -He is curious and observant, but very very naive -He finds it hard to pick up on social cues, and tends to daydream a lot -Never really had a father figure, and unfortunately kind of half sees Joey as one (baaaad choice), but his mother is great -Loves drawing and tends to chew on pens (and most objects really) -Too young Susie Campbell-she/her, demi -Her parents were Russian and she picked up their accent, but taught herself how to cover it up. She is now excellent at voice acting. -Has a birthmark most theatres turned her away for. But luckily voice acting gave her another chance at performance, and the music department really does not care about it. -Her dad was a butcher, so she now knows a concerning amount about how to cut up and dissect meat. -She gets easily attached to things emotionally, and has a whole pile of random bits and bops she keeps on her person because she can't throw them away. -Naive, but smart enough to know how to read and deceive people if needed. Ms Abigail Lambert-she/her, lesbian -A very gifted artist, who is quite frustrated with the business aspect of animation. -Picked up quite a few things about engineering from Lacie. -Stern, but kind. Motherly, if she likes you and you squint hard enough. -Used to fighting for things. -Giving her food is a pretty good way to get her to like you. Being an artist, she forgets to eat at the correct times a lot, so a meals always appreciated. Norman Polk-he/him, gay, albino -Knows how to fix things, knows how to fight, knows how to hide -General cool uncle vibes -He watches people a lot, and gives off some creepy vibes, but he does genuinely care about people -Knows something is up and is determined to find out what (even if he dies trying) -Fought in WW1, then worked at a cinema for a bit. Emma Lamont-she/her, heteroflexible -Keep dancing even when everything goes wrong -Bit of a 'i'm better than these fools' mentality going on -But she's pretty chill, and willing to act when needed -Basically every woman in the studio knows her on the basis that she chills in the girls bathroom. -Hates Joey, but knows those who stir up a bit too much trouble usually 'resign' Sammy Lawrence-he/him, (vocal-romantic) bi/ace, ADD -His dad sucked, so he ran away. He's also the reason he's largely abandoned his faith, but he still holds hope that there is some kind of god out there. -He and Jack are basically brothers, they've known each other for a long time. -He can compose music in his head, but can play basically every instrument. -Tall and thin and sharp with a love of black coffee. -He's actually pretty chill and nice, but the conditions of the studio (workload, noises, dreams) have left him quick to snap and a stressed out mess. -He's pretty oblivious to his own feelings and spends basically all his time thinking about music, so he usually only realises that he has a crush on someone if he hears them singing (hence the vocal-romantic joke) Johnny Hart-he/him (she/her), gay (trans), heart condition -A nervous wreck who avoids everything and everyone -Trans but doesn't realise it, he thinks this level of discomfort has something to do with his heart condition or something like that. -Speaking of which, if he gets genuinely terrified or panicked he could have a heart attack. -Hence why he's a recluse who remains in the organ room and interacts w/ literally no one. -Except Dot and Buddy (who forgets he exists and who he also has a crush on). Wally Franks-he/him, pan -Friends with literally everyone who isn't one of the older folks (and thomas) -Honorary member of the music department because he can play a harmonica and vibes with everyone there. -Tries to put a positive spin on everything, often beyond the point of reason -A mischevous, mildly selfish prankster with a heart of gold -Gossip pals with Susie and Norman The Violinist-she/her, nobody knows -Has literally never expressed an emotion ever -Seems to know things are going to happen before they happen -Just generally pretty weird -She isn't friends with Dot, they're both just vaguely interested in what the others doing -She looks a lot like Allison, but the two have never spoken and nobody knows if they're sisters Thomas Connor-they/them, gynephilia -He is just. So tired. -An actual mechanical genius who gets his work used for the wrong purposes. -Is very of the 'when you're on a path stick to it' mentality -Cold and hard exterior that vertually no one except Allison has ever managed to get through. -He can and will beat you up. Henry Stein-he/him, gay, vitiligo -Nice and hardworking. -Doesn't have many emotions other than to draw. -He's in fucking narnia he's so deep in the closest. -Feels emotions, but buries them deep down and doesn't express them too clearly. -Has difficulty setting healthy boundaries with people and represses himself far too much. Joey Drew-he/him, homoromantic/pansexual, bipolar disorder, alcohol and cigarette addictions -Chaotic, feral, short little man who lies to everyone -Charismatic as hell, but also a terrible friend and person in general -He doesn't blink enough, does not know the meaning of personal space, and hasn't aged for about 4 years, which are all very bad signs. -Doesn't understand how to run a business but does so anyway. Doesn't understand how to interact with people but does so anyway. Doesn't understand how to create life but does so anyway- -He isn't pure evil, he just gets into very bad mindsets and makes poor decisions that lead him down the wrongest way to go. -Does some self evaluation and goes 'maybe this wasn't the right way chief :/' just a bit too late Audrey Dempsey-she/her, lesbian, Borderline Personality Disorder -Feral conspiracy theorist -May or may not be related to multiple studio members -Everyone's called her crazy for years and made her feel like a burden, and she is hellbent on proving everyone wrong -Quite socially awkward, and rather sarcastic with a dark sense of humour -Works for Archgate Allison Pendle-she/her & they/them, androphilic/ace -Is forever lost in a vintage clothing store -Most people say she seems nice, but everyone just kind of subconciously registers that there is something up with her -Knows a lot about the supernatural -The person closest to Joey, which doesn't necessarily mean they're friends -Nobody has ever seen the right side of her face Dot Acciaci-she/her, pan -Her parents are Italian, and she speaks a little herself, usually using it to encrypt her private notes -Mischevious & curious, but ultimately kind -She will find out your secrets, and is very good at reading people -Great storyteller -Struggles with loneliness a lot Dr Eleanor Hackenbush-she/her, aro/ace -Science knows no bounds -Doesn't care what your motivation is, as long as you give her some cash and some experiments -Filled with nothing but utter spite Ms Reina Rodriguez-they/them, demi -Tired of everything -Although she puts up a calm exterior, Rodriguez is very attached to the studio and views it as her 'new family', having a terrible relationship with her old one -Her family drama connects to the fact they're very catholic, but she nobody knows what this drama is other than Joey Tessa Arch-she/her, straight -An absolute bitch -Trusts her husband far too much -Not very smart, but compensates for this for being good looking and rich Shawn Flynn-he/him (intersex), pan -Jovial, but gets angry quickly -Willing to do 'wrong' things if it helps someone else out, kind of like Robin Hood or something -His mother taught him how to sew and he helped her make clothes when he was younger -Found it hard to get a job because he's Irish, so despite being tired of all the bullshit of JDS, he is reluctant to look elsewhere -Friends with Lacie and Grant because they appreciate his humour Lacie Benton-She/her, lesbian, trans -Tougher than the toughies -wlw & mlm solidarity w/ Bertrum, who she views as one of the only genuinely smart people in JDS and who she has worked for for basically all of her life -Feels like something is up, but doesn't notice much if it doesn't connect to her work -Has automatophobia -Friend with Shawn and Grant because she respects their dedication to their work Grant Cohen-He/him, bi, depression, jewish -Absolute madlad at maths -Acts like he doesn't care what you think, cares far too much about what you think -Everyone wants him to just get therapy already -Doesn't have many friends, but has a weird 'we're both horribly overworked' kinship with Sammy, so they usually just chill and smoke together -Friends with Shawn and Lacie because they're actually mentally stable and he needs some rocks Nathan Arch-He/him, straight -You should hate him -You should hate him a lot -Super rich and doesn't pay his workers enough -Silver tongued -Basically a spider. Creates webs of manipulation and lies, sees a lot, and knows plenty about waiting for his prey to come to him.

[nomattertheoceans]

I feel like I picked up on most of the racist tropes in Maas’ books but I’d love to hear your thoughts on the homophobia in them

Hi Non!! Thanks for the ask :) 

Just an fyi if people didn’t see it, Anon is referring to my tags on this post about death of the author and the importance of criticizing media without taking into account the creator’s intent.

So yeah, regarding Maas. There’s a lot of ways in which I find her writing homophobic, I’ll divide them in different categories to try and make it clearer because my mind works in twisted ways x)

You should also know that I haven’t read Crescent City past the first few chapters so I can’t talk about this book (what I heard isn’t great regarding this issue but I haven’t read it so I won’t comment on it)

(this got long so I’m gonna use a read more)

worldbuilding

I think her worldbuilding tends to reflect a homophobia that she might not be aware of. Her entire world is built on heteronormative ... norms (lmao sorry I don’t have a better word I haven’t slept in more than 20 hours) that don’t leave any space for queer people to thrive in.

Throne of Glass actually got the less awful bit on this one, we’re shown that Hasar’s girlfriend Renia would become Empress if Hasar was crowned, and Aelin’s uncle was openly gay, so I guess compared to ACOTAR it’s better.

ACOTAR gets the worst of this: The fae society is painfully mysoginistic and by extend, homophobic. Mor is basically sold into marriage at sixteen, to a man, without regards of how she feels about it, because women are considered a breeding stock. The Illyrian women are viewed in the same light. Even Feyre is expected to be making heirs when she’s about to marry Tamlin. Yes, all these examples are painted as bad things in the books, but it doesn’t take away the fact that there are also considered normal within the society we are presented with. When the entire world is built around cishet dynamics (whether good or bad), it shows us that queer relationships are not the norm here, they’re outsiders from their own society (btw considering women as ‘baby makers’ is also transphobic but I’m not gonna open that can of worms).

The mating bond in itself is the biggest heteronormative concept in her books. As Rhys explains it in ACOMAF, it is literally intended for couples to make the strongest babies. It doesn’t care about love between partners, its primary goal is to perpetuate the species. It’s a natural instinct that we’re shown is basically impossible (or at least very difficult) to fight against. We’re shown that the woman has to make the man a meal to “seal the deal”, we’re shown that men become extremely violent towards other men they consider a threat when they’re influenced by the bond (by the way that’s toxic masculinity but it’s not what this post is about).

I believe that Maas didn’t intend for the mating bond to be a possibility between mlm or wlw couples, but that she retconned it in ACOWAR. Which in a sense is good, I’m all for queer soulmates! But the concept she invented here doesn’t have much room for non heteronormative relationships, and it becomes painfully obvious when you try to apply the mating bond logic to wlw/mlm couples. It brings many questions to mind: if it’s intended to make babies, does it mean that the mated mlm couple has one of the men be a trans man? If that’s the case, why didn’t she tell us? Why didn’t she spend more time on telling us their story? If they’re both cis men, then why would they have a mating bond, something specifically designed to help with species continuity by making babies? To me, it’s proof that she didn’t think it through, she thought it was cute to have two men be mates just like our main couple was, and didn’t stop to consider how the mating bond didn’t allow for this to happen organically because it exists in a vaccum of cishet privilege where she didn’t think about the consequences of including it in her books without elaborating on it. 

We can also see that queer people aren’t expected to be the norm in that society. Feyre is genuinely surprised when Mor tells her that she likes women, as if it was this groundbreaking thing she never even considered. I’m not going to get into details as to why I hate Mor’s coming out (I love Mor being a wlw but really, really, hate that scene), but the fact that she hasn’t felt comfortable enough to come out in five centuries is very telling of how unaccepting the fae society is of queer people. So yeah, there’s a queer bar where she hangs out but like... that doesn’t mean it’s accepted. One of the main reasons why queer bars started existing in the first place was to become a safe space for people to be themselves, so you know, I kinda take it as another proof of how unopen-minded the fae society actually is.

lack of queer characters

Overall, we don’t have a lot of confirmed queer characters. Off the top of my head, I can think about (of course I might forget some so that might not be 100% accurate, I haven’t read the books in a long while):

TOG: Hasar and Renia, Aedion, Orlon and Darrow

ACOTAR: Mor, Helion, Thesan, Andromache, Nephelle

Note that I’m not counting unnamed characters. I don’t consider “x’s lover” as a developped enough character to count as representation, come on.

Out of all these characters, only two of them are in the main cast of their respective series (Aedion and Mor). The others go from “mentioned” to “secondary character” at best. I’m not saying that all of her characters have to be queer, but out of such a big cast of mains, one in each series seems very little.

construction of these characters

On top of not having many characters that aren’t cishet, the characters we do have aren’t very well handled by the story.

Hasar is repeatedly described as being ugly, despite most of the other characters being described over and over as breathtakingly beautiful.

Aedion compares bisexuality to forced prostitution.

Helion is basically shown as sleeping around with everybody.

Mor’s sexuality is kept so ambiguous that there’s debate as to whether she’s actually bi, or rather a closeted lesbian.

Renia barely talks, Darrow is a jerk. Orlon, Andromache and Nephelle are figures of the past that we never meet

This is a problem mainly because of how small in numbers the queer characters are. The more diverse cast you create, the easiest it gets to avoid hurtful tropes. I wouldn’t mind Helion being a bi man sleeping around all the time if he wasn’t the only bi man in ACOTAR. Nor would I mind Mor’s tragic backstory if we had other wlw characters. By reducing her cast to such little numbers, she’s creating problems in her writing. She’s telling us that bi men sleep around and never settle down, she’s telling us that sapphic women will only get tragic stories and never find love again.

In the end, the combination of a heteronormative worldbuilding and the lack of work put into the queer characters we are given makes it impossible for me to not consider her books homophobic.

To be clear,

I don’t think Maas does this out of malice. I don’t think she’s a homophobe who hates queer people or anything. I also don’t dislike her books. They’re a fun read, and there’s a reason why ACOMAF is one of only two audiobooks I always have on my phone! Hell, I even write fanfic with her characters. But I think it’s important to be critical of her books, particularly in regards to issues such as racism, mysoginy, or homophobia.

To go back to the original post from yesterday, this is why ‘death of the author’ is an important point here. I’m not saying that Maas intended to be homophobic or that she built her world expressedly to exclude queer people. But in the end, that’s what happened, and we can’t brush off the critics of queer people and people of color just by saying “well, the author didn’t mean it that way.”

I do think that she includes queer representation only as an afterthought in her books, and it shows. Mor’s coming out was poorly handled because she didn’t consider the ramifications of it, just like the mating bond suddenly applying to queer relationships. Her societies are based on cishet white upper class America and that leaves little to no place for queer people (and people of color) to thrive in her stories. From what I see, she doesn’t seem interested in consulting with sensitivity readers over these issues, and as long as she doesn’t swallow her pride and listen to the people that are affected by it, she’s not going to get better on these points.

[daily-dose-of-imagines]

(���◔◡◔)っ ♥ Matchup ♥

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

Hello there! If you don’t mind, would it be alright to request a matchup for Demon Slayer, Fullmetal Alchemist & Fire Force?

I’m an autistic, gay trans guy!

(I’m a Libra & ISFP).

I’m 4'10 with short hair that I dye often (as of right now, it’s indigo!) and I have hazel eyes, with a lot of freckles. I’m chubby, but with a very prominent hourglass figure. I gravitate towards wearing clothes that are baggy, but I have a secret love for wearing things like dresses or generally very pretty/cute clothes?

(Like.. Lolita style stuff! I have no problem wearing feminine things, and a lot of it makes me feel really confident! I often feel insecure about myself due to my autism, and I have a birth defect that gives me complications with walking, so wearing nice things and looking fancy makes me feel a lot better about myself!)

I’m timid and struggle when it comes to socialising especially with new people. I tend to not speak at first and only gesturing to avoid having to properly talk unless necessary. I struggle anxiety and extreme hyper-empathy (I feel emotions a lot more intensely than most people would). It’s not hard to get me very overwhelmed either so I do find it difficult to talk to others, but I do get along better with those who are a lot more extroverted and will open up more with people like that! Over time I tend to come more out of my shell and I’m very loving and compassionate!

I’m not the smartest, and can be pretty oblivious (i.e. with romantic advances) and need most things to be said to me at face value or I usually won’t understand, or it’ll go over my head.. And to which, I have my head in the clouds most of the time, always day-dreaming and that causes me to be uncoordinated or clumsy.. Which my short attention span doesn’t help with at all!

(It’s taken me a few hours to actually sit and write this ‘cus I keep getting distracted, haha!)

Despite my initial shyness, I have the tendency to be very loud and childish around people I like/want to impress, and won’t think much when I do this, which leads me to embarrass myself rather often. My love language comes in gifts or words of affirmation and I’m over the top lovey-dovey, but I instantly fluster if they’re returned. I’m very much so teased for how easy I am to embarrass.

I’m creative and absolutely adore most forms of fiction, taking mass amounts of inspiration from it for what I make! I’m a writer, artist and a singer in my free-time! (I love to sing for others or draw others, do anything to just show off my talent to make others happy!)

I really enjoy impressing with my ideas and their originality, and adore nothing more than when I get to talk about what I love; but sometimes I overshare or talk too much and can be unsure where to stop.

I guess overall I would do better with someone who doesn’t mind how 'eccentric’ I am? (I’m often bullied for these “strange” qualities) And someone who’s more outgoing than me? That aside, I don’t mind anything else, but I do have a type for guys who are a lot taller than me, haha!

I hope this isn’t too much, but thank you so much for reading, and if you accept this request! I really tried my hardest with this 'cus I really like this blog!

Waah, thank you again! I hope you have a nice day!

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

Hello @eggedeggs and thank you so much for requesting with us! I am sososososos sorry this got out so late, but I truly hope that you enjoy this!

>Admin 𝕋

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

𝐼 𝓈𝒽𝒾𝓅 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽...

 Alphonse Elric! So, the reasons as to why I matched you up with Alphonse is because i really like the idea of having someone who looks so basic with someone who looks so cool, you! I feel like Alphonse, being the accepting person that he is will have no reservations being with someone so outspoken in the way you show yourself to the world. Hopefully that makes sense, but ultimately Alphonse will ultimately be fascinated with how you look, cool hair and lolita style and all! 

You aren’t the only person who is a little timid at first, Alphonse is just as timid, but as had time to adjust to it. He could be someone that could help you with your shyness and being timid! He understands the feeling, he knows how it feels to be shy towards others, so he will know how to help you feel more confident! And when you feel overwhelmed about meeting new people, he will pull you to he side and make sure that you okay, make sure that you feel calm until you can socialize again, and if you can’t then he will take you some place that will help you feel better! He also loves that you are so compassionate and he especially loves watching you come out of your shell when you are comfortable around people! SO with that in mind, Alphonse will do everything in his power to make you feel comfortable so that he can see you being the bubbly and eccentric person you are!

Alphonse would notice your love of fiction, how you are always reading or writing; so he’ll sometimes go into town and look the various shops to see if they have a new fiction book or if they have someone writing utensils that would suit you and your creative endeavors! He is very attentive to stuff that really makes you happy, so when he sees something that make your smile the brightest, Alphonse will never hesitate to get it for you, no matter the cost!

All in all, I feel that Alphonse will be the best fit for you in the fullmetal universe because he is attentive, loves how you express, yourself, understands your shyness and how sometimes being around people really overwhelms you! He will love every bit of you from head to toe. He isn’t really the most outgoing person, but for you, he will do his best to be the man of the party!

Tanjiro! Okay, so you and Tanjiro! It’s just *Chef’s kiss*! Tanjiro is a pretty outgoing guy with a love for friends and family that compares to no other! And you not be an exception to that! He would love you cute clothes, your cool Indigo hair, and your amazing hourglass figure! 

Tanjiro would be understanding about your shyness around other people, though wouldn’t personally understand it himself. But that won’t stop him from trying to make sure that you feel comfortable around his friends and such! And oh boy, once you do get comfortable enough to show all of them your funny confident side, Tanjiro’s eyes will become literal hearts for you! He will fin d it extremely endearing when you talk about things that you love and things that give you inpiration! And just as Alphonse will do, Tanjiro will find things that will help you get more inspirations and more motivation to be creative!

Tanjiro will notice that you are a bit floaty, in the sense that you get distracted a lot, which is perfectly fine for him, he is the kind of person that has dealt with that and knows how to help you back to the grounds of reality! But sometimes, Tanjiro will let you do you thing, whatever it may be, from thinking about something else entirely or maybe just letting you stay in your daydream! He mostly does it because he the look on your face whenever you go into your little dreamland intrigues. He always wonders what you are thinking about whether it be your next project or something about the flowers in the garden! He just likes staring and watching, his heart beating rapidly because of how cute it is!

He would love if you were to tell him your ideas, run it by him so that he can be a part of the creative adventure! Tell him about a new book you want to write or maybe a piece of art that you want to paint! And if by chance, the painting would be a portrait of him, he will smile and excitedly pose for the painting! He wants to be there every step of the way even if he doesn’t really know what is going on!

All in all, I feel like you and Tanjiro would make a fantastic couple! He will help you get out of your shell a little but, but still support you when you need to be a lone to recharge! He will be there for you when you have amazing ideas for a book or a picture that you want to make! Tanjiro will be the one to make you feel confident and feel great about yourself with how much love he will shower on you! So make sure to give some of that love back to him!

Vulcan! So, I chose Vulcan purely for the aesthetic, like come on. You have this amazing lolita look going on with the cool hair and the and the nice sense if style mixed in with his tattoos and rocker look, and his hair and iron personality, it just makes so much sense to pair you up with him! His personality is outgoing, loud, and rambunctious. It’s something that can really combat your shy demeanor in a good way. The way you see him conversing with other people, they way he would make you feel comfortable around because he is with you will help you tremendously! He will make sure you will never feel overwhelmed ever again, and knowing him he will most likely try to fight that overwhelming feelings himself. On another note, I feel that out of all three of these guys, Vulcan would be the most into your body! He wou0d loves the curves and just, the way you look in clothing, he just love it so much! 

As for your floaty mind and your daydreaming, he would find it a extremely endearing and kind of irritating at times, but mostly endearing. What makes it irritating for him is when you do it for too long and you accidentally fall and hurt yourself or something along those lines. He just doesn’t want you to hurt yourself! He also doesn’t want you to forget things, but he would learn to live with it by putting little notes all around your shared space, making sure that you don’t forget at least the important things, such as doctors appointments or  bills that need to be paid! 

Vulcan will be the type to constantly want to embarrass you, so if you show him any affection and he returns then sees you get all flustered by his affections, you will be in for a long ride! He will shower you in hugs and kisses just to see how red you can get! Is it mean? Yes, but does he really care? No, not when you look so cute when you are blushing! He can’t handle it! But he does it cause he loves you, and if anything it is more of an excuse to give you more hugs and kisses!

On another note, he will be absolutely love how creative you are! I mean, look at him, you and Vulcan can do wonders to the worlds with both of your creative minds working together! So, all in all, I think that you and Vulcan would make a fantastic couple in the fire force universe. He will treat you spectacularly, with care and with lots of love! So make sure you give him your all too!

[curewhimsy]

Utane Uta x Soune Taya infodump (Shiro-Sora)

General Chemistry Uta is pretty sarcastic, blunt, and reserved, so it’s an interesting development to see her grow and interact with the pure and shy Taya as they both overcome their shortcomings together. Uta just lost her passion to depression, but that's touched on eventually/later. She's all like "I hate life" but that's because of depression. She also lost her interest in music to depression, but being with Taya and being in a musical school has her slowly regain it. Taya tries to help out Uta and make her smile but... he ends up upsetting her one time... When Taya finds out how depressed Uta really is he starts crying for her and saying "I'm sorry..." and Uta is like "Why are you crying? Nothing is your fault..." And Taya apologizes again and says it's a habit that he feels responsible for his friend's sadness. Uta hugs him. "I haven't been able to cry for years, so I'm a bit jealous..." She says. "But... I still don't want you to cry though... I like to see your smile, ok?" Taya is very polite, and selfless. He's always willing to do favors for people. He speaks in polite language. He bows at many occasions (Even in this universe that takes place in the USA, and not Japan.) He is humble as well. These may seem like quirks or obsessions as first, but it stems from his feeling of obligation to do things for people and "not be a burden," because he had friends and teachers who treated him like a burden before. When his anemia caused him to faint or miss classes, everyone treated him as a burden. When he starts hanging out with Uta, she comments on how he feels like a butler and tells him to loosen up, it's okay to be a bit more relaxed, and selfish even. Well I think the day Uta finally cries and lets out her emotions is when something bad happens to her (fighting with her father perhaps,) but Taya comes and helps and comforts her, then confesses his love for her. And then come the waterworks, from both of them! Other General Background Stuff (including their gender identities and such) Uta Utane is non-binary, and first discovers it at age 20 through Taya, after getting to know him and realizing she is non-binary as well. Uta eventually switches to identifying as demigirl and uses she/her and they/them pronouns. Taya Soune is non-binary (he/him, trans-masculine, lesbian) and discovered his identity at age 14. He is DFAB and had been raised as a girl until then. A lot of his gender identity is still a secret from his parents, even though they know he takes testosterone hormone therapy. (They assume he is a trans man.)

Uta’s mother died when she was 4 years old. This fanfic takes place in the USA, so she is Japanese-American. Uta’s mother loved music and singing, and named her daughter after the Japanese word for song. After Uta’s mother died, her father didn’t take it well. He abandoned all music and began to hate it, because it brought back painful memories of Uta’s mother. Taya is also Japanese-American. His parents named him “Taya” with the intent of giving him an easy name to pronounce and relate to for Americans. Since Taya was designated female at birth, he was also given a name that sounded female to Americans. He still decided to keep the name after transitioning, however.

Taya picked up his habit of politely bowing when he was 15 years old and took a summer trip to Japan for two months. For this trip, he studied Japanese extensively to be able to communicate with the local people. He can speak Japanese at an intermediate skill level because of this. While he was in Japan, he felt that bowing was an expression of utmost politeness and now continues to do it back in the USA out of both out of reflex and courtesy. Uta had never been to Japan. Her father, who abandoned music after Uta’s mother died, never taught Uta the meaning of her name. When Uta was 10 years old, she was mistaken as being named Utah by everyone and was teased for it. So she Googled her name. She learned that it meant “song” in Japanese. She began to learn about Japanese culture, especially pop culture and music, in secret from her father. Quirks and Funny Moments Uta’s catchphrase is “Yare yare...” (“Good grief...”) Taya’s catchphrase is “Is that sou, desu ne?” (“Sou desu ne” is basically “Is that so?” in Japanese. I combined the two. He also tends to mumble “Sou, ne” which means “oh, well,” and alludes to... his last name! Taya is smart and dignified but... very clumsy and naive as well. Uta is badass, but kind of “chaotic dumb” in certain ways. Sometimes she forgets to do her homework while doing her homework. Don’t ask. Taya loves sweets, and his favorite is strawberry shortcake. He is also a good pastry chef... Uta is horrible at cooking! She is so horrible, that she makes things mega-explode! She is so horrible, she needs Taya to cook for her just so she can get by! Taya gets completely drunk after just a few sips of alcohol. When his 21st birthday comes in the story, he has his first drink. He gets drunk almost instantly and becomes a lot less shy. He starts singing drunk karaoke along with an intoxicated Meiko. (The songs Ghost Rule and World is Mine come to mind.) Taya and Momo Momone once got into a rather heated argument over whether strawberries or peaches are better. Uta asked herself why she was surrounded by airheads. Uta buys Taya a strawberry Squishmallow for his birthday. In no time, Taya is able to think of a personality and an extensive backstory for his new plush friend. Uta is... impressed.

One time Taya tried playing Uta’s violin instead of his usual cello. He played an earsplitting tune and ended up breaking the violin. Not only does it just break, it comically explodes into little pieces! Taya wears fancy and posh menswear all the time. To every occasion. Even to sleep. Don’t judge him. Taya is 5’4” but wishes he were at least 5’8”. He has a slight Napoleonic complex, which is somewhat unexpected. It is eventually revealed that Taya started dressing in such an elegant way to make up for his lack of height. Uta reassures Taya that his height is fine. (Once before they started dating, she accidentally slipped out that she thinks Taya is “handsome the way he is” and became flustered. However, Taya didn’t take Uta’s compliment as having any romantic undertones.) Uta’s height is 5’0” and she is rather fine with it. Deep down, she doesn’t want Taya to be tall. She likes Taya just the way he is. “Why did you set me on fire, Uta? Why didn’t you just write your essay?” -Quote from Taya, when Uta didn’t write her essay and ended up setting Taya on fire instead. (Don’t ask.) Their Part-Time Jobs Uta works part time at a hat shop. This is because Uta loves hats. In fact, she is usually never seen without her favorite hat, a black beret. Even when she is wearing a different hat, such as a beanie, she still usually is carrying her beret with her somewhere. Uta’s hat shop is at the mall, in the dimly-lit corner where nobody really goes to. It is a small shop and she is the head of it. The sales at the shop are poor. The place is named “Defoko’s Hats,” after the nickname Miki gave Uta. The nickname Defoko came from now Miki thought Uta was such a “default” type of person the first time she met her, whatever that was supposed to mean. (The word default written in Japanese katakana is pronounced “deforuto.” The first part of “deforuto” was combined with “ko,” a common ending in Japanese girls’ names, to make the nickname Defoko.) Taya works part-time at Denny’s as a waiter. He started working there to pay back the funds it took to fix a window that he broke by crashing through said window like the Kool-Aid man while he was drunk after having only one drink on his 21st birthday. (Because he cannot hold his alcohol.) Taya over-achieves at his job at Denny’s and acts as if he is a waiter in a five-star restaurant. Along with always wearing his posh, elegant clothing to the job, he is very overly-polite and tactful when taking orders, even bowing at times... people have commented that he feels more like a butler than a waiter. Taya also tends to pour the drinks at the table. In fancy teacups. He pours from a fancy kettle into the cup from a high angle. In fact, he pours them from so high, he has to get a ladder. Everyone in the restaurant stares at him. Taya is quite odd, but he does get a lot of tips. And more people have been coming to the restaurant since he had started working there. He isn’t even going for a gimmick however. He is literally just being Taya. The Theatre Club Taya wanted Uta to join the musical theatre club with him. He felt unconfident in himself alone. Taya is somewhat experienced in singing, though he is a complete beginner in the acting aspect of musical theatre. Uta has no interest in theatre, though joins to help out Taya. The biggest reason Taya wanted this is because he had a play he dreamed of acting out with everyone. It’s a play he wrote himself, from his heart. Taya is alone a lot, but he hopes this play can bring him and his schoolmates closer together. This is all Taya asks for. Uta admires his sincerity. However, since Taya is a newcomer, and the other members of the club are well-established, nobody is thinking of considering Taya’s play as their acting source material, even though nobody else’s ideas are really clicking. Given his nature, Taya doesn’t speak up. They only pay attention to him when Uta tells everyone that he’d like to share an idea. The play is… short, and similar to the one in Clannad? Except with… more people… lol. Haven’t thought too hard about the plot yet. However, it has the line, “Take my hand, I’ll take you to a place where miracles happen.” Taya’s character will be the one to say this line. Note: Okay so I thought harder and brought in the lyrics to “Dolls” by Rozenkreuz-P. So it’s basically about a child who felt alone in the world, so he built a mechanical doll to have as a friend, though he had to leave the doll behind one day to depart to “a world beyond ours” AKA death. The doll was left all alone to age and weather. The doll comes to life and is able to move. It becomes able to speak, so it sets out on an adventure, meeting people in the world it was left behind in. The doll helps out many people with its magical power. The doll’s favorite saying is “Take my hand, I’ll take you to a place where miracles happen.” One day, the doll eventually breaks, and is unable to contain the spirit within it. The doll’s spirit is able to reunite with its beloved owner who created it. Also the doll is a genderless character, because well… Taya wrote this. The work is eventually given the name “Fantasia Story,” exactly like Nagisa’s play from Clannad. Taya is playing the role of the doll. In-universe, it is said to have an “otherworldly feel” to it, and even “Wow, did you write this, Taya? That’s incredible…” A few songs are composed and written by the music club for the play, and the only one mentioned by name in the fic will be the solo Taya sings. It’ll be an actual song as well, Dolls by Rozenkreuz-P (feat. Kagamine Rin). Since this fic takes place in the USA… pretend it’s been translated to English or something. I imagine that maybe IA was the one who composed the song in-universe. Friendship Interactions (From when they were still just friends) Taya felt platonic (friendship) love for Uta the moment he first met her. He was lost on the college campus during his first day, and Uta offered to help Taya find where he was going, even though she didn’t know much about the campus herself. Taya immediately sensed that Uta was a good person. Taya wanted Uta to stay longer and talk with him for a while. When Uta went on her way and left Taya after she couldn’t help him, he felt dejected, but he felt so happy and blessed when he met Uta again later in the day and got to become close friends with her. He states the memory of their meeting is enough to make him cry. Taya is very fond of Uta. He sees her as such a wonderful and special person. He cannot stand seeing her hurt or upset, it hurts him as well. Uta grows to be very fond of Taya. The kindness and pureness of Taya’s heart widens Uta’s perspective on life. She is inspired to be someone more like him, who doesn’t harbor harsh feelings in their heart. Uta grows very protective of Taya. In a sense, she becomes willing to do anything for the sake of him, even doing something embarrassing in front of everyone in physics class to take the attention away from Taya sleep-talking in class. As best friends, they open up about their problems to each other and are always willing to be each other’s shoulder to cry on. When their lives take a turn for the stressful, they have each other. Their bond deeps this way. Uta’s crush on Taya began when she saw how confident he became when acting in the play he wrote himself. Also through the story in the play, Uta felt she got to learn so much about what’s in Taya’s heart. Uta began to see Taya as a wonderful, sweet, humble, and charming person. Taya’s crush on Uta started out as a “platonic crush.” It gradually grew into a romantic one. Taya began seeing Uta in a different light when he realized she was not only kind, but very brave and willing to help anyone in need. Once when Taya wasn’t feeling good, he still felt obligated to work and to do Uta favors. Uta told Taya he needed to rest and to take it easy. She attempted to cook chicken and vegetable porridge for Taya but nearly made the kitchen explode... however, by a miracle of friendship (or love?) the actual porridge didn’t turn out so bad. However, that night Taya’s condition worsened and became severe. He needed to go to the emergency room for pneumonia and a blood transfusion (due to anemia.) Taya began to feel like a burden, but Uta reassured him he wasn’t and blamed herself. They then worked out that maybe it was nobody’s fault. This bout of illness happened shortly before Taya was to perform his musical theatre play. Therefore, Taya isn’t in top condition when he performs. However, he still does his best and gives a good performance. Shippy Details and Interactions (From after they became lovers) Taya is a very gentle and affectionate person. Right after he confesses his love to Uta, he is rather chaste about showing his affection out of shyness. But they grow to trust each other more about these feelings. Taya is a huge hugger and loves to cuddle. Uta is gray-romantic, meaning she rarely feels romantic attraction. She seldom felt romantic feelings in her life. She never felt them substantially before meeting Taya, who she considers her first, and really, only love. Uta never thought she would be big with hugging and cuddling, but physical affection with Taya gives her comfort. (DISCLAIMER: I’m not trying to state that people who lack romantic attraction are “broken” or need to be “repaired.” Other types of love, such as platonic or familial love can be just as, or even more meaningful and fulfilling than the romantic kind.) Taya likes singing Uta to sleep. He even recorded his voice softly singing lullabies for Uta to listen to while falling asleep for when he can’t be available to sing for her. Uta thinks this is very sweet of him. Taya likes holding/hugging or clinging to Uta gently as they fall asleep together. Sometimes when Taya is feeling down, Uta does this to Taya and it comforts him greatly. The Emotional Part TW: ABUSIVE PARENT

———

Taya is practicing lines from the short play he wrote himself. He reaches his hand out and says “Take my hand... I’ll take you to a place where miracles happen.” This captures Uta’s heart.

Eventually in the story, something emotional happens. Uta gets in a fight with her father over her college major. Uta has learned to love music again and now truly wants to pursue it. However, Uta’s father still hates music, and hates that his daughter’s name is Uta (meaning “song”), and hates that the family’s name is Utane (“singing sound”.) Uta’s mother died when she was young. Her now single father is distant, abusive, and wants Uta to be a business major.

Things get emotional between them, and even a bit physical. Taya sees the whole thing, and steps in at a certain point as Uta’s father is about to hit his daughter. Uta tells Taya to stop for his own good, not wanting Taya to have to get hurt. Uta grabs Taya by the hand and runs off.

Once away from the scene, Uta then vents to Taya and tells him that life has been terrible because it lost all its meaning... Uta starts sobbing and letting out all her pent-up emotions. Taya hugs her, unable to handle seeing Uta cry, letting tears slide down his own face. After crying and comforting Uta for a bit, Taya says... “Uta, take my hand... I’ll take you to a place where miracles happen...” This time he’s for real. He‘s reaching his hand out to Uta. He‘s trying to comfort her. Both of them are misty-eyed. Uta takes his hand... and smiles at him. “Now, shall we go?” Taya smiles back. “Yes...” They take a walk to the place where they first met... And after a talk about their memories, Taya confesses his love to Uta at the top of the hill under the stars. Uta’s Life, Music, and Singing Uta Utane started out not being a singer. Until she went to Sonare Community College, the music-oriented college the story takes place in, and met Taya, she had never taken a singing lesson in her life. Uta’s late mother used to love singing. Uta herself was exclusively a violinist at first. She started playing the violin in childhood. When she lost her passion for music to depression, she still continued to play the violin simply because she felt she’d come too far to abandon it. Early in the story, Uta went to karaoke with Taya to help themselves come out of their shells a bit and become less shy in performing. Their new acquaintances Ritsu Namine and Ruko Yokune gave very powerful performances of -ERROR and The Lost One’s Weeping, and blew everyone away. Next, shy Taya gave a performance of From Y to Y, and Uta found out that he actually had a really beautiful singing voice. Uta went up on stage next and sang Jitter Doll rather horribly. Her voice was screechy, scratchy, and off-key. It was actually so bad that the microphone started making a weird feedback noise. She became so embarrassed that she stopped in the middle... and confessed with shame that she wasn’t a singer, and that she just came to help out Taya. Everyone cheered Uta on regardless. It was a great feeling, and pushed Uta to want to pursue singing. Uta becomes Taya’s singing partner, and Taya coaches Uta with what he knows about vocals. Within a year, the quality of Uta’s voice develops well. Eventually, Uta is outside with Taya. A mood strikes them and they start singing. Uta is singing a solo part, and suddenly her father comes up. “Uta?” He says. Uta is suddenly revolted by his presence and ready to take Taya’s hand and run away. She hates her dad and was ready for him to say something awful. But rather... “When did you learn to sing like that? You sounded just like your mother. It brought back memories...” Uta’s father is smiling sentimentally? Uta still doesn’t trust him, and neither does Taya, but Uta’s legs somehow just won’t move. “I...” Uta starts to speak. “You know, I realized something.” Uta’s father interrupts. “I should’ve stayed strong for you. I should have let you pursue music if it made you this happy. Your mother may have passed, but... music is where she lives on. How... how have I not realized that she lives on in you...?” Uta’s father suddenly begins sobbing. Uta doesn’t know how to react at first... but Taya pats him on the back. “Dad...” Uta eventually finds the words to say. “It’s okay now. I’m sorry I never realized you felt this way. I’d recommend not bottling these things up. Seek some professional help, okay? The first step to recovering is realizing these things. I promise, things will get better.” Uta’s father never fully redeems himself, but he lets go all his hatred caused by a traumatic past he cannot change and stops burdening his daughter with his harsh feelings. Two years after the beginning of the story, Uta goes back to the same karaoke place where she first sang Jitter Doll horribly. Little does she know, her performance became somewhat infamous there among the workers for being awful. All 46 Vocaloid and UTAU characters featured in the fic will be present in this scene. This will be a party scene, and perhaps nearing the series’ finale. “Hey, isn’t she that one who couldn’t sing?” The staff says upon seeing her. “Yes, and I’m back.” Uta says. “Now let’s turn up the volume in here. I’ll be requesting Jitter Doll.” This time, Uta totally slays every note of the song with great power and technique. She isn’t impeccably skilled yet, but she’s getting there. Applause booms from the group. Uta’s improvement is as clear as day. Not only did Uta’s singing improve within those two years, but so did her life and character. Her personality is now more cheerful and less closed-off, and she managed to overcome depression alongside Taya, becoming much more confident and buoyant in the process. Eventually... (After Story and Epilogue...) Taya plans an event on the hill where he and Uta first met. It’s a formal evening cookout with a lot of karaoke. In the place where they first met, Taya proposes marriage to Uta on a day in April. They are 24 years old. Their honeymoon is in Tokyo that June. Two months after the honeymoon, in August, they have their wedding and get married. Three years later at age 27, the two adopt their first child, a baby girl they name Sonata.

[scripttorture]

Hello I have a character who gets locked up and starved for about 3 days, as a way for their abuser to make them “submit”. At the end of the 3 days, the abuser offers my character food in exchange for their obedience. My MC is a teenager at that time, I don't intend to make him genuinely obey their abuser, but as they're under her mercy, they have to go along with it. (1/2)

(2/2) *Starved MC ask* How likely is my MC to actually comply? (they’re stubborn, fierce, and unrelenting, but already suffering from trauma after losing their family and getting separated from their sibling +plus taken away to a foreign country where they only know their abuser, and don’t speak or understand the language there). What are the physical repercussions that they’d suffer from the starvation? (+If they were physically/sexually abused, how would that affect their health?

-

This looks like a long one. I think it might be related to another ask but it’s been a while since I answered the other ask and I can’t remember the details of the story. So I’m going to answer this on it’s own merits and leave it to the author to judge which question lines up best with the situation they’re writing.

 Compliance is a complicated question. I’m unaware of any relevant studies on the topic. It would be unethical to conduct an actual experiment on the subject (before someone mentions Miligram the man was a hack who published deliberately misleading results). Trying to put together a statistical study based on surveys of survivors would rely on survivors’ memories, which not a good idea. It would also mean coming up with a decent in-context definition of compliance.

 My opinion is that compliance is a lot less likely then we are led to believe.

 The one thing I do have statistics for is forced confessions under torture. The data comes from analysis of historical sources.

 For the historical French sources, where torture alone was used to force confessions, the average success rate was 10% and varied slightly across provinces.

 In the London Cage circa world war 2, where bribery and plea bargains were used as well, the success rate was around 30%.

 Consider for a moment that to confess a person need only comply long enough to sign their name.

 In contrast- slavery and forced labour scenarios involve torturous prison conditions and torturous punishments yet a lot of victims comply to some extent. Often by performing simple, repetitive tasks.

 But we don’t actually have accurate estimates for compliance in these scenarios. The records of numbers of slaves during the time of the trans-atlantic trade assume compliance, they assume that the people kidnapped and shipped across an ocean would work. This was not always the case.

 A great many people chose death over compliance. People committed suicide en masse. People also refused to work and were killed for it. Numbers for each group aren’t recorded.

 We also don’t have accurate numbers for the people who complied just long enough to walk into the forest and vanish. And we can’t even estimate the number of people who appeared to comply but sabotaged their own work, poisoned their abusers or just broke as much stuff as they could.

 Story tellers often treat compliance as if it’s an all or nothing scenario and- everything I’ve read suggests it isn’t. It depends on the individuals involved and their strongly held beliefs. It’s about where individuals draw the line.

 An awful lot of people would rather starve then renounce their religion or put their families in danger. Very few people would rather starve then break rocks.

 So how believable your character complying is depends on what she believes and what her abuser is trying to get her to do.

 It also depends on the situation; people don’t comply just because they’re hurt or threatened. They do it because short term compliance can (depending on the situation) make survival, escape and more effective acts of resistance more likely.

 Some degree of compliance in the scenario you’ve outlined isn’t unrealistic. But neither is a flat out refusal.

 Having the character turn round and say ‘No. I would rather starve to death,’ and having him do it, is also realistic.

 Ultimately it’s your decision whether the character complies and to what degree. But rather then just going with whatever seems easiest for the plot I’d suggest trying to consider the scenario in greater depth: why does the character comply?

 The answer is never as simple as ‘because he was hungry’.

 Think about what the character’s options really are. Then think about what opportunities complying creates. The character doesn’t need to have a clear defined plan. He doesn’t need to be right about the opportunities he thinks complying will create. He also doesn’t need to have a good or effective plan.

 So for instance, the last time I wrote a character complying after being threatened and hurt was in a sci fi story. The character agreed to have some experimental tech implanted in his body. His plan was essentially ‘I’m smart, I know tech. Signing this form will mean I don’t get beaten up and I’ll be able to handle any problem the tech creates.’

 This was a stupid plan. But my point is, it’s still a plan. It’s something that puts this decision in context for the readers and doesn’t make the character passive in the scene.

 He is making a decision. Even though it’s under duress.

 So approach it as a decision. Reject the idea of there being ‘no choice’.

 Most previously healthy people wouldn’t see long term complications from three days of starvation once they can eat normally again.

 For those three days the character will be in a lot of pain. The psychological effects of starvation will be obvious, and some of the physical effects will be too.

 The masterpost on starvation is here.

 Now I think over this period of time if the character isn’t getting any food then all of the psychological symptoms will probably be there. It would be normal for those symptoms to still be present for a few weeks after he starts eating properly.

 People working with famine victims generally report that the mood swings can become a big problem when victims start getting enough to eat. Basically- these people are still suffering from such intense mood swings that they’re ready to fight over seating arrangements and once they start eating again they suddenly have enough energy to actually start a fight. This can be a problem if you’re trying to manage the re-feeding of a few thousand people.

 From your perspective it’s something to take into account when you think about how the character is responding to his abuser. He doesn’t have to do anything silly but you should show that starvation has affected his mind as well as his body.

 As for the physical symptoms a few of them are only really obvious in people who are starved over a long period of time. He’s not going to see a sudden growth of body hair in three days.

 He would be in pain and he’d lose a lot of weight. A lot of that weight would be muscle. He would experience the lack of strength and coordination, be prone to fainting and have difficulty controlling his body temperature. He’d be vulnerable to disease and he could potentially develop bloating in the abdomen and swelling in the legs but I think that’s less likely.

 I don’t think he’d see a significant difference in the strength of his bones, hair and nails. I’m not sure if he’d experience skin problems (he’d certainly look unhealthy) or an absence of tears.

 Organ failure, poor pulse and swelling in the abdomen are all associated with really severe starvation and a poorer chance of survival. I think they’re also more likely over a slightly longer time frame.

 Once again- don’t forget to take the psychological symptoms into account. They have a profound effect on people and they’re integral to capturing the experience of starvation. Physical repercussions are easier to describe but without the psychological symptoms you’re really only describing half of what’s going on.

 In terms of recovery if the character can have as much food as he wants his physical recovery will be quicker. The psychological symptoms will linger for a while even after he is physically healthy/out of harm’s way. If there were no other abuses going on the psychological symptoms would vanish completely with food and time.

 Remember here that when I’m talking about ‘healthy’ I’m talking about averages. If this character is an athlete or a superhero or something else that demands an above average physical ability it will take him a long time to get back to that level of ability.

 He might be completely physically healthy after a week and a half of eating as much as he likes. But that doesn’t mean he could go out and win a gold medal yet. That would probably take months, perhaps years, of training in a safe abuse free environment.

 The last question, how physical and sexual abuse would effect the character’s health, doesn’t have a simple answer.

 The short answer is: badly. But it really depends on what exactly you’re picturing.

 The long term psychological effects are terrible however the abuse is conducted. That said, some kinds of abuse are more likely to cause physical scars, long term physical injury, physical disability or death.

 Repeated rape, especially when it also involves beatings and use of objects, can cause lethal injuries. The worst single injury I’ve heard of was a broken pelvis. To put that into context it’s one of the strongest and biggest bones in the body.

 My point here is ‘sexual abuse’ and ‘physical abuse’ both cover a really wide variety of things. The long term health effects depend on exactly what’s happening.

 Head injuries can easily be lethal or disabling. Beatings can be conducted in ways that are less likely to bruise, leave scars or break bones, but they still cause massive internal damage. A person can be beaten to death and not looked bruised.

 Anything that leaves large scars has the potential to cause mobility problems because scar tissue tends to be less flexible and shrink the skin. When this happens over joints it can restrict the movement of the joint.

 A lot of tortures cause chronic pain and this can be disabling.

 Anything that breaks the skin has the potential to cause serious infections.

 Lack of sleep and lack of food increase the chance of an infection and of that infection becoming serious.

 The general long term effects of abuse are the same as the general long term effects of torture. As with torture we can’t predict who will get which symptoms, so I advise picking symptoms based on what you feel fits the character and plot best.

 But there are a lot of possible outcomes. Brain injuries, mobility problems ranging from paralysis to loss of fine motor functions, joint problems, muscle problems, weak bones, skin disorders, recurrent infections, diabetes- The list goes on.

 As an example I’ve got a case in front of me right now of a young man who was enslaved in the agricultural industry in America for about five years. He suffered from: chronic respiratory ailments (unspecified), failing vision, chronic pain, heat exhaustion and frequent bowel problems.

 You could make the argument that some of these conditions were entirely physical due to injuries he sustained while enslaved. But it’s difficult to entirely separate the psychological and physical symptoms.

 Digestive issues can be due to depression. Chronic pain can be psychological, physical or due to a combination of the two. For instance if someone instinctively tenses their muscles when stressed then their chronic pain could be due to muscle damage. But that muscle damage is ultimately coming from the fact they’re under stress.

 Heart attacks and strokes can be due to physical factors, such as large blood clots caused by particular forms of abuse. But they also become more likely when the body’s stress response is active over a prolonged period of time; such as in the case of long term torture or abuse.

 With the information you’ve given me all I can definitively say is that the character would suffer from long term health problems and be generally more unhealthy then the rest of the population.

 There is a range within that though. You might find it helpful to come up with a list of what the character goes through and search for relevant terms on the blog. If other people have asked about similar things you’ll be able to find a list of injury patterns and risk factors.

 You might also find ScriptTraumaSurvivor’s blog helpful.

 I hope that helps. :)

Availableon Wordpress.

Disclaimer

[artificialqueens]

Sk8er Girl CH2 (Trixya)- Squeaky Pink

Trixya!HS AU. Trixie is a nerdy, girly girl with bows and frills. Katya is a skater chick with scuffed knees and a  Flazéda attitude. When they’re assigned as lab partners, can they discover chemistry together?

Or: She was a sk8er girl. She said see you later girl. She wasn’t good enough for her (or was she?).

[AN: Pink Shrooms aka Squeaky Pink. We’re writing this together but alternating chapters and POVs. Pinky is Trixie’s POV and Squeaky is Katya’s POV. We wanted to write the ending of this chapter based on the actual experience of a friend. The goal was to emulate life it its honest, messy way.]

PLAYING HOOKY

“You have to stop crashing at our place,” Alaska snaps as she throws open the curtains of the trailer. Katya groans and rubs her eyes. Ugh, she can still taste last night’s booze.

“But I thought you liked it when I warmed your couch? Doesn’t it get lonely without me?” Katya yawns as she grabs some cereal from the drawer. Sharon Needles greets her with the middle finger as she comes out of the bedroom in a leather studded jacket.

“Nah, bitch. ‘Lasky and I like to fuck without you a fart’s distance away, listening to our every creak.”

“I’ll close my ears next time.”

“Girl, you live right next to the skate park. So why are you constantly come crawling over to this dumpster?”

“The scenic view,” Katya says and gestures out the window to the pile of rubber tires. Willam zooms past them. Then the whirlwind of a girl kicks open the door, cracks open a can of beer from the fridge, and raises her eyebrows at the three of them.

“So we gonna skate or you blonde fucks too busy finger-popping each others’ assholes?”

“You’re blonde too,” Alaska points out.

“That’s bottle-blonde,” Willam burps. “AKA the dick sucking brand of blonde. Y’all be the lesbian variety.”

“I’m bisexual, bitch,” Katya says, flicking Willam on the forehead and stealing her drink. It’s too early to be drinking, especially on a Wednesday, but it’s not the worst decision she has made this week.

She sighs in relief as the LA sun warms her back, the wind whips her hair, and wheels happily hum against the concrete. Katya’s still a little sore from her fall a couple of days ago, but it’s nothing an early morning spin can’t soothe.

They practice new tricks. Willam finds a new trick and sneaks off into the bushes with him. Alaska tries to ride on Sharon’s back, but they end up collapsing on top of each other, laughing like idiots. Katya smiles up at the blue sky. In the distance, she sees the yellow school bus chugging by, and her easy smile falls away.

“Aw, shit, gotta get my ass to math class before princi-PAL Ru-PAL suspends me,” Willam says and snaps her fingers. “Again.”

“I’m just gonna stay here,” Katya mumbles as her friends grab their backpacks.

Alaska throws a friendly hand over her shoulder: “Can I assssk you a question?”

“Yeah?”

“How are you going to graduate if you don’t show up? I’m surprised that you, pardon the expression, have the balls to skip so much school with that Barbie doll as your lab partner.”

Katya rubs her fingers over the bandaid. She bites her lip as she remembers how gently Trixie had applied it. Sure, Trixie had come off as a bitch during class, but Katya also saw a softer side to her that afternoon. Fuck, then those stupid tampons and Katya had run away…

They’d made Katya anxious. Her? Anxious? Groundbreaking. She wasn’t ready to come out to Trixie as trans. Although she definitely liked Trixie, they just weren’t that close. Trixie was an out and proud lesbian…so maybe being a part of the LGBT community she’d be more understanding? Katya shook her head; she didn’t want to risk it. It’s none of Trixie’s business, anyway.   

She sighs: Why bother, ‘Lasky? My brain’s full of small mice that run and run, but they’re going nowhere. You think my mouse-run brain’s gonna get me to college? Nah, fuck school knowledge. I should just take the GED exam so I can spend more time practicing my skating for competitions.“

Alaska squeezes her shoulder, but Willam gives the back of Katya’s helmet a firm smack.

“Now listen. Stop being stupid, stupid! Teachers want you to graduate, so they don’t gotta deal with yo ass. So just show up and show tits. Unless you have Michelle Visage, then wear a turtleneck. I’m saying this cause I love you, and I don’t want to see you sellin’ that ass on the side of road for a quarter when you’re worth a million bucks. Go to school. Get a diploma. Maybe get head from a hottie. And get the fuck over yourself.”

Katya laughs even as she shakes her head. God, why are her friends so amazing? Even though she’d rather spend the rest of the day here, perfecting her moves at the park, Katya goes with them to school.

Choices.

——

BACK TO SCHOOL (AGAIN)

First period is gym, and Katya’s secretly glad to trade in her helmet for a badminton racket. Coach Santino gives her a nod and tosses her a birdie. Most students think he’s a creep ever since that rumor that he took Violet Chachki to Red Lobster and ate her out, but he seems ok. Well, at least he doesn’t have a dildo wedged up his ass like Ms. Del Rio.

Katya plays a game with Alaska. Their shots fail to go over the net, but they’re giggling anyways. Gym has always been her favorite period. Besides lunch and study hall.

RIIIIIIIIIIIING.

Katya slumps into the back of English class, and they’re reading -surprise!- Shakespeare. More like Shakesqueer, Katya mouths to Sharon Needles. They fist bump. It’s Romeo and Juliet, and everyone groans except for this one girl with grey hair, Max, who’s a little too excited to do assigned reading. Oh, wait, she’s a theater kid, so of course she diddles herself to The Bard.

“It’s the most romantic play of all time! I can feel every line in my bosom,” Max sighs.

Bosom? Suuuure. Katya zones out and looks up a Sparknotes summary on her phone. Romeo is super in love with this Rosaline girl one day and then Juliet the next day? Wow, true love. Katya’s seen this exact drama played out behind the skate park bushes at least twice a week featuring less death and more herpes.

“Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs,” Max reads with a pathetic sigh. Katya wants to stab her eye with her pencil.

Katya is relieved when English class finishes. “If I have to listen to that British girl jerking off to Romeo’s monologues for the rest of this week…I don’t think I’m coming back,” Katya groans as they walk out back to the dumpster. She lights up Sharon’s cigarette and then her own.

“Love is bullshit,” Sharon agrees as Alaska arrives; she offers the younger girl a puff.  

“You have a girlfriend though.”

“Nah, I gotta friend, who likes to fuck. Big difference. Romeo just wanted to stick it in, so he had to get married to do it to please the patriarchy. Worst thing that happened to us gays was when we started getting gay-married.”

“Are you sure?” Katya rolls her eyes. “Are you sure that’s the worst thing that’s happened to us gays in the last hundred years?”

“Ok, maybe not. But love is fake and marriage is an institution.”

Alaska snaps her fingers in agreement and gives Sharon Needles a peck on the cheek. Ugh, for two people who think love is fake, they look like they are going to elope and drive to Las Vegas any day now. They’re that one couple that everyone knows is a thing, but they pretend it’s not as serious as it is. Katya has a That’s-So-Raven moment where she sees their wedding invitations. Gross.

“I mean is capitalism’s corporate dick wedged deep inside our every sacred tradition, including marriage? Yes. Do I still think social equality for the LGBT community is important? Fuck yes.”

Katya and Sharon go back and forth. Katya wishes that school was like this- a real debate. She wishes that it wasn’t always regurgitating the teachers’ opinions for a grade. Then the bell rings and they head inside, but Katya stays to finish. As she deeply inhales the smoke, Katya rubs the Barbie Band-Aid once more. Why hasn’t she taken it off yet?

“Oh, good, look who decided to show up,” Ms. Del Rio deadpans.

“McDonald’s wasn’t hiring,” Katya jokes back as the entire class laughs. Laganja chirps ‘okuuurrr.’ Ms. Del Rio gives Katya a look like drop another test tube and you’ll wish they were hiring.

Katya forgot her lab manual, periodic table, and basically everything at home, so she just slinks down next to Trixie. She hates that her stomach twists up into a knot when the blonde smiles at her. Katya almost forgets how to smile back.

“I scared you off, huh? Sorry…I tend to have that kind effect on people,” Trixie softly whispers as Ms. Del Rio dims the lights.

Katya’s fingers brush against Trixie’s as they reach for their pencils. Katya may not believe in love, but she believes in the way her thighs clench with arousal at the touch. Electric. Trixie’s wearing a strapless dress, which is tight around her breasts, and Katya believes in the way her cock twitches at the sight.

Katya’s glad the lights are low enough to hide her heated face. What? She’s eighteen and horny, and Trixie Mattel is the world’s least likely girl to ever sleep with her. All things considered, Katya would do anything to bury her face between those thick thighs. 

She tries to slow her breathing and concentrate on the video about potassium. Nothing like ions to try and take your mind off of your growing erection. Katya shouldn’t have worn denim shorts this tight, but it’s too late to do anything but squirm in her seat with regret and arousal.

Trixie leans in, breath curling against Katya’s ear: “Did the Band-Aid help?”

“Not without the expert care of my favorite Barbie nurse,” Katya says, trying for flirty, but she kind of stumbles at the end and lands closer to awkward. Curse Trixie and her breasts and bows and brains! If only Katya had that many B’s on her report card, her parents might actually want her to come home. Wow, now she’s horny and anxious? An all time low.

“What made you come back to chemistry?”

My asshole friends.

“You,” Katya promises with a wink.

Trixie snorts and rolls her eyes. She’s so frustratingly superior, and Katya should hate her for that. It kind of turns her on though. Katya likes when Trixie sasses her with a single look, and, wow, thoughts like that aren’t helping with the boner situation. It’s hard -pun intended- to think when Trixie’s around.

“Sorry about the tampons.”

Katya flinches. Ok, erection effectively killed.

“Don’t mention it. No, like, please, don’t mention it.”

“I thought it was weird that you ran, but I talked to my friends and…well, Max has a chronically shallow vagina, and she says that tampons won’t fit. So, I don’t know you or your medical history, and if I somehow triggered you, I’m sorry. Really sorry.”

Thinking about Max’s chronically shallow vagina has made Katya very un-hard. Wow, that’s the first time that Katya has ever been thankful someone un-aroused her. Chemistry class has taken a turn for the weird. Just how Katya likes it.

“It’s ok,” she promises. “I promise not to run away from you again, if you help me figure out how to pass this class. Da?”

“Wait…you know Russian?”

“I don’t just know it– I am Russian. I was brought here when I was six, so I don’t have an accent. Why?”

“Because I want to go to college in Russia!” Trixie whispers. “Please help me, and I’ll reach-around to help you.”

Ok, now that just sounds vaguely like a sex act. Courtney twists around at her lab table and gives them both a knowing look.

“Fuck, yeah!”

Wow, that was not her inside voice. That wasn’t even her outside voice. That’s her in-the-basement jerking off to porn voice, and now everyone in the room is staring.

Ms. Del Rio click-clacks over to them, and Katya wants to cower under the lab table. The woman hands them both a slip for lunch detention. Trixie gasps as she’s given the pink slip, holding it like it’s covered in poisonous chemicals. 

“I see that I have a couple of clowns in my class this year, so let me repeat- all foolishness will earn you a detention slip. If you don’t want to behave, get packing.”

Katya doesn’t give a shit, but Trixie buries her face into her hands and doesn’t speak to her for the rest of the period. The lab is so simple even Katya manages to get it. Trixie’s face is blank, but Katya can see the hurt just under the surface. She wishes that she knew how to approach her or what to say. Once more, she’s reminded of what different worlds they come from.

“Hey, so do you still want to tutor-”

“You smell like cigarettes,” Trixie snaps and rushes out of the classroom, pink slip crumpled up in her hand.

Katya usually is the first to bolt after class, but she goes up to Ms. Del Rio instead: “I did everything! I cursed and came in late and- and please don’t punish Trixie for me being an idiot.”

“You were both talking. You both get detention. Next?”

“No! I wasn’t talking to Trixie I, uh, I was…talking to myself?” Katya stammers and it’s ridiculous even for her. “Please, don’t punish Trixie. She’s trying her best and school is so important to her-”

“Then she’ll go to lunch detention. I don’t believe in special treatment, Ms. Zamo. I’ll see you both in an hour,” Ms. Del Rio says, and her word is law. What is this? Prison?

Katya skips social studies to smoke behind the bleachers with Laganja. She rants about science class, omitting her erection, and questions why school is structured like the penal system. Laganja replies with her usual yes, mawma, preach, god.

Katya comes back, reeking even worse of smoke, and sits a lab table away from Trixie. She bought french fries and milk. Part of a balanced diet. Ms. Del Rio silently grades work at the front of the room, but then she leaves half way through to go to the bathroom.

“Pssstt,” Katya faux-whispers. “Sorry. Hey, are we even on the whole running away from each other thing?”

“Sure. It’s fine,” Trixie mutters, tearing her chicken nuggets in half and opening up her chem notes. That’s the least ‘fine’ fine Katya has ever heard. Fuuuuck, trust her to have a crush on the girl who’s in love with her school work. They’re in chemistry class, but this feels like a lesson in subtraction; Katya should just subtract her being from Trixie’s being. Maybe then Trixie wouldn’t look so miserable.

Katya sighs.

What bullshit did Shakespeare write? Love is smokey sighs? Accurate.

Katya wishes that she had asked Alaska and Sharon what to do. They were the most functional dysfunctional couple that she’d ever met. How did they manage it?

Remedial algebra passes in a blur of numbers. Tick tock. Katya wants to jump over the clock and punch Mr. Davis with a sock. That’s the gibberish that she texts Willam at least.

Suck his cock -W

U say that whenever anyone has a problem. Broken heart? Suck. Broken leg? Suck. Broken moral compass? Suck. -K

If it’s broken, sucking a cock will help. 10/10. User tested and reviewed. -W

How about if u…hurt someone’s feelings? -K

Hurt how? Fucked their mother kinda hurt? -W

Like if you accidentally got them into detention? And they don’t have a dick to potentially suck??? -K

Uhhhhhhhh, lick their clit -W

Metaphorically? -K

OK, MAX. -W

Hmm -W

Try ‘sorry’ -W

Tried that -K

Try it again but this time with your face in between her thighs ;) -W

Katya laughs and sends a gif of a burning hot dog because it feels right in this wiener driven context. She remembers when she came out as trans to her, and Willam was legit like ‘damn, you got the best of both worlds, Hannah Montana.’ Willam never failed to make her laugh.

She arrives at ninth period Intro to Psychology feeling like she’s lost ten years off her life. How has so much drama happened? On a Wednesday for fucks sake.

It’s started to lightly drizzle, and Katya jiggles her foot as she watches the rain streak down the window. Good thing she has a baseball bat, water bottle, and umbrella in her locker. It’s an ‘escape kit’ for a potential zombie apocalypse. Huh, guess Katya’s like Trixie in that way, always preparing for the worst.

“Write down five words that describe you and try to connect those different parts of your identities. Which one is most important to you? In this Unit of Psychology we’ll be exploring ourselves…”

Katya can think of a lot of words that describe her perfectly: skater, chronic under achiever, ADD, bisexual, trans, disappointment—

Disappointment. That’s the word that keeps repeating in her head as she doodles a tattoo design on the side of her paper. Her parents would never approve of a hammer and sickle tattoo, but Katya’s stopped living her life for them. She stopped the day she’d come out as trans ten years ago. Katya had already been wearing skirts around the house since she came to America, but, when she turned eight, Katya gave the middle finger to the world.

Now, she’s eighteen, and her middle finger is still firmly in the air. Her mother, Pat, understands, but her father doesn’t- he never did. He looks at her, silent, like she’s a mistake. Fuck. Katya excuses herself to go pee. She can’t think of words when her brain keeps racing around like a mouse from one thought crumb to the next. Katya stays in the bathroom stall longer than necessary, pressing her head into her hands.

By the time the bell rings, the rain is coming down hard. Katya can only see the yellow blur of buses and the distant green of trees. Alaska and Sharon are making out on top of her locker, and she pushes them off. 

“Ay, this is the thanks we get for letting you stay in our humble abode?” Sharon grumbles.

“Please keep all hands and tongues inside your space while near my locker. This is a 'No Slobber Zone.’ Bitch needs to keep dry.”

“Mhm, that’s not what Willam’s been texting,” Alaska says and raises her eyebrow. “Says you want to make someone wet…with apology tears.”

“Willam’s a Willam.”

“And you’re showing all the signs of being in looove. Sighing? Lying? Laganja told Gia who told Alyssa who told me that you begged Ms. Del Rio not to give Trixie Mattel detention. What’s really going on with you and Barbie, huh?”

“Nothing,” Katya lies and flushes. Wow, it’s a good thing she’s a skater and not a poker player. Her red cheeks are a dead give away.

———

LOST KITTEN

The buses have left by the time Katya rolls outside, red umbrella above her. The pavement is slippery, so Katya forces herself to slow down. She can’t go to the skate park, and, after this morning, she can’t go back to the trailer park. Heart sinking, Katya directs herself home.

Just as she’s turning the corner, Katya sees the saddest sight. Trixie is walking without an umbrella. Her bow is soggy. Her Moschino backpack is practically dragging on the ground.

“Need umbrella? Da?” Katya says with a faux-Russian accent.

Trixie pushes a strand of wet hair from her forehead and smiles: “My knight on a shining skateboard.”

Katya jumps off and tucks her board under her arm. Trixie’s hand brushes hers as she reaches up to hold the umbrella. Katya can’t help it when her cheeks heat up. Her? Blushing? Unheard of.

They walk in silence for a bit, and Katya knows that the events of this morning are still weighing heavily between them. Katya wishes she knew how to break through all of Trixie’s many shields, but she’s…so confusing. Somehow, the more confused Trixie makes her, the less Katya can stay away.

Rain, rain, don’t go away, Katya thinks as Trixie’s hip bumps against hers. You just saved this horrid day.

Katya opens her mouth to say that and then closes it. Everything she wants to say sounds dumb compared to how brilliant Trixie is. Everything might mean nothing when Trixie doesn’t know she’s trans. Why can’t she just say that? Just be the usual middle-finger-to-the-world girl that she is at home and with her friends?

Instead, Katya clears her throat. Pathetic. They pass by the town stores, and she wrinkles her nose at the reek of wet dog. There are too many strays in this town.

“Wait. Did you hear that?”

“What?” Katya stops, but there’s nothing but the rush of cars, splashing through puddles, and the roar of motorcycles. In the distance, she can hear the rumble of thunder. Trixie heads towards the dark alleyway, and Katya follows her.

“Look,” Trixie whispers, breathless.

Katya hears the most pathetic ‘meow’ as she leans down to see a cardboard box. On the outside it says ‘Lucky’s Treats,’ but, inside, there’s the most unlucky looking kitten. It sadly mewls as Trixie carefully reaches down.

“A kitten,” Trixie sighs as she hugs it to her breast. The motherly act makes Katya’s heart twist.

Suddenly, Katya can see the girl who fell to her knees to help her at the skate park. Trixie’s eyes are soft and lips parted when she looks up at Katya. How can one girl hide so much beauty?

“My mom is allergic to cats,” Trixie confesses as she looks up at her with pleading eyes.

“Well, I live in the basement cause my parents are allergic to me, so…yeah, come one, let’s sneak this kitty cat in.”

Trixie’s eyes light up, and she gratefully presses a kiss to Katya’s cheek. It might just be a friendly gesture, but Katya’s toes curl in her wet Converse. God, the sight of Trixie with that little kitten snuggled into her big chest is the best thing she’s seen all day. They debate over names before finally settling on ‘Lucky’ because that’s what it said on the side of the box. Besides, the little scrap of fur is lucky to have found them.

“Shhh,” Katya presses a finger to her lips as she slips in through the back door. They’re tracking water everywhere, so it will be obvious. Still, Katya’s main priority is helping Trixie and Lucky.

They give him milk and watch as he happily laps it up. Trixie’s head is in her hands, face still unguarded, as she happily watches. Trixie tells her a story about how she used to sneak into the animal shelter in the town over on Sundays, spend the whole day there, and tell her mom she was at church. Katya laughs; she thinks that she could listen to Trixie all day.

“Your turn,” Trixie says and nudges her knee. They’re pressed up close on the couch now, with their science homework spread out on the table. Fuck, she likes Trixie so much. She needs to be honest with her so that if Trixie pushes her away, it’ll be sooner rather than later. 

“When I was a little kid, I…came here from Russia. So I never felt like I fit in. Everyone saw some stranger, who didn’t speak how they spoke. Who didn’t look how they thought a- a “boy” should look.”

Trixie’s eyebrows shoot up and she covers her mouth. Then she laughs-

“Wait, you’re joking, right? You mean you were…a tomboy? Right?!”

“No, I…I’m transgender,” Katya says to her hands, afraid to look up at Trixie’s face.

Silence.

Lucky yawns and curls up on the carpet to sleep. The clock angrily ticks as Katya waits for Trixie to say something, anything. Oh god, everything had been going so great and then Katya had to fuck it up.

“That’s great,” Trixie says, face blank. “Great. Uh, I think I have to…my mom wants me to come home…”

“Right,” Katya says, blinking away tears.

Wow, this couldn’t have gone any worse.

“I’ll see you in class-”

“Wait, but- but how about we go over some of the Russian declensions? Or you show me the element symbols again-”

“See you in class,” Trixie repeats, gives her an awkward side hug, and then she’s gone. She leaves Katya shaken and alone. Katya feels like she’s been stripped naked, raw, and then left out in the rain. She curls up on the floor, cradling Lucky to her chest. Katya has already cried once today, and she hates that the tear count is this high.

Disappointment. That’s the word that keeps repeating in her head. Katya gets up, and, even though it’s too early to sleep, hides in bed. Katya buries her face into the pillow and screams. Louder. She can still see Trixie’s eyes, judging her.

Maybe it would have been better if Katya had gotten Laganja or Sasha fucking Belle for a lab partner. Then they could have just failed together. Katya wants to live in a world where she never met Trixie or opened up to her.

The kitten licks her hand, which is hanging over the edge of the bed.

Katya lifts Lucky up and cradles him to her chest.

“There are too many strays in this town,” Katya whispers. “You. Me. They left you in a box. They left me at the airport. I was six. How old are you, Lucky? They also told me I was ‘lucky’ to be taken in by such a nice, middle-class family. Why don’t I feel that way then? God, we’re both so alone, Lucky, so let’s…let’s be alone together? You and me. Just you and me against this world.”

[blooming-blooming]

Odd numbers 1-20 for Mizael and even for kaito if u wanna do a big one :3

binch you know my overly obsessive ass is gonna do both

Mizael1. What does their bedroom look like? It’s the attic in the Kamishiro mansion; he likes his distance from the other Barians in his own space. It has a very rustic, old feel to it because of that; while obviously he makes sure none of the wood is rotting, he enjoys the old, worn look of the walls and floor. It’s fairly small, sporting a large window with a cushioned bench at the window sill in the center. His bed is to the left of that, which is usually a messy dragon’s nest despite everything else being organized. His dresser is on the other side of the window, and there’s a small coffee table in the middle of the room where he helps others with homework. There’s also a lot of things decorated around the room that remind him of “home”, which doesn’t have a special definition. He also has a small bathroom with an old fashioned bathtub, because hell if he’s gonna let Vector get anywhere near his stuff.

3. Do they exercise, and if so, what do they do? How often? He exercises fairly often; he finds physical health and upkeep important. He mocks Alit and Gilag’s ridiculous training regimen at first, but after trying it himself he finds he enjoys the challenge, and has no problem keeping up with them.

5. Cleanliness habits (personal, workspace, etc.) Despite Mizael feeling comfort in clutter, everything is perfectly organized in how compact all the stuff he has is. Everything has a place. As for hygiene, he is fairly high maintenence and can spend hours in the shower on a bad day.

7. Favorite way to waste time and feelings surrounding wasting time Reading. It’s his way of learning about humans.

9. Makeup? Once he’s more comfortable with his gender Mizael really enjoys makeup. He focuses on subtle, nude looks, though he has gone more daring at the suggestion of Merag for special occasions.

11. Intellectual pursuits? History and literature. History makes him feel more safe and at home with himself, and he just kind of naturally picks up writing from all the reading he does.

13. Sexual Orientation? And, regardless of own orientation, thoughts on sexual orientation in general? Gay. Human sexuality/gender and Barian sexuality/gender are very different, so it takes him a while to even realize it’s even a thing at all. Once he’s more acclimated to it it’s something that’s important to him though, I think, especially since I hc he’s trans as well. He finds his LGBT status to be really important to him as an author in particular.

15. Biggest and smallest short term goal? Biggest: convince the school system to let him skip high school entirely because he cannot stand being around all these children. (It takes jumping through an ungodly amount of hoops, more tests than any one person should have to take, and more than one favor from the Arclight family to have their prestige help convince people.)Smallest: Survive living under the same roof with Vector probably tbh

17. Preferred mode of dress and rituals surrounding dress He dresses very earthy, if that makes sense. Lots of earth tones (especially greens and browns) and tunics, usually made of loose woven fabrics. He also has a fondness of scarves and cardigans, and sundresses in the summer. I… don’t really think he has any dress rituals, but he puts a lot of pride in his appearance so getting ready overall takes him forever.

19. What do they think about before falling asleep at night? Death and regret.

Kaito

2. Do they have any daily rituals? He wakes up and gets Haruto ready, then basically just works until he drops.

4. What would they do if they needed to make dinner but the kitchen was busy? Probably just skip out on eating all together.

6. Eating habits and sample daily menu Kaito very much forgets to eat; he either eats a lot at once or nothing at all. He generally likes simple soups a lot for standard lunch/dinner meals, and for breakfast he enjoys how sweet western style breakfasts are. (Especially pancakes with caramel mixed in the batter).

8. Favorite indulgence and feelings surrounding indulging Kaito has a 100TB hard drive that consists of nothing but high res images of cat paws because he thinks they’re cute. In general he probably doesn’t indulge too much, though, because he thinks it’s a waste of time.

10. Neuroses? Do they recognize them as such? He has very, very severe PTSD from Numbers Hunting that he represses for several years before admitting its a problem; from the trauma of what he went through in training, the guilt of stealing peoples’ souls, the severe neglect from his father, and I also hc he’s a CSA victim from this time period as well. I wanna write a fic about him realizing his trauma a few years after the fact and coping, healing, and eventually getting back on his feet that portrays abuse as what it really is at some point really bad.Also, it doesn’t fit the definition of neurosis from my understanding of it, but as a neurodivergent thing in general: He’s autistic, specifically Asperger’s. He’s always been fairly isolated from people regardless so he’s never really cared that he’s “different” all that much. (I’m planning on bringing it up in Ad Astra if I ever get off my ass and get back to writing it)

12. Favorite book genre? Scientific journals and nonfiction. Literature and prose in general tends to go right over his head until he starts reading with Mizael and Mizael explains things to him.

14. Physical abnormalities? (Both visible and not, including injuries/disabilities, long-term illnesses, food-intolerances, etc.) Well I mean, Photon Mode.For real though I think his vision is basically completely shot post canon; with treatment he can see off the strictest glasses prescription known to man, but it only delays the inevitable. He’s blind by the time he’s 65.

16. Biggest and smallest long term goal? Biggest: Have a family and kids. 100%. It’s all he really wants.Smallest: Probably actually live to meet that goal honestly??

18. Favorite beverage? Hot chocolate, duh.

20. Childhood illnesses? Any interesting stories behind them? While he spent most of his time indoors and didn’t go out to play much, if at all, he was relatively healthy besides that. Sadly, that didn’t pass on to his brother.

[damnitaddie]

Adventures in Mental Health

I wanted to write this up before I forget any of the finer details. As I’ve mentioned before, I tend to take my mental health very seriously. With the amount of stressors that I have experienced in the last 2 years, I’m not ashamed to say that depression has been a problem. When you also consider that one of my best friends committed suicide about 10 months ago after losing his battle with depression, it becomes even more important to me. 

Over the last year, I’ve been working with my family doctor and my psychologist to find a balance. My GP has tried adjusting my dosages, as well as trying different drugs, to no avail. Both at separate times suggested that I see a psychiatrist that had more specific knowledge on psychotropics. I was recommended to a center that was staffed with both nurse practitioners and doctors of psychiatry. I called and set up an appointment for this past Thursday. 

As I normally do when visiting a new doctor, I downloaded their intake paperwork completed it a couple days prior to the appointment. Nevertheless, I arrived about 13 minutes early for my 10:15 appointment. I signed in at the front desk and took a seat. The first thing I noticed was how busy the place was. The building being a repurposed house didn’t have a large waiting room and it was full. Additionally, some of the people waiting had restaurant style pagers. 

10:15 came and went as I amused myself on the internet as usual. As 10:30 came, I called my

Seriously?

manager to let him know that I would be coming in later due to a doctor’s appointment. At 10:38, I finally got up and went back to the window to see if they had forgotten about me. She motioned towards the check-in book. 

“I signed in at 10:03. The sticker I signed has been peeled off”, I replied. 

With no apology or explanation, she took my paperwork and a copy of my ID, then provided me with a pager of my own. I sat across from a mother and daughter, who were waiting for a 10AM appointment. She was finally paged at 10:52. In less than 5 minutes, her appointment was over. I’m thinking, “Seriously? SERIOUSLY?” in my best Meredith Grey voice.

About that time, I get called and simultaneously vibrated as my table for four is ready.. Oh wait, this is a mental health office, not Texas Roadhouse. So I meet my new person. His name is, well, we’ll call him Steve. So Steve invites me into his office. The first thing I notice is that it’s like my office at home. A mess. Stuff everywhere. Which, I can’t cast stones in glass houses, but hey! I don’t see patients in my office. We just play video games and post passive aggressive tweets. I digress. 

He introduces himself, and we’re exchanging pleasantries. He mentions that there’s an Addison in his family, but that Addison is a boy. I told him that a hundred years ago, Addison was primarily a masculine name, but in recent decades has become more popular as a woman’s name. I also mentioned that I had a non-binary/agender friend and their name is Addison as well. This is where things started to go sideways.

 “What is non-binary?” he asks. 

At first I think he’s joking. Then as I look at his face, I can actually see the puzzled look on his face. It’s the same face my seven year old makes when I explain something technical. It’s not dramatically different than my dogs cocking their heads to one side when you say, “Who’s a good dog?”

I explained that there are people who don’t identify with either male or female, that there are people who are fluid between genders and then some, like my friend, who are agender. They don’t identify as any gender. I got the feeling that, maybe.. I was his first trans patient. Somehow, it feels slightly unfair that this guy brings in at least $75-100 an hour, but I have to educate him on things that he could find on google. 

Next, Steve starts with a brief history. I give him the broad strokes, my laundry list of medications. What we’ve tried, etc. I always like when a professional asks me, “Why such a low dose of X?” To which I’m thinking, “Uh, IDK. That’s what the doctor told me to take???” 

Anyway, he asks about family history. I tell him what I know, in terms of mental health. Then we go into alcoholism and addiction. I explain about my father and his sobriety up until his passing. He pushes deeper about the rest of the family. 

“Well, I was raised catholic, so that should give you an idea”, I quipped. 

He doesn’t get the joke and continues to push on it. I explain that if you go AA’s “Twelve Questions Only You Can Answer” page, many of my family members would have fallen on the spectrum at some point in their lives. 

Finally, moving on, I’m asked about any past surgeries. Mind you, all of this was listed on my intake paperwork. I tell him that I had GRS in May and then Breast Augmentation in November. That I had my wisdom teeth out about 16-17 years ago but other than that, no other significant medical interventions.

I explain that I’m having a number of issues aside from just typical depression. My problem list: 

Trouble concentrating

Issues staying on task

Constant exhaustion, lethargy, and malaise. 

Nervous Anxiety

Clenching my jaw subconsciously when I’m awake.

Then we take, what feels like, a drastic course change back to Transtown™.  First is a question that’s so hard for a trans person to answer, at least in the first couple years. 

“Are you still,” motioning with his hands towards his crotch, “…. um… male down there?”

I shot him the kind of look that only a mother would give to her kids when they’re out of line and replied, “I was never male.”

It’s called a penis.

As he stumbled over his words and tried to make a coherent sentence, I asked if it was medically relevant to my mental health? Mind you, if he had read my intake paperwork, or had any familiarity with trans patients, he’d have know without asking. He said it was, because some of the drugs have sexual side effects, including erectile dysfunction. 

And once again, I had to come back to Trans 101 and explain that a decent percentage of trans women who are post-op or non-op have issues with getting or maintaining an erection. Because of the use of anti-androgens, such as Spironolactone, our testosterone levels are typically lower than the average cis woman. I explained that mine were normally somewhere in the 8-12 range, on a scale of 8-55 for cis women, cis men having a much higher range from ~300-1000 (ng/dL). 

I went on to explain that there was a much better way to ask those questions to a trans person. I suggested, “Do you still have a penis?” Or even better “Do you still have testicles?” 

From that point on, I pretty much checked out on this dude. Especially when he started to show me facebook pictures of his sister’s lesbian wedding on his phone. Because, you know I’m a lesbian, so we must all lesbian together. Or something. 

In the end, he had two cardboard boxes of some drug called “Trintellix” of which he rummaged through and gave me two sample bottles. He basically claimed it to be the best stuff on the planet and that a number of his patients had seen improvements in 1-3 days. Which is odd, because my understanding of SSRI’s is that they usually take a couple weeks to build up a normal level in your system. He wants to see me back in two weeks.

Sorry, I think I’ll skip it. 

Adventures in Mental Health was originally published on TransVentures

[seven-oomen]

Hi, Ben!  Hope you’re doing okay.  Sorry I’ve been quieter, work’s been rather beyond stressful for a lot of reasons.  I have a few minutes before I’m due in, however, and wanted to throw out a couple more thoughts on Noah’s age before I forget them again.

The main one is that another reason I had him a little closer to the other parents (though still older) is so that, if one chooses to assume he saw actual active combat, that would put him in the Army around the time the US was (known to the public to be) active in Iraq, which I just though made for a nice narrative parallel to Jordan’s tour in Afghanistan.  The other is that whether or not he actually went to a college could affect things, too.  I personally feel he’s the type, but I don’t know that a degree is necessary for the Police Academy, and I think those tend to be rather shorted than 4 years.  So depending on how you choose to interpret/use it for story purposes, there’s a fair amount of play in the timeline.

Also, I love the new chapter preview, and the gifs!  Yes, Stiles, adults do occasionally have conversations.  Perhaps you might try one with the adult raising you.  XD  It’s all so cute, and I have badly needed the fluff lately.  Also, I think I may have finally wrestled the next chapter of IYWTD into halfway decent shape, so hopefully I’ll get a chance to get it posted tonight.

I hope you’re having a good day, and enjoying your “research” ;D (omg, those excerpts… also the thought of horny Peter getting distracted by scritches… XD )  Enjoy the snow if it’s still around (we’ve had a few hits of it lately, too, had to clean my car again this morning.)  Sending as much positive energy as I can muster right now!  Take care!  *Hugs!*

Hey B! That’s quite alright, I’m sorry work has been so stressful and hectic and I do hope things calm down soon so you can have a bit of rest and breathing room.

Well I mean, the timeline I made could have him within the birthyear of between 1960 and 1964 and it would still work out. Actually if his birthyear was 1964 he could go straight from the Army to college so that might actually work out better.  It’s mentioned on several wikis that Noah went to college after the Army so I’m treating that info as canon.

Yay! Fingers crossed, I honestly love that story it’s so cute <3 

And for welcome to the family, yeah Stiles def should have known adults talk. But Stiles in S1 wasn’t exactly the most open with old dad XD 

But I’m very glad you like the GIFs and little bits and pieces here and there. I haven’t gotten much sleep last night but I do want to write more today and get started on writing down all my ideas for an original werewolf story.

Basically what I want to write is just a very sweet romance story about 3 dads (one hunter with his young five year old trans daughter, one park ranger and his hyperactive teenage son, and one werewolf with his pre teen twins Identical but one of them is a cis girl and the other a trans boy) who meet in Yellowstone and make a pact to try and protect the Werewolves of Yellowstone and of course they fall in love along the way.

My research so far has been very interesting. I think I liked the first story I read the best, even though it probably featured dub-con since I’m not sure how consensual all of it actually was because I don’t have the full context since it was just a random book out of a series. But it did feature the ear scritches while our twink werewolf is being dicked down by his huge bear “hunter?” master. So, that was quite enjoyable despite being in first person.

Basically dude is chained down in a cabin where he waits for his master to come dick him down every day, but he does wear a very luxurious collar that his master picked out for him and he mentions how much he wants it. (Which honestly comes across as if he’s trying to convince himself? But I digress)

Second book (well short story, both of these were like 14 pages) wasn’t nearly as interesting, just our twink werewolf running through the woods chasing something as he thinks back on how he met his master and how his master instantly knew he was a werewolf. He comes back to the cabin and transforms back into a human where his master picks him up, cares for him and then dicks him down rather sweetly. Which was alright, but it was once again in first person.

The real interesting stuff is the untold lore behind the breeding camp series. It’s fascinating! (Maybe this is my asexuality talking but the sex is just kinda bland erotica like dick in pussy, switch position, dick in mouth dick in pussy dick in ass, switch positions, dick in mouth two dicks in pussy dick in ass, switch positions, dick in ass dick in pussy, etc. Also were are some of these limbs???? ) 

But the LORE. Like werewolves and humans are at war, the werewolves are winning, some are eating humans and hunt them for food and sport, other ‘camps’ are peaceful and only kill humans when they have to. But like they kidnap human women and human men, they either eat or turn the human men into werewolves, the women are brought to breeding camps. Which is like an internment camp where the women are fed, clothed, make sure they exercise, and just make sure they’re healthy basically. With only werewolves to guard them. There’s always a camp leader, the Alpha, and several packs of 3 to 4 wolves within the camp. These packs are assigned a human woman when it’s time to breed. 

The woman is then taken to a breeding hotel or chamber that’s very luxurious and she’s asked/coerced really to say yes to be bred. She’s then fucked several times throughout the night so all wolves have a chance to be the father of the pups or something. And then it usually cuts off since it’s short stories. But from what I gather it’s then that the woman are taken to another camp/or villages where they all live with other breeding pairs and where they all raise the pups communally. Or well, that’s what it sort of elludes to since the stories always stop after the fucking.

But I find that fascinating and I want to know more about the  world of that series, you know. I kinda want to write a DILF club + Derek fic of it now. Like imagine if it’s like an A/B/O au and Chris is a captured Omega hunter who’s brought to a breeding camp where he’s paired with the Camp leader Peter, the Camp head of Security Noah and Peter’s nephew Derek. He’s then bred by them during his heat and then relocated to the town where they raise the pups. He then meets other Omegas like Melissa (who’s paired with Claudia, Natalie, and Victoria). The town and the Camp themselves are run by Alpha Talia. I don’t how I would write all of it out, but I think it could be interesting to explore. (Idk I might have just have a weakness for weird shit like this.)

But anyway, my dishwasher just broke down so I gotta go see if I can fix this. See you later B and I hope your day’s going okay! <3

[diakena]

La Strife

Texts cited by Heidegger: SZ   Sein und Zeit, trans. John MacQuarrie and Ed Robinson. New York: Harper and Row 1962 PLT   Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter. New York: Harper and Row 2013 BW   Basic Writings, Ed. David Farell Krell. New York: Harper and Row 2008 P   Pathmarks, Ed. William McNeill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998 HF   Ontology: The Hermeneutics of Facticity, Trans. John Van Buren. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2008

Several years ago while I was still in college, I worked a long-range delivery job that had me alone in a car for 15 hours every weekend. The first couple hours of my route would be filled with podcasts, usually a combination of On the Media and In Our Time, but once that was over, I would put on music, and the band that clicked with me most at this point in my life was La Dispute. Part of this was probably because I’m from the same city, and a lot of places they talk about in their songs were even a part of my delivery routes, places like East Grand Rapids, Hudsonville, northbound on I-75, and so on. But I think the bigger reason they resonated with me was that at the time, I was working on a large paper focusing on the thought of German philosopher Martin Heidegger. So for several months my weeks were filled with reading through his work and then spending all weekend listening to Rooms of the House on repeat while processing what I’d read, and so for all the changes my thought has gone through the last few years, the two topics will always have some overlap, even if only in my head. So that’s what I want to talk about here. It might be best to start the way Heidegger does; by backtracking to the beginning. For Heidegger, philosophy has often proceeded blind to its own foundations, trying to start from nowhere, when in his view it needs to start with “explicating the original motivational situations in which the fundamental experiences of philosophy have arisen.” (P3) So what is this soil out of which philosophy grows? We get our answer early on in Being and Time: “Looking at something, understanding and conceiving it, choosing, gaining access to – all these ways of behavior are constitutive for our inquiry, and therefore are modes of being for those particular entities which we, the inquirers, are ourselves. Thus to work out the question of being adequately, we must make an entity – the inquirer – transparent in his own being.” (SZ7) But this study of the object in question, namely, us as human beings, also needs to proceed from the proper place. Rather than insist, as many have, that what makes us unique is our ability to sit back and think rationally, he insists on starting with more generic examples, things like working in a workshop, driving a car, cooking and cleaning, and so on. He writes “At the outset of our analysis it is particularly important that Dasein should not be interpreted with the differentiated character of some definite way of existing, but that it should be uncovered in the undifferentiated character which it has proximally and for the most part.” (SZ43) And it’s at this point where we start to have overlap with the album in question, which remains focused throughout on the small details of life, in an its banal trivialities, something that comes across especially well in Woman (In Mirror): In the bathroom off  the kitchen leave the door ajar in a brand new dress. Let me watch put your makeup on, let me in, give me holy privileges. There’s a dinner thing, Thanksgiving, dress up nice make a dish to bring. There are moments here only yours and mine, tiny dots on an endless timeline. Here we have relationships as they are, ‘proximally and for the most part,’ composed of tiny details, little moments of connection that make up a larger story. Love today tends to get hyped up as the best thing that can ever happen to you, but the band here takes a different approach. The song isn’t cynical, but it’s measured and attentive to things that often tend to escape notice but, if given proper attention, can seem incredibly significant, like how seeing one’s partner changing or preparing to go out can feel like a divine privilege. In the mirror with your eyes wide trace outlines, ask for wine, but you never look away when you do, your eyes don’t move, I never move mine from you and I watch your reversal it’s an honest thing when there’s no one there, some days they feel like dress rehearsals, some days I watch and you don’t care. There’s a dinner, Thanksgiving, dress up nice, make a dish to bring. There are moments here,only yours and mine, tiny dots on an endless timeline. A key thing going on here is the familiarity the narrator has with his partner, and the world they inhabit. Part of the reason these small details which make up our lives are so often missed is they form a world we become so familiar with that in its familiarity, it disappears. This invisible familiarity is, according to Heidegger, a fundamental part of being human, as he dissects the etymology of the Ich bin, I am: “’In’ is derived from ‘innan’ – ‘to reside’, ‘habitare’, ‘to dwell’. ‘An’ signifies ‘I am accustomed’, ‘I am familiar with’, ‘I look after something’…and so ‘ich bin’ [‘I am’] means in its turn ‘I reside’ or ‘dwell alongside’ the world, as that which is familiar to me in such and such a way.” (SZ54) This familiarity with our world, and those around us has recently been proven at the levels of neurobiology[1], but Heidegger was calling attention to this long before neuroscientists. Things like facial recognition can be analyzed in what Heidegger refers to as ‘mood’, something that not only enables self-understanding, but is always shared, as Ben Morgan writes “In Heidegger’s argument, the shared mood comes first: It is where we meet each other, and it is the basis on which we come to our own sense of ourselves. In other words, there’s something going on in which we are already involved that is also the medium through which we come to a sense of each other and of ourselves. This emotional involvement is the background against which both my identity and the strangeness of other people can be experienced.”[2] Two things to note about mood that show up in both this passage and the song itself: first, mood is the basis of our own self-understanding. It isn’t a distortion of our perspective; mood itself is the frame through which we interpret and understand everything. Even without paying attention to the lyrics, one can hear in the stifled percussion, Dreyer’s muffled voice and the relaxed guitars a feeling of warmth and comfort. The lyric-videos the band posted for each song also help convey a sense of familiar everydayness, the lyrics laid over found footage of everyday events like family gathering, weddings, graduations and family trips. So mood is incredibly important for how we experience the world, and Morgan points out that it’s also always shared. At our basis, who we are is a reflection of those around us; we are always, as Peter Sloterdijk would put it, in a space of shared cohabitation. In this way, connection and communication run deeper than simply transferring information from one isolated subject to another; instead, “In [a] more general kind of communication, the articulation of being with one another understandingly is constituted. Through it a co-state-of-mind [Mitbefindlichkeit] gets ‘shared’, and so does the understanding of being-with.” (SZ162) This shared communication, that dwells below the simple propositional exchange takes place in the song as well, where things are communicated without even the use of words. A glance back, the small of yours on the sink where I set your glass. A hand that rests there flat a moment, retracts,and the recognition that you give when you shift position. Move your hip slightly in, we say nothing then out loud and that’s what feels the most profound. It’s in these little moments where two people, dwelling in the intimate familiarity of each other’s presence that the everydayness of existence comes to shine forth. “Being attuned…can be ‘experienced’ and ‘felt’ only because the ‘human being who experiences’, without being aware of the essence of attunement, is always engaged in being attuned a way that discloses beings as a whole.” (P147; BW129)                  How is it that this everydayness, so central to who we are, gets glossed over so easily? Part of it is its very familiarity; in order for us to navigate the world so easily and comfortably, we need to forget most of it in order to focus on whatever tasks we have at hand. But part of it, Heidegger thinks, is embedded in the history of philosophy itself, particularly in its misunderstanding of ‘truth’, which is understood in increasingly narrow terms as technology comes to dominate our way of seeing the world.[3] But this increasing narrowness has a long history of development, arguably going back to Plato. Heidegger, however, thinks that where Plato went wrong is in his thinking about humans, and their relationship to truth, and a big part of his thinking on this comes from reading the Greek word for truth in a more literal fashion, since aletheia literally translates to not-concealed. Meanwhile, the opposite of truth is no longer simply a proposition that doesn’t accord with reality, but instead is a covering-up. Heidegger writes: “The being-true of the discourse as truth means that in discoursing as showing the entities of which one is talking must be taken out of their hiddenness; one must let them be seen as something unhidden, that is, they must be discovered. Similarly, ‘being-false’ amounts to deceiving in the sense of covering-up: putting something in front of something (in such a way as to let it be seen) and thereby passing it off as something which it is not.” (SZ33) So our misunderstanding of truth gives us a false conception of who we are, covering up our actual nature as beings who mostly find ourselves immersed in a world of both revealed and concealed elements, something that comes to fore in track 8, THE CHILD WE LOST 1963, which plays with the theme on several levels, which are worth breaking down: There were shadows in the bedroom where the light got thrown by the lamp on the nightstand on your mother’s side after midnight, still you can see it all,you can see it all. So here’s the first layer of unconcealment; here we have two elements in the first couple lines, shadows and light interplaying with one another. This image, one of small places of illumination surrounded by hiddenness hints at another aspect of Heidegger’s understanding of truth, as a clearing, something that shows up as early as Being and Time, where he writes “When we talk in an ontically figurative way of the lumen natural in man, we have in mind nothing other than the existential-ontological structure of this entity, that it is in such a way as to be its ‘there’. To say that it is ‘illuminated’ means that as being-in-the-world it is cleared in itself, not through any other entity, but in such a way that it is itself the clearing.” (SZ133) This concept of the clearing would later be developed in an essay titled “The Essence of Truth”, where he would declare that all ek-sistence takes place in a space that has always-already been opened up, allowing things to present themselves: “All working and achieving, all action and calculation, keep within an open region within which beings, with regard to what they are and how they are, can properly take their stand and become capable of being said.” (P141; BW122) And we see this in the first few lines pointed out, where seeing is dependent on a place that’s lit up. It’s also worth noting Heidegger’s term for clearing, Lichtung, contains the German word for light, Licht, so a clearing is literally a place where things are made visible by the light. However, these spaces of illumination are only possible on the basis of surrounding darkness: “concealment preserves what is most proper to aletheia as its own.” (P148; BW130) So the way we experience the world as an illuminated place is only possible because some things remain obscured and hidden. The world then isn’t simply composed of light and noise, but shadows and silence as well, the things we don’t know, or don’t speak of, helping compose it. And a hush fell over everything like a funeral prayer, a reverence, ancestral, heavy in the air though you didn’t understand what it meant that they never said her name aloud around you even sitting at the table with her things they’d kept. Second, we have a twist hidden in the passage above; not just that people occupy a clearing, but that they are the clearing. “The entity which bears the title ‘being-there’ is one that has been ‘cleared’…in other words, that which makes it both ‘open’ for itself and ‘bright’ for itself.” (SZ350) The band gives us both the positive and inverted example of someone who is there both in their presence as a light, as well as in an inverted form, in a sort of present-absence, a darkness. You were visions, a vagueness, a faded image, you were visions.You were a flame lit that burned out twice as brightly as the rest of us did. When you left, you light then you tumbled away. There are shadows that fall still here at a certain angle. So now we have two ways in which the song is playing with the theme of the relationship between the world, the person, truth and light, but there’s a third and final way. In his essay “The Origin of the Work of Art”, Heidegger wanders through a variety of different works in different periods, and sees art as performing a transformative role at a grand historical level, concluding “Art as poetry is founding…founding as beginning. Art attains to its historical nature as foundation…At each time a new and essential world arose. At each time the openness of what is had to be established in beings themselves, by fixing in place of truth in figure. At each time there happened unconcealedness of what is. Unconcealedness sets itself into work, a setting which is accomplished by art. Whenever art happens – that is, whenever there is a beginning – a thrust enters history, history either begins or starts over again.” (PLT74; BW201) What he means here is that art doesn’t just show us the world as it is, but can help establish new ways of seeing, new ways of engaging with the world, new clearings, but to do this, the fact that there’s a shadow at all needs to be addressed, and the shadow here is not just the fact that someone is gone, but why. No, they never said her name aloud around you. Only told you it was perfect where your sister went. And you didn’t understand why it hurt them so much then that she’d come and left so soon, could only guess inside your head at what a “stillbirth” meant, only knew that mother wept. The shadow here is not just the absent person, but the fact that no one will talk about it. The absent sister is both a gap in the family, particularly the mother, but also a gap in the sense that no one will really talk about it. The band is bringing to light the shadow of the family’s history, showing the sort of long-living sense of shame that can surround such an event. It’s the sort of thing that is loudly silent, a concept Heidegger explores in Being and Time: “Keeping silent is another essential possibility of discourse…Keeping silent authentically is possible only in genuine discoursing. To be able to keep silent, Dasein must have something to say – that is, it must have at its disposal an authentic and rich disclosedness of itself. In that case one’s reticence makes something manifest, and does away with ‘idle talk.’ As a mode of discoursing, reticence articulates the intelligibility of Dasein in so primordial a manner that it gives rise to a potentiality-for-hearing which is genuine, and to a being-with-one-another which is transparent.” (SZ165) This silence can be deafening, and it will haunt the family forever, the footage in the video depicting happy family gatherings, but the lyrics challenging the surface, suggesting there’s something going on underneath. There’s a storm underneath, a storm that haunts the narrator’s family at gatherings, that haunts my own family at gatherings, something everyone knows but no one talks about. But the band, in doing a song about such an event, can also be seen as challenging the shadow itself, and attempting to set up a new clearing. This is part of what art can do; give us a new perspective on what it means to be and go through various elements of life, and possibly challenge outdated ways of thinking about them. By bringing light to the shadowy parts of our lives, the band may be taking up Heidegger’s challenge for poets to venture ahead of the clearing already in play: “The more venturesome are the poets, but poets whose song turns our unprotected being into the open. Because they convert the parting against the open and inwardly recall its unwholesomeness into a sound whole, these poets sing the healing whole in the midst of the unholy.” It’s worth remembering that the clearing, here seen to be a dynamic interplay of light and shadow, also is the very limits of what can and can’t be said. To repeat from earlier, “All working and achieving, all action and calculation, keep within an open region within which beings, with regard to what they are and how they are, can properly take their stand and become capable of being said.” (P141; BW122) By venturing out into the unwholesome and unholy, the band challenges the shadow, and brings light to something we traditionally have not been able to speak of, possibly setting up a new world in the process. But she never said it once out loud on the way back home from where you thought they meant when they said where sister went. After grandpa got hospice-sick and he couldn’t fall asleep they wheeled his stretcher-bed beside her at night and I saw the light on the day that he died by their bed, grandma’s eyes while us grandkids said our goodbyes. She said “don’t cry, somewhere he holds her.” Said a name I didn’t recognize, and the light with all the shadows combined. So if setting up new approaches to the world is how art works in a grand historical sense, how does it work on a smaller, more detailed scale? In his essay “What are Poets for?”, when writing on some of his own favorite poets, such as Holderlin and Rilke, Heidegger comments that “The mark of these poets is that to them the nature of poetry becomes worthy of questioning…” (PLT139) Working through some of their poems, he finds not just attempts to describe their world, but reflections on how poetry works in describing the world, what they, as poets, are doing. In another essay, he connects poetry to the Greek poiesis, literally bringing-forth. (BW317; QCT10). This occurs in his essay “The Question Concerning Technology”, where he shows how this bringing-forth is being overly systematized, leaving the whole world at the mercy of humans who see everything as mere resources. However, there is another sort of bringing-forth available, one that poets can remind us of, and one which the band draws explicit attention to in Woman (Reading). The first lines remind us of Heidegger’s analysis of the everyday, of the focus on ordinary scenes and moments. You in the living room, you on a Tuesday afternoon, a breeze see when the curtains move. You by the window with both feet up on the couch where you sit and you read and I watch you. The song as a whole describes the narrator remembering what it’s like to sit in a room and watch a lover reading, and what it’s like to describe being there. The world as disclosed and illuminated clearing gets a twist in “The Origin of the Work of Art”, where he contrasts world with earth. We’ve already talked about world, which he defines in this essay as “the self-disclosing openness”, but what is earth? It is not to be associated with the planet, but instead contrasted with the world as disclosed, opened-up, revealed. “What this word says is not to be associated with the idea of a mass of matter deposited somewhere, or with the merely astronomical idea of a planet. Earth is that whence the arising brings back and shelters everything that arises without violation…The earth is the spontaneous forthcoming of that which is continually self-secluding and to that extent sheltering and concealing.” (PLT41,47; BW168, 174) So while world is disclosure, earth is a sheltering and concealing, and “The opposition of world and earth is a striving.” (PLT47; BW174) World seeks to disclose, earth pulls back and tries to remain hidden, and the dynamic push and pull of the two elements creates a strife, and the work of art sets up the opposition. You with a book propped on your knees, a breeze seen in your coffee steam. I’m in the office thinking back to rules of poetry; it’s fourteen lines, the last two rhyme, what does pentameter mean? “In setting up a world and setting forth the earth, the work is an instigating of this striving.” (PLT48; BW175) Art and poetry are about bringing-forth, poiesis, but in doing so, something pulls back, and in the song we see a dynamic push-and-pull, an attempt to use whatever frameworks are available to bring about disclosure. I write AB AB, try to find your rhyme scheme. I look for objects on the desk with which to sculpt your image best. What would I name this?Could I paint it?‘ Woman (Reading)’? ‘Girl at Rest’? Throughout the song, the narrator is trying to find ways to describe the memory of what it’s like to be there, to watch someone, to be in love. Various mental images occur, rules of poetry give him a framework and objects provide necessary tools to try and attempt, but in every case, reality eludes complete description. There always remains something beyond our grasp, something that doesn’t quite fit. “Each time we encounter and which encounter us keeps to this curious opposition of presencing, in that it always withholds itself at the same time in a concealment. The clearing in which beings stand is in itself at the same time concealment.” (BW178; PLT52) But rather than see it as a flaw, Heidegger sees this limitation on disclosure, on the clearing, as an essential element of it. Mark Wrathall explains: “there is always more to entities than we can deal with. No matter how skillful we get in dealing with entities, Heidegger argues, there will always be something about the that we can’t focus on or pay attention to…But this concealment…is precisely what makes it possible for us to deal with the thing in the first place…We get a grip on entities in the world, in other words, by generalizing, by dealing with them as instances of a known type.”[4] The limitation of our knowledge is its very condition of possibility, and poetry reminds us how much of reality actually eludes us, even in our everyday world. The song at hand deals with a very typical memory, simply watching someone reading on a couch, and it’s a scene that could’ve occurred within Heidegger’s works as well, since he often focused on very generic, everyday moment involving generic, everyday objects that hold so much meaning and memory in them, such as Heidegger’s kitchen table: “What is there in the room there at home is the table at which one sits…Here and there it shows lines – the boys like to busy themselves at the table. These lines are not just interruptions in the paint, but rather: it was the boys and still is.” (HF69) Or it could be the narrator’s living-room couch. When you leave here, when you go from a home you take all that you own but the memories echo on hardwood floor in the living room, tore the carpet, the scratches below that we found and the wine stain on the couch, we got drunk and decided we’d still try to move it around .And I can’t tell what the difference is between the ones that we made and the ones that we didn’t make. They all conjure images still where you sit and you read in the sunlight aware that I watch. The world is overflowing with meaning, and poetry can only capture so much at one time. The world itself always eludes our total understanding, but poets can help bring particular elements into focus, illuminating the world for us, both carving new paths and retracing old ones, showing us how saturated the world is with both meaning and memory. And I live alone now save for the echoes I live alone now save for the echoes.

[1] See Iacaboni, M., Mirroring People: The Science of Empathy and How We Connect to Others. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2008; Morgan, B. On Becoming God: Late Medieval Mysticism and the Modern Western Self. New York: Fordham University Press 2013; and Dreyfus, H. “Being-with-Others” in The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger’s Being and Time, Ed. Wrathall, M. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2013 [2] Morgan, On Becoming God, 40 [3] See Heidegger, M. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Trans. William Lovitt. New York: Harper Perennial 1977; Thomson, I. Heidegger on Ontotheology: Technology and the Politics of Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2005, chapters 1-2; Mitchell, A. The Fourfold: Reading the Late Heidegger. Illinois: Northwestern University Press 2015, chapter 1. [4] Wrathall, M. “Unconcealment” in A Companion to Heidegger,  Ed. Dreyfus, H. and Wrathall, M. London: Blackwell 2005. 348; Wrathall, M. Heidegger and Unconcealment: Truth, Language, and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2011, 24-25