#i don't need to have gone through war and experience all the trauma it causes to think peace is cool tf

[rq1nlol]

must I have heard, witnessed or been through worse to appreciate fun and beauty?

[a-cure-for-hysteria]

Crowley attracts neurodivergents because he smells like us.

(Expanding on my previous rant about how we see ourselves in him). No, not saying he's autistic coded or anything like that, just that - and you probably don't struggle to see where this is going - he kinda portrays several very common autistic experiences. 1: First, he's a naïve 'kid', clearly with a special interest (machines and building things), something he's very skilled at. He assumes he's allowed to ask questions about Creation, not trying to hide his frustration when he doesn't understand why things are the way they are. He does not mask. 2: Then, he's cast out of Heaven with the rest of the angels who asked questions, after them having waged a war on Heaven (?). He fights for good, he wants justice no matter what. 3: After the Fall, his naïvety is gone, replaced by bitterness and cynicism - but even on the walls of Eden, he's still nice to someone who presumably never hurt him. 4: We see him turning into a snake at will in Eden. He slithers around, tempting Eve, pulls strings - still, for justice. He has started masking, and does it well, but believes he does it for good. 5: Throughout history, he mostly spends his time alone or in situations that don't offer connection with others, completing tasks for Hell, gradually losing his sense of self. He still cares, he still want's to be a good person, but he doesn't know what "good" is. Everyone's a hypocrite, and he feels all alone. All he has is his sense of justice, and he comes to believe that he can only trust himself. 6: Aziraphale, arguably also portraying several common autistic experiences, is the only person who understands Crowley. Possibly because he has a different trauma to that of Crowley's, but definitely still a trauma caused by Heaven. Aziraphale knows WHY one masks in Heaven, something Crowley learns too late. 7: Crowley wants to isolate from the world, is angry, traumatized and wants nothing to do with Heaven or Hell. At some point, this requires him opening up just a little to that other weirdo he keeps running into, and they form a partnership - initially only because of common interests. I might be reaching here, but a lot of autistic people have "common interest acquaintances" morph into friendships, they often can't be friends with just anyone. They need a good reason to. And Crowley and Aziraphale's shared desire to do as little as possible (and later, save the world) is such a common interest. 8: Via engaging through their common interest, Crowley opens up more and more. Again, we see the naivety we witnessed earlier (In The Beginning, S2E1) - that happy kid who just enjoyed seeing his machinations take form. For him to dare a romantic relationship with Aziraphale, it is essential for Crowley to (at least begin to) heal the trauma caused by Heaven. Him allowing himself to experience pure, naïve excitement is a prerequisite for love, I think. Without this change, he will be on his toes at all times, never letting his guard down. 9: He finally reaches a point where he forces himself open, out of desperation. It wasn't done right - it was done with fear and anger, but he was vulnerable enough, and finally naïve enough to try. This was immediately punished by Aziraphale, who abandoned him (not necessarily what happened, but definitely what Crowley feels). 10: And so, Crowley might retreat back into his hard, cynical shell, having lost the only person who gets him. Better just self-medicate, with alcohol and whatever else not shown on screen that I can promise you Crowley does. It's the "autistic, care-free kid to bitter, cynical, functional addict/goth-adult"-pipeline.

[areyoudreaminof]

The Rock Against the Surf: A Gwyn Berdara Playlist

If my timing is correct, it happens to be Day 2 of @gwynweekofficial , song association! So, how about a playlist of songs for Gwyn?

Just like Nesta needed Gwyn, I think a lot of us readers needed her too. To see someone heal herself through such trauma, to see the beauty and strength in the world and to be vulnerable with herself and others in order to heal was an important experience for me. I really am looking forward to Gwyn's story progressing. Listen Here! And follow me behind the cut for a deep dive!

Pegasi-Jesca Hoop

You combed out my mane I'll wear your saddle and reins With all these stars at my feet I'll stamp and tap the spring With my rider a mount I feel like spreading my wings Take to the sky like poetry

The River-AURORA

Don't forget who you are even though you are hurt You are caught in a wire and soon it will burst You can cry, drinking your eyes Do you miss the sadness when it is gone? (Gone) And you let the river run wild (Gone) And you let the river run wild

The Siren-Nadiiife

Moonlight on my skin Rising from within Taking all my wounds Mother moon my home

Here in the water My soul evolves in wrath I am thunder I am the siren's song

Little Earthquakes-Tori Amos

We danced in graveyards with vampires till dawn We laughed in the faces of kings, never afraid to burn And I hate, and I hate And I hate, and I hate Disintegration, watching us wither Black-winged roses that safely changed their color Oh, these little earthquakes Here we go again

I can't reach you, can't reach you Give me life, give me pain Give me myself again Give me life, give me pain Give me myself again

Rocks and Water-Deb Talan

Seven times I went down Six times I walked back I don't fear the dark anymore 'Cause I've become all that

I will be rocks, I will be water I will leave this to my daughter Lift your head up in the wind When you feel yourself grow colder Wrap the night around your shoulders I will be with you even then Even when I cannot see your face anymore

O'Sister-City and Colour

What have the demons done? With a luminous light that once shined from your eyes What makes you feel so alone?

Is it the whispering ghost that you fear the most? But the blackness in your heart, it won't last forever I know it's tearing you apart but it's a song you can wither

Was it the whispering ghost that left you out in the cold? But the blackness in your heart won't last forever I know it's tearing you apart but it's a storm you can wither

Cold War-Janelle Monáe

So you think I'm alone? But being alone's the only way to be When you step outside You spend life fighting for your sanity This is a cold war You better know what you're fighting for This is a cold war Do you know what you're fighting for? If you want to be free Below the ground is the only place to be Cause in this life You spend time running from depravity

notre dame-Paris Paloma

As I tiptoe Creaking over prayers Pleading with their maker Crying with the choir

I’m not immune to the sincerity Below me, makes me feel It makes me holy But the tears I understand That I do not below No I do not belong

Bishop Briggs-White Flag

Take a hit, shoot me down, shoot me down I will never hit the ground, hit the ground Playing dead, I'll never do Gotta keep an eye on you Patience is wearing thin, paper-thin Promises broke again, what a sin But it only feeds my energy So don't expect no sympathy

Oh, won't wave my white flag, no This time I won't let go I'd rather die Than give up the fight, give up the fight

Rebel Heart-First Aid Kit

You told me once I have a rebel heart I don't know if that's true But I believe you saw something in me That lives inside you too Now all I hear is the wind There's a storm coming through

Tell me what do you do I keep trying To be someone I'd never be I keep seeing her in everyone Everyone but me But I know you truly saw me Even if just for a while Maybe that's why it hurts now To leave it all behind I don't know what it is That makes me run That makes me wanna shatter Everything that I've done

Only If For A Night-Florence + the Machine

And I heard your voice as clear as day And you told me I should concentrate It was all so strange and so surreal That a ghost should be so practical Only if for a night And the only solution was to stand and fight And my body was bruised and I was set alight But you came over me like some holy rite And although I was burning, you're the only light Only if for a night

Albatross-Foals

You burnt the lungs That your ancestors created You sat by the banks Of the river and you waited Till time rolled back And the water had abated You drank your share But you still could not be sated You said you're scared Of the clocks that keep ticking over We'll find a way For a life that's worth living over Again and again

Claim Your Ghost-Iron and Wine

Our winter keeps running us down We wake up with love hanging on Killers let go, killers let go

Some kids get a handful of rain Our hope is the desperate die wise Killers let go, killers let go

Morning falls from a tree and asks for a name Claim your ghost, know the wine for what it is

Be Sweet-Japanese Breakfast

So come and get your woman (Comе and get your woman) Pacify her rage (Pacify her rage) Take the time to undo your lies, make it up once more with feeling Recognize your mistakes and I'll let you back in Realize not too late, loved you always Make it up to me, you know it's better Make it up to me, you know it's better Be sweet to me, baby I wanna believe in you, I wanna believe in something

Ready to Start-Arcade Fire

If I was scared, I would And if I was pure, you know I would And if I was yours, but I'm not Now I'm ready to start If I was scared, I would And if I was pure, you know I would And if I was yours, but I'm not Now I'm ready to start Now I'm ready to start I would rather be wrong Than live in the shadows of your song

Taglist: @ofduskanddreams @krem-does-stuff @krem-has-a-mess @octobers-veryown @melting-houses-of-gold @velidewrites @reverie-tales @c-e-d-dreamer, @andrigyn @foundress0fnothing @vulpes-fennec @asnowfern @mossytrashcan @thelovelymadone @the-lonelybarricade @shadowriel @separatist-apologist @fieldofdaisiies @stickyelectrons @vanserrass @panicatthenightcourt @iftheshoef1tz @damedechance @headcanonheadcase @cursebrkr @wilde-knight @moonpatroclus @kataravimes-of-the-shire @sunshinebingo @filthyglamdoll @ablogofbipanic @bagelfyre @thesistersarcheron @ultadverb @iftheshoef1tz @yazthebookish, @foreverinelysian, @spell-cleavers, @aldbooks, @gwyns, @bookofmirth

[sillyparker]

(mcu!)Peter's love for Spider-Man

I saw a few reddit comments that frankly really bothered me, so I just wanted to ramble about how Peter being somewhat bothered by having to be Spider-Man in ffh and nwh (ffh esp) is more than insanely justified. He will never hate being Spider-Man, infact i think his trauma likely will spur him on to do more and more, either as an escape or a chance to help people the way he hadn't been helped, either way I believe post nwh Peter definitely still finds his joy in being Spider-Man, it'd be literally impossible to just up and make him stop. This part is more of a personal hc before I get into the rest of the post, but I think if he desired to give Spider-Man up after everything, he would have chosen to make the world forget that instead, from what I understand it would have still relieved his troubles, as nobody knows who Spider-Man is, so why would they know Peter?

Far From Home. People take the way Peter acts during the film as him no longer liking being Spider-Man, and it frankly feels very.. ignorant of like literally everything Peter has gone through, honestly. ffh is post endgame, which good fucking god - that is the most trauma inducing experience any possible 15 (16?) year old teen could endure, now im talking both infinity war and endgame, because both are just as bad. In infinity war, he obviously fights alot, not as much as he does in the second film, but it's still very rough, and well he sorta dies, which I'm sure takes a rather extreme toll on him as he could likely feel absolutely everything happening, because of his healing factor, and spidey sense, it's just a very very scary experience, hell I wouldn't be shocked if Peter was drop dead terrified everytime he felt his spidey sense, (he isn't, but I wouldn't put it past being very possible).

And, in endgame he had to hold the gauntlet for an extended period of time from an insane amount of creatures, he literally was holding the future of the entire world in his hands, I would imagine that'd be actually very, very scary. He's consistently put in unfair positions and made to just 'deal' with it, I'm sure he expected some of this but I cant firmly believe he thought he'd end up in such a crazy situation. Now, most obviously the very big part of endgame - Tony Stark fucking died dude!?!?! Let the kid have some time to grieve... not that he ended up getting any, he's literally already lost his parents, (possible uncle), and now his pseudo father, and shit does he lose more right after in such a tiny timespan.

Point is, yeah the fact he want's a goddamn break is not the most insane thing that's happened, god forbid a thoroughly traumatized teenager wants a break without needing to have the burdens of the world (literally) on him again. It just gets to me each time there are such crazy expectations for him, as if any a bunch other characters or people wouldn't literally crumble into pieces if they experienced the amount of stress a kid like Peter is holding constantly. We also get an actual insight on an exact thing I mentioned, where he has a talk with Mysterio where he just wanted to be a normal kid for at least a few seconds, and god is he owed all of that and more. He never got a break, he never got a real chance to comprehend everything that went around him, he got pulled into a fucking other world crisis and yeah - sue him for being exhausted, and not motivated to attempt that all again.

No Way Home. Okay, to start this off - What the fuck? I don't know how obvious it has to be, but the fact Peter is not ecstatic to be Spider-Man after not only having his "identity revealed, but (all I'm about to say is from ffh, still going to get into nwh in a second) almost being killed multiple times, been manipulated by another adult in his life, had his trauma and losses smeared all across his face, faced with taking down an entire insanely large army of killer - explosive - drones, also faced with the fear of accidentally being the cause for a massive incident", is a VERY fair reason, I genuinely think if he stopped being Spider-Man right then and there, everybody he knew would probably support him, because god the things he went through is mind boggling, I don't know how to capture the amount of damage that must have done to Peter, not even just mentally but like quite literal brain damage, he's a kid - no world this severe amount of trauma is taken any forms of lightly. (Which is sorta shown, when Happy goes to pick up Peter on the flower field, and Peter being afraid of Happy maybe not being real)

I wish people gave Peter more credit than they think he deserves, also god Peter fights to be Spider-Man still all throughout nwh, he does his 'duty' by saving all the villains (whilst experiencing the most heinous levels of grief, post May's death), and does everything he can to save the people of their possible destruction, etc. One could fight for the fact Peter.. sorta did cause all of that, even if indirectly - but honestly, I genuinely cannot imagine a different outcome. "What if he went to the lady first, like Strange suggested" It definitely would have not worked, she literally only agreed because he saved her from a being that wouldn't exist had it not been for the earlier mess up, I literally cannot imagine how he would have been able to get any of fixed or back to a state of tolerable at the very least. Peter deserves (and wants) to not live his life as horrible as expected it'd be, he'd never get to any form of normal again, everything he loved was on the line, and half of the world hated him, (alot, wanted him dead or -behind bars).

Peter Parker is just a kid, that is the first and foremost the most important aspect to his character, because the way everything is affected is so so different its ridiculous, the way he will function as a whole when older is very starkly different had this happened to somebody around the age as most of the avengers, all because his brain is just simply not capable of handling such amount's of trauma, or stress. And the way he functions now is so important too, because he's a kid, n' hell will it be obvious how childish he can think or act.

Lastly, another thing I simply hate that people do is when they find the idea of Peter having trauma unrealistic. I'm very much thinking too hard about his character probably, but he is a character with such complex details, and his life is splayed out infront of us through the films, giving us every event that could likely be a cause of something to happen one day, or something that is a cause of an action he already did. I hate that people think just because he's a movie character he's unable to be an actual person in his world, like how everything is simply black and white when it comes to characterization.

Side Note, - this totally turned into just plain out angry rambling, as I've been just annoyed as a whole ever since I started writing this all. so mind anything I say that may be incorrect, I'm defensive about Spider-Man at 8am in the morning and I haven't slept yet, so typos will be made, and some sentences will probably seem confusing.

(next day now and I think i fixed everything(??), I had decided to post this tomorrow/now when I was more comprehensible)

[baldhedanxiety]

Excerpt from "Resilience" Emergent Strategy - AMB

What we put our attention on grows. We have been growing otherness, borders, separateness, and in all that division we have created layer upon layer of trauma and vengefulness. Conditions for permanent war, practices that move us into battle with the very planet we rely on for all life. The scale of division, conflict, racism, xenophobia, and hierarchical supremacy on our planet is overwhelming. Finding the places of healing and transformation, moving towards a world beyond enemies is work that has to be done for our survival. Which means transformative justice: justice that transforms the route causes of injustice is necessary at every scale. But I am particularly focused on how it becomes the common orientation and practice for movements with social change. For peace, for liberation. I tie transformative justice into emergent strategy because it feels like a non-negotiable aspect of our future and because the natural world has guidance for us here.

Transformative justice in the context of emergent strategy asks us to consider how to transform toxic energy, hurt, legitimate pain, and conflict into solutions. To get under the wrong. Find a way to coexist. Be energy moving towards life together. While we often put our attention on the state and demand transformative and restorative justice, it is important that individuals begin practicing in our personal, familial, and communal lives. We can reach the people we need to reach and measure our work by the way our relationships feel. It is hard work but it is accessible to anyone, anywhere, at any scale. Eventually transformative practices that begin small will demand new societal structures. I suspect, we can't back into this, demanding that our government provide a form of justice that even we in movements don't know how to practice in real time. So, let's grow our expertise in this.

Before I go any further in this section I want to share with yall some wisdom from the incomparable Shira Hassan. Shira and I can never quite remember where and how we met, but it was when we were both doing harm reduction work. Reducing the harm from drug use and sex while increasing the agency of each human being to make decisions related to his/her/their body without shame or judgement. We were thrilled to find each other. Over the years she has been a confidant, tarot reader, guide, friend. She has taught me to be less judgmental, to love my fatness, to embrace my own need as my body has gone through various levels of ability and disability. And through her work at Young Women's Empowerment Project and her consulting she has taught me a ton about transformative justice. I showed Shira an early draft of this book and her feedback was so good that I had to include it here, as a core part of this chapter. Here is some Shira brilliance.

"I love that you are writing about transformative justice in the context of emergent strategy. I need us to acknowledge more that we have no idea what we're doing. That we're a birthing a new collective consciousness out of the pain of losing too many people to colonialist practice. I need transformative justice to be framed as part of emergent strategy so that we can acknowledge we are midwives to a changeling. Transformative justice is a mutable process with only its values set in stone. In order to resist one size fits all justice, we have to resist the idea that every process looks the same. The goal is for us to to embody these values so that our creativity can guide our healing and our drive for treating each other with true justice. With every experience of healing on our own terms we also begin to heal the generational wounds of colonialist justice. Here's the definition I use in my trainings and the YWEP used too.

Transformative justice:

Acknowledges the reality of state harm.

Looks for alternative ways to address and interrupt harm which do not rely on the state.

Relies on organic, creative strategies that are community created and sustained.

Transforms the route cause of violence, not only the invidiual experience.

I love the piece you wrote that is later included in this section "We are still beginning". It is one of my favorites on transformative justice right now and I've been using it in my workshops.

"Nothing in nature is disposable."

This isn't most people's belief. I just killed a bug earlier today and will set out some rat poison tomorrow lol. The struggle between disposability and getting something or someone that doesn't work for me out of my life. No one is disposable and yet we have a right to make boundaries. Furthermore, we want people to make boundaries. For people who are currently in abusive situations and living with their violent partners, this kind of transformative justice thinking needs more clarity. I can't tell you how many times I've had to go back to the drawing board because someone I love has used TJ principles of transformative and non-shaming to justify the return of their abusive, jerk partner. I say all this to say, I think it's important to think of the audience as people who are currently in abusive situations. What are we telling them? What are we asking?

I really like generationFIVE's works on this. I use this a lot. It is a combination of generativeFIVE's principles with the YWEP's thinking combined into it. Safety, healing, and agency for all.

Safety, healing, and individual agency for survivors.

Accountability and a transformation for people who harm

Community action, healing, and/or group and organizational healing and accountability.

Transformation of the social conditions that perpetuate violence.

Lessons from a transformative break up: How to find new ways to be in each other's lives and not split the communities we love, or the movements we support.

Try every single thing you can to make it work and articulate the effort you are making to each other, even things you aren't sure will work. Try everything. This will matter later.

Love yourself. Don't let fear make you settle for something you know isn't working. Be honest. The harder things are to say, the more necessary they are to say. Commit to being in each other's lives and doing whatever is needed to ensure that in the long term. This may include being far away from each other, physically and social media in the short term. Set boundaries around communication and stick to them. This includes how often to communicate, what is okay to talk about, who is okay to talk to about the process, and permission to express feelings. You can identify a new boundary as you go along if something hurts or doesn't feel right. Don't tell anyone else until you are ready. Be intentional about who you tell, what you say, and letting people know what is and isn't okay to talk and ask about. Write a letter to your community if need be. That way your true story trumps gossip and bullshit.

FEEL YOUR FEELINGS!!!! x3

Gather trusted supported around you and lean on them as much as necessary. Together, tell the story of your relationship to a trusted and neutral friend. What happened? What was great? What did you learn? Be as honest as possible and take the time to tell the whole thing.

Don't judge each other's choices, feelings, or processes. You can't actually know what is going on for the other person. Take responsibility for your own feelings and act accordingly. When you feel ready, dream together about the new relationship you want to have with each other. As you come into new, post-break up relationship with each other, watch for patterns, and take it slow. Celebrate your maturity and growth and ability to be present and do this. Invite others to celebrate and applaud the efforts. When you feel ready, enjoy the friendship you made possible together.

Please note, all of this is in the case of a generally awesome healthy relationship that doesn't quite work, ot an abusive one that you actually may need to actually completely leave quickly.

Transformative justice in an abusive dynamic

"Like everything in nature. We all have gifts. Sometimes the gifts don't seem like gifts: the bee that sting, the stinging nettle that irritates your skin. But when we look at our ecosystem in totality, it is clear how each piece is necessary for the whole. It is a reminder to make room for all of us and our fiery stinging glory." -Karissa Lewis

"Every living thing has a role in the ecosystem and its own destiny to fulfill, even things we can't see, don't like, or don't understand." -Judy Hatcher

When an abusive dynamic builds between lovers, family, or coworkers, it is first and foremost important to understand that it is a dynamic that both or all parties are playing into, consciously and unconsciously. This is different from an abusive event, one explosive moment. This is when there is habitual emotional, spiritual, and/or physical violence and cruelty. An abusive dynamic can sustain by two or more people directly involved in it and a bevy of others who ignore, enable, or exacerbate it. When we are children or dependents, we don't usually have full agency to shift or leave an abusive dynamic because our safety and livelihood depend upon our abuser. And many of us figure out other ways of "leaving": dissociation, appeasing, addiction, etc.

When we are adults, we can begin to notice how we are playing into the dynamic and to shift. We have agency, even if we feel like we are solely victims. That realization can be liberation in itself. Often the same dynamics echo across different realms of our lives. What we allow at our home and love realm shows up with our friends or our families or with our coworkers, bosses, or partner organizations. It is our pattern, our shape. These patterns are prevalent within our movements, spilling the boundaries of our personal lives and creating toxicity in our organizations and networks. We perpetuate abusive dynamics under the guise of accountability, call outs, even solidarity and love. If you have the ability to see the dynamic, to see yourself in a pattern and walk away before reaching the point of emotional or physical harm, bravo. And if not, hey, most of us don't. We need community to hold us in our dignity and to support transformative justice.

Here are a few signs that you may be in an abusive movement, work, family, friendship, or romantic dynamic:

You make agreements or set boundaries and they get crossed or broken and/or you can't hold the agreements or boundaries yourself.

You can't communicate directly with the person or people about concerns. A culture of gossip grows here in the family or group.

When you raise the issue that agreements or boundaries are not being held, there's no accountability. The other person or people deny the transgression, say they forgot the agreements, say it is your fault, ridicule you, continue the transgression and / or you can't see your accountability in boundary crossing and / or diminish the harm.

There's a culture of blaming or dishonesty that breaks down trust over time.

You don't feel comfortable processing the issues of the dynamic with friends, coworkers, allies. You feel ashamed or like it will upset the other person or people in the dynamic.

Arguments are really confusing and/or repetitive. You can't tell what you're arguing about. The arguments have no boundaries or containers. You keep returning to issues you felt were resolved. And you keep losing track of your values and center in the process.

You feel dismissed, hidden, or disrespected and/or like you can't acknowledge reality, be transparent, or respectful.

You feel like a core part of yourself is compromised or not welcome and/or you want to change a core aspect of another person or group.

You feel bullied or bullying, scared or scary, emotionally unsafe.

You feel like something is being taken from you or you are taking from the other person.

Once you become aware of the dynamic it is important to take some space to become clear of the dynamic of yourself. So often, these dynamics perpetuate because we are scared to be alone. Scared to create conflict. Scared to take a step back. And then once we do, we get more air. More clarity. If it feels like there is work that can be done for mediation, healing, and transformation, by all means put time and attention there. But with some humility the nature of abusive dynamics is that they are foggy and hard to navigate from within.

Often, we leap to couples therapy or office mediation while still in the private fog of it all. Get transparent and current with trusted friends or comrades who can offer perspective on the situation. You have the right to tell your story. The silence and shame around these dynamics makes people think they are alone and especially flawed. Not so. Organizations are rife with abusive bosses or collective members. Social justice movements are full of couples in private battles against the oppressive dynamics we face in the world. You are not alone. And you do not have to be silent. You do not have the right to traumatize abusive people, to attack them personally or publicly, or to sabotage anyone else's health. The behaviors of abuse are also survival based. Learned behaviors rooted in some pain. If you can look through the lens of compassion, you will find hurt and trauma there.

If you are the abused party, healing that hurt is not your responsibility and exacerbating that pain is not your justified right. You do have the right to walk away, to literally and virtually gather yourself up and remove yourself from the dynamic. Take space in order to remember and fortify yourself. You have the right to create boundaries that generate more possibilities for you. Those boundaries may be short term or permanent. You have the right to ask for support from your friends and community. It really helps to find neutral mediators, or mediation teams to support conversations that the abusive dynamics may make difficult. Sometimes the feeling of things being unresolved will keep pulling you back into the conversation. Mediation can help draw the line.

You are not obligated to engage in a process with someone if you do not feel like it. Whether you feel unsafe or exhausted or angry. While we are working towards a world where all conflict can be resolved in a transformative way, we aren't there yet. And a lot of messy shit goes down in the name of transformative justice. One thing to really track here if you are the abuser or in a mutually abusive dynamic and you don't want to participate in a process, this could be you dodging a responsibility that if you did take it on, could transform your life and future relationships. But it's up to you. You have the right to not know the right moves to make.

[buckydeservesthebest]

My pal @tragicfantasy-girl already made an excellent and thorough contribution, but I still want to give my two cents addition.

First of all, it seems to me that saying that “the world has moved past the need for Bucky stans”, is at the very least, a very dogmatic statement on @wenellyb part. Because by its own definition, being a fan doesn't come from the fact that it's “necessary”, it comes from the empathy, sympathy, congeniality one feels towards a certain character. No one can prohibit someone from being a fan and much less their right to express the thoughts and opinions they may have about it, freedom of expression is a basic right.

Secondly, as my friend rightly said, the OP just makes it clear that Bucky fans do need to exist. And not for the sake of fangirling/fanboying but because Bucky is the agglomeration of many (too many) of the worst experiences anyone could ever experience. He was a prisoner of war, he was exposed to decades of physical and psychological torture, he was subjected to ECT during these 70 years which caused him irreparable brain damage and this subject has never been talked about. Bucky is an amputee, disabled and suffers from C-PTSD (a much more severe version than simple PTSD), depersonalization crisis, depression, anxiety and many other mental illnesses. The number of people who can relate to him to one degree or another is overwhelming.

We Bucky stans never try to minimize all the trauma and suffering that Sam and other characters have gone through. Almost every Marvel character suffers from some sort of trauma and of course this is important and should be treated with great respect. But it must be recognized that even within traumatic experiences, there are levels of severity that are based on both the duration and the level of short and long term damage that these experiences entail.

When we say that Bucky is one of the victims who have suffered the most, it is not only because he endured one of the longest lasting and most damaging tortures to anyone's psyche, but also because unlike absolutely every other character, be it Clint, Erik Selvig, Helen Cho, Jessica Jones, Yelena and the other BWs who were victims of mind control, or Isaiah who was a victim of imprisonment and experimentation, Bucky does not enjoy the right to be recognized as a victim of either mind control or imprisonment and experimentation.

Bucky has been actively blamed over and over again (with the exception of Steve of course, and T'Challa) for a situation in which it is perfectly well known he is innocent because he had no agency. Bucky is blamed for the harm his captors caused others, as is the case with Isaiah's “Even your people (HYDRA) weren’t done with me” situation. HYDRA is NOT Bucky's people, they were his kidnappers and enslavers. Because yes, Bucky was a slave of HYDRA, because he was under the total domination of a third party, which is one of the definitions the dictionary gives to the word slave.

I have seen several of the stans complaining about how Sam was mean/unfair or still treated Bucky like he was still the Winter Soldier or like he was responsible for his crimes as the Winter Soldier, which is all untrue by the way.

Yes, Sam did hold Bucky responsible for what he was forced to do as the Winter Soldier, and this on more than one occasion, whether from jokes that aren't funny to serious statements:

"You were stopping all the wrongdoers *you* enabled as the Winter Soldier" Ep 05.

"They cleared the bionic staring machine, and he killed almost everybody he’s met." Ep 03.

"We're not assasins" Ep. 02

And don't get me started on the ableist jokes Sam made about Bucky's condition:

"What’s going on in that big cyborg brain of yours? I can actually see it. I can see the gears turning. Oh, they’re malfunctioning, shutting down. Yep, they’re on fire." "(...) the bionic staring machine (...)" "I get it, why you want me to talk to *Freaky* Magoo over here"

Isn't Sam treating Bucky badly in these situations? Isn't he being unfair by blaming Bucky for what he “did” as the Winter Soldier, knowing full well that he didn't have the remotest control over his actions? Isn't he having a discriminatory attitude with all that ableist banter?

As tragicfanstasy-girl rightly said, Sam's fans hold double standards by getting upset because we don't acknowledge Bucky's "bad" treatment of Sam, when they refuse to acknowledge all the victim-blaming and ableism Sam subjected Bucky to. Where is the fairness in this way of reasoning?

To accuse Bucky of treating Sam "badly", just like that, is not only to remove all context from the situation, because “treating badly / mistreating” implies that this behavior comes out of nowhere, for no apparent reason, and that it is generally done with the intention of making the other person feel bad.

That is why I would not use the term “treat badly”, because none of Bucky's behavior comes from malice or bad faith. As my friend rightly said, it comes from the pain, depression, self-loathing of a suffering person.

But let's look at the whole context a little deeper. More than anything else, what Bucky did was to express his displeasure and disapproval about Sam's decision to give up possession of the shield (it's what give up something means), nothing else.

And here's the kicker, Bucky did NOT criticize or judge Sam as a person, he criticized his specific ACTION/DECISION of giving up the shield. At literally no point did Bucky ever insult him or use derogatory terms towards him or label him as incapable of protecting Steve's legacy, something he originally did agree to do.

And I mean, if we think about it, there ARE compelling reasons for Bucky and anyone else to disagree with Sam's decision, and NOT for the fact of him not wanting to wield the shield, BUT for the act of giving up its possession. Giving up its possession to the museum that the government owns. The same government that has proven to make terrible decisions time and time again. The same government that wanted to have control over enhanced people. The same government that confiscated Steve's shield and Sam's wings for being against it. The same government that has proven to be anything but trustworthy and fair.

So therein lies the problem for Bucky (besides wanting to protect Steve's legacy and the emotional attachment he feels towards the shield), the problem is that Sam put the shield in the hands of those who could misuse it, and literally that's where the whole problem with Walker came from.

To summarize (and I apologize if I already said several times), the problem for Bucky was NEVER that Sam had not wielded the shield or that he had not adopted the mantle of Captain America, because he was in possession of the shield for months after Steve's death, and did not wield it, continuing to maintain the alias of Falcon. And that was fine, no criticism of Bucky comes from this fact, but again, from the fact of having ceded possession of the shield to those who could misuse it.

(I mean, even if the shield had been kept in the museum, there was a risk that anyone could steal it and do whatever they wanted with it.)

Everything Bucky said to Sam about the shield was NOT meant to make him feel bad, but to convince him to do something about it, get it back and put it back in good hands, or rather, put it in Sam's hands. Because despite everything, Bucky NEVER doubted for a second that Sam was the right one to wield it and be the next Captain America. Bucky continued to actively support and believe in him, that's why he gave him the shield once they took it away from Walker, and that's why the favor he asked the Wakandans was to make a new suit for Sam.

It's unfair to say that Bucky was a asshole to Sam, when he helped him with his mission to capture the Flag Smashers, even when it was none of his business. Bucky actively defended Sam both in combat, and from the racist attitude of the cops in episode 2, as well as Walker's attempt to intervene in Sam's mission for trying to reason with Karli in episode 4: “he knows what he's doing”.

Again, at absolutely no point did Bucky doubt that Sam was a good and capable man and the right one to carry on Steve's legacy. None of this is “treating badly” if you ask me.

The first thing Bucky did when he met Sam was blame him “You shouldn’t have given up the shield”. No “hello”, no “good morning”, no “how have you been Sam?, when we know that Sam has been checking up on Bucky, and texting him but Bucky didn’t reply. So Bucky ghosts Sam, and only comes back to blame him about giving up the shield.

Besides the fact that Bucky did have reason to express his displeasure about Sam's decision, and as tragicfantasy-girl explained earlier, Bucky's attitude does not come from malice or bad faith, but from pain, guilt and grief.

My pal gave an incredible introspection as a person who has sadly gone through traumatic experiences. These points of view are very, very important because they offer a perspective that people who have not been through a similar situation may not understand.

I cannot speak from this point of view, but I can offer my opinion as someone who lost a very close loved one and who has not yet overcome a grief that has already lasted 3 years. So I can say from my own experience, that losing a close loved one generates a very strong emotional attachment to their belongings and we become very over protective of them, and anything that may represent a lack of respect towards those belongings is considered a very serious offense. It is true that everyone grieves differently, but from what I can see, Bucky grieved very similarly to what I experienced. This is one of the many reasons I can empathize with him. And if I see one of the possessions my loved one entrusted to others being misused or disrespected, I will not hesitate to express my outrage at the person causing the situation. I wouldn't even have the head to greet them kindly first.

When you live a very painful and recent bereavement, the last thing that goes through your mind is to be the kindest person to others, and you just prefer to isolate yourself, you don't want to have to see anyone... At least that's how I lived it...

To say that Sam was checking on Bucky is a very specific interpretation of the fact that he sent him messages. This could mean many things, not necessarily that he was looking out for Bucky's welfare. In fact, in an interview that was done for the series, where Seb and Anthony were present, the interviewer asked what the content of those messages would be, and Anthony jokingly replied “Hey, did you kill someone?”, and everyone agreed that that was most likely the type of messages Sam sent to Bucky. Actually, this is consistent with Sam's character who tried on more than one occasion to dissuade Steve from his attempts to save Bucky, behaving consistently hostile towards him by making unkind remarks before every little remark Bucky made, always expressing the dislike he felt for him.

So, nobody can't blame Bucky for not wanting to respond to those kinds of messages, which are nothing more than mockery of all the severe trauma he still suffers.

Not only did Bucky actively support and believe in Sam, and never try to express his displeasure at his continued ableist and victim-blaming comments (because unfairly Bucky believes he deserves them), but the plot had him apologize for his own white privilege as well as Steve's! Bucky had to apologize because Steve made a decision (to give the shield to Sam) without considering what it would mean for a black man. It was Steve who put that burden on Sam, NOT Bucky, because he had no say in that decision. If anything, if anyone should apologize for that situation, it was Steve and NOT Bucky.

TFATWS revolutionized around the injustice of racism and how people in the black community can and should be considered victims for that, but it never addressed the issue of the injustice of victim-blaming over all the time Bucky has been held responsible for everything he was forced to do under mind control, and how he also deserves to be recognized as a victim. Sam, Sharon, and everyone gets a pass on blaming Bucky for the harm he was forced to commit, something only HYDRA is responsible for, just because “they too have suffered injustice”. NO, suffering injustice does NOT give you the right to be unfair to others.

Everything, absolutely everything within the TFATWS plot was focused on vilifying Bucky, and making him look like the cause or at least a participant in all the evils and tragedies that have taken place in everyone's lives. “Bucky's people hurt Isaiah”, "Sharon became a criminal for helping Steve to help Bucky", "Bucky was thoughtless for not thinking about what it could mean for a black man to be Captain America". In none of these situations did Bucky have a word.

And talking about Bucky hurting people, I have NEVER seen a Bucky stan talking about how awful what he did to Yori was. He befriended a man knowing full well he had killed his son? What kind of mindgame was he playing.

This is one of the most misguided and out of context takes I have ever read.

There is NO mind game, because all Bucky was trying to do was make amends for the damage done to others that he believes he is responsible for. Yori lost his son and became a lonely man, Bucky couldn't revive him but he could try to somehow fill the void his loss left in his father's life. That's why he tried to spend time with him, tried to be there for him, and his company was good for him. Leah recognized him. Yori already knew that his son had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, ending up being one of the many killed by an unnamed assassin who broke into the hotel where he worked.

Knowing the identity of the person who pulled the trigger brought absolutely NOTHING revelatory or healing for Yori that would allow him to find closure. That's why Bucky didn't tell him, not only because telling him that would only put Yori through a new grief, but because it would prevent Bucky from being able to continue to be there for him. It's because of all this that the scene of Bucky telling Yori the truth is one of the most criticized by fans, BECAUSE IT OFFERS NOTHING HEALING FOR EITHER YORI OR BUCKY.

And please don’t get me started on how they tried to make Ayo the “bad guy”, when Bucky had just broke out Zemo out of prison, the guy who killed King T’Chaka, without thinking about the consequences and the impact on his Wakandan friends.

Again, there is a very pronounced misinformation and lack of context here. Bucky assisted Zemo in his escape, because according to the plot and the writers' logic, Zemo was the only one with the resources to discover the origin of the new super soldier serum and track down the Flag Smashers. The book The Art of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier (which was written by the production of the series itself, which makes it totally canonical), offers more information about the whole issue of Zemo's escape from prison. It is clearly stated there that before resorting to his intervention, Bucky and Sam had already exhausted all other available options, the last card being Zemo. And it is also stated and I quote, “Zemo refuses to help from behind bars, so Bucky assists him in his escape.” This implies that Bucky first tried to get useful information from him, without having to release him from prison, but he refused. So again, according to the plot, Bucky did the right thing by assisting him in his escape because Zemo was the only one who could offer help.

No one ever said that Ayo or the Wakandas were the “bad guys” for wanting to go arrest Zemo, Bucky himself understands how this impacted their pride. And at no time did he refuse to hand him over to them, he just asked them for a little more time, because his intention from the beginning was to return Zemo to prison, and Zemo himself knew it. Ayo understood that, and that's why she gave an ultimatum of 8 hours before returning. Bucky understood it too. That is why he never objected to the Dora's intention to arrest Zemo after those 8 hours.

What we do consider unfair on the part of the Wakandans is the fact that they hid from Bucky the existence of the fail-safe that disconnects his arm, his prosthesis, one that they gave him without any previous condition, without considering that Bucky's ignorance of this fail-safe could be potentially fatal for him, in case he found himself in a situation in which he was hanging for his life by his left arm, and that by pure bad luck something activated that mechanism.

All of this coupled with the objectification associated with Bucky's disability. The way in which Ayo dehumanized him horribly by removing a part of his body, all this in a form of power game, in which Bucky has no control over even his own body.

And worst of all (or I don't know what's worst in all this anymore) is the "reason" - if you can call it that - why Ayo did it, simply because she was upset that Bucky has stopped her from killing Walker, something that had nothing to do with her original mission of capturing Zemo. And frustrated by that, she blamed and dehumanized Bucky.... To say this was totally unfair on her part is an understatement.

We are not hating on Ayo as a person: but to the action of removing the ability aid from a disabled person. It's like if someone took away Dr X wheelchair or Matt Murdock's sight stick.

The dehumanization towards Bucky in TFATWS is treated with the same disrespect that James Gunn handled in Guardians of the Galaxy: Holiday Special, in which with much mockery and ableist comedy, his prosthesis was treated as a mere object and not as what it is: an ability aid.

It is because of all this and many many many more things that we Bucky stans continue to raise our voices about all the injustices and mistreatment that Marvel has subjected him to time and time again. Not because we believe he is the only character who has suffered, but because he is the only character who has not been done justice. Because he is the only character within all of Marvel that has been denied the right to be considered a victim, when everyone else can be without issue.

It is alarming how many posts still exist and are still being shared where Bucky is still considered guilty for what he was forced to do as the Winter Soldier, even though it is well known among fans that he had no remote control over his actions. The level of victim-blaming that exists is disturbing. And not only because this is an injustice to the character of Bucky, but because it is also an injustice to everyone who can relate to him in this regard.

These are a couple of comments from a Twitter user, in which the person was affected on an emotional level by all the victim-blaming that was shown on TFATWS as if it wasn't a bad thing. Who knows how many people have been affected by this and we just don't know. “If Bucky is guilty for a situation he had no agency in being mind-controlled, then I, who was not brainwashed, am certainly guilty, even though I had no opportunity to offer resistance.” Do you realize the impact this has on people???

So NO, we will NEVER shut up and stop asking for justice for Bucky, because asking for justice for him also means asking for justice for all those people who can identify with his suffering.

The world has moved past the need for Bucky stans. They serve no other purpose than to write long stories explaining why their characters is the most miserable character, who has suffered the most, has had the most unfair treatment in the world and then forget and dismiss anyone around their character. Let’s not forget how entitled they act whenever there is a big announcement for Sam’s character, and immediately demand the same for Bucky. Even though there are 364 other days where they could do the complaing for their character, they conviently choose the day there is a big announcement for Sam’s character to complain and make demands they have no right to make, instead of praising Sam’s character just once in their life.

And honestly, I don’t even think they really like Bucky as a character because they absolutely refuse to see him as he really is or see the ways their character has grown.

Like Tony Stans before them, and unlike any other fans in the MCU, Bucky stans have the ability to always paint their character as the victim no matter what the circumstances, act as if their character is the only character to have ever experienced trauma in the history of characters. And they absolutely to refuse to see the flaws of their characters or any bad thing they do, They will blame all the bad things their character does on literally anybody BUT the character. They refuse to acknowledge that their character isn’t the only one who has feelings and who has known pain. We are slowly being freed from Tony stans, it’s time for the same thing to happen with the Buckies.

The last strike is that now they somehow came up with the idea that Bucky’s and Isaiah’s stories are somewhat similar. Excuse me but what???

What is surprising to me is that I never see this kind of behavior coming from Steve fans, Natasha fans, Thor fans and so on. Maybe I missed something.

It’s always the same fandoms that decide on one specific interpretation of a character and stick to it no matter what is happening on screen. They insist on Bucky being the one who needs to be taken care of, when Bucky in episode 5, and episode 6 was the one who was taking care of Sam ( getting the suit, helping with the boat, supporting with the flagsmashers). Do you even watch the shows your character’s involved in or do you just live in your headcanon? Do you even realize that you character is making progess and that unlike your headcanons Bucky seems to have more the profile of a nurturer once he starts healing? Bucky still has a long way to go, but have you seen him giving away that notebook? Starting to make amends the right way? Do you not see his progress?

They insist on Bucky being the one being hurt but turn a blind eye when Bucky is doing the hurting. And let’s not even talk about what happens when the other character interacting with Bucky is not White…

I have seen several of the stans complaining about how Sam was mean/unfair or still treated Bucky like he was still the Winter Soldier or like he was responsible for his crimes as the Winter Soldier, which is all untrue by the way. But then they never mention why Sam didn’t open welcome Bucky with open arms.

The first thing Bucky did when he met Sam was blame him “You shouldn’t have given up the shield”. No “hello”, no “good morning”, no “how have you been Sam?”, when we know that Sam has been checking up on Bucky, and texting him but Bucky didn’t reply. So Bucky ghosts Sam, and only comes back to blame him about giving up the shield. And even when Sam tells him he’s upset about the shield being given to Walker, Bucky keeps pestering Sam. And it keeps being that way for a major part of episode 2 and 3. 

And yet I have NEVER seen any Bucky stan talk about how Bucky treated Sam badly during that time.

Do you guys not remember the scene where Bucky apoligize? I just don’t understand, even Bucky understood that he f*cked up, and changed his behavior, why can’t his stans?

And talking about Bucky hurting people, I have NEVER seen a Bucky stan talking about how awful what he did to Yori was. He befriended a man knowing full well he had killed his son? What kind of mindgame was he playing.

And please don’t get me started on how they tried to make Ayo the “bad guy”, when Bucky had just broke out Zemo out of prison, the guy who killed King T’Chaka, without thinking about the consequences and the impact on his Wakandan friends.

Bucky stans don’t even acknowledge the feelings of other characters than their own. They did it with Endgame Steve with blablabla how unfair he was to abandon Bucky, even though Bucky knew Steve was leaving. And they are now doing it from Sam.

I really like Loki as a character but I’m sometimes annoyed at some stans that want to insist that he isn’t a villain, never did anything wrong and even go to the lengths to paint him as a victim when he killed actual people. But usually Loki stans don’t reach the levels of Buckies when it comes to putting on blinders whenever they are thinking about their characters. Most of them acknowledge Loki’s flaws and his wrongdoings and like him anyway. As they should.

Bucky stans need to step aside and leave Bucky’s character to people who really know how to appreciate him, who (unlike them) want his character to heal and be happy and see him as he is, flaws, wrongdoings, mistakes and most importanly who also see his growth. 

Most importantly, leave Bucky’s character to people who know how to tag properly and won’t tag a post that doesn’t even have Sam in it with “Sam Wilson” just to get more traction for their post.

[instantartific]

ও Neon J Headcanons

Ooh, I got a dollar in my pocket! // So, turn the music up and get it poppin'!

I'm tryna have some fun before I die slow- // So, all that really matters is tonight!~

♡

Note: the majority of these headcanons have to do with Neon being disabled one way or another, but some delve into the results of his (unresolved) trauma in the war, including phantom pain to poor mental health.

Neon isn't actually his name. It's what he was referred to back when he was a soldier. Out of respect to his brothers, he keeps the nickname alive. "J" is just his middle initial. Anyone who knew his actual name from him directly is long dead or plain ol' gone. A background check isn't exactly that difficult to work out, though, seeing the, er... y'know. Every surgery.

While his radar is definitely better than nothing, it isn't exactly great. His ability to actually see detail in anything he looks at depends greatly on how far out the signal is being sent and how he personally feels that day.

On a good day, he can actually somewhat see the outlines of the pens and papers lying on his desk, and can even write if he feels like it. On a bad day, it's almost completely dark and all he can tell is that he's facing a solid roughly shorter than his waist.

That being said, what is shown on his display isn't exactly what he's seeing. It's his interpretation of the information that he's gathering from the environment around him. People can completely disappear from his vision while still being close enough to be 'seen'; on the flip side, people can show up on his radar that don't actually exist.

He surprisingly relies on hearing a lot. He can track and identify people from how fast they walk, how they carry their weight, if they drag their feet, all before they start talking. He's around 1010 enough that he can identify them by walk alone.

Let alone having to rely solely on tone to identify emotion.

Memorization is essentially key in every aspect of his life. Which is a big reason why touching shit without asking, AND not putting it back where he knows it is? Single easiest way to royally piss him off, obviously outside of insulting his kids. Insulting his kids is the fastest way to make a very, very strong enemy.

Second easiest way is stairs. Goddamn stairs. Rin or one of the other boys have to help him with any set of stairs outside of the ones in the mansion. They announce when he's coming up to a set of stairs, count his steps, and announce when he's on solid ground. He has eaten shit cause of foreign sets of stairs so many times.

Outside of the boys, he uses a retractable walking cane to get around areas he's unfamiliar with, or if there's just too many people around in general. While his focus is directed on people moving around him, the cane keeps him from walking into things lower than his focus is set.

This cane is also 100% used as an impromptu weapon, if the need be. If you really think he's afraid to hurt someone just because he's trying to change now, you'll be solely mistaken. He's just much less trigger happy these days and would never cause harm for no reason. Self defense for himself or anyone he cares about does not count towards this.

He has absolutely caught one of the boys slipping and calling him 'Captain Whack-a-Mole'. He appreciated the effort to be PG.

He experiences phantom limb almost constantly. This usually isn't an issue, but if he's really out of it, he'll forget to actually move his physical body (swearing up and down that he moved his, well- original one instead. The sensation of moving his nerves is still very much there, and it's different from the sensation of moving the mech.)

He's not foreign to experiencing phantom pain from this as well. And with the inability to take any "pain killers", placebo or otherwise, he simply has to go through the torture with little to nothing to alleviate it outside of putting pressure on the area.

The more the phantom limb acts up, the more likely he is to be seen limping or using the cane to walk rather than feel where he's going. He makes an effort to keep it as subtle as he can, but there's only so much he can hide without being able to see what it looks like.

He wears two rings on his right hand: one black band on the pointer, and one gold band on the ring. Both simple, both relatively unassuming. But if he feels alright, he'll share that the gold band was his father's promise ring to his mother. And the black one is one in mourning them both. What can he say, he's sentimental.

He never really received help after the war, actually. He was primarily on his own. Just dumped off after his entire life had been stripped of him. That's the main reason why he chose to start repurposing those war bots. He'd never say this out loud, but he... initially just wanted someone to talk to again.

He considers himself to be anything but a good man, and will get uncomfortable if called anything like a hero. He feels that he's done a lot of bad things, and he now wants to improve himself and do better as a person, but he still holds a lot of past guilt.

And hearing distorted, off-sounding voices were easier than organic ones for a long time, even if they couldn't put up good conversation. At first, that is. Over time, though, he found that they were capable of far more than he first expected. And damn him for being sentimental, but he got attached.

He would have performed his own music himself, if it wasn't for the fact that being recorded (and not knowing who does and doesn't know what) makes him extremely paranoid. He's anything but shy, and certainly knows what he's doing, he just hates the thought of someone being able to see him without him knowing.

His greatest guilt and greatest regret is unintentionally programming 1010 to care more about their fans' love than their own lives.

[scuttle-buttle]

Chapter 11

WC: 2077

Rated: E

Chapter Tags: full on angst, discussions of emotional trauma, mild depictions of blood/gore, mentions of self h*rm & su*cide, mentions of child abuse, discussions of physical disabilities, institutionalization, some dialogue & plot canon to TV show, hurt/comfort

🧠

The rest of the conference went by much like the first day did. Both you and Laszlo bought a few books for your collections. An ease had settled over your conversations with the help of Sara and John's presence; you spoke more freely with each other. You tell yourself it is not because he's going soft on you or vice versa, but rather that you have found yourself in this imaginary bubble where you happen to get on well. It's inevitable that it will pop once you’re back at school and Laszlo will revert back to his usual callous state.

Laszlo. It still felt odd to think of him like that, rather than by his title. You couldn't lie, it gave you a sort of thrill. Even in your dreams you had only called him by his honorific. Thankfully you didn't have another dream after Friday. You couldn't escape the feeling that you'd said something incriminating in front of the man in question. So you chose to pretend it didn't happen.

Monday morning came and you headed to the train station. Once again he had secured a private cabin for the journey. This time you came prepared with a book since you had yet to replace your broken phone.

"Thank you again for inviting me to this, I really enjoyed myself. It was really nice of the department to foot my travel expenses, the hotel was really fancy. I may have helped myself to a mini-bottle or two," you joked.

"There is no need to worry about the department's finances; they were not involved."

You pause. He paid for you? Laszlo did say he would take care of the arrangements; but the four-star hotel, the private compartment train tickets, the admission to the conference, and every meal? Shit, that must have been a fortune, hundreds of dollars at least.

You don't know what to say, so you settle for an awkward "oh." A moment passes before you add "I appreciate that, um, I can pay you back. Might take some time but I can."

The professor is flippant in his reply. "There is no need, it was well spent for the research and knowledge acquired." He opens his book signaling the conversation is over.

You lick your lips. Fine then, I'll just consider it payment for emotional suffering and damages of the last eight weeks.

The first few hours of the journey were spent reading one of the new books you picked up at the convention. Occasionally you would peek over the pages at the professor. He was engrossed in his own selection; sometimes he would pause to write down a thought.

Around the seventh hour of your journey you had given up on reading anymore in favor of looking at the fields outside. The silence was comforting.

Laszlo had trouble concentrating on the book in his hand. He saw you as a conundrum. One minute you could be sociable and teasing with your comments, then next you were biting at his throat with your quick wit and fierce ideals. He decides that he wants to know what made you into who you are today. Now is as good a time as any.

His eyes on you cause a tingle up your spine but you ignore it. Laszlo breaks the silence; "may I ask a personal question?"

"You just did," you answer, still peering out of the large window. He huffed once, amused. At his following silence you face him. You raise your eyebrows to signal him to go on with his question. Curiosity grows at the thought of what he intends to ask.

"Twice now you have made implications of a traumatic past," he begins.

Bubble popped.

Interrupting, you snark "is this the part where you psychoanalyze me, doc? Because trust me, I've been through enough of that." You pick at the lint on your jeans.

Laszlo tries to choose his words more carefully the next time he speaks. "What I mean to say is, the first afternoon in the classroom where you defended that student you implied you had been witness to a trauma. You then displayed signs of anger and embarrassment before leaving prematurely. Yesterday you mentioned having entered a psychiatric facility. As an alienist I can't help but find myself curious about your experiences."

You slide your eyes to meet his from across the cabin. Your face is devoid of any emotion. "We all have our demons. Even you can't argue with that."

Your jaw clenches. Everyone had warned you. They all said he would try to worm his way into your head to figure you out. All the reviews, the gossip, everything. It was a big fat 'I told you so'. You give a pitiful laugh at the situation. "You know, everyone told me that you would pull this stunt."

He seems confused by your statement. "And what is that?"

"That you'd get inside my head and try to figure me all out or whatever. You already know I googled you beforehand, what everyone says about your methods. By now I assume you've done a little research yourself. I promise you there is nothing exciting here," you scoff and point to yourself.

"You would be correct in your assumption." You chew at your cheek as he starts. "I do know some of what happened in your past. Yet I also know that society likes to dilute the truth into something either more palatable, more entertaining, for people to consume greedily. What I want to know is what you have faced. How you have not allowed the experience to overcome you so much so that your humanity is erased like the characters I lecture on."

Eyes closing of their own volition you are thrown back in time to that night so many years ago. You didn't talk about it anymore. Bitsy knew of course, but that was the extent.

Laszlo waits. He knows this is likely to push you over the edge if your history with him means anything. Quite frankly, anyone would be tossed to their limit at his interrogation had they gone through what you had. John always told him that he needed to work on his bedside manner; that he had a habit of coming on too strong in his pursuit of learning the intricacies of the human mind. But your earlier comment about being sent to a so-called 'nuthouse' rubbed him the wrong way. It left a bad taste in his mouth. He needed to know. He needed to understand.

Laszlo can imagine the reprimand that he would receive from John and Sara for this. Just as he considers apologizing for his intrusion you open your eyes.

"She was fine. None of us suspected anything was wrong. I came home from having dinner with some… boy, and she had locked herself in the bathroom. She- she must have started over the sink and moved to sit on the side of the tub. She was hunched inside it when I got the door open. I pulled her out. Blood was… everywhere." Your voice is clinical as you explain.

"After, I shut down. So I checked myself into a psych ward a few days later when I couldn't get the feel of her blood off my hands. It's slippery, you know. And it smells. You wouldn't think so but it does." You clear your throat. "I did the therapy, took the meds they prescribed, all the standard treatments. Later I started watching true crime documentaries. I'd heard about exposure therapy so I figured the more I saw the gore, the less the image of my dead roommate would bother me. And it did help. The nightmares stopped after a while, I came back to school. I was better, just not the same.” You had watched the passing landscape as you explained. Turning to face him you speak again. “That's why those pictures didn't bother me. They weren't anything I hadn't seen before."

He contemplates you. The discovery and subsequent loss of your friend in this manner would no doubt cause lingering effects to your psyche. A stain that would forever remind you. "I offer my sincerest condolences. I do not presume to know what that would be like to experience, but I am glad you sought help afterwards. To make the choice to alleviate yourself of your own suffering where possible.”

As he says this he realizes that your anger towards the idea of being enslaved to unconscious impulse makes perfect sense. It explains why you focused so much energy on defending your belief in free will. That you have the power to choose how you carry your joy, your anger, your healing. It reminds him of how he held onto his own guilt and hurt, ignoring how it festered within him for so long. He feels as though he needs to share a piece of himself with you.

“I played piano as a child, quite well too. My mother hoped I would someday make a career of it. I vividly remember playing Mozart’s Concerto for Piano No. 20 in D Minor at a holiday party when I was seven years old. It was my favorite to play.... It requires two hands." You finally look at him. "My father...” He pauses to gather himself.

Now it is the doctor that cannot meet your eyes. As you listen you feel your confusion grow. How could he have been a talented pianist if he only had full use of his left hand? Unless..., the realization dawns on you just as he continues, his words slow.

“My father had two sides. One loving and the other brutal, the two often coexisting. It was something as trivial as putting me to bed, I recall... A game of tug of war. We were laughing…” He inhales a sharp breath. Already you can feel the tears begin to blur your vision. “I don't remember if he was drunk or if I said something that offended him. He must have pulled my arm behind my back.” Laszlo exhales shakily. “In small children, fractures can often affect…” he trails off, unable to finish. You can hear how he barely holds himself together.

Your heart aches for the broken man that sits in front of you. He never let on how much his arm bothered him, at least not within your presence. Suddenly you don’t see him as this rude, insufferable, obsessive man, but instead as someone that spends his life trying to protect himself. He projects his own anger and hurt so that he may, just for a minute, forget about his own demons. He wants to help others even when he feels he cannot bear to help himself.

But unlike you, he has to live with the physical reminder of his past every day of his life.

You stand and move to sit on his right side. Before allowing yourself to think too much of your actions, you place your hand atop his own, curling your fingers around his palm and squeezing delicately. You don’t bother wiping away the tears on your cheeks. “I’m so sorry, Laszlo;” the whisper is barely heard above the sound of the train. A second passes where you fear you have overstepped and offended him by touching the affected limb. When his thumb tightens against the backs of your fingers you know he is not. He holds you in place.

“You asked me how I kept my humanity. How does anyone really? We learn to take what we get and we carry it in a bag. Sometimes you have to drag the damn thing behind you. But eventually the weight gets less and less if you allow yourself to move forward, even if it’s still there with you all the time. I dealt with what happened years ago and it does still haunt me. It’s easier now than it was, but… I- I suppose I’ve learned from you too. Sitting in those lectures and hearing you talk. We can either let it haunt us for the rest of our lives… or we can accept it… and use the memory of our pain to help ourselves and others.”

“I’m not sure the choice is entirely in our hands.” His tone is mournful.

You turn to smile at him through your tears. His own eyes are bloodshot. “I disagree. If it weren’t, if we didn’t have the freedom to choose that, we’d all be murderers.”

Tag list

@hardlyinteresting @lorna-d-m @livvyshmiv @somethingthatsaysbubbles @greeneyedblondie44 @unbeatablecurlgirl @apparrio @marchingicenotes7 @anteroom-of-death @bruhidaniel @lemairepstuff @thehuiabird @zemosimp05 @alindeluce @iamnotthecatladynextdoor @laura-naruto-fan1998 @trelaney @boneheadduluc @i-am-dead-inside-666 @fictionlandslanddreams

[pluraldeepdive]

[ID: "In any case, I do have a few notes I want to add. The first is on this comment:

Well, what makes DID a disorder isn't the multiple consciousnesses- it's the amnesia and derealization. Take these away, and you have a state of being that is not inherently disordered.

[Censored user's name.]

I was part of spreading this misconception, so I apologize for that. The truth is, it's not that simple. Saying DID is 'disordered plurality' is like saying 'war is scary'. It's technically true, but it downplays the scope of what goes on so much. Sadly, it took me uncovering the hidden traumagenic side of my system to get me to read DID systems' accounts in-depth and see that.

It doesn't stop at amnesia and derealization. That can be part of it, yes, but it's far from the whole. There's the trauma, whose effects will linger even if you get rid of the amnesia and derealization, which many DID systems have said is the worst part of the disorder. There's the confusion about who you are. There's the fear of being found out and discriminated against, no matter how functional you are. There's paranoia about whether you're making it all up, and frustration at being denied your own reality.

Every system's experience with DID/OSDD is unique, but... to borrow from what a member of a DID system posted elsewhere. Think of it this way. People are shaped by what memories they have, yes? Now imagine that you were born from traumatic memories, from a desperate means of surviving. You're thrown into a head with a bunch of others carrying trauma in this way, and then a few who don't know of that trauma consciously and carry on trying to live a 'normal' life. You have no context for what's going on, and even if everyone does realize what's going on, it's a mess of denial, people having conflicting desires and sabotaging each other directly or indirectly, being shoved down and denied over and over, and on top of that, some are already struggling with containing the trauma that started all this in the first place. The distrust, frustration, resent, anxiety between everyone, it doesn't go away overnight. It doesn't go away when you're diagnosed, and it certainly doesn't go away when someone tells you that the state of being that's caused you so many issues doesn't have to be a disorder. Especially when it comes off as, 'If you'd just appreciated your system more, it'd be fine! Look, look at how happy our non-traumatized and having-gone-through-entirely-different-experiences group is!'

With all that in mind, I can't really blame people for not wanting anything to do with plurality ever again. Some come to value being multiple, even with all the shit that went on. Others find they can't erase the past, or always truly 'put it behind you'. It's a wide array of experiences, as was said before.

It's sort of like... coming from a dysfunctional, even abusive physical family, and seeing all the other kids talking about how excited they are for Winter Break. And if you talk about how your family's been through the shitter, you get reminded that 'but not all families are like that! I'm so happy in mine!' Or told, 'But can't you still appreciate having a family in the first place?' Or get looked at sideways and asked why you aren't doing more to bring your family closer together. It's a slap in the face, even if it isn't meant to be that way. I don't agree with the abject hostility I've seen many clinical systems exhibit towards non-clinical systems--including a well-meaning but misguided yours truly--but sadly, I've come to understand where it comes from.

This comment took a turn for the darker, but I do feel it was something that needed to be said.

Anyway. Be careful, too, of using examples from across the spectrum to prove that other parts of a spectrum exist. If I were to claim that the color 'X' existed, collecting green objects wouldn't be sufficient to prove that 'X' exists. It would be sufficient to prove that color exists, and since 'X' is hypothetically a color, that 'X' could thus potentially exist. You would need to collect objects of color 'X' to show that 'X' itself exists. Which, well, I think the fiction writer study and Nimoy's autobiography do well enough, in any case."

END ID]

A comment from 2016 about viewing CDDs as "disordered" versions of plurality. I found this comment pleasantly relatable and really nice as a DID system, myself. That's my personal experience, though. Any CDD systems want to share their own thoughts?

(I'm not going to post the link with respect to this person's privacy but, for transparency's sake, this comment was found within a tulpa community.)

(Image ID is under the read more!)

[ID: "In any case, I do have a few notes I want to add. The first is on this comment:

Well, what makes DID a disorder isn't the multiple consciousnesses- it's the amnesia and derealization. Take these away, and you have a state of being that is not inherently disordered.

[Censored user's name.]

I was part of spreading this misconception, so I apologize for that. The truth is, it's not that simple. Saying DID is 'disordered plurality' is like saying 'war is scary'. It's technically true, but it downplays the scope of what goes on so much. Sadly, it took me uncovering the hidden traumagenic side of my system to get me to read DID systems' accounts in-depth and see that.

It doesn't stop at amnesia and derealization. That can be part of it, yes, but it's far from the whole. There's the trauma, whose effects will linger even if you get rid of the amnesia and derealization, which many DID systems have said is the worst part of the disorder. There's the confusion about who you are. There's the fear of being found out and discriminated against, no matter how functional you are. There's paranoia about whether you're making it all up, and frustration at being denied your own reality.

Every system's experience with DID/OSDD is unique, but... to borrow from what a member of a DID system posted elsewhere. Think of it this way. People are shaped by what memories they have, yes? Now imagine that you were born from traumatic memories, from a desperate means of surviving. You're thrown into a head with a bunch of others carrying trauma in this way, and then a few who don't know of that trauma consciously and carry on trying to live a 'normal' life. You have no context for what's going on, and even if everyone does realize what's going on, it's a mess of denial, people having conflicting desires and sabotaging each other directly or indirectly, being shoved down and denied over and over, and on top of that, some are already struggling with containing the trauma that started all this in the first place. The distrust, frustration, resent, anxiety between everyone, it doesn't go away overnight. It doesn't go away when you're diagnosed, and it certainly doesn't go away when someone tells you that the state of being that's caused you so many issues doesn't have to be a disorder. Especially when it comes off as, 'If you'd just appreciated your system more, it'd be fine! Look, look at how happy our non-traumatized and having-gone-through-entirely-different-experiences group is!'

With all that in mind, I can't really blame people for not wanting anything to do with plurality ever again. Some come to value being multiple, even with all the shit that went on. Others find they can't erase the past, or always truly 'put it behind you'. It's a wide array of experiences, as was said before.

It's sort of like... coming from a dysfunctional, even abusive physical family, and seeing all the other kids talking about how excited they are for Winter Break. And if you talk about how your family's been through the shitter, you get reminded that 'but not all families are like that! I'm so happy in mine!' Or told, 'But can't you still appreciate having a family in the first place?' Or get looked at sideways and asked why you aren't doing more to bring your family closer together. It's a slap in the face, even if it isn't meant to be that way. I don't agree with the abject hostility I've seen many clinical systems exhibit towards non-clinical systems--including a well-meaning but misguided yours truly--but sadly, I've come to understand where it comes from.

This comment took a turn for the darker, but I do feel it was something that needed to be said.

Anyway. Be careful, too, of using examples from across the spectrum to prove that other parts of a spectrum exist. If I were to claim that the color 'X' existed, collecting green objects wouldn't be sufficient to prove that 'X' exists. It would be sufficient to prove that color exists, and since 'X' is hypothetically a color, that 'X' could thus potentially exist. You would need to collect objects of color 'X' to show that 'X' itself exists. Which, well, I think the fiction writer study and Nimoy's autobiography do well enough, in any case."

END ID]

[wintervvidow]

apricity

part one.

apricity - the warmth of the sun in winter

warnings: angst, blood mention, violence

pairing: bucky barnes x female oc

word count: 2,364

A/N: hi! welcome to part one of apricity! set in mid-captain america: the winter soldier. this idea has been in my head for a very long time and I am super excited to finally get it out. in this story I use the term “winter widow” , similar to the “winter soldier”, it has no correlation to bucky and natasha here. prolonged italics indicate a flashback.  friendly feedback is appreciated! thank you! <3

ALSO: please know that future parts will take a WHILE. I just want to get the first part out to get the ball rolling.

MASTERLIST 

The silence is what breaks her. She swears she would have been fine if it weren't for the silence, the screams of innocent bystanders no longer existed, the smell of gunpowder burning her nose and stinging her eyes. Aside from the erratic breaths coming from both their lips, you could hear a pin drop as their eyes stared at each other in a blinding intensity as Steve Rogers called out to him, “Bucky?”

The gun feels entirely too heavy in her hands as her lungs expand rapidly, eyes unmoving from the ghost of a man in front of her. Except he isn't a ghost anymore. He's here, alive. James Buchanan Barnes, her Bucky, alive.

He’s clad in all-black tactical gear, metal arm glinting blindingly in the sun. His eyes are a stormy shade of blue, same as the ones that haunt her in her nightmares, not the kind blue she wishes she could have back. The Winter Soldier is the shell of the man she was in love with, the man in front of her was the man she learned to love all the same. He protected her even when he didn’t remember her, even the brainwashing couldn’t fully get rid of the love they both had for one another. Although HYDRA fought like hell to make them both forget. It never worked though, fragments of memory always littered their conscience. 

His brows furrow, overgrown hair in his eyes, “Who the hell is Bucky?”

Deep down in her bones, she knew he was alive. The last time she saw him he was being wiped by HYDRA, his screams masking her disappearance into the winter weather. HYDRA searched high and low for her, yet they forgot that they were the ones to train her. HYDRA perfected her, taught her how to disappear into thin air, and that's just what she did. They went as far as to send the Winter Soldier to find her, but even he couldn’t track her. Florence was a ghost. 

Florence Morozov was many things before she was an assassin; she was an immigrant daughter, a friend, a nurse, and her greatest title of all, the love of Bucky Barnes' life, his fiancée. The couple, along with the third wheel Steve, were inseparable in their younger days before the second war. Where there was one, the other two were usually not far behind. 

The trio had gone to the Stark Expo the night before Bucky got shipped off to the war. That night Bucky had proposed with a small emerald ring, promising her that when he got back they'd get married, move into a little white picket fence house, and settle down. They dreamed of growing old together surrounded by their kids and grandchildren. Only that dream had been crushed under the heel of HYDRA, not long after Florence enlisted as a nurse and Steve became Captain America, notably leading the Howling Commandos. Florence worked closely along with them, acting as a medic when needed. 

When Steve woke up from his 70-year slumber on ice, Florence had a lot of explaining to do. How she was alive, what she had been doing, where she had been. She told Steve what he needed to know, leaving Bucky out of the answers. She had to protect him, even if it meant lying to their shared best friend. She would do anything to protect Bucky. 

Florence explained to Steve that when she fell off the train with Bucky, she had been captured by HYDRA and experimented on. She was sent to the Red Room to be trained and then sent back to HYDRA in the ‘50s. She was their puppet for 46 years, coined the name the Winter Widow before she disappeared in late December of 1991. Florence was on the run for 17 years before she was taken in by Clint Barton, joining S.H.I.E.L.D along with Natasha Romanoff. 

Natasha and Florence grew to be very close over the years, the trauma they both shared bonded them. Natasha was the only one to know the full story of Bucky, every nitty-gritty detail that haunted Florence in her dreams. When Nick Fury had been killed, both Florence and Natasha immediately recognized the ballistics information, a silent agreement between the two redheads to only tell Steve what he needed to know, no more than that. Florence only told Steve that she knew the Winter Soldier, nothing more. Natasha understood her secrets, she had them herself, her response of, "That's not my story to tell, we all have secrets for a reason."

Florence quickly tracked everything up to this moment. Fury being attacked, Steve's description of the shooter, the Winter Soldier attacking them on the highway only minutes ago. And then there was the chase between the soldier and Florence, trying to divert him. And it worked, Florence had managed to distract him until he got too close, the pair of lovers engaging in hand-to-hand combat until Steve intervened.

And now here she was standing in the middle of the street with a bullet in her shoulder from none other than the Winter Soldier. Flashes of the mission in Odessa running through her mind, he had shot her in the thigh then, Natasha in the abdomen. Steve stood in shock as the ghost disappeared, leaving Steve, Natasha, Sam, and Florence to be surrounded by HYDRA agents and arrested. 

Blood trickled down Florence’s shoulder as she was seated between Sam and Natasha in the back of the truck. Her shoulder felt white-hot as she grits her teeth, Sam nervously glancing at her every second. Steve sat across from them, visibly upset, lifting his head to glare at Florence, eyes cold, "You said you knew the Winter Soldier, that you two had a history, not that it was Bucky!" Steve felt betrayed, his oldest friend lying to his face for years about his best friend.  

Sam angrily glared at Steve as Florence rasped her response with a shaky breath, "Steve, I'm kind of bleeding out right now. This is going to have to wait, just know I had my reasons. I did it to protect him. And you." 

Florence knew this day would come. Bucky wouldn’t be a ghost forever. She fought herself internally every night, dreaming of him. It was always him; the good and bad, the Red Room, what happened after the Red Room, their mission in Romania, and every second in between. She was permanently trapped in her own personal hell.

Steve continued on, “It was him. He looked right at me and he didn’t even know me.”

Florence knew the feeling. Every time Bucky was reprogrammed, she had to convince him to loosen his grip around her throat, begging him to recognize her before he killed her. And every time he did, his eyes flashing in recognition and guilt. And then he would hold her shivering body against his in the confines of their shared cell, murmuring in her ear that he was sorry. And she knew he meant it. Even if his mind barely recognized her, his heart always did.

Sam questioned Steve loudly, causing Florence to flinch as she fell back down to reality, “How is that even possible, that was 70 years ago.” Florence felt bad for Sam, he just jumped headfirst into a dark world with more questions than answers. 

“Zola. Bucky’s whole unit was captured in ‘43. Zola experimented on him. Whatever he did helped Bucky survive the fall. Florence, how are you even alive? Zola didn’t get to you before the fall?” Steve just asked the golden question.

Florence took a deep breath in, “I don’t know. There are gaps in time, I don’t remember much from it. They all said that the fall should have killed me but it didn’t. Then I became a lab rat. The end.”

Steve looked her directly in the eye for the first time the entire day, “They must have found him and…”

Natasha interrupted him, she knew where this conversation could lead, “None of that’s your fault, Steve.”

Florence shifted slightly, sharing a look with Natasha, silently thanking her for diverting the conversation. 

Sam shifted beside her as another wave of blood oozed out from her shoulder, he turned to the guards, "We need to get a doctor here. If we don't put pressure on that wound, she's gonna bleed out here in the truck." Florence appreciated Sam’s protective and caring nature as Steve continued glaring daggers her way. Florence knew Steve wouldn’t understand her reasoning, too set in his ways of complete honesty all of the time. He didn’t understand what it meant to lie to keep those you loved safe.

The nearest guard flinched forward, flashing the taser at Sam before turning the taser on the second guard and kicking him unconscious. The guard pulled the helmet off of themselves, revealing Maria Hill, “God, that thing was squeezing my brain.” She motioned at Sam, “Who is this guy?” Everyone shared a collective sigh of relief at the sight of Maria. 

After ditching the car, the team arrived at an undisclosed location. The doors of the truck opened, allowing sunlight to flood in. Steve helped Florence down from the truck, supporting her weight with ease. Blood continued to trickle from her shoulder as she leaned against him for support as Steve spoke while he half carried her forward into the building, “I’m not mad. I get why you didn’t tell me.”

Florence laughed slightly, her body weak, “Are you just saying that because I got shot and I’m currently bleeding out all over you?”

Steve scoffed, his body vibrating with the action, arm tightening around her, “No, Flo.”

Behind her and Steve, Sam called out for a doctor. People ran towards them from the opposite end of the hall, Maria Hill speaking over the sound of footsteps thundering down the hall, "Natasha, there's something you're going to wanna see. Steve, get Florence patched up."

The group broke apart for a short period of time, Natasha reappearing with a hopeful expression on her face as Florence grimaced in pain next to the doctor stitching her up, "Fury is alive."

All eyes remained on Natasha as she explained how Fury was alive, a medication Bruce Banner had come up with did the trick to fake his death. Florence looked to Sam as he digested this information, he didn’t know what he got himself into. She could feel Steve's eyes boring into her head, but she didn't dare look. Her mind was a constant loop of Bucky. 

Flashback: 

His calloused hand led her through the crowd of people, Steve trailing far behind. The trio had just gotten finished dancing and now they were wandering aimlessly through the busy streets of Queens. The air was brisk as it blew through Florence’s auburn hair, her dress fluttering around her calves. Bucky stopped in front of a movie theater, the lights casting a warm glow over his face as he turned to face the girl. Her cheeks were blushed pink from the chill of the air and a smile had been permanently etched on her face all night.

 The news that Bucky was being shipped off in the morning loomed over them like a rain cloud but Bucky was determined to keep her smiling; at least until the morning. His hand abandoned hers, reaching down to fish in his pocket. He found what he was looking for quickly, the velvet box small in his hand. Florence gasped at soon as the box came into the light, tears welling up in her eyes. She knew what this was, she accidentally stumbled upon it when she was putting away clothes last week. A small emerald ring.

Bucky knelt down on one knee, flipping the box open, “Flo, you’ve been by my side through everything. You’re my best girl, always there keeping me in line. I love you more than words can say. I know I leave tomorrow and I should have done this years ago, but will you make me that luckiest man on earth and marry me?”

Florence flew into Bucky’s arms in a flurry of kisses and agreements, Bucky lifting her up and twirling her. He gently set her back on the ground, slipping the ring on her finger as she giggled. Bucky met her eyes, tears glimmering in them, “I promise you, when I get back you and I will get married, we’ll buy a house and we’ll make it a happy home; kids, dogs, a garden, all of it. I promise you.” By the end of Bucky’s promise, both he and Florence were crying in each other’s arms, each one clutching the other tightly, both hyper-aware that the future wasn’t promised. 

Steve stumbled his way through the large crowd, catching sight of his two best friends hugging each other. He didn’t have the heart to break them up at the moment, so he watched on with a smile. It would all be okay.

Bucky sat in the test chair underneath the bank piecing the remnants of his memories together. He knew them. The man knew his name, or at least what he thought was his name. And he knew the girl he shot, memories of her smiling flickered through his mind. Yet they were complete strangers, their faces foreign yet home all at the same time. 

Alexander Pierce was terrified of this day, whether he wanted to admit it or not. He knew of the attachment Bucky had to the Winter Widow, ever since she disappeared in ‘91, the soldier was harder to control, more agitated and violent. He screamed her name in his sleep and when they wiped him he was always mumbling about her when he became coherent. They tried to program it out of him, and when that didn’t work, they tried to beat it out of him, hoping she would vanish from his memories the way his blood washed down the drain. Nothing ever worked. The Winter Soldier was irrevocably in love with Florence Morozov and Alexander was going to use that against him.

The Winter Soldier’s mission was to kill Steve Rogers and Florence Morozov.

FEEDBACK IS WELCOMED. IF YOU ENJOYED, PLEASE REBLOG.

[monocytogenes]

OTP ASKS!! Josephine/Pravin: 14, 20, 22!!

Ah yep, here we go on DAI!Pravin ("pravinquisition")--

14. How do their personalities compliment each other? How do they clash?

Well, I think Pravin and Josephine bond initially because they're both politically savvy, well-connected Social Experts. Ethically, Pravin falls sort of between Josephine and Leliana--he's not to the point of "I need to totally emotionally detach and treat my contacts as tools", but he's also enough of a cynic to believe that when negotiations fail, sometimes you just have to knife a motherfucker in the back. Much of that attitude comes from the trauma he's gone through--he cares about people more than he lets on, but he also has a tendency to hold grudges, a (justifiable) paranoid streak, and a general disdain for institutional power. Josephine believes the Inquisition can be a force for good; Pravin believes she's good, and Thalia's good, but he's been burned before.

That's where they tend to clash ideologically, I think--Josephine's proud to be part of the Inquisition and of what she's been able to accomplish in it, while Pravin's out here all 'don't put my name on the reports, don't tell people I'm here, I'm snagging my own invitation to the Winter Palace so I don't look like I belong to something.' He's intent on remaining a free agent, and while she understands well enough in the period where they're still trying to build clout with Orlais, she can also get annoyed with his commitment issues. I imagine there's a couple times where he goes behind the backs of the inner circle to solve problems in his own way, or is all 'you need to pay me way more to clean up this or that mess for you', and she just wants to shake him like 'you are a DECENT PERSON who GIVES A SHIT and you need to ACTUALLY JOIN THIS CAUSE THAT I KNOW YOU CARE ABOUT DESPITE ALL OF YOUR PROTESTATIONS.'

I imagine too that while they work preternaturally well together when they're both in a social setting with their charms turned up--they both can be very difficult to read beyond the friendly empathy they're expressing, and are both effective liars (though Pravin's capable of selling far more elaborate tales than she is)--she's pretty good at compartmentalizing that part of her life, while Pravin...finds it hard to just be himself with folks other than Thalia, who gets a pass because he's known her for so long. He's kind of moody under all that, whereas Josephine's naturally more sweet, and I think when that side of him does manifest (e.g. at the war table as he does get more invested) she isn't really sure what to do with that. Generally, her kneejerk reaction to uncomfortable scenarios is to try and smooth things over (being a parentified elder child and all) while Pravin's more than capable of being absolutely caustically snarky to straight up pissed off if he's got his guard down.

20. Choose one song that perfectly describes their relationship.

Lol so I should probably first mention that most of what I've written stuff about this version of Pravin to is, weirdly, Cuban/Latin music. Like, if you want a sense of his vibes™, here's some examples.

That said, here's a song in French that I had on rotation because it sounded like something you'd hear in a tavern, and I think the lyrics kind of capture where Pravin winds up when he 1. realizes he has feelings for Josephine and 2. she tells him they can't be together because he's not nobility. Which isn't actually true, of course, but he's spent the last decade pretending to be a commoner after a horrific near-death experience made him reevaluate his life, and the thought of jeopardizing what he's built for himself terrifies him. He's all like, fuuuuck me, I should never have gotten close to her in the first place.

(Part of the translated lyrics; I cleaned them up slightly):

It's me / who said why not

Now it's me / who's saying why

It's me / who was the brave one

Now it's me / the fearful one here / from time to time

And sometimes / life gives us / things that we don't want

Love out of the question / death out of season

-

I don't know anything about love / I don't know anything my love

I'm in love with you / Still in love with you

22. What reminds each of their partner?

I imagine in general they had a whole "same hat!!" type of reaction to each other upon finding out they're from the same country, so they come to each other with a lot of stuff like 'I discovered this place that serves great lemon cake that reminds me of home' or 'at this tavern they sang this folk song from Salle and I was real excited about it.' (There's the language thing, too. Their conversations are often totally in Antivan or kind of an Antivan/Orlesian mishmash, and sometimes Pravin will think of a really good joke and be like 'I have to tell her that', only to find afterwards that it's nigh untranslatable when Cullen or Thalia's like what?? What's so funny?)

There's also the obvious associations; she thinks of him in regard to Orlesian theater stuff, and he thinks of her when there's some really fuckin good political gossip going on. And, you know, appearance-wise she's kind of known for the poofy sleeves and he's kind of known for the flamboyant hats, so they might spot something in a shop or someone walking around like that and think of the other.

[valeriethepussycats]

Inside Out

Chapter 4

Pairing- Loki x Reader

Warning-cursing and childhood trauma

Your thoughts and other characters are in italics.

Flashbacks are in bold.

“The celebration had been going on strong for the last few hours, and there wasn’t an end in sight. Asgardians strolled through the streets, rejoicing the fact that the Nine Realms were safe at last. Friends laughed, kids played, and warriors recounted their many victorious battles.

Y/n,Gambit,Sif, and The warrior three are all drinking in the castle, until Y/n starts to get flashes of Loki. He was in the scorching sun day in and day out,and they deprive him of water for weeks, and someone used the mind stone on him. Outside her head all the glass bottles and wine glasses bust, and Gambit immediately looks over at Y/n and see the black vines on her arm but before he could make his way over to her but time freeze.

Y/n gets up and runs to the dungeon, when she gets there she just stands in front of Loki’s cell looking down at her feet. Having a hard time looking at him and not see what she saw.

“Y/n, what’s going on?” Loki said as he looks around and see everyone is frozen. “Are you doing this?”

“why didn’t you tell me....why didn’t you tell me you were tortured.” Y/n questioned.

Loki looks at Y/n with wide eyes. “How do you do know that.”

“The stars, our minds all of that is Connected remember. How you not tell me.” Y/n said with Infrequent blinking.

“I didn’t want you to see that.” Loki answered.

“You were alone before you came to earth.” Y/n said as a tear rolls down her face.

The Black vines starts to slowly climb up her arm and appear on her face. Loki see that Y/n is in distress from what she learned. He knows what will happen if he let her feel those emotions. So he walks up the to the shield and use his up most calming and soothing voice he could muster at a time like this.

“It’s ok I’m fine Y/n look at me look at me.” Loki pleased.

Y/n looks at Loki with an empty stare. “No it’s not fine.....you were tortured. You were tortured into do what you did on earth. You was being watched. Even if I was aware of what was going on with you there was nothing I could’ve done. Nothing you could’ve done cause if you would’ve said or done anything differently they would’ve killed you.”

“I tried my best to get to rid those memory. I knew you would be able to feel it.” Loki said.

“I never wanted to experience those feeling.....not again?” Y/n quavered. “Not again.”

“What do you mean by ‘not again’?” Loki dais with a firm voice.

“The people that took me did this to me they put someone else’s X-Gene inside of me and I have to learn how to control it....and when I couldn’t control it they would put a collar around my neck then throw me into a dark room. The feeling of loneliness every day inside that room...if it wasn’t for Gambit....” Y/n trailed off. But Loki knew what she was going to say.

“I’m so sorry. I am here.” Loki puts he’s hand on over the Barrier of the cell walk and Y/n copies his movement.

“The person that did that to you.” Robin started. “What was there name?”

“Thanos” Loki answered.

“Thanos.”

○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

At that same time, back on Asgard, Heimdall, the all-seeing keeper of the Rainbow Bridge, stood at his post at the edge of the observatory, scanning the cosmos. He did not turn when Thor approached, but spoke as soon as the prince was behind him.

“You're late.” Heimdall announced.

“Merriment can sometimes be a heavier burden than battle.” Thor stated.

“Then you're doing one of them incorrectly.” Heimdall commented.

Thor chuckles. “Perhaps. How fare the stars?”

“Still shining. From here I can see Nine Realms and ten trillion souls.” Heimdall looks at Thor for a moment. “You recall what I told you of the Convergence?”

“Yes, the alignment of the worlds. It approaches, doesn't it?” Thor asked.

“The universe hasn't seen this marvel since before my watch began. Few can sense, even fewer can see it. A world that's infected can be dangerous. It is truly beautiful.” Heimdall explained.

They looks out into the stars. “I see nothing.”

“Or perhaps that is not the beauty you seek.”

Thor laughs. “How is she?”

“She's quite clever, your mortal. She doesn't know it yet, but she studies the Convergence as well. Even...” Heimdall stops as he senses something.”

“What?” Thor stressed.

“I can't see her.”

○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

We see Jane being infected by the Aether] [after Jane is infected with the Aether she reawakens in the factory, she runs out to find Darcy has called the police.

“Jane! Where the hell were you?” Darcy exclaimed.

“Tell me you didn't call the police!” Jane inquired.

“What was I supposed to do?” Darcy asked.

“Not call the police!” Jane yelled.

“I was freaking out.” Darcy stuttered.

“You call the cops they tell the feds, the next thing you know we have Shield crawling all over area fifty-one-ing the place.” Jane proclaimed.

“Jane!”

“We had a stable gratification anomaly, we had unheeded access. Our only competition was ten years old!”

“Jane, you were gone for five hours!” Darcy disclosed.

“What?....”

Suddenly the weather turns, it starts raining and they hear the sound of thunder, Jane looks around her and puts her hand out.

“That's weird.” Darcy noted.

They see it's raining but it's not raining on Jane and Darcy, there's an invisible barrier protecting them, suddenly Jane sees Thor standing a few feet away from them, Jane hands her gadget to Darcy and walks towards Thor, as she walks away the invisible barrier follows her and the rain starts falling on Darcy.

“Typical.”

Jane walks towards Thor.

“Jane.”

“As she reaches him suddenly she slaps him hard in the face. “Sorry. I just needed to make sure you were real, it's been a very strange day.”

“Well, I am. Jane...”

Suddenly she slaps him again. “Where were you?!”

“Where were you? Heimdall could not see you.” Thor said.

“I was right here where you left me. I was waiting and then I was crying and then I went out looking for you. You said you were coming back.” Jane said in a level tone.

“I know, I know, but the Bifrost was destroyed. The Nine Realms erupted into chaos, wars were raging, marauding hordes were pillaging. I had to put an end to the slaughter.” Thor explained.

“As excuses go, that's not terrible. But I saw you on TV, you were...you were in New York! Fighting with Y/n.” Jane said without trying to sound Jealous.

But she was he was spending all that time with Y/n. Ok she was the only person that believe him but Jane did to (with reason).

Does Thor have Heimdall to look in on Y/n.

“Jane, I fought to protect you from the dangers of my world, but I was wrong, I was a fool.” Thor places his hand Jane's face. “I believe that fate brought us together. Jane, I don't know where you were or what happened, but I do know this.”

“What?”

“I know...”

“You do?”

“Do what?”

They lean in close and just as they are about to kiss Darcy interrupts them; referring to the rain.

“Hey! Is that you?”

Thor looks up and the rain stops.

“Uh...we're kind of in the middle of something.” Jane sigh of irritation as she look at Darcy.

“Um...I'm pretty sure we are getting arrested” Darcy replied.

Jane look over at Thor. “Hold that thought.” She turns and runs towards the police.

“Look at you, still all muscly and everything. How's space?” Darcy asked.

“Space is fine.” Thor answered.

Jane walks over to the police. “Excuse me?”

“Are you Jane Foster?” One of police officer asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you know this man?” police officer said referring to Ian.

“He's my intern. My intern's intern.” Jane answered.

“This is private property and you're trespassing, the lot of you. You'll have to come with me.” The police officer goes t grab Jane's arm but suddenly the force from the Aether creates a powerful force which pushes the officer and everything else away,

Thor runs towards Jane who's lying on the ground.

“Jane! Jane?” Thor said as he helps her stand. “You alright?”

“What just happened?” Jane asked.

The other police officer approaches Jane apprehensively. “Place your hands on your head, step back!”

“The woman is unwell.” Thor answered.

“She's dangerous.”

“So am I.” Thor disclosed.

Talking into his radio. “Requesting armed response officers to the scene.” Thor grabs Jane and pulls her closer to him.

“Hold on to me.”

“What are you doing?” Suddenly the Bifrost opens and Thor takes Jane to Asgard; Darcy looks up as they disappear

“Holy shit!” Darcy shouted.

Thor and Jane travel through the Bifrost and enter Asgard where Heimdall is guarding as always, Jane looks around her in amazement.

“We have to do that again.” she notices Heimdall for the first time. “Hi.”

“Welcome to Asgard.” Heimdall announced.

○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

Returning to their homeland, Svartalfheim, Malekith kneels and grabs a handful of dust from the ground. “Look at my legacy, Algrim. I barely remember the time before light.”

Algrim places his hand on Malekith's shoulder. “Our survival will be your legacy.”

“The Asgardians will suffer as we have suffered. I will reclaim the Aether. I will restore our world and I'll put an end to this poisonous world.” Malekith replied.

○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

Asgard.

Loki is laying down on his bed, think about what happened the other day. The way Y/n was angry for him and what he saw. He didn’t know if he deserve such passion. What has he done to deserve that from her.

Maybe Odin is right

Y/n appeared in his cell, looks over at her and see she’s looks upset.

“What’s the matter? Did you have a another memory?” Loki said sitting up.

“No.... I just had to say goodbye to Gambit that all.” Y/n said with a downturned head.

“Gambit, he’s alive?” Loki questioned looking shocked.

“Yes, he is. Why you asked me that?” Y/n wondered then realization hits her. “Did you see one of my memories?”

Loki nods yes.

“Which one?” Y/n said with an intriguing voice.

“He was dying.” Loki answered.

“Oh.....that one.” Y/n said in a small voice. “That day would ever be known as November 18th. That was the day I lost control...caused an earthquake and black out in the upper east of the United States.”

“What happened?” Loki wondered.

“I had a nightmare but it wasn’t like any other nightmare it was vivid. I the way his blood felt on my hands. I ever since that day my father was trying to find ways to conceal my powers and when he did I will get the senses when something good or bad was gonna happen sometimes it was painful sometimes it wasn’t.” Y/n explained.

“You’re the only person I’ve ever told that to.”

Loki walks over to Y/n and lif her head up with his index finger so she’s looking at him. “Why would you tell me?”

“I don’t know it just felt like the right thing to do.” Y/n answered smile. “That’s what you do when you care about someone you open up to them.”

“You caring for me only make things worst.” Loki said with his head down. “After your two weeks you will never see me again. You dealing with the feeling of yearning will not be good for you or your powers.”

“My powers?” Y/n said in a curious tone. “What makes you think I won’t stay on Asgard?”

“Y/n...you just got someone you care about back into your life and you would willingly leave them behind for me?”

“Gambit, with understand.” Y/n replied.

“You would hate to living here on Asgard.”

“No, I won’t because you’re here.”

Loki walks over to Y/n and lif her head up with his index finger so she’s looking at him. “Y/n, when your two weeks are up....you are going to have to let me go?”

“No..No I’m not letting anything go.” Y/n said putting some space between her and Loki. “And don’t you say if you love me let me go.”

“If you don’t you could hurt people.” Loki said walking up to Y/n hugging her from the back.

“Since when do you care about people?” Y/n asked sarcastically.

“Because your care about people.” Loki answered.

Y/n turns around and gives Loki Direct eye contact. “Don’t ask me to let you go because I won’t.”

“Y/n....” Loki said struggling to find the right words to say.

“I should go I have to met your mom.” Y/n said.

And just like that Y/n is gone and Loki stands there facial muscles tensing.

○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

As the Asgardian physicians study Jane and the force within her. “What's that?”

“Be still.” Eir said in a snappy voice.

Thor watches with one of the nurses as they examine Jane. “This is not of Earth, what is it?”

“We do not know, but she will not survive the amount of energy surging within her.” the nurse turns and walks away as Thor looks at Jane with worry.

“That's a quantum field generator, isn't it?” Jane asked.

“It's a Soul Forge.” Eir answered.

“Does a Soul Forge transfer molecular energy from one place to another?” Jane questioned.

Eir looks impressed. “Yes.”

Jane looks at Thor and whispers. “It's a quantum field generator.” Thor smiles at her.

Odin enters the room as the Thor looks on to Jane as she is being examined. “My words are mere noises to you that you ignore them completely?”

”She's ill.” Thor disclosed.

“She is mortal. Illness is their defining trait.” Odin replied.

“I brought here because we can help her.” Thor told Odin.

“She does not belong here in Asgard anymore than a goat belongs at a banquet table.“ Odin replied.

Jane sits up and looks at Thor. “Did he just...?” Jane started. “Who do you think you are?”

“I'm Odin. King of Asgard. Protector of the Nine Realms.” Odin answered.

“Oh. Well, I'm...”

“I know very well who you are, Jane Foster.”

Jane turns to look at Thor. “You told your Dad about me?”

“Something is within her, father, something I have not seen before.” Thor explained.

“Her world has its healers, their called doctors, let them deal with it. Guards, take her back to Midgard.” Odin said as two guards approach Jane and go to grab her, suddenly the energy force within her sets off again throwing the two guards aside.

“Don't touch her.” Thor said as he leans down and tenderly touches Jane. “Jane, are you alright?”

Jane nods her head, Odin inspects the energy force running through Jane's body and realizes it's the Aether. “That's impossible.”

“The infection, it's defending her.” Eir said in a shocked face.

“No, it's defending itself.” Thor corrected.

“Come with me. There are relics that predate the universe itself. What lies within her appears to be one of them. The Nine Realms are not eternal. They had a dawn as they will have a dusk.” Odin said showing Thor and Jane an ancient book. “But before that dawn the dark forces, the Dark Elves, reigned absolute and unchallenged.”

Thor reading from the book. “Born of eternal night, the Dark Elves comes to steal away your light. They were these stories mother told us as children.”

“Their leader, Malekith made a weapon out of that darkness, it was called the Aether. While the other relics often appeared as stones, the Aether is fluid and ever changing. It changes matter into dark matter and seeks out to host bodies, drawing strength from their life force. Malekith sought to use the Aether's power to return the universe to one of darkness. But after eternities of blood shed, my father Bor, finally triumphed, ushering in the peace that lasted thousands of years.”

“What happened?” Jane chimed in.

“He killed them all.” Odin answered.

“Are you certain? The Aether was said to have been destroyed with them and yet here it is.” Thor specified.

“The Dark Elves are dead.” Odin commented.

“Does your book happen to mention how to get it out of me?” Jane questioned.

“No, it does not.”

○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

Y/n is sitting crisscross apple sauce in her room’s balcony. Thinking about what happened between her and Loki.

Was that our first fight?

Y/n’s emotions were at a frenzy. She didn’t understand why Loki was acting like that. She wanted to be mad. Something happened to change his mind on everything.

What if i’m overthinking it Gambit did say I think and feel more then anyone else

Y/n let’s out a sigh of irritation.

“It’s ok if my thoughts run a mile but focus on one.” Y/n said closing her eye.

So am I supposed to just sit here.

Yes I am going to be spinning this day with my daughter

Y/n can hear Frigga’s voice clear as day. She doesn’t know if it’s was her inner or outer voice.

“I didn’t know Thor had a sister.” Y/n mumbled to herself.

Y/n gets a knock on her door and she opens it with the flick of her hand.

“So I see your trying to meditate that’s a good start.” Frigga said walking in the room. The door shut close as Frigga makes her way over to Y/n.

“Yes. But I’m failing miserably at it.” Y/n laughed at herself. “I learned that my mind is a satellite. I’m always going to pick up others people thoughts. So I had to learn how to store them in the back of my mind. But even then it still feels crowded.”

“You poor dear, I can not imagine how you feel but I think I can help. Close your eyes imagine everything in your head.” Frigga said.

Y/n takes a deep breath and closes her eyes.

“Now I want you to think of the similarities of Asgard and Midgard.” Frigga said.

“That’s kind of hard Asgard is beautiful while Earth only as hidden gems.....the sunset are beautiful.” Y/n answered.

“When you think of the sun, what do you think of?” Frigga asked.

“Warm light.”

“And what is light?”

“Electricity....and electricity is power.”

“How does one turn off power?” Frigga wondered.

“By flipping a switch.” Y/n grinned.

“Now turn it off switch.” Frigga told Y/n.

Y/n flips a switch off in her mind and everything going quite. She opens her eyes and looks up at Frigga smiling.

“It’s gone. It’s not crowded anymore. Thank you.” Y/n rejoiced.

A rainbow appears in the sky as all the clouds disappear. Y/n gets up from the ground and hugs Frigga, then immediately letting her go.

She’s a queen you have to remember that

“Oh I’m so sorry.” Y/n said with a downward gaze.

Frigga smiles. “Y/n, it is fine.” Frigga looks out and sees a rainbow. “That wouldn’t be your doing would is?”

“Sorry.” Y/n goes to fix the sky but Frigga stops her.

“I think it’s rather lovely.”

Y/n smiles at Frigga.

○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

back on Svartalfheim, in his ship Malekith plots his vengeance against the Asgardians.

“The Realms will be aligned soon.” Malekith takes out a knife and turns to Algrim.“You'll be the last of the Kursed.”

Malekith stabs Algrim in the stomach with his knife. “Let my life be sacrificed. The same as our people.”

“You will become darkness, doomed to this existence until it consumes you.” Malekith started. One of the dark elves places a molten rock in Malekith's hand and Malekith places it inside Algrim's stomach. “And then no power of our enemies will stop me.”

“I'll destroy their defenses and resurrect the universe.” Malekith looks to one of his dark elves as he carries a mask.

A/n- I can’t believe the Loki tv show season one is done. (Sigh) I guess I’ll be waiting.

[nagdabbit]

LONG ANSWER, PLEASE. Come through callin' broke me and put me back together, I want to know EVERYTHING

yall are fast this morning! 💜

im sorry for how long and overshary this is gonna be

so, like, i really haven't been shy about talking about my mental health and shit, and especially how writing this fic kinda became part of my therapy, right? like it really became "how do i talk about burnout, this thing that i have no fucking words for because at no point in time have i ever let myself recover from it and have spent literal decades of my life letting it compound to the point that i have no idea whether or not ill ever be able to really heal?"

so this kinda came about in talking with my therapist about, like, how to move on and forward and start actually healing. and the fic definitely didn't end up a 1:1, cuz i still had to translate therapy into science fiction and romance. and obviously this is in no way a universal experience, this is just how my brain works. kay? kay.

the thing is i just get absolutely bogged down in the "this is whats happening and i need to stop it," not "this is what's happening to me and i need to start recovering from it." ive got a brain that likes to get extremely bogged down in the thing (burnout, depression, anxiety, etc) and not the broad causes of the thing (overworking, trauma, etc). i fixate on an unsolvable problem and don't allow myself enough room to actually think about myself as a person experiencing said problem—and therefore tend to ignore the limits of what i can actually take before i fall apart. i am absolutely the type to see a massive crack in the side of a dam and put a batman bandaid on it, thinking that'll fix it and it's safe to carry on business as usual.

preserving kayfabe and all that, in the lead up to revolution mox is getting terrorized by kenny, still missing his best friend who he's gone to war with, got betrayed by the bucks mid-match, oh were about to put on one of the most iconic gimmick matches of all time i hope it lives up to the unreasonable hype, etc. like, if wrestling were real life, i would need to lie down for a long time after all that. the start of the fic, we find mox in "i cannot fix this singular thing, so i have stopped trying" instead of "i am going to try and heal the things that caused this." cuz moxs life is now just sunday. saturday doesn't matter, only sunday. he's fixating on the thing, and not thinking about fixing what caused it.

cuz jeezy, and i cannot stress this enough, chreezy, it is nigh impossible to see the problem when you're in the middle of it. especially when you're isolated, by choice or circumstance.

i also struggle with asking for help in any kind of normal way. like, i with either bottle things up until they overflow, or i put way too much on another person with no real regard for what they can actually carry. and when that support system that i have piled on top of fails, i get angry a blame myself and everyone within reach and then cycle back around to the not talking about it with anyone, ever part. i am all for being selfish, humans need to be selfish, but not at the detriment of the health of the people they care about. it's a real fine line that i often forget exists until i cross it.

mox spends the fic placing too much on people who have no way to carry it all. once again, not exactly 1:1. there's a lot that he does, and conversations that are had, that would be so much healthier if the fic weren't, you know, a time loop. it's the "i am going to hang absolutely everything i have left on this sliver of hope that you have provided me" thats fucking him over. none of these people, no matter how well he explains it, are going to be able to fully understand what hes experiencing. and through no fault of their—or his—own are going to let him down. whether he admits it, or not. see: the final conversation with eddie at the end of chapter one. every conversation pervious has yielded no change in his circumstances (because he's not analyzing himself, so much as the space he's occupying) so he goes into that conversation angry and frustrated that eddie can't fix or fully understand this impossible thing.

a thing my therapist has tried very, very hard get me to understand in a very practical sense is that doing something that feels good is still healing. that thing that makes my bandaid-on-the-hoover-dam coping mechanisms not work is the amount of guilt ill throw at myself at the idea that im just ignoring the problem—which just adds more pressure trying to break through the dam.

mox spends this entire fic finding ways to feel better and heal emotionally, and then writing them off because they aren't the Big Bad. he noticeably feels better after talking to eddie and cooking with renee, but because those don't fix the issue, they don't matter. he chases those moments, and then feels guilty that he's found these moments of respite because he thinks he's not fixing the actual time loop part—even tho he very clearly is. he gets bogged down going after science and brain scans, not realizing that talking through those trials with renee is the part that's actually helping.

so the time loop finally breaks the day he gets up and says "i have decided to feel good today" and doesn't try and punish himself for it. the previous cycle to that, he still gets in his head about that guilt. another not 1:1 part, he has guilt of realizing that he's using this to break the cycle, and not because he wants his two people together.

that bit in the sessions where he was like, "i make a point to have my fake beer, and make it specifically a part of my routine, so i don't just accidentally forget and have a regular beer." that is, objectively, an extremely adhd fucking thing to say. do you know how often i accidentally buy grapefruit juice even tho i am on zoloft, and have been for years? that's also not a thing that simply happens in a physical sense, it can happen in an emotional one, too. to get back to the personal oversharing bit, decemeber of 2020, i got so excited to get a care package from my brother that for like ten minutes i forgot i had covid and that both my parents had died of it just weeks before. brains are stupid.

so, like, "i got so caught up in the euphoria of loving these people that i forgot i was trapped in an unknowable hellscape." it wasn't so much that he remembered that kept the cycle from breaking that day, it's the guilt of thinking he's ignoring his problem and then taking two steps backward. again. because thats kinda the theme of the fic.

the loops well and truly start to unravel when he sees them together in the kitchen and just goes fuck it. im gonna enjoy tonight and not punish myself for it. but it breaks when he gets up the next cycle and let's himself have it. the shadow of these loops is still there, and he knows it, and he acknowledges it to himself, but he's not feeling feeling guilty for letting go himself have a nice day.

and going back to the putting too much on people, it's that final conversation with eddie that really fixed it. there's a thing i kinda started to examine in an earlier fic i wrote, lamp-bright rind, about healing as a person so there's room for the people you care about, and not building yourself around those people. that people are people, not scaffolding, i guess. you can rely on people, but you can't build yourself in an image that will make them love you, cuz you're a person not a painting that's going to hang in the house of someone's life.

that last morning, he realizes that every conversation he's had, outside of renee (and even a couple of those), has been for his own gain in a way. like, he's spent so long talking about himself and his problems and what he needs, that he forgot that eddie is also living a life and that he always wants to hear about it. "i got so fucked up by groundhog day that i forgot that i care more about who you are than what you can do for me." brains. it happens. hell, speaking from experience here, i am old fucking hat at this revelation.

the "oh, hey, i love you and i love knowing about you, and i am extremely tired of not actually indulging this thing that i love, which is just having a no-strings conversation with you."

so, long therapy short, the thing that broke the loops was mox just letting himself have a healing moment without the guilt of doing so. letting himself go "hey, this feels nice and i am going to let it feel nice and accept this, and not feel bad about it." because that is recovery. that really is healing, and it's small and it can feel insignificant, but it is actually extremely fucking huge.

so.

i have no idea if that all is coherent or makes as much sense laid out as it did in the scrambled mess of my brain. but. that's the logic i kinda built this fic around.

anyway, my best friend refers to mox as their "emotional support wrestler" and i really have started to feel that. especially after reading his book and that most recent episode of renees pod.

is this healthy? i do not know or care, but my therapist gave me a gold star sticker, so it doesn't fucking matter.

thank you for letting me overshare my thought process

[faebriel]

ok ok I'm insane and couldn't pick one so have two (no need to answer both if you don't want to)

“You talk to him.” Not kindly, but he does.

“I’m used to him,” he shoots back. “I’m the only person who is.”

That makes Niki feel something, some uncomfortable tug in her chest. She mentally kicks herself. It’s not jealousy, she reminds herself, because despite the near-cliff jumping and the long nights without food and the nuclear fallout that has punctuated her last few months, being jealous of Tommy would be the least reasonable thing she’s allowed herself to be, maybe ever.

“You don’t believe me,” Tommy says flatly. “You never - eugh.” He cuts himself off with another ragged sigh, running a hand down his face. “Look, Niki, it’s - we were all together in Pogtopia, right? But I was there first. With him. And you didn’t see the start of it, it was horrible, and I’m glad no one else saw the beginning of it either but it was still just so shit and he kept saying all these terrible things about Tubbo and Fundy and you and,” he takes a shaky breath, “then, when I died, I saw him.”

Her breath catches in her throat.

Well, the voice in the back of her head whistles. If you were still wondering about all this afterlife bullshit, if you want to know where you’re going after your third life, here you go.

and

“You didn’t even - this isn’t about L’Manberg, Wilbur!” Niki shouts.

And then he stops, breathing hard, and he looks at Niki the same way he does whenever her voice is being drowned out in a crowd - the way he does when he wants to hear her, when he wants to know what she has to say.

“What else is there?” he asks.

Niki freezes. Stock still, unable to move, unable to breathe, ice threading its way through her gut, her chest, her shoulders, chilled down to the bone. With slow-dawning horror, she can feel hot tears welling up behind her eyes, sitting in her throat, threatening to spill over into a sob. She swallows - to keep her cool, to stay calm, to keep it together -

And then, something in her chest just snaps.

“You said you’d come back for me!” she cries, and her voice hitches on the lump of tears at the back of her throat and god, she sounds absolutely pathetic. Wilbur’s face softens immediately, which somehow just makes her feel even worse. “In Manberg. When Schlatt put me in prison, and you and Tommy were in Pogtopia, you said you’d break me out when it was safe. I waited for weeks , Wilbur. It was… it was horrible.”

“Niki…” a kaleidoscope of emotions flicker across his face, and he seems unsure which to settle on. “We got you out though, right? After the festival.”

“You looked for the button first,” she says quietly, and he stills.

Her sniffling sounds embarrassingly loud against the quiet background of night.

thank you sm!!! i’m gonna put these under the cut because they got a little long sorry (tw for discussion of suicidal ideation)

to preface: tommy is kind of the accidental but incredibly necessary invisible support beam for niki and wilbur’s making amends in bitter. niki cannot accept wilbur’s actions and apology without first acknowledging her own actions and making steps towards an apology, because otherwise it kind of falls flat? in that ending scene niki finally gets what wilbur is feeling and wilbur finally gets that someone else knows how he feels (it’s not perfect 100% yet, but…. that’ll get explored later)

onto the actual snippet! “tommy talks to wilbur - not kindly, but he does” was very important to me! tommy has stuck by wilbur ever since pogtopia, but the tragedy is that he is not equipped to deal with wilbur’s issues, and it shows. wilbur’s first stream after revival depicts this really clearly, where tommy tails wilbur around the whole time but insults him, is still stuck on calling him the villain, physically fights him at some point, etc. on one hand this isn’t healthy but on the other hand tommy is actually around, which is more than can be said for basically any other ally wilbur has had on the dsmp, maybe excluding his dad, who literally killed him lmfao.

this whole issue is exacerbated by the fact that tommy believes that he is the only person who properly understands wilbur, the only person who gets what happened to him, and feels like wilbur is generally his burden to bear. he failed to stop wilbur from both 1. hurting other people and 2. killing himself after the pogtopia-manberg war - and he doesn’t trust wilbur not to do either of those things again, so he’s stuck hovering around wilbur while wilbur is inadvertently setting off his own trauma and feeling responsible for any way he might fuck up and hating that but not wanting to leave. tommy’s memory isn’t perfect and he isn’t a perfect narrator, what he remembers from pogtopia the most were the scariest parts and that’s understandable but it means he’s holding wilbur to the worst expectations of behaviour (and he does so very vocally). the others showed up later, sure, but in tommy’s eyes he’s the only one who saw wilbur’s descent, and by the time they showed up wilbur had already changed irreversably. tommy tries to rationalise this by splitting the ‘different wilburs’ apart from each other in his head (he does this in canon too - there’s one quote from like late 2020 where he says he and tubbo need to keep on going for who wilbur used to be, not who he became, even though they’re,, the same person), and no one challenges that perspective, so he just keeps doing it even though it’s not healthy for him or wilbur.

and then limbo happened and, oh geez, THAT didn’t help jhfaskjjfsa

tommy is on a bit of a knife edge with niki in this fic. niki’s in this state of “ok, he’s annoying whatever, i’m moving on”, but all tommy knows is that she tried to kill him that one time, disappeared off the face of the map, joined a book club with two people who definitely do not like him, and now is just acting weirdly mellow and polite. she is not someone he wants near wilbur bc what the fuck is she gonna do? what is he gonna do? who knows. he’s frustrated that niki doesn’t seem to acknowledge how he’s feeling (especially bc once upon a time she would have been someone he trusted to acknowledge them - they were friends, they fought together) and he’s taking a big step by telling someone about his concerns here, especially bc tommy doesn’t really like talking about them at all. he wouldn’t be saying absolutely anything to niki if he didn’t truly believe she should stay away from wilbur, even if he’s wrong about him. (sometimes i think i write tommy as a little too emotionally mature here but it all goes out the window when wilbur’s brought up. idk if that balances it out)

ok onto niki: this is the first she has actually heard of limbo! she’s only just come around to the fact that resurrection is possible at all. death is kind of a touchy subject for niki both in general and re: wilbur in the fic - she’s coming off of a period in her life where suicidal ideation was, uh, a big thing (whether you want to read that into canon or not is subjective, that’s just the angle i went with in this fic). the sudden existence of a life after death, miserable as it is - and whether she really believes in such a place, when it only exists in tommy and wilbur’s words - that is a lot of information for her to absorb all at once. death is a weird connection point for tommy and niki here, coming right off of the fact that they’ve just acknowledged each other having those problems - tommy, out of, yknow, altruism, would very much like to keep niki out of that place, and niki is quietly reckoning with the fact that that is where she would have sent him. the concept of limbo from the perspective of a character with no experience of it, even secondhand, is so interesting to me like what kind of eldritch location would you feel like you’re living in asghjkl

(also - i gotta be honest the jealousy angle here but mostly when she’s talking later about dream not deserving wilbur’s companionship kinda came out after this post came across my dash while writing. whoops /j)

-

fun fact, this is the very first snippet of bitter that i ever wrote! all the way back in may!! this is like the moment of the fic - it's where the miscommunication that niki and wilbur have been having is shattered entirely - and so sticking the landing was uhhh kinda important to me lol.

wilbur's entire being in this fic is basically consumed by L'Manberg - he equates his self worth to it entirely. in his eyes, everyone (rightfully) hates him because of what he did to L'Manberg, because L'Manberg was corrupted and he himself with it, etc. niki tries to tell herself this, and while it definitely does form part of her issues with him, it was the betrayal that causes her this much pain - that he seemingly brushed her and their friendship off entirely when he supposedly left her for dead in manberg. because here is what we as the audience know: wilbur couldn’t leave niki in trouble when he heard her life was in danger, even when he was trying to find the button (pretty much the only thing he sees himself as having left at this point) and so he returned. here is what it looks like from niki’s perspective: wilbur told her to wait in manberg until it was safe to come to pogtopia, laid the place with TNT, went to blow up the place, and only returned when he couldn’t find the detonator (and then the first thing she saw him do in pogtopia was encourage the pit behaviour but that’s not what we’re talking about asdfgh). that is massive miscommunication and it’s been brewing between them for months - to make a quirky little reference to the title, niki has been carrying that anger with her so long it's gone bitter. it was never just about l’manberg with niki - not that anger, not her and wilbur’s friendship (hence the little flashback earlier in the fic, bc niki’s relationship to anarchism and statehood or statelessness juxtaposed with her friendships with wilbur and eret - she loves l’manberg bc she loves wilbur, but she loves eret too and those national ties don’t undermine that - is Real Interesting to me) - so when wilbur asks what else there could possibly be (because in his mind, what else could she have bothered staying around for?), she just fucking breaks.

“Niki freezes. Stock still, unable to move, unable to breathe, ice threading its way through her gut...with slow-dawning horror, she can feel hot tears welling up behind her eyes” - prose discussion time! heat and cold are two big throughlines in this fic - particularly for niki, cold is what she is. admittedly when i started with it i mostly wanted to subvert hot = angry and cold = dead but i kinda ended up enjoying this take on it for what it is instead of just as a subversion (also i like the idea of revived people running hot, their bodies r working hard to keep em going). she’s holding onto her feelings and refusing to deal with them, she’s frozen over. descriptions of cold are key to niki’s mental state throughout the fic - cold weight on her chest, feelings of frostbite when she and wilbur hug the first time, ice cold water during the dinner scene, waking up in the cold flat, etc. this was an attempt at describing a more visceral feeling of like, when you’re really mad and you can just feel the adrenaline running through your veins. always felt more cold than hot to me. when she starts to cry, the facade she’s been putting on is finally thawing out and cracking the ice she’s buried her feelings under. (also gives an excuse to write warm comforting hugs towards the end /hj). it’s a loss, it’s catharsis, it’s a whole mess.

and ofc this is all news to wilbur and he feels terrible, because as unintentional as it was, he really really hurt her - because the destruction of l’manberg fucking sucked but above all else wilbur hurt the people he loved because they loved him so much and not in spite of it, because they cared about him so deeply and his death was a massive blow to them. this hasn’t even dawned on him, because how could it? he respects deeply niki (lowkey respects her opinion more than his own at this point) so he has to listen, because it’s niki (“and he looks at Niki the same way he does whenever her voice is being drowned out in a crowd - the way he does when he wants to hear her, when he wants to know what she has to say” - because he does), and what she says fucking floors him. in his eyes, he failed her by putting her in danger and then by destroying her home - the idea that she valued him and their friendship so much flies entirely over his head until this moment, and he is forced to re-evaluate the mindset that has motivated him since… basically since pogtopia! the way i write wilbur is like… yes, he’s one of niki’s closest friends and he’s more aware of her insecurities and issues than most (which is why he does always take the time to listen to her, etc) but he does over-idealise her a bit. tbf, i think he does to some extent with everyone (calling tubbo strong on the anniversary stream, for example). also the fact that he really wasn’t around for niki’s lowest moments as a character! he still thinks of her the way she was in l’manberg - confident, steadfast, respected - and this moment shatters that for him as he realises exactly what effect he and his death had on her and everyone else, not just by his actions, but because they loved him and cared for him so deeply.

sorry that this got horrifically long!! and thank you so much for sending snippets in <3333

[apportioned-abortion]

I am so incredibly sick of anti-parent/anti-child discourse from people who have no compassion. For some of these people, they'll champion all sorts of social justice causes and sticking up for the little guy and pro-mental health and whatever, until a child or a parent is involved, then they just deserve to suffer and fuck them I guess.

I absolutely understand being child-free and not wanting kids. I absolutely understand the knee-jerk reaction against parenting by all of society and relatives and whoever the fuck trying to push parenting on you/hypothetical person. This is not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about the people who act like parents are committing a war-crime by just... Taking their children into public places.

Two parents sitting at a nice restaurant while their children are running around disturbing everyone else? That's shitty. That gossip article about the entitled parents getting mad at the waitress for daring to ask their child to sit down and not have a tray of hot food tipped on them? Not what I'm referring to (even if gossip articles criticizing shitty parenting seems to invoke all sorts of horrible gleefully mean attitudes in people).

I'm talking about parents getting eye rolls for their kid being kind of loud at Applebee's, or the way people act like a child on a plane is literally the worst torture imaginable, or all of the assholes who come out of the woodwork with unsolicited parenting advice at every single thing every single mom does with their child ever. Be on your phone while your kid is at the park? Selfish and horrible. Have your kid watch tv? Why did you even have kids if you were going to let the tv babysit?

All of these same people that rush in at the first sign of less than ideal parenting with "WELL WHY DID YOU EVEN HAVE KIDS" or "If I was a parent..." Or "this is why crotch-goblins should be locked up" are always the first people to demand sympathy for anything that has ever gone wrong in their life. They're the first people to treat like a slightly less than optimal experience during an outing is a personal slight against them and not just part of being in public.

Yes, we've all experienced the annoying mom who minimizes your struggles with "yeah you should try having four kids!". Have you ever considered that having a dependent 24/7 doesn't mean that life stops, and they have all their own struggles PLUS someone depending on them all the time? People without kids have all sorts of miserable things happen that shouldn't get diminished if they're childless... But have you considered that a person with kids has a unique struggle in that their parents still die, they still lose their jobs, they still don't sleep, they still have break-ups and divorces, and then also have to be a pillar for someone else and don't get the luxury of putting their life on hold for it? Because I genuinely don't think many people who haven't be a primary caregiver HAVE considered that (if not for a child, insert disabled relative, aging parents, et cetera).

The other thing to consider too is that everyone who takes children into a public space isn't someone who made the conscious decision to bring a child into the world. For work, I take kids with trauma, developmentally delayed kids, kids with mental health and behavioral struggles into the community all the time because through no fault of their own, they've been seriously deprived and the way to learn how to act in those situations is to experience them. I work with foster parents, who are doing the hard and thankless work of taking care of OTHER PARENTS' KIDS while they get their shit together (often their relatives, who they have their own emotional baggage with). Relatives, babysitters, etc who may not be experts with kids but still need to take them out for reasons...

The only people I personally have seen have compassion for parents/people with kids in public is other parents.

For all that parenting is glamorized as a choice in theory and painted as the only correct option by society... Everyone sure fucking hates parents. And let's be real, despite the neutral phrasing, everyone sure fucking hates mothers.

For every terrible mother I have seen that was abusive, entitled, placed unreasonable expectations on others, wasn't paying attention to their destructive child, detached, and refused to parent, were rude and callous to others... I have probably seen 10 that haven't gone out by themselves in years, don't have time for hobbies, have no support network, lost all their friends, have decades of trauma, mental health issues, physical health issues (often BECAUSE OF BIRTH), and still give their damndest every single day to making sure their child is happy and healthy at the cost of themselves and while everyone around them uses their hands to point and criticize instead of doing the bare minimum to reach out and help or empathize.

Some child-free people want to compare owning pets to parenting (and no, not criticizing people who spoil their pets or just call them their kids, but talking about people who think we should be implementing puppy leave in work places when paid maternity leave is non-existent), as if those two things are comparable. I've had a puppy, and it was hard and difficult, but I didn't have to recover from 9 months of bodily torture and a difficult and painful surgical procedure while caring for a puppy, I didn't have to breastfeed a puppy, I could leave the puppy home alone and step outside if I needed to, and at 2 the puppy mostly matured into an adult dog where my child was getting STARTED with mischief at 2.

Some child-free people want to pretend that parents get all of these extra rights in the workplace when people show the barest hint of compassion towards their unique needs as caregivers... As if mothers aren't uniquely discriminated against, as if the cost of child-care doesn't make the return back to work barely worth it, as if mother's aren't embarrassed as hell to draw attention to the fact that they have split attention between parenting and work.

I've seen people acknowledging that parents are the only people recognized as primary caregivers and that support should be given too to adults caring for other dependents, and I 100% agree with that. This is not about those people. Caregivers to disabled adults, aging adults, and other caregivers I'm likely ignorant to also have extremely unique struggles that should be addressed that people treat as invisible. I'm just not making a post about them right now.

The deck is so stacked against parents at every turn, and I just want to lose it every time I hear some jackass who has never been responsible for another person tsk tsk at kids existing in public, or seeing a child in the background of a zoom meeting, or a mom daring to let her child touch a tablet, or an "entitled parent" that's actually just asking for basic compassion and accommodation.

[spirit-of-vengeance]

@spxcemuses @mr-mansnoozie @xxstar-bluesxx

Guess who gathered enough mind to finally write her full backstory of Western Verse. Her being a bounty hunter is set in the Wild West time period (1865-1895), there is no current year(s) to set her story in mainly because I don't want to make a mistake messing up the timeline.

Calm before the storm

Her father, Attila a lesser Hungarian noble whom supported the 1848-1849 revolutionary war but after the failure of it he escaped emigrated to America to avoid the Habsburg revenge, soon followed by his brother Gábor. He could save a small amount of his fortune along with his two most important horses: a purebred Lipizzan stallion and an extremely rare Akhal Teke mare. He had settled near a small town, due to his financial situation and education as a noble he established a school with the support and approval of the local church. To quieten his guilt for abandoning his country in its peril, he poured all of his heart into educating children; at least he is still useful in some way.

One day, a group of artists traveling artists, acrobats traveled through the town and the aristocrat fell in love at first sight. She was like the queen of fairy from the folk tales he'd heard in his childhood, she was tall, blue eyes sparkled like light sapphire, long golden brown hair floated ethereally with every twirl. The smitten lord shamelessly courted the the graceful acrobat, determined to know at least the name.

The group had stayed in the town for a few weeks, allowing Attila's and Myra's romance to blossom; after a month she ended up staying with him, just like in true fairytales.

My obsession with angst backstory strikes again

The lord was in love, deeper than poets could express it. Since the loss of his home and country he had found his place in the universe along with the perfect companion by his side. He paid less attention to the school, the church and other public affairs; it wasn't like he abandoned them but became more withdrawn to spend time with the love of his life, especially after the birth of their daughter. She was almost the perfect miniature of her mother, same beautiful hair glinting gold in the sunlight, only her eyes were the brightest emerald green he'd ever seen.

While Myra's heart and aura was as pure as a fairy's; the local church was beyond distressed. They claimed that Attila had completely abandoned helping those in need because of her wicked seduction. When they witnessed her performing for the amusement of the crowd, the 'temptress witch' brand couldn't be lifted. They gathered a few enthusiastic townsfolk whom shared their views and a few morally questionable men whom only wanted a piece of the lord's fortune.

10 year old Karma was awakened from her deep slumber by her frantic father; smoke and yelling blinding her senses as he carried her out of the burning house into the nearby forest so the mob won't find her. He promised her he will be back but he had to return into their home for Myra; he couldn't leave her inside. Karma watched her dad disappear into the flames, the air filled with suffocating smoke and religious shouts for god to smite the sinners. She couldn't tear her eyes away from the spot where her father was gone, waiting for her parents to stumble out of the half collapsed building; but that never had happened. She sat unmoving from her spot, struck staring into the flames then into the ashes as the sun has risen.

Birth of the marksman

Attila's brother, Gábor arrived the next day after hearing the news, he was the one whom found Karma still staring at the ruins in a catatonic state. He couldn't avenge his sibling as it meant endangering his niece and she has lost more than enough.

Gábor expected her to become a soft spoken, reserved lady once she overcame her trauma; that theory was soon abandoned when once he had awoken to his niece practicing with his rifle outside with frighteningly great accuracy. The young girl naturally had an extraordinary aim and after a few long talks, he'd seen the determination burning in her to avenge the murder of her parents. Given by her mother's dance lessons, she was also flexible and capable of many different acrobatic moves; this combined with her aim proven to be a very dangerous combination.

To not awaken suspicion he told his friends Karma was an orphan whose parents were killed by bandits and he had adopted her to give her a family and education. Karma was fascinated chasing greater heights of her skills, this involved reading every possible book about anatomy, marking, engraving the useful spots of the body. Karma knows where to shoot to disarm, to cause a slow death, to paralyze, to disable for life and when it is only a warning: an injury which will heal with time. Along with her accuracy, her drawing speed only can be compared to lightning. Although she prefers/most comfortable with her dual revolvers (model undecided yet), she is still a menace with shotguns, rifles, flintlocks and even bows due to Gàbor's 'A Hungarian is not a Hungarian if they can't use a bow' mindset.

The bounty hunter quicker than death

Karma had her first official gunfight at the age of 18 on the auction. for Vihar (Storm), the filly of her father's horses.

Detailed post about Vihar

She officially entered the bounty hunter business when she was 20 and Vihar was 2, aiming for the most dangerous criminals whom committed the worst acts possible. In her early years after the kill she slit open corpses she trying to find the bullet, surverying the damage it caused and adding filler information to her anatomy knowledge. Of course she didn’t bother burying the bodies, she knew as a woman she has to be extremely vicious above talented to be hired and mutilated dead bodies did send a great message & served as cement for building her reputation. The name Karma wasn't entirely her idea, many thankful family members claimed that karma has came for their loved ones' murderers. Her talent spread like wildfire among the men of law, glad to be rid of the dangerous scum; with careful planning, use of environment and Vihar as backup she had wiped out gangs, not solely focused on individuals.

Unfortunately her reputation summoned an unofficial grand price on her head as well in certain circles; they had tracked her back to her uncle's house. The battle claimed Gábor's life and nearly her sight as her right eye was almost slashed out. The new loss opened old wounds: her not being able to protect her loved ones. She couldn't look into a mirror, the scar a reminder how despite all years of training she wasn't untouchable; after burying her uncle plan to gain control over her psyche already formed.

She took a knife and carefully carved four half circles around her eye to form a crosshair with her pupil being the middle of it. She made sure she kept the wounds open for enough time to scar as visibly as the vertical cut; she wanted a symbol to add to her legend. Excuse my pathetic excuse of an edit, I'm not good in this, nor I can draw.

Now Karma is 25, Vihar is 6, both of them in their peak physical prime; the name Vihar is also symbolic a little, Karma is the lightning to her horse. She is dancing on the thin edge of bounty hunting and being an outlaw as she often takes...side jobs to help people who deserve it and usually that person doesn't have a bounty on their head, therefore it is technically murder.

Local antisocial feral monk & cocky gunslinger feral lady / addition of the AU with the amazing @mr-mansnoozie

Near her uncle's house, Karma had discovered a cave and a grumpy mute monk living in it along with his pet bear. The monk, Sandy eventually became a second uncle to the traumatized angry orphan, he taught her how to move & creep upon someone soundlessly, disappear without a trace, cover her stances and behavior patterns of various animals. Before and after returning from a job she always visits her uncle of choice for a chat; a silent way to prepare him to the possibility of her not coming back. But she always do. She considers Sandy as part of her tiny family, although his...copying mechanisms with his own traumas were a bit strange to get used to; she adapted quite fast, after all who is she to judge with a past like that?

I'm a dead man walking, Hell's at my door.

aka collection of small headcanons

🎯 Her dual revolvers are called Salvation and Damnation because she's dramatic

🎯 Karma has a small sketchbook filled with anatomy drawings for further practice.

🎯 She actually can sing, but rarely does, only to Vihar since she never received positive feedback on it. Her voice is gritty, rugged and deep; definitely not the usual and desired sounding from a woman.

🎯 If her target was an outstandingly cruel bastard and/or one of those whom killed her parents she uses a little psychological torture. After fatally wounding them she starts whistling (for the most terrifying experience wear headphones & close your eyes while listening) as they try to crawl away or beg for mercy. The first time the whistle gets shrill & more intense is when she lazily reloads, knowing she has both the time and the upper hand. The second pace shift is when she aims; she shoots during the last, long drawn out high note.

🎯 This is her only verse where Cindy is afraid, no terrified of fire; during her....26 AU's she's always been associated with fire despite dying in or being wounded by it. In this verse she is more tied to lightning, the scent of smoke is enough to send her into a silent panic attack and despite loathing the cold she will never sit close to the fireplace. Her other deep fears include injuring her hands & sight and losing Vihar. Her horse is the only remaining family member of hers, she can't fail her too.

🎯 Most of Karma's scars, injuries are a result of her standing between Vihar and a knife/bullet/ even a bullwhip when a criminal was smart enough to catch on their deep emotional bond.

🎯 She has recurring night terrors about the night her parents died, she always wakes up in cold sweat; she's sort of used to them. Though, sometimes she still cries but thankfully Vihar is there to comfort her.

🎯 Karma has a special morning stretch routine to keep her flexibility and warm up her hands & keep them steady and fast.

🎯 Due to her dad and uncle she received high quality education

🎯 For the untrained eye, the belt of her hat are simple crosses while in reality, they are inverted crosses to symbolize her stance with Christianity

🎯 Karma's middle name is Emerald, given by her father due to her eye color.

🎯 Karma was first inspired by League of Legends Miss Fortune because that name alone is great but unfortunately she is too pirate coded for a western so I abandoned the relation. Though when Karma is not being the 'Call me a slow reader but I only made it to the Dead part, the or Alive didn't register.' ; her personality is similar to hers.

🎯 Due to her dad, Karma is actually half aristocrat. Not like she cares about it the slightest; the only indication of noble blood is her idle stance. It is an unconscious mirror of how her father used to hold himself: back straightened to almost impossible point, left arm behind it, right hand resting on the grip of in her case, revolver instead of hilt of a sword.

🎯 If given the chance to live a normal life, she would've grown into a captivating, lively young woman, much like her mother but with the aristocrat elegance of her father; finding a suitor who lives up to her parents' and her standards would've been the challenge of the century.

🎯 Her special move is called Dance of Death. This is used as last resort when she's facing more opponents up to 12, as with her dual revolvers she has 12 bullets without reloading. She mentally marks the stances of all opponents, predicts their movement, firing order and possible way of their bullets before whirling out of her hiding place. Each pose minimizes the chance of getting shot, and with each change of movement two bullets are fired, two men drop dead.

🎯 Her accuracy isn't just 'gun goes boom >:D' but a combination of natural talent, endless practice, movement prediction, sharp, quick thinking & analytical skills and different techniques molten together to utilize them all at once

🎯 Her hair is now as long as her mother's, she always keeps it in a single tight braid to keep it out of the way; without her hat and hair down she actually loses some of her dangerous edge.

🎯 The only physical memory Karma has of her parents is her dad's hussar sword she found underneath the ruins of the house, it was protected by a very thick wooden box & a lock of her mother's hair is tied to the grip. She has hidden it in the nearby forest, her thoughts often wander to it along with the wish to wield it.