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hakuryuu · 4 years

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PLEASE I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW (EITHER-OR!) NEW OR RONAH’S ANSWERS FOR THE WHOLE MEME YOU POSTED

NEW 1. How would you (or they) describe their gender, without using standard binary terms?: new would describe her gender as the color the sky gets right before the sunrise gets started in the summer

 2. Are they religious?: no…..sort of…….religion is hard one bc gods like Canonically Exist in this world and she Knows This And Believes In Them but she’s not particularly spiritual and doesn’t have one god she’s particularly devoted to AND because of the memory thing she only like vaguely knows that the gods exist at all so sjdflkjs 

3. What social media platforms would they use (if in a world where those existed) and what would they use them for? Bonus: What would they get cancelled for?: new would probably have an instagram but not use it very much, she’d maybe post pictures of stuff now and again and she likes to follow people who make cool things but i think she would mostly make an instagram account and then forget about it (bonus: paz and caramel are BIG on twitter)

 4. Do they have any weird scars, and how did they get them?: she has a bunch of regular accumulated life-living scars from like scratches and bug bites and falls and stuff, but nothing really weird except for that she doesn’t remember how she got a lot of them 

5. What crime are they most likely to be arrested for?: loitering U__U 

6. Ok, what crime are they most likely to have actually committed?: trespassing 

7. If the one prison phone call thing was real, who would they call?: paz w/o hesitation (paz is the richest and will probably show up with caramel and run anyway)

 8. Do they collect anything? What do they collect?: she collects little trinkets and things! usually small emotionally relevant items that are from or remind her of experiences she’s had (her haircutting knife, that portrait of run in her bag, the small bells off her dress, etc)

 9. Who would they platonically marry for tax benefits?: PAZ……. 

10. What superstition/paranormal entity/conspiracy theory do they believe is 100% real, whether or not they admit it?: i can’t think of anything like this for new im sorryyyyy i’ll come back to this one

 11. What’s something embarrassing they did as a child/teenager?: [REDACTED DUE TO MEMORY LOSS] 

12. What’s something embarrassing they probably did yesterday?: walked up to someone without looking directly at them, assumed they were run, started talking to them, and then realized that they were just a random stranger and not run 

13. What hobby did they try once and give up on? Why?: jewelry-making! she wanted to make more fun earrings and stuff for herself and her friends but she doesn’t have access to many of the right tools for it and the stuff she managed to put together didn’t look how she wanted it to so she just stuck with weaving as a hobby

 14. What niche topic do they get incredibly pedantic about?: SJKDGLF THANKS TO HER LIKE WEEK OF RESEARCH AT THE PIPER TOWN LIBRARY THAT ONE TIME SHE KNOWS SO MUCH ABOUT OLD RICH FAMILIES ON PANSIA…..paz will make some offhand comment about a family the mahaleys work at and new will be like. eyes emoji 

15. What’s their favorite food to make?: she loves apple cinnamon oatmeal and loves to make it from scratch ;__; 

16. What do you think this character’s worst decision was? What does this character think their worst decision was?: New Has Done Nothing Wrong In Her LIFE (SHE thinks her worst decision was agreeing to abandon caramel and run & go with paz when paz left them, even though they ended up turning back pretty quickly)

 17. Is there anything you wish the writers had done differently with this character? Why?: I WOULD HAVE LOVED TO SEE THE WRITER GIVE HER SOME MORE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT IN THE SECOND HALF OF FMFY, I THINK THAT SHE AND ALL OF THE CHARACTERS COULD HAVE REALLY BENEFITTED FROM EXPLORING THOSE NEW WEIRD DYNAMICS BEFORE THE CLIMAX OF THE BOOK, 

18. What character from another work do you think they’d get along really well with?: within my own works (elise nano extended universe) i think that she would get along with maimou from ttsp (he’s that kind of friendly that would put her at ease and draw her out of her shyness somewhat i think), and outside of my own works i have this vague sense that she might get along with charlotte’s oc io?

 19. What character from another work would be their mortal enemy?: not mortal enemy but i think that she and turnadot from lamsm would be at odds because of the like difference in approach they have to everything that’s happening to them and the difference of experience… oh iro i think would get frustrated at her easily i think

 20. What’s a headcanon you’ve always wanted to share but none of these ask memes ever ask you about it?: I Am Constantly Sharing All My Headcanons And No One Can Stop Me

---

RONAH 1. How would you (or they) describe their gender, without using standard binary terms?: you know when you light a fire in the snow at night and the light is orange and the shadows are this bright blue? that color 

2. Are they religious?: yes! they’re a big believer in the moon and the cycle (ironically….. :( )

 3. What social media platforms would they use (if in a world where those existed) and what would they use them for? Bonus: What would they get cancelled for?: gjsdlgjsf i really feel like the closest they have to a social media presence is like. a goodreads account. and then they show up in the background of thrip’s tiktoks sometimes and their brothers reference them in tweets and raiv’s instagram has a lot of selfies with them

 4. Do they have any weird scars, and how did they get them?: the only weird scar they have is one on their thigh where they accidentally cut themself mid-switch between elf and wolf forms and it took forever to heal and it’s BRIGHT red

 5. What crime are they most likely to be arrested for?: grim answer: being a wolf shifter

 6. Ok, what crime are they most likely to have actually committed?: accessory to murder U___U

 7. If the one prison phone call thing was real, who would they call?: they’d want to call raiv, but they would call laithe (they would consider calling bliss “walked barefoot across the country to get out of a witchcraft trial” parvo and then immediately decide against it)

 8. Do they collect anything? What do they collect?: they have a modest storybook/folktale book collection, just a small shelf of their favorites, but they aren’t really the collecting type

 9. Who would they platonically marry for tax benefits?: they would (queer)platonically marry bliss for tax benefits, although honestly bliss is getting the benefit because it means they never have to do taxes again because ronah will do them

 10. What superstition/paranormal entity/conspiracy theory do they believe is 100% real, whether or not they admit it?: probably one that they’re kind of embarrassed about but still believe deep down that lonaih and unaech (wolf shifter folk story cornerstones) are still alive and out there somewhere somehow

 11. What’s something embarrassing they did as a child/teenager?: they were VERY into performing songs and plays and stuff when they were younger, which is something that they feel kind of silly and embarrassed about now (but they still love to tell stories) 

12. What’s something embarrassing they probably did yesterday?: walked around the corner and saw themself in a mirror and scared themself 

13. What hobby did they try once and give up on? Why?: music, because it was impractical…. :( 

14. What niche topic do they get incredibly pedantic about?: LITERALLY EVERYTHING, THATS LIKE THEIR JOB, I LOVE THEM

 15. What’s their favorite food to make?: do you remember that braid of pesto bread iro was briefly eating in the beginning of lle? you might not because i suddenly can’t remember if you read the whole thing or just the kavi chapter, BUT ronah learned how to make that because it’s both iro and thrip’s favorite food

 16. What do you think this character’s worst decision was? What does this character think their worst decision was?: i personally think that the decision to actively assist their family in a scheme to murder a moon goddess for revenge isn’t the BEST idea they’ve ever had. ronah thinks their worst decision was leaving raiv behind 

17. Is there anything you wish the writers had done differently with this character? Why?: it would be cool if the writer had. written the last three to five chapters of the book they’re in. i think that would have been neat .

18. What character from another work do you think they’d get along really well with?: i think that they and kavi would bond over a love of family and stories!! w/i my own works i kind of like to think that they would get along with farfara from tayl. sonia from ttsp would also remind them of their family, and i think they’d like her for that

 19. What character from another work would be their mortal enemy?: this is niche but the bounty hunter from see me through would hate them

 20. What’s a headcanon you’ve always wanted to share but none of these ask memes ever ask you about it?: they used to dye their hair when they were younger!

#long post #CANT MAKE THE READMORE WORK!! RIP #ask #bardcharms #I LOVE UUUUUUU #find me find you tag #long limb ellipse tag #ask meme

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himjopper · 5 years

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the flea & the acrobat (jim hopper fic)

pairing: hopper x reader, stranger things chapter: 1/? chapter rating: teen, 18+ (mention of violence, fear, mild swearing, mention of sexual intentions) summary: you’re an FBI agent from the behavioral analysis unit, living in the big city and enjoying the hustle and bustle of the 80’s crime scene. you’ve worked your ass off to get respect around a male dominated field, earning yourself a promotion as the head of your department after you helped solve a missing persons case that swept the nation just short of a year ago. the case closed, but something happening in a small town in Hawkins, Indiana is making your bones chill with its similarities to your closed case. a young girl, barbara holland, is missing and you’ve got a hunch on how to bring her home. little do you know, Hawkins isn’t exactly textbook and you need the locals’s help. a/n: helloooo!! so I actually only got back into writing literally from just reading all the drabbles and fics on here about hop and I was deserperate to get in there myself. this started as a one shot and bc I have a difficult time uhh shutting up, it became a full fic. pls enjoy and feel free to msg me with ideas and inspiration it helps a ton!! special thanks to @chiefharbour for existing and getting me out of a writers block that had actual cobwebs <3 gif credit: @hawkinslibrary

You loved the city.

You loved the traffic and the sound of cars honking, the occasional couple arguing, the screech of tires and never ending hustle. You loved the constant rain and the way it ruined your hair every morning at 8:07AM when you’d leave your apartment to get your double espresso before you stepped into the office just to be greeted with missing persons case after missing persons case. These were all things you told yourself, every day, every morning, and every night.

On cue, the pager on your hip beeps wildly. An involuntary groan comes from your throat while you try to preview the message and head into the building.

“Scotch, I need to talk to you about the Snake Hole Case-“

Your eyes look up to address the older gentleman in front of you who reeks of too much cologne and cheap cigars; he’s just a detective and he’s never been very confident in your abilities even though you’ve been the lead profiler in your division for the last two years and you have 36 solved cases under your belt.

Regardless, you give him your distracted attention as you both stride hurriedly down the hall leading to the conference room you should’ve been in ten minutes ago. The office is bustling and there’s a fax machine ringing in the distance but your rushed heeled steps are louder even on carpet.

“This better be worth my time, Hayes, I’m late for a meeting as is and I have a phone call with Seattle’s Chamber in fourteen minutes in counting.”

The shorter man quickens his step in attempt to catch up to you. “Snake Hole, the original killer was-“

You cut off his excitement with your bluntness as usual, “Gene Schwartzman, white male, 43-years-old, small town stores clerk, no children, never married, alcoholic, absolute low life...”

Hayes snorts, “Right, but he had a pattern, an obsession with younger women with a specific and detailed description, mirroring his own mother, and that’s why he would retaliate-“

Your heels come to a halt as you step in front of the older detective. His lips are chapped, his bottom teeth have ridges from obsessive grinding, the normally groomed hair is parted in every which way, there’s an ink stain on his dress shirt’s pocket. It’s not like him to be so out of sorts. He was obnoxious, sure, but not messy.

“That case was closed a year ago. What are you trying to tell me, Hayes?”

Nervously, his tongue darts out to lick his lips before he speaks. His voice remains low so only the two of you can hear.

“I think... I think we’re seeing an admirer of Schwartzmen mirroring his case. He never got to finish his pattern-“

“We were able to catch him before the final murder. We solved his puzzle first-“

“Someone in Indiana is trying to finish the job, Scotch. I think you need to see this.”

He holds your gaze for a moment as you’re replaying the details of the Snake Hole case in your memory. His hand grips the manilla folder that he extends out to you.

There’s suddenly an impatient call for you to go into the room just down the hall to join that meeting. You’re already twelve minutes late now and before you can respond, there’s another louder call of your name.

You take the folder from the detective and return his low volume, “Get one of the assistants to cancel the phone meeting I have with the Chamber, you and I need to talk. I want to know what’s going on in Indiana. Get me in contact with the local PD, as soon as possible.”

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

Everyone could tell you were distracted the whole meeting. Every second you weren’t looking at the file tucked under your half-assed notes was a second wasted. Your behavior was fidgety and as you clicked at your pen the whole half an hour, you couldn’t stop thinking about the secret admirer Schwartzmen has in Indiana of all places. The original murders took place a year ago in Alabama, made nationwide headlines for weeks and there was even a public memorial for the victims and their families. Schwartzmen confessed on tape and immediately thrown in prison to rot. Everything felt so final. What was the connection to Indiana? You finally got to read over the file on your lunch break with your third coffee before 1PM. Red nails drumming on the wood of your desk, frustrated. There’s a Missing poster of a younger girl, she’s sixteen, decorated with freckles across her face. Round cheeks, even rounder glasses, red hair and seemingly innocent. You hated that the bitter but smart detective Dennis Hayes of all people was going to be right. Unfortunately, Miss Barbara Holland of Hawkins, Indiana fit the description too well. She might even be closest in resemblance to Schwartzmen’s actual mother and it made the acid from your stomach rise up to the back of your tongue.

A knock at your door finally makes your eyes look away from the young girl’s school photo.

“Scotch?”

It’s Hayes and he’s holding two styrofoam cups, hopefully full of caffeine.

“Come in, please, sit.” You wave a manicured hand towards the chair in front of your desk and he takes a seat as he carefully places one of the cups next to your current (and nearly empty) mug.

“I’ll make this short,” Hayes begins. “I know your hands are full with other cases where they’re asking you to profile who kidnapped a dog from a park and robbed a granny at the mom and pop shop at noon-“

You roll your eyes at his brief condescending comment towards your line of work as if he could make his arrests without your insight.

“But you gotta admit, Scotch... the resemblance here is uncanny.”

And it was. Uncomfortably so. She was nearly a spitting image of Schwartzmen’s mother, down to the same yearbook photo we plastered on the screens of every television in America mirrored this young Barbara Holland’s. Schwartzmen was an orphan until the age of 12, he had grown up in his adolescence without a mother and resented the nameless redhead who left him at a church’s doorstep to be found. Angry and feeling abandoned, he grieved the loss of what he never had by murdering young women who resembled the only photo he had of his biological mother: her yearbook photo. The same yearbook photo you cleared with the media to be broadcast to America during the investigation a year ago.

A part of you feels responsible for a split second and there’s a tinge of guilt in your stomach thinking you put her at risk when you let the media have the photo of Schwartzmen’s mother, the very inspiration for all his heinous murders. Did someone see this young girl in Indiana and think she was an opportunity that couldn’t be missed? Was sixteen year old Barbara Holland just an innocent and unfortunate puzzle piece? You’re both staring at the file with some local news from Hawkins along with some notes from the Snake Hole case. It was more frustrating how little Hawkins had on Barbara’s disappearance. It was as simple as one minute was there, the next minute, she wasn’t. Good girl, good grades, good friends, what happened?

You break the thick and focused silence first.

“Did you get me the number for the state police?”

“Indiana State Police don’t have much on it, it’s mainly the Hawkins PD that seems to have more information. It’s a small town. They had two missing kids in the same month-“

Your brow furrowed together, “Two?”

Hayes leans back further in the chair, arms crossed over his chest nonchalantly.

“Young boy, no older than twelve, he turned up alive after some searches, seems unrelated to this case. There’s still no body found for the sixteen year old, goes by Barb. I think we need to get involved.”

This almost makes a snort leave your body.

“We? Hayes, no, I’m going alone.” He opens his mouth to protest but you continue with your voice stern, “I know the Schwartzmen case, I worked on it first hand, I’m going to Indiana. This is just another disorganized killer and the fact it’s only one girl missing gives me some hope. Some sad sack in the Midwest trying to get a shot of fame by comparing himself to Schwartzmen, recreating the profile, maybe make the public wonder if he’s still locked up, whatever. She’s a missing girl, but it doesn’t mean she’s dead. If this is mirroring Schwartzmen and the Hawkins PD hasn’t caught up to that, it’s my responsibility to involve myself to help them be a step ahead.”

Detective Hayes stands up from the chair then with a proud smirk on his face.

“You’re welcome, you know. You can say it.”

You scrunch your nose at him then.

“I could, but I don’t feel like it.”

Hayes chuckles as he turns on his heel to leave your office. “Well, enjoy Indiana, Scotch.”

You grunt in response behind the coffee cup, your lipstick leaving a print on the white foam.

As you’re about to hear the click of your office door closing signaling his exit, Hayes peeps his head back in. “Oh, you’ll have fun talking to that chief of police, by the way. Goes by Hopper, or somethin’ like that. Hung up on me twice and told me to go fuck myself on the third attempt. Seems like a hard ass, so. Maybe flirt a little, show a little leg when you touch down in Hawkins.”

His wink and sneering grin made you sick. Just when you thought this detective was useful. You draw in a patient sigh before looking back at him.

“Detective?” Your hands folded under your chin to appear sweeter.

Hayes steps more into the doorway to listen, he’s already eyed your crossed legs and heeled shoes. Pervert.

“The only time I’m going to show a little leg is before I kick your ass.”

The smile dropped from his face and it was followed by the slight slam of your office door. You smirk to yourself and prepare the arrangements to fly to Indiana to meet with Hawkins PD and hopefully bring Barbara Holland home.

#aaaaaHHHH IDK WHAT I AM DOING BUT I AM PROUD OF THIS???#jim hopper #chief jim hopper x reader #jim hopper x reader #hopper x reader #jim hopper fic #jim hopper fanfiction #stranger things #stranger things fanfiction #crime fiction #fic #flea and the acrobat #chapter 1 #ch1 #fanfiction

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mittensmorgul · 5 years

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do you think that claiming that Sam and Rowena have been in love since s13 would be overkill on my part? bc I really have that impression. When Sam was hurt by her for killing the reapers, Dean had to prepare him to do the right thing. I remember that there was a scene when Sam tried to defend her, saying that maybe there was a reason. He really trusted her and didn't want to believe that she was doing it. And later in the same episode, Rowena is hurt by Sam for shooting her. It looks romantic

I... don’t know if I’d go THAT far... but to me saying characters are “in love,” let’s just say I have a REALLY high bar for that one... and it’s not like there was “love at first sight,” or the sort of casual flirtation that Sam has had with a lot of other women on the show. Rowena actively began her arc on the show as a pure antagonist. She was a Monster they were hunting, but never just a Monster of the Week... she was introduced like she was being set up as a sort of Big Bad Antagonist, but very quickly began to enter a weird grey area. Most of her first season on the show, s10, she was actively plotting against the Winchesters. Her first full episode (10.07) had her literally try to kill Sam. By the end of the season, she and Sam were working on a quid pro quo deal that was intended to benefit both of them... until Sam chained her to a table and basically forced her to Do The Terrible Thing...

Heck I have written nearly 13k about Rowena’s character arc, and here I am trying to sum it up in a few words... >.>

(the Really Long Thing about Rowena: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21641770)

During s11, Rowena began to change. She was still plotting for herself, but being horrifically murdered by Lucifer a few times, as well as helping Sam out a few times-- Sam was the one who brought her into the whole “save the world from the Darkness plan” at the end of s11, after all, and then called her for help when Dean was losing his memory in s12, they very gradually began to establish a friendlier working relationship.

Then s13 happened. 13.12, and her conversation with Sam in the car about their mutual fear and experiences at Lucifer’s hands, made their relationship something more. I wouldn’t say that was love, but it was at least a bone-deep mutual understanding and compassion. And it prompted Sam to do what had been unthinkable even after she’d saved Dean’s life in 12.11. Sam gave her the spell to unbind her power. That... was some wild levels of trust in her.

13.19 pretty much sealed her place in the Winchester Inner Circle-- even including on Dean’s behalf, when he hadn’t trusted her completely before that. But as you said, the look on her face when she realized that Sam COULD shoot her, and then the look of shock on Sam’s face... yeah, that was something. Especially since it happened minutes after she learned that Sam was the one fated to kill her. She was HURT by the fact that he could, when she was only doing what Sam and Dean had done for each other over and over again out of grief. Sam witnessed that entire conversation between her and Billie, and saw her pain. I don’t know if that was “falling in love” right there, but heck, there’s a reason Sam Winchester’s heart was worth $500,000 in a monster auction, because his heart was breaking for her right there.

(I mean, my heart was breaking for her too, but I mean... heck...)

I think it’s ridiculous to suggest that Sam didn’t at least CARE for her at that point, you know? But her WANTING to change her fate, WANTING to live without fear and to do the right thing... Sam absolutely wanted to HELP her do that. Isn’t that the sort of thing you do for people you care for?

And then she did something for Sam that she likely wouldn’t have done for ANYONE ELSE EVER. She willingly helped capture Lucifer, the being in the universe she was most terrified of, and then sat alone in a room with him for near on a day before he finally pushed her to snap, giving him the power to escape, and then when she’d failed to hold him prisoner, instead of walking away, she used her own power to keep that rift open herself until everyone had been returned safely. That’s... something you do for people you care about. That level of personal sacrifice.

Sam called and asked for her help in 14.07, and she came without question. Even when Sam revealed he’d called about JACK, aka Lucifer’s son, and she was about to leave... Jack himself in his absolute innocence and sweetness, convinced her to stay-- tying her directly to Jack for the first time. Which I personally see as her official entry into TFW 2.0, and the innermost circle of Extended Winchester Family Membership. In the span of a day, she went from hating Jack on principle to “wee boy” and all that nonsense.

She called Sam out on his messing with the natural order in having kept Jack alive after that, even if she didn’t know the full extent of what Sam had actually done. It’s... they have a relationship of mutual respect in a way that Rowena has never had with pretty much anyone else in canon, ever. She doesn’t treat him like a potential “mark,” one of the men she hits on to con them for something-- be it money, power, information, shelter, safety, whatever. She doesn’t treat him like a child or someone she can take advantage of, nor someone she believes will try to take advantage of her. Which, for Rowena, is like... incredible. They are tied by that prophecy, but they’re also tied by mutual care and respect. And she... literally actively sacrificed herself to Michael because he promised not to hurt the people she cared about (and then he turned around and directly hurt the people she cared about, but hey at least he was dead like two minutes later...) She was well and truly integrated into the entire family at this point, you know?

Would I call that love? Perhaps the early stages of it? It’s not cute and flirty, or going for “something fun” as Eileen proposed to Sam in 15.07. It’s not like any relationship Sam has ever had with ANYONE. Which is WILD. Not only does she understand all of his life (even the parts he’s admitted he’s never even talked to Dean about), she’s basically LIVED most of it, herself, right down to being personally tortured by Lucifer. They both understand each other on a level that I don’t think anyone else ever has, for either of them.

Rowena spent her life actively rejecting love, seeing it as a danger, as a weapon to be used against her. Not ALLOWING herself to feel love, lest she be weak. Sam has spent his entire life only ever engaging in relationships where he couldn’t be his real, true self, having to hide vast swaths of his history in order to maintain the relationship.

If they’re not in love, the potential is definitely there. Rowena even implied it in 15.03, that they’d grown “fond of each other,” and from the look on Sam’s face in 15.08 he was... pretty damn devastated to see what became of her. She didn’t earn “redemption.” He’d killed her because she demanded it, because they had no other choice. She’d saved the world, and her reward was Hell, where she would never be loved. Kinda burns for Sam, who’d committed to helping her change her fate, especially since he was manipulated into being the direct agent of that fate, all because of those damn “prophecies”...

*echoes of Chuck cackling with glee about how everything he writes will definitely, absolutely happen, so they might as well just give in and let it happen*

Would *I personally* say they were already in love back in s13? eh... that’s a really tricky term to define, you know? Especially for a relationship as long and complicated as theirs, but the story isn’t over yet, so we’ll see...

#spn s15 speculation #samwitch #rowena #because honestly i care more about rowena as a character than i do the ship #i just need her to be loved... at all... by everyone tbh :'D #LET ROWENA HAVE HER FAMILY WHO CARES FOR HER 2KFOREVER #it would be a nice turnabout from sam forcing her to kill the one person she ever loved for a spell to save dean in 10.23...#sure there was a lot more at stake than just dean if he went full demon again and gave in to the darkness #but heck #it's the least she deserves to be given that love back you know?#i DETEST the fact that people are PLEASED that she's queen of hell #as if that's in any way a satisfying ending for an abused woman who believed love was poison #because it always had been to her...#but sure sitting on the throne of hell where she would NEVER be loved and COULD never love anyone herself #sure that's a greaaaaat ending for her >.>#Anonymous

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sureivy · 5 years

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is that HALSEY? no, that’s just IVY CALDER. SHE is TWENTY-FOUR years old and is an EMPLOYEE AT DON’T FRET & PAWS 4 LOVE. rumor has it they’ve been in town for FOUR MONTHS / TEN YEARS. on a good day, they’re CREATIVE & VERSATILE. but watch out! they can also be IRRESPONSIBLE & VOLATILE. TRIGGER BANG BY LILY ALLEN (FT. GIGGS) plays in my head whenever i think of them. can’t wait to see them around springhill!

hello my pals ! i’m amy ( 20 // est // she/her ) and i am super excited to be here! we also over here bringing back a fairly old muse (i,, apparently,, play her during election years,,) with a couple of tweaks, so we love that for me! also! pls forgive me if this is lowkey disorganized, we’ve been in and out of airports all day! can’t wait to contract that sexy corona!

QUICK FACTS:

full name: ivy rose calder

date of birth: may 2, 1995

*does not perfectly reflect the below big three zodiac chart because that’s too much math

zodiac big three: taurus sun, pisces moon, aquarius rising

gender & pronouns: cis woman & she/her

sexual orientation: bisexual ( preference for women bc we luv that for her but we also luv leaving things open to chemistry )

education: high school diploma

enneagram: 7w8?

mbti: enfp

moral alignment: chaotic neutral

positive traits: creative, versatile, passionate, compassionate

negative traits: irresponsible, volatile, impressionable, hedonistic

BACKGROUND INFO:

triggers: brief implied sexual abuse, suicide, a lot of death talk?, drug abuse ( desoxyn ), overdose

ivy lived the first eight years of her life in newark, nj. she had a mere family of three – her mother, a model-turned-stay-at-home-mom, her father, a politician, and herself. she was much closer to her mother, but she and her father were close at night.

when her mother finally found out about this, she wasted no time in taking ivy’s father’s side. what a good mom! instead, ya girl was already getting in touch with cps herself... but wow... it was gonna ruin his career in politics :\

“Now, one thing I lerned from Storys is, when something big is about to okur, a riter will go: Then it hapened! This tells the reeder: Get Reddy. Here I go: Then it hapened!” - fox 8

then it happened!

humiliated, clearly never getting a platform back, and absolutely bitter, ivy’s father killed himself before being sent to prison.

Very Tragique™

ok. so. to distance themselves from the poor memories, but to save money, ivy and her mother moved to springhill, temporarily sharing ivy’s aunt’s apartment while her mother began collecting enough money to buy an apartment of their own and keep it.

during this time, ivy was seeing a lot of people and she didn’t know why! they asked questions about her mental health, but she didn’t know why! i mean, totally not traumatic, right?

yes. instead of managing communication well, she became very fascinated by the concept of death. she had many questions about it, she, a youth, had some extended conversations with clergymen about it –– she never killed any animals, god forbid, but she was absolutely fascinated when she ran across them.

SO CLEARLY THAT WAS ALSO TRYING TO BE DEALT WITH.

ok, i’m gonna skip ahead a little. now in teen years and still fascinated by death, but in a healthier way!, and no longer in therapy because... like... that costs a lot of money!

she dealt with it the best she could. became enamored with music... because why wouldn’t she? some covers here and there, some originals here and there, living that youtube lyf, but not expecting anything to come of it. just liked validation! mood!

she also dealt with it the worst she could! became enamored with drugs! naturally, it started out small. some weed, some lsd, some molly –– you know, just drugs that you don’t typically think of as addictive. although her grades suffered, it was harmless enough...

upon graduating high school, she figured... no college. instead, with barely any money to her name, she was like “i... will go to new york... and i will become famous.”

and she did! she did go to new york! she found a few sketchy places that didn’t charge much for a few nights as she began networking - both socially and “i would like to be known for music” (i literally just forgot the word for networking like..... employment wise.... y’all i’m so dumb). when she’d made some friends, she began crashing on couches that were not quite as sketchy!

but :\ she did meet these friends in sketchy places :\ and they were like “ok here r some new and more addictive drugs for u to try!”

what she wound up abusing using the most was desoxyn. it kept her awake, it kept her focused, it even shed a few pounds to create an excellent figure! what wasn’t to love!

i mean it’s literally a prescription methamphetamine,,, when abused,,, literally almost exact same effects as meth,,, but when meth mouth, skin lesions, acne, etc aren’t occurring as a side effect? who was she to care!

20, she released an actual ep with the help of a super cool friend who made everyone call him puppy mills! wow! things were excellent! it wasn’t necessarily seeing mainstream traction, but there was a decent enough following! enough to release an album at 22!

perfect timing, btw! desoxyn was starting to become too expensive for puppy to afford and trying to fake having such a severe form of adhd that desoxyn would be prescribed as opposed to something like ritalin or adderal when it’s literally illegal to prescribe in some countries now?? too hard :\ but the money from the album helped her and puppy!

*olaf vc* puppy died. *end vc*

she was there for it too. she thought it was just a freak-out, took a LITTLE too much, but not OVERDOSE worthy... then he l i t e r a l l y died. and it was a painful death!

“oh wow! maybe prescription meth isn’t super cool after all! shucks!” but that was also an opening?? to visit death herself?? like... she didn’t necessarily want to die (sort of), but she wanted... an answer to the question that had plagued her her entire life... so she was like “ok hope i die then someone revives me but if i die then :\ i guess i die!”

did not die. but also did not get a satisfying answer to her question. the only way it would’ve been truly satisfying? if she had been dead for longer than a minute - then it would’ve given a definite answer! because the answer she received was just nothingness which, while peaceful... is it true?

she tried to detox alone, what because rehab is a business, and it... only... sort of worked. she would be clean for a few weeks, then fall back in, then clean for a few weeks, then fall back in. whenever she wasn’t just naturally focused and awake, or whenever what she was focused on was the past, she would fall back in.

i mean, a side effect is memory loss, so win/win!

she made the semi-wise decision to move back to springhill. wisest would’ve been to just move to a town/city she had absolutely no memories in, but better than moving back to newark!

so... without much to show, and with an unreliable streak, she knew she wouldn’t be able to start looking for much of an occupation – but she still needed money! so she began working at don’t fret out of a love for music, then began working at the animal shelter after completing training.

the main training was, of course, for putting animals to sleep.

FULL CIRCLE.

ah yes. how she pretends it’s healthy... even tho there are studies and statistics relating suicide to veterinarians and shelter workers who euthanize animals... ah yes.

has been back for four months now. love that. do not know how to finish this.

TL ; DR:

born in newark. moved to springhill at 8. childhood trauma that she is still carrying causes fascination with death. “i love music.” moved to ny at 18 because realistic. childhood trauma also causes dependency on desoxyn. releases an ep and an album. does not become famous, but they both have decent traction. moves back after an overdose. relapses... often. now sells records and puts animals to sleep. miss american dream since she was 17, amirite?

PERSONALITY / MISCELLANEOUS INFO:

one person one week, a totally different person the next.

wants to please people, but also wants to be her own person? it’s a whole deal!

in spite of her slight icarian incident, she still hopes to maybe one day become a real musician and performer. until then, we selling records and saying ‘goodbye’ to sweet animals!

can truly flip like a switch in interactions! does love ruining things for herself! almost always feels bad after bc :\ damn :\ alright :\

i’m very bad at these sections i really hate that i always include them!

is still avoiding healthy coping mechanisms. love that for her.

favorite movie is, unironically, the bee movie. favorite horror movie is cats.

SO GOOD at memorizing random lines or trivia. could probably recite literally all of who’s afraid of virginia woolf? other than that?? her memory is so bad. hate drugs for that :\

she uses her hair to express herself! (that sounds really boring.) ...she uses her hair to express herself!

but no. seriously. wears the black shag weave the most, followed by the blue/yellow combo ( we stan the badlands aesthetic ). occasionally forays into other colors and styles when money permits, but it’s usually gonna be one of those two!!

was an envy on the coast stan in high school which makes an inappropriate amount of sense.

will go out and steal the dumbest shit when she’s drunk. has a history of stealing chickens.

once again: hate that i always include these!! feel free 2 j consult the personality parts in the quick facts!!

CONNECTION IDEAS:

ok we gonna list some general ones for right now! all are open to multiple people unless there’s an asterisk by it!

close friends –– moonie, teagan,

ride or die

childhood friends –– moonie,

bad influence ( mutual or her on them ) –– veronica ( mutual ),

good influence ( them on her ) –– presley, hayden, gabrielle,

exes ( can be from high school or something like that if based in springhill, can be from 20s in new york if based in new york )

fwb –– trent,

will they, won’t they –– presley,

someone who knew her music ( can be neutral, a fan of it, or hate it afhkjsl ) –– presley, moonie, teagan, indiana,

will also possibly be sending in some wanted connections for things that are! more specific!

truly anything!! also up to brainstorm and/or look at yours if you have them!!

UPDATE: i have created a wc page so we luv that for me.

OK. like this or hmu if you’d like to plot!

#springhillintro #DONT WORRY THERE'S A TL;DR I. DIDNT KNOW WHEN TO STOP.#also!! am gonna leave the ooc post up for a few so i have reference for who liked it bc i must!!#depart for about an hour and a half and i do not want!! to forget!! y'all idk what im doing today.

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harpers-tartarus · 6 years

Note

I feed off of your anti-molly sentiments (considering we share so many of them) 😈😈 please share them with the class, Professor Shini!

For some reason she always gives Ron sandwiches he hates andmakes his sweater in a color he doesn’t like…

She wouldn’t let Ginny fly with the boys for some reason?? to the point where Ginny snuck out in the dead of night to practice with their brooms when no one could see her.

Ginny got nicer dress robes than Ron and she didn’t get hersuntil after she agreed to go with Neville, because that was the only way 1-3rdyears could go to the Yule Ball and you would’ve thought Molly could’ve cleanedRon’s robes up a bit, she does know a lot about housekeeping magic

In the last book when thetrio were trying to prepare to head off to search for the Horcruxes, shesabotaged them at every turn, which I can understand on the side of a defensiveparent that doesn’t want their child involved in a war, but the way she wentabout it made sure that they were under-prepared and on edge about talking witheach other, their best friends, because they thought she would see.

I won’t say that the twinsaren’t pranksters and troublemakers, because they are, but they had legitimateplans about the store and I can’t imagine she was very pleased to find out thatHarry had given his Triwizard winnings to the twins. I think Molly loves thetwins, she loves all her children, I just don’t think she thought very highlyof their choice in profession until she realized how well they were doing

ie,the Christmas presents the twins got her.

There were a lot of scenes that annoyed me with Molly’s treatmentof her children, like where she complains “Why can’t you be more like yourbrothers?” to Fred and George, but given how low Ron’s self-esteem was at thebeginning of book 1 (“Everyone expects me to do as well as the others,but if I do, it’s no big deal, because they did it first”), its likely that she’s mentioned something of the like before. But then she turned around when Ron was named Prefect saying “that’s everyone in the family!” when it wasn’t…Fred and George weren’t prefects and they were certainly part of the family

constantly comparing Fred and George to Percy probably didn’t help things

I really hated how shetreated Fleur, and I can only assume it was because of her being French and notat all the kind of person Molly wanted Bill to marry. They were engaged andMolly was still trying to nudge Bill towards Tonks, which had to be awkward forboth parties. Assuming that Fleur wouldn’t want to marry Bill bc of his scarsin front of her right after he’d been attacked was incredibly low.

you don’t need to like your in-laws, but at least be respectful of them

In book 4, Hermione wassmeared by Rita Skeeter and when Easter came around, Hermione got asignificantly smaller chocolate egg than the rest, bc Molly decided to believea reporter who relies solely on gossip rather than a 15 year old who has beenbest friends with her kid and Harry for years.

The dynamic between Molly andArthur always seemed pretty unbalanced with Arthur saying a lot “Don’ttell Molly” and it would have to be uncomfortable to have an adult tell you notto tell his wife about what he’s doing, being afraid of her that much.

she only really turns to him when she needs to prove a point, which is a sad testament to their relationship

I absolutely despised how sheacted in book 5 towards Sirius. This whole scene pissed me off:

“It’s not my fault you haven’t been told what the Order’sdoing,” said Sirius calmly. “That’s your parents’ decision. Harry, on the otherhand —”

“It’s not down to you to decide what’s good for Harry!” saidMrs. Weasley sharply. Her normally kindly face looked dangerous. “You haven’tforgotten what Dumbledore said, I suppose?”

“Which bit?” Sirius asked politely, but with an air as thoughreadying himself for a fight.

“The bit about not telling Harry more than he needs to know,”said Mrs. Weasley, placing a heavy emphasis on the last three words. Ron,Hermione, Fred, and George’s heads turned from Sirius to Mrs. Weasley as thoughfollowing a tennis rally. Ginny was kneeling amid a pile of abandonedbutterbeer corks, watching the conversation with her mouth slightlyopen. Lupin’s eyes were fixed on Sirius.

“I don’t intend to tell him more than he needs to know, Molly,”said Sirius. “But as he was the one who saw Voldemort come back” (again, therewas a collective shudder around the table at the name), “he has more right thanmost to —”

“He’s not a member of the Order of the Phoenix!” said Mrs. Weasley.“He’s only fifteen and —”

“— and he’s dealt with as much as most in the Order,” saidSirius, “and more than some —”

“No one’s denying what he’s done!” said Mrs. Weasley, her voicerising, her fists trembling on the arms of her chair. “But he’s still —”

“He’s not a child!” said Sirius impatiently.

“He’s not an adult either!” said Mrs. Weasley, the color risingin her cheeks.

“He’s not James, Sirius!”

“I’m perfectly clear who he is, thanks, Molly,” said Siriuscoldly.

“I’m not sure you are!” said Mrs. Weasley. “Sometimes, the wayyou talk about him, it’s as though you think you’ve got your best friendback!”

“What’s wrong with that?” said Harry.

“What’s wrong, Harry, is that you are not your father, howevermuch you might look like him!” said Mrs. Weasley, her eyes still boring intoSirius. “You are still at school and adults responsible for you should notforget it!”

“Meaning I’m an irresponsible godfather?” demanded Sirius, hisvoice rising.

“Meaning you’ve been known to act rashly, Sirius, which is whyDumbledore keeps reminding you to stay at home and —”

“We’ll leave my instructions from Dumbledore out of this, if youplease!” said Sirius loudly.

“Arthur!” said Mrs. Weasley, rounding on herhusband. “Arthur, back me up!”

Mr. Weasley did not speak at once. He took off his glasses andcleaned them slowly on his robes, not looking at his wife. Only when he had replacedthem carefully on his nose did he say, “Dumbledore knows the position haschanged, Molly. He accepts that Harry will have to be filled in to a certainextent now that he is staying at headquarters —”

“Yes, but there’s a difference between that and inviting him toask whatever he likes!”

“Personally,” said Lupin quietly, looking away from Sirius atlast, as Mrs. Weasley turned quickly to him, hopeful that finally she was aboutto get an ally, “I think it better that Harry gets the facts — not all thefacts, Molly, but the general picture — from us, rather than a garbled versionfrom … others.”

His expression was mild, but Harry felt sure that Lupin, atleast, knew that some Extendable Ears had survived Mrs. Weasley’s purge.

“Well,” said Mrs. Weasley, breathing deeply and looking aroundthe table for support that did not come, “well … I can see I’m going to beoverruled. I’ll just say this: Dumbledore must have had his reasons for notwanting Harry to know too much, and speaking as someone who has got Harry’sbest interests at heart —”

“He’s not your son,” said Sirius quietly.

“He’s as good as,” said Mrs. Weasley fiercely. “Who else has hegot?”

“He’s got me!”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Weasley, her lip curling. “The thing is, it’sbeen rather difficult for you to look after him while you’ve been locked up inAzkaban, hasn’t it?”

Siriusstarted to rise from his chair. “Molly, you’re not the only person at thistable who cares about Harry,” said Lupin sharply. “Sirius, sit down.”

Shoving Sirius’ lawfulimprisonment in Sirius’ face as a reason why he couldn’t have much of a say inHarry’s upbringing -and really, Molly couldn’t either, only seeing Harry for afew weeks out of the summer, if at all- was the ultimate low. She was living inhis house, under his care, in a house where Sirius ran away from where heprobably has a lot of trauma in, forced to remain inside by Dumbledore whoreally shouldn’t have had a say in that if he’d cared at all about Sirius’mental wellbeing and how he went from one prison to the next, but that’sprobably something to address in Dumbledore-focused essay. The point is, shegets in the last word but that is what probably made me start to activelydislike her.

it does seem that Sirius is getting walkedon a lot by the Order, taking advantage of his home and house-elf just bc ofits old protections. Its not that hard to believe that Sirius actually caresabout his godson, but Molly tends to overstep her bounds by treating Harry asone of her children, but knowing he’s not.

#anti molly weasley #essay #hp #e-lysium #character essays #shinis meta

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sortasirius · 5 years

Text

A Life Worth Living

Pairing: Dean/Cas Dean/pretty much anyone he’s had a relationship with in the show and original characters bc I have a problem

AN: Looks like I’m down the rabbit hole with Dean coming out lol. This is angsty......very angsty.

Warnings: Abuse, Alcoholism, John Winchester being a horrible parent, Violence

Words: A very gratuitous 3643

As always, up on my AO3 here.

Dean’s first crush was Eleanor Andrews when he was four years old. She was blond and had pink ribbons at the end of her pigtails. She and Dean pretended to get married in the playground in Lawrence, Kansas and promised to be together forever. The last time he saw her was the day that Mary died, and he had given her a worm he found in the grass. She said she’d keep it forever.

When Mary died, John made Dean become a man overnight. He was four years old and told how to hold a shotgun that was taller than him. They spent the next few years on the road, or at Bobby’s, or at Pastor Jim’s. Dean saw less of his father than he’d like to admit, but took care of Sam, because that’s what John told him to do. “Watch out for Sammy” was the constant mantra he was never, not for one second, allowed to forget.

When Dean was eight and Sam was four, John started taking him on the road with him. Different hotels, cities, towns, highways every week. At first it was cool, Dean liked watching the winding asphalt roads, twisting up towards mountains or around lakes, sometimes windy, sometimes still, sometimes hot, and sometimes snowy. Hotels always had TV and a bed all to himself. He would take Sam to preschool and walk over to school himself, where everyone always thought he was cool because he was always the new kid. He would leave school, pick up Sam, walk back to whatever hotel they were staying in that week, make Sam dinner, tuck him in, and then keep watch for anything that might come in. It was kinda lonely sometimes, especially since they moved around so much, but that was okay, as long as he could take care of Sam.

When Dean was ten, he met Sarah Deleon when John had them stay in Lafayette, Indiana for two months while he hunted some ghouls. She had brown hair and bright green eyes and wasn’t interested in talking to him, which made Dean want to talk to her even more. He met her when he was trying to drag Sam out of the library after school. He recognized her from his class and had swaggered over to her the way he had seen the cowboys do in his favorite Western movies. She had barely looked up from her book until Sam asked what she was reading. Turns out it was a book about a cowdog named Hank, and Dean ended up stealing it from the library and reading it every night. He really wanted to live on a ranch sometimes.

She, Dean, and Sam were pretty much inseparable for the next few weeks, staying at the library right up until closing, until Mrs. May told them all to go home before it got too dark. Dean liked the way Sarah laughed at him and told him to read more, and he really liked the way she listened to Sam. When John came back and told them to get in the car one early morning, Dean felt an ache in his chest that he didn’t get to say goodbye.

As the years wore on, the novelty of travel wore off. Hotels weren’t interesting anymore, just more of the same. The food was almost always bad, and the cool factor of being the new kid transformed into being the weird kid by the time Dean hit middle school. Dean was Sam’s constant protector, and even though he would do anything for his brother, even give him the last of the Lucky Charms, sometimes he just wanted to be able to get a soda without worrying about what John would say if he did. But, of course, the one time he did that, a shtriga almost killed Sam, and John, bursting in at the exact right moment, did what Dean couldn’t do, and never looked at Dean the same way again.

Dean’s first kiss was a girl named Bria Zuniga, and she kissed Dean behind the school in Pinedale, Wyoming when he was thirteen. She had black hair and bright blue eyes, and Dean remembered how nervous he had been when she had leaned in, he thought he was gonna be bad at it. John had dragged them out of there two days later, and Dean had given Bria another kiss before they left. John had clapped him on the shoulder.

Things got complicated when he turned fourteen. Dean and Sam, who was growing like a total weed and was going to be taller than Dean, damn him, were left in Riverside, Iowa, James T. Kirk’s future birthplace, which was totally awesome, while John hunted a demon in the area. That was where Dean met Jim Barnes, and it was like he could see through Dean’s cool guy loner persona. He had light brown hair and dark brown eyes and they bonded over Star Trek and Batman, and Jim even showed Dean his comic collection, which was pretty cool. He introduced Dean to Kurt Vonnegut and gave him the copy of Cat’s Cradle Dean still has to this day. Dean introduced him to Led Zeppelin, and when Sam was studying at the hotel and insisted that he could take care of himself for a couple of hours, they went out to the movies and saw Jurassic Park. That night, they walked back towards Jim’s house, talking about which dinosaur they would keep as a pet, when Dean kissed him. It was simple and short and kinda sweet, and afterward Jim put his hand in Dean’s and Dean walked him to the door. Four days later, right after school, John was waiting for them, the Impala running and the kind of look on his face that told Dean not to push any buttons if he didn’t want a black eye, but he was always a risk-taker, so he ran back inside and gave Jim one last kiss in the dirty school bathroom before watching Jim Kirk’s future birthplace fade away like fogged breath on the window of the Impala.

Dean was sixteen when John had told the cops that he could rot in prison. He had given the cop a black eye and they had shipped him off to Sonny’s and even though it hurt to be away from Sam, for the first time in his life, Dean had friends, he did well in school, he made the wrestling team, and he met Robin. She had dark hair and dark eyes with a kind smile. Sonny never made him feel like he was less than, and for the first time, he didn’t have to think about what was out there in the dark. He still missed Sam, but not having John around was like being able to see blue sky after years and years of overcast. He told Robin his dreams, talked about his love of cars, how much he liked to sing. She listened, and he listened to her dreams, let her take all the photos of him she wanted, and sort of, kind of, fell in love with her. She kissed him on Sonny’s couch with a guitar between them, and he made promises to her that he really wished he could keep. And when John came back on the night of his first school dance, his dance with Robin, he really wished he could be someone other than Dean Winchester. Sonny gave him a choice, gave him a chance at normal, at Robin, at a family that didn’t drink too much and bruise your wrists when you didn’t do the dishes. But when he looked out the window and saw Sam with his stupid toy plane, he knew. Dean couldn’t, wouldn’t leave Sam.

After Robin, Dean didn’t really pay attention to anyone but Sam. He met girls, flirted with girls, kissed girls, hooked up with girls, and then left girls as easy as drawing breath. And hell, when you move around every other week it was easy. Arrogance and disdain for school bought him cool guy cred, and cool guy cred usually meant that people left him alone. When he was seventeen, he met Amanda Heckerling at Truman High. She was blonde with blue eyes and was whip smart. She kissed him and it tasted like candy. He liked her a lot, but he didn’t want to feel that vulnerability he felt with Robin, and when she called him out for being afraid, he did what he did best. He ran away.

Dean got his GED at nineteen and watched Sam go from little brother to actual man. He studied hard and Dean was fiercely proud of him for it. And then, one night, when Dean was twenty, he came back from a bar in Flagstaff, Arizona where they were staying, and Sam was gone. Panic settled in his throat like someone was choking him. He spent a week without sleeping, looking everywhere for Sam. He checked every hotel, snuck his way to every security room with cameras he could, asking anyone who would pay him the time of day if they had seen him, but no one had. And then, nine days after Sam had disappeared, John came back, and if Dean had wished he was dead before, it was nothing to what John made him feel. He was pretty sure his jaw was fractured and he knew he had some cracked ribs, but that was nothing to him, all that mattered was finding Sam, getting Sam home. John found him in some shitty little apartment on the outskirts of town with pizza boxes and a dog and a stolen car outside. Dean had gripped him tightly and ignored Sam’s questions about the state of his face. He tripped, he said, coming out of a bar. Sam told him he drank too much. Dean looked at John’s bruised knuckles and quietly thought he didn’t drink enough.

Dean met Andrew Hawkins on his twenty-first birthday in Roundup, Montana. Sam was studying for the ACT, whatever that is, and John was out on an extended rugaru hunt or drinking binge. Andrew had hazel eyes and dark brown hair and they made conversation over a friendly game of pool. A friendly conversation turned into too many shots, and then they stumbled into the alley behind the bar, away from the prying pink neon lights, and Dean let himself touch and be touched, knowing that it meant nothing, but meaning everything in the moment. Andrew took control in a way that Dean had never known, and when he came back to the hotel with too many hickies on his neck, Sam laughed and said he hoped she didn’t look half as bad as Dean did. Dean laughed to hide the shame that rose like vomit in his throat.

Sam left for Stanford when Dean was twenty-two. When he told John, during the middle of an argument, because Sam always had impeccable timing, Dean felt like the world was falling out from under him. Who the hell was he if he didn’t have Sam? He couldn’t even remember being his own person anymore. John had tried everything, screaming, slamming things into walls, breaking glass, getting in Sam’s space, but Sam wasn’t afraid of him anymore, and John had never hit Sam, not that Dean would ever have let him. Sam left that night, taking only what he could carry in a bag and looking back at Dean with what Dean thought might be an apology in his face. John had yelled after him that if he was going to go he should stay gone, and that was that. The frail wooden door slammed behind him, and Dean’s little brother was out on his own. Even years later, Dean didn’t tell Sam about the rest of that night, but he was lucky to survive it. He kept John at arm’s length after that, after his right arm had healed, anyway.

Dean tried to be a nomad, not get attached to anyone for anything except for the Impala. He and John made tracks across the country, so many miles on the odometer he almost expected it to break. John routinely dragged them to the west coast just to see what Sam was up to, and that was when he started to let Dean off on his own. The grooves in the highway were his best friends, and he went places John would never go. The deep South, the Canadian border, bigger cities, all the places he had wanted to be when he was younger. He fought ghouls and ghosts and demons and vamps. He repaired junker cars when he stopped by Bobby’s every so often. He checked in with John every other day and they sometimes met up for a hunt. He met people, fucked them, and then left. Had the bendiest weekend of his life with Lisa Braeden. It wasn’t really freedom, but it was about as close as he could hope for.

Dean met Cassie in Mississippi when he was twenty-four. She had dark hair and dark eyes. She was smarter than him, prettier than him, and even though he had a pact with himself to never get attached, she made herself comfortable in his heart. He felt himself falling, like he had taken a running leap off a cliff and there was nothing below him but endless air and sharp rocks at the bottom. So, in the middle of the night, he did what John would have done, and he left, trying to ignore the tears that spilled from his eyes as he crossed the Alabama border.

John gave him the Impala on his twenty-fifth birthday. She was everything he had ever wanted in a car. His first home, with his and Sam’s initials carved in the back. John had bruised the back of his neck with his hand and told him to take care of the car. Dean swore he wouldn’t let him down.

It all went to hell when Dean met Connor Stevens two months later. He was on a routine hunt with John. Vengeful spirit, whatever. He was doing research in the library when this dorky guy with glasses, a bow tie, red hair, and blue eyes sat down at his table. The got to talking about what they were reading and ended up having dinner at a way too nice restaurant that Connor suggested. It was a break from burgers and beer and the ever-looming presence of John. Connor asked him halfway through if this was a date, and Dean blushingly said he hoped so. They ended up back at Dean’s room since John would be out most of the night. Until, of course, he wasn’t. Dean was used to being afraid of John, but never before had he felt terror like that. John didn’t speak to him for nearly two months, and Dean was left floundering in a lake of guilt and shame, mixed with a healthy dose of defiance, but he always came back to John, because that’s what a good son does.

When John disappeared when Dean was twenty-six, he didn’t have anyone to turn to, so he went back to Sam. He hated that he had to take Sam away from his life, where he was clearly thriving with his very pretty girlfriend Jess and his good grades, but Dean was no soldier with no one to follow, and he swore to himself that once they found John that he would let Sam go. But the universe never seemed to give him what he wanted, and Dean had to drag Sam away from Jess burning on the ceiling, just like their mother had.

He and Sam become hunters together, and even though he knew he could never heal the pain of losing Jess, he could at least make it so that the Impala became Sam’s home again. Her tires sped along the winding roads all across the country, and even though it was selfish, having Sam back made Dean feel as calm as he had in years.

John died when Dean was twenty-seven. Dean felt his heart break, but also felt like someone had taken handcuffs off him that he had been wearing for so long he didn’t even realize he was wearing them.

Dean went to hell when he was twenty-nine. The sound of the hellhounds tearing through the house towards him were terrifying, but the knowledge that he had done this for Sam made him feel a little better about getting ripped to shreds by dogs from hell.

Hell was worse than he could have ever imagined. Torture was about the best thing that could happen to you down there. Allistair had convinced him to pick up a knife, and even though he knew it was wrong, he knew that John would hate him for what he was doing, he took the knife from Allistair and thought, what the hell, John hated him anyway.

Dean met Castiel when he was thirty. He had black hair and blue eyes and giant black wings. He left a mark on Dean even before they met. He stood too close to Dean and made him feel like he was being x-rayed every time they made eye contact, but Dean could never make himself look away.

Dean settled down with Lisa Braeden when he was thirty-one. She had black hair and brown eyes and the kindest and most beautiful heart he had ever known. He was very lucky to have her and Ben. Probably a little too lucky. He slept with a gun under his pillow every night. You never knew what was waiting in the dark. He had nightmares about Sam throwing himself in the pit and she would comfort him, and when Sam showed back up when he was thirty-two, she let him go hunt with him. He made her forget him when he was thirty, and that was a wound that he knew would never really heal.

Dean went to Purgatory when he was thirty-four. He spent a year there with Benny, vamp turned new best friend in tow, and every night, when he was trying to sleep, he would think of one thing, where, how, when to find Cas. It was stupid, he was probably dead, Benny said pretty much every day, but until they found a pile of bones with a trenchcoat, Dean wouldn’t believe that. They ended up finding him, and losing Cas to Purgatory just as he and Benny escaped made Dean want to jump right back into it, and he wasn’t really sure why.

He met Amara when he was thirty-seven. She was all powerful and deeply frightening, but Dean felt a pull towards her that he had never felt towards anyone or anything. She knew this, she tried to use it against him, but something broke when she started torturing Cas, probably because they were best friends. Because Dean needed Cas. He needed Cas. He needed Cas.

Dean lost Cas to an angel blade held by Lucifer when he was thirty-nine. He begged God, Chuck, whatever to bring him back. It was like someone punched a hole in his chest, and when they burned his body, it sort of felt like Dean was burning too.

Jack brought Cas back when Dean was thirty-nine. It felt like he had aged forty years since he last saw him. He didn’t tell Cas that he didn’t cope well with him being gone, but he thought Cas knew, because Cas knew everything about him. They went back to the way things should be. They hunted, watched movies, sang terribly in the Impala, and Dean felt like he really, truly, had a family again. He would look at Cas when he didn’t think Cas could see, and even though he knew they were best friends and nothing more, sometimes Dean would think about just how beautiful Cas was.

Dean kissed Cas when he was forty-one. He was older, that there was less time, that Chuck was going to kill him one way or another, and Dean didn’t want Cas to be another what if, especially if he was about to spend eternity in Hell, which is probably where he would end up anyway. He kissed him in the Impala, when he and Cas tried to escape Belphegor’s incessant talking and Sam had disappeared to read in his room in the bunker. Zeppelin played softly from the Impala’s speakers, and Dean instinctually leaned forward, like he had meant to do it all his life. Cas’ lips were chapped and soft and Dean didn’t ever want to pull back from him. But when he did, Cas gave him the kind of smile that made it all worth it. The pain, the self-hatred, the hunting, the angels, devils, destiny, and God himself are all worth dealing with if it meant that this moment could exist with Cas in the Impala.

Dean told Sam the truth when he was forty-one. He told him about John, about Flagstaff, about Stanford, and about Jim, Andrew, Robin, Cas, and all the rest. Dean laid his heart out on the line, because if anyone deserved to know who he really was, it was Sam. And Sam, because he was the best brother in the world, didn’t say anything, just leaned forward and hugged Dean as tightly as he had when Dean left Sonny’s. It was one of those hugs that sort of made the world turn a little easier, and Dean knew that he was still the luckiest guy on earth to have Sam Winchester as his brother. His family, Sam and Cas, they’re what make life worth living, and even if they had ten years of ten minutes left together, Dean was finally going to make the most of it.

#dean winchester #spn fic #destiel fic #deancas #supernatural #fanfiction #writing #my writing #bi dean #sam winchester #castiel #dean #spn #cas #sam #i love this boi a whole lot if you cant tell #also i see a lot of me in him which is probs why i cant stop writing him coming out lol

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not-tryin-2-have-a-debate · 8 years

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i want to keep my original long draft for an essay abotu my Psych Ward Expirience somewhere so i’m post it here under readmore bc its super long

When most people hear the phrase “Psych Ward,” they think of settings in horror movies. They picture 1800’s sanatoriums, dark and crumbling asylums full of dangerous murderers. I don’t know if hollywood or a general societal ignorance towards mental disorders should be blamed more for that, but living with a serious mental illness is one of those things that “outsiders” never really seem to understand. That misunderstanding extends to treatment as well.

Therapy comes in many shapes and sizes, different types and intensities. There are different amounts of work expected from the patient, different ways the therapist can try to work through their issues, but the biggest range of differences is probably in the environments these sessions can take place in. One-on-One appointments with a therapist, Group therapy that meets once or twice a week, specific support groups, and anger management classes are all things that we in the business would call “outpatient” treatment. Some programs are dubbed as “intensive outpatient” or “semi-inpatient” programs, for when they want to hospitalize someone but aren’t allowed to for whatever reason (usually because they can’t pay for it, or the family in charge of their affairs won’t allow it, or they're actually a good and understanding doctor that sees the problem with taking a mother away from her job and kids from three days to three months depending on the program.)

Group homes, halfway houses, and stays in mental hospitals would all be on the “inpatient” or residential side of things. Some places are specifically “Crisis Hospitals,” a place where suicidal patients go for one or two days until they aren’t considered an active threat to themselves anymore. Depending on the hospital and how much they actually care, the patient may run out the clock of their stay and can sent to a different center or dropped back into society while still in the middle of their crisis. Every psychiatric hospital has protocol for patients on suicide watch and many have specific rooms for it, open cubbies in a big long hall with no doors or front walls, so the staff can be watching you at all times.

When someone’s in treatment for any mental issues extending beyond mild depression or anxiety, being hospitalized is a kind of vague threat always looming on the horizon. If they say something a little too dark, or they fly off the handle a little too often, the question comes up asking if they’re in need of more ‘intense’ care.

Most patients that have been around a while know how to quickly deflect a nervous doctor. We get told our own horror stories; tales of prisons with heavily medicated inmates, friends recounting abuse from their nurses, being locked up in a place that claimed to help them but in actuality just held their lives/times for ransom until they stopped complaining.

I’m asked about my safety every time I see my psychiatrist. I sit in Brian’s office once every three or four weeks and discuss how much of a failure I am at pretending to be a human being. Every time, near the end, he looks me in the eye with an uncomfortable grimace and asks me how safe I feel. We both know it's a strange and impossible question. I could say no for so many different reasons. Realistically I will probably hurt myself before our next appointment. There will definitely be at least a few times I think of dying, go over the details in my head. I could point to my paranoia, or my childhood, and tell him I haven’t felt safe in a long, long time. But he knows all of that, and he knows my honest answer, and we both know that him asking how safe I currently feel is just secret code for whether or not I want to be sent to a hospital. So I shrug and tell him I’ll be just fine.

I guess I was having a pretty rough time at fourteen. I say “I guess” because I can’t remember most of it, but what I do remember wasn’t particularly any worse than two years before or the year after. It was mainly just that when I was fourteen, people were noticing more, and feeling more guilty, and I was saying some wrong things at the wrong times.

I’d already been in regular therapy for years; I’d been through one group until my therapist got transferred and an “intensive outpatient therapy plan” after that. Every two weeks or so one of my parents would dig me out of bed and drive me to the one small therapy office in my town. I would wait for at least forty minutes past my appointment and then be called back to see the nurse, Mellisa. (Her name was spelled with two L’s and one S; I know about that because she would get very upset with the other staff for spelling it wrong.) Every time I went to that office, Mellisa would have me take a pregnancy test, no matter how many things about me made its results obvious, because when you’re a kid medical professionals will never trust a single word out of your mouth: especially if you’re crazy. My mother and I would go and sit in an uncomfortably warm room waiting for my psychiatrist go come online. I would study the boring, mass-produced ocean painting on the wall, finding anything to look towards but my mother. My psychiatrist at the time was an attractive nigerian man that I was only ever introduced to as Dr.O; one time I asked Mellisa what his full name was, because I felt disrespectful not knowing it, but she’d brushed it off as too hard to even try pronouncing. Dr.O lived somewhere else in the state and would see me for our appointments through a computer monitor, setup on a cheap wooden coffee table across from some chairs. My parents always complained about having to drive all the way to the office just to have a skype call; I always just wondered why they bothered setting up the fancy room, since you could hear what everyone was saying through the walls anyway. Dr.O mainly saw older patients and I could tell that he usually thought I was being overdramatic. I would keep my head down, trying my best to speak up so he could hear me through the microphone on the table (and often being chided by him and my mother to move closer to it when he still couldn’t hear me.) I would stay silent as my mother talked the whole time, giving half of the story with none of the context. I would stiffly and awkwardly be made to stand up and show a man on a screen the words carved into my arms, motion to where the cuts went on my legs. I would look at noe one and try not to think of the mostly-screamed “lecture” that was waiting for me once we were done there, where both of my parents sat me on my bed and stood there with crossed arms, telling me they weren’t angry, they were just frustrated, telling me they just didn’t understand why I did these things to myself. They didn’t understand why I couldn’t just come talk to them.

Dr.O decided once, while my mom was in the middle of telling him her version of what I was going through, that I needed to be hospitalized. I snapped back to attention, stopped picking at the scabs on my arm, asked what I did. I barely remember what the real reasoning was: something about how I was already suicidal and they were going to take me off my anti-depressants which were making me more depressed on top of causing me to gain weight, and I would probably feel even more suicidal when I was in the withdrawal from those so I needed to be monitored, or something. That’s a series of events that I’ve gone through about five or six times with five or six different drugs, and that one (paxil, for anyone wondering) wasn’t the first. I’m still not sure why that time it was any different...maybe those reasons were an excuse for some kind of psychic doctor vibe he was getting from me. My mother was, of course, completely furious for all the wrong reasons. I was calmly sent out of the room to wait with Mellisa while she screamed, asking if he was really about to lock up a fourteen year old girl with a bunch of “violent drug addicts” because I was having “some issues adjusting.” When I was younger my mother would often refer to my ‘adjustment issues’--i was never sure what it was I was trying to adjust to.

My mother called my father and I thought to myself that this was a really bad way to make me not want to die. He entered the building crying and confused, probably having only been told a vague three word explanation by my mother, leaning down at me chair, caressing my face like I was dying or like we would never see each other again. For all I knew, we wouldn’t; for all the information I’d been given, I was about to be shipped off somewhere for life. We spent probably another hour in that office, me sitting in my chair, watching everyone else argue and talk and come and go and give me weird looks for split seconds and then continue on talking about me like they’d already sent me to the terrifying gate of hell that a mental hospital apparently was. Mellisa tried to comfort me and pointed out that I was crying. She put a hand on my shoulder and I accidentally, involuntarily, blurted out for her not to touch me. My mouth says a lot of things I don’t want it to. That’s one of the times I’ve most regretted it. I was eventually told I would go home, pack my things, and drive to the hospital that night. That had set my mother off again right when she’d started to calm down-- “Tonight!?” she’d barked at Mellisa. “We can’t even wait til tomorrow?!” Imagine what a dinner that would’ve been. I assume I did as I was told. I remember packing the stuffed animal my internet boyfriend had hot-glued together for me, and a (paperback) Robert Louis Stevenson novel that I was trying to read and pretending I understood more than half of. You aren’t allowed to take a whole list of things with you to the hospital; anything that could possibly be considered dangerous to you or to anyone else is prohibited. No shoes with laces or pants with drawstrings. No mirror, hair brushes, toothbrushes, or soaps either, because the hospital would supply those. At one point I bitterly argued with a nurse that I could shove a sock in my mouth a choke on it if I really wanted to, and she threatened to take all my socks away. I decided to stay quiet on the realization I had that if I got really desperate I could just try to bite off my own tongue. The drive was two hours long and completely silent. My mother spent the first twenty minutes determined to squeeze as much as she could out of the time we had left til arrival, but I was in a confused haze and she was tired from screaming at doctors...or tired from dealing with her defective daughter. She tried to comfort me, assuring me that this would be good for me, that maybe this hospital would straighten some things out and set me on the road to true recovery after all this time spent struggling. I looked at the moonless sky outside and chose not to tell her that she had finally admitted something was wrong with me. It was almost midnight when we actually reached the hospital; we passed it once on accident since we could barely make out the sign. My body was working on its own again at this point. I took mechnical steps, looking straight ahead, hand held in my mother’s because she needed the comfort.

The sterile white walls and fluorescent lights in the front lobby were blinding coming in from the night. I squinted at the woman who came up to meet us, shook my dad’s hand, my mom’s, glanced at me for maybe half of a second. A man named Jesus took and searched my things while we were guided into a more traditional room for this setting, corporate representations of calming moods. Light blue or green walls, wicker and tweed furniture, mass-produced ocean paintings. I focussed on how much I hated paintings of the beach while my parents filled out forms, until the woman finally turned her attention to me. I was comforted and assured, again, that this would be good for me, and then assured that they legally weren’t allowed to use electro-shock therapy. I was told I would do regular groups and that the security wouldn’t use force unless I posed a violent threat. She explained expressive therapy to me, as if I’d never heard of art, while I signed a form saying I consented to being medically sedated if need be. I asked how they would sedate people. She asked if I was afraid of needles.

After signing my name a hundred times, with one of my parents signing after each, it was time for us to say our goodbyes. I’m sure I cried, but I can’t honestly say I remember.

Jesus reappeared without my belongings, telling me before I could ask that they were waiting on my new bed. He led me about three steps out of the conference room to a set of wooden double-doors, like the entrance to a school cafeteria. “This is the Ad Ward…’Ad’ stands for ‘Adolescent.’” he told me, shuffling out an ID card to unlock the doors. He quickly ushered me through and it the first door on the left before I could nothing anything other than a hardwood floor. Jesus handed me a paper hospital gown I never noticed him holding and instructed me to put in on, pointing at the spot on the floor on the small empty room where I should put my clothes. He said a woman would come in shortly to search them and me and then took his swift exit before I could ask any questions. I did as I was told as quickly as possible, nervously trying to make out the muffled voices right outside the door. The second I’d put my clothes in their neatly folded line the head nurse came into the room, making good on Jesus’s word. She went down the line of clothed I had made her, picking up and shaking out every part of my outfit without saying a word. When she was satisfied with them, she turned to me. For those of you that have never been strip searched, please know that it is every bit as strange and mortifying as you would expect, and that no matter how many times you’ve been through it, it’s going to stay just as weird. As my mostly-naked fourteen year old self squatted and coughed before the eyes of a stern older woman with a clipboard, I wondered again how this place was supposed to make life seem worth living. After that, and her metal detector being set off by my braces, I was regifted my clothes (but not my shoes) and handed off to my last stop for the night before bed. I finally got a good look at the Royal Oak Hospital Adolescent Ward: one long hallway with a nurses station near the exit, an elevator, and a long line of almost closed doors. A younger nurse took me into one of them, again completely different from the others I’d been in, and sat me down on an expensive medical equipment looking chair. The girl’s name was Rebecca, she told me sweetly, in the first actual human conversation I’d had in hours. She tried at mostly one-sided small talk with me and she gave me some kind of vaccination or shot. I remember being told it was just a precaution, but I can’t remember what it actually was. The second she was done with the mysterious syringe, though, Rebecca turned on me, bringing out a clipboard and a volley of emotionless questioned that seemed routine to her, but invasive and a little nerve-wracking to me. Asking if I ok with having a roommate or if they had to move my stuff to a different bed was one thing, but at the time I was tired and scared and every question after seemed to strike just the right nerve. She got about halfway down her sheet and asked, casually, what my sexuality was, before I started sobbing. She went back to the good Rebecca and sent me off to bed. We could finish the questions tomorrow. I wouldn’t get to really get a look at my new room and roommate until the morning, as all the other patients on ward were already asleep (or were pretending to be). I slid into the bed, noting the plastic covering on the mattress and the starched, motel room feel of the blanket. Jesus peaked in the doorway to tell me it needed to stay open at night and that he and another man would keep watch on the hall. He said if I couldn’t sleep I was allowed to come sit out there and talk with them; there was usually at least one kid that took advantage of that at some point in the night. I thanked him but chose to stay where I was, holding my handmade stuffed animal so tight it hurt my wrists and staring at the cracked door. I listened to Jesus and the other man talking quietly for hours until I finally passed out. I finally drifted off some time after Jesus lamented about how little time he was getting with his daughter after his divorce. Morning Routine in the hospital was as follows: wake up at 8 a.m. and line up in the hallway for Checks. Roll was taken and an always different nurse that didn’t know our names would check our blood pressure, temperature, and pulse. People who took meds in the morning were given their pills and some water in two small paper cups, and David, the nurse that later became my favorite, would ask everyone who they wanted to call on the phone that day. (Phone time was allowed during a break after lunch; we could only ask to call people on an approved list of phone numbers written during admission.) Then, and only then, were we allowed to cram into the one elevator that led from the ward to the basement, and eat breakfast in the cafeteria. After that our daily routine mainly consisted of therapy, one-on-one conversations with a psychiatrist, and school, if it was a weekday. My first morning I was greeted with a great enthusiasm by the eight other kids on the ward. Most of them were older than me by a year or two and I was quickly taken under their collective wing as a newbie. My roommate introduced herself (I’ll call her L) and wasted no time in getting to the stereotypical “what are you in for” conversation. Since my answer was pretty much a vague shrug she made up the difference, telling me a fabulous story embellished highly in her favor about how she punched her school’s superintendent in the face and was given the option of juvie or the hospital. We agreed that it was stupid of the school to give her that choice.

L loved to see how far she could cross the line before she got in trouble, but in the middle of testing people’s limits she would get angry and fly off the handle. She bragged to me that by the time I got there she had been restrained twice and medically sedated the second time. Eventually I had to change rooms when she started an altercation with Jesus and had to and was put on restrictions. There’s an immediate air of understanding and camaraderie between patients on a ward, even between people that kind of hate each other on a personal level. I think it makes perfect sense given the environment, and the fact that in a short time there everyone is going to learn a lot of deep and personal things about everyone else. I remember most of the kids I met there well: M was a small blond and the youngest on the ward at thirteen. He was extremely proud that he was old enough to belong with the teenagers. He was one of the most adamantly alive people I have ever met. He was very upfront about the fact that he had anger issues. I think I was the only one there who didn’t.

G is a girl that I think about very often, fondly and worriedly. She was such a genuine and lovely person, a heavy and pretty girl with long curly hair that was always smiling and talked with her hands. I worry about her because I was never able to contact her once i was out of the hospital; she didn’t give anyone contact information because she wasn’t sure where exactly she was going to end up after her stay there. Knowing what i did learn from her about her family...I still worry about her. But i also worry that trying to look her up now would be weird, but also only make me sad no matter what i found, even the best answers would feel bittersweet. I think that for now i prefer to just remember G fondly as a very dear friend i only got to spend a precious little amount of time with. R was nice but was also the most actively angry about being there, and none of us could blame him. From what he told us (looking back on it now I’m still not sure which side was truthful) his parents had forced him into his stay after blowing an argument completely out of proportion. R as I gravitated towards each other magically, drawn by our innate ability to Tell. from my experience there were always two or three kids on the ward or in the group who aren’t straight, and we would always find each other and group together as quickly as possible. D was the third or the two or three gay kids. I was told she made advances at me but I don’t remember noticing any of them. She really liked naruto and would tell me dramatic stories that I knew were mostly lies but listened to anyways because we were friends. J was a surprise in a lot of ways. He showed up very suddenly and had the staff scrambling. He was tall and wide and older than most of us, with gauged ears and angry eyes. I feel guilty for the amount of time I spent compulsively strategizing self-defense plans against him before we got to know each other. J had been in juvenile detention before coming to the ward as a way to ease his transition back out into the “real world.” The only person I didn’t really get along with was K, but I wasn’t the only one; she sat on the ‘normal people’ side of the social rift and didn’t particularly want anything to do with the rest of the group. Her choice. The rest I don’t remember by name anymore; the teenage mother who got transferred to a different hospital, a boy who would not talk talk about anything other than weed every time I heard him speak. A quiet boy who’s name started with a D and had a nurse communicate things for him.

The usual length of a stay at Royal Oaks was around a week, so people were usually coming and going every other day, making a rotating list of patients for David complained about because it complicated his job and phone call cataloguing. L left on day four, the weed guy the night before her. We vaguely celebrated when someone was left; we could have done more, but it would have meant celebrating almost every night, and jesus didn’t have enough change for the vending machine. We would say our goodbyes before we went to sleep, and part ways at breakfast. The new kids would be greeted with stories of who they replaced, and would be taken under our collective wing, and the cycle would continue. I never personally got to see them, but there was a ward for Adults somewhere on our floor and one for “Pre-Ads” (children under the age of thirteen) downstairs, with the classroom, cafeteria, and ET room. The full layout of the Ad Ward wasn’t much more complicated than what I had observed the night before; one mysterious room was the “Lounge,” a baby blue nightmare where we spent free time, and another was a shower--yes, the whole room, that was it. A twelve-by-twelve cube of brown tile from floor to ceiling, with a small drain in the middle of the floor and a sad faucet with the water pressure of slow falling tears on one wall. About a foot in from the door there was a haphazardly installed shower curtain, and right below the faucet was a wall-hanging soap dispenser, like same kind you find in most public bathrooms. I’d heard of 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner before, but never All-in-1 general showering goo. Every other room in the hall was a bedroom, and most of them looked identical. Blue walls, two beds set in wooden box frames, and a strange storage-shelf-table-sink hybrid on the other wall. Each room also had a small closet with a toilet in it (two of the rooms had actual bathrooms with their own, normal shower, but most of us weren’t as lucky.) Bathroom doors weren’t allowed to be closed unless they were actively being used. We could only close the door to our room if we were changing clothes, or “with permission,” which meant we could only close the door when we were changing clothes. We were each given a plastic basket of toiletries with our name on it, given it us from a locked space in the nurse’s station after break and before we went to sleep. At some point in the afternoon we would each be called away separately to go meet with a psychiatrist for a bit; a rotating door of short indian men that usually didn’t introduce themselves. The psychiatrists were nice but impersonal, concerned but not well-informed about your situation, fitting with the general theme the hospital seemed to have going. Once one of them took me outside to have our talk, in a little fenced in area with a basketball hoop but not enough room to really try playing with it. I don’t remember anything we talked about other than how I was feeling, how I felt about the hospital, same old thing again and again.

Every night after dinner, two patients that behaved well were allowed to order 1 soda and 1 candy bar from a vending machine outside our reach in the ward. I got a twix and a coke on my first full day, and all the other kids were simultaneously very jealous and proud. The art therapy room was, like all walls in my world at that point, blue, but now with past patient’s art hung up and painted onto them all over, which was a welcome change. Art therapy only involved making art about three of the times that I went. Other times We’d have another group therapy session, or try and fail miserably to play ping pong, or be forced to watch the movie “Freedom Writers” and then talk about our feelings on it. My feelings were that it was a bad film with a nice idea.

The hospital had a Classroom right beside the cafeteria that the ad and pre-ad patients had to attend for three hours every school day. We went separately; the wards weren’t allowed to mix, especially after it turned out that a girl on our ward was the cousin of a kid on the pre-ad. Every week a new sweet older lady would be our teacher, a good samaritan volunteering her time to the hospital. Most of us were old enough that we would just work on our own homework from our school; i was lucky enough that my high school didn’t want to work with the hospital at all, and was unwilling to give me any assignments but the one’s I had brought with me. When I finished those halfway through the first day of class I was given general middle school level work packets and left to my own devices. When i finished those i started trying to help the others, usually M with his science worksheets, or I would spend as long as possible with one of the medical student interns going over a graded french test. I told G how to pronounce her name with a french accent, and she excited told every member of staff about her new name for the rest of the day.

The food, unless you were on suicide watch or “Finger Foods.” Finger Foods was the general terms for when someone had their privileges taken away after an outburst or trying to hurt themselves. You could only use crayons to write, couldn’t handle any sharp objects, were out of the running for a night time candy bar, and obviously, good only eat food with your hands in the cafeteria. Suicide watch Included all the rules of being on Finger Foods but with an added element of direct surveillance at all times; there were some people on suicide watch who were still allowed to be rewarded or participate in activities with supervision, because the restrictions were meant more for their protection than as a punishment. For my first two days at every meal a bulimic girl on my ward would be light-heartedly threatened with a feeding tube if she didn't eat. She and the nurses all seemed to think it was funny, so i just accepted it. At one point we were promised a pizza for our good behavior. We never received that pizza. I’m bitter about that to this day.

Group therapy came in two flavors: there was actual group therapy where we would do therapy, but in a group, and then there was what group normally meant, which was “a nurse is going to come talk about some topic no one cares about for a while.” riveting topics covered in our sessions included personal hygiene and the importance of not doing drugs if you don’t already do drugs, which half of us did. Actual group required more emotional effort but at least I wasn’t going to be bored to tears by the end of the hour. The ward’s main therapist was a nice guy that happened to look exactly like sigmund freud. He also happened to not enjoy it very much when i blurted out that he looked like sigmund freud. We were told multiple times a day by various nurses that shoes were a privilege and you would earn back your shows after you showed staff you were deserving of them. I never saw a single person earn their shoes, and not for lack of trying. This was a problem because if a single person on the ward was without their shoes, we weren’t allowed to have time outside. Every time I’ve ever recounted this to someone they’ve seen the Immediate flaw in this system, but it apparently slid past all members of staff on a daily basis, despite continued incredulous whining from a dozen barefoot teenagers.On the fourth or fifth day, I was whisked off with no explanation to get an EEG (a test where they part sticker attached to wired attached to a machine on your head and listen to the electricity in your brain.) i was never told the results on that test or why i was getting it done. The lady washed my hair afterwards, which maybe up for the fact that i had to miss breakfast but didn’t make up for the strip searches before and after i left the building. At the very least it made G jealous i’d gotten to wash myself with anything other than the suspicious shower goo.

At some point i started routinely being woken up about a half-hour before everyone else to a nurse that would take my blood pressure. Then i would lay there, tired and confused, until we all had to wake up and get in taken as a group anyways. I asked about this every time they did it and was never given an answer as to why this was necessary. Honestly I think they might have just been messing with me.

We were supposed to refrain from asking for personal information about each other, and told that if we wrote down another patient's email or phone number whatever it was written on would be thrown away if found. Obviously we all worked around this; one girl secretly wrote names on her stomach an hour before she was processed for release, another kid wrote phone numbers in code. For me it was as simple as just remembering people’s last names so I could find them on facebook.

The hospital existed in a kind of twilight zone half in and half out of reality, where a crisis would occur every other hour but in the between times we were all bored to tears. Surrounded by such an intense atmosphere, staff trying to force an understanding of our lives being in our own hands, and we would just sit there, nodding our hands and coloring with our crayons. In a way the hospital was a sanctuary; no family to get into screaming matches with, no classmates to end up in a fist fight with. An environment meant to be scrubbed clean of all the stressors of day to day life. Visiting hours happened twice a week; kids with visitors would go down into the cafeteria while everyone else hung around in the lounge. Usually it was just me and M waiting down there for our families; the visits were always entirely uncomfortable. My parents wanted to be sure I was being treated right, and held my hand with a guilty sadness that I didn’t really want to acknowledge. Free time didn’t offer very many options. We would play cards and coloring mandalas printed out on copy paper. I finished coloring about six of the things before a decided it would no longer be a helpful part of my mental healing journey. Our card game of choice was called “BS,” initially because it was the only game everyone who wanted to play cards seemed to know. BS became a highlight of our day, because of M. The hospital had a lot of rules about how to conduct yourself. We weren’t supposed to yell, run around, or touch each other unnecessarily. We also weren’t supposed to curse. The name of the card game “BS” is short for “Bullshit.” the rules of the game are very simple--cards are passed out and someone decides to go first. In turns, everyone goes around, putting some cards face down on the pile and announcing what value those cards supposed were (someone put down two cards and says they had two jacks, etc.). Multiple cards have to be on the same value, if you think someone is lying, putting down more cards than they had to win faster, you point to them and call out that you think they’re lying. The challenged player turns over their cards, and depending on if they were telling the truth or not one of the players in penalized. Usually the thing you yell out when you challenge someone is “Bullshit,” but we weren’t allowed to say that and were told to call it something else. M thought that this was a personal affront to him and everything that he stood for as a person. Every single free time, two or three times a day, we got into the routine of playing this card game solely to see this scene play out. We would start out normally and do as we were told, politely pointing out lies. M wouldn’t say anything. We’d go on for as long as we could, before someone would make an obvious play, putting down three jacks after someone else put two or saying they had five aces. Then, ecstatic, M would heave air into his lungs, jumping up and pointing at the other player and yelling as loudly as he could: “BULLSHIT!!”

He stopped being scolded for it around the fifth time because most of the staff thought it was hilarious. We’d stop playing the game immediately after that, our point achieved, all of us having got what we came there for. We sat in the hall and shared stories about when each of us had lost our virginity, or the first time we’d been punched in the face. He giggled at Jared as he mimicked grasping at his bleeding nose. The nurses didn’t seem to find it as funny. There was a general, noticeable disconnect between us and them, even the nurses we all likes the most. Not really because of age, or because they were on the job. It was a feeling of disconnecting, not quite meshing with normal people, that all of us already went through life with separately-- and here, where we had community, that only intensified. For many of us this was the first time that our abnormalities had really been accepted and even admired by others. Being with the other kids in my ward was a time i felt freest, even in our restricted and controlled environment. None of them cares if i’d twitch and fidget, none of them minded my shiness or were caught off guard by the things I’d say. While the nurses would squint at me suspiciously if i repeated that they said or spiralled into babbling from our conversations, my new friends had all accepted these things by the third time they came around. I was allowed to express myself and allowed to not be able to, and it felt effortless to return the favor, because who was i to judge. Little outbursts, conversations that trailed off into blank stares, people needing to go walk around or cry or smack their seat five times before they sat on it, these things were all easy to look past. It was hard, however, not to notice the trouble staff still saw with them, and not to turn on them a bit for that. My friends accepted that i spoke weird, while the nurses would roll their eyes if i stammered. G would nod understandingly when I confided in her about the past while staff would react uncomfortably, their only help in offering to make police reports i didn’t want made. If I told the others i felt like hurting myself, they would show sympathy and talk with me about it; the one time I told a nurse i was “having urges,” like we were supposed to, I was put on finger foods. This tension culminated in one particular group session. A thin older woman replaced our usual freud impersonator, loitering outside to chat with the nurses as long as possible before having to deal with us. We whispered to each other; no one had met or before, or seen her around the building. That was probably a bad sign. She told us to call her Olivia, I think. Olivia was the worst therapist I have ever seen in action, and that should be frightening. She commanded direct eye contact between her and the patient speaking, and that no one else speak until directly spoken to (interruptions are one thing, but discussion is just about the entire point of doing therapy in a group.) She gave us all a question she assumed would be simple enough for our tiny broken minds. “What do you think is keeping you here?” I started echoing the hard way she said “What” and clamped my mouth shut as soon as possible. Usually I could keep the parrot in my head around doctors, with some effort; being open with my impulses around the others made it hard to start shutting up again. She took my weird reflex as volunteering to go first, and looked to me expectantly. Its honestly the most stupid and annoying question you will ever be asked in a therapy setting. I never heard it asked in a tone other than condescending, and it's never failed to be ignorant; ‘Why do you think you’re here?’ is therapist code for ‘why are you messing up your life, and can you convince me it isn’t on purpose?’ I had a routine for this question that seemed to be shared with the others; attempt to answer honestly, listing all the things in and out of your control, your life and environment and symptoms, the fact that you are a complex human being with feelings and a past. Then, try not to sigh at your doctor and list some rehearsed line about how you guess you’re just a disrespectful child acting out for attention. I ran through it as quickly as possible, feeling restless and trying not to avert my eyes from hers or change my position too much as she would impatiently observe every movement. Usually I’d have something in my hands to funnel my stress into, but this had to be the one time I forgot to take one of my hoarded stress toys from the pile in my room. Three more kids went after me, in the same routine, with varying degrees of sass. Then Olivia set her eyes on G. The rest of us shared a silent realization and looked to each other with worry, straightening up, thinking up ways to deflect Olivia onto something else. It was too late when G shrunk, laughing nervously and not meeting the womans eyes. G’s home situation was truly heartbreaking to hear retold. I love and respect her too much to retell the details of it here, but Olivia spent what seemed like unending years of punishment pulling this story out of the girl, giving us a demeaning hush if we objected. It was surreal and we didn’t know what to do, stuck in a room with one authority figure under threat and tranquilizers, watching the friend we all openly adored the most be forced to recount such a cruel thing in such complete detail. Obviously she was crying, most of us were too. J sat alone on a couch beside Olivia’s, hands in fists, and I focussed on my fear for him instead of my fear of him. I was sitting beside G, being shushed at every concerned whine that forced its way out, unable to think of an escape plan because I couldn’t turn off my ears. It was when she reached a specific point of the story, G cut herself off and let out a sob and my hand automatically went to her shoulder. Olivia barked out, in the coldest tone I think I have ever heard, “No Touching.” The room exploded, every one of us reacting at the same time with a vicious intensity. The others jumped to their feet, protectively leaning towards G. M pointed and yelled a few choice words hand selected for our doctor, R went for the door to get other staff, someone else just cried out at her hysterically. J lunged at the woman as G slid into my arms, looking away from what was happening and sobbing into my shirt. I put my hand on her hair half to comfort her and half to make sure she didn’t look back. A dozen staff members crowded around the doorway of the room but only three actually entered; I don’t remember how it felt watching my friend try to choke out an old woman and be pulled away by security, but the picture of it in my head is crystal clear. A nurse, Cecily, had her arms out low but wide, making a barrier between us and the gasping doctor. Everyone was yelling, us at staff and staff at us. The intern that helped me with french came to guide Olivia out of the room and M screeched that he was a traitor, throwing a stack on coloring sheets in their general direction. Olivia said something under her breath as she left-- something about how we were terrible demon children, or how ‘never in all her years in the field’ something like this had happened, I think I forgot because her words aren’t worth remembering. We locked eyes for a split second before the slid out of the room, and I muffled “Occupational Hazard” into G’s hair.

For an hour after we were forced to sit and have alcohol poisoning explained to us until Freud Jr. Appeared. We were happy to see him but still furious, all on the same side against Olivia once we were finally asked what had happened. Everyone recounted the same story, agreeing loudly with each other, stopping to comfort and apologize to G and ask if she was okay. We stayed in that room for another hour, giving our testimony and demanding J shouldn’t be punished, or more begging they didn’t send him back to juvenile. Freud nodded solemnly as he listened to us the way only he and Jesus and two of the nurses did, meaning at all. He told us he’d see what he could do. We didn’t see J for the rest of the day and come morning, Jesus was his new shadow. He was on some kind of reverse suicide watch, with all the restrictions, but the league of nameless psychiatrists and hospital directors had agreed or been swayed to agree that J’s only real crime was being physically violent with staff. After dinner that night, I asked if he could have my candy bar, and threw it in the trash when I was refused.

I was discharged after nine days on the ward, feeling no more or less suicidal, no more or less recovered, not more normal but not more different. I remember Rebecca calling me into the hallway to ask if i was afraid to go home. Of course I was, I told her! I was leaving friends I had connected to more in a week than I had with anyone in years. I was returning to a town of people like the staff, strangers that didn’t understand and only pretended to want to. I would be returning to my second month of high school, gone for the last week of September, though I’d barely showed up at all before then. I asked her what I had not to be worried about, but then dropped it, because I knew we were only having this conversation in case my answer alluded that my parents weren’t safe to go home to.

The goodbyes I was given before 8 o’clock lights out were short and sweet and always, turning our attention back and forth between them and “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou!” playing on the television. I only slept an hour through that night, feeling about everything I could think to. In the morning, I was given my shoes while the others were lined up, in the middle of Checks. I waved silently at them and heard M call out “Bring a better book next time!” Before Jesus closed the double-doors behind us.

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