#i digress but i want to believe there's hope here so i will cope this way with the new chapter

[torgawl]

i wonder what this means

we know judgeman's appearance is similar to lady justice, who has a blindfold over her eyes, to represent impartial or blind justice. it's interesting that during sukuna's trial, and subsequent death penalty veredict, the stitches break on one side and that eye opens. something that didn't happen during the first death penalty delivered to yuuji despite both eyes opening up. we know everything higuruma is aware about his own ct, and ce in general, he grasped through reverse engeneering. his surprise about judgeman confiscating sukuna's cursed tool and not the cursed technique highlights that higuruma is only aware of his own technique due to things he was able to experience and deduce from the short time that has passed since he became a sorcerer. it's safe to say he had never persecuted someone who used a cursed tool before and therefore was unaware of this aspect of his technique (similar situations have happened before to characters like geto and even the way mahoraga works). this makes me wonder if judgeman's abilities are something we and higuruma have limited information on and there's something else going on, hinting at a possible outcome for higuruma/higuruma's character.

judgeman's eye opening is especially interesting because that is exactly the stance higuruma decided to take once he lost faith in the justice system. jujutsu kaisen and the concept of cursed energy and cursed techniques are very based in buddhist philosophy, or rather the power system is, and more specifically the concept of suffering. buddha recognised there was suffering in life and started guiding people into following a practice to get rid of that suffering, through the four noble truths the noble eightfold path. which ultimately would result in liberation from the samsara, cycle of rebirth and suffering. a lot of that lifestyle is learning how to properly process suffering in a way that's beneficial to the individual with the goal of achieving enlightment. in jjk suffering directly creates cursed energy and when that suffering sort of accumulates it originates cursed spirits. jujutsu sorcerers are basically people able to process their own suffering and their own ce to fight and exorcise the suffering that's constantly emerging from humanity (tying deeply with the core theme of jjk and a big plot point - the merging). you could even draw parallels between ways individuals cope with their own pain and their cursed techniques, which is very obvious in characters like geto (ingesting curses through cursed spirit manipulation akin to bottling up his own feelings and letting that suffering eat him from the inside out), for example. where am i going with this? i'm not sure (sorry if you read all of this expecting a really cool theory) but what if this is sort of an awakening moment for higuruma? a moment where his technique will finally align with his beliefs? i just don't believe the differences in judgeman throughout the story are a coincidence. not when judgeman also has this form, with both its eyes completely shut.

[nalyra-dreaming]

I'm sorry but I can't believe sex in ep6 even topic of discussion.

1)Why would they go to such lengths and spend their time and resources on making floaty sex, if it didn't mean anything and didn't serve any purpose? What purpose did it serve? Well, the first and last time we also saw floaty sex in ep1 and it was clear representation of connection and pleasure that sends you flying to Saturn and back. So, logically, ep6 sex too supposed to show connection and pleasure.

2) Next point (i'm not sure about this one tbh): perhaps there's one more parallel to ep1 scene - Louis "didn't consider himself a homosexual at that time" and we see cut to him having enthusiastic sex. In ep6 he was telling Daniel about being numb and we have cut to him PARTICIPATING in sex and not just lying there like a corpse.

3) They literally included Lestat stopping and checking on Louis and not doing anything before Louis kissed him. He noticed that Louis wasn't mentally there and stopped. Clear indication that Lestat wanted CONSENSUAL sex, if he truly didn't care he would just proceed to fuck Louis because Louis wasn't stopping him.

4) Give Louis a little agency, would you?(general you, not you, Nalyra) As I said, we didn't have any indication that Louis wad pressured into it, that lestat didn't care about Louis' consent and pleasure. Just because you're depressed doesn't mean you're incapable of making decisions. Louis' kiss was him reassuring lestat that he's here with him. He KNEW that lestat needed reassurance to proceed. Lestat can't read Louis' mind, he can't be 100% if Louis wants it or not, so he has to rely on what Louis TELLS him with words and body language. Louis told lestat with his actions that he wants him to proceed. That's Louis' decision, like it or not

5) I know fandom likes to act like Claudia is mentally 14 forever, but for majority of story she's grown woman. I'm actually not sure if she truly thinks Louis wouldn't mind her being in his head while they're having sex or she's actively disregarding his boundaries (that he didn't establish) but there's fact: it's weird. Maybe she thinks she's helping Louis to "cope" with sex because she's projecting her trauma with Bruce on Loustat (which is understandable!) but for me Louis' sounds uncomfortable, and resigned, half-heartedly trying to deflect Claudia. "Anywhere sounds like nowhere" - for me it was clear that he doesn't really want to leave and doesn't want to have this conversation but he fails to say it outright and shut down Claudia. So he just makes up excuses not to leave, avoids telling NO, and blocks his mind when Lestat notices that something is wrong.

So, my point, that cut from Bruce to Lestat was Claudia's mind coming to comparison. She thinks Louis does it to appease lestat, she's probably tries to help telling Louis about her escape plan, she views Louis' reluctants as fear of Lestat and that's it, when probably main reason is Louis simply not wanting to leave.

I'm so sorry for long essay, hope you don't mind! Love your work and blog:)

:) Glad you like.

And yeah... I cannot believe we're at this point again/still either.

Exactly. This is a deliberate thing, a deliberate connection to the best sex Louis had. As said before, it carries meaning.

Well, I mean, there are a lot more instances of Louis saying something and the show showing us something else. Or vice versa. That is... exactly the point. Louis is telling the tale for an effect. And that effect was to lead to the justified "murder night". But the why will be part of season 2.

I know

Louis is (not just) depressed because of Lestat. He is deep in the rite of passage. He addresses that on the bench. And yeah.. for some reason Louis' never gets his agency in these discussions. Because he could have moved away. He could have left. But he did not want to. He stayed right there, in Rue Royale during those 6 years (for example). Where Lestat could find him. But I digress. Louis does have agency, indeed. And it is often dismissed for some reason -.-

Claudia's thinking is very black and white, pun not intended. It's stark contrast. She hates and loves with the full power of puberty, at all times, no matter her mental age. Her hatred for Lestat colors her perception of Louis' love for him - she just cannot imagine Louis loving him. Oh she understands it. But to her Lestat is like Bruce, the worst of the worst, and she cannot fathom that there are actually vampires out there... who are much, much worse. That is part of the horror, that she just cannot... imagine, because ultimately Lestat and Louis raised her as a child and then a loved family member - not as a coven member. She has no point of reference, unfortunately. And no, Louis neither wants to have that conversation (but he is too nice to shut it down), nor does he want to leave. And that just... flies right over her head.

Neither Claudia nor Louis actually fear Lestat, and definitely not even after the fight. The car scene made that quite clear, imho.

Oh, they are angry at him, and justified in that anger. But fear? Nope.

[nagy-bari]

middle europe ex-eastern block about 3 years older but hooo boi does it resonate. the aftermath of soviet block terror is still here only with a greenwash over the older communist propaganda. (not gonna go into actual day to day political problems just the fear aspect of things - so feel free to skip, also ramble warning)

TL;DR

The feeling is universal - the wish to act, to move, to start something but being petrified/frozen to act by old rules/tales of horror - the solution is personal. find a reason to move even if. find something you think is worth risking that horror. find the true value in ideals, movements, ideas, dreams. being without practice is just the stating point. yeah, we will make a bit of a fool of ourselves but if you wish to be someone involved find the reasons that moves you. out of discomfort zones, out of old habits. if these are people the better. talk, debate, if you can in person the better, start small then grow out, etc etc.

Realising this part of our past is still just the starting point. good journey on ahead.

(just make sure you are really up to debate, to listen to the other so sleep before hand and rest well - personal experience - no matter how true what you say it hurts others if you say it with desperation.)

where to start.

- parents who grew up to a family blacklisted by the Communist Party learned: to keep to yourself and hope at least your thoughts are free in your own head, never spoken out, never made into action, because those actions (aftermath of a failed revolution) were hell on earth.

- other parents favored by the Communist Party learned to serve in order to stay in that favor - to become the eyes of the party, to spy on neighbours and collegues etc. so their kids will have it better. so their kids are offered a safe job to start out. etc. these people learned to serve into the terror and fear-control. for a questionable benefit. cause the party needed scapegoats sometimes, the image needed to be uphold and you never knew when past  failings of your lives were dragged out and damned you.

- the generation that saw the end of the soviet union believed that now things will change. they believed that now we’re our own rulers, that the damned capitalist ideals and the rotten indiviualism we learned about will be as sweet and as liberating as we dreamed of.

- but the damage on how people regard each other was already done. you either don’t trust someone because you fear they work for someone with power and will make your life a living hell if they don’t like you, or you fear that your past will come back and people will want retribution for it.

- country specific horror: never really sorted out what to do with individuals who were in power and still hold power, before and after the end of the Soviet Union. Cause let me tell you it’s a mess. but it’s not strictly into topic, so i digress.

- parents generation grew up under a horror-comedy show of communist government and learned to survive one way or another. stealing cigarettes and causing mayhem was probably still in their life but there was also a little edge to it, if you dared to do it to someone from the communist party or an frowned upon intellectual - enemy of the state. if you did it to their kids or if their kids pranked you. they grew up with a second nature to everything they still hold to these days (some. others now seemed to forget everything and chase a dream to cope with what we have) a hidden language of politics that will make or break your life if you know how to play it, a dangerous reading that can cost you your whole social existential status or more.

- my generation was born into said ‘freedom’ after ‘the systemchange’ but nobody really was ready on how to deal with it. the parents at that time were too drunk on supposed freedom granted by capitalism that they didn’t really made sure to end the terror or stop the mechanics of it still running. social interactions were laced with a bit of a skeptical non-acts, noone really cleaned up after the soviets here. we were born into a world full of new hopes and huge dreams built on fantasies with old habits of ‘don’t talk about this or that’ and ‘better not to aggravate people and just blend in’ and ‘ respect has nothing to do with obedience’ and ‘please just don’t act up, and keep a low profile’ and ‘it’s better to be tolerated than to confront a controversial subject or oppinion’ and the simplest version of it all (and the most dragged out reason still in use) ‘your religion and political standpoint is not suited for social debate, it concerns noone, you need not to answer to any questions about it’

-only that my generation was the one also growing up in the 2008 economic crisis where all those dreams of new ways and colored glasses of the wonderful west and capitalisms started to crack and crash down. and the panic resoluted in old practices, the don’t trust anyone and every man for their own if you want to succeed because if people hear event he beginning of ‘commun’ they have a viceral knee-jerk reaction of NO, not again, anything but that - even to the better parts of it. and we were left alone to figure out what to learn and what to forget.

- right now my country has a strange standpoint on communities and participation and activisms and such. the last year was full of protests started by students (15-18 years old) and before this universities tried to step up and tell people that hey, maybe turning everything formerly owned by the country- the state - into something that can be given out to indiviuals like personal property is not the way a country will thrive. that maybe if the law is that you have to be a student till you are 16 and the country will provide an opportunity to learn till then, underpaying and overworking the teachers is not the way to do it. that maybe forcing obviously idiotic laws is not the way to prove how free we are now.

- and here i am with my over a quater of century behind my tiny feet and i cannot gather the courage to go out and march with them for a better tomorrow. i hate crowds and hate conflicts, i wish to see what is so different from those terror days with my two eyes but i fear that if i go i’ll only see confirmation that nothing has changed. that our generation is at the same starter point as those who learned to speak double, to play the hidden political game. and i don’t want to play that game.

- what we learned was that if something is never found out, it may be for the best. thankfully my parents never tracked my phones, i only got it to inform them where i need to be picked up, or if an afternoon class was canceled. i roamed the internet quiet freely (scorched my brain a bit without filters but thank god i’m really picky) and the only thing my parents told me was not to share my pictures with anyone or my name or my adress etc etc.

- till university most of my experience was positive when it came to building contacts on the internet and then building them further offline. so i’m lucky to be still picky i guess. but it comes mostly from the sole fact that i use a whole different language online. i use english - but my offline reality is built and lived by a whole other logic and culture.

- i learned self-confidence from being online and how to be a little liar about oh so many important things. so here’s the catch. if pressed i would say i’m trying my best to be an intellectual. hate it or not it comes with the first step: critical thinking and approach of topics. Constructive criticism. Trying to find the real value of things and reasons and habits and traditions and then sorting them and keeping them etc.

- extremes are everywhere. ‘the loud minority’ - as it comes up often in arguments. people will shout the most absurd shit you’ve ever heard and believe it at the moment and the day after and you’ll just wonder if the world has gone mad. yes and no. it did and will do and always is going mad, cause this is the game itself. the game that now supposedly does not come with terror or living hell as a consequence. it’s the basic problem of standing into a conflict. of taking a side. of expressing yourself.

- i guess our generation learned to express quite well. the problem is the taking action. here the main problem is the ‘why should i bother, if nothing will ever change’. out there in the west you tell me it’s the old stories of fabricated horror. i’m not sure all of those were lies. but i’m in no position to tell otherwise. here we learned that ideologies will make simple people into the cruelest of devils and sadistic horrohfreaks. and sometimes both sides turns into the same monsters. and history will always show how seemingly opposites are the same fucking monster over and over again. but we’ve also seen what it takes to face them. sometimes you die, sometimes you’re threatened or tortured or blackmailed. but the decision is there to act. and if you do you probably have a good reason. cause you are running into danger you know bigger than you. so either everone was a big baffon idiot who went against the Comminist party or they had something/someone to do it for.

- we have no idea how to build communities cause the only real one, where you did not felt threatened was (hopefully) your family and that’s just a completely different thing. the way our parents lived was built on communities they had while learning. the profession they choose heavily determined their circle of friends and contacts. plus the contacts from family friends and old associates. i cannot tell you about the mechanics of the State Party under the Soviet era, cause my family was more on the blacklist side of things.

- nuclear family does not have to be inheritly bad (or good. it’s built on the hope of two normal thinking grown up deciding together and acting on it. it has a lot to go awful. takes a little only. like having no real idea what you sign up for.) having siblings does help you learn to compromise and live with people you may not understand all the time. i’m not sure what people bring up as argument for or against families but i’m grateful to have experienced it, even if i do not plan on starting one (as of yet. it’s also economically easier in a family so who knows)

- sex, sexuality and all this stuff is personal and would love to keep it that way, cause really it concerns you and the person you share it with. i might be a prude here but sometimes it’s just not that interesting and people who are hung up on other’s sexual activites and interest are just the worst of nosy people and you can tell them that. setting up boundaries is just another useful part of social interactions. but i guess ya’ll know that already.

if you powered thought all of this ramble (whoever you might be, sitting in the void) thank you. from the middle of europe, someone trying really hard to find something to live for, act for etc i trully thank your attention. trying to build connections and communities is a hard task, trying to find your worldview is a hard task. thank you for your time and eyes following my rambling thoughts. and if you take away anything from this at all - don’t give up. the world is too curious to shut ourselves in. all the jokes are out there.

here's my hot take about my generation and people younger than me (I'm 22 years old)

The reason current teenagers and people in their really early 20s are conservative on accident and have such shitty takes on the internet is because our generation was much more sheltered than previous generations and because we were raised to be ok with orwellian servailence and that is 100% the fault of our parents, Reagan Era kidnapping panics, and the rise of technology all coming together to prevent us from doing the sketchy shit that sends parents into panic mode but which is also completely fundemental to childhood development. If your parents had even a crumb of money to their name and even a shred of free time they started tracking your phone as soon as it was possible to. I did not experience this because my parents are actively trying to live like it's the 1990s and still have not gotten cell phones of their own, and did not let me have one until I was 18 years old and it was no longer their choice, but literally over half of my friends in middle and high school had their phones tracked by their parents at some point or other, and we would occasionally find this out, not because their parents told them, but when we were trying to do the aforementioned sketchy shit and their parent's car would pull up. And I would, like a reasonable person after finding this out, encourage my friends to just leave their phones at home, and their response would be "What if I get kidnapped" or "My parents are just trying to keep me safe"

This in my estimation has lead to a combination of kids being terminally online because they do have internet access and are better at deleting search history than their parents think they are, but don't have the freedom to go out and do shit without their parents' knowledge or consent, so they have the most privacy from the people who control their lives while they're on the internet, and kids not having the real world experiences they should have, not knowing how to connect with other people irl, not feeling comfortable leaving the house because of the horror story lies their parents told them to make them ok with the surveillance they were inflicting on their kids. Kids these days are growing up in the fucking panopticon when they should be out in the woods playing with knives or stealing cigarettes from their older sibling and going out to an empty parking lot to smoke them or whatever and that shit is sticking with them into adulthood. Things that were "tee hee we could get in trouble isn't this so fun and daring" in the 1990s and 2000s have become in the 2010s and 2020s things that are "If I do that without texting my parents some sort of lie to excuse where my location is my parent's car will pull up and I will get grounded for the next two weeks."

Like even when I was 19 I had a 16 year old friend who would volunteer their time at a food shelf and that's how we knew each other. We would talk about dungeons and dragons together, and the game store was 4 blocks from the food shelf. One day we left the food shelf earlier than they had told their parents they would and they got punished for that. We were literally just going to look at dungeons and dragons miniatures and dice, which was self evident if you could see where we started and how far we walked and where too. I have to assume that this isn't uncommon. It's wrong, but it's not uncommon.

[mylifeisactuallyamess]

A/N: I have been thinking for ages how I could make Run something I could write. Thankfully talking with my Star Wars guru @daydreamsofren spawned this beauty. It not secret that I am so desperate to escape my real life and this is just one way of coping.

Warnings: Not much in this chapter. Minor character death, implied murder, Poe affection (is that a warning?) mention of established relationship. Multi chapter, will be 18+. NSFW. MDNI. The timelines are not canon in this but honestly, fuck canon.

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2

Word Count: 2025

Pairing: Armitage Hux x F!Reader

The silence was unsettling, it had to be. Something about an interrogation room filled most people with dread but you found it comforting. Maybe it’s what made you such a good intelligence officer, the way you could unnerve people with just your presence had them spilling everything to you.

The man sitting before you though, wasn’t crumbling. His hair was deep grey and long, his skin tanned and weather beaten from being on a desert planet for so long. He was wearing sand wrappings, they travelled up his arms and down legs, his tunic was long and loose fitting, the trousers he wore were tight against his body so the sand couldn’t get in.

His head hung down as he leaned against the binding that held his wrists behind the chair. You had asked for him to be freed, he couldn’t escape this room and he wouldn’t get very far if he did but Poe said it was for your safety. You let out a small sigh scrolling through the information that had been hacked from an old imperial terminal the technicians had managed to get some power to. Words lept out at you, Naval Intelligence, Commander, Nova Star, Emperor’s Will Medal, Admiral… The man was decorated by imperial standards. And he was supposed to be dead.

He was certainly silent enough to be a dead man, he hadn’t made a sound since he’d been dragged in from the sands of Jakku. Considering how old he was the man had kept up with training, his physique was thick and muscular you had no doubts he was dangerous, his deeds within the rule of the Empire were legendary. Palpatine’s right hand man, some even said the man before you ran the Empire in all but name.

“We know who you are.” You let a flicker of annoyance cross your features, this man had all sorts of information that could solidify facts on a growing darkness in the Unknown Regions. He had helped bring it to fruition but why he was still on Jakku you wished to find out. If only he would just speak. You’d been sitting here for five hours now and you actually wondered if he’d fallen asleep, his swathes of grey hair covered his face and you didn’t want to get any closer to him. Some of the intelligence agents you worked with adopted tougher methods but you very rarely found you needed them. General Organa said something about you having a trusting face and it caused them to spill to you. You didn’t believe her and Poe had teased you ever since she’d said it, but your thoughts were digressing. You stood abruptly hoping to drag even a flinch from him but the man was a damn statue. Snatching the tablet off the table you left the room hating that this one was testing your limits. Poe detached himself from the wall as you locked the door and followed you down the corridor.

“Well?”

“Nothing,” you snapped. Poe swore under his breath, dragging his hand through his curls except they just bounced back to where they were. He looked back the way you’d just come and you went to follow his gaze but he hastily wrapped an arm around your shoulders.

“Can I get you a drink Commander? Maybe go over a strategy that he might respond to?”

“I really should get back, I just needed to get out of the room for a moment.” He gave you that cocky flyboy grin, the one that had all the women on the base swooning, especially you. The frustration of the situation took over and you leaned into him, his hand sliding up the side of your face as he accepted your quick kiss.

“Is that a yes, sweetheart? Because he isn’t going to suddenly decide he wants to talk after five minutes.” He was right and you grinned with a quick roll of your eyes.

“Fine. Just one.” His deep brown eyes flashed mischievously and he began to guide you outside. Disembarking from the Corvette had you breathing the rich planet air deeply, spread before you were rows of X-Wings all having maintenance and being cleaned. The fleet recently had some new ones delivered from the New Republic, they trickled in slowly. The accounts had to be fixed so it didn’t look like the Republic were funding the Resistance outright but it seemed General Organa still had friends in high places. Or in the right places.

Poe guided you to a table in the small cantina disappearing for a minute only to return with a bottle of whiskey and a couple of cups. You groaned and rubbed a hand over your face.

“I thought you meant like a caf or tea or something, I should know you better huh?”

“You look like you need this,” he told you, pouring a hefty amount for you. “Besides, it might loosen up your trusting face.” You reached across the table and swatted him with your datapad where he made an exaggerated show of being hurt but already you felt yourself relaxing. Sipping the Corellian rocket fuel you fell into an easy conversation and soon some more of Poe’s team joined you. They were your little pocket of family in this vast bleak Galaxy, really they were all you had left.

Looking down at your datapad you saw time had flown by, knocking back the last of your drink, you told them you had to leave much to their dismay. Poe got up to kiss you goodbye, Snap whistled and Jess groaned at the show of affection but you loved it, giving Poe a grin before you walked away.

The corridor was empty as you approached your interrogation room which was odd because someone should be here at all times. Activating the lock on the door it whooshed open to reveal Rax still in the same position, leaning forward against his bindings, hair low and covering his hanging head.

“Alright Gallius time to give up this stoic act,” you demanded, placing the datapad on the table and crossing your arms. “We know who you are, we know what you did at the Battle of Jakku. We will use force to extract information from you about where they fled to.” Silence. Not your usual comforting silence, no this was deeper. As silent as the grave, you thought that was a term you’d heard. “Rax?” You uncrossed your arms and hesitantly moved towards him, your eyes skimming over his form. Instinctively you pressed a hand against his neck, swearing loudly. Activating your com you called for a medic but you already knew it was too late. You searched him but there was nothing to show he’d been shot, no blood so he wasn’t stabbed, this was something else.

You demanded a tox screen from Dr Kalonia wanting to know exactly what he died of and when. You left the ship, your steps firm and angry as you made your way to the command centre underground. Leia was in the middle, she was always in the middle directing everything. Her dark brown eyes lit up at your arrival but her expression fell when she saw no good news was written over your own face. She motioned for you to follow her into the private room at the back, closing out the bustle of the room she perched on the table.

“What happened?”

“He’s dead.” There was no point even sugar coating it, he was dead and your strongest lead for finding the Imperials was gone.

“Do we know why?” Leia asked.

“No. I left the room for an hour maximum just to get a break because he wasn’t fucking talking!” You paced otherwise you’d punch something. “The Doc is doing a tox screen…” your datapad bleeped and you accessed the report immediately. “Shit. Shit.”

“Commander…”

“Someone used a fucking lullaby on him.” You handed her the pad.

“One of ours?” She queried and you nodded. Someone had sneaked into your interrogation room, someone who had access and forced him to bite down on one of the suicide pills that the Resistance kept for their spies if they were caught. “This is bad news,” she murmured. “And an investigation I would rather not conduct right now.” You glared at her in disbelief.

“We have a traitor in our midst, possibly from the Imperials themselves or someone paid by them and you’re not willing to conduct an investigation?”

“Excuse me Commander but last I checked you were not in charge here,” the General’s tone changed and you knew she wasn’t going to move on this. “There are other ways to get intelligence, they can’t stay hidden for much longer and I do believe they will make their move soon. We just need to wait.” You almost snatched your datapad from her hands hating what you were hearing. You disagreed with everything that had just gone down and right now it just made you want to up and leave this whole organisation in the dust.

“We don’t have time to wait and they just made their move,” you pointed out jabbing your finger at the screen of your pad.

“We don’t have the resources to verify everyone on this base! As soon as we start they will run anyway. It’s a pointless endeavour Commander.” You sneered at her words, nodding in reluctant acceptance.

“Yes, General.” You activated the door barging your way through the room not caring who you knocked into and ignoring their aggravated cries as you took the stone steps two at a time. You saw Poe heading towards you but you were too livid to even acknowledge him, the question dying in his mouth as you carried on walking to your room.

What was she thinking? Since when did the Resistance let prisoners just die on their watch? You paced up and down the room you shared with Poe, your fists clenching but nothing helped the build up of anger in your chest. It filtered down your arms and before you knew it the datapad had left your grip and smashed against the far wall. The screen fractured, spiking from the point of impact like a web and already you could hear the berating you were going to get from Leia. These were expensive and the Resistance couldn’t afford to keep replacing them which was another thing that peeved you off.

The Resistance, apparently the good force within the Galaxy, had no time, no resources, little readily available funding, and no personnel. It was a joke. Most of them worked round the clock to the point of exhaustion, maxed out on stimulants just to keep up with the demands that Leia expected of them. Just because she seemed inhuman and able to survive off 2 hours asleep didn’t mean everyone else could.

With a sigh you picked up the datapad, yet again your temper had got the better of you and probably yet again it was going to get you in trouble. You honestly had no idea how you held onto your Commander rank most days. The pad screen flickered to life and a notification about a personal encrypted message popped up on the damaged screen. Frowning you tried to swipe it, eventually the programming kicked in and you saw it decoding the message. Most of you had a private messaging service on your datapads so you could message sources who wished to remain nameless, or each other and it not be picked up by random probes or whoever else was floating out there in the Galaxy. The programme finished quicker than normal which meant it was a small message, you had no agents in the field right now so you had no idea who was contacting you. It took a few attempts to get the screen to register your finger but when you clicked on the message your blood ran cold.

Just one word. One word you’d never dreamed of seeing on its own. One word that tipped your entire world upside down. One word that made your heart pound erratically. A word that changed your life forever:

RUN.

[thevillainsfangirl]

The Teavee family make me sad.

Yes, the Teavee family from the iconic childhood tale, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It’s their story, the Buckets are just at the forefront of it.

Specifically, those 👆🏽 versions of the Teavees, from the 2005 film and the 2013 musical, though I will also look at the National Tour for the Broadway version because of the song they use in it.

Now, let me start off with this: I firmly believe that Norman and Doris Teavee love their son, and they are doing their best. Their best just isn’t very good. (They literally suck so bad as parents in ‘71, as he has 0 basic manners and they’ll let him get a gun for his 12th birthday! However, I don’t see them in the first movie as Doris & Norman anyway, and I think their names are different.)

...

I first want to cover the musical. Here, Michael is a feral child; he is violent, he is... “high-spirited,” he smokes 2 packs of cigarettes a day (it used to be more)... he has set their cat on fire and chloroformed a nurse (which makes me wonder if they needed a nurse for him?), he somehow stole a German tank, and he is on house-arrest... at only 10-years-old. Because of all this, Doris is a high-strung alcoholic who is deep in denial. Meanwhile, Norman seems... disconnected; he gives off the vibe that he has dissociated in order to cope with his own son. (I know the intention was most likely to paint him as a clueless sitcom dad, but I personally don’t see it that way.)

I don’t care much for the Broadway version of this show, especially because of the song that replaces “It’s Teavee Time!” as it has nothing to do with them as characters, but it’s important to mention here because... Mike’s father (I won’t say Norman) is gone in the Broadway version. (Or is it only the National Tour where this is mentioned?) He’s just gone, he has up and left his wife and son, he has actually checked-out of the family! And I can’t even blame him; with that wife and that child, I’d honestly want to ditch them, too. Another thing worth mentioning is the song used in the National Tour of the Broadway musical, “Little Man Of Mine”, which mentions Mike still being on house-arrest for something that “they never proved”, and his mother (here called Ethel; I consider them a different set of parents, but I digress) doping him up and putting restraints on him, while also drinking and popping pills herself. The saddest part of the song is probably Mike saying that he (or they) try to find his father online every night. 🥺

Also very important to note: In both “It’s Teavee Time!” and “That Little Man Of Mine”, Doris and Ethel mention wishing they’d had a daughter instead of Mike. WHAT. THE. FUCK??? Does Mike ever hear this? I sincerely hope not! (Also, it’s simply illogical because a girl could act the exact same way that Mike does. 🤨)

Unfortunately, there’s no official recording of “Little Man Of Mine” anywhere, but the lyrics to it are here, and I’ve seen one (1) recorded performance of decent film/audio quality.

Now, on to the movie; grab some tissues, because the sads just keep on coming...

In the 2005 film... well, Mrs. Teavee doesn’t speak, and we only see her once, but she feels dead inside. She gives off a vibe that says she regrets having this child, and she and her husband haven’t been in love for years. Norman is a defeated pushover who would probably lay down in a puddle if Mike told him to because he doesn’t want to get his shoes dirty (not that the kid would care, he *was* stomping in candy goo); he tries to tell Mike to stop ragefully stomping on candy pumpkins, he tries to tell Mike to calm down in the TV room, but it of course doesn’t work, and he barely tried at all. He doesn’t understand his son, and he feels he has grown up too fast (which is probably true). And Mike, well... Mike is a lot of things, but I honestly feel like the kid is sad. He is so angry all of the time, that is not a happy child. That is a Depressed & Angry 2000s Emo Child, I can tell because I was one. I don’t know if he can tell how dead inside his parents are, if it’s because they don’t get him, if he gets picked on in school for being a little genius... but the kid is unhappy, that much I know.

But I don’t think it was always this way. I think they were a happy family once, when Mike was little, but then it started going downhill.

This newspaper article from the film (I’ve never seen in the film) paints the picture for me:

(First off: Mike looks too pure here, so can you imagine people picking up that newspaper and then reading the article? “Awww, what an adorable child!” 😊 *reads it* “Jeez, what an obnoxious little shit!” 🤨 And I sincerely can’t help but wonder how they got him to smile for the picture; his parents probably promised to buy him a new video game if he would just smile, please. I can hear the exhaustion in Norman’s voice.)

If you click on this 👆🏽 image (in Dashboard/preview mode), open it in a new tab, click the zoom magnifying glass, and look down to the lower-middle left of the paper, you should be able to read: Young Teavee also no doubt takes after his father, a Certified Public Accountant with nearly 20 years of experience. “I would always bring work home and Mikey would look over my shoulder when he was a baby,” professed Mr. Teavee. “He’s always had a knack for numbers.”

Now, I know that makes no sense because in the actual film, Mr. Teavee said that he is a high school geography teacher, not an accountant, but... let’s just go along with it for now. How precious does that sound? Imagine Mr. Teavee sitting on their couch, looking over his work, and little baby Mike is just standing on the couch and looking over his dad’s shoulder, just really fascinated by it. 🥺

What I’m getting at is: I think they were a happy family once, but then Mike started detaching and growing up, and maybe his parents marriage isn’t doing the best anymore (I get the vibe, I get the vibe), and it just all went downhill. And honestly? I think Norman is afraid of his son. Which is understandable; if I lived with that kid, I’d be scared, too. 😳

(Side-note: That newspaper says that Mike is 13-years-old? 🤨 Yeah, I don’t fucking buy it, that kid looks 10 or 11, which doesn’t sound like much, but kids are growing all the time, so they definitely look different at 13 than they do at 10 or 11. It’s possible he could be 13, but I don’t believe that, and I headcanon him as 10/11.)

I’m sure there’s something I’m forgetting, but I think I’ve said every relevant thing there is to be said so far about this candy-coated Greek tragedy called the Teavee family. My point is...

The Bucket family is sad because of their financial situation, but thankfully for them, that’s fixed by the end of the story. The Teavee family is sad in a way that I don’t think can be fixed, not if they don’t try. The Teavee family is sad because they’re broken.

[dan-despairing]

Alright, long(ish) post time. <None of which will be new news or ideas but this is my blog and I want to blab about it>

Ford coming back very obviously brings up big and complex emotions for Stan. Emotions that he hasn't addressed or worked on between the thirty years of Mr. Mystery-ing by day and rebuilding the portal by night.

To lay things out clearly, Ford is portal-ed away in the middle of a fight that had been simmering for a decade already; Both men had their own struggles and misconceptions about how well off the other was, partially colored by their own hurt feelings about the perpetual motion machine and Stan's subsequent being kicked out. Even though they have their big blowout fight, the last thing Stan hears his brother say is "Do something, Stanley!" A desperate plea that an audience can assume equal parts haunts him and drives him to be as dedicated as he is to right this wrong.

Here I have to digress just a little to explain my interpretation of Ford and Stan given my view of the characters, their traumas and personalities. As children the Stans were mostly on equal footing in and out of their home; Both outcasts for different reasons and as the one-note bully from S2 E12 surmises they are "lucky they have each other." It's clear in that episode that they feel this sentiment to be true. As they grow up, Stanley seems to be the one who holds onto that while Ford wises up to the reality of oncoming adulthood and what his skills and intelligence can do in terms of rising above his station. (Though personally I don't view Ford as driven by status or opulence but rather learning as much as he can about everything, and status just happens to come with the territory sometimes.)

To sum the Stans up: Stanford is raised as an archetypal Golden Child, taught early that his 'faults' can be overlooked so long as he is the best of the best and the smartest. He internalizes this and eventually believes that he truly is the smartest and the most special. Smart enough to be on equal footing with a Muse and special enough to chosen by one in the first place. (Note that I'm not meaning to paint Ford as full of himself but instead showing his biggest flaw of 'arrogance' is instilled in him by a difficult childhood and is something he uses as a cope for anything he doesn't want to feel or think about / so he does not feel worthless.) He shows awareness in hindsight that he's easily drawn in by flattery, so is Stanley and for both of them it stems from their emotionally neglectful father (and though not explicitly abusive on screen...I have my thoughts about Filbrick.) Where Stanford's need for outward approval presents as overachieving and honing his greatness to get very deserved praise, Stanley's wounds show up in a much more 'clockable' way. While today we know that perfectionism and overachieving is unhealthy, it's still always going to be more palatable to outsiders if your psychological wounds present as 'Being Too Successful' instead of emotionally stunted, having scarcity mindset and being homeless for a decade.

I've said this in another post but I'll repeat it here, Stanley was a normal kid. A little troubled on account of his less than desirable parental situation, but fairly typical. He just had the misfortune of being constantly compared to excellence, both in and out of the home. A Scapegoat. His heart is bigger than his head from the beginning and throughout his childhood he's shown as acting on emotion rather than logic. He views himself and Stanford as a package deal and when that's threatened he acts before he can think. He repeats this mistake when he shoves Stanford into the portal. Both Stans become selfish in their own ways as they age, and never really quite grow up.

When Ford comes home they pick up right where they left off: Fighting. It reverts them both back to the younger, hurt versions of themselves. Stan wanted his brother back but he was hoping for a brother that had been just as doggedly yearning for reunion. He wasn't hoping to be held accountable (at least not at first, perhaps not at all.) However accountability is all Stan gets and it only serves to cut away at the already very shallow and frail sense of self worth he has. This in turn is proof to Ford that his brother has only ever done things for his own interest (destroying the perpetual motion machine so Ford will stay in Jersey, sending him into the portal for emotional recompense during a fight, bringing him back so that Ford can grovel and thank him.) and drives a further wedge between them.

Stan falls back on old coping mechanisms of attention seeking, something he likely did a lot as a troubled kid who was overlooked for a brother he was always reminded was better than him. Dipper and Mabel expressing a fondness for Ford doesn't read to him as just two kids being excited about a new cool family member, or for Dipper meeting an idol, but instead touches Stan as the kids choosing Ford. Just like Filbrick chose Ford. Just like every teacher in their hometown, and some fancy college chose Ford. He tries to hold onto normalcy by running the shop, going on his usual road-trip and telling the kids to steer clear of Ford to keep them close or 'on his side'. Stan eventually becomes that hurt, abandoned child again by lashing out and seeking outside approval to show him he has worth by running for mayor.

He probably can't even admit it to himself but the resentment he's feeling towards Ford is coming from an overwhelming guilt. When Ford doesn't thank him, and tells him that he has to leave when summer ends, it feels to Stanley like the one person who could absolve him doesn't see him as worthy. The last thirty years have been spent hoping for forgiveness or understanding, or at least to be shown that he isn't a waste by the one person whose opinion really means something to him.

Ford meanwhile copes by disregarding his emotions and throwing himself headfirst at what he deems to be the real problem at hand: Securing the rift. Holding the universe together is something he can draw up plans for, making up with his twin and delving into a lifetime of regrets is decidedly not.

Ford also regresses by projecting his younger self onto Dipper. He pries Dip away from Mabel and Stan, unintentionally but still noticeably. He perhaps regrets the years he spent bumbling around with an old boat in childhood with Stanley instead of using every moment to build toward his future. His years out of his original dimension combined with the resentment that has had forty years and a fist fight to build on has seemingly made him forget just how close he and Stanley used to be.

In Dipper and Mabel vs. The Future Ford offers to mentor Dipper, to make use of that brain of his instead of seeing him waste it with a regular high-school experience. Dipper expresses concern about leaving Mabel behind, which Ford waves off with a comment about how charismatic she is (likely hinting at how he viewed Stanley back in the day via the snippets he saw of him on TV. I don't personally believe Ford knew how badly Stan was doing back then).

Dipper says, "We've never really been apart before." And Ford answers with, "And isn't it suffocating? Can you honestly tell me you never felt like you were meant for something more?" I find this line to be another projection from Ford. Maybe during their adolescence he felt stifled by Stan or maybe the reasons listed before have convinced him that he felt that way or should have. In any case, Ford seems completely unaware of how important it is to have emotional ties to other people.(Not without good reason: See again, the being in different dimensions for thirty years + emotionally distant father + two gigantic betrayal wounds compounded with being pushed to a mental health crisis.)

Dipper is still a kid and more than that he still actively loves his sister and cherishes his bond with her. While his future is on his mind he isn't exactly chomping at the bit to completely leave her behind. Something that Ford seems to not see here as the adult is that no matter how tedious the years between childhood and adulthood appear to be, they are integral to who one becomes. So too are the people one is surrounded by in those delicate years.

Dipper needs Mabel as much as she needs him, and luckily they do both eventually realize that despite the outward forces at play.

Stan isn't the most responsible adult and since he's pretty stunted himself he doesn't always behave in the most mature ways. What he is, undoubtedly, is devoted to his family. When Mabel is broken up about getting older he offers her some words of comfort, maybe words he wanted to hear when he was young and scared about losing his brother. Maybe if someone told a teenage Stan that growing didn't mean he had to grow-up or that no matter what he'd have his brother through thick and thin, things would have ended differently all those years ago.

i have so many thoughts and feelings about Stan's big emotions and how he regressed post-Ford returning......

[hopefulstarfire]

I reinstalled Sims 4 because yeah it's easy character making but I digress, I decided to make the ygo ocs and their families because yeah no impulse control and my thoughts revolve around them right now.

So here's the Mercers.

First up is Kat, the youngest daughter. As I've said before, she's also Cecelia's younger sister and was essentially raised by Max from the time she was about 7/8 years old, following the deaths of her sister and parents (all separate occurrences that I'll get into). She's my girly girl at heart, uses a plant themed Deck (Plant Princess and some Rose cards), and comes into the story with Duelist Kingdom, having gotten out of the castle when she found out Mokuba was being kept there, and ran into Yugi and the gang. She moves to Domino City following her brother in law's injury, at first to track down the person who hurt him but finds herself staying because of Bakura and starts hanging out with the gang more.

Her mother, Evangeline "Evie" Mercer (nee Davenport), was a soap opera starlet that once also graced the theater stage in various musicals. When Cecelia first fell ill, she threw all of her energy into trying to help her, from taking notes at all her appointments, finding the best doctors in the field, raising money into research. Cecelia became her only concern, essentially, and she soon began to struggle quite a bit with everything going on. Then, she loses her husband and only two months later, she loses her eldest daughter. She shut herself away from the world, and Kat would lose her Mom only a month after Cecelia died.

Mason Mercer was an all around family man. A former Olympic equestrian, he put all his focus on working the family ranch and being with his girls and his brother. He was a goofball, super open and loving, and he helped anyone he could; but he always had a good hunch about people and on if they could or couldn't be trusted. He devoted all his time to making sure both of his daughters were taken care of, and wanted nothing more than to see them through everything. He, unfortunately, passed away from a car accident. (Except in the Everyone Lives AU, he's doing great there and he actually remarries and gains a son)

Wesley "Wes" Mercer is the only other member of the family still around. As Mason's older brother, he's been the one primarily running the family ranch and is super dedicated to his work. While he's definitely gruff and a little rough around the edges, he's absolutely fantastic with kids and animals, and always makes sure you feel welcome at his home. Originally, he was going to be the one raising Kat, but found that she needed Max more than him at that time, and, honestly, believed Max could benefit more from having her, as he hoped it would help him settle down and better cope with the grief of Cecelia's passing.

[morganaspendragonss]

teach me what i need to know (to be strong enough to let go)

@911lonestarangstweek day 2 - g is for...grief, guilt, grace

title from night must end by sleeping at last

ao3 | 1.3k | grief, references to past character death

She’s drunk. She’s barely touched a drop of drink since Charles because there was the girls to think about, always the girls, and it’s not like they’ve gone anywhere, but Tommy just. She can’t. She can’t do this. She doesn’t know how she ever did this.

Not that she ever…

Because, before, there was always Charles. At the end of the day, he would always come home; even if he ended up staying late at the restaurant, he would text her and she would go to sleep in the knowledge that she would wake up to a warm bed.

Now, all Tommy has is a cold mattress and an abandoned text thread that is slipping further and further down in her messages.

And she’s been coping. She has. But tonight it was all just—the station and Billy and Owen and the girls and Charles—it was all too damn much.

So now she’s here, drunk off her ass with Gracie attempting to console her while Judd looks after Izzy and Evie for the night. She’s going to feel horrendously guilty once the hangover has faded and her brain is firing on all cylinders again, but that’s for future Tommy to deal with.

“D’you remember the last night we did this?” she’s saying now. ‘We’ is a relative term, of course; Grace is hardly drinking now—(and, god, Tommy had hated that part of her own pregnancy, not that she’s a big drinker, but she hadn’t even been able to have a glass of wine and she’d missed it dammit)—but she digresses.

“I was jealous,” she continues. “I was honest to god jealous of the fact that my husband was taking care of our girls, and he was doing it well. Can you believe that?”

“Tommy—”

“And, you know, Charles was always there for the girls, they were always his first priority, but there was the restaurant, so I was the one who’d tuck them in and read them stories and—and braid their hair. That was me.

“I thanked God everyday that Charles was able to be there for them. But I hated it because it felt—it felt like they didn’t need me anymore. Charles was perfect and it was like he was doing so much better than I ever did, and a part of me really, really hated that. No, a part of me still does sometimes because I’ve forgotten how to do this on my own and I need him now more than ever but he’s just… He’s gone, Gracie.”

She hadn’t even realised she was crying, but she can’t suppress a sob at that, bitterness and regret and grief threatening to overwhelm her yet again. Tommy twists away at the sensation of Grace’s hand on her back, shaking her head as she cries harder.

“No.”

“T, it’s okay, just let it out, it’s gonna be okay.”

“No, no, it’s not.” She takes a shuddering breath and wipes her eyes, meeting Grace’s gaze as best she can through her near triple vision. “They want their daddy,” she whispers. “They want their daddy, and I don’t know how to be enough for them anymore. I don’t know if I ever was.”

“Tommy!” Grace’s voice is sharper this time and it shocks Tommy out of her spiral, to hear the near anger in her friend’s voice. “If you expect me to just sit here and listen to this, then you have another thing coming, ‘cause I’m gonna tell you something now and I hope you hear it.”

Grace takes a breath, pausing as though waiting for Tommy to interrupt again. But Tommy is out of words anyway and she’s tired of fighting for now.

“I don’t know what you’re going through,” Grace continues after waiting a moment longer, “and I pray that I never find out. But you have to know that this is all natural. Those girls just lost their daddy, which is hard for anyone, let alone two nine-year-olds. So, yeah, they’re gonna be acting out and giving you a bit of a hard time, but don’t you ever doubt that they love you. You are their world, and you have always been there for them; you have always been more than enough.

“But here’s the thing,” she continues, voice softening. She reaches out and takes Tommy’s hands, holding them tightly. “Izzy and Evie lost their dad, but you, Tommy Vega, lost your husband. The man who had been by your side for thirty years. You were a team, you and Charles, and a damn good one; neither of you were ever alone, not when Charles had the restaurant, and not when you went back to work. But he’s gone now, and you feel like all that weight you two shared is now all on you, right?”

Tommy swallows and sniffs, nodding silently. Somewhere along the line she started crying again, a fact she’s only alerted to when Grace reaches up and wipes a tear away, smiling softly.

“It’s not,” Grace says. “It never will be. Whatever happens, I promise you’ll always have me and Judd, and I’m pretty sure you can count on anyone at the firehouse to help whenever you need. I mean, Carlos looked after them for, what, one afternoon? And they love him already.”

She snorts at that; Judd’s indignation at being replaced as the girls’ favourite person has provided both her and Grace (and TK, a little) with endless amusement.

“See? It’s okay to share the load, Tommy. You cannot be expected to be on it 24/7, especially not after what you’ve been through, okay? We’re only human, and someone once taught me that asking for help makes us wise, not weak. It was some pretty good advice; you might want to consider taking it.”

Grace levels her with a pointed look that Tommy can understand even with her mind only quarter-functioning. She pouts at her, getting a small giggle out of Grace.

“Not fair to use my own words against me.”

“Well, maybe you deserved it,” Grace teases. Then, she gets to her feet and grasps Tommy’s elbows, pulling her up to standing as well. “Now, here’s what’s gonna happen. You, ma’am, are going to drink some water and get your ass into bed while I text Judd and tell him that he’s gotta keep the girls overnight. I’ll sleep in your spare room—”

“No, Gracie, no, no.” Tommy tugs herself from Grace’s grasp but, unsteady as she is, the simple movement unbalances her and she slumps back onto the couch.

Grace folds her arms, watching her with a raised eyebrow. “This isn’t up for discussion, T.”

“But—”

“Uh-uh,” she tuts, shaking her head. “What did we just talk about, huh? Tonight, I’m here to help you in whatever you need, even if that involves putting you to bed and holding your hair back over the toilet bowl. Now, come on.”

And, this time, Tommy goes willingly, allowing Grace to lead her to bed and force a glass of water down her. She settles into the covers, sleep rapidly approaching now that she’s lying down, but she manages to hold it back long enough to call, “Hey, Gracie?”

Grace turns, smiles. “Yeah?”

“Thank you. You’re a… You’re a good friend.”

Grace’s smile softens and she raps her knuckles lightly on the doorframe. “Love you too, T.”

Then she’s gone, and Tommy is alone in her bed again. Charles’s absence is still as glaring as ever, but knowing that Grace is here eases the weight on her chest.

For the first time in months, Tommy falls asleep with a smile on her face.

[ravenadottir]

a rocco route

so much love for rocco on my dash got me thinking... what a rocco route would look like if he stayed in the villa on day 8.

everything up to that point could stay the same. his mistakes, the things he and mc say to each other, all of it. perhaps a tweet that would make him think twice though, like:

"______ made a huge mistake. he should've kept in his pants because the girl he dismissed is amazing. he doesn't know what he's missing out."

or something a little more impactful.

rocco anc mc have a dreaded conversation that somehow was provided by bobby, because he would probably tell marisol that no matter how much she likes him, mc deserves an apology.

they occupy a daybed and have a dreaded conversation where rocco might be incredibly lost for words. he makes a comparison to a similar situation he went through before to going to the villa, and there's probably a fun anecdote where he made a huge discovery about himself.

mc can just forgive him, or she can give him a hard time. if he's supposed to stay and be an li, then he'll realize that just because he had feelings for marisol it didn't mean the ones he had for mc were gone.

he's now feeling guilty about the betrayal and tries to find a way of fixing things, but it might be too late. he could be out here making food, mocktails, offering a massage, acting all distracted to pay attention to anyone else that isn't mc.

at the recoupling, mc has the power to pick him. when she does, he shoots an apologetic look at marisol, and that would make her have resentment towards mc.

they have the opportunity to go to the hideaway, and if that happens, rocco might lose his mind over her, because i believe he associates intimacy with love. he's very confused at this point, but the choice of bedding him is yours.

the next day, operation nope happens, which leads me to believe he would be hearing about it sooner than the others. because bobby will ask marisol and she might comment about it with rocco.

he's now worried, that mc would get revenge, and stay put, quietly watching and hoping she won't. if she does, he's disheartened, but doesn't say anything besides "i made a mistake, you made this solely to hurt me, even after what happened between us last night."

he might go to marisol's arms if mc participates actively in the operation. if she doesn't then he's fucked, because now he's sure those feelings are growing stronger every day.

in the meantime, he might've talked it out with gary and apologized for going behind his back, even though he doesn't know it's possible gary had a couple of kisses with mc while they were coupled up.

when chelsea arrives, that's what concerns me, because i really think he would be charmed and that's just another moment that would make mc doubt his loyalty. enough to say something to him.

"no, i made that mistake once. you should know how i feel before thinking i would trade you for someone new."

"rocco... you traded me for someone who was here... i don't know if i can trust you."

"i understand. but i want you to know, i have been rethinking my decisions and the more i do, the more i know for sure you're the girl i want to share this journey with."

things get heated with the tension of operation, and after the disaster recoupling, i would make gary or bobby choose mc, leaving rocco distressed and upset. he could say something to gary like "i thought we had put the past behind us." or if bobby, "that was the snakiest thing you could've done mate, and that's coming from me!"

it depends on who has a higher 'heart score' with mc, and this is the order i would put them in:

jakub = hope

noah = priya

ibrahim = lottie

gary/bobby = chelsea

gary/bobby = mc

rocco = marisol

he's forced to choose marisol, which increases the angst because now he's gonna share the bed with the girl he liked just a few days ago, and who's eager to be with him again.

before anything else happens, casa amor days come, and i would make rocco have the almost fight with the boy that stole mc, and that boy is the one bringing blake back.

mc would have a discussion with them on the roof terrace, and say "i thought you were my friend, and i expected this from rocco, but a betrayal like this coming from you? i don't know if i can forgive you."

at the bean bags the other boys, noah, ibrahim and rocco, are talking and you have the same dialogue. he asks mc for a moment alone and says the same thing the others say on the paid scene. "i missed you, that's all."

during this playthrough i would love to insert some moments where rocco and marisol share the coping of the pool, or the kitchen space while talking, to get that angst high.

the stick or switch brought blake, but the next recoupling is for mc to save someone, and the ones endangered depend on whether mc brings someone or not. if she did:

chelsea stays coupled up with bobby/gary (her partner that stayed loyal)

lottie saves noah

bobby/gary (who stole mc) saves hope

and everyone else goes home, which would be unfair to rocco.

if he left here, i would make him give a really hurt speech. "i thought i could have a second chance, but i understand why you wouldn't be able to trust me again." he sniffs while putting his things in the bag. "i caused this, and i'm really sorry for hurting you. if anything, i brought this on myself."

but if mc stayed loyal, then these islanders are single:

mc // chelsea's partner (bobby/gary) // rocco // lottie

lottie saves noah

mc saves either jakub/elijah or the boy that stole her

chelsea's partner saves hope

rocco saves chelsea (and cmm would make sense, but i digress)

this would be a turning point to make chelsea tell you about her crush, but she doesn't, and tries to shake it off, not saying anything, like she does in the game.

elisa and jo come in, and i think it would be delightful to see how into jo's stories rocco is. same as mc's partner at this point.

once the next recoupling comes, i think it would be feral (but also amazing) to make marisol talk to mc about rocco, because she thinks she has a chance with him. when asked about graham, she responds "graham is nice and all, but i really think i have a shot with rocco."

to which mc would reply "i want him. it's his decision who he wants to be with. we've been through a lot, but i reckon if he likes you, i don't see why i should stay in the way. but marisol, asking me this, after everything that happened, is really selfish. you have someone that likes you, and i should have a chance to be happy."

rocco picks mc, saying "i'm so relieved because i thought you and bobby/gary were getting along... i didn't wanna lose the chance to be with you. already did that once and i'm not gonna repeat my mistakes."

returning!hannah and lurik come, lurik is all over mc, hannah is all over rocco, saying how much she wished she had a shot back then, and that they always shared so much about their vision of what love is.

another angsty moment except rocco is not giving her the time of day, but that's not clear enough for mc to see. he knows if he fucks up, mc is gonna run towards anyone that would take her, which is a lot of people.

after couple trouble, he says 'i love you', and completes with

"i knew it a while ago, i just didn't say anything because i didn't want to scare you, or to put that pressure on you. i know how intense it can be when someone says 'i love you' too soon, and well..." he laughs. "i wanted to do it right."

i would like to see rocco being eager to participate on the 'baby challenge', because i really believe he loves children and would be comparing notes with noah. plus, i know rocco stans would have their uteruses skipping several beats with the edit of him holding the doll in that... thing that carries the doll on their chest lol

i think from here on it's pretty standard. the last date might contain a very sweet speech, but for a rocco stan it would mean the world, because after the mistakes he made, i think this redemption would be great.

everyone in there made mistakes, and the fact that i don't like him doesn't influence on the fact that he was an interesting character. he just had a really short term in there, but if he had stayed, i think his route would be the most flavorful, given marisol would be trying to be with him, and she's charming as fuck!

anyway, hope you rocco stans like this. a post i saw today got me thinking about it and i needed to put it somewhere.

[fluorescentbrains]

my lying ass said i wasn’t going to stew on this… anyway this doesn’t count because i’m stewing on the implications for society not the facts of the events. so

i can’t stop thinking about how this is the perfect storm of factors to strain our over-reliance on evaluating what’s real and what’s fake news through a sort of… short-cut series of fragmented and highly politicized narratives. and on continuously pushing those narratives even in situations where they’re inadequate or even harmful because we’re afraid that any whiff of ambiguity provides an opening for a bad faith audience to attack. as public opinion gets more and more polarized, it gets more and more difficult to cope with situations where two vehemently opposed parties can agree on a fact of reality

i’ve gestured at this a lot with respect to israel-palestine discourse where people who (making charitable assumptions here) lack historical knowledge lean so hard into the narrative of israelis as colonizers that they unthinkingly propagate khazar theory. the fact that the jewish people DO have ancestral ties to the region is something of an attack surface for pro-israeli propagandists, so for the sake of an uncomplicated and easily communicable narrative, it must be elided. (to be clear as i’ve said before i don’t think you even *need* to refute jewish history in order to condemn israel’s violence but i digress)

in the case of the TERF wars, there’s always been a lot of strain on people’s ability to parse the agenda behind the argument because TERFs will often use the same, like, buzz-narratives as left-leaning feminists, but they also rely on transphobic and sexually conservative narratives that come from the right. “suspiciously aphobic and possibly terfy” took off as a meme because it encapsulated how people can dismiss a point as something a terf might hypothetically argue, even though it didn’t have anything to do with trans people. the problem is the venn diagram of what terfs believe and what trans inclusive feminists believe aren’t two completely separate circles. i’ve deleted a lot of reblogged posts on this blog not because i actually disagreed with them but because they were posted by TERFs, i didn’t want to drive traffic towards their blogs, and the same things have been articulated just as well by people who don’t publish vile bigotry on a regular basis

tortoise media is run by at least one TERF and they have a pretty obvious spin on their reporting. at the same time, while their coverage of the events is sexually conservative, they haven’t made any explicit attacks on trans people. and the issue being reported is alleged abusive behavior towards women by a powerful male celebrity, which is something feminists in general do agree is. Bad. i fear it is going to be very difficult for audiences to parse out a conclusion that both treats the women in the story with dignity and doesn’t serve to reinforce a narrative like, The Degenerate Trans Allies Are A Danger To Women. i fear it is going to be a constant volley back and forth between people saying “it’s a TERF hit piece on a famous trans-positive celebrity, so it’s complete nonsense” and people arguing back “there were allegations of sexual misconduct, so the context is unimportant” both attempting to terminate all possible ambiguities by invoking provocative elements of a narrative. i really hope the inadequacies of both statements are obvious!!

i fear the media literacy of the english speaking world is about to be tested severely in the coming weeks

[herglowinggirl]

Hello, familiar anon here, I didn't ask the question about an SOK ending where Yun lives and gains redemption. I also wouldn't mind having my own tag. I haven't found any other evidence of Yun shipping Kyoshi and Rangi outside of "The Boy From Makapu". How does Kyoshi view Yun later in her life( up to the first year after "The Meeting", creating Kyoshi Island nearly 25 years later, the last years of her life)? Would Kyoshi ever mention or talk about Yun after the events of The Shadow of Kyoshi?

hello! and yes I have some thoughts on this and how it would impact the advice Kyoshi gave to Roku and Aang. this got long but I’d love to break down parts of it to write fic, which I think I will do and perhaps post before Kyoshi Fortnight. But I digress, it’s long enough that I have decided to use subtitles. If anything skip to the end about the advice she gave Roku and Aang I think it’s most relevant to what I want to say and also my favorite part.

what I talk about under the cut: the ways I believe yun’s death would impact kyoshi’s actions after tsok and what the advice she gave aang and roku actually means (my thoughts on “only justice will bring peace” means)

would kyoshi talk about yun during her lifetime?

Yes. First off, it would be impossible to avoid him in the political landscape, because it is mentioned that he passed lots of judgements and signed treaties, ect. Although Kyoshi has grown in her leadership style and it’s turned a little (a lot) anti-establishment, she would still need to deal with the fallout of Yun not being the Avatar, because there would be a need to re-sign treaties and settle disputes with people seeking to take advantage of others now that the Avatar has “changed” would have to be dealt with and in tandem, Yun’s legacy.

But also, in a duology that features grief, I find it a natural continuation of the narrative that Yun would be mourned. You don’t stop knowing or loving someone after they pass, and I feel like mourning all of Yun—the boy he was, where he came from, his legacy, the decisions he made, the impact he had on the people around him, even how he hurt people—is only natural and is slightly unavoidable. I think Kyoshi mourns all of her deceased loved ones. 

Just, like the concept of this: she’s always hated pai sho but now when she faces a board in her gut and in her throat things feel wrong because it reminds her of what Yun had to do to survive. A breeze smells like the flour and air Kelsang sent into her face the moments before everything changed. She collects pebbles that Lek would’ve liked. Rangi brings her fire lilies for an anniversary and she starts crying. She sings songs with Wong that were her parent’s favorites that coincidentally, Kelsang knew too.

community in grief and kyoshi’s relationships

He was Rangi’s friend, too. Auntie Mui and Hei-Ran are sure to mourn him in their own ways. In tSoK Kyoshi calls her team Avatar a group of contradictions and misfits and in his way, Yun was too. The false Avatar. What a title! 

A continuation of the concept: Rangi and Kyoshi remind each other of him every day for a while, swapping stories about him when it gets to be too much, making eye contact when they can hear his voice making light of something stupid an official has said. Hei-Ran makes her do drills she made Yun do. Auntie Mui makes his favorite dish on his birthday that they do not pass in silence, because then what would they be, that group of misfits, to forget another outcast? If they don’t mourn the boy from Yokoya who will mourn them, or who would’ve mourned them if they hadn’t been so lucky? Who will care for the beggars and orphans of the world if not the Avatar who was once one of them and her companions? In a way, the retribution and pain of it all is justice for the life that Kyoshi took. Like, there’s just so much to unpack in the way she says “Was I right about anything at all? What will they say about me? Avatar Kyoshi, who killed her friend because she couldn’t save him?” But I don’t think her guilt would silence her. 

That being said, Yun was fundamentally a victim of a system that failed him. The same one that failed Kyoshi. In another way, her actions are justice on a world that failed her and her best friend and the similarities they shared, and she’s able to take those actions because of the way that Yun impacted her, for better or for worse. So yes, I think during her lifetime, she would speak of Yun and who he was, not letting people forget the ways they (and she) failed him and how easily everyone wants to forget their failure. It brings me to the way she was so angry with the Earth Kingdom establishment for discarding him and trying to hide history away. I don’t think she’d ever do that, even if she did...uh, dispatch him.

kyoshi, immortality, and her role as an avatar

I’d like to turn to two passages:

Kyoshi: “The way you describe it, you’d have to decide what version of yourself you’d be stuck as, forever.”

Lao Ge: “Exactly! Those who grow, live and die. The stagnant pool is immortal, while the clear flowing river dies an uncountable number of deaths.”

and

In the future, perhaps, she’d become finalized like carved stone. It would be easier to deal with the world then. She could only hope.

[...]

She still had to be careful not to lose her balance and fall. Kyoshi kept her eyes focused on her difficult path, sometimes stumbling but making sure to catch herself, taking one step at a time.

This isn’t directly related to what I think she would say, but more about how she lets her experiences, and therefore, her experiences and relationship with Yun, affect who she is. Here, F.C. Yee is detailing the person we see in her cameo in A:tLA. It’s a testament to her growth, yes, but also to how she lived so long. She’s allowed to grow now, while she’s young and still learning. But eventually Kyoshi’s growth will wane, leaving us with the iron woman we saw in A:tLA. 

Remember when I said I would call F.C. Yee a sap for the very last Kyoshi POV line? It’s the last sentence in my second excerpt, is that Kyoshi is allowing herself make mistakes. It’s pretty obviously a little deeper than the concept of walking down a slope: She became one of the most revered Avatars, we know how her story ends, if not lots of the in-betweens, but F.C. Yee tells us right here in that sentence. She changed and she learned. 

I think, however, that eventually she had to pick a place to stop in order to stop aging. If I had to pick a point where she became “immortal” I’d pick Rangi’s peaceful and timely death surrounded by her loved ones on Yokoya (not Kyoshi Island since I’m going to maintain that her A;tLA cameo was “immortal” Kyoshi) and I think Lao Ge killed her—or at least convinced her to let go.

further thoughts on her longevity: rangi’s role and future

Ok before anybody comes into my inbox like “um zey herglowinggirl I need you to know that actually Rangi also lived to 230 😌″ because I understand the sentiment it’s more like here’s what I’d like to discuss: Kyoshi can’t be immortal around Rangi because Rangi is in so many ways her catalyst for growth. First off, it would be completely out of character for Rangi to be immortal, because she’s constantly moving and being and feeling and judging and that changes her. Positive jing. And Lao Ge says it: “those who grow, live and die.” Rangi believes in the best and strives for the best, for perfection. For Kyoshi to freeze herself and become immortal, that would require picking an imperfect state. And as we know, Sei’naka women do not accept imperfection 😤. 

Although Rangi promises to always be by Kyoshi’s side, I think in the latter years of Kyoshi’s live it’s more like the impact that Rangi has had on her in that frozen state. That voice of Rangi’s is part of Kyoshi in those years. However, without Rangi, it is unlikely that Kyoshi will always or commonly choose to act on it. It’s stated multiple times throughout the novels that Rangi is Kyoshi’s center and that she doesn’t know who she’d be without Rangi, but I think the logical conclusion is immortal. With Rangi’s death she becomes her own center by stopping her growth; with Rangi’s death she just becomes...that stone she was talking about, where it does get easier to make decisions because you’re not striving to constantly change and grow. It’s almost a coping mechanism, if you will. Because Kyoshi is more than Rangi, can function without Rangi, it’s just not necessarily pretty.

lao ge’s role and future

Which brings me to my “in my personal version of canon Lao Ge kinda maybe killed Kyoshi” point. Rangi is in no way Kyoshi’s morality, but she is very much the idealistic ‘better’ half. With this catalyst of hope and change gone, I think back to the creation of the Dai Li—it very much sounds to me like something Jianzhu would do. Kyoshi, who had previously been the breakdown of negotiations, created a secret op police force? 

I think the moment Kyoshi started being the establishment, the moment she was the band-aid instead of the solution (much like Yun was, hint hint) Lao Ge would’ve paid her a visit. Either this or the creation of the Dai Li created a catalyst for perhaps an existential crisis, perhaps just being tired, perhaps simply knowing what is best...Kyoshi is, and always will be, a sworn criminal who cannot uphold the law, only her own judgements. She is both the law and the breaking and bending of it, and when she loses this balance when Rangi falls from her side and she becomes her own rock I think it would swing her away from her center, and this is where she becomes immortal. Eventually, it would become enough of an issue for people to intervene and tell her that her time as an Avatar is coming to an end. 

advice to future avatars

This is my favorite point and I’ll tie it back to Yun in just a second. I have posted about thinking about the impact of Yun’s death on Kyoshi and how that would’ve impacted her legacy and the advice she gave Roku and Aang before. Honestly what strikes me is how proud Kyoshi would be of Aang. The way that each Avatar must learn to forge their own way and become their own person and what their era needs, balancing themselves, is something so lovely. I think Kyoshi would’ve absolutely loved how Aang took the advice of his predecessors and said “no, I know what would be better for me,” and I think post-tSoK Kyoshi, who has learned she has to forge her own way and style as a leader, would love and be so proud of him for that. 

However, that doesn’t mean that her advice doesn’t have weight. I think mainly her “immortal” phase would perhaps have an impact on the way Yun impacts her advice. I think “only justice will bring peace” also speaks to the finality of death. Just like immortality, death keeps growth from happening. “only justice will bring peace” is also a nod to the way you must learn to cope with your actions and the way you feel about them. It’s also about Aang’s inner peace, which is something I don’t think I’ve ever seen mentioned. Everyone always wants to talk about what he should’ve done and how Kyoshi was right because she told Aang about her choice to let Chin die, but I think she actually guided him to the idea that you should be ok with yourself. To be confident in what you do and take up responsibility for your actions. Kyoshi wasn’t telling him murder was good. She was telling him she owned up to her actions and chose to make those decisions as an Avatar. To me, this finality speaks of growth after Yun’s death and the end of tSoK. She has grown and then frozen, but that means she has changed.

And although I don’t have an answer for what advice she might’ve given Roku, I think it’s a good way to interpret this. The only thing keeping Kyoshi from being honest about Yun’s death is the fact that Zoryu has “Yun” locked up. I think this is likely one of her biggest regrets, that she cannot be honest and responsible for something that weighs so heavily on her soul. This, I think, guides her advice. Only justice will bring peace. Now that I’ve thought it out, perhaps it wasn’t Lao Ge, and perhaps it was the idea that Yun had never been done justice and perhaps that turmoil never changed, which made her long-lived but not quite immortal. She cannot quite know the peace of death nor of life.

I think she must’ve told Roku that no matter what, he must accept the consequences of what he does. He’s not willing to loose that friendship and I think Kyoshi would’ve understood that, and the questions Roku would’ve had to pose himself as an Avatar. That is Kyoshi’s advice. Only justice, true justice in the form of accountability and self-actualization as a leader, will allow you to make good decisions. The acceptance of this: that whatever he does, he must be willing to accept it’s legacy, learn from it, and teach the next Avatar just as she let Yun’s death affect her leadership and what she taught. And I think that’s probably incredibly poetic, even if I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. 

[writing-fool]

Hey, real stressed out right now, if you're not too busy can I get the Mlqc boys with a stressed out s/o? I'm in some need of some serotonin, love your work x

mlqc | so will i

Hi hun, I’m very sorry to hear that. I hope you’ll feel better soon. If this doesn’t end up giving you enough serotonin, I have something a little similar up on my blog: here

That said, I think I’m becoming a comfort writer, and I can’t really complain about that. So, here’s a couple of quick and loving headcanons for each boy.

Much love,

R.

Victor

Victor isn’t actually all that cold as a husband anyways (and we ALL know author Ré likes their moody boys just a little gooey) 

but when you’re stressed? oh boy this gentleman is ready to do anything in his power to make you feel better

he was deadass about to buy a whole spa before you stopped him and told him you just need him to hold you

“Oh. I...guess I can do that.” be careful, this man will not let you go until you feel better

as an excellent chef, he’s also The Person to ask when you need comfort food

mac & cheese? you got it. congee? already done. chicken noodle soup? yes yes.

the way to a person’s heart is through their stomach and mine is currently growling

on occasion, he’ll be the cause of your stress, and while he doesn’t want to favour you over his other employees necessarily, he does understand that sometimes you need a break

for once, he’ll be the one pulling you from your work

how does he notice you’re stressed? your reports become dangerously subpar. sorry hun, it’s the truth

if you don’t listen to him and keep working yourself to near death, he’ll just have to use drastic measures

did he swing you over his shoulder? yup.

did you low-key enjoy it because his ass is Immaculate? also yup. 

he knows you like it when he pampers you, so when you’re stressed out, he’ll run you a nice bath with expensive oils and soaps

he’ll wash your back for you, digging his large fingers into those knots at the nape of your neck

afterwards, Vic will brush your hair for you, making sure you’re all cozy in your fluffy robe

he doesn’t like to admit it, but seeing you relax warms his heart and makes up for all the mediocre reports you write

Lucien

our favourite perceptive professor notices right away

i mean, everyone has tells when they start getting stressed out, and Lucien knows yours like the back of his hand

sometimes, he even notices before you do. how does that even happen?

prepare for the endless amounts of chamomile tea he’ll make you drink

Lucien’s very supportive of what you do, but he also reminds you that you need to rest like a filthy hypocrite~

so he’ll jot down cheeky notes in your agenda

14:00 / come have a relaxing walk in the park with me. ~L

7:30 early morning online meeting 8:00 have a lie-in with your favourite scientist. for research purposes, of course

you confront him about it and he’s just staring at you with this innocent look that’s absolutely illegal because you’re not innocent Lucien, not in the slightest i won’t believe it i’m not going to fall for it—damnit i fell for it

“Am I not allowed to take care of my little flower?”

is really good at clearing your schedule

like, suspiciously good

he’ll probably help you with anything you’ve got going on regarding paperwork, and instead of having to do research for a production, a whole stack of highlighted and marked articles will already be on your desk, waiting for you to quickly sift through everything

on a more serious note, he does know a lot about destressing and ways to relax

so he’ll suggest practicing mindfulness together, or something similar 

from experience, these things may sound silly, but breathing exercises or meditation can really just refocus your brain on the tasks at hand to lessen stress. obviously though, this is all very personal

but he knows he can’t love your negative emotions away, so most importantly, he’s always there for you

whether it is to listen to you rant, to give advice or even just to soothingly rub his thumb over your shoulder

Lucien’s always right next to you, and that’s one less thing to worry about

Gavin

Birdcop! lately i’ve been associating him with bnha’s Hawks/Keigo, and i don’t know how to feel about that. but i digress

Gavin’s not the quickest to pick up on your emotions

like, he knows there’s something going on because his mind is filled with you all day, but he can’t really decipher what’s wrong

will just straight up ask you what’s going on, how you’re feeling, etc

i always turn Gavin into this really understanding and communicative, healthy relationship poster boy, but y’all deserve it

“Babe? Are you feeling alright?”

if the answer is no, this man just clears his schedule for a week, or a month, or a whole year Gavin you can’t ignore your responsibilities don’t—

not really, but he does go out of his way to spend more time with you

clocks out earlier, only does missions that require him,...

flies to you the moment he’s got time to spare

does so recklessly. gets caught by some people who, fortunately, are convinced it’s just some very weird humanoid bird. gets reprimanded by STF. does not care.

at home he doesn’t really do more than give you space when you need it, offer a listening ear when you need that. he’s really not doing anything grand, because that’s not really Gavin, but he lets you know that he cares, and that’s good enough.

Gavin will force Minor to look out for you at work, and will stage a freakin’ intervention if you’re getting overworked

“MC, you’re getting kidnapped.” wraps you into a blanket like a burrito and flies home with you in his arms

actually flying seems like a relaxing thing to do, especially at night

when the stars are twinkling, the moon is glowing, and you’re high above the city, all your problems seem just a little smaller

Kiro

the chances of him not knowing you’re feeling bad aren’t very small

he’s obviously very busy, and if he’s overseas...

being concerned that you’re going to be lonely without him like he is without you does make him call you as often as he possibly can

he’s a clingy pupper, what can i say

he picks up the stressed out tone in your voice though, even when you try to hide it

“Oh, Miss/Mr. Chips, you can’t fool me, The Best Actor Of All Time. Now, tell me...are you alright?” imagine him saying that last bit in like a hushed, slightly worried tone. i wouldn’t even be able to lie

he’ll let you complain as long as you want on the phone, even when Savin’s been calling him

he’ll just hide in the closet so he doesn’t get found

when he goes back home, the first thing he does is trap you in a big hug

he refuses to let you go, pouting about how worried he was, and how much better he’ll make you feel

“Because I’m your brightest star after all!”

if he’s free while you’re feeling stressed, for example, when you’re at home together, he’ll do something silly to cheer you up

like dance on the coffee table

yup. that’s why it broke.

i don’t think he’d be too focused on your problems, as in, he doesn’t need to know 100% of what’s going on

Kiro just kind of zooms in on the fact that you’re feeling sad, overwhelmed, stressed out, and he’ll do anything in his power to relieve that feeling

and that’s one of his qualities, to be fair

you’re not going to do stuff like have long chats about your feelings, but he is going to propose doing face masks together to calm down

maybe you’ll play a couple of video games together

at the end of the day, how could you worry when your sun is right next to you?

Shaw

look, i don’t know if you’re of legal drinking age...but Shaw’s coping mechanism is drinking and going out

so the moment you say you feel bad, he’s whipping out the wine, hun

lowkey wants to drag you to the club to make you forget about your problems...but even he realises how inappropriate that type of behaviour is

he’s actually a lot cuter when he’s a little tipsy

“Hm, beautiful.” “What?” “Nothing.”

Shaw’s also a huge diva, which is canon now you guys can’t stop me from making it canon

so you guys will have matching head bands on, face masks, glasses of wine, bottles of nail polish, talking about how horrible life is

you’re venting to him, and he vents back, and you just both come to the conclusion that life sUCKS, work sUCKS and Shaw...doesn’t suck at all

the next morning, you wake up slightly disheveled and a bit disoriented

but you feel significantly lighter

well, not physically, since there’s literally an arm slung around your waist

he doesn’t really change much about his behaviour...but you notice he’s a tad more affectionate

and a lot less mean

like, forehead poking suddenly turned into teasing hair ruffling.

tickling turns into soft kisses in the crook of your neck while you’re cooking

his rough hands intertwine with yours

“Don’t just overwork yourself, stupid.”

ahh, his words don’t match his actions at all

I had very little inspiration for Shaw...but I wanted to get this out ASAP. Feel free to send in any requests!

[whatareyousearchingfordean]

Supernatural Series Finale

It took me a couple days to collect my thoughts on one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to watch in my life. Like I said a few days ago, I cried even harder watching it the second time around. But now that I’ve had a chance to process and also see what other people were saying, I think I can finally put into words my impression of the finale. 

Buckle up, this is a long one....

Let me preface this first off by saying that as an adamant Dean girl that has said numerous times over the years that all I’ve ever wanted was to wrap Dean in a blanket and give him some forehead kisses and tell him everything is going to be fine, this episode gutted me. I fully believe that my boy did not deserve to fight so hard for so long to just die as soon as he was free. He deserved a lifetime of truly enjoying time with his baby brother, the person he loved most in the whole world.

Now with that being said, having watched this series so many numerous times, I truly don’t believe that the show could have ended any other way. It’s something that has been pointed out by the creator, the writers, the actors, and even the characters themselves in the show. Dean never saw anything else for himself than dying doing the one thing he knows best, hunting. I saw a post that discussed how this would have happened numerous times already had Chuck not been interfering in their lives, and I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment. 

And Dean had been raised to never think anything of that. It goes back to Cas’ declaration that he is “the most loving human he has ever met”. Dean is and always has been a man of duty. He would gladly die at the end of a blade if it meant he saved someone from the fate his family was ‘destined’ to live. He has always cared more about other people than he ever has himself. It part of the reason that his freak out in 15.17 didn’t throw me because for fuck’s sake wasn’t it his turn to be a little bit selfish for once?

Anyway, I digress. Dean has been fighting for others his whole life. And as stated in 15.19, him and Sam were free to finally write their own story. Is it not 100% on character that Dean would die a hunter’s death? As we see in the beginning of the episode, the Winchesters could have chosen to walk away from the life then. They could have chose the apple pie life, a wife and 2.5 kids. But they didn’t, they chose to continue saving people, hunting things. They were writing their own story, even if it ended tragically. But that’s life, it’s messy and depressing, but it’s also beautiful and even if Dean only got a small taste of that, I can be happy.

I know a lot of people feel like that negates their character growth throughout the seasons, but I disagree. I think that the way this ended shows just how much both of them had grown. Sam very well could have went to Jack and begged him to bring Dean back and Dean could have asked him to. But neither felt that it was necessary any longer. Without Chuck pulling the strings, that scary, neurotic, codependence they used to hold was gone. Dean was okay with dying and Sam let him go. Dean told him how much he loved him and how scared he had been to go get him at school. Dean opened up, something that season 1 Dean never would have done. Just look back at “Faith”, the episode where Dean makes every joke in the book about dying instead of facing the truth that his time was up and Sam refuses to accept it so much that his one source to save him (unwittingly) is black magic. The men I saw in 15.20 were far from the men we met in season one. 

Coming back to finally being free, I have to talk about the dammed paperwork in Dean’s room. I’ve seen the speculation about that. But that’s all it is, speculation. We have no idea what that was supposed to be about. If they had meant for us to see it, they would have shown it to use like they showed us the “Dean’s other other phone” sticker. But they didn’t. So it’s perfectly fine to speculate about it, that all a part of art interpretation, but in my opinion, even if Dean was working on ‘something else’ I don’t think he ever could have fully walked away from hunting. This ending was for all intents and purposes, inevitable. 

For all the rest, as a writer, I fully understand the way that they chose to do this episode. Sure covid played a role but the boys had said that the crux of what the episode was did not change. There is a certain nuance to storytelling, like I posted back on Thursday and something that is probably one of the most famous lines from this show. Endings are hard. Writing is hard. It’s impossible to please everyone and even harder to tie up all loose ends. At the end of the day, the writers had to be satisfied with the story that they put out, irregardless of what you or I think. As Jensen so beautifully puts it, Supernatural is a piece of art, one that has numerous hands in the pot. From writers to actors and directors. And art is always up for interpretation. But that’s the beauty in it. 

I talked to a dear friend, @waywardbeanie after the episode and was like “I want to know x.y.and z” because a part of me wanted all the answers from them. I’ve always been a person so very deeply rooted in canon (I know as a fanfic author that sounds weird but stay with me). I trust the information given to me and take it as face value. I seen my stories as an extension to canon, not trying to rewrite it. So it took me a few days, and more conversations with other fans of the show, like @winchest09 , to understand that the facts left out of the final were most likely intentional. 

This is a show that has such a passionate and loving (mostly) fandom. Together we have done so much good for the world, and that is something even if you hated the finale, you can’t take back. The writers left the ending open for us, to write our own stories, whether it’s just your thoughts or if you actually write a piece of fanfiction. There is so little about what happens after Sam leaves, presumably for Austin (don’t even get me started on the essence of that cause I might cry again), because it’s our job to decide. Did Sam quite hunting all together or was he a pseudo Bobby, manning the phones for other hunters? Did he finally go to law school or end up getting some other mundane job? Who was his wife or girlfriend or baby momma in the background? Was it Eileen? If not did she know about his life? One could drive themselves crazy answering these questions, and it’s your right to do so however it will make you happy. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter to the story. 

At the end of the day, what mattered was the peace that the boys found together, in heaven. Sure Dean missed Sammy when he first got there, but he didn’t fuss, because as Bobby said “he would be along”. So Dean did what he’s always done, he took a drive in Baby, and Sam was there when he finally brought her to a stop. In the end their story ended just as it had started, our boys together. 

And I know a lot of people are angry because one of the big themes this show touched on was that family doesn’t end in blood. And I agree wholeheartedly that I would have loved more familiar faces or even the mention of them (I screamed when Donna was mentioned), but at the end of the day, something Eric Kripke has been saying since season one, this show is and always has been about the brothers and their relationship. I in no way think that this negates the family they found along the way or how they could not have done a lot of it without them but, it’s not their story. I’m sorry but it’s true. 

It’s not about Cas, Jack, Bobby, Crowley, Ellen, Jo, Mary, Eileen, etc. It’s about Sam and Dean and it sucks that people can’t let that go, but I get it. I can’t imagine putting so much time into something to let something like that ruin the whole experience for you. I hope that you can find peace eventually. I guess that’s my blessing, that I never really cared for anyone besides Dean. Which isn’t to say I didn’t like characters but what happened to them never mattered to me, as bitchy as that sounds. 

I’m at peace with this ending, no matter how much it hurts me. And I think it’s just the finality of it that hurts. Jensen and Jared and Kripke are satisfied with their little show that could and that’s what matters most to me. Because those are the real people with real feelings that I care about. 

So there you have it. I have zero tolerance for negativity, so please keep your comments off this posts. You are free to your opinion but I don’t want to see it and put any seed of doubt in my acceptance of this ending. I’ll be the first to admit I’m too easily swayed, ha!

But if you need to talk, my inbox is always open. I’m still coping with the loss of this show and everything that comes with it. I don’t do well with change or facing my own mortality, something that has rattle me these past few days. I feel a million years older and that scares me. So know your feelings are valid and I’m here. 

[amwritingmeta]

15x14: Striking A Balance

This is late. I fell behind. Life happens. I still haven’t watched 15x15. Gah! But now to some thoughts on 15x14...

I thought this was a great episode the first time I watched it. Then I thought it was a bloody fantastic episode the second time I watched it, and the third time… well, it just gets better and better. I’m thoroughly looking forward to the final six. I hope you are too. 

I hope you’re as well as you can be and that you’re not living in a stress bubble. They’re the worst. I’d hand you a big old needle if I could. Maybe this meta can be some sort of needle (for popping), because at least I don’t feel the ending of this show is anything we need to stress about. I do believe it’s going to be utterly spectacular. *all the faith*

So I spent a chunk of lockdown watching this show of ours. I started at 12x19 (that episode still makes me tremble with its sheer brilliance) through to 15x13, and felt an overwhelming satisfaction at the evenness of the storytelling for these last three-ish seasons. 

A brief breakdown of three years of meta writing would be: Dean has been pushed to face, recognise and dismantle his internalised toxic masculinity traits aka his Shadow (which has been the root of unhealthy coping mechanisms and an inability to put down boundaries, communicate openly and handle his emotions), he’s been pushed to see the strength and power of his feminine traits (his nurturing side, his compassion, his protective nature) through being put in situations where he’s had no choice but to open up to being honest with himself, in turn bringing him on a course to him handling his emotions better, as well as the narrative giving us moments where he’s gotten the chance to acknowledge and embrace his neglected inner child. 

Yes, Jungian doctrine runs like a river through it, what can I say? I’m a fan.

With Dean as our protagonist, Sam and Cas are both on mirroring journeys, though Sam is Dean’s mirror opposite and Cas is Dean’s mirror likeness. It doesn’t take away from the individual journeys of Sam and Cas: it’s just that their choices and their progression are not determining the course of the narrative. Rather, their choices and progression work to underline and highlight Dean’s growth. Sam and Cas are main characters, but they’re not driving the core of the plot. 

Make sense? Cool!

Especially as this also means that Dean’s progression is pivotal for all three of them to actually reach… well, since it’s a word used twice this season why shouldn’t we just go with it? — completion. 

Which is why my eyes are happily peeled for Dean having moments that display a deepened sense of self-understanding (like his prayer to Cas, where Dean put words on the anger he’s always feeling and how he doesn’t know why or where it’s coming from) (an enormous step toward actually dealing with that emotion) (as self-deception through denial caused by fear of weakness tied to fear of rejection and fear of failure — that’s a mouthful — has always formed Dean’s biggest internal obstacle) because neither Sam nor Cas should, when we look at the narrative as a whole, be able or allowed to reach full completion (or individuation, to use Jungian terms) without Dean getting there first, or at least being shown to be well on his way to getting there.

This episode then is more of an epicsode, because, man, do we get to explore balanced!Dean, and it’s all through Jack: the narrative representation of Dean’s inner child.

Oh, yeah. Way I see it, Jeremy Adams brought us right back to the threads he was pulling on in Scoobynatural. *bless his brain* Only this time he’s pushed it a step further and rather than Dean simply facing his inner child—as (14x16 whoops I mean) 13x16 opened up that can of worms—now, in 15x14, Dean is forced to properly acknowledge and embrace that inner child. I mean. The mind crackles. The feels are cascading like a waterfall over a great cliff. The excitement, people, is real.

Let’s dig in!

Sam and Dean

They were glorious this episode!!

So Sam ended up tortured a little, but that was because he was shooting first, asking questions second, and sure, Mrs. Butters had gone a bit crazy, but as he learned: it wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t her nature, the crazy had been torture-nurtured into her.

And Dean was faced with yet one more reminder of how kindness, compassion and protectiveness can go haywire when there’s influence from toxic masculinity (aka Cuthbert Sinclair) pushing someone into a position of mistrust, insecurity and need for control. 

Let me reiterate the fact that when I’m talking masculine/feminine I’m not tying these concepts to gender, though of course these concepts have been tied to gender traits to the point of brainwashing people into thinking they should dictate what is male and what is female. (mental) Rather I mean all of our internal masculine/feminine traits that need to find balance if we are each to feel happy and content as human beings. 

It’s Tao, and it’s Jung, and it’s beautiful. Is all I’m saying. 

Digression.

My point is that in spite of sorting stuff out in their individual arcs, the brotherly relationship was depicted awesomely this episode, with Dean being 1000% supportive of Sam going to get itches scratched with Eileen, to the point of feeling he would rather just handle the sudden turn of events and this new threat by himself, than disrupt Sam and Eileen’s fun times (and by “fun times” I mean sex), and Sam going along for the joyride of holiday celebrations, home cooked meals and the supportive, warm and caring mother figure that they’re both, again, missing in their lives.

Sam was submissive this episode, following Dean’s opinions on how to best handle Jack (even with Dean being disastrous in the past when stating what Jack needs) which is somewhat frustrating, because Sam has so much more in him, but he also got to show that humongous heart of his, where he understood the root cause of Mrs. Butters’ behaviour and showed compassion, rather than judgement. His compassion has always been one of his most formidable strengths. 

And, of course, Sam had to ride sidesaddle this episode because if he was putting up any sort of protest—regarding accepting Mrs. Butters as part of the bunker or how best to deal with Jack— Dean wouldn’t have gone through the push for progression, delivered through the representation of his inner femininity that is Mrs. Butters, but primarily through the representation of (and here we go into the deeper digging) his inner child—Jack.

Dean and Jack

You know, end of the episode Dean states what is evident throughout: he’s trying. 

In the opening scene he asks Sam if Jack’s come out of his room, and then he’s the one who goes and knocks on Jack’s door to warn him about Mrs. Butters, placing trust in Jack that he can handle it and will call them if anything gets weird, and he cajoles Jack to come out with the promise of snickerdoodles. All of this subtly shows us that Dean knows what Jack is suffering, and we can be sure of that because we know he’s been there enough times.

The guilt, the self-blame, as well as the self-doubt underpinning it all, making it difficult to forgive. 

Because, thing is, Jack is struggling to forgive himself. To accept that it was an accident. He’s waiting for Dean’s forgiveness to give him a marker for whether it’s okay for him to even begin to forgive himself, which is understandable on all the levels of his character progression, but especially when looking at him as a representative of Dean’s inner child.

So then, why is Dean acknowledging, embracing and nurturing his inner child important?

Because, when looking at the narrative from the angle where it’s filled with symbolisism to do with Dean’s internal journey (and by extension the internal journeys of all the characters), then Dean’s progression, and especially lack there of, has been closely tied to the fact that he never got to be a kid. 

He had to grow up fast, got responsibility put on him that was way out of proportion for a four year old child, had to be a father and a mother to his younger brother, and learned to repress and suppress his childish urges, wants and needs through unhealthy coping mechanisms in order to dress himself in the image of the strongerst person that he’s ever known: his father.

(which is a misnomer because there was plenty of weakness to John Winchester) (especially how he was a highly emotional man who spent the years after his wife’s death driven by grief, but hammered it into his eldest son that emotions are weaknesses that will get you killed and you should control them to the point of barely being able to recognise them anymore) 

It’s imperitive for Dean to deal with the neglect he suffered in his childhood, rather than ignore it, if he’s ever going to be able to let those wounds heal over. And letting them heal over is important because pushing down trauma leaves it room to influence our choices and to keep us in old patterns of behaviour. Because self-denial and self-neglect is where our Shadow lives and thrives—our unconscious gaining power over us and dictating our behaviour even as we’re unaware of it.

Remember how Jack swallowed Michael? Remember how Michael was Dean’s Shadow representative? It’s not by accident that what Dean has left to confront, fully, is self-trust, self-forgiveness and finding his way to real self-love, symbolically given to us in this narrative through his treatment of Jack.

Because Jack is the final piece of Dean’s internal puzzle: his inner child in need of some real TLC.

So then, what does Dean need in order to be able to show Jack aka himself some real TLC?

Mrs. Butters

Ah, yes, of course what Dean needs most is to engage with his internal femininity. 

Mrs. Butters represents Dean’s suppressed and repressed longing for more in life, for a home, for love, and the only reason there’s been a need to suppress and repress this longing is to due with what he was taught as a child and throughout his formative years, actively by his father, and unconsciously by the way he was never taught or shown how to deal in any type of healthy way with the loss of his mother. 

Mrs. Butters as our representative of positive femininity then shows us as the audience how Dean, in his heart of heart, wants to believe that he can have good things in his life. That he deserves them. 

Mrs. Butters shows us that what Dean needs is to allow himself to feel joy, without expecting it to flip at a moment’s notice into feeling loss. 

And yes, I realise where the episode ends, but perhaps the feeling of joy wouldn’t flip if the lesson was learned in full and Dean knew how to trust and simply let go of the undercurrent of fear that the flip is lurking somewhere just around the next bend. 

What this episode shows us is that he’s just not quite there yet, but omg the threshholding is intense.

Because Mrs. Butters underlines that what Dean needs, more than anything, is to practice trust. Dean needs to practice opening up. Dean needs to practice letting go of his need for control. 

He can still be in charge of a situation, without thinking it’s all on him always.

Now, the episode highlights this in a rather glorious way, by trapping him in a room, under threat, knowing Sam is about to walk into the situation, and deciding not only is he not going to call Sam for help, he’s not even going to text him a heads up.

Look. This might be a plothole here. Jeremy Adams might have been so focused on the joke of Dean not wanting to interrupt Sam’s sexy times that he didn’t realise the implactions of Dean not even sending a text to warn Sam that he was essentially heading home to a dangerous situation, yeah? 

But the rather lax attitude of the brothers this episode: letting Mrs. Butters stay, and both of them neglecting the need for them to look into her backstory further, because they both got so distracted by holiday celebrations and her amazing cooking, combined with the hopscotch way they approach getting rid of her, all this is intentional enough for me to lean into the reading of Dean’s need to practice trust being explored in awesome ways.

Because Dean needs someone to take the load off, and Mrs. Butters does this in spades. 

What with how she brokers zero arguments, immediately getting him to clean up his language, and I mean, Dean then defying this is a moment of awesomeness and of course we all want him to continue being midly CW foulmouthed, but for all intents and purposes, he succumbs to her chastising quickly, and she gets him to open up to the joy of the moment via holiday celebrations, and, to top it all off, she gets him to eat healthier.

The fact that she’s introduced folding his underwear, and then goes on to tell him that she wouldn’t have had to if he’d just done it right to begin with, is fairly epic. (verrryy epic) As is her giving Dean the nightshirt from Scoobynatural. Obviously! He’s wrapped in hugs! Purple hugs! And having Dean dressed in purple and eating vegetables in the same episode is enough to make one’s head explode.

*head* *ex* *ploded*

Balance. Is why my head is exploding. The purple and the vegetables are indications of growing internal balance. *yes please and thank you!*

I loved them celebrating Sam’s birthday and Dean having specific requests for his, Mrs. Butters dismissing him with how she thought he’s too old to want to celebrate. It was such a moment of reminding Dean that he’s not supposed to regress, he’s not to forget that he is, in fact, an adult, and nurturing his inner child is about letting go of the need for the childhood he never had—which is keeping him from properly having the adult life he deep down yearns for. 

(and then this reminder was followed by a moment of kindness) (as there already were rice crispie treats waiting for him) (and his eager little face!) *heart eyes*

There was so much to love about Mrs. Butters, though!

Like the big bowl of crispy bacon on the breakfast table and her encouraging Sam to enjoy the world he’s fighting for, the waxing of Baby (!!), the introduction of the monster radar, finally getting the telescope—pardon me, the interdimensional geoscope—given some attention, Dean blowing a door down by using the grenade launcher (symbolically tied to self-liberation), the fixing of the TV in the Deancave (with thanks to Jeremy! he who breaketh he too shalt fixeth), the fact that Mrs. Butters is a straight-up anti-Nazi killing machine and that her violence stems directly from her need to protect her home and the people she cares about.

Yeah, there’s so much good in her that her not ending up shot, even though she tortured Sam, is not very surprising and I really enjoyed the fact that her story ended on a compassionate note of understanding, and that, if she hadn’t longed to go back to the woods, the boys would have wanted her to stick around. 

Forgiveness—looking for it, or needing it— is a clear thread through this episode.

As For the Deeper Symbolism

Dean starts out cooking, wearing his new favourite garment—an apron. Now, I could tie that to Dean embracing his inner femininity and the rest of the episode working to underline this fact to us, but that’s just my reading of it, so who knows what the deal with the apron actually is. I do love it though, and it’s put in dialogue twice so we were definitely meant to make note of it.

The cooking ties him directly to Mrs. Butters, of course (or her to him, if you will) and creates a bookend for the episode, where Dean starts and ends the episode wearing the apron: first presenting Sam with a burger (meat man!) and then presenting Jack with a birthday cake. 

This bookend is also tied very strongly to Jack. 

Dean asks about him in the opening scene and we learn Jack is holed up in his room, the episode going from having Jack hiding himself away, ashamed and self-hating in his room, to him sitting opposite Sam, expressing concern that they’re putting all their bets on him and he’s not sure he’ll be able to kill God, Sam offering assurance and Dean, through his cake-baking and happy birthday wishes, offering forgiveness and support.

It’s awesome! Beyond awesome! It’s bloody brilliant, is what it is!

Especially when looking at the implications it holds for Dean’s inner work: his inner child starts out locked away, fearful and despairing, being brought out of that room through the kind and supportive side to his internal femininity representative, only for that representative to turn around and step into the shoes of the toxic masculinity traits that have always been the source of Dean’s self-hatred, distrust and lack of faith in himself, and once being granted honesty from the ego (Dean’s consciousness admitting that he’s trying, he’s angry, maybe always will be, but he’s trying) his inner child ends up with the ego showing that inner child how much it matters, that it’s trusted, cared for and loved. 

*brains on ceiling*

Now, as mentioned briefly, the narrative gives us Dean’s inner femininity (Mrs. Butters) influenced by what is a clear toxic masculinity/Shadow character (Sinclair) and shows us why Dean is still wary of his inner child, still not entirely trusting, and it makes all the sense, especially now that the inner child has swallowed up the Shadow and incorporated it into himself. 

Mrs. Butters’ mistrust of Jack becomes emblematic of Dean’s own mistrust in himself, but his inner child knows better and Jack’s continous denial of Mrs. Butters’ accusations underscores this fact. There is self-trust within Dean. Stronger than the lingering mistrust.

All of this inner work for Dean and Sam’s the one who gets tortured?

Well, I can see good reason why Sam is Mrs. Butters’ favourite and it’s to do with how he’s so closely tied to Dean’s purpose in life. Mrs. Butters is a reflection of Dean, and as she moves into Protector of the Bunker she’s also a reflection of any lingering toxic masculinity within Dean, and how it’s always been trying to find a way to sink its claws in Sam, but Sam has never bought into the toxic masculinty spiel, and because of that he’s needed in this instance, to see through the behaviour, to push for compassion, to break through the brainwashing that Mrs. Butters is under, to point out how she was used, taken out of her true nature to do someone else’s bidding.

The most thrilling part is that it’s Dean who delivers the biggest missing piece to Mrs. Butters’ puzzle: the true nature of Jack. 

Because, looked at symbolically, Jack’s ability to save the world represents Dean’s inner child’s ability to save Dean.

Because if any side to Dean were to destroy/thoroughly repress his inner child, he’d be lost. He would never be able to heal. 

The fact that Dean gets to be the one to do this, to talk a representative of his own inner imbalance down, makes me giddy. 

He would not have been able to do this a season ago. He was barely able to do this at the beginning of this season, because he was so full of anger.

That anger, after voicing it to Cas, doesn’t hold the same sway anymore.

He freely admitted to Jack that he’s still angry, and perhaps he always will be a little angry, but he is trying, and this, to me, is enormous. He expressed his emotion and he’s in zero ways allowing that emotion to control his actions anymore.

And, hey, we got Dean, wearing purple, assuring Mrs. Butters that Jack is a good kid.

It’s just… happy happy joy joy!

And a standing ovation to Meagen Fay. She really helped make the episode compelling to watch, balancing Mrs. Butters’ homely and darling characteristics with the darker and MoL compelled Protector of the Bunker that slowly, but surely, reared its not-as-darling head. Kudos!

Right. I could write about this episode some more, because layers, but it’s time to leave off. One thing before I go, though: I loved that we finally had them talk about that big-ass telescope. And I love that it’s not a telescope, because it makes sense. They’re underground—how would they see the stars? I figured there was some sort of skylight somehow that would open or something but meh, dull. This is so much better! And I loved that the green colour of warning was actually to do with the fact that they’re now not being able to see anything through it, rather than the colour having to do exclusively with Mrs. Butters. Utterly brilliant! And… oh dear, what horrors lie ahead??

Now to go watch 15x15. 

I’m not biting my nails. 

At all.

[depressedoverdrawings]

Look at Gilbert, here. He's so small. Look at his body language. There is none of his usual grace. None of his glamour. None of his arrogance. None of his sexuality. There is only paralysing fear, as he realises what's about to happen to him. A child, frozen in fear, completely vulnerable, utterly alone, with no one to hear, no one to help, locked with a demon in a dark room. I believe this might just be the truest depiction of Gilbert there is, the real Gilbert, that exists behind his façade of coping mechanisms, his attitude, his hypersexuality; the panel is like a microcosm of his soul. He was not a "little devil". He was a scared, hurt kid. One of the elements that help make this particular illustration so horrifying, so revolting, is how it clashes with the usual style of the manga. Most of the manga is drawn is its particular dreamy way I love so much, ethereal and idealized, all dramatic poses, allegoric representations, framing flowers, and furniture prettier than I could ever hope to be. But this particular part is awfully realistic in the body language of the characters: The way Auguste is so depravedly, predatorily hunched over Gilbert, the way the poor boy is pressed against the wall in fear, so tiny, so vulnerable. My god, he really was just a child! It's maddening. I didn't want to keep reading, to turn the page. To me, it didn't feel like an illustration, it felt like a photo. It actually made my skin crawl. That Gilbert has the ending he gets, that there is no recovery, or even justice for him, it bothers me so much. Too much. I feel like trash. It bothers me so much that it feels inadequate, considering how much injustice and pain there really is, happening in the real world. But I digress. I'll just congratulate Madam Takemiya on her work again, and leave it at that. Anyway, I couldn't sleep. It wasn't just Kazeki this time, but it sure as hell did its part. So, after a polite amount of tossing and turning, I got back up, and got a bit too into Kazeki again. Anyway, I'm actually feeling a touch of sleepiness, right now. I should be passing out soon, thankfully. I hope I don't remember any dreams I might have.

[kirstinmaldonado]

Chapter Four 2.0

Is it just me or are the alarming numbers of posts about weight gain or weight loss in this time freaking everyone out? I know I’m not innocent; I’ve definitely joked about my personal quarantine-15 as well, blindingly attempting to hide my own insecurities with it through humor.

But if I see another “Carbie” or changed photo online insinuating weight gain, I might cry.

It’s hard enough trying to “make the most” of your time, even if you’re riddled with it. If you read my last post, you’d think by now I’d be the fit, Spanish-speaking, piano-playing, singer-songwriter that Week 1 Kwarantine Kirstie dreamed of. As we know, I’ve “fallen off.”

But have I? Is this really the age we’re in? Where in a global pandemic we still feel the urge to get a thousand things done in the mere 24 hours we get a day? 

That societal pressures are so prominent that we all joke together about how much weight we’ll gain? And where posts scream at you with side by side pictures of extreme weight loss, expecting you to not only have your life together but lose weight with all this “extra time?”

I digress. I can’t do it all and keep my mental health in check.

People are either finding new or returning to hobbies to distract themselves from what is going on right now, and that’s great. If yours is that home workout, I applaud you!! Keep at it! It’s so good for your mental and physical health, I know I need to be more on top of it! 

If it’s reading a little, spring cleaning, whatever it is that you are able to accomplish, I am proud of you! If you’ve been able to dig in and uncover a goal you’d not been able to achieve before, don’t let this or anything hold you back! I hope to get to that mindset and I feel I am on my way!

But in the meantime, I’ve been baking, and since there’s only two people in the house it’s, y’know, not ideal for the waistline.

But here’s my deal. I’m coping. When I went to the grocery store a few weeks ago and saw empty shelves, I cried and went to the baking aisle to get decorations and proper ingredients for the baking I was planning on doing. My hands have been stained with food color more often than not within just this last week, as I baked for friends’ birthdays in quarantine and for Easter.

And that’s okay! I am adapting.

You know why I stopped baking so much in the first place? I ran out of time. When I’d be home from tour I wanted to relax more than work all night in the kitchen. I wanted to spend quality time enjoying others’ company rather than cleaning pots and pans all night. But I’ve realized now more than ever that baking just brings me this sense of happiness, like I’m sure other things do for you guys.

There’s a rhythm to baking, how you mix it. You can’t rush the process, ‘cause the icing will melt if your treat hasn’t cooled. There’s a sense of calm patience I enjoy that is hard to replicate. And then the decorating taps in to my artistic side, and depending on how I’m feeling I’m either slathering that icing on freely or delicately decorating with pearl accents and made-from-chocolate flourish!

Baking brings me back to Nana’s and Grandma’s kitchens. My favorite thing was baking with them, rolling dough, watching them and learning! As I grew older, got my own place, that feeling of baking and care-taking made me happy. Baked goods always have a lot of love in them, I feel, and is this not a time to put a smile on peoples’ faces? Why not do what I love on Easter and bake a whole cake, a hobby that reminds me of my family that I miss so much and can’t be with?

I don’t want all this to sound like an explanation for my recent eating choices. You’re not my food journal. And even though I’ve dipped away from my goals and feel a little disappointment, I know I was cathartic baking and so accept the consequences of my actions. The point is to recognize and move forward.

I also don’t want this to be like every “how/why not to gain weight in quarantine” post, because I don’t know how to do that.

With all the stress on how this would progress, I don’t blame myself or anyone for freaking out when they saw empty shelves and grabbing the closest thing they could find that has a decent shelf-life (Kraft Mac n Cheese…). The real hurdle here, my point, is just making sure you’re being healthy to yourself.

If you want some red wine, go for it. If you want to treat yourself, okay! These things are all fine in doses as long as you don’t transform your habits from healthy to unhealthy.

I have binged before. I have purged before. I have had the most unhealthy views of my body before. I still battle with it. But within this last year I have gained so much knowledge about how my body operates. I have fed it cleaner food and seen how it’s transformed my mind, body, and spirit. I have worked SO hard and done two a days. It’s not always the easiest, but I spent quality time taking care of myself.

All that to say, my initial 2020 goals were to remain on track and healthy to myself. This is THE year, I thought.

Coronavirus put a…twist on my goals. I haven’t been fussing about the wine I’ve had, or the goodies I’ve made, as I focused more on my mental health. I am glad I let myself just be. It really helped. But it’s mid week five and we have five more weeks ahead of us at least. And as I started looking at myself in the mirror, or flipping through Instagram, I could feel my anxiety creep up again. So I made that dreaded trip to the scale and got out my measuring tape which I’d used before to track progress.

And you know what? I gained inches. I gained weight. 

Did it make me…kinda sad? Yes. I felt disappointed as if all my hard work last year was for naught.

But…I gained weight in a global pandemic.

In the big picture of things, how fortunate am I to have the resources to feed myself. To gain weight. 

All these ads, all the modified pictures which are ACTUALLY kinda fat-shaming, all this panic of gaining weight is so triggering while everyone is just trying to keep relatively afloat. It feels insensitive. I can’t flip through Instagram without seeing people capitalizing on the situation. “Lost 20lbs with this amazing home workout plan and tea” or diets to take care of the “stubborn fat you’ll have” when this ends. It’s toxic for those that battle with eating disorders or body dysmorphia. It’s toxic for those that are just able to get what they can. There’s enough stress already! We are staying inside and at home for a REASON. If you have the luxury to gain a few pounds while you’re safer at home, good for you. Don’t be so hard on yourself as you try to mitigate a PANDEMIC.

I am trying not to be. I am re-adjusting how I’m working out so it fits more in line with my aesthetic goals. We are almost done eating the carrot cake from Easter (yikes, I know, already, it was too good). 

All I hope for myself, and for you all, is that you don’t fall in to unhealthy ways, mentally or physically. It’s a battle, especially in this time, I know! I’ll be the first to say I haven’t been my best. Gaining some pounds isn’t unhealthy itself, but can manifest into bad habits in this isolation like binging or an overall sedentary, unmotivated lifestyle.

If you’re moving, you’re getting a little sun, and you are staying safe and healthy, you’re gonna be okay. Don’t let little personal fluctuations alarm you and derail who you are and what you’ve worked for. The world is fluctuating with you, so you are constantly having to adapt!

I’m going to make a better effort to not coop myself inside, be aware if I’m overdoing the emotionally eating, and feed my body in all the right ways. Mind. Body. Spirit. Besides that, it’s just taking one day at a time.

I hope you all are safe and healthy. I hope you all are still believing and trying your best. <3