#i used to be christian (not my fault‚ raised that way) and even though i left the faith a long time ago biblical stories still fascinate me

[bayofwolves]

i was on the most random nostalgia kick and rewatched the prince of egypt yesterday and let me just say... that movie is truly one of the greatest animated films of all time.

[pinguwrites]

The Doll's Burial ⸻ Jonathan Crane

READ DISCLAIMER

pairing | jonathan crane x reader

summary | You knew Jonathan Crane was meant for you from the moment you laid your eyes on him — a brilliant man, filled with wit and curiosity and youth. So perfect, in fact, that you have to take him away from the rest of the world and make him yours, your darling doll. He’ll like it, won’t he?

word count | 9k

Warnings: NON-CON/DUB-CON, dark!reader, kidnapping, Stockholm syndrome, reader’s delusional and sick and sadistic but sweet ig, religious (specifically Christian) disdain from Jon , murder/torture towards jon/in general, jon isn’t scarecrow au, slightly ooc jon, p in v sex, househusband!jonathan, PROCEED WITH CAUTION - DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE NOT COMFORTABLE

Disclaimer: This is part of my unfinished works. I don't write anymore, but I still wanted to publish what I have. I'll use bullet points to explain what I planned to happen at the end. Also note that this is heavily unedited, there will be a lot of mistakes.

i.

You didn’t know what beauty was until you met Jonathan Crane that fateful winter’s night, a night where the season’s gentle touch had left windows glazed with frost, and the late evening coated in a thick, gloomy darkness. Crystal flakes were falling from the sky onto your body like specks of dust, but it was nothing compared to the way it looked on him, his dark hair contrasting with the white, the snow melting upon the touch of his skin. His breath was coming out in puffs of smoke before dissipating into the bitter air, his square glasses glinting in the light of the street lamps.  

Time had frozen still at that moment, as though your brain had gone numb, much like the cold was numbing your ears and toes and the tips of your fingers. Licking your lips, you observed as the man — whose name you did not know then — glanced at the slim watch on his wrist, shivering ever so slightly as a breeze brushed him by. He was wearing an elegant suit, colored charcoal, the dress shirt underneath thinly striped, and his shoes polished and new, no doubt recently bought. He seemed to be an educated man with wealth, maybe a doctor or lawyer, but you guessed doctor, because he struck you as a scientific mind, curious but practical. 

He wasn’t married, as he had no ring, which led you to believe that his profession took up a lot of his time and effort. After all, how could a man as gorgeous as him not be desired? Even the thought of him in bed with you set your loins alight, not to mention the slightest notion of him being yours until death do us part.  

“Silly,” you had murmured to yourself, though there was a soft smile playing on your lips. “You’re thinking too far ahead, like always.”

But it really wasn’t your fault. He was so delightful to look at. Almost like a doll, with his plump pink lips and blush-dusted cheeks. You could imagine it already: a domestic life. He needn’t not lift a finger, not think a single thought, as long as he allowed you to hold him in his arms. How was it that someone who had not done anything at all to warrant such attraction, found himself at the center of your obsessiveness?

There’s something about him. Something different I cannot deny. He was unlike anyone you had ever seen before, anyone you would ever see in the future. It was strange how humans worked, heart so easily manipulated. What was it that caught your attention in the first place? you wondered. The aesthetic of the scene? His simple presence in the emptiness of the street? Did it even matter anymore, now that you were so hopelessly captured by him?

“Hey, excuse me, ma’am!”

Heart thumping against your chest at the sudden noise, you answered hesitantly, “Yes?”

The man, who was raising his voice so he could be heard across the street, gave you a wary look. “Do you know when the bus will arrive? I’ve been waiting for fifteen minutes — the sign said it would arrive at seven.”

“I’m not sure,” you lied. You hadn’t expected him to talk to you. The event felt out of control, like you weren’t sure what was going to happen next. It bothered you, but if anything, this was a sign. A sign that perhaps he was the one. “I’m waiting for it as well,” you continued. “Do you mind if I cross?”

“I don’t.”

After you made sure there were no cars nearby, you walked across the road and finally got your first view of the man, finding his features, his mannerisms, his everything to be just as breathtaking as it was from a distance. He had a relatively low voice, around a medium pitch, and it was grated, almost like a vocal fry. He had these little freckles scattered across his face like distant stars in the sky. If it was possible, you would have plucked out every single one of them to store in a jar.

“I usually don’t take the bus,” you said smoothly, trying to start a conversation, though all you could focus on the way he was looking at you, his gaze piercing and icy, “but my car’s in a workshop. I thought I’d try my luck here before heading to the subway.”

Your car wasn’t in a workshop. It was in the garage parking lot just diagonal of his view. You had only gotten out because you wanted a quick coffee at the local café. Eternally grateful that you spotted him along the way, you weren’t sure what you would have done if you hadn’t. It had only been a few minutes, and you were already in love.

The man hummed in response, not seeming to take much of an interest. “I’m in a similar situation myself . . . I’ll be on my way, then,” he said, clearing his throat. 

He started walking down the sidewalk to the nearest subway station, a walk you knew was going to take about a while. And in those clothes? He was most certainly going to catch a cold. If it was proper to do so, you would have offered him your own coat, but in a city like this, where no one trusted, you didn’t need to make him suspicious of your kindness. People were like animals, small critters. Approaching them too fast would scare them off. You had to be subtle, ease into it before you did anything too rash. 

“Are you coming?” he asked, turning around, waiting for you to follow him. His tone was expectant, and almost humorous, like the thought of you continuing to wait for the bus was amusing to him. It made you amused. There would be work to do with his arrogance when you finally take him away, you made a mental note of that. 

“No,” you responded. “I’ve changed my mind, I’ll have a friend come pick me up.”

“. . . Are you sure?” he pressed, concerned. He was concerned for you. It was so sweet. 

“I’m sure,” you repeated. If you were with him for a second longer you would have gotten down on your knees and proposed. 

He considered your words, then nodded. “Well, have a nice day, ma’am.”

“You as well . . . I’m sorry, what’s your name?”

“Jonathan. Dr. Jonathan Crane.”

“Jonathan,” you repeated, the word rolling off your tongue with ease. Jon-ah-thun, meaning God has given, gift of God. A gift to you, surely, or why else would he be here, standing in your presence if he wasn’t meant to be taken away? To be polite, you gave him your own name, hoping he liked it as much as you liked his, and simply said, “Have a nice day,” hiding the butterflies inside your stomach that flew around like hail in a blizzard. 

Jonathan Crane, my very own doll.

+++

The chains clinked against the others in the link, the cuffs tugging against the skin, pulled so hard it restricted the blood flow. It was only then the noises stopped, and a defeated sigh left your doll’s lips. His head leaned against the wall and his posture slumped, as though he had given up. It was a shame, too. The sight of him struggling was exhilarating. It filled you with such excitement and arousal that you wished he kept going.

Currently, you were working, with your laptop placed out in front of you on your desk, some oatmeal to your right. The camera system was hooked up to the large monitor, so from here you could watch Jonathan’s movements. He had been awake since the break of dawn, the time he usually got up for work, except he wasn’t at his house today, he was in your basement, body against the cold floor, trembling like a scared bunny.

The planning was the most difficult part of this endevour. You had never actually kidnapped someone before. When you were a child, the local police suspected you in the mutilation of a few small critters in your apartment complex, and in college you were involved in the accidental death of one of your fellow students (he fell down the stairs and hit his head, nothing that anyone could prove was your fault), but to actually kidnap someone was entirely different. 

It would be an ongoing investigation until the case was classified as cold, and even then some cold cases were picked up again after years; you had to make sure no could connect a link, because some people were too narrow-minded to understand how true and unconditional your adoration for him was; and not only that, but the amount of research — or stalking, as some might call it — that you had to do was exhaustive; but really, it was worth it, and Jonathan would fall for you just as you did for him within a few months, maybe a year at most. He would come to realize just how much you cared about him, and just how wonderful your life could be together. Once you arrived at that point, things would flow seamlessly. You had all the precautions in place. Even if he did try and escape, you always had a sedative in your pocket, and all the doors to your house was just as secure on the inside as it was on the outside. 

The only thing you worried about was witnesses. See, Jonathan was usually very careful not to go into secluded alleyways or dingy locations on his own, which made it difficult to take him. So, you had to bump into him in a coffee shop — a coincidence, you had told him — and from there lure him out.  

You sighed lovingly and gazed at Jonathan through the screen, deciding that it was time to bring him breakfast and lay out the ground rules.

After a few more minutes, you crept down the stairs with some food and water, careful not to step on any of the parts that would cause a creaking sound, and unlocked the basement with the passcode. When you opened the door, Jonathan raised his head, scooting his body away from your figure until he backed into a corner.

It was a dingy little place. It used to have carpet, but you removed that in favor of plastic tarp on the floor, nothing that could indefinitely stain the cement underneath. The walls were covered in that as well, and there was no window or clock to let him know the time. There were blankets to the side, and a small toilet to the other corner of the room. It was a good enough place for now. You hated seeing him in these conditions, but only once he proved responsible would you update him to a secured bedroom. At this point in time, he wasn’t capable of understanding things, and would only try to run away if you gave him more freedom. 

Jonathan stayed quiet for a long while, and so did you, but then he scoffed. “I’m not eating that.”

Frowning, you bent down to his level. You placed the bowl in front of him, the sweet aroma of cinnamon and honey filling the stale air. “It's not poisoned, you know that.”

Jonathan did know that. He was smart enough to realize that a person wouldn’t go through all the effort of bringing him here, only to poison him. There needn’t be a conversation over this. He didn’t reach for the bowl yet, but you knew he would when you left. Eventually, hunger would get to him. 

“Are you in love with me?” he asked next.

Yes, yes I am. I love you as true as the air you breathe, as blue as your eyes gleam, and as certain as the beat of your heart. 

“Why do you ask?” you said instead.

“Your eyes are always dilated, you can’t keep them off of me. Not at the bus station, the coffee shop.” He paused. “You’re sick. I’m not in love with you. Whatever fantasy you have is not real.”

“You may not be in love with me now, but you will be soon.”

There was no point in hiding your intentions. 

He scoffed again, head down. “Realize this, I have nothing. Whatever you want from me, I can’t give you.”

Reaching out to him, you rubbed your thumb against his skin. He was cold. Again. 

“You need to learn how to keep warm,” you said, concerned. “There’s some blankets. Use them.”

Jonathan pulled away, though you could tell he wanted you to keep doing that, because for a brief moment he almost leaned into your touch and warmth. So, you did just that. You gripped his chin and forced him to look at you. He put up a bit of a struggle, but in the end, he relented, and let you caress his skin. Letting your fingers trail up his cheek to his nose, you quickly made your way to his eyelashes, his long, thick eyelashes that fluttered like a black bird’s feathers. 

“I did a bit of research on you,” you said. “Just enough to make sure no one would come looking for you right away, to learn your patterns and your habits, or any other important bits of information . . . like the fact that you have a therapist.”

Jonathan looked straight into your eyes. It was almost as if, at the moment, he was more concerned about what you might have read about him than his current predicament. He didn’t want anyone to know his past, his secrets, his weaknesses. It was embarrassing, and you knew that because you read in his file — which took atrociously long to obtain — how ashamed he was of himself, how conscious. 

He shoved you away, and you backed off.

“Don’t be mean,” you frowned, hurt. “It was necessary. Watching you through your window wasn’t enough to truly know you. And even now, I’m sure there’s so much I’ve missed. It’ll be nice. As long as you listen and don’t cause trouble, everything will be okay.”

“You’re delusional,” he scowled. “I’ve known enough people like you in my life to understand how you work. Once you’re tired of me, you’ll dump me and get someone new to torment.”

“That’s not true, and you’ll see that,” you protested. It broke you to know that he thought of himself as expendable. “. . . I know you need some time to think. I’ll come down in a few hours with lunch, alright?”

You took his silence as a ‘yes’.

“Good boy.”

+++

A few weeks had passed by. The snow was beginning to melt, turning into a mushy, brown sludge that you had to trudge through every morning to get to work. Admittedly, you were quite busy with your job, but you made as much time as you could for Jonathan. Your doll was in a sour mood the entire time, and after calling you a bitch and a unintelligent, perverted whore — such colorful language — he started begging you to let him go.

I won’t tell anyone. I’ll give you money. Please, I’m begging you. All clearly signs of emotional distress.

It hurt you a lot when Jonathan rejected your affection. More than you thought it would. He should be grateful that you took such an interest in him, but instead he was disgusted. Of course, he would fall for you soon, but it made you wish that he had already done so, and that too on the night you two met. 

Wouldn’t it have been romantic? Love at first sight. Did you not deserve something like that? For someone to look into your eyes the way you did his and think, This is the one I want to marry. Again, you knew it would take time, but the wound still cut deep. 

He was eating, which was good. One less thing to worry about. But when you checked his wrists to see if the cuffs were still locked you found them red with marks. It worried you a bit, so you applied some cream to them — or at least, tried to, with the way he was struggling and all. You did other things like bathe him, but despite how desperate you were to see his pretty cock, you never went beyond the waistline, and encouraged him to clean himself down there instead. You hoped it established some sense of trust between you two, because at least Jonathan would realize that you would never do anything to make him uncomfortable. 

When you were researching Jonathan Crane — before you took him — you learned that he was a psychiatrist at Arkham Asylum. A professor at Gotham University first, but either way, it seemed that his heart lied with the sciences. You did a little internet digging and tracked his book orders, then picked something you thought he would like and was sure he hadn’t read yet.

One book on chemistry and its applications on brain science, and another on psychology, a look into real-world examples written by a doctor from the late twentieth century. 

Carefully wrapping it up in light blue paper, you tied it with a navy-colored ribbon and made a bow. Your fingers lingered on the box, a little nervous about handing it over to Jonathan, but you walked downstairs with it anyways, opening the basement door and watching with satisfaction as he scurried away once again.

“It’s just a gift,” you laughed, setting it down in front of him. He watched it warily. “I want you to open it. I hope you’ll like it.”

Jonathan’s lower lip quivered, and you had a sudden desire to kiss him. Lips upon lips, heavy and sweet. Sometimes, you felt as though the only way to get close to him — truly close — was to peel off his skin and wrap it around you. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? He would die, which you didn’t want, but to think about it was enough. It was so intimate it made you hot all over. 

“Please,” Jonathan muttered. “Please let me go. I’ll do anything.”

You sighed. “I don’t want to hear this again. I’ve been really patient with you. Can’t you just . . . be normal?”

“Normal?” 

Oh, dear. He’s about to go into another one of his fits.

“How can you expect me to be normal when you’ve got me locked in chains?” he frowned. Surprisingly enough, he wasn’t getting upset, but rather more submissive. He wasn’t scowling or spitting in your face, but rather his head was downturned and his body language more open. Was this it? Was this the point of breaking? 

“I have nothing,” he continued. “No bed to sleep in, no touch . . .”

Touch. Well, he had you, didn’t he? 

“You don’t like it when I touch you,” you said.

He looked away, almost embarrassed. This doll of a man had you completely enamored, fooled, like a hopeless soul waiting for the heavens. Anything he did, anything he said, would make you fold in a heartbeat. If he asked you to go get the moon, you would die, frozen in the vastness of space just trying. He could make you do anything, except perhaps let you go, but only because you knew that deep down, he didn’t really want it.

Jonathan didn’t make an effort to come closer to you, and you didn’t either. Despite your devotion, you wanted to see him make the first move. You had waited long enough. All you wanted was to be loved by him, and you knew that he had it in him to show his affection. He just feared you, feared that you would hurt him.

. . . Maybe a few more days. A few more days of waiting until you would take drastic action.

+++

Laying on the couch, you turned on the TV, opening up the Gotham news channel as background noise while you dozed off. There were a few errands to be done, but you decided to put them off until tomorrow as the weather had gotten worse. It wasn’t raining anymore, and the snow was still brown and mushy, but it was freezing, and you made the stupid mistake of leaving your car outside. 

After ten minutes of just lazing around, you were abruptly woken up by the ring of your doorbell. With a groan, you got up off the couch and unlocked the door, only for your nerves to jump and a nervous chuckle escape your lips.

“I — well, hi. Can I help you, officer?” you asked, looking the man in front of you up and down. He had wispy brown hair that was covered by a fur hoodie and a kind smile painted on his face. He didn’t look like he meant any harm, but perhaps this was just a facade to get your guard down. For all you knew there could be police officers stationed all around your house. Or were you being too paranoid? Yes. You probably were. 

“You can,” he said, voice a little gruff. “My name is Peter Wright, I just wanna ask you a few questions. May I come inside?”

You hesitated. “What's this about?”

Wright chuckled, but didn’t answer. “Do you know a man named Jonathan Crane? You may have just passed him on the street — he had dark hair, glasses, clean-cut . . .”

Your mind ran through all the possibilities. There was absolutely no way this man could know you two even met. You were so careful — so unbelievably careful. Was there something you had overlooked? Something you had missed? Maybe someone saw you with Jonathan and reported it to the police once they realized he was missing.

“. . . No.”

Wright smiled. “No need to be so tense. We just wanna know where he is.”

You smiled, trying to be friendly. “I’m sorry, sir, I have no clue who that is. You probably have the wrong person — ”

“ — yeah, figured,” Wright interrupted, flashing another smile. “He’s been missing for a while. You’re not in trouble, we just have to check every lead.”

“Oh, I understand completely,” you said. “May I ask, why have I become a . . . lead?”

“Just some security footage on a date of interest. You had crossed the street at a bus station.” Wright paused for a moment, seeing if you remembered anything. You did, but you kept your face blank. It was better to pretend. It made you relieved, however. This was nothing serious, and nothing that was your fault. “He wrote it down in one of his journal entries, that’s why we checked.”

“Journal entries?” you blurted out before you could stop yourself.

“Yes. That’s how all these smart people are like, or so I’ve been told. Methodical, pattern-orientated.”

Was he even supposed to be telling you this? It seemed like this man was more loose-lipped than he first appeared. Perhaps you could pull some information out of him, turn on your charm. 

“You know what? Come inside. It’s cold, and I can make you some hot coffee.”

“Really?” Wright raised an eyebrow. “Now you’re getting let me in?”

You gave a playful glare. “I’m not gonna ask again, sir.”

Wright obliged, and for the rest of the evening, he divulged information about the case, a little too flirtatious for your taste, but it got the work done, and by the end of the day, you learned that they had nothing on you, and nothing on this case. 

+++

“Jonathan,” you cooed as you entered the basement with a plate of mashed potatoes and steak. You immediately noticed that his knuckles were bloody, and realized what he was trying to do — he must have heard another person upstairs and banged against the concrete walls in the hopes that he would’ve been heard.

What a stupid boy!

“Hold on,” you muttered, annoyed, placing the food down. “I’ll get you some bandages — ”

“ — Can’t you just be here?” Jonathan said shakily, his voice hoarse. “You said you loved me but you never spend time with me, you’re always upstairs . . . I’m going insane.”

Your heart leaped. Finally. Finally! It was happening. He was beginning to see, to truly see the connection you both had. You could envision it already — a wedding, with only an eficator there to make things legitimate, with flowers and a beautiful background, perhaps a sunset or beach, or maybe some mountains — topped with snow. That would be perfect, absolutely wonderful. Oh, you would have to start making the plans now! 

“Did I do something wrong?”

“What?” You snapped out of your thoughts. “Oh, no. No, darling. I’m just so excited, I’ve been waiting so long . . . Here, can I hold you?”

Jonathan nodded with a sniffle. 

Not wasting a single moment, you wrapped him up in your arms, watching as he delicately snuggled his head in the crook of your neck. The feeling of his hair brushing up against your skin was exhilarating, making you shudder and shake like you were about to lose it. About to lose it and take him right then and there, all romantic like, with nice words and the scent of rose petals . . . Maybe your first time could be in a bath, with lit candles, cleaning each other off. It was —

Hold on. Where was his chain?

Jonathan’s arms were around your waist, but you couldn’t feel the metal. You looked to the hook on the wall and saw that it had broken off, next to it the psychology book you gave to him, heavily dented. 

Chasting yourself, you felt Jonathan tighten his grip around your body. You should have checked — you should have checked for the chain like you did every time you came down. What was wrong with you? This one simple mistake could ruin everything . . . 

Trying to think as quickly as you could, you looked around the room for the other book, but couldn’t find it anywhere. You had a sedative syringe in your pocket, but you couldn’t get to it without alerting him. Alas, you finally felt something poking you in the side, something sharp like an edge, and within seconds you had been tossed to the floor and hit over the head.

+++

When you finally woke up, your head was reeling. You had a massive headache, and everytime you tried to sit up your vision would go a little dark and you would give up. Before you could try again, you had a hand against your throat. You felt a horrible surge of anger, and in the midst of your emotions, a slight sense of arousal.

“After everything I’ve done for you?” you cried out, voice choked. You could feel a shift in movement, because after Jonathan realized he was hurting you, he loosened his grip, but it still wasn’t enough to get out of his grasp. He probably tried to open the basement door but couldn’t, so waited until you came to give him the passcode. You couldn’t rely on the hope that he wouldn’t hurt you. He was desperate. But so were you.

“Everything you’ve done,” he repeated with a low murmur. “You know how humiliating it is to be trapped in a basement for a month, forced to bathe in front of you because I can’t even be trusted with a flow of water? Have to piss with chains on? I’m a doctor, I shouldn’t have to submit to your delusion.”

“You should and you will!” you screeched, squirming. “You finally have someone to love you, to adore you, someone who would do anything for you, and it’s still not enough. Or you know what? Maybe you like that. Being sad all the time, not having anyone to care for you. Probably used to it, huh? Distant parents, bitch grandmother, no friends, no lovers . . .”

Jonathan tossed you to the floor and pinned you down, his nose close to yours, breathing heavy, eyes a little glossy. Then, without warning, he slapped you. The sting was both painful and pleasurable. The little whimper you let out was more of a light sigh, but you didn’t let that distract you. All you needed to do was reach into your pocket for the syringe, which he clearly hadn’t noticed was there. If you could drug him just a little, you would be able to get your power back, your control.

“I want the code. That’s it.”

“I want a kiss.”

“Fuck you.”

“Just one kiss. A nice, long one.”

Jonathan thought for a moment. His breath tickled your skin. Then, he leaned in, his eyes fluttering shut, and brushed his perfect, pink lips against yours. He was so easily manipulated, so eager. Even when he had all the power, he still fell for your little antic. Or maybe he just wanted an excuse to kiss you.

While he was distracted, you swiftly took the syringe out and stabbed him with it, pushing half the liquid in. He pulled away and gasped, but then his eyes started drooping, and his movements became more wobbly, and he fell into your arms, disorientated and dizzy.

“Mm . . . what did you do?” he asked. 

You grabbed his hair, making him wince in pain. “You know, I’ve been trying so hard to be patient, not rushing you, making you feel as safe as possible” You paused. “But sometimes people aren’t grateful for what they have. That’s okay, it happens. You just have to learn. I’ll be patient again, just for you.”

You laid him on his back and started unbuckling his pants belt. He tried to stop you, but his movements were too weak and groggy.

“Don’t — don’t,” he pleaded.

You stopped, but only for the time being. You lifted him up onto his feet and let him lean against you. His feet were dragging a little against the floor, but he managed to walk. He pulled himself away from you when you made it to the top of the stairs but stumbled. He just wasn’t strong enough. You unlocked the passcode.

You led him over to the bathroom on your first floor, where you opened the tub’s tap and let the water flow. Jonathan’s eyelids drooped slightly, but you could see — smell — the fear in them. He knew what you were going to do, and he was helpless to stop it. 

Taking off the rest of his belt, you pulled his cock out. White, soft, a little big, but other than that it was perfect, just like every other part of him. You brushed your finger across it, watching the way it twitched in your hands. Unable to stop yourself, you leaned down and gave the head a small kiss, but that was the last bit of kindness Jonathan was going to receive today. In fact, receive for a long while.

You dipped your hand in the tub, which was steadily flowing with water, and gave his cock a hard squeeze, making him whimper in pain. “That’s the closest to lube you’ll get,” you said. “Now come on, don’t fight me. Dip your face in.”

Pushing his head down into the tub wasn’t much of a struggle, but Jonathan wasn’t making it easy. Your doll, your poor doll. He didn’t want to be hurt, but that was what had to happen. And it would keep happening until he finally admitted that he loved you. 

When Jonathan’s nose touched the water, he groaned, his head dizzy. It was cold, but by the time he could even register the temperature, his entire head was in, held by your hand as your other stroked his cock. A few air bubbles came up, but you didn’t give in. You wanted him to struggle, you wanted him to be in pain. He was like a fragile mouse caught in a trap. Only you could let him go. Only you had the power to.

After a few more seconds, you lifted his head up, watching with glee as he gasped for air, coughing and sputtering when he could spare it. 

“Aw, baby boy. You don’t like that very much, do you?”

He shook his head, opening his mouth to speak, but you didn’t let him. You just shoved him down into the tub again, feeling your body tingle. You swiped your finger over that little hole where you would soon force cum to shoot out of, and pressed down on it hard. Then, you found your way to his balls, slightly pulling at the small hairs there. Pinching and squeezing. His thighs shook, so you slapped them. They were another beautiful part of his body.

You continued pumping, up and down, steadily, then pulled him out. You could feel some pre-cum on your hands . . . even when you were torturing him he couldn’t control his biological reactions.

When he came up for the second time, he begged, “Please — I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . . Mercy, I can’t!”

His hair was wet, sticking to his forehead, and water was running down from his chin to his chest underneath the plain white shirt you had given him. His nipples were perked, probably from all the adrenaline, but you liked to think that it was because he was aroused. 

“You can and you will,” you growled. “Take it. Take it!”

+++

When you were finished with him, you took him back down to the basement, his cock hanging limp through the zipper area of his pants, and tossed him to the floor. Noticing one of the books you gifted him on the ground, you picked it up and threw it at him. It hit his leg, and within seconds, he passed out. 

You locked the door and left him like that for the next few days. No food, no water, no nothing. Through the camera you could see that he was barely moving. He only got up to use the toilet, but other than that, he was like a slug. It was on the third day that you decided to go down again and nourish him, otherwise he might die, and you didn't want that, not after all this hard work. 

ii.

Jonathan Crane was respected throughout the city of Gotham, a known and reputable psychiatrist amongst others in his field, as well as connected with higher elites who often funded his projects, his small passions. Never did he think he would ever end up in someone’s basement, that too the basement of a beauty. 

He had gotten into a car accident while pulling out of Akrham’s parking lot. It was a stupid mistake, not even his fault, really. The curb was so narrow and it was difficult to see past the line of trees whether another car was coming or not, and in his rush to get home, he went ahead without thinking and collided with a red Sedan.

No one was injured, but his car was beat up, and after getting it towed, he had to walk all the way to the nearest bus station (which was very far away, as the aslyum was rather secluded). It was cold, and he wasn’t dressed for this weather at all. He tried to take his mind off the temperature by looking at his watch, the tick-tick ticking, but when he finally got there, he found that the bus was not coming at all. It had been fifteen minutes, and nothing was there. The entire street was surprisingly empty for a city as busy as Gotham, with only the occasional patrol car driving past.

He was about ready to head to the subway — another long trek — when he saw someone else standing across the street. It was a woman, he could tell from the figure, but she was shrouded in darkness . . . Maybe she was waiting for the bus as well.

“Hey, excuse me, ma’am!” he shouted out, hoping not to startle her. He knew how women could get, all scared and skittish when they were alone. He understood. Crime rates were high, rape and theft were common. Even he was on his guard right now. 

“Yes?” the woman answered hesitantly. 

“Do you know when the bus will arrive?” Jonathan asked. “I’ve been waiting for fifteen minutes — the sign said it would arrive at seven.”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “I’m waiting for it as well. Do you mind if I cross?”

Jonathan hadn’t expected that, but agreed nonetheless. He found it a bit odd that she was waiting on the other side of the road, but figured that she might have only just arrived. When she crossed, the light of the street lamps hit her face and he was taken aback. She was awfully pretty — beautiful, in fact. She was looking at him with almost dazed eyes, a nervous expression upon her face. He couldn’t tell if she found him attractive, or if she was intimidated by him. Most people were. 

They had a short conversation that eventually ended. Jonathan would head down to the subway station, and the woman had opted to call her friend to pick her up. He was a little disappointed. She seemed interesting, and there was no harm in continuing their conversation, but he was also tired and in no mood to convince her to come along with him. 

He was about to leave when she asked him for his name. “Jonathan. Dr. Jonathan Crane,” he clarified.

“Jonathan,” she repeated. For a moment, he felt ill at ease. Maybe it was the reminder that he was in the middle of an empty street at night, or the way she looked at him as she repeated his name. He shook it off, he was just being silly. 

The woman gave him her name — your name, a nice name. He didn’t know what it was about you, but for the rest of the day you were on his mind. It was enough to make him mention you in his journal, mention with a flow of compliments that ranged from beautiful to almost sinister.

+++

Jonathan had always had a bit of a problem when it came to people. As a child he was ostracized and bullied for his gangly body, and in his adulthood, he had always come off as too unnerving for others. It probably didn’t help that he was arrogant and assuming, too. When it came to lovers, he could get quite obsessive, a problem that broke most of his relationships. Apparently no one liked it when their boyfriends were possessive.

He’d had a few affairs before, but nothing ever serious. He could never find someone he liked enough to marry. On the surface, he semed like the kind of guy that was more interested in his work than anything romantic, but in the end he had been raised with typical values, and as much as he tried to shake it off, he really felt like his path in life was to work, marry, have children, and then die.

When he was a kid his grandmother, Keeny, stressed upon him the importance of finding a good Christian wife. She must be a virgin, submissive, good-natured, and so on. He was sure she had already picked someone from their small town for him, because she was oddly pushy towards this one Church girl who liked to have ribbons in her braids (that was all he really remembered of her). Jonathan wondered what his grandmother thought of him now. Despite all the bad memories associated with her, he still sent letters with money every once in a while. She responded sometimes, mostly with pleas for him to come back, but he never paid them any mind. He was done with her and Georgia. 

In his mind, his ideal wife would be an intellectual just like him. Preferably smart, but not as smart as him, who was just as clingy as he was, who understood and could care for him, and who was perhaps a little more on the dominant side. He was always embarrassed with the fact that he liked dominant women, but wasn’t going to let that stop him from finding one, or at least, hoping one would find him.

“So, you’re opening yourself up to new relationships,” his therapist, Dr. Taylor Smith said, an encouraging smile on her face. Jonathan had been with her for years, and while they were strictly professional, Jonathan couldn’t help but be slightly attached to her. It was what happened when someone gave him even the slightest ounce of affection.

“I suppose so,” Jonathan responded, not knowing what else to say.

“If you’re ready for it, I think you should go out and start talking to people,” Smith suggested. “You have a lot of colleagues, you could start there.”

Jonathan frowned. “They’ve stopped asking me to lunches.”

“Because you decline all the time?”

“Probably.”

“Then why don’t you ask them first?”

Jonathan frowned again. “I’d rather not.”

Smith gave a knowing look. “And how do you suppose to meet people, then?”

Jonathan didn’t want to answer. He knew he was being silly, but he just didn’t want to be the one to make the first move. Eventually someone would come along and ask him out, right? He just had to wait a little . . . Perhaps he could loiter around some bookstores or near the lectures he attended so he could meet a woman who was like-minded.

“Look,” Smith said, intertwining her hands. “Before we meet again next week, I want you to have made an effort towards a relationship. Friendship would be a good start.”

“I have friends. Harleen is — fine,” Jonathan relented, after seeing the glare his therapist was giving. “I’ll do that. It’ll be my homework,” he joked, but on the inside he was thoroughly annoyed.

+++

Jonathan’s first idea was to go to a coffee shop. He had been starved for some caffeine and decided that instead of making one at home he could go out and get one. He parked his car in a nearby garage and walked over to a local shop. It had a long line of impatient-looking people, moody, too, at that.

He took his place in line, inhaling the sweet aroma of the atmosphere. A few people were working, typing away at their laptops, while others were with their friends or family or partners. He tried to look as casual as possible, sweeping his hair over his forehead every once in a while, but then he stopped, feeling stupid.

He felt like a kid back in highschool trying to get a girl’s attention. Everyone here was either already with someone or rushing to get out. It was a dumb idea. He’d just get his coffee and leave.

Maybe he could just ask his coworkers at the asylum. They were nice enough, and it would probably do good on his work relationships if he made an effort on them.

When he got to the counter he ordered a small latte and went on his way, but after turning the corner he bumped into someone. They were holding a cup of coffee — from the same cafe he just went to. The cap, which must not have been applied properly, fell to the ground, and all the hot, brown liquid splashed onto both him and . . . and . . . the lady from the bus station?

Jonathan hissed at the burning sensation, but restrained himself from letting out a small scream. A few people stopped and turned to look at them. A few of them in pity, others stifling their giggles, while one man offered to go get some napkins.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” the woman — you — said, grabbing some napkins from the man and wiping your blouse off.

Jonathan glared.

“What is wrong with you?” he sneered, his face contorted in controlled disgust. “Are you stalking me?”

“What? I don’t — look, I’m really sorry, sir,” you fervently apologized, which made Jonathan feel a bit bad. “Here — some napkins — ”

“ — Don’t bother,” Jonathan said, looking down at his suit, though his tone was a bit softer. 

There was a moment of silence. Jonathan admired your features for those few moments, and thought back to how he wrote about you in his journal. His cheeks flushed a light pink at the memory. Imagine what would happen if you found out . . .

“Aren’t you going to say sorry, too?”

Jonathan sighed, getting annoyed again. “I’m sorry,” but it was sarcastic. 

“I want to hear a genuine apology,” you said, but before Jonathan could say anything, you continued, “That or . . . you buy me another cup of coffee and we go our separate ways.”

Jonathan was caught off guard, but he realized that it was the perfect opportunity to do what he came here for: make a friend. And she was so obviously flirting. 

“Alright. But we’ll be quick. I have to change.”

You chuckled. “Okay, okay.”

You both walked back to the coffee shop, standing in line as you looked over the menu. Jonathan wondered what to say.

“It’s quite the coincidence, don’t you think?” he said, feeling sticky as his dress shirt stuck to his skin. “We meet at the bus station, then here . . .”

“What do you mean?” you asked, confused.

Jonathan couldn’t believe that you didn’t remember. “I introduced myself to you. Dr. Jonathan Crane. And you told me your name.”

You thought for a moment, eyes dazed for a few seconds, but when you looked back at him you shook your head. “I-I suppose you look familiar, but I don’t really remember . . . I’m sorry.”

“Oh, that’s alright.”

Eventually, you both got up to the front. You ordered another coffee and Jonathan paid with his card. This time, he made sure your lid was secured on properly. When he got out of the cafe for the second time that day, he felt disappointed that he had to leave you again.

At the bus station he had let you go, and was he about to do the same thing here? No. He would try, shoot his chance. If it didn't work, so what? He would get over it.

“I can walk you back to your car,” Jonathan offered, taking a sip of his coffee, which thankfully he didn’t drop when he bumped into you. 

“I don’t want to bother you,” you said, shaking your head. “It’s all the way down the road.”

“I insist,” he said. 

You smiled. It was such a sweet smile, Jonathan wished he could igraine the memory into his mind forever. 

“What do you do for work?” he asked, trying to make light conversation.

“Real estate,” you responded. “You?”

“I’m a psychiatrist . . .”

He didn’t mention the fact that he worked at Arkham. It was infamous in Gotham, and not that great of a conversation starter. Jonathan didn’t want this to turn into an interview about what it’s like to work there, how the patients were, and so on.

When you and Jonathan reached your car, he felt that odd sense of dread again. He was near a closed-off area behind a shop. It was one of those places that had parking lots for behind a store, and was shaped almost like a square. The shop was closed, and there was only one car in the area — presumably yours.

“Sorry,” you apologized with a laugh after seeing the look on his face. “There was no parking nearby. I’m actually kind of glad you walked me . . . it’s a little scary all by myself.”

“It’s fine. I understand,” Jonathan said with a shrug, ignoring his instincts. He walked you to the car, and before he knew what was happening, he was knocked out. 

+++

The chains clinked against the others in the link, the cuffs tugging against Jonathan Crane’s skin, pulled so hard it restricted the blood flow. It was only then he stopped, and let a defeated sigh escape his lips. His head leaned against the wall and his posture slumped. Since he woke up he had been trying to get out of this place — out of this basement, it looked to be. His thoughts flooded his head a million times, and it was impossible for him to produce a semblance of coherent thinking. He begged his brain to stop working, to just be quiet for a moment so he could control his emotions and focus, but it wouldn’t. It left him tired and confused and scared.

What happened to me?

Why am I here?

Was that woman responsible for this? Did she kidnap me? Oh god, she kidnapped me.

What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?

People are going to notice I’m missing. The police will come for me, I’ll be fine.

No they won’t. It’s Gotham, no one will do anything about it.

Jonathan squeezed his eyes shut. Stop it. Stop thinking.

After a while, he got his thoughts to quiet, but before he could be rational, the padlock clicked and the door opened. He backed into a corner — well, as far as his binding would let him, and his suspicions were confirmed.

It was you. You were his captor. His doom.

You placed a bowl of oatmeal in front of him. Cinnamon and honey filled the air. It had little pieces of apple cut up, and even some chocolate chips on the side. It was absolutely heavenly, and Jonathan could feel his mouth water at just the sight of it. He restrained himself, however. He was not that hungry, at least not yet, and he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t poisioned. 

“I’m not eating that.”

Frowning, you bent down to his level. “It's not poisoned, you know that.”

Jonathan did know that. He was smart enough to realize that a person wouldn’t go through all the effort of bringing him here, only to poison him. 

“Are you in love with me?” he asked next.

“Why do you ask?” you said instead. Avoiding the question.

“Your eyes are always dilated, you can’t keep them off of me. Not at the bus station, the coffee shop.” He paused. “You’re sick. I’m not in love with you. Whatever fantasy you have is not real.”

“You may not be in love with me now, but you will be soon.”

Was it wrong that for a moment Jonathan felt nice? In all his life, he never had someone care for him, but here, someone had gone through the effort of kidnapping him just to be with him. He felt stupid for thinking like that. This wasn’t some story, it was reality, and in reality, you didn’t actually love him. You were obsessed. Obsessed . . . Was he that incapable of being loved that people had to either hate him or obsess over him like an object? Was there no in-between? 

There were a few more words exchanged. You brushed your fingers against his skin, and though he pulled away, he couldn’t deny the affection rising within him. No one had ever touched him this gently before, this kindly.

You left, leaving Jonathan alone in the cold, dark room. After a few moments of hesitation, he reached for the bowl, and began eating.

+++

A few weeks had passed by. Jonathan couldn’t tell if the weather outside had begun to turn warm, or if it was still as cold as the last time he saw it. He never knew what time it was unless you came down with food, and even then, he was probably a couple of hours off. As he spent time in that basement, searching for a way out, he felt a sense of desperate hopelessness creep onto him. Would he ever make it out alive?

He couldn’t believe that he was even in this situation. After insulting you and calling you names, he resorted to fervent begging, but even that wasn’t enough to make you let him go. In your delusion you had made his life a misery. He couldn’t keep living in your basement like some sort of pet, forced to bathe in front of you and constantly monitored by cameras.

Maybe Jonathan would have liked you better if you actually gave him a nice room to sleep in. Or if you made something other than acai bowls and fruit smoothies all the time.

He could see it in your eyes that you truly believed you loved him, and it made him feel scared. While he overviewed cases like this and met people with the same mentality to kidnap and stalk, he still didn’t know what to do. In a part of his brain, he thought that maybe you weren’t so bad and that you could have been torturing him right now, but instead was being kind and thoughtful. 

You tried to apply cream to his bruised wrists, and you didn’t even scold him for trying to get out of the handcuffs. He made it a difficult process, but it was because he was afraid. He had never been touched like that before. You were making him feel all sorts of things — anger, confusion, fear. 

It didn’t help when you brought down a present for him. A book on chemistry, and another on psychology. It was wrapped in a box, which was wrapped in a light-blue color. Why were you so sweet? In all his years, he had never gotten a present as meaningful as this. His heart had wrenched uncomfortably, and he had to remind himself who you were, what type of person you were.

Maybe if he used this book to hit you over the head with, it would knock you out and he could escape. He could use it to break the chains, too. They were hardcover, and th

———

(I stopped writing here.)

The rest of this section was just going to be through Jonathan’s perspective.

iii.

You opened the door hesitantly, a wave of guilt flooding your body. Jonathan lay there on the floor, beaten and bruised, shivering in a corner even though he had a blanket around him. He didn’t smell good, but you expected it to be worse, so you took it as a sign that things could still be salvaged.

———

(I stopped writing here).

Jonathan is passed out, barely able to move. For the next few days, you nurse him back to health. You clean him, feed him, and give him better clothing. He doesn’t fight back. Slowly, he starts to accept his new environment and you upgrade him to a guest bedroom, but you still lock the doors and windows so he can’t escape.

The police officer comes back to flirt. You’re annoyed, but you know you need him for info. The police officer starts to get suspicious, and out of fear he’ll do something, you murder him. The murder is sort of the climax of the story.

After that whole ordeal, Jonathan has been completely conditioned by you, but the ending is open-ended. “The Doll’s Burial” is meant to represent a burial of his true self, replaced by a version you created, or, his actual death. It depends on you — do you get bored of him, is it truly an obsession? Or do you truly love him, and are willing to spend your whole life as his wife?

Tagging in case ya'll are still interested: @shroombloom-rry @madnessandobsession @henrywintersdearestgirl @hllywdwhre @your-nanas-house @ellebelleshelby @Meetmeatyourworst @hanawrites404 @Emimurphy2008

@nela-cutie

@slut4thebroken

@wild-rose-35

@madeinuk

@flwrs4aust

@httpxgray

[manicpixiedreamjop]

those prompts r SO CUTE either breathe or stop w solving ? bc we were talking abt them being protective of each other the other day 👀💕

stop - muse a holds muse b back from walking back out into the fray

Lieutenant Irving is still. Painfully, unnaturally still, his face white as snow, a pale and awful contrast to the splatter of bright red blood still visible across the corner of his mouth. Solomon doesn’t know where this particular blood even came from, whether it was John’s himself, or Solomon’s, or god forbid Cornelius Hickey’s, but as he looks at it he is struck by the memory of a story, told to him as a child. Skin as white as snow and lips as red as blood. Solomon almost laughs — a nauseating, manic feeling. Lieutenant Irving, a princess. He is as pretty as one, Solomon supposes, and prim and proper too, and dressed in those robes at Carnivale, when he had stumbled, drunkly, cheeks flushed, into Solomon, and his hands had lingered on Solomon’s chest just a moment too long — Solomon shakes his head, ridding it of the memory. It feels almost disrespectful to Irving to think of him like that right now, and even more so to think of their other interactions from the last several months, every lingering glance and brush of their bodies. There is every chance Solomon was imagining it, or that even if he hadn’t been that Irving never would have acted on it, no matter how big and frightening and important whatever was building between them felt to Solomon. There is every chance too, that Solomon will never find out either way, not when John — Irving, he forces himself to think, only Irving, not when the only time he’d received permission to use the Lieutenant’s Christian name had been that night at Carnivale, when Irving had been too far gone to censor himself — is laying there with that many stab wounds in his chest and a splatter of blood across his mouth that could belong to anyone.

Solomon should have known better. He should have paid more attention to Hickey’s strange comments the last few days about Solomon’s distraction, his commitment to survival. About how they couldn’t risk having any attachments left to the rest of the camp when they made their move. He should have listened when Hickey told him what he was, and now John — Irving — is laying here bleeding out and Solomon can’t do anything about it.

Well.

There is one thing he could do about it. He had fought Hickey off of Irving, had fought him hard enough to nearly knock him unconscious, and now he sits, bound and watched, not three tents away. Solomon is a Sergeant of the marines, he has the authority to force his way inside. He’ll be court martialed and hanged for it, if he kills Hickey in there in broad daylight, but doesn’t he deserve it? Shouldn’t he die for allowing this to happen to John — Irving — no, John.

He leans down, brushing his lips to John’s forehead, and then he turns to leave the tent.

There are cold fingers at his wrist.

He starts, turning back, and John’s eyes are open, his hand barely raised, grip weak. Solomon could pull away easily, but he doesn’t. He turns back completely, and he lets himself fall to his knees at John’s side.

“Solomon,” whispers John, voice weak and pained. “Where are you going?”

“I—” Solomon chokes out. “Hickey.”

“He… He did this to me.”

“He did,” says Solomon. His voice is thick, and it takes him a moment to realise he’s crying.

John’s hand, still pale and shaky, raises again, brushing his fingertips across Solomon’s face. “You saved my life.”

“I didn’t— it’s my fault.”

“You saved my life,” John says again.

“I have to— He’s still alive, John. He can’t— I can’t let him—”

John shushes him, eyes already fluttering closed again, and lets his hand drop so it’s rested on top of Solomon’s where it clings to the edge of his bed. “Just stay with me. Please.”

“I—”

“Please.”

Solomon nods, even though John’s eyes have already fallen closed, and swallows hard around the lump in his throat. “Alright,” he whispers. “I’ll stay.”

[noa-de-cajou]

Zuza and Idalia belong to @soupedepates

Louis belongs to @corneille-but-not-the-author

______

Mom never told me who my father was. Apparently, she doesn't remember. I believed her. She tried to raise me alone, as best as she could, but she came from Poland with nothing but a base level in english, a vague understanding of french and a graphist degree. She was alone, she fell in love with Christian and they got married when I was three.

I couldn't do this alone, Misiu, do you understand?

Mom never told me Christian was beating her. I started talking really late, my first word was blue for the bruises he left on her cheeks and the next one was bitch because I just repeated what I heard from him. Mom tried to overwrite it by speaking to me in polish. It worked, for a time.

To nie twoja wina, she said.

It's not your fault.

The teachers never told me what was wrong with me, or why the letters would jumble and the words undo themselves in front of my eyes. I wasn’t putting in enough effort. I wasn’t academically smart. I listened. They knew better, after all, didn't they? I couldn’t even translate documents for Mom.

The other kids never told me why they’d call me names or mock my accent. I never understood why they liked to do that. And I could never defend myself with my words.

But I never hit.

Because mom told me I was a good kid and good kids don’t hit people. Even when they're mean. Good kids don’t hurt people.

But she never told me why Christian was allowed to hurt us.

Bronya, Bazyli and Simowiet were the first to tell me it was okay to cry. They never hit me when I did. I felt good. I felt safe.

Bronya and Bazyli always told people what they thought, gave them a piece of their mind, they were always good with words. Even though they had been to the hospital for so long everybody else thought they were weird. And Simowiet always talked calmly, never yelled.

Never hit.

So I never hit either.

They were my very first friends.

Yet they took forever to tell me where Simowiet went after what happened to his stepmom. About what happened to Jacek after that.

Misiu, everyone here knew about the mister Adamski, you know, Mom said. Bad man, that one.

Yeah. Just like everyone knows about Christian. But I never know anything. And no one who knows things is doing anything.

No one told me anything, so I tried to get stronger on my own. No one told me I wasn't supposed to start this early. No one told me I wasn't supposed to stop eating. Bronya yelled at me for it when she learned.

No one told me how to defend myself. So when Christian hit me one too many times, I retaliated.

I hit.

It worked.

He bled.

Mom cried.

He never hit me again and neither did I.

But I knew I crossed a line. I knew I was just as bad. How could I do otherwise? No one ever told me how to help.

Hanko never told us that his parents were beating him either, but I knew. I guessed. He had the same bruises that I used to wear on my wrists.

Even so, I couldn't do anything when they pushed Bazyli down the stairs. Couldn't do anything to save them afterwards.

It's not your fault, their eyes said.

Bazyli told us to keep it a secret. So I did. I don’t mind that much. I understand why he doesn't want to say it. But it hurts to be lying to Bronya and Tonia.

Then we enter uni.

Bazyli never tells me why he looks more and more tired with each day or why he hides his neck.

Bronya never tells me why she looks at me the way she does. I think I might know. But I don’t dare to hope.

Simowiet never tells me about his problems, or his life, or his family, even though we live together.

Zuza never tells us about the pills in her cabinet. She never tells us about the arguments with Idalia either.

I can take a lot of things. I can take a punch or two. I can keep secrets. I can nod along. I can deal with being stupid. I can carry everyone on my back.

But I can't help if no one ever tells me anything.

Maybe no one ever wants me to help, but they need help. And they tell me that me being around is more than enough, but it isn't.

But I can't force anything out of anyone.

You’re a good kid, Misiu.

You’re a good guy, Milosz.

It's not your fault.

I get it. I get it, alright? It’s never my fault. It's never under my control.

But what’s the point of being good when everyone around you consider themselves bad?

So I smile and say nothing and I go to the gym and I run and I push and I grit my teeth and I hit and hit and hit and hit and hit and hit and hit

And I won't tell them about how I feel

Because

No one

Ever

Tells me

Anything –

“Your stance is wrong! You need to put your shoulder into it.”

It was just two sentences, thrown around at the gym, and then he was gone. I don’t think he remembers it at all.

But Louis tells me things.

Louis told me about the bet. Louis told me Bronya likes me. Louis told me that I look handsome. Louis told me that he didn't start working out for good reasons. Louis told me not every part of himself deserves to be known and I don’t agree. Louis told us he loved us.

He doesn't know how much it means to me.

All I ever wanted was just to feel

Like I'm worth sharing things to.

It feels possible now.

…

I didn’t know it could be that easy to breathe before.

[ruminate88]

My upbringing and the way I interpreted it: Leading me to be emotionally abused

I grew up in a mostly positive but Christian home. Both parents extremely giving and forgiving as well. I watched them help people out my whole life and never ask for anything in return. I watched them make friends and lose friends. Watched them serve our church and total strangers that would visit. My parents always held out their hands to everyone who needed it. I saw that and believed “love” and “charity” was the most important two things in the whole world.

At 15, I was homeschooled because I did so terrible in school AND we had to move in with my grandma who has dementia. Both my parents had to work so during the day I took care of my grandma…. Also, my brother needed help with his kids so I began to help raise his kids. 7 years my grandma lived with dementia. She would hear and see things. She would forget where her purse was and accuse me of stealing it. Her dementia was called “Sun Downers” which means her mental didn’t really act up till the evening time. A total of 11 years, I pretty much raised my bro’s kids.

I was nurturing, I was extremely forgiving and use to putting other’s needs before my own. I was taught in church that Jesus suffered for others AND turned the other cheek when people mistreated him. I was literally the perfect candidate for insecure, jealous and selfish men. I was willing to put their needs first and that’s what they wanted. I was a people pleaser to a fault. I was willing to forgive so fast. So I let so much happen to me that I not only didn’t understand WHAT was happening but didn’t realize how it would affect me years later.

I also had a horrible porn addiction from the time I was 15 till well into my 20s. I would stop for a season because it made me feel so much shame but then start it up again. I confused “love and forgiveness” with “sex and lust.” I wanted a man I could just spoil so badly. I wanted a man that wanted my “love and affection” more than they wanted air…. I wanted a man that just wanted to hold me soooo tight and feel all my love. I wanted us to just be so madly crazy in love. Movies and tv shows portray this but it’s not real. Porn is not real. I was very twisted and confused about “love” in my 20s.

When I met Cody and he lovebombed me, wow. That was the most intense experience I’ve EVER had!!! Cody was telling me he was “obsessed with me” and saying “I love you” 24/7. Oh my gosh!! We were texting “I love you more, no I love you more” just constant intense proclamations of love. It was SO CRAZY that I sat on my bed reading his text and my stomach turned. I was SICK!!!! I wanted to throw up. I wanted to cry my eyes out. It was too good to be true. 🤯 I couldn’t eat and I didn’t sleep. I talked to Cody 24/7 and it was more than I could handle. However, it was EXACTLY what I had dreamt of. A man that could tangle himself in me and not let go. A man that could just be all over me and be in heaven with me. It was sex and lust, not love. I just was so confused on my way of thinking back then. 🥺❤️‍🩹

When Cody randomly dumped me, ouch. It was a huge shock and rocked my world. It made NO SENSE and sucked like hell. He made me so unstable and anxious. I became very desperate and clingy. When Cody came back at the end of the summer and “took me back” wow. I instantly forgave him and did whatever he wanted. He talk about us moving in together and I didn’t agree with it, I wanted marriage but I went along with it becuase I was too desperate and anxious to say no. I didn’t want him to leave me again….

Eventually, Cody ghosted me 😱 after all the talk about “moving in” and uh, I died that night. I was a zombie for months. I hated myself and didn’t know how I would get on with life. I met Andrew less than 6 months later though and it took time but eventually I started to let my guard down and Andrew also love bombs me. Wow…. I still didn’t know what “love bombing” was and becuase I was so hurt by Cody, Andrew made me feel amazing again!!! I started to believe I’m falling in love with Andrew and trying to make plans to meet him. I’m picking out our baby’s name and I’m ready to give Andrew everything ❤️‍🩹

Andrew’s actions didn’t match his words and he always acted so “busy” and said it wasn’t a good time to tell our parents about our relationship or date in front of friends. I was very hurt that he was keeping me a secret but was too desperate and anxious still to demand anything from Andrew or stand up for myself. Andrew would never break up with me which confused me yet he acted like I was bothering him but at random moments, would praise me and make me feel so wanted by him. He would cry to me “he’s not good enough for me” but was the one making me feel unworthy. I constantly felt paranoid that he’s cheating and hiding things from me.

Andrew would often ignore me in the relationship for days and put me in isolation but I always forgave him when he came back. I had nooooo idea it was “abuse.” I was totally in the dark of everything and just way too nice and naive. Taking Andrew for his word. Giving him the benefit of the doubt but also knowing like Cody, he can leave whenever and hurt me… So, being afraid for Andrew to “leave me”, I kissed his butt so hard and praised the ground he walked on. I treated Andrew like he’s a king and a celebrity! I truly thought Andrew was so special and felt so unbelievably shocked he “wanted me” like I knew it was all too unreal and thought Andrew was way more attractive than me…. Hah I thought he could date prettier girls than me. I sadly compared myself to his exes and thought they were prettier than me too. 😓

I had major self worth issues that I did not recognize or address. I was just so use to taking care of people, putting their needs before my own and serving people. I just misinterpreted my whole childhood completely. I found out the hard way, Andrew was using me and lyng to me and I made it all too easy for him. The way I treated him like a king. I wanted to give him the world…. 💔

Today, I still struggle to love myself but I know and believe God is love and loved me. God gave me purpose to be on this planet and while I believe God still calls us to “love and forgive” people, no where does the Bible say people please and to stay with someone who lies, cheats and abuses you. I think God would want me to remove myself from manipulation and to NOT retaliate. I don’t believe God wants me to get back at my exes or try to make justice. I’m still learning and trying to understand where the line is drawn.

Ultimately, forgiveness is a process. Daily unraveling the lies told to me by porn, tv and my exes. The toxic messages I received and the people pleasing. This “big grand love” I wanted so long isn’t in people. It’s not on this earth. I KNOW God protected me from Andrew even though I thought I loved him and it’s been hard to fully accept and let go. I’ve been far from perfect and I don’t expect my exes to be perfect. I still care about their souls and what happens to them…. I know they will never probably want good for me, idk that for sure but seems that way.

Healing from Cody and Andrew has been super painful and hard. I’ve failed so many times. I’ve had so many emotions and feelings towards them. One minute I’m angry at them, anther I’m irritated, I’m sad, frustrated and sometimes I miss them 😆🥺😓❤️‍🩹 sometimes I just wanna run and hug them. I do believe they’ve had trauma at some point becuase why did they traumatize me??? Some days I beat myself up saying “it’s not that bad” then other days I think, “oh you’ve been traumatized, you have to rest and take it easy.” Ugh. Which is it? Hah

Real love is not crazy, intense or sickening. It’s not fleeting or chaotic. It’s not an overwhelming feeling. REAL LOVE seems to be peaceful, honest, long lasting and gentle. Seems to be a choice more than a feeling. FORGIVENESS is also a choice and an action word. To forgive the abuse, you have to believe in the power of forgiveness but know it’s not a magical fix all. It’s work. But what work is involved to heal from toxic relationships?? For me, it seems to be resting, confronting the abuse and lots of reflection. Spending time alone with yourself in a quiet space. Forgiving yourself as much as you forgive the past.

Taking it all one day at a time ❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹

[mwagneto]

i know it's my fault for interacting with western politics in the first place but it's such a massive and extremely annoying mistake on the west's part to keep assuming that eastern european misogyny works the same/is worse than western misogyny like. the culture of america and the west as a whole is way more extremist christian and their version of misogyny is very heavily built on the 50s housewife/"women are incapable of doing anything but raise babies" worldview and they just assume anyone perceived as "less developed" than them must then have an even worse case of misogyny automatically even though the culture of gender in the eastern bloc comes from the world wars & soviet union culture with the former bringing the necessity of working women (due to lack of male work force) and the latter just. inherently not being a misogynist culture like people straight up don't know that the soviet union was actively pro equality like being the first to legalise abortion in 1920 and always pushing for women in all fields including STEM and politics. like obviously there was still misogyny, it wasn't some sort of utopia/a haven of women's rights but the eastern bloc's misogyny is founded on THAT and not the same christian capitalist "man go work big job woman have 100000 babies" thing that the west and especially the US is built on, like this is from personal experience now but I've literally never heard a single negative comment about women in politics and our president is literally a woman without anyone melting down about it like americans did when a woman decided to run for president. so like. TLDR stop assuming bigotry has developed in the same way all over the world and that every country you think of as poorer than yours must then be inherently worse and more bigoted in every way

[coderedblood]

My ideal storyline for Jack Perry

Okay, so, I actually don't hate the Beethovsn theme for Jack. Classical music is the progenitor of heavy metal, after all, and classical music is used to signal seriousness, right? Right now, though, classical music is being used to cover up insecurity - Jack's. All this time of feeling inferior has finally boiled over and now he's a leather-clad, classical music fiend with the FTW title. It doesn't matter which title. Just a title to prove his former mentor wrong about him. He did it, even if he did it by cheating. We see that Jack hates that he cheated to win, especially since it was against someone he called his best friend, but he smirked because that's what he thought he should be doing. All is well, he continues to strut around with the FTW title, until Christian comes by one day and says "I'm so proud of you, Jack."

Jack stops dead in his fucking tracks because he never wanted this. He never wanted Christian to be proud of him, he never wanted to betray Hook, and now he's all alone. He decides to take his frustrations out...on the FTW title, and he destroys it. But when he sinks to his knees, he sees the broken pieces, and realizes it's all his fault. He resolves to fix it.

He goes to the ring next week and calls Hook. This time, when Hook comes, Jack doesn't run. (The first glimpse of his old heroic self.) He tells Hook to do whatever he wants to him, beat him up, choke him out, whatever. Hook just glares and leaves, which Jack accepts. Forgiveness isn't easy and sometimes it doesn't happen.

Jack resolves to be better for himself. He wasn't happy with being a heel. It was just like wearing a mask. He works his way up to being one of the company's top faces again, winning back the love of the fans, but then Danhausen's music hits and it's not Danhausen but Evilhausen. He swears to make Jack pay for what he did to his Hook and begins stalking Jack with surprise attacks. Eventually this culminates in Jack getting punched in the groin but before he can get spiked in the eye, Hook comes and saves him.

Evilhausen gives Hook the spike and Jack resigns himself to getting spiked, shutting his eyes. Hook raises the spike, but drops it and pulls Jack into a hug, much to Evilhausen's rage. Hook and Jack then work together to free Danhausen and they all part as friends, new and once again.

Then they can either be trios champs or go their separate ways!

[sofiadragon]

I use this sewing kit.

I inherited this gently used sewing set from my great-gran. She wasn't very crafty, so it didn't see much use until it reached my hands. The set has held up well, though it is clear that some bits have gone.

This is interesting to me because it is an advertisement. This was free, not purchased, for attending some event. I don't know a lot about the history of it aside from "it came from Southern or Central New Jersey" and what is written on it.

It shows how the party has moved, how the values have changed over time. Now big Republican donors are citing the way party funds were (mis)used over the last few years to explain why they aren't donating. Lavish election-night parties for people who lost. Unspecified fees in the millions per state. Vague categories where there used to be line items... and they used to be so down to earth and about the little guy. I look at them now and see them only helping millionaires.

It's just so practical. A tool, a useful (if sexist) gift given to active political women.

Looking at the rest of my blog it might shock people to know I started out Republican. I hated the nanny state, and bluer areas of my home state seemed to have more troubles. Why, Atlantic City had that cheapskate Trump who failed to pay good hard working construction contractors for the work they did on his hotels and those corrupt liberals from up near NYC let him get away with bankrupting working class folks.

They left me behind as they shifted the goal posts. I don't want to ban all guns, I just want them registered like cars because too many people are getting killed by them. The same way I want commercial vehicles driven by people with CDLs I want people carrying in public to have had additional training. Do what you like in your own home, but your freedom stops at the bridge of my nose. That's not removing my rights as a law abiding citizen, that's gatekeeping supply from those who aren't so law abiding. Adding more guns to schools to fix the problem of people shooting up schools missed the entire point, and voting to defund mental health programs makes the current Republican stance on gun control hypocritical as well as too lax.

It was one part libertarian and one part practicality. Like this sewing kit, I want people to have the tools and if they don't use them that's their fault. Democrats wanted to tear down so much and rebuild it to fix systemic inequality, but lots of people would be hurt if it was done all at once and are we going to compensate them? Then as I approached voting age the Republicans started advocating, not for measured responses to problems and slow change over time, but to bring things back to how they were when this sewing kit was made. I was never an Evangelical Christian or a millionare and as the party moved to cater more and more to the former in word and the latter in deed I got left behind.

I don't want my politicians to have punishing sexuality -related sins as a top ten priority. When it was plank number 597 on the platform I ignored it, because when it came time to write laws I knew they would ignore it. That libertarian foundation I had said that what happenes between consenting adults is between them and whatever God they have, and I expect the same courtesy for everything I do in my home that doesn't affect anybody outside it.

But that's not even the main reason I flipped. I'm a history nut, born and raised by a family of Daughters of the American Revolution, Veterans, and teachers, with a pagan/Christian fliwer child turned finacial planner for a mom and a draft-doging conscientious objector nerd for a father. The family voted red down ticket and third-party up ticket through my childhood. When George Bush Jr started talking about Iraq, my father and I looked at each other and called BS. We knew, because we knew our history, that Saddam Hussein and the terrorists who attacked us would rather rip out each other's entrails than work together. We were being lied to.

And they kept lying. Sure, fine, all politicians lie, but historically they promise the moon and deliver a glow in the dark sticker. They say A is their top priority and then mostly work on B and C - and that's lies but it's an acceptable sort of lie. Expected. Less a bold faced falsehood and more a confrontation between ideas and reality. Recall what I said about the anti-gay political adjenda for my home state politicians? Yeah, priority number 597 was only brought up to drive certain people to the polls, but nobody was going to do anything about it on either side of the aisle back then.

There was no way Afghanistan radicals and Iraq were working together. Hussein had been killing them to keep them out of his country for years before 9/11. History nerds knew. Immigrant families from the Middle East knew. Most Americans just believed, because why make a lie so huge? We thought that the truth would out, Bush would look like a nincompoop out to avenge daddy, and we would course correct.

Obama was actually pretty good, too. The ACA wasn't a Medicare buy-in like the poorer parts of my family would have liked to have, and my eyes and teeth are somehow not parts of my body still according to medical insurance, but at least my uterus finally was! The filibusters were out of line - that silent version has to go - and the Republican led Congress passed the fewest number of bill in the history of the institution, to the point of not being able to keep their own lights on, to coddle the racist demographic.

While I was personally shedding the racist framing I grew up with, the Republican party was pulling on extra layers of hate. They didn't talk about their ideas anymore, just all what they didn't want. No this, no that, and when Obama shrugged and started writing executive orders just to keep the wheel turning they hated that too.

Then, Republicans went full ugly. They blocked a Supreme Court nomination, not on the merits of the nominee, but only on the basis of the president's skin color. Just sat on their hands and refused to do their job for the best part of a year. The constitution says they should have a hearing and talk about the merits, they just didn't.

You know how fast anybody would be fired for not handling a project like that in any other context? Just don't make any fries at a fast food job. Just don't file your quarterly reports at an office job. Just don't conduct any interviews for a new CFO as a CEO. This was a major obligation and they just dropped it. Like the constitution was just a suggestion. As if the second election of Obama wasn't legitimate.

And I was out. I was in a different state then, but the people I voted into state and federal office supported this nonsense. I would have liked several people other than Clinton on the ticket- I thought Trump was too old then and wanted someone younger and more willing to call a spade a spade. Clinton was too savvy, too deep into the delicate political dance to be rude about the lies. Trump also lied "bigly" and constantly. Pence was a floorboard - bland and easily stepped on.

I don't see them getting my vote back, even downticket. Biden has salvaged our international relations - I consider the president's primary job to be running the State Department and filling our embassies with competent patriots. Bush and Trump were both international laughing stocks, and in the vein of Republicans not doing anything Trump seemed to have forgotten that appointing people to a lot of necessary positions was his job. Whatever you want to say about Obama's or Biden's relation to the Ukraine, at least they didn't leave an empty chair in the embassy.

I used this sewing kit today. It's a tool, a needful thing that wants use and facilitates productivity. It gets a job done. I think it is ironic.

Republicans, for most of my voting life, have been the party of doing nothing. Filibusters instead of arguing your case. Blocking nominations and then not filling empty posts. Doing less and less of the essential parts of governing the country, while digging more and more into our privacy. It is Republicans who want to know what my genitals look like, who I sleep with, and all the bloody details of my multiple miscarriages. They want to restrict what books I am allowed to read in my local library. They want to pass nanny state laws so restrictive to "protect" the children from seeing two men holding hands that the mention of adultery gets anything with the ten commandments in it banned from all school district funded libraries. Actually, Republicans are really into nanny state laws lately. It's the only thing I hear them talking about on a national stage. Infrastructure? Nope, that's a Democratic issue now because all the big projects are woke green stuff like hydroelectric gravity batteries for wind farms and mass transit.

Democrats want to make it illegal to be a dick for racist or queerphobic reasons. I think we have laws for that already, but there is no harm in clarifying that you should believe people when they introduce themselves as a woman or man and not harm them because you think their genitals might not look 'right' according to your personal standards. We had to clarify that black people and women were also to be treated with respect and decency, so let's make it clear that you don't have the right to assault someone. Democrats want Universal Healthcare, and I'd be happy with a medicare/aid buy-in where I can pay extra taxes voluntarily to get coverage, but I wouldn't be upset if they took it to the next step. Like Bernie said, ask for a whole loaf and negotiate for half. Biden would like to get Putin out of office, and I'm all for that. Our foreign relations are awesome right now. We're trying to claw back component manufacturing for national security reasons because we can't have the military dependent on circuit boards and component parts that are all imported.

What I care about that both sides ignore?

Nationalize the rails (and make it stick this time, codify that under interstate commerce the way we did highways.) It's getting to be a national security issue that freight shipping is so gas-dependant so we need to build nuclear power and modern electrified rail systems.

Right to Repair needs national attention too. There is no reason my phone is constructed in such a way that a handy person like myself can't safely replace the battery.

Recycling in the USA is a joke that stopped being funny around Y2K. Why are we shipping our Recycling overseas? Garbage collection and processing is one of those things I expect my taxes to pay for - stop requiring Recycling plants to pull a profit. That's idiotic hyper- capitalistic nonsense; trash collection does not need to be profitable to be a public good.

Make police academy training require/include a 2 year college degree based on law, history, and conflict resolution/psychology. Many other countries have 4 year programs and we're over here clowning like this is an easy job you can learn by doing after less than 6 months of training in much of the USA. Some state police programs are already at this standard, others need to catch up.

And closer to home? One school district per county in every state. Period. Let the kids mix, let the funding comingle. A more level playing field is beneficial to society as a whole, everyone deserves access to the tools. In fact, bring a lot of small town home rule shenanigans up to the county level. More daylight there to catch corruption and embezzlement because more people show up to watch or stream county meetings than do the same for small town boards. Again, some states already have this on lock, but boy do some others need work. Finally, if you won't forgive loans then let people lose them if they go bankrupt. You tried, you failed, let's cut that dead weight loose so you can try again. It hurts the economy to have so much student loan debt on people who never got a high value 4 year degree - which is where a lot of the people struggling with the loans are. Sometimes random shit happens through no fault of your own, and you bail out into a working class job to avoid something worse. That's where a lot of the old SL debt is sitting, so just let people drop the debt if they fail that hard the way they can for everything else.

[tumbleweedtech]

If you don't mind me say, I agree with you that Christian teaching has largely warped the way people view the way they apologise, and their expectations for forgiveness, but like with many things I think it comes from a watered down, lazy theology. I was raised Catholic too but I've regularly attended Churches of different denominations at different times. I'm kinda at a point where atheistic liberals think I'm too religious and religious people think I'm a highly suspect leftist.

My point is though, that I do try as much as possible to practice forgiveness and I do find relief in it. It's actually one of the few things a lot of priests and pastors get right in my opinion, but then I have thankfully always them emphasise that forgiveness does not necessitate reconciliation. I'm not doubting that there are some, and probably used to be a lot more, who taught that it was ones duty to forgive the person who hurt them and continue to put themselves in a position to be hurt, but I think (and hope) the alternative is becoming a lot more widespread: You don't have to reconcile with someone who hurt you to forgive them, you don't have to speak to them, you don't even have to tell them that you forgive them, and you most certainly don't have to empathise with or make excuses for the. You just forgive them, and you let go of your anger; it doesn't erase the hurt they caused you, but hopefully the memory of it will cease to keep hurting you.

I'm glad that works for you. Generally speaking, I forgive quite easily. It's nearly automatic, in some cases. Did that person actively mean to hurt me? No? Okay. Partially that's the adhd. I also forget quite easily. So my consideration and complaints I was writing about - these are not one off slights. This is repeated, deliberate, often selfish to an extent that surprises me.

In one instance: It took me months, months of readily letting go of small insults because it never seemed deliberate, or aimed to hurt. But after a big disagreement, I had to sit back and think. And looked back at all the times that person's behaviour hurt feelings (not just mine, but others). I had to be reminded by another friend that no, right now I'm not overreacting, that was a dick thing to say. And you know? I still forgave. But the second time? I did not. Because now I was paying attention, and saw it was deliberate. And it hurt, when I finally let go of that relationship. But years later? I still do not forgive that person. And I won't. They don't deserve it, and they would never deign to ask. But you know what? I forgave myself, for letting it go on. For not valuing my own boundaries. I forgave myself, and I am working on being more firm on my boundaries, and not allowing small hurts. So that person? That issue? I'm not angry at them. They no longer hurt me. The memory does not hurt me. But I don't need to forgive them for that. I just need to be kind to myself. it's the same as a wild animal, or a rabid dog. If you get close, and it bites you, is it the animal's fault? No. Do you need to forgive the animal, who has no concept they have done a wrong? No. And I don't know about how widespread it is. It sure would be nicer if the world (religious or not) started teaching a better perspective on apologies. However not 2 months ago I still got messages from a catholic family member reminding me that I "needed" to forgive. And I know that family member is very, very devout - though who's to say what the pastor is preaching. I was largely coming at this from the cultural perspective - because it's a ridiculously common thing I see people claim. I said SORRY. Why are they still upset at me? I APOLOGIZED. Why are they still treating me like they're mad? etc. Either way. However your heart deals with harm in a way that does not hurt others and gives peace and solace to yourself sounds pretty good to me.

[catsnuggler]

I've struggled with belonging, all my life. I don't claim to have the worst experience of that. I'm white, able-bodied, a cisgender man, I come from a Christian background (if a bizarre one, what with it being Mormonism), and I pass for straight because I'm mostly into women and haven't really made an effort to be visibly queer. So, I don't have the hardest background, I don't have the worst struggle with belonging.

I do have a struggle, though. As mentioned, I was raised Mormon. Mormons have a burning intensity on uniformity within the church. Uniform, unquestioning obedience to the church leadership, even as you're expected to admit that they are mortal men capable of mistakes and faults (likewise the treatment of the church, itself; capable of fault, imperfect, yet never admitting they actually have faults); to condemn and condone what the church organization, as a conservative settler-colonialist cult, and the church membership, which is largely an openly reactionary settler-colonialist cult, condemns and condone; the anti-Semitic and colonialist Mormon beliefs about Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island and Abya Yala; all this, and an emphasis on "The Plan of Salvation/Happiness", a checklist of everything faithful Mormons have to do to achieve eternal life, including baptism, priesthood for men, marriage, raising a nuclear family...

My family questioned the leadership and the church, even disagreed with some things; we disagreed on condoning the church's history of racism, and on condemning gay people; I eventually realized how bigoted those racial beliefs were, and discarded them, as have my siblings (my dad still believes in Mormonism, but... allegorically, rather than literally? I wish he would leave the church, tbh); and now, we arrive at my family.

My mom is dead. She died when I was 7. My dad remarried a year later, to a divorced single mother, and moved us to a different area. That marriage didn't last, by the way. She was cold and uncaring, and I felt no remorse for her when I was told there was going to be a divorce. Anyway, the people here, where we live now and have lived since that move, couldn't relate to us, for all the reasons from the previous paragraph, and because I came from a patchwork family, and my mother had died. They never said "it's your fault your mother died," but they never truly cared to make us feel just as warmly-welcomed as anyone else. We were constantly gossiped about. It wasn't because my mom had died that they didn't care, it was because they couldn't relate to me, because I didn't fit the uniform mold... because my mom was dead... I was never directly blamed, but I felt the indirect blame in their hollow smiles. Perhaps they even believed that her death was a punishment to us, an attempt to get us to reconcile to TBM beliefs, and the fact we hadn't just meant we were foolishly rebelling against God, who would surely punish us again, until we went back in line, and so they had best distance themselves from us? I don't know if they thought this or not, but they do have a general belief that complete obedience to the church is rewarded in this life and the next, while catastrophe results from heterodoxy and disobedience.

So. I wasn't accepted as a Mormon. I also moved from my old home not long after my mother's death. Mormons are generally not accepted in American society, either. I was too "worldly" for the Mormons. I was too "Mormon" for "The World". And then I gravitated to Norse paganism, where I'm still at today, and people wonder if I'm a Nazi, or if I'm a Marvel fanboy, or if I'm just dumb because Christianity superseded paganism a long time ago (as if conversion-by-the-sword; which wasn't always the case, but uh, it still happened a lot; is morally acceptable), so why am I in a religion that was conquered and defeated? Or I'm preached to. Gods. I fucking hate that so much. Or people think I'm arrogant, think that I think I'm better than everyone because I'm a pagan, like I chose it only to be exotic. I'm not in a small town in the deep south, or in the back country of anywhere, so it's not like being pagan alone, even if I keep yo myself, results in death threats, or denied job offers, or any of the oppressions Muslims and Jews know all too well; I'm not suffering hate crimes, but when I am recognized as a pagan when I wear my hammer necklace, I'm looked askance at. Not terribly awful, not inhumane, but still wrong, still alienating. If who I am isn't hurting anybody, I don't want to be treated as if I am inherently hurtful. I want to be treated as a human being - with a baseline of respect one would show to a stranger, unless, through disrespectful actions on my part, I earn disrespect in kind. I don't expect automatic honor, merely the respect of being a fellow, imperfect human being, with some measure of good and potential. I'm saddened when I am othered, and I am shocked, angered, in despair, and appalled at the actual violence faced by groups who have it a lot worse than myself.

And then we arrive at whiteness. Top of the social pyramid of racism, yes... At the cost of our souls. You're not Scottish-American, not English-American, not German-American - oh, by all means, you can call yourself those things! No problem with saying those! But being different? Actually having something outside of whiteness? Nope! It's just Columbus Day, Plymouth Rock, States' Rights, Thanksgiving, Fourth of July - oh, and uh, Martin Luther King had a dream, I guess, so you get a day off from school or a government job, but don't you bother actually really learning who he was, what he really dreamed of, how the US government harassed him and had a hand in his death. And America is always the good guy in every war, and we didn't lose the Vietnam War. But uh. No hosen, no kilts, no haggis, no maypoles, nothing from wherever in Europe your ancestors came from, Europe is... I don't know, too "gay" or something, idek. Sure, you can have some annual Scottish festival or whatever, but then it's back to being white, being like every other white person out there. "Consume, consume, consume, and kill everybody who disagrees. Fuck you, I'll get mine. I was standing my ground when I shot that car of kids that backed into my driveway to try to make a turn." Once you start learning the things your ancestors did to other people, well... how can you feel good, at all, about family history? You never really know the good stuff, whatever good stuff there may have been; it didn't pass down. You just know they were awful people. So you're lost. That is, I'm lost... and my ancestors wanted that. They thought that would be a good thing. For us, I mean. A necessary cost I would surely agree to pay, and be glad they did, for the sake of keeping others down, so we could have more in comparison. Only, I don't agree. I'm horrified they did. As I said, I'm lost.

Belonging. I wish for it.

[roman-catholic-mass-readings]

9th June >> Mass Readings (Except USA)

Feast Saint Columba (Colum Cille), Abbot 

or

Friday, Ninth Week in Ordinary Time 

or

Saint Ephraem, Deacon, Doctor.

Feast Saint Columba (Colum Cille), Abbot 

(Liturgical Colour: White: A(1))

Either:

First Reading Romans 12:1-2,9-13 The Christian life, a spiritual worship.

Think of God’s mercy, my brothers, and worship him, I beg you, in a way that is worthy of thinking beings, by offering your living bodies as a holy sacrifice, truly pleasing to God. Do not model yourselves on the behaviour of the world around you, but let your behaviour change, modelled by your new mind. This is the only way to discover the will of God and know what is good, what it is that God wants, what is the perfect thing to do.

Do not let your love be a pretence, but sincerely prefer good to evil. Love each other as much as brothers should, and have a profound respect for each other. Work for the Lord with untiring effort and with great earnestness of spirit. If you have hope, this will make you cheerful. Do not give up if trials come; and keep on praying. If any of the saints are in need you must share with them; and you should make hospitality your special care.

The Word of the Lord

R/ Thanks be to God.

Or:

First Reading 2 Corinthians 5:14-21 From now onwards we do not judge anyone by the standards of the flesh.

The love of Christ overwhelms us when we reflect that if one man has died for all, then all men should be dead; and the reason he died for all was so that living men should live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised to life for them.

From now onwards, therefore, we do not judge anyone by the standards of the flesh. Even if we did once know Christ in the flesh, that is not how we know him now. And for anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old creation has gone, and now the new one is here. It is all God’s work. It was God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the work of handing on this reconciliation. In other words, God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself, not holding men’s faults against them, and he has entrusted to us the news that they are reconciled. So we are ambassadors for Christ; it is as though God were appealing through us, and the appeal that we make in Christ’s name is: be reconciled to God. For our sake God made the sinless one into sin, so that in him we might become the goodness of God.

The Word of the Lord

R/ Thanks be to God.

Responsorial Psalm Psalm 33(34):2-3,10-15

R/ Taste and see that the Lord is good.

I will bless the Lord at all times, his praise always on my lips; in the Lord my soul shall make its boast. The humble shall hear and be glad.

R/ Taste and see that the Lord is good.

Revere the Lord, you his saints. They lack nothing, those who revere him. Strong lions suffer want and go hungry but those who seek the Lord lack no blessing.

R/ Taste and see that the Lord is good.

Come, children, and hear me that I may teach you the fear of the Lord. Who is he who longs for life and many days, to enjoy his prosperity?

R/ Taste and see that the Lord is good.

Then keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. Turn aside from evil and do good; seek and strive after peace.

R/ Taste and see that the Lord is good.

Gospel Acclamation Matthew 5:3

Alleluia, alleluia! How happy are the poor in spirit: theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Alleluia!

Or: Matthew 5:6

Alleluia, alleluia! Happy those who hunger and thirst for what is right: they shall be satisfied. Alleluia!

Or: Mt5:8

Alleluia, alleluia! Happy the pure in heart: they shall see God. Alleluia!

Or: Mt11:25

Alleluia, alleluia! Blessed are you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for revealing the mysteries of the kingdom to mere children. Alleluia!

Or: Mt23:11,12

Alleluia, alleluia! The greatest among you must be your servant, says the Lord: the man who humbles himself will be exalted. Alleluia!

Or: Mt11:28

Alleluia, alleluia! Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened and I will give you rest, says the Lord. Alleluia!

Or: Lk21:36

Alleluia, alleluia! Stay awake, praying at all times for the strength to stand with confidence before the Son of Man. Alleluia!

Or: Jn8:12

Alleluia, alleluia! I am the light of the world, says the Lord; anyone who follows me will have the light of life. Alleluia!

Or: Jn8:31-32

Alleluia, alleluia! If you make my word your home you will indeed be my disciples, and you will learn the truth, says the Lord. Alleluia!

Or: Jn13:34

Alleluia, alleluia! I give you a new commandment: love one another just as I have loved you, says the Lord. Alleluia!

Or: Jn14:23

Alleluia, alleluia! If anyone loves me he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we shall come to him. Alleluia!

Or: Jn15:4,5

Alleluia, alleluia! Make your home in me, as I make mine in you, says the Lord; whoever remains in me bears fruit in plenty. Alleluia!

Or: Jn15:9,5

Alleluia, alleluia! Remain in my love, says the Lord; whoever remains in me, with me in him, bears fruit in plenty. Alleluia!

Either:

Gospel Matthew 8:18-27 Give everything you own to the poor, and follow me.

When Jesus saw the great crowds all about him he gave orders to leave for the other side. One of the scribes then came up and said to him, ‘Master, I will follow you wherever you go.’ Jesus replied, ‘Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’

Another man, one of his disciples, said to him, ‘Sir, let me go and bury my father first.’ But Jesus replied, ‘Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their dead.’

Jesus got into the boat followed by his disciples. Without warning a storm broke over the lake, so violent that the waves were breaking right over the boat. But he was asleep. So they went to him and woke him saying, ‘Save us, Lord, we are going down!’ And he said to them, ‘Why are you so frightened, you men of little faith?’ And with that he stood up and rebuked the winds and the sea; and all was calm again. The men were astounded and said, ‘Whatever kind of man is this? Even the winds and the sea obey him.’

The Gospel of the Lord

R/ Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

Or:

Gospel Matthew 19:27-29 They will be repaid a hundred times over and inherit eternal life.

Peter spoke to Jesus. ‘What about us?’ he said. ‘We have left everything and followed you. What are we to have, then?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I tell you solemnly, when all is made new and the Son of Man sits on his throne of glory, you will yourselves sit on twelve thrones to judge the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses, brothers, sisters, father, mother, children or land for the sake of my name will be repaid a hundred times over, and also inherit eternal life.’

The Gospel of the Lord

R/ Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

------------------------------

Friday, Ninth Week in Ordinary Time 

(Liturgical Colour: Green: A(1))

First Reading Tobit 11:5-17 Tobit's sight is restored to him.

Anna was sitting, watching the road by which her son would come. She was sure at once it must be he and said to the father, ‘Here comes your son, with his companion.’

Raphael said to Tobias before he reached his father, ‘I give you my word that your father’s eyes will open. You must put the fish’s gall to his eyes; the medicine will smart and will draw a filmy white skin off his eyes. And your father will be able to see and look on the light.’ The mother ran forward and threw her arms round her son’s neck. ‘Now I can die,’ she said ‘I have seen you again.’ And she wept. Tobit rose to his feet and stumbled across the courtyard through the door. Tobias came on towards him (he had the fish’s gall in his hand). He blew into his eyes and said, steadying him, ‘Take courage, father!’ With this he applied the medicine, left it there a while, then with both hands peeled away a filmy skin from the corners of his eyes. Then his father fell on his neck and wept. He exclaimed, ‘I can see, my son, the light of my eyes!’ And he said:

‘Blessed be God! Blessed be his great name! Blessed be all his holy angels! Blessed be his great name for evermore! For he had scourged me and now has had pity on me and I see my son Tobias.’

Tobias went into the house, and with a loud voice joyfully blessed God. Then he told his father everything: how his journey had been successful and he had brought the silver back; how he had married Sarah, the daughter of Raguel; how she was following him now, close behind, and could not be far from the gates of Nineveh.

Tobit set off to the gates of Nineveh to meet his daughter-in-law, giving joyful praise to God as he went. When the people of Nineveh saw him walking without a guide and stepping forward as briskly as of old, they were astonished. Tobit described to them how God had taken pity on him and had opened his eyes. Then Tobit met Sarah, the bride of his son Tobias, and blessed her in these words, ‘Welcome, daughter! Blessed be your God for sending you to us, my daughter. Blessings on your father, blessings on my son Tobias, blessings on yourself, my daughter. Welcome now to your own house in joyfulness and in blessedness. Come in, my daughter.’ He held a feast that day for all the Jews of Nineveh.

The Word of the Lord

R/ Thanks be to God.

Responsorial Psalm Psalm 145(146):2,7-10

R/ My soul, give praise to the Lord. or R/ Alleluia!

My soul, give praise to the Lord: I will praise the Lord all my days, make music to my God while I live.

R/ My soul, give praise to the Lord. or R/ Alleluia!

It is the Lord who keeps faith for ever, who is just to those who are oppressed. It is he who gives bread to the hungry, the Lord, who sets prisoners free,

R/ My soul, give praise to the Lord. or R/ Alleluia!

It is the Lord who gives sight to the blind, who raises up those who are bowed down, the Lord, who protects the stranger and upholds the widow and orphan.

R/ My soul, give praise to the Lord. or R/ Alleluia!

It is the Lord who loves the just but thwarts the path of the wicked. The Lord will reign for ever, Zion’s God, from age to age.

R/ My soul, give praise to the Lord. or R/ Alleluia!

Gospel Acclamation cf. Psalm 18:9

Alleluia, alleluia! Your words gladden the heart, O Lord, they give light to the eyes. Alleluia!

Or: John 14:23

Alleluia, alleluia! If anyone loves me he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we shall come to him. Alleluia!

Gospel Mark 12:35-37 'David himself calls him Lord'.

At that time while teaching in the Temple, Jesus said, ‘How can the scribes maintain that the Christ is the son of David? David himself, moved by the Holy Spirit, said:

The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand and I will put your enemies under your feet.

David himself calls him Lord, in what way then can he be his son?’ And the great majority of the people heard this with delight.

The Gospel of the Lord

R/ Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

-----------------------------------

Saint Ephraem, Deacon, Doctor   

(Liturgical Colour: White: A(1))

(Readings for the memorial)

(There is a choice today between the readings for the ferial day (Friday) and those for the memorial. The ferial readings are recommended unless pastoral reasons suggest otherwise)

First Reading Colossians 3:12-17 Be clothed in love.

You are God’s chosen race, his saints; he loves you, and you should be clothed in sincere compassion, in kindness and humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with one another; forgive each other as soon as a quarrel begins. The Lord has forgiven you; now you must do the same. Over all these clothes, to keep them together and complete them, put on love. And may the peace of Christ reign in your hearts, because it is for this that you were called together as parts of one body. Always be thankful.

Let the message of Christ, in all its richness, find a home with you. Teach each other, and advise each other, in all wisdom. With gratitude in your hearts sing psalms and hymns and inspired songs to God; and never say or do anything except in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

The Word of the Lord

R/ Thanks be to God.

Responsorial Psalm Psalm 36(37):3-6,30-31

R/ The just man’s mouth utters wisdom.

If you trust in the Lord and do good, then you will live in the land and be secure. If you find your delight in the Lord, he will grant your heart’s desire.

R/ The just man’s mouth utters wisdom.

Commit your life to the Lord, trust in him and he will act, so that your justice breaks forth like the light, your cause like the noon-day sun.

R/ The just man’s mouth utters wisdom.

The just man’s mouth utters wisdom and his lips speak what is right; the law of his God is in his heart, his steps shall be saved from stumbling.

R/ The just man’s mouth utters wisdom.

Gospel Acclamation John 15:5

Alleluia, alleluia! I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, with me in him, bears fruit in plenty, says the Lord. Alleluia!

Gospel Luke 6:43-45 A sound tree cannot produce rotten fruit.

Jesus said to his disciples: ‘There is no sound tree that produces rotten fruit, nor again a rotten tree that produces sound fruit. For every tree can be told by its own fruit: people do not pick figs from thorns, nor gather grapes from brambles. A good man draws what is good from the store of goodness in his heart; a bad man draws what is bad from the store of badness. For a man’s words flow out of what fills his heart.’

The Gospel of the Lord

R/ Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

[thatndginger]

Happy STS, K! How do you factor religion into your story, if at all? How religious are your characters? Did you build them a religion? If so, why did you do it that way? Do they follow a real religion? Why that one? If they aren’t religious at all, why?

!!!! Oooh this is a very good series of questions! I'll answer for Shapeshifter for this one, since it's almost always on my mind ;P

How do you factor religion into your story, if at all?

I'd like to think I factor religion into Shapeshifter in a respectful way - but religion is far from the main focus of this story. I treat religion and religious belief in a very 'mundane' way, in my opinion. Like: Warrick's an artist, he's a mechanic, he's Muslim, he wears wild clothes, he can't cook... it's a part of who he is, but it's not all he is, you know? Sometimes religion is more important to other characters, but to the story it isn't really a big thing. The city has roughly 1 million people, there is a lot of variation capable.

I do have a plot that deals pretty heavily with a cult and extremist religious views, but that's still very much in the 'building' stage so I don't wanna say much about it.

How religious are your characters? Do they follow a real religion? Why that one? If they aren’t religious at all, why?

That is very dependent on the individual characters. Kerr believes in something, but despite being Irish he's not a Christian. Jay has a very contentious relationship with religion and the idea of a higher power guiding the universe. Warrick is Muslim and he might be the most devout believer, but he is still very much a believer. There are a lot of witch characters who believe in various deities or universal powers.

Kerr's belief (or lack of, if you ask him) stems from an event in his childhood that made him definitively sure that the Christian God he'd been taught about couldn't exist. His belief is more in the realm of "the universe has a trajectory but there's no one at the wheel".

Jay tends to range from ambivalent to actively hostile against religion - something that is a direct copy from my own experience. She has a very, very hard time believing in a God or Gods that would willingly allow such suffering and pain to exist in the world. And personally, why they would allow her to become this monstrous thing when she's done nothing to warrant it. (I was suicidally depressed at 13 and being raised in a Christian cult that told me it was my own fault. It left me with some heavy baggage that unfortunately Jay inherited. I have recovered and am doing fine most days now!)

Did you build them a religion? If so, why did you do it that way?

On a technicality, yes. While I am happy to borrow from various open witchcraft practices that exist in the real world, I've developed my own Shapeshifter-specific witchcraft practice for this world. It started as a way for me to explore my own relationship to witchcraft and personal beliefs, and partly to avoid possibly offending anyone who follows real-life practices. And then everything grew a life of it's own and it is distinctly it's Own Thing now lol.

The main tenants of the 'Shapeshifter Witchcraft' practice are as follows:

-the ability to use magic comes almost entirely from simply believing you can use magic. Trust in yourself and magic will listen

-It is impossible to say for certain that any or all deities truly exist, because even a witch who believes in no gods can weild magic. So, to err on the side of caution, it's better to believe all deities could be alive and you shouldn't disparage them

-everything in the world has a base level of magic inside itself. For some objects, this magic level is so small it's almost nonexistent. For some, it's so large they're nearly bursting with it. Regardless of levels, everything has some magic.

-there is a base 'normal' for all living things, and though magic can alter a great deal of a thing's makeup, it cannot truly alter the 'base' of it. A human will always be a human, a dog always a dog, no matter how hard you try to change that with magic

[elderemorune]

My Name is August

Before anyone worries, I'm not technically doxxing myself. It's a chosen name, and I wanted to examine it. For awhile, really, but I've been going through it and it took me awhile to figure out what I needed to say about it.

My given name is Christian. My mother, who had me at too young with a man who beat her for daring to carry me (who is not my father, that dubiously given title belongs to the bastard child of American royalty), named be after a terrible Robin Hood movie featuring Kevin Costner whose only redeeming feature is Alan Rickman threatening to cut hearts out with spoons. This name was chosen because she thought it was so cool how Morgan Freeman's character (whose name I cannot recall) referred to Robin as Christian.

Yeah.

I'm sure other people have naming stories that are just as stupid, but this is my blog and we're here to talk about me. Anyway, the choosing of my name rings as thoughtless to me. Just "That sounds cool". Being blunt, this is simply how my entire life has felt.

Proving that point, I was recently diagnosed with CPTSD. No, I have not told my folks, no matter how much I want to, because I know they'll make it all about them. Mom will wail about how it's her fault she was such a bad mom, and dad will stare angrily at me for a moment before recognizing that I'm right and then doing nothing to accept responsibility, let alone prevent future behaviour like it.

I was constantly abandoned. Left to my own devices because to quote my father directly "You were always fantastically independent."

I had to be. In so many goddamn ways, I raised myself. On TV, on video games, on movies and comics and of course, the Internet. As long as I wasn't causing trouble, you said. Unless of course my sister caused trouble but blamed me, and you grounded me despite my protestations of innocence. Often willfully, you later admitted to me. It was just fucking easier to ground me, rather than be a fucking parent and discipline your daughter. And you wonder why I hate her.

And mom, she isn't innocent in this either. See, I was raised on infidelity and harem anime, though both of them deny their charges. Dad saying "Well, that's an unfair characterization" of mom waking us up at 4:00 AM to pack our shit and leave because you were fucking a woman in Seattle? What else would you call that, father? And mom denying that she watched all that much only to buckle as I refer to several (Ai Yori Aoshi, Fruits Basket, Tenchi, etc.).

Beyond the harem anime, which is mostly a joke, she just didn't fucking leave him. She never once put my needs above hers. Desired the financial safety net. "Well, he could have buried me in legal fees" she said, "But I know he never would have done it." she says after some pressing.

My father was verbally abusive to everyone in the house. Physically abusive with only me, though my sister will insist he beat her despite even he himself admitting to only ever hitting me. When I didn't know a math problem's solution, it was a swift smack up the backside of my head. When I 'misbehaved' (didn't do what he wanted when he wanted) it was a smack. This kept on until I got big enough to hit him back. All it took was one punch to the gut to remind this obelisk of a person that he was indeed human, and so was I.

Mom knew about this, of course. She turned a blind eye to it until I hit him back. Then I was in trouble for not toeing the goddamn line. Grounded again for an amount of time that by then no longer mattered.

And let's not forget my fucking sister Amy! Oh boy, what a trainwreck! First off, I fucking hate my sister. My entire life, anything I had to work for, she was simply given because it was otherwise 'unfair' and my folks didn't want to listen to her bitch. She's even gone so far as to co-opt my trauma! We did a exactly one family therapy session, wherein she said, in front of the therapist, that she was scared of dad because he used to hit her. It was silent for a moment, then father coughed. "Um. No. I never hit you. I only ever hit your brother, because I was taught you don't hit girls."

The counselor then chimed in. "Amy, I mean this with kindness, but you and I have been working together for a long time. You've told me before that your dad never hit you. What are you trying to say here?"

Amy, incredible performer that she is, rose up, said "FUCK YOU" at the top of her lungs, and stormed out. A classic tactic from her teenage years, where she would do this, storm out of the house, often barefoot, screaming about how she hoped she starved to death in the woods and maybe then they'd understand how fucking awfully they treated her.

Frankly, I hate all of these people. The worst part is how they know about the ways in which their behaviour impacts me. They are all moving to Florida this month, with my folks moving Amy into their new home for "at most 30 days" (yeah right) and buying her a car.

Amy says the car's a gift, mom says the car has payments on it. I don't know who to believe, and at this point I don't care. I had to work for my fucking car. She didn't. It's the same shit on a brand new day.

Like with my goddamn house.

See, my wife and I got married on October 31st of 2020. It wasn't the wedding we wanted, but it was the one we needed. We got back from the honeymoon, and mom and dad are talking about helping us get a mortgage on a house. Well, Amy hears this, and of course, like the 27 year old woman she is, she pitches a fucking tantrum about how unfair it is that "They get a house and I'm stuck here".

Well, mom and dad can't go about being unfair to their kid, now can they? After all, it would be so unfair to give a married couple a normal married couple gift and not give that same gift to their seemingly single daughter.

So father had a bright idea. Start an LLC, buy a house, and rent it to us.

My wedding gift, reduced to an apartment, turned into a living nightmare, because anything else would have been unfair.

Let's expand on the living nightmare, shall we? Over the course of sharing a roof with my sister, she:

Told us if we got pregnant she'd kill herself. Mom asked us to stop trying while we live with her because of how triggering it would be for her.

2: Threatened to kill herself if we got another dog. Mom and dad asked us to consider how unfair it would be to her and her 'emotional support' dog that she hadn't trained.

3: Called my wife a fat bitch on multiple occasions, including in front of my mom, and then claimed amnesia. "I don't remember calling her that, I never said that. You're taking what I said out of context." She still won't apologize, even when confronted with a recording of her doing it.

4: When she moved her boyfriend in (without asking us, mind, she lied and told us he'd only be staying a few days), he asked for a space in their area. When we were asked to mediate, she said "Why should I have to give up space in my house?" and when reminded it wasn't her house, she stormed out after shouting fuck you at the top of her lungs, barefoot, marching down a very dangerous street in the middle of the night.

5: Did the same stunt again when we got back from apartment hunting in Seattle because my wife dared to tell her to shut up because we'd just got back in the door.

There's just so goddamn much. All of it awful.

So I'm fucking reclaiming me from this.

My name is motherfucking August Jones, and even though they couldn't do it, I fucking love me. I love who I could be, and even who I was, trapped in their cycle of abuse though I may have been. Shit, I still am, but we're working on that.

Mom, dad, if you find this blog entry somehow, and I hope you don't, don't fucking come to me about how this shit's exaggerated or I'm not remembering it right, I am. The axe forgets, you fucking morons, but the tree remembers.

Amy, if you find this, I hope your husband fucking leaves you, takes his kids, and abandons you in Florida. He may be a doormat, but he deserves better than a slathering narcissist maggot like you.

[nothorses]

Oh god I would love to hear you go off about homeschooling

Oh absolutely.

So okay: the public education system is deeply, deeply flawed. Most notably, in the US anyway (which is what all of this is gonna be- that's what the material for my degree was on) our education system was built up from two primary sources:

1. Schools for rich white boys to learn how to continue their legacy of being rich white boys (rich white girls were added much later)

2. Boarding schools and attempts to convert Native children to Christianity, erase their cultures, and replace them with white Western culture- all using incredible amounts of truly horrific, unspeakable violence.

The remnants of both of these systems still exist today, though there are more steps between them now: #1 exists in wealthy upper-class schools with a high level of gatekeeping, and #2 exists in impoverished and underfunded schools with mostly students of color.

#1 schools tend to also have a really positive impact on kids; their teachers believe in and respect them, resulting in both a higher level of academic success, and a higher level of self confidence and ambition. They believe they can do anything- so they can!

#2 schools have the inverse effect; teachers resent their students and view them as burdens, or charges to keep in line and shuffle through to the end with minimal trouble. Their students are, as a result, demoralized and unmotivated. They don't believe they are capable of anything, and so they struggle and often fail.

The steps between the two are lower-class, middle-class, & upper-middle-class schools, which make up a kind of scale- the lower class schools tend to have lower ambition and achievement, but also lower ego. There's a sweet spot- kind of- somewhere just below the wealthy schools, where students are highly motivated, but still a little humble.

You can see how people might be having different experiences with the education system, even in the same country.

People coming from low income backgrounds understandably, even rightfully, really resent the education system. People coming from anything above that might see things a little more favorably, though- that's not because anyone is stupid or self centered or wrong, it's because those experiences are intrinsically very, very different, and that's not really their fault for falling into one kind of school over another.

So okay, the public education system is flawed; but we can also see that there is a sweet spot. What we need is to figure out how to get there, normalize it, and bring that positive and healthy experience to as many kids as we can.

There are also certain undeniable benefits to a standardized public education system: ideally, children with abusive families are given a space away from the violence they face at home. They are given connections to trusted adults, mentors, peers, and experiences & knowledge their abusive families cannot control. They are given access to help, and access to power. (This isn't up for debate; rates of child abuse rose dramatically when schools closed during the pandemic because it removed a vital line of defense).

In a perfect world, the public education system is a really, really good way to facilitate communal raising of children; and who better to participate in that than people who are trained and educated and devoted to doing it in the best way possible?

There's obviously a lot of ways this can go wrong: teachers can seek those positions out for the power they might gain, people can weigh in on or control the curriculum who should not have that control, etc.

But these are also problems with homeschool. Parents might choose to homeschool their child because they want more complete control over them; they might put their child into a religious "homeschool" system designed to brainwash kids into blind devotion to a harmful ideology; they might find creationist schools or schools that otherwise align more perfectly with their beliefs, and with nothing to challenge that or help them develop critical thinking skills, kids are less likely to ever question or grow beyond what they absorb in homeschool.

Sometimes homeschool works out- and sometimes it doesn't.

But the thing with homeschool for me, at least, is this: there is a severe lack of accountability. There is nobody else to ensure those children are being treated properly. There is no standardization of curriculum, no training, and no education on best methods to educate- not just on facts, but to teach kids to think for themselves, question authority, and be capable of independent thought and action.

If a teacher in a public school abuses a child, there are people nearby more likely to notice and defend the child (and, legally, they are obligated to in a way even police are not). If a homeschool teacher abuses a child, nobody knows about it.

That's why Christian conservatives are such big proponents for decreased public school and increased homeschooling & private schools. Money or they themselves control those institutions, and they want that power and control. In many ways, they need it.

Tne public education system is a direct threat to their political and social power. That is why we need to fix it- to make it a more effective weapon against fascism and abuse.

[emilysshortstories]

Paul Lahote Part One

trigger warnings: ??? Nothing yet but not promises that will keep in later parts

words: 1543

It’s in those moments of deep desperation that you find hope. Or it seems to find you. When I left home to live with my uncle, miles away from my home, desperation was the only thing on my mind. Desperately running away, I didn’t want to face that part of my life that I already felt as though I was behind. I wanted to start fresh. I still do, so why does the reason I came here matter? My uncle, Charlie, agreed that he wouldn’t tell a soul about the events that lead me to his home, not even his own daughter. Who never really dropped the subject of course, but knew it wasn’t any of her business. I wasn’t naive enough to actually believe that I wouldn’t have to face problems here, but I think that’s what drew me here. Different problems, and that’s what I got. 

When I first moved here my cousin, Bella, had a boyfriend who she spent most of her time with. She still introduced me to everyone and showed me around, but when he moved things shifted. Bella completely shut down, she was always quiet and reserved, but this was different. She was numb. It took her a really long time to talk to anyone, and when she did, it was only me, Charlie, and her friend Jacob. They were always working on these two motorcycles together, sometimes I would join them. Jacob was nice, clearly had a massive crush on Bella even though she always denied it. 

One day when I tagged along I met Quil and Embry, they also seemed nice but I didn’t talk to them much. I didn’t talk to anyone that lived on the reservation actually, not until I had to stop Bella from doing something stupid. Feels like I’ve been doing that a lot lately. 

She was pissed. I’ve never seen her this angry before. I was a little scared to get in the car with her, but the fear of what she was going to do with this anger overpowered me. I stayed in the car when she stormed into Jacob’s house, but practically leaped out as I saw her approaching “Sam’s cult”. I was too far behind her and couldn’t reach her until she had already slapped one of the boys. “ALRIGHT” I yelled at Bella, getting in between them and seeing the boy start to shake in anger. “What you’re NOT gonna do is pick a fight with Mr. Mc steroids over here.” I continued while looking the boy up and down. We made eye contact. I didn’t want to but I froze and felt something turn in my gut while he immediately stopped shaking. I quickly shook it off and turned back to my crazy cousin. “Lets leave. Get in the fucking car John Cena”, pointing to her truck. I heard a bit of laughter as we walked away, but didn’t turn around. I didn’t even dare look in the rear view mirror as I drove off.

After Bella calmed down she admitted that slapping a 7 foot Greek sculpture wasn’t the smartest move. “They did something to him, I know it. Jacob’s too scared to tell me what’s going on but I’m gonna figure it out.” Bella said with gritted teeth. “Listen, you know Jacob better than I do so it’s your call, but maybe consider the idea that it’s none of your business? You and him have been friends since preschool. I feel like if it was necessary for you to know, he would have told you”. By the time I finished my speech Bella had already shut down. Just like she was before. Broke my heart seeing her like this. Maybe I should talk to Jacob or the “cult”, just be civil about it. 

So that’s what I did. The next day I drove to Jacob’s house, but Billy said he wasn’t home and to try Sam’s place. Well, he said Jacob wasn’t home and I begged him to tell me where he might be. For some reason he caved and told me where to find him and not Bella. I tried not to think about it too much or let my anxiety get the best of me while driving. 

When I knocked on the door, I didn’t expect a small, sweet woman with a huge scar across her face to answer the door. “Hi, can I help you?”

“Yes, I was looking for Jacob?”

“Are you Bella?”

“No, I’m Y/N, Bella’s cousin.”

“Oh. OH!” She seemed really surprised to find out this information. “Jacob it out with Paul right now. Working. They will be back soon though if you would like to come in, the rest of the crowd is here. I’m Emily, Sam’s fiance.”

“Oh I can come back another time, I don’t want to intrude.”

“Don’t be silly, we are all friendly and we are dying to get to know you.”

What does that mean? I walked in and saw everyone I saw yesterday but Jacob and the boy Bella slapped. Paul. “Hey Embry, how have you been?” I asked, seeming he was the only person I recognized. “Good, You?”

“I’m ok, just worried about Bella. Wanted to give Jacob a bit of grief for leaving her high and dry. She’s taking it a bit hard, but I also wanted to apologize for how she acted yesterday. Slapping who I assume is Paul wasn’t cool at all. I’m sure she feels really awful about it.”

“It’s not Jacob’s fault for leaving Bella. You don’t have to apologize for Bella, I think we have all wanted to slap Paul at some point in time.” Sam said.

“Got it, but is there anything I can do to get Jacob to talk to Bella again?”

“Jump in line, we all want him to talk about it so we don’t have to hear him monologuing all the time about it.” Embry said, before the third and last boy elbowed him really hard. 

“So none of this is your doing?” I asked all the boys.

“Not exactly, no.” Said Sam. 

“Ok. That’s some clarity at least.” I said with a smile.

“Why don’t you sit down, muffin, before the beasts attack them?” Emily offered a bowl full of muffins the size of Ohio to me.

“Thank you, that’s really sweet of you.” I said while taking a muffin and sitting next to Embry. Emily was right that the boys would attack the food, holy shit. “So why don’t you tell us about yourself?” Emily said, seeming excited and sitting across from me. “What do you want to know? I’m pretty much an open book.” 

“What brings you to Forks?” The ONE question I hate.

“Running away from my problems, if i’m being honest. I’ve always loved the rain, needed a change, and my uncle, Charlie, offered me a room. So I took it.”

“I like that, where are you from?”

“Austin.”

“Texas?” said the only boy who I didn’t know.

“No, actually it’s a small secret base on Mars. I’m an alien.” This made everyone laugh, especially the strange boy. “Sorry, I never caught your name?”

“Jared, you always that sarcastic?”

“Yes, humor is my only likable personality trait.”

“I hear that” said Jared while raising his muffin. “What do you like to do for fun?”

“I write, read, and love watching movies and TV shows. I'm a big music lover but I think that’s just a side effect of being born and raised in Austin. Since moving here I’ve really taken up hiking though, it’s so beautiful here. Not just flat desert like in Texas.”

“The only TV show I watch is New Girl, nobody here seems to watch it.” Said Jared and before I even thought it through my favorite Schmit quote fell out of my mouth.

“You would have been my nightmare. We were on very strict instructions from Rabbi Schmolli not to say anything until the very last christian kid found out about Santa Claus. Ruining Christmas? Very bad for our brand.”

Everyone seemed to like me after that and conversation flowed freely. I really liked spending time with everyone and lost track of time until I saw that the sun was going down. “Oh shit, I gotta get going, I’m not used to driving on ice yet and don’t want to drive on these roads when it's dark. Thank you so much for being so nice to me Emily, it was really nice talking to everyone.”

“Oh but Paul isn’t back yet” Emily said quickly. “And Jacob.”

“I can give Jacob shit anytime and I’m sure Paul isn’t my biggest fan after what Bella did so I think it’s a good idea to head out now. Thanks again though.” I said and started making my way to the door. 

“Of course! No problem, please come by again. I liked talking to you too and I’d love you to properly meet Paul.” 

We walked out just as Jacob and Paul emerged from the trees, but as soon as Paul made eye contact with me, that same flip happened in my gut again before he took off running back into the woods. Guess that answers my question on if he’s mad at me. 

[boreal-sea]

"You’re blaming america for Muslim countries being sexist and misogynistic"

Yes, and I am specifically blaming America for Iran. Are you... not aware of how thoroughly the USA has fucked with Iran and the middle east over the last century?

If you're not American, then I don't blame you for not knowing American history. If you ARE American... you really need to learn this stuff. America is EXTREMELY responsible for how fucked up the middle east is these days and we are responsible for religious fundamentalists being able to gain so much power over there.

The Islamic Revolution in 1979 is America's fault. We went in, fucked around with their government, destabilized it, then acted shocked when it was overthrown from within. Iran is the way it is today specifically because of US interference and the cold war.

Also - I don't know you or your life. But you seem to believe that all religions are sexist, and you seem to believe that Islam is uniquely horrible among them... and that sounds like cultural Christianity and the Islamophobic propaganda that comes with it, especially in the west.

You don't have to be Christian to be culturally Christian; just being raised in a Christian-majority country (like the UK, Canada, the USA, and many others) is enough for it to seep into the culture you are raised in without you being aware of it. Anyway.

---

As for "how does it change what is written" -

As an actual real former Christian, let me explain how Christians view the Bible: it is a foundational and unchanging document that should be interpreted as literally as possible when convenient to do so.

As a converting Jew, let me explain how Jews view the Torah: it is a foundational and living document... and then there are the centuries of writings and commentary on the Torah, thousands of words that have been written about, argued about, and debated about. Judaism is not static and does not act like there's one end-all-be-all interpretation of the Torah that everyone has to believe "or else". Judaism is constantly evolving and changing and arguing with itself, wrestling with the texts and how they can be applied to life in every new century.

It is, in my opinion, a completely different viewpoint on the texts compared to Christianity.

So please don't mind me when I chuckle at the idea that a religious person must look at the original text as some kind of incredibly strict set of rules that must be followed or your thumbs fall off (hyperbole). Again, that feels like a very culturally-Christian belief.

Also... not all religions have texts saying women must obey their husbands. You know that, right??

Like, if you're only thinking about the Torah, the Christian bible, or the Quran, then yes. Those texts do contain parts discussing how women should obey husbands.

And feminists from these religions discuss this, and grapple with it.

And, specifically with regards to Jewish feminists, there are many opinions about what it means to reconcile feminism with Judaism:

The Jewish feminists I associate with generally believe that there are bits of the Torah that are simply not ethical in modern day life. Other Jewish feminists believe there is no chance of reconciliation. They are valid, too. That's just not my favored interpretation.

There's a lot of stuff that's written down in holy books of all kinds that people from multiple religions don't follow these days, often because culture has advanced and we've decided certain things are unethical - like, y'know, slavery.

A LOT of that stuff involves human rights. Just because it's in the book doesn't mean we have to follow it if we decide it's unethical.

So if religious folks can say "yeah slavery is bad actually, let's not do that anymore even though it's written in the book", why is is so hard to believe that we can also say "Yeah, sexism is bad actually, let's not do that anymore even though it's written in the book"?

Friendly Reminder: radfems are fascists and fully support cultural genocide if it furthers their White Western Feminist goals.

This radfem doesn't actually care about Islamic women or children. She would never admit Islamic feminists exist and she sure as hell isn't listening to Islamic feminists - because if she did, she wouldn't have this viewpoint.

She just hates Islam, because that's what Western Christianity taught her to do!! She wants to erase Islam from the face of the Earth and will use any excuse to do so. Feminism gives her a cute excuse to be a bigot.

Also, I love that once again "children" do not have sex or gender and/or are somehow equivalent to women. At what point to boys stop being "children" and become "evil men"? At what point to boys lose this safety and become the enemy?