#i am so insane about them in ways i can't even articulate

[icewindandboringhorror]

Everytime I face a new character limit on a website that didn't have them before/used to have really long ones... AUGHHhhh the modern social media world was not made for people like me (lovers of details, rambling, elaboration, thorough explanation, and nuance)

[saintobio]

I seriously need to find out what movies you watch/stuff you read in your formative years or who hurt you that you manage to string the most painful sentences possible to articulate in human language and cause this heartwrenching pain on my heart. Forget about yn girl I'M about to have a heart attack.

It's crazy. Like I'm heartbroken and I'm pissed and I'm hopeful and I'm hurt and I want justice for my girl yn. I still don't know if I want them together but I just want her happy because my god does your stuff not wreck me🥲 Your work makes us feel so many things at the same time, I'm just in awe.

I don't even mean this in a mean or rude way but I hate angst and I still stick around like a stubborn tick when it comes to all your stories because your work just is that evocative.

On a personal basis, does writing so much pain not hurt you? I hope this doesn't sound mean omfg but as a reader, consuming a story so painful can do a number on my brain chemistry. I can't imagine how it feels to come up with these scenarios, write them, edit and rewrite them and then continuing the pain?? Group hugs for you and yn. 🥹

Long story short congratulations on being such a wonderful writer SY has ruined me and I will never forget it 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 I will never recover😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 I will still lock tf in for all your work tho🫶🏻

gaaah i can’t recommend a good angsty movie/book/manhwa right now to you bcos nothing’s coming up in my head. but i do have a preference on consuming stuff that has neglect, cheating, unrequited love, and similar themes! and i guess that shows in my writings as well :’) also a lot of my works do stem from personal experiences so there’s that!

i think i’m at a point where writing too much angst has numbed me. but then again, i still cry when i’m writing heavy emotional scenes bcos i rly do get into it 🤧 i’d even listen to the playlist too so it hurts me more. like sy!yn has been screaming for a good ending for sooo long and here i am constantly wrecking her spirit every chapter bcos i enjoy that sting in my heart. it makes me feel more human :)))

(i love angst and i am truly one with pain. i know it’s obvious but i really can’t live without it. and the funny thing is, when i feel like i’m “too happy” with my current relationship, i’d ask my bf to make me sad and upset or pretend to hurt my feelings LMAOOO that’s how crazy i am for angst. i literally crave for it, it’s insane and idk why.)

[freakattack]

some stuff on.. *shudders*.. twitter got me thinking tldr fake leak about Wario in M&L Brothership, which led to people discussing the common dream of a M&L game with the overalled quartet. how would Wario and Waluigi work in a combat-focused setting? would they be able to work in-sync like Mario and Luigi do? would they even work at all? i wahnder.

AUUUUGGHHHHHH

Sorry. Let me articulate my thoughts more eloquently

AAAAUUUUUGGHHHH

I love wario. I love mario and luigi. I love Mario & Luigi. I even love waluigi. But for the love of god would I hate to have them all in the same room. Here is why:

Wario would never be part of a team that he couldn't be in charge of, much less one with Mario in it. Wario has his own life, his own goals, and his own social circle, none of which have anything to do with mario. He's his own man now

On a similar note, Wario's whole schtick is (ironically) being unique from Mario. Wario Land is a mario game if you tailored every single game mechanic to his very soul, such that it is so distinct that we call other games "wariolikes". To make Wario conform to the game mechanics of a Mario game, RPG or not, would make me very upsetti spaghetti

Also, Waluigi and Wario are NOT EVEN FRIENDS!!! At best, they are exes that sometimes bully people together when they are invited to the same party (if you subscribe to Poppadopolos theory, which I do). At worst, they are simply guys that are not friends, that sometimes bully people together when they are invited to the same party. I DO NOT want waluigi and wario to share a legit game together because I feel this goes against everything we know about the Wahs.

On a related note, I am of the staunch opinion that Waluigi deserves better than to be scaffolded into someone else's series. Luigi has Luigi's Mansion, Wario has WarioWare/Wario Land, and Mario has everything else. If Waluigi gets "his own game", it should be a place where he can build his own identity proper rather than piggybacking off of someone else as usual

Whenever two foods on my plate mix I get really really mad and don't want to eat it

So you can understand why this is not something on my wishlist (because I am a fun-hating asshole). That being said, for the purposes of this thought exercise, let's say that miyamoto himself is holding me at gunpoint and telling me I can't have any more microgames until I make this happen. Here is how I would approach this concept in a way that is least likely to make me go insane:

I wouldn't make it a M&L game, it would be its Own Thing. This is so that the mario & luigi series can continue to feature mario & luigi while opening up the possibility for this concept of all 4 guys working together to have (sigh) a sequel.

The thing that makes this all happen is that in the first chapter the Big Bad Guy of the week somehow transports/knocks the overall men into a deep and inescapable chasm (a volcano, a nightmare, a inside of a whale, whateverthefuck) and you start as mario and have to find luigi.

Along the way you find everyone except luigi. You have to fight wario and waluigi separately before they begrudgingly agree to join your party.

Because you're all kind of fucked they suck it up and decide to work together with each other and mario just to get the hell out of there. Maybe you can shoehorn luigi's superjump ability in here to justify why the other guys would give a damn about finding luigi.

You find luigi.

Once you get out of the Hole Situation you have all 4 guys in your "party" and find out that you all have to work together to save the world super paper mario style. I still don't know if this would be sufficient motivation for either wario or waluigi but something will be in it for them. I guess.

I think Wario should be able to pick up and use Waluigi as various tools (e.g. hammer, crowbar, pole vault), because he is a tool. I don't know it just feels right

Alternatively (or in addition to that), I think it would be fun to have different pair combos of guys you can use at a time, each with their own benefits. Obviously mario+luigi and wario+waluigi would be an option but it would also be fun to explore the potential synergy between wildcard combos like wario+luigi and waluigi+mario

The penultimate boss is wario+waluigi randomly betraying you and using all the skills and EXP you taught them along the way. They behave after you kick their ass though

IDK what else is going on in this pretend game but I'm glad I don't have to think about it actually being real. KNOCK ON WOOD!!!!! NINTENDO CRUSH TWITTER'S DREAMS

[0509-brainrot]

POST THE DOUBKE PARALLELS PLSPLSPLS

HNGH OKAY SO,

First of all just some General Visual Parallels (ones that while I don't have any particular Thoughts or Deep Analysis on they're Neat :) (also they fit more into the overarching smoking trio parallels since Kazui has a matching one too) I'm sorry Kazui my blog is so biased orz)

Mfs when they hold the left side of their face while forcing out a pained smile (Although with Mikoto it's just his general lying/trying to brush off his own suffering while with Shidou we're looking at him at his most painfully honest) ((Also they both have phone calls in their songs which I think is Great))

Cool eye shots :) (Am I the only one who thinks Mikoto's eyes are very pretty :sob: ((Also now the entire smoking trio has one of these close up eye shots, I also love that Mikoto and Orekoto both get individual shots nobody gets left out (Ignoring the fact that they Disbanded)))

Okay but time for. My Actual Shitty Parallels Analysis bear with me guys here this is gonna get Messy,

Idk if I talked about this Before but Shidou and John (I'm sorry guys I Need to adjust to it I'm gonna call him John here) are both obviously extremely tied to their "purpose" of protecting people, specifically their loved ones (Shidou's Family/Mikoto). However they obviously go at it very Differently, John's method Is harmful (violence/killing) while Shidou's is supposed to be the complete Opposite (treating/healing).

There's also something interesting about their victims. I can't say for sure from Double if Multiple people were Actually murdered, but it seems to be portrayed that way by John at least; he and Shidou both portray themselves as having multiple victims, and they're also portrayed completely differently than their loved ones (Flowers/Tags, Mannequins, they're not entirely portrayed as people and have little to no identity, their lives were set aside to protect/save the ones they cared about)

(The environment in Shidou's MV is also very sterile and clean looking while John's is covered in blood. They're both surrounded by their representations of the lives they took)

From what we've seen this purpose is currently what basically makes or breaks their will/reason to live, these people are their entire worlds, if they can't even save the ones they care about they may as well have nothing, and what happened with that purpose of protecting?

Well. They failed.

Shidou's fails to protect/save his family and John fails to protect/save Mikoto, and their arcs with how they go Forward with this failure completely Kills Me

I fucking. Hrmghsdflbds these shots at the ends of their respective mvs are the shots that pretty much prompted this post. Shidou reaches out and, despite his failures, tries to push past his self-hatred and resolves to continue living and protecting others. Meanwhile, John closes in on himself with renewed self-hatred, and decides that it would be better off if he disappeared/went dormant.

Just. Aheem aheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeem

GOD, GOD (while the shots themselves don't exactly parallel, the lyrics. Oh The Lyrics)

"So hey, prolong my life" / "If only I were never born, if only"

"I'm Dispensable" / "I'm So Sorry"

Minus the "Why, why" in Double, these are the Last Two Lines for both of their songs and,

I'M GONNA HIT SOMETHING,

We see John with the most Openly Distressed expression we've seen on him meanwhile Shidou has almost Cold Resolve

Shidou and John's arcs are going in completely opposite directions and that Breaks my Fucking Heart Man oh my God get me Out of here Get Me Out (I hope these shots also helps articulate that parallel I tried to make earlier about the different ways they go at protecting people? Shidou puts on new white, clean gloves meanwhile John's hands are completely coated in blood and just. Man,).

Just. Yeah. Yeah,

Pain

God I hope this makes sense to Someone I'm going Insane

Most miserable guys ever I love them so much </333

[i-literally-cant-with-this]

Panty Dropper

@callm3senpaii was so kind tagging me in this and I know I should have been asleep but I couldn't stop thinking about stuff to write. Will I be tired today? I probably already am. Will it be worth dragging my ass around? Most definitely.

Things they do that have me throwing my panties on the floor and my ankles in the air:

TOJI :

~ The bulge in his pants and the scar on his lips.

~ When he stands, sits, when he's hard. Especially if he wants to hug me or pull me down onto his lap. And if he looks at me and licks the scar, I'm immediately flooding my pants. I don't know what it is about scars, whether they're on chests, arms, faces, backs (omfg backssss). They're just so fucking sexy to me. I want to lick them all.

~ He'll press that mass right into me. Knowing damn well what he's doing. Same with the scar, he knows wtf is up. If he wants my attention but doesn't want to have to say that he wants it, he'll just stare at me and lick the corner of his mouth until I'm dropping down on his face.

~ It gets worse the longer we're out of the house. Having to show self-restraint and not drop to my knees and rip his low-hanging pants from his godlike hips is not #1 on my to-do list.

~ HE IS, though.

REINER :

~ Jesus Christ. The way he would hold me all the time. How he can flip-flop between being gentle one minute to shoving my back up against any hard surface that was easily accessible, rolling and grinding his hips into me.

~ How needy he can be sometimes is so hot. Like, he can't fucking live another second without burying his face in my cunt or stuffing me full of his cock. Or tongue. Let's be real, the man loves to eat.

~ He's also emotional AND emotionally stupid. He tries to express himself and sometimes he just gets so pissed off that he doesn't have the words that he'll shut down. And I wouldn't be able to sit by and watch him beat himself up about some shit that happened 10 years ago. I'd have to climb up on his lap and start rubbing my ass all over him to get his focus to shift.

~ Watching him hold a baby would make every single good egg I had left drop down, ready to create life with him. He's so fucking big and seeing him hold something so small and fragile would make me insane with lust. (As if I'm not always DTF this guy). I'd whisper in his ear to give the baby back to her (yes, it would be a baby girl, all pinked out) parents because I need him upstairs shooting his hot load into me and telling me how much he wants to fuck a baby into me and watch my body change while nurturing life (WHERE THE FUCK DID THAT COME FROM. LITERALLY WHAT. TF.)

~ His sweet gestures would kill me so softly. He would bring me a wild flower that he saw somewhere while he was out. Or he'd bring me a little succulent clipping that he snagged while he was at Home Depot getting stuff to make the rack to hold our sex swing that was going to be delivered in 2 days. 1 if the mail runs a little faster than anticipated.

~ I don't know how else to articulate this other than to tell you that we'd dance like they do in Dirty Dancing (the OG movie. Not the remake shit). You know how Baby and Johnny danced with each other when they'd basically straddle each others thighs and just grind while his hands were on her ass and she was clinging to him to keep herself from falling over backwards, even though there was no way in hell that he'd ever let go of her. And how he'd turn me around and have my back to his chest while we're just like, making our hips go in circles while we're in the living room listening to songs like "Cry To Me." Fucking shoot me now, please. I can't stand another minute without this guy.

Sanemi :

~ This motherfucker. His lack of personal space with me would be irritating at first. Like, he would always come to bed with me at the same time. Sleep smooshed up next to me, even during summer months when it's too hot to lay like that unless you have 3 box fans pointing at you (and I DO) just to take the edge off of the humidity swarming around you. But eventually, when he'd stay up to do something, video games or working out, whatever, and I go to bed alone, I definitely would just lay there and miss him. So I'd call for him and he'd come peek his head in the room and ask me what I need.

~ I'd admit that I need him because I'm so goddamn used to feeling his body next to me that I don't know what to do with myself when I'm not all tangled up in him. I just toss and turn not feeling grounded in my own bed.

~ So he'll turn off all the lights because he's a responsible electricity user and do his bedtime routine then finally come in and lay with me.

~ But he's not really tired. And he will turn over to face me and starts rubbing my thigh with his left hand, sloooowwwlllyy going higher until he's got his fingers dancing over the waistband of my --- wait, I won't be wearing panties. Scratch that. He'd play with the hem of my t-shirt and inch his way between my thighs until my knees are opening up for him.

~ "You still not tired?" is all he'd have to say to me in his deep, husky nighttime voice and I'd pull him over on top of me because I can't resist his voice, even in the daytime. But there's just something about his voice at night that does me in. It's heavy with the days weight and he wants to let go of everything. And I would help him with all that shiz.

LEVI

~ There are several things that he would do that'd lead to my clothes spontaneously disappearing.

~ If I walked in on him cleaning ANYTHING my pants would combust on the spot. There is something about a man who takes tidiness seriously. And no one takes it more seriously that Levi.

~I would try to get him to wear nothing but an apron to clean stuff up in, but he'd just call me a dumbass and continue his dusting.

~ When he is getting annoyed with me and his voice gets all disciplinary and starts yelling at me a little bit to "Knock my shit off", it's only going to egg me on more.

~ I would love to push his buttons until he was beating my ass over the kitchen table, counter, dishwasher, shower, closet, cat food dish. Idfc.

~ Also when he would drive us somewhere, he'd have his hand on my thigh and subconsciously rub and squeeze it whenever he'd get pissed off at the other idiots on the road.

~ It would be the way that he'd kiss me goodbye in the morning and then he would pull away only to lean in for a deeper kiss as his hands wrapped around my waist and pulled me into him.

~ The way the heat from his cock would warm me wherever it pressed into me as he was trying to leave for work that day. "I'm working from home today, yes. Yes, thank you. I'll be in tomorrow," he looks at me, "Possibly."

[marleysfinest]

ok first of all mar. what a fantastic event you're hosting!!! i will literally never get enough of telling people i love them. second of all i am a very sappy very affectionate person so i'm not sorry if this gets long. in no particular order:

@ghost-1-y : my very first friend on here. so kind and supportive and lovely and wonderful to talk to always. and a great writer on top of it all!!!

@sugurei : my ride or die, my fellow feral being, the older sister i wish i had. u r my favorite enabler & my life is better for having you in it

@peachdues : a deeply talented writer that i am deeply blessed that i get to talk to. passing angst back and forth is truly a pleasure and sometimes gives me a laugh even if it gives me chest pain AHAHA

@dr-runs-with-scissors : CAL MY BELOVED i love you so fucking much. talking to you every day is truly a gift. my life has been much richer since we stumbled across each other and realized we both already enjoyed each other's work. i love you.

@mitsuristoleme : kay!!! my lovely lovely noble blood beta reader. you are wonderful in so many ways i can't even begin to explain. i'm so glad we talk even tho our time zones are so different. keep killing it at uni friend 💜

@threadbaresweater : lin you are my cool aunt jsyk. your writing & fandom takes & posts about real life stuff are all things i am endlessly glad i have the privilege to see on my dash

@2kmps : cort, your honesty is always refreshing, and i admire your dedication to your craft. i'm so glad we've started talking more lately!

@bloompompom : the sweetest kindest most lovely artist on this site!!! being in your orbit is a blessing

@oceaneyesinla : roxy, your constant encouragement and sweet words never fail to make me smile

@teddybeartoji MICKEY i love being insane with you. your excitement about things is contagious and it is so so wonderful

YOU!!! mar you are such a joy to see on my dash, i can never get enough of you fr

there are so many more ppl on this hellsite that i love with my whole heart but i am only human and cannot properly articulate my feelings. but know if we're mutuals or i see you consistently in my notes, i love you so bad and am squeezing you so tight & with so much love

💜💜💜

this is what im TALKIN about fallon thank u for sharing the love!!!!! look at all these stunners!!!!!

share the love in muvva’s feel good 500!

[scaly-freaks]

Kind of going off your post about how brown and black characters in HOTD and GOT are completely wasted or demolished or turned into a crude caricature.

Ummmm the HATE that is thrown towards Elia Martell is absolutely absurd. The way they hate the idea of this character and are honestly happy with how her character was destroyed is so telling and disgusting.

The hatred and discontent is so real and frightening and we saw a glimpse of that with those leaked texts from some random discord. I guess what I’m just trying to say is racism is far from dead and it’s seen in this fandom.

And yes the entirety of Arianne Martell’s character being a seductress is insane.

Also wanted to mention that the only other time I’ve seen brown characters in the show are as brothel workers. Of course nothing wrong with that sort of work. But it’s the sexualization that’s creepy.

Yeah. Yep. It's just depressing. Sometimes I find myself accepting it because it's so normal at this point, but then I'm like...no???? I hesitated making Amara Dornish and visibly non-white because my own self doubt made me want to . I thought eh I'll just make her from the Riverlands or something, it's less complicated. But then I make her, and people love her and it's not an issue (it's just stuff I've internalised over the years thanks to how society is set up). Which obviously goes to show the people who create our media are deliberately fucking up representation so that we just stop asking. They can create compelling characters that are centred they just don't want to a lot of the time.

That being said, British TV that specifically isn't popular outside of the UK, represents non-white characters quite well and doesn't turn them into caricatures of their culture/ethnicity (at least most of the time). In this case I am talking about American productions and non-British audiences.

On the note of Elia Martell...a lot of the times she is fancasted as Indian. Stereotypes about Dorne are also stereotypes used against Indians ('she smells Dornish' - no two guesses on what Aerys meant). I've seen Indians be used as punching bags for racism by every other race as if it's a free-for-all, to the point where very horrible and very real issues like misogyny in India are treated frivolously and with 'oh well they're all just like that.'

The mistreatment and racism against Elia has real life parallels because of the otherness of Dorne, and since Dorne brings to mind South and Western Asia so much (the way they hid in caves when the dragons came is very reminiscent of Afghan guerilla tactics and their tough terrain that invaders can't adjust to) that's usually the area of the world I associate it with.

It's all very other other other and now pair that up with snow-white daddy Rhaegar and his lily-white, dark-haired Stark girl (because mind you, I understand white blondes have had issues with how they're represented as slutty caricatures onscreen and brunettes as more clever and by extension more desirable in the long-term).

Elia didn't stand a chance against two white people pairing up, and that is honestly the only time when I'm like "you know what, stop fan casting her as desi." The woman is raped in front of her children and watches those same kids die in front of her, and even that isn't enough to stop the cruel jokes.

And yes, absolutely, there's nothing wrong with being a brothel worker. I adore stories about people in the grassroots, brothel workers especially, just trying to survive and get by in the world. But watch the brown workers be immediately depicted as more "comfortable" with this lifestyle, and just naturally promiscuous as compared to their white counterparts.

Meanwhile irl, if the brown person in question is a Muslim for example, their values in terms of modesty are mocked and derided and deemed an extremist 'other'. And then I guess you can be a Mormon in Utah and be just fine.

I honestly don't know if any of this made sense, or if I articulated without room for misunderstanding. Trust me, I do think about this a lot. I'm Kashmiri, and I've lived in England all my life, and my dating pool has mostly been white because that is what's more available. I've dealt with fetishisation/sexualisation (never for the ethnicity I am which most people couldn't even guess...uhhh hilarious) and it's forefront on my mind despite my active decision to leave it out of my fics as much as I can.

It can be very cathartic to talk about, but sometimes I'm like, you know what Amara, I'll take this extra little bit of suffering away from you bc girl you're already dealing with a lot (Aegon)

[wejustvibing]

Here to vent. Everything you said was perfectly said and I agree. The issue is and has always been (imo) is that no one stands up for lewis appropriately. Just a lot of empty words. And I don’t even mean just his team and teammate I mean in general. I don’t trust a single person around him in that sport. It’s tiring sad and exhausting because every week i anticipate abuse or bias against him with little to no support or backlash for certain actions against him. Even other drivers that are nice to him I don’t believe it. Maybe I’m being far too cautious but no one around him has given appropriate levels of support in all situations that require it. Irrespective of who Lewis is and how he wishes to deal with things, his team have a duty of care to support him, treat him equally and protect him and I feel like because he can articulate himself rather well most of the time, has a mindset of rising above and a good work ethic / strong will - they assume he doesn’t need the support. Everyone needs it. And the difference between how they treat George Vs him is like day and night, very different and very gross. It may be unconscious or deliberate, but regardless of which it is it’s worrying. The team in a general sense hasn’t been the same since 2021. The dynamic has shifted, the strengths that made them a force have disappeared, social media has been a mess etc i could make an entire list. What’s happening here isn’t something a fast car is going to fix. That being said i don’t think Lewis needs to leave the team per se but I do think there needs to be some changes and fast. You don’t necessarily need to quit a job straight away, sometimes what’s obvious to us isn’t obvious to everyone and can potentially be solved. He clearly gets along with many of the people there and feels comfortable there, and amongst thousands of employees there are only some that need to be better in regards to the problems I am discussing so I won’t dictate to him about whether he should go elsewhere or leave. He’s grown he can make those choices himself (not saying you are trying to talk for him btw i hope that doesn’t sound rude to you) but I do think he may need an eye opener as does the team that they are just not working well lately. For a while. Things need to change. I think these issues are fixable though with the correct support and people. Honestly as a black person myself this is tiring seeing things play out like this as all too often I have experienced these things too. Merc has some gems in their team for sure but that’s being overshadowed by a colossal pile of problems. I want Lewis to have support. It’s not about babying him. It’s about the fact that he rarely gets support sufficiently (and it’s still lacking) until he’s being called slurs. This sport is rotten and I wish I could tune it out. Every race week I’m anxious.

thank you and i agree

you're not being too cautious, i feel you there. this perfectly describes the conditioning we've had through microaggressions and racism irl. you just can't let your guard down. it's instinctive and it's stressful especially when you know there's nothing you can do about it.

the number of times this team has failed to show up for him is concerning. and really, we (i) don't expect a special treatment or babying, in fact, there's no need for a pedestal they keep putting him on when it suits the brand. just let him be a fucking human? back him up when you know everything he does invites insane levels of hatred and abuse.

and you're so right! if anything, a fast car is going to make things worse for them given the team dynamic they're cultivating, quite evidently through social media at least and often with strategy. i get that the car is shit but they can easily put effort into sorting these issues out. they're just too casual with the way they leave him to fend for himself just because he can. but are quick to exploit his success, emotions and words.

and many are failing to see why we are unhappy. george is a selfish asshole which well all the drivers are. but he is not a threat to lewis in terms of race craft or talent. it's what this team is actively trying to portray that's damaging and pissing us off. i get it, it's not a portrayal of the entire team but then they need to stop taking advantage of lewis' character and show him the support he deserves.

[imaginespazzi]

Hi bestie 🥰

Sorry it took me a lil while to check in but I wanted to make sure I formed some sensical thoughts after reading part 1! Although, this might actually all be non-sensical because I’m still reeling from it all and I’m nowhere near as articulate but anyway, here goes (side note: am I listening to if the world was ending while writing this? you bet I am):

WOW WOW WOW, the beginning? My heart broke immediately and as the biggest angst fiend, I was like oh- this- this is gonna be immaculate I already know.

And of course it was. OF COURSE IT WAS.

The photos of them on the wall?? And Paige’s realisation of how much she fucked up cos Azzi never once let go even though Paige ignored her for a WHOLE FUCKING YEAR!!!

The flashback to when Azzi broke the UCLA news to Paige; yeah you ATE that. I know you said you might take inspiration from my suggestion and that’s pretty much how it played out in my mind, only your version was a hundred thousand times better- like the talent is just unmatched.

Paige’s first reaction being “BUT YOU NAMED YOUR DOG STEWIE!!!!” Is so fucking real lmao, I laughed and cried.

Nika standing ten toes down for her twin always, I respect it.

And Jealous Paige? Yeah my favourite trope fr ✊ (also the fact that she already got jealous of carol of all ppl?? lmao, i can't even imagine how she'd react to seeing Azzi with someone that's actually into her 😭)

And then the ending?? You’re sick for that cos see now that’s all I’ll be thinking about until we get the next part (making your fics my roman empire? it’s only fair)

Thoughts on what might come next (which you should totally ignore if it's not what you have in mind bcos again, your brain >>> my pea-sized brain):

Imma need Paige to suffer a lot bit LMAO, like sorry to her but girlie deserves to pay for freezing out princess FOR A YEAR.

Like I know that’s the love of your life Azzi babygirl, but you better make blondie work. beg. grovel.

I also feel like Azzi’s teammates wouldn’t be so accepting of Paige straight away? They’d be super protective of Azzi cos like that’s pookie, who wouldn’t be?? And they were the ones who witnessed just how much she was hurting during her freshman year and how often she waited for a call that never came, so yeah Paige really gonna have to prove herself 😌

Anyhooo, to sum it up, you outdid yourself and then some bestie. Your stories genuinely give me the best escape from reality and I cannot express how thankful I am for you taking the time and effort to write masterpieces like that for us.

Oh finally, the tagline for the story being "everything changes, except the ending" - pure genius, in my humble opinion.

Until next time 💗

-🙋‍♀️ (I’ve decided to fully stick to this as my signature)

Hi bestieeee, I'm so, so, so, glad you liked it. Like I wanted everyone to like it of course, but you especially, it's very important to me that you like it.

Bestie, you helped so much with how Azzi would reveal it/Paige's reaction, like so much of that is your brain work, I just put it into words and I'm glad it turned out how you imagined it.

Lmao I wanted Paige's initial reaction to be so random and I was like WAIT, how is she going to bring a dog named Stewie to UCLA (again more proof that it was always gonna be UConn for her).

Jealous Paige is my favorite version of Paige because it's a) really fun to write and b) really hot to imagine. And it's only going to get worse for her.

Nika needs to be team Paige because I fear Azzi's teammates are about to be menaces to her and not in a good way.

I was actually gonna end it with Azzi running out and then have none of the stuff outside but I think it was important for them to have that conversation and I wanted them to kiss teehee

My current (loose) summary for the next part in terms of plot is "Azzi goes on a date and Paige goes insane" so trust bestie, blondie will in fact suffer. 😈

Always so happy to see you babe, come back with more suggestions or just to ki-ki whenever. 💗💗💗

[hikennosabo]

trimax volume 6 random thoughts

chapter 1:

oh, hey, it's the guy from the 98 anime!..... or not?!

i'm not keeping track of this TOO closely, so there may be other instances of this that i missed, but the guy from 98 episode 1 also showed up in trimax chapter 7. it makes me wonder if nightow provided character designs/ideas to the 98 team, or if it's the other way around and he decided to incorporate anime-original characters into the manga. either way: neat!

HAVE I MENTIONED I LOVE MERYL, BY THE WAY.

i love the bits of characterization we've been getting for her. she (and milly) are our tie to humanity, after all

i must say it is nice to have a goofy fight after... all that in volume 5. and before... the rest of volume 6.

chapter 2:

aaaand now we start the next chapter with wolfwood's nightmare/flashback! hurts just a little bit! (the trio IS kinda serving tho ngl... when you have a fashion show at 7 but need to terrorize the orphanage at 6)

^ completely and 100% unironically, they were in love here.

i just... ugh. this is such a vashwood chapter. the absolute trust and fighting together completely seamlessly, they are just. ugh. ughhhhh. this kind of trust just GETS to me.... sorry. i'm normal about them. i'm NORMALLLLLLaauughghghgh

ANYWAY. chekhov's table made me laugh

i am physically restraining myself from going crazy over vw again as i reread this chapter to write this post.

anyway anyway. ww calling himself "nicholas" is cute :)

just kidding one more vw comment as a treat

HE'S SO IN LOVE. FUUUUUCK.

chapter 3:

legato continues to be fascinating to me. i'm observing him like a bug in a jar. which is appropriate, considering...

WHEN I CALLED HIM A BAGWORM IN THAT ONE POST I WAS JOKINGGGGG I WAS JOKING!!! THIS MADE ME LAUGH FOR LIKE 10 MINUTES STRAIGHT WHY DID SHE HANG HIM FROM THE CEILINGGGG IT'S SO FUNNY

this is actually making me fucking cry.

...i got so distracted laughing at bagworm legato that i almost forgot to say literally anything else about the chapter, but anything else i have to say mostly boils down to "wow, legato is such a freak (affectionate)"

also, whenever something that was in tristamp is brought up i feel like the leonardo dicaprio pointing meme. like "oh hey, i know this!" going into this manga with prior knowledge from stampede is... an interesting experience. all that being said, i can't WAIT to see more of the manga version of double fang. oh nightow we're really in it now

chapter 4:

oh, finally, FINALLY!!! last volume i asked where the knives nuance was and now we're FINALLY getting some knuance, thank god. seeing knives react to just how badly humans treat plants is SO effective. and we're not even up to the juicy part yet. it makes me want to eat glass.

speaking of eating glass.

i thought something like this might've been the case, but still... this hurts to read.

i want to eat glass!!!! fuck!!! this reveal is so insane, it's like monkey's paw of "this is a way knives can be defeated, but by the same method, vash is closer to death than knives is." WE don't want vash to die, and neither does knives, and this chapter is the first (and possibly the only, idk) time the reader's feelings and knives's feelings are... well, aligned. at least in a sense.

chapter 5:

this chapter is really something, because it starts off almost seeming like another lighthearted "we're in a random town fighting a goofy enemy of the month" romp much like the early chapters were, heck like chapter 1 of this very volume. but it's just wearing the skin of that. which is, y'know. the thesis of this entire chapter. smiling to hide the pain and all that.

i don't think i can really... articulate anything of substance. the chapter just kind of... speaks for itself, i think.

although i DID laugh at ww trying to enjoy his noodles and failing, and also the phrase "needle-noggin-isms." thanks for providing some levity, we actually really do need it.

chapter 6:

ohhh boy we are REALLY in it now!!

i enjoy seeing knives ponder like this. legs crossed, arm slung over his face... i don't know. maybe it's because i myself sometimes lounge in this pose.

what exactly is he thinking about, i wonder. that in awakening/forcing vash to use his powers, he unintentionally pushed him closer to death? maybe? i don't know. either way it's very on-the-nose for what their relationship has been like.

and then of course we cut to this shot of vash, looking in a mirror created by knives's slice

this shot is making me think a lot and i'm reading too much into it, but- obviously the reflection puts vash's beauty mark on the opposite side, so there's the knives resemblance, so also, i suppose vash must see knives every time he looks in the mirror, right? also vash looking at his reflection featuring his own black hair- which we're all still thinking about... i dont know. i dont even know if this is anything LOL. i feel like i have the dots but i'm failing to articulate the connection. anyway

this made me laugh. thanks for the levity again, wolfwood :)

BECAUSE WE'RE GONNA NEED ALL THE COMIC RELIEF WE CAN GET, BABY!!!

maybe i'm just insane for this because it's Generic Party Imagery but the specific combination of rem flashback + party popper + funny glasses makes me think of the similar scene in 98 when the seeds crew celebrates finding planet gunsmoke. like is this another instance of nightow nabbing stuff from 98 or am i just making things up.

the twins are so cute and baby knives smiles so much, i want to microwave myself.

knives wants to believe in humanity. man. MAN!!!!!

what comes next... i'm absolutely carrying my prior stampede knowledge into this, but fuck, man. fuck. even then, i know that stampede didn't show everything, so i don't even fully know what to expect. which is fun! but i can't believe the volume ends right in the middle of the flashback, MAN!!!

[yumester]

sending this back to sender. i need a full dissertation on pAInter STAT

Oh, look it's the silly mutual once again in my ask box, wailing and screaming like a drenched kitten or that one generic male character from the hit game going through the worst experience ever— (gets shot)

Anyway, here's my opinions on The p.AI.nter from the hit Roblox game.

You know the drill, putting a read more for my and everyone's safety.

Fucking character of all time, man. Not including Sebastian! We hate Sebastian in this house! 🗣

They made this shit in the lab and called it straight up cocaine for lore heads. And by lore heads I mean me homie!! /j

Gonna mainly go over each label but might go into detail later on so watch out.

Everyone but me is wrong about them <3: I mean this in the nicest way possible. Pressure fandom has already failed miserably at the characterization of Sebastian. We've seen it all, to people anime boyifing the hell out of his visage, to the literal creators having to ward people off by adding changes to the game's data by removing voice lines. Man is not your big monster hubby with a tortured soul. Okay, maybe he is a tortured soul, but more literal than that and less likely to cry on your shoulder or even give you the benefit of the doubt to hold you at arm's length. Anyway, I've seen some people babify the hell out of p.AI.nter as well, and it sucks. I'm sorry, but it's true. It is not your friend, guys. It just wants to paint.

they got done dirty but the creator/s: Okay IDK if you've even peered at the recent updates or uploads from the main creator, but it was shown that p.AI.nter will be updated to be killed at some point. I don't know if they already patched that through the other day because, for one, I haven't played the new update. And, two, I think anyone who tries to do so is a dumb bitch because all p.AI.nter does is trick the player with fake doors and has turrets in occasional rooms (yes, the turrets can be annoying at times but who cares). In my head, I feel like the entity adds some charm to the existing enemies you face during a play through. And removing those elements just feels like a waste. Technically speaking, you only get to The p.AI.nter's room in a certain percentage. Though I will say it makes sense in canon why you would be able to destroy it as Urbanshade as talked nonstop about removing any and all adversaries that get in its way, mainly Sebastian (Unfortunately and thankfully, in Sebastian's case, Sebastian can't be killed). But, I will also say, The p.AI.nter's document, however tragic that it is, kills me at the fact how they handled its owner's death. Like really? Accidentally killed with a rifle to the head because of some dumb guard, no less. If I was that sentient AI, I would no doubt feel endless dread and sorrow. Though, then again, The p.AI.nter is already had several moments of killing itself and been depressed while under Urbanshade's care.

ADOPTION PAPERS ADOPTION PAPERS FILING THE ADOPTION PAPERS: I won't bother writing a whole paragraph, so take this GIF of p.AI.nter as Edgar instead. <3

i am constantly going insane rotating them in my brain like a fork in a microwave: I can not overstate how much I love this little guy. I don't talk about it much nor articulate the words in discussing this freak like I wish I could. But The p.AI.nter is a character that resides in my head twenty-four, seven. Like I'm writing a fanfic about Sebastian right now—well before you sent this, but all I've been thinking about is this dumb AI. Its relationship with Sebastian. Its overall role in the story of the game and so forth.

the popular ships for this character suck: OKAY, OKAY! I know I reblog and sometimes like content of The p.AI.nter with Sebastian together, but that's mostly because I find ship art in general to be an endearing thing to look at from the views of a consumer. However, canon wise it just doesn't… click is all I'm going to say. I DO LOVE THEIR DYNAMIC, HOWEVER!

constantly listening to songs and mentally holding them up like a paint swatch: To be fair, I'm always listening to music, I'm a music junkie at heart and, brother, this shit is breakcore!

I WANT TO STUDY THEM LIKE A COCKROACH: All I'm saying is robotic characters growing sentience is a form of love in video game writing, baby. Also, like I loved The p.AI.nter even before friendly fire update. But y'know me, when it hit beta with its new voice and new face with the MS Paint program that has scratchy line art, circles for eyes and wobbly smile—I was ecstatic! I'm not an engineer or a computer nerd by any meanings, but I wouldn't give to be in Pressure for a spell to like look at inside and out in a non-sexual way of course LMAO.

whats wrong with them (affectionate): SO, SO MANY THINGS! MAINLY URBANSHADE </3

#LETTHEPAINTERPAINTFREELYCHALLENGE

not enough screen time: Maybe this is the me that “likes this character a normal amount” talking, but it makes me sad that The p.AI.nter doesn't say much when you visit its enclosure in heavy containment. Like, you visit Sebastian's shop, and he has like hundreds of dialogue, all of which include snide remarks and shouting at you. It's freaking Gianni I get people! But anyway, my man deserves a little more, thank you. <3

they've never done anything wrong in their life <3: Watch this video from 1:25 and 2:23 and tell me I'm wrong.

my opinions would be received by most fans as akin to hitting a wasps nest with a baseball bat: i shan't say...

This is the best character in the work: Discounting the most integral character, Sebastian fucking Shoelace, we have The p.AI.nter! Yippie!!! My blorbo, my absolute bestie, my man who hits me in the ass with high grade turret bullets to only die to the next room, my “locks me in a room with my wife as we discuss divorce papers and play 7 minutes in heaven” wingman. <3

Anyway, thanks for coming to my TedTalk!

[donnerpartyofone]

i find you unimaginably cool and ive expressed to you before on anon the sentiment that i feel a deep kinship towards you for how you speak so candidly abt your own stupidity (pls dont take that as me calling you stupid) bcuz i feel exactly the same way abt my own stupidity and hate when ppl try to talk me out of it but ANYways i just saw your post abt writing a novelization of splice and i am literally reeling. i love that weird ass movie so much and i think writing a novelization of it is one of the most off the wall and amazing things ive ever heard of. i hope that you will share when it is published bcuz i cannot wait to read it. pls know that someone out there understands you (or at least understands you as best as someone can thru this parasocial lens of tumblr and how you choose to share yourself there) and that someone out there thinks you are basically what i hope i can be when i grow up. thank you for sharing. thank you for articulating yourself as well as you do (i too have the itch to tell you you are not stupid but bcuz i know how it is i wont do it but besides that, i think you are one of the clearest and most well articulated writers ive ever encountered online or elsewhere). sorry, this all feels insane to type. im off two tallboy ipas and i just think youre great.

Dearest Correspondent,

Oddly enough, just the other day somebody liked an older post of mine, and when I clicked on it to remind myself of what it was, the next post down was your last message. Anyway, thanks! The whole novelization business is really funny. Do people even know what they are anymore? I didn't know anybody still made them until I was hired to do SPLICE. I used to get them from the drugstore sometimes when I was a kid because my parents were very uptight about what I watched, but they wouldn't be caught dead restricting anyone's reading habits. During my initial conversation with the SPLICE publisher, we kind of bonded over our memories of the CHILD'S PLAY 2 novelization, of all things, that seemed to help me a lot in addition to my ideas about what SPLICE should be like on paper. I tend to think of novelizations as just another piece of merch, but when you write them, I don't know, like you really have to live out the movie in your mind over and over again to figure out what the characters are experiencing physically, environmentally, how their emotional experiences affect their bodies, etc. You have to fill in the blanks of what they think and sense just enough to make your transcription convincing, while staying within certain bounds to honor what the filmmaker meant to say. SPLICE started as kind of a lark for me, and then almost immediately it became extremely personal; when I was nearing the end of my first draft I thought, "OK, well, I guess everyone is about to find out how insane I am." I was afraid it just sounded "crazy" and wouldn't be what the publisher was expecting. But after I turned it in, the surprise encouragement I got from actual-Vincenzo Natali was pretty amazing, so maybe it's good! Maybe you really CAN'T tell how crazy I am, and it's just very entertaining. You'll have to wait and see.

Parasocial relationships are tricky, huh, especially here on tumblr dot com. The best thing you can do for yourself is just be very aware that they are happening within you, a test you seem to have passed. I think a lot of us come here seeking understanding of our weirdest parts, but the more you put out there to find the people who get what you're saying, you simultaneously get a lot of reminders that most people have no idea what you're talking about. There will be people who seem to hate you because they've misunderstood you, and there will also be people who love you but whose interactions prove that they have absolutely no idea what you're communicating. I recently culled a bunch of followers because they were just creating a lot of noise, even though they may have meant well, and I was losing the clarity I needed to keep doing this. I started to see every post as a worrisome opportunity to find out how poorly people can possibly read me, and suppressing the urge to re-explain myself every day was becoming exhausting. And ironically, around the same time, I was briefly mutuals with one of my favorite bloggers ever, and just as I thought we were becoming chummy, they unfollowed me. I didn't freak out, actually I just unfollowed them back because I was concerned about being annoying, but I did have all kinds of Thoughts about this event. I have spent a lot of time reviewing what my projections were about that person, and what my personal investment in their narrative says about me. I think there could be something good to get out of this audit, even though the whole episode is sort of embarrassing. But Tumblr definitely gives you a lot of opportunities to examine your own filters, clean them out once in a while, and get to know yourself a little better--even if other people seem to be getting to know you a little worse! You just have to stick to your own course and see what comes of it.

Uh. What the hell was I saying. I don't know! But I appreciate your messages, I feel "gotten" by them. Some of the follower upheaval recently did involve the way that I process my experience of my own stupidity out loud on here--like I know that sometimes folks are trying to be helpful by contradicting me whenever I sound "negative" (read: realistic), but being told (by strangers) how to feel about yourself and that you're wrong about your own experiences is actually really awful, confusing, frustrating, and undermining. So I don't mind being reminded that my signal is coming through for at least some people. I hope you're doing good this holiday season. I wonder what beers you had, they sound fun!

Good tidings to you,

C

PS Isn't "on here" a weird phrase? I always feel like a primate when I say it, but I have yet to find a different phrase that conveys the same thing as accurately.

[thekimspoblog]

It would take hours to actually articulate what happens in the penultimate chapter of my "Sheepdog" fanfic, but let me see if I can try.

A major thing Jimmy and Kim bond over is their shared interest as cinephiles. And I haven't seen many fans discuss this, but to me this suggests that both of them actually have a pretty terminal case of "main character" syndrome. They've both watched so many movies, that this is the only frame of reference for interpreting their reality, and this is the driving force behind why these two act like assholes. Jimmy is the more obvious example, given that so much of what he does during the various montages is needlessly convoluted in a way that only makes sense if you assume that amusing himself is his top priority. But I'd argue Kim does this too, just not with as much self-awareness.

Everyone within the narrative rightfully thinks this pair is unstable. But the delicious irony is that this insane view of the world is correct. And we know it's correct because we're watching these events unfold after all. And I just love the level of cosmic horror that this brings to the metanarrative: Wouldn't it be terrible if a narcissist's attitude that you were just a bit player in their story was justified? Wouldn't it be terrible if your free will was an illusion, because you were always created as a scapegoat to be sacrificed? Wouldn't it be horrifying if there was a God, but this god would be happy to reward terrible behavior as long as the violence was entertaining?

Now here's where this goes from regular headcanon to completely cracked:

In the final chapter of "Sheepdog", the fanbase of Breaking Bad is confirmed to be a malevolent supernatural force inflicting its collective will on the narrative. And specifically, Kim is confronted with the fact that she made a covenant with this entity at the end of Season 5 (securing her own longevity in the story by promising to harm others) and in Season 6 she tried to break this contract with the Devil. But it's too late to back out: Her destiny was to use the money she got from killing Howard to join the upper class, and hunt bigger, more dangerous game from there. We were promised a story of oligarchs meeting their demise. We were promised a story of a vengeful woman remaking the world in her own vision of perfect justice, and after having already taken two lives, she has no choice but complete the ritual by taking five more.

After mulling over her options, she accepts that the world as she knew it will come to an end unless she shoulders this burden of playing the villain. There are thousands of good, normal, people in the universe of Breaking Bad, people that she can't help but see as valuable human lives even after being told point-blank that these are just tertiary characters, but all those characters can only continue to exist so long as one person is fulfilling the titular goal of this franchise.

So when this character returns in "Slippin Kimmy" there is something decidedly OFF about her, even more than before, and the above is why. She doesn't remember the specifics of the lucid dream, but the intuition that she is a doll on a stage never leaves her. And even if Jimmy claims to understand, she knows he can't, not fully anyway. I remember once reading a think piece which described Anton Chigurh as "someone who doesn't even enjoy doing evil, but simply feels a grim obligation to serve as the hand of fate (. . .) the product of staring too long into the abyss of the modern age", and on some level I am going for a more toned-down version of that. Having seen the rest of her life laid out for her, Kim knows she has a lot left to look forward to which will make enduring all the horror worthwhile, but even if she's not happy in this role, it doesn't really matter. A humble existence just isn't in the cards for her.

This also would suggest that Iris is some sort of antichrist figure, but eh... it's even more complicated than that.

Also why yes, I am ripping off whole aspects of Dolores Abernathy's character arc! Thank you for noticing!

[carmenized-onions]

First of all, I am so obsessed with this story if you can't already tell, I'm deeply in love with all of it. BUT LIKE???

Carmy KISSING TONY??

I literally gasped and kicked my feetsies in the car on the way home

It was despicable.

Also like the way their thoughts like

Im not sure how to properly articulate this but like Tony being like !! He can't think im incompetent !! And carmy like going on a whole spiral about how he's convinced tony doesn't think he's shit when tony absolutely is obsessed with him (me)

URGGHHHHH im in love. With you. With ur writing. With these stupid fucking characters.

I need to be put down.

It's really such an insane feeling to think that people THINK about chicago's kindest even when they aren't actively reading chicago's kindest. Like that's crazy to me. Anyways--

She opened the gate!! Lil cheek kiss!! He HAD to squeeze one in fr. UNLESS OF COURSE YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT CHAPTER 5 IN WHICH CASE YEAH THAT WAS FUCKIN NUTS. It's again, what the coin flip was for. I could see that boy circling the drain for much longer after asking her out (basically) but she also said the words Fuck Me and that kind of blacks out kind of Any Other Thought even if it's an entirely opposing sentence.

And YEAGH!!! Big fucking performance anxiety from BOTH of them. Simultaneously thinking the other is stunning and brilliant in their craft, and thinking they themselves suck shit. Ah,,,,, romance,,,,,

Honestly, I didn't notice how heavily Tony was mirroring Carm until you pointed it out and then i was like ohhhhh yeahh!!! Instinctual writing after so long is a real son of a bitch, anywaays

THANK YOU!!!

Please don't be put down, i need you to continue reading!! and telling me thoughts!!

[jupiter-quinn]

Lane's experience with the devil

To die is a strange and tragic thing: when most people think of death, they define it in all sorts of ways. They say that it is the moment when your soul leaves your body, when the electricity circuit that spins around your bodies axis- the spinal cord, the brain, the heart, the nervous system, every part of you that made who you were- happy, curious, excited, humble, greedy, selfish, destructive- becomes extinct, is swallowed into un-existence, is gone.

Death is a strange and hollow thing, when you think about it. It is inevitable. Everything dies. Every emperor who claimed he was chosen by God himself, every prophet, every prostitute, every slave, even the smallest unicellular organisms on Earth carries an inherent flaw in its biological design- they all one day cease to function, lose their souls. One could not live life without the promise of it one day coming to an end.

People have all sorts of beliefs about the world that exists beyond the one they know. How could we not? How could beings that were designed to survive at all costs not think about it, when we have that power? That inherent understanding that when we go, our soul, the fragment of energy that runs through our bodies and is made of every memory and choice we have made... it is one of the measuring factors of the intelligence of any species on Earth, it is one of the many contributing factors that lead to our rapid evolution, our massive breakthrough to the top of the food chain. And yet, the price at which it carries is the price of insanity. The need to evolve that makes up most of our DNA begs us to ponder, what happens afterwards? How could I possibly cease to exist? How could everything I've ever fought for not matter when my time here ends? How could everything that drove me forward die with me?

Some say that death is beautiful. The souls of our dead wait for us there, they call us to come back home to them, that the feeling of heaven is so exquisite that a mere human could simply not fathom something of that magnitude. They say that divine judgement awaits us, that Satan and God will judge your soul, cast you down to the rotting hell that looms ominously below our very feet, deep in the core of the planet- waiting patiently to devour the souls of sinners.

On the day that I die, I can feel the world stretching out from under me, I can feel my soul transcending from a mere circuit of electricity to the entirety of my being. It is a marvelous feeling, but it is the most excruciating experience I have ever had. I can feel the electricity turning into something... else. The emotions that follow in suit are all laid bare in front of me, there is no hiding from them in the way that most people do. There is no body for them to lurk behind anymore. And in that moment, I am a child being born, naked and vulnerable. Fear, exhilaration, curiosity, love, anger, sorrow, despair- these are the ones that I can tell for certainty are there. The rest merge together in confusing patterns that move too sporadically to correctly articulate into words.

This energy is hurtling me forward, twisting and pulling into thousands of configurations, merging with something of higher power but I cannot tell what it is. It occurs to me that my form is producing a bright white light and creating a sound that might be some new way of screaming, but I can't be entirely sure.

What I know is that I am overwhelmed, that I want it to stop, I want the journey to be over and to have lungs to breathe through again, arms that might catch me- for perhaps in a human body I might be provided the mercy of knowing that stopping is even an option.

And then, by some miracle, it does.

It is a slow decent, the burning quiets and hushes, some parts hissing in some vigil of stubbornness, before they start to fade away, too as if the electricity has worn itself ragged.

I am unaware of where I am going, but it seems less important than finding someplace quiet, someplace that I might be able to allow myself to rest.

The world-or what I know of it- turns grey. I can sense noises coming from somewhere but they are very far away and so it does not seem to be any of my business. I find myself curling inwards, and the energy around me takes the form of the body in which I was used to. The greyness around me encases my body, holding me as if it was made to surround my body in this very moment. It is humid, warm and it feels as if it is breathing softly- relief floods my being, and I make another strangled cry in the comfort of it.

I do not know how I got here. The environment has changed but I am too weary to puzzle out why.

And it is here that consumes me, swallows my being. I'm not sure where I am, where it is I am to be going, all I know is that I feel as though I have been running so hard that I have turned my entire being inside out, as if I was chasing something I could never quite grasp- and I know that this place isn't it, but I also understand that I don't want to leave.

Time passes, the measure of which escapes me. It doesn't seem to matter; I am too frayed to continue going anywhere in particular.

"Lane?" A deep but quiet voice asks, it sounds as if it is existing through the walls around me.

It will be okay. Right here I feel safe. I don't want to come out if it means experiencing that burning sensation again.

"Lane? I know you're there." It says again, this time I can feel it's frequency vibrating around me more clearly.

Safe. that's all that matters. Safe.

"Lane, it's time to come home, dear girl. You can't stay up there forever."

Up where? I think to myself, blinking my eyes awake as they beg for me to keep them shut.

"Come home to me."

I manage to open my eyes all the way, although it is not through vision that I comprehend the world, but rather through wavelengths of energy. I can feel them unfurling around me in threads, wound and wound around me, around everything else that I might possibly be able to conceive.

I do the best that I can to sit up, but the greyness around me is sluggish and it's difficult to maneuver. After the realization that I might be stuck hits me, I begin to panic. Where am I? What am I doing here? How could I even exist after dying?

What am I supposed to do?

I start to struggle, kicking and flailing in a furious attempt to free myself. I think about calling out to the voice below me, but I do not know who it belongs to. I do not know what they might want from me.

Eventually, the form around me starts to move along with my flailing, pulling me downwards, great waves of energy curling with mine to bring me to some other unknown location.

Finally, the energy seems to give way to something else... someplace large and empty and cold.

I drop to the floor with a grunt.

I blink and take a look around, I can sense the energy at such a blinding rate that my surroundings look like puzzle pieces, and I am too disoriented to bother putting them together. I am in too much shock for that.

I let out a groan, leaning over and brushing what feels like my hands against what feels like my face, reaching to where my ears may have been and shutting my eyes hard against how overwhelming this new world is.

"It gets easier, I promise." That voice says, louder now, but not overwhelming in the same way the rest of the world seems to be. I recognize that the low, pulsing waves are pulling my energy forward, steadying how quickly my senses seem to be pulsating.

"Oh... ack. That's... much better, thank you." I find myself slurring out. I am not a nice person, I don't oftentimes find myself thanking people and for this reason, I am surprised at my reaction, surprised by how familiar this all seems to feel. Like I am catching up with an old friend rather than facing death itself.

I finally allow myself to look up and find myself face to face with a large grey man. There are no undertones of honey or amber or beige to his skin tone- he is humanoid in appearance, but he is completely grey. Neutral grey skin, a slightly paler shade of hair, darker grey freckles that spread like ashes all throughout his form- his most distinctive feature being the deep black eyes that stare back at me abysmally with some emotion I can't quite place.

He is the most strangely beautiful being I have ever seen before- ageless somehow, as if he could be as old as time or simply a young man slightly older than myself. His features are round but sharp simultaneously, and although I presume that he is male in origin he holds himself with a slight feminine touch that I'm sure most people miss.

I then realize that I am still hunched over myself on the grey, marble floor of a rather cavernous room. If it weren't for the man blinking down at me, I would assume he was simply a very strangely placed statue in a place like this.

I take a moment to look around... the room appears to be some sort of banquet hall or ball room, with large, black marble pillars which seem to be engraved with images I can't quite make out, reaching to the ceiling that looms high above me. The ceiling itself appears to be some sort of ocean- an ocean that I realize as I squint upwards is moving in the way that an ocean does. I look closer at it and see that although it seems to behave like it's made of water, there are slight undertones of heaviness to make me doubt that it's water at all. As if it could be water as much as it could be mud or stone, in a place as stoic and strange as this.

"Where am I?" I finally manage to squeak out.

The man comes to a sitting position across from me and smiles so softly I wonder if his face has even moved at all, his upper face seems to be stoic, locked in place with the same curiosity he held before.

"Hell." He responds softly, but deeply, his energy still curled around me in a protective shield of sorts.

I blink back in confusion, wondering at the prospect. I had never been particularly religious- spiritual, sure- but far from the traditional Christianity I had grown up with.

"Hell?" I barely whisper back. "You're telling me I'm in hell right now?"

"Yes, Lane. You have been here before, but I hardly assumed you would remember. I admit that it does look a bit different than the last time you visited."

"How did you know my name? Who... what are you, anyway?"

"My name is Lucifer Morningstar, Satan, the Devil, Lord of the Underworld. I have many names, refer to me as whatever you like. They're all the same to me."

I blink back again, confused as to how my form of energy somehow feels like a mortal human one once more.

"Why... did my form change again?"

"Ah... you see, I am merging my energy with yours to help you better adjust to the shift between planes. It should look a bit more familiar to you in this guided way."

I chuckle darkly to myself, adjusting my position from a scared child to something more respectable. I realize after a moment that if wouldn't matter how I chose to appear, that he can still sense my fear. I decide not to let that realization keep me from the facade I have chosen.

"And you're really Satan? I've heard stories about your little friend upstairs all throughout my childhood and you are certainly not him."

His face shifts -once again- in such a minor way that I wonder if I even noticed it in the first place.

I realize that although he may not be who he says he is, I cannot deny that he is some sort of ancient being, someone powerful, and that I should choose my words a bit more carefully.

"Apologies if I'm a bit rough around the edges" I say, trying again to adjust my vision so that I might be able to comprehend my surroundings in a way that might make sense, that might feel familiar.

"It's not every day that one finds themself... experiencing whatever it is that is happening to me right now."

This time, the change in his facial features is more distinct. He tightens his eyebrows slightly, his smile widening before his head tilts and he looks... almost sympathetic, as if he has something important to say but isn't quite sure how to say it.

"Tsk tsk... hmm. I have a few questions for you, but I understand that you likely have more for me. I'll allow you to go first. Consider it a welcoming gift on my part."

"A welcoming gift to hell?"

"Yes." He smiles softly again in a way that might come off as alarming but is darkly tranquil.

I sit and run questions through my mind, there are so many that I couldn't possibly keep track of them. How long does he have? Isn't a being such as this busy with more important things? Not to mention if he really is telling the truth about being Lucifer himself.

An alarm pulsates through me, as I begin to unravel the gravity at which my reality has changed. What is time here? Does it really even matter?

I stare at my hands, the familiar feeling of the hands I never expected to doubt takes hold of my mind. I pool over the features- soft, delicate female hands which I had always secretly wished were larger to help me appear more masculine and intimidating- that I now cherish the sight of. My black nail polish is still slightly chipped in some places, and my cuticles are still torn to shreds from years of finger biting and tugging to soothe the nerves that always seemed to be on fire.

Finally, after a thorough examination of the hands in front of me, I manage to ask in barely a whisper: "why are you grey?"

I look back up at the man squatting in front of me, a look of masked surprise echoing from my face to his. He laughs and covers a hand to his mouth in a way that seems almost childlike, as if he hasn't laughed in a very long time and has somehow forgotten how.

"Oh, dear Lane. You are still so full of surprises, aren't you?"

He adjusts to an upright fetal position, and I realize that he is mirroring my own posture, which I hadn't even noticed had changed.

"Well, Lane. I have to admit that I am not the hugest fan of colors. They overstimulate me, you see, much too bright for eyes such as mine, eyes that have bared witness to every sin of the world. I chose my form when I was cast down from heaven because it felt the most suited for me... the color grey is the combination of both white and black. White, which is traditionally the color of purity, of innocence, goodness, life. And black, which resembles sin, darkness, fear, anger, quiet, stillness, decay, famine, death.

You see, when taken away from all the fancy metaphors mortals and conscious beings alike have assigned to them, they are simply light, and they are darkness. A being cannot comprehend one without also understanding the meaning of the other. If only day existed, the sun would grow too hot, it would starve this planet of water, of nutrients, of life itself. If only night were to exist, the planet would have no sun, no gravity, it would be cast into darkness where the cold vacuum of space itself would devour it all. Life could not exist without either, not one is inherently good, or evil. They simply are. As am I: I am not what humans presume me to be, I am not good, I am not evil, I just am. Do you understand, Lane?"

I stare back at him in response, kneading my brow and fully taking the sight of him in, doing the best that I could to understand the answer that he has provided. I notice that his clothes aren't quite what I expected, they are not extravagant and glorious dark robes but rather simple grey jeans, a darker grey shirt, black boots that seem dirty -and most notably- a large jean jacket that looks as if it is covered in soot. Strangely modern, the clothes of a working man.

"Why do the stories say that you're so cruel? Why do you preach about light and darkness as being just what they are when you are the ruler of the underworld, hell itself, where sinners are tortured for their crimes?"

"Ah..." He replies. "Well, you know how humans are. It's been so long since God and I were young, since we established our existence boldly to our world. As time passes, the ideas become more and more warped- you see, religion is meant to be a guide to living a peaceful mortal life- but as a consequence, meaning is fractured into millions of ways, as numerous as the stars themselves. But... I suppose all in all the idea is to guide people against sin, towards a truth which they can comprehend with their mortal minds. If they fear a grueling afterlife, then they are more likely to take on a more righteous path."

The grey man looks down and smiles at the floor with that uncharacteristic softness, and I realize that I am brushing my hand up and down the cold grey marble in an attempt to soothe myself, which he once again decides to mimic.

"It's funny, you know. The idea that the Lord of the underworld does not wish for humans to detect his existence -that he might personally hunt people down himself- temptations filling their heads discreetly, luring them down to the darkness of sin. If I truly desired for this world to suffer, I wouldn't have warned humans of my presence. Chaos would spread much faster amongst mortals that way. Humans have souls made of energy- energy that makes up the entirety of beings like me, and like you are now. But their biological bodies are primal, and in that mortal plane it lures them back into the beast that is the laws of Earth and planets like it. Lust, wrath, greed, pride, envy, gluttony, sloth- these things cannot haunt a being that is no longer capable of death. A being that was not truly capable of life. These sins would have their way with them if they had no reason to fear punishment, and so God and myself warned them of the hell that I created in an attempt to establish a middle ground, a steady list of rules to goals to keep them afloat in the tragedy of a mortal life.

But of course, the mortal mind will warp this guide itself to suit their needs. They murder for God, the ultimate and supreme being, a beacon of power. And they do not defend themselves against evil out of fear for me, for the judgement that I might bestow upon them when they take their eternal rest. It's all... very tragic. Very human. There is no escape from the biology that exists in their blood, there is no one true guide that will aid them in life. We made more than one sacred text, and then more came after that, too, but still. Humanity always wins. The Earth will always let itself decay to make room for its many children. What can you do."

I find that I am leaning towards him, towards his energy, towards his voice. I am somewhat hypnotized by his words, by the sensations of mourning and loss attached to them, and with his energy pulsating towards me I can feel the way that he speaks, and I understand that what he says is the truth.

"Do you have any more questions for me, Lane?"

I sit and think about it for a moment, the more he speaks the more at peace I am with the situation, the more assured I am that I will be okay and that although I am afraid, I will discover how to maneuver death with grace. I will figure it all out in time.

"How do you know my name? I mean... I guess as the lord of the underworld you know a lot of people's names. But why do you say it like that? Like it's familiar to you?"

He responds by looking up at me once more, pausing his hand from sweeping across the floor. He gives me one of those short smiles, as if to say that the answer to that question will come with time.

"I see. Okay, I think I'm ready for your questions now." I think to why he would even want to ask me anything at all, I presumed that Lucifer already knew everyone's secrets. But he isn't in any way similar to the way that he is scripted in the stories, so I suppose it doesn't matter.

Another soft smile, and once again I am appalled by how large and dark his eyes are. They remind me of a child's eyes, but they carry a weight that would be otherwise unfathomable to anyone else.

"You seemed rather haunted throughout your life, you were always plagued by something no one else could seem to understand. They oftentimes cast you aside and left you alone to deal with whatever darkness it was that followed you. And yet, you were good to them anyway, you always took great care in making sure that those who were close to you never felt what you felt, even when they couldn't understand you enough to treat you the same way. Why is that? Why were you so relentless about making sure no one else felt the way you felt even when you knew that they would never do the same for you?"

Oh. I hadn't expected a question like this... I had expected the man to ask me what my darkest sin was, what my greatest fear was, what deadly sin drove my mortal mind forward. Not a question like this.

"Oh... umm... well, I guess that I also think about that all the time. It drives me crazy to think about, why I always treat other people like that when they wouldn't life a finger to do the same for me. Sometimes I hate myself for it, sometimes I wish I wasn't like that. It's brought me a lot of pain to be more aware of others than they will ever be of me."

I take a moment to think about my life. About how hard it was to survive. About the abuse I always endured from my classmates, from the neglect I faced when teachers would turn the other cheek. About the parents who were more like ghosts than human beings, always too faded and dissociated from the world to deal with their daughter. About the poverty, the brief time I spent on the streets and how afraid I was, how I became numb to violence, about once I finally got out- living paycheck to paycheck with no foreseeable escape.

"I suppose I didn't want to be like them... I didn't want to be like the people who hurt me, I had to be better than they were to prove to myself that I was enough, that I didn't deserve the abuse I endured. And after a while I noticed..." I take some time to worry at the laces on my right boot, twirling them in my fingers over and over again until a familiar pattern starts to form- "I noticed that I wasn't like any of them. Everyone else seemed to be stuck on who they felt they inherently were, they built up these patterns of identity in their heads that they couldn't quite get out of. They would have walked the same path until their feet bled because they couldn't see that any other pattern might exist. They couldn't see outside their own perspective, they couldn't truly understand that other people were there, too. But I wasn't like that."

I take a deep breath, emotions surging forward, and I pull at them, manipulating the threads to weave tightly around me so that I might keep my composure a little longer.

"I was never entirely sure that I even existed. There were days that I wondered if I was dead but simply didn't notice yet, that I was an invisible ghost, wandering amongst the living. It was hard, I never really grew out of it, but it gave me time to watch. To observe. I could comprehend the lives of the people around me very deeply in the absence of myself. I analyzed them, picked them apart in my head, devoured what their minds might be like. I wasn't trapped in who I was, like they were, but rather, who I wasn't. So, I selected traits that I admired in them for myself, traits that seemed to be useful or necessary, traits that would make me stand out. Traits that would make me different from them. Better than them, maybe. I was never trapped in the pattern of who I was, I chose who I became.

"Of course, it wasn't as easy as that." I add. "Of course, there were traits that I couldn't get rid of, but I analyzed those, too, and understood their positive and negative energies. What use I could make of them, and how they would hold me back. I always had a deep understanding of my strengths as well as my weaknesses, how to understand and utilize them in my life."

I pause, pondering his question once again, weaving it through my head and gathering what it really means.

"I guess... I guess that I just never stopped analyzing them. I never stopped seeing those patterns. Once I felt more complete, once I was satisfied with what I had, I couldn't turn that part of my brain off. I had transcended- once, I was a ghost, empty and incomplete. And then, I became a sort of... well, I don't know how to put it. An emotional shapeshifter, I suppose. I could see who they were, maybe not all the way, but I learned how to read the subconscious mind. I could deduct their main sources of drive, I could see their aspirations, their fears, their insecurities. It would unsettle people, when I made light of my knowledge, when I could easily see the parts of them that they were desperate to hide from the world. It always struck me as sort of strange... lots of people were like that, most people share the same roots, they just branch out in different directions. In that way, there was nothing that was truly unique- rare, yes. But unique? Not entirely. I didn't understand why they became so distraught when I showed them that part of my own core- the need to understand."

"In that way, I guess it was lonely. It's pretty rare to find someone else like me, someone who could see the world and understand it the way that I did. It always felt like my head was above theirs, they were swimming like schools of fish, without a need to look back, to see where they were and who everyone else was. I saw them from an ariel perspective, but they never looked up at me. I decided that if I was stuck riding that wave, that I would do what I had always done. I would watch, I would observe, I would choose to become the kind of person that I needed the most throughout my life. The kind of person I would have admired when I was fourteen years old and afraid. I had expected to meet others that were like me, and a few times I did. But... our paths never seemed to quite co-align in the way that I would have hoped for. And so, I became the person who I would have admired most in some strange desperation to fill that void that existed in me. It was never enough. No one ever knew. No one could understand me or dote on how strong I had been. How strong I shouldn't have had to be at such a young age. No one could witness it, witness all I had endured and all that I would continue to endure. But it was the best that I could do."

I look back up at the man, who had given up mirroring my fidgeting and instead looked at me with a sort of somber expression.

In that moment, I felt so afraid of his awareness of my existence- his true awareness- that I look down and fight the urge to cover my face with my hands and beg for him to not look at me anymore.

"Sorry. I'm sure that my answer isn't as noble as you probably wanted. But it's the truth. I was selfless for selfish reasons."

He shakes his head slowly and gives me a sad sort of smile.

"No, dear Lane. Most people are afraid of giving an answer like yours, even to themselves. For that, you have my admiration."

I stare at him expectantly, waiting for his next question.

"Do you remember how you died?"

The memory of my death seems far behind me, perhaps it is hiding in fear of how I might respond at such knowledge. When I knock at its door, I remember the impact of my soul leaving my body, reaching for something else. I remember how deeply it burned, how it was so painful that I couldn't see in front of me, I couldn't even comprehend that I was screaming. Shuttering a bit, I relent from the memory, knowing that what I may find there will not bring me any peace in this moment.

I have all of eternity, I realize. Time is not as important as when it was when the biological clock was ticking down. It will be important to understand sometime else, but for now I choose to rest.

Staring back at the man, an ardent expression takes over my face. "It's not important to know right now, I think. I would rather move onto something else."

"Hmm... interesting response, my girl. Alright. Do you know why you're here? Why you would be in a place that has been introduced to you as hell?"

I look back down and start picking at my nail beds again. I can feel some sort of emotion taking its rise, begging at me to claw its way out of me. And still, I keep it wound.

"I think so." I reply, my voice sounding more broken than I had aimed for.

"Do you wish to explain yourself?"

I blink back tears, if I responded now, I wouldn't be able to stop myself from crying- so I let the aching silence between us carry the conversation forward.

"I see... well I'm sure that the answer isn't quite what you expected. If I am to explain it to you, I am going to have to show you some memories that won't be pleasant. Are you okay with that?"

I blink back up at him- I am surprised at the new information, but somehow more so by the tone of his voice, of his asking of my permission. I'm not sure why I am still weary of his kindness. He isn't human, he isn't trapped in the biological web of Earth, as he might say. But still, I suppose mistrust is a difficult habit to break.

I nod in agreement.

"You see, when you were young, barely more than a babe, you made a deal with me."

My vision escapes me, and the room around us shifts until we are sitting on the floor of an apartment, one that I was told I lived in around that time of my life by my parents.

The grand room itself seems to be shifting to this new perspective: the large, cavernous walls narrowing in on themselves, the oceanic scape on the ceiling shifting and molding into the shape of something a little more normal looking. I can feel the energy of the room shifting, and it is like I am back in that apartment back when I was still alive- and yet, somehow, I can still feel the presence of the grey room as if it is peering over my shoulder, keeping me stable and grounded, breathing all around me despite not being able to see it.

The new room is filthy, with strange stains everywhere from the carpeted floor to the ceiling above. Furniture is sparse, with only a couch at the far end of the wall and a little table in front of it which is covered with filthy residue. There are newspapers cast all along the floor, bundling against the feet of the couch, all of them stained and dusty. The windows are covered with bed sheets, as if no one wishes to be watched from the outside.

I see a woman, on the couch with needles cast around the floor. In the background, I see men wandering around the apartment, vaguely there, as if they are ghosts that are imprisoned in their minds, maneuvering their bodies as if they are only half-attached to them, mouths agape and eyes rolling to peer at the ceiling which they likely can't even see. Throughout the whole scene, the stench of rot filtrates upwards, so unbearable that I cannot help but gag.

I see a child, a young girl on the barren floor. She is only a toddler, and she isn't moving. I step with a certain fragility closer to check if she's breathing. Her eyes are on the ceiling, her arms flayed to the side. A smell- something like rot, like human mess- wafts off of her tiny frame as if she hasn't been washed or changed in weeks. Tentatively I move closer, peering over her face to see if there is anyone behind them. Large dark eyes stare back at me -eyes that are a stark reminder of Lucifers own- they are vacant on the surface, but I can feel something deeper exuding off of her. Some tiny thread of energy that is reaching out, fighting to hold on. Fighting for a world that might be better than the one she is trapped in.

And then I hear it. A tiny voice, trapped in that miniscule spool of thread, as faint as a ghost but distinct as a flame: "Please, someone... save me, take me away from here."

I start walking backwards away from the child, closing my eyes tight and stopping once my back hits the wall, right next to the couch. I cast my head upwards towards the ceiling while crossing one arm over my chest, while the other covers the lower half of my face. I cannot be here. I do not want to see this anymore. I do not want to remember.

Because the girl is me.

"You will want to keep watching if you wish to truly understand," Lucifer responds, his voice seeming to come around from all directions.

"I don't want to" I respond so quietly that I am surprised he can hear me.

"Oh, Lane. You know that you do."

A deep breath escapes me. I keep my eyes closed long enough to count to five, until I can steady myself enough to look once again.

I see Lucifer sweep in. I cannot tell if he has been here with me this whole time or if this is simply him in the memory, but I suppose it doesn't matter. He is squatting over the child, peering into her large eyes that look too much like his own. Eyes, as he put, that carry the weight of having seen too much.

I can feel his energy shift, curling outwards, like smoke- it moves around the child in a protective shield, and it is then that she twitches slightly, as if she can better understand his presence. Like she can see him.

Another faint figure emerges- one that I can tell is ethereal, like ours- but it seems to be distanced, its own hum radiating at a higher frequency than our own. Faintly, I can understand that it seems to be communicating with the grey man at its opposite- they seem to be in the midst of trying to figure the situation out.

"Let me take this one, please. You know I'm better at these cases."

It starts to communicate once more, and Lucifer responds with "Ha, well you know I can be gentle with her. My reputation lies, you know that."

The other form hesitates for a moment and starts to move forward: peering for once last time at the girl, a brief movement of light seeming to reach down and touch her cheek. It communicates for a final time before it backs away and is no longer in the scene that lays before me.

"What do you wish for, dear girl?" The man asks.

And once again, the small voice that lies deep in her energy peeps up: "Make it stop. Take me away from here."

Lucifer sweeps his arm over her, and the ashes that lie on his coat dust over her in a small sprinkle.

"Wait... one more thing..."

He pauses, looking down at her with the mere gesture of surprise in his face. "Yes?"

"Make me better than them. Please, I want to be good... I want to be better than them. I want to fight for something good."

Again, he is still, staring at her with an emotion I can't quite place.

"Yes. Of course." He eventually responds.

"You know, I am the devil. I will have your soul when you die in exchange for our agreement. Are you sure about this?"

And her voice changes- what was once small and pitiful lowered in pitch, sounding almost deep and guttural. "Your hell cannot be worse than this place, sir."

A soft chuckle escapes the man, and he lays down next to her, covering her eyes with one of his hands in a protective shield.

"Yes, dear girl, you are right about that. But I promise that it will be worse for them- for the people who did this to you. I'll make sure of that."

She turns her head slightly to the side, with her mouth still agape, as if the minor movement of her neck is all she can take. "What about mommy? Will she be okay?"

Another pause, and another minor shift in facial expression- he looks as if he's debating with himself. He takes a deep sigh before looking up on the woman on the couch, squinting for a while.

"I suppose that will be up to her. She is safe from me for now."

The girl sighs softly, so as not to disturb any of the men who are wandering aimlessly around her.

"Okay. I'm ready, Mr. Devil."

He chuckles softly, seemingly surprised at her formality in the situation.

"Please, call me Lucifer. That is my name after all."

"Oh. Okay... Mr. Lucifer. My name is Lane."

The memory shifts again, and it is like I am watching the movie of my life, but it is stuck in forward motion- slowing down at certain segments, as if the Devil has watched it a thousand times and edited it so that he could deeply savor his favorite memories with more time, but speeds through at a quicker pace past the more blasé parts.

I see myself being taken away by CPS, escorted to some house that is crowded with other children. The scene switches a few times as I am transported to different houses, and then finally settle into a home that seems more permanent. I see my adopted parents, a man and a woman, who are both constantly busy fussing with phone calls and paperwork, and I see a younger me- older than I was when I was in the rotting apartment- frolicking around a large yard, one with a garden. I see Lucifer in the woods across the street, watching from far away; he creates pink butterflies and sends them my way, laughing as I try to catch them. I can no longer see him, but I can sense the energy he leaves behind and I chase it into the woods, desperate to find its source. Desperate to feel his deepness again.

I see me later, in elementary school, watching outside the little glass window of the classroom door, as I sit quietly and draw in my notebook. I feel his energy spark from me to the girl sitting next to me, as if goading me on to introduce myself. I watch as I exist throughout grades K through 5, bouncing next to my best friend and chatting excitedly.

I watch myself move on to middle school, where life takes a darker turn- I am popular by no means, for I am far too childlike and innocent, and the others are hell-bent on being as adult-like as possible- which for them means cruelty. I watch as my innocence and bubbly nature fade away, and I start wearing darker colors, watching silently over the others- desperate to see something they all inherently understood but that I could somehow not grasp. I see the girls giggling at me as I walk by, the boys leaning forward and mocking me. Some days they just laugh, poking fun at everything I do because it is always somehow wrong. Sometimes, it's more than that. A boy would slam my head into the lockers as I walk by, and I pull the hood of my sweatshirt over my head to keep from being seen. Sometimes, they corner me and reach for my chest, and I see Lucifer standing in the background, his presence heavier, darkness curling off his body in a heat of anger. He lurks forward and takes one by the head and whispers into his ear- the boy, who cannot see him, backs away with numbness in his eyes, and decides that the others should follow him to some unknown destination.

I watch as the cruel game they used to play emerges: Lane is practically a ghost, so let's all pretend like she isn't there. And suddenly, no one says a peep to me, they pretend like I no longer exist to the point that I myself start to question it. So, I start to draw more, withdraw into myself. And again, Lucifer is there, watching from the back of my class, reaching out and touching the cruelest girl on the head. She turns around as if she can sense it -but not quite enough so she shifts back as if nothing happened.

I watch as I transition into high school, still introverted and picked on, but numb to it still. I carry myself with a different posture, once immature and curled in on myself, but now with my head held high. I had decided that it was enough, that I would not let others define me. I became strange and abstract, with a distinct style for darkness. I continue to draw relentlessly, hell-bent on being the best artist that I could possibly become. In one of my sketchbooks, I see what looks like a vague representation of Lucifers face looking back at me. He notices as well and smiles softly.

I watch as I abruptly leave home at 17, deciding that I would not deal with my parents developing drinking problems and isolated tendencies. I could not pinpoint what had been so disturbing about this situation at the time, but now I could see Lucifers energy guiding me out, as if he had some foresight that I could not understand. I watch as he walks down the road and to a friend's apartment, with me numbly trailing his path of energy behind. I live on their couch for the continuation of high school until I graduate, and afterwards, I feel so guilty for expending their recourses that I decide to leave.

I move to a shelter in the nearest city, and on some nights when there are rowdy people, when they start to get aggressive or ask me to offer pieces of myself to them, I can see Lucifer once again guiding me away, seeking out a decent shelter under a highway or in the forest to rest for a while. Even when it rains, even when it snows- he is there, sometimes joining me as I warm my hands over a makeshift fire pit.

My biological father runs into me at some point -a brief trail of Lucifers energy wafting off of him- and he offers to let me stay in his apartment for the foreseeable future. Once I'm in a safer place, I am able to find a decent and respectable job at a local coffee shop, and although by this point, I am plagued with demons from my past, I am able to move up in the world. I take a few community college courses in an effort to one day become a psychologist.

I am not a very nice person, and often times offend people who come into the shop by being overly defensive or too snappy, but overall things are starting to get better. I always go out of my way to ask my coworkers how they are doing, and I always mean it authentically. Sometimes we'll talk about their life, and I can give them an outside perspective, but most of them never ask me back. After a while, that small lack of effort starts to bother me, then a while after that it weighs me down. And still, I ask them anyway. Because I would have loved to be cared for in that way, and in doing these small acts of kindness and others like it, I can prove that goodness still exists in the world.

And sometimes the acts are more daunting than that. Sometimes I feel Lucifers trail, guiding me to some mysterious and unknown destination. We have come to a point in my life where I don't doubt that feeling he gives to me, the call that lures me away. Once, it was a girl on a balcony, who I talked to and eventually laughed with for hours before she agrees to come back down. Another time, I buy an old man a coffee and sit to talk with him a while, only to discover that it is his birthday but none of his children remembered.

I am not a nice person, but I am a good one.

Eventually, the images start to change, and I am not looking into the city I lived in, but someplace else. Someplace far away, in the country. I realize that I am not peering into the memories of my own life, but rather, someone else's.

There is a large house in the suburbs- one with white walls and a black roof. The garage holds two expensive cars in it, and there is a garden out front. I see a woman there- presumably the matriarch of such a place- who is planting pink roses out front. She is beautiful, even with her older age- with pale skin and long dark hair that frames her face in waves, like mine. She wears tasteful robes and simple yet elegant jewelry, and yet her hands are covered with soil. I walk closer to her, taking time to admire the flowers, grabbing one with my hand.

The woman is humming softly to herself, a melody which I can faintly recall at the back of my mind, at the furthest reaches of my memories. A melody that she may have sung to me at one point or another. I am listening to her softly while admiring her work, strumming the petals of the rose between my fingers. And she stops abruptly, looking towards my direction.

"Lane?" She says, in barely a whisper.

I am surprised, and I slowly make my way towards her, leaning down to peer into her face. She has aged well, and from afar she has anyone fooled. But when I take a closer look, I can see where her crow's feet dance across her skin. Her eyes carry the same weight as mine, as Lucifers. Somehow, she feels more haunted than I anticipated, and I can see that although the house and her garden are beautiful, some part of her is still trapped in that apartment that she will never escape.

Once my gaze drifts downwards, I still notice the scars and track-marks on her forearms. They have been healed for a long time by my guess, but I can still feel a faint and yet distinct burning feeling that exudes off of them. The burning of guilt, perhaps.

I reach out to touch her face- hesitating to make contact, worried that I might mess with the balance of things. If I were somehow to merge our souls to speak for her, I wouldn't know what to say.

"I hope you can make it out of there, someday. I can see it burning so deeply that parts of it escapes you, and it probably makes a mess in the threads around you... I hope that someday you will be alright, that you will understand that fire like that is not always helpful." I whisper to her. I have so much more to say, parts of me reel at the sight of my mother, begging me to drag her back down to the hell she created in my head. For all the despair I have ever felt. But she is just a woman, I tell myself.

She was my mother, but she is just a woman.

Her stare lingers over my presence a little while longer, and tears make their way down her cheeks. Her eyes then shift to the scape around me, at the rows of varied plant life that surround us. There are pink flowers strewn in everywhere.

"Pink was always your favorite, back when I knew you. I hope that somewhere out there, you're doing okay. I wanted to reach out but... I didn't know how to show my face after what I did. I didn't want you to suffer anymore at the sight of me."

She speaks as if she is singing a soft melody for a young child, as if she is praying. I squat down next to her for a while, taking in the sight around me in the sacred moment between us- a dead girl and the mother who gave birth to her. And eventually I come to understand that the garden is for me.

I see Lucifer making his way to the edge of the scene, taking it in with me. In this moment, I am glad that I asked him to spare her, even if the bitter part of me isn't.

"Her life isn't over yet. It is up to her to make the final decision." He responds, sensing my thoughts somehow.

"Yeah, I know."

After another moment, I add "However, hell already exists in her head. I can feel it, running so deeply that it radiates from her body. I hope you keep that in mind when her day of judgment comes."

He smiles again to me, in that soft and all-knowing way. I suppose it isn't up to me, but I am satisfied in knowing that I did what I could.

We sit in the tranquility of the scene for a moment longer. The sun is setting and casts a brilliant orange light over the world. I'm glad that one of my last glimpses of the world was as beautiful as this, with the trees blowing gently in the wind and my mother's lullaby rolling faintly across my form.

"Do you wish to see how you died?" He asks, sitting next to me now. "I have to warn you, it is somewhat of a tragic story."

"Oh yeah? I'm surprised you didn't guide me away from that, too."

"Ah, dear one, I'm afraid that there was nothing I could do to prevent something like that. I did my best, but you are stubborn. And... it fulfilled your wish, so there was no need to take higher force in a situation like that."

I take one last breath, counting to five once more to savor the moment.

"Alright then."

The scene shifts, and as we are pulled away, I turn around and reach out to my mother one last time, desperate to sit in her presence a while longer, desperate to feel her touch. The feeling was fast to sneak up on me, and yet I am whisked away too quickly to act upon it.

And we are at the coffee shop once more. It takes me a moment to adjust, to let the presence of my mother go, but after a while I come to terms with the scene displayed before me.

I can see myself working the milk-station, a somewhat intimidating expression on my face as I am lost in thought over the steam-wand. I ponder over to stand in front of myself, stuck in the surrealness of the situation.

The cafe looks to be functioning as it always does- Adri, my favorite coworker and someone I had truly thought to be the most pure-hearted and beautiful person I had ever met is at the register. She was the only one who asked me if I was doing okay, the only one who wasn't afraid to hear about the darkness that lurked under my skin, that haunted my mind. Our manager, Johnny, a large man with a hard and sarcastic outer shell with a sweet and gooey center, works the espresso station.

Customers are bustling about, it's busy enough but not overwhelmingly so. And still, my slightly irritated expression darts over the faces- rapidly judging their characters in a desperate effort to remind myself that I am safe.

Our city is not known to be the safest. I was at one time one of the homeless, and I met a lot of good comrades in that way: but I also know that in the hood there are shady characters who have corroded away due to childhood neglect and the survival that they found. We had a history of disturbed fellows who would come in and act strangely, but they were peacefully dealt with in an easy enough state of affairs.

But I suppose today is different, and I watch as a sun-burnt and disheveled man walks in the front door, carrying his body with his hips as his shoulders hang loosely with the sway of his movement.

He approaches Adri, and Johnny and I are already one step behind her, watching her back. From an outside perspective I can feel the heat of raw survival emanating off of me. It is something I had discovered in life that others could feel, and, I suspected, was part of why they felt so off-put by me. In that way it was a sort of safety blanket, a warning to those who might try and have their way with me. But this man is too far gone to notice, too far deep in the need for something else to truly comprehend the circumstances. To feel the life of the people around him in the way others could.

And before we know it, he has a weapon pulled. From my abstract position now, I wonder how he had even gotten hold of such a thing, but my mortal self has already been prepared for this moment. Had already lost too much in her life to worry about it being taken away anymore.

Johnny tries to react, but I am quicker, pulling Adri behind me just before the moment of impact, before I could reach for cover myself.

It hadn't mattered. The idea was, I suppose, to pull her away and then duck for shelter myself- but the moment was too fast. There was no way I could have saved both of us. But it didn't matter, because Adri had proven to me that she was good. Good in the way that I had always craved, good in the way that I always needed proof of.

She wasn't like me, she hadn't waded through the darkness to find the light, she always had it. The weight of knowing what lurked in the shadows would never drag her back down to it, in the way that it had done so for me. And that was something that was worth dying for. It was what made the darkness truly go away.

My body falls into Johnny's arms, before he lets go to deal with the perpetrator. I can't help but let out a stifled laugh at the sight of such a clumsy fall, but I understand that he was preoccupied. There is screaming all around as everyone understands the gravity of what has happened. Adri leans over my body and holds my head in her arms, too desperate to cling to the idea that I am still alive to let herself accept that I am not. She huddles for safety with me still in her lap, sobbing in big heaving breaths. I move forward, try to touch her back again so that she can sense that although I am no longer with her, I am okay in the same way that I did with my mother- but the situation is too drastic for her to comprehend that kind of presence. I frown, distraught at the realization that although my life was taken for her sake, she will never be the same. Some of this darkness will stay with her forever, the same way that it did for me.

But I have no regrets. I couldn't have taken the pain of it being the other way around. I had accumulated enough darkness already.

The scene comes to a close, time seeming to move faster as I watch the man and my body away, Johnny holding Adri in his arms as she continues to sob until the tears run out. The sun sets again, and the cafe is dark. I always loved the early shifts, when the sun wasn't out yet and the building was dark. It had always seemed peaceful then. But now, the whole place is covered in police tape, and there are still flecks of my blood on the countertops here and there. And yet, there is a strange sense of tranquility here. Lucifer kept his promise, I died for something more than myself, and I don't have to fight anymore. I can finally find my peace.

I once again, find myself wandering around the scene, brushing my hand against the espresso machine and savoring the last moment that I would see it. I turn back to Lucifer, who is standing behind me.

"Thank you." I tell him. Any other words I could say escape me, there are simply not enough.

He once again smiles, taking a few steps in my direction.

"I always did the best that I could. I had always wished I could give you more."

"I understand." There are worlds between us now, worlds that him and I can both see, the gravitational pulls threading us together. In a time like this, not many words can be said.

"Thank you for the hardship, too. I wouldn't have been who I am now without it, I wouldn't be able to see it all so clearly. I wouldn't have been able to meet you halfway in the fulfilment of our contract."

He reaches out a hand. I can feel the energy of the environment shifting once more, the pressure pulling me forward and under, blowing my hair around me as I take his hand.

"let's go home, Lane." 

[prettyboykatsuki]

excuse my disturbance and my bad english but i must say that im completely in love with your mind. at this point it feels like a puzzle and every other post you make gives me another piece and i have to figure out where to place it, it gives me an idea of the way you think of certain things? hope it doesn't sound weird. im just trying to express my fascination of your writings and the indepth of your overall characterisations especially. this started with your perception of the itoshi brothers because for me they have been frustrating to understand. its like they are pretty much an open book so it's not hard to understand them and their bond and read into their personality at all but sometimes it feels so blurry you know? and i just can't connect it and it makes me insane. but the way you put them into words feels so easy and simple that makes me even more insane. maybe im just crazy and obsessed about it i honestly dont know. the way you also generally use sexuality as a tool to explain characters feelings/mind is so interesting to me as an inexperienced person. so yeah i just wanted to let you know that i really really appreciate your writings! and what i originally wanted to ask is what books do you think the itoshis would read? or which authors they'd prefer? the books a person reads gives me an idea of their mind, and i love you characterisation of rin and sae so i would love to know your thoughts if you don't mind! sending lots of love :)

WAH!! first of all hello! ur english is perfectly find and understandable do not worry at all!!! but also the opening sentence for this ask is so sweet as is the rest of it?? im flopping around like a wet noodle and whatnot.

i feel like i never make any sense like in the slightest so this ask really surprised me a lot JFSDKJSFS. im always talking out of my ass and while being articulate is important to me i only succeed like half of the time in my own head. so it means a lot that you think the way !! and im really honored that u are so fascinated by my smooth wrinkle free brain

i think the itoshi bros are indeed frustrating if you're not like really consciously examining their characters which most people arent since bllk is primarily about isagi!!! while the rin sae arc is really good its still a side plot and its mostly meant for rin. it took me another good long read and some brainstorming to figure out what sae was like because on the surface he's a really shitty jerk

i like to think of myself as a character first writer!! my stories are not as driven by the environment as other peoples (though im working on being better at that) and most of my writing is pretty character driven. in general i am obsessed with human behavior in a kind of neurotic way sdkjfsk and sometimes that comes out as i write. sexuality is an aspect of that obsession which is why it plays an important part in everything i write.

as for authors for the itoshi bros... i dont think either of them read that much. for sae - i imagine he reads a lot of nonfiction about soccer and sports psychology. unlike rin who has other interests, sae thinks his main flaw is that he's only interest is soccer and i think that extends to his reading.

rin loves horror canonically so probably horror books more than anything? someone like yukito ayatsuji who writes a lot of well received japanese horror