#it’s closer to never waking up vs self harm but still

[void-tiger]

I think I hate security lights so damn much not only ‘cause they force me to blackout my windows just to get any sleep at all…but. Here’s the thing about depression or cptsd and chronic fatigue etc.

It’s easy to never get out of bed. It feels like a constant siren lull to “just go back to sleep. you’ll feel better after just a bit more sleep. you can escape it into oblivion with just a bit more sleep. maybe you won’t wake up at all and won’t have to deal with it. won’t that be nice?” And it sounds so gentle and sweet…but it’s poisoned honey.

If I didn’t have my cat bugging me to Just Get Up (but will often curl up next to me and purr until I’m awake and bored enough to get up and stretch), or a bird to uncover (whose day/night cycles I’ve officially screwed up for her with my sleeping habits and the curtains blocking out light so she no longer Morning Crows, but uncovering her is a routine and I HAVE to let in light for HER sake), or lived with family who’d notice (but already don’t like my Different Sleep Schedule) …sometimes I wonder if I’d even drag myself out of bed at all.

And my “natural aesthetic” if you will is…lots of natural light streaming in. Sunny and soft. As many jewel tones and other bright or soft light colors as I can get my paws on. Someday I’ll have prism suncatchers in every window and around every light source, and as much stuff that glows in the dark as possible until my mind finally lets me drift to sleep. Heck, possibly even those short, cheap chandeliers with the acrylic prism balls to scatter around even more light and glitter. Soft colorful curtains and sheers for privacy and warmth and coziness…and to let the light in.

I do better when I can let the light in. But with security lights, I can’t.

Because I gravitate towards light and color and shiny things like a migratory bird, or a corvid obsessed with collecting things that glimmer. Because inside my head it’s the darkness of the womb or static—and that’s on the good days.

I don’t need the sleep disruption unless I block it out.

I don’t need the reminder that I’m Not Safe because of my afab body, gender identity, and disability were a Human Prowler the one to set them off and choose to break in (instead of…better locks? A security camera? It’s mostly set off by wild animals and steam, anyway.)

I don’t need the Extra Fight to drag myself out of bed in the morning because my depressive and fatigue symptoms like the dark.

I want a safer world. One that allows me to let the sunlight in, and marvel at the moonlight and stars.

[sseanettles]

nothing grows in corpses (in the earth of me)

dream x hob gadling | mature | Finally cross-posting my take on the fandom classic of the show progresses as the comics do, even to The Wake. Until Death resurrects Morpheus and forces the choice of "redemption" upon him instead of suicide. It goes...horribly. No good. Very bad. Instead of learning the lesson, Morpheus (in his infinite wisdom) opts instead for a highly effective existence strike until one day Hob Gadling stumbles upon his ghastly handiwork and immediately decides that this just won't do. Man Who Refuses To Die vs. Man Who Refuses To Live: fight.

Dead Dove, Do Not Eat for the following: graphic depictions of starvation, illness, suicidal ideation, self-harm, blood and gore, loss of autonomy, etc. etc. This is some classic old world whump, folks! But I promise it's also supremely healing in the end.

CH. 19: hope | 4.8 k | AO3 link | prev part | final part

(or: the one where the lesson is finally, finally learned.)

“Jim!” he yelled and tried to drag himself forward as his husband reached back for him with fingers that tugged weakly at the earth before giving up. “Come on,” he grunted but knew it was in vain. “Come on!”

It was always in vain. The ice box had landed atop the back of his knees, robbing him of the leverage he needed to kick it off; the weight of the rubble across his shoulders was heavy enough to prevent him from turning at the hips to push himself free. In fact, it was heavy enough that in about thirty minutes, his thrashing attempts to free himself would bring more debris tumbling down upon him in a brutal avalanche, and it would crush him into the earth until his heart ran out of room to beat.

He knew this. He always knew this, every time.

“It’s okay,” Jim whimpered and gave him a watery, reassuring smile with lips that were steadily turning red as he watched Hob fight to no avail. “It’s okay, love….”

“No! I can—I can do this, just—gaAAHH!”

He knew he would dislocate his joints trying to break free instead of listening to what his husband had to say to him in these final moments. He knew he would claw at the earth until he drove stones and metal deep beneath his nails trying to get closer.

“It’s…it’s all okay…”

“No, Jim, look at me! Look at me, love, come on! Stay with me!”

He knew, no matter how he strained, he would never be able to grab hold of Jim’s outstretched, sailing-calloused hand. He knew that the last thing Jim would see, smiling at him through his own fearful tears all the while in an attempt to make this okay—it was not okay, it would never be okay—was Hob’s sobbing, anguished face as he stretched as far as he could and came up just a finger’s width short.

“I…I love you,” Jim had sobbed in the end, trying valiantly to hold that smile, to hold that love in his eyes even as they darkened.

“Don’t. Don’t, don’t you dare, don’t you dare!”

The sobs turned to bloody chokes and then finally to those dreaded gasps…and Jim’s weakly reaching hand went slack.

Why didn’t I say I love you back?

WHY DIDN’T I SAY I LOVE YOU BACK?

“Gadling,” a voice distantly called, a voice that did not belong. “Come away from here.”

It’s okay, he returned, even as he let out a heart-rending cry and screamed for help that would not come for hours. Let them come. Let me see them all over again…one last time.

He rocked on a resplendent bed—the finest one money could buy with the softest sheets and mattress (even if it was hell on his back, because Eleanor loved soft things, and he had all of time to have the kind of bed he liked)—now covered in the blood of failed childbirth. He wailed into his wife’s cooling neck with his hand fisted in the back of her dark, sweaty curls, her pregnant belly still and heavy between them. Robyn, Robyn was outside, he knew, and he should not be hearing his father like this. He should be stoic and solemn and bear the loss with a stiff upper lip.

“Gadling…” Morpheus said.

Let me have them. Let me love them.

“Ellie,” he sobbed, pulling her as close as he could, pulling them both as close as he could, trying to make them safe within himself. “Oh, Ellie, no, no, no—”

Something tugged at him, Morpheus’ distant voice pleading, and he slammed into the edge of a physician’s table, catching himself as his knees gave out beneath the wracking force of redoubled sobs.

“Not this one,” Morpheus pressed from where he watched the scene in the corner of the room. “You need not relive this one—”

Allow me my grief, Stranger! I need my grief!

Robyn. Robyn, his boy—his brave, loving, stupid boy—lied before him, run through the heart in what the doctor promised had been a quick death. The last of his family, the last of his Eleanor, gone, and not of the old age he had prepared himself to witness but of something so stupid, so juvenile, so wasteful. A duel: what had he been thinking, did he not understand that life was precious, Hob wanted to throttle him, he….

He picked up his son as he had once picked up his mother and cried and cried and cried as the physician bowed from the room.

Morpheus had gone gray, gaunt with the empathy of a father who knew this pain well.

“How do you live with this?” he asked, unable to look away from the horrid memory. “How do you live with these pains?"

 Grief is human, Hob’s voice murmured, permeating the air around them even as he continued to sob and cry over his son. Necessary.

Morpheus watched Sir Robert Gadlen rock his child, watched him ease him back to the table and follow him down. His head rested atop the still chest and listened for a heart that would never beat again as he brushed his fingers through his boy’s hair and cried.

Hob stood behind his own self, watching.

My grief is the proof that I loved. Hob met Morpheus’ eyes without speaking aloud from over his own quaking shoulders. And that I love, still.

And when Morpheus still stared at him in disbelief, he gave a small, marveling huff.

“These aren’t nightmares to me, friend,” he said aloud with a tired, faint smile. “They’re just the memory of dreams.”

He stepped back, pulling Morpheus in his wake like an undertow, and the once-Endless fell to his knees, his mouth parting in a wounded gasp as he saw where they now stood.

It was the Dreaming. And it was a funeral…the one funeral he could never attend.

Hob Gadling stood among beings older and more powerful than he, turning about in bewilderment and mounting grief.

“Hang on,” he was saying, dressed in his ragged fare of their first meeting, so ill-suited for a proceeding so grand. He looked to all of them, begging someone to tell him otherwise. “The Dream-King. He’s dead?”

Bast closed her eyes rather than meet his beseeching gaze and bowed her head.

“He’s dead,” Chiron confirmed as he solemnly descended the stairs. “Yes.”

Gadling could only watch the centaur as he walked slowly to meet him, the great mentor of the Greek heroes, figure of legend and tales for eons past and eons to come: a being nearly twice Hob’s height and certainly twice as broad. And as Chiron arrived before him, Hob saw the truth. In his ancient eyes, there rang no lie.

And so, he did the only thing he knew how to do as the helplessness and despair welled within him to bursting. He charged Chiron with a grief-stricken roar, fists swinging, and Morpheus rushed into the dream himself as Hob struck and hit with all the effectiveness of a child to a towering tree.

“He can’t be dead! You’re LYING!” Chiron grabbed the insolent human by the wrist and then the shoulder, hauling him clear off the ground as he continued to yell and kick and hit. “It’s not TRUE!”

Powerful arms locked around him, pinning him in place as easily as if he were an infant, and the air filled with rain as he sobbed and hung from Chiron’s embrace.

“I’ll tell you what!” his voice echoed through the storm, chasing after a man who would not be caught. “I’ll be here in a hundred years, and if you’re here, too, it’ll be because we’re friends! And no other reason, right?!”

Rain turned to sleet turned to snow, and a shadowy visage of himself and Morpheus took shape amid the flurries around them, speaking words that made sense now far too late.

“—learned to pick up on, it’s the smell of death. I mean, it’s almost like a real smell. You sniff it on a bloke and two weeks later he gets his throat cut in an alley,” Hob was saying, so close to truth and missing it all the same. “And mate, you stink of it. I worry. You take care of yourself.”

Morpheus had smiled at him. He’d smiled at Hob, and Hob bared his teeth and redoubled his struggle against Chiron’s arms as he allowed himself to fall to the nightmare’s pull and hurt transformed to rage.

“Thank you, Hob,” Dream had lied, that smile on his face. “I shall.”

“You LIAR!”

The mighty arms gripping him from behind thinned and grew familiar. The ground returned beneath his feet. 

“YOU GAVE UP!” Hob bellowed, bucking against Morpheus’ embrace as the other man held him close, hiding his face in the meeting of his neck and shoulder. “HOW COULD YOU GIVE UP?!”

He grabbed Morpheus with all intent to rip himself free, but as soon as he felt him, real and warm beneath his touch, his temper cooled. Fawney Rig’s influence withdrew like curtains from a window until only the grief remained. Only the displaced love that now finally, finally had somewhere to go. Hob pressed his head to his friend’s with a quaking breath as his knees began to buckle, and Morpheus followed him down like a shroud.

“I never gave up,” he whispered with a sob and clung tighter to his friend as he felt Morpheus’ still-living breath on his skin. “I never…how could you? How could you give up on me?”

The black of Morpheus’ robes swept around them in a consuming swirl, and they pitched into drifting nothing.

“Because I destroyed worlds,” Morpheus murmured, his voice reverberating through the void of himself. “I coveted their hope and happiness for myself without a thought for those I robbed to attain it.”

The screams of a universe going mad rent the air. Planets burned, systems imploded, stars went nova far before their time, and at the center of it all stood the little girl with the blue skin and the red triangle upon her forehead, smiling so kindly and sweetly and reaching her hand to them. Her visage burned and folded in on itself, and the old woman with the graying hair and the lovely smile stood in her place. A golden annulet glinted upon her finger as she held her own bloody heart out to them with a kind, understanding smile. Crimson poured down her chest from the ragged wound her own wrenching hands had made in sacrifice, until she too, disappeared. In her place was left the girl with the rainbow locs and eyes that were so much more somber than her age, old and hard with a righteous anger.

Calliope and Hippolyta’s screams as they fell amid the eviscerated remains of their children, their shrieks of Oneiros both damning and begging, echoed behind the triumvirate. And as Nada plummeted to the only freedom left to her from a mountainside, doomed to reformation and violation at the Endless’ uncaring hand all the same, Morpheus moved to pull them away, to hide in shame.

Gadling held him firm. And as Nada hit the ground, Morpheus found himself drifting deep beneath the surface of a lake, watching as a dim figure thrashed in its dark depths and screamed until there was no air left to scream and yet wailed still. He was bound hand and foot with shackles that refused to break and fastened to a heavy stone that must have required multiple men to move. But around him, there floated hundreds more dead, all of them African, and they stared with vindicated eyes as Hob Gadling drowned in an eternal hell. Far above him, past the distantly glittering surface, Gwen watched him suffer from the sunlit world, damning, hardened. And though he screamed and fought for life because he could not keep his body from its instincts, his eyes as he beheld them all were accepting. 

Deserved, their calm said. This was deserved.

The water drained through the silky lakebed in a smashing slam, and Morpheus landed upon a gruesome battlefield. The bodies slain beneath his feet belonged to no single era or walk of life. They were anyone and everyone, spanning even ages.

A solitary, surviving figure walked toward him across the butchering ground that drowned in blood and the dead, a claymore that dripped in kind drawn at his side as he went.

…A grim, selfish reaper clad in Hadean armor who walked with Gadling’s step and stature.

“Haven’t we all?” he returned.

“I let down those in my care,” Morpheus pushed back, “I failed to protect them. All because I was tired.”

The Dreaming’s carnage at the Furies’ and Hippolyta’s avenging hands razed Hob’s battlefield into one Morpheus knew deeply. His Dreams and Nightmares alike laid dead and dismembered around them, and he tried not to look at the butchered mass he knew to be Fiddler’s Green.

The eldritch beasts frolicked about the kingdom while Morpheus rotted away in his own dungeons, and little Delight’s mind fractured under their irreverence until only Delirium remained.

Nuala stood before him, crying as she held her boon aloft, begging to know why…why did he make her play this role in his death? How could he, didn’t he know that she loved him?

Of course, he did. That was, after all, why he had done it.

The final moments of countless dreamers filled the space around the little fae in a unified moment of finality, flickering out atop each other like candles at their ends, and Morpheus struggled to understand what was happening until he caught sight of a common soul through them all. The altar from Gadling’s home loomed large in the form of a mausoleum wreathed in ivy and shadows, crafted this time of bones, of cairn stones and pyre wood and time-weathered tombstones.

“You are not alone in that my friend.” 

The doors creaked open on a dying breath, and upon its central tomb, at the heart of Gadling’s house of grief, lay the stone effigy of Lord Morpheus.

“How could you give up on me?” 

“Because I needed to change,” Morpheus whispered. “I could not be one who wrought all that pain anymore.”

“And you couldn’t do that yourself?”

“I am immutable,” Morpheus snapped, the weight of hot, self-loathing tears lacing every syllable. “I am Endless, what I am is what I shall always be, there is no changing my facet—”

“Bullshit,” Gadling spoke. “I just saw it myself—your kid sister changed. Heard talk at the funeral that you had a brother walk away from it all. I’ve seen enough faces of Death to know she has multitudes.” He paused, damning and sure. The black about them, about this temple of homeless love, sparked with color and lights that flickered away, and the scent of blade oil and the unknowable followed in their fading wakes. “So, I ask you again: how could you give up?”

And there, standing in the face of Gadling’s blistering honesty and the heart of his loss, of their two souls fully bared, Morpheus found he could not summon forth a worthy answer.

“You are not alone in what you’ve done,” Hob promised again as the monument to undying love rippled away into blackness. “You are not unworthy of change, and dress it up however you like but suicide is not self-love.”

The writhing dark fluttered back like great wings, like a passing shroud, and deposited them once more upon the cliffs of Naxos without ceremony, grace, or warning. Hob stumbled through his sprawl, only just keeping his feet under him, and spun in a sharp circle as he hunted for any sign of the dreaded temple. He found none, but the Dreaming was not happy around them, or at least, Fawney Rig was not. The skies were dark and roiling with a banshee-like wind kicking up, and the Nightmare’s borders seemed closer than they had been at the start, distorted and losing their shape as they collapsed steadily inward.

Seconds behind him, Morpheus arrived only to let out an anguished cry.

“If I am not alone in it, if I am not unworthy, then tell me why I always end back here!”

Hob turned and found his Stranger once more braced like a wild, drunken man at the end of his rope.

The prison of Orpheus’ head again claimed his hands like Gadling’s drowning stone.

Hob pressed his palms over his face with a groan, and he crouched down with his weight sat back on his heels and tried to think. 

With nothing else left to him, Morpheus fell to his never-ending cycle for the innumerable time, pulling with the little strength he had left and only growing more tired the longer he struggled in vain. The storm worsened by the minute until Fawney Rig groaned and screamed around them, the territory shrinking down and cannibalizing itself beyond the borders of this one cliff rise. They were all that was left now: just Robert Gadling, Fawney Rig, and the one Dreamer they could not seem to get to confront his demons. Hob squinted through the border winds as he saw the outline of Dream of the Endless, his robes whipping around him in a frenzy as he stood in observation without raising a hand to preserve the Nightmare’s fabric. They held each other’s eye through the chaos, and he heard the Dream Lord’s intention as clearly in his head as if they were speaking face to face.

This must happen. It was always written so, and he would do nothing to intervene.

“Please,” Morpheus begged his son’s mangled head as he collapsed in surrender, utterly exhausted. “Please, not this. Not again, I cannot do this again.”

Hob stumbled against the twisting winds that buffeted him in seemingly every direction to drop to his knees before his friend. He planted his hands on Morpheus’ lap, pinning him in place much to the other’s alarm.

“Stop running!” he called over the storm.

Morpheus shook his head, wild. “I cannot.”

“Yes,” Hob nodded, just as exaggerated back to him. “Yes, you stubborn prick, you can!” And without asking for permission or giving chance for argument, Hob gripped Orpheus’ head alongside him and guided him to look up at his father. “I know you’re tired, I know,” he said as Morpheus tried to pull away, and he held him fast by his hands. “So, stop running. Dig deep, come on.” He waited until the man looked back to him…and, finally, to his son. “At the very core of it all, what is there?”

For a time, Morpheus said nothing, refusing to dive into those two little words that had haunted them since they began.

“…So live,” he finally whispered.

“Yes,” Hob said. “What did that mean?”

Morpheus gritted his teeth. His expression screwed into one of disgust, of hate and pain that wrenched cruelly back around into gnawing, relentless grief.

“When…when Eurydice died on their wedding day…Orpheus came to me. Afterward. He asked….” Morpheus closed his eyes, tugging against Gadling’s hold in a gentle, persistent back and forth that settled into a twisted sort of self-soothing sway. “…He asked me to approach Hades on his behalf. To reclaim his wife’s soul.” He forced himself to bear his son’s unblinking stare. “I refused. That refusal led him to seek his own way to Hades, and…” He stopped, and Hob watched him breathe his way through the pain of memory until he could once more speak. “And what is told in myth came to pass.”

The winds howled and screamed.

“They tore him apart,” he managed, and his voice shook apart into sobs of the deepest empathy, “and still he lived.” 

Christ. Hob held him tighter, gripped Orpheus’ curls and his father’s hands in the same sickened seize that left all three of them melded into one. Christ, Christ, bloody Christ—

“Until…” The tears began to stay, his breaths steadying, and Hob’s heart skipped at the numbness he saw settling into the other man’s eyes, the cold lead of it that filled his bones and sank him down to the ocean floor within him.

…that despair that drove so deep that little remained to feel at all but its bite. 

“...until I ensured he lived no longer.” 

Hob’s eyes flinched shut, and he leaned to meet Morpheus, catching his heavy head upon his collarbone as he stared with that mounting numbness into his boy’s dead, mutilated face. Hob kept his hands fixed to the lad’s skull, refusing to leave his father to bear its weight alone.

They stayed that way for a time, their heads pressed to each other’s in steadying comfort amid the maelstrom. But as the winds continued to mount, screaming all the while with voices long gone, Hob forced himself to withdraw. He nuzzled his Stranger’s head as he went to guide their eyes to meet, and Morpheus followed him readily, longingly—seeking after him for any contact he could. Hob gave him a moment, let him come back to his senses and himself, before pushing on.

“What is so live?” he gently pressed.

Morpheus swallowed a few times and conjured his final confession.

“It was what I told him…when he came to me to ask the favor. I told him that he was mortal, and as such, mortal lives ended.” Hob’s eyes glistened, and Morpheus tried to unfocus his eyes, tried not to see his child in his hands. “The only thing he could do was to mourn his wife, to attend her funeral…love her and release her and know that her loss would linger with him always, though it would lessen as the time passed.” He paused. Hob’s hands squeezed his in steady comfort against Orpheus’ skull. “At the end, I told him, she is dead. You are alive. So live.”

Hob swallowed and barely found his voice once more beyond the lump in his throat.

“That was uncommonly kind of you, my friend.” He moved one hand to Morpheus’ shoulder, squeezed as tightly as he dared, and smiled softly through the grief. “I am sorry your son didn’t know how to hear you.”

“No,” Morpheus shook his head in sharp denial, his voice gumming in his throat. “No, it was not what he needed to hear—”

Hob switched his grip to the back of Morpheus’ neck, wincing as he painted him in Orpheus’ blood, and guided him to meet his earnest eyes.

“Yes,” he insisted. “It was. It just wasn’t what he wanted to hear.”

Morpheus looked into Hob’s eyes, those graveside shots of whiskey, and let his solemnly spoken truth sit in him like a stone.

So live. So live, so live, so live, so live.

The man who killed himself beheld the man who refused to die, and he recalled their final meeting in a previous life. For a moment, he imagined a world in which Gadling had truly confronted him on the stench of death that followed him, on the premonition he had that his Stranger was about to do something stupid and that this was the last time they would see one another. He imagined Gadling trying to extol him on the wonders of life, trying to talk him out of his pain and grief with platitudes and greeting cards and vague poetic nonsense that did nothing to address his very real and present anguish.

So live would have been laughable.

And he realized in a sickening jolt that he could relate to Orpheus’ struggle…to not wanting to hear his own words.

And he realized why his son haunted him so.

Redemption or death, the Kindly Ones had offered him. And he…he had chosen. Despite the wisdom, the philosophy, the truth of existence he claimed to espouse, he had chosen.

“I…” He stopped, afraid, and Hob carefully released him.

“That’s it, Stranger,” he said and shuffled back, keeping on his knees, until he was sure the man had enough space. “Stick with it. Come on.”

Morpheus looked from Hob to his son with a level of anxiety that would have been comical in any other circumstance, and Hob nodded to him in encouragement as he struggled to articulate the answer he had found. His chest rose and fell in unsteady cadence, and he swallowed as he met his son’s lifeless eyes where they watched him above his hand’s imprisoned strike. He now knew the words. But to speak them….

Hob Gadling watched him with all his heart’s love glistening in his eyes, and Morpheus stepped off the edge of a towering pillar of earth into free-falling nothing.

“I am sorry I did not live,” he whispered, and something in his chest cracked wide open, flooding his lungs with an almighty hurt. “I am sorry I am refusing to live still.” His voice wavered, and he spoke the final truth, the words biting out of him in self-hatred for their admittance, in hatred of everything that had come to pass, of everything that had led to this moment, and especially of his own folly at the center of it all.

“I am sorry I did not choose to live.”

In an almighty release, Morpheus’ hand pulled free. He tumbled back with the force of it, his child’s head toppling from his grasp as he went, and he clutched his arm to his chest as he landed in a breath-starving bang. It dripped with viscera and brain matter that oozed through his fingers and spattered him like rain, and…

…and slowly turned to golden ichor and stardust.

Orpheus sat before him where his head had fallen: whole and well and watching his father with loving, pain-stricken eyes.

After a time, he stood, and he paused with a sad, sympathetic smile as Morpheus flinched from him. And with the same grace his father possessed, with the same quiet intensity and his mother’s love in his eyes, he approached the man who killed him.

Morpheus watched him come: hardly daring to breathe, his chin quivering, his eyes shining. And he closed his eyes with a spilling of tears as his son reached wordlessly for his bowing head. He was okay with this ending. He could end like this, knelt before his child, in perfect symmetry. It was okay. It was all….

Orpheus caressed his father’s face with a touch as gentle as a little boy’s, and Morpheus’ eyes flew open, his breath paralyzing in his chest. His son’s fingers passed to cradle the angle of his jaw, and he tipped his father’s tear-tracked face up with a cautious delicateness until their eyes met. Morpheus reached for the folds of his himation, uncertain at first, and then gripped the white silk as tightly as he possibly could, not daring to let him go.

Not again.

There came a moment of silence, of quiet beholding.

Then, Orpheus began to hum. He hummed the melody that led Eurydice from the Underworld, the melody he performed at their wedding, the melody impossible to hear and live to recall. And as Morpheus gazed upon his child and silently wept beneath his serenade, Hob Gadling sank back on his heels, unaware of the tears falling from his own eyes. The sound…stars above, Orpheus was the most beautiful thing he had ever heard, and he almost cried out in relief as two hands slipped over his ears from behind him, turning the song distant and muffled. And now, the trance gone, he wept harder to see his Stranger, his dear friend, in such rapture at the end of it all. He reached for the hands and gripped their wrists in vicious comfort, and he smiled through his tears as he recognized the wrapped, gem-embroidered gauntlets as Dream’s.

As he recognized the salt-kissed skin as Jim’s.

As he recognized the embroidered hems of heavy, billowing sleeves as Eleanor’s.

As he recognized the small wrists of his littlest Robyn.

He leaned back into Dream’s legs, surrounded by the little ghosts he let walk on with him, his heart lighter than it had been in an age. The Endless took a step closer and caught him as he came.

Orpheus bowed to kiss his father’s head, his hummed song accompanying him all the while even though he had stopped singing himself. Morpheus still clung to his robes, crying in earnest, and Hob wept for him still, the hands of all his past loves and past shames upon him in well-loved company as he watched. Fawney Rig was unfurling from the beast it had twisted itself into, restoring its crater to a valley in a cathartic maelstrom of a release that tore and pulled and pushed, and Hob raised his hand to shield his eyes as he felt himself caught in the riptide. The father and son stood untouched at the center of it all, and this was the eye of the storm—

Morpheus gazed into his child’s face as the blessed kiss withdrew on an ending world.

And Orpheus, with his beautiful voice and godly face and his gentle musician’s hands still cradling his father’s head, gave his parting command, his final sagacity.

“So live.” 

[theji]

Things Yizhan Made Me Do

It's BXG Day today! 🐢💛

To commemorate the occasion, I thought of making a list of 13 out-of-character things that I've done since falling into the fandom. (OK I'm a bit late I meant to do this sooner, the day is ending soon in a couple of hours).

1. Start a blog

And a public one, no less. I had a blog when I was in my teens but that was private, like a personal diary. My day job already involves writing so off-work I would usually like to indulge in mindless activities. Now, here I am, maintaining a Yizhan blog. I have not even used Tumblr prior to this but I'm enjoying it now, rambling about our fav boys. Writing is not a chore if it's about them.

2. Join a fandom

I joined a boy band fan club once upon a time, some 15 years ago, but I was never as invested in it as I am now with Yizhan. Back then it was just buying some merch, attending their concert/autograph sessions, listening to their songs. Apart from work, dog mum duties, personal relationships, other hobbies like kombucha brewing, most of my free time is now spent on the fandom. My Netflix account is crying. There is just so much to do and catch up on (I'm not complaining). I also enjoy interacting with and learning from other bloggers here. Antis are no fun and some industry news/developments/hate messages are upsetting but ultimately, you curate your own fandom experience. And I choose positivity and rationality.

3. Indulge in RPS

I don't ever 'ship'. What is 'ship'? 😆 I was always a dutiful audience, just enjoying whatever drama series and moving on after that. I started with CQL like most people and I didn't even notice/like GGDD until much later. Didn't even set out to 'ship' anyone but now I'm a self-professed turtle. SZD is SZD, and anyone can see something special between them if you keep an open mind. I wrote about my SZD reasons here previously. That said, GG & DD are individuals, each with their own successful careers. They come first, the ship comes second. That I'm very clear of.

4. Use Chinese apps

Gosh, my phone and tablet are now full of Chinese apps. I used to have only WeChat cos I needed it for work but now I have Weibo, Oasis, Douyin, WeTV, MangoTV, Youku, etc. Some of them are not even available in the app store so I had to find alternative sources to download them. haha..I even have paid membership for some of these apps. And now, browsing Weibo daily becomes a routine. If you wish, you can just get stuck browsing Weibo for a long long time. It's entertaining.

5. Read fan fic

I only started about 6 months ago but now I'm hooked and fics are largely the only thing I read these days, apart from news. But I only read Yizhan or WangXian fics (p.s. calling for fic recs of other pairings!) I know some might have different feelings about fan fics but to me, I really just see them as fiction, with characters (and sometimes traits) bearing similarities to GGDD. Similarly, I separate the platform from the incident so I have no problems going to A03 despite GG's incident. I just enjoy seeing the characters named XZ/WYB having happy endings in many different timelines and universes. While most of the fics I read are explicit (by design), I don't use them as tools to play out certain fantasies or to think of GGDD in a sexual manner. In fact, I really hate fics that have little substance and just go into the explicit parts without plot development. I like those with interesting premises too, like one I read recently where XZ is a serial killer and WYB is a police officer investigating the case but also in love with him. I do have plans to share my list of fav fan fics some time down the road so keep an eye out for it!

6. Willingly read Chinese

Yes, Chinese may be my mother tongue but I don't use it much in daily living unless I have to. I also find it tedious to read Chinese cos the characters are just so squashed together. If I have a choice, I will always pick English. But now, I read so much Chinese from my daily weibo browsing. I even read fan fics in Chinese! Who am I? On the plus side, I think my Chinese comprehension and translation skills improved. I also picked up some internet lingo used by Chinese netizens, which are pretty interesting like doi, 🐮🍺, 🖍. My all-time fav is yyds.

7. Act like a cougar

In real life, I have always maintained that younger men are childish. At least those I have encountered. But look at me now, fangirling over two younger men (I am closer in age to GG, but still..). I even jokingly call them my 'China Boyfriends'. I look at them very respectfully most of the time.

8. Buy merch

Seriously, once you start, you can't stop. At least that was what happened to me, although I'm still quite selective when it comes to supporting their endorsements. I usually go for consumables like food, cosmetics vs collectibles cos I'm more practical. Also, GG says to support their merch within reasonable means so that's what I'm doing. Just buying things that I'm interested to try and not because it has their faces or names slapped on it. In a way, this suits me cos I like trying new brands and stuff anyway.

9. Keeping a Yizhan archive

Photos, weblinks, videos, songs, fan fics list..my phone is full of these things now. I think my Yizhan photo gallery is only second to the folder with my dogs' pictures. But how can you resist when we are blessed with new pics of them almost every week?

10. Camp for livestreams

I'm lucky I live in the same time zone as the boys so I don't have to wake up in the wee hours of the morning just to watch something. But that's the thing, being in the same time zone sometimes make me feel like I HAVE to watch that thing live because, why not? Why wait? Not shy to admit that I once watched a live programme in the middle of work but I made sure I finished what needed to be done. I think so long as we don't let these livestream schedules run our lives, there's no harm in camping for them.

11. Watch c entertainment

I am one of those who used to pass over Chinese productions, simply because it's a Chinese production. Not in a scoffing manner but I'm just genuinely not interested in them nor the celebs. I was more of a US/UK production kind of person, occasionally Korean/Japanese. Now, I'm learning to enjoy them although I just watch those with GGDD in them. No energy to follow other Chinese celebs anyway. The other programme I'm contemplating watching even if it doesn't have them in it is Who's the Murderer (GG was only in one of the cases) cos I like the premise. On the flip side, now my sis and partner keep making fun of me cos to them, all I do now is "watch China shows". That is so not true. Or is it?

12. Write fan mail

I wrote a letter to GG once. A long-ass letter. I hope he read it. That's all I'm gonna say. 🙈 hahahahaha

13. Desire to visit China

China was never on my list of to-visit places. Just wasn't interested. I have been to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou a few times in the past for work but even then, I never felt the urge to revisit for leisure. Now, I wanna visit GG and DD's home town, visit Chongqing to see the graffiti wall with Bobii Zanbii on it, eat mala hotpot and try out their sauce recipe, attend BXG events, dine at the CQL restaurant... Watching TTXS also made me realise that there are many beautiful places in China with natural landscapes and all that. I used to be clouded by my disdain for the regime and some behaviour of its citizens but now, I recognise that the country is separate from the regime or a smaller group of poorly behaved citizens. China is a beautiful country and I would love to visit some day. I will fly over immediately on my own if someone gives me tix to ADLAD!!

Well, I hope some of these things resonate with you. Feel free to share the OOC things that Yizhan made you do.

Once again, Happy BXG Day! 🐢💛🐆🐇🐷🌶🦁🍑🐶🍍🛹🎋

[stillness-in-green]

Hopefully at some point, Izuku will look back at how he treated Overhaul and realize that he didn’t bother to truly listen to him

In total fairness, Overhaul was never much interested in talking to Deku; indeed, he calls him a maggot and tells him to shut up in the wake of the Nagant fight. But Deku didn't need to have Chisaki talking directly to him to hear the pertinent bit of what the man actually said there, which was, "[The boss] is all I've got left!"

Which is to say, god, I hope so. And I feel like that sort of sentiment makes Deku fans angry, but let me tell you, between, “It isn’t Deku’s job to care about evil psychopaths; it’s his job to stop them from harming others,” and, “Maybe the fact that Hero Society is rotten from the top down is, in fact, something that anyone who wants to call him or herself a Hero has an obligation to try and improve. They can start by not writing people howling in pain off as evil psychopaths,” I’m pretty sure the latter is closer to where the manga is hewing!

I’m sure Deku will save Shigaraki in some way shape or form. But I hope that he matures enough to look back and realize that while his thought, “I never understood what made them turn out that way,” was a good first step, the next step from there is, “It is not important that I personally understand a person’s tragic backstory as a prerequisite for getting them the help they so desperately need.”

On the topic of angry Deku fans, incidentally, I have recognized a reference or two to my meta on Twitter over the last few months, largely coming from people who seem to want to look at Deku's arc much more in terms of who Midoriya Izuku is, a bullied child grown into a self-sacrificial teen, rather than as The Hero Deku. Fair's fair; we all have the aspects of a story that speak to us, and I'll be the first to admit I care very little for Midoriya's personal growth, so am not in the best of positions to weigh how that's going to affect the rest of the story.

Still, I think it goes the other way as well. That is, I don't think it's actually possible to understand what the Heroes vs. Villains narrative is driving at if you insist on overlooking the matter of what Deku represents as a hero: the interrogation of the Pillar mentality he gets from All Might, the matter of heroes as Symbols, the questions of collective responsibility for the vulnerable or suffering, the obligation of one generation to the next, etc. Horikoshi did not pack all that stuff into his story just for people who stan Midoriya Izuku to say, "Whatever; Izuku didn't hurt the villains; why should he have to be the one to help them?"

Thanks for the ask!

[coffee-n-bagels-comic-universe]

Bloody, Beaten, Bruised or Maximum Effort

Quick Tag List: @kuruumiya @spacelizardtrashboys @enigmaticandunstable @nattinngrst @amyofaquitaine

This passage contains potentially: scenes of one (or more) characters swearing, blood, self-harm (unintentional) and scenes of a violent nature. whump content and potential tear-jerking moments.

Summary: In this 'chapter' Kirby has her first fight in New Jersey, and stay in New Jersey for a week, leading to some heavy whump content by a certain someone.

Kirby's POV:

Standard match, one on one with a ten minute time limit. Not much for a debut but it's made into a big deal upon learning the opponents were male and female and not the standard male on male.

Jobber VS Newcomer.

Andrew Strong VS Kirby 'Gluttony' Lucifarian.

The bell rings and the fight starts.

"Strong throws the first punch and misses."

"The Ogress capitalises and hits him with a Feeding Frenzy."

"Strong is backed into the turnbuckle but the Ogress continues her attack."

"The referee is forced to separate them and Strong gets The Ogress in a lock-up."

"A swift knee to the stomach and Strong is staggered."

"The Ogress hits Strong with the Organ Grinder and it looks like it's all over."

"She covers Strong and … one … two … three. She's done it! The Ogress has won!"

Walking back to the locker room, I caught a glimpse of Moolah as she sneers at me and I shrug her off, focusing on getting into some clean clothes and going back to the hotel. I change and walk out of the dressing room with my bag slung over my shoulder.

"Good work out there, Kirby."

I recognise the voice and turn to see André, "Thank you, Drey."

"Moolah, doesn't seem to like you girls."

"We're stealing the hag's time in the sun. She always hates people who do that, even if she brings them in. I'll see you soon Drey."

"See you soon, Kirby."

I start walking back to the hotel when I start hearing a voice behind me, gradually getting closer.

"Hey, Miss, I think you dropped this." A distinctly masculine voice called out.

I turned around to see what the person wanted. To my surprise they had picked up my wallet, "Huh, I didn't feel it fall out of my pocket, thank you."

The man handed it to me before introducing himself, "Paul Orndorff. I saw your match earlier, you're fast for a giant, tough too."

"Thank you, Mr Orndorff."

He looked over his shoulder, "Oh, well, I have to go, Piper's waiting for me."

"Uh well, bye Mr Orndorff."

He left without another word and I unzipped my bag slightly to place my wallet inside, zipping it back up and continuing back to the hotel. I spent the night in a cramped hotel room and went to the gym the next morning.

Setting myself up at a heavy bag and practicing as per usual, no interruptions, no one else near by to talk to.

It was as if my mind just drifted away and I went into this mental fog, no gloves on but punching as if I did, breaking through the skin on my knuckles and only stopping after I noticed smears of blood on the heavy bag.

I wiped it down and bandaged my knuckles before moving on to doing push ups, lunges, squats and other exercises that wouldn't leave me covered in blood.

I was alone for the rest of the day, so I ordered some pizza (simple, pepperoni) and relaxed in the hotel, I pulled out a sketch book from my suitcase and began sketching.

I didn't plan on sketching anything too important so I just went with what was on my mind, which happened to be Roddy, Jeez it's like I'm becoming emotionally attached to this idiot.

When I see him next I'll give him the drawing if I have it with me. I close the sketchbook and go back to the gym for around an hour, before coming back to the hotel and getting some rest.

I woke up the next morning (January 9th) and had a day much the same as the last, got up, did my morning routine, went to the gym, came back, ordered Chinese food and started drawing. It was just a shitty little thing, but once again, the Rowdy one came to mind.

What is it with Scottish men and me, is it because I'm a quarter Scottish, is it maybe because I believe in the folk tales and stories of old, of knights on white steeds, saving fair maidens and living happily ever after, while the monsters they kill or maim lie in a pool of their own blood and wish they could've had a different life?

I have no idea, and the idea of my own mind comparing me with those monsters makes me regret ever reading those stories while growing up, rather I should have stuck my head into scientific textbooks instead of tales of heroism and fantastical ghouls, then I would have never become and wrestler or met the amazing people in my life.

I look back down at the paper and decide to let Roddy have two final full page drawings on the other side of the sketches I've already drawn of him, I add in a small note on the page under a picture of Roddy that Sam had found.

The more I looked at the drawings and that lone picture, the more I realised the small details of Roddy's features, the strong jaw with a cleft chin, his hazel eyes? or are they dark blue? either way they intrigue me. And that musculature, Roddy's not slim but not a big man either, he's at that almost perfect weight to body fat ratio. Good lord, listen to me calling … Piper, Roddy, Him, perfect. I think I want to be sick, just to be rid of those thoughts.

Right as I run into the small bathroom I hear a commotion in the hallway and someone being thrown or more accurately, hurled into the other side of the bathroom wall. I take a deep breath, re-fix my mask into it's usual position and dart out into the corridor, right as the commotion ends.

The obvious victim of the bout was on the floor face down with a long, not to deep cut down the back of their left leg and was breathing heavily when I reached them.

"Woah, hey, hey buddy." I whispered to them in an effort to calm them.

"Kirby?"

FUCK

…

That Glaswegian accent, fuck, He's not even supposed to be in town, or is he?

"Piper?!" I whisper-yelled, more to myself than to him.

"Hey…" his voice trailed off, I heaved him over my shoulder and went back into my hotel room, tossing him down on the only bed and grabbing his left foot, reaching over to my suitcase and getting my personal first aid kit, nothing too fancy, some bandages, plasters, the bare essentials. I cleaned the cut and bandaged it, taping the bandage in place.

I glanced up from Roddy's leg and saw that he had passed out, "Shit." I muttered to myself, louder than I thought and his eyes flickered open.

"Kirby? Is that you?" His voice weak but still understandable.

I stood there, frozen to the spot, unable to move, I wanted to cry as I realised how badly he had been beaten up, his eyebrow cut, coming close to his eye, his hairline a mix of matted brown hair and blood that was starting to coagulate and then I started to notice more things wrong with Roddy's visage.

His shirt (a Piper classic, yellow with a wild cat graphic) was torn in several places, showing bruises and nicks in his flesh. His kilt, however, was fully intact, including his belt and sporran, though all of it was scuffed with little scratches, but no cuts.

"Kirby? Kirby talk to me, please?" He spoke so carefully and it broke me.

I dropped to my knees, weeping, and Roddy shot to his feet, before dropping down on his left side and leaning on the bed, getting only a couple of steps closer to me.

"Kirby, are you okay?"

"Roddy, look at ya," I took a deep breath in, "How can you be so beat up and worried about me? How is that possible?"

"Kirby? look at ya, you're crying over me? I thought you didn't care about me that much?"

I wiped the tears from my face and got Roddy back on the bed.

"Stay there, Piper."

"Oh, feisty."

"Roddy! Stay on the bed and don't move."

"Yes Ma'am."

I trudged into the bathroom and ran a long cold shower, and I heard him move off the bed before swearing and sitting back on the bed.

"I thought I said, DON'T MOVE Roddy!"

"Alright, alright. … feisty"

After the shower, I dressed in the bathroom after drying myself off and exited the room. I instantly noticed a sleeping Piper.

"I guess I'll sleep on the floor then."

"C'mere." He lazily waved his arm to try and beckon me over.

"No, Roddy, get some rest."

"Come here and get in the bed." He rolled over and picked up the duvet, lackadaisically blowing a joking kiss in my direction.

"Jesus, Roddy, fine."

I climbed into the bed and felt Roddy's arms curl around my waist and his face between my shoulder blades.

"Rod, get off."

"Wha'?"

"Get off of me."

"Why?"

"Aren't you married, get off."

"if I was married, there would be a ring on my finger," He waved his left hand in front of my face, "No ring, no wife."

"Oh. Still, get off."

"Now, would that be 'get off' in the, leave me alone, way or the 'get off' in the, I love you take me now, way." The latter a clear joke but it annoyed me even more.

"Leave me alone, Roddy."

He slid his arms off and rolled to face the other way.

"Small bed, Kirby."

"I wasn't expecting company, Piper."

"Your tattoos are nice."

"Sleep, Piper."

"I'm just saying."

"Roddy, you are injured, sleep."

"I looked through your sketchbook earlier, y'know, when you were in the shower, just flicked through it, and wow, you're a great artist."

"For the love of God, Roddy! would you please just get some sleep."

"Alright!, alright. No need to yell."

"One more word and I'm chucking you out the nearest window."

We both fell silent and managed to get some sleep, it wasn't until sunrise that either one of us awoke. As I stirred from my slumber I was face to face with the Scottish idiot. I yelped and, without realising his legs were intertwined with mine, fell off the bed with him falling on top of me, waking Roddy up in the process.

"Oh, well, morning sweetheart, did I wake ya."

"Rod, get ya damn 'Loch Ness Monster' away from me."

Rod's cheeks turned pink and he quickly looked down between our bodies before sheepishly standing up and hurrying to the bathroom, I took the chance to change into a graphic tee and some black jeans, not noticing that Piper had left the bathroom door wide open, until I heard his voice.

"Woah, so uh, all of you is bigger than normal?"

I yelped and threw one of my shirts at his face, before realising that I had thrown the shirt I was planning on wearing at him, "Wait, Roddy, I need that shirt."

He laughed before handing me back my shirt, "Uh, thank you … for …saving me last night."

"Were you even supposed to be in town?"

"Well no, but I …" He trailed off

"I can't hear you, Roddy?"

"It's nothing, really."

I continued on with my normal routine, mindful that Roddy was in the same room as me and injured. It wasn't until the phone rang that I had a problem, before I could reach the phone Roddy had already answered it.

"Who is this?"

I could hear a loud, angry voice on the phone and Piper got defensive.

"You think you're a hard man do ya?!"

Damien. That's got to be Damien, which means I am in some real trouble now. Thanks Piper, ya dafty.

"I'll get her to call ya back once you've calmed down."

He slammed the phone back into it's place and breathed out a hefty sigh.

"Kirby, is Damien your boyfriend?" He seemed instantaneously calm

I almost choked on air for a moment, "No! He's my manager, and he's like double my age. He's Vic," I paused for a moment, "He's my dad, as well as the other members of the D.O.D. We're not all his biological daughters though, just Vickie."

"So, he adopted you?"

"I guess you could say that." I avoided looking him in the eyes.

"Tell me the truth. Now!"

"Promise you won't tell anyone first."

"I won't tell a soul, now, why are you so, uptight, about who he is to you."

"First things first, my name isn't Kirby Lucifarian, it's actually Kirby Trevor."

"Oh, so Damien's not you're adoptive father, either?"

"No, my real parents are Heaven and Eric Trevor. Damien's Vickie's dad and only Vickie's dad."

"Are either one of your parents giants? or is it just you?"

"Just me, the closest person to me in height, family-wise was my uncle Rory. He's the reason I have the tattoo on my wrist."

I walked up to Piper and showed him the 'R' tattooed on my right wrist.

"So, he passed away?"

"Yeah. He died, eleven, no no, twelve years ago now, when I was Seventeen, My uncle Vaughn died a couple months later, he's why I have the lighter on my left arm, my uncle Vaughn was best known for being, in the nicest terms, a layabout smoker, and the smoke took him in the end."

"So, you have a lighter to remember a man who died by smoking?"

"Dark, I know, but uncle Vaughn would've laughed at it. Erik laughed at it when I explained it to him."

"Eric, your dad?"

"No, no, Erik, with a 'K', my old tag partner before I joined the D.O.D. I think you would've liked him."

"Really, now why would I like a guy I know nothing about?"

"Well, Erik's Scottish, He's from Edinburgh. He's tall-ish, then again I am a giant, so who am I to say what's tall, he's six-foot-five. He played the bagpipes when he was younger, he quit playing when he was twenty-three, same year we lost the tag titles."

"Rough," He interrupted "Continue, please."

"Uh, well. Erik's strong, very strong, he would compete in the Highland games and well, … I guess back then I thought I'd never leave him, until Damien gave me an offer I couldn't refuse and I left him. I had a whole life with him planned inside my head and I left it all behind, for what, cramped hotel rooms and breakfasts with André."

"You had breakfast with André the giant and you didn't tell me … You, You had a good Scottish man, and you left him, for," He gestured to the room, "all this?"

"Well I jus-"

"No," He held my jaw and looked me straight in the eyes, "You had a life, a man who obviously a close relationship with you, and you gave it up for breakfasts with André and shitty hotel rooms."

"I know I'm stupid."

"But you're not stupid, you saved me, I could have died in that hallway and you brought me in here, you stopped that bastard from killing me. I could kiss you."

"Please don't."

Sorry for cliff-hanger ending, but … END OF BLOODY, BEATEN, BRUISED or MAXIMUM EFFORT.

[silver-wield]

tbh after playing the remake, I get the appeal of CA, because it's a familiar manic pixie dream girlfriend type love story. It even plays into the tragic boy loses girl trope which helps frame it as some grand romantic story. and yeah they're cute, and they definitely have a special connection. I think I could ship it if not for the whole rest of the story. It's a relationship that has the potential to become romantic, but it doesn't exist in a vacuum. 1/5

The remake is doing a great job on untangling a lot of the ambiguity the OG left us with. Yes, Cloud could develop feelings for Aerith and vice versa, but the remake is planting so many seeds that confirm he currently has feelings for Tifa (which she reciprocates) and I don't think it's possible for any feelings he might develop for Aerith to overcome these feelings he has harboured since childhood. 2/5

Unfortunately those feelings are something he cannot fully understand because of his comprimised mental state. But you can clearly see that his deep affections for Tifa and desire to protect her stay with him despite that (as can Aerith). The problem with the OG (other than having to potray this incredibly complex subversive nuanced story through text and polygons) is that the LS scene recontextualize so much of who Cloud is, but by that time people had already made their conclusions. 3/5

With the remake you can see them trying to fix this by having a constant thread of romantic undertones to all of cloti's interactions. The CA relationship meanwhile is potrayed with these moments that play into romantic tropes and expectations. The bridge scene is flashy and grand and draws the attention, but it doesn't carry the substance that a single hand-clech does. 4/5

It's meant to be a smokescreen to the real story - just as Cloud is not the hero you think he is, the love story is also not the one you think it is. And that's what makes FF7 so great. It's all about the subversions of what you expect - it's about the truth underneath these grand and compelling illusions that is complicated and real but still just as beautiful. 5/5

Okay, first off I don’t see how anyone can play Remake with Cloud being biggest mood around Aerith and find that appealing. Personally I think it’s the most toxic and harmful behaviour in the entire game when he’s alone with her and she’s literally trying to force him to act like her dead boyfriend. There is zero appeal in that and it’s not cute how she behaves, it’s arrogant and self serving. Like I said in a different post (or maybe a tweet) both Sephiroth and Aerith use Cloud to fulfill their own selfish desires. Sephiroth needs Cloud to destroy the planet by getting him the black materia, and Aerith wants Cloud to emulate Zack so she can fool herself into believing he didn’t die. In both cases what Cloud wants doesn’t even factor into things. That harmful dynamic doesn’t give them a special relationship. It mirrors Cloud’s relationship with Sephiroth in that it hurts him. Aerith and Sephiroth are two sides of a coin and the whole isn’t anything that benefits Cloud. Even after they’re both dead they continue to harm him through their obsession with him. It’s only at the end of AC when they’re both truly gone from his life completely that he’s able to smile and be at peace. He has no stalkers in DC and that’s why he’s so cheerful. He gets to live happily with Tifa and not worry about ghosts coming after him. It has zero potential to become anything because to make that a thing, you need to totally destroy everything else about the story and characters themselves. You have to take away Zack being Cloud’s best friend and saviour, at which point he’s just dead. You have to take away Tifa being his motivation to become a soldier, at which point he’s dead cause Sephiroth still comes to Nibelheim and burns it. Point is, there is no way that dumdum dinghy is possible without removing Cloud and most of his personality from FF7, at which point he’s just a pretty face, so people should just go write AU fanfiction and admit they wanna bang the pretty boy and not deal with his canon personality and story. 

There wasn’t any ambiguity in OG because 7R is FF7 and the devs have said multiple times the story is the same as before. The problem back then was a poor translation, bad advertising and people refusing to follow the narrative to its proper conclusion. Cloud at no point in OG or any of the compilation could develop feelings because it’s shown in the entire compilation that he has always and will always love Tifa. Before Crisis he loves Tifa. Crisis Core he loves Tifa. OG he loves Tifa. AC he loves Tifa. DC he loves Tifa and Remake he loves Tifa. There’s zero room for anything with Aerith because his entire character arc is consumed with his desire for Tifa. It’s literally shown in the damn game that he’s in love with her. So, no, there never was any chance for Aerith, and I’m tired of people trying to entertain one by saying “if she lived”. Sorry, not sorry, if she lived Cloud is still in love with Tifa, so he never would, could or want to develop any feelings for Aerith. 

Cloud loves Tifa. It’s the goddamn plot. 

There isn’t any problem with the lifestream scene being the big reveal at that point in that game. The problem, again, is that people refused to follow the narrative to its logical conclusion and got hung up on their dumbass headcanon about Aerith. The entire premise of the game is built on illusion vs reality and yet some people still refuse to wake up and see reality. The game spells it out for everyone. They got so triggered over her dying that they acted like the game ended at that point instead of it carrying on and reaching the actual true culminating arc where we find out Cloud wasn’t himself this entire time. People seem to think Aerith dying is the plot and that she’s the main character or something. It’s Cloud’s game. The plot revolves around him. That’s why the lifestream scene is the apex of it. 

It’s Cloud’s story, not Aerith’s. 

I’ve pointed out several times how Aerith’s optional scenes in Remake show that Cloud is barely even a fixture. Her language of flowers you barely have Cloud in shot while she’s doing all that talking. She’s basically talking to the player. Her optional dress scenes show the illusion for what it is. That bridge is tiny and yet in the red dress is looks like this massive structure. I laughed my ass off when I spotted it. The pink dresses perspective shortens drastically for each one, with the funeral dress having Cloud standing nearest to Aerith, so that one’s probably closer to reality than that ott scene with random fireworks and fans popping up from nowhere. Not to mention the fact Aerith’s entire figure is padded out to fill that dress and she’s got hair extensions in and a ton of make up and the ost is actually called a mess of makeup or something like that and not a certain gaudiness. I mean, Madam M tried to turn Aerith into Tifa to win the bride contest and beat Sam. The game makes things very clear that the illusion is Aerith and the reality is Tifa, and players can’t turn Aerith into Tifa to make Cloud notice her no matter how hard they wanna believe they can. Her resolution literally has her repeating her OG lines from the GS about how Cloud isn’t himself, but she also arrogantly assumes he fell in love with her or would because she’s arrogant. It’s a character trait that again mirrors Sephiroth’s arrogance. It’s what gets them both killed in the end. Aerith underestimates Sephiroth and Sephiroth underestimates Cloud. 

And we already saw what Cloud had to say about her declaration cause he only ever refers to her as a friend and didn’t show any romantic behaviour when he rescued her. Unless “Yep” is the height of romance now. It’s not that the romance isn’t the one you think it is. It’s that it’s the one you ignored and acted like wasn’t important because you hate the heroine. Tifa and Cloud are together from start to finish, but because people decided the pink girl was more important they acted like Tifa had no right to what was hers from the beginning. She didn’t get between Cloud and Aerith. There never was any Cloud and Aerith. It was always Tifa. She just took what was always hers and kept it. 

Anyone who doesn’t understand that should try playing the game cause it’s clear they didn’t.

[shibalen]

H-hi I would like to request for Haikyuu and Yona of the dawn and um music box and jewellery box. I'm female, 18 y/o. My height is 172 cm. My hair is black and a bit below my shoulders. My skin is somewhat fair/yellowish. My eyes are dark brown and i wear glasses. My zodiac sign is Gemini and my MTBI test is ISFP-T. I'm still very confused about my sexuality so I'm okay with either and i never were in a relationship before. My hobbies are listening to music and watching anime. (1/2)🌼

Other than that, my hobbies change from time to time. I'm very kind and am very good at comforting. I'm very shy but open up very slowly to someone. I'm not that talkative. I'm very protective towards my friends. I'm very anxious, oversensitive and very insecure. I also lack a lot of self esteem. But even if i have flaws i try my best amd know that my friends are always there for me. I also get easily embarrassed. Thank you *bows* (2/2) 🌼

♡︎ matchup for 🌼anon

hi there! thanks for your patience, and i hope you enjoy your matches!

haikyuu: i match you with . . .

hinata shoyo !!

• isfp-t's tend to be sensitive and gentle as well as intense and experimental. i think you're a good balance for Hinata because you'd keep his feet on the ground while he would help you be more confident about yourself. believe me, this ray of sunshine would adore you to the moon and back !!

• he becomes more observant thanks to you as he learns better how to keep his voice down and excitability under control so you wouldn't get overwhelmed. he loves you and only wishes for your comfort ♡︎

• you came to cheer on Kenma and Kuroo actually for a Nekoma vs Karasuno practice match the first time you two met. After the match Hinata was looking for his friend when he spotted you being surrounded by tall strangers and looking rather anxious.

• his instincts made him jump in and try to get them to stop bothering you, trying to be as intimidating as possible. but then you reached out and said they were first years just asking for directions (・∀・)

• it was an honest mistake, you assured him and found his kindness touching despite the truth. your mutual friends helped you feel more comfortable around this ball of energy, and, though you had already graduated by then, he was able to confess his feelings.

• he's talkative enough for the both of you and will happily do speaking in your stead if that's what you want until you become accustomed to the situation. always encourages and supports you no matter what!

• doesn't understand why you'd feel insecure because he's in love with you for who you are, but can relate to the feeling of inferiority nevertheless. he's your biggest cheerleader and admires your determination to keep doing your best! honestly, you're his inspiration.

• he's delighted to say the least when you begin opening up to him. knows better than to pressure you but sometimes he can't help but to cheer you on "uwah, your laugh is so pretty, y/n! i wanna hear it more!" – "i like this artist too! you have such a great taste in music!"

• thinks it's awesome sauce that you switch between hobbies. you get to try out new things all the time, and whenever you show/tell him about what you started you can see stars in his eyes. it comes as no surprise he's tried getting you into volleyball too.

• you'd think with all the volleyball going on in his head Hinata's never been in a relationship before either. well, you are absolutely correct. you're just two awkward dorks in love trying your best.

• Hinata would be a stuttering mess at first, his hands sweating buckets as he tries to take hold of yours. however, once he understands you're also shy he makes an effort to appear more confident.

• brags about you to everyone because he needs them to know how incredible you are.

• one time when he was showing you volleyball he praised you for an amazing receive so many times that your face overheated and you hid in the corner from embarrassment. bby was so worried he'd said something wrong that he went crying to Suga. "i broke y/n!!" ｡ﾟ(*´□`)ﾟ｡

• tol girlfriend makes his heart go doki doki. loves that you accept his height as well (pre-timeskip at least). will give you piggybacks to train but to also have fun with you. post-timeskip you're the same height which means he lifts you up and carries you a lot more to make up for lost time (•̀ᴗ•́)و

• for dates you'd have, for example, anime marathons (his favorites are shounen, sports, and comedy, surprise!), go to adventure parks and conventions and shopping at music stores.

♫︎ music box

— Someone To You by BANNERS

— Sunkissed by khai dreams

— Talk Too Much by COIN

— Appreciated by Rixton

— Magic Shop by BTS

♡︎ runner up: Tadashi Yamaguchi

⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:⠀ *⋆.*:･ﾟ .: ⋆*･ﾟ: .⋆

akatsuki no yona: i match you with . . .

kija !!

• all right, i have my reasons! Kija may be quite headstrong and startle you with that trait sometimes but he is also extremely caring and attentive—it goes well with your kind and shy personality, he finds those traits the absolute cutest. it also squeezes his heart how protective you are of your loved ones ♡︎

• this dear boy invests all of his emotions into everything he does so it's easy for him to get hurt. during times like these your presence and advice are the best remedies he could wish for. he seeks you out sometimes even not registering it himself.

• you'd known each other for a long time, having grown up in the same village, but hardly interacted due to Kija always being secluded and treated as a god. once he was escaping the women who were trying to get to him, and met you at the edge of the village. you offered to hide him despite knowing better.

• you stayed on his mind ever since and whenever he'd see you he called your name for attention. the word about you two got around fast but you weren't liking the attention. Kija just wanted to be with you without everyone poking their nosees into it.

• so when Yona, Hak and Yoon arrived at last Kija insisted you'd come with them, swearing to protect you from all harm!

• it saddens him that you don't have a lot of self-esteem. he easily goes into rants whenever someone else says something even slightly bad about you. will throw hands with that person regardless of who they are, don't test him. you might want to step in though if starts turning into a scene.

• anyway, he won't let you forget how much potential you have. he'll stop you the moment you try to put yourself down and lists all the great things you've done. he remembers your smallest actions and words of kindness and makes sure you do as well.

• Kija seeks your approval like a puppy. whenever he wins a competition against Hak or does anything even slightly praiseworthy he turns to you with sparkling eyes. lighting a fire? yep. cooking? uh-uh. waking up earlier than Hak? most definitely. "did you see that, y/n? amazing, right??"

• very blushy about anything publically affectionate, but if you're feeling anxious any situation at all he will gently make sure you know he's there for you. tenderly touching you or whispering "it's all right. you'll be okay", anything to help put your mind at ease.

• not to be nsfw or anything but please run your fingers through his hair and over his scars and tell him how proud you are of him. he will melt into your touch ｡ﾟ°(❁ᴗ͈ˬᴗ͈)

• it's so adorable though that you can compliment each other like there's no tomorrow but the moment you recieve one ever you'll turn into flustered little bundles ♡︎ it's quite fun for the rest of the gang to watch as you lowkey argue over who has prettier eyes.

• your dates include exploring around towns and villages, picnics by lakes and rivers, dancing to the music in city centres and studying new things such as a place or language—anything new that you're curious about!

𑁍 jewellery box

— favourite memory with you:

the time both of you got lost in a cave and separated from others. you were scared and worried whether or not you'd make it out yet still put on a strong appearance for Kija's sake. admittedly, he tried acting tough too although there were bugs everywhere and he was freaking out. you, on the other hand, were so gentle with him and joked around lightly to ease his mind. it wasn't a particularly the happiest memory but it's his favourite because it always reminds him what a loyal, kind spirit you are.

— favourite activity to do together:

he loves going exploring with you! it teaches him new things about the world but also you, what you're facinated or repulsed by, what are things that make you laugh or sad. overall Kija is very big on quality time so don't be surprised when he asks if you'd like to go on a walk or teach him how to do something.

— favourite place to kiss you:

forehead, forehead, forehead, maybe cheeks too. a kiss doesn't come the most naturally for Kija, and you both prefer to show your affections through other actions. but a forehead kiss is sweet and innocent. he likes giving them to you when you're parting or saying goodnight/morning ♡︎

— favourite nicknames for you:

hmm, i think he'd be too shy to use anything but your name. BUT in the spur of the moment of complimenting you he easily describes you as cute, lovely, beautiful, enchanting, to name a few (・ωｰ)

— favourite thing about you:

if it comes down to it, it's your protectiveness and how much you care for others that makes Kija head-over-heels smitten with you. he's the same, so knowing you two share the same values makes him incredibly happy as it brings you even closer together ♡︎ though if you're too nice to anyone he'll get jelly like a little doggy and whine

♡︎ runner up: Yoon

thank you for requesting, dear! i had fun finding songs for the music box ( ^ω^) stay well and healthy, you are important ♡︎

[acim]

Burden, Labels, and Throwing the Towel In

I can vividly remember the exact moment that I tried to kill myself. I stood in my room at my dresser, with a bottle of pills, alone, crying, inconsolable. I had switched out the pills in a vitamin bottle with Tylenol PM, I didn’t want my mom to find out what I had done. As if she wouldn’t notice her dead son. But I didn’t think of that, I just wanted to waste away alone, never to be a burden again. And so I swallowed all of the pills in 6 mouthfuls, each one more painful than the next. I past out shortly after. I remember waking up on the bathroom floor, covered in vomit, my mother banging on the door, before I slipped away again. I finally woke up in a hospital bed and was transferred to a psych ward shortly thereafter.

Unsurprisingly, this was a difficult experience, but also a transformational one. I would not be who I am today if not for this dark moment. It was sobering. In the hospital, I saw stranger-peers in some of the greatest emotional pain I had ever seen; I heard stories that emptied me and made me feel absolutely hollow. I realized that although I have had a tough childhood, many - even those in my family - have had it much worse. This brought myself into a new perspective that has allowed me to forgive those that had failed me in my time of need, as I know they did so not out of spite, but out of inability or ignorance.

While in the hospital, I wanted nothing more than to comfort each of these people physically, through a hug, a handshake, a hand on the shoulder, something small but significant. But we were not allowed to connect physically unfortunately, out of the ward’s fear of bodily harm. So instead, we connected emotionally through our unity in labels, we were the mentally ill.

Specifically, I was “generally anxious” whatever that vague label means. I’ve never been comfortable with that label, and have always felt it as something I had to hide. I thought people would hate me or reject me if they knew that I was “weak”. And I’ve tried to unpack that and get down to the root cause of it, whether that be masculinity, shame, or saving face; I’m unsure. However, I do know that it partially comes down to never wanting to be a burden to anybody. Which is a very common worry of most people, but it’s such a weird thing to worry about when you really think about it. I love people “burdening” me in ways that I’d worry about. I love people venting to me and sharing with me things that they hold sensitively. But yet we all still worry about it.

“I should ask them to hang out, but I know they’re busy”

“I already texted him, I can’t double text him”

“I probably am boring to him”

And maybe partially this stems from the innate fear of rejection, especially by people we hold near and dear. We can never truly get away from that fear or rejection until we are truly connected with each other, as we cannot know what we are separate from. However, we can take action to try and get over this barrier; because in reality, by being a “burden” we are unburdening each other. We are helping them through bringing them closer to ourselves, and they are helping us by bring ourselves closer to them.

And that is a Miracle.

So be bold, be a burden.

Although my previous label of Generalized Anxiety brought negative emotions, my new label of ADHD has brought untold unity and connection. This is not only because of the physical effects of the medication, which allow me to obtain the clarity and motivation to think this deeply and write, but also because of the unity I find in the label. I find comfort that other people have felt this way before, that I am not insane, I am not alone. No one wants to feel alone and separate, wholly loveless. But yet we often push ourselves away from others through seeking ways to diminish this absence of love. We are self-sabotaging. One of my favorite quotes in the Course is about this:

“Yet the ego, though encouraging the search for love very actively, makes one proviso; do not find it. Its dictate, then, can be summed up simply as: “Seek and do not find.””

There is so much to unpack here between the futility of actively looking for Love -- when you can only receive what you give out -- to the temptation that seeking has over finding -- that’s the fun part we love to do after all; the grass is always greener on the other side. But, I want to focus in on how this quote relates to labels for me.

Labels, while they cannot create unity within a group, tend to also create disparity outside of a group. Although at our very core, we are all the same, we do have significant differences in our behaviors, actions, and thoughts. To find like-minded people is pure joy; it is like a breath of fresh air when you can talk to someone and really feel understood. And labels help us quickly see where those people may be, they help us Seek.

“Democrat” “Conservative” “Gay” “Christian” “SJW”

And this is not a bad thing at all, this gives us a quick way to bring each other closer, and that is never a bad thing. However, a fine balance, as always, is needed. Trekking too far into a label can create this “us vs. them” mentality. This happens particularly awfully when we start to identify more with the concept of the group than with the group itself, and this is where we give in to the ego and lose the ability to Find. We then begin to be closed-minded and the people and ideas that oppose your concepts are now hurtful because they also oppose you, as you have separated yourself and become the concept. You cannot be both the concept and the group, for one is self-centered while the other is selfless-centered. If, rather, you can identify as the group, then you can more easily accept conceptual dissonances and grow from that acceptance. You are then less likely to Attack and Judge others based on your ideology because you do not feel the need to guard it so vehemently, as it is not yourself.

So always remember that when you are connecting with people, you are not connecting with their ideas, but with them.

One specific label that has brought me a lot of agita over the past week or so is teacher. I think this is partially self-inflicted from me thinking I’m different than everyone else; and I’m trying to get into right-minded think in that regard, but uhh… we not there yet. At the same time, it is intrinsically true that I am not the concept of a teacher, although that doesn’t mean that I am not like teachers. Meaning, while the description of character and passions/desires of a teacher may not follow my own - I do not have passion for youth, or for creating great lessons, or for education in general - I am like my coworkers in that I do care for my students greatly. I can do this as a job temporarily, but I can not make it long-term. It is both a disservice to my students who deserve someone that can and will provide for their needs (especially for my students that have extreme needs that I cannot even begin to provide, as I am not whole). It is also a disservice to me for not following the path I have been set on, and for not prioritizing my mental health, which has struggled as a result of teaching the past few months.

I forced this new decision to become a teacher so hard. I knew this job was not for me, but I squashed that thought, I did not listen to Myself or God, both of which tried in vain to guide me. I also went into it for the wrong reasons: a desire to move on and not truly live in the present (Seek but do not find), a desire for a better schedule, a desire to be someone I’m not - I can lose myself in others that are close to me like I said - a desire for a “better” job. I will get on the right path again by leaving education quickly and going back into the medical field in some way. What way, I am unsure of yet. I am confident though that this is the correct step back onto my path.

This is a recurring theme for myself and many others as well: we force ourselves into who we think we are or who we want to be rather than allowing ourselves to be who we truly are. And that’s such a tricky problem to tackle, it’s so big and nebulous. But I think the best way to do this is to let go of the past - this frees us from who we think we are - and the future - this frees us from who we want to be - and focus on the present - this sets us up to be who we truly are. This is not to say that we should barrel forward like a bull through a china shop, never looking back or forward. But instead, we should be observant of our past actions, and try to understand the cause that underlies our non-harmonious actions through reflection. And that reflection is the keypiece that brings the past into the present and makes it so fundamentally different than the past.

[missmeikakuna]

Chad and the Incel Chapter 8

Rated: M

Fandom: Original Fiction (but inspired by the Virgin vs Chad meme)

Relationship type: Male/Male with a bit of Female/Female (the lesbians are adorable, btw) and unrequited Male/Female (in other words, the guys are bisexual).

Description: Chad is, well, a Chad, or at least he looks like one. He’s got his sights set on the cool nerd Becky and enlists the help of her shy incel ex-friend Noah, offering to help him get the gorgeous girl (Stacy) he desperately wants. Noah is reluctant to help, believing that he will be stuck in inceldom forever, but Chad’s interest in his life gives him hope. When their plans go awry, they start turning their romantic attention towards each other.

Content Warning: Given the subject matter, you can guess that this story has dark themes in it, such as suicide and self-harm (plus the mental health issues that often cause them), sexism, slut-shaming homophobia, biphobia and transphobia. There is also swearing and some mentions of sex but nothing too explicit (hence the M rating as opposed to an Explicit rating).

8th Post: [LifeFuel]  My crush likes me back

Noah rapidly raised and dropped his laptop, standing up and turning away from it. After remembering the price of the thing, he checked it for damages. Upon seeing no problems, he sighed and sat back down.

He put his headphones back on and played the game again. All the cartoonish gun sounds couldn’t drown out the voice in the back of his mind.

What’s with you lately?

He chose to ignore the voice but it only got louder, and as it got louder it pushed him to play harder, firing at everyone. Yes, even his teammates. He wasted bullets on players that couldn’t be harmed by him.

After his team lost the game, he slammed the headphones against the desk. Once again, he sheepishly checked for any damages and found none.

He leaned against the back on his chair and looked up at the ceiling.

The voice had disappeared but was replaced with an image of Chad smirking on the ceiling. He scowled at the image in his mind, only to swallow air when it was replaced with Chad’s fish-out-of-water face.

‘You’re… hot…’

Noah felt a twinge in his heart and throbbing down below. His shoulders became heavy as he unzipped his pants. As per usual, he pictured smoke rising from his hand and tried to ignore it.

After washing his hands, he picked up his phone, scrolled through the contacts and almost deleted Chad’s. His thumb hovered over the screen until he decided to keep it. The voice came back.

You should get a picture of him for the contact.

The thought put even more weight onto his shoulders. As if he was going to do that. It wasn’t like he missed him all that much.

He lied down on his bed, staring at the screen and trying to avoid the contacts app, though naturally his eyes kept going back to that little address book.

He groaned. ‘Fine,’ he hissed to himself. He sent Chad a message.

How are you? Been a while.

Chad replied surprisingly quickly, causing Noah to fumble with his phone after almost dropping it in shock.

Yeah, it has. I’ve been good. I need to go to bed soon so I’ll talk to you at school.

Chad kept his promise and chatted to him during class. At first, the conversation was slow and awkward, both boys trying to tiptoe around the issue of Chad calling Noah hot.

The conversation began to centre around sports, with Chad trying to convince Noah to watch one football game, something Noah had not done since he was eight. He reluctantly agreed on the condition that he watch Chad play first.

At football practice that afternoon, Noah leaned forward with his hands maintaining a strong grip on the metal bar in front of the bleachers. His eyes never left Chad as the player threw the ball with one of his muscular arms.

When practice ended, Noah congratulated Chad on doing well before sneaking out of the bleachers and shuffling to his car. On his way home, he saw a little NFL shop about to close for the day.

He rushed in and bought a generic poster with the NFL logo and a picture of a football. At home he blu-tacked the poster on the wall behind his bed’s headboard. 

He went onto his laptop and looked for ways to torrent NFL games. Instead of studying he ended up watching one and a half games until he fell asleep. His eyes subconsciously sought out the most handsome players and he even found a guy who looked like Chad. 

During the moments the players stopped, fantasies danced around his mind about what Chad would do with him in that uniform of his. At first, these fantasies were purely carnal, though they gradually changed into something a little different.

For instance, he imagined Chad running to the bleachers to kiss him after scoring a touchdown. He thought of the boy training him in football, complimenting his skills. He even made up a scenario in which he tended to Chad’s injuries.

After that last daydream, one question popped into his head.

The fuck is wrong with you?

He woke up late in the morning but couldn’t bring himself out of bed. He just lied there thinking about what those fantasies meant, what any fantasy he’d ever had about a guy meant. It wasn’t like he was gay. As much as women frustrated him to the point of stirring hatred within him, he still wanted them. No, he needed them.

His heart leapt in shock and something that totally wasn’t joy when he heard his phone buzz. It was a message from Chad.

Where are you?

Noah spent half a minute coming up with an excuse.

Sick.

Chad replied with some sad emojis like the normie he was.

I’ll meet you after school to check up on you.

Noah groaned.

You want to catch something?

Chad’s response sent a wave of warmth throughout Noah’s body.

I don’t, but I’ll feel worse if I don’t see for myself that you’re okay.

Noah smiled as he got up and made himself a meal he had learnt how to make from an anime. After finishing off his lunch, he went back onto his laptop and debating (or, to be more accurate, arguing) with someone on an anime forum.

Chad did what he said he was going to do, and quicker than expected. When Noah opened the door for him, Chad asked him how he was.

Noah coughed. ‘Good. I feel better now. You wait in my room and I’ll make us some coffee. You okay with having it black?’ 

‘Yeah, but aren’t you still sick? I should make it.’

‘It’s fine, really.’ Noah nudged him into his room.

Chad spun around on the chair by the desk. As he stopped the chair, his hand slipped on the mouse, moving it enough to wake the laptop from its screensaver mode. A tab showed a forum debate entitled ‘Are Traps Gay?’

When Noah entered the room with two cups of coffee, Chad asked him, ‘What are traps? I’m guessing you’re not talking about stuff used for hunting, unless hunting’s a gay activity now.’ This caused Noah to spill some of the coffee as he slammed the mugs on the desk.

‘N-none of your business.’ Chad took out his phone. ‘Wait!’ Noah shouted as he closed the door behind him. He whispered, ‘Okay, so, uh, in anime there are these guys called ‘traps’ who look like girls.’

Chad joined him in speaking with a hushed voice. ‘Sounds like an insult.’

‘H-how?’

‘Well, a trap means you’re, I don’t know, tricking someone, right? Are these anime dudes who look like chicks tricking people or something? Or is the word a coincidence or something like that?’

‘Well, uh, no, I mean, I think the word comes from that, but, uh…’ Noah looked around the room for a way to change the subject but found nothing. The whispering ended. ‘It-It’s a compliment nowadays!’

‘Really? Doesn’t sound like one,’ Chad said as he shrugged his shoulders.

‘The question isn't really about those guys anyway, so it doesn’t matter if they’re ‘tricking’ you or not. It’s more about if you’re gay for liking them. They’re, uh, popular with dudes.’

‘Sounds pretty gay to me.’

‘It’s not! Absolutely not! You think some faggot would be into anime characters who look like girls? No, it’s the realm of the straight men. Only straight men can appreciate these beauties.’

Chad stood up and leaned closer to Noah. ‘So you’re into dudes?’

‘No, it doesn’t count, it doesn’t-’

‘Would you fuck a real-life guy in a dress?’

‘Uh… n-no…’

Chad smirked as some mysterious, much more confident force possessed him and made words he never expected to say spew from his mouth.  Perhaps it was Noah’s relatable nervousness that made him feel oddly safe. He put his hand between Noah’s shoulder and his neck, lightly rubbing the area.

‘Would you fuck me if I looked like a girl?’

Noah didn’t respond, at least verbally. He just stared at Chad, who leaned closer and drank in the delicious sound of his heartbeat.

The stare lasted a good twenty or so seconds before their bodies joined together in a heated kiss. As Noah panted with desire, the zest of ginger and the scent of honey from his lunch lit up Chad’s mind, as did his partner’s heartbeat, which continued to get louder and faster. Chad’s heart and breaths quickly matched him as he held his cheeks, his thumbs stroking the hair in front of his ears. He continued kissing him even as he started becoming more aware of what he was doing, as any fear he could possibly feel was replaced with the endorphins he usually got playing football.

Part of him had expected an overly slobbery kiss, so he grinned when he noticed that this wasn’t the one he was having. Noah’s lips were a little rough but Chad enjoyed every inch of them. Noah’s skin was hot and, in contrast with his lips, soft. 

He pushed Chad onto the chair and stuck his tongue in his mouth, reaching for the taller man’s coat to take it off. Chad shivered at this sudden display of dominance and helped him fling off the coat. Noah only let go of him to turn on the CD player and soon the sounds of their kiss were hidden under the swelling of a boisterous symphony. They moved to the bed, grasping at each other’s clothes to remove them as quickly as possible.

The air was filled with heavy breaths that gradually slowed down. The duo felt almost sick from the smell of the room. The CD player finished its current track before Noah turned it off. He turned until his back was facing Chad, who placed his hand on the shorter man’s hip.

‘How was it?’ he murmured. Noah shrugged, refusing to look at him and yet again focusing on his own hands as if smoke was emanating from them. ‘That bad, huh? Sorry, I’m new to this. That was my first time.’

Noah rolled back with the speed of a tumble dryer. ‘The fuck are you talking about? There’s no way you were a virgin. What about all those girls that throw themselves at you?’

‘What girls?’ 

Noah stared at Chad like the man was high. Chad stroked his hip with his thumb as he said, ‘And besides, even if I did sleep with girls, it’s not like that would prepare me to sleep with a guy. I doubt many girls would be interested in doing what you…’ He laughed nervously.

Noah covered his eyes with his bangs. ‘Oh. Yeah. Speaking of which, are you… sore?’

Chad shifted his butt on the bed. ‘A little. Maybe we should have done more prep.’ He reached underneath the sheets and pulled out a bottle. ‘This is pretty good stuff, though. And the condoms… why’d you have these on you?’

Noah gulped, staring at the ceiling, then the door, anything to prevent him from having to look at Chad.

‘In… in case I needed to use them… with a girl. I bought them when you made me think for a second that maybe I could actually get a girl.’

Chad sighed. ‘Yeah, so, uh, what exactly are we? I mean, are we… what’s it called… bisexual?’

Noah pulled the sheets up despite showing no shame a few minutes earlier. ‘No way,’ he said with a shake of the head like a dog leaving a bath. ‘This is… fucked. I shouldn’t have… we shouldn’t have… Let’s just forget about this. It never happened, alright?’

Chad dropped the bottle and looked down at the sheets with a frown. ‘Was I really that bad? Or couldn’t you picture me as a girl? Maybe you are straight after all-’

‘You were fine!’ Noah snapped. ‘And I didn’t imagine you as a girl. You were… okay. It felt good.’ He looked at the evidence of this: the condom in the bin. ‘It’s just that… my first time wasn’t supposed to be ‘okay’.’

‘What’d you expect it to be like? It’s not like either of us are very experienced.’

‘I don’t know. Just better. It almost feels like nothing happened. I mean, for Christ’s sake, I lost my virginity! That’s a big deal, isn’t it? It’s not like I can undo it.’ Noah tightened his grip on his sheets until his knuckles turned white. ‘So why don’t I feel any different?’

With another sigh Chad turned around and got off the bed. Unsure how to reply to that question, he asked Noah where the bathroom was but, before Noah could answer, they heard a knock on the door. 

‘Noah, are you decent?’ a feminine voice called out.

‘No!’

‘Well hurry up and get dressed. Family meeting.’

Noah looked from side to side in thought before shoving Chad in the closet and pulling the quilt over the sheets to hide the evidence. He picked up the clothes he wore from before and threw Chad’s clothes into the closet.

‘Family meeting? Since when do we have those?’

‘We do now! Your father and I can’t decide on dinner.’

Noah pulled his jeans up, trying to ignore the sudden stickiness of his underwear. ‘Well, decide for yourself! You don’t need me.’ Chad felt his heart twist but he focused on his task of putting clothes on while cramped in a closet. Noah threw a shirt on and opened the door just a little, not so much as to show what was on his bed.

His mother pinched her nose. ‘What’s that smell?’

‘Nothing! I’m sure it’s nothing.’

After hearing the door slam shut, Chad made his way out of the closet, picked up his bag and coat and snuck out of the room. He tiptoed through the living room. He locked eyes with Noah, who gave him a deer in the headlights look. His parents turned their heads and Chad ducked down behind the couch, holding his breath. His heart sped up as he crawled to the door. He looked at Noah one last time and put his hand on the door.

Noah looked in the opposite direction and yelled, ‘Did you see that? Mittens just jumped for no reason!’ Chad opened the door. ‘I think she saw a mouse!’ Chad closed the door behind him and slowly exhaled. 

Once the family meeting ended, Noah took to Incels.me and discovered that the website was gone. He was fuming when he learned that it was taken down. He searched around for a replacement and quickly found one. He joined it under a new username and began to write, changing Chad from a ‘he’ to an unnamed ‘she’.

Rotcel2003- [LifeFuel] My crush likes me back

Well, this is only half life fuel. On the one hand, I just slept with my crush. It was fairly good, and she’s pretty hot, but it wasn’t life-changing. It kind of makes me question why I was so obsessed with losing my virginity. Is this really the life of an ascended incel? I don’t know. 

I can’t help but wonder if it was worth doing stuff with her. I mean, what kind of femoid would be into me? She clearly has low standards to date a sub-3 like me. And it’s even weirder when you consider that it started with us talking about anime. She doesn’t even watch anime! Plus, we were talking about traps, not exactly prime normie material.

So yeah, I’m conflicted.

When Noah went back onto the post, he was shocked at the influx of replies calling him a bluepilled cuck and saying he was bragging. Someone even accused him of being a normie trying to pass himself off as an incel.

It was that night when Chad decided to look up this whole incel thing. He came across the same forum Noah visited and saw a post about a discussion of anime ‘traps’ leading to sex.

His fish-out-of-water eyes returned. 

[tespuco]

PotC Liveblog: Curse of the Black Pearl

CotBP is one of my ‘forever films’ for sure - every time I rewatch it I not only feel the same sense of wonder and delight as the first time but invariably discover new things to love and squee over as well. 

I would love to learn more about Elizabeth as a child: this lonely, solemn girl who feels something perverse in her thrill at pirate stories and gallows humor, yet who gravely takes on the duty of looking after young William Turner because she wants to be good, too. (@dollsome-does-tumblr‘s Elizabeth-centric, post-CotBP fic Shrouded Heart explores this ambivalence in her self-concept with heart-wrenching emotional realism)

Wow, Will was doomed from the start, wasn’t he? I would be too if I were a 12-year old piece of half-drowned human driftwood waking up to a miniature guardian angel who softly murmurs, “I’m watching over you” before I drift back into unconsciousness

Framing Elizabeth’s memory of seeing the Black Pearl and meeting Will as a dream, one that impels her to put on the medallion, suggests fate or some other supernatural influence at work - a nifty way for writers to sidestep accusations of Contrived Coincidences and call it Destiny instead!

Keira Knightley is so beautiful hELP

Awww, Will is so proud of his handiwork! It’s interesting because the film puts a fair amount of emphasis on it early on, his skill and pride in not just wielding swords but forging them - only to tell us later that he’s really a pirate by blood and at heart. I like it when fics like fried_flamingo & salr323′s At World’s End: Redux lean into Will’s identity as a blacksmith and extrapolate from it an affinity for land/earth/balance/creation as opposed to the sea’s wild potential for destruction. (He lost his father to the sea and to piracy; he never learned to love either.)

My god everyone’s layered in buttoned-up and corseted finery in the fucking TROPICS no wonder Elizabeth passed out (ngl despite the ‘Caribbean’ in the title and visiting the Disney ride in New Orleans Square, I remember stupidly assuming Port Royal was part of England, not Jamaica; at 9 yrs old my geography was shit and I had yet to learn what imperialism was ok)

“A ship with black sails that’s crewed by the damned and captained by a man so evil that hell itself spat him back out.”  shiver me timbers now that’s how you tell a ghost story

“If he were telling the truth, he wouldn’t have told us” has the same antimonious energy as Winnie-the-Pooh going, “Well, it’s a good thing I noticed it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have seen it”

This is definitely tmi but in retrospect the rescue scene played a formative part in my (bi)sexual awakening: for a long time my go-to pubescent fantasies involved near-drownings followed by hypersexualized resuscitation attempts and frantic uncomfortable sex on wet rocks in damp subterranean caves

Omg I just realized Elizabeth’s scene with Jack on the docks mirrors the one she had on deck Will in the flashback: a (wo)man overboard recovered, rescuer hovering over a supine body and fingering the pirate medallion around his/her neck, love at first sight

“One good deed is not enough to redeem a man of a lifetime of wickedness.” “Though it seems enough to condemn him.” Basically “no good deed goes unpunished” but with style

16 years later and the swordfight between Jack and Will holds up as an iconic example of swashbuckling fight choreo. I also love how the exchange establishes the Jack/Will dynamic: the former as a kind of ironic mentor (“Excellent form. But how’s your footwork?”), the latter as an unwilling pupil who nevertheless mostly plays along

“I practice with them three hours a day.” “You need to find yourself a girl, mate.” Raunchy Shakespearean-grade comedy at its finest (along with  “This sweet, proliferous bouquet that is Tortuga…What do you think?” “It’ll linger.”)

“This shot is not meant for you.” I love the hints we get of Jack’s darker side: he keeps his bitterness close and his grudges closer; for 10 years he saved that bullet for one man, refusing to expend it in any number of life-threatening situations in the interim; he drawls, “Worry about your own fortunes, gentlemen. The deepest circle of Hell is reserved for betrayers and mutineers,” like a witch uttering a curse. A dishonest man, methinks, would not feel the stab of betrayal so deeply.

The running joke of Will not getting recognized for his skills and earnest efforts is what makes Norrington’s parting words to him at the end so satisfying: “This is a beautiful sword. I would expect the man who made it to show the same care and devotion in every aspect of his life.” (NORRINGTON KNEW IT WAS HIM ALONG BUT WAS TOO JEALOUS TO EVER PRAISE HIM TO HIS FACE that petty little shit lmao)

I remember looking up the definition of ‘acquiesce’ after watching CotBP as a kid, so Barbossa had a direct hand in expanding my 9-year old vocabulary.

Competent, hyper-focused!Jack at the wheel with an unholy gleam in his eye as he gets drenched in a torrential downpour is my kind of Byronic hero

I prefer Jack Sparrow’s backstory to remain a loose collection of rumors and half-truths jumbled together even in his own memory, but I DO want to know how Jack and Gibbs met, how the former earned the latter’s (mostly) steadfast loyalty. I want to eavesdrop on all the inebriated conversational musings they’ve shared over a bottle of rum, whether topside on the decks of a ship not the Pearl or shouted above/muttered below the ruckus of a Tortuga tavern.

I’d also read/watch a prequel about the mutiny. “He plays things closer to the vest now. And a hard-learned lesson it was.” WHO HURT YOU JACK

Well obviously Barbossa did, but I still have so many questions! How did a younger, more trusting Jack earn the ire of his first mate and crew, to the point where they’d stage a mutiny? Then again, to hear Gibbs tell it, Barbossa simply appealed to Jack’s sense of fairness; perhaps in their unadulterated greed they saw Jack’s honest streak as a vulnerability to exploit? Or was it something in Jack’s manner of captaincy that fomented discontent? Idk, I can’t tell based on the way the crew jeers at “Gents, you all remember Captain Jack Sparrow?” whether their antipathy smacks more of derision or vitriol.

“Mr. Gibbs? …Jack? Jack Sparrow?” Elizabeth must be SO confused by these blasts from her distant and more recent past: who knows when Gibbs left Norrington’s employ, but the last time she saw Jack he had her in chains and at gunpoint, and now apparently he’s conspiring with Will??

I’ve always been kind of baffled by the cabin scene between Elizabeth and Will. What is she apologizing for? Taking the medallion and not telling him? Or for telling him and making him realize his father was a pirate?

Also her tearful, “Because I was afraid that you were a pirate. That would have been awful” is the biggest, bald-faced lie if I’ve ever heard one. She took an interest in him BECAUSE she thought he was a pirate (although I do think young Elizabeth had been afraid FOR him, after Gibbs’ pantomime of the hangman’s noose)

“daft like Jack” should be my Jack/Elizabeth/Will OT3 tag

Ah, back when PotC incorporated visual gags to spice up their action sequences instead of building the equivalent of a Rube-Goldberg machine around a single, unfunny gag. Compare: Gibbs’ canteen making its unlikely way from the Interceptor to the Pearl and back as an accompaniment to the battle and Jack’s breakout from his cell VS the overextended Tortuga sequence in DMC where Jack weaves in and out of a brawl to no apparent purpose except to try on different hats and then exit the tavern.

“Though it does seem a shame to lose something so fine, don’t it? …So I’ll be having that dress back before you go.” Barbossa is despicable and Geoffrey Rush delivers his lines with such RELISH

I will squee over the island scene & its deleted segments at length in a separate post so for now I’ll just say: Elizabeth is obviously a huge Jack Sparrow stan and she’s doing a piss-poor job of hiding it

Listen it’s easy to overlook Norrington’s sense of duty and decency in the face of the stick up his butt and his bouts of extreme pettiness. But the fact is that Jack’s attempt to manipulate and appeal to his ambition fails. Because the Commodore is no Barbossa - he’s a fine man who serves others, not only himself; who cares whether a woman’s acceptance of his proposal is less than sincere; who wouldn’t have risked his men ambushing the Pearl’s crew had he known about the curse (last two courtesy of the deleted scenes on the Dauntless).

Now that I’m paying closer attention I’m just blown away by the careful consideration in Jack’s plans. He’s playing both sides to further his own goal of enacting revenge at minimal risk to himself, but he looks after the unwitting parties he involves in the process, too: while the Royal Navy occupies the undead pirates from the safety of their long range cannons, Jack can intervene to save Will, use him to break the curse, and kill Barbossa. All the good guys win! (He couldn’t have foreseen the Trojan Horse or the en masse submarine attack; nor Norrington’s pettiness in defying Jack’s instructions to man cannons that would’ve blown the undead into smithereens.)

Exhibit B: “Now, to be quite honest with you, there’s still a slight risk for those aboard the Dauntless, which includes the future Mrs. Commodore.” Disregard his insouciant delivery here, and you get Jack telling the whole, unvarnished truth!!! “What do you have to lose?” he asks Norrington, who brushes him off: “Nothing I’d lament being rid of.” It’s JACK who reminds him that for all their precautions, the ambush might put Elizabeth in danger. Jack knows about the curse, and after being marooned on an island with her, he knows Elizabeth will do whatever’s necessary to save Will. So he finds a way to ensure not only that she won’t interfere, but that she’ll be kept safe from harm!! I’ll never be over it

And Murtogg’s “You think he wasn’t telling the truth?” line is such a great callback to their early sketch as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern on the docks of Port Royal. These dimwits happen to know Jack does tell the truth, expecting no one to believe him. His own exhortations on the subject notwithstanding, Jack’s real trickery lies in rarely telling the whole truth, letting people make their own assumptions, and giving them enough rope by which to hang themselves.

Governor Swann is such a darling, the ultimate doting father. It’s easy to assume he doesn’t get Elizabeth at all, but he’s no idiot. He rightly suspects she only agreed to marry Norrington to save Will, and while he’s not above nudging her in that direction (“I believe you made a very good decision today. Couldn’t be more proud of you.”), he’s also not about to let his only daughter bargain away her happiness for the sake of his OTP. (And his face of exasperated affection at Jack’s hanging, when he realizes she only pretended to faint as a diversion! Notice the lack of surprise in his expression: that’s the face of a father who is all too used to her Pulling This Kind of Shit)

Jack keeps popping up like a bad penny and both Norrington and Barbossa are so appalled every time lol

The sequence where Will breaks the curse and Jack shoots Barbossa and Elizabeth jerks like she’s the one who was shot is just - *chef’s kiss* the CHOREOGRAPHY! the CAMERAWORK! the EDITING! 

“I feel…cold.” *a single apple rolls out of Barbossa’s dead hands* Can you believe a summer blockbuster movie invented poetic justice tell your English professors

“If all I have achieved here is that the hangman will earn two pairs of boots instead of one, so be it.” Ugh Will is sooo not my type but he’s so DASHING and GOOD no wonder Elizabeth covets him. What a hero

“My place is between you and Jack.” Ohhh you know what I would love to track the main characters’ alignment arcs throughout the series. Here Will’s situating himself as the Chaotic Good between Jack’s Chaotic Neutral and Norrington’s Lawful Good. But I would argue he’s still pretty Lawful and, even under Jack’s tutelage, only resorts to Chaos in extremis; meanwhile Jack flits between Chaotic Good and Chaotic Neutral; Elizabeth’s arc is similar except it’s unidirectional; and without the Law at his back Norrington spirals into Neutral Evil. 

It’s the Sparrabeth shipper in me but the last line of the movie is Jack singing a song that Elizabeth taught him. (*Cutler Beckett voice* “We’ve had dealings in the past. And we’ve each left our mark on the other.”) For a fic about what Jack leaves her, may I redirect you to Shrouded Heart by dollsome, linked above - and this brain dump comes full circle!

[lyraeon]

Hi! Sorry for intruding, and you definitely don't have to answer if this too personnal or invasive, but I've been wondering if my depression might be a bipolar one for a while now, only I don't always see myself in the way people talk about mania/hypomania, only sometimes I do? And the way you described mania being /straightforwardly frustrating/ sort of spoke to me, so I was wondering if you could explain what you meant by that? (or direct me to posts where you have?) Huge thanks!

Hello friend!

I’m sure I have other posts about it somewhere, but short of digging through my whole relevant tag, I wouldn’t know where to look for them. But I don’t mind explaining overall.

First of all, if your depression seems to come and go, but not necessarily be replaced by hypomania or mania, it may be something else. Seasonal Affective Disorder is the most common alternative, but Cyclothymia is also a thing, and should especially be looked up if your depression also never hits a bottomless pit level. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking “well, it’s not THAT bad, so I guess I’m ONLY cyclothymic and I shouldn’t worry about it” or whatever though!! That’s just the depression talking and trying to keep you down. Ignore it.

I don’t know if I get manic or hypomanic, doctors have consistently disagreed about it. But, I know I have two main modes of mania, though they can bleed into each other.

There winds up being talk about hallucinations, self-harm, and graphic nightmares in this, so if that’s gonna bug anyone reading this, J on past it

Hyperactive mania:

What is sleep? This is not me procrastinating sleep or being distracted by other things, this is me flat out not needing more than 3-4 hours of sleep a night and having trouble getting to sleep to begin with, not in an insomnia “I’m so tired but can’t settle down” way but in a “I don’t feel tired unless I drink or take sleeping pills or otherwise really wear myself out” way.

Zero focus - I have little to no attention span most of the time to begin with (I suspect I have ADHD but most doctors will be reluctant to diagnose that in addition to bipolar, since mania has a lot of overlap). This typically gets worse during mania; I will repeatedly get up out of my chair to walk laps around my house, often gesturing wildly and definitely talking out loud to myself if no one’s home. I’ll sometimes try to play music to get the energy out to that, but rarely get through a single verse before skipping to the next.

Hyperfocus - and when I do manage to focus on something, (which has to either be something I’m REALLY ENJOYING or something social) I will get dragged into it for 14 hours and only snap out of it if I need a bathroom break or something. The Sims is a common one, not just for me but for a lot of people from what I hear. I always know something was a hyperfocus and not a thing I really wanted to do in general because after 3 days - 2 weeks of the thing I won’t touch it again for months or years. My last manic fit involved playing a sim city phone game for 6-7 hours a day and binge watching multiple people’s entire hermitcraft 4 season. The one before that had me playing rollercoaster tycoon constantly.

sex drive - suddenly characters and celebrities I had not previously regarded as hot are hot. Suddenly I have 15 AO3 tabs open. I feel like people who know me well can notice my mania just by how often and what gets reblogged to my NSFW blog.

poor decision making - I’m far more likely to buy ice cream or alcohol or other things I don’t need to be spending my money on. I’m far more likely to give in to the whole not sleeping thing, or to take sleeping meds despite cutting it way too close to when I have to be up the next day. I lose my verbal filter. I still don’t know if the fact I don’t do anything life-ruiningly stupid is evidence I’m only hypomanic, not manic, or just my anxiety keeping me in check.

Intense emotions - I cried at a University of Phoenix ad yesterday y’all. I also in general am not one to cheer or yell at something happening on TV/in a video, but get more invested when manic and react on a level closer to when I’m actively playing a game or something.

But there’s also the frustrating side (not that the above isn’t often frustrating, just that the above are more associated with positive emotions or at least not a pervasive Stressed Out feeling)

Easily frustrated - I am not one to get mad, normally. I actually get criticized for just letting things slide that obviously upset me/”you keep saying it’s okay right after saying it’s not okay”. I don’t know how to handle getting mad due to gaslighting issues growing up that I won’t get into right now so when I do start getting mad, it tends to build up until I find myself tense and literally stomping mad and sitting in the car screaming in frustration (because if I scream in the house someone might hear me). I also snap at people far, far more often when manic, losing any patience I would typically have and sometimes going for passive aggressive gouges if what they’re annoying me with has built up over a couple days as opposed to instantly. For example, yelling at people who are in my raid group.

nightmares - dear god the nightmares. I will do things in them that I find barely or completely unquestionable in them, then wake up freaked the fuck out because I just - well, we’ll go with today’s example, which is that I fuckin shot my dog in my dream, and for no apparent reason! Death is a pervasive thing in these, including me getting jolted awake by my own death in them, but unstoppable torrents of water are also common as is things just not making any sense - an object I’m holding turning into something else the moment I try to give it to someone else is also something that happens a lot

tense - dear god do my shoulders and back hurt, and not my normal everyday chronic arthritis pain, because that’s in the joints. This is every muscle pulled as tight as it will go and locked, and often carries a sensation of “the only way to fix this is to literally claw them off the bones”. Upper back is the most common but my forearms come next (especially near my elbows) and every major muscle can feel that way if I’m far enough gone. This used to lead to self-harm in the form of me scraping at those areas trying to make the sensation stop (and has lead to weird masochism stuff), but it’s something I consciously avoid now. I’ll usually try to rub at them or stretch to relieve the tightness, but often sleeping it off is my only real recourse.

really, really, REALLY unable to focus - I can’t get through two minutes of a video without pausing it. I skip every song 4 seconds in and instead of just feeling like they don’t fit quite right, each song feels like it’s personally offending me by not being the right one and I eventually give up and take off my headphones in a huff. I’ll forget I was loading the dishwasher halfway through. I’ll keep doing one more little task and one more little task for hours to procrastinate simple things like eating or walking the dog. I always in general have trouble finishing my sentences sometimes, because I’ll lose words or I’ll wind up reading/hearing something mid-sentence, but it becomes every third sentence.

Itchy - everything feels wrong. My hair has to be pinned up as thoroughly as possible so it can’t touch my skin, my glasses have to be perfectly clean because the smudges will piss me off, my clothes have to be just right so they don’t touch my skin in ways that will make me jump/itch like if my hair touches me, any rough edge of my nails or cuticles has to immediately be chewed off, if there’s a weird hair or a zit or a scab anywhere on me I will be picking at it instantly, whatever I’m sitting or laying on is too lumpy, etc. My scalp itches regardless of when I last washed my hair, but washing my hair sounds dreadful because the sensation of wet hair weighing me down is even worse (vs it normally being a soothing sensation to me). My ears itch!! it’s maddening and distracting.

noise and light sensetivity - everything is too bright and too loud! I’ll have as many lights off as possible (sitting in the dark, showering in the dark, screens all as dim as they will go; I’ll often close my eyes or blindfold myself if I really need to concentrate on something I’m typing or listening to). I try to get white noise because background sounds like the dog walking around will drive me batty, but white noise will give the same “wrong one” sensation as music, and if I notice ANY repetition in the white noise (obvious bird loops for example) unless I have deliberately chosen a repetitive melody because it feels right, I will snap and have to turn it off and probably just cover my ears for a while. 

The sensation that shit would suck less if I was drunk right now, because that would either “at least give me something to do” or “make all of this funny instead of annoying” (but alcohol only intensifies what I’m feeling, so if I’m “good” manic it makes me super happy and if I’m frustrated manic I just get angrier)

just an overall sense that everything is wrong and there’s nothing I can do about it and unlike when I’m depressed, wherein I feel like it’s all my fault and I probably deserve to die because of it, it all just pisses me off more and makes me need to get up and wander around. in the less extreme of these moments, I end up trying to figure out lists of what needs to be done, but getting frustrated trying to think that hard. In the worse ones, things will be blown out of scale and I’ll be plagued not just by the problems in my own life but by how fucking frustrating it is not to be able to fix, oh, our broken government, or how frustrating it is that I don’t have the money to just buy us a house right this second, etc.

hallucinations - this is top floor mania for me. The only thing above it is the roof that I will sometimes lay on at 2 in the morning, limbs spread as wide as possible for minimal skin contact, laughing uncontrollably on the inside while feeling paralyzed. My hallucinations are “mild” ones - I’ve only had one or two visual flashes in my life, everything else has been sounds, and it’s rarely been even words, let alone more. it’s usually alarms and sometimes music. I’ll hear my boyfriend’s alarm going off, or the fire alarm going off, or my own alarm going off, or my family’s burglar alarm going off, etc. This is one that meds have been royally good at keeping under control and I’ve only had breakthroughs of it when I’m also sleep deprived.

-basically, mania is fUCKING FRUSTRATING AS ALL GET OUT because you have all this energy but nothing FEELS RIGHT so nothing gets DONE, 99.94% of the time.

The additional problem for me with breakthrough mania - that is, symptoms that happen despite my medication keeping me mostly “normal” -  is that it rarely brings any of the positive aspects that make being manic at least fun in the moment, if not sometimes genuinely worth it. I can get a LOT done when manic if I can take advantage of it before the bad symptoms set in, and I suspect a lot of my current writer’s block issues are because I’m not getting the same kind of hyperfocus days that I used to. But boy do I still itch sometimes, boy are my shoulders craving for me to go rub on a tree like a bear, boy is my stomach cranky because I’m so hungry but eating food sounds like a horrifying chore because what if it doesn’t taste right, etc.

I don’t really know how to explain exactly what I mean by the emotions feeling stunted, but it’s sort of like trying your hardest to find the can opener because you know it’s got to be somewhere, but it’s not anywhere you’re looking, except the can opener is your ability to be excited about this thing you wanted to do, or is your ability to be mad about something you know for a fact you’re pissed about, but you get stuck sitting there just dully frustrated instead because you can only read the label of the can, not actually experience the contents? Or maybe like opening it and finding store brand, “no sugar added” peaches instead of the really good del monte overly sweet stuff; your emotions themselves just feel lackluster compared to what you know they can be.

If a lot of this sounds familiar - if you’re like, yeah I get really annoyed easily and get sensory issues etc but I thought I didn’t get mania because I’ve never been pulled over in vegas going 110 in a 45 and all the media presents of mania is that and crazy chicks putting themselves $12,000 in debt overnight and waking up with no recollection of it - then you probably have hypomanic bipolar. If little bits sound familiar but they always are accompanied by existential dread and/or the pervasive sense you’ve gotta keep moving Or Else, it could be some sort of anxiety disorder. Parts of this list also overlap with autism, or with ADHD, or with BPD, just depending on which symptoms you have.

By my understanding, the one cornerstone of any form of mania is that you feel like you have more energy than normal; not more energy than depressed you, but an actual excess. That energy can fade fast/turn out to be just a sensation and not actual energy, but the sensation is still there, and usually fucks with your sleep.

Hopefully that helped. If it didn’t, or if it did but there’s something else you want to know, feel free to shoot me another anon or a message. I might be slow to respond because my sleep schedule is currently fucked to three more hells than normal, but I will definitely do what I can to help.