#i am vaguely sick and also my grandfather is dying

[dubacheryking]

hello gang today has been a Bad Day

[all-pacas]

re chase and thirteen wip: i’m not sure if this fits what you need since it’s angsty and a little more of a mutual bonding thing, but i think there’s something about the way that their mothers both slowly died while they watched and couldn’t help or control it that they could really bond about, like we always talk about the sibling trauma, but the mommy issues are there too

i also think a lot about the fact that chase never knew his father was dying and how that might play into his relationship with thirteen since he’s known that she’s terminal pretty much since they met, i just feel like there’s something there

it doesn't quite fit into the story - it's more of a "them getting to know one another" vibe - but BOY am i obsessed with this fact all the same. they both state on the show they watched their mothers die and hated her for her sickness and death; they're both still holding onto that trauma all these years later. it's such a … it's not a unique experience, but honestly, i think it is something not everyone would get, you know? like in s8, chase tells adams, and adams is just "it was so important you were there for her though," you're such a good person, she was dying. and - no, chase tells her: i hated her. it's such a difficult position to be in, watching someone you love die, hating them for it, not being a "good generous person" but just trapped. and i mean, i think from the outside we can understand that, but - i'm estranged from my own family and it's not half as traumatic, but whenever i am forced to explain it to people i get the blank looks and "but it's your mother." 13 and chase's examples are 800 times worse, but you know it's not something they can easily talk about. but they Get It.

anyway here's a lil bit of the fanfic where they do allude to issues:

-

“Sure,” she says, since it’s necessary and she feels vaguely like she owes him a little for prying. Thirteen glances at the textbook again. “You from a family of doctors?”

“More or less. My grandfather was a GP or something.” Chase doesn’t sound offended, just pointedly bored by the conversation: she knows she’s being told to drop it, but the apathy is so thick it’s almost funny.

“Little Robbie Chase, carrying on his father’s grand legacy. How touching.”

She’s hoping he’ll find the nickname presumptuous or annoying, but Chase just raises an invisible glass in salute. “Why’d you become a doctor then?”

“My mom died,” Thirteen says blandly, which is true and most of the real reason. And then my brother tested positive.

“Hey,” Chase says, surprised and wry: “Me too.”

[savrenim]

I keep almost opening tumblr to write a Big Long Post About My Life Because Goddamnit This Place Used To Be My Diary Until Suddenly I Got Involved In The H*milton Fandom And A Whole Bunch Of Strangers Started Following Me, and then, like. suddenly got more self-conscious. as well as better at dealing with stuff in my life so I haven’t really felt the need to vent, when did I become a semi-responsible semi-functional adult. but you know what? what the hell. there are things that I actually vaguely do want to vent about because dear gods has my life Been Ridiculous of late.

I am approximately 3/4 the person that I used to be? which is a dramatic way of stating that I used to be about 200lbs, I didn’t actually know because in theory I’ve aggressively avoided scales since high school because I used to have pretty bad anorexia and then orthorexia and binge eating then, it got better after I decided I don’t care about anything physical and just cut off all thoughts about anything like that and refused to acknowledge anything more than following the rule of eating three meals a day, but in practice I go to the doctor yearly and can access my medical records online and every once in a while can check with a friend and being steady over the last year or two meant that I was about 200lbs.

I was 153lbs the last time I checked, and I’ve been checking weekly just to make sure that I Don’t Keep Drastically Losing Weight, because this has all been since March. not even the beginning of March, the second half of March. I almost definitely lost thirty pounds in a month, a month and a half. and then have at least been losing weight more slowly after that? it has been fucking insane and I hated every second of it, wheeeee. (what happened in March was I got sick with the flu, couldn’t eat for a week, lost a fair bit of weight from that, and then my appetite/taste buds solidly shifted after only eating lentil soup back to super healthy vegetarian rice and beans and what-not that I’d been eating at the beginning of the school year, instead of take-out type deal, and I was actually getting sleep and going to more Tai Chi and every other week my car was breaking down so I was walking places a bunch and sudden lots of exercise + change in diet + not as stressed as first semester and getting sleep actually is a fairly healthy way to lose weight?)

but boooooy did it freak me out when I suddenly fit into jeans from the start of college that I had kept thinking I’d never fit into them again because Holy Fuck All Of My I’m Starving And Am Going To Die instincts kicked in and all of my actual close friends are online friends which meant besides one comment from a Tai Chi instructor directly after I’d been out for three weeks from slowly recovering from the flu (which actually was the nicest way anyone has ever commented on my weight, it was an “oh you’ve lost weight” “yeah I had the flu pretty bad, that’s where I’ve been for three weeks, couldn’t eat for a week and have been slowly getting back to solid meals” “oh yeah that really sucks, happened to a friend of mine last year, I think there are still pictures it’s scary” instead of a well you look good response, Thomas P is great and I love him) but absolutely no one was commenting and it made me feel like I was going crazy and I had no idea how much I weighed so how much I should be freaking out and no data even to compare that against, which was why I eventually broke and got a scale so that I could at least have datapoints and figure out when I was steady again because gods I just wanted to be steady

and, like, that was one of the literal worst parts of losing weight in high school, it was ballooning from 100lbs to 200lbs and all the not-so-subtle judgement from my mother when I came back various breaks during college and the number of times I had to threaten not to come back at all if she so much as commented on my weight so she found other ways of commenting about “why are you skipping aikido tonight, you only have so many times to go to the studio before you’re back east,” and, like, the constant fight of her either deciding to pay for my food or that she wouldn’t pay for any of it because I ate too much of it, and then, like. after having lost so much weight needing to get new bras and honestly some new clothes despite the fact that I haven’t bought fitted clothes since the very start of college because I’ve just been so fucking afraid of my weight ballooning again and not being able to fit into anything, considering I don’t really have money to drop on a new wardrobe as I get everything as cheap as possible or hand-me-down anyways and then wheeee that brought up all the shitty memories from high school where my mother refused to get me a new uniform when I weighed too much for my old one so I spent a year squeezing into skirts that left imprints on my waist and wearing long sweaters to cover the fact that I couldn’t zip them up, and, like. suddenly losing weight also triggered the fear of am I going to gain it all back then more and be stuck with a wardrobe that even though it was designed loose in the first place, still won’t fit me, which is ridiculous because I’m steadying out and it’s not like my diet or patterns are going to change again, just. gods have these past few months brought up a fair bit of past trauma and I a little bit wish more people had reached out to me and responded but I bugged the right people and they hella listened and made sure enough that old instincts and old fears didn’t get involved and, like. I like this body? I’m more flexible and my balance is a bit better and I can punch differently but just as well and I need to get used to groundfighting and throws with it but lack of mass is made up for in other ways. gods I love Tai Chi and it is the one thing that has kept me sane through all of this because no matter what my body looks like the thing that’s been most important to me is that physically, I’m dangerous, and that’s not about weight. that’s about strength, that’s about training, I’m in that studio now eight hours a week because that is the maximum number of classes they have for adults and I can practice on my own and just. the one time that I feel fiercely okay and goddamn happy about the fact that I have a physical form is knowing that if someone messes with me, I can defend myself, and proving it to myself over and over and over.

but yeah that’s been going on.

then there are the kittens can you tell how much my life has been made better by the kittens, I love these kittens so much, the story behind the kittens is that I saw a cat meowing outside, thought it was a stray kitten because of how small and starving it looked but knocked on doors to see if it belonged to any of my neighbors before I just took it to a vet type deal, and it belonged to the woman behind the first door I knocked on, who asked me why, do you want her, which I thought was weird, then said woman shouted at me from her window as I was taking out trash that seriously, this cat just had three kittens, she needed money and to get rid of them, was I interested in buying any of them off her, I was just going to get Talvus and then it was a combo of “she gave me the kitten at 4 weeks which then I couldn’t get him to eat anything because he hadn’t been weaned yet and kittens can’t be separated from the rest of their litter until 12 or 13 weeks or they don’t socialize correctly” that just. waaaasn’t good. as well as the other two kittens were adorable and I’d named them and it seemed for a little while like my girlfriend might be able to take one so I went “listen just give me all three at 8 weeks once they’re weaned and I’ll take it from there”

and I’m so fucking glad I did this

she was keeping all three of them in a cage most of the time, they weren’t using her litter box because she was barely cleaning it so she was surprised to hear they weren’t peeing all over my house, I’m actually taking them to get vaccinated and spayed/neutered which I can only afford because the Friends of Animals program exists but also, holy fuck have I been spending a lot of my savings between kittens and needing to drive everyone everywhere so a whole bunch of tolls and gas money to my fiance staying with me for a bit but that both meant buying more expensive groceries than I usually do because she eats meat as well as a whole bunch of errands to run and little things that add up (and then she got strep and just. it was a nightmare.)

right my car has been breaking down too, that’s been exciting, thank you my grandfather for dying and leaving enough inheritance-wise that I have been able to afford getting a different used car despite wheee leaking money left and right this summer but fixing up this one consistently because if I don’t I’m even More Fucked despite it not being worth it has legitimately burned through a solid quarter of my savings. like. I don’t have the right to say that I’m worried about money because I do still have some savings and a stipend coming in each month from research that pays for food and groceries so it’s not like it’s gotten tight so much as I have had to just deal with savings exist because sometimes emergencies come up and you Gotta Spend Them and hopefully I’ll save more next year and having a car that doesn’t break down every other month is going to help

considering the old car is in now perfect working condition I’m giving it to a friend of mine for $300 with the stipulation that if it breaks down at all over the next year I will refund them any of that $300 that they don’t make selling it to a junkyard because I didn’t want to waste a perfectly fine working car and my friends are even more poor than me I just. also am hemorrhaging money left and right and gods maybe that will help.

my fiance and I figured out that we’re probably never going to live together. from a combination of we have very, very different schedules to she needs so much structure in her life that slowly wears away at my spoons to not even give it to her but to re-arrange my own schedule and contribute to the logistics of her making it happen for herself, like, I can sit at the table in my apartment and work for eight hours on research and pause because there’s food in my kitchen to grab a thing to eat, she needed to go to a coffee shop every morning to be able to concentrate because if it wasn’t going out with a goal of doing something and being somewhere she wouldn’t be able to concentrate and it would mess up the entire day, which, like. wasn’t terrible because I usually walk for coffee anyways and can work anywhere but having that be a Necessary Logistic that I Have To Push For In The Morning Because God Help Anyone Who Tries To Wake The Sleeping Dragon (even though said sleeping dragon prefers to be on schedules where she wakes up at 6:30am, unlike my usual 10:00am, and we tried to compromise for 8:30am but guess who was the one who was always up first because I actually listen to my alarm and then dear gods is it stressful to wake people up)

(as well as this is not all her, it is also me, like. I need everything to be perfectly organized in terms of logistics so if someone hasn’t eaten yet it will bug me so I will ping them every half an hour of “you’ve forgotten to eat lunch, can we make lunch happen for you,” or there is a very specific state of clean that I need the apartment to be, or I’m incredibly antisocial at times, I can’t deal with someone touching me or fall asleep next to them if I’m stressed or if it’s hot so spent a couple of nights on the couch, as well as I’m picky about exactly the way the chores get done so needed to do all of them, the tl;dr is I think I have discovered my ideal living situation is living alone, at least most of the time and maybe having a house to visit on weekends, because I love her and love to spend time with her but also need a lot of space and long periods of quiet to do the work that I need to get done)

which, like

absolutely none of this is detrimental to our actual plans for our relationship, considering our actual plans are “we both are very busy people, she actually does have a group of people that she lives with very very well and that actively work well into her schedule, I have my kittens and my math and my facetime and my weekends with people, and the basis of our relationship is the commitment and the external alliance and the face that we present the world as well as the fun of getting to be gay and go on cute dates every once in a while, it’s not that we live well or lifestyle well together, it’s that we powercouple well together, so pick and choose the things that work and keep those.” which also works really well for she’s thinking of raising kids and I’m probably going to bounce around location-wise in post doc positions for a while before I find somewhere I might be able to settle with tenure, and, like. that’s not a good environment to raise kids in.

(we’re poly. we’re so poly. can you tell how poly we are. it’s one of the things that solidly makes us work, because we don’t have to force the other one to be everything, she’s found someone that she solidly likes that we’re calling prospective duckling papa, I also solidly like this person, so. kids might actually be a thing on the actual horizon, although probably not in the house that I’m spending most of my time, so that’s interesting. and terrifying. and expensive. and hopefully at least five years away.)

and then also I...finally had a conversation with a friend that I’ve been meaning to have for a while? that I really hope and I really think I did get across the whole “I care about our friendship the way that society mostly expects people to care about and be committed to romantic relationships, which is almost why it’s weird to just call you a friend which is why we are having this conversation, not because I Am In Romantic Love With You Again” of basically just “considering I’ve been thinking about and mapping out the actual relationships in my life and the ones that are steady and that are going to stick around, you know that I love you, right, and that you’re one of the ones that I really really want to stick around” and, like

gods do I love this person so much. and just....the role they have played in my life over the years? the way that I can talk to them and the things that I can talk to them about and share with them and math and physics and stories and DnD stories because gods do I rant about that to anyone who will listen and they get it pretty bad, oops, but they put up with it. and just the sum of who they are to me right now? is one of the most important people in my life. and I get so self-conscious of “but do I mean anything back to you at all, of course no one cares about me and this is Entirely One Sided but that’s okay I’ve always been the person who was going to jump in front of the bullet because I go more intense than other people” but, like. besides the friends that actively know that they are surrogate siblings to me. There’s my fiance, that I trust actually loves me as much as I love her, because we are very gay and we talk about it all the time. There’s another friend that is actually one of the few people that I’m physically comfortable with because both (a) he is as asexual as me so I can actually make out or cuddle with him while knowing that there is zero interest in sex happening in the encounter, and (b) has spent years slowly setting boundaries and slowly negotiating comfort levels together and has been an amazing friend and fantastic part of my life in other ways and, like, so yeah, I love him, and he’s well aware of that, and he loves me, and I’m not self-conscious about that, but, just.

there is this part of me that always goes “nope you don’t matter to people” or at least the people that matter to me unless I have Lots Of Data to back it up and you know what I have fucking data to back this one up and this person explicitly told me that they care about me too

and it bothers me to love a person a bunch and then go “but oh gods I need to be so careful and delicate about saying it because what if They Get The Wrong Message and I don’t want to make things awkward on their end” which also is complete bullshit because this person has heard me talk about how I think and feel about things for years so if anyone is going to actually know that I’m not lying or sidestepping the truth in what I mean when I say I love them it’s going to be them but just. I guess time to build up the confidence that it is okay to directly express how much I care about this person the way that I have gotten comfortable expressing the way I care about other people in my inner circle because at least now I have their word that they know, they’re okay with it, they care about me right back too type deal

and that is all the drama that has been going on in my life

[broomswept-thoughts]

I’m feeling so tired and sick of life. I feel stuck on med school apps, and I’m so nervous and afraid of even working on the essays. I’ve been procrastinating for so long, and I wonder if I didn’t do this with college apps because I was ricocheting in the opposite direction (high key anxiety and adrenaline). I feel kinda depressed and out of it. I feel heavy inside when I think of my parents, especially my mother. She seemed so unhappy and sick with her job, and I’m also worried a bit about her health and her back... She’s already 60 but she can’t take an easier job since the condominium fee is going up and they still have to pay off the house loan (and also save more and more money for retirement). The fact that they’re using their savings makes me stressed and nervous for them. I’m sad that she needs to continue working at Stone Ridge in order to pay off the house loan and have the flexibility to go back to Japan in case my grandfather passes away (or if either of my grandparents die), and to be able to come back to work afterwards so it’s risky to look for a new employment now. I feel a vague sense of stress and anxiety that my parents are kind of on a financial ledge, and I feel so guilty that I’m about to try to apply to a program that would take 9 years for me to even get a job that could help pay some of their bills or help take care of them. By the time I graduate in 10 years, they’ll be in their 70s and I’ll be going into my first job? I’m stressed. Is that a sacrifice that can or even should be made? If I just became a doctor right away, then I could finish residency and then begin earning money to help them at least 4 years earlier. I feel sick and guilty. I wonder if I should’ve just gone into pharmaceuticals or a company that could pay me sooner, like finances or something or something... I hate corporate lifestyle and the idea of living under the guillotine of a company, but maybe this is just spoiled to complain in this way. It’s not like academia is going to pay me well, and it’s solely for my own selfishness to want a PhD and to go into research. And what does academia achieve me, substantially? Prestige? Sorry, but is that marketable? Will that get me the coin fast enough? Probably not.

Sigh sigh sigh. What am I doing, maybe I should just. I don’t even know. Ugh, I don’t know I don’t know. Do I just do a MD/PhD? I’ll hate my life if I become a MD-only, but... it would pay the bills lol. Do I just want to not do a PhD because I want to self-sabotage and hate myself or punish myself for existing in any way? Fuck. Ugh. I think I just don’t know what to do with feeling so terrible about the financial states that my parents are in, how they’re growing so old and I’m scared of them dying or being hit with health complications, and the guilt that I would feel for not being able to financially support them. I would feel guilty for putting my career over taking care of them because they literally do not have anyone else that could support or take care of them (especially in the US). I would feel guilty that they had to become stuck in the US, even if it wasn’t an active choice that I persuaded them to make or anything like that.

......................

I feel so bitter that my parents were kinda cheated out of whatever Americann dream or opportunity that was supposed to happen for them and then let them return to Japan. I’m grateful to have been raised in the US, but I wish that they didn’t have to be trapped here. I wish that I could make enough money that they would be able to quit working whatever job that they don’t want to and can just live peacefully and without worries in Japan (or wherever they would feel most comfortable). I wish that I could be rich so they wouldn’t have to worry anymore. I wish that I could make money sooner so that I can help them sooner. I wish that they wouldn’t have to suffer anymore from working until they drop and die. I wish that they could travel and go back to Japan more easily and whenever they want to. I wish. I wish that I could become rich off of academia sooner and make more money as soon as I can. My parents could literally become overworked and die as their healths become more fragile with every coming year. I hate this. I hate this so much.

I’m really in an irritable and depressed mood. I feel the growing pressure of needing to work harder, in a desperate way, in order to make it up to my parents. I feel the same pressure that I felt when I was a first year where I would feel that I would have to work harder and harder in order to make up for the sacrifices that my mother and grandmothers have made so that I could just have fun and study in such a luxurious and indulgent way. I feel like I should suffer more to justify what I have received from their pain and frustration and suffering. I feel guilty that I haven’t done enough to ever deserve anything or any time like this, I feel like I haven’t suffered nearly enough and that I need to work harder in order to gain the results to justify and make them proud and happy and also relieved that their sacrifices meant something. It makes me want to die, but a part of me relishes having a reason to work harder and push myself to get outward achievement and results. I also relish an opportunity to be harsh and hate myself to achievement, especially since I was rewarded for that result (and the behavior that caused it) in the past. I can’t understand how I could ever be successful and also not a harsh disciplinarian towards myself. I feel like I need to shriek and scream at myself in order to succeed. I feel like I’ve been too lax on myself for appreciating myself more, or that I’m being lazy or not working hard enough. I don’t know how to balance between discipline and depression or self-loathing. Everything that I dislike about myself becomes cruelty. And then fatigue, and then self loathing about that fatigue and on and on.

If I want to succeed, do I need to sacrifice happiness in order to make it happen? If I want to succeed, do I need to be in pain? If I suffer hard enough, will I be successful? Will my suffering be rewarded in the end? I think these things, and have thought them for a long time. At this point, success is kind of scary because it feels like I need to sacrifice happiness in order to make it. I need to become a machine that just works away in order to get recognition. But just because I’m in pain doesn’t mean that I’ll be rewarded. Suffering isn’t correlated with success, useful work is correlated with success. I wish suffering could be correlated with success because I know how to hate myself better than anyone else. But in the end, it just drags me down emotionally to become an emotionally dead piece of crap. I don’t want to become that anymore, because it’s scary and also sad and being in endless despair is just truly hell. But I’m scared of committing myself to hard work, pure hard work, because I don’t want to become that way either. I don’t want to be so obsessed with having to prove that the sacrifices of my family were really worth it or to punish myself by working myself until I die inside because I know that inside, I’ll never feel like I’m worthy of those sacrifices, and that they should’ve been the ones to have succeeded in life and have enjoyed life instead of me. What gives me the right to have fun or to have friends or to feel joy? What have I done to have deserved happiness? And the depressing answer is nothing, no one ever has the right or received the right to deserve happiness. It’s all in the end, some kind of inherent privilege. Of race, class, and gender, etc. of course, but also privilege of being born in the right place at the right time, of being born into the family you were born into, of having some magical set of neurons in your brain that makes you more receptive to happiness or setting into action ways to make you happy, of having the correct genes go off to give you the body you have, and so on. No one deserves these things through their own hard work. It’s just pure random timing and luck that it’s you and not your ancestors or relatives. Some things just happen and are out of our individual control. I can respect and be grateful for my family’s sacrifices, but as I had no control over whether it was me or them to have come to this specific point in my life, I shouldn’t feel guilt because I could not have controlled it.

I guess now I come to the monetary aspect, since I do have control over money and what job I take to get money. Sigh......... I really don’t want to do a MD only. I feel guilty and bad for wanting to do a MD/PhD. Ugh.......................................................................... ugh. I feel like crap. Because I know I’m going to do a MD/PhD. Maybe I’ll rant/ ask on r/mdphd because I’m just feeling things right now.

[kitsunegamer]

Chapter 20 part 2: Campfire Stories

I smile, grateful for their empathy. “Hopefully, if she’s still alive, I can help her get out of whatever situation has prevented her from contacting me.”

“I’m sure that if you stick with us, we’re bound to hear word of her during our travels. We might even find her,” Aster reassures me optimistically. “We’ll always take time to help you try to find her if we come across any information.” He looks so earnest; his heart truly seems to be in the right place.

“Thank you. I know that… all the clues from her last letter have come to dead ends. All I can do now is search for word of her as I travel.” Is there any better way to find such information? I certainly haven’t been able to find one. Travelling with Aster and the others, although certainly interesting and exciting sometimes, does seem to cover a lot of ground. I’m trying, Kyume, but you certainly haven’t made it easy for me!

“It is a noble quest,” Erwin nods again. “We will do what we can to help.”

A snuffling sound comes from off to the left. Looking over, Bearington is rubbing his paws over his face. Is he crying? Aster starts climbing to his feet. “Bearington?” he asks gently.

Bearington roughly gestures for Aster to sit back down. “Sorry, it’s just that hearing about this makes me think back to my own family. I know those things were hard for you, but,” Bearington trails off snuffling back more tears. The fur on his face is starting to stand up in wet, brown spikes. He takes another minute to pull himself back together. All of us wait in silent sympathy. “I’m sorry,” Bearington gasps around his tears. “I never really even knew my parents. If they’re still alive, I don’t know where they are. A small group of druids found me wandering around the forest alone after I’d somehow lost them. I lived with those crazy sons of bitches after that. Honestly, they really were crazy, but I loved them. Then, one day out of nowhere, a swarm of harpies attacked us.”

“That’s unusual,” Erwin murmurs.

“I don’t know what happened,” Bearington continues, his voice growing stronger and his tears stopping, at least for the moment. “I’m not sure if we wandered into their territory, but they came and attacked us. They killed all the druids of the tribe, including the people I thought of as my parents. I only made it out alive because I’ve always had an uncanny ability to hide unseen. They never even noticed me. I hid in some bushes, watching while it all happened. After they left, I went to the nearest town to find shelter and safety. I found some noble people there who took me in and taught me the ways of combat. I took it upon myself to learn everything I could so I would be able to defend myself in case anything like that ever happened again. Maybe even enact,” Bearington’s growly bass breaks again, and he turns away muttering another apology. “Just give me a minute, guys.”

Erwin rises silently to her feet and pads over to Bearington, resting one hand on his shaking shoulder. “One does not need to speak of origins which burden them with great pain,” she says gently.

“Don’t worry about me,” Bearington continues to snuffle. “I’m going to be fine.”

How horrible for Bearington! Who would have guessed such a thing could have happened to him? Just thinking about losing Kyume in such a way – the possibility nearly breaks my heart. To have lost your entire family in one fell swoop? I think of all my mothers and fathers and siblings, and I can’t imagine how painful it must have been. How painful it clearly still is.

“Perhaps we should change the subject?” I venture slowly. “Where do you come from, Erwin? Perhaps it might be a happier tale? I know practically as little about you as I did about Aster.” As I speak, Bearington moves away from the little circle we’ve formed and starts pacing along the tunnel. His ears are still cocked towards us, though, so I know he’s still listening even as disturbed as he is by his own memories. Hopefully Erwin’s story isn’t so tragic.

Aster looks at me incredulously. “Her? She’s totally Miss Stoic Samurai.”

“Have you ever bothered trying to ask her about herself?” I ask archly, shaking my head in exasperation. Personally, I disagree with Aster’s assessment. Although, yes, Erwin can be stoic, she is also willing to show emotions when she deems them appropriate. She was very compassionate just now with Bearington, and seemed sympathetic about my search for Kyume. Erwin is very restrained, as befits the station she holds in her culture, but she isn’t truly a stoic.

Aster snorts. “I’m pretty sure she hates me; I think she’d just stoic me out.”

I roll my eyes back at him. “I wouldn’t doubt the first half of that assumption.”

Darwin muffles his laughter behind a fist at this comment before saying, “Nor would you be the only person that she hates.”

Erwin tactfully ignore Darwin’s statement. Good, we don’t need to revisit the tension from earlier. I turn back to Erwin. “I’ll admit I’m curious. I’ve been traveling with all of you for nearly a month now. I’ve learned some more about them,” I gesture vaguely at the others. “Now I’d like to know more about you, if you’re willing to share.”

Erwin holds my gaze for a moment before dropping hers introspectively. Her hands find the scabbard of her sword and caress the lacquered wood absently. After another moment, she begins to speak, her voice soft and steady. “I come from a land that no longer exists. It was one of the first lands consumed by the Arlo Heint.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that,” I sigh softly. She continues with her story without glancing up. I’m not even sure if she heard me, she seems completely absorbed by the past.

“There was an attempt at the beginning to purge the lands by setting them aflame. Unfortunately, they not only lost control of the fire, but also aggravated and offended the spirits of the land who then came after the town. Much of my kin in that settlement were slain.

“My father was a samurai of our town, as was his father before him. His grandfather as well and so on for many generations. In Bermesian culture, it is traditional for the man to be the warrior and the woman to be the healer and caregiver.” Erwin glances up briefly. “Some might call it sexist, but that is the way our tribe evolved. When both my mother and father died, as well as my two brothers, there was nobody left to carry my father’s sword. I recovered this sword from my father’s dying hands and then I left to train myself in the ways of the blade.”

“How did you escape when the rest of your village was slain?” I can’t help but to ask when she pauses.

“I was not the only one to survive. A large majority of the village died, but some of us were saved. The Church came with their mages, scholars, and warriors. They fought and died for us. They made it possible for the rest of my people to flee. They brought us through a portal to Fellinor.”

Silence, broken only by the dying fire, fills the cavern as Erwin finishes. Her story is just as tragic as Bearington’s. Something in Erwin’s eyes, deep in their sapphire depths, shines with sadness, albeit one long come to terms with.

Finally, Aster just shakes his head. “For someone who self-trained with a blade, you are pretty damn good.”

“I had years of watching my father train on his own from morning to afternoon every day. Then, when I was ten and they had given up any hope of more children, my parents were blessed with my identical twin brothers. Twins are considered a great blessing in our society, thought to be a sign of great things to come. My father began training them as soon as they were big enough. I watched him train them for seven years before the Arlo Heint came. I am simply a good observer. I will never be anywhere near the warrior my father was, nor be able to compare to many of the samurai of our clan.”

Darwin nods with sympathy. “I can understand that feeling.”

“Unfortunately, because I have taken up the blade,” Erwin continues, “I am not well-met by those who do not reside within the Church. Many of the Bermesians within the Church come from my settlement and simply look the other way. More traditional Bermesians, those who have not been touched by plague and sickness and hardship, are not so understanding. That is their way, however, and I will not deny them that.”

“That’s a real shame. My clan would welcome you with open arms. We love warriors.”

Darwin’s comment succeeds in bringing a slight smile to Erwin’s lips. “Vanarans have always been very friendly people.”

“Oh, I meant the Clan Belmont themselves.” Erwin doesn’t reply to this as Bearington chooses this moment to come back and sit down with the group. The fur on his face is slowly starting to dry.

“Sorry about that, guys. I just needed to calm down a bit,” he explains.

“It seems we are all quite the sad bunch.”

“Even if we all have tragic backstories, at least we’re in good company,” I say trying to lighten the mood. Bearington gives me a wan smile at least.

“Hearing about you losing your sister made me think back to my family. I lost people dear to me twice, even if I can’t remember my real parents. It takes its toll.” Bearington shrugs in explanation of his earlier outburst.

“The world is a difficult place. It has only become harder since the disease has started running rampant.” Erwin’s words leave the Church’s involvement, good or bad, unspoken. But thinking of the Church does bring to mind something I’d been wondering about back in Fellinor. I suppose now is as good a time as any to ask. It’s not as if our conversation could get more depressing.

“On a slightly different note,” I start. “Back in Fellinor, when we were at the Church, the person we spoke to mentioned someone named Sapphire. Who is that?”

“Sapphire is a noble whose father conscripted him into the Church because he felt the boy had lived too much of a sheltered, luxurious life. Sapphire only accompanied us for a short time. He received an urgent message from his family calling him home shortly before we set out for Gylnis’s temple. I have not yet heard from any of my contacts what has transpired with him.” After explaining this, Erwin frowns thoughtfully. “Back to our original conversation, however, I can’t help but notice that Aster has not actually spoken of his family.” Of course, she’s completely right. I started out asking him about where he came from but then we ended up getting side-tracked when Aster spoke about the Church and the village they destroyed.

Aster shrugs and replies nonchalantly, “I’m fine. My family’s fine. I don’t have sad stories like all of you. My parents live in a kingdom west of here. My mother is an arch-mage and my father an arch-knight of the kingdom. That’s about all there is to it.”

Wait a second. Now I’m confused. “If your family lives in another kingdom, what was your connection to the village that the Church destroyed? Were you studying there or something?” I ask.

Aster nods. “Yeah, the village was essentially a second home. I was born with the rare ability to summon beings from other planes. After I graduated from the Academy, I decided to seek out specialized training to hone my skills. That particular town specialized in higher learning for magic academics. To be honest, I wasn’t that great of a student, though. I hate doing busy work, so I never really did a lot while I was there. I think I pissed off a lot of people because of that. Well, I know it. It was still a good place, though.”

“You pissing people off? It seems we’ve come full-circle to what you were saying earlier.” Erwin’s ironic tone isn’t lost on me, but it’s subtle enough that I’m not sure some of the others notice.

Aster shrugs helplessly, “There’s not a lot to say.”

“I suppose everybody resents someone who doesn’t have to work as hard to be good at something,” I point out. Aster just shrugs again and gives me a half-smile. He can’t deny the ring of truth in my statement. He’s smart enough not to try.

The room falls into silence once more as the conversation lulls, our breathing the only sound. Wait. The only sound? I look over to where the fire has been eating away at the bramble patch. Only embers remain now, glowing like fireflies to light our path.

“It seems as if the fire died out some time ago. Shall we continue our journey?” I suggest.

Darwin leaps eagerly to his feet. He’s more a man of action than words. Sitting around talking like this is probably not his preferred pastime. “Let’s go before we end up telling our whole life stories,” he urges.

I get up and dust myself off as the others do the same. Then I walk over to where Percy has fallen asleep, curled into a ball against one of the cavern walls. Waking him as gently as I can, I nudge one of his shoulders until he blinks up at me. Poor guy, he probably hasn’t had any decent sleep since he left the village.

“It’s time to go,” I say as I take his hand and help him up. He still seems sleep-dazed, but his eyes are clearing the sleep from them quickly. He nods, grabbing his sword.

[haplesshuman]

Breaking Dawn, Book 2 Part 1

In which nobody knows what they’re deailing with.

Let me tell you a little story.

In 2015, I had to do a university project on Boys’ Adventure Stories as a group presentation. As the only girl in the group, I got to look at the books from  a feminist point of view. I also had to guess which books in the library were boys’ adventure stories, took a pile out (of which sadly only three have stuck in mind - Northern Lights, the first book of the His Dark Materials trilogy, Stormbreaker, the first of the Alex Rider books, and Artemis Fowl, the first book in the series of the same name), and sadly never got to read those books. Shame. It didn’t help that I had to read Gold of the Gods, the very book that inspired this very blog.

Anyway, after looking random stuff up on TV Tropes, I decided to put that wrong right, and am now looking up the books I failed to read two years ago. I don’t think any of them will end up on Too Long; Didn’t Read. I’ve finally read the first Artemis Fowl book, and no, it’s not going on this blog.  Expect it to be referred to, though.

I would far sooner be reading that than Breaking Dawn. What you’re about to see is from the Book of Suck. I’d have hoped it to be one nice long part, but I’m afraid you’re going to be mistaken. I never finished book 2 whilst I still had Breaking Dawn. I ran out of patience at chapter... Oh, who cares? You do. Wait a second. Even the Book of Suck won’t tell me what chapter I stopped at.

I lost patience at the end of Chapter 12. Goody. That means I’ve got another... 27 chapters to go before I can wash my hands of this stuff. Well, shit.

Buckle up, kids.

And after that long intro, let’s kick this one off.

1. Preface. ‘Whiny crap’, I said. It’s mercifully short.

2. Italics for the wolf mind meld. Oh no. I took the decision to speed read those bits, and it seems nothing of value made it out of the actual page. Apart from Jacob being called out for being a horible person

3. Let’s meet Rachel Black! Yeah, Jacob’s sister has not appeared once in the story, and of course she makes her debut now. No, I know nothing about her.  I asked, ‘WHY THE HELL HAVE WE NOT SEEN RACHEL BLACK BEFORE?’ She’s not really plot-relevant, and sadly nor is she here. She just exists to be the girlfriend via imprint of some guy named Paul, so I’m just going to pretend they don’t exist from now on and just move on.

4. Reigns vs Reins. The term ‘free rein’ is spelt without a g. Whoever proofread this must have been blinded by dollar signs, that’s my only explanation for this one.

5. The Quil and Claire scene. Remember these guys from Eclipse? If you’re new to Too Long; Didn’t Read, then you’ll know that Claire is Quil’s girlfriend via imprint. She is also two, something which sent me to the Great White Telephone. I’m not sure what the point of this scene is, but Claire’s parents? Please teach Claire you can’t always get what you want, because Quil is never going to teach her.

What we do learn is that imprinting is basically mind rape. Ick.

6. Oh, the Protagonists are Horrible People. Yeah, they really are. They’re now lying to Charlie - who is blissfully aware that he is about to become a grandfather - about Bells’ pregnancy. I think he’d want to know. The story is that she’s sick - which would only DRAW A PARENT CLOSE. Jesus Christ, not only do we have protagonists who I can now no longer call heros if I ever could, but they’re STUPID AS ALL HELL.

Villain Protagonist is not a bad trope, mind you. It can work.

Here... it doesn’t work.

Also, dipping into more TV Tropes language, Did They Think Charlie Couldn’t Feel? Gaah.

9. Medical consent, people. Jacob bas even less right than Edward to force an abortian on Beells. He’s not related.

10. What has Leah done? Seriously, everyone seems to have it in for her. What did she do? Did she invent Comic Sans? She’s snarky, so no, Leah’s not letting me down in being an OK character.

11. Crazy idea. Edward comes up with one - having Jacob be a sperm donor - and because plot, it won’t work. He’s called out on this, but then it leads to the next point -

12. Jacob failing to sound his age. He does not sound like a 16-year-old. No freaking way am I buying that narration.

Again, I’m not saying this is a bad thing - if it’s justified (case in point - Artemis Fowl) . Where’s your justification, Jacob?

13. Snarky Chapter Titles. Unforunately, the snark came out wrong. The only one that vaguely amused me was Chapter 10′s title, and that’s only because it’s right - Jacob is an idiot.

14. This is pregnancy on drugs. Bella has turned into an optimist. She’s normally a really, really pessimistic whiny person. Uh, what happened? Who or what happened? (Any suggestions are to be placed in the comments)

15. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It doesn’t go like that. I can’t remember the full thing, but whatever interpretation you used, you got it wrong.

16. More rules of science are being torn up and set aflame. Why would the ultrasound not work? And also, whilst I dropped Biology 8 years ago, I’m pretty sure chromosones don’t work like that.

17. More headdesking. I don’t know a damn thing about artificial insemination, not being a farmer. It’s not really being handled well here. If Bells wants a kid and can’t really have one, couldn’t they get a vampire to be a surrogate (Not Rosalie, though)

18. That fight will never happen. Nuff said.

19. Everyone also hates Rosalie. Is it because she’s blonde? If so, someone needs to get over themselves.

20. The narration. I’ll get this elephant in the room out of the way - this narration is worse than Bella’s. Yeah, I know, can’t be unsaid.

21. In-laws. Doc, Bells is your daughter-in-law. This means she is family. Got that? Yes? Good.

22. Exposition that must break medical rules. Doc Cullen is now telling Jacob a whole pile of stuff that, as a friend of the expectant mother, shouldn’t really be finding out from him. Patient confidentiality, just saying.

23. Robbing a bank. Robbing a blood bank. Whilst, you know, there could be a blood shortage and people could be dying due to lack of suitable blood. Do I even have to say how wrong this is?

I’ll be back next week, if not with another part read, the long awaited Why I Won’t Review entry for The Host. In the meantime, I think I shall cheer myself up with something funny.

POSTSCRIPT: Remember my review of The Princess Diaries: A Royal Disaster? Well, I expleained the plot to my mum - who said it didn’t make sense at all. Looking at the plot again, yeah, sense is something it’s lacking. Thanks, Mum.

[flarebossmalva]

just for future reference and in case anyone was curious i’m going to explain what the hell i was on about re: some stuff in my writing tag

skipping things that are obvious or self-explanatory but if you’re puzzled by something i wrote and i didn’t explain it here then feel free to ask i guess

disgust - i thought of vomit immediately and then wrote about the last experience i had with a friend who was sick. i don’t actually remember which friend this was anymore. “you’re never going to die ever again” i’m not sure about but i think this may have been referring to how awful stomach sicknesses are and how they can literally be so bad they make you feel like you’re dying? that’s a guess

aether - thought of “ether” instead which is very volatile so that’s how i got onto the theme about exploding. i think the rest was just vague associations

pincushion - human pincushion. i guess someone who has bled out completely

aura - you know how they talk about people having colored auras? i just picked a color and went from there. don’t know what “i can taste it under my fingernails” means even remotely but if this is from when i worked in produce/floral i constantly had plant matter under my fingernails so maybe that. am reading “you look lovely, by the way. very fresh.” in GLaDOS’ voice for some reason and not sure if that was what i had in mind when i wrote it

mint leaves - catnip is in the mint family and some people says humans can get a mild high off smoking it

indie - this was about seeing mother mother live. the “he” is ryan

wind - probably masturbation but trying to explain the trip from point a to point b that i made here would get really complicated if i’m even recalling it correctly

lamp oil - amnesia: the dark descent. lamp oil is a resource in that game. player character hallucinates bugs and grinds his teeth when he spends too long in the dark

bombs - boss fight wheatley. the track that plays during that battle is called “bombs for throwing at you”

cucumber - i was thinking of items you could buy together at a supermarket that would disturb the cashier. a single cucumber, rope, and a paperback romance novel sends some interesting implications i think

columbia - no idea but one of my friends told me this is essentially the plot of bioshock infinite

kevin james - one of those paul blart mall cop memes involved the phrase “distant egg song!” and that’s what i was going off of

marigold - flowey

25-27 - since this looked like it was referring to three sequential questions on an askmeme i acted as though that’s what i was answering here. i don’t know why i chose the colors blue and orange; portals from the portal games are those colors but what with the other two responses in this post being undertale related i’m thinking maybe blue = sans and orange = papyrus

🙌 - reference to a (nsfw, i won’t link it) fanfic about sans smoking. i have a massive smoking kink so i think you can see why i’d find that emoji appropriate

syringe - this is a reference to a short story i wrote in high school. the association is that i think syringes were used to administer drugs to the protagonist

wine - almost positive there’s an audio log in the first bioshock game that’s a bit like this. even if there isn’t, there’s an area where a party has clearly gone down (lots of alcohol, splicers are dressed fancy) and that’s what it made me think of

glow - no idea

can of soda - i was thinking of a sprite can

amsterdam by imagine dragons - a song i don’t know; i used to be friends with this kid who was weirdly snobby about music and would condescend to me if i admitted to not knowing of a song or artist, so i wrote about that, kind of

apartments - “apartments are like cages” is a phrase that either i or someone else has used and i thought of that phrase and then i thought about cages and then i thought about johanna from sweeney todd and her one musical number

gold - this is about my paternal grandfather moving west as an adult. he didn’t move as part of the gold rush but that’s what i thought of first and then i thought about his moving to california so this was kind of a mix of the two concepts

sting - musical artist sting has got an album called brand new day and this was written thinking about the album art

lunar theatre - i’ve explained this one before but i wrote this while really sick around the time i first got diagnosed with lyme disease. i was sleeping most of the time and tired whenever i was awake. at the time i was also taking ativan (among other medications) and it made me very sleepy and out of it. the title comes from an art installation i saw once which basically looked like an artificial shoreline, which is where the ocean/water imagery comes from

tessellation - obvious maybe but repetition is part of the definition of the word

roses - james from team rocket, often carrying a rose

paris - this was a joke about egg hatching in pokemon x/y (the most efficient way to do it is to bike in circles repeatedly around the game’s version of the eiffel tower)

n - i feel like this is obvious too but it’s a joke about n harmonia from the 5th gen pokemon games

nature - i’m not sure how i got to talking about gelatin molds but have you seen some of the ones from the fifties and sixties? truly horrifying

berry - early on in x/y you’re put in charge of a berry field and then later you become champion (the league is at the top of a mountain). there are curtains in the champion’s room. idk i just thought about becoming champ and then abandoning the berry field since that’s basically what i did in-game

dogs - pretty literal, this is just my experience with pet dogs

q - this is a reference to a song from goddamn sesame street

teacup - malva has a butler, who presumably serves her tea sometimes. he battles you on her behalf once and his team is pretty powerful, but of course she’s elite four and would have him beat

guitar - at the time there were a lot of “wonderwall” memes that’s what i thought of

pine - pine trees, christmas trees, their lives are cut short but they get to dress up fancy for a few weeks, i don’t know

touch-me-not - fanfic i plotted out once but never actually finished writing. in it, bryony and celosia are using one of those remote-control vibrators (celosia was the one wearing it, and bryony had the remote, iirc) but if you remember team flare also used a remote to control the ultimate weapon and i loved the idea of getting the two remotes mixed up. all the higher-ups (save bryony and celosia, of course) are playing with the remote thinking it’s broken and trying to get it to work. meanwhile poor celosia is dying and the only one who notices is malva, who is the “she” in this piece, who deliberately starts messing with the remote to get a reaction out of bry + cel. i don’t remember how this fanfic was going to end but i think probably celosia would excuse herself to go to the bathroom (to, ahem, take care of herself) and malva would follow her in and then idk they’d fuck. listen i’ve had worse ideas

nightshade - i’m not sure how i got from the prompt to my fill but the fill is definitely about another fic i was working on involving a trainer who experiments on eevee trying to discover new eeveelutions

knives - my abuser had a “suicide attempt” (not really, he didn’t do anything except think about it, but that’s how he classed it iirc) where he planned on using a knife. also he wrote (bad) poetry once comparing me to a knife because idk i was mean for not wanting to fuck him probably

cake - it’s 2007 bro. memes bro. this was about portal bro

gameboy - self-explanatory i think but this was specifically a goof on ben drowned even though a lot of video game creepypasta start out this way

ruby - as in the pokemon game. this was about being a team magma grunt

cicada - i think this one is straightforward but in case it’s not, in my area you find dead cicadas all over the place in june

notebook - this was about harriet the spy

tree - based off of something that happened with me and my best friend when i was eleven or twelve

big ben - well, english clock towers... there’s a scene in a christmas carol where scrooge wakes up and hears the clock strike an hour it’s already struck and gets freaked and worries about the spirits coming to haunt him

cookie - i got a baby doll for christmas when i was a little kid and gave it to my younger sister bc she liked baby dolls and i didn’t. she named that doll cookie. this was general feels about being the Bad Child who Wasn’t Feminine

paint - straightforward again but this is about my parents’ house, the one we moved into when i was a young teen and where they still live with my little sister (and, currently, me). it was initially painted white and we repainted yellow a few years ago (i think after i had moved out to go to college). also that house still doesn’t feel like home to me in the same way our old house did

boots - god this is gonna take a lot of explaining but in the underland chronicles, second book, gregor (protagonist) is separated from his baby sister (nicknamed boots) after, iirc, the boat they’re in capsizes and they get washed into the nearby catacombs by the waves. he assumes she’s drowned since she’s a toddler and can’t swim. it’s basically his blue screen of death moment and he spends the next part of the book feeling totally dead inside, like a machine, no emotion no empathy. this scene fucked me up bad when i first read it aged about nine

freckles - i think this is obvious but just in case, this is about me (formerly) hating my freckles

egg - aforementioned fic about eevee experimentation was maybe going to involve unethical forced hatching of eevee eggs by cracking them open before they’re ready. i was basically thinking of every sick thing you could do to a pokemon to try and force an evolution

fairy - same fic. the protagonist has a shiny eevee that she gives special treatment and thinks is going to evolve into something special bc no evolution method she’s tried has worked on it. it was to be revealed later that her “special” eevee had actually just swallowed an everstone, and, immediately upon operating to remove said everstone, eevee evolved into sylveon

orange - as a small child i was allergic to oranges. the only memory i have of having an allergic reaction was breaking out in hives and going down our creaky old staircase, which felt big and intimidating to me as a little kid, to tell my parents about it

yuri - i thought of a favorite f/f pairing of mine, bryony/celosia, and in particular the scene that got me to ship it. in that scene, you battle celosia (who acts very woe-is-me upon being defeated) and bryony immediately springs to her (girl)friend’s defense

mitochondria - i learned the word from the sequel to a wrinkle in time, in which charles wallace gets really sick with some sort of mitochondrial disease and his older sister meg tries to save him by like astral projecting inside his mitochondria or something. god that book was weird

a gigantic rubber duck - when she was a baby someone gave my sister a gigantic rubber duck (which she adored, i think we still have it somewhere) and so this was about how i felt about having a new sibling

electricity - eevee fic again. rival character in the fic was an electric-type trainer. this was about the convention of trainers locking eyes and then battling

feverish - fevers as sex metaphor somehow??? i guess because fevers, like sex, often leave you sweaty. eleven was when i had my first wet dream and eighteen was when i listened to that “naegi with a fever” audio and got real gay

anger - metaphor again. i really did make a glass paperweight one time, on a class trip to a glass museum. my abuser and i were off-again with our friendship at the beginning of that trip and on-again by the end of it but there was still, i think, unresolved anger on both sides. that’s the association. i don’t know how to explain what i was thinking here beyond that

mosquitos - “petty annoyances” is just what i think of mosquitos and then i guess i just went from there. “bigger than i am but you know when to kneel” might have been my abuser again. he was, indeed, bigger than me but he got down on his knees begging me to be his friend again right at the end of things between us lol. honestly it was the most compelling thing he ever did

laundry basket - i thought about dirty laundry and then about worrying my clothes smelled dirty or that i smelled dirty and like, obsessively bathing because someone wanted to come over and have sex with me and i was just barely not a virgin at that point and had no idea what i was doing and was freaked out over the whole thing

cow - i took a year of spanish and for some reason the only thing i actually learned was how to say “where is the cow” and “the cow is here” which are not actually useful phrases in most contexts